mimi smartypants
Seriously, though: what's with the penguins?

clean up on aisle blog

Oh I am a very quaint and anachronistic ho, indeed I am. So you write a what? A blog? How much do you make per month? Oh. Do you get free products and stuff? Oh. Long-form and…personal? Oh.

It is not even cool retro/weird like the guy who roasts his own coffee beans, but slightly scary retro/weird, like tatting lace or writing villanelles. Which is also something I do, by the way. Villanelles are great when you have two excellent lines but no real poem for them. And they are a great vehicle for being overwrought. I am super-great at being overwrought. I should have been born earlier, I could have been a Decadent (although I would never be mean to a tortoise)

I was thinking about blogging (and the Decadents) because I have been recording and watching a terrible TV show called Newlyweds: The First Year. I fast-forward a lot because I am only interested in one of the newlywed pairs, both profoundly shitty people who fight all the time and refer to themselves as “a New York power couple” although (1) they live in New Jersey and (2) WHO SAYS THINGS LIKE THAT? I think he works in banking and she in fashion merchandising and she also runs a “style blog,” and she’d like to quit the salary job and blog full-time, which is another source of the fights since the guy thinks this is a dumb idea (and despite being a shitty person he is not totally wrong about that. Wouldn’t a “style blogger” who works in fashion merchandising be more interesting and credible than one who just buys clothes and blogs about them?) Anyway. I had an odd moment in one of these past episodes when the shitty couple was having a shitty conversation in their living room, and they have my EXACT COUCH. I paused the playback and texted Nora (who was right upstairs, but who is also 13 years old, so please don’t question the intra-house texting), “Our couch is on television!” She understood the momentous nature of this fact and came down so we could see our couch be reality-TV famous.

THE THINGS WE SHOULD STOP NAMING OUR BOOKS

I got super-irritated about books with titles that include “Things We” and did a rage-search. The list is by no means exhaustive as I quickly gave up.

The Things We Keep

The Things We Set On Fire

The Things We Don’t Do

The Things We Do For Love

The Things We Cherished

Things We Found During The Autopsy

The Things We Tell Ourselves

The Things We Save

The Things We Left Unsaid

The Things We Knew

Things We Bury

The Things We Lost

Things We Need

Things We Never Say

Things We Don’t Say Out Loud

ENOUGH. All “things-we” are officially off limits now. Authors, take note.

WHAT ELSE

  1. We took Rocko cat to the vet and it turns out he has meth mouth, hillbilly dentition, a cat lifetime of Mountain Dew and chewing tobacco having caught up with him, and of course the cat hospital recommended an extremely expensive surgery. We were initially skeptical but what if part of Rocko’s being a dick is because his little cat mouth hurts? So now the needy maniac only has 18 teeth in his maw, and he actually does seem a bit calmer. Although maybe he is just scared that if he acts out we will box him up and let strangers remove more parts of his face. Post-surgery Rocko was very wobbly and high so I put on some YouTube for him.

rockotelevision

  1. We also got bored and went to Mexico, taking along my sister-in-law. Mostly it was snacks and beer and beach and sitting on a condo balcony watching the waves, although we did get a car and drive to Chichen Itza on one of the days, for tasty ziggurat goodness.

zigg

I enjoyed all the death imagery, like these derpy-looking skulls. This is how you will look when you are dead. You will look like a complete dork. The one on the bottom right reminds me a bit of Beavis.

amusing skulls

Speaking of death, we all nearly perished during this trip when LT and Nora came back from a beach walk with a coconut they had found floating in the sea. We were sitting on the balcony with beer, and Nora asked if she could crack it open. Sure! we said from our lounge chairs. Go ahead! The cracking process took a while, and the adults sipped alcohol and proffered advice. Harder! Crack it on the edge there! Keep going, you’ve almost got it!

And lo: the coconut doth split. Let it be known that a water-borne coconut is not airtight. The interior was dark gray; the smell, indescribable. We scrambled away with towels over our noses. My sister-in-law actually sprinted upstairs to the safety of the bedrooms. I lunged for the kitchen to procure plastic bags for LT and Nora to wrap the coconut and contain the stench, so it could be taken away and hurled into a faraway trash can. We sprayed some lavender-scented Mexican Windex all over the balcony, preferring chemical stink to rotten coconut death-musk. Holy mother of god. I wish I could send you just a smidgen of the smell through the Internet. It was a terrorist weapon.

WHEN I KNOW SOMETHING, I TELL YOU SOMETHING

I refer you to US Patent 273074, registered by Robert F. S. Heath in 1883.

Be it known that I, ROBERT F. S. HEATH, a citizen of the United States,residing in the city and county of Camden, State of New Jersey, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Hats, Caps, and other Head-Wear, which improvement is fully set forth in the following specification and accompanying drawing, in which the figure is a side elevation of a hat embodying my invention, which consists of a hat, cap, bonnet, or other article of headwear made partially or entirely self-luminous, whereby advantages are obtained, as will be hereinafter fully set forth.

Well, by all means, hereinafter fully set forth! Take it away, Robert Heath, and your luminous hat!

But it’s kind of a cheat, because if you read onhis “patent” consists of the suggestion that you take a regular hat and dip it into “self-luminous material,” or “painting a hat with such material, forming a sheathing of the material and fitting it over the hat, or molding the hat of said material.” Uh, okay. Way to NOT REALLY INVENT ANYTHING, Robert F. S. Heath. I have better ideas in my sleep.

—-shhhh, don’t wake mimi smartypants.