AOL Welcome Screen Headline Of The Week

'I Was Tortured.I Was in Tears'

Kate Beckinsale's On-Set Meltdown,
Nude Scene Crisis: What Happened?

I guess there's a few different reasons why this one won. First of all, there's the classic AOL welcome phrase device of using a word ("crisis") to overdescribe a celebrity problem ("Nude scene"). It's a great phrase: "Nude scene crisis."

But also, it's use of the word "torture," especially when seen on the same page as a link to a story about a disabled woman who was literally tortured to death by housemates.

Kinda puts your "torture" in perspective, huh, Kate?

Carolyn Hax-ism of the week

Every one of Carolyn Hax's live Friday chats online at Washington Post.com has at least one sentence or paragraph that hits home. This one, from Carolyn's reply regarding a man's distress at his brother's pending marriage, was the one from the last chat. As with so many of her gems, it almost doesn't matter what the question was:

There's not much you can do to stop someone from making a mistake he's determined to make. You can, though, shift your take on why he's sharing your unhappiness. You see it as a chance to fix things. Maybe he doesn't want it fixed, maybe he just wants to talk. Let him talk (and of course drive you nuts). Ask questions instead of offering ideas--example, "What do you think you should do?"; "What would be your perfect outcome?" or even, "Is there something you want me to do or say?" and "WHAT DO YOU WANT?" Leading questions.

Notes from a week of work at Harvest Market

Following are some things I noticed or heard at my job the last week or so. I am presenting them sans analysis; just putting them out here as is, for you to make of them what you will.

* "Weird and Slightly Scary Product Name" Department
Last week I went down to the kitchen to get something from the walk-in and I noticed a single brown cardboard box (mixed in on a shelf of Honey Graham Cracker crumb boxes) with the following product description printed on the end:
LASER SCANNED RAISINS

* "No, actually, they're the one item on this counter that sucks" department
Exchange with a customer at the pastry counter:
Customer: And what are those?
Me: That's a maple biscuit.
Customer: Oh. Are they good?

* "I don't know... you tell ME, lady" department
"So," a woman asked my co-worker David as he stood at the deli, "what is the difference between the big salami and the small salami?"

* "Nope! Psych! I don't!" department
"So," I said to the customer as I surveyed the scattered items she'd just bought and paid for, "would you like a bag to carry all this stuff?"
"Yeah," she said, "if you have one."

Future updates as events warrant.

AOL Welcome Screen Headline Of The Week

Had to block, copy and paste this one before it vanished from cyberspace forever...

You Can Bust Your Belly Fat
Reach for These Two Nuts First

Random thoughts on a Sunday

Just some random stuff I felt like pulling together, none of which merited its own post, but which together... uh... STILL might not merit its own post. Ah, well...

* * *

I loved Kevin Cowherd's article about Renaissance Faire dinner theater in the Baltimore Sun ("Watching Knights of the Dinner Table"). Even Cowherd's weakest columns inevitably have one line in them that makes me laugh out loud as I read. This one had more than one.

* * *

Advice from my friend Shawn, when I whined to him about a general malaise I'd been feeling lately: "We all suffer bouts of depression, indecision, angst. But don't let it interfere with moving your life forward. Let it go. Shake things up if you're down.... I understand what you're going through, and the best medicine is movement. Give your brain something new to think about so that it doesn't have time to fuck with you."

That last line is what Zen masters have been preaching and trying to practice for years. Easier said than done at times, and, oddly enough, easier done than said at other times.

I'd rather hear it from a friend than from a master. Thanks, Shawn.

* * *

Listening at work to the "Starbuck's XM Cafe" station, featuring "adult singer-songwriter" music (aka bland, midtempo, nondescript, nonmelodic confessional modern folk rock, or, as a Rolling Stone writer once described REM, "moan in search of a melody') and a track from Bob Dylan came on.

The problem with the aforementioned genre of music is that the performers who populate it are trying to do what Dylan did (does) while lacking three essential elements:

* Dylan's sense of himself as not only a performer and a songwriter, but as a stage persona, a character independent of Robert Zimmerman, the man who has placed himself in the title role.

* Dylan's talent as a songwriter: meaning not only his obvious gifts as a wordsmith, but his fearlessness as an artist.

* Dylan's devotion to rock and roll, and to making sure his songs never lull, but drive or pulse.

The inability to capture any of these three elements is what dooms most modern day singer-songwriters to mediocrity, and also explains why 99.99999999% of the time, the moniker THE NEW DYLAN is simply misplaced and never to be trusted.

* * *

I've noticed that whenever I have coffee, whether it's my 16-ounce 50-50 french roast-french roast decaf at home, or a long espresso (a double shot stretched out to coffee-cup size) at work, or a Red Eye or Americano at the cafe, or a cup of Dunkin Donuts brew grabbed on the fly... no matter where or when, I've noticed that somehow I always leave an inch of coffee in the bottom of the cup. I don't know why. For a while, I thought "OK, so maybe I should get the next size down," but when I started doing that, I STILL left an inch of coffee in the bottom of the cup.

What does unfinished coffee represent? Hmmmm...

* * *

Best STATUS UPDATE I've yet read from one of my friends on Facebook was my Goddard pal George's post from last week:

George took the True Age Test and found out he died five years ago.

* * *

Best one-liner I've heard recently: my co-worker Ian's description of "speed dating" at a local pub, where participants rotate in seven-minute shifts between tables of other singles.

"Yep, seven minutes. Five minutes of small talk... then the two most unforgettable minutes of our lives."

* * *

Realization: that I have gotten the good things I have in my life right now by trusting God and following faith... by realizing that my actions and thoughts and words have consequences in my life and in the lives of those around me, and that I am largely responsible for my life, the circumstances in it, and the quality of my relationships with people.

I'm thinking of one friendship in particular that, eight years ago, seemed like it would never happen, that was impossible... that I would suffer forever and never unlock the key to this person. Now, eight years later, I count this person among my closest friends. It all came about for a lot of reasons, but from my perspective, it happened because I knew I wanted this person in my life, knew she was important to me, and so I worked HARD spiritually to build a foundation for a friendship (blessed her and her life and her family in my heart, let go of a lot of baggage on my end) and followed "the silent voice within" in all my contact with her.

But I also just made sure that I respected her, and further, I TOOK THE RISK and expressed what I was really feeling for her. Scary, because I told her some things that, if she'd taken them the wrong way, might have shut the door forever. But instead, with the foundation I'd laid and we built together, she got where I was coming from, told me where SHE was coming from, and so we met in the middle. And we've been there ever since. One of my closest friends, and it's hard to believe I ever wanted it any other way, because now I wouldn't want it any other way.

From her and my friendship with her, I learned to be persistent and understanding, to abandon my expectations and just meet people where they were and give what I had, because who knows, if I needed someone's friendship, maybe THEY in turn needed MINE.

I'm keeping this in mind as I struggle with my feelings for a "distant star." I know what I feel and what I want. And having been there before (having someone I held in esteem at a distance become one of my closest friends over the course of time), I also know that it's possible. Like I said, I've been here before... several times, in fact. And each of those times, what I ended up getting turned out to be something much different from what I thought I wanted... but still, something amazing and beautiful and wonderful in its own way that I wouldn't trade for the world.

So I'm approaching this "distant star" with the same reverence and respect that I have approached others in the past. We'll see what happens.

After all, tomorrow, as the aforementioned Mr. Dylan sang, is a long time.

Garfield Minus Garfield

In describing a somewhat, uh, mentally unbalanced co-worker to me once, my brother said "She sits in her cubicle and talks to herself the way you talk to yourself when you're in your apartment alone."

Whomever it is that got the brilliant idea to do the blog Garfield Minus Garfield has tapped into that same energy. This is the funniest website I have read in years.

What is Garfield Minus Garfield? It's Garfield panels with the cat photoshopped out, so that Jon, Garfield's owner, is left talking to himself. Sounds like it'd be a little pointless, but from the blog's main page...

Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.

My favorite one is here.

Garfield is a kid-friendly foray into the imagination. Kids (and the kid in adults) love the idea that a man could have such interactions with his pets (and, for adults, Get Fuzzy has taken this concept to the nth degree)... but when you really THINK about it... I mean, imagine for a second that you're a fly on the wall in Jon Arbuckle's apartment, listening to him talk to "his cat"... not just TALK, but CONVERSE. Anyone who's ever had a pet can relate... still, in many ways, Jon might as well be talking to an empty room.

Meds would be indicated.

Not only has Garfield Minus Garfield become one of the first sites I click on whenever I go online every day; it's also gotten me to-- imagine this-- ACTUALLY READ GARFIELD EVERY DAY IN THE PAPER!!! Garfield has always left me a little limp; I just didn't find it particularly funny. I suppose if I was a cat lover, or maybe, more specifically, a 12-year-old cat lover, I might have enjoyed it... but it's always been on my COMICS TO READ LIST somewhere down between Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G. Since I discovered Garfield Minus Garfield, though, I actually read it in the paper, erasing the cat in my mind's eye, catching up on Jon's battles with mental illness.

I even tried creating a few of my own (posted below). My apologies for the quality; they're crude (I'm not anywhere near as smooth with graphics programs as the owner of the GMG blog is) but they made me laugh.

In my apartment. Alone.

Uh-oh.

* * *

Here are my versions, altered from current Garfield offerings on the Universal Press Syndicate website. Apologies to Jim Davis and to the Garfield Minus Garfield webmaster:

Wine

Rather than go into my traditional tirade about how, for years, I was intimidated by WINE because I felt like I didn't really KNOW enough... I just knew what I liked... not realizing, of course, that that was ENOUGH... anyway...

I always want to pass along wine recommendations, so here's my current fave: Banfi Centine 2005. A red wine. Awesome.

For those who need to read about the terroir and flavor tones and the like, here's the blurb from the Banfi website:

The calcareous soil and temperate micro-climate of Tuscany rewards the wine grape with unequaled fruitiness. Among the noble grape varieties that thrive here are Sangiovese, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

Centine is a bright ruby-red youthful wine, intensely fruity with a lingering finish - a testament to its overall balance. It is an ideal companion to pasta, grilled or roasted red and white meats.

Grape Varieties: 60% Sangiovese; 20% Cabernet Sauvignon; 20% Merlot.

In the words of Max at the Christmas party, where I had about four glasses of this stuff:

WOOOOO!!! I'M GONNA SKATEBOARD DOWN THIS SLOPING UNDERGROUND TUNNEL BETWEEN MY BOSS'S HOUSE AND BARN!!!!!!! WOOOOOOO!!!!

And no sulfite hangover the day after. Yummy.

We have a couple cases of this stuff at work and I'm planning to bring them home one bottle at a time. (Or is that TAKE them home?)

Then, a skateboard. And kneepads.