STOVE STATUS, MONTH FIVE: STILL DEAD

Whirlpool has a hotline where you can punch in your order number and hear the shipping status of whatever it is you’re waiting for. Lisa from Whirlpool had helpfully given me all the numbers, along with her promise that we’d have a new stove within three to four weeks. It’s been eleven weeks since she LIED to me, and our current order status is not yet shipped. I have no more to say about this.

REVIEW OF A MOVIE I WAITED TOO LONG TO SEE: Zoolander.

This movie was terrible.

You might have had this experience, when you’re in a new-ish relationship and you want to catch the other person up on your in-jokes and important cultural touchstones. Brian and I were browsing the DVDs at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale and commenting on all the stuff: seen it, loved it, etc. when I made the grave error of saying I hadn’t seen Zoolander. It’s fun! he said. It’s silly.

I can already sense that you are dividing yourselves into camps as you read this, and that many of you are drafting comments in your mind. “It’s not that bad!” you’re going to tell me, and I’ll forgive you. I get it. I am not immune to the charms of early Owen Wilson.

But the ones who say, “I agree with you completely, and here’s why:” — you are the people I hold close, like a mermaid with new legs clings to a rock in heavy seas.

Here’s the important part, though — even though we may disagree about this one stupid comedy, it did not make me lose respect for Brian’s taste or intelligence. I feel like it’s a testament to my own maturity* because I’ve had boyfriends who have breathlessly asked me to read this one book that changed their life, and I have not liked that book** and it has shifted my view of them to the extent that I’ve lost trust in not just their taste but their ability to discern right from wrong. I’m not proud of having been like that, because it’s pretty shallow in its own way, to dismiss someone because I don’t like something they like, and to be fair, I’ve been on the receiving end of the same judgment and there are no winners. You eventually break up and then ten years later you go, Aw, he wasn’t that bad (but I sure hope he started flossing).

* I stand by the belief that it’s the smartest people I know who love the dumbest movies and TV.

** The Master and Margarita; 18th-c. romantic poetry and the unshakable conviction that it’s head and shoulders above anything written in the 20th century; Henry Miller.

THE GODS ARE PRETTY FUNNY

I do this thing where I pull a tarot card every morning from an app on my phone, and then I make that card my phone screen for the day. (The app is called Tarot! and it uses the Rider-Waite deck.) Today I got the four of swords, which is a card of rest and repose, but what makes it funny is that I have an acupuncture appointment later, and this guy is laying on a tomb with literal swords/needles coming at him.

GO AHEAD AND JUDGE ME

My attention span is still terrible but I’m trying to get my reading muscles back and I’m working my way through Search by Michelle Huneven, which is the most intensely Unitarian book I’ve ever read, and that includes Walden and anything by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It’s about a Unitarian-Universalist congregation’s search for a new minister, and it’s like she wrote a novel about my job. The names have been changed but every single character has a real-life analog for me. I almost hesitate to recommend it because it’s impossible for me to gauge how it would land with an outsider, but I think the author is really skilled in capturing the comic struggles of a white liberal religious institution in the early 21st century grappling with its own ironies. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far, for me, it’s a page-turner.