Okay, I could say that I was sorry for quoting from probably the girliest movie I will ever willingly admit to liking. But I’m not going to. Besides, I know at least one person is laughing at the title of this blog entry, and that’s enough for me.
So I’ve been working on this template for a while. I confess, I didn’t build it from scratch. I don’t have that much free time. However, I was so pleased by the basic concept of the original theme that I knew I wanted to take it and make it my own.
I’m pretty pleased overall. There are a few things that I think I’m going to change, but they’ll more than likely be minor. I just really dig the clean, crisp nature of this new layout. I do a lot of design work that, while being lovely in its own bold and brash way, is far from the rather minimalist design concepts that I’ve taken to preferring lately.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new look of the lair. And, yes, in case you were wondering, I did “borrow” the color scheme from the image in my last entry. I’d been toying around with different color schemes for an embarrassingly long time. When I saw the color elements of this particular design, I knew I’d finally found the right colors. Plus, the primary color is teal. And we all know who wore teal, right?
Yep. The look might be new, but the geekery is par for the course. Geek on, denizens.
I don’t know why, but I’ve had the word “dipthong” stuck in my head for about a week. This post really won’t have anything at all to do with the word…although perhaps it does. This will be a bit of a dual-toned entry—equal parts whimsical and serious. That pretty much sums up my current state of mind. I’m sure I won’t need to tell you that by the time you’re finished here. If you finish, that is. This one’s a rambler, denizens.
So I’ve been cheating on you all. With other blogs. Yes, that’s right, I said blogs. With an “s.” I’m not telling you anything else. I don’t want these other blogs to feel your wrath over my infidelity. They’re good blogs and they know nothing of the lair. Well, one of them does. But that’s a long story. Oh, and to make matters worse? I get paid to do one of them. That’s right…I take money for blogging. Do you feel dirty now? You should. You mingy little monkeys. You like it when I talk to you like that though, don’t you? Don’t you?!
Oh dear.
I don’t really know what the hell is going on with me right now. Things have been random parts chaotic and stressful in my life for so long that I think it’s starting to wear me down. Things are finally starting to level off…but the damage is done. And, yes, denizens, there is damage. I simply can’t tell you about it. Professional lines of scrimmage and all that, you know.
You gotta keep on spinnin’ around—
Never let your worlds collide
‘Cause if we all start talkin’ there might
Be nowhere for you to hide
Ain’t that the truth.
Two evenings ago, we were on a walk around the neighborhood and this beautiful black dog came bounding down the street toward us. I swear to you on my life, had she had a white stripe on her chest and one blue eye, she could have passed as my Jodie Girl. Everything else about her was perfectly, precisely Jodie: her size, her head shape and her floppy ears, her multicolored fur with the black overcoat and brown/gray undercoat, the way her tail curled back toward her body in a fluffy “O”…but more than this, the mannerisms were spot-on. The way she ran like a bullet, barely able to come to a stop before jumping up at me with fluffy soft paws. The sound she made as she ran: this steady chuffing that made her sound like a furry little engine-that-could. The way she pranced and turned when her owner tried to grab her collar to put her back on her leash. Jodie was always a clown, my little “bo-bo dog,” and she thought everything was a game and everyone wanted to play with her. This dog seemed to think the same thing.
I really don’t think I’m giving this the proper weight it holds in my heart, but everything about this dog was Jodie. Things that I don’t even know how to capture in words…some ephemeral essence that maybe only I could sense. But it was her, denizens. It was her.
I know that more than likely Jodie would have been gone from my life by this point in time anyway, had she not been taken from me by cancer. After all, 14 is pretty old for a dog her size. But seeing this dog just brought all the…missing right back to the forefront. As if I need to be reminded that there are multiple pieces of my life puzzle that I can’t seem to stop missing.
Even my subconscious mind seems hell-bent on reminding me. This morning my alarm cut into a dream-in-progress in which I’d witnessed someone fire-bombing my parents’ house in the middle of the night (although, honestly, it looked more like the house from A Christmas Story, only it had a window in the shape of the Star Trek delta shield at the very top; seriously, this is what my dream world conjures for me). Suddenly, it’s daylight and I’m standing outside a black Denali…talking with Catherine Willows. I’ve just told her that my dad had to carry my mom out of the house while the firebombing took place, but he wasn’t able to walk to the hospital fast enough and the doctors didn’t think she’d survive. Willows’ response was something along the lines of “Her body couldn’t have survived much longer in its condition anyway; perhaps this is for the best.”
That’s the point where I woke up.
There was always a part of me that wondered if perhaps my previous CSI-related dream had something to do with my mom as well. Some sort of strange parable, an attempt by Sara Sidle to give me a message that I was too stubborn and too late to hear. CSI Willows’ message was a little less cryptic and a lot more upsetting.
Now I’ve associated both of my favorite CSIs with something sad. That’s not cool. Here’s a happy photo. Erase, erase, erase:
It’ll be a year this Sunday. For some reason I’ve fixated on the thought that after this Sunday comes the beginning of the time in which I can no longer think to myself, “She was alive at this point a year ago today.” Strangely, I could find some sliver of solace in such thinking. Soon, that sliver will be gone.
I miss my mom.
So do I, Admiral. So do I.
See? I told you: dipthong. Two tones. One high and one low. Always sounding in my head anymore.
Did I ever tell you that when I was in San Francisco last year, I made a special walk from our hotel just to take this photo:
It’s probably the touristiest thing I have ever done in my entire life. I got looks. It’s admittedly not the first time I’ve gotten “looks.” But still, it made me laugh.
Well, then. That’s quite an eyeful I’ve just dumped on you. And now I’m leaving you. “Lunch time” is over and I have professional obligations to which I must attend. I’ll be back. I have a book review. And I know that tomorrow is Flashback Friday. I’ve written myself a reminder. Honestly and seriously.
Now I just need to figure out what kind of Flashback to have…
That’s much better. I do have a soft spot in my heart for the Black Crowes. Why? There are some things that Loba needs to keep to herself. Let’s just say that their cover of “Hard to Handle” can make me smile like a fool every time I hear it. Ah, high school.
But this weekend has been all about remedies. Seems Loba is not as invincible as she would like others to think she is (although other Internet PersonalitiesTM still retain the rights to this particular claim). Seems someone decided to share germs with me. I have the usual suspects in the line-up for this crime, although I’m almost positive I know the prime suspect…even without Helen Mirren’s help.
The cold kicked into effect Tuesday evening, but being the stubborn wolf that I am, I refused to take any time off from responsibilities, either of the work or fun varieties. I detest being sick. I detest the impudence of germs thinking that they can best me, take me down, make me relinquish my duties. Plus, I hate how being sick turns me into a mouth-breathing medicine-addled moron and leaves me waking up with a grungy, phlegmy tongue that feels like I spent the previous evening licking sidewalks in Times Square.
My, that was vivid, wasn’t it, denizens?
So I dragged myself to work the rest of last week, forcing myself to wade through the growing internal maelstrom of germs and cold medicine as they did their war dance through my veins. I pulled it off relatively convincingly by popping pills, drinking copious amounts of hot tea to flush out my system, blowing my nose as discreetly but as often as I could, and going through an entire bottle of Purell. Some people didn’t even realize I was sick, which left me feeling a sense of victory that only someone who once boasted having gone 9 years in a row at school with perfect attendance could possibly appreciate.
The down side of this? Saturday morning, the germs realized that I was no longer bound by workday obligations. I was released from that routine…and they were released from my persistent resistance.
Yes, Seven, resistance is futile.
Other than walking outside to get the mail this afternoon, I haven’t left the lair since I came home Friday afternoon. More to the point, I haven’t really left the couch since I woke up Saturday morning to a renewed raspiness in my throat, a throbbing headache, and a constant pressure on my sinuses that felt like several pachyderms had packed into the space right between my eyes. Yesterday was spent medicating myself,literally and geekily. Big Trouble in Little China is a must for the healing process. That’s what ole Jack Burton says anyway. So, too, are the special features from my Scream trilogy box set. And fan fiction. Lots and lots of fan fiction. All things designed to delight my inner geek while not really requiring any real mental effort of any kind…or requiring that I remain conscious the entire time. Just what I needed.
This morning I woke up feeling a little better…and a little weirded out as well. Seems that all the cold meds decided to wreak royal havoc with my dreams last night. Or at least with the one dream that I can remember. Seems that on the rare occasion when I remember a dream, it’s only one and that’s the one that I’m having right when I wake up. This is, of course, a huge improvement over all the years I spent not being able to remember any dreams. Except for that extremely vivid one I had in high school in which I was Dr. Crusher.
Yeah. Maybe it’s better if I don’t remember my dreams.
So this dream from last night…or rather this morning involved me stuck inside a lighthouse that didn’t work, a remnant, I’m assuming, from the fanfic I read last night that was loosely based on the horror movie El Orfanato. It was storming outside, the intermittent lightning providing the only light within the structure. I was there because I was looking for someone (another remnant from the same fanfic; yeah, I know…that’s some severe stream-crossing going on there, Dr. Spengler), but the rain had forced me to take shelter.
However, the lighthouse was next to a river instead of an ocean, nestled down low enough that the waters flowed right past one side of the structure, and the bottom level was composed of glass, allowing me to see what was floating past.
Suddenly, this enormous fish swam into view. I’m talking enormous, large enough that it was longer than the river was wide. As it came up parallel to the lighthouse, it began to swim in slow circles, looking almost like an ichthyian ouroboros. It was mesmerizing and I remember being drawn into the river, which was now suddenly inside the lighthouse. There was a calming, somewhat anthropomorphic quality to the fish that entranced me for many moments before I had this stunning epiphany that I needed to photograph the fish.
I began to slowly ease away from the fish, back to the river’s edge. A voice from behind and slightly above me caused me finally look away. It was Sara Sidle, descending the spiral staircase of the lighthouse. She was wearing her CSI vest with the stitched name tag and the reflective tape on each side, and a pair of black leather gloves. All she said was, “If you leave now, you won’t see her again.”
I stopped for a moment, looking back at the fish, still circling. But I am apparently as stubborn in lucidity as I am in reality. I climbed back onto the shore and ran as quickly as I could to get my camera.
I returned to the shore and the fish was gone. So, too, was the elusive CSI. The river was no longer flowing, instead turning to solid ice as I watched. I looked around, trying to find someone…anyone who could help me. But I was alone. I turned back to the freezing waters, and the last thing I remember before waking up was this intense need to dive beneath the ice and find the fish.
I’ve revisited this dream several times throughout the day, examining and analyzing all that I can remember. I’ve come to certain opinions about what it all means, and I’ve decided that sometimes the way my brain works scares even me.
Needless to say, today has been another one for relaxing on the couch, reading an actual book this time and watching movies that don’t involve Kurt Russell shaking the pillars of Heaven. And this evening has kicked off with watching an Encore special called Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible. I learned a few things that I didn’t already know (since it is the law that one must know the history of ILM as part of the bargain of keeping their geek cred in tact). Most interesting tidbit? Everyone keeps making a big deal about how Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern costume is all CGI. Well guess what? It’s not the first time this has occurred. Robert Downey, Jr. detested the physical Ironman costume they built for him to wear so much that the ILM crew finally told him to take it off and not worry about it…they’d take care of it. So take that, Reynolds. Take it all the way back to Canada. I also received proof that my initial opinion of J.J. Abrams as a massive douchewanger is even truer than I originally thought. Oh, and he definitely doesn’t deserve the right to have anything to do with Star Trek.
And now it’s time for dinner. Homemade pizza. Yes, my prime suspect may have shared these accursed germs with me in the first place, but said suspect has also made sure I have been well fed throughout my convalescence. Prophets know I’m awful when it comes to knowing what to make myself when I’m well. Had I been left to my own devices, I probably would have survived on tea, toast, and Twizzlers.
So there you have it, denizens. Loba has been taken down, but not out. Like the Phoenix, I shall rise (hopefully, though, someone will stop me before I turn all Dark Phoenix and try to take over the world). And thankfully, I have tomorrow off. And Spike is running an all-day CSI marathon. Bonus!
Oh, and bonus for you, too. Here’s another Black Crowes video. Hope it makes you smile even half as much as it does me…
It would be a magnificent lie if I wrote right now that I try to keep things non-biased and non-political here at the lair. I really don’t try that at all. And while things are nowhere near the level of political that they were in my Angry BloggerTM days (and while I’m nowhere near as big a blue jackass donkey as I was in those days either), I still like to throw out the occasional political jab.
Like this one. I came across this sticker while wandering back from my walk to the Pacific through Golden Gate Park. It was stuck to a telephone pole somewhere on Fulton Street:
There’s really nothing else to say after that. Although, I do very much enjoy the little heart at the end of this message. See? It’s a PSA written with nothing but love, denizens. Just like everything else that appears here at the lair…
And so a new year has begun. Better yet, a new decade has begun. I must admit, denizens, I’m at a bit of a loss as to where the “Noughties” went. Y2K still seems like it was “just last year”…although perhaps I’ve been circling about in that causality loop a lot longer than I thought. If only Dr. Crusher had spent less time drinking hot toddies with the Captain and more time paying attention to all those clues around her, maybe I wouldn’t have lost an entire decade…
(Seriously, did you think that I could start the new year without some kind of geek reference?)
Things have been noticeably quiet here at the lair as of late. I’m sure those who are regular visitors can guess as to why. But I’m not in a guessing mood, so let’s just name this black-cloaked elephant that has parked its ginormous tuchus in the middle of my lair and my life for far too long. The past year decade has been a bit of a rough one. Starting in 2001, Death decided that he wanted to hang out and be best buds with my family for a while. We lost 9 members of my family from 2001-2010…actually, 11 if you count my dog Jodie and my cat Data, which I do. They were as much a part of my heart as any human could be…and if I’m completely honest right now, they were closer to me than I allow most humans to ever become.
This was an equal opportunity culling, with Death sampling from both sides of my family. It was such a frequent sampling that I feel as though I’ve earned my very own Ph.D. in the subject. In some ways, I feel as though all of this loss somehow defines me now, which is silly considering the fact that most people don’t even know about all this. I keep so much inside that I’m willing to bet most of the people reading this right now had no idea about the extent of my familial losses.
Of course, keeping so much inside has its side effects. Since May of last year, I’ve gone through a bit of major shrinkage. Back then, I was at the outer reaches of a size 12. My jeans are now crazy 8s. It’s not as if I’m skipping meals or purging or anything morbid like that. I still eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I still drink (although prophets help me if I try to drink as much as I used to; apparently my fat was my “girdle of strength” in regard to my superhero-sized tolerance). I just…lost interest in food after my mom died.
Instead, I found myself wantingneeding to constantly be on the move. I needed to walk. Walk after dinner. Walk on the weekends. Walk at the park. Walk in the neighborhood. Walk until my eyes burned from the sweat and my legs ached and I couldn’t concentrate on anything beyond these physical discomforts. Because then? Then, I couldn’t think. Then I could only collapse on the couch and let my brain lapse into the silence of exhaustion.
People who don’t know about my mother keep asking me what I’ve been doing and telling me that I look great. Truth be told, physically I feel great. I have never been this in-shape in my entire adult life, and I confess that I like it (yes, Mr. Pacino, vanity is apparently my favorite sin as well). I just wish I had been more aware that it was happening. I completely tuned myself out for a while, though. Next thing I know, I’m standing up from my desk chair at work, stepping on the hem of a pant leg, and defrocking myself in my office. Thank the prophets my office mate wasn’t there that day. And don’t worry, denizens…I’ve made sure to replace those pants with ones that aren’t so easy to lose. There will be no unintended moonings here at the lair. I can’t make any promises about intentional ones, however.
As for how I feel in other ways? There is a rawness inside me that I still cannot fathom facing. I just don’t know how. “Unfinished business” of the permanent variety is a horrible sensation, and I feel as if it’s the label of shame I now carry in regard to my relationship with my mom. My very own scarlet “A”…for what? Absent? Annoyed? Arrogant? Asinine? These are all self-imposed labels and feelings, I suppose. Then again, she’s not here anymore to tell me that I shouldn’t feel this way. And that’s what I’m having the most trouble handling. She’s gone and I feel as though I played every hand wrong while she was here.
So, for now, I keep walking. If I can’t exorcise my demons, I’ll at least exercise the hell out of them. Sooner or later I’m bound to stop, right? Besides, I can’t imagine I can shrink much more before someone straps me down and starts force-feeding me candy corn and Cheetos.
Mmm.
But was this past decade a complete bust? No. Through all of the losses that my family has endured, I’ve learned that resilience is an amazing parlor trick of the heart and those who love you never completely leave you. I’ve learned that people really do live on through our memories and even the ugliest of souls have lessons to teach.
I’ve learned that what’s meant to be cannot be stopped, only sidetracked temporarily. But it will find its way eventually.
I’ve learned that, if I wasn’t so daft at math, I think that being a Crime Scene Investigator would have been a perfect fit for my anal-retentive, puzzle-solving, obsessive-compulsive, über-organizational personality. Either that or I really need to stop watching so much CSI.
I’ve learned that, even without being a CSI, I can love what I do for a living and have fun doing it.
I’ve learned that my geekery cannot be tamed, but when channeled properly, it can be a force used for good. Or at least for good entertainment.
I’ve learned that I love being a Synner.
I’ve learned that being very vague is very fun.
I’ve also learned that I’ve got a helluva lot left to learn. And a helluva lot left to blather on about here at the lair. More books to read, more DVDs to review, more geekery to spread like a sweaty, smelly virus that’s bound to drive Agent Smith back to standing in a frock on a rock with General Zod and Alexander Hartdegen, which would be such a drag. And, dear denizens, if any of you followed this last sentence from start to finish and got what I was talking about, my heart is most assuredly yours.
So there you have it: That’s me, wrapping up my state of mind from this past year/decade in thick plastic sheeting and dumping it for Pete Martell to find when he heads out for his morning fishing sabbatical. Don’t let Andy see. His tears will muck things up for Agent Cooper. And bring me some more of that damn fine coffee, Norma. I’m having another outbreak of Lynchian insanity. Backwards. With little people.
The owls really are never what they seem. And neither is the lair. But face it, denizens…this is why you keep coming back. At least I hope so. Just remember: The rest is yet to come…
I’m trying to “keep calm and carry on” as the Anglophile in me thinks is best. My frame of mind at the present is a whirling dervish of unpredictability, with valleys of torrential self-pity…which I hate. What I hate even more is that I seem to be at a total loss regarding how to verbalize any of this. Or write about it either. My focus as of late has once again been reduced to Twitter-level: short, random, and most often pointless.
[Loba Tangent: I speak hypothetically, of course. Loba does not tweet. Although I get the sneaking suspicion that one of my Internet PersonalitiesTM does. I'm just not sure which one...yet.]
Anyway, this is why the lair has been a relative ghost town as of late. Minus my holiday investigation with Santa Sidle, of course.
[Loba Tangent 2: Did you know that, apparently, all I needed to do to give my visitor numbers a nice bump was to mention Sara Sidle? Who knew? I wonder what mentioning Jorja Fox will do to my stats. Gina Toscano? Maggie Doyle? Seriously, I'm a closeted stats whore, so I'll do whatever it takes to make my numbers soar. Heh. That rhymed.]
However, I wanted to bring you all something during this final countdown to the end of 2010…something more special than gold, frankincense, and myrrh combined. What could be better than that combination, you might ask? How about Wil Wheaton, the Golden Girls, and Dungeons & Dragons? Framed in bacon?
Yeah, it’s okay to be speechless right now. It’s also okay to be mesmerized. Go ahead, take your time and stare. I’ll wait.
…
It’s breathtaking, isn’t it? Even Wil Wheaton didn’t quite know what to call this masterpiece. His blog post on it was titled what is this i don’t even
I don’t even either, Wil. All I know is that when I start to feel sad, I open this image and the tsunami of awesome that crashes through my mind immediately sweeps the sad away. It’s a temporary palliative, true…but I’ll take temporary like this any day. With an extra side of bacon, please.
Sometimes you stumble across something so bizarre…and yet so strangely entertaining…that you can’t stop looking at it. Perhaps that’s a statement only applicable to the truly obsessive by nature, but I do believe that I undeniably fall under the purview of this particular categorization (you may have noticed that I can sometimes obsess about certain things here at the lair [cough, cough] Star Trek [cough, cough]).
So it is with this video:
Bet you weren’t in a million years expecting that ending, were you? I mean, what about a Merengue-rapping dachshund, dancing girls in hoodie dresses and go-go boots, exploding avocados, and random Lucha Libre wrestlers, all undulating to the rhythm of a Latin fusion beat says “paper towel commercial” to you? It wasn’t immediately obvious to me either, but this write-up gives away a bit of the thought process behind this commercial, at the end of the article.
Whatever the reasons, I can’t stop watching this silly video. I even caught myself humming the tune as I was walking to my car after work. So I’ve decided to post it here, for all you lovely denizens. I figure, if I can’t stop watching it, at least I can maybe attract some company to obsess along with me…
As most people know, this past weekend was the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear, the combined crazy spoofiness sponsored by Comedy Central and hosted by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. I didn’t attend this rally (although I did get caught up in some of the mad rush trying to get downtown). I have a HUGE phobia against massive crowds, regardless of how amused I am by the purpose of said gatherings. Plus, I had quieter and more personally enjoyable plans for my weekend.
Several of these signs quickly became favorites, including the one that reads, “Teatard.” I’m only going to post one here, however, because if I start posting more than one, I’ll end up posting them all…and I don’t want to steal buzzfeed’s thunder. Here, then, is the one that made me laugh out loud and make a strange squee-like noise that made me grateful my officemate hadn’t arrived yet:
Of course I enjoyed it for the obvious reason, but I also loved it because whoever made this sign has a sense of humor as cheesy and geeky as mine. Case in point, this is a snippet from a blog entry I made during my Angry BloggerTM days:
When an American reporter later asked Bush if he realized that many people considered his statement to be highly hypocritical because many consider him to be xenophobic, he scoffed loudly and replied, “Who said I was Xena-phobic? I love that show! I think it’s great to see more women in action roles, especially ones who look so good in so little…know what I mean?” He then appeared to cringe visibly and several in the vicinity reported hearing loud screaming coming from the still unidentified “mystery bulge” beneath the president’s sports coat. Several reported that the voice sounded like Karl Rove. Mr. Bush promptly stopped talking and allowed Secret Service to escort him back to Air Force One.
See? Utter cheese of the strongest geek flavor. And, wow, talk about taking a walk down “Thank the prophets those days are over” lane! Ah, good times.
Anyway, take a look at the rest of the signs and, hopefully, laugh along with Loba.
Whilst visiting my dad and his siblings this weekend for a combined August birthday celebration, I saw the following poster hanging on the wall beside the kitchen telephone. It’s something that my dad found while he was sorting through some papers from my grandparents’ belongings.
Isn’t it the grooviest thing you’ve ever seen? Especially considering that it was printed by the Government Printing Office, which admittedly isn’t renowned for its awesome artistry. But this fairly screams “I was designed in the 60s!! I’m groovy and far out!”
