Melissa Dunphy

FIRST -- BEFORE PICS. Here is the wall when we bought the house -- it's the wall in the back, through the arch, covered in plaster, awful wallpaper, and (shudder) baby blue trim.



Here is the wall after the plaster had been chipped away. As I said in my last post, it was like this for months.



Here is the wall now:



And with the dining set moved out of the way:



I still obviously need to prime and paint the trim, and I need baseboard and crown molding (which I can't put up until I've sorted out threading another wire into that light switch). But there it is. Got me some pride.

Labels: House

To help me get through what has been, to put it mildly, a trying time, I am focusing a lot of my energy on a wall. Months and months ago, Matt and I (with help from Chris and Stefania) exposed a brick wall in our house by painstakingly chiseling away hundreds of pounds of dilapidated horsehair plaster. The bricks were never meant to be seen -- they were chipped and broken and covered in plaster dust, and century-old mortar oozed all over them -- but an exposed brick wall was tantalizing. There's a beautiful exposed brick wall at National Mechanics, for instance. But gee, it seemed like such a lot of work. I often wondered if it would be easier to just paint over it, though that would ruin the effect of the natural brick. Months and months passed.

In the last week, though, I took it on as a kind of therapeutic project. And gee (again), were we ever right about it being a lot of work. I chipped all the extruded mortar away by hand. I painstakingly sanded each brick until it was clear of plaster and cement remnants, covering the interior of my house in dust and probably giving myself cancer in the process. I grouted until my fingers were raw from pushing slop between sharp brick edges. I brushed sealant on the cracked surfaces like a hermit painting delicate watercolors. It has been a labor of love and devotion. Every time I felt overwhelmed, I forced myself to get up and work on the wall. The nervous shake in my fingers and arms became the somewhat more bearable tremor of fatigue. Sometimes working on the wall took the place of eating and sleeping properly (like tonight).

The wall drove me crazy; the wall kept me sane. I told the wall secrets and listened for a response. I made bargains with the wall, convincing myself that it was a kind of talisman that would bring me luck. My mind filled with metaphors about stripping away facades and repairing the substance beneath until it was beautiful.

It's nearing completion, and I think it is going to be beautiful. Not perfect, and it won't solve any of my problems, but beautiful. Tomorrow, if the last of the grout dries properly, I'll finish sealing and put up the trim around the two doorways through it, and then I'll show you pictures. I'm afraid, though, the way I get when I'm nearing the end of a good book. What will I do when my friend the wall doesn't need me anymore?

Labels: House, psychobabble

This weekend, I finally finished grouting and caulking the kitchen tiles, and Matt and I installed our cute-as-a-button 18" dishwasher. It is perfectly functional! It doesn't leak! Clean dishes ahoy!

As a reward for our hard work, we saw Grindhouse today. Beware of spoilers in the coming paragraphs.

I daresay Grindhouse is the best thing I've seen in a long time. You know, I never used to like Tarentino all that much. Pulp Fiction was a good movie, but the way everyone in my generation seemed to go apeshit over it was too much for me. Maybe I heard the soundtrack a little too often. Also, I fell asleep in the cinema during Jackie Brown. However, the Kill Bill movies and now this have given me a very deep-seated fondness for Tarentino.

I probably wouldn't have seen Grindhouse at the cinema if I hadn't seen the trailer featuring Rose McGowan in Planet Terror with an amputated limb and a giant fuck-off machine gun screwed into the stump. All the same, I sort of wish I hadn't seen the trailer, so the machine-gun-leg would have been a surprise. Oh, it was wonderful nevertheless. It was everything I could have hoped for and more. I suspended my disbelief with glee (she walks on a "prosthetic" a mere hours after having her leg bitten off; the gun in her leg appears to be triggered by telepathy; later, a Gatling installed in her leg fails to knock her off a horse). And there were enough surprises to keep me entertained, including Fergie from the Black-Eyed Peas, who loses her brain, snigger. And there were lots of zombies. I loved it. "If anyone comes to the door, I want you to shoot them. Just like in your video games."

A lot of people online are complaining about all the dialogue in Deathproof. They're dumb. The dialogue was (a) good, and (b) riddled with in-jokes, which makes it even better. For instance, in one scene, four girls in the movie business are gossiping about who fucked whom on a set. They mention a stand-in for Darryl Hannah who fucked a director on his girlfriend's birthday. One of the actors in the first half of the film was Darryl Hannah's stand-in in the Kill Bill movies. I can't help but wonder if she fucked a director on his girlfriend's birthday, and how much more of the dialogue was an allusion.

There was something kind of heartwarming about seeing Zoe Bell kick arse. Something about the way she went after Kurt Russell with an iron pipe, hollering, "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" was so ... Australasian. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but there's something in Australian/New Zealand culture that causes people to react in just this way to certain situations. I was reminded of the time Jason and I were nearly mugged on New Year's Eve years ago. When a group of guys surrounded us and one of them snatched my bag, my first instinct wasn't, "Oh, shit, help!" but "Give me back my fucking bag," which I hollered at the would-be mugger while rushing at him, ready and willing to physically harm him, though he probably would have beat the shit out of me in a fight. He was surprised enough to throw the purse to another guy, who dropped it, and I snatched it back.

Also spotted: a XXXX beer neon sign. There was a thank-you to XXXX beer and VB in the credits. Weird.

CONCLUSION: This movie does not deserve to bomb. Go see it. It's awesome. I will probably even buy it on DVD.

• A had a lot of fun this week watching as many episodes as I could of Wizard People, Brad Neely's Harry Potter commentary. If it didn't cost money to buy the Harry Potter DVD, I would take the video and watch it with the commentary, which you can rip for free to CDs of your own.


• Turritopsis nutricula is a jellyfish with a life cycle in which it reverts back to the polyp stage after becoming sexually mature ... This cycle then repeats, rendering it effectively immortal.


• Google Voice Local Search. Awesome.

Labels: House, movies

I can't believe spring break begins for me in a couple of hours. HOW? Whither the first seven weeks of the semester? Where have I been? Was I here? There's a niggling feeling in a corner of my brain that any moment I will wake up, and it will be the beginning of January ... 2002.

Life's good, though. My conjunctivitis was gone in two days without any kind of treatment. I noted this week that it's impossible for me to walk through the music school without seeing people I know and like, and smiling. I just sorted out my schedule for next semester, and I'm looking forward to it. And 300 is open this weekend. What more could a girl want?

Here is a boring list of things to do over the break. Hey, it's good to have plans. Even if I have doubts about accomplishing any of them.

1. Clean the damn house
2. Write song cycle based on Lucy's blog. I already have one song started, but I'd like to have at least three by the end of next week.
3. Tidy up recording of bass and pianist for "So You Want to Write a Fugue?" We're cobbling together the recording since our bass is spending spring break in Israel. Basically, this process is going to be like Frog and Toad all over again, I can tell. (Only, you know, without an immediate member of my family passing away in the middle of the chaos, touch wood.)
4. Finish reading American Shaolin and get started on the Proust.
5. Study for my music theory exam
6. Finish tiling and grouting the kitchen floor and backsplash, and install the dishwasher
7. Practice the cello. Maybe if I practice hard enough, I'll make up for all the lack of practice. Is that how this music thing works?
8. Practice the bassoon
9. Practice singing
10. Rebuild my laptop
11. Rip Metropolis to my laptop and choose a nice fifteen-minute section of it to score in the next year.
12. Counterpoint homework
13. Build a theremin (if the parts arrive)

• Amazon.com: Dragons: Lexicon Triumvirate: Books: Kenneth Che-Tew Eng: "Customers tagged this product with: crap (2) atheist (1) carpetbagger (1) chronic masturbator (1) coward (1) craptacular (1) dribble (1) eugenics (1) fascist (1) flat earth theorist (1) garbage (1) hate (1) hitler (1) infantile (1) mein kampf (1) mental illness (1) misanthropic (1) paranoia (1) racism (1) racist (1) retarded (1) stinks (1) uninspired (1)"


• Digital archives of the Beethoven-Haus Bonn

Labels: gadgets, House, movies, music

Our water pipes froze and burst in five places. Luckily, I found out before they thawed, and managed to slice and replace the bad bits before there was any significant water damage (mind you, that room can probably take it - it's a weird shed-like area under the bathroom, and only a week ago it flooded completely when the regulator broke on our washing machine). I am the soldering fucking queen.

I thought at first that insulating the plumbing was going to keep me from going out to the Slow Andy gig last night, but in a last-minute fit of "fuck it," I left the taps on slow, grabbed an outfit, and tumbled into Matt's car. Once there, I proceeded to get very drunk. I woke up with a hangover. Mormolyke is getting old.

• Crowded House are reforming for Coachella WTF? Crowded House and RATM? Why don't they just resurrect Elvis and stick his name on the bill?


• Unit 731. I read through this and nearly threw up. I guess I'm some kind of pussy today.


• Bird flu brewing in cats?


• Why am I studying music composition? Well, maybe one day I'll get to compose a nuclear symphony. Or perhaps I'll write a song for doctors on death row. The possibilities are endless!

Labels: House

I'm working sixteen hours a day on the house and not answering my phone or e-mails. It's therapeutic in some ways, and maddening in others. Spending so much time and energy on the house is going a long way but also making me long to get away, so I have been making plans - or daydreaming, depending on which way you look at it.

Once I finish my degree, and before I go to grad school, Matt and I are going to do that cross-country driving holiday we've been dreaming of since we first met. We'll sell the house. Hopefully, with all the work we're putting in, we'll make a decent profit. We'll then take some of that money and trade in Matt's car for a Honda Element.



See, it looks like an SUV, but its fuel efficiency is 21/27 mpg. My two-door Hyundai Accent hatchback is only three miles per gallon better. And it's big enough inside that we can sleep in it when necessary. And it's relatively cheap - new ones are $18,900, but there are many available secondhand. Yeah, it's ugly as shit, but I am liking it more and more as the Matt & Mel American Odyssey Mobile (except it's an Element, not an Odyssey).

• Oh, fuck. Every fucking Randroid libertarian arsewipe in the world is going to log onto the internet when this movie is released and shit in every forum I frequent. No doubt they won't stick to the topic of the movie, either, but pollute every thread and every topic with their moon logic. Fan-fucking-tastic.


• Pffft. Pink gets cranky about Australian wool. I suppose we should just kill the sheep and make them into ugg boots instead.


• Ah, sweet Allentown. Almost as cool as Scranton.


• Strandbeest


• The drift of the magnetic pole has changed direction and accelerated substantially. I've always been fascinated with the idea that the magnetic poles could suddenly "flip." I hope it happens. When I'm really old and about to die anyway.


• Guess it's time to take Orson Scott Card off my favorite authors list. Goddamn. I hear too his new scifi series is frighteningly right-wing.


• Parasite which affects 40% of the population turns men into idiots, women into sluts. Suddenly the world makes a lot more sense to me.


• Via Jill, a delightful rant regarding Pachelbel's Canon.

Labels: House, vacation

I am on break, and it is glorious. What's more, I'm reasonably pleased with my finals, although I won't get my final grades until the 21st.

Things to do this winter break:

• Continue where I left off on that small business thing I was blathering on about a couple months ago but failed to get off the ground before I became too busy, surprise surprise.


• Record my set of "Variations on a theme by Trent Reznor," a ridiculous late-romantic-ish treatment of "The Frail" for cello and piano. It went over pretty well at my theory class's final performance, particularly the fugue variation, which is extra-ridiculous.


• Work on the house. I've already started - there's only one more wall to drywall in the kitchen (the uber-tall wall, now that the ceiling is vaulted), and in a few hours, I should finally have the second glass block window in the bathroom constructed.


• Practice the cello some.


• Create/memorize dozens of Sibelius keyboard shortcuts. God, I want this so badly.


• Masturbate and torture small animals.

Labels: House, music

Matt and I spent Thanksgiving weekend siding the back of our house. Click for before and after photos! Also completely new are the fascia and gutters. There are a few odds and ends we need to fix (caulking, securing flashing), but all in all, I'd say we did a pretty goddamn awesome job. The weekend before, we stripped all of that old (and *completely* rotted) wooden lap siding away and put up (previously non-existent) plywood sheathing. It's odd to think that in the space of two weeks, we went from the picture at the left, to NO WALL WHATSOEVER, to the picture on the right. Underneath the shiny white siding is both foam and batt insulation. The kitchen is cozy and warm! We are the handiest people in the universe!

Unfortunately, siding all weekend has put me terribly behind with relation to schoolwork. I'm writing a set of variations on NIN's The Frail which is sounding ... rushed. Yuck. I should have started earlier, but since this is my first college composition, I developed an insecure neurosis about it and put it off as long as possible. Thus, even if it's awful, I can always say, "Yes, but see, I composed it in only a week," and hope that people will forgive me.

Last week, I came very close to calling into Radio Times on NPR. Normally, the topics on RT are political, and the only listeners who have the desire to get on the air are complete moonbats (and excessively verbose to boot). But they recently discussed the new James Bond movie, and I desperately wanted to call in after the expert guest read this line from Fleming's novel Casino Royale: "The conquest of [Vesper's] body ... would each time have the sweet tang of rape."

I read Casino Royale, along with most of the Bond books, when I was twelve or so and was so scandalized by that sentence that I remember it perfectly fourteen years later. Previous to reading the books, I had been something of a Roger Moore fan since the age of eight or nine. I think Moore is a great way to get small children into Bond when it's all about having fun and giggling at the sex. Later, they can come to appreciate the other Bond actors. Then, when they're ready, they can discover the sweet tang of rape or being dragged over a coral reef until your back is a tangle of bloody ribbons within the pages of the books.

I once tried to read some of the post-Fleming Bond books. Brokenclaw was particularly gruesome. Bond is tortured in that novel by being strung up via four meathooks thrust into the flesh of his back. Horrible book. Maybe the author was overreacting to the relative tameness of the movie franchise.

Anyway, I wanted to call in and talk about the difference between the books and the movies, but I was driving from Ephrata to West Chester (Romeo and Juliet workshop at Ephrata high school - I bawled like a crazy person) and thought it might be unwise to talk on the radio while on the road. I should have pulled over and done it, though. I would have been the only female to call in.

• Pennsylvania is the worst state in America for car accidents involving deer. It's pretty bad where we live now. I usually see at least two or three dead deer on the road during the twelve-minute drive to college.
  


• BE A CHARACTER IN A WEEBL AND BOB CARTOON! AHHHHH!


• Kramer the Mason - there used to be an online copy here of a front cover and cover article of Scottish Rite Journal featuring an interview of 33rd degree Freemason Michael Richards, but it seems after the whole "YOU'RE A NIGGER!" fiasco, they've taken it down.


• Story of my goddamn life


• Pennsylvania - 27 Hate Groups Found


• Monty Python's "Galaxy Song" actually earned me a couple of points on my Physics exams this semester.

Labels: House

Labels: House