dry air in a sea of frozen water

It is so incredibly cold here, which is fine by me, but it's playing havoc with my skin. This is something new to me; since losing over 80 pounds, I now seem to have dry skin issues and comparatively little fat to cushion the blow of subzero windchill and low relative humidity. So what's an itchy girl to do? Hydrate from within, and use some kind of skin oil. And because it's me, I'm here with way TMI on the latter, because maybe you care, or have a similar issue?

Here beginneth the chronicle of this quest. 

Almond oil: great. Smells vaguely like cherries, which makes sense, since the two are from the same family. Absorbs with minimal effort. Not as cheap as some, but way less expensive than others, and applied right out of the shower, it's dandy.

Amla oil: also known as Indian gooseberry oil, which to my mind is not necessarily more explanatory. Smells good. Feels light. Absorbs well. Does nothing for my hands to speak of. Works great on dry hair. Not too heavy, not too light.

Avocado oil: smells strange, looks pretty, sits on top of the skin and feels, um, oily. Which it feels rather petty to gripe about. It's expensive, as salad oil goes. You can skip it.

Babassu oil: smells okay. A bit on the heavy side. Hard to find. You feel like a goof, asking for it.

Castor oil: terrible idea. Don't go there.

Coconut oil: smells like Hawaiian Tropic. A little goes a long way. Solidified at room temperature, but turns liquid right in your hands, like magic. Absorbs fairly quickly. Induces an overwhelming urge to eat popcorn. Perks your hair right up, if you have dry hair, but extremely difficult to wash out. Hint: rub shampoo into hair and scrunge it around in there before getting your hair wet. Then it will come out. Otherwise, you're kind of hosed.

Crisco oil: forget it. Useless. Attempted this in the name of completism.

Huile de Corps from Clarins: pretty good. Has an almost indescribable scent...a little like soybean oil, a little like lotus oil, has an undertone of vanilla, but not the vanilla of a gourmand perfume like Pink Sugar...more that almost burnt-rubber scent you get in the basenotes of Shalimar. Excellent on thin skin, like the neck and the tops of your legs.

Jojoba oil: not bad. Allegedly as close as you can come to your own natural skin oils. Smells a little hinky.

Nuxe Huile Prodigieuse: it's fine. More expensive than it needs to be. Smells like Neutrogena soap. Absorbs after 30 or 40 seconds of massage.

Rodin Olio Lusso: good. Spendy. Best in class w/r/t absorbency. Smells like jasmine, as in JASMINE, as in "like you repeatedly got hit in the side of the head with a bunch of jasmine." Those of you who are perfumery geeks like me may recall that this is not necessarily a good thing, since it's a massively indolic scent...which is to say, to those of you who are not, that it bears more than a passing resemblance to mothballs, a little like putrefaction, and is detectable in the odor of feces. Which is not to say that it smells like poo...it's more complicated than that. But it is a deep, vaguely rotting, almost beefy scent. Kind of like the scent you sometimes get in a kitchen in a dodgy French apartment: like something's gone off, but you can't quite tell what it is. So. That being said, if you like JASMINE being shouted at you and you have the cash, this is one outstanding oil.

Rosehip oil: a little bit more viscous than I'm happy with. Smells neutral. Doesn't have a lot of slip to it.

Safflower oil: okay. Cheap. Good slip. Takes a while to absorb. No discernable scent.

Santal oil from Clarins: terrific. Smells good, if you like sandalwood. Absorbs immediately, feels good, keeps things from cracking. Findable at TJMaxx if the bargain gods are with you.

Shea butter (liquified): not bad at all. Requires a lot of kneading and working into the skin. Lasts through multiple washes.

Vitamin E: terrible. Sticky. Never absorbs. Creepy, actually...tugs at your skin.

Wintergreen oil: horrible idea. Never do this. You will want to cut your hands off and run screaming into the night because they will burn like mad. Also, you will smell like Pepto-Bismol for a week.

So...there you go. Saved you a little time and a lot of heartache. Go with the almond for cheaps and the Olio Lusso for extravagance, and the Clarins Santal to split the difference. I wish you all smooth, undisastrously cracked sides of fingers, and a good night.




A Microscopic Cog in a Catastrophic Plan by Laura Lorson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at witheringexhaustion.blogspot.com.

makeup for the cosmetically challenged

So I'm sitting here in my house, not particularly compelled to a)clean b)cook c)knit d)read e)watch football, so I have belatedly recalled that yes, I do have a blog...and no, I haven't written for it in something like a year, so I'm combining this chore with another: the annual winnowing-out of the appalling amount of makeup I collect. Thought I'd write some reviews, in case you are remotely like me, and strangely compelled to purchase such things without the faintest idea if they work. So allow me to edify you, allow me to save you some money, and allow me to tell you that there are, in fact, some things you can't live without. Men: you, too should pay some attention here. I have seen some pretty grim looks on people of the XY persuasion on TV recently. Like it would kill you guys to use some bronzer once in a while? Anyway, here we go.

Primers: These are, without a doubt, the greatest advance in makeup technology in the last 20 years. But there are a zillion of them, and every single one...if you are to read the Interwebs...is the best. There actually are some differences and uses for some and not others. Basically, they are silicone-based goop that you put on prior to makeup application that makes the makeup stay put.
Category I: face primers. Best whole-face primer: Spackle, by Laura Geller cosmetics. This stuff is great. Smooths out the lines, fills in the creases, makes your foundation stay put, kills shine dead. Now, people are pretty much evangelical about Smashbox PhotoFinish primer, but I think it's too thin and too silicone-y. The Laura Mercier primer is kind of meh, and overpriced. Spackle ain't cheap, but it lasts forever and it comes in a nifty pump. And it works. I kid you not. I tend to only use this, though, for when I need to do a full-metal-jacket whole-face TV-oriented or "big deal evening out" makeup. It's sort of overkill for every day.

Category II: trouble spot primers. Best in class: Primed and Poreless by Too Faced cosmetics. Lightly tinted, sucks up oil, looks natural if you don't want to wear a full-scale, buffed-out foundation+powder over it. Also, it's fairly cheap for what you get. You only need about a pea-sized amount to do what you need to. No, seriously, you'll be tempted to use more because it's awesome, but if you use too much it will clump up and look kind of...well, like you have some sort of communicable disease. Runner-up: Jemma Kidd mannequin skin complexion enhancer. Kind of pearlized, but not too much. Stays put, mattifies, and is available at Target. A little pricey for what you get. But it's pretty good. Second runner-up: "that gal" brightening face primer by Benefit. Does what it is supposed to do, is a pale pink, looks okay but is better for people who are 1)vampire pale and 2) under 40. You look a little goofy trying to be all dewy-skinned and such when you are toting 40-ish years of disappointments, hangovers and sundry unfortunate incidents under your belt.

Category III: eyelid primers. Make your eye shadow stay on and render it crease-proof. Laura's choice: not a primer at all, actually, but gets the job done: MAC Paint Pot eyeshadow in the shade "Painterly." Put it on first, smooth it out, brightens up the eye, eyeshadow sticks to it like nobody's business and you never get creases. You can just put it on by itself and instantly look like you have had about 5 hours more sleep than you got. Now, I need to throw in here that my sister Amy, whose experience with eye makeup makes me look like a rank amateur, is all about Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion. I tried it once and it made my eyelids itch...which is about par for the course with me. I have insanely sensitive eyes. But she swears by the UDEPP, and really, you'll have to take my word for this, she knows what she's talking about. So if you don't have super-sensitive eyes, this stuff is very good, according to someone who knows. My runner up in this category is Shadow Insurance from Too Faced, which I like but seems to run out of gas after about 6 hours. On the other hand, it does not make my eyelids itch, so there's that.

Category IV: eyelash primers. For years, I wondered what the heck was up with me and my strange, impermeable and apparently Teflon-coated eyelashes. I couldn't make any mascara stay put. Waterproof mascara was no match for my eyes. The mascaras that you put on and they turn into little tubes of goo on your lashes? Nope. Slid right off. So I was not much of a mascara-wearer, until I got this TV gig and I had to tell the makeup people that this mascara business? wasn't gonna work on me. And they said, "oh, that happens to everyone. Here, use this." And they gave me some eyelash primer. And the rest, as they say, is history. Best in class: Blinc Lash Primer. You can get it at Beauty Brands or Sephora or Ulta. Big beauty stores tend to have it. Cheap, works great, cute packaging. Done deal. Runner-up: Lorac lash primer. Harder to find, slightly more expensive. Still works great. Forget anything you find in CVS of Walgreens claiming to be a lash primer. Never works. Never.

Well, I could go on like this all day, but I'll cut to the chase, basically letting you know what I'm keeping, out of this mountain of products, because it works. Everything else? Buh-bye. I don't want to end up on an episode of "Hoarders," having collapsed under a mountain of old cosmetics.

Best undereye moisturizer: La Prairie cellular contour eye cream. Upside: actually works to make your wrinkles less crepey and firms up the skin under your eyes. This, I find, makes LPCCEC unique amongst eye creams. Lasts 2 or 3 months, as a little goes a very long way. Downside: costs as much as a good king-size down comforter. Doesn't come in a pump, which is more sanitary and all. Second choice: Avalon Organics Coenzyme Q10 Cellular Renewing Wrinkle Defense. Upside: works okay, moisturizes well, though it's no LPCCEC. Comes in a pump, doesn't make my horribly sensitive eyes sting at all, smells like lavender, is under 20 bucks (!) and you can get it at either your co-op or an grocery store with a good health-foods section. Downside: is not LPCECC. Not particularly good at reducing wrinkles, but at least you're making an effort.
Undereye moisturizers that sting my eyes and/or do not appear to either reduce wrinkles or moisturize? Olay Pro-X. Garnier Nutritioniste. ROC Retinol Undereye Cream. Neutrogena Wrinkle Defense. Clarins Eye Serum. Lancome Eye Serum. Elizabeth Arden Eye Serum. La Mer. Clinique Repairwear Undereye. Estee Lauder Eye Serum. Aveda Tourmaline Eye Cream. Lumene Undereye Cream. Seriously, you get the picture. I've tried about every drugstore cream and a lot of dept. store brands. If you have a question about one, call me -- I've probably tried it at some point. The two I recommended are the only two that ever didn't make my try to claw my eyes out or induce horrible red puffiness (or, for those of you new to cosmetics: "do the diametric opposite of what undereye cream is supposed to do").
Best expensive foundation: Chanel. People go on and on about the Laura Mercier but I am not a fan...I think it's too sticky and never really sets well. If you have 50 bucks to blow on foundation, go with the Chanel Teinte Illumineé.
Best midrange foundation: MakeUp For Ever Mat Velvet. Looks great. Stays put. Good range of colors...I think if you are male and have been asked to appear on TV, you should consider getting some of this stuff. Really blends well.
Best drugstore foundation: The late, lamented Revlon Skinlights. It was discontinued. Revlon PhotoFinish is pretty good, as is Sally Hansen Inspired by Carmindy liquid foundation. I'm really pale, and they both have pale enough shades that don't turn out yellow on my skin. Most other drugstore foundations' palest shades are too dark for me.
Best loose translucent powder: Laura Mercier.
Concealer: Amazing Cosmetics Amazing Concealer. Best I've ever used, by a mile. Expensive, but lasts forever. 2nd-best: Benefit's Erase Paste in shade No.1. Under no circumstances should you ever use CoverGirl or Almay concealers. They do not, in a word, conceal. Plus, they have that dopey doe's-foot applicator. Don't use it. Put on the concealer and then repeatedly tap it into your skin, don't smear. It won't stay put very well, but if you're in a bind (i.e., on your way to the prom, need something right now for under five bucks, and you happen to be at Wal-Mart), it will do for an hour or so.
Best pressed powder: Chantecaille, in Very Light. Hard to find, but is great.
Best bronzer: Trish McEvoy. Go with Bronze #1. If you don't like this, try the St. Tropez Mousse Bronzer in the lightest shade. Bonus: has SPF 15 in it.
Best powder blush: Trish McEvoy in Barely There.
Best creme blush: Dream Mousse by Maybelline in Soft Plum. Stays put all day!
Best lip stain: BeneTint original (don't be suckered into the PosieTint! It is way too pale -- I gave it to a friend for her daughters to play with. )
Best lip balm: well, this is embarrassing but I make it myself. It's a shea-butter lip balm. If you want some, ask me. I don't like commercial lip balms at all.
Best lipstick: True Red - Chanel's Star Red, with MAC Russian Red getting an honorable mention. Pink - MAC Petals and Peacocks (English rose pink), MAC Girl About Town (magenta-ish) or American Beauty Very Pink (true pink, blue undertone). Coral-pink: La Prairie Rose Bronze (beware! $$$$) or Maybelline Sweet Nectar (like, about 300% cheaper, looks about the same). Mauve: Aveda Nourish-Mint Lipstick in Sugar Apple.
Best eyeliner: Bobbi Brown gel eyeliner in Cobalt or Plum.
Best drugstore eyeliner: LÓreal Telescopic in Waterproof Ultra-Black.
Best mascara: Maybelline Lash Discovery. Here's the thing about mascara -- you really ought to throw it away every 3 months or so, so it makes no sense to buy expensive mascara. If you use primer, any kind really will get the job done. Runner up: Physician's Formula Lash Enhancer.
Totally useless? Neutrogena Lashtint. Totally overrated? Great Lash. That stuff looks horrible on me and is gloppy and goes all over the place. But if you love it, good on ya. Let me know, 'cause I keep buying it and then throwing it away, and I might as well give it to you.
Best expensive mascara that I will use if I win the lottery? Fresh Cosmetics Firebird Mascara in Charcoal Grey. Best free sample mascara ever? Fresh Cosmetics Supernova Mascara in Jet Black. They frequently will give you samples of this at Macy's. Just sayin'.

Well, that's all I have the energy for at the moment. More cosmetic trivia anon, plus a discussion of perfume. In the meantime, happy November. Talk to you soon.








A Microscopic Cog in a Catastrophic Plan by Laura Lorson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at witheringexhaustion.blogspot.com.

the military-industrial-entertainment complex

hey there, hi there, ho there -- I just realized that I have been HORRIBLY lax about updating this, so here's the short version.

The store moved.

Kelly broke some bones by falling off a ladder.

I had a terrible case of poison ivy.

I broke a toe.

There was one day where Finnegan would not stop barfing. The solution, according to a vet, was to feed him some cough medicine. This led to Finnegan not stopping barfing, and now barfing in a vivid, Technicolor red. We are still working on getting the carpets back to normal.

My sister had a baby. It is a girl. Her name is Emerson.

I am going to enter the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

I got the flu. I think it was H1N1, but that may just be wishful thinking, because it seems more daring.

I recovered from the flu.

I made apple butter, pumpkin butter, elderberry tincture, and Danish. (These were not all part of the same recipe.)

People were apparently tortured during the Bush Administration by being forced to listen to music including Metallica, Britney Spears and the BeeGees. In short -- the Bush Administration would have apparently saved money and time by locking their detainees at my house. There would have been no waterboarding, and I could have tried out my Pillsbury BakeOff recipes on them.

I continue to be mystified by pretty much everything.

A Microscopic Cog in a Catastrophic Plan by Laura Lorson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at witheringexhaustion.blogspot.com.

the quiet summer symphony of cicadas and tree frogs

It's hot here in Jefferson County, which is actually a phrase that any number of people in pretty much any state in the union could be writing right now. I've been feeling kind of beaten-down by life lately, and keep hanging on to the idea that come autumn, things will be better. I'm not much of a fan of summer. I have never liked the humid heat, which is unfortunate, given that I have never lived anywhere that the two don't go hand-in-hand. Still, I get a little nostalgic for my childhood when the temperatures rise and I find myself in a room that's just a little too hot to be comfortable. When I was a kid, I would sit in my (generally sweltering) room and read, or listen to the radio, and convince myself that if I could just lay as still as possible, the heat wouldn't be so bad. Another thing that conjures up "heat" for me is hearing any song by Little Willie John, or anything from the series of records called "Oldies But Goodies," of which my father had about 10. So in short, anything on Ace or Roulette or Chess, old rock and roll of the Huey "Piano" Smith school -- all of this conjures up maddening, stifling heat and the orange-gold light of early-evening, the kind that cinematographers wait for all day and is flattering to everyone, even when you're caked with sweat and grime and one more day's failures to be brilliant, world-altering, and compassionate.
I've been playing with the dogs this evening, who are also not summertime fans, and this makes me feel better. It makes me think that it is not the fault of the hyper-critical, rational mindset I have always had that makes me hate the weather. I made some peach tea, and took a book outside to read, where it's just this side of stifling, listening to the sun set. Autumn will come soon enough, I suppose, and then winter, then spring. These things that seem awful now will eventually become stories filled with asides about my own intemperance and foible, and I will forget that it was as bad as it currently seems. When I come inside, I can hear the tree frogs singing in four-part counterpoint, and I forget that just minutes ago, I was outside and couldn't hear them at all over the noise of my own brain. Distance and time are gifts.

enough already with the confessing! freundlaven!

Unquestionably, this will mean more to those of you who were fans of Animaniacs. "Commence with the screaming and running and the hair-pulling and the freundlaven!" being the signature of the Animaniacs' Jerry Lewis auteur-like feller. "Freundlaven! Flamiel! HOYL! How'd you...with the going...you were there...but here now...you are...for me to see...how'd you do..."

Anyway, seriously, Mark Sanford? You were just kind of sadly, weirdly pathetic the other day (what with the hubris and the talking and the schlockiness ...freundlaven!) but now you are squicking me out. Enough with the Argentina and the mistress and the Harlequin Romance-inspired monologues. HOYL! You make me want to put my fingers in my ears and chant "lalalalalalalala"until you go. Away.

Not romantic. Gross. If I were that Jenny Sanford (re: Mark Sanford:"I'm going to try to fall back in love with my wife"), I'd say, "wow, that's really big of you, but please don't put yourself out. You derivative, soap-opera watchin', two-timin', tango-dancin' self-consciously self-serving piecea poo."

you've got to get it right while you've got the time

Tonight, the world's all agog with the news about Michael Jackson, and I myself am not sure how to feel about it. I think this is a watershed moment, actually, kind of like when Elvis died. A hinge moment, I think they call it. A tipping point. I mean, Elvis was about the dawn of a new kind of youth culture, an engineered kind of celebrity, a tale of promise gone to success gone to seed. He started out as a marginally talented kid who got rounded up by some hucksters who realized that the time was ripe for something new, something different, a little bit dangerous and ultimately all about sex...and the denial of its power, even as it was being flaunted in this sort of creepy, underage way. Elvis and his crack team of handlers went about it by merging black and white music, and that was also the genius of Quincy Jones and MJ, successfully emasculating and white-ifying funk on the dance floor...though I will unkindly point out that while Elvis was about a figurative merger of black and white, MJ took things a little farther than people were comfortable with, given the whole "gradually becoming white"/"maybe it's vitiligo"/ "plastic surgery addiction" thing.

Anyway. Elvis dying was an end of an era, and a moment when people about the age I am now stopped for a moment and thought, "oh, I really liked him when I was a kid." It got to be one big mortality-check for people just on the cusp of middle age. But you know, the Elvis death stopped everyone for a moment, and people all rushed to Graceland and started this whole (to my mind) odd thing where you leave candles and teddy bears and flowers and such to rot in front of some random place, as though the places themselves are magical and mystical and somehow imbued with the dearly-departed's spirit. I myself think that there was more of the spirit of Elvis embedded in the walls of Sun Studios. Anyhow, I see this kind of continuum, this kind of arc of the Cult of Celebrity, maybe beginning with Elvis, reaching its apogee with Princess Diana, and then, perhaps, just perhaps, ending here, with the sad news today about this poor kid from Gary who was turned into a moneymaking machine, who never got the chance to really create any kind of self outside what the public decided he was supposed to be. I think the weirdness displayed by MJ in the last 10 years fed on itself -- that was how he got publicity, it was how he stayed in the public eye, and being used to the star-maker machinery of the 70s and 80s, that was all he really knew how to do. The new, faster, frankly more vicious celebrity machine of the here and now was something he didn't know how to cope with, I think.
But maybe this will be the thing that changes the paradigm. I mean, I'm not holding my breath, but you never know. The death of Elvis marked the end of the beginning of the whole created, bought-and-paid-for, mass-marketed celebrity culture. Maybe the death of Michael Jackson will mark some kind of ending of the end. Maybe now is when we've finally reached critical mass, now that the tabloid poster child for The Sickly Fascinating Odd has passed to his great reward, whatever that may be. Maybe now is the time that people quite caring about random pretty people doing random things, being famous for fame's sake. Between Jon & Kate, Spencer & Heidi, Robert & Kristen, LiLo, Paris...maybe now is the time when we're all so sick and tired of ourselves and our apparently limitless voyeurism (and our fellow-travellers' apparently limitless exhibitionism) that we can't stand it any more. Though probably not.

I was reading my friend Doug's observation that he was someplace, as the news about Michael Jackson was unfolding, and everyone was staring down at their communication devices, thumbs flying across the keys. I find this unbearably compelling, and unbearably sad. No one wants to look each other in the eyes any more at a time of startle and shock. We want to look at the screen, which is looking back into us, just like the abyss. Or maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Wouldn't be the first time. We want to know everything, we want to know it now, we're feeding the beast to the point of bursting and we still want more. We are making things worse, just when we thought that *more, more, more information* would make things all better. Someone asked me about an hour before the official death announcement came what was going on, and I went to TMZ.com for the latest news. Then I went to Twitter. What does this say? When did this happen? What's the next step? Who are we becoming?

He was a guy in over his head. He made some good records. Every time he'd go to Japan, I'd think of Don DeLillo's book "Mao II," which opens with the thought that the face of the future is the face of the frenzied mob. Ordinarily rational people started wearing red leather jackets with too many zippers so they could be more like him. He was driven mad by having the world at his feet -- a common enough tale. Like Ozymandias, King of Kings (no, not the Watchmen character). Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair.

Antoinette Perry, we salute you (with glittery hats and jazz hands)

I love the Tony Awards. I like them much better than the Oscars, which I also watch every year. The Tony Awards actually seem to matter to the theatre community...much more so than the Academy Awards do to Hollywood. Anyway, I have been a regular viewer of the Tonys (Tonies?) since my childhood. I remember

--the year the Tony Awards were broadcast from the point-of-view of Bonnie Franklin
-- learning who Bob Fosse was from the Tony Awards
-- learning who Stephen Sondheim was from the Tony Awards
-- being stunned to learn that Boyd Gaines was actually a Broadway actor more than a bit-part TV actor
--figuring out who Harold Prince is
--seeing Bernadette Peters sing with a voice like a foghorn while skipping around doing a number from "Sunday in the Park with George"
--learning that whatever it was, Broadway was something fundamentally different and more immediate than a movie

and so, for all their faults, I love the Tony Awards, and will faithfully watch, every year, just because I think this is the kind of awards show that actually OUGHT to be televised, if just to see the warmth and good humor of the Broadway community.

That is all.

to dream the impossible dream. to drive the undriveable car. to do the impossible job. to open the unopenable jar.

This week feels like it is never going to end. I am not, not, resolutely not going to discuss my job on this page, but basically, I feel like I have aged ten years in the last ten days. I am not having a good time.

Elsewhere, though, I find myself in one of those almost obsessive-compulsive feedback loops, wherein everything is going through this Man of La Mancha "impossible dream" filter. Which is to say, for those of you who are uninitiated, that mentally, everything is "the un-__________-able _______." I am drinking the undrinkable Coke Zero. I am washing the unwashable dishes. I am wearing the unwearable shoes, writing the unwritable piece, sleeping in the un-sleep-on-able bed, petting the unpettable dog. Whatever, I get on these kicks. Every now and again, one of these will strike me as completely hilarious and I'll burst out laughing. I get looks indicating that perhaps I'd be better off in a home of some kind.

Of course in my head, I hear it sung to the tune. "To eat...the uneatable pie! To pack...the unpackable box! To cook...the uncookable dinner! To mate....the unmateable socks! To feed! The! Un! Feed! A! Ble!.....DOGS!"

Whatever, it's a game and it's funny and at the moment, it's what is keeping me (what passes for) sane.

I just think it will happen, soon

I'm on a little bit of a Philip Larkin kick here, lately. Don't worry -- it will pass, and we will return you to your regularly-scheduled swooning over T.S. Eliot, William Stafford and Ted Koozer.

ods bodkins

Weird words of the day*:

logy
pumpkin
misled
ragamuffin
saturnine
whiffle
avoirdupois
reify
mugwump

* I know what they all mean. They just sound strange to me. It's weird that they wound up being English, if you know what I mean.

on watching 'willy wonka and the chocolate factory'

Okay, so I saw this film maybe 15 times as a child, as it was the "Overboard" or "Under Siege"of its day -- constantly in reruns, constantly on television. I probably have not watched it in 15 years. I just watched the first 40 minutes. I submit herewith a list of things I do not understand.

1) When exactly is this film happening? There's television, but Charlie's mother is still doing laundry in a giant cauldron with lye soap that she stirs with a giant wooden pole? No wonder they are starving to death. There's TV, there are live satellite feeds, and this woman is basing her livelihood on the odds that people somehow don't have washing machines? Or, alternatively, are lonesome for Victorian England and want to re-live the magic by sending out their laundry to her, rather than to a dry-cleaner or a commercial laundry?

2) Who is paying for all this candy in the opening "candy man" candy store scene? Are all of these children running tabs? Do their parents pay at the end of the month? If the shopkeeper is throwing taffy all over the place in giant, swooping arcs, why would he care if Charlie scooped up a piece and then ran out the door? What is this guy's shrinkage cost per month?

3) What exactly is the content of tomorrow? According to Bricusse and Newley, the songwriters, the candy man:
"can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream...separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream."
So I surmise that either tomorrow or dream is in fact at least partially dairy. The sentence implies that some component of tomorrow or a dream is sorrow, which at some point is separated, presumably because it does not taste particularly good. 100% sorrow-free cream sounds like a pretty good idea, but I'm not sure why a candy man is doing this. Is it some kind of sideline business?

4) Grandpa Joe seems like a real son of a bitch. He says "one of these days I'm going to get out of this bed and help out," yet we learn from his daughter that he has not done so in more than 20 years. GJ then states that he would do so if the floor were not so cold, a not-so-thinly-veiled dig at the daughter, who cannot adequately heat the shack in which they live.

5) The family lives in a shack, with a superannuated television, one 40-watt lightbulb, and a king-sized four-poster bed, apparently with bedlinens (which are not particularly inexpensive for king-size, but I digress). Four elderly people, two men and two women, sleep, eat, and god-knows-what-all in this bed. They never leave the bed. How exactly is there a child left in their custody? DCFS should have paid a call on these people by now.

6) They are eating, fairly regularly, something described by Charlie as "cabbage water." There is apparently no money for spices or bread to accompany this meal. Yet the grandfather mentions that he smokes tobacco. Charlie offers to pay for the tobacco. The grandfather demurs, but then his (evil? stupid?) daughter protests: "It's only a pipe a day, Dad." So she is enabling the grandfather's tobacco addiction, and is not averse to her child working at an under-the-table cash-payment-only job delivering newspapers to facilitate this?

7) Wouldn't Grandpa George, Grandma Georgina, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine be drawing SSRI disability payments? Wouldn't Charlie's mother be drawing Social Security survivor benefits after her husband died? It seems there is some mismanagement of funds taking place here that may border on the criminal.

8) Tinkers roam the streets, offering their knife-sharpening services. And this is taking place when?

9) Grandpa Joe, far from being kindly and charming, decides that despite not working...nay, not GETTING OUT OF BED for twenty years...that he would like to go see the inside of the Chocolate Factory with his grandson. His legs, however, have not atrophied, so I am assuming that at night he is getting up and exercising, or sneakily going for walks or smoking or something. It turns out that despite an initial equilibrium problem, he is actually fine enough to go on a six-hour walking tour of a facility that must, to a starving child, seem like a cruel temptation and mockery of justice. Also, he has a very nice cane, which seems a little amiss in this landscape of poverty.

10) The part about the musical lock? The woman says it's Rachmaninoff? It's not. It's Beethoven. It's the opening of Fidelio.

10) WW&tCF was made in 1971. Amnesty International was founded in 1961. I am skeptical of their silence on the Oompa-Loompa question.

I had to quit watching then, because I was getting too annoyed. Also? Bricusse and Newley? Argh. Who thought this was a good idea?

the peculiar comfort of lowered expectations

thank you Royals -- you're .500, that is all, repeat ALL, I ask of you.

kyle farnsworth

well, that was 4.5 million dollars well-spent. PHILO Farnsworth would have known better than to pitch Thome straight up the middle on 2-and-1 in the bottom of the eighth, and he died in 1971.

Another fabulous season of Royals baseball awaits.

rule 6.05

Okay, so another baseball season is upon us, for which I am profoundly, humbly grateful, and I'm the kind of person who actually DOES keep score at home, plays rotisserie-league baseball and loves the ever-lovin' heck out of the game, and I swear, I just don't get the infield fly rule. I have had it explained to me and it always makes sense at the time, and then I try later to remember what it is and it's beyond me. Kind of like general relativity, or Fermat's last theorem -- I get this quick flash of complete comprehension, like the green flash on the sea at sunset, and then it's gone.

Anyway, the advent of baseball always makes me feel good, cozy and quiet inside, secure in the knowledge that on any given evening from April through September, I can hunker down with a radio and listen to a game, announced in a way that leaves room for daydreaming and breathing and seeing the whole game, all complete, just like Einstein field equations, now that I'm thinking of it. Maybe that's what I like about baseball -- the game of Euclid, the game of angles, the game of grassgreen and chalkwhite and stripes mown into the outfield -- it changes the way you see things, if just for a couple (or three or four or if it's an AL/NL matchup, five) hours.

It's still not gonna reconcile me to the designated hitter, though.

In other news: a woman I work with wears a perfume made with heliotrope. I mentioned it to her, saying how it was unusual, and she had no idea what I was talking about. She said she thought it smelled like roses. Which it most certainly does NOT. Whatever, if that's what she thinks it is, and she likes it, I suppose to her it does indeed smell as sweet, no matter the name. I just want to know how you get up past the age of 20 and have never smelled what a rose smells like. Which, for the record, is not like heliotrope, not at all.

Oh, well. This is where complex, elegant rules like those in baseball would be useful in the workplace. I say, "nice heliotrope perfume, that's really unusual" and my co-worker says "it's not heliotrope, it's roses, what is wrong with you?" I could defer to the umpire, who in the absence of knowing the difference between roses, heliotrope, opoponax and stephanotis, would call it an infield fly: runners advance at their own risk, and everyone just rolls with it. Crisis averted. Now, if we could just figure out who keeps leaving their old, mold-encrusted coffee mugs in the sink. Maybe we could appeal to the 3rd base line judge on who keeps committing this outrage: we could rule it's Stephen Bartman, for lack of a better scapegoat, and the world will continue to spin on in its epicycles, apogee and perigee, steadfast and solemn.

stepping lightly, just like a ballerina

I know I have been bad about updating this, but I'm turning over a new leaf. Or, at least, things are just now starting to get interesting again.

What is up with all the sudden rhapsodizing over 'Astral Weeks?' In the last 72 hours I have heard at least 5 people talking about Van Morrison and this record. Hmph. I love this record. I have loved it ever since I switched over from hating it, about 20 years ago. I thought it was strange in 1985, but it stuck with me. I realized that I loved it in about 1988, and all things being equal this mattered not at all, as it rarely came up. Now in the last three days, everyone's suddenly all enthusiastic about it. Ok, whatever. Where were you people when I was un-confident in my own musical tastes? Now that I don't need validation, they're everywhere. I will never, everever grow so old again. Hearing the 2 pieces on NPR, the one TV piece, seeing the three magazine articles, I will try not to feel smug and instead just suggest that yes, it would be a good idea to listen to 'Astral Weeks' again soon. An aside: I associate this music strongly with the beginning of spring. The songs are all shades of green and yellow, and they make me think of things growing in good black soil, stretching for the light of the sun.

Here's something odd that happened today. I went to the pet store to purchase some dog food for the beasts, and as usual there were not enough cashiers, so I'm standing there with a 40-pound sack of Nutro Natural Choice Small Bites in Lamb and Rice Meal slung over my right shoulder as casually as only a 40-pound sack of Nutro Natural Choice Small Bites in Lamb and Rice Meal over one's right shoulder can be, and anyway this woman is taking an eternity up at the checkout stand, and she's just prattling away to the bored teenager who is waiting for her to finish writing out her check. Now, I'm aggravated because I'm waiting and holding this giant bag of dog food, and this nimrod is writing a check(!) and having to fish out her driver's license (!) and she's off on this tangent about, I don't know, switchgrass or something that she is growing for her skunks (!). Anyway, so she suddenly stops in this middle of this soliloquy and looks right. at. me. and says "I have seven cats. What do you say to that?" And I say, "um, me?" and she says "yes. I have seven cats, what do you say to that?" and I think okay, what am I going to say to this, and so what I say is this:
"Oh, wait, I know the answer to this one. The answer is one. I am the one going to St. Ives."
And the woman just *looks* at me. And takes her stuff and goes out the door. So the teenager is ringing my stuff up now and says: "You're weird." Okay, this woman was just talking at this kid for like 15 minutes at top speed and volume about having seven cats (which pretty much is game-set-match on the insanity question) and raising skunks and switchgrass, and I'm the one who's weird, huh?

The world spins on, apace. Retail service-industry teenagers think I'm weird. Music reviewers can't get enough of a 40-year-old Van Morrison record. I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.

an anecdote that will probably interest precisely one reader of this blog

Sophia Hawthorne used to call Herman Melville "Mr. Omoo." I find this rather charming. That is all.

the radical scaling back of one's expectations

I was in the grocery store a couple of days ago, and was trying to purchase less and get more out of the whole experience. I went ahead and splurged on a very expensive (okay, comparatively speaking) Honeycrisp apple. It was exceptionally good. I'm not kidding around, this apple restored my faith in agriculture, median voters, and the American economic system. I kind of now want to tell everyone who's all tied up in knots over the current world situation: go eat a really good apple, and really concentrate* on it while you are eating it. This little Zen sort of moment will do you a world of good.



* by concentrate on it, I mean really think about everything that has to do with this apple. Hold it in your hand, look at it, think about how it grew, and how you ended up getting it, and feel the heft and weight of it, then eat it slowly and think about the texture and the taste. Okay, fine, make fun of me -- I'll go sign up for an OCD support group now.

apocalypse postponed; what to read while you wait

I have been reading a great deal (which sounds remarkably like "I have travelled a good deal in Concord...") and I can definitively recommend the following for a fine diversion, which might come in handy about now, if you are sick to death of politics and politicking and the Cassandrine wails of the media. Yes, I know that titles of books are to be underlined, but I'm on a clamshell terminal here and that is not working out.

"Uncivil Seasons" by Michael Malone
"The Decameron" by Bocaccio
"The Persian Expedition" of Xenophon (I love the little snarky asides -- like the part where he describes the Syrians as very nice but oddly entranced by fish)
"The Red Book Mabinogion"
"The Normans in Sicily" by John Julius Norwich
"Girls on the Run" by John Ashbery
"Local Wonders" by Ted Kooser
"The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski (I know, it's an Oprah, but I started it before she signed off on it)
"Genie du christianisme" by Chateaubriand
"Hymn of the Universe" by Teilhard de Chardin
"Akt und Sein" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"Isis Unveiled" by Helena Blavatsky (I know, I kept meaning to get to it, and now I did)

books you can skip, if you want:
"Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marissa Pessl
"Sweetheart" by Chelsea Cain

This is for those of you keeping score at home. Just doin' my part to keep people reading, in the face of crushing indifference.

where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

Well, things seem fairly dire at this point, so in that greatest of all American traditions, I've decided to just not think about it. I mean, I lay awake last night in a complete cold sweat thinking about global financial meltdown and was all panicked and upset...so at about 4 am, I got up and played with my dogs and decided to watch a DVD collection of Warner Bros. cartoons that a friend of mine gave me. I felt much better. Everyone else seems to have some kind of plan -- Henry Paulson, Newt Gingrich, innumerable bloggers -- mine is, as of right now, to eat chocolate pudding and play with my dogs. I believe that Congress should buy everyone a pony. It would improve the fundamentals of the livestock/equine breeding market, and the nation's hay-baling equipment manufacturers. Also, the construction industry -- we're all going to need barns. It's no stupider than other stuff I've heard in the last 72 hours.

...and the ambiance has that certain je ne sais quoi

This is the funniest thing I have read in weeks -- Camille Paglia, via Salon.

"One reason I live in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia and have never moved to New York or Washington is that, as a cultural analyst, I want to remain in touch with the mainstream of American life. I frequent fast-food restaurants, shop at the mall, and periodically visit Wal-Mart (its bird-seed section is nonpareil)."

Its bird-seed section. Is. Nonpareil.

I snorted sodapop out my nose. I'm trying to imagine Camille in all sorts of places she would consider plebeian, describing them in her own "you little people need an anthropologist to tell you what's what" sort of way.

Camille Paglia at Burger King: their ground-beef patty sandwiches are exquisite.
Camille Paglia at Costco: the ready availability of 20-pound jars of mayonnaise and packages of frozen shrimp the size of peat-moss bags is toujours perdrix.
Camille Paglia at Kohl's: the 80%-off rack is sine qua non.
Camille Paglia at Kansas Speedway: the tailgating is a veritable Montmartre (immediately preceding the French Revolution).
Camille Paglia at Tractor Supply Company: its vast selection of bagged pet foods and John Deere-logoed outerwear reveals a Midwestern weltanschauung of thrift and practicality.

Sheesh. Camille Paglia, everywoman. (slaps hand to forehead, rolling of eyes)