Sdtrk: ‘We don’t belong’ by Sylvan

No, the heat hasn’t killed me. But it’s sure as hell trying. It’s been in the lower 90s every day since I last posted! I can only say this: Autumn better arrive early, and last for a long time — like from early September to mid-November. Mother Nature, I’M CALLING YOU OUT!!

I’m disappointed. I was semi-awake for like nearly half an hour before I got out of bed today, and all during that time, I was attempting to remember the details of last night’s dream. But, as it turns out, that the last half of my dream consisted of me attempting to remember the details of the first half of my dream. GodDAMNIT!!@
So what I’m left with is: it was a sunny-yet-nice day, and I was in the parking lot of ILHS, which was the location of the best job I’ve ever had in real life. I was driving some sort of sports car — a Mazda Rx-8, I believe — and you know how you can remove the back seats in vans? Well, you could do that to all the seats in my car, and two of my coworkers were putting them back in for me. Whilst that was going down, I was standing a few feet away, speaking to my real-life supervisor Avinash about Synthetiks.
‘What can you tell me about CandyGirls? I have seen a couple of pictures of them on the Internet, and I thought getting one would be pretty neat, but what would you say about them?’ he asked. (Picture that being said with an Indian accent, by the way.)
‘Well, to be honest, they’re not really my area of expertise’, I replied. ‘I mean, they’re cute and all, but for some reason, I never got too into them. I could tell you about RealDolls, Rare-Borgs and Mechadolls all day, but I don’t know a whole lot about the CandyGirl line, sorry.’
I was about to suggest that he hop online and hit the Doll Forum, when Sandy, one of my coworkers, motioned for me to come over to my car. ‘You gotta clear some of these quarters off the floor before we can get these seats in,’ she said. I peered inside my car, and there was about $50 in quarters spread out all over the floor.
‘O!’ I exclaimed, a bit surprised. ‘Oops!’

Aaand that’s pretty much all I recall. What would a dream interpreter make of this, I wonder?
1) I miss my job at ILHS.
1) I’m a trusted Synthetiks expert.
1) My quarter storage skills are horribly inadequate.
…yeah, that sounds about right.
Back in the early-to-mid Nineties, I used to keep detailed dream journals, and I was pretty disciplined about it, too. My problem now is that I do my best to recall what occurred in my dream; however, my desire to stay in bed and dream even more usually wins out. I’m too busy trying to spend my time in the proverbial dreamland, that by the time I legitimately wake up, I have around ten minutes or less before I forget the intricacies and plot points of what I was dreaming.

I’ve got to get ready for my final session of Transcription technology, but I’ll return with a summary of the fine Sunday evening I had with a couple of mates. In the meantime, here’s a link to a video clip from 2003 of Actroid-chan, before she made her official NEDO Expo debut (click on where it says ‘MOVIE’, obviously). Automatically cute!

Sdtrk: ‘Blue skied an’ clear’ by Slowdive

You can blame SafeT’s comments and excessive viewing of Zip Gun’s ‘The Day Today’ DVD for this ‘un.

ROUEN, FRANCE (AP) – The music and entertainment world was stunned when Michael Jackson, the 46-year old King of Pop and world-famous child-toucher, was fatally shot several times by an angry passerby.

Jackson was having what appeared to be an impromptu celebration, due to the dropping of his recent child molestation charges, at a restaurant called ‘Le Lapin Gonflé’, on the outskirts of Paris. According to eyewitnesses, Jackson made a protracted attempt to order crepes, when area cynic Jean-Jacques ‘Le Jacques’ Chirac walked up to the party’s table, pulled a pistol from his jacket pocket, and emptied the magazine into the singer’s chest.

‘The shooting itself just happened so fast,’ said Peter Hurpingerder, one of Jackson’s attendants. ‘Michael wanted to order ten pounds worth of crepes and cheese for all of us, but wanted to place the order in French. He never knew the language, so he was stuttering and mumbling his way through it for five minutes. The waiter asked him several times to please repeat what he had said, and with every repetition, Michael’s voice grew more and more faint and incomprehensible. He had just managed to stammer out “je suis le canard gigantesque”, when that guy from that table over there stood up, walked quickly towards Michael, and started shooting. I dropped my dinner roll in abject fear.’

‘I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to finish that roll,’ Hurderpinger added.

Jackson was hastily strapped onto a makeshift gurney and rushed to a nearby hospital, but it was too late. His body then began to slowly dissolve into a gooey flesh-coloured paste. Handlers carefully scooped the paste into a bucket, where it will be shipped back to Jackson’s Neverland Ranch following what passes for an autopsy.

Chirac, 38, was apprehended by local gendarmes and hustled to a nearby police station. Upon questioning if he had planned to assassinate the singer, Chirac lit a Gauloise and took a long, meaningful drag. ‘No,’ he answered in French, ‘I just wanted him to either speak up or shut up. His voice was like a high-pitched mumbling, like a fly stuck in my ear, endlessly saying nothing that I could understand. I am not sorry for what I have done, because life, she is like a crazy merry-go-round, and you can only hop on it once.’ As he spoke, the smoke from his cigarette wafted lazily through the room, much like the haze of questions that the reporters would surely have for him upon release to the general public.

Chirac then extracted a harmonica from his shirt pocket and played a stirring rendition of ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’.

Upon hearing the news of their brother’s demise, Jermaine, Tito, and Harpo burst into loud, messy sobbing. Neither Janet or her breasts could be reached for comment.

Sdtrk: ‘MTO’ by New order

Michael Jackson Found Innocent, Common Sense Shot Several Times in Face

I’ve not been keeping up with that case at all, cos ultimately I don’t really care, but again, I erroneously believed that right thinking would prevail.

California – Jurors in Michael Jackson’s child sex trial will not hear a former Neverland security guard’s explosive claim that he once fetched Vaseline for the singer’s implied sex acts with a youth, the court ruled on Thursday. [..] Former guard Kassim Abdool was prepared to tell jurors that he brought the “sweaty, aroused” singer a jar of Vaseline while he was in his bedroom with a 12- or 13-year-old youth, court documents said. (from this site)

Guess not! This sort of thing is why I don’t keep up with the news in general, cos I never really hear anything good..

Let’s talk about something else, shall we?
Having successfully returned from the eye doctor (her first name starts with an ‘S’, and not a ‘J’, as I’d mis-reported) with a clean bill of health, I stopped round to Meijer and grabbed the latest issue of .. err, it was PlayStation magazine, I believe. Normally I don’t buy videogame magazines, shockingly enough, but this month’s issue featured a demo disk for the new ‘Gundam vs Zeta Gundam‘ game. Practically anything dealing with the Universal Century timeline is fab, but a game featuring all of my favourite Mobile suits from Zeta?? I am wroth with froth. It’ll be out in late June, they say, so I’m guessing it’ll actually be out in early July.
And on the back of said magazine, there was an advert for ‘Samurai western‘, which is another must-buy for me, cos any game containing gratuitous dismemberment and the ability to deflect bullets with your katana equals winner in my book.. However, I didn’t think that’d be out this soon.. And I still haven’t picked up Devil may cry 3, or Red ninja, or GunGriffon Allied strike. And wahey, SoulCalibur 3 is due out this year! Grrr. Now I have to get a job..

And that’s the lot! Anyway, this post has achieved what I wanted it to do, which is bumping the previous post from the topmost slot. Bitterness is all well and good, but I don’t want casual viewers tuning in to ‘Shouting etc etc’, and mistakenly thinking they’ve clicked on a LiveJournal

Sdtrk: ‘Head’ by The Jesus and Mary Chain

Ahhh, Monday. The day that I finally had that damnable chalazion scraped off my head. You don’t forget something like that! No matter how hard you try.

I got round to my eye doctor last Monday, at 6pm. The actual appointment was at 6.30, but of course they’re like, ‘fill this stack of papers out that absolves us of all guilt and responsiblilty should we accidentally carve up your eyeball’, so they had me show up early. Having finished those in due course, I was escorted to the operating room proper, where the nurse placed a shower cap-like paper hat on my head, and had me lie on the cushioned cot/counter thing, with my head resting in a cushion to keep it from rotating. She then applied some eye drops, stating that Dr Lim would be in shortly, and made her way to assisting other patients.
Whilst I was lying on that pleather-upholstered cot, attempting to calm myself down by thinking pleasant thoughts, my mind drifted to what someone had once said about a universal truth to doctor visits of any kind. You wait for an interminable period, then they usher you into a smaller room, where you wait by yourself for another interminable period. I was waiting on that cot for a little over half an hour. At one point, I guess my focussing on pleasant thoughts had worked, as I actually fell asleep for a few minutes.

Dr Lim returned with the nurse presently. Dr Lim (her first name escapes me — I think it started with a ‘J’) is a short Asian lass, probably in her early thirties, and with a pleasant demeanour. She began swabbing my eyelid, stating that ‘The part that hurts the most is when we do the injections to numb the area.’ ‘Yeah, I remember that part from the last time I was here to get a chalazion removed,’ I replied. ‘It was really pinchy.’ And with that, we were off!
Now perhaps times have changed since my last chalazion removal — last time, in all honesty, the injection part was not all that bad — but on this go-round, I don’t know what happened, but the procedure wasn’t as smooth as last time. Truth be told, it hurt like a motherfucker. I don’t know if there wasn’t enough lidocaine, or too much, but the thing to remember with lidocaine injections is that they burn. It’s acidic. Factor in that that shit was near my eye, and you have a pretty wild scene, man. Plus, as I was expressing to Dr Lim and the nurse, I wonder if more of my pain was more psychosomatically induced, cos I’ll tell you: you know when you visit the dentist, and they use that pick thing to remove plaque from your teeth? You’re familiar with that sound and that general feeling, yes? Well, Dr Lim didn’t have a pick, but she was doing practically the same thing in removing the core of my chalazion. I could hear that pt pt pt sound as she was extricating it. Yeah. And heh, it’s not as if you can close your eye!

To attempt to get my mind off what they were doing to me, the nurse was like ‘You know, you look like you play an instrument. Do you play anything?’ So I attempted to explain that yes, I used to play guitar and keyboards (but not at the same time) in Dole age and Wreath.VCA as best I could. You know, trying to be my usual humourous and flippant self whilst exacavation was underway on my fucking eye. So in between gripping the nurse’s hand like grim death, I also told them about the Dears concert from that previous Sunday. That went well.
Eventually, Dr Lim couldn’t get all of it out via the inner eyelid. I neglected to mention that all surgery up til this point was performed on the inside of my eyelid, so as not to leave a scar, so they applied a lidclamp and flipped that bad boy open, which also hurt like a sonofabitch. But like I’d said, she couldn’t remove it all through the inside, so she announced that she was going to have to make an incision on the outside and get the rest out. I didn’t feel the scalpel incision at all, but the cauterising that she had to do on both sides of my lid was not pleasant, I’ll tell you. Ye gods. If I ever, ever, develop another chalazion ever again in my life, when I get it removed, my first words upon seeing the doctor will be ‘Fill me with Valium tabs until I no longer remember proper English.’

Everything could’ve been worse, however. The nurse was telling me that on Monday, she and Dr Lim would have to treat a bloke who had four rather large chalazions on each eyelid. They had gotten so out of hand that they were kinda spreading to his upper cheeks. Think about that one for a while.

If I’m not mistaken, the whole procedure, including the wiping up of the blood, and the wound cauterisation, and the eyewashing, and applying the eyepatch that made me look like a character in a Trevor Brown painting, took about an hour. I get to see Dr Lim again for a follow-up this Tuesday. Hooray for Modern Medicine!
Lucky for you, I forgot to take ‘before’ photos, so you’ll just have to use your God-given imaginations. And you can stop throwing up now, I’m all done with my story!

Sdtrk: ‘Will you be staying after Sunday’ by The Peppermint rainbow

And Happy Victoria Day, Canada! When I move to you in five years, you’re gonna have to esplain to me what that holiday’s all about. (Or rather, aboot.)

Went to the eye doctor on Friday, as I have a chalazion on my left lower eyelid. Actually, I’ve had the bastard for almost two months now, but I’ve been financially unable to have it seen to. Hurrah.
A chalazion, if you’re not familiar with it, is just a fancy Greek name for an eyelid zit. It doesn’t hurt unless I squint real hard, but they’re fecking annoying, and rather damaging to my already-tenuous opinion of my self-image. Mine is currently the size of an airsoft BB, and if I glance to the left and down, I can see it. Mnyeh. I’ve had them before, back a couple of years ago when I was working in the Blood and Serum Mines at Quest diagnostics, and they were hateful back then, too. Since I had really good health insurance through my job, I went and had ’em scraped out. That’s right! The eye doctor clamped on some Clockwork orange-style lidlocks, flipped my lids inside out, and scraped out the offending material. I went in one week to have one done, then went back next week for the other. Thanx to modern localised anaesthetic, the procedure didn’t hurt a lot, it was just very pinchy. So on 6 June I’ll have this one done. I should take before and after pics, so you will know what a chalazion looks like..

I’ll attempt to write something not steeped in nausea later on. Some people are still digesting lunch right now!

Sdtrk: some, uh, rave music?

Just got the latest newsletter from the lovely and entertaining maniacs at b3ta.com, which reads:

* EXPRESSIONLESS GIRL – last week we linked to
a series of photos of a young lady whose
expression never changed. Many of you were
disappointed as the site went down shortly
afterwards. Thanks to B3ta reader markta
who grabbed the pics and stuck them into a
video loop which really makes the point
about how bloody odd these images really
are: http://snipurl.com/expressionlessgirl

The music’s shite (and it’s loud, too), but it’s well worth reliving the spectacle. Man o man.
O Paula. I just want to place you in a chair outside my door, to scare away everyone. Happy 15th birthday!

Sdtrk: ‘Tiger in my tank’ by My bloody valentine

Sorry for the short notice, but anyone who happens to be at the Time Traveler Convention tomorrow, could you get a couple of snaps for me? Doumo!

The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(events start at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
3 Ames St. Cambridge, MA 02142
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

What is it?

Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT on Saturday, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

This sucks. It’s kinda like when whitehouse were performing in Cleveland OH a couple of years ago, and I couldn’t drive to the show, as my brakes needed repair. I’d love to go to this convention, but I have no TARDIS! Grr.
Could someone from the future maybe give me a ride? I’ll go halfsies on gas.. or crystals.. or Shizuma drive, or whatever the hell your conveyance runs on