vituperation

March 16, 2004

Thanks, everyone, for the overwhelmingly positive comments regarding my last entry. Glad you liked it.

A special note for my male readers:

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re laying in bed with your wife one evening, having a nice pre-sleep conversation (no, that’s not a euphemism) about nothing in particular. Further imagine that your wife makes a comment like, “I should call your plastic surgeon this week and see how much he’d charge to laser off my moustache.”

Should this happen to you, the correct response would not be a mighty guffaw and the words, “But then you’d look Amish!”

Just so you know.

After my conversation with Joe Quita about the Australian Men’s Health thing, I pretty much forgot about it, thinking it was all over.

It wasn’t.

Turns out it was growing in Australia before I even wrote about it, culminating in an article in The Australian, the national newspaper, on February 26. Below is an image of the text about Fred and Frank:

Old Frank sure gets around, doesn’t he? Note that the editor of the magazine called it a “little white lie.” Heh.

Enter Australia’s media watchdogs, appropriately named Media Watch. They picked up on the story and put it on Australian TV Monday night. Here’s a transcript, with some clickable links to screen captures from the TV show.

I feel practically famous. In Oz, anyway.

I got to “say” both “butt” and “arse” on national television on the other side of the planet. That fucking rocks.

To me, anyway.

I’ve emailed Media Watch and asked if there’s any way I can get a copy of the clip or show. Here’s hoping they’ll send it to me (and yes, I asked for it in NTSC format, so don’t be telling me I need to).

It’s a little disconcerting to work your way through a 635-page Pulitzer Prize winning book, only to find on page 596 that you’d been mispronouncing one of the main character’s names the whole time.

Because I’m all for being helpful I’ll tell you now: it’s kev-ALL-year, not ca-vuh-LEER.

As you read this, editors from Rodale, Simon and Schuster, Ballantine, NAL, McGraw-Hill Contemporary, and four others I can’t remember right now are reading writings about my penis.

It gives you a certain warm feeling to know that, doesn’t it?

And now, I leave you with some (creepy, to me) cemetery pictures I took Sunday at Maple Hill.

Here lies the body of Isabell Harris who departed this life
September the 13 aged 73, 1824

This one watches you. Wherever you are.