Japanese

There's lots of cool japanese art and picture sites out there. Unfortunately, I can't read any of it. I tried to teach myself japanese years ago.. but was eventually stymied, mostly by verb tenses. I need to find someone who reads fluent japanese to translate these things for me. Anybody out there?

On another note, got that extended return of the king dvd today. The movies are somewhat poignant for me, as my dad was always a huge lotr fan. He was excited about the movies and we went to see the first one, but he never got to see the last two. Things left undone.

Tree time!

I'm so sore. All over. Yesterday I woke up with an inclination to get all creative and stuff. So, I went and got a paint sprayer, a gallon of black latex housepaint, and a fake xmas tree. Branch by branch, I sprayed that tree down and hung it up on a clothesline in the backyard. It took 3 hours to spray the whole tree... but now it's complete. I have a black xmas tree! Yay!

Foolishly, I put the lights on before testing the string, and half of them don't work. I'll have to replace the whole lot. I also need to get some dark red ornaments. The only ones I've seen so far are those cheap orange-red ones, and that just won't work. I'll try to get a picture of it up somewhere when it's done.

... o gothmas tree, o gothmas treeee... how mordant are your branches....

o.. m.. g..

Just got in from a walk. Really windy today and a cold front came in so it's quite nippy out. Ears hurt. Anyway, the sky was really cool.. just a purplish gray with smudges of darker purplish blue clouds. About all the leaves that can fall have fallen by now. I don't like being cold, but I enjoy the stark beauty of winter. Bare branch silhuoettes on a whitish gray sky. Just lovely. I could stare at it for hours.. if I didn't get so cold.

Got another fake today. After hours of 'interviewing' her, turns out she wouldn't talk on the phone. Afraid of being stalked. If you're interested in putting your life in someone else's hands having them control you utterly, a phone call is the least of your concerns. So I turned on my webcam to see if that would calm her down. She didn't have a cam on her end, but it seems that 'she' had left 'her' microphone on. Startled guy talking in a high-pitched voice. Classy.

I never, ever talk to someone for long without phone confirmation. I don't care if you haven't paid your bill or if you have a crippling phobia of tangled phone cords.. if you want to be someone's slave for real, you find a way to get to a phone. Otherwise, to me, you're a guy jerking off. Is that cynical and jaded of me to not be trusting? Sorry. That's the way it is.

cubby hole

Decided today to clear out this closet/pantry that's in a hallway underneath the stairs. It's about 10 feet deep and gets smaller all the way to the back, as it's underneath the stairs. It's been full of junk-mostly cleaning stuff-for ages. It's also where all of the xmas stuff has traditionally been stored. I got it all and nice and emptied out. I stood there and realized that an eyebolt put into the studs way in the back would make for a nice, dark, cozy cubbyhole for someone. Just stick em in there, lock the chain, and let em relax. I like it!

iii'm dreaming.. of a whiiite.. chameleon?

So, it's about that time of year. Happy to say most of my xmas shopping is done (Note, I intentionally refuse to type 'Christmas' the majority of the time. You can see where my mind's at). I haven't put up any lights or a tree in many a year.. not since I was a child.. so I thought I'd put up a few lights this year. Just to spruce things up. I bought some lights, shimmied up the ladder to find a whole ton of wet leaves, sticks, acorns, and about an acre of very healthy moss growing on my roof. I have nothing against moss. I like moss. I'm a moss kinda person. But it just won't do to have it on my roof. So I spent about an hour and a half scraping and sweeping, and was thoroughly exhausted by the time it was done. Then I leaned over the edge to start hanging the lights, which I'm pleased to say went off without misshap. I hope they look okay in the dark. To add insult to injury, about halfway through the sweeping, I got an old song stuck in my head which I had to keep singing the entire time.

see the chameleon
lying there in the sun
all things to everyone
run, run away

You try getting that out of your head once it's firmly wedged in there.

On another note. Went with some friends to a xmas comedy show that's put on yearly by a local acting troupe called red octopus. Bizarre but funny. It's held a pizza place/micro brewery.. the kind of place where local bands try to make a name for themselves and there's amateur paintings (mostly all bad) for sale on the walls. Now, I'm not much of a public drinker. In fact, I pretty much only drink to get pretty well buzzed, which is very rare and almost always in private. There are few things more boring to me than sitting around a little bar table with friends for a couple hours while they merrily down pitchers of beer, waiting until they get tired and drunk enough to disperse. It's kind of like waiting in a doctor's office for a long time. Except the doctor's office has more comfortable chairs.

Oh yeah, also went to a local craft show that's held every year. It's a pretty high quality of craft stuff, and I got some nice things to add to my hoard of objects. Being me, I certainly do feel out of place at those things, though. Poor, friendly folksy people from the Ozarks confronted with weirdness like me. But at least I got a pretty porcelain egg with roses painted on it. I do go for that ultra-femmy, grandmotherly stuff, sometimes.