Wheels!

I've been a pretty slacking blogger recently - apologies, dear readers (all three of you). Since I'm not posting as regularly anymore, I'm going to add a subscription bit to the right-hand column; you'll be able to enter your email address, hit subscribe, and get the most recent post in your inbox. Woo hoo.

I've still been enjoying the financial meltdown - enjoy might not be the best word choice. It's rather like watching Godzilla rampage through the world economy instead of Tokyo. And I'm pretty sure most people outside of Japan would rather Godzilla were rampaging Tokyo. Soon enough my mutual fund will be worth so little that I won't be able to by a newspaper with it, even a weekday edition. It was a gift, though, so it's rather like free money - all I can end up with is nothing, which is what I had before it was given.

I do have an extremely simplistic question about the market. It seems to me that if everyone quits selling, the stocks will quit going down. Right? I realize that there are occasions where that strategy doesn't pay off in the end, for example, if you had stock in WaMu or Lehman Bros (were they actually a publicly traded company?). I do understand that not tanking the stock market won't resolve the bigger issues of banks holding paper that's losing value at a depressing rate, or the credit freeze that bollixed up commercial paper, etc. But if you've already lost 30-50% of your worth in stocks, why does rushing to sell the rest of it off seem like a good idea? If any of you send me an explanation I can understand, I'll post it.

Then there's the fun of playing the unemployment game. Quel surprise, I screwed up my application and had to call the Unemployment Insurance (UI) office. The woman on the other end was exceedingly helpful, and we got everything straightened out. In fact, I was able to report that fact to a friend of mine just yesterday...but I spoke too soon. I checked my mail and found that their system did not like something, so I have to complete some paperwork and send it in. Feh.

Speaking of fun, the Presidential/Vice Presidential debates are over. I must say, Barack Obama seems to have gotten his act down, and I mean that in the performative sense of the word. One of my friends and occasional readers compared McCain's performance in the previous debate as remniscent of Grampa Simpson, an analysis with which I agreed. Last night, he still reminded me of ol' Abe Simpson, and I fully expected John McCain to say, "I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missouri," or some other such nonsense as we usually hear from Grampa. In fact, I had summarized the first three debates (Prez & VP) thusly:

See! Sarah Palin act like a Barbie Doll! Hear! Joe Biden try not to say something studip! Watch! John McCain wheeze his way around the stage, talking to all his friends! Enjoy! The immaculate hang of Barack Obama's silk suit!

I spent a couple of days with The Mater last week. The most exciting aspect of that was going to a book sale where, for $15, I brought home many more books than I should have been allowed to buy all year. Bad Viviana!

I spent Saturday evening in the company of a poet. Previous experiences with poets were less than inspiring, part of that due to the fact that they weren't very good poets, and thus were tedious companions. This poet, however, is exactly to my taste - no crappy love poems, no bad beat poet imitations, but his own voice and a love of words that I'm sure surpasses my own. So there was plenty of conversation, some reading of poetry...and single malt double wood 16 yr old Oban. Now, I have to admit, I'm just a wee bit fonder of the Lagavulin; it's the peat. I love the scent and taste of the peat smoke in such a smooth and delightful delivery system as the 16 yr old Lagavulin. However, were I stuck on a desert island for the rest of my life with 20 crates of 16 yr old double wood Oban, I wouldn't shed a tear for my lost Lagavulin. I've always enjoyed the 12 yr old Oban, but the 16 yr old was delightful, smooth as anything. So please let me recommend - Oban 16 yr old double matured (as it is officially named). Super tasty stuff.

And finally - wheels. I bought me some wheels. A Diamondback bicycle. She's a nice little bike; I had to get the shrimpy sized frame (14 or 15). And panniers, helmet, gloves, dayglo jacket. It's not the lightest frame in the world, and I think it will be a few weeks before I can safely lift her high enough to get her on a bus bike rack (don't want to destroy my back), but I'll have enormous biceps once I reach that point.

Tell me, did y'all think I'd bought meself a car? Huh? Huh? I'm unemployed. I can't afford a car. Honestly, I'm not sure I can afford anything more expensive than a pair of discount running shoes, but I bought a bicycle anyway.

My social calendar is a little full the next four days - damn, how'd I get so popular? Anyhoo, I'll update y'all early next week.

While Working in the Laboratory Late One Night

I received a comment on my photo of Dolores Fuller, who represents my idea of the successful lab assistant-type from such fine films as "Bride of the Monster"; the commenter said that they didn't think I could pull off a facial expression as dumb as Dolores, and suggested Bebe Daniels as a role model instead.

Now, don't get me wrong, I adore Bebe, she was in "42nd Street", a great musical. However, she never played a lab assistant. In my searches, though, I recalled a late, great actress with tons of horror movie cred who played a lab assistant - Fay Wray.

Fay was the woman for whom King Kong braved bullets and planes to try and keep her love (NB how that affair ended - that's why, much as I love Gojira, I would never try to date him; size does matter at a certain point, folks).

Fay also starred in a B movie entitled "The Vampire Bat", which also starred Melvyn Douglas as his urbane, witty, sexy self, and Lionel Atwill as his suave, charming, wicked self.

Fay, of course, is sweet and trusting, but no idiot, even in roles such as this. Lionel Atwill is a mad scientist of the less-than-nice variety, coercing a subordinate into killing villagers for their blood. Melvyn Douglas is the law enforcement official, as much as a village like that is going to have, and is in love with Fay Wray, who is Lionel's lab assistant. Here are a few screen captures from the film:


Left to right: Atwill, Wray, Douglas, all chatting it up like the best of friends. Notice she is wearing PPE in the form of a lab coat.


Here is Atwill menacing poor Fay after she finds out what a crazed loser he is.


Here's a nice composed shot - notice the shadow on the far left, the weird apparatus, and then Fay on the right hand side, elements that draw one's eye somewhere besides the center of the frame...oops, I sound like a film school student. My apologies.

The only problem I see with Fay is that she's a lot less, er, buxom than yours truly, whereas Dolores Fuller is not. So I think I will simply have to strive to bring a Fay Wray sensibility to my Dolores Fuller costume. That will require some work. Also, I'll have to find a Melvyn Douglas character to rescue me from the mad scientist, I guess. Although that might not be the worst thing in the world; after all, the women who stay with the mad scientist often end up dead, or a disembodied head in a baking pan, at the end of the film.

So if any of you know of any Melvyn Douglas-types out there, I'll be taking applications. Hey, a girl's gotta be prepared, just like a boy scout, you know.

Another Monday

Here 'tis, Monday again. My weekend was jam-packedwith activities. The wedding on Friday was quite lovely - by far the most thoughtfully worded ceremony I've ever attended. It was a great event, and if anyone mistook me for a failed scientific experiment, I was unaware of it. So yes, I spent Friday afternoon brushing up on raccoon chatter for no good reason.

I danced until I had blisters on my feet (that would be something like three or four dances, I believe). Egon the Mad Scientist is quite the terpsichorean and dances one mean quadrille. Louis Quinze has nothing on him, I tells ya!

The wedding was also an opportunity to chat with another geoduck who actually attended Geoduck U the same time I did; we fairly trashed a couple of faculty in the course of a 20 minute conversation, always a bonding experience for alumni.

Saturday I had a bbq to attend, so I assisted in the creation of a blueberry cheesecake (bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha! no tasty cheesecake for you, dear readers, bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!). It was indeed a tasty cheesecake, with a magnificent, decadent crust. Mmm...cheesecake. I found a kindred spirit who also loved the tv series "UFO" as well as the Simpsons' parody of George Lucas's Phantom Menace (or Phantom Script, as I call it - sorry, Star Wars fans, I'm too old and cranky to be able to love any ol' thing with the Star Wars name attached).

My Sunday was co-opted by the Mad Scientist - he actually wanted my assistance in writing his first Manifesto! I was more than thrilled; I have a soft spot for manifesti of all types, and was interested to see his specific ideas for achieving world dominance, and what he would do with it once the goal was attained. No, no, don't ask me for details - I've been sworn to secrecy. I will say I was disappointed to notice a lack of plans for killer robots or the creation of a Godzilla-like creature, but I will work on trying to get those included. Stay tuned for updates.

We relaxed to some lovely episodes of Red Dwarf Season Six - Gunman of the Apocalypse is probably one of the finest episodes of the series, and always a great one to share with a friend.

Earlier in the week I attended my (former) department's picnic event. It was also a chance to say good-bye to some of the folks from the group that was sold off to Globex Corporation. We losers, er, former coworkers were given photo ops with the headlines in the paper that very day announcing that MegaDyneCorp Technologies was laying off a whole bunch of people.



It was nice to be there, hanging with the crowd, and watching the few brave and competitive spirits vying for prizes. I also negotiated alimony with my faux hubby - my alimony will be in the form of sausage. Yes, one day I'm expecting home-made chorizo for my dining pleasure.

Thursday, hmmm, I hung out with my bff and her son, a young man of 25, a youth with whom I spent many hours playing nintendo, exposing him to punk rock, and encouraging him to...alright, alright, I totally helped warp this kid's mind. I admit it. He still managed to get into the Air Force in spite of my corrupting influence - I'm sure he simply omitted mention of the fact that he knows me. It was fun chatting and I received a couple of cans of Japanese coffee to bring home; it's not bad iced, I must say. Japan and their vending machines.

Well, I apologize for this not being a better conceived post, but I mostly wanted to catch up my vast legions of admirers on my recent activities. I'm sure I'll return to a verbose and redundant state in short order.

Saturday

Clever title, eh? Ms Wilde is never at a loss for clever titles, pithy remarks, or astute observations. (What's even better is that I didn't spell it correctly the first time I posted it - duuuuuh.)

In providing my link to the Wikipedia definition of 'steampunk' the other day, I rediscovered a world I hadn't visited in three years or so (in 2005 I wrote a little steampunk vampire adventure for a friend of mine's entertainment). I found so many wonderful things. One of the coolest is SteamPunk magazine's "A SteamPunk's Guide to the Apocalypse", a wonderful book on how to live after we run out of oil and civilisation collapses. Certainly not something that most of my readers will appreciate, but I have spent my morning reading it. After all, I'm unemployed; I may yet end up living out of a 40' shipping container, probably sharing the yard with the amorous goats. And those goats better not get any ideas about me - I stick to my own species, or alien species that can easily pass for human (I had to add that; I swear, some of the men who've asked me out were indeed from other planets).

Speaking of men I've dated, I haven't really sussed out the mad scientist's attitude toward steampunk; I suspect that if I can successfully blend it with Star Trek, I just might have a chance. He still hasn't passed the Geiger counter test yet...I suspect I've been quite lazy about capitalizing the word Geiger. Yeah, well, whaddaya gonna do, as Homer Simpson would say.

Mad Sci Guy and I did not meet up for the symposium last night, but we're scheduled to rendezvous at noon to spend the afternoon there. To be honest, I'm not sure I'm up to matching wits and skills with the evil genius/mad scientist set, although I did promise a friend that if he ever got an advanced degree in biochemistry, I'd get one in bioengineering or some such thing so that we could create our own Gojira (Godzilla, to you unbelievers)...but neither one of us ever acquired those degrees. So I might be full of bright, if mad, ideas and brilliant observations, but I'm not at all sure I'm up to actually participating. I'm a huge coward, if you must know. Some days I wonder how I ever make it to the mailbox. Oh, I hear lots of laughter out there - not caring is not the same as being brave, my dears. Regardless, you'll be regaled with tales of my humiliations on the morrow, to be sure.

And this evening a few of us girls are going out to celebrate a friend's upcoming nuptials; we're going to start the evening by catching an Eartha Kitt performance. Man, I don't know how she does it, all the touring - she must just love performing!

4 Days of Unemployment

I've been off the job for 4 days. I cannot tell if I've truly fully grasped the fact that my time is my own - however, I had a lovely date Friday evening and spent a few minutes ranting about the fact that, for the first time in years, my time is actually my own. Even though the gentleman in question is a mad scientist, I'm sure he was thinking, "They call me mad?" If that was indeed his reaction, he had a point.

He had asked me what time I needed to be home and I commented that I really didn't have a time I needed to return home. I could return home at 11 PM or 4 AM. I had no obligations the following day that required me to be asleep or awake at a specific time. And more importantly, since I don't have to worry about getting up at 5:30 AM, it doesn't matter if I stay up late and mess up my sleep schedule for a few days. These thoughts inspired me to devote a couple of minutes to proclaiming the fact that my life is temporarily mine. (Temporarily because I cannot foresee being gainfully unemployed indefinitely.)

What time did I get home? Can't remember exactly, but I'm sure it was before the pumpkin hour. Since I was dressed like a hippie slob, I'm sure I wasn't returned home because he feared my clothes would turn into rags; perhaps he feared I'd turn into a rodent. Or perhaps my mad scientist friend is the one with the midnight transformation issues. Should we go out again, we'll have a conversation on this topic. After all, some transformations would be a plus in my book, not a minus.

For instance, the Creature from the Black Lagoon is one sexy rubber-suited monster. As long as I'm not going to end up murdered, I would be pleased to find out that I went out with the Creature. Godzilla would be cool, but the size issues are, well, immense, and I'm pretty sure I'd end up stepped on or burnt to a crisp in no time. Vampires are so overdone, and anemia is not something I ever want to experience again. Werewolves - no problems with the concept, but they're awfully bitey. I don't like excessive biting and scratching in a man. There is also the potential for flea issues. A mummy would be fascinating, as long as human sacrifice wasn't part of our dating future (I should clarify - as long I'm not the sacrifice). Think of the fun historical and archaeological questions you could ask.

However, I did not spend my Saturday ruminating on the charms of one monster over another. I spent quite a bit of it doing laundry and trying to excavate the serious disaster that is currently my apartment. In addition to the stacks of books, baskets of knitting, and chair full of laundry that are regular features, there are boxes and bags of crap from work. I managed to clear some of the pathway from the front door to the rest of the place - a good thing, as one of the boxes actually left a nasty wound on my leg. After creating the path, I then began to rearrange my cds and dvds. That resulted in a small decrease in clutter, but more to the point, it's part of a search for some software I want to load on my new Mac. I was trying to avoid having to migrate it from the old one, but I suspect that I'll end up migrating it because I cannot find the disk.

So today I finish the cd project (when you run a performance space you end up with a huge number of cds), conquer the laundry, and start working on a thorough kitchen cleaning. I haven't gotten any real writing done since Friday morning, excepting this scintillating blog entry, mes amis.

And I'll get started on all that work as soon as I'm finished with season 5 of Red Dwarf...ah, the joys of unemployment!

{Oh ye of dirty minds, it's not what you think! It's from Season 6. See, Kryten has a vacuum hose groinal attachment and was vacuuming the living quarters when Lister put on a pair of shorts that were actually a polymorph...oh, never mind.}

My Last Day...And My First

Yesterday was my last day at MegaDyneCorp Technologies (not their real name). I did indeed wear my jammies in to work (there will be photographic evidence in the next few days, I assure you). Two other liberated chair moisteners joined me by donning their lounging attire, and four members of my now-shrunken unit dressed to celebrate my freedom - Noisy came as me with Mary Todd Lincoln accessories (July 16th is the anniversary of MTL's death); Ms Prickly also came dressed as me (in one of my favorite skirts!); Cesare came as Mamluk Sultan Baibar, whose glorious victory at the Battle of Antioch on May 18, 1268, is generally ignored by calendar makers; and JB wore his kilt. If I might digress just a moment, I love a man in a kilt; the first time I ever saw a kilt-wearing man in the flesh was in 1981 at a Dead Kennedys show at the Showbox. There was this good-looking blond man in the scene who always sported black-rimmed eye glasses of an early 1960's vintage, and that night he had on combat boots, a black leather jacket and a kilt...and I was in love! He broke my heart when he went poofy haired disco three years later....

But I have to say, as cute as JB looked in his kilt, Cesare was stunning in his robes and fez - they were perfect with his beard and braided pigtail, and he looked as if he should be living it up in a hashish lounge in Marrakech...

But enough of the wardrobe details - let me return to work. The cafeteria had sunk to its lowest ever in terms of pastry quality, so Wonder Woman actually ran up to Starbucks and grabbed some pastries, including some Top Pot donuts (mmmm....donuts). I much appreciated it; when lounging around in my pyjamas and robe, it's nice to have a decent pastry to go with the coffee. So again, thank you so much, Wonder Woman!

Then there was the group lunch out - something like 40 people invaded the Red Robin, messing up the section seating and changing places at the tables so that the poor wait staff could do nothing but watch the chaos. Since they were all high-school age, I don't think they cared much; I figure that will teach management there to not take reservations for large groups, heh heh.

There were many tearful hugs, some last minute packing, and then another summit at the Milton. That was great fun - JB treated me to a Dewars Rob Roy, which the young bartender did not know how to make. Apparently, it's an old-fashioned drink. I said that I liked my drinks like I liked my men, old and classic, and some dude at the end of the bar started howling with laughter - it probably was pretty funny, coming from a woman in pyjamas and bathrobe and fuzzy pink flamingo slippers. Panagiotis treated me to a Glenlivet on the rocks - yeah, I like scotch. It rather goes with the men in kilts thing, after all. Tasty bar food was shared, and someone I hadn't seen in years actually showed up - the man responsible for my Gidorah and Mothra Beanie Babies. No, I'm not a BB collector, but I love all things Gojira (Godzilla to you unbelievers). It was great to see him again, and I have his card, so if I get desperate for work, I'll be sending him an email with my resume...

I did receive a couple of parting gifts - last week, Noisy gave me a Butthole Surfers video from 1985, I believe, full of live performances of all their early greats on there. I've already noted the time marks for my favorite songs, like "Hey" and "Mexican Caravan" and "I Shot the Pope" (or whatever the real title of the song is). It's been so long since I've listened to them that I was very happy to recall exactly how much I like their stuff. So truly, a million thanks, Noisy, for the wonderful treat!

I also received a flower arrangement from a former dept manager and his wife - they are great people, I always enjoyed working with him and chatting with his wife when she'd call. I would conspire with her to keep him on the straight and narrow - we made a great team. Thanks again for the lovely flowers!

And now for today...

I took a Benedryl last night because I felt an allergic attack was imminent, so I slept until 8:30 AM. I got up and brushed my teeth. I put on what I was wearing yesterday and walked to the coffee shop behind my house. I got a short soy mocha and cinnamon roll with orange glaze to go (no yogurt in the fridge, so that means I end up getting a breakfast treat at the coffee shop). I walked home, made sure I didn't want to catch today's NPR morning programming, and fired up the computer to check email. I cued up Jethro Tull in iTunes. There was an hysterically funny lolcats email waiting for me, which I read while eating and drinking. After ensuring that there weren't any email disasters I needed to address, I got the jammie cam going, and wrote my little blog post...


So, how's work today?

Note to Noisy - I'll write about Mr Pizza today, but I won't post it until tomorrow. This post is waaay too long as it is!