On Bow To Coleen, Queen Of The WAGs
This is my favorite column anywhere, ever.
Do you take requests? Because I have a few: Jordan (obvs), Dannii Minogue (famous for something other than being Kylie's sister? I have no idea), the sisters Ecclestone, and maybe could you please explain Liz Jones?
It's just that sometimes I click a link to the Daily Mail, and then I get lost in there, but I don't really know who all of these people are ...
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On Rental Brokers Are Useless
@KenWheaton: Reminds me of planning my wedding. I'd call a venue, ask when they could show me around. "Um, Tuesday at 2?" I think you're supposed to quit your job in order to undertake these sorts of tasks.
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On 'Pet Sematary': A Reminder That Zombie Cats Make Terrible Pets
@Gef the Talking Mongoose: Okay, where to begin? Like someone downthread said, "Full Dark, No Stars," which is four novellas, is excellent (as is "Different Seasons," if you haven't read it). His recent short stories have also been good, and "Under the Dome" was a bit of a throwback to "The Stand" for me (I am an aficionado of the epic novel).
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On 'Pet Sematary': A Reminder That Zombie Cats Make Terrible Pets
Jodi Picoult is most obsessed with dead kids, but I'm ashamed of knowing that.
Also, for a lot of the really confusing parts of King's oeuvre (yes, I mean That Scene in It), it helps to remember the part of On Writing where he talks about all the drugs he was doing around the same time that some of this stuff was written. Then it doesn't seem quite so out of left field.
In other King commentary, The Stand! That's all. Robert McCammon's Swan Song, while decent, does not compare, and don't believe anyone who tells you it does.
Also (also! I am on a run here with King, fan that I am), who is inordinately excited for his new book in November?
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On How Wisconsin Stayed Republican
@BadUncle: Perhaps Abe made the same mistake I did, of reading the comments this morning on the Journal Sentinel article about Alberta Darling's victory. That there would do it, the head-'asplodin.
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On Tube-Shaped Entrails, Thin Slabs Of Viscera Unhealthy
So today at work my coworker and I had the idea to google 'slurry' (please don't ask) and we discovered that there is such a thing as a 'meat slurry,' which itself is the result of a process called Advanced Meat Recovery. It is always fun to think of your food in such ... industrial terms.
http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2010/10/enjoy_a_meat_sl.php (don't open that if you want to enjoy a McNugget ever again)
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On Dead Kid Still Good For Traffic 15 Years Later
@HeyThatsMyBike: I pretty much haven't read a nice thing all day long. I vote no on August 8th, 2011. Just, no.
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On The Horrors And Pleasures Of The Columbia House Music Club In Six Albums
So this is where I talk about the time our puppy got angry at the mail (this happens, regularly) and chewed up the envelope containing the MAIL BACK OR ELSE card, so my mom put the bits of the MAIL BACK OR ELSE card into a plastic bag and sent it back with a note.
Then we got a mailbox to hang outside the house.
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On The Eight Truths About Weddings (That No One Ever Tells You)
I just had a wedding in late May. A traditional-ish (the -ish because it was a mixed-culture affair so we incorporated bits from both sides), country-club, not-cheap wedding.
Since I'm on the other side, here's one of the positives:
I was blown away by how people responded to my wedding. As in really, really touched. I received gifts from friends of my parents that I barely know wishing me well. One of my old college roommates flew all the way across the country for basically one day to be there. One of my mother's oldest friends offered to throw me a shower as soon as she knew I was engaged. It was amazing to realize how many people loved and cared about me - not just my now-husband, but by all the people in my life who reached out to me in some way. (I'm trying to spread the goodwill in the future by being the same kind of awesome well-wisher.)
Also, it really helped to remember that as long as we had the officiant and each other, we still had a wedding. Everything else was icing on the proverbial cake, even if it was really fantastic.
That said, I realize that I'm quite ridiculously privileged because I could afford the wedding I wanted, and that plays a huge part in reducing stress. (My major stressors were: My biggest stressors were a) seriously why does no one in the wedding industry return emails? I'm basically writing an email that says HI I'D LIKE TO SPEND A BUNCH OF MONEY WITH YOUR BUSINESS and they don't respond, and b) also why do most wedding-industry people make appointments between 9 and 5 on weekdays? I didn't quit my job to plan my wedding, exactly.)
Also please don't think there's any kind of wedding you have to have. I looked at so many blog posts of DIY chic weddings with gorgeous handcrafted details and loved them, but I probably would have had a nervous breakdown trying to do my centerpieces or come up with a cute way to display escort cards. I was better off working overtime and paying someone else to do that. You're right when you say you figure out what kind of person (or at least micro-manager, party-planner, or social engineer) that you are when you plan something like this.
One more thing: seriously, the ceremony counts for something. And I don't just mean the big commitment-to-each-other part of it, or the legal part of it, or the religious/spiritual part of it. I mean that it's so, so worth it to have a ceremony that you love, be it something completely original or something well-established. If you have to cut elsewhere in your budget to have an officiant you love or a ceremony that you want, do it. The actual text of my wedding ceremony is something I hold truly dear, and it was worth every penny we paid (and more!).
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On The Architect, The "It” Girl And The Toy Pistol That Wasn't
I believe that Evelyn Nesbit's young life was the inspiration for the Gillian Darmody character on Boardwalk Empire, but I could be wrong.