The Witching Well

Um. What?

It seems that KTLA in Los Angeles think that Black Canary is a bad role model, and Barbie shouldn’t dress like her. Their story is online here.

Yeah, right. ‘Cause we all know that what you wear is so much more important than what you do or why. Nevermind that fighting evil and saving people stuff, she wears fishnet stockings and a leather jacket, so she’s bad bad bad.

Please notice that they gloss over the fact that this doll is a high-ticket collector’s edition, not a kiddie toy. And that they chose to single out the Canary rather than Batgirl or Wonder Woman, who are coming out in the same product line. Oy.

Mood: angry
Music: Flogging Molly: Float

That was his name, really. Tonka for short, like the big yellow trucks we all used to play with as kids. Most of the time, though, we called him Boo or Boo-boo, often with the definite article. (Yes, it makes me think of the song, too: “Me and you and a dog named Boo…” But that’s a coincidence. Boo was a manglement of “boy” originally.)

We got the Boo from the woman who made my wedding dress. I’ve been married 15 years. I’ve had a dog 15 years. As of last night, I have to learn how to do one of those without the other.

We’ve been preparing ourselves this last year or so to let him go. Eventually. He was, after all, 15. He also had a degenerative neuralopathy, which meant he was slowly losing control over his back legs. And he was a bit senile. Eventually, we figured, when he was no longer enjoying his daily raid on the cat food bowl, when he stopped begging like a fool for the bits of chicken and hamburger that my mother liked to save for him, we’d have to make that hard decision.

But last night, what the vet called “twisted stomach” got him instead. He seemed OK when we got home from work. Around 10pm, he died in my arms in the back seat of the car on the way to the emergency clinic. Happens that way sometimes, apparently.

I’m just glad it didn’t happen when no one was home.

Today we’re both staying home from work so we can start learning how to live without him underfoot.

Mood: sad

Go and see Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. See what Joss Whedon, Nathan Fillion, and Neil Patrick Harris did with their summer vaca… I mean, their free time during the writers’ strike.

Go now. It comes down tomorrow!

Mood: amused

MA Senate votes to repeal 1913 law..

Mood: excited

As airports go, the one at Tampa isn’t too bad. There’s the usual food and places to sit and restrooms and internet access. But it’s not on my list of places to spend a whole day. Unfortunately, when you have a connecting flight at Atlanta and Atlanta is shut down for weather…

That was Sunday. Before that, though, on Saturday, there was a cousin getting married and other cousins to visit with and my brother to hang with and lots of great food. So, you know, not enirely a bad weekend trip. Though I do find it a bit disconcerting that I seem to have become one of those people who says to younger relatives: “When I last saw you, you were only that tall.” In my defense, the cousin (once removed) I said it to is now close to 7 feet tall and married and when I last saw him he was still drinking from a bottle.

And Mom gave me a really good laugh on the way down on Friday. She had a book packed, but it wasn’t very long and she wanted to save it for reading at night in the hotel, so she went to the newsstand and got a magazine for the flight down. Told me when she came back that she doesn’t usually read trashy celebrity-watcher mags (she’s more the Time, Consumer Reports, Bon Apetit, and Cat Fancy type) but she’d picked up an issue of People. Seems she does this sometimes when she travels. But when she pulled out the magazine after we’d boarded, it turns out she’d grabbed the Miley Cyrus Collector’s Issue of the thing by mistake. Hannah Montana til you puke on your shoes.

She left the magazine in the seatback pocket. Maybe the next passenger was a 12-year-old girl?

Mood: tired

My birthday was last weekend, but my husband made me wait until last night for my birthday present.

Can I just say that the Dropkick Murphys and the Mighty Mighty BossTones rock?

I mean, I knew it before, but last night at Lowell’s LeLacheur Park just blew me away. Seriously. The BossTones have still got it. I couldn’t stop dancing. And the Dropkicks do a punk rendition of Black Velvet Band that’ll make you do silly things like jump up and down until you can’t walk the next day. (You have to love a punk band that can get away with opening a concert with The Foggy Dew and have cute little stepdancers on stage for several numbers.)

Mood: energetic

Human behavior fascinates me. The bizarre things that people do.

Why on earth would anyone steal Ian Curtis’s headstone? And why would they wait until 28 years after his death to do it?

Mood: confused

The tanning salon that I pass on my way to and from the train station every day is apparently under new management. It has been renamed “Solar Eclipse Tanning.” I kid you not.

Um, guys? Not going to get much of a tan if the moon’s in the way.

Mood: giggly