In honor of the day, I've been trying to find a clip of The Doug Anthony All Stars performing Mommy Dearest on YouTube, but that seems to be a gap in the available videos. Alas.

Perhaps it is for the best, though, really.

I'll just post "Joan of Arc" instead, even though it has nothing to do with mothers. (NSFW)

In which I eat a spoonful of Vegemite:

I'm a fan of those pore-cleaning nose strips, but I don't use them often enough to remember the following fact:

There are two brands of pore cleaning strips. One is Ponds, which is horrible and non-functioning and a waste of time and money, and the other is Biore, which is wonderful and nifty and oddly satisfying to rip off.

Got that? Ponds = bad. Biore = good.

I can never recall which is which when I am in the store. I need a mnemonic. Ponds are icky lakes filled with dead frogs. Biore starts with B, as in bon, as in good.
---

My weekend was a good one, although not as adventure-filled as the weekend prior. How could it have been, though?

There was much GTA4 playing and watching, and I bought two plastic saints out of a vending machine, and Saturday in particular was three ways fun.

This week is my normal work schedule, which means I have two more afternoons off during which I hope to get things done. (Invader Zim: "I HAVE THINGS TO DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!")

I'm pondering dying my hair purple, but I'll have to get my Legos out of the bathtub first.

This Friday, I'm going to The Western Mass Poly Meetup. Saturday is the meeting of the Mad Scientists' Union, and Sunday Julie and I may be going to help Pixel open up the lake house for the season.

True, true, true.

I did get *MUCH* better at handling a car in GTA4 overnight. I still try to play GTA like it were The Sims, though. I think Nikko should just get a job washing dishes or move in with Michelle, work his way up the career ladder by practicing his charisma in the bathroom mirror.

For example:
Me: Oh, no, I don't have a car anymore.
Julie: Steal Michelle's!
Me: I can't do that, we just had a nice date.
::I look at the map::
It's not too far, I'll run there.
Julie: Lou...
Me: Yeah?
Julie: You have to pick up Roman at the hospital.
Me: Yeah, so?
Julie: In. a. car.
Me: But...
Julie: Lou, I don't think you're really getting into the spirit of the thing. What is this game called?
Me: mumbleGrandTheftAutomumble
Julie: So what should you do now?
Me: ::sigh:: Steal a car grandly.

And I maintain that if they didn't want you to stop at the stoplights, they wouldn't have included them in the game.

( I feel a need to cut this lest I spoil a joke for those planning on seeing the show later in the Stripped tour. )

As we were shuffling out of the theater, who should I see but my college roommate Laura and her husband! We said hello and hugged and did that awkward catching up conversation people have when they run into old friends unexpectedly but really have other places to go.

I saw the show on the first official night of the tour, and I can't wait until the DVD comes out, because it will surely be a completely different act. I wish I could go to a later date to compare. I would love to tour with Eddie Izzard and do a study of how the act changes from night to night over the course of the tour. That would be fascinating!

I have two songs stuck in my head currently.

The first is Jonathan Coulton's NSFW "First of May", for obvious reasons.

The second is The Whitlams' "Start My Cellar Again" due to the lyric "That was the longest weekend on record/ Friday seems like a year ago".

This weekend was EPIC and AWESOME and about six days long.

FRIDAY
After work, I headed north to have lunch with auntiemame67. There was talking and hamburgers.

In the evening after Julie came home, she and I went to Eastern Mountain Sports so I could try on Chaco sandals. I'm in need of summer footwear, disillusioned with Teva, and have heard good things about the Chaco brand, but as the sandals are quite expensive, I wanted to try them on before buying them, rather than simply ordering them online and hoping for the best as I would normally do in this situation.

EMS was total fail because I arrived in the store too close to closing time and as soon as I entered the shoe department, the staff scattered, not wanting to take the trouble of getting out boxes of shoes that late in the day. I was rather pissed off at this at first, and even thought it might have something to do with my weight and the sports and fitness nature of the shop, until I put myself in the position of the clerks and realized I'm pretty much of the same attitude the last hour before I close a shop where I work.

Instead, Julie and I went next door to Toys R Us, where we bought Legos. If I remember correctly, I assembled my skull-fronted castle with dragon later that evening.

(I just found the Green Grocer set on lego.com. WANT.)

SATURDAY
Julie and I drove to Northampton, Massachusetts to wander about. Well, more precisely Julie drove, and I fiddled with the MP3 player, listened to podcasts, and stared out the window. Although I'm an alright driver, I don't much *enjoy* driving, particularly to new places. I'm very grateful for all the chauffeuring Julie did for us this weekend.

The weather was beautiful and we were able to enjoy it while we ate lunch outside on a restaurant roof. It was so sunny that Julie and I were both worried about sunburn, as we tend to not so much tan as burst into flame, but the SPF 65 we'd put on that morning worked like a dream.

In a science toy shop, I found a plush mandrill who was later named "Manny".

When we returned home, Julie assembled the Indiana Jones set she had purchased on Friday.

Later, the gang convinced pixel that buying an XBox was a brilliant idea (it was not difficult to do so) so Pix, Julie, and I headed to GameStop. Pix also bought a zombie game and preordered Grand Theft Auto IV, and I played a demo of Katamari very poorly.

That night, I had a particularly horrible nightmare. It woke me up, and I proceeded to bear-hug Julie for comfort. The nightmare SUCKED, but how awesome is it that I got to skootch over and cling to someone until I felt better? Julie is way more comforting than any book or glass of warm milk or stuffed monkey.

SUNDAY
On Sunday, auntiemame67 brought two movies: Buckaroo Bonzai and Big Trouble in Little China, the latter of which I'd never seen. I think the people present assumed I enjoyed the movies less than I did. They were fine, really, and watching them and knitting was a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

There was also a lot of watching Pix play the zombie game on the XBox and listening to him swear in frustration. (I was reminded of eglamore's video "Fun in Small Groups") My favorite of Pixel's exclamations was "WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!"

It's not just fuck, it's fucking fuck. :D

MONDAY
I hadn't asked for Monday off from Office When We Get To It - I don't know why; lack of initiative combined with lack of foresight, I suppose - so on Monday morning I headed to work, tra la la.

After work, I ran a few errands (library, filled the car with gas) then headed home to do some laundry and yoga, take a shower and change. I would have liked to have done more exercise than just my stupid yoga DVD, but time was a limiting factor.

It was raining heavily all Monday, which slowed my drive back to West Hartford in the evening. Still, I arrived with enough time to eat a sandwich before Julie and I headed to Boston to see Eddie Izzard.

The Izzard show itself gets its own entry, which is already partially written. It should be up later this evening.

TUESDAY
We returned from Boston between 12:30 and 1:00 am and slept like particularly immobile forms of rocks until late morning.

We had brekkie at Mo's Midtown. I inhaled my breakfast; I didn't realize how hungry I was until I started in on those delicious hash browns.

After breakfast, I played a bit of Pix's zombie game in a manner which amused/ frustrated Julie.

Me, I see the point of a zombie game is survival. This means staying away from the effing zombies. I was very disappointed that when the helicopter pilot dropped me off on the heliport on the mall roof with instructions to meet him back there in three days, I couldn't hide in the dumpster on the roof for 72 hours.

'Cause, damn, then I'd win the game, right?

Likewise, when some smartass, obnoxious punk challenges me to a photo-op off in which I'm supposed to hang around in close range of zombies and take pictures while he drop kicks them, I see no reason why I should comply. I also don't see why I can't beat the crap out of him with a baseball bat without him shooting me in retaliation and then not leaving me the fuck alone. Why do I need to prove myself to this kid with a bad haircut and put myself at risk?

Well, the simple answer is, you have to do it because it's part of the game and it's a mission and if you don't finish the mission it won't end and you won't get the points and... yeah.

It is still stupid, I say. Why don't I get hiding-in-the-dumpster-on-the-roof points? There are frickin' ZOMBIES in that mall. Damn.

But then again, I'm the sort of person who would play Grand Theft Auto and ask which button controls the turn signal.

The Sims is much more my speed.

Also this morning, Julie whacked the heck out of her elbow. It was a bit frightening. There wasn't much I could do... well, I could have fetched an ice pack if I had the presence of mind to do so, but I didn't... She probably has an impressive bruise now.

Speaking of The Sims, after dinner at Bertucci's (I had a chicken parm hankerin') Julie and I stopped at a Borders which was located in a new shopping center. The center was a little bit uncanny valley in that it looked like built in The Sims. Everything was just a little too new and trying a little too hard to look established.

In Borders, I bought a new Yoga DVD. The DVD I use now is a three part deal with each section led by a different instructor. The only one of the three I like is Rodney Yee (I tend to do a Pixel impression during the other two sections: "OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE! Stop telling me to "Put my head on the brick", you leotard-wearing skank!") The DVD I bought was all Rodney Yee, all the time, so hopefully my new yoga sessions will involve less snark on my part.

pixel picked up Grand Theft Auto IV on his way home from work, and I spent much of the evening watching it being played. It is an incredibly gorgeous game. When you run over a mailbox, letters fly out! I can't speak for the gameplay itself, but from a spectator's p.o.v., the graphics and characters are light years beyond GTA: San Andreas.

WEDNESDAY
Blarg, back to work (a shift at each job) and my bizarre home life.

I watched the season finale of The Riches. OMG, I love that show. It was my favorite thing on television this spring, by far.

My brother's birthday is this Saturday and he called last night to invite the parents to a cookout at his place. I, however, will not be going, and will probably not be seeing much of him until he gets his head out of his ass. I'm not really sure if this is my choice or his. Mom is talking about having a cookout for her 40th wedding anniversary this July, saying how great it will be to have everyone together. I think it may be the narcotics keeping her from seeing that this is, perhaps, a bad idea.

Anyway... I don't want to end this entry on a negative note, because it detracts from the main point of this entry: HOW TOTALLY KICKASS this weekend was.

TOTALLY.

KICKASS.

From io9: 20 Nonfiction Science Books Every Scifi Fan (and Writer) Should Read

::runs in from switching laundry::

OMG I'ma gonna see a live Eddie Izzard show tonight in Boston OMG

Muthafuckin'WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE






Okay, bye.

::runs out to shower::

I stopped by my local library today to return a copy of Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du mal). I'm working my way through Peter Gay's book on modernism (Modernism: The Lure of Heresy) and, as is the case with Gay, he expects a lot from his readers. I read one of his books on Freud in college and was frustrated that he rarely translated foreign phrases in his text. I've studied Spanish and Latin; the German and French and Greek were... well, Greek.

I've been quite intellectually curious lately, which is a state in which I enjoy being. I'm not very far into Modernism, only page ninety of six hundred or so, but already the book is inspiring me to fill in the gaps and thin bits of my education. At the library, I picked up a book on Impressionism and volume one of Virginia Woolf's diary. My knowledge of art history is very spotty (some might even describe it as Pointillist. HA! Art history puns! I'm awesome.), and although I did take a course that included Woolf, I was playing a lot of Tekken 3 that semester.

Incidentally, my favorite two poems from Flowers of Evil were Le Léthé, for its unabashed bitterness, and Les Bijoux ("Jewels") for being so very, very sexy. Thexy!

Although I enjoyed the collection, none of the poems in Flowers of Evil usurped Thomas Carew's "The Lover Consults With Reason", "The Ballad of Reading Goal" by Oscar Wilde, or T.S. Eliot's sublime "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" as my favorite poems.

I think I posted "The Lover Consults With Reason" in my journal the last time I googled the title and did not find the text, but google still does not show any results.

The Lover Consults With Reason
by Thomas Carew

Lover
Weep not, not backward turn your beams,
Fond eyes! Sad sighs, lock in your breath,
Lest on this wind or in those streams,
My grieved soul fly or sail to death.
Fortune destroys me if I stay,
Love kills me if I go away:
Since love and fortune both are blind,
Come, Reason, and resolve my doubtful mind.

Reason
Fly! and blind Fortune be thy guide,
And 'gainst the blinder god rebel.
Thy love-sick heart shall not reside
Where scorn and self-willed error dwell;
Where entrance unto Truth is barred,
Where Love and Faith find no reward:
For my just hand may sometimes move
The wheel of Fortune, not the sphere of Love.

I has an ugly monkey!

woe_in_a_hoodie sent me a handmade, button-eyed, purple monkey. I have named him Chisleworth, and he and Elizabeth seem to be getting along rather well.

Thank you, Han! You're awesome. :D
---

Today was a dead bookshop day yet again. Part of me is a bit worried; another part of me knows that come May or June we'll be swamped with summer business and be wishing for a slow day.

Ilse is back form her trip to Germany. She stopped by the bookshop on her way back from delivering a case of paper to the insurance office down the sidewalk. She had a new hand truck with her and seemed quite excited that it could be used to more easily transport the heavy boxes of paper.

Me, I prefer sauntering into the office with a box slung over one shoulder and asking the little secretaries, cooly, "Where should I put this?" It lets me act out my inner butch, y'know.

( Entries from the Aprils from 2001 through 2007 )

I don't think I'll do a set of these in a single afternoon again; I'm a bit overwhelmed by reading so many entries from the past seven years in a few short hours.

Reading these accounts, I do feel as though I have changed a great deal with each passing year and that I continue to improve. I am biased in my perspective; it's easy to see a "path" and talk about progress in one's life when looking backwards.

I will be in Northampton, Massachusetts tomorrow afternoon, wandering around NoHo center with Julie. If you're in the area and want to meet up, drop me a line in a comment here or text me.

There was a third video, but the sound won't upload from my phone to YouTube. I've tried twice; it's odd.

Yeah, pretty damn much.


My Personality

Neuroticism	43
Extraversion	9
Openness to Experience	77
Agreeableness	38
Conscientiousness	59

You rarely get angry and it takes a lot to make you angry, however you tend to lack energy and have difficult initiating activities. You lead a leisurely and relaxed life. You would prefer to sit back and smell the roses than indulge in high energy activities. You tend not to express your emotions openly and are sometimes not even aware of your own feelings. You see no need for pretense or manipulation when dealing with others and are therefore candid, frank and sincere. People find it relatively easy to relate to you, however you generally see others as selfish, devious, and sometimes potentially dangerous. You take your time when making decisions and will deliberate on all the possible consequences and alternatives.

Take a Personality Test now or view the full Personality Report.

To be fair, I see myself as selfish, devious, and sometimes potentially dangerous as well. It's kinda the human condition. So don't feel too bad, "others".
---

I am at the shoreline currently, and I notice I have "pack for weekend" on my to-do list. I am not, however, going anywhere tonight, as I have a full day of work tomorrow (not that this has stopped me in the past. For example, erm, last week.). I do need to pack for Sunday and Monday today, however, as I am leaving for West Hartford directly after work tomorrow and returning directly to work on Monday...

... uhm ...

I've just confused myself.

Does this mean I should be doing laundry right now?

::scratches head::

Today, I joined a community for people with girlcrushes on Gillian Anderson. The com is named gayforga.

Oh, LiveJournal, sometimes you are so wonderful!
---

Bookshop Julie sent me to the post office with some boxes of books to return to our distributor.

OH MY. The looks one gets when standing in line with a hand truck stacked high with boxes at the post office in America on April the 14th. My whuffie may never recover.

Feh. To quote bookshop Wendy, "A lack of planning on their part does not constitute an emergency on your part."

Also, sending the boxes out today meant I don't have to go to the post office tomorrow, tax day proper.
---

This weekend was a good one, if about three days shorter than I would have liked. I drove the length of route 9 twelve times between Friday evening and this morning...

... no, wait. ::counts on fingers:: Okay, it was only four times. Well worth it, of course, but I feel the Connecticut State Troopers should be paying me for patrol duty.

I think I may need to rename the Civic from "Norwegian Blue" to "The TARDIS" because even when I try to not speed too extremely, my travel time diminishes with each trip. Even if I catch the lights in Middletown. Even if I hit stop and go traffic due to construction. I'm not complaining; it is merely a bit odd.

For example, I left West Hartford a few minutes before eight this morning and was pulling into work on the shoreline at 8:30, which I'm pretty sure is physically impossible without a chameleon circuit and an Eye of Harmony.

But anyway, YES!

What was I saying?

It was a good weekend. I haven't been recounting my weekends very well these last few months. Allow me to break that pattern.

There was a miscommunication about Thursday, so I didn't see Julie that evening. However, I didn't really want to wait until Saturday night to see her, so I hightailed it north on Friday. We went to Barnes & Noble, where I was quite happy to see that their copy of Bisexuality and Transgenderism: Intersexions of the Others was still on the shelf. I'd seen the book two weeks ago and not bought it, thinking I could get it cheaper through work. However, upon further research, I found that Ingram had no copies available. Denied! (Well, denied until last Friday, at any rate.)

Saturday morning, I woke up far, far too early and drove south. I bought myself my usual A&P breakfast (melon, pineapple, cottage cheese, drinkable yogurt) and played office supply shopkeeper for eight hours. I have to say, I expected Saturday to be awful in an "arg why am I here I could be hanging with my peeps" sort of way, but instead I found Saturday to be quite tolerable. Bookending work with seeing Julie actually made my job an order of magnitude more tolerable.

After work, I drove back north to find Julie in the kitchen, making me a Mediterranean salad. She'd been out shopping at Stew Leonard's and along with the salad fixins she had bought me a stuffed monkey.

After dinner, we went to Elizabeth Park, which was beautiful. We went near sun set. There were many layers of cloud, and the light hit each layer differently, giving each the appearance of being a different color and depth. Also, at the park, there were ducks! And kissing! (But not kissing ducks.) So that was a pretty damn good evening, I must say.

I think working mornings is slowly ruining my ability to sleep until noon. Sunday, I was fully awake by 8:30, which was unexpected and rather unwelcome, frankly. I really wanted to get in a big ol' chunk of sleep over the weekend, but for whatever reason, my meat puppet was not up for the twelve-hour doze-a-thon my mind was wanting.

Sunday was relaxed, which was nice. I love lazy weekend days, especially when I have two weeks back-to-back working six days each. I knit some and read some and bowled a perfect game in Wii skeeball. Julie and I went out to dinner at John Harvard's, and much more soon than I expected, it was Monday morning and I was headed back to Office WWGTI to put all the crap back out on the sidewalk that I'd brought in on Saturday.

Today was rather nice; there was work and the aforementioned post office trip and shopping for a little something for Julie's brother (his birthday party is next Saturday). This evening, I plan to unpack and do some laundry and continue the deep-straightening of my room.

Tomorrow is a bookstore day, so I can sleep in a bit and muck about online while I work.

This week, I am getting two paychecks, and they are both inflated due to extra hours worked. Bill-paying-a-plenty shall ensue.
---

In springtime, I have a habit of getting a single song stuck in my head for a month or two. I listen to it repeatedly, until the song and the season become linked in memory. I first noticed this trend in 2001, and every year since then, I've added a song to my "Vernal Equinox" playlist. Here is how it currently stands:

2001: Here Comes The Flood, Peter Gabriel
2002: Lovers In A Dangerous Time, Barenaked Ladies
2003: Shape Of My Heart, Sting
2004: Ease Of The Midnight Visit, The Whitlams
2005: 20th Century Boy, Placebo
2006: White Horses, The Whitlams
2007: Australia, The Shins
2008: When You Were Young, The Killers

I mention this because "Shape Of My Heart" came up in conversation over the weekend, and I was reminded that I had recently chosen this year's addition.
----

Speaking of West Hartford: Ooooooh. Shit be goin' down, according to Elizabeth Bear.

There are things I should be doing that are not listening to this song on repeat and feeling sorry for myself, but I'm not doing them.

( Lyrics: The Whitlams: Tonight )

I didn't go to a funeral to which I was invited this evening (another one of our customers died). I also could have gone to Car Chase Movie Night, but I missed out that because I wasn't watching my inbox and didn't see that it was an option until it was too late.

Screw it. I'm going to go to bed extremely early and wait for tomorrow to arrive. I wish I could be put into a coma until this week is over. I'm not in the mood to deal with Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

I wouldn't turn down a do-over on today, either.

I took my sweet time closing the bookshop today, and then I stopped by the A&P to pick up a few things for dinner. By the time I was driving home, the sun was very low in the sky, so I turned off the main road to my favorite sunset-watching spot.

I wasn't sure if I was PMSing or just tired, grumpy, scatterbrained, and hungry. Then that poor Mary Kay consultant came into the bookstore and tried to sell me skin care products, and now I have no doubt that I'm a bit more than merely grumpy.

I hope she recovers.

I'm deprivatising old entries. I'm working through the Februarys currently, and found the following quote from Saint Augustine: The mind commands the body and the body obeys. The mind commands itself and finds resistance. I think the key word there is "resistance"; not disobedience or immutability, simply resistance.
---

My progress on the old entries, mostly for my own reference:
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2001/02/ DONE, but most of the entries are inane.
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2002/02/ DONE, but most of the entries are inane.
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2003/02/ DONE, lots of stories about the bunny and about kindergarteners**
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2004/02/ DONE, and some of the entries are quite interesting.*
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2005/02/ DONE, with two vintage phone posts***
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2006/02/ DONE, skip it all except my definition of "Postmodern Twister". ****
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/2007/02/ DONE, but this was only last year


* Entries I found particularly interesting:
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/705241.html
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/705991.html
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/707623.html
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/711025.html
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/711746.html

** My interactions with the elementary school students were often of this type: http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/554757.html Bunny interaction was more like this: http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/552050.html , http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/546819.html

***
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/831119.html
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/831309.html

****
http://purpleprimate.livejournal.com/923109.html