Accommodatingly

It’s meme quiz time again.

A Bit Of Both You are 40% Calvin and 60% Hobbes

Calvin & Hobbes, like a scruffy yin and yang, are in perfect balance within you. Like Calvin, you’re weird, a bit insecure, and can be a trouble-maker. But like Hobbes, you’re down to earth and sensitive. It’s a risk to say it here, after just a ten question test, but I’ll bet you’re smarter than most. Both Calvin and Hobbes are crafty, clever characters, and any one made from equal parts of each is a force to be reckoned with.

…is reading at Macalester College today, Thursday March 30, at 7pm in Weyerhauser Chapel. It’s free. He’s great. If you live in the Twin Cities, do show up.

If you live in New York, on the other hand, you can see me, David Orr, Adam Kirsch, and Meghan O’Rourke on this panel about poet-critics, at Housing Works downtown, at 7pm on April 10. (I’ll be back in New York for more readings in mid-May.)

Unbelievably great eBay auction

Cute Babies

Must be seen to be believed.

Spit-up, since it is made up mostly of fat-rich breastmilk, can leave grease stains on clothes. As much sense as this makes, this fact is new to me.

It’s been a good day so far, spit-up stains aside. I got a haircut. It’s pretty drastic, but very cute. I feel a hundred times better than I did 24 hours ago. I feel so good that I didn’t keep making excuses and actually got Nathan out in the stroller and took a walk. I also haven’t been snacking on crap all day, which is something I do when I feel lousy, which makes me feel lousy, causing me to snack on more crap. Oh, the evil trap of binge eating.

The only bad part about getting a haircut is looking at myself in the mirror for over an hour. Ugh. My boobs are the size of watermelons and my thighs–I don’t even want to go there. In my mind, I am a much smaller person than the one I saw in that mirror.

I’ll Dominate yo’u Little Boy…mmm - w4m

For one thing, I am “Jessie” not “Jesse”.

Joshua Corey, in a generally articulate and worth-digesting post, both propagates the term “social formalism” (has he defined it?) and says I’m the Brooks-and-Warren of contemporary semi-experimental writing. (As, in their day, were Brooks and Warren.)

I find the idea very flattering: thanks! (Though the so-called New Critic one should actually emulate is, as always, William Empson. If you have already read the mammoth Haffenden biography, what did you think?

Jonathan Mayhew, worth reading as always:

“We have a bias toward the contemporary in some sense, in that we overvalue some work of our own period. And we also have a bias against the contemporary: we don’t really believe that any contemporary writer belongs on the same list as Ovid. (For ‘we’ read ‘I.’)”

Female? Can’t make decisions? Ask Bill!

If there’s a strange smell coming from your tailpipe that is something like the smell of a plastic bag melting, it’s probably a plastic bag melting. But you should probably have a professional remove it, at any rate, so bring it to the garage.