So about a month ago I quietly snuck away for another two weeks of Writey Camp to work on something. (Okay, there is a book. At least one book and maybe another book.) I guess I didn’t say much about it (the book, and the maybe-other book) because I didn’t want to give anyone the impression that I would be returning with a book, a finished and fully realized entity with a title cover page printed with that classy Garamond font, because that’s still a long time from happening, people. This thing (the book) is really only a few months along and not yet viable outside parentheses, so please continue to go about your business, because, well, it’s gonna be awhile. Right now all that exists are some printouts that frankly looked a lot better when I was at Writey Camp, because apparently there’s something about artists’ colonies that gives you literary beer goggles when you read your own stuff. But still! It’s progress. And it felt good to be doing more than flailing around, or at the very least flailing around on a consistent schedule and in a picturesque location. Somehow by 8 am every morning I managed to be at my desk, showered and dressed and working. And holy crap, just the thought of that is so stupidly inspiring it makes me want to close my browser and work on the you-know-what, but just for you I’ll carry on.

In the middle of my time at Ragdale I woke up one night feeling something weirdly alive going on under the floorboards and hearing things in the house softly rattling. I had the vague sense that there was a lot more going on there than ought to be in a very old house in a semi-rural neighborhood in the middle of the night. I thought, well, that was something, and I went back to sleep. In the morning I found out it had been an earthquake. An earthquake! That means I got felt up by the world and you better believe I’m thrilled.

But now I am back in civilization, where my windows rattle from the boomy bass Albany Park cars driving through the alley, and I am working to get caught up with the rest of my life, in addition to being deep in the middle of doing a column and critiquing manuscripts for a writing conference in Portland next weekend. So I’ll post here when I can, but I feel like I’ve been tuned to a somewhat different frequency at the moment, one that isn’t much good for public broadcast. So please stand by. Before too long there will be another little seismic shift that will bring me more fully back to you guys, but for now I need just a bit more time to do my real world work, as well as listen to the things that are softly rattling in my head.

I’m doing one of those photo-a-day things at Flickr, wherein I try to take one half-decent photo a day, or at the very least POST one half-decent photo taken on another day when half-decent photo opportunities were more plentiful than they are on the particular day of posting. Yeah, hope that’s clear. Anyway, I’m trying to stay honest.

Oh, if you were wondering why you couldn’t get to Candyboots the last couple of days, I accidentally let the domain registration lapse. Oops, sorry. It’s back up! Sorry! Renewed all the way up to the End Times now, I swear.

The new BUST is on newsstands now, and if you buy it you can read my Pop Tart column on Britney Spears as well as a short interview I did with Ira Glass. I cannot quite bring myself to erase the recording of the original interview phone call, in which I laugh very loudly and horsily over every other thing Mr. Glass says. The gulf between the droll NPR radio career persona I often imagine for myself and the sad, sputtering reality is vast indeed, but oh well. As for the Britney piece, I wrote it when she was a bit more spinny-eyed than she is now, back when her future lifespan was looking as scanty as those shirt-dress-thingies she’d wear to the liquor store, and I figured I’d better write the column and gather her crazy roses while ye may, you know? But in a way I’m kind of glad that my article is a tad less relevant than it used to be. Perhaps you understand, too.

I did not mean this to be a hiatus. I just got through the first weekend of Kurosawa Fest, which is the latest installment of this thing my boyfriend does wherein he collects a director’s complete works and then watches them all according to a rigid schedule in a multi-weekend endurance event. So far it’s been exhausting and life-altering at the same time. I really do not recommend watching Kurosawa’s earliest works on bootleg Chinese DVDs that have subtitles translated from Japanese to Chinese to English by way of Babelfish, because all the philosophical dialogue about Judo mastery is at best hilarious (”Doing this stupid could make the karate down“) and at worst incomprehensible. But even those movies were great to watch in their own way, and we made it to the seriously awesome stuff like Ikiru and Seven Samurai. Six-word-summaries of all the films so far can be found here. We also have a Twitter for even more vicarious real-time action in case you care (and, I know, you probably don’t).

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Speaking of translations (sort of!) I heard yesterday that Random House is reissuing the Sweet Valley High books with a few strategic updates from their 80s incarnation. The Wakefield Twins are a “perfect size 4″ now, instead of the “perfect size 6″ that they were in 1983. It’s not clear whether they’re actually skinnier or whether vanity sizing is in effect, because of course medical science has yet to invent a reliable scale for fictional characters, but still, it’s kind of a big deal.

I definitely see Mo’s point about how the change attempts to remain faithful to the books. The fact that the girls are “perfect” remains the same; the only real difference is in the number that denotes perfection. Of course, it’s a stunningly barfy notion that perfection should be a size at all, and that’s a whole other can of worms that I’ll let someone else open, but at any rate, one can argue that really, the girls’ sizes were changed so that the girls could remain the same—perfectly perfect according to whatever standard currently applies.

And actually, that’s what I find even more insulting than the standards themselves—this blind stubborn quest to make the books feel precisely the same to a 12-year-old girl in 2008 as they did to a 12 year-old-girl in the 80s. What, exactly, is wrong with having some 2008 preteen figure out, by way of reading Sweet Valley High, that the idea of perfection was two sizes bigger twenty-five years ago than it is now? Is Random House afraid that if she’s allowed to think—just for a moment—about what that means, that she won’t be able to enjoy the book on its own terms? Or do they assume she can’t think at all? Does the current blatant non-perfection of “Size 6″ totally preclude this kid from understanding how Jessica and Elizabeth are envied, just because Size 6 may not be particularly enviable to her? Did she also read Little House on the Prairie and just have no freaking idea why someone would be jealous of Mary Ingalls, who only had “golden curls” and not a sweet rack or awesome clavicles? Just how many middle-grade and YA books published before 2005 are presumably now utterly confusing and unreadable to her because they’re about these so-called pretty pudgy girls who lumber around wearing culottes and listening to “Walkmans” and using pay phones?

I know how codgery this makes me sound, but, ahem, back in my day I found my way around all manner of inexplicable details in Judy Blume books (who “sets” their hair? why does everyone wear hats and live in New Jersey?) while still managing to relate to the characters and the stories. As an editor, I try to have a pretty good sense of what kids can figure out for themselves, and I suspect the people behind SVH ‘08 do, too. I bet they know better, in other words.

Of course, they also know how to get people to give a shit about Sweet Valley High 25 years later, which is to update the books just enough to push a few buttons about body image issues, send out some press releases to fan the flames, and then watch the fun and indignation that ensues. But what do you expect? It’s so Jessica of them! Ugh.

For extra credit, feel free to speculate about the standards by which the Wakefield Twins will be “perfect” in the 2033 reissue of Sweet Valley High. “As Elizabeth twirled her size 2 figure, the sun gleamed off her flawless Brazilian.” Because isn’t that where they’re headed at this rate? Sweet Valley indeed!

And this is exactly how I plan to spend the day, hanging out vacantly in my underwater disco with my koi and my jewels. Let me also contemplate the prophecies of the coming year, according to the greatest astrological wisdom the internet can offer (for free):

I found this one last night, since it runs in a New Zealand paper and is therefore from the future:

Expect the unexpected in 2008. Random events could occur and whether they are unusual or untested, you might be immediately aware of the benefits. Act on left-field ideas or crazy hunches without hesitation.

Random events could occur. I might be immediately aware of them. I could be somewhere in a situation where possibly I’d be compelled to act or react in a particular manner and WHOA! I have a crazy hunch this one will come true. The future does not lie!

Cafe Astrology says:

2008 will be a Number Eight year for you. Ruled by Saturn. This is a year of power and accomplishment. Actively seeking to expand, taking educated risks, and moving forward are highlighted. This is a year of opportunity, particularly in the material and business world, and opportunities need to be seized. It’s generally not a year to find a new love partner, simply because the focus is on the material world and your place in the world. This is a problem-solving year in which you can expect real, tangible results. Advice - take action, plan ahead, seize opportunities.

This is a pretty decent horoscope that appears to have been written by the Kellogg School of Management. I will put this into Powerpoint and review this at least once every quarter of this Number Eight Year, Mr. Saturn! Yes, sir!

Here is what Holiday Mathis says:

The experiences of this year help you connect your heart and head so you can live more fully in the moment. You’re popular and in demand over the next 10 weeks. Feel out situations before committing yourself. Give yourself permission to do what seems like fun! Profits soar in July. Relationships tighten in August. Libra and Aries adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 14, 3, 25, 31 and 17.

I’m popular! And I should have fun! I am giving myself permission to totally buy into this one. Though August sounds a little kinky, what with Libra and Aries and possibly the numbers 14 and 25 getting involved. I should really feel that out first. If you do not hear from me for 3 days in August please call 17 cops. Thanks!

Finally, the always mindblowing Lovepsychic.com weighs in:

Happy tremendous Thursday! Be conservation in all your actions today! A touchy Moon/Uranus contact creates chaotic situations. Maintain a flexible attitude and keep an open mind. Last minute changes come out of nowhere and people can have a indifferent or non cooperative attitude. Don’t expect too much when it comes to team work or group projects. It’s best to remain independent and solo today! If today is your birthday, happy birthday! You are a Pisces who is wonderfully creative. Sunday is your best day. The Moon is in the sign of Gemini. Best signs for the day are Gemini and Libra. Your dream symbol for the day is, “to dream of new shoes.”

Why, yes, Love Psychic, I will be conservation in all my actions! I will not be squander. Or liberalation. Or….whatever you mean. Also, should I just avoid touchy Moon/Uranus contact altogether, or just make sure I’ve had a few drinks first, or what? Please clarify! In the meantime I shall symbolically dream of dreaming of new shoes, which I sure as hell hope are more than metaphors, because I really fucking need new shoes.

I need to interrupt this rant to point out that I will be doing this Interview Show at the Hideout on Friday at 6:30. I will sit on a couch and Mark Bazer will interview me and it will be funny but maybe also thoughtful! I will get drink tickets. You will probably be able to tell I get drink tickets! Please come!

Okay, back to hating the ground. And late winter. And laundry, and overheated rooms, and drafty rooms, and sidewalk salt in places that are not sidewalks, and FOX Network, and the City of Chicago for having only a pretend recycling program, and people who call themselves “foodies,” and faux new wave, and being too tired to hate all the things that deserve to be hated, because DAMMIT.

2.) If you hadn’t gotten enough audio interview of me last week, you can also hear me on the KCRW show Good Food with Evan Kleiman this week. The original episode aired on Saturday but you can listen to it online or in podcast form. The interview is about Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan and you can hear me do my very best NPR voice.

3.) The little bitty grocery store I lamented in this entry has returned! Reopened! Reportedly a little spookier than before, but whatever! The Bounty bars have yet to come back though, and while I am grateful to the several of you who offered to send some, I think we’re going to wait until we’re just a little more desperate.

4.) I forgot what 4 was going to be, so it must be bedtime.

Now I am at home napping and coughing and just now I somehow managed to get my feeble fever brain to figure out how to embed the code to play this phone interview I did with Kim on Elastic Waist’s Daily Special show. Check it out!

Anyway, it was fun. I like how they really dug the valentine from yesterday!

Um, and I might go back to bed now. Please think lucid thoughts for me this weekend, because right now I feel like the monkey is eggplantish, and that is never funkadelic.

Last night I was looking at vintage valentines online and I could not stop myself from grabbling this one and giving it creepy new captions. Sorry! If you’re looking for the single girl valentines I did a few years back, you can see them here, and I also just dug up and uploaded a couple more that I did way back in 2002. As you can see, my Photoshop skills have not improved one bit over the years.

In other news, I did a Q & A with Anne over at Elastic Waist the other day, because they’re doing I’m Not the New Me for their book club.  I’m so glad I got to do it, because back when the book came out I don’t think I quite knew how to talk about it yet, or say why I did certain things. Plus half the time I was being interviewed by people who’d barely had time to read the book, if they’d even gotten to read it at all. But Anne is super smart and she asked me supersmarty things that nobody ever thought to ask me before. Thank you, Elastic Waist ladies, for paying attention to a book that came out 27 years ago!  In publishing world years, that is.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all you freaky foxes out there, and have fun. If all goes well tonight, we will be playing bingo. Not the hipster bar bingo, but bingo the way Bingo God intended, with old people in a big ugly room smelling of ink daubers and superstition. We can’t wait.

Somehow the joke didn’t go over so well. I know, right!? Because the execution-style killing of five bystanders in an incident with no answers or closure whatsoever is so totally comedy gold, yet hardly anyone has shown up to give him the props that he deserves for going there, man, because everyone is so sick of these obese women who have the freaking nerve to go out and buy clothes while they’re still fat, and can you believe they actually have stores for them, encouraging them to stay all fatty jubbo and shit, and all with such complete disregard for his boner the obesity epidemic that of course he had to say what he said, lest the fat chicks of the world think they can get a death-holiday day off or something.

But no, nobody gives this guy credit! Instead of high-fives, practically all he’s getting are angry comments from fat chicks! Well, except for two guys who hate fat chicks, including some dude named Alex who keeps valiantly coming back to post like some self-appointed keeper of the flame, or refiller of the douchebag, or whatever. As for the fat chicks who are posting comments there, they don’t say they’re fat chicks, but they just don’t seem to appreciate the way the victims of a violent unsolved crime were immediately ridiculed in a feebly written Onion-copycat mock press release, and everyone knows that only fat chicks have a sense of human decency and also high standards for satire, right?

I know that all kinds of people read my site, but if any of you go over to this guy’s site to tell him how unfunny he is (and whether you do or not is up to you), it seems you automatically become a fat chick. Seriously, as soon as you click “Submit Comment,” a tub of ice cream will magically appear in your hand, and then you’ll be promptly told to put it down. This guy blames the nation’s health problems on us fat chicks for writing “obesity-coddling” blogs and eating all the pies, but clearly all our militant binging and coddling is no match for the way this guy’s site can make fresh new fatties in just minutes, just like donuts! It’s so amazing that if I, too, were into writing stale, imitative news parodies in lieu of having any kind of individual comic voice whatsoever, I would totally crap out one right now with the headline Area Man’s Website Increases Female Obesity Statistics to Include 98% of the General Population, and then I’d quote him saying some inane shit that I just made up, and hyuk hyuk hyuk har har! But I digress.

Anyway, as for all you newly-minted fat chicks, hello and welcome to the fold! (By which I mean, of course, the fatty, fleshy folds that guys like dude-with-the-website love to describe in fetishistic detail, for reasons we could have a field day with if we actually cared.) Please feel free to enjoy the privileges of honorary membership, which includes 1.) getting to eat all the pies and 2.) possessing the kind of adaptive skills that help you to be way the hell funnier than any braying jackhole whose jokes are all based on his own desperate need to keep things just the way he thinks they ought to be and, especially, keep everyone in their place. Which is spectacularly shitty just on principle, but even worse when it’s not funny.

And by “not funny” I don’t mean in bad taste. I mean actually not funny. I mean it completely failed. It’s one thing to read something smart and sharp and precise enough that in spite of all your defenses and preconceived ideas and notions of correctness it gets through; it slays you. It’s another thing entirely to come across some bullshit that is so stunningly mangled and skidmarked and sloppy that it’s like getting hacked in the neck with a spork, and then of course it’s a perfectly reasonable response to want to punch and kick and scratch and bite back. This is just to explain why I bothered to write this. Sometimes it’s just what people—excuse me, “fat chicks”—have to do.

Update 10:45 p.m: He took down his “Fat Girls Don’t Think I’m Funny” entry but you can read this screen shot of it here to see how dopey it was. The last comment I saw posted there read, “Honey, nobody thinks you’re funny.”

Update, Februrary 18th: He’s gone extra chickenshit now and doesn’t even approve comments anymore. I’ve decided to just link to screencaps of his site instead. I gaveth traffic, but sorry, you friendless angry little clown fart, now I taketh away.

Update, Feburary 25th: Today, like two and a half weeks later, he got all lonely and tried to bombard the comments of this entry with more of his shit-sputtering failure rage! I just checked my spam filter, where his last message says, “awww…you erased my comment. Bet you wish is (sic) was just as easy to remove all your fatz from your ass.” Oh, but “Alex,” blocking your tiny and inadequate insult cock is way, way more fun than removing the fatz from my ass! Check out how I totally just gained 50 pounds because I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE! I drink it up!

I told Chris, “That kid is so like, ‘Dude, I just cheated death.’”

“You know that’s going to be his Twitter today,” Chris said.