Jewel: Behind the Muse
Here's a little story about a pop singer named Jewel. See, she's from Alaska. It's cold there, so she learned to sing. At first, she was atrocious. But one day, during a "Rugrats" marathon, she began to sing in an adnoidal baby-talk voice. Alaskans loved that. It warmed their hearts. In fact, their hearts got so warm that lots of glaciers started melting. Some of the glaciers even broke apart, the pieces, some as big as buildings, drifting far out to sea. After that happened, the Alaskans were very angry. Their hearts cooled. They were so angry that they sent Jewel also out to sea on an ice floe. Jewel rode the floe far and wide, eventually landing on a beach in California, where several passing record executives found her, malnourished and dehydrated, under Santa Monica Pier. The executives put her up in a motel near the airport, where she was nursed back to health by a really hot Mexican chamber maid. (Whew.)

Anyway, During that time, Jewel spent her days scrawling sentence after sentence of words she had heard on "Jem and the Holograms" on roll after roll of toilet paper. When the executives came over to check on her, they read from the toilet paper rolls and proclamed her the foremost poet of her generation. As a poesa, the first thing she did was put out an album, then another, then a book. Soon, many more hearts then just the Alaskans' had been warmed.

But Jewel was unhappy. "Poets should be as rich as Mariah Carey! Why am I not?" she said to her agent, a brittle but hard-charging woman, whom everyone called Sarah, but her real name was Phyllis. Phyllis knew that poets didn't sell too many albums. She wondered how she could get Jewel more fame and money, but not cool the hearts of those her poetry had already warmed. "I've got it!," Phyllis said. She sent Jewel to a pilates class and then for a makeover. Then, Jewel recorded an album, which included a song that was a comment on the shallowness of the record industry. She made a video of that song, in which she revealed the new look she got from the pilates and makeover. Boy was she hot -- even hotter than Mariah Carey. When the album was released, it sold millions and millions of copies. All the old hearts stayed warm, and lots of new "hearts" were warmed as well.

Then she met HiFi Randy.

Read this and live by it. It is important.
"That is, they exercise judgment, which is quite a different thing from silencing or self-censorship. No one is silenced because a single outlet declines to publish him; silencing occurs when that outlet (or any other) is forbidden by the state to publish him on pain of legal action; and that is also what censorship is." Full text care of The Chronicle of Higher Education

Past to the Future
Critics of LF.com say we are Gen-X solipsists obsessed with our own past. We've been derided for being more interested in what we, or Judas Priest or Jeff Goldblum, did ten or fifteen years ago than in the history being made right now. (Wasn't it funny watching Jeff beat the crap out of Igby?) To those critics, I say "pfft," the sound John Steinbeck's buck-toothed poodle, Charley, made when he wanted to leave the camper to pee. Screw the critics. We're not the only ones, either. Check out these cutting-edge gizmos on Gizmodo. You'll wish you saw "Tron" in 72mm like I did.

This is what I find funny -- let's call it Farming Humor. A site with two visitors a week (second item) links to a site with two visitors a week. If a blogger farts in a virtual fashion, does the Internet smell it?

MONKEYPOX!

If there's anything we here like at Lasagna Farm, it's cover letters that no one answers.

69 Enterprises
PO Box 1823
Van Nuys, CA 91411


Hi:

I saw your posting on the Internet at Craigslist.com and nearly peed my pants. I couldn't believe my eyes. It's all the things I've been looking for in a job: instant money, work from home, no training needed, flexible hours! The spirits are sure smiling on me, aren't they.

I'm a single mother living in Albuquerque, NM, where I have a career as a flower arranger. I am also working on a children's book and I baby-sit a few of the neighbors' kids (I use them as research. Shhhh. Ha ha.). I followed the http:// link in your posting and see that this work is primarily over the phone. Even better! I am great on the phone, just ask anyone. I wish you could hear my voice in this letter. It's the sound of a friend. I've been known to talk to telemarketers for hours because I could hear a great sadness in their voice. One of them still even calls me and I going to come visit over the holiday!

The only thing that worried me about this job was the note at the bottom of the posting that said "Must be comfortable with adult material." I'm not sure what you meant by that. Does this position involve books or educational material, because that would be great too. My acceptance letter from Albuquerque Community College (goooooo Kokopellis!) just arrived yesterday. This is certainly my week, isn't it!?!?

I hope to talk to you soon, and my phone number is at the top of my resume. Please don't call during nap time (2 p.m. to 4 p.m.). When you finally hear me talk, I guarantee you'll agree that I am perfect for this job.

Talk to you in a little while,
Emily Minkin

Bad to the Bone
Can the networks find anyone for its reality shows without an incriminating past? First Joe Millionaire's descended from the Hapsburgs, then Frenchie posed for Funny Uncle dot com, and now this guy groped a female officer in the service. Hey, what about me? In the name of full disclosure, here are some things I've done that I'm not proud of:

• Ran over a cat (I still have nightmares about cats clawing my flesh)
  
• Committed a Federal offence (her ex-boyfriend's mailbox deserved it)
• Bought mescaline in Washington Square Park (c'mon, it was the 80s)
• Punched a guy in the face and ran (You'd have run too, it was Bay Ridge. Plus, being on the receiving end of my scrawny fist was probably like being hit by an empty tube sock.)
• Egged a house

Celebrity Update
Greg from "The Bachelorette" still lives in an apartment at 20 Avenue A.

Hello Kitty Van Halen
Check out this contestant from last night's Air Guitar Championship at the Pussycat lounge. You suppose there might be a market for cartoon breastplates? I think the breastplate is the most underappreciated male accessory of the past 1,000 years, next to the surcoat, which, was last worn by Queensryche's Geoff Tate during the band's "Rage for Order" period.

Stuck in the Middle Again

I was never in with the In Crowd. But I was never with the Out Crowd either. I was somewhere in between, riding the fine line of anonymity. I couldn't get past a velvet rope even wearing Armani. At the same time, I would look wrong with the Trench Coat Mafia. Thus, some t-shirts I would like to make celebrating my middleness.

1. I look good in chinos.
2. Edge Bar would be fine with me.
3. 11:30 already? Boy, I'm tired.
4. Never been published.
5. You can take the boy out of Connecticut, but you can't take Connecticut out of the boy.

Ebert Steps up with Gallo's Humor [thats really a stupid headline - ed.]
"It is true that I am fat, but one day I will be thin, and he will still be the director of 'The Brown Bunny.'" That's just one of the great bons mots with which thumb-wielding movie critic Roger Ebert responds to quotes from director Vincent Gallo in the NY Post and Observer calling Ebert a "fat pig" with "the physique of a slave-trader." Not much of a Gallo fan myself, though I appaluded his casting of a barely conscious Jan-Michael Vincent in Buffalo 66, I can't wait to see his latest now.