Fragile Industries

Useless Men (A Redundant Phrase)

While I flatter myself that I am a Mostly Useful Woman, and have found most men to be More Useless Than A Cucumber (there's a whole book on the subject), this week's blog tenant has given me something to think about.  Useless Advice From Useless Men posts daily answers to questions about the gender wars that will tickle your funnybone, along with free useless gifts.  For example, they give the following question their studious attention, and use outcome probabilities to reach a conclusion:

Dear Useless Men,

I have a question,

Is it better to be really really hot, but lacking in other areas, or really really smart? Hot gets you laid, smart gets you everything else.. so really, it's hard to choose.

Hot or Smart Girl

Written by a group of self-admitted Useless Men (one is named "Any More Useless And I'd Be A Cat") these guys serve the function of providing a much needed humor component to the issue.  So they aren't completely useless.  This is a conundrum along the lines of "one hand clapping."

Check out their site by clicking on the Rent My Blog thumbnail to the right for a giggle or two.

Meet Top Drawer Designs

I'm renting a click-through window this week from Top Drawer Designs, an interesting art blog.  This multi-talented artist works in a variety of media: acrylic on drums (for real money!  I'm impressed . . . and jealous), oils, Japanese ink, and my favorite, assemblages incorporating found and discarded objects.  Although our styles are very different, I'm sure I will visit her for inspiration when my creative muse takes a hike.  Check her out!

A Modest Proposal

Recent revelations indicate that the NSA, not content to monitor your phone calls, has tapped your internet traffic as well.  I recently read a post that recalled that in the relatively innocent days of Hoover's tap-happy FBI (and who ever thought we'd look back on that time with nostalgia), some Congresspeople regularly answered the phone, "Fuck J. Edgar Hoover."  He suggested an update:  "Fuck the NSA."  I like the idea, but this could upset Aunt Sadie or your 4-year old grandchild when they call.  My modest proposal is this: since Internet content is now pored over by government geeks in basements, let's all gently remind them of the document they violate.  If everyone posted the following over the next few days, we can drown the NSA in a tasteful sea of remembered civil liberties.

Meet My Landlord . . .

Blog Explosion, a blogger's group I belong to, allows members to rent space from other bloggers, so that a thumbnail of your blog appears on their site.  I have occasionally had tenants in the upper right hand corner of my page.  It's a neat way to meet new bloggers and encounter new points of view.  For the next week, I'm renting from Winsome Gunning Art, a lovely painter who lives on Australia's Gold Coast.  A sample of her whimsical, yet thoughtful work is below.  She writes about her painting, other bloggers and artists, but mostly about the creative journey that is available to us all.  I think you'll find her interesting, so check her out!

Marilyn is Dreamy

Hey!  I made Dream of The Week! 

I'd like to thank the Academy . . .

(my fifteen minutes start now . . . tick . . . tick . . . tick . . .)

Dream a Little Dream of Me

In my wanderings, I found a unique site that records dreams about celebrities.  Anyone's dreams.  You can submit your own nocturnal encounters with the glitterati, politicians, authors.  The webmaster also wants your name and occupation, but you can submit under a nom de rêve.

I sent in the following, from a couple weeks ago:

I'm in my former office building's lobby with some friends.  My ex-husband (the first, nice one), a few co-workers, and my best friend Marilyn Monroe.  She is, of course, beautiful, with the trademark breathy, little-girl voice, and wears an ivory dress like the famous hem-lifter in The Seven-Year Itch, but it looks somehow as if it is from the 1930's.  I've known her for years. We see each other all the time, and I feel rather protective for her.  Our group has had a riotous evening of bar-hopping, and we are all laughing, having a great time.  We get to the bank of elevators and a crowd of other people arrive, pushing their way on.  All my friends and a number of the other people get on the elevator together and it is a tight squeeze, but we are still cheerful, calling out to one another from our positions in between the others.  For some reason, my friends and I decide that we will spend the rest of the evening riding the elevators.  We get off and on at various floors, and each elevator is different. Some are very fast, some creak along shakily.  Some are glass and reveal subway systems, or freeways, or night skylines, some are very small, some as large as ballrooms.  As this progresses, we become quieter, and eventually apprehensive, Marilyn in particular.  Furtive strangers hop on and off, several elevators have surly operators (I've only seen this in movies before) in vaguely military uniforms.  When the last elevator goes sideways, we decide enough is enough and walk back to the lobby down a series of parking ramps.  The lobby is dark and littered with many shopping carts and the kind of luggage carts rented at airports.  We all have that 3 a.m. look: the party has gone on too long.  Marilyn sighs and drapes herself against one of the luggage carts.  "I have to go, I have to work in the morning," she says, stretching luxuriously.  She puts on a bright red coat with large black buttons.  Her make-up is smudged.  "Are you in a movie now?" I ask her, handing her the evening bag she dropped on the cart.  "I'm not in a movie, I work in a store!" she says indignantly, and walks out of the lobby.  I'm her best friend, I should have known that.

I laughed to myself all day about that dream.

Please, Dr. Freud, what does it mean?  Marilyn Gallery below.  Pick out the Fragile Industries impostor, circa 1985 . . .

More Random Notes: Weirdness on the Internet

1.  Am I the last person to know about reflectoporn?  The only aspect of this trend that disappoints me is the lack of imagination in the reflected images.  Lumpy, naked bodies, for the most part.  How about some whips, leather catsuits, midgets.  C'mon, guys.  This is a new blank canvas made available by technology.  Use some artistry.  Here's a related site that shows what could be achieved, but my quick browse found nothing XXX-rated.  I approve of this gallery as a fellow shoe fetishist.  Now that I have a digital camera, I may develop yet another time-wasting exhibitionist hobby.  Oh yeah, I blog.  Visuals are probably redundant.

2.  The internet is buzzing about my guilty-secret crush, the Geico Gecko.  Geico Insurance commercials are inescapable.  Fortunately, their campaigns are usually pretty amusing.  One of my favorites is the series that sets you up to expect one thing, such as the fake reality series commercial "Tiny House," with the punchline, "I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance with Geico."  I loved that they revived the old "Speed Racer" cartoon of my misspent youth, complete with monkey and so-bad-it's-good animation.  Their ad agency is understandably proud, and probably happy to get away from the two-C's-in-a-K work. The gecko gained a fan club, a blog, gecko merchandise, and is scuttling all over every page of the award-winning Geico website.  When they unveiled the new, East End-accented gecko, with an improved computer-generated lizard, I would stop what I was doing to gaze into his limpid eyes and hear him croon, "it's pie . . . and chips . . . for free!"  What makes him irresistable to me is his new voice.  The first voice of the gecko, in his inaugeral incarnation, was Kelsey Grammer's New England baritone.  The gecko was silent for a time, doing the robot dance and other undignified antics.  Then Dave Kelley gave him an upper-crust Brit accent for a while.  Now he's a semi-cockney smoothie, kind of a friendly uncle who is a grifter on the side.  No one's telling who gives the gecko his new voice. I've spent far too much time e-mailing the gecko, with no result. Inquiring minds (well, idle minds) want to know.

3. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of bestsellers Blink and The Tipping Point, has a website with links to his New Yorker articles, a blog, and other stuff.  I enjoy his logical but innovative interpretations of our culture.  Like Freakonomics, he tries to trace trends with a particular emphasis -- psychology, in his case, not economics.  An excellent article about pit bull profiling and profiling's flaws in general confirms what I long suspected about the breed.

4. You know the stuff you find in used books?  Not the text, but the things people put in books to mark their place, or for safekeeping.  Photos, bills, lists, letters, brochures, all of which gives you a window into the life of the person who previously owned the volume.  One website, which has generated a couple of books, displays generic found ephemera, not necessarily found in books.  Some are funny, some are spooky.  I submitted the clipping shown below, found in a used art book. Poor "Stinky."  Do you think she appreciates this revealing memorial in the hereafter? There should be a name for this species of ephemera.  This is another website's topic. My brother claims the term of art is "snuffle," but I can find no confirmation.  Can someone with access to the complete Oxford English Dictionary clarify?

Shameless Self-Promotion

Sometime today, something wonderful will happen.  I try to hold on to that thought every day as a mantra, even through the days that seem like the Bataan Death March through steaming sewage.  Kind of a "there must be a pony" philosophy.  I'm not good as a Pollyanna, unfortunately, and the thought usually escapes me by the end of the day.  Yesterday, I gave thanks for catching a glass of green diet soda (Jones Soda, Diet Green Apple - yum) before it spilled on the cheap beige condo carpet.  That was as good as it got.  But today is different, something wonderful is a definite go.  Today someone will be the 10,000th visitor to Fragile Industries. 

I'm not handy with HTML, so there will be no confetti, no balloon drop, no keys to a BRAND NEW CAR!!!!!!!!!! for the numerically significant individual.  It will probably be someone making a Google search for an unlikely and probably sex-related series of words, "Betty Ford's nipples" or something.  Now that I've written the phrase, it will turn up.

Through Blog Explosion, my guilty secret traffic generator, I get all kinds of info on who's linking here.  Typepad, my host, also reveals what's up with my visitors.  Some of the Google searches are intriguing.  And disturbing.  Or downright silly.  (So silly, I had to write about it.)  There are a lot of people, myself included, who obviously have too much free time.

My Devoted Readers hail from the US of A, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Singapore, the Philippines, Bahamas, Ireland, Uruguay, Slovokia, South Africa, Belgium, Turkey, Italy, Malasia, Nepal, Spain, Cote D'Ivory, Honduras, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong, Egypt, Mexico, Cyprus, India and even the land of Oz (Australia, that is).  They speak American English, English English, Afrikaans, Dutch, German, Spanish, Swedish, and Malay.

My most popularly searched image is this.  By far.  The image has shown up on countless other blogs since then.  Glad to be of service.  (For some one else's most popular image, check out this.  Both portraits, art of a sort, but I think it says something about our respective audiences that his is a brilliant portrait of a brilliant portraitist, and mine is a toon.) Closing in on Jessica's spike heels is Rosa Parks sitting on a bus. Most popular page in the last week, the only period for which I have stats.

I don't know what my 10,000th visitor will be looking for, where this Devoted Reader will be sitting at the time, or the language spoken.  I don't know who it will be.  But there should be a prize.  Then again, there should be a pony.

And a nod to my landlord . . .

. . . One Writer's Rambles, who has kindly hosted my blog for the week.  Gina is another great woman I've met through Blog Explosion.  She's a writer (nonfiction and erotica), reviewer, cat lover, supports gay causes, and has a lot to say.  I'm delighted to be in her company!

Welcome my new tenant . . .

I'm proud to be hosting The Bloggin' Bizatch as my tenant of the week.  See the cute condo -- which should be labled "Blog of the Week", not "Blog of the Day" -- in the right hand column with her icon.  I like her blog so well I've added it to my "J'adore" list (that's "the blogs I love" en francaise -- sorry, no curly bit on the "c" available in my blog font).  She's funny, pretty, smart (check her reading list), has at least one cat, and kicks ass (well, she does).  She's not your stereotyped So Cal girl, but then neither am I.  I hope.  Click on the icon to right and welcome her with many visits.  Tell your friends.