What is it about my recent emails that has led gmail (which usually posts annoying ads and useless news stories in this space) to believe I'm in need of the following wisdom?

"Only the mediocre are always at their best." -- Jean Giraudoux

I'm embarrassed to admit that I'm in any way affected by a bit of hallmark-worthy cheese dropped on me by my email server, but...

I think this is a sentiment I should have tattooed on my forehead. (Or at least on my mirror, at forehead height, so I could actually read it.) Because it would go a long way toward satisfying the "I suspect this may be a total piece of crap" inner voice that's on a constant rinse/repeat cycle whenever I sit down in front of a blank page.

Or I could just listen to this song again. (Oh, who am I kidding, I listen to it every day.)

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Don't forget to enter the contest and win yourself a free copy of SKINNED -- which I assure you is not crap!

"There is always a point in the writing of a piece when I sit in a room literally papered with false starts and cannot put one word after another and imagine that I have suffered a small stroke, leaving me apparently undamaged but actually aphasic." --Joan Didion

(Mind you, this may well be the only thing Joan Didion and I have in common, but still, that's a start.)

Some Friday miscellany for you:

1. Since Justine nicely composed this excellent post to save me from writing a far more intemperate one, the least I can do is send you toward it.  (Actually the least I can do is reward her with a delicious treat, but that's more of an offline endeavor.)

2. Who loves Joss Whedon? Meeeeeeeeeeeee! If you're raising your hand (or making a similarly undignified squealing sound), you will want to click here immediately to watch the first trailer for his new show, Dollhouse. Starring Faith. Er, I mean, Eliza Dushku.

3. Via Bookshelves of Doom, the greatest Harry Potter rapping puppet show you've ever seen. (I dare you to resist the lure of that description.)

4. A column by an English professor confessing that he cheated his way into grad school (along with numerous other acts of plagiarism before or since). This is somewhat riveting, and the big question now is: What next? Does this torpedo his career, or will it just be taken as I suspect he intends, a string of humorous anecdotes that can garner him a bookdeal?

5. Maybe it's the former debate geek in me -- defining the terms generally being the key to victory -- but I came across this today and it really struck me: "Yet does not this curious right [to define one's terms], which we have come to grant as soon as we deal with matters of importance -- as though it were actually the same as the right to one's own opinion -- already indicate that such terms as 'tyranny,' 'authority,' 'totalitarianism' have simply lost their common meaning, or that we have ceased to live in a common world where the words we have in common possess an unquestionable meaningfulness." (Hannah Arendt)

6. In my continuing -- if often floundering -- attempt to forestall the turning-30 freakout (see subject heading), I was quite cheered to encounter this thought: "Attractive women of nineteen and twenty-nine are alike in their breezy confidence; on the contrary, the exigent womb of the twenties does not pull the outside world centripetally around itself. The former are ages of insolence, comparable the one to a young cadet, the other to a fighter strutting after combat. But whereas a girl of nineteen draws her confidence from a surfeit of attention, a woman of twenty-nine is nourished by subtler stuff. Desirous, she chooses her appertifs wisely, or, content, she enjoys the caviare of potential power." (Fitzgerald) 

For the next 15 days, I think perhaps I will sign all my emails "insolently yours, Robin."

(Although certain people would suggest that my entire life has been an Age of Insolence.)

I usually find it simultaneously exhilarating and alarming when an author manages to state a truth of my wold in terms far more eloquent and clarifying than I've ever managed to formulate for myself.  But in this case, I'm mostly just extremely hopeful that the line I came across this morning is accurate -- because, speaking as a card-carrying member of "most people," it would be a massive comfort:

"Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do -- they think other people's opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval." (From Tender is the Night)

So I was sitting at a cafe with a friend, glorying in the sunshine, the wine, and the chocolate...and, because I am who I am, wondering if I wasting my time with all this frivolous (and very tasty) relaxing when I should probably be spending every waking Parisian minute (at least the ones not spent in front of the computer trying to actually be productive) immersing myself in culture, going to museums and seeking out intellectually or aesthetically or emotionally fulfilling paris sights and whatnot. 

After suggesting rather firmly that we order another drink, my friend pointed me toward a passage in (look, I said I was embarrassed, give me a break, and besides it's a good book, okay?) Bridget Jones's Diary that addresses the way the British (and I think by extension, New Yorkers) have just a little problem with the whole relaxing thing:

"Envy summer life on the Continent, where men in smart suits and designer sunglasses lightweight glide around calmly in smart air-conditioned cars, maybe stopping for a citron presse in a shady pavement cafe in an ancient square, totally cool about the sun and ignoring it because they know for a fact that it will still be shining at the weekend, when they can go and lie quietly on the yacht. What you are supposed to do when it's hot is go to sleep under a tree or watch cricket with the curtains drawn. But to my way of thinking, to actually get to sleep you’d have to know that the next day would be hot as well, and the one after that, and that enough hot days lay in store in your lifetime to do all conceivable hot-day activities in a calm and measured manner with no sense of urgency whatsoever. Fat chance. "

Substitute "Paris" for "hot" and you've got the idea.

(Incidentally, this "hot" theory is one I formulated myself several years ago when I moved to LA and was trying to come up with a reason why the people who lived there seemed to be an alien species. I'm convinced that every west coast personality trait can be attributed to the bizarreness of growing up in a place where each day is guaranteed to be as beautiful as the next.)