Yes, I did just photograph my chest and post it on the Internet.

This post is going to be about things I forgot to mention at the time. For instance, for my birthday, I got a truly amazing sweatshirt from Ivan, specially embroidered with that timeless exclamation, "Nargh!"

Viking loungewear


While I thrust my narghy chest in everyone's face for a month afterward, saying "DON'T YOU WISH THIS WAS YOURS? WELL YOU CAN'T GET ONE! IT'S ONE OF A KIND!", I never posted about it. It came with Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and smelled like chocolate for weeks. It baffles my coworkers. I guess they don't realize that Vikings are intrinsically funny. Some people are weird. Anyway, I've been thinking of other things that would be great on a sweatshirt and although many of them are Latin obscenities I think also a large HWAET! would be enjoyable as well. But only for me and the two other people who have read Beowulf.

For Christmas, I got something I should have taken a picture of and posted immediately. My grandmother, the one who met President Bush and said later she almost bit him, saw this in a catalogue and apparently thought of me.

Patchogue


As far as I know, Simon and Ivan are strangers to her, and so it is rather a startling coincidence, really. It is named Patchogue, after a town on Long Island near where my grandparents live. You can't tell from the rather yellow quality of this picture, but Patchogue is olive green, patterned, and in every way splendid. You should have seen him with his wig. Also splendid.

Also concerning my grandmother: she learned that I needed a hat and after Christmas, I got one in the mail. It was grape purple, thick, and . . . splendid. About a week later, I got another, modeled here by Patchogue.

Hat


The note said "For your more fantastical occasions." Indeed! My grandmother descends from ministers and educators practically as far back as Plymouth Rock. When I was little there seemed to me no explanation for the strange ways of my family other than that all these forefathers were Puritans, whose hellfire-and-brimstone work ethic had been passed down to us later generations mainly in the form of an unbelievable consistency in preparing meals with all the food groups, going to bed before ten, and using the television solely to watch the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. But I guess the truth is that my grandmother is a sort of New Puritan, the kind that buys a sinfully gaudy hedgehog doorstop, knits a jester hat really just for the hell of it, and would happily bite the leader of the free world as revenge for him being a total idiot. And even if New Puritanism involves eating a lot more vegetables than a rational person would ever want, I think I could really get behind that lifestyle. Unless it forbade me to take pictures of my chest and post them on the Internet. That right I will never surrender.

In other news, and I don't have a picture for this, I am no longer Simon, Girl Reporter. I gave up my job at the local paper because I was very bad at it. Also I hated it. Also I had one of those moments of clarity when you realize you are wasting valuable time doing something that brings you no joy (except for the rare occasion when somebody says something SO outrageous it's funny, like "Why can't we close the parks on Sunday mornings so kids don't have to choose between sports and church?" Answer: "Because of the Constitution.") and you might as well use that time doing something that brings you monstrous levels of frustration, irritation, and anger, such as writing. If I did have a picture of this moment of clarity, it would be of me at my computer surrounded by Greek muses cooperatively engaged in throwing thousands and thousands of hardcover copies of the Riverside Shakespeare at my head. Parts of me would be bleeding, but the general feel of the composition, I believe, would be happiness. Because while procrastinating I would be posting pictures of my chest on the Internet and blogging about it.