Effluvia

From a parliamentary sketch by Matthew Parris, The Times, 13 March 2001

...nobody knows if it is Lord Falconer who gets the Government's knickers into the twist, or whether some sixth sense that the knickers are on the verge of twisting prompts Mr Blair to call for Lord Falconer.

"I'm not putting up with that," said the noble codger, "I was told I was coming on next." All the others mooed irritatedly, but he interrupted again as Cope sat down: "When is my amendment to be taken?" Again, he was mooed down...

...more mooing. But peers were in a distracted frame of mind. As Lord Burns, speaking next and taking us on a tour of his Hunting Inquiry's recent deliberations, wandered all over the landscape, and barons fidgeted with their sticks and fiddled with their ties, a better headline than "Peers kill hunting ban" suggested itself: "Peers fiddle while Burns roams."

Good stuff from Salon:

• On the death of Buffy's mom.
• Why radio sucks.

Q: What did the Enquirer call Monica Lewinsky?
A: "The Mouth That Roared."

Journal Roulette

spinsugar.com - Neat design, though I'll be damned if I could ever find an entry.

Siobhanorama!

Siobhan can even make a list into interesting reading.

The Coworkers
Ain't Cool Dep't.

One guy coughs and coughs and coughs. Not like he's got a hair in his throat, but more like the whole damned rabbit. Go to the doctor already, dude.

Two Years Ago
German engineering and simple country folk.

Funny. Siobhan links to me (and a hardy - if belated - welcome to all of Siobhan's readers who came through this weekend) and I get a lovely spike in hits. She posts her next entry and the hits cease. What? Do her people forget me? How is that possible?

So attention, Siobhan's readers: add me to your favorites. Go ahead, do it now. In case you didn't know I'm every bit as important as she is to you. You're life will be incomplete without me.

Perhaps, if you ask nicely, I will stress about money or talk about my hair. Would that make you people happy?

And while we're on the subject of Siobhan and her topics: I don't sound anything like Boss Hogg. But she sounds exactly like Frances McDormand in Fargo.

Anyway, James and Jen left last week and nothing happened. Sonya and I went to bed early and slept late. Then, this weekend, we stayed up late, slept late and took naps. After a string of high-energy weekends it was nice to burn a couple of days.

So I'm reading Marquis de Sade, okay? And right now I'm working on Philosophy in the Bedroom, a series of dialogues between a group of swinging aristocrats back in pre-revolutionary France. It's all dialogue, right? Right, with only an occasional parenthetical phrase to give you a sense of the action. And I'm reading, and I'm thinking, "hey, Jen should direct this! It would need editing, of course..."

A lot of editing. Some thoughts:

• Some of it is very sharp and witty and pithy and the humor is positively coal black. Also, it's so straightforward (especially concerning the Marquis' belief that woman are good for one thing only) that it would be quite bracing to see on stage.
• Sometimes, though, it sound like the worst kind of freshman bull session. "There is no God! I owe myself only pleasure! To stuff a squirrel up one's ass is totally natural! I need twenty bucks to do laundry!" At times like this - and the Marquis can go on for pages in that mode - it would be totally natural to kick de Sade in the shin.
• And sometimes, in the middle of either the wittiness or the dorm-room philosopy, the story will wander off into a brisk session of hardcore gonzo pornography. It's a little awkward, with the action coming completely in dialogue, but the point always comes across. "You, penetrate me thusly! And I will penetrate you over there thus-wise! And you, come bat me around the head and neck! Oh, divine pleasure!" How much of this made it on stage would depend on the actors and director, I suppose, and the laws of the area where it would be performed.

So, yeah - extensive editing. Selected lines, you know? What do you say, Jen?

My sister came to town today, and Sonya's parents will be here this weekend. In honor of our families I cleaned the fuck out of our apartment yesterday. I mean, it's spotless. Beautiful. I was quite proud.

Sonya's parents got me one of those little rock zen fountains. You know what I'm talking about? You get 'em at Pier One and places like that. In the course of my cleaning I took that out of the box and set it up. It was very peasant, gurgling and dripping sweetly, until we tried to sleep with it turned on last night. I thought (and Sonya agreed with me) that it was like sleeping next to a noisy, annoying waterfall. Tonight it goes in the kitchen.

Weird experience from yesterday: I was out last night, walking the dog. I'm heading back for the house when a car pulls up beside me. There are four college kids inside. They've all got heavy Italian accents. The car has Georgia plates. It looks like they've been road-tripping for day - the car is full of clothes, pillows and fast food bags.

"Can you..." the girl driving asked haltingly, "can you tell us...where is...where is the discotech? The place to dance?"

"Are you looking for a particular place?" I asked.

"The place...the place we are for looking...I think the name starts with an 'M'...and it is...it is on a street?"

"Go two blocks up, turn left, turn right on St. Charles and go down to the place with the tower on top," I told them confidently, "it's called the Red Room."

I have no idea if this is where they were trying to go. In fact, I'm sure it's not - the Red Room is a snooty yuppie meat market, from what I've heard. But shit! Where am I supposed to send 'em? What the girl told me matched nothing I know of in this town. I guess they were looking for a rave.

I told Sonya about this when I went inside. She noted that I was wearing a Placebo t-shirt.

"Placebo's very big in Italy," she told me, "they thought you were cool."

Obviously they were wrong.

Highlight of the WWF wrestling last night: Kurt Angle, a fireplug-like former Olympic wrestler, is fighting The Rock, who has magnificent eyebrows. The Rock is managed by Debra, who is the wife of "Stone Cold" Steve Austin. Steve Austin sometimes makes guest appearances on Nash Bridges, playing a loose-cannon detective. Anyway, Kurt Angle, after he was disqualified, went after Debra. Cheap heat! Then "Stone Cold" Steve Austin came out, beat the shit out of Kurt Angle for hitting his wife and took a few shots at The Rock for letting it happen to his wife. It was a masterful entertainment.

I wrote all that on Tuesday, but never got around to updating. Sorry about that. You are wonderful, patient people.

We met Julie (my sister) and Lynne (my niece) for dinner Tuesday night. They were travelling with several friends, so it took us a while to get everyone together. By nine, though, Julie, Sonya and I were sitting at the bar at the Port of Call, eating burgers. I had a couple of drinks. Julie had several beers.

"Have kids!" she encouraged us, "you're young! It's the right time! You're ready! You've got good genes!"

Burgers and beer led to a massive headache. I went to bed when we got home.

Yesterday I called in sick because my stomach was in revolt. Had I been healthy and off work, though, I could have done the following things with Julie and Lynne:

• Waited for an excruciatingly slow (but quite tasty) breakfast of biscuits and gravy at the Quarter Scene.
• Bummed around at Virgin while they went to the aquarium with their friends. It's cool, yeah, but you can only see the fish so many times before it starts to lose its luster.
• Had wine and cheese at the cafe in Pirate's Alley. I'd walked by and seen the place and wanted to check it out - I like it! I've heard it's where the spooky kids hang out; this is probably true. The painting of the sexy green fairy pouring absinthe was a hint; the stream of goths popping their heads in the door and looking around was another. It was like, every five minutes another tragic young thing dressed in black would come along, look inside and then continue on their way when they saw no others of their kind there. I wanted to say, "hey! Wait a sec! Someone will be along shortly and you can hook up." But I don't like to get involved in other people's business.
• We took Lynne to Fifi Mahoney's to get a wig. The burly, effervescent gay guy working there took to Lynne immediately and placed a procession of wacky wigs on her head. She ended up with a fairly conservative pink pageboy. I liked it.
• We met Sonya at the house, then had another snack at Rocky's before taking Lynne for more shopping. She got lots of cute little t-shirts, 'cause she's a cute little girl.
• And ending the evening with seafood at Ralph and Kacoo's. By this time I wasn't even hungry anymore. But we had good fellowship, eating off each other's plates and talking about Julie's habit of eating dirt when she was a toddler.

  "They couldn't leave me alone outside," she said, "I'd fill up on dirt while they were gone."

Right after we dropped them off at their hotel there was a massive, street-flooding thunderstorm. It took Sonya and I less than ten seconds to get from the car to the house and we were still soaked. We looked funny.

Oh, yeah. Sonya, talking about some dead musician:

"It's a shame what happened to that boy."

I looked at her. "Is that a fact, there, colenol?"