Hot toe picker (c'mon, you know this one)

[greygirlbeast]

Spooky and I are not accustomed to large, heavy breakfasts. Normally, I have coffee and an hour or so later, a bowl of ramen with fresh 'shrooms and broccoli tossed in, maybe a few wasabi rice crackers. Spooky has coffee and nothing more. Neither of us are much for lunch. But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. So, yeah, we're breakfast lightweights. Therefore, I cannot adequately explain what drove us from the house at 10:30 this morning for gigantic breakfasts at the Flying Biscuit in Candler Park. Okay, that's not quite true. It was the damn grits. At least, for me it was the grits. In all the long and vaulted history of gritdom, no grit has ever been so marvelous as the rich, creamy, ever-so-slightly sweet grits they serve at the Flying Biscuit. Mystery solved. It was the grits what lured me out into the blazing sun. And the grits were wonderful, as expected. If only I'd stopped at the grits. If only there'd not also been the eggs and biscuits and cranberry-apple butter and huge oatmeal pancake with peach compote that I honestly did not even mean to order. I simply wasn't cut out for breakfast.

No writing yesterday. I'd fully intended to spend the first half of the day on eBay, then spend the second half writing. But I wasn't done with all the eBay stuff until about five, and then I had to figure out where I want Ted's illustrations to be placed in Alabaster, which sounds easy enough, but in practice took me almost an hour. Which must be why I procrastinated over doing it for the last two or three months. Unconsciously, I knew it would be a tedious ass pain. Anyway, now it's done, and I don't have to dread doing it any longer. I also exchanged several e-mails with sovay regarding her stories for the July and August issues of Sirenia Digest. It was a full day of work, and yet not one word of prose was written. Which just seems ridiculous.

Today, Spooky's handling eBay, and me, I'm writing. Something.

Of course, the threat that the Daughter of Hounds CEM may arrive today and not on Monday looms over me like a great hungry carrion bird.

There's a write up on the aforementioned Virginia-Highland tree massacre in the June 29th-July 5th issue of Creative Loafing. Turns out, eighteen trees were cut, not fifteen, as I'd believed. They were Bradford pears. Now the Virigina-Highland Civic Association is making promises that they'll be replaced by "heartier" Chinese elms once the damn sidewalks are widened. Well, we shall see. The trees that were already thriving there looked pretty hearty to me.

Last night, Spooky and I watched an odd little film, Night Tide (1961), directed by Curtis Harrington and starring a dashingly young and bewildered Dennis Hopper. A sailor on leave from the US Navy falls for a strange woman who makes her living pretending to be a mermaid on the Santa Monica boardwalk, a woman who may, in fact, be an actual siren. The film has its moments, here and there, but lost me at the end, when it abruptly trades its slow supernatural build-up for a clumsy and somewhat unconvincing Radcliffe/Scooby-Doo sort of revelation that all the weirdness was only the product of perfectly mundane, prosaic forces, and there were no sirens after all. Anyway, despite the shortcomings of the ending, it's a peculiar and mostly forgotten film and surely worth a look.

It's getting late, and I need to be working so...please have a look at the new auctions. That's why they're there. Yesterday, I added many things, including the hardback of Threshold: The Writing of Trilobite, a first edition of The Sandman: Book of Dreams, and an ARC of From Weird and Distant Shores Go. Look. Bid. Thanks.

Comments

[sleepycyan.livejournal.com]

You're breakfast sounds delightful. I don't usually eat breakfast, but once in a while, dining out in the morning can be lovely. I can easily be lured by the promise of potato pancakes, applesauce, and eggs...Mmmmm

The trees that were already thriving there looked pretty hearty to me.

That's very frustrating. One has to wonder what was "wrong" with the original trees that were alive and well. We used to have nice trees in the courtyard of my office, and they were home to many birds and squirrels. Watching them was the highlight of my otherwise dreary, deskjob of a day. Unfortunately, the complex removed them and replaced them with pine trees because they're "lower maintenance." That's a very frustrating human trait, and it leads to mediocrity in everything. Easier doesn't necessarily mean better, and now, I have no squirrely antics to watch. The birds are still here, but they've been forced to make their nests in the nooks and crannies of the building rather than a lovely tree.

[sleepycyan.livejournal.com]

Oops. Sorry about my incorrect tags.

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

Without knowing what kind of trees were in the courtyard before, I can't help on any legitimate reasons for removing them. However, pine should support a large number of species, and, in my experience, should provide even better nesting potential given some time. Of course, spruce, fir, or hemlock would do the job even better, but those tend to prefer northern ranges, so sometimes pine is what's available.

I agree that the lower maintenance excuse is no excuse - what can be lower maintainence then allowing a natural woodland to form, by leaving leaves and limbs where they fall, so that they can rot away and help the trees grow healthier?

[sleepycyan.livejournal.com]

You're correct. They'll probably eventually support a larger number of species, but at the moment, they're very small and sparse. The birds don't go near them, and the squirrels are completely gone. :( The trees that were here before were mature, and there was nothing unhealthy about them. It just makes me sad that they removed them.

I agree that the lower maintenance excuse is no excuse - what can be lower maintainence then allowing a natural woodland to form, by leaving leaves and limbs where they fall, so that they can rot away and help the trees grow healthier?

I agree wholeheartedly, and in fact, I would like to see more people letting go of their manicured lawns and adopting more regionally appropriate landscaping that caters to the weather and environmental patterns of the area, but that's another conversation altogether, and I've cluttered Caitlin's journal quite enough. :)

[ellyssian.livejournal.com]

I felt really concerned about those trees before, but, hey, they are Bradford pears (http://www.nps.gov/plants/alien/pubs/midatlantic/pyca.htm), alias Pyrus calleryana 'Bradford', aka Flora non grata. Short lifespan, weak limbs, and invasive tendencies. Cutting them down was a very good thing to do.

Now if only people would stop growing them... there are so many better choices!

[sovay]

The film has its moments, here and there, but lost me at the end, when it abruptly trades its slow supernatural build-up for a clumsy and somewhat unconvincing Radcliffe/Scooby-Doo sort of revelation that all the weirdness was only the product of perfectly mundane, prosaic forces, and there were no sirens after all.

So . . . sort of like Cat People (1942, of course), only nowhere near as good? I think Night Tide may still be on my list of films to see, because it involves mermaids and I have a habit to feed, but I will consider myself duly warned.

[rozk.livejournal.com]

Ineterestingly, [Unknown site tag] tried to persuade me to have the grits at the Flying Pancake, but they are the bit of US breakfast at which I sort of draw the line. Biscuits, fine; pancakes, why not?; cranapple butter, OK; weird black bean things, I suppose so. But frakking library paste in the middle of my plate, that's just weird.

If I ever come back to Atlanta, I promise to try.

[tagplazen.livejournal.com]

The woman who played the older witch in Night Tide was Marjorie Cameron. She was married to Jack Parsons, the occultnik who was a rocket scientist, was chosen by Crowley to found an abbey in the US, and with L. Ron Hubbard performed the Babylon working (Parsons thought Cameron was the result of that working). She also hung out with Kenneth Anger and made a life long enemy out of Anias Nin because when Anger saw Cameron, he dropped Nin from the starring role in his film.

And for once, I'm not drunk and/or high just making this shit up, she and the rest of that little circle are pretty amazing. There's a good book out called Sex And Rockets that deals with the early Parsons stuff and one of the Disinfo books has a good article on her.

[eldritch00.livejournal.com]

While in practice my breakfast habits are similar to Spooky's (just with at least three cups), I do love breakfast food best of all. And I've only ever had grits once, while we were on a trip to Florida from North Carolina in 1996. I'm sorry I can't recall what state that was, much less the restaurant.

Completely OT

[darklily66.livejournal.com]

Would you mind if I friend you? I don't like to friend without asking permission.