Through The Looking Glass

I was of two minds whether I should join, but I wound up doing so because it couldn’t really cause any harm.

Today around six or seven I got email notification of a message from my friend Mark. Yay! I clicked on the link. It took me to my message center thingy and told me that I had no messages. Around nine I got email notification of a testimonial from Katherine. Yay! My first one. My entire existence is validated! I clicked on the link. It took my to my testimonial page and told me that I had no testimonials.

my entire existence is worthless!

I signed out and am cursing Friendster repeatedly, in assorted languages.

My first thought as I walk out the door is that I should have worn my sunglasses. They’re inside, up two flights of stairs. My eyes are already starting to adjust, and I want to walk. As I step onto the sidewalk a chilly breeze hits my bare white arms. Combined with the sun, it makes for the nicest weather Los Angeles has seen in weeks.

I walk, squinting a little bit, towards Western Avenue. My destination is Magic Tobacco, a shop whose name evokes images of something a bit different than the Marlboro Red Kings I’m planning to purchase. As if the universe heard my thoughts, I walk inside and notice for the first time a glass display case full of beautiful glass pipes. One of them is shaped like an octopus, which pleases me.

I leave the shop and as I walk past Carl’s Jr the smell of french fries hits me. For a minute I think I’m hungry, but it’s probably just the smell tricking me. The drivers, usually so inconsiderate in my neighborhood, wait patiently for me to cross the street at the four-way stops on my way home. I admire the climbing flowers on my favorite house and take the long way around my building so that I can check the mail.

Someone has given me a credit card, which is a bit of a shock. I try to push aside thoughts of vacations and new clothing, replacing them (with moderate success) with thoughts of emergency money and a long-overdue dentist visit.

I look outside and the last bit of sun is struggling to keep its hold on my deck. Downstairs there is a streak of light across the balcony. The fuchsia’s leaves seem to be leaning toward it. I look down at the floor and see my book, waiting. The canvas chair sits next to the fuchsia, and the sun is low enough that my eyes will be shaded.

The temptation is stronger than any desire I’m harboring to be indoors.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Gay couples win full rights to ‘marriage’

Go Britain! I am not familiar with the ‘traditional’ marriage laws over there, so I am not really qualified to comment on this (the Civil Partnerships Bill), especially as very little information is offered. England seems to be our main political ally lately, so I have some hope that this could have influence on American gay rights. Some.

[spoiler for criticism of this week's Alias]
That was not a choker.
[/spoiler]

I’m having another blonde moment. (I swear, I really do know the difference between memory and hard disc space…but I digress.) What is the name of the company whose catalogs usually show up on airplane seatbacks? They have Brookstone-like products, but aren’t Brookstone.

Yes, it really is dreadfully important. Really.

When I was a little girl and had never heard of Elvis Presley, I thought that Graceland was surely another name for heaven. My parents were not religious, but I knew about heaven and while I didn’t necessarily believe in it personally, I had a fairly decent idea what believers thought heaven was like.

My father is a classical musician. He plays timpani for American Ballet Theater, and my favorite music growing up was Tchaikovsky. The Nutcracker, of course, but also Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty, and plenty of music by other composers too, mostly music that was written for or turned into ballets. The only rock and roll I remember hearing early on was The Beatles’ White Album and Paul Simon’s Graceland. I have memories of Bonnie Raitt’s Nick Of Time as well, but I think that came later.

My favorite Beatles song was “Buffalo” Bill*, as I pronounced it at that age, and my favorite Paul Simon was Graceland. It wasn’t until recently that I remembered my early assumption that Graceland was heaven, and even as an adult it makes perfect sense to me. “I have reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.” What a lovely image that evokes – heaven as a place that you get to on a train (always my favorite mode of transportation), where everyone is welcome.

My mother may or may not have met Paul Simon once. She moved to New York City sometime after high school and she once played frisbee in Central Park with someone who looked just like him. She asked if he was Paul Simon and he claimed to be his younger brother. I believe Simon & Garfunkle were still together at that point, so of course Central Park seems like the only place either of them could be. But I suppose it might really have been the younger Simon, or perhaps even just a look-alike.

I haven’t made my mind up about heaven, but I’d like to go to Graceland. In the 20 or so years since I first remember hearing Graceland, I found out who Elvis Presley was. I have several records of his music, and I’ve heard countless covers at assorted rockabilly shows. I have Fit For A King, the Elvis Presley cookbook, and someday when my cholesterol is too low I might even try a few of the recipes. I love his rock and roll songs, but I really love his gospel music. I’ve never been to Tennessee.

But I’m afraid I might be disappointed if it turns out to be a real place.

*I didn’t find out what a bungalow was until a few years later when I began devouring the Nancy Drew mystery stories. Interestingly, at that time I had never heard of Buffalo Bill either.

Here is an entry for those of you who don’t care/can’t help with my computer traumas. (If you can help, though, I beg you to scroll down.) Of course, if you are Kirk, you disagree with everything I am about to say, so you might want to just keep scrolling or go away…

I am just loving Wonder Falls. I am not so very devoted to the Buffyverse that I’ve watched every show that involved Buffy alumni. I watched Firefly because Whedon’s first two shows were pretty fine and because I liked the premise, and I was not disappointed. Well, not by the show – Fox made me see red over their treatment of the series. I never watched Jake 2.0 because as much as I liked David Greenwalt, the show had two major strikes against it – it was on against Angel and its producers had failed to give my friend Sean a writing job (though that is just as well, because I love Everwood, which he currently works for). I did watch Greenwalt’s previous project, Miracles – see Firefly, replace Fox with ABC. I haven’t watched any of the made-for-TV movies starring assorted ex-cast members, because they were all on cable, which we don’t have. I haven’t watched Miss Match, because Charisma Carpenter may be neat but I never did figure out when the show aired, and anyway I’m pretty sure it’s on Fridays, which is not a good day of the week for me to remember to turn on the TV.

We missed at least two episodes of Firefly, which aired on Friday nights, because we just forgot. I didn’t catch the pilot of Wonder Falls because…well, I don’t remember if we were out or just didn’t remember it was on – that whole Friday thing – but it re-aired the following Thursday and we caught it and it was great.

The lead (Caroline something-or-other) is just so charismatic and believable. I don’t feel for one second that she is some stereotype of my generation (the actress and I are almost exactly the same age, and I believe the character is meant to be about a year younger than me), and while I have the advantage of never having seen her in another role, I never remember that she is an actress while I am watching her.

The show is shot in Canada and it shows. Not specifically because it takes place on the “wrong” side of the falls, but because actors from Nero Wolfe keep showing up. This pleases me immensely.

I haven’t recognized any of the writers’ names yet, but they all write clever, snappy dialogue without making it seem unrealistic, and the plots have all been coherent and interesting so far. The absurdity of the premise becomes charming in the hands of the actors and writers. And I recognized a Minear-ism in this past week’s dialogue – he has either influenced the writers or taken a pass at the scripts. Either way, I approve. So far, Firefly’s “The Message” is the only Minear-penned script I’ve hated, and I think the blame for that one lies with Whedon.

This coming week’s episode airs on Thursday, which either means that Fox is fucking around another show I love or trying to give it a better chance. Either way, I am going to try my damnedest to remember to watch it.

I’ve been having a lot of difficulty lately. The primary problem is that when I have more than one program running, at least one of them will freak out on me and freeze up, telling me that there isn’t enough memory. I have about 11gb free, which seems to me that it ought to be plenty – but on the other hand, I have a 40gb harddrive and I can’t figure out where the other 29gb are tied up (in reality, it’s more like 37 total with 26 tied up). So I tried to run the defragment thingy but it told me that it couldn’t run because there is an error on the disc. Now, due to the programs freezing up thingy, I often have to force a restart, and I usually let ScanDisc run, but I followed the prompt from Defrag and told it (ScanDisc) to run a Thorough check rather than the usual Standard.

So I leave ScanDisc running and go downstairs to drink some coffee. I come back upstairs to check on it, and there is an error message that reads:

ScanDisc has restarted 10 times because Windows or another program is writing to this drive. Quitting some running programs may enable ScanDisc to finish sooner.

And then there was a prompt to keep receiving this message (or not), which I clicked OK on. So ScanDisc tells me it’s “Checking File Allocation Tables,” then “Checking folders,” and keeps restarting. The folder check never gets past two bars of progress before it goes back to the file allocation tables. There are absolutely no programs running, so it can only be Windows itself that is the problem. So what do I do here? Is there a way to run ScanDisc (thorough) before Windows starts?

And while I am at it, can anyone tell me why my very own computer would tell me that I am not allowed to copy my files to CD and should contact the Administrator? Last time I checked, that was me, useless though I may be. (Could the problem be that I have my computer password protected, so I am technically a sub-profile? I should check that, but it really seems nonsensical.)

I know that I should be calling Dell support with all these problems, but they’ve outsourced to Pakistan and I haven’t gotten a single helpful suggestion from them since. I don’t think it’s worth being on hold for an hour and a half just to be told to use selective startup, no matter what the problem is. Useless fuckers. (Er, not all Pakistanis, just the ones answering the phones at Dell.)

*sigh* One of these days I’m going to follow through on that threat to start a collection for a Mac.

I found a $20 bill on the beach today. Yippee! We didn’t run out of gas on the way home! (OK, so our finances weren’t that bad, but I did use the money to put gas in the car.)

We’ve just dropped K off at the airport after a day spent primarily driving to and from the beach, with a ridiculously long detour to find a bathroom. It’s a good thing we took the detour, too, because the beach was far more populated than I’m used to and I wouldn’t have been able to do my usual squat behind the dune and hope no one sees me routine.

Have I mentioned yet how glad I am that the wedding shopping is done? I mean, realistically, we still have loads to do. But the clothing is taken care of except for the dreaded alterations on my dress. And I can’t even begin to be bothered about that until the dress arrives, so I shan’t. Of course, we still need clothes for Will, and flowers and cake and probably more junk than anyone could ever possibly need for one four-hour event, but nevermind. I’ll think about it tomorrow. (Not literally – just having a Scarlet moment. I don’t plan to think about it for days and days.)

I have thought of lots of stuff that I wish to post about, including the atrocity that is LA drivers; racial stereotypes; civil rights; and the fact that my hands itch like crazy and I can’t figure out why. However, I am tired and I don’t think I will do so tonight.

K and I spent literally hours shopping yesterday. I am, to put it mildly, not a huge fan of the shopping. However, we accomplished what we set out to accomplish, and I will never have to do it again. Unless I decide that I don’t like these shoes…

The little one was asleep on the couch before 9:00. I had been dead on my feet for hours at that point, and was perfectly happy to retire to our bedroom and let her sleep (though I did make her move upstairs to her bed, which is much better than our couch). I read for not more than half an hour before passing into a weird dream state. Frankly, it’s a miracle that either of us even made it through dinner – I think only the fact that it was Thai take-away kept us going. YUM!

It is a perfectly lovely day. I plan to waste most of it sitting inside, cowering from the dreaded sun. I have a grudge against it at the moment for the giganto headache I walked away from Melrose with.