shoebox_dw (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shoebox_dw) wrote2008-01-21 04:38 pm
shoebox_dw) wrote2008-01-21 04:38 pm
Happiness is a warm sequin
So I'm sitting here wearing my cashmere sweater.
It's kind of like a Bucket List thing, this sweater purchase. While I have no interest whatsoever in actually seeing the movie - as Roger Ebert put it, wouldn't it be nice if just for once, a movie opened with a white character extolling the virtues of Morgan Freeman? - I have always been kind of sympathetic to the general idea.
I suppose it involves some misdirected wedding-planning instincts, too; I can't have the poufy ivory dress with the rosebud-embroidered bodice (mental pattern borrowed liberally from Catherine Cookson novels), so the ridiculously expensive sweater is like the prize for growing out of it already. You may not have a man, self, but by God you are a successful, sophisticated woman!
Thus, here I sit in genuine two-ply Jones New York Luxe cashmere knit, v-necked, heather grey with a silver-sequinned neckline. Oh, yes, there are sequins. I'm not quite that grown-up, yet. I did however carefully save the little packet with the extras, instead of tossing them up in the air and squealing with glee, so, y'know, progress. I’m so pleased with myself I’m not even going to tell you how long I waited for it to go on sale, which discount is frankly none of your business anyway…
It's kind of like a Bucket List thing, this sweater purchase. While I have no interest whatsoever in actually seeing the movie - as Roger Ebert put it, wouldn't it be nice if just for once, a movie opened with a white character extolling the virtues of Morgan Freeman? - I have always been kind of sympathetic to the general idea.
I suppose it involves some misdirected wedding-planning instincts, too; I can't have the poufy ivory dress with the rosebud-embroidered bodice (mental pattern borrowed liberally from Catherine Cookson novels), so the ridiculously expensive sweater is like the prize for growing out of it already. You may not have a man, self, but by God you are a successful, sophisticated woman!
Thus, here I sit in genuine two-ply Jones New York Luxe cashmere knit, v-necked, heather grey with a silver-sequinned neckline. Oh, yes, there are sequins. I'm not quite that grown-up, yet. I did however carefully save the little packet with the extras, instead of tossing them up in the air and squealing with glee, so, y'know, progress. I’m so pleased with myself I’m not even going to tell you how long I waited for it to go on sale, which discount is frankly none of your business anyway…
Erm, sorry. I’m a little cranky today; the reason I’ve broken out the silky softness being basically a concerted attempt to ward off Monday. You see, the Packers lost the championship game last night and this morning it was -22 wind-chill and, in what I really do have to admire as an example of timing that any reading supervillain should jot on a Post-it, the subway got stuck with the doors open at the one open-air station on the line of eight I run thru each day.
The good news is, Fuzz Therapy does appear to be working. Wearing this thing really does feel like being gently cuddled by some sympathetic…uh…goat, I guess it is. Never mind the search for Meaning right now, I’m warm and cozy withal, my ego is purring steadily within, and I am ready to resume pondering blank Wikipedia pages.
Yeah. See, left to cast about for some other excitement once the plans for spending two weeks immersed in SuperBowl prep were abruptly flushed, I rummaged through the ‘might be cool to try sometime’ backlog and figured it’d speed the healing process quite a lot, to spend awhile puttering round my trivia collection to good purpose for once. You know, I haven’t got time for such trivialities as touchdowns, I’m busy helping spread accurate knowledge to the masses far and wide.
Or something. The more you read the manifestos at the front of this-here collective intellectual exercise, the more struck you are with how sweetly naive it’s still possible to be, here on the Net. Gather ye minds where they may, and let them streweth forth pearls of…uh…well, let’s just say that it’s possible that the gag-writers had it all wrong, and that future historians will conclude that the Earth was ruled by not dogs, but nerds. With OCD. Samuel Johnson would be mightily amused by the whole thing.
Somehow, though, I’m not. I suppose it was a mistake to start my journey of [ahem] Wikidiscovery – that’s another credibility issue I’m having; as far as I know the Britannica does not make with the cutesy buzzwords – anyway, I’ve been over on the board for deletion debates. Suddenly what seemed like a harmless desire to update a few factoids has mushroomed into a full professorship, what with all these citations and notability requirements and whatnot. I am seized with the responsibility of actually, y’know, spreading knowledge; or else be exposed right there on the same page as “Rufus A. Klingworthy Mlddle Schoolz leik awsomest soccr game EVAH!!!!!!!!!ONEELEVENTY!!!”
Thus the editors shall gather round and mock and draw red lines through my most cherished obscure flourishes, and I’ll be forced to have this sweater permanently bonded to my body, which will be a problem in summer, so I’ll have to go find a monastery in Tibet, and spend the rest of my life not wiping my nose for fear of killing all the little bacterias, and it’ll just be…it’ll…I…[sob]. Even the chance to update the Bob & Ray pages isn’t worth that kind of aggravation.
…thought you’d get away without another mention of those two, eh? Hah. Just for your edification, O supremely reluctant beta readership, my mother read the full-scale article and she thinks I’m totally brilliant, so there. Really, those were her words: “You do realize you’re brilliant, don’t you?” Hanging around my mother a lot, this is entries #s 2 through about 985 on my personal bucket list.
Meanwhile, this priceless opportunity to get in on the ground floor of my soon-to-be boundless intellect is still available to anybody who wants to drop me a line…to answer the next question, yes, smart Alec, I do too have real-life friends. Trouble is, none of them are…how do I put this...exactly the kind of people future historians envision ruling the world, so I run into difficulty just blithely up and announcing that I’ve written 6000 words on a mostly sort of pointless pop-culture subject.
Not, I hasten to add, that my Net readership isn’t astute, cultured and generally on-the-ball, or of course I wouldn’t be asking. It’s just that you guys, y’know, understand. My inner circle – just as a reminder, many of these people are from rural northern Ontario - as soon as the subject of my writing comes up anywhere, like for instance it did at a family dinner the other night, the whole thing devolves into “Ooo! When’s the book coming out?! You are writing a book, right?” Then I have to get into the whole no-but-I-write-a-column-on-the-Net-no-I-don’t-get-paid schpiel and my literary rep all just goes to hell in a gravy boat.
Actually, of course I am writing a book, sort of, after a manner of speaking, when I happen to think about it, which it so happens I have lots of time to do now, on account of I'm not going to be busy reading the sports media's attempts to relate every bitty detail of each individual Packer's life stories (up to and including where they scratched themselves last Tuesday) to the SuperBowl...[snif]...
...OK, just a sec. [strokes sweater sleeve]
Right, better now. As I was saying, maybe it's about time I picked up that particular thread - no, not scratching football players, geeze! Pay attention here. The book, I mean. That I'm writing. Or something. Tune in next week, when I may have figured all this out.
Not, I hasten to add, that my Net readership isn’t astute, cultured and generally on-the-ball, or of course I wouldn’t be asking. It’s just that you guys, y’know, understand. My inner circle – just as a reminder, many of these people are from rural northern Ontario - as soon as the subject of my writing comes up anywhere, like for instance it did at a family dinner the other night, the whole thing devolves into “Ooo! When’s the book coming out?! You are writing a book, right?” Then I have to get into the whole no-but-I-write-a-column-on-the-Net-no-I-don’t-get-paid schpiel and my literary rep all just goes to hell in a gravy boat.
Actually, of course I am writing a book, sort of, after a manner of speaking, when I happen to think about it, which it so happens I have lots of time to do now, on account of I'm not going to be busy reading the sports media's attempts to relate every bitty detail of each individual Packer's life stories (up to and including where they scratched themselves last Tuesday) to the SuperBowl...[snif]...
...OK, just a sec. [strokes sweater sleeve]
Right, better now. As I was saying, maybe it's about time I picked up that particular thread - no, not scratching football players, geeze! Pay attention here. The book, I mean. That I'm writing. Or something. Tune in next week, when I may have figured all this out.