Sarah Palin's Hairstyle: Leave It Alone!

Sarah Palin as VP candidate may or may not prove to be a brilliantly maniacal move. We will see what happens; in the meantime, riveting though her story is, and as complex a figure as she may be, I am sad that my own most-favored hairstyle (see above; way, way above, up in the header) is being pilloried ceaselessly by cosmetological hatemongers.

It is not a beehive,

as journalists, bloggers, editorialists, and other such ill-informed numbskulls continue to call it. It is, however, a hairstyle that adds a little height, which some of us can benefit from. Additionally, being an updo, it conveys slightly more sophistication, and the weest soupςon of gravitas when necessary, than long, loose hair does,

while not suggesting the prudery that people seem to read into tightly-pulled-back chignons.

Mind you, I can pull off the archest of chignons and ballerinabuns, but I have eyes the size of pancakes, so it is only with extreme effort that I can manage to look 'hard' or severe under any circumstances.

Nonetheless, I resent the fact that every time henceforth I hastily put together a French-Twist-with-a-Pouf with nothing but hope, two bent bobby pins, and a rearview mirror to guide me, I run the risk of being accused of sporting 'A Sarah Palin.' It is a sad year for grooming indeed.

A Reader's Guide to the Personal Weblog

Since people appear to be reading this, as well as writing to me about what they read, the following are intended to be helpful tips to prevent those people from having difficulty with making either heads or tails - or heads along with tails, if that is their preference - of the contents.

I'd Have to Use Even More Liner. (And driving would be yet more difficult.)

Firstly, take it all with a hearty helping of coarse-grain Himalayan Pink. I have never once, for example, taken an oyster knife, grapefruit spoon, or hydraulic corkscrew to my (gorgeous, seagreen) eyeballs over the sight of Dockers at dinner, despite what might seem to be (glaring and repeated) indications to the contrary.

I'm Not Reuters.

Secondly, the foregoing derives from the fact that this blog is neither a news wire nor a diary. It is not true, in other words, nor does it purport to be. There is truth in it, surely, but that truth, where one can find it, is snuggled up tight with with all kinds of tricks, like exaggeration, sleazy argumentation, grasping at straws to make a point, and lazy recourse to such creatures as litotes, anaphora, paranomasia, syllepsis, paraleipsis, and their wicked, wicked chums, to lend, at times, the sense that I truly do accord the selection of the evening's shoes the same weight as I do truly weighty things. --Or to make things sound more pleasant, or less pleasant, or funnier, than they really are.

I'm Lying.

Thirdly, the same foregoing can be interpreted to mean that some of the details are factually inaccurate. I might say 'Dockers,' for instance, when in fact I was at no point anything like close enough to read the tag inside the pants of the individual in question. In that case, I am extrapolating from: 'chinos of some sort' plus probability, as I learned a few years ago in Harper's Index that about 80 percent of American men own Dockers. Thus, they are indeed likely to be Dockers -- but, again, they might not be. And if it is the case that there was an initial 'd' in the vicinity looking lost and hapless and unbecomingly unadorned, I might say 'Dockers,' anyway, even if the benighted boob under scrutiny was -- as unmistakably as he was inexcusably -- wearing corduroy. The ratio might be close to the following: 15 percent true, 80 percent fic-trutional, and 5 percent abandonedly, recklessly, from-the-gut brutally honest.

Why, Just the Other Day I Ate a Whole Half Rosemary-Roasted Brandywine.

Fourthly, if not all admissions are entirely accurate, so, too, must one be wary of reading too much into omissions. We might take bathing and eating as two obvious examples: I do both so frequently that one could almost consider them 'daily activities,' and yet there is scant mention of either. I have neither the time nor the inclination to make this a minute-by-minute accounting of the day's every activity. I would like to keep work, for example, out of it almost entirely, confining it, if I can manage, to the occasional snarky and quite general aside. Dating, for its part, is poked at only when it can be used to serve as a convenient portal into disquisitions on some of my more general Concerns with Our Decaying Society, or 'make a point' in some way I misguidedly think might be amusing, or open the way for a large-scale rant on a marginally related topic for which I lacked a segue. The blog also features a great many lacunae -- including around dating -- the (non-?) existence of which gaps being attributable in part to a sense of decency and concern for others. I am more than happy, in other words, to prate on at obscene, contrived length about the recurring failures of my structurally-unsound would-be 'hairstyles' and my inability to give a one-word answer to such questions as 'Do you like tomatoes?' while I would hope that I am possessed of sufficient restraint not to catalogue the conversational and sartorial failings of anyone misguided enough to go on a date, or enter into a relationship, with me. This latter is of course true only of the present: my gay exhusband is still gay, and my other exhusband is still welcome to help me find pants whenever he's in town, and anyone base enough to have offended the sensibilities of the Only Perfect Girlfriend in the Free World (TM) may likewise find mention (if little quarter) herein.

I Left My Heart in Ouagadougou.

Which, having covered factuality, intent, scope, omissions, and timbre, leads us to Sixthly, which is the timestamp. And sometimes the date, too, if I, let's say, neglected finishing my birthday greetings to M. Saussure until the day after, in which case I can retroactively date it appropriately and thus save face with the dead. Neither, then, is an entirely accurate gauge of my doings. Six o'clock is six o'clock in Vanuatu, or Yerevan, or the Marianas Trench. Whichever one I had it set to then. Or a different one, as that list above was arbitrary. For the sake of clarity: I am not certain that I have ever set it to any one of those three. Just as geographically savvy alcoholics can always reassure themselves with the fact that the sun's always past the yardarm somewhere and start the day thus with a G & T rather than regret and misgiving, so, too, is it the case that it is frequently oh-six-hundred-hours somewhere -- just not always precisely where I am. Sometimes, frankly, the thing's all written, and I just want to look over it once before work, or upon returning home, which would mean I had 'really' written it before, even though I am pushing send now.

Doe-eyed, Po-faced, and Half Dotty Already

Earlier, while duskily languishing and hanging upon the cheek of night like a French Hook in an ecdysiast's ear, it occurred to me how pleased I am that I am no more in need of recourse to clip-on hair. In fact, I have so much of my own now that it frequently gets in my way, and I have alternately to Put It Up, Pull It Back, Smoosh It Down, and continue to work on my own tragic version of the French-Twist-with-a-Pouf, wherein all the extra bits that would otherwise make me look like a daughter of Akhenaten were they stuffed in with the rest are instead pitched topside, in a studied simulation of the sort of Devil-may-care posture I'll never quite pull off. At least not until I'm convinced that the Devil doesn't care very, very much and is not standing to my left at all times and pulling little pieces of it out and around and straight up, to illustrate that the only way in which I'll ever resemble Brigitte Bardot will be in my looming dotage when I'm so potty over animals I have no idea what I'm saying about anything else.

Certainly it won't be for supporting Le Pen. Nor, I suspect, for having an affair with Serge Gainsbourg or encouraging massacres in Algeria. Still, it would be nice to be able smolder abandonedly every so often, presuming there were no German playboy astrologers around to render it all cosmically de trop.

La Plus Haute Tour

I went on a good date tonight.

And shut up you for thinking what you just thought: if I hold out no hope I am in no danger of being misled or misconstrued. My approach is neutral; therefore my reading should rightly be presumed accurate. In fewer words, it was a good date, and I should be trusted on this. I had rather seal my lips, than, to my peril,/ Speak that which is not.

But yes it is true in the end: I am as shocked as you to discover that people other than me should be simultaneously nice, thinky, and as engaged as they are engaging. And I think I was mostly fine, too, which is something. Except for the beginning, when I had to call and ask was that him the guy I just squinted at and walked away from or was he not here yet which would be preferable as if he was that guy and it looked like he might be because they looked the same it might be better if we tried this another time because I could leave now and not walk up to the guy who just looked at me weirdly and then again at the end when I didn't know what to do and so barged ahead the better to get the ending ended and opened the door on my own which I hate doing and anyway am no good at either because physics gets in the way but didn't see much of an alternative at that point.

But the middle bit was fine. I hate pickles but I ate about sixteen, and there were no real knives so that was challenging because I do think they are an integral part of the eating part of a meal, but apart from that I'm sure it was fine. Well, there was the part where my hair hit the limit of its (purported) 'style' and I discovered far too late that it was not merely listing leftwards as I had only recently come to suspect but was instead fixed entirely on the left rear of my head, undoubtedly with all the end bits exploding in an unprepossessing fountain-like structure above my left ear, but I'm used to that since my lack of cosmetological expertise lends itself daily to hairstyle tragedies. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I do take it in stride and always assume my companion(s) understand it is a failure not of conception but merely of execution and, my being bereft of an engineering degree, such things are likely to happen and should be excused without prejudice.

Anyway, it was far from hell. By-and-by is easily said, but we both avowed something or other with appropriate levels of genuicity and advienne que pourra. I don't mean to sound as though I'm thinking anything other than What (overdressed) couch is the neighbor's cat hiding under, and why isn't he in the armoire where he belongs, but, as Fats Waller said, One never knows, do one?