a very nonny mouse

2008-01-11T11:57:00.000-05:00

gypsy balcony suite

2007-11-25T20:20:00.000-05:00

balcony gypsy

2007-11-17T15:22:00.000-05:00

more knitting sultriness from fabulana

2007-11-05T09:17:00.000-05:00

mr. mcgillicuddy lives

2007-04-26T12:24:00.001-04:00

My father tells me that one good way to resist procrastination is to eat a frog first thing in the morning. This comes from some saying by some French dude, who said that if everyone, upon awakening, ate a frog, nothing else he had to do that day would seem as bad in comparison. The first time I heard this story all you had to do was lick the frog, but anyway what was I saying.

I have been determined to implement this policy, by doing things first in the morning like cleaning the litterbox, doing the dishes, or tackling my least desired work-related task. Unfortunately, I got distracted this morning by the need to upload a photo to another blog. And while I was sitting at my desk doing that, look who sauntered into view!

It's Mr. McGillicuddy! You really can't tell how big he is, because of the lack of good reference points. But trust me; he is back to his usual self this year. He is a little early this year, but who's counting. Maybe he will come back again right after classes end and right before the American Idol finale like he usually does. Maybe he won't. I don't know! Wait, is he still there?
For me part of the cause of procrastination is thinking too far ahead. If I do this first task, I will next have to do another one which I hate even more, and then it will never end. Or, if I write this dreaded e-mail, I will get a response which I predict to be negative and who wants that. Alternately, sometimes I tell myself that if I just do this one more thing, I will be able to watch a movie or call a friend. But then I get caught up thinking about how great it will be to see the movie or talk to my friend. And then I just do it because it will be so great. The slogans "do the next right thing" and "lick the frog" are supposed to keep you from thinking stymying thoughts about the future so that you instead concentrate on what needs to be done right now.

But how can I keep from thinking of the summer's promise when this portentous lizard makes his visit? It's a clear case of frog versus lizard. Or iguana; I can't figure it out, really.

calling all nonny mice

2007-02-13T09:07:00.000-05:00

We have moved the blog to a new domain:

http://averynonnymouse.wordpress.com

Check it out and let us know what you think!

super duper

2007-02-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

Which super-power would you rather have: to fly, or to be invisible?

I have been asked this question many times, and it is always those same two powers that are offered as options. Even limiting my choices to those two, it's a difficult question to answer.

I know from my dreams that flying is incredibly fun. I bat my hands against the air enough times to build up some air resistance and eventually I float skyward. From there, I can loop de loop, swerve down and fly back up away from the fray. I can get places fast and make people jealous. And just think, jonie v.: no airplanes!

I've never had a dream that I was invisible. But I would imagine that this skill would primarily serve for spying on people. And not just naked people. There are a few people in the world whose life I would like to know about without their knowledge. I am intensely curious but I don't want them to have an inkling that I gave the slightest thought to the fact that they may be living somewhere doing something. Then again, what they're doing may be way more fun than what I am doing right now. Especially since, in this scenario, I have forsaken the power to fly. They may be starring in a movie or recalling back bad memories of me. What if they could spy on me as well? Obviously they wouldn't want me to know that I was under watch because they don't want to have to actually talk to me. Thus, their invisibility. But it's too late -- they're already in my head. Leaning over my shoulder in everything I do. I wish they would disappear, or at least really be invisible, unintelligible. OK: that's my final answer to the super-power question. I wish other people would be invisible.

Except for you, nonny mice!

not the mental pictures most of us have in mind

2007-02-10T12:00:00.000-05:00

i think i want to go live here.

sunrise sunset

2007-02-08T22:42:00.000-05:00

This is Taylor Mac

2007-01-25T18:47:00.000-05:00

Here's where to go if you want to see more from this living Cockette...

Shades of black

2007-01-14T21:25:00.000-05:00

I should know

finally, something for everyone

2007-01-10T10:44:00.000-05:00

Is this a blog of funniness, politics, or fashion? Even the mice don't really know. It's a great mystery! But anyways here is something for everyone.

In case you're wondering, the fashion involved here is of course a fashion "no." "No" to matching the color of your tie to your partisan allegiances. Which reminds me. Yesterday while jonie v. was lounging around with me in my fabulous deco flat because I could not convince her to go see the greatest song ever filmed (in Dreamgirls), we started to peruse a book of the work of the invisible British artist known as Banksy.

Let's look at some of his work, shall we?

... and this last one, painted on the barrier wall in Israel:

If you like it, you can click here to see his own site.

doing laundry in the garden of plenty

2007-01-07T11:33:00.000-05:00

i thought i'd share this special experience with you. it's about 100 degrees out there, oh, but the gorgeous tropical luxuriance!

Window paintings

2006-12-30T00:05:00.000-05:00

The apartments where I live can look pretty crummy.

But my neighbors have taken to painting their windows, which livens things up a lot. Click the pictures to enlarge and to read my neighbors' strange and beautiful messages.

going north through the south

2006-12-28T16:36:00.000-05:00

america is a place of great and wondrous contradictions: in order to go north you need to go to the south! since we were going through savannah, georgia, and savannah figures prominently in gone with the wind, we decided to stop a few hours and bask in the glory of the mythic american past. here is one of the many beautiful old houses, now a restaurant:

here are other images from pictoresque savannah:

as you can see, savannah is very old. the wall on the right of the picture is old, and the cobblestones are old, too. the cars, though, make it a very modern city. savannah is a lovely combination of new and old.

in the south, spiritual nourishment is at hand at every turn of the way!

physical nourishment is no less abundant. in the south, wholesome homemade food is always available and plentiful!

northward, ho ho ho

2006-12-25T22:45:00.000-05:00

christmas day in stuart, FL

daytona beach, FL

and jacksonville, home of the jaguars

That's all, folks.

2006-12-24T18:40:00.000-05:00

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? Oy, oy, oy.

2. How much cash do you have on you? I'm in my pyjamas; so only about $300 or so.

3. What's a word that rhymes with "DOOR?" MORE

4. Favorite planet? Pluto, only it ain't a planet any more.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? N/a

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone? N/a

7. What shirt are you wearing? I'm not in pyjamas any more.

8. Do you "label" yourself? Yes. I'm a chronic labeller.

9. Name the brand of the shoes you're currently wearing? Noppy. No, really.

10. Bright or dark room? Bright.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you? Person? I thought it was a pony.

12. What does your watch look like? Broken.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night? What I'm always doing. Nothing.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say? N/a.

15. Where is your nearest 7-11 Did you realize that in the series 7-11, 9-11.... the next entry would be 11-11?

16. What's a word that you say a lot? What?

17. Who told you he/she loved you last? A nonny mouse.

18. Last furry thing you touched? Yes, it was a pussy - but not that kind!

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days? Oh, quite a few.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed? I hate taking photos.

21. Favorite age you have been so far? 41.

22. Your worst enemy? Christmas.

23. What is your current desktop picture?

24. What was the last thing you said to someone? I can't remember.

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be? To be able to fly. I'd join a circus and make a million bucks.

26. Do you like someone? No.

27. The last song you listened to? "Onward Christian Soldiers" (at my temperance meeting).

28. What time of day were you born? 6:66am.

29. What's your favorite number? 10. It's perfect.

30. Where did you live in 1987? Deptford, site of the murder of Christopher Marlowe.

31. Are you jealous of anyone? Just about everyone.

32. Is anyone jealous of you? I very much doubt it (at least if you exclude the 4 billion or so who might be jealous of the fact that I have enough food to eat).

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened?In my underwear.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money? First I whack them a few times. Then I grind my teeth and swear I will contact them to get my money back. Then I put more money in.

35. Do you consider yourself kind? Shut up.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be? The usual place.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be? First-order predicate calculus.

38. Would you move for the person you loved? Sure, if there wasn't enough room on the couch.

39. Are you touchy feely? Ugh!

40. What's your life motto? Being is more important than doing.

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times? Clothes, origami paper, and a screw-driver that doubles a flash light and a rain-hat.

42. What's your favorite town/city? Tinsel.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash? My 8-track.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it? Actually, this is interesting. In pursuing my research on the Mysterious Barricades, I wrote to the composer (and one of the founders of Fluxus) Philip Corner, who now lives in Italy. He was the author of the piece "Through the Mysterious Barricades," used by Stan Brakhage in his film "Passage Through: A Ritual." Corner was nice enough to reply with an interesting letter of his own.

45. Can you change the oil on a car? No way Jose.

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her? I'm told I had one at three, called Vicky. But I don't remember her. The first I remember was a Polish girl at my school in London. She was called Magda Lomax. I don't think I every heard anything about her after she left the school.

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry? Actually, I'm related to the Vilna Gaon. (Marc, take note. He was a fierce opponent of the Hasidim.)

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy? My bar mitzvah - an awful blue suit. It was the 70s.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now? My brain.

50. Have you been burned by love? Nicely done, on both sides.

tinsel toe!

2006-12-23T17:30:00.000-05:00

i have relinquished the holiday blooz's. i packed them in their little car, made sure their seat belts were strapped, kissed them all goodbye, and sent them on their merry way. i'm sure they are cheerily singing their way through toll booths and traffic jams. you can't keep them down! they're irrepressible.

me, i made myself a hot cup of tea, smelled the soggy post-summer air that is gracing miami in the new common era of destabilization and discomfort (2006 CE is the year 1 CEDD), and went on a diet. i figured one month would be enough to fit back into my regular clothes, instead of li'l pony's (pretty) discarded ones. you see, my mom is coming in january, and i want to look my berry merry best.

also, i started reading the iliad. truly, it was a class preparation move, but i'm getting into the little mother. it's kinda nice. in italy, you read this stuff as if it were a foreign language you do not know. italian books of "literature" (vs., say, john grisham's mystery novels, which are enormously popular in the ol' country and conveniently american and therefore in no need whatsover of footnotes) have much more footnotes than text. here are a random couple of pages from my italian edition of dante's divine comedy:

it's impossible to read the iliad without a single footnote and not vibrate inside. this is fun! i didn't know it was fun! i can work out on my own who achilles' mother and father are! i can follow the story without worrying about k-n-o-w-ledge!

yesterday i went to the house of friends and helped them decide the name of their soon-to-be-born baby. not the first name. the last name. there were two options: 1) first name + mother's last name + father's last name, or 2) first name + father's last name + mother's last name. we tossed a coin and 1) won! how many people choose their baby's last name this way? no one does! secretely, i was a bit sad that 1) won, because this way no one will know that 2) could have been the case instead. if 2) had won, everyone would have known that 1) could have been the case, and how it happened that it wasn't. but the coin spake, and the baby will be a regular-sounding baby instead of a born-of-single-mother-sounding baby.

i have chestnuts in the refrigerator. this is good, because otherwise i'd never know that it's winter in the northern hemisphere, and that it is very, very cold. funny how it can be cold without your knowing it. this must be the reason why i can't sleep well at night: it's cold! silly jonie v., get yourself a cozy blanket!

here are some miami christmas photos. merry christmas y'all!

li'l pony says goodbye the nyc

2006-12-20T11:54:00.000-05:00

what a sweet journey it's been, new york! li'l pony came to you young and hopeful, and now, some six months later, he leaves wise and worldly! thank you, new york. you did good by the pony. for this reason we, the nonny mice, say to you as one:

CIAO NEORK!!!! VAFFANCULO!!!

story. i don't want

2006-12-20T00:20:00.000-05:00

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

El mundo gira gira y nunca para.
People get older and lose their youth's beauty.
Youtube videos fade with each viewing, and will be obsolete in a few years. Like my 8-tracks.

I met a guy from Cuba named Osveld. He fell in love the day before his 25th birthday with a Venezuelan passing through Cuba. He's never had a birthday like that, and he's had three birthdays since. Two days after his birthday, Osveld let the Venezuelan smuggle him into the US even though that meant that he would likely not see his family again. The Venezuelan sent a girl to Cuba for Osveld to marry. He had to marry the girl for the plan to work. When he met the Venezuelan finally in the US, the Venezuelan and the girl lived off him. They used him.

"How?"
"They made me ... I ... it's a sad story; I don't want to tell you."

Now I depend only on myself, and I call my family once a week. But there are times when you wish you could see them, with your eyes see them. It's hard when you live in this city, and you don't speak English and you don't have any friends. I come here almost every day.

Did you know that someone bought Coney Island? I wonder if they will keep the Wonder Wheel. I've only been there once. People do the same thing over and over again, you know. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. You can do the same thing over and over again and get a different result, but that doesn't mean you're crazy. If you do something new, you can find yourself starring in a sad story with no director.

I used to wonder what it would be like if you could only hear a song once. All the enjoyment you were ever going to get out of a song, you would have to get that first and last time you heard it. You would really really listen, I bet. It was an Air Supply song that triggered that thought for me, for some reason, as I looked out the window of my parents' station wagon. What if you could only meet each person once? Even your family? You don't have to give your number because they can't call you anyway.

I am buying everything I see so I can bring it back and hide it away in my house. I won't want to look at anything because it will make me sad. I will let these things surprise me, later, when I come across them while cleaning. It doesn't work that way with people. People change anyway, and I'm always doing the same thing over and over and getting different results.

In 1993, I watched that video for "Cose della vita" every morning before going to work. They played it on TV every morning, and I watched it.

Drafts

2006-12-19T23:14:00.000-05:00

Hey mice,
Did you know that on this new Blogger we can view each other's drafts? Or could we always view each other's drafts? Or did I do something special by mistake to allow me to view your drafts?
xo
Jules

out of the mouth of babes

2006-12-18T15:27:00.000-05:00

accurate or inaccurate?

Plain me

2006-12-14T23:47:00.000-05:00

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought?
"Not as bad as yesterday."

2. How much cash do you have on you?
About $130.

3. What's a word that rhymes with "DOOR?"
Bore.

4. Favorite planet?
Saturn.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone?
Mom & Dad.

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone?
I don't like any of my ring tones. I want the ring tone from my first cell phone back, the one that rang like an actual old-fashioned ding-a-ling-a-ling phone.

7. What shirt are you wearing?
Black ribbed turtleneck from the Gap.

8. Do you "label" yourself?
Yes.

9. Name the brand of the shoes you're currently wearing?
I'm only wearing socks.

10. Bright or dark room?
Medium.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you?
He is funny!

12. What does your watch look like?
I haven't worn a watch since I was 12 and my Timex with the green leather band broke.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Reading.

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say?
"Sorry i missed yesterday's call! Xxoo t."

15. Where is your nearest 7-11?
I don't know.

16. What's a word that you say a lot?
I don't know.

17. Who told you he/she loved you last?
Liz!

18. Last furry thing you touched?
I'm not telling.

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days?
Fistfuls of vitamins, as always, but no drugs.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed?
One. It's from last summer, and has lots of probably blurry pictures of my godson on it.

21. Favorite age you have been so far?
41 (I'm serious!)

22. Your worst enemy?
I don't know its name.

23. What is your current desktop picture?

24. What was the last thing you said to someone?
"Thanks."

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be?
Fly.

26. Do you like someone?
Yes.

27. The last song you listened to?
Something on an Esopus CD.

28. What time of day were you born?
9am-ish.

29. What's your favorite number?
3-5

30. Where did you live in 1987?
Swarthmore, PA; Pearl River, NY; and Americus, GA.

31. Are you jealous of anyone?
Yup.

32. Is anyone jealous of you?
I think so.

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened?
At my table, on Miami Beach, eating breakfast. Anthony Barthelemy called to tell me. I had a doctor's appointment, and went to the doctor, but everyone of course was freaking out and watching the little office TV. The doctor was reminiscing about his parents, the Holocaust survivors, and their emergency preparedness (gallons and gallons of water).

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money?
This doesn’t happen to me.

35. Do you consider yourself kind?
Yes, but I doubt kindness is my strongest suit.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be?
On my other shoulder.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be?
Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, something closely related to Sanskrit, Arabic, and if I absolutely can't keep avoiding romance languages, Ladino.

38. Would you move for the person you loved?
Maybe.

39. Are you touchy feely?
I like to talk about important things, but I can also be impatient and defensive.

40. What's your life motto?
"It's better to regret something you did do than to regret something you didn't do." I stole this motto from the Butthole Surfers.

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times.
My cell phone, Vitamin C, reading glasses.

42. What's your favorite town/city?
New York City.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash?
Some red cotton tights for my baby niece. Or no, after that I was at Stop 'n' Shop and I bought vanilla extract and smoked oysters.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it?
When I bitched to Time Warner about them not showing up to install cable on December 1.

45. Can you change the oil on a car?
Yes.

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her?
Haven't heard anything for ages, though his best friend and rival for my 5th grade affections, Kenny, emailed out of the blue a few years ago. Kenny is married and in some kind of business, and lives in Rockland County, NY, where we all grew up. Jonathan, the first love, moved to Braintree, MA, after 5th grade. We wrote letters to each other for a while, but even though I pined for him and wrote our initials together in hearts all over my secret journals, I was very freaked out about all the love confessions and kissing games my friends were into. My idea of love was that we would trade baseball cards and kid around together 4ever.

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry?
Mayflower, at least – 14th-century Hungarian royalty maybe – on my father's side. Early 19th-century on my mom's.

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy?
I wore a big red satiny plaid strapless dress, with crinolines and a black velvet sash; I wore it to a formal event for big Purchase College donors. It's a dress I also wore as a bridesmaid in January 2004.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now?
Surprisingly, no.

50. Have you been burned by love?
Wrecked, yes. Burned, no. Well, maybe burned too.

so many before me

2006-12-13T00:58:00.000-05:00

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? "Should that be there?"

2. How much cash do you have on you? $80

3. What's a word that rhymes with "DOOR?" whore

4. Favorite planet? Neptune. I think it’s upside-down.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? Earth

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone? vibrate

7. What shirt are you wearing? a black t-shirt advertising New Jersey tomatoes. It is supposed to be ironic, but guess what: it's not.

8. Do you "label" yourself? Yes. “Clearance”

9. Name the brand of the shoes you're currently wearing? Fabulaire. “If it’s not a size 12, it’s not a Fabulaire!”

10. Bright or dark room? I need five sources of indirect lighting on me at all times.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you? Could she be any cuter?

12. What does your watch look like? Like the wet dream of a fashion-forward investment banker who has a clown fetish

13. What were you doing at midnight last night? Marvelling at the agony

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say? “Don’t get me the Hall and Oates Christmas CD ‘cause that’s what I got you.”

15. Where is your nearest 7-11 It's probably nearer to you.

16. What's a word that you say a lot? Yes

17. Who told you he/she loved you last? Jonny McGovern

18. Last furry thing you touched? a bear

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days? Do natural homophobic remedies count? If not, 5.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed? Many! Mostly they belong to other people. Mostly those people work for Italian soccer teams.

21. Favorite age you have been so far? 27

22. Your worst enemy? The “dominion” of “Canada”

23. What is your current desktop picture? a table at a wedding reception with awesome lighting.

24. What was the last thing you said to someone? "Just give me the scale.”

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be? A million bucks!! Oh wait, are they talking about money? OK. To fly!!

26. Do you like someone? Yes, but don’t ask me who! (hint: see #11)

27. The last song you listened to? “Runway in my Street Clothes”

28. What time of day were you born? At the ordained time.

29. What's your favorite number? 2536

30. Where did you live in 1987? In a world of my own making

31. Are you jealous of anyone? Yes, insanely so.

32. Is anyone jealous of you? Yes, rightfully so.

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened? In my car on US1.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money? Fall in love.

35. Do you consider yourself kind? Of.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be? Rome.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be? Hebrew, so that I could fulfill my lifelong dream of joining the Mossad.

38. Would you move for the person you loved? Yes, mountains.

39. Are you touchy feely? As long as it does not involve my body in any way.

40. What's your life motto? "Go for it, Pony!"

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times? Cellphone, TimeOut New York, photo of the Rebbe

42. What's your favorite town/city? Oh come on.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash? Revenge.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it? 2:30 today. Who will be the lucky recipient??

45. Can you change the oil on a car? I don’t understand the question.

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her? $300/hr.

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry? 1450. Thank you, Church of Latter Day Saints!

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy? i was wearing my usual “fratboy home for easter” look. i was dressing fancy because she was competing in the purina fashion show.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now? My right toe hurts, my left toe is numb. Such is the way of the world.

50. Have you been burned by love? Not so much burned as burnt.

Mice in the Zeitgeist's avant garde, as ever

2006-12-12T12:24:00.000-05:00

From the New York Times Magazine 2006 "Year In Ideas" issues (Dec. 10, 2006):

S P O R N O by David Haskell

When approached to write an article about the homoerotic subtext of sports for Out magazine this spring, the journalist Mark Simpson feared the subject was old news. “There wasn’t much of a point,” he says, “since sport was already the new gay porn.” Indeed, with the publication of a Dolce & Gabbana underwear campaign featuring Italian soccer players glistening in a dank locker room, the phenomenon had gone well beyond subtext. All that was lacking was a name, and it didn’t take Simpson very long to invent it: sporno.

Sports, of course, have always celebrated physical form. What has changed, Simpson argues, is how we look at men. Thanks to what might be called the Abercrombie effect, the male body has become increasingly aestheticized — or “metrosexualized,” as Simpson would have it (he invented that term too) — and male imagery, particularly in fashion advertising, has become more overtly sensual. Considering that sports is visual, masculine and (like porn) geared mostly to men, Simpson was not surprised to find male athletes — even, or perhaps especially, heterosexual ones — grooming their physical image and “fetishizing themselves.”

The arrival of what Simpson calls “equal opportunity flirts” like the soccer players David Beckham and Freddie Ljungberg, who dabble in gay iconography and openly embrace their gay fans, lends sporno a celebrity cachet. (Simpson calls sporno stars like Ljungberg, whose physical assets are abundantly featured in Calvin Klein underwear ads, “young hustlers.”) Among professional sports organizations, the French national rugby team has pursued its sporno status most aggressively. The team’s annual calendars, Simpson notes, include photo shoots in which “there is no pretense that this is anything but hyperhomoerotic.” Indeed, some images are but a few soap bubbles away from pure pornography.

what can you possibily say that hasn't been said before, and better?

2006-12-11T09:46:00.000-05:00

i found this here. myriad versions are circulating on the internet, but eric of we, like sheep gives this game a whole new dignity. sort of.

1. When you looked at yourself in the mirror today, what was the first thing you thought? i look fucking great, man. so damn cute. yay.

2. How much cash do you have on you? i have two credit cards with lots of sweet sweet credit!

3. What's a word that rhymes with "DOOR?" vindaloo.

4. Favorite planet? thahbgobnagoiy pgya ikga pigy ooiay gpq.

5. Who is the 4th person on your missed call list on your cell phone? oh, nonny mice, chip in and give me this for christmas!

6. What is your favorite ring tone on your phone? oh, nonny mice, chip in and give me this for christmas!

7. What shirt are you wearing? oh, silly.

8. Do you "label" yourself? yes, of course. don't you?

9. Name the brand of the shoes you're currently wearing? prada.

10. Bright or dark room? half and half.

11. What do you think about the person who took this survey before you? he wears excellent shoes !

12. What does your watch look like? it's round, and black, and steel.

13. What were you doing at midnight last night? oh, nonny, that's prying!

14. What did your last text message you received on your cell say? oh, nonny mice, chip in and give me this for christmas!

15. Where is your nearest 7-11? bird and lejeune, why?

16. What's a word that you say a lot? if you see what i mean. also, straight off the bat.

17. Who told you he/she loved you last? parsley.

18. Last furry thing you touched? parsley.

19. How many drugs have you done in the last three days? done? i didn't "do" any.

20. How many rolls of film do you need developed? this question is so yesterday!

21. Favorite age you have been so far? oh, i dunno. 3?

22. Your worst enemy? ants.

23. What is your current desktop picture? kittens frolicking in a bowl of spaghetti, surrounded by ants.

24. What was the last thing you said to someone? including myself? that'd be, rock on, jonie v.

25. If you had to choose between a million bucks or to be able to fly what would it be? a million bucks so that i could hire a personal anaesthesiologist the next time i fly.

26. Do you like someone? yes. i really do. more than one person. everyone is so nice.

27. The last song you listened to? a christmas carol the memory of which i succeeded in removing forever from my mind.

28. What time of day were you born? the time of the wolf.

29. What's your favorite number? easy: 1,387,981.

30. Where did you live in 1987? i think it was padua, italy. why?

31. Are you jealous of anyone? absolutely. all the mice, for instance, in different ways, arouse my profound jealousy.

32. Is anyone jealous of you? what can i say? :-o

33. Where were you when 9/11 happened? in my apartment in miami, waking up, considering the state of the world. my considerations were confirmed when i turned on my tv. we still had cable then. we cancelled it the following day. tv is bad-ass news, man.

34. What do you do when vending machines steal your money? i take down the machine id, so that i can throw it away a week later when i wash my pants.

35. Do you consider yourself kind? I try, man, i really do.

36. If you had to get a tattoo, where would it be? inside.

37. If you could be fluent in any other language, what would it be? english.

38. Would you move for the person you loved? ask me how many times i've done this already. go ahead.

39. Are you touchy feely? in a strange, mercurial sort of way.

40. What's your life motto? prima le cose importanti poi le cose urgenti.

41. Name three things that you have on you at all times? skin tags. body grease. anti-smelling cosmetic products.

42. What's your favorite town/city? i'm going to have to say miami. please don't ask me why.

43. What was the last thing you paid for with cash? sweet espresso at art basel miami beach.

44. When was the last time you wrote a letter to someone on paper and mailed it? i got one from li'l pony a week or so ago! thank you pony!!!

45. Can you change the oil on a car? nope. next question?

46. Your first love: what is the last thing you heard about him/her? she was getting a degree in biology. that was twenty years ago.

47. How far back do you know about your ancestry? thousands of years. i'm italian! we all descend from aeneas!

48. The last time you dressed fancy, what did you wear and why did you dress fancy? when i had my greencard interview. i got rid of most of those clothes soon after because they never really fit. the shirt was too tight and the pants were too large. i still feel an imbecile for buying them in the first place.

49. Does anything hurt on your body right now? you kidding me?! everything hurts.

50. Have you been burned by love? no, just mildly reddened, as if by a 5 pm autumn sun.

ABMB

2006-12-08T06:08:00.000-05:00

yesterday i went to art basel miami beach. you can see some highlights if you go here and click on the slide show link. the slide show works in a not entirely intuitive way, which is only fair given that it's about absurdly expensive contemporary art.

one of the best things about art basel is the shoes. i spent a whole lot of time looking at people's shoes. a video you can link to from the same page as the slide show (it was not shot this year, but i can't quite date it) justly dwells on the shoes. i noticed a whole lot of dressy men's shoes that looked to me uncool. i often find dressy to be uncool. it's an uncool bias i have. since just about everyone wore them they are obviously cool, and it is i who am uncool. cool is, as everyone who's anyone knows, a pure function of mass-produced, consumer-driven culture. if you think something that's very much at the center of the consumer world uncool, you have simply not being paying attention and that's all there is to it, no point even talking about it.

of course, i only looked at men's shoes. women's shoes mean nothing to me.

after spending hours scorning other people's shoes i happened to glance at my own. that gave me a whole new humility. this humility was fortunately short lived, as i realized that one's personal appearance is absolutely and most decidedly irrelevant to one's appreciation or lack of appreciation for other people's. this realization restored my inner calm.

i spent a whole lot of time, too, paying attention to the languages people spoke. these are the two most frequently heard languages of art basel miami beach: english, italian. discounting english, italian is the most spoken language of art basel miami beach. this should make it, i believe, its official language. i was happy when i reached this conclusion, because italian is my first language! (the reasons i am discounting english are a) because i feel like it).

i had an overpriced lavazza espresso at one of the little mobile bars and felt extremely cool. a man who was also at the bar talked to me and that gave me pleasure. i consider art basel miami beach a deeply communal moment. this is why i spent most of the time with a smile on my face. i tried to have a smile on my face at all time, but i may have slipped once or twice, like when i saw the women with pins stuck all over their bodies. if there's one thing that kills the smile on my face is seeing women with pins stuck all over their bodies. this i can tell for sure: i felt one with everybody, and i felt everybody one with me. even the people with the ugly and cool dressy shoes. especially them.

i spent slightly less time looking at people's clothes, because i quickly decided they were very ugly. i decided just as quickly that the people with ugly clothes were english, even when they spoke german. the english are wily that way, trying the make people think they are dressed lousily because they are germans, and i didn't fall for it for a single second. plus their german accents were ridiculous.

i noticed a whole lot of beautiful women and a whole lot of gay men. i embraced them all with my smiles and my love.

touring art basel while sipping sugared espresso from a little paper cup made me feel very cool. i think i already said this, but it bears repeating.

at times, i thought i was the coolest person there. at other times, i thought tb would have been if she'd been there. that these two thoughts were entirely consistent deepened the smile on my face. i thought simsby was the second coolest person there. i didn't think of jules or li'l pony because they are in new york and art basel miami beach is an exquisitely miami event.

the abetter's lament

2006-12-07T12:47:00.000-05:00

there is fire outside. i can see it from my window, but i don't want to get up. i lie on my bed as the noise of people begins to tear gashes in the night air. soon there will be sirens. who cares. i'm tired. i worked all day. J isn't back yet. he should be here any minute.

i didn't know dry grass could catch fire this easily. looks as if the fire was set by a cigarette butt. they always say this can happen but i've never quite believed it. c'mon, a cigarette butt? it goes out before you can blink. well, apparently not before setting the whole neighborhood on fire.

there was something pleasing about the jerking licks of the flames. like playing slide guitar. licks. a good word.

if i knew who did it, i wouldn't give them away. you get slammed good for this kind of shit. fuck it. let them set more things on fire. i don't care. let them keep smoking. i don't give a shit about their "justice" system. send 'em to jail and see them turn into criminals in urine- and cum-soaked cells. i don't think so.

it was a kid. i knew that. of course it was going to be a kid. fucking kids. they always get it. wouldn't you know that mother and father are separated, father's gone, mother works three jobs. three jobs, for fuckssakes! give the woman a raise i say, get the father's ass back in town, send them to family counseling at some god-fearing government-sponsored marriage indoctrination center!

why do i have to pay for it? J says let it be, but i can't. i work all day. kids, tobacco, marriage counseling, the war in iraq, it's all the same to me. something to douse with grey goose, just like everything else.

things that have given me pleasure this week

2006-12-07T01:52:00.000-05:00

for all sorts of reasons, some of them not the obvious ones.

i have also rediscovered this, taken great pleasure in being part of this, and looked forward to the crazy shit they show here.

of love and lying

2006-12-05T22:14:00.000-05:00

i don't mind being lied to. in general. i am one of those people who believe that lies are a decent way of life. what else is there? the truth? com'on.

i lie pretty regularly. the opposite of lying is one's supposed version of what really is the case, and we all know that nothing is ever really the case. it rains. it doesn't rain. it just stopped raining. it all depends on where. i love you. i stopped loving you. you turn me on. all true. depends on when, and where, and under what circumstances, and what we mean by 'love' or 'on.'

lying is just another way of communicating. lying about where i was means: i love you enough to spare your feeling. (i was buying you a birthday present. i was at a party at which you weren't invited. i was taking a dump. i was talking to my mother on the phone. i was preparing for a class. i was taking a nap. i was eating junk food). lying about where i was also means: i care about my own feelings enough to spare them. or: i value peace of mind over whatever you mean by truth.

sometimes i tell people: this really matters to me, tell me the truth. what i mean is: i would really like to know what you think it really happened. i don't say this frequently, and when it say it i expect my interlocutor to deliver. he or she has to decide what delivering consists in. i trust my interlocutor to make that decision correctly. i wouldn't be asking them to tell me what really happened, otherwise.

truthfulness, being a function of communication, is a function of the kind of relation that exists between the communicants. i expect the media to tell me whatever they need to tell me to perpetuate the relation to me we both understand we have. i expect one kind of lies from the nyt and another kind of lies from the miami herald.

when my mother tells me she's well and i ask her, really? and she says yes, i trust her to tell me whatever it is i need to know in the context of the rapport we have. if i hear an almost inaudible (almost) hesitation in her voice, i know she wants to tell me more. i respect that and i ask for more. that's the way it works. if she tells me she's well and i believe her, she is well as far as i am concerned. who is ever really, really well? who is not a little bit unwell, in some way? (i am always a little bit unwell).

i don't find students who cheat outrageous. if i did, i wouldn't establish anti-cheating mechanisms. i never ask my students to be honorable. i believe that puts them in a false position. we don't have that kind of relation. they don't care about me. they care about getting a good grade, or learning, or whatever it is they took my class for. they didn't take my class to get into a trusting relationship with me. when they enrolled in my class they didn't even know me!

i could continue, but you get the gist. it's all about love, really, as most things are.

Tiny dancer

2006-12-02T00:12:00.000-05:00

The other night, I watched Cameron Crowe's autobiographical movie, "Almost Famous." Though it was somehow a bit too polished, and Kate Hudson was too pretty all the time, it took me to a long series of thoughts and memories about being a fan, and about watching bands, and the people around them, and about being one of the people around them. The movie has a scene where the band, which has been fighting, is on the highway in the tour bus, and Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" comes on, and one by one they all start singing, and you know everything is going to be alright. I went and bought the song, and have been listening to it so much I think I'm about sick of it now. But it is a good song about a woman who is a seamstress for a band, or about the version of her Elton John keeps in his head, or about performers and the people who believe in them, and about the ways performers and the people who believe in them need each other.

Frances McDormand was in the movie, playing the Cameron Crowe character's mother. Tonight I had dinner with a friend on 1st Ave., and Frances McDormand was in the restaurant. I couldn't place her til afterwards. I am a fan of hers, but being a fan is not the same as it was when I was young.

Something you probably don't know about me is that when I was about 16, I took the photo on the cover of this band's CD.

life lessons

2006-12-01T14:38:00.000-05:00

things I have learned from Julianne:

1. You can hook a washing machine up to the kitchen faucet.

2. If you go out one dewy morning to practice your electric guitar on the front lawn, by all means before you tell your roommate to go ahead and plug the guitar cord in for you, make sure to remind him that he reversed the polarity on the house sockets -- so he knows to plug the guitar cord in backwards for you. Otherwise, you're in for a shock!

3. Studio 54 wasn't that hard to get into, if you knew the right people.

4. There is an underground railroad of sort, called "the ferret route," used by people to transport ferrets across the US, into states where ferret-possession is illegal.

5. You can use the ferret route to transport orchids into states where orchid-importation is too tightly controlled.

6. Artists residing in New York are entitled to write off from their taxes one new pair of shoes per year.

7. You too can look this young if you stay off the drugs.

I think, I know

2006-11-29T15:09:00.000-05:00

Jonie V., I think I know why the nonny mice aren't saying anything. They must be busy scouring the Internets in search of information on what the world-champion Italian squad has been up to since their stunning victory in the World Cup this summer.

Well search no further, nonny mice! Don't let the cat get your tongue anymore!

nothing to say, nonny mice?

2006-11-28T01:12:00.000-05:00

not the case with me, bitches. i have so damn much to say, i can't keep any of it inside me long enough to get to a computer and put it down in this here blog thingie. by the time i sit down it's gone, replaced forever by another thought, which also, in turn, goes before i can put it down, replaced by another, and so on, in a nonny rendition of zeno's paradox. tragedy of tragedies. but here's one thought:

people enjoy reading about other people's lives a whole lot more than they like hearing about them.

and here's another: the nation magazine, a leftie institution with a bona fide feminist in its editorial staff, cannot publish a fall book issue that contains a fair representation of women's books (say, 51%) to save its life. can't. they are unable to. if they try, they fail.

and here's another thought: borat is cute. or sasha baron cohen is. or both. (how many people are there? this is a question for philosophers or literary critics, who would probably agree on the number though for totally different reasons).

and there is a cafe' in miami beach li'l pony didn't know of, and when (if) he comes back we'll be spending long studious hours there, sipping expensive coffee and working on lesson plans and nonny plans too.

i put my guess of how many people are afraid of flying at about 48% of all airplane travellers.

what gives away people's nervousness is their hands.

i'm reading books furiously and pleasantly.

words words words. gotta love 'em.

viewing

2006-11-15T15:52:00.000-05:00

Look for me on TV this Friday, bitches. ABC at 11 am east-coast time, that is.

You want to know how I got to appear on national TV?
Well, sit down for a second and I'll tell you.
OK. So you know how I have that blog?
The one about the subway?
Well I got on the subway yesterday morning, took it up to 66th St by Lincoln Center, and got in line for same-day standby tickets to The View.

I waited two hours and forty minutes only to find out that they were taking no standbys for that day's live taping. However, they were going to do a second taping for Friday's show and yes, we were welcome to try back again for that one, at noon. Well I came back, and I got in. At this point, you may be asking yourself, "The View? Isn't that just a show for bored shut-ins and wives of professional football players? Why oh why would Li'l Pony be so eager to see The View in person?"
The answer is simple. First, the prizes! Hello! The people who attended the previous show walked out with tickets to a Broadway show and a $100 gift card to Sears. And (B), Rosie! Rosie! Rosie! (jonie v.: Rosie is a View co-host and Miami's most famous gay hero).

So I stood patiently in line, next to a charming couple of retired schoolteachers from outside Grand Rapids Michigan who had attended upwards of 20 live tapings of daytime talk shows. They proudly shared with me some secrets to getting in to see Rachael Ray's new show -- very nice of them! The wife of this couple told a View staff member that she had come all the way from Michigan and the next thing you know, she had been plucked out of the crowd to record a special "don't go away we'll be right back after these commercial messages" teaser standing next to Rosie O'Donnell. I was happy for my new friend but also secretly jealous that I had not been selected to record the teaser because I bet my boss watches the View.

Also waiting in line with me that day to get into the View studio:
150 pushy New Jersey housewives,
4 extremely pushy New Jersey housewives who berated View staffers for letting them lose their place in line,
4 women upset that they had reserved their tickets months before Star Jones was fired from the View,
1 crazy white-haired lady wearing a yellow scrunchie and a hippy skirt, and
1 mooch plainly obsessed with bringing home free loot. (Oh wait, that was me.)

Once inside the studio, we were continuously directed by an applause coach in the fine shades of audience reaction. We practiced all the nuances, from "polite smattering" to "wild and crazy cheerleaders just leaving the Starbucks." It was hard work! But it is also hard not to enjoy yourself when you are clapping the top layer of skin clear off your palms and shouting your lungs out for every wisecrack from the hosts and every transition back from every commercial break. (I need to remember this trick for my classes: forced applause.) At any rate, it was all well worth it. Within the first 10 minutes I had won, qua member of the studio audience, a $100 gift certificate to H&M. I clapped wildly throughout the show but I stopped hooting and hollering after the first commercial because in my case, it sounded more like squealing. I kept up the charade for the sake of the cute applause coach, and pantomimed screaming on cue for the rest of the taping.

The last segment of the show featured a "toy expert" hawking the hottest toys to buy for this Christmas season.

"How did you get to be a toy expert, Susan?"
"Simple, Rosie -- I'm a mom!" [cue APPLAUSE!]

I didn't really pay attention to this segment because I was sharpening my vision to figure out which toy we in the studio audience were going to receive as our free prize give-away loot. Mind you -- I don't like toys and don't know anyone who does. The closest person I know is my 3 yr-old godson, but he probably wouldn't be allowed to play with most of these stupid toys because they were too infantile.

But I zeroed in on the last toy that they were making their way around to, which looked like some mini electronics thing that came in different colors like iPods do. I coveted that object intently without even knowing what it was. If the camera cuts away to my part of the audience at that point, you will see me looking on with a intense and furrowed brow, apparently keenly interested in the hottest toy trends for Fall/Winter 2006. I concentrated my way through the entire segment until Rosie got to that last item on the toy table, whereupon she announced that she had an announcement to make.

"The makers of these toys have graciously decided to donate them ... "
WOW -- really? All this for me? Even the BabyAlive doll that poops its own pants?
"to the victims of Hurricane Katrina!"
My heart sank. Damn Hurricane Katrina.
"... And also, because it's not a show without a give-away, every member of the studio audience today will receive this Nintendo DS portable gaming system valued at $240!"

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH! Now that's something I can "APPLAUSE!" for. If you watch on Friday, you may be able to catch the delirious expression of glee on my face when I learned I was to receive this gaming console that I had absolutely no interest in ever personally using.

So for those of you keeping count, this brings to $900 the total value of prizes I have won since arriving in NYC. Next, I plan to visit Martha Stewart's and Rachael Ray's shows. I wonder what they will be giving out?

overheard in miami

2006-11-10T16:43:00.000-05:00

"he is not in control of the details of his words"
about john kerry

"it embarrasses me that people feel free to discuss my reproductive life"
about being pregnant

"words are not the proper object of translation, sentences are"
about translation

"the nightmare is over"
about the 11/7 elections

"you follow those principles religiously, that is, hypocritically"
about life

Fall (index)

2006-11-04T11:42:00.000-05:00

Cool, guma!

2006-10-23T21:35:00.000-04:00

I think you will all enjoy this great Wikipedia entry about folk etymology. It has lots of examples of words that have changed because people were trying to make etymological sense of old words.

For example:
Old English bryd-guma ("bride-man") became bridegroom after the Old English word guma fell out of use and made the compound semantically obscure.

Ever wonder where the 's' in 'island' comes from? I know you did! The site will tell you!

They are more beautiful cases of folk etymology making itself real etymology, in a complicated way. I love people and our restless drive for meaning.

Star Children

2006-10-23T02:31:00.000-04:00

As seen propped against a window on a street in downtown Greenwich, Conn. (I didn't dare touch it.)

who needs clunky zippers

2006-10-17T13:38:00.000-04:00

I realize that I may be the only contributor who believes that A Very Nonny Mouse is fundamentally a blog about fashion. Of course, after my recent conversion to Chanelism, I believe that most things in life are about fashion.

I will indulge myself here for your benefit, bringing you an excerpt and video from coverage of Hussein Chalayan's recent show at Paris Fashion Week held in Paris, France. This is an international affair, by the way, and therefore must have some political implications somewhere if you care to look for them.

This excerpt is from Kim Hastreiter's blog entry about the show:

"But the most extraordinary show which took place in Paris was the show that designer Hussein Chalayan put on. Integrating amazing computer chip technology, Chalayan miraculously transformed pieces while they were out on the catwalk. He made an entire dress disappear into a hat (I swear! The model ended up naked!), created dresses that changed silhouettes before our eyes, created outfits that grew pearls or mirrors or just plain moved on their own to change shape. Unbelievable. The best part was that the traditional means of documenting fashion shows (ie: runway photographers) could not capture this show. You can look at every photo taken at this show and you cannot see what occurred. Ah. But the magic of Youtube solves this. Watch this amazing Chalayan show below!!!!! It's mindbending."

Click on this:

Dear Mouse

2006-10-15T12:18:00.000-04:00

dear mouse,

i have two friends, i'll call them "butt" and "ugly," who, unrelatedly, are going through a seriously tough time. even though i realize there is nothing i can do, i want to be close to them, so that they won't feel abandoned by me. but because i was a part of their lives before the rocky times started, they shun me. butt is very hard to reach and won't return either my calls or my email messages. ugly won't seek me out but will talk to me; except, when this happens, ugly will talk a lot but respond to my conversational attempts with impatience or brusqueness. i am happy to remain their friends because i am very fond of them. at the same time, i'm not sure they even want me around at all. what do you advise?

rocky mountain in miami

(because i know the nonny mice are a bit self-centered, allow me, mouse, to clarify that none of the mice is either butt or ugly, and that they have no relation whatsover to the friends i mention in my letter!)

And what about this closely related phenomenon...

2006-10-11T22:24:00.000-04:00

Ουκ ελαβον πολιν. Αλα γαρ, έλπισ ηφη κακα. (Pronounced: Ouk elabon polin. Ala gar. Helpis efe kaka.)

A Greek sentence (from Thucydides) meaning, "They haven't taken the city. However, he said, there's not much hope."

Où est la bonne Pauline? A la gare. Elle pisse et fait caca.

A French sentence meaning, "Where is the the maid Pauline? At the station. She's pissing and having a crap."

does this have a name?

2006-10-11T00:46:00.000-04:00

sentence: i vitelli dei romani sono belli.
meaning in italian: the calves [young cows] of the romans are handsome.
meaning in latin: go, vitellius, following the war song of the roman god!

sentence: cane nero.
meaning in italian: black dog.
meaning in latin: sing, nero!

depraved hippies

2006-10-08T15:46:00.000-04:00

Last night I spent knitting in the company of two agreeable companions. J. was doing needlepoint, and L. was reading aloud to us (in the grand tradition of reading to manual laborers as celebrated in Anna in the Tropics). I do not read books, but I enjoy being read books.

L. read to us from the classic tome Depraved Hippies (New York: Midwood Enterprises, 1972). This novel is beloved among its legions of readers, and perhaps most of all for one particular scene in which the heroine regales her lover with the memory of the day when she was drawn by her unquenchable curiosity into the stables to find her excitable family horse, Champ. "Well, you've probably guessed what happened next," she coos to her lover.

Intrigued? Maybe you'd care to check out one of Midway's other classic titles ($1.95 ea.)

Now I Lay Me
What's Up?
Easy Come
When Virtue Fails
Ohhhhh, It Feels Like Dying
And Then Came
The Act of Acts
Measurements
My, How You've Grown
A Very Private Nurse
Autobiography of a Louse, Vol. III (by Anonymous)
Members, Rise
How Nice of You to Come
Bang!
My Strange Compulsion (by Dr. Frederick W. Hammond)
Man Hole
Out of the Closet
Straight In
Mommy's Sick Friends

elegance is refusal

2006-10-07T20:28:00.000-04:00

“Elegance is refusal” – Coco Chanel

I don’t know if it was Coco Chanel who said that, but let’s just say it was. (You can look it up if you want.) What I am more concerned with is: what does it mean, and why did Coco Chanel, of all people, say it?

I take Coco Chanel to mean that elegance means refusing the temptation of adorning oneself to the point of excess. This implies that such a thing as over-adornment is in fact possible – an idea with which many would disagree. But then again, maybe those people actually do not mean that over-adornment is elegant; they simply mean that over-adornment is beautiful. They could not dispute, however, that beauty does not guarantee elegance. Beautiful things indeed are not always elegant, although elegance is almost always beautiful.

Was it not also Coco Chanel who advised women that before leaving their home, they should have a glance in the mirror and remove one thing from their look? I think she had in mind a pair of earrings, a bracelet, a scarf. Not underwear, and certainly not a dress. You can look up that one too if you’d like.

I may have mentioned before that Coco Chanel is my heroine, because she was able to attract lovers with ease and even nonchalance. (I have no idea if this is true, but let's just say it is.) I don’t think that she had a bond with any of her lovers that was durable enough to make it into the canon of fashion lore. At one time, however, she conducted her entire business out of a lover’s flat. I like to think that she fell freely into this arrangement, but refrained from committing more to it than was actually reasonable.

The question now in my mind is therefore whether over-adornment is the only thing one should refuse, if one would be elegant. I take it on principle that in order to be elegant, one may also refuse any number of things: one may refuse to marry, refuse to log in to an e-mail account, refuse to leave the house, refuse to do laundry. Then again, if one refuses to do enough housework, he finds himself in the most baroque of quagmires.

Restrained elegance and barroque excess attract me equally, although in different ways. Both kinds of things make me believe that if I possess them, I will become more like them: either calm and simple, or exuberant and energetic. These days, I am especially compelled by the pared-down elegance of restraint. I want to possess many elegant things which will make me feel elegant like them, but I know that elegance is refusal.

i was wrong

2006-10-06T18:48:00.000-04:00

keith olbermann is brave.

Mess on the floor

2006-10-06T00:27:00.000-04:00

Nonny mice, do you ever feel like you're a big mess on the floor? I do!

So I Googled images of "mess on the floor" and look what I found!

If you look carefully you'll see interesting things in these images, and maybe even fall in love with the people whose messes they are! Many of these messes seem to me quite fantastic.

So it's not so bad, I found, to be a mess on the floor. Except if you're a mess with tarantulas...look carefully and you'll see what I mean! Oh well.

OK, faint of heart, scroll slowly and peek through your fingers!

(Maybe it's just a CD cover...?)

face it

2006-10-04T13:33:00.000-04:00

Try this out, nonny mice. Upload a photo onto this site, register with some nonny name, and they will tell you which celebrity you most resemble. I guess this will help solve the problem of casting for yourself in the movie to be made of your life.

jet-setters

2006-09-30T12:14:00.000-04:00

there are people like me, and there are jet-setters. people like me buy a home, paint it with fresh colors, make it cozy enough, and spend a whole lot of time in it. people like me plan their vacations in advance and then, at the last minute, cancel them because the thought of sitting quietly at home seems infinitely more attractive. people like me don't have a cell phone because they don't need it -- they are always at home, and when they are not it is because they don't want to be found. people like me start a new novel on a friday night because it is still too hot to go out, and why go out anyway if you have a new novel?

jet-setters are different. jet-setters hop on airplanes at the drop of a hat. they decide to zip to brazil for a windsurfing expedition and drive themelves to the airport so the car will be there when they come back five days later, with a fresh change of clothes for the first client of the day. they give each other appointments in new york at 4 pm at the w in times square, from which they converge from different continents. they get on a plane to catch a concert by someone a little bit famous and get back on a plane early the same morning in time for work. when they have a long weekend off work, they get on a plane to europe to check out the latest exhibition at the louvre which was curated by a childhood friend of theirs.

jet-setters have a lover in each continent. they have rented apartments in at least three major cities in different countries, and sublet their apartments to people from at least six different nationalities, whom they have never seen. if the whim hits them, they get on a plane to turkey and spend a couple of days in istanbul. they don't like canada because it's too provincial, but don't mind italy, even though it is incredibly provincial. in italy, they buy shoes from african immigrants who sell them illegally in the street and run very fast with their merchandise magically condensed into a small package on their shoulders when the police approach. the police stings are never very successful because all the passersby are on the qui vive on behalf of the illegal sellers and when the police nabs one they circle around captor and captive and boo.

jet-setters love haute couture and max out their credit cards with plane tickets and designer clothes. some jet-setters don't need to max out their credit cards because they find people who buy them tickets and designer clothes in exchange for love. other jet-setters have jobs in haute couture and have their expenses paid.

jet-setters have resources the rest of us don't have and can find a perfectly good place to live in in any city in the space of an afternoon. jet-setters find rural locations uncomfortable unless they have silky beaches and tiki bars.

jet-setters travel alone, dress smartly, and have flings in the air. when they land, they exchange phone numbers and give each other appointments for 4 pm at the w in times squre in six weeks or six months.

tonight i'm not feeling funny

2006-09-30T01:28:00.000-04:00

on thursday, september 28, 2006, torture and the suspension of basic human rights for a certain class of people have become the law of the land in the united states of america. i wear a black arm band around my heart.

this is not a political blog...

2006-09-29T14:33:00.000-04:00

... yet, sometimes, we need to remind our faithful readers that just because we are not political it doesn't mean we are not paying attention! oh yeah, we are paying attention, bitches.

and today our attention was riveted by the nice edward r. murrow impersonation of a mainstream, living and breathing, american journalist! who knew we still had journalists who used the closing line "good night and good luck"????

(N.B. when bill clinton whooped chris wallace's ass on fox television, people said he was courageous. i'm sure people are saying that keith olbermann is brave, too. without taking anything away from clinton and olbermann, this nonny mouse wants to remind folks that the cowardice of others does not in itself make those who are not cowardly, brave.)

uncover the comfort of afghans

2006-09-28T19:44:00.000-04:00

If you loved Women's Comfort, or any other vintage craft magazine, you will love "A Bouquet of Bernat Afghans"! A lovelier catalogue of crochet patterns was never produced. A lonelier catalogue of crochet patterns was never produced, either. Look at these forlorn shut-in ladies -- maybe we could send them a card shower!

These pages were sent in and captioned by nonny mouse Fabulana:

(the above one didn't scan too well; it says "She's a dominos widow -- the orangeade is laced with valium")

Btw

2006-09-23T18:24:00.000-04:00

I just found out that Lisa Marie Presley is my birthday twin. Now *that* explains a lot.

Take a right, for sure

2006-09-23T16:52:00.000-04:00

This sign is real! I heart Ft. Awesome, the new freshman dorm...

american humor vs italian humor

2006-09-22T01:19:00.000-04:00

americans love to laugh. often they laugh when there is nothing to laugh about. it's a national thing. americans laugh a whole lot. it's really bizarre. even the tiniest humorous thing makes them laugh. americans are the ones who invented the laugh track.

italians laugh too, but less. they laugh if something is funny, but that is not guaranteed. sometimes, when something is really funny, they acknowledge it in the same way they'd acknowledge a change in temperature. they say, "this is funny," with the same face with which they'd say "it's cooler now." in other words, they say it with a straight face. in italy, only daytime american comedies have a laugh track.

americans love plays on words. plays on words kill them. most of their jokes are based on verbal punch lines. i'm not talking exclusively about puns. i'm talking about all instances of verbal equivocation or allusion or juxtaposition. because language is a social thing, a lot of american humor is contextual. it's hard to get a joke if you don't know who the person who's saying the joke is, and where she is coming from.

italians don't give a damn for plays on words. they laugh almost exclusively at life's humiliations, moral and physical. it is better if the humiliation is someone else's, but they laugh at their own, too. the best situation is when people are comfortable enough to laugh at each other's humiliations. italian humor is contextual too, but not in the way in which american humor is: it demands not a context of meaning, but a context of mutual knowledge and sympathy. it requires clicking.

americans are uncomfortable with unease and misfortune and don't typically find them humorous. people who find them humorous are considered unfeeling bastards.

italians love unease and misfortune which you can make fun of. a person who falls off her bicycle is the funniest thing. if you fall off your bicycle in america, people will immediately become alarmed and ask you if you are okay. if you fall off your bicycle in italy people will kill themselves laughing while surreptitiously checking that you are not seriously hurt.

americans love clever jokes. in fact, in america humor is often understood to coincide with cleverness, and vice versa.

italians don't give a damn for clever jokes. in fact, they don't understand them. if a joke is clever it stops being a joke and it becomes a display of cleverness. displays of cleverness are never funny. they are embarrassing. italians like simple, direct, crass, and vulgar jokes that rest on humiliation. these jokes must not be told cleverly and quickly, but with great pathos.

american humor is based on distance and differentiation.

italian humor is based on proximity and identification.

americans don't find insulting each other funny. they find it painful.

italians cannot conceive of a funnier or sweeter way of talking to each other than mutual insult and put-down. people who are really close put each other down constantly and laugh hysterically at it. americans who hang out with italians try to copy this but end up only being offensive.

italians love to tell their jokes in their local dialect instead of italian. every italian knows that a comical situation loses a lot of its humor if it's spoken in italian. when italians switch from italian to dialect, you know they are ready to be funny. when they switch back to italian, the joking is over. this can happen every two or three minutes. americans who know italian but are unable to follow this linguistic code may feel lost or offended.

americans find it uncomfortable to laugh at themselves as a people, and when they do, their joking is almost inevitably political.

italians laugh at themselves as a people as a matter of course. laughing at themselves as a people makes them feel proud. if a foreigner did the same, italians would immediately defend themselves and accuse the foreigner of being anti-italian.

americans don't laugh at america.

italians laugh at italy every day. laughing at italy is a fundamental and inevitable part of the italian national character, and every italian worth her mettle displays it with generosity.

the comfort of women

2006-09-20T00:29:00.000-04:00

Some people take comfort in wine, some take comfort in women, and others still take comfort in homemakers' magazines of the early 70's. I now belong to the third group, thanks to Jeff F. who showed me some magazines that Walter D. had found: Women's Household (July 1973) and Women's Comfort (July 1975). The two publications must be related somehow because as you can see, the model on the cover of Women's Comfort is reading Women's Household.

As you can also see from the cover, these are magazines "where women HELP women." I don't know which activity "HELP" is stressing itself as an alternative to, but I don't really have time to think about that because the helping is so fascinating.

As near as I can tell, these magazines are composed for lonely women in rural areas of the US who would like nothing more than to correspond about home crafts with other women in similar situations. The magazines are in fact largely composed BY these women, who write in with recipe ideas, doily patterns, and pen pal sollicitations. For an example, click on the first image file in this post to enlarge it.

If your computer does not allow you to enlarge it sufficiently for reading, allow me to quote a few lines:

Mrs. Fox's request for mail:
"With the extra work he [her husband, Bud] does, I'm home quite a lot with just the girls, so would appreciate some mail to keep me company."

some of her hobbies:
"I love to bake, and my weight shows it, too. Bud never gains an ounce, though."

some of her pets:
"There's also a black-and-white cat back in the shed that somebody must have dumped off."

Mrs. Williams's request:
"After reading W.H. for years, I'd like to participate in the fun and hope my letter brings me lots of mail."

an additional enticement:
"Also if anyone wants a special souvenir from New Mexico, they can tell me what they want and if they send the money, I'll shop for the article they want from New Mexico."

[If you can enlarge that image, though, you should do it so you can read more.]

A major focus of their attention is the "robin." I need to look this up, but it seems to be something like a useful kind of chain mail. There is mention of poetry robins (exchanging original verse), knitting robins, and diet robins. These girls love themselves a robin!

It is really hard to get over just how sweet these ladies are, and harder still to resist the urge to write to them even though many of them are probably gone by now. There was so much kindness to strangers in these pages -- housewife reaching out to housewife, to see if she needed someone to talk to, or to see if she too collected decorative bottles.

These ladies did not keep the love to themselves. Besides "robins," the ladies loved to write to shut-ins. And their absolute favorite thing to do was to spring a "card shower" on someone deserving. Can you make out the card shower in the clipping below?

We were glad to read within these pages of the different positive effects these ladies were having, not just in our hardened 21st-century hearts, but in their own time too. One lady wrote in to report on the riches to be reaped by having pen pals in the US and abroad.

These thoughts come to us from Frances:

Sometimes, the outpouring of response is so great that the ladies must take pre-emptive action to ensure that they will not receive a deluge of mail likely to strain their eyes.

Oh, and I almost forgot the one thing that these ladies loved more than anything else on earth: finding a birthday twin.
"Birthday twins" are people who have the same exact birthday as you. And these people were obsessed with finding one for themselves. Ob. Sessed. Every letter to the magazine, even if it was just to offer a doll-clothing patter, also included the writer's birthdate and the mention "Any twins?"

And yet, not all women were exactly alike in their interests. A lot of them, one speculates, may have had trouble finding kindred spirits in the magazine, let alone on their own rural route.

Now, I realize I must come to terms with the fact that I am not a rural 70's homemaker. I am living the big life in the big city and yet still I find myself pondering the age-old humble questions of life and friendship, and I only wish there were someone I could turn to, who could teach me just what life is about. Who can tell me, when I'm having a tough time, if it is a real catastrophe or if life's just like that?

2006-09-19T20:45:00.000-04:00

(I took this picture while lying on my couch.)

hourglass, dawn

2006-09-15T05:59:00.000-04:00

the largest expanse of unbroken sand in the world is the arabian desert.

pour one cup of sand in tall glass.
add three cups of water.
stir vigorously and drink in one long draught while sand is still suspended.
do not stop to think.

deserts are arid regions where the annual precipitation is less than ten inches, or the potential evaporation rate is twice as great as the precipitation.

this is not a definition.

when filling sandbag, bend knees and keep back straight. lift sandbag by using quadruceps, in order to avoid back injury.

i don't remember having built more than three sand castles in my whole life.

unbeknownst to many, jack hesterhazi abhors the use of articles, in particular the indefinite kind.

(hester prynne's young daughter is called pearl, a truly lovely name)

when i was in my very early teens my family would rent an apartment at a seaside location and every summer we would spend a month there. the apartment was probably more than we could afford, but it is an article of religion among my people that sea air is essential to the good health of children. even though one of my sisters was so disturbed by these holidays that she would scream every night in her sleep, my mother thought that the sea air was more beneficial than harmful to her. she had bad tonsils. she still does. now herself a mother, she takes her children to the seaside every year, though for less than a month.

on one very good summer, my other sister and i built sand forts and positioned our little soldiers on them. we had very large armies which we proceeded to exterminate. the one with the last soldier standing won the battle. the war is still going on.

my mother didn't like us getting sand in our beds, but i didn't see what the problem was, since we were covered in sand all day long. how could the sand be okay during the day but bad at night?

little crabs crawled out of the sand at the bottom of the sea and sometimes pinched you. there were many crabs on the surf, too.

i have never intentionally hurt an animal. it is a well knows fact that children who hurt animals become Really Bad People and that you should stay away from them. children who don't share their midmorning snack at school also become Bad People, but not as bad as children who hurt animals. the worst children of all are those who cross themselves with their left hand. these children are guaranteed to go to Hell.

open letter to our president on the anniversary of the twin towers disaster

2006-09-12T22:01:00.000-04:00

dear

it is not that it is rather
but of course
please do not
things have been going since
i wish you hadn't

there will be terrible suffering
don't you
when can we expect to

on the other hand
hope you'll understand if i

swollen bellies

-- not that you'd

what does it take

i would very much appreciate
sincerely

Ideas that I'm working on, #1

2006-09-08T17:37:00.000-04:00

I lived in L.A., so I of course, I wanna write a screenplay. Here's the outline. It will be called Passing Through Tuscany. A poor, working-class (though surprisingly well-educated) mid-thirties white southern woman has a fifteen-year-old daughter (the latest Christina Ricci or Natalie Portman) with whom things are difficult. This is partly owing to the fact that they are shacked up with some loser trailer-trash dude, not the daughter's father. Dude senses he's losing mom and, gallantly though unrealistically, takes mom and daughter on a trip to Italy to try and make things work. (Mom has always wanted to go, having Italian roots, and having taken a night class in something or other.) On the trip, dude, in typical fashion, loses the traveler's checks, he and mom have a big fight, and he leaves, leaving mom and daughter penniless, language-less and angry with each other in Emilia Romagna.

Mom decides that the best thing to do is keep the rental car and drive down to Sicily, where she thinks she has a great-aunt. So begins the road-trip through, among other places, Tuscany.

Mom and daughter have various adventures. They stop in a village where an elderly lady is madly trying to prepare enough gnocchi for a wedding feast in a few days. For lodging and food, mom and daughter stop and help nonna. We see them kneading the dough, laughing as they throw flour in each others' faces, etc. A beautiful wedding (mom cries surreptitiously).

A couple of handsome peasants are stomping the olives to make oil in another place. Mom and daughter stop, flirt with the guys, and get their toes oily. (Many sensual shots.) Mom lets daughter drink some wine. They talk about the facts of life. Daughter begins to understand how hard mom's life has been.

They stop and admire frescoes in Assisi. Mom remembers something or other from her night class and so they understand the beauty of the paintings much better than the snotty guide who won't let them join the tour.

Finally they make it to Sicily and find the great-aunt. They stay with her and settle into a gentle pace of life. They decide to stay there. (Scenes of dude arguing with car rental office in Milano airport about where the hell the car is.) Daughter likes a young fisher-dude but can only see him if accompanied by several old ladies dressed entirely in black. Mom laughs. Later, mom likes older fisher-dude but can only see him if accompanied by several old ladies dressed entirely in black. Daughter laughs. They laugh together. Film ends when daughter goes off to film school at NYU.

Brandsmart

2006-09-05T20:56:00.000-04:00

You've got to hand it to Starbucks; it was a masterpiece of branding. Re-issuing Moby Dick with the character Dillon renamed after their product. What will be next, I wonder? A new edition of Pepsi Karenina? Country-house whodunnits with the little Belgian Hercule Perrier? A Tempest-toss'd isle ruled over by the magus Chik-fil-a?

I can't wait.

dispatch from gotham

2006-09-01T18:58:00.000-04:00

Ernesto is about to hit NYC in the form of ... some rain. Please worry about me, though, for it is likely to be upsetting to my new routine. I am very steadfast about my routine.

You see, ever since intensive therapy has made me back into an industrious member of society, there has been no stopping me. When I am not in therapy, I am either busy in my work area or at the gym. Yes, my dear nonny mice, it's the straight and narrow life for me!

hurricane warmings

2006-08-29T18:25:00.000-04:00

doing hurricane preparedness for ernesto, as our local authorities urged us to do, was nothing short of feverish. first, i had to run to the salon to get a haircut. i told myself, "jonie v., you don't want to be trapped in a hurricane with your hair less than freshly cut." second, i had to get back-up batteries for my laptop. i mused: "jonie v., you don't want to find yourself in the middle of a 'cane without being able to blog about it." third, i had to rush to the store to buy chocolate chip cookies and milk. "jonie v.," i told myself, "you really, really don't want to find yourself stranded without chocolate chip cookies!"

now, as the first "squalls" hit the dark-green leaves attached to the large trees hovering outside my windows, i feel safe. my hair, thanks to the hairdresser's wise product-placing advice, is not frizzy but curly. my laptop is humming cozily. cookies are seasoning to perfection in my cupboard.

from where i sit, writing, i could be in a cabin in the middle of a forest. the trees have grown back so luscious from last year's hurricane beatings! their crowns are large and strong, and their bows weighed down by rich bunches of leaves. even as "squalls" beat them, they look calm and majestic, as if they had endured this for centuries and couldn't be bothered to look ruffled.

in truth, the leaves i see outside my window are barely moving at all. "squalls" are hitting south florida at just below sound-barrier-breaking speed, and look at these leaves, baby. they are a sight to behold. tough as nails. hard as rocks. tenacious as clams.

want a chocolate chip cookie?

that's my buoy

2006-08-28T14:49:00.000-04:00

If I were a lobsterman, my buoys would have these colors. Under each of my buoys would lie a lobster trap full of robust, expensive lobsters. I would go out each morning and either put out the traps, or collect them. Or both. There is a science to these things; don't ask me to explain it to you here. I need to learn up on it first, memorize tidal cycles and breeding seasons and etcetera. I would not need to memorize which buoy colors were my family's, because I would just spontaneously grab these buoys for their beauty. If I were a lobsterman, I would also be burlier than I am now. My name would probably be Jake, or Chad... But I digress.

My thoughts go out to those nonny mice who live near waters more tempest-toss'd than these.

soft marble floor

2006-08-27T21:50:00.000-04:00

(In Ayasofya in Istanbul from A.D. 537 or thereabouts.)

guilty about what?

2006-08-27T12:30:00.000-04:00

david sedaris, who lives in paris, watches a movie every day. has been doing so for years. i bet he hasn't yet seen the inside of a gym, either.

have a very, very safe flight

2006-08-25T02:20:00.000-04:00

ryan air's got the right idea.

I'm not sure, but today I may have had my last glimmer of sanity

2006-08-23T12:31:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure, but today I may have had my last glimmer of sanity. I decided that a good way to help deal with our ant problem would be to kill 100 ants per day. Squash them. "Simsby," I told myself, "you're going nuts!" Then I started squashing... one, two, three, I made it up to about 10. And I thought, "This isn't nuts at all."

Help!

under a star-studded sky, regardless

2006-08-11T01:21:00.000-04:00

it is the middle of the night on the east coast of the united states of america, but the terrorists never sleep. this is why jonie v. is awake, watchful over her fellow nonny mice who might, in their lovely innocence, have fallen asleep! she would never want the nonny mice's sleep to be disrupted by disturbing thoughts of terrorist plots! jonie v. is watching over you, li'l mice! sleep easy!

jonie v. knows how to ward off terrorist attacks on her follow nonny mice. for instance, she has never given anyone the password to this site! she knows much better than to do that! also, she's very careful never to use the word 'bomb' either in speech or in writing, especially on the internet! this is a very important security measure in the united states of america! finally, jonie v. takes night excursions to the airport and to little havana, to monitor, respectively, the terror alert in the flying world and the state of the cuban revolution! sleep easy, little mice, sleep easy!

(some of these trips are documented on this very blog!)!

it is, in fact, a quiet night in the united states of america. no hurricane has yet hit our land and not a single enemy b_ _ _ has detonated in the country since the 1993 attack on the world trade center. the people of the united states of america sleep easy indeed! fortunately, a possible terrorist attack against planes directed towards the united states of america was foiled yesterday by the brave english police! jonie v. loves the english police who, with their american counterparts, keep us safe!

occasionally, jonie v. wonders why her trips to the airport and to little havana, her watchful nights, and her scrupulous security measures don't keep the whole world safe and not just her fellow nonny mice and the people of the united states of america! but jonie v. is just a little nonny mouse! jonie v. is no superman!

jonie v. doesn't want to be superman. but she wouldn't mind a long night of sound, deep, dreamless sleep, a long, tender night in which everyone in the world promises not to harm anyone else, in which not a single gun is fired or knife unsheathed. jonie v. would not mind one single, solitary night on earth in which neither rock nor fist hits another's flesh, nor wood, nor metal, nor hard plastic. a night without bruises or cuts. a night without insults to the body or the soul. a night without danger.

this night would have to be prepared very carefully, of course, because danger is not very different from the perception of danger. so, all the people in the world would have to be notified of this special, harmless night: not only the potential perpetrators, but also the victims! maybe it could be a special UN goal for 2020! everyone on earth would be asked to sign a pledge that he or she will inflict no harm on that night, no harm at all to anyone else! and everyone would, because what need is there to inflict harm when no harm can possibly come? a whole, long, dark night of guaranteed harmlessness! what a lovely dream!

some difficulties, of course, would have to be anticipated and discussed. but that's life, isn't it? nothing is ever simple.

but jonie v. has already spent enough time night-dreaming this wakeful dream! it's time for her to resume her rounds and her watchfulness! the password to this site has to be kept secret! the word 'bomb' unuttered! little havana and the airport monitored!

good night, my lovelies, good night!

summer fictions

2006-08-09T14:24:00.000-04:00

these ridiculously cliched images will be of no interest to anyone but the occasional person wondering what's so special about brief tropical sunsets, large puddles, digital cameras, and gentle photoshopping, in no particular order.

MIA 3:35 am

2006-08-07T15:05:00.000-04:00

we're still paying attention, bitches!

2006-08-04T15:19:00.000-04:00

A Lebanese musician on his balcony improves a duet with the Israeli bombs falling on Beirut.

Summer Glory No. 3 (aka Castro is Unwell, Jubilation in Little Havana)

2006-08-02T12:49:00.000-04:00

versailles is behind you, on your right, all around you. the night is clocking at a cool low eighties. the sound of car horns is deafening. you are sipping a fake-decaf cortadito that will keep you up al night. everyone is delirious with happiness.

drive kami, drive!

2006-08-01T16:15:00.000-04:00

What is Kami doing driving? You can't drive if your legs are broken, Kami!

[You can see Kami driving her white car, coming from the top of the screen at about 1:20 into the footage, going the wrong way down the street. And how did she get back to India, anyhow?]

Come back to the five-and-dime, Kami Sutra Kami Sutra!

i love

2006-07-31T19:20:00.000-04:00

i take love seriously. there are people i love and people i like a lot but don't exactly love. when referring to other humans, people use 'love' to mean all sorts of things. here are a few of them:

like a lot
likey
lust after
feel extremely fond of
want to see all the time
am given great pleasure by
is/are part of my family
have been friends with for a long time
admire
wouldn't mind meeting for coffee once in a while
find entertaining
would willingly give my life for
would kill me not to have in my life
put up with

people love animals and things, too. the feeling of love people have for animals and things tends to be a little less complicated, because it ultimately hinges on ownership or the desire for ownership. the maddening thing about humans is that we can't own them (not that we don't try). if you try to own them, you fuck yourself up. what i'm trying to say is, it doesn't work.

here is a thing that people say that i simply don't understand the meaning of:

i love my country

huh?

the only way in which this sentence makes a tiny little bit of sense to me is if i tweak it to mean:

i want my country (or people from my country) to win some major sports event.

like, for instance, now that it looks as if floyd landis might lose his victory of the tour de france because he tested abnormally high for testosterone (he says that's just the guy he is), i'm upset. i want landis to have won the tour de france. in this sense, i do love the united states of america.

other, better times

2006-07-29T22:35:00.000-04:00

in my first or second year of high school i locked a janitor in a closet and threw away the key. it became a bit of a big deal, because the poor man, a guy in his thirties with a strong lisp, started banging on the door and screaming, thus causing a whole lot of commotion. eventually, i went looking for the key and let him out. he was pissed, but he already knew it had been me (who else could it be?) so he just told me i was maleducata maleducata maleducata and we left it at that. generally speaking, i was nice to him. i was nice to everyone. but i was also irrepressibly naughty. so, generally speaking, he liked me. he just didn't like being locked up in the closet, and who can blame him?

this is what happened. we had had gym, a class i hated with a passion, and were making our way out of the gym area when i saw the janitor in the closet with the key in the keyhole on the outside. you can't pass on an occasion like this. i gently closed the door, took the key, and joined my classmates on the way up the stairs. my best friend was the only one who saw my lightening-speed action and told me, astonished, that i couldn't do that. "you can't do that," she said. we were just about up a floor at that point, so i decided that the best way to deal with the situation was to throw the key in the spacious stairwell. i was sure someone would find it and let the man out. but, judging from the commotion during the following class period, no one had any idea where the key was. so i asked my teacher if i could go to the bathroom and headed instead back to the gym, where i quickly found the key, pushed my way through the small crowd that had assembled in front of the closet, and let my friend the janitor out. as i said, he shouted at me a bit but i said i really had to get back to class. i am sure i apologized. as i said, i was a nice kid.

it is astonishing to me, having lived in america this long now, to realize how much we got away with when we were kids in italy (from what i hear from my nieces and nephews, it's pretty much the same now). we were drug free, alcohol free, candy free. candy free! at recess, a vendor came to sell homemade sandwiches with salame, pancetta, or ham, and that was all the food at our disposal. also, there was no culture of bullying in our school. if someone was not liked, people just ignored him or her. i was, easily, the naughtiest kid in the whole school, the only one who, for the five years i was there, ever risked expulsion because of bad behavior, and locking that door was just about as bad as my behavior got.

there were no repercussions for the closet accident. since i was doing something like that just about every day, the principal had given up on trying to punish me for this or that naughtiness and hoped instead for a general reformation of me as a person. my parents were constantly consulting with him, and my mother was constantly pissed at me, while my father didn't give a damn. eventually, i grew out of most of it, though in my last year i made my latin teacher, an elderly, dowdy lady, leave the classroom in tears. i had to go find her and console her while the class waited in paralyzed stillness. i think she was pacified because i remember returning to class and assuring everyone that the teacher would be back soon, which is exactly what happened. truth be told, after five years of me, my classmates were a bit fed up, but that time, too, there were no repercussions.

everywhere you go especially on 6th avenue

2006-07-29T19:31:00.000-04:00

Jonie V. and Simsby are popping up all over New York. To misquote Pepper Labeija, Mother of the House of Labeija, "New York is all wrapped up in being Jonie and Simsby."

Walking down 6th Ave, I look to my left ...

... and to my right.

Snow Ponies

2006-07-28T00:29:00.000-04:00

Marvel together to keep warm because that's what pony pals do!
(How (re-)presentational...!)

Summer Glory No. 2 (aka Every Angel is Terrible)

2006-07-27T23:13:00.000-04:00

You are sitting in the balcony at the Polish National Home, eye level with the beautiful old-fashioned disco ball. You are sipping a too-sweet vodka tonic from a plastic glass. The MC introduces the first act, whose first lyric that you understand is a quote from Rilke. Before you know it, you have nothing left to say for yourself. You are very very happy.

Some pictures came out really small, but in them you can see Antony, who can't keep his hands still, helped by a member of Cocorosie, previewing his new hit, "Bouncy Balls." There is also someone from Matmos, whose tribute to Alan Turing is a version of "Cockles and Mussels," sung last night by, yes, Antony:

Speaking of fast horses

2006-07-25T16:23:00.000-04:00

"Race Day" is up.

Preview: someone was thinking about tropical crafts...

I want to use your words for "Snow Ponies," so go get a drink and start making a list.

a therapeutic puzzler for you nonny mouseketeers!

2006-07-22T11:57:00.000-04:00

As jonie v. has repeatedly pointed out to me, the City is having a Profound Effect on me and my Personality. I therefore decided to go to Therapy. Has any of you ever had Group? I usually have Individual so I thought this would be a nice change.

After the initial Sharing Phase we separated into Pairs and Small Groups. I was paired with a model scout from Finland. It turned out to be very revealing! I uncovered so much Good Stuff. About me.

Now, which Nonny Mouse is clever enough to figure out the Address to which I went for Therapy? The Winner will receive a pint of Yoghurt!

the nonny mice are paying attention, bitches

2006-07-20T12:52:00.000-04:00

i believe i am talking for all of my fellow nonny mice when i say that, even though we are all happy children who like to tell each other funny things, we are not unaware that lebanon and northern israel are being bombed to smithereens and more people than one can contemplate without throwing up (that would be, like, one) have been or are being killed, maimed, displaced, and left bereft by the unconscionable violence unleashed by stupid, vindictive, greedy, and deeple reprehensible political factions. we are also aware that western governments (ours in particular) are irresponsibly sitting on their hands and doing exactly nothing to put the brakes on this horror and shame. so please, dear reader, even as you read our funny and charming stories, know that we bleed for our middle eastern brothers and sisters and wish them all peace, peace, peace.

Summer Glory No. 1

2006-07-20T00:01:00.000-04:00

You are standing on 10th St., Coney Island. The Cyclone is to your left, the Wonder Wheel to your right. The subway is at your back. The sun is going down. The Main Stage is right in front of you, and here is what you get to watch:

For more, go to our favorite outerborough vegan website.

Degeneration

2006-07-19T23:51:00.000-04:00

It always happens with Mad Libs.

Campout: Last Chance!

2006-07-19T16:15:00.000-04:00

The Ponies' camping adventures will post tonight. If you haven't sent your words, please do so asap! Remember, we need 10 nouns, 2 verbs, and 2 adjectives.

heat wave in the city

2006-07-19T10:13:00.000-04:00

makes the buildings bend.

Why Some Athletes Crack, and Others Don't

2006-07-18T12:07:00.000-04:00

TAUNTS Jackie Robinson faced abuse without attacking as Zinédine Zidane did

From the New York Times Sunday Week In Review, July 16.

So, you ask, why *do* some crack, while others don't?
'Cause some are good darkies, and some are crazy Muslims!

things get worse for materazzi

2006-07-17T18:04:00.000-04:00

This is also quite bad news for me, as fond as I have grown of the world-champion Italian squad.

THIS JUST IN: Zinedine Zidane may be a bourgeois conceit too!

stayin' alive

2006-07-17T10:30:00.000-04:00

the other day i thought, "jonie v. , trying to be good is incredibly hard. why not give it a rest?"

i thought, "hell, yeah," and i decided i'd be bad.

but, it turns out, trying to be bad is incredibly hard, too; so i've been going for the middle of the road, trying to be nothing, being what comes.

i've done this for a few days now, and i've noticed that i'm just the same as always, the same as i was when i was trying to be good. which disappointed me some, because if i'm just the same whether i'm trying to be good or trying to be nothing, it means that all my trying-to-be-good efforts were just one great big fat failure. (there's another option, that i'm naturally good, but by golly, i'm fucking well not).

lessons in femininity

2006-07-17T10:07:00.000-04:00

When I was 9, my friend Lucia told me not to bother her because she was in a bad mood. I asked her why she was in a bad mood. By way of response she took out a sheet of paper and a pencil, and started drawing a circle: dragging the pencil lead around and around and around and around, obsessively, for a really long time until she had completely filled in a huge black circle on the paper. That’s how I learned what a period was.

and this is a girl

2006-07-16T02:08:00.000-04:00

This is a boy, though

2006-07-16T02:07:00.000-04:00

A contribution

2006-07-15T11:58:00.000-04:00

For more go to www.newenlightenment.com/beauty.html...

channeling the pony, with a jonie v. touch

2006-07-14T22:21:00.000-04:00

this blog is in trouble. all the pictures posted lately have been of males. to see a picture of a female member of the species you need to go here, where, bless her heart, jules had to decency to post a drawing or something with some good-looking medieval females. now, i liked the world cup like the next person, heck, i loved the friggin' world cup, but you cannot have only men on the blog. it spoils the blog, that's what it does. it unbalances it. it makes it crooked. so here i am, a valiant foot soldier at the rescue of the nonny mouse!

in this here picture you see the fabulous anne hathaway, who stars in the equally fabulous the devil wears prada. anne has a mouth the reminds one of julia roberts, but since she's cute you can forgive her that.

also in the devil wears prada is the astounding meryl streep. now i should definitely know better than to say "also in...", because, as everyone who's seen the movie knows, meryl is the damn movie!

and here, finally, are meryl and anne together! please don't be fooled by their apparent closeness. if you saw the film, you know what i mean.

funny picture

2006-07-12T22:43:00.000-04:00

i found this really funny picture here. does someone on this blog know french? i don't know what it says at the bottom....

Road Trip

2006-07-12T20:20:00.000-04:00

I. Butterscotch is as jubilant as candy! She has invited Sparkleworks to go on a road trip with her! They're off to model New York City! These golden ponies fraternize in the car together with the radio cranked up. When they arrive, they head straight to the Empire State Speed Bump and careen all the way to the top to get a view of the city! Then they screech in Times Square and see themselves looking tawdry in the giant television screen. Butterscotch poses in her Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull! Finally, they make their way to the Statue of Popcorn. These pony pals agree that Lady Liberty looks victorious in her syringe. What a fetching road trip!

II. Butterscotch is as mushy as candy! She has invited Sparkleworks to go on a road trip with her! They're off to stumble New York City! These golden ponies hijack the car together with the radio cranked up. When they arrive, they head straight to the Empire State Boobies and gargle all the way to the top to get a view of the city! Then they prick in Times Square and see themselves looking blunt in the giant television screen. Butterscotch poses in her buffalo chicken tenders! Finally, they make their way to the Statue of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. These pony pals agree that Lady Liberty looks ripe in her cafe cubano. What a dizzy road trip!

Next: "Campout"
10 nouns
2 verbs
2 adjectives

Dress You Up

2006-07-11T22:46:00.000-04:00

The pink ponies are having a costume party! Cherry Blossom is a princess, so she wears an Italian and carries a World Cup. Very victorious! Sweet Breeze comes as a soccer player, so she has on a Fabio and pretends to shoot! Sky Wishes and Pinkie Pie are both dressed as fast babies. They each wear a Gennaro and have underwear hanging from their neck. To play the part, they both dive during the party! Rainbow Flash comes as a clown. She starts to dribble in her elegant costume. And Fluttershy? She comes to the costume party as a photographer, of course! She snaps victorious pictures of all her pink pony pals!

The next story is called Road Trip.
4 adjectives
4 verbs
4 nouns

Ponyville

2006-07-10T21:17:00.000-04:00

I. Ponyville is a crummy place where all the ponies live and bubble together. You can usally hear remedies singing while the rancorous butterflies bomb. The Celebration Castle has enviable towers and a purple roof. It is decorated with a turtle and with flags that play in the wind. Nearby, the ponies massage in their own velvety homes. They often go to Pony Park to take balloon rides! And all the ponies love to bake in the Greener-Than-Green Meadow, where the sun always shines and there are rollerskates and cucumbers everywhere! I wish I could whip in Ponyville!

II. Ponyville is a cheap place where all the ponies live and fill together. You can usally hear couches singing while the wet butterflies approach. The Celebration Castle has extensive towers and a purple roof. It is decorated with filth and with flags that massacre in the wind. Nearby, the ponies entice in their own red homes. They often go to Pony Park to take balloon rides! And all the ponies love to nab in the Greener-Than-Green Meadow, where the sun always shines and there are nights and bars everywhere! I wish I could screw in Ponyville!

You're getting the idea!
For number two, please send
5 nouns
4 adjectives and
3 verbs

Finally, I have to reprint for you the complete list of adjectives the book recommended for the first story: silky, shiny, silly, fancy, friendly, lovely, magical, new, super, furry, glittery, pink. It is a beautiful list, no? OK, now send me some wet rancorous approaching butterfly bombs!

true sportsmanship

2006-07-10T14:11:00.000-04:00

I don't know what this is an advertisement for; maybe watches. Whatever! The real message of this ad is sportsmanship. Look: here you have (starting on the left) two praeter-stylish players from the world-champion Italian squad (both working together admirably well despite the fact that only one of them was chosen for the Dolce & Gabbana underwear campaign). Next to them you have Trezeguet, happy in his ignorance that he would soon miss a penalty kick against the world-champion Italian squad. Rounding out the table you have Nedved, a happy-go-lucky Czech player, smiling in spite of the fact that his team would not do as well as the US team did against the world-champion Italian squad.

Two winners, two losers, one table, one ball. And they all know what time it is. Time for fair-play!

It turns out that the world-champion Italian squad is chock full of players who literally embody this harmonious equanimity. Francesco Totti, for example, ecumenically makes himself available to endorse products even if they have no connection to soccer whatsoever. Here you can see him in an ad for cylindrical tubing.

If it's longer than it is wide, Totti's your man!

In the spirit of true sportsmanship, he shares his knowledge of endorsements with teammate Luca Toni. Here Totti is seen (after a lovely haircut) showing Toni the hand-signal for "money."

Cannavaro looks on at this lesson approvingly. You jokers!

Have I mentioned, by the way, that the world-champion Italian squad is the only team in the 2006WC to successfully use that typeface on the back of their jerseys? They are. Other teams used the same typeface, but with the letters too far apart. See?

The typeface just doesn't look quite as good with that spacing; I'm sorry.

Anyway, you just can't help but be impressed with the exemplary conduct of the world-champion Italian squad. Why, they even treat the Cup itself with an adoration that most human beings would be overjoyed to receive.

What are you whispering to the Cup, Gattuso? Is it a secret, or can you tell us?

Report from New York

2006-07-10T11:44:00.000-04:00