I talk about my mom a lot and it's completely warranted.  Soft-spoken, brilliant, animal-loving, and really bizarre. 

It went like this:

Meg (my sister): Oh, look at the flowers on the table!  Pretty.

Mama: Yes, and did you see my butterfly?

Meg [holds up butterfly tucked into flower bouquet]: Oh, nice touch!

me:  [joking voice]  Hope you didn't have to petrify it yourself!

[long silence as the truth sets in]

me:  Mama....is that a fake butterfly?

Mama:  It's amazing!  Usually they die with their wings folded but there it was, on the roses, all spread out like that.

me:  You have a dead butterfly just hanging out on your roses?

[Meg carefully puts the butterfly back.]

Mama:  Sure!  It's so pretty, isn't it?

me:  Mama, it's a corpse that's gonna decay or -- yes, it's very pretty.


I just got up and got more coffee.  When your mom hangs out with dead insects as decorative touches there isn't a lot you can do.

...and it's birthin' right now!  Behold, some things you may have missed:

The Howdies

(and Ginger Lee)

April 9 (that's tomorrow)

Blue Moon Saloon

like 9ish

cover is like $8ish

next nugget of info

I have a music column called either Club Seen or Barcrawler.  I really don't get which.  But who cares as long as I got it.  Please tell people about my column.  This is a link to it. 

Geronimo Music Fest

May 30

I am helping with PR and such.  So heads up.  The lineup is spectacular.  The more you know! *shooting star*

 

A Street

by Leonard Cohen
(as published in The New Yorker March 2, 2009)

 

I used to be your favorite drunk

I've started rooting through my freezer to get rid of things.  I found a bundle of tinfoil, opened it up, and lo!  A mini homemade pie.  Not the round kind, but that folded over dough kind where you pinch the seam.

I've no memory of said pie.  Could be from anyone.  So of course I ate it.  Cuz I'm devil-may-care like that.  Word.

Turned out to be a spinach pie.  There was some cheese in there (Swiss?) and it ws delicious.  So far my theories are that Jessica bought and left it when she moved out or that my sister made and left it one day when she came to walk Bobby Hank.  I'm certain it wasn't in the freezer when I moved in (and for the record I would not have eaten it, in such a case!).

If anyone who hangs at Le Pornderosa knows about this pie, please let me know.  It was great and I'd like another.

Euthanasia is legal in Switzerland, creating some interesting legal cases -- some folks have brought their terminally ill loved ones to this clinic only to be arrested upon re-entry into their home country.
 
So this clinic will help this woman commit suicide, but know why?  She wants to go at the same time as her terminal husband.  Wow.
 
You can feel how you want to about euthanasia, and you can think she's crazy, but you can't argue she's devoted. 
 
Dear Future Spouse,
I am never going to do this and I hope you wouldn't, either.
I'm on the for realz, Anna

Really, I think I just did!  Here we go...
 
For every person you let into America you help another one get out.  Example: France lets me in.  Just poof.  There all like, "Welcome, citizen!"  Now I figure that it doesn't have to be an exchange like me for France and a Frenchwoman (or Frenchdude) takes my place here in the States...cuz eventually it will even out.  So let in the 100,000 Mexicans at the border!  Cuz believe me there are 100,000 of us who would like to bolt the hell outta here! 
 
Imagine you get to live anywhere you want in the world and wham: You can get a job, vote, etc.  No paperwork, no problems.  You sign a piece of paper acknowledging that you want to live in New Zealand or what have you (can you imagine how many nerds we would lose to Japan and New Zealand, how empty our Comicons would be?) and you're done.
 
Now you have to stay at least one year.  Can't have folks jumping country to country.  And you have to leave your country without any debt, otherwise there would be debt-jumpers traipsing all about the globe.  But let's say I want back into the States...just another exchange!
 
This is kind of like when I told Michael I'd be a great diplomat, and he said how would you solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and I said I'd make the oldest boy and girl from either side marry each other for like twenty years straight.  Or at least get a bunch of horny kids all in the same room, same thing.
 
Okay maybe I shouldn't be Secretary of State but I still have awesome ideas.
 
I should probably go get some coffee.

When you study folklore and mythology you find that every myth began with a kernal of truth.  Behold, a baby who has ripped abs.  Seriously. 
 
Okay, so all the original Ghostbusters will be back for part 3, so it may not blow chunks.  However, they will be acting as mentors to some young Ghostbusters?  But two writers from The Office are taking a stab at the script.  What I'm saying is that this is all mad crazy up in the air-- to be awesome, or sucktacular?
 
Good idea or bad: Newspapers may receive non-profit status a la PBS or NPR.  Essentially this just means a tax exemption, and frankly that might be kinda sexy.  Can you imagine a newspaper with limited ads and real news?  Me neither but my grandfather used to tell me what it was like.  [Note: the newspaper I work for is awesome.]
 
While we're in the neighborhood, here is a link to my latest column.  It's only online for another two days, so hurry!  After that its...my next column.  It's kind of a theme.  They arrive every Thursday, like babies or somethin'.  And also if you are in a band or know of one that is playing that is awesome you need to let me know.  I don't promise to cover what you suggest but it is definitely taken into suggestion.  I'm not limited to Acadiana, either -- I can cover Baton Rouge or New Orleans (as long as it's not every column, because that would be kinda stupid, wouldn't you think?).
 
Also, if any of y'all hear about a job you think I'd be good for, let me know.  Mama need to make money.  I love my day job (no I don't, I love my boss) but I'd like to make enough so that I don't need to sell my eggs on eBay.
 
On a completely unrelated to anything note, my coworker just announced how much she loves the song "Everything I Do, I Do it For You" and cranked her radio.  So it was nice knowing you guys. *gunshot*

Sonnet 27

Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,

The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;

But then begins a journey in my head,

To work my mind, when body's work's expired:

For then my thoughts, from far where I abide,

Intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee,

And keep my drooping eyelids open wide,

Looking on darkness which the blind do see

Save that my soul's imaginary sight

Presents thy shadow to my sightless view,

Which, like a jewel hung in ghastly night,

Makes black night beauteous and her old face new.

Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,

For thee and for myself no quiet find.
~William Shakespeare

[Note: this is his only sonnet to contain every letter in the alphabet.]

When you live with a dog and a cat things are never boring.  These two species are the perfect storm -- not dog-and-dog nor cat-and-cat nor duck-and-monkey or somesuch -- to chase the borings away.
 
Sometimes I'll be sitting in the living room when I hear a great big crash and those two coming running in, side-by-side, but when they see me they scatter.  The cat runs all crazy and the dog runs to a corner and freezes, looking at me, as if no one notices 40 collective pounds of furbeast running helter skelter through the house.  What I love, though, is that they split up; that primordial instinct for self-presevations holds true.  Like one of them is going to hide in Pago Pago and the other in a Parisian garret.
 
But that isn't the real mystery.  Often I can't find exactly what Bobby Hank and Lou made crash.  So I wander around my house expecting a mess somewhere and every time, briefly, one question rolls through my mind: "Dude, did they actually somehow cover the evidence?"

Smoking weed linked to severe vomiting?  Apparently some guy in Omaha has this condition, and the correlation is a mystery because you can develop this after years of chronic use of the chronic.  I call bullshit on this -- I believe the guy is harfing, I just don't believe he doesn't have Crohn's Disease or something.

On My Mind: The State of the Music Business  Ok, it's a long article and it's written by someone surprising, but he's an intelligent man who has been in the industry a long time.  If you're a musician or love one, give it a go.  My mother calls the music industry "diseased" and I love that so much I'm gonna work it into a column, I swear to god.

And now....a bunny dressed as a taco!  You're quite welcome.  (What I love about this costume, which won first place at some contest this month in Houston btw, is that it's not trying at all.  It's just a fake taco with a bunny shoved in it!  No pretenses, all fake taco and real bun-bun.)