Top Ten Things I Learned from Freedom Day 2014

10. The Fourth of July is more fun when you call it Freedom Day.

Being able to yell, “Freedom!” and having people yell, “Freedom!” in return makes for a great party rallying cry. Frankly, it’s just really fun to do any kind of call and answer, holiday or no.

In all seriousness, though, it also makes you think about the difference between patriotism, nationalism, and jingoism, about performative patriotism in all forms, from say joining the armed services to attending protest rallies to wearing items sporting the flag. We’re a very performatively patriotic citizenry here in the U.S., and it’s good to stop and consider what that says and means about us as individuals and as a people, both internally and within the international community.

9. The best kind of birthday cake is one made for America.

I dunno why birthday cake tastes better when you keep shouting, “Happy Birthday America!” but it does. Just trust me.

8. Most of these best films for Fourth of July viewing are missing one of the very best options imaginable…as we discovered yesterday.

I looked at tons of recommended viewing/marathon lists and not one of them had the movie we finally settled on, Varsity Blues. The film actually starts with red white and blue and the first line is literally, “America has a lot of rules.” This film bleeds ‘Merica through and through, and I appreciate that – in the context of the film – this also means a kind of skepticism about following trends or people blindly, an independent spirit, and a willingness to stand up for others and/or what you believe in, even if it means losing something important to you personally. Also, Texas! And football. On the whole, a perfect Freedom Day choice.

7. YouTube has a kind of hilariously good ability to make mix tapes for your Freedom Day partying/aimless driving.

Seriously, you turn on the YouTube and BAM! Here’s a list of weird, strangely patriotic music….kind of? Putting David Byrne’s “America” next to 2LiveCrew “Banned in the U.S.A.,” Lana Del Rey’s “National Anthem,” and Cimorelli’s “Made in America,” you definitely get Americana with an edge. And if your car stereo is swank like mine, you can stream that playlist right through your speakers. Awwww, yeah.

6. There are a lot of Freedom-related smells I enjoy.

I like the smell of gunpowder. I like the smell of bonfires. I like the smell of smoking meat. I like the smell of sweat and salt and sunscreen, the perennial scents of summer. I like the smell of summer fruits – strawberries, watermelons, blackberries. And then there’s the leathers – they smell like new boots and worn saddle – and incenses and desert flowers.

Which is to say that, yes, to me Freedom Day smells a lot like home. I guess you can take the girl of Texas, but you’ll never take the Texas out of the girl. I wish I had Tauer Perfumes Lonestar Memories, but since I didn’t, I opted Tauer Perfumes L'Air du desert marocain, which is meant to capture the experience of “finding peace in a room, lying on the bed, exhausted from the heat of the day, with the window open, letting the cool air in which still is very dry and filled with the scents from the near desert and overlayed with the spicy scents of the streets below.” Portland may not be Houston hot, but hot is hot, and this is what I always think of in the high heat of summer, wherever I am.

5. I have become slightly more baller at fancy eye make-up than I realized.

I saw this awesome #MUA video of a blue gradient eye makeup and decided I really wanted to try it. I think I did a pretty good job (see the photo) annnnnd I got randomly complimented specifically on my eye makeup, so I am calling that a Freedom Day success story.

4. El Hubs has discovered his summer Glühwein beverage creation equivalent – Sangria!

For years now, David has been rocking the glühwein for our winter holiday gatherings. Summers, however, have been less party beverage defined. Thanks to our housemate coming home with five bottles of free white wine and some season fruit inspiration of David’s part, I think we’ve settled on our wine+booze+fruit drink for warmer days. The beverage was delicious, there was plenty of it, and we all enjoyed it, so I think the white wine sangria is definitely a hit!

3. I really like white wine sangria, but like it a lot less when I am wearing it.

I managed to dump a lot of sangria on me during a typical Diana-is-a-klutz disaster, but the nicest thing about a white sangria is that at least it didn’t stain my clothes. Was I sticky? Yes. But that was the extent of my unhappiness, and when it comes to me and my klutziness, that’s a success story. Again, we’re calling that a Freedom Day win.

2. We’ve created a new holiday game!
On Saturday, El Hubs and I created a new 4th of July weekend competition/event/form of entertainment.

You and your friends select the non-alcoholic Americana beverage of your choice (we had unnameable custom-called giant Starbucks beverages, but would also accept things like a giant drink from Sonic, a 72oz Slurpee, etc.). Then you drive around various neighborhoods in your city, comparing their relative 'Freedom' and 'Merica' scores.

For every house/vehicle you pass with tasteful, moderate Independence Day decorations (a tasteful bit of bunting, tiny row of sidewalk flags), said neighborhood gets a 'Freedom' point. For every house/vehicle you pass that either looks like it had been hosed down in American regalia OR has some sort of obvious over the top spirit going on (I'm looking at you, guy with a giant American flag attached hastily to a 2x4 that is tied to the gate of your truck), said neighborhood earns one 'Merica' point. Bonus points are awarded for 'Permanent' installations in either category (e.g. someone with an obviously permanent flag pole and flag set up in their yard; something with a patriotic paint job on their vehicle).

This leads to both amazing conversations and photos. Why is wealthy neighborhood A so much freer than wealthy neighborhood B? Why did small municipality X feel so 'Merica-inspired they covered their street construction in flags? What demographics lead to overt expressions of various forms of patriotism? What do these expressions represent and how they differ? Why do some people with lots of money still have such terrible taste?

So many questions! Plus you get to drive around listening to patriotic music (Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Sr., etc.) while yelling "Freedom!" or "'Merica!" and pointing or taking the occasional photo.

1. I sort of love all this patrio-nationalistic nonsense all the same.

The thing is, I genuinely enjoyed the decorations. Like I was kind of sad I hadn't decorated our house by the time I got home. Hell, I even tear up whenever I hear "Proud to be an American," and I'm fine with that.  So I think the key is to recognize there's a little ingrained overt patrio-nationalistic in all of us and to smile and wish people a happy fourth if they look at you funny if you're playing our little as-yet-unnamed-game. 

And with that – I’ll take my leave. I hope you all had a great weekend, and I wish my American readers a happy Freedom Day to all.

"He says to 'be cool' but I don't know how yet.
Wind in my hair, hand on the back of my neck.
I said, "Can we party later on?"
He said, 'Yes, yes.' (Yes.)

Tell me I'm your National Anthem.
(Ooh, yeah, baby, bow down, making me so wow, wow.)
Tell me I'm your National Anthem.
(Sugar, sugar, how now, take your body down town.)
Red, white, blue is in the skies.
Summer's in the air and baby, heaven's in your eyes.
I'm your National Anthem."
~ "National Anthem," Lana Del Rey

The Girl on Fire: Katniss Everdeen as Feminist Icon

Thoughts, Perfumey and not, on Suzanne Collin's The Hunger Games, Pt. 1

For those of you living under a rock, the first film adaptation of Suzanne Collin's killer trilogy, The Hunger Games, released this past weekend, and brought in the third biggest U.S. box office opening in history. Though I will tread carefully to avoid film-related spoilers, I do want to talk a little about Katniss Everdeen as a role model for young women everywhere.

This post got so long, I'm splitting it into two parts.

Katniss as Feminist Role Model

To start let's talk about Katniss, the role model. I was listening to Jennifer Lawrence talking about why she took the part of Katniss on NPR last Friday morning and I feel like she summed it up nicely.

Q: What draws you to the character:

JL: She's not a hero. She's not a James Bond or Laura Croft that's done this a million of time and she has all the tools and knows how to do it and we're just going to watch her win. There's never really a point in the Games where she thinks she won't die. She's just trying to survive for her family and then becomes this Joan of Arc by starting to fight for her people.

Q: When you think about the young women who are going to be in these audiences, what do you want them to take from this character?

JL: I think the most important message that this movie has and what Katniss has is how powerful one person can be and the power that we have as the people because we're being manipulated by whatever we're being manipulated by -- reality television, the news, the president... And also, on a simpler note, she's just a girl whose standing up for what's right when something's wrong when it's hard and when it's scary.

Q:What were the doubts? If [your mom, who introduced JL to the books,] had said there could be a potential down side, what was it?

JL: I was just worried about, you know there's not a lot of decisions you are faced with that will change your life forever and it'll never go back. I was afraid nobody'd ever be able to lose themselves in another character I did. It would always be, you know, Katniss is doing a period drama, Katniss is doing .... But then I realized that if I was going to known for any character, this is the most incredible character that I could ever... you know, I would be honored.

JL on Katniss' costuming:
"I want to make sure I can run
and jump and climb.
[...] The dresses I don't care about.
Just put them on me.
 It's like Oscar season again."

FN1. "I would be honored."  Just reading that gives me a little lump in my throat.

Listening to Lawrence's interview, I found myself crying. I think what moved me about Lawrence's interview, in part, is that this film is coming out at a time when a lot of power structures are moving against women's rights to autonomy in this country. And whether you are talking about a presidential candidate or a religious leadership council or a state government, it is hard not to feel like your right to make choices about what happens to you physically isn't being increasingly restrained. Speaking out is punished. These decisions are being made for your own good. Dissent will be met swiftly, and with ugliness and, frankly, hatred.

When Lawrence describes Katniss as "just a girl," she's right. Katniss is only a girl struggling to survive. While her situation is far more dire than most first-world women, the principle that no government or religious organization has the right to restrict your autonomy, personal safety, or right to live remains the same.

I know I sound like a boring, broken record lately, and I apologize for that. Believe me when I tell you I want to write about something other than reproductive choice and politics. Hell, I want to think about something other than reproductive choice and politics. But I cannot stop, because I am inundated on a daily basis with the message that my choices are being constricted and my life is less valuable than someone else's and my judgement is suspect. And if I speak out, I will be cast in a negative light because we must never forget that it is wrong for women to enjoy or want physical intimacy and that if women become pregnant, it is always and exclusively, their responsibility, their fault. FN2

Activists protesting for
reproductive freedom in Virginia.

I went to a history lecture last week at my alma mater (yes, I'm one of those people). In it, one of my beloved professors, Dr. David Campion, spoke about feeling lost in your life. "Who am I? Where am I going? Am I making wise decisions? What will happen if I fail? What will happen to those who choose to follow me if I do?" Though he spoke of many extraordinary people -- Eisenhower and Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Tolstoy -- his point, over and over, was this: no one knows when or if they are destined for greatness. Eisenhower, before he was President or Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, was a man with an unremarkable military career headed for retirement. You just never know when life is going to suddenly expect you to be extraordinary. So the best plan is to make decisions based on what you think is right, consult the examples of those who have gone before for inspiration and guidance, and surround ourselves with people smart and trustworthy in case you are called on by force of circumstance or chance or choice to become something less than ordinary.

This is one of the things that makes Katniss an extraordinary example. She doesn't want to be a leader, she doesn't ask to be an icon. She becomes ones because she refuses to lie down and die when she's told to. She acts of love and bravery, not fear, even when it might come at the cost of her life, or the lives of those she loves. That is extraordinary, and I think it is part of what has resonated with a lot of the books' readership.

I'm also pleased the directors chose to include Katniss' aversion to having a family in the beginning of the film and her feeling of responsibility as stand-in parent for her sister. I think it is rare in this world that women who don't want children are portrayed as sensible or likable though given how awful the world, even the first world, can be, sometimes I wonder if these men and women aren't making the wiser choice. Mostly, I'm glad that the sheer work it takes to feed and cloth and house oneself and one's dependents is shown as a real and limiting factor for both Katniss and Gale in the first book, because it is an important aspect of the intersection of poverty and reproductive choice rarely explored in media.  While this was explored more full in the book, I am really glad the film included it.

Gale: "Maybe if I didn't live here."
Katniss: "Yeah,but you do live here."

I like that it is okay for Katniss to express that she does not want to have children and for us to like and understand her choice far more than Gale's reaction to it. I like that the one who seems irrational isn't the person who does not want children; too often, the social norm of 'wanting to have kids' is so overpowering that the idea that no children is a (possibly more) rational choice gets overlooked entirely. FN3.

The other thing I wanted to comment on is that I am thrilled the film reflects one of the things I noticed most in series' first book: if most of the men who make it to the final rounds do so on brute strength, the women survive due to their own cleverness. Rue, Foxface, Katniss -- each has moments of brilliance that keep them alive, and it is because they are smart and thoughtful and clever, not because they are the biggest, strongest, or most inclined to success in conflict. What a great message for young female readers! It isn't your looks or your physical prowess or your ability to be likable and feminine that is your most valuable asset: it is your intellect! FN4. FN5.

I wrote a piece a while back talking about my hope that a result of the current proliferation of women-written, female-character-centered young adult novels would be a generation of women inundated with a message that their voices matter and their strength matters and that they can change the world. Like Lawrence, I hope young women in film audiences will take the message from The Hunger Games that they don't have to be special to become special. They don't have to feel brave to be brave. That simply doing the right thing in the face of fear and difficulty can make all the difference in the world, be it this one or Panem.

It isn't easy, as any fan of Katniss knows. It can cost you plenty.

But in the end (and for those of you who haven't finished the series, you should), it can mean a much better life than any you could have imagined, one that contains -- if not comfort -- love and self-respect.

Stay tuned for Part Two, wherein I talk about perfumes and music I associate with the world of The Hunger Games, and do a give away that contains both, plus so much more [SPOILER ALERT - HG SWAG YOU CAN WIN!]!

May the odds be ever in your favor.

________________
FN1. You can hear the full interview with Lawrence and the director, Gary Ross, here.

FN2. This did not stop me, of course, from offering myself up for criticism as the only pro-choice female speaker an abortion discussion panel at a Catholic University. They could not locate a pro-choice female faculty or staff member willing to do the panel for professional reasons, so a former co-worker and professional associate reached out to me. went because (1) someone needs to; (2) I don't like intimidation used to silence speech; (3) I'm a glutton for punishment. The hate mail in the aftermath has been....challenging. To the credit of the university, it wasn't their community members who attacked me (they were all very respectful), but some audience members who seem unrelated to the school, and whom I suspect are attached to the anti-choice organization who was represented on the panel as well.

FN3. Bella Swan, Bella Swan, Bella Swan.  Sorry. Had to get that off my chest.

FN4. Okay, so yes, there's the underlying current that Katniss, much like Bella Swann of the Twilight franchise, are beautiful and have an effect on men they are unconscious of. (My husband pounced on this similarity before the credits had finished rolling.) Aren't they humble about their looks and isn't that amazing, that they are beautiful but only occasionally engage in using it as a tool and then feel really bad about their guile? I think the difference between them is that (a) Katniss has more to offer than her looks and almost never relies on them, or on anyone else, to solve her problems. In point of fact, trying to be a 'pretty girl' is something she can never grow comfortable with and is an aspect of her personality used more by others than by her.

FN5. Though it is obvious that Panem, as a society, does not value intellect the most, which is made equally clear in the book and the film. Katniss' intellect is a liability, it attracts negative attention, it saves and simultaneously endangers her because her ability to think for herself and to resist mass messaging makes her a target, figuratively and literally. Katniss is only safe when she sticks to scripts that serve traditional male dominance/appeal to the male gaze.

Haymatch: "He [Peeta] made you desirable!"

Because remember, Ladies, it's not your inherent beauty or strength, personal charm or intelligence that makes you attractive to others, it's that the male gaze values you. Peeta makes Katniss 'desirable' (i.e. an object of value within the confines of 'things men want to possess') and that makes her worth sponsoring, not her skill score or anything she does on her own. The only people who sponsor her for her own value are the people of District 11, and they honor one of the best things about Katniss during the games: her ability to maintain her humanity even at the worst times.

Is there room for more perfume writing?

Blogging: A Mission Statement

Pat at OlfactaRama had a great post about the general rumbling among fragrance bloggers regarding the 'glut' of new perfumer reviewers/writers/bloggers. I've seen this rumbling around for a bit now, most recently in sort of warning piece/guest post by Vanessa Musson of Bonkers for Perfume, at Now Smell This! entitled "5 things to think about before you start a perfume blog," and then a follow-up post, "The Sequel: 5 Things I Have Learnt From Perfume Blogging."

A mission statement?
You know that's right!

Now I don't want to pick on Vanessa. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, to talk about perfume bloggers or the number thereof or what makes a good/bad blog. Also, I think she had some interesting and useful things to say. FN1. But I do want to talk about this whole "why are you blogging/should you be blogging" thing because I've been wanting to comment on it for a while, and I didn't want to write a thousand word manifesto in someone else's comments section.

Okay, maybe not a manifesto.  It's more like...

A mission statement.

That's right people. I'm about to go all Jerry Maguire up in here. FN2. In fact, let's run with that as a theme, shall we? FN3.

I hated myself... no, I hated my place in the world.

Let me tell you why I started Feminine Things. I was in law school. I was miserable. I had leveraged my future to the hilt to earn my degree, only to find out that I hated my classmates/future colleagues and my industry. FN4. I hadn't written anything fun or interesting in a while. I felt as though my logic-driven studies was literally sucking the creativity out of me through my pores.

At the same time, I met Angela from Now Smell This! through our respective jobs. I told her I was thinking of buying myself a bottle of perfume for my thirtieth birthday. She brought me some samples.

So that's what oakmoss
looks like...

I summarily lost my mind and began buying tens of samples. FN5. I kept trying to keep straight what I'd tried and hadn't, what I liked best, why I liked one thing more than another. I didn't know anything about perfume.

 I had never heard the word "chypre." I couldn't tell a gardenia from a jasmine, a leather rose from a powder rose. I couldn't pronounce most of the perfume house names. I didn't even know what the big houses were.

But I had some free time. And I needed to keep track of what I was smelling. And I needed a writing prompt to help me begin writing again. I figured, "What could be harder than writing about the way something smelled for people who couldn't actually be present to smell it?

So I started this blog.

If this [points to heart] is empty, this [points to head] doesn't matter.

Let me tell you how little I had to go on. I didn't own any non-Body Shop/Bath & Body Works perfume when I started. No one linked to me. No one. My friends didn't even read my blog. You know how much I cared? Not even a little.

Those sunglasses are to hide
my tear-filled eyes.

I didn't start the blog to get readers. I needed a place to think and reflect and write. I needed, some days, a place to scream.  I needed a place for me.

Perfume inspired me. It was overwhelming at first.  I would put something on, and BAM! The perfume I was smelling made me feel...everything.

I would smell a scent and it would remind me of my deceased grandfather, and I wept. Another would remind me of the smell of gardenias in my grandmother's backyard...and I blubbered for an hour. A scent reminiscent of my old high school boy friend? More tears.

Basically, I cried a lot.

But I also wrote a lot. I remembered how much I liked words, liked the texture and feel of them in my mouth as I read my writing back to myself. I loved the vivid images perfumes evoked, the random pop cultural connections that would spring into my head when I sniffed at my hand, and just how damned happy I was. My perfume made me so happy. Still does.

First class, that's what's wrong. It used to be a better meal, now it's a better life.

They get free samples in first class?

Even over a year later, I didn't have anyone sending me samples. FN6.   I didn't have any awards. I didn't have any invites to be part of special blogging events. I still didn't have any links to other bloggers. I didn't even have someone to swap with because Angela and I had both left our positions and, sadly, didn't see much of one another.

 I was spending all my disposable income and then some on samples, but there was no way I could keep up with blogs like Now Smell This! or Perfume Posse. So I didn't bother trying. I bought sample sets from The Perfumed Court so I could learn the difference between a candied violet and a soapy violet, if anyone could make a decent orange scent, what constituted a boozy scent, whether I'd ever like anything other than a rose. New releases - who cared? I hadn't even tried Patou Joy or Guerlain Mitsouko yet.

I read a few books about perfume, but mostly? I just smelled, and then I wrote about it. Then I'd smell some more, and write about it. I'm not promoting blogging with blind ignorance.  I'm just saying, everybody has to start somewhere, and you should never be so afraid of looking stupid you miss an opportunity to learn. As I blogged, I trusted my instincts and my own impressions of the scents. You know why? Perfumes smell different to and on different people. They evoke different memories. They elicit different connections. What smells like a funeral to me may smell like heaven to you.  I think both reviews are probably correct.

Was I writing what my esteemed colleagues were? Nope. As far as I could tell, everyone else had a lot more knowledge of the industry and a lot fewer pop references, no one else was using song lyrics for titles, and I didn't see anyone else occasionally freaking out about feminist politics. Did I have "a new perspective to offer"? Ha! Who cared? I was writing again. It felt terrific.

This April 15 will mark four full years of blogging about perfume. I haven't stopped yet, and I have no intention of doing so.

The key to this business is personal relationships.

One thing that keeps coming up in posts about the 'crowded field' of perfume blogging is the idea of "lost readership" and " fluctuating traffic" and "shouting into the void."

Largely these things seem like nonsensical concerns to me. I admit to being flattered by readership. Who isn't? I admit I like comments. But mostly, I write this blog for me. Maybe it's the writer in me that thinks it's a good idea, but I prefer to give credit to the historian.

When I was in college, I read A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812 for a class. This work by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich is one of the best books you can read about American life in the period in large part because it reflects the thoughts and feelings of the daily life of a real person as they were living it. This is history gold, people! It doesn't get more primary source than that.

 Do I think I deserve to be the speaker for our times? No, I do not. But I suspect Martha Ballard didn't think she would be either. Part of the reason I write this blog,  and part of why I write and document my life to (quite frankly) an absurd degree (you really should see my scrap books of movie tickets stubs - not even joking), is because part of me thinks, "What if I end up the Martha Ballard of the early 21st Century?" You never know who the Angel of History's eye will fall upon in the rubble. If it's me? I'd like there to be plenty of material for that intrepid historical scholar to work from.

And to that end, I try to document the work I've enjoyed reading around the internet here, and on twitter, FB, G+, and the like. I like to share things with people, to talk about them and read them. And I like to give inspirational credit where credit is due, even if the inspiration is to blog at length about how I disagree, whether that be related to perfume or not. Discourse is intensely valuable and immeasurably rewarding, particularly when it challenges us to (re)consider our own assumed postures. I am grateful to those who prompt me to bring pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.

Plus, being nice? Kind of the golden rule.

Hey, I don't have all the answers. In life, to be honest, I failed as much as I have succeeded.

This isn't my first blog. I started a livejournal back in the late 1990s, then I had an independent blog I designed myself that was hosted on a friend's server for a few years. Before that, I wrote in spiral bound notebooks. FN7.

Can I be your ambassador
of perfume kwan?

I'm not really in the beauty industry, and I doubt I ever will be. I still don't know as much about perfume as a lot of other bloggers. You know what I learned on Castle two weeks ago? How to properly say the name of a perfume I actually own. FN8.

I keep going anyway, learning and trying and collecting. Will I keep writing Feminine Things for a while? I like to think so. I see no reason for stopping. And even though I do have all those things now - awards and event invites, links and followers and commenters and even, yes, the occasional free samples to review - I would still keep writing here if I didn't.

Most flattering to me, though, is that you keep reading, and others find my work valuable.  This blog ended up on a couple of Women's Studies syllabi in courses on feminism and the beauty industry in the last couple of years.  I actually got to send a message to one of the classes that used my blog.  As someone who has made a life of studying sex and gender in popular culture, it touches me to think I might help someone else learn and grow.

Truthfully? I never track my traffic. I didn't even know about this wikio/Ebuzzing thing until I read Vanessa's follow-up piece. Google ranks sites? News to me. I like it when people post on my drawings, because I like to give pretty things away. Other than that? I might as well be writing letters to myself.

When I went back to look at my very short initial post today, there was a comment on it, one I never even replied to. How great is that? Three days in and I had a reader. One reader. Perhaps it's her I'm still writing to.

When I write the words, dear reader, I am literally imagining you out there, reader, and I hope you will hear me when I say the following:

Words are tools; writing, a learned skill. The more you use them, the better you get at writing. Whatever inspires you to write, write about that. If it's wine? Start a w(h)ine blog. If it's shoes, go with that fetish. If it's making up funny, misspelled statements to apply on photos of cats, I hear there's a market for that. It's a big old internet out there, and I am not in any way afraid of losing my reader to you. I can't. They live here, in my head.

You complete me, dear reader!

So if you've got something to say about perfume, I want to hear it! If you've started a scent blog you don't see listed in my sidebar of bloggers, tell me. Provided you aren't a spamming troll, I'll be happy to add you. I can't promise I will always have time to read everything you write and comment on it, but if you inspire me to think or talk or write, I will give you the internet love you deserve. And I truly hope you do it better than I do, even if you start your very first post tomorrow.

Who knows - I might even learn something.

Leave a comment to be added to the blogroll.  Or just to say you love/hate/indifferent me, sweet reader.  For deep down in the spidery corners of my ventricular chambers, I feel the same about you.

But I love my wife husband. I love my life. And I wish you my kind of success.
______________
FN1. For instance, I, too, regret not going with Wordpress. Though if I move now, I'm probably going to Drupal Gardens. Because this Bitch? She hearts the cutting edge technologies. (Given that, I still don't know why I ended up on Blogger. I think because I was broke and it was free. Thanks for asking.)

FN2. Dorothy: "I loved your memo, by the way."
Jerry: "Thanks... actually, it was just a Mission Statement."

Bonkers!

FN3. Also, if you all don't like this post, please don't golf clap me off stage left with my sad little fish in hand. Plus, Tom Cruise is actually bonkers, so I think it works thematically. Also, I love Cameron Crowe, so you can all suck it.

Wait -- am I not supposed to be telling readers to suck it? Damn, I'm bad at this.

FN4. Loved my coursework and my profs, though. Holla to my Lewis & Clark faculty, what? What! Seriously, though. I really should have just gotten a Ph.D. in Legal History or Legal Philosophy.


FN5. Yes, tens, not hundreds. I was broke, remember?

FN6. I actually don't mind paying for samples.  I appreciate that materials are expensive and most of the perfumers I buy from are independent small business owners who need to recoup/cover their costs.  I'm just happy they let me have the samples, instead of selling by full bottle only.  I couldn't afford to try much perfume if I had to buy full bottles just to try them.

FN7. I still write long hand in notebooks.

FN8. Seriously. It isn't fracas? As in "to cause a"? I am terrrrible with French. Ah well. I might sound like a stupid culturally-illiterate American, but at least I don't smell like one.