I'm so ashamed

But Freud tells me I'm well on the road to pushing knickknacks in from the edge of small occasional tables (and other similarly tragic behaviors) with all this repression, so here goes: I really like the reality TV shows like America's Next Top Model, Dancing with the Stars, Project Runway, and so on (this is in the order of my liking for them, too, I think). Now it's time for me to return to Mr. Conrad, with whom I am having an passionate dalliance since I don't have a TV. But to paraphrase a girl from work, just because I'm seeing him doesn't mean I wouldn't leave for a TV were one to appear in our apartment.

I Like Ike

There is a 100% chance of rain tomorrow, and the 14,500 stubborns in Galveston who've exempted themselves from the mandatory evacuation are being told that they face "certain death." I need to go to the laundromat tomorrow as our dryer is AWOL, so I guess this is just a little spur to get up early enough to be done and back home by 1 pm (when the fun is really supposed to start.) I'm kind of looking forward to it, as I won't really need power tomorrow, and as long as the plumbing works life should be good. The sky at sunset was gorgeous this evening, featuring the main colors from a spreadsheet chart I'd been working on earlier.

And in more important news, I got expensive shampoo and conditioner since my hair is long enough that it needs encouragement to avoid knots ("If you don't talk to your hair about tangling, who will?"). This will be totally fun to try (what will the smells and textures of these epithelial condiments be?), and I expect to be combing admirers out of my "long luscious hair"* starting tomorrow.

*A quote from a girl on the subway, NOT referring to another girl. At first I thought the young man's obvious lack of interest was because she was making him sound like even more of a fruit than he was, but I misjudged him. He suddenly awoke from his coma when the girl said she supposed his long luscious hair had very little product in it: as it turns out it had five and his lack of interest previously was that the connection to himself† was a little more tangential than he found appealing. In the end, the girl was a sympathetic character as she was at least trying to be congenial, while the young man seemed to have found someone he really liked (himself) and was too entranced to notice others.

†It had been a story of another young man with similar long luscious hair who had been made to cut it off.

Early Morning Songbird

I've been listening to a lot of Johnny Cash lately, which comes up in unexpected ways. One is that I'll find myself a couple of bars into "If I were a carpenter..." while in the shower in the early morning. Then I realize what I'm doing: "did anyone hear?" as I look guiltily around the tiles and shower curtain (as if the absence of a visible audience will prove that no one did hear.) Of course, since it's early morning and I haven't yet wrested my iron self-control away from Mr. Sandman, these thoughts are also said out loud (remember, this is only about twenty minutes since I've realized that yes, I am the kind of thing that can do something about that alarm clock). And for about the same reason, the entire scenario repeats at least once more before the shower is over and I can escape downstairs (and away from my soon-to-be-sainted roommate who is usually attempting some of tired nature's sweet restorer).

Of course, once downstairs the urge to sing does not recur. There are probably deep-seated psychological reasons for this (and physiological reasons, since I'm not the kind of thing that can sing and eat breakfast simultaneously). Also interesting from a psychoanalyst's point of view is why some songs are so very popular for ablutionary singing ("Oh Bury Me Not" is a perennial favorite) without overlapping the playlist ("Hurt" and "The Mercy Seat.") "The Man Who Couldn't Cry" shows up reliably on both, but I think that's because I really like the bit where he locates his dog before he rejoins his arm.

I'm not going to ask my roommate if she's heard me. Once when I was thirteen, a lady who was staying with us told me I had a lovely voice and that she'd particularly enjoyed the rousing version of "Dixie" and it was years before I could shower when company was at the house.

I've been watching a bunch of "Arrested Development" on Hulu (free but apparently legal with lots of commercials), and enjoying it overall. However, the most recent episodes (last half of series two) were yet another proof of how much the TV/movie industry needs a "Christian consultant" to help them produce Christian characters who are more caricatures (realistic portrayals are not the series' forte*) and less Frankenstein's monster. These last episodes featured evangelical-episcopal-Catholic Baptists.

*Someone also needs to tell them that gun rights enthusiasts are usually NUTS for gun safety.