Most of you have probably already read most of this stuff since those of us with excellent taste tend to run in the same circles, but just in case:

Terlet rats. If you aren’t already reading the Hoo family adventures, you don’t know what you are missing. Work through the back catalog if you’re new to the HoodyHoo.

Regretsy on Hippies: “More importantly, hippies think Bob Dylan is a genius. And there’s just no coming back from that.” I have come to like some Dylan, mostly the newer stuff, but I don’t think he’s a genius. :) Via Doubleplusundead

More murder and mayhem uncovered in Laura’s childhood.

If you haven’t watched the unfortunately short lived series Better Off Ted, you really should. Leeann alerts us to the fact that Netflix now carries it streaming and posts one of the most hilariously profane outtake reels ever. “Walking cock cozy” is one of my faves. The episode as edited for TV is still pretty damn funny and inventive. Plus, eye candy, male and female. :)

Aggie explores her inner un-Sith by showing yet another talent for creating beautiful things.

The Queen reveals some favorite words and I agree with her on many of them.

Nursemyra shares a sordid tale from Australia of hypnosis, “seductive malice,” jealousy and murder. One picture here is mildly NSFW.

The cute on this video that Lynn posted is so intense it burns. That is a whole passle o’ kittens there. Gotta be one tired momma.

And that’s probably enough content-free posting-so-you’ll-know-I’m-alive for now. Pictures coming eventually of the project that has been occupying all of my attention (or competing with work for attention) and preventing me from coming up with any really good content lately. You’re just lucky I haven’t resorted to all cat blogging all the time because it’s easy.

So, I thought the government was going to save money on the government supplied healthcare by having us all die at 70 or so by simply refusing us treatment late in life.

But now there is this from a physicians’ healthcare advocacy group:

“As role model to millions of Americans, the president has a responsibility to watch what he eats in public,” said Susan Levin, nutrition education director with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM).

…

A release noted that eating processed meats was shown in a recent study to increase the risk of premature death.

While I have no problem with President Finger Wag being told what to eat and what not to eat, there are a couple of things here that bother me. First, the whole “in public” thing. They are making (and we are letting them make) food into something as shameful as heroin or crack. We’ll be hoarding Twinkies and setting up black markets for cheeseburgers. Food is not shameful. Overindulgence – in anything – is the problem and criminalizing the food isn’t going to make overindulgence go away.

Secondly, although the death panels are going to assess whether or not we will get that hip replacement or simply be put out to pasture at 70 because the life we have left isn’t worth the cost to maintain us in good quality, they want to make us stop eating food that is bad for our health. Wouldn’t it save time and money if they simply let us eat ourselves to death and die before 70?

So many things about these days bother me but top of the list are all the finger wagging, head shaking, for your own good you simpleton, holier than thou nannies. Why do these people get to suck up all the oxygen in the room?

My mom’s side of the family. All the wimmen but one biological and 2 of the in-law wimmen are represented here. I suppose the in-law ladies would prefer to be called “wymyn,” being of that political persuasion. :)

We haz fun, we does.

Toss them in a corner of the yard, assume they’ll live the first summer and then never be seen again. Apparently they love it where they are. I have never fed them or watered them beyond what they get from the rain. Yet when I try to garden, things die. Perhaps my lesson here is that the less attention things get from me, the happier they are. Makes sense. Even Kira wants nothing to do with me until I ignore her. Then she’s yowling through the house and underfoot in the kitchen.

I’m pretty much a sucker for monster movies. And show me one that also features James Nesbitt and I’ll sit through almost any low quality dreck.

It’s slow to develop and it never really captured every bit of my attention so I’ll admit that my understanding of the plot may be lacking and I may have missed nuances. Also, because I wasn’t paying complete attention I often had a hard time with the accents. Normally I don’t have much trouble with them, but this gave me fits. I also didn’t hear Scottish in the girl’s accent, though according to the description on IMDB she is Scottish/Romany. And I didn’t hear Irish in the boy, either. Nesbitt’s accent was so thick it was difficult for me to catch what he was saying sometimes.

Teen boy and mother move into rundown flat in the projects. Teen girl and disabled brother live down the way with their alcoholic mum. We find out Teen Boy’s mother is using witchcraft to hide him from something that is chasing him and tells him to stay away from girls. Nesbitt goes to some old man and gets old school tap-with-needle-stick-hurt-a-lot tattoos all over back and chest that give him access to magic. Gets a permit from another old dude (Irish mob boss from Castle) to “hunt” in his territory. Meanwhile we get shots occasionally of a slimy, clawed humanoid monster killing women. Teen Boy admits to Teen Girl that his “people” almost died out… Nesbitt goes all hardcore after experiencing some setbacks and at one point cuts one of his new tattoos off his neck to use it in a ritual. Yikes. I couldn’t watch.

On the off chance that you want to watch this, I won’t divulge further. I don’t have any idea why Nesbitt was hunting the thing, what it was, where it came from, if there was some kind of magical society or what, but I do know that apparently one can become pregnant from 15 seconds of sex inside a playground fort. So be careful, girls. Sex is bad, mkay?

I cannot believe there aren’t photos out online of Nesbitt’s ass. He may look pretty rough in this for the tastes of a lot of folks but he has got damn fine back and ass. No, I wouldn’t have posted any ass pictures (probably not anyway) but I sure would have posted some back pictures. And whether or not I could ever understand a single word he says, I wouldn’t kick him out, that’s for sure. :)

Poor baby. Hanging onto the floor for dear life. Just returned from vet visit. He only had a shot but he had to immediately flop onto the floor like he’d experienced some major trauma.

Book added for comparison purposes

Vet says he isn’t fat. He’s just a big cat. But lying on his side, that tummy sho do flatten out to make him look pretty chubby… 14 1/2 pounds. Not the biggest cat I’ve had but he’s pretty dense. And not just his head. :)

I am not really a nostalgic person. I tend to cherish certain memories but probably 70% of my life up to this point is kind of a fog of “doesn’t matta – it’s in de past.”

The OAM has been on a music kick lately, which I’m not discouraging. Most times I’d prefer to listen to music rather than watch TV all night long.

The other night I had gone to bed before him, as usual. He came up to bed and told me that he’d found some music that was a hit from the past and maybe it would help me to relax before bed if we listened to it.

Turned out to be James Taylor’s Greatest Hits. Talk about a flood of memories.

Back when we were first together, we didn’t have a TV but we had a CD player and a bookstore in town that sold used CDs for $5 each. That was one that we listened to so often that if it had been a vinyl record we might have worn through it (along with TLC’s Crazy Sexy Cool and Lorena McKennit).

Things were simpler. I know that is a pretty cliche thing to say but they were. We had less baggage (hard to believe with me just coming off a divorce back then), less stress, fewer responsibilities and fewer possessions. We had a cat, a CD player with a home theater stereo system, kitchen stuff, a twin bed,  a ratty sectional that a friend had thrown out and lots of books and used CDs. I think we might have had a dresser but I’m far from positive on that account – might have been milk crates. We had one car and one real job between the two of us and I walked to school and work. Our rent was $200 a month. Maybe less. That was the attic apartment so it might have been less. I may be thinking of the house across the street that we rented after the attic apartment (Rent in college towns rocks, BTW).

And we were happy.

Not that we are unhappy now, just that happy tends to get relegated to the status of background noise to everything else competing for attention in our lives.

Anyway, I made it through Fire & Rain and Carolina In My Mind but Something In the Way She Moves tripped the lock on the floodgates and I found myself bawling my eyes out.

Then I felt bad because then it made the OAM feel bad like he’d brought music up that ruined my night. Hard to explain but it wasn’t all sadness. A lot was just remembering how good it all felt back then. And then sadness, yes, for letting that feeling get pushed to the back. I’m happy to be where I am (mostly :-) ) but there is a lot of water under our bridge. And burned spots around the edges. I wouldn’t trade any of it, good or bad, if it would mean we wouldn’t be here today. But I just couldn’t help it – I was assaulted by memories of all kinds. A cathartic and damp hour or so later I was being headbutted by an insistent cat and life was calming back down for everyone.

Always amazes me what a trigger music is for memory.

There has even been a study highlighted on NPR recently about music and Alzheimer’s patients. How if they give a player with a personalized playlist to a patient it actually helps bring them out of themselves and gets them socializing – sharing their music and their memories with others. Was very glad to see that the grandparents have discovered the music channels on their TV lately. They keep a station on with lots of 40s music and remakes of 40s music. We’d been trying to get them to listen to CDs since they moved into the home. Took several months before they even turned on the TV for noise and the music took 2+ years to get them to do. Better late than never, I suppose. :)

How about you all? Any music linked to special or vivid memories?

I so want a flowered backyard. Lovely smelling things and pretty colors.

I have 2 hybrid tea roses that, against all odds and despite complete abandonment, have been growing like gangbusters for 3 years now.

Mine isn't quite this lush, but I have hopes.

A wygelia bush that did okay the first 2 years but isn’t doing so well this  year.

I do okay with hostas. Those things are getting huge.

Euonymous bushes that are exactly the same size they were when I planted them 4 years ago.

And some lilies that aren’t supposed to come back year after year that I just can’t seem to kill.

But, like the Queen, I just don’t have a green thumb. I’d be just as well off each year to dig a hole and throw money in it.

The OAM compared my gardening skills to an Al Qaeda cell – “You plant in a random spot and then promptly forget about them for two years. Upon which you return and assault them for failing to survive regardless of the fact that they had no food, water, supplies or attention.”

Sigh. So even though I have a mother who is a certified Master Gardener that I could prevail upon to make my yard lovely, it wouldn’t last because I know me well enough to know that I’m not going to weed or feed or nurture. Maybe I can just paint pictures of flowers on the side of the house.

Been mostly offline for the past several days. Boredom, work, sick of politics, sick of humanity, home renovations… take yer pick, they all apply.

A few notes:

1.) No one in this house can paint for shit. Good thing the downstairs will never be under light as bright as the spots we had to work under.

2.) Landfills that are closed on Saturday & Sunday. Why? I can’t see a whole lot of people taking stuff to the dump during the week. Seems like, as a private business that charges people to put stuff in the landfill, they’d want to be open when business would be busiest… but what do I know.

3.) Gawdamighty but paying people to haul off junk is expensive. A good thing about living in the country – we could have just burned the stuff and/or tossed it in our own landfill. However, since I need ice cream and tacos far more frequently than I have junk to burn, I guess the suburbs win for now.

4.) Everyone will say this about the previous homeowner’s renovations, but man was this guy an idiot. That, and he never met a screw he didn’t strip the head on.

5.) Having gotten about halfway through this project, I understand the idiotic shortcuts the previous owner took. I’m ready to have this over with. Though, having met him and his partner in DIY crime, the neighbor, I’m still thinking it was more idiocy than impatience.

6.) Decide on paint colors and carpet at the same time. Or, paint your room first, then pick the carpet. Cheaper to have someone bring in those little carpet samples and lay them next to the painted wall than it is to take the carpet sample to the store, pick some paint, buy samples of the paint, paint it on the wall next to the carpet, rinse-repeat until you have paid enough in samples to paint the whole room. FYI, very few colors go well with rust colored carpet.

7.) Some cats will attempt to chew on everything. Don’t let them around loose wiring that might be live. No cats were harmed in the making of this renovation, but she came close. Those wires dangling down sure are inviting.

8.) You have more crap than you think you do. When it ‘s all put up and on shelves it doesn’t look like much. Go to pack it all up and move it out of the room and it suddenly becomes endless.

9.) When you have seen one good movie, don’t  push your luck and go to another on the same day. With all electronic entertainment options packed away except for the upstairs desktop computers, the OAM was going nuts. He isn’t a watch movies in bed type, and neither am I or we could have used the iPad or the laptops. But there really is no seating in the house that isn’t covered with cat fur (to which he is allergic) except for the downstairs – which is torn up. So… off to the theater we went last night.

Cabin in the Woods – Awesome. Just awesome. A gory, adult Buffy and Dollhouse mash up. Excellent. Go see it if you like Whedon’s stuff and aren’t put off by sometimes copious gore (though I don’t remember seeing much explicit up close violence being done shots and no guts hanging out type of things).

Lockout – Was a walkout. Made it through an hour before the OAM applied the Netflix Rule: Yeah, I paid to see this but if I were watching this on Netflix under my monthly subscription fee, would I still watch it to the end? Answer was a resounding “No, I’d have picked something else long before now.” If we wouldn’t watch it for essentially free, it’s a real stinker, because we have watched a lot of bad movies for free.  I like Guy Pearce, but he was phoning it in here. Probably because the script gave basically nothing to work with. Just wretched.

10.) Castle is good. If you haven’t yet seen it and can grab it somewhere, do it. It’s an enjoyable series.

11.) Justified continues to kick ass. Game of Thrones continues to be an exercise in how much sex can be fit into an hour and how explicit can it get before we have to technically call it a pron movie. I wasn’t going to watch this season since I was so disappointed by the books but then I figured WTH. The guys at work are watching it and it gives us something to chat about on Monday morning. It gives me a yardstick to measure just how jaded I have apparently become. They tend to be pretty shocked by a lot of the action on the show. I guess living without kids or a spouse that cringes at adult fare has exposed me to a pattern of media consumption that may not strictly be healthy. :)

how do you get into or out of the Jiffy Lube?