Some Observations From Tonight's Bedtime Stories

1) If you're going to run around town with a monkey, you should probably be committed to keeping better tabs on him. Letting him get into the kitchen at the pizza place and start making pizzas is just plain lazy monkey-wrangling.

2) It's pretty rude to just leave your monkey at the ice cream shop while you go run errands, unless you've made arrangements with the proprietor.

3) It's okay to be curious and make trouble - as long as something good comes out of it in the end, everyone you've injured and offended will forgive you.

Corn Accessories Sur La Table Would Like Me To Consider

Planning to cook up some corn tonight and realized I no longer have any of those poky corn holder thingies. In perusing my options on Sur La Table's website (I'll walk over to their store at lunch today), here are some other suggested corn-related accessories:

• The "Corn Zipper" (not what it sounds like)
• The "Corn Slitter" (also not what it sounds like - same function as the "corn zipper")
• The "Corn Cob Butterer" (what it sounds like...depending on where your mind is)
• The "Corn De-Silking Brush"
• The "Corn Cutter" (I'm not sure what this sounds like...same function as "corn zipper" and "corn slitter")
• 4 varieties of "Corn Dishes" - 3 in the shape of ears of corn, in case you forget what you bought them for
• "Corn Grilling Cage"
  
• Electric Martini Shaker/Stirrer (Exactly what it sounds like - relation to corn, uncertain)

As for the corn holder options (apparently also termed "corn picks"), I'll have to see what exactly is available in store, but options I won't be going with:

• Lobster Corn Picks (in shape of lobster, for some reason)
• Barbecue Folk Corn Holders (one end in shape of the head and shoulders of some down-home barbecueing type person that looks like they might have been designed by Gary Larson, the other end in the shape of the person's lower half)
• Corn Picks (in shape of ears of corn, in case you forget what you bought them for)

Two conclusions to be drawn:

1. If properly accessorized, grilling and serving corn for four people could run you $70 if you leave the kernels on the cob ($150 if you're also making martinis).
   
2. There is need for an official term for removing kernels of corn from the cob. I suggest that this term not be "zipping" or "slitting".
   

Learning To Read

I'm a magazine addict. I think my number of subscriptions is at its lowest in ages, but I still can't get through a bookstore without picking up a magazine. Having recently subscribed to the New Yorker again after a long hiatus, I'm having to force myself to be economic about my magazine reading time. Some obsessive compulsive part of me makes me feel like I have to read the whole magazine, cover to cover, in order. Any magazine I pick up. The articles I'm dying to read acting as a reward for sludging through everything that comes before. So I'm having to force myself to start with the things that sound interesting. Today I allowed myself to jump straight to the New Yorker review of "I Hate Sarah Marshall", then to the Jonathan Franzen piece - skipping right over all the letters to the editor and NYC arts listings I've always read, or at least skimmed. For me this is as momentous an occasion as when I decided that I didn't have to read all the comic strips on the funnies page; that it was okay to just admit that Cathy is in no way funny and I could care less about the adventures of Brenda Starr and it is okay to just skip right on over to Boondocks or Dilbert or whatever passes for comic strips in these post Bloom County / Calvin and Hobbes days. Baby steps.

It's this same controlling sense of order that I caught myself in at Whole Foods today. I had selected a sandwich for lunch and put it in my basket. Then, perusing the sushi case, I decided I'd rather have some sashimi. Rather than put the sashimi in my basket right then, my brain told me I needed to walk back over the sandwich case, put the sandwich away, then come back to the sashimi case for my new selection. It wasn't forgetfulness - I didn't just forget to put the sashimi in my basket; it was some deeply ingrained directive.

After It's Over, Things I Surprisingly Still Own

Curling Iron
2-3 Years Worth of Bon Apetit Magazines
Enough cosmetics/feminine toiletries to fill a tall kitchen garbage bag
2 Woman's jackets
Wheaton College Yearbooks
2 Jewelery boxes containing a modest collection of costume jewelery
Iron
Pink ducky flip-flops