The paper towels, they tell me things. Unspeakable things.
I don’t know how Rembrandt did it without paper towels. They’re the perfect studio companion — a mix of tough, absorbant and inexpensive. They daub excellent textures into wet paint, leach just the right amount of excess medium off an overladen brush, protect delicate surfaces from greasy human fingers and they’re totally the quicker picker upper. You can quote me on that.
When I have used a paper towel, if it isn’t thoroughly gefukt, I carefully fold it into a square and set it aside — a habit I picked up from an old art school friend (though I think she picked it up in her years of food service jobs). There’s always a big, tottery pile of gently used paper towel squares next to my left hand. When it’s panic stations, I’m on it. I’m a blottin’ fool.
I buy the best quality paper towels I can find, with a “good” randomized texture and always — always — in plain white. So how a roll of these vapid, preachy fuckers got in my cart, I will never know. I must’ve been in a hurry.
The paper towels picked a bad time to mock me. I was thinking blearily about the whole mortgage and financial meltdown while I made coffee and paper-toweled things this morning. Generally speaking, Washington is no more than a peripheral malignancy; a sort of slow sapping around the edges of the national vitality. But at this moment, those strutting retards are directly responsible for what’s wrong with my life. Their greed and incompetence is the only reason I am sitting at a desk today facing another eight hours of PowerPoint instead of bustling about the kitchen in my English country house making pickles.
Yes I’m going to make pickles. I’m going to make the hell out of pickles. I’ll probably wear an apron while I make them, too.
But right now, I have PowerPointin’ to do…
September 18, 2008 — 8:29 am
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