Pardon Me, The Music Is Moving.

It's been a while since I did a post which pretty much can be summed up with, "OMG watch this thing I found on YouTube!" mainly because I haven't have 4 minutes straight of free time in which to check anything in my "ToWatch*" folder--and if you find that hard to believe, I was called away as I was writing that very line--but also because YouTube pulls things down faster than I can see them.

But here, from the channel of the director of the video (and one would hope not so soon to be taken down, but there was always that Sequential Pictures Dune Re-Dub incident), is Eric Wareheim's masterpiece for a song I've loved forever, Polite Dance Song by The Bird and The Bee. It makes me ten kinds of happy.



(*I have a ToWatch, Read, and Replies folder on my desktop. I...am afraid to do a count of how many items are in each folder. I've also got one merely titled "4," because there's a locked (damaged?) file in there and until I'm done with it I can't rename the folder...which has been sitting there since April. Of 2007.)

Pardon Me, The Music Is Moving.

Daily Lit: Like P.G. Wodehouse Had A Blog!

I have to admit that all this Internet has cut in on my book-reading time. Back when all I logged onto Prodigy for was e-mail from my cousin and the latest installment of Abel Adventures, I used to read [insert impressive number here] books a year. Now...not as many. Yes, the books I'm interested in now are longer and have bigger words, but I spend too much time checking RSS feeds when I could be reading books.

Apparently I'm not the only one, because there is a place called Daily Lit, and THEY POST BOOKS IN AN RSS FEED. It's...insane, really, but I signed up for My Man Jeeves within an hour of finding the place. I chose something light that I'd never read, see. I could have gone straight for Ulysses, but no. Two-and-a-half months and I'll have read a book my great-grandfather once read. Unless I get behind on my RSS feeds again, then I may just give up and go back to hardcovers.

Daily Lit: Like P.G. Wodehouse Had A Blog!

Almost Lost My Head

Last Saturday we watched Be Kind, Rewind, because it seemed so hilarious in the commercials and Jack Black has become a favorite of ours. It was funny, for the most part, but the plotline about saving the building reminded me of my life a little too much and not in a *Batteries Not Included kind of way. Perhaps it was just the day.

I totally fell over and got my head wedged against the wall. What are the odds? It sucked in many ways because on my way down the little MSG-laden caramel things I was planning to eat went all over the (eh, hairy) floor and once my head dropped below chest level I lost my voice and so no one knew I was in any trouble until my arse was spotted. Didn't help that the only arm I had to get away from the offending wall is the shoulder that I somehow messed up back in April. The moral of the story is that if you find someone wedged against a wall, don't just assume they will get up if you tell them to, even if you tell them really really loud. Also, don't be surprised if said slab of meat and bones flips you the finger because really, attempting to move the wall with the sonic quality of your voice is just not helping.

The next night we saw The Other Boleyn Girl, which reminded me that people kinda suck. I don't know, that's what I generally take from history. Other people get romantic notions about England back in the day of beheadings, but damn, I have yet to see a period in history where people were not screwing each other over and resorting to grudge killing. I liked the movie as a movie, though. Natalie Portman's a favorite of mine, though. I've read...unfavorable reviews. I shouldn't, really.

Tuesday was depressing. It was the last time I paid for groceries in the first store we shopped in when we moved here. Yes, the building hasn't seen a remodel since those days, but dammit, when you're as insane as I am, you get attached to things like people who know you and the feeling that no matter what's going on around you, you can get a damned loaf of rye bread after 1PM within ten minutes. Of course because of the weather, I was on Sudafed knock-off and so any real emotion was completely deadened to the point where I just ran around like the Tazmanian Devil. But I say it was depressing as the guy who was working the deli counter was holding his cellphone with the plastic food service gloves on. I think I covered this.

Nan found a doozy of a movie called either The Favorite or Intimate Power, neither of which title really does the film justice. Cuff from The Bloodhound Gang is the would-be sultan of...where were they, anyway? Turkey, I think. I would say watch it just so you can experience the strange, rushed lives of a bunch of people who were not French or Turkish in any way. Ah, '80s movies.

I got it into my head to create 24 comic strips in one month. That means every weekday in July, I have to draw, scan, put together and otherwise create a comic strip. Which is I think what I already said. But I don't usually do that many. If I pull this off, I will be able to take some time off from strip-making in August. Or at least it will give me a lot of lead time for when I go insane from trying to make 24 strips in as many days.

Perhaps unrelated, I had the strangest allergic reaction in all the time I know me. I was sitting here minding my business, when all of a sudden my hands started itching. That's not really rare, nor is the progression of the itching to my arms. No, I've been itchy before, I've been itchy for about thirty years, but when my throat suddenly closed up as if I'd been using Capsasin-P for toothpaste (I had not), that sorta weirded me out a bit. The wheezy nastiness in my chest that followed was entirely new. I've added the feeling to my list of ways I wouldn't like to die.

On the fourth, I stayed indoors. Many of the neighbors were setting off small explosives and it's best if I stay out of the way when they do that. So instead of maybe catching up on replies, I went and played with Twitter. I am now officially a twit. Somewhere along the sidebar is the Twidget, and anyone wanting to follow the moment-to-moment dullness that is me can find me at twitter.com/LyndaN.

Almost Lost My Head

Do Yourself In Project #34: The Bed Blocks

So I have this hernia. I mention it only because it's the entire reason why I hauled out the sawhorse and the jigsaw and a bunch of wood to make my bed look like a funny car.

Why make bed-raising things out of wood when you can buy some ready-made? Because that takes mo-ney, and after all I have bits of wood left over from all the other things we've built...those heavy things that aggravated my hernia. So six months after this most recent big-time* hernia aggravation, I finally got it into my head to make proper permanent blocks to replace the stack of wood I had to remove because it wasn't safe for others. Nothing wakes you up faster than the sound of your bed killing people.

Raising the wheels at the head of the bed is really the only effective way to make a hiatal hernia stop being an annoying little bastard. So it had to be done. Once my mom saw the first one all stuck together with duct tape (makes it easier to nail), she realized why I was making her saw all these tiny little pieces into even smaller pieces. She was impressed the next day when I woke up and could speak without the use of gymnastics or caustic food. Before that she was just like, not enthusiastic aboutthe project.

This is what I had her cut:

• Two 3-inch long sections of 2x4 for each leg (that would be 4)
• "Sides" for each leg, sort of a box around the 2x4 blocks which were measured very scientifically by holding the 2x4 bits up and drawing a line around them. The purpose of the box was to keep the wheels of the bed from rolling off the blocks in case the bed is moved.
• A 4-inch square to sit all that on, and a 5-inch square to sit that on, because pyramids don't tip, yo.

This whole thing, nailed together, brings the head of bed up six inches, which is said to be the proper gut-dropping angle. It worked, really. I mean, after lifting the bed to get the wood under the wheels. That part sort of sucked.

As of today it's been a week since this project and hopefully all the damage that started during the happy healthy Puppy time to eat too much Lo Mein and then prune trees day is healing. I can talk more often than not, which is a complete reversal of how it's been since that nice patch of weather in January when I decided to get a jump on the yardwork, followed by that bad patch of weather where I shoveled the slush...after er...eating too much. ONE TIME. ONE TIME AND I GET MY ESOPHAGUS HANDED TO ME. Fie foul noodles! They really were quite tasty, I can't lie. Not as tasty as the smell of fresh-cut pine boards, but hey.

*No, really, I knew it would take a while to go away, but dude, six months?

Do Yourself In Project #34: The Bed Blocks

Dear Guy Behind The Deli Counter,

Those plastic gloves you wear are meant to keep your germs off the food. So holding your cell phone to your head while wearing the gloves (I appreciate you switching the phone to your other gloved hand while you worked the slicer...I'm sure you noticed me gaping in horror staring) sort of defeats the purpose. What else do you do while wearing the gloves, I wonder?

Shake hands with the customers?

Oh my.

I'm...sorry I saw all that.

Dear Guy Behind The Deli Counter,