Twisted Spinster

Oh good lord! Sometimes it’s better not to look things up… actor Nigel Terry, who played the part of nutty General Cobb on the recent Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Daughter,” also played the part of Mortimer in Derek Jarman’s hard-gaytastic version of Edward II. Yes, I saw that movie in an art-house movie theater (I think it was the one next to my friend’s psychiatrist’s office on Miami Beach) when it came out. Anyone who has seen the movie will know why I feel all creepy now.

Sorry for the long silence, folks, I just haven’t felt like posting anything. I get ideas, they just don’t seem to want to make it from the brain to the fingers.

I will say, though, that I got a job — well, it’s a temporary position, but it’ll be for about a month, and who knows, maybe longer. This temp agency from Georgia of all places calls me out of the blue because they saw my resume online. The position is at a place down here, though — at the Florida headquarters of an Atlanta-based company. I did all my application filling-out stuff via computer and fax. I love the internet. I’m just waiting to be told where to go for my drug test sometime tomorrow, and if all goes well I’ll start the job Monday. That’s a good thing, because I am basically out of cash, except for what I have saved to pay a couple of bills.

And that’s it so far. I have old Doctor Who dvds to watch (from the Pertwee era, notable mostly for the odd Avengers vibe of the episodes and the fact that this Doctor might still be anti-gun but at least he gets to fight occasionally using karate moves and swords; yes the Xtreem pacifism of the current Doc is getting a tad tiresome). Also he wears a shirt with lace collar and cuffs. So, later, homes.

Update: one more thing — well, what do you know, a reason to go back to Belgium (where my mother and I spent one unmemorable day doing mostly nothing, as it was a saint’s day and everything was closed). Hey, this is the sort of thing that would fascinate me — I still wish I could find one of those old wooden card-catalogue cabinets, the ones with the tiny drawers that had those hook-shaped handles, and metal label holders for the paper labels. One day… (Thanks to reader aelfheld for that article.)

Big Trouble in Little China is the greatest movie EVER MADE.

Don’t argue with me.

I’ve been suffering through a lovely bout of what feels like dysentery all day, so everything I was going to post over the weekend will have to wait for a while. Back tomorrow, or so I hope. Now, Three Dog Night will sing to you.

Another day, another lack of dollars… I went through some more junk that I had packed without bothering to go through before I moved, and I found my old passport. Damn I was skinny. And that shirt — OMG, I had so many tacky shirts in 1981. I’d had them since the 70’s; they were all of that fake silk “Qiana” stuff; I wore them with jeans. Anyway, you can see by my face that I was really skinny back then. Sigh. Maybe I’ll scan the photo and upload it before I send off the old passport so I can get my new one. (Yes, I still plan to get a new passport before the year is out and go to Europe before the place completely succumbs to Mohammedanism. Somehow…)

Oh by the way, some of my readers mentioned the version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew with John Cleese playing Petruchio. Well, kiddies, guess what I got in the mail from Netflix… I also have the BBC version of Hamlet from 1980 starring Derek Jacobi, which is so far my favorite version. So I have things to watch. See you later.

I just got off the phone with the post office. I went to my mailbox today and saw what I thought was my free gummint money (ie, my “economic stimulus payment” from the IRS). Well, it turned out to be another person’s check entirely. For some reason my forwarding mail address label got slapped on this guy’s check. Questions of whether or not it’s a good thing to depend on government money aside, I really was looking forward to that cash (I have bills to pay and still no job). There’s no way to track whether or not my own check was sent to the right address — with my luck I’m guessing not, and it will take ages to make the trek through the bowels of the postal service before it gets into my hot little hands. So my economy remains unstimulated.

Man, disaster follows me.* Oh, okay, nothing happened to me, but earlier this evening I heard this ruckus outside my apartment building: sirens sirens sirens! I stepped outside and smelled smoke, and knew something was up. And now there are four or five fire trucks and an ambulance parked on the street in front of the complex, which my sliding glass door happens to face. There are three more fire trucks parked down by the duck pond on the other side of the complex from me — and a building which still had smoke coming from it. (Yes, I walked over there — I was bored.) It isn’t near me, but I’m sure glad I bought that renter’s insurance policy. I’ll bet you some college kid dropped his bong.

*Last year one of the buildings in the apartment complex I used to live in was gutted by fire. And the year before that the condos across from the apartment I lived in in Winter Park was discovered to be harboring a meth lab, which brought out the hazmat trucks. I swear, it has nothing to do with the pact I made with Satan…

Much to avoid doing today, writing included, so to fill in the gaps here’s some vintage cheesy 80’s rock by Night Ranger. (Seriously, is this not an awesome song? Try not to look at the white pants and the mullets…)

Hmm… except for a few minor details (like the beer can pyramid — I have a wine bottle and ginger ale can pyramid, etc.) this “retrosexual man” sounds a whole lot like me.

(Via various frustrated male bloggers.)

Random stuff:

— Watching one of the old episodes of Doctor Who that features Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart after watching an episode of Monty Python that has a sketch featuring comic takeoffs of British military types adds a whole new layer of… something… to the experience.

— I’ve been wanting to point this out for a while: CSI Miami’s Horatio Caine character has become a joke worldwide. Proof: in the episode “Utopia” from the last season of Doctor Who, David Tennant’s Doctor does a Caine-sunglass-thing in reverse in one scene (instead of putting on his eyeglasses to make the “Horatio Caine quip” remark, he takes them off). I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it; that’s just a little too meta even for one of Russell T. Davies’ scripts. Somebody slap that man.

— Speaking of David Tennant, there’s a snippet here of a review of Casanova from the Guardian that describes his character as: “bouncing and jumping and throbbing through the part like a human erection.” Yup, the Guardian reviewer called Tennant a dick. Secret Tory voter? Or just another case of the Grauniad strikes again? (IR, most likely the insular British reviewer didn’t know American slang.)

— You want to clean your innards out? The heck with all those fiber supplements, ladies — eat some corn. I was going to go run a few errands. That was before last night’s veg out (corn broccoli carrots on brown rice) kicked in. Well that’s one way to lose weight.

— Speaking of CSI Miami, the show’s tendency to have all its scenes, including the aerial beach shots, filmed in saturated orange color, is very annoying, and makes Miami look like no place on Earth. (Maybe Gallifrey.) I can tell you right now that having grown up and lived most of my life in Miami that we rarely have an orange sunset, much less an entire environment that looks as if it were drenched in Tang. Even when all of Central Florida was on fire back in the Nineties and the smoke came all the way down south we didn’t get that effect. (Everything just looked sort of dull grayish-brown, like, you know, ash.) I guess it’s the show’s way of saying “We’re not Miami Vice, this isn’t the Eighties, etc.” Well I’m sorry to inform everyone that Miami Vice’s famous white-pink-aqua color scheme wasn’t an effect; Miami really did and still does look like that, not like a vat of orange juice with buildings in it.