Things I would give up for the return of my absent kitty

1. Black heroin.

2. Hot baths.

3. Ben & Jerry's Phish Food.

4. The films of Woody Allen.

Preach, brother!

Via Rainbow Rowell.

Related: Is it weird that my crush was always on Mark Hamill, who spends half the first Star Wars movie cruising around in lame white pajamas, and not Harrison Ford who, I think we can all agree, shits charisma and was once a very good-looking dude?

"Smells like new money, dresses like fake royalty"

"Should we honour our treaty, King Louis' head?" 

"Uh do whatever you want, I'm super dead."

I realise I'm pretty late to the party when it comes to recognising that Hamilton is a thing and I am not the kind of person who has ever listened to a cast album of a musical without having seen the musical but... this is the exception because man it is a lot of fun.

"I am the best goddamn dancer in the American Ballet"

Not ashamed to admit (okay a little ashamed) that my first thought on seeing an episode of Flesh and Bone was "hey it's that guy from Centre Stage". In a related note, how many virgins has Sascha Radetsky been sacrificing on a daily basis because, you know, time has been kind.

Reason #35 why Rahul Kohli and I are destined to be together:

He no dummy.

Also, real talk, the other 34 reasons mostly relate to his amazing hair. Oh, would that I could tell you the things I would do to that hair.

"You insist on dropping hints to your guests about Bunny’s “frightfully interesting time during the war.” Bunny is glowering."

As a saddo Christie fan who has read and re-read most of her novels and seen more adaptations of those novels than I'm prepared to admit, I sort of love this Toast particle on signs Agatha Christie might be thinking about bumping you off.

He was Russell Crowe's Stooge

You might think you don't care about Russell Crowe or about journalist Jack Marx. Until last night I pretty much felt the same way. Then the charming Annabel Crabb/Leigh Sales podcast, Chat 10 Looks 3, alerted me to the existence of THIS 8-year-old article and I read it and now I want you to read it too. Seriously: bizarre, very amusingly-written ("like a little boy asked his age by the king, I told him") and just... I don't even know how to describe the circumstances of events it describes so read it now, thank me later.

"It was March 2005 when the Oscar-winning movie star called me. He had read an article I had written - something about how the celebrity magazines make up lies - and had tracked down my number. He wanted to meet over lunch. He asked me if I could be trusted. The last thing he wanted to see in the papers, he said, was some story about my lunch with Russell Crowe. I told him not to worry. I wouldn't want to read that story either."

Things I said to the mechanic who insisted on showing me photos of what the gunged up oil in my engine looked like before I threw a whole bunch of money I don't have at the problem:

* "Oh. Um, wow."

* "Uh-huh."

* Okay, okay."

* "Oh. Um, wow."

* "Uh-huh."

* "I'll put it on credit."

"You’re great. But if you were just a liiiiitttle bit more like everyone else, you’d be better."

I think number one of this list of worst lessons learned from 90s teen movies - that if you like someone enough, you’re totally deserving of and entitled to their affections - is my favourite because: WORD. But, real talk, they're all pretty good.

Summer Skin: this week's book recommendation.

Someone, somewhere is looking after me because lately I have been reading a string of great books, all by authors I've never read before. Surely I'm due for a stinker but please let my run continue a bit longer - it's bloody terrific.

The latest of these is Kirsty Eagar's Summer Skin, which I picked up for a whole $1 in a work book sale. I thought Summer Skin would be a bit of fun, and it is, but it's also the feminist love story I really didn't know I was looking for. Somehow Eager has written a romp that's hot, funny and just lots and lots of fun. I'm not getting carried away - this is not a book I'll be re-reading for years to come - but should you happen to find yourself in need of a little somethin' somethin' with which to curl up, you could do a lot worse.

Dreams

A disclaimer: obviously there's nothing more boring than someone else's dreams blah blah blah.

But seriously what does it say about me that I had a terrifying nightmare last night that was not about dinosaurs or serial killers but about getting too drunk at a work party and mildly disgracing myself? Nothing... good, I feel.

This is just a really nice column over at the New York Times:

“Light Years,” James Salter writes: “For whatever we do, even whatever we do not do prevents us from doing its opposite. Acts demolish their alternatives, that is the paradox.” 

"Can you fucking believe this guy?"

What's that you say? For some reason you haven't checked out these Women Rejecting Marriage Proposals in Western Art? Friend, you are missing out. Get into it over here at The Toast.

well you’re too late, Richard
I’m a lesbian now
WE’RE ALL LESBIANS NOW
ARE YOU HAPPY
YOU LEFT AND NOW WE’RE ALL LESBIANS AND EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE

Places I got chocolate icing while making this vegan chocolate cake

1. My face.

2. My hands.

3. The white sugar flowers that were supposed to adorn it.

4. The floor.

5. The bench top.

6. The oven.

7. The oven door.

8. MY FACE. LIKE ALL OVER IT SERIOUSLY.

9. The cookbook.

10. The keyboard of this laptop.

Overheard in the Office

“Sure he’s got a mental illness now. If you’re on coke for 15 years you’re going to give yourself a mental illness.”

These are a few of my least favourite things

Mondays (Garfield and I are so alike that way).

Rudeness (Really? I mean really?).

Insomnia (Zzzzz).

Headaches.

Needles.

Blood tests.

More blood tests.

So many blood tests.

Horrible, insensitive awful people (Seriously what is wrong with you?)

“There was a sad fellow over on a bar stool talking to the bartender, who was polishing a glass and listening with that plastic smile people wear when they are trying not to scream.” 

― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.” 

― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited