Kitty discovery!

9+ years ago I lived in an apartment with Megan in Orlando. I had Chewie then.

Chewbadoo

His Chewness

She had Emma. One day we started seeing this black and white cat outside, young but not wee kitteny, 3 or 4 months old maybe. I named him Simon. He had a streak down the middle of his head, where someone had to have peroxided him or something.

Stopped seeing him around after a while.

May 25, 2000, Chewie died, just over 1 year old, of lymphosarcoma from feline leukemia. Terrible stuff, terrible time.

Three months later, I saw another black and white cat, wondered at first if Simon was back, then realized this one was way too small to be the same cat. When I saw she was pregnant, I grabbed her, and you know the rest of the story.

Last night I was looking through photos from 1999-2000, lots of Chewie but of other things around that time too. One package had "Simon" written on it. I was eager to remember what he looked like.

Simon the small, young kitty

What he looked like was my girl Rogue. Down to the spot on the left hind toe. He was her all along! She was him! And this has fascinated me since discovering it last night! I hooted when I realized! Is she older than I thought? Did she and Chewie talk to each other, she below in the grass and he from the third-story window? I knew her before I knew her!

CURRENT DAY, LITERALLY

Obviously all the other markings reveal the mystery, too, but the toe spot really clinched it.

Now, Chewie is in this pack of photos, so it's obviously like April '00. And also, Steve and his grandparents in West Palm, so if only I could remember when that was ...

Florida cat in Northeast autumn: the heater vent squish

Heart!

Of a summer's evening

At 7:30 tonight I went to sit outside and read. By 7:50 I felt it:

It’s time.

I’d known it a while ago, but the weirdness of the past few months blanked it out, I guess. So sitting out in the yard I will sorely, deeply miss, where I have spent perhaps too much time alone, I knew. For while I have made wonderful friends here, I have still been very alone, save for a few short, quick, lovely months. Still, those were spent inside, and all my time outside has been just me. (And Rogue, sometimes.)

And a year ago, I told Jenny I had a feeling I wouldn’t be renewing my lease again.

It's not only time to leave. It’s time to go.

For Soda and Candy and my 3 other readers; we're up to a dime!

Prepare for disappointment! But read on anyway.

Bring Me the Pants in a Nine

http://yeoldeninjashoppe.blogspot.com/2009/05/your-cheesy-bookstore-romance-pt-nine.html

Sex Pants Eight coming your way

duck

Lucky No. 7

... y'all

Batter up

http://yeoldeninjashoppe.blogspot.com/

7

I hate the 7 a.m. hour. I realized this fully yesterday. I think this hatred makes it impossible for me to get up then willingly, even if I'm decently awake. 7 a.m. is brown and dark and unforgivable. It's the brother who always punches you in the stomach. It's Benjamin Linus. It'll never go away, and it'll never be nice to you.

It's possible that I could get up at 6 or 6:30, nice green 6, but then I'd have to get through 7 still, and it would just be angrifying. 8, 8 is nice and pink, 8 is the soft freedom that comes after 7. 8 is breakfast on the porch or a soft warm morning snooze.

I need to cleanse 7 somehow. How do I cleanse an hour? Is there some kind of sage to burn for it? Should I make it a pie?

7 was never good to me. I've never been able to get up easily or early. Even when I had my Batman talking alarm clock. Really, if that won't get a 7-year-old out of bed, nothing will. So now 7 and I have to make friends again somehow.

I think 7 owes *me* a pie.

5 pants for the ninja sex

I know it's been a tough wait. Here is your reward. Me, I like pie, since you were wondering.

OH NO

IT GOT INSPECTOR GADGET

4 for the ninja train

http://yeoldeninjashoppe.blogspot.com/2009/04/your-cheesy-bookstore-romance-pt-4_27.html

Ninja Sex Pants la Troisieme

Fancy dance about with it here

In which I already give you more Ninja Sex Pants

http://yeoldeninjashoppe.blogspot.com/2009/04/your-cheesy-bookstore-romance-pt-2.html

Ninja Sex Pants

Somewhere in time I set my time setting to Pacific time. I know, I know; my cleverness makes your heart ache, and you probably just peed a little. Now I don't know where I did it or how to fix it. Is it in Blogger? Is it in Firefox somehow? My computer shows the right time. Is it inside my fingers? *licks one* Mmm, maple walnut scone.

Anyhoo, while my minds sorts and sifts and waits and wades through some things of late, I am not in a posting frame of mind or heart these days, so in order to entertain the masses (i.e. Ealish and Hawkman), I've started a new blog for the purpose of posting a cheesy romance I started writing in 1996. I was working at Waldenbooks then and saw daily what utter crap was selling like hotcakes. (See "Throwing 'The Horse Whisperer' across the room upon completion, circa 1996.")


So I present to you the unfinished result. Please to find some form of enjoyment in it. If not today, revel in the promise of tomorrow! Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you ... Ninja Sex Pants.

(This is, as the monkeys of destiny would have it, the name of the new blog but *not* the name of the story. That remains Cheesy Bookstore Romance for now.)

Now please remember, this was written to make fun of other books. The initial idea was to take something exceedingly dull and cheese it up. I believe that when it's done right, this is termed something along the lines of "farce" or "satire." But fear not. I promise that you will find no such thing in the reality that is CBR.

Critical acclaim for Cheesy Bookstore Romance
"That's some well-written crap!" -- Uncle Howie

The pagan fertility ritual cupcake pirate cake to end all pagan fertility ritual cupcake pirate cakes

Words fail me. Fortunately, friends don't. [Click photo to learn more]

It only gets better/worse from "rubbers"

I got me a Wegmans in-store-brand razor (correction! 6-blade shaving system). It's curvy and green and sure to be like shaving with a springtime meadow. And? Bonus!

"Ergonomically designed handle:
"Non-slip rubbers along the side of the handle provide special benefits for a woman's grip."

Is ... tennis involved somehow? Did anyone who had ever accidentally overheard English while walking past a foreign theater or local place of sex trade come near this copy?* Wait. Maybe that's it. Overheard at the Mango Road Palace of Special Tourism and Kabobs. Is there some pleasure internal to the hands that Thai hookers have just now shared with Wegmans?

Also: Blades Made [sic] in Korea. The plastic rest was birthed by lilypads in a gentle summer's pond and lifted from the water on the breath of baby turtles.


*OK, granted, this is way far from Engrish. Perhaps written by an Oxford-educated Indonesian lady of pleasure who tended to only have a certain vocabulary.

Ich bien ein president you will LOVE

I was inspired today. Without even going to Strasbourg.
I did have some cheese, though, so that's close.

All right, Lost, it's time we had a talk.

***SPOILERS AHOY***

Dear Lost:

Please sit down there at the kitchen table. Here. Have a cookie.

I saw that Kate gave Aaron to his rightful grandmother last night. A grandmother who is Australian and just in town for ... wait, for what again? Wasn't Daddy Jack's funeral three years ago? Why IS she still here and living in a motel?

Hawkman tells me Hot Lips Littleton was there to see the lawyer. OK. Let's proceed.

Hawkman (1:43 PM):

she was in town because she's suing Oceanic Airlines

she was picking up her settlement check from that lawyer

That being said, and it's debatable whether I actually said anything or not, I'm pretty sure you can't just give an apparently American baby to a visiting Aussie woman, no matter how skinny and maybe 35 she is. One, she can't stay in America and especially with some random kid. B., she can't just take said random kid back to Australia with her. Believe me. It only works with Borneo. So did Kate take a few minutes to fill out all the legal papers before heading to the airport?

OK, saying that out loud I just realized that there will be DNA tests and -- wait, no there won't! Will there? Can she say anything about Claire actually having the baby?

GAHHHHHHHH

Give me the cookie back. You're giving me a headache. Go to your room. Your father will deal with you later.

Love,
Moonkee

This photo is wee

For Don, and for Rheta

When I worked at King Features I was lucky to be assigned the columnist Rheta Grimsley Johnson, whose writing has always reminded me of Charles Kuralt, and who goes in private life by Rheta Grierson. Current Rheta editor Amy sent me her column for this week. I don't think she'd mind my posting it here. I hope some of you see in it what I love about her, and also go give your significant other a 3-hour hug or a phone call or shout from a mountaintop about how much you love them.

The world lost a good man Sunday.

This old world is big and full to bulging, yet there are so few truly good men.

Don Grierson was one. Don loved the old cowboy movie “Shane” and Hank Williams songs, which he played on the same Gibson guitar he’d had since he was 16. He could sing “Cold, Cold Heart” and “I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You” and knew the entire recitative of “Be Careful of Stones That You Throw.”

He spoke in a South Mississippi drawl so soft and low you sometimes had to lean in toward him to hear him. He didn’t talk much, but, when he did, he had something to say. People who didn’t know him well often underestimated him. Don thought we all should listen more and talk less.

He joked that he got his masters in English just so he could tell Yankees he had one. He was up in Knoxville finishing up on his doctorate when he got tired of the academic scene and came on home to enjoy another squirrel-hunting season.

Don Grierson was, to quote Kristofferson, a walking contradiction -- a small man who loomed large, an academic whose passion was duck hunting, a voracious reader of poetry, periodicals and Shakespeare who also loved TV’s “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

Don grew up on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which changed dramatically after his boyhood. His stories of a Huck Finn childhood sounded too good to be true, and the names of his friends -- Gator and Luray, Marvin Earl and Scooter -- added fictional flair to his memories. He felt most at home in recent years in Southwest Louisiana, which Don frequently compared to the Mississippi of his youth. He liked the informality of the place, the fact that neighbors would stop by without phoning, and that Cajun cooks knew you are supposed to fry seafood.

He was the least materialistic person I’ve ever known, his one luxury being a convertible car he bought after retirement. Before that, he drove the same Dodge truck for 20 years. He had shirts in the closet that were 30 years old.

Don did not suffer fools, and he never mistook acquaintances for friends. But the friends he had -- most of them for decades -- were loyal to him in a way that makes most of us envious. One of his best buddies, for instance, was a former reporter Don fired while he was managing editor of The Natchez (Miss.) Democrat. Instead of hating Don, the discharged reporter took Don’s journalism course when he began his teaching career at Mississippi State. And they remained fast friends.

Nobody could hate Don.

Don had a bad year last year. He lost his older brother, Buba, whom he loved beyond reason. He lost his former wife, Pat, who was an accomplished poet and English teacher and, typically, remained good friends with Don. Don’s bad heart was taxed by these losses, but he also had much to live for.

We were planning to drive to Canada this summer, and to host friends from France. Don loved our dogs and me and proved it in a million quiet ways. Our life together the past 16 years was one of travel and reading and music on the porch. We had it made, and most days realized it. When I’d fret over something that couldn’t be helped or fixed, Don would gently say, “Let’s just try to have fun.”

Many of my friends I don’t know by name. You read this column and follow my meandering thoughts on the days when I write. You tolerate my politics.

Some days it’s tougher to write than others. I need for you to indulge me again, today, as I deal with the hardest loss I’ve ever been dealt.

Take this advice from your friend: Love your mate as well and as hard as you possibly can.

At least only half of it is rusty

I was halfway through shaving this morning (left leg done, for everyone keeping track) when I discovered I was using a rusty razor, having just grabbed an old disposable one from the shower caddy after abandoning my PRESERVE Triple once and for all. Now I feel (a) lopsided and (2) like our neanderthal ancestral grandmothers must have felt after starting to shave with their scythes and then having to bolt across the veldt to get away from the sabretooth tigers.

(The other day I was listening to the Radio Lab show entitled Stress, and they kept talking about tigers on the veldt and I kept yelling TIGERS LIVE IN ASIA! Which I'm pretty sure is true, but then again, sabretooths? How would we ever know about THAT? )

(And if you don't already listen to Radio Lab, you totally should, because it's awesome and have I ever steered you wrong?)

Fortunately I'm current on my tetanus, and I sure meant to check the razor blades before starting to shave, but I must've started thinking about my handsome boyfriend or how late I was for work or maybe pie. (Handsome BF actually saved the right leg from attack with a well-timed and clearly clairvoyant phone call, so, whoo, Sexy Ninja Superhero!)

Too bad the Preserve cut my legs for a good two months (and now keeps falling apart, after a tumble to the tubby ground the other day). I'll at least avoid the animal-testers (I hope) and get a Wegmans brand. It's possible that I put too much trust in Wegmans. Except that nothing but wonderfulness comes from Wegmans. It's true. I saw it in Wikipedia somewhere.

And they bring the boxes too, I bet

What exactly do I have to "witness" to be part of the witness protection program, anyway? Can I just be annoyed by the goings-on around me? Can I claim emotional distress due to the burden of having to pack up my cube by April 30 and be done with it?

'Course I'm only asking for the relocation assistance. I don't want to disappear from my friends and family and certainly need to see status updates too often to change my name. I've got 84 friends now; I can't start all over again! (I know you all have more, and yes, you're very special. But do you KNOW them? Have you had them over for dinner? Have you sent them Pringles in the mail? Yeah. That's what I thought.)

Also, I have a great petsitter. Never underestimate the importance of a woman who cleans the litter boxes right and will pill a cat.

I'm assuming the government has expert packers and movers on hand, guys and gals who will wear dark glasses and that curly thing that runs to their ear that is either for easy phone reception or an homage to Orthodox Jews; really, it's win-win either way. I get discreet, swift packing and, if anything gets broken, a free ride on the space shuttle. I saw that in the Constitution the other day. Or maybe an Epcot brochure.

I'm looking forward to this packing help is my point. These are the kind of people who you know are crazy good at Tetris, so I should be able to win their eternal trust and fidelity and local restaurant knowledge with some Wii Fit balance games. I'll just move 2-3 hours northwest of here, and if they want me to spy on kindly old Mrs. Davenport in return, well, I can hide in the flowers with the best of them. Especially if she's partial to bright pink.

I went away and didn't tell you

Because I didn't want you stealing my stuff.

So just some quick fill-you-ins while I simmer some real posts (we can all hope; Lords of Kobol, we can all hope).

• I was laid off by Cornell 2 weeks ago today. This was 3 days before my trip to Florida with my Mom.
• Fathom started straining to pee and even peed some blood 2 days before I left.
  
• I went to Florida with my Mom. For 8 days. Saw most of my wonderful old Orlando friends.
• I turned 40.
• BSG's final episode aired.

I'm OK with the layoff, so far anyway. Easy enough to say while I'm still sitting at my desk and getting a paycheck (I can work through April 30 if I want. I get 3 weeks' severance after that, and health insurance for a year).

Now I can dance a little monkey dance back to Western NY.

This is the kind of magic and hootenanny you missed out on
by not being in the Magic Kingdom last Friday

What's that? A cake recipe? Why, yes, I happen to have one right here.

Dana asked me the other day to re-give her my Mom's recipe for Texas sheet cake. I had determined to post it as a note on Facebook when I got -- The Upgrade (and well after others did. I think this means FB likes me better than you). The tabs don't work from my Mac, and the Note option is gone from the other little row of iconny bits. So, to satisfy the part of me that was already reveling in accolades over the most wonderful cake of all time, here's the recipe.

It's a super moist, really wonderful cake that always wins over a crowd or makes someone happy on their birthday. Here you can see it in its "love cake" form; in the wild, it's a big rectangle. I've started making it with white whole wheat flour to make it a wee bit healthier, and I know there are lighter versions out there. But this came to me from my Mom and her family, and I've been having it since I was wee, so I stick to the original pretty closely, because That's My Cake. I feel like it's my Mom doing the cooking when I make her recipes.

TEXAS SHEET CAKE
Why Texas sheet cake? I think it killed a man once just for snoring.

The recipe calls for a 9x15 jelly roll pan. I have found that a dark colored one works better than a lighter one. Weird. But true. While the cake is baking, make the frosting.

CAKE
DRY:
2 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
½ cup sour cream (or ½ cup milk with enough vinegar to sour, maybe a teaspoon)
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda

WET:
2 sticks margarine/butter
4 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 cup water

1. preheat oven to 350.
2. combine dry ingredients in large mixing bowl.
3. combine wet in saucepan on stove. Bring to boil.
4. add wet ingredients to dry, mixing thoroughly. Pour into greased jelly roll pan.
5. bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until knife slipped into center comes out clean. Set on cooling racks.


FROSTING
Pour one 1-lb box of powdered sugar into mixing bowl.

Heat over low:
1 stick margarine/butter
4 tablespoons milk
4 tablespoons cocoa powder

Heat till butter melts; mix.

Add to powdered sugar.
Mix well.

Add 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Mix well.
Frosting should drop slowly from spoon -- plop, even: not a river, but not sludge either.

Frost the cake while still warm. You’ll want it cool enough that it doesn’t come apart when you spread the frosting. Doing it while still warm lets the frosting sink into the cake and makes it that much more moist.

I should probably get the potato chips out of my hair now.

"Put the mask over your own face before your child's," I kept hearing as I fed the cats first while my own blood sugar tanked, my breathing shallow. If I pass out from the lack of oxygen, can they reach the masks? They are (a) jumpers and (2) entranced by dangly things. So really, wouldn't they have a better chance than some wobbly headed hominid who's crying because his mommy went all floppy?

If I pass out on the floor, I guarantee that will be the straw that finally makes them sprout thumbs.

It won't be like that X-Files. They don't know how to bite like that. You should see them trying to eat turkey.

This is not them trying to eat turkey

Tiny little post about Tiny little Lost quasi-spoiler

Would someone please spare me Kate from here on? When was the last time she actually meant anything to the plot, for real, for true? And this ridiculous love triangle. If I were a spitter I’d spit on it and sock it in the groin. If Sawyer even WANTS to leave Juliet for her now, I am so done with him. That'll learn him.

The only thing I like about it anymore is the term “S/Kater,” which maybe I also hate at the same time; who can tell anymore.

In other news, the cats would LOVE a pendulum. Maybe not one so hitty, though.

Having found petroleum near the Hydra,

the gentlemen of the island begin a new plastics industry.

There was very little worth reading here. Some might say nothing. Now I have to go buy cat food.

P.S. Don't get me started on the "word" app. I growl every time I hear it.

PBS'd

Entered in this contest.
Tough decision, they take so many good shots. Really the contest should just be among them and their many beautiful ways.

Is it any wonder I'm not in jail?

The more I think about it, the more relieved I am that I survived 8th grade with my eternal soul still intact and on the right side of the line, considering all the bands that we knew for certain to be devil worshippers, with hardcore evidence against them. For instance!

1. AC/DC. Name = Anti-Christ, Devil's Child. Duh.
2. Led Zeppelin. CODA meant something. I'll tell you if I remember what.
3. The Eagles. "There have been no spirits here since 1969," where "spirits" = Jesus, said Dawn Uglik. She gave us the lowdown on ALL this stuff. She had a sister.
4. Styx. Der.
5. Supertramp. I ... ask Dawn.

At some point I think my BF's sister tried to tell me that ELO were devil worshippers too. This I refused to believe because I already liked them so much, and really, followers of the horned one are not so much for singing about holding on tight to one's dreams (and especially! not in French). Time was the first concept album I'd ever heard. And come on. The guys from the soundtrack to Xanadu? Like Olivia Newton-John would've stood for that.

Lucky for us all we found holy respite and distraction instead in the tight pants of Loverboy, Billy Squire, Foreigner, and Journey.

Lucky for us all.

Dawn loved Mike Reno.

None of *this* has happened before, I'm pretty sure.

Last night at about 11:07 p.m. I did a search for "Daniel Dreilide" and got zero results. Today, 5:24 p.m., 174.

This is about Battlestar Galactica

I did wonder at one point if Starbuck was Chipping the piano player, but then thought surely she would remember what her father looked like and dismissed it. I forever get this show wrong. (Or does it get me wrong? Discuss.)

IMO Someone to Watch Over Me was one of the best episodes they've ever done, and makes me wonder why more can't be like it, why so much of this final season has been wasted on other crap, and why they are gypping us out of the fantastic talent of Katee and Tricia and the others by taking it away from us too soon.

Some questions that either last night's show aroused or I just happened to wonder about since then. You probably have too.

• How did Boomer find the fleet?
• Why would the centurions want skin jobs anyway? Unless they could become them, why would they care? Cavil talks with rancor about how humans enslaved cylons, but then the skin jobs just went and enslaved the centurions themselves. How completely genuous and unhypocritical of them. Really, John, you have a skill.
• When SB says the mutiny thinned their ranks: What happened to everyone who turned against Adama, anyway? They didn't all die. Racetrack, how could ye, and where have ye gone?
  

According to Battlestar Wiki:

• The name 'Dreilide' is German for 'third eyelid' and refers to the inner eyelid, regarded as the gateway to the soul and realms of higher consciousness. The third eye is often associated with visions, clairvoyance, precognition, and out-of-body experiences, and people who have allegedly developed the capacity to use their third eyes are sometimes known as seers.^[2]

• The analog for Dreilide Thrace in the Original Series is Chameleon. Chameleons have a third eye called a parietal eye.

And of course, back to the '70s: A charming and aging con man, Chameleon just happens to be Starbuck's father.

I wonder if there's any chance I beat Jenny to this.

Hey, lookee here!

And look where they are. Aw.

P.S. Under "Sponsored links from Yahoo!" on the TWoP recaplet page for this episode, in which Jacob says the word "Watchtower," the first link is this:

High quality leather binding for Jehovah's Witnesses. Bible and reason book. Gold edging. Rush orders and credit cards. Other ministry items available.

This one's for you, Kurt

She was singing your name over and over again

And then the monkey stole the glasses from off my head

What is it with salad anyway? Why haven’t we evolved yet to crave the things that are actually healthy for us? This makes no sense to me right now, sitting here staring at the remainder of the $10 salad I made at Collegetown Bagels and wishing it were made of Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper Kettle Chips instead and wishing I didn’t wish this and oh the snake it just keeps on eating its tail don’t it.

The reality of potato chips does our bodies zero good, except for all the tastiness. And don’t start telling me about how it helps me run away from tigers and chase woolly mammoths and flee from my tribal enemies across the veldt and escape the aliens building the pyramids, because I’m not buying it anymore. Get with it already, cells, and adjust to my modern-day eating habits! I eat for pleasure now, not survival. Well you know. Still survival, yes, I don’t want anyone in celestial power thinking I’m taking that for granted. But how do we evolve to cook saffron cream sauces and delectable curries but not to process them better for less heart-solidifying cholesterolification? Why don’t I crave raw spinach instead of gooey sweet-sauced pizza topped with blue cheese dressing? Why could I digest milk for the first 33 years of my life but no more? Why does my neighbor “Old Crackles” smell like beans?

This brings me to something I’ve actually wondered about for years. We have these brains inside our heads, right. (Or so I’m told! Ha ha!) Our brains control everything our bodies do. Therefore our brains already know everything needed about biology and anatomical chemistry and other terms I could also maybe make up while sitting here but really you get my drift. So why do we need to study these things to learn about them? We’ve got the libraries already in our craniums. Somewhere there surely must be a switch that turns the lights on in the stacks.

I bet the aliens can process the chips just fine there inside their skinny stupid space suits, and that’s why they built the pyramids the way they did, and it was actually to be storage for chips well into the space future, and where’s my hovercraft, you pyramid-building chip-eating veldt-chasing space jerks?

Yeah. I thought so.

If I can find the actual court

Well something got lost in translation somewhere betwixt "Here is your court date, Moonkee" and The Day I Actually See If I Can Have the Ticket Reduced/Dismissed. Helpful and generous amie Melissa accompanied me on the 90-minute drive to Clifton Springs for the 7 p.m. court date. We got to our last turn on Mapquest at about 6:30, looking for Manchester Town Court in a not terribly populated area but a stone's throw from the Thruway (irony!), and stopped at the Manchester Town Hall on presumption that there probably wouldn't be two Manchester Anythings. Indeed it had the same address as the court, so OK, we parked.


This cat was hungry during this time period

The doors were locked, and its office hours said whatever-4:30, but there were two cars with people inside waiting, and no one inside the cars was making out, esp. as there was only one person apiece, so it would have had to be some kind of Ralph Malph thing, and if that's your thing that's OK, I'm just saying, they looked like they were waiting for something and knew what they were waiting for. Then a Forrester pulled up with a lawyerly/judgely fellow inside, and we knew we were in business. We also both knew we had to do some business and hoped the restrooms would be open.

Court takes up about half the town hall's non-bathroom/non-hallway/non-barn-photo-archive facilities. There was a court clerk, a bailiff (I assumed), and the judge, who probably owns his own tractor. Not a slight, just noticing! No Kind Officer M***seng, either, which made me so happy, till ...

When I got called up, I asked about reduction/dismissal, and was told I'd have to come back to talk to the DA. Would Feb. 18 work?

Ugh, you mean it's not OVER?

This also means I may have to actually think and prepare.

If it please the court

I have to go to traffic court tomorrow night. The claim by Mr. CoppyPants is that I was going 84 on the Thruway in the Town of Manchester. My counter is that because I am made of magic, I am not bound by such laws of "physics" and "speed" and "why didn't I have some peanut butter cookies on hand for just such an occasion," and also we have entered the Time of Hope and Unicorns, so, really, why are we doing this again? And does Clifton Springs have a good diner? Someone had better be able to direct us to some pannycakes is all I'm saying.

On BSG's season thingy premiere

"Anders, stop quoting Dylan lyrics at me." -- Kurt

If you don't want to be spoiled about Battlestar Galactica, please to stop the reading now and go look you at some LOL cats.

I have to begin with this, which annoyed me before, with the final episode of whatever season it was last year: Who the hell approaches an unknown planet with their entire fleet in tow (peacefully, that is)? A planet they believe to be fully populated? Didn't a surprise fleet, oh, I don't know, BLOW UP YOUR WHOLE TWELVE WORLDS JUST A FEW YEARS AGO? The fact that they weren’t shot out of the sky should have been their first clue that something was amiss.

There is speculation that Dee still was/is actually a cylon. I don’t contest that possibility, but I do propose another explanation for why she fastened on to the jacks like that: the simple destruction of hope. All her dreams for earth. All her dreams with Lee. The scene with the Agathons might serve to point to a sinking sadness, the deep sense of loss of something she had always expected to have –- since childhood, since sitting on that rocking horse –- and now, now it’s been blown away by two wars, too many to bear any longer. First losing Caprica, then Lee, then Earth on top of it, the Earth some never thought they’d find and then, THEN, there, Oh my gods, it’s REAL? The equation adds up too, too easily.

Also, considering what we now know about this Earth and its cylons, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out there are more cylons in the fleet, except that obviously we won’t, because there are only 13, so say we all.

As for Ellen: Her very survival was a surprise to many, and her story was unverified by anyone. Better questions might be about why there are 13, five very old and eight rather new, and, the biggie: Exactly how are humans different from cylons anyway? Why do humans keep insisting the skinjobs are machines? Even when the Eights keep breaking their programming?

It could also explain why Ellen was with Saul in the first place, since he wasn’t exactly going anywhere for a large part of his life. Though he might simply have been a good port in a storm for her. ... Or she loved him. There's that.

And then, Starbuck. Dude. Why wasn’t her hair burned with the rest of her? Is it magic hair? IS HER HAIR A CYLON?

Nine episodes to explore and explain all this. It’s not enough.

What else? There is more. Like why Olmos can’t play drunk.

Also, I like Anders. There, I said it.

But most importantly, what did you think?

I think my life is now complete

from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.


Curtsies to Kurt for the heads-up

Sometimes a Great Notion

Four days, 11 hours and 36 minutes till Battlestar's beginning of the end.

Why hello there, 2009, aren't you lookin' sexy

TO ACCOMPLISH THIS YEAR:

• Acquire hover car and investigate other hover-related technology
• Nurture relationship with The Tanning Bed. Set tan example for pasty hippie town
  
• Avoid Wyclef Jean. Remember last funk-fueled shooting spree
• Start gum bank in move to be better friend
  
• MORE LIME
• Avoid Manilow. Remember last sob-induced shooting spree
  
• Find one who will perform piscine matrimony (start with Unitarians)
  
• Do Not Cry when Mother glares disapprovingly at eyes
• Look into changing eye color
• Remember Pluto
• Discover perfect shade of lavender
  
• More Sabado Gigante!
  
• BELIEVE IN THE MONKEY KING