The Iliad of lost pet notices showed up outside the local 7-11 last Friday. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it took a month for Marguerite and Susie to get this out to the public.

Good luck, ladies.

My friend Elana brought my attention this weekend to the art of Baragami, the practice of formal toast arranging. Much like the hairy sausage “craze,” I suspect that Baragami is a completely made-up phenomenon with no history other than the one imagined on the Baragami Home Page. I have to say “suspect” rather than “know for a fact,” however, because of the claim on said webpage that Baragami originated in Wales. And there’s something about Baragami

that does seem a bit Welsh, isn’t there? Something about the wonderful batshit craziness, I suppose. I mean that with the utmost respect, Welsh readers. I’m sure you know that.

Anyway, this is rather a long introduction to today’s word:

“Etaoin shrdlu” comes from an old typesetting practice of marking an error-filled line for deletion by completing the line with nonsense letters. Sometimes the line would not be deleted, and the phrase “etaoin shrdlu” (from the first two columns in a linotype keyboard) made its way into print a number of times. These days etaoin shrdlu just means nonsense. And like Baragami, there is something decidedly Welsh-seeming about it. God bless you, Wales. The world would be a much duller place without you.

This summer at the Madonna Inn, I learned that if you get a hotel room that has a toilet with one of those fancy washlet bidet features, you should make sure that the wash water temperature is correctly adjusted. I’m not sure what you’re supposed to do if you get a toilet with eyes and a mouth, however. I believe bowing is involved but beyond that I’m just not sure. Hopefully I’ll never have to find out.

I’d like to take a moment to thank the peacock spider for saving Spring Fashions 2010 for me. Up until now, I had been feeling pretty glum about the new fashions being paraded about, as they were managing the difficult feat of being dull and absurd at the same time:

Designers: PANTS NEED POCKETS. There may be something else wrong with these trousers as well, but I’m having a little trouble pinning down exactly what it is because I’m so blinded with rage from the lack of pockets.

But back to the peacock spider. Thank you, Peacock Spider. For me, spring is about dancing and sex and funny hats. And you perfectly understand this.

Nicely executed. I bet you even have plenty of pockets in that outfit.

It’s a groundbreaking day here at the Notions. For the first day in I don’t know how many days, the top searches resulting in arrival at this site have not been “big butt panties,” “anorexic girls,” or “A1 steak sauce.” Taroo taray! Not to say that I don’t love big butt panties, anorexic girls, and A1 steak sauce, but I’m afraid people searching for those items might be disappointed when they arrive here.

I think the new stats indicate that I’m finally getting traffic sent here that actually wants to be sent here. Today’s top searches people used to find this site are:

• tricycle ruined
• snoopy cartoons
• beef jerky flickr
• sneezing etiquette
• anorexic girls (Damn it! Okay; it’s still on here, but it’s not #1 on the list today)
• washroom etiquette cartoons
• waiting for my sissy haircut and perm
• beer in jollibee menu

Welcome, searchers of beef jerky flickr. I hope you find what you’re looking for. Jollibee searchers, you may want to look elsewhere.

I used to work with a woman who called those pre-sliced apples you buy in a bag from Trader Joe’s “Lazy Girls,” because really, how lazy do you have to be to buy pre-sliced apples? Pretty lazy. Anyway, she would often bring a bag of pre-sliced apples into the office and share them with anyone would wanted some, calling out in her cute Kentucky accent, “Who wants a Lazy Girl?” I loved the days that she brought Lazy Girls into the office.

Today’s Fancy Notions offering is kind of the Lazy Girl of craft projects. It can barely be called a project, in fact. It’s nearly a belt. You would have to be really unskilled to not be able to make these two elements into a belt.

You have the belt part:

and then you have the belt clasp so you don’t have to tie the ends of the belt together in a knot like a rube:

Clean up those stray threads, make a couple of stitches around the clasps, and voila… a delightful belt. The only reason I’m offering this package as a Fancy Notions prize is because I already made a belt just like this when I shortened the dress that this fabric came from. I guess I could make the fabric into a headband, but with the dress and the belt already in this fabric, I think a headband would be a little much.

So what are you doing this weekend? I think you should make a belt. First person who writes in to the comment section expressing his/her desire for these items* gets them in the mail. For free. From me. I promise I won’t think you’re lazy for making such an easy belt.

*The previous qualification “… or most sincere person who writes in…” has been temporarily suspended. The last notions giveaway had two people of equal sincerity who wrote in within 30 minutes of each other, and I had a bit of a crisis determining whether one was in fact more sincere than the other, and at the end I went by the timing. I still felt guilty wondering if I made anybody feel like they hadn’t been sincere enough. I will only employ this qualification again if the first person who writes in is obviously insincere.

I am in such a foul mood today. I’m not really sure why. I have to get out of this foul mood somehow.

Wow. The Happy Organ didn’t work. This is some foul mood I’m in.

I read a news story yesterday about elementary schools banning scary costumes from school Halloween celebrations, and it really annoyed the hell out of me. One item in the story especially stood out in my mind: apparently at one school district in Illinois, “…costumes depicting animals and food (preferably carrots or pumpkins) are in favor.”

Carrots? What is so scary about carrots? That is absolutely idiotic, I thought. But then I watched this film.

I stand corrected, carrots. If you’re pals with that cackling leek there, you’re probably a pretty tough customer.

Woooooooooo! It’s Hallowe’ene’en, everybody. I don’t know about you, but Hallowe’ene’en puts me in the mood for scary creatures, and words about scary creatures. Actually, today’s words aren’t really about scary creatures, but they sure do sound like they are.

and

Mulligrubs and fantods? I hope you locked the doors, Benny. Now, I don’t know where I got the idea that mulligrubs were monsters rather than a depressed state, but I do know that the fantod confusion came from Edward Gorey, noted chronicler of the humorously macabre. A mysterious taxidermied creature featured in his story “The Unstrung Harp” is identified as a fantod, and I always just assumed that he had just coined the term to describe the creature, even when I read another story by another writer that frequently referenced “the howling fantods.”

The Estate of Edward Gorey happens to be quite protective of its copyrights, so I’m not going to be able to provide you with Edward Gorey’s depiction of a fantod without fear of receiving a takedown notice. Being pretty well-versed in intellectual property law, however, I am quite sure that I can provide you with a drawing that I myself made of Edward Gorey’s depiction of a fantod:

Benny, are you sure you locked the doors? I don’t want any fantods creeping in. Wait. What? Fantods aren’t creatures either? When you have a case of the fantods it simply means that you’re in an agitated and restless state? Well, what do you know? I still hope you locked the doors, Benny.

Today’s storefront art post is another iffy subject, in that the art doesn’t depict anything the store sells and was also created with the intention of the finished piece being considered “art,” or at least an “artistic mural.” Normally those two things are disqualifiers in my world of storefront art.

Nevertheless, I’d like to turn my spotlight on the Sunset Plaza Trader Joe’s elevator murals because they do fulfill the most important requirement I have for storefront art: unintended profundity.

Now, I’m not really sure what the portraits of nearly unrecognizable film and music celebrities actually say, but they sure say something.

Take this one.

Is it saying, “Is Paul Newman merely a chin dimple?” Or “Do you remember if Paul Newman even has a chin dimple?” Or “Is Paul Newman with a chin dimple Kirk Douglas?”? I’m not sure.

Similarly, “Is Prince Prince even if he doesn’t look like Prince, if he simply has Prince-like facial hair and is framed in a large pink guitar pick?”

And then we come to Marilyn Monroe.

I did not photograph this at an angle, by the way. Please note that half of the face is rendered from one perspective, and half is rendered from a very different angle. Either the artist had a stroke mid-way through this one, or the artist is a flounder with eyes on either side of his head.

Step along folks. We have more to see. We have Morrissey.

Morrissey. I am fascinated that I know this is Morrissey and not Elvis or Ricky Nelson or Fabian or Frankie Avalon. What is the essential Morrissey-ness in this portrait that makes it definitively him?

And finally, I come to this one.

Who is she? She is rendered like a celebrity, so she must be a celebrity. Lauren Bacall. Judy Garland. Patricia Neal?

I have absolutely no idea, but if I were a maitre d’ at a restaurant and she came in, I would give this woman a good table. Because she looks important, she is important. There’s something deep about that, isn’t there? Phew. I gotta sit down for a minute.

Now, where’s that Two Buck Chuck?