redthroatedloon

So in an effort to make up for a couple of years of no work, I've overloaded myself, and I think I'm already burning out a bit. (Look at all the time I spend here reading fanfic. Productive? Not likely.)

So my boss at my thank-God-I-have-it steady freelance gig is going on vacation, as is his boss, and so he asks me and two others to stand in for him for the week. Of course, I say yes -- and so far, I've had to edit one person's newsletter, another's column (and now I'm going to be looking at her newsletter, too), and ran a third through an update problem. And my boss hasn't even left yet.

And I've got another gig that I'm sort of behind on (although since I found a nasty virus on their site and told them about it, I think I'm entitled to a bit of leeway there), and another that I'm dreadfully behind on.

And Significant Other has a very bad cold and is miserable.

Bleh. I don't care. Toss the fanfic my way. Might as well let the stuff pile up a bit more...

Okay, I'm going to start a new LJ group having to do with the music of the 1920s and 1930s. My Significant Other has obtained a collection of the songs that were listed in a book written by somebody named Whitburn -- apparently a bunch of fans got together online and came together with a list of the definitive versions of all these wonderful popular and jazz numbers.

They're great -- they're bouncy and weird and political (especially the 1929 songs, which are overwhelmingly about booze and money) and some of them are downright filthy. They make me happy just to listen to them. And nobody can wail like Bessie Smith. ("I ain't got nobody, and nobody cares for me...")

(It occurs to me that, in a place as large as LJ, there may very well be some folks into the music of the 1920s. Better search 'em out>0

The 911 Commission has come to New York City, and are starting to explore exactly what happened. I'm watching it on television while I work. The first gentleman is now laying out the facts in a carefully dispassionate voice. Unexpectedly (because I was safe at home when the towers fell), it's making me feel rather tense. My neighbors three houses over lost their son; I wonder if they're watching.

I just found out that my colleague Patrick died a week ago Monday. He was 43 years old.

Forty fucking three years old. With a wife and two kids. Of a heart attack.

I first worked with Pat back in 1988 at a magazine called Personal Computing, which was located in New Jersey. I lived in Brooklyn with no car, so I used to get rides from a fellow Brooklynite who, however, was an observant Jew, so on Fridays I'd get a ride home from Pat. He lived in Queens, so he'd drop me off in Manhattan just before he took the bridge into Queens, and I'd take the subway the rest of the way.

Pat was one of the most laid-back guys I knew. Good writer, good editor, met all his deadlines, and just the nicest, sweetest guy... The only time I ever saw him lose his temper was when we were driving south on the FDR drive and somebody cut him off. He'd apparently had a bad day at work, and so he started playing chicken with the guy, cutting him off and being cut off for several miles. When we finally pulled over so I could get out, I stared at him with my best cold-as-ice furious face and said, "You are not going to do this again when I'm in your car." He apologized profusely, and said he'd never do it again. And he didn't.

When that magazine closed, we both got jobs at the same Ziff publication, and worked together until the mid-1990s, when he got a job elsewhere, and I (having been laid off) went freelance. Haven't kept in touch, except loosely by the network of old friends.

But even if I hadn't actually talked to him in several years, I remember him clearly. And remember him well.

Last night, the Significant Other and I threw a party for several of our friends at which we showed what has to be the weird Russia scifi movie around: Kin-Dza-Dza. It's sort of a Soviet version of Hitchhiker's Guide. Two guys accidentally get transported to another planet, where "Koo," is the most used term in the language, and matches are the most valuable form of currency -- and then it starts to get weird. Wonderful stuff.

The only real problem is that it is not available in any English language version. We managed to get hold of a copy that some British fans subtitled, but as far as I know, the Internet is the only way to get hold of this thing -- unless you can find it in a Russian deli/neighborhood, but then you won't have the subtitles.

Even all the fan sites for this one is in Russian. There's one that features some stills, and another that seems to have the script, including some dialogue files.

Koo.

So last night the Significant Other and I are watching the DVD version of The Warrior, and the narrators for this segment are Peter DeLuise (who is always fun) and Dan Shea (stunt double, stunt coordinator, and Guy With Glasses), and if we thought Peter DeLuise was weird by himself, the two of them are salacious to the point that I am giggling all over my vegetables. Besides the commentaries on how well-built the various Jaffa actors are, and what a good-looking boy "the Shankster" is, we get several admiring comments on "pipes." "There's whatsername," (I don't remember the name) Shea says. "Look at those pipes." "Yeah, they've all got great pipes," says DeLuise.

Okay, so if anybody knows what the heck they are talking about, please let me know. We've already ruled out breasts and pecs; I think it's those muscles that stand out when you're really into physical stuff, but I'm not sure...

Ex-Goddess in Fred's Body (to Wesley): You don't worship me as a god, do you?

Significant Other (admiring the ex-goddess's leather eveningwear): He might if you keep dressing like that.

So we watched the last episode on our current NetFlix Stargate DVD -- Fail Safe, an okay, if somewhat scientifically questionable, episode -- and I suddenly realize that the next one is going to be the last DVD for Season 5. Which means that, first, I'm going to have to sit through the commentary for Meridian, which I'm not totally sure I want to (the directors and writers tend to spend a lot of time justifying their choices, and I'm not sure I want to listen to 40 minutes of why it was a good idea to introduce Jonas in that manner), and second, we're about to embark on the DVDs for Season 6, which on the whole I found dreadfully boring.

It would be all too depressing, except that the Spike channel (a name I find unfortunate, since I associate it with sexy platinum-blond vampires, and the network seems geared toward male morons) has just started running Star Trek: DS9 from the beginning, and I'm rediscovering why I enjoyed that series so much. It was one of the few series of the time that tried to use political and religious intrigue as plot points instead of space ships.

A relative of mine recently sent out an email broadcast. This isn't unusual; this woman usually irritates me with her broadcasts -- I hate having my email clogged up by them -- but this one caught my eye.

Apparently (and it was true when I tried it), when you type the word "Jew" into Google, the list is topped by a viciously anti-semitic site called Jew Watch.

Somebody is circulating a probably useless petition to get the site off Google; I vastly prefer the folks who are including links to the definition for Jew at Wikipedia in their blogs and sites in order to move Jew Watch down the list. So this is my contribution.

So Kate, from three houses down, rings our doorbell at 11:30 p.m., just as I'm cleaning up after my S.O. has finished putting two potato puddings in the oven (one for my mother's seder, one for ours). Even in Brooklyn, people coming by at 11:30 p.m. is not usual, so my inner alarm bells immediately go off.

Kate, a rotund young woman in her late 20s with a heart too large for her own good, is standing at the door, distraught. She found a cat on the sidewalk that had obviously been hurt, and took it home (she's got 11 of her own). She called her vet, who told her to give the cat a quarter of an aspirin and that he'd come in early in the morning to see it. Kate's exhausted from studying for a midterm and from coming off a court case (she's always on trial for some demonstration or other; she spends her life getting arrested), and she's not sure whether she shouldn't just take the cat to the emergency animal hospital, but she just can't afford it. So she bursts into tears.

Poor thing. We give her the aspirin, and listen to her stories, and say soothing things, and try tactfully to suggest that if the cat doesn't make it through the night, she shouldn't blame herself. She seems a bit better when she leaves, but aside from the aspirin, there's not a whole lot we can do.

People like that make me feel terribly selfish. But at the same time, they have so much trouble making it through the world.