The Desert Mermaid

Apparently around here it's mug-smashing season. Over the past month we've managed to smash a whole bunch of mugs around here, including, tragically, my two favorite mugs. Dangit, I really liked that grey stoneware mug.

So as a consolation prize, and also showing my foolhardy optimism when it is uncertain whether mug-smashing season is over, I've ordered a couple new things to drink out of.

Like this:



BUT HEY WHAT IS THAT? It's not a mug, and also it has holes in it. What gives?

Dudes, you are looking at my very own musical teacup, a Teacarina.

Yes, the thing is totally musical, and a mouthpiece is set in the rim. It's a four-hole ocarina that plays one octave in the key of C.



Also, you can put tea in it.



A shot of the interior, because it is pretty.

It's not as big as my late lamented Favorite Mug, but by god it makes music, and it's kind of fun to see how the music changes when you actually have tea in it and the temperature does things to the resonating chamber. Though I wouldn't recommend playing too vigorously that way. Seems like a good way to get tea up your nose.

Let's hope teacups are exempt from mug-smashing season, because this thing's going to provide me hours of entertainment.

I got me some blogger’s block. Know what that means? A bullet entry!

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Went to Ed the Hairbender today so’s he could silly up my hair again! I’ll post pictures at some point, unless I don’t, but I’ll tell you now it’s my usual tortoiseshell swirls with a warmer twist—I look a bit tigerish. It was that or Xmas colors.

While I was waiting for the dye to set another lady saw my book—a juvie fantasy novel—and we started to talk about how awesome fantasy is. After a bit of book comparing (she liked The Name Of The Wind), Ed came back. “Oh,” I said. “Looks like it’s time go get this foil out of my hair and let the aliens hear my thoughts again.”

There was a pause.

“Okay,” the lady said, “maybe you read too much fantasy. “

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She wasn’t quite correct, though. It’s not so much the fantasy as the way I’ve been on a serious Fringe binge. Goddamn, y’all, THIS SHOW. I love every single character and am a total fangirl of Astrid. And as I said earlier, I get a huge kick out of the fact that the pale bald mystery dudes are called Observers. I really hope that’s a sign that some writer was an MST fan.

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So! My Thanksgiving weekend this year still had a few small adventures. First came an abortive trip to the mall on Black Friday (“Are you crazy, Mom?” “Oh, it can’t be that bad!” “I’d better come along. Let me get my old sparring pads and some safety goggles.”) After fifteen minutes we decided that it was too damn much trouble to find a parking space, so we came home and did our shopping online as I had suggested.

That was still a bit of a treasure hunt, though. I even had to go to the internet UK to track some stuff down, and enlist the aid of good buddy and great sport acrossthelake in the actual UK to finish the job.*

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But the good times did not last! That evening Dad came to find me.

DAD: Can you help me? It’s your mom. I was talking to her, and I went to the bathroom, and when I came back she had stopped making sense.

ME: Is she asking herself, “How did I get here?”

DAD: Just get over here. *to Mom* Hey, do you recognize this person?

MOM: … Yeah, I know who that is.

DAD: …
…
…
Who is she?

MOM: That's Amelia. ... I don’t feel good.

ME: What’s the matter?

MOM: Well, my clothes are all sticks and there’s a wax cat on my chest. Also my feet are tennis balls.

ME: Ah. Dad, I see what you mean.

DAD: You’re lucky I’m a doctor.

MOM: Why? Who needs a doctor?


So I spent the evening helping Dad do neurological tests. After some science and detectivery we ruled out “stroke,” “aneurysm,” “flu,” “space rays,” and “Pazuzu,” and decided it was a bad reaction to her new sleep medication. So after we escorted her to the bathroom for the old-fashioned DIY stomach pump, we figured we could let her sleep it off. Though we did keep checking to make sure she was breathing.

And the next day we teased her mercilessly about it. After all, she ddn’t remember, so we certainly had to remind her.

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Ocarina Xmas carols are happening! Which is great, except I am still indirectly allergic to my ocarina, in the sense that every time I play it I suddenly get facehugged by the cat. Either that, or I lock her out of my room—and she tries her damndedst to either batter down the door or crawl under it.

But it’s worth it to be able to play through “Jingle Bells.”

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I also owe y’all the story of Thanksgiving Weekend In Mombasa. I thought I’d written more about it before, but I suppose I hadn’t. It may take me a while to put it together, but I’m working on it!


*Also I got her address, so I can send her the awesome thing I found for her!

So the only problem with practicing the ocarina is that it continues to agitate the hell out of the cat. Every time I start noodling when Fern’s inside, she appears, climbing into my lap, yawping and turning around and jamming her head into my face, giving off the same confounded air as those dumb bastards did when they were trying to understand Lassie: “What? What do you want? What is the meaning of these noises you’re making? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT FROM ME?”

The other day I figured if I didn’t have a lap it might help, so I stood up and continued, working on “Sweet Baby James” and “Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms” and “Saria’s Song” and hoping she'd just do the leg-twining thing she does when I'm trying to do tae kwon do forms.

Instead, with a frustrated howl, my big fat old cat wrapped herself around my thigh like a fluffy facehugger.

I am not sure what it is about my playing that upsets her so much. Maybe I sound like a kitten in distress. Maybe those frequencies hurt her ears. Or I’m just that bad, and she’s as much a music critic as my late budgie.*

No matter what, though, it’s a good thing it’s allegedly almost summer, since from now on when I want to practice I’m throwing her ass outside.


*Piners really hated Fats Domino.

Got my mushroom log up and running! It is so far a bit of an ugly sight, sittin’ on my desk next to my Klein bottle and my jewelry pile.* I am led to understand that they will look quite lovely when they grow, but for now it looks like I have a very weird shrine to nougat sitting near my window. We shall see how that unfolds.

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Speaking of mushrooms, I’ve been learning “Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms” on the ocarina. Only trouble with video game songs is trying to end them. Perhaps this is why my cat has taken to punching me in the stomach when I play them. But it’s worth it—this song is ridiculously fun to play.

Anyway, while trying to find some sheet music for it I discovered that my weird love of Geno is shared by many other people who are probably equally weird. He is one of my favorite characters in the Mario franchise, despite Square’s refusal to let him come out and play anymore. (It’s okay! I made up for that prominently in my own extremely bad Super Mario stories, which I wrote obsessively in sixth grade before I even knew that anyone else in the entire world wrote fanfiction!) Good to know I'm not alone.

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I love the way people who make TV shows are completely clueless about video games. They don’t even try. They’ll have some scene where two people are furiously button-mashing, and saying scripted things like “Aha you got me that time!” or “Let me get the next powerup!”, except that any gamer could tell you that these idiots have got the game on single player mode, and furthermore it’s the middle of a cutscene. It has the great effect of making any character with a controller look like the little kids at the arcade who are furiously toggling the joystick and cheering while the screen still says INSERT TOKEN TO PLAY.**

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I have been craving pizza lately, but there is no good pizza place around here, frozen pizzas are nasty, and ready-made some-assembly-required pizza sauces and crusts all have about four cups of sugar dumped into them to appeal to the discerning consumer palate. But by god, it got bad, so I finally caved in and made my own damn pizza yesterday evening. IT TURNS OUT I SHOULD DO THAT MORE OFTEN.

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It’s a mite cloudy these last few nights, but I did manage to identify Betelgeuse as Betelgeuse and not just “one of the stars in Orion.”*** I’d never bothered to pay attention to star colors before, but it really is orange. I’ll be damned.

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Had to do this the night after a raccoon-and-skunk skirmish in the yard so’s I didn’t pass out from skunk fallout. That must have been some battle, because it involved a raccoon disguising itself as our cat, possibly replete with papers forged by Donald Pleasence. Mom opened the door and called for the cat, and lo a big furry thing with a stripey tail responded instantly by bounding toward her. No hesitation, no wild animal wariness, just “You’re inviting me in? THANK GOODNESS. THERE ARE SKUNKS OUT HERE!” We literally had to slam the door on it when we realized it was an imposter. And yes, we kept the real cat in for the rest of the evening.


*I try to keep my jewelry in boxes, but it always outgrows ’em. It’s like pasta from Strega Nona’s magical pot, only with more shiny bits.

**Or like your little sister back when she was really tiny and wanted to play video games so you gave her your other controller, which was not even hooked to the console, and told her she could “help” you, not that I ever did this.

***I know the four stars are supposed to frame his tunic, but frankly Orion always looks more like a guy doing a jumping jack to me. But at least it’s one of the few constellations I can recognize by gestalt!

Have transposed quite a few songs and am working on learning Midna's Theme. It goes the full range my ocarina can give, which means trying to figure out how to play the high notes without it going all thin. It's making me miss my music critic of a budgie, though. Piners was not a fan of music practice. The shrieks she'd emit when my sister practiced were clearly conveying the timeless critical remark, "Your music's bad and you should feel bad!"

Also, I'm trying to work out arhod mathematical notation and terminology, because I am a god damn nerd. I do like that they refer to an ellipse as a bwarn bweltapte, though--because marhematics aside, they really are "squashed circles," y'know. I am really loving that I can put Office files on the Nook, too--makes it easier to lug my conlang dictionary and grammar overviews around. Damn, I love the future.

(I am also posting from my Nook right now. BECAUSE I CAN,DAMMIT.)