Category: My Life

Nightmare Fairies

So, according to this article, PETA has decided to hand out fliers to little kids coming out of the Nutcracker. The fliers “include a color drawing of a woman plunging a large bloody knife into the belly of a terrified rabbit. The fliers urge kids to ‘ask your mommy how many dead animals she killed to make her fur clothes.'”

As long as PETA is educating the public on how animals have similar feelings and instincts to humans, perhaps they should pause and consider how a mother bear reacts when someone threatens her cubs.

Walking Faster

It is raining heavily. This man is wearing a yellow slicker and rain boots as he hoses down the sidewalk. There is obviously something so noxious on the pavement that he cannot wait a few minutes for the rain to wash it away. He would prefer to stand in the downpour with a hose to expedite the process.

Word of the Day

When we travel, I’ve started to take my own teabags along so I’m not stuck with Lipton when the hotel room offers hot water. On our honeymoon, I took ginger peach tea along. I was having a cup recently and suddenly I felt like I was on our hotel patio in Malaysia. I could practically hear the ocean.

What I like about the word “redolent” is that it’s a perfect expression of the relationship between smells and memory. It means:

1. Having or emitting fragrance; aromatic.

2. Reminiscent; suggestive

presidential

In the past, I’ve tried to remain detached in the primaries. Once I choose a candidate I like, I tend to be fiercely loyal. If that person doesn’t win the nomination, I feel like a traitor when I ultimately vote for the other guy.

I spent last weekend helping Bryan with the Howard Dean campaign. He did site advance work, and I was the advance person for the hotel, which means that I missed the concert and Dean’s speech because I was watching the press core’s luggage. Though I learned very little about Dean himself, I’m hoping he gets the nomination simply because I shook his hand in a parking garage at 6 a.m. after collating his press briefing. That makes for a lame anecdote if doesn’t get elected.

You Spin Me Right Round

Last weekend, a little group of us went to see the Dance Along Nutcracker. It was exactly as it sounds: hundreds of little girls in fairy-princess costumes, and dozens of drag queens who had the same idea. Tutu rentals were $5 and worth every penny. There were toy soliders, and mice, and many a sugarplum fairy. There was also a woman who, inexplicably, took a length of pink tulle and tied a toy lamb to her head.

Leaving a Little Something

I was fast-forwarding through commercials the other day (thanks TiVo!) when I caught a nanosecond of a woman pole dancing. What the…? I stopped; rewound. Turns out it was a cheesy commercial for Centerfolds, a local strip joint. There were dozens of taut women pouting, gyrating, and otherwise seducing the home video camera. Their slogan, “Absolutely nothing is left to the imagination,” made me wonder when that became a selling point.

I’d Rather Be

We pause at a stoplight behind a car that has an enormous fish decal covering most of the back window.

Me: That guy loves fishin’.

B: He likes, killin’ ’em, cookin’ ’em, and stickin’ them on the back of his SUV.

Me: Where did he get that? Who thought, “You know what would be a big seller? A 3-foot-wide Rainbow Trout decal.”

B: Are you kidding? You’ve spent too much time in California. People have all kinds of shit like that on their cars.

Me: Is that true? Many people have large animal decals in their back windows?

B: Sure.

Me: Oh, America.

B: That’s why other countries are so jealous of us.

Me: The 3-foot fish decals?

B: The fish paraphernalia of all kinds. Fish decals, wooden fish models, fish oil paintings, great big beach towels with fish printed on them.

Me: Take that, world!

When Real Golf is Too Taxing

At the back of the bar there’s a group of five men in their thirties, most of them are wearing plaid. They are crowded around a video-game console pounding at the air and yelling things like, “BITE! Bitebitebitebitebite.” “AIRMAIL, Budddiiiie! ” I walk past them on my way to the bathroom and glance at the screen. Video Golf is just about the whitest thing the world’s got going.