You guys seen Sherlock Holmes yet?


When the movie came out my first move wasn't to run out and see it, but to pull down the big compilation of Holmes' stories from my bookshelf and devour them alive, which led to a sudden craving for Jeremy Brett and a marathon session of Granada's Sherlock Holmes episodes. Then I saw the movie. And craved more Jeremy Brett and even Basil Rathbone. Badly. Not that the sight of Holmes naked and tied up didn't thrill me to no end, but Ironman as Sherlock wasn't clicking for me even if Jude Law rocked as Watson. 'Grab your piece cause we're gonna kick some ass' has always been Holmes watchword for his friend and the movie portrayed that faithfully. And yeah, Holmes boxed. In college. Not in an Eastside brawling pit. But he was naked so the critical part of me was hushed for several minutes. Naked mens do that to me. And if they'd chosen an actor who fit Doyle's VERY exact description of what the detective looks like, I would have dropped eggs in my Hanes for Her panties at the least sign of his shirt coming off.

I didn't buy that bit when Irene Adler doped the wine, either. Okay, so she sealed off the hole she made in the cork with wax, but remember who we're dealing with here. This is a guy who foiled an attempt to mail him a deadly tropical disease by pretending to have the illness in order to lure the culprit to Baker Street. He saw the whole thing coming a mile away. So why would he trust Irene to serve him untainted wine? Oh yeah. So we could see Robert Downing Jr. nekkid. Cause even more out-of-character than missing a clue would be him saying to her, 'My darling Irene, do please relieve me of my stifling clothing and strap me to the bedposts, for I haven't laid with a woman since I learned to shave. I am desperate for your nubile flesh.'

Maybe in the next movie.

You know, when I think of the 'Dying Detective' story and the 'Final Problem' story, I really have to hand it to Watson for putting up with his shenadigans. First he fakes his own death and makes Watson grieve for 3 years, then fakes this exotic sickness so Watson about dies of anxiety and on top of that makes his landlady cry buckets. It's a wonder she didn't cancel the lease and kick his lying ass to the curb.

Another thing: Holmes looks like House. Stop it. Yes he does. I kept expecting the Downey Holmes to turn to Watson and go, 'It's NEVER elementary!' and thump his cane irritably on Watson's/Wilson's instep after he stuns Lestrade with his brilliant deductions. Now they go and find an actor who completes all the parallels. All we need now is a time travel story switching Holmes and House into each other's little world. Cue drama! Can you imagine how House would treat poor 19th century Watson, M.D.? I don't know about you, but I think there'd be a nice, fresh homicide for Holmes to figure out when he got back, if 21st century forensics didn't do him in first. At least if I write it, you can count on me for one thing if anyone's clothes start coming off. All sausages will come with buns. Holmes will never peer at Watson's drawers and wonder what mysteries lay beneath. I respect them too much for that.

Tags: sherlock holmes
I feel: recumbent

It takes guts to let the world know your opinion, especially when it's not exactly a politically correct or particularly sensitive opinion. Witness Exhibit A. This charming denizen of Federal Way was not satisfied with just one controversial viewpoint, but THREE, and all within close proximity to one another so you wouldn't miss them.

( Big pic back here! Redneck in Seattle sighted! )



Witness also the apparent personal conflict expressed so well in three little bumper stickers, which at first glace seem to contradict each other but serve to add a sardonic touch instead. National Athiests Day paired with Trust Jesus. Can you possibly get more sarcastic? More biting? Yes! You can slap on the 'no homo' sticker and balance the whole thing on the end of the sharpest of sharp pins. Another sticker and the whole thing topples into the abyss of overkill. This fine gentleman has obviously chosen his messages with the kind of care usually devoted to plotting a ten book historical series and whether you agree with them or not, you have to admit it takes balls to drive down the road flaunting the kinds of viewpoints that sends most people's dials into the red zone. No matter who you are, something on that tailgate will offend you. It's brilliant. And in only 3 stickers.

I like that Athiest's Day is on April 1st, too.

It was while driving up toward the freeway that I saw this guy and in the rain because this is Seattle and it does that. I had to do a one handed grab at my camera and then I worried that a guy with the cajones to tell the world he resented the whole 'gay rights' movement wouldn't hesitate to blow me a new hole in my head with the shotgun he kept handy under the seat.

Well the whole short episode made me think of all the blogs that I skim half the time because they don't really say anything, ever. And don't I do the same thing? I take the coward's way out and duck telling it like it is, according to barlidoc. Or I do it halfway for fear of a raging flamewar in comments or a massive friends dump here in LJ land. Not that I'd want to read nothing but boiling vitriol, but I bet you all have opinions on everyday events you don't dare share to the world. I didn't vote for Obama, for example. I don't trust the bloke. It has nothing to do with race and more to do with my belief people were schmoozed and soothed by his oh-so-charming facade. Compared to Bush's ineptitude behind the mike, Obama is a virtual God. And it bothers me that some voters DID vote because he's black--they were the ones weeping and carrying on on Nov4. Now isn't that a form of racism? I think it is. It's no way to choose the leader of the country.

There. Now I expressed one unpopular POV. Your turn! No--not here in comments where your flist won't see. Get out there and put it in YOUR journal, chickenshit. And no cheating with the lj cut.



Off topic--holy shit is that a whiskey jug hanging offen the truck's canopy frame????? Dip me in pitch and call me Sticky!

I feel: secretly admiring Muggles

Anything this cute should be registered as a controlled substance. I've been snorgling this face all day and left said face in the care of Beth for a little while. She is now addicted. There is no known cure. Even Cathulhu can't resist. He's guilty of romping around the house with the new kitty and the only sign he's a little concerned is he's been rubbing everything Ninja rubs so his stink rules above her stink. Or however cats think about stuff like that. We're getting rubbed so much we risk tripping over cats if we so much as grab a bowl of popcorn. And then they rub the popcorn. And 'help' us eat it.


( More pix back here! )



On Friday, when we went to see Ninja and her sisters, mom and dad at the neighbor's, we knew she was a special kitty. Her undercover alias at that time was Daffodil. The neighbors showed us all the kittens, but no one but no one could find Ninja a.k.a. Daffodil. And here they were telling us how cuddly and friendly and sweet she was. When she did finally phase into being, it was in a spot everyone had gone over at least a dozen times, in a baby seat. Then we bring her home and POOF gone. For five hours. She has now claimed the recliner for her own kitty kondo and so, really, it saves us a wad. We have too many chairs anyway.

I feel: sleepy

I've been seeing plugs for a fan community to celebrate Severus Snape's 50th birthday over the last week, an event that can only herald one thing; a shitstorm (sorry) of slash. Already his greasy package is being lauded as if it were the Sacred Rod of God. And just when Harry could finally bed down with his canon girlfriend with a sigh of relief, Snape crosses the threshold with a limp rose in his unbrushed teeth and wearing ancient gray Speedos he once wore to impress Lily in case James should flip him arse over tip again. There is some comfort in all this, however. The Jason Isaacs community I belong to had announced an upcoming calendar! And just as I had despaired and was planning to try making my own! Well I might anyhow so I'll have two and if the proposed calendar is somehow missing the nude pic, well hell, I got that covered, right in my hard drive! Can you say halleluia?



**************************************










MEET NINJAKITTY!!!!!!











I'll give you a moment.



Give up?



Look. I'm not messing with you. Get your nose off the screen. There is actually a kitten in that picture. We just got her yesterday, you see. Then about half an hour after we sprung open the cat carrier in the family room, we could NOT find her at all. A six month old gray calico, gone. We looked under the furniture, on top of the cupboards, under the bed, in the bed, behind curtains, in Beth's baritone case, we lifted up couch cushions, beat the rug and performed some kind of Swahili appeal to the gods. It rained. We looked outside, in the rain. We peered behind every door and rooted through boxes in the garage, checked the washer and dryer, and even the oven. No kitty. None. Five hours went by. And then I heard a baby mew. We followed the sound to the chair you see above.


No kitty.


But she WAS mewing! It came from the extreme depths of the chair and this was because she was literally INSIDE it. She crawled up from a gap underneath and stayed there all that time, which has bewildered Cathulhu into thinking the stars have aligned and he will soon see R'yleh and his evil cat ancestors. And so, this picture is a picture of a cat. Technically. It's a picture of a ninja cat and so her name is Ninja Kitty. When she comes out of stealth mode, I'll post more pix.

I feel: Ninja gonna get me

I had a lovely little Christmas this year and no, I didn't get any more Snuggies. If I had, I would have sewn the two together to make the biggest nightgown in history--as well as the most hazardous to life and limb. What I got was a el neato digital picture frame that is right now displaying some pix and art on my entertainment center. I haven't uploaded Lucius yet, but I will. If I do, I'll have to also upload some sexytime music to go along with the slideshow. I also got a marble cheese slicer which is nifty. I've been cutting cheese all week. It's disgusting. And fragrant. You don't want to know. Oh and I also got a new Stephen King novel. Under the Dome. It's about the size of War and Peace and what's a laugh is King says in the back 'Afterward' page that he's so thankful for his editor for shrinking this dinosaur down.' It's about 1000 pages now. What was it before? A goddamn unabridged Websters? Good Christ. I guess he wanted his Constant Reader to be able to lift it while sitting on the pot. But I read it and


( SPOILER ALERT AHOY )

I feel: King--the hell?

What fun I've had this weekend! Saturday night was the big Kris Kringle party combining both the day and evening staff at my church and held at one of their homes. The Kris Kringle thing was where we drew a name and picked one small gift a day for a week, then on Saturday, exchanged a 'big' one 20 bucks or less. Also we tried to guess our Kringle and since I kept getting office supplies and socks I knew it had to be one of the guys. And when I opened the main gift, I knew for sure. But the tragic thing about this gift is I actually know of people who really want one of this things and would really and actually be seen in public in one. These people are in some other universe I'm not a member of and it's likely I couldn't even breathe their atmosphere anyhow, let alone mate with their denizens and produce others of the same mindset. But when I first saw the infomercials, they set off a multiround series of spirited arguments between my daughter and I.

Picture the scene maybe a year ago. The first Snuggie ads begin to run. Like all of America, I watch and digest. So does Beth. I immediately propose that you'd have a cold ass if you stood up in one because it wouldn't wrap around properly. Beth disagreed. She believed the clever camera angles' deceptive version of the truth, which was to make the Snuggie look second in coverage only to an entire mammoth hide (with sleeves!). Also it showed grown men and women walking around in them. I told this much to the gang when I opened my Snuggie Saturday night and everyone demanded that I model it then and now. So I did. And there hung my ass just as I said it would. I felt vindicated. So vindicated I did a little Snuggie ass-dance right there in Richard's boss's front room (his wife works day hours) before all and sundry. I also demonstrated that to attempt to stride across a floor would result in Snuggiecide. Only an individual 9 feet tall can possibly walk around without killing himself on the excess fabric that naturally wants to fold under the feet from the first step. The sleeves are about 5 yards long. I think they used Bumble the Abominable as their dressing dummy. It also slides forward as if it wants to get off and fuck with other Snuggies to create the much anticipated Snuggies for Dogs. I have better results when I put on my bathrobe backwards--better because I can tie it to keep it in place.

So do you still want this thing, folks?

Actually it's not all that bad. I'm looking at it in a new light.

And thinking it'd make one hell of a giant Sham WOW.

Tags: snuggie
I feel: amused

Unbeknownst to most, my hubby has been elected President of a strange and reclusive group of parents charged with raising funds for the school band. Not quite in the big leagues like the PTA and their weekly cookie blitz, but nevertheless important to supplement the meager income the State throws at the public school band programs. You can just about wipe your ass with that. To wipe anything else, you need Band Booster parents--either that or force the kiddies to hawk those five dollar candy bars that taste like a tragic marriage of lard and the dregs of an off-brand chocolate company's cooling vat.

How did hubby get elected in the first place?

That's simple. I wasn't there the first band booster's meeting. Had I been in attendance, this never would have happened. When they were electing officials, I could have distracted him with some subtle, but effective, sexy moves or promised him a meatball sub if he settled for being a stage hand. But no. Let him alone and he goes on a power trip. He says he did it because no one else was volunteering to do it and he called me to say he 'somehow' wound up Band Booster's President and this meant he had to learn to gift wrap a basket. Like any President, you know. Cause the big project for the Boosters is the Christmas Concert Silent Auction (I won't call it a Winter Concert. Political correctness can suck it.)

And so for the last two months we've built up to last night, the Big Concert. It was also our new band director's first concert. All but one of the Booster parents are new. Hubby is new at being a president. See where this is going? The Land of the Noobs is what we have here. No one knows what they're doing at all. First time we asked the director what she wanted to raise money for and how much she needed, she had no clue. We had to coax it out of her and I managed some of that during the first ice cream feed last October. Inch by painful inch. This is a tense woman. Her neck veins pop out if you look at her wrong. I could probably have her weeping for mercy inside 5 minutes if I wanted to and she reminds me of some of the roles Sally Fields has played--those really high strung, sort of screechy older women that are all tendons and bared teeth. Last night at the concert I think she doubled her Ritalin daily intake to get through it. It put her in a slightly reflective mood. At the intro to one medley, she suggested that we'd find ourselves recognizing certain strains without knowing why, that might take us back 'in life.' I wanted to ask how many lives. When she said this, the kid on kettle drums looked at her as if she'd flipped her gourd. Had his jaw dropped any more, we would have heard a faint 'thum' sound from his chin lightly striking the drumhead.

And so it went. Intermission came and we parents swung into high gear. Nearly everything was bid on and we cleared over 3 grand, which isn't bad for a bunch of noobs. The director looked happy at the end and it was nice to see her smile in a way that didn't look forced. Oh and I did something I wish I could do all the time. I scored two huge carafes of free Starbucks Coffee just by asking for it. Charity rocks! There was so much donated, we had some left over despite a constant line at the coffee table during intermission. Go Starbucks!

Oh and now my car smells like a fresh brew.

Plus I have to drive into Seattle tonight. How am I going to manage? My car smells of coffee and I'm heading into the Capital of Coffee. Why do I have the feeling I'm going to part with a lot of cash in the very near future? Grand Mocha here I come! With Peppermint? You betcha!

Now it feels like we can get on with the normal chaos of the holidays with The Big Auction out of our way. That and Nano is behind me. I won this year and flopped at the Drawmo challenge I started. Oops. Maybe I'll do better when I'm not the First Lady of Nerdom next year.

I feel: relieved

My latest Drawmo thingie! I copied him from a drawing I found on another blog because I couldn't not do something with that wicked grin. He's been a good lesson in handling both color and contrast--and hasn't done my libido much harm either. Maybe the next Luce I do will actually have depth now!

I feel: busy

Is it November?

Wow I just now noticed.

But judging by the ads we skipped it and went right to December because in the eyes of the retailer Thanksgiving is an unsightly wart upon the saintly skin of Christmas merchandising. It's ugly and has no monetary purpose unless you're a turkey farmer and/or Sarah Palin. But I tend to have a lot of love for Halloween anyhow and that's mainly because there are few social pitfalls to fall into. And even those don't have spikes at the bottom. How do you mess up a day when you can call a house that's been uncleaned since Obama took office 'zombie headquarters'? Hell, Good Housekeeping might even do a spread and feature your mold smeared dishes as a front page attraction with instructions to other housewives on how they too can achieve the same look for just pennies. Got cobwebs? Don't knock 'em down! They add atmosphere! Did you get in a fight? Great! The blood's a nice touch on the floor. More atmosphere! Put the knocked out teeth in a jar for maximum Halloween brownie points. And even if you're a Halloween Scrooge and pretend you're not home while the kiddies pile up on your front porch plotting revenge, the worse that can happen is some eggs and toilet paper. No one will disown you.

But now we rush headlong into That Time.

This means I have to clean the house. Mop up the blood and banish the spiders. My black cat is once again just a black cat and not a harbinger of fur covered doom. I have to bone up on the perils or regifting and the higher math necessary to calculate the price and type of gift to give based on what they gave me last year, my budget, their budget, the phase of the moon on Dec 25, their decor, tastes and habits and whether or not they ignored my birthday this past August. Then they must do the same for me. Somewhere someone needs to create an algorhythm for this mess. On Halloween you toss candy at kids and jump out from behind bushes in Grim Reaper masks. On Christmas I crack open Advanced Physics for Giftgivers and hope I don't wind up disowned by someone who gives expensive presents.

Thanksgiving's okay. You eat, fall asleep and go home. Sometimes you end up the host and have to do the housecleaning thing, but overall it's not bad. I have these fancy wineglasses that I got at Arby's during a holiday giveaway several years ago and I swear you can't tell. It's my little secret. No there aren't pictures of the Arby's Oven Mitt etched on them. These predate the Oven Mitt anyhow.

*note*

Do not link me to porn of the Arby's Oven Mitt and the Hamburger Helper Glove. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt. Thank you.


Well that's about all. That and Nano and Drawmo. I'm behind on the Drawmo and doing good on Nano. About 35k.

I feel: sleepy

I know. Wow, huh? Yes the community I swept under the rug last year is actually running this year and we got ARTZ posted and everything! It's fun! I vowed to keep Drawmo alive all month and I'm busy keeping that promise so if you signed on last year, jump right in this year and go for it. You know the nice thing that the community is so small right now everyone will get a chance to show off their draws and snippets because I'm extremely blase about the ol' LJ cut. Me and the cut never saw eye to eye anyhow and as mod, I pretty much moon the whole concept. In other words your art doesn't hide! So if the 50k Nano isn't much of a challenge, add this drawing challenge to it! 50 drawings in 30 days!

Boy I don't know about you but my loins just girded big time. I got to shut up now and draw. And write.


DRAWMO!

I feel: artistic