Lusciousity

So I just wrote this essay for creative nonfiction class about corn mazes, or, more accurately, how I’ve never been to a real one but have recently latched onto the idea that they symbolize all that is untransplantable and unimportable from the northern world of my youth. Is this true? In my head, and that’s all it takes for some creative nonfiction. But a better question, is there such a thing as a cool corn maze? I’ll have to get back to you, but you just have to heart this Vermont corn maze website.

It looks like Omega 3 fatty acid is about to hit the zeitgeist fan, spraying little droplets of oxidizing fatty goo all over our faces if we don’t look sharp and start eating grass fed meat and eggs (if we eat meat, which we shouldn’t, I know Maureen, but we are weaker beings and our iron levels just can’t stay up without the occasional rare hamburger). Both Salon and the NY Times ran pieces this week on how we all need to eat more fish because fish have Omega 3’s, and if we can’t eat more fish because we are nervous about mercury and dioxins, there’s companies lining up to, the Salon author puts it, sell us back in processed form what they have just processed out of our food. This involves collecting fish fat, making it into little unbreakable droplets so it doesn’t reek, and seeding innocuous foods such as yogurt and cereal with it so that we can reap the benefits of what we used to get naturally when cows and chickens were all grass fed and not filled with unnatural grain products (and other, unmentionable things). Apparently Omega 3’s reside in grass and algae primarily, so if the food we eat didn’t eat that, we ain’t getting none. This is bad, because our bodies have evolved to need it and thrive on it.
Me? I think it’s lusciouser if my yogurt doesn’t have mackerel in it, so I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to spend some time and hard earned dough on meat that was raised the way the intelligent designer intended. For starters, I found this page on where to buy grass fed food in Florida. Sadly, most of these farms are found in parts of the state that are north of here, parts that I believe don’t exist, parts that I dub the redneck latitudes. Not to worry! My next plan of attack is a little focused Whole Foods and Farmer’s Market research to figure out how I can get me some without needing to carry a rifle and pretend I vote Republican. I will let you know how it goes and keep my eyes on the luscious, Omega 3 filled bacon burger of my dreams.

Yesterday, news spread that the patron saint of Lusciousity, Scarlett Johansson signed her “first” record deal. According to Salon’s The Fix, the planned title is “Scarlett Sings Tom Waits.” Several burning questions come to mind. Can she sing? Is she old enough to sing Tom Waits? What is our patron saint going to do to distinguish herself from other actresses who have felt the need to put out an album, such as Jennifer Love Hewitt and the Olsen twins. Above all, will this be a luscious boon to our aural universe or a self-aggrandizing misstep? This editor, for one, is taking the uneasy wait and see approach.

Frida and I had a conversation a couple of months back about whether or not a song could be directly responsible for prolonging certain moods, good or bad, although at the time I was mostly thinking about bad. At least, bad-ish, as when you keep listening to a certain song over and over again because you are feeling kind of bittersweet about how friendships change and you change and time keeps moving along. You give up any pretension of listening to other music and just put the song on repeat. For hours. Days. You get the picture. Is the song a function of your mood or is your mood a function of the song you won’t make yourself stop listening to? Are there times in one’s life when one should simply be cut off from the Keane, the Ben Harper, the Sarah McLachlan, the Nirvana, the what have you?

The closest we came to a conclusion on the question was that yes, probably listening to certain songs obsessively does nothing good for your mood. I think Lee Ann Brown, the poet who wrote the following poem, would agree:

Short Talk on Revenants

after Anne Carson

Zombies walk the hills waiting for a ballad to jump out of their eyes. Pay attention to what song is going through your head. It means something for your life. Change your tune–Change your fate.

So, if the song going through my head right now is Jesse McCartney’s Beautiful Soul, what does that mean for my fate? Next track!!

I lift mine eyes to the hills… whence cometh my fall televsion line-up? What reality show shall I fear when NBC hath provided me with Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip and ABC hath spread a table of Ugly Betty before me in the presence of mine DVR? The CW giveth Veronica Mars and Everybody Hates Chris but the Fox taketh away my OC (at least until November).

Is anybody else so bored of summer television now that they have caught up on all the shows they missed on DVD that they have taken to mangling scripture? Maybe that’s just me.