I recently purchased A Very Long Engagement by Sébastien Japrisot. It's being turned into the next film from the Amélie team. Kris just finished reading the book and she declared it the best novel she's read in the past several years. High praise, indeed. I'll have to bump it ahead of Within a Budding Grove.

Life as a House is a strange beast. In some ways it is sappy and maudlin and formulaic and if you told me you hated it, I wouldn't blame you a bit. Seen from another point of view, it breathes fresh air into familiar themes, is filled with real characters in real situations. I didn't love the film, but I sure found it affecting. It worked for me, despite its obvious flaws.

Remember how I'm closing down Computer Resources? Somebody forgot to tell my clients. I've done more computer work this month than in any other previous month, I keep getting requests for more. I have maybe five or six hours more tonight, then maybe I'm finished for the month.

One positive consequence of weight loss is that my s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d thirty-six inch pants are unable to stay up around my forty-one inch waist without a belt. (They're used to a forty-two inch waist.) That's all well and good since I usually wear a belt, except that I've lost it. Where could my belt have gone? It's not like I take my belt off at random. It must be in the house someplace, but it seems to have vanished.

Yesterday, in Costco, I had to hitch my pants up every couple of steps. Now, I admit that this is a good problem to have, but still, it's a problem. If I'm carrying something, and am unable to pull up my pants, they sink lower and lower around my hips. On the way home from Costco, I stopped to buy an emergency belt…

I'm telling you: The Decemberists are fucking awesome. If you like folk rock (Simon & Garfunkel, Indigo Girls (who have a new album coming out in a few weeks), 10,000 Maniacs, Bob Dylan, CSN) or Britfolk (Belle & Sebastian, Billy Bragg, Aztec Camera, The Housemartins, Morrissey, The Bluebells, old Everything But the Girl, etc.), then you may like The Decemberists. I'd be happy to burn you an indoctrination CD.

At present, this is the song I'm bellering to most often:

Red Right Ankle by The Decemberists

This is the story of your red right ankle,
and how it came to meet your leg,
and how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled,
and how the skin was softly shed.
And how it whispered, "Oh, adhere to me!
For we are bound by symmetry.
And whatever differences our lives have been,
We, together, make a limb."
This is the story of your red right ankle.

This is the story of your gypsy uncle
You never knew cause he was dead.
And how his face was carved and ripped with wrinkles
In the picture in your head.
And remember how you found the key
To his hide-out in the Pyrenees,
But you wanted to keep his secret safe
So you threw the key away.
This is the story of your gypsy uncle.

This is the story of the boys who loved you,
Who love you now and loved you then.
Some were sweet and some were cold, and snuffed you,
And some just laid around in bed.
And some they crumbled you straight to your knees:
Did it cruel, did it tenderly.
Some they crawled their way into your heart
To rend your ventricles apart.
This is the story of the boys who loved you.

This is the story of your red right ankle.

I love that song. (Bonus Decemberists reviews, both of which make me think I ought to check out a band called Neutral Milk Hotel.)

Have you noticed how I've restrained my use of the word fuck in all its forms: predicate, nominative, adjectival. It's a part of my everyday vocabulary, yet I've grown uncomfortable using it in this forum. I know that there are an increasing number of people reading this who might find it offensive. In conversation, I can self-censor, use the word with some people, and avoid it with others. In this weblog, what I say for one, I say for all. So, I don't use the word much anymore.

Yet, I think it's entirely appropriate to use its adjectival form to help describe how I feel about The Decemberists...

On this day at foldedspace.org

2005 — Moonshowers   When I turned down Gribble Road this morning — the final leg of my drive to work — I was struck by an oddness about the scene before me.

2003 — Holding Pattern   Nothing much to say.

2002 — Eila's 32nd Birthday   We sat around a table, drinking our cosmopolitans and our Mexican coffees, and we played UNO while pumping dollar bills into the jukebox.