Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup --
Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup


Lambchops, Borscht, and Artichokes for dinner. Mmmmmm, heaven. _
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08:51:03 PM, Tuesday 3 June 2003

So who wants to hitchhike to Tierra Del Fuego with me? _
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03:07:40 PM, Tuesday 3 June 2003

I'd wanted to be a professional allusion-catcher. Like a dog catcher, y'know, only easier on the joints. But harder in every other damn way. It's impossible. I could read and read and read and do nothing else for all my years -- famous and rare, light and dense, good and godawful, no discriminating -- and I'd still feel like an ignorant sod-muncher when I came across some name or sly reference that didn't buzz no bells in my head. But you get this feeling that, as long as there's something in a book you admire that you haven't dredged the depths of, you don't have the right to derive anything of your own from it, much less break off and do anything original. Frustrating. _
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04:20:09 PM, Monday 2 June 2003

I went to amateur gay karaoke. I must have burned at least six months of purgatory, or there's no such thing as justice. I sung I am a Man of Constant Sorrow. Hoo boy. I had club soda and grenadine. I am a right-angled rhombus in a vest. I am now blogging from Kinkos for twenty cents a minute. The copy attendant chick's kinda hot. It cost me $2.00 to get through the blogs. What is there to do in this town? Should I go to the Oxford and have scrambled cow brains? Should I go throw rocks in the river? Should I stand on a streetcorner and look pouty? Oh woe is me. _
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03:09:35 AM, Monday 2 June 2003

Plum Pudding. _
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12:33:54 AM, Monday 2 June 2003

Moss, you're a marvel. _
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12:33:04 AM, Monday 2 June 2003

Chick Corea plays one mean Mozart piano concerto. But these waterproof earbuds are weird-sounding. _
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12:14:36 AM, Monday 2 June 2003

Should I go to the bar tonight?

I wish I had a flowchart to help me decide...

After reading Tipping the Velvet all evening, I want to wear my loose fool's gold silk shirt with gray-green leather vest and black necktie, but... it's freaking Karaoke night. And this is Montana. 2003. Only cross-eyed ponces wear getups like that. So maybe I'll just go as incognito as possible and skulk in the shadows.

Yoiks... Karaoke night... I'm of the opinion that listening to amateur gay Karaoke is a sort of holy penitence, a way to reduce your years in Purgatory by a good 12% per every hour you endure it, but I just dunno if I got it in me tonight.

On the other hand, I ain't been out to any kind of social function in weeks, and the bar's usually good for a little eye candy if nothing else... accompanied by the occasional withering put-down, of course, but what isn't? Floog. I dunno. I'll see. _
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11:15:53 PM, Sunday 1 June 2003

Et in Arcadia Eggo. _
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11:01:39 PM, Sunday 1 June 2003

(warning: cutesy anecdote ahead)

My ma was opening her birthday presents just now (she was 65 yesterday) and the cat was by her side the whole time, lying on the wrapping paper. I guess he liked the feeling of it against his belly better than the carpet. Anyway, so she finishes opening 'em all, and I say to her, "You should have more presents! That wasn't nearly enough." And Mitya gets up off the wrapping paper and goes upstairs. And she's still there admiring all the things she got when he comes tearing down the stairs with Ratsputin, his stuffed rat, in his mouth, which he sets at her feet before going to lie down on the wrapping paper again. _
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09:38:40 PM, Sunday 1 June 2003

I was at the hardware store looking for stuff to paint my flautino black with (It's brown plastic. I hate brown plastic.) and I found this thing for ten bucks called "Survival Kit in a Sardine Can". It's in a sardine can, which floats, is crushproof and waterproof, and can be used for boiling and drinking water and cooking food. Inside the sardine can is: Acetaminophen, Adhesive Bandage, Alcohol Prep, Antibiotic Ointment, Book Matches, Tea Bag, Chwing Gum, Compass, Sugar, Whistle, Salt Packet, Energy Nugget, Duct Tape, Fire Starter Cube, Wire Clip, First Aid Instructions, Note Paper, Fishing Hook & Line, Razor Blade, Pencil, Safety Pin, Signal Mirror, and Waterproof Bag. It rocks more booty than is possible to describe. _
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09:34:26 PM, Sunday 1 June 2003

So Tipping the Velvet is like pretty much the best book ever. I checked it out from the library today and I'm nearly halfway through it and already it's made a neat little notch in just about all my kinks, one by one. True, there's no opera, but there's music hall and panto, which are, together, a grand substitute. The protagonist's a faggot butch who becomes a rent-boy (for real faggots -- guardsman uniform and all) after having her heart broken by a self-loathing drag king. I mean, honestly. It's perfection itself. And it's cunningly written -- plain, never pretentious, but with enough art to rouge up the melodrama, and acutely sensitive to diction. I even love the suits (it's unnerving what a dandy I've turned into since I started being brazen about cross-dressing when it suited me... I was watching the DVD of Fosse last night and positively drooling over the smoking jackets. Clothes in general didn't used to mean half a piddly to me before, but now they -- men's clothes, I mean; women's can go hang -- send me over all funny if they've got just the right dapper cut to 'em) and the songs and the glances and most of all the heartbreak, Ha! Just enough sex to keep the romance from being trite, just enough sleaziness so it ain't twee, and when I said it wasn't pretentious, I mean it has no pretentions of any kind. It gives you all the penny dreadful details you want, but it's not trying to shock -- just titillate. And it's grounded by an intimately solid narrator who doesn't mince words but doesn't flounce them up either. It's not deep. It's not universal. It's just tailor-made to my own peculiar proclivities. And about friggin' time something like it came along, bless its heart. _
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08:07:25 PM, Saturday 31 May 2003

Do I ever talk or think about anything other than sex or music? Or, more commonly, sex and music? Oh yeah, puns. Bit limited, I admit, but, hell, I ain't got tired of it yet, and it's my friggin' blog so THE FIG OF SPAIN! _
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01:53:43 PM, Saturday 31 May 2003

Those "pitcher" and "catcher" t-shirts they advertise on Planetout are so tawdry. But maybe I'm just bitter 'cause they don't sell one that says "shortstop". _
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01:48:59 PM, Saturday 31 May 2003

Damn, the net is a lovely thing. Doubt if you remember, but a long time back I was I.L.W. Smaragda Berg, sister of Alban Berg (the noted serial composer), for three reasons: she was one of them fin-de-siecle dykazoids that for some reason have a universal and irresistable pull on me, she was partially the model for one of my favorite operatic doormats ever, Graefin Geschwitz from Lulu, and... dude. "Smaragda". 'Nuff said. But, as you can see from the original entry, I couldn't locate a picture of her after the age of six, and I kvetched about it. So today I get an email from a guy who's writing a book on Richard Gerstl, the guy who painted some famous portrait of her that kept turning up in web catalogues but never with an image attached -- and he gave me one! Also a photograph with her husband which he says she gave the apologetic boot to shortly after it was taken. She's pretty hot, too, though some junky little sprat appears to have defaced her visage a trifle... wouldn't be surpised if it was Gerstl. Damn modernists. I'll upload it later maybe. Anyway, it was just cool to get random email about an obscure little blog entry. I think I should be I.L.W. lovely Smaragda again, just to commemorate. _
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01:36:13 PM, Saturday 31 May 2003

I got my violin out and squeedled around on it for the first time in months. Just for a little while, no sheet music... old hazy Suzuki pieces from middle school and stuff. Glargh. It felt good, though. I really freaking need to play more. I wish I was in a string quartet or something so there'd be something kicking my butt every week. The fingers came right back to me -- tone and intonation sounded fairly decent, and I could even hack some of the tricky fast stuff. But my bowing sucks goldfish balls. My wrist is all stiff and my spiccato splatters and blecch. Even my bowhold is all squished and spidery. My bowing was always way weaker than everything else, but it seems to have degraded faster than everything else too. I wanna play music! I really haven't missed having a social life for the several months I've been back, unabomberish as it sounds... my job is fantastic, the city is lovely, I get along with my parents -- I've really got no complaints. but I'm starting to miss playing music with people a whole hell of a lot. _
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07:48:26 PM, Friday 30 May 2003

Umbilically fresh! _
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11:19:45 AM, Friday 30 May 2003

My email provider's newest banner ad. I can say no more. _
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09:34:38 AM, Friday 30 May 2003

What I learned about last night from the same book that told me about the Bug: Hitler Youth Quex. (The hero's name is "Heini".) _
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12:50:00 PM, Thursday 29 May 2003

Pontius Pilate's pilot piled piles of pies in the pie-lot. Pontius's pryers pried 2-plies piously apart with pliars. Pontius plied his prize pied pryers with pleas of "Please! The pie-eyed pilot's got piles and the piles of pies are pliant. Ply your pliars! Pry the pies! Apply your pious pyrite to my plight!" _
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10:58:27 AM, Thursday 29 May 2003


Mirabai Knight
(thomasaquinas@catholic.org)

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