87? did i say 87? i meant to say 107. really.

The article is titled, NYC admits problems after rat infestation at fast-food restaurant

Here is a snippet:

On Feb. 22, [health inspector] Thomas documented only 87 rat droppings and didn't cite an additional 20, which would have caused the restaurant to fail the inspection and could have forced it to close immediately, the department said. The next day, video of rats scampering throughout the eatery surfaced.

Okay. Let me get this straight. Part of health inspector's jobs are to actually count (like a pharmacist?) each little piece of rodent poo and write that number down? Are the accounted droppings then gathered up as evidence or do they remain there on the crusty floor for diners to gaze at as they chow down on their drumstick-n-thigh special?

Second issue: Eighty-seven bits o' rat shit are simply not enough to close an eatery? Nope, seems that 107 is the magic number. Need 20 more or the frying continues. Wow. What if one turd breaks and "appears" to be two? That could throw the whole thing off. This shit counting is more complex than it appears. Time was a handful of rat shit was pretty much all it took.

See the fast food rat here.

larry jerkhead

I hate to blow the soon-to-be abused clever little nickname for Anna Nicole's babydaddy on a blog title but I couldn't figure out how to make Birkhead rhyme with smegma.

Everything repugnant about modern society captured in the triumphant pump of a fist, cheesy thumbs-up and humble "I told you so."

"I won the million-dollar baby! My sperm rocks!"

One particular unprotected, sloppy romp with shit-for-brains/tits-for-days and Mr. Classy is golden! His 15-seconds of ejaculated fame.

Okay. We can all agree that this little girl didn't have a chance in hell of a tragedy-free life since zygotehood. Her mother was trash and everyone poking the trash was repugnant. The thing that reeks of Americana in all this is not that Anna Nicole was vapid and fucked up. It's not even that all the men surrounding her could have only wanted sex and money from her, despite her sterling command of the English language. It isn't even that three men and a goat have come forward with claims of paternity in the legal orgy following her death.

It's that all of this crass, tragic, shallow behavior is not being camouflaged in the slightest way by respect for a dead mother, a dead brother, a rejected/disturbed but grieving grandmother and last, and evidently least, an orphaned infant. No. Not even a nod in the direction of discretion. Not even a hint of humility at the challenges of new fatherhood. This is the look of someone who has just had his pony cross the finish line first. This is the face of a man who just watched the fifth Lotto ball drop in his favor.

If I were the judge and had the power, these two photographs would cancel Larry Jerkhead's claim to fatherhood. Permanently.

5 a.m.

Woke up this morning at the end of the drowning dream. Kept swimming furiously to the surface as it receded and my lungs felt filled to bursting. I fucking hate that dream. Jaw clenched and mind racing, I couldn't get back to sleep (it's Saturday, damn it all) and then, a thunderstorm came through. Two rounds of lighting and the rumbling of thunder and I slipped back into unconsciouness. Ahhh.

is that mollusk running out of your nose?

An acquaintance was telling me about his sick niece and remarked that she was miserable in part because she had crustaceans all around her eyes.

I laughed so hard my arthropods flared up.

(This just in: Jesus had a bad case of the crustaceans once, too.)

blag, blag, blag

When you invert the first two consonant sounds in a word or phrase sometimes it means something else or just sounds good. Like kitchen and chicken. Or crooks and nannies instead of nooks and crannies. Well, lately I've been calling my blog, my glob. I like the way it sounds. Bloggers are getting a lot of shit for being so trendy and/or full of inflated self-importance. It's good to poke fun at blogging even though, you know, I'm so not like those other globbers.

I think this guy is funny. Unexpectedly science-math-nerd poignant funny.

I'm not a high maintenance kind of woman...

...Sometimes a clever statement is all I need to resurrect a crapulent day.

My brother-in-law, the one that once sent me nunchucks anonymously (bless his divine humor), saw this and sent it to me yesterday:

Creationists should not be allowed to burn fossil fuel.

See? All better now.

finally, a hobo name to be proud of

I'm not saying that I will never have another hobo name but this first one will always hold a special place in my heart:

Inside-Out Mathilda

A long-awaited epiphenita, this one.

The origin comes from a more-often-than-normal tendency of mine to leave the house with an article of clothing on inside-out, backwards, mismatched or missing. This happened when I was a kid. A teenager. A young adult and it happened last month and again last week. A sign, I sigh, of my lifelong inability to give enough weight* to appearance. It's not that I don't care. I just don't care as much as most people. I can say this, because I rarely see my female or male coworkers with mismatched shoes, inside-out t-shirts, skirts spun around, etc. And I'm always looking for comrades in carelessness.

The Mathilda is a conglomeration: Tom Waits song, my ancient aunt and any name that hides the word math. So there you have it. From Inside-Out Mathilda who loves stew and swearing, too.

*pun gleefully intended

in awe of the rude

My friend Bryan made a comment on my last blog that referenced The Rude Pundit. He included a warning, because the Rude Pundit is not for the faint of heart or anyone who thinks George Bush is not laps ahead of Nixon and Harding in the race for the all-time worst president this country has ever had. I love the creative fucking ballsiness of it all. Statements like "no one...would have given a happy monkey fuck about the damn thing" leave me wheezing. I live for expressions like happy monkey fuck.

When my normal breathing resumed, I read this snippet and wondered if my old inhaler was still functional:

In answer to a couple of whiny questions about yesterday's post regarding the Fox "News" website's home page headlines being nearly completely devoid of anything remotely related to news, listen, you wads of fuck:

1. It wasn't photoshopped. If the Rude Pundit were going to waste his time photoshopping a Fox web page, it'd have a headline like "Rupert Murdoch Raped By Angry Wallaby"...

I am also partial to "wads of fuck" and references to wallaby sex.

One of the harsh lessons of adulthood is that no matter how much you might have in common with someone, nor how much you like and respect them, your humor Venn Diagrams may not intersect. Enough. With that disclaimer, I will say that I think that the Rude Pundit is too goddamn funny. And it's okay if you don't. It's okay if you sniff disapprovingly at me and my vulgar ways during high tea. Ms. Fussypants.

the peter principal, in general

General Peter Pace: "I believe that homosexual acts between individuals[*] are immoral, and that we should not condone immoral acts." General Pace said he believed homosexuality was like adultery, the military doesn't condone either. [source]

Peter, Peter, Peter.

General Pace thinks the queers are immoral. No major surprise there (I am a pun-lovin fool). However, when in uniform, speaking as a military leader (not as Peter Pace The Everyman Self-Righteous Prick) he is not smart enough to keep his own holier-than-thou ideas private (make me stop).

Here's the obvious problem with aiming that moral flamethrower: there is no end to the list of things or people that an individual might label "immoral." So pretty soon, everything's on fire. And everyone's incendiary is pointed in a different direction. If PP finds adultery immoral and homosexuality immoral and behaviors worthy of military punishment, what's to stop him from throwing interracial marriage into the conflagration? Or gamblers? Or atheists? Or women who work while their husbands are at home raising the chitlins?

It's a Pandora's box old Pete is opening up and it's got teeth. I'm not saying he doesn't have the right to his own ignorant opinions. I just don't think he ought to be espousing them from the military pulpit.

*one more thing, and this is just my wordsmithing pettiness, but this phrase "homosexual acts between individuals" has gotten stuck in my craw. Does this imply that homosexual acts between groups are okie-dokie? Or is he reassuring us that that homosexual acts between, let's say, two fruitflies or two german shepherds are not a punishable military offense?

when i die, remember something funny i said

When a comedian dies, you just want to remember why they made you laugh. CNN had a few Richard Jeni quotes and these are my favorites:

On religion: "You're basically killing each other to see who's got the better imaginary friend."

On Chicago: "I think that's how Chicago got started. A bunch of people in New York said, 'Gee, I'm enjoying the crime and the poverty, but it just isn't cold enough. Let's go west.' "

rainy days and dst mondays

This was a tough daylight savings time "spring forward" Monday. At 5 a.m. (or so) a fantastic thunder and lightning storm opened up in Houston. About 20 feet above our roof, it seemed. Not only should you get to stay in bed when it's dark and thundering and you're short an hour of sleep but you shouldn't have to leave all that bliss to slog around in the rain.

However, let me set the record straight, I'm not blaming DST. I'm really pretty neutral on that hotly debated yawn. The only beef I have with the subject is when people talk about how great it is to get an extra hour of daylight. People, we're not getting an extra hour of daylight. We don't have that kind of power. We're shifting our workday to take advantage of the natural system of the earth's rotation blah blah blah, not the other way around. Stop mucking up the science with sloppy descriptions. For petesake.

country goodness

Just got back from the grocery store. I try and comfort myself with the cow-milking, butter-churning alternative to shopping but I still hate it.

Whenever possible, I try and buy free-range products. Like eggs from cage-free chickens. Barbara worked on a chicken farm in her colorful youth and her descriptions of that abuse make the extra dollar I shell out well worth it. So I bring home my reduced-guilt eggs. They are each stamped with, what one assumes is the mark of free chickens everywhere, a little red symbol. It seems a bit fussy but maybe the department of poultry rights insists on the labels.

What I really don't understand are the little bits of hen crap left on the shells. If they go to the trouble to stamp each egg, (and presumably the ink won't stick to dirty eggs) they must have to clean them first. My theory is that they take the pristine eggs, stamp them and then have a poultry poop sprayer that imparts a so-fresh-from-the-farm-they-still-have-chicken-shit-on-them authenticity.

Shit sprayers. The best metaphor for the field of advertising/marketing. I should know, that's where I work. Bill Hicks, rest his ranting soul, would probably agree.

which way to the pub, old bean?

Every month or so, it seems, there's a headline about a motorist's death due to driving the wrong way on a one-way street. Seriously, this is a regular story. And I find it incredible. One must assume the bulk of these fatalities have some drug-related factor to them (and for the most part, I mean alcohol).

It would be easy to understand, let's say, turning the wrong way on a one-way street downtown. It's a confusing grid if you're not used to it. But you don't tend to pick up enough speed for fatalities partly because the ability to spot oncoming cars from a distance is quite good. Which leads to the stranger fact that most of these accidents occur on the freeway. On the freeway.

Driving on the right side of the road is about as ingrained as gas-pedal-to-the-right, brake-pedal-to-the-left in this country. Shit, in the whole western hemisphere. So, even drunk, wouldn't you have one of those, "what about this just feels wrong?" moments? These are not soused Brits speeding willy-nilly southbound down I-45 north at 2 a.m., blissfully unaware of which side of the pond they're on.

It's not that I don't believe in the power of drunken misdirection. I just have never been so drunk that I thought going downstairs would lead me to the roof.

crazy old man

Robert is the senior citizen who lives next door to us. For years, I just referred to him as old fucker. He is racist, sexist and has a tendency to impose himself like a sticky booger. I suspected that he was not "right in the head" since we first moved here 13 years ago but he was such an irritation that I couldn't dredge up much compassion over this. He lives in the house that I believe he grew up in. He lived there with his mother until she passed away. Like 100 years ago.

He has a couple of "friends" who are homeless or not all there either. Most of the time their exchanges consist of yelling at each other through his screen door. Sometimes they are fighting and sometimes they are just conversing. Sometimes, I wish I owned a fire hose.

Ocassionally, it gets too loud to ignore. Then it is ALL I can do to resist bellowing from my front porch, "Would you two nutcakes please hold it down? I know it's hard to hear yourselves speak over the voices in your heads but I am going to have to apply for membership in your batshit crazy club if you don't fucking learn to rant more quietly." I do resist, however, because recently Robert came by and explained through his saliva-encrusted lips that he has The Alzheimers. It takes some of the steam out of my vehemence and helps me to retract my claws. A little.

Our tenant recently had piano movers come and move a little upright piano into his garage apartment. Robert saw the moving truck and asked anyone who made eye contact with him that day, "Are the lesbians moving?" "Do you think the two lesbians are moving out?" "I think the lesbian woman are moving!" Even his enthusiasm didn't piss me off.

investigate this

Headline in today's Chronicle:

Houston police probe rape of pregnant woman

Surely we can find a better word to describe a rape investigation than "probe."

must...get...up

Sometimes when people say, so what have you been doing lately? A voice in my head softly prods, "say 'retaining fluids'" or when someone asks me what I'm doing for lunch, my hoarse whisperer urges, "say that you can't leave because you're working on your thrombosis" or "love to join you but if I move I'll lose all the work I've put into making this blood clot."

sirens must jar the hell out of them

My mom and dad are 70-ish and live in a retirement community. They are happier than I've ever known them to be. They have dinner parties and go swimming and bike riding. Mom said they had to go to a funeral last week. She said it like she does, matter-of-factly, implying that funerals were pretty much part of the package at their age. She mentioned ambulances coming and going. It dawned on me how ambulance sirens must jar the hell out of them.

When I get older, I hope I find a community like theirs (but I'm not moving to Florida). I hope I never stop swearing. If my brain stays healthy and my body gets decrepit and anyone within earshot says, "but her mind is still sharp as a tack" I will hurl my colostomy bag at them, sohelpmegod.

the wacko cracko world of dolls

Sometimes an epiphenita is nothing more than remembering a soft-focus childhood moment in the harsh light of maturity and education. Digging around the doll graveyard dredged up the following oddities:

Tiffany Taylor Doll 1974-76 (Ideal Toy Corp)


"She's blonde, she's brunette! 19 inches of what you want her to be. To change hair color quick-as-a-wink rotate top of her head." So what is it about being about to rotate a doll's scalp 180° that seems kind of nauseating? I mean, is having reversible hair worth all that violence?

Mommy's Having A Baby 1992 (Tyco)


Well. I'm of two minds on this failed attempt. It's not a bad idea to demystify pregnancy and defy the yuck attitudes surrounding it. That's a good thing.
However, here are just a sprinkling of my concerns with preggo doll:

• First, she looks like she's 8 years old. That's creepy.
• Second, the baby comes out of a fold of her dress. Now, I suspect we're not ready for Vaginal Delivery Mommy (with Velcro®!) but on a topic which is so poorly addressed with most children, I am put off by this sanitized version of birth.
• Third, immediately upon giving birth Mommy is standing there in her perfect size 8 sundress with her clean, quiet infant and nary a milk stain on her petite plastic breasts. We must stop lying to the children. Especially to the little girls who will grow up to be royally pissed off post-partum mothers.

Growing Up Skipper (and her brunette afterthought clone: Growing Up Ginger) 1975-77 (Mattel)




Finally, the pièce de résistance and inspiration for today's walk down mammary lane. First, the mechanics: Skipper is a nice little girl until your crank her arm around clockwise at which point her waist (freakishly) elongates and her flat chest sprouts demure breasts. Voila! she is transformed into a nubile teen.

Once again, I'm split on this intellectually. Those crazy toy designers at Mattel gave conservative and traditional dollery the heave-ho and tackled the uncharted borderlands of toy puberty. I give kudos to the attempt, however unsuccessful.

Then again, there are so many things wrong with this. Not the least of which is the number of SkipperGinger dolls who became amputees due to the "enthusiastic" arm twisting by many a little boy, and truth be told, quite a number of little girls. Because Logic bates you: if one revolution gives you a B cup, what would you have after three?

more on doll weirdness

We are a prurient puritanical nation because puberty is taboo and porn is not.

Growing up Skipper highlights this gap and begs for sequels: First Period Peggy, Noturnal Emissions Emile (just fill up the reservoir with Ivory Liquid®!), Bobby Boner Doll and of course, Pubic Hair Paul(a) which I envision would work very much like the Play Doh® Fun Factory. A lever in the arm or leg would force squiggles of pubic hair to be extruded out of "pore" holes in the crotch, armpits, legs, face, etc. Naturally, this would make the smooth asexual crotches sort of a moot point, so that would have to be addressed...well, it'll never happen outside of liberal hippie world because mature or not, grown women and, increasingly, grown men are supposed to be as hairless as possible. Which is fucktarded and pedophilic in my opinion. (Thank you Barry for the vocabulary reminder.) But I digress.

Dolls are strange cultural barometers. Even as a child, I found Barbies vapid. Okay, I liked making clothes for them (design/crafts nerd) and coupling them with GI Joe, Ken or each other for space-age-polyvinyl-chloride sex games. But even that grew boring. As I got older I saw the damage done by promoting Barbie as the beauty ideal. And before all you Barbie lovers get indignant and fall off your stands, Barbie is just the symbol of our society's unhealthy and inflexible standard of beauty for women. In this case, however, I think it would be okay to shoot the messenger.

working girl

I created an advertisement for a snake oil salesman recently and it made me feel dirty. But not in a good way.

brahmzzzz

We went to the symphony last Friday. It had been a week full of late nights and pressure. Not a good lead-in to a Brahms performance or any classical music, for that matter – Brahms didn't just write lullabies, you know. Anyhow, here are some observations from the evening. They've been translated from my blind scrawls across several pages of the program/magazine (why are those things so lengthy? I can never find the program I'm there to see without wading through pages of musician bio puff pieces and endless ads for upscale everything):

• The first part of the program was a piece composed by GL Frank. The GL stands for Gabriela Lena. It was very cool to hear the "world premiere" (whatever that really means) of a work by a female composer. Especially since she spoke to the audience and seemed genuinely delighted about being there.
• By the way, she is of Peruvian-Jewish-Chinese heritage. They got to check off a lot of boxes on their how-diverse-are-we form.
• I enjoyed her "tone poem" entitled "La Llorona," written for viola and orchestra.
• As the violist prepared to play, I noticed that his mannerisms were not unlike a batter's in the batting box. Funny little stretches and stances.
• Second part was Brahms "A German Requiem." Written, so the slick program notes say, after the death of his mother.
  
• 160 or so black-and-white-clad members of the Houston Symphony Chorus filled the tiered rows (for godsakes, don't call them bleachers) behind the orchestra.I'm not a big fan of choruses. One might say I'm not a team player; I prefer soloists. However the chorus added quite a bit to the requiem-ness and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to them.
• During the delightful, chaotic orchestra tune-up, I wished the chorus members would join in, each humming a note until they knocked the flatness or sharpness out of it. It would have been a symphony cacophony. (I love saying shit like that more than I can explain.)
  
• In spite of the fact that I had a bad case of the fidgets (like some strung out tweaker, I could not sit still), I ended up falling asleep during the fifth movement of Brahms' somber piece.
• Barbara woke me up before I started snoring. I think.
• Finally, what's up with all the fucking posturing at classical presentations? Stop that dramatic 20-second pause between the first violinist sitting down and the conductor striding in. It's annoying and affected. So are the four encores. Enough. Stop it. This isn't the royal court. Music is reward enough without all your pompous frippery.

a reminder

Even living in one of the big red states in the U.S. South, I feel buffered from some of the blatant indicators that women and minorities are still viewed as expendable around the world.

In today's Chronicle, this article refers to female feticide still being practiced in parts of India (and one can safely assume many other nations):

Abortion is legal in India, though it is against the law to abort a fetus because of its sex. Female feticide is still practiced in parts of the country, where an infant girl is valued considerably less than a boy...the government announced on Sunday that it would establish a "cradle scheme" to adopt girls in an effort to curb female feticide. "If you don't want a girl child, leave her to us," Renuka Chowdhury, minister for women and child development...

And this YouTube video link that my daughter sent to me. A young woman, Kiri Davis, reenacts the experiment that was

...the social science research cited in the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision. The symbol and lightning rod for that research were the doll experiments conducted by Kenneth Clark and his wife Mamie that tested perceptions of race. (from NPR)

Of course I read articles about honor killings in Muslim cultures and domestic abuse worldwide and feel revulsion and disbelief that such practices are tolerated. Yet sometimes a snippet of news hits home with fresh poignancy.

keys to the kingdom

I don't know which one of you assholes signed me up for the "free" gift from the Priests of the Sacred Heart Monastery in Hales Corners, Wisconsin but I am moved to the bottom of my unsacred heart.

Our Lady of Guadalupe (or "Lady Loopy," as we like to call her) is cunningly enameled on a little goldtone key chain. And if the Merciful Virgin wasn't enough (and by Cracky, she is) my unworthy name is printed more or less centered below her Holy Intactness...so that the sinner who steals my keys will be able to track down my lost soul and worldly possessions as well.

In addition, the whole direct mail marketing piece is in Spanish. From which I've learned that "misericordiosa" translates as "merciful" not "miserable"(according to Babel Fish) but the resemblance is uncanny.

Finally, one more Catholic-scented note: if you look closely, Our Decoupaged Lady on the Wood-Burned Plaque is being held aloft by a deceptively strong putti. The Angel Atlas, if you will, is a little disturbing in that he is reaching up under her dress hem to perform his feat of virginal suspension. One could almost picture the holographic version of this image with his cherubic head tilting back to snatch a glimpse of the Holy Mother's holy hoohah.

i don't live there on purpose

Don't tell me how insanely arctic cold it is north of Houston. I want tangible comfort not some "imagine how bad it could be" bullshit. It's cold here now. My feet are barges on a frozen sea. I detest being cold. I will pummel the next person who uses the word "invigorating." I want to climb into bed and not come out until the thermometer hits 60° and refuses to fall. Being cold makes me bitchy and inert. I am wearing a wool coat in my house and I resent it. The only thing standing between me and exorcism-worthy, tourettesque spew is the promise of a functioning electric blanket. Which is beckoning to me like a siren right now. Adios, motherfuckers.

space balls

Aeronutical
An astronaut goes crazy and yes, somehow it's more entertaining than if some ordinary non-astronaut citizen loses their shit. In a "fodder for fiction" way, this one is really great.

"[Lisa Marie] Nowak drove 900 miles, donned a disguise and was armed with a BB gun and pepper spray...raced from Houston to Orlando wearing [adult] diapers in the car so she wouldn't have to stop to go to the bathroom..."

After she failed to abduct the woman who she suspected was seeing a man that the married Nowak was "interested in" but not, in fact, married to...

"an officer reported following Nowak and watching her throw away a bag containing the wig and BB gun. Police also found a steel mallet, a 4-inch folding knife, rubber tubing, $600 and garbage bags inside a bag Nowak was carrying..."

A disguise, a steel mallet, rubber tubing and adult diapers...seriously people, legal definitions aside, either this one snapped or was functionally retarded before her road trip. No excuse, mind you, but no one who had ever laughed at Saturday morning cartoons could have taken this I'm-ready-to-play-Let's-Make-a-Deal plan seriously.

Holy Touchdown
The Superbowl. I watched it. It's Barbara's birthday weekend, she loves the Superbowl and I'm a sucker for that woman. Plus I thought I'd enjoy the commercials (they were so-so) and finally, I can always use some brushing up on traditional dyke factoids...like what is the outcome of a successful 2-point conversion? (I also know who's buried in Grant's tomb.) Anyway, my mother wanted the Colts to win and that's reason enough for me to cheer them on. Besides, neither team had an outstanding logo design to sway me.

The coaches seem like nice guys. You know, we love the iconoclasts. In a profession that lends itself to screaming, cursing and gesturing, Tony Dungy looks like the freakin' Dali Lama. Of course the NFL and the press played up the "first black coaches in Superbowl history" juxtaposed with Black History Month. It's important. It's noteworthy. I'd have been irritated had it not been mentioned. But the coverage also felt like peddling the sacred for soundbites. Using the Shroud of Turin to polish the big church doors, if you know what I mean. Ironically it was the soft spoken Dungy who really irritated me in the end. This won't surprise those who know me.

Is Jesus really participating in the NFL?

“I’m proud to be the first African-American coach to win this,” Dungy said during the trophy ceremony. “But again, more than anything, Lovie Smith and I are not only African-American but also Christian coaches, showing you can do it the Lord’s way. We’re more proud of that.”

How would the Savior coach football? What plays would He call? I guess it's impossible not to read that all those other winning coaches didn't do it the Lord's way, otherwise what would Dungy and Smith have to be so proud about? What would the reaction have been had Dungy been Muslim–and said that he owed all his team's touchdowns to Allah? It's just arrogance, however well-intentioned. Not to mention ridiculous.

a very sad day

Molly Ivins is dead. As a non-believer, I always said that if I had any pseudo-religious monuments in my house, I'd set up an altar to Tom Waits and one to Molly Ivins. She made this displaced Yankee proud to be a Texan. I somehow don't think she'd have any patience for my sorrow (or anyone else's) though I am terribly sad that she is no longer with us. Sadder than I've been at the loss of any public figure in my life. She would probably, in that rare blend of no-bullshit/southern belle wit, just tell me and everyone else to get out there “Raise more hell.” Here's to you, Molly, we'll stop blubbering in a minute and start banging the pots and pans:

From today's Chronicle:

In her last column, in mid-January, she said she was starting a newspaper crusade to stop the war. "Raise hell," she urged readers. "Think of something ridiculous to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. ... We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!' "

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.]

where does all the dirt come from?

Before I forget, we created a wedding announcement for the online Houston Chronicle "paper." It is hokey but sweet to have an official announcement.

I've been thinking that the Democrats need to pick three or four issues and make some progress, rather than tackle 50 social problems and dissolve into egalitarian squabbling and posturing. That seems like a simple concept but of course, it's not. In keeping with my microcosm reflects macrocosm and visa versa, I thought we might take the same approach with our little world here. So we picked our first thing–the attic. The unfinished, debris-laden attic.

Our attic is accessed by a small, being-John-Malkovich-sized hole in a narrow 9-1/2 foot ceilinged coat closet. It is, without exaggeration, a fucking small entry space. We've tacked up a piece of plastic over the hole to prevent the outside elements from coming in willy-nilly, but let's face it, a piece of plastic is no kind of insulation. It does, however, come down pretty easily.

Our goal is to clean up the attic. Clean it up and prepare to remodel the space so it is a working room with storage. I keep telling people that it hasn't been tended to in 35 years, but that may be an uncharacteristic understatement. Our house is 86 years old. I swear to god there is more than three decades of debris up there.

Up we climbed. We placed a half-dozen 4' by 1' boards across the support beams so we wouldn't have to balance on those sturdy but narrow 2" wide beams as we cleaned. The floor in between these beams is, of course, the ceiling below. It consists of what appear to be fairly sturdy, wide planks of wood. However, this doesn't fill me with confidence as I can't figure out exactly how thick said boards are nor from which direction they have been secured. And I am motivated as much by my fear of falling through the ceiling below, as I am by having to explain to the EMT how I broke my leg and why there's a plus-sized hole in the ceiling above me.

The space in between these beams is chock-full–and I mean to the brim–of broken bits of wood, chunks of old roofing, dust clumps, dropped ten-penny nails and copious amounts of silty dirt. There are the requisite number of tetanus-shot-baiting nail-ends coming through the roof and sprinkled dangerously around the beams. The beams that were tacked up like no human beings would every actually walk around this space. It looks like what you would expect the structure of a grown-up tree house to look like. Pieces of wood in varying stages of soundness, nailed up all over the place. Like cartoon characters slapped up boards with their oversized hammers.

We begin the slow process of sweeping up these three-foot alleyways, filling small plastic bags with giant splinters and dirt. I tell Barbara that the first one of us to find the dead carcass of some long-gone creature/squatter would win the prize. Of course, the person who doesn't win, wins as well. We sweep, bag and shift foot by foot. Poking deep in the eaves with our brooms, disturbing the very birthplace of any number of Stephen King-like stories. It's a relatively cool day in Houston. In fact, when I was downstairs for a period of time, I got chilled. But it took less than 5 minutes in the attic to begin to sweat. No wonder our energy bill is ridiculous. This is like having a rustic cabin stuck on top of our house venting the cooling/heating to the great outdoors.

Did you ever do something to which the outcome was a dreadful, foregone conclusion but for some weird reason no consequence ever materialized? For instance, if you snuck out of the house at night and quietly crept back in at 3 a.m. You know that your parents will kill you if they catch you. As you tiptoe through the kitchen to your bedroom, you knock into the pot rack and a pot is jettisoned and hits the ground with a clatter that almost makes you lose control of your bowels. You stand there in frozen, reverberating silence waiting for your parents to appear and your life to end. And nothing happens. A relief, of course, but unnerving on some plane. Well, that's the critter story. There is no reason that we should not have grabbed (with gloved hands) some dessicated rodent carcass during our archeological dig. It only makes sense. But–nothing. I'm relieved but disturbed. Then, it is Houston and if something once crawled up there to live or die, the heat probably would have evaporated and crumbled their remains in no time. Then again, we're only about a quarter of the way done.

Everything hurts and we haven't even had a night to stiffen up. There's a meconium-like substance coming out of my noise everytime I blow. Tonight I will dream of elves with winches and enormous vacuum cleaners.

vancouver

We are coming to the end of our week in Vancouver. We had crisp air and sunshine for the first five days and constant rain for these last two. We are currently in a very busy internet cafe/billiard hall in Vancouver's West End. The clientele is almost exclusively young and Asian. It's far too noisy for real writing. At least for me.

Barbara and I have had a wonderful week together. Starting out with getting married on Monday. More about that later–if it seems there is more to write. Mostly, it was a lovely affirmation of the relationship we already have. And a strange, unexpected rush at being legally recognized for the first time in 20 years. If only for the few days north of the U.S. border.

We've tasted incredible salmon and tried several variations on the local dessert: nanaimo bars. We've been wined and winded (flatlanders from the land of cars plunked down into this hilly, walking city). There've been wonderful homecooked meals and ferry rides and conversation. The cold weather has been unexpectedly pleasant. I generally hate the cold but for some reason, these 40-45 degree days have been lovely. Until the rain. Cold and wet is cold and wet and not pleasant in any climate.

There is talk among our friends of a future journey by car and camper to Alaska starting in Alvin & David's hometown of Fort Nelson. Right now, the idea of walking in this climate is pleasant but it might be stretching my capacities to actually camp in a place more than 1,000 miles north of here. Nevertheless, city girl here is not ruling it out.

have you ever...

Have you ever been talking to someone you've known for years and they tell you something they've told you (several times) before as if you'd never heard it? Don't you find it painfully hard to resist asking, "Have we met?"

Have you ever run into the bathroom, your bladder tap-tap-tapping on heaven's door, only to find that the boorish cretin preceding you didn't do the all-important turn and check before exiting the stall? Boorish cretin with careless elimination habits. I never think about boxing someone's ears. In this situation, it's the only appropriate response.

Have you ever waited behind someone at a red light, for what seems like hours, only to have them turn on their signal after the light turns green and you're hopelessly stuck behind them? You hadn't been given the head's up to go around them because they were too busy unwedging their head from their ass to nudge up their signal stick. Then, they have the nerve to look indignant at your gentle gesture of disapproval.

rage sabbatical

The rage sabbatical is going well. Exhaustion, apathy and the return of my sense of humor have pretty much smothered the embers of fury. Or banked them.

My dear friend Joe suggested I read gofugyourself.com, after I made a particularly lascivious remark about the ravishing Helen Mirren. (I'm not 100% about the connection but it's beside the point.) My god, what a bitchy funny blog. This delighted endorsement is a window into my warped persona. You can tell so much about a person from the things that really amuse them. I've been reading and wheeze-laughing for hours.

Barbara and I are currently fighting the hate-grocery-shopping/ must-go-grocery-shopping battle. And we're going down in flames. Sucked into the warm, welcoming oatmeal of inertia. What is up with this? The weather's finally nice and we're only shopping for the two of us...yet, it's as if we've come down with agoraphobic lethargy. Don't get me wrong, it's not pathological yet--we're bathing and all. It would be creepy if it weren't so womblike. Okay, that's kind of creepy.

regrouping

There's a saying in political circles, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." Well, boys and girls (and the gender dysphoric), I've been paying WAY too much attention. I'm attempting a rage sabbatical for a couple of days. So that my self-digesting stomach gets out of the driver's seat and back in the trunk where it belongs.