What Part Is This Again?

This is the part where I get all contrite about the not-posting-to-the-blog for days and days. Please. I am on my knees here. I beg and beseech. Sometimes at the same time. Let's not pretend this isn't going to happen again. Because we know that it will. Weeks will go by with no sign of me, and then suddenly, here I am again, back in your life and expecting a nutritious, though not too filling, breakfast.

Well, the hell with me.

This time, you should break it off. Tell me that you can't handle this sort of neglect anymore. You should get on your 1982 Puch moped and putt your butt right on out of here. You will have to ask me for a push though.

And that's all it will take.

I will gaze into your eyes and promise you I will never again leave you gazing at the back door as I travel the country, following my dream of eating pie in all of the contiguous states. And Guam. And you will take me back, like you always do, thinking that this time, just maybe, it'll be different.

It's all lies, baby. Lies.

Eary

Something deeply troubling happened yesterday. I noticed that I am developing long and luxurious -- I would even say Fu Manchu-esque -- ear hair.

For those of you who haven't already clicked away, let me just say that this isn't the "growing out of the earhole" sort of ear hair. That, while disgusting and disconcerting in a very real way, is to be expected. This is the "growing off the sides of my ears" ear hair.

I don't know what this means, but the really deeply frightening thought I had yesterday, as I stared at this new development in the mirror, with roughly the same expression as the guy had when he had just torn his face off in Poltergeist, was that I will never have less ear hair than at this precise moment in time.

I wonder if Hallmark makes a card for that?

To my darling husband
On our anniversary
The leaves have blown across our lives
We have weathered many storms
And your ear hair is creeping me out.

or

Happy birthday
Please keep your
demented ear hair
contained within a hat
Or perhaps muffs.

Here, Have Some Links

I don't do this very often, because frankly there are a million other places where you can get your RDA of Wacky Linkage. But a voice told me out of nowhere that I needed to put some links on my site. I looked at the cat and asked pointedly "Was that you just then? About the links?"

He ignored me.

AFI's 100 Years, 100 Movie Quotes - Read their list of 400 nominees! Argue with your friends that Buckaroo Bonzai should be included! Take a nice warm bath and reconsider! Use exclamation points where none are really needed!

Hermits around the Web - I was reading this page for no good reason. Hermits seem charming when you read about them on the net. They might be a little smelly in real life, though.

Alien v. Predator v. Mario - Face sucking.

Perry Bible Fellowship Archive - Consistently amusing web comic. Read that and Achewood, and you are probably done with all the sometimes funny stuff for a while.

Blatant Self-Interest

Today is the day. The day when Neil Young was born, and Booker T of Booker T and the MGs fame. And me, too. I am thirty-three today. As far as our contributions to society and art in general go, I would probably come in third on that particular list. But no matter!

Today I will venture, as I did in my youth, to the Hundred Acre Wood, where the happy animals will caper and cavort, and bring me vodka-tonics. The birds will sing merrily. Perhaps they will break into Green Onions or The Needle and The Damage Done, just to keep continuity. Piglet will perform a duet with Eddie Vedder, but will grow disenchanted with his monotony, and attack him mid-song. Eddie will lie bleeding on the loamy earth as the animated toys dance around his cooling body.

Sorry. Getting a little weird there.

Thirty-three is nice in a numerological sense. It's nice to be divisible by eleven, I have to say.

Also, Jesus was allegedly crucified when he was thirty-three, so I'd better 1. get busy, and 2.be on my guard for Romans.

Brain Hurt

Please go and have a look at this very pleasing and brain-painful Dragon Illusion. Best viewed on the video, so make with the downloading. Also, print out your own!

[thanks Johnny13]

I Am Running

Not for office. No. I am running from the Dog Police. You've got to help me.

I have the song Dog Police stuck in my head, and I only know the line "You've got me running from the Dog Police!"

I guess that's enough.

The only cure known to mankind.

Also, as an addendum to that last fancy post with all the pictures, the wifely friend wanted me to share that I did, in fact, fall off a ladder while working on our guest room. I was scraping the acoustic off the ceiling and standing on one of those little metal folding stepstools. I was leaning out over one of the bookcases to get the last bit of acoustic off the corner, when the things just collapsed under me.

But the strangest thing happened.

I was totally uninjured. I went down instantly, from perching on the stool to flat on my stomach, my chin lightly settling on the hardwood floor. I remember as I fell that I was sure the really heavy bookcase would topple over on me and maim me for life. But somehow, not even a bruise.

Also, the wifely friend was filled with sympathy, when she stopped laughing. And she was quick to point out that it only happened because I managed, in my expert fashion, to assemble the stepstool wrong.

There. I hope you're happy.

Expert-ese

"I am an expert." It's the phrase I use to allay my wife's concerns that I am about to hurt myself really badly in an act of home improvement. I am not what is known in the common parlance as "handy". And yet I must soldier on, because in spite of the fact that I will probably knock myself unconscious at least once during my chosen task, I must not let my fellow experts down.

Exchanges like this are fairly commonplace:

*WHAM!*
Wifely friend: Are you OK in there?
Kafkaesque: I--I am fine.
WF: What was that WHAM! sound?
K: What do you mean? I heard nothing, and I am an expert so I should know.
WF: OK then. Don't make any holes in the wall or in your extremities.
K: Ha. Very funny. Being an expert, I am unconcerned with my own personal safet--
....
K:
WF: Husband?
K: Ahg.
WF: Husband?
K: I will be fine. Where is the tourniquet?

This sort of high-level experting is best exhibited when working with either really heavy things, like particle board furniture or really dangerous things, like your larger saws. My friend Chimichanga proved himself a lifetime expert a few years back when he cut his thumb almost entirely off in an inspired run-in with a table saw (and was heard to say later: "I had the situation under control. I am, after all, an expert.") *

I recently managed to put my expert skills to work, peeling multiple layers of wood paneling off the walls in our guest bedroom. One of the previous owners of our new house was obviously a paneling enthusiast. Such a paneling enthusiast, in fact, that he would not settle for just one layer of ugly, crappy paneling. No! He had two layers of paneling!

This is the same guy that put rock walls everywhere in our house. The rock hearth he made around the fireplace is great. I have to give him that. The rock wall he put up in the living room? OK. Not one of the features I was actively seeking when shopping for real estate, but OK.

But the rock wall in the bathroom? The line should have been drawn is what I'm saying. Sure, sometimes after one of those really big bran muffins and three cups of coffee on a lazy Sunday, I'm in the mood for a little rock climbing target practice in the lavatory, but not every day.

Anyway, back to the paneling.

I had to get this paneling off the walls. It was mocking me. Also, I couldn't unpack any of our 8,000 books (approximately 60% of which seem to be copies of Black Elk Speaks and Crime and Punishment -- I blame liberal arts degrees) until the walls were freed from their paneling bondage. So I began prying the paneling off the walls with a small scraping knife. Or putty knife. I am too much of an expert to bother knowing the accurate names of the myriad tools I have at my disposal, so vast is my arsenal. Let's call it a scraper.

I started prying the first panel off, which was not easy. To begin with, the installer of the paneling had used lots of nails. Lots and lots. There were so many nails in my wall that frankly I began to suspect the paneling guy had an eye to this eventual return to sanity when he installed it in the first place. BAM! BAM! BAM! Yep BAM! BAM! BAM! They may BAM! BAM! BAM! take off BAM! BAM! BAM! my paneling BAM! BAM! BAM! but not BAM! BAM! BAM! without BAM! a BAM! BAM! fight.

Incidentally, all that BAM! stuff was supposed to be the guy hammering.

I finally pried off the first panel. I accomplished this by prying a small section off the wall and then pulling the panel really, really hard, until it came off the wall with a pop. This resulted in me staggering around the room, which was now covered in dust and nails, with about a 4 foot by eight foot wood panel with nails sticking out of it. Opportunities for injury abounded, needless to say. But, oddly, and despite my expert status, I remained unharmed. Apart stepping on a few nails, but I figure that is par for the course.

When the first layer came off, I was of course very happy to see the second layer. The second layer was heavier, and yes, uglier, wood than the first.



But I persevered and kept tearing the paneling down, revealing big holes in the wall, and some creative wiring.



It turned out there was also some creative writing. Paneling man had written his esoteric and enigmatic calculations on the wall before he began installation.



I was starting to hate the installer of the paneling. But I needed a name. A target for my wrath. Who had knocked holes in my wall? As I pulled off the last panel, I found my answer.



So. Steve. I don't know what to say to you, Steve, except that you were sick. A sick, putting-up-two-layers-of-paneling, writing-on-the-wall, day-glo-sticker-sticking freak. But I salute you, Steve, because I know, deep down, you were an expert too.

To wrap up this overly long tale, I finally finished the room. This included not just fun with paneling, but acoustic ceiling scraping and ceiling fan removal. My injuries, surprisingly, were only slight. And now, I can look at my guest bedroom, feast my eyes on my inadequate spackling job, and know that I will forever be an expert.





* This is not to say that particle board furniture is not inherently dangerous in and of itself. Especially when one considers those pointy little allen wrenches supplied with your IKEA furniture by crafty IKEA Swedes who secretly want to kill America with the slow poison of modular storage and funny looking lamps.

Despair

So, it seems to be over, and Bush will continue as our nation's puppet for four more years. Though, with the electronic voting machines now so widespread, who really knows if he won? It occurred to me as we watched Dan Rather call the election "Closer than two hickory sticks stuck together with ground-up earthworms", or something to that effect, that the republicans might just have learned to cheat better.

Also, Bush won because MORAL VALUES were so important to voters? It's nice to know that moral values are defined by fear and hatred. That moral values include the invasion of a woman's womb, and the hateful oppression of gay people in this country.

I can't help but think the wool is still being pulled over our eyes. How is it possible that middle America is voting for the administration that is killing their children for no reason? Can we as a nation tolerate the evil done in our name over this whole planet? I hope everyone who voted for Bush feels some sense of responsibility the next time he or she sees a flag draped coffin (if they let the pictures out, that is), or a journalist being beheaded or a gay person beaten or killed in the name of hatred, ignorance and fear.

Time for a dandelion break.

Vote, Ye Mighty

Hi again. It seems that there is going to be an election tomorrow. We will come together as a nation (those of us that can be bothered, I guess), and appoint a new Grand High Poobah. I hope against hope that Bush loses. Anyway, like everyone else, I'm advising you to vote.

Michael Moore's Election Eve Note Sure, he can be kind of an annoying turd, but sometimes he hits the right note.