1991

I can’t come up with a better title for this post, which will have nothing to do with party crashing in the least. I’ve just been listening to The B-52s almost exclusively for days. For the most part, everything else just makes me want to crawl out of my skin or simply desire no audio stimulation at all. Yes, even I need a break from KaTe every once in a while, although this last run was probably one of the longest on record.

At any rate, I’ve been thinking about wonderfully timed unemployment situation and comparing it to the last one back in 2004. If 2008 will be known as the Summer of My Cybertent, 2004 should be called the Summer of My Wanna-Be Subversive-tent.

I’ve even created a mix CD in honor of this summer, although it’s technically not summer just yet. I don’t think I’ve ever done that, created a CD to memorialize the music I played over and over in a given season. Nope. I can guarantee I’ve never done this. But it’s a good mix and hopefully the sister will be of a mind to listen to it at least once while I’m visiting. The track listing has been uploaded to artofthemix.com.

No, it hasn’t. AOTM has been down for two days and instead of waiting for them to get their act together, I proudly present The Summer of My Cybertent 2008:

Games People Play - The Alan Parsons Project

Give Him A Great Big Kiss (remix) - The Shangri-las

Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair) - Sheena Easton

Deadbeat Club - The B-52s

Eye In The Sky - The Alan Parsons Project

It’s Too Late - Bob Mould

Want You - The Bangles

Modern Girl - Sheena Easton

Out In The Streets - The Shangri-Las

You Want Alchemy - KaTe Bush

Loch Lomond - The Real McKenzies

Don’t Answer Me - The Alan Parsons Project

Leader of the pack (remix) - The Shangri-Las

Aquarius/Let The Sun Shine In (The Flesh Failures) - The Fifth Dimension

Eyes Wide Open - The B52s

As I was listing the songs, I realized making a mix CD without at least one KaTe song seems an impossibility for me. There’s obviously little, if any rhyme or reason for any particular song’s inclusion (if you discount the whole KaTe factor), except it’s a snapshot of the bands/singers I’ve been playing over and over. I’ve even left behind Pink Striped Sox and A Sonic Lipstick in favor of this for listening in the 40-ouncer. That mix CD is a story unto itself; I don’t even know what version I’m up to.

If you’d like a copy of either - or both, let me know and I’ll get one to you.

Funplex

Hey, don’t forget I’m making my debut on the new-fangled radio these crazy kids have today.

What? You say you can listen to radio from around the world on your computer? Oh, stop it. When I was your age, computers took up an entire rooms, if not building floors!

And none of the computer handlers looked like this and therefore inspired dangerously intense mouth-breathing:

1600 PDT today, here.

If you can’t tune due to prior commitments (e.g. washing and setting your hair, changing the oil in your car, ridding the remote control of that nastiness it attracts around the buttons), you can always download the program for listening on your terms.

Be seeing you.

Reflections

(possibly one of the finest songs written.
ever. in the history of the world.)

With nothing witty to add.

if charlie parker was a gunslinger, there’d be a whole lot of dead copycats

lol manuscripts: everything could use a little lol, especially the renaissance

Pulled from the bowels of my hard drive.

Old Apple Computer Co. logo,
complete with Sir Isaac Newton

Screen cap from “Moonlight Lady,” which I enjoyed to a point,
although the only thing I really understood was the sex.

I’m not sure what the hell this has to do with communism,
but I found it when I was image googling “communism, communist manifesto,” etc., etc.

The very talented and always lovely Honor Blackman.
I still can’t believe I actually spoke to her and stood this close, peering over her shoulder.

Seriously, do you think he ever tripped over this damn thing?
A scarf like that could come in very handy for a little kink about the TARDIS, you know.

Gambling with Souls (1936)

The Wild and the Wicked (1956)

2007

An Unearthly Child

Okay, thanks to my very good friend on the right coast, I spent more time than really necessary making a new avatar for myself this morning. It took me forever to figure out how to save the goddamn thing, then had to take it first to the Crapaq in the hopes I could convert the original .tiff file to something I could use on the internets. Of course, the program I’ve got on the Crapaq can’t do it, so I had to take the file to Myrna Loynux and voila! Naturally she could take care of it and not even break a sweat. Once I’d gotten that straightened out, I updated my avatar everywhere I could think of, including my address book, which necessitated me creating a new vcard for myself because I was unable to change the picture on the original card.

I’m quite fond of little Animickme; I had a dream last night in which my hair was pink, striped as I used to have it (a la Michael Steel of the Bangles) with hot hot pink. And the headphones she’s sporting are the type I prefer over the little ear buds so popular these days. In fact, I think I’ve got a big ol’ pair of 70s headphones somewhere in the garage; perhaps when I venture forth in a little while, I’ll look for them

Cute, hmmm?

Perhaps it was the particular date causing the tears to roll down my face at the end of “The Dalek Invasion of Earth” earlier today. Perhaps I’ve got the beginnings of PMS. Perhaps I’ve been saving up my tears over other things for too long now. It may be a combination of all three. Watching the Doctor double lock the doors to the TARDIS, thereby leaving his granddaughter Susan behind caused innumerable tears to fall and I cursed that man, I cursed him good and loud for doing it to me again, for this is certainly not the first time I’ve cried watching the fool show (and no, I have not watched the last S! J! S! episode yet), and I’m quite sure it won’t be the last (yes, I’m still holding off on the last S! J! S! episode).

There were tears for Adric. There were tears for the second Doctor when he sent Jamie and Zoe back with no real memories of him. There were tears for the third and fourth Doctors when they regenerated into the fourth and fifth Doctors respectively. There may have been tears early on in my Who education for Rose when the Doctor left her behind in that parallel world. There were tears for the sixth Doctor because of Mel. There were tears over Tegan because…well, it was Tegan.

No, not really. I’m just being mean to Mel.

I’m exaggerating about Tegan, but only by this much.

To quote a bit from an email I recently sent:

Yes, I still prefer Barbara over Susan, but I will no longer unequivocably declare dislike of anyone in the Whoniverse. I learned my lesson with Pertwee. That being said, Tegan does not, nor ever fall into that category, should you be wondering…

I’m not terribly creative when it comes to image manipulation, nor am I particularly skilled at it; there was a time when I’d spend hours at the computer, screwing around with this type of thing until either my head felt like it was going to explode or I just gave up. Having a properly set up computer helped a little; as it is, the only computer on which I can do this is actually used as my second television these days, so it’s really far from a working machine for anything but watching movies.

Taking the suggestion Wes left earlier, I grabbed two screen caps from Reefer Madness to use for posts in the exploitastic! category. I’d rather use actual pictures of movie posters, as I do with celluloid-a-go-go, but I don’t hold out much hope for finding them on a consistent basis.

Okay, this is the question at hand: which do you prefer for the new exploitastic! category?

or

Leave your preference in the comments; I’m seriously torn between the two.

The Road to Ruin

1934

The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Can there be any others? Absolutely not.

Except for the unexpected two and a half hour nap this afternoon, today was one of the fuller days I’ve had in over a week. I didn’t mean to sleep for that long, really, I didn’t. I finished watching part four of “The Invasion of the Daleks” and closed my eyes for what was only going to be ten minutes or so. Imagine my utter surprise when I woke up and it was almost half past six. Well, so much for today being the day to get back on my normal schedule.

I’m quite pleased with all I accomplished today, the two most important tasks being submitting paperwork for unemployment and making calls to people I knew through my former employer. It would be fair to say that across the board, everyone with whom I spoke was beyond puzzled about the turn of events and wondered if the company was up against more than just simple cutbacks. I sort of dished with one of them, the wife of a customer with whom I’ve always had a connection. Actually, she wanted to dish more than I did and so I did, but very cautiously, never forgetting what I said could get back to the factory. Not that I think she would do that, but strange things are known to happen with gossip. All in all, it was strangely uplifting, to speak with these guys I’ve known for almost four years, to hear their bewilderment, their total dismay I lost my job and in the process, lost the one person they could count on to get things done and done correctly the first time around, in most cases.

Inspiration struck me while talking with one of them: I very honestly told him the (wo) had taught me a lot in the time we had together and that we had a great run, but in the end, the universe was telling me in its own mysterious way that it was time for me to move on, because in the end, the universe and its plan for me, for you, for the guy down the street is much larger than any of us can begin to fathom. It’s so much more than a job, a relationship, how much money is in the bank. It’s more than all of us in the world combined.

Yeah, I know. It’s mumbo-jumbo, child of the universe crap and all that, but I sincerely believe it’s true, despite the cynical and more practical side I show to the public. And although I don’t think Max Ehrmann, the author of The Desiderata necessarily had in mind the picture I’ve used to accompany this post, but I really dig it much more than the frou-frou examples I found. This was found at 8images; click on the image for a larger version.

One of the guys actually asked me if I would be moving to be closer to Star and Bar and I answered him more honestly than I thought I would. My options are so open right now that it would be quite easy for me to pick up stakes and get out. As of tomorrow, I’m two years into my five year plan and time, she’s not slowin’ down. I’ll confab with the sister while I’m there and see what she thinks honestly about the pragmatics of the scheme, the express wish we lived closer notwithstanding. One of the big roadblocks is the real estate market and how fast I could unload my condo. Bettie P has suggested renting it out; the sister’s expressed the same idea. But with all the painting I’ve just done and finally liking the villa again, I’m not sure that’s the thing I want to be doing at the moment.

So, I’ll leave you with two lines from Glenn Frey’s song, “Part of Me, Part of You,” which I’m slightly obsessed with at the moment, sort of like when I heard it for the first time in “Thelma and Louise” and then a few years later, when it was, very briefly, the song that * and I considered ours.

We can never know about tomorrow
Still we have to choose which way to go

don’t let me disabuse you of that notion, because lately they have been, for the most part. Movies. Music. Lovely women. Three things that make my world go ’round these days, in lieu of having to think about anything relating to a job in any way. Except knowing the money will run out eventually and even sooner if I don’t get my ass in gear and get the unemployment paperwork submitted. Hell, I completed it yesterday in more than enough time to get it faxed at 101 or mailed at the UPS store, but did I do either? No, of course I didn’t. I sat around on my ever-increasing butt and watched movies, then laid down and fell asleep watching Freaks (I think it was Freaks…god, I’m gross).

I’m trying to be productive, I am, I really am…and I’m halfway imagining myself as Sally Field right about now…I was just telling Irrelephant of the great success I’m having in starting and/or completing the myriad projects I’ve been sitting on for seemingly forever. I’ve washed the windows, inside and out, plus the screens. This may have gotten a cursory mention a few posts back, not to mention the admission it’s been seven years since they were last addressed. And the screen Tat Boi and I couldn’t get back in the way it came out still wouldn’t cooperate and so is still in the window frame backwards.

I’ve also rearranged the porch, so watch for pictures of that coming up, as well as photographs of the hanging things I’ve got decorating the porch. The flag finally bit the dust; I think it may have been up since 2000 or so, but it was frayed and faded and I knew my dad would be disappointed if he were here to see it in such a sorry state. I folded it up and put it in the water heater closet, since I didn’t know where else it should go and I didn’t have the heart to throw it in the dumpster, nor a place to properly burn it.

I’ve also realized recently how many images I have stored up on my hard drive, all of them hoping to be used in a blog post at one time or another. That isn’t going to happen, at least right away and there are so many of them that I’ll just put them in posts where they won’t have any other reason for inclusion except I’ve got to find a place for them…starting with this post. Plus, some of them are pretty neat screen caps from movies I’ve recently watched. That certainly can’t come as any surprise, hmmm?

The great movie catalog project I started last night finally came to an end this afternoon (less the VHS in my collection) and I’m quite pleased overall with the import option at dvdspot, but I wish the database was a bit more forgiving. Case in point: I tried adding “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dreamhouse” and was unable to do so because it wasn’t in the database, but when I added “Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,” voila! There it was…for a site so extensive, I’d hoped for a bit more leniency with movie titles because now I’ve got quite a list of films I’ll have to add manually and no desire to do so. I tried last night with movie titles I knew I owned and about half of them didn’t take, although I ticked off the “Owned” buttons. Frustrating, that. I suppose analyzing it by total number of movies versus total number of movies not imported, it’s not so bad, but still. I dread the day when I’m ready to import all the television titles I’ve got, since I have very few series in their entirety and suspect I won’t be able to pick and choose what episodes I’ve actually got. Ah well. Such is life.