Dueling Muses

He touristed around the grounds, digital camera permanently affixed
to his right eye, except when he placed it on a ledge to set the timer.

He asked me to wait, to get out of the shade, no, maybe a few feet to the left,
a little more, he wants the sign in the background, smile, put down the bag,
wait for the car to pass, no, smile for real, he’s almost ready just a sec,
take off your sunglasses and then he bounds to my side just as the flash hits.

Without this picture, he can’t prove that we went to City Park
for a picnic on the first Tuesday in July.
Otherwise, it wouldn’t count. It would have just been a waste of time.

As we get into his car, I threaten to write a poem
about how annoying it is to pose for photographic evidence of our dates.
We debate the irony all the way back to his place.

I Do Like Orange Soda

(via Vintage Ads)

Housekeeping

Messing around with the template today, since last night I took a look at my site in Internet Explorer and was disappointed in how it looked.

I suppose if you're still using Internet Explorer you get what you deserve, but still.

Technically the blog hasn't yet upgraded to the major blogger upgrade from like, two years ago. I guess today's the day. Please disregard anything that looks crappy this afternoon, and trust that I'll fix it as soon as possible.

EDIT:: I spent two hours playing with blogger layouts and the "new" XML based designs, decided I hated how inflexible they are, gave up and reverted back to my original design, IE users be damned.

A Patriotic Song

("A Patriotic Finale" from Howard Crabtree's When Pigs Fly)

"Philip Roth featured on 'booty-shaking' dance track"

(NSFWish)

The title of that article scared me but it was intriguing enough to make me click through. It sounds like a terrible, terrible idea.

It's being billed as the "the ringtone of choice among hip literary types this summer," which I don't buy for a second.

I listened to the track, and I was able to dismiss it with a wave of the hand, like a drag queen brushing aside an uppity amateur on Halloween. I mean, it's bad. And unnecessary.

The only good part is that the publisher is quoted as always being on alert for booty-shaking literary artifacts.

Which, of course, is a great segue way to my semi-regular series of photoshopping books I've recently read over the dirty parts of men I'd like to sleep with.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith


A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi


Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout


Kitchen by Banana Yoshimo


Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith


Q & A by Vikas Swarup


A Short History of Ukrainian Tractors by Marina Lewycha

Persepolis 2.0

SpreadPersepolis.com

Bonus MP3 Download in Post

I may hate my boyfriend's roommate for many reasons, but she does have her moments. She works for the local Red Cross, and occasionally brings home leftover swag. And so magically we got four free daypasses to a local water park.

(Her generosity is slightly dampened by the fact that she got the tickets a few weeks ago, and after checking out their website found out that since the weight limit for most rides was 400 lbs she would end up spending most of the day sitting on the sidelines watching people's towels, and only then offered the passes to us. But still: free is free.)

At first we were all excited to get out of town and cool off for a day, and only when we pulled into the parking lot did we realize why water parks are overrated.

1. Twenty minutes waiting in line for a waterslide that lasts about ninety seconds.

2. Roving bands of pushy unsupervised small children.

3. Taking off our shirts (mp3) in public.

Fortunately we live in one of the fatter states in the country, and so the boyfriend and I were in the top twenty percent of the cuter/in-shape/hairy-in-appropriate-places guys at the park.

It helps that there were a lot of grossly overweight kids with their overweight hairy-back fathers, which skewed things in our favor. But still, it's nice not to feel fat. And to cool off every once in a while.

The King (of Pop) Is Dead

It's a shame my friends and I grew up thinking of Michael Jackson only as a laughingstock. I still remember the first time I saw the video to "Black and White" and at seven years old I remember thinking what a weirdo he was, even though I kinda liked the song. It was almost 15 years later before I was able to fully recognize just how great he was.

I think the biggest generational divide is between people who grew up thinking Michael Jackson was the greatest since Elvis, if not ever, and those who think of him as an albino pedophile who is the butt of every joke.



If only we knew him when.

But Is It Art?

As you've probably guessed from the watermarks, all of these delightful pics are from fantasticsmag.

Kitties and Cute Guys

I've said it before, I'll say it now, and I'll probably say it again in the future. The majority of the internet is comprised of two things: pornography and cute pictures of small animals. And far be it for me not to help contribute.

So here's a neat article about the Cute Cat Theory of Internet Censorship as well as Self Portraits of Heterosexual Men by Gabriel Martinez.