Assorted

I'm back. Did you miss me? What am I saying? Of course you missed me. Well, I'm sorry , but it couldn't be helped. Since I was last here, I have been to Paris and back and also turned in my accursed Dante research paper. Is it a good paper? No. Not particularly, but it is a done paper. A nothing-I-can-do-about-it-now paper. And second only to a work of complete genius, that's my favorite kind of paper. All this to say, I've been busy.

No doubt there will be forthcoming Paris stories, but for now let's just say that due to a lapse in packing attention, Marja somehow managed to come to France with neither her pants, nor her socks. This meant that she spent our four days in the dress and tights she'd worn on the plane and...looked fabulous ALL THE TIME. It was really a remarkable thing to witness.

In more current news, last night while I was in the living room contentedly decorating my wee, yet costly, impulse-buy Christmas tree, my kitchen sink was ever-so-quietly filling with foul water that had been mysteriously regurgitated through my disposal. When I went in to make dinner, it was a nasty shock. Turning on the disposal made the water level rise alarmingly rather than lower. A plunger, even when wielded by a strong neighbor, did nothing. At an inch and a half from overflow level, I called the landlord who came and bailed the water into a bucket with the intention of doing further repairs today. All was well until the upstairs neighbor took a shower and the water crept back up the drain into my sink, filled with a revolting sort of silt that I can only hope the neighbor had not just washed from his body. The good news is that now I know how to fill my apartment with the delightful aroma of vomit without having to go through the exhausting process of actually vomiting. Woo hoo.

Speaking of the aroma of vomit, apparently an ice show is coming to town: Brian Boitano skating his heart out to '70s hits by Barry Manilow. Which, incidentally, Barry will be on hand to perform live. How is that a real show?

Conspiracy

Saturday

1. 6-7am upstairs neighbors' accursed cat.

2. 7am-present next door neighbors' newborn infant.

3. 8:24am wrong number.

4. 8:33am next door neighbors' attempt to soothe infant with liberal application of techno music.


8:36 am. Okay, okay. I'm up, people. You win.

Also? I hate you.

Vive la France

I am going to Paris for Thanksgiving--just as soon as I finish my accursed Dante research paper. This very short trip has been the light at the end of the tunnel of this darkish fall. Only four days there and, counting the way there and back, another day spent in the air, but still worth it. That is, if I can actually get from the airport to the city.

Two things the French enjoy:

1. Cheese
2. Labor strikes


Oh, how they enjoy a good labor strike. This time it's a transit strike which means the trains, buses, and metro are essentially shut down. Presumably the taxis are gleefully running to and from Roissy, but with the strike-induced traffic, I can only imagine how long that ride would take. Or, more alarmingly, what it would cost. 100 Euros? 200?

It kind of redefines the whole "bargain travel package" thing.

Scope

This morning when my radio alarm went off, people were calling in to the station to discuss this tragic oil spill that has befouled our beloved Bay.

Two of the most distraught callers ranted about accountability and the need for San Franciscans to rise in protest. I was right there with them until BOTH of them mentioned their dogs. "I mean," said one, winding up the call, "I have an old dog who loves to run on the beach...and now he can't."

Seriously? With the scope of this disaster, you're primarily worried about how it affects your dog's routine? Well, ma'am. I'll be honest. You just lost me.

Advent calendar

Some people in my neighborhood have raised a few holiday questions in my mind. Last month the question was:

Is October 8 too early to cover the front of one's house with spooky cobwebs, witches, skeletons, etc?

The answer is:

Yes.


Today the question is:

Is November 4 too early to erect a fully-decorated ten-foot Christmas tree in one's front room?

The answer is:

Yes.


Let's all calm down here people. Do not let retailers entirely skew your sense of time. Halloween is not actually a month-long festival and Christmas is in December. Late December. If we start counting down before Thanksgiving, advent calendars are going to have to get a lot bigger.

NYC

Things I learned during my weekend in NY:

1. NY, NY is a hell of a town
2. The Bronx is up
3. The Battery's down
4. The people ride in a hole in the ground

Oh wait. Wrong list. I already knew all that from "On the Town"

Here we go:

1. My mother is a very organized traveler

2. It is possible to become quite intoxicated on two glasses of sangria. Particularly at Alta.

3. There are still hotel rooms available in which countless thousands of people seem to have been smoking since, say, 1952.

4. On the 19th floor the windows only open two inches.

5. Even if the website says student tickets will be available if you come in person to the box office, there will be no student tickets available.

6. Jules and Talya live way, way too far away from me and my life would be much improved if they lived within sangria-drinking distance all the time.

7. The R will get you there, but not back.

8. The F train will get you back, but not there.

9. Many, many, many people enjoy running.

10. My father is a rock star.


Actually, I knew a lot of that already, particularly #'s 1 and 10. Oh, and #6--I am definitely all too aware of #6.

If I were a millionaire, or, heck, a billionaire, and I had a warmer coat, I would probably move. For this year though, two days will have to do.

Perspective

A conversation yesterday regarding my seven-year-old niece, Ruby.


Ruby's mother: We've got to take Ruby to school. She's playing the villain in a melodrama or something this afternoon.

Ruby's father: A melodrama? I don't think that's what it is.

Ruby: I'm playing a rabbit.

All assembled adults: A rabbit?

Ruby: Yes. But a rabbit is a villain to a garden.


All assembled adults: Ohhhhh.

Lessons learned at dinner

1. In certain contexts, brussels sprouts can be surprisingly delicious.

2. Ditto celery root.

3. It is difficult to read by the light of one candle, even when the waitress, seeing your plight, brings you a bigger candle than anyone else has.

4. When the book is any part of The Divine Comedy, it will automatically be harder to read than any other book you might have thought to bring.

5. The first time you have dinner in a restaurant alone after a break up is far lonelier than you will be prepared for it to be.

6. If your recent ex was (and presumably is) a big fan of chocolate pudding--if chocolate pudding indeed was one of the major elements of your relationship--you may find eating chocolate pot de creme to be a bit heartbreaking.

7. This is a bummer because you love chocolate pot de creme.

8. When you are already extremely full, it is foolish to eat chocolate pot de creme even if (lucky you) you do not find it to be a particularly emotional experience.

9. If it is part of a prix fixe menu, you will eat it anyway (see #7).

10. When you are very, very full, it is even harder to read Dante.

Common ground

Dorothy Sayers' summary of Canto XVIII of Purgatory:

Dante is just dozing when he is roused by the noisy approach of the spirits of the Slothful , who run continually around the Cornice crying aloud examples of Zeal and Sloth which form the Whip and Bridle for their meditation. The spirit of the Abbot of San Zeno, as he rushes by, calls out directions for the Poets' journey and tells them about his convent. Presently, Dante falls asleep.

And so do I.

Birdhouse

Do you ever find yourself in a situation where something is suddenly just profoundly wrong? I don't mean like you've made a mistake. I mean deeply wrong. I have experienced this while snorkling, for example. All was well, there I was swimming merrily along the reef, breathing like Darth Vader through a rubber tube, marveling at flippery, shimmery, multi-colored nature. Then, quite suddenly, something swam innocently by and I panicked completely. Suddenly, I was overcome with the clear knowledge that I had no business trying to participate in the underwater kingdom. I was a land mammal for God's sake. I very clearly DID NOT BELONG HERE. I took off for shore as fast as I could.

Today was like that. I had a lot to bring in from the car, so after the first load, I just left the front door of my parents' house open. I went back to the parking lot, got the rest of my stuff, and came back to the house. I was gone for maybe seven minutes. I walked in, put everything down, and closed the screen door behind me. When I turned away from the door I saw something, sort of half registered it, and then did a complete cartoon double take. There was a bird about the size of a pigeon sitting on the window sill in the living room. This wouldn't have been such a big deal except that the window was closed and the bird was on the inside.

Seeing a bird inside the house is strangely shocking. The wrongness of it almost took my breath away for a moment. I was looking at it; it was clearly sitting right there, but my brain was saying: THIS SIMPLY CANNOT BE. The panic was soon to follow. Oh-my-god-that-is-a-a-big-bird-how-the-hell-am-I-going-to-get-it-out-of-here. I opened the screen door and just stood there for a moment trying to formulate a plan. Meanwhile, the bird looked at me, lept lightly from the window sill, flew toward me, and, making a graceful turn into the entry way, flew straight out the door. It sat for a few minutes on the porch railing before heading for the trees. Throughout our encounter, it was as calm as though it had just dropped in to pay a social call.

The equilbrium between inside and outside was restored almost as quickly as it had been disturbed, but I stared disbelievingly after that bird for several long minutes. When, at last, I reached to close the screen door, my hands were still shaking.

You smell delicious

One thing about having a smallish apartment is that there is no way to achieve anything akin to "what happens in the kitchen stays in the kitchen." My kitchen has no interior wall even, it just sort of opens into the living room and it a mere four steps from the bedroom. Therefore, the smell of anything I cook permeates the entire apartment and lingers for days. Last night I made quiche. It smelled pretty delicious at the time it was cooking, it even smelled good an hour later when I ate it. However, it was less delightful to go to sleep in this quiche-compromised air. And it was downright revolting to wake up this morning having marinated myself all night in eau de gruyere.

But who knows? Maybe as I walk home, I'll find a group of Frenchmen trailing behind me, entirely bewitched.

The great unknown

It's kind of like this. Let's say that the world was suddenly filled with a blinding light. To protect yourself, you cover all your windows with black-out shades and you stay inside. The question of course is, how do you know if the blinding light is still there? Do you dare peek? How long do you wait?

After nearly two months of sleeping under a mosquito net, I have lately been wondering if it's still necessary. Am I no longer plagued by mosquitos solely because of the net? Or have the mosquitos, in fact, gone? And I'm just being a paranoid weirdo? It is, after all, mid October. How long can mosquitos even survive as the weather gets colder?

While the net doesn't bother me when I'm asleep, it does present some difficulties when I'm awake. For example, I can't turn the lights off and on once I'm in there, nor can I reach the snooze alarm. I am nostalgic for the old days when I could freely extend my limbs beyond the mattress perimeter.

Tuesday night, I kept the net open and was entirely undisturbed all night. I congratulated myself for my courage and foresight in having undertaken this experiment. Last night, filled with a renewed sense of well being, I left the net wide open again. At 2am I was awakened by an intense itching on the side of my neck. Soon after I heard the tell tale whine in my ear. I reached (easily) for the light, searched for the interloper, saw nothing except one stray fruit fly, turned the light back off and, groping in the dark, pulled the net closed around me.

And now I know.

Several letters

Dear Food,
We used to be so close. What went wrong? Why must everything I eat make me sick? Wait, I know. If you're food that won't make me sick, raise your hand; the rest of you, hands down. Okay. Great, great. Thanks, seltzer water. Thanks, rye crisps. I'll be seeing you at dinnertime.
Thanks, bye.
Love, Kari


Dear Men in my Building,
I know you. You are all quite fit. Really--looking good, fellas. So, why have you all adopted the Fee-Fie-Fo-Fum tread? You are not giants. You are not even slightly overweight. Why the crazy stomping? Could you please stop? Because you're waking me up. Thanks, bye.
Love, Kari


Dear Fruit Flies,
Fun is fun, but it's time to go.
Thanks, bye.
Love, Kari


Dear Neighborhood Cats,
Shut up. No, really. Shut up.
Thanks, bye.
Love, Kari


Dear Lady Upstairs,
Before you moved in there was a family with a toddler in what is now your apartment. This toddler used to run flat-footed up and down all day over my head. Things in my apartment shook. It was noisy. I didn't like it. Fortunately, you don't have any children of your own (you do have a stompy boyfriend, but I've already written to him, so don't worry). Why then, have you been compelled to borrow someone else's flat-footed toddler? I can't imagine any reason that I would get up at dawn every morning, go out to borrow a small non-verbal creature, bring it back home, and let it run wild in my apartment. And yet, that's what you do. Huh. Weird. Do you think you could stop? 'Cause you're waking me up.
Thanks, bye.
Love, Kari


Dear Dante,
I'm sorry to tell you this, but I'm not really enjoying your long, long poem. Do you have any idea how I can write a paper about it while secretly really writing a paper about something else? Like maybe Jane Austen? I'd appreciate any tips.
Thanks, bye.
Love, Kari

And the socks?

On my way to work I pass two guys in mid-conversation:

Guy #1: What are you gonna do today?

Guy #2: I don't know what I'm gonna do. [Pause] These shoes are telling me I should do what I wanna do.


Foolishly, I didn't even ask my shoes for their thoughts this morning. They probably would have had a better proposition than "walk to work." Next week, I'm definitely going to check in with them before we leave the house.

Either way

I'm on one of those word-a-day lists and today's word is lugubrious. This was the example given to illustrate the usage of the word:

"Although the program notes characterize the piece as dark and lugubrious, it's actually rather playful and matter-of-fact, a reflection of Russian acceptance of life's inequalities and perils."
Roy C. Dicks; Russian Reality (dance review); The News & Observer(Raleigh, North Carolina); Jun 16, 2007.

I find this unaccountably hilarious. Mostly though, whether the dance be dark and lugubrious, or a playful reflection of Russian acceptance of life's perils, I find that I'm not particularly keen to see it.

When superpowers fail

Walking home yesterday, I saw a little boy and his mother headed toward me from the other end of the block. He was quite small, maybe four years old. He also happened to be a super hero--as evidenced by the rather dashing red cape he was wearing with his street clothes. He was running a little ahead of his mother. Clearly there were superhero-type tasks to which he needed to attend with considerable urgency.

His mother caught up to him and, to my surprise, pulled his pants down at once. She guided the wriggling boy toward the curb, took his tiny penis between her thumb and forefinger and directed his stream of urine toward a tree. Apparently bladder control was not one of his superpowers.

Fortunately, I don't think there were any arch villians in the vicinity at the time, because that kind of thing can be damned embarrassing.

Defying reason

Somehow I have ended up with a little swarm of fruit flies in my apartment. They are not those extremely tiny ones; they have some substance. And yet, despite being plainly visible, they are impossible to kill. I wander around clapping wildly over my head like a lunatic and still they dart erratically around, entirely unfazed.

I truly don't know where they came from or where they are having their little fly orgies that result in still more flies. Nevertheless, I've done my best to dissuade their permanent residency. Basically, aside from the wild clapping campaign, my strategy has been to put all my fruit in the refrigerator.This is quite a sacrifice
since I am a fruit bowl user generally and don't actually enjoy cold fruit. Still, desperate times....

Imagine my dismay then when I opened the refrigerator this morning and four flies flew out quite cheerfully from its chilly depths.

Really?

What then? What then must I do? Burn down the house? I can just see it now, all my worldly goods smoldering in a black heap on the sidewalk. And what's that moving above the cinders? A plume of smoke? Why, no. I believe it's a little cloud of fruit flies.

Incognito

When my new license plates arrived from the DMV, the best I seemed able to do was to put them in my back seat of my car for several weeks. Last week, I finally borrowed an appropriately large screwdriver from the facility guys at work and put the plates on the car rather than simply in it. The upside is that now that the dealer plates are off, I'm in full legal compliance and all; the downside is that I no longer recognize my car.

Crank it up

Browsing through the International section of iTunes streaming radio options, I run across this enticing description:

"French songs since 1890 of the dead artists."


And if that doesn't say dance party, I don't know what does.

Like a bad and hard soldier

On NPR last night there was a special edition of Youth Radio focused on young people in New Orleans. Unsurprisingly, it was full of stories of kids struggling, but ultimately triumphing even in the face of horrible circumstances. One segment was about a family who'd stayed in their house for a week even though it was full of water. The father felt it was safer for them to stay together at home than to evacuate. The sister narrates. She says that her family is stronger now than they were before. She says that she is far more self confident and is no longer bothered by trivial things like namecalling at school. She speaks about how her brothers are stronger too--physically stronger and more fearless. I picture these boys all lean and muscled and tall. I picture them looking people in the eye and taking all comers. Cut to the voice of the younger brother:

Like a bad and hard soldier, I got very very brave. I used to be very very scared of crickets. One night one got on me. I was about to scream at the top of my lungs, but I just looked at it and was like wait, it’s going to be alright, that cricket can’t do nothing, it’s not going to bite you, and it just flew off. And I said wait, that’s just a harmless little bug.

Miss Manners

Sophie is one of the most charming and gracious children I've ever met. Yesterday at her 5th birthday party she greeted each guest with true enthusiasm and told them how glad she was to see them. When it was time for her to choose an assistant for the magic show, the other girls clamored for her attention. She said, "I will pick someone who is being very quiet." And she did. True, she was a little panicky about being first for face painting, but come on, she was the birthday girl.

When she was opening her presents, she always said her thank you's and frequently said, "These are the best presents ever." Still, who among us has never made a faux pas? She opened a big present and said happily, "A kite!" "Wow. It's a pirate kite," said her mother. Sophie, fairy-loving child that she is, replied, "I don't like pirates." Instantly, she knew her mistake. You could actually see the dismay flicker over her face. "But I love Uncle Billy's present, though!"

Nice save, Sophie. Emily Post would be be proud.

No comment

I was doing so well there for a while. Did you notice? Writing and updating and making humorous observations and all? It was great. Then my boyfriend and I broke up and now I find that the humorous-commentary energy has transformed into crying-all-the-time energy.

Nevertheless in the spirit of looking at the bright side of life here are three nice things from today:

1. Whole Foods sells oatmeal in the morning. They even have brown sugar and raisins and milk there. This may not strike you as exciting, but when you are obliged to go to Whole Foods at 8am because you forgot to buy flowers for a work event, hot oatmeal is very welcome indeed.

2. Dahlias. One bunch is dark pink and the other is purple. I find them so cheerful that I would like to just carry them around with me.

3. This morning I heard the Mill Valley song on the radio. I learned it in elementary school, but apparently it was an international hit before I was born. Go figure. I sang along. I got all misty eyed and nostalgic about my home town. Aww.

That's it people. That's all I got. I hope to be funny again sometime soon.

Today's lesson

Today for lunch I had a bowl of onion soup. Or rather, I had several spoonfuls of onion soup before I gave up on the whole project and poured the rest down the drain. However, while eating those few, inadequate spoonfuls, I learned something-- something I shall generously share with you.

French onion soup is delicious. Why is it delicious? Because in the wee tureen of steaming onion broth, there is also half a pound of melted cheese and a quarter of a baguette. When you have onion soup from a can both the cheese and bread are necessarily, albeit tragically, absent. Therefore, onion soup from a can is not delicious. Not at all delicious.

Heed my words.

War is Hell

Knowing how much I love the performing arts, you may be inclined to buy me tickets for this. Thank you for the kind thought. Sadly, as much as sitting through an opera by Philip Glass about the civil war seems like a fantastic way to spend an evening, I find I am busy for the entire month of October.

Speaking of hell, we spend a fair amount of time discussing it in my Dante class--quelle suprise. Yesterday the professor asked us to share our own notions of hell. One woman said, "Well, what about here? Marin County?"

Um...right. Or Darfur. Whichever.

Changing sides

Yesterday I dragged my poor, sick self to the drug store to buy more Nyquil and tissues. By some miracle, I remembered that I also needed to get toothpaste. I stood there in my viral haze, overwhelmed by the dazzling American array of toothpaste options. Tartar control, dual cavity fighting action, dazzling white, etc., etc. My eye fell on a new type of Crest called Pro Health. "Hey," I thought, sniffling pitifully, "I'm pro health." And so I bought it.

This morning I used it for the first time. It tastes sort of like baking soda and glue sprinkled with cinnamon. What's more, it lingers for hours. I'm not sure if it's meant to promote oral health or general health or if Crest just wants you to know where they stand on the general question of health, but one thing is clear. If this is the taste of health, I'm going to have to side with illness.

Where have you been all my life?

Today my printer revealed to me a previously unseen error message. It stated that Tray 3 was not programmed and then gave me two options, one of which I was to select.

1. Resolve all problems for me automatically.
2. I will resolve this problem myself.

Oh, Option One, I knew you had to be out there somewhere. Goodbye insomnia. Goodbye indecision. Goodbye worry. Hello Option One.

If you see me around town dragging a massive printer behind me everywhere I go, you'll know why.

Tidying up

They tell me that I am soon to get a new computer at work, so yesterday I dutifully cleaned all the random documents off my computer desktop. They frown on us saving things to the desktop because they will not be magically backed up in the night like all those things saved to more appropriate files. If it's on your desktop and your computer crashes, it's gone forever. Frankly, I don't care very much if the things on my desktop are lost forever, but still would prefer to avoid the "too many documents on your desktop" lecture, so I refiled them. That is to say, I dragged them all into a file called "Misc. from desktop" which is also on my desktop. But still, it looks better and I figure I'm ready for the new machine any time.

Today though, I noticed my actual desktop. You know, the top of my wooden desk here in physical reality. It turns out that my real desktop is a good deal less tidy that my virtual one. Not only are there dozens of documents that ought to be filed into real labeled folders, there are also scores of little scratch paper notes to myself, five pens, a calculator, a message pad, a notebook, a phone extension list, a variety of loose power cords, an envelope sealer, a plastic cup, a saucer, a small teapot, a long spoon, a pitcher, a tee shirt, and a slightly used kleenex. If the IT guys came in here to replace this computer, they'd have to excavate it first.

Here's what I'm thinking: I go to the garage and get a big cardboard box. I sweep all this stuff into it and with a big black marker label it: Misc. from Desktop. Then I'll just put it on the corner of my desk.

Perfect.

Narnia

My neighbors sleep, Narnia style, in the back of my closet. Or at any rate just beyond the back of my closet. Who am I to say whether or not they exist in a magical kingdom? They might. I've never been in their apartment. I know they're over there though because I hear them. When they retire at night, I hear their bed squeak; I hear their murmuring voices. If I go to bed after them, I'm sure they hear me jostling hangers in my closet as I undress. They probably wish I wasn't addicted to the snooze alarm in the morning.

Last night I was awakened by something. I lay in the dark listening for the mystery disturbance. I could hear nothing alarming, just a little muffled repetitive noise that I identified as a carpet sweeper being run back and forth over the same crumb-covered bit of rug. Then I realized that no one in 2007 has a carpet sweeper and that the apartments in my building have wood floors.

What else makes a muffled repetitive noise late at night? Oohhhh. Right. That. Now I'm all embarrassed.

There's a special place in hell...

Lately I have been reading Dante. (Let's just leave that there by itself for a moment since it looks so literary and highly-educated and self-improving and all.) Actually, I'm reading Dante under duress because I was obliged to enroll in a class called something like "Dante, Dante, Dante." Who knows? Maybe I'll grow to love the Divine Comedy. I don't love it yet, mind you, but I'm only four cantos in, so there's time. Lots and lots of time.

However, this translator's explanation from the end of Canto I is already worth mentioning:

The gay Leopard is the image of the self-indulgent sins--Incontinence; the fierce Lion, of the violent sins--Bestiality; the She-Wolf of the malicious sins, which involve Fraud.

All right, I think I can agree that bestiality counts as a sin, but incontinence? Surely not. Messy, yes. Humiliating, yes, but not a sin. Even to call it "self indulgent" seems a trifle harsh.




[Okay, okay. If you really want to know, incontinent can mean "unchaste," but I'll be that's not the first thing you thought of either.]

Waste not...

I had a dream this morning in which I had been hiking for days through a treacherous mountain range full of Mayan ruins. I believe I also happened to be Leonardo DiCaprio, but that is not too critical. I/Leo was fortunate to run accross another group of explores who A) knew the way down and B) had provisions. We came to rest and the head of their group ripped open numerous packs of Oscar Meyer bologna and distributing them among the travelers. We began devouring it by the handful. Just then many starving villagers appeared. The travelers ignored them, but I/Leo could not bear this injustice and vowed to go hungry if it meant I could feed even one starving child. I tossed my pack of bologna into the crowd.

Cut ahead dream style. We, the viewers, are standing in a cave where a youngster is proudly displaying some kind of peculiarly textured what? hide? on a rack. In front of it is a little rack of bottles filled with yellowish liquid. Apparently, the villagers have managed to extract olive oil from the bologna and then they have made it into a kind a jerky which they split among themselves and chew for two years.

When I woke I spent some time considering what exactly constitutes a nightmare and whether a drying rack of bologna jerky would be allowed to count. I decided that it would.

Not saying much

Things have come to a pretty pass when I'm actually more afraid of my blog (a word I still hate, for the record) than I am of the gym. Did I remember my password? No. No, I did not. Was I a wee bit ashamed? Sadly, yes. But here we are! Again! New leaves all around, say I. Let us turn them together. Ready? Go.

Last night I heard an ad on the radio soliciting support for a summer camp for terminally ill children. They said that this exciting summer escapade would create "memories that will last a lifetime." Which, when you're talking about terminally ill children isn't saying a whole hell of a lot. They may want to rethink that.

And besides, it's true

I saw a review of the new movie Bridge to Terabithia (which, in case you don't know because you never cried over it yourself as a child, is based on a very sad, Newbery Award winning book of the same name). At the very end of the review where there is generally an explantation of why a movie has its particular rating (violence, language, nudity, etc.) it says this:

-- Advisory: This movie contains mild violence, mature themes and false and defamatory claims that "TV kills your brain cells."


I don't even really know what to say about this. Is this somehow legally required? Or is it a weird joke by the reviewer? Have we ever seen a joke in that section of a review?

But it has to be a joke, right?
Sure.
Let's just stick with that theory.

Small thanks

Thank you, Weather, for stuffing all those clouds into the linen closet and keeping the rain in your various buckets and pots and barrels for just one day. I'll have wet feet when I get home today, sure, but I wanted you to know that I did appreciate the sunny Sunday. We went on a longish walk that took us to delicious waffles and tea and contributed to the breaking in of my new shoes. Sure, we might have done that even with umbrellas, but we did like the sunshine very much. It was thoughtful of you. Tonight I have to write a paper, so if you would like to keep going with the precipitation, you have my blessing.

New math

I had a dream that a friend of mine had decided to engage in bigamy. There was nothing sneaky about it. She and her two finaces were planning to get married all at once in the same ceremony. She called her parents excitedly and said, "I can't wait for you to meet the men I'm going to marry!" "Men?" they repeated, alarmed by the plural. "Yes," she said. "You know how people wait and wait to get married because they are waiting for the one? Well, this completely solves that problem."

Be Mine, but maybe next year?

Trader Joe's has produced what may well be the best Valentine's Day merchandizing commercial ever. It goes something like this:


Everyone knows that roses and chocolate make perfect Valentine's Day gifts, but what if your relationship hasn't reached the dozen roses stage? Finding a gift that reflects your feelings for your "friend" can be stressful. What should you do if you're not sure just how special your special someone is? Trader Joe's recommends a jar of marinated mushrooms with garlic. They are wonderfully flavorful and at just $2.69, your budget will be in line with your feelings. Of course, if you're sure, TJ's also has a large assortment of roses and chocolate at great prices, but a jar of marinated mushrooms with garlic is a great way to say, "I like you, but let's not rush into anything."

Frere Jacques

I had one of those nights of shallow sleep where I was plagued with the fear of oversleeping. Even my dreams were about being late to work. So great was my dread of somehow missing the alarm, that I was only able to relax after it had woken me up at the appointed time and I had turned it off. Only then, finally free from Alarm Anticipation Syndrome (AAS), was I able to really sleep. Which I did. For an hour. And then was very late to work.

Considering other possibilities

I heard on the radio this morning the very sad news that a missing Stanford grad student had been found dead in the trunk of her car. The police, according to the report, suspect suicide.

What?

Now clearly I haven't been through any extensive police training, but if I found someone in the trunk of her car, I probably wouldn't go with suicide as a first guess. These police officers have apparently never seen any movies. At all. Because if the cinema teaches us anything it's that dead body+trunk of car=murder. Unless there is also suikidnapping involved, which, obviously, changes things.

Color me crazy

but, no matter how arty your film may be, I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario in which it makes sense for Cate Blanchett to play the role of Bob Dylan.

Youth ministry

Grafitti scrawled on the side of a church in my neighborhood:

"Jesus is my homeboy"

Armed and Famous

This morning I heard an ad on the radio for a thoroughly ludicrous new television show called "Armed and Famous" in which "stars" are trained to be police officers and then apparently are somehow qualified to go on actual police calls with um...real police officers. There are many reasons that this seems to be a terrible idea, but from a marketing perspective, the primary problem is that the "stars" are no one I have ever heard of with two exeptions: LaToya Jackson (what?) and, gloriously, Eric Estrada. And that is pretty darn amusing.