Photoshop Contest: If Pirates Ruled the World… HA! My favorite is “Wal-Marrrt.”

Roger Ebert’s obsessive love for Renee Zellweger is really, really disturbing me. Oh, and check out this line from his Polar Express review: “There are so many jobs and so many credits on this movie that I don’t know whom to praise…” The answer to that question, Rog, is DAN CARBO, my soon-to-be brother-in-law who worked on the movie. So if you go see it, hang around and see if you can spot his name in the credits. (It’ll probably be way, way down at the bottom.)

• I still don’t have an outfit for our wedding. I do, however, have the shoes. I was trying on yet another crappy white dress at Portman’s on Friday when I thought to myself, “What’s the point? I don’t even have shoes to go with this.” And then, like lightning, I had a perfect vision of exactly the shoes I wanted to be married in. Oh yes, pristine white low-top Chuck Taylor sneakers. I happily marched up to General Pants Co. and bought them. They shall not be worn til the day of the wedding. In this, at least, I am satisfied.
• Helen started at Tapestry Craft! She even had a run-in with Creepy Jesus Lady on only her second day. She asked CJL if she’d knitted her own sweater, and CJL replied: “Yep, me and God.” (CJL was pretty annoyed with me on this visit, I think, because I refused to return some of the wool she bought during the sale. Apparently Jesus forgot to warn her to read the sale policy.)
• Saturday was our Post-Sale Celebratory Dinner at Ichiban Teppan-Yaki. Snookums joined me and the rest of the TC staff for an evening of food, fire, and flying eggs. Afterwards we went to “Viva Karaoke,” which was pretty fun. I got into it, anyway. Unfortunately most of my co-workers were too shy to sing, which kinda sucked. (And of course, we had a “mocker” amongst the group who thought it was much funnier to make fun of everyone else, which didn’t help the shyness issue.) Clinton was definitely the rockstar of the night with his Ricky Martin moves. The two of us also duetted on a rockin’ version of “Sk8er Boi” that left me hoarse afterwards.
• I’m so close to being done with my sister’s wedding gift. It’s take me well over a hundred hours. I hope she likes it!
• Snookums and I met up with my friend Sharon at the Newtown RSL this arvo, and guess who I saw? Tripod. We were just sitting in the bar when I saw Yon wander past. I was like, “Snookums, look look look! Right behind you. It’s the guy from Tripod.” Him: “The baldy?” Me: “No, the one with glasses. Look look look!” Turns out they were doing a gig later that night. Ten minutes later Gatesy strolled out. Me: “It’s another one! Ooh, it’s the cute one!” Him: “The cute one?? Scod?” Me: “No! Gatesy. Quit obsessing about Scod. Oh wait, Scod just came out.” Man, I wish we had seen the show now. Instead we just listened to the end of the meat raffle and then headed home.
• I am so unprepared for this trip. We leave in less than a hundred hours. I have less than a week of singleness left. AND WHAT THE HELL AM I GOING TO WEAR FOR THE WEDDING?

For myself: How to Write a Request for Proposal.

The KFS Sweater Project: a guy models 25 extremely daggy sweaters that he pulled out of his wardrobe. Let this be a cautionary tale for knitters everywhere.

Check out the iApology at SorryEverybody.com. (Scroll down halfway.) Note the track number as well as the time elapsed/left in the song. Very clever, eh?

Here’s a glowing review of Delicious Library, which I downloaded a few days ago. It’s an OS X program that helps you maintain your collection of books, movies, CDs, and video games. That sounds boring, but it’s actually pretty jaw-dropping. I was just messing around with it, playing with the demo collection, when I hit the “Scan Barcode” button. My iSight popped up a black-and-white video window with laser scanlines on it. Curious, I held the nearest book up in front of it. Five seconds later, my computer said (actually said, mind you): “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen.” And there it was, sitting on the little virtual shelf with all the data loaded in from Amazon! I was like, “Get OUT!” That is pretty damn sweet. I figure I’ll wait til we get back from the trip to drop the $40 on the license and give the thing a real workout.

See? I can shill with the best of them. Too bad in this case it’s because I actually like the product, and I’m not getting anything in return. Take that, Warner Brothers!

I’m conflicted. Remember how I was ranting about the new Wonka movie? Well, I just got an e-mail from someone at Warner Bros. asking me to plug the movie on my Dahl site. They’ll send me a poster if I do. So here’s the conundrum: This is information about a Roald Dahl adaptation, and presumably most of his fans will be interested in it. So I should just post it, right? On the other hand, to me the movie looks like it’s going to piss all over the original story. I’d rather not act as a shill for that. So should I do it? The principled bit of me says no; the not-so-principled bit is shrieking “Maybe they’ll invite you to the Sydney premiere and you can meet Johnny Depp!” over and over. Stupid, I know.

Um, so if any of y’all are looking for a last minute wedding gift for us… we’ll take this. Seriously. That would be sweet. 🙂

The Tale of Creepy Jesus Lady
This happened on Saturday afternoon. This hippie-lookin’ lady came in about ten minutes before closing and immediately gave off the you’re-going-to-be-here-for-another-half-hour vibe. Great. I also noticed that she was wearing a big circular cardboard pendant around her neck with “JESUS” written on it in ink pen. Things did not look good. She grabbed a basket and started loading up (but without any particular sense of urgency). I was busy helping a few stragglers so I lost track of her for a bit. Eventually I noticed her pestering Albert up at the other counter. She’d heard me mention that the new store will have a coffee shop and she decided that she had the perfect name for it. It was so long that she actually had to write it down. It was something like: “Tapestry Craft Total Tea Shop Creative Coffee Cafe.” (As she put it, “So you could just refer to it as the TCTTSCCC!”) Albert somehow managed to keep a straight face and launched into a great performance of “How to Deal with Crazy People.” He thanked her and said he’d give her a call back about it. He grabbed a piece of paper to write down her contact details. “What name should I put?” “Jesus.” Say what? We both looked at her. “Or you could put YESHUA,” she happily announced, turning over her cardboard pendant to reveal that very name on the other side. Uh-huh. Albie high-tailed it out of there, leaving me to deal with her as she finalized her purchases. As I was ringing her up, I went into the standard store patter of asking how she’d heard about our sale. “Oh, I didn’t know about it,” she said. “I don’t get out much, but I’m a CHRISTIAN, and I pray for EVERYTHING. It was a MIRACLE from CHRIST that I made it here for the sale today.” Really? “Yes, the last time I came you were closed. So it was a MIRACLE from JESUS that you were open today.” Wow, most folks just read the sign with the opening hours on the door. I just kept nodding and smiling. With a flash of inspiration, I asked if she went to any knitting groups. “No! But I’d love to. Where do you find out about that stuff?” she asked. “The Internet,” I answered solemnly. “Are you on the Internet?” Regretfully, she said she was not. And thus I was able to ascertain that it was safe to talk about her on my website. Clever, no? I can’t wait to see what happens when she finds out that we passed on her TCTTSCCC suggestion.