This is the creepiest thing I’ve ever read, ever.  I feel like hugging my sweet little ants, they’re nothing.  I couldn’t even read it all and I’m so creeped out right now I’m going to get water. 

If you have the time and desire to be unalterably creeped out, click right here. 

You see, A.?  It is so totally not just me.  I’d say it’s commonplace.

My ants are not eating dead flies, they’ve found other ways to torture me.  They only crawl around, now, in ones and twos.  They see I no longer fear their swarms — 409 ends their futures neat and quick — so they’ve split up, they’re covering more ground.  It wears me down, they know, to spray them two at a time when there’s probably millions.  At least millions.  I bet billions.

I want Amy Winehouse to make me tea in my bug-ridden house.  I’ve a deadline, though.  So not ’til 3:00.

The birds are still eating dog food and leaving their droppings around the dish but I haven’t the heart to ask them to go.  (Or to move the food).  Stuff has blown in the pool and an umbrella’s on its side, and Scruffy smells like sunscreen because the clever children sprayed him with some.  Also there are 50 things in the house to be cleaned, I need the housecleaners!

I’m in danger of repeating more stories, so I’ll go.  If you’d like to bring me lunch, that’s fine.  Cobb salad would be good, thanks.

Shuffle, as some do, to Buffalo. 

Oh, and PS, A. — thanks for the money!

(This post will seem scattered, it’s because I’m working on a piece.)   

So my goal, in the end, is to raise charming dinner guests.  I think it’s an important responsibility, one our parents’ generation failed at miserably.  Well, not mine, but a load of them –name five charming people at all, never mind about dinner.

Gore Vidal said somewhere, of actors and writers that he had little use for either but at least actors remember to entertain.  I want to have dinner tonight, and I want you to come over and entertain me, you can act. 

C. is boycotting email and internet, which made me think of it.  I’ll quote her out of context, ”[email] should only be used by stupid people who have nothing to say … interesting people don’t email,” and also, “internet was meant strictly for perverts, pedophiles and porn addicts then it mainstreamed … secret plotline to destroy society.”

Maybe she’s right, we’ve stopped being interesting.  All we’ve got now are dull emails.  Are you interesting?  A., are you there, are you interesting?  I know you’re not coming home tonight, but maybe tomorrow we could see if we interest each other.  Perhaps it’s not possible, we’ve lost our interest.  And if that’s the case, if we’ve lost it, how is it got back? 

Dinner party Friday tomorrow.  Think of interesting guests – dead, alive or made-up.  One of the most interesting people I ever knew was my made-up friend Bobby.  We haven’t talked since I was five.  I miss him terribly.

[Further Reading:  "How to Be Interesting," Time, 1969; "How to Be Interesting," Wikihow.com]

Sara Perry spoke to my epicuriously gifted friends today (A.’s, too.  He had them first).  Go to their restaurant.  Right now.  Get what I always get, the moules pernod avec (with) frites.  Unless, of course, it’s Sunday then order the cassoulet.  But if it’s Wednesday or Thursday you must have duck and Saturday should always be coq au vin, it comes in its own little red Le Creuset pot and you scoop it into your dish a bit at a time. 

Whatever you do, have a salad, I’d say frisee aux lardons.  Then try all the specials, and get at least three desserts — I recommend the profiterales, moelleux au chocolat and whatever homemade ice cream’s on tap, to pass around.

Not a bad idea, either, to start with white truffle fondue to get in the spirit of things.  Just saying.  Also Jean-Jacques should write a cookbook.  He should start on it tomorrow, by my pool, we could finish by Wednesday.  You should all buy several copies and give them as gifts. 

I read the Oregonian today, obviously.  I try to do it a few times a year.  It reminded me that I haven’t yet shown you my Summer Reading List, and also I might finally tackle Ulysses.  Just because. 

It’s a Sunday in June which means if you’re reading this right now, well, you shouldn’t.  You should be throwing frisbees to your dog or playing chess, in the park.  Call me when you’re done. 

I have Kelly Navari’s forks, Tammy Cook’s cooler and a bunch of dishes that might be theirs or someone’s else.  (Ill grammar intended). 

Writer’s Almanac printed my favorite Theodore Roethke poem today (send me yours!) — the lovely bones one:

I knew a woman lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them; Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:

Etc.  Don’t you wish you’d married the woman lovely in her bones?  For my part, when the fat piggy bluebirds eyeball me from their perch on Scruffy’s dish, I eyeball back at them. 

Here’s a long passage for your Friday thrills.  My tense is inconsistent.  You’ll have to suffer through it until my copyeditor returns from Tahiti.

Howard said an eight-word sentence to her the second week they were married.  They were back from the sandy honeymoon, it was their first day officially living together in one jointly shared space.  A place that was no longer hers, or his, but theirs.  (For the record, it had first been his.  His and then theirs.)

Ellen had showered and left her wet towel hanging on the door and then made the coffee and left the filters out, next to the can.  (Yes, the can.  In her defense it was horrible coffee and she’d left both the filters and can out as admonition — look at this! — hoping Howard would see and be embarrassed and then replace; she hadn’t signed up for canned coffee.)

She continued the morning this way leaving a trail of misplaced items, cupboard doors open, crumpled bed sheets and loose change.  The newspaper was even left undone, spread haphazardly out on the floor and there’d been a glimpse of the entomophobia.  She’d gone into hysterics, had been about to cry – or was she seriously crying?  Jesus, Howard thought — when a harmless waterbug climbed up in the sink. 

None of this was exactly breaking news.  Howard had on several occasions disposed of various insects so they could proceed.  He’d also closed up cupboards and knew the coffee was a finicky issue and that things were occasionally left on the floor.  But of course the lighting isn’t as soft once you’ve uttered (on video, no less) “’til death.”  These small things lose their charm.

So at the end of a long day of towels and filters and newspapers, Howard let out a laugh — a forced, insincere laugh to hide the irritation Ellen hadn’t yet learned to detect.  He put his long arms clear around her, maybe instinctively to protect her from the blunt edge, and then he said, “You’re going to take some getting used to.”

You’re going to take some getting used to, that’s what he said.

Ellen was still kicking herself eight years later for not saying something right back, “Well, so are you!”  Because by not saying it she’d handed everything over, she’d let Howard define them from the get-go.  Their marriage, and Ellen, were things he’d have to get used to.  His life was something she had disturbed, had upset.  (It was his place before theirs.)  And Ellen caught off guard, it not having occurred to her she would be something he’d have to get used to, had conceded it with her silence.  She had agreed with Howard in her failure to rebut, apologized with her lack of retort. 

Howard, they’d established, was fine.  Ellen would take getting used to.

Okay, forget everything I said before, it’s today.  Today today today, Back Fence PDX — the stories, the swimsuits — is today.  That’s the last time I’m saying it, too.  I may not look it but I’m busy. 

With Alfred Hitchcock, for one.  If you know him, click here.  (He’s dead, by the way.)  If you have a good drinking story about him, click here. 

Goodnight. 

So A. and I are in therapy if you must know.  You were all acting weird about it, I knew you knew.  We have a tall doctor, we’ve cancelled with him once, we also saw him once, too, I think that’s important.  We had to cancel this Friday because the kids have a thing, so we rescheduled the night of raviolis with M-III (aka “Herb”).  We had to, it’s all he had.  Hey, we’re done at 7:00 though, Herb.  If we can have late raviolis, we’re still on! 

I like our tall doctor, I think we both do, I think we both want to be best friends with him, I want our tall doctor to like me best, I think he does.

It’s all silly. 

A. and I now have awkward conversations about what we want out of life, we’re dropping “love.”  We’d like to have fake love.  The kind where someone’s nice to you a lot regardless of how they feel. 

We try to figure out who screwed up first, I keep saying it’s him, he keeps lying. 

Thursdays are famous for salty discharge.  All old grumpy English writers were born on Thursday.  In lieu of them, kiss a nut today.  Mmm-wah!

Back Fence is TOMORROW.  If you’re on your way there right now, STOP.  Turn around and drive to my house I’m sauteeing rainbow chard and grilling salmon (no color added).  I might let you eat some if you promise to go TOMORROW, Thursday, to Back Fence PDX. 

Jeez.  GOSH!

Okay, so Duh — go to this tonight.  Back Fence PDX.  Some very funny people will tell you outrageous stories about summer.  They’re actors and writers and former Scientologists, so it’s guaranteed to be great.  There will also be a swimsuit contest and RSG is in that, and if you’re in Mac can you stop on my street and give me a ride?  Thanks.

I’m working in the front room this week, which means the wireless signal is even weaker than in the small house.  This, of course, makes me think of Liz — hey Liz! — because she’s very sympathetic about my wireless connection and maybe she’ll buy me a booster today and leave it on the porch.  If she does, though, I’ll see her doing it because my front door’s mostly a window and the other windows don’t have stuff to cover them, I’m exposed.  But that means you are too when you drop things off on my porch.

The other thing about working in the front is I see the deer walk by.  C. says the deer are dirty.  “Filthy” was the word she used but I disagree.  I see them walking up from the creek, I think they bathe.  So there’s that and now the birds are flying in. 

The birds come in the back door to eat Scruffy’s food and yesterday one hopped all the way up here, to the front, and flew around.  It scared me because I watch Hitchcock and because birds fly crazy when you put them in small rooms, but I opened all the doors and it left and now I miss it. 

I feel like you need a link here to something smart.  Brain food, something to perk up your tired heads.  I can’t find one, though, my flitty connection is making me mad.  Wait, I know — Melissa Lion today, she wants you to like yourself naked and she has a picture.  Which reminds me that in Ashland a woman is marching topless in the 4th of July parade.  Because you can be topless in Ashland, it’s totally legal.  Ashland rocks, right? 

(More later.)