As the filk song has it.
Jane is the builder in the house. I’m in charge of destroying things. I get tagged to kill algae, poison weeds, break down boxes…remove tile…you get the picture. So here I am trying to manage a damned sprayer the instructions to which I’ve lost, and I get a bath in Triox, which is so potent weeds won’t grow where it’s sprayed for a whole year—they say. Says not to spray it in the drip pattern of tress, which is pretty well our whole property, but I got the driveway, the side path, and the lava rock below the retaining wall….I’ve got to get the weedwhacker to the line of foot-tall grass which our neighbors’ lawn crew inexplicably left as a barrier between our paving-stone walkway and his lawn. Go figure. It’s on his property. But it’s seeding onto our gravel path. The Destroyer will be after it, with the weedwhacker, not the Triox.
Triox compound? I believe that means you should be able to breathe easier on Vulcan, just in case you have to fight in one of those shotgun wedding parties….
And I am … I am ….
(Looks frantically around for something I do.)
I am The Petter! The Bringer of Kitty Foods. The Bed Warmer!
I knew I had a use.
The Lap. The Provider of Entertainment. Dispenser of Treats.
My yard is all over *(%$#@&!(*!@#! tree of heaven seedlings from the neighbor’s tree, and I’ve got knee high nettles growing between the slabs of the sidewalk to the alley. But I also have mourning doves foraging. When you get done whacking the grass. . . .
I want a tee shirt that says, “She Who Must Be Butted” for I am she. Now, if I could just teach the black one to butt me instead of indulging in an orgy of face rubbing that usually has the result of his wiping his nose all over me. . . .
The infamous Head Butt of Approval.
Despite being warned that I shouldn’t expect produce from my spontaneously-seeded squash vines, one is definitely growing at the end of a vine — so there! I also have weeds all over the yard, and not the kind that make nice wildflowers, just sticky burrs and vining grass that gets up into the bushes and smothers them if not removed. I spent much of an afternoon trying to extricate my cup and saucer bush from an overgrowth of the grass and bitter melon ropes. It used to be a nice hedge plant, but I found that the weeds had smothered everything but a few tufts at the end of the whippy long branches.
Anybody want to trade for Way Too Many lily-of-the-valley plants? It’s like an army of little green soldiers armed with tiny white bells. Also an aggressive oregano patch and a hosta that is almost large enough to eat the neighbor’s house (I can only hope…)
I’ll send you a bucket of our local garden challenge and you can have the contents for dinner after it solves your garden challenge! I would love to be able to grow hosta, and I’ve never seen lily of the valley here. Some loverly induhvidual gifted the west coast with European brown snails, which I imagine would go lovely with the oregano. If you like escargot. Personally I’m not afraid to admit I’d rather eat the OTHER local garden challenge, deer.
Lol—well, our resolve Against New Plants crashed and burned, and it’s not all Jane’s Fault. She got clematis, which do spectacularly well here. We don’t know what we could trade you for—except iris rhizomes! We have lots of iris! —
I got a canna. Jane hates cannas. But I have had a soft spot for them. They have huge leaves (Jane hates plants with huge leaves.) But they survived the drought years of my childhood in Oklahoma and multiplied and thrived, with big tropic leaves, which were like jungle plants to me.
And they’ve bred them now in such marvelous colors Jane was willing to entertain one. I haven’t explain how fiercely they multiply….
They also send out children … into the lawn a couple of feet away is not unusual. I like cannas myself.
I wondered when you two were going fall from resolve and grace! Glad to know you are human.
I’m going to disguise its bad behavior by putting it in a large pot on the patio. 😉
They really have some beautiful varieties now. I had one that was a lovely yellow with red highlights and ruffles. The only drawback was that the flowers tended to burn up where I had it. It needed semi-shade. You can’t kill the sturdy very tall varieties; they thrive on neglect.
This one is green leaves with red and yellow stripes and a red-orange-yellow flower. We shall see!
It’s all HER fault… She mentioned filk and claimed to be the destroyer. Of course, my mind went to the Dorsai based song by Bill Sutton titled DESTROYER. My brain immediately went to the chorus:
“I am the destroyer.
I the wrecker of worlds.
I the rider of lightening
As the storm around me swirls.”
Except, when it got to the third line, I switched to a song written by Frank Hayes, CHEAP LAWYER, which uses the same music. My brain came out with…
“I am the destroyer.
I the wrecker of worlds.
I the amublance chaser….
(name omitted), PSC. ”
(The person named is a real lawyer.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfauvAPBP0&feature=relmfu
I will warn you. If you have depression problems do not play this song. This is not my favorite recording either. The one I have is Bill Sutton singing.
On a lighter side, when I read INVADER I keep hearing Julie Andrews singings “SHOW ME” from MY FAIR LADY when Jago tells Bren, “Words, words words…”
I had the same association with “words, words, words…”, only with Audrey Hepburn, from the 1964 film – and on checking my facts just now found out that wasn’t her voice, but Marni Nixon’s!
I wonder if our kind hostess here likes old musicals and meant it as a wink in that direction?
And…Cheap Lawyer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGNa3dSaZCA
What we need is a dialog between Bren and Jago with that music. Trying to switch it to Atevi attitudes is the hard part. There has to be a cartoon in there somewhere if I think about it. (After all, it’s May and that’s one of my creative periods every year.)
Does this mean the next book is a musical episode? (Obscure Buffy/Whedon reference.)
It might help that I rewatched 1776 this past weekend. Fantastic.
Amusingly, a re-run of “Once More with Feeling” was on a local station this morning, BCS! 😛
Our neighbor doesn’t care about our plants, and mostly his plants don’t bother us…no no. It’s the CATS our neighbor roars about.
Because two of my cats are outside kitties, having been born “working cats” in a rural area…and they still work. Mostly the black one works at bleaching his fur out, but Tiger lives up to his name. Occasionally, it seems, he chooses to hunt in the neighbor’s back yard among the songbird feeders…!
But, honestly, the man’s bird feeders are also sustaining a raccoon family in high style, so he is getting just what he asks for, leaving food out for the wild life. *grin*
I’d love to know what our lovely hostess thinks about music!
Lol—well, I PLAY music more than listen to it. But I find some things by Phil Collins for Disney just brilliant—Tarzan, eg. Our favorite traveling music (ie, when we’re in the car and need to stay awake) are Road to El Dorado (Elton John)—the reason our Forester is nicknamed ‘Tivo, nothing at all to do with the DVR recorder and everything to do with our lads’ runaway attitudinal horse. 😉 ) and we love Alan Mencken/Stephen Schwartz in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which we think is one of the most brilliant and surprisingly deep ‘light’ operettas (the Disney version, ie) ever conceived. Love those pieces. We like Japanese anime bubble gum pop, ie, the tracks to Bleach and Naruto and Descendants of Darkness and Gravitation. I enjoy filk, at least the upper skill levels, among which I don’t count myself. I like Fish’s Kipling. And her Minus Ten and Counting. I think The Eagle Has Landed ought to be the national fannish anthem. Of classic musicals, probably My Fair Lady is still my sentimental favorite, but I have a warm spot for Camelot—though I’ve listened to those so often I just can’t anymore. And from childhood, I have loved The Vagabond King (1930’s movie, re Francois Villon). I love 1776—again, brilliant work. Our taste in music runs right down the same channels, though Jane likes a far broader range of music than I do. If you gather I have a penchant for minor key, eminently singable, belt-em-out sorts of ballads, you’re not going to go far wrong. Of modern popular music, nothing that great—I think Japan is where it’s at: much more sense of musicality to my ears, better rhythm, some sense of what a backup ought to be.
And one hint of a warbling female that can’t true up her notes before she lets them out and thinks her virtuosity is sufficiently demonstrated by off-key runs rather than a steady, pure sostenuto on the original note—and I’m outa there. She’s not my cuppa. Male, either, though I’m more tolerant of male voices. If they wanna do grand opera (which seems to me the tendency now in American Idol) they should try Das Nibelungenlied, not Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
I was in Philadelphia last week at a conference and grabbed an hour and a half before my plane left back to Boston to go visit Independence Hall. I didn’t actually get in (last ticket for tour handed out a bit before I got there) but roamed the area, yes, populating it with all our historical personages — mentally tricked out in their 1776 musical guises. One of my favorite musicals.
I did get to go “next door” to Independence Hall, to our nation’s first congressional building. Congress met there for two years while waiting for DC to be built. “Your Humble Servant, G. Washington” lived not far away as president and stepped down from office in the small (maybe 45 feet by 30 feet) House of Representatives chamber, thus setting an example of peaceful transfer of power for the entire world, one many African countries have still to learn. And upstairs, John Adams presided in his crankiness over the Senate as G. Washington’s VP. A Boston native, he’s one of my all time favorites — everyone should read the letters he and his wife Abigail exchanged.
Gravitation and DoD, awesome. Check out Buck-Tick, the Japanese gods of rock. Get a taste with the opening themes of Nightwalker and Trinity Blood (Gessekai and Dress, respectively, if you want to go the YouTube route.)
This, BTW, I found when I was tracking down Cheap Lawyer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mO7vkdkJhg&feature=relmfu
This is one I wrote, lyrics and music. Sung by Leslie Fish. Long since unavailable…and the tape is sadly stretched, but you can get the idea. Go out and by Leslie’s stuff.
And from MM: with one personal name censored, justincase.
Cheap Lawyer
by Frank Hayes
Broke I grew in my first year of law school
Broker still in my second year grew.
By the time I had earned my diploma,
I’d be in debt till 2032.
Got a job at a big prestigious law firm
Meanie, Tekle, Parson, McGhee
Not a dime did I earn for my labor.
If I cannot be successful
then shyster I will be.
I am the cheap lawyer.
Mine contingency fees.
I the ambulance chaser.
{name}, PSC.
Ask a housewife how much two and two is
Without hesitation, she’ll tell you it’s four.
Ask a doctor and he’ll think about malpractice
and tell you at the very least he’s certain it’s three.
Ask an accountant and he’ll say
I’m very certain,
but let me run through those figures once more.
Ask a lawyer, he’ll shut the door
and close the curtains
and whisper to you “How much do you want it to be?”
I am the cheap lawyer.
Mine contingency fees.
I the ambulance chaser.
[name], PSC.
Off topic, on the garden: how did all the basalt-spreading go, can you two still move? And what’s going on with the pond? From all the pictures over on Jane’s blog you seem to be having some trouble with it, having to rebuild the waterfall and making artistic waves of foam!
The tulips are looking good though. You’ve got some very unusual and beautiful ones. I love the one that looks like a rose or a paeony, looking into the flower.