Back to Diaryland 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	2003-12-04 ... 11:40 a.m. I am still going deaf, but I continue to mis-hear things in lovely and creative ways, so I do not mind one bit. Just keep talking nice and loud and allow me to think you are more interesting or funny than you actually are. This past weekend I was watching football and folding laundry (more on this juxtaposition in a moment),* and the announcers were doing one of those dead-time plugs for other shows on the network, which are super-annoying because I cannot effectively zap that kind of advertising through the magic of TiVo. The play-by-play guy said something about "the hottest new drama on television," called "Cold Case." In my deafness I thought he said "Coffeecake." But sadly there is no dramatic television series called "Coffeecake," although there should be. In the pilot episode, Bob brings a coffeecake to work and puts it in the breakroom. It's...caramel pecan! And everyone stands around looking all stricken, like on ER, and the lights are all dim like on West Wing, and maybe it's raining outside. Coffeecake, tonight at eightsevencentral. LT is going deaf too. In the car I was telling him about my next homemade iron-on T-shirt, which is going to say GEE YOUR HAIR SMELLS IRONIC, and he thought I had said GEE YOUR HAIR SMELLS LIKE RAMEN. I decided to make that one as well, in his size because he thought of it. MORE POSTING OF THE FUNNY-ONLY-TO-US CHAT TRANSCRIPTS smartypantsmimi: My web stats make me happy: "dill in Victorian times"! Someone is interested in old-timey herb usage! feedmewithyrkids: I'm trying to think of nursery rhymes that feature dill. They would probably have pre-dated colonization. smartypantsmimi: I'm thinking egg salad tea sandwiches with dill. And Victorian pornography with dill. feedmewithyrkids: Dill in the bildungsroman. smartypantsmimi: You got bildungsroman in my dill. Like the old peanut butter/chocolate commercials. feedmewithyrkids: Swinburne getting spanked by a dill branch in school. feedmewithyrkids: Culture soaks into a man immersed in the world like dill flavor soaks into a cucumber immersed in brine. smartypantsmimi: Dandies carrying dill sprigs folded into their handkerchiefs, for that fresh herbal feeling. smartypantsmimi: From "A New Booke of Cookerie," 1615, I shall quote: "Then worke it stiffe like a pudding, and cram it in againe." feedmewithyrkids: Whoa. feedmewithyrkids: I like to cram it in the pudding. smartypantsmimi: It's the hottest cookbook sentence ever. Part of the hotness is the spelling. smartypantsmimi: WORKE IT STIFFE LIKE A PUDDING smartypantsmimi: That sentence is about making some stuffing to stuff inside a swan. smartypantsmimi: CRAM IT IN THE SWAN AGAINE smartypantsmimi: "Ahhh, go cram it in the swan." feedmewithyrkids: Portrayals of dill in Leda and the Swan paintings. feedmewithyrkids: Burne-Jones' use of dill. smartypantsmimi: We have a whole dill/swan-cramming/Victorian sexual mores academic conference program going here. feedmewithyrkids: It's our frustrated inner grad students. smartypantsmimi: "I enjoy anal, three-ways, and swan-cramming." feedmewithyrkids: With a stiffe pudding. feedmewithyrkids: Swan cramming. feedmewithyrkids: I should make a Craigslist personal for that. smartypantsmimi: It's a fantastic insult too. "Go cram it in the swan." Particularly w/a Chicago accent. feedmewithyrkids: I bet Asian fetishists would be turned on by the phrase "swan cramming." smartypantsmimi: "When all is boyled well together, put in your Fish, and scum it well." smartypantsmimi: The authors keep using that possessive for food: "parboyle your legge." "Put in your Fish." feedmewithyrkids: Wait, you cram the swan with a fish? smartypantsmimi: Sorry, this is a different recipe. smartypantsmimi: "To hash a Legge of Mutton in the French fashion." smartypantsmimi: "To make an Vmble Pye, or for want of Vmbles to doe it with a Lambes head and Purtenance." smartypantsmimi: What the fuck? I can't decipher that one. feedmewithyrkids: Humble? Umble. Vmble. smartypantsmimi: I thought humble pie had no meat, though. If you have no humble, use a lamb's head? smartypantsmimi: If you have hubris, use a lamb's head. feedmewithyrkids: And purtenance. smartypantsmimi: "Stampe it in a Morter till it come like Paste, all in a lumpe." feedmewithyrkids: The head? smartypantsmimi: No, new recipe again...the buttocke of a wilde Boare. feedmewithyrkids: Elizabethan cookbooks vs Mike Tyson's press conferences. Much the same syntax. smartypantsmimi: "Cram It In The Swan" by AC/DC. feedmewithyrkids: No replies to the swan-cramming ad yet. smartypantsmimi: Come on, swan-crammers. feedmewithyrkids: I thought Chicago was full of swan-crammers. smartypantsmimi: We could start a LiveJournal community. feedmewithyrkids: Yes. Of 2 people. smartypantsmimi: That's the best kind of LiveJournal community. smartypantsmimi: "Cramming the swan" could also be anything, really. A skateboard term. feedmewithyrkids: A financial term. Secret Enron e-mails about Operation Swan Cramm. smartypantsmimi: Swanny McSwanCram. smartypantsmimi: Delicious Crammed Swan. feedmewithyrkids: We could bring it back as a vegan dish: "It's really yellow peppers simmered in coconut milk. We just call it a crammed swan." smartypantsmimi: A seitan swan, crammed with leeks. feedmewithyrkids: Then have ready the Greate Gutts of Mutton. feedmewithyrkids: That's so like a directive from some hobbit-rock song. smartypantsmimi: Greate bigge globs of greesy grimie gophere guttes. feedmewithyrkids: Geddy Lee singing: feedmewithyrkids: Then have ready the Greate Gutts of Mutton feedmewithyrkids: For when the swan come to cramme you smartypantsmimi: Now I'm all laughing in my office. feedmewithyrkids: And your head is smashed into a paste. smartypantsmimi: Come! Like Paste! All! In! A Lumpe! *Okay, the juxtaposition thing. Maybe I am just hideously self-aware (every freaking moment of every freaking day), but do you too have that running commentary in your head that points out when you are doing something faux-contradictory or slightly clich�? Like watching football and folding laundry. Smoking a cigarette right after you finish a bowl of tofu and veggies. Stuffing your latest subversive Quimby's purchases into your messenger bag and finding a teething ring and Nora's Cheerio stash also in there. Something about these moments makes you sort of hover above yourself like a camera crane on a movie set, and you think, "Well, here I am, feeding the baby with one hand and correcting the proofs for my book** with the other, I never thought I would be this person but it seems that I am this person." It is not a despairing feeling, just an odd third-person "wow, I guess this is me" feeling. And the feeling has nothing to do with "oh I have gotten so old it seems like just yesterday I was eating three hits of acid and carrying a tire iron around and getting questioned by the cops about it." (Note: true story.) I hate that crap. There is no "magic" age when you are a "grown-up," that's so reductionist and fake and lets millions of slack twenty-somethings off the hook for not doing anything with themselves. Your life is your life! Stumble through it proudly! Weave in and out of the parked cars of your life, shout at the lampposts of your life, puke in the bushes of your life's neighbors! ** I have avoided it long enough, so here's the scoop on the damn book. I was not going to mention this until it was actually published but hey, maybe you are still doing the holiday shopping. To smush the story down to a sentence or nine, because we are running overlong here, a wonderful woman from HarperCollins UK contacted me a while back and said, "We think your site should be made into a book." I laughed. If I had wanted to write a book I would have written a book. Then she kept talking and I realized it was not a prank call, and I realized I am JUST NOT PUNK ROCK ENOUGH to say no to HarperCollins UK and their checks. I feel very guilty about this book thing, because many incredibly worthy authors struggle and suffer to get their books published, and many more toil away at brilliant novels in obscurity. I go blah blah during my lunch hour on my happy little subdomain, writing something that is NOT A BOOK, and out of the blue comes a publishing contract. 1. My pseudonym has been retained. 2. I did not choose the cover art. Nor did I write the Amazon.com blurb copy. I think that much should be obvious. 3. I don't know if it will be published in the US or not. British Amazon will be happy to ship it to you, I assume. 4. 100% no new content! All crap you have read before, just on the printed page and in a different order! However, maybe you will find that comforting. 5. If I were truly cool, and good at making graceful exits, I would say that this book spells the end of the website. But do you know how much I would miss it? A lot. 6. There is a provision at the very end of my contract that stipulates all the possible spin-offs of this enterprise, and what percentage of the revenue belongs to HarperCollins UK if the spin-offs occur, and one of the things mentioned is action figures. OH PLEASE CAN WE HAVE ACTION FIGURES? ---mimi smartypants comes with everything you see here. back/forward