Well This Blows

There was a scheduled blogger outage this evening, so I decided to catch up with other blogs while I waited. I thought I had a decent post in mind and was worried that it would get eaten, as others have after scheduled outages. So I went cruising around and totally forgot my post. And now I've lost my writing impulse as well. Oh well, there's always tomorrow or later tonight, even if I can't post from home yet.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: Terrifying Tuesday Edition!

Helob finally ate one of the little violinsts! I happened to glance over at him/her/it/bird/spider and she/he/it/bird/spider snatched up a cricket that wandered too close. Sweet success for me and sweet succulent secretions for him/her/it/bird/spider. Hopefully, fear will keep the rest of the string section in line.

Summer Expedition Plans?

My quartermaster just waltzed into my writing den and proposed a schedule that included planning sessions for a possible return to the land of buckthorn and honey weiss. I nearly cane-whipped Auswald for interrupting my thoughts. The sheer audacity of the man! I was betwixt a plot and a nap, nearly finished with a rough draft of my next novel, prior to the typing stage and he barges in all a-flutter over schedules and time tables! It's my expedition, is it not? It shall leave when I say and not a moment earlier nor later.

I should not be too hard on Auswald, his disturbance brought some fond memories to the forefront of my cognition and for that I shall have a sumptuous dinner made that he will serve me and enjoy most fragrant lovelies and an abundance of pungence. This meal will sate me and serve to enhance his savoring of whatever broth and noodles the cook prepares for the staff. I suppose I should have Auswald perform an inventory of the expedition's equipment and oil my armaments. I shall retire to my den and begun anew with my memoirs.

My Life is a Constant Veil of Tears, Post-Modern Tears

I've been reading through the archive of Pictures for Sad Children, catching up on comics I've missed or forgotten since disconnecting the internets from my apartment. This comic about bugs in the flour reminded me of an incident from two summers ago. I was over at my brother's watering our tomatoes while he was off on a vacation. I stuck around to watch some tv and eat some of his food. The only food he had was crackers and mustard, so I ate some crackers with mustard. I got thirsty after eating most of the crackers in one package and went to get some water. I came back to the couch to find little black bugs crawling all over the crackers. I had previously thought the little black dots were part of the cracker. I was wrong, and horribly so. I drank as much water as I could and hoped that the bugs weren't toxic. I shoved the crackers in the freezer to kill the bugs, and also in the hopes that maybe my brother would eat them and therefore get some measure of revenge upon him for leaving me bugged crackers. He had not intended to leave any food for me at all, so I guess the joke was on me.

I nearly barfed all over the Metro on the way home, but held it together. I guess I've matured, or maybe just gotten dumber.

On Africa trip, pope displays complete lack of regard for health issues

From Yahoo news:

YAOUNDE, Cameroon – Condoms are not the answer to Africa's fight against HIV, Pope Benedict XVI said Tuesday as he began a weeklong trip to the continent. He also said that pigs fly. It was the pope's first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

The pope also said that he is a dumbass.

In similar news, the AIDS/HIV prevalence rate in the District of Columbia is estimated at 3%. An epidemic is quantified as a 1% infection/prevalence rate, according the to the Washington Post article I read yesterday. So it's a severe epidemic in the city. I somehow doubt that U.S. Representative who held up the D.C. budget a few years back over a program that would have promoted condom use is losing any sleep over this serious problem.

Totally Tarantula Tuesday: The Cricket Farmer's Spider

I spaketh and I delivereth...on my own fucking schedule, so go eat a cobag, or read on, if you like tales of large, hairy, arachnids and their complex relationships with their caregivers and life-essence providerers.

Some writers have written about the eternal nights and the depths of the human soul which they encounter while exploring said nights. I write not of such nights, nor am I lucky enough to experience such lovely, lonely nights on a regular basis. I write of nights filled with the sweet, dulcet tunes of creatures unfortunate enough to be birthed into a world of captivity and fear. they live their sad, short lives in constant dread of the moment of pain and poison which suddenly ends their miserable excuse for an existence. I write, of course, of the crickets that have hatched in my tarantula's terrarium.

These are the evolutionary equivalent of veteran soldiers. They are the spawn of crickets smart or lucky enough to have lied long enough to breed and lay eggs in the strata of my cohabitant's domain. I am amazed and bedazzled by the mere presence of unpaid-for crickets in my fanged roommate's portion of our small efficiency. She's quite and always pays the bills on time, so I count myself among the lucky few in the District. Back to the crickets.

I have counted more than seven of the little bastards in there with her. The first three that reached edible stage were eaten with a quickness, mostly likely due to the extended and involuntary, totally accidentally enforced, starvation of last Autumn. Also, they were the first to sing and chirp.

As one local stand up comedian remarked last summer at Live Humans, "it must suck to be a cricket violinist, because you know you'll never be as good as an Asian." All I can say is this, if I were an Asian violinist, I would hope, pray and practice so that I would not become prey. I have not heard much about Chinese tarantulas but I will admit to the great and species-wide fear we should all be fearing at the implication that there are arachnids preying on violinists of any region.

There are more circkets than I can count in Helob's terrarium than I can currently count due to my deificient lack of marking equipment and motivation. I think I counted somewhere between eleven and eighteen musicians of various tonnage. Currently, there are only one or two denizens capable of producing ear-splitting decibels and violations of my REM-pattern. I would blame my recent lack of worthy Celebrity Dream Cameo's but the one brilliant remaining dream of such quality is still in draft form among other languishing blog posts. I can not fairly blame the crickets for this because I am a huge slacker. I can blame them for thinking that my alarm is blaring at dawn, when it was clearly set for 11. I wish she would just harvest the life juice out of these six-legged bastards and be done with it.

Regarding the predator in discussion, she remains calm in the face of immanent financial ruin. She may have lost all her stock and options, but she's still got some living crickets and a slow metabolism. The second crop of crickets to reach singing age have recently begun inflicting their special brand of insomnilent torture upon me. I sincerely hope Helob either experiences a growth spurt and the incipient pangs, or gets bored with this version of Tchaikoveranskhovenonovachight's Third Symphony in A Major, Night Terrors alternate universe version. I would vastly prefer if she would just consume all the goddamn grass that grows and chirrips in her vastness.

I will state for the internetian record that there is very sparse irony at searching for the allowed variations of the word insomnia at 6:43 am on Sunday morning.

Who watched the Watchmen? I did.

I read the graphic novel in the fall for the first time and I thought it was pretty damn good. I liked the thoroughness of the novel, even if I didn't think all of the asides and endnotes, or frontnotes, were necessary to the plot. I enjoyed the heck out of it and figured that a significant portion would be cut to make the movie. I don't really have a problem with cutting things for movie adaptations, so long as the directers or producers don't cut characters or plot points that I think are essential. There is basically no way to make an adaptation without cuts, unless you're the BBC and are shooting for a four hour miniseries, so these should be expected. After reading the novel, I had a short think about the cuts I would make, were I making the movie, and I am surprised to say that I was almost right. However, I was not surprised nor was I disappointed by what was cut.

I heard some guy complaining about it as we all filed out, and he compared it to the Harry Potter movies in the list of shitty adaptations. This was a tremendous overreaction. The Potter movies have cut scenes and extended others in a display of poor judgment and changed crucial dialogue. This guy seemed to want a literal transfer of written word and panel to the screen, and I don't expect or want that. If I wanted to see a movie like that, I would just read the book again. The director has a creative vision, usually, and you are watching their team's interpretation of the book or graphic novel. If you accept that, you might find yourself enjoying Watchmen as well.

As a movie, it is extremely entertaining but surprisingly slow at times. The characters were excellent, especially Rohrschach, though Silk Spectre II was perhaps the least excellent. Rohrschach had to be brilliant or the entire movie would have fallen apart. I don't want to spoil anything else, except to say that I thought the changes were fine (unlike the end of The Two Towers) and the movie was great overall. This feels like a pretty limp review but I don't want to give away anything for those who haven't seen it (unlike teh l4m3 and his Battlestar Galactica spoilage). Worth the bullshit of the modern movie theater experience.

I should say that I found the sex scene to be a little ridiculous. The entire theater was laughing at it and that is kinda the point but it lasted long enough to be almost uncomfortable.

Watchmen

I'm going to see that in a few hours. Hopefully, it is at least mildly interesting. I heard that some reviewers claimed that it didn't have enough action, to which I can only respond with "duh."