it's the schiznick, baby

So every year the kid and I await Halloween with anticipation. Sure, we dig the Brach's autumn mix, and we even eat the tiny orange pumpkins that come mixed in with the regular and chocolate candy corn, but what we totally dig the best is the costume aisle at Target. Oh. My. God. Do we love to try on pretty much every costume we can squeeze ourselves into and then proceed to photograph one another? Oh, hell yeah. Even better when unsuspecting Tar-jay shoppers start up the Halloween aisle and stop dead when they see the bumble bee prancing around. Usually they behave as if they just opened what they thought was an unoccupied stall door in a dirty public restroom and discovered someone fully exposed from the waist down trying to drop some mud in peace. They flush and back out, beating a stumbling retreat. Sometimes they even mumble "Sorry....." as the do a u-turn with their red carts. For chrissake, people, lighten up! It's fucking Halloween! Come on in and try on the Homer Simpson mask. It totally rocks and the inside sort of smells like Silly Putty.

still in the tunnel

So I have been working on my masters for, oh, like 800 years. But the end is near. Not seeing a light at the end of the tunnel just yet but at least I'm gathering steam and back at it on my thesis. The challenge has been marshaling the inspiration and time and trying to get my shit together so that both are within reach at the same time. Luckily, I have a supportive family and even better, a rich friend who has graciously offered me the use of her cabin near Maggie Valley in which I shall hole up ALONE for a week next month and KNOCK IT OUT. Ten pages a day for seven days ought to do it. My thesis is due October 20th so I will have time to come back home and breathe for a few days, edit and send it off to my thesis advisor on whom I have had a crush for about two years. It's the whole deeply cerebral Jewish nebbish thing that I find so alluring. Plus he wrote a book on Jefferson. Enywho.

DFW

Not a week ago I recommended David Foster Wallace to a budding writer with the cliched admonition: “a decent writer always writes but an exceptional writer always reads, and you need to read this guy.”

It made me feel cooler to have DFW as a contemporary.

I feel like I’ve lost a childhood friend — one who totally understood me, spoke my language and got my jokes.

A friend of mine sent a message that said "This is how I felt when I found out John Lennon was dead."

Damn it

Yet another light has gone out of the world. David Foster Wallace wrote prose that made me weep and laugh out loud. One of my favorites: his short piece "Consider the Lobster," and his collection, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.

Kitty Jones

this is Kitty Jones, according to my daughter. Schmoopie likes to wander around the neighborhood every afternoon after school, creeping around with her camera and whispering to the dragonflies and squirrels and mourning doves and wild-child kitties, all of whom seem to stop and pose for her. She is a truly talented photographer and has even had a few of her photos published recently AND her first show in a local gallery. Not bad for a 15-year-old, huh? She's my hero.

I'm not dead, just hormonal.

more hurricanes headed our way.

christine: mr. wonderful was riffed out in an "enhanced retirement offer." The newsroom now has more oxygen.

the IT guy at work has a crush on me.

my dog has mastered sleeping with her eyes open.

the kid has her learner's permit.

my thesis is due in a month and I am blank.

I have been eating a lot of bananas lately.