Multi-tasking.
As I blog I'm on hold with Nikon to find out how come my camera is no longer willing to autofocus after it was fixed by them (camera was ass-crunched by a pal on New Year's Eve and the hotshoe was bent).
A sad tale. Which is sadder... the tech problems or the holding to speak to tech problem shooters.

Thinking back to Disney on Ice and what I learned from it.

*wow, I have a real person on the line...*

The Long & Short = they want the camera to come back to them to fix the AF probs.

Onwards to happier Disney thoughts:
young girls are victims of fate and victims of older and uglier women - on skates or not.
When bad or dramatic things happen sparks shoot from the sky. Hello pyros!!!
And, as we all know, every story ends with a cute guy in tights giving a big smooch to the girl.
Disney-styled love.

Technology schmechnology.
Look under the post of the 14th for the post of early the 15th.
I just figured it out. I'm in EST, Blogger is in SF, CA so if I post earlier than 3AM their computer says midnight.
Color me confused. Confused and happy in my ignorance and ever-questioning status.
Tonight it's Disney on Ice with niece on nephew.
Have to budget how many dollars I'm willing to spend on program, shirts, other items and glo-stick chokers.
Glo-stick chokers are critical to having a good time, I think.
Love glo.

Sip Oban. Listen to baby rockstar's band's cd. Take break from all-day writing marathon. (repeat as needed)
Today a nincompoop mis-dialed, reaching my super-secret cell phone. A caller from Wisconsin.
Call 262-203-0318 and say Hi, Perfect Nancy in the Middling City says you're a nincompoop - true or false?
Speaking of strange communiques, RR in KY sent an email moments ago that read, in part, I am a Raelian.
Now I won't indulge those cultos with a hit on their site lest that is their name but are the Raelians the cult that believes we've all morphed from the grays? Or that we all stem from newborn-looking aliens?
RR says that now that he's Raelian smoking is non-lethal.

RR: do not contact me to donate fund to your Raelian cause.
And don't come crying to me when you realize you've been duped, all spent in your flowing cult robe.

Do Raelians wear robes?
Why not join that cult (article about them in my personal archives/fridge door) that believed the apocalypse was imminent so they ditched their clothing and a dozen or so of them jumped into a mid-sized American car and drove like hell to...
well they drove until they crashed into a tree.
A badass cult with a purpose.
Rock on, newbie Raelian.

Travel Queen Dorota is on the online prowl for el cheapo tix to Barcelona. The Land of Gaudi, Spanish rice, Spanish prisoners, probably some sort of turbo-powered booze and spices... and let us not forget Spanish fly.
D is painting (no, flailing) away for her big NYC début next month and I offered some important advice:
1. your new work sounds great (I asked her to be more specific about the 'candy' colors) but how about buying jugs of artificial flavours and creating one painting that has flavour, à la Willie Wonka?
2. and, of course, sound shoe advice to push her ensemble over the artworld edge.

Whyowhy should anyone care about the American Music Awards?
Apparently Eminem did not. Nor the Dixie Chixxx. And fat-headed S. Stapp of Creed and band stayed away.
This was the sound clip I heard this AM from the AMA:
I want to BLEEEEEP this BLEEEEEEPPP and BLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPP off. Thanks.

Can you imagine being the poor BLEEEEP who has to man the BLEEPING bleeper? That person must be drug tested to insure positive focus.

Back to AOL matters at hand.

DNA swirling somewhat the same, me and my sister and five girl cousins (1 missing as she's currently residing in gai Paris) simultaneously pallbore and experienced feisty and low-volumed outbursts of laughter.
My sister, the youngest niece of maiden Aunt Marion, brought up the rear and when she complained I said Listen, Sue, in the cousinly productions we did as kids you always played the Mexican visitor in the straw hat, so just deal with it.
We realized that the old North Buffalo church aisle was ill-equipped for a modern/wider coffin (according to the funeral guy) plus bodies on either side. My sister was right behind me and had both her hands planted under the coffin as if she were driving it solo down the aisle. She suddenly (and thankfully) noted that at that speed the six of us on either side were having a rough time managing the space between the old pews... and that she would also be mowing down the funeral director at the helm (and back to coffin/gurney/us) any second.
Then when it was time to bring up the gifts to the priest me + 2 cousins were like the Keystone Cops, heading off into various directions, reconvening at the steps then gathering up said gifts and then heading into three new and differing directions. More suppressed laughter.
Later a non-deceased aunt said There should have been arrows painted on the floor to direct you girls.
Better laughter than hysterical sobbing, I say. Life is for the living, and the laughing, dig?
The priest gave me my intro and called Wallace Stevens one of this country's greatest poets.
I don't usually but I really liked this Catholic priest, very hip to things cultural.
I read Stevens' words without a hitch and in my little intro added that my aunt loved LAUGHTER, and looked up at the cousins in front of me.
When the last drops of water were flung by the hipster priest onto the steely box the sun came out and shot through a rose window on the northernly side somehow and when we left the sun was blazing.
Now back to my familiar and comforting world of deadlines and wordy purpose.
Words and words and words.
Love.

Last night several told me how much they enjoyed my drawings now hanging in the Hallwalls members' show, pencil renderings of drive-thrus and mentioned previously in a blogpost when I had a run-in with the fuzz at a KFC.
This week maiden aunt Marion left this world, as did Liz's mom, Anne.
This morning I delivered my homemade floral arrangement to the funereal parlor and was greeted by a doe-eyed man running the joint who was not so sure he wanted to allow me to enter Aunt Marion's viewing chamber. Are you immediate family, was his question. Are you the florist?
I stated (thinking Listen Mr. Important, I've dealt with bigger, burlier and snarlier men than you and won backstage at concerts galore and you're a graham cracker crust compared to them) I'm her niece until he let me in... for god's sake.
Due to the shortage of men in the fam arranged that six nieces will be pallbearers and told various relatives that my aunt would have totally dug this. One cousin, Patty, of Cali, is still not too comfortable with the concept of us pallbearing. The coffin will be on a gurney, on wheels, I said, it's not like we'll be heaving and hoing.
I am going to read Wallace Stevens's Evening Without Angels as a reading tomorrow at the funeral service and think, as I reread it, it's a complicated poem - thematically obtuse though beautiful. There's also one line with a shitload of s's so sibilance will be slithering throughout the vaulted space as I read into the mic.
... Desire for rest, that that descending sea/ Of dark, which in its very darkening/ Is rest and silence spreading into sleep.
Loads of s's.
My dad said It's not a tear-jerker is it? I assured him it is not.
How can a poem that mentions a coiffeur of haloes be sniffly?
It's about how we elevate our lives to holiness, how what we have is our life and the sun and the moon.
It ends
Where the voice that is great within us rises up,/ As we stand gazing at the rounded moon.
Rock on, Aunt Marion, wherever you've floated off to.
And same to you, Anne.
Literary and lifeful love.