Katie Doyle, Girl About Town

Saturday, Nov. 09, 2002 - 8:20 p.m.

Wow, I'm totally bummed. I had just spent like an hour writing this really great entry and I somehow activated a virus or whatever that Shut. Me. Down. :( So I had to run my anti-virus program and all that, and I lost my whole entry, and here I am starting over.

I hate when that happens. Frickin' hackers.

So as I was saying (2 hours ago, before I was so rudely interrupted), I must do updates on a few of my stories of the last few days or so.

The smells have all gone from my abode, so my olfactory poltergeist must be on vacation or moved on to people more easily and openly freaked out by odd smells. Whatever, I'm happy.

Sticky Fingers
Turns out Winona Ryder was detained prior to her little Saks spree by at least three other high end stores who suspected her of researching upcoming roles. Course, they don't make that public until after the Trial of the Century, when her sealed court documents suddenly disappear and go missing, but whatever. I have mixed feelings on this. A) it pisses me off she got a tiny little half-ass slap on the wrist by the starstruck District Attorney's office when some schmo with no money or celebrity woulda gotten knocked into next week. B) I am relieved she's merely pathological and not stupid. Because lemme tell you: the more times you have to share the stage with a stupid bimbo actress, the less tolerant you become, until one day you wish all stupid people had been drowned at birth, so I am happy she's merely polluting the gene pool with sick, amoral genes and not stupid ones. C) $80 for freakin' socks. And they say shoplifting has no victims. Personally, I think Winona should find a better class of directors to work with, else she'll never shop in this town again. And for God's sake, woman, get thee to a psychotherapist. One who specializes in the fetish of overpriced socks and headbands, coz you got big problems, and I don't think Saks is the solution.

As the Vineyard Turns
I still have had no time for searching out more information on that bloody golf course debacle on Martha's Vineyard. I hear there are some truly stellar quotes to be had, too. But what with school, and all, I've had not time for searching. Which is kind of a bummer, but I'm sure we'll all live. Mr. Brian Lafferty of the Stupid Quote(s) of the Day Lafferties has stopped the forthcomingness with the 411 on the golf course, as well. I'm sure he's been really busy tooling around in his SUV and doling out the super pithy quotes in the Land of Urban Development and Beautification, so I don't hold it against him, because that's the kind of cool, understanding chick I am. Plus, he did say I seem a very nice person, and didn't hold my clueless golfiness against me, so I'm at peace with the whole situation. Except for the lack of excellent quotiness lately. Don't it always seem to go? I mean seriously, before I decided to make Stupid Quote(s) a staple, I found at least one every single time I read news. But no. Decide to make it a policy, and the Fates and Murphy get all involved, and then there's no more quoty fun. ::sigh:: Life is just that unfair.

Animal Emotion
I saw a pretty neat show on the Discovery Channel this evening about animal emotions and how they relate to each other in their packs/families/tribes/whatever. I think it was called "Why Dogs Smile & Chimpanzees Cry," but I missed the very beginning and had to surf to find that, so I could be wrong. It was really interesting, especially the bit about the search and rescue dogs who worked the WTC and OKC bombing disasters. The dogs got just as depressed as their human coworkers when all they found day after day were dead bodies. The dogs eventually refused to work and showed major signs of depression. So the humans got together and arranged what they called mock rescues so that at the end of a day the dogs could "find" and "rescue" a live person. After that, the animals were much more active and eager to search every day. There were a bunch of other things in there that were just totally absorbing, so if you get the chance, you should check it out.

Too. Many. Snakes.
I also happened to watch an episode of the Animal Planet show Fangs today, which was really disgusting and gross, on more than a few levels. BTW, when baby snakes hatch, it's really gross. There's all this bubbling froth and slimy egg sac fluid stuff...I really don't recommend it. Especially if you are herpephobic or have a queasy tummy disposition, because it really is totally disgusting. So is snake eating carnage. I know snakes have to eat, just like everthing else, but I don't need to see it. I don't need to see an egg snake regurgitate the shell from an egg it has just eaten, either, but I did. Also disgusting and gross.

You know, I am the kind of person that might tap on the glass in the herpetarium at the zoo(actually, I don't, because that might piss one of them off, which would then be motivated to escape and come and find my ass on some kind of weird snake vendetta), but if one of those damn things got out, I'd be dead of a heart attack caused by terror long before the damn thing could get to me. Yet if I stumble across a snake program, I am suddenly hypnotized into some bizarre, Medusa-like state in which I find myself incapable of changing the channel, even though I hate, hate, hate snakes with the white hot intensity of a thousand suns. Seriously. The only good snake is a dead snake, that when it was alive, ate other snakes. I mean I really, really, really hate snakes. Any reptile really, but especially snakes. And this program was nothin' *but* snakes. Including plenty of camera shots down their wide open, gaping maws as they struck at the camera. Why do shows about snakes always do that? If you've seen the inside of one snake mouth, you've pretty much seen 'em all, because seriously, there's very little variety in the interior of snake maws. They're pretty much all the same. So do we really need to see one every 3.2 seconds? I think not. And then while I'm watching that show, there are all these promos for Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kindom, about the deadly black mambo, "the deadliest snake in the entire world" (more on that later). They've been showing that promo for weeks, and ever since the first time I had the misfortune to see it, I look away during its duration, but somehow I still manage to see the part where the damn black mambo strikes at the camera and we see it's gaping black snake mouth and all its teeth at least 50% of the time. I saw more than enough snake mouths in my rural youth, so I really don't need to see more, especially when I already have a periodic recurring dream in which I am in a building - usually my house - and some freakishly intelligent deadly snake is pursuing me with a single-minded ferocity usually saved for Michael Myers Halloween movies. So I'm sure given the number of snake mouths I saw today, I will be having that dream every night for the next 5 weeks. Which really sucks.

Did I mention the time my friend Autumn was making her bed and something black thunked down onto it from above, and it turned out to be a freaking 3-1/2' snake that had somehow climbed into the light fixture in the ceiling for warmth, but when she turned the light on, it got too hot and kamikaze'd out, onto the bed?

Yeah.

I had nightmares for WEEKS after that happened.

The Deadly Black Mambo
Okay. If you are ever in the mood for a really cheesy, unintentially funny "scary" movie, try 1982's "Venom". Mass snake-fu. See, this woman in Africa accidentally sends a little British boy with what I'm sure is an unhealthy interest in snakes a deadly black mambo instead of the harmless African bush snake she was supposed to send him. The black mambo was supposed to go to some big snake lab or something, where all the deadly snakes go to further the aid of humanity, but whatever. She send it to the kid, and much horror ensues when the snake gets out and starts terrorizing the inhabitants of the house, which has been taken over by kidnappers. Yup. Kidnappers. They're really awesome too, because you have Klaus Kinsky, who plays musical accents, and Oliver Reed, who's just plain mean. And you have this snakelady expert who repeatedly intones throughout the movie, "the black mamba, the deadliest snake in the entire world," in this really snooty, upperclass limey brit accent. (not to offend my limey brit readers; I merely use the term for its non-pc factor juxtaposed with the upperclass thing). She draws out the word "world" too, in a way that only snooty, upperclass limey brits can. By the time she does this 5 or 6 times, for some reason it becomes quite humorous. There are lots of shots of the black mamba too, and they used a real one in the filming, which woulda been my cue maybe this wasn't the movie for my career, but Sterling Hayden, Oliver Reed, and Susan George didn't seem to mind. Klaus Kinsky probably didn't know the difference, because he's been in some real dogs, but nevermind. The point is there are many black mambo close-ups, so if you're herpephobic, it's actually kinda scary and tense, mainly for its gross out factor of "ohmigod-another-close-up-shot-of-the-creepy-snake". Other than that, it's pretty ludicrous, but it has some really screamingly hilarious bad lines, so if you love a bad movie, this is one to watch.

And btw, referring back to the whole Fangs thing, if I'd been a cameraman and they told me I was going on that shoot, I woulda been like, "Uh-uh, you can shoot it yourself, and have a nice day." There is no way in HELL I woulda put my ass on an airplane to go film venomous snakes in the wilds of Borneo, Africa, or anywhere else they don't have antivenin like 3' away. Or even 3" away, since like I said, I am not a fan of the big creepy crawly. Me film snakes? I don't think so.

But anyway.

I have to go do design stuff now. It's not that I really want to, understand, it's that I have final projects due and have to finish them. Plus, all this talk of snakes has really creeped me out, and I'd like to move away from the semi-dark corner my computer is in and maybe have some chocolate or something to steady my nerves and release some endorphins. But you can bet yer ass I'll be checking out the bedcovers really well before I get into bed this evening. Oh yes, I will.

Peace out,
Katie

ps. why do you think it's called antivenin, instead of anti-venom???
just won'drin',
K

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Yesterday's News - Next Stop

In which Katie shares sad news - Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2015
In which Katie returns after a very long absence - Monday, Jun. 25, 2012
In which Katie pokes her head in and brushes some of the cobwebs away - Thursday, May. 06, 2010
In which Katie asks you to write your congressman again. - Monday, Jun. 02, 2008
In which Katie asks you to please click the link and send the message to protect the rights of artists - Wednesday, May. 21, 2008