James Lileks: Queer Eye For the Blog Guy

I like James Lileks' writing, I really do. Every weekday morning, it's my first stop on my web-rounds. He's funny. He's sincere. He's a great writer.

Except . . . On the odd day like today when he's suddenly running for "Mr. Domesticality" in the All-Minnesota Sensitive New Age Guy contest:

I offer my congratulations on a successful product line, and I look forward to a similarly integrated theme come the spring. However, you are surely aware that of the disparity in usage patterns that exists between towels and napkins, which makes it likely that a customer will run out of one before exhausting his stores of the other. This would not be a problem were it not for the seemingly random fashion in which these matching patterns have been distributed to the retail outlets. Yesterday, for example, I found three bales of leaf-bordered napkins at the store, and no such paper towels. This presents the consumer with a dilemma. Having become accustomed to the tight thematic consistency, one is forced to consider abandoning it entirely, and returning to the pell-mell ways of yore. Yes, the customer could keep using the towels without the napkins, but the presence of the former would mock the latter, make it seem somehow lesser. Which in fact it would be.

James! Snap out of it man! There are screeds to be written, spleen to be vented, idiots to be mocked!

Of course, the column improves dramatically once he gets the excess domesticity wrung out of his system. . .