Thanksgiving 2008

I think the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade just may be my favorite part of Thanksgiving. With the midday gorging being a close second fave. Anyways, I watched a good deal of the parade before I at last relented and started in washing the dishes that I had let set in the sink overnight (from prepping veggies & Green Goddess dip & devilled eggs the night before) Anyways, I was sorta peripherally keeping an eye on the parade, when the sudden, jarring, seemingly arbitrary appearance of RICK ASTLEY had me abandoning the sink and standing bewilderedly in front of the TV with my dish soapy hands held up in front of me ( y’know, pre-surgery doc style) He was on the Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends float “singing” Never Gonna Give You Up and I was genuinely puzzled (albeit DELIGHTED… I do so enjoy that Rick Astley) It seemed to me SO outta left field that it took on a sort of miraculous & surreal quality.

So yeah, I was “Rickrolled”. And it just astounds me that I had never heard of this phenomenon until I did a li’l Wikipedia perusal this afternoon. It’s odd and trivial and just the sorta thing that I would know all about. But I didn’t!! Curses!

Lemme see… other things about my Thanksgiving…
I pigged out royally.
I kicked arse at Scrabble.
I went through the 2600+ songs in the iTunes library I share w/ Laura and weeded out all the Raffi & the Jonas Bros (& other such undesirables).

Going back to work on the day after a holiday completely blows the big euphonium. I gotta use up some of my small stash of ETO for Dec 26 (awww yeahhh..Boxing Day mah bitches!!)

Nice chair. . .FOR ME TO POOP ON!!

I SOO don’t wanna be here today. The only thing that will spare me from harboring lasting resentment against the organization is if I’m able to fit in a goodly amount of slacking off time. If I were an employer, I would absolutely allot time for my employees to slack off. I think I would give them a whole hour (in addition to the lunch hour... something like a ½ hr a.m. block of downtime, lunch hour, ½ hr afternoon block of downtime) Of course, I’m sure any company I was heading up would be of the creative sort…a sort of place where slacking off could be construed as constructive & crucial to production. Also I’m sure any company I was heading up would tank in a fairly short amount of time. It’s quite unbecoming to be self-deprecating, I realize, but I’m just not business-minded, is all. I have plenty other redeeming qualities. Truly, I do…

I have been preoccupying my mid—late morning hours with pondering what to get for lunch. Can you believe I didn’t score any leftovers from my sister’s yesterday?? Pfff! I suppose I’m not *entitled*. I have no legal claim on the leftovers (don’t need Starr Jones to tell me that). But I was expecting a li’l somethin’-somethin’. A smallish doggie bag. A pittance, if you will. But I gots nothin’ . … therefore I’ve been perusing the online menu for 99. Nothing therein is particularly enticing to me, but I’m still hooked on the notion of 99 takeout because it’s within walking distance.

Have I mentioned they’re remodeling our offices? I moved into my new, improved work station on Nov 17th. I got a new desk as well as this swanky new light blue office chair that I realized this morning already has a stain on it. A small stain that—I regret to report-- resembles a poop stain. Why, oh, WHY did they hafta order light blue chairs?? Oh and no , to the best of my knowledge, I did not poop my pants at work. I do believe that I would notice and subsequently remember pooping my pants at work. I think it’s dirt. Surely, it’s from my mindless habit of sitting with my right foot tucked underneath me. So it may really be a poop stain if I’d tromped thru dog dookie on one of my lunch break walks. If I had the privacy of a cubicle, I might cop a squat & sniff the seat of my chair but our office is very open plan and I don’t fancy anyone &everyone seeing me do that, y’know?

I miss my jaw harp. I never figured out how to really play it and now the thing is MIA. I'm real tempted to buy another one. What's the worse that could happen..that soon after replacing the missing harp, I find the original one (that seems to happen to me A LOT when I replace lost items). Well, in that scenario, I would hand over my old jaw harp to a friend (after boiling in diluted bleach or somehow purifying the thing, if the recipient in question was one of my more fastidious pals) and then we could both learn the jaw harp. Thereafter, we could rock out....in epic musical camaraderie... a-settin' in rocking chairs on a porch somewhere ...possibly at a Cracker Barrel as we do a 5 state concert tour of Cracker Barrel restaurants. Yeee HA.

I thought of this tonight because I was doing some online browsing (I hope to find some sweet Xmas gifts online this year) and one of the sites I hit was the VT Country Store. Their TOYS section has a musical instrument subsection and they offered a jaw harp on there. Oh, also they had this that caught my eye--





I'm all for old timey instrumentation, but even I am not jackass enough to pay $20. for a slab of corrugated metal. That's flippin' reDONKulous, maaan!!

small, odd, vexations & misc. notes

D'ya ever feel like your tongue just doesn't fit right inside your mouth? My tongue just could NOT get comfy today.

Another thing that irks me.... I think this irks me more than it does most people. I really hate "toast tracks " in the butter. Technically these would be toast crumbs left in the stick of butter in the butter dish... but I have long called them "toast tracks". I want to slather my toast with PRISTINE butter, not butter full of crumbs from godknows whose toast from who-the-flip knows when??

The butter rant makes me think of a poem I read the other night. That's right. I'm not a complete cultural heathen. I sometimes read poetry, dammit.

Anyways, I think this A.A. Milne ditty is utterly charming...

Perhaps I shall write a sequel epic poem...telling of a lovely Empress and her reactions to toast tracks in her butter...

TV blather

Sheepish confession: Between my regular TV addictions, I have taken to watching the Disney channel again. Particularly The Wizards of Waverly Place or Hannah Montana or Life With Derek. That last one, because all the people on that show are so charmingly Canadian. Yeah, so I happen to know the show is made in Canada, but I swear even without knowing that...you'd be able to tell. They really do exude this distinct Canadian je ne sais pas I can't fully define. For one, they seem more wholesome. And they really do say "about" funnily. Or at least the younger bro on the "Derek" show does anyhow.

Anyways, speaking of TV... my Thurs night line up consists of: Ugly Betty, Grey's Anatomy & then It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I still do love The Office, but I usually catch up with it online over the weekend. I know I can watch Grey's online too, but watching it Thurs gives me a more balanced night of couch spuddery (comedy-drama-comedy vs. comedy-comedy-comedy) So...WHAT THE FLIP is wrong with Izzy anyways?? I swear they are building up to a brain tumor and that is going to be a godawful DRAG of a storyline. Still, I'd be miffed if they were just making her go plain ol' nuts too. The only palatable way out of this Denny foolishness---in my opinion-- is to pull a Dallas circa 1986 (the show, dummy, not the city) and make it all a nasty dream. Conversely , what was good in this episode was that Sloane got the opportunity to be a bit more than set dressing. Don't get me wrong... he is a fuckingGORGEOUS bit of set dressing, but there is more to him than just his uber fine exterior. He is my absolute FAVE Gray's character and I've been saying for aaaages that the dude needs more of a storyline. However, I didn' t like his comment that he'd been contemplating a dalliance with "Little Gray". I do NOT sanction that pairing!! Y'know I always thought a Sloane-Izzy coupling would be just capital. You've got the whole bad boy-goody 2 shoes girl dynamic in play there. And , okay, YES, Little Gray is a goodie 2 shoes also, but she's also a tremendous dweeb. I like her well enough, but she's SO not worthy. But Izzy has got her thing right now with Karev , and that's a pretty decent pairing . Plus she's apparently bat guano loco at present...so... not the best timing to launch a Sloane-Izzie storyline. I think it'd be fine for Sloane to bide his time with Callie. Maybe even have an ill-fated fling with that new blonde Aussie psycho. The only other Gray's romance worth mention (since Derek + Mer= ZZzzzz) is the burgeoning Hunt- Yang pairing. Not everyone liked Hunt's weird inarticulate frustration combined with sudden maulings but I gotta say...I'm a fan. It is weird. But hot& weird. And this week in particular he kind of shrugged off his oddball aura and was really rather adorable in that stoop scene near the show's end. " I think you're BEAUTIFUL." Simultaneously heart-melting and twitterpating...I loved it.

Heroes blather

Who else thought the Elle/Sylar face off on Heroes was hot?? I mean, killing a gal's father is quite a doozy of a romantic roadblock but Elle seemed to get over it rather quickly. Yes, she got over it after firing a coupla hundred lightning bolts at the fellah, but still!! Daddy-killing is the sort of faux pas that should really result in a lengthier grudge--am I right? Nevertheless, it was still pretty hubba-hubba. And Sylar is seeming strangely attractive to me this season. Well clearly he has a sweet bod--that's pretty evident during the Elle confrontation scene. But from the neck up I'm finding him fetching too, but can't really pinpoint why. I mean, none of those features are aesthetically pleasing in any classic sense of aesthetic pleasantry. And the eyebrows should be a source of much distraction. But they're not . (Sadly, I can't say the same about Nathan Petrelli...my sis likes him. It's way shallow of me , but I just cannot get over his megalithic chin...or jaw...it's kind of the jaw region as well. Really, his whole head is a bit Easter Islandy and it freaks me out)

Conversely, Parkman and Daphne have more or less pledged their love and they have all the chemistry of.. .of...uhh...white paper plates and cotton balls. Ok, so my arsenal of chem-knowledge is tres miniscule (practically nonexistant) but it seems a decent bet that those two elements aren't apt to catalyze any dramatic chemical reactions of note. I just think this particular romantic storyline looks to be LAME and I blame the dame. This Daphne falls in love faster than she runs but she doesn't do it very convincingly. I can't decide if this actress is lacking that mysterious "it factor" that endears her to the viewer, or if she simply is a shitty actress(possibly both). Anyways, it's too bad, because Parkman's mah boy and he deserves some love. Other than that non-trad fam love he had going on with the whole My 2 Dads set up --him, Molly, Mohinder. Who the hell is watching that child anyways??

I really miss...

PacMan Pasta with meatballs. Maan, that was the best thing to have for lunch EVER!! As you may have surmised, I ate a good deal of PacMan Pasta as a wee Sanny. That kinda stuff stays with ya(well, stays with me anyways) I mean, everytime I walk past the Chef Boyardee offerings in my local supermarket I feel a pang of sadness over the extinction of Pac Man Pasta. EVERY. TIME. For reals, yo. And logically, I do realize that Dora Pasta with Meatballs is quite possibly the same EXACT thing just with Dora shapes, but I can't bring myself to buy that stuff. In my heart, I just feel it couldn't measure up, y'know?

Maybe I should create a petition.

Have to add..

That I'm kind of in love with Ghost of the Doll now. Add it to my links side bar or no? Passing fancy or fixed fixation? I must contemplate this...

audience participation please..

I find iTunes to be really easy to use, but it's not all it could be. I really love shopping Amazon on account o' the browsing capabilities. iTunes is so simple to *buy* from, but mere browsing isn't so great. The big advantage to Amazon is the WISH LIST. I love the wish list. iTunes should sooo let users compile wish lists. And while they're improving, I think it would also be rad of them (and rather ground-breaking,really) if they offered full minute music preview snippets. A lot of songs you really can't get the gist of in a measly 30 seconds.
See, if I had a wish list, I mighta remembered that I wanted to buy George Harrison's "Got my Mind Set on You" I know it's a cheezy song, but I so dig it. Remember this---???---




Bravo--amazing space-age special effects in play here! Where is he -- in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion ?? I kid! I kid! I love this song, really. And the vid is a fond memory. I think it was the squirrel playing air sax with a pipe that stuck in my nog the most vividly. Love that. None of the squirrels at my house are so amusing.

So I'm suddenly inspired to posit a poll-esque query to y'all (what few of you comprises "y'all" anyway). It's not going to be a full-on poll, because I want you to tax your own memories and give me answers rather that respond to a bunch of voting options thunk up by moi. Anyways, the aforementioned query:

What is the most memorable music video from the 80s?? ( put your answers in the comments per favor)

I think an obvious answer would be "Thriller" and I don't really mean one that was ubiquitous like that,or iconic , not necessarily. I mean something that stuck in your own mental craw, personally memorable, not culturally memorable. Dig? Of course, that might still be Thriller. Thriller was a biggie for me...not so much because of the actual video, but because my Thriller ViewMaster reel was 1 of my 2 favorite reels. Yep, pretty much when I got out the ol ' VM, I was reeling thru Thriller or 1976 King Kong. I had lotsa other reels-- Tom & Jerry, Huggabunch,--oooh, quick side tangent...check this shit out.. I owned the one they call "Tickles" here but I think I called her Bitchface and her illegitimate babe I called Allistair. Hey, I had nothin' against him. Not his fault that he is harlot-born.
But I digress. Wooah do I digress..back to videos.

Most memorable 80s vid for me ( I am soon going to divulge MY answer to the poll-esque query, I urge you to right now scrawl down your answer lest you be influenced..) is , hands down, Genesis 's Land of Confusion . Oh, not only do we got ugly puppets, you have singing navels & drowning in bed . If that stuff is not branded on your memory then it's because the trauma made you suppress it. Yeah..ok.. I suppose grandiose claims like that warrant an embed...

web meanderings...

Some terrif new sites I've stumbled on to as of late--

The Book of Threes website is kinda neat-o. I'll tell ya why I was looking there... Our office is currently undergoing some renovations, and when all is done, we will have 3 conference rooms. And my boss sent out this email that they were fielding suggestions for names for the conference rooms. See, naturally I'm wanting to mine literature or mythology for some quirky yet meaningful set of names. For instance-- Mazaru, Mizaru, & Mikazaru sort of appealled to me. But none of my suggestions were practically viable , so I kept 'em to myself. Cathy (bosslady) proffered a suggestion of her own-- it was The Connecticuit River Room, The Ottaquechee Room, and. . .and...oh, I don't recall the third option, they were all united by this regional geography motif..possibly it was The Ascutney Mountain Room. One of the other managers emailed some feedback immediately-- countering that "Ottaquechee" is too hard to spell. Accordingly, she misspelled it in that very email. Well, I don't think "Ottaquechee" is all that difficult a word, but that's neither here nor there, really. I find that whole notion repugnant-- avoiding words because they're not easily spelled. Still, upon further contemplation, I feel like neither mine nor Cathy's ideas would do. The reason being that my names make the conference rooms sound like interesting places. Cathy's names are swank sounding. I haven't seen the new rooms,but I feel pretty certain that they're doing them on the cheapy-cheap and they're going to be as corporate cookie cutter as it gets. So, 'tis only fair to avoid names that cruelly raise one's expectations. Probably Conference Room A, Conference Room B, & Conference Room C are the only really suitable options.

Speaking of corporate interiors... have I ever before raved about how much I dig the looks of Frank Lloyd Wright's Johnson Wax Building in Racine , WI?? (I may have...I sometimes feel like I repeat myself incessantly in this blog) . That looks like a really rad place to work. Of course, there doesn't seem to be a whole hell of a lot of privacy, what with a huge bullpen with no cubicle walls.

Oh yeah, the other site I discovered: Plaid Stallions. No drawn out explanation required on that one. Sites like that are just naturally my bag, y'know?

Tonight I called Laura and learned that my niece Lucy has pneumonia. I was kinda wary of inhaling her icky sick germs, but I could keep myself from stopping in to see how the wee muffin was doing. She looked a bit pale and run down, but ,on a positive note, she seemed to be in good spirits--being silly, laughing at TV, eating. Laura said she was much improved over last night & earlier in the day.


While visiting the li'l patient, I was treated to my very first episode of Yo Gabba Gabba! I'd seen some merchandise in stores (Brobee dolls in Newbury Comics, etc) but didn't know what the toys were from. Tonight I was enlightened and must confess I'm now kind of smitten with the show. Well this probably comes as no shock to those of you who knew me in my Bananas in Pajamas phase (didn't you watch that avec moi, Jilly?) and/or throughout my BooBahs kick.

It's driving me nuts though that I found the Snacky Snack song insanely catchy and had resolved to sing it whenever I consumed snackies from here on out forevermore...(well, no, just on occasion) but damned if I can't remember it at all!! So maybe "catchy" is a poor adjective choice in this instance, as I believe that catchy things, by nature, are supposed to adhere to one's consciousness. Am I right on that? So perhaps the Snacky Snack song wasn't all that catchy but I did like it. It's good, I assure you. I've searched all over them internets and I can't find it anywhere. DAGNABBIT ALL TO HELL!!



I had the same exact thing happen with a birthday song I heard the animatronic Chuck E. Cheese band perform (the last time I went to Chuck E. Cheese, that is, that band was not appearing on Yo Gabba Gabba. Although, Elijah Wood did show up to demonstrate an innovative new dance move). It's too damn bad, as I'd meant to store it up in me noggin for my next birthday serenade opportunity,--a most welcome alternative,as the ol' "Happy Birthday" is tremendously played out.


In totally unrelated news, when I walked to Shaw's today on my lunch break, I strolled the "SHOP THE WORLD" aisle for about 10 minutes and didn't buy anything. I love that aisle. It kinda seems like, at this juncture of my life anyways, that's the closest I'm going to get to international travel. Siiiigh. It's really the Irish/ British subsection of the aisle that I zoned in on. Perhaps it's that those are the only nations represented in "SHOP THE WORLD" that I would truly like to travel to. I've been to Mexico . And I feel fully indifferent toward the whole Asian continent . Meh. It's really Europe I long to see.


All that blathering just to simply state that I enjoy the "SHOP THE WORLD" aisle at Shaws. Oh,but I would certainly be remiss if I didn't sniggerly mention that I saw and inspected a can of... .

Haaa! That was the hardiest har har I had all day!! How could I NOT wanna go to the UK?? Such yuks...

STEVE GUTTENBERG JOGS HALF-NAKEY!!

I found this to be such compelling news item that I just *had* to defy my no-blogging-at-work policy to post it. Apparently hitching his star to the ol’ DWTS wagon did not catalyze the comeback that Guttenberg had hoped for. Now –ostensibly--we have an out-of-the-blue outbreak of wackadooism…amazingly captured on YouTube. Is it the height of cynicism that I don’t believe this is legit?