Random Wednesday

sunset
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Huh, that was weird - a keyboard shortcut posted this long before it was ready. Oh well! Guess I must blog now! Actually, damn, it is far easier to post a link from Blogger proper rather than from Flickr although I don't get that tiny feeling of pride in my own mad basic knowledge of HTML skillz that I do when I type it all in laboriously. Still. And now for something completely different!

LOVE
Have I blogged lately about my great love for China Mieville? No? Have I ever blogged about my great love for China Mieville? Well. Let me fix that. I am in love with China Mieville. I am also, coincidentally, in love with Martin Millar and James McMurtry (I am not posting a link to James. If you don't know who he is it behooves you to google him immediately.) and so clearly, if I threw an apple peel over my left shoulder* it would land on the floor in the shape of an M, which is interesting and totally beside the point. Nevertheless! I have just finished Kraken, Mieville's latest book and I am here to tell you that you should go out and buy it immediately. Perhaps buy several copies, even: the book is great and so, as nice lagniappe, is the cover design. The book, though, the book is completely amazing. I mean, it is wonderfully great even for a book that centers around the random theft of a giant squid, which is perhaps the best plot premise ever (eat your heart out, Dashiell Hammett - why fuck around with a small black statuette of some random bird when you could be chasing a GIANT SQUID?): it is engrossing, thoughtful, beautifully written of course and even occasionally funny as hell. China Mieville is a genius - I mean, a genius, a serious genius - and sometimes he can be somewhat overwhelmingly abstract and intellectual but it is worth it to force your brain to try to keep up. Also, he's gorgeous, OMG, insert various girly stuff here, and I like his politics. Or, well, I think I do, but then British politics are a little opaque to we colonials due to the lack of the overwhelming stupidity factor that Americans seem to find necessary to keep in our own political life. "Why, he's dumb as dirt!" we say proudly and then reelect the bastard to keep on voting against health care and extending unemployment. "Dumb as dirt! Haw! Wouldn't want one of them goddamn smartypants progressives in Washington! Why, no, I don't get why we is so poor now and how come we has lost everything we once had - must be the goddamn terr'ists."

GARDEN
The garden has been really weird this year. It is the beginning of July and yet the garden seems to think it is the middle of August. Thus, all my sunflowers are out, half the peppers are ready, the corn is miserable, small and no good, the beans are done, the cucumbers are finishing and, well, it's not so awesome, actually. Also, borer beetles have killed all my zucchini - little fuckers! Evil insects! Forces of doom! - so for the first time in many years I am facing a zucchini free summer, which is clearly not to be borne. I am baffled in the face of the sudden uselessness of all my carefully hoarded recipes that disguise zucchini. If there is no zucchini to disguise I will probably have to start gluing mustaches on those weird ass Chinese whatever they ares and we don't want that. Or maybe we do.

WII FIT
I am having more fun with the Wii Fit than I probably should. I live in fear that somebody will catch me attempting one of the kindergarten level games, like marching in place, that I enjoy so much and yet am so, so very bad at. I confess: I've never really gotten my right and left straight. Never. Neither has my son, which is one of the reasons why we were so extremely terrible at Tae Kwon Do all those years ago. I am also bad at rhythm, as in, I don't got none and so I am terrible at most of the Wii Fit games, which rely heavily on rhythm and balance for some unknown reason that perhaps will one day become clear to me. But it is fun as hell to try. There are elements of living in the future that I adore and running in place in the basement while virtually following a small cat around an imaginary cartoon island on a large screen in front of me is one of them. As long as nobody ever sees me. I think I should probably wear a fake mustache.

INK
I decided a while ago that I would get another tattoo on my mom's birthday, which is today. Happy Birthday, Mom! Miss you every day - yeah, that's one of those things that you don't know until you lose a parent but let's not go there. It is rough. However. My mother would be completely horrified by this form of tribute - we had a sort of silent don't ask, don't tell thing going on with all the tattoos I already have, which I sort of attempted to keep mostly hidden - but, well, I don't care and I do think that as usual, my own very contrary nature, which is in large part much like her very contrary nature, would continue to amuse her. So, another tattoo is in the works. I already have Snufkin and Little My on my right shoulder blade and it is time to add my very own Moominmamma. Now I have to find a place that will do this today, because with my usual total lack of planning, I have done nothing but pick out a picture. Therefore, I'm out of here and off to find an available artist. Which, interestingly enough, one could also say about my quest for Martin Millar, James McMurtry and China Mieville.

ASTERISK PART
* This is an old fortune telling device that is infallible. Infallible, I tell you! What you do is first you must peel an apple so that the peel comes off all in one piece like a spiral without breaking anywhere. Then you throw it - the peel, not the apple - over your left shoulder and examine what it looks like on the floor. Whatever letter of the alphabet it resembles is the initial of the man you are going to marry. This is tough on people with names beginning with F or T or A or Z - that's why they never marry, as you know, while people whose names start with J and S and C marry often - but hey, my twelve year old self informs me that this method is absolutely the truth.