Friday, December 01, 2006

the day off

If you pay close attention to the title of this entry, you won't be surprised when I tell you that this is my day off. Oh how was your day off, then, P'node? Was it manly? No, it was the least manly day off I've had in months. Short of putting on a dress and skipping down the street and flipping my long locks vigorously over my shoulders, it doesn't get less manly than what I did today.

Usually my days off come packed with plans. The key to putting those plans in motion is getting out of bed. If I don't perform that key action, you can bet on a day of solitary brooding and surly postponement of plans, all done in my blue bathrobe. Today I got all proactive about getting out of bed because I really felt like a nice cup of tea. That is not a manly start to the day.

After tea, I watched classic BBC drama on DVD, then went out banking, lunching and shopping. I bought a present for my mother, a teapot, some wrapping paper, and I found myself sorely tempted by stemless crystal wine glasses and a nice jar of tapenade. Clearly I'm turning into a middle-class British woman. At one point I thought to myself "I really must learn how to make paella" and then ended up in a discussion about the merits of Moleskine notebooks with a charming young man who runs a paper boutique. I'm a complete metrosexual, like David Beckham without the talent or the tone.

Maddox would hate me. I'm going to go drink flagons of mead tonight to restore my manliness. Wait, that just sounds goofy.

In the meantime, here's a page from my notebook. Warning: this is raw Palinode, so concentrated that just a few drops can sustain a weblog for six months and still feed a family of four. If you don't have the energy to puzzle out my scrawl, the first part of the page is devoted to a pretentious ponce who was talking about musicians playing "in their truth". Is this a widely accepted term in some circles? Because I felt sorry for the people at his table who had to take that phrase seriously. The second bit is a little rumination on makeup. I know absolutely nothing about makeup, but this is a weblog, where uninformed opinions build their nests and lay their terrible eggs. You will have to take my word for it that the spelling is correct, because my handwriting sucks so very terribly much. Click to enlarge.

Note that I was trying to draw a picture of a three year old boy, but it went wrong so quickly and so badly that I made a save by turning the boy into a round-face woman with flyaway hair, then drew a quick variation to make it look like I'd planned it that way all along. Always a handy fix.

5 comments:

motherbumper said...

Nothing wrong being a metrosexual but I can't picture you as a the middle class British woman, I'd definitely picture you as a society lady. Anyhow, interesting to see how the mind of Palinode spills out onto paper. I'm afraid to look too closely and fall in.

Mr. Head said...

Mead. Yaaaarrrrgh.

Miss Syl said...

Hey, Hemingway used Moleskines. And everyone seems to think HE was manly.

Except me. I think he was trying too hard to prove his manliness. Which implies deep lack of confidence in his manliness. Which isn't manly at all.

So in the end, this means a real man is one who doesn't have to prove his manliness through manly things. Which means the most manly of men would actually *be* a middle-class British woman.

Anonymous said...

Your handwriting is beautiful in its unreadability. Are you sure it's not klingon?

Anonymous said...

You're still manly because you admitted with no shame that you were committing non-manly acts.

John Wayne used to wear panties, but by golly, he would look you right dead in the eye and admit allowed, "the silk cools my balls partner".