Failure of the Day: Vay-Kay

The Plan, so far is coming along nicely. My closet (and look, I am of course aware that world ended in south Asia over the weekend, but that just got piled onto the heap of horrible things that I am Ignoring As Best I Can To Preserve My Own Sanity. OK? What am I supposed to do with the fact of 114k dead and counting, anyway?) is now very tidy and I have six enormous hefty bags of clothes and shoes that I’m dropping off at a donation center tomorrow. (I mean, it’s not like I can do more than write a check, and once that’s done, dwelling on the horror and feeling crappy about all those people doesn’t actually count as being helpful. So might as well get on with it.)

I’ve been watching Carnivale. Gothic, Good v Evil story about depression-era traveling carnies; it’s more or less what it would look like if Nick Cave exploded in my TV. I’ve seen the first 6 episodes so far, and they’re pretty good. One of the stars is an actor named Clancy Brown, who I’ve liked ever since he played Rawhide in my beloved Buckaroo Banzai, and I like him even more now that I’ve realized that he looks just like Jon Stewart, if Jon Stewart were a giant. I also can’t seem to shake the image if Clancy Brown using Jon Stewart as a ventriloquist dummy, but that’s both kind of gross and stolen from Killer Klowns.

So it’s a fine vacation so far. My end-of-year panic attack came this morning when I woke up absolutely certain that my plan for the day of washing my hair and then laundering a load of sheets of towels contained the seeds of our doom, and that I would make one decision that would result in our spending the rest of our lives gnashing our teeth and rending our clothes. But then Chris got out of the shower and told me with great patience and kindness that I was possibly worrying a bit too much, and it turns out I was. So he went to work and I had a latte. And that brings us just about up to date.