Why I Oughtta

Summer vacation has blown thus far, as it has entailed:

1. going to Chicago to bury the last of my grandparents
2. being homebound for the past 3 days with an extraordinarily painful case of pharyngitis, and
3. missing out on plans to go to NYC, Connecticut and to go see Arrah and the Ferns.

Send boys, chocolate, mix tapes, or some combination thereof.

This is already turning into a disaster.

As anticipated, upper lip is not keeping up with the rest of my face. The result is a sort of Amish/Pennsylvania Dutch affair that pleases nobody. Furthermore, half of the hair on said upper lip is growing in blonde.

It also itches like a motherfucker. Currently mulling the possibility of shaving under my jaw, like they said to do on Queer Eye back when that show was on and people watched it.

So Valentine’s Day cards are totally not happening. I guess, in theory, I could still send them out but I’d have to explain why they were late. And saying that you were at a funeral in Ohio the weekend you planned on getting them done will kind of quash the merriment you intended to inspire with the card.

But fear not. I’m still going to send something out, likely as a celebration for a Jewish holiday, an obscure American holiday or for some reason I just make up. We’ll see what happens. I have no timetable to give you.

Here’s the card I was going to send out — a text-added version of the famous Sacramento headless lamp person photo.

I’m pleased with it — a shame it’s not getting printed up. I guess I could have sent it next year, but hopefully I’ll have purchased my fancy new camera by then and shot a whole new crop of photos due to my renewed interest in taking pictures.

Well, that’s disappointing.

Remember how I was talking about that book Only Revolutions by Mark Danielewski? He wrote one of my favorites, House of Leaves, and now he has just come out with another.

So I went to take a look at it on my lunch break and there’s no effing way I’m reading that thing. House of Leaves was complicated and meta — it had appendices, weirdo type, footnotes, drawings. The prose was swirly and layered and disjointed. But there was a really cool story that was very straightforward if you followed it.

Only Revolutions has the same weirdo type (the right 2/3 of the page is in 15 point font and is all prose-poetry-like while the left third is footnotes). I can barely read it. I was going to bring it up for book club on Tuesday, but, as Whitney says, “Hell to the no.”