Archives Check

My archives are acting up again. Just republished, off to check on them.

Expiration Date

Started the morning with a big bowl of Special K with Red Berries which I'm crazy for. Poured in a lot of milk. Took one delicious bite and nearly gagged. Checked the milk carton, EXP DATE; JULY 18. Luckily I had a new unopened carton of milk in the fridge I got two days ago. Reset -- bowl one down the drain, wash bowl, start again.

Staring Into Space

I had a lovely dinner last night that I had to leave early and appreciated everyone's graciousness around the table to let me go so soon, but I've been writing fiction and it seems to require a enormous amount of time of simply staring into space. Doing nothing. I thought I read somewhere that Thurber's wife used to say when he wandered around the house like a somnambulist in a daze, "Ut oh, he's writing again."

That's just about the way I get. Spend a lot of time on the floor looking up at the ceiling. I'm thinking about scenes, characters, stealing this limb or head or body from one real person, cutting and pasting it onto a fictional character. Noticing this meal or other, a real-live tuna noodle casserole, neatly inserted into a fictional suburban kitchen, the fictional wife ready to feed the fictional kids who will all bitch and moan about hating tuna.

A House Of No Women

[I'm writing some fiction and this is a very early rough draft. Don't need any advice or critique, thanks. just send flowers, candy and love letters. ]

House Of No Women

This was a house of no women. That’s all she could think. Or rather, all she could feel. This is a house of no women. It was an enormous house. She noticed it as her boyfriend Peter drove her up the long driveway in his new red sports car. He was wanting her to notice his car so much, but next to this house, crunching along this gravel driveway, his toy car was about as impressive as a kid’s tiny metal Hot Wheels car that you bought in the supermarket for less than a dollar. Neither of them had been expecting so much house – so much big stone house – like a mountain you were asked to climb and it had seemed a nice adventure when you stretched the guidebooks and maps out on your kitchen table one night under a yellow light. All within reason, not ominous, but doable. But this was another matter, in fact it was a veritable Matterhorn of a house. In the daylight rising up and looking nothing short of terrifying, anyone would begin to think that maybe this was just a bad idea all around and it was a good time to turn back.

This is a house of no women. She thought it again even though it wasn’t quite grammatical, not particularly good English, something as a writer, she should be able to articulate more precisely, but this phrase rose from her gut – a house of no women – and every part of the house spoke it. Not that it was a masculine house per se, rather it seemed to pull her in, as if needing her feminine nature, as if needing any feminine nature to balance it out. .

What she was feeling was his presence, but since she didn’t even know Vladimir yet, she could not know that. She did not know that his soul was such a powerful black hole, pulling her and every woman around him in, like a bad table cloth trick where the magician fails to leave every cup, plate, knife, fork spoon and candlestick standing as he yanks away the table linens, but instead, Vladimir had a way all pulling whole dinner party tables of place settings and women into his lap, and they could not resist being upended, all within a few quick looks of his from under those bushy dark eyebrows, now slightly graying. Vladimir could cause incredible damage..

Maybe it was knowing the back story – that Titantia, the beautiful Russian dancer/model his wife had died here – a bit of a scandal it ended up being as it splashed through the papers, she and her lover nude in the swimming pool – Vladimir and the the son away. She was beautiful. And even with the scandal and the tragedy, most of the publications had only printed the gorgeous pictures of her – almost unheard of these days – but Vladimir had had a hand in making sure none of the accident details were made public.

The pictures they ran of her were incredible. She was by then more model than dancer and no one was clear if she ever had been much of a dancer back in Russia. Equally unclear if Vladimir had been much of a businessman, or maybe just a gangster. So it may have been a house with women when she lived there, but today, there was the unmistakable feeling that women had been banished from this kingdom.

And the king of this kingdom was as ugly as the former queen was beautiful, But Vladimir wore the odd combination of ugly-powerful-rich in a way that gave him a strange magnetic quality. You couldn’t find too many photographs of him, again it wasn’t clear why. Was he a gangster ducking the authorities or? Papers were in the habit of cropping his face out of the pictures of Titantia and him completely, or often as not cutting his big bear-like figure and face in half as they let her tiny fairy-like shape take center-stage in the photographs of the couple entering the US at Boston Logan Airport, or visiting the Kennedys at Hyannisport or arriving at Kennebunkport to fish with the President.

And Vladimir was as rich as she was poor, the story being that he had attended the ballet in Moscow with a few of his mistresses, his wife refusing to go anywhere with him at that point, and had seen her dance the lead role that night and had sent all the mistresses home, and gone back stage and had just about kidnapped her, but she had slipped through his fingers that night, making him all the more desirous of her. He was rumored to be a man of great appetitie and was not willing to delay his gratification when he saw something he wanted -- be it real estate, airlines, diamond mines, nuclear power plants or women, all of which he owned several of – except for Titania. Once he saw her, he didn’t want any other women, just her. He cleared the decks, wife quickly and quietly divorced, mistresses dismissed. And then he laid traps for her and waited, looking as confident as any man possibly could that. As he had learned in business over and over again, it was just a matter of time and she would yield. But she did not make it easy, and there were more pictures of her with other men in the papers, other reports of Frenchmen with royal ancestors and that billionaire Spaniard, but Vladimir was undaunted. He knew how to outwait this particular kind of butterfly, until she landed, And he was right. He got her.

Peter slowed down, way down, pulled the car over before they were close to the door, under a shady overhanging of green leafy canopy of trees where they would be sheltered in a little privacy. She noticed his nervousness as she reached for the door handle saying “Wait” as she tried to get out, he touched her arm to tell her to wait, then went around to the other side, to let her out and carefully kissed her and said, “Are you sure you want to do this? You don’t have to, you know.”

But she looked at him quizzically, all this sudden overprotectedness was so unlike him, but he must have sensed it too – that this house might swallow her alive. That the man who lived in the house might … well, that something might happen. They never give men enough credit for male intuition she thought to herself. They always sense when another man is ready to pounce on their woman.

“It’s okay,” she said, knowing it would not reassure him. “They said they’d arrange a car for me when I’m done. You don’t have to wait.”
This reassured him even less, but he let her go.
He kissed her hard – an insurance kiss, she liked to call those – a kiss a man plants on you to remind you for a good long time that you belong to him, to insure that you get returned to the rightful owner soon,. She opened the car door for him, since she could tell he did not want to go and it was getting close to 4:00. Sunday at 4:00 that was her appointment time to meet Vladimir.

She walked up to the house and he turned the circle drive reluctantly, heading back out to the road. She turned to wave to Peter, who was waiting for her wave, car stopped, though heading out and after the wave, he threw it in gear and raced out of there, knowing there was nothing to do. She watched him get smaller and smaller as he followed the long driveway. There was so much Peter didn’t know about this. There was so much she couldn’t say. There was the heart-leap she had experienced that same morning when she went to the ATM with Peter before they were getting bagels, to find a surprise $250,000 in her account – the amount Vladimir had offered her for advising him – the amount she had laughed at, surely he was kidding, the amount she had turned down, she thought. How had he even found out her bank account number?

She had only agreed to have tea with him on Sunday at 4:00. She didn’t drive, growing up in New York City and all. He would send a car for her. No, she told him, my boyfriend can bring me out. He should not wait, I’ll send you home in a car. She had said like some silly girl, forgetting her research on him, “Oh, don’t go to the trouble.” He had said, “I go to no trouble. I own the limousine service. Actually I own a few limousine services.” She looked back to where her boyfriend had been and saw that now he was gone. She turned back to the door and rang the bell. It was 4:01 by her watch.

Run Arianna Run Is Right

CNN is so sick. They interview Arianna Huffington's deadbeat husband, who says his daughters begged their parents not to run. What bullshit. He's simply trying to put down his ex-wife because she's so much more on the ball than he is.

And deadbeat CNN has the nerve to show video of him and Arianna CARRYING their daughters -- little baby girls in little baby girl dresses with mary janes -- AS IF THAT WERE A RECENT VIDEO CLIP -- basically trying to make it look like she's a mother abandoning her children. Any idiot will see that Arianna AND her husband, who's being interviewed LIVE, look more than 10 years older now -- and of course, their daughters are NOT young baby girls.

How stupid and sick of CNN to produce such an idiotic interview slamming Arianna as if she were a bad mom. I can't wait for the backlash.

I think she just got every divorced woman's vote in California. If I were still living there, she'd sure get mine.

And does CNN think we are so stupid that we can't figure out that Arianna's daughters are 14 and 12 -- or are they so stupid they didn't bother to search Google to find that out before they put together their cock-a-mamie story?!

Think Twice

It occurred to me when looking over Victoria's Secret's Bridal Collection, that there's something a little paradoxical about marrying a woman who's wearing a "merrywidow" underneath her dress -- what's she got on her mind?

Make sure that pre-nup is airtight guys and don't book a walking tour of the Alps as a honeymoon.

Morality Play

Chris Hartjes emailed me to mention he HATED the ending to the first story in the collection Four Blondes I blogged about below. Here's what he says:

[the idea of the protagonist, Janie Wilcox the model] getting a modelling contract with Victoria's Secret as a reward for years of sleeping around and basically being a gold-digger struck me as an incredibly lame ending.

I agree that the ending didn't really work. The story is about her slow downward spiral from her late twenties to early thirties, using one man after another like Kleenex, and them using her, her money and beauty fading as well. The darkedst moment is when after all the manoeuvering she's done, her younger sister instead becomes the belle of the ball in the Hamptons and snags a guy to marry, a weird guy, but there's a sense at least the sister has a life. The logic of it should end on a down note.

Thing is though, it's not really a morality play, rather some light fluffy girly entertainment. Maybe we should both write a new ending and try them out on our blogs?

Still Having Trouble Getting Over This

I used to live in California. I used to live in LA. I used to eat in his restaurant in Venice -- I even saw him and Maria there one evening. But I still don't quite believe this is happening. "Schwarzenegger announces bid for governor." Of course, we should have all seen it coming, the way they are dragging Gray Davis, bloody and battered, out of town on a rope, tied to one ankle, making him eat dust as they let the horses and wagon tear at top speed,

Work Out Work In

The rain woke me at 4:30 -- what a noise! So nothing else to do but work out. Living room rug, here I come.

Hey Barlow-San

John Perry Barlow sends another great group email today (JP--GET A BLOG MAN!) and this one tells of an EFF party coming up in Golden Gate Park (Sat Aug 9 at noon) and ends with the greatest quote. (All of JPB's emails end with the greatest quotes, but this sure caught my eye.)


"I have always wished that my computer would be as easy to use as my
telephone. My wish has come true. I no longer know how to use my
telephone."

-- Bjarne Stroustrup, computer science professor, designer of C++
programming language (1950- )

_______________________________________________
BarlowFriendz mailing list
BarlowFriendz@eff.org
https://owl.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/barlowfriendz

Four Blondes

Dave was kind enough to mention today that he thinks I'm a good writer -- thanks, man. And that I should be writing a book ... shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ... don't tell anybody, but I am ... but I'm also a good reader and have been reading a lot lately and enjoying it so much. I don't think there's any better pleasure than summer reading, at the beach, in a hammock on someone's grassy lawn as everyone around you is doing something else. Kids playing, ants attending picnics uninvited, croquet balls whacking other balls, whatever ...

I've been reading Four Blondes by Candace Bushnell (author of Sex And The City) and it's so great and funny. I can't get enough. It's also a great summer book as it starts with a model who makes a habit of dating rich guys with nice houses in the Hamptons from Memorial Day through Labor Day, then dumping them (or getting dumped) and we watch her age summer-by-summer, lover-by-lover, one more eccentric than the last. Bushnell writes great characters.

A friend suggested I read Sex And The City (despite my protestations that I didn't really like the TV series) but I couldn't find a copy of it, so got Four Blondes instead. There are four novellas (or long short stories if you will) in the book and the second one is about a very unadventuresome man and wife (both writers) who have a totally dead marriage and they both are voraciously unfaithful to one another on the same crazy day, after years and years of faithfulness. In fact, the wife literally tells the husband that evening that she spent the whole afternoon fucking this movie star in his hotel room -- WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT SHE DID DO -- but the husband figures she's got to be joking, that she would never do that. Besides, he's such a mess of dirty clothes, come, lipstick and booze, he's too undone to even listen to her and heads for the shower. This has a back story -- get ready for this -- the husband's doing an article for his magazine on ALPHA MALES!

The friend who recommended I read Bushnell's work had not read this particular book, only figured I'd find it useful since I write fiction about sex -- and I have a similar style in some ways. He had no idea that it would hit SO close to home. Life is strange.

Meanwhile, I have a story being published in Penthouse in October -- on newsstands next month. If you get a second, check out the cover of this month's Penthouse. It's got a picture of a woman's face -- a lovely blond with pink barrettes in her hair. That's all -- no boobs, no everything else. Jeez -- wish the issue with my story in it had THAT cover -- a rare cover to be sure with the only cheeks showing being the ones on the pretty woman's face! It would be so much easier to show off my story to the neighbors with a cover like that! With my luck, I figure the next issue will have ... well, you can imagine.

Thanks So Much Werner!

Gotta love blogging. Werner from @cs.cornell.edu sent me this email just now to save my Sony! Ah! My Alpha Male Geek Hero! Love these guys with big brains.

Halley,

I also lost some essential keys once and couldn't get them replaced by the vendor. I don't know whether you have tried this already but first line of defense is to pop two useless keys from your keyboard and put them in the place of the lost ones, so that you can at least type again (numlock and pause/break come to mind). It looks weird but at least you can use it again ...

Awfully enough the cheapest way to bring the keyboard back to it rightful state is to replace it. It costs $65 mail-order, but luckily it is rather simple to install (http://www.sparepartswarehouse.com/sony/parts/147723011.asp).

Now if I could just get Sony to pay you for your excellent customer support!

I'm Talking To A Robot

It's taken me half a lifetime but I'm finally trying to get a J key and a C key for my Sony Vaio, which I vacuumed up a few months back. The customer service guy is named Max and he is a robot and I don't like him. He asks me the model number. I tell him what's written on the Sony Vaio "PCG=NV190" -- the robot says "do you mean EXR12?" I say "What the fuck?" He says "Do you mean EXR12?" Christ.

I stop talking ... he says something that lets me get to a human. I talk to some woman from ... sounds like Texas. She explains how she can't help me, I need to call another 800 number. She does clue me that if the computer is less than a year old, it's under Sony's 365-day warranty.

I call the other number -- I get an Indian guy with a heavy accent who tells me although it should be under the warranty, the missing keyboard keys are considered cosmetic damage and that Sony has a special three-tiered level of service for fixing these problems which ARE NOT under warranty. I say, "Wait a minute ... " I ask him to explain why a keyboard is considered "cosmetic" -- he is reading from some script and is getting on my nerves.

I stop him and say "WHERE are you?" He says, "We are not authorized to disclose our location." I say, "What are you on another planet?"

I decide to calm down and back-off for a few more nano-seconds. Nobody's kidding anybody. He's in India somewhere and I can smell curry and cows and other New Delhi smells. Poor guy can't even say where he works. Even Apu Nahasapeemapetilon can proudly mention he works at the Kwik-E-Mart. He's reading about how I can get one the three-tiered service levels for

Basic Damage @ $249.00/hr
Major Damage @ $699.00/hr
Some other thing @ $102.00/hr

Of course, I qualify for either the $249 deal orf the $699 deal. Next he starts reading to me how I must obtain a box and pack the computer and I'm responsible for any damage it might incur when I pay to ship it to them.

I say "Wait a minute ... how did I end up being the computer packing and shipping department?!." He doesn't answer but asks if he can keep reading his script to me.

I say, "I don't think so. Thank you for your help, but I don't want to talk you or Sony anymore. I'm really pissed off. That means I'm mad. Good bye." To be fair the guy DID register my computer which I neglected to do last year when I bought it -- yes, I was a bonehead to not do that.

I'm thinking of repurposing my Sony Vaio. Maybe I could toast bread with it? Maybe line a big birdcage with it? Maybe I could set it on fire in the backyard -- I'm got a lot of marshmellows here -- tis the season -- nothing like a nice campfire.

I know, I know, I was the jerk who damaged it ... but what the hell do you have to go through to get some service or a simple PART these days?

I knew I was dodging the phone call to attempt to fix this stupid computer for a reason. I guess my hunch that trying to fix it would be a gigantic pain in the ass was exactly right -- yes, yes, I was right on the money about that.
-

Pick A Card

Yes, pick a card, any card. I went to a tarot card reader once, all upset about some guy. She started to turn over the cards -- it was before I knew anything about the tarot cards. None were particularly good or particularly bad.

I was so crazy for this guy and he was ... yes, ouch, easy to say now, wasn't easy to admit then ... dumping me. One of those long, slow, "Honey, I'm just so busy now, you gotta understand" heave-ho's that hurt more than the hitting-a-wall-at-60mph-sudden-slam-dumps. Pulling the bandaid off one excruciatingly slow tug at a time.

She got one thing right, "I see a young man." She was no genius. I started to cry, then cry harder, then bawl my eyes out. She kept turning over cards, saying nothing. Her bedside manner sucked. I'm crying me a river and she finally looks up and says, "I sense you are feeling some sadness." Boy, was she gifted!

Strike A Pose

In case you wondered what it takes to be a model. For women, start by being about 5 feet, 10 inches and wearing a Size 4. I've seen size 4 clothing -- it's for dressing up dolls.

About Halley's Tail

Oh, yeah, and one more thing before I really go to sleep. Here's a piece about my tail. And a photograph entitled, "Why Halley Flipped" which is very strange. I appreciate it. Even I need to know the scientific explanation behind why I flip now and then.

Good Night

See you tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Beautiful Beautiful Blossoms

I have a bunch of family in Boston, which I'm so lucky to have. I love to visit my sister Jan and her husband Tom too. They have a lovely store in Newton Highlands called BLOSSOMS right off the Green Line T, where they sell silk flower arrangements and other beautiful things. Yesterday, I got a chance to have lunch over there -- they had just gotten a big shipment of silk flowers in big cardboard boxes, almost as large as coffins. Jan and I worked out back opening boxes and talking in the hot Mediterraen sun as we opened box after box of the most gorgeous burnt orange day lilies, red brick orchids, yellow morning glories, removed their wrappings, got them ready to be used this fall. She found a big black lacquer metal pail to put these bushels of lush flowers in, a riot of blossoms waiting for their day to star in a new flower arrangement.

Inside, Tom manned the store, working on outgoing orders, arranging autumnal centerpieces with russet fruits, shades of fall flowers, great splashes of color and texture. They work in a place of such staggering beauty -- I envy them. Of course they see it so differently -- for them it's a lot of sheer hard work and not all that special. Amazing how we see our lives so differently up close.

The shop is long and railroad car-shaped. Both of them are so creative and they have made a beautiful ecstatic cave of sensualness in that small space, which changes season by season before the new season breaks. Yesterday on a blisteringly humid hot August afternoon, I opened the lovely glass door, already overwhelmed by the autumnal window display and entered an air-conditioned heaven of October plants and flowers. They've got tall silk green trees, willows and ivy, shoots of bamboo. They have flower pots of pink and red poppies -- the pots bricky -- the flowers flirty and scarlet. They've got new ceramic vases of cardomon, cinnamon and persimmon, good enough to eat, with one or two or three simple stalks of fresia or an orchid dipping its hooded head in a lady-like manner in palest beige. They have bowls of autumnal fruits -- they look so real -- yellow gourds and brown pears and tan plums and purple berries -- all fake but simple and life-like. They have a flat golden japanese plate of bright tangerine-colored mandarin oranges.

Doctors should prescribe quarterly visits to their shop -- it's such a restorative treat. And they don't even SEE it. They see all the work of it -- yes, yes, I know, it only makes sense. But it's a heaven on earth. to me We talked about our work. We talked about how few people I know have such beauty in their lives on a daily basis. We talked about the offices my brother-in-law has as corporate clients and the arrangements he delivers to companies around town. Often his flowers are the only beauty in the place and thank goodness someone thought to bring those arrangements into their place of work.

We talked about beauty. I thought about my mother who loved to garden. My sister has created a place my mother would adore. I walked around the shop as they helped customers. All the flowers of my mother's garden are there in full bloom, never to pass away, as she has now. My mother's pale lilacs, her washed denim-colored hydrangeas, her funny pink peonies which I loved to fiddle with when I was about five. The peonies had a sticky covering to their buds which ants loved to eat, so they were always crawling with ants. I would flick the ants off of the big round buds for my mom -- not that she asked, but it just seemed helpful. The bell on the door rings like sleighbells as a customer leaves, breaking my peony revery. It's time for me to leave too -- never easy to do. Two hugs, a few more laughs about this and that, a promise to return soon with my son who loves the place and I'm back out on a hot, humid summer street.

My Sorry Old Ass

I have a sorry old mom's butt. I do. I'm an old lady of 47 with a sorry old ass. It's just a fact. It's supposed to be that way. We have to step aside and let the truly cool folks take over. And those folks -- the folks who are really cool are ... well, dare I say it ... YOUNG. Now, you might argue with me. But read this link Rageboy told me about -- The Merchants of Cool -- and then tell me if there's really room for a brand that's cool AND middle-aged. I think not.

Cool Babes

Oh, yes, and ccooler than cool in hot Atlanta are the cool babes Jenna and Jeneane. I love reading you kid -- you're a fine, fine writer..

Who's The Coolest Of Them All?

Mirror, mirror on the wall ... the guys below are cool, but most cool ... yeah, go ahead and say it, coolissimo ... or is it coolissima ... is Jeannie Cool! She's so cool her blog is private -- like one of those celebrity haunts in LA with a plain wooden door, no markings. If you're lucky, later she'll tell me the URL and I'll post it. [Just kidding. I got the link and it's right up there with her name.]

Big A Art And Coolio Dave

Okay, I get it -- there's an epidemic of cool going on here. Dave Winer is getting quite cool posting pix of cool artwork and sending out kisses. On such a hot day it's great to be cool man, cool.

Of course, BloggerCon at Harvard Law School this October will be unbareably cool. Better sign up. Be there or be square. BTW, I am on the local host committee for BloggerCon.

Cool, Desu Ne?

Wow, looks like August 6th is turning into INTERNATIONAL COOL DAY. Joi Ito's written something cool about being cool -- and hell, who should know better?! Not only is Joi cool but he gives us a link to the piece called Japan's Gross National Cool from Foreign Policy, a must read.

Are the Japanese about to out-cool the Americans? This may be the beginning of the Cool Wars -- I'm sure the cool europeans will have to fight their way into the fray. Some of those Europeans are damned cool and the Brits are increasingly cool. This could get out of hand.

Say What You Will

I must admit famous cool weblogger Chris (aka Rageboy) Locke is an acquired taste, but he's done a beautiful thing today that should not be missed. He's one of the few bloggers who I consider a real Artist -- oh shit, yes I used the big A word -- and one of the very few bloggers, who I can say without reservation, continue to take the medium of blogging into stratospheric places. Rageboy's art could exist in no other medium but the web. That's a big deal.

He's written a story about taking his daughter to a rock concert, with stories and psychological text book quotes and other narratives all embedded within the post. Nobody knows how to embed like Rageboy, take it from me. (Sorry, man, couldn't resist!) But honestly, read all the way down to the KEY and let it all sit in your brain for awhile.

Seven More Days? Not 40 Days And 40 Nights I Hope

Just saw the 7 day outlook for Boston on the weather channel. Even I can't believe it.

RAIN
RAIN
RAIN
RAIN
RAIN
RAIN
RAIN

Boy, oh boy am I glad this wasn't my precious vacation week. Yikes!

American Originals

Getting a little moony listening to all these great songs on BeatGreets. I'm crazy for all kinds of music. Hope the links work. Make sure your audio's not on mute.

Weird And Wild Mind Of A Spell Checker

There are some really weird suggestions spell checkers make and I have to say, I'm tempted some days to stop pressing "IGNORE" and just let the beast run free and 'REPLACE" all the words with the spell checker's wacky suggestions. Some are so strange. In the post below, the Spell Checker was rather insistent that "Winer's" should be "Winners" and that "blogging" should be "flogging" and the word "permalink" should be ... get ready for this ... VERMILLION or FARMLANDS or FORMALNESS ... go figure.

BTW, in this current post, they suggest the single noun "Winer" should be "Winery". Dave, do you run a place up in Napa called Chateau Neuf du Dave and you never told us? How cool.

It even wants to replace part of itself -- "checkers" -- with "chokers" "shockers" "chasers" "choosers" and "chiggers." Okay, do you guys know what "chiggers" are -- very creepy.

On Point

Dave Winer's got a good essay on "pointing" today -- just click this link to go to it. There are certainly many points of blog etiquette we all need to be reminded of. Someone should write the Miss Manners Guiide To Blogging and spell them out, just like Dave's essay does.

I don't know if it's good manners, but one thing that's been driving me crazy lately is so many blogs have their permalinks mysteriously disguised or just completely not there. I know I dare not say anything on this score as my permalinks are not working often -- but at least you can FIND them. I often want to link to another blogger's site and I give up in frustration because the permalinks are so hard to find or are so cutesy-wootsey, looking like little kitty cats or something, I just give it up and point to another source that's got an easy and clean link.

The Iron Giant

Are you kidding me? Are you telling me you've never seen The Iron Giant? Are you telling me you don't own it on DVD? Come on, don't tease me. You must have it somewhere up there on your shelf. It's such a knock-out. The drawing is so beautiful. The story is so scary. The giant is so metallic but so loveable. Go get it.

Rumor Has It

Rumor has it that it's a brand new day. A brand new day, like a brand new baby, born into the world early in the morning, open to a brand new life, with a myriad of possibilities. Just about anything can happen today -- good things, not so good things -- but it's a gift. Make the most of it. Or crawl back into bed and do nothing with it at all. Ahh ... ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

RSS and Rain On The Roof

Maybe the rain will put out some fires. Did I mention, thanks to Dave Winer for the pointer to this piece, and all the coverage of RSS yesterday? What a treat it would be if we could all work together.

You And Me And Rain On The Roof

Did I mention ... it rained most of the weekend and it's supposed to rain all week? I'll leave the guitar chords in for Gnome-Girl.

You and me and rain on the roof
A7 D
Caught up in a summer shower
A7 D
Dryin' while it soaks the flowers
E7 A7
Maybe we'll be caught for hours
Em A A7
Waitin' out the sun

You and me were gabbin' away
Dreamy conversation sittin' in the hay
Honey, how long was I laughing in the rain with you
'Cause I didn't feel a drop 'til the thunder brought us to

You and me underneath the roof of tin
Pretty comfy feelin' how the rain ain't leakin' in
We can sit and dry just as long as it can pour
'Cause the way it makes you look makes me hope it rains some more

Yikes! Here Comes The Rain Again

Got out and about to do early morning errands, but plinkity, plankity, plop -- here comes the rain again. What a noise.! This is the funny August tug-of-war in New England where summer and fall fight it out and guess who wins?!

I used to look a little like Annie Lennox, but my hair's a lot more tame now.

Here Comes the Rain Again
-- Eurythmics

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

So baby talk to me
Like lovers do
Walk with me
Like lovers do
Talk to me
Like lovers do

Here comes the rain again
Raining in my head like a tragedy
Tearing me apart like a new emotion
Oooooh
I want to breathe in the open wind
I want to kiss like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

So baby talk to me
Like lovers do

Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
(Here it comes again, here it comes again)
I want to walk in the open wind
I want to talk like lovers do
I want to dive into your ocean
Is it raining with you

Don't Get Carried Away

I described a favorite summer game we used to play in rental houses by the beach with all the lights off called "Sardines" but do be careful if you decide to try it. The most famous story about the game took place in Hollywood in the 1940's where David Niven's wife actually took a deadly fall while playing sardines at Tyrone Power's mansion. Turner Classic Movies recounts the situation:

But the usually cheerful Niven was going through his own private hell. Prior to production on The Bishop's Wife, the actor's beloved wife Primmie suffered a fatal head injury; it occurred during a party game of "sardines" at Tyrone Power's house. She thought she was running into a closet, but instead took a long fall down the cellar stairs and died of complications days later.

Games People Play On Summer Evenings

I was trying to tell someone this weekend about the summers I spent as a kid in a really rural place with a gang of cohorts my age, no TV, bikes, rowboats, catamarrans, pogo sticks, Monopoly, playing cards, dogs, flip flops and a lot of penny candy from the general store in town. It's hard to explain -- seems to be a childhood completely lost these days -- one that can never exist again. We had enormous freedom. We were outside all day and a good part of the night. We were relaxed and funny and silly and creative and very lucky to be so.

One thing we spent a lot of time doing was playing "Sardines" -- a game you play in a completely dark house -- no lights on. One person hides in the house, you give them 15 minutes while the rest of you wait in one room or outside. Then if they are ready, you call out "Ready?" and they DON'T answer. No answer means, time to start.

You wander around in the pitch dark, although it's also fun to play on a moonlit evening, in search of the person who is hiding. If you find him/her you go ahead and silently hide with them. If you have not found them, the only word you are allowed to say is "Sardines?" which must be answered by other players still looking for the hidden person. If you start with 20 people, the reply to your question "Sardines?" is quickly offered, "Sardines." "Sardines" "Sardines" you hear from all quarters, which means, yes, I'm still here.

After a bit, you notice the replies begin to thin -- and then you know a bunch of other folks have found the person and are hiding somewhere in the house with them, ready to jump out at the last unfortunate sucker. You know you're the last guy when your "Sardines?!" remains unanswered and then you think to yourself, "Oh, shit" knowing that any dark corner you turn into might have 19 people hiding ready to jump out at you and scare the hell out of you.

Needless to say it's a great game for teenagers as they are "forced" to pile into a small space together, body against body and try NOT to make noises or giggle, which is next to impossible.

A Summer's Day

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

-- William Shakespeare