Bill's LiveJournal Doodad

This morning, I spent three hours in traffic school.

This afternoon, I spent two and a half hours at the theater watching "New Moon".

Thanks, Saturday.

(PS: semi-review to follow tomorrow)

Happy Birthday, epiphany. You're nothing less than fantastic!

Happy Birthday to erstwhile fellow MiSTie, MiSTer, and the High Exalted Commissioner of the MSTFL, freezer818!

Happy Birthday, qthewetsprocket! Hope your birthday is Qlicious!

I was flipping through a magazine earlier today and I came across a picture or Robert "Joe" Haldeman, the CBS new producer accused of trying to blackmail David Letterman. And as I looked upon his scowly visage, the thought occurred to me: he looks like an evil, mirror-universe version of Bill Engvall!

Blue Collar Comedy



White Collar Tragedy

I have a bit of a problem. OK, it's not a problem yet, but it's looming at the horizon. I can tell.

There's this cat that's been roaming our neighborhood for about a year or so. It's black and white and basically just walks around, doing cat-type things. Here he is.



Well, we'd never paid it too much mind, but about three weeks ago, it showed up under the eaves of our garage, limping and meowing pitifully. Paula, who has a much more tender heart towards wounded kitties and puppies and the like, decided that it needed to be fed.

Well, you know what happens when you feed a cat. It's yours. Or rather, you're its. And now that we're feeding it, it doesn't limp so bad. Which I suspect means that all that pitiful meowing is feline-speak for "Suckers!"

Paula went up and down the street looking for the owners, and guess what? She found them! And they don't want Lenny (the cat) back! They say that their toddler is too rough on him. (Can *you* spot the logical fallacy in their reasoning, boys & girls?)

Now the cat wants in. Evey time I come home, he tries to slip past me into the sun room. I'm afraid if he gets in, that's it. And then he'll get into the house itself. Which would be bad (more on that below).

Paula *wants* to bring the cat in. Of course, once he's in, he'd be ours. He'd never leave. And I'm not in theory opposed to this. I don't want to call animal control in, because we all know what happens to unadopted cats there, and I don't want that on my conscience. And I don't want Lenny (or whoever he eventually becomes) to starve or freeze or what have you.

But here's the thing. Piper (the dawg) hates this cat! Hate, hate, hate! This house (in her mind) is hers, and she's the guardian of it and us! If Piper is in the sun room and the cat strolls up to the door, Piper will bark and growl and snarl and makes noises not heard since prehistoric chihuahuas roamed the land. I always thought that in a real fight, though, she'd get creamed since she's kind of a scaredy-cat dog. Then when we found that Lenny had been declawed, I was afraid *he'd* wind up being hurt. But having seen Lenny's tiny, razor-sharp teeth, now I think it's a toss-up.

I don't want to see the cat out there when it starts getting real cold. But I don't want endure a constant barrage of howling and yowling. Or worse, trying to break up a fight!

Does anyone have any advice>

Let's see, that's a hard choice.

Oh no, wait - it's an easy choice. LUXURY HOTEL!!! You know, the place with the beds and the AC and the indoor plumbing.

Nature is best left outdoors - it's nice to look at, but I wouldn't want to live there!

Here's a meme I snagged from scarfman, who snagged it from rodlox, who got it for free at Kroger's becuase it had the wrong price tag on it.

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

Attempting to redo all the bookcases at once. Ack!

Earlier, as per meme ettiquette, I invited you all to aks me any fan-type top fives you had in mind.

Of three questions, two were about food.

Not that I'm not a fan of food, mind you - I seriously am.

So here we are.

( Desserts )
( Bad Meals )
( Trek! )

A meme that I snuck in and lifted from the estimable scarfman:

Ask me my fannish Top Five Whatevers. Any top fives. Doesn't matter what, really! And I will answer them all in a new post.

Hit me!

My computer keeps nagging my to update to Internet Exploder 8. Has anyone here done so? If so, ho does it compare with the previous version(s)?

No, not in the meme-ish kind of way. I had to go buy our new car tags today.

One of the things I remember growing up is that every year, dad would buy new tags for his & mom's cars, and he'd give the old tags to me (because even then, I was a packrat). Sitting in my old Radio Red wagon in the garage are Alabama state tags from the early 70s to the mid 80s. I have enough old car tags to, right now, open my own theme restaurant.

Nowadays, of course, tag designs are expected to last 5 years minimum, with new decals taking their place. It saves money, and in fact is more convenient, so that's good.

Still, if I'm paying $200, it just feels more satisfying to walk out of the courthouse with two slabs of metal than a couple of stickers.

Right now it's a toss-up between Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson from "The Closer" and Dr. Temperence Brennan of "Bones".

Of course I can't forget L&O's Lt. Anita Van Buren.

And I'll always have a place in my heart for Barbara "Batgirl" (aka "Oracle") Gordon.

Enjoyed "Half-Blood Prince",
Metrics are kicking my butt;
Is it lunchtime yet?

A Very Happy and Feline-Frolicking Birthday to firsttiger. The Bunny Man will be around directly with your gift.

Why, what's wrong with what I've got on?

Last Thursday was Paula's Birthday (yey!) so I got her something she'd been wanting - the complete series of "Moonlight" on DVD. (If you've never heard of it, it was yet another "Vampire Detective in LA Making Atonement" show that was being rerun on ScyFcy, but that's not important right now.) I had to special order it from FYE, and it got here Friday, so I went to pick it up.

I shopped around a bit before finally going to the counter to get it. The guy there was fooling around trying to get it to ring up when I became aware of something very - odd about his ear.

Namely, I could see the rest of the mall through it.

To wit, he had a hollowed-out hoop, the size of a FRACKING QUARTER, in each of his earlobes!!!

Is this the new fashion? Because this is something I've not encountered before and it seems not just odd, but aggressively so.

Happy Independence Day, y'all! (For all the non-Americans reading out there, happy July 4!) And to celebrate the 233rd anniversary of our great country, what better was is there, I ask you, than...


MUPPETS!



Everyone enjoy and be safe!

I've thought some this week about Dudley Moore.

What with all the rigamarole surrounding Michael Jackson's death far surpassing the memorials for Farrah Fawcett, I pointed out on Facebook that when 2 celebrities happed to die on the same day, one invariably seems to eclipse the other. The most famous example of this, of course, is when Elvis & Groucho died on the same day, and Groucho was pushed to the back of the paper as everyone focused on the passing of Elvis Presley. But the same thing, to a lesser degree, happened a few years ago when Dudley Moore and Milton Berle passed the same day. Uncle Miltie got the lion's share of the coverage, and Dudley was usually mentioned only in passing.

That's kind of sad, actually. Dudley was a very funny man, and a whiz on the piano. His work with "Beyond the Fringe" was nothing short of hilarious. My first fiance had a bit of a crush on the man (so much so that she occasionally lapsed into a British accent). He was hilarious in "Arthur" and "10" and several other films.

But here's the sad part. If you go to IMDb and look up "Dudley Moore", the first entry returned isn't even for Dudley Moore - it's for Woody Allen!

Anyway, just because I feel like it, here's two Dudley Moore clips. The first is him & Peter Cook performing the routine about the one-lggged man auditioning for the role of Tarzan. The second is a rare recording of the Dudley Moore Trio on the BBC that showcases his musical ability.