Sign I may watch too much television: it only took me 3 or 4 minutes to figure out that the reason the girl getting a makeover on How Do I Look? looked familiar was that she was on an episode of True Life (the one where the girls want to get breast reductions).

Speaking of How Do I Look?, there is also an episode where one of the friends of the makeoveree was a cheerleader at my high school.

I’m watching an episode of Neat (another in a series of shows where people throw away their stuff and get organized; in other words, heaven on tv) where a lady just got bullied into throwing away her portion of a towel that she and her friends acquired at a Duran Duran concert and which holds the sweat of Simon LeBon. Hello. I am all for throwing out, but there is room in any house for a two inch square of sweaty Duran Duran towel.

I watch these shows because I enjoy watching people be forced to get rid of their ugly, broken items, NOT PRECIOUS ARTIFACTS. I may not be able to watch this show anymore.

Hey look, it’s Sunday night’s episode of Brothers and Sisters, recapped and condensed into one scene!

Kitty: I have cancer, but I feel pretty good.
Nora: NO YOU DON’T I WANT YOU TO FEEL TERRIBLE SO YOU WILL NEVER LEEEEEEEEEAVE MEEEEEE SOB SOB
Robert: I am going to take you to an exciting Republican dinner! At the Reagan Library!
Kitty: I am so excited!
Holly: (aside) I have lost all of my money, but have not told anyone. Shh! Here comes my boyfriend, David.
David: Why so glum?
Holly: SHUT UP I HATE YOU
Scotty: Let’s have a baby!
Kevin: I want control over everything, all the time.
Scotty: I found this random purse maker to carry our child! Why aren’t you excited? The viewing public has never seen her before, but it’s all cool, y’all.
Frenchman: Oh, Walker fameely! Leet me chahm you wiz my dancing and, how you say, abs!
All the Walkers except for Nora: THAT GUY IS HOT.
Kitty: I am so excited about the Republican event!
Robert: Oh, about that. I have tricked you. It’s really a dinner for two inexplicably atop a building.
Kitty: I really wanted to see some Republicans. You don’t have to be such a show off with your annoying gestures, Robert.
Fireworks explode nearby.
Robert: Ahem.
Nora: FRET FRET FRET
Frenchman: Eet ees ok, Nora. Le French ave a saying, “Blah blah blah blah.” Let us dance.
Nora: All my problems are resolved, kind of! Scotty and Kevin used a dancing metaphor to sort out their surrogacy issue, Sarah apologized to me for screaming at me about telling the kids about Kitty’s cancer, Evan actually exists, and next week stupid Tommy comes back!

FIN

Note: I watched this episode on fast forward with the closed captioning on. It’s totally the way to go. I slowed it down to watch in regular time a couple of times, and would have died had I had to sit through that scene where Rebecca and Frenchie tango or whatever. Fast forward, suckas!

Dear True Blood writers,

You started this story arc one episode too late, and that is why in last night’s episode I was forced to watch Jason Stackhouse eat a Powerbar while sitting in his truck. Lame. And oh god, Evan Rachel Wood, your overacting was painful to watch. As was your Yahtzee playing.

Also: with all the shit Sookie’s seen in the past few days, a giant egg is what makes her scream? Please.

Bring on the finale! I want to be on the edge of my seat, not checking my watch while Jason chews.

Thanks in advance,
Sally J. Nordan

1. PTRYNPK

2. My birthday was Monday and I stayed home with Spike, and then yesterday I ditched him at daycare and went shopping. I had a gift card from Anthropologie (thanks, in laws!) and no time constraints. This, friends, is a great combo. So I dug around in the sale area and had a pile of stuff to try on, including this really cute dress that was marked down to $19.95! Hello! At Anthropologie! So I tried it on, and ohmygod it fit. It’s a leetle low cut (and uh, not in a cute way), but a tank top underneath will do the trick. I also got a super cute skirt.

So last night I was hanging the dress up and heard some crinkling. I went hunting for the crinkly tag and found, instead, a Payday candy bar wrapper in the pocket.

I figured the dress had been returned, as it was marked down so much, but people, it is pristine. There is nary a mark on it, nary a stray string. I have decided that these are the only possible scenarios:

a. the person wore the dress and ate a Payday
b. the person tried the dress on at home and ate a Payday
c. the person tried the dress on at home, heard her roommate’s key in the lock, and stuffed the Payday wrapper into the pocket to prevent the roommate from knowing she ate her last Payday
d. an Anthropologie employee was eating a Payday in the sale area and slipped the wrapper in the pocket when she heard her supervisor coming

While I do not understand who eats Paydays — hello, there is no chocolate — I am grateful that there is no smeary chocolate residue in the pocket. In related news, I am going to start stuffing candy bar wrappers into garments and then demanding a discount upon check out.

3. Last night I accidentally watched Somewhere in Time. All 103 minutes of it (I know there are 103 minutes because at 90 minutes, I looked on imdb to see how much more I had to live through). I last saw this when I was in high school and thought it was sooooo romaaaaantic. Y’all. While I love romance + time travel, Christopher Reeve, bless him, is the WORST ACTOR EVER. It’s like watching an orangutan trying to act. He clutches his head to indicate despair. It is unbearable. It would be 10 times more enjoyable as a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. If you have seen this movie lately, perhaps you can answer two questions for me:

1. So she gives the watch to him when she’s old, and then he leaves it in 1912 when he disappears. But where did it come from to begin with?
2. So the penny screws him and he flies back to 1979. Why doesn’t he just try to go back to 1912 again instead of crying and taking long walks on the beach?

If you have a chance, please watch this movie, take some notes, and get back to me.

1. Overheard in Jackson:
Lady on cell phone examining cans of peaches at Kroger: “They’re about to pull the plug on him and I can’t even get there!”

2. The other day I had some warm laundry that had just come out of the dryer and thought Pete might like lounging in it. Stupid. What he enjoyed doing was pooping in it. Oh, and THEN I didn’t notice the turds and threw a quilt over the laundry because I didn’t feel like folding it and DAMN MY LAZINESS because then Pete peed on the quilt. So, to recap, Pete pooped and peed in my laundry. Which, incidentally, was on the guest bed.

3. So, The Wire. I made it through season one, but I don’t think I can proceed. Sometimes shows do things that are JUST TOO MEAN FOR ME. And there was this character that they went out of their way to portray as a good guy and he took care of all the little abandoned project children and gave them juice boxes and bags of chips for lunch (which is tragic in its own right) and then OH YEAH HIS FRIENDS JUST SHOT HIM DEAD. I just — I can’t go on. Who else are you gonna kill off, The Wire? Huh? HUH?

4. If you thought a book was pretty good until the end, does that make it a good book or a bad book? Here, let me explain: I read The Ghost Writer the other weekend (my in laws were in town, thus I had time to read an entire book), and while it was kind of good there for awhile, I found the ending so awful, so STUPID, that the whole book is totally tainted now.

If you have any interest in reading this book, look away! ‘Cause I’ma telling you all about it now.
So there is this little boy named Gerard who lives in Australia, and while his mother is asleep he sneaks into her bedroom and finds this photo of a woman and a short story. Mom comes in, finds him, and beats the crap out of him. Several years later, he finds the story again, which the reader gets to read as well (I love that conceit). When he’s 13 or so, he gets a letter in the mail from a penpal service. He signs up. His penpal is named Alice. She is also 13 and is an orphan whose parents were killed in a car accident that paralyzed her. She and Gerard become best buddies. Years go by and Gerard wants to visit her, but she keeps putting him off. He goes to England for some reason or other, doesn’t visit her, but does read two more short stories by the same author as the secret one. It turns out the author is his great-grandmother, who raised his mother. His mother, btw, never talks about her past. So ok, more years go on, and Gerard has become a librarian who lives with his mother. She has cancer but actually dies by falling off of a stool in her room, trying to get something out of a cabinet. Another short story!

Gerard places an ad in a London newspaper asking for info about his mother and her family. An old lady named Abigail writes to him and says that she is his aunt Anne’s best friend. (He didn’t know he had an aunt.) Apparently there was a big scuffle and his mother was cut from the will. Abigail fears that Gerard’s mother killed her sister. Abigail also tells him where to find the keys to the family estate, and asks him to see if he can find anything there that might explain what happened 50 years ago.

Ok, so if you are the kind of person who likes stories like this — librarians, short stories, family estates, family secrets — this book is rocking along at this point. Gerard goes to England and explores the spoooooky family estate over the course of several days. He continues to write to his penpal, Alice, throughout (they have graduated to email by this time) and as he learns more about the family secrets, he tells her about each day’s find.

AND THEN (are you still reading? bless you) comes the big moment. Gerard is creeping through the house. He gets locked in the basement. He starts a fire to keep warm, but of course that is a terrible idea and fire rages and the smoke overtakes him and he passes out. When he comes to, the fire is out, he is sopping wet, AND THERE IS A BUCKET NEARBY. What? There’s someone here! He never did explore the third floor of the house, so something compels him up there after his brush with a fiery death. He goes into the bedroom, and instead of a crusty dusty bookcase like in all the bedrooms, there’s. . . a computer? Wha? And there are folders and folders full of. . .his emails to Alice?

So, reader. If you are thinking what I was thinking, it is this: his auntie Anne has been creepily writing him letters under the guise of being a girl his age. She responded to the ad in the paper and there is no such person as the elderly Abigail. Well, you’re part right! They are one and the same. EXCEPT THAT AUNTIE ANNE/ALICE/ABIGAIL IS A GHOST. Ghosts can move things around, but friends, ghosts can’t write letters, pour buckets of water on your flaming body, or send fucking email. I have never been more pissed off than when it’s revealed that it’s a FUCKING GHOST. A ghost! To add insult to injury, the ghosty person traps Gerard in the room and tries to make out with him! And it is then that he sees that the ghosty person has ONE ROTTING EYEBALL IN HER SKULLY HEAD.

I can’t tell you how angry I was. After all that time! Come on! Gerard and the stories and the penpal and the cancerous mother and then YOU GIVE ME A ONE-EYED ROTTING SKULL GHOST WHO SENDS EMAIL? So angry. SO ANGRY.

I think I’m still angry.

(However, if you like books like this [but without the fucking one-eyed ghost emailer], you should read Possession and/or The Thirteenth Tale.)

1. Today I bought Spike a t-shirt for $.49 at Gymboree.
2. The other night while we slept, Pete barfed up about 9 barf logs in between Larry and me.
3. Later that night, he jumped on my back and started scratching at the covers LIKE HE WAS ABOUT TO POOP.
4. He did not poop, as I threw him on the floor.
5. Are you watching The Next Food Netwood Star? Here is why the show is midly interesting: when people exhibit bad behavior, the judges have no choice but to boot them because if we see that the guy with the big eyebrows and the eyes that are too close together is a douchebag, we will not watch his show were he to win. It’s the only reality show with any sort of justice, as they aren’t about to give a tv show to somebody the universe hates. This may be why it’s kind of boring, since it violates The Omarosa Factor, but whatever. My favorites are Gay Seth Rogen (if he would just say “heavens to Murgatroyd” my life would be complete–whatever accent Snagglepuss has, GSR has it, too), Large Forehead Man, and Chubby Asian Lady. Who needs names? I’ve got stereotypes.
6. I just started watching The Wire. So I watched the first episode and followed what was happening pretty well, then watched the second episode and thought uh what but then remembered that a lot of dumb-dumbs watch this show and maybe it gets easier, and then went to watch the third episode and realized that I had actually skipped the second episode and THAT is why major plot points happened off screen. So anyway. I have no opinions so far except that Dominic West = hot.
7. You will be happy to learn that Spike is getting better about eating real food these days and will also let me feed him if I do it fast. This means there are less things being immedately thrown on the floor (although everything hits the floor eventually). Last night the child ate baked chicken and roasted zucchini! Over the weekend he ate a sloppy joe! Because I am bragging, tonight will be a floor throwing extravaganza.
8. Did you know that a position used to exist called the Groom of the Stool? This person’s #1 priority was wiping the king’s ass. NO, REALLY. He would then examine the turds and, if necessary, administer an enema.
9. I ran into this guy today! He is just as weird as ever.
10. Did you see how many comments there were on that post? TWENTY-EIGHT.

I think there is a rule — ok, fine, I made up this rule — that if you’re browsing the Daedalus Books catalog and find items you’ve been wanting for years, it’s totally ok to buy them because they are now $5. Who cares that you ran out of bookshelves years ago? (I just ordered The Selected Letters of Martha Gelhorn and The Man of My Dreams by Curtis Sittenfeld.)

Speaking of books, this has been a great reading year so far. I just updated my book list here (mostly for my own purposes, but you’re welcome to look at it, too) and am impressed at how few duds I’ve read this year (uh, can you guess which ones I had to read for work?). Sunday I started reading Wesley Stace’s by George and ohmygod it is awesome. I kind of approached it with a sneer and a sigh because it concerns itself with — prepare yourselves — a ventriloquist dummy, but literally two pages into it I was won over. I loved his first book, Misfortune, and I should’ve trusted that the second one would be just as good. It’s better, in fact. I am at the point in my reading where I’m slowing down because if I keep going, it’ll be over too soon.

In unrelated news, I started making this list the other day:
Things That Are Boring, Internet-Style
1. Blog posts about your blog, including a list of the search terms that led people to your site.
2. Tweets about Twitter.
3. Facebook statuses that are this:
Jimmy McGuggenheim is.

In further unrelated news, are you people watching Make Me a Supermodel? If so, did you cry big tears when the beautiful Salome got booted last week? I can’t believe grody Branden is still there but SALOME is gone. I am rooting for Jonathan, if only because he always refers to his son as his “baby boy.” Also: The Fashion Show is a perfectly fine replacement for Project Runway. Apparently I just need a tv show where people are flamboyant, hate each other, and have 15 minutes to make a dress out of a pile of pencil shavings. I don’t care who the host is. Bring on the claws/goofy challenges, people!

Also: American Idol. Who saw that coming? It’s funny: I spent the whole season not understanding why people liked getting their eardrums burst by Adam’s shrieking, but then was kind of devastated that he didn’t win.

Yesterday I was wearing a pair of black socks but a few hours into the workday decided they looked stupid, so I took them off and tossed them aside, where they looked as if an elderly gentleman had evaporated under my desk. Today it is raining and my sockless feet got soaked coming in from lunch and now I am wearing yesterday’s abandoned socks and I am a slovenly GENIUS.

So much of a genius, in fact, that on my watch, Spike managed to fall out of his crib this week. I could say he climbed out, but I suspect falling is more along the lines of what happened. I might have forgotten to raise the crib rail, and even though the mattress is as low as it can go, if you are a small, wily person whose crib rail only even comes up to the top of your chest, I am sure there is a way to topple out. I heard a thump over the monitor while I was making dinner, then a pause, then wild banshee shrieking. But he was fine! And approximately 8 minutes later, even though I could’ve SWORN he was giving me eat shit looks, he was jumping up and down in my lap and crawling and attempting to murder himself in various other ways, as the pre-toddling-yet-omg-so-mobile baby likes to do.

So many vanity tags to report:
DVASTYL
CJSWIFE (no doubt CJ got this tag for her)
FOTOS4U
YOU GOD
ILVMIKE (Mike + CJ = bffs)
U L IT
SZMTRS (on giant truck, naturally)

I fear it’s happened: I am officially old, as Top Model is boring. Oh, I’m still watching it and all, but I tend to fast forward through the parts where the models are actually, like, talking to each other or pouring beer on each other’s weaves. I just want to see the photo shoots and the results. On the other hand, Make Me a Supermodel is just so much better. Their shoots are better, their judges are better, and the contestants’ names are better (I present to you: Sandhurst and Mountaha [prounounced moon-ta-ha]).

I mentioned my deep and abiding love for American Idol this season, and said I wasn’t going to talk about it, but I cannot resist. I will be forever fascinated by the fact that a gorgeous, yet solidly untalented bird-call enthusiast like Megan Joy Corkrey can make it through. Same goes for the meathead country/Nickelback hybrid Michael Sarver. America: what is wrong with your ears? Lend them to me, as Mark Antony* once requested, and I will clean them out with a q-tip.

*Not to be confused with Mark Anthony, who wants you to lend him YOUR BLOOD.

My father-in-law (who is happily married, btw) said he was going out on New Year’s Eve to find him a cougar with a lot of money to take care of him. Then Larry pointed out that the lady in question would have to be around 90 to qualify as a cougar for a 65-year-old man. Oh, and then I laughed at him.

Happy new year! How long are you allowed to say happy new year? Just on new year’s day? The first month? Until you stop writing the wrong year on things? Larry and I had a huge new year’s eve this year complete with baby barf and everyone going to bed at 9:15 and not waking up until 6:30 the next morning. If getting barfed on is the price I have to pay for a full night’s sleep, I WILL TAKE IT. DO YOU HEAR ME UNIVERSE. Spike apparently had either the mildest virus in the history of the world — a couple of barfs and one explosive poo — or else he just felt like barfing on me a few times. As you do.

I am reading, at the internet’s recommendation, American Wife. And it is amazing. This kind of book love is a rare, but oh, when it happens, it is so sweet.

Have y’all seen Kiss Kiss Bang Bang? I started watching it with pretty low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. Reasons I liked it: it is a caper; Val Kilmer’s character is named Gay Perry; the voiceover bits made me laugh. I should try having low expectations all the time.

That is all.

Yesterday someone asked me if the reason it was dark outside was because of the time change. This person is not, to my knowledge, mentally retarded.

Speaking of, hats off to all the actors who played retarded folks on this week’s Law and Order: they were convincing without being embarrassing or Juliette Lewis-like. It was a heartbreaking episode, though.

I have abandoned my dream of wanting to name lipsticks for a living. I now want to be the person who writes the descriptions of shows for digital cable companies. Larry recorded an animal show the other day merely because of this description:

Barking Mad. Episode: “Elmo and Ollie.” Horse refuses to be mounted; tortoise thinks it is a fearsome dinosaur; dog is obsessed with stones; rabbit is a bully; goat and pig fight.

Please note that the tortoise doesn’t think it’s a dinosaur. The tortoise thinks it’s a FEARSOME DINOSAUR. Because I haven’t watched this yet, I am imagining that all these animals live together and they all speak English. How else would we know what the tortoise thinks?

A few weeks ago a coworker and I were talking about True Blood and she said, “You know what I find totally unrealistic about last night’s show?” The vampires strolling around Louisiana, perchance? “As if a town the size of Bon Temps would have a taxi!”

Tonight’s show gave me the willies, but not in a good way. Theory: Zack from the Gilmore Girls is the killer. IF YOU READ THE BOOKS AND KNOW ALREADY PLEASE SAY NOTHING.

I saw this tag today: 2ND BABY
What sort of car would you expect this to be on? I would’ve put my money on a Mustang had you asked me this, but no, this person’s second baby was the very hot Toyota Corolla. It reminded me of my old car. I used to drive a Chevy Cavalier — for YEARS I drove that thing, even though it was an embarrassing green color, that “hey, look at me! I’m sporty and fun and — oh GOD never mind I am just a Cavalier” green — and even though I am the sort of person who names her cars, it never had a name. A friend admired the way it could whip around without doing a three-point turn, and started calling it the Whipper, but it never caught on. The closest thing to a nickname was calling it “the Cav.” Anyway, my point is that it was not my baby, nor my second baby. Not even my thirteenth baby. However, I am happy that the owner of that Toyota Corolla is so pleased with her purchase.

Dear Undecided Voters,

HOW CAN YOU STILL BE UNDECIDED? Is it for the attention at this point? That is seriously the only reason I can think of. “I don’t like either one,” you say. THOSE ARE THE OPTIONS CHOOSE ONE FOR GOD’S SAKE. Do you stand in the toothpaste aisle, totally flummoxed by all the choices? Paste or gel? Tartar control or tartar-inviting? The blue kind with little glittery stuff in it or the plain, white kind? JESUS HELP ME THERE ARE TOO MANY OPTIONS.

Anyway, if you need some help figuring it out, let me know. I have some charts and stuff you could look at.

Love,
Sally

I have been watching AND LOVING this show on BBC America called You Are What You Eat. In each episode, a doctor storms some fat people’s house, pokes at their bellies, examines their tongues, analyzes their poo, shows them how many Twinkies and fish and chips and biscuits they eat per week by piling it all on a table — WAIT A MINUTE WHAT DID YOU SAY? She analyzes their poo. A quotation from an episode I watched yesterday: “It reminded me of glue.” While I was still reeling from this, a commercial came on for a one-hour docuspecial coming on in a few weeks: Brothers and Sisters in Love: “They know it’s wrong.” Oh, BBC America, you know what I like.

So there is this show that you should watch. It’s called Whatever, Martha and it’s on the Fine Living network. I knew it was Martha Stewart’s daughter and her friend, but what I didn’t know is that they a) look at segments from old Martha Stewart Living shows and then b) completely make fun of those segments. It is enjoyable whether you are a Martha devotee (like me) or not (like Larry, who was forced to watch an episode while I said “this is the best show EVER” approximately 400 times as Alexis ripped on her mother’s love of the cocktail napkin).

Speaking of Martha, I worship at many of her altars, including the organizational altar (my dream is a whole room to devote to linens — SHUT UP IT’S MY DREAM OK), the ridiculously cute and labor-intensive party favor altar, and the baking altar, but one area where Martha and I part ways is actual food. I don’t think I’ve ever tried a non-baked good Martha recipe before yesterday…and I probably won’t do it again. I got tricked into making some old chicken breast stuffed with white beans recipe, and it reminded me of orphanage food.

Larry, who was recently admonished for not saying he enjoyed his dinner quick enough and with the appropriate (read: maniacal) level of enthusiasm, said it was delicious! very moist and flavorful! until I said “I think this sucks” and then he said he agreed.

This weekend I finished reading Brideshead Revisited — a major achievement as I only started it a week ago, it has no pictures, and is a full 341 pages long. I should’ve watched the 80-part miniseries when I was a bored, driver’s licenseless teenager checking out movies from the library, but I never did, perhaps because I read the title then as bride-shed, not brides-head, and maybe I didn’t know that Brides-head is the name of a house until I opened the book, but I really didn’t know what a bride-shed was then. Anyway, I guess I don’t have anything to say about it except it was rolling along for 340 pages and then apparently Evelyn Waugh’s favorite pen broke or he ran out of ink or his editor called because the book suddenly ends on page 341. Seriously: on page 340 everyone is happy and in love and then on page 341 it’s over and everyone dies alone. I think I should write book reviews for the Not Very Interesing Spoiler-Gazette.