whiskey in a teacup . com

The sound of a cat’s purr, as auscultated with a stethoscope, is not unlike the mesmerizing drone of the Hypnotoad.

“Contains spoilers!”

I’m willing to accept the batsuit, the batmobile, the silly sonar/cell phone subplot, and pretty much every other fantastical thing that happened in this movie. I’m an American movie-goer; my disbelief is suspended, yo. But my patience for ridiculousness runs out around the time the (terrifically acted) Joker visits the freshly-injured Two Face in the hospital. That left eyeball, shining moist and unscathed despite its eyelids and tear ducts having been burned away. That gaping jaw wound, with its exposed bone and tendon, not resulting in a fulminant infection. The fact that Two Face speaks with perfect diction despite having no lips on one side of his mouth. No! It simply doesn’t make sense. Plus, if he was really refusing all treatment, a burn that severe would probably kill him secondary to fluid loss, electrolyte imbalance, and that sort of thing even in the absence of infection. The pain alone could kill him, I’d reckon.

Furthermore, the jailed character who has the exploding cell phone subcutaneously implanted into his abdomen? The plot suggested this back alley surgery had taken place recently; yet the wound was in a fairly advanced stage of healing, with no edema, erythema, drainage, or (again) signs of infection. Inconceivable! In Gotham, there are great feats of violence and incredible technologies, but curiously there is no sex, no blood, no swearing, and apparently no microbial life.

I was delighted, however, to note that the Joker used hand sanitizer when he left Two Face’s room at the hospital. Let us all emulate this behavior in the course of our own maniacal endeavors.

From a forty-two year old salesman I used to work with:

“Don’t remember telling you but I got divorced last month. Tell your hot single friends (younger friends of coarse - you’re a little old for me) hope all is well”

I made you a mixtape on a dubiously legal site that lets you upload a dozen tracks, which then stream for the recipient who has only to click on the first song, sit back, and be delighted/disappointed. It’s an interesting service in that you can only make one mix at a time; yet you needn’t make a “best of” or themed list or try to impress or seduce the listener…you can delete the whole thing and make a new one whenever you want. The one I made today is not really indicative of what I’d be listening to on any given day (though I do love all the tracks I included) and is clearly informed by the delicate state I’m in. I could probably do this once a week times many, many weeks without running out of songs I want you to hear. Anyway, if anyone else makes one, I’d like to hear it.

On Saturday night, maybe around midnight, I was scrunched up on the couch reading The Week. Jared was playing with his turntables in the front room. I caught up on the headlines and read an article about how we don’t know our neighbors and should make more of an effort to reach out to them. It was getting late, so I decided to take my party to the bedroom (i.e. take my contacts out and read some laptop in bed until I passed out). On my way to the front room to say goodnight to Jared I noticed some bright lights flashing from outside. From the window I saw two ambulances, a fire truck, and a police car parked in front of our house.

A few moments later two EMTs emerged from the house across the street, carrying on a gurney a woman I didn’t recognize. She appeared to be unconscious. Her breasts were exposed and I thought her legs looked a bit streaked with blue. The EMTs brought the gurney around to the back of the ambulance, started to load her up, and stopped. I was viewing this through the leaves of the tree that guards our window, but I thought I saw them cover her face with a sheet; then, paradoxically, I thought I saw one of them do a few quick chest compressions. They put her in the vehicle. Then nothing happened. Four cops were standing on the sidewalk talking to each other. Maybe fifteen minutes later all the lights stopped flashing, and the vehicles pulled away silently.

When my preferred Sherman Cafe is full up on a Saturday morning, and I am forced (forced!) to take my books and head over to the Bloc 11 instead, it is really difficult not to joke with myself that this echoes the way my ancestral Juden were forced to their own Block 11 when the hearty Anglos needed more Lebensraum.

Really, really difficult.

What I wouldn’t give for a crisp fifty-degree day, the kind that requires a jacket or maybe a hoodie you can wrap around yourself at the coffeeshop…the kind where at night it drops down into the forties, and you can crack open the window next to your bed and cuddle into the blankets and wake up at three in the morning to close the window because you’re too chilly.

October can’t get here fast enough.

Dan shares a story about winding up on the wrong end of a knife, resulting in a large gash to the left forearm. After enjoying his tale, I realized that my own left forearm was once home to a rather sizable slice, though unlike his mine was self-inflicted. Those days are long behind me now, and I am currently one of the happiest people I know, but Dan’s descriptions of the shock of seeing one’s own yellow fat inside a wound, and subsequently seeing the sadness on one’s mother’s face, were quite evocative.

Anyway, all this jibbajabber is just an excuse to invite you to listen to You Can’t Put Your Arm Around a Memory by Johnny Thunders, which has long been a whiskeyinateacup favorite for all seasons and all mental states.

Travis coins a phrase that has been sorely missing from the vernacular:

“goatseing your comfort zone”

Fantastic.

Vacation; coming to the end of the paved road under a black sky in Plymouth; enjoying the weird and wonderful sight of yet more friends getting married; stilettos sinking into the dirt; slow dancing with a three year old to Bryan Adams; lots of hugs; some guy in the last call for alcohol line showing me his tattoos; crying on the shuttle bus; family; going to Dali with the mother in law and our lodger; several Spanish men singing Happy Anniversary while shooting us with a bubble gun; giving my husband books and chocolate; more vacation.