Hurraher! & Hurrahest!

Sorry. Life is good.

1) ABBA's Voulez-Vous is the perfect 73 degree Friday morning drive to work soundtrack. A-HA! I freakin' love ABBA. So very much. Their Swedish pop genius is a joy to behold. Behear? Eh. Why is there no sincere optimism in pop music anymore? Am I missing something? Tell me. Is there a contemporary equivalent to the sincere refrain of "I believe in angels/Something good in everything I see"?

2) I'm wearing sandals for the first time this year - & they're my lovely gold sparkly cork wedge sandals, to boot. Er, no pun intended.

(Lengthy parenthetical aside revealing my etymological dorkiness & alarming passion for punctuation:

("The boot in [the phrase 'to boot'] is pretty much the only surviving sense of a once prominent word. Some archaic or obsolete senses are 'advantage; profit; use' ('O spare they happy daies, and them apply/To better boot'--Spenser, Faerie Queen); 'something given in a sale or exchange to equalize the value of the exchange' (now only used in dialect, in America found chiefly in the south); and 'deliverance from evil or danger' (often in the phrase boot of bale 'relief from woe').

("The phrase ['to boot'] uses [the word 'boot'], in a sense like 'to the good; to advantage', and hence 'in addition; besides; moreover'. This particular boot is from Old English, and is related to better."

(The above explanation can be found in full, & with fewer parentheses/brackets, here.)

3) On Wednesday I made a decision which makes me molto contenta. I ain't tellin'. The action won't happen until 2011 anyway. Let's just say that I hope in three years the dollar/euro exchange rate is a bit more in my favor.

4) Said decision involved the more immediate decision to look for a part-time job. That same day, I found a listing for a part-time video store job, 12 - 14 hours a week, in NW Portland. I dropped my resume off that night, interviewed yesterday, & start working on Saturday. Yeah, I rock. Y'know, my favorite job ever was at a video store. This new one has the benefit of not being in rural Oregon, which gives me relative confidence that the following exchange is highly unlikely to occur:

Customer returning The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I had recommended to him the night before: I didn't like this movie.
Me: Oh, I'm sorry.
Him: It was about faggots.
Me: Well, yes, I suppose that's true.
Him: That's sick.
Me: Some people think so.
Him: You don't?
Me: No, I don't.
Him: Are you a dyke?

Yes indeedy. You can't make this stuff up, people. So...I'm going to get paid to talk about movies & clean & organize shelves stuffed with movies. It makes my movie-loving, compulsively clean & systematic self well-nigh giddy. Oh, yeah, plus I get free movies. I mean, I could probably get a better-paying part-time job. But the way I look at it, I already have one job for which I don't much care. If I'm gonna have a second job, I better damn well like it. And this is...perfect.

5) Also, this is entirely politically irresponsible of me, because I know absolutely nothing about his governorship, but goddamn. Whenever I remember that we live in a world where Arnold motherfuckin' Schwarzenegger is the GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA, things get just a little more...sparkly. I love it, I do, I confess. I don't think you could dream up something more deliciously absurd. Hee hee! Related: the commentary track for Conan the Barbarian is the single most fantastic commentary I've ever heard. Easily as good as the movie proper. (Governator: "She's so hot. I'm so hot in this scene" John Milius: "She's like a...Valkyrie." Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Surely they were both drunk. Schwarzenegger is a total chauvinist, which I inexplicably love.)