For those who prefer not to play the YouTube clip, the song has these recurring lines:
He's got looks that books take pages to tell He's got a face to make you fall on your knees He's got money in the bank to thank and I guess You could think he's livin' at ease...
Plus, the chorus is:
Blame it on the girls who know what to do Blame it on the boys who keep hitting on you Blame it on your mother for the things she said Blame it on your father, but you know he’s dead
I am getting chest X-rays tomorrow. /o\ I finally went to the doctor on Wednesday to see if he could do anything about the shoggoth breeding grounds that were formerly my lungs. He did the usual poking and prodding and thumping and stethoscoping, and decided he didn’t like the noise my right lung was making. Hence, radiology. He also suggested that the pain I’d been feeling when I coughed, or breathed too deeply, was caused by inflammation of the pleura, and recommended I switch from acetaminophen to ibuprofen. This turned out to be a good call.
In happier news, tomorrow evening is the start of the Dances of Vice Festival III: The Shipwrecked Mariners Ball, a cruise around New York harbor aboard the Jewel. I have my outfits assembled (more or less — I have to sew one button and make decisions re: accessories and makeup), and will be praying to Poseidon and the nereids for fine sailing.
So, the new version of The Prisoner — is anyone else on my friends list watching it? By now the finale will have aired. I’m on the night shift this week so I’ve been taping it. If anyone comments, PLEASE, NO SPOILERS. Thank you.
I am a sad panda, because the fact that I am still leaking horrible substances from various orifices means I missed both my friend’s belated wedding reception at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Waters of Mars viewing party. Watching half my friends list go into (mostly) joyous spasms over the latter is not helping. *sulks*
Seriously, I’m going into my third week of expelling wads of glutinous stuff in unattractive earth tones. I finally caved and made a doctor’s appointment.
In the meantime, I have been trying various drugstore remedies, and OMIGOD, you guys, oxymetazoline hydrochloride is amazing. Does what it says on the tin squeeze bottle.
On the upside, Dilatory Bastard is home from the shop and waiting to be plugged in. I can haz home intarwebz? :D
Spoke too soon re: the cough. I feel like a wuss complaining about this when there are people on my friends list who are much worse off, health-wise, but earlier I went into a coughing fit so violent that I pulled a muscle over my ribcage, I think — it hurts when I inhale too deeply.
In other news, I’m taking a break from James Branch Cabell to re-read some of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu books. It’s like switching from filet mignon to roadside burgers. Also, it makes me want to find a good biography of Rohmer so I can find out if he was a believer in the Yellow Peril and the pro-Anglo themes of these stories, or if he was secretly rooting for the Doctor like I am — lord knows, Fu Manchu is far more compelling than the various ersatz Holmes-and-Watson duos who oppose him.
Praise Kalki,* I think the cough is finally going away. (I think some of my co-workers were itching to throw me into a padded cell just to stop the noise.) If I wake up tomorrow without a throat full of baby shoggoths, I will proclaim myself well and truly cured.
*
Alas, Eastwick, we hardly knew ye. Apparently ABC is going to air the remainder of the ordered episodes, and that will be it. While I’ll concede that it was never quite the giddy supernatural screwball comedy series I was hoping for — except perhaps for the moon madness episode — is the show really worse than the V reboot? (Which, so far? UGH. Clunky dialogue, bad pacing, totally lacking in suspense.) Ah well, have a valedictory montage from io9.com.
*
Dang it, I am probably going to miss the DWNY Waters of Mars viewing party, because a newly married friend is having a instead-of-a-wedding-reception (she and her boyfriend basically tied the knot at her father’s deathbed) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that night. Maybe I could leave early...?
*
I wonder if the Supernatural powers that be intended to air this week’s Sam-and-Dean-go-to-a-fan-convention episode right after last week’s Sam-and-Dean-bounce-through-TV-parodies episode, or if the back-to-back meta is due to network meddling? Also, has anyone else pointed out that Dean’s affirmative answer to his game show question, "Would your Mother and Father still be alive if your brother was never born?", may NOT be correct? True, if San had never been born they probably wouldn’t have been killed by demons, but that doesn’t guarantee they’d be alive — after all, the John Winchester in Dean’s genie-generated dream world was dead of heart failure, if memory serves.
*
Oh! Almost forgot to say: I’m signed up for Yuletide and the Man from Uncle Secret Santa Affair, so that’s at least two fics I’ll have to whomp out in the next month. *cracks fingers*
I was just looking at my Hollywood Legends of Horror Collection DVD boxset (which I brought to work last week so I could grab screencaps for Halloween-themed desktops and screensavers), and saw, to my utmost delight, that it includes The Devil Doll (1936), easily the most deranged mainstream movie I have seen. Then I was disappointed to realize that it was the only title in the six-film set without a commentary track, because I would love to know what the deal was with this movie; a recap of the plot sounds like the jumbled retelling of two or more half-remembered dreams, and one of the credited writers is Erich von Stroheim. Yes, that guy.
I’ve been in a funk all day — I’m sick and tired (literally), my home computer is still out of commission, the anti-gay-marriage asshats in Maine won...and then I learned that Wil Wheaton* did all the ADR for the Romulan voices in the Star Trek reboot. So yes, much of the the world is still ruled by hate and decrepitude, but sometimes Steve the Fruitbat grants us a glimmer of hope and happiness.
* Full disclosure: I was never part of the Wesley-Crusher-Die-Die-Die! contingent, and in fact had a massive geek!crush on Wil back in the day.
Want to help? You can donate here. While you’re at the site, why not check out her online novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (updated on Mondays), or her short-fiction-by-post subscription service, the Omikuji Project?
I’ve been playing Bluefly’s 30 Bags in 30 Days game, and when I checked my e-mail just now I found a message, timestamped 3:45 p.m., containing a code good for 10% off my next $100 purchase from Bluefly.com. Huh, I thought, did I win a discount yesterday and forget?Then, I went to the site, played the game...and won that exact code. [*cue Twilight Zone theme*]
During last week’s proofreading with wasserface, she said something along the lines of, “You’re coughing.* Everyone in the office is coughing. It’s strep season. I just had strep last week. Do you think it’s strep? I hope it isn’t strep. STREP STREP STREP STREP STREP.” And then I stabbed her in the throat with a blue pencil.**
So of course, I’ve spent today chugging a mix of hot water, cayenne pepper sauce, honey, lemon juice, and apple cider vinegar (plus the occasional shot of Robitussin) in an attempt to dissolve whatever crud is currently massing in the back of my throat.
* I wasn’t. I had just sipped some water and cleared my throat. ** No I didn’t. But I’m pretty sure if I had, no one would have ratted me out, and the guy in the nearest cubicle would have whistled while he helped me hide the body.
Managed to buy a CPU fan of the right size from a computer repair place a few blocks from my apartment and install it myself.
However, pushing the on switch yielded absolutely no results, so I hauled the ’puter to the place where I bought the fan for diagnosis and possible repair.
But wait! During the weekly(-ish) phone conversation with Dad, he said he’d send me a Sony Vaio that’s been sitting in a closet since he quit his last job. Better Living Through Hand-Me-Downs!
Volunteered at the WFMU Record Fair and spent Sunday morning selling tickets (and gently informing one customer than no, handing over four $2-off-admission coupons would not get him in for free). This year I practiced restraint when cruising the dealer tables. Spoils:
Get Lost, by the Magnetic Fields — An inexplicable gap in my music collection is finally filled.
Feelin’ Kinda Patton, by Patton Oswalt — Never heard of the guy until Ratatouille, then bought Werewolves and Chocolate and fell like a lead brick.
Decksanddrumsandrockandroll, by Propellorheads — Sonofabitch, misfiled! According to iTunes this is actually The Rabbit in the Moon Remixed, Vol. 1. Such are the perils of the WFMU $1 bins.
Chamber Music Ensembles; United States Military Academy, 200 Years of Excellence, Volumes I and II, by various permutations of the U.S. Military Academy Band of West Point — The track listing which sealed the deal: “‘Londonderry Air’ — West Point Tuba Quartet.”
Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, by Tom Waits. One of the most amazing things I have ever seen was a puppet show called “Tom Waits’ Haunted Basement,” which starred a wooden Tom Waits marionette that smoked a cigarette.
Did anyone else see Werewolves: Dark Survivors on Animal Planet? It was a moderately interesting exercise in speculative xenobiology (what if werewolves were humans infected with a mutated, inheritable strain of rabies?) marred by the otherwise intelligent female scientist’s insistence on Tempting Fate. (JESUS CHRIST IT’S A WEREWOLF, GET IN THE CAR!)
As I’ve mentioned previously, this past weekend the CPU fan of my desktop computer* apparently gave up the ghost, leaving me with no home Internet connection. (whimper) Since in my experience having someone else repair one’s computer is insanely expensive, I decided to try replacing the fan myself. This involved unplugging eleventy billion cables; working out how to open the housing without injury to myself or the machine; finding the fan in question (cleverly concealed in a bright green plastic housing connecting the motherboard to a vent in the case); and then detaching the fan, again without hurt to myself or the computer.
So, fan in hand — well, in a plastic bag because it had the accumulated dust of ages upon it — I went downtown to J&R on my lunch break. Surely, the staff of this “New York institution since 1971” with “the best service and lowest prices around” would fulfil my needs!
Reader, they did not.
“Wow, this is an old fan,” observed the sale clerk. “I don’t think we can replace this.”
“None of these would work?” I asked plaintively, gesturing to a display rack bearing dozens of fans in various sizes. Some of them had LEDs and multiple speed settings.
“Let me ask my co-worker. He’s an expert.”
We asked the co-worker. He proclaimed himself utterly stumped.
So I came back to work and found this fan in two seconds by running a Google search on the brand name and model number of the old fan. Then I went to the J&R website, ran a search for “92 mm fan”, and came up with half a dozen hits, all of which are listed as “in stock.”
Keep in mind, I’m just the idiot customer; they’re the alleged experts.
Think I’ll have better luck at RadioShack?
* Unlike seemingly everyone else on my friends list, I have never named my computer. If I had, it would probably have been something along the lines of “Dilatory Bastard.”
Wow. That...was actually kind of good. Still cheesy, but I didn’t cringe at any of the dialogue (trust me, this is a huge improvement over the previous episodes), and I thought they pitched the farce just right.
Have they ever explicitly stated on the show what Penny’s job is? I ask because during the scene when she was pushing Joanna to work on the Van Horne/Hart article I was wondering, If you’re so het up on the subject why don’t you work on the story? I figured she was in some kind of clerical position, since she’s the person who (mis)arranged the newspaper’s archives. Aha, according to Penny’s bio on the official site, she’s a fact-checker. So presumably she has researching skills; maybe she’s just not a writer. Or, maybe [SPOILER]Jamie[/SPOILER], Penny’s “anonymous source” wants Joanna to write the article, to break up Darryl’s coven. Also, I wonder if Joanna is being led to information the “source” already possesses, or he’s using her to uncover real secrets.
Speaking of Darryl, he was in top form, declaring, “I am making sweet love to this bad boy!” as he tickled the ivories. (Based on the camera angles, I guess Paul Gross can play guitar but not piano.) Then, when Kat apologized for possibly causing his restaurant to burn down with her torch song, he pointed out that hey, his company made the candles. (Oh, and I was thinking, Man, they’re lucky the drapes haven’t caught on fireright before the place went up. Excellent timing, show!)
Oh, Kat. Will the Smokin’ Volunteer Firefighter (and this was the first time I thought, I’d hit that) was right to say that you were gorgeous in that red dress (did anyone else think of a pocket-sized Jessica Rabbit?), but you should have skedaddled there and then. Also, the way you clutched your belly when Darryl spoke of a moment’s lust causing a lifetime’s sorrow ... woman, have you never heard of prophylactics? You, a health-care professional who has five kids? (Then again, maybe that’s why you’ve had five kids in ten years.) However, I do clear you of breaking the Girl Code, specifically the tenet Thou Shalt Not Poach Thine Sister’s Fella. It’s been two weeks (thank you, expository dialogue) since Joanna stood up Will for a tumble with her scumbag ex, and between that and the mind-control dub-con the chances he’ll give her another chance are nigh nonexistent. Hey, I wonder when the fallout from Joanna confessing to Will about the hypno-gaze will arrive...?
Meanwhile, Roxie told Chad about her psychic abilities, and it was hilarious. He’s read many works about people with special powers: “Sequential art.” “Comic books?” “Graphic novels.” Hee! (Also, Rebecca Romijn claimed not to know who Professor X is. HEE!) She was amused but rolled with it, thereby demonstrating better judgment and taste than her daughter Mia, who smirked at Josh’s blue dragon (Pern?) poster and doesn’t want to destroy her rep by publicly hanging with the nerd.
Whoa, I almost forgot: show, that was a mean thing to do to any Joanna/Penny ’shippers that may be out there. And hey, was there any other same-sex activity during the town-wide lunacy, or was that it?
Ooh, and did everyone notice which card Chad was holding when Roxie had that vision of a funeral? The Ace of Spades: the death card. Nice touch.
I spent much of the afternoon proofreading a report about how the Forces nouvelles in Côte d’Ivoire are getting around sanctions meant to prevent them for getting funds that could be used to purchase weapons and related materiel — specifically, the smuggling of cacao.
By the time 4 p.m. rolled around I was desperate for a grande mocha.
Am posting from internet cafe. Home computer on fritz -- CPU fan dead, computer shuts down within minute of turning on. Cannot read e-mail or LJ, upload pix from camera, or look up directions at home.
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