Faulkner for the family.

Went to a book swap Friday night.  The theme for the swap was "family," and while I briefly considered bringing Helter Skelter, I ultimately decided to go with my favorite Faulkner: As I Lay Dying.

As I Lay Dying is about a family transporting their dead mother in a homemade wooden casket across the county in a borrowed wagon, so that she can be buried where she wanted to be buried.  Shenanigans befall them, & meanwhile, the weather gets....hot.  Mississippi-hot.  You get where I'm going with this?  Also, there is a river and a certain faulty casket latch.  But I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

While exceedingly gothic, the book is also terribly moving.

(One chapter reads only, "My mother is a fish."  Damn.)

While I love to make personal playlists, I also love making playlists for others--even if those others are dead (or, um, fictitious).  So here's my playlist for the matriarch of As I Lay Dying, Addie Bundren:

Hank Williams Sr., Hey Good Lookin'
Memphis Minnie, Me and My Chauffeur Blues
Tom Waits, You Can Never Hold Back Spring

Next week: Happy Hour. 

Lighthearted.

I find myself in a stellar mood lately:

Details to follow.  For now, I'm gonna put on my boots & enjoy it.

Next week: Ready, steady...bookswap!

MLK day quickie.

I'm going to the Plastic Camera Show this week.

I don't use a plastic camera so I want to see if there's anything I'm missing.  I'm trying to feel my way to my next project & I don't want to rule any options out.

One project idea is to take photos of Burt & Shelley...nude.

Like this, but less achingly artful, more exquisitely awkward:

 There are several impediments to this project, however:

• They haven't actually agreed to it.
• It's cold outside, & outside is where I like to take photos.
• I'm not sure I could take the photos without damaging my temperament.

I like my temperament how it is.  It's been very serviceable.

Thinking about it.

Next week: The camera show...or something else.

I love Jillian.

 I have a girl crush on Jillian Michaels.

Shelley got me a Ripped in 30 dvd for xmas, & Jillian's been kicking my ass on a near-daily basis.  The woman does.not.play & she is crunch central, & I like stomach stuff but jesus christ.

What I love most about Jillian is that she's unabashedly attracted to her assistants.  She repeatedly pretends she's going to bite their asses while they're demonstrating the moves, & I find this mesmerizing--even when I've done the workout before & know the mock-biting is coming.

Also, she talks about how she used to be fat in high school & I like that.

Now whether I will actually become ripped (or...shredded) in 30 is another matter, b/c I am fond lately of eating Jack in the Box eggrolls at midnight.  They are incredible & I can eat 3 of them in about 4 minutes.  Less if I skip the sauce.  But I love the sauce!

Jillian would totally bite my ass if she knew. 

Next week: Up all night.

Happy New Print.

I was going to write about my road trip with Burt, but it got canceled.  And by "it got canceled," I mean I drove back to the bay area by myself after fighting with Burt in the kitchen.

 Yes, life with Burt involves a dash of drama.

So instead, I'm going to talk about my fabulous new print.  My friend L made it--we're art-swapping.  I got to choose one of her amazing prints & she's going to choose a photograph.

The print is like this: imagine if Rothko and the Good Humor Man had a baby.

The baby picks up a Gothic branch and waves it around.  Then an earthquake comes and cleaves the earth in two.  And that is the print.

I'm currently deciding where its place of honor should be.  And L didn't name it, so I will:

Latvian Sorbet Shake.

Next week: Shredded is the new ripped!

I spy a surreptitious Christmas.

I've added a new tradition to Xmas eve: playing Secret Spies w/ my nephew.

Secret Spies is when you follow your 6-year-old behaviorally-challenged nephew (both of you surreptitious-though-whispering-very-loudly) to the kitchen, then down the hallway, past the bathroom, then onto the floor and crawling down the length of the back of a sofa, in order to listen--secretly--to the family's pre-dinner conversations.

Unfortunately, these conversations do not generally involve any top-secret revelations.  Instead, they involve reversible place mats, the restriction of carbs, and the Chicago Bears. 

However, I was cheered when my nephew allowed me to play Secret Spies with a glass of vognier in my hand, so long as I held two stormtroopers in the other hand.

"Why are we bringing the stormtroopers?"  I whispered.

"Because we're fighting the bad," he whispered back.

"There's a lot of bad in the world," I said.  "We could be at it all night." 

"If that's what we have to do," he said.

Fortunately, Shelley rang the proverbial dinner bell, like, 10 minutes later.

Next week: A road trip with Burt.

Drives you crazy.

a) So I went to a cafe today to work on my photo captions. That kind of work is hard enough, but when when you add in a strange man intent on making crazy kissing faces at you, it's exponentially harder. Why don't the crazies ever know the difference between a wanted gesture, and an unwanted one?

Wanted gesture: when you have a crazy crush on someone.
Unwanted gesture: when crazy is standing in the middle of the cafe, talking to himself in his very own bubble of sexual tension, expressing immense feeling via crazy puckered lips.  While you're trying to write.

See?  There's a difference.

b) Anyway.  Burt has decided that he wants to go on a road trip with me.  Meaning, he's going to drive back to the bay area with me after Xmas.


As most of you have not been encased in an automobile with my father for 8.5 hours, allow me to share some topics that will likely be addressed:

• why is your hair so short?
• why don't you go to church anymore?
• why do you have such a hard-on for minorities?
• why do you always have to be different?
• all these other drivers are complete imbeciles
• women still hit on me
• golf

Next week: A holly-jolly xmas.