This account could inspire any person (who finds both cold weather and extended periods of darkness wholly unacceptable) to take a leap of faith and move to Denmark. While Helen Russell’s experience was not all rainbows and unicorns, it does have herring and, well…Danish.
A woman after my own heart, (see Stick Chick and Loverboy) I enjoyed the author’s sense of humor. Especially inspired are the assigned names she uses to describe her husband and their new found Danish friends. I grew a certain fondness for her way of imparting her opinions and found myself laughing out loud despite the quiet environs in which I’d settled to read.
If you’ve ever moved to a new place where you didn’t know anyone but your immediate family, you’ll appreciate getting to know Denmark through the eyes of one who’s navigating the culture as she learns where she fits into the landscape.
Since I woke up and began writing while still in my PJs and Bucks T-shirt, it was afternoon by the time I finished writing an article that deserved more than its allotted space. I hard-scrabbled it down to a shell of its former self, satisfied that while imperfect, it is as good as it will get given the time.
So while I wait for the latest MacOS High Karate to upload to my laptop, writing with a pen in one of a stack of 50 new spiral notebooks that I bought when they were on sale at Wally World 10 for $10 about four years ago, I’m attempting to soak off the old gel nails from my left hand with 100 percent acetone which I realized in the wee hours of last night I had neglected to keep on hand and that required a trip to the drug store today to purchase. Damn it.
Unshowered and looking unkempt, I deodorized, put on a fresh blouse and my Lauren Conrad printed leggings, a pair of slides and my old jeans jacket (not my best look) to venture to the local RiteAid for acetone. After pondering the poor selection of available nail polish colors, I opted out and headed to the registers to pay for the bottle of acetone where Gertrude yelled to the only other cashier for assistance, flustered by the line of four mildly irritated patrons.
Pleased that no one I knew saw me shopping, I hurried to the car, stopped at the florist to order a bouquet for a friend and returned to the home office.
I gathered the cotton balls, acetone and nail clips and prepared my left hand. The acetone bottle label set in random position before me revealed what I presume is the RiteAid slogan: ‘look great feel great’ (all lowercase) above its 100% money back guarantee.
I snarfed my coffee.
I mean, I get it. It’s a slogan; one probably spitballed at a meeting of the best and brightest branding minds in the marketing department, run by focus groups, and approved by the management and shareholders who voted for it based on recommendations buried deep in the annual report. Considering that the only alternative nail polish removal method is the Dremel 4000 (read: dangerous equipment), it’s just hard to imagine a scenario in which acetone (read: some kind of poison) would make me look greater or feel greater.
This thought of course, made me examine the label further.
Turns out that 100% acetone consists of the following ingredients: acetone and denatonium benzoate. Um…excuse me. Question in the back of the room!
I think I need to resurrect those old Ross Perot pie-charts and graphs. While I never claimed to be strong in the STEM fields, I thought 100% still represents a whole? Maybe you MIT-Silicon Valley or chemistry types can clarify that for me.
Well, my High Karate operating system is ready to roll. Got more writing to do!
A fellow blogger posted his list of 50 favorite movies. Sometimes the perfect storm of direction, cinematography, lighting, on-screen talent, dialog, costumes and makeup, special effects and musical score combine to create a masterpiece.
For me, what makes a movie memorable are the lines; the words on a page, committed to memory and delivered with precision and emotion. Recognize any of these, who said them or where they come from?
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life son.
There’s a nearby business/industrial property situated on a corner where a yellowish brick warehouse sits about 100 yards back from passing traffic that’s chock full of tractor trailers, commuters and vans and SUVs full of softball moms and all their gear.
A single macadam entrance to its loading dock that is narrowed by a rolling, chain link fence gate and concrete barriers remains visibly unvisited by day. But at the end of each day the gate with its single, rusted, NO TRESPASSING sign rolls closed for the night. Alien-esque, sometime before the next dawn, it reopens but no matter how early you pass by, the gate is already open once again.
The front and one side of the building’s frontage otherwise devoid of landscaping consists of a grass lawn that’s home to one modern metal sculpture and a tree or two. It dips into a hollow leading to a long-abandoned front office entrance. There, a tiny, lineless paved lot looks like it once served the company president, staff and visitors (but not the peons). The entire building rear and opposite side hides behind a railroad track embankment and a fenced in lot full of nondescript storage trailers.
The few windows in front reveal nothing about its contents save for a tiny, dilapidated wooden sign, peeling with age. Some of the stick-on black letters have peeled off leaving silhouettes announcing the company name: So and So Imports.
In the past, Stick Chick occasionally noted NO TRESPASSING signs on the lawn but not much else, and certainly not the number of notices that passersby could have placed announcing everything from nearby homes for sale to political rants, lost pets or yard sale ads.
Stick Chick has always maintained that the place must be a front for a clandestine government operation or more nefarious pursuits. Never would you see people bustling about and only once or twice in two decades of passing by on a regular basis did she ever see a vehicle coming or going from that skinny side entrance.
Most recently, and more ironically, facing each of the two roads that meet at the corner, someone unseen, placed a big yellow sign with red stencil-painted letters announcing NO SIGNS ON YARD.
Stick Chick laughed aloud the first time she saw them, imagining the poor bastard assigned to paint and plant the signs announcing no signs.
Some soul with a deeper sense of irony and humor than she recently planted a new accompanying sign. If you are driving and pass by quickly, you might miss it. But just the other day, Stick Chick turned the corner with v2.0 in the passenger seat who erupted with a fit of giggles that lasted a good half mile.
Neil Patrick Harris and the writers of How I Met Your Mother would be proud to know that Barney Stinson’s oft delivered line has made it into the common vernacular.
Kudos to the maker of the renegade sign, and the local who took this photo and posted it on Facebook. Stick Chick would be pleased to give proper credit on that one.
50: A Figment of my Imagination 
You must be logged in to post a comment.