Saturday, December 08, 2007

"I want people to stop eating my house, but that ain't gonna happen."

BEST...COMMERCIAL...EVER...

The detail in this ad is fantastic, right down to the rolled-up-red-liquorice for the bike tires. It also makes me laugh and laugh and laugh, to a degree where I get short of breath.


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Sunday, December 02, 2007

Yo, re-entry

Tomorrow I re-enter the workaday world. I have been out of the office since the afternoon of November 14, and was on vacation for about 10 days and then at home sick all last week. I'm still sick, but I'm going to work anyway because I have a ton of stuff to do and my Internet connection at home SUCKS so I can't work from here.

It snowed today and it's bitterly cold. Tomorrow my feet shall be bedecked in cashmere knee socks and my new polka-dot Wellies, and my feet shall be toasty and dry.

I need to stay the hell off of ebay. I am finding all these weird sub-genres of Bad Art. Here's one I'd never seen before: kittens in a bowl.

Now, I'm not a cat person, but I had a cat in college. Even taking into account that she was a mean, devious, spiteful cat, I do still think she was a reasonable representative of her species. And not once did I ever see her hang out in a bowl. Does this actually make her a freak? Was she a strange cat because she did not loll in serving dishes, cheerfully sliding around in the Corelle from the Goodwill? Perhaps she was not a reasonable representative of her species after all, if the following exhibits from ebay are any indication of the real life of cats. Or kittens, at least. Read on, if you dare:


Exhibit A: ANTIQUE DRAWING OF KITTENS IN A BOWL

Comments:
1) WTF is wrong with these kittens? They look feral. The one in the lower left looks like it is shirking away from some unseen figure with a machete. These are not happy kittens. They're all "Dudes, we're already in a bowl; we're not heading anywhere good fast."
2) Why did someone FRAME this under GLASS? As a memento of Strange Cousin Bobby, the one who put kittens in a bowl, and then put the bowl in the microwave?
3) Who is the weirdo who OUTBID MY HIGH BID OF $19.72 for this monstrosity?
4) Why did I want this enough to bid $19.72 for it?


Exhibit B: Two KITTENS in a Bowl ~ 1903 Sheahan Pub

Comments:
1) Here we have two kittens in a soup tureen, apparently this is the kind of bowl kittens are in before they are in a regular-sized bowl (see above).
2) These kittens, apparently, are "HOT STUFF" according the the image caption. Why? Simple. Because the person who created and laid-out this image is a total freak. From the item title, it appears this may be an advertising postcard for a pub or restaurant. I don't know about you, but the kittens in a tureen really make me just want to run there for a meal. Hot stuff, indeed.
3) I just want to state for the record that these kittens, as with the kittens above, are not happy kittens.


Exhibit C: KITTEN IN BOWL Italian Charm Link charms cats cat kitty

Comments:
1) Here we have a charming, um, charm, of a--you guessed it--kitten in a bowl. For all those times when you're out and about and you think, "Wow, you know what I'd love to see right about now? A kitten in a bowl! Oh! I have one around my neck right now. Ain't life grand?"
2) Who wants to wear a charm with a picture of a kitten in a bowl around his/her neck? Wait! I know who. Rachael Ray.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Once Upon a Time...

When I was but a wee lass, I used to read real literature for fun. Yes, I was one of those people. While other children my age were reading...hell, what am I saying? they were not reading they were outside playing sports...I was reading. And reading. And reading some more.

And then I decided I wanted my JOB to be reading. And whose job is it to read? A college professor, of course. I would go to graduate school, and get a PhD, and be a college professor, and then I could read all the time.

Ah, youth.

So, in summary, from about 1976 to 2001 or 2002, I read, and read, and read some more. And then I realized that graduate school, and indeed my future career as a college professor had nothing to do with reading.

And then I stopped reading. And I started reading crap. Piles and piles of garbage.

Actually, let me amend that. Not crap. I made lighter choices. I approached reading as escapism, and not as a career. However, had I been studying "cultural studies" or some such, I could probably have made a career out of these lighter choices. I could have gotten a PhD in Danielle Steel. Well, maybe not Danielle Steel, but surely Judith Krantz. And if not Judith Krantz, undoubtedly Jilly Cooper.

I think of this now because I just read a short memoir about James Merrill and David Jackson. And then I pulled out my copy of "The Changing Light at Sandover" and started flipping through it. And was struck dumb (well, not really dumb, because I was not talking at the time, but work with me here) by the realization that I used to read incredibly dense and difficult poetry for fun. And I would converse about said poetry at length, for fun, outside of the classroom setting. I had friends that also talked about incredibly dense poetry for fun.

And then at some point it all stopped being fun. And I dropped out of graduate school and got a therapist, because that is what you do when you are ABD. And I look at the hundreds of poetry books with the fine layer of dust on them, sigh, and re-read something by Barbara Taylor Bradford. Because somewhere in graduate school I realized that it was not about reading, but about jumping through hoops to get a job. I had about a year before I went on the circuit, trying to get into a club that probably didn't want me, but that had a branch in Arkansas that might take me on on a temporary basis (with a 4/4 teaching load).

And then reading made me sad, I think, because it wasn't going to help me get a job at a little private college in Vermont with a white-steepled Congregational Church in the middle of town, off the very green town green.

But I have started mixing in more real books again. I am not quitting my Danielle Steel cold-turkey, but I read some Ezra Pound today, and it felt ok.


O bright Apollo,
tin andra, tin herowa, tina Theon
What god, man, or hero
Shall I place a tin wreath upon!

Monday, January 29, 2007

kunitz quote/fine arts work center


kunitz quote/fine arts work center, originally uploaded by eicats.

banner on the wall in the common room at the fine arts work center in provincetown, massachusetts.