yeah, and i also sometimes drive down the highway blasting ABBA

I think the female equivalent of looking at porn online is surfing for kitten pictures. And shoes. I don’t seem to be the only woman who does this, and feels a little uncomfortable about it, like it’s a bad habit for which I should consider seeking help.

Even if diving into the shallow end of the pool (kittens, youtube parodies, porn) is a defense mechanism, maybe an avoidance of thinking about politics or unemployment or what’s going on with the bees, it sure has gotten popular.

To wit, yesterday’s most emailed New York Times article: “When the icing on the cake spells disaster”

The article is about a blog / book called “Cake Wrecks.”

Cake wrecks are exactly what they sound like.
When you say “write ‘congratulations,’ as small as possible” and the icer writes “Congratulations as small as possible” on the cake.

or you have a lisp.

... or something.

For example. Someone collects these photos tirelessly and publishes them. Just to be that jerk who laughs at the idiot cake icer. And because no matter what amuses you, there is an online community for it.

Also I discovered steampunk cakes, which should help you crawl out of the dark cakewrecks hole I just led you into.  I don't know what gold icing tastes like, but we have all eaten blue, so how bad could it be?





Isn’t it wonderful that all the punk rockers have grown up and started careers, like making children’s television shows with rock bands on them .. and .. icing cakes?

well, on to the cats, which I may not have mentioned. they are wearing WIGS.

kitty wigs book

the wigs (for sale)

the iphone app (99 cents! what a bargain. you can’t even buy 99 swedish fish for that anymore)

book blurb from Bobcat Goldthwait:

“Little animals in clothes have always brought me a lot of joy but kitty wigs?! Holy crap! I felt like a star-bellied sneetch. Why are kitty wigs so awesome? It's simple: cats play it straight. They don't lean on the joke. They get it. Cats are the Buster Keatons of the animal kingdom.”

Bobcat and his cat Peeps something or other

a couple of my Buster Keatons, apped out:

(cat wig photos from the cat wigs website and facebook page; cake wreck photos from cake wrecks; steampunk cakes made by sprinkles custom cakes, clever cake studio, and the cakery)

should have been a trust fund kid

It's very late, and I should be sleeping, but instead I'm musing about how this brilliant 30 second character introduction in an otherwise almost naive movie, slo-mo and silent and set to a Style Council song of all things, could possibly be so perfect. The editing is perfect, the lighting is perfect, the acting is perfect, the wardrobe and hair and makeup and sound and characterizations - seemingly effortlessly perfect. It evokes that profound and nebulous emotion that only exists in a rueful memory of the moment when someone walks into your life and changes it: someone who fails to hold up under close scrutiny or never allows it; someone you never want to hunt down ten years later incase you find he / she's aged poorly or amounted to nothing; someone who changes you by embodying all of your dreams which eventually slip away, who shows you a new reality which isn't real at all, and compared to whom you feel more deserving and yet also more inadequate than you ever thought possible.

It was like the 30 second music video remake of The Great Gatsby. I watched it a dozen times, like a car accident, and it was the same each time.

I'm inspired and empty. This is the kind of story I would tell in my biography, after a long and influential career as a film director, of the moment when I knew what I wanted to be. If I were that sort of person. If I had had that sort of privilege. But instead I have a heart like an air balloon, beating next to a pin.

final sale

visual therapy

(Images, respectfully borrowed from the New York Times, are of Grey Gardens and the Kips Bay Decorator Show House)

horriblescope

I saw this horoscope awhile ago, on a screen behind a coffee stand, but it's so great:

"Life's little mysteries enrich the world. So stop trying to solve them all."

Ok. Be frivolous ..

Look at these coats I saw in Massachusetts when I was there for Christmas ...



and these great rain boots, which I didn't get and then got by mail order after most of the rain had passed, and now I pray for rain ...


For no reason:  I've always loved this picture of my boy Rasputin, where he looks partially desaturated, as if he's been colorized badly .. like his tail and elbows were hanging out of the frame .. and then he whipped his tail back in, but it was still in black and white.



And then there's the story of Christian the lion who these two guys kept as a pet and then released into the wild in Africa, and then when they went back to visit him a couple years later, he jumped up and hugged them like a little house cat.

Here are some photos before they set him free ..



He came back, thus he is theirs.

Late. sleep. unemployment. dreams ZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

electile dysfunction

Ah, the George W. Bush years .. wasn't that something?

Now that we can truly laugh about it - he's just days away from being out of the White House forever!! - I thought I'd share this little ray of sunshine, the chalkboard specials at the Black Sheep Cafe in Amherst, MA, October, 2004:

ELECTILE DYSFUNCTION
$6.95

The Burning Bush - JERK chicken with green chilis, pepper jack cheese, lettuce, tomato and spicy lime vinaigrette on a baguette.

The Challahburton - Lots of PORK loin with pear chutney, spinach, roasted red peppers, red onion on challah. (accompanying illustration: smiling pig reclining with feet up on large sacks of money, staring at oil barrels)

The Big Dick Cheney - An OVERCOMPENSATING amount of Black Forest smoked turkey, cheddar cheese, sliced apples, red pepper mustard, lettuce, tomato on a baguette.

The Ronald Dumsfeld - An OFFENSIVE amount of 5-spice baked tofu, spicy hoisin peanut sauce, pickled carrots, lettuce, scallions, roasted garlic sauce on a baguette.

Wolfowitz in Sheep's Clothing - AGRESSIVELY spiced kafta (ground lamb patties) with yogurt dressing, lettuce, tomato, onions, cucumbers in a pita.

(final illustration: a sheep dropping a vote into a ballot box)

And in the bakery section, they offered Republican Convention Cookies (filled with fruits and nuts).

thank you, London

... for the atheist bus campaign