If you put your hand..there, I swear you won't regret it.

I don’t really come here to say anything spectacular. Is that an obvious statement, or do you feel it saved you digging through the mire and saved you some time? The weather was nice enough this weekend to spend an enjoyable amount of time traipsing through the Swan Point Cemetery. UglyAgnes thinks it’s funny to try and break into crypts. She thinks there will be dead bodies lying in wait for her. She’s a vampire. Of fun! We watched “Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo” and it was 100% better than I thought it would be, a point not hard to believe given I felt it would have been the worst comedy I’d seen since “Puddle Jumpers” (which in itself wasn’t that bad, just not that good). Anyway, Deuce was 50 times better than the Dukes of Hazard movie. That was awful. There were a few funny moments, but for a movie based on a lame tv show, even I felt it was too crude. I’d rather see a crude movie divorced of any ties to something usually slated as family entertainment. The translation doesn’t work. I also watched a French film that tried to blend too many film making techniques together. Some of it really worked, reinventing a future a-la Blade Runner that made me excited, but the other parts dipped into the low budget end of effects making, drawing away from the overall initial excitement I felt about watching it. I hope this guy makes another movie that ditches the mistakes, because the parts that worked were stunning. We went to the Purgatory Chasm, but I wouldn’t go in it because it was covered in snow, ice and slush and I was wearing pants I wear to work and didn’t feel like getting them ruined. I’ll return when it’s not so covered in snow and the sign next to it doesn’t say ‘closed.’ We saw “Hostel” a week or so ago. It was really great. A lot of T&A I had to sit through, but I think it was overkill in order to be funny, and most likely to entice underage viewers. I mean, I think that’s ok. Fifteen year old boys like that kind of thing. It didn’t hurt me, I turned out pretty messed up, and that’s the norm. I think I’ve put about 15 novels on my Palm, and a bunch of WSJ, Newsweek articles. Good for those moments waiting at the Lincoln Marshall’s while someone is trying on jeans. Also loaded Tetris on it, as every single piece of electronic equipment I have that is capable of playing a port of this game has it on there. I’d put it on my flesh if it was animated. I have a long meeting to go to today so I can’t really get it together to start working on anything in particular. That’s why I’m here. If you wanted to know how you look today, my answer is simple: awful.

Before the boring recap of my breakfast, this.

From beyond the great void, I return. The weekend blew up in a rather quick way, but there weren’t that many details so it will be easy to recap the whole thing. Friday I nerved through the award ceremony where I got my hands on my prize check. Is it wrong to keep your eyes on the prize? I don’t think so, especially given my lack of enthusiasm when thrust into a crowded situation like that, people breathing down your neck and watching you. And it’s not your performance, so it makes a difference. Give me half a second to bomb with my own material, fine, someone else’s’, I’m not having it. Went out for a few drinks after that which was fun. Saturday was prep time for the party that night. Not that I had much to prep except the music play list, so obviously that was easy. I can mix for a wide range of people while still slipping in the odd track here and there that hits my sweet spot. Did anyone notice the flaming audio of King Diamond belting out “Abigail?” I hope so. Besides that early Black Metal classic, there was the morose cover of “Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)” by Erasure. Truly, something for everyone. Anyway, the party was great. The theme was “Appreciate the Penguins” featuring fancy dress, and fancy drinks. The dress was slightly less than fancy, and the fancy drinks were condensed down to two main factions: an amazing, dazzling, stupendous punch that blew your mind to smithereens and then several bottles of champagne. There may have been more, but this is what counted, what I’m going to remember, and therefore all that matters. I had at least nine cups of punch. My brain was like a wet brick looking at it’s mortar sliding down the street in the rain. Great stuff. Sunday’s brunch was another highlight only because I’d been looking forward to it since Friday. Along the way I managed to watch a few movies, but I don’t feel like listing them. The up shot of everything was deciding to get my new Palm Pilot. I’m several layers of happy with this. Wi Fi, video playback, fits in my pocket. Lengths ahead of the older one.

Wet wire ware.

Well, I might as well put to rest my database concerns: I have finished it. The barcode scanner works as I planned it to, the reset commands work, the forms look pretty, the reports are completed. It’s all done, and just in time for my award (which may or may not have had something to do with this project to begin with). Anyway, I just felt as though this labour should be commented upon since I did put it in my last post. Not that it was ever about the excitement, anyway. Just so you don’t think I’m toiling away with no goals now, I’ve come up with some new projects to throw myself into. For a three-day weekend I can be proud in saying I remember very little of it. I know I did a few things, but none of them took off like a rocket, so nothing burned itself onto my memory to celebrate in daydream fantasies. I have a number of good things coming up, but I don’t feel like revealing what they are right now, so I’m just going to number them like this: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6. I might be pushing it a little on 6, but I’m going to include it on my list of good things for now. If it later reveals itself to be disappointment, well, you’ll never know, will you? If you’re in to this sort of thing, you’ll also be terribly excited that this week brings the airing of the 100th episode of “Smallville.” According to series star Tom Welling, this is the episode where the show takes a dramatic turn towards the future. It’s apparently, again according to Tom Welling, the point in the whole timeline fans have been waiting for. Some main character is going to die. No one knew who until they got the script. You can’t beat entertainment like that. I know I’ll be tuning in. Around here they’ve switched the broadcast night to Saturday’s so we can see “Beauty and the Geek 2” on Thursdays. Yes, it’s true, one lame show is trumped by an even lamer one. I wish Tom Welling would come and do a press conference about my life and get everyone really excited about it. Well, everyone in the boxedrobot fan community anyway. If anyone would like to contribute some slash about me to this site, please feel free and I’ll post it. Not even the best, I will post the worst as well. I’m not going to be discriminating. If you would like me to write some disturbing fiction starring you, please let me know as I’m only too willing to be mean to you in print.

Eat your heart out, then petits four for desert?

Nothing you can imagine worth writing about at the moment. I’m working on my library database again this week, after ignoring it for a month. I cleaned up the user-forms, made them look pretty. I fixed/figured out the way to quickly use my scanner to look up titles in the library and filter them. Now I just need to figure out how to spool those results into a new sub-form, record activity on it, and then receive things back, closing out the sub-form. I managed to lock myself out of the database by deleting a series of command buttons I thought weren’t being used, but they were still being called in the opening of the database, so I had to blindly edit the Visual Basic code and hope I did the right thing…and I did. I managed to change the number of buttons the program looks for on start up, but I didn’t actually fix it so I’ll have to readdress that at some point, just so all my code doesn’t look like crap. Anyway, back to the trivial drivel that makes up the majority of my waking life. This weekend I had some fun back up in Salem, MA. At the disquietingly busy North Shore Mall (Shopping Centre?) I was able to purchase the gayest of necessities, body lotion. From C.O. Bigelow, I acquired a pot of "breathe delight" deep nourishment body cream uplifting tamarind nectar. It smells so wonderful; I’m only using it as a hand lotion at work. It makes my day slightly more delightful. So, working in conjunction with my iced coffee, it really is a treat. So, lots and lots of activity approaching. Not a lot of definite dates and such, but things broiling and the like. I only hope the next ice age doesn’t drop down upon us due to this frighteningly spring-like weather in the midst of January. I couldn’t swear by it, but I feel as though at this time last year it was somewhat colder by about 20 degrees, and we were buried in near perpetual snow. Perhaps I’m wrong. I don’t care. I have an award ceremony coming up which I’m not looking all that forward too. Being spotlighted for something other than an actual artistic contribution really makes me uncomfortable. I prefer the performance spotlight, where I can shed my inhibitions, anything else is like torture. Besides, you have to be nice, which you don’t in performance, and everyone knows I’m not nice.

You may touch, but please, wash first.

I’m pushing through the doors of the new year. Someone else is pushing out, but I won’t let that stand in my way. Where do the doors lead? Back to work, of course. It’s been a non-stop gang bang since I returned on Monday. Everyone’s in a rush to get this big piece of work completed, and I’m caught in the cross fire. It’s not bad because the week has gone by faster than my week off. There’s much afoot around here. I’m lucky to be at my desk for an hour before I have to go off and do something. I’m overwhelmed, so I hope they’re getting me an android underling. I’ve enjoyed a number of days of good cinema over the last few weeks. I haven’t gotten much of anything done, as in the sense of things that need to be done, so I suppose I’ll have a crack at that now I’m back to work. I have recurrent flashbacks of my trip to Chicago, specifically the image of Sonya’s finger waves. Sonya, I had no idea you’d have such an impact on me. My visual hallucinations (or perhaps day dreams as I stare out the office window) focus on that head you were working on. I wonder what became of him? This is not to say the time I spent with Sean was any less memorable (and, yes, for clarification it did begin to feel like the start of an illicit spring-time affair, which was made all the more confusing by the bitter sting of wintery weather…now we’ll never know what might have been, especially as Sonya wasn’t going to let go of her man no matter how many martini’s I poured down her throat). Where was I? I’m totally of my track, but I just felt like rambling. Oh, was this about a three-way with them? I don’t even remember now! I shouldn’t even begin to mention the amount of television I subjected myself to over the last few days, but I’ll give you a peek. I used the useful function of the DVR to record about 20 episodes of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. I’ve watched them all. I’ve had TWO dreams featuring Mr. Vincent D’Onofrio as his amiable character, Det. Bobby Goren. His investigatory skills were put to good use in order to solve the mystery of the Latin etymology of a particular horticultural menace, I kid you not. This was my DREAM. Somewhere, deep inside of me, lives a little old lady mystery writer trapped in a thatch roof cottage in the Cotswolds. Beee-Itch. It may not be of particular interest, and certainly provides no relevant insight, but I seem to have fewer pairs (even though they don’t come in two’s) of underwear than I thought. They seem to disappear, though they aren’t of the collectable variety. Only the newer ones, however. The older ones, they hang around forever. Which is good news, I suppose, because, if not, I’d be bare. I’ve rambled here, there and everywhere and said a lot of nothing amounting to less than, even, so here shall I stop. On a scale of one to one hundred million, three hundred and fifty thousand, and two, I would say my personal outlook has notched up about two points. That’s not so bad.