Have you ever played matchmaker? How did it go?
Once. Accidentally. He had a roving eye, and she was too needy - and a real bitch, actually - once she landed him, she ignored me! It was all very boring, and came to a head one night when he showed up with another woman. And of course suddenly I was a shoulder to cry on for the next month. Which seriously impinged on my social life.
But then he's dead now, and she's in Kuala Lumpur. Let that be a lesson to all would be matchmakers out there.
If you ever find yourself in a position to speak at a funeral, a great thing to not do while eulogizing a dead loved one, is to wipe away the tears, muster up a really brave look on your face, gaze off into the distance and say, "It's up to me now." This works especially unwell if you don't know the dead person in question, or any of the attending mourners, and just happened upon the buffet table in the reception lounge while looking for the pisser. Because while sometimes it may feel pretty darn nice to do a bit of public speaking after a free meal, it can also feel pretty horrible having the shit knocked out of you by a wildly unpredictable and surprisingly nimble granddaughter.
I like The Pixies. I like Boards of Canada. I like Pavement. And I like Shakira. I genuinely like a lot of her music, and think she's brave and funny and a bit odd. Some of my friends laugh at me for this. But they're often friends who use the word "chav" to describe people.
I think the best way to share the love is to look at her video for Objection, which is infinitely more entertaining than anything po faced by The Strokes...
Shakira begins by enjoying a steamy tango with some no-good dirty Lothario.
But! Then he throws her to the ground and leaves, sparing her only a parting glance, even as she shakes her bottom at him!
Shakira's dancing then becomes very aggressive.
So she jumps in her car, her head barely popping over the steering wheel, and follows him to a bar, where he hooks up with his hateful, surgically enhanced girlfriend, Pete Burns.
Enraged, Shakira turns into a cartoon and charges the couple, punching out the dirty cheater and puncturing Pete Burns' breasts.
But we realise this was just a daydream -- what actually happens is that Shakira attempts some flimsy violence but is strongarmed by the lothario and then thrown into a glass table.
Then Shakira's superhero friends Zuperhombre and Guano turn up and save the day!
Shakira puts the next stage of her revenge into action...
Then takes a break to dance like a robot and play a B-52's style guitar solo.
And we realise that Shakira has the dirty duo tied up on spinning wheels while her band practises! Oh, Shakira, you wag. As the song reaches its climax, the wheels break free and the couple spin away, presumably to their deaths.
And Shakira ends the video with a triumphant little private Salsa session.
Moral of the story? Don't tango with lotharios and if you do, make sure you have some superhero mates, murderous intentions and kick-ass salsa moves. That said, I really don't like Hips Don't Lie. You can watch the video for Objection here.
PS: Yes, I do have a lot of free time at the moment. Why do you ask?
...The anaesthesia really did a number on me [...] and it took many, many, many nauseated hours before I even started recovering[...]
When the doctor ripped the well-crusted packing out of my nose [...] my gut reaction was to punch him as hard as I possibly could, then run far, far away. Searing, blinding, face-smashing pain...
I, however, was surprised how together I felt when I woke up in the recovery room. My nostrils were packed with mini tampons, but I was chatting happily with the nurses who wheeled me back to the ward. Then I spent a contented hour or so cheerily texting and phoning friends, marvelling at how out of it the other patients were looking.
Then the morphine wore off.
After that it was inexplicable and uncontrollable sobbing, bleeding and vomiting (sometimes all three via the same orifice) all the way. And a sudden flashback to the anteroom where the surgeon told the nurses he was going to "flush her sinuses with a cocaine solution". So basically I was.. what? Having withdrawal?
When the chipper young Irish nurse came to remove my packing the next morning, I was wide awake and counting down the hours till I was discharged. But 8am took forever to come. I now fully appreciate my dog's attitude of "okay, let's go!" when we exit the vet's surgery and she's hanging around while I pay the bill. Every second sentence out of my mouth was "...But I'm still being discharged at 8am, aren't I?"
Having the packing removed was a bit of an ordeal. She squirted saline solution up each nostril and dragged out the tampons while I held a kidney dish under my chin. It's a bit like having a wet weasel pulled from the back of your brain via your nostril. And with each one came blood. A lot of blood. Much of it was going down the back of my throat, too. And it just kept coming until the nurse got very pale and said things like "Oh dear" and "Oh god you're so young" and "I'm not very good with blood, you know".
Then another nurse came and there was a whispered discussion about whether I'd need a blood transfusion and an extra night in hospital. I fully believe that I only stopped bleeding then because I willed it. Then The Boyfriend showed up and I went from 0 to fully packed and dressed in 30 seconds. They strapped a sanitary towel to my face, gave me some painkillers and I zoomed out of the door.
I have never been so thankful to be home in my life. I have spent the last week on the sofa, mostly zonked on painkillers, although this weekend I have done an unwise amount of geeking, which only goes to show me that geeking in this condition is unwise. I get thumping sinus headaches, my nose hurts like a motherfucker but I can breathe through it a little. Thankfully my work sent me an enormous bouquet and a card, and I have 7 more days' leave.
So why aren't I slumped on the sofa watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Good question! Bye-bye...!
My favourite Ask MetaFilter topics today:
Following on from earlier hormonally-charged epiphanies, I have documented my movie boyfriends - celebrity crushes - from the dawn of my burgeoning crushability (surprisingly early - 5?) in a set on Flickr. Yes, David Bowie in Labyrinth is among them. I never said I had any taste...
If you could open a restaurant, any kind you want, what would it look like and what's on the menu?
Submitted by A is for Amy.
I would open a cabaret restaurant. Dimly lit, little clusters of tables, a couple of small dance floors, and a stage. We might open with a little burlesque, perhaps some bellydancing, and for the main course, a local band would play.
I'd have open mic night once a week, and at the weekend the tables would be cleared away and sofas and pouffes put in their place for a late night movie screening. And large mugs of hot tea and coffee would be served: I hate that you can't get hot beverages when you go to the movies.
Fridays and Tuesdays would be club nights. DJs would alternate between interesting IDM, ear-splitting experimental electronica, and contemporary Latin.
As for the food, who needs food when you have such good music?
I'm having trouble not believing every tall blond woman I see isn't a cylon.
As ever, I am plagued with guilt about not being at work, but this time I'm fighting it. I'm ill, damnit. I'll do what we always do. Fight 'em until we can't.
Oh, no. That's something else.
I went to see The Boyfriend in hospital today.
Upon laying eyes on him I was hit by an unexpected rush of love and protectiveness, and a kind of stupid pride that he was easily the youngest and most attractive man on his ward. I brought him flowers. Then I went to the nurses' station to ask for a vase. Do you have a vase? I asked. A what? Said the nurse. A vase, I repeated. Then this exchange followed:
Nurse: Vase?
Me: Vase.
Nurse: Vase.
Nurse: Vase?
Me: Vase.
Apparently the Nigerian nurse had trouble deciphering my, generic English, accent. Despite our both pronouncing "vase" exactly the same way ("vhaarz").
The Boyfriend is on IV antibiotics and hasn't seen his surgeon yet, so we don't know when he will be discharged. But he's surprisingly chipper: he has no pain in his leg. They zapped the nerves in his leg with an electric shock before operating, to numb it. This will wear off and he will be in considerable pain. But for now he's on a quiet ward with plenty to read, and now, some sunflowers. In a vhaarz.
We spent a pleasant 4 hours together, doing what we normally do on Saturday afternoons -- hanging out, reading the paper, chatting. And then it was time to go. Again, I was hit by a wave of emotion: a sudden, gnawing melancholy. I wanted to scoop him up and take him home right then. But I bit my lip and dabbed the corners of my eyes, and swung my bag on my shoulder with such false bravado that, with force, I whacked his bad leg.
He's starting to get some feeling back now, apparently.
I learned a new word today: glückschmerz - sorrow at someone else's happiness. The opposite of schadenfreude (pleasure from someone else's misfortune).
I'm exhausted. tonight I shall go to bed early with a book. But first I am going to make myself a steaming bowl of pasta and watch X-Factor. I imagine glückschmerz and schadenfreude will both feature.
The Boyfriend has just sent me a text message saying "ow". So I'm going to take a wild guess and say he's out of surgery. To bed, perchance to sleep!
