Daze of Whine and Roses

Triple Play

2007-01-20T16:32:00.000-08:00

Lovely day with my phlebotibuds at the RC this morning. They have a lovely new machine, the TRIMA. Very nice that I can donate a double unit of platelets in just over 45 minutes. Very nice that it uses only one needle in one arm to both draw and return the blood after it extracts the glue (platelets).

And Monday last (yes I am late in reporting) I was informed that the RC here in Norfolk shall have the go-ahead from the FDA to start doing TRIPLE UNITS on this same machine; and with my platelet count that will just take an additional 10 minutes or so. That is starting the first full week of February, the 6th or 7th I believe, and I have been asked if I would like to be the first triple unit donor. Of course I said yes and am mentally rehearsing my soundbites and trying not to get too political or sectarian no matter what i would like to say.

Because personally, for me, this whole thing is about being prolife in the most personal and also widest scope of the word. I'm not one for hauling off with a ton of legislation about what women can and cannot do with their bodies. But I'm also not about saying that disposing of a life is right in any sense, and that includes not only abortion but the death penalty, war, limiting people's economic access to health care, hunger, homlessness, neglect, and abuse. Either all life is sacred or no life is sacred and it is not for us to sit in the ultimate judgement.

At the same time, people who are in the "pro life" movement but who support capital punishment, war, decrease in healthcare benefits, ad infinitum, ad nauseum, on a neocon agenda? You figure the world I have for them...it begins with an "H". Those who rant and picket and don't have the balls to roll up the sleeves & make another life last.... heh... unless you have a justifiable medical reason, you lose in the game of life.

Tha is why it is so important to me to do as much apheresis as humanly possible. Lives are in the balance. In the case of my platelet makeup that is mostly children's lives: children who I do not know what they will turn out to be as they become adults. One could save the world from its insane course of self-destruction, another could become a mass murderer, another could die a year later from their illness or something else - before they have had the chance to "do" anything as an adult or maybe never even getting to leave the hospital they were admitted to.

But I don't know these things. I don't know the children. But to me all their lives are equally precious. And so, as I go about my daily business, every child, every person I see, is or could be a part of me, and I a part of them. I cannot wish any of them dead, no matter what. It would be suicide by proxy.

Sound Of Angels...And Breaking Commandments

2007-01-12T17:33:00.000-08:00

Small graces in unexpected places. New Years Eve day was the voice of an angel in the guise of an 80something black-clad Yiayia with the strongest most beautiful voice I have heard in the few "Greek" Orthodox liturgies I've been a part of. Singing the choir and responses all from memory. 100% a capella. Needed my church fix, and here in Greenville, NC where I am currently working, that figures to a group of fifteen or so hearty souls braving this sola scriptura wonderland to carve out a door to that place between heaven and earth for a couple of hours on a Sunday morning. She was up from Tarpon Springs, FL (where all good Greeks go to retire) visiting family that one weekend and then she was gone....a momentary small grace that is sticking inside my head and rattling around like other small exquisite things that are all the more precious because they will never be experienced for the first time again. The first time I smelled orange blossoms straight from the tree, the taste of a 100+ year old pre-phyloxera Madiera vintage, how the perfect pair of fluffy cotton socks feel on the first freezing night of the year, prehensile babytoes.

I prefer to class those as "Acts of God" rather than the scurrilous use of that term used by insurance policy clauses.

We bring craptastic disasters on ourselves and dammit, I want my winters back!

Speaking of craptastic, it kinds sucks being from Virginia what with Virgil Goode's narrowheadedness and Pat Robertson's paranoia mongering, Virginia is becoming a hell sammich with a side of vitriol fries.

Pat and Virgil and Georgie and company want to continue wars. And ya know? that got me thinking about one of the commandments - Number 3. And the more I sat in this extended stay hotel room and thought deep thoughts, the more I realized that it's not about how many JCs or GDs one ejaculates in a fit of pique. Sure, that's not the most pious thing to do but it's a crap load worse to take G-d's name as the reason to kill someone, or beat someone, or deny someone their civil rights, or engender fear, or foster hatred in the "name of G-d".

What with all the evils spewing from the newsfronttelewarmachine, it's the memory of that small yet boundless grace of a lone perfect ancient-timeless-young voice chanting responses in a Greek I do and do not understand, that is pure comfort and joy.

Gone Too Long & Joyful Holidays

2006-12-25T16:37:00.000-08:00

In between faith crises and extended business travel I've just not been around mentally or physically. Hope to remedy that sooner rather than later. I am leaving the garret again tomorrow for further extended business travel. Lovely urbane Greenville, North Carolina until the middle of January but listen up Bunions.... da man called me and I am swinging by the office tomorrow a.m. to pick up one of the corporate traveling laptops that became available!!!

Whooo! Hooooo! and high speed at l'Hotel des Grits as well. A real treat for a dial-up girl.

so...in the meantime...

Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva!

That's Russian by the way... two Liturgies + Compline. My arches are killing me.

where I've been?

2006-05-26T09:21:00.000-07:00

Working, sleeping, trying to budget on nothing at all & trying to get the hemocrit up & dealing with verious bone spurs & maniscus issues.. It's borderline now for platelet donations & was able to do the do last weekend. Hope this weekend pans out too.

But...there is a new link on my side bar for Sages of Consciousness. Interesting e-zine that y'all should submit your Multicultural Musings to for their next thematic issue.... go...now....do...

Last issue was Death And The Afterlife. They accept reprints. Life 404 was accepted and is up there now in the latest edition that just came out today. Something very nifty about getting that first "registered ISSN number zine" acceptance.

And thank you everyone (ESPECIALLY the HAWT HAWT HAWT BUNION BABES who rock the world) for the encouragement when I first had it up in Flashing in the Gutters. That gave me the courage to toss the piece out there to complete strangers for a yea or nay acceptance.

Open Bar Nite at Jickys

2006-04-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

The maitresse'd is stretched out on her fainting couch with a Purple Destiny. The poker for pills game is ongoing so ante up. At the dim back table it's dicing for decants with the perfume pushers. And front and center it's authorial critique jello wrestling. The hostess is tired but the good times roll on. Drinks are free. The pill & decants .... you bring your own.

2006-04-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

Not thinking much and a little tired. I treid to do apheresis today but my hemocrit was too low for the second week in a row. I could afford to see my GP if I wanted to take off more unpaid time. But I couldn't afford the tests to tell me why all of a sudden my hemocrit is down to 33 from it's usual 39-42 - or why my back and knee hurt (was supposed to get an MRI for the knee just before I got laid off anf lost insurance and even with the craptastic insurance I had, the MRI would have set me out of pocket $500)- or get a cortisone shot for my ankle at the orthopedists.

This is my apheresis folder.

I have donated 81 times (79 of those double units) of CMV negative platelets. Those fo to infants and the severely immuno compromised who've never had CMV

I won't get insurance converage until November with my new job which I do love despite the wait. All I want to know is why when I've done my part in saving not just a few lives, I can't get any medical care that I can fucking afford and why it would be a whole different story If I'd had three or four out of wedlock puppies, or had been an addict, or a criminal or a dropout, or illiterate, or someone who didn't dig down to pay out of pocket for the meds to keep themselves from going to the happy home with all the other basket weavers.

So I am taking time off and aside from work which I take seriously....I am sleeping and being frivolous with my time and watching television and goofing off. I go to the doctor on the state dime tomorrow though because I now have a "job" albeit that I am uninsured....I'm being told my disability claim/request for some small modicum of assistance....will likely be denied.

Another night at Jicky's

2006-04-03T14:56:00.000-07:00

The glare of sodium lights streams through the door of Jicky's. Sam looks up from his piano, stops midway through a quiet Chopin etude. "Where ya, been baby?"

The hostess slips off her suit coat and slides into her smoking jacket. A chorus boy brings her cashmere lined slippers and her jeweled cigarette holder. "Working Sam, gotta pay for this joint somehow."

"They treating you good out there."

"The best Sam. It's old-school, you know, men do the heavy lifting, I get face-time with the big shots. It's all good, sweetheart. Gonna go get me a Purple Destiny now."

At the bar Emily K is holding forth, translating Baudelaire off the cuff and making a mean salad nicoise. Patrons seem to be sipping their absinthe and chartreuse with a certain unusual savor along with the mellifluous words.

MG and Dana are munching on pain au chocolat courtesy of the inestimable Emily K; while Sharon and E. Ann indulge in steak tartare. Their eyes are glued to the glare of laptop screens to the exclusion of all else.

Purple Destiny in hand, the hostess makes her way back to the piano. "Back there, what's happening?" She flicks her head toward the furthest dimmest table in the room, where several soignee folk in black velvet hold forth in a polite and courtly manner.

"The dealers are back, babe. With a vengance."

"Sam, you know what happened the last time I let perfume pushers into Jickys."

"Talked to Katie 'The Nose' for ya baby. They'll pay up this time."

"Anything for a price Sam. They know me too well."

Paris Is Lunching

2006-03-23T08:37:00.000-08:00

Please please please! For the sake of your keyboards, have a napkin or drool cloth handy before you see What's For Lunch in Paris.

Go say hello to Emily. She's my older sister. She takes wonderful photos, and writes about lunching in France with delightful style.

A Slow Night at Jicky's

2006-03-21T13:24:00.000-08:00

Just around the corner from Genre’s place, and under the jaundiced glow of stale yellow neon, the curious wend their way down a flight of granite steps to a basement dive of the oddest sort, a place called Jicky’s where perfume and booze flow in equal measure. Boys in dresses and girls in tuxes, artists and artificers, chorus kids on a late night wind down. They all find their way in eventually. Grim former chanteuses drink absinthe and chartreuse. Smoke hangs in a blue pall a foot from the low ceiling and mixes with the scent of L’heure Bleu, Shalimar, Mitsuoko, and gin.

Above the bar hangs the sign “Abandon All Hope Of Modernity, Ye Who Enter Here”

The hostess leans against the battered upright piano, white tie and tails in disarray as she pokes a desultory finger at her meager poker for pills winnings from earlier in the evening.

“Bad night, baby?” The pianist looks up.

“Sucked donkey nuts, Sam. Got me a couple a xanax but Lala and MG were bogarting the vicodins. And crap, Dana won all my femiron pills out from under me. I’m tired Sam, ain’t had no one of import here lately.”

“You been busy, Lisa babe. Got your business to look after.”

“Thanks Sam.”

“Don’t look now baby, but you got The Company.”

“Aw crap. Evelyn, get your sagging butt up on the stage and sing like I know you still can.” The hostess drags a leathery faded chanteuse away from her chartreuse and props her in front of the mike.

“Sing it yourself bitch.” Evelyn adjusts her feather boa and pulls up her opera gloves.

“I’m tone deaf. And you can have my chorus boys” At Evelyn’s grudging assent, she grabs several from their table in the back before turning to her trusty pianist. “Play it Sam, play it for Her.”

”You got it sweetheart”

You’re The Snark! You’re George Clooney’s girl,
You’re The Snark! You’ve got wisdom’s pearls,
You’ve a pail of gin from the nearest liquor store,
You're Phyllis Diller,
An alien killer,
You're on the floor!

You're the Hudson! You’re the Chrysler Building,
You're the wit, sharp as a bee sting!
I'm a worthless hack, can’t write jack, in the dark!
But if I’m a serial scrubber,
You’re The Snark!

You’re The Snark, you’ve a crap-o-meter,
You’re The Snark! There’s no one neater,
You're the sapphire blue of a bottle of Bombay,
You're the perfect galley, you're Dan Brown's salary,
You're Tanqueray!

You're the lime, in my gin and tonic
You’re the toe, of a Manolo Blahnik
I'm a Rabbitanian writing on a lark;
But If I’m a serial scrubber, You’re The Snark!

"Play it again, Sam, from the top."

”You got it sweetheart”

You’re The Snark, you’re a bottle of Boodles
You’re The Snark, you’re so kind to poodles
You're the classic lines of a William Morris chair
You're a blogging drama, you're a red-hot mama, you're debonair

You're the prose, of a Booker winner
You're the ems, of the finest printer.
I'm an alien dropper who hasn’t made a mark
But If I’m a serial scrubber,
You’re The Snark!

"Think She liked it,Sam?"

"Can't say baby, but she's having a grand time with the bottle of Junipero and the leftover chorus boys."

"Gotta get busy, Sam. Looks like E. Ann might want to look at the backroom stash of inflatables."

Memories

2006-03-13T14:33:00.000-08:00

If you read the last post you saw a comment by "emilyk". That's my older sister. We haven't seen each other for a dogs age, so I was just utterly tickled to hear from her. Now, I may be able to write a little but Ann Emily can do just about anything she puts her mind to, even math and science. I suck at those, and at foreign languages. Ann Emily is completely bilingual in French & English. She also did me to honor of leaving a very touching review of my Flash Fiction on Tribe's site. And that got me sentimental and sent me perusing my photo albums... of two little girls born in the 60's

Oh Dear.....

2006-03-10T21:36:00.000-08:00

Lest any of us forget how to Be Gracious in the face of disappointments.

Heretic or Not

2006-03-08T10:00:00.000-08:00

You scored as Chalcedon compliant. You are Chalcedon compliant. Congratulations, you're not a heretic. You believe that Jesus is truly God and truly man and like us in every respect, apart from sin. Officially approved in 451.

Chalcedon compliant

100%

Nestorianism

67%

Pelagianism

58%

Modalism

33%

Apollanarian

33%

Monophysitism

33%

Monarchianism

33%

Socinianism

17%

Arianism

Adoptionist

Donatism

Gnosticism

Albigensianism

Docetism

Are you a heretic?
created with QuizFarm.com

Shamelessly Snoopy Dancing

2006-03-05T16:41:00.000-08:00

My first piece of published fiction is up at Flashing In The Gutters, Tribe's incredible site for Flash Fiction!

Needless to say I am tickled silly to be included.

And hugs all around to my fellow Bunions for their time, patience, and support while I whipped an amorphous need to write this story into something beyond that.

Never Rains But It Pours - in a good way

2006-03-01T13:49:00.000-08:00

Woot! TWO, count 'em TWO interviews set up for tomorrow. One with a well established customs broker/international freight forwarder and the other with a container ship line! And I e-mailed resumes to these folks just THIS AFTERNOON! Pardon my excitement but I'm a "lifer" in this biz. Some folks start and leave within a year or two. Anyone who stays on tends to be the ones who got hooked in that span of time... We're all just a little crazy around the edges.

Sometimes Compromise

2006-02-28T14:31:00.000-08:00

I've blogged about how I love my corner drugstore where they know me by name and all that good hometown stuff but comes a time when we have to embrace the big e-commerce monster with both arms. I have a great doctor who loaded me up with samples of a couple of meds before my insurance expired but there was some stuff they didn't have and I was looking at a troublesome March. Then I discovered drugstore.com. What with the samples I still have and the outstandingly low pirces they had for what I needed on refills.... I'm laying out less than what I normally pay on insurance co-pays.

Where there is a will there is a way. And when I am again in Jobland I'll go back to friendly family pharmacy. Had a job interview today. Thoughts, prayers, chants, incense, candles... all are welcomed.

Dinner in The Garret

2006-02-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

Being the single gal with a good job, I had gotten used to swinging by the grocery store on the way home for something fast and easy, hot soup already prepared - FarmFresh has a great She Crab Soup - or a big old salad from the in-store salad bar. I'm not a person to grocery shop once a week or fix dinner after work. And hauling a week's worth of stuff up the stairs would probably totally destroy my back.

But with unemployment and attendant reduction in circumstances, I find myself back in the kitchen. I got a great bargain on a honking big thing of hamburger meat. I picked up a load of pouched noodle & rice side dishes for a dollar apiece. I make casseroles in the microwave. I have a large jar full of rice. 5 for $5 frozen Swanson dinners are in the freezer. A bag of potatoes and a bag of onions are on top of the fridge. The ramen I hoard is only for the direst of circumstances.

Not the most nutritious fare but it beats Chef-Boy-Ar-Sodium. What I want to know is why I can get 5 for $2 on cans of some processed crap but it costs me $3.50+ or more to put together a dinner of fresh dark leafy greens with all their goodness intact & little skinless chicken breast mixed in? And leafy greens do not include iceberg lettuce. That is a travesty of a non-food engineered to serve only as a vehicle for ranch dressing.

Cooking for one is a pisser. You either eat what you made for three days running or it goes bad. Buying milk is worse. Some noodle package flavors call for milk and who knows? I may someday possibly want to bake something....As if. I nabbed the only two three-packs of aseptic packaged shelf-stable milk in all of FarmFresh today. It was hidden among the juices. But FarmFresh has great employees who knew exactly where it was. Useful stuff in 8 oz individual packages. Not like buying a quart where for a single person half of it will likely go bad unless they really like to drink milk.

Why hasn't aseptic packaged milk taken off her in the USofA? When I first encountered it back in 1982 and doing a semester in London is was suitable weirded out. But it makes sense for the singular.

In other matters, many congratulations to Canada for winning the gold in curling at the Olympics. Couldn't happen to a nicer group of folks. And yay for the Bronze Boys from Bemidji.

Well time to turn off the lights in the garret for another day. My landlord doesn't want to renew my lease which expires on April 1. I don't know why. I've lived here eight years. I have to speak seriously with him next week. Do you think I could persuade him with some hamburger, picante sauce, and rice casserole?

Browsing the Bookracks

2006-02-18T20:38:00.000-08:00

Over at M.G.'s blog a conversation linking several other conversations is going on. Interesting stuff that got me thinking..about bookstores and their stocking/categorizing practices.

I'm a history buff. One of my favorite dates in history is May 23, 1618. Because it's just such a damned bizzare way to mark the start of what might well have been the first "total war".... long before Sherman's slash and burn campaign to the sea. I wanted to read more. I had an idea for a novel, about the effects of such a total war on a very small place that history forgot, a nowhere what represented all the depredations of war, the loss and horror and the ultimate futility of fighting over different interpretations of the same God.

I went to the local B&N. I went to the history section. I found nothing in this category that didn't seem to project that the particular region sprang full grown from the head of Zeus on June 28th 1914.

There were histories aplenty about Celts, Scots, Renaissance Italians, Henry's eight wives, Ancient Greece and Rome, ad infinitum. There wasn't anything I was looking for. There was the Hundred Years War, The War of The Roses, The Spanish American War, the Battle of Bannockburn, ad nauseum. Couldn't find anything there either.

So far as B&N was concerned The Thirty Years war never happened, and Germany began with Franz Ferdinand's assination in Sarajevo and progressed from there to Jackboots where the books were stacked high and deep. I had to go to Amazon and really scour for accessable material.

And even then there is stuff I cannot use in the novel. For one my originally intended frontspiece poem by Andreas Gryphius. Go read. click on the titles and there are translations of the poems. You'll know the one I cannot use even though it is about the full horrors of war. Read all three of the poems. The WWI trench poets have nothing on Gryphius.

Go read. It's the stuff way before the other stuff. It's about people. German people. They (include me on on this one, my mom's paternal grandparents were from Bremen) have hearts too.

But if the novel sees the light of day, I won't use Tranen as a frontspiece, no matter how powerful a poem it is. I would just hope and pray that my writing could do the spirit of the poem justice.

Now Read This

2006-02-16T09:26:00.000-08:00

Tribe, a great literary e-zine has just gotten bunionized! And thus M.G. begins our nefarious plans for word domination. It's a great story by a great writer and a great friend. Yay M.G.!

Go.

Read.

Now.

Plowing Under

The Things We Can Learn as Kids

2006-02-14T18:57:00.000-08:00

I've been reading a lot lately about various nefarious publishing schemes, bogus agents, vanity and subsidy presses, and the like. Thinking to educate myself I suppose, when it occurred to me that almost possibly everything I needed to learn about publishing I learned on The Waltons.

It was in an episode titled The Book,wherein young John-boy gets bilked by a vanity press. It taught a fantastic lesson about "too good to be true" to an eleven year old. So in high school when a friend said her poetry had been "selected" for inclusion in some anthology or another I was quietly congratulatory and inwardly cringing.

And now? Suffice to say I am well aware that there are no short-cuts that don't end in dead-ends, and that writing takes a crap-load of work, intestinal fortitude, and a hide thicker than a rhino's.

And I miss television that was as good as The Waltons.

How They Used To Sell It

2006-02-13T17:33:00.000-08:00

Inspired to post this by a comment M.G. made on the link about perfume copyright in my previous post. The article contained a picture that showed a contemporary perfume advertisment with an unclad but no-vital-bits-visible model.

In my opinion a whole lot hotter than any perfume ads out there right now.

Rather Random

2006-02-12T20:45:00.000-08:00

Taking a break from the writing for a moment.

Dick Cheney. What more is there to say about Mr. Birdshot that hasn't been said?

Called a younger sister today. She's in Massachusetts. They got whumped today which is no news to all y'all up there. Someone picked up the phone, I thought it was her. I just about fell out of my seat when the person on the other end identified herself as my niece. Not surprised that she was home, but that her voice was so different. She sounded just like her mom, my sister. I then realized that my niece was twelve. I've not seen her since she was nine, the last time I went home for a visit. Years fly.

I've another sister who now lives in Paris (the real Paris for real) and her eldest is...nineteen? I remember holding this niece when she was only two days old. Remember so clearly playing peek-a-boo and making her laugh or rocking her to sleep.

A house full of women. I've another sister also. At one point in my childhood the household was comprised of Mom & Dad, my maternal grandmother, my maternal grandmother's sister, four girl children, two female cats, and a parakeet of indeterminate gender. Among the humans the birth years ranged from 1884 to 1969.

I can't do platelet apheresis for a while. Seems I maxed out my Red Blood Cell allowable loss and can't go again until next week, nevermind that my hemocrit is a consistent 41. But last time I donated I got a very cool cordura nylon briefcase thing for doing 10 donations since November. I shall accompany me to any job interviews I may yet get. If for nothing more than to state that I am a fine corporate citizen. Five more donations and I get a cool jacket. I think they give you a gas card at 20 donations. All very useful stuff indeed.

And in matters perhaps slightly marginally tangentally writerly, it seems that the French have decided that one Can copywrite a perfume. With the advent of GCMS (Gas Chromatograph and Mass Spectrometer) analysis it's no guessing game. So what is the future of designer knockoffs? Something that will surely keep me awake and pondering tonight.

Apropos of Nothing

2006-02-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

You may have already seen it, but everyone needs Viking Kittens

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change

2006-02-07T16:21:00.000-08:00

I felt joy today to read this news coming out of Indonesia.

There is something about knowing that someplace somewhere there is a place untouched by time, by fear, by greed. That there are places that have never been walked in anger. A place where God's creation is unmarred by the hands of two legged beasties. Someplace that does not know CocaCola or Dupont or Exxon.

Yes, a few two legged beasties went there. I think they mean well. I hope that the valley is left unmolested. I hope that there is another valley over another mountain that no mortal has yet seen and never will. That we'll always have wonders.

The title of my post is from my favorite poem and my first thought when reading the story:

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).

Ranch Dressing - The fifth food group?

2006-02-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

It is. When "the big game" snack displays in the supermarket feature Ranch Dressing prominently among their offerings, it has reached the amorphous "Fifth Food Group", dethroning dehydrated onion soup mix and sour cream as the comestable of couch-potatoes everywhere.

I don't use Ranch Dressing unless backed into a corner because the supermarket is out of Caesar Dressing. Part of this is sense memory I suppose. In days of old when knights were bold, I was married. To a barbarian.

We lived in a small house with a small backyard that held a small kitchen garden. It was wonderful in summer to go out and pick dinner. Some roma tomatoes, green bell peppers, ominpresent zucchini, leeks, and my herbs - basil, oregano, thyme, a little dill, some chives. Boil some tricolor pasta and add the veggies and herbs with some olive oil - the good stuff, not the stuff you cook with, and a splash or two of red-wine vinegar. What could be better on a miserably humid summer evening.

"Gee, this would be better if you made it with Ranch Dressing" Said ex-husband as he dumped it back into the bowl. Just the thought of molesting lovely organically grown vegetables like that. I didn't divorce him then. I should have.

Bubba the Barbarian had lovely children from his first wife Sheena the Jungle Woman. They were lovely after they realised that I would leave the table if they did not exhibit civil table manners. Having salad in these younglings mind (the female youngling in any respect) consisted of three leaves of iceberg lettuce and half a bottle of.... Ranch Dressing. The male youngling would eat nothing but hotdogs and pizza - sans anything but pepperoni, cheese, and sauce.

By the time I waved farewell to Bubba the Barbarian he was no closer to being civilised, but I could take my lovely steplings to the best restaurants with no fear of receiving the hairy eyeball from anyone in the place.

Kids are better at picking up languages they say. Perhaps it's the same with manners.

But to this day....there is something about Ranch Dressing that keeps it for only the most extreme of exegencies.

Yeah, and if either of my step-kidlings who are now grown adults ever find this blog...post a hello.

Odds and Ends

2006-02-01T20:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to James Goodman's post today, I now know what the "lava" in a "lava lamp" consists of. That is what I learned today.

I'm working on Ennui this evening - reworking the second chapter because it was to much a cooking lesson and not enough funny. And the story isn't about food. It's about perfume - a topic that gives me much amusement as I research the subject. I'm learning about the inner workings and business of the whole thing and that's not so easy to find. It's still a fairly closed loop with very few people saying anything about how a perfume goes from idea to bottle. Exception being Chandler Burr who writes about perfume for the NY Times.

In a complete 180 degree turn from the above, I had another job interview today for a biz with three positions open. I am so craving one of the positions. It's with a team building a trade-lane from the ground up, the start of something new. I'm loving the challenge it presents. I felt the adrenaline buzz start in the interview.

It's addictive, the logistics business. Some people start and are gone in a year or two for something a little more quiet. But those who stick around for a few years, they tend to become lifers. I knew at least five people where I interviewed today, from previous positions or because I'd worked with their spouse at another company. And a couple more because I had phone contact with them on a regular basis at some time in my career. It was like "old home week". I left the interviews with a smile and feeling connected.

A Day is Never a Loss

2006-01-30T16:35:00.000-08:00

If you learn something new. It can be anything about anything. Saturday, on my way out to drop off my rent check, I ran into a guy outside my building who was with the plumbers who were obviously doing plumbing things in the building. It's an old building. It leaks frequently. So I asked the young gentleman what they were doing and he told me they were fixing leaks (obviously).

I mentioned that it has only been in the last year or so that the garret apartments have had good water pressure. And I learned that when plumbers are putting in the water service to a building, the size of the pipe they use to connect to the water main is determined by the distance of the water outlet in the building that is furthest from said water main.

I thought it was interesting and filed it away in the useful facts file of my brain.

Today I had a job interview. I'd like to get the job. I know all about big ships and big trucks and big airplanes but in this position I'd have the opportunity to learn about stack-trains....the ones that carry ocean cargo containers from inland points to ocean ports.

And I honestly do live in a garret. Third floor walkup in a circa 1870 building

Sometimes a Smaller Word is Better

2006-01-26T11:09:00.000-08:00

In today's reading I came across the following snippet:

its members known only to each other, exacted revenge, sometimes sanguinely

San´guine`ly
adv. 1. In a sanguine manner.
I can not speculate quite so sanguinely as he does.
- Burke.

~Websters Dictionary 1913

To which there are these definitions of the word sanguine. And unless I take the final definition, a transitive verb and create an adjective from this -
I am reading the originally quoted passage to say that the members cheerfully, confidently or heartily exacted revenge. I don't think that this was the author's purpose or meaning.

The writer was on the correct path, "sanguis" being the latin for "blood" as in "exsanguinate" or "bleed out" (something your's truly has less risk of than most)

But he did not count on the Medieval humor theory, which is not a joke about how many Saxons it takes to make a pottage. In short one is Sanguine having plenty of blood and therefore cheerful, Phlegmatic having plenty of phlegm and is thus laid-back, mellow, or indifferent, Melancholic having plenty of Black Bile and is an unhappy soul, or Choleric having plenty of yellow bile and thus being an all around son of a bitch.

So after all this the writer could have just said:

its members known only to each other, exacted bloody revenge

So sometimes the simpler word is the best. Most of the time it is, unless in dialog, in the mouth of an overbearing know-it-all character, sort of like me.

More From The Lexicon

2006-01-24T13:08:00.000-08:00

Somewhere below this post I wrote about the words "H*&^n R*#$&%^@s" and "Personnel" and what I both seemed to mean. I think lots about words when I'm at the unemployment office or sending resumes.

Want to talk today about something called "Employee". I employ tools to do a job.
I employ a papertowel to clean the diet coke off my monitor after E. Ann comments about leather at inappropriate times. To employ is to put into use for ones purposes, nefarious or otherwise. One who employs is the Employer. The object one employs is the "employee". So does that make me a tool sitting unused in the great gadget drawer of life? I think not...

Also, unemployed. That means not used for anything. I am simply not remuneratively engaged at this time, thank you. Oh dear, that is horribly close to P.C. speak.

Speaking of which, I went to the unemployment office today to drop off some forms. The one I went to the last time is closed. They directed me to a place called "Empowerment 2010, Inc." to drop off the forms. I need to be empowered? No, Don't think that that is my problem. Sounds like they hold self-esteem classes or something.... euwwwwwww....

Sunday Funnies

2006-01-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

If you've not seen the genius that is Longmire click on his name. Put down drinks and swallow the mouthful of sandwich first.

The entity known as Hot Cross Bunion (me), goaded on by my fellow Bunions, submitted a couple to the genius that is Longmire. Those can be found on this page.

And while not romance, this just begged to be photoshopped:

File This Under Silver Linings

2006-01-21T21:04:00.000-08:00

Unemployment sucks...most of the time. So I'm writing more and this is a "Very Good Thing". I'm whipping another short story into form thanks to M.G. and The Bunion Method(tm). In between I occasionally get to be Mighty Mousette "Here she comes to save the day!".

That was Friday for me. I had an apheresis appointment for Sunday morning but I got a call on Friday afternoon that only 6 donors had shown up...and when I had called just that morning the schedule was full for Friday and Saturday. So I get the afternoon call and the scheduler asked if there was a time I could come in. I got to say "How soon can you do a set-up for a double?" I'm a fifteen minute drive from the Red Cross center.

It's nice when someone is delighted to see you....and tucks you in for an afternoon nap.

But damn! I'm still waiting for that case of Turtle Wax and the Play-At-Home Game from the other guys. Ya know..the more I think about it I want the "runner-up" prize, something like 3 days and 2 nights at the Holiday Inn, Weehauken with all meals and entertainment included.

On the Scent of JT Leroy

2006-01-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

A combination of Florid Fictions and Truth is Stranger then Fiction:

1/16 oz for $51 $800 an oz? I refrain from editorial comment here. I just think it's bizarre.

From Embryo to Fetus in 3165 Words

2006-01-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

That's where I'm at on Ennui and it is taking form beyond mere exponential word increase. There's a plot in there, and a few good characters. But it's not yet a baby to raise up to a full grown novel. M.G. says that'll happen at round 10,000 words.

In other matters I stumbled upon what may be the singularly most disturbing site on the internet. I am warning you now. Do Not open this site if you are in the least disturbed by weirdness. Very Disturbing

Having said that, of course you are going to look...but please don't say I didn't warn you.

Job -vs- Career -vs- Vocation

2006-01-17T12:18:00.000-08:00

I have an interview tomorrow. It is in my field of expertise. It's in what I know how to do and what I do well. And I am one more time going through that anticipation/nervousness/questioning of "Will they like me?" "Will they want me to work for them?" "Do I have the mad skillz that they want?" "Am I a good fit for the organization?"

It's not some interview for some call center that I would apply for to have a job just to tide me over until something in my field came along. Maybe I'm crazy but I really do enjoy the work I do despite the insanity of the industry as a whole. It connects me with the whole world - literally.

These pre-interview jitters - it's the same thing that is going to happen when Ennui (that's the title of the WIP that is likely to be completed first) is done and polished and I can go no further with the ms and I start querying agents.

But there is a difference also. In my career I've reached the place where I my resume gets stamped "over-qualified" on occasion. Happened a few times the last time I went through this. I don't think that this happens in writing.

Writing is about constantly honing ones skills, ones craft. There is no top but the one we set for ourselves. That's a calling, a vocation. And it about a unique voice. All y'all could do what I do if you'd been doing it as many years as I have. But I couldn't write your books and you couldn't write mine.

So... Job - what you do just to keep roof over head and cupboard in bread. Career - that plus you really like the field you're in and want to progress in it. Vocation -what you do because you know you are called to do it.

The best world is where career and vocation are one and the same. I hope that for all of us.

But for the moment...it would be nice to get back to my career while I persue the other, my vocation, in hopes of it becoming a career.

Prayers, incense, chants, esoteric rituals.... all would be appreciated.

Tagged by Dana

2006-01-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

Four jobs you have had in your life:
Cleaning lady in an apartment complex
Cafeteria worker
Medical Records File Clerk
Export Logistics Specialist

Four movies you could watch over and over:
Henry V (Branagh version)
The Big Easy
Patton
Revenge Of The Nerds

Four places you've lived:
Chicopee, MA
London, England
Grinnell, IA
Portsmouth, VA

Four TV Shows you love to watch:
Crossing Jordan
Project Runway
American Idol (Dana, we'll have to do a weekly rehash once the new series starts tomorrow)
Better Living Through Pharmacology

Four places you've been on vacation:
California
The Jersey Shore
The Outer Banks
The Blue Ridge Mountains

Four of your favourite foods:
She Crab Soup (having some right now)
Kalamata Olives
Real Polish Kielbasa (hillshire farms does not count)
Spaetzele

Four places you'd rather be right now:

Working

On a tropical island with a cold beverage, a cool breeze, warm sand, and a hot cabana boy

On a tall ship sailing the world with the above accoutrements except the sand

The Outer Banks

Four sites I visit daily:
Google News
Go Fug Yourself
Basenotes
JigZone

Four bloggers you are tagging:
Erik Ivan James
R.J. Baker
Gabriele Campbell
Adam Hurtubise

Four sheep breeds you could recognise in a field:
Merino
Arabi
Astrakhan
???

Four people you'd really like to meet (who are alive) and what you would ask them:
Desmond Tutu
Jimmy Carter
Aung San Suu Kyi (Burma)
Bernard Kouchner (Founder of Doctors Without Borders)

And I would just sit back and listen to the conversation.......

Florid Fictions

2006-01-15T17:43:00.000-08:00

There is a last outpost of florid fancies and furbelows.
Taking a break from research here to bring you bits from the truth IS stranger than fiction department:

A sensorial and mysterious scent with frankincense wood accents....a sweet, woodsy, resinous note achieved from the combustion of agarwood.

Sensorial??? Why use one four syllable adjective when two four syllable ones will do will do?

M.G. would thwap them for using sensorial and scent in the same sentence.

The combustion of agarwood??? Will it spontaneously ignite on my skin to create the smell?

-------------

A fragrant alchemy of enchanted forest notes (oak, patchouli) wedded to whale amber, a ‘cross between leather and flowers’.

Do you Mister Oak take Ms Spermwhale as your awfully wedded wife?

Leather and Flowers? E. Ann would have something to say about that….

-------------
A sparkling opening bursting with citrus fruit, pierced with a mouthwatering note of red currant. The heart unveils a bouquet of fresh flowers, enhanced with a bulrush note

Bulrush Note???? Will a shirtless and younger Charlton Heston arise from the Nile?

Grace Under Pressure

2006-01-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I forget what that is about. Interesting story.

A woman is in the hospital with metastasizing terminal cancer. She's on a morphene drip and finally getting a reasonable measure of pain management. All she wants is to get the hell out of the hospital and go home for whatever time she has left. It's the end of January.

The doctor comes in the room. The woman asks him "How long do I have?"

The doctor tells her "Four to six months."

The woman says "Oh good, I won't miss the Final Four."

(For you basketball illiterates, that's the college championships.)

Parting Gifts and Platelets

2006-01-14T10:47:00.000-08:00

You know, they could have at least gifted me with a year's supply of Turtle Wax, and a few cases of Rice-a-Roni, The San Francisco Treat. According to what they say, the flavor can't be beat. I want parting gifts darnit! And throw in a copy of the home game while you're at it Jim. Guaranteed fun for kids from five to ninety-five.

I'd feel like Charlie Brown on Halloween except for the long list on the left side of this blog. Parting gifts come in the most delightful and unexpected packages. I feel a heck of a lot better today.

So I did my "give back" this morning. I guess it all started when I was knee high to a grasshopper and mom would take us along when she went to donate blood. We got sugar soda (verboten at home) and cookies from the nice volunteers while mom did her donation. So giving blood was just one more thing that "adults" did.

As a kid, however, I was scared to death of needles. I still don't particularly like injections. The skinny little needles are a whole lot more uncomfortable going in than the big honking hollow needles that go in and stay in for a couple of hours.

Them I can deal with....in both arms. This is xtreme blood product donation. One needle drains it out, the other puts it back after it goes through the apheresis machine to separate the platelets from the rest of the blood. Today was a good donation....after I got a new phlebotomist.

Never trust a phlebotomist with cold hands. Never trust a skinny phlebotomist. These are things I have learned in the 70 or so platelet donations I have done. Heed my words the next time you roll one (or two) up. Miss Skinny Cold Hands missed the outflow vein completely and rested the needle on a nerve. That is not fun.

I would not let her try a second time. Fortunately the genius Nigerian phlebotomist was in the room. In his hands those needles go in like a hot knife through butter and I don't feel a thing. He's brilliant. I just wish I could make appointments and specify the phlebotomist I want, sort of like a hair appointment.

But that being said, the platelets rocked out at a 415 count. Anything over 154 is considered "normal range". I have a surfeit. So I'll be less likely to bleed out if I get in an accident. It also means that where most people can donate one unit, I can donate two in one sitting. And due to my wholesome and uneventful life (har har har) my blood is so clean it goes over to the children's hospital.

I napped rather well in the lounger too. Funny that my blood is so thick but never clots up the lines. I just don't have to squeeze. I think the thing I like best about apheresis is getting the blankets tucked around me like a kid being put to bed. There is something incredibly comforting about that at any age.

Platelet shelf life is 48 hours. So sometime between now and Monday morning a preemie or kidling heart patient or sprog with cancer is going to get that bag of yellowy fluid.

And I thought my life was tough..... as if.....

But that doesn't mean I'm not piqued over not recieving the Turtle Wax.

It is Friday the Thirteenth

2006-01-13T12:10:00.000-08:00

And I am home today. Home until the Gods of employment gift me and my own stalwart efforts gain me another job. Once again we do the round of what seems to be the inevitable corporate consolidation and downsizing. A Human Resource that is no longer required.

That is an interesting phrase "Human Resources". I consider natural gas and oil resources. I consider iron and tin resources. These are things we use to make and build and go places. We are the agents of creation and movement. But when we ourselves are the "resources"? In my mind that predicates an agent over us using the very fibres of our being to make and build and go places for themself.

Call me old fashioned but I prefer the old word "Personnel". There is a "person" in that very word. So on this blog, I hereby ban the use of the term "Human Resources".

M.G., bless her soul, has already listened to the full outflow of my imbalanced humors. She says to take the time to find my authentic voice and do more writing in between job hunts and the daily round of visits and meetings to keep roof over head, cupboard in bread, and gas tank fed. So I heed wise advice, being past the point of thinking I don't have to listen to anyone.

My writing? Probably won't talk that much about it here since both books are mere embryos and nowhere near where the rest of my bunioned cohorts are. But observations? Likely the things that come up in the day to day round of news and world events and the definition of words.

Around the Office - Schussing through the workday

2006-01-12T15:50:00.000-08:00

As happens every four years, sports which get little play in the off years come to the front of office chat. Skiing? We usually discuss footbal playoffs this time of year when we discuss sports. Figure Skating? Not even up for discussion any time of year.

Except for the Olympics, those couple of weeks when everyone seems to care about things they have not cared about since the last winter Olympics. It becomes an event of role-models and bad-kids. And somewhere in this, something approaching sport actually get played out. But above all the Olympics are a morality play.

Back in the day it was Us-vs-Them with the Eastern Bloc sports machine cast as the mountain which must be conquered. It was a moral imperative to plant the stars and stripes on the very highest peaks of Olympus. It was easy, and we as often as not did not concern ourselves with the behavior or "our" athletes and champions. They were ours and we embraced them with patriotic fervor, ignoring the bong in the backpack and the temper behind the tutu.

Now the bloc is gone and we've entered a period of where the morality plays are writ in terms of a "clean living index" and individuals rather than states are the media created heroes and villans and objects of shame.

Take the case of Bode Miller. Top-notch skier in all alpine disciplines. No excess facial hair, no inappropriate tattoes or piercings. A politely spoken young man. He has however admitted to taking part in a competition or two after a night of serious drinking...hungover...still intoxicated. An honest young man. Work hard, Play Hard, it is easily understandable.

Never mind that he achieved world champion status in overall alpine as well as sveral of the individual events during the last four years. Never mind the fact that he is in superb physical and mental condition. He has been commanded by the keepers of the moral flame to apologize for the comments he made, when these comments were only about himself. They slandered no-one that I can imagine. But this is the price of participation in the quadrennial morality play on snow.

Network news trumpets the story with the full weight of moral indignation including clips of teenage skiers saying that said Mr. Miller is a poor example. I quietly beg to differ. He has slandered no one and hurt no one and is accountable only to himself. He earned the ticket to Torino with hard work and gutsy skiing year in and year out and is at the top of his game.

Drinkers will continue to drink and kill themselves skiing into trees whether or no Mr Miller. Personal responsibility.

Contrast that with the other interesting case of Michelle Kwan who has not skated in a serious competition all year and is asking for a bye onto the U.S. Olympic team on the basis of her past performance as world champion. She's had two Olympiads and has proven herself up to the challenge in neither despite winning world championships in the same years. She was fourth last year at the world championships. She is just coming off a muscle pull that has not allowed her to practice her jumps and Torino is just about a month away.

But figure skating (women's, pairs, and dance) has become a showcase of damsels in distress and villanous vixens rather then athletics as the driving force. So a sub-par damsel can easily be embraced by the writers of this morality play and allowed on the stage one more time. A speed skater would not be given a similar bye if unable to ski in team try-outs. Neither would Bode Miller be on the alpine team if he were a sub-par has-been out-of-condition drunkard.

It is nice stage craft. It is not sport.

File This Under Silver Linings

2006-01-07T21:04:00.000-08:00

Bad Cinema and Other Year End Observations

2005-12-31T19:58:00.000-08:00

My resolution for 06 is to live a bit more simply, write more, whine less.

So, I started by ditching most of the Cable. Took the addressable convertor back to Cox a couple of weeks ago and am supples to just have the barebones minimum package, which is fundamentally just clear access to most network stations. I don't watch other other channels anyways. And I am saving over $40 a month with this move. So, what happens? I take the convertor back and attach the cable to my small by any standerd television, and for some reason I am getting HBO now.... It'll probably go away really soon. This would be a good thing. It is a mind-suck of the nth magnitude..especially when you're down with bronchitis and need some quick escapism.

Tonight was a truly terrible experience in modern cinema: Oliver Stone's Men in Skirts, aka "Alexander". I'm fanatical about my history. Not my fault, I was raised that way. My late mother loved ancient Greece, read us stories from the mythology, had little plaster statuettes and busts of the gods. She passed me Mary Renault's Alexander trilogy when she was done with it...when I was in high school. We drove to a hundred miles to the MFA in Boston to see the Alexander exhibit back in '82. We saw the Pompeii exhibit as well.

I don't want to think what mom would have thought about Ollie's sandle-opera. Well, she wouldn't have liked the nudity. She had standards. A good film can dispose with naked and most of the best films do. A good film can dispense with smarmy "messages" and faux-weepy moments and drawing characters out of the pop-psychology handbook and deconstructing history through the lense of the modern mindset. It makes for dull storytelling that in no way transports the viewer or the reader for that matter when talking about good books.

Part of a good book is the opportunity the writer gives us to step outside of our own headspace and see things from a different viewpoint or through the lense of different values. We are enriched by that experience, and perhaps become better for it, rather than indulging in simple "validation" through characters who think and act no different than modern fashion no matter the era they live in.

Am I making any sense?

2005. I made some wonderful friends this year. Bless the Bunions and their spouses and offspring. Good friends are rare, honest friends are even rarer. Someone who will still be your friend after you rip into their ms is a price above rubies. You guys kept me sane this year. Thank you. I haven't laughed this much in a long time.

Reality television... you couldn't write fiction this strange.. What is this that it has become fashionable to hang ones dirty laundry up in public on purpose? Have people become so blind to themselves that they are no longer capable of being embarassed? Food for thought there. It's almost as if people want to be disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable.

Interesting study I read on the psychology of blood donors. The study said that blood and especially platelet donors have "lower self-esteem" than average. I would prefer to think that blood donors had a more "realistic self estimation" and that we realize that no man is an island. We're perhaps a little less self involved, a little more understanding, a little more desirious to do what we can for others. It's also a cheap way do do a hell of a lot of good. Doesn't cost anything and you just might score a teeshirt in the bargain... I have a drawer full of em. This is something I am proud of... 70 double units of platelets and still going strong.

Almost time for a new year. That means a couple months of typing "2005" in error.

Joy To The World

2005-12-15T16:20:00.003-08:00

I am supposed to be deep in the study of The Thirty Years war, immersing myself in human misery and vagaries, and killing scads of paper people.

Instead? I have found myself listlessly wandering the internet, blog hopping on such diverse and trivial matters as the history of dance, metal forging, and perfume.

Do you remember far back? When there was "The One Perfume"? and it's name was Joy. The advertisements were in the Vogue we read at the public library: we who splashed on a little of our mom's Jean Nate' for lack of better. Joy's message was clear: "You don't have the money to even think of affording me." And so it was.

And we perhaps, hoped for the day when we would be old enough, and careered or married well enough, to move to a city that had a swank department store that carried Joy. And maybe we'd get some on Christmas from our husband or boyfriend who always in our fantasies looked like Donald from "That Girl". It was a bottle of dreams and we knew that Joy was the most perfect perfume...even without smelling it.(this was before scented strips in magazines and before the anti-scent backlash against the same that removed them from magazines) It was the magical and touted $100 an ounce price point. It meant something, talismanic. That was luxury, perfection in the rounded off 100. No 99.95 shenanigans with Joy.

A friend at work told me about her aunt who had a bottle of Joy, a gift from her husband. The aunt kept her Joy boxed and wrapped and in the refrigerator.

So back to now. I am wandering the internets and stumble upon the modern perfume monolith stretching from such established houses as Guerlain to the oddly named "Dinner by Bobo". And behold, the iconic has been surpassed, the talismanic sent to the ranks of the "very good but old-fashoned".

The House of Creed has not a "Singular and Iconic" scent pricing about $100 but at least 20 such scents! All at $150.00 and above retail. Molinard has poured old perfume into new perfume flasks and the dowager Habanita that you could find on close out shelves a couple of years back is resurrected at $295 a 3.3 ounce bottle. The ranks of the $75+ are legion. Are they all beautiful? Worthy? Hardly. I am close enough to places to sample upon occasion. There is some delightful work out there. There is also stuff that smells like nothing more than burning rubber or a Yankee Candle shop. This holds even at the sky-high price points.

Fashion is all but dead. The speed of the wired world demands a new novelty by the minute, a new lure, and it is becoming the "artisanal" or "niche" perfumes or "scents" as they might properly be called. I tried one that was lovely, simply lovely if I wanted to call back the smell of being in church at Pascha on midnight. Pure Russian incense vibe. I don't care to go around all day smelling like I should be at confession. But it is lovely for the exercise that it is. It's not wearable except to evoke memory, like bonfires in autumn evoke the desire to wear wool and start back to school. It's the preciousness of impossible to wear haute couture, but sold to the masses for $75.00 eau de toilette strength 1.7 ounces.

And it is no longer about having ones "signature" scent that renders one memorable. Perfume has become the province of collectors for whom nothing but having one of everything will do. This should be a book, I think. An amusing if cautionary fiction of smell wars and credit-card counts and countesses. I'd tell you where they hang out on line, but then I'd have to kill me.

Feel free to pop over to my side bar and pay Luca Truin a visit on his blog. He's an amusing eccentric, a bio-physicist and smell guru. He's also snide and writes fairly well if with the soupcon of hyperbole himself. His emperor may or may not be wearing clothes. I'll leave you to judge that if you feel you need a break from the endless writing.

Then there is the interesting case of the "haute" on and off line perfumieries touting my favorite Bandit at something around $50.00+ for 1.7 oz. It's an old leathery chanteuse of a perfume, going back to 1944 and enjoying a popular revival of sorts. So it is mythified by the shills. The hyperbolic writing would mean an automatic reject to the trash-can if one tried to pass it as serious writing:

Bandit: Piguet launched the spirit and scent of Bandit, his first fragrance (and, incidentally or not, the first chypre) on the couture runway in 1944. Intent on evoking the aura of the outlaw, he dressed his models in Zorro masks and staged them brandishing toy revolvers and knives. The fragrance is a mischievous and seductive statement accessory - not for every woman, but perfect for a certain woman...and, it should be noted, for a certain man as well. (fair use I hope)

Hint to the frugal....you CAN buy Bandit for $16.00 elsewhere without the flourishes.

And as for the lady who wore Joy? She likely had better things to do than blog about it online. Like a charity opera ball to organize, or a New England Christmas to orchestrate.

My First Post

2005-12-04T18:35:00.000-08:00

OK M.G. & Dana. I now have a proper blog. Talk to me.