Hah!

You Be The Judge

A mildly heartwarming story about how people buy their moms mother's day cards.

I was in the CVS and here were all these men, some tough looking, some scruffy, some a bit grungy picking out cards for their moms. With care.

Aw, everyone loves their mom.

OK, not really. But a lot of people.

They have moms at least.

A more heartwarming story about how a kind man gave a child part of his lunch

I idiotically picked my daughter up from school without remembering to bring her food. I know she is always ravenous when I pick her up and I sometimes forget to bring her anything. So I was almost late and was running past the apples and bananas at the cafe stand near work on my way to the car with only minutes to spare. All the time thinking as I run by "I neeeed that apple. I'm going to neeeed that apple." I get to school. She asks me: "Do you have an apple? Do you have a banana?' She never asks for a banana. NEVER. Is she psychic or something? Especially attuned to my guilt? How did she know to ask for the banana I did not get her?

Damnit, I think! I suck again! Daddy never forgets the banana! But aha! There is a gas station. A nice big convenience market laden gas station.

Wow. I've known this for some time since I cannot eat what most of America eats but wow. An entire store full of food that one cannot eat. There is one food in there that is not some kind of poison: Milk. They didn't even have overly sugared yogurt. Nothing. "Do you have an apple? Do you have a banana?" I asked plaintively.

They must of overheard me saying to her. "No, you cannot have the peanut cookies! Nooooo! The peanut cookies are full of death. Death! I tell you. Hydrogenation.

There was nothing to eat. I settled on some kind of misleadingly named strawberry nutrigrain bar.
I guess after hearing me say, "...wait let me look at the label....noooooooo." about virtually every 'food' in the store, they took pity on us. One of the guys behind the counter gave her his apple. He had a banana too. The other worker tried to make him give me his banana but I pretended not to hear. I did the polite thing of 'No, no we can't, etc. But ya know, when your kid is hungry and you are a bad mom for not bringing food for said kid, etc.'

We'll go and give the guy an apple at some point.

A Not At All Heartwarming Story About How Our Scary Neighbor Beat the Shit Out of Some Homeless Guy

We almost never sit on the couch. But for some reason we are sitting on the couch and I hear screaming and yelling. I look at the window and see one man standing menancingly over another man who has been knocked into some grass, face down. The standing man is in the process of beating up the man in the grass. Oddly, they are both shaven bald. My husband is about to run down but I realize that this is not a wise idea as there is a chance that the menancer--who has a goatee--is our extremely scary looking neighbor. Other people are getting involved at this point. There is a flock of witnesses with their cell phones out. Why piss off your apparently very violent neighbor unless it is absolutely necessary? (Bad, I know. I didn't know if it was our neighbor or not. But at that point we'd just be gawkers because a crowd had gathered.)

The police show up. The beaten man explains to the police that he was just walking with his shopping cart and eating a piece of pizza when out of nowhere this guy comes up to beat on him.

Reason--which we discover when the crazy ass car owner screeches up to scream some more seconds before the cops arise--it appears that the beater is mad that his victim has scratched his new car or something. Touched his car? No damage could be seen but he gestured wildly toward some invisible microscopic change in the paint's molecular structure.

Digression: The other day I tapped someone's bumper. It was a man in his 'new' truck. I did nothing to his bumper. But he menaced me and threatened me and tried to extort money from me. I urged him to call my insurance company! Yes! That is what insurance companies are for! Apparently, because my car touched his new car without causing any visible harm to his car I owed him some money. I'm sure if I'd been a man he'd have beaten me up.   I'm telling you: He wanted to hurt me. I think calling someone on my cell phone protected me a bit perhaps. And that a lot of people were around.

People, if you are going to go apeshit batshit over a ding on your car or even mere contact between your car and anything other than air, I would recommend not getting a new car.  Just a thought. Cars. They are driven through the world. They are not Faberge Eggs, these things.

So, the beaten man is bleeding all over the street, there are many sympathetic witnesses, the fire department comes. The fire department guys help the beaten guy retrieve his stuff from his grocery cart, the cops talk to the violent man and somehow ended up shaking his hand and letting him leave?

And the beaten up homeless man refuses the ambulance and limps away. He seemed to have lost something important in the bushes and spent some time looking for it but I don't know he found it.

The Fire Department decides to hose the blood off the street.

I had hopes, after the scary mf-ers fancy ass American Chevrolet or whatever the fuck it was turned the corner that he wasn't our neighbor after all. We were like "whew, maybe it wasn't him after all.' Then our hearts kind of sank as we saw that shiny new car sitting in the driveway two houses down a few hours later.

So you be the judge. Humans, evil motherfuckers or lost souls? Generous and kind or the scourge of the earth?  

Tag Yer It

This person memed me.

Whereupon I learned that they bit their brother's penis. As a child, mind you. To win a wrestling match. Understandable! If penis biting can ever be understandable. I'm sure that some people think it cannot. I'll bet 49% of the population, give or take a 5% who are masochists would probably concur. Somehow, I felt that my life was enriched by this information about this person whom I do not know and said person's penis biting and so I began to appreciate the five random things or six random things notion.

God, the rules, though. The rules! Make me so weary. I cannot follow these rules. I can't even tell you what they are, they make me so tired.

Usually I notice six random things are supposed to be 'six idiosyncratic facts about oneself that somehow reveal something about one's individuality, uniqueness, snow-flake like one-of-a-kind-ness.' They should not merely be random like

1. I am wearing a performance fleece thing from Old Navy. I bought a lot of clothes there during one sad period of my life. Which may not be over.

And you don't give a justification for 1, which was: I swear to God there was a time I used to shop vintage. I swear to God. But I was a size 6 then and didn't have this strange thing about germs, etc. I still shop for vintage furniture, though.

Nor does (1) make you sob, remembering how you might never be a size 6 again and hence, never fit into vintage. One day, the good vintage will be for fat people. Because all the people are fat now! Didja know? But by that day, you will be old. And vintage when you are old just does not work. Vintage only works if it is from the period before you hit puberty. Otherwise, it is just sad old you, wearing your sad old clothes.

God, will I ever get to (2)? How do you get to (2)?

(2) I don't think this makes me special like a little snowflake and I think I've even mentioned it before but I took a lot of hallucinogenic drugs in my youth. And they had a major positive effect on my life. And I'd like to take them again but I don't know how to score these days. And I don't expect that to change anytime soon. Now that the Grateful Dead are defunct. It's just not so easy anymore, is it?

Speaking of which, I think maybe somewhere deep down inside I feel sure that Barack Obama took shrooms. He had to have at least taken shrooms. No one ever smoked pot in high school in Hawaii who did not also take shrooms. This is a fact, people. It's in The Farmer's Almanac. And for this reason, the reason that Obama took shrooms at least one time, I believe he's destined to be the greatest president EVAH.

No, really. Back in the hippie days when I was dropping all that acid I was sure that the world' problems could be solved if everyone would just take acid. Frequently. Why, you ask? Acid gives you perspective. The incredibly arbitrary nature of most things that seem very necessary and important becomes wildly clear on those special, special drugs. Unfortunately, you forget a lot of this after you trip because nothing  you thought when tripping makes any sense whatsoever. However, little bits and residues of perspective remain and this is the reason I feel sure that Barack Obama will bring peace to the MIddle East. I truly believe that if the Israelis and Palestinians would just take LSD they could re-think this whole war thing.

However, they should probably trip in the Gaza Strip because at least there's a beach there. I think the refugee camps would be very conducive to a bad trip. It's nice to trip on the beach, though.

3. Sometimes I think about how I had this plan to be a normal mommy-blogger and how to do that one shouldn't write posts like this and then I feel kind of sad inside.

4. Here's something that probably isn't unique at all: Do you ever worry that you scratch yourself in inappropriate places without realizing it?  I'm just that absent-minded. Maybe this is only because I average 4 hours of sleep a night?  Which, combined with some unfortunate medication I took five years ago is the reason I am not size six anymore?

Do you think I do it? How would I know? Maybe doing inappropriate things all the time and not realizing it is the major drawback of lack of sleep. Besides the obesity and early death and mind blowing fatigue and all that.

5. Do you wonder: Why? Why doesn't she sleep? I will tell you: My job. Combined with some deep failing in myself as well, I'm sure.

6. I think it is part of the rules that one of these things has to be from childhood. We were all strange in childhood, weren't we? There's too much to say there, about my childhood and what a weirdo I was but for some reason the other day I was remembering that I had a black front tooth as a child and this made me laugh. I had a rotten front tooth with a hole in it. It seemed like almost a piece of my identity but alas, I lost it. I have many lousy teeth now and Goddamn do I ever want a gold tooth. No lie. It bothers me greatly that the class stigma I would suffer from the possession of a tooth lined with gold is such a deterrent for me. (I don't want a gold crown but a gold outline for one of my currently sucky teeth.)

Someday I plan to be brave, a true paragon of courage. Let that be my sixth and last random thing.

The Pale Girl

There was a girl in my neighborhood who was around our age but who never went outside. We never saw her at school. She did not go to our school. She was very pale. And beautiful. One day, she came outside into the yard and played with a ball for awhile. Then she went inside and we never saw her again.

Their windows were covered with tinfoil.

There was an evil girl named Pam in my life. She was much older than I, and somehow the inventor of many delinquent schemes. They were classic delinquency and yet: Where did she come up with them? She was kind of a loner. She liked to do the paper bag with dogshit on the front porch trick for this girl's family. To get them to go outside, I suppose.

Many stories would go around about the family. All guesses of course.

I'll never know. I'll never know if this was something horrifying happening 50 yards away from my house or simply something mundane and sad.

China Has A Lot of People In It

I don't know why but I keep laughing about this article today in the newspaper that basically said Chinese people are getting grouchy and now they hate all these visitors, especially the Americans.

Like, first they were so excited and now they are just like 'you fussy jerks just go away.'  We don't want their antibiotic ridden hormone laced meat! Or whatever the latest story is.

I guess I laughed first because it sounded like one of those stories you read where the reporter had to file a story and so he just sort of noticed the 'mood' in some public place he was in. The story starts by mentioning how a airport guard had gotten very angry about a can of shaving cream in someone's bag. He scowled and shook his head! The Chinese! They were so friendly! And already they are tired of me!

Also, I laughed because I can so relate to this on the part of the Chinese. Don't you just know how they feel?  They just want to put their feet up and watch their shows but then they have to entertain your damn ass.

Although, that's a lot of people to have sick of your ass.

Is There A Job Like This

I want a job where

1. If you don't do enough work on Tuesday, there isn't twice as much work on Wednesday.

2. Some days when you go to work it's OK if you don't work. Or don't work very hard. Nothing bad happens.

3. Nothing bad happens if you forget something.

4. No one pays attention to you. You don't have to report to anyone. No one asks you if you did anything or ever says you did anything wrong.

5. You can be late and nothing bad happens.

6. You can be alone alot. You have your own office where you can be alone for long periods of time. (Note: This is the only thing on this list that is true of my own job.)

7. You get paid alot. OK, maybe not alot. But enough to pay off your horrifyingly large debt which was accumulated soooo slowly over time but time just kept moving forward, day in, day out and then a lot of time went by. And then you made one mistake and the tiny snowball of debt you had turned into a giant huge cartoon snowball that basically picks up all the characters of the cartoon plus the Alpine town at the foot of the mountain.

8. Vacations. Sick days. Two hour lunches. Well, sometimes. I don't demand a two hour lunch every day.

9. Terror and humiliation free with only the amount of boredom that is a side-effect of the fact that there isn't a whole lot of work.

I think there is more on this list but I have a bunch of work to do.

I was in a cafe once eavesdropping on a super confident young woman and her very elderly father. She was a law student at Boalt. And she was describing her husband's job. This basically was his job, almost. He didn't have to do anything. Her father disapproved of this but--unlike me--she really attempted to sell her husband to her father. I think he was writing a novel. And he's going to quit this job! That was the only time I thought to intervene. Do you ever have that problem? Where you almost interject when you are eavesdropping? I wanted to say: NOOOOO. Striving for accomplishment is the biggest mistake we make! Tell him to never ever ever ever ever ever ever leave that job. EVER.

In graduate school, I used to feel so guilty about how easy my life was. To ease my guilt, I would read novels about English landed gentry or the clergy--Trollope...Barchester Towers...or Austen. And I'd be like: See, it's OK. It's OK not to have a job. A lot of people used to do that!

Anyway, I think the reason I felt guilty was because I knew someday that I WOULD PAY. I WOULD PAY FOR MY LIFE OF EASE. And Lordy Lord Lord, that day has come. I now know that feeling guilty does not protect you from the future punishment you will accrue. You should enjoy the now, etc., etc.

Of course, guilty or not, I never would have left graduate school if I'd had a choice in the matter. Believe me. My saddest regret was that I didn't go to the other Ivy League school where you can stick around for 20 years. At my school, they got all antsy around 7 years and gave you disapproving looks.

Grad school had the most things on this list. Not high pay, obviously. And of course, you had social shame and yes, you could fail. (Note to self--put 'high level of social prestige' on list.) I know someone well who is the boss of a successful law firm and his life is kind of like this. So you could claw your way to the top and get a life like this (Note to self--put 'all benefits accrue immediately upon taking said job' on the list...oh, and health insurance/retirement plan.) I think about some older women I know who were married to cool academics and how they had a house and all that and after the kids reached a certain age, they got to just hang out and garden and do volunteer work. And write poetry or whatever. And that was middle class life! It's a lost age, a golden age. Man, I yearn for it more than I yearn for the days of Homer.

Anyway, with all the addenda is there a job like this?

The Salad Days

I was wondering where the term 'the salad days' came from. I first heard it in the movie Raising Arizona.

(I wanted to talk about my movie memories. How weird is it that my early movie memories link up to certain kinds of childhood trauma? OK, maybe later.)

Here's what the internet told me:

Meaning

The days of one's youthful inexperience.

Origin

From Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, 1606:

CLEOPATRA: My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood,
To say as I said then! But, come, away;
Get me ink and paper:
He shall have every day a several greeting,
Or I'll unpeople Egypt.

I'm thinking: Wow! Shakespeare ate salad! Somehow I imagine him gnawing on gristly rancid meat or digging into a high carb crust over a kidney pie. I did not figure him for a vegetable man. I wonder what kind of dressing he used.

The correct meaning of salad days does not serve my purposes here. So I choose to ignore it. OK, I am not a fresh, green salad. I am not in the prime of youth. I've decided for the purposes of this post that salad days means a beautiful period in a life, perishable, fragile from the passing of time. You know its wilting is imminent, you relish its momentary crispness. It's inevitable wiltability makes relishing it painful and exquisite all at once.

I'm not sure what role the croutons play. The croutons are like the distraction of day to day life. Their longer shelf life might seduce you into thinking your salad is going to be there when you need it. I'm telling you: Eat that salad now.

I say leave off the baco-bits. But that's a matter of personal preference. Cranberries are a much better garnish.

OK, I've destroyed this metaphor.

On the one hand, I kind of ricochet back between wishing I were dead and being like "nooooooo, I want to live!" So you'd think these are not my salad days. Alas, these are the salad days I get. It's strange how my salad days should turn out to have this admixture of dread, fear, misery, tormented anticipation of humiliation and the current sting of failure (not to mention public scrutiny of one's failure which is worse, much worse than mere failure).* All combined with the boring and yet agonizing experience of imminent financial ruin.

I don't get unadulterated salad days. But it's as real to me as a broken tooth that this is it. This is the best time in my life, the absolute best time I've had and the best it will ever be.

In the morning she calls me a beautiful star, in the evening she sighs into sleep and murmurs for me to put my arm around her. My husband's neck smells delicious. He brings me tea and oatmeal in the morning. Everyone we love is now fine, although we lost someone beloved to us recently. And there you have it. 

Yes, it would be nice to have salad days that were nothing but salad and no bitter root or rocks to break my teeth on. But you get the salad days you get and I guess for me, there isn't much to do but eat around the dirt and smile sometimes at my truly unfathomable luck.

*Note: I'm on the tenure track. If you know much about this, at least some of this will make sense. If you don't, I'm not sure I can explain it.

I Never Meme

You know, time and time again I have failed to meme.

Believe it or not, I have a lot of things to say. It's just they are all crazy.

So I'm thinking of some kind of list. Do I have to give the list a theme? Or can it just be a list of some kind.

1. Jennifer Aniston is a very good actress. There is a scene in this movie with Catherine Keener where she is talking to a boyfriend that is exploiting her where she reminds me of every insecure woman I've ever met, myself included. She was also excellent in the movie "The Good Girl."

This thought requires me to meditate on a pure white lotus. It's so amazing how well that works!   

It is impossible to have thoughts about celebrities that are original to oneself. Did you know that?  Here's a fun fact about language: It combines into infinite possible combinations of original sentences. Or maybe that's a fun fact about mathematical possibility. Except when one is talking about celebrities. Then language somehow only re-creates itself into the same repeated and unoriginal sentences, over and over.

2. If Hillary Clinton does not concede soon, my career will actually suffer deeply. I cannot take this anymore. Please, someone, help me.

You know, I was thinking about why I do get excited about Obama and I realized that I am not actually excited about Obama, per se. It is that he wasn't who they wanted and who they said would win. Who are they? Oh, c'mon, you know. THEM. THE MEDIA. They tried to call it and failed. It turned out that I actually wanted a little bit of democracy to exist. Who woulda thunk?

However, I admit that I prefer Obama because he said he would not nuke Iran. I appreciate that. But I get excited more just for the unbelievable fact of it. I'm sure he'll just be a regular president who cannot stop the eventual apocalypse that awaits us, etc.

3. Did you know when I say things like "the eventual apocalypse" or that I'm going to teach my child that only being rich matters and taking the road less traveled is for losers I'm actually kidding? Also, I do not intend to get botox. Yes, I admit I found it excited to meet a person whose entire face had been botoxed so I could examine the phenomenon somewhat more closely. I'm curious. What can I say.

I'm not sure you get me, internet.

21st Century America and This Is What We Get

I'll bet you never thought an art critic would write this sentence:

'Balloon Dog' is a masterpiece."

I don't know about you, but I feel cheated. I'm not saying it has to be Guernica or The Potato Eaters. I'd settle for View of Toledo.

Maybe "Balloon Dog" is the masterpiece we deserve here in 21st Century America. I guess that itself makes it a masterpiece. It's our punishment for being us. We don't get anything else. But you know, I had hopes.

Greedy About It

My child often refuses to learn anything from me. But she is surprisingly receptive to any idea if it can be tied to a movie or a book.

Greed is one of these. I told her about greed and she remembered this and discusses it with me often.

She is interested in stories and nothing else remotely connected to reality but greed is a useful concept for her. It explains what people do in stories. Greed moves plots forward in a variety of ways--from Robin Hood to the Lorax. Why does the Onceler chop down all the trees? She invented this phrase 'greedy about it.'

"I'm really greedy about it," she'll say when she wants something too much.

I love the phrase 'greedy about it'. It expresses something in shorthand that is hard to express otherwise--the idea of being gripped or obsessed with something, maybe a bit taken over by something. To one's moral detriment perhaps.

The other day she said to me as I was looking for my makeup, "Mommy, you're really greedy about beauty." I was kind of surprised by this since I am the world's biggest slob but she does see me put on moisturizer and the like. I guess I am greedy about beauty.

Beauty is another concept that interests her. I told her that beauty isn't important (which isn't strictly speaking true but we'll get to the whole truth later. In other words I AM LYING TO MY KID JUST LIKE ALICE SAYS YOU SHOULDN'T.

I guess what I meant was: Compared to morality beauty isn't important. Now how to explain why the world cares mightily about a person's beauty but is fairly uninterested in her moral character?  I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.   

At some point, I'll have to explain what is worth going for in life and the distinction between that and what society values. And how not to be like me and march to a different drummer/take the road less traveled and all that because that's totally for losers.

My tendency to not go for what society values is probably why my life is so sad and pathetic and why I have no money. I vowed that, so she wouldn't be a sucker like me, I would teach my kid in such a way that she would become an MBA and sell her soul to the corporate world but that was harder to do than I thought it would be and I keep slipping back into my self-defeating idealism and imparting moral lessons that are destined to leave her on the bottom of the heap.

Still, when whole magazine covers are devoted to stories about how Mariah Carey lost 20 pounds by GASP! eating 1000 calories a day then one has to do something to serve as a counterbalance. So I guess I'll teach her beauty doesn't matter as long as you're rich. And beauty is good. If you can use it to become rich.

 

As far as being greedy about beauty, one thing I've wondered is when the point comes where you give up on beauty. I think I sort of went past that point and feel guilty about it. I'm going for presentable with the possibility of moderate elegance. (Note to self: Does this still require moisturizer? I believe it does but perhaps I am wrong.) Then I wonder: Am I giving up too soon?  Not that it matters since I'm not sure the will has much control over beauty. I think my interest in beauty was at a fairly moderate level for much of the time since I couldn't be obsessed with my schoolwork and beauty both. Like a lot of women, I rebelled against the beauty standard except at certain odd points where I was wearing lycra mini-dresses and mascara. (There was the punk rock Catholic school uniform phase. I think I was actually beautiful during that phase although I didn't know it so what was the point?) From flannel shirts and not brushing my hair to lycra and eye shadow and now I'm at that Ann Taylor phase but only so I can appear professional and possibly keep my ludicrous soul-destroying job.

There is no authenticity, I eventually discovered. There is only dressing up.

So. Are you greedy about something? And when do you just sort of  let go and let the tide come in?

Hey White Bear

You password protected your blog. Will I ever see you again? I hope nothing bad happened.