THAT WAS THE BEST THING EVER SOMEONE DISTILLED MY CHILDHOOD AND PUT IT ON SCREEN AND THERE WERE PIRATES AND BOATS AND SHOOT OUTS AND DRUNKS AND DOGS AND WHISKEY AND THE DTS AND THE DESERT AND AIRPLANES AND CAMELS AND OPERA SINGERS AND AND AND AND MY HEART.

Location: The dining room, sitting at the classy IKEA table Feeling: hyper Listening to: TINTIN?! Tags: movies, tintin

Walking Whimsy by the river bank this evening, spotted at least fifty geese, all congregating near partially iced sand bars. It was weird and beautiful, but I tried to explain that it was February tomorrow and they're supposed to migrate. Geese, however, have little interest in explanations.

The winter has either been so mild that the geese are rapidly evolving and know their chances of survival are better here, even if it does get cold, than in places where they will be shot as pests, or they're plotting something devious and Hitchcockian.

A list of things that aren't as terrible as they should be:

- The new Swamp Thing, which looks to have potentially competent and interestingly horrifying writing coupled with clean, attractive art and some non-traditional panel layout, without pissing all over Alan Moore's extraordinary run from the '80s (not that this hasn't already been done, but I stopped collecting Swamp Thing after Moore left the title and so should you). Here's to hoping it doesn't go off the rails or get beaten into banality by editorial. On similar lines, the new Animal Man (another title I thought should have been left to the perfect narrative closure allowed by its legendary run) looks to be a high quality title in both writing and art, but I cannot legitimately list it on the basis that I can't actually read it. Artistically, it's like reading something drawn by Junji Ito's American cousin and sporadically inked by someone going through the DTs. The degree of body horror present is just too much when it's portrayed in full, horribly vibrant colour. It would probably be an excellent 'thing that isn't as terrible as it should be' for someone with a stronger stomach than me, though.

- The new Justice League: International has excellent costume designs which don't sexually objectify the female heros, while the artist recognizes the importance of paying great attention to the detail on Booster Gold's eyelashes. I may read this once there's a complete arc to judge it by, as Dan Jurgens isn't exactly a must-buy writer for me (but has the amazing advantage of not being Geoff Johns).

- Plumbers. They're surprisingly nice, efficient, and patient people, considering they come into your flooding house and leave you an hour later about $200.00 poorer (but with less water in places there shouldn't be water).

- Falling down a flight of stairs. Even though you can't show anyone your impressive collection of bruises, it gives you a great excuse to sit in a hot bath every night, responsible use of water be damned.

- The BBC's Sherlock which I grudgingly allowed myself to watch after, I believe, three reliable sources told me it actually wasn't as terrible as it should be. While Moffatt remains not one of my favourite behind the camera people, Gatiss seems to keep his more unfortunate tendencies in check and the result is something where the good outweighs the bad. Freeman's Watson is a clever, likeable, subdued badass under a layer of faux-everyman and, when allowed by script, easily operates on an equal, if different, level than Cumberbatch's Holmes. Cumberbatch does an excellent job having Holmes straddle the line between likeably acerbic and autistic-aggravating and also Benedict Cumberbatch is the best actor name I have heard in a long, long time. I also want to marry whoever is behind the music; there's a lot of sharp, manic violin stuff in the background and I adore it. (Also this provided an excellent prod to get me to go back and read the stories for the first time since I left school, which is probably the best thing any adaptation of anything can do.)

- And speaking of modern adaptations of things that were already just fine they way they are, Usamaru Furuya's No Longer Human is great, in story and art, and makes me wish I could find an English translation of the original novel by Osamu Dazai here in town. Furuya's depiction of depression is one of the best I've seen since Setona Mizushiro's X-Day.

I was going to put some other stuff here, but I've decided to spare even the wasteland of livejournal and save it for my psychiatrist on Friday (or not; the temptation to omit certain incidents from reports to the psychiatrist in the hopes that the illusion of being well will somehow cause it to become reality is a great one).

Location: The dining room, sitting at the classy IKEA table Feeling: depressed Listening to: Quality - Barenaked Ladies Tags: books, canada, comics, manga, real_life, whimsy

A Christmas Carol (the real one)
Miracle on 34th Street (the real one) [twice]
Casablanca
The Maltese Falcon
The Good Old Summertime (... questionable, but it has Buster Keaton who is adorable)
Meet Me In St. Louis
Christmas in Conneticut
The Thin Man
The Man Who Came To Dinner (in-credible)

Sadly, tomorrow is a Doctor Kildare marathon so I will probably end up watching more Doctor Kildare movies than I ever needed or wanted to.

I don't know what other people do when they take a vacation during winter holidays; probably not swoon over Peter Lorre, the fools.

Location: Dr. Tonguie's House of Cats Feeling: okay Listening to: Guthrie giggling down below Tags: movies

Walking Whimsy down by the river this evening, we stopped at the sound of "Jingle Bells" being loudly and enthusiastically sung somewhere nearby. We stopped in the dead grass and leaves and remains of snow, even though my ears were burning from the cold, until we found out where the singing was coming from:

A wagon full of happy, singing people, bundled up in jackets and mittens and hats, being pulled along by a pair of huge, spotted horses.

A girl waved at me as they went from "Jingle Bells" to "O Come All Ye Faithful" and I waved back before the horses clip clopped their way around a corner, away from the river.

Location: Lying in bed Feeling: okay Listening to: Quietness and cats scrabbling Tags: real_life, whimsy

The glamourous nature of my job:

Going through several hundred files on a USB stick and opening one to find a series of photos of a naked woman, post some kind of major weight loss surgery. Elephant Man level wrinkles and horrible flappy stretchy skin bags.

My job, ladies and gentlemen.

Location: Lying in bed Feeling: nauseated Listening to: Just Whimsy Tags: ..., real_life

As part of the integration of Whimsy into our home (our being, of course, mine and the cats) we have slowly lead up to Whimsy having increasing free reign to find new things she shouldn't eat. Part of this has been allowing Whimsy to run around the kitchen-dining room-living room-hallway-bathroom without being restrained when I'm home (and also awake).

This free reign area does not currently include the basement for several reasons: one is that the basement is still full of tools, including saws, which she would try to eat. The other is that the basement is where the cat's poop, and you seriously do not want to introduce a chaotic element like a puppy into a cat's shitting room. They will grow angry and protest (disgustingly and on your bed).

As a solution, BFF Matt and I took a trip a few months ago to that most hallowed institution of Canadian Tire and I bought a baby gate, which Matt set up above the stairs to the basement.

This has worked surprisingly well, but I have recently become aware of a defect in the product's manufacturing - namely, whoever built this baby gate did not stop to consider that a baby with long, sharp canines might decide to start chewing the baby gate. How do they expect people with baby werewolves to cope, I ask you?

Location: The dining room, sitting at the classy IKEA table Feeling: okay Listening to: Just Whimsy Tags: real_life, whimsy

There is either a giant wasp nest or a dessicated mummy head impaled on a very high tree branch in my back yard.

WHO WANTS TO PARTY WITH PROJECTILES?

Unrelated (OR IS IT) I have discovered that everything is about ten times better when you can incorporate something called a "death blow". It does not matter what the something is, because you know that if it is called death blow, it is pretty fucking badass.

For example, last night I made cookies.

Instead of chopping up an ingredient with a knife, or running out to the blender store and buying a blender (that's the thing you can use to chop things up with whirly blades, right?), I found the death blow sledge hammer that was in the hallway and applied it quite vigorously to the ingredient (in its wrapper) in question.

It was super effective.

Location: Lying in the guest bed because SOMEONE peed on mine Feeling: okay Listening to: Dryer for SOME REASON Tags: ..., baking, real_life

A brief list detailing things which are not, in fact, puppy food, puppy treats, dog food, dog treats, or any other sort of thing which should be found inside a dog's mouth and/or stomach despite what certain canines might try to convince you of:

- pillows
- Ted the stuffed lobster
- blankets
- slippers
- oven mits
- spatulas
- knives
- scissors
- cat food
- fire
- candles
- cat vomit
- my underwear
- baking sheets
- measuring cups
- my stuffed lemur
- Ivan's tail
- the broom
- the mop
- the dust pan
- mudding shovels
- paint brushes
- paint stir sticks
- tape (duct)
- tape (painting)
- tape (scotch)
- tape (tape)
- CDs
- my laptop
- my DS
- my PSP
- the garbage can
- an ... egg cup? really?
- chairs
- couch legs
- human beings
- skirts
- my new T-shirt with the heron on it
- plastic bags of any variety but especially plastic bags which have been used to contain dog poop (yours or anothers)
- doors
- the front steps
- Mormon missionaries

Location: Lying in bed Feeling: tired Listening to: Cats probably preparing to stage an uprising Tags: real_life, whimsy

My mum had the first part of her surgery to deal with her colon cancer - an ileostomy which is not a colonostomy but apparently people kept referring to it as a colonostomy because 'everyone knows what that is' and also describing an ileostomy and explaining what it is gets gross while you don't have to go into gross details about a colonostomy, I guess - Friday before last. They released her eight days later, Saturday afternoon.

It's four weeks until she sees the cancerdoctor again and we find out how cancery the stuff taken out of her is, so it's just a waiting game now.

Obviously, the person who got the surgery had the hardest time, but after a week plus of going to the hospital every day and having people constantly in my house and trying very hard to be an optimist or at least not burst into tears in front of my mother every time she was feeling not-so-awesome, today I feel like a zombie, despite having a very good puppy who did not wake me up once in the night.

It's a good thing I'm not the one with cancer, I guess.

Location: Lying in bed Feeling: exhausted Listening to: You Don't Know My Mind - Hugh Laurie Tags: real_life