Dancing Around the Four Sides

So if anyone is interested, abraxane is a powder that has to be mixed fresh every dose (mine was mixed in the pharmacy next door to the infusion room). Once it's mixed, it looks like watered-down milk. It takes about 30 minutes to infuse (through an IV line).

Everything went well! No aches or pains so far, and, as a matter of fact, I haven't felt any side effects at all -- I imagine that will pick up by tomorrow. Next Friday we get to do it all over again. And then the next Friday! And the next! And the --

Still. The thought of all those cancer cells popping like rotten little kernels of corn warms the core of my vengeful, angry heart. Psycho killer, qu'est-ce que c'est? :DDD

Repotted the two hibiscus yesterday into their new clay pots. These should retain moisture longer; they were getting dried out very quickly in the little plastic pots they came in. Only thing left to repot (at the moment) is the dwarf mulberry, but as far as the houseplants are concerned, I could also repot the baby papaya tree and the coffee tree, the latter just so it would look nicer in the bath. And the mixed pot of succulents in there that has some kind of kalanchoe with fuzzy green leaves -- it needs to be separated and repotted.

One of the new geraniums is blooming -- one very pretty rose-pink flower.

Listened to a lot of old music last night -- Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, Joe Jackson, Yes (Owner of a Lonely Heart has got to be one of the most cringingly awful vids in the history of music vids, omg), Gordon Lightfoot, Talking Heads, Indigo Girls, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Al Stewart ... also listened to Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street, and thought, not for the first time, that it would make a great House-Wilson vid. (You can read the lyrics here.) To me they could fit either H and W in canon, or in an AU after one or the other has left.

So there's that.

Happy birthday to David Byrne. :D



One of my favorite music vids ever (right up there with R.E.M.'s Losing My Religion). Careful for a couple of strobe/rapid camera flash effects, though.

Gregg Allman, 1947 - 2017 :-(



20 Essential Songs (Gregg Allman)

Just because I never noticed before how the piano notes at the very end sound like a birdsong.

And stop making sense.



Otherwise known as "David Byrne dances in his Big Suit." After so many years, still so brilliant.

Some fun power K-pop for a Sunday afternoon.

Two years ago, they manipulated the content that users saw when they logged in. It was part of a mass psych experiment to fuck with peoples' heads and then see if there was a correlation on how many positive and negative words they used afterward, depending on how they'd been fucked with. That is, if I show you nothing but death and accidents and famine and apocalypse, are you more likely to make a post containing negative words a week later?

No, I can't see anything going wrong with this AT ALL.

Everything We Know About Facebook's Secret Mood Manipulation Experiment (via The Atlantic)
Facebook tinkered with users' feeds for a massive psychology experiment (via the AV Club)

ON THE OTHER HAND, because there must be some saving beauty in the world, have some beautiful, beautiful music. This is soprano Nuria Rial and countertenor Philippe Jaroussky singing the Monteverdi madrigal Zefiro torna (Return, O Zephyr), and it is gorgeous.

1) Head cold is almost completely gone. It hung on for a while, adding to my general foul mood and crankiness.

2) Read Hilary Mantel's Giving Up the Ghost: A Memoir, and by god it is brilliant. Mantel is a writing god.

3) Started Americanah, by a Nigerian writer named Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which is about a Nigerian blogger (bloggess?) who's been living in the U.S. (in Princeton) and who decides to return home. There was a positive review of it in the NY Times and so far it is excellent.

4) And speaking of Nigeria ... this Nigerian-American singer reminds me very much of Adele:



Four things make a post.

omg so tired after a full day. But anyway. So tonight Mister Nightdog and I watched The Iron Lady on one of the movie channels, and it was okay and Meryl Streep was amazing, and then we were channel-surfing and stopped on Turner Classic Movies for awhile because they were showing Wings, which is a silent 1927 film and the winner of the very first Academy Award (in 1929) for Best Picture. SO ANYWAY, we were watching, and there's a scene where the two heroes (Charles Rogers and Richard Arlen), who are WWI pilots, finally get to the front, and they meet a character called "Cadet White." And Mister Nightdog and I sat straight up, because WOW, this Cadet White had presence. And he was only on-screen for about five minutes! So I looked him up on IMDB, and LOL. The guy on the right? Yeah, that would be Cadet White. I can't believe I didn't recognize him, but then he was only 26 years old. :D :D :D

In other news, Mister Nightdog was watching one of those Warren Miller skiing movies today, and this was on the soundtrack. I think she sounds a bit like Joni Mitchell and Neko Case.