I was never “furious.” 

And Fishopoly, the most popular search term leading people to this site, is a game invented by Junior.  For rules and regulations, click here. 

What else?  Oh yeah, it’s Irma Rombauer’s birthday, she wrote The Joy of Cooking.  Irma was, by her own admission, a terrible cook.  Her book catered to women with few cooking skills, and her recipes included convenience ingredients — canned soup, for crying out loud!  Alice Waters would never stand for it.  She of the Know-Your-Farmer-and-Pet-the-Chickens school of people who have time to stroll around all day watching their food grow.  That Alice.

Alice, Alice, Alice.  I’m not making fun of her, though I should.  Her ideals should be a little precious for my taste, but they’re not.  I love her!  I don’t want to, but I do, I really do!  I’ve read Chez Panisse: Vegetables inside and out, then inside again, to the point where presented with kale and german butter potatoes last week in my CSA box, I nonchalantly turned out a lovely pot of potato-kale soup.  Now I’m reading The Art of Simple Food, which I predict will be my generation’s J. of C.  If Alice is not widely acknowledged as iconic, she will be.  I’m frightening the hell out of A. and the kids by threatening an experiment where we live Alice’s way for a year.  G.’s reaction to dinner last night, however, gives me pause.

A. had the equally brilliant, and more manageable, idea of eating out of cans for a year.  Every meal on the table must be derived from a can or a box, both recyclable.  Maybe we’ll flip a coin. 

Our dog Scruffy got his first boner last night.  “Boner” is a fun word to say, isn’t it?  Right up there with most curse words, which I wrote about in THE HUMAN COMEDY this week.  [I don't yet have it posted online, but click here and I'll send you four copies.] 

Anyway, the boner.  I didn’t have boy dogs growing up; or even a dog, or boy cats.  I did see a boy cat boinking my little Tabby under the deck one time, but it hardly compares with what happened last night. 

Scruffy’s first boner occurred, appropriately, in front of a full moon and it was the most fascinating, but at the same time, horrific thing I’ve seen in many years.  It was wildly disproportionate, for one.  Scruffy weighs 10-and-a-half pounds, and the boner, by my estimate, weighed 8. 

And it also went on entirely too long, like one of those side effects they boast of in the Cialis commercial.  Scruffy didn’t appear to be getting any sort of enjoyment out of it whatsever.  He looked pained. 

It did finally end, before what I thought would be an embarrassing trip to the vet, but the whole scene was jarring.  A. even, who did have boy dogs, big ones, was visibly rattled. 

I’m afraid now, for the cat.  Enjoy the sun if you’ve got it.

The University of Florida and the Norman Mailer Society have gotten together and produced the inaugural issue of The Mailer Review.

This begs the question — Who is running the Teresa DiFalco Society, and where is my review?  Whoever you are, you’re fired, I’m putting Lisa Austin in charge.  Some notes: 

The DiFalco Review should include, among other things, anecdotes and musings on Teresa DiFalco from various celebrities (of course my boyfriend — who Deborah said she’d sleep with last night and I almost had to beat her up!  Also, Mickey Rooney and maybe Frank Zappa).  Along with the anecdotes should be this year’s winning entry in the Teresa DiFalco contest (which should have been started years ago, btw – chop chop!), a friendly little competition for serious Teresa DiFalco devotees who want to match wits and repartee and try their hand at mimicking the master.  There should also be, in the review, mock interviews with imaginary people, and portraits of Teresa DiFalco done in different styles — an impressionist DiFalco, a surreal one, dadadada-ism, etc. 

I expect my complimentary first issue to arrive in the mail soon.

Go, now.  And spread the Word.

Doris Lessing!  And thanks for my books. 

#1: I love you.

#2: You were right. It was Naomi Klein you were trying to think of, not Naomi Wolfe which is what I said. You heard her on NPR and I said ‘Naomi Wolfe!’ and you said “No, it wasn’t her.” Then later you came up with the name and told me — ‘It was Naomi Klein,’ — and I said, ‘I told you Naomi Klein, you never listen to me!’ But today I remembered that the name I’d given you was Wolfe, not Klein, and so you were right.

My apologies to you, to everyone named ‘Naomi’, and to anyone who wasted time reading this post.

Update: Email just in from A. –

So. A.’s either calling me a liar (i.e., I never even said Naomi), or it’s true he never listens to me.

Cast your vote here. Champagne cocktails and vote count at 5:00 sharp on Bill’s Street. (Come to the backyard, the painters have the house taped up. Bring an umbrella.)

It’s all the rage. According to a study out of the University of East Anglia (my alma mater!), swearing at work can foster solidarity among employees.

“We hope that this study will serve not only to acknowledge the part that swearing plays in our work and our lives, but also to indicate that leaders sometimes need to ‘think differently’ and be open to intriguing ideas.”

Is there enough swearing going on in your office, A.? Is it binding your employees? Is it intriguing? For my part at Opus 13 Productions, I’ve started a curse break every hour when the church bells ring. It’s done wonders in bridging the social gap between Scruffy and I.

On another angle, Jonah Lehrer discovers you can determine the stressed syllable in any multi-syllable word by inserting “fucking” in the middle. As in, “re-fucking-di-cu-lous”. Go ahead, try it. It seriously works, plus endears you to colleagues!

“Tumbleweeds”, “Alice B. Toklas”, “hotel lobby”, “complain get free panties”.

Go ahead and send me the new Charles Schulz bio, dear readers, if you’d like.  Another cup of coffee, too, if you’re headed that way.  Thanks.

Peanuts.  The reviews suggest a dark and stormy portrait of the artist.  I find it hard to believe of a man who never smoke, drank or drugged.  Yawn with a capital “n”.  I guess there were women.  Regardless, I grew up on Peanuts, so whatever Mr. Schulz was doing during my formative years, it had a direct impact on me.  Send the book.

Sorry for the R-rated Friday. You’ll be happy to know I made it through church yesterday, without cursing once. Uh-oh, that’s not entirely true. There was the glowering woman sitting next to me — she glowered when we came in because we sat in her row. She glowered when I had to hand her the money basket, she glowered another time, too, I forget why. So I did whisper a curse word to A., regarding the woman, and because of her glower. I won’t stand for glowering, not on Sunday, not at me.

Most of the rest of the weekend, I didn’t curse. Instead we looked at art, which is a fabulous way to kill a weekend. They had a festival here, in the county. Local artists opened their studios and put out cookies and for $5 (the biggest bargain of the year!) we could all look around.

The highlights:

Doug Roy’s papercarving. (A picture on a web site doesn’t do his work justice, I linked to one anyway).

Marilyn Dell’s beautiful books, and stunning 4,000 square foot apartment in what used to be the Elks Lodge.

Luke Zimmerman’s arresting oils

Susan Dey’s pastels

Marilynn Higginson’s beautiful landscapes (and intriguing home!)

Carmen Borasse‘s witty surrealism

Also … the haunting faces of Mike Santone’s masks, his wife Elizabeth’s fun watercolors and beautiful felts, Blythe Eastman’s stoneware horses (bears and bunnies, too, but I loved the horses).

To be able to view these artists’ work in their studios, and in many cases as they were working, was priceless.

I will go now, I know I am busy.

Any article that begins with the word “fucking”, as in — “Fucking became the subject of congressional debate in 2003” — deserves our attention.

The article is, “Why We Curse: What the F*%#?” by Stephen Pinker, The New Republic.

I haven’t read it yet, but I respect a good curse word, I think they’re important. They feel good to say, they diffuse anger. There would be much more violence, I think, without curse words; driving, for instance. Consider if there were no F***! and we were left with “Hey, don’t do that, bad driver!” It’s unfulfilling.

A. and I like to curse, it amuses us. Not just randomly, we like to curse in inappropriate places, like church, or parent-teacher meetings. It makes us giggle and God knows you can’t have too much giggling. Sometimes we just say it a la carte — “fuck” — like we did at Parents Club last week.  Or we whisper things on Sunday during the homily like “Jesus, how f***ing long is he going to go?“  Then we giggle and hold hands and in those moments I feel very fortunate to have A., and also curse words and words to say in vain.  They provide all kinds of relief, plus half the dialogue for The Sopranos, not one word of which is misspent. 

That said, it’s Friday, and if you don’t have time to read Pinker’s article, at least take time to curse. Do it in the elevator, or on the subway; say f*** in your office meetings (s**t is fine, too).  You’ll see, it will make you happy.  It will make you f***ing laugh.

["Why We Curse", The New Republic]

There’s nothing to cure writer’s block like reading the Neiman Marcus Christmas Catalog. This year I want a $50,000 tent. I mean it. I’ve been good, I worked hard, I made my bed a few times. And if the tent’s out of stock, then the dragon. Or forget the pumpkin seed chocolate chip cookies Santa!

[By the way, I found my way to the catalog via Alex Ross' great blog (music critic for The New Yorker, author of the book The Rest is Noise, out this week). Jeez, okay, okay, I give Very Short List credit, too, Alex Ross was their pick today. Criminy. Are you happy?  I took the word "criminy," in case you're wondering, from my friend Leanne, so there.  I'm full-blown derivative.  Leave it alone.]