macbebekin

First things first: I'm not a connoisseur. I'm not much of an oenophile. Most of the things I am are much easier to spell.

But I've been getting interested in wine, in my small way. I do like to have a pleasant glass with dinner. Two or three glasses, and I start to giggle. Four, and I start to show my tattoos. And I don't have any tattoos, so you can see that four is over my limit. A scant two is more likely, and not always two days in a row.

Since I'm the only wine-drinker in the house, I hate to open a good bottle and have it sit on the shelf, squinting sourly at me for the rest of the week, so I'm looking at some alternatives.

Watch out, travels are over and I'm back on the net, people. Don't get too excited though, as most of my pursuits will be towards bringing in the bacon to pay for an incredible, envy-inducing apartment. I'll be watching you from my little nest, my little haven in the wintery world down under.

Elsa and I received our first spamalicious request to review product x, over which we had a good laugh and set some ground rules (all thanks to Elsa because my brain is on vacation still):

A) We might choose not to write about it.
B) If we do decide it's worth writing about, the review might be negative.
c) We will always disclose that the product was a promotional sample.

So there you have it. We're all about disclosure and honesty if you didn't get that already. You're curious now, aren't you? Too bad, we're exercising option A here.

On the verge
Memories from ten and twenty years ago come flooding back to me as I approach the big 3-9 which precurses* the massive 4-0. (*Why is this not a verb? I precurse you!) I'm remembering the drama department at UT, the cult where I met JM, moving to a new country, the adjustment... Is it all about adjusting and accepting? I sense a trend...

In Port Adelaide, on our last day there, I woke up from a dream thinking "this isn't my life", that I should go back to sleep to the life I was just experiencing--I really and truly couldn't identify with the waking me. It was so cool. Once I realized, no, this is it, I was able to adjust, but the whole experience gave me pause to consider just what reality is which at this moment is... I'm running out of internet time at the caravan park.

The Fella and I have been trying to socialize more, a resolution that butts up against our natural inclination to hole up alone together in our dollhouse-sized apartment and make fun of movies. The more we go out, and the more we have people over to our dollhouse-sized apartment, the more I daydream about parties I'd like to have:

- an easy brunch. Nothing too fancy, and no on-the-spot cooking: I'll bake sweet rolls and let people help themselves to homemade granola, macerated fruit, yogurt, and slices of cold frittata. Mostly, this is a chance to catch up with friends who work weekday jobs, to show off the espresso maker The Fella gave me for Christmas, to break open the "extra" bottle of champagne my mom casually palmed off on me during a recent visit. (Which tells you something about my mother: she's the kind of person who gives away champagne. Thanks, Mom!)

- a Star Wars viewing party. Okay, this one belongs to The Fella. I mentioned wanting to watch the trilogy all together some night, and he perked up. "We'll have people over!" ....yyyyyes, okay, let's! I'll bake swirly cinnamon rolls, so we can hold 'em up to our heads Leia-style. He can take charge of everything else.

- a birthday party. Can you imagine a better birthday cake than this? Pistachio cake, marzipan, apricot preserves (or maybe I'd use bitter marmalade, mmmmm), and dark chocolate ganache. Swoon. Do you suppose making actual petit fours would make it any simpler? No, perhaps not.

- a proper tea party. I want to unpack the box of porcelain teacups that Mom gave me, make some dainty little sandwiches and tiny pastries, and sit in the garden with friends, all wearing sunhats and sipping tea with our pinkies prinked out from the handle. I foresee only two possible obstacles: I have no teapot and no garden.

What party would you give? What party would you attend?

I talked The Fella into watching Bloodrayne.

[I had to heave a sorry sigh before I could type anything else.]

Curious about the foulness that notoriously awful director Uwe Boll foists upon an undeserving world, I insisted upon seeing the evidence. I even bounced on my toes as I waggled the DVD case at The Fella. He, who routinely comes home with packets boasting "Drive-In Classics: 50 movies on 12 DVDs!" or "Horrorlicious! Bonus features: Hostesses of Horror!," displayed no enthusiasm, which should have been my first warning.

No. Uwe Boll should have been my first warning.

Bloodrayne takes its premise loosely from the videogame of the same name, transferring the action from WWII-era to a generic Olde Tyme of corsets, candles, and horseback. The basic narrative, if it can be said to have one, follows half-vampire Rayne as she oh I can't go on. You don't need to know, because you'll never see it, because you deserve better.

We barely even laughed at at. This movie plunged too deep for laughter. I just felt sad. Sad for Michael Madsen, a fine actor trudging wanly through this muck. Sad for Geraldine Chaplin, who brought a glimmer of dignity to her small part. Only a tiny bit sad for Sir Ben Kingsley, who (based on his previous roles) clearly likes money. Sad about the action sequences, which mostly featured bit players walking stolidly up to the point of impact, carefully aiming their blood-squibs at swordpoints. Sad.

Neither of us felt even a little bit bad for beloved horror regular Udo Kier; this is exactly his kind of gig, and its pedestrian dreariness doesn't even touch him.

Remarks I made during this film, in place of the hoots of laughter I expected:
- I feel bad.
- Michael Madsen looks so sad. So sad to be in this movie.
- This is soul-suckingly awful.
- Should we stop?
- Oh. Oh. Oh, no.
- I feel like a worse person for watching this.

Zardoz, 1974. In a post-apocalyptic future, a giant flying stone head named Zardoz rules over the warrior class, indoctrinating them with wisdom like "The gun is good; the penis is evil."

Wait, I'll start again: It's 2293, and the earth is populated by The Brutals, who suffer under the reign of the Exterminators (a.k.a. The Chosen), who in turn are ruled by Zardoz, who (did I mention?) is a giant flying stone head that belches out firearms.

Hang on, this doesn't seem to make sense. Okay: Zed (Sean Freaking Connery!) assassinates the Immortal Eternal pilot (yeah, don't ask me how you kill an Immortal Eternal) of the giant flying stone head that rules over the...

Um. Look: Zardoz was made in 1974; director John Boorman was given carte blanche after the spectacular success of Deliverance, which relied on the terrible simplicity of human nature and a perfectly unaffected setting. In striking contrast, Zardoz features Sean Connery dolled up in red leather briefs with criss-cross suspender straps, dramatically flared thigh-high boots, and a Yosemite Sam mustache, a get-up that in no way enhances his overblown macho posturing as he bounds around a dystopian landscape (and into another dimension, or a vortex, or, uh, something) trying to undermine the totalitarian regime of, yes, a giant flying stone head. As sci-fi, it's peculiar. As allegory, it's fatuous. As camp, it's mindblowing.

49 As a 1930s wife, I am Average Take the test!

I make a barely adequate 1930s wife, and I'll tell you why:
- fails to wash the top of the milk bottle before opening it? Yes.
- gives [The Fella] shampoos and manicures? No.
- slows up card game with chatter and gossip? Yes.
- tells risque or vulgar stories? Oh, hell yes --- this one time, I told a risque or vulgar story in a burlesque club, when we were between acts, and I ... Oh.

I fare much better as a husband.

126 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Superior Take the test!

Hanlon's [or possibly Heinlein's] razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Callahan's principle, illustrated here on a handsome stein: You can't argue with stupid.

Segal's law: A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure.

Hofstadter's law, which recursively contains its own addendum: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

Murphy's law [or sod's law]*: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Sturgeon's law: Nothing is always absolutely so.

Sturgeon's revelation**: Ninety percent of everything is crud.

*I'm assuming this link is pre-borked, or will go dead, or will crash your browser, or something because, well, y'know.

**Please notice how rigorously we at macbebekin implement Sturgeon's revelation, in homage to a fine author and a visionary.

C is for chalazion. I thought I was the victim of spider bite until the opthamologist set me straight. The lump on my eyelid is very small in comparison to all the photos I've found, but it's large enough to have caused my vision to go all wonky and produce a ghosted double of everything. I'm currently using chamomile tea bags as a warm compress to bring down the swelling, but what a pain the eye this has been.

I am in love, sweet bitter love with Chinotto, but I can't help the creeping feeling I'm slowly being poisoned while I drink it.

The final C represents the campground where we're staying close to the project in Port Adelaide. At night I can hear the waves on the beach (but not during the day). The original accommodation came with a cat and since I'm allergic we had to find a back up. We're in a cosy cabin surrounded by wild bunnies. Odd, but true.

It's early in the evening. There's a quiet table or two down at the other end of the pub, but I'm the only one sitting at the bar. My friend M is tending bar, doing some busywork and keeping me company. The TV perches above us, the Winter Olympics silently beaming out iceskating. Unfed, the jukebox plays a selection of the most popular songs in its repertoire.

Of course the friggin' Doors pop up in the rotation.

And because we're alone, M and I are the only ones who see it.

The skater takes to the ice just as "Roadhouse Blues" cranks into its first notes. At first, we snort in laughter at the unlikelihood of the juxtaposition, but thirty seconds in, M and I are silenced, our mouths gaping at how perfectly, how impossibly her gliding swoops and arches and leaps suit the tempo of the song.

You gotta roll, baby, roll.

It's flawless. It's maddening. We flick our eyes at each other, but hate to take them off the spectacle for even that instant.

The skater winds up with a grand flourish just in time for "I woke up this morning and I got myself a beer."

M and I spontaneously burst into applause.

You kinda had to be there.

I wrote on twitter about being shy. Here's a bit of expounding:

Before yesterday I wouldn't have added you as a contact unless I knew you personally or overcame the supreme sense of hesitation after seeing that you added me and thought why on earth would this person do that? When I was actively doing Illustration Friday I loved the comments, but it was so hard for me to leave one on somebody else's site. I've always been the girl who sits at the side of the pool splashing her feet while you were out there playing marco polo or whatever. I hate making the first move and for that matter so does JM--it's a wonder we'll celebrate our tenth anniversary soon.

Anyway, yesterday I had a beer and threw caution to the wind. I started adding people left and right to my twitter and flickr accounts. I even left a message or two. Maybe only one, not two. Am I too weird? It's taken a while, but I think I'm finally getting the gist of this internet life-thing. Toes in, next the whole foot.