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the latest waddle:

good morning, wordpress - 10:36 a.m. , 2009-07-03

elaborate murder attempt - 2:56 p.m. , 2009-07-01

building a tractor in the basement - 10:42 a.m. , 2009-06-19

ask no questions tell just a few lies - 3:17 p.m. , 2009-06-09

my long lasting flavor really lasts long - 1:10 p.m. , 2009-06-04


2005-02-02 ... 4:56 p.m.

I have had a weird couple of days. First there was the New York Times article about "mommy blogs" which has a huge photo of baby dooce.com and a teeny quote from me, and which also contains the very tiresome observation that "The baby blog in many cases is an online shrine to parental self-absorption." La da dee dee dee, would someone please tell me what I am supposed to write about in my DIARY if not my own personal LIFE? If I had more energy today I could get good and mad about the story, but on the other hand I think it's kind of cute how the New York Times thinks that right now is 2001, and that any sort of story on weblogs and online writing qualifies as news. Even "Style" section news.

Second, there was the phone call from the editors of the coming-soon US version of my dumb book, who told me that I needed to call this woman at CNN, because some morning show that is probably the televised equivalent of a "Style" section may want to do a story about, guess what, PARENTING WEBLOGS, and if you ever needed proof that memes and trend stories travel like a snotty-nose virus passed around a preschool, you now have it. The editors at HarperCollins were very excited about the possible CNN thing, claiming it would be great publicity for the book, which I find very baffling because there is no Nora in the book. So anyone who is attracted by the "parenting weblog" angle is going to be very disappointed when they pick up my book and read glib tales of a younger, skinnier me falling off of barstools and harassing public-transit masturbators.

Then I received an email and subsequent phone call from a guy at "HarperCollins Productions," whose job it is to "leverage" "intellectual properties" into "other media," like film and television. I can't say anything else about that because my head might explode.

I know some people don't believe me when I post about how completely underwhelmed I am about the book and the really-very-puny-in-the-scheme-of-things media coverage of my silly website, and these same people assume that a mere scratch of my "eh" surface would reveal a drooling fame-obsessed mediawhore who jumps up and down like a Price Is Right contestant at every link or book press release.You can believe what you like, but MY "EH" IS SINCERE. Think of it this way: You happen to have a drawer full of grocery lists. Grocery lists stretching back to 1999 or so. Some big publishing company comes along and says "Your grocery lists would make a great book! We could make money off your grocery lists! You could make money off your grocery lists too, although probably not quite as much as us!" You would probably say yes because why the hell not, but you would not suddenly fancy yourself the Jane Austen of grocery lists. You would not quit your job or buy expensive pointy hipster shoes or say "DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?" to the bartenders at the Rainbo. You wouldn't even call yourself a "writer" because dude, grocery lists? Come on. And if a guy with a porn-star name and lots of scary media words in his vocabulary called you and talked real fast about "optioning" your collected grocery lists into a screenplay or whatever, you would not hang up thinking you had hit the jackpot, you would hang up going "uh...okay." Yes you would. This book thing has been a bit like the log ride at a theme park: I have a feeling I will end up slightly damp, but mildly exhilarated and hopefully not very nauseated.

And here is a special shout-out to the very small handful of people who have decided to actually get angry at me for having this book ridiculousness fall out of the sky and into my lap, the people who are stamping their feet and whining that they deserve it more because they are the real Writers, not me: Grow Up. There is no "deserve" here. If you are such a basement-dwelling retard that you can't see past or around the glittery shininess of a real book! That got really published! to the big vapid nothingness of so what, and can't understand that I, like you, am just trying to Do My Thing, then you are dumber than I thought.

Well! That anger certainly came out of nowhere! Sometimes you bite into an innocent-seeming topic and a hateful cream filling oozes out. Let's move on, shall we?

PABST, YOU DID NOT DESERVE THAT BLUE RIBBON

I was walking home from an evening of cheap beer and pasta salad and Aqua Teen DVDs, feeling a little loopy, and I started feeling sorry for all the underappreciated berries of the world. Strawberries and (to a lesser extent) blueberries get lots of props but there is not a lot of love out there for loganberries or gooseberries or elderberries. After I thought of those three B-list berries I kind of ran out of berry names, and then I came up with crunchberries and was very happy with myself for a whole block until I remembered what crunchberries actually are. After that all bets were off and I decided to just make up berries, and I similarly decided that although there is no such thing as the Wu-Tang Clan anymore it is really a crying shame that there were not more food products named after its members, because Ghostface Killa Berries has a great ring to it. GhostfaceKillaBerry pie!

UNDERREPORTED TSUNAMI TRAGEDY

I was recently panhandled by a junkie-looking woman who was dressed like Steven Tyler's microphone stand.

Her: Got a dollar?
Me: No.
Her: It's not for me, it's for the pandas! The ones killed in the tsunami!

THIS ENTRY IS GOING DOWN THE TUBES

Here's the Nora report:

1. After an evening of lying on the floor whining about how we were hungry, but did not have any motivation to cook, and we could make X if only we had Y ingredient, and we could go out but that means I would have to put on real pants, LT and I ordered a pizza. Nora perked up at the very idea (I had no idea she was such a pizza fan), and proceeded to mention pizza approximately every twenty seconds during the hour or so from phone call to delivery.

[door buzzer sounds]
Nora: Pizza here! Allbody* come eat! Eat pizza! Mommy! Daddy! Pizza!
Me: Okay, okay, wait, let Daddy pay the pizza guy.
[transaction complete]
Nora [calling after the delivery person]: THANK YOU PIZZA!
[later, eating]
Nora [pulls a shred of spinach off of her piece]: Uh-oh! Leaf! No thank you, leaf. Mommy! Take leaf!
Me: Yeah, better not order from this place any more. Leaves on the pizza! The nerve!

*I love this made-up Nora-word "allbody." Why say "everybody" when you can say "allbody"?

2. We are playing in the living room and Nora puts a skunk puppet on one hand, a stingray puppet on the other, and announces, "Puppet show!"

"Hooray!" I say, more excited than is seemly (it has been a long, dull winter day, and even a toddler puppet show sounds good right now). Here is the script of the puppet show, for those of you who want to find your skunk and stingray puppets and stage your own.

Skunk: Hello.
Stingray: Hello.
[long pause]
Stingray: SQUEEZE YOU!
[The stingray puppet completely engulfs the skunk puppet. Parental figure claps and cheers. Repeat scene many, many times, until it's time for toothbrushing and Blue's Clues.]

---mimi smartypants had better check herself before she wrecks herself.


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