Rants, Ravings and Ramblings

The Sam Cooke Effect: suddenly a song about a clock that doesn't work any more is the coolest song in the world.

Five Fictional Characters and Powers They Have You Wish You Had Too:

1. Mary Poppins and her perfect propriety and ability to fly whether she's thinking lovely thoughts or not.
2. Merlin (from the Disney cartoon of "The Sword in the Stone") and his ability to pack.
3. Lucy Pevensie and her healing cordial.
4. The Three Ladies from "The Magic Flute" and their ability to dispose of unwanted reptiles and put padlocks on people's mouths.
5. I'm torn between:
 a) Andrew Undershaft from "Major Barbara" and his big heaps of money and consequent ability to give people jobs.
 b) Nanny Ogg's ability to see the best in people, always, even a best they didn't know was there, and do the kind and understanding thing.

It might be steamsquare, or steamwaltz, or steambourgeois.  Steam-late-to-the-trend?  Incidentally, it is fun to substitute the word "steampunk" for "steamboat" in old songs.  "Don't you let your gal/Meet that steampunk dandy/He's a scandalous inventin' man/Keeps his goggles handy."

So I've been questing for a fixable, not-too-expensive Waltham pocket watch on eBay, as one does, and I kept getting outbid (I was fantasizing that the person doing it was an obsessive mastermind named Horologia Cutglass, the result of a long ago liason between Lord Cut-Glass from "Under Milk Wood" and Mr. Bagthorpe's Great-Aunt Lucy in Torquay.  Or maybe it was the Clock King from "Batman: the Animated Series, of whom more anon.  Just as long as it wasn't some Regretsy type who wanted to cannibalize them for some kind of steampunk tosheroon.)

Last week I finally won one.  When it got here today, one of the hands had apparently fallen off in transit (it was supposed to be in working order.)  The dealer was very sweet about it and told me I could return it for a full refund.  While this was going on my dad came through and was like, "Why didn't you tell me you wanted a pocket watch?  I have two that used to belong to my father!"

So I am writing this with my grandfather's lovely H. Samuel of Manchester Everite silver watch ticking away at my elbow.  It polished up beautifully and keeps good time, too!  I'm not sure whether to sew small watch pockets into all my clothes or just to make a small, velvet-lined clip-on compartment for it, which I would attach to the waistband.  (And put a loop for my keys on the bottom of same.)  And then there's the question of a chain.

It would have been my grandfather's 110th birthday today. I wish I had known him.

One of the kidlets was joking about running for dictator today.  I would totally campaign for her to be dictator.  She is kind and polite and smart and gentle and she works hard to help those who have less money and power than she does and she DOES HER EFFING JOB WITHOUT THROWING A TANTRUM OR TRYING TO CONTROL WHAT DOESN'T BELONG TO HER.

I'd take *any* of the kidlets as dictator.  Including the flaky ones. 

Now, I fear I can't phrase this graciously, but if you're reading this and you're going to be in any kind of straitened circs over the next few weeks or months and a small loan for groceries or meds or gas would be helpful, please let me know if I can help.  Comments are screened and I am on PayPal.

Have a happy link (mostly for K., though she's probably seen it already): "Lovelace and Babbage."

And have a dispiriting link: "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

Try NPR-gate!  It'll tie your stomach in knots and food will be the last thing on your mind!

I had this nifty entry all planned out about Orwell and Batman, but my mind is busy boggling.

I just imagine Ben Becker, in a free moment between campaigning to save the rainforest and volunteering with lonely old people, out in the park throwing sticks for his adoring puppy dog (who is a shelter-rescue mongrel, NOT an Alsatian.)  His phone rings.  It's his agent.

Agent: Hallo Ben!  I have for you an offer of a part!
BB: This is good news, my friend!  What is it?
Agent: It is a complex role in a historical film!
BB: Perhaps a film about the eighteenth century?
Agent: No.
BB: Then it is an interesting character from the age of Bismarck?
Agent: Think of a time which nearer to the present day is.
BB: Oh, well, as long as they do not wish me again a Nazi to play....
Agent: (is silent)
BB: My friend?  This is not another picture about friends by the rise of Nazism torn apart, in which I play a guy who starts out OK but gradually becomes a shit?
Agent: I am sorry.  You are tall and blond.  Germans like to make Nazi pictures.  This is going to happen.
BB: It is known to them that I am actually Jewish, right?
Agent: Take the money.  Regard the poor Englander James Wilby: he always an upper-middle-class thug must portray.
BB: I other parts have played, but the films to the world audience released are always the ones in which I the fucking V-2 invent, or something. It is not my fault I in suspenders and 30's tailoring so good look!

You can hear a version of the song here.

And you know what I like to do with song lyrics...

Sunday is gloomy, my skin can't make any D.
Supplement pills can repair this deficiency.
Gray light must struggle to reach my geranium.
If it survives, it's as tough as titanium.
Pity it's winter and therefore so cold and dark.
If it were summer we'd all hit the water park.
Flume-y Sunday.

Where can we go if we take the Commuter Rail?
Poor Mt Wachusett is hardly Gstaad or Vail.
Is there a Something in Kingston or Providence
Worth the round trip, fourteen dollars and fifty cents?
Let's go to Lowell, there's lots of neat stuff to see.
Mourn the decline of American industry.
Loom-y Sunday.

Spending my day on the couch (what a big surprise!)
Make up some rhymes so this earworm I exorcise.
Listen to Mom on the phone with insurance dicks.
Each month brings something they will not or cannot fix.
It's a small grievance compared with what some go through.
Tell me reform isn't many years overdue.
Screw me, Sunday.

And now I will go and some soup have, and from the Internets disconnect.

I'll admit it, I wish life were more like this.

(I've linked to it before; I will probably link to it again.)