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Post-Dieter blogging

Hey!  There are no more “gates” in Central Park!  In fact, they’ve been down for four weeks now!  How come nobody told me?  --and there I was, for almost the entire month of March on this blog, posing like a fool in front of things that don’t even exist anymore.  Oh, the shame of it all.  How I wish someone, anyone had given me a discreet nudge in the ribs.

So here’s our new look for almost-spring:  it’s A Blog of Teal!  OK, I’m still posing for pix in front of works of art, but this time I’m at home in my study, and the Eiffel Tower looming over my right shoulder was painted by my sister-in-law and all-around Super Genius, Todd Lyon.  Are my study walls really teal?  Yep, they sure are, and I painted ‘em myself.  In fact, I had to take the study apart and put it back together 18 months ago when we learned that my books and my massive ready-to-assemble desk (made of standard office-furniture particleboard—you know the kind, it’s dipped in uranium for extra heft) had caused the second floor of our house to sag about two inches.  So I dismantled the desk and all my bookshelves, and Janet said, “you know, you might as well paint it now while everything is strewn around the floor.” Now I have a clean, lightweight, drawer-less desk made of glass and hollow metal tubes, and I have to run downstairs to the basement every time I want to look up a passage from Gender Trouble or Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.  But it’s good for me, and it’s good for the house, too.  Let’s see if it’s good for the blog.

Posted by on 03/29 at 11:40 AM

  1. Much better. Your blog is no longer burning holes into my retina.

    Posted by Roxanne  on  03/29  at  01:15 PM

  2. From an leaked internal memo from the Omnicom Group, Michael Bérubé Division: “Everybody loves the Florida Marlins!”

    Posted by norbizness  on  03/29  at  01:41 PM

  3. And/or the Jacksonville Jaguars!  (After all, the shirt has the requisite mustard color.)

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  01:46 PM

  4. Janet’s letting your books stay in the basement? Nice of her. Becky’s making me move mine out to the shed. Of course, she’s also encouraging me to move the whole office out there. And she’s mumbled something about changing the locks on the back door, but I think that was about something else.

    Posted by Chris Clarke  on  03/29  at  01:47 PM

  5. Forget the Marlins—why that’s the teal of the San Jose Sharks. Can you put up the cover from the Hartford Advocate?

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  01:47 PM

  6. I thought the Hartford Advocate moved to Carolina and became the Hurricane.  No?

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  01:51 PM

  7. I must admit that this colour-scheme & photograph pairing do not have quite the same pseudo-Ukrainian revolutionary sense to them. Although, equally, I don’t have to don my polarized Bollés everytime I open the page.

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  02:10 PM

  8. I can stop calling you Neo now.

    Posted by Randy Paul  on  03/29  at  02:11 PM

  9. You and the rest of my office.

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  02:55 PM

  10. My wife is making me build the Japanese-style furniture I’ve been promising I would do for five years in order to conceal how many books we have. I’ve finished the first of six - using walnut and maple and mail-order hardware - and the result does look pretty good for an experienced amateur.

    She shouldn’t complain, quite of few of the books are hers, but there’s something about them on open shelves not as pleasing to her eye as a good tansu. Or maybe she’s trying to convince the guests and neighbors that there are no pointyheads in this house.

    Fortunately, no matter how full they become, the tansus won’t sag the joists. Learning whether this hidden arrangement will improve my thinking or writing will, I’ve just been told, have to wait until numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 are built.

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  03:44 PM

  11. Whoa...this is the color we picked for our furniture. Is teal the official color of liberals everywhere?

    Posted by PZ Myers  on  03/29  at  04:51 PM

  12. Odd how the popularity of teal came along about the same time as smooth jazz.  I just had to get up and change shirts as the one i was wearing matched the side bars and all this talk of teal started making me swoon and feel ill.

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  05:03 PM

  13. Michael et al--

    please do NOT keep your books in the basement! not only do basements often flood, but the generally moist climate and the wildly fluctuating temps down there are Very Bad for the books, not to mention an invitation to various destructive and sometimes even poisonous molds and mildews...can you take out what you actually use when writing at home, and keep them someplace upstairs, while sending the rest to the office on campus? if you MUST keep them in the basement, you’d better rig up something to keep them as high off the floor as you can, and away from any walls that conduct moisture.

    not to be gettin’ all “mom” on your asses or anything, but i’m just sayin’…

    -L.

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  07:39 PM

  14. Love the “I-know-where-some-bodies-are-buried” grin, Michael.

    Posted by  on  03/29  at  08:26 PM

  15. I think that a flight of stairs between you (or anyone) and Judith Butler is just about right: it’s just the right distance to insure that you really do need that quotation…

    Posted by Anne  on  03/29  at  10:18 PM

  16. Now, see, I really liked the Dieter picture.

    Posted by bitchphd  on  03/30  at  04:04 AM

  17. Now you tell me.

    Posted by  on  03/30  at  08:33 AM

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