Mere coincidence?

OK, Aggie's got a case here for you folks. I've discussed this extensively with the Chair, and he has some strong opinions about this which I'm sure he will share. Here's the case: I know two wonderful Ottawa women of a certain age who are 'out there' trying to date. One met a dude through a dancing event. They arranged a date, he didn't show up or call, she called him and told him that not showing up without calling is rude, he left a message 2 days later saying that her message had been "unkind" because he had been in the hospital with kidney stones.

Second woman: They went out on a date. It was hot. 2nd date. He didn't show. Resurfaced a week later, with the excuse that he lost his blackberry, and hence her phone #.

The interesting thing about this is that - are you ready? -, both men have the same name. For privacy reasons, I will not post the name, but I will say it is not a common anglo name like one of the following names: John, Mike, Jeff, Dave, etc... It is more like one of these more uncommon names: Bart, Wyatt, Lyle, etc...

Mere coincidence? Or, are there two pathological liars with the same name preying on innocent Ottawa women? I say we get to the bottom of this and bring justice back to the Ottawa dating scene.

Speaking of sweaty potential ...

The IO is happily preparing for some intensive overseas stargazing. And what better tome to pack than Chambers Harrap's handy new phrase book of pickup lines.

The British publisher has zeroed in on some of the cheesiest (and hence probably most effective) PLs and translated them into the world's most pheromone-laden languages: Czech, French, Italian, Spanish and German.

As you can see, they veritably sizzle even in plain old boring English:

• Was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.
• Didn't it hurt when you fell from heaven?
• You must be tired, because you've been running through my mind all day.
• Excuse me, I seem to have lost my phone number. Could I borrow yours?
• Do you believe in love at first sight, or shall I walk by again?
• Excuse me, do you kiss strangers? No? Well let me introduce myself.
• Do your legs hurt from running through my dreams all night?
• I'm new in town. Could you give me directions to your apartment?
• Do you have a map? I keep getting lost in your eyes.
• The only thing your eyes haven't told me is your name.

As a seasoned astronomer, I'll be making heavy use of the one about stealing stars from the sky. If my cheeks seem a little red upon my return, I'm afraid it may not be sunburn but morbid embarrassment or, worse yet, lingering evidence of slap marks.

Hello Kitty, Bluesfest, Heat

I searched desperately for my ESI friends and Bob at Wilco. I did manage to round up the Independent Observer and Coyote. The reason they were able to find me was that I was carrying a Hello Kitty balloon. So, for all of you people and your Bluesfest strategies or "schemas" (David Scrimshaw and Matilda Zine), this is a good one. Go to the little card shop on Elgin Street - forget the name, but somewhere near Bluesfest. Get a helium balloon. You can get the ones for $1 that last 8-9 hours, or you can get the more expensive Hello Kitty or Barbie balloons for $4.99. The cheaper ones are actually better because the helium holds them up higher. The Hello Kitty balloon ended up in one Wilco fan's face, and he wasn't too pleased about that. Tell your friends to look for the balloon, and then you can find one another.

How are you all doing with the heat? Remember when the 5M wrote this (June 26, 2005): "It's summer, it's hot, I wish I could make the most of all the sweaty potential of this season." I've been in her archives getting all nostalgic.

Even cowdogs get da blooz

Quite a week at Bluesfest. Except for Rihanna's extended Ashley-Simpson-does-Milli-Vanilli-on-Saturday-Night-Live moment (if ya were there, ya know what I'm sayin'...) it was usually amazing. But that mainstage grand finale? KC and the Sunshine Band? Sister Sledge? Tavares? Gloria Gaynor?

I'm an old enough semimythical coyote to remember the first Prairie Chicken Dance. (inside joke, there...) I also recall in gruesome detail the first incarnation of disco. And (declaring a personal bias here) managed to completely avoid the sweaty taint of suspect synthetic fabrics draped across my oh-so-natural fur while being blinded by flashy lights in the floor and deafened by giant JBL monitors with a, um, slight bias toward the bass end of things.

So I can say without any qualification whatsoever that disco sucked.

And having attended on Sunday night, I can also safely say that -- even with the eyebrow-arching layer of self-aware hipster irony attempted by way too many people who are not as skinny, cool or jiggle-less as they thought they were, back when they first greased themselves into them slimy white polyester bellbottoms -- recycled disco sucks on turbo!

Gimme a big, loose sloppy ol' Chicago blooz band any day. Fortunately, there were one or two about. Okay, I'm done now. I need to suck back a whole buncha slough water and take a weeklong nap in a shady chokecherry patch. G'night.

(image: panama red music)

Equality in Love

That fellow Matt and his girlfriend who doesn't love him as much as he loves her reminds me of a movie I produced a few years ago.

Ottawa Blogger Event Tonight

Apparently some Ottawa bloggers are getting together with others according to this. I'm not interested in going because:

1) It's bluesfest time;

2) I hate that place at Dow's Lake; and

3) I suspect it will attract folks like this and his "hot girlfriend" who -- according to him -- loves him almost as much as he loves her.

Bluesfest: How to

According to Dame Agatha, the Bluesfest is "great". I say it's over-priced, over-crowded and they don't want a fellow to bring in his own refreshment, but if you're smart like me, you can get around the problems.

p.s. There's a new poem on Swabbin' th' Deck

Zizou, Bluesfest & Personal Training Update

It's been a busy week with the World Cup, the Bluesfest....and my personal training.

1) Zizou. I don't know what happened there. Apparently, he has an "anger management" problem. They say he got a red card for stomping a Saudi about a 5 years ago. One source reported that it was the Italian calling him a terrorist that led to the head-butting. That seems lame. I think the Italian was trashtalking Zizou's mama... This incident reminded me that you have to watch out for those 'cool' guys. They are pressure cookers ready to blow.

2) Bluesfest. Isn't it great? I fell in love with Peter Karp last night. Bought his CD and then stalked him. Sigh. Roxanne Potvin is lovely, but maybe too young to be singing the blues? Rickie Lee Jones. Messy. Looks like life has taken a toll on her liver.

3) Personal Training Update. I have not been walking, but am using my bicycle as my means of transportation. Things I have learned: a) don't leave anything on your bike that can be stolen, because it will get stolen. b) you can buy bike lights at the dollar store, and then you don't feel as bad when they get stolen (4th Dwarf taught me this one) c)a garbage bag can work well as a makeshift rain poncho.

Where is the IO?

Our Independent Observer seems to have gone missing. He has not blogged for over a week, and I'm concerned about him. I know he is "Independent". He has never engaged in any of the co-dependent behaviour of some ESIs. And I know that he likes to maintain an aura of mystery about his whereabouts. Here are some of my suspicions about what he might be doing:
1) He may be -- like me-- completely obsessed with the World Cup and has no time for blogging.
2) He may have decided to go back to the land of the Vikings for a spell.
3) He may have found his own muse, and doesn't want to share.
4) He may be working on one of his famous Don Cherry channelling postings (If you don't know what I'm talking about, read our ARCHIVES).
5) There is no fifth reason...

Views on a Muse

Life as an Irregular is not all mojitos n' cheesecake on sunny terraces, not by a long shot. We continue, behind the scenes, to search for a metablogworthy new muse.

I liked our old Muse for many reasons. As one of our "B"mused silent witnesses noted at one point, she was an exhibitionist, and we were rather a bunch of voyeurs -- it was a match made in metaheaven.

Then, possibly with our aid, she shed the dysfunctional relationship that drove her blog and ours, got into another one, got happy, got married and got disappeared. Aggie mourns this state of affairs to this day, and continues to cast about for our next subject.

What are we looking for? Somebody who's articulate and literate. Someone with a reasonably dysfunctional love life, or at least someone who wants a love life, who is searching for it in reasonably dysfunctional settings..... A fairly crisp balance of spunk, angst, humour and self-pity. Self-aware postings are good. Let's face it; metablogging a brain-dead muse holds no challenge or interest.

Our new metamuse needs to be someone who blogs frequently enough to create a sufficient body of quality work, so that we may do what we do best: riff on some seriously-bent-outta-shape mojo. Someone who shows the potential to move forward from mere inertial whining about the situation -- which stales damn fast -- and actually act. Right now, our patented brand of semi-respectful irreverence is all dressed up with no place to go. The Chair is dying to show off his new slipcover, and I'm pretty sure Aggie's bandaid is about due to fall off. The Independent Observer has been polishing his lenses for so long, they're beginning to wear out. Conch Shell, who has been MIA for much of the spring, finally seems to be floating within sight of us. And the Short Guy, is, well, the Short Guy. He's always got things to say. Often about completely innocent coyotes.

Perhaps we don't need to confine our search to traditional pairings -- it'd be very Canadian of us to consider placing gay relationships within our purview. At least until that gang of antediluvian trolls lurking on the current government's back benches have their way. Most relationships, gay or straight, hold many common issues. As Gertrude Stein (and I quote her advisedly) probably would've said, given half a chance, "A relationship is a relationship is a relationship."

And now that we've done the whole "spring-a-giant-blog-about-the-last-few-months-of-your-life" thing once, maybe it's time to retire that strategy, and become more open from the outset. Although I regret to say, having experienced it, that the Heisenberg Principle seems to work both ways, affecting us as much as it affected the Muse. But maybe that was the point. Really, it was all about us....

Now, a question: should we as a group perhaps be setting protocols for contact with any potential new muses? So that our myriad, anarchic agentes provocateurs know in advance what their constraints are, 'steada freelancing quite as much as they did last year? Not that I'm mentioning names. You know who you are...

(Image from doggieshades.com)