Coming up with awesome book titles takes practice.

Sometime last year I saw this book cover on a friend's Facebook page:

In Hendersonville, North Carolina, two months ago, while visiting my parents for Christmas, I saw the book's title again, this time on a postcard at a local grocery store called the Fresh Market (possibly the best-smelling place on earth).

Luckily, it's not the only memorable title Lorraine Peterson, an author of books for young (Christian) adults, has come up with over the years:

Answer: He's paranoid about getting mugged, so He never carries cash, but He can light up your life with a lightning strike if you'd prefer.

Answer: Your hair is proof enough that you can't be trusted to do the right thing.

Answer (in the form of bitter, sarcastic rhetorical questions that reveal a little too much about the person writing them): Who ever said God loves forgetful teenagers? Who said God loves teenagers, period? I mean, look at your face—if God loved mankind, why would He create pimples?! And why would He let grown men go bald in their early 20s but still give them pimples in their mid-30s? That's just cruel!

Most accidents occur in the home.

Last night I opened one of my kitchen cabinets to put away some dishes, but I forgot to close the door.

I have a short attention span, but I've only found it to be a problem since I graduated from college 12 years ago. Still, that's a dozen years, and the rise of the Internet as a part of everyday life probably hasn't helped.

In case you're just tuning in, I'm blaming the Internet for my short attention span, and I'm blaming my short attention span for my decision to interrupt the activity in progress—putting away dishes—in order to dust my breakfast table.

At the time I was thinking, "I'd better do that before I forget." But in the process of not forgetting, I forgot to close the kitchen cabinet door. That's why, when a spine from the little cactus on my breakfast table (my only table, and it doubles as a desk) pricked my finger, I walked over to the sink to rinse it off.

That's when I ran right into the kitchen cabinet door.

I didn't turn around and bang my head into it. No, I walked directly into it. How did I not see it?

It reminded me of when I was six and was jumping into a pile of leaves with a friend at his dad's house after kindergarten one day. On my second or third jump I was running toward the pile of leaves when suddenly I fell backward onto the ground—I'd hit a metal bar that was right above my line of sight. That accident left me with some stitches and a scar above my left temple. And now that I'm bald, the scar is in plain sight on my forehead.

I don't think last night's accident will leave a scar, and the cleanup didn't require more than a Band-Aid or four, but I was left with a gash* on my right temple, and over the next few days I'm sure I'll get lots of reactions like "What did you do to your head?"

Well, clearly I got in a fight with one of my kitchen cabinets. Unfortunately, it won.

* The gash above John McClane's (Bruce Willis) right eyebrow in the featured promotional still from 2007's Live Free or Die Hard doesn't resemble mine at all in terms of point of impact. His postaccident facial expression, however, is a perfect match.

expressions of love

My girlfriend, Tamara, took her daughter on a trip to Los Angeles last weekend to look at colleges. She brought me back a "Music We Like" in-store booklet from Amoeba Records, which lists employees' favorite music and movies. I especially liked these two write-ups:

EvelynMarie
The Best of the Moments: Love on a Two-Way Street (Rhino): Wow! ["Sexy Mama"] goes beyond sexy. Harry [Ray, lead vocals] says, "This afternoon I know you liked me, by tonight you're gonna love me." He had me at his parents' conception! It is eight minutes long & good. My only wish was to have been in the studio at this recording. Be careful you might get pregnant just listening! Always practice safe listening!!



Rachel W.
Paper Moon soundtrack (El/Cherry Red): "Drink your Nehi and eat your Coney Island!" No surprise that my all-time favorite movie is also my all-time favorite soundtrack ... Leo Reisman, Dick Powell, Ozzie Nelson, Hoagy Carmichael and friends ease you into the joyful, alien land of Depression America where snappy patter wards off poverty and sickness, and you can wrap your troubles in dreams.



Also, last month my dad sent me the following xkcd comic strip by Randall Munroe:

antidefamation defamers

In Monday's Chicago Sun-Times the wildly popular, heavily spray-tanned MTV reality show Jersey Shore was called "nothing more but a 'Sopranos' for teenagers" by Robert Allegrini, the vice president of communications for Hilton Hotels in North and South America and "a major player in various Italian-American groups" that protest cultural stereotypes in movies and TV shows, according to the Sun-Times.

I haven't seen Jersey Shore, which reportedly follows the exploits of underachieving, fame-seeking twentysomethings who drink a lot, then argue and/or hook up with each other. (Sooo, pretty much like The Real World ever since that 2002 season set in Las Vegas?) But to compare it to The Sopranos, one of the richest, most entertaining TV series ever created, is an insult. In fact I'd say it's defamation—and anti-defamers who defame disgust me!

I'll cut Allegrini some slack, though, since he's employed by a company whose profits have allowed Paris Hilton to never have to worry about getting a "real" job. Underachieving fame seekers probably aren't his favorite kind of people.