disinfection disaffection

So I'm in a public restroom. I exit the stall and walk to the sink. Next to me is a woman who has just begun to wash her hands. And she is taking this whole hand washing thing to a prepping-for-surgery level. I try not to stare but she is lathering so...vigorously that I can't help myself. It's all I can do to hold back the burning question, "What the hell did you do in there to warrant such a scrubbing?" Here are some hypothetical explanations:

• Perhaps she was introduced to Mexican food last night for the very first time and the amount of toilet paper was inversely proportional to her digestive dilemma.
• Maybe her mother had told her that her "womanly fluids" would stain her skin and everyone would know that she had, in fact, had contact with her "secret place."
• Perhaps she's one of those fastidious little women who douche so much they smell like a Glade Plug-In.

Whatever it was, it made me want to run out and buy a vulva puppet to celebrate the Formula 409-free vaginas of the world and then go eat a big ol' plate of enchiladas with refried beans. That reminds me of a slang expression for a woman's happy place: taco. See, now we've come full-circle.

quotes to start the week off right

From the delightful A-Word-A-Day:

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
– James Thurber, writer and cartoonist (1894-1961)

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
– Thomas Paine, philosopher and writer (1737-1809)

Thanks to the Writer's Almanac:

Any idiot can face a crisis; it is this day-to-day living that wears you out.
– Anton Chekhov

He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
– Thomas Paine

redneck philosophy 101 cliffsnotes

Drove past a stationwagon plastered with fabulous, oxymoronic bumper stickers:

But I have to give Bubba/Bubbette credit where it's due because they had the one of the best bumper stickers I've seen in a while:Kinda makes a girl mist up.

venomous waters

I am reminded of a vengeful fish who was so bitter at the world that he poisoned the water to kill his pond mates. The moral of the story is, of course, that he ends up dying, too. But the truth is, for some malignant souls among us, the knowledge that they had inflicted pain and suffering on those they hated would be comfort enough in their final moments.

waits there's dancing

Okay, I'm a Tom Waits devotee most of the time but lately I feel like a Waitsaholic on a bender. Here is the latest in my effusive praise for Orphans.

"Little Drop of Poison" (on the Bawlers CD) has this bit of brilliance:

I'm all alone
I smoked my friends
Down to the filter

Jesus that is good.

"Home I'll Never Be" and "On the Road" are two different songs with the same lyrics on the Bastards CD. Taken from Jack Kerouac's writings, the refrain begins, "Cross the Mississippi..." The "On the Road" version* makes me want to do some CRAZY revival tent dancing. Honest to god, I can't remember the last time a song...or anything made me want to jump up and dance like that. Hands shaking in the air all tambourine-like. I just wish there were more verses so I could hear the chorus over and over without having to press replay so often.

(And no, I will not document my hallelujah dance for you.)

*This link opens up with Real One Player. If you want to listen with Windows Media, go here.

think of me as a foul-mouthed miss manners

It's about inconvenience. All those people who are willing to trade their inconvenience for yours without consulting you.

You're driving to work down a busy street with dozens of other auto-clad worker bees. The person in front of you decides to stop and pick up a friend. But pulling off the road into a parking lot right next to him would be a bother. So you and 8 of your fellow travelers get to queue up behind Mr. Spontaneity while his erstwhile passenger figures out how the door latch works. All the while Dick the Driver is holding up his hand to say, "Just a minute, hope you don't mind, my schedule is so much more important than yours. Oops, there goes the green light!"

You're doing your weekly shopping. It's not the highlight of your week so you've set your list up to snake through the gleaming barely-maneuverable-mega-grocery store as efficiently as possible. Every third row, however, some self-absorbed shopper with a cell phone growing out of their ear stops mid-aisle to gaze stupidly at the dazzling product array. No one can pass in either direction.

All I'm saying is just open your eyes and the get the fuck out of my way. Move over. Pull over. You are not the goddamn center of the universe. Get the fuck out of the way.

starbucking good

It's become popular sport to rag on the ubiquitous Starbucks. For some good reasons. They are wildly successful and most of us find that as tempting as a line of tin cans on a low brick wall...you just want to find a couple of perfect stones. Their success spans a population from boomers to yuppies to whatever we're labeling the young and caffeinated these days. Their success is somewhat formulaic. Muted tones, honey-colored wood, restrained design with the thinnest glaze of funkiness and Carly Simon Garfunkel lite-rocking you in the background. The coffee drink array, while quite good, is fucking expensive.

But goddammit, it's pleasant to sit in a kinda retro lime-green/pumpkin upholstered living room chair sipping your Double Vente Caramel Macchiata while Paul Simon is strumming through Graceland. It is. Dammit.

Anyway, on the way over to the comfy chair with toasty drink in hand (thanks to a gift card from our daughter, I might add), I saw a large basket with what looked like oversized coffee bean bags in it. Looking closely, I saw that they were used coffee grounds that had been dried and bagged up. They were being touted as a good organic soil additive. I quickly assumed that this was some vapid money-first marketer's brainchild and readied a jaded sneer. But not exactly. On the large bags (recycled wholesale coffee bean bags, no less) was the word FREE. Free. I wish it hadn't been chilly that morning so my Birkenstocks could have shared the crunchy moment with me. I guess it could still be a marketer's brainchild but instead of slapping an even token price tag on the dead coffee remains, they just said, "here, use this, it's good for the earth." (Okay, it gets us to tote some of their garbage home at no cost to them, I concede, and it makes them all seem all green and fuzzy to the organic among us. But still.) Damn, damn, damn. The sarcasm was just leeched out of me.

Good form, Starbuckians. [I still would have sneered when the little marketeer said "win-win." But that's just me.]

goodbyes

I hate saying goodbye to my children. It's always an inner struggle to balance the desire to tell them that they are two of the brightest lights in my life and avoid making them feel like I am clinging. They know I have my own happy life. They know I adore them. But still, I feel the tension. And deep sorrow at their leaving.

This was my daughter's first visit as a full-fledged vegetarian. I teased her about being Organic Girl and she retorted with mock annoyance, that's Organica, Mom. Her sense of humor is delightful and, in my always-ready opinion, revived. We ate relatively healthy, beautiful food. (Not overwhelmed by my traditional need to make dazzling side dishes and desserts in dazzling quantities. I worshipped at the feet of the culinary gods with some moderation.)

My son was his witty, warm self. Happy to be visiting friends and drinking at Rudz with his people. Ours has morphed over the years into a warm, comfortable mutual appreciation. He is a complex whirl of literature, commentary, riotous humor and remarkable self-love.

So, forgive a mother's effusiveness. I am so lucky to have two buzz-headed, richly-layered, quick-to-laugh human beings to call my offspring. And I miss them dearly.

words to start the year off right

From my friend Barry, a blog entry called Savior as Decoration:

I actually saw this today on a sign in front of a Baptist church in Missouri City: "The best ornament ever hung was Jesus Christ."

I like to think of this as adages run amok. There is so much wrong with this charlie-horse-inducing-stretch of quippish evangelizing.

From William Kennedy's Ironweed, a wonderful novel I just finished reading, hobo-gritty and penned in shades of gray:

When Francis opened the trunk lid the odor of lost time filled the attic air, a cloying reek of imprisoned flowers that unsettled the dust and fluttered the window shades. Francis felt drugged by the scent of the reconstituted past...

From Cooking with Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson, a book I've just begun to read that promises a breathtaking color palette and, most enchanting, recipes of exotic sensuality that are delightfully tongue-in-cheek: (It's a long excerpt, but stay with me as it's extremely satisfying.)

Mussels in Chocolate

You flinch? But that's only because you are gastronomically unadventurous. (Your Saturday evening visits to the Koh-i-Noor Balti House do not count. These days conveyor-belt curry is as safe a taste as Mozart.)

Ingredients
2 dozen fresh mussels, shelled and cleaned
Good quantity olive oil
Rosemary
Soy sauce
100 gm fined grated Valrhona dark chocolate

You will need quite a lot of olive oil because you are going to deep-fry the mussels and no, that bright green stuff claiming to be Extra Special First Pressing Verginissimo olive oil with a handwritten parchment label isn't necessary. Anyway, how can there possibly be degrees of virginity?...Heat [the oil] until the small bubbles appear (before it begins to seethe). Toss in a good handful of fresh rosemary. Meanwhile, dunk each mussel in soy sauce and roll it in the bitter chocolate. (Unlike the oil, the chocolate must be of the best possible quality. If it even crosses your mind to use Cadbury's Dairy Milk you should stop reading this book at once and give it to a charity shop. You will learn nothing from it.)...

And some recently discovered words for good measure:

Cruciverbalist: an aficionado of crossword puzzles (courtesy of A Word A Day)

Milt: fish sperm (courtesy of my word-loving, dictionary-delighted daughter)

And now that I am done, I find myself all at sixes and sevens as to what I should do next...

sneaking into 007

My end-of-the-year reflection is a goulash of imagery and words.

I listened to Garrison Keillor read a poem called "Benediction" and talk about the life of Henri Matisse on today's edition of The Writer's Almanac. It was velvet and uplifting and hopeful.

I watched Saddam Hussein have the noose placed around his neck in the video of his execution. It was barbaric and chilling and foreboding.

This week, especially, has been filled with delight and despair. Our children are home for a holiday visit. Their wisdom and peculiarity and beauty are are my treasures. Spent yesterday going to museums and bookstores with my daughter. We had an unhurried lunch and time to laugh and talk and be silent. I temper the urge to overwhelm her with my joy; our relationship seems a deeply-rooted but fragile rebirth. I have become very aware that a year is too long to go without seeing either of them. I kiss my sleepy son good morning (at 2 p.m.) and receive his disgruntled sweetness as a gift.

The despair part is more about the world in general. From today's New York Times:

The execution block scenes offered a grim echo of the sectarian struggle now convulsing Iraq, as Sunni insurgents and Shiite death squads engage in a implacable cycle of revenge that has killed as many as 3,700 civilians a month this year, and prompted many Iraqis to say that the killings ushered in by the overthrow of Mr. Hussein are becoming as brutal, and numerous, as anything he inflicted.

3,700 Iraqis a month. A month. Jesus Christ, how we've poured gasoline on and fanned the embers of hatred.

We also watched Deepa Mehta's film Earth, based on Bapsi Sidhwa's novel Cracking India, her autobiographical recounting of the partitioning of India. Brutal and compelling. Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims lived together in relative harmony in Lahore for ages and she chronicles how lifetime friends become violent enemies by the time the country is partitioned and Lahore becomes the capital of the Punjab province of Pakistan. I have no solution, just the affirmation that violence begets hatred begets violence.

•••

Holidays are about food. The gift of it. The sensory delight in it. For me, the perfecting of a dish.

Holidays are about laughter. The sound of it. The contagion of it. The way it cushions and clarifies truth.

Here are my end-of-year and holiday images. In no particular order.

The perfect pie, thanks to Christopher Kimball and the gurus at Cooks Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen. Culinary deities every one of them. This baby tasted as good as it looked. And it looked gorgeous. For all of you who have suffered through my pastry strutting this past week, I vow this will be the last you hear about my damn pie.

And this gem from break.com which captures these young men (one might infer drunken young men) calling to confirm their reservation for three in Satan's basement cafe. If there is a god and said god didn't find this funny, you are all in for a long, depressing afterlife. These guys made me laugh for days. I only wish I had thought of it first.

And finally, my parting grammatical shot for the year:

Will somebody PLEASE explain to these cretins the accurate definition of "literal"? A company cannot be "literally" born. It is "figuratively born" or plain old "born," used with the assumption that no behemouth, gravid being squatted on the race track and squeezed out Henry Ford's factory.

Happy New Year!

contributions to atheism

Over the past two days two famous men died: James Brown and Gerald Ford. James Brown died at 73; Gerald Ford was 93.
I'm talking about James Brown here. James Motherfucking Brown. Sweating, rocking, living on the edge. And Gerald Fall-Down-Yawning Ford. Gerald Ford got an extra 20 years, for christssake. What kind of god would stand for this crap? That's rhetorical, my good readers, I really don't want to debate god's mysterious ways. I'm just remarking on the wrongness of it all.

my new title

Today's Dictionary.com word of the day:

bricolage \bree-koh-LAHZH; brih-\, noun:
Construction or something constructed by using whatever materials happen to be available.

I want to be a bricolager. A bricolagette even. Maybe do a little tinkering on the side. It's the MacGyver degree.

errata

Here are some things that I think need correcting:

• The scent they use to disinfect the bathrooms at work is that pungent fake green apple smell. I don't know. Perhaps I don't want to be thinking about the taste of Jolly Ranchers during the elimination rite. Unless, of course, I just ate a bag of them. Then I'd deserve the noxious combo.
  
  
• When a driver approaches a busy intersection with the intent to make a left turn and doesn't pull out into the intersection (in case the only opportunity to turn comes when the light turns yellow) I think the driver directly behind The Timid One should be able to ram them gently into the correct position. Otherwise, you end up sitting through the light cycle several times while Mr. Clueless waits for a sign from god or something while I am visualizing getting out of my car, marching over to their window and explaining to them, in my most flowery language, that city driving is not for pussies like them.
  
  
• I love Christmas. Not the shopping part. Not the god part. Just the festive, family, friends and food part. However, I have recently discovered that my allotment of holiday spirit is finite. I went to the Post Office this past Monday. Most of my shipping had been done the week before, and I just had few items left. It was 7 a.m. and I stood in line behind the blessed automatic postal machine.
  
  I fucking love the automatic postal machine. And I am fast. So the two people ahead of me get finished and I begin my speedy little screen input when a woman gets in line behind me with an assortment of large packages. She's just inside my personal space and her body language is screaming impatience. Oh, for fucksake, I think, you'd better hope the poor sap behind you has more patience than you do, bitch. It's here where I begin to realize that my holiday spirit could be drained before the day had even gotten started.
  
  I place my last item on the scale, a small gift for our host daughter and her family in Finland, and Nosy Pissypants says abruptly "You can't use the machine for International." I soon learn that she has never used the holy machine (which she doesn't deserve–the regular cattle line is already snaking outside the large post office area and that's where she belongs) and she's trying to tell me, High Priestess of Automatic Interfaces, how to use it. We are not amused. I turn to her and say, "That's funny, the screen says I CAN ship internationally." At which point I turn and press the clearly visible International button and began typing "Finland" on the keyboard...maybe a little slower than I'd been typing before her arrival.
  
  After I get my international stamp, I walk over to the big drop contraption and put in each regulation-sized box. On the last one, the barrel jams. I am so tempted to skip away. But I don't. I find a kindly but not confidence-inspiring postal employee and tell her that the box wasn't too big but it jammed anyway. The Procrastinating Know-It-All now standing in front the machine crabs loudly, "They didn't tell me the boxes have to fit in there!" "Well," I replied, "they do." And I felt my waning holiday spirit flutter back to life.

how it sounds to me

Does anyone else hear Fruit of the Loom and automatically merge Fruit of the Loin with Fruit of the Womb? Anyone? This happens to me all the time.

homage to fug

Here's how those brilliant, sharp-tongued, riotously funny, gofugyourself.com women described one of Posh Spice's (aka Victoria Beckham) outfits at TomKat's wedding (scroll down to #4):

An insane arts-and-crafts fetishist. This one is fantastic. Now, granted, she didn't wear this to the wedding itself; just to some of the paparazzi-baiting festivities beforehand, whatever those were (the official blessing of the pre-nup, perhaps, or free Scientology classes). But there's something so magical about the fact that she ever even put this on at all. She does know the difference between decolletage and decoupage, right?

The difference between decolletage and decoupage? That is just perfect. Really perfect. I bow down in homage and verbal envy.

I freely admit that I didn't even know who Posh Spice was before I became a fugisciple. And I still react to most celebrity names with a look of mild retardation. Like dryer lint would be more fascinating than the red carpet parade hot-air balloons. However, if Heather and Jessica of fug fame were to write about the gauche behavior of the aforementioned dryer lint, I'd line up to read it. It's not the personalities, it's the critique. Bravo, you most unladylike women. You bring new meaning to the domestic science of slicing and dicing.

j.f.o.m.

Thanks to Lori & Mary, I can send my Tourette's humor into semi-retirement and focus full-time on making fun of a fresh disorder: Jumping Frenchmen of Maine. That's right, boys and girls, that's what it's called. Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

Jumping Frenchmen of Maine is a rare disorder originally described by G. M. Beard in 1878. It results in an exaggerated "startle" reflex, and was first noted among related French-Canadian lumberjacks in the Moosehead Lake area of Maine. It is not clear if the disorder is neurological or psychological.

The "Jumping Frenchmen" seemed to react abnormally to sudden stimuli. Beard recorded, for instance, individuals who would obey any command given suddenly, even if it meant striking a loved one, and repeat back unfamiliar or foreign phrases uncontrollably. Beard also noticed that the condition was often shared within a family, suggesting that it was inherited.

It's cruel and unusual punishment to even insinuate that this disorder is not fodder for mockery. Startle a Québécois woodchopper in a New England church and just see if you can stop laughing.

atticky

I wish I knew the emoticon for chestbeating victory.
Here's my lame attempt: *∞*
We divided and conquered; the attic is now debris-free. And as we went into the ring this week with more heavy duty filters than last week, the sinus reaction was...well, less dramatic. We also turned the oldies station up loud. All nasty projects should be accompanied by bouncy, corny, sing-a-long music.

And, the other results are in. Strangely disappointing: neither one of us has bragging rights for finding any pest remains. No bones, claws or tails. And I was looking. But I wasn't playing CSI; there was no sieving of dusty dirt piles. We had a job to do. Barbara did find an old bottle of Castor Oil. Have no idea how old it is but my guess is that the dregs are no longer odorless nor tasteless as the label claims. She also found two newspapers–from 1936. Must have been a good year to work in the attic because I swear it hadn't been touched since. They were both fairly degraded and brittle.

Okay, so we're targeting our next project on the road to renovation. I know you're all waiting with bated breath. Or is it baited breath...probably not, who wants their breath to smell like bait? Anyway, we're hellbent on not losing momentum. Stay tuned.

urbanita

For me, the suburbs were to culture what gore-tex is to sweat: wicking away any music, art or literature of substance; while paradoxically allowing the clammy moisture of the banal to stay close to the soul, chafing if one ventured off the well-beaten track. Perhaps that's why I am drawn to urban living. All those years of wanting something richer, I can't imagine myself ever moving back to the land of strip centers, malls and restaurant chains.

Which is not to say I don't periodically enjoy a big bowl of mac & cheese while watching The Simpsons in a sweatsuit. For balance. I mean, to balance out the symphony and haute cuisine not that I need the sweatsuit to balance. I'm sitting on my ass for the tv/comfort food ritual–not really in any danger of tipping over.

waits for orphans

Tom Waits has just come out with a new collection of songs. It's called Orphans; Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. How could you not adore this man (and his wife) for the titles alone? Seriously, I mean adore. Sacrifice-your-virginity-to level of adoration.

Blues, Ballads and Noise. I have long imagined a dotted line running from my brain to my crotch—cutting figuratively through the middle of my heart and soul or spirit (or whatever I am calling it these days). Anything that strikes a simultaneous vibrating chord, satisfying intellect, emotion, soul and desire is a rare truth. A moment of perfection. A glimpse at godhood. Art or thought or person or song. It doesn't matter–the unified plucking of a string that reverberates at all points is not limited by form.

More than any songwriter, Waits did and does this for me. His songs, old or experimental, make me feel plucked to life. My children heard his rough-lullaby voice all their lives. There are songs that I connect so strongly with each of them, I can hardly bear those songs in their absence. The love songs he rasps to life that make me think of Barbara pull at my heart like no others.

The man and his wife, Kathleen Brennan, are fucking geniuses and I'm happy to drop the 40 bucks to pay my humble disciple dues.

P.S. And thank you, Rich, for the NPR link...

attic in progress

15 hours and three filled-to-overflowing city trash containers later, we've finished cleaning about 3/4 of the attic.

In addition to the previously mentioned fear that the spaces between the attic beams were probably never intended to be weight-bearing, did I mention that scattered about are nail spikes coming up through the floor? Did I mention that much of the attic floor is threaded with electrical cords that qualify as antiques? Cleaning under and in between these electrical lines made me wonder which quadrant of our house would suddenly lose power.

Still no carcasses. Barely any bug shells for that matter.

In the open ceiling area in front of our bathroom a large, dinosaur attic fan sits. We drop bags and bags of debris between the large rusty fan blades. Temperatures dropped last night to the upper thirties. This morning it felt like I was showering outside. Like Catherine O'Hara says in Beetlejuice, in "an indoor outhouse."

We are learning to "hop" mountain goat-like from beam to beam. That alone should make anyone who knows us smile. I would not choose as my animal representative anything that could be described as nimble-footed. I am much more ever-observant but weary bluetick hound type.

[I wrote this post, or sketched it out last month and forgot to publish it. For those of you who are paying attention to such details, my apologies.]