Crowley

I love Spring. I love birds. I do not love the bird who sings at top volume in the tree outside my office window. He is Hell personified. He is, in fact, the King of Hell.

Perhaps I’ve been thinking too much about Supernatural lately as I work on my presentation for the Pop Culture Association conference. No, definitely not.

This bird is a lunatic.

He must have a tiny avian PA up in that tree – no bird can be that loud. He shall henceforth be known as Crowley.

I’ll record him for your enjoyment some day soon….

[edited to correct the Supernatural wiki link]

That disturbance in the Force Martha Stewart feels every day is just me waking up

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[embedded image: post-smoothie cleanup operation]

This morning I decided to make a green tea fruit smoothie because I had a large quantity of frozen fruit. This is not rocket surgery. You put fruit, green tea, honey and lime juice in a blender. Then you paint the ceiling with the smoothie when you accidentally turn the blender back on after Husband removes the lid.

I make it sound much easier than it is.

In between, there are a few intermediary steps that involve destroying Husband’s kitchen appliances, as well as a significant amount of profanity.

Destruction and profanity. That pretty much sums up my entire cooking style.

To be fair, the death of Husband’s beloved kitchen appliances was not exactly my fault.

Much like the ape uprising wasn’t exactly Caesar’s fault in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, but was more precisely the result of what is known in scientific circles as the Ricardo Montalban Effect, an inevitable trajectory begun when Cornelius and Zira travelled back through time in Escape from the Planet of the Apes.

I’m not sure Husband sees it that way. Frankly, Husband should have seized operational control of this entire enterprise as soon as he heard me snuffling around in the kitchen, but he didn’t.

So really, who’s to blame here?

Ricardo Montalban, obviously.

First, the blender mysteriously refused to work. Husband joined me in the kitchen as soon as he heard me muttering and swearing at the blender. The indicator lights were on and the outlet worked, but no matter how much button-pushing we tried, the blender was an inert object. Our blender has 3 buttons. It’s not a complicated device.

For a brief moment I thought I’d well and truly lost my ability to function as an adult, so I felt better when it didn’t work for Husband, either.

House elves, we* agreed, are to blame for the death of the blender. I would feel bad if Ricardo Montalban was blamed for killing our blender.

At that point, Husband suggested we use the mixie. He dumped the ingredients from the blender carafe into the mixie carafe and started the mixie, which promptly broke. The little plastic pieces that spin the blades all broke off.

To be fair, the mixie has endured years of steady, almost daily use, and I contend it was time for a new one. I never touched the mixie, so clearly this was in no way my fault. I didn’t even suggest using it.

Clearly, this was Husband’s fault.

Although I may have been the one who failed to warn him that the pineapple chunks were still frozen and that there was a quarter cup of honey in the mix just waiting for an opportunity to ooze to the bottom of the carafe and gum up the blades. So that may have been my fault, but who can say, really?

While Husband was standing over the mixie, possibly administering Last Rites, I plugged the blender back in and hit the start button in what I figured was an act of futility. Of course the bastard roared to life. One of the three buttons didn’t work, so it’s still a bit of a mystery what’s up, but “on” and “off” were in good working order so who needs to the pulse function?

Husband dumped the ingredients back into the blender carafe, at which point we discovered that hard clump of honey and pineapple in the bottom of the mixie carafe.

You don’t need this much detail, and we don’t know for sure this is what killed the mixie, but I like typing the word “mixie.”

We then made smoothies without any further difficulty.

Unless you count the part where Husband removed the lid from the blender and I immediately reached over to make sure the blender was turned completely off so that we wouldn’t have any more accidental disasters. The carafe was still sitting on the blender body, where Husband left it when he removed the lid. Instead of powering down when I hit the button, the blender roared to life and geysered smoothie all over the kitchen counter and everything on that counter.

Obviously, it was his fault for not maintaining situational awareness (read: remembering that I was still in the room) and taking the carafe off the blender body before he removed the lid.

Husband does not agree with my logic.

In closing, making smoothies is serious business. Also, don’t forget to clean out the toaster while you’re wiping smoothie goo off of every other surface in the room.

—————
*We. I. One of those.

Remember the Lovecraftian horror that was Windows 95 with a new Tumblr

http://windows95tips.com/

When we got Windows 95 (probably sometime in 1998), it took our admins about 30 seconds to see the true purpose of the system alerts. The first one I got read, “Report to the roof immediately, await further instructions.” It took some people longer than others to catch on that not all windows alerts were created equally.

Some of my former co-workers may still be up on the roof, actually. Someone should probably check into that…

This morning on facebook, a friend posted this AV Club post about a tumblr devoted to the Lovecraftian horror of Windows 95:

If you’re old enough—and Lord, does it make us sad that this is now something you can remember if you’re “old enough,” like there are now, “You know you’re a child of the ‘90s if…” e-mail forwards—then you remember that great, shimmering bastard of an operating system, Windows 95.

Posted about their post? There must be a less awkward way to say that.

The rest of their description is funny so you should visit the AV Club before you mosey over to tumblr to relive Windows 95 Tips, Tricks and Tweaks, and possibly open a gateway to another dimension.

Circus Arts

I (recently) discovered Circus Arts isn’t a normal part of most public school curricula.

Me, to Husband, horrified: “But, but, but…how do kids learn how to juggle? or walk on wires? or stand up on a moving horse?”

Husband: “They don’t. That’s dangerous.”

Me, bereft: “That’s so sad!”

I have no idea why this hadn’t struck me as anomalous before now. Or why I consider it so tragically sad, considering I ran away from the circus myself and never looked back.

I also see that Sailor Circus was transferred from the Sarasota County School Board to the Police Athletic League in 2004 and Circus Sarasota in 2011. One of my readers works with Circus Sarasota, perhaps she can let me know if students still get school credit for Circus Arts.

This is a draft that escaped facebook and ran over here when I was cleaning house.

Wrath of the Titans (Or, this movie sucks so much it will break your furnace)

Wrath of the Titans is a clunky inept sequel to a clunky inept remake of a clunky inept movie from the 1980s. Young Boomers/older Gen Xers, who thought the original Clash of the Titans was great because they were young and impressionable when it first came out (and were probably stoned when they saw it) are now the people green-lighting the big budget IMAX 3D reboots of movies that they would realize weren’t very good if they weren’t currently working as “Creatives” and consequently making business decisions while smoking pot.

The people who greenlit this movie also know two things. One, that the kids who are willing to shell out weekend box-office don’t comprehend, or care, that the original movie was Not Great. Two, GenXers will Netflix or purchase the reboot in a fit of pique and/or out of misguided nostalgia. What this means is this: lots of people will get paid.

Everybody wins.

Except us, because we’re watching it. Right. Now.

This movie, like all movies, co-stars Liam Neesen.

Seriously. What the hell?

I just watched The Haunting (1963), one of the all-time scariest movies of all time ever. I spotted the 1999 remake on HBOHD and, being too sick to think, decided to see if it was as bad as I remembered.

It was. Got a post about that drafted, you’ll have to wait for it a little longer – the relevant point here is that the remake starred Liam Neesen.

Husband decided to watch all the Star Wars movies. We watched 4, 5 and 6 over the holidays. But we know who’s in the the first 3: Liam Neeson.

Our Tivo, OverLord II, recorded Unknown for us. Never heard of it. Looked at the description. Liam Neeson.

The Netflix fairy sent Battleship. Liam Neeson.

The Dark Knight Rises? Liam Neeson.

Maybe the connection here isn’t “Liam Neeson.” Maybe it’s “our questionable movie selection judgement.”

I’ve been sick for 3 weeks. I don’t know what Husband’s excuse is. I guess that doesn’t explain the last 20some years of our movie watching co-existence, does it?

Moving on.

I guess I have to quit copying IMDB links for Liam Neeson movies and pay attention to the screen if I want to describe Wrath of the Titans to you. There aren’t any spoilers in here. To be fair, I think to have a movie spoiled you probably need to care about the outcome. Trust me, no one should care about the outcome of this movie.

Except Liam Neeson’s agent, who should probably wake up with a horse head in his bed or something. This dude has been in some shitty, shitty movies.

Wrath of the Titans. Wrath of the Titans is about Perseus and Zeus and a bunch of other Gods who lived back in the Ancient Greek Lack of Hygiene World.

Liam Neeson is Zeus. His half-human son, Perseus, has to rescue him from the underworld and

I just realized I’ve been sitting here trying to remember why the guy woke up with the horse head in his bed in the Godfather and I’ve forgotten what came next in that unfinished sentence you see above this paragraph. I fall asleep every time I try to watch the Godfather. I’ve seen the scene but I have no idea what it means. (What? It was before my time. Plus I was afraid of New Jersey as a kid so the Godfather isn’t really my thing. Sorry).

Back to Wrath of the Titans.

Perseus has Poseiden’s pitchfork. It’s a Magical God Pitchfork, which means that it glows orange whenever it’s near manure, I think. That describes the overall quality of the script for this movie, so the pitchfork glows a lot. Husband thinks it might be more complicated than that, but Husband had to get up at 6 a.m. on a Saturday and work all day and he’s had a few drinks so I don’t know that you should trust him.

Plus, he’s still really bitter about the whole midi-chlorians thing, which he seems to be holding Liam Neeson personally responsible for.

So, Perseus has the pitchfork and he goes off to find his Dad.

Perseus ends up in a cave with Bill Nighy, one of our favorite actors. Nighy performs a monologue from a one-man Off Broadway show. Or outtakes from Love Actually. I’m not really sure, but I think it must be one of those. Then he shows Perseus and Andromeda a shortcut to destroy the Underworld that seems to defeat the whole “I’m on an epic quest” story-arc.

Husband: “There’s a small thermal exhaust port right below the main port!”

Liam Neeson, incidentally, was in Love Actually.

Wait, what’s Andromeda doing there? When did she show up? Perseus rode off alone on his Pegasus. Then he fought a bunch of badly rendered monsters and then I think he flew around some more.

Whatever.

Sometimes the dialogue is hard to understand. The sound mixing is actually pretty good. To be honest, the biggest problem is that we keep yelling lines from other movies, which makes it hard for us to hear the movie we’re watching. Husband hasn’t seen Taken, and neither of us has seen Taken 2 or the forthcoming Taken 3: the Quickening, but all of the trailers look the same so it seems safe to just make up dialogue.

Seriously, how many movies can there be in the Someone Stole Liam Neeson’s Daughter franchise?

It’s possible I made Taken 3 up…but I bet it gets made.

Since Perseus gets around on a fast-flying Pegasus, I’m not really clear on how all the other characters seem to be able to keep up with him. Nevertheless, Pegasus and Perseus go flapping away and everyone they left behind is just somehow with them in the next scene.

Husband: “A small one-man fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense!”

Hang on a second, there’s some kind of fire-monster warrior guys attacking our band of plucky morons. That’s sort of cool.

Honestly, I have no idea what’s happening.

Husband: “Get this big walking carpet out of my way.”

The tagline for Wrath of the Titans is “Feel the Wrath.” That’s the best they could do?

Anyway, Andromeda and Perseus are on an epic quest. At some point while I was trying to make up a joke about feeling the wrath a bunch of shit happened and now I’m confused about who’s fighting who or what the quest is. It seems to have changed.

I actually thought the movie was over because they’d gotten out of the Underworld and put on deodorant (I think that’s what they were doing. I might be mistaken). But now the people who I thought were mortal enemies are fighting on the same side and I can’t figure out who in the hell they’re fighting.

Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers summed it up when he wrote, “…Clash of the Titans sucketh the mighty big one.”

We aren’t even bothering to recite movie dialogue anymore, we’re just moaning and mumbling to ourselves. Husband just said something about his blast-shield being down, but, having realized that the credits are rolling and our servitude is over, we’re both too busy scrambling for the remote to think clearly.

post-script
After the movie ended I was giving this post a quick edit to remove eighty percent of the profanity while Husband stared at the blank TV screen looking, frankly, happier than he’d looked over the last 92 minutes. That was when our furnace – which is located in the basement – directly below the television – emitted a terrible sound.

Husband has been down there for the last 10 minutes trying to repair it enough that it will limp along until Monday. Mostly, we’d prefer not to pay Double Jeopardy Magical Super-Overtime, or whatever the rate is you have to pay for a furnace repair at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night in February. Honestly, I’m also a little afraid if we call the furnace company they’ll send Liam Neeson over. Or, the more likely scenario will occur: my cough medicine will take control of my mouth and I’ll just blurt out a request that they not to send Liam Neeson.

They probably don’t get a lot of out-of-the-blue requests to not have Liam Neeson dispatched to people’s homes. It actually wouldn’t be the craziest thing I’ve ever called and asked them. Still, cross your fingers that Husband’s repair gets us through. Just in case, we won’t be subjecting the furnace to any more bad movies this weekend. It’s all Downton Abbey from here on out.

Yeah. Right.