baseball luv

What's going on over in the National League, my friends, is why I love baseball. To be at the last day of the season with still no idea of who is actually going to make it into the playoffs is just a beautiful, beautiful thing. The drama. The angst. The fans in five separate cities glued to their TVs.

I love everything about it.

xoxo

puttin' the T in BEST

Several months ago I had to take this mandatory BEST class at work. Basically, it was a poor man's version of the Myers-Briggs, and since I already knew I'm an INTP, I was not very surprised to learn I'm a T (technical) in the BEST system. In my defense, just as my T and F are close in the Myers-Briggs, making me not as socially clueless, tactless, and borderline-Aspergers as your stronger INTP might be, I was a "low" T.

(Can I just interrupt myself here to say that I love love love stronger INTPs than me and recognize them instantly? Like my friends LV and KC. I automatically heart people like LV and KC, because they say aloud what I'm only thinking, thus serving as the ids to my superego. In any group situation, this is ideal for me, since my unpopular opinions get aired without my ever having to look like the asshole. Genius. Higher INTPs rock.)

Anyway, in the BEST training, our instructor told us she was going to tell us one secret to remember about each type that would be invaluable in dealing with them. What she said about us Ts is that we secretly think we're smarter than everyone else. And I was like, Really? Secretly? Because I don't think I do that good a job at, y'know, hiding it.

So what brings this up today? Well, in the Sunday Globe, there's an article about how the narcissistic kids of today are good for the economy. Or something. I just skimmed it. But in the part I skimmed, there was mention that one of the indicators in the standard narcissism scale is agreement with the statement "The world would be a better place if I ran it." Goddamn it. I say that all the time and I have never considered myself narcissistic in any way. Isn't it normal to think your opinions and ideas are the right ones...or else you'd have other ones? Why would you stick to opinions you suspected were incorrect and faulty? Is it just the T part of my personality that makes me think that? Because I really not-so-secretly think I'm smarter than (most) everyone else?

I'm sticking to the definition of narcissism that A and I were talking about yesterday. People who think *other people's* behavior is all about them. There's an epidemic of this, we've noticed, but I suppose that's another blog post. So I'll just close in insisting I am not narcissistic. I'm just borderline socially retarded.

(That's better, right?)

xoxo

My Man Godfrey

The other DVD I rented this week was 1936's My Man Godfrey. Once I adjusted to William Powell playing a part other than Nick Charles, it was actually a pretty funny movie. After I watched it, though, I looked Carole Lombard up online, curious as to how old she was when she made the film. (Answer: 28.) In some ways, her character was portrayed as a young ingenue, but she looked considerably older than that to me. But, anyway, I was surprised to find that she and William Powell had been married and amicably divorced prior to this movie. It added a whole 'nother level to the plot that I'm sure audiences of the time were well aware of, but that was totally lost on me.

For example, from what I read, in real life everyone had predicted that the marriage wouldn't last because of the sixteen year age difference between them. In the movie, Lombard's bitch sister is constantly making snide remarks about her chasing "the middle-aged" because she can't get a guy her own age. I'm sure that was much, much funnier if you knew they'd really been a couple. With age issues.

It makes me wonder what else I'm missing when I watch classic movies. (I watch a lot of British TV as well, and I know that a lot of those jokes and cultural references go sailing over my head, though sometimes I get them from the context.)

xoxo

me 'n knitting

About four years ago, when it was becoming all hip again, I decided to take up knitting.

Now, my mom had been a fabulous knitter. (One of the reasons, out of many, that we used to harass her by calling her the white-trash Martha Stewart.) She did all the impressive, complicated stuff: intarsia, cabling, and so forth. And when I was a kid, she taught me to knit a little. This first phase of my knitting career culminated in a bright red sweater I made for my cat Stanley in 10th grade. Unfortunately, soon after I got distracted by other matters, like having sex and minimum wage employment and deciding where to go to college, and knitting fell by the wayside for twenty-five years.

By the time 2004 rolled around, I'd forgotten everything I'd ever known and my mom was gone, so I had to re-learn from books, like Knitting for Dummies and Stitch 'n Bitch. I spent time on knitting websites and made pilgrimages to Windsor Button Shop for $10 skeins of fancy-shmancy yarn. I experimented with felting and pompoms. It was fun. I made all my female friends and co-workers trendy scarves for Christmas, and everyone was impressed and pleased.

Then I hit a snag. I couldn't figure out how to sew pieces of knitting together, not even with a goddamn ...for Dummies book. And my mom was ::sob:: not around to help (which in retrospect was how the cat sweater came together in 1978). Not being able to progress beyond projects that could be made in a single piece was discouraging. I stopped the knitting.

Just the last few days, I've been dragging out my knitting books again, and thinking about maybe, just maybe...

Anyone want a scarf?

xoxo

hey! leave my spit alone

So, Dan's watching TV and I'm typing, not really listening to what he's got on, when he turns to me and asks, "You've got genes in your spit?"

What I'm thinking: You really did sleep through high school biology, didn't you?

What I say: "Well, yeah, you've got DNA in every one of your cells, so your genes are in your skin, your hair, your spit, everything."

"So someone could clone me from my spit?"

"They can't clone people."

"They can clone sheep. And mice. So when they can clone people, they could clone me from my spit?'

"I suppose."

"They should make cloning humans against the law."

"Why? Are you concerned about someone cloning you from your spit?"

"Well, yeah. I've got some good genes! Someone might want them."

Yes, darlin', you do, and you got them from your mom, so I've only got myself to blame for conversations like this.

xoxo

monogamy by assumption

I just watched Puccini for Beginners on DVD. It's an indie romantic comedy, slight but pleasant. The main character Allegra is a lesbian writer who, after a breakup, finds herself falling for a guy she meets at a party, even though, y'know, she's a lesbian. She tells him all they can do is have a meaningless fling because, y'know, she's a lesbian. He promptly breaks up with his girlfriend for her. And then Allegra meets his ex-girlfriend, without knowing who she is, and--because this is a romantic comedy--starts falling for her too, with the usual wacky complications ensuing.

But what I find interesting, solely because I've had this conversation with some of you all before, is that when she's in the midst of dating and sleeping with both of them, she's trying to gently bring up that fact to the guy and she asks him, "So, how do you feel about non-monogamy?" (Even though just a couple scenes before, she's told him he can only be a fling.) But in the movie, and I guess in our culture, because they've had sex a few times, the default is that they're automatically then a couple who are supposed to expect monogamy from each other, without ever having discussed it.

I think that's so fucked up. In *my* world, everybody's free to date whoever they want until there's a specific agreement made that, nope, now we're a monogamous couple. It doesn't just magically happen without any conversation or discussion, no matter how many dates you've had or what you've done with each other's bits.

I seriously don't understand how other people think sometimes.

xoxo

your a-CAD-e-my!

Just a brief note to say that, yes, yes indeed, Mission of Burma at the ICA yesterday were awesome and I had a fabulous time. I remarked to A when we were walking out of the parking lot after the show that I actually felt happy, really happy. Combining this with my admissions of last week in various places to various people that when I've been super cranky and/or sad of late, playing enough of the right music has made it all better, I can only surmise that good music is actually kicking in my endorphins. Weird, huh?

Right now, however, I've got to seek solace from my crappy, crappy afternoon in Prison Break, though it affords me no endorphins at all.

xoxo

I promise...

not to get all emo on your asses again, but a combination of things I've read this week, conversations I've had both recently and in the past, and (to quote Saffy from AbFab) "that car crash of emotions (I) call (my) life" have ganged up in my head and made me want to write about this briefly.

In massage school we had this class called Skills and Dynamics of Therapeutic Relationships. Three long semesters of it, actually. We learned all kinds of fascinating and non-fascinating things about boundaries and assertiveness and blah blah blah, but since our instructor was also a psychotherapist, it also felt like a big forced group therapy session at times. One day we were talking about how our families of origin influenced who we are as caregivers. At the end of class, after telling us the many, many ways in which our parents probably fucked us up about this issue, our teacher made us go around and say one positive thing we got or learned from our birth families. (Yeah, it was that kind of class.) Though, obviously, we had no time to prepare for this or think about what we might want to say, when it was my turn, I said without hesitation "taught me to give and to receive love."

And it's absolutely true. This may sound semi-ridiculous coming from me, the poster child for born-again spinsterhood as well as Ms. Keep-those-walls-up!, but I can and do love, and I can and do accept love, and I am forever grateful that whatever dysfunctional circus I grew up in, it was one in which I knew beyond a doubt that I was loved.

It makes a difference.

xoxo

men

This morning on my way to work, I saw this Hispanic gentleman. If his coveralls were telling the truth (and why would they lie to me?), he was on his way to work, too, at the dealership near my place of employment. He was a big guy, muscular, with long hair done up in one of those male top-knots.

Now, as you may be aware, I give props to men who are secure enough in their masculinity to, say, rock a pink shirt unapologetically, and the male top-knot falls into the same category. What set Mr. Auto Mechanic apart, however, was the careful row of bobbypins holding the side pieces of his hair in place. It takes a special kind of attitude for a big, muscular guy in coveralls to rock the bobbypins, and I could only come to one conclusion.

Ten inches or better. That's all I'm sayin'.

xoxo

quickie post

Can I just say that while it appears that Phoebe Cates and I now have the same haircut:

http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/go_fug_yourself/2007/09/fugin-kline-and.html

it's a damn shame that's all she and I have in common.

xoxo

shame

In case you're keeping score, I'm still plugging away on the cleaning. Last night and today I spent a considerable amount of time working on my bedroom.

I was going to write a kinda cutesy, lightly amusing entry today about how two of my walk-in closets had morphed into stand-in-the-doorway-and-wrinkle-your-nose closets, but now had regained their walk-in status, perhaps with a little mildly poignant nostalgia thrown in about some of the things I found in them. The sort of blog post that entertains people and makes them think I've said something about my life, but which has very little emotional honesty at all, you know?

But I've changed my mind. I've changed my mind, and yet I hesitate, because I'm really kind of afraid that I'm going to lose people with this. I'm afraid that people I like, people whose opinions I care about, are going to read this and think... Well, I dunno. Think that my life is far more fucked up than they care to know about, I guess. What I want to write about is how my bedroom got to be in the state it's recently been in. I've never told most of this to anyone who hasn't been through something very similar themselves. I've glossed over it at best. But here's some truth, with a side of emotional transparency.

Two years ago, D spent the summer, off his meds, in a state of psychotic mania. He did things like go for walks in the middle of the night, leaving the front door open. (Not unlocked--open.) He'd be up for 48 hours straight, then crash. He read the encyclopedia from front to back. He wrote the same word hundreds of times on one piece of paper. He paced. You couldn't talk to him without his snapping at you. He--and this is the most painful for me--stopped bathing for weeks. I was sick with anxiety, sick at heart, and there was nothing I could do, for or about him.

Then at some point during my first semester back at school, over the course of one weekend, he "flipped." It was like someone turned a switch. The mania stopped and he became very quiet, subdued, and depressed. He started bathing again, and changing his clothes, multiple times a day. And after not talking to me for months, he came to me and asked me about school, about what I was doing there. I asked him very gently, didn't he think he should go to the doctor, get back on some medicine. And he said, in a scared voice, which I didn't understand until months later, "I don't think I can, mom. I don't think I can now. You aren't mad at me, are you?"

We spent the next six months with a progressively quieter, flatter, and yet more scared and then clingy D. He watched certain DVDs over and over and over again for reasons known only to him. He was still having trouble sleeping at nights, though not during the day. And as time passed, he started asking me if he could lie on my bedroom floor at night and watch his DVDs on my TV. I didn't understand why and I didn't know what to do, but I knew it made him feel better, so I let him. Then when I got up to go to work or school, he'd crawl into my bed and sleep in it most of the day. At first it was once in awhile. Then it was every day. My bedroom--or the shower--was about the only place he felt safe. And as he got sicker, he got more clumsy, spilling soda on my rugs, and more careless, leaving candy wrappers and other detritus around, pulling stuff out of closets as he searched for other things. I was so stressed and worried and numb at the same time, I just couldn't bring myself to care.

A lot of you know how this comes out: he eventually finally admitted to hearing voices, progressively more and more, and soon after that, decompensated so much that he agreed to go to the hospital, where he stayed for two and a half months. It's been all uphill since then. But part of the reason that I've avoided tackling that huge mess in the bedroom that's needed cleaning and organizing is because it brings me back in my head to that helpless and scared place. If I were a drama queen (oh, shut up), I'd call it a bit of PTSD.

Yeah, I know. "Thanks for sharing."

xoxo

everything I learned about sex came from Redbook

I like to say, half-jokingly, that nine years of Catholic school and they still didn't manage to convince me sex was wrong. But the half-joking part isn't that it isn't true, it's that--contrary to cultural stereotype and perhaps other people's experience--they didn't even try. Nine years of Catholic school and we didn't talk about sex or sexuality at all. When we learned the ten commandments, they just sorta glossed right over the one on adultery. Certainly no one explained what the word meant to a bunch of perplexed eight year olds. No one told us in elementary school that we shouldn't masturbate or have sex before marriage or whatever else it was that we weren't supposed to do. All that time that I imagine people think the nuns spent telling us sex was bad was really, in fact, spent teaching us to diagram sentences and write proper paragraphs. Win-win, y'know?

So in the absence of any kind of sexual education or morality indoctrination, everything I learned about sex came (in time-honored tradition) from the street or from...Redbook. See, my mom loved magazines. My mom bought or subscribed to, and read, pretty much every "married women's" magazine available in the 70s, from Family Circle to Ladies' Home Journal, from Good Housekeeping to Redbook. And in the mid-seventies, some of those magazines were surprisingly (in retrospect) feminist. There were the usual health-related articles on the various types of birth control and self breast examination. But there were also a fair number of articles about a wife's right to sexual satisfaction and such. So in the pages of Redbook, I read about the existence of the clitoris long before my future ex-husband pointed mine out to me (his sexual education having come from what we today would call a "cougar"--or statutory rapist, whatever--and god bless her, wherever she is). In the pages of Redbook, I learned what an orgasm was after I'd already managed to have one, with a kind of "ohhhhh, so that's what that was" dawning fascination. I learned that sex was supposed to be fun and that I was supposed to like it if I were a modern kind of chick. Whew, thank goodness.

I have absolutely no idea why my mom allowed me to read her magazines without censorship, especially since I wasn't allowed to check books out of the "adult" side of the library till I was in 8th grade, and since she kept certain of her books in a drawer in her headboard that I was forbidden to open under the pain of, like, death. Maybe she thought discussions of the clitoris would go right over my head?

I don't know. But, thank you, Redbook, thank you and your liberated 70s editors so very much.

xoxo

doggy love

Went hiking yesterday and, I am proud to say, made it out of the woods alive. Now, granted, we were hiking in the Middlesex Fells which meant that sometimes we were within twenty feet of someone's backyard and at other times actually on the road. I don't care. It counts. The legend on the map even said that the trail we took was "moderate to difficult." So there.

But, anyway, the parking lot we used and the trailhead we started at seemed to be a place where every dog owner in a ten mile radius brought their pooch for exercise. And all the dogs, transfixed by the smells of the woods and the smells of all the other dogs, were just quivering with happiness. I am much more a cat than a dog person--mostly because my family never had dogs when I was a kid, living in a triple-decker as we did--but I do like dogs, and it was impossible not to smile at this outpouring of doggy joy.

Someone needs to write that self-help book: Live Life Like a Dog, a guide to finding ecstasy in the small pleasures of life.

xoxo

in which I am terribly politically incorrect

Ah, Boston Sunday Globe, endless blog entry generator, what would I do without you?

Today there's a small article about handicap access and lack thereof. The Charles Playhouse, where the Blue Men Group perform, has many stairs, which people in wheelchairs must be carried up. The article mentions a young man, about my son's age, who is in a heavy motorized wheelchair due to muscular dystrophy, who thus is unable to go see the Blue Man Group. I am supposed to feel...I dunno, something...about this.

Well, this is what I feel. My son is handicapped too. His handicap is psychiatric, not physical. Despite being on a potent cocktail of the strongest antipsychotic there is, plus antianxiolytics, and antidepressants, going to crowded public places, full of strangers, is incredibly anxiety-producing for him, inducing near paranoia. He deals with it for things that he has to do, doctor's appointments, trips to the blood lab. A necessary visit to the Registry earlier this summer required weeks of psyching himself up to get through it.

Would he like the Blue Man Group? Oh, yeah, I know he'd get a huge kick out of them. He'd also love to go to a Red Sox game again. Despite being a huge movie fan, he hasn't seen one at the cinema for four years--28 Days Later being the last, if you wanna know. All those kinds of things we all take for granted in being able to do are out of his reach right now. Does that mean that maybe there should be a special performance at the Charles Playhouse or a special game at Fenway, played before no more than 20 people, so his rights as a handicapped person aren't infringed on? Uh, hardly.

That's why it's called a handicap. There are things you cannot do. Did the universe kick you in the nuts by giving you muscular dystrophy or schizoaffective disorder? Hell, yeah. Does that mean you have a constitutional right to see the Blue Man Group? Hell, no. Places you *need* to go--hospitals, banks, supermarkets, the Registry--should be sensitive to making sure everyone can use their services.

Theaters, not so much, you know?

xoxo

WTF? conversation #3462

Usually the WTF? conversations I report in on are overheard partial cell phone chats, but today? Today, this very morning, I overheard the entire conversation and I still don't know quite what to make of it.

While waiting for their son at my place of employment, a woman is telling her husband about her recent mattress shopping adventures. She's babbling on about how nice and non-pushy the salesman was and how she explained to him that the problem was they had a really narrow staircase the mattress would have to go up and how he recommended the memory foam and blah blah. Then she says, "So he said I should just test out a bunch of them and one thing led to another." Slight pause. "Anyway, honey, the best thing about the memory foam is that it's guaranteed for 30 years, so if we got one, we'd probably never need to buy another mattress..."

And I'm there thinking, Wait. 'One thing led to another'? Is she skipping the part where she and the nice, non-pushy salesman had sex on twelve different mattresses? What does that even mean?

I am so confused.

xoxo

quickie! book reviews

1. Another Day in the Frontal Lobe by Katrina Firlik: I hope you're a better neurosurgeon than you are a writer, Doc. And don't tell me that being skinny and blond didn't help seal the book deal.
2. A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance by Jane Juska: surprisingly sweet, poignant, and funny, but I'd have like the author even better had she not told me she'd been in classical psychoanalysis for five years and Recovered Memories therein. Plus, if you're in psychotherapy for five years, shouldn't you have explored your tendency to abusing substances? I mean, I dunno, I think it would have come up.
3. Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure by Sarah Macdonald: only halfway through, but I have to say, I think this is possibly the first book by an Australian author I've knowingly read, and the sense of humor is quite different than an American or British one. Which is interesting. Also? I never ever ever want to go to India.

xoxo

physics lesson

(Brought to you by the producer of "wait! how do you know blue cheese has gone bad?")

The top floor of my house has, because of how the roof is configured, a couple of rooms which have skylights and very high ceilings. On paper, and at first glance, this is lovely. In practice, it means that at least half of both those rooms can't be cleaned without standing on a ladder. This being me we're talking about, that means that cleaning only happens every few--okay, never.

But, being as I've been trying little by little over the past couple weeks to get rid of the disgusting dirt and clutter that's accumulated up on the second floor over the past two years while I was going to school, D was in the hospital, I was job-hunting, I was working six days a week, blah blah excusecakes, I was up there with a ladder today. While I was changing bulbs in the recessed ceiling fixtures (another looks-good, pain-in-the-ass idea), I decided I should wipe off the ceiling fan. And--look away if you're weak of stomach--there was literally an inch and a half of dust on top of the blades. How is it even possible for dust to settle and stay on something that's revolving at high rate of speed? I don't understand this.

And then, while I was on a ladder roll, I figured I would open up the grate on a heating duct that was wayyyyyy up on the ceiling and wipe it down. Oh, look at that. It had a filter in it, completely clogged with crud. And on the filter it said "for best energy efficiency, replace monthly."

They're fucking with me, right?

xoxo

omg, it contains calories

In the Globe's food section this morning, there's a small article about the phenomenon of "100-calorie snack packs." A nutritionist interviewed for the article sniffs that, while they are okay for a special treat, they shouldn't be part of one's regular diet. This brings up a number of thoughts, the first two of which are Shut and Up.

Is there a profession any more repressed and joyless, prim and sanctimonious, than that of nutritionist? I've never understood why the cultural stereotype is of prudish, uptight librarians. Books are hot. Reading is hot. Libraries are sensual places and "sexy librarian glasses" are neither an oxymoron nor a surprise. I don't think you need to rip the pins out of the bun of your average librarian to have her on one of those lovely, long wooden tables. Nutritionists, on the other hand...

You know what porn I'd like to see? I'd like to see a nutritionist tied down and forced to eat chocolate ganache. Forced to admit she likes it. Forced to beg for it. Or, for a real wallow in filth, the same thing, but with Yodels.

But before I get too distracted with my rich and full fantasy life, on to point number two:

I recently read a discussion of gender and advertising in which someone sarcastically commented that apparently, if you're a woman, you're supposed to subsist entirely on yogurt, Special K, low-cal cranberry juice, and the occasional Lean Cuisine. Because to be feminine means to be perpetually on a diet and to never eat anything that actually tastes good or satisfies you. (Well, actually, the commercials try to brainwash you into thinking that if you're a real woman, all that Special K and fat free yogurt will taste good and satisfy you. But not even the average American sucker, er, consumer is gonna fall for that one.) Despite whatever issues I had with food in high school, it was still a rude awakening to go to college and find that suddenly drinking a non-Diet Coke was a moral failing and a dinner of air-popped popcorn or some of that yogurt with all the fat magically removed was supposed to suffice as dinner. If you weren't a disgusting pig.

Sorry, but no. Nutritionists and American advertising wonks be damned. Food is not supposed to be joyless and non-pleasurable. I will live to eat, not eat to live, and when too many cookies or sandwiches make my pants get tight, I'll cut the hell out of my carbs for a couple months and walk a whole lot of miles till my pants fit again.

Then I'm right back on the ganache.

xoxo

notes from organizing the CD collection

Apparently I own a Sheryl Crow CD. For the love of all that is holy, why?

It wasn't a sympathy purchase because it predates her dating a douche. On the other hand, I also own the Counting Crows and the Black Crowes. Obviously at some point in the 90s all you had to do was remind me of Heckyl and Jeckyl and I'd buy your record. But we won't even speculate what that Rod Stewart Unplugged is doing in there. Shudder. Probably something nasty with the Alanis Morrisette above it.

In other news, I also found both my copies of BloodSugarSexMagik, the only CD I've ever bought twice, and worth, may I say, every penny. I did not find NIN Broken, Morphine Yes, or Exile on Main Street, despite having the sleeves. I couldn't have lost Sheryl Crow instead? There's no justice.

I also seem to have some very weird compilations, including a reggae tribute album to the Police, and something that claims to be "ambient translations of Bob Marley in dub." I don't know exactly what that means, but it scares me. Just a little.

Stay tuned for further dispatches on what I find while I'm cleaning. Admit it. It's better than listening to me rant.

xoxo

ranty rant rant

I was all revved up to write a rant about body hair removal, about men who don't understand the time, effort, and expense women spend to look good for them, etc etc, when I realized that isn't even what's pissing me off. The incredibly long thread that spawned this rant consisted of a (in her words) hirsute woman, fighting against ethnicity and, as it turns out, PCOS, for whom normal everyday hair removal is already a huge chore (and reading between the lines) psychologically distressing, worrying about a potential new lover's preference for, uh, bare pubes. And so many people telling her, "oh, it's no big deal, just do it."

That's actually what I want to rant about. That's actually what pissed me off. Total and complete lack of empathy. The inability to understand that just because something is no big deal for you, it can be a huge big deal, physically, emotionally, or financially, for someone else.

I seriously do not know how people go through life without any ability to put themselves in other people's places, to understand how something might make the other person feel even if it's different from what you feel. That's social retardation, as far as I'm concerned. But it appears to be endemic. Gah.

As you were.

xoxo

in which I am a bad girl

I've been trying to blog every day, sort of as a challenge to myself and my (lack of) writerly discipline, but obviously I missed yesterday. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I was too busy brunching, shopping, cake-eating, walking, and movie-attending to fit it in yesterday. I will endeavor to do better the rest of the week.

I hope yesterday's brunch was not the last meal this season that I eat sitting at a sidewalk table. But rather than bore you all with a sad meditation on how all the long, warm days are coming to a crashing end, and because I'm supposed to be upstairs this very minute, cleaning and throwing out more crap, I'll just bring up one thing D pointed out the other day when he was watching the original 1978 Halloween on TV:

Michael Myers breaks out of the mental institution and steals a car. If, according to the story, he's been locked up since he was a young child, who taught him how to drive?

Plot holes, plot holes. The bane of a writer's existence.

xoxo

chill

No, that's not a command to relax. Nor is it a description of the opposite of today's weather conditions. It's the XM station I'm listening to right now.

I don't know how I got hooked on this stuff.

Well, yeah, I do. It all started with massage school and the search for treatment music that wasn't unbearably lame or incredibly boring. A chance encounter with a "trance yoga" CD from Borders showed me that electronica with a non-Western influence made my inner bodyworker happy, and searching for similar items on allmusic led me to the Buddha Lounge stuff, as well as the transcendent "tribal techno" that is Robert Rich's "Seven Veils" (a disc I will continue to endlessly recommend to people who don't give a crap, thanks.)

At first, I only listened to this stuff when I was actually giving a treatment. Then, somehow, instead of just throwing my CDs in my bag on my way to my massage gig, I started popping one or another into the CD player for the commute. Eventually, when I discovered XMChill was one of the stations on my satellite, I started putting it on for background while reading or surfing. And then, ultimately, playing it for dinner guests who were really probably expecting something else.

I guess I've reached the point of no return. I've got to admit I actually enjoy ambient, chill, ethnic fusion, and (as Al from Deadwood would say) the like. Should I be embarrassed about that?

xoxo

Butterfield 8

So, after musing on vintage underwear and Elizabeth Taylor the day, I went on an epic quest to discover what movie it was in which she spent the first fifteen minutes or so in nothing but her slip. (Okay, so it wasn't epic, it was a little bit of typing and a few mouse clicks. You've heard of hyperbole, right?) Then, having found my answer, I netflixed it.

Oh. My. God. Can I just say, this is possibly the cheesiest movie of all time. Can I also just say that Elizabeth Taylor is one of the worst actresses I have ever seen? I guess I haven't seen anything with her in it for many years, but I was totally unprepared for the suckage that is her trying to emote credibly. Not that her co-stars, Eddie Fisher and Laurence Harvey acquitted themselves any better, but seeing as they didn't win any major Academy Awards for this film, I won't judge them quite as harshly. And not that the (unintentionally) hilarious dialogue helped any, but man. That woman could not act. She did, however, have big tits.

On a sociological note, was this the first movie in which female promiscuity (or perhaps just liking sex a lot--it's not totally clear) is attributed to being molested as a child? That seems an awfully 1985, rather than 1960, bit of psychobabble, but perhaps I'm just blissfully unaware of what early '60s psychobabble consisted of. I also found it fascinating that in the movie's world apparently her biggest sin was not sleeping around, or sleeping with inappropriate partners, it was using men for her own pleasure and then dropping them. Horrors! It seems that slutty women were supposed to know their place and be the dump-ee, not the dump-er.

Anyway, I am totally at a loss on how to rate this movie. On Netflix, you can give anywhere from one star, which is "hated it", to five stars ("loved it"). There is really no way to indicate "loved it because it's the biggest pile of camp yumminess, sordid wallowing in sleeze with an overlay of moral indignation, and snarkworthiness that I've seen in forever. Enjoyed it totally just because it's a horrible, horrible movie."

Ah, well.

xoxo

a wee Aerosmith moment

Yeah, yeah, I know, we all know my position on classic rock. But since a co-worker directly mentioned "Lord of the Thighs" today and I have it stuck in my brain (and it is my favorite of all possible Aerosmith songs), I give you:

Down the who knows who, just to socialize
I'm waitin for my girls when you caught my eyes
You got a way to make a man, honey,
You got to understand
I'm your man, child,
Lord of the thighs

Well, well, Lord, oh my God,
What do we got here
She's passin cross the floor
Make it perfectly clear
You're the bait and you're the hook
Someone bound to take a look

I'm your man, child,
Lord of the thighs

Did you know that in the interest of accuracy I went to like ten different online lyric sites to see if I actually knew the lyrics? Did you know that I then said "fuck it" and wrote that second stanza the way I've been singing it for the last thirty years anyway? Well, yeah. I refuse to admit I'm wrong unless Steven Tyler tells me so himself.

So. One of the reasons I loved that song twenty-something years ago, is that it expressed something very directly to me about the power of my sexuality. A young woman's power in knowing that I could draw the look, that I could inspire lust if I so chose, just "passin cross the floor". Not a particularly impressive power, true, but useful at times. Not to mention ridiculously satisfying.

Now those days are gone, of course, and I wonder what power has replaced it. I'm smarter now and less crazy, but neither of those things translate as power. Maybe it's where the crone archetype came from. Maybe we old women have encouraged it down through the ages, letting people (i.e. men) think we've replaced the magical powers of our thighs with real magical powers.

Maybe there was a ridiculous satisfaction in that. Even if it came with a 50-50 chance of being burnt at the stake.

Or maybe I'm just making crap up.

xoxo

when your characters die

Here's the thing. I used to write fiction. I say "used to" because I haven't finished a piece of fiction in over four years and I'm not sure I ever will again. But back when I was turning 30 and wondering how the hell my life had gotten to where it was then, I decided on two goals for the upcoming decade. The second one was to become a published writer.

I bought all the beginner's writing and how-to-get-published books I could find and read them faithfully (since my Creative Writing experience in high school had consisted of two years of getting A's for showing up and occasionally handing something in and my Creative Writing experience in college was all about paying lots of money to have some earnest grad student tell me my crap poetry was promising.) I read the books and bought My First P.C. (tm) and decided to start out easy by writing a novel.

Oh, yes, write a novel I did. I wrote and wrote and eventually I finished a manuscript. It was--don't snicker--a science fiction romance. Sorta. I said, stop snickering. That's a valid genre. My manuscript, however, was not a valid book. It had some plot problems and some bigger worldbuilding problems. On the plus side, besides being finished, it had some good dialogue and some kickass characterization. More on that later.

All my how-to books were telling me that it was easier to get a novel looked at if you'd published some short fiction, so I wrote some. I wrote some, and got a little better at writing, and eventually got some of it published. For real money, even. (Go, Andrea! Goals accomplished by 33, leaving the rest of the decade to slack off. Damn good thing they'd already invented the Internet.)

Meanwhile, I hooked up with a critique group full of people who were serious about all this and workshopped my book. And despite the numerous essential flaws in the manuscript, the one thing everyone agreed on was that they loved my characters. Hell, I loved my characters. Star-crossed lovers Ayla and Liam. Snotty, snarky, sexy Joey and her smoothly evil brother, Bri. Roguish opportunist and ladies' man Rael. The bullying, but ultimately tragic, Captain. And most of all, the complexity that is Jesse. They were like real people to me, with real (fictional) lives.

Part of why I kept trying to re-write that unsalvageable book was that to give up on them, to give up on anyone other than a select few of my friends ever reading the novel, meant they would "die." Or cease to exist. Giving up on them was like commiting murder, murder of people I was really fond of.

As recently as three years ago, I dragged the manuscript out again and tried, unsuccessfully, to revise it.

I think I've got to say it.

R.I.P., Ayla, R.I.P.

xoxo

retro

Really, I'm not one of those people who are stoopid enough to want to have been born in another era. The Ren Faire may (or may not) be fun, but only a complete tool fails to realize that they call 'em the Dark Ages for a reason. I'll take my giant turkey leg without the side order of plague, thanks. Similarly, I'm not down with the nostalgia for the supposedly simpler days of fifty years ago. I like my reproductive and sexual freedom, my career opportunities, and my satellite TV. Not to mention Netflix and (sob) splenda Coke.

But, goddamn. As I may have mentioned elsewhere, they had better underwear then. I want a bullet bra. And a half slip. Maybe a girdle. Definitely stockings, and the garters with the little button tabs on them, like I remember my mom having when I was a very, very small child.

Of course I don't want to wear that stuff every day. Or have to wear it. I just want it to play Elizabeth Taylor sex kitten in. (Or, more realistically, I guess, Mrs. Robinson.) I want a Bettie Page wig, some red lipstick, elbow length gloves. And a highball.

I just read someone commenting sarcastically that just about every fall season the designers trumpet a return to "ladylike" as they shill their pencil skirts, their tweed suits, the coats with the fur collars. And it's played out. (Which may explain why we're all still in our hoodies and flip-flops.) I can't say I disagree. So screw the pencil skirt and the satin cocktail dress. Just give me the contents of Macy's lingerie department circa 1960, and an echo of the days when getting into a woman's pants involved more of a challenge than pushing aside some ugly thong.

xoxo

clothes make the man

Forgive me if you've read part of this elsewhere. Or if, y'know, you were there for the actual conversation. If you're looking for complete novelty, you'd better go read some total stranger's blog or risk bitter disappointment.

Ok, disclaimer out of the way! Actual content coming right up.

In yesterday's Sunday Globe magazine, there was an article about the lack of middle class people with children in the city of Boston, mainly because the schools suck and the cost of private school plus a city mortgage is prohibitive. One of the interviewees in the accompanying photos struck me as the Definitive Hipster Douche: the perfect ironic glasses, the ugly checked shirt, the graying hair cut just so, the insufferably smug expression. I hated this guy just from looking at his picture for 7.5 seconds. But even a judgmental bitch like me realized that that was harsh and perhaps unfair.

Then I read the article, in which Mr. Definitive Hipster Douche describes visiting many, many kindergartens in his quest for the perfect school for his offspring. All of which were inadequate. Because, mind you, "as an architect", he found them all too architecturally distressing. Douche!

Moral of this story? I need to trust my bitchy snap judgmentalism more.

Anyway, I was telling this story to my friend A at the beach yesterday, and after we finished laughing our proverbial asses off, he tried to engage me in a serious, intellectual discussion about how trends start and spread, and who, for instance, decided that the uglier and nerdier the glasses, the cooler they are. Unfortunately, since I'm only good at making fun of pretentious losers, not actual intelligent thought, I had no answer.

xoxo

islands of ignorance

We all have 'em, and personally, I find them fascinating. What someone doesn't know can be even more intriguing than what they do know.

There are four kinds of islands of ignorance, I think. Not counting the general ignorance of people who are morons. That's not intriguing at all. People who can't find their country of residence on a map or who believe their spam e-mail aren't actually fun per se.

Okay, so there's all the stuff you learned in school, then promptly forgot totally. (In my case, Latin and all higher math from Algebra 2 on up.) Then there's stuff that isn't generally taught in school, but that most people pick up somehow along the way. (In my case, anything to do with finance more complex than balancing a checkbook.) There's also willful ignorance, stuff you just refuse to learn. (In my case, that'd be...nevermind, we won't go there.) And then there's the stuff that they should have taught you in school, if only you'd gone to a better school district. (In my case, all US History from about 1870 through World War I. Every freaking year we started over with Columbus, and every freaking year, we made it halfway through the book. Srsly.)

I think category #2 is the most fun. A male friend of mine confessed recently that despite being college educated and quite well-read, he's not actually sure which foods contain carbs. A female friend not only did not know what "ska" is when it came up in conversation, she'd never even heard the word. I'd like to give an example of something remarkably simple that I should know but don't, but the sad part is, I probably don't know I don't know it.

I'm fairly sure it has to do with computers, automobiles, or the Bush Administration, however.