The Customer Is Always . . .

Favorite new strategy employed by spam e-mailers in their subject line, in order to pique my interest:

"You look really stupid bullwinkle"

Currently playing

Album of the moment (as of 20 minutes ago):

"All I Intended To Be" -- Emmylou Harris

Talking in America

From the story "Dance in America" by Lorrie Moore (and quite nicely read and discussed by Louise Erdrich on a podcast from The New Yorker.)

The narrator is having dinner with an old friend Cal, and his wife Simone, who she (the narrator) has not met before.

Simone has prepared Peking Duck, which is ropy and sweet. Cal keeps passing around the basket of bread, anxiously, talking about how modern man has only been around for forty-five thousand years and bread probably hasn't changed much in all that time.

"Forty-five thousand years?" says Simone. "That's all? That can't be. [. . . ]"

There are people who talk with their hands. There are people who talk with their arms. Then, there are people who talk with their arms over their head. Those are the ones I like best. Simone is one of those.

This made me laugh: "Then, there are people who talk with their arms over their head."

Then, this pleased me: "Those are the ones I like best."

That kind of look . . .

from Girl Factory (the extended, overly-specific simile a recurrent comic device in this novel):

Immediately to my right as I entered was a lone flamingo, its pink plumage darkened to crimson by the colored lights. The shadowed hatchet of its bill, combined with its beady eyes, gave it a criminal look, the kind you might see on a guy caught while stealing car stereos, leaning up against the side of a squad car in his sweatpants and athletic shoes, waiting to be taken down to the station, booked, and then let out on bail. I wasn't sure whether this was a bad sign or a good one.

Cri de coeur

Found on the internet, searching for something else entirely:

I have apologized for the cat issue and have explained how I can understand how you would feel and how it would make me feel if it happened to Donny and I told you how absolutely WRONG I was for that to happen. I told you that my PREVIOUS behavior was totally unacceptable. I realized that.

So, WHY IS THAT AN ISSUE STILL?

I explained that I am not used to a kid bouncing all over the place. Corwyn doesn't He's an introvert. He's the only other ten year old I know, so he's the only one I can base things on. I never, ever said or implied that there was something WRONG with Nathan. I never said or implied I didnt want to be AROUND Nathan, I never said or implied that my children were BETTER than Nathan.You did all of that, without once asking what I thought, or to elaborate when I had first said anything. AND, I apologized for that entire scenario and told you I knew although Nathan would take some getting used to, and that I was willing to do whatever it took.

As far as Kenny goes, I have never, ever said or done a single thing to him in any way, shape or form. The guy is loud. That's all I have said.

http://rontalks.blogspot.com/

(Good news -- the guy has met a new woman named Charlotte)

Bad Concert Behavior

At a concert, setting a bad example for my children:

On the bench in front of me, two sisters and a boyfriend.

During the first act: they chatter constantly, making jokes about how the first act is not the second act, who they came to see.

During the second act: they jump up on the bench and dance and scream the whole set, literally the only people dancing among thousands in the venue. The whole long bench on which they dance shakes vigorously, and the poor guy next to them (wearing earplugs) is whiplashed around as he struggles to eat a slice of pizza. The three are the cause of mostly good-humored eye-rolling and bonding all around them.

In the break there is some hope that they won't be back for the last act.

During the third act, they are up and down and in and out of their seats, switching places, alternately dancing, singing, and conducting loud conversation. Finally, during a very pretty rendition of a quiet song, I break:

Guy: I got the last beer. The place was closed. I got them to give me this. This beer cost me twenty dollars. [repeat, loudly, three times]

Me, after banging my head on the bench in front of me, even more loudly: Shut the fuck up. Nobody cares about your beer.

They: stunned silence.

A couple of songs later.

Guy: Sorry. I didn't realize I was so loud. I didn't know the song.

John Updike, on his long body of work:

"It is true that everything you do turns out to be by John Updike, and that's a little disconcerting."

"It is a ridiculous demand which England and America make, that you shall speak so that they shall understand you." Thoreau, from "Walden"

About Harry Stephen Keeler:

http://home.williampoundstone.net/Keeler/Home.html

Bob and Ray: "The Komodo Dragon"

To listen to it, click here. (from Slate.)

Early Replacements:

Otto

Everybody gotta go Otto, Otto
Everybody gotta go Otto-to
Everybody wants to know Otto, Otto
Everybody wants to know Otto-to

Tried to come over here
Thought I might give her, give her a call
Tried to phone my baby, give her a call
But Otto, he went crazy
He ripped the phone right off the wall

from Dissatisfied

Look me in the eye
And tell me that I'm satisfied
Were you satisfied?

Look me in the eye
Then, tell me I'm satisfied
And now are you satisfied?

Everything goes
Well, anything goes all of the time
Everything you dream of
Is right in front of you
And everything is a lie

Look me in the eye
And tell me that I'm satisfied
Look me in the eye
Unsatisfied
I'm so, I'm so unsatisfied
I'm so dissatisfied
I'm so, I'm so unsatisfied
I'm so unsatisfied
Well, I'm-a
I'm so, I'm so unsatisfied
I'm so dissatis,dissattis...
I'm so

Lame Llama Alarm

Dream: I was talking to a writer of comedy sketches, an acquaintance, pitching an idea: about a guy who is an Islamist, which alarms everyone, but it turns out what he is, is someone who likes to identify llamas: an "is llama"-ist. The comedy writer was disappointed in the idea, and I, cutting losses, said "Maybe it would be a line in a sketch, not a whole sketch." He wasn't convinced.

[Despite appearances, an anxiety dream.]

Cakes and Ale

From "Cakes and Ale"

describing Alroy Kear:

"Most of us when we do a caddish thing harbour resentment against the person we have done it to, but Roy's heart, always in the right place, never permitted him such pettiness. He could use a man very shabbily without afterward bearing him the slightest ill-will."

on the use of "ready-made phrases" in spoken language:

"The Americans, who are the most efficient people on the earth, have carried this device to such a height of perfection and have invented so wide a range of pithy and hackneyed phrases that they can carry on an amusing and animated conversation without giving a moment's reflection to what they are saying and so leave their minds free to consider the more important matters of big business and fornication."

on the pure artist:

"I saw that Roy was not inclined to be amused. I was not annoyed, for I was quite used to people not being amused at my jokes. I often think that the purest type of the artist is the humorist who laughs alone at his own jests."

Obituary from The Telegraph:

Elaine Dundy, the American writer who has died aged 86, shot to the top of
the best-seller lists in 1958 with The Dud Avocado, a novel which she wrote in
an attempt to save her marriage to the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan; but her
literary success became an added source of friction in a relationship that was
already fraught owing to Tynan's fondness for the lash.

. . . A few years into their marriage, he told his wife he was
getting bored with their lovemaking and presented her with two books on
sadomasochistic sex. Discovering that she was "up against a revered British
institution", she agreed to try – but it was not a success. Their first session
ended with her grabbing the schoolmaster's cane and breaking it.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1933071/Elaine-Dundy.html

An obituary which perhaps could have been more generous regarding her work.

These sleepless nights

will break my heart in two.

-- from the biggest gun there is: Pieces of the Sky