I just went on a honeymoon with my husband (of course!), and we booked first class to South Africa and back. On the flight to South Africa, someone died in economy class, and believe it or not, they moved the body from where it was over to first class, where it lay wrapped in a blanket directly across the aisle from me.

I protested, because who wants to look at a corpse on her honeymoon, especially in first class, after paying a lot of money, but was told that economy was really crowded, and they didn't want a corpse there "for health reasons" (but first class was OK?? Our health was better?).

When we landed, I pitched a fit, and said we deserved to have our money refunded, considering it was hardly a first class experience. The airline had a real hard time understanding this, apparently. They said nothing in their agreement with passengers prevented them from moving a dead body from one class to another.

What do you think?

Dorothy Parker: If the stiff what brung you isn't fun/
Here's a mile-high two for one!

Casanova: Why "of course?"

Oscar Wilde: Oh, how vile. Salts, please.

Marquis de Sade: Some of us do like to look at corpses on honeymoons, by the way.

George Donner: What was this, 10 hours? Cry me a river!

Marie Antoinette: On the contrary, the rich are far, far more delicate!

Midas: You know, money isn't everything.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck planes.

A First Class Body, The Death Rattle And Helping A Family Friend [Obit]

For starters, those earrings on the cover are $19,600. They're not just earrings, see, they're 7.67 natural amoeba diamond slice earrings in 18K gold with colored diamonds. Plus, they possess the power to hypnotize!

This, friends, is a candle. A pretty candle, and yet: something you set fire to. $395. Are you feeling witty yet?

Rose gold chain with diamonds, $4900. Skinny jeans, $194. Hairdo that involves refereeing a cock fight: Priceless.

This Lacoste polo featuring a crocodile clusterfuck is a limited edition collaboration with Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campanas and "reflects their commitment to creative chaos and triumphantly simple solutions." Witty! And $165.

"You can pretend to be serious; you cannot pretend to be witty." — Sascha Guitry

Honestly, I like the idea of peppering the catalog with witticisms, like this one, even though I had never heard of Sacha Guitry. I looked him up! He was a French actor, dramatist and director who wrote his first play at age 17. He wrote and directed and acted in Pasteur, a biography of the famous scientist; and there's something in his IMDb biography about how he lived a lavish lifestyle while the Germans occupied France in the '40s… He was jailed for a few months after the liberation of Paris. He was married five times, all to actresses who co-starred in either his plays or films. And! His name was apparently spelled Sacha, not Sascha.

But none of this is the point! The point is: That hair bauble, which would most certainly instantly fall out of my hair and through a sewer grate, is $1,990.

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." — Carl Jung

"Show me someone willing to pay $2,900 for these earrings and I will show you someone rich and dumb." — Yours truly.

There's a Dorothy Parker quote on the lingerie page, where $125 gets you a strip of silk for romantic, light BDSM evenings.

Dammit, if I had $365 and poor eyesight, I would love a pair of Albert Maysles glasses. He directed Grey Gardens! He's avuncular! He rocks! And the Maysles Institute in Harlem is a nonprofit organization that provides training and apprenticeships to underprivileged individuals. And you can see movies there, too!

A "choosing between two evils" quote on page where both items are made of rabbit fur? Witty?

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" —Abraham Lincoln.

New idea: LOLFoundingFathers.

Oh, hey, if this loose, body-disguising psuedo-homeless style looks familiar, it's because these garments are from The Row, aka Mary-Kate and Ashley's clothing line. $490 for the cardigan, $225 for the tank and $1,700 for the pants. That's $2,145 to look like you just rolled out of bed and threw on some laundry from your floordrobe.

Since alligators have been seen in the Mississippi River, a Mark Twain quote on this page is actually an inspired choice.

Barneys New York [Official Site]

Earlier: Ashro: Stop Being Such A Slob And Get Yourself A Suit, Hat & Wig
19 Crappy & Crazy Christmas Gifts From Sky Mall
Dean & Deluca Thanksgiving: Mouth-Watering, Wallet-Emptying
All previous catalog posts

I love European travel, but my girlfriend has travel restrictions outside the United States for at least one more year...I really like her, but this is causing me some resentment; she hinted that she's okay with my traveling by myself — but in a passive-aggressive manner, I suspect. Any words of wisdom?

Dorthy Parker:
"You overestimate your appeal/
She'll pack your bags with joyful zeal."

Ernest Hemingway: This is why God made French whores. And Spanish whores. I'm forgetting some whores.

Casanova: That's what we call a "business trip."

Emily Dickinson: What is this "travel" of which you speak?

Lizzie Borden: What is this "passive aggression" of which you speak?

Joseph McCarthy: "Travel restrictions?" And what are these "European" countries you're so very eager to visit?

Abelard: So, you "love" travel and "like" this woman? Enduring Love: ur doin it rong. [translated from the Latin.]

Isak Dinesen: I disagree. This is curtailing your ability to travel? End it.

George M. Cohan: Wait, why would you want to leave the GREATEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD? [Dances.]

Marie Antoinette: Travel restrictions? I don't understand. You just call a carriage, nicht wahr?

Alfred Dreyfus: Don't talk to me about resentment, Monsieur.

Sir Thomas More: What do you mean, "hinted?"

Ernest Hemingway: Remembered! Cuban whores.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck the government.

CAROLYN HAX [Washington Post]

Earlier: How Do I Tell Everyone That This Guy Died Of Prostate Cancer Because He Was An Adulterer?
"My Marriage Is Falling Apart Because I'm A Mac, And He's A PC."
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?
"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

Dear Judy,

I don't know if this is up your alley. One of the people in my church died recently. He was wealthy and had the best doctors but prostate cancer got him anyway in the end. He was also married, with four children, and slept with a number of women, including the church secretary. She has a broken heart, still, because he left her.

I think maybe he got prostate cancer because he was an adulterer, although I realize there's no scientific proof of this.

Now some of the people in our church want to establish a scholarship in this man's name (a religious scholarship! for college students who want to go on and become pastors). So what do I do?

Do I inform our own pastor about this issue? In a way I don't want to because the two men were friends. But in a way I feel I should do what's right, no matter what. Also, I think the 11 members of our church who want to fund such a scholarship should be told so maybe the scholarship can be given another name. And maybe the man's widow, who is a very nice woman, but none too smart.

Your view?

Celia

Dorothy Parker: If every man who cheated got smote, well, there'd be no one left to smite.

Casanova: Yes. I'm sure the pastor had...no idea. He'll be shocked. Really.

Anais Nin: I don't believe in "morality."

Brigham Young: I really fail to see what the problem here is, Madam.

Peggy Hopkins Joyce: Wait, how wealthy?

Saint Augustine: Passion is the evil in adultery. If a man has no opportunity of living with another man's wife, but if it is obvious for some reason that he would like to do so, and would do so if he could, he is no less guilty than if he was caught in the act.

Leopold and Loeb: We know what it's like having to deal with intellectual inferiors; torture.

Andrew Carnegie: You're absolutely right; all philanthropists should lead blameless personal lives.

Oscar Wilde: Madam, I find your moralizing exceedingly tedious.

Hippocrates: A doctor, you're not.

Benjamin Franklin: Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck religion.

The Man Who Broke My Heart, A Church Scandal and a Callous Cousin [Obit]

Earlier:"My Marriage Is Falling Apart Because I'm A Mac, And He's A PC."
"How Do I Explain To My Friend That Her Bad Mothering Drove Her Daughter To Suicide?"
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

I recently married my dream husband. We have incredible chemistry and a shared commitment to each other. When we disagree, we settle our differences by balancing logic and gut feelings. That is, until we came to our disagreement on which laptop I should buy to replace my Mac PowerBook. We are both in the software industry and have strong preferences on which operating system we prefer. I have been a happy Mac user for years. My husband can't stand the Mac, and his only explanation is the image associated with Mac users. Whenever he sees me with my PowerBook, he thinks of the "Get a Mac" commercials where Justin Long, who is a Mac, ridicules John Hodgman, a PC. I agree with him that the commercials are obnoxious, but they have nothing to do with the usability of the Mac. My husband said jokingly that I could get a Mac only over the divorce papers. I don't believe he was joking. It's getting to a point that we cannot discuss this without getting our blood boiling.

Dorothy Parker: "Dream husband?" Dream on.

Lady Idina Sackville: Bolt, my dear! Bolt!

Henry VIII: You are discouretous, Madam. He'd do well to cast you out.

Sir Thomas More: With all due respect, marriage is an Athenic weaving together of families, of two souls with their individual fates and destinies, of time and eternity - everyday life married to the timeless mysteries of the soul.

Marlene Dietrich: Oh, just let him have his way. Men are such tiresome children. You can always have your Mac on the side.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck monogamy.

Joseph Smith: Now, now, your husband knows best. Don't tire your brain with machinery and machinations.

Marie Antoinette: Je ne comprende pas. Why don't you have separate chateaux?

Ned Ludd: What's wrong with a sharpened stick and some foolscap?

Job: First-world problems. You haz them.

Computer Love [Slate]

Earlier: "How Do I Explain To My Friend That Her Bad Mothering Drove Her Daughter To Suicide?"
What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

Dear Judy,

When her boyfriend broke up with her, a young girl — 17 — committed suicide. She is (was) the daughter of a longtime friend. And to put it candidly, my friend was a so-so mother. Always criticizing the girl, never praising her, telling her she was "fat" or that her grades weren't up to par. Like that.

So I really think my friend's attitude contributed to that poor girl's suicide. My friend talks about it a lot, obviously, keeps pinning the tragedy on the boy who broke off with her daughter. And keeps saying she was always "a good mother."

What should I say? If anything? Should I correct her? In my mind she was an awful mother, and maybe she should acknowledge that.

Lidia

Dorothy Parker: If I trusted you behind the wheel and I wasn't already sipping a martini, you'd have just driven me to drink.

Ayn Rand: How does this serve your rational self-interest? You are a fool.

Freud: Seriously?

Leopold and Loeb: Our superior intellect impels this kind of honesty. Carry on.

Saint Paul: I hate women.

Agamemnon: You know, "acknowledging it?" Doesn't really help that much.

Joan Crawford: Maybe she was fat.

Hume: Honesty is part of letting go. It is seeing the need to let go. (The desire for humility comes from admitting that one is prideful.)

Innocent III: The only sinner here is the miserable girl who's now in hell. Let's pray for her.

Edith Piaf: It was love! IT WAS LOVE, I SAY!

H.L. Mencken: Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends. And you make me glad to be dead.

Judas: You're a good friend.

Aurelia Plath: Go to hell, go directly to hell.

[Jack Kerouac was not apparently available for comment at this time.]

A Second Opinion, The Oversharing Widower And A Guilty Mother [Obit]

Earlier: What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

"How Do I Keep My Sullen Daughter From Alienating My Wealthy Boyfriend?"

Writes the seeker,

Q. I am a widow with a 15-year-old daughter. I have been going out with someone for six months but he lives and works abroad and I usually go and see him. On the few occasions when he has come to stay with me and my daughter in England, she has been absolutely poisonous towards him. (She is just jealous. He is a very nice man.) Now he has invited us both to stay with him for a fortnight in the summer in his holiday house in Italy and I am at my wits' end to know how I can get my daughter to behave on this holiday and prevent her from putting him off me because the ‘baggage' is too difficult to handle. What can I do?

Freud: I'm leaving this one alone.

Marie Antoinette: I don't understand. Why don't you just stay at separate chateaux?

Vladimir Nabokov: Urbane, European boyfriend? Bratty 15-year-old daughter? Selfish, widowed mother? This should end well!

Joan Crawford: Isn't there a bathroom somewhere she should be cleaning?

Nathan Bedford Forrest: I hate Italians.

Little Edie Beale: She's jealous? YOU'RE JEALOUS!

Oscar Wilde: I find you unspeakably tedious.

Dorothy Parker:
You're boyfriend's married,
You're daughter's a pill.
I wish I didn't, but
I know that drill.

Lizzie Borden: Watch your back.

Dare Wright: Why don't you just live together, do elaborate photoshoots and play with dolls? What is this "going out" of which you speak?

Joseph Smith: And why is this young woman yet unmarried?

Jack Kerouac: Fuck You

Your problems solved [SpectatorUK]

Earlier: What To Do When You're In Love With Your Sister's Widower?

Here's what "Randi" wrote into Obit Mag's mortality-related advice column.

Dear Judy,

I can hardly stand to write this, I'm so embarrassed. My older sister died a year ago, more or less. It wasn't a big surprise. She had uncontrollable diabetes. Also, she was very overweight and weak, never exercised and didn't take care of herself the way she should have.

My problem is her husband. I've been crazy about him for a few years now. Obviously, while my sister was alive I never told him, my brother or anyone about my feelings. Now that she's dead, my feelings for him are getting a lot worse. Meaning they're getting stronger. He was very upset by my sister's death: They have a son who's 8. I was sad too, but obviously conflicted about many things.

Would it be bad for me to tell this man how I feel about him now? If I do, I know my mother will freak. She was abandoned by my father right after I was born, so she has a lot of thoughts on the subject of love and marriage, as you can imagine. Also, I'm not too sure how the rest of our extended families will react.

I don't know what to do, which is why I'm writing you.

Randi

Judy's advice is, as ever, very sensible. As she says, "I'm in a really bad position here since you haven't given me a clue about your brother-in-law — namely, whether or not he's ever shown any indication that he's interested in you. Which is a fairly important factor." She also suggests that, given how short a time the sister's been dead, she should hold off - from confessing to anyone.

Here is what various dead people had to say:

Dorothy Parker: Darling, to hell with them. But remember: "Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away." Or not. Fools lap up folly like Manhattans.

Joseph Smith: Why art you not his plural wife in the first place?

Dr. Atkins: Diet and exercise are overrated. At the end of the day, we're all here and some of us haven't eaten a piece of fruit in thirty-two years.

Lizzie Borden: 'Wasn't a big suprise?' I know that game.

Jane Austen: Thoughts of love and marriage, madam, do not wisdom make, and what is more, the disapprobation of one's family can upon occasion bestow an untold degree of felicity - and distance not easily breached by a few miles of good road.

Anais Nin: The heart does not know law, know marriage...anxiety is love's only enemy!

Oscar Wilde: I have little to declare, madam, but your tedium. There are few things less engaging than a "widower," save perhaps an Ulster widower.

Flannery O'Connor: If he wanted you, he'd have you. Men seldom don't have what they want.

Jack Kerouac: Fuck You.

In Love With A Widower, Terminal Depression And Bucking Dependency [Obit]

The author quotes statistics about the rise of drinking among young women — "more than 48 percent acknowledge having had at least one drink in the past month (up from 42 percent in 1992). But beyond that, the women who drink are drinking more. The number of women who identify as moderate-to-heavy drinkers has risen in the last ten years, while the number of women who say they are light drinkers has declined" — and then uses anecdotal evidence from her peer group to show that upwardly mobile urban women are the ones who are doing all the drinking, out of wanting to do well at work or wanting to express the fact that they cannot be controlled by social mores.

Full disclosure: I am quoted in the article, and this site generally and two editors specifically are mentioned as examples of the fact that "drinking has become entwined with progressive feminism." I don't really think that's true at all, and say in the article that drinking in and of itself is not a feminist act.

Indeed, much of the New York social world revolves around drinking, but it has, well, pretty much forever. Tales of Dorothy Parker getting shitcanned at speakeasies in the 20s are part of writerly lore. Rather than increased hard drinking having much to do with gender, I think it has more to do with career and circumstance. New York describes a woman named Kate, who works in finance, and started drinking with her colleagues after hard days of work so she could be "one of the guys." The anecdote seemed so dated, and reminded all of us of the scene in Mad Men when Peggy goes to the strip club so she can ingratiate herself with the boys.

But wouldn't a male teetotaler feel much of the same pressure to be included if he worked in the same industry? Somehow, I doubt that medical students and residents, male or female, feel any of the same social pressures to booze it up, since their work colleagues are not indulging in the same way. This is New York Magazine, and so they are only talking about New Yorkers, but I also find it difficult to believe that the drinking of urban upper middle class white women is the only reason drinking has gone up for women across the board. The article doesn't even mention the fact that the writer interviews only young, childless, unmarried women: i.e., the kind of women who have the extra time on their hands to hit the bar on a weeknight... and are young enough to be able to work through an alcohol-induced haze more easily. There must be more complex issues (like the marketing of booze that the author mentions) than just a desire for some sort of misguided equality.

Gender Bender [New York]

She was a patient likely to improve but never be cured...[she was initially] diagnosed as schizophrenic, and [years later her doctor] would describe her as a 'constitutional, emotionally unbalanced psychopath...in Zelda's case the onset of the illness could have come several years before she was ever hospitalized. Scott, in the fall of 1928, had made a cryptic entry in his ledger: 'Dirt eating in hotel.' (The psychiatric term is 'stool smearing' or 'stool eating.')...presumably no one knew of it but Scott. Whatever he saw was so disturbing that he tried to block it from his mind.

Feminist revisionist literary scholars have resurrected a lot of great writers — Charlotte Perkins Gilman of the The Yellow Wallpaper, Kate Chopin and her Awakening — and I think their time would be better spent unearthing other fantastic female writers from the prior centuries. Zelda's life was interesting and dramatic for sure, but continuing to argue for her artistic prominence is losing battle.

The Art of Being Zelda [BlueStocking — Click on "Current Issue" to find article]
Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties [Amazon]

Choose Your Flavor In Lipstick [Modern Mechanix]
Related: New Twist In Illicit Drugs: Fruit Flavor [SacramentoBee]