While I was watching The Amazing Race[1] last night, I noticed something amusing during one of the commercials. Thanks to the magic of DVR, I was able to rewind it and get the exact wording:
…Patients also taking aspirin and the elderly are at increased risk for stomach bleeding and ulcers.
So if you are eating elderly people, lay off the Celebrex!
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[1] I was sad to see Uchenna and Joyce go. They have been favorites of mine since the first time they were on the show. Why, oh why, couldn’t it have been Charla and Mirna? They make my ears bleed. I cringe when they start talking to anyone they think isn’t fluent in English–their pidgin English and exaggerated accents are painful and embarrassing.
Doodle
gel pen on 90lb Stonehenge paper
7 1/2 x 5 5/8 inches
I usually doodle in front of the television. This evening, as I was getting out my pens, that stupid Cheerios commercial with the Donovan song came on. I adore the song in the commercial, but I’m kind of disgusted that it’s being used to pimp a breakfast food. O ick.
Anyway, if you aren’t familiar with the song, give it a listen. It’s very nearly perfect in every way, I think, and you can probably see why it appeals to me. Little boats and circles and all… There really is a method to my madness.
Little pebble upon the sand
Now you’re lying here in my hand
How many years
Have you been here?
Little human upon the sand
From where I’m lying
Here in your hand
You to me are but a passing breeze
The sun will always, shine where you stand
Depending in which land
You may find yourself
Now you have my blessing, go your way
Happiness runs in a circular motion
Thought is like a little boat upon the sea
Everybody is a part of everything anyway
You can have everything if you let yourself be
We had another meeting-slash-training-session today. This one was, thankfully, only an hour long, but that’s an hour of my life I’ll never get back. Damn! So, I did a little more doodling at the bottom of the previous doodle’s page, which explains the swirlies along the top border.
This may be as close to arting as I get today. I just don’t think I’m in the mood to mess with it. We found out this morning that one of our coworkers was in a coma, and was not going to come out of it. She died at 1:00 this afternoon. I didn’t know her well, but it’s still kind of weird and sobering to think that someone I saw on Friday is gone today. Poof! Just like that.
And that, such as it is, is the news of the day.
A man in my shoes runs a light and
All the papers lied tonight
But falling over you
Is the news of the day
Angels fall like rain
And love (love, love)
Is all of heaven away
(I always did love that Psychedelic Furs song, so it seems sort of fitting that it’s stuck in my head tonight.)
Seen at the gas station this ayem: old Pontiac Sunbird with a large steel hasp and padlock securing the hood. It was not entirely unlike this. The car’s back end was plastered with surfer-tattoo-heavy metal type bumper stickers. Duuuude!
You’ve heard the ridiculous “The internet is a series of tubes” story? Well, now you can get the shirt! I really want one. They’re hand screened and numbered, and well worth the $20. Proceeds go to benefit community radio, so it’s for a very good cause.
I’ve seen three red foxes this week–one on my road and two in Bloomington. I think, to see foxes, you need to be out and about at about a half hour before sunrise. They seem to be heading home at about that time.
There was a Watchtower tucked inside my storm door when I came home the other day. So now I’m on the look-out for Jehovah’s Witnesses. I didn’t know we had them in our neck of the woods!
Misogynistic t-shirt sighting, on frat boy: [University of Chicago:] If it were easy, it’d be your mom.
It’s always allergy season for me, but ragweed is fixin’ to bloom soon, and that’s when the real fun starts. My eyes are getting itchy, my head’s congested, and I’ve got a sore throat. I suppose it could be a cold, but I don’t think it is.
I saw the BoD’s Eeevil-ganger again yesterday, pulling into Casey’s convenience store. I kinda feel like Mr. Bean hunting down the little blue car Reliant. Only with more self-restraint.
Perhaps the, um, liberal application of more bumper stickers is called for?
I have to mow this weekend. There’s no way I can avoid it. The grass is so long that it’s hiding bunnies right under Miss Brown’s nose. You have not seen a pissed off Boxer until you’ve seen Harriet realize that she let one get away. I think her ears melted a little bit from the steam shooting out of them.
And, now, some happy sunshine reflecting on water, courtesy of my neighbor’s pond. Petsitting has its perks, you see. I’m going to be doing more of the same this weekend, so I’m likely to take more pictures. I’m hoping to get some close-ups of the bitty eraser-sized toadlets that occasionally hop across the driveway. They are ridiculously small and cute and precious. Of course, I only ever see them when I do not have my camera with me.
Edit: This periodically disappears, but it’s back, so I’m updating the post. I wouldn’t have bothered, except I get a ridiculous amount of traffic from people looking for this video. Also, it’s fucking hilarious.
It was 10F this morning, which relative to recent temperatures, was arse cold. The slush from yesterday’s thaw had frozen overnight, so I had a hell of a time getting my car out, because my tires were stuck in ice.
I ended up being just late enough for work that the sun was starting to rise as while I drove east to Bloomington. It started as a slight lightening, but by the time I got to town, there was a narrow band of deep orange hugging the horizon. As I was driving into Bloomington, Bruce Cockburn’s The Rose Above the Sky came on.
I’d always associated that song with sunsets, partly because of the imagery of the lyrics, and partly because the song–for me, at least–is simultaneously sad and uplifting. It makes a lovely sunrise soundtrack, as well.
I discovered Bruce Cockburn when I was in high school. I was babysitting one night, and after the kids had gone to bed, I had MTV playing while I studied. They were debuting the video for Madonna’s Like a Virgin, so it was playing nearly non-stop. Sandwiched between repeated airings of Madge’s décolletage was a video for If I Had a Rocket Launcher. I was hooked (on Bruce, not Madge’s breasts). The next day, I went to Stonehenge, the local hippie head shop & record store, and spent my babysitting money on Humans and Stealing Fire. I think I probably spent more time listening to those two albums than any others during the rest of my high school years.
It’s weird. I didn’t know anyone else who had even heard of Bruce Cockburn, much less anyone who listened to his music. So, while it was the 80s, and I was listening to the standard Velveeta fair, I was also listening to Bruce Cockburn. It was like a weird, secret influence that no one else in my group of friends knew about. They were listening to Depeche Mode and the Petshop Boys and I was listening to Canadian folk-y-ish music with decidedly spiritual overtones (I really don’t know where I’d place him genre-wise). I like Depeche Mode, mind you, but their music didn’t make me think or feel. Bruce’s did. And does.
I still don’t know anyone who listens to Bruce Cockburn, though I did have an odd Bruce encounter with complete strangers once. A coworker was going through my CDs at work, and commented that friends of hers were going to see Bruce play in Indianapolis. She gave me their phone number, and I called and asked if I could tag along. (Keep in mind that I am pathologically phone-phobic and I’m not too keen on hanging out with strangers.) They said sure, so I went to Indy with a couple of strange–in more ways than one–Canadians to see Bruce play. It was an absolutely amazing show. I recall him saying, between songs, that Canadians only sing about social issues and love. He does both, and does them well.
I took this photo last Wednesday. It’d been gross and cloudy, but the clouds started to break up right around sunset, producing some nice crepuscular ray action.
Also called Buddha’s Fingers, Sun Drawing Water, and Ropes of Maui, crepuscular rays occur when an object (building, cloud, tree, etc.) interrupts the sun’s light, casting shadows and creating rays. The same phenomenon can occur when something blocks a portion of a car’s headlights. If you’ve ever been in a forest and seen rays of light streaming through the trees, those, also, are crepuscular rays.
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*(Pardon me while I have a Monty Python moment. Crepuscular rays have that effect on me.)
red paper boat 