Reading Poirot in French speaking English with a French accent

I decided to learn French, so I got some Agatha Christie books in French translations because I figured they'd be more fun to study than lists of imperfect verbs. And, as far as her books go, once you learn the words for "murder", "kill", and "little gray cells", you're basically fluent.

(What stinks is that you still have to look up those imperfect verbs; I was so sure I had outsmarted them.)

It was only after reading two Poirot mysteries in French that I remembered that one of his signature quirks, along with his enormous ego and his flourishing mustache, is his charmingly-phrased Franglish. He's Belgian, of course, and speaks English with a French accent. So I'd been reading his Franglish in French as translated from English.

Way to learn a language, Me!

I read Temoin Muet, then not long after I finished it I stayed in a bed and breakfast that had an old Christie paperback on the bedside table in my room, and lo and behold: it was Dumb Witness. In English! Bon chance! I told my vacation to screw off and sat there and read the book to see what I'd missed. It turns out: not much. If you want to feel a false sense of fluency really quickly, learn French the Christie way.

But I did miss the accents. Agatha is not shy about the Upstairs/Downstairs mental gap -- she's always going on about how dumb the maids are, and in English they speak in broad slang-filled accents. I didn't notice that in French, but I was pretty busy congratulating myself in my head like this: "Tuer -- to kill! That means to kill! I AM SO FRENCH!"

One thing about Dumb Witness made no sense in Temoin Muet (Clue Spoiler!): the victim leaves a pre-tuer clue by mumbling on about a "dessin vaste". Drawing vast? Big drawing? Wide design? Lady, I know you're dying, but that makes no sense. It turns out to be a misunderstood word; vase instead of vaste. She's referring to a design on a vase that sort of proves that she knew that someone was trying to kill her. Wicked clever wordplay, right?

Not in French, it isn't. That was the translator's way of dealing with the English word "ajar". The victim babbles about something being "ajar", so there's all this speculation about her door being ajar while her killer skulked around. But it turns out that she's talking about the fricking vase again in our English alterna-verse, her vase or her urn, or her JAR. So look at the drawing on the jar, dummies! Someone tuer-ed me!

And that's what got lost in translation. That and the fact that everyone says things "dryly" in her books, which sounds a lot dumber as "un ton sec".

If someday you and I have a conversation in French and I sound like a Belgian detective, you'll know why.

I will break your "bio break" over your head while you urinate

Some companies are announcing during meetings that they will be taking a "bio break". That means you are invited to use the break time to urinate and/or defecate and/or menstruate. And/or masticate.

These are companies created by adults that employ adults, although it's possible that there are some gigantism-suffering preschoolers in these meetings, maybe working in Nap Development.

Let's take a break, my fellow adults. Do whatever you want with your grown up break. Please don't tell me what you're going to do during this break, not even using cute words and especially not if it involves your tummy or your rude tube.

I blame Oprah.

"Thanks to the smartness of my intellect, I'm rich."

Thanks to anonymous commenting on the internet, I'm rich in quotes.

Please feel free to use this scavenged sentence in your daily life, preferably at the height of a self-righteous tirade.

Basement! Fovie Promo

Here, kitty kitty. Inspector Gillroy knew there was something strange about that basement.

That monkey sure did kill a lot of people

Yesterday I finally watched the movie "Monkey Shines". I've been meaning to see that movie for 20 years. One night twenty years ago, I thought I was actually watching it, but I wasn't, and then I threw up in the sink a little bit after begging myself not to vomit.

College is stupid.

[SPOILERS!] The movie was pretty good, with good actors. The best part was watching the paralyzed guy being terrorized by the cute little monkey, like when she kept shoving food in his mouth. The best villain is a darned cute one, which explains the enduring malevolence of the Ewoks.

I don't think it was scientifically accurate, though, so if you want to inject human brain material into a monkey's ass, go ahead (ask the monkey for permission, first). I really don't think it will make you telepathically bond with her brain and cause her to go on killing sprees of your enemies.

Also, I didn't think it was fair that the paralyzed guy was cured at the end, but the monkey was killed. It wasn't her fault she was injected with bad human cells or whatever.

And like it couldn't be a happy ending if he was still paralyzed and getting on with his life with the added benefit of not being stalked by a demonic monkey? That seemed like a weird message to me, given that accidents do happen and life does have to go on, with or without your monkey.

Sometimes killing your monkey doesn't solve all of your problems, but it does make things better overall -- cut off the dumb ending where he could walk, and that's what I took from this movie.

Deep!

Picture of the Devil aka Bunelzebub

I was looking through some old photos, and I noticed that I seem to have captured a shot of the Devil when I was in London.

Here he is, hanging out in a park.

If you are in London, don't worry; this was 2005, and he has probably hopped on by now.

Plus, you can always placate him by giving him a carrot. Remember: hold on to your soul; offer a carrot instead.

They will know us by our sneakers

My old man and I took a trip to Paris, where it's a Euro here and two Euros there, and the next thing you know, you're broke. Also, it's easy to spot fellow Americans because 1) they are everywhere, and 2) they are wearing sneakers and shorts.
We walked all over town and cooled down with a three Euro icy fruit drink.

We drove down to Fountainebleau and jumped in the gardens.

We hung out at the Invalides with Napoleon's tomb.

We hid from the sun. It got pretty hot, and I'd like to point out that the Arc de Triomphe is not as close as it looks from the Louvre, and that once you finally get there, you will be mad at it.

We went shopping.

We ate Nutella, because it is freakishly ubiquitous and because it is delicious. We prudently bought only one Nutella crepe to share, then fought viciously over each bite.

We visited Notre Dame, where tourists like us stomped around during Mass and took video like it was a Tony Robbins appearance.

At Notre Dame, we contemplated being dragged off to Hell.

We visited the Louvre, where the Mona Lisa had her dance card filled. Also, the recent NY Times article that noted that people zoom through the Louvre taking pictures of the pictures without pausing to actually looking at the things in front of them is absolutely true. Are the museum shop postcards too expensive? Are people hoping to zoom in and study their favorite parts of, say, Mona's right shoulder? Is there a lot of wacky Hey, I'm attending the Wedding of Cana! photoshopping going on?

We saw statues wearing beards.

We saw terrifying mannequins.

Don't you want to visit the Palais de Justice? Aw, come on. No, you want to go to Sainte Chapelle? But the line is so long! Come to Palais de Justice? No?

The most awesome thing we did was to take advantage of Velib. This is a bike rental system with stations everywhere you turn in town -- you get a pass (which is a few Euros) with a number on it, type in your number and password at the station, select a bike, unlock it and away you go. The first 1/2 hr is free. The next 1/2 hr after that is 1 Euro. Each next 1/2 hr after that is 4 Euros or something. So you can't just take it out all day, or you will be money-sorry. But to hop from place to place, it is excellent and super-fun, especially since Paris has lots of marked bike lanes (as long as you don't mind sharing with buses) and even separate lanes in the islands in the middle or side of the street that are the most fun and excellent of all. The Paris drivers were generally patient and easy enough to drive with (at least compared to Boston, where I got my street-riding chops and were drivers are horrible evil demons).

Caveats about Velib:
(1) This is Very Important: North American credit cards will not work here on in the Metro stations!! They don't have whatever special stripe or code the French cards have. Also, there are No Other Alternative Places Anywhere to buy Velib passes. You have to get them at the little unmanned stations. After much confusions and searching, we finally found a tip on a blog that said someone's American Express card worked, and that's what worked for us. Otherwise, I think you can buy a pass ahead of time on the internet and have it mailed to you.
(2) The system only works if people continually take out and return the bikes. A number of times (e.g. at Notre Dame) we came to our destination and went to a station and could not drop off our bikes because the station was full. There is a map at each station showing you where nearby stops are, and you can type in your number to get an extra 15 minutes to use to go to the next stop. But sometimes it took quite a bit of searching to find open spaces.
(3) Check your bike before you take it out (tires, steering column, lock).

We went to Montmartre and walked in the cemetery, where we learned that even in death, the rich get fancier houses than the non-rich.

I went to the Musee d'Art Moderne and set up my camera on self-timer to take this shot. Then I picked up my stuff and wandered off,leaving the camera. I was two floors up sitting in a room entirely filled with Roald Dufy's magical mural when I reached for my camera and found it missing. Quelle suprise!

I hurried downstairs, where the lady guard came after me, clearly realizing that I was the idiot who lost her camera. I was also the idiot who failed to learn conversational French in my months of study prior to the trip, though I could read pretty well at the point. The lady guard for some reason insisted on speaking instead of typing at me. So I kept holding up my hands and clicking an imaginary camera and saying "photo apparail", which I was very proud of knowing, and she kept nodding and saying, "camera". She asked her friend guard where they took my camera, then kindly walked me to the elevator and told me to go to the fourth floor and... do...something.

So I went to the fourth floor and figured lost-and-found would be a the coat check. The coat check lady was nice enough but very confused as I kept saying "second floor downstairs" and "lady" and "camera" and mimed picture-taking and mimed putting my mime camera down and walking away from it because I could remember the word for "take" but not for "lost". What was the problem, lady? I thought you people loved Marcel Marceau! But she had no idea what I was doing.

So I thanked her and tried the ticket desk, where the ticket man knew English (score!) and knew exactly why I was there, but insisted on grilling me on the make and model of my camera. I think he was jerking me around. But he finally gave it to me and said, "so it wasn't stolen!" and I should've said "bon chance!" but I didn't think of that until later, darnit! So I just said "Merci beaucoup!" and ran out of that museum because I was all stressed out and I don't know how immigrants do it, it is freaking stressful to not know the language and feel so stupid.

I have to note that, in general, the Parisians we interacted with were very nice and pleasant and patient with us, that no one made fun of our bad French, that I successfully asked a book store guy, in French, if he had a book on birds and HE DID, that I also successfully bought four postcard stamps in French at a tabac despite mispronouncing "the United States" and "four", and that everyone was pretty much laid-back and friendly, and I live in LA so I know from laid-back and friendly. The bike system and the Metro are awesome and easy ways to get around. I definitely recommend studying up some French before you go, as it was a huge advantage to be able to read signs and things even if my speaking/listening skills were just above deaf/mute.

Good job, Paris. I'm glad you weren't blown up in 1945.

The Best and Worst Cats in the History of Art; Proof of Secret Society?

I recently visited Paris, where I ate lots of Nutella and, even more importantly, saw what I believe to be both the best and worst cat representations in the History of Art. (Or, the History of Art That I Have Seen. But let's not quibble.)

Veronese's sumptuous Wedding at Cana at the Louvre (which puts up a great fight across the room from that smug attention hog Mona Lisa), one of my all-time favorite pictures, features such a realistic cat that I can't help but tag Veronese as a cat lover. That cat is playing with that urn just like a cat would!

Meanwhile over at the Musee D'Orsay, Henri Rousseau's Madame M. poses with that hideous freak in the lower right. Forget Madame M's enormous hands and displaced shoulders -- what about that freaky kitty? And yet, as with all things Rousseau, it is an appealing and unforgettable freak, and points for the ball of string. He was playing with his ball of string, then looked up and saw a STARTLING TERROR!

Both master cats are in the lower right hand corner of their paintings; coincidence? Both are playing, attempting to destroy the string and urn (of the world? Of the Vatican?). The Madame extends all but her middle finger toward the cat. The water that has just been turned into wine at the feast is near the cat. Are these kittyphilic signs intentionally coded into the paintings by the painters? Could Veronese and Rousseau have been members of a secret pan-generational Opus Felis organization? Quick, call Dan Brown!!

"Picnic at Hanging Rock": Disappearing Schoolgirls, Serenaded by the Pan Flute (Master Thereof)

I watched the most excellent and unusual Peter Weir 1975 suspense film "Picnic at Hanging Rock"; it's worth checking not least for its rather bizarre origin as a novel, and the missing last book chapter that "explained" everything but was wisely left out. Good on ya, IFC channel, for scheduling this one.

The action (such as it is -- girls go on picnic, climb rock, disappear) starts in an Australian girl's boarding school in 1900. The genius of this film is that the atmosphere of suspense and dread comes from the pre-Raphaelite beauty and dreaminess of these girls and their upright Victorian minders and the rugged working men lurking nearby; the girls with their fluttering white dresses and pressed flowers and invocations to St Valentine barely concealing raging suppressed passions and merciless personal denials; the teachers with their leonine updos and perfect posture and desperate attempts to stick a firm finger in the dyke of sexual awakening. (No pun intended; seriously, what do you take me for? You need a cold shower.)

Best of all, the dreamiest scenes are scored by the pan flute stylings of the Master himself, Gheorghe Zamfir. I knew there was something menacing about that guy.

Google Ad To Help You Survive Becoming Mormon

See that first Google Ad that showed up (in the blue boxes on the right) on the BBC News home page today?

Why? What is so awful about becoming a Mormon that you need a special kit just to survive the first 72 hours?

How will a radio help you?

How much does it cost...your soul?

Always be prepared!

Bully, looking klassy

Rough night, Bully? Too much PBR and spare ribs? For heaven's sake, make yourself comfortable.

Dear Starbucks: Your Pastries are Disgusting

Look at the size of these things! Are these pastries or really ugly decorative pillows?

These are surely designed to tempt every diabetic giant in the land.

Starbucks, must I remind you that you sell $4 coffee? These ginormous, cold, dense, sticky-icing nightmares are the stuff of highway rest stops -- not the kind with the Subway in the corner, but the kind with lottery machines by the door and chili dogs cowering under the heat lamp.

Listen, Howard Schultz: Unless you plan to stick a bowl of beef jerky by the register, you'd better get fancy pastry to match your fancy coffee. Either that or lower the coffee to 50 cents and pass the bear claw.

Seriously, America? Operation brand fruit flavored snacks?

Who doesn't want a "fruit flavored" (as proven by the pictures of actual fruit in the lower right corner; very convincing, Kellogg's) snacks based on a board game that itself is based on that yummiest of experiences: surgery?

I'm not saying it doesn't make perfect sense to make a snack based on a board game; I mean, duh, I'm eating Trivial Pursweets right now. No, the true stroke of genius here is in choosing Operation, because with that choice comes your cover boy; the face that launched a thousand fruit flavored snacks. Which makes you hungrier: the red nose, the crossed eyes, the mercury thermometer, or the Ronald Reagan haircut? I can't choose!

The "fruit" flavored "snacks" seem to be shaped like a bell, a dog?, maybe a turtle?, a bird, a red thing, and is that a lemon wedge? I don't know about you, but when I go in for laparoscopic surgery, I always bring my turtle and my red thing. I suppose the alternative choices were treats shaped like a blue bedpan, a green syringe, and a purple insurance claim. So, good choices, Kellogg's.

If Michael Pollan sees these, he's going to need a doctor.

Applescript for Journler: puts Contacts in Comments

Ok, now I'm just being annoying. I didn't want to be mucking around with Applescript at all, but Journler is so cool and so useful that I just can't help myself. With just a few little scripty tweaks, I'm able to use it as my dream PIM (that's a personal information manager for those of you who aren't annoying).

[p.s. Did you know that when you hover over the date of an entry in the browser list for a few seconds, the tip will show the amount of time that has elapsed since the date of the entry? So hover over 9/8/08 a few seconds, and underneath the tip showing "~ 8 months 4 weeks and 2 days ago". That is so cool! Make your savant computer slave calculate for you!]

Anyway, I used the script from my last post to import a bunch of iCal entries for meetings that I've had, each with one attached contact. In Journler, I needed to be able to see a list of all those meetings, see the date, see the topic of the meeting in the title, and also see the contacts so that I could see at a glance when I last saw who in comparison to everyone else. Because the contacts/resources have a many-to-one relationship to the entries, they aren't easily listed in the grid view. The entry Comments to the rescue!

This script makes a list of all the contacts names and copies it to the comments column, which can then be shows in the grid list and sorted on and so forth. Voila (hey, those French lessons are coming in handy, too).

All warnings apply; again, this was quick and dirty scripting.

-- place in ~/Library/Scripts/Journler
-- Copies selected entry's contact resources to comments
- Created by Courtney Lamb 6/7/09 (www.courtneylamb.com)
-- Use at your own risk!
tell application "Journler"
set theEntriesList to selected entries
repeat with theEntry in theEntriesList
set theNames to ""
repeat with theResource in resources of theEntry

if type of theResource is contact then
if theNames is not "" then
set theNames to theNames & ", " & name of theResource
else
set theNames to name of theResource
end if
end if

end repeat
set comments of theEntry to theNames
end repeat
end tell

Applescript to create Journler entries from all events in an iCal calendar

I searched long and hard on the you-know-what to find some nerd who had already done what I needed to do -- "import" all of my iCal events in a certain Calendar into Journler as events, also attaching the iCal event attendee to the Journler entry as a Contacts resource.

Surely someone else had done this already! I don't have to muck around with programming/scripting anymore, do I? I don't have to learn AppleScript all of a sudden; I mean, I'm sick of this shit, we're supposed to have robot servants to do things like this for us by now!

So I had to be my own nerd, and if you are the me of yesterday and are looking for a script to do this, you are welcome. Just use it at your own risk because I learned as little about AppleScript as I possibly could in order to throw this together and resented it every step of the way and wasn't careful with error handling and all that mess.

But it totally works! As a reference, I converted 158 entries this way with no problem, took a few minutes. I knew my mysterious past in data conversion would pay off some day.

-- place in ~/Library/Scripts/Journler
-- Creates Journler entries from all iCal events in the calendar named "Journler Drop" (copy desired events here)
-- Sets a tag of "iCal" to the Journler entry
-- In addition, if there is an attendee on the iCal event (just the last attendee, if there are multiple), it attaches a Contacts Resource to the Journler entry
-- Created by Courtney Lamb 6/4/09 (www.courtneylamb.com)
-- Use at your own risk!

tell application "iCal"
tell calendar "Journler Drop"
set theCount to count of events
-- Loop through all of the iCal events in the given calendar
repeat with j from 1 to theCount
set theEvent to item j of events
set theSummary to summary of theEvent
set theDate to start date of theEvent

-- Put both the iCal description and location in the Journler notes
set theNotes to ""
set theLocation to ""

if exists (description of theEvent) then
set theNotes to description of theEvent
else
set theNotes to ""
end if
if exists (location of theEvent) then
set theLocation to location of theEvent
else
set theLocation to ""
end if

-- Get only the last of the attendees, if any
set theContactID to ""
if exists (the last attendee of theEvent) then
set theName to display name of the last attendee of theEvent
tell application "Address Book"
if exists (the first person whose organization = theName) then
set thePerson to (the first person whose organization = theName)
set theContactID to id of thePerson
else
set theContactID to ""
end if
end tell
end if

-- Create the Journler entry
set theNewTag to {"iCal"}
set theCategory to "Contacts"
tell application "Journler"
set anEntry to make new entry
set the name of anEntry to theSummary
set the date created of anEntry to theDate
set the tags of anEntry to theNewTag
set the category of anEntry to theCategory
set the rich text of anEntry to theLocation & "
" & theNotes
-- Create the attached Contact resource from the iCal attendee
if theContactID is not "" then
set aResource to make new resource with properties {owner:anEntry, type:contact, contact id:theContactID}
end if
end tell
end repeat
end tell
end tell

Advice for if you have coma

This is valuable advice from a site called emedicinehealth:

Seek immediate attention at a hospital's emergency department if you have these signs and symptoms associated with thyroid problems.

Shortness of breath

Abdominal pain

Vomiting

Confusion

Coma

Seriously, people; if you have coma, go to the ER without delay. I don't know how you're going to get there, but get there.

"Cool Cars: Culver City" photo gallery

I'm lucky; I live in an awesome neighborhood. One of the awesome things about it is that my neighbors believe in the power of a cool car with a lot of personality. Look, the Stinger above is even winking at us. It knows how cool it is. (Note: I nicknamed it the Stinger all on my own. I don't know much about cars except that I find some of them to be cool.)

Check out my gallery of cool cars here:
Link to my Cool Cars: Culver City Photo Gallery

Someone pooped in our yard

There, I said it. It happened, and I acknowledged it.

I think it was an act of desperation, not of revenge. I don't think there was someone saying, "I really hate those guys. I mean really. How can I best say, 'I hate you'? An anonymous letter just seems so...non-disgusting. Hmmm, that burrito I just ate is really acting up....I've got it!"

No, I think someone got really desperate and found themselves stuck in a neighborhood and faced a terrible choice. This is the price we as a society pay for not having enough public toilets.

How do I know it wasn't a really large dog? Well, in my experience, a) dogs don't open gates, and b) dogs don't use napkins as toilet paper.

I disposed of the evidence with one of those long-handled grabber things you use to pick up trash. Some trash that was.

Do I have any suspects? Yes. I think it was Mexico.

I was supposed to go to Cancun on vacation this past weekend and had to cancel due to swine flu aka H1N1.

In retaliation, Mexico pooped in my yard.

Mighty uncalled-for response to a pandemic, Mexico. Próxima vez que escriba una carta anónima!

Gruesome Crime Scene?

There might be a deep artistic meaning in this set-up, like an Ed and Nancy Keinholz-type of thing -- renewal! cycles! excrement! protection! cleansing! -- but it's more fun to imagine the awful toilet tragedy that could've led to this gruesome state of affairs.

Call the exhibit Home Repair: Destruction of the Past.

INJECTION! You haven't been kidnapped, Mr. Jones. You've been admitted for treatment.

[This is practically a shot-for-shot remake of the original INJECTION, but this one has been modernized in 21st century green]

Ghost Pathologist! Fovie Promo

Ectoplasmic crime scene? The Ghost Pathologist is on call and taking samples.

Warhol Tweets

Have you read The Andy Warhol Diaries?

I did. Andy called a friend of his named Pat Hackett every morning for eleven years (from 1976 to 1987) and told her what had happened the day before, including scintillating news like "took a cab 20 blocks, $10" or "ate at a diner, $4.20". She wrote everything down and transcribed it, and it was all eventually edited down and published in 1989.

He did it ostensibly as ammunition against his annual tax audits.

It's both mundane and hilarious because Warhol was a very intelligent person and didn't miss a trick.

In other words, like everything else concerning public personas and the need to self-validate via attention paid (and not acknowledgement of achievements), Andy predicted Twitter.

I just noticed that! I exist and I do things and I think thoughts! Acknowledge me!!

How to cook children

This is a page from the index in The Joy of Cooking.

Children! They instruct you on how best to cook children!

I would expect this from The Anarchist's Cookbook, but Joy? I heard they'd increased the calorie count in their recipes over the years, but I didn't know about the kid count.

But since they told me to, I made a berry cone brat, and it was delicious.

I went 800 miles to see a $40 movie

I went to Sundance!

Because we had to do this in the most ridiculous way possible, since that's how we roll, Walter and I went on the last weekend (when everyone had left) and drove (800 miles) and got tickets on the internet ahead of time ($6/each service fee) and chose a movie playing in Ogden (1 hour + from Park City). We r smahrt.

But the driving was pretty cool because we got to go through four states on the way (CA, AZ, NV, UT, aka caz-no-VUT) and after Las Vegas it was pretty damned beautiful for most of the way with purple mountain majesties and all that. This little lovely is from Virgin River Canyons:


We arrived at Ogden at night for our first movie and had a lot of time to kill, so we got to walk around in the pea soup fog, have dinner, and I even found a coffee in Ogden, UT! Of course, it was from inside the movie theatre, so I don't think it counts. No coffee shops in Ogden (except one place in an alley behind the theatre that promised to be open due to a whiteboard in the window promising "1/2 price lattes on Friday after 5!", but was not open at all. Maybe that's a result of the horrible economy -- rather than renege on the 1/2 price, they just closed up and ran away). I have a theory that there are mostly no-caffeine Mormons in Ogden, thus no Starbucks; could this possibly be true? Anyway, proof:


Then after coffee-hunting we still had time to kill, so we wandered down to Fat Cats and bowled:


and skee-balled:


and air hockeyed (no picture because of my shame at losing so disgracefully, including scoring ON MYSELF about six times).

We saw "500 Days of Summer" at the incredibly gorgeous Peery's Egyptian Theatre with the live organ playing ahead of time, and the movie was awesome. I have total crushes on both Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt and they both delivered, yay, movie!

Then we finally made our way to Park City and hung out with friends and saw some more movies and ate food. Thank you, Park City, for giving us a winter wonderland while we were there.

We went to see the thoughtful and charming "Arlen Faber", written and directed by my old sketch teacher John Hindman (meaning: he's not old; he taught Olde Sketch Style). We joined the crowd of post-movie-and-Q-and-A fans talking to him and shaking his hand, and I said hello and congrats, and thankfully Walter was there to capture this illustrious moment with his cell phone camera:


Boy, I'll treasure that photo!

You may not write I Love You

You mustn't lie about one of the most famous drunken writers of our time

These are excerpts from the bio in the back of the current Vintage Crime edition of Raymond Chander's The Simple Art of Murder:

Raymond Chandler was born in Chicago..,but spent most of his boyhood and youth in England, where he attended Dulwich College and later worked as a free-lance journalist for The Westminster Gazette and The Spectator.... In 1919 he returned to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually became director of a number of independent oil companies. The Depression put an end to his business career, and in 1933, at the age of forty-five, he turned to writing....

I've read too much about Chandler lately, so that I've become as woozy from his difficult life as I was by Katherine Mansfield's that time I endured D.H. Lawrence's love/hate insults, her family's coldness, her husband's what's-his-deal-ness, her lost pregnancy in a German pension, Ida's mule-like devotion, and fatal TB with her. It's too much, is what I'm saying.

With Chandler, it's too much booze and too many moves from house to house and too many years between him and his wife and too many worries and too few friends and too much of his beloved elderly wife fading away. And then more alcohol. And some shots to round it off. How could a man who loved his cat so much have such a rough time of it?

So this bio struck me as odd because it made him sound too normal and his transitions in life too smooth, when in fact it was all a fucking mess. By his own admission he worked as a "free-lance journalist" in England for about a week. I'm sorry to admit that I've exited jobs after a week or two, and I wouldn't want my bio to read "worked as a free-lance contractor at the Mustang Ranch." Look, I was barely there long enough to get herpes!

And though he was a director of oil companies, at the end of his time there he was skipping work to have sex vacations with secretaries, and when he did show up, he was drunk. So you could argue that a depression "put an end to his business career", but not The Depression.

Why sugar-coat it, Vintage? We love dissolute geniuses!

The Universe guided me to the floor

I decided to do one of those things wherein you let The Universe(tm) guide your actions in life by asking It to give you a sign as to the direction your life should go.

Over the years I have met many actors who had been guided by The U to become actors, but I've not yet met a accountant or a librarian or a packaging company account executive who was similarly guided in their paths. Although, to be fair, they may just not be as vocal about it.

Anyway I was in the library (because my life is action-packed like that) and asked T.U. to lead me to a book that would lead the rest of my life. I wandered, then blindly stuck out a hand and grabbed a book.

"The Complete Book of Floor Coverings -- a guide to buying and installing carpet, tile, and linoleum" by Robert Y. Ellis.

Hmmm. The last floor-related issue in my life involved the concrete floor that we had laid down on the first floor of our house. Is Uni telling me that we should've gone with carpet, tile, or linoleum? Are there terrible spiritual consequences to having a concrete floor? But, Universe! It's so easy to clean!

Perhaps I'm being too literal. Floor. The base. The foundation on which you stand. You need to think about the ground on which you are standing. You can only jump off from there. Is it firm? Is it solid? Is it teetering on the edge of a plunge into blackness? Is it carpet, tile, or linoleum?

Very deep, Verse-Man. I'll have to ruminate on it.