S n a r k A t t a c k

It Ain't Necessarily So

Maybe it's just because my people like to get it on in the summertime, but lord, don't these next several weeks bring on the birthdays, mine included.  Getting older - feh - no biggie, though I have wondered, should I be eating more fiber?  Should I buy myself a Gameboy so that I can use Brain Age and keep my brain extra supple?  Should I just start using a scooter to get around the Piggly-Wiggy?  I think not. 

But what I have been wondering at right this very moment is why it took me a full ten minutes to remember why the guy I ran into just now looked so familiar.  Seriously, people - I strive to live in the moment. I am living in the NOW. I am living mindfully, blah blah, cherishing each bite of high fiber cereal every morning, just thinking about how I am right now chewing a spoonful of high fiber cereal and wow, doesn't it taste exactly like cardboard.  Perhaps it IS cardboard. 

This, of course, made me wonder about money-saving additives that turn out to be beneficial, healthwise.   Take carrageenan, for example.  I know what you're thinking - it sounds like a nice Irish girl.  A nice lass, perhaps, from the County Meaght, just over - well, not yonder, but you get the drift.  It's a drive. 

Anyway, so carrageenan is derived from seaweed, and seaweed being all gloppy and uncomfortable-making with its general slipperiness and its strong association as the locus of many a sea otter sexing-up, it should come as no surprise that it's used as a binding agent.  Exciting, yes?  The sea truly is the breadbasket of the world, especially if you like supersalty mercury-laden bread.  But: did you know that seaweed is actually good for you?  No?  Well, join the ranks of the corporate cheapskates who were deciding between coal slurry and carrageenan to use as a thickener for ice cream.  Yes, you just think on that. 

Of course, you can't think of carrageenan without thinking of Montmorillonite clay.  Sure, they add it to our dog's super expensive/Gary Danko-for-dogs dog food  as the third ingredient, right after rat anus, so you know there's, like, a LOT of clay in the food.  But, as it turns out, the clay is used by people - actual, real live, hemp be-clothed people - as a dietary supplement. Apparently, clay contains mad minerals which are good for the digestive tract (again with that guy).  Plus, every morning Mr Toilet will present you with a lovely Lladro in the bowl.  (FYI, it's usually a sleeping snake, so don't get too excited about it.)

But that made me realize that I'd gotten the dog food from Best in Show - the Castro's own pet store.  And it was just another fourteen logical steps until I figured out that the guy I just ran into works there. 

I am just so glad I'm not showing any signs of age, like - I don't know - memory loss.

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Listening to: Dinah Washington - The Blues Ain't Nothin' But A Woman Cryin' For Her Man
via FoxyTunes   

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Listening to: Aretha Franklin - It Ain't Necessarily So
via FoxyTunes   

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Listening to: Billie Holiday - Autumn In New York - LP Take
via FoxyTunes    

Ain't Nothing Like The Real Thing

Distressed to find this in my inbox yesterday: Lindsay Lohan's homage to Marilyn Monroe.  Unless you happen to work at Defamer or "work" while at a cafe, this is probably not safe for work.  And if you care for Marilyn Monroe at all, it's also not safe for you because this is the photographic equivalent of Madonna covering "American Pie," a song which does NOT need to be covered, and then still doing it so terribly that even she saw her shadow and immediately emigrated to the UK where, in quick succession, she adopted a British accent and a guy named, well, Guy.  All this in service of a movie which she did solely to show off how good she was at yoga.  Madonna, you get an A for bendiness and an F for acting and song choice.  Even Paula hated you and she never hates anyone. And Randy thinks you're pitchy, or at least that's what it sounded like.

In other news, we got a bunch of stuff delivered via UPS the other day - boxes and boxes of home goodies - and all of it was packed in what I considered to be an unreasonable quantity of styrofoam peanuts (5:1, peanut:goody).  Worse, when I started to unpack the first box, the peanuts, freed from their cardboard prison, were suddenly high on static electricity and too many Prison Break reruns: they began to CRAWL up my arms.  Trying not to lose my shit, I brushed them off and they returned in force - and the ones that didn't started to STICK TO THE WALLS.  I'm sorry, but I don't care how well adjusted you are, but when inanimate objects begin to make a run for it, I get a little anxious. 

I fought to get them into a plastic bag, but they fought back, and soon there were peanuts everywhere.  Just scoop them up, right?  Just deal with it and move on, right?  Wrong.  (I feel like the word should be German just to convey to you how wrong this was: wrongfahrt.  Wrongfahrtgruven.  Like that.)  As I tried scooping them up, they stuck to everything I used to scoop them up - my arms (again and still - oh, still so incredibly unnerving), a paper bag fashioned into a shovel, a swatch of cardboard bent into what I thought might be a humane peanut-catcher. 

But no.  Twenty something minutes later and the floor was still covered in peanuts.  A lesser soul might have thought that these were sentient beings, sent to torture me.  ("They'll never suspect packing material," said Commandante Duct Tape, as the UPS store was rendered into HQ...)  Not I.  I thought, it must be dry out!  Low humidity!  Nothing weird about - hey, is that a peanut on the ceiling...?

I went to Plan B.  Sometimes, Plan B's can be good.  Sometimes, Plan B's can even be great.  You go in, not expecting much - it's Plan B after all - and when it comes together, you feel like a genius and like the world has smiled upon you.

This isn't that Plan B. 

See, I decided to vacuum.  For one, we've got a great vacuum cleaner (sidenote: I adore vacuuming. Don't ask me why, but I love it) and secondly, I've vacuumed up these suckers before and knew the trick - only vacuum up the little pieces of styrofoam and not the entire peanut, for the peanut, when laid crosswise, is exactly the same width as the diameter of the vacuum's hoses.  Which is to say, one perfectly positioned peanut and you will lose all the suck out of the vacuum.  And, like Condoleeza always says, the peanuts only have to be right once which is why you must be naked to get onto a plane.  Otherwise the terrorists win.  And so, frequently, would Mr. Blackwell.  (If I see one more applique sweatshirt on another flight...)

Armed with all of this information, I started to vacuum.  This worked for a patch of carpet roughly 6"x 8".  After that, the vacuum didn't lose suction but rather began to PULVERIZE what little bits were on the floor. It was though I had set the vacuum to liquefy when really, no, I wanted a completely different household appliance experience altogether.  Pulverize suggests that I'm about to have a delicious breakfast smoothie.  Liquefy says, 'hey, you lucky lady - it's Margarita Tuesday!'   When it's the vacuum that's doing these things, you understand that something has gone horribly awry and no margarita shall be forthcoming.

To really get a sense of the damage, I will have to share with you a crappy photo that I took with my cameraphone.  And don't think the dogs didn't manage to become completely covered in styrofoam, because they did, and then walked - as they will - all over the house, ensuring maximum dispersal.  (The carpet is supposed to be a dark brown, btw, but what I dig about all of this is how the Attack Bichon looks like some non-recyclable CFC-laden miniature Yeti.)

Un Año de Amor

Take this for example - a gorgeous ad for the Madrid Metro.  Whether or not you believe that yes, they do have the best metro in the world, you will never for once doubt that Spanish men have the best voices in the universe.

When I lived there for a year during college, I was in that tiny minority of American females who had never seen more than one episode of Beverly Hills 90210.  References to the Peach Pit in later years I got sheerly through context. I'd nod dumbly, praying that we'd move onto referencing something I'd actually seen.  Like Tales of the Golden Monkey, starring Stephen Collins, a show I loved so much that I'd cut out of my 4-H meeting a few minutes early and run home so as not to miss anything. 

So when I arrived in Granada and lived in a boarding house with a dueña named Charo and several female Andalusian law students, I was immediately treated to the latest craze to hit Spanish t.v. - Sensación de Vivir, known in these parts as 90201. 

Seriously, I had no idea what Luke Perry sounded like in real life, but in Spanish he had this gorgeous, deep voice - authoritative, sexy and rich.  Not my thing but I could sort of see how someone like that might be rather attractive to, oh, I don't know, ANYONE WITH EARS.   And then I got back to the States and caught a rerun of 90201. Excellent, I thought - I am now familiar with the antics of Brendan, et al. 

Holy Mother of All That Is Good And Righteous.  Luke Perry in English is the WORST.  He makes Walter Payton sounds like a baritone.  Michael Jackson has a deeper voice.  THIS? This is what American girls are clamoring for? 

Not that the Spanish should be exactly congratulated for the excellence of their native t.v. offerings, which seemed to consist mostly of a version of America's Funniest Home Videos which was itself mostly clips of bulls falling onto cars, running into cars, running into each other or just generally falling down.

On second thought, I would totally watch that.

Better Version of Me

Suffice to say, I'm right now backing up my entire hard drive.  And lest that external hard drive give up the ghost, I'm backing up the entirety of my "My Documents" folder onto a thumb flash drive - 8gigs! 

I am now officially chastened by this whole thing.  And exhausted.  Jeez, that was a stressful way to spend the day.  It's one thing to be unproductive - a precept for which I am generally in favor, given the right time, right place, blah blah, but when you're unproductive despite all efforts to actually BE productive, then stress ensues.  I am now drinking something containing taurine and creatine.  Neither here nor there, but if the productivity sneaks up on me, I shall be ready to lasso it and ride it into a future of completed scripts.  It's also an homage to Roger Clemens who I've never liked, especially after he hucked part of a broken bat at someone.  CP - you remember that game I'm talking about?

Every Day is a Winding Road

Well, no sooner had I posted that last bit of drivel, when I got a call from Central Computer.  The laptop is ready!

Laptop is healthy!

(Laptop apparently hadn't registered the dismissive comments I had made about it because laptop cannot read!  Laptop is bundle of circuits and magic!  Laptop is fixed!  HUZZAH!)

Okay, in honor of this escape from sadness and the spectre of increasing debt thanks to writers' strike + cancellation + resistance to boxed wine, I shall leave you with some of my favorite links of the week.  Huzzah!

Dare not to laugh at wine making gone awry - a classic.

Spongebob and Squidward have greater range than anyone might have imagined.  Indeed.

And I dare you not to think that this raccoon is simply reenacting the final scene from There Will Be Blood.  I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE, cat.

I will now get laptop and reflect that today would have been nearly as productive had I gone to Reno, played some Keno and taken some Beano.  And then driven home, low on gas. 

Karma Police

Let me just serve as the cautionary tale - backup your work, my lovelies, for you never know when you might be greeted, as I was this morning, with the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.  Forget the momentum I'd acquired over the last several days, writing writing writing, in anticipation of the end of the writers' strike (for the show's been cancelled so I'm looking for a new gig).  Forget all the lovely good thoughts in mind of wickedly smart dialog or maybe just wickedly okay dialog or perhaps even just stuff that people could maybe say in real life, stroke victims excepted, and even them, sure, why not? 

But all of that is gone - gone! - as my laptop sits, alone, in the back of Central Computer on Howard Street.  Sure, the guy back there has at best a tenuous hold on the English language, his grip loosening more still when confronted with a choice of prepositions - of, over, about? - but he seemed completely unfazed at my predicament: this computer tells me that I have a corrupt or missing registry file.  Why?  Why why why?  He mumbled something comforting, along the lines of he'd seen it before which made me feel better but then he put the fear of death into/above/around me by asking if - and I quote because you too shall know the fear - "There was any data on this computer that you want to keep." 

There are not enough exclamation points in the universe, known, unknown or dreamt up by that autistic kid in St. Elsewhere, to convey the horror I experienced in that moment. But I kept my shit together, people.  I kept my cool. 

Yes, in fact there are several files that I care very deeply about/around/of.  Please, can you copy them for me?

At press time, he's going to try to copy my entire My Documents folder, but he didn't have any idea how long it would take to fix the laptop or even - gulp - if it IS fixable.  But as I stew and freak out about the script that was very nearly finished or the various treatments I'd worked on over the last month or so, and how the strike is over and I should have stuff ready to go soon, and how my agent and managers are looking for PRODUCT from me, I think the previously unthinkable: 

I love the laptop, don't get me wrong, and I'm practically whispering as I type this lest it hear me from the shelf in the back of the store and shove off this digital coil, but: I don't care about the hardware.  I just want my data.

Incidentally, I've no one but myself to blame - I backed everything up about a month ago and everytime I do, I feel like a putz for wasting my time, which really makes no sense, like resenting putting on a seatbelt because you've never gotten into an accident.   Yet I'd looked at my external hard drive repeatedly over the last couple of weeks and thought - well, I guess I figured 'what's the point?'  Point taken. 

Sigh. 

Come on little laptop.  You can make it, buddy.

p.s. A huge thank you to the GF for lending me her laptop so I can continue to work, and to the folks at the Writers' Store (and purveyors of Final Draft - screenwriting software) who talked me down off the ledge and assured me that I could just download the software again to the GF's computer, no worries - and no additional license fee. 

You're My Best Friend

BTW, the pup's been on vacation with my folks and I'm getting her back this week.  I've totally missed her - what a good dog.  Plus, the attack bichon pines for her, which is sweet.

Again, I'm loving the camera that the GF got me for Xmas (she gets me this incredible camera; I got her a... ball of lint that I'd amassed during the strike.  "Here, honey!")  Here's a great pic of her pup doing the 'bichon buzz' - something they all do, apparently, when they run like crazy people.  Assuming crazy people run around in circles while growling in a way that can only be described as the opposite-of-threatening.)

Wouldn't It Be Nice

Lent was going to usher in a new period of abstemious behavior - no beer, no red meat, no sodium benzoate, no high fructose corn syrup - but the only thing I gave up for Lent has been...Lent.  As the GF pointed out, it's nearly impossible to quit HFCS as it's in practically everything except for water and some brands of toothpaste.  Once you start looking for it, it's a little disconcerting to realize its ubiquity.  (I LOVE that word. U-bi-quity.  Lo-lee-ta.)

Of course, all this began when I was thinking, you know, this wouldn't be a bad time to shed a few pounds, stop blaming the dryer for shrinking my pants, etc., and giving up such foods is the sort of thing that's like a diet but sounds more like a high-minded attempt to eat BETTER.  Not a diet, per se.  Diets are for fat people.  This is merely a minor lifestyle change.  No, this is a small move in the direction of self-improvement, a crossing of the street from Burger King to Whole Foods, from combo meals to salad bars and their smudgy sneeze guards.  But a diet?  No, not a diet. Heavens no.

But it turns out that HFCS is in everything and well, per my doctor, my cholesterol's never been lower despite my love of bacon and red meat, and sodium benzoate's not really as toxic as they'd have you think... All of which has made me rethink my Lenten intentions.

 

Shame, though, that our dryer is shrinking my clothes so.