Oh, the Schadenfreude!

It seems that, under the Copyright Act of 1976, creative persons will soon be able to reclaim their grant of copyright to publishers, according to an article on WIRED. Apparently, some artists are filing or preparing to file notices of termination, which have to be made no more than 10 years and no less than 2 years before the actual date of termination.

My only problem with this is having music ... "scatter." If after an artist reclaims their copyright a fan can only get their music from that artist's own website - it's going to make shopping a royal pain in the butt. I don't know if Amazon and iTunes are willing now to deal with individual artists - but if they're not, they'd damn well better be ready to change! And if another site comes up that offers an MP3Sparks-like ability to choose my own codec and quality level, I'd be all over that!

Of course, this affects all copyrights not just music - but for a number of reasons it's likely to hit the music industry the hardest. Considering what shitheads they've been the past few years, all I can say is that they damn well deserve it.

As much as I identify with the visceral rejection of relentless sales promotion that undergirds Buy Nothing Day, I can never bring myself to observe it. For all my miseriness, I just enjoy shopping too much. So it was that monshu and I were out on the street these last two days along with everyone else. In our defence, they were two really beautiful days for this time of year; I didn't even need a coat downtown at the Christkindlmarket today. (Californians, feel free to begin snickering away. Goddess knows I do whenever it's fire season and the talk turns to "air quality".)

Yesterday, we decided to steer well clear of any traditional big box districts (so no SamsBinny's run for us), which is how we found ourselves on Clark Street. Before hitting Gethsemane to get the fixings for my traditional advent wreath, we poked into Andersonville Wines & Spirits on the off chance of finding something from our local boutique distillery. I first found out about Koval through the Reader and was particularly intrigued by the part of the story which described how they made Bierbrand from a failed batch at the neighbouring microbrewery. Given the small size of their batches, I wasn't expecting to see bottles of this appear at AW&S a year later. (Unaccountably, I concluded that I had too many oddities already in the cabinets and failed to buy a bottle.)

But this time it was their ginger liqueur we were on the prowl for. Nuphy had talked it up massively I'd called to wish him a happy holiday. Evidentally he's not the only person taken with it because we were informed by the owner that the last bottle in stock had sold the day before. However, they still had bottles of of their rose hip liqueur, which had intrigued me on previous visits. (Would that I had bought that instead of Zirbenz!) Now I'm a fan of rose hips; I like 'em in tea and I like 'em in jelly. But would I like 'em in liqueur? Well I like this one. It has a strong fruity fragrance, but surprisingly the taste is less one-note than I expected. The rose hips are front and centre, make no mistake, but monshu also picked out vanilla notes and there's a hint of spice that neither of us can quite identify. I'm starting to muse the possibilities for drink mixing.

Today we decided to venture downtown, figuring that perhaps the worst was over--at least where we were concerned, which was the Christkindlmarket. monshu and I made it there ten minutes before they opened and already lines of a dozen people or more weren't uncommon at the more popular booths. The timber hall on the northern edge, however, was mostly empty, so we nailed down a table with two boots of glühwein while we waited for Nuphy to find us. After stuffing ourselves on potato pancakes, currywurst, leberkäse, and hot soup, we felt fortified to swim the madding crowds. Crowds where we lost monshu for nearly half and hour.

We finally found him in front of the stand for Bienes Honighaus Augsburg. In order to further enable my budding honey-snob tendencies, he bought me a six-pack sampler. I only had to make one or two cooing noises about the appearance of the canola honey for him to treat me to a 500 mg jar of that as well. It was creamed and so pale as to give it the appearance of marshmallow fluff. And as you might imagine, it's extremely mild. But not, however, characterless. Again, the precise undertone is devilishly hard to pin down (even for the Old Man, who's far better at this sort of thing than me). Even more than the kamahi honey, it can't be paired with anything too strong; sweetening a cup of linden blossom tea was exactly right for it. And, of course, it was lovely on a piece of whole grain toast.

I am ridiculously pleased that I could pull up "Kubla Kahn: Or A Vision In A Dream..." by entering "Kubla Kahn" & "Pleasure Dome" into Google.

Of course, I was flummoxed by the fragment quoted in my subject line.

Note Added Later: Actually, that I read a classic of English literature for the first time only so I could completely understand someone's userpic is pretty funny as well.

Those of you who know spookyfruit are well acquainted with his hostility to electronic communication taking the place of face-to-face. So it should come as no surprise that when his law partner and I happened to find ourselves seated at his Thanksgiving dinner next to the last two people in America who have yet to watch the Muppet "Bohemian Rhapsody" and he began to play it on his iPhone that Spooky roared from across the room "You know that's a violation of a house rule!"

"What house rule?" asked a rare visitor.

"No electronic devices out in the house."

This set off a brief discussion into which I, arms crossed behind my head, interjected, "I just want you to know, Spooky, that I've been live Twittering the whole time with my genitals."

"There isn't a house rule against that?" someone else asked.

"I didn't think it'd be necessary to make a rule against that," replied our host. "If you can pull that off, more power to you."

After clarifying that there was no house rule against singing at the table (as there was in my household), princeofcairo and I attempted to accompany Spooky's partner in a live rendition. All I can say is that anyone who can continue to make chicken noises for more than two measures of that intro is a stronger man than I.

I was born with the wrong sign
In the wrong house
With the wrong ascendancy.
I took the wrong road
That led to
The wrong tendencies.
I was in the wrong place
At the wrong time
For the wrong reason and the wrong rhyme.
On the wrong day
Of the wrong week
I used the wrong method with the wrong technique. (Depeche Mode, "Wrong")

First time I listened to this song I heard that last line as "I use the wrong makeup with the wrong technique." Another listen or two was enough to determine what it should've been, but I can't help singing it my way. It's Depeche fucking Mode, for Maybeline's sake!

Yesterday was a busy day of vacuuming, cleaning of the living room and some other smaller chores in there as well, and what that entailed was moving the couches, chairs etc to get behind/under them and spot cleaned the carpet. Mom's getting her whole house done as a surprise birthday present later in Dec. These are the cleaning that comes when a tree is about to be put up.

As blogged last night, we had roasted beast for dinner. So far this morning not much yet but I'm about to tackle the two top shelves in the kitchen and have a load of laundry in, darks so I'll have a clean pair of jeans to wear later when we go out.

And since Thanksgiving is over, I now have Christmas music going (not traditional stuff yet) and have my A Rockin' Christmas CD I made 4 years ago which includes Brenda Lee, John Lennen, The Royal Guardsmen (Snoopy's Christmas, It Kinda Feels Like Christmas) and Bing Crosby amongst others.

Today will be getting her tree up and plugged in, the lights on the Rhodadendron out front and perhaps a pic of her and the 2 dogs.

I did give my best friend a quick jingle to wish him a belated happy Thanksgiving and discovered that he'd changed carriers and phone # for cellular service so that's why the text message didn't go through as I called them at home.

Anyway, once we get some stuff done here it's out for errands and fun.

So, let the holidays begin!

Tappit Brother: "There's gotta be something in the tranny."

Me: (thinks) "One would hope it's estrogen."

I've always pigged out on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Strangely enough partly because it's just a big old festival of product placement.

Now Val hasn't seen it in years, so our plan was for me to go over to their place on the Weds. before, sleep over and the two of us would watch the parade.

And it was Really Big Fun.

I must admit that for me the highlight was how every now and then Val'd bounce up and down, saying, "OOOOOOO Thank you for suggesting this!!"

As for dinner, the pizza was a big success, and...simple. I remember sitting down, and then realizing that the cooking was all done. Weds. I made the dough, then at Jeff and Val's everything took maybe a total of an hour and a half, maybe two hours.

I nearly forgot, after the parade the three of us watched the--don't know if I've got this right--the National Kennel Club dog show. Best Of Show was a black Scottie. All three of us thought that she had everyone else at a disadvantage since, if she won--it'd be her 100th BOS.

Got back mid afternoon, fed the George, and headed for bed about 10:30-ish. Woke up too many times, so was really exhausted the next day. I didn't really get how washed out I was until I tried to get in a nap, and started jerking. (This is something that kicked in during my last depression.) Gave up, and waited until 10:00pm to take my regular dose of whatever it is that I take to sleep, and was gone in thirty seconds.

Today was a busy day and needless to say, I'm tired but tonight was the night Mom and I did up a small standing rib roast she'd bought last year to have in case we got stranded here Christmas Day, thankfully that was not the case and she had it in the freezer, well, it's nearly a year and time to eat it so we did.

Cooked to near perfection and studded with garlic, salt and pepper OMG, it was fabulous and I did roasted purple potatoes that had Thyme, Oregano and dill, salt and pepper and olive oil and slivers of more garlic, again done to near perfection and salad.

We have a whole Pecan pie that got overlooked yesterday (she had brought down 2 of them in a pie basket with a shelf to allow careful stacking) so we have desert to partake in shortly

So without further ado, here is the evidence of the roasted beast.

Twitted throughout the day:

• 22:27 Wishes he were watching this Beyonce thing with a certain date cause we'd have fun; girls and homosexuals only. #
• 22:30 seriously, Beyonce is a ridiculous entity; this mix of 'real' and 'unreal'; unique and uber-packaged. Ricockulous. #
• 22:32 ut what are you? #
• 22:32 I mean those are her real hips but def not her real hair. The black and the non black. That is her voice but also her vocal track. #
• 22:46 Beyonce 'i am yours' but what are you? #
• 22:48 Beyonce contradiction: pretty princess songbird backed by a tough rocker
  chick band. Her band is fierce, but then again so is Beyonce. #
• 23:01 Carlos contradiction: I'm a very happy male but every once in a while I'd kill for a life as long-legged dancer chick. Beautiful. #
• 23:04 as an aside, nothing wrong with a sixpack shirtless dancer boi #
• 01:28 is surrounded by the sound of gently snoring doggies. #
• 12:53 is walking in the winter clear. A heavy lifting brain day. Some things just refuse to go away. Slow dance on the el anyway. #
• 16:50 guesses that the main reason he enjoyed Ninja Assasin was that JMS of Babylon 5/Thor/Spiderman f
  ame wrote it. #

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Just spreading the word: Marc/Bootglove's Funeral Service - 7PM Dec 2nd. RSVP and other information at: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=186899511722

Thanks to mcfires for setting up the Facebook page for us all. He is collecting pictures of Marc for a display. See the webpage for more details.

Please pass this information to others whom he or I may not know. (But be sure to point them to the webpage which has address information and any updates.)

Aside from Good Friday, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

I went to Starbears in the morning and completed chapter 13 homework for my chemistry class. I'm not digging amino acids so much. At least there was scenery at the kafe. Lots of people seemed to be out and about the village.

Came home, baked some cheese olives, and then rootbeer1 and qbear picked us up to go to Cal & Dave's for the rest of the day. We were joined my Mr. French, and had gobs of food. It was very relaxing, and the feast was delicious.

Got home and Steve bugged me about the trash bins. I was pretty sure there would be a holiday delay, so I just went to bed after watching Survivor. I stayed in bed until 8am this morning (waking up several times in the night). Got up and checked the trash pickup schedule, and there was no delay. Whoops. Luckily, they hadn't been by yet, so I was able to get trashed. Now ya know.

This is the strangest cat I've ever lived with. Anytime we're preparing something in the kitchen, he will stand around begging for it. (Don't worry, I recognise this for the garden-variety feline egotism it is; the strange part is coming.) From time to time, I'll take a bit in my hand and show it to him, since his reaction in invariably to sniff it a bit and then turn away. It doesn't matter whether it's hot tea or raw poultry, all people food appears equally distasteful to him. He can easily reach the countertop, but it doesn't matter what we leave sitting out there since nothing we've ever had in the house--not even fish--had ever interested him in the least.

Until yesterday.

Any guesses what foodstuff it was that he finally began licking and then eating out of my hand? (Hint: It was an ingredient in our Thanksgiving dinner.)

ETA: Wrong guesses so far:

• brussel sprout
• cranberry sauce
• celeriac or parsnip
• flour (closest yet!)
• butter
• gravy
• pie dough
• salt