Clusterflockstock 1.9
If you’d asked me a week ago what color Andrew’s eyes are, I couldn’t have told you. Now I’ll never forget.
Read more
Advice to the lovelorn?
“She had never been made love to after this fashion before. She knew, or half knew, that the man was a scheming hypocrite, craving her money, and following her in the hour of her troubles, because he might then have the best chance of success. She had no belief whatever in his love. And yet she liked it, and approved his proceedings. She liked lies, thinking them to be more beautiful than truth. To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in woman, and an added grace in man.”
Anthony Trollope, The Eustace Diamonds (Oxford, 1973; vol. ii, p. 367)
The stink of mortality
Today Deron took me to the dump, where he and I heaved out a Jeepful of my late mother’s detritus as a thousand gulls swirled about us.
I’m going back
to Texas tomorrow, y’all. For a week, anyways.
Big party on Dutton Drive. The last waltz. The final hurrah.
“Hey, my mom’s not at home. You wanna come over?”
For the Newbies
As I approach my third anniversary with y’all (still a little more than a month away), I thought I might offer the newer members a trip down my memory lane. Deron has many times queried Sheila for helps and hints on fashion. I’m not sure, but my comment, buried here, may have been my first appearance.
Baby
February 24, 2010. Dutton Drive. Dallas, Texas.
Sometimes you find things exactly when and where you expect to find them. When I entered my late mother’s house, I expected to find this old baby doll of hers in a drawer in a closet in what used to be my bedroom. And there it lay.
Since we’re doing this. . .
1963~Nugget and I were both three years old. He was a wise pony.
About Right
“I regret how I said to you, “honey, just open your heart” when I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar. And that right there is where we are…” - Joanna Newsom, Good Intentions Paving Company
Wombat Music Workshop | Ladybug
What to sing to the ladybugs you find in your coconut icecream.
Two Important Things I Learned Last Night
1. If something delights Sheila, she snorts. If the delight continues, she really does get down onto all fours and commences to cough.
2. If you give Deron a taste of coconut ice cream, he will make a face and spit it into the sink.
Also of note: We have 11 ladybugs in our bathroom.
Eat Your Best Friends
Strawberry rose milkshake with rose laced cream; kobe beef, mimolette with quince mustard and vanilla aioli in steamed bun
Some new-ish friends of mine put on a gourmet paid dinner party every two weeks, centered around a theme. (Think Thomas Keller in your own backyard.) For Christmas it was Home Alone, for January it was a ten-course meal based on the ten best songs of 2009. Pictured above is the song “Walkabout (featuring Noah Lennox)” by Atlas Sound
This is not your parents dinner party.
Let a Professional Do It
When I posted this, the phrase “insert in post” caught my eye.
Dear Clusterflock
Today I quit on an online survey concerning a “buying experience”; the only reason I was doing it was because it kept popping up in my mail and taking it seemed the quickest way to make it go away. But I came to a question that pissed me off and made me delete the whole thing. It asked me to indicate my “position” in my household: was I the Head of household? The spouse of the Head of household? A dependent of the Head of household? and so on. Do you find yourself thinking as I do that the whole notion of there necessarily being A head of household is archaic? In my view, the whole thing smacks of that Southern Baptist insistence that women “submit” to the will of their husbands, which I find to be one of many reprehensible notions they espouse. Can’t we get past the whole Command Structure thing? Is this just me going off, or do you have feeling about this?
Proportions and entitlement
For the last six months or so, I’ve had this guilty pleasure. It’s a blog called, Why There Are No Girls in San Francisco.* Here’s an example of the content:
SF females (a scattering of honeys from Serbia and Turkey aside) don’t aim for sexy in their dress or carriage. They aim for anti-Florida. They are reserved, borderline haughty in demeanor and fashion themselves in one of three looks: the always vogue “I run Iron-Mans” guy-girl look, the cluttered Hipster, or the famous and very popular “SF black”, where you cover up every square inch of your body but are still fabulous because the fabric is black and black is daring and sexy, right? Not right. Boobs are sexy. Legs are sexy. Black is just a color. Black is what Batman wears so he can be stealthy. When Bruce Wayne wants to impress the ladies he wears a tank top.
Today I read a story in the New York Times about the shortage of men on college campuses, and how it’s affecting more than just the admissions offices:
“Women do not want to get left out in the cold, so they are competing for men on men’s terms. This results in more casual hook-up encounters that do not end up leading to more serious romantic relationships. Since college women say they generally want ’something more’ than just a casual hook-up, women end up losing out.”
W. Keith Campbell, a psychology professor at the University of Georgia, which is 57 percent female, put it this way: “When men have the social power, they create a man’s ideal of relationships,” he said. Translation: more partners, more sex.
The pseudonymous author of WTANGISF probably attended one of these disproportionately female universities and now strugges with the reality of living in a disproportionately male city, but I wonder if both situations are just a symptom of Love in the Time of Darwinism:
Women can take a Chinese-menu approach to gender roles. They can be all “Let me pay for the movie tickets” on Friday night and “A single rose? That’s it?” on Valentine’s Day. This isn’t equality, say the male-contents; it’s a ratification of female privilege and, worse, caprice. “Women seemingly have decided that they want it all (and deserve it, too),” Kevin from Ann Arbor writes. “They want to compete equally, and have the privileges of their mother’s generation. They want the executive position, AND the ability to stay home with children and come back into the workplace at or beyond the position at which they left. They want the bad boy and the metrosexual.”
What’s your take? How do you navigate the modern labyrinth of gender roles better known as sex, dating, and marriage?
* I should mention that I am a girl. And I live in San Francisco.
The death of Jermyn Street
I had just settled in my easy chair when a key turned in the lock and a nattily-dressed man in his 60s let himself in. He held a bottle of Teachers’ scotch under his arm. He walked to the sideboard, took a glass, poured a shot, and while filling it with soda from the siphon, asked me, “Fancy a spot?”
“I’m afraid I don’t drink,” I said.
“Oh, my.”
This man sat on my sofa, lit a cigarette, and said, “I’m Henry.”
“Am I…in your room?”
“Oh, no, no, old boy! I’m only the owner. I dropped in to say hello.”
This was Henry Togna Sr. He appears in a Dickens novel I haven’t yet read. I’m sure of it. He appeared in my room almost every afternoon when I stayed at the Eyrie Mansion.
—Roger Ebert, “I met a character from Dickens,” Chicago Sun-Times, February 5, 2010
(Via @davidmoldawer)
J.D. Salinger dies
J.D. Salinger, the legendary author, youth hero and fugitive from fame whose “The Catcher in the Rye” shocked and inspired a world he increasingly shunned, has died. He was 91.
Fuck me.
Howard Zinn died yesterday
“I can’t think of anyone who had such a powerful and benign influence,” said the linguist and fellow activist Noam Chomsky, a close friend of Zinn’s. “His historical work changed the way millions of people saw the past.”
from the comments
I own stuff I wish I didn’t and resist owning stuff that I love.
Oh, Phil! Yes. I intend to change that equation, soon.
Richard Thompson, Calvary Cross (I’ll Be Your Light ‘Till Doomsday)
The Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy / Tortoise version:
Going out in style
Donald Jack Wickman
WICKMAN Donald Jack Wickman – A truly pulchritudinous man, Donald Jack Wickman gallivanted off to a new adventure January 12, 2010. While he made the peregrination alone, he was surrounded by and given a rousing valediction by so many of the ones who loved him: his wife, daughters, sons, daughter-in-law, and a plethora of friends. Yet, he was greeted by those who had gone before him: his mom and dad, brothers and many more of the friends he made during his undaunted life. Some of these multitudinous friends were made amidst jumping out of perfectly good airplanes as a member of the 82nd Airborne, and others while shellacking criminals as a cop in Boulder and Thornton, Colorado, and writing himself tickets (and taking himself to court.) Don made many friends after arriving on Dauphin Island in a blue limousine, and as he travailed with his wife, Lynn, to spawn the world famous Treasure Trove. Copious friendships were also developed as he hunted down antiques and refurbished them into pristine status, while debating with the people of Mars Hill Church, and during the creation of flabbergasting paintings. All of these friends and family are invited to gather in his and his wife’s home on Friday, January 15, at 7 pm to celebrate Don’s superlative life. He may be gone from us in body, but he is surely not forgotten. So, tell your friends about him.
I hope that when I die, somebody has the awesomeness (and worthwhile material) to post such an exuberant notice for me. Rock on, Don & company.
(Thanks, sc!)
What Cindy Just Said
Well fuck my rubber anus under the fold.
Clustersourcing
Do you recognize any of these books?
It’s my friend’s bookshelves, the one whose house burned down. She can’t bear to look at it (another friend retrieved it from her Facebook account for me), but she asked if I could somehow to enhance it enough to identify some of the books. It’s too low-resolution to sharpen, unfortunately, and I can only make out the Chicago Manual of Style. Maybe you have a more varied library than I do?
If you see anything you recognize, could you please add a note to the photo at Flickr or leave a comment? Thanks.
a lot of layers here
The Vermont Supreme Court is ruling on the value of a dog’s love.
Dear Henry
When we saw Henry Rollins speak
a fewten years ago, he told a story about a fan who wrote to him with a peculiar problem. Seems the guy is a paramedic and one night they come upon a car crash where a beautiful naked woman is lying on the ground unconscious. They spring into action, get her in the back of the ambulance and begin emergency resuscitation. Now, the guy is alone in the back of the ambulance with the woman, and he can’t get over how hauntingly beautiful she is.And she’s not responding. All her vitals were failing and he knows she’s not going to make it. As she expires, the paramedic, who had suddenly and quickly developed feelings for her, kisses her on the lips. By the time they reach the hospital, the woman is dead. Trouble is, the paramedic is now completely in love with her. So much so he can’t sleep, he can’t eat and he’s having trouble working.
Rollins said his first reaction was to write back, “YOU SICK $@#!!! GO KILL YOURSELF!” But no, the paramedic’s obviously in pain and obviously needs his help. So he thinks about it for awhile and attempts to seek out helpful advice. That night at some awards ceremony he runs into none other than Tom Waits and figures if anyone has some words of wisdom for the poor, lovestruck — but slightly demented — paramedic it would be Waits.
Cast y’all’s votes, y’all.
Should I be the next Oprah?