Three Day Blur

The last three days have just flown by without much to show for them. I did get my computer fixed; the glowy fan thing was putting noise into the system, not a good idea, so I removed it and replaced the back fan with an industrial variety, and now it's quieter and cooler and it doesn't glow and it doesn't crash. I also tore out the ZIP drive that never worked and moved a hard drive into its place, thus putting more airflow between the two big drives and dropping their average operating temperatures about five degrees C.

What to say? We set up the tent and cleaned it out, only to find that it was infested with these ugly black silverfish-like bugs. The apples are dropping off the tree, so it's time to look up apple recipes to take care of them all. The girls got a lot of sunlight into their diets without ever getting burned, good for them. All in all, it was just a blur, except for the blackberry picking. Mmm, fresh sun-warmed blackberries on ice cream; it doesn't get much better than that.

Omaha and Kouryou-chan replanted almost a hundred basil seedlings on the back porch, necessitating not one but two trips to the gardening store to pick up long planting buckets. They're now growing on the back porch, looking shockingly healthy. I need to go back to the gardening store sometime soon and pick up some stakes for the apple tree.

I enjoyed myself. I did nothing and went nowhere, and for once it felt okay to tell the world to shove off and let me fold paper airplanes for my kids.

Tim Curry does not rock.

Apparently, in the early 1980s, trying to escape his typecast as Frank N. Furter, Tim Curry made a pass at a rock album entitled Fearless. Well, yeah, he'd have to be, since he'd be following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner, the same trail later followed by David Hasselhoff and, most recently, Steven Segal.

It's... not rock. It's funny in places, but it doesn't hang together as well as one might hope from Mr. Curry. I Do The Rock is an amusing riff on the culture of the time when it was recorded, but some of it might be forgotten by now. Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire makes better of his voice talents as an actor than as a singer. Some pieces, like Paradise Garage, just fall apart because there's nothing behind him but lame jokes and an average studio band. Only the saxaphonist really stands out.

On the whole, not a great album. Kinda too bad; I really like him as an actor.

They drilled holes in my damned teeth!

I can't remember what X-Files that line, "They drilled holes in my damned teeth!", is from, but it's on one of the soundtracks. And the Klaatu song I'm listening to has, as one reviewer put it, "backing vocals that sound like a bunch of horny alien girls." And the problem with that would be... ?

I had dental work this morning. After one of my molars came out last year, my teeth shifted, left a big gap between two where, well, where sugary things got stuck and caused rot so the gap had to be closed up. It hurts like John Tesh's musicianship and isn't nearly as lucrative. Despite the novocaine cancelling out even the tiniest of pain, it was a stressful morning; I got isometric exercise just being tense in the damn chair. But my dentist is quite professional and had me in and out of there in an hour or so. It wasn't until two in the afternoon or so that I could drink coffee without drooling myself.

And the pain has been distracting. I haven't gotten much done in the way of work. Grr...

Writing life: Where Ideas Come From, Part IX

I stumbled today upon the Grand List of Overused Science Fiction Clichés. My first reaction? Print it out and attack it with a highlighter: green for things I've done, orange for things I've parodied or Shakespeared, and yellow for the ones I haven't tried yet.