all & sundry

Out of nowhere, my copy of Dreamweaver seems to have gone flop-bott, which if you remember your James Herriot stories, was the ailment Mrs. Pumphrey's Pekingnese Tricky Woo suffered from. Is there a doctor in the house? I need to express Dreamweaver's anal glands! Bring latex!

Relatively obscure veterinary references aside, the program just stopped working, for no reason I can discern. When launched, a partial menu appears, with my only option under the File menu being "Quit". Well! That's a fine how-do-you-do, Dreamweaver, thanks very much for the encouragement. Whether it's a slight on my admittedly dubious web design skills, or my tendency to overuse the word "sausage", the software clearly wants me to STOP ALL THIS SILLINESS, and right away.

The sucky thing about this exceedingly expensive application (not that I uh exactly paid for my license, unless Macromedia is reading this, in which case hi! I totally bought it, twice even) suddenly refusing to operate is that once I exhausted my personal expertise when it came to troubleshooting (Step 1: restart computer. Step 2: try the app again. Step 3: say fuck it and eat a liverwurst sandwich), my remaining options were pretty much limited to purchasing technical support from the developer. Karma-wise, maybe this is my obvious course of action, but what an irritating policy. It's not like I have some dumbass RTFM question, their shit is broken. "SHIT BE'S" + "BROKE" should = FREE SUPPORT, is what I'm saying.

In the meantime, I will be cobbling together entries using whatever html editing voodoo I can get my mitts on, so Please Excuse Our Dust.

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You figured I was kidding about the liverwurst, didn't you? I mean, who in their right mind would buy one of those...tubes of liverwurst paste, spread it on some bread, and lustily devour it, all the while singing a fanciful little ditty that goes something like: "Liver! Liver! In my mouth!". Certainly not me.

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From the department of phrases I don't believe I've ever had occasion to use before: I went to a burlesque show on Friday night, and it was great fun. Here is at least one definition of the term, in case you are unsure whether or not burlesque involves greased poles (no), dollar bills tucked under g-strings (I don't think so), or ping-pong/vagina tricks (DEFINITELY NO).

Chiara invited both JB and myself to the shindig, and while I couldn't guess what JB's level of interest was going to be, I should have known better - all I had to do was whisper the magic word (titties) and he was asking where to park and how much money to bring and shouldn't we get going right now to get a good seat, etc.

The club we went to had attracted a very gothic clientele, either because it always does, or because of the fact that in addition to burlesque, the evening's programming included - oh dear, oh dear - a Cure cover band, which I am very sorry to report we couldn't stay long enough to see. I did, however, experience the lip-curl AND fist-shake of Vital Idol, the, you guessed it, Billy Idol cover band that also played. Dancin' with myself, oh oh oh-oh.

I have to say, I felt kind of dorky when we first got there, mostly because I appeared to be the only person in the building who was lame enough to wear jeans. And although I had at least worn the correct color of t-shirt (black like the inside of my SOOUUUL), there wasn't enough liquid eyeliner in the world to conceal the fact that I'm a boring suburbanite (east side, uh, represents!) whose club days are long past. Yawn, is it 10 PM already? I couldn't even hold something sexy-looking like a martini; being as how none of us imbibe alcohol, Chiara, myself and JB all sported matching plastic cups of ginger ale, which was a drink order that, according to JB, had caused the (painfully hip) bartender to roll her eyes so far back in their sockets they shot sparks.

Thankfully, I ceased to give a fuck over my uncool appearance when the burlesque girls came out, because they were truly awesome and fun and inspiring; I wish I had that kind of self-confidence about my body, not to mention the ability to twirl a lacy parasol while simultaneously untying a very complicated-looking corset. Where does one get pasties, anyway? I want a pair with blinking LEDs, how great would that be? They could double as a reading light.

I'm thankful in many ways for my friend Chiara, not least because she has the biggest heart of anyone you'll meet, but also because without her, my Friday night would have involved whatever dregs TiVo had managed to collect, and possibly liverwurst. Instead, we saw boobs! And what's wrong with boobs? Nothin', that's what.

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Last but not least, I saw Million Dollar Baby on Saturday, and I can honestly say it was one of the most amazing and beautiful movies I've ever seen. You should go, while you can still catch it in theaters.

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