Nothing I have written today makes much of a statement. Sometimes there are just days like this.
+ I have a pretty small carbon footprint, about 1/5 of the national average, which I feel pretty good about. I wonder how much of this is due to the fact that I do not own a car.
+ Via Jezebel, how great is this?
+ Some writing things. This post on Jenny Crusie’s blog got me thinking about what constitutes a romance novel. (My friend T says, though, that, if you can take the romance plot out of a novel and still have a story, it’s not a romance. Hmm.) Also, men read romance.
So, I have this advice-column blog called The Advice Blender. I update it even less than I update this blog, so I figured, maybe I’ll consolidate! So we’re going to try doing Advice Blender posts over here and see how that goes. Hopefully, you can locate them easily.
So, two Cary Tennis posts, because he is full of the crazy.
1. Someone seriously overthinks accepting a Facebook friend request. Cary tries to speak like the Young People, then is basically like, whatever, dude. (Gawker gets in on the mocking.)
+ Is RENT too edgy for high school? I think I heard the music for the first time when I was maybe 16, right after it came out. We listened to the soundtrack a lot in the work room of my high school lit mag. Our adviser didn’t object. I mean, it’s not The Music Man, but it’s also not as groundbreaking as it was 15 years ago.
Oh, and there were pratfalls. Domain re-registration got FUBARed, so the site was down for two days, whoops. Not that I’ve written anything here in a while, since real life gets in the way too much. I’m hoping to carve out some more free time for frivolous things like blogging, but we’ll see.
In the meantime, some delicious links:
+ Barbie sales down, American Girl sales up. Some friends of mine were in New York around New Years, and we wound up at the American Girl store, which OMG INSANE! I read a couple of the books when I was 10, but I think I’m a little too old to have been a part of the phenomenon, so I missed it. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think the dolls are mostly positive roll models and also educational, since the Girls come from different backgrounds and different periods in American history. And thumbs up to kids learning history! On the other hand, devotion is cult-like and the dolls, etc., are frickin’ expensive! The store is crazy, too. There’s a doll beauty salon, people, and a cafe with special chairs so that your doll can sit at the table with you. And, also, I had probably 30 Barbies when I was a kid and I don’t think she ruined my self esteem or whatever evil Barbie is accused of most often. Still, it’s interesting, the sales trends. Is Barbie falling out of favor?
