MISC. WANTS TO THANK all the attentive readers who wrote, emailed or faxed in to confirm the flyer I wrote about warning Yellowstone visitors against head-butting buffalo is real. One reader even claimed “I’m still alive today thanks to that advice;” another said park employees maintain a tote board every tourist season saying something like “Buffalo 6, Humans 0.”
HEADLINE OF THE WEEK (from the front page of Murdoch’s notorious London tabloid News of the World): “My Sex And Smoked Salmon Romp.” Ahh, the two great tastes that taste great together…
AMERICAN ENTERPRISE AT ITS FINEST: Pee-On-It is a urinal sanitizer-deodorizer by the Ohio-based Anthem Inc., with one of seven pictures on it: A guy holding an umbrella with the caption “And you thought you were having a rough day,” a woman with her mouth open, another woman laughing “What’s That, A Joke?”, a bull’s eye with the caption “If You Don’t Have Length Try For Aim,” a guy getting a “shower,” another guy holding his nose and ranting “You Drank THAT?,” and an opened beer can with the caption “Ecology project: Recycle Your Beer Here.”
META-FICTIONS: Seems that not only is there already a real Gramercy Books, the fictional Gramercy Press of the MCI ads will put out a sort-of real book, Apocalypse of the Heart. Romance queen Barbara Cartland’s allegedly been contracted to pen the tome, to be issued under the pen name of “Marcus Belfry,” a fictional writer in the commercials. Speaking of the word. It’s not the first time a “fictional character” has written a book. Many early Brit novels were written in the first person and presumed by some readers to be true stories. The Ellery Queen mysteries listed the hero as author, tho’ they were written in the third person. Then there’s Venus on the Half Shell, a sci-fi spoof attributed to one Kilgore Trout, a hack-writer character in several Kurt Vonnegut novels. (To this day most folks don’t know Vonnegut didn’t write Venus; real-life sci-fi hack Philip Jose Farmer did.) Speaking of the word…
MANLY READING: It’s common in semiotics texts these days to ascribe homoerotic meanings to the archtypal adult-male heroes of boys’ adventure fiction, from the old Pee-wee’s Playhouse gang to today’s Batman Forever cast. What these texts haven’t mentioned as far as I’ve seen is how all those PR campaigns to sell “Books” to kids as one generic commodity always trot out past generations’ boy-adventure heroes (pirates, knights in armor, your basic Pagemaster cast). I’m sure something could be done with that, maybe something scandalous about how Barbara Bush and the American Library Assn. are propagating homoerotica to children. Speaking of the word…
SEGREGATED SENTENCES: The Times quoted an 1853 Old Farmer’s Almanac homily as warning householders to keep books by male and female authors (unless married to one antoher) stocked on separate shelves. Finally: An explanation for the fiction racks at Left Bank Books. Still speaking of the word…
VOLUME SELLING: The arrival of one of them huge Barnes & Noble book emporia at U-Village points out the perception/reality thang re: the alleged non-popularity of the written word in PoMo America. If nobody were buying these paper artifacts, huge corps. wouldn’t be spending proudly to install great print palaces (and potentially drive the li’l folks outta the biz). Still speaking of the word…
IT’S ONLY WORDS: Thanks to your diligence in reply to our recent solicitations, we have a veritable bevy of non-“surfing” words for Internet use: gigging, looking around, skimming, roamin’, ramblin,’ and my favorite of the week, that ol’ Situationist Internationale term “dérive.” I’ll try using some of these in sentences over the next few weeks, to see how they work.
NOW I HAVE ANOTHER FAVOR to ask of you, to enter your suggestion in our drive to find the best grocery stores in Seattle. Base your nominations on atmosphere, attitude, cool products, and price, and place them under one or more of these categories: convenience store, small supermarket, regular supermarket, superstore, and ethnic. Mail them here to the paper or leave them at the Misc. website.
