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Cover of Entertainment Weekly: Quentin Tarantino wearing all-white and a half-sneer, stroking a white dove. (John Woo reference! Excellent!) The cover promises “His Favorite Make-out Soundtrack.”
I cannot think of any less appealing cover-story lead-in, aside from Dick Cheney’s Toe Fungus Home Remedies. Can you? fence@startribune.com. I’m going to do a column on this; have your say.
Column night, so this will be brief.
Big tot day, Mondays. No school, no Nana, just us - and since I decree that the TV shall be silenced after two morning programs, that means puzzles and books and coloring and painting and so on. Usually I have the radio or the news on while we play, but like I said last week, I hit a point where I can’t take it right now. I just can’t take another “we’re there for the oil” call. I can’t take another 37 minute discussion about whether the PDB said OBL wanted USA DOA PDQ. I browse the news sites and the blogs, then go play with my daughter for the rest of the morning. I think April will be my month off from marinating in the news 24-7, if only to get my blood-pressure down from hummingbird levels.
And of course we cleaned. We always clean. Every day. Chores, we have; allowances we earn, yessss, says Yoda Dad. (Interesting: the Microsoft spellchecker doesn’t flag “Yoda.” Let’s test: Jesus. Nope. Augustine. Nope. Vader. Nope. Moff Tarkin. Bingo!) Today I turned all my displaced dissatisfaction towards the high-end counter-top cleaning fluid industry. There’s a new niche: hoity-toity counter sprays that charge you through the nose because they smell better. We had a week’s infatuation with Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day spray until we realized that A) it smelled like orchids in full rut, and B) the logo warns us we are dealing with Bea Arthur's obsessive-compulsive sister. Last time I fall for good graphic design. (Sure. Right.) Then I picked up something called Caldrea at the grocery store, because it really, really smelled good. Like fresh grass. A light scent, and a familiar one; didn’t smell like “Mountain Breeze” or “Crisp Linen” or “Exfoliated Centerfold” or any other indistinct scent the rest of the commercial crap uses to mask the pungent fact of their efficient surficants. But it left a filmy residue over the counters. As a thing about which I am, in the end, concerned, the cloudy murky residue ranks quite low – but if a product is put forth as a cleaner of countertops, and the end result is a dull, drab countertop, well: you have made a powerful enemy today, I fear, because I paid seven bucks for this crap.
It’s back to Windex. I just want a kitchen that doesn’t smell like burnt coffee, spilled milk, the recycling can and damp dog, okay? Is that too much to ask?
And now I return to the evening column, writing about Fallujah.
Just to put things in perspective. Just to remind me that even my annoyances are blessings.
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