Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

-- from the NBC police procedural, Life, episode "Mirror Ball" (originally broadcast 2009-02-11), written by Rand Ravich and directed by Frederick King Keller

OMG, my cat has skin after all! Every other time I've tried to part her fur look, all I've found under her fur was more fur (leading me to believe that she had no skin, but just transitioned directly at some point from fur to stomach), but this time I got to see skin with hairs growing out of it instead of Yet More Layers of undercoat.

I think she has dandruff. There are little white flakes sprinkled through the hairs that come off on the grooming brush.

Dear self,

Try to remember that there is a difference between "that's not supposed to hurt" and "I usually get away with that", and try not to feel persecuted when hot skillet + hot oil + hot food + using-fingertips-instead-of-spatula[*] results in the sensation of pain; especially when your "touched a hot thing" reflex is still quick enough that there was no actual skin damage.

Dear ankle,

Please stop bleeding, will you? I promise to never buy that brand of razor again. And I'd like to walk over to the pharmacy now, before they close at five.

Dear universe,

Can I get away with a small time-warp, please, maybe an extra three or four hours today or tomorrow?

Dear Perrrine,

Can I apologize in advance for subjecting you to a car ride later?

-- me

[I can usually get away with that when flipping bread-constrained things like one-eyed jacks and sometimes grilled cheese sandwiches; I'm not talking about an omelette or sautéed mushrooms -- even my fingertips don't go that far. But I did learn to toast a marshmallow barehanded over a campfire in high school (for no other reason than showing off, of course).

A phrase that's going to bounce merrily around in my head for awhile: "the dangers of setting up an autonomous process in one's own brain" . (What counts as 'autonomous'? The context of the phrase sounds more like what I call a 'background process' by analogy to computing. And even without getting into brain-hacking (which I would say has not hurt me, except that were I to say such a thing, it would open the door for some wise-ass or two or a dozen ...), there are sub-conscious processes going on in our brains all the time: the visual and auditory pattern-matching processes, for example, that figure out whether a sight or sound we'd not been intentionally paying attention to is something that we need to suddenly become conscious of, like hearing our own name jump out of a blur of background noise, or identifying a particular shape+motion in our peripheral vision as a spider. Anyhow, the phrase is sticking in my mind for the moment, in much the same way that a song can get stuck.)

A phrase that's going to bounce merrily around in my head for awhile: "the dangers of setting up an autonomous process in one's own brain" . (What counts as 'autonomous'? The context of the phrase sounds more like what I call a 'background process' by analogy to computing. And even without getting into brain-hacking (which I would say has not hurt me, except that were I to say such a thing, it would open the door for some wise-ass or two or a dozen ...), there are sub-conscious processes going on in our brains all the time: the visual and auditory pattern-matching processes, for example, that figure out whether a sight or sound we'd not been intentionally paying attention to is something that we need to suddenly become conscious of, like hearing our own name jump out of a blur of background noise, or identifying a particular shape+motion in our peripheral vision as a spider. Anyhow, the phrase is sticking in my mind for the moment, in much the same way that a song can get stuck.)

Conterpoint was fun but took a lot out of me. Still recovering. The muggy weather isn't helping. *shrug*

I just got spam with the subject, "Get a bigger instrument!" and the first thing I thought was, "What, the double bass isn't enough? They're going to sell me a theorbo?" (Jim's theorbo -- or archlute? I get those two mixed up -- is longer than the double bass, but the double bass has more volume, I think.)

Gonna go rearrange my to-do list again and try to get back to sleep ...

Conterpoint was fun but took a lot out of me. Still recovering. The muggy weather isn't helping. *shrug*

I just got spam with the subject, "Get a bigger instrument!" and the first thing I thought was, "What, the double bass isn't enough? They're going to sell me a theorbo?" (Jim's theorbo -- or archlute? I get those two mixed up -- is longer than the double bass, but the double bass has more volume, I think.)

Gonna go rearrange my to-do list again and try to get back to sleep ...

I propose an "all-purpose counter-protest" meme:

Inspired by Charles Kline. (It seems to me that this could be used by folks on all sides of various issues, as easily by people I disagree with as by reasonable people ... folks who agree with me. Hence "all-purpose". Or does surrealism itself have an inherent political implication?)

Okay, I think I can manage to not adopt this as Yet Another Project I'll Never Get Around To, since I'm not a quilter (so I'll hope that my mentioning it will incite someone more into fiber arts to take it on instead): hearing the phrase "sowing chaos" made me think that I ah, someone, should concoct a design for a quilt that could rightly be called "sewing chaos". Something with an irregular, jagged border, as well as a properly chaotic pattern on the front.

Also, when I mentioned to anniemal that "Periwinkle is a funny word -- it sounds like it should mean 'around the winkle'", she replied, "Pubic hair!". So obviously, ah, 'someone', needs to find some periwinkle hair dye ...

Earlier, I was looking something up in Wikipedia, and got distracted by all the shiny tangential links, and wound up on a Month_Day page where they listed births and deaths of famous people, one of whom was described as an 'ecdysiast'.

But as a result, I've had the lines:

...and died of constriction
attempting a Moebius strip

stuck in my brain ever since my eyes landed on that word. (And, of course, not for the first time, started trying to figure out how to design a routine that could be considered to count as being such a thing.)

Oddly enough, the word 'stripper' does not seem to have the same effect on me.

This just arrived in my mailbox via the Clan MacAthair^[*] mailing list. ("Louie, Louie" is the official MacAthair clan song, which I didn't know until just now.) It somehow seems an appropriate finish to a night when I have not slept a wink because leg cramps & twitches kept me awake the whole time... But it's too bad I didn't know in time to pick a related QotD.

From: "Louie Report" <lou_report @ louielouie.net>
Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2007 4:25 AM
Subject: Today, April 11 is a day to CELEBRATE!

Today is a very special day of celebration.

Today, April 11 is INTERNATIONAL LOUIE LOUIE Day!

While no country has actually made any kind of official declaration, and there have been no mandated holidays that I know of, that shouldn't stop you from using the time to celebrate this very special day.

Why today, of all days?

1. Richard Berry, the author of this song, was born on April 11, 1935.
2. His original recording of LOUIE LOUIE was released during the week of April 13, 1957, which means this song is 50 years old!
3. The Kingsmen recorded their version of LOUIE LOUIE on April 6, 1963.
4. On April 10, 1998, The Kingsmen regained their original recordings back from the record companies that refused to pay them ANY royalties, despite the millions of sales.

There's some other great moments in LOUIE LOUIE history attached around this time in April, but I think it's best that you read the rest of this information for yourself at the LOUIE REPORT blog.

[...]

So today - enjoy INTERNATIONAL LOUIE LOUIE DAY!
Dancing is strongly recommended!
. me gotta go now .

ERIC PREDOEHL
http://www.louielouie.net/blog/

Something tells me a bunch of y'all will find amusement, delight, and excuses for mayhem in this. (And some will find it pointlessly silly, and I'm sure a few of you must despise the song or simply fail to understand its appeal -- «chacun à son goût», n'est-ce pas?). At the moment I'm too sleep-fuddled to say whether I'd have found this as amusing after a proper night of sleep as I do now. Perhaps.

[*] Yes, I'm a member of this clan, though I think my dues are overdue. The name translates to "son of a father", and the genealogical requirements for membership are that one must have, or at some point in the past have had, a father. They're a right friendly bunch. Look for their tent at the Southern Maryland Celtic Festival later this month.

I wish to lodge a formal complaint. I should not be dealing with "wake up feeling like I'm drowning in snot" levels of pollen at the same time as I am needing to keep track of my gloves because my fingers get cold when I go outside. This is simply wrong.

In other news, there's tonight's dinner ... The burrito, about four-fifths eaten, decided to attempt to fight back by launching a last-ditch counteroffensive against my face and shirt. Fortunately I headed off the shirt attack at my chin and ultimately emerged victorious with the burrito inside me. The shirt is safe and the burrito has been defeated devoured.

Stuffed butternut squashed (lentil filling), jalaneño cinnamon corn muffins, porcini mushroom tortellini, creamy pesto sauce with pink peppercorns, purple corn, baked purple potato, beets, halloumi, and decaf earl grey.

I felt like eating Easter colours.

It's almost ready. :-)

Note to self: stop saying, "But it's a Jaguar, in my price range." Even if it weren't for Jags' reputation for needing frequent maintenance and the "needs work" in the ad, there's just no way the double bass is going into a two-door Jaguar unless that sunroof is way bigger than any sunroof I've ever seen.

But I could strap the bass to the roof with bungee cords!

(I guess a motorcycle is out of the question too.)

"Everybody was admiring a woman who is able to tie crocodiles to her body." -- Maria Telleria, spokeswoman for the European observers who run the Gaza-Egypt border crossing, as quoted in an AP story about a crocodile-smuggler (posted 2007-03-26, describing events of 2007-03-22) [thanks to merde for pointing out the story]

I wonder what my body's rate of hair growth is in grams/day.

But no, my curiosity is not quite strong enough to impel me to perform the obvious experiment.

Google maps provides directions from NYC to Dublin. Note step #23 in the directions.

( Thanks to merde, who in turn got it from boutell.)

Talking on the phone to the Sheepie, she veered into one of her recurring criticisms of my diet (Sheepies are emphatically not vegetarian). She said, "We were meant to be omnivores! These claws! These teeth!"

My first thought in reaction was, "I don't know about that; most people's claws aren't all that strong ..." But then the double-irony hit me: my nails are claw-strong. But I'm still not going to switch to hunting my food (or eating the sort of food to which the verb "hunt" applies in that sense, with the possible exception of wild mushrooms[1]) just because I'm actually equipped to do so.

(She's also informing me about differences between digestive systems of people of Mediterranean descent and folks of other ancestry. I wondered whether I'd inherited more of my mother's genes or my father's in that regard. Er ... until tonight I'd had no idea that there were any negatives to (large quantities of) olive oil other than the calories. I guess that means my digestive system is mostly inherited from my mother.)

[1] The top of the food chain[2], when they're nourished by the corpses of carnivores, as I explained to the friend who said, "I didn't sleep my way to the top of the food chain to eat vegetarians."

[2] Yes, I know this sort of thing is why they call it a "web" instead of a "chain" nowadays. Shhh. You're spoiling us fogeys' jokes.

In all the decades I've walked this Earth, I've never completely gotten used to the fact that my legs have fewer nerve endings than my fingers.