Blogging about nothing.

 
Newest Addition to Top 100 Paragraphs List

Oh, come now. Don't you maintain such a list?

Anyway, here's my most recent addition, from an E! Online article describing Siegfried & Roy's history:

The two met aboard a cruise ship in 1959. Roy was a bellboy, traveling with a cheetah he had stolen from a German zoo. Siegfried was a steward, who performed magic tricks for the ship's passengers on the side. A partnership was born.

I smell mini-series.
posted by mindse at 6:52 PM

 
Former Federal Judicial Clerk Turned Ebay Addict Seeks Help


Something about the fact that I now must measure out my life in coffee spoons filled with little six minute increments has made the Internet even more seductive. I have become addicted to Ebay. In the last 24 hours I have purchased a bookcase, three laundry hampers, and an oil-on-canvas reproduction of a Rousseau painting.

Then I found this site that collects disturbing auctions, and now I'm addicted to that.
posted by mindse at 12:16 PM

 
At Long Last, I am Vindicated

Have you ever known that something was true in your heart of hearts and yet your dearest friends doubted you? Painful, isn't it? Here's a little story about believing in yourself against all odds.

When I was a child, I watched the television program Too Close for Comfort. Didn't we all? Who could resist lovable Ted Knight as grouchy Mr. Rush, and Jim J. Bullock as somehow-not-gay Monroe. A few years ago, I was telling a group of friends about the most bizarre episode of Too Close for Comfort I could remember. It was a "very special" Too Close for Comfort. A very special Too Close for Comfort, in which Monroe was raped. By two women. In a van.

I could not have predicted the scoffs, the gasps, the jokes. I was mocked. Soundly mocked. Certain that this could not have happened, my friends chided me for dreaming up this nonsensical obscenity. Frankly, they began looking at me just a little differently. What is wrong with her, their looks suggested, that would permit her to come up with such a bizarre notion?

As I often do, I turned to the Internet for comfort. Surely some maniac has a Too Close for Comfort website. Surely someone has plucked this gem of a "very special episode" apart and turned in the resulting term paper to their seminar at Brown on gender roles and violence on 80's television. TO NO AVAIL. I had finally stumbled upon something so obscure not even the Internet held any evidence of it.

Or had I? During the ensuing years I began to doubt myself. Had I really seen such a thing? Did I dream it? If so, what in God's name did it mean? Clearly gay man raped by two women in a van at a mall parking lot? And, dear God, was it CHRISTMAS when this happened? Perhaps there was something wrong with me after all...

This self-doubt persisted until Saturday evening.

My dear friend Meg called, sounding shaken, saying "I owe you the most sincere apology."

"What?!?" I replied, excited, "The Dad from ALF really is a crack ho?" (This is yet another of those things of which I'm certain and yet can find no proof.)

"No," she said, taking a deep breath, "Monroe was raped."

The veil was lifted.

It turns out that VH-1, God Bless Em, is running a show called "Super Secret TV Formulas". Episode One focuses on "very special" shows. AND DIRECTLY ADDRESSES THE EPISODE I REMEMBERED.... including depicting a shaken Monroe, saying, "No one takes this seriously unless it happens to a woman."

WHAT?!?

But, yes. It happened.

The apologetic phone calls have been coming in fast and furious now. My friend Dave tells me, "This must have been what it was like when they found out the world was round."
posted by mindse at 2:55 PM