From the archives of Tomato Nation:

I should just pretend I pick these guys up in bars, because apparently that concept is a lot less disturbing to other people.
“Soooo? Where’d you meeeeet him?….Whe– the INTERNET? But he’s probably a PERV! He’ll kill you WITH AN AXE and take PICTURES of it!”

Oh yes. He probably will. In a Starbucks. Yep, that could totally happen. Not. Leave me alone. It’s the same as when that girl at the office asks if you brought a date to something or other, which you didn’t because it’s an office party and who cares, and she pouts all sympathetically and says “oh, you’ll find someone, don’t worry” and then pats your hand, like, I know I will! I don’t worry! But the more I say that, the more it sounds like I do!

People? Not everyone with email access is a child pornographer. I didn’t order a Russian guy out of the back of Playgirl. Simmer down, jeez.

Good stuff. Check out the description of introducing her cats to the Roomba.

Once, at a party, I remember telling a gentleman I had met about my hobbies. He responded with, “You make your own clothes? That’s just so…Little House on the Prairie.” I found someone else to talk to.

Because would Laura, as much as I love her (all seven books are on my shelf right now), ever make something like this?
(Okay, the blurry shot ruins the dramatic effect a little. Sorry. My batteries died during the shoot.)

Anyway, it’s a Nehru-ish tunic made with Japanese indigo dyed cotton:


And we have some pickstitch detailing–done by hand:
(Done by that enormous and blurry hand, in fact.)

And, Party Dude, I know for a fact Laura Ingalls would not be drinking sherry by a bunch of grape hyacinths while she did her hand finishing.

So call my hobbies what you will (resourceful, frivoulous, sublimation). Just don’t call them Little House on the Prairie. Especially when you mean the TV show.

The Friday Post of Unrelated Information made me remember Cute Kitten Picture Monday, aka I Forgot to Load My Own Pictures For a Clever Post About the Weekend Monday.

This kitten was hon-gry, which makes him even CUTER.

Remember when I used to do Friday Posts of Unrelated Information? I gave that up when I realized it was ALL unrelated information, ALL THE TIME. But today is Good Friday, of course, so I paid more attention to the fact that it’s Friday, and I have some good unrelated links. So it’s back.

Wednesday’s list got me on a Bob Dylan kick, and I had to think of the opening of “Just Like Tom Thumbs Blues”:
When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through
Don’t put on any airs
When you’re down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you

Now, what does this mean? I never can tell (I think you might have to be stoned) but I like it. And did you know you can look up lyrics to all his songs on bobdylan.com? Hours of fun.

Here’s a website called the Daily Bunny. Guess what you’ll find there! Just guess!

And finally, I watched Easter Parade last night, which once again confirmed my desire to marry Fred Astaire. Also: Irving Berlin would be a good band name.

(I’m afraid you will have to imagine it, literally, because I have no picture.) But I was locking the door this morning, late for work, coffeeless, wondering if I could figure out a way to do my editing outside today, when I looked at my front yard and saw six quail.

They were running to the beds I hadn’t weeded yet (maybe that’s a good excuse not to weed?) and I thought they were running from me, until I looked up and saw a hawk.

I live across the street from a busy hospital that gets a lot of traffic, both vehicular and helicopter-ular. But there was Nature! In my front yard! I can’t wait until a family of raccoons moves in.

This is not the quail I saw this morning, but it does illustrate the little feather thing on top of their heads.

Yep, I love the McSweeney’s lists.

L Y R I C S F R O M
B O B D Y L A N T U N E S
O R P O O R L Y T R A N S L A T E D
E N G L I S H O N
J A P A N E S E F O O D P A C K A G I N G .

BY KIM McCANN

– – – –

1. It’s burned to a crisp with all our heart!
2. I see you’ve got your brand-new leopard skin pillbox hat!
3. Anytime, anywhere, just like your friend.
4. We’re going all the way until the wheels fall off and burn.
5. You might like to drink wiskey! Might like to drink milk! You might like to eat caviar!
6. The sentimental taste is cozy for the heroines in the town.
7. My mind was relaxed by attaching importance to the tradition.
8. You’ve got all the love, honeybaby, I can stand!
9. Teeth like pearls, shining like the moon above.
10. Relieve the relief and listen to the angel’s whisper.
11. There is a house in New Orleans they call the rising sun.
12. If dishes are nice, the square ceiling becomes round.

KEY:

1. Batard bread
2. from “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat”
3. No-Brand Orange Punch
4. from “Brownsville Girl”
5. from “Gotta Serve Somebody”
6. Koedastick chocolate candy
7. Izumiya Confectionary Company
8. from “Buckets of Rain”
9. from “Brownsville Girl”
10. Angel Relief chocolate and bisquit cookies
11. from “House of the Rising Sun”
12. a fondue pot box

1. Citizen Kane (I had never seen it before last night! Imagine where this post is going!)
2. He allegedly dated Billie Holiday
3. The War of the Worlds
4. He was the voice of the Shadow (I had no idea!)
5. Don’t laugh at me, but he was mighty handsome
(Think young Brando. Not old Brando. You can never think of the old version of hot genius actors.) (Peter O’Toole is an exception to that rule.)

And a bonus reason:
6. He wanted to make Heart Of Darkness as his first movie

I knew a little about William Randolph Hearst, thanks to my old roommate’s tutelage and love of San Simeon (he visited it as a boy, and credits it for wanting to be a sculptor). And of course I had read The Fountainhead, whose Gail Wyand character is also based on Hearst. But Citizen Kane and the Citizen Kane documentary last night made me feel like I did when I was maybe eight and had just figured out the allegory in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and wanted to make sure everyone knew about it. (I remember telling my mom that, and her saying—so seriously, which is one of the many reasons she is such an excellent mother—“I think people already know.”)

In other words, I’m sure people already know much more than I know about the connections between Citizen Kane, The Fouintainhead, and William Hearst. But I want to find out more about Hearst, and about when exactly Rand was writing The Fountainhead (it was published in 1943) and if she saw Citizen Kane first (premiered in 1941) and yeah. Learning! Books! Cinema! And did I mention I was knitting on a new grey alpaca sweater during all of this?

Not only did I sleep a lot, I got two sewing projects crossed off the list.

First, I trimmed some pillowcases for my bed:
Mmm, sleeping….

And then I sewed a top to wear, part 1 of The Great DIY Spring Wardrobe Makeover of 2007:
Should I be concerned my blouse matches my wall?

I bought both fabrics in Hawaii. I saw them and I said, “Well, hello, big orange Asian-inspired fabrics!”
They said hello back. And the rest is now craft history.

Remember when I quoted poems and talked about books? Here’s a poem that flashed through my mind last night. Actually, it was just the first line of the poem that flashed, since I’ve always had trouble really understanding this one. But I come closer every time I read it–I think yesterday I finally got a grasp on
“A man goes far to find out what he is–
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.”

Anyway, here it is: “In A Dark Time,” by Theodore Roethke, who might be elevated to imaginary boyfriend status because I love his poems so much.

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood–
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What’s madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day’s on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks–is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is–
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

Dark,dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

Because I’m not THAT weird. Yet.

(Weirdness courtesy of Cute Overload).