Friday Fluff Post

How hard it is to turn from the topics of my last two posts to something fluffy. Hard but also necessary, because I can't begin a weekend with all that pain on my mind, and I don't want to leave only sad and painful posts at the top of the front page. Yet doing the necessary reversal in one single post seems tasteless and shallow. But so it goes.

Let us then go all fluffy and shallow. Float comfortably in your chair or on your bed and pop in a piece of chocolate. Did you have a good week? Are you the same person you were a week ago? Any new gray hairs? Do your eyes look shinier now? Did you notice that the sun suddenly smells of spring?

I have a plan for something to sell on this here blog, by the way. I'm going to knit woolen chastity belts (from sizes XS to XL), and the front will have a picture of a nicely slithering snake. How much could I charge for those? I figure that each would take about eight hours of knitting and/or embroidery.

I bet they wouldn't sell, though. The alternative get-rich-quick-scheme is to make my most profound posts into little autographed booklets (perhaps with a lip-print from me on the cover) and to sell them on the blog for, say, 20 dollars each. That wouldn't work, either, but it's fun to imagine which posts would be included and why.

Or I could start an Echidne Advises series. You could send in all your most embarrassing questions and I could give you sage advice which would make no sense at all. "Yes, Clueless in Cleveland, your husband is quite right. They do stay outside during the act." Except that Dan Savage already has that covered.

Read any good books, lately? I just finished unSpun, by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. It's all about how not to get cheated in this world of disinformation. I was planning to review it until I realized that it's not so cool to review a book on something that you are somewhat of an expert yourself, because what irritates you about the book is not really relevant for most readers. So I didn't review it (or rather, didn't post the review), but it's probably worth a read if you want to know the 47.5 ways politicians lie to you and how not to fall for those lies. I suspect that there are only three ways politicians lie, though, and that rewriting the book that way might have been more useful. And no, "he-said-she-said" is not neutral, and neither is an attempt to make the lying into a completely bipartisan problem. But other than that and a few fact check problems I liked the book just fine.

Was that praise lukewarm enough for you?

Henrietta the Hound is not doing too bad. She will never climb stairs unassisted but barking, that's something she can do without my help at all. As I can hear right now.

Have a nice weekend.