So, I'm chatting with an editor friend online last night, and she tells me the following:
Friend: "Dagmar makes $45/hour for that, but I don't know what she charges for the spanking movies."
Me: "Dagmar edits the kinds of stuff we do? But, what's this other thing? There are actually instructional movies on how to spank your child?"
Friend: "No. They are not instructional movies on how to spank your child."
Me: "Ah."
Friend: "I don't know how much she charges for those services."
Me: "Right. More, I guess."
Friend: "Probably."
Me: "I dunno. Diversification is good, but I'd really need to redo my Web site."
Friend: "Agreed."
Headline #2: Lily Gets Emotional
Lily used to be the reigning Mexican Rat Queen of her tiny village. While she is a very sweet little dog, she has a tough undercurrent and a teardrop tattoo on her face serves as a reminder of her rough days as a street dog. Sometimes, I catch a dreamy look in her eye that tells me she is reliving the days of romping and pouncing and chomping, romping and pouncing and chomping. Of course, to truly connect with her roots she would also need to relive the days of getting beaten and having her hips broken, but I'm pretty sure her memory is merciful and selective because she adores people and she passionately loathes rodents. It is as if Lily is Charles Bronson and a rodent killed her whole family and danced on the prone corpses while forcing Lily to play the harmonica.
Rodents: They make Lily very, very emotional and it has been a very, very emotional day.
"Squeeeee!" wailed the vole that Lily had pinned down with one paw beneath the fence gate. Lord, it was a chubby, pitiful little vole. Covered in flop sweat, spritzing urine about like a lawn sprinkler, it looked a little like John Candy with a silky gray pelt and very poor eyesight. "Squeee!" "Lilllleeeeee!" I hollered, sprinting across the back yard in my bare feet (ouch ouch ouch not toughened up yet ouch). I really did not want to see her kill the vole. "Gnnrrr grnnnnr-roo-roo" Lily moaned, slithering her entire upper body under the fence and trying to secure the vole with an anaconda vice--or perhaps it was a chickenwing camel clutch or a stretch plum? I couldn't tell in the heat of the moment.
I hit the dirt, throwing first a cobra clutch and then a shoulder claw at Lily, accompanied by a series of low, growly "Noooooos," to little avail. "You've seen worse on the Discovery channel," she grunted. "This vole has disrepected you," she pleaded, insinuating even more of her body under the gate. As I tackled her mid-section--which happened to be oozing slinkylike along the dirt--she cast a disgusted glance back at me. The teardrop tattoo on her face glinted in the sun.
To sum up: I saved the vole, and Lily has spent the morning silently rebuking me with her large, brown eyes and looking for weaknesses in the fence to exploit.
Headline: Google Rabbit Holes
I'm a googler, and I'm the first to admit that I am a bit of a "problem googler." First, I'm looking up some research article for work and then, without even realizing it, my fingers are typing in some bizarre combination of search terms. Who knows what it will be? The name of an ex-boyfriend? A supplier of small, colored glass jars--because I have suddenly convinced myself that I need an assortment of small, colored glass jars? An author's name? GWAH! Could be anything. Could be everything. That, of course, is the beauty of the google. Yesterday, for example, I was typing in "digital divide for low-income families" which suddenly turned into "small, colored glass jars" which suddenly turned into "removing scratches from wooden floors" which suddenly turned into "vintage sundresses" which suddenly turned into "The Haphazard Gourmet." You see? Even before I typed in "Haphazard Gourmet" it was all very haphazard. That is the google. Deliciously, seductively haphazard--even when you think you are being very purposeful.
So, here is my Google rabbit hole of yesterday. I typed in the name of this book that I bought at a public library book sale many years ago and reread once each year:
It is a very, very winning book. Written in the early 1960s, the author was kind of the ultimate bon vivant Playboy guy. He had about six wives or something, he loved food and wine of all kinds, and I imagine that he had an impressive hi fi system for the time and possibly one of those love chambers where you push a button, the lights dim, and the leopard-print bed falls out of the wall (y'know, prototype Austin Powers stuff). The book contains a lot of entertaining anecdotes and really good recipes--although his prose demonstrates an alarming penchant for Hormel products or perhaps a Hormel sponsorship of some kind--written in a very breezy voice. Celebrity names fountain about through the book. Here's the beginning of a typical anecdote, "So, as I was rushing onto the plane to Istanbul, Bill Holden pushed past me, his arms loaded with caviar." Jackie Gleason's giant appetites for food and booze are also featured.So, I typed in "Haphazard Gourmet," and instantly I found out that the author not only had a million wives he had a million children. Three of his daughters--Cupcake, Eddie, and Pleasant--now write a blog. So, I googled around madly checking out their blog, checking them out, and finding out that Pleasant--a belly dancer--was huge in the LA punk world, is a singer, a writer, an actress, and a kind of burlesque tootsie lass, which led me to delve into more google rabbit holes and to ultimately wash up on the shores of Amazon and punk rock blogs.
To sum up: Type the words "digital divide for low-income families" into the google and you will end up at the doorstep of a burlesque tootsie. Guaranteed.
