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.

I might’ve proclaimed my love for this before, but we’ve reunited recently and our love cannot be stopped: cheesecake-flavored spready cream cheese. Dudes. Just try it. It will change your life.

If you have a scaly, eczema-ridden baby, I highly recommend Baby Phisoderm for all your baby washing needs. You can only get it online and it comes in a pack of six bottles, but it lasted us a whole year. It smells awesome, too: authentically babylike.

So, I read Twilight. While I certainly see the appeal of Edward (pretty, feels like marble), I have major problems with some of the more implausible plot points (Bella tells her cop dad “I’m outta here” and he just lets her go? no way) and even majorer problems with the overuse of adverbs, Sally wrote wryly.

However, I also recently read a fantastic book, which, if you live in Mississippi, you are hereby required to read: Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. Set in Jackson in the 60s, it’s just heartbreaking and interesting and funny and well-written and if you’re from here you will die every time a character walks down Belmont and turns onto Myrtle or when someone shops at the Jitney 14. It is not my #1 all-time favorite contemporary novel about Mississippi — always and forever, I pledge my troth to The Heaven of Mercury by Brad Watson — but it is a great book.

Eating sushi in my car makes me feel like a homeless person, albeit one who found a few dollars on the ground and decided to go purchase some grocery store sushi, which is surprisingly not terrible sushi actually.

I had a dream the other night that The Rock was trying to get it on with me in my state senator’s front yard. When I told Mr. The Rock that while I was flattered, we were certainly in different eschalons of attractiveness, he feigned confusion until I pointed at his thigh as evidence.

Spike took a few steps yesterday at school! While I was not there to see it, luckily, the janitor was and demonstrated Spike’s moves for me when I went to pick him up yesterday.

I’ve been on a lot of overnight trips for work lately (the last one is today: hooray) and I have to say that there is one good thing about driving the company car. That thing is that it has a cassette player. I don’t have anywhere to play a cassette tape anymore, so each time I take a trip I open the plastic tub full of tapes in the guest room closet, blindly grab a few, and head off to some rural location to impart my wisdom there, where those in attendance will eye me with suspicion and then fall asleep during my presentation.

For the trip at the beginning of the month, I enjoyed a mix tape from May 1994 (labelled “May 1994″) that had the Posies, Mary Wilson, and Kermit the Frog on it. My trip last week was Ella Fitzgerald Sings Gershwin and They Might Be Giants’ Flood. Today it’s Velvet Crush’s Teenage Symphonies to God and John Wesley Harding’s Here Comes the Groom. What’s serendipitous about those two tapes is that I bought them in Columbus at the Wall’s there — y’all remember how they had all those burned up tapes? my Velvet Crush case barely opens because it’s all melty, though the tape itself is ok — and today I’m headed for Columbus.

In unrelated news, last night I finished reading Tobias Wolff’s Old School, and here is my review: Did you like Dead Poets Society? Then read Old School. I’m also reading Anne Fadiman’s At Large and At Small, which is not as good as Ex Libris, but is still excellent.

And speaking of wordy things, guess what Wednesday starts? National Poetry Month! You know you’ve been missing it. Last year the birth of that baby sort of screwed up NPM, but unless I am soon to be featured on an episode of Discovery Health’s I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant (they had a marathon of this last night, y’all!), I intend to post a poem every day. Whether you like it or not.

Also, did I tell you I was in the Cringe book? I’m telling you this now because I finally emailed the boy I wrote about and he emailed me back and that is funny so ok that’s all I wanted to say.

Should I even tell you, internet, how into American Idol I am this season? No? Ok, then.

Note to those who value every precious minute of sleep due to tiny baby in other room who likes to wake up and scream (but not so much so recently! thank god): do not read On Chesil Beach before bed. It’s a quick read, but if you’re approaching the end, save it for the next day, when you can brood about it in the light of day and will not have broody British dreams about it. Damn that Ian McEwan. He gets me every time!

I have recently — if by “recently” you mean “at work, pretending to be productive” — read this little self-helpyesque book called Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living. It’s sort of a touchy feely book about how you should eat chocolate and take naps and make mistakes and fall down a lot and stuff. There are some treacherous passages involving romance that I skipped, but overall it was sort of comforting. It would look cute on a shelf, if one were to buy it (I did not; I got it from the public library).

Here is a Facebook etiquette question: if you are friends with people with whom, 20 years ago, you shared some insanely embarrassing moments, are you supposed to ignore said moments or bring them up to clear the air? Sometimes I want to bring them up, but then I think that maybe they were not insanely embarrassing for the other person. Maybe they don’t even remember. But then I sort of feel like we are dancing around a turd on the floor and trying not to step on it.

Case in point: I had this friend in high school who used to like to pick me up and throw me onto soft, cushy surfaces, like his couch or bed or trampoline. It was fun. However, occasionally he would miss when he was tossing me around and I would get bruised up. My mother noticed these bruises one day and when she asked, I did not lie like I should have and instead told her about the fun times where JP would toss me around onto his parents’ furniture. This did not go over well. In fact, I seem to recall my stepfather calling JP and telling him he was going to stomp his ass into the ground. This effectively damaged our friendship — as it should have! — but now I am friends with JP on Facebook and we are sending emails back and forth and everything is super fun and much like it was in 1990 but without the trampoline. And yet, I feel as though the ass-stomping threat is looming over us and my fingers keep typing lame ass-stomping jokey references in my emails like HEY JP WRITE ME BACK OR I WILL STOMP YOUR ASS INTO THE GROUND and then deleting them. Am I supposed to reference the ass stomping? Help!

I am also Facebook friends with the tragic, puffy haired nerd who, my senior year of high school, arrived on my doorstep out of the blue on Valentine’s Day with a single red rose. However, that is a turd I will gladly dance around forever.

1. I am already experiencing party anxiety over Spike’s first birthday party…which is over two months away. After looking at some photos of some recent first-birthday parties online, I am already feeling sorry for Spike and his homemade, not-covered-in-fondant, lopsided, crumbs-all-in-the-frosting cake. With his name spelled wrong on it. And maybe some dog hair thrown in for good measure.

2. Today at lunch, some ladies and I shared a dessert that had a warm peach sauce on it. Afterwards, one lady said, “Wow, those apples were delicious!” Another said, “No, that was pineapple.” There was still a tiny UFO* floating in the bowl, so I took it and cut it in half with a knife, and because the chef was apparently milling about the dining room and this looked so ridiculous, he brought us a piece of the most delicious chocolately cream cheesey pie ever. So, score one for being UNABLE TO IDENTIFY FRUIT.
*unidentified fruit object

3. I bought a book on Sunday almost 100% because of the cover. It’s a photograph of some English schoolboys from the 70s, and the main one, who has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, looks like Hugh Grant. You should take my book recommendations seriously, as they are based on intellectual criteria.

4. Speaking of, I recently did one of those Facebook notes where you mark all the books you’ve read, etc, only I was unprepared for the comments people left, such as YOU HAVEN’T READ SHERLOCK HOLMES? WHAT ARE YOU, DUMB? and sad messages that will look even sadder if I italicize them, like this one: You are really missing out by not reading The Kite Runner. I felt my list was pretty solid, and personally did not feel the need to berate anyone for not having read things, but hey, what are judgmental acquaintances for? While we’re on the subject, I should tell you that I will never read the following books:
–A Confederacy of Dunces
–anything by Tolkien
–anything involving hobbits, goblins, or hoblins

5. Vanity tags:
2UNWIND
4U MOM

6. I am trying to post more. Bear with me. There may be lots more posts like this one.

• I have a question. If someone says, referring to a lady, “Hubba hubba,” what do you imagine that lady looking like? (I think of a cartoon lady in a red dress with big boobs and a fur stole.)

• I kind of said I wasn’t going to collect vanity tags anymore, and lo, the world opened up to me, and yea, there were many tags:
MRSOLO
HIDDEN
ICEEY
IWKHAIR
MIRACL2
RCK STR

Dude. Those are awesome.

• When you’re feeling tired and like learning the characters of a new book would be as exhausting as getting to know a group of new friends, do you reach for old books that you know inside and out? If so, then you’ll understand why I am reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler for the nine-hundredth time.

• Larry’s dad, who is sweet as pie, is a bit of a dunderhead. I mean that in the nicest way. He’s an adorable dunderhead! An adorable, generous dunderhead! So he was telling Larry about how you can rent movies from the grocery store.

Larry’s dad: And it’s only a dollar a day!
Larry: Well, don’t you keep them for like a week?
Larry’s dad: Well, yeah. But they have all the new releases!
Larry: So what’d you get?
Larry’s dad: Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Larry: …
Larry’s dad: They were out of everything good.
Larry: (laughing)
Larry’s dad: Hey, do you know how to turn off the 3D on a movie? Journey to the Center of the Earth is in 3D and it’s hurting my eyes.
Larry: I don’t think you can turn it off. You need 3D glasses.
Larry’s dad: I can just wear my sunglasses, right? That’s the same thing as 3D, right?
Larry: No.

• In other news, it appears that I can only write posts in nugget form now.

• 2WITCHY
7TITHRS
SNKTFYD

I get twitchy, I get sanctified* (although it took me a minute), but 7TITHRS? The Diplomat sent me that one. My guess is “seven tithers” and his is “seven tit hours.” Any other guesses?

• I’ve been reading (slowly, I may add) Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh. I aspire to write a truly silly book one day (complete with ridiculous character names) and have some blurbist write on the back that my book is “in the spirit of Waugh’s Decline and Fall; a true nonsensical masterpiece.” I have the feeling it took Waugh approximately two weeks to write and that he was drunk a lot during the process. One day, I shall give myself a drunken two weeks alone with a typewriter and see what happens. I have a feeling it would be something like this:

Onec upon a tine there was a nam maned Horace McSludgebucket and omg I’m so drunkkkk

• Do you know about Sexy People? What about Fuck You, Penguin? You’re welcome, internet.

• Jaxxonians, have you been to the downtown Keifer’s and had a burger lately? The burger with the mozzerella AND THE FETA DRESSING? Jesus. I ate one yesterday and could eat another four or so today, too.

• Also, gorjus killed John Updike.

*These sound like awesome song lyrics.

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.

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.

I have just spent several minutes writing and rewriting a post about how Larry accidentally locked Icky (the outside cat) in the trunk of my car overnight, and how the only reason I even heard him meowing was that I was buckling Spike into the carseat, which I don’t usually do in the morning since Larry takes him to school and I pick him up, and I was buckling him in because we were headed to the doctor, and we were only headed to the doctor that morning because I am an idiot and thought our appointment was the day before in the afternoon, and I left work early and got to the doctor’s office and then discovered that I am an idiot and made an appointment for the next day, and anyway the whole point of the whole thing was that I saved Icky’s life by being forgetful. But man, even the Cliffs Notes version of that story is not all that great.

Sidenote: besides having a poo-poo party on one of my jackets, Icky was totally fine. And Larry feels terrible. It’s pretty much the best thing that’s ever happened to Icky in terms of us being extra nice to him.

In unrelated news, today has been fairly awesome: the baby slept for 9 hours last night! And I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret! And I watched 5 episodes of the second season of Dexter! And I read half of How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read! And I made brownies! And a cheesecake to take to a party tomorrow!

So: to sum up, the cat almost died and I had an awesome day.

Hey there, internets.

Today the long-awaited Cringe book goes on sale, and I think you should buy it. Don’t borrow it from a friend, go out and buy the dang thing! It has pretty, shiny, color pages full of adolescent journaling and updates from those previous adolescents and there is one entry that makes me laugh just thinking about it (THE NOTEBOOK OF RAGE AND HATRED) and also some people you know might be in there. Maybe.

Last night I was putting Spike to bed when my elbow knocked the side of his crib. I was still holding him, so he got jostled, and apparently it scared him to death. He screamed in a totally new way, like a person in a haunted house: Aaaaaaaahhhh! It was the scariest, worst sound I have ever heard. He’s never been afraid before — cranky, hungry, mad because he has a diaper full of pee, yes; afraid, no. I immediately burst into tears.

You know how those Fox News folks said that every time Hillary Clinton opens her mouth, men hear their wives nagging them? While that is sexist and awful, it has given me an easy way to do some good old fashioned nagging. This morning:

Me: Hey, Larry? Hillary Clinton called and said you wore those shorts yesterday and the day before.
Larry: Oh, that was sweet of her, but could you call her back and tell her I have an outside meeting today and that I’m going to get dirty?
Me: Sure thing.

Y’all, I read a book! Sure, it was a parenting book with illustrations and only 114 pages, but still. I never thought I would read another book ever again. I highly recommend The Three Martini Playdate for anyone who believes that indulging your children too much is going to turn them bad. There is a particularly hilarious chapter on not going overboard with childproofing your house:

If you don’t teach them now, do not be surprised when, forty years from now, your adult son electrocutes himself with a spoon, or drowns in the toilet, or repeatedly lights his hair on fire when using the stove.

This was actually the first baby present we received (from Jaxxie and Jaysus) — thanks, guys!

The back page essay in the NYTBR this week was about literary dealbreakers (“It’s Not You, It’s Your Books”). Read the article, then go read the accompanying blog post about it. Be sure and read the comments.

I don’t know if I’ve ever gone for almost a week without posting something here. I have been busy, and sometimes out of town, and sometimes getting laryngitis, and sometimes having to give 5-hour presentations with laryngitis. Also, it is possible that some kind church ladies left a smoked chicken on my doorstep. I think that wraps up all the interesting things that have happened to me lately.

I’m currently reading The Correspondence of Shelby Foote and Walker Percy, and damn: that Shelby Foote, he’s got an ego on him. Percy kept all of Foote’s letters and Foote didn’t start keeping Percy’s letters until 1970 or so, so
for awhile there it’s all Foote, all the time. A person could be forgiven for thinking Foote is egotistical after one reads 13 letters in a row that are essentially this:

Dear Walker,

1. I AM THE GREATEST WRITER OF ALL TIME.
2. Stop being Catholic! It’s ruining your writing.

Love,
Shelby

A few weeks ago I read Then We Came to the End but didn’t really love it. I know. So disappointing. It was pretty good, and I actually laughed out loud in a couple of places, and there is a nice meta moment near the end, and it nails cube-life, but still: I did not love it. However, if you’ve read it, when you imagined Tom Mota, was it Creed from The Office? And did Joe Pope arrive in your head in the guise of Toby from The Office? It is possible that I watch too much tv. Not that there’s lots of tv to watch these days. However, I have managed to get by somehow.

So there is Project Runway, which FINALLY got rid of Crying Ricky — WHO DID NOT CRY WHEN ELIMINATED, GO FIGURE — and there is the new season of Lost, which I love and am stressed out by at the same time, and there is The Millionaire Matchmaker, which is lame but still intriguing, and there is In Treatment, which I am watching even though each episode is boring until roughly minute 18:43 when something interesting happens, but because it’s just two people talking you can’t fast forward to that moment, you have to watch the whole thing.

The show is on 5 days a week; each day you see Gabriel Byrne’s therapist character have a session with a certain patient; Mondays it’s Laura, etc. I have not been to therapy more than a couple of times so I do not know if it is normal to scream at your therapist, but Gabriel Byrne gets screamed at and dumped on a lot. By his new patients, by his old patients, by the mailman, by the dog, everyone screams at and dumps on Gabriel Byrne. AND THEN on Fridays he goes to his own therapist, who he then screams at and dumps on. Is this what therapy is? Because it sounds fun.

And in unrelated news, if you love Morrissey, go look at this picture. Make sure your boss isn’t standing directly behind you when you do.

Also, happy birthday to Gorjus today! He’s really old now and has probably already gone home to go to bed.

We just had a tornado warning and were evacuated to the ground floor! This is exciting, mostly because I went to lunch early and therefore was not fretting about what I was going to eat while I was huddled with the other employees and guests. Nothing would worry me more than worrying about being hungry and being crushed by debris at the same time.

Last night’s Project Runway continued to make me say every 5 minutes, “This show is awesome.” I feared for my precious, cantankerous Christian and really hoped Heidi would give Ricky something to cry about, but — SPOILER! — I have no real feelings for that one straight dude so everything turned out ok. Great challenge, though — maybe next season they can truck in some old people and make fashion-forward nightgowns for them. They’ve now done dogs, men, people’s mothers, postal employees, Barbie, former fat ladies, and teenagers. Mark my words: the senior crowd is next.

My favorite moment of the show, though, was Victorya asking her teenybopper, “What was it about my portfolio that made you want to work with me?” and the teenybopper saying, “Um, I got last pick.”

I got lots of books for Christmas, and last night I thoroughly enjoyed examining each page of The Sweeter Side of R. Crumb, which does feature Amazonian women with big calves, but none of it makes you go “ew” like so many Crumb pieces do. When you’re not being grossed out by him, you can really appreciate what a fine artist he is. And, like one Amazon.com reviewer says, “I’m a cat lover and his drawing of his cat was just super.” If that’s not a ringing endorsement, I don’t know what is. It was just super!!