early polar exploration vs. late Renaissance art
WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN
As I may have mentioned before, I subscribe to Vanity Fair. I can't remember why, and the subscription must be on auto-renew for some miniscule price because I never send them any money and I never notice any unusual credit-card charges. Occasionally I get really close to canceling it, because I don't care about Hollywood or obscure Greek royalty or Christopher Hitchens, but then the magazine will redeem itself with a good, in-depth story about a murder or a publishing-industry scandal. Yay, murder! Yay, plagiarism!
And sometimes Vanity Fair will have unintentionally hilarious fashion ads, of the too tard to moddle variety. The latest issue has a huge fold-out ad of David Beckham looking cross in Armani underpants. Seriously, he is literally FROWNING at his crotch in each shot, he is all ANNOYED with his junk. He is all wait hold the phone something's gone wonky with my willy. Something's gone wacky with my cockles and my whelk. Bollocks! My bollocks!
I find this hilarious, and equally hilarious is the notion that somewhere there are people who DON'T find it hilarious. Somewhere people frowned at David Beckham's privates in an equally serious fashion, over a lightbox and on computer screens. Somewhere people gave him direction as to exactly how to frown at his cock. On a different day this might depress me, but today I must be in HOORAY FOR COMMERCE mode. As long as commerce continues to amuse, that is.
RECIPE BOOK
LT and I were talking about beef stroganoff, probably prompted by the fact that I said “beef stroganoff” while we were in bed together. I have a tendency to free-associate when aroused.
(Brief pause while you sigh with relief that you don't have to have sex with me.)
Anyway, the gist of our conversation was that “Beef Stroganoff” sounds sort of gay-porn-ish. Is it the name of a performer? The title of a certain club's Thursday-night orgy? Can it be the punchline to a dirty joke? Hey Bob, beef stroganoff? No! I'm just…adjusting my pants! I swear! None of these beef stroganoff jokes are precisely satisfying. I will form a committee to work on this.
NORA BRINGS THE PAIN
The other day Nora came home from school FURIOUS because of an argument with some know-it-all six-year-old in her class, who tried to tell her that Tasmanian devils were not real. Obviously Miss Princess has an overfamiliarity with Warner Bros. and an underfamiliarity with Australian fauna. Nora adores Tasmanian devils because they are fierce and badass (look at the teeth!) and she was extremely angry that someone would dare deny their existence.
I was sort of counseling a “whatever” approach, you know, just pity-the-poor-dear-in-her-ignorance, but LT took up Nora's cause and helped her find various web pages and fact sheets on the Tasmanian devil, for printing out and shoving in the other kid's face the next school day and saying WIKIPEDIA, BEEYATCH. Well, it sounds like Nora did not say exactly that, thank goodness. But she did painstakingly point out the difference between the cartoon and the real Tasmanian devil, and one of the teacher's aides overheard the discussion and backed Nora up on the topic, so basically the devil-denying girl got SERVED. All hail the power of fact!
SPEAKING OF SMARTASSES
Magnet school notification letters are in, and although nothing is final quite yet, we will probably accept the “gifted” school slot that was offered to us. The whole test-results thing kind of took me by surprise, because I don't usually think of Nora in terms of the g-word (sorry, kid)—“really frightfully clever,” yes, but Mozart she is not. But hey, if the school system wants to classify her as such that is A-OKAY with me. This is going to sound elitist and evil, but I am not so afraid of her being academically “pushed” as I am of her ending up in a kindergarten full of pants-wetters who are learning the letter “M.” Girlfriend would go insane, and rightfully so—there is a lot of school ahead of her, it is too soon to start hating it. So bring on the nerds, man. Bring on the science fairs and the chess clubs. Maybe Nora will get her dissecting-animals dream fulfilled sooner than we thought.
(But chemistry is cool too.)
NOT SO VERY GIFTED, ME
I was reading a public-health article about the prevalence of iron deficiency in inner-city toddlers, and I thought well fuck, just go eat some paint chips, you live in the ghetto, right? Problem solved! And then I felt ashamed because that is a Very Bad Thought even though it is kind of funny. And then I felt even more ashamed because I remembered that lead and iron are not the same, oh stupid me. From concerned citizen to inappropriate wisecracker to simpleton, all in the space of a few seconds.
—mimi smartypants is the monkey in the middle.