Harder better faster stronger!

Whatever it is that is wrong with me, the doctors had better find out soon. I have plans to sketchcrawl, starve and soliloquise my way through unsuspecting foreign lands, I would really appreciate it if my mind and my body were on the same starting page.

Having written this, she sighed.

Well.

Down on life again. Listening to Karen Dalton. A dead folk/blues singer. This album is called It's so hard to tell who's going to love you. She sounds a bit like Janis Joplin, a lot like Billie Holiday, but, above everything, like herself. Please listen to her. My favourite is this moody little corner of a song called "Ribbon bow".

A least tomorrow is Monday, back to paper-writing and lecture-attending and... and i think Nadine Gordimer's gonna be in town. Now i am ashamed to admit this, but i must. I have only read one book by her. The Conservationist. I can never type 'conservationist' without typing 'conversationist' first. Gordimer is by all accounts a fabulously cranky, no-nonsense woman, and i do want to listen to what she has to say. O, that's it. I'm going. I half-want to take a good picture of her, but she'd probably slap me for my cheap insolence. On the other hand, how many people can say 'i went to a talk by Nadine Gordimer and all i got was a resounding public slap!' It would make a fine anecdote for sure.

In other news i have watched this video at least ten times. That sound effect there, the one that sounds like a glass tabletop being aggressively wiped with a damp bit of cloth, is so annoying and wonderful! I have also overthought those lyrics. Beyonce insists that she does not actually intend to rule the world like the insane diva she is: 'what i prefer, what i deserve is a man that makes me and takes me and delivers me to a destiny, to infinity and beyond.' Do i detect the easy confidence of a woman who knows she can have both, despite her words, or do i sigh and go back to wanting to bite her amazing thighs? No prizes for guessing. Hey, and because i'm incapable of turning off my nerdiness, i really want to see Beyonce as Starfire in a live action movie someday.

This is going to be the first pujo away from home in very many years. And then the growing up embarrassingly late (not that, not that). And the cat, it is out of the bag, and it has left its paws behind. Or its wits. Who knows? I have a list in my head of things i want to paint. Except that they aren't things, exactly. Also embarrassing: yes, there is a playlist for the journey. Music made with instruments i can only identify half the time, if at all, so that i won't follow the words. (A perfectly serene double meaning emerged. Good?)

Things i am (probably) going to read: a biography of Charlie Chaplin, a book on travel in the ancient world, Shakespeare textual scholarship (a guy forges a bunch of plays, letters, etc. claiming them to be by Shakespeare; another guy lays the smackdown on this shameless villainy; the manuscript for the second edition for the second guy's book is owned for a time by a third guy who, you guessed it, is notorious for Shakespeare forgery. Is this not a thing of beauty?), the first twenty-six issues of the lovesome Blue Beetle III (one more time).

But not when i am away. When i am away... Painting, yes. Sleeping sound and early. Self-possession? Yes. Something still, something distilled.

This is my song.

If there has to be just one, this is it.



I intensely love Rufus's cover of it - and in a meta way that one is doubly ironic and poignant - but Loudon's has a kick to it.

Baby did a bad, bad thing.

I was going to post a review of 'The Dark Knight' - godknows I've seen it a billion times and raved about it a few more times. But right now I can't think of anything to say about this movie (good and bad) that hasn't been said already. I do hate redundancy.

So I decided to just post... that. Don't hate me? And no, I have no idea why his arms are so muscly. I swear I haven't been reading that one ASsBAR issue...

Ah ye drunk ye drunk ye silly old fool

One of the first cds I ever owned (and to date I own very few of the things) was a Dubliners 'greatest hits' collection. The Dubliners remain one of my favourite bands, and I have recently begun to listen to them again. The one song I keep returning to, though, is 'Seven Drunken Nights'. In it the protagonist returns home thoroughly plastered every night only to find some foreign item in his house. Each of these items belongs in fact to a stranger the man's wife is having an affair with. The wife has an explanation ready for these mysterious objects - objects ranging from a horse to the other man's head itself - and the man, being thoroughly plastered, notes the discrepancies ("a saddle on a sow sure I never saw before") but accepts these explanations. Oh the way it is sung by Ronnie Drew. Never fails to make me laugh.

In the Dubliners song, only five days of the week are accounted for. As a young'un I didn't particularly care to find out why, but now I know. Weekends are not for the prudish.

It was only a few days ago, however, that I discovered that there is a video for this song. And the video features some very crude clay model animation. I am currently obsessed with making ugly little plasticine people and monsters, so the entire thing is a double treat for me.

As it happens,

I really have nothing to say right now except for the fact that i love John Carpenter's 'The Thing'. I love it very much. Watched of a late summer afternoon w/legs crossed at ankles on a spring-hobbled, lump-ridden sofa, alone at home, it is i realise a creature comfort: all those discomforting creatures, and Kurt Russell being generally badass & adorable under that incongruous cowboy hat. Splatter, ooze, don't rinse, repeat.

I have been looking for stills of my favourite moments, but the internet has failed me. Miserably. You will have to recall or imagine the one where someone attempts a bit of perfectly well-meaning defibrillation on someone else and the chest collapses and slimy alien jaws thrust up and go crunch. Look Ma, no hands.