Postcards from Nowhere

So lovely reader Nina was true to her word and sent me postcards from her various vacation destinations this summer.  While she didn’t get me a picture of a man riding a dinosaur, she did sent me some uniformly AWFUL postcards.

First up, a recipe from Ohio:

Nina said:

All the postcards centered around these candies.  They are serious about them.  Oh, well.  Detroit’s would be a photo of a homicide so, “Yeah, Buckeyes!”

~Nina

P.S.  I’m from Detroit, so that wasn’t random.

Well, in the spirit of not being random, Nina, go watch this.  The Boyfriend went to Ohio State, and he says that this video is a completely accurate and true representation of Cleveland.

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I Promise, This Is a Post You’ll All Actually Care About

Assuming that you all care about romance novels of dubious quality.  Which is assuming rather a lot.

Wait–most of you found me because of I Love My Dead Gay Husband.  We’re good!

Eloisa James, A Duke of Her Own

After years of whoring around and never using condoms, the Duke of Villiers has six illegitimate children.  Well, technically only five, but he let that one chick lie and say the kid was his because that just seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.  Anyway.  He’s got all these kids, and he’s never had very much interest in them, but now he’s trying to round them up from the various schools and homes he had them sent to.  Only problem is, it turns out that his lawyer was a cheat and a crook, and was pocketing the money for the children’s upkeep and sending them to all sorts of horrible places.

One kid was a mudlark, and two others were stuck in an orphanage where they were all named the same thing and forced to make buttons for a living.

The Duke feels hella guilt over A.) being so careless as to accumulate six children in the first place; and B.) being so careless as to have LOST THEM.  So he wants to make amends by treating them as legitimate, settling huge amounts of money on each of them, and getting a biddable wife who will raise them as if they were her own.

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And While We’re Talking about Haterade…

After witnessing the brewing storm on twitter because of Dooce’s laundry situation (no, I am not making this up, this is an actual issue for some people), I decided that it was time to lay out my intentions for you, all 10 of my extremely occasional readers:

• If I ever get internet-famous, I solemnly swear that I will abuse the shit out of my extreme and all-encompassing power.
• I will put ads on my site, not because they might generate much-needed income, but because I know that doing so is the epitome of evil and an exploitation of my relationship with my readers.
• I will write carefully-edited anecdotes about my personal life, because that will TOTALLY violate the privacy of everyone I’ve ever come in contact with, including my mail lady and the hot hippie chick I buy honey from at the farmer’s market.  See?  See all the detail in that last sentence?  PRIVACY SUCCESSFULLY VIOLATED!  HAHAHAHAHA!
• I will not answer every single comment or email addressed to me, not because I have a life outside of my website, but because I am a bitch.  Yes, you read that right:  I, Talulah Mankiller, am a bitch.  And that’s my motivation for everything.
• I will use my twitter account to poke fun at my significant other as if we were just regular people, not a SPR FMS CPLE!!!!  Oh, and if I buy something that costs 1300 dollars and it doesn’t work, I will totally bitch about the experience in real time.  Because I am cruel, and I like to “abuse” the poor tiny little multi-billion dollar appliance companies who just can’t compete with my incredible star-power. 
• I will have opinions about things, opinions that are not your opinions, and I will talk about them!  On my website!  Where I usually blog about my life experiences!  Which is a total conflict of interest and an exploitation of you, my readers!  I SHOULD THINK EXACTLY WHAT YOU THINK OR SHUT UP ABOUT IT, AMIRITE?

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Let’s Hear It for the Baby-Haters!

Now, let’s get this straight:  I am not actually a baby hater.  One of the ladies in my office has an adorable, chubby baby that I occasionally get to see and nosh on, and it is hard for me not to run off with him.  Babies are part of my life plan, which is why I hope to get an actual career off the ground before my ovaries calcify,  my uterus crumbles to dust, and stealing a baby becomes less a matter of instinct and more a matter of practicality.

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Guidos Have Feelings, Too

So I’ve read the first two Jessica Darling books—I even reviewed them here—and I bought the next two.  And they’ve been sitting on my shelf, unread, for a year.  Because I read the first sixty pages or so of the third one and found something that I just cannot get past.

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Celebrity Memoir Monday

Tori Spelling, sTori Telling

Spelling’s first memoir, in which she details her childhood, her pre-reality show career, and the dissolution of her first marriage and the affair that led to her second.

For me, the most interesting part about this autobiography was the fact that I totally had to read a book about the Voodoo priestess Spelling mentions visiting; one of my anthropology professors assigned a book on Mama Lola back in my undergraduate days.  So when Spelling mentioned being horrified by the fact that she was unwittingly bathed in the blood of a freshly-killed chicken, I was all, “Duh. How do you think they cleanse you of a curse?”  But then I realized that not everyone has had the benefit of a liberal arts education, and I felt slightly more forgiving.

…but when Spelling mentioned that she didn’t run screaming out into the night when the chicken was slaughtered because she was wearing nothing but a g-string at the time, I must confess that my first, most moralistic thought was, “See this?  This is yet another reason not to wear thongs!”

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The Boyfriend Rolls His Own

..sushi, that is.

And for the record, when he said that he wanted his face obscured for this photo, I volunteered to (badly) photoshop Rain’s head onto his body.  Or, if he preferred, I could make him look like young and hot Jet Li from Lethal Weapon 4. I even offered to give him Brad Pitt’s face, if he felt like being completely generic and BORING.  “I’d rather have you just black out my face, please,” he begged.

So in vengeance, I’ve filtered him until he looks like that head-shrunk guy from Beetle Juice.  Aren’t I the best girlfriend ever?

…don’t answer that.

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The Horror: Part I

So awhile back, I promised to liveblog this:

(Holy shit, what have I done?)

And you know guys, I’m not going to welsch on you.  I will uphold my side of the bargain.  But in pieces and parts, because sweet heavenly Jesus, I cannot read that shit all in one sitting.  It is just not humanly possible.

So whenever I have more to add, I’ll update.  When I don’t, I’ll just sit and cry quietly in a corner.  Deal?  Deal.

PART THE FIRST

August 10, 2009

An otherwise pleasant day is ruined by The Sheriff’s Secretary.

Direct quotes will be in italics.

Comments will be in normal font.

The screaming will only be in our heads.

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Attack of the 16 lb Toilet-Drinker

So most of the time, the toilet-drinker (otherwise known as Oliver) is a pretty mellow guy.  A good portion of the day, he can be found chillin’ like a villain:

(Probably dreaming of taking another nap.)

But the truth is that despite his missing front fang, his knowing eyes, and his…impressive bulk, Oliver is actually a pretty young cat:  the vet put him at about two years, but I think he might even be younger.  Back in February when we first got him, he was still chasing his tail–prime kitten behavior.  Older cats don’t have the energy for that shit.  Also, they’ve figured out that IT HURTS WHEN YOU BITE YOURSELF.

Kittens:  dumber than shit, cuter than sin.

So yes.  Oliver is a young cat, and he likes to play.  This presents kind of a problem, since Original Flavor Cat is eleven years old and half his size, not to mention terminally timid.  In short, she has no interest in wrestling with our fair toilet-drinker.  So Oliver has to resort to other means to get his jollies.  Which is how he came to haunt the upstairs stairwell like a beefy teenage hoodlum trolling for victims last night:

(Who, me? I’m not going to bite anyone’s face off!)

Before we could call the cops on him for loitering with intent to nibble, however, tragedy struck.  The Roomate, who should have known better than to leave his cave basement apartment, came upstairs to ask a question.

I’m going to cut, because these images are graphic.

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I Might Have Forgiven the Pun if the Book Hadn’t Been So Sexist

But then again, probably not.  I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to puns.

Iain Pears, Stone’s Fall

A mystery told in four parts by three narrators, the story begins relatively simply.  Journalist Matthew Braddock, now an old man, attends the funeral of a mysterious Frenchwoman to whom he has some unexplained connection.  After the funeral, he spends time with a young lawyer, who tells him that now that Madame Whosit is dead, Braddock can finally receive a bequest from a long-dead acquaintance, a Mr. Cort.  In due time, Braddock comes into possession of a series of papers, some by Cort, and some by businessman John Stone.  The book proper then begins with Braddock narrating how he came to know of John Stone, who fell to his death in 1909 (Stone’s fall–geddit?):  the mysterious Frenchwoman was Stone’s wife, Elizabeth, and she employed Braddock to find an illegitimate child Stone mentioned in his will.

Sound complicated enough?  It gets worse.  Once Braddock has had his say, Cort takes up the story twenty years earlier in 1890, and when he’s done, Stone picks up and narrates the crucial events of 1867, upon which the rest of the plot depends.

This was a good mystery, well-constructed, but it made my brain break for two very spoilery reasons, both of which are behind the cut.

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