There comes a time in one’s life when it becomes apparent one has too much of something, be it CDs, DVDs, books, dishes, shoes…t-shirts. I fall into the category of someone with far too many t-shirts, and yet I keep buying them. In fact, I bought two more just last night. Below is just a small sampling of my collection (an ever-growing one, at that), all from my favorite cyberspace t-shirt store, DJTees.

I’ve left my handy Canon PowerShot 520 behind and have officially graduated to the camera pictured on the left, the Fuji FinePixS700. Goddamn, that’s a lot of camera. Crikey!

How I love that little 520, though. It’s such a good little camera. It’s gone to my emm now, since she needs one for herself these days. It’s a simple model, not too fancy but with enough of what she’ll need to be just right. And it was just right for me, too, for two years (almost to the day!) and two trips to London, where it pulled yeoman’s duty and never complained.

It’s time to move on, though and step it up a bit, and just in time, since I’m still planning that day trip to a few cemeteries round the area. I haven’t even checked to see if it will fit in my purse - I’m pretty sure it will, though. It’s not like I have that much in it to begin with. But first, I need to figure out how to loop the lens cap strap through the cap itself and then onto the camera. It’s a simple thing, but so far beyond me right now that I may have to hand it over to my emm to address for me. Hell, I could barely figure out how to attach the neck strap to the damn thing this morning and that’s after I fucked around with it yesterday and knew there was no way it was going to happen then. I was far too tired to make sense of the diagram, which is actually pretty pathetic, but I can’t deny it.

I’d been awake and on the run since about four yesterday morning and had run errands all day with my emm (including purchasing the camera, as well as a new laptop and printer/fax/scanner/copier for her) and then had dinner plans with my eff’s boss and secretary to celebrate my emm’s birthday. It’s a tradition, one going back quite a few years. We were so raucous and obnoxious I’m surprised we weren’t asked to leave. No, I’m exaggerating just a wee bit. But we were pretty damn raucous. Sadly, there was no chance for me to nap in between errands and dinner and on more than one occasion, I had trouble keeping my eyes open, despite the liveliness of our little group.

At least I’m feeling a bit more awake this morning, but not by much. Sundays suck because I can’t nap unless I want to be awake and tossing and turning all night.

This time of year is understandably difficult for me and will only continue through May, until the anniversary of my dad’s death passes for the second time. And as I did then, I’ve put myself on a pretty much exclusive aural diet of KaTe Bush, because…well, because. That’s for another post, methinks.

Although I’ve been giving some serious thought to trawling through the Strange Cousin Susan archives from spring 2006 and reposting them, I don’t think I will. It’s more than a little maudlin and would prove of no great value to me, nor to anyone else, although I’m of the mind some of my best writing was done then.

Here. Instead of that, let me reminisce very briefly on an exchange I had with my father the week before he died. He was lying in his bed, pretty much dead and gone but for the shouting, when he called me in. “Mickey Glitter, I need to write a sales order. Can you get me the form?”

This short scene plays over and over in my head and has for almost two years now. This, and a handful of other such times were the last I saw of my dad as I’d known him for thirty-five years. And as such, they are precious to me like almost nothing else in my life is. They are more precious to me than the Rolex watch, the Antarctic certificates, the Navy ribbons…certainly, memories are not tangible; they cannot be held or worn or looked at. They are, as KaTe’s song says, moments time has given as a gift to those who will survive.

But they are much more than that…no one can ever take them away and so I’ll have them for a lifetime. The watch may break. It may get lost or stolen. The pictures may be damaged somehow. The memories, although their clarity may fade over time, will always be in my head. The good memories of that last week continue to comfort me. The bad memories of that last week continue to haunt me. But regardless of comforting or haunting, I never want to lose them.

Some moments that I’ve had

Some moments of pleasure

I think about us lying

Lying on a beach somewhere

I think about us diving

Diving off a rock, into another moment

The case of George the Wipe

Oh God I can’t stop laughing

This sense of humour of mine

It isn’t funny at all

Oh but we sit up all night

Talking about it

Just being alive

It can really hurt

And these moments given

Are a gift from time

On a balcony in New York

It’s just started to snow

He meets us at the lift

Like Douglas Fairbanks

Waving his walking stick

But he isn’t well at all

The buildings of New York

Look just like mountains through the snow

Just being alive

It can really hurt

And these moments given

Are a gift from time

Just let us try

To give these moments back

To those we love

To those who will survive

And I can hear my mother saying

“Every old sock meets an old shoe”

Isn’t that a great saying?

“Every old sock meets an old shoe”

Here come the Hills of Time

Hey there Maureen,

Hey there Bubba,

Dancing down the aisle of a plane,

‘S Murph, playing his guitar refrain,

Hey there Teddy,

Spinning in the chair at Abbey Road,

Hey there Michael,

Do you really love me?

Hey there Bill,

Could you turn the lights up?

©1993 Kate Bush Music Ltd.

It was only a matter of time, I suppose and isn’t any huge surprise. After stating emphatically to Wes some weeks ago the third Doctor could never even momentarily being my favorite, it’s no longer true at all.

Naturally, this has everything to do with the exclusive Pertwee/Sladen immersion program I’ve recently found myself in. I can’t bear to watch the last S! J! S! episode (with Tom Baker as the Doctor) and so I’m watching just about everything around it and after it (including episodes with the Doctor’s post-Sarah Jane companion, Leela). This is certainly not the first time I’ve exhibited this type of behavior when it comes to Who and Sarah Jane…I danced around School Reunion for a good two or three months before I watched it.

I’ve convinced myself I’ll weep like a little girl as the Doctor exits, TARDIS left and leaves S! J! S! behind, as I did the first…the second…um, and yes, the third time I watched Mrs. Peel leave Steed upon the return of her long-lost husband. And I probably will. In fact, there’s no probably about it. I get a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when I think about it, so naturally, it didn’t take much to convince myself of this very strong possibility of tears at Sarah Jane’s departure from the program.

But why the sudden change of heart where Jon Pertwee is concerned? It’s quite simple, really and again, has almost everything to do with Sarah Jane: even though Pertwee’s Doctor can be a bit curmudegeonly (shades of his two previous incarnations) he is  also absolutely so sweet to her; I don’t remember Baker’s Doctor being so affectionate at all. Pertwee treats her as if he was her grandfather, father, or brother, which I find very appealing. One of my favorite scenes where the Doctor does just what I imagine a brother might do to a sister is in the last scene of The Monster of Peladon: he literally takes her by the ear and gets her into the TARDIS, wearing an expression of mock irritation on his face.

To her credit, though, S! J! S! is quite affectionate towards Pertwee’s Doctor, as well, being that grand daughter, daughter, or sister to him. Again, I don’t recall S! J! being so with the Fourth Doctor, but many of their serials were early on in my Who education and it might have totally passed me by.

Ahhh…another way to totally avoid that last Sarah Jane serial…thank God.

When was the last time I dreamed about a truck?

That’s right.

Never. Never in my natural life.

Until last night, when I dreamed about one not too different from the picture here. I distinctly remember polishing its grill and then sitting in the cab, wondering if I should name it Ilsa or Claudette.

That’s Claudette, as in Colbert.

Yeah, it’s pretty damn weird, I know.

And what a strange and delightful dream it was. We were in Florida on a yacht and I’m pretty sure William Powell was there, as well as Lillian Gish.

I’ve taken to wearing fancy socks at the factory, much to the amusement of my factory-mates. These two screen caps illustrate where I got the inspiration, although I do draw the line at camouflage pants with tie-ties at the ankles. I’ll keep to the socks, thanks, and just…um…admire those who wear the camouflage pants with the tie-ties and the pink striped socks at the same time.

In all honesty, the socks themselves are not all that fancy; the fanciest pair is indeed a pair of pink striped socks, although the stripes are pink and white, not a lighter pink and a darker pink, as worn by Miss Smith. Although I eschew the camouflage pants, I do put my own slight military twist to the outfit by combining these lovely, girly socks with my beloved steel-toed combat boots and a pair of jeans with the cuffs rolled up just enough so the socks are just visible when standing, and more than visible when sitting.

Put that together with Leather Kate and a new preferred hairdo, it’s quite a look. Unfortunately, I’m unable to find a picture of that particular inspiration at the moment. I’ll have to search my files, for I think there’s one hiding somewhere.

This screen cap is simply and unabashedly gratuitous, although if you look closely enough, more of the ensemble is visible. But really? It’s only included here because it’s Sarah! Jane! Smith!.

Fun. Weird. Informative, to a point.

Another album found via boingboing and pulled from the dusty vaults of my external hard drive in order to danger up my listening experience.

Download Music for Robots here, if you’d like.

I had no idea Ackerman was so…famous, until wikipedia came to my rescue.

I love you, wikipedia!

And I love you, too, Uncle Forry.

Nah, he’s not really. Despite his straight-from-the-70s sideburns and his penchant for calling young women “old girl” and “old thing,” I’m finding I quite like him.

From wikipedia:

The character was originally devised by the production team as a means of handling any action scenes required in episodes when they had envisioned that the new Doctor would be played by an older actor (Sarah even jokingly compares Harry to James Bond at one point). When forty year-old Tom Baker was cast, however, this was no longer a concern and the decision was taken to write Harry out — something producer Philip Hinchcliffe later admitted was probably a mistake, as Harry was a likeable and popular character who worked well with both of his fellow leads.

The excerpt below is shamelessly reproduced (without permission, but with proper credit given) from the November 19, 2007 issue of Time Magazine. The author is Evan Thomas.

Lyndon Johnson’s presidency was collapsing…Johnson dreaded the nights. He dreamt that he was lying in the Red Room of the White House, his body wasted and numb. His grandmother had been paralyzed in her last years, and so had Woodrow Wilson, another president who had struggled with the burden of war. Waking from his tortured sleep, LBJ would take a small flashlight and walk the halls of the White House until he found the portrait of Wilson. Touching the painting, he would be soothed, for the moment, and go back to bed.

The context in which it was written had to do with the politically charged alphabet soup of 1968: LBJ. RFK. MLK. The piece began with LBJ and ended with RFK’s assasination, while between those bookends touching on MLK and the uneasy relationship he and RFK shared.

I don’t know exactly what touched me so deeply about that passage, but obviously it hit a nerve, and deeply, for I tore out the article and have tucked it away. For what reason and towards what end, I am at a loss to explain, but I want to keep it.