BlabberMouse

Now With 75% More Blabber

I'm all about the shout outs today. It's the lazy busy blogger's way. When I'm having trouble cobbling together a complete thought, I get out my trusty blogger toolkit and start digging around in there ... ope! ... what have we here? Why it's a set of links! I'll just jingle these around in your face and hope you won't notice that I haven't actually said anything. Jingle jingle.

I pulled this linking stunt over at Her Nashville this afternoon. And no, those other bloggers did not stuff dollars in my g-string using Pay Pal. I just really like them. You know what else I like? I like the fact that the contractors FINALLY WENT HOME and are not coming back. Cute and friendly as they are. Larry was all, "Do you think we should invite them over for Christmas Eve, or will they still be here?" All for the want of a wall outlet.

Anyway, as long as I'm hosting this big love fest, I have to tell you that I love everything about this short film, The Beckoning of Lovely, except for the fact that I wasn't there to help make it. So I'm sharing it with you, on the off chance that I am not The Last Person On Earth to See It. I haven't had a chance to follow up on the next phase of Miss Amy's* project--for all I know, all the lovely has already been beckoned--but GOD I hope it hasn't, because I WANT TO PLAY.

*My first encounter with Amy Krouse Rosenthal was through her book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, which is simultaneously funny and sweet (and would make a nice little gift for the humor appreciating sister or gal pal in your life, if you're in the market). WHAT IS GOING ON WITH ME? Note to self: Get some real advertisers to pander to.

It's Independence Day

And what song is stuck in my head? The Star Spangled Banner? No. America the Beautiful? Please.

No, the song that has been thrumming through my head all week is Independence Day, Martina McBride's overwrought anthem for battered women.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this song by Gretchen Peters, allow me to summarize its salient points:

Cute eight-year-old girl goes to the county fair on the Fourth of July while her drunk abusive father beats the crap out of her mother. Because the mother can't take any more of the father's shit, she burns their house down with both of them in it. They die, and the little girl is sent to a group home.

It's very festive.

You know, I get what the writer was saying. Sort of. Although I don't necessarily advocate lighting yourself on fire when you want to declare your independence from abuse. Surely there's a better way?

What's hilarious is that Martina McBride insists that the mother doesn't die at the end of the song. She says she never would have recorded it if she felt like the mother died.

Umm ... okay. If you say so.

Well, she lit up the sky that Fourth of July
By the time that the firemen come
They just put out the flames and took down some names
and sent me to the county home
Now I ain't sayin' it's right, or it's wrong
But maybe it's the only way
Talk about your revolution
It's Independence Day

Yes, it's all very clear to me now. One of the handsome fireman was taking down the mother's name. So he could ask her out. And the daughter went to the group home, so her mom could have some "mommy time" with the nice volunteer firefighter. And then they all ate blueberry pie for breakfast the next morning.

It's a happy song after all. And now Martina and I can both enjoy Independence Day.

I hope you all do, too.

No Theme, No Thread, No Problem.

That's a Kenny Chesney song waiting to happen. Don't deny it.

I wasn't even going to post tonight, but then I saw this link on Twitter, and I had to share it with you.

You didn't click on it, did you?

Because you don't know what it is, right?

It could be monkey porn, for all you know.

I hear you.

I hate it when bloggers are all, I am totally loving THIS, and THIS, and OMG, WAIT TILL YOU SEE THIS!

Life is short. SPECIFICITY is our friend.

So I'll tell you. It's a series of pictures called Photobombers ("People who hilariously ruin your nice little picture"). And it will probably make you laugh harder than it should.

In other news, I found this annoying:

Encountered a grown woman at Panera this weekend while dining with my four year old son. She was chatting away with her male companion, eating a sandwich, while kneeling in the booth. But not kneeling like an older person kneels to, say, weed a garden (which would be weird enough). She was kneeling the way a kneecap-less two year old kneels while watching Teletubbies. Butt flat on the seat. Legs folded under at each side. Bobbing her head cutely, like "Look at me! So tiny and nimble! A free-spirit! Like a baby, almost! Except that I have breasts. And a driver's license that says I'm almost 40."

Allrightythen.

Going for a hat trick:

Number of times today I have checked celebritybabyblog.com to see if Angelina has given birth to her twins: 11 12 13 times. 

Editor's Note: I have now checked 14 times.

It's In The Bag

My friend Erin forwarded me one of those “One More Thing to Worry About--Pass it On!” emails yesterday—about how filthy women’s handbags are because of the disgusting places they go. For example, a woman will go to a restaurant, set her purse down on the floor in the bathroom and then place it on the dining table when she returns. That night, one of her dining companions will become seriously ill and blame it on the Moo Goo Gai Pan. Evidently a microbiologist tested a variety of women’s bags and found everything from salmonella to vomit to fecal matter in the handbags’ fibers.

This news is paralyzing to me. Not only am I afraid to touch my purse, I am afraid to look at it now that I know it’s full of grimy little parasites staring back at me.

I always suspected my purses were the enemy. Not because they harbored bacteria, but because they harbored my personal belongings in much the same way the Bermuda triangle harbors ships. I’ll hear my cell phone ringing somewhere inside my bag and have to go spelunking through its interior with a headlamp and a pick axe in order to find it.

This is why I keep buying new purses and tossing the old ones onto the compost heap in the closet at the top of the stairs. That and I’m planning to use the compost to plant a majestic tree in our front yard, which will one day sprout colorful handbags, board games, and ladies’ pants that need to be hemmed.

But back to the purses. So hard to find a good one. Someone should start a match.com for women and purses. A Purseharmony.com perhaps. I could create my profile, and the purses could email me about why they think we’d be a good match.

“Hi Amanda! I’m 18 by 14 inches, I have two exterior pockets for your cell phone and sunglasses, and one large compartment on my interior wall in which to keep your wallet for easy access! My strap is 3.5 inches wide and adjustable, and I can easily carry the latest issue of Vogue, one bestselling novel, two bags of dinosaur snacks, a binky, a sippy cup, two spare diapers, one pair of Thomas the Tank Engine underwear, and a small container of baby wipes, without getting bent out of shape. I am relaxed and casual, but people still say I’m very chic. Without getting too personal too soon, let's just say that my bottom is reinforced with a heavy-duty non porous material that repels dirt and parasites. So what do you say?”

If you’re for real, I say I'll pick you up at eight.

Next Time Just Leave it At Neuroscience

As a member of the Vanderbilt Career Connection, I occasionally get inquiries from students or recent graduates who are looking for jobs, internships or advice about how to break into advertising.

Last month, a young man (who is still in his sophmore year) asked me, without a trace of irony, if he should start talking to headhunters.

Talk to them about what? I wanted to ask.

This week, I got an email from a student who will graduate this spring with a degree in Neuroscience. He feels his "experience" would make him a real asset in the advertising world.

I asked him to elaborate.

He responded that he'd been building an e-commerce web site (which is good!) but then he followed with, "The planning and advertising schemes necessary have been far more intriguing to me in their inventive necessities and creative ideation than anything else."

I can't tell you how much that sentence hurts my head.

And not just because this young man violently raped a thesaurus in order to conceive it. Or because it defies all laws of grammar. But because he put it in an e-mail.

It's like he was trying to wrap an Hermes Scarf around a Ramen noodle. It just makes no sense.

Granted, when I was in college, I could, in a single sitting, churn out enough pompous, nonsensical essay content to wallpaper the Louvre. I'd then write a follow-up essay about the essay cum wallpaper and its postmodern implications. For four years, I didn't have a single thought. Just notions.

.

So, I know this kid's being an ass.

Or at least I have a pretty good ideation.