In the Peacock Room

OK, here's the deal. You want leveling, here goes. First, using your daughter's handle to argue your agenda makes anything you say come from someone wearing a pink tutu. You can beat your chest, you can roar all you want, but you're still wearing a pink tutu. Your avatar means nothing, because it's the handle that's doing all the talking. Since Pink Tutu is talking, you sound like an overly sincere teenage girl, no matter how confident you are that you don't. Your occasional slip-ups ("famine" for what is clearly "fasting"), only underline the problem.  Sure, you think it's "just music", but if you're so courageous (and not "chicken"), why don't you get your own account? Second, I was on a forum to discuss liturgy. Lit-ur-gy. Not Biblical exegesis as applied to current events, not evangelizing, not ranting about the current president. Liturgy. That occasionally, some atheists come trolling by is irrelevent. My ...

Transitioning from a nomadic to a sessile life. While the specifics will vary with the actual apartment, the question remains: how do I get from bare to livable in the least time with the least amount of money? And my more hedonistic side answers, With what and how will I decorate a place where I will (in all probability) spend the rest of my life? Having grown up in a fine New England Colonial Revival home, I feel somewhat uneasy at the prospect of not ending my life as comfortably as I began it. Even if my finances change, I can't easily see myself suddenly gaining the savoir-faire of my older female relatives. (Yes, I realize the irony of all this: my "virtual" space is Decadent and named for one of the most beautiful rooms in the world; my "real" situation is that I can hardly keep a room in even college-dorm order by myself.)  Ok, to start, I'll probably need a bed, a table, a chair and a chest of drawers. Unless I decide to go completely paperl...

It rankled me to have to engage in enforced corporate Grace, to see people reading nothing but Bibles,  Our Daily Bread (an evangelical devotional), and 'recovery' material, and to live in a place where the default response of one of the matrons to a simple "How ya' doin'?" was "Blessed. How are you?" (delivered with a kind of sneer that you aren't so lucky). Being as I am, a three-way split between observant Anglican, devout humanist, and quirky mystic, having a one-way ticket into Fundie territory was not too pleasant. One  morning I talked about this to one of the other inmates while waiting for the bus. She seemed more or less sympathetic, and managed to make me feel a little less bitter. I took a deep breath, and let it out. I realized where I was. I was in a Wal-Mart frame of mind. What makes it Wal-Mart  is the fact that Wal-Mart is...well, palatable. It shares with Oprah Winfrey  the gift of making the rift between Blue State and ...

Living where I am, most people are into reading The Bible.  This is OK, I guess, but my humanistic side longed for something else: something as dense and chewy, but different . I got my inspiration while "on vacation" in Martha's Place, another establishment for the homeless, reading two volumes of "The Limits of Art", an anthology of the best of the best (as selected by well-regarded editors) of Western Literature. Having totally charmed another resident by reading her a French love poem (a villanelle)  I went on to read Milton's "Joy" and "Melancholy", and felt incredibly refreshed! Which led me to try the Five Foot Shelf.  Every day, I'd log into Gateway Community College's computers, and download, sometimes in pieces, a reading assignment. Sometimes, I'd take whole volumes out: which caused me a major headache when, under the effects of wine, fatigue and a major cold, I lost one (owners of the Faust volume -- No. 29 --...

Finger puppets of dogs paired with T-bones. Quilted "Just Married" signs. Evening bags made of painted cardboard. Wall hangings made from forty dollars worth of material to commemorate a five-year-0ld's birthday. Amigurumi made of every possible character from Star Wars, classic arcade gaming, Jane Austin...It's hip! It's handmade! Crafts are green! It's....utter crap. Walking through Michael's, I'm struck with all the stuff sold to people to make other stuff. Not just raw materials, like paper, clay and cloth, or even the semi-obscure bits of Obtainium such as raffia, peacock feathers, and googly eyes, but... Scrapbook supplies....Let's face it, how many pairs of edging scissors does a person need? Paper punches in shapes you'll likely use for only one occasion. Seasonal items that will only take up storage space for most of the year. More wedding knickknacks than you can shake a stick at. Tiny cozies for tiny toilet seats. Make Magazine...

Little Dog A fears Big Dog B But what he should watch for is Little Cat C. I see this illustrated in post-war retro style, slightly mathematical, what say you? Reading IQ.org wonders me: Anderson Cooper and Julian Assange are both the same age (approximately), look very alike, yet it's as if they had their souls switched. You'd kind of expect a fellow from old money, a great university, and a world traveler, to talk about things with a learned perspective and to have some kind of depth. You'd expect a guy who spends most of his life bent over a keyboard and a lifestyle described as "monastic" to have little background in literature, be allergic to the outdoors, and have an inner life that's dull, dull, dull. However, " Dispatches " reads like...well, it sounds like the dutiful scrivenings of a college student trying to turn in a term paper. "Um, well...I'm Anderson Cooper, and my mom is Gloria Vanderbilt....yeah, that Vanderbilt...not l...