you're the key to my piece of mind.

2007-02-26 / 9:32 p.m.

Want to hear something nefarious? There are cookie-peddling Girl Scouts posted at the doorway of the YWCA. You can follow up your workout with a box of Thin Mints, which we did the other night. We should have gotten a medal just for leaving the house that day, frankly. As we hauled our wheezy asses around the track, inches upon inches of snow piled up around my car. My next workout took the form of hardcore shoveling after we got plowed into the garage. It was nice. I've probably written before about how ultimately wanky the gym seems to me, how hamster-wheely, how unproductive, but I'm not hating on gym rats. Fitness is an end in itself, I realize. I just hate that modern life typically requires so little physical labor that we need to go pound away on a treadmill to get exercise.

But like I was saying, Thin Mints. Thin Mints are nefarious themselves, because they are sort of refreshing. You don't really feel like you're getting bogged down by cookie, so you keep popping them. Instead of sickening yourself with chocolate overload, you renew your minty freshness with each tender bite. In this way, a row of Thin Mints disappears very quickly. Next time I hit the gym I'm just taking the cookies with me. I'll be the woman on the elliptical trainer eating Thin Mints and doing Sudoku.

The real reason I'm here is that there is something so barfy on PBS right now I'm having a hard time talking about it. I am enjoying it, though. Apparently everyone has been telling Sting for years that he should sing John Dowland songs. In case you are not a nerd, John Dowland was an Elizabethan lutenist, singer, and composer. He wrote some pretty good stuff ("Flow my tears" is justly well-known: it's beautiful). But it's pretty much not stuff Sting should sing.

It's okay if you're a Sting fan. We can still be friends. I loved Dream of the Blue Turtles and I have to confess to owning Ten Summoner's Tales, but that was more or less by accident. But he has become more grandiose and adult contemporary with each passing year, as you know, so I don't know what Songs from the Labyrinth--Sting's John Dowland album--is supposed to be. A vanity project? A cred adjustment? Frankly, I don't think he really cares. Anyway, that's what's on right now: Sting, with this MONSTER lutenist, kicking it real old-school with some Dowland. You have to admit that Sting's life is pretty damn decent, when he can decide he's going to get into lute songs and then record them on Deutsche Grammophone and make an episode of Great Performances in his garden with input from a bunch of musicologists.

So, it's barfy but I couldn't turn it off. The songs are good. The lutenist is amazing. Sting is Sting, crooning and pronouncing things strangely, but he doesn't suck. Watching him and the lutenist make rock and roll faces at each other while playing is pretty awesome. The best sequence involves Sting sitting around a table with himself: four Stings, singing in harmony with each other. "That is some woman's wet dream," I observed. "Four of his tantric cocks, all in the same room."

There you have it. We (the Brit mostly) have been building an IKEA desk this eve, in an attempt to corral some of my stuff. I am inordinately excited at the prospect of having a proper workstation in the house. Sayonara, kitchen table, you sucka.

Like a natural woman,
Maven.

PS: More Ebay. Also coming soon: Pro-Choice Bowling, where I ask you to sponsor me. Trust me, it's dope.

Spinning: See above.
Feeling: Cannot stop sneezing; watery eyes; generally snotty.
Plotting: Early bed.

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