I read Catcher in the Rye and a lot of other incredibly difficult books and here are all my deep thoughts-

No?

All right then.

First, let me say that- as a reader- I despise misleading cover art. I HATE a photo that looks nothing like the described character. As to whether Bloomsbury is a nest of racist vipers, I can’t say.

This is my experience- as a designer- of book cover design projects:

Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 1: We need a cover for this book titled Seventeenth Century Colonial Teaspoons in Peru: The Gold, The Bad, and the Ugly.
Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 2: And we need it yesterday afternoon.
Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 3: Here’s a printout of the design that Suzie, the Senile Secretary, created using Paint Shop Pro and her six year old granddaughter’s assistance. Use it as your guide.
Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 1: No, you can’t have the manuscript, because I hate you. And also, nobody knows where it is.
Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 2: BTW, don’t start to think you have a budget. Just see what you can do with the computer you brought from home and the watercolors you have on your desk for some mysterious artsy reason.
Designer: Aaargh!

A week passes.

Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 3: I can tell you right off the bat that Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 5 won’t want the gold teaspoons on the cover because the book is mostly about silver teaspoons, so could you change that? I know the title says gold, but the title isn’t finalized.

Another week passes.

Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 4: I like this cover, but I have this great picture of copper teaspoons that my young lover research assistant took on our research trip to Peru. Can we put some butterflies on the cover?

Four days pass.

Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 2: All the other Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figures are out of the office, but we need to send the cover design to the printer by tomorrow, and why are these butterflies on the cover? Replace them with sweet pink birdies, and the spoons need to be silver, not copper.

A day passes.

Crotchety Lunatic Boss Figure 4: Why are these birds on here?

And so on, and so on.

Here in San Diego, there’s an area of stunning natural beauty (with sheer sandy cliffs plunging through gauzy golden light to a streaky cobalt sea) which the Spanish conquistadors called La Jolla, or “The Jewel.”  The street grid of an adjacent area of the city, built in the mid 20th century, bears names such as “Garnet” and “Emerald” and “Diamond.”

You see this convention a lot.  Sometimes it’s effective, as in

Kirin: A mystical unicorn from Japan.*

Sometimes, not so much.

Kashi: A spirit from Angola, that appears good, but is secretly evil.  Once it lures you in with its false promises, you can never escape.*

What a way to market natural foods!

*(from The Element Encyclopedia of Magical Creatures by John and Caitlin Matthews)

I feel like I’m in that story by Borges or Oliverio Girondo or somebody where every day he coughs up more rabbits. He writes letters home about it. “Today, Mother, I coughed up two rabbits.” Only with us, it is gift baskets.

We’ve received 14. Some are homemade, some purchased. Every day brings more. 10 more days until Christmas. We love it- so much easier than grocery shopping.

We went to see paragliders on the cliffs of La Jolla.

I thought it was pretty cool. Overpriced hot dogs and pizza for sale in one of those gray weather-beaten structures you see near the water. Drunk/high people in lawn chairs watching the paragliders soar around the landing area. Bright sun like almost always in Southern California, 75 degrees in November with a crisp breeze off the ocean.

It worked like this. People would strap on a giant parachute and run down the mild grassy slope to the cliff edge, chased by barking dogs, get caught in the updraft off the ocean, and take off.

Then they flew down the coast, turned around, and came back in a long oval of single file flying people. When they came in to land they did one of several things: landed peacefully, soared around like maniacs yelling at their friends, or crashed.

We also climbed 350 feet down the cliffs to the sea. I do not know how the surfers managed this feat- I took the stairs.

On the beach at the bottom, we discovered a scene of breathtaking beauty, and also naked people. Naked people sunbathing, naked people standing around like statues, naked people playing volleyball and changing their kids’ diapers.

Here is the breathtaking scene. (Naked people not pictured.)

As Mary points out, Tori Amos has turned into the ghost of Loretta Lynn fo sho:

She is immune to criticism, Botox or not. We see her and gape. You have to buy her holiday album, as well as the Sugarland holiday album. They are not to be missed.

In case you were wondering, there were 9 food related metaphors in today’s WSJ articles concerning Kraft’s hostile takeover bid of Cadbury.

I guess it gets boring working there.

Also, today I bought advance tickets for 2012. I love disaster movies so much. I don’t care what the haters say about how it is worthless trash.

I got home from painting at the lake.

To find this: my laptop emblazoned with an NRA sticker, a toy dog wearing a sequined Halloween mask stuffed inside, and all of this being attacked by a giant spider.