Happy Anniversary, Jim and Patricia

James Douglas Morrison and Patricia Anne Elizabeth Genevieve Honora Kennealy, June 24, 1970


I usually put up a bit of poetry for these occasions, but today I thought I'd share something a little different...

In my capacity as public rock critic and private editor (or cranky commentator and loving consort, if you will), I often complained to Jim that there just weren’t enough darn verses to Doors songs. So on our wedding night, when it came up again, he said Well, if it makes you happy, why don’t we write some more then, what’s your pleasure? I said You're on, Lizard King, how about let's start with “People Are Strange”?

So we did. Write them. Together. Right there.

And right here.

Happy 37th, honey.



The Lost Verses to "People Are Strange"


People are strange
Stranger than fiction
Reading them's easy
When they're your own
Pledging allegiance
Seven past seven
Pages keep turning
Right to the bone

When you're strange
Players hit out of the game
When you're strange
Everyone's shouting your name
When you're strange (3x)

People get strange
When you're a danger
Roads are a detour
Once you have flown
Eyes are a question
Arms only answer
Answers are murder
When you're gone


© 1970, 2007 by Jim Morrison and Patricia Kennealy Morrison

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Dead: The Rennie Stride Mysteries

Death is her groupie...or she's his.

Sex, drugs, rock&roll---and murder. A slightly different side of the Sixties.


She's a newspaper reporter whose beat is rock, not a detective, and her best-friend sidekick is a blonde bisexual superstar chick singer, not a cop, but murder rocks their world, following them through the heart of the Sixties, from Haight-Ashbury to the Hollywood Hills, from the East Village to Abbey Road....

In the hip, funny, contemporary style of modern mystery queens Margaret Maron, Sharyn McCrumb, Janet Evanovich, Marcia Muller...

Seamlessly blending the fictional with the real: the stars, the bands, the music, all the excitement of the most incredible decade of the last century...

Full of rockworld dish and attitude, created by someone who was not only there for it but made some of it happen herself, and who took just enough drugs to get into it and not so many that she can't remember it...

And with murder to sit in and jam...

The Rennie Stride Mysteries.

It is a time when things are happening that have never happened before...when artists like Jerry Garcia and Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger are doing stuff onstage that people never dreamed of when listening to Perry Como...when rock is the hottest thing on the planet and the people who make it their life and love and work are the coolest people you could ever hope to meet.

The time when it was all NEW: the music, the hair, the clothes, the drugs, the sex, the politics, the revolution in society that stopped a war and changed the world.

A time often imitated, always envied by those not lucky enough to have been there for it, certainly never surpassed...

Over the course of the series, which will run from 1964 to around 1972---the real if not the chronological Sixties, kicked off by the Beatles' arrival in America and ending with the beginning of the end of the Vietnam conflict (with possible extensions into the rise of heavy metal, up to 1975 or so)---smart, tough, pretty rock writer/social commentator/amateur crime-solver RENNIE STRIDE will move back and forth between San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and London.

Everywhere she goes, it's the heart of rock and roll: She's a player in classic scenes like Woodstock, Monterey, the Fillmores East and West,the San Francisco ballroooms, the Greenwich Village rock and folk clubs, LA's Whisky A Go-Go and Troubadour, England's tiny blues club and huge pop festivals.

As notorious for her affinity for and proximity to foul play---the "rock albatross," as she calls herself, a murder magnet always around for, or connected to, a string of music biz murders and counterculture crimes---as she is famous for her journalistic talent and style and personal dash, Rennie is not only a hip rockworld Miss Marple but the friend of superstar PRAX McKENNA and dozens of other Sixties movers and shakers, real and fictional: musicians, painters, photographers, clothes designers, record company execs, other writers.
Not to mention the lover of some of the rock deities who are making musical history.

And eventually falling madly in love with one in particular, an English guitar hero named TURK WAYLAND, leader of the hugely famous blues-rock band Lionheart, and he with her. The relationship will have its ups and downs over the course of several books, mostly due to the huge personal secret that Turk, as he insists on calling himself, is carrying around. But everyone, including themselves, can see that Rennie and Turk are made for each other, and they get together and stay together and move on together.

"It's ONLY rock and roll"? No way. So...let it be. Let it bleed. Let it roll, baby, roll. And rock on...


The first Rennie Stride book, Ungrateful Dead: Murder at the Fillmore, is scheduled to be published, through Lulu.com, on or about November 1...the Day of the Dead. And also the Celtic New Year. It seems the proper time.

Thanks to Lulu's phenomenal two-month turnaround time, the second book, California Screamin': Murder at Monterey Pop, could come out as quickly as six months later (once I finish it; it's all roughed out, about 60,000 words, just needs to be filled in). And as the third one, Love Him Madly: Murder at the Whiskey A Go-Go, is done and ready to go, it won't be far behind.
I will be setting up, or having someone set up, a website strictly for these, with a click-through to Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble, and they can be ordered directly from Lulu as well.

As to the books themselves: MDFs Jared and Michael and Suki and Mary have seen some of them, and, I believe, enjoyed what they read. I'm having a ball writing them...like Margaret Maron's Judge Deborah Knott books, or the Kelts books, they're more about the people and emotional relationships and why they do what they do, not so much about the murders and the personal solving. Rennie's around for it, obviously, and a participant in it, as are Prax and Turk (who are both busted for separate murders, btw), but the detectiving isn't the big thing it is in more traditional mysteries. It's more the catalyst for the interactions, which is how I like it.

Which is the problem that moron publishers had with it: "Where would it go at Barnes & Noble? Is it chick lit? A mystery? A romance? Ooooh, we wouldn't know how to market it." Even my agent, who couldn't manage to sell it despite much effort and persuasion, said that publishing today is very different from what it was when the Keltiad first appeared, and that they would never give me the respect I deserve, or indeed require. Because they've turned into a fearful, weasel-hearted bunch of money-grubbing bastards who wouldn't know a good book if it bit them in the ass and wouldn't publish it if they did. (I said that, my agent didn't.)

Well, as we said in the Sixties, fuck that noise, man. This way I can get them out when I want, how I want, to the people I want. And I would hope that you lot could help out a bit with that, getting the word to other lists and groups who might be interested.

Oh, and Rennie is absolutely not me, by the way. Actually, it's amazing how much she isn't...surprised the hell out of me, really. Mary pointed it out immediately, and she was quite right.
Nor is Turk Jim, and not just because he's an English guitar stud and not an American lead singer. They're both really cool people, but like all my characters they're not perfect and sometimes you will get annoyed with them. But I am completely in love with them, as I am with all my best characters, and I do find myself wishing they'd been real, and that I could have known them and been friends with them back in the day...

In fact, I also find myself buying things for them occasionally, which is either verisimilitude carried about as far as you can tote it or completely demented. It's just one of my little ways. Not big things. Rennie wanted a charm bracelet and an anklet with Turk's name on it, Turk needed a funky handmade leather duffel bag that he bought when Lionheart played Woodstock and someone poisoned him...eBay's been extremely helpful. Though I do have a two-inch-thick binder full of pictures of their stuff that I found online and printed out: clothes, cars, houses, pets. Pictures are safer.
I drew the line at a black vintage Porsche (see "Auto Eroticism" on this blog) and the gold-plated Strat that Turk uses for encores. Well, it had to be drawn SOMEwhere...

Anyway, I'm very excited and very resolute and very into it all. And after Whisky will come The Beltane Queen, hopefully. More about that later.

So long live rock and roll, and long live Keltia! And thank you all for your patience and loyalty.

Sole Kitchen

I bought two new pairs of shoes today! Yes, it deserves the exclam, since shoes are positively the last thing I go out to buy. I just don't like 'em, and yet I have to wear them, because otherwise? Ick. I buy a new pair maybe every two years, usually low-rise black Reeboks, to replace an old pair that I toss.

Anyway, I had seen this particular kind of shoe I coveted on the elegant pedal extremities of MDF Kathleen, back in April, when she came to NYC. I pointed, much struck, and said What those? And she said those Privos, and yes, as comfortable as they look. And I said, Verily, let us go then and buy me some! For my own aristocratically high-arched, high-instepped feets!

So we went out and sought, and lo! our quest was fruitless. And shoeless, too. Though we did find two lovely old coats at Andy's Vintage.

But today was the day and the hour. My lovely National Geographic walking shoes needed something to come off the bench and sub. And I needed Crocs. Orange Crocs.
Which I found. AND I found a pair of Privos! Black and dark green, and just as comfy as they, indeed, look.

I have three or four pairs of shoes that I wear continually, three or four more occasionals like sandals or rain shoes, some boots for winter and dress-up and two pairs of fancy heels (which I've worn exactly once each) and that's about it. On the other hand, my mother and my niece Shannie are shoe fiends. Mom has I believe over fifty pairs, most of which have never been on her feet except to try them on and say I'll take these, please.

I just never got into shoes. Manolos and Choos and Louboutin leave me perplexed and sad to think that women strap these things on their poor unoffending feet and torture them. I'd sooner be in my Reeboks any day.
Or Keds. I can't stand those monster Godzilla sneaks that look as if they not only can preserve you from fatal ankle pronation but launch a nuclear strike while doing so. I'm perfectly happy in humble canvas Keds. Which is a kind of reverse snobbism, but there you have it.

It goes back to that style vs. fashion thing. If you only feel validated when Manolos are telling you you're valid, then you have a problem. If you're not cool when you're wearing Keds, then you have a problem. Cool's what you are, not what you put on your feet. Even Jim wore Adidas occasionally.

Still, I'm glad I have something new to put on mine.

Reel Cool

I see where Regal Cinemas. one of our local movie chains, has begun issuing phasers, er, I mean pagers, to audience members, by which they are empowered to silently alert theater staff as to infractions in the audience. Noisy cellphone users, chatty patrons bent on unwanted commentary, seat kickers, out-of-control bratty children...one lucky audience member per show can blow the silent electronic whistle on all of them.

I cannot TELL you how much I love this idea. Secret movie police! And I also think that I should be permanently issued one of these gizmos, so that I could use it on the side of good and clean up Dodge, or at least the Union Square multiplex.

According to the NY Times: "The device is small and light and looks like a child’s toy. When a patron presses a button to alert a theater employee about a problem, a pager on an employee’s hip vibrates and indicates what and where the difficulty is. The employee can then enter the seating area and deal with the problem. Although the company does not keep statistics on the number of complaints, cellphone use and talking during a movie are the most common issues, according to a company spokesman."

People these days don't seem to realize they're out in public with hundreds of other people, and therefore must not behave as if they're at home alone or with a couple of others.
When I was a kid, there were "matrons" at the Saturday matinees, prowling up and down the aisles with a flashlight to enforce order, and if she caught you with your feet on the seat in front, or being rowdy, she had the power to banish you from the theater, at least for that day.

We should have more of that sort of thing. Failing that, a snitch in the ranks is next best.

Though I wonder what a theater matron would have done at a screening of "Message to Love", the documentary about the 1970 Isle of Wight festival (fantastic, go rent it), at which I was present some years ago.

The first time I saw it, I went alone. By happy chance, the director was there that night to talk about the movie afterwards, and I went up to speak to him when he was done, as the Doors had played that festival in the middle of Jim's trial and Jim always maintained they had majorly sucked and I had wanted to see if he had been correct. Utterly not true, and I conveyed this to the director, along with my praise for the film. He remembered Jim and the circumstances very well, and we had a lovely chat.

The second time I went, because the movie is just that good, it was with my silversmith friend Audrey (who made my 25th-anniversary-of-Jim's-death ring, 20-carat white Ceylon sapphire from my dealer in Sri Lanka, big heavy silver setting of a crowned lizard on one side and a wolf's head on the other).

We're sitting there quietly and interestedly watching this amazing film when the Doors come on and the guy on my left starts going off on Jim. "Heeeeyyy Morrison you stupid drunk fat pig"...and like that.

Well. I politely suggest that he should shut the fuck up. He doesn't. I say I'm Jim's wife and that's my husband up there he's trashing and he REALLY better shut the fuck up. He still doesn't.
So I leap to my feet in the middle of this packed movie theater, get my hands around his throat and start CHOKING HIM. I swear I do not know what the hell came over me. Meanwhile, Audrey is falling out of her seat laughing.

I finally whack the guy upside his head and leave to ask the management to have HIM ejected. Again, I have no idea what I was thinking. Jim would have loved it; in fact, he's probably the one who egged me on.
So, the guy's still inside watching the movie. Audrey and I are in the lobby waiting for the cops, whom I have loudly and furiously prevailed upon the management to call, when the guy's friend comes out to go to the men's room, sees me and starts casting aspersions on my veracity. "Oh, yeah, right, Jim's wife, suuuuure."

I beckon him over, promising I'm not going to hurt him, and to prove my bona fides I show him my passport, Lizard Queen business card, a picture of Jim and me in Miami, and our claddagh wedding rings (whatever that was supposed to prove), which I happened to be wearing that night.

He looks, assimilates, then all but falls to his knees. In fact, I believe he may have actually done so. OMIGODOMIGODOMIGOD he's read my BOOK, he's my biggest fan EVAH, I'm terrific, his friend thinks so too at least he does when he's not drunk, he looooved the book, he'll be mortified when he realizes, he would LOVE to talk to me about Jim whom he really admires, I was quite right to beat up on him, oh if it's not too much trouble would I mind signing an autograph...the whole thing.

Absolutely SCREAMING with laughter within, I graciously forgive him, tell him he should choose his friends more wisely, and Audrey and I equally wisely split just as the cops are pulling up outside.
We can barely walk home to the East Village, we are laughing so hard, hanging on each other all the way along Houston Street. Never did hear what happened, but I've never been back to that theater since.

So I really can't cop too many virtuous attitudes about movie violence and rudeness. Well, not in the audience, anyway. But I still could be totally trusted with one of those phasers. Yes. I could.

The People Next Door

Writer's Block: Who's in your neighborhood

How well do you know your next-door neighbors?


Just clicked on this little thingy from over on LJ. Because I was bored. And it isn't time yet to go to the gym or the two street fairs I plan on attending later this afternoon.

Oh, the answer? Not at all. In New York we generally prefer it that way. I live in a Victorian building in the East Village, on one of the best blocks therein, full of shops and funkiness. And my building, which was half hippies and half Ukrainians when I arrived, has been for many years about a quarter NYU student transients. Which means the population turns over roughly every couple of years: parents rent the apartments for their kids who want to live off-campus, or the kids rent for themselves, and when they graduate they mostly move on, as it's not a grand building in the slightest.

As the inhabitant of an unrenovated apartment, I am deeply fond of my decorative amenities: an original silver pressed-tin ceiling in a pleasing pattern, a white marble fireplace, twelve-foot ceilings, oak cabinets and window shutters, nice wood floors, a stripped brick wall in the book room. It's a small apartment, railroad-style, but it possesses the overwhelming advantage of being rent-controlled. It has reached its maximum scheduled base rent, and now the rent can never, ever be increased as long as I live here.
You would cry if I told you what I pay for rent, but I regard it as a subsidy for my art, and frankly, sometimes even this minuscule amount has been hard to come by. My landlord doubtless prays nightly that I will fall down the stairs and break my neck, because then he could soullessly gut and renovate this apartment as he's done with half the others, and raise the rent by a factor of ten.
But I plan on being carried out of here feet first. (That is, if the EMT guys can even get in: there's a LOT of stuff.) Jim was here with me, I was married here, all my books were written here---I'm not going anywhere. Even though a bigger place would be nice...more space...who am I kidding, I'd only fill it up with more stuff.

But I digress... Neighbors. There are four other tenants who are elders, one here longer than I, three more who arrived round about the same time. The second tier consists of people who've been here between 5 and 20 years, about eight of them, and the rest are newbies. My immediate next-door neighbor at the moment? Haven't a clue. I think they're students, but I hardly ever see them. When they're home, they're very quiet, which is good.

Nobody really hangs out with fellow tenants, but we're all cordial and every now and then we get together, as we did for a rent strike some years ago. The roof was leaking badly (top floor tenants actually had to tack up strings to lead the water away from their light fixtures), and the rat bastard Iranian-Jewish rug merchant landlord wouldn't fix it. So we hired a tenant lawyer and took him to court and won. It was great. We hung banners saying RENT STRIKE out the windows for all to see, and our anarchy-loving neighborhood cheered.

I sometimes entertain thoughts of moving to Scotland or upstate New York, but I know I'm just messing around. What the hell would I do? How would I manage? No hairdresser, no Ukrainian butchers, no dim sum place in Chinatown, no egg creams...

It's just too darn convenient where I am. I don't need to drive, I can get anything I want at any hour of the day or night, there's tons of stuff to do or see even if I never do or see any of it---it's out there. I could if I wanted to. When my feet hit the floor in the morning, I'm already in the place millions of people are trying to get to, and I don't just mean commuters.

I'm here. I'm in. I'm staying.

The Death of Hippie

I see where in its Style section today, the NY Times makes much of how, in this 40th year to heaven of the original Summer of Love, the anniversary of Monterey Pop, the "hippie" look is back in. It raises some intolerable deal o' fuss over arms stacked eight deep in wood and bead and leather bracelets, I believe, to prove its point, but basically, the Times no more has a clue about hippie now than it did back in the day. And as for style, well....

You know, for some of us hippie never left. Though, truth be told, I scorned hippies---they were unwashed and simplistic and irresponsible and high all the time, and I disliked all those attributes. I often describe myself as a hippie chick because it's an easy shorthand to the ethos of those times, and such a self-description sets me well and safely apart from the straights. But in actual truth I was no more a young hippie than I was a Young Republican.

How could I have been? I had college loans I was faithfully paying back and I was writing in and running a magazine at the age of 22. I was a warrior against oppression---the Church, the government, convention---from the minute I figured out what I could constructively do with my bottomless wrath: hippies were never angry, they were (a), too stoned, and (b), too stupid. I never rolled out to the Haight to sleep barefoot and grimy on the street or Earth-Mother it up in some Marin commune or seek my meals from the Diggers, and frankly, I had nothing but contempt for those who did.

I thought they were lightweight grasshoppers with no "bottom" to them, to use a nautical term. People who thought that everything should be free---pads, music, love---and that there would never be a bill for any of it. Or that they'd never have to get a job because someone else would always take care of them.
Not that I was a diligent humorless no-fun ant, but I did have some very definite ideas on how I wanted my life to go and how I wanted to live it with fitness and honor, and the hippie way wasn't it.

They had a few good ideas, the hippies did, but not the foggiest notion of how to implement them---the ones who actually did weren't hippies at all---and for that we are today paying the very, very steep price. The fellow college students we couldn't stand then and did all we could to distance ourselves from are the ones running the country today. And it's our fault, the fault of the hippies and the freaks and the straights alike, that they are.

But I did wear a kurta top and jeans to work the other day with an armful of bracelets. Diamond bracelets. Not unlike some of the ones the Times had pictures of. Told you I'm not a real hippie...though I do still harbor hopes of hip.

Smiley Smile

It may be just me, but it seems that New Yorkers are SMILING at people more. And I don't know what to do about it.

In the last, say, couple of months, I have noticed people catching my eye and smiling as we pass each other on the streets of my 'hood. This rather unsettling phenomenon takes place only on my home turf, never in midtown. And I have to say, it Creeps. Me. Out. Bigtime.

This isn't Hayseedville, Redstate, USA. This is New freakin' YORK! We do not look at our fellow citizens, we do not make eye contact as we peripheral-visionally give approaching strangers the Manhattan Once-over (Is she crazy? Will he mug me? Do they have guns?) and we CERTAINLY do not SMILE.

I know none of these people. None of them know me. Okay, it's only been a few, maybe a dozen, twenty at the outside, over the course of numerous weeks. But STILL. It's gotten to the point where I'm wondering if I forgot my trousers, or if my shirt is open, or if I have finally arrived at that special place where I am publicly perceived by strangers as a dotty old lady, and not in a good way either.

Or, I could just be going nuts. Always a possibility. But I don't think so. No, something strange and worrisome is going on here, and by God I'm going to find out what it is. And I am not smiling as I say this.

Satan's Sous-Chef

Ah, I see where my favorite guilty TV pleasure, summer division, is back: Hell's Kitchen, season 3.

Chef Gordon Ramsay just cripples me with laughter. He's crankier than I am by a factor of about a million! He calls the cook contestants donkeys and fuckheads! He throws things at them! He smooshes incorrectly prepared food on their fronts! He makes them cry and blubber! He tells them he wouldn't serve their food to pigs! People leave in ambulances! I freakin' LOVE it.
(I know, I know, I'm a horrible person. I would never terrorize people the way he does, no, really, well maybe SOME people, they know who they are, but I must say I do enjoy watching him be the cause of terror in others...)

Sorry I didn't blog as promised over the weekend. I went to see POTC:AWE Friday night with MDF Michael Rosenthal, who had not seen it yet. I liked it better the second time around, I must say. Well, sure, once my over-the-skysails expectations had been sunk to the bilge...no, really, I did like it a lot more.

[SPOILERS ON THE HORIZON]

But still confused on a number of plot points: namely and chiefest, In "Dead Man's Chest," we learn that Davy Jones was betrayed long ago by his love Calypso, so he cut out him heart and put it in a chest and sprouted barnacles and tentacles. Fine. When Will Turner chooses to take on the duty of ferrying souls to the other side and becomes the next Davy Jones, his own dad cuts out him heart (Will's) and puts it in a chest and into Elizabeth's care. BUT. Lizzie didn't betray Will, and if it was because of betrayed love that Davy cut out his heart, why then should Will's heart have to be extracted? I don't get it, and I don't get it because it's sloppy scriptwriting. You see where I am on this. And when he comes back, is the ten-year stint as captain of the Dutchman over and he's human again, returned from the dead (betokened by the green flash)? I'm so confused...

[END SPOILERS]

So after the movie Michael and I went to Veselka's, Ukrainian coffeshop of choice (took Jim there, many years ago), and he had pierogi and I had Ukrainian meatballs. Nummy.
He also made me an open-ended loan of his old iBook, dear man, to help me sort out my computer difficulties. So now I have THREE laptops, and am trying ohsohard to figure out my options. I'm thinking I'll use the iBook, since I can get my iTunes account up and running without too much difficulty, hopefully. And also I can use the external hard drive to put my files on iBook Word, which is the older version and not the horrible new one.
Eventually I'll get a Thinkpad, with the nice eraser mouse, and switch everything over, or maybe a newer iBook. And I'll donate this Toshiba to some grammar school where the average eight-year-old will know better than I how to deal with it

The Judgment of Paris

No golden apples here, folks! Just poor little Paris Hilton: a screaming, crying, hysterical spoiled brat who is apparently not at all sorry she drove drunk and got her license suspended and then was caught driving not once but twice. No, she's sorry only that she got caught, and, for the first time in her spoiled little life, is being treated like a normal person.

Oh, the horror! Not special. Not precious. That mean old judge, sending her back to jail when that nice bribe-taking evidence-hiding celebrity-ass-kissing sheriff let her out contrary to the judge's orders. Boo-freakin'-hoo.

People like this creature never cease to amaze me. Now, I happen to be friends with a famous billionaire's famous daughter myself, casual friends, not anyone close. Nice girl, who had a lot of problems in her past. But she not only got herself and friends/partners through rehab, she founded several charities to benefit the less fortunate and she works like a dog at them, she doesn't just lend her name and sit back and put her feet up. She admitted her many mistakes in younger years and she turned her life, and others' lives, completely around, and I have nothing but respect for what she did.

Not so Paris and her clones. And if people would just stop giving them the attention and passes for bad behavior they so desperately seek, maybe they too could pull up their socks and be more like my friend. Maybe this'll finally knock that annoying little smirk off her face. But probably not. With people like Paris Hilton, it's never their fault.

Owl's This, Then?

Your Power Bird is an Owl

You are beyond wise. You are so smart, you're almost prophetic. Your inner voice always speaks the truth, and you take the time to listen to it. You are good at seeing who people are... including the darkness of others. As a result, you tend to have a rather dark - yet realistic - outlook on life.

What's Your Power Bird?

I promise some real blogging over the weekend...the computer wars have sapped my strength. But not for long!

Keepin' to the Code

Your LiveJournal Pirate Crew LiveJournal Username Fifteen men on a dead man's chest! Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum!Ew... How unsanitary.*dances a jig on a dead man's chest* Cutlass or pistol? CutlassPistolTorpedoHeat vision What is the name of your pirate ship? Where is your secret pirate base? Jolly Pirate IslandTreasure IslandPleasure IslandIsland of DoomGilligan's IslandWindfall Island What kind of loot do you prefer? Pieces of eight!Bling!Babes!Booze!Crowns and scepters!Target giftcards! What do you and your crew prefer to be called? Freebooters!Swashbucklers!Corsairs!Seadogs!Desperados!Pirates, of course! Parrot or monkey? ParrotMonkeyUnicornKittenT-Rex Argh! Ahoy, matey!Avast!Shiver me timbers!I'll see you to Davy Jones!Argh! Ack! Gah! *thud* Your capable first mate bleekman Your bumbling cabin boy with a heart of gold firedrake_mor The aloof, yet honorable, pirate with a mysterious past la_lisa Is always the first one into the fray caitriona_nnc Is the naval officer who ruthlessly pursues your ship mercurialbaby Is the comical pirate who is always drunk on grog sarmispug Is currently in Davy Jones's locker saffronrose The amount of money you make as a pirate $127,994 This Fun Quiz created by Lynn at BlogQuiz.Net

Leo Horoscope at DailyHoroscopes.Biz

Conanne the Grammarian Rides Again!

Just some pet peeves, oh so dearly cherished (it's hot and sticky today, I'm cranky, I can't have the a/c and the modem on at the same time since they need to use the same heavy-duty cord):

"Her and I went to the movies." "That's between he and I." (And all other variants of this particular piece of heinousness.) You get this ALL THE TIME on TV, and I think it should be made a capital offense.

"Passed" meaning "died." Drives. Me. Crazy. "Passed away" is fine, if rather precious. But "She passed last night"? No.
To which I always respond, "Passed what? Gas? Someone in the street? The finish line?" Don't do it, people! Why are you so afraid of the verb "die"???

"He's one of the artists who makes my favorite kind of music." No again. Should be "of the artists who MAKE my favorite, etc." The thing modifies "artists", not "he." If you invert it ("Of the artists who makes my favorite kind of music, he is one"), you see where the verb is wrongwrongwrong.
I even chided William Safire once for pussyfooting on this. BAD Safire!

Local newscasters who can't pronounce the name of local towns/inhabitants: Sade Baderinwa of our local ABC 5 o'clock news is especially bad in this, though she's one of my faves in all other respects. But she can't seem to learn to pronounce town names derived from Native American: you should hear her mangle "Hauppauge" and "Copiague". (HAW-pawg and CO-payg, in case you were wondering...) Well, she's Indian herself, but of the dot, not the feather, variety.
At BBC headquarters in London, they have lists all over the walls on how to pronounce names and stuff correctly. Maybe I'll work one up and send it to Sade. (Shah-DAY Bed-er-in-WAH, so you'd think she'd be more careful.)

Feel free to chime in, my legions! Ride out with me to slay written and verbal incorrectness with our terrible swift swords! Aye, and the perpetrators thereof also! Conanne likes company!

The Poppets Take Broadway

Took my niece Shannon Rose to see "The Pirate Queen" on Broadway today. Ostensibly the story of renowned 16th-century Irish pirate Granuaile (Grace O'Malley) set to music by the folks behind "Les Miz" and "Riverdance", it partakes of elements of both. It's just pirates pirates everywhere these days..

However, the music is boring (nothing remotely hummable) and the history questionable (they mix up Donal nan Cogaidh, her first hubby, and Richard-in-Iron Burke, her second, ON PURPOSE) and the fiery Irish dancing not anywhere near enough. And the actress/singer who played Elizabeth I, a major character, distressingly reminded me of Miranda Richardson as the same queen in "Blackadder." Just as squeaky-voiced too.
The Grace was good: great voice and nicely athletic (swinging from ropes, climbing masts), and the guy who played her noble dad was gorgeous in a long gray hippie ponytail wig and knotwork circlet. Smokin' hot. Probably what Gwydion would look like round about age 180 or so.

We sat in the very front stage-left box and Shannie was thrilled, never having done so before, and I kept our seats a surprise ("Oh, well, I got the best seats I could, I don't know how good they'll be"). The best part was that due to a NY Daily News promotion, all seats in the house were $35 from May 24 to June 3. What a deal.

Anyway, it was enjoyable and it was fun spending the day with my niece. We went back to my place and ordered our favorite Dallas BBQ and just hung out and I showed her some of my demented Rennie&Turk research (their clothes, houses, furniture, cars, pets and jewelry) and sang her hooks from a few of Turk's songs. She didn't run screaming from the room.

So now I'm back to considering computer options. And very weary of it indeed. But it was nice to not think of it today.

Microsoft, Fry In Hell! And Your Little Dog Toshiba Too!

I believe I may have mentioned that I hate my new laptop and I hate, loathe, detest and would gladly sink to the depths the abomination that is Windows Vista. The Toshiba has one of those nasty touchpads and the mouse buttons are located so that I can't really click and scroll conveniently and it skitters all over the place, opening unwanted windows and zipping from one to another. Plus the touchpad has some weird gizmo on the sides and edges that drives me nuts, again with the skittering.

Vista has manifold sins, offenses and wrongs going for it, but the chief one is that it keeps sending my printer offline and then telling me there is an error (and like ten documents in the queue) when I try to put it online. I have spent at least twelve hours on the phone with HP uninstalling and reinstalling, and I'm fucking SICK of it.

I'm not the only one: I was in the local copy shop today recounting my woes to Santo and Margaret, the shop's owners, and their big yellow Lab Satch, and Santo said there have been numerous others in there complaining just as bitterly as I of how much Vista sucks and how it's not even out of beta yet and we're all guinea pig suckers forced into using it and it prevents people from not only printer ease but routers and all sorts of other add-on hardware. Have I said how much I hate it, Vista?

So I'm trying to think of creative solutions that don't involve spending too much money. I am considering buying a cheap second-hand Mac (if such a thing exists), since my iTunes account is all on Mac from my office computer. Or a cheap second-hand PC with a nipple mouse and WIndows XP, which I have at my new work and is fast, easy and doesn't make me scream and want to throw it out the, yes, window. Or uninstalling Vista and installing XP.

That is all. For now.