Dangerous Doll Dilemmas

Omg, throwback!

So, you know how there are those cultural icons that we all recognize and "get" even if we haven't checked out the original? We all know the line, "it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all," but was it Shakespeare or Yeats or wrote it? (It was Alfred Lord Tennyson, in case you were curious.)

Well, this month's novel is one of those. It's Valley of the Dolls, darling.

Valley of the Dolls was first published in 1966 by Jacqueline Susann. 1966. That's kind of way before my time. Super Mario didn't even exist yet. (Do you see how history can be a cruel mistress?) But people reference this novel left and right; "oh God, this is like a scene out of Valley of the Dolls," people say, especially when referencing one of those tragic soap operas. *"Nadia's Theme" starts playing in the background*

But what is Valley of the Dolls really about?

I'll tell you, so you'll know, and you can impress your friends. It's a novel about three young women, Anne, Jennifer, and Neely, who work in the arts and discover the helpfulness of little dolls (codeword for pills) that help them lose weight or sleep. Anne is the most formal of the trio, and is more or less the main character. Jennifer is a sweet girl known only for her amazing body, which causes her to question her intelligence capacity, and Neely is a young woman trying to make it big in Broadway and Hollywood.

The novel is a clear reflection on another cultural icon we have (that I won't try to explain here): the feminine mystique. All the girls really want to do (except for Anne, who feels crappy about the fact) is get married and bang out kids. That's the goal, and career comes second. Way to reach for the sky er, uterus, right? That's what makes this novel so interesting; it's Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique in fiction form.

One thing that Susann does that really kind of shocked the pants off me was use the "f" word. And she used it a LOT. Not the f**k one, but the f*g one. Consider this exert from one of the secondary characters, Helen, a famous but lonely actress:

"Oh, I can always scare up someone. My designer will take me, or Bobby Eaves, my accompanist. But they're both fags. That's the trouble--no real men these days. Plenty of fags, but no men. I hate to go to an opening with a faggot. It's like wearing a sign: 'This is all I could get.'"

(Welcome to the entertainment industry, toots.)

With such a pottymouth, it's no wonder that this novel was so salacious, on top of scandalous infidelity moments, including that of one of the men sleeping around on his wife with other men. But in terms of narrative structure and social issues raised without bashing the reader across the face with them, Susann performs an excellent job. For being such an old (and therefore potentially outdatable) novel, it's certainly worth the read in one's free time to consider more than just it's cultural quote. It's rating? Totally Awesome.

--

But as a warning, totally don't skip out on the novel and only watch the film. I watched the film, and it was a bit of a disappointment. They changed the ending entirely, so, don't try to pass off as having read the novel and have just watched the film. You might get called on it. And barbiturates may get shoved down your throat.

Ok, One More Christmas Video

Because, I couldn't resist. I'm going up to New Jersey/New York for Christmas and I actually have family that sorta sound like this. Plus John Roberts is just hilarious.


Who wants Baileys? Yes. My Holiday. Please.

Have An Awesome Christmas*!

My FAVORITE Christmas song, from me to you. Time to chug some eggnog.

*And other assorted winter themed holidays.

It's a Cruel, Cruel Cruel Summer...

So...

I'm not dead. Although it seemed like it because I couldn't remember what day it was for about 3 weeks.

My intention was to do a sort of "this semester in numbers" post where I listed an object or an activity and then the number of times performed, but it kind of got boring after "numbers of books read," "number of pages written," and "number of wine bottles consumed." Maybe next year.

Instead, I'm going to reflect back on this year with remembrance and a fondness that mirrors sharks giving birth. (You know they eat all of their siblings in utero, right?)

1/2 Winter 2010

I know, it's super weird that I'm starting with winter, but you can't really consider January "Spring," now can you? It was cold. Super cold. I was living in Tampa in my own apartment, and working hard going to school and working part time to pay for all of those graduate applications. I fell in love with my crockpot and Netflix (these are ongoing affairs, in case you're curious. *rubs crockpot gently*). I like never slept, and was freaking out about whether or not I'd finish undergraduate school, but I made it.

Spring 2010

The problem with applying to so many graduate schools is that they all send you rejection letters in the same 2 week period. It was completely Pavlovian; I started to avoid going to the mailbox at all costs, but then one accepted me! And it was exciting because I got into grad school - yay! So I made preparations to move and to say goodbye to Tampa, a city I still miss greatly.

Summer 2010

You know what song never goes out of style? "Cruel Summer" by Ace of Base. Every year, you have to listen to it at least once. In fact, it's December, and I must listen to it now. During the Summer, I resurfaced on this earth as a bright eyed, bushy tailed kid with a degree and respectable Fall plans. I applied to over 67 different jobs (I stopped writing down the number after 67, but I'm sure there were a few more after that). The only one that got back to me was the one that didn't pay - the internship. So, to add some experience to the old resume, I drove an hour outside of town and back twice a week. It was dull work, but I loved their computers. (Giant screens FTW! *computer nerd* :B)

Fall 2010

New town, new school, new hair-do. I just like to refer to this semester as rough, and leave it at that. I'm still impressed that I made it through. There's so much I learned so quickly that my head's still spinning. My days began to blend together, and for a while there, I forgot how to spell my own middle name.

Then I remembered that I didn't have one.

It's been really bizarre standing around in that place where you're a student, but you're a teacher too. I went out to dinner with people who had Doctorate degrees and who were successful businesspeople, and they treated me like one of them instead of the kid who tagged along. All of a sudden, people were listening to what I had to say, and I had to keep double-checking myself to make sure that what I said wasn't my usual vapid air-headed drivel. (Omg, speaking of, did you hear about Michael C. Hall - the dude who plays Dexter on Dexter - getting a divorce from his wife and co-star, Jennifer Carpenter? Granted, I will forever picture Michael as the uptight homo on Six Feet Under, taking it up the butt from his black lova, Matthew St. Patrick, who just happens to be from one of the coolest cities on the eastern seaboard, Philadelphia. That's the home city of P!nk, who's totally starting to show in her pregnancy now. Could you imagine being like, "yeah, P!nk's my mom"? Why can't my mom be a pop icon? Are you reading this mom? Now's your chance to lead the nation in the latest drinking ballad!)

1/2 Winter 2010

Well, that pretty much brings us up to date. Next week, I'm heading up north for Christmas and New Years. Maybe I'll take a bunch of pictures of me hanging out in snow and stuff. Or maybe just some sophisticated stuff like some pictures of me standing next to influential works in the Museum of Modern Art or something.

Or maybe another great picture of me slipping on black ice and falling on my ass. What a magical time of year.

The Little Black Dress That Could

So, I've decided that once a month, I'm going to do a book review!

What? People get paid to do this. I'm doing it for free. Be grateful. God.

Seriously though, lately I've been reading some pretty awesome books, and since I'm reading, I figure, I might as well suggest some books if I find them worth suggesting.

The first novel I'm going to review is Mennonite in a Little Black Dress.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is Rhoda Janzen's first novel. But fear not - the woman totally comes to bat facing the right direction. In fact, she has experience; she's a Poet Laureate (this means that if her poetry was a car, it would be a Lexus) and holds a Ph.D. from the University of California. So, as you might expect, it could help to keep a dictionary handy. I learned words that didn't even show up on the 'top 500 GRE vocabulary words study guide'.

I'd be really, really scared if Rhoda took to working for the GRE. Seriously.

But, her saving grace (besides spacing these words out so as not to make you feel incredibly stupid, as you are apt to do when reading the work of a Ph.D. - and take that little bit of advice to heart, from me to you, as a person who's studying underneath 3 or 4 of them on a weekly basis) is that she is absolutely hilarious. She's got gall, you guys. And any writer who's willing to make fun of themselves, and actually be good at it, is worth checking out.

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress is a fictional memoir piece - in the same style as Elizabeth Gilbert and David Sedaris - about how Rhoda falls apart and heads back to her Mennonite home after her husband Nick leaves her for a man he met on Gay.com. (Oops, right?) The quirkiness of Rhoda's crazy family stands out in stark contrast to her liberalized educational life as a college professor, with the help of Rhoda's well crafted writing. She pulls out several of the unorthodox stops to really keep you interested, and she's just insightful enough to make you smile a little bit at the end of each chapter. You won't want to put the book down. And when you do, your mom will pick it up while she's visiting, read the back, and say, "this sounds funny - I want to read it when you're done."

And then you'll have to say, "Sure mom," but hide the novel because, even though Rhoda is anything but homophobic, her husband still leaves her for a man on Gay.com. There's just no getting around that:

One day Nick came home with a pair of Yohji Yamamoto gloves that had cost $385. This was in 1996, mind you. Granted, these gloves were wondrously conceived: over an interior pebbled leather glove, a leather mitt unzipped and folded back into a gauntlet of sorts. It was just the kind of witty sartorial gesture that a dandified socialite might affect, very Oscar Wilde, if Oscar Wilde would have ditched the lily and firmed up the tummy and got full-sleeve tatts designed by the famed Los Angeles artist Bob Roberts. Nick wasn't a dandified socialite, though. He was a grad student. We were supposed to be living on the ten bucks an hour I was making as a receptionist at the law firm.

The man clearly sucks cooooooo...pper piping. *ahem*. Which he does. Metaphorically.

But my absolute favorite sentence from the novel is this: At twenty all I wanted to do was read philosophy, feminism, and fashion. Oh, didn't we all, Rhoda? Didn't we all?

That is why this novel is forthwith gaining the rating, "totally awesome." She's smart, she's classy, and she's not afraid to turn her mother down when she tells her that her very Mennonite first cousin is on the market after she gets divorced.

Her website.

Confessions of a Third Wheel

This is my friend Clint.

Once, in one of our many playfights, I replied with the classic nerdy throwback, "well...YOUR MOM!", and without missing a beat, his retort was: My mom died. Thanks. And I thought he was serious. I believed him. I apologized and everything.

I went on thinking that his mom had passed for over two years.

So, that's right Clint; revenge is a dish best served in displaying your incredibly tight tights all over the internetz. Work it, baby, work it!

Last night, he drove over two hours to come and see me, and hang out with a potential love interest. It was a really nice night; we went to dinner downtown, and then - I'm still not quite sure how this happened - ended up dancing at a lesbian bar. And then he and his newly budding boyfriend spent the rest of the night on my couch talking about Marvel comic books and the premise behind Wonder Woman's character. "You can't watch Wonder Woman cartoons in the context of her being just another superhero - you have to think of her as a liberated woman in skimpy outfits with a boyfriend whose biggest virtue is that he doesn't want to get into her wonder panties." And on and on they went, two geeks in pre-Let's-Make-Out matrimonial bliss.

It was cuter than two puppies learning how to wag their tails at full speed.

And, it was a really nice thing to watch, as I sat in an armchair across from them, researching and grading papers at four in the morning. We always have this self-absorbed complaint floating around in the US that we're always the bridesmaids and never the bride (ignoring the fact that the bridesmaids outnumber the bride like three to one, and that if they worked together, they could take that marrying heifer out before anyone, anywhere could even eek out a single mazel tov!), but think about it. We all know people in relationships, and how many of them tend to last? Cooing couples are everywhere, and yet virtually non-existent in this regard. Why complain about how their couple-ness is not your couple-ness? Why not enjoy the few brief moments of amor as they flash before your eyes as well as theirs? Is this not an amazing treat in and of itself?

So, yes, Clint. To answer your question - since you asked - I did feel like a third wheel last night. But, I felt like an awesome third wheel. The kind of third wheel who doesn't question happiness when he sees it. The kind of third wheel who appreciates the highs of young love.

The kind of third wheel with neon glow in the dark beads in its spokes.

I Know the Feeling

Kiss Me, I'm Turning Irish

Ok, so last weekend. For the first time ever, I tried Guinness.

Well, maybe I should backtrack.

I'm on a half-a**ed quest to find out find out which drink works best for me. When I turned 21, no one laid a buffet of Mai Tais and Margaritas out in front of me and said "you're not moving from that spot till you puke or pass out." I was pretty much on my own.

And in a year's time, I've tried the occasional drink here or there. Specifically:

Sex on the Beach - kind of tastes like a jollyrancher....only, with alcohol.

Screwdriver - I thought this was one of the most basic drinks out there, but every other time I've ordered it, someone says "ooo, what's that?" It's vodka and orange juice, comrades. It's a nice basic drink to start with, and you can feel classy ordering it by name, knowing that the bartender will know how to make it.

Fuzzy Navel - This was my number one mixed drink choice for a long time, even though I've only ever made my own. It's simply peach schnapps and orange juice. Citrus is great with alcohol because it masks the bitterness, but this here is a nice fruit combination that really slides down easily. Thankfully schnapps is not as high in alcohol content as some of these other drinks, or else you'll be wondering what happened to your underwear way before someone suggests a game of naked tag out in the backyard.

Rum and Coke - Carbonation helps make you feel drunker, faster. So, if that's your goal, this is your drink. But, if you ask me, the coke usually doesn't mask the rum enough for it to be an enjoyable drink.

Pina Colada - This is a must try, if only so you have the excuse of singing "if you like pina coladas~" later on in the night. The drink, however, is far sweeter than the song. (Really? You catch your spouse cheating on you and you're just like 'ooh hoo, well, isn't this funny? I was trying to cheat on YOU! Ha, how adorable. What a coinkidink. Let's go home...' How bloody unlikely. This too will hit you, later on in the night)

Margarita - I finally got around to trying tequila. And you know what? It's dangerous; don't do it. Unless of course you're watching Desperate Housewives. Then, it's mandatory. And you may not stop giggling.

Long Island Iced Tea - Same deal as a Margarita, only while watching the Real Housewives of (closest) City/County.

And finally, my all time absolute favorite mixed drink, is sake with orange juice. Sake is incredibly smooth, so, when mixed with just about anything, it's difficult to detect. So naturally, mixed with orange juice, it's practically an alcoholic date rape drink (as a general rule, if you go to someone's house at 10 o'clock at night, and they offer you orange juice, decline. Decline, decline, access: denied. Because, it could totally be a sake orange juice. But, if you're amongst friends, give this drink a try, especially if you're not a fan of the burning sensation of booze, or you just want to try something different. It goes down that easy.) As a matter of fact, it seems, sake is rarely stocked in bars, and after some searching, I haven't found an official name for this drink. Someone called it a Sake Screwdriver, but, I don't think that does this drink justice. It should have it's own, super cool name, like Far East Sun, or Asian Navel.

Because, as teenagers not allowed to drink the US, my friends and I would go to TGIF and pour over their drink menus, reading out the awesome sounding names and wishing that 'Sprite' and 'Pepsi' had a much cooler names, like 'Buttery Nipple' or 'Kamikaze'. It's all in the name, guys.

But anyway, I digress. Back to Guinness.

Beer has been something of an obstacle for me, cause it typically tastes like crap. It's bitter, abrupt, and overall best left to cowboys and frat guys who have to purchase alcohol in large commodities. But Guinness? Wow. It's incredibly smooth...almost chocolatey smooth. And creamy. I'm a sucker for anything creamy, and I make killer milkshakes to prove it. (Not to brag, but it does bring boys to the yard. And damn right - it's better than yours.) Guinness is a definite two thumbs up, but my beer list is pretty small. So far, it's been victoria bitter, budlight, yuengling, stella artois, and guinness, in order both of my trying it, and in taste. So, I'm assuming that I'm finally developing the taste buds to distinguish between certain beers, and not just finding them all to be abrasive.

But...if there are any recommendations out there, as to which ones to try next, I'm certainly willing to give it a try.

Emerson....and Death

LOL, English major humor. This is basically a play-by-play video of what it's like in my field. Love the publishing part - SO TRUE.

"Money is not important to me."

"Oh my God. Who let you into this school?"

Bwahahahaha, how inappropriate.

Craig Thompson

Tonight (last night? What time is it? ...oh. Yeah ....um, last night), I got to experience something awesome. I went to a reading/showing of Craig Thompson, cartoonist extraordinaire.

He does really awesome stuff, like this:

And this:

To be honest, I had never heard of his work before I went to the reading. Not that I have anything against graphic novels as a genre - I've dabbled here and there - but, I'm certainly no expert. In fact, I wouldn't even claim to be a guesspert. But, to see his work and to hear how he came to draw those works was pretty phenomenal.

I mean, as he explained, Good-bye, Chunky Rice was his earliest work (the adorable turtle), and after that he wanted to do something more serious (Blankets). But to do something as personal as Blankets, as it is based off of his personal life, is tough work. To be a good writer, one must step on some toes here and there, and I suppose he did so there. But, what really enthralled me was how he managed to draw Carnet de Voyage, perpetually on the go, in France and Morocco. I mean literally, on the go. As in, he showed us pages that he drew while he was walking, on the train, on the streets, never stopping, never at his desk.

Talk about a work ethic.

And then he showed us pages from his soon to be published Habibi. World, (aka, the two off-the-cuff people who happen to chance upon this blog) Habibi is gorgeous. It is visually gorgeous. I'm buying it when it becomes available. And I'm going to get Blankets too.

You should have seen the way he signed books. He took out his illustrator's pen and he DREW the person he was dedicating the book to on the first page of the book he was signing. It was stunning. Mucho gusto.

Luckily for me - I who did not have a book for him to sign - he works at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, which is maybe 30 minutes away from here. Guess who's going to show up at his office all stalker-slash-screaming-teenage-girl-ish?

That's right.

This guy.

Hobo Fo Sho

If time were money, I'd be broke.

When I was in undergrad, I would go to school full time Mondays through Thursdays, then work part time Fridays through Sundays. Mondays were my admin days - the day when I would go grocery shopping, change my oil, go to the beach (um...I mean, do local research?), and the like. But then, to offset the costs of graduate applications, I started working Mondays before school. It was tough, but I did it.

Now that I'm in grad school (thankfully), I still go to school full time, Mondays through Thursdays, but my part time job is grading papers for the school. Officially, this is called an "Assistantship". Officially, this is also what friends and family call "When are you getting a job?"

In case you are one of them, or are dangerously close to becoming one of them, I will take this moment to let it soak through your unusually troubled scalp that my assistantship IS my job.

....no, trust me, you still need more time.

Are you with me now? Same page? Same page. (s'allright? s'allright.) The trouble that arises with such a flexible, yet equally demanding part time profession is that - when your family and friends come to the conclusion that your weekends are free and that you have absolutely no homework despite a full time course load - they start to plan your weekends for you. And the worst part is that it's almost always stuff that I can't say no to without feeling guilty about it later. I mean, it's one thing if it's a party with friends - in fact, I look forward to taking those breaks from the monotonous drudgery that is my monastery-style life at the moment (at least Quasimoto's friends sang the occasional jingle, even if they were made entirely out of stone and bird droppings). But, it's usually some other somber event that I would typically rather avoid - that I somehow successfully avoided in most of my undergraduate years.

Meanwhile, everyone's surprised that I'm not making a ton of friends here. They're actually shocked that I have my plate full with school and family obligations. They just seem so far left field in their assumptions about my life and my free time that I hardly even know how to begin to redirect them.

School is hard, I say. I have no free time.

Oh. That's too bad... is the reply. Can you come for dinner next week? I need you to x/y/z for me because a/b/c prevents me from doing it myself.

It is truly by the cruelest twist of fate that the only graduate program that accepted me was in-state, instead of 1,500 miles away, as it should have been.

*Holds up cardboard sign*

"Will Work for Free Time."

Oh Snaps I'm Gay!

Every once in a while, I just kind of forget. I wake up late in the mornings, scratch my ass, and stare at the clothes I ripped off of myself last night, wondering if I could get away with wearing them again today. My life is not pretty.

So it's easy to forget. But then, I find myself daydreaming about escaping the drudgery that is my life, and heading somewhere else. And my daydreams don't just consist of a rusted old boat in the middle of a pond where I fish between hours of drinking. Oh no. They're full of art galleries and women in expensive dresses and - dare I say it - glitter. GLITTER, people.

That's when I start quoting Barbra Streisand in the only song of hers I'd allow myself to listen to. I have got to move.

I Want a Rejection Letter

Tonight I did the unthinkable. I wrote poetry.

It's tough being a grad student. I don't have time for...well...anything these days. It's like this - being a full time student doesn't mean I spend half of my days loafing around and all of my evenings out drinking; being a full time student means that when I'm not in class, I should be studying/doing homework so that it balances out to 40 hours a week of my time (people forget this). Then, as a TA, I'm working 20 more hours a week.

These numbers are guesstimations, of course.

Outside of these 60 hours, I'm eating, sleeping, and showering (well, of the three, at least I shower regularly...), and dealing with social obligations. Family gatherings, hanging out with friends, etc. As things have been progressing, I've been spending one night a week devoted to each of these factors. This is odd for me, because in undergrad, I typically did neither.

And on top of this, I'm supposed to be working on my thesis *laugh*. And getting published and speaking at conferences *maniacal laugh*. Oh, and promoting world peace, while we're at it.

But tonight, between finishing Little Bee by Chris Cleave for my independent study course and starting on the 90-something book reviews I have to grade, I sat down and wrote a poem. And then another. And then another. It was like I relapsed back into compulsive writing. My sponsor will not be pleased.

I wrote 9 poems tonight. And then, I thought, oh my God, I must get published! And I started scouring the internet for possible literary magazines that would take my work. Getting published is no walk down the produce aisle; you have to find the right type of magazine, which would be a magazine that has a nice mixture of your style and its notoriety. That's when I discovered my issue: none of the respected literary magazines are publishing my kind of poetry. In fact, no literary magazines are. Of all of the past editions from different publications (from Florida to Oahu) that I leafed through, I couldn't find a single poem that resembled any that I wrote.

My poetry is purposefully childish and straightforward. All of the poetry that I read was more mature and opaque. I want my audience to "get it". Most poets don't, it seems.

So, I don't know what I'll do.

I guess send some poems off anyway and hope for the best, right? In the publication world, getting rejections letters is a really good sign, because it means that they almost chose you; submissions that are terrible usually don't get any sort of response at all. I keep a small pile of rejection letters in my sock drawer, oddly enough. Maybe some day, my rejections can outnumber my socks.

Chamomile Tea

Sometimes, I find myself sitting on the couch with some chamomile tea and staring into space, I think...

'what the hell am I doing here?'

Sea Harbor

I just dropped $30 on a candle. As in, a bunch of wax in a jar. When I'm done hyperventilating, I'll explain what happened.

Last week, I was visiting my dad in Jacksonville. "What do you want to do today?" he asked. "Oh, I don't know; whatever" (my usual reply), "wait. I have a coupon for 40% off at Borders Bookstore. And that's 50% with my membership card - I need to go today, or else the coupon'll expire," I said. So, we head over to the mall....and when we get there, my dad realizes that this particular mall doesn't have a Borders; it has a Booksamillion.

It's no big deal. We walk the mall instead.

Along the trip, my dad detours us into the Yankee Candle store. It's always a little tricky going into a Yankee Candle store; at the first step over the threshold, the smell of 150 differently scented candles smacks you in the face, and you're busy trying not to wrinkle up your nose or act disgusted when a store associate rushes up to you to offer their assistance. This is the worst type of shopping experience for me; to have the sales clerk looming over your back making comments about every candle you pick up just makes me incredibly self-conscious. My dad offers to buy me a candle, and I decline, because I can't reasonably ask my dad to drop $30 on a candle, like I just did 5 hours ago.

Even though I told my dad no, I found a scent, Sea Harbor, that I really liked - one out of the hundreds, like a beacon of individuality, whispering "pick me, pick me!" I had put it back. I wanted my dad to learn that he doesn't have to spend money on me every time we hang out.

So, last night, I went to the local mall, scouting for this particular candle. In my usual (almost heterosexual) shopping style, I was planning on getting in, getting what I came for, paying, and leaving. I glided into the Yankee Candle store with my typical "I've got places to be" pace that makes people think that I'm a New Yorker. I started eyeing the shelves, row after row, looking for the tell-tale blue of the candle I was after. On my fourth step into the store:

Hi! How are you doing today? Can I help you find anything?

I returned her niceties, assured her that I was all right, and thanked her for asking. I made it to the back of the store, before:

Are you looking for a gift for someone? You know our car scents are buy one get one free, so if you need something for your car--

"No," I said, deciding to come clean, "I'm actually here for Sea Harbor, but I wanted to look around a bit while I'm here." Partially true; I wanted to make sure that I was making the right decision before I spent any money.

Really? That's an interesting choice. No one's really come in looking for that candle before; it's not one of our biggest sellers. I'm glad someone likes it.

And I do. But I don't know why everyone else might not.

So, I finished looking around the store, and then picked up a jar of neglected Sea Harbor, bought it, and left. According to the website, Sea Harbor is "a fresh ocean breeze," meeting the aroma of "bright citrus, sweet jasmine, and warm vanilla." Frankly, it reminds me of the cologne or the perfume of someone in my childhood...I think my great-grandmother. Its heady, but not overpowering.

But the whole ordeal seemed like just another page out of my life. Here I am, a paying customer with cash in hand, dropping a full tank of gas or a nice faux leather jacket (after the darling little coupons they send in the mail) from JCPenny's on a candle - a candle - and the response is "oh. That's a weird choice; no one likes that one."

It was almost awesome.