credit card jewelry

I read offline in the newspaper about how a hot new trend currently being tested -- credit card jewelry. You wear a piece of jewelry that's embedded with a chip. You just wave your hand or wrist over a scanner, your account is charged, and you're on your way.

Thank you but count me out. That just seems too insecure. Jewelry can be lost or stolen. You wouldn't wear your credit card on an elastic band around your wrist because it would be too insecure. Credit card jewelry is no different.

I always always always insist on a receipt when paying by credit card. I have no problem with self-checkouts at stores, where I use my card. But I make damn sure to always get a receipt.

Why? Because on rare occasion, you can be charged the wrong amount on your account. I have no idea how this happens, but it's happened twice to me. Because I had a receipt, I was able to get the charge corrected.

But if you're waving fingers and wrists over a scanner, are you getting a receipt? Do you even know how much you've been charged? My husband and I stayed in a hotel not too long ago and I discovered a hidden charge while paying for the bill, which I promptly had removed. Had I been paying with my jewelry, I might not have known that.

australian bagels are not superb

I am not Jewish but I know a good bagel when I eat one. My life in the United States was exclusively in metropolitan areas with a large and vibrant Jewish population, so there never was as a shortage of wonderful bagels when you wanted them.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for Australia. Bagels are sold here, but they taste more like rolls than bagels. The percentage of Jews in Australia is a lot lower than in the United States -- only about a third -- and I guess those who are here are not much of Polish ancestry, where the bagel was born.

Some really enterprising soul needs to introduce "real bagels" to Australia. Please. I've been craving some wonderful bagels and all I can get are the ones that taste like rolls. I'm not craving rolls. I want bagels!

I've tried baking some but they end up tasting like rolls, too. My boys love them, but they don't know the real thing.

remembering meuse-argonne

I read in the local newspaper about how reinactors from various nations have begun placing flags on World War I headstones in remembrance of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive which started 100 years ago this week. It lasted for nearly seven weeks, up until the Armistice, and was the bloodiest engagement of American soldiers in U.S. history with 26,277 Americans killed.

My grandfather talked about how his dad -- my great-grandfather -- fought at Meuse-Argonne, but he knew little about what he did. He said his father never really talked about the war nor much else about his younger years, for that matter.

Reading about the battle made me think about how pointless World War I really was. I think you can make the case the World War II was necessary to defend for the Allies, but I don't think you can say the same about World War I.

IMHO, and based on my reading of history, the war came about because too many "leaders" in too many nations thought it was time for a war. They were rushing to war, chests puffed up, ready to fight. We all know about how everyone thought it would be a short war of only a few months.

Arguably, had it not been for World War I, there would have been no Joseph Stalin or Adolph Hitler. Yes, both of them would have been born and lived, but they'd be unknown to history. I've heard and read that opinion from a number of historians.

Yet at the same time, if it wasn't for World War I, certain medical and technological advancements would not have come along until a good bit later. So as horrible as wars may be, they can speed up a better peace to follow.

washday blues

My quest to solve our washing machine problem continues. A few hours after I wrote and posted my entry online about the washer the other day, my husband remembered that his cousin's husband Paul used to fix home appliances for a living.

I called Paul and he offered to swing buy and take a look for no charge. The verdict was not good. Both the motor and the timer are shot. They alone would cost $965 Australian to replace ($700 American) just for the parts.

He also told me the machine was nearly thirty years old, which surprised me. The homeowner took very good care of all her appliances and cleaned them regularly. I have tried to do the same.

So for the time being, I will continue to use my jury-rigged system of avoiding the rinse cycle and, instead, running it twice through the wash cycle. I've also begun to research a replacement that will fit the rather tight space, either new or used.

the epitome of defeat

Bill Cosby was sentenced yesterday for three to ten years in state prison for sexual assault. The 81-year-old disgraced entertainer was immediately taken away in handcuffs to begin his sentence after the judge denied bail pending an appeal.

Even before I read about it, I was struck by his mugshot, seen below. In contrast to his laughing, smiling image when he walked into the courtroom earlier in the day before the sentence was handed down, Cosby seems to have finally realized the gravity of his situation.

At the risk of overstating the obvious, one news outlet interviewed a body language expert who said "his head is cast downward, his eyes are at half-mast, and his cheeks seem to be melting off his face — that’s associated with shame and despair. It’s the epitome of defeat."

Given his age, there's more than a small chance Cosby will die in prison. One wonders if that's what he was thinking when the mugshot was taken.

Yes, it's sad his life is in ruins, but at the same time, we don't need to feel compelled to feel sorry for him. Yes, it's sad when anyone fails spectacularly, but we bear no responsibility for that.

Cosby was alone in the room with his victim and Cosby alone decided to commit criminal acts. He owns yesterday's sentence -- no one else.

washing machine dilemma

We don't own the house where we live nor any of the appliances. But if one of the latter breaks, we fix it and, if necessary, replace it at our cost. We do this because we pay no rent in return for being caretakers of sorts.

The washing machine developed problems last week. It no longer automatically completed its cycle and would not perform certain functions. For instance, it drains and spins after the wash cycle but no longer drains and spins after the rinse cycle.

I came up with a workaround -- after the rinse cycle, I put the machine on pause, turned off the water, and dial it back to the end of the wash cycle so that it will drain and spin properly. After it drains, then the clothes are just like they should be at the end of the entire wash cycle.

The husband took the machine's case off and gave a look but he couldn't see any obvious problems. So I don't know whether to call a repair person or continue to use my workaround? Repair technicians will not give free estimates; hence, to find out how much it would cost to repair, I have to pay for an estimate.

I suspect it will not be cheap to fix it because it's an old machine. Thus, it's probably not cost effective to have it fixed.

But it's not easily replaced because the space where the washer and dryer are positioned is very tight. Most new washer models will not fit in the available space, which means I may have to pay to have it repaired.

So I'm thinking about going with my workaround until the machine breaks completely. I might pay for an estimate to see how much it would cost to fix -- they will not charge for an estimate if it cannot be fixed. Alternatively, I'm thinking about buying a used washer model that will fit in the space, but that could be a gamble.

The final alternative is that I use a laundromat -- often called a "coin laundry" here. That's a possibility particularly if I continue to use my workaround and the thing eventually breaks completely.

irezumi man

Irezumi is the traditional Japanese practice of covering the entire body with tattoos. I'll admit I had to look up that word for the spelling, but I did know about the Japanese practice.

This now seems to have seeped into Western culture and is not rare among people who do porn, both male and female. I find it at once fascinating and repellent. It has something of a reptilian look.

The man seen here (enlargement) is apparently still not finished with his tattoos. I believe the monochrome part on his thigh was yet to be colored when this was shot. Then I imagine when that's done, he'll find more parts of his body to cover.

One or even two sleeve tattoos can be kind of sexy on some men if they have solid muscle to make it look substantial, but I find the whole body thing way too much. It's like an ugly, gaudy bodysuit.

When he's old and saggy -- if he lives that long -- and his tattoos are all faded and misshapen, I wonder if he'll go out of his way to hide them. But then again, I don't think people who get this much ink really think much about the future at all.

If you're interested, the entire hardcore photo set is available on file sharing sites.

very cute, but...

Kasi and Mtani are a yellow lab and cheetah that were raised together from when they were very small. They are the best of friends.

When young, they played together rather roughly, particularly by the cheetah. As the video below shows, they're still bonded and somewhat rough as adults.

While this is very cute, this also worries me. The dog is domesticated but the cheetah is not. The latter's prey instinct could kick in suddenly without warning. Remember when the tiger suddenly mauled Roy of Siegfried & Roy fame, a tiger he had handled and adored since it was tiny.

I've known people with a mix of large and small dogs that are usually the best of friends. But on the rare occasion, for unknown reasons, something kicks a large dog's prey instinct into action and it picks up and shakes one of its little dog buddies, often killing the animal.

That's a risk I wouldn't be willing to take with any animal, no matter how cute the pair.

how early is too early?

According to an Associated Press article, early voting has already begun in some states, more than six weeks before election day.

I think that's a little too early for prudent, informed voting. Lots of issues are in flux right now and won't shake out for a few more weeks.

Now I can see in some extraordinary cases this would be okay, like you're expecting to have major surgery in the month before election day or are in the process of relocating overseas. And, of course, if you have some horrible terminal illness and possibly only days to live.

But if you're an ordinary Joe or Jane, why so early? Wouldn't it be better to wait maybe another three or four weeks, given issues can change on a dime?

I will vote absentee, so I'll make sure my ballot is postmarked two weeks before election day, to allow time to get back to the states. But I wish I didn't have to vote so early. Yes, I know how I will vote for certain slots, but for a few, I'm still on the fence.

If you want to vote the minute early voting becomes available, that is your right. But I don't think it's necessarily the best exercise of your right.

bearded again

Steven Colbert is sporting a beard again, and wags are gossiping why it's so white while his hair is so dark. Some are speculating that's because he colors his hair.

Yet if you look at a high-res photo, you can clearly see random gray hairs throughout his entire head of hair. He's clearly not coloring his locks.

But I'll admit that, at first glance, it does look like he's gone to town with the dye. He's mostly Irish by ancestry, and it's not uncommon for Irish men to gray this way. I've seen it in my own family.

IMHO Colbert looks better with the beard, but I do think the color irregularity seems a bit off. So I propose a solution, on the microscopic chance he reads this blog.

Either dial up the gray on your head a bit, particularly on the sideburns, or make your beard appear a little darker, without entirely covering the gray. With your money, you can afford to have this done professionally and then retouched regularly.

And think about losing the rimless glasses. They make you look a little too grandpa.

the underpants song

Back when Joey was in his toilet training phase, we wanted to make it fun for him. Given children sometimes pull down their pants but forget their underpants, I made up a little reminder song and tune, which goes:

Pull your pants down to your knee,
When you have to sit to pee.
And pull your briefs down as well,
Because you don't want to smell.

We would sing it when Joey was going to the bathroom. He had one or two accidents and that was about it.

Tombo is now thirty months old, so he's now in his toilet training period. He loves the underpants song, too.

Yesterday, I had the boys with me in a variety store that sells both household goods and some groceries. We were waiting in the checkout line.

I noticed in the next checkout line that there was a particularly stern-faced older nun. If you called Central Casting and asked for a nun who looked like a witch, they would send her.

At that point, for whatever reason, Joey and Tombo decided to sing the underpants song. A few people chuckled. I shot a discrete look at Sister Crab, expecting a fierce look.

Instead, she was silently shaking with laughter.

That was a good lesson for Mummy in how first impressions can sometimes be the wrong impression.

then she was gone

Last night I finished Then She Was Gone, a new thriller by British writer Lisa Jewell published a few months ago in the U.K. Per Amazon, I see it's currently selling in the U.S. and other English-language countries.

This is the first time I've read anything by Jewell and will definitely read more. The novel had a lot of unexpected twists and turns, and while I didn't quite buy all of them, I found most of them quite clever and surprising -- the author does an excellent job sneaking in foreshadowing that you don't even realize is there.

Skimming through Jewell's Facebook and Twitter page, as well as her entry on Goodreads, it seems an overwhelming majority of her readers are women. I think that's a shame, because she's definitely not a "chick lit" writer, at least based on this example, and I think men would enjoy this book, too.

americans are innovative

I was looking at Associated Press photos of the hurricane damage and flooding back in the United States and noticed what looked like a large snake perched on the dark blue car in the far left of the picture seen below (enlargement and detail). I hunted down a higher resolution version and located the one you see here.

Closer examination reveals the car's owner or driver removed the fender and apparently jury-rigged some kind of piping so the exhaust would come out of the top of the car, like seen on many trucks. That way, they could drive through much deeper water without stalling from flooding.

Talk about innovative Americans.

I would still think the body of the car would be in danger of water streaming in if the driver went in too deep. Sure the engine might survive the water for a bit, but if you flood out the insides, you could really muck up the electronics and wiring on the car. I would ask my husband about this, but he's out of town until Friday (sad face).

I think the moral to this story might be to not wait until the very last minute to evacuate. When you're modifying your car like you're in a Mad Max movie, that might be a warning and reminder not to wait so long the next time evacuation could be a serious possibility.

bagel heresy

Last week, in the final days of her campaign, doomed New York gubernatorial candidate and actress Cynthia Nixon went into a deli and ordered a cinnamon raisin bagel with smoked salmon, red onions, capers, tomato, and plain cream cheese.

For bagel purists, this was nothing short of heresy.

I'm not a fan of Nixon's politics, but I think the public outrage over her food order is bullshit. She has the freedom and right to eat whatever she wants.

If she enjoys this concoction, then more power to her. It's not like the bagel purists will feel pain or have to eat the same thing, too.

The actress and erstwhile candidate is in her early fifties, so I doubt she's expecting. Nonetheless what she ordered certainly isn't out of line for the sort of thing enjoyed by many pregnant women with food cravings. (BTW, I have not yet experienced any bizarre food cravings with my current pregnancy.)

Food Nazis need to learn how to mind their own business.

a touching dog story

This made me laugh like a fool. Some dogs may be tiny, but they still have wolf DNA in them. And being bit by tiny little razor-sharp teeth can hurt a lot more than a big dog's bite.

My brother once told me -- warning this is gruesome -- that when he was doing his emergency room rotation during his residency, one of the goriest admissions he ever had was an appliance repair man who had been attacked by a woman's tiny dog. The repair man was down on the floor and the dog went for him, literally ripping his flesh and muscle from the bone. The damage was extensive.

deliberately wrecked trains

It's funny how the most trivial things can stick in your brain and then pop up again years later. Yesterday when I was in the shower, I remembered a book I had seen in a used book store back when I lived in New York.

I don't remember the title, but it was a coffee table book of sorts showing hundreds of photographs of an odd late nineteenth and early twentieth century pastime in rural parts of the United States -- trains that were deliberately wrecked. Two trains no longer in regular use would speed toward each other on a track and end up in a deliberate head-on collision.

In some cases, the audiences gathered for these events numbered into the tens of thousands. Spectators on occasion were killed. Nevertheless, people continued to flock to the wrecks.

The impresario of deliberate train wrecks was a man named "Head-On Joe" Connolly who staged nearly one hundred wrecks. Some were filmed with early movie cameras.

This might sound sort of ghoulish, but is it any different than demolition derbies and NASCAR of our era? People don't go to watch the driving. They go for the spectacular wrecks.

Seen below is a 1919 photo of a head-on collision (enlargement).

ridiculous waistline

I was reading an article in a 1945 issue of The New Yorker via their online archive and noticed the advertisement below for a dress at Peck & Peck, an upscale woman's shop on the same retail rung as Bonwit Teller. Obviously this was not a sketch of an actual model of that era.

It helps to know some context of what the ideal female form was in this period. The top models and ideal look would be pretty much the same shape and size of what are known today as plus-size models or full-figure models. The starved internment camp inmate chic would not come along until the later 1960s.

Yet this ad from twenty years earlier was prescient about the predominant look to come. Apparently, already in some corners of the rag trade, the powers that be decided women should look anorexic.

evil is contagious

I was thinking this morning about evil in our modern world. I'm sort of vaguely agnostic/Christian and believe in some sort of supreme being, but I also believe in evil, too.

Whether evil is caused by Satan or some other nefarious force doesn't really matter to me. What matters is there is evil in this world. Some people are bad, but far fewer people are truly evil.

I was thinking about this because I'm currently reading yet another book about the Nazi occupation of France and also because my husband and I are currently watching the British series Apple Tree Yard, based on the novel of the same name.

Evil people feel a need to corrupt others, to make them evil, too. Do they know they're doing this consciously? Some probably do. That might be part of the thrill. Are they "told" to do this by any supernatural entity? I don't think this latter question is particularly important.

But evil is almost like a contagious disease. The evil person infects others with his or her evil. Those others become evil, too. Whole sections of society can become infected. We see that today in places like Russia and Syria and elsewhere.

I guess you can't scientifically study evil, because its grounded in theology. Science has explanations for evil -- an evil person is a sociopath, for instance. But science can't really explain, in many circumstances, what caused that sociopath to be one.

Bad people can be redeemed. But what about truly evil people? I don't think so. They arguably want to remain evil. They rejoice at being evil.

ten years later

I started this blog ten years ago today, on my twenty-third birthday. I have posted an entry every day in those ten years. I never thought I could stick with something this long, but I did.

To be honest, some days I wish I didn't have to write an entry but I do. Other days I look forward to it. I do have a reserve of posts just in case I can't post on a particular day, but 99 percent of the time I write a daily post.

I actually thought a while about ending the blog today, ten years on, but as I got closer to this date, I decided not to. It's become such a part of my life that I think I would miss it.

So I soldier on. And, oh, by the way, I am pregnant again. I'm due in March. I've known a while, but I decided to wait until today to announce it.

Back again tomorrow! And the day after that. And so on and so on and so on.

mysterious bloody scrape

About a week ago, I started noticing a sore, tender place with irritated skin on my forehead above my left eye. There was a tiny contusion so I thought it must be some kind of nasty bug bite. I showed it to hubby and he was mystified.

Each day it seemed to get worse. It morphed into something like a scrape. I put ointment on it but, each day, it seemed to worsen.

Yesterday, working at my new laptop, I noticed what looked like tiny bits of pasta sauce in the areas around the Q W E R T keys and some in the rows above and below them. I cleaned it out with a Q-tip dipped in a tiny bit of alcohol.

What could be causing that, I wondered? I never eat food at the computer nor does anyone else in the household.

Then it dawned on me. Sometimes I doze off for a minute or two and plant my face on the laptop when I'm working at the computer. I've done that for years.

The new laptop has metal keys, whereas my previous ones all had plastic keys. When I plant my face, I must rub a bit on the keys and that was irritating my skin.

I brainstormed for solutions. I thought at first about putting on a sweat band when working on the laptop, but then that could move and I could still end up scraping the skin. I settled on a baseball cap.

That way, when I doze off for a minute or two or three, the front of the cap bill rests on the computer and my face will not be injured.

Problem solved!

cold-blooded killers

I was reading offline about the two Russians suspected of traveling to Britain in order to assassinate dissident Sergei Skripal. Although not the same piece I read, this article includes many of the same illustrative photos.

The two men are seen casually entering through customs, checking into a hotel, and then strolling the neighborhood to case their victim. They look like any two men on the street.

That made me think about what was running through their heads during the course of their journey. They entered the country knowing they had come to kill. They spent all day doing tasks necessary to kill a fellow human being.

What has to happen in your life so that your conscience is completely suppressed in order to do something like that? Or were they born sociopaths and have never given a moment's thought to their crimes? Because almost certainly this was not the first time they assassinated someone -- you don't send amateurs to do a professional hit.

It's the classic question of "how do they sleep at night?" Probably very peacefully. That's sad. And sick.

a handy dandy website

As part of my ongoing but irregular effort to share useful websites with readers, today I recommend the free website Outline, which allows you to plug in a web address and then it strips away all ads, popups, clutter, internal links, external links, and more, leaving you with the original article free of annoying, spammy, irrelevant clutter.

It's also a great way to get around hard paywalls on some sites like the Wall Street Journal that severely restrict content for non-subscribers. So, for instance, this article is blocked on the WSJ website, but by using Outline, the article looks like this.

This is a keeper.

form without function

The outfits seen in the four pictures below are from a fashion house called Reconstruct based out of Amsterdam. Many more of their ensembles are as ridiculous as these.

Fashion today has reached a bizarre dadaism faze, where the ridiculous is celebrated, the impractical is heralded, and the pointless is triumphant. It's bizarre for bizarreness's sake.

The result are outfits that are pointless and unusable. The first one seen below features a down half-vest with a hood and a bare midriff. Where could you possibly wear this?

The second one looks extremely uncomfortable with those bizarre sleeves that would restrict arm movement. The same could be said about the third one. And the fourth one features a hat that blocks your vision, not to mention making you look like you've lost your mind.

But, seriously, designers could still go even further. How about outfits smeared with feces? Or models wearing cuts of rotted meat?

Because if you're going stark raving mad, you really want to go all out.000000000000000000000000

RIP burt

Burt Reynolds died yesterday at age 82. I met him briefly when I was an attendee's date at an entertainment industry event. The takeaway instant impression I had was "a lot of plastic surgery."

As a young man, Reynolds had a sexy Marlon Brando way about him, but as he aged, after a while, he did not age well. He also made a lot of bad career decisions in later life.

Like women, some male sex symbols can age well, but others age badly. Perhaps the ones who age best are the ones who don't pretend they're not aging. Reynolds strikes me as someone who spent too much time and effort trying to pretend he was no longer a young man.

Nonetheless, he had talent and great comic timing at his peak. He should be remembered for that and not what he became.

ancient kansas

Who knew the second largest ancient Native American city within the current United States was in Kansas? I certainly didn't. This article reports from the scene of an ongoing excavation there.

Called Etzanoa, the city was not photogenic compared to Aztec or Mayan or Inca standards. No grand boulevards. No stunning carvings. No impressive pyramids. At its height, it was just a five=-miles-long collection of thatched huts along two rivers.

The city was second only in size to Cahokia, in present-day Illinois, which I saw when I was a little girl. Cahokia does have an impressive earthen pyramid.

Reading this, I was struck with the thought -- what if there's an even larger ancient city out there inside the United States that has yet to be discovered? Where's Indiana Jones when you need him?

send in the clowns

The weekend international edition of the Wall Street Journal ran a photo feature on alternatives to women's traditional business suits. I thought the lead example they provided was particularly clownish (see below and enlargement).

If I had an appointment with a lawyer and she dressed like this, I think I would be tempted to say "what's with the pajamas?" IMHO, that look does not scream "professional."

If you owned your own business and didn't give a fuck about what the public thought of your business attire or you worked in a creative profession, then maybe you could pull this off. But if you're in a business where you need to project a confident, professional image, clowntown is not the way to go.

BTW, the ensemble is $2,150 American at Barney's.

fresh air

I have about five dozen different podcasts on my feed, but I find that I listen to the same four or five shows most of the time. One of my favorites is Fresh Air, a NPR program I used to follow on the radio back when I lived in the States.

Now, of course, I'm out of radio range so I podcast. I'm obviously not alone in liking the program because it's the number-one downloaded podcast in the world.

It's a straight-up one-on-one interview program conducted by a host who has been on the air about forty years. There's nothing new about the format, but the host remains highly engaged and informed about topics as she interviews prominent people like authors, entertainers, politicians, academics, and more.

Most programs have a primary segment with the one-on-one interview and then a short segment at the end focusing on a non-interview topic of interest. The latter are often reviews of new books, recordings, films, and TV shows.

The host, Terry Gross, has a mellow, engaging voice, but she's no pushover and asks tough, probing questions, causing more than one guest to walk out on the program. While some episodes are more interesting to me than others, I never fail to be informed and entertained after listening to the show no matter what the topic.

If you've never listened to Fresh Air, I highly recommend, whether you enjoy on the radio or in podcast form. The latter, of course, is most convenient for many because it allows you to listen on your own schedule. If you're out of the country like me, it's the only way to enjoy the show.

evolution/history mystery

Here's something I've always wondered and never found answered anywhere. It's probably one of those unanswerable things.

Certain species, particularly pests, are entirely dependant on human civilization. Two good examples would be wool moths and bedbugs.

Because humans wear wool garments, wool moths have a ready supply of food to munch in closets and chests. And since most humans sleep in some kind of bedding and use some kind of upholstered furniture, bedbugs can usually find a home.

But what about the era when humans existed but before there was any sense of an organized civilization? Humans lived in caves or slept under trees and spent their days hunting, fishing, and foraging.

Where did bedbugs live then? It wasn't like a cave man had a mattress or upholstered couch. And what did wool moths eat, given humans wore animal pelts, if anything at all, and did not yet have a textile culture.

A stumper.

big tarsier eyes

The first thing I noticed about my husband the first time we met are his eyes. Other people say the same. He has big, wide, innocent-looking brown eyes.

He also tends to hold them very open most of the time. He doesn't squint or narrow his eyes. They are, in a phrase, like big tarsier eyes.

Upon meeting his family, I noticed the first time that some have the same eyes but not others. Old family photos revealed that his long-dead mother had them, too.

Not surprisingly, both of our sons have them, too. It's the first thing people often mention about them. They stare at you with these big, wide, innocent-looking eyes.

On occasion, I see other people with eyes like this. More often than not, they seem to have blue eyes, not brown eyes, but you occasionally see brownies, too.

This is obviously the result of certain genes. At the same time, it seems like a pointless genetic variation, like certain ear patterns. Nonetheless, I find them very endearing and, if we have a third child, I hope he or she has them, too.

toxic twee

Sometimes short words pack a particular punch, and twee is certainly one of them. The word has been around for more than a century and means things that are excessively sentimental or affectedly quaint.

So a teddy bear is not inherently twee, but a teddy bear dressed up like Teddy Roosevelt certainly is. So are Wes Anderson movies. So are mason jars, but only if filled with something frivilous like dried flowers.

IMHO, twee is to be avoided at all costs because it rots your brain. It weakens you to eventually accepting sentimental crap. It affects your vocabulary was you start to say things like "how adorable" or "so precious."

Resist twee with all your might. It must be stopped.