 |
The scanning is done; now to write the dang thing. Today I witnessed something that defines the pleasures of being six: Gnat was playing Rock-paper-scissors with a friend. Over the Nothing to report as far as my fascinating & action-packed life goes; I scanned. I went to the office to talk to the overlords, and made a pitch for moving a good deal of this site’s content to the Strib site, including the Diner. (Hello, permanent bandwidth problem solution.) If this means I do ads for the paper in the show, fine. If it means I move the Bleat to the site or do blogging for them, fine. Not that I feel it tickling my neck as much as before. Time not only heals all wounds and lulls all fools. So I have nothing much to add, alas. Let’s just dip into the vast folder of unsorted images, and see what I haven’t posted. Potpourri Thursday:
Maybe I should put her in the new book; it doesn’t have enough hot perky flame-haired pixies in the book. “Laugh all the way to the casserole” didn’t quite catch on as a slogan for joy, thrift, financial success and implied comeuppance of your naysayers, but it makes sense here – once you read the text, that is. Who knew that fluffy stand-apart rice cost 33% more than Comet? Who knew that you could give a side dish the same name as a poisonous cleanser, and people would buy each? Being a consumer requires more sophistication than one would think – the shopper has to think “I need rice, so I’ll pick up some Comet, and then I need sink-cleanser, so I’ll pick up some Comet” without any internal dissonance clouding the purchases. The Comet Rice Brigade was never deployed in actual combat, if you’re writing a Wikipedia entry. Here’s a picture of me with my first dog, Lady.
Lady was a Basenji who did not adapt well to our house, and went to live at the Gas Station after a while. I always felt bad about that, and the very picture makes me sad for the poor dog. I had expected that a dog would be a Friend, following me around, playing games, sleeping on the floor by my bed, but Lady was nuts. And not just puppy-nuts, either. She didn’t connect with anyone. You can probably sense the ambivalence in the picture. I remember nearly every detail, incidentally – the footie jimmies had plastic bottons, the green paper was the Farmers’ Forum section that came out weekly and contained news specifically aimed at the Toilers of the Earth (it also had the TV grid.) The modern sofa was a masterpiece of discomfort; the nubby fabric burned your bare skin in the summer, and its slick slippery surface made the cushions slide all over hell when you tried to lean back. The rug was approximately 3 microns thick, and had the same synthetic feel as the sofa – just being in that room was like eating cotton candy made from spun fiberglas. The picture on the wall was never a favorite; it was a scene of a thawed stream in late winter, and seemed to imply that winter was the eternal condition of life, somehow. At least in the plains. From a 1950s Better Homes and Garden: Hail Poison!
I remember people freaking out over aerial Melathion spraying in the 80s, so this was amusing. (Don’t send links to sites about Melathion toxicity; already read them.) The close-up is priceless: c’mon, Buster! I’ve got a tank full of chemicals and I’m rarin’ to spray! I love America:
Really, I do. A taut lovely happy gardener, her faithful dog, a tank of death-juice from American Cyanimid = a wonderful day in California. And after she finished gassing the roses, a fresh Lark and some coffee. All without fear. My current laptop desktop image:
Amazingly lurid 1940s fruit-seed ad from “The Country Gentleman” magazine. A larger image is here. All of these things are tidbits from sites to come after the book’s done. To say nothing of the Institute and Minneapolis makeovers. Oh: one more thing on yesterday’s comments, per some email inquiries: I did not mean to suggest that women who have been cast off by their husbands should live barren unhappy lives of regret and resentment. No. Nor did I suggest that women should cleave to whichever Bufus saunters up and gives a cozening wink. If people can make the best of altered circumstances, then hurrah and excelsior. But the general tone of the article seemed to celebrate those who had chosen singletude because they realized it was a more liberating position. No doubt it is for some. But most wish otherwise. One gently disappointed reader pointed out how much I say I enjoy my weekends on my own, but A) they’re just weekends, and the freedom is made possible by a grant from the Wife and Child Institute, shoring up random male atoms for over six millennia, and B) after three days I am useless and despondent, something I think I’ve made clear. Anyway. There you go. New Quirk, of course. Thanks for the visit! See you tomorrow.
|
 |
phone. They’d count down 3 – 2 – 1, then make their choice, then tell what it was. Gnat appeared to win most of the rounds, and since she declared first this said a great deal about her opponent’s character. (Or intelligence.) 
