Tilting the Void

I haven't been avoiding the blog, not really. Well. Okay, maybe a little.

And don't worry. I haven't run out of things to say, not at all--I just got done ranting at the TV. Yes, I am turning into one of those people, I'm afraid; I knit my own hats, talk to my cat, drink tea in the afternoons, and rant at the TV as if the babbling heads on the screen can hear me. Jeezus H. Merry Christmas. I've gone renegade on my Ted Nugent-style Republican husband. I keep bees, for god's sake. What the hell is this world coming to? I think I'll start carrying firearms, eating acid, and rename my house the Owl Farm, and when I croak you can shoot my remains out of a cannon, but only if you're Johnny damn Depp.

I got to a sticky patch on the novel, so I gave it a break for a few days. Now I'm back on the horse and heading for the electrified fence in my soaking-wet steel plate armor (maybe). Let's hope the current is on, shall we? Not that it matters one iota, but that's where we are. Churning and turning in the widening gyre.

I just finished watching X Men 3 Infinity, or whateverthefuck. I did watch it last year at a friend's house, but I was possibly drunk off my ass, because I sure as hell don't remember it. The only AND I MEAN ONLY thing worth watching in it, besides Ian McKellan's voice (which I know you can't watch, duh), is Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Honestly, I can't really watch him in any other role now. HE DEFINES WOLVERINE. Whatever the hell that means--that character never made any sense anyway--and neither did this movie. Hugh Jackman is a skinny, weak-jawed nasal-voiced Australian who happens to be able to dance and looks sort of good in costume--but as Wolverine, he's an improvement. Especially since the comic-book Wolvie is only 5'3", while Jackman tends to be a little taller. HAH! And you guys thought you had the market cornered on sexism in comic books, din'cha? All them boobs and such in spandex costumes--well, us girls were getting our jollies too, but in a different way. Or not. Anyway. The movie was IMPOSSIBLY terrible and yet pretty good to watch, if that makes any sense. And when Magneto gets his powers yanked and then goes "WHAT HAVE I DONE?" and Wolverine is forced to kill the Phoenix (again) and goes "NOOOOOOOO!" I nearly upchucked my dinner. Apparently, bathos is just peachy as long as you have the CGI and sexy bodies to back it up. And what the hell were half those characters and subplots about, anyway? I tried really hard to care, but the care, it started slipping away some time around whenever the winged guy showed up and was all cool but very, very superfluous--along with 9/10ths of the rest of the film.

Um. But I digress. I did watch the movie, after all. I also watched part of a documentary about Tommy Chong, about how the gov'mint went after him and stuck him in a posh fed pen for--get this--selling glass bongs and being TOMMY CHONG. For, you know, telling doob jokes and acting like a pothead. Seriously, that's what they busted him for. Corruption of youth, or something. So, like, part of me is all FUCK YOU, YOU FASCIST PIG BASTARDS, HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE WITH THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH, and then the other part of me is, oh come on, he was in Club Fed for a little while, it's not like they were beating him with rubber hoses and threatening to water board him. Yet.

So that's it. I get four days off--what a concept!--in a row, no less. Depending on the weather, I don't know if I want to fire up my Star Wars dvds and spend the next four days in my jammies heckling that nincompoop Anakin (damn you Lucas, you stole Vader's dignity by giving him that dork kid's face!), sketching out our Christmas card, sealing up plot holes in my theoretical novel, reading the stack of paperbacks I dragged home from the used book store (Burma Days? The Road to Wigan Pier? Orwell? Anyone??), riding my bike, cleaning *cough-no-the-fuck-way-cough* house, watching House, bee-bothering, knitting, spinning, drinking and no doubt eating to excess, watching the Macy's Parade, weeping over Miracle on 34th Street (the only Wood that doesn't float!), shopping maybe, drinking again and probably more reading (Anna Karenina? Simenon?). Damn. I'm exhausted already.

On another note, I absolutely love Graham Greene and Greene-esque fiction like Paul Theroux's The Consul's File. It's noirish spy stuff, only in foreign locations, preferably limited to the decades between 1938 and 1975, with lots of angst and weary affairs and epiphanies and Catholic guilt and guys in rumpled expensive suits and ladies who presumably look something like Sofia Loren or Audrey Hepburn in sheath dresses and pearls and little Chanel jackets, with gloves and puffy hair and pillbox hats and ambassador husbands who don't know anything about what they're doing with those files, and who look absolutely smashing, baby, while they smoke Parliaments and drink vodka martinis or gin rickeys in the Singapore heat. If I were given a choice, I'd rather it be 1965 and I'd look like Capucine and have my own veterinary someplace like Botswana, where I'd be fighting poachers and smugglers but never smudge my makeup or lose my Ralph Lauren wardrobe, and my guy would be some disaffected American CIA agent who looks like William Holden and is in Africa trying to forget about his wife, who was murdered by Soviet spies who were really trying to get him, instead. (deep breath here)

And, if you guessed I've been using the blog to stall either A) cleaning up after dinner or B) getting on with Chapter Fourteen, well, you'd be right!

Sigh. Back to work.




Bill Holden and Aslan and Me fighting EVIL in Botswana. Ah, those were the days.