So, I bought this fabric over a year ago. A friend was having a baby girl and I wanted to make her something. That was before my quilting days where I usually just made blankets with a minky backing, bibs, burps, and a ball.Very cute, but, not a quilt. So, when I started quilting earlier this year – I quickly switched it to a quilting project. I had been eying circle quilts ever since my first quilt and I knew that I would try it on a baby quilt since it would be smaller and more manageable. And since I love circles I started researching how to piece and applique them. I was intrigued with the Dale Fleming six minute circle method and knew this would be one of the first I would try. It turned out to be pretty simple but longer than I wanted it to be. I had 48 circles so if it was really six minutes per circle that equals almost five hours not including any of the prep work. Anyway, I was happy with how it turned out.

The quilt is designed around the Alexander Henry “Very Berry” fabric and a couple of other coordinating Alexander Henry prints. Then I picked up a couple of coordinating fabrics from Joann’s – the black and the pink to complete the look. I am starting to realize that I like black in quilts. I guess I like the contrast. Plus the black print circles really drew out the black background in the “Very Berry” fabric and pulled the quilt together.

I quilted it in what I call a Loop de Loop pattern – don’t know what the official name is. It was fun and easy to do. I’ll definitely get better with this quilting thing over time. . .

The back is simple highlighting the “Very Berry” fabric with a strip going across the width of the quilt and another strip of the coordinating fabrics pieced with a circle in “Very Berry” thrown in.

I wanted the circles in the quilt to be very close together like the Michael Miller Disco Dot fabric – so of course the name of the quilt is Strawberry Disco Fields!
Let me know what you think!

I used to keep a closet full of different clothes. Well, different shirts. I never had many pants because it is so hard to find pants that fit me and my long legs. I have very long legs!

What I had many of were nice, solid-colored polo shirts and t-shirts with beautiful designs on them. Then I realized that a t-shirt with a beautiful design on it did not necessarily make a beautiful t-shirt. At least as worn by me. I needed a collar on my shirt to look good. So I would only feel comfortable wearing the polo shirts. But I would still wear the t-shirts too, because I didn’t want them to go to waste. Or more precisely, I didn’t want to waste my precious polo shirts on just any regular day. I had to save up the polo shirts for special days.

Eventually, my t-shirts all wore out and I was finally left with just polo shirts. Then I noticed myself saving up the blue polo shirts for special days, and resigning myself to wearing the green or red ones on just normal days. When I finally allowed myself to wear a blue polo shirt, I would wear it for as many consecutive days as possible, so that I could get the most out of it before having to return to the other-colored shirts. A blue-shirt day was a special day, and I wanted more of them.

My friend who knows these things says that retail interior design companies always prepare at least two proposals for their clients: the design they think would be best for the workplace, and a “blue option,” which is the same design but all in blue. They do this because they know that if it is a man who is making the purchasing decision, he will always pick the “blue option.” Maybe that is what I am doing. Or maybe I am just picking a shirt that will go well with my eyes. I have very blue eyes!

Anyway, I decided to cut out the middleman and stock my closet with only blue shirts. I went around town scouring TJ Maxx and Ross and Old Navy and Target for cheap, fitted blue polo shirts. I found a bunch of nice ones at Target, which I snapped up. Then I found cheaper ones at Ross to fill more hangers. And then they held a sale at Old Navy, where I was able to fill out my closet very nicely indeed. If I found enough blue polo shirts at different places around town, I would almost never have to go to the laundromat again, yet I would not have to stretch any one polo shirt more than one day.

But guess what. I do. Because some blue polo shirts are just better than others.

this morning the pony and i went to a bakery to eat pastries. we try to get together and eat sugar-based products as often as we can, to keep it real.

when the pony asked for a red velvet cupcake, the bakery’s owner, who is some variety of european to judge by her accent, said she had two velvet cupcakes. the pony said, “i’ll have one.” the owner said, “two?” the pony replied, “one.” the owner rejoined, “two?” patiently and politely, the pony said, “one.”

this reminded me of when i was a young ‘un and did the grocery every day for the whole family. it was around the end of the 19th century and we did daily grocery shopping. it took a sizeable chunk of the day because there were many shops to visit: the bread and egg shop, the meat shop, the cheese shop, the veggie shop, the newspaper shop, the tobacconist shop, etc. you did it all on foot. that was just the way it worked. i didn’t particularly like it. by the end the bags were heavy and i was tired. (it was also cold and snowy, and we had wooden shoes and threadbare hoseries: but that’s for another post).

the worst was the cheese place. the cheese guy would always give me as least 50% more cheese or cold cuts than i asked for. if i asked for 1 hg, he’d give me 1.5 hg. if i asked for 2 hg, he’d give me 3. it was very painful for me, because i didn’t know how to stop him. when i joined the line i’d rehearse what to say to him: “and i mean 1 hg!” or, “did you get that i said just 1 hg?” but it never did any good. it only made me feel anxious and defeated.

while i was in line i checked if he did the same to the other people, older, maturer women, grown-up women, but i don’t remember it now. what i know is that no-one said any of the things i did. maybe the women accepted the extra stuff, or maybe they asked for 2/3 of what they really wanted and ended up satisfied. i would never have done this myself because i hadn’t yet learned The Practical Approach to Life and was practicing instead The True and Just Approach to Life. let me tell you before you read any further: the True and Just Approach to Life must be practiced very seldom and for a very, very good reason. if you are in any doubt whatsoever, go for the Practical Approach to Life with a clear and light conscience.

when i asked for cold cuts i’d keep a keen eye on the scales and shout “enough!” the moment the scales reached the amount i wanted. the cheese man would continue unfazedly to pile slices till he added another 50%. my fury knew no bounds.

when i think of it now, i wonder why i didn’t just hand him back the rolled package, tell him to take 1/3 off. at the time, it seemed unthinkable. the package was wrapped and sealed, the price scribbled on. it was over. i had lost my round.

here is something i’m proud of, though. one day, when she was still doing the grocery shopping herself, my grandmother came home furious because the fish monger had sold her fish other than the one she had requested. seeing my grandmother so upset gave me the courage i later failed to find for myself. i went out into the street as i was (no coat) and marched to the fish monger. there was a fair crowd at his truck. i elbowed my way to the front and said with a big and indignant voice, “you cheated my grandmother! shame on you, cheating on an elderly woman! i want all these people to know that you are a grandmother cheater. shame on you!”

everyone was very quiet. the fish monger was very quiet. i turned on my heels and marched back home. it was a fine moment.

this morning, when the baker pretended not to understand that the pony had asked for only one cup cake, i felt bad for her. this is america, i wanted to say. this is america.

when i was little i used the dictionary all the time. it was very frustrating because the definition would always contains words i didn’t understand. i’d go and look those words up, but their definitions, too, would contain words i didn’t understand. i would look those up, only to be stuck in a hellish cycle of endless deferral. it was exhausting and i could never reconstruct what the original word meant. i don’t think i bothered asking my mom or grandmother. my grandmother was always home so i suppose it would have been easy to ask her, but for some reason i didn’t.

when i came to the US i didn’t buy an english-italian dictionary. by that time i had realized that dictionaries were useless. it was much easier to ignore the words i didn’t know and get the general meaning from the context.

now that my english is all right, when there is a word whose meaning i don’t know i ask simsby. if he’s not around i ask li’l pony. if neither is around i don’t ask anyone. i figure sooner or later i’ll figure it out.

there is a site that will send you an email with a new word every day. it’s called A.Word.A.Day. someone gift-subscribed me to it. i knew the first two words i received so i felt rather pleased with myself and even smug. since then i haven’t known one single word. until three days ago, i’d look at the word carefully, read the definition, and look at the usage. i’d tell myself that i’d try to find a way to use the word that very day. but the occasion never came up and by the following day i had forgotten the word entirely. three days ago i stopped opening the emails.

i do remember, however, snake eyes, because that seemed a really important word (well, two words). snake eyes is when you get two ones on a pair of dice. since this is the lowest possible outcome (i had to think a second on that, on account of not being very good at math, but of course it’s true), snake eyes also means bad luck. i hope i’m remembering this right. these words stuck with me because i like gambling, as a concept. for instance, i really, really like movies about gambling. i think i would like novels about gambling if i could understand them.

i never gamble in person unless my mom is in town. when my mom is in town we go to the casino on the miccosukee reservation and gamble away $10 each. we stay at the slots until we finish the $10. the last time we went it was touch and go for a bit because the casino had replaced the usual slots with new ones and for the life of us we couldn’t understand how the new ones worked. finally we asked a slot attendant and she told us. the explanation was very difficult and i didn’t understand it (my mother didn’t even bother following). the young attendant had to think a little to figure out what the easiest machine in the house was, then walked us to it and told us its very basics. she told us not to touch this or that button because it would make things too difficult for us. we managed to play for a long time with our $10. we felt cool and also a little smug, though there was no reason for the smugness whatsoever.

this is serious, bitches, so if you can’t take it go elsewhere.

jonie v. , who now likes to refer to herself in the third person because of the nefarious influence of facebook, has given lots and lots of thought to the facts of a) so-called suicide bombers and b) shooters on a shooting spree that ends with the shooter’s suicide. and this is what jonie v. has concluded: that it’s all fucked. the rules of war and warriorship, which jonie v. finds an inherently male enterprise and (therefore implicitly) despises but has to reckon with nonetheless, are based on the principle that no one wants to get hurt.  since no one wants to get hurt, you can pressure your so-called enemies to do things they don’t want to do by threatening to hurt them or, even better, actually hurting them. once they are hurt enough, thus the theory goes, they’ll realize that they don’t like being hurt and will do whatever you want them to do, providing it’s not too unreasonable (the rules of war take care of this, too).

well, it doesn’t seem to work like this anymore. nowadays “warriors” do their warring by getting hurt. meaning, they hurt themselves (and others alongside). now some people, namely those people who go by the old rules of war, call these self-hurting warriors cowardly. i never got this. what’s cowardly in choosing to die to forward a cause? isn’t this the very definition of heroism? and you see that, in fact, those who are on the side of the self-hurting warriors (if such self-hurting warriors have anyone on their side at all) consider and proclaim them heroes.

this totally fucks up the concept of heroism and cowardice, because people no longer agree on their definitions, and we all know that when concepts are not agreed on it’s fucked up. another concept people no longer agree on is martyrdom and since i have always been pretty impressed by martyrdom, being catholic and all, i find this pretty fucked, too.

so here i am, trying to clarify things for everyone, in a handy fit-in-your-pocket easy-to-consult list:

• war sucks
• all violence against others sucks, but organized and self-righteous violence clad in nationalistic hymns and flags sucks even more, in fact, it sucks so much it basically sucks itself
• instruments of violence suck

and here is another short and easy to consult list that should guide us in understanding acts of self-huring warriorship:

• self-hurting warriorship is not worse than self-protecting warriorship in any respect whatsover
• it’s not better either
• self-hurting warriors are not heroes or martyrs, they are just fucked
• unself-hurting warriors are also fucked, if not individually, because the whole enterprise is fucked and they necessarily partake of this fuckedness

jonie v. would like to close this short and, she hopes, enlightening essay with an appeal to international cooperation and international basic decency, which, as the readers of this blog know, is not too difficult to attain if one actually gives it a try.

thank you.

The future is cloudier than ever. My rusty rituals and trusty omens are all failing me.

I saw a Ewan MacGregor movie, but it was a little early in the summer. I saw it, but before grades were due. The optimal day to see it would have been May 21st, since that is the date in 2003 that Jonie V. and I saw Down With Love. I don’t know what was so great about the summer of 2003; all I know is that all other summers have thenceforth been measured against it.

I had a chinotto at Segafredo, but with someone unaware of that event’s significance. Also, she gave no money to the homeless at any point in the proceedings. Also, we had not just seen a movie. Also, the movie we had not just seen was not even a Ewan MacGregor movie.

Mr. McGillicuddy has not returned this year! He always comes back around the time of the American Idol finale. The timing used to seem even more significant before I started watching that show. I cannot imagine what could be keeping him away this year, unless something happened during that fumigation last September. Uh oh! Then again, a very nonny mouse tells me that that is not the reason. Thank you, nonny! 

The other week a raven swooped past me four times in a row, jarringly close. It almost touched me. It swooped by on my left side, which I took to be a good omen until I realized that I was facing north at the time. If I had been facing south, it would have been on my right. Everyone knows you measure from the south, and that the right is sinister.

On a brighter note, crickets have been heard singing from the sewers.

I still feel adrift. Like I’m rolling hither and thither with no assurance. I have lost my ball bearings. 

UPDATE: It looks like Mr. McGillicuddy has finally been spotted, on the other side of the beach.

Dear Target manager,

I am writing to express my outrage at the horrendous, dare I say discriminatory, treatment I received yesterday from a sign stuck on the front doors of your Dadeland Station location.

The sticker on the front door plainly and unmistakably said “service animals only” or something like that. What an outrage: humans are good enough to work for you but not good enough to shop in your store? I had no idea of this animals-only policy you had enacted, and let me tell you — I don’t take kindly to it. 

I entered the store anyway, at which point I began to feel the full brunt of the psychological and emotional harassment the sign was inficting on me. If you allowed me to enter the store, it follows logically that you must consider me to be a service animal. Not just an animal, but a service animal. What exactly are you trying to say? That you consider me to be a service animal? I don’t know how much therapy it is going to take for me to process this affront to my humanity and to my social standing as a bourgeois, but as soon as I find out I will be sure to send you the bill.

Whether you think (as you apparently do) that service animals are superior customers, or you think (as I do) that it is an insult to call a human of my standing a service animal, the point remains that you should cease and desist your exclusionary practices. This is not some nightclub with a velvet rope across its entrance. You’ve heard of velvet ropes, right? Ropes made of an imitation animal texture. Fitting, since an imitation animal is exactly what I was made to feel like. 

Signed,
a concerned humanist

Sometimes I get to thinking that the only people who really understand me are the crazy homeless people I pass by on the street. Then I go home and watch TV.

“my wife adores my big dick, and yours?” is in great need of disambiguation.

are you wondering whether your wife adores my big dick as well as yours,

whether my wife adores your big dick,

or whether my wife adores my big dick?

only option two makes logical and grammatical sense,

but since you’re interested in the size of my dick

(otherwise why your email in my inbox)

that interpretation is the least likely.

you think no one adores my big dick,

in fact you think there is no big dick attached to my body to adore,

only a small dick

(if i opened your thoughtful email i would find instructions on how to enlarge my small dick).

but you are wrong on this score, too.

there is no dick attached to my body

so please

get your dick out of my inbox.

some people i won’t name names like hyperfemininity coupled with hypermasculinity. the concept of this coupling is not difficult to understand if you are a Gay or hang out with the Gays. now i do realize that not all Gays are alike there’s a large spectrum variety range it won’t do to generalize but you know what i mean.

i am not a Gay as the Gays are mailpersons and i am not a mailperson. this is a simple enough concept to understand and even though some parts of the above contain odious generalizations i’m getting away with it.

i like hypomasculinity coupled with hypofemininity like hutch or hillary clinton when she chokes up thinking about how much she loves america which is a pretty hypofeminine/hypomasculine thing to do upon which i myself would not choke up even if an olive pit went down the wrong way but this doesn’t deny the generalization because it was only an example to illustrate a point not a generalization.

last weekend i listened to a fresh air show and i realized for the very first time in my whole life that the very best place to find hypomasculinity coupled with hypofemininity is mailpersons’ uniformly gay bands that sing communally to the accompaniment of a strumming guitar, i.e. R.E.M.. R.E.M. is the ultimate uniformly gay band that sings communally to the accompaniment of a strumming guitar. i put R.E.M. as my only band seed in pandora and i discovered a whole string of uniformly gay bands TSCTTAOASG such as

• coldplay
• radiohead
• smashing pumpkins
• the wallflowers
• U2
• pearl jam
• the police

if someone anyone had told me that pop rock is all about Sexuality i would have totally listened to it! i don’t know how long these uniformly gay bands have been around but they are entirely new to me. i listened to this gay music all weekend and i plan to listen to it every spare moment i’ve got for the rest of my life.

There’s this show called American Idol. They take people off the street and try to make stars out of them. Every week they put them at war with each other and who will win you never know. One girl this year keeps getting new tattoos. I wonder if they have a Tattoos Anonymous for tattooees. From Tattooine. Like this girl, from a country far far away. A long, long time ago, I can still remember, how that music used to make me smile.

Onlangs kon u op Broodkast de prachtige Mini-banner bekijken. Hieronder vind u de nieuwste Mini Clubman-banner, die weliswaar iets minder sterk is. Klik op de afbeelding om de nieuwe banner te ontdekken.

Via

I’ve had this picture of my Twitter social network in my head. Chris Brogan’s Twitter Packs made me think about it again.

Social networking loop de loops diagram 1.

Social networking loop de loops diagram 2.

I imagine that a more sophisticated, streamlined social networking experience will allow you to “mute” loops at will – aiding focus on a noisy day. It would also allow certain loops to sit behind a firewall for privacy, yet remain connected to the rest of the circuit.

in spite of what my fellow mousers believe (and they do have beliefs of their own on this score, i know because we have talked about it) i am a person with incredibly narrow interests. it is true, it is true. i’m sorry, i’m sorry. these are, in no specific order, the things i like/i am interested in/i care about/i think about/have meaning for me:

books.

okay, i’m exaggerating. there are other things. here they are, in no specific order:

politics.

that’s it. i’m serious.

wait, something else came to mind. here it is:

people.

i am interested in people. in fact, i love thinking about people. why, for instance, is Z reading agatha christie? there have been many mystery writers between agatha christie and 2008: would she like any of them? what other mystery writers write in the same style as agatha christie? are there any american mystery writers who write in the same genteel style as agatha christie? why not?

you see, it comes back to books.

and these are the things i’m not interested in, in no specific order:

• american pop culture, including television, music, cinema, celebrities, advertising, magazines, fashion, fads, frills, fan mail, youtubes, sound clips, websites, weblogs, and weddings;
• other countries’ pop culture, including all of the above;
• other countries, including their language, their culture, their food, their gardens, their monuments, their dances, their art, their museums, their landscape, their mountains, their beaches, their factories, their political system, their economy, their weapon cache, their political leaders, their songs, their athletic endeavors, their hats, their fashion and shoe style, and their dolls;
• art. it’s true. i don’t give a fig about art. really truly i promise cross my heart;
• world religions;
• traditionally female occupations, including gardening, cooking, child rearing, creating things (anything) with one’s hands, house cleaning, sock darning, button sawing, bathroom cleaning, and men pleasuring;
• beauty. when all is said and done, i really don’t care about beauty;
• local elections;
• how-to books and all books that are not novels poetry plays short story collections or about novels poetry plays short story collections
• technology
• music. it’s true. i don’t give a fig about music. really truly i promise cross my heart.

this is just the cream at the top of the pot. there’s a whole steaming potful of things i’m not interested in right underneath.

i feel the need to make this declaration because while i was sipping my tasteless and diluted decaffeinated tea this morning i caught myself thinking about books. i just started a new book last night, see, and the goodness of it suddenly and retroactively brightened what had been an okay but unexciting weekend. i thought: “think about something else, jonie v., you can’t be thinking about books all the time!” with great effort, my mind shifted to the current primaries. i spent about five minutes repeating to myself why i should vote for barack obama and why i should vote for hillary clinton and why i should not vote for the candidate i like best, john edwards. the reasons are, respectively: 1) he has a chance of getting the nomination; 2) she has a chance of getting the nomination; 3) he has no chance of getting the nomination. after five minutes i shook myself: “you can’t only think about books and politics!” i told myself; “there’s more to life than books and politics!” so i thought about my friend Z and agatha christie. and then i ran out of topics to think about. and then i decided to write this post.

I knit a mouse from a pattern included in a book.
The book was by Tracey Ullman and a knitting boutique owner friend of hers named Mel.
Mel something.
Tracey rediscovered knitting while filming a John Waters movie in Fells Point.
That’s in Baltimore, bitches.
She was drawn to the warmly glowing window of a cozy knitting boutique on one of Fells Point’s cobblestone streets.
I remember that place and she’s right — it’s so cute. 

 

sometimes i open a cultured publication and my mind seizes up in rejection of its content. it rejects the call of ideas and beauty. it says, no more. it happened tonight with the latest issue of harper’s. i think it was the fact that some articles reminded me of some other articles (or books, or authors) and suddenly a whole fan, a whole genealogy of connections sprang wide open in my mind like the spokes of an umbrella and my mind said, no.

my mind is of the connecting kind. the only time someone with a degree asked me to read a series of rorshach images i saw them as live landscapes, each little bit interacting with each other little bit in a significant way. they’d be battlefields or playgrounds or amusement parks, except i didn’t know about amusement parks at the time because i had not yet been to disneyland.

i see things as wholes. this is the mindset of the paranoid, but i am not paranoid. this surprises me constantly because i truly expect myself to be paranoid. you see, i think i should be, given my mindset. yet i don’t see conspiracies and i consistently tend to a) attribute good motives to people and b) assume that no one is ever talking about me except, possibly, in a good way. this is not to say that i am immune to egocentrism. i know i am the hub from which the spokes fan out. i have read my kant and my hegel (i think i understood the former but i most certainly failed entirely to understand a single word of the latter). when i imagine people talking about me, they are always saying nice things. it is possible for me to conceive that people will think bad things about me, but not that they’ll share them with each other. in my mind, i am spoken of only in sympathy.

the connecting mind lends itself quite nicely to philosophy, theology, and critical theory.

sometimes, though, at the end of a hot day, as lovely as it is, i am quite done with the giddiness of complex wholes whose parts dance around each other. i want to deafen my ears to the calls of birds across jungles, prairies, wetlands, or deep alpine valleys.

I was once infatuated with a boy who did not return my affections. My boss at the time was trying to get me see this. He had several different ways to communicate this fact to me, one of which he was sure would open my eyes. The first thing he tried was to order a cake to be delivered to the workplace. The cake had a message written on it in icing, which read simply “Get over it.” I had to admit it was a good cake for coming from a supermarket.

Another way he tried to communicate to me that my feelings for this boy were not mutual was to use a striking image. He told me, “Here you are thinking about him endlessly, while he’s probably at home thinking about cutting his toenails.”

In this holiday week, I would like to tell all you nonny mice that I cherish you all as my friends. Whenever I cut my toenails, I always think only of you.

Then click on this, bitches.

Wow what a great little post I have put together for you! Well actually not so little! And well actually I didn’t write it. Fabulana did! It’s about a topic that has proven very popular with the nonny mice in the past, but now on “wordpress” it is much harder to publish this particular kind of post. So I have recurred to our previous incarnation on blogger (how I miss you). To see the post, click HERE!

If you have trouble reading any of the annotations, just click on the picture to make it bigger.

i ask forgiveness of the rain that didn’t hit south florida too much this season, not the rain i mean but the wind and rain and broken trees and downed power lines. i ask forgiveness of the rain and the water because much is made of it, it must feel cheated.

i ask forgiveness for the mothers and the fathers but most especially the children, all the naughty children including those who don’t go on to be mothers and fathers, including those who eat their snot and play with their down under, even those that cut the tail of my cat and shot my pet rabbit and raped my sister.

i ask forgiveness of the politicians who have a terrible job i would rather they had it than me then spend all day criticizing or critiquing and wishing death and scourge upon them.

i ask forgiveness for the catholic priests and the children they molested in the sense of had sex with either penetrative or not and then shed the cloth and now live alone in isolated places with a shotgun on the left hand side of the door.

i ask forgiveness, too, for the boy who started the wildfire playing with matches let his life not be charred like the houses he killed.

i ask forgiveness of my friends for my silence and my enemies for my words especially the ones that hurt whether i meant them or not.

i ask forgiveness for all the bloggers who spell its as if it were it’s and spray their writing with dangling participles greater sin than which cannot and will not be conceived yet i ask forgiveness and mercy and the guiding light of god.

my friend li’l pony has helped me tremendously in deepening my understanding of American Culture. i am learning so much from him! last week, for instance, he showed me all sorts of amazing clips from some vh1 shows whose titles i don’t remember but had “charm school” and “fave” or “flavored” and “new york” in them, so maybe you can figure out what i’m talking about even though i don’t remember the exact titles, because li’l pony told me that like 90% of all people in the world know about those shows and i was in the 10% but not any more, and i understood for the first time that americans have a heart. they really do. you thought americans were all about picking wars with other countries and dropping bombs on japanese people and making sure their Children don’t go to the Doctor. not true! americans do amazingly nice things! all the time! like, for instance, on one show i saw thanks to li’l pony a woman gave away her most valued boots to please another woman, and, some time later, when the woman who had given away the boots had already forgotten all about them, the other woman got the boots back for her! and, in another show or maybe the same, we saw a woman spit in very slo mo at another woman and that wasn’t very nice but at the end it turned out nice tho i don’t really remember how. the gob of spit was pretty awesome, too. i don’t think i would be able to produce such a juicy gob, i really don’t, on account that i don’t have enough saliva in me at any given time except maybe if i’m eating candies, which makes me wonder if the spitting woman was eating a candy, not that that matters. anyway, it turned out very nice, with forgiveness and love all around. also, the gob of spit didn’t reach the other woman’s face, only the side of her hair, which is very nice unto itself.

now i’m watching reality tv all the time, for the nice things. lately i watched this amazing reality tv whose name i don’t remember but had “dog” in it so maybe you can figure it out. it’s about a woman who lost her little dog to another woman, but she’s so nice that even though it’s only a little dog she had — check this out — for just one day, she loves him already to death!

this proves to me that the woman is incredibly nice, because i have never loved so much a dog that i had for only one day or even more, like once i had a dog for a week and i loved her but not as much as this nice american woman loves her little dog iggy, which is very much for sure.

Of course, there’s also a French version. It’s not quite as good as the English version, but the video has a certain je ne sais quoi that appeals to my technological sensibilities.

She apparently also released an Italian version, but no one has uploaded it to youtube yet.

One thing has gotten me through good times and bad times, the high times and the low times. That is my ability to fold things into thirds. I love folding things in thirds. I love folding paper, towels, paper towels, plastic bags, fabric, sheets, fabric sheets, whatever have you. What’s really great is to fold a sheet in thirds the long way, then fold it in thirds the short way. That way, there are no exposed edges; just a tight little bundle of bleachy-clean neatness. Did I mention I like to bleach things too? Mostly sheets. Also, my skin in the chlorinated pool. When I see people who have bleached their bangs it reminds me of freshman year of high school. That was 1985. Today I took my dress shirts to be dry-cleaned. I took them to the dry cleaners. The dry cleaner told me he was just going to launder them because it was a waste of money for me to have them dry-cleaned. He’s supposed to be the professional so I said OK. Later I started to think I should have told him “do you realize these are Brooks Brothers shirts?” Because I don’t think he did. It’s not like he’s so professional anyway. The last time I dropped some shirts off to him, I had to point out some stains that I wanted removed. Every time I pointed to a stain, he would put a little orange “stain” sticker on that point. When I was finished with the stains on one shirt, he put a “stain” sticker on my hand, looked up at me, and smiled.

2-15-08 may look like a date to you, but to me it is a case number. I treat every date like that. A case. To be solved.

I haven’t introduced myself. My name is, well, let’s say my name is Bobby. Bobby Caboose. Worked at the agency since 1983. What do I do? Easy. My job consists of diagnosing the problem with the day, identifying the solution, and the implementing it. Properly.

For some cases the problem is clear but not the solution. For some other cases, the problem could be any one of a number of related obstacles, but there may be one clear solution capable of neutralizing the whole category of them. Let me let you in on a little professional secret: that solution is usually a nap.

The agency employing me subscribes to a Judeo-Christio-Muslim paradigm of original sin. Those guys at the Buddhist agency have it easy. They go right to the solution. A lot less paperwork.