Boxing Week

Today I was fit for a bridesmaid dress and it was an eye-opening experience.

"It's too tight," I whined to the lady who had just been hugging me with measuring tape. "I need a bigger size."

She looked at me critically. "Where?"

"My tummy," I said, brushing it.

But she would not agree. She made me go sit down and then walk around until I agreed that in fact it was not too tight around the tummy; that indeed, I looked dangerously good and that the size up I subsequently tried on looked like crap.

"It's up to you, of course," she said. "It's a comfort level thing. But if you go up a size you'll need lots of alterations and you looked good in the first."

"Alright, I'll get that and then drop weight on purpose if I need to," I said, remembering both the series of perhaps seven consecutive huge meals I'd had over the past week with shortbread scarfed in the breaks, as well as the strange adolescent taste of a toothbrush to the back of the throat.

"Don't do that," she said dismissively. "If you're really worried about the waist just wear a ____." This was some word for a dressing concept I didn't understand then and don't remember now, but it seemed to be built in to pantyhose to act like a stomach squisher.

Anyways, I ordered the dress and got a 10% discount on an already good value sale (although since its a very pale lime green for a late spring wedding I'm going to have to pay, financially and physically, for some tanning sessions before a pallid death's head like me dares wear it in public) which I almost immediately squandered on some thigh highs from American Apparel (I don't like American Apparel but Lady reccommended these thigh highs by looking really good in them). And I thought about how I like baggy clothes and how I can almost never tolerate them actually touching my waist. At first I wondered if it's some weird sort of neurotic modesty or a conviction that girls like me should be draped, not wrapped.

Then I realized itreally is just a comfort thing, but in the sense that if there's ever an impromptu war or other disturbance of some kind, I want to be able to leap into unhindered action. That's the reason I don't wear shoes I can't run and kick in. But here's the thing: I'm 28 and I still haven't started my career as a superhero. Something has to give.

The Red Dragon is being dangerously bashful

That was nice. Christmas sped by this year, maybe with the awareness that I might not be home next year, maybe because of losing Grandpa this year unsubtly demonstrating you just can't count on everybody being there forevs.

Anyhoo. The brunch was great and the presents I got were phenomenal - including a massage mat I can bring to work and attach to my chair, smoothing over the twilight months of my time with that company by making my co-workers horribly, bitterly jealous. Thanks, Luke Duke.

Among other awesome things, Figaro took and mounted some lovely pictures of my beautiful kitty Lexie. Here she is, taken much less beautifully by me but showing all her feline loveliness.

And now back to our regular scheduled ranting

Straight into some pre-emptive complaining about the fact that Patrick Suskind's Perfume has been made into a film. Now, I don't have favourite books. There are many, many books I love very much and I love them all seperately but equally, sort of like how Americans used to imagine God felt about the different races. But I've really loved Perfume for years, and if you haven't read it I strongly advise you do. Although this book isn't everybody's cup of tea, its power and appeal is undeniable to everyone I know who has read it, although their tastes have often been very different from each others'. This is a book that can change people's ideas about what words can do.

The other couple of Patrick Suskind things I've read, the Pigeon and Maitre Muissard's Bequest, are similar in that sense - that as you read them, you feel he's doing something absolutely new with words - but Perfume's scale is grander. It's also the only one I've got Book Nazi about - the Pigeon is too unsettling for me to go around reccommending and MMB is too scary. I don't scare with books, but I felt chilled to the bone after MMB.

I don't want to go on about Perfume because the less you know before reading it the better, which means read it FAST. The publicity for the film already looks pretty aggressive in England and it will be here too if it goes over well there, I suppose. So just read it. And bear with me while I complain that there are some reasons I'm obliged to go see the film, even though the only book-to-film projects I've ever really enjoyed were good films from shit books, like the Godfather.

First, Tom Tykwer directed it and I loved Run Lola Run back in the day. Second, much as I can't resist talking to even unattractive complete strangers when they're in a conversation about a book I love, I can't resist going to see someone else's vision of this book on a big screen. And third, I'm pissed it was made into a movie. It was already an essentially perfect project. There was nothing to fix and nothing to add, at least from my point of view as a reader. So I have a feeling I'm going to need to complain about this movie, alot, and I should see it before I do, at least so my complaining makes more sense.

Finally, I have very little hope the film will be a quarter as astonishing as the book. But I live to be surprised.

The Red Dragon is Unimpressed

I haven't fully learned how to use this camera, but hopefully on a good monitor you can make out the Jeebus between the two upper-storey windows. I can see benefits to raising kids in small towns, but this isn't one of them.

Still overeating, still happy, still Christmasy. Happy whatevs, y'all.

The Red Dragon is Overfed

A quick note to wish any intrepid Christmas readers a good one, both for their benefit and to demonstrate I am not in so much awe of spurious Christian traditions that try to convince us Jeebus was a Capricorn that I cannot type on the fake day of his birth. Especially considering we're postponing the non-churchy bits of Christmas (that is, PRESENTS PRESENTS PRESENTS) until the young people get here on the 27th. Nonetheless, Happy Christmas to all, especially people who are actually interested enough to read this blog. You have no idea how endearing that makes you to me.

There are no complaints from here yet. We've been eating like pigs and my family is well. Although Magnum had to respond to a fire last night and his plat0on ch1ef was an oaf who nearly got people killed for the sake of an empty building. There's something of a romantic hero about Magnum, which could be why I've never been into the Romantic Hero type. But because of his romantic-type heroism I've never worried too much about him being a f1reman, figuring it was a socially wonderful outlet for that heroism, better than the army or being a cop or something. Also, Rescue Me is some damn fine television. But now I'm a little more worried thinking of how the decisions of incompetent or stupid rank superiors could endanger him. That's hard to countenance.

That's as exciting as the present gets, although I'd like to commemorate the vast quantity of food we prepared and ate last night, including TWO tomato sauces, one with shrimp and the other with salt cod. But duty calls in the shape of jumping on Figaro to wake his lazy ass up and of washing my hair before going to my yearly Catholic service - keeping my hand in, in case the doors to Heaven don't open to Quakers, though you'd really have to wonder what sort of Heaven would be closed to an earnest Quaker and open to a ersatz Catholic. So I'd like to leave you with the news that it's been snowing ever so lightly during the nights and making things pretty in the morning, which is all this "look but don't touch" winterphobe could ask from Santa.

Merry Christmas, everyone!