You're Amelia!
You're late!
Amelia Pond! You're the little girl!
I'm Amelia, and you're late.

My Ill-Timed Brushes With Fame

I'll have you know that I've been quoted by both the all-knowing Steven den Beste and the blogfather himself, Glenn (Reynolds). Glenn (Reynolds) even emailed me once!

Unfortunately, my appearance on Instapundit came before I started blogging (and I'm mentioned by my real name too), and my tour of U.S.S. Clueless came on the day that Blogger died. No, not that day, the other day. No, the other other day. Yes, that day.

Foo.

Well, never mind. I'm here for the long haul. If I ever get to the point where I have nothing to blog, I've got 30,000 words of my novel written and I'll post that instead.

And one day, one day, I'll be mentioned on Instapundit again!

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Bloviating Inanities

Blog of the Day is Bloviating Inanities. Bill, your host, is receiving this singular award for several reasons:

1. The cool name. Bloviating Inanities. I just like to say that name: Bloviating Inanities.

2. Susie likes him.

3. He hates seminars:

There's nothing worse than starting out with the stupid, meaningless, "Tell us a little bit about yourself" bullshit. Man, I hate that. I want to answer, "My name's Bill and I hate seminars. The only thing I hate worse than seminars is strangers asking me to 'tell them a little bit about myself'.

All right-thinking people hate seminars. It's a good way to tell if a person is right-thinking.

4. He's funny:

Me: I was born in a small hospital in New Jersey. My Mom tells me I "fell out of her". When I was one, we moved to Chicago, Illinois. Many things happened in Chicago. I met a girl named Kimmy who I played with a lot. Once, when we we're taking a bath together, I

Well, yes, enough of that.

5. He has this cool contest going on. The way it works is this: you link to Bloviating Inanities (Bloviating Inanities!) on your blog. Then send Bill an email or leave a comment on his blog to let him know. Then he links to you on his blog!

Neat, huh! Much better than that other contest!

6. There is no reason 6!

7. Bloviating Inanities!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:33 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Pottery Highlights

No better way to spice up a blog than to steal content give another's work the exposure it deserves. These are not, repeat, not, written by me:

Toe No Mo'

the bloom fell off
the garden roses
when the puppy
ate mother's toses.

Freemont G. Bowen

My Mother's Toes

I used to have little brown pup
With sad brown eyes. When he grew up
The dog bit off my mother's nose
Then the dog ate my mother's toes.
It ate them one by one, all ten.
Then threw up, and ate them again.

I don't have that dog any more.

Freemont Freemont Freemontressori

The Canterdoggy Tales

What eyleth yow to grucche thus and gronne?
Is if for ye wolde have my toes allone?
Wy, taak it al! lo, have it every deel!
Dog! I shrewe yow, but ye love it weel;
For I wolde selle my belle toes,
I kould walke fresh as a rose;
The dog ate my mother's toes.

Freemont VII Preston Chaucer

Passage of Time

Seeing my life from within the throes
Of reflection
Nothing can change, but still I chose
My direction

I've seen it all through highs and lows
But when
It changed
It re-
Arranged
Everything -- my heart was squoze
The day the dog ate mother's toes

Freemont Mosely

A Sonnet, or: Help! My toes!

What piquant inspiration’s driven me
To scribe such foolish, addle-minded verse?
A comic genius' blog from whence, you see,
Emerged a challenge that forecasts the worst

For Poetry.com's poor tournament
To locate lyric diamonds in the rough.
For now the Freemonts come, all fraudulent,
And leave behind their own poetic fluff.

Oh, thus must I, while typing, ruminate
Upon the untold upshot of this act.
Could some true Freemont, unknown laureate,
Be scarred for life by such a lack of tact?

Now peroration's nigh; well here it goes:
The dog has eaten up my mother's toes.

Freemont Tobor Nomeerf

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:22 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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1 Was the posting of all these inspired by the saga of Bill's toes?

Posted by: Susie at Wednesday, July 16 2003 11:03 AM (QVnOi)

2 No - it's a contest being run by Dave Barry. (See The International Squirrel Conspiracy, which is my link to his blog for reasons that seemed good at the time.) Last time I checked there were already 240 poems involving dogs that ate Mother's toes...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, July 16 2003 12:07 PM (MB7Fq)

3 k--search for Freemont Lebowski to find mine!

Posted by: Susie at Wednesday, July 16 2003 01:25 PM (QVnOi)

4 Whoa. I'm famous. And I was just clicking through from Clueless.

Posted by: F. Mosely at Wednesday, July 16 2003 01:44 PM (wSCgA)

5 Hey Freemont! I just loved the structure of that one. And your masterful use of the word "squoze"! Unforgettable.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, July 16 2003 01:54 PM (MB7Fq)

6 Susie - I love it! I'll put it up in the morning, but first, Zzzzzz...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, July 16 2003 02:01 PM (b9eZf)

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Discerning Individuals

Good gravy, blogs I don't know are blogrolling me! This shows discernment and good taste and all that, so I really need to get over to their sites and have a read. I also need to get moving with my Blog of the Day again, which is turning into more of a Blog of the Fortnight.

Meanwhile, thanks go to:

Gaggle of Girls + One Guy, which I did in fact know beforehand, and have left comments at before.
Brain Fertilizer, who seems to have his brain on straight.
Orange Haired Boy, blogging from Scotland Florida, who is my kind of geek.
Quidnunc, who have me listed as "Pixy Misa" (they list the authors rather than the blogs). I've visited Quidnunc before, too. Their blogroll is long but stuffed full of goodness.

I'll mention The Cheese Stands Alone again another day, once LeeAnn returns to the Blogosphere. Apparently she's moving house or some such.

Also a wave to Wizbang who noted my little category icons. But did they notice that they change every day? They also have the sad story of a Sniffer Cat Snuffed.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:19 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Too Much of a Muchness

When I get to work tomorrow, there'll be a terabyte of data waiting for me to analyse.

This should be fun...

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Poetry, That'll Work!

The International Squirrel Conspiracy is holding a poetry contest. You can view some of the entries here: just search on a first name of "Freemont". (The contest requires that all entrants use that name. There are certain other requirements as well.)

Unfortunately, my entry ran somewhat over the 20-line limit, and I was forced to cut it into three parts and submit them separately. Fortunately, you, the lucky (and wise and discerning) readers of this blog can read the whole unexpurgated masterpiece right here:

As we travel through our lives,
We all encounter certain woes;
For happiness is fleeting,
And contentment comes and goes,
And good fortune never lingers -
The tide ebbs after it flows.
But I never dreamed I'd find the dog
That ate my mother's toes.

The day was brisk, the sky was grey,
The trees were filled with crows;
I'd just filled up my fishpond
With the neighbour's garden hose.
I fumbled for a handkerchief
With which to blow my nose -
And then looked up, and saw the dog
That ate my mother's toes.

I looked at him; he looked at me;
He was chewing on a rose.
His eyes were hard, his mouth was set -
Determined, I suppose.
I'd have gone and fetched my shotgun -
But I don't got me one of those.
So I stood my ground and faced the fiend
That ate my mother's toes.

We glared into each other's eyes
The bitterest of foes:
The fellow who just lives his life,
The dog that feeds on does.
And then he got run over -
One reaps just what one sows -
And lay there dying, the vile beast
That ate my mother's toes.

My poetry may sometimes rhyme,
But can't compete with Poe's.
The meter changes over time;
The rhyming comes and goes.
My one last act I will remark,
For none here would oppose:
I kicked him in the ribs and he
Coughed up my mother's toes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:31 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Zoom!

UFO Princess Warukyure*: Zero to 40D in 6.7 seconds.

* Valkyrie.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:36 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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She Sells Email...

Over at USS Clueless, Steven den Beste gets nearly as much email as I do. Difference being that his is addressed to him, rather than to "Dear ampn" (or one of my other throwaway spamtraps.)

In this case, mostly telling him what I was too polite (or to lazy) to say:

Hey, Steven, seeing how you know everything, I'm sure it just slipped your mind that Linux has been out for the Xbox for some time now, and recently became available without the need for any mod chip or messing about?

Now, if all of Steven's readers had blogs of their own, and they all blogged their comments instead of emailing them, he would have got a thousand new trackback links and shot straight to the top of the Blogosphere Ecosystem.

Hmm. Maybe I should try that. Gratuitous made-up accusations against the puppy ble... uh, against Glenn (Reynolds) worked for that Frank guy, so maybe I should try slipping in a few obvious errors so my readers can correct me and feel smug while my ratings go through the roof.

Let me think about that one.

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What Would You Do If

If you were lost in another world, with only a Olympic-class sharp-shooter, an Oscar-winning actress, the High Priestess of the Elves, and an M1 tank possessed by the ghost of a cat for company - and you ran out of toilet paper?

Hopefully you'd do better than Those Who Hunt Elves (season two, episode two).

Mind you, one of those pichikatos could come in handy in case of an emergency.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:51 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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How Was Your Weekend?

Let's see. Had an early lunch Saturday - yum cha with family and friends. My nephew Lionel was there, and after lunch we went shopping for a while. He didn't want to stay in the stroller, so I picked him up and carried him for a bit. When I tried to trade him off, he wasn't having any. Don't wanna be carried by Uncle Kay or Auntie Dee! Don't wanna be carried by daddy! Wanna be carried by Pixy! Sorry, Pixy's arm seems to be coming off. What has mummy been feeding you, lead pancakes?

There was a lovely table at Bay Swiss - at about twelve feet by four, it was even bigger than my existing dining table (which is about seven feet by three, but extends to ten feet). If I had the money (a snip at four grand!) and had the room (well, it could go on the balcony...) and had any idea how to get it home, I would have bought it. Zero out of three. Too bad.

I did buy some t-shirts at Kathmandu, which is a camping/hiking/mountain-climbing goods store. I've been in there at least a dozen times, and I've bought a grand total of... Nine t-shirts.

Hey, they're good shirts!

Then off to cousin Jay's for chocolate cake and hot chocolate and ice cream and accidentally breaking his coffee table. That wasn't Pixy, Pixy didn't do that! This evoked the traditional family response whenever something gets broken: bring out all sorts of tools and glues and assorted hardware and fix it better than new on the spot. I'm told things don't work this way in some families, which must be very strange.

Then back home, getting a lift in cousin Elle's new car ("Just drop me at the station." "I could give you a lift! I'm happy to give you a lift! In my new car! Isn't it a cute car!") which is a Honda Jazz. It has magic folding seats, shiny shiny paintwork, and the quietest cabin I've ever been in in a small car. Is the engine actually running? Must be, we're still moving.

Home now, but I seem to be out of food. Off to the supermarket, but on my way up the hill

(WARNING: RANT AHEAD)

I spot a leaflet stuck to a telegraph pole. It reads "SMASH MIDDLE EAST TERRORISM". Well, I'm all for that. "BOMB ISRAEL NOW". Right. That's coming down. It was glued on pretty well, so I was reduced to tearing it into illegible strips. At the next pole, some other right-thinking person had already started in on the leaflet, so I finished the job. And so on until I reached the supermarket.

To the backwards-evolved febrile pus-monkeys who stuck these things up: Your little hate-papers are gone now, suckers. And may you get run over by a speeding garbage truck before your next birthday.

(RANT ENDS)

Anyway, get to the supermarket (Did I mention that my idiot local council has a policy against providing public litter bins? They claim it increases littering. Which means I had to carry those damned leaflets with me until I found a bin at the supermarket.) and buy some food. (They didn't have Solomon's Matzo, only Sniders, and they don't carry Blue Diamond Smokehouse Almonds any more. Grr.) Eighty dollars? How did that come to eighty dollars? Is anyone else just the slightest bit suspicious about the official inflation figures? I wonder just what they include in their numbers; if they are including anything electronic then that will be off-setting price increases on groceries and other items.

I lug my goodies back down the hill, and find that there's no room at the inn for my frozen dinners. Oh no! It seems that the freezer door was left ajar a couple of weeks back (I think the Sticky Date Pudding held it open), and it quickly frosted up to the point where even after I moved things around the door wouldn't close properly. Another week, and my freezer compartment looks like a scene from The Day the Earth Froze. There weren't any saber-toothed squirrels in there, so it couldn't have been Ice Age.

There's so much ice that my roast chicken rolls and my beef in red wine sauce with unnamed pasta won't fit. This is a disaster! So, I roll up my sleeves (well, I didn't, though it might have gone better if I had), turn off the fridge, and get to work. About an hour later the massive ice shelf clinging to the ceiling of the freezer compartment finally gives up the fight and is ceremonially dumped in the sink. Then I wipe things down and stow away my dinners.

Upstairs now, because it's time for work. (Half-past seven on Saturday night. Sigh.) I have some database updates to apply, and this means shutting down the entire system, which is hard to do while people are using it. This turns out not to take too long; what was once an all-night job is done in an hour thanks to the miracle of being able to fit your entire database into memory. Bless you, Gordon Moore.

Then I relaxed for a while and read The Woad to Wuin, which is the sequel to Sir Apropos of Nothing. Or a couple of hundred pages of it, at least. I found myself stopping, not particularly interested in going further. The problem is, I think, that the book is just mean-spirited; it's in the first person, and our hero is a weasel. In the first book he was a much put-upon weasel and it worked; this time around he has no real problems but complains twice as much. No thanks. I have many books and a limited amount of time, so this one gets the heave-ho.

Dinner time. Odd, this frozen roast chicken roll isn't very frozen. Odd, the fridge isn't making any sound at all. Maybe it would work a little better if I turned it back on...

Sleep.

Sunday. I've been meaning to get my hair cut for about, oh, for about the last four months. Today is the day! Off I go... wait, more sleep? Okay.

Head into the city to get my hair cut and maybe do a little shopping. (Another beautiful winter's day in Sydney. Blue sky, sunshine, all of that. Ho hum.) There's a fifteen minute wait at the hairdresser so I wander into HMV and have a look around. Find a Weird Al album I didn't have and a best-of collection of the Hoodoo Gurus. Click-click... Oh, I have to take them to the counter, right.

Get my hair cut. I look human again! Haha! Just when my secret was in danger of coming out, my mask is back in place and I can...

Oops. Ignore all that.

I've been going to The Cartoon Gallery a couple of times a month since I got back into anime (and cartoons in general) in 1995. I've spent more money there than I have in any other single shop. Today they have half a dozen DVDs waiting for me: Cardcaptor Sakura #15, DNA Squared #3, Inu Yasha #7, Mahoromatic Maiden #3 (I like Mahoromatic a lot. It's kinda schizoid - light and fluffy but with a very dark backstory. And the closing theme, the Mahoro Mambo, is a delight.), Noir #4, and Sugar, A Little Snow Fairy #2 (what I refer to as Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar) I also picked up volume two of .Hack//Sign and volume one of... Of... No, I didn't end up buying Corrector Yui, so it wasn't that. Oh yes, Eden's Bowy. No, I have no idea what it's about either. Maybe if I actually read Newtype instead of piling it up in the spare room, I would.

Then down Pitt St to King's Comics. The last time I was in there (in their wonderful shiny new store), they didn't have anything I wanted. Not a thing. Nothing at all. Depressing, that, when you go to one of the best comic stores around and you don't want anything.

This time, I walk in the door and Peorth is looking at me. Peorth?! Yes, and Hild, too. Cool! I bag one of each to go with the Urds, Belldandys and Skulds I already have at home. Volume seven of Futaba-Kun Change is in at last, and so is a new Groo collection: The Groo Odyssey. All good stuff.

Oh, and my DVDs from the Cartoon Gallery didn't set off the alarms, which is a pleasant change.

Back up Pitt St to Grace Bros, where it's the last day of the toy sale. Lego is 20% to 60% off! Yay! I get some giant bugs, a plane, a couple of Star Wars sets (a Landspeeder and a TIE Bomber), and ooh! The Harry Potter Chamber of Secrets set, marked down from $140 to $59. Oh, little buckets with orange bricks, down from $22 to $15? I'll take a couple of those, too.

Dump it all at the sales counter. No, I won't be taking your six month interest-free offer on your store credit card. I don't have your store card any more. No, I won't be taking up your frequent flyer points loyalty card offer, either. Since I don't fly if there is any practical alternative. Now, if you had a frequent train-travel point scheme, I'd be there like a shot.

Now, pick up all my purchases and did I ever mention that in large quantities Lego is both very heavy and very awkward? Back through the Queen Victoria Building to Town Hall Station and home again. (Did I also mention that it's possible to get from the Zegna store on the corner of Macquarie Street and Martin Place, to the food court under the Coopers and Lybrand building on the corner of George and, what, Bathurst?, without ever coming out from under cover? Well, it is.)

Lug my new goodies home. Oh dear, my arm seems to have fallen off. How annoying.

Now I think I'll take a little nap.

So how was your weekend?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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