Author Archives: meanlouise

Without properly installed crown molding, one risks opening a gateway to a demonic dimension

I know my blog is a mess. I really need to remedy the poor categorization and sloppy archives code. Too many exports and imports and re-exports from platform to platform have really done a number on the place.

You’d think that being sick and stuck in bed would afford ample time to do this work. You’d think that if you didn’t know that the cough medicine my doctor added to the pharmacological cornucopia contains a powerful antihistamine and a narcotic.

I have a flipchart page mapping out the blog maintenance, writing, and updating I need to do to bring facebook (personal page + fan page), linkdin, my blog, flickr, pinterest, twitter, and ravelry into some sort of harmonious arrangement. Fuck MySpace. They can send me all the press releases they want, I’m not signing back up for that one.

Yes, I have my own flipchart. It’s the kind that’s sort of like a pack of giganto post-it notes. It’s awesome.

A few months ago Husband realized I have my own flipchart. He was horrified. He tried to cover it with a weak, “That’s nice, Dear,” but in his eyes I could see him thinking, “I don’t even know you anymore.”

I didn’t tell him GhostCat and I hold staff meetings in the afternoons after he leaves for work. We’re going to wait until after the Spring team-building retreat to share that with him, so don’t spoil the surprise, okay?

We haven’t decided whether to invite Husband to the retreat yet. He’s not a team player sometimes.

I didn’t implement anything from the chart yet because I left the cap off the marker and the fumes spaced me out even more than I already was but I didn’t realize this was happening because I couldn’t smell the fumes. Antibiotics have wrecked (temporarily, I hope) my sense of taste and smell. The upside to this is that I can’t taste the cough medicine, which has a rather alarming color and viscosity.

I never get tired of imagining the kind of advice HP Lovecraft would have offered had he ended up as the editor of a Home & Garden-type magazine. I can think about that for hours. Currently, I can’t think about one thing and do anything else at the same time so the whole point of this post seems likely to have to wait.

Pegasus vs Chimera

Pegasus vs Chimera, tonight’s SyFy Saturday Night Craptacular, is the single greatest movie I’ve seen in the last 6 minutes.

The movie, which we started about 5 minutes ago, is set in some hokey mythological past somewhere. The Kingdom of the Seven Realms, where I think they live, must be catty corner from Game of Thrones and adjacent to Conan the Barbarian. Several towns away from Lord of the Rings, though. Might have shared a beach house one summer with Reign of Fire. Can’t rule it out.

Pegasus vs Chimera co-stars That Guy Who’s in Everything, Sebastian Roche, and That Guy Who’s in A Lot of Stuff, Carlo Rota. And Rae Dawn Chong.

I know! Right?

I was so busy thinking about all of that, I spaced out and just returned 3 minutes later to a scene where That Guy Who’s in Everything is yakyakyakking about vengeance to a dewy young woman who I think might be a Princess.

At least Reign of Fire has Christian Bale and Matthew Matthew McConaughey. With the exception of That Guy Who’s in Everything, this is a movie about slightly doughy men delivering manly-man dialogue with what simply has to be an intentionally overwrought & stereotypically effeminate affectation.

As for wardrobe, many of the actors seem to be wearing their own bedsheets, held together by accessories purchased at a KMart in Central Florida sometime in late 1983.

I suppose you could argue this is the movie for people who always complain about the anachronistically tanned, toned and waxed characters on Game of Thrones. (See also: the King’s Landing Strip).

I have no idea what’s happening in this movie but apparently now there’s a Chimera. Apparently, it’s the Bad Creature That Must Be Stopped. Husband says that’s obvious because everyone loves Pegasuses. I ask how he knows that, because I thought everybody loved unicorns. Husband says people love them both.

We spend some time wondering if Pegasuses and Unicorns would be friends or enemies. We discuss this for a lot longer than we should admit, but to be fair, this is a (delightfully) terrible movie and this debate helps pass the time.

Husband asks me if I’m blogging this. I think he’s laughing at me. Hey, I have an excuse to be watching this, I’m blogging it. He’s just watching it. I’m not live-blogging it, though. It was on earlier tonight, but our Tivo, Overlord II is recording it so we could watch when we got home.

The movie is 2 hours long and we’re timeshifted by about 90 minutes…so that means that those of you who watched this movie on the east coast in real time tonight will probably be dead by the time I post this.

It’s really a pretty terrible movie.

The key is apparently to stop paying attention for a few minutes, because I just looked back up and Rae Dawn Chong is doing something hilarious and bizarre while Acting. Husband describes it as Greek Goddess Stick Dancing.

Husband can be charitable.

“But our only choice Is. To. FIGHT his monster!” The Princess just spat, with the same tone and delivery she’s used for every other line in every scene, no matter what the alleged emotional tone of the scene.

Holy crap, this whole movie has been totally worthwhile for the completely cheesetastic scenes of That Guy Who’s in Everything and the Princess pretending to fly around on the pegasus. Or on a mechanical bull. It’s unclear, really. Husband believes Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was their point of reference for how to Act like you’re flying.

Hey, so get this: in Japan, Reign of Fire was released with the title, “Salamander.” Seriously?

That Guy Who’s in Everything plays George Washington in the official big-budget Hollywood biopic they show at Mount Vernon, George Washington’s estate. Henceforth, Pegasus vs Chimera shall be known in our household as “that movie where George Washington rides around on a pegasus.”

And well it should.

I think every “major” character in Pegasus vs Chimera has had a season-long role on 24. There must be some seriously messed up drinking game they play on the set of that show – it would explain a lot about this movie.

As the final dramatic scene of the movie unfolds, Husband yells at the screen in complete exasperation, “Fuck you, Pegasus! Why didn’t you do that over an hour ago?”

Thereby proving my point that probably not everyone loves Pegasuses.

Dear Reservoir Carl

photo.JPG

Longtime readers knew Carl Cordell as Reservoir Carl, a nickname I stuck to him in 2007 before I ever even met him, based on a photo I saw of the Peeps diorama he made for the Washington Post Peeps Diorama contest. Fortunately, he thought it was funny. This birthday post I wrote about him 2 years ago explains it all.

No human being on the face of the earth could aggravate me more than Carl. He reveled in this, of course, and we laughed about it, in those times when I wasn’t secretly plotting ways to drop him to the bottom of the Potomac River with rocks in his pockets.

Carl was my biggest fan, reading every word I wrote and sending me a detailed email about every single thing I posted.

He was also the hardest worker Artomatic ever had.

He was also a royal pain in my ass. Let’s not get too sappy, here…

Carl passed away last year. Before his health began to spiral downward, he sent me an absurdly long, overly detailed, utterly ridiculous, totally Carl list of things I was instructed to do upon his demise. I promised I would do my very best.

At the time we made this deal, he swore his health was fine. It wasn’t long before we all knew that was a lie, of course.

Carl had no way of knowing that Tracy and Roger and Michele and Brian and all of his friends would create an amazing shrine to him for this Artomatic, or probably even that the whole event would be dedicated to his memory, but they did and it is. Instead of placing flowers next to his last peeps diorama as he’d instructed, I had a real place to put the flowers I was asked to bring.

I posted this on Facebook this morning. Facebook being Facebook, the message didn’t display for everyone so some wackiness ensued. Here it is again, in perhaps a more stable form:

Dear Carl,
Okay buddy, here we are on opening day. I’m not running this crazy shindig anymore but I got permission to bring the flowers I promised you, 1 for each artomatic we did together. I’m sorry I had to go w your 2nd choice, roses, but I just couldn’t find good sunflowers this morning.

I know, ants love all flowers, but I made you a promise I couldn’t keep.

I’m sorry you aren’t here to see this event & I’m almost sorry we won’t get to have our traditional opening day fight and I’m actually even sorry I couldn’t keep the other promises you made me make, but let’s be honest, even if we’d gotten you mummified, I doubt I could have done the ritual to reanimate you as Carl-Tet, mummy king of Artomatic. I’m pretty sure that movie we watched was a Hollywood movie & not a documentary.

But I digress.

I need to go now cause even though I’ve got permission to be in the building, I’m just sitting here crying and scaring the volunteers witless.

Also, this bench they put in front of your shrine is sorta rickety & I have my doubts about how long it’ll support my weight. That’s just the kind of stuff you’d have called me to worry over, though, isn’t it? :-)

I was a wreck by the time I got those flowers put up. My full instructions were to get a dozen flowers and place one for each Artomatic we worked on together next to his diorama and the rest in my space. I did that this morning but I suspect when I arrive tonight for the opening I’m going to have to move them all over to his shrine or I won’t be able to go into my own space without crying.

Carl being Carl, my instructions included a list of acceptable flowers. The list was several pages long. Decent-looking sunflowers being in short supply in my neighborhood stores this morning, I went with the 2nd choice, roses.

Later in the day, Roger sent me this photo. The sunflower crisis is over:

I don’t know if I’m going to be able to recite Jabberwocky at Meet the Artist Night or edit Carl into a copy of Empire of Ants, but this flower thing, I could do this. So I did.

For the following reasons I have not yet completed a satisfactory draft of this paper:

-When Husband goes to work he’ll be out of my hair
-This seems like a great morning for a 5 miler
-One more cup of coffee
-One more article, I just need to read one more article.
-What citation style are we supposed to use?
-Those christmas lights aren’t going to hang themselves!
-Did I leave a dress at the drycleaners?
–Sleepy kitten
-I have to go to the grocery store and buy a giant bag of baby carrots. Immediately.
–Save Greendale
-Inbox zero, bitches!
-Hey, the neighbors are home!
-Maybe neo-liberal theory is the best framework for this paper, after all…
-Hey, Charlie’s Angels is on and it’s the one where Farrah has to infiltrate the roller derby team! (aka Angels on Wheels).
-Hey, the other neighbors are home!
-Twitter!
-It’s happy hour somewhere!
-I’d better get coconut flakes in case I make cookies this weekend. I better do this right now.
-When did we get so many neighbors?
-Time to commiserate on facebook with everyone else who isn’t getting enough work done today.
-Hello, Jehova’s Witnesses, I’d love to hear more about the Watchtower!
-If I add coconut flakes to this oatmeal cookie recipe should I reduce the amount of flour? I’m omitting the walnuts. Maybe just reduce the sugar, I did get sweetened coconut flakes. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten the sweetened ones. Maybe I should go back to the store…
-Hey, Husband’s home and he’s making thai food for dinner! Maybe I’ve done enough homework for one day…

No time for a full episode of Charlie’s Angels? Here’s the 5 minute minisode courtesy of Crackle TV:

(I’ve got the world’s worst 32 page 1st draft done. Worst because, well, it’s badly written. Also because the assignment specifies a length of 15 pages. I can’t even procrastinate properly. Also, badly written. Bad. Bad. Bad).

I wish I was kidding. About any of this. Any of it at all. Or at least exaggerating for comic effect. But I can’t and I’m not.