the month ends

You know how when things are going pretty well and you're feeling kind of happy and sort of optimistic and more or less at peace, even though you know from previous experience that it's not going to last, you still feel punched in the gut when your optimism gets yanked away? No? Just me then?

You'll remember my little (okay, big) hissy this time last month about the fuckwits at D's doctor's office and how it had made me determined to switch his care elsewhere. Finally, at the beginning of this week, his caseworker L and I connected, and she told me she had, after some message-leaving back and forth, spoken to someone at the office of the MD she wanted to refer us to, and that they were taking new patients, but wouldn't book an appointment with her, that it had to be made with the patient/family. And she apologized for not calling me earlier, but she'd been out sick for a week. So I called Tuesday and left a message. A few hours later, the doctor's secretary calls me back (and I'm like, yay! same day returned call!) and asks me for his insurance information. The insurance coordinator has to verify his coverage before they'll set up an appointment. But someone will call me back. Very pleasant woman. I am psyched. I am hopeful.

I wait all day Wednesday and all day Thursday for a return call. Today I call them again, and the receptionist tells me that they are overwhelmed with an influx of new patient referrals, and it's probably still being processed. I am mollified. And still hopeful.

I come home today to find that D has received a letter from them, saying, oh, so sorry, we are all booked up and we cannot take you as a patient. Try again in a few months.

You know, if you don't want to take new MassHealth patients because you don't get paid enough, then fucking say so. Except, you know, you can't, because that's illegal if you take MassHealth at all. You can't triage patients by how much their insurance pays. But you explain to me, dear reader, why else we didn't get a "sorry, can't fit you in" until after they found out what kind of coverage he has. No way to prove it, but yeah, they suck.

And we're back at square one. I wanna cry with frustration. Four and a half years of this shit and sometimes I'm not sure I can keep continuing to deal.

This is not me complaining. This is just me being very tired.

I'll be better tomorrow. Or at least I'll shut the fuck up about it.

xoxo

caffeine-free

It suddenly dawned on me this afternoon that the reason I've been kind of tired and kind of headachey is that, due to a variety of circumstances, I haven't had any coffee for the past three days. And the tea I've been drinking is decaf. While I haven't been completely caffeine-free--there's been some Snapple and some (ewww) Pepsi--and while I, unlike many of my co-workers, am not the kind of person who sucks down coffee all day long, I am obviously in a wee bit of caffeine withdrawal.

My question is, since I've done this for three days without really meaning to and with no horribly heinous effects, should I just keep going for as long as I can stand it, and call it a detox? I dunno. It's a small step from there to drinking wheat grass juice, I'm afraid.

If you want to chime in with a vote, you probably ought to do so before 6:30 am, 2/29/08. Because there's a good chance I'll just go to Dunkin' Donuts on my way to work.

xoxo

March comes in February

My cami arrived today.

Back-ordered, my ass! <---(there'd be a great big smiley face there if I wasn't morally opposed to emoticons in my actual blog entries.)

xoxo

food nostalgia

I was thinking about the fact that while I don't actually eat a "real" roast beef sandwich all that often, I would indeed be bereft if the opportunity to do so at my whim were taken away from me. And that the (perhaps) regional foods like that which I feel similarly about, the things I can't imagine not being able to order for takeout, like a "real" chicken kabob salad or good fried clams, perhaps only have that place in my heart/stomach because I'm used to them. Because I ate them in my formative years, by which I mean to say, before I turned thirty.

So I was thinking that, as life goes on, and I try new things, new favorite foods get added, but the old standbys still delight. Except, that's not true. Some things that delighted me when I was sixteen, I wouldn't eat now. Not to say it's because I have a refined and rarefied palate these days. Original Kraft Macaroni and Cheese still tastes really good about once or twice a year, you know? But somehow, some things just drop off the table as things I want to eat.

When I was sixteen and seventeen, some Saturday nights when his parents went out, my future ex-husband would cook me dinner at his house. The way to a woman's vagina is through her stomach. Or something. And generally the meal, which did delight me, was steak with sauteed onions, potatoes either mashed or home-fried, canned baby peas, and for dessert, Oreos and milk. Mmmm. This was big-time seduction food, and it made me feel very princess-y, happy, and spoiled.

These days, I'd eat the steak and the onions and the potatoes. But the peas would be right out. And while I often have Oreos in my house for the guys, and occasionally may eat a couple if I'm PMSing like crazy or otherwise jonesing for junk food, the fact is, Oreos taste like crap. Even if you dunk 'em in full fat milk, they are not the taste treat I remember from 1979.

So why is that? Have they changed the formula? Has my palate in fact matured, but only in a way that makes Oreos and canned peas untenable but blue box Kraft mac n' cheese acceptable? It's another of life's mysteries, I'll tell you what.

xoxo

one more entry

...in the regional food wars.

I didn't get a chance to blog about this the other day, but Monday afternoon I had a patient who lived in central-to-northern New Hampshire. They were originally from Wakefield, and still came down to Massachusetts for the (handicapped) kid's health care. When they were getting ready to leave, the young man's mom was like, "C'mon, I'll take you out for dinner! What do you want to eat?"

And he was insisting what he wanted was Burger King. The mom, half-laughing and half-pleading, was trying to talk him into Kowloons or Hilltop or any of number of the places that they used to love going to down here. Finally she said, "I know! Let's go to Beef and Sea and get roast beef sandwiches." She turned to me and said, "They don't have roast beef in New Hampshire. I mean, not real roast beef. Not like Beef and Sea."

I said, "That's...a pity."

"It is."

Just another reason I can never move from eastern Massachusetts. Because, really. That's a pity.

xoxo

overheard

Today's cell phone conversation: a young man, about my kid's age, vehemently defending his whereabouts, or his choice of companionship to--his mother? his girlfriend?--you know it had to be a woman, anyway. "No, I walked all the way down there and all the way back by myself. Well, yeah, I did run into Spanish Danny in Central Square for like twenty minutes. He was waiting for his bus and I was waiting for mine."

And I'm thinking, Spanish Danny! That's the best nickname evah. Perhaps there's a whole plethora of them, identified only by the modifying ethnicity in front of their name. The cell phone kid might have been Irish Danny, for all I know, judging solely and completely from the huge skull-and-shamrock neck tattoo.

Okay, so maybe it was his probation officer he was justifying his whereabouts and companions to.

(I'm being a judgmental bitch again, right? Oh, well.)

xoxo

bye, Mr Indemnity!

Mr Indemnity is off tomorrow on the first leg of his trip to the wilds of the Yucatan. No, he is not going to spring break in Cancun. He is going into the jungle, yo, to look at ruins and such.

Let's all send out positive vibes into the universe that he doesn't run into any malarial mosquitoes or old skool Mayans who haven't repudiated the whole human sacrifice thang, 'k? Because I do so want my postcard.

xoxo

people with something to prove

Have you ever been to the Porter Square Red Line station? It's probably my favorite of all T stations, simply for the fact that it is deep, deep underground. (If you've never been to Porter, but you have ridden the subway in Washington DC, [if I remember correctly] the stop you take to get to the zoo is very similar, so you can use that for comparison.) To exit the station, you get on this very steep, very long escalator and you sort of just ride it for what seems like a full two minutes to get to the next level. And if you look back or if you crane your head up, you get a wee little momentary vertigo headrush. And that amuses me, because I have never lost my child-like sense of enjoyment for things like that. Shut up.

But if, instead of looking back or looking up, you cast your eyes to the left, what you will see is one or two or possibly three people who have chosen to walk up the many, many, many stairs instead. And, if you are me, you look back away and you think to yourself, fucking overachievers, man.

That is all.

xoxo

a new rule

I'm sitting here, waiting for my patient to arrive--probably fruitlessly because they probably didn't feel like digging out their car--and just sort of screwing around on the internet, as you do, to keep myself entertained.

And I come across someone (probably a sixteen year old boy) proclaiming that if a girl has more than one sexual partner in a year, then she's a whore. I'm thinking, well. If you hold to this particular rule, you'd probably want to hold off on breaking up with your current partner until, like, early December.

Wait. Do we not mean calendar year?

xoxo

oh, Valerie

Well, I see in today's celeb news that Valerie admits in her new tell-all autobiography (and I guess in an Oprah interview) that she cheated on Eddie. And Eddie cheated on her, but she apparently cheated first.

I dunno. Does this mean I need to shun her as an adulteress, and not invite her to poker with Drew? Or maybe I should invite her, but then stone her instead of feeding her low-fat Jenny Craig-approved hors d'oeuvres. That'd fix her!

(Perhaps this post calls for a brand new tag. Not that I underestimate y'all.)

xoxo

cami update

I think it's amusing that I feel as if I need to post this as breaking news, but I bit the bullet and ordered it. Unfortunately, it is backordered until the middle of March.

Now, on the one hand, in three weeks I'll probably be way over it. On the other, when the FedEx guy comes to my door with a package I'll have totally forgotten was coming, it'll be like freaking Christmas.

xoxo

the milk of human kindness

I had something amazing happen to me this morning, something that hasn't happened for literally years. A T driver on an out of service bus stopped for me. "I'm only going as far as ______ and then I need to turn." "Oh, no, I'm getting off before that." "Great! Hop on!"

And then when I got to work, my first patient, who was double-booked because someone thought he was going to be difficult to test, turned out not only to be completely cooperative, but a little sweetie. I whipped him in and out of here so fast, not only do I have time to blog, I'm going to the caf to get oatmeal.

I'm sure this day could get better, but I really don't know how.

xoxo

exile

I finally did cardio again today after a hiatus of... Well, we don't really need to put a figure to it, do we? Anyway, I decided that I was going to listen to an album, rather than a playlist or random songs, on the iPod while working out, which I don't usually do. And while I was doing that, it occurred to me how I wanted to blog about how some albums are a complete work of art and should be listened to and appreciated as such, no shuffling or skipping songs and screwing with the artist's vision.

But I changed my mind. What I want to talk about is how a very few albums are, to me, like madeleines to Proust, an unavoidable font of memory, causing an almost visceral feeling of time and place. Today's album reminds me, always and forever, of the summer after my freshman year of college, living in Allston, and most specifically, of a certain kind of summer weather: those hot, cloudy days when the humidity is 150% and you pray for a thunderstorm to break the heat, to allow you to breathe. I can listen to it in February and just about feel the clamminess on my skin, the low-pressure migraine threatening to pound behind my eyes. Visceral.

I specifically remember one particular day that is indelibly linked in my brain with both that weather and that music. We had an electric bill that was three or four months overdue and needed to be paid that day or our service was going to be cut off. Somehow, I was the only one who had the day off or something, and I was elected to go on the mythic quest through the wilds of Brighton with our wads of cobbled together cash to find the electric company office and save the day. I remember walking for what seemed like miles and miles through neighborhoods I'd never been in, my espadrilles giving me blisters, and the air like a damp blanket in my lungs. And in my memory, there's only one soundtrack to that episode.

Which is a false memory, of course. In those days before iPods or even Walkmen, walking through Brighton didn't have a soundtrack per se. But it would have been that album, because I listened to it every single day that summer. Multiple times. I was obsessed. It was a wonder my roommates didn't kill me.

But they had their own quirks, of course. There was L, who was my best friend L's older sister. But that's too many L's, so we'll just call her Linda. Because that was her name. She was into modern dance, and being a dancer, her obsession was in being as skinny as possible. Some of her methods were relatively benign, like the macrobiotic diet--though it did lead to a weekly seaweed taste test: "No, try this one, Andrea; this one you're gonna like..." But, alas, it all tasted like getting a mouthful of beach water to me. And some were less benign, like the amphetamines, which led to charming behaviors like deciding to clean the apartment at 5 am because she was wired on black beauties, and then being angry and hurt that no one would help her.

But we had our ways of getting back. She used to get offended and perplexed when she and I went out walking and guys turned to look at me. "But I'm the one who works out three hours a day..." and I would just smugly tell her it was my fabulous rack. Or when we were all sitting around the floor in the apartment, she would be offended and perplexed that she did all the stretching and yet we had more hip flexibility. "That's because you're a virgin, Linda. Maybe you should just have some sex instead of stretching..."

But in the end, I guess she had the last laugh on me. She stiffed me with a bill when she knew I wouldn't make too big of a deal about it because of my friendship with her sister. And she took my very favorite white pants with her when she went to NYC for the weekend. Without asking. Not that I'm still pissed or anything, 26 years later. Ahem.

So, um, yeah, music. That whole rush of vivid memories was just triggered by pushing play on the right selection on the iPod. Does that happen to you?

xoxo

underwear post

Oh, yeah, give the audience what they want, and I haven't done one in a while, have I?

Recently, I've been obsessed with (and failing miserably at) finding two particular undergarments, either online somewhere that doesn't charge outrageous shipping charges, or preferably in a brick-n-mortar store. One is a ridiculously expensive Hanky Panky cami from the Garnet Hill catalog that I just inexplicably love, with emphasis on the ridiculously and the inexplicably. The second is (what was apparently) a limited edition color of my favoritest bra.

Let me pause to say that, also recently, I have been relentlessly mocked--relentlessly, I tell you!--because there are only certain specific undergarments that I'll wear when they are going to be glimpsed, ahem, by someone else. It has been suggested to me that this is very, very silly, since glimpsing quickly proceeds to divesting. Well, I'm sorry, but I think they need to look pretty for the fifteen seconds before they hit the floor, and if they look pretty just lying there in a heap, all the better. No, seriously, it's much more about how the cute underwear makes me feel than really their aesthetic appeal to anyone viewing. Perhaps that's something that people with a Y chromosome (and some people with two Xs) can't fully appreciate.

So! Yeah! I just want these two phantom undergarments because I think they're going to make me feel adorable for no really good reason. And having spent parts of three days perusing all the high-end online lingerie purveyors, though to no avail, I both have a new appreciation of the Hanky Panky company's wares and an explanation for something that had me perplexed a few months ago.

I'm not sure exactly why I didn't blog about this when it happened, because it was really funny, but I must have been obsessed with something else at the time. Anyway, during one of the times I went soaking this fall, I somehow managed to drop my underwear somewhere between the bathroom and the tub room. And since when I was changing out of my bathing suit to get redressed, I didn't remember that I had still had my underwear on under my robe when I had gone to the bathroom, I was convinced I'd lost them in the actual tub room. Which, the room being like eight feet by eight feet, didn't seem possible, barring actual wormholes or rips in the space/time continuum. Be that as it may, I dressed without them and prepared to leave.

Then, at the front desk, as I paid, the woman sort of dropped her voice a notch and asked tentatively, "You aren't missing anything, are you?" Why, yes. She takes a plastic bag from the lost-and-found shelf and hands it to me. On the outside it is marked, no lie, "expensive woman's underwear." Oh, we laughed and laughed. My friend asked me if they were actually expensive, and I was like, uh, no, seven bucks at the Gap.

But now I know! My seven buck Gap underwear is a direct knockoff of these: http://tinyurl.com/yrqam5 and if you didn't look at the tag...

And I *suppose* people who lose their $32 underpants at the hydrospa/massage therapy place would be really motivated to come back and claim them from lost and found, rather than just trust in the wormhole theory, huh?

Anyway? Point? I should really, really read a book.

xoxo

sexuality & vulnerability: body image post # gazillion

I read a blog today in which the writer expressed two contradictory emotions about being a physically large woman. One was that due to the "solidity" of her body, she felt much less afraid and less vulnerable than (she imagined) a smaller woman would feel, both in her work situation--which has some risk of physical assault--and in everyday life. The second was that, even though she doesn't fit society's stereotype of the typically sexually attractive woman, she gets reminders that she still is to many people, and that makes her feel vulnerable.

Whew. Where to start? I guess this is one of those examples of times when you can live in the same universe as another individual and yet experience the world as a completely different place.

As I guess many of you know, I'm a small person. I'm five two (and one time at the doctor's--once!--they told me five two and a half, so when I'm in the mood I claim that) and pretty small boned. I don't think of myself as a teeny tiny person, I'm not that short for a woman and I've got some muscle and some fat on me, but I don't take up that much space. And that has never made me feel vulnerable or more apt to be assaulted or anything. I mean, obviously I can't use my size to intimidate anyone, like some 6'4, 240 lb guy might, but I've never felt like, "oh, I wish I could grow seven inches and put on 70 lbs so I can be a big woman and walk alone at night."

I do walk alone at night. I take the T. I've lived in kinda skeery neighborhoods. And I've never had any kind of assault happen to me. The one time I got in a little bit of trouble that might have been worse, it was totally because I was in a crappy mood and I baited the guy, throwing all my common sense and street smarts to the wind. That's the thing: I see keeping safe as just projecting the right attitude, being alert, using your good sense, and (here's the one you can't control) not being in the very wrong place at the very wrong time. It has nothing to do with the "solidity" of your body, unless, I guess, if that solidity is the only thing that enables *you* to project the right attitude.

And, in my work life, where very rarely there's that encounter with a volatile patient that could escalate, I feel like it's the opposite of being physically intimidating that keeps me safe. It's been my experience that when someone's escalating, it's the calm, soft-spoken, extremely non-threatening demeanor that brings that down a notch or twelve.

As to the second, and more disturbing, thing? Sexual attractiveness equals vulnerability? Really? I'm more apt to see it as equaling power and I feel kind of sad to hear from someone for whom that is so not true. I can't help but wonder (and my apologies if this is offensive to anyone) if that's the hallmark of someone who was sexually abused at a young (or perhaps not-so-young) age. I can't imagine why else someone would be so afraid of their own sexuality and see it as a weakness rather than a strength.

If you all have any better, smarter explanations for that, I'd love to hear them.

xoxo

just say no

The next time anyone invites me to an experimental production of anything, you all are going to do me a favor.

You're going to say, Andrea, there are places you can go. You can go to punk shows and you can go to outdoor concerts. You can go to indie films and foreign films and films in which lots and lots and lots of shit blows up. You can go to nice cocktail lounges and you can go to hole-in-the-wall bars. You can go hiking and you can go to the beach and you can even go to Red Sox games if they ever let you buy a ticket. You can go to restaurants that serve the cuisines of many different nations, though French and Japanese are iffy. You can go to massage conferences. You can go shopping. You can go for aimless long walks. You can go to the MFA and the ICA. You can go to Vermont and look at cows.

But, Andrea, you are going to say, you cannot go to the theater. You are too stoopid, uneducated, and lower middle class to go to the theater. Just say no.

xoxo

suzi orman

I've never really watched her, but since D fell asleep on the couch with the TV on and I was too lazy to get up from dining room table and go change the channel when she came on, I did tonight.

My very favorite part was the segment wherein viewers called in asking "can I afford x?" Her answer was always "no!" with a dollop of "you bring home how much a month and have how much debt, and you think you should buy x? are you crazy?"

I would so love to have a television show on which I could just verbally bitchslap people who were about to do really stupid things. It'd be fun. They wouldn't even have to pay me. I'd do it for free.

(Though, actually, ol' Suze would probably have a problem with that particular financial strategy.)

xoxo

sometimes they surprise you

So, a good-customer-service story.

Thursday on my way to work I went to pick up my drycleaning. There was an older lady working behind the counter. She took my ticket, went in back, and returned. Without my sweaters. She looked in her computer. "It says they're back." Well, yes, I would assume they were back because they were due on Wednesday and it was now Thursday. "They must be misfiled. I'll have to look through all the racks." Said with less than sparkling enthusiasm to do that, y'know, any time soon. And I had to go to work anyway. So I left my cell # and she promised to call me when she found them.

When I didn't get a call all day, I was starting to get a wee bit nervous about my poor garments, envisioning them in a new home in someone else's closet, someone who wouldn't love them just the way I do. But I checked the voicemail on my home phone on a hunch and there was a message from a different woman, saying they had them.

Today I finally get down there again to pick them up. Not only were they actually there, they had comped them for me. The manager (owner?) who had left me the message was out front vacuuming and, after I expressed my surprise about this, she was like, oh, no, I certainly wouldn't charge you for that when you had to come back twice.

Um, so, yeah. Yay for my drycleaner's.

xoxo

watch out! anecdote ahead!

Yes, yes, I know, I've been slacking on the blogging this week. While I would love to tell you all a whole bunch of stories about things that have happened in work the past two days, I fear that would break so many HIPAA regulations that I'd be forced to go into the witness protection program. Or something. So, instead, I'm going to tell you one which is beyond the statute of limitations.

Part of why I've been reminded of this particular story is that, as previously mentioned, I'm watching season 4 of The Wire, which is the season which follows the middle school kids. If you've seen it, you'll probably understand why it's brought up this memory for me. If not, just hang in there, 'k?

This happened, I dunno, 18 or 20 years ago--very late '80s anyway. There was this little 15 or 16 month old boy admitted for some relatively benign thing (probably a febrile seizure, but I won't swear to it.) In the hour or hour and a half that he was in my department being tested, he managed to make every one of us fall in love with him.

Oh, he was a beautiful baby, physically. Just gorgeous. But more than that, he was so smart. At an age when most toddlers, especially male toddlers, can say a few words at best, this kiddo was talking in phrases. Really talking. But even beyond that? At an age when most toddlers have a fair amount of stranger anxiety and in a situation where most toddlers would be scared and pissed off by strangers poking at them and sticking things to them, this kiddo didn't cry, didn't fuss. Instead, he smiled. He kept up a steady stream of chatter. He laughed, and he flirted with each and every one of us. He was frigging charming. Beautiful, smart, and charming.

No down side there, right? Well...

His mom was fifteen. His dad was sixteen. He lived in a very, very rough neighborhood. And he was bi-racial (which shouldn't matter of course, but unfortunately in our imperfect world, it's just another obstacle.) Now, both parents were with him in the hospital, and they were very good with him. They were such kids, but they were trying hard.

But still. The strikes against this poor baby...

He went back to the floor and we were standing around talking, all still dazzled by how incredibly bright and gorgeous and full of personality he was. And I turned to my friend and said, "Damn. That kid's going to grow up to be the smartest drug dealer on his block." And we laughed. Sadly.

I seriously hope it didn't turn out to be true.

xoxo

more crap about the media

I had the TV on today, playing in the background as I ironed my pants for work, and one of those purile morning shows was on. Because, of course, it's Valentine's Day, they had one of your usual ridiculous "relationship expert"/self-help book authors on, discussing, I dunno, how to handle this market-driven exploitation of Twue Love, whether you're in a relationship or not. And The Expert said that if you aren't in a relationship, this is the loneliest day of the year.

I was, like, Seriously? And also, Fuck You. The only possible way that this could be the loneliest day of the year for anyone is if they listen to crap like that in the media, the only purpose of which is to sell jewelry and flowers and lingerie to the coupled, and self-help books to the single. Being unpartnered on 2/14 is no different or more upsetting than being unpartnered on 1/14 or 5/14, unless you buy into the media brainwashing that if you don't have anyone to give or receive diamonds (or, I dunno, edible underwear) to or from on Valentine's Day, you are a big Losah. Capital L.

Just another way for the media to fuck with the self-esteem of the American buying public. Bastards!

And, okay, let me just say this, on a positive note. The best Valentine's Day gift I ever received was a huge white ceramic piggy bank with red hearts on it that my future ex-husband bought for me at Fanueil Hall in 1979. I still have it. It no longer has the stopper, so you can't put any money in it, and it's probably very dusty, being stuck on the top shelf of a closet, but as a reminder of what being in love for the first time felt like, it's pretty cool.

xoxo

teeny tiny Red Sox thoughts

Oh, it's getting closer. I can smell it. Mmmmm, baseball season.

Till then, a few wee remarks. First of all, on Saturday I was eligible to *try* to buy Red Sox-Yankees tickets online. Try being the operative word. I was in work Saturday and spent four, count 'em four, hours with the "virtual waiting room" refreshing itself on my computer, and nevah evah obtained the privilege of *giving them my fucking money*. I mean, c'mon now.

Secondly, big props to Mr Indemnity for alerting me to the picture of Manny with 110 lb dumbbells in each hand in Saturday's paper. I honestly think the La Leche League needs to recruit him as a spokesman. "Breastfeed your kid till he's four and just *look* at what a fine, strapping young man he'll grow up to be! Without any added HGH! And look at that head of hair, too!" Oh, Manny Manny, I kid because I love.

Finally, yay Youk for your big raise. I'm sure your golddigger girlfriend/fiance isn't going anywhere now, darlin'.

xoxo

(weekend) update

1.) Approximately 85% of my calorie intake today was supplied by two tiramisu martinis and then some actual tiramisu. Is that wrong? (If it's wrong, I don't wanna be right.)

2.) For those of you familiar with last summer's job saga with the bloody webfooted bastards who went out of business and stole our money, I must happily report that I *finally* received a W-2 form from them yesterday. It looks totally wrong, but I did get one. I was kinda worried about it.

3.) Now that I am done with Deadwood and arty Chinese movies, I am watching season 4 of The Wire on DVD. Did you know the guy who plays Prez lives in Cambridge? And did you know that Felicia "Snoop" Pearson is played by a young woman who is actually named Felicia "Snoop" Pearson, and that she shot and killed another young woman when she was 14, and did time for it? Did you know Omar's scar is real, not stage makeup to make him look skeery?

That's all for now. I think I may still have a wee martini buzz or possibly a sugar high.

xoxo

and today's encounter

...with the general public.

There was a woman ahead of me in line in the 7-11 today who wanted to engage the clerk in a long conversation about if and why and how she could deduct her lottery losses from her taxes, and how her accountant told her she could only do this if she had proof of losses that were equal to her winnings. "I won $1000," she said. "What if I had $900 in losses? That doesn't count?"

The clerk was one of the various and sundry brown-skinned immigrants from various and sundry Third World countries who work in my 7-11, and you could just see him thinking, You stoopid spoiled American! Be glad all your government wants is a cut of your lottery winnings and that no death squads have marched through your village and no one is planning genocide against your people! Now move along so the customers behind you can pay for their purchases.

Okay, so maybe I'm projecting. It happens. What the poor long-suffering clerk was really doing was very patiently explaining that this matter was neither his area of expertise nor under his control, so perhaps she should take it up with the lottery commision, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, or her accountant. But even still, she was still going on about it to her companion when I left.

Jesus (and Allah and Buddha and Vishnu) wept.

xoxo

"Raise the Red Lantern"

Two subtitled films in one week? Klassy! Or maybe just an attempt to save those dying neurons? Actually, I would watch more foreign movies, but--much like my problems with fiction read in translation--I always mistrust the subtitles a bit, and wonder what I'm missing by not being able to understand all the dialogue.

In RtRL, this really isn't so much of an issue, because it can be appreciated just on a visual level alone. Gorgeous cinematography, and a gorgeous young Gong Li, who doesn't even have that much dialogue anyway. So much of her acting is done just with the subtle expressions that flit across her face, with the set of her body. And some of the visual choices add understanding that transcends language--the fact that "the master" is never clearly shown, but instead is always shot from behind, or in a long shot, or behind the bed curtains, such that after a two hour movie the viewer still has no clear idea what he looks like, is brilliant. And, to me, emphasizes that all he is to these women is The Husband, that they are all jockeying for his favor, not because of who he is as an individual, but because getting his attention is the only way to move up in the hierarchy. He might just as well as be faceless.

Now, generally, I don't read the netflix viewer reviews until after I've watched the film myself, and then I see how much I disagree with everyone else's interpretations. Many of the reviews of RtRL frame it as a tragedy of what happens to women in a brutal patriarchal system. And, yeah, the master gets to choose which woman he's going to sleep with each night, gets to repudiate the one he feels has lied to him, and have killed the one who cheats. Yes, he's got that ultimate power. But what so many people seem to miss as their feminist Western principles are being outraged by that, is how in everyday life he is so controlled by these women and their whims and little schemes. Add that to the fact that he has to know that they've married him for his money and that (as noted above) they want his attentions just for the temporary status they bring and the possibility of permanent status if they lead to impregnation with a son. I see the film as saying that the whole system was broken and sad. (Is modern Western marriage for love any less broken and sad? 'Cause we all know how that so often works out, eh? But that's a post for another day.)

The other point I tend to disagree with in other people's reviews of RtRL is that the ending was a failure. (STOP! STOP reading if you don't want to be spoiled.) First of all, I haven't even seen that much Chinese cinema, but even I know they ain't big on the happy endings. So if you think that Gong Li is going to--I dunno, I can't even come up with a possible happy ending to this story, frankly. Secondly, a number of people seem to think that Gong Li's character is "strong" at the beginning of the movie and then becomes weak.

I have so many problems with this. For one, I don't think she's strong to begin with. She's petty and childish and bratty, which is understandable since she's a nineteen year old who's pissed off by having to leave university, but the fact that people see that behavior as strong is a sad indictment, I think. Secondly, what happens to her at the end is that she goes "mad." We'll leave aside the disturbing judgment that strong people couldn't/wouldn't have mental breakdowns, because that's definitely also a post for another day. But since in the film, she is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of two other people due to, in one case, petty revenge, and in the other, a horrible drunken mistake, and that she is already being shunned for another mistake, I think some PTSD and severe depression is absolutely a logical and believable outcome.

Anyway! Interesting and beautiful film.

xoxo

duty?

I can't fucking help it...I've been reading the fat blogs again. Swear to god, soon it will be baseball season, and I can occupy my mind with that when it's slow in work or I'm stuck home doing mounds of laundry. But right now I'm burned out on election coverage, schizophrenia message boards, reading television snark, looking up recipes for stuff I might make, and even online window-shopping for shoes and purses. So, yeah, it's the fat blogs. (Yeah, I know, I know, read a freakin' book, Andrea. I can feel neurons dying even as I type.)

The shoes and purses mentioned above? Germane to this discussion even. One of the tenets of the "fatosphere" is debunking the cultural assumption that women with BMIs over 25 or whatever don't care about looking good, style and fashion, and so forth. And, as with everything in life, there's a backlash to this. Some other fat bloggers who could really give a shit about being "non-frumpy", about stereotypical girly shit, about fitting in with the accepted standard of female beauty, object, with the objection running along the lines of "it's not my duty to the world to be pretty" (or decorative or whatever.)

I really had to think about that. Obviously, anyone who knows me or has read me over time knows I have very mixed feelings about this. I *am* girly. I wear makeup and jewelry. I enjoy buying clothes and purses, and ohgodyes, boots. Particularly boots. I also have periods where I deeply deeply resent the amount of time and money that goes into upkeep--though I spend way way less time and money on upkeep than many chicks.

Why do I bother? Not with the stuff that gives me pleasure in and of itself, like boots and earrings and the occasional beautiful sweater or new jeans, but with stuff like hair color and the endless root retouching that entails, and removing body hair, and mascara just to go to 7-11, all of which is more a big chore than a source of enjoyment? Do I feel I have some duty to look good to the world in general?

Well, no. Mostly I do that crap, as much as it pisses me off on one level, because when I feel like I look good--or at least okay--I feel better. I'm sure there's enough psychotherapy available in the world that I could be cured of that, but it'd cost more money than salon services, 'k? And some of that crap I do, frankly, so that I can get laid occasionally. I mean, I guess I do feel that in a relationship you do have some duty to remain kinda attractive for your partner. And outside of a relationship, you're going to have more options if you make some stab at "conventionally attractive," like it or not. No one said that's fair, but...

But! Here's the other big piece of it: no, I do not feel it's my duty to the world to look pretty or decorative, but the sucky fact is, as a woman, the more you are, the better the world treats you, even if they're not getting in your pants. Even if they don't want in your pants. We/I could bitch about that like the objecting bloggers, and say it's not right, and not fair, but it ain't gonna change human nature. My duty in life, such as it is, is to myself first and foremost. If making a stab at conventionally attractive smoothes my way through life, refusing to do so out of...what? principle?...would be self-defeating.

Slogans are nice, principle is nice, reality is crucial.

xoxo

grandmotherly love

Persepolis has left me thinking about grandmothers. Those of you who know me have probably heard me talk about my maternal grandmother, how she was the person in my life who gave me the purest and most unconditional love, and feelings of security and being special, and how I admired her strength and smarts more than anyone else I've ever known. And you've probably heard me say that even though she died in...1992?...I still miss her fiercely sometimes. (More than I miss my mom, a fact that shames me a little, but, y'know, even loving parent-child relationships are complex and full of landmines.)

And thinking about grandmothers, mine, and the grandmother in Perspolis who reminded me so much of mine, I'm feeling a bit sad that the chances are very, very high that I will never be one. I would like so much to be able to give that to someone--that pure love uncomplicated by the need to discipline or instill boundaries, that pure acceptance unfouled by expectations, just hugs and listening and the occasional bit of wise advice and the even more occasional metaphorical kick in the ass when they're on the precipice of douchery.

Part of me wonders what's the point of getting old if I'm not going to serve that purpose for someone. What good am I going to be to anyone when I am 70 if there's no one for me to share that with?

I suppose I've got another 25 years to figure it out, eh?

xoxo

persepolis, deals w/ satan, TMI, & stylin'

1.) Go see Persepolis. Put aside your prejudices that it's animated and that it's subtitled. It's charming and moving, and the grandmother in it is probably my favorite movie character in years, 2D or not. Lurved it.

2.) So, back in 2004, we had a running joke in my household about Big Papi having sold his soul to the prince of darkness, 'cause how else do you explain the sudden invincibility of someone with hereforeto only modestly promising potential? (Especially, y'know, if you're Catholic?) Having seen the recently-highly-publicized Pats draft photos of circa 2000 Tom Brady, pasty, not-so-hott, and modestly promising, not the infallible, ridiculously good-looking, model-fucking, actress-knocking-up, best-quarterback-evah Tom we know today, one might feel compelled to make the same joke. But, really? How do you become the charmed one? It ain't all hard work and genetic endowment.

3.) And, yeah. A couple posts back in the comments, I was tempted to joke with Mr Barma about what I would have put on Myspace, had it existed when I was 18 or 20. Not fifteen or sixteen, because in high school I was still held hostage by the spector of vicious gossip, and I'd have never made public anything that might have been fuel for my "enemies." But once I got to college? All bets were off. Until very, very recently, I had in my possession, three polaroid pictures of myself, my future ex-husband, and my cousin/quasi-sister doing lines, circa 1983ish. We called them our "blackmail" pictures. How the blackmail was supposed to work in my case, since I kept all three, I dunno, but it probably speaks to who was the brains of that operation. Ahem. Not so effin' smart as to not document illegal activities on film however, or--had it been possible, I'm sure, to share them with the virtual world. I shudder to think.

So, I was thinking about that today, and wondering why I'd kept those pictures for so long. Not to actually blackmail my ex should his political ambitions ever overreach what they are, though, you know...hahahaha. Perhaps just because I liked that particular picture of myself, looking very New Wave with my "bilevel" haircut and way too much blush. Maybe just as a memento of a time in my life when I did things that were ridiculously stoopid and irresponsible, because those times came to an end soon after and I had to grow up and be an adult. I dunno.

4.) A drunk told me today that I was stylin', so it must be true, right? I mean, I'm going with the model of inebriation that causes a person to blurt out true comments to strangers due to a lack of inhibitions, rather than the model of inebriation that causes one to have no reliable judgment at all. Because it's to my advantage. And because obviously I'm always stylin'. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Now I suppose I oughta go watch some football lest I be un-American.

xoxo

done with Deadwood

I finished the last DVD of the third and final season last might, and I am so sad that show was cancelled. So many loose ends left untied. Now, considering how many characters on the show were actual historical people, I suppose I could do the research and see whatever happened to them in real life. But I bet the truth wouldn't be as much fun as the fiction.

But, anyways, I do now have a new quote that I can use in here every time I tell you people about something stupid or spectacularly ill-advised I've done.

Morgan Earp: "I ain't shown myself to advantage, I am fully fuckin' aware."

I think, by the way, that perhaps my favorite visual moment in season three is the scene in which Morgan and Wyatt are being woken at dawn and tossed from the whores' beds at the Bella Union, and Morgan is sleeping sweetly on his side, sucking his thumb. Awww.

xoxo

it's a very strange world we live in

So, there's this:

http://www.itemlive.com/articles/2008/02/01/news/news05.txt

Apparently, being a.) dumb as a post and b.) a jerk are grounds for life imprisonment now. Who knew? If we're locking up people under those criteria now, they better start building some more maximum security facilities. On the plus side, it'll make the Green Line much less crowded and alleviate the whole "move into the train" problem.

Seriously though? Using the term "child rape" to describe consensual sexual behavior between a teenage couple is, to me, offensive to, y'know, children who have actually been raped. And the oh-so-cynical side of me wonders, noting the "victim's" hometown, how wealthy and connected her parents are, and whether anyone would be making *quite* so much of a fuss if her last name ended in a "z" and her mommy only spoke Spanish.

But what do I know? I just had a conversation the other day in which I reminisced about how much pure fun sex was back when I was under the age of consent. But obviously I should have been being protected from my base appetites. Or something.

xoxo