More good stuff from “What I’ve Learned:”

Bob Lutz says, “Being able to “think outside the box” presupposes you were able to think in it. ”

In this month’s Esquire, Muhammad Ali says, “What you’re thinking is what you’re becoming.” When I shared this quote with Leslie she responded, “That’s chilling.” I’d have to agree. It’s about time to ponder the works of Mother Theresa. Or a Britney Spears video. We all have our own aspirations.

From White Oleander by Janet Fitch:

“I crawled under the bed, pulled out the sack of her letters, some packets thin as a promise, others fat like white koi.”

Have you met Josh Cagan? He amuses me greatly:

On the movie Thirteen:

“Okay. Dig this. I have a thirteen year-old neice. I’m sure one of her friends is messed up. I’ll get her to confide in me, and then we’ll write an awesome screenplay about it! What better way to teach a troubled child the difference between right and wrong, than to reward her behavior with ALL OF THE MONEY, FAME, AND MEDIA EXPOSURE IN THE WORLD!!!

The completely awesome thing about that plan, is that NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, is better for an emotionally damaged kid than turning them into a cautionary example/media wunderkind/eroticized child whore-pop SENSATION!!!!! Because the ads sure as shootin’ don’t show any repentant, seen-the-error-of-their-ways teenage girls, they show ROCKET HOT YOUNG DRUGGED UP NOT-EVEN-BARELY-LEGAL-POON-A-PALOOZA-CHICK-A-LICK-A-DING DONG!!!! HELLO!!!

So, three cheers, director. Attaboy, producers. Sorry, kid. Hope the sidewalk in front of the Viper Room is soft and warm.”

Observation by Loriloo:

“Don’t Think That’s In The Book

Observed:
Overweight couple sharing a platter of Krispy Kreme doughnuts, each reading their own copy of Dr. Phil’s The Ultimate Weight Solution: 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom.”

EXPLODING DOG

How long has it been since you visited Exploding Dog:

He decided not to go back there anymore

How did this get my eye?

Is this really all there is?

An what if I do?

I never expected this

Dong Resin has a better tagline than you, “Speaking and removing all doubt. More funnyness:

“…My taxation suggestions for the Sunshine State :

Any insect larger than your head

Anything that big with that many hands has to have some form of currency on it. It probably has real estate holdings and a mistress. Tax that fuck.

Any dipshit with an “interesting pet”

By interesting, I mean any sad cry for attention that’s not a dog, cat, or bunny rabbit. Bunny rabbits are a pretty stupid pet too, but they get a pass because nobody takes them to the beach to try to get laid. I want people who try to make themselves interesting by harboring some stupid animal to pay extra for the privilege of being allowed to be that emotionally stunted and not be routinely hunted for sport…

And by “dog”, I mean a dog, not something that looks like Mr. Worf took a shit and decided to name it. Shih Tzus, Shar peis,.. anything I have to look up to spell properly, you fuckers have to pay the tax.

Wiggers

Any white kid who lives in a gated community but talks like Flavor Flav did when he was still on the rock has to pay $12,000 a year to the NAACP. $14,000 if he tires to intimidate people with it…”

“I see we’ve mapped out the genome structure of the poodle.

Naturally, I pray this will lead to some sort of cure.”

It’s my birthday! I turn twenty-eight this year. It’s been a very good year. Let’s celebrate with a little bitta Leslie Harpold.

Go read Leslie’s very short essays. Three of my favorites are excerpted and linked below.

“Unsaid”

To the woman who leapt out in front of me on Houston Street and jumped into the cab I had hailed, looking over her shoulder at me, saying “Survival of the fittest, sorry!” as she climbed in:

Fuck you. That was just rude.

“On Being Good”

“I am going to grab you by the collar, push my lips to your ear and whisper in my most murderous tone “I am not only a good girl I am the best good girl there is.”

“Fifty Things I Did Not Do This Weekend

“7. Build a model railroad to scale. I also did not build one not to scale.”

From Dooce:

“Jon and I smoked weed for the first and last time together, a little over a year ago, a horrible experience wherein Jon sat relaxed and groovy on one end of the couch and I sat uncomfortably transfixed at the other end, completely convinced that Jon was going to figure out that I couldn’t hold my shit together while high on pot and leave me for someone who could hold their shit together while high on pot. I kept repeating in my head, Hold your shit together, hold your shit together, and I couldn’t say anything but, Huh? when Jon asked how I was doing. I just knew that he knew that I was not holding my shit together and that our wonderful and loving relationship was coming to an abrupt end. After 17 or 18 Huh? responses I finally mustered what I thought was the most coherent sentence in the world, something that would prove to him that I was so keeping my shit together, and I said, ‘I want our kids to know and to understand the magic that is Bob Marley.’ A year later and we’re still together, people. It totally worked!”

From Mimi Smartypants:

“America would be a better place if everyone dressed and acted like Prince. (The Purple One. The Artist. Whatever.) Maybe not forever and ever, because that could get tiring (not to mention hot in the summertime with all the gloves and velvet and such), but it would be so great if the entire country participated in Dress And Behave Like Prince Week. I would very much like it if, instead of sitting on his duff and speaking dryly into a microphone, Alan Greenspan made his semi-annual monetary policy reports while dry-humping a purple guitar. The male members of Congress could wear identical white pimp suits and do a big dance number in the background. The female members of Congress could wear white lycra bodysuits and some sort of sex-kitten faux-militaristic garb, like PVC captain’s hats. It would add so much to the day if you went to the dry cleaner and said, “Can you do something about this stain on my raspberry beret? I think it’s salad dressing, don’t ask me how it got there,” and your dry cleaning lady and her friend were dancing all lesbotronically and playing single notes on a Casio keyboard. And who hasn’t wanted, during a boring meeting, to throw a translucent black veil over his or her head and start crawling like a demonically possessed boa constrictor across the polished boardroom table? ‘Sir, I move that this is what it sounds like when doves cry!'”

“Also, today I saw a woman wearing a skirt that had a design of hats printed all over it and now I feel unsettled. I know paper towels and such often have weird things printed on them, like ducks or picnic baskets, but the skirt and hats seem a little too close together somehow. A likely analogy would be if paper towels had rolls of toilet paper printed on them. Arrggh, leave me alone, I have to think about this one.”

From Poetry Daily:

The Cadillac in the Attic

by Andrew Hudgins

After the tenant moved out, died, disappeared

the stories vary the landlord

walked downstairs, bemused, and told his wife,

“There’s a Cadillac in the attic,”

and there was. An old one, sure, and one

with sloppy paint, bald tires,

and orange rust chewing at the rocker panels,

but still and all, a Cadillac in the attic.

He’d battled transmission, chassis, engine block,

even the huge bench seats,

up the folding stairs, heaved them through the trapdoor,

and rebuilt a Cadillac in the attic.

Why’d he do it? we asked. But we know why.

For the reasons we would do it: for the looks

of astonishment he’d never see but could imagine.

For the joke. A Cadillac in the attic!

And for the meaning, though we aren’t sure what it means.

And of course he did it for pleasure,

the pleasure on his lips of all those short vowels

and three hard clicks: the Cadillac in the attic.