Gumby, Dammit

Well, since the bunny refuses to go to bed peacefully I'll blog for a bit. She's sitting in her litterbox as she is in the picture, glowering at me with a "You suck" look on her face. Teenagers.

And speaking of teenagers, Aaron was here for the weekend with his big brother David, and the guys went out for steak on Friday night to celebrate their birthdays. Aaron is now...hard to believe...17. Mein Gott. He'll probably be living with us for his senior year, taking school by correspondence so he can start an auto-mechanic apprenticeship in the city. Two guys, a woman, and a rabbit in a 550-sq-ft condo...oughta keep life interesting! Sophie kept leaping onto the couch-bed while Aaron was sleeping and poking at him like, "Hey! WTF? This wasn't here before!" Then she pooped on his T-shirt.

The dad vs. son battles have begun already, of course. Richard the spotless-floor Nazi couldn't stand the sight of Aaron's socks. Aaron and I, on the other hand, get along just fine & dandy. We watch most of the same TV shows with the exception of Corner Gas, which I find obnoxiously cute. All three of us are obsessed with Curb Your Enthusiasm, though. I'm bummed that we're at the 5th season on DVD already. Maybe I'll just start over at the beginning.

There was a lucid-dreaming expert on Coast to Coast AM last night who suggested that people watch dream-like TV shows before going to bed to help get the dream-juices flowing, and guess what he suggested as an example? Gumby. I started watching Gumby on Cartoon Network at 2:30 in the morning when I was about 20, and it's got to be the trippiest, most surreal kids' show ever created next to that Puff'n Stuff or whatever it was called. (Not to mention a tremendous amount of work goes into traditional stop-motion. It's really a marvel.) One episode took place in a giant pumpkin that hovered in deep space like the Death Star; a witch had kidnapped Gumby's little sister and was holding her prisoner inside it. Gumby is abducted by aliens in another. I bought the whole original show on DVD a few years ago, to everyone's bafflement. But I tell ya, after watching just a few minutes of this stuff, I feel like I'm already asleep and dreaming. It eases the transition beautifully.

The guys hooked our computer up to cable, and I was amazed to find that Windows Media Center does all the same stuff as TiVo. Groovy.

I finished the Timothy Leary bio. Man, what a whacko...he gave up on LSD after a while and spent the rest of his life babbling about the necessity of migration into outer space.