I Stand Corrected

In one of my earlier posts I talked about how I listen to 107.7 The Bone when I drive to work sometimes and how they play that song "Here I Go Again On My Own" by Winger... well it turns out that that song was actually penned and performed by Whitesnake, not Winger. I think I got them mixed up because I thought the guy from Winger was really hot when I was, like, 12:


The hot guy from Winger. In retrospect I can see he needs some man-scaping.


Whitesnake. The bitchy 80's pout on the guy on the far left still resonates after all these years.

Now you can see why I may have mixed them up. Both bands seem to have a bad case of airline-stewardess hair. Anyway, sorry for the confusion.

Death and Forgetfulness

The dead are looking down at us through the glass bottom boats of heaven.



Forgetfulness is a fishing village where there are no phones.

Pickles are Destroying My Life

Wake up!

Stress-O-Meter

I had a beautiful weekend up in Oregon, thanks for asking. I am so relaxed and mellow I feel like I'm in slow motion, perhaps moving backwards in time even. I have come up with this brief stress test. Watch this video; you'll know how relaxed you are by how much of it you can take; I can watch the whole thing and even think its kind of cute but I know I wouldnt have felt that way, say, last Wednesday:

Spring Break in the Animal Kingdom

(Link to video in case you can't see it above.)

I thought this video was funny on its own and posted it without comment a few minutes ago... but seconds after I posted it I realized that many of you out there didn't know what a drunk ostrich looks like and were baffled by the comment somebody made in my previous post about Jonathan Antin; it was the one that a random YouTube viewer made, saying Jonathan is "as gay as a drunk ostrich" (see previous post "Somebody please cancel my cable subscription").

Well, remarkably, not even 6 days later, I have randomly happened upon a video clip of a drunk ostrich (look for it around 1:05 of the video above).

I got into an interesting discussion at work today with my co-workers about where gay-ness fits into the whole idea of the family unit because Yahoo! has all these flyers up around the buildings for the internal celebration of Gay Pride weekend here in the gleaming towers of corporate America. One of my co-workers was talking about how his lesbian neighbors were out walking with their one-year old daughter and how his mother-in-law commented to her granddaughter, "Oh look there's so and so (insert child's name here) out walking with..." strange but brief pause "... her mommies." My co-worker was saying what a moment that was for him, because he realized that for his kid, having two mommies or daddies is not going to be such a big deal in the future because at that moment his mother-in-law chose to not make it a big deal.

My other co-worker having lunch with us is from a rural town in northern California and said that his grandmother-in-law still refers to African-Americans as "coloreds" and often wonders out loud in public places how "they can be let in here". He didn't really see it that way and thinks that the toddler being raised by two mommies is going to have a tough time in school when the other kids find out. His argument was that gender roles play an important part in a child's upbringing and that they need both, and that invariably in any gay relationship one parent would also end up being "the nurturer" and the other the more butch "alpha leader".

Anyway, I don't see anything particularly "gay" about the drunk ostrich in the video (but maybe that's because he is one of the more butchy/alpha drunk ostriches =) My main point in all this, though, was to point out the synchronicity of it all!!! It's like the universe is constantly conspiring to bring us new and interesting things we've never thought of before; and the instant we sit in wonder and go "hey, what *does* a drunk ostrich look like?", well, that's the moment that one appears. So there it is, ladies and gents... one drunk ostrich.

Happy Gay Pride weekend, too, for all of you out there that are into it! (And for those of you who aren't --> get over it!)

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program for a few days of meditation in the woods. For those of you who haven't checked it out yet, go read Gorav's twisted tales from Honduras. I'll be back in 5.

Soundtrack for Tuesday

I haven't thrown any of you audiophiles a bone lately. Today has been a great day so far. Beautiful. Here's some commemoratively obscure tracks that might light up your imagination.

Kid Koala: SpankyPanky.mp3
CliffordGilbertoRhythm.mp3

Sometimes I listen to 107.7 The Bone if I drive to work. They play stuff like Winger's "Here I Go Again On My Own" and I laugh and laugh and laugh. They played this song the other night and I was shocked at how good it sounds all these years later. The second half of the song is the best. I forgot how rock-opera (think Tommy) Guns R Roses could be. It only sounds good if you crank it up really loud.

01_-_civil_war_192_lame_cbr.mp3

Giant Purple Brain = Not Necessary

This is your brain... and this is your purple sequined brain on Liberace's anti-depressants.

Somebody Please Cancel My Cable Subscription

Just to confirm for you any suspicions you may have been harboring about whether I am bipolar or not (please compare/contrast with the previous post for context), tonight's post is about a vacuous L.A. hairstylist that makes me giddy with amusement.

I lived without cable for a year and a half. It was a good year and a half full of reflection, quiet contemplation, good music, books, you know... nutritious quality time. But since I moved and had to order cable to get DSL at the house, the pernicious influence of television culture has gradually seeped back into my consciousness, and I wasnt sure it was such a good thing until tonight. Don't get me wrong, sometimes there is good stuff on the History Channel and National Geographic. The Gospel of Judas documentary on the History channel comes to mind; I am also obsessed with the Dog Whisperer. Anyway, what I am about to share with you is something that made me laugh until I cried tonight. And is something that will probably be one of the first things I think about when I wake up in the morning and force me to run to the bathroom to keep from peeing in my bed from laughter.

Rebekah and I started talking about TV and she was saying how she didn't have TV and doesnt really mind but sometimes feels like she's missing out on a whole generation of cultural stuff. I confessed to her that sometimes I watch really horribly vapid stuff; think E! and Bravo. One of my favorite shows is BlowOut on Bravo. Its a documentary-style show about hairdresser-to-the-stars Jonathan Antin. The wonderful thing about the show is how fantastically vapid Jonathan is, but in a really geniune way. His bio at Bravo.com says he drew the inspiration for his life from Warren Beatty in Shampoo, if that gives you any idea about where he is coming from. He's not the kind of guy you could sit down and level with and say, "hey, c'mon, stop hiding behind all this superficial crap and BE REAL"... because that's actually just who he is. And somehow, thru his utter stupidity and conceit, he's still loveable because he is sensitive and caring and warm. He actually told two people who were riding in a limo with him in Honolulu on the way to an event to promote his namesake shower filter (God forbid any impurities get into your hair) in ALL SINCERITY, "You know, alot of people just don't understand that hair has a voice."

So Rebekah put this question to me after I mentioned that this season he has a girlfriend and new baby: Do you think he's actually straight? To which I responded that he is not gay, just a Leo (leo being the eurotrash of the zodiac). So of course this started some speculation about his sign, which I didn't actually know, factually. Leo as a diagnosis is just a hypothesis at this point.

We get to Rebekah's house and decide that we must find out Jonathan's birthday, so we got online to find out. It was tough to dig up, and during the course of finding out that his birthday is August 16th and he is *indeed* a Leo (how could he NOT be?) we managed to find this video clip which had us ROLLING on the floor. The most hysterical part of this video is that Jonathan is being interviewed by the guy from the English comedian Ali G show who is being completely sarcastic and baiting Jonathan to make him say stupid, stupid, STUPID things.



Yes, you just heard correctly. Jonathan actually observed that Moses and Jesus and God (!) don't really care about their "look" because they always have long hair or are wearing "wraps" in pictures. The things he says would almost be disturbing if he wasn't such an idiot, which makes it the funniest thing I've seen in a while. The comments on the actual YouTube post are hysterical:


becSchapes (2 months ago)
I love how Rod Stewart is considered in the same category as Jesus.

drewski67 (2 months ago)
This just confirms my belief that Jonathan Antin is the BIGGEST douche in the entire world...

iluvelephants (2 months ago)
jonathan is as gay as a drunk ostrich.


Now here is the best part. What's the good of finding out a celebrity's birthday if you can't compare your compatibility in ~love~ with them at CelebMatch.com! Link Both Rebekah and I took the test and I would like to now share Rebekah's astonishing results with you:



It's the blue bar that had us rolling on the floor. Embarassingly, my intellectual compatibility with him is also a whopping 95%... but 99%... that's a soul mate.

I am always thirsty

when i am feeling emotional. my kidneys dry up like a desert, the dryness and heat reaches all the way up into my throat, makes it feel like a rusty stretch of corrugated pipe like the kind that travels for miles thru aqueducts and blaze with heat in the summertime and stretch out towards the sea but always end about a quarter mile from shore when the tide is low and has nothing to offer anyway except the dried up detritus of last month's rainstorm and maybe a hearty weed or two, that dust billowing out of its mouth with each gust of wind another thin layer is peeled away and swept out into the windy gap between it and the water, scattered like a silent prayer left unanswered grain by gritty grain swept into the empty atmosphere where one grain will be blown toward the water only to be stung with salt and others will just drift in that space where there is no up or down just the expansiveness of time passing for so long that it has no meaning any more and strikes you down with its silence its capacity for a dullness so real it makes all other times and places and events disintegrate and unfold themselves like those little Chinese origami boxes when you grab one corner and start to untuck its tidy folds and realize it is only a hiding place for a one dimensional slice of paper and just like that the box is gone and you have no idea how to fold it back up again into something three-dimensional, tangible, coherent but can't quite manage to get rid of the paper because you knew what it was before and all you have left of it is a reminder of its potential but its flat and now you find its color is only on one side and you stare down at the side you were never supposed to see and all you taste is thirst.

Sick Reviews on Yelp

Anyone else out there use Yelp.com?

Is there an echo in here?

Yelp is for writing reviews of places you go in the citty. Its for loudly complementing places you like, or alternately excreting that last bit of passive aggressive filth that clings to you when someone in a shop or restaurant is a pie-hole to you and you just want to scream in their face but instead you go home and slam their head in the proverbial door to cyberspace. In other words, I've written a couple of reviews and found it to be a relaxing outlet for my antisocial tendencies.

It is driven by a system of compliments like, "You're hot" or "Good writer", so of course it has a vociferous following in which I partake every once in a while. Sometimes I am bored by people's dullness and lack of creativity given such a forum, but today I logged in because somebody named Kia B. had friended me, but wound up on somebody named B L.'s page whose reviews are almost I'd say... excruciating. But hold up now, in a Good way.

B L.'s page caught my eye because one of his Lists he created was "Hecka Depressing Places in San Leandro". All of his reviews are blistering and make me want to actually write more. Anyway, I wanted to share with you one of his reviews because its hecka deep. Here you go:


"After a night of cruising through all of San Leandro's weirdo bars with a high school friend -- from the abandoned Club Temptation, to the Southeast-Asian-codeword-only Club Chanel, to the single-cowboy-at-the-pool-table Washington Club, to the scary leftover-San-Leandro-High-School-student Parker House -- Cunha's Lounge is our last stop.

The Mariachi karaoke is blasting into the street, and Jen and I enter to an old popcorn popper, a 4'9" Asian bartend-ress, a whole bunch of Mexican men in ten-gallon hats and their wives, a few elderly couples, and an assortment of race-and-age-indiscernable working schmucks.

The karaoke MC slams his red fruity looking drink on our table and proclaims, "Welcome to Cunja's! You see her (pointing to the Asian woman, who has on gold-framed octagonal glasses) if you a drink. Welcome to Cunja's!" Jen gets up to get a white russian, and a woman in dark circles of eyeliner, hair like ramen, a frame like a linebacker, and a bag of a gray sweatshirt and jeans, leans over to me and says, "You new hon? I swear, I come here every Saturday night. It's all I can do after a long work week, you know? I swear, Saturday nights are the most fun in town."

All these men are staring at Jen, and I'm staring at the 400 lb. 70-year-old man at the bar in an XXXL purple vacation shirt with palm trees, a white beanie, and tinted glasses on. I bet his name is Ron. Jen comes back to get my ID for the bartender to see, and after she sits and I get the stiffest amaretto sour I've ever had (well maybe the stiffest was that day Jessica and I were sitting in her kitchen and before we went to Safeway to get detergent and to see if the cute boy was working we made amaretto sours in really big tumblers, and I think I put way too much amaretto), the woman leans in to talk to us again. Across from her is a guy built like a barcolounger in a Raiders jersey, and next to her is ... imagine Martha Dumptruck from Heathers, except make her have really long, crimped blond hair, a face frozen into a scowl, a big white sweatshirt, and a deep, deep Mexican accent. One that I first heard when she handed over the karaoke book.

The woman in the gray takes us under her wing. "Hold on a second - you know that song? That one that goes ___ ____ ____ ____? Hold on!" She gets up and slaps the MC on the back and tells him something then comes back. "He's my friend. I'm gonna sing it. He's my buddy. I swear, I live my life by this place. How old do you think I am?"

Me: "You can be anywhere between 29 and 39."

Her: "Oh, you're a doll! I'm 44! I'm an artist - I make sculptures and objects! I'm a live in nanny! How old are you?"

This is after Jen has given her name as Samantha, and following suit, I introduce myself as Brian. She responds, "Brian? No way. No, I won't ask. Okay, I'll ask. Are you Chinese or Japanese?" And when I answer, she goes on, "No way, Brian for a Chinese guy? No way!"

We respond with our ages and she says, "Cuz I'm a live in nanny - I take care of two kids. Brian, is she your girlfriend?" Smile and shake of the head. "Well get together! Hook up! Stop wasting time!" At this moment I notice Jen is totally showing her cleavage. Then I ponder the word "cleavage".

"Lizzie! By special request!" the burly MC calls out.

"Lizzie! That's me, hold on!" And oh dear. Lizzie took the stage, and sang this crazy ass song about how "Mary Jane's mamma broke it down to the Harper Valley PTA" - except I have all the names wrong because I can't remember. But that song be crazy. I want it.

Lizzie's got the voice of that lady on the commercial about how she thought that smoking would make her sexy, and then she takes a puff by putting a ciggie up to a hole in her trachea. Except obviously Lizzie can enunciate more. Or think, as a former Magic Mountain employee who was later a supervisor over at Arts & Lectures where I used to take ticket orders put it, of going into the vast underground network of paths under Disneyland, and running into a haggard old witch who has one armed cross and the other elbow-into-side holding up a ciggie, with one bright lamp above her head and darkness all around, rasping, "Yeah, I used to be Snow White!"

After Lizzie sits down from singing her song about the Harper Valley PTA, she goes on about how she lives her life here, it's the best of anywhere Saturday night, why aren't we two hooked up, nice to meet you Brian, you know, in between dancing to some more Mexican numbers with large still pixelated graphics on the screen. Somehow the men just know the songs by heart.

Jen and I don't necessarily want to leave, but it's roundin' midnight and we still have high school schlepps to run into. Lizzie was already distracted anyway, because she is saying an extended goodbye (like 30 minutes worth) because her barcolounger and Martha Dumptruck friends say they wanna leave. So we slip out. We're totally going back though."


Anyway, you can see what I mean. I am currently in the process of friending B L. (wish me luck). I made up some lame shit and told him I have ADD and that my present me wants my future me to be able to read his reviews but won't remember unless I friend him. Wish me luck. Hopefully you will be able to do a "Member Search" on me in the near future and see B L. in my list of Yelp frenz.

Lauren vs. the Philips 27PT6441

I am my own new hero. There's two parts of this post: the practical advice and backstory. If your Philips 27 inch TV model#27PT6441 just crapped out on you and you don't know what to do, skip ahead and read the practical advice. If you find my personal process interesting, read the backstory.

Backstory
A friend from my meditation group gave me the book that inspired my master's master's master to take up this practice. It's a beautiful book called the Anurag Sagar, or Ocean of Love. It is very hard to find in print, although I did manage to find an electronic copy online. But it seemed kind of wrong to read a book like that off of a computer screen. So thanks to John I got a print copy of the book in my paws on Saturday, after months of looking. I read it all the way home on BART and then for another hour or two when I got home.

After a couple of hours of contemplation, reading and re-reading passages I didn't understand (or comprehend), I put it down next to the couch, picked up the remote control, and proceeded to watch Talk Soup on the E! channel. About 5 minutes later, in what I took to be the universe's supreme offense at my choice of activities, my TV decided to unequivocally stop working. No strange blips on the screen, no smoke. Nothing but blankness, silence.

I waited a couple of days to fix it, out of respect and acknowledgement of my personal tackiness. Here's what happened next.


Practical Advice
So Philips TV totally crapped out in the middle of Talk Soup (so disappointing). No power whatsoever. I unplugged and replugged, changed plugs, etc. Still no power. Later I called the Philips helpline and told two different people what happened and that I thought it was a fuse. They gave me absolutely NO helpful advice, which was pretty much expected, and told me to take it in to get repaired and that I was responsible for all parts and labor unless the problem was with the tube part of the TV since my one-year warranty expired 4 months ago. Doh!

I was pretty sure it was just a blown fuse and proceeded to hop on the internet to see if anyone else out there had the same problem. And of course I found a million other (very angry) people out there with the same exact problem. What did we do before the internet? The most helpful site I found was this one but I had to parse thru a million comments on the post to figure out how to fix it. If you are the kind of person that finds community in bitchy anonymous posts from people with a very keen sense of American entitlement, by all means, go find your people. I am consolidating the post for you and giving you this advice, free of charge, on how to fix the problem. Remember, its just advice and I'm not responsible if you break a nail or electrocute yourself. Please be very careful as television tubes can discharge a big shock, even when unplugged.

First unplug your set (drrrrr) and take the eight screws off of the back cover. Supposedly there are 9 screws but I only found eight, but also didnt even have to take the cover off completely to change the fuse (I have tiny hands, probably much like the tiny hands that put this thing together in the first place). Follow the power cord into a circuit board inside the set. By now you have gone to Radio Shack and purchased item #270-1067 (a slow-blow 5-amp, 250-volt fuse) and a pair of needle-nose pliers whose handle is coated in plastic in case you get zapped. The fuse is right next to the power cord on the circuit board and takes 2 seconds to switch out.

From what I've read, the problem is not just a bad batch of fuses that Philips got a hold of; the problem is actually bad electrical engineering and the real fix is more complex and will probably take a trip to the repair shop. But I don't really mind doing this once a year if it saves me a couple hundred dollars. The fuse that fixes the problem only costs $2.50, and may need to be changed out several times over the life of the set, but oh well.

Some of the people on the other site that I linked to before were pretty pissed off and there were some grumblings about a class-action lawsuit over there. A couple people had thrown big enough fits on the phone to get Philips to repair the set for them, at no cost. The people who apparently contacted the BBB (Better Business Bureau) seemed to get the best response from Philips that way. I found it a bit disingenuous that the people on the help-line acted like this was the first time this ever happened and didn't say anything about the obviously very well-known defect. But that's life. Go to Radio Shack.

ADDENDUM
There seems to be a recent uptick in consumption of this blog, so i wanted to point out one final thing about the changing the fuse solution - your power button on the front of the TV probably won't work anymore. You'll have to use the remote from now on. Remember when you lose it - its always in the couch cushions.

GYEO: Home Garden Edition

Yes, it's that time of year. Both CC and I have been hard at work in the garden, even though the gardens are thousands of miles apart. She asked me to post some pix of the work, so here you go. I'll narrate.

(click to enlarge)

You can see I did alot of weed-pulling around the deck. I cleaned up both sides of the deck, especially the right-hand side where I liberated the Hawaiian ginger from the tentacles of doom surrounding it (far right). After its flowers bloom you hack off the tops of the plant leaving only the nubs. Eventually they sprout pointy little tops that grow up and flower again. To the left of the Hawaiian ginger is another Hawaiian plant. It's the purple variety of ti-leaf. They say it wards the evil spirits away. If you don't believe that then talk to Kelley, who didn't believe it either until she pulled the ti-leaf out of our yard in Maui and was subsequently visited several times by the ghost of ti-leaf past. It scared the crap out of the poor girl who didn't believe in stuff like that until then. Silly mor-MON.


New ginger shoot sprouting out of the top of a hacked-off one.






Here's a swatch of garden that has emerged from the weeds where I've planted tomatoes, spinach, basil, cilantro, echinacea, and catnip for Fikkels!

Darknesses

I'm Rick James, Bitch! All 3 Rick James segments, back to back. I couldn't NOT put this on my blog.