Ahem. That's bibbidi bobbidi boo.

It was either that, or Bare Necessities . Can you tell with whom I spent my weekend?

Your cousin's boyfriend?

Very fucking funny mister.

No, my nephews. The 3 year old is currently obsessed with Cinderella and Jungle Book .

Reminded me of this sad story
http://www.etymonline.com/columns/miscarriage.htm

The guy who wrote it has put together a good etymology site:
etymonline.com

This afternoon at work, we all got an e-mail from our president asking us to limit the time we spend making personal calls and surfing the Internet. I got it as I was looking at MF.

What does it say about me that I recognized it immediately? My grandmother took me to see the movie and sat through it three times. I would have stayed for a fourth, but she finally drew the line.

I asked several friends in Zurich if they want anything from here (we're going on Friday).

Pastrami, rye bread, bagels, pickles.

I didn't know you had Chinese friends in Switzerland.

I have no idea what that means, but the friends who want the pastrami, rye and pickles are Swiss Jewish, and the friend who wants the bagels is from Colombia originally, but lived in NYC for some years, and she's married to a Catholic Swiss guy.

It was only a bad joke.

Je ne suis pas tres amuseant, oui?

Tu es trop subtile pour mangetoutte Moi, j'etais amuse, oui

Speakin of Barbie, et al, (well I needed a transition)

my grand daughter keeps a few in our apartment to play with when she visits.
In particular, there are two nekked Barbies that reside in a plastic pot on
the side of the tub where Hannah takes long involved baths with many toys.

Now, this is the same bathroom guests and visitors use when they come to my home office.
One day, while standing over the toilet, musing on life's twists and turns, I gazed down to
spot these two bare beauties, locked in an inadvertent embrace in their cozy tubside home.

Looking at them with fresh eyes, it occurs to me that some of my visitors, who know
nothing of Hannah and her baths, see the same tiny nude maidens when they use the
toilet. I wonder what they make of my choice of tub toys?

No one has yet mentioned it.

Your friends are probably afraid to raise the issue. If you've been to Toys R Us, you know there are about as many Barbies as there are living humans. It's only a matter of time before the Barbies make their takeover move.

I've considered adding a naked Ken to the mix and creating a manage-a- trois.

I was in Toy R Us recently and saw a Ken in a Superman suit! Don't know if this was the old Ken or the new Ken.

David Blain is surreal. I don't get it. Can someone explain? I walked by Lincoln Center last night and saw the long line of people lining up to catch a glimpse of him in his water bubble.

My brother-in-law uses a french phrase that basically means "he/it brings nothing to the table". Often said when a completely vapid comment is made, or useless action taken. It's what I think about Blain- he brings absolutely nothing to the table. Am I wrong?

link to what some people would call a stunt. That would not be my definition.

Pretty insane either way.

Chris Rock, who is working on a project in a space adjacent to ours, is borrowing one of our offices for some meetings. The door is open and his distinctive voice is only loud enough so I can hear bits and pieces of what he’s saying, but based on the raucous laughter of his crew, he's on a roll.

I find his stunts creepy, but I am not immune to the fascination. When he stood on that pole in Bryant Park for a couple of days, I did go down and gawp in amazement for a few minutes.

I had to admit to someone last night that I was English. The topics of conversation then tabled were (1) soccer and (2) Benny Hill. I have never much liked either (except (1) when England plays Germany), and have had little exposure to (1) in ten years and no exposure to (2) pretty much since childhood.

At least we didn't get on to Charles and Diana.

Maybe this should be in Annoyances.

What, you're a self-loathing Brit?

So, I'm crawling along the freeway behind this big flatbed with Colorado plates. It's got 2 rows of 14 brake/running lights on the back end. Then, I notice that every other light is covered with a silver skull with eye holes so that it glows when he brakes. Kinda like those skull rings with ruby eyes guys wear.

I am an exemplar of the fact that simple nation-of-birth-based labels can be misleading. These days, many of us are a whole bunch of things.

Yeah, we're mutts.

A psychic failed to predict that a man who stole $4 million worth of art in Florida would be captured in her trailer park. link here
My favorite part of the article:

Merci beaucoup. Moi? Subtile? C'est le premier fois quelqun dites cela.

Yeah, I can see that

I had lunch with two colleagues from my firm's Dallas office in a food court in downtown and got a chicken sandwich from the chain Chick-fill-A. My coworkers laughed when I didn't know it was a chain (I've never heard of it) and when I pronounced the name of the restaurant as chickfilla. Apparently it is a high class operation and the name is pronounced "Chick Fillet." They claim to have invented the chicken sandwich!

Chick-fill-A = "Chick Fillet". That is bizarre.

I take it you're not familiar with the Ben Folds Five track Army....

Grew a mustache and a mullet
Got a job at Chick-fil-A
Citing artistic differences
The band broke up in May
And in June reformed without me
And they got a different name
Nuked another grandma's apple pie
And hung my head in shame

I think that's very funny because Ben Folds is one of my favorite singers and I do know that song but never connected it with the fast food restaurant as I didn't know it existed and I listened to the song but guess hadn't looked at the lyrics...

Oh man I wish I could teleport myself to Niagara Falls to see him play tomorrow.

There is a mailbox nailed to a tree in Union Square park.

Is the little flag up or down?

Found out on Friday that the lawyer who did such a great job for us when we sued Mayor Bloomberg, Deputy Mayor Doctoroff, Forest City Ratner, and NY Downtown Hospital is an alumna of the same high school as I. A few years later, though, so I couldn't have known her there.

Is NYC a small town or what?

Yes, one of the reasons I left NYC was because it was such a small town for me.

When I called my dad yesterday he handed the phone to my little sister, who's visiting. She had just rescued a tiny baby rabbit from the jaws of Dad's dog and wanted a consult on what to do next. No, I did not tell her to get out the olive oil and a skillet.

I went to rabbit.org (of course!) and ticked through some questions: Is the rabbit warm? Check. Tummy rounded? Check. When you pinch a fold of skin at its neck, does the skin snap right back? Check. So it had been recently fed - mama rabbits do this at night, apparently - and wasn't dehydrated, meaning it likely wasn't orphaned. The site advised putting it back outside or its mother would be frantic.

Shari set it down under a tree but it just sat there, looking up at her with big bunny eyes, so she gave it a massage (of course!). She claims the bunny stretched out and purred (or the bunny equivalent), and when she was done it hopped away.

You didn't?

on to the surrealism....I'm in the T magazine

What's surreal about that? You are the Pimcess.

Two men with a generator and a 10 foot tall inflatable Uncle Sam across from City Hall last week. This week Uncle Sam has been replaced with an equally large inflatable rat. No signs, advertising, or anything.

Lady next to me at the airport right now. Feeding her dog (which is hidden in a duffel bag) bits of cheese and crackers.

Oh, the rat is just for Pace University -- probably having nonunion workers do some of the D&C.

I missed the Uncle Sam.

Yesterday, late morning, walking up Fifth avenue, near 54th, I saw about 20 young ladies across the street, walking down Fifth, all dressed in identical ersatz Italian renaissance dresses, wearing the same long, black, wavy-hair wig. The leader carried an empty frame on an easel. Sheesh, where was my camera?!

(later told a friend who immediately pegged it as most likely some sort of publicity stunt for the DaVinci Code movie. Duh.)

A friend of ours had a chow who had to be put down because she had cancer, but, anyway, during the last days of her life she would eat only cheese and spaghetti of all things. I saw her the night before she died and I fed her cubes of cheese. Oh.

On a cheerier note, I've just given our two kittens a little treat of Sheba's Filet Mignon. That's surreal.

From the menu of Mundo, a restaurant in Astoria:

Toasted Almond Cake

Toasted almond cream cake with mascarpone cream, amarettini cookies & toasted almonds...Leonardo DaVinci's favorite

What's so surreal about that? When Ginny and I were in Milan, we went to see "The Last Supper". That extra arm holding the knife? It was cutting the Toasted Almond Cake!! (little known fact -- I plan to write a novel about it).

Overheard in the wine aisle at my local groceria over the weekend:

Woman 1: Wow. Is there really 3 liters of wine in this little box?

Woman 2: Lemme see... Well, it says right here: 3 liters.

Woman 1: I know, but it just doesn't look like there could be 3 liters in there.

Woman 3: Maybe you have to add water or something.


Edit: maybe this belongs in the Dum-de-Dumb-Dumb thread. Do we have one of those?

I saw a man leading two llamas or alpacas up Hudson street today and it isn't even St. Francis day...

I've been thinking about Manchurian cauliflower a lot lately. Every time I do, my mouth waters thinking about the tangy tomato sauce that surrounds the sweet bits of vegetable.

This morning in the Union Square station, as I am walking to the staircase for my train, my eyes lock on a face that seems at once familiar and exotic. I keep looking and walking as he is looking and walking towards me. We acknowledge each other with our eyes as our shoulders pass one another yet we keep on moving. Who was that? Who was that? I ask myself. A wave of beautiful tangy cauliflower crosses my mind. I know! It was Hemant!!!! (of Devi fame)

I love Hemant. Oh, what a sweet man.

Thanks, Rose. I got the feeling you intended.

I think.

Tuesday morning while I was getting ready for work I was thinking about wearing a T-shirt that I got in Portland, Oregon, at a strip joint. It's a black T-shirt with a drawing of a beautiful naked lady on it that says: "Mary's Club, Portland, Oregon." I decided against it and wore something much more mundane.

Then, when I got to work, a customer came in wearing the Mary's Club shirt .

Rats.
I was hoping you'd say that when you got to work, the customer was the beautiful naked lady.