Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2004).
‘Tis the season for quaint loving customs like swearing a blue streak! I had a wonderful day with my family and special extended loved ones yesterday, and today I am sliding on down to C-town for Miss D and my semi-annual viewing of Love Actually. It’s the most wonnnnderful tiiiime of the year. (So is July; don’t ask us why.)
Photographed by entelpelente on the flickr.
But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
(Kerouac, Jack. On the Road, 1951.)
Won’t you please go crazy just once in a while.
My daughter and I went to the downtown branch of our public library today, to which I had not been in epochs. A year, at least.
We went a little crazy.
Photographed by realbelgianwaffles on the flickr.
I had to buy two more bags so we could carry the books, and my bag ripped so we were drag-assing to the car, both of us weighted down by several bags each. The trunk was stuck, and propping the ripped bag on my hip in order to try and really pull up on the lid sent half the books sliding like an avalanche over my shoulder because of the arch my body was in, where they tumbled behind me to the ground and christ-knows-why cartwheeled in to the smack middle of the drive. Why not?
Kidlet instinctively darted out to retrieve them, so I was in a panic shouting “No!”, throwing my head around to look for cars and warning her, “Get back in position!,” “position” being facing her door, with both hands on the car — yes, I know it is a seemingly fascist thing to teach a child to memorize, but it keeps her semi-secure while I try to juggle crap with my hands full in a parking lot. Today was a case in point. As soon as I’d managed to fumble the keyfob into unlock, I told her to get in the car, and as soon as her car door closed, let out a very heartfelt, “Fucking fuck!” Then I picked up the books. Twist ending!
the kitty nightlight keeps it on-theme.
If you think all of that’s chaotic, farcical, and vulgar, you should have seen us in the library. Think, “Jackie Chan meets the Three Stooges, with special guest writer Quentin Tarantino.”
A portion of my haul is above. Snagged a few more gems for the Wonder Woman research and a couple Hammett novels for funsies; also Far Arden and a new book by Elizabeth Kostova, who wrote The Historian (a yearly read). I almost picked up Embroideries but I’ve almost literally just reread Persepolis and I decided to wait until next time. Does anyone else find to your disappointment that when you read a great deal of someone else’s art and writing, it begins to accidentally spill over in to your own, or am I the only hack?
Anyway, it’s all at your Local Library!
Also, I wanted to show off this improvised bookcover for Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. My California copy has gone saucily topless up front for around a half a decade (thus prompting the purchase of my much more gently used Oregon copy) and I could brook no more. I decided that, after eighteen years, I no longer really needed the Kirkus and New York Times, etc, reviews at the front telling me the book was worth a look, and, knowing the dedication already — to Stan Rice, her husband —, I flipped to the first page and started duct-taping the front ten-odd junk pages together. This made a stiff enough cover so that, when I lie in bed curled on my side to read, the force of my hand holding the thicker part of the book does not wear and worry and rip away at the front any longer, saving the book from further separating from the spine.
I’m pretty proud of my shitty repair job. The spine itself has always been fine, so it as not as though the book would be anonymous when shelved or sidewise-viewed, the only ways it would matter in a search, but I wrote “The Witching Hour” and “Anne Rice” on the duct-tape cover anyway because it felt right.
“The Voice of the Internet judges Good Ol’ E”
Voice of the Internet: Hello, E. I am the Voice of the Internet and I am here to judge your journal.
Good Ol’ E: Fuck a bunch of Voice of the Internet. You’re not going to make me apologize for anything.
VOI: We’ll see. Let’s start: Your blog lacks a strong male figure.
GO’E: Your mom lacks a strong male figure.
Look out: Jessica Rabbit will hit you with a purse, next three miles.
VOI: Yes, and I have often wondered if this is part of what lead her to abandon me and be a drug-shooting hooker who is not one of the ones with a heart of gold at all. So thanks for reminding me, Miss Apology-Not McInsensitivepants.
GO’E: Shit. Okay, well, still I must say that is a totally forced insult name, even with allowances for being made up on the fly and under duress.
VOI: I have difficulty making up insult names, on the fly or otherwise, because I have short-term memory loss as a result of a head injury from being dropped as a baby.
GO’E: That explains a lot.
Ir♥sh boy Gabriel Byrne for the priest picture because why not?
VOI: Oh? It happened when my grandmother dropped me upon hearing the news of my underground-decommissioned-firetruck-racing father’s accidental decapitation when he was saying Mass because he was also a priest on top of racing. Though I was only a few weeks old, my grandmother was holding me since, as I have just mentioned, my mother is a drug-addicted hooker who abandoned me. Does that “explain a lot”?
GO’E: Okay, actually no, because what the mothership was a bedamned underground-decommissioned-firetruck-racing priest even doing with a drug-addicted hooker? And how do you race a firetruck?
VOI: He accompanied a negotiator to a police standoff with my mother in a motel room, a standoff which was over of course drugs and hooking, and my father succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome and I was conceived. I don’t know how you race a firetruck* because my father it seems was the only one and the knowledge died with him that awful day in Mass when he was decapitated by accident.
GO’E: If he was the only one, then was it like a beat-your-own-best-time thing or else who did he firetruck-race against?
VOI: We don’t know. They have never come forward despite the reward.
GO’E: I am getting straight up interested despite my own damned self. What reward?
Just pretend Gabriel Byrne is behind the wheel in the cab.
VOI: My grandmother has posted the offer of a reward to anyone with information about my father’s firetruck-racing, as we did not know about the secret racing life he led until after his death, when we discovered an embroidered “Four-time Underground-decommissioned-firetruck-race Winner” robe** in his effects. When she passes on, which will be soon because she has recently been diagnosed with cataracts —
GO’E: Not typically fatal.
VOI: — plus liver, stomach, and ovarian cancer —
GO’E: Shit. Sorry.
VOI: — then in accordance with her wishes, I will add to the reward fund with any leftover money after we settle up the estate. I anticipate that the reward will go as high as about $3500.
GO’E: Huh. I need to say: for being the Voice of the Internet, you are awfully fucking pretty specific.
VOI: You really say cusses a lot.
GO’E: What the what? After all this shit, you’re going to try to bring me down with some motherfucking ridiculous chump change criticism like that? “You really say cusses a lot.” Like, dude, how even old are you?
VOI: I am ten and I can’t say I am appreciating your king-size cusses.
GO’E: Oh, effing cheezits. This is going all kinds of not well. Heck. Know what? I’m sorry.
VOI: So the Voice of the Internet wins? Against you?
GO’E: Dude. The Voice of the Internet wins the whole dad-blessed thing against Good Ol’ E for alwaystimes, okay?
And……..scene.
*for the record you underground race decommissioned firetrucks the way you race regular cars ‘cept you do it a-way out in the country at this quarry behind my friend’s stepfather’s ranch and you better believe you run the sirens THE WHOLE TIME it is the fucking shit sorry kid but only a king-size cuss will do for how much of the fucking shit firetruck-racing is: all of the fucking shit okay so pass it on but try to keep it underground.
**He actually won five times but they don’t know it because he left that robe in a truck stop in Tulsa. Total bummer cause he loved that thing.
PSA: This arcade belongs to the fucking Batgirl!* And none of you cockmongering assmunchers best forget it. She will mess the shit of all you ne’er-do-well cuntnecks** the fuck up, but proper!!
Ohhh, DC. You and your “leaks” and “apologies” for/of cusswords. Your lust for sales will slay us all.
*Is that anything like “the goddamned Batman?” you wonder. Mmm. Not yet. But delicious, memey-riffic time will tell.
**What is a cunt neck? I don’t know, it just came to me as a good insult. Like it seems it is a comparison to the neck of someone plump and vital in youth but maybe now gone to seed that has become all wrinkly and fleshy and vag-y? It is an insult that I think invites understanding of repulsion and distinct un-sexiness. Not sure exactly. I just know I am being vulgar as all kinds of heck in this post and I am (clap-clap, criss-cross-gesture with hands) ALL DONE for the day! King-size cusses. So done. SeaQuest out!
The Thought Experiment 