This will save you from the sea of pet hair

The Feline Trifecta sheds. When sunlight spills into the room and a fan is blowing, all I can see is hair flying everywhere. It's horrifying. I vacuum. I lint roll. I cannot keep up. Vacuums don't pick up much hair. And the surface of a lint roller is so small, that to clean off, say, my comforter or my sheets or my couch, takes about 40 sheets and just as many minutes to peel away each and every layer.

And then Pledge made this:



And can I tell you how amazing this thing is? It works better than a lint roller--picks up more hair and in far less time. Plus, it's reusable, over and over. This means it is way better for the environment too.

Got a pet hair problem? You want to buy this.

UPDATE: I originally thought you could snap open the top of this thing, dump out the collected hair and reuse it. Nope. Pledge wants you to throw the whole thing away. It's still cheaper than buying a lint roller, but that's still a whole lot of plastic going in the trash. I'm going to jerry rig mine to open up and become reusable. Still way better than a lint roller.

Why did it take me so long to pick up this book and read it?

No, seriously: it is CHANGING my life right now.

Change yours. Read it.

(P.S. Substitute word "screenwriting" for "story writing" or "novel writing" or "being a better writer.")

And all this time I thought it was about the Hokey Pokey

I'll admit it: I went to Walmart today. Tell me: is there angry bad energy in that store 24 hours a day? Because the few times I've stepped into that store, I've immediately been sucked dry of happiness. I cannot walk down an aisle without someone pushing past me, trying to grab at everything off the shelf as if all the food in the world were about to disappear. Also, people shriek a lot in there. And babies always cry. And entire families--I'm talking cousins and aunts and grandmas--congregate together in the aisles and try on hats, on shoes, on bras over their shirts.

Today there was this woman--we'll call her Mrs. Over Consumer--knuckling the handles of her cart and tapping her foot. Occasionally, she'd sigh, then pace the aisle. She finally found a Walmart employee, tugged her over, and started mumbling and grumbling. She said she was unhappy and that she was a regular customer who should be happy and how in the world could Walmart not carry the staples she wanted? Why were there so many choices? Her voice rose. She started waving her arms. She wanted the employee to know that something should be done. The Walmart Employee--we'll call her Miss This is Just a Summer Job Please Don't Yell at Me--was talking in a soft and kind voice, trying to explain something to Mrs. Over Consumer, when Mrs. Over Consumer screamed:

"BUT THAT'S WHAT WALMART HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT: REGULAR STAPLES!"

I want to know how funny it was putting together all the penises.

Have you seen Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno videos? They are so weird and fantastic. My favorite thing about this one: "It will be species specific so I'm not screwed by a bear."

This must mean the internet is god.

I'm working on revising my thesis right now (due date: July sometime) and I wanted to add fireflies into an evening scene. Except the scene is in California and I wasn't sure--having never seen them out there--if fireflies have been spotted so far west. Specifically, I wanted to know--was dying for someone to tell me--if fireflies can be found in California. I went to Wikipedia and looked up fireflies, but couldn't find specifics about where fireflies live, so I typed into a Google search Fireflies, Region. My first hit? A yahoo.com question that read: Where in the US do fireflies live? Can I find them in California?, as if my brain had been transplanted onto the computer screen, then given the answer.

The internet is awesome.

(By the way, the answer is no.)

(Unless you go on Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland where you can see them, but, believe me, they are not real.)

I think I will call it Kung Fu Baby

I am in my study, facing the window, and writing. Out in my neighbor's yard, there's a baby squirrel flitting between bushes, sometimes resting in shade on the grass. A moment ago, a robin dropped from the roof and dive-bombed the baby, sending it scurrying into hiding. Then from out of nowhere the baby squirrel flipped through the air, waving its front arms wildly and flicking its tail at the robin until the bird flew away.

There are more where these came from

Check out www.awkwardfamilyphotos.com for a real portrait treat:

Translating sounds to the page.

If you were going to write about this baby fox, how would you describe the sound it makes?



By the way, how cute is this fox?

UPDATE: I've decided it's making a warbling sound.

Even Journalists Fall For It.

You might want to use this article next time you're teaching about Wikipedia in a comp class.

If you see me passed out on the side of the road, bring water

Plan for today:

1. Run outside (outside!) for the first time since November. (note: I have been running on the treadmill at school, but that's inside, inside, inside, and noisy, noisy, noisy).

2. Chug along on the thesis to turn it in for July deadline.

3. Prep for summer job.

4. Go outside! Outside! Outside!

5. Do a I-have-no-more-homework dance.

I want to know what the lunch breaks look like

Imagine this: a country offers you a 3-bedroom house RENT FREE on AN ISLAND for six months. All you have to do in return is ACCEPT PAYMENT of $130,000, and snorkel and scuba and bum around on the beach, then blog about it. All you have to do is act like this is your job. Because it is your job.

This guy gets to do it.

I'm going to start imagining it was sharp cheddar cheese

I feel like I slipped out from some dark hole, having been buried under by Nathan's death, by a dark and cold Mankato winter, by feelings of deep deep sadness. Now that the sun is out, spring is here, the air is warmer, things feel a bit better. It's been four months today that Nathan died and the grief shows up differently now: I don't cry as often (although when I do, it's like falling a thousand feet, it's dark and horrible and sad), and things feel less blurry now, like even if I'm sad I can see something bright at the end of all of it, like now I can laugh again sometimes and I don't have to try so hard to be present with people, although I still want to shrink away. I still feel him everywhere. I sense him all over the place. Everything I see or do or say feels tinted by his death. But I feel like I will be happy again one day, I can feel that, which is good, because for a while there I thought I was facing a life of darkness.

Things floating around in my head right now:

I don't know what the last thing was that my brother ate. This seems important to know. Not knowing is another piece I don't have of him.

My brother hasn't experienced the last four months. There are things that have happened to me, are happening to me, that I can't tell him about. And there are things that haven't happened to him because he's dead.

I want to know things like: was the winter hard for him? Would it have been? Doesn't he think it's silly how much people talk about Obama's dog? Has he heard Lisa Hannigan's CD? Is he sad she doesn't sing with Damien Rice anymore?

If he was still alive, where would he have slept when Denver got all that snow last weekend? Would he have been homeless then? And what happened with all the homeless people who are still alive in Denver? Did they have a place to sleep? Were extra shelters opened for them? Were their family members worried about them all night long, all day long, wondering where their homeless brothers, fathers, sisters, sons were?

And dammit I still want to know what Nathan's last meal was. I know his roommate had been making curry with aromatic rice, had just finished making it, and then went into the bedroom where he thought Nathan was sleeping, asked him, "Hey, you want to eat some of this?" And when Nathan didn't respond, the roommate walked over, touched him, shook him to ask again, and then realized he was dead, had been dead for a while--how long, really? Four hours? Three? How long had he been dead? No one knows that either.