I’m happy to see that Orbit Bubblemint gum has received 5 stars from every reviewer on Yelp. Sometimes people aren’t stupid. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any tips of etiquette or superstitions about Bubblemint, so I had to cast a wider net.
ETIQUETTE: If you are giving flowers to your true love, you probably don’t want to give him/her a big bunch of mint. Mint is a symbol of suspicion. It is also not a flower.
SUPERSTITION: A wounded man will never recover if he eats mint.
I find history and politics to be intimidatingly complicated, so when something like massive protests in Egypt comes up, I tend to shut up and retreat to simpler ideas about the subject in general. Egypt. Sometimes when I think of Egypt, I think of that interesting casting choice they made for that TV movie back in the ’80s by casting Louis Gossett, Jr. as Anwar al-Sadat, but right now, even that thought is a little too complicated and controversial for my brain. Let’s retreat further.
Egypt. I had a history teacher in high school who said that Egypt was the sexiest word in the world. “Those curves! The swooping! And then you have to cross that t!” Okay, I’m going to stick with this thought. I suppose in this day and age it could be controversial that a high school teacher tells his students what he thinks is sexy, but if I retreat to any simpler thought than this, I’m going to be stuck staring at that mummified baboon at the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum they used to take us to on field trips in grade school. Hm. Mummified baboon. Wait; what? Apparently there isn’t even a baboon in that thing I spent all that time staring at. It’s a goddamn jar wrapped in cloth. To the cartoons, then.
When I first saw this lost pet flyer for Sherwin, it was nighttime and I had had a couple of cocktails. Perhaps that’s why I thought the condensation under the plastic covering was actually an overlay of a calm ocean scene.
I’m glad I went back to look at it again in the daylight, because it was kind of driving me crazy wondering why there would be a calm ocean scene on a lost pet notice.
On Sunday evening Benny, Kenny, Matteo and I spent some time at a little pocket park at the edge of a parking lot. We watched a young boy skateboard across the parking lot as a car followed behind him. The boy would reach the end of the parking lot, the car would catch up, there would be some discussion, and then the boy would turn around and skateboard back across the parking lot. This happened for a long time. I caught some of it on film near the end when there were more frequent negotiations, perhaps because the car was getting tired.
I think the scene plays better if you turn the sound off.
Around the beginning of this year, I noticed a lot of larger-than-normal lost pet notices. There were some for a lost dog around Beachwood Canyon, one written in tape wound through chain-link fence near the Hollywood Freeway entrance on Sunset, and then this one that was written on red flocked wallpaper:
I was going to feature this one not only because of the paper choice, but also because of the fact that it was noted below the photo that poor Oskar has no teeth and need medication, but then this postcard showed up in our mailbox:
Here’s the back:
It’s obviously the same cat, but I’m curious about the discrepancies between the sign and the postcard. The cat’s name is spelled differently, and Alex’s name and number are on the sign but very conspicuously removed from the postcard. I feel like there’s something more here than just a lost cat. Oscar/Oskar, if you can make your way back home maybe everything will be right again.
My mother gave me Amy Sedaris’ craft book Simple Times for Christmas, and while I’m still working my way through the easier projects like the Wizard Duck Costume and The Ole Granddad, I see she has included a couple of recipes in here that I might want to take a crack at. I was a little put off by the failure of Colbert’s Shrimp Paste recipe from her previous book, but I’m going to have to try this hot dog on a rake scheme as soon as I wash my rake:
Twenty-first century, I have found your lexicographer. Allow me to introduce you to Ricky Romance. In a fairly brief statement, Ricky can employ the words:
with ease. Guy knows his way around a thesaurus, spells “judgment” correctly, and seems to have coined some new words along the way. As soon as Ricky lets me know what it means, I’m calling the next craphound that crosses my path an immature nanocephalous adult raglan tailored ex-batman and a jean maillot wearing macrotus, labrose, kazachoc like dancing, woman beater callent.
This weekend I observed a man not blink for 20 minutes. His eyes were open and everything.
ETIQUETTE: The early 20th century pamphlet “All About Girls” (found via The Hairpin, eventually) has a lot of rules about what eye gestures mean. I was happy to find these, as I now feel that my “avoid human eye contact” modus operandi is completely justified.
SUPERSTITION: It is unlucky to meet a squinting person of the opposite sex. If you meet a squinting person, you must either:
- speak to him/her
- spit over your left shoulder
- spit three times, or
- return home and eat a meal
in order to counteract the bad luck.
|
