A Summer Smoker Underground

1) From After School Snack comes this link. I called the art gallery and they have some of the books left, I think I’m gonna call back and have them sent to me. I love art that assaults my senses. That’s why I love Rene Magritte. And Bruegel. And…and….

2) And speaking of senses, I’m trying to find a ‘hook’ for a ‘book’. Hear me out…Sergei and I watched the movie "Everything is Illuminated" and really enjoyed it. The movie is based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer. I paged through the free preview pages on Amazon and saw that the ‘hook’ (SPOILER) is that the book is written by a Russian who’s learning English with the help of a thesaurus. So his language is in the ballpark, but comes out sounding, er, slanted sometimes. I just ordered the book (yesh, I’m a sucker for free preview pages) and should get it in a couple days. It reminded me of another favourite book of mine, “Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess. A good friend in college loaned it to me, and I gushed so much about it that he ended up GIVING it to me. (SPOILER) “Clockwork Orange” is written in a sort of bastardized Russian-ish language called Nadsat (and comes complete with dictionary in the back!). I love that. I love that I have to WORK at it. (This doesn’t apply to everything…if reading the local paper took me that much work, I’d head down to their offices with a crowbar and teach them a thing or two about ‘readership’. But I digest.) So now my goal is to write ‘The Great American Paperback’ with a ‘hook’…something that the critics will go “AH! Wunderbar!”, and that will sell millions of copies and that Oprah will beg me to be on her show but which I will politely decline but will do some sort of film-montage of my life that she can show to her audience and they will all go, “AH! Wunderbar!”, before Oprah gives them all copies of my book and new SUVs.

3) Donald Fagen has haunted my dreams, dammit. I went to sleep singing one of his songs and woke up singing a different one of his songs. I’ve got two of his cds and one Steely Dan here at work today, and I plan to ignore the programmers today to concentrate on Don’s fine lyrical stylings.

4) This is how boring my life has become…Target is having a sale! And I’m EXCITED BEYOND BELIEF! And apparently capitalizing (aka shouting) way too much in my blogging.

5) Helpful Hint: If the cat barfs in the basement, and both you and your spouse ignore it long enough, not only will it stop smelling, but it’ll harden to the consistency of sandstone, hence making it easier to throw away.

6) I’m now The Coach’s Wife. Sergei’s heading up both the Boy-child’s and the Girl-child’s baseball teams this summer. Which, actually, makes me pretty randy. (And I will refrain as much as I can from joking about being a 'ball-handler'. Oops, guess there was no refraining, was there?)

7) I really hope Al Gore's documentary makes a huge buzz. A huge splash. I still have a geek-politico crush on him after Al was on the cover of Rolling Stone with what appeared to be a summer sausage in his trousers. Yeah, baby, talk dirty to me, tell me about global warming, stud….