For me it’s not so much a nifty fireworks display as it is a mosquito endurance test. Despite my best efforts of a hoodie, long pants and fuzzy slippers I still managed to get eaten alive by the pesky things. And that’s just standing on my own balcony.

Every year the kidlet (I’m going to have to think of another name for her now that she’s 14) and I watch the city fireworks display from our house because frankly, the last thing I want to do this late at night is fight traffic and eejits who should never be allowed to handle flammable items.

This year the display was pretty nice. There were a couple chandelier-types that made us ‘Ooohhh’ involuntarily. We decided to leave off the radio station music that coordinates with the show because they play the same tired old songs every year and while I admit I get a little tingly patriotic feeling during a stirring rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, I do not want to subject my ears to whatever country patriotic song du jour is.

We don’t usually let fireworks off ourselves. I think this might stem from my fear of things that explode along with things that might set me on fire. I remember one year when I was younger and my sister was a mere 2 or 3 years old I was handed 2 lit sparklers. I was so afraid of the sparks flying off of them that I immediately tossed them as far away from me as possible. Unfortunately I tossed them directly at my sister. It was totally unintentional – I mean really now, did my parents honestly believe I meant to set her alight? They must have because I got into a lot of trouble for that.

Another reason I don’t particularly like going to public fireworks displays has to do with a very vivid memory I have of my mother taking me to on in Palm Springs. I must have been about 4 or 5 and we went to this display/rodeo with some friends of hers.

The rodeo was fun and when it grew dark we settled in the bleachers to watch the show. I reember there was some kind of message that was on a fence of some kind that was made of fireworks and when they lit up it spelled out something… “Happy 4th” or something.. I’m not sure, I couldn’t read yet. Anyway, the next thing I knew the stadium was filled with this awful.. sickly-sweet putrid smoke that burned my eyes terribly. People were screaming, terrified and panicking as they tried to run in every direction trying to get away from the horrible smoke.

Somehow my mom got me out of there but we were separated from her friends. Being such a young age I of course had no idea what had happened. I just remember vividly how scared I was and how my eyes stung so badly. Even now as I write this I still smell that acrid stench. Later I learned that some pranksters had thrown canisters of tear gas into the stadium.

I don’t know if they were ever caught, but it was enough to put me off going to public fireworks for a long time.

So yeah, Happy 4th of July everyone 🙂 I’m off to look for some neosporin.

God I’m stupid. In the middle of this particular entry the kid asked me to check her blog to see if her audio post went through. Without thinking I opened another browser and logged out of blogger and back in as her. Her entry was there, and I came back to this window to finish my blog. It was good too. But as soon as I hit ‘publish’ I was taken to the goddamned login screen and promptly lost the entire blog. *sigh* My bad..

Anyway I was just waxing philosophical on the fact that MTV is becoming a bit of a joke in that it rarely shows videos anymore. It’s bread and butter has fallen victim to a hungry audience’s appetite for mostly reality programming. I blame Real World.

I remember when MTV first debuted. What a revolution that was. I was at the perfect age too because I was just beginning to enjoy more mature music and learning to put bands with songs I heard on the radio. With MTV I was able to put faces with the bands as well because I didn’t keep up with the music rags at that age.

A lot of the videos in the beginning were made on the cheap and consisted mostly of concert footage but gradually, with the success of MTV and the greater access to the bands for fans the videos began to improve. I think Duran Duran were great pioneers of the artistic music video. I know their vids combined with their sex appeal is what did me in.

God I totally remember fighting my family for use of the only TV in the house so I could watch my MTV. I really did want my MTV damnit but most of the time I had to wait for the weekend after the parentals had gone to bed to get the most access to it. Then I’d sit for hours watching the videos and I remember the agonizing waits I had to endure waiting for a favourite one to play. The Vee-jays were the epitome of cool. I’d even watch the USA channel’s attempt to combat MTV’s popularity with their Night Flight programming which consisted of video and bad Andy Warhol movies.

Ahhh to be young again.

When did MTV stop showing videos? Was the Real World really the video’s downfall? It certainly seemd to be another revolution for the young network. Throw some hipsters into a fishbowl and let the world watch. How cool! Slowly over time more and more programming began to invade the airtime and it became difficult to catch blocks of videos until one day, they were gone.

Oh sure I know they show some occasionally but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit through crap programming to get to them. So I stopped watching.

I have a coworker who will ask me now and again if I’ve seen some show on MTV and I have to woefully tell her that I haven’t. To me, MTV’s just not as cool as it once was. It’s just not the same. And I don’t think it’s an age issue, though what the hell do I know. Maybe it is. Maybe what they sho today is what the kids want.

It just doesn’t appeal to me.

Damn it was hot out today.

This week? Sucked. I’m not going to go into detail though, I just wanted it on the record that the only bright spot in the week for me this week was the writing workshop I went to today. It was brilliant. Other than that, I would be very happy to forget this entire week.

Moving on though I see that Blogger’s added a new feature with the image button in this editor. Very cool. They were using picasa originally, but it looks like that won’t be needed for users without their own server space. Very excellent. I think Google buying Blogger was a great move. I love this service. Now if they would just allow unlimited team members in a group blog and turned the stat service back on it would be perfect 🙂

Let’s see… I’ll be finishing up S3 of Soprano’s this weekend and I’m going to force myself to hold off for a bit on asking to borrow season 5. I’m just zipping through this show because it’s like Pringles. Once you popped, you can’t stop. I meant to watch one ep tonight, instead I watch three. Now it’s late and I’m going to be a zombie in the morning.

I hate mornings. I hate the fuzzy disorientation you get when the alrm goes off. Then the grogginess and the dread of having to move robotically through your morning routine to get ready to face the day. I’m fine once I get my contacts in but before that I’m a grouchy bitch. Something about putting something cold and wet directly onto my eyeballs sort of zings mee into wakefulness.

It’s 10:30 pm -ish and I wish I could just stay up ’til 3 or so doing whatever. watch late night telly, read one of the books I picked up at the library tonight, or just lie in bed, listen to music and stare at the ceiling not thinking about anything in particular. But I have to get up at 6am, go through grouchy bitch mode, get to work and somehow lose grouchy bitch mode before I get there lest my coworkers think I’m that way all the time. I dunno. I feel lethargic right now I guess.

So I go to bed. Gnighty.

Oh wait. I want to play with the image thingie really quick:

Hayden’s so pretty here 🙂

So I’m on the third season of Soprano’s now (thanks Mike!) Joey pants has shown up and looks like he’ll be gumming up the works so I’m looking forward to that. I’m really digging the show and I never thought I would.

I’m going to admit something here, and I don’t want to hear any collective gasps or cries of disbelief:

I’ve never seen any of the Godfather movies.

There. I said it. I’ve never seen those, or Goodfellas or any other “serious” mobster flick. I think the last mafia movie I saw was “Married to the Mob” with Michelle Pfeiffer. It’s not really a genre I’ve been interested in – not something I could identify with. I’m Irish for crying out loud 🙂

And so I never made any real effort to check out Tony Soprano and his families despite critical acclaim and rave reviews from people I know. I know the DVDs have been out for rent for ages now but I figured, ‘Meh.’ But then I was made an offer I couldn’t refuse (sorry, had to be done) of borrowing all five glorious seasons on DVD and I was not sorry.

It’s a fuckin’ brilliant show. Full stop. Although I did have to Google ‘mobspeak’ so that I could understand the lingo. Now I know what a ‘Goomah’ is and that some gabagool would be quite nice right about now. Since my finances this weekend dictated that I stay home, I watched Season 2 all day and I swear by the end of the day I had that distinctive Jersey twang in my speech 🙂

Tonight, I just finished the episode where (SPOILER ALERT if you’ve been under my rock with me and haven’t seen the show) Dr. Melfi is raped. It was powerful. At the end when she nearly tells Tony what really happened to her I found myself wanting her to tell him so he’d whack the asshole. And then I was totally taken aback by that. That would be wrong. Of course she can’t tell him and use him like that to satisfy her own need for revenge. But the damn show made me actually care about these mafiosos and I wanted Tony to take care of it for Melfi.

I’m still dumbfounded I felt that way. The show ended with her not telling him of course, but I was disappointed by that. And then my conscience said “Woooah there. She did the right thing you eejit.”

It was a powerful ep.

I’d go on about it, but my computer’s being a bitch and I’ve had a whole damn day of computer problems at work and I don’t wanna mess with this one right now. Gnighty.

Last time I blog and drive at the same time, I promise.