Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Karlos the Jackal's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Sunday, February 27th, 2011
2:45 pm	Oscar Predictions 2011 These are predictions, not wishes. Best Picture: The King's Speech Best Director: Tom Hooper (many people are predicting a split, w/ this going to Fincher, but people love predicting splits.) Best Actor: Colin Firth Best Actress: Natalie Portman Best Supp. Actor: Christian Bale Best Supp. Actress: Haliee Stanfield (if I'm wrong, this will be Melissa Leo) Original Screenplay: The King's Speech Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network Editing: The Social Network Cinematography: True Grit (because Deakins HAS to get an Oscar someday) Art Direction: Alice in Wonderland Original Score: King's Speech Original Song: Randy Newman, "We Belong Together" Foreign Film: Biutiful Animated Film: Toy Story 3 (duh) Makeup: The Wolfman Costume Design: Alice in Wonderland Sound Editing: Inception Sound Mixing: Inception Visual Effects: Inception Documentary Feature: Inside Job Doc Short: Killing in the Name Short FIlm: Na Wewe Short Animated: Day & Night (If I'm wrong, "The Gruffalo" wins) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
12:44 am	THE GROSSEST THING I WILL EVER TELL YOU Okay, so let's talk about my open wound. I was sent home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon with an open wound in my abdomen.  This was done on purpose!  The idea, you see, is that the wound must heal from the inside out; if the outside heals first, then there will be stuff trapped inside (bacteria, dust, sugar gliders) and the surgery site will get infected.  So they have to make sure that the outside incision does not heal for a period of a week or so after the surgery.  How do they do that? Here's how:  the slice is held closed with three loose stitches.  In between these stitches, into my appendix hole, are stuffed "sani-strips" -- thin strips of fabric.  These "sani-strips" stick out of the wound, preventing it from healing.  Every day, I pull out a little more of the strips and trim off the edge.  The strips wick blood and other fluid away from the wound, and pulling them out bit by bit helps get junk out from the inside of the cavity as well.  As they come out, marbled with gore, they look like bacon made from tapeworms. By the time all four of these strips are pulled out completely, the inside of the wound should be healed up enough for the closing of the wound itself to commence.  I have pulled out three of them so far (each time expecting some sort of prize -- a tiny charm, perhaps -- attached to the end), so the fourth one should be coming out pretty soon, unless the doctors put in an extra long one just to fuck with me. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010
7:46 pm	TALES FROM THE ANAESTHESIOLOGIST The scariest part of The Appendix Adventure was not the surgery.  I was filled to the brim with morphine from diagnosis to operation, so maybe I wasn't really as concerned as I should have been; and then of course I ended up sleeping through the actual procedure. Speaking of which: I *was* worried about the general anaesthesia, since I always thought most people either never wake up afterward or are awake throughout the surgery, and if you manage to straddle that centerline it's more luck than anything.  Happily, one of the people who came and talked to me before the surgery (in addition to the surgeon, a nurse, and for some reason John Keister) was the aesthesiologist herself, the delightfully named "Doctor Pulse." Doctor Pulse informed me that neither of the two things -- not waking up after, being awake during surgery -- that were on my mind were very common anymore and are in fact very rare.  She also intimated, with narrowed eyes, that this meeting was her opportunity to decide if one of these two things would in fact occur. (Neither did.  Luckily, I am quite charming when I get enough morphine in me.) (BTW, the scariest part -- for me, at least -- was pre-diagnosis when my temperature went up to 104° and, apart from my wildly chattering teeth, my entire body locked up and I thought I just might snap in half.) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 15th, 2010
9:06 pm	TALES FROM OUT OF THE HOSPITAL I may not have mentioned that I currently have an open wound in my abdomen.  It's supposed to heal "from the inside out," so the actual incision just has three loose loops of stitching holding it shut, but other than that and some surgical "packing strips" stuffed in, my appendix-hole is open the world!  (I am thinking of installing a snap and carrying a chapstick in there.) What I have discovered is that if I push on my tummy, a rivulet of diluted blood runs out the corner of the slice.  Worst fountain drink ever. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
9:05 pm	TALES FROM THE HOSPITAL So stomach pain is not at all unusual for me, although the probiotics I take seem to help a lot. My stomach pain usually takes the from of relatively short-lived cramping, and was worst during my teen years. My stomach pain on Monday night did not ring any particular alarm bells until it became clear that it was steadily in rising in intensity. I went to the ER at around 5 or 6 that morning, and went into surgery at 2 pm the next day, at which point my appendix literally exploded, covering the doctors and walls in the the operating room with bright yellow slime. (I assume appendices are bright yellow. I might be thinking of Cliffs Notes.) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, March 7th, 2010
2:37 pm	Last-Minute Oscar Predictions Best Picture: The Hurt Locker Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow I'm actually kinda expecting a split here, but I don't want to predict it the wrong way and miss both of them. Actor: Jeff Bridges Actress: Sandra Bullock Supp. Actor: Cristoph Waltz Supp. Actress: Mo'Nique I see no reason to disagree with the universally-agreed-upon front runners. Orig. Screenplay: Inglourious Basterds Adap. Screenplay: Up in the Air aka "Consolation Prizes" Animated film: Up Foreign Film: White Ribbon Cinematography: Hurt Locker Editing: Hurt Locker Art Direction: Avatar Visual Effects: Avatar Costumes: Young Victoria Makeup: Star Trek Score: Up Song: Crazy Heart Sound mixing: Avatar Sound Editing: Avatar Documentary: The Cove Short Doc: Music by Prudence Animated Short: Wallace & Gromit (although Logorama is better!) Live Action Short: Kavi (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
2:51 pm	Okay, assuming the writing in the lower left corner is a musical scale, what are the notes? I was assuming that it would go from C to C, but there's not that much range in adjusting the individual pipes -- it seems like F to F is more likely. But elsewhere in the book it has staff pics that seem to confirm C to C. I am confused! (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 4th, 2009
11:35 pm	Jack Conte at Boundary Bay I'm going to go see Jack Conte at Boundary Bay Friday night.  Show starts at 10:30 (w/ opening band).  Here is a video. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 8th, 2009
2:04 am	No, it's a FUNograph So a while ago I bought this kit which is a small version of a phonograph.  You put a CD on the turntable, start the motor, and shout into the horn and the needle carves a spiral scratch in the CD (don't use a good CD for this) and then you can listen back to it! I put it together and it's pretty neat but much quieter than I anticipated and not really useful for what I was hoping to use it for (I was imagining something more like TMBG's I Can Hear You, which was wildly optimistic of me). So now it's taking up room which I need for other things.  Do you want it?  Let me know and it is yours for free (or free + shipping if you want me to mail it to you). (I also have an old Stylophone on which the tuning is really out of whack.  Maybe if you know anything about electronics or just want to make spacey noises you could find a use for it.) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 10th, 2008
12:14 am	Do you read Japanese? So for my birthday I got some Japanese kits from "Otona no Kagaku" magazine (each issue comes with a science kit to put together!).  For one of them -- a bird-chirp hand-crank organ (see it play "Amazing Grace" here) -- I'm supposed to supply a tube of...something.  Glue?  Oil?  I'm guessing it's a lubricant of some sort, but I dunno. (click for larger version) I'm pretty sure there are a couple of people around here who could read this and let me know what I need, and if you could, I would be quite grateful. Yay! (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 9th, 2008
1:33 am	Oh, geez, San Francisco! I forgot! And all of you on tenterhooks! Well, here's the wrap-up: The evening of Day 4 (Sept. 6) we went to an Indian restaurant with Nicole and Mick which was, to be honest, not particularly good.  (Also, they were the second place in San Francisco that didn't take credit cards!  What!)  We then went to City Lights, the bookstore founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  Sue bought a copy of Howl because he felt that she should, and I picked up a Phil Spector biography. Then we went to a little cafe for dessert.  I neglected to write down what I had but it was very good -- possibly a chocolate torte? Or something similar. I think the thing that would annoy me the most if I lived in San Francisco is transportation.  Public transportation was very slow and very crowded -- our experience, of course, was very limited (and in the tourist-heavy Wharf area), but our local guides did not have kind things to say about it either.  But if you own a car, you might drive (say) 20 minutes to your destination, and then you spend at least another 20 minutes driving in an outward spiral looking for a place to park. (It makes me crabby when people complain about having difficulty parking downtown -- "well, the Parkade is free after five," I offer, and they stare at me and finally blurt,  "that's, like, a block and a half away!"  Or best of all, the woman to whom I pointed out the drop-off/pickup window in the one-way alley -- "but I don't come from that direction!") Day Five was only a half-day, which we began by poking around Japantown for a little bit.  We then met Nicole and Nicole's taciturn daughter Julianna, and went for lunch at a Mexican hole-in-the-wall in Nicole's Inner Sunset neighborhood.  We also stopped by the nearby Le Video, San Francisco's Scarecrow, and took a look around. Then we came back home. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
1:35 am	San Francisco, Day 4, Part 1: The Rock One thing I have realized is that I really like tourist locations, but I'm not all that hot on being a tourist -- I like to know my way around and know a few secrets as well.  So I think it would be fun to work at a tourist trap -- like, for instance, Alcatraz.  You start and end each day with a relaxing boat ride, you spend each day with a captive audience, and if you need to get a hold of anyone, you can just use your...cell phone!  ah ha ha ha ( Read more... ) (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Friday, September 26th, 2008
2:48 am	An Evening with Groucho (I know that everyone is on tenterhooks waiting for me to finish writing about my trip to San Francisco but I must interrupt myself for a moment.) Tonight Sue and I went to see Frank Ferrante perform his "An Evening with Groucho" one-man (plus a pianist) show at the Mt. Baker Theatre.  (It was actually in the small theater, which has room for maybe 160 people.)  We had seen Frank exactly three weeks ago in San Francisco at the Teatro ZinZanni -- those of you who have been paying attention will remember that I talked about that over here. It's a fun show -- he tells very brief stories about the Marx Brothers and sings several songs, but mostly the conceit is an excuse for Frank to wander among the audience talking to people -- well, teasing them, more often than not -- and Frank really shines at this, with an incredibly quick wit and improv skills. My favorite bit: For some reason, several people were wearing nametag stickers.  Frank pulled off one guy's tag and stuck it to the guy's bald pate -- "Frankly, it helps with the glare."  For the rest of the night, Frank made him keep it on his head, at one point taking tags from other people and adding them to the guy's reluctant collection. (We were sitting in the upper-stage-left-hand corner, so he didn't get as far as us; we avoided a repeat of last time.) We got comped in again -- same as ZinZanni -- so I bought a DVD of his "Groucho: A Life in Revue" -- I feel like he deserves something from me, after all.  He was in the lobby signing them, so I spoke to him briefly, telling him that we had seen him a few weeks ago when we were with Felicia in San Francisco.  "Oh," he said, perking up, "you're the one who blogged about it!  I 'humiliate' people!"  I am only very slightly abashed. Frank's doing another show Friday, two on Saturday, and two more on Sunday.  Fun times; check it out. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 18th, 2008
1:34 am	San Francisco, Day 3: Mission, Accomplished On Friday, September 5, we met Sue's friend Nicole for lunch at a place in Japan Center called "On the Bridge."  The name is eerily apropos: And the inside is very cute: ( See more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, September 15th, 2008
12:58 am	San Francisco, Day 2 Part 2: Five Courses, Nine Inches After the Musee Mecanique, we ambled our way back to Pier 29 and Teatro ZinZanni, where Felicia works.  She -- graciously and unexpectedly -- comped us into the evening's show, and paid for our dinners as well (!).  The dinners were five-course deals, interspersed with sort of circus-type entertainment.  You would be very proud of me -- I tried almost everything except for the all-tomato salad.  I even tried the corn flan, which was odd.  The Egyptian lentil soup was pretty great -- thick and earthy. The circus bits centered around Cleopatra (Debbie de Coudreaux -- one of only two Americans to have starred at the Moulin Rouge), who shows up in our world under the mistaken impression that our chef, Caesar, is actually her Caesar.  Caesar is played by Frank Ferrante, "the greatest living interpreter of Groucho Marx's material" (New York Times).  (A couple of days after coming back home, we got a postcard with Frank Ferrante on it -- he's doing his Groucho thing at the Mt. Baker Theater.) Throughout the course of the show, Caesar pulls people out of the audience and humiliates them in front of everyone.  This is the sort of thing that makes me feel ill, but unluckily for me, I am strikingly handsome and hard to miss -- and sure enough, late in the show, Caesar came straight for me...( Read more... ) (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
2:10 am	San Francisco, Day 2 Part 1 (addendum) After some WILDLY CLEVER Googling ("musee mecanique monkey song") I figured out that the song that the monkeys are playing in my YouTube clip from my last post is Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's version of "A Taste of Honey."  It has been stuck in my head for days!  Go listen to it!  My favorite monkey is the one in the lower right-hand corner.  The little guy is trying so hard! (Monkeys show up at around the one minute mark.) (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
1:24 am	San Francisco, Day 2 Part 1: Put Another Quarter In On Thursday, September 4, Sue and I met up with Felicia and went to the Musee Mecanique (warning: sound), a collection of coin-operated automata from, mostly, the early-to-mid 20th century.  Here is a compilation of clips that I took while there (warning: more sound): As you can tell, drunken, maniacal laughter is pretty much inescapable at the Museum.  Some of these automata are quite large -- Laffing Sal is nearly 7 feet tall -- while others are darling miniatures, including a number of itsy-bitsy dioramas featuring various styles of executions, one of which is seen in the video above (Sue: "Waaaugh!"). ( Read more... ) (Comment on this)
Monday, September 8th, 2008
2:35 am	San Francisco, Day 1: Tomo! Tomo! Tomo! Most of Wednesday was spent travelling; we arrived at our hotel around 10pm. We stayed at the Hotel Tomo in Japantown; here is the view from our 6th-floor room. Hotel Tomo is, more accurately, HOTEL TOMO! and brightly-colored exclamation points abound, including our room number: ( Read more... ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 15th, 2008
2:11 am	Waking Up is Hard to Do I went to the hospital again today with kidney stone pain that the Percocet was not strong enough to overcome.  They gave me an even more powerful (!) pain killer -- Dilaudid, a morphine derivative -- and suggested that I use it regularly -- like every 6 hours -- for the next 48 hours, but I don't think I'm going to do that -- it makes me really woozy and I'm just in general not excited about taking stuff like that more often than absolutely necessary. In any case, the next time kidney stones come up on the ballot, I am voting "no." Here is a more natural painkiller -- listening to Neil Sedaka singing "Breaking Up is Hard to Do." I love the melody line of the verse and the harmonies are really nice as well, and the way the nonsense vocal line continues underneath knocks me out, and -- oh, shit, are those sleigh bells?  AWESOME As far as the video goes:  I think it's tremendous the way Sedaka turns away from the camera so that he can dramatically turn back at the beginning of the first bridge -- and then he immediately gets this look of doubt on his face, like he's not sure that that was such a great idea.  I also like the teenagers who, I assume, got drafted into lipsyncing and look like they have no idea what's going on. The song -- which the host refers to as a "Oldie Goldie" -- hit #1 a mere 4 years previous.  It's a great song, and that's not just the Dilaudid talkin'. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 4th, 2008
1:31 am	Another update I seem to be back to normal, which is to say, back to my regular levels of back and stomach pain.  Sometimes I feel a twinge and wonder if it's the kidney stone, but if I'm still not sure after a few seconds, that means it's not the kidney stone.  My assumption, then, is that it's moved on to the bladder, although I've seen no further sign of it.  (I have -- apologies -- a funnel/sieve device with which to attempt a daring capture.) I got nothing creative done while on the Percocet, which seems a little dissapointing for those expecting "Kubla Khan 2: The Wrath of Khan."  I did, happily, get a song finished a few days before, which coincidentally sounds sort of what I would think I would make if I did write a song on Percocet.  (Here is my drowsy blog entry on the song.  Fans of The Newstand will be pleased to note that Newstand employee Peter is featured therein.)  This gets me up to #3 in my "one song a month" 2008 plate-cleaning project, so you can see how well that is going. (1 Comment |Comment on this)