What's Up, Ding Dongs

Hey ummm, does anybody know where I can get a snack-cake?



Oh wait, what's this here, at my desk?!

How about 168 Ding Dongs covering my cubicle, phone and computer?! How about 30,240 calories worth of Ding Dongs?! How about 1,512 grams of Ding Dong fat, hmm?!

Wow, but you know what would make this better? If they all had some kind of message on them, like, I dunno... a greeting or an action verb of some type.





My God! By all the twinkling stars of bountiful heaven, look! They all say, "Eat Me!" on them. They're commanding me to love them even more!

I am beside myself in cream filling over this. This is revenge, people. Sweet, sweet revenge.

See, a few weeks ago I accused the Boss Man of throwing a Ding Dong at me. At first I thought it was manna from Heaven because it came hurtling down at me from the floor above, and besides that, no one in their right mind would launch a perfectly good snack-cake at someone.

It had to be sorcery... The kind of sorcery the Boss Man practices, that is.

So I sent him an email that basically said, "I know you threw that Ding-Dong! Don't deny it because whoever threw it had a bad aim and I know your arm is all jacked up, in addition to being pale and hairless! Confess, cupcake abuser!"

Officemate Carolyn tried to intercede: "Boss Man prefers a marshmallow gun as his weapon of choice," she said, which was a really good point because it's totally true. "Unless he really did throw a snack cake, then that is indefensible and wrong." Also totally true.

The Boss Man responded hours later with something watery like, "How DARE you! You want Ding-Dongs?! I'll show you Ding-Dongs!!!"

That was three weeks ago.

Monday morning I saw my cube and at first I was like, "Ack! I've been Ding Dong'd!" But then quickly realized, "Awesome!"

If this is revenge then I am all for it, and so is Hostess. (But Little Debbie, oooh is she pissed.) Ha, jokes on him, I love Ding-Dongs. Everyone loves Ding Dongs.

Who's you're best friend now, hmm? It's me, isn't it?! ME!

Today I turned them into one of the wonders of the world, pyramids. Tomorrow I will try for Stonehenge.

Party in my cube, y'all!

Bombs Away

You wouldn't know it from reading this blog but I have a stack of books on my nightstand that I swear I'm going to write reviews of one of these days.

I know you all are riveted.

My God, Gina, how DARE you make us wait for your opinion on Mishna Wolff's, 'I'm Down.'

(My opinion is it's funny and moving and wonderfully-written and basically I hated it because I didn't write it; but you should read it and we'll go out for drinks and chat about it because it's not often in book discussions you get talk about race relations and socioeconomic status as well as Kangols and Doug E. Fresh.)

But to hold you over, I stumbled upon this spectacular list of Author-on-Author insults at Flavorwire, including this Mark Twain take-down of Jane Austen (1898):

"I haven't any right to criticize books, and I don't do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can't conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice,' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone."

I laughed out loud.

I've never read any Jane Austen, but I understand the sentiment. (I happen to feel the same way about Elizabeth Gilbert for Eat, Pray, Love, which should have been titled, Eat, Pray, Hit Elizabeth Gilbert With Her Own Shin-Bone.)

I'm just jealous no one paid me gobs of money to type a bunch of babbling crap and bind it.

The comments to the Author-on-Author insults are tremendous too. And while you're there, don't miss the Musician-on-Musician take-downs.

Expatriés, Paris

"Please god, let me go to Paris someday and let me go to the wrong restaurant and let me be treated rudely by Parisians and let me wander randomly, not knowing where I am going, confused, and find myself in some less than wonderful café, eating less than the best food and having a glass of not particularly good red wine. What better thing could you hope for - my god, it's Paris!" - Anthony Bourdain, in this hilarious travel video

In 14 days I will be in Paris.

If it's sounds like I'm bragging, I am.

I've never even been to Canada ok, people. Don't take this away from me.

I've been practicing on my iPad how to have conversational French with crappy waiters, pouring over maps, breaking in shoes and already I've packed my bag, unpacked it and packed it again only with more protein bars and Pepto tablets.

Every since I read this staggering Jacques Prévert poem I've been dying to go. (A 43-word poem that captures better what a million words could never.) And now I am so excited I can't believe I ever thought of anything else.

The beauty of it is other than seeing Parc Montsouris (that's French, y'all) from the poem, I have no agenda per se, other than to walk around and see the city and the sights, eat bread, drink wine and sit in cafés. And I can't think of anything more delightful than getting lost in Paris, hopefully in the Latin Quarter where all the bookstores are.

Though truthfully, I probably won't get lost. Ray (my boyfriend not my dad) went last year (I'm basically his hayseed girlfriend) and we are traveling with two friends, one of whom speaks French and doesn't consider it a good year unless he's gone to Paris.

So basically my job is to sit back and be awed. That, I am good at.

My biggest concern is how I'm going to get Anna Karenina to Europe. Because why wouldn't I be reading a 950 page tome instead of a reasonably sized, easier to travel with book. Usually I don't even read books this long because it's not my fault the writer needed a better editor and I don't have that kinda time, but at 150 pages in, I gotta see how this unfolds.

Anna is heavy and bulky and I don't really want to carry a big book around, but I can't commit to reading on the iPad quite yet. It feels like... cheating. And is there a better time to read Tolstoy than being trapped with it on a plane for 16 hours round trip? Hell no.

So Anna is coming with me, I'm just undecided in what form.

Anyway, I should go... I'm heading to Target to buy one of those posters of the Eiffel Tower so I can hang it in my dining room so when people come over I can be all, "Oh, I've always loved Paris... and I totally got that at a street fair on the Champs-whatever-it's-called.'