sunday best-of blogging

best song to stretch lazily and blissfully in a swath of sunlight that's warming your bed in all the right places to: "the greatest," cat power. chan marshall sounds like a very happy woman on this new album, and i'm glad.

best career news: in march, i started copyediting three days a week for a periodicals publisher. those three days were in addition to the three days i was already (and still am) working at the animal hospital, and that's why you haven't heard much from me lately; it was rough getting used to having one day off, when for the past year or so i'd had about four. but it's been worth the adjustment: wednesday the managing editor and president of the company offered me a full-time position as chief articles editor for three journals, one that's currently in publication and two that will be starting up in the summer. they're all on really technical sciency stuff like neurodegeneration and opioid receptors, so my inner geek is doing cartwheels, and the position seems like a pretty killer way to transition into a new field. as a bonus, i'll still get to do the copyediting on the truly troubled articles, like the ones that were written by people who don't normally speak english, and i genuinely love that stuff, so i'm one happy nerd. it's a lot more than i'd expected to be offered, coming in as a temp with no formal experience, but apparently i've got a golden ear for quality. it's especially fun for me because for the past ten years my best friend's nickname for me has been "chief," so i won't just be Chief Articles Editor, i'll be Chief, Articles Editor. what a hoot! i won't be making the switch until july, so i might still be off the radar a lot of the time, but know that i'm well and that i'm always thinking of you. unless i've died. i don't know how you'll know for sure. i guess i'd recommend cautious optimism.

best basis for sexual attraction: "he's got a real horshack-epstein vibe going on." spoken by toadie in reference to the lead singer of the band why? (whom you can search for on their label's site). why? opened for islands, also on wednesday, now on record as Juniper's Favorite Day in April Ever. islands contains two former members of the unicorns and lots of other people, and while i dreamt unfulfilled dreams of a "jellybones" encor, toadie's above comment, which was followed by, "i might have to throw my underwear on stage," made up for anything that might have been missing—especially because she and i are maybe the only two girls on the planet who could say it and mean it.

saddest punctuation development: the new yorker appears to have abandoned the en dash. as they were one of the last remaining holdouts, i fear for its imminent extinction in mass publication. it will forever live on in this blog, though, and doubtless in your faithful hearts, and the second i take over the magazine's offices you can bet your bonny behind you'll be seeing it back on those pompous, beautiful pages.

best missed photo op: ah, my dear, sweet, brazenly hypocritical mspca; how happy i am to be escaping your smarmy, capitalist façade of goodness. the society's veterinary hospital, who can't be my former employer one moment too soon, is in the midst of a MASSIVE and entirely cosmetic renovation, believing that a prettier outside will draw more clients inside. i've no idea how many billions of dollars they're pouring into it, but i imagine it's several. meanwhile, the staff is tragically underpaid, the ccu is cramped and inadequate (and staying that way), and dozens of patients are turned away or sentenced to death because their owners don't make the financial cut. oh, and the hospital's president owns a very small jet, which he likes to take out every once in a while for meditation purposes. 'cause he's tense.

anyway, since the external construction started, the grounds have been bombed routinely with rodenticide to keep mice from seeking shelter in the building, and half the trees on the once sprawling and lovely lawn have been cleared to make room for parking lots. yesterday, i.e., earth day, a surgery supervisor made a large, touching "happy earth day!" sign for us to take outside and stand next to the destruction crew with as they detreed our borders, and i was soooo excited—but then it started to rain, and they all went home. poo.

least inspiring television moment: i have no idea what the program was, or even what channel it was on, but the other night i saw a woman applying makeup to a tomboyish teenage girl, and when she was done and the girl admitted that she didn't look too bad, the woman said, "now, i want you to put this makeup on every day, O.K.? you have to promise that you'll do that, no cheating; girly girls wear makeup to school." i'd like to tell you what happened after that, but i vomited and passed out.

best kisser: your mom. at least, that's what it says in the fourth stall from the right.

an apology for lsz*, and some other crap

oh, muffin. i'm a bad blogger. bad, bad blogger, leaving you out here to fend for yourself in the wilds of the internets like an infant foisted off on a band of harpies. i tricked you into counting on me, and then i pulled the rug out from under you and walloped you over the head with it. i shall die a fiery death for my sins, i assure you.

the tragic truth of it, though, is that i, too, am bereft of interesting news about pretty boys and political evils. let me see if i can dredge up a little something to rouse your curiosity, anyway.

1. i don't exactly watch dr. 90210, but i frequently pause on it when they're in the middle of actual surgical procedures, just because i'm somewhat transfixed by the ease with which a living thing can be made into listless meat, and also i'm sort of hypnotized by the shininess of it all. anyhow, on an episode that aired recently a male-to-female transsexual went in for breast implants. all during the consult and surgical prep, we were treated to uncensored full-frontal torso, but once the implants were in place (and i mean the second they were in place; the doctor hadn't even put down his forceps) the show began to pixelate her nipples. this struck me as immensely bizarre and disgustingly misogynistic. the patient wasn't more or less a woman with the implants in, she just fit the societal mold a little better. are athletic, flatter-chested genetic women less female than naturally larger-breasted girls? the patient still had a penis; technically, medically, those were male nipples on top of those synthetic fun bags. but they were on top, and so they couldn't be displayed. my vexation is tempered only by the thought that the patient may have been pleased. . . i guess i'd have to talk to her before i made a solid stand.

2. i am now only four months behind on the new yorker, and am slogging through my accumulated stack at a tortoise-steady clip that i'm certain will get me caught up in no time (in the past week i finished two and a half issues by deciding that i didn't really care about classical music or athletes; i guess this is how everyone else manages to keep from falling behind in the first place). today i finished the jan. 16 issue and can not believe the magazine ran a two-page plug for the family guy. what? what?!?! i mean, anyone who knows me knows i love lowbrowing it, but even i couldn't watch enough of this show to write an article about it. i wonder how much the author was motivated by the series' recent financial success from its dvd sales; she did mention it pretty prominently. nancy franklin, do you *heart* lucrative ventures? and why have you taken the looking-glass position that indulging in potty humor makes you a feminist? and how dare you compare harvey birdman to drawn together? harvey, like everything of its ilk williams street has blessed us with over the years (space ghost coast to coast, sealab 2021, etc.) is an inspired burst of irreverent oddness with a mind-blowingly stellar cast (gary cole, stephen colbert, peter macnicol, to name a few). drawn together is the animated equivalent of the thing the roto-rooter man pulls out of my bathroom sink every fall. maybe brian should go back to work at the new yorker, nancy. perhaps he could take your office.

3. roasted turnips are delicious, and have practically no calories. oh, what's that, nancy? you find my calorie counting a self-effacing act that sets the feminist movement back half a century and only assures the industrialized world's capitalist patriarchy that it's got me right where it wants me? well, if you eat too many of them they'll give you gas that could make a dead hyena's eyes water. how's that?


thanks for checking in on me, kids. and all the gentle nagging about my prolonged absence . . . thanks for that, too.






* what the hell . . . i'll extend the apology to all the rest of you who feel you have one coming.

a note from lsz

Dear Readers,

i may not be "the" JP, but hey i think i could come in at maybe 4th place... if you take away my awful grammar and horrid spelling. I bake a mean pumpkin pie and often burn my toast in the morning (for those of you that like burnt toast) I also do windows.

i don't have anything exciting to talk about today, no links, no current events, no hot guy leads sorry!, but i will say that we all miss JP very much, don't we kids?

oh yeah and don't go copying my new trend, a blog-within-a-blog.

yours truly,
me