Where the Walls are Soft…

An original tune, even! She wrote this a couple of years ago. I commented when she posted it, that she kind of looked like she was playing “air guitar”… she tells me that’s the only way she can stay in time without the music. This is the a cappella version.

Y’all know how much I love Kelly of the Shoes. Well, when I heard she had a cameo in the new Weezer video (along with Chris Crocker, if you can believe it), I had to go check it out, of course.

Made my day.

Not-So-Random Song for the Day: “Pork and Beans” - Weezer

“You’re not Morgan Freeman!”

The winning caption was written by Dale of Passion of the Dale, a fellow Canuckian, I might add. No, I didn’t “fix” it. I’m not that patriotic.

And those that didn’t win, not to mention those that didn’t enter the contest (shame on you!), can get a copy of Natalie d’Arbeloff’s “The God Interviews” by clicking Here.

Congratulations, Dale! I know you’ll love “The God Interviews”.

As will any cats you read it to.

Random song for the Day: “Opera Singer” - Cake

What - Me? Procrastinate?!

…we didn’t
drop
the ball.
It’s more
like we
just lobbed it
back and forth until
it went over the fence and got lost in the tall weeds.Remember this!? Oh, yeah, that! I remember that!

Now.

I posted it on February 11th. Ahem…*

I don’t like breaking promises. I didn’t break this one, thankfully, so much as delayed it. By a loooooong time.

Cardiogirl, my shetbag of a partner in crime and caption-contest-hosting, is blaming herself for this delay. I’m trying to convince her that she didn’t “drop the ball”, as she insists on putting it. We were in this together from the get-go.

And besides… we didn’t drop the ball. It’s more like we just lobbed it back and forth until it went over the fence and got lost in the tall weeds.

Good news, though - we found it! As per the original “rules” of the contest, we have chosen our three favourite captions and we’re expecting our readers to do the actual work and vote for the winner of an AUTOGRAPHED copy of Natalie d’Arbeloff’s fabulous book of cartoons, “The God Interviews”.

Actually, truth be told, we couldn’t pare it down to fewer than four captions, so CG put them in a toy bathtub belonging to her daughter and had said daughter draw the top three. That’s right, the three best captions were pulled randomly out of the tub by a child, folks, so you know this is legit.

Here’s what we ended up with, along with the pic from the contest.

“Of course I caught you, that’s the deal. You were expecting the Flying Wallendas?”

“Carpet deum.”

“You’re not Morgan Freeman!”

If you click here, you’ll find CG’s post with the voting poll. The poll will stay up until Tuesday, as Monday is a holiday in the U.S. and all the U.S.ers will be beaching or BBQing instead of surfing the net and voting for captions like they ought to be doing, and all the Canuckians will be stuck at work complaining that the Americans got a holiday and we didn’t.

Cuz that’s what we do in Canuckia.

After Tuesday, we will announce the winning caption and attempt to extract a shipping address from the lucky new owner of “The God Interviews”. Then… we will actually (gasp!) ship the book to the winner!

Honest. I swear we will do this.

This time.

P.S. Carolyn B., over at Drops of Blood wrote a fairy-tale meme and Where the Walls are Soft - Yes! This freaky-deaky blog of mine! - got included! How cool is that?!

Random Song for the Day: “Mr. Brightside” - The Killers

Pink Fantasy
Taken February 22, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

The more
we
thought about
moving, the more
we realized
that the only
good thing about moving
was that it was just downstairs, so packing would be…
well…
it wouldn’t be, would it?I’m right impressed with myself over this picture. I seriously doubt I’ll get another shot even half this good for the rest of the year. I kind of hope I don’t - I’m really proud of this one. I want to blow it up to about garage-door-sized and hang it on my wall.

The inside of my head feels a lot like this pic - kind of dreamy… gauzy… lazy…

I’ve been busy, mind you….

…picking away at a website I’m building for a charitable organization here in town…

…picking away at painting my little apartment - we’ve decided not to move, after all. We’re finally getting this place “prettified” the way we like it, and the thought of hauling all the stuff down the stairs…. Blech. It’s still small, even though we’ve gotten rid of 60% of its contents, but it suits us, and the larger (huger) place comes with a big jump in rent.

The more we thought about moving, the more we realized that the only good thing about moving was that it was just downstairs (no way am I giving up my landlady!), so packing would be… well… it wouldn’t be, would it?

I’m still waiting to actually get on the schedule at the new J.O.B…. they insist that I’m hired. Every time I call… “Uuuuuuuhhhhhhhhmmmmm…. probably…. some time…. uuuuuhhhhhhmmmmm…. next week….? Maybe….?” They tell me this once a week. I should have applied to work in HR instead of sales… I think they need the help.

So, in the meantime…

…I drink a lot of coffee, and work a lot of crosswords, and watch a lot of movies (and ball games… and hockey games…) with Ruby.

…I continue to scan the J.O.B. boards and newspaper ads, in the undying hope that something not involving sales, customer service or telemarketing jumps out at me.

…I Walk-About to my parents’, drink rum, and listen to a new story once a week. Yes, I’m writing them down - heck I might even get around to posting them…

…I swear over the apparently uninstallable software that will allow the coolest Ruby post ever posted to be posted… finally. I hope. Gulp…*

…I dance with The Turkey - who, by the way, has just finished the second edit of her first novel. At 13. Yup. I feel a little useless when she’s in the room. She’s also re-dyed her hair purple, and has taken to stealing the pre-stolen “Grampa-shirts” out of my closet (I stole them first, but there’s never one to wear when I want one), and wearing them with neckties. I’d post pics, but the kid doesn’t stay home long enough to catch more than her shirt-tail in the view-finder…

…I drive around with The Fly-Girl in the Soon-to-be-Mine Minivan (I think I’ll name it The FlyMobile, whad’ya think?), singing old rock tunes from when we were young and thought we’d be 16 for-freaking-ever.

…and I spend a lot of time staring at this picture… and drifting off… somewhere…

Random Song-for-the-Day: “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” - Elton John

Lazin’ Around…
Taken February 25, 2008 with Canon PowerShot A550

For the
full
effect, you
must imagine me,
as well,
with my hair
yanked back and tucked
into a shower-cap. Oh yeah…. and naked.My life is fairly straight-forward and routine-oriented. I really like it that way. If there’s going to be any excitement, I’d like to plan it, trouble-shoot it, and control all aspects of it, thank you very much.

Patchouli, the cute little fur-ball you see above, feels otherwise. She has, in fact, been the cause of many incidents of “excitement” around here, much to my dismay. She revels in causing emergency situations calling for cool heads. I don’t deal well with emergencies, if you must know.

When Patchouli pulled a heavy table-top down on her head a couple of years ago (did you know it’s possible for cat shit to come out both ends of a cat at the same time?), my way of dealing with it was to scream and cry a lot. She survived, obviously, but the credit goes to the thankfully cooler heads that were actively prevailing at the time. You’d never know the cat got bonked, except that she’s a little retarded, now.

Okay, maybe more than a little retarded.

She likes to squish herself through the 2-inch width of open window by my desk, to sit on the 2-inch width of ledge - the only thing keeping her retarded little head from meeting the pavement of John Street before being squashed flat by a truck. She sits on the other side of the glass, smiling at me, waiting for the panic attack.

She also likes to sit beside one of the many candles that burn here every evening, twitching her tail through the flame. Smiling. I keep waiting for the Whooomph! that will signal the beginning of her painful demise…

Yesterday being Wednesday, the kuckiest day of the week, historically speaking, I spent the evening indulging in my weekly habit of tub-soaking in a dim bathroom, radio playing, candles burning, bath oil oiling… and my face painted with one of those “stress-relieving” facial masques that are supposed to suck out all the day’s tensions while erasing 40 years’ worth of wrinkles at the same time.

I’ve never actually seen my face with this goop on - I don’t have the guts to look, truthfully - but it looks yellow coming out of the jar, at least by candlelight, so I can just imagine the vision I must be while wearing it.

For the full effect, you must imagine me, as well, with my hair yanked back and tucked into a shower-cap. Oh yeah…. and naked. That got you laughing, right?

Anyway….

Patchouli likes to keep me company in the bathroom on Wednesday evenings. It’s the candles, of course - the flames fascinate her, and she loves to sit on the vanity and watch the reflection of the candles in the mirror, twitching her tail back and forth…

I got sick of hauling myself up and out of the tub every two minutes to put her down on the floor. Aside from getting car hair all over my wet hands, and then transferring it into the bath water, there was also a good chance I’d catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror and scare the bejeezus out of myself. The thought kind of makes the idea of meditating in a hot bath by candlelight to wash Wednesday away a little laughable. As does the idea of the cat suddenly going up in flames, which is why I finally put her out the door.

I had just settled back down, with the water up to my shoulders, and my neck resting on The Turkey’s squishy bath pillow…. Siiiiiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh……. when I heard a quack.

I did. I heard a quack and it wasn’t a duck.

It was Sheikh, the other cat that owns me. Sheikh quacks. He does. You can hear him here, if you don’t believe me…

I hadn’t noticed him sitting in the sink, but there he was. He’s “poof-ier” than Patchouli. I think that makes him more flammable. I got thinking that a better word might even be “combustible”, that’s how “poofy” he is…

Well, the vision ran away with me, and all I could imagine was that Whooomph! sound, followed by shrieking coming from either me or the cat, or both, and Sheikh flying down the hall, in flames, followed by myself, dripping wet and naked except for my shower cap and my face painted yellow, screaming, “The cat’s on fire! The cat’s on fire!”

And I got laughing. Hysterically. Out loud.

I KNOW!!!

I could just imagine The Guy Across the Hall on the other side of the bathroom wall, wondering what all the laughing and quacking in my bathroom was about…

I haven’t decided how well yellow facial-masques or bath oil or candles work for relieving stress and tension. I do know that laughter works wonders.

P.S. A very special Thank You to David McMahon for awarding me the ever-elusive Post-of-the-Day Award for “Mein Kluben! Mein Kluben!” My dad was tickled pink when he heard the news (my mom wanted to know if there was any money in it…)

Random Song-for-the-Day: “The Animal I’ve Become” - 3 Days Grace