The Illustrated Gaff (my favorite binder memes)

Last night in the presidential debate, Mitt Romney's handlers must had experienced a collective palm-to-forehead gasp when he said that his request for women candidates for his cabinet yielded "binders full of women." First of all, is it really such an ordeal to come up with qualified women for those positions? He gets special credit for the afterthought that it would look good to have some women on his staff? It would be easy to get serious about the subtext of the gaff. But it's a lot more fun to just hold it up to ridicule.

A few of the greatest hits:

My Rule: Make Love, Peace & Joy Whenever Possible

I have a strict rule in Words With Friends: Make LOVE, PEACE and JOY whenever and wherever possible, even if you don't score a lot of points for it.

The Decemberists "One Engine" from Hunger Games

You MUST see Pina! ("Dance, dance, or we are lost!")

"Jan Pehchan Ho" Warning: Mohammed Rafi music inspires uncontrollable paroxysms of coolness

I can't help it. It makes me want to dance. And go to the chiropractor. Basically, this is how I'm entering my 50s this week: not terribly graceful, but with a LOT of enthusiasm!

"The Joy of Books" from Type Bookstore in Toronto

Amazing video of Comet Lovejoy from space station

Awesome flash mob "Deck the Halls" (Okay, now I'm in the holiday mood.)

Harry Potter in 99 Seconds

Happy Thanksgiving! (With gratitude for everything that's been and all that's possible)

Herman Melville on the guileless spirit of a sailor

This description of a sailor's guileless spirit comes from Billy Budd by Herman Melville.

Habitually living with the elements and knowing little more of the land than as a beach, or rather, that portion . . . set apart for dance-houses, doxies, and tapsters, in short what sailors call a “fiddler’s green,” his simple nature remained unsophisticated by those moral obliquities which are not in every case incompatible with that manufacturable thing known as respectability. But are sailors, frequenters of fiddlers’ greens, without vices? No; but less often than with landsmen do their vices, so called, partake of crookedness of heart, seeming less to proceed from viciousness than exuberance of vitality after long constraint; frank manifestations in accordance with natural law. By his original constitution aided by the co-operating influences of his lot, Billy in many respects was little more than a sort of upright barbarian, much such perhaps as Adam presumably might have been ere the urbane Serpent wriggled himself into his company.

Above: Robert Howard Rodgers, my father-in-law, serving in the Navy during WWII

Erica Jong: "Do you want me to tell you something really subversive?"

"Do you want me to tell you something really subversive? Love is everything it's cracked up to be. That's why people are so cynical about it. It really is worth fighting for, being brave for, risking everything for. And the trouble is, if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."

This includes the love of writing.

Love Shack, baby! (That's right. I said it.)

Happy Friday, everyone!

Sometimes a door is just a door...and then there's this cuckoo for Rococo puffs door in Paris

No apologies for my recent absence from the blog. Went Euro-tripping in Germany and France with the Gare Bear, who extracted a rock solid promise that I would not work on this trip. I didn't even keep a journal.

Our last night in Paris, via subway, bus and miles of walking, we searched out this doorway Gary had read about. The building at 29 Avenue Rapp in the 7th arrondisement was designed by Jules Aimé Lavirotte and won the Concours de Façades de la Ville de Paris in 1901, but it caused a controversy when people looked closely at the configuration on the door. (A bit more obvious if you view it upside down, and I don't even want to know the backstory on the person who discovered that.)

Have a groovy weekend, everyone. Back next week with renewed energy for this business that I love with an entirely new perspective. More about that later.

Apropos of overworking a manuscript?

Okay, I know, but it's Saturday, right?

Sunday night non sequitur: Holy hand jive!

Good art needs no clever tie-in.