How many chicks can YOU pick up wearing a monocle?

I'm a sucker for passages from old books that sound like they could be from today. Like this one bit from Busman's Honeymoon, a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery from the 1930s. Peter is trying to get his new bride, Harriet, to sit on his lap and he says "That's better. No, you are not too heavy--you needn't insult me."

I love that. I love that she protests that she will be too heavy to sit on his lap, because it's something that I myself have done. And that's great.

A little further down the page is the cheeky passage: "Women had found paradise in his arms before now--and told him so, with considerable emphasis and eloquence. He had accepted the assurance cheerfully, because he had not really cared whether they found paradise, or only the Champs Elysees, so long as the place was a pleasant one."

Again, I love that. Dorothy Sayers was writing at a time of, yes, sexual awakening. But she was also British. Things didn't really loosen up there until much later. I mean, a major point of Strong Poison was public outcry because Harriet had taken a lover and lived with him without being married. SCANDAL. And here Sayers is mentioning about Peter's sexploits in an offhand and dismissive manner. In Strong Poison, when Peter initially proposes and Harriet turns him down, she reminds him that she's had a lover. Peter comes right back with, "So have I. Several, in fact. It's the sort of thing that might happen to anyone."

Again, the dismissiveness. Who knew that a guy who wears a monocle would get so much play? It's fantastic. It's the way someone might talk in 2010, and there Sayers was, eighty years ago, beating the curve. Go, Dorothy!

I made a list of things that I want out of life because I was bored out of my mind at Phonathon yesterday. I'm going to write it here, because otherwise I feel like this entry is too short.

THINGS I WOULD LIKE OUT OF LIFE

1. A job that doesn't make me want to slit my wrists.
2. A do-over button (or just plain old time travel would be good, too)
3. Someone to tell me when I'm doing something stupid. Like, a tiny gnome who lives in my hat.
4. A hat.
5. Fortune, with or without fame.
6. Happiness?
7. Happiness.
8. Happiness!
9. Happyness. No, nevermind. Not even for Will Smith will I knowingly sacrifice spelling and grammar.
10. To like where I live.
11. To live out of the country for a year or so. Peter Jackson, I'm still waiting on that invitation to work on The Hobbit.
12. The power to conjure up the perfect sandwich whenever I want one.
13. Magic.
14. For my children to have the opportunity I never had...to attend Hogwarts.
15. Self-control.
16. My own TV show. One that I can point to and say, "I made this," like the kid's voice at the end of each episode of The X-Files when the Thirteen production company logo comes up.
17. A nice, big, sloppy dog.
18. A skirt, like the one I can see in my head but can never find in stores.
19. Free laundry.
20. Never to have to go through anything that makes me find/lose religion. I'm good with the amount of religion I've got right now, thanks very much.