How to Make My Couch into a Happier Place

I don't have anything to say today. I'd like to talk about World Trade Center, the Oliver Stone movie I saw on Friday. But although it was brilliant in the first half, the second was manipulative and misguided, so it's just not worth the trouble to talk about something that ultimately disappointed me (not unlike my last date). I'd like to talk about The West Wing, since I'm now up to disc 2 of season 4, but after I say I still love the show, what else is there to say? I'd like to talk about the fact that my friend Joe thinks I don't want to see stuff at the Joyce theater because I emailed him that I didn't know what to say about seeing stuff at the Joyce theater with him. I assure you (and Joe) that this is a huge misunderstanding, that not knowing and not wanting are two completely separate topics, and that not understanding an email is quite common and no one should feel embarrassed about it. But I'll speak to him Wednesday when I see him, so I won't bother going over it all now. I'd like to talk about the Krugman OpEd piece in the Times that was recommended to me today, but you have to subscribe to Times Select to read it online and although there's a 14-day trial period, I'm pretty sure I'll forget to cancel before the time is up and I'll end up paying for something I'm going to use exactly once.

So what else can we talk about? How Allison is trying to get me to eat more healthily? How I put too many pages in my three-hole punch today and it took me and a senior staffer half an hour to get the ripped up bits of paper out of the center hole puncher? How much I miss Edy's Gourmet Ice Cream? How someone drove by my apartment building just as I was dropping off to sleep last night and their need to share DMX's Year of the Dog...Again with the neighborhood woke me up and kept dreams of Matt from arriving for at least another hour? Or what about how fast bananas go from being not quite ripe to not edible?

Nah, none of that will cut the mustard. Hold on - there's a good topic! Whoever thought up the phrase "cut the mustard?" And what, exactly, does it mean? If you put your knife into a jar of Grey Poupon it slices through pretty darned easily, so to "cut the mustard" really ought to refer to a simple task, yes? Well, I can't say if that's the case or not. Mark Israel on www.alt-usage-english.org says it means "to achieve the required standard." Is it a simple task to achieve a required standard? Hmmm... Achievements of any kind tend to put me off my feed, and even more so when I can't get any mustard out of the jar. The word "achievement" seems to denote manual labor, at least to me, and manual labor is something I watch hunky men do with their shirts off. If a standard is required, chances are I'm going to do my best to bypass it because I'm a rebel and I'll never ever be any good. So I'm guessing achieving this required standard is not quite as easy as pie. But how easy is that? If you're talking about "pie" you first have to shape some dough into a crust, fill it with, I don't know, whatever you put in a pie these days, and bake it at 350 for 45 minutes, or until the crust is a light, golden brown and that sounds pretty tough to me. If you're talking about "pi" you have to divide 22 by 7 or 223 by 71 or take the average of the two of them, which is already much more difficult than figuring how much to tip the handsome waiter so why should I bother wasting my time with it? All this shows us is that if one is able to "cut the mustard," it seems to me it would be cause for a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon. But then again, walking in the door at night and taking off my shoes is cause for a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Do you think Matt can cut the mustard? Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it? Matt can do whatever he darn well pleases, and if he does it with me on the couch over a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon the world would truly be a much, much happier place. Or, at least my couch would be a much, much happier place.