To Live and Die and Have a Birthday In LA

I know some people, when celebrating their birthday with a trip, will go for a vigorous hike in the Cascades, or trek to Bhuthan to meditate with the monks.   Last week for my birthday (and sincere thanks to everybody who wished me a happy one, and all the rest of you miscreants also,) I went down to Los Angeles for a manicure.

It was well and truly the greatest manicure I've ever had.  The salon Secret Agent Fred and I went to had the severe white hush of a chic research lab and we each had a room all to ourselves so the technician could truly concentrate on our cuticles.

Also, tiny little fur brushes to whisk away the detritus from the emory board.  Dazzling.

Also quite charming was the always beautiful LA weather and lots of cute guys.

We were staying in a small hotel I quite like and which pretends to have a bar.  You sit down at a table, a server appears eventually, takes your order and then disappears.   One supposes they're mixing drinks back in the laundry room.  I ordered a Lemon Drop because I am a Lady, I do Lady Things and it was served as a martini glass filled with Citron vodka.  That was it, no mixer, nothing, just liquor.  Turned out to go with my vicodin perfectly well.

And really great Mexican food, my favorite cuisine.  Why San Francisco is so lacking in it is a constant source of pain to me.

My favorite coffee place in the universe is a small San Francisco chain called Peet's.  I was so glad to find one near our hotel and even more delighted to see they have valet parking.  It's L.A. baby.

Thanks again to everyone for your birthday wishes, all of which came true.  It was a plenty Happy one.

Sprung

The season of chocolate bunnies and enthusiastic flowering shrubs is on us and mrpeenee is reveling in  and suffering through it in about equal parts.

Reveling because this is the time of year when all the hard work I've put in to my yard over the years pays off.

Here my favorite flowering plant ever, a California native called ceanothus, or California Lilac.  Photos never do justice to its electric, sapphire blue.  It blooms with flowers so dense you can't see the leaves.  The bees dig it, too.

Also, further up in a sort of inaccessible spot, two charming imports from Australia, Leptospermum, or tea tree (but not the tea tree that they get oil from.   Botany is so darn confusing) hold down the fort.  The bigger one is a fabulous rose red and the smaller one has flowers that look white from the distance, but up closer reveal their pale, pale pink throats.

You can see in this picture the patch in the back of the garden I rescued from the invading blackberry vines and acacia.  Considering how it took me weeks to hack them back and resulted in several various ouchies in the process. seeing how teensy the new open space is pretty discouraging, but I'll take what I can get.  I've planted it out in wildflower seeds; I hope July wil see a blaze of poppies and cornflowers and whatnot up there.

Suffering comes in because as much as I love this time of year, my sinuses hate it.  I have been slowly drowning for two weeks in my own mucus and all I ask for is a burial at sea where, hopefully, the fucking pollen will not be able to find me.

Here Comes Peter

So I spent all day today convinced it was Easter Sunday.  The very nice hostess at the Burritt Room, where we had a fabulous early dinner, confirmed that I was a week early.  On the up side, she convinced us to come back next Sunday (which claims to actually be the day) for brunch.  Bottomless mimosas to celebrate the horrific torture and murder of a Jewish prophet and his sort-of-scary zombie path to holiness!  All right!

What makes this annoying (aside from the possibility I have lost what little mind I ever had) is the fact that I am one of the very few people who can rattle off how the date Easter falls on is determined.  The very same church which refused my ultra fabulous campaign for ultra fabulous popester created a bizarre formula for Easter while they were struggling for the hearts and minds of heathens.  Since the heathens were reluctant to give up their holidays, the church just absorbed them and turned them into ecumenical holy days or feasts.  Thus Easter is a moveable feast because it changes each year.

Calculating the date has its own name, "Computus" and here's how it works:  Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox.  There was probably something about sacrificing a goat when it was still heathen property, but that didn't make it past the Jewish Passover.  The name "Easter" comes from a pre-christian goddess names Oestrus, which also lent itself to the biology term estrus for when Ladies can make babies out of their eggs.

Paganism: the church is stuffed with it.

I can also name all seven dwarves by memory.

Remember When You Were Young?

Secret Agent Fred and I shared a most amusing afternoon recently with an old friend from mrpeenee's long gone wasted youth.  We were tucked into tea at Neiman's; it was, as I pointed out, the very heart of the One Percent Land.  Tea at Neiman's only made the conversation even odder: surrounded by the most respectable of matrons and the Very Good handbags, we traded preposterous stories about our druggy past.  Preposterous because among other things, he claimed I showed up in Austin on a visit once baring nitrous oxide whippets.  While it's true there was a time when I found whippets most amusing in a conscious altering sort of way, the idea that I would cater them is not worth considering.  I was poor in those days, sweetie, how on earth could I afford exotica for my friends?

My biggest problem debunking claims like this is my memory of those times is patchy, at best.  Sieve-like is probably a more accurate adjective.  So when these wild tales about long gone shenanigans erupt, my whole defense consists of spluttering "I did no such thing."  No one at the table even pretended to believe me.

Speaking of drugginess from days gone by, let us consider this newish, bang up version of Pink Floyd's Shine on You Crazy Diamond.  The song manages to hit both the tune's motha-o-gawd-I-am-tripping-like-a-thousand-screaming-monkeys effect and also a nod to the very bluesy sound those incredibly white English bands were shooting for in those days.  Pink Floyd, Cream, Traffic, Rolling Stones, everyone wanted to be Blind Willy Lead Foot Pig Meat Johnson.

I like it.

Dammit

I knew I needed to pay more attention to this whole getting-elected-pope thing, but how could I focus when those fussy old queeny cardinals were pissing on my last good nerve and then I got distracted looking up this redhead on the Night is Half Gone blog

Can you blame me?

Plus I got this extremely unsettling email from MJ over at Infomaniac:
Dearest Pope Peenee:

Would you do me the kindness of emailing a frontal photograph of your good self?  Not necessarily top to bottom (pun intended) but something with your face in view and not in profile.

I had several likenesses of you but when my computer crashed I lost them.

Not that I'm planning to Photoshop you or anything. *crosses fingers behind back*

Respectfully (again, with fingers crossed behind back*,

Mistress MJ

God almighty, I have a hard enough time sleeping at night with the fucking cat commandeering the best part of the mattress and now I keep peeking under the bed expecting MJ to pop up like that clown doll in Poltergeist.  Can you blame me?

Anyway, the old dears in the Vatican were adamant about no working from home.  They said if Yahoo can't do it, why should the pope.  So that was a non-starter for me right there.  I think they were just afraid I wouldn't share the Brazilian stripper/choir boys.

Actually, I would not have shared this.  Do I look crazy.  Don't answer that.

So, ok, fine, one more tiny little dream of mine, crushed.  If only I could comfort myself in that redhead's pits.

Pope This Space for Rent

Headline from the NY Times article today: "Pope Wanted. Must Possess Magnetic Charm. And Grit."  Am I a shoo-in, or what?

Actually, I suppose I need to start paying more attention to this whole getting-elected-pope business, but I just got distracted by porn.

Still, I'm back on it, trust me.  I hear the cardinals are mostly in place, probably comparing shoes and playing Who's Got the Cutest Prelate.

Once I'm in, I'll need to come up with a pope name, cause even though I think "Pope peenee" has a certain spunky charm, I know tradition demands that the new pope select a papal name.  Plenty of them have gone with Gregory, a name I'm sort of luke warm to.  There was a fifth century pope called Pope Zosimus, and isn't that the coolest papal name ever?  And Google adds, quite casually, that he might have been jewish which almost sells me on it, but not quite.

I prefer the popes that went with names that played up some personal trait, thus all those Piuses and Innocents and Clements.  While I think that may be a little too obvious ("Look at me!  I'm all pious and stuff!") I'm sort of leaning towards either Pope Lucky or Pope Sassy.  Certain of our dedicants would be allowed to address us as "Pope SassyPants."

I spent way too long trying to Google the translation of SassyPants into Italian.  I suppose I'll just have to stick to sign language.

Also, though, I have to consider selling naming rights.  If any more of those grabby priests get sued, there isn't going to be enough bingo games in the world to keep my holiness in red Prada pumps. So something like "Pope General Electric: Imagination at Work" or "Pope Staples: That Was Easy." The First.  For an extra consideration I would have their logo embroidered on my chasuble.  But not my good one, just the everyday one.

In Which mrpeenee Fixes Television

So the rumor that I am unable to pay attention is totally false; I just don't like to.  For instance, I have, for quite a little while, known that this is the 21st century.  I know this because people keep yammering the same old chestnut about "It's the 21st century, where is my flying car?"  Yaddayaddayadda.  Listen, right now you are plenty likely to be rear ended by an old hippie paying too much attention to her audio book of L. Ron Hubbard's wit and wisdom and when that happens you trade insurance info and fend off her attempts to talk you into a "personality test" and drive away.  In a flying car, you plunge to a fiery death.  That's an improvement?

I do not want the techno nerds wasting time on death trap flying cars.  I want them to get off the dime and produce a sexbot.  It's already 2013, for christ sake's.  (It is, isn't it?)  The question should be "Where is my lifelike android who will perform unspeakable acts and then go wash itself off?"

You know the first few iterations are going to all be Daryl Hannah from Blade Runner, cause these R&D guys are serious Big Bang type geeks.

Even when they finally get their hands out of their laps and turn their attention to running up a male version, it'll probably be Data from Star Trek.

That's just how they think.


Will they ever realize the marketing value of Mario Lopez's pussy?  I doubt it.

In fact, I have been waiting so long for my Genuine Mario Lopez Sex Toy Android, with the patented Love Grip, that I have now moved on to a new focus.  I want a Theo James doll.   With the patented Love Grip.

Perhaps you know of Mr. James.  He was the ill fated Turkish ambassador in Downton Abbey's first episode.  He has resurfaced on the television this week with a new show called Golden Boy.  Tragically, it is stink-eee.  He's the latest in a long, long line of kind of generic brooding alpha male cops with a troubled past.  Again, yaddayaddayadda.

The problem is Theo sweetie is so darn pretty his looks swamp his character.  He launches his broody cop thang and all you think is "Wow look at those lips."  You can't fight cheekbones like that.

I say go with the flow and write some show appropriate to his beauty.  Here's my pitch:  sensitive, but troubled Brian Scott (or Scott Brian,  I'm working on the details, ok?)  attempts to deal with his traumatic past (cue arty flashbacks) by leading a Double Life: by day, an underwear supermodel, by night, I don't know, something.  What difference does it make?   Spy, or cop or serial killer, who cares as long as most of the show features lengthy photo shoots of Theo in his panties looking all pouty and bulgy and stuff.

I know, at night he can be a sexbot.  With the patented Love Grip.