"Having these all on the same list is kind of like saying, 'You know what my pet peeves are? People who crack their knuckles, genocide, extreme poverty, and shopping cart wheels that get stuck.'..."

"... I mean, OK, but the juxtaposition is a little insensitive."

Jac is offended by TIME's list of the 50 worst inventions.

Things singers sing that they do that they actually never do.

I'm starting a list:

1. Hop a train.
2. ...
3. ...

I need some help with this one. I don't want fantasies, but real things that are intended to make the singers sound gritty and deeply in touch with life, but you know damned well they don't do.

(Here's the song that was playing....)

"If I Ate Lab-Grown Human Tissue or Organs, Would I Be Considered a Cannibal?"

I'm adding this to my list of moral questions about things nobody wants to do.

Questions:

1. What else can we put on that list?

2. If you bite your cuticles or the inside of your mouth and keep chewing and swallowing, are you a cannibal?

3. Why does it matter whether a particular word — such as "cannibal" — applies to something, when the real question is whether something is right or wrong?

From an article about "the art of list-making."

Finnish architect Eero Saarinen itemizes the attractiveness of his wife:

I. First I recognized that you were very clever

II. That you were very handsome

III. That you were perceptive

IV. That you were enthusiastic

V. That you were generous

VI. That you were beautiful

Handsome and beautiful? I'm picturing the very clever Mrs. Saarinen reading the list and saying, "Not 'very beautiful'?"

Let's talk about "The Hot Issue" of Cosmo.

I was just waiting in line at Walgreens, trying to buy some toothpaste, and this grabbed... well, I don't want to say it grabbed me by the balls, but that's the kind of thing it would say, just like it would say "5 things that can BLOW a JOB interview."


(Enlarge.)

Cosmo is just so sexually aggressive. It tires me out. It makes me want to to find out how not to look tired. Get hit on all the time? Get hit on to annoy your friends? Can't I just quietly contemplate whether my breasts are normal or what pittance I might spend to make my skin amazing?

And now you want to tell me about 125 sex moves — in rank order, no less. 125! What if I'd just like some — maybe 40 — little tiny ways to connect with a guy? (One guy!) Not even sex ways, you know? Duh! Sex is just the 41st way, and we already know about it. It's so desperate to need that one thing broken down into 125 parts.

And maybe I don't want thousands of men sent over the edge. That sounds dangerous! Like some kind of war. Over the edge! Come on, back off a bit, ladies. Cosmo has been handing out secrets to drive men wild for decades, to the point where I've been wondering why the streets aren't, by now, teeming with rampaging wild men, all these secrets being so widely dispersed among so many women for so long.

Then there are the 5 things — always with the lists — you should never let your "gyno" do. That underlining, frankly, scares me. You mean there are some rather disturbing things you might occasionally let your gyno do, but there are 5 of them that you really never should let him/her do? What kind of crazy shit are gynos trying to get away with, anyway?

And that leaves us with the Orgasm Whisperer, which I guess is like the Horse Whisperer or the Dog Whisperer, but for orgasms, so supposedly this is a man — woman? — who is has a special, highly effective way of talking to orgasms and extracting appropriate behavior from them. I don't really understand. Maybe it's a little like playing Mozart recordings to unborn babies in the womb. Still, if the orgasm is there, what's the problem? And if the orgasm is not there, what are you whispering to?

Oh, lord, I just want to know some beauty tricks from top models and the real deal on the guys Taylor Swift sings about.

Jack Kerouac did not text.

I need to get some blogging up, and I actually have about 5 things I've been meaning to write, that is, after the completion of various Sunday morning activities, such as transforming the corn leftover from last night into breakfast and analyzing why I didn't quite replicate my mother's corn fritters. But somehow, I'm reading the comments over on Richard's blog — not even my own blog.

(I did read some of my blog's comments on my iPhone in the middle of the night, and I'd just like to say, Lem, I'm sorry no one was in the buckets of flowers with you last night to say, yes, we're your friends and thanks for telling us that you've found comfort here.)

Anyway, over at Richard's, Penny commented:

I just noticed your new blog header. NICE! I like it a lot. I do have one comment though. Pen authors need to watch out for what I will call "texting creep".

That refers to the quote in Richard's banner:

SCRIBBLED SECRET NOTEBOOKS, AND WILD TYPEWRITTEN PAGES, FOR YR OWN JOY... SUBMISSIVE TO EVERYTHING, OPEN, LISTENING... SOMETHING THAT YOU FEEL WILL FIND ITS OWN FORM. --JACK KEROUAC, FROM "BELIEF AND TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE"

Kerouac wrote "yr," long before anybody was indulging in rampant abbreviation for texting purposes. I'd read that quote in Richard's banner many times, but this morning was the first time I was moved to Google the quote. I wanted to make sure of what I was already sure of, that the abbreviation was Kerouac's. And the cool thing about that, for which I offer a penny to Penny, is that I found the whole context, "Belief and Technique for Modern Prose," which is written — Richard elides this — as a numbered list. I love lists, especially numbered lists.

(We've been eating salads from that 101 salads list, and, for example, #2 really is — as billed — "[a]stonishing.")

There are only 30 items on Kerouac's list, so it's easier to read than not to read. Nevertheless, I'll copy a few here, with commentary:

3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house

And don't even yell as if u were drunk outside yr house, especially at a cop.

6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind

Consider it done! Since 2004.

8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind

I often write bottomless. Much more than topless. Because I like to write in bed.

13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition

K.

15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog

Would all the political bloggers please take a day to do exactly this? Then, if you can do it, do it all the time.

18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea...
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

See? Blog!

And text, if u want 2.