Month: April 2011

I just read on Echo that the end of the world has been predicted, again, this time it’s scheduled for May 21. Mark your calendars!

It reminded me of a pre-9/11 Daily Show piece about a guy who had predicted the destruction of New York for a particular day. The day came and went and the Daily Show “reporter” calls the guy from New York and says something like, “What happened?? We’re all still here.” And the guy answers in a very testy voice, “Relax! I’ve been waiting a long time for this, and you’ll just have to wait too!”

I’m not quite getting the wording right, but it was clear the guy wasn’t just predicting the total destruction of New York, he was longing for it.

Someone on Echo also made the point that this is what’s behind a lot of these predictions, a lot of people long for total annihilation.

No more pictures of me for weeks, I promise. But I had to take a billion shots just to get two that were remotely acceptable. God I’ve gotten so old and jowly. Notice the strategic hand (and hair) placement.  I should include one of the rejects just so you see what I really look like, but I can’t. I’m only human.  I’ll stick with the illusion.

I went all out for my author photo for my book Waiting For My Cats to Die, and hired a make-up artist and one of the best photographers money can buy. Marion Ettlinger can make anyone look like a rock star. But then for the next couple of years I had to deal with the inevitable look of disappointment when people met me and I wasn’t that glamorous in person. For my next author photo I kept my glasses on and didn’t wear any makeup except what I use in real life (almost nothing, lipstick and a little concealer under my eyes).

But here are the three shots I considered for Waiting. They were taken in 2000, I believe it was, and I went with the last one below.

This was was a little too va-va-va-voom.  Plus my bangs look funny.

Something was off about my face.  Those shoes are cute, though!  Do I still own those??

The winner!  Reminder:  I didn’t look like this then and I certainly don’t look like this now!

It is simply not possible for there to be a cleaner apartment in all Manhattan. Mine is the cleanest. Period. The cleanest among millions. Actually I think I read somewhere that there are 470,000 rental units in Manhattan. That can’t be right. It sounds too small. Yeah, totally not right. It’s 2.14 million as of 2008. Bottomline: my apartment is very clean.

I bought myself a couple of bunches of daffodils as a reward. Finney is in the shot because of the in-house “a cat must be in every shot” rule.

Using the computer’s camera, I took this shot while drinking my morning coffee. Buddy is so sweet.

Howard is stopping by in a minute to return some books. He and Sandra Newman wrote a book called Read This Next, where they suggest, well, just what the title says, what to read next.

They came by one day to ask for recommendations and I lent them all my favorite books. They used a bunch of my suggestions, but one they didn’t was a book of short stories by Graham Greene called A Sense of Reality. Maybe they aren’t Greene’s best, but I love those stories! Why didn’t they use them? I think they’re this wonderful, mostly undiscovered find.

Meanwhile, I learned of this via a tweet: What Happens When You Get Sucked Out of a Plane. Predictably, nothing good.

Spring Cleaning Status Report: One small thing to do and I’m done for the day!