Breaking cleanly from the starting gate

Everyone who is anyone knows that I’ve been reading books about horse racing lately; therefore, I feel it is worth a blog post to advertise the fact that I’m stopping. I know that it’s shocking and that I’ve devoted miles and miles of cyberspace to praising horse books, but I think I finally managed to OD on horse-related non-fiction. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I woke up repeatedly last night from horse-related nightmares.

Now, to be fair not all of my nightmares last night were about horse racing. Some of them were about work and some of them were about some asshole stealing both of the bumpers off of my car. Most of them, however, were about horse racing. I’m not even exactly sure how they were about horse racing; I only know that I kept waking up in a panic, concerned over paddock boots and “break clean” from the starter gate. To make matters worse I was in that hazy intermediate state of coherence and kept having to reassure my soggy mind that there was no part of my life that resembled a horse race.

The terrible thing is that I was on such a g.d. roll with reading horse books. In the last two weeks I’d swept through three, one on Secretariat, one on Seabiscuit, and another on Ruffian. I started a book on Man o’ War last night and I fell asleep reading it. In hindsight I think it was the book on Ruffian that really did me in though…There was a lot about riding towards the light with shattered ankle bones toward the end.

Anyway, this has developed into a very belated and boring post so I’ll stop while I’m still ahead (or at least not that far behind). I’m going to retire with some very tame literature this evening – I’m thinking something about the prairie at about the 5th grade reading level. Any book that mentions the use of sunbonnets to preserve a racially-charged paleness of the skin is like a sedative to me.

Lunch would be too awkward; let’s get coffee.

If I was going to write a gimmicky book, something that would get me on the Today Show in a salmon colored pullover to explain my “inspiration” and a guest spot on Hollywood Squares, I would spend a year alternating between Peet’s Coffee and Starbucks and recording my observations. I wouldn’t waste my time on drinking the coffee or thinking about the freshness of the beans; I would go between the two devoting myself entirely to observing, cataloging and comparing the people who loiter in each establishment.

One-on-one consumer rivalry is all about promoting the lifestyle (which is how I know that Pepsi drinkers are born hooligans), and I’m suspicious of this particular dichotomy. No matter how much Celtic music they play in Peet’s, I suspect that the average patron is not discernable from the average Starbies jerkwad.

I’m not saying this because I want to knock the legs out from under Peet’s free-trade reputation or because I think that Starbucks gets the short end of the stick – I don’t have any loyalty to coffee shops beyond a personal loyalty to warm, sugary beverages and free wifi. I’m saying it because I spent the afternoon in Peet’s recently and found myself part of a mid-day ensemble that I’d thought only possible within the foamy embrace of a Starbucks. Because I have a soft spot for Celtic music and because I once saw some old guy in a sailor suit outside of a Peet’s, I was a little surprised to find the coffee-going populace so…regular.

I know that I talk about coffee shops a lot and I realize that it takes a dramatic suspension of the hypocrisy-impulse to listen to someone who hangs out in coffee shops bitch about the people who loiter there. Lack of perspective duly noted. But for the purpose of this rant, I’ll continue.

I spent an afternoon in Peet’s last week because I needed to get out of the house to recharge my faltering brain. While there I did quiet, coffee shop things like read, take notes, and drink tea. I also participated in my favorite coffee shop activity: spying.

I watched ladies in white-leather watches refer to their dogs by their first names, talk about kitchen remodels and plan birthday parties at the Macaroni Grille. I watched struggling father-son conversations where the young man stared at his cell phone and the father referenced various “hilarious” television commercials. I stared at two hipsters sitting at a table outside of the shop, plaided and bearded, with colorful Bic lighters balanced on top of their twin cigarette packs. I sat beside a young man who periodically read his (presumed) essay aloud in a whisper. Before I left I saw an old man in cowboy boots order a hot chocolate.

I wasn’t annoyed by this crowd – I’d left my house intentionally to refresh my brain – but my keen sense of elitism recognized them as annoying. So annoying, in fact, that I tried to recall the last time I’d been in a place with so many conspicuous characters. Eventually, it dawned on me. The last time that I’d been crowded in with middle-aged dames, hipsters and failed paternal bonding (“Lunch would be too awkward; let’s get coffee”) was my last trip to Starbucks.

And between those characters and the Peet’s people there was no moral or lifestyle difference that I could discern. Come on, Peet’s, throw us romantics a bone. I wanted there to at least be a substantial increase in people wearing REI-brand fleece jackets or something.

Holy crap, someone had better stop me or I’m going to discover that going to Target isn’t any different than going to Wal-Mart.

Why would you spell "biscuit" like 'biskit"?

Two points today, one is sort of somber and the other is the usual frivolous tomfoolery that I have convinced the internet to indulge me in. I should probably be devoting a greater part of this post to somber concerns since I spent the better chunk of the weekend at a memorial service, but that would smack of chronological relevance and I certain can’t have that.

One comment about memorial services though, before I forget and move along to equally irrelevant discussions. On the drive home my main squeeze and I stopped for dinner at a brew house and discussed our respective funerals. We both decided that people would be hard-pressed to think of nice things to say about us and that we didn’t want to put anyone to the trouble of fiction; ergo, we probably shouldn’t have funerals.

Admitting the attractiveness of not having a funeral is a funny thing when you take into account how popular the funeral fantasy is among teenaged girls. I know it seems crazy at first-glance, but it isn’t actually that morbid. I did this, and while I don’t paint myself as the model of mental health, most of my friends did this also. You merely imagine the reaction to your great tragedy and enjoy the professions of affection that are heaped on your coffin/hospital bed. If you can manage it, feel free to throw in a plot twist that means your death secures your revenge on that chick from second period.

Honestly, I’m not making this up. Most teenaged girls think more about what would happen at their funeral (or better yet, if they were hospitalized in some serious but attractive way) than they do about Twilight, and that’s saying something.

I am going to move along to discuss what I intended to discuss today, first the somber thing and then the cheerful thing so that everyone leaves on a high note. The somber discussion is a another reflection on the class that I’m taking. Yesterday we all had to rewrite a boring story and then read it aloud to the class so that we could understand how personal voice/detail make an essay. I liked this exercise in theory, but I hate reading aloud with a fiery passion, so the whole process made me glum.

For the first few minutes of the read-along I couldn’t listen because I was too busy being nervous and later I was distracted by my profound relief, but I eventually started listening to people reading their stories. I’m glad that I did because listening to other people read their work always reminds me that putting words into sentences isn’t a particularly difficult task – not nearly as difficult as I make it out to be. I putter and struggle with words and sentences and (above all) having the motivation to sit still and focus without succumbing to the many temptations of the internet. (Today I am doing fairly well. Or I was. I am running out of self control.)

Anyway, it is always humbling and motivating to know that putting ideas together is an easy thing.

So here is the joyful thing that I promised to bring this whole situation to a cheerful close. My question for people who make popsicles for a living: Why do you bother to put jokes on the sticks with the answer embedded in the frozen juice? Do you think that kids need more motivation for eating popsicles? You are just throwing away incentives on kids who love nothing more than a drippy dessert. Save your jokes for something that people hate, like the bottom of a box of Chicken in a Biskit.

Same goes for you, Mr. Cracker Jack.

As a point of interest I might be changing my blog quota to 3 X a week, throwing Sunday in the mix. I hate doing actual work on Sundays but I always find writing on Mondays so shocking that I figure that I shouldn't late my brain completely atrophy over the weekend anymore. I know what you are thinking and yes, I do think that this blog helps rather than accelerates the degradation of my brain. If not the writing then trying to remember how to keep this sucker for being double spaced and ragged-right....all ragged-right alignment is a blight on humanity.

Are you calling me Almanzo's mom?

Several points of minimal interest today.

The first of these points is cameras. Today I uploaded a photo album on facebook, the first in a long while. And while I'd like to claim that it has been awhile because I've realized that facebook is a silly and shallow venue, it's more likely because I never take any pictures.

I've had the same digital camera for several years (a techno-sin, I know) and I have never found a way to use it that did not seem completely obnoxious. In my more youthful days of enthusiastic alcohol consumption cameras were far more common. There is nothing drunk ladies love more than taking pictures together. But more subdued society does not lend itself well to photography. Enchanting candid photos are unlikely to be snapped while stuffing one's face over dinner. Or at least not of me (being a messy and enthusiastic eater). End camera segment of the show.

Today I was walking my dog in the park and there were several teenage girls sitting on the swings and looking sulky. When I wandered past, I recalled how I found young adults intimidating and awfully cool when I was in high school. (Notably, this phenomenon is entirely different than my usual fear of teenagers-at-dusk.) I thought to myself, "If I looked a little less like a high schooler myself, maybe I would intimidate and impress these teenagers and they would remark amongst themselves about my rad-ness." I suspected that this would be the ultimate embodiment of a cyclic life.

Unfortunately my dog took this opportunity to distract from our cool image by urinating straight onto the playground pavement and making an enormous puddle in the four-square area. I believe that no self-respecting dog would do this, when there is grass and bark all around. Needless to say, I did not conquer my fear of teenagers today.

Final point for the day: caffeine. I try to stay away from it, but it is so damn delightful. I was doing well for several months being off of it entirely, but the slow re-integration of soda has made me more susceptible to the threat of caffeinated tea and coffee beverages. If I get back on the coffee the world will soon see a friendlier, shakier, and sweatier me.

The only cardinals I know are birds

A few days ago my live-in-fellow interrupted one of my fairly routine soliloquies about the detrimental effects of technology on the youth to assert a certain humbling fact.

The object of my tentative attack was the ever-more-common GPS unit, and I was pondering (vocally) that perhaps the prevalence of GPS units makes people less apt to be aware of their surroundings and to develop a sense of direction. As we pulled away from the grocery store I was really hitting my melodramatic stride, mourning cartography and suggesting passionately that maybe we should learn to navigate like sailors using stars and the mating calls of whales as reference points.

At this point my main squeeze (a google-mapper for life and quite ironically driving me around at the time) interrupted me mid-rant to remind me that I (sans GP-anything) am wretched at finding anything, even places I have been to many times before. I was aghast at his statement, but could offer no argument. I am indeed shitty at finding my way while driving; however, that fact had never distinguished itself from the many other things about driving that I am incapable of doing sufficiently to grab my attention.

I’ve been thinking about this since but try as I might, I can’t really blame myself for this appalling fact. I’ve been shamefully enabled into a very inattentive, if charming, passenger.

The foundation for my disability was laid early in life during long car rides to and from my grandparent’s ranch. I spent these car rides with my nose jammed into various cheesy tomes of historical fiction and trying to block the smooth sounds of Journey from my ears. I never attended to the scenery, most commonly I would look up bleary-eyed, surprised and somewhat disappointed whenever we arrived at our destination.

My parents are the sort who are incapable of leaving a social event before darkness has fallen, and so many of these long drives home were made in the dark, four sisters and various quadrupeds stuff into a smelly blue-and-white GMC tank. On the occasions that we drove home after dark, my dad would allow me to use a flashlight to read in the backseat, provided that I remembered not to shine it in his eyes while flipping the pages. I remember on one occasion demanding the attention of my whole family and reading a scandalous passage aloud in which a family on the Oregon Trail ate pancakes after bugs had flown into the batter; my mother craning her head around from the front seat and attentive all the while.

So if today I can’t find my way back to a restaurant that I’ve been to twice, I blame the hours of sitting in that wretched suburban and worrying about dysentery and oxen rather than bothering about the cardinal directions. Unfortunately I don’t get much time to read in the car anymore (only at long stop-lights, hella yes), so I’ve had to make due with convincing people that they enjoy driving me around, or letting me follow them.

I’m hoping that I can continue to sell myself as an endearing and helpful passenger (license-plate game, lock the doors when I see teenagers in the cross-walk) to the point where I’ll never have to invest in a GPS.

The only time skim milk is acceptable

Excuse me for sounding obnoxious and hyper-patriotic on a Wednesday afternoon, but sometimes a Coke is just awesome. I’m having one now and I’m pleased as punch.

I don’t have too much to relate (my brain is the mucky state at the crossroads of bored and caffeine) so I will just share a few random thoughts to avoid being called a blog-bandoner.

1) It’s a “free jeans” day at my workplace. It is very unnerving to see coworkers who would never usually soil themselves with denim donning it painfully for a show of solidarity. People get insulted if you don’t wear jeans on “free jeans” day. Strangely they are often more upset at this than they are if you violate the everyday no-jeans policy.

2) I am forcing certain persons of my very close acquaintance to experience select volumes of prairie literature. I’m pleased to find (yet again) that my brain has not evolved to a point where reading descriptions of skimming milk is not the most pleasant thing comprehendible. Please, list yet again the process of dressing in wool for sub-zero weather. This is how I get my kicks.

3) It has been quite cold and I was very excited that the weather had finally decided to act like winter. However, the sun came out very determinedly this afternoon and rendered me incapable of fully appreciating a semi-truck with a Christmas wreath attached to the front. I simply cannot enjoy thinking about that truck driver making the long trek home in snowy weather to arrive in the nick (I’m really resisting a bad joke here) of time on Christmas Eve when I’m busy sweating inside of my car.

While I am yapping on about the weather, I’d like to petition for it to rain already, so that I can use my totally bitchin’ umbrella.

More than traffic

I definitely hate sitting in traffic, but I have lately realized that what I hate slightly more is driving in a quickly-moving middle lane next to a lane of stopped traffic.

For some reason this really creeps me out; I tend to cringe on the right side while hurtling past these stopped cars at impressive, yet legal, speeds.

My fear is that someone in that line of cars is going to decide suddenly that that exit is not nearly so remarkable as to warrant the wait, and thus liberated and joyous, turn violently into the quickly-moving lane. [That's where I am driving, hoping to be left alone.]

Blinkers people, love your blinkers.

This is not a vomit story

I think that it is real pleasant when people call television shows “programs.” This is an excellent tactic for worming your way into my affections during casual conversation.

Also, I am prematurely and rapturously excited about Thanksgiving. I was raised to be very gluttonous around the holidays and Thanksgiving is prime pie chow-time. I spend most of the day stuffing my face with deviled eggs and avoiding awkward conversations that start with “How’s school going?” I guess now that I’m graduated, they will all be “Have a job yet?” questions. I will mumble about bad economic conditions and repel questioners with my paprika breath.

Last Thanksgiving I had the mad stomach flu. I never really get stomach-type illness, but this was wretched. I couldn’t eat more than one mouthful of mashed potatoes and was sick for the next three days. At the time I was house-sitting for a good pal of mine (HI TORI!) and it was only her charming cable television that saved me. That and the plain oatmeal and telephone sympathy (during gross vomit-description conversations) furnished by my main fellow.

I wish I had thought at the time to call the junk I was TIVO-ing “programs.” I would have been consoled.

Hyperbolisms

Worst thing I saw today:

A woman using the pants part of her overalls as pants, but disregarding the shirt-part and leaving it to trail behind.

Best thing that I heard today:

“I was forced to watch CNN; apparently the economy is bad. I will not be buying a jeep.”

Best thing ever:

Reading detailed descriptions of domestic tasks on the prairie. Reading about prairie cooking makes me hungry, even though I would probably never eat a slab of salt-pork from a barrel after some matronly lady grilled it up on a skittle greased up with a hunk of lard.

The "OF" Complex

Moving makes me feel awfully weird. And I am fairly certain that it is not just a shock reaction to the strain of lifting things (being the sort who writes primarily in cursive to avoid excessive lifting of the hand) but is instead the product of a more intangible funkiness.

[Aside: Man, I just can’t believe that “funkiness” is a real word. As I was typing it I was steeling myself to ignore the red line of Word, so ironically wiggly for representing the rigidity of spelling within the oppressive Word-world. And yet, no red line. I guess there is no other way to say “funkiness.” I could have said “a more intangible thing with elements of funk included.” I'm getting quite out of control, I know. Maybe I miss school.]

But back to moving. It’s entirely probably that I always get a little unhinged about moving because I yearn for the epic imagery of cheese-ball novels. In my youth I saturated my brain with books from the vast field of novels featuring sprightly young women as heroines in a more moral provincial past. Think covers of a “grass in motion” motif.

You know the sort of books I am talking about. The female version of your epic boy-and-dog tale, which often boiled down to girl-and-horse because no child in their right mind wants to read a book about a kitten. I was never happier than if these whippersnappers occasioned upon a horse that was untamable to all hard-hearted men-folk and easily won over by the offer of an apple or the playing of a fiddle, or maybe just automatically because the horse cleverly realized that he and this chick were similarly misunderstood by society, horses being great sociologists. The horse theme in this kind of literature is optional, but that stuff is gold. I could watch The Notebook about 30 times and never cry as hard as I would reading My Friend Flicka.

To return to my point (if I did indeed have one), these books warped my impressionable young mind and thus I suffer to this day from an “OF” complex. Oftentimes these books include the the name of the whimsical farm or region where the saucy young heroine lives in the title of the novel. Looking back, I guess it's possibly because these books frequently pushed a theme of ownership and home-making and the space that's being claimed is as important as anything else. And because it is important, it becomes important that you are “Of” there, to use the hokey phrasing. Hence the “OF"complex.

The prime Canadian example is the epic Anne of Green Gables series, featuring 8 whole books using the “Anne of whatever” title structure. But there is also American stuff like Rebecca of Sunnybook Farm. Or the Little House series, which doesn't state the OF so blatantly, but instead completely eradicates the main character Laura from the title and makes the House the constant [Farmer Boy excluded, ewww] and connects it with a series of “on” and “in”s. In short, the literature of my childhood taught me two things: tame a horse with some sugar cookies and a fiddle; and your home is a defining characteristic, or in some of the Wilder [ha..ha..] cases, more important than you altogether.

So moving makes me feel weird, because it deserves due consideration and weight. I spent many formative years (and long weekends in college) reading about people drawing their identity from their home and only conceding to leave their home in when sheer desperation left no other option or when dragged along by the cruel bitch of Manifest Destiny. Maybe I'm being too American today, but I can't help but want some sort of great gurgling reliance on my home. And although I adore my apartment to pieces, I wouldn't risk any sort of prairie fire to keep it, and I don't feel too bad leaving it.

Mostly I am nervous about my job interview tomorrow and rambling on insensibly.

Series of mildly related thoughts.

While plodding away at work this morning I succumbed to a fit of procrastination and took the opportunity to examine my water bottle from all sides. I always give my water bottle labels a thorough peeling, so it's not often that I get to gaze on the exciting line-drawings of mountains and streams name-plates. I was thus occupied when I realized something disturbing: water is a total show-off.

To preface, I love tap water. People are always gabbing on and on about how the water in Davis is distasteful (too liberal?) and whenever I’m not too busy guzzling water straight from the hose I take the time to disagree with this. It tastes perfectly acceptable to me.

My boyfriend and I are in the formative stages of a plan that requires drinking several dozen bottles full of sparkling lemonade, with the intent of filling them with marvelous tap water and stockpiling them in the fridge, thereby enabling us to constantly be lumbering about swigging from a chilled bottle held by the neck. [To be clear, that last sentence is both the longest in my blog thus far and a blatant digression.] Obviously, I am no anti-water freak with an ugly rock lawn.

And yet, the unbridled liquid ego of bottled water rankles me. There is no need for a Nutrition Facts panel when the answer for every value is 0 percent (based on a 2000-calorie daily diet). If you need to include it, you might as well mention things like 0 % water snake particulate matter, or 0 % crawdads disease, both of which concern me more than the fact that water lacks carbs. So you have no sodium, no calories and no sugar. Stop showing off. You also have no color. And I think that Sierra Mist, semi-transparent N-64 game systems and albinos can attest that having no color is bad news.

So, while reflecting on water I was reminded of the Willa Cather documentary that I watched last night (because I’m that kind of crazy party kid). In addition to revealing Willa Cather’s suspect sex life and history of the risky hair decisions, the documentary featured several melodramatic voice-over excerpts from her novels against a visual of casually wind-swept prairie.

This is exactly the sort of thing that I like about documentaries, the low-budget reenactment feeling. I’m quite fond of long dramatic shots featuring someone’s hand writing with a feather quill while a lilting voice reads the Gettysburg address or the personal correspondence of some hella religious corn farmer. I’m also keen on panning shots of cannons and flags with the noise of bullets whizzing and swords clanging. I even like a repetitive circling of a gallows accompanied by a noisy courtroom soundtrack, complete with audience shuffling and pounding gavel.

Anyway, in this Willa Cather documentary featured one such reenactment. A man and his packhorse were picture from the knee-down roaming listlessly in the desert in search of water. The narrator was reading from the novel Death Comes for the Archbishop and explained that the priest was following his pack animal, hoping that the mule might sense water. There's some nonsense about a cactus casting the shadow of a cross, and maybe some metaphor about needing God almost (but not quite) as much as you need water. Eventually the super-star mule leads the priest to water.

It occurs to me that a water company might do much better to detail this story on the side of the bottle instead of including a Nutrition Facts panel.

PS, I'm reading The Way of All Flesh by S. Butler, which is very slow going, but offers important insights about the valuing your offspring. Por exemplo:

“His money was never naughty; his money never made noise or litter, and it did not spill things on the tablecloth at mealtimes or leave the door open when it went out. His dividends did not quarrel amongst themselves, nor was he under any uneasiness lest his mortgages become extravagant upon reaching manhood and run him up debts which sooner or later he would have to pay.”

Ode to biking; Short tirade on bikers.

Today when I was biking in the wind beside a field of threshed hay, I was trying to have "amber waves of grain" type thoughts. I was trying to direct my imagination at the world before the hay bale and to consider narratives about little prairie runts sliding down hay stacks like they were pre-industrial Six Flags (but without the weird Looney Tunes affiliation). Perhaps I could even have been contented with some Willa Cather-ish notions with plows [read: hard working men] silhouetted against the setting sun [read: death of the Mid-Western farming community] or the young widows of Civil War veterans selling their beauteous meadows to support their frivolous life style [read: oh, Willa Cather]. But try as I might, I just kept thinking: That is some ugly burnt grass, and biking in the wind is unfathomably annoying.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love riding my bike. I consider the rediscovery of the bike as one of the most valuable lessons I've learned here at my venue of higher education. Being the sort of person who hates driving and fears the bus [I once sat down in the seat kept symbolically vacant for the ghost of Rosa Parks on Rosa Parks Day and got told off by the bus driver] biking is a preferable alternative. I'm currently cruising on a teal-with-purple flecks Huffy road bike with dysfunctional gears but very nice tires and generally have a pleasant time wheeling about...when it is not windy.

As much as I like biking, however, I can't seem to get over my distaste for bikers. You know, the sort of people with more than one helmet (matchy, matchy), a spare tire attached to their backpack and are always yelling things like "On your right!"

What, pray tell, is a normal person supposed to respond to "On your right!"?

Because I am a polite person, I feel that some response is required. Unfortunately, because I am a both a polite and a nervous person, I can't think on the fly. So, I usually end up tentatively saying "okay...thanks" long after the fiercely peddling helmeteer has glided past. As I duck my head and peddle sluggishly on in shame, I console myself that my awkward response probably rolled right off of their sleek spandex torso, unheard.

So today in the wind along the field of hella burnt threshed grass, I thought about how people fall into threshers and get all ground to bits and when some chick in a camouflage sandals gave me the "On your right!" I just gave her a knowing glance.

Because I should be writing a paper...

Last week in my sociology class (how I abhor you, G.E. left until my last quarter, full of freshman sporting their ID cards in lanyard pouches about their necks) we watched this documentary called Merchants of Cool. The documentary wasn't really shocking, it simply detailed that the entertainment industry is ruled by giant conglomerates who are busy You-Got-Mailing their way into our brain-cases. It also described how these empires employ special baby-faced professionals (Andy Milonakis?!) who seek out "cool" kids and infiltrate their sub-cultures with the intent of popularizing it for evil capitalist gains. Now, I know I'm being trite, but I thought that the concept of cool deserved a little meditation.


My interest in the documentary was focused almost entirely on the choice of wording. The phrase "cool" seems to have become vaguely immortal. It transcends the harsh realities that ground up trends like "savage" and "sweet" (yes, sweet is over). Parental types utter it all the time when figuring out how to play BeJeweled on their Blackberry. Although my personal tastes tend more toward "bitchin," I am not immune to saying cool when confronted with say, someone doing a kickflip on their skateboard in a halfpipe built of boxes behind the Safeway. I looked it up on Urban Dictionary [Long aside: Not a usual reference point for me, but some guy I know IM-ed me yesterday and said that he was "sprung" and then followed up with a link to the word on Urban Dictionary. After clicking around for awhile I learned that the meaning of the phrase "drink champagne on a beer bottle budget" and advice on how to leave your girl if she is acting "klingy"]. Anyway, the entry on Urban Dictionary for "cool" implies that it is relaxed and never goes out of style and (most importantly) no one will ever laugh at you for saying it. Apparently cool is the safest verbal road away from embarrassment.


So, in the spirit of the immortality of the phrase, and because my boyfriend said that my blog needed more lists, what follows is a list of the things that come to my head immediately as being cool.

1) Melodramatic and poorly edited literary magazines full of melodramatic poetry and thinly concealed politics.

2) Professors who write their lecture outlines on the board.

3) Soothing prose about early America. [I never eat pancakes without thinking: "Then sit down he did, as they urged him, and lifting the blanket cake on the untouched pile, he slipped from under it a section of the stack of hot, syrupy pancakes. Royal forked a brown slice of ham from the frying pan...and Alamanzo filled up his coffee cup."]*

4) Zealous internet fan communities.

5) Hour-long teen dramas from the late-nineties.

6) High school newspapers.

7)Boring BBC adaptations of boring British novels.

8)Unpopular eateries.

9) N. Baker's The Mezzanine. [I'm going through a revival phase. After gifting it to someone last week I re-read it, and am re-enamored. People are lucky that I don't block-quote the hell out of that thing all over the interweb.]


*That's The Long Winter; I don't want the internet police knocking on my cyber-door with their virtual mag-lites.