Unsolicited Advice, VI

You should get a winter coat that looks just like mine and wear it all the time.

I just look so @%$#ing cute in it.

Unsolicited advice, cameo by Marcus: Ninjas

“If you’re writing stories, you should probably put ninjas in them. Everybody likes ninjas.”

Unsolicited Advice, XII

Don't get involved with your sibling's love interest unless you're as funny and down-to-earth-charming as Steve Carell, and it's true love.

Unsolicited Advice, XIII

Buy 30 Rock, seasons 1 & 2.

If you do it right now, you can get both seasons from Amazon in a bundle pack for just under $24.

(I don't understand why you're still reading this. Go.)

Unsolicited Advice: 12

The exact right number of grains for bread.

Unsolicited Advice, IX

If you're happy and you know it, it's better to avoid clapping your hands, randomly, in public -- no matter what that song says.

Unsolicited Advice V

You will keep hating the people who control you until you stop letting them.

So stop it.

Unsolicited Advice IV

In Johnson City, TN, as in the rest of the South, iced tea is called "sweet tea" and unsweetened iced tea is called "unsweetened tea."

There is nothing called "just regular iced tea." Do not harass the waitresses by attempting to order it.

Unsolicited Advice, X

If you don't like my columns, stop reading them.

Unsolicited Advice III

Never name your child "Dick."

"Richard" is okay.

Unsolicited Advice, VIII

Stop using these words:

formulate
utilize

You don't need them. Nobody does.

Unsolicited Advice, cameo by Phil Gramm: It's all in your head, whiners!

John McCain's campaign advisor Phil Gramm said awhile back that we're only experiencing a "mental recession."

(I'm glad he said this now, as I wondered prior to this statement whether John McCain was a neocon (or just a regular old con). Out of that closet he comes -- though he's distanced himself from this statement, in much the same way he's distanced himself from every previous position he's held on government, the economy, the war...you know. Whatever.)

It's telling that Gramm thinks this should make us feel better.

It's true, perhaps, that the recession is all in our minds -- maybe there are no fewer goods being produced or purchased now than there were ten years ago? -- but it's also true that everything else is, too.

The value of money, for instance. Or faith in credit cards to pay our bills. Or the belief that we should pay bills. The value of gold.

Or, you know, the belief that other people exist.

I, for one, find it hard to believe that people like Phil Gramm exist.

Maybe if I quit whining and ignore him, he'll disappear.

Unsolicited Advice XV

Read Without a Map by Meredith Hall.

It is clearly and beautifully written.

Unsolicited Advice VII

If you're ever trying to choose a boy's name and narrow it down to Kevin and Evan, choose Evan.

It's simply a much better name.

Special Features Commentary: Calendarsthenics on CU

Well, all, on the eve of failing for a second month to do all I tacitly promised to do here on CU, I decided my first month of meeting my post-number goals should end with a listing of all I haven't done, and more.

Over the last eight months or so, I've built up a set of expectations that have slowly congealed and eventually hardened into requirements for CU. You may have sensed the presence of these internal regulations already, but thanks to my not always following them, you might have figured they were more like guidelines than rules.

You were wrong. They're rules. I just keep breaking them.

So as to keep your scorecard more accurately riddled with my errors, and to cleanse my guilt over not posting a movie review for two months in a row, now, here's what you can expect from CU, both in the past and in the future.

Remember, though, the telos of Continue Unprotected: My posting a schedule of events is just as likely to cause me to aspire to offend you by continually flouting it as it is to keep me on task.

Posting frequency: I expect myself to post two items a day, ideally one long and one short.

Type of post, and frequency:

Once a week: At least one PSA and one Local Trivia; SYD reviews in season

Twice a month: Confessions

Once a month: Movie Review, In Defense of Poppery, Quantifiable Living, Accusations, Unsolicited Advice, New word, something involving Freud, something involving my personal life or family

Special features, to be posted as inspired: Phrases That Never Help, Mix CD lists, Carte Blanche answers

Anyone who wants to count up the percentage of this schedule I've stuck to and give me some kind of score is welcome to.

Just don't tell me about it.

PSA: Whew.

I fried my brain today by going back into the archives of my Internetted columns and searching out comments, then replying to them on my blog archive.

So for today, my unsolicited advice is all you get.

Unsolicited Advice XIV

If you ever pass by an estate sale, stop and see what they’ve got. It’s someone’s whole life there, and if you’re lucky, you’ll end up with an antique quilt from the Iowa farm like I did from my grandparents’ estate sale or a portrait painting that’s free just because the canvas has a smallish hole in it, and you’ll come to regard the woman in the picture (who you call Elaine) as a benevolent friend even though you don’t know who she is, have never met her and probably wouldn’t recognize her if you did. (She seemed to be in her twenties 40 years ago.)

Unsolicited Advice, XI

Open House.

It's a good TV show.

Unsolicited Advice

You should really get a haircut. Seriously.

Unsolicited Advice II

You need to stop telling other people what to do. Seriously.