Them belly full, but we hungry.

My head is a noisy mess. 

I've been bouncing back and forth between starving, attempting to eat like a normal person, and pigging out, interspersed with my usual frantic exercising and occasional ex-lax-attack. Like a pinball, only with food and no fun lights or sound effects.

Today, for example, I had a small bowl of Special K cereal for breakfast, a snack of a fiber bar and a small bag of Cheerios at work, and then for lunch I had turkey and lettuce and low-fat mayo on a whole wheat wrap, and I felt okay about it. Until like half an hour after lunch, when I was like OMFG I'M A WHALE. So I went to the gym for an hour and a half and I still have abnormal circulation in my feet (new sneakers). And I haven't eaten anything since lunch. I don't plan on eating anything until breakfast tomorrow. 


I need to go visit my father this weekend. We haven't spoken in several weeks--not since I called to see if the Little Bros could come adventuring with my friends and me. My bff's Christmas present is still at Dad's house, and I really need to get it (because for some asinine reason, you can't ship alcohol to New Jersey). Calling him up is such an emotional hassle. 


Despite now being an adult, I still find myself in the same mental state I was in at the age of five, as far as fathers are concerned. Like many children with absent fathers, I collected father figures. Mostly I collected them off the television. 


Gene Autry was my first father. 

The original singing cowboy. I loved him with all my heart. My nanny recorded episodes off Nick at Nite, or whatever channel it was on, so I could watch the Gene Autry Show over and over and over. I invented a whole world in which I lived with Gene Autry out in the Wild West, and was his only child, and he doted on me and treated me like a princess.


Then there was Bob Ross

He nurtured my artistic spirit. I would set my paper and watercolour sets up on the floor and paint with him nearly every day. And he of course loved my artwork, as a father should, and no doubt he hung it all up on our imaginary refrigerator.


Around age 6, the Undertaker became my father.

Because no one would dare f*ck with the Undertaker's daughter.

And then when Law & Order first came on TV, Detective Lenny Briscoe was my new dad.

When he died a few years ago, I mourned for weeks. I think that was when I first realized that perhaps I had a problem, because it really felt as though I had lost someone very dear to me. 

I think I started having the Willie Nelson Dad Fantasies around the same time Law & Order started, like age 8 or 9.

Who wouldn't want Willie Nelson for a dad? You'd be the coolest kid on the block. 

And then when I was like 11 years old, I saw both Pumpkinhead and Powder for the first time. The show Millennium aired its pilot episode that same year. And thus Lance Henriksen came into my life.

He is my favourite dad. I am still in the process of obsessively collecting all of his movies. I just bought Dead Man (Lance, Michael Wincott, and Johnny Depp, AND it's a Western--you really can't go wrong). 

It's pretty bad. I know I talk about Millennium a fair bit, but seriously I am OBSESSED with that show. I could probably recite all three seasons. I watch at least one episode a day. It's like a security blanket. I watch it at night right before bed, so Lance Henriksen/Dad can tuck me into bed and tell me stories while I go to sleep. 

I think I need a therapist. 

[...on a side note--for all of you in Australia, Lance is going to be at the Armageddon Expo in Sydney next weekend. I will sell my soul to anyone who goes and gets him to a sign a photo for me.]

Only two options left: suicide or become a television weatherman.

Since the television doesn't feel it is necessary to include the good music, I shall announce the Grammy winners here. 

Best Classical Album - Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra playing Verdi's Requiem.  They also won Best Choral Performance. Well deserved.

Best Orchestral Performance - Daugherty: Metropolis Symphony; Deus Ex Machina - Giancarlo Guerrero with the Nashville Symphony

Best Instrumental Soloist - Mitsuko Uchida - Mozart's Piano Concertos 23 and 24 (with the Cleveland Orchestra)

Best Instrumental Soloist without orchestra - Paul Jacobs - Messiaen: Livre Du Saint-Sacrement

Best Chamber Music - The Parker Quintet playing Ligeti's String Quartets 1 & 2

Those were the good ones, anyway. 

I made a vlog in which I brought the camera up into the attic, and there was nice music (Marin Marais), machetes, and horror-film worthy shots of the attic door. But for some reason my camera decided to eat most of it, leaving me with only the first 10 seconds. 

This is why I prefer film. If you screw up your 16mm movie, at least you know it was probably something YOU did wrong, rather than the camera being possessed by evil technology demons that can think for themselves. 

I'm not so good with technology. The fact that I can operate a computer without anything catching fire or exploding is a pretty epic achievement. I'm still trying to wrap my head around itunes and the fact that I can carry 14 days worth of music around in my pocket. (Actually 13 days and 8 hours, if you played all the music in my itunes.)

I am both frightened by and in awe of electricity. Perhaps this is why electronic things tend to malfunction around me?

 

Electrical outlets seem to have a particular hatred for me. 

Even radios stop working when i get too close.

The effing radio in the car even goes funny sometimes. And I swear to god, half the street lights on the road go out right when I drive past them. 

This is nerve-wracking when your only job qualifications are for office positions. I am not exaggerating--EVERY SINGLE OFFICE COMPUTER I have ever used has had something go wrong with it within a week of me touching it. And the other people in the office will all swear that the computer was totally fine before. In my current job, I have definitive proof.  

2 weeks after I started working for the Boss, my computer began to act weird. Word would just quit for no reason. The program we use to keep track of cases would spazz and freeze the computer. And the accounting program was on technological crack. 

So we got a new computer for Boss, and he gave me his old (but still relatively new) computer. That one went nuts as well. Then 2 weeks ago, I got a whole new computer. Brand new. 

Guess what. 

It's not working. 

And they can't fix it. The regular tech guy, and the tech guy for the fancy program we use have been trying non-stop since last Wednesday. The Boss is getting suspicious, but he can't admit it because that's like admitting I have supernatural powers. It's the same with Mum. She knows things inexplicably break around me, but she will still verbally insist that it's all in my head. Even when I killed her Blackberry. 

This problem is most fun in winter. I seem to attract an abnormal amount of static electricity. It doesn't bother me so much personally, with the exception of my bed. I had to get rid of my fleece blankets because they more or less electrocuted me every time I moved.

But other than that, I don't get shocked too much. Instead, I become a living breathing Tesla coil.

I will zap you right out of existence.

Little Sis's cat, Daisy will not go anywhere near me unless she's standing on a surface that is not a conductor. 

I'm still deflating from the weekend binge, so I'm not conducting as much electricity as I usually would. Which is a good thing, because I plan on going to the gym for at least an hour on the elliptical. Electronic gym equipment malfunctions around me as well. At least at Planet Fitness, everything is on a hard floor. 

But at home, with the treadmill on a carpet, I tend to zap anything within a 6-foot radius. And if I run fast enough, I can short out the whole basement.