Argh Ink

Sarah Palin resigned from her governorship about six hours ago, effectively dumping the news in the dead zone of Friday night before the fourth of July. I will leave it to others to determine the political implications of that; what fascinates me is the speculation her announcement is generating. Because as everybody is saying, there’s got to be more story there.

I believe that as human beings, we need story. We crave it. We take the random events of the day and arrange them into a pleasing narrative so that the day makes sense as a whole. We take isolated incidents and embroider them with commentary and invest them with meaning and they too become stories with clear themes. But it isn’t just that we need events to make sense; we need them to satisfy our hunger for drama, for surprise and reversal and climax. A story isn’t enough, it has to be a good story. read more >>

When Lani was coming to visit a few weeks back, I was cleaning the kitchen and notice that my fridge kind of . . . smelled. I took everything out, and it was all fresh, so I scrubbed the whole thing down with disinfectant cleaner, put my groceries back, and figured my work was done. When Lani got here, she was polite for twenty-four hours and then she said, “That fridge smells.” I said, “I KNOW, but I cleaned it.” Lani is pro-active so we cleaned it again. The next day, we were making lunch and we both said, “What the hell?” because it still smelled. So Lani, a better person than I, went through and smelled everything in there and found the problem: brand new brie. Evidently it was supposed to smell that way, but we pitched it anyway. An hour later, the fridge was lovely again, but I felt oddly exposed. read more >>

Worth1000.com has a display of contest entries that put classic two-dimensional cartoon characters seamlessly into classic paintings. Not surprisingly, Dali and Picasso get quite a workout. It’s fun to flip through all the entries, but the successful ones go beyond fun; they make you look at both the old art and the new in different ways through the juxtaposition of two famous images. Charlie Brown in the Miro painting may be the best (and thank you to Andrew Sullivan who sent me to the site originally with that image) but others are equally interesting. Take, for example, Dali’s “Galatea of the Spheres:”
read more >>

There’s some major upheaval going on in my life, plus the usual To Do List from Hell (where is Shane when I need him?), but one of the fun changes is the new website look. Joelle from Moxie Design Studios has done an amazing job on the design which I wanted to reflect the change away from romantic comedy to darker, more complex books like Wild Ride and Always Kiss Me Goodnight and some other projects I’ve got on the back burner. It’s been really interesting trying to come up with a look that matches the feel of the direction I think I might be going. The design is dark and I really, really like it, in part because it’s full of such quirky things.

Like the monkey.

Joelle put in an old building (the Wapakoneta Court House, actually, but it could be the big crumbling house in AKMG, too) and a spooky carousel from Wild Ride along with tarot cards that have meaning for me and a vintage typewriter and, of course, the cherry, and then she put in this monkey:

Why? She just liked the monkey. Then I saw it and thought, “What a great monkey!” and then “What does that represent in my life?” and then “What difference does it make, that’s a cool monkey.” But then it had to come out of the home page banner, and we tried it someplace else right side up, and I have to tell you, right side up that monkey is creepy, and it finally ended up at the bottom of the page and on the interior page banners, upside down and quirky again, not Monkey-From-Hell creepy.

And I thought, “Maybe I should change my symbol from the cherry to the monkey.” Then I realized that would make the Cherries into Monkeys, and while they are broad-minded with good senses of humor, I didn’t think they’d go for it in spite of the great theme song they’d get automatically. Plus, there are fabulous sock monkey earrings available on the net, so the jewelry thing would be covered, but that would mean all their cherry stuff would be obsolete and frankly, monkeys aren’t as pretty as cherries. So after some reflection, I decided a big no on changing the symbol. We’re sticking with the cherry.

But now there are monkeys on my website, or there will be once the programming is done and Mollie and I have the content reorganized–stay tuned–and most of the changes that are coming up are good ones. I figure as long as I look at them the way I’m looking at that monkey, open-minded and upside down–a fresh viewpoint on life, so to speak–everything’s going to be just fine. Change is good.

And so is that monkey.

There was an interesting article on Salon a while ago about how we use our tastes to define us and how limiting and ultimately dishonest it often is because we choose to advertise the things that reflect who we want to be more than who we really. At the end, the author, Megan Hustad, suggested, “Type up a shadow list of products, one that really captures you. (My list, for instance, would be: ChapStick, Kleenex, $9 bottles of red wine, pumpkin walnut muffins, Mrs. Meyer’s Dish Soap, and boy-short underwear from American Apparel.)” That shadow list is supposed to the Real You, the stuff you hide under the bed so nobody else will know you’re reading/watching/using it.

So here are five shadow things about me.
1. i wanted to see Ironman more than I ever wanted to see a Jane Austen movie or anything by Merchant-Ivory.
2. My most-visited internet site is LOLCats.
3. I have a masters in American Lit, but I’ve never finished Moby Dick, although I did finish the Cliff Notes. The book I’ve read more than any other? A tie between Heyer’s The Grand Sophy and Pratchett’s Thief of Time.
4. My favorite dessert is Snickers Ice Cream Bars. I can’t buy them because I eat the entire box the same day.
5. My favorite TV show is Burn Notice. My all time fave: Buffy, of course.

But then I thought, that’s not really a shadow list; none of that is anything I’d really hide under the bed. The real shadow list would be the things I’ve apologized for liking, the true confessions I’ve made to friends, saying, “I know it’s awful-dumb-lowbrow-tasteless, but I really love. . .”

1. NCIS. It’s a regular old cop show, not a damn thing new or different about it, but I watch it obsessively, mostly for Gibbs and Abby and Duckie, but also because it’s just good. I feel like I should be watching Flight of the Conchords or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia or some other It show, but I just like watching Mark Harmon solve everything. Also, they do a nice job of killing off the regulars I don’t like.

2. Braunsweiger. It’s smoked liverwurst, aka liver paste. Poor man’s pate. My blue-collar German-descended family loved it and I grew up on it. Then I found out that the fat content is about 110% and stopped eating it, but every now and then I indulge. With mustard on whole wheat. And onions if I’m really feeling go-to-hell. If I was classy, I’d buy pate. I had pate at Per Se in NYC and it was sublime, but really, all I need is braunsweiger.

3. Liz Lange. She makes maternity clothes for Target. My favorite sundress of all time is Liz Lange as is my favorite cardigan. I thought about cutting the “maternity wear” label out and then thought, “Screw it. I like this stuff.”

4. Up the Creek. A B movie so low on the taste list it’s probably a D, written by two entirely different people, one a genius and the other an idiot. The idiot put in fart jokes and bare boobs. The genius did some of the funniest dialogue I’ve ever heard. This movie is totally without redeeming value although it did make me a lifelong fan of Tim Matheson. (I just checked on Amazon and it has four and a half stars. Evidently I’m not the only Chuck the Wonder Dog fan.)

I’m sure there’s a fifth, but I can’t think of one right now. How about you? Guilty pleasures anybody?