Because that’s what it’s all about, people.

Happy midweek to you, and happy 126th birthday to detective novelist Raymond Chandler!!

Chandler’s iconic private dick Philip Marlowe was his main character in nine novels – beginning with “The Big Sleep” – and five short stories between 1934 and 1959, as well as ten film adaptations – including 1946’s The Big Sleep, starring newlyweds Humphrey Bogart + Lauren Bacall – between 1942 and 1978.

“The writer who puts his individual mark on
the way he writes will always pay off.”

~ Raymond Chandler ~

Here are seven words I thought I would never utter [or type, even]: Weird Al Yankovic is my new hero.

He has taken a song I find brutally appalling and made it into an awesomely brilliant writer’s anthem!

All hail King Yankovic and his big dictionary!!!

Happy Friday to you, and happy 115th birthday to one of my favorite writers, E.B. White!!

“I arise in the morning torn between
a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.”

~ E.B. White ~

“All good writing is swimming underwater and holding your breath.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald ~

Artwork via Samantha French @ etsy.

Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass was first published on this date in 1855. The first edition received several glowing — and anonymous — reviews in New York newspapers; many of them were written by Whitman himself. One such review read, “An American bard, at last!”

Not too difficult to believe of the guy who wrote the 52-stanza “Song of Myself” … here’s a sampling from stanza 16 that seems appropriate for the day:

I am of old and young, of the foolish as much as the wise;
Regardless of others, ever regardful of others,
Maternal as well as paternal, a child as well as a man,
Stuff’d with the stuff that is coarse, and stuff’d with the stuff that is fine;
One of the Great Nation, the nation of many nations, the smallest the same, and the largest the same;
A southerner soon as a northerner—a planter nonchalant and hospitable, down by the Oconee I live;
A Yankee, bound by my own way, ready for trade, my joints the limberest joints on earth, and the sternest joints on earth;
A Kentuckian, walking the vale of the Elkhorn, in my deer-skin leggings—a Louisianian or Georgian;
A boatman over lakes or bays, or along coasts—a Hoosier, Badger, Buckeye;
At home on Kanadian snow-shoes, or up in the bush, or with fishermen off Newfoundland;
At home in the fleet of ice-boats, sailing with the rest and tacking;
At home on the hills of Vermont, or in the woods of Maine, or the Texan ranch;
Comrade of Californians—comrade of free north-westerners, (loving their big proportions;)
Comrade of raftsmen and coalmen—comrade of all who shake hands and welcome to drink and meat;
A learner with the simplest, a teacher of the thoughtfullest;
A novice beginning, yet experient of myriads of seasons;
Of every hue and caste am I, of every rank and religion;
A farmer, mechanic, artist, gentleman, sailor, quaker;
A prisoner, fancy-man, rowdy, lawyer, physician, priest.

(The moth and the fish-eggs are in their place;
The suns I see, and the suns I cannot see, are in their place;
The palpable is in its place, and the impalpable is in its place.)

Happy Independence Day, all!!

Sooo … it looks like I might have GPS-type OCD.
O.M.G.

Every day is Take Your [My?] Dog to Work Day @ Studio K!!

Here’s my security detail, on-duty & on-edge, as ever …
they don’t call her Crazy [Eyes] Daisy for nothing!

The grim reality.
PS – More cowbell!!

Confession: My daughter is a Potterhead [defined by Urban Dictionary as “an extreme version of a fan of the Harry Potter books”].

True confession: I’ve read only the first Harry Potter book, and seen the movies only spottily.
For this alone, my Potterhead daughter is rather ashamed of me.

But, while I thoroughly enjoyed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone as well as the movie slices I’ve seen, and while I’ve got the utmost respect for JK Rowling as a writer and creative genius, and while I’d love to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando, fantasy fiction isn’t really my deal.

I’m simply not called to it the way I am some other genres. It’s just not my jam.

So I’m content letting the boy with the lightning-shaped scar be all hers. I’m happy to indulge her fangirl fetishes … her unanswered prayers for a letter from Hogwarts [delivered via owl, naturally], her love of Hermione Granger, Luna Lovegood and Bellatrix Lestrange, her sniggering about Snape’s uncrackable countenance, her grief over Dobby the house elf.

Oh – and of course, her relentless ridicule of Voldemort’s serpentine scantiness of snout. [Oh, yes, she found the above meme hilarious.]

And one day, I’ll be just as giddy as a newly-sorted Gryffindor to follow her all around the aforementioned theme park, and let her show me all the pleasures, great and small, of Potterhead-dom.

Harry’s her world. And I’m happy being the proud Muggle mama of a Potterhead girl.

image via buzzfeed.