Today is September 9, 2009. Which doesn't look interesting at all until it goes all 09/09/09 and then if you throw in 09:09:09 for good measure it becomes an explosion of awesome so crazy I start acting twelve again.
Here are nine things I want to remember from today:
1. I pulled two Runes and they just happened to be Isa and Gebo. Why am I talking about this? LOOK AT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE:
2. I got to hear just about every Beatles song ever on WFUV, including remakes by other artists and solo projects.
3. I spent the day with people and furry things I love.
4. I blipped two songs for the day. Revolution #9 by The Beatles because I like to scare people first thing in the morning, and Beethoven's 9th Symphony because I can't believe I remembered it.
5. I got to enjoy some things on television. So You Think You Can Dance is back already, President Obama kicks ass, and Melanie Oudin made this year's U.S. Open interesting.
6. I took a picture of my watch at 9:09:09PM because I'm still that hardcore.
7. I gave a plant a new home and made a crack about Léon: The Professional that was totally understood.
8. I got to walk around in lovely freakin' weather.
9. I got to see the moon poking through the clouds as it hit 9:09 in the Pacific time zone.
It was a good day.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
To The Nines
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
No Juju In Skyflower, Only House For Bugs.
One of my favorite movies is Medicine Man. Maybe because I respect ants. Which is why it's always difficult for me to wipe out the colonies eating my house. Sometimes I weigh who I would rather lose the house to, and ants always come up as the ones who love the house as much as I do.
When we moved here my father pulled out all the Rose of Sharon (along with every other small plant). They were buggy, he said.
The Rose of Sharon came back to me. Pink, white, lilac, every combination, they line the fences and they'd grow to the sky if I let them, but I prune them in winter because I need to see if a raccoon is trying stop in for...whatever it is they do. Hummingbirds and butterflies visit to check out the flowers, and the ants who still live outside of the house--because ants are hardy bastards--stand on the petals looking awesome.
I like ants. Monty Python devoted an entire episode to them once.
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Songs of My Misspent Youth: It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)
The world as we know it ends all the time. It's a difficult idea to grasp as a kid, especially when possible futures being suggested are wholly disturbing.
But I was lucky, I had an R.E.M. song get into my head one long dark night in 1987. It started out letting me know I wasn't the only one aware that everything was going to change, but then after we had a few years together the numbness of futility was replaced with a strange peace of mind. The world doesn't end. The world as we know it...different story. Loved ones die, seasons change, strangers become friends, disasters strike, leaders change, cars break down, hairstyles change, things decay, fears get burnt away in the light of day, ice keeps melting, trees keep growing, the whole world changes every second, but the world itself doesn't end.
I wasn't going to include It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) in the moments of misspent youth, because the journey to get from mind-numbing fear to feeling fine requires a lot of misspent youth, but the song's neat, and I needed to put this all down in writing to commemorate all the times when the world as I knew it ended.
Tomorrow I'll get out of bed and start over again.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
The Lead Up To Many Craigslist Listings
I've said it before and I'll say it every time I write something my peers deem worthy of voting for, I only take part in the 100 Word Stories' weekly challenge to keep my mind working, not to win.
The sappy puppet story won. All by itself. I didn't even vote for it! True enough I didn't thoroughly hate that one after reading it over and over but it's still humbling to have the other writers vote for me, because the other writers are consistently GOOD. The winner of the previous week gets to pick the topic of the next challenge, so naturally when I fired up Google reader last week and saw the next theme was A Full Set my brain went totally blank and stayed that way for several days. I will not elaborate further if exposure to UV rays were partially responsible.
The story I ended up writing was...nasty.
Call me obsessed, but my completionist mentality has served me well. I put myself through school by selling my comic book collection, my original redline Hot Wheels paid for my first real car, my house was paid for with stamps, and the early marketing for my home business was financed by scalping Star Wars figures on the Internet.
I think selling my rookie Babe Ruth card to buy identical implants and veneers for all of my girlfriends was a poor investment, though, because all I got in return was a full set of sexually transmitted diseases. Who would want that?
Scientists, perhaps. Hmm. Hey yeah, maybe this guy can get together with the broad from Hmmmmmmmmmmm! Maybe he DID. *sigh* I do enjoy the lowbrow humor a bit too much.
The full set of challengers can be read and heard here. Read, listen, enjoy, laugh, cry, get grossed out, hear the puppet give an acceptance speech that exposes me for the sock-buying charlatan that I am.
