One of my oldest and very best friends - my brother, even - Schmy, is here in Chicago. I haven't seen him, or heard his (very Australian) voice in nearly three years! Here's two photos taken by The Husband on Thursday, one near the giant Chicago bean, and the other in front of the Married With Children fountain. Arriving in a very, very short while are two more of my very favourite people, Xian (Delve on LJ, from waaaaay back) and Alex, who will also be staying with me for several weeks before heading to Vegas (of all places!) to get married. Then, the cherry on the cake (and several cakes, truth be told), my BBF Mars will arrive later from the Land of Cleves next week to join us all. Complete with Wade, an apartment full of family, the people on this planet I love more than a shark made out of sushi driving a tank to Prague with a sloth riding shotgun.

Enjoy your weekends everyone. xxx

Monster Monster, originally uploaded by givemethegun.

Wade plays guitar, Ollie rocks out.

More Aussiestralia nostalgia for me, as Oz enters another shark season - lots of sightings already, some say more than usual. Anyone who knows me knows that I've been obsessed with sharks since I was a wee thing (and even sighted the silhouette of a rather large one only a few metres away when I was swimming off a beach on Kangaroo Island)...and I also love kayaking, being influenced by my father who was a world champion canoeist. So shark 'attacks' on kayaks are especially fascinating to me. This little article has a happy ending, but I almost got a little teary at the very typical Aussiestralian fisherman's attitude towards the circling shark. I've become such a bloody patriot since moving overseas. For reference, a 'tinnie' is a very small aluminum boat.

Go here...and swim safe this summer, guys.

( A little something special from my homeland. )

Other highlights include the girl with the testicle-removers dragging her boyfriend (?) away from the media, saying "You've seen enough!", and the guy who thought the shooting was "Awesome!" Makes me proud, and oddly, nostalgic - the drunken accents, mind.

This is one of the titles we carry where I work;

Personally, I think the dinosaur who plays Top should be holding a champagne bottle in one stunted claw, and a bouquet of penis flowers in the other.

I swear we carry highbrow titles, too.

For more information on Dinosaur Sex, go here.

Actually, it was Ms. invader_kitty's appearance in this very journal that reminded me I had to post this recipe. No photos, because I'm lazy - you'll just have to trust me that it's fucking delicious and crazy, and will soon become one of your favourite not-so-healthy salads in the repertoire.

Bacon-wrapped Date and Goat Cheese 'Salad'*.

You will need:

Baaacon. Dates, seeded (delicious!). Goat cheese. Lettuce-type items (whatever tickles the fancy). Salad dressing - I typically use raspberry/cranberry walnut dressing, but I know this is a very American thing, so pick some similarly-themed dressing that is more on the sweetish than savory side. Actually, a sundried tomato dressing would also work here.

It looks easy already, right? Right, you pussies. Cut your dates in half, and lovingly wrap them in a strip of bacon (just enough to make it once-around, and then a little more). Pin with a wooden toothpick. Grill those babies until crunchy. While these are cooking, prepare your greenery, and throw the datecons on top. Sprinkle with little clumps of goat cheese, and drizzle with dressing. Super easy. I've also added chopped avocado to this, and toasted walnut pieces. But this is all about the datecons and goat cheese, so do whatever tickles you, really.

You gotta try it. The dates get all carmelized, and the bacon is...well, bacon.

* I quickly discovered that America has a very loose interpretation of salad. Most people I know from home would be horrified at what passes for greenery over here, as the salads can be quite sugary, and sometimes even contain things like marshmallows and candied items. Yes. That being said, this is a somewhat American version of a salad, but I promise you it's quite delicious regardless of how odd it may sound.

I keep receiving calls (in response to the ads I have plastered around) where people leave voicemails like this;

"Uh, hi...I just saw your flyer for the missing cat at the (local coffee shop). I wanted to let you know that I was down (blah blah and blah) street, and saw a dead cat on the side of the road. It was really fluffy and white. I just thought I should let you know. Thanks!"

Seeing as how I've written a pretty direct description of Gin on the flyer (plus two clear and coloured photos), I don't quite understand why these people are calling me. I get that they might be feeling that they can help in some way, but I'm certainly not going to be chasing down fluffy white roadmeat on the off chance Gin donned a lamb suit whilst playing chicken in traffic two suburbs across. Come on now. Drink your fucking coffee and go home.

I've spent the weekend on high Pissed Off alert. Every time I'd get close to calming down, something else stupid would happen. I'm a little over it.

Hope everyone had great weekends, yay! Fuck.

It's been a bit of a week. First, news on Gin.

I received a call from a guy a few nights back who said he'd seen Gin a day after she went missing, fighting with another cat on his porch. She apparently spent 24 hours on the porch before his 'neighbours' called animal control and they came and took her away. He was "pretty sure" it was Gin, based on the flyer, and gave me the name of the shelter she was sent to. But hurry, he says, after 5 days they put lost cats up for adoption, he says, 7 days later. So the next day I go to work and can't concentrate, so decide to leave work and get Gin - a fucking marvvy girl from work insisted on driving me, as it was on the other side of Chicago and I had no idea how I was going to get there and bring Gin home. The entire sojourn took 4 hours, and long story short, it wasn't Gin. Lots of miserable, pathetic-looking cats in cages, but no Gin. It was a long, teary, stupid day, yay. P.S. Spay and neuter your cats, people.

Tonight I was walking home tipsy on sangria (The Husband and I had Spanish people for dinner, and he went home the short way whilst I stopped for coffee) when I saw a broken seagull in the park. I called animal services, and they said they'd send someone out. I told them I'd wait. The seagull was sitting up, but had obviously broken its wing and had blood on its back. I'd been able to walk right up next to it, and it didn't move - just started making pathetic sounds. So I stood back in the freeeeezing cold, with nothing but my boobs to keep me warm, so as to protect it from dogs and muggers until the bird rescuers arrived. Luckily I had delicious coffee to keep me company. And boobs. One hour later, the seagull had progressed from standing upright to slowly sinking down into the earth, beak pressed into the dirt and wings spread out. It was dying. So I called 311 again, and they were engaged. Five minutes later I went over to the bird and it was quite dead, so I called 311 again and told them to cancel the pick-up. I asked what I should do with the body, and was told to leave it there, as they'd get around to picking it up eventually. While standing in the dark and cold, a weird Irish guy asked me if I was looking for an apartment, and some crazy lady loaned me her sweater as she was doing laps of the park. When she found out the bird had died, she went over and...cuddled it. Yes. I told the dead seagull that, had it been a monkey or maybe even a pelican, animal services would have surely gotten there sooner. Seagulls are, like, one step up from pigeons.

Lastly, I saw the final in the Feast trilogy. I've been trying to convince all my lover-of-horror friends to watch these movies, to no avail (Mars, I'm looking at you, mostly). They are surprisingly brilliant (especially #2 & #3), and quite possibly the most fresh and unique horror films of this past decade. I'm in love with the end credits from Feast 2: Sloppy Seconds - it's beautiful. Here's an image of one of the beasties trying to eat a Mexican wrestler midget in a can, and Honey Pie;

The series contains: a baby monster ejaculating into a lesbian biker's mouth, projectile vomiting, gore, midgets in catapults, baby death, cat-fucking, a creature eating a woman's head and then shitting it out moments later, a man who walks around for several hours with a metal pipe through his skull, a man being fucked in the back (he soon gives birth to a super-monster), an unhappy ending for a flying baby, a handicapped prophet, a ninja kid with no arms, maggots, giant monster penis-and-scrotum ensembles, gratuitous nudity (two of the characters are topless for a majority of films #2 and #3), a woman who has her uterus ripped out via her vagina by an angry lesbian, a big-arse robot, a slowly decomposing grandmother, Henry Rollins, a hobo who shits his pants, a dead penis ejaculating, plus so much more I can't even tell you because it's a secret...did I mention cat-fucking? Yes, I'm a teenage boy. Honestly, why aren't you watching this right now? I can't name ANY of my friends who have seen these films (and if you have, please speak up). They just get better and better. Plus, it's an independent, family affair! Gosh I love them, they're so fucking disgusting and wrong. Anyways, if you love horror that's refreshingly clever, over-the-top gory, and totally hilarious, you should see these - again, Mars, especially, am looking at you.

That's it.

Wade and I spent about an hour laughing our arses off at this last night, which was nice;

We're simple folk.

His store can be found here. It's certainly worth a peruse if you're in need of a cheering up, which we certainly were.

P.S. Thank you for all your kind thoughts re: Gin. It means a lot.

xxx

, originally uploaded by givemethegun.

On April Fool's day, Gin went missing. She'd been cooped up inside our various apartments for over two years, and was used to being an indoor/outdoor kitty back home. She'd become increasingly neurotic and unhappy from being locked indoors. One day, we let her out onto the back porch to see what she'd do. She rolled around in the sun, got filthy, purred, explored, and was marvelously content. We started letting her out on small, supervised mini-adventures in the back yard. She hung about, returned when she wanted in. She never went far. She besotted the neighbours. She stopped vomiting, yowling, and being miserable in general. She was a much happier cat.

Now she's disappeared. We don't think she wandered far - we think someone picked her up/took her in. This is what I'd prefer to believe, anyways. I've called everywhere, posted flyers, faxed flyers, canvassed the neighbourhood and remained hopeful. It's been 4 days. Now I'm actually starting to worry.

So, people are dumb - mostly me. I'm a bad parent. And people are dumb, because someone called just now, raising my hopes as I waited to hear what I wanted to hear. Instead, this silly muppet said she'd seen my flyer, and was wondering if I wanted *her* cat, as she was moving overseas? I'd mentioned on the flyer that whoever had Gin probably didn't want to keep her, as her favourite pastime was vomiting on the bed. This woman on the phone said *her* cat vomited too...was I sure I didn't want her?

Anyways, this is the last photo I took of Gin, and I just thought I'd let you all know. I've had Gin for 8 years, and she moved to the States with me from Australia. That is all.