OF A GOLDEN AGE

At Target on Christmas Eve, my boyfriend stood in the slow line while I got through a faster one. I went to wait with him and the checker studied me. I studied him back.

Finally he said, “You look just like this friend of mine.”

“Oh yeah?” I said. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah! Same height, same build, except she’s black!” he said. I laughed.

“That’s the funniest thing,” he said. “You two could be sisters, except you’re white and she’s black!”

Voting is ongoing for Andrew Sullivan’s myriad annual awards (which he jokingly referred to as The Andrews), all highlighting other people’s public achievements or blunders, mostly the latter. Browsing the nominees for “Best Mental Health Break” reminded me how much I loved this Mental Health Break the first time. Not sure it counts, because it’s quite poignant and thought-provoking. But dogs are funny and adorable, so I get it.

► Marty the Party turns 24 today. Welcome to oldtown, buddy. It is bizarre to think that Martin and I were barely 19 and 18, respectively, when we first became friends.

► My last post got me reading about Nauru again. Damnit, Nauru! You always suck me back in!

► Current temperature in Chicago: -2°. This is “better” than last night’s low of -6°, though tomorrow the temperature purports to rebound into the high 20s. I often crack the windows in my apartment to counteract the omnipotent crushing radiator heat, and yesterday the cracked windows developed — no shit — a frosty rim. Mew Mew grew suspicious.

► My aunt referred to Mew Mew as “Mew squared,” which made me realize her name is downright mathematical. μ (Greek letter mu, pronounced moo or myoo) is the arithmetic mean — I have written μ nearly as many times as I’ve written α, alpha. Good times reminiscing about math . . . and by good times I mean terrible times.

Time Magazine’s Fond Farewells feature reminded me how many famous and impactful people died this year, including a former president of Nauru: tiny island nation and object of my personal fascination.

Brad Renfro, actor, b. 1982
Heath Ledger, b. 1979
David Foster Wallace, novelist, b. 1962
Bernie Mac, comedian, b. 1957
Tony Snow, commentator, b. 1955
Anthony Minghella, director, b. 1954
Tim Russert, b. 1950
Stan Winston, makeup artist, b. 1946
Richard Wright, Pink Floyd keyboardist, b. 1943
Bobby Fischer, chess champion, b. 1943
Isaac Hayes, musician, b. 1942
Gary Gygax, Dungeons & Dragons developer, b. 1938
Suzanne Pleshette, actress, b. 1937
George Carlin, comedian, b. 1937
Yves Saint Laurent, designer, b. 1936
Sydney Pollack, director, b. 1934
Roy Scheider, actor, b. 1932
Bo Diddley, musician, b. 1928
William F. Buckley, conservative, b. 1925
Paul Newman, actor and humanitarian, b. 1925
Norman Smith, early Pink Floyd and Beatles producer, b. 1923
Bettie Page, model, b. 1923
Estelle Getty, actress, b. 1923
Cyd Charisse, dancer, b. 1922
Jesse Helms, politician, b. 1921
Arthur C. Clarke, novelist, b. 1917
Jerry Wexler, producer, b. 1917
Studs Terkel, writer, b. 1912

For the last ten minutes or so, I’ve been looking up lyrics to Neil Young songs, and for the most part they are very stupid. I love Neil Young, and while his songs are playing I think to myself, “He’s such a lovely lyricist,” but apparently something is lost between the sound and the words on paper.

Here: compare the lyrics to “Harvest Moon” with the lyrics to “Southern Cross,” written by Young’s occasional bandmate Stephen Stills.

Okay. Maybe you’re all, “Come on, Harvest Moon isn’t Neil Young’s best work.” In that vein, check out the lyrics to “Heart of Gold,” perhaps Neil Young’s most recognized song. They are equally short, rhymey, and dumb.

This is really befuddling.

I can’t stop looking at Tower of Babel by Peter Brueghel the Elder.

Thanks, FreeRice.com Famous Paintings category.

I was given some before a procedure yesterday.

Whooaaaa.

After Netflix’s Instant Watch feature went Mac-patible, I started plowing through seasons of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Vincent D’Onofrio’s weird tics and appearance remind me of a nutsy close friend of mine, and I really love the formulaic crooks-go-to-jail plots. The justice system! My goodness.

What I’ve learned watching the first few seasons of Criminal Intent is that there’s a connection between this and Sex and the City: Virtually every episode of CI has an actor who also guested on SATC. Literally, all but one or two episodes. It must be a New York thing, and I’m sure both the original Law & Order and SVU have the same level of crossover. There are also countless websites devoted to the actors who show up on multiple episodes of the L&O franchises, picking up unrelated roles as perps, lawyers, family, whoever.

► Nothing synergizes my day like an article about Abraham Lincoln in the New York Times. The comparison of plaster casts from 1860 and 1865 is a meaningful reminder that each president experiences the kind of stress that likely shortens each of their natural lives, even barring a terrible death like that of President Lincoln. Hell, look at a photo of George W. Bush in 2000 and today. Regardless of how you feel about the man, you can see the stress he wears in his face.

► Math solitaire via FreeArcade.com — oh, my goodness, I am not going to get work done ever again. The splash screen includes the word “operand”!!

► One of our customers had an email address at this domain: Online-Buddies.com. It sounded, well, exactly how it is. Any legitimate business homepage with a press release about MANHUNT gets a chortle out of this kid.

For months now I’ve asked myself almost daily, How on earth can you become a crazy cat lady without cats? Well, my brother Nick presented me with a solution:

This is Mew Mew, a six-year-old fully declawed and fixed lady cat. She only weighs 7 pounds, which means she is like a tiny fuzzy shotput and she is the perfect size for my little apartment. For some reason her owner needs to get rid of her, and after trying for some time she declared to my brother that she was going to give the cat to a shelter if someone didn’t take it within two more weeks.

Knitting . . . check.
Vase of dead flowers . . . check.
Sue Grafton paperbacks . . . check and check.
Cat . . . check.

All I need now is a purple sweatshirt with an applique of a cat, surrounded by glittering Puff Paint. So close, and yet, so far. Please wish Mew Mew and me the best of happinesses in our new shared household.