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May 13, 2008 :: Nu shooz

Chuck Taylor One-Stars from Tar-jay. Made for walkin. Which I did yesterday and Blake and I will do tonight with our newly-clean doggies. A point: allow a white puppy to play with total, unbridled joy and abandon in an underdeveloped yard for the greater part of a sunny weekend, and you end up with a dodgey dirt-bomb on four legs, and muddy paw prints all over your green, mid-century couch. Yeah. That's exactly what. So, the squirmer was washed last night, which made her terrified, then sullen, then so ecstatic she peed a big crazy circle in the living room. Apparently, we can't win.

Other things since I last said anything of substance...

• Jane stopped puking. We think she ate a rogue chili pepper that rolled out the open kitchen window during a grilling party a week or so back. Other things that have rolled out that window: several ripening avocadoes, ant bait, a set of pudgy bluebird salt-n-pepper shakers, and the steel pins that are meant to keep Cabbagetown's not-so-finest from prying open our 120 year old sashes. Kind of useless, since most of the window weights are broken, and you'd have to be the Incredible Hulk to get one open over your head anyway.
• The wedding planneth beginnith. I have compiled (mostly) Indiana and Georgia guest lists, considered a rain contingency plan that sounds better than my original plan, and secured a wedding "planner" of sorts...for free. Industrious friends rock.
• We tried to plan a Memorial Day vacation. And then it backfired. We wanted to take the dog friends to the beach. Savannah is the closest. Tybee doesn't allow dogs. St. Simons/Jekyll is 5+ hours away, requires 3 night stays at all its hotels, and the van gets like 8 miles to the gallon. So, no beach for us right now. Instead, I think we're going to Athens to see a band or two, hang out with Blake's music-industry friends, drink $3 pint glass-sized gin and tonics, and dream about packing up our citified life, becoming bartenders, and buying a house in the country. Like we do every time we go to Athens. Because it sounds fun for a half a second.
  
• We watched Juno. I came into this one warily. I've read both the hype and the rebuttal from hipsters complaining that the movie was too hipstery. It's all blech. Pfaff. I knew I'd love this because I have a ridiculously high tolerance for witty banter and throwback references set in a world filled with flocked green wallpaper and beat-up late model vehicles. I enjoy twee. Especially the word twee. Gimme 5000 words of the Gilmore Girls. Give me stylized, intellectual meaninglessness. Give me more Dario Argento references in mainstream cinema. Don't give me sappy, teary-eyed techno-remakes of the stuff I remember from when I was eight. (Damn you, speedracer!!!) I don't think I'm special because I like this stuff, I just like it. It's part of who I am, and maybe even more part of who I was when the Thundercats were actually on TV and we log-rolled our already pegged jeans and turned up our collars. Look at my shoes, for god's sake. I'm unapologetic for my love of Wes Andersen and "sappy indie rock." But you detractors can suck it anyway. Oh, but the part where Jason Bateman becomes a creepy cradle-robber for a minute? Totally unnecessary. That completely skeeved me out. Why, Diablo Cody? Why?