Scene: parents' bedroom, early evening Dramatis personae: MOTHER (reading), DAUGHTER (drawing My Little Pony comic), DRACHMA the Kitten (licking backside daintily)
Enter FATHER, with flea treatment squirt bottle. Places bottle at back of DRACHMA's head, squirts flea treatment on cat.
DAUGHTER: What's that, Daddy?
FATHER: That's the kitten's flea stuff, sweetie. Don't pet Drachma on the head because you don't want to get that on your hands, it'll make you sick.
DAUGHTER: Well that's silly, because if Drachma licks it off he'll get sick, too.
FATHER: That's why I put it on the back of his head, sweetie, because he can't lick it off the back of his head. If Daddy could lick the back of HIS head Mommy would give him all her money.
MOTHER: (Snort)
DAUGHTER: I don't get it, why would she do that?
FATHER: You'll understand when you get bigger.
MOTHER: (Snort)
Driving out of the 'hood today (finally) I caught a reminder that, yes, I do live in a college town:
Kinda makes the ordinary snowman and his little carrot look like brine shrimp, no?
Seems like a thousand years ago I would have taken the time and effort to construct this sort of magnificent snow-herm. But I would have, sadly, because college guys do shit like this.
Today the thaw has begun. In drips and runnels, the mighty Shaft of Snow melts away like every other symbol of male pride, beaten down by time and the hard light of day. Tomorrow the Pride - or is it the Shame - of North Portland will be just another wet spot.
Apparently this poor woman's vintage LP album cover has become something of a recent Internet sensation.
One suspects that Ms. Gruebbersolvik's native tongue was not English and that neither she nor her record label had enough familiarity with English idiom to understand the smutty implications of the translation of her album title.
Simply proving, once again, that while a filthy mind can be a handicap at times it can also help prevent embarrassing gaffes and bevues such as this.
Sex dreams and now this. Lechery, lechery, wars and lechery. Nothing else holds fashion, I kid you not...
Anyway.
To begin with, my parents were of the school of parenting that believed that innocence was bliss.
I think I didn't even know that there were expressions inadmissible in polite company until high school at the earliest. Even after that my profanity was not convincing until the U.S. Army taught me to swear and then some.
I now have some considerable experience with the subject and have become through experience a thorough believer in the notion that the more you know - and, in many cases, the sooner - the wiser and more judicious you will be in your selection and employment of the rougher forms of the English language.
Because swearing and cursing, like any other form of speech, have a form and a style and an elegance to them when done correctly. And it is well for a person to do things, any thing, with form, style, and elegance.
Even invective.
But.
There is also an element of discretion involved.
If you are ignorant of the language then oftimes you will be oblivious when it is used, or misused, by others. It has always seemed to me that having someone on staff with a reasonably filthy mind is essential to avoiding errors such as this one:
Wanna bet Cathy got a whole bunch of smartass remarks after that header appeared on her column? Especially with the little smirky-face picture above it? And all because nobody on the "Examiner"'s editorial staff looked at that and chuckled "Eat out Catherine Cleary, hunh? I'll bet..." Derp.
I'm not sayin' you have to be filthy.
But it doesn't hurt to know about filthy. All's I'm saying.
Posted (almost) without comment, the images released with Playtex's "Fresh + Sexy Wipes" ad campaign:
Don't have a beaver? How 'bout this, then, you dirty boy:
And we know how much you like that plump, juicy, delicious peach...
So you mean the whole time the secret to getting all that freaky action was to carry around a pack of those fruity-smelling baby wipe things to swab my junk with? Christ on a crutch, how come nobody told me that when my kids were still in goddamn diapers?!?
I...I...there's really no words for this that these gawdawful ads don't say, is there?
So the Peeper and I are watching "The Empire Strikes Back" for, like, the four zillionth time the other day. He loves it, I'm willing to sit through it again from love of the Peep and a sort of distant affection for the impact of the originals back in the Seventies.
But, I have to admit, the daddy mind wanders a bit.
It doesn't help that I still remember having a bit of a thing for the actress Carrie Fisher back in the day.
So I was sitting there watching Princess Leia suddenly get a tingle of her Force power and (being male and post-pubescent) thinking about Carrie, and the Force, and consequently thinking about sex. In particular, thinking: "Y'know, if I could suddenly manipulate stuff with my mind, the hell with throwing stuff at evil Sith Lords or manipulating weak-minded minions. We'd be talking really, really, really. Great.Sex."
You can't tell me that G. Lucas didn't think about that, too. The guy put Fisher in a totally gratuitous metal bikini in his last decent Star Wars flick (and, when you think about it, what decent flicks HAS the guy directed since the first SW epic? He's a pretty tragic story, when you think about it.)
But so far the sexual innuendo in the lightsaber-and-droid milieu is pretty anemic. Probably good, in that Mister Peep is way excited about the new season of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" coming up in a couple of weeks. He's all about gunships and blasters. But I'm going to have a hard time watching smart-alec teen jedi Ahsoka Tano without a smirk until this whole notion wears off.
Lechery, lechery, Star Wars and lechery. Nothing else holds fashion. At least the one for the daddy and other for the Peeper. I don't know if I can handle the day he starts to fashion the former. But I do wonder...who will his Carrie Fisher be?
So I'm going through the bookcase sorting stuff to go to the Goodwill, open a hardcover novel and out flutters this.
I still remember seeing this in the store - had to be something like a pretty out-there gift shop, don't remember where - and wanting it not to send as an actual greeting card but just because I loved the image.Is it the domme's faintly pigeon-toed stance, suggesting by just a little bit of wobble on the fuck-me pumps that she's not quite as in command as she'd like you to think? (I mean, after all, she's dominating a CAT...) Is it the furious look in Bondage Kitty's eyes, promising a serious ass-scratching if he ever gets loose and NOT in a good way. Is it just the idea that the only way to get a cat to really do what you want is with whips and leather?
Dunno. But I laughed then and I laughed this afternoon when I saw it again, probably a decade after the last time I chuckled as I used it to mark my place in "Mr. Lincoln's Army" and put it away on the shelf...
Okay, I only thought I was done for the afternoon.
I'm doing slope stability analysis at the computer and fooling around looking for music and came across these.Listen to the 1932 Duke Ellington version first.
Then sample the 1974 Steely Dan cover;
Interesting, aren't they? You know what an "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" was, right? That's where you stopped on the way home from work to tear off a piece with one of the rental girls down at the local speakeasy. So the music is all about doin' the nasty on the down-low. For all that the one version is forty years younger, I think that the Depression era take is more sly and sophisticated, more insinuating, more...dirty. For all their tricky name, the Becker/Fagan cover sounds to me like nothing more then musicianship. While the Duke...daaaymn, boy. There's a fella that's thinking about something hot and sweaty...
Whaddya think?
I think it's a fucking great song either way, is what I think.
It's been a strange week here at the Fire Direction Center.
1. Migraines are scary things. In the course of 4 hours I went from being married to a strong, vital, funny, sexy, smart woman to being the servant of a blind, insensate thing that burrowed from light and sound and was barely capable of movement and coherant thought. And, of course, our friends and neighbors were terrific. "OHMIGOD!" cried Mary, a friend from daycare, "My husband had a horrible headache and it turned out to be viral meningitis!!!"Ummmm...thanks for that, Mary...
Mojo is slowly recovering, but she still says she feels "hung-over", and she was wandering around this morning in her bathrobe and sunglasses looking like a cute, buxom, white Stevie Wonder with bedhead. Thank God the little peeps have been wonderfully gentle with mommy's "head owie", creeping quietly past the bedroom and refraining from leaping on Mommy like she was a pink bouncy house with legs like they usually do.
Oh, just so you know - the "anti-migraine knife"? The migraine part was a hollow handle with camphor in it, a 19th Century specific for headache. I don't think it was bad enough for...naaah.
2. I can't imagine anything that speaks as eloquently of the destitution of the political life in this, the last stages of our Republic, as the "debates" our candidates have been having.
The Palin-Biden "debate" was a joke, what with the utter incompetence of Gwen Ifil to ask anything of substance or follow up on anything else, particularly Palin's blatant refusal to answer questions on subects that she should have been prepared for but clearly knew nothing about.
But the two presidential sideshows have been ridiculous, too, with the parade of talking points and unrefuted spin and outright lies - albeit mostly from the now-desperate McCain, looking ever more like a whacked out bus station psycho missing his meds - that served, possibly, to inform someone who managed to completely miss the preceding nine months of campaigning.
That these pathetic freak shows have been accepted as a legitimate part of the campaign is a telling observation on the barrenness of our national discourse. Its one thing to be lied to by fools. Its quite another thing to demand that you be lied to and treated like a fool. Another thing entirely.
3. And, speaking of loathesome campaign bullshit,
I can't believe that Sarah Palin's "John McCain knows how to win a war" wasn't treated as a laugh line.
Last time I checked, when the enemy shoots you down, they are generally conceded to have "won" that particular encounter. Got it? You shoot them, you won. They shoot you, they won. So by cratering that rice paddy with his aircraft, John McCain did about as much to "win" the war he fought in as George B. MacClellan. But I suppose that you could stretch the incident to represent McCain's having done his bit to take out a $40,000 North Vietnamese antiaircraft missile by...ummm...flying his $2.5 million dollar aircraft into it.
Reminds me of the throwaway bit in the original Rocky where Mick (Burgess Meredith) notices that Rocky has a chintzy new pre-fight dressing gown with an enormous meat packing logo on the back,
and asks what his fighter got for being a walking shill for his brother-in-law's employer.
"I got duh robe" mumbles Rocky
Meredith looks at him with a saddened, pitying expression, and, in that perfect sarcastic gravelly Meredith voice sneers: "Shrewd..."
4. Why are so many Hollywood movies so dopey? At home with Mojo Monday I caught about half of "The Truth About Cats and Dogs". Now I have to confess having something of a thing for Janeane Garofalo; I love her smart, snarky sense of humor and her dark, smouldering intense beauty.
I can't think of a man who WOULDN'T at least give her a moment's attention at a bare minimum. But for the entire picture to work she has to come off as a completely insecure dummy who won't level with Ben Chaplin (who plays the required hunk) about who she really is. The picture is clever and has a bunch of funny moments and Janeane is utterly, deliciously oofy, but that just made it all the more irritating because of the hokey premise.
When Steve Martin made his version of Cyrano at least he had the excuse of the freakish nose. But Garofalo is a luminous delight. The plot's insistence on her insecurity and fear makes her look stupid, and it's hard to be sympathetic with a dope. You just want to shake her character, and that, for me, just kills the picture.
5.
While we're on the subject of Hollywood and movies that don't tax your brain, Turner Classic ran a 1951 gem called "Take Care of My Little Girl", in which we are introduced to the lovely and frivolous "Liz Ericson", played by one of my more favorite classic Hollywood actresses, Jeanne Crain.
Callow Liz goes off to MiddleWestern U. because...well, a less kindly fellow might suspect it's to earn her "MRS" degree. Because she must, must, must pledge "Tri-U", the sisters of Upsilon Upsilon Upsilon being ONLY the most socially desirable, best dressed and popular girls on campus.
Oh, and they sing.
Of course, our little heroine's eyes are opened by the petty and vicious acts of her "sisters" and she ends up in the arms of "Joe" (Dale Robertson), the handsome senior who represents what my father, good Phi Kappa Psi that he is, would have called a "GDI". She returns her pledge pin and rejects the shallow, immoral lifestyle of the Greeks, with their chichi styles and their singing. Oh. Did I mention they sing?
Anyway, Jeanne is lovely, Robertson is manly, the slinky Jean Peters is delightful as the Eeeeevil Queen Bee of the Tri-Us (expand the picture above to really appreciate Jean's comittment to authenticity in her pictures: the shot is a publicity still from her first feature, the utterly awful "Captain from Castile". As terrible as the picture is, Jean is terrific, and note the genuine 16th Century leg hair on Jean - she's wild and positively woolly. And this in the Fifties, mind you, when it was every American woman's duty to shave, pull, depilate, slash and burn every single exposed follicle - God forbid that one of the Mad Men or Cocktail Nation Weenies got the idea that women had, y'know, like, actual body hair!) and the whole thing is good campy fun on the way to being a "scathing indictment" of the campus Greek system.
So "Take Care of My Little Girl" is a total hoot without being as irritatingly dumb as "TTAC&D". Catch it if you can.
6. It's sad to admit, but when it comes to pumpkin pie, the recipe I still like the best is on the inside of the freaking Carnation evaporated milk can.
It's a goddam 1950's artifact (and evaporated milk has got to be the Devil's diaper gravy, anyway, right?) and combined with frozen pie crust has GOT to be bad for you. But I love the stuff. It's memories of childhood autumns in Chicago with the cold wind whirling the fallen leaves outside, cider and pumpkin spices and a warm woolen blanket and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on the black-and-white TV inside.
None of my kids or Mojo likes the orange squash as pie. So I am forced to make the whole thing and eat it myself.
Sad, really. But in a good way.
7. Cats must have very odd little minds. Nitty has been sitting next to the laptop (enjoying the hot fan exhaust, I suspect) licking herself with concentrated effort for a solid ten minutes. And yet, I've seen her unable to do the same thing for more than a second or two. It's like there are two cat brains in there; one with an infinite patience and painstaking attention to detail, the other like a dandelion puffball. You never know which one is in charge at any given moment.
8. I wish that all those ads using scantily clad, painfully thin women to sell stuff would just come right out and say what they want you to think will happen if you buy their crap. Like this (Warning - NOT safe for work!):
Note that the original image went viral on the Internet, long story. But is this all that much skeevier than one of those commercials where the guy puts on the cologne or takes the "male enhancement" or gets the new car or whatever and is suddenly attacked by women who want to have his babies?
I think that Mennen or Enzyte or Accura should just do a spot that has a naked woman rubbing their product on her body (difficult with the Accura,I know, but bear with me) as the voice-over says: "Our product will make women have sex with you, regardless of how disgusting you are." Fade to black.
No shit, if I was 16, I'd have gone out and robbed a bank to buy an Accura. Robbed a fucking bank. I'm totally serious.
9.
Why is rain so enjoyable to watch and soothing to hear, yet the moment you're caught out in it, it sucks enormous pipe?
Oh, and, for the record? When we set out the new rain barrel, Mojo looked it over and noted the attachment to feed a second barrel in series. "Who needs two rain barrels?" she quipped.
Second day of rain?
Barrel's full.
10. I finally got to watch the last half of the U.S. Women's National Team vs. Brazil in the Olympic gold medal game. Tragic. Tragic. I usually love Julie Foudy as a color commentator, but for this game I kept hearing her going on and on about what a back-and-forth game it was, and how the U.S.'s grit and will to win were keeping the game so close and kept I looking at the screen and thinking, Loudy, you have GOT to stop drinking sterno, it makes you babble and you can't see for shit.The Samba Gals knocked us on our ass, and only inhumanly great goalkeeping and pure damn luck kept them from winning in regulation time. The U.S. lost the game in the 71st minute only Hope Solo stuck out a hand. For 90 minutes the Brazilians were robbed, denied, unrewarded for their great play...soccer can be a cruel game sometimes, and this was one of the times.
There were two teams on the field that night two months ago, a good team and a great team and they both won a medal. But the team that won the gold wasn't the great team and the medal the great team won wasn't the gold.
Extra Credit. I couldn't resist: here's our own Doctor Farley, "accredited Apocalypse Specialist", to help us through the coming economic hard times. Hat tip to Bob Lefarkins of Lawyers, Guns and Money. Ahem:
Dear Dr. Farley,
In view of the impending financial distress, I'm worried about my cats. Should I stock up on cat food, or will it be available in post-apocalypse America?
Thanks,
Worried in Dubuque
Dear Worried in Dubuque,
No. You should concentrate on stocking up on firearms, clean water, and canned goods. Cat food will most certainly not be available in post-apocalypse America; any housecats will only be a drain on your resources. Your cats should be eaten at the first opportunity, followed by the eating of any surplus cat food. Most such food is edible by humans, and while you may be tempted to "fatten up" your cats, much of the energy in the cat food is lost when its eaten by the cat.
Yike!
But, hey - my wife is Christmas shopping. Christmas! Shopping! In October! And has rearranged the interior of the refrigerator! What does this mean? Is it the Apocalypse? Is she bored out of her skull after having been home sick for a week? Are they the same thing?
Since I seem to be on a cartoon thing lately, here's one of the more luscious animated cinema dames in the past twenty years. Ladies and gentlemen...Miss Jessica Rabbit...Wonderful, salacious rendition of one of the great jazz standards. Of course, having Kathleen Turner sing for you is always a Good Thing. Someday I'll get around to talking about the babes of animated film going back to Tex Avery's Red (and, of course, Bugs Bunny in drag...)
As a rather bland counterpoint, here's Peggy Lee doing the same tune with Benny Goodman and his orchestra:Ain't the same song, izzit?
