Cheney's Daughter Says She'll Write Memoir: "Mary Cheney, the daughter and campaign manager of Vice President Dick Cheney whose identity as a lesbian became an issue in the presidential campaign, has sold the rights to a memoir to Simon & Schuster for an advance of about $1 million, according to two people involved in the negotiations."
Despite the publicaiton of her memoirs being still two years away, I thought I'd help Mary get a head start on possible titles:
Learning To Live With Dick Portrait Of A Lesbian As A Young Campaigner Guilt and Self-Denial: A Life Guide My Life As An Achilles Heel
Supreme Court Weighs in on File-Sharing: "The Supreme Court expressed concerns Tuesday over allowing entertainment companies to sue makers of software that allows Internet users to illegally download music and movies, questioning whether the threat of such legal action might stifle Web innovation".
Just remember that those Justices are tricky! You let them lull you into safe harbor and they will sink the ship!
My insides must resemble this rabbit's after all the egg shaped candy I ate today. Except in my stomach and not my uterus. Apparently I did not miss much at the annual egg hunt with my family since 1. HappyWill is sick, and 2. the hunt was moved indoors since Easter is so early in the calendar. Bah. My big weekend activity was walking to the candy shop yesterday just to see what I could see and then walking back to the apartment. In any case, April is so close. I think I may survive the winter afterall.
Back during those heady Christmas shopping days of November and December, I began an Amazon list, But, why?, for the most random items I could find. Home Defibrillator? Of course! I love a jolt in the morning! Pokemon Eau De Toilette? Do six year olds need cologne? I am not sure if its the pinnacle or nadir of consumerism.
Suggestions and submissions welcome. (Okay, in all honesty, the baby bear jacket is sugar cute).
My recent bachelor status has had some frightening consequences--I am becoming an old man! On Saturday I listened to the New York Philharmonic on the radio play a pops concert and enjoyed it. To seal the deal, I found myself in the supermarket checkout line with several frozen dinners yesterday evening. (Cooking for one is no fun). Since I already have a fondness for plaids and corduroy, I fear that I am doomed to be an early elderly. At least until Brian returns.
Earlier this week, the morning after one of the weekly blizzards, Evie found a wasp on the floor while waiting for her breakfast. She simply stared at the thing and then left the kitchen. I was more concerned. After, by the smallest estimate, three months of below freezing weather, how has a wasp survived and managed to get into my kitchen? Pondering such tricks of nature were best left for later. The wasp managed a flight at me! I lost sight of the thing! Its trajectory should have led it to my pajamas. I took them off and shook them out. It's one thing to find a wasp in the kitchen in March. It's quite another to find said wasp in your pajamas. The wasp's dried up body was discovered in the kitchen a few days later. Now we can ponder the tricks of nature. So how did it get inside?
Brian is away until next weekend so my diet so far has consisted of tea and (fancy! new!) red Peeps. Snow has been falling for over twenty-four hours so I'm not about to leave the apartment. Used tea bags are filling up the sink.
Today has been mythical singer-songwriter documentary day. Don't Look Back left me sort of cold, perhaps because Bob figures so largely in popular memory. However, it was nice to see him speak in normal sentences since I often imagine him as the giant floating head from the Academy Awards a few years ago.
Jandek On Corwood was a fascinating film about a mystery man. Most of the film is various fans and critics discussing the man himself. Apparently he exists in some alternate world, just slightly off sync with our own. He is a dream artist for fans and critics--they can pick apart obtuse clues in an unfolding mystery. Bob rarely takes off his sunglasses in a "look at me--don't look at me" manner. Jandek, in contrast, just hovers just out of view.
Dog's false lead in murder case: "US prosecutors trying to crack a murder case realised they were barking up the wrong tree when one of their witnesses turned out to be a small dog... They sent out a subpoena, and the five-year-old Shih Tzu duly appeared at the Benton County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, led by the defendant's brother... Prosecutor Robin Green told the Associated Press news agency she apologised to the brother for any inconvenience, adding: 'The dog was friendly enough and probably would have been a very co-operative witness.'"
The Superimposers: "The Superimposers are... deft inheritors of the late-1960s Los Angeles psychedelic-pop tradition established by people such as Curt Boettcher, Brian Wilson, Neil Young and Jimmy Webb."
Finally a third party review of the Superimposers record. I was beginning to think I imagined it all in some early morning dream.
Love's Labor Now Lost, to the Gavel: "[Engelbert Humperdinck] would retire to the suite after his performances at Mount Airy. The Humperdinck suite was the pièce de cheez-sistance at an auction of the contents of the resort known for its round beds, heart-shaped tubs and impossibly catchy jingle. (Everybody now: 'Beaut-iful Mount Airy Lodge.')
The resort, in Paradise Township, closed in late 2001, a victim of severe financial problems and shifting tastes... After decades as a celebrated honeymoon hideaway, it was sold to a businessman who is selling off its beds and tubs and fake potted plants, in the hope of transforming the site into a grand slot-machine parlor.
In the field house, it seemed everything but the jingle was for sale: ...of course, the glossy red heart-shaped tubs. There were 80 of the fiberglass tubs, stacked like bowls on display."
The jingle for the Mount Airy Lodge would play on nearly every television commerical break in my childhood. It's burned into my brian synapses. Everyone seemed so happy there while they sipped champagne in champagne flute-shaped tubs. And I always thought, One day, I too wil get to the Poconos. But that day has passed.
Anti-gay millionaire bankrolls Caravaggio spectacular: "[Caravaggio], who was alleged to have kept a boy lover and slept with a dagger by his bed, scandalised the Roman Catholic church's senior hierarchy as much for his hedonistic ways as his shocking depictions of the Virgin Mary, for which he used his prostitute muse as a model.
But what the crowds are unlikely to appreciate is that the acclaimed exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous donation of a reclusive US millionaire who bankrolled a fundamentalist religious movement founded by a man who endorsed the execution of homosexuals and adulterers...
'It's ironic that one of the major funders of the exhibition - about which there has been such interesting comment about Caravaggio's realism, use of real life models and homo-erotic content - should also be one of the major funders of the [American Anglican Council],' said Reverend Nicholas Holtam, vicar at St Martin-in-the-Fields church next to the National Gallery."
John the Painter by Jessica Warner: "It remains a mystery why Aitken suddenly embraced the cause of American independence... but around 1775, when he overheard someone declare that the Navy depended on the royal dockyards and that without them the war was as good as lost, he instantly knew what to do: he would burn down the dockyards, the Americans would win the war and he would return to America a hero... In Portsmouth Aitken set fire to the dockyard ropehouse and in Bristol he torched three mer chantmen, some homes and warehouses... He was hanged on March 10 1777, from the mizzenmast of a ship in the Portsmouth dockyard... And what did the Americans make of this young man who lay down his life for American independence? They completely ignored him."
When driving in downtown Jersey City last night, I said to Brian that I hoped to see the woman walking her Italian Greyhounds around the park again as I did the last time I was in town in December. And guess what? I totally did did see her again with her three dogs. I can will things to happen! Only things involving small house pets, but still!
Other than that, my winter break has been slow and easy-like. Sunday was Gates and Luna (RIP). Monday was the second blizzard that has trapped me at my parents' house this year (first time is tragedy, second time is whatever). On Tuesday, HappyWill and I built a snowman (yes, we used a kit). Back in NH before classes begin again for a few days. Eight weeks, eight weeks until classes are over!
