Category: Angst

You know, I could use a frisbee.

April 18, 2005 /

I guess I have a birthday later? Coincidentally, I am annoyed in general (though not necessarily in specific) by the practice of posting one’s Amazon wishlist to one’s weblog; it’s passive-aggressive avarice, and I don’t think anyone really deserves presents for putting words in a little box on a screen for ten minutes a day. If that.

So when I link to my own wishlist, you understand, it’s only for the benefit of humans who feel the need to buy me physical objects once a year but lack any helpful specificity of vision. I don’t actually want any things off there–it’s more like I don’t diswant them. What I really want is for you to come over on the afternoon of the third and play Ticket to Ride with us, and then once it’s dark and cooler we can go play frisbee by the river.

I have to go get some sackcloth and ashes now.

Pookie

April 17, 2005 /

He was a canine Houdini, absolutely brilliant at escaping whatever fences, gates or other barriers we could set up to keep him safe. He was brick-stupid about everything else: glass doors, bigger dogs, cars. Those two things in combination don’t make for a long life expectancy; it’s kind of surprising that he lived to be eleven.

Pookie was always nominally my dog, although Ian took care of him more often, and after we moved out he was really my mom’s. She found him, Friday afternoon, on the wrong side of the fence around Kelly Ridge. There wasn’t any real evidence of what exactly happened. Could have been a car, or another dog, or some unknown medical problem.

He was a shih tzu, the kind you see like little furry hovercraft on shows: glossy, legless, gliding. Pookie never looked like that. His fur was short, tangled and dirty; he smelled like a dog. He lived outdoors, and always seemed satisfied with that.

After Mom sold the house, Pookie spent much more time with Joe and his giant antisocial dog, Greg Brown, out on the ridge. I don’t know how Greg and Pookie first behaved around each other, but by the time I saw them together they were inseparable. Pookie was already nine, but he acted like a dog finally growing up: his body got thicker and more muscular, and he seemed more reserved, less goofy. Greg never let anyone he didn’t trust near his protege.

When he was wet he looked like a rat, but when his hair was just the right length he looked like those Chinese statues of lions. I’ve never met anyone more confident, or more trusting, or who spent his entire life in such a happy mood.

Pookie, leonine

Ninety minutes later, I still don’t feel well

April 15, 2005 /

I gave blood for the first time at GSP, which was, hideously, almost seven years ago. I haven’t gone a year without donating since then. At my current job, I’ve given at all but one (I was sick) of our company-wide blood drives, which happen every two and a half months. I’m fairly experienced at these things. I always prep with lots of water, and I eat a decent lunch, sans french fries.

But dammit, it keeps getting worse. I used to get nervous and shaky, so I started bringing my CD player along, and that helped. Then I started getting light-headed and hot at the snack canteen; last time I had to lie down with my feet on a box and drink nasty Powerade. Today I took twice as long as usual, so they had to reseat the needle–a new and disturbing experience–and I didn’t even make it off the donation table before I almost passed out. Giving blood sucks!

Not gonna stop, though.

April 7, 2005 /

On a less happy note, I had been wondering for a while why almost all of Rebecca Borgstrom’s protagonists are brave children in great danger. I suppose her column today is an answer of sorts.

April 5, 2005 /

Further Keyhole obsession: I’ve finally proved to my satisfaction that New Circle Road in Lexington is not a circle, but a teardrop-shaped gob of snot headed southeast to Richmond.

April 5, 2005 /

For the record, I am SO WATCHING YOU.

Update 1040 hrs: I just spent like half a damn hour playing with this thing, flying all over Louisville and trying to figure out what looks like what from the air. I never properly understood how huge the (now-closed) Showcase Cinema parking lot was. Is. Also, if you get driving directions and superimpose them on the satellite images instead of the map? Things don’t quite line up, so to get anywhere it is apparently necessary to tear up a lot of lawns and drive directly down the median of the highway.

Sin City

April 1, 2005 /

Yeah, I saw it already, because I’m better than you.

And I gotta tell you… man, there’s a great movie in that footage, but that wasn’t it. It was a decent movie, an extraordinarily pretty one, and resolutely faithful to the original (as everyone’s pointed out). Cut all the voice-over monologues, I mean all of them, and you’d have a good movie. Cut the length of every shot in half, shrink Michael Madsen’s speaking parts (why, Michael, why? He sounded, as Maria pointed out, like community theatre), lose the stiff wire work and actually put the music from the trailers on the soundtrack–then you’d have a fucking magnificent balls-out bug-eyed noir-fu motion picture. I would watch that movie every night.

I hope there’s a director’s cut, or an editor’s cut, or a pirate renegade interweb cut, or something; I don’t think I’ve seen anything that needed it worse. Last night people were giggling when they should have been gasping, and all it would take to fix that would be a sharp knife and time.

March 24, 2005 /

I’d just like to point out that you don’t actually care about Terri Schiavo. Thanks.