disaffected housewife

Sopranos Finale: Cliff Notes for the "Ambiguity Challenged"

2007-06-10T22:12:00.000-05:00

So I've abandoned my blog in favor of watching TV (among other things) but now TV has driven me back to it.

Seems like a lot of bloggers are saying either that the ending was "ambiguous" or that Tony lives. And a lot of people hate it.

Personally I loved the ending and I think it was almost perfectly clear: Tony got shot! Do we really need to see him face down in the onion rings to confirm that?

Every cliche of the mob hit was well represented in the final diner scene, down to that mysterious guy with the hat who keeps eyeing Tony, goes to the bathroom, and then, "Godfather" style, whacks Tony.

The entire series was VERY closely tied to Tony's own perspective. We shared it to the last, when Tony's life comes to an abrupt but inevitable close. Specifically, I think Tony never sees what hits him--a bullet from the gun of the bathroom-going-hat-guy---because he is looking not at the hit man but Meadow coming through the door.

Other bloggers have commented that Tony and Bobby had a conversation in the fishing boat (in the course of the lake house episode) in which Tony muses about what death is like. He says something to the effect of--you never see it coming, and then everything just goes black. Which was exactly what happened last night.

I thought it was an incredibly powerful ending (once I realized it wasn't a DVR foul up) because if the blackout equals Tony's death, then the finale presents death as utter annihilation, which is pretty scary.

There's no misty fade out, no final shot of the corpse, no music rolling with the credits, just stark, instant finality. Much less is there a lake of fire or gaggle of pitchforking wielding demons to provide some final commentary on Tony's life. He lived in hell, and then he died. And that's that.

To anyone who thinks that Tony's life "goes on" or that the ending is ambiguous I have to say: Duh.

And if David Chase himself comes out and refutes my opinion later, I still stand by it. Because I'd rather be whacked eating onion rings than publicly admit a mistake.

Required Reading

2007-05-15T19:02:00.000-05:00

Here is a book you MUST read. It's mandatory. Stop what you're doing and get this book: Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky.

It's actually two novellas (as in short novel, not one of the Spanish language soaps which, as required by various international treaties, always features a well-to-do young man named Juan Carlos who is in love with a beautiful but poor young woman employed as a domestic servant on his cruel parents' lavish estate.)

The first novella is "Storm in June," takes place in Paris just after the surrender to the Germans. (Surprisingly, despite what esteemed historians led me to believe, virtually no cheese eating takes place after the French army throws down its arms and rolls out the welcome mat for the Nazis.) The second, "Dolce" takes place mostly in a French village during the occupation.

I would like to quote one of my favorite parts, but like a fool I returned the book to the library. Anyway, the portraits of various people in extreme circumstances are powerful: I'd finish a chapter and just have to put it down awhile because it was so intense.

The book has a pretty incredible back story. It was written in 1942--which makes it almost shocking that her depiction of certain German characters is so humane. Nemirovsky didn't live to finish the 2 additional novellas she'd planned for her Suite. She was Jewish (and also not a French citizen) and was therefore taken off to a death camp. What a waste.

Now go get the book!

Evil Vegetarians: A Coffee Table Book

2007-05-06T13:41:00.000-05:00

A few nights ago around 3 a.m. I thought I had hit upon an original, maybe even a brilliant idea. And then, as it so often does, Google shattered my dreams.

My idea was to compose a coffee table book of Evil Vegetarians, complete with full page portraits and short bios of the heinous herbivores.

To the layman, the term "evil vegetarian" may simply conjure up images of Adolf Hitler, or possibly of Peter Singer, who, while actually more militant about the vegetable part, is only guilty of theoretical mass murder since he's merely an academic and not the Fuhrer.

But those of us who have actually researched the subject (by which I mean contemplating it briefly in a semi conscious state) know that Hitler and Singer are merely the best known of a very distinguished evil vegetarian field.

Other evil vegetarians include Rasputin, Genghis Khan, Bill O'Reilly, Queen Elizabeth II and the singer James Taylor.

No doubt some readers would denounce my book as biased and incorrect, claiming that the above mentioned are either not evil or not vegetarians.

Well, it was just a first draft.

Besides, evil is a very subjective concept. I may think hosting an obnoxious talk show is "evil"; you may think tax evasion, jay walking, or ritual human sacrifice are "evil." We'll just have to agree to disagree.

Furthermore, a survey by Time magazine found that 60% of self-described vegetarians had eaten meat within the past 24 hours, whereas Genghis Khan and Rasputin have gone much longer without so much as a Slim Jim.

This supports my view that all the people I listed may fairly be called "vegetarians," and also suggests that vegetarians are usually liars.

I'm not sure why so many vegetarians are evil, but I think it may be that becoming a mass murder makes one more likely to take up an all-vegetable diet, and not vice versa.

When I sit down to a medium rare steak my conscience is occasionally troubled by what the cow endured ("The cow, the old cow she is dead! It sleeps well, the horned head!") but the sight doesn't remind me of how a village of peasants looked after my secret police force decimated them.

Also, if you're worried about being assassinated by members of your own elite guard, your chances of detecting poison in creamed peas are probably better than in heavily seasoned barbecued meats.

Anyway, the morning after my inspiration I dished out oatmeal to the lunatics and sat down at my computer, ready to take the first step toward achieving the fame and fortune that have strangely eluded me so far.

And that's when Google broke my heart, again. There's already an entire web site devoted to Evil Vegetarians. Read it and weep. I did.

Come for the cheap rooms, Stay for the Capuchino

2007-04-21T09:07:00.000-05:00

I've been spending too much time on TripAdvisor lately and I've become a fan of the Trip Advisor blog, which features some hilarious reviews. This one seems like an obvious fake, and yet I really want to believe in it. I guess I'm just a romantic:

My name is T------ and I returned to this hotel one month after leaving. To reunite with the love of my life. His name is Capuchino and he is an entertainer there at the ------- hotel. For those of you who have been blessed enough to know him and be in his presence, know what an incredible person he is and how fun he is to be around. For those of you thinking of going to this resort, let me tell you not only as Capuchino's girlfriend but just as someone who truly admires who he is, you're trip to this hotel would be worth while just to meat him.
Capuchino and I have not been together very long but we love each other very much. And so I'm so great full that I took my first trip to this hotel. And now I will be moving there from Canada in 3 months to work at the resort and to be with my one true love Capuchino.
So make this trip to this hotel, enjoy the beaches, the sun and the way of life there, but most of all take time to get to know the people because they will truly impact your life for the better. I have made life time friends there and couldn't imagine my life without them. You never know maybe your trip could bring you love too!!
If you see Capuchino tell him about my letter and tell him I said "hi"!!!!! Oh and I love him so much!!!! Also say hi to Chocolate, Johnathan, Bebeto, Louis, David, and all the dancer's. Just a fiew of the amazing people you will enjoy!! They are tallented and have wonderful hearts, enjoy!!

Majority of Children Report Abuse!

2007-04-13T13:24:00.000-05:00

The Onion breaks the shocking story.

Advice for Single Women

2007-04-10T08:54:00.000-05:00

The shadowy group of anarchists posing as the columnist "Dear Abby" is at it again. Their mission: edge America's already declining marriage rates into a tailspin.

That's the only possible explanation for the series of letters now appearing in the column advising single women on where to meet "eligible" men.

The first suggestion is: eat breakfast in a diner in Maine! This tip was sent in by---- the owner of a diner in Maine!

Ladies, he advises that you sit at the counter (tables are for married people, not pathetic loners like you!) and bring along a crossword puzzle so that you can engage your syrup slurping prey in conversation by coyly asking for help with the difficult words.

I have to admit, this does sounds like an excellent way to meet male octogenarians who happen to live in Maine, if that's you're thing.

The second letter is even more disturbing: Hang out at McDonald's on Wednesday evenings, when divorced, broke dads while away the brief hours of their court mandated weekly visitation with their small children.

The demographic of single women who prefer divorced, possibly bitter and/or bankrupt men who are part owners of small children has got to be nearly as small as the crossword-solving-octogenarian-Down Easter niche.

The letter warns that these men may be touchy, damaged, and inclined to hate all women but says that "one woman's trash is another woman's treasure," which is high praise indeed.

Even so, wouldn't a single (childless) woman feel a bit awkward clambering up Mayor McCheese? And who do you chat up first: the potential husband or the prospective step child?

Personally, I'd begin with the children, gathering detailed information about their behavior, eating habits, bed time, and the details of the custody arrangement before zeroing in on the fathers.

Is there a more ludicrous, ineffective/ sure-to-lead-to-disaster way to meet single men? Forthcoming Dear Abby columns are rumored to recommend becoming a prison pen pal, hanging around a battered women's shelter, or getting involved in the hair or fashion industry. Happy hunting, ladies.

Jesus, Give Me a Sign

2007-03-31T17:01:00.000-05:00

To kick off Holy Week, I thought I'd share this useful site, the Church Sign Generator. You can view some actual church signs, but best of all you can make your own. There are various denominational options, but since mockery begins at home, I find myself especially drawn to the Catholic sign.

Disaffected Investigates: Turks vs. Turkmen

2007-03-29T15:42:00.000-05:00

Are the Turkmen related to the Turks? (Who hasn't asked themselves this question in the small hours?)

My research indicates that this question has been troubling humanity for centuries. Either "Turkmen" is a combo of "Turk" and the Iranian word "manad" which, combined, means "looks like a Turk." Or, as some modern scholars suspect, the "man" in "Turkman" is an intensifier. In that case "Turkman" means "most Turk-like of the Turks" or "super-duper-Turkish."

In short, I have no answer for you. Perhaps the Turkmen themselves would care to clear this up? Until they do, I present a picture of a Turkman in traditional garb for your consideration. Does he simply look "kinda Turkish"? Or is he as Turkish as they come?

I welcome your theories on this fascinating, controversial matter.

An Apology and a Non-Binding Resolution

2007-03-29T15:06:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting my blog lately--should I apologize for that, or for now resolving to resume blogging more? I'm not sure.

At any rate, I've decided to introduce a new feature which I'm calling Disaffected Investigates. This will be a series of random revelations about the things that matter to you, as well as the things that don't, based entirely on my whim.

The first one will follow momentarily, unless one of the usual suspects wets her pants or tries to eat dirt...

The Association Does Not Approve

2007-03-22T14:30:00.000-05:00

I just received a "courtesy notice" from my Home Owner's Association advising me in broken English that "the underground sprinkling your are putting in" has not been approved by the Architectural Control Committee and may violate Deed Restrictions.

O may it? I can imagine that installing a sprinkler, say, on the roof of my house might violate some sort of Restriction that would rouse the Architectural Control Committee to a fit of Regulatory Fury.

But this "underground sprinkling" is in my lawn--coincidentally the same location that my next-door-neighbors and many other neighborhood residents chose to install their sprinkling.

The sprinkler is already in, so submitting a form begging them to allow it just a charade designed to assuage the hurt feelings of the Architectural Control Committee. And along with the form, I'm supposed to submit a picture of the sprinkler system. Here it is:

The mulch fire that's been smoldering near my house since Christmas Day had nearly convinced me that maybe Big Government really is the answer. Because when it's not busy regulating the shape of tomatoes and mandating that infants can find their toes, perhaps Big Government could find the odd moment to deal with pressing environmental hazards?

That's the way I was thinking until jackbooted neighborhood agents delivered the "sprinkling" missive to my door. True, the HOA isn't the government and I seriously doubt that the Architectural Control Committee has an armed enforcement wing. But on the I think that I'd rather live in a state where the hands-off government doesn't bother itself with cleaning up disaster sites that threaten our air quality and water supply than in one where Big Government starts interfering in my lawn.

I guess I've realized that I love to breathe the sweet (yet toxic) air of freedom more than I love responsive government. So when my house catches fire and nobody comes, I won't complain. I'll just try to salvage what I can with my renegade sprinkling.

Bush Fires Some Attorneys: Democracy, R.I.P.

2007-03-19T20:54:00.000-05:00

I apologize for abandoning my post, particularly in this time of upheaval and confusion. But if you were looking for the Disaffected to provide her signature insider line on the Beltway brouhaha du jour--well you seem to have confused me with The Drudge Report. Don't worry, happens all the time.

I've been trying to follow the news about the firing of the 8 U.S. Attorneys and to form some sort of conclusion about it. I'm open to rousing myself into a mild state of righteous indignation over this, if necessary, but to be honest I'm having enough trouble keeping my eyes open.

Admit it: This scandal is boring, boring, boring! If I were Alberto Gonzalez (and I MAY BE) I would never resign over a scandal like this. It lacks sizzle. It's deficient in pizazz. It's totally devoid of prurient interest.

The first order of business among the Democrats in Congress and other interested parties must be to spice this thing up!

Since I fancy myself a novelist (of sorts) I've taken the liberty of drawing up a few plot elements that, if inserted into this standard U.S.-attornies-get-the-axe plot line, could win the hearts, minds, and wavering attention span of the American People.

1) An actual axe. If one of the U.S. attorneys were an axe murderer, or perhaps, just lived next door to an axe murderer, this story goes from fizzle to sizzle fast.

2) Cross-dressing. Nothing spices up the usual political wrangling like a few revelations about male bureaucrats in ladies' underwear and wigs.

3) A meteor. An enormous meter hurtling toward the earth, though seemingly unconnected, would provide an opportunity for character development--I'd love to read about how one of the former U.S. attorneys refused to take shelter in a bunker moments before the meteor hit. "I promised myself I'd never be pushed out of the way for anyone or anything again," he might say, staring defiantly at the giant space rock hurtling toward him.

4) A catastrophic climate change event. I don't mean something boring like an ice sheet receding a couple of meters: something big, like the meteor, but instead of an Act of God (or the Apathetic Universe, for all you existentialist atheists) it would be Humanity's Love for Fossil Fuels and Aerosol Hairspray Comes Home to Roost. I'm leaning toward something involving lava.

5) A cover up. This is the single biggest problem with the story so far: where's the (interesting) cover up? A boring cover up may land you in jail (Martha Stewart) but it won't win you many readers. The cover up would dovetail nicely with any of the options above, particularly the meteor and the cross dressing.

ACTION ITEM: Write your Senator and Representative and tell them we're sick and tired of the same old, same old: they're boring the socks off their constituents. Demand that drama and well-developed heroes and villains be added to this story immediately.

What kind of narcissist are you?

2007-03-09T13:47:00.000-06:00

It's Friday, the best day of the week for shirking duties and wasting time. But how to fill those long hours between lunchtime and happy hour? What to do, what to do?

Allow me to suggest that you get in touch with your own narcissism with this handy quiz which will tell you exactly what kind of self-centered jerk you are.

What's that? You claim you're not a narcissist? I hope I won't be bruising your oversized ego when I tell you that denying you're a narcissist is the leading symptom of the condition.

Let's move past Denial, into Acceptance, and finally journey together toward Healing. I'll set the example by revealing that according to this quiz I am a narcissistic perfectionist (NP) personality with submissive traits, the classic "bovine" or "nervous bird" personality.

Bovine is pretty insulting, but my submissive traits dictate that I accept the ruling of the online quiz without complaint or question. The quiz knows what's best for me and I don't want to make any waves by contesting it.

Luckily for my inflated sense of self, the NP personality type is also called the "Quiet Achiever" and that part I really like. I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon contemplating my reflection in the mirror and whispering to myself "Lookin' good, Quite Achiever!"

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

2007-02-28T23:31:00.000-06:00

Last week I promised to reveal something momentous and ranch-dressing-related about the state of American democracy, and then I mysteriously disappeared.

Was I silenced? And if so, by whom, and for what reason? Who stood to lose by my revelations about America's favorite salad dressing/condiment and to what lengths would they go to stop me from speaking? These were the questions I asked myself about myself.

Luckily, as I believe I've said before, when the question is "conspiracy" there are only three credible perpetrators these days: a neocon cabal, Halliburton, or the Roman Catholic Church.

[The Catholic angle is possibly a little dated, a little 2006, especially now that persecuted, top secret, female-centered, pro-orgy, Jesus-was-my-grandaddy factions of Christianity are out with last year's hemlines, but I disapprove of conspiracies which don't include a walk-on role for the Vatican. Feel free to substitute an entity more to your liking... PETA, the postal service, Mothers Against Drunk Driving... whatever. ]

Having reduced the list to the usual suspects I began to ponder my likely fate. Had the CIA spirited me away to a dreary third-world jail for a friendly game of water boarding? Was I cleaning latrines at GITMO? Or was I perhaps reclining on the couch, swilling a margarita, with a bank account fat with Halliburton hush money and a nanny to watch the kids? No, no, and (sadly) no.

I could see this was going to be a tough case to crack. Possibly, the toughest of my distinguished career, in which my extraordinary powers of detection and dogged determination have led me to solve mysteries such as "What is the name of that Chinese takeout place near my house" and "Where is the baby?"

I've decided to let the matter lie, for now, and just get back to the ranch dressing already.

As I divulged last week, my order of buffalo wings at the movies recently was accompanied by an enormous vat of ranch dressing. The wings-to-dressing ratio was so outrageous that my first thought was that it was performance art of some kind---a satiric commentary on American overconsumption.

Even the most generous dipping and re-dipping of the greasy neon orange wings could not have emptied this cup. It invited you, it dared you, it practically begged you to--once the movie had started and nobody was looking--lift the quivering cauldron of ranch to your lips and drink it down.

And that's when Michael Moore and his camera crew would burst out from the row of seats behind you and make an ass of you in front of left-leaning, ranch-hating conspiracy theorists everywhere.

A disdain for ranch dressing goes hand in hand with a certain kind of homegrown anti-Americanism, because this milky white substance is linked closely to almost every liberal bete noir.

For instance: It's mass produced--by corporations! It's tacky and fattening and they don't eat it in France--sneering at it therefore makes you a cosmopolitan sophisticate, so different from you backward compatriots. Best of all, the very name "ranch" evokes the wild west and by extension the "cowboy" attitude so often decried in our foreign policy. In short, ranch is the Ugly American of the world's condiment shelf.

I had half a mind to leap from my seat and go burn the American flag in the theater's parking lot, but it just so happened we were watching "Pan's Labyrinth," which as you may know is set in Spain during the civil war.

Spain's condiment of choice, aioli, is both tastier and classier than ranch, and yet the movie painted a grim picture of Spanish life. Preening fascists vied for control with desperate commies, and while there was plenty of fresh produce in evidence, there was absolutely nobody to root for.

True, I had sneered at my oversized tub-o-ranch and all it stood for, but as I swabbed a wing over the pool of herb-speckled fat, reclining in my cushy oversized stadium chair, I had to admit it wasn't half bad.

Was it hypocrisy to enjoy the ranch and rail against it nearly simultaneously? Uh, yeah, I guess it was. But there's a longstanding American tradition of sneering at America, and isn't hypocrisy as American as apple pie?

Surely, I thought, a place where the condiments are bland but copious, where a few fascists parade ridiculously under cover of bed sheets, and where "marxist" is just a stage people go through in college can't be beyond redemption. Tears of patriotic pride rose to my eyes and coursed down my cheeks, displacing the rivulets of dressing that had collected in my triple chin.

Another Miracle Tree

2007-02-21T08:36:00.000-06:00

In honor of Ash Wednesday, here's a picture of another local miracle tree featured in the Express-News. If you look closely, you may see something that resembles Christ on a crucifix. Then again, you may just see a case of poor pruning.

I don't think this is quite as impressive as the tree that poured forth living (tap) water, but I love that San Antonio (or Crystal City in this case) is home to all sorts of low level horticultural miracles.

Ranch Dressing and the Excess of Empire

2007-02-20T09:19:00.000-06:00

This is an actual picture of the ranch dressing cup that came with the buffalo wings my husband and I ordered at the movies recently. I'm not sure if you can tell how enormous the cup was, but it easily held about 3/4 cup of ranch... served with, I think, 6 chicken wings.

The implications for the state of the American polis are dire. Right now I have to throw toys in bins and dress my children, but I'll be back with in-depth analysis of this important civilizational crisis soon.

In which I modestly declare my victory...

2007-02-15T15:37:00.000-06:00

I won 3rd place in a writing contest and I have a badge to prove it.

Look upon it and despair, all you naysayers. Just kidding.

I'm excited about this because I didn't even beg my friends and relatives to vote for me. Complete strangers did it!

I just noticed that my entry includes several typos, despite my former "career" as an editor. As Gordon would say "the shame of it, the shame of it!" There are lots of good entries to read at The Moon Topples.

Rick Perry 2008!

2007-02-07T09:55:00.000-06:00

Flush with victory (most Texans voted against him, but a win is a win) Gov. Rick Perry is pointing his pompadour to the Admiral's House--because apparently that's where the Vice President lives.

Perry hasn't actually declared himself for Veep in 2008. And why would he? That just isn't done. The Vice President has to be the courted, not the court-er. Nothing can spoil a Veep-hopeful's chances quicker than an over-eager, overt statement of his goal.

Becoming Veep is lot like dating at its most strictly traditional. Perry knows this, and that's why he's curled up in the Governor's mansion with a cup of chamomile tea and a copy of The Rules.

In the established tradition of campaigning, the party's nominee is the manly man and the vice presidential candidate is the blushing southern belle. These conventions must be observed.

Ask a man out, or God forbid, mention "marriage" or "electoral votes" and you'll find yourself home alone watching Sabado Gigante while he steps out with another girl/governor.

Perry certainly hasn't been foolish enough to actually announce his intentions, but he's been signalling his availability like mad, showing the boys that he's ready for the national stage.

Why just this week he's announced a plan to curb illegal immigration, declared war on cervical cancer, and dropped the names of various foreign leaders, just to prove he knows them.

(Note to out-of-staters: Texas politicians are typically quite hazy on the identities of non-Texans. Governor Bush couldn't recall the name of Pervez Musharaff; Comptroller and gubernatorial candidate Grandma Strayhorn was a little vague on who's president of Mexico; and Congressman Silvestre Reyes wouldn't know a Shiite from a Sunni at point-blank range, despite his years on the Select Intelligence Committee.)

I love my home state, but since we've loosed both LBJ and W on the Oval Office in the span of just a few decades, I think it's time we take a breather from presidential history. I suspect, though, that I am alone in this view and the rest of the country will greet the prospect of another Texan in the White House with wild enthusiasm.

But I'm getting ahead of myself: Perry's just aiming for Vice President at this point, and though (fellow Texan) John Garner dubbed the office "not worth a bucket of warm spit," the Coiffenor may find it much to his liking.

However, two things may spoil Perry's plans. The mulch fire, and Ted Nugent. The complicated political calculus I've used to determine that these are the biggest issues of a Perry candidacy is much too esoteric to explain to the lay reader, so just take my word for it.

Ahem. Now that we're all agreed, I'll explain why these are problems.

Problem #1: El Mulch Fire Gigante
First off, this thing is STILL BURNING. (Un applauso!) The fire started Christmas Day. Has Rick Perry done so much as a fly over? No he has not. Much less has he posed in front of the towering inferno, with shirt sleeves carefully rolled and collar unbuttoned, striking the Man of Decisive Action pose.

In these post-Katrina times, being soft on natural disasters is going to be a major liability on the campaign trail. And while the governor is sequestered in his mansion scribbling "Vice President Perry," "Vice President Rick Perry," "V.P.R.P," etc, over and over in his notebook, his underlings continue to behave like characters in a farce.

I won't bore you with the details (if things go well for Perry, you can learn about them in negative campaign ads instead) but today San Antonio Water Systems declined to provide water needed to resume the firefighting operations which were suspended weeks ago amid fears the fire runoff was contaminating the city's water supply.

SAWS now says the clay lined sluice pits the contractor spent weeks building aren't good enough to safeguard the water supply. But never fear: Bexar Met water, just down the road, has agreed to provide the water. So, since SAWS took this brave, principled stand, we'll just be paying more for water to be trucked in from farther away, and it will run right into the aquifer anyway.

Confidential to R.P. in Austin, Texas: Now might be the time do DO SOMETHING!

Problem #2: Ted Nugent

Republican rocker Ted Nugent played Perry's inaugural ball wearing a shirt displaying the Confederate flag. Apparently it was Confederate Veteran's Day, and somehow the rest of the state forgot to take the day off and barbecue in honor of our traitorous, slave-holding, anti-federalist past.

While I can't claim to possess the political evil genius of The Architect Karl Rove, I suspect that video footage of Gov. Perry clapping along to a stars-and-bars wearing nutcase might not play well nationally.

Go to the Time Out Chair, California

2007-01-30T21:01:00.000-06:00

So you may have heard that there's a move afoot to ban a certain method of discipline in California. Visiting red-staters who try to discipline their kids at Disneyland with this unenlightened, outmoded form of physical punishment would have to pay a $1,000 fine or possibly even spend a year in prison.

I'm deliberately not mentioning the name for this mode of punishment because I can just imagine the hits I'd get from people Googling "housewife" and "the punishment that shall remain nameless." Pervs.

However, the blog Blame Bush has a pretty amusing write up on the issue which you can read here.

361 Days Without a 2-Year-Old

2007-01-21T19:21:00.000-06:00

Lunatic 1, the resident 2 year old, turned 3 today. Hopefully with this milestone will come a halcyon era of domestic peace and serenity ... that is until next January when hell will break loose all over again.

Lunatic 2 Marks 365 Consecutive Sleepless Nights

2007-01-17T20:19:00.000-06:00

Kudos, #2! And Happy Birthday. While I miss actually getting some rest at night, I have to admire your commitment to rising every few hours and screaming your head off---every single night for a solid year. That takes true grit, and for that I salute you. Paging Dr. Ferber....

W. Snubs My Alma Mater

2007-01-15T20:56:00.000-06:00

This time, Mr. President, it's personal.

The Disaster in Chief has (almost) officially decided NOT to award his Presidential Library to the University of Dallas. Laura's alma mater, Southern Methodist University, will almost certainly get the nod instead.

I can't decide whether I'm more relieved or offended.

While it's neither as morally questionable as a preemptive-but-unplanned war against a random target, or as dangerous as appointing a stable boy to head a federal agency, this latest abuse of presidential power really annoys me--mostly because I can't believe that WE were rejected by HIM. It's not as bad as being turned down for, say, the Pol Pot Center for the Performing Arts, but it hurts.

As outrageous as it is to choose SMU over UD, the deck was stacked in SMU's favor from the get-go. Besides Mrs. W, this first-class, top rate, world renowned center of intellectual and horticultural excellence (the grass on their campus is quite striking, I must concede) was also graced by Karen Hughes and Harriet Miers. And Dick Cheney was once on the board.

It was, as they say, "a slam dunk."

Still, not everybody at SMU is happy that the W. show will be coming to town. Some of the faculty fear this will be an embarrassment to the school. But a current student quoted in the CNN article says :

"This school has a very conservative vibe, and most of the students like Bush. The only people who don't seem to be the faculty. I know for a fact that some are real liberal and I don't think should be teaching here."

Liberals on the faculty! It's shocking!!

So I've never understood why college professors are required by law to be, at the very least, pinkos (although if "not liking" W makes you a lefty then 68% of Americans are now pledging allegiance to the hammer and sickle... or whatever) but is SMU really a place where dissenting views of any kind are not to be tolerated? Is it? Is it really?

I have just one thing to say, then. Mr. President, welcome home!

It's not Hell, It's Helotes

2007-01-10T22:30:00.001-06:00

Welcome to the inferno! Just up the road from my house, in Helotes, Texas, there's a 400 foot long, 225 foot wide, and 70 foot tall pile of burning trash.

In some places, a fire of this magnitude might be considered a public emergency. I imagine that in the quasi-socialist nanny-state regimes of "old Europe," for instance, jackbooted federal fire fighters regularly burst through the doors of one's chateau to put out toaster fires.

Well, that's fine for them, but here in Texas we do things differently. We believe that government works best when it works least. Our state motto is: A smoldering inferno? Ya'll better put that out yourselves.

This fire began burning Christmas Day. Nobody other than the proud owner of the flaming heap of mulch, Henry Zumwalt, has yet tried to put it out.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (which helpfully issued Zumwalt a permit to collect this massive amount of brush and woodchips on his property) saw no role for itself once the trash heap caught fire and began billowing smoke. Who can blame them? It was Christmas time, and there were still cookies and eggnog in the breakroom.

The air in my neighborhood is smokey and when the wind blows the right direction, even the inside of my house smells like a barbecue place. I was a little concerned about whether young children might be harmed by breathing smokey air night and day, possibly for months or a year, which is how long it would take the fire to burn out on its own, but San Antonio's Metropolitan Health District quickly put my fears to rest.

"It's cool," they said in a memo released by an intern while the rest of the staff was home watching playoff football and eating leftover turkey, "a little smoke never hurt anybody."

When nobody bought that story, Metro Health admitted that smoke is, in fact, still bad for you and that the mulchy inferno does pose a health risk. Some people like to play the "blame game," but I salute Metro Health for being so frank with the public once it became clear that deception was ineffective.

(Or if ignorance was to blame, then I salute them for Googling "smoke--good for lungs?" and then being humble enough to reconsider their stance.)

Kudos, too, to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which after a slow start, sprang into action this week and demanded that Zumwalt produce a written plan about how he intended to deal with the fire. Now that's what I call decisive!

I'm so glad to know that the TCEQ is a real agency with principles and a plan (a written plan!) and and not just a meal ticket for political cronies like, you know, FEMA.

Well, this story may have a happy ending because TCEQ decided to hire a fancy pants contractor from California, Oil Mop LLC, to put out the fire. But first they have to build a wall of dirt around it so that the runoff doesn't contaminate our drinking water. With a bit of luck, they might begin trying to extinguish this thing on Friday, mere weeks after it began!

That, and the fact that I and every member of my family smell like brisket, makes me proud to be a Texan.

Ring in the New Year with a Homeless Cat

2006-12-31T11:58:00.000-06:00

It's New Year's Eve! Are you all alone, watching the festivities in Times Square in your dingy bathrobe and eating cold tomato soup out of the can? Do you long for friendship, understanding, or at least the company of another mammal?

Adopt a cat!

Or maybe you just got home from a fabulous New Year's bash. You've consumed nothing but champagne and small objects wrapped in philo dough for the past 8 hours. Let's be honest, your judgment isn't the best right now:

There's no better time to adopt a cat!

Perhaps you're reading this on New Year's Day, a holiday traditionally marred by periods of anxious brooding, regret, and pounding headaches. "Where am I going? What am I doing with my life? What does it all mean?" you ask as you breakfast on ritz crackers and warm beer.

Assuage your existential angst by adopting a homeless cat!

Seriously, if you live in San Antonio and want a (free!!) homeless cat, my compassionate, animal-loving friend Dawn is trying to place the three cuddly (?) characters pictured above.

I'd adopt one myself, except that I don't like cats. But I do like Dawn. So if you like cats, and you can't be brought to your senses, do a good deed and consider welcoming one of these felines into your heart and ... shudder... your home.

Happy New Year!

Disaffected Gift Guide

2006-12-21T13:40:00.000-06:00

As a public service, I'm compiling a short list of can't-miss gifts that will be sure to please anyone your Christmas list.

My natural modesty has prevented me from mentioning it before now, but I can't deny that I'm known among my friends and relations as something of a gift-giving savant. I have an uncanny knack of buying miraculously tasteful and thoughtful gifts for a fraction of the cost the recipient typically spends on me.

Now it's time for me to share my picks for the best gifts of 2006. Just pick a gift at random and present it with pride to anyone and/or everyone on your list, regardless of gender, age, race, class, ethnicity, religion or creed, then sit back and enjoy the ooohs and aahhhs of sheer delight. Consider that my Christmas gift to you.

1) American Hair Metal by Steven Blush

Perfect for the history buff, the music enthusiast, or anyone who has or once had hair, Steven Blush's scholarly tome--which analyzes the enduring appeal of metal bands such as Damn Salmon and Barometric Pressure-- is sure to reduce the lucky recipient to a state of tearful gratitude.

2) Bare Escentuals Make Up. Bare Escentuals makeup is made out of "minerals," by which they mean, I think, "dirt." However, the dirt has been cleaned and sanitized to make it pure. So pure, in fact that they claim "you can sleep in it." Well, I say it's about time that somebody removed the stigma associated with sleeping in your makeup.

Too often, showing up at the office in "yesterday's makeup" subjects a woman to malicious and unfair gossip to the effect that she is either 1) a slob or 2) has a drinking problem and/or 3) is a tramp. This is another example of the double standard women face, as men who come to work unshaven, disheveled, and reeking of tequila are merely considered "fashionable."

While this gift is suitable for everyone--yes, EVERYONE--on your list I urge you to keep it mind for women who are known to enjoy the nightlife and who are prone to waking up in strange places, feeling confused and nauseated. This is the kind of gift that says "I understand you, and yet, I don't judge you."

3) A salad spinner

Once considered the quintessence of the random, disappointing, and completely unnecessary gift, this little gadget has come into its own in our post 9/11 world. Need I remind you of how Al Queda operatives recently contaminated the nation's spinach supply? Hmmm? Well, how quickly we forget!

If the lucky recipient should have the cheek to suggest that simply washing greens will not protect us from ecoli, you look them dead in the eye and say: "I will never relent in defending America - whatever it takes. " Perfect for the patriot on your list.

Randy Cohen: The Everyday Nihilist

2006-12-11T21:12:00.000-06:00

I have an advice column addiction, and like most addictions, the fleeting rush of pleasure it brings me is far outweighed by the pain. For every highpoint (the hilarious letter to Dr. Billy Graham in which a woman asked if it was wrong to pray that people she didn't like would go to hell! [He said yes.]) there is a lowpoint, usually in the medical column, which deals almost exclusively with spastic colons, peppered with the occasional case of Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

But worse even than the contortions of a stranger's bowels is Randy Cohen's "Everyday Ethics." Randy Cohen is a New York Times columnist and a sociopath of the first order. His column never fails to depress and mystify me, even when, as very occasionally happens, I agree with him-- because it's quite disturbing to find myself in agreement with one of the most shockingly criminal minds of the advice column biz, an industry which is rife with nuts, perverts, and sadists.

I'm almost certain that the uniformly terrible advice dished out by advice columnists of all sorts is no accident. Rather, it's part of a broad conspiracy to destroy American society from within.

I'm not sure who is behind it, but the Dear Abby/Ann Landers columns which were at the vanguard of this sinister plot began appearing in 1955/1956. The dates suggest either the KGB, North Korea, or maybe even high ranking officials deep within the Roman Curia. (That last one is just because I disapprove of conspiracy theories which don't provide at least a cameo role for the Vatican.)

My personal feeling is that this has the KGB's fingers all over it, but I'll Conjecture, You Decide, ok?

Well, for more evidence of the advice column conspiracy see the story "The Best of Betty," by Jincy Willet. Now back to Randy Cohen.

Agent Cohen once told a recent convert to vegetarianism that it would be wrong to give his fly fishing equipment away to his non-vegetarian relative, because fishing is so Eeeevil that one can't in good conscience aid or abet it in any way. On the other hand, just a few weeks ago he told a probate lawyer whose client mentioned that she might kill herself to mind his own businesses and not attempt to dissuade her!

Say what you will about the moral and ethical questions raised by the suicide scenario, but I submit to you that simple politeness requires a person to say, "Please don't kill yourself!" in just the same way you reassure friends that they're not too fat to wear leggings or swear to your hosts that the soup they made isn't too salty. Anything less is just poor form.

But the enormity of Cohen's latest "advice" column makes the suicide thing look like a minor gaffe. A computer tech person who found kiddy porn on his (?) boss's computer was told by Cohen that he or she was ethically obligated to say nothing. He didn't just tell this person that there was no obligation to turn the boss in; he went so far as to say the employee must not say anything.

Cohen said that it's possible the "kids" were really adult actors portraying underage boys/girls and that it wouldn't be fair for the boss to go to jail for possessing pictures of adult pervs who are just pretending to be victimized children or teens for the titillation of other adult perverts. He then went on to compare the government's efforts to fight kiddy porn to the war on drugs, which (he thinks) irrationally punishes the consumers.

Er, ok. Surely Randy has no personal interest in decriminalizing child pornography? Then I have to fall back on my KGB agent conspiracy theory. Mr. Cohen provides a few more equally outrageous arguments about why 1) the employee should ignore the porn and 2) some of the laws on the books about child porn are too harsh. I wish I could quote them for you, but to do that, I'd have to pay the New York Times for the column.

Since I can't in good conscience do that, I'm forced to conclude this blog with an apology to Randy Cohen. He's not a nihilist after all. Whatever else might be said of the man, he's a firm believer in copyright law.

Extra Disaffected

2006-12-01T13:26:00.000-06:00

I woke up this morning filled with energy and optimism, for some reason. As I was drinking my coffee and perusing advice columns, I experienced a moment of Rumsfeldian hubris: I actually resolved to clean my entire house. Not just the upstairs, not just the playroom or the kitchen, but the entire thing.

My record on cleaning the whole house is nearly as spotty as my record on nation building, regime change, exporting democracy, and brokering peace deals, which is to say.... it's practically nonexistent.

Still, my campaign began well. I started in my room. In less time than it takes to topple a colossal statue of a ruthless dictator, I had made the bed and returned a plastic carrot, a toy stethoscope, and a ceramic piggy bank to their homes in the playroom.

I moved on to the playroom, which was awash in blocks, trains, dolls, and toddler sized musical instruments--a gift that I recommend that the U.S. government give to the children of those who threaten our national security. Try assembling a dirty bomb while your toddler is banging away at a drum or thrashing a tambourine. Really, just try it.

The task was daunting, but I was still optimistic and even beginning to see small splotches of carpet amid the debris, when intra-Lunatic violence broke out. The two of them began tussling over a green mermaid cell phone and neither could be tempted with the pink cell phone. Civil war seemed imminent, but the baby was suddenly distracted by tasty looking scrap of paper under the desk, at which point her sister lost all interest in the mermaid phone, too.

I resumed my cleaning operation, but things went downhill fast. The offspring kept clamoring for my attention, pulling each other's hair, demanding snacks, and getting out new toys to take the place of the ones I'd put away.

The thing that continually surprises me about motherhood is how if you let your guard down for just a minute, your children inevitably end up naked and covered with jam. Just as sectarian violence erupts whenever there's a vacuum of power, disrobing and jam smearing inevitably rear their heads as soon as a lapse in maternal supervision occurs. Running around wearing a thick coat of grape jelly is the natural state of children, I guess.

I abandoned my assault on the living room in order to scrub jam off faces, legs, backs, and arms and to find and replace the discarded clothing. When I'd finished, the optimism of the morning had been replaced by my typical afternoon malaise.

The house looks better than it did, I suppose, so my hours of effort aren't completely in vain. An impartial observer might conclude that an orderly family once lived upstairs, but that they were tragically eaten by a pack of jelly covered wild boars who then ran amuck in the living room.

Parenting Paris Hilton

2006-11-17T21:58:00.000-06:00

I haven't been blogging lately since I am, at least in theory, writing a novel, and also because my baby has thrown the household into chaos in recent weeks by pretending to have celiac disease.

At least I hope she's just pretending. We'll see. She had blood drawn for tests this afternoon and her symptoms seem to have improved since then. Either she was "scared straight" by our trip to the lab or else the time honored practice of blood letting really does have healing properties and should reinstated immediately.

Well, to keep from imagining a potential future in which bread, pasta, waffles, cake, pizza and every other carb which we hold dear is banned from our house, I've spent the evening contemplating Paris Hilton.

I realize this may sound frivolous. However, the practice was endorsed by no less an authority than Ignatius of Loyola, author of The Spiritual Exercises of St. I. of L.

I'm not saying that Ignatius knew Paris Hilton personally, although I can't rule it out, either. It's as likely as anything that Paris Hilton has always existed and has roamed the earth in various guises since the dawn of time, wreaking havoc of one kind or another.

But just at Ignatius' 12 step program recommends imagining the suffering of sinners in hell in order to avoid eventually joining them, as the mother of 2 girls I find it useful to contemplate the many faults of Paris Hilton in order to avoid raising a daughter anything like her.

I'm not sure exactly what my goal for my daughters is, but I think you could sum it up as "the exact opposite of Paris Hilton," who must be the Worst Daughter in twenty-first-century America.

She's ignorant. She's tacky. She's shallow and materialistic. She's known for mocking the homeless, physically attacking people, driving drunk, and appearing semi clothed in public, among other things.

Clearly her parents did absolutely everything wrong. But I ask myself, am I making the same mistakes? I wish her parents would, in reparation for having loosed her on the world, write a book spelling out every detail of her upbringing--discipline methods, diaper creams, everything--so that the rest of us can scrupulously avoid those pitfalls.

Until the Paris Hilton Parenting Manual is published I'm flying blind.

Am I as bad a parent as the Hiltons were? Well, I'm not filthy rich and I'm not a hotel mogul, so I've dodged a couple of bullets there. Also, I didn't name either daughter after the French location of a hotel chain. Three points in the "Not as Bad" column.

However, like both Paris and Ignatius of Loyola, I'm Catholic. In case you've been neglecting your celebrity gossip, Paris actually referred to herself as a practicing Catholic and claimed that she attends church-- or at least, that she could enter a church without the earth cracking open to swallow her or the veil of the tabernacle being rent or anything in that line.

So at first I put "Same Religion" in the "Potentially as Bad" column. But since I've lived 31 years beholden to the Whore of Babylon without yet making a worldwide spectacle of my appalling, multifaceted, heinous collection of moral failings or wearing a dress with a million dollars in poker chips hanging from the collar, I decided I'm going to just tally it as a Neutral.

Well, three points for me, one neutral, and none against... that's some comfort, but my mind isn't yet at ease. Please, Mr. and Mrs. Hilton, write that book!

If you're afraid admitting that her character is all your fault will make you legally liable next time she punches somebody in the face or ridicules poverty, I have a suggestion. Just title the book "If We Raised Her..."

How Evelyn Waugh Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life

2006-11-01T07:57:00.000-06:00

Well friends, National Write a Novel Month is upon us, and this year I'm not going to make the same mistakes that plagued my novel writing campaigns of 2005 and 2004.

Original invention is out the window: plagiarism is in!

Inspired by the example of Harvard student and plagiarist Kaavya Viswanathan (author of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life) I plan to abandon my efforts to craft an original plot and just crib Evelyn Waugh.

Here's my reasoning. I tried original writing and where did it get me?
nowhere. Viswanathan got a 2-book-deal, a movie option, an advance, and infamy, which is the new, improved form of fame. True, her book deal got canceled and her book was recalled from the shelves, but copies of it are going for more than $80 on ebay, and that's $80 more than I've ever made on my writing.

To follow the Viswanathan formula, I'll need to copy a few other writers, too. I'm open to suggestions on this. The young Harvard plagiarist lifted material from a weighty tome called "Sloppy Seconds," "The Princess Diaries"---and, amazingly--"Haroun and the Sea of Stories" by Salman Rushdie.

At first, since Viswanathan is so young and and a Harvard student (and as everyone knows, cheating is the Ivy League way... or at least it was back when I was double majoring in astrophysics and drama at Yale) people were going easy on her and referring to the copying as a "mistake." But not Rushdie. Here's what she lifted from him, as reported by the Harvard Crimson:

On page 35 of Rushdie’s novel, one of the warnings reads: “If from speed you get your thrill / take precaution—make your will.”

On page 118 of Viswanathan’s novel, one of the posters reads:
“If from drink you get your thrill, take precaution—write your will.”

If she'd actually written the rest of her book, I think maybe this one line could have been called an allusion. But a clearly ticked Rushdie said in response "I know when I write a book it's my name on the book so I stand or fall by what I sign"-- a not-so-subtle reminder of how he was insulting Islam and receiving death threats way back before it was cool.

Although he doesn't come out and say it, I think his real beef was being grouped with the authors of "Sloppy Seconds" and the "Princess Diaries." That's got to be the most humiliating thing that can happen to a hoity toity intellectual writer short of an endorsement by Oprah's book club. Since I read 75% of "Midnight's Children" I think I know Mr. Rushide well enough to say that the Fatwa was probably a lot easier to take than a cameo in "Opal Mehta."

Well, maybe plaigairsm is more trouble than it's worth. Besides, I've got at least two stunningly original plots just waiting to be put down on paper:

1) A group of lovable misfits overcomes all odds to win the state championship, finding love, friendship, and redemption along the way.

2) A courageous teacher challenges the school establishment and engages his/her troubled, at-risk, inner city students, opening their eyes to the joy of calculus/Brit lit/pilates , finding love, friendship, and redemption on the way.

Either way, the thing will practically write itself. And at this rate, it may have to.

I was right all along. Wasn't I?

2006-10-27T11:38:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I received a strange envelope in the mail. At first it looked like ordinary junk mail, but as I was poised to drop it into the garbage can I noticed typed on the back "[Emarie] you were right all along!"

Well, this just confirmed what I already knew, and yet I was surprised, because I don't hear that as often as you might expect. I had to open it.

The letter inside announced what in particular I've been right about: media bias.

"Did I ever say the media was biased," I asked the baby, but her mouth was stuffed with banana and she remained silent and inscrutable.

I was pretty sure I hadn't, but it seemed ungracious to quibble. True, they'd gotten the particulars somewhat wrong but the substance of their message was dead-on. I agreed to let the Christian Science Monitor send me three months of free issues.

They started to arrive a week ago.

I think it's general practice among religious groups, doomsday cults, and book-of-the month clubs to emphasize the positive and to keep you in the dark about the downside of membership until they've already got you in their power. I imagine that when they go out trolling for new recruits, the Amish hype the home cooked meals and the quilts, and say as little as possible about the beards, the backbreaking labor, and the 19th century dental care.

So I have to credit the Christian Scientists for their candor. The small two column daily feature "Christian science perspective on daily life" quite often mentions how everything from aspirin to echo cardiograms is verboten to the faithful.

The very first column I read was an inspiring tale of a woman (I think) who woke with cold symptoms which she attributed to the draught created by her sleeping fan. Does Christ Comma Scientist point out that colds are viruses and that the draught theory went out with the horse and buggy? No. He simply heals her without comment. By the time she's finished showering the cold symptoms and the despair that accompanied the onset of the sniffles have disappeared.

The Christian Scientist Himself is very different from the Catholic Jesus, or at least my own probably warped post Vatican II understanding of him. Catholic Jesus would, I suspect, tell you to take some Sudafed and to be glad you're called upon to face down a sore throat and not a trio of hungry lions in Nero's Circus.

But Christ Comma Scientist seems to have no harsh words for anyone (except pill poppers?). He's a helpful fellow, ever ready to exert himself in small but meaningful ways like opening the lid of a jar that's on too tight, suggesting a new way to prepare chicken casserole, or cheering you up when your lack of living room furniture has got you down.

Maybe they're saving his tougher side for when I try to cancel my subscription?

Thus Spake the Disaffected

2006-10-23T21:58:00.000-05:00

Here by... ahem... popular demand is an excerpt from the story I wrote for writing class a few weeks ago. If I had any sense at all, I'd be trying to revise and improve it based on the very helpful and generous advice of the writing teacher, Carlos Flores, who wrote this novel.

Instead, I'm trying to make an outline of what I want to write for National Write a Novel Month, which is a mere 8 days away. I'm planning to try a historical novel, which will be a challenge, because I don't know any history.

So to sum up: I plan to write a novel, in 30 days, on a historical subject, without knowing much history, and without doing any research whatsoever.

The only thing that could make this plan more ingenious would be to resolve to type the whole thing with my nose, which I just might do.

Without further ado, here is an excerpt from (the middle of) my story, which I've humbly titled Crime & Punishment:

Juror number 12 cried continually during the trial, especially when we were shown pictures of Killer, the pit bull who’d mauled the victim to death and then been shot twice in the head by animal control.

During the morning recess, she sighed weepily into her decaf, “I think there are really two victims here. The victim, and Killer.”

I tried to look noncommittal as I crunched my way through a glazed cruller, but I guess it didn’t quite come off because she sniffed again and added, a bit defensively I thought, “I’m just a sensitive soul.”

Well a person like that, a “sensitive” person who goes in for crass melodrama, would be crushed under the weight of indifference foisted upon patrons who run afoul of the public library system. I doubt she could bear for one day the nagging guilt and the crippling ennui that I’ve been living with for the past 407 days.

Still less could she face up to her crime, overcome her inertia, and steel herself into a resolve firm enough even to withstand the bored face of the circulation desk clerk, pay her fine, and return the book.

That’s right: no confession, no repentance, no absolution. Nothing emotional or ceremonial or even procedural to indicate that you‘ve done wrong and are atoning for your crime: just the quick, impersonal exchange of legal tender and the thud of the book as it slides down into the returns slot and you‘re free to rejoin the other patrons milling around the periodicals.

Such is the nihilism of our public library system.

The 30-Day Novel

2006-10-17T11:51:00.000-05:00

November is National Novel Writing Month!

If you're not too busy celebrating National Family Caregiver's Month, National American Indian & Alaska Native Heritage Month, National Healthy Skin Month, Children's Book Week, Diabetes Awareness Month, or National Tub Grout Cleaning Week, I strongly suggest you participate.
That's right, participate.

Unlike Awareness and professional football, Novel Writing is no spectator sport. You can go to this web site to register for the event, but the plan is simple: Write a 175 page novel in 30 days.

I'm contemplating a third consecutive try, even though, as usual, I have no plot, no ideas, and almost no time to write that isn't interrupted by the need to remove electrical cords from my baby's mouth.

Still, I'm optimistic:

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

I look at it this way: If I spend 30 days typing as fast as I can, then for the rest of my life, I'll have the right to coyly mention "my novel" and to refer to myself as a novelist, with a semi-straight face.

Nobody need know that my novel will be 175 pages of hopeless, disconnected blather, dashed off in only one month.

I plan to cultivate the impression that it's simply too daring, too envelope-pushing to be publishable in today's market, but that it's very likely--almost certain--that future generations of high schoolers will be buying the Cliff Notes to it.

Jane Austen: Writing Workshop Dropout

2006-10-13T09:38:00.000-05:00

Can you tell what's wrong with the following passage? If you've been hanging around with writing class groupies, its flaws will jump out at you.

Lydia's intention of walking to Meryton was not forgotten; every sister
except Mary agreed to go with her; and Mr. Collins was to attend them, at the request of Mr. Bennet, who was most anxious to get rid of him, and have his library to himself; for thither Mr. Collins had followed him after breakfast, and there he would continue, nominally engaged with one of the largest folios in the collection, but really talking to Mr. Bennet, with little cessation, of his house and garden at Hunsford. Such doings discomposed Mr. Bennet exceedingly. In
his library he had been always sure of leisure and tranquillity; and though prepared, as he told Elizabeth, to meet with folly and conceit in every other room in the house, he was used to be free from them there; his civility, therefore, was most prompt in inviting Mr. Collins to join his daughters in their walk; and Mr. Collins, being in fact much better fitted for a walker than a reader, was extremely well pleased to close his large book, and go.

If you were to submit this to a writing workshop, and weren't recognized as a plagiarist, I guarantee that you'd be told this is a horrible example of telling not showing.

Instead of one longish paragraph, people would recommend that you spend pages dramatizing Lydia deciding to go on a walk, Mr. Collins making inane remarks, Mr. Bennet getting annoyed, and then everyone leaving the house together.

(You'd also be told that the name "Mr. Collins" is implausible, that Lydia isn't likeable, and that the motivations of Mr. Bennet are unclear and confusing. )

Of course, in fairness to the writing class junkies, Pride & Prejudice is 90% dialogue so in general JA adheres to that standard, whereas I don't but should. Or at least, should more often.

Still, I'm just not convinced that there aren't times when "telling" isn't better and less boring than a lot of drawn out "showing."

For one thing, in my daily life, when I'm in conversation, people rarely beg and plead with me to give them more detail. Sometimes I catch a distinct pleading look of "Get to the point, already!" in their glazed eyes.

And I think it's probably safer to go by the reactions of people who have to listen to you all the time rather than a group of strangers who are secure in the knowledge that after reading 5 pages of double spaced schlock, they'll never have to deal with you again.

Snout Nosed

2006-10-05T22:18:00.000-05:00

It's been hot here this week and I've been busy working on a story for a writing class I'm taking this Saturday, so I haven't had much time or inclination to go out and commune with nature.

Mind you, even during the best of times, I don't commune with nature unless it absolutely can't be helped. I prefer the great indoors, now and for all eternity. In fact, I'm turning 31 this month and for my birthday I asked my husband to buy me one of the indoor burial-crypt-slot-things our church is selling... either that or the BBC version of Pride & Prejudice on DVD.

The thought of my remains being stored in air conditioned comfort really appeals to me, and my hopes were high. But what came in the mail today?.... a package from Amazon.com. I'm definitely NOT getting the crypt I asked for. (Cheapskate!)

Well I was going to say that though I haven't gone outside much, I have noticed swarms butterflies in the area. My car is covered with splattered butterfly guts.

I haven't got a close look at one of the butterflies in a live, unsplattered state but from what I read, they are called "snout nosed" butterflies and are prone to appearing in south Texas in huge numbers--as in billions of butterflies--especially during times of drought. They're not very cute. Here's a picture.

Where are the snout noses going, you may ask? Nowhere in particular, according to the Express-News.

"No one really knows where the snouts are headed next. Unlike their more famous
cousins, the monarchs, snouts have no discernible migration pattern and have been known to just kind of mill about in circles."

They're just milling around! I love it, because I think that's how most of the population of San Antonio got here: we all just wandered here for no good reason, and we can't formulate a plan to move anywhere more appealing, so here we stay, milling.

Let that be a lesson to you, o out-of-town readership. Keep focused. Have a plan. Or one day, you'll wake up in San Antonio, where it's infernally hot most of the year and the air conditioned crypts are going fast.

In Custody: Angry!

2006-09-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

My daughter was rummaging through the toy closet this morning when she announced, "Oh, here's Angry!"

Since all I knew about Angry was that he 1) is dirty 2) talks and 3) tends to bite people, I approached the closet with some trepidation.

However, Angry appears to be nothing more than a stuffed bear of only middling dinginess, a memento of Valentine's Day past.

The Angry-is-Dirty crisis was finally resolved with only a moderate loss of maternal sanity when we told her that Angry had gone to his mommy's house to take a bath. Apparently she still buys that story because "Angry is clean now."

I'll think twice before picking up toys again.

The Marital Politics of 9/11

2006-09-26T20:48:00.000-05:00

Why did Bill Clinton flip out when Chris Wallace asked whether he did enough to go after Al Queda during his presidency?

You may say it's something to do with right-wing hit jobs or election year posturing, but I can explain his flareup with one word: Hillary.

No matter how staunchly she defends him in public, you know that's it's got to be a totally different picture when it's just the two of them, alone on a Saturday night, confronting the really tough issues that married couples face, like what kind of movie to order on pay-per-view:

Hillary: This French movie got great reviews...
BC: No! Nothing with costumes or subtitles! Let's see an action flick.
Hillary: You're such a philistine, Bill.
BC: Can't we see a movie I want to see just once? You always have to have your own way.
Hillary: You could have stopped 9/11!

Cue the artsy costume drama with subtitles. That's all she has to say, and she wins, every single time.

Well, I've blamed MY husband for 9/11 a few times in the heat of an argument... who hasn't? But since I'm pretty sure that, despite his questionable taste in movies, he had almost nothing to do with it, it's not a terribly effective gambit.

For Hillary on the other hand, 9/11 has likely become the nuclear option of marital arguments. It's given her the kind of ammo that even years of public philandering on Bill's part could never provide, and it must make Bill's life a living hell.

I don't know whether he gave Osama enough thought during his presidency, but I bet he thinks of him often now. Perhaps he even gets a little wistful when he imagines Osama running wild and free through the Pakistani outback with his many, many wives.... all of them chattel, none of them senators.

The Vatican Sports Page

2006-09-22T14:01:00.000-05:00

I've read this site Whispers in the Loggia off and on in the past, and was reminded of it again last week when I heard the guy who does it profiled on the radio.

As you would / would not (take your pick) expect of a site that chronicles such things as who's going to be the new Super Duper Prelate General of the Order of the Fighting Carthusians, for instance, it's written by a 23-year-old guy in Pennsylvania who lives in his parents' basement.

I'm not sure why I read the site, because despite, oh, 17 years or so of Catholic education, I usually can't make head or tail of it. Of course, if my religion classes had focused more on Insider Vatican Secrets!! and less on "working within the Church for change," maybe I'd know more about these matters.

Anyway, the guy who writes it (Rocco Palmo) refers to it as the Vatican sports page, but I think it's more like celebrity gossip... except you've never heard of 99% of the celebrities.

Better Parenting through Shakespeare

2006-09-18T13:20:00.000-05:00

This search engine will let you search the complete works of Shakespeare. My first instinct was to search for "Francis Bacon" in case there might be some sort of coded admission that Bacon authored the works of Shakespeare. But I had no luck. Searching for "bacon" returned a few cryptic references, but nothing I'm willing to stake my scholarly reputation on. Ha ha.

So instead I turned to it for parenting advice and I found this, which pretty much sums up the situation at my house:

Now, as fond fathers,
Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch,
Only to stick it in their children's sight
For terror, not to use, in time the rod
Becomes more mock'd than fear'd; so our decrees,
Dead to infliction, to themselves are dead;
And liberty plucks justice by the nose;
The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart
Goes all decorum.

Blame Ann Richards

2006-09-15T12:01:00.000-05:00

Ann Richards, the second woman to be governor of Texas, died this week, and among the mostly positive remembrances I'm starting to detect a few sour notes. Namely, she's getting blamed for W.

I come to blog Gov. Richards, not to praise her, so let's get right down to business: In 1994 despite raising millions more in campaign money than W., despite being known for her eloquence and "wit," she managed to lose an election everybody thought she would win.

And get this: W. beat her, by her own admission, by being the most articulate candidate! (Ok, she said he was more on message and in an insulting way, but still.)

If she had managed to out talk the most famously inarticulate politician in American history, what would the world be like today?

Well, Texas would have had to put up with Richards for 4 more years (I confess, I'm not a Fan of Ann, may she RIP ) and W. would still be (mis)managing a baseball team somewhere in North Texas.

Worst case scenario: he might have hired an army of mercenaries to invade countries that like soccer, forcibly set up baseball leagues, and thereby provoked an insurgency made up of various factions of hard line soccer hooligans. As Alternate Futures go, it's really not too bad.

Every Richards tribute I've read mentions (approvingly) her famous line about H.W., that he was "born with a silver foot in his mouth." but since that is possibly one of the reasons W. decided to run against her, I'm not sure we can justifiably put that in the plus column of Richard's record.

And it troubles me that both Richards and the other female governor of Texas, Ma Ferguson, are probably going to be remembered for one liners. (For those of you who are just joining us, Ma said about the English language "If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.) Really, ladies, is that the best we can do? Although at least Richards' was funny on purpose.

Still, there's a hopeful footnote (ha ha ha) to this story, some evidence that civility is not dead in politics. After Ann made her famous joke, H.W. sent her some jewelry: a silver foot pin.

I lost my engagement ring earlier this year and now I'm obsessed with the idea of trying to publicly insult H.W. in a bid to get it replaced.

My current plan is this: When W. leaves the White House for good and returns to the ranch in Crawford, he'll be ready to have some R& R with the family.

The new president will be getting all the media attention, and Cindy Sheehan and all the other protesters and will all have dispersed. With his parents by his side, W. will sigh, with relief or maybe regret, when he sees the entrance to his beloved ranch deserted... or so it seems, until the glint of white poster board catches his eye.

One protester will be there to greet the family motorcade, frantically waving a placard emblazoned with the message: "George Bush was born with a 6-carrot diamond engagement ring, yellow gold, size 4 1/2, in his mouth!" followed by my mailing address.

Angry is Dirty

2006-09-15T10:45:00.000-05:00

My 2 year old has been walking around all morning saying that "Angry is dirty," and "We need to clean him."

It's best not to contradict a 2 yr old, so I just gave her a wash rag and told her to have at it. But apparently, Angry is also lost and I need to find him.

My problem is that I have no idea who or what Angry might be. "Who is Angry? What is Angry?" I keep asking but I just get the same answer: "Angry is dirty."

I've asked whether Angry is a doll, a train, a book, anything I can think of but I'm getting nowhere. I've tried just ignoring her, but apparently Angry's lack of cleanliness is first and foremost in her mind.

It was kind of funny the first 500 times, but now I'm heading for a nervous breakdown. Another hour of this and I'll spend the rest of my life in an asylum, wearing a dingy bathrobe and muttering "Angry is dirty."

If you have any information about the whereabouts of Angry, please call in your tips. If you don't hear from me again, I'm somewhere getting shock therapy.

Borderline

2006-09-13T08:35:00.000-05:00

Mexico is offering a new attraction for extreme sports enthusiasts: Eco Alberto, a theme park in Mexico will recreate the (illegal) border crossing experience for you in all its hot, miserable glory for just $15.

The price seems high, since the real Border Patrol will happily chase you for free. (Not counting the tax dollars, that is... but who does?) Of course, the real Border Patrol might shoot or arrest you, but that's got to make the rush all that more intense.

The park operator on the other hand, who reportedly looks a lot like Subcomandante Marcos, just takes you to an indigenous holy place and exhorts you to be "more honest and sincere" in your life.

(And having just paid impoverished members of the Hnahnu community to chase you across a fake border, you're off to an excellent start.)

Egoist's Book Club: Teething Edition

2006-09-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

I've thought long and hard about finishing Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation and several times I've resolved to resume reading it, but I'm ashamed to report that it's still lying on the floor of my closet. I'm sorry, John Phillip Santos. You deserved better, but I'm fickle, and I don't really like memoirs.

I'm also very sleep deprived, which has decimated my already underdeveloped attention span. My baby is teething and I have come to suspect she's also a practicing Christian Scientist because of the lengths she will go to to avoid swallowing even a drop of baby Tylenol.

I mention that not to plead for sympathy (though I'll take it) but to warn anyone who might read this that you're dealing with what's known as an Unreliable Narrator. Maybe this book exists and maybe I've been reading it or maybe it's just a delusion I've been having while pacing the floor at 2 a.m. I can't vouch for anything.

Without further ado here are some of the highlights from To The Best of My Ability: The American Presidents, ed. James McPherson.

Guess Who? "Lacking the intellectual confidence of his advisers, he consulted with them often... but when ready to act, he acted decisively and, in the case of controversial decisions... never second-guessed himself." Hint: George W!.... But in this case the W. stands for Washington.

Like most American school children I swallowed the lies about George Washington: that he chopped down a cherry tree with his little axe (How charming colonial children must have been with their pint-sized, fully functional versions of dangerous weapons) that he Could Not Tell a Lie, and that he was a good president.

In fact, Washington showed an appalling lack of republican (little r) virtue, in my opinion. He at first wanted to be called his "His High Mightiness" rather than Mr. President and often spoke of himself in the third person. He held very formal audiences called levees in imitation of royal courts, and he was always attended by four servants dressed in livery. The essay in the book (by Gordon Wood) is favorable and lauds Washington for not assuming kingly power despite a lot of popular support for an American king, but I say praising a president for not making himself king is setting the bar pretty low.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? President Taft. Sorry, a shameless fat joke. He installed a specially made xtra-large bathtub in the White House, but sadly, it was removed. Given the obesity problem in this country, President Taft is sure to be dethroned (er.. impeached?) as Fattest President sooner or later, and we'll be needing that bathtub back.

Guess Who's Not Coming to Dinner? The descendents of President Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings (Jefferson's slave AND probably his wife's half-sister. Ewwww.) The Monticello Society voted not to admit the Hemmings-Jeffersons branch of the family tree even after DNA tests showed definite Jefferson blood, on the theory that maybe Jefferson's brother fathered the Hemmings kids. I for one don't blame them... a legacy of incest and owning your relatives as property is one thing... but inviting your uncle's kids to your family party--now that would just be too weird.

Be Careful Who You Assassinate. Anybody following the just-canonized Lincoln would have looked bad, but it took an assassin's bullet to install a President (Andrew Johnson) who hated black people and the Confederacy. (Good one, John Wilkes Booth.) The irony is that AJ, while staunchly pro-slavery, was once practically a slave himself--He was an indentured servant as a child and ran away. (Note to corporate America "tolerance and diversity" clinics: Apparently it's possible to walk a mile in somebody's shoes and STILL hate them. And be President, too.)

Don't Count on the "Judgment of History" Thing. All our living Presidents are probably harboring a secret hope that history will judge them to have been misunderstood, unappapreciated in their own times, and will single out their presidencies for praise. But it's important to point out that sometimes the judgment of your contemporaries and the judgment of history is one and the same. For instance, Ulysses S. Grant. Contemporaries' Take: Corrupt, ineffectual, pawn of his party. Judgment of History: Yep.

City of Miracles

2006-08-25T21:25:00.000-05:00

The best thing about San Antonio isn't the Alamo (It's a fake! We built it back from rubble! It never had that hump on top before!) or the Riverwalk (want to know why it smells.... because we dump rhino dung into it. Yes, really!), it's that the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the ascendancy of rationality and skepticism over myth and magic and has never really caught on here.

I think the Enlightenment is mostly hype, anyway, since UFOs and magic crystals seem to happily coexist over the decades with x-rays and polio vaccines, but San Antonio rivals any hamlet in Medieval Europe for the sheer number of supernatural happenings reported by its citizens.

We've got ghosts: in the Alamo, in hotels, a museum, a creekbed, on a train track. We've got monsters: the chupacabra, a vampiric creature which roams around town sucking the blood out of goats.

And we've got miracles. Since this is a heavily Catholic town without public transportation, I guess it's inevitable that these are mostly dubious apparitions involving the Virgin Mary and automobiles.

However, the latest miracle doesn't involve Mary, or even an image of any kind, which makes it more of a Calvinist miracle, I suppose:

A few months ago water began to spontaneously gush from a red oak in the yard of San Antonio resident Lucille "I'm Not The" Pope, which was especially dramatic since we're enduring a pretty severe drought right now. People flocked to see the miracle tree.

That could have happened anywhere. This is what strikes me as peculiarly San Antonian: even after it was determined that the tree's root had tapped into the city water line, pilgrims continued to come to the tree!

Blessed are ye who have seen conclusive evidence to the contrary, and yet believe....

Now if you accept the premise of a God, which I do, then it's really just small potatoes to accept that He could make a tree spring a leak if He wanted to, although it does seem kind of silly and (unless it's to save the lives of some wandering Israelites) maybe even beneath His dignity, not to mention a bit Provoking during a major drought, when He could make it Rain with probably less trouble, since the Water Cycle has been up and running for millennia but the Crying Tree routine gets little use. Still, His ways are not our ways, etc, etc.

I'm pro-miracle. I like living in a place where the allegedly supernatural is practically commonplace.

But once you know, definitely, that the tree isn't a sign of divine love but is, rather, a poacher on our civic water system, a remorseless water-waster no better than my neighbors who use their sprinkler when it's not their assigned day, what are you doing standing in some stranger's yard with a plastic bottle, trying to collect ordinary tap water?

It's enough to make you lose faith in your fellow man. . . but on that point, I'm an agnostic, if not a complete non-believer.

Vacation from Mortality

2006-08-23T22:00:00.000-05:00

In my daily life I go around assuming that death is imminent. If I see an 18 wheeler ahead of me on the highway, for instance, I automatically picture it blowing a tire, then jackknifing, then crushing my car into the median.

There's probably medication for this, but I don't need it because when it comes to the illusory prospect of imaginary death I'm impressively brave. Stoic, even.

"It's been a good run," I say to myself with a disarming, devil-may-care smirk, strongly reminiscent of Humphrey Bogart, yet still feminine (at least I think it is, but I haven't actually checked the rearview mirror to confirm this. Dying because you were making faces in the mirror while driving just doesn't have the same tragic gravitas as the 18 wheeler tire blow out thing.)

When I'm on vacation--I mean once I'm actually there, having survived figmentary plane crashes, hostage situations, and taxi cab abductions --it's just the opposite: I feel immortal.

A few weeks ago in Nebraska a car pulled out in front of us and my pulse didn't even quicken. "I can't die here," I thought. "It's the least visited state!"

Well, maybe North Dakota is the least visited, but no matter, the neurotic part of my brain that is always anticipating my own tragic demise just can't square the image of me dying on a trip to visit family in Nebraska.

Today when I was searching the internet to fulfill Lunatic 1's demands to see pictures of elephants, I had a small epiphany. Everyone feels immortal on vacation! That's why people just stand there filming tsunamis, not bothering to run until it's absolutely clear that what they're witnessing is a major natural disaster and not a little treat prepared by hotel management.

This is the picture that opened my eyes:

Can you believe this? I'm not mother of the year (officially), but I take some pride in knowing that I would never let one of my daughters participate in a stunt in which the best possible outcome is merely not getting crushed by an elephant!

I hope there was a cash prize involved, at least. Because this took place at an elephant show in Thailand, and the parents must have bought tickets to the show. And I can't bear to think that some mother and father actually paid to have their child possibly flattened by an elephant. The world is just too full of free-of-charge dangers to justify that kind of expenditure, even on vacation.

Fairy Tales are so Middle Class...

2006-08-22T20:21:00.000-05:00

"Once upon a time" used to be a gateway to a land that was inviting precisely because it was timeless, like the stories it introduced and their ageless lessons about the human condition. But this invitation must now apparently read, "Once upon a time when women were powerless and exploited and white male hegemony ruled the world, and when the sky was dark…."

. . .According to this fairly scathing review of the new Norton Anthology of Children's Literature, which makes me glad kids don't read lit crit.

Cover Blurbs Decoded: A Consumer's Guide

2006-08-19T12:07:00.000-05:00

Here is a list of words which, when they appear on the back cover of a novel, tell you that you should probably NOT buy the book.

"....lyrical..."
This just means the book doesn't make much sense. The novel is poorly crafted, the plot is weak, the characters are boring, but for unknown and probably nefarious reasons, the critic felt bound to praise it, and so went for "lyrical" which is just polite code for all of the above. It also probably indicates a lot of nonstandard punctuation & grammar, like so: "Flying. He was. Flying. Over the lakes. And the trees. He really really... Was. Flying."

"One woman's journey from X to Y"
X and Y could be darkness to light, fatness to fitness, or Baltimore to Cincinnati... it doesn't matter, the overwhelming odds are that it's going to be utter drivel. Wait for the made-for-TV movie.

"ultimately life affirming"
This means you're going to have to read about a lot of really demented, sick stuff, and then, to add insult to injury, some sort of treacley feel-good message will be tacked on at the end. Skip it.

"a coming-of-age story"
If you've read one, you've read them all.

"Don Delillo"
I hate and despise Don Delillo (as an author... probably he's an ok guy) on the basis of Mao IIand White Noise. I can't explain why, just as I probably can't argue can't offer a cogent argument against cannibalism. I just abhor them both and I'd no sooner read a book that Don Delillo praised (or worse, wrote) than I'd barbecue somebody's thigh and eat it for breakfast.

Frightening Whitening

2006-08-18T08:08:00.000-05:00

Mostly I'm content to do a poor to barely adequate job of my domestic chores but occasionally I take a mild interest in some aspects of domestic drudgery. Right now, my hobby is whitening whites, and I'm a big fan of Mrs. Stewart's Bluing.

Previous generations of housewives went wild for bluing, until bleach gained popularity. Bluing is a blue (surprise!) dye which when used in small amounts makes whites look whiter.... at least if you're white.

Perhaps it's based on location and not ethnicity, but according to this laundry enthusiast perceptions of whiteness vary among people and "blue-white" looks whiter to North Americans and Europeans but not to South Americans who favor some other cast of white. (The position of Mexico as a North American Latin American country must pose something of a conundrum for the shadowy forces involved in devising regionally correct detergent.)

Anyway, a key ingredient in bluing is something called Prussian Blue, a pigment which has some unusual chemical properties and which is also the name of a racist band. They're a teenage twin sister duo considered to be the Olsen twins of the "white nationalist movement" which is apparently what (white, American) racists prefer to be called these days.

In this ABC news article one of the racist pop tarts espouses views which, while sick, disturbing, and reeeeaaaallly stupid, are remarkably similar to my aspirations for my laundry!

"We're proud of being white, we want to keep being white," said Lynx. "We want our people to stay white …"

I just want my shirts to stay white, but after reading that, I felt dirty, like I'd been spiffing up a load of hoods for the Klan Klatch instead of an assortment of shirts, towels, and sheets-- ordinary bed sheets, to sleep on, that is.

I was reassured after visiting the Mrs. Stewart's Bluing company web site that their mission is to reverse the natural dulling of white fabric, (at least in the eyes of North Americans) not to, you know, repeal the Fourteenth Amendment or whatever.

In fact, bluing has lots of non-racist, non-laundry uses including growing salt crystal gardens and marking ski courses.

Customers are invited to send in new uses they've found for bluing, and I briefly considered e-mailing them that I'd found it quite handy in "turning back the tide of miscegenation currently imperiling the fatherland," but Mrs. Stewart is a stern looking old bird and I don't think she'd get the joke. Plus, I'm scared of white supremacists and of girl bands and I don't want to encourage any of them to e-mail me.

2006-08-17T21:33:00.000-05:00

A Governor of Biblical Proportions

2006-08-04T14:20:00.000-05:00

As my fellow Texans know, unless Lopez Obrador seizes power, reconquers Texas, and appoints a new Viceroy for the region, we're doomed to elect someone for governor this fall.

Please understand that I do not intend to start taking an interest in politics, much less blogging about them, but this has reached the level
of spectacle (by "this" I mean the governor's race, of course, because--and I don't mean to be snide about it--election fraud and demonstrations and fire-breathing leftists in Latin America, while critically important to millions of people ... well, it's just kind of ho-hum in terms of novelty).

The governor's race, on the other hand, is a four ring circus featuring: Current Governor Rick "Git on Down the Road" Perry (AKA Rick"Adios, Mofo" Perry.... see the semi-dramatic footage here ); Kinky Friedman, former frontman for Mel Gibson's favorite band, The Texas Jewboys; Grandma Carole "Call Me Grandma or I'll Sue" Keeton Strayhorn, the current state Comptroller (whatever that is) ; and a candidate named Chris Bell who remains shrouded in mystery because he is a Democrat and has absolutely no hope of winning.

There's also a Libertarian candidate, whose name escapes me, which makes it technically a 5-ring-circus. It must be tough times for the Libertarians when the candidate from the party which favors tear gas and opposes garbage pickup isn't the oddest one on the ballot.

I had all but decided that whoever is elected (or, as the polls show, reelected) will be the worst governor ever, or at least the most embarrassing one, and that I'd just slap a "Lopez Obrador for
Viceroy" sticker on my minivan and forget about the whole mess,when a completely different line of research (which is what I like to call the time I spend on the Internet) reassured me that even the current cadre of clowns will have a tall-order in besting another former Texas governor for sheer lunacy. No, not HIM.

Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson was the first woman to be governor of Texas. She was also an early advocate of cuddly nicknames for female politicians, and the inventor of the "two-for-one" husband and wife election strategy, having promised Texans if they elected her--after her husband, Gov. James Ferguson, was impeached in his second term--that they'd get two governors for the price of one. Is your head spinning or is it just me?

Although the historical evidence is dodgy, she is best remembered for having been a champion of English-only policies, having allegedly said something to the effect of "If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me." (Some versions have her saying its good enough for Texas, which seems more gubernatorial, don't you think?)

Anyway, Ma Ferguson made some inroads against the Klan in Texas, was anti-prohibition, and soft on crime, but she's most remembered for that statement, which, I've recently learned, is symptomatic of an extreme case of something called King Jamesonlyism, which holds that the King James Bible is the only one worth having, if not the original testament itself, as Ma Ferguson seems to have believed.

King Jamesonlyism was a hot controversy in its day, and although there are still some KJV-only Christians, the main non-scholarly Bible controversy of our times seems to be pro- or con- inclusive language, at least based on what I read in Amazon.com reviews.

After reading the Blogging the Bible feature on Slate, I realized that most of what I know about the Old Testament I learned from the movie The Ten Commandments, so I decided I should take a closer look at the book itself.

Mine is an RSV version, which features noninclusive language, but I don't mind that for two reasons:

One, as the country song says, I Like My Religion A Little On the Patriarchal Side.

Two, there's only so far replacing "brothers" with "brothers and sisters" can take you. For instance, this verse from the book of Sirach "the birth of a daughter is a loss."

What would you, as an inclusive language translator, do there? Would it really be better if you said "or a son"?

Or later on there's the line "Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good." (By which logic, Jeffrey Dahmer keeping somebody's liver in his freezer is more virtuous than Mother Theresa's entire oeuvre of good works. I just have to assume that was a joke that didn't quite come off.)

Well, my solution, soon to be available under the moniker "The Revised Texas Version" will substitute the phrase "Governor of Texas" for "woman" or "daughter" in any verse deemed negative by an esteemed panel of Bible scholars. (Meaning me, of course.)

Here's a sample for your contemplation:

Keep strict watch over a headstrong Governor of Texas, lest he (or she) make you a laughingstock to your enemies, a byword in the city and
notorious among people, and put you to shame before the multitude.

Toddler Divination

2006-08-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

My oldest daughter now talks well enough that I occasionally am fooled into thinking we can have a full-fledged conversation. After she spent an hour with a group of kids and a babysitter recently I asked her whether she had fun and whether she played with so-and-so, etc., to which she replied either "yes" "umh-hmm" or "no," pretty much at random, I think.

Then she volunteered : "Johnny got stuck." I peppered her with follow up questions, but her replies were cryptic.

Where did he get stuck?
Umh-hmm.
Did he get stuck under a table.
Nooooo.
Did the babysitter help him?
Johnny got stuck.

We were getting nowhere, but an air of dejavu so thick you could spread it on toast hung over the conversation. I realized that questioning my daughter is remarkably similar to questioning the Magic 8 Ball--a series of semi-random phrases float to the top of her brain in response to your queries.

Anyway, I decided to rub her head and question her about world events.

Will there be a cease-fire in the Lebanon this week?
Umm-hmm.
Is there going to be a civil war in Iraq?
I like elphlants.
Elephants? Will the next President be a Republican?
NO!

Then she ran off to play with some blocks, as inscrutable and mysterious as the Magic 8 Ball itself.

more BIRD sightings...

2006-07-23T17:11:00.000-05:00

According to this article, Dead Boomers want popsicles (are they a lighthearted summer treat for your "guests" or a chilling (har har) reminder of the icy cold of the grave?) disco outfits and videos with professional actors at their funerals...

It kind of makes me nostalgic for the good old days, when megalomaniacs simply enslaved entire nations and forced them to build huge tombs in the middle of the desert to secure immortality.

tales from the crypt

2006-07-19T09:09:00.000-05:00

The most suspicious kind of news story, or so I read at one of those media watch web sites, is one that alleges a trend of some kind, especially a "disturbing trend," which relies on anecdotal evidence.

Normally they read something like this:

Emarie (not her real name) is a 30-year-old suburbanite and a mother of two. Dressed impeccably in a pair of extremely long shorts, Emarie looks the picture of wholesome domesticity. But, despite her advanced degrees in astrophysics from America's premiere university, she is part of a small but growing contingent of housewives who admit letting their small infants chew on the tassels of area rugs. "I know it's wrong," she says, brushing away tears. "But it keeps her quiet. And sometimes, I just need the screaming to stop. Dear God, how did it come to this?"

The "mommy wars/opt-out revolution/just-get back to your cube already you pawn of the patriarchy" debates are one example of a suspicious media trend, but some are even more outlandish. For example, just before 9/11 there were reports of a "disturbing trend" of young teens prostituting themselves in suburban shopping malls in exchange for designer jeans. But anyway, after Sept. 11, when we had plenty of real news, this trend was allowed to go by the wayside.

Well, I'm not sure if it quite fits into this category, but I've noticed that every 2 weeks or so there's another story about the Baby Boomers "reinventing" something. I have to admit that I didn't start paying close attention to the news until about the late 90s, so I probably missed the stories in which the Boomers reinvented drooling, hop scotch, slumber parties, prom, college, careers, and divorce.

But lately, I've charted a disturbing trend of the Boomers reinventing ageing and retirement, which mostly involves taking vitamins, doing yoga, smiling into the camera while skateboarding and chirping, "You're only as old as you feel!"

It's inevitable, I suppose, that the baby boomers will be credited with reinventing death. (You'd think un-inventing it would be the first order of business, if they're going to bother tinkering with it at all.)

An enterprising Boomer named Robert "Dick" Tips (Why, oh why, doesn't he just go by "Bob"?), owner of San Antonio's Mission Park Funeral Home, clearly has his finger on the pulse (or lack thereof) of the boomer generation and is on the commercial cusp of the Boomer Initiative to Reinvent Death (known in the industry at "the BIRD").

According to the San Antonio Express-News article, Tips plans to build a series of massive "European style" funeral homes featuring arches, fountains, video conferencing, and concessions: yes, your family and friends will be swilling Starbucks lattes and chomping Otis Spunkmeyer cookies over your dead body.

The article features this choice quote:

"'Baby boomers are just now starting to die, and boomers have their own ideas and want it done their way,' said Arvin Starrett, past board member of the National Funeral Directors Association and owner of Starrett-Rose Funeral Home in the East Texas town of Paris. "

(Starting to die? I have to say that if it's true that nobody born between the years 1946-1964 has died until very recently, that's a much bigger story then graveside cookies, isn't it?)

These newfangled, boomerized funeral homes won't just be "funeral" homes--the plan is to gear them toward "life events"; meaning that you could have your wedding, family reunion, anniversary party or... whatever... in them.

This is bound to lead to some sit-com worthy moments when devastated, grieving, espresso guzzling families keeping vigil over the corpse of the Departed are interrupted by a slew of intoxicated, garter waving, frat-boy groomsmen who've wandered into the wrong room.

Unseemly? Older, less discerning generations may have thought so, but now we know it's all a part of a Circle of Life. Pass the cookies.

The Boomer Initiative to Reinvent Death is a bold one, and I don't have the heart to mock it (more than strictly necessary). With their stick-to-itiveness, pluck, and sheer demographic dominance, the Boomers have allegedly changed a lot of things. Still, I predict that in the final analysis, when the Reaper comes, as he must, for the freewheeling sons of daughters of the Greatest Generation, it'll be he, and not the Boomers, giving the BIRD.

Beach Reading

2006-07-07T14:04:00.000-05:00

For reasons that are shrouded in mystery, when you go to the beach you're supposed to read something light. I'd assume this so-called tradition is nothing but a cynical marketing strategy designed to move a lot of pulp while TV series are in reruns, but marketing is the science of getting you to buy what you don't want or need, and who doesn't want light reading?

Don't say that you don't, because if it ever got out you'd been reading this blog, your carefully crafted image as a discriminating, intellectual reader would be totally blown. Sorry.

It's possible that at the height of the Cold War, in dreary Soviet bloc countries, people read nothing but ponderous, challenging books. Maybe they didn't let up even when they were released from work camps and the walls came tumbling down and Pizza Huts began appearing on every corner and thanks to global warming the temperature inched up toward a sweltering 58 degrees. Maybe July in other countries means a run on the works of Proust and Joyce.

But clearly, Keeping it Lite is the American way. And I think that's probably one of our greatest achievements as a people, nearly on par with the Big Gulp and spurning the metric system.

(My fourth grade teacher prognosticated a futuristic hell in which the metric system would reign supreme and all those who failed to learn it would feel its lash; confined to the margins of society, we'd eke out a meager existence working measurement-free-jobs, trying to scrimp enough money to buy a 5-pound bag of mite-infested flour on the black market. Who's laughing now, Mrs. Winkler?)

Anyway, my theory is that a "beach reading" season lets us pretend that, come fall, we'll get down to business and read something with depth and complexity. And maybe we will. But that's when all the series openers are on TV and then the Oscar contender movies start to trickle out.... before you know it, it's Page Turning Fluff Time again.

Well, we're now clearly, squarely in beach reading "season," and since I was at the beach this week, I felt honor bound to temporarily throw over John Phillip Santos' PLUATTOC--because while it isn't intellectual enough that you want to parade around conspicuously with it, it's also not really light enough to easily scan while sitting in the sand, brewing a bucket of seaweed soup with a toddler. So I dropped it in favor of Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell.

Assassination Vacation is a series of essays about Vowell's visits to various sites associated with three of our four murdered presidents: Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, plus Teddy Roosevelt, who was assassinated but lived. That's right. If somebody even tries to kill you, you've been assassinated, assuming you're important enough, I mean. Whether you live or die in the aftermath is immaterial.

In fact, definition one in Merriam-Webster specifies that to "assassinate" is to inflict an unexpected injury, which means that merely throwing a pie in the face of a public figure might count.

If so, depending on your stomach for cream-covered-violence, you may be pleased or sickened to learn that Ann Coulter, Bill Gates, Jean Chrétien, G. Gordon Liddy, William Shatner and Ralph Nader have all been assassinated under definition #1. (There's a little something for everybody in that list, politically speaking.)

The major player in international pastry terrorism is "surrealist Noel Godin" (How do you get a job as a surrealist? Where do I sign up?) whose favorite target is Bernard-Henri Levy, a choice I heartily approve, (though I deplore violence and the wasting of desserts and I really sort of like BHL, a man whose writings are not, in my opinion, very good beach reading) because anybody who even allegedly said "God is dead but my hair is perfect" needs a regular meringue facial.

Godin's antics have inspired shadowy copycat groups like the Biotic Baking Brigade and the Canadian pie flingers, the Entartistes, whose members include someone called Pope-Tart. A group calling itself Al Pieda has taken responsibility for pieing Ann Coulter and even has a web site soliciting donations for their legal defense team, which kind of undercuts their credibility as subversives, if you ask me.

Anyway, even though Vowell writes mostly about assassination definition #2 and not at all about pies, the book is both informative and amusing in that public-radio sort of way... by which I mean that though you might smirk a little and you'll be entertained, you're in no danger of choking on your iced tea, much less of falling off your lounge chair in a helpless paroxysm of hilarity about the president taking a bullet, which is a good thing for a lot of reasons, including that it spares you getting more sand in your swimsuit.

backwoods chic & the geopolitical implications of humidity

2006-06-30T14:01:00.000-05:00

I make it a policy not to comment on things I know nothing about. Ok, that's obviously untrue. However, since I have zero personal style and since I live in what is either, depending on your perspective, the northern outpost of civilization (the Santos' family view) or maybe a few hundred miles past the southern outpost, I normally don't give much thought to fashion.

San Antonio is a fashion graveyard where mullets and perms and leggings and ultra low rise jeans (which I particularly despise and which, so I hear, went out in the mid 90s) wander around like the undead, impervious to the passing decades.

So maybe the fashion pestilence infecting the stores in which I shop has long since lifted from more with-it parts of the country. I hope so. I like to think that somewhere, in the remote north, where people speak in Kennedy-family accents and go to prep schools and drink cocktails made with cranberry juice, people are wearing well-designed, appealing clothing that will someday, along with bird flu, wend its way south.

But I'm here to tell you that this city it still a toxic, festering stew of gaucho pants, those little crocheted "shrug" sweaters, and worst of all --Huckleberry Finn shorts.

No one, not even gauchos, needs gaucho pants, shrug sweaters are completely superfluous and therefore easy to avoid, but there are times when shorts are absolutely necessary.

Like when you're going to the beach over the weekend. Not a rocky, lighthouse-having, come-for-a-spin-on-my-yacht and have-some-liquor-and-cranberry-for-a-nightcap beach,but the Texas Gulf Coast, where wearing jeans is, except for a brief period in January, as comfortable and practical as wearing a burka.

(Which makes me wonder... could militant Islam have arisen and flourished in a humid climate? I hope someone, somewhere is writing a dissertation predicting that militant Islam will be defeated not by Regular Islam or globalization, not by a coalition of the willing or an axis of evil or war or democracy--but by climate change! I predict that if the "dry heat" of the middle east turns into the soupy miserable humid heat of the American south, even the most conservative middle eastern women will turn their headscarves into miniskirts. You heard it here first.)

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I had to buy some really long shorts, the "Huck Finn" type, because the only other kind for sale are meant to be worn exclusively by B-list celebrities dancing provocatively in pizza commercials.

They (the long shorts) look horrendous. Maybe this is too personal, but the area between my knee and my ankle, to which this "style" draws particular attention, is roughly the circumference of a No. 2 pencil and is entirely covered with bruises and welts from tripping over or running in to various toys. Huck Finn looked far more dapper and sophisticated in his outgrown pants than I do in these ridiculous, horrible, white, extra long and low rise (it's a fashion Bermuda triangle!) offenses against taste and decency.

My only consolation is that, this being south Texas, 95% of the people around me will look equally as bad. If while I'm walking on the beach, I notice a large, gleaming boat full of well dressed people nearing the shore, I'll either run into the condo and change, or else chalk their sneers and guffaws at my apparel up to one of the many eccentricities of "Yankeeism," like cranberry juice and the Federal Government.

vacation of last resort

2006-06-28T20:01:00.000-05:00

I've been wasting a lot of time on the Tripadvisor web site lately, reading reviews of all-inclusive resorts in the Mayan Riviera. I've never been to a resort and I've never wanted to go to one before, either, but it's just the latest in a slew of changes brought on by motherhood. I never wanted to drive a minivan, read a book on potty training, or sing the theme song of "Little Einsteins" on a daily basis, either.

Well, the beauty of a resort seems to be that you can go somewhere and yet feel like you're nowhere. Technically, you're in Mexico, but really you're in a beautiful, non-threatening utopia where 24 hour buffets serve a mishmash of bland Americanized cuisine, people ignore the stunningly clear blue ocean in favor of swimming in gigantic swimming pools, and--most importantly--ill-behaved toddlers and screaming babies are not only tolerated, they're welcomed.

However, if the Tripadvisor forum provides a representative sample, a good 90% of the people who vacation in all-inclusive resorts in Mexico are insane.

There are the sophisticates who praise the "omniounce" and the complementary glasses of "champaign." There are the malcontents who gripe about the fact that the locals speak Spanish and that the ocean contains seaweed, both serious problems which the management "failed to address" despite "repeated complaints"!

And then there are the people who think that for a few hundred dollars they are buying all of Mexico, and are incensed that the drinks are made with off-brand tequila, it sometimes rains, and the service, though attentive, certainly "does not compare to the Ritz-Carlton."

What scares me slightly more is the partiers. "Sickest vacation, ever!" (Sickest in this context apparently means it was good; I'm not sure whether there's a direct correlation to the number of mornings spent head-down in a toilet bowl...) There are assurances that if "Raul at the pool bar is awesome and will hook you up!"

Occasionally you'll read a review from a scandalized parent, trying to sound upbeat about the money sunk into a vacation that brought them into close proximity with people you can avoid for free at home:

"There is quite a lot of topless sunbathing, which was kind of embarrassing for our boys. Also, the round-the-clock naked tequila volleyball games made us a little uncomfortable, so we spent a lot of time in our room with the blinds down, playing tic-tack-toe. Still, all in all, it was a great time!"

Books Left Unfinished Till the End of Creation

2006-06-27T12:45:00.000-05:00

I intended to be much further along in my reading of PLUATTOC but events intervened. The lunatics have been suffering from two severe colds and one intestinal illness and my precious reading time has been sadly eaten up by trivial matters like caring for my children. I hope they remember how I good I was to them when they check me into the care home someday.

Another impediment to my reading has been that the opening of Chapter 3 commits two capital literary offenses, in the judgment of the leadership of the EBC: italics and a gratuitous ghost.

The ghost of Uncle Raul appears in Santos' apartment in Manhattan and starts rattling on about butterflies, tortillas, prayers, and forgetting the family history. This is the lamest ghost in the history of literature. It's the job of (live) old people to chastise their young relations about forgetting their roots (which I assume is what Uncle Raul is getting at when he brings up huisache and aqueducts) and it's the job of ghosts to rattle chains and moan spookily.

I don't mind that Santos is using an obviously fake ghost in a memoir, which was once considered a work of non-fiction (before the James Frey era) , but I don't like to see the literary lines between blood-curdling terror and mind-numbing boredom crossed so glibly.

Worse, the whole episode is written entirely in italics which makes you want to skip it. Nothing of note is ever said in italics that go on for longer than four or five words, at the most.

The going gets much easier once Uncle Raul disappears in a swirl of vapor, or shuffles out the door, or whatever, and the infernal italics come to an end.

Santos recounts a story of his dad and his two uncles searching for gold on "la Loma de los Muertos" ( That means the hill of the dead. By the way, JP Santos, if you're reading this, and I strongly suspect you are, this would have been the logical place for a ghost!)

Sadly, they never get to the gold due to some ill-timed car trouble, which raises the question: if you're going to embellish the family history a bit, why not do it in a way that... oh, I don't know... advances the plot?

Instead of merely getting stalled on a rail road track in the middle of nowhere, the Santos brothers could have reached the hill, discovered a mound of plundered Aztec gold being guarded by horrifying conquistador zombies. Then, obviously, they'd impale the zombies, undo the ancient curse, save Coahuila, avenge the plunder of their ancestors, and get mounds and mounds of gold.

Instead, they just give up and go home! But it's not a total loss as this episode of car trouble leads to the second bombshell revelation in the book, if you're keeping score at home: Mexicans, whether walking or driving, are, Santos says, uniquely susceptible to getting stuck on railroad tracks.

EBC discussion question: How long till Lou Dobbs recommends securing our southern border by building miles and miles of rail road tracks?

Egoist's Book Club I: A Failure of Egoism?

2006-06-20T22:16:00.000-05:00

The Egoist's Book Club is now making its debut, and I have to admit that after floundering around trying to find something to read, I decided to just follow the herd and read the book that people all over the city of San Antonio are allegedly reading. It's my book club and I'll compromise its founding principles if I wanna.

The book I'm reading is the first in the "One Book. One San Antonio." project, Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation (hereafter PLUATTOC) by John Phillip Santos, who is, I think it's important to point out, neither the composer John Phillip Sousa nor the novelist John Dos Passos.

I suppose the "One Book. One San Antonio." campaign has as much to do with fostering city unity as with arbitrary punctuation, so I was puzzled to read on its web site that PLUATTOC is a recollection of Texas (and especially San Antonio) before it was "anglicized." The next books in the "One San Antonio" series are going to be There Goes the Neighborhood and Yanquis Estúpidos.

But from what I've read so far (70ish pages) that's not really fair to JPS and PLUATTOC. Yes, one of his forbears warns the youngins' to stay away from the "square headed" Germans in Fredericksburg, but that's pretty mild, plus it's just sound advice, because I have it on good authority that the town of Fredericksburg, Texas, exists solely in order to issue traffic citations to outsiders.

The bombshell revelation of the book so far is that it's possible that Texas is Aztlan (which means The Place of Whiteness--Take that "One San Antonio" committee!), the mythical birthplace of the Mexia, the proto-Aztecs. I think this claim is ridiculous on its face, at least as far as San Antonio is concerned. If oral tradition indicated that Aztlan was a good place for a convention or for a metal band's nostalgia tour stop, I'd be sure it was San Antonio.... but a mythical paradise? Um, no.

However, the title is a pretty good indication that Santos knows San Antonio better than that, and I'm very hopeful that the city will adopt "A Place Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation" as its new motto.

update: free pole!

2006-06-19T21:38:00.000-05:00

Since my last post was a searing exposé of the Step2 company I guess it's only fair to report that the issue seems to have been peacefully resolved.

On the theory that complaining is easier than doing just about anything else, I sent the company an email instead of the pictures of the defective pole they'd demanded.

The email was nearly identical to my blog, minus most of the terrorist allegations, and someone actually called me to apologize. She claimed that a low-level clerk had made a mistake, which is what they always say. Enron, the Titanic, and the Roman Empire were all allegedly brought low by the error of some nameless drone in the customer service department.

I knew this wasn't true, and that the corruption of Step2 goes all the way to the top, but I'm nothing if not gracious in victory, so I pretended to believe this version of events and accepted an apology for the "misunderstanding."

My new pole should arrive any day now. If anyone has a need for a defective metal swing set pole, I know where you can get one cheap.

the devil's playground (company)

2006-06-13T13:50:00.000-05:00

For the second time in as many weeks, I've been mistaken for a criminal mastermind. It's flattering, I guess. Often stay-at-home moms are perceived as boring domestic drones, but over the phone I project a far more sinister persona.

Either that, or as seems more likely, the Step2 Company is pure evil. While posing as a purveyor of playground equipment, it's actually a ring of terrorists secretly operating under the name "Al-Qaeda in Ohio." And their customer service department is really a sleeper cell, passing time by taking a few phone calls while they plot their next deadly move.

A month ago I ordered a swing set from this shell company. I paid extra for "assisted delivery" because Step2 has redefined the term "delivery" to mean the driver just parks in your driveway, opens up the back of the truck, and lets you take it from there.

My email receipt included a note explaining that though I had paid for assistance, I should have some friends or neighbors on hand to help the driver unload my order. This is as close as a company ever gets to saying "We just stole your money!"

I don't know all that much about my neighbors but I have noticed that they generally aren't lolling around in their front yards night and day waiting to unload other people's playground equipment, so it was lucky that the driver was operating under the old definition of "delivery."

I thought my problems were over until I saw the pole which the swings are supposed to hang from. It's missing a hole. Where the hole should be, there's just a round, black sticker.

At least, that's my story. Step2, after first suggesting I drill a hole through a thick metal pole, then offering to send me a replacement pole with all the holes included, has now withdrawn that offer and taken the position that it is impossible the pole is missing a hole because, you see, they drill the holes themselves and if it had been missing a hole, they wouldn't have sent it to me.

So, in a world where mistakes are made every day, by governments, by individuals, even by tiny pieces of DNA, Step2 stands alone, free from error. So they quite reasonably requested that I take pictures of the missing hole and upon reviewing the evidence they will then consider my request again, along with their world view, presumably.

But for now their assumption remains that they are the victims of a brazen attempt at extortion by an unscrupulous "customer" lying through her teeth in hopes of receiving a free metal pole!

I could go on and on about this, but I've got to go take a picture of a hole that doesn't exist.

Marcos and Maribel: They're (Not) Coming For You!

2006-06-12T21:20:00.000-05:00

Every life is filled with a few pivotal moments in which the choice you make and its consequences will reverberate through the rest of your days: Should you roll a large, mysterious wooden horse inside the city gates, or should you check it out first? Should you stay on with your fledgling band "The Beatles" or should you become an artist instead?

One day last September I put myself firmly in the Troy-Sutcliffe camp when I opted not to change my phone number. As I now know--older, wiser, a bit hardened, maybe--when you start getting weirdly aggressive phone calls, including from the phone company, the very day your "new" number is installed you should definitely change it right away.

But I was filled with youthful naiveté, and I assumed that once these callers were informed that my number belonged to me and not to Marcos and Maribel M., they would stop calling.

What a fool I was. Several times a week I have the following conversation.

Maribel M., please.

You have the wrong phone number.

You have no knowledge of Maribel M?

Never heard of her.

What about Maribel V.?

After I assured the latest caller that no Maribels of any kind were in residence she demanded to know who I am. My number (that's right, MY number!) is in the phone book, and I knew an investigator this shrewd and dogged might eventually get around to looking it up, but just on principle, I made her go first. Her friends call her "Inspektor Dawn" and she was kind enough to clue me in to the mysterious reason for the ongoing phone calls: My phone number has been "implicated in fraud!"

She questioned me further, but since I know nothing about Marcos & Maribel M. or V. and their ill gotten gains, she wasn't able to break me--at least, not this time.

Meanwhile, I can't help but wonder about Maribel and Marcos. I like to think they're sailing the Mediterranean on a fabulous yacht, with peaceful blue waters lapping all around them, undisturbed by phone calls or the threat of prosecution. But their peace is a false on. Someday, years from now, the creditors, auditors, and even Inspektor Dawn will stop calling me, and then, well... who knows.

preaching the organization gospel

2006-06-07T23:00:00.000-05:00

I think I may have joined a cult, except you can't call them cults anymore. Now they're called "new religious movements."

Using judgmental words like "cults" just reveals that you, and not the person swearing absolute obedience to the Leader and fulminating about the imminent destruction of the Earth by a fleet of UFOs, are the one with the problem.

Anyway, the movement I've joined doesn't have an end-times, space odyssey angle, or at least not one that new initiates are let in on. It's the cult of organization, and its sacred text is the Franklin Covey personal organizer.

I'm not sure how I arrived at this point. I've been an organization agnostic all my life. Decades of lectures from parents and teachers about how my life would be easier if I would just get organized left me unmoved. I even sort of pitied the organized, with their color-coded tabbed binders and their specially-made containers for Q-tips. Couldn't they see how ridiculous they were, I asked myself?

But a week ago I found myself in Office Depot staring at rows of personal organizers, a contrite and unworthy sinner, ready to open my heart to the principles of order and structure, if only somebody would show me the way. I bought the Franklin Covey, because it was on clearance. I had no idea that in addition to buying a calendar and a to-do list, I was also buying a completely new World View.

Franklin Covey takes its inspiration from Benjamin Franklin, considered by most historians to be America's most organized president. He invented the personal organizer hundreds and hundreds of years ago, give or take, and it helped him achieve a lot of unspecified greatness. (The Franklin Covey is pretty vague on Franklin's achievements or what role his "little book" may have played in them, but I think they're just tactfully neglecting to point out that he didn't have the foresight to patent and mass produce the thing before they did.)

Well, each week I'm supposed to identify the Roles I play (for instance: Statesman, Inventor, Printer's Apprentice) and Big Rocks within those roles. Confusingly, the Big Rocks aren't potential hazards ready to smash you like a bug, they're just the most important things you need to do this week, like, maybe, Negotiate a Treaty with the French, Discover Electricity, and Buy Ink.

You're supposed to jot down your Roles and Big Rocks on a thing called the Weekly Compass, which also has space for you to list the ways you are going to Sharpen the Saw. I thought this was when they were going to let me in on the stockpile of weapons, the underground lair, and the coming war between the Franklin Coveyites and the denizens of disorganization, but instead sharpening the saw just means self improvement in one of four specified categories.

I remember reading somewhere that President Franklin's program of self improvement included a vegetarian diet and nudism, and that's when I started to get cold feet. It's too much, too fast. So I threw the "Values" pages of the planner in the trash and replaced them with extra "Menu and Meal Planning" pages.

I may not be the better, happier, more productive person I could have been if I'd taken that closer walk with Franklin Covey, but at least lately we haven't had spaghetti for dinner three times in a week.

Visit Beautiful Namibia... if you dare

2006-06-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

Although it's hardly been mentioned in the press (do I smell a cover-up?) I happen to know that an obscure actress who calls herself "Angelina Jolie" has recently given birth to a baby in the Republic of Namibia, which is allegedly a country in Africa, although details remain sketchy.

Anyway, I like what I'm hearing about the place. Apparently, journalists can be arrested for taking a picture of Angelina or her boyfriend (a sometime-thespian who is using the alias "Pitt") without permission, and you can't even get a visa to enter the country unless Jolie and Pitt give the ok. And why are the Namibians doing this... word is, it's because they want more tourists.Now that is what I call hospitality!

We are sorely in need of a family vacation here, and I can't wait to be an honored guest of the Namibians and to control their national borders and their press corps.

Anyway, I've been doing some research and the place looks fabulous. It's home to the oldest desert in the world and a huge ravine, which will be a lot of fun for the kids.

And the friendliness of the place is just palpable, even on its web site, although, unfortunately the page on tourism appears to be down. http://www.grnnet.gov.na

With the world situation being what it is, you can't be too careful about where you go overseas, so I checked out the CIA fact book on Namibia, and thank goodness I did, because the mystery of Namibia becomes even more mysterious the deeper you look into it:the population is 50% Lutheran.

Like most Americans, I know very little about the secretive, powerful sect known as the Lutherans or their practices, but the little I do know troubles me. For one thing, their founder was known for nailing things to doors (history does not record what things exactly... documents, kittens, the scalps of his enemies... who can say?) which strikes me as a little sinister.

Secondly, modern day practitioners of Lutheranism are reported to engage in archaic, little understood, and potentially dangerous culinary practices frowned on by modern theologians, including the preparation of something called a "hot dish" which includes, and I am not making this up, canned soup. Frankly, that's not the sort of thing I want my children exposed to.

Wingless chickens come home to roost!

2006-05-31T16:00:00.000-05:00

I was close to just forgetting all about the wingless chickens novel idea when I came across a recent interview of Peter Singer, in which he endorses the idea of breeding chickens without wings. (http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/05/08/singer/)

He doesn't go so far as to suggest they be given human hands, but I'm pretty sure that's just because he hasn't thought of it yet.

Peter Singer is the Princeton professor who through his writing has proven that ethics, like brain surgery and toilet cleaning, are best left to the professionals. An amateur, non-ethicist might well assume that infanticide, euthanizing the handicapped, and getting very, very friendly with animals would be unethical, or at least somewhat gauche-- certainly worse then consuming dairy products--but then, you would be wrong.

But back to the chickens: apparently poultry farms keep chickens in cages so small that they can't spread their wings. The non-ethicist, again, might rashly conclude that bigger cages are the solution, but Singer sees another possibility: breeding them without wings! It can't be long before a man of his intellect and principles stumbles upon the idea of giving chickens hands. (I wonder if it would be ethical to take the hands from babies... they're not really using them, are they?)

I'm so excited about this, I don't know what to do. Should I try to finish my chicken story while it still has some residual shock value? Because it's just a matter of time before wingless chickens become available at store near you (driving the whole "buffalo wing" trade underground, presumably). Or should I put my crass ambitions behind me and, for the good of humanity, or poultry, let Peter Singer in on the missing piece of the (chicken) pie?

It's an ethical dilemma.

Egoist's Book Club: Reading Roundup

2006-05-28T14:09:00.000-05:00

Before the EBC makes its glorious official debut, I've decided to do a preliminary session on some things I've read recently/am still reading.

Manhunt: The 12-day chase for Lincoln's Killer
The problem with history, generally, is that there's way too much of it. This book caters to today's busy families by relating the history of just under 2 particular weeks at the pace of a high-speed car chase. In the process it also makes three stunning revelations:

1) Abraham Lincoln was really bad at dream interpretation.
The night before he was assassinated, Lincoln dreamed that he was sailing rapidly on an unknown ship toward a vast, indistinct shore. Does that sound like a good omen to you? Lincoln felt sure it meant he was going to get good news about the war. What's the good of having a prophetic dream if you're just going to totally miss the point, and then announce to the press that you're going to be spending the evening in a open theater box, with no security, with the Civil War still somewhat on, a stone's throw from the Confederacy, and on Good Friday, no less?

2) Mr and Mrs Booth got their sons mixed up.
John Wilkes Booth's brother was named Junius Brutus Booth, which is the perfect name for an assassin. Clearly there was some confusion.

3) People were easily amused Back Then.
This was the laugh line which JWB waited for, so that the thunderous cackling of the audience would muffle the gun shot: "Don't know the manners of good society, eh? Wal, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal... you sockdologizing old mantrap!" Har har har. (If you want to know what sockdologizing means, this is the closest I've found to a definition http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?va=sockdologers)

French Women Don't Get Fat
I'm just skimming through this one, but so far I've got a few alternate theories about the origins of the non-fat-French-female.

1) French women don't live in Texas.
This pretty much parle pour se.

2) French women smoke a lot.
Based on the many, many French women I've known (ok, 3) they are all chain smokers, whereas I, on the other hand, am not. Once in college somebody gave me a lit cigarette because they thought it would be funny to see me holding one. Yeah, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not cool.

3) French women don't have babies.
With fertility levels below replacement rate (around 1.89 ) French women have a lot less baby weight to lose.

The Egoist's Book Club

2006-05-25T08:57:00.000-05:00

I love the idea of belonging to a book club but the reality is too often a disappointment. I don't mind that, despite the initially lofty ambitions, the meetings often become nothing but bull sessions. I don't mind listening to the (sadly deluded) points of view that differ from my own. What I mind is that other people are allowed to pick the books.

This is tolerable when other people pick books I want to read, but it's bound to happen that sooner or later somebody will pick a book that I'd rather burn than crack the cover of.

I admire people who read broadly, who can get past their prejudices and judge a book on its own merits, or who can persevere through a book they're not enjoying, and maybe even come to an appreciation of it by the end. I'm just not one of them.

The last time I finished a book I didn't want to read was midway through my junior year in college, after which I switched my major from English to Skimming.

So I'm starting my own book club. All the books will be picked by me. The meetings will be at my blog and will be presided over by me. Snacks and drinks will be provided for me, by me. Me me me me.

laundry day & literary ambitions

2006-05-24T12:19:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking since I turned thirty last fall that maybe it's time to rachet down my literary ambitions just a bit. Instead of aspiring to write a good novel, I now only aspire to write a mediocre-to-low-quality, non-literary novel. But even that is setting the bar pretty high, at my age, because 30 is almost geriatric in first-novel terms.

Most novelists and poets begin writing--and this is key--finishing novels or poems in their 20s. Danielle Steele finished her first novel at 19, and was then promptly sent to her room. By the time he was 30, John Keats had already been dead 5 years.

So my newest plan is to narrow my focus substantially. I'm using the Olympics as a model here. It's extremely hard to make the Olympic team in basketball or track, but your odds of making the trampoline or biathlon (a sport that combines skiing and rifle shooting. Great idea!!) teams has got to be astronomically better. Hasn't it?

Anyway, that's my theory. I was considering, in honor of laundry day, attempting to write a decent-to-pretty-good poem about laundry, possibly the first of its kind. But I discovered Richard Wilbur beat me to it. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~richie/poetry/html/poem98.html

Maybe I could try a short novel about laundry, or a longish Limerick.

I'm so incredibly busy!!

2006-05-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

Today's families/moms/kids are allegedly "busier than ever before" so say advertisements, magazine articles, op-eds, and even Senator Lamar Alexander ( http://alexander.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=CommitteeStatements.
Detail&CommitteeStatement_id=19&Month=4&Year=2004 ).

I have the advantage of being both unemployed and disaffected, which buys you a lot of time, but even so I'll happily concede that I'm "busier" then "before", especially if "before" refers to the days when people sewed their own clothes, grew their own food, churned their own butter and went to bed at sunset. Those lucky mothers/kids/families only had to choose between the Bible and The Old Farmer's Almanac for entertainment. It takes me 10 minutes to flip through all 300 channels before I even settle on something to watch, and that's not counting the 15 minutes or so spent searching for the remote.

But I wasn't aware how dangerous my busy lifestyle could be until, after browsing randomly on the internet, I happened upon an article from The American Instistue for Concept Therapy. The AICT takes the problem of our busyness and its sinister by-product--worrying-- very seriously. 38% of Americans are worried about something! And being worried could lead to Something Even Worse.

Like what, you ask? Don't waste your precious time worrying about that, because they've already found a cure! It's "boredom therapy." Therapists recommend that all these busy, worried people spend an hour watching airplanes land or riding randomly up and down in an elevator. This, apparently, is sure to restore your enjoyment of life and help you deal with the stress of your insanely packed schedule. I don't want to knock it, but if you're THAT busy, I recommend you just read my blog.

Parenting Philosophy and the Coming Apocalypse

2006-05-19T22:02:00.000-05:00

A cursory reading of history (which is the kind I prefer) makes clear that most parents in the past did a mediocre job, but a significant number did a remarkably bad job.... Take a bow, parents of Lizzy Borden, John Wilkes Booth, and Vlad the Impaler.

This happened even though there was, from what I can piece together based on light historical novels and BBC costume dramas, broad agreement on how children should be raised. I suspect that Napoleon's mom had few philosophical disagreements with Joan of Arc's parents on discipline and potty training, and yet the final products, though in both cases militant and French, could hardly have differed more.

Let me restate this point, because I have a pretty good feeling that the fate of civilization may be hanging in the balance: Even when parents all generally agreed on how children ought to be raised there was a huge divergence in the quality of the outcome. Or as they say in diet commercials "results may vary."

Today no two parents in America are in agreement on any aspect of raising children, and there are a multitude of parenting philosophies, each with its own expert. Is this because we understand more about children today?

No. Through the miracle of sitcom syndication, you can chart a clear downturn in the behavior of the American child. We clearly know less about children than ever before.

Which leads me to conclude that 1) most modern theories of parenting are almost certainly even worse than whatever programs the parents of Benedict Arnold and Jack the Ripper so carefully followed and 2) since we've got so much variety in parenting technique, we're also going to end up with even more divergent outcomes.

So I think it's pretty clear the inevitable result of the current parenting theory boom is going to be a generation of rowdy, ill mannered, super-criminals. Keep searching for that perfect parenting program if you want, but based on my field research, I suggest loading up on ammo and canned goods to weather the collapse of civilization that will almost certainly be unleashed when the current generation of toddlers comes of age.

Why a blog is better than a diary

2006-05-18T08:28:00.000-05:00

I've never succesfully kept a diary for longer than a week, and this is only my second day on the blog, so I'm really no authority on this subject. But I can type and I have an opinion.. what more do you need?

1. Diaries cause hand cramp
Technically, you could type your diary, but tradition dictates you write it out, prefarably on parchment with a quill pen, and if there's one principle I try to live by, it's an unthinking devotion to obsolete conventions.Writing at length is difficult for me because the tendon (or whatever) between my thumb and my first finger is slowly contracting, transforming my hand into a useless, terrifying claw. This is apparently a condition called "Mother's hand" and comes from repeatedly picking up small children under their arms. I'm kind of excited about it though, because it sounds like something that would happen to a comic book villan. When the transformation is complete, my plan is a) to begin going by "The Claw"; b) to wear a specially made, elbow-length purple silk glove over the claw--possibly with a matching cape, at least for evening wear; c) to use said claw to menace small children; and d) to concoct a diabolical plan to poison the city's water supply (Just kidding, NSA!)

2. Diaires are supposed to be secret, yet written with an eye for Posterity
This is a problem because if your secrets are boring, well, that's just depressing. And if nothing of general interest ever happens to you, your shot at posthumous fame is nil and then you're a Failure. Blogs clearly don't have to be interesting and nobody thinks anyone is going to be reading their blog a hundred years hence. In fact, it's entirely likely this blog thing will be over and done with in a mere 10 or 20 yrs, and by the year 2156 history students will learn about the current blog phenom with the same mixture of amusement and mild contempt with which we now view historical oddities like the steam-powered asparagus peeler.

3. The standard for diaries as literary works is way too high
I'm sure there are millions of diaries that are both badly written and boring, but of course nobody reads those. Most of the diaries that have been preserved are either by famous people or written by people who happened to witness important events firsthand. So when you sit down to write your own diary, and you're up against diaries by people who knew Abe Lincoln or escaped slavery through the underground railroad, the pressure is seriously on. I believe this is a pathetic and petty version of what Harold Bloom calls the Anxiety of Influence. But I'm not sure, because I've never actually read anything by Bloom. I just felt it was time for a subtle literary name drop.

I can cite an exception to the Interesting Diary Rule: one written by an ancestor of mine, an Irish immigrant rancher in South Texas in the 1800s. He began nearly every entry with an observation on the weather. Almost every page says "It continues hot and close." He should have been a blogger.

2006-05-17T15:24:00.000-05:00

Loon 2 was coaxed back to sleep with a pacy, so I'm posting again already. It's only my first day, so I've got a lot of pent-up blogging to deal with.

I was listening to NPR this morning and heard Billy Collins on "Fresh Air" hawking a CD collection of poets reading their own work. This one includes Yeats reading The Lake Isle of Innisfree. My first reaction was to get teary eyed because it's a beautiful poem and it's the one my grandmother read to my uncle, who died in March, in his last moments. I was prevented from reflecting on the poem or on how much I miss my uncle by the absolutely insane way in which Yeats read it--apparently insisted on reading it, despite pleas that he cease and desist. It's indescribable. Check it out http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15529

On second hearing, I have to admit it's got a certain wacky incantatory power. And he claimed he was inspired by an ad for a fizzy drink, which makes me think Yeats could probably have done something amazing with my self-harvesting chickens idea.

Hello there

2006-05-17T14:49:00.000-05:00

I'm not really sure why I'm starting a blog. Why are you reading it? Well, welcome aboard anyway.

Besides being a 30-yr-old disaffected houswife, I'm also the mother of 2 very young girls, known around here as The Lunatics. Loon 1 is 2 yrs old and Loon 2 is 4 mos. They're napping now which is the only reason I'm writing this instead of filling up sippy cups with juice or changing diapers, etc.

I'm also an aspiring novelist. Aspiring in that I'd like to write a novel, not that I'm actually currently even attempting to write one. I don't even have a concept for a novel... although I briefly thought I did sometime between 3 and 4 this morning.

I came up with this concept in a dream and I thought it sounded excellent, until I woke up. Here's the story... a young scientist involved in human cloning undergoes a religious awakening and realizes that the human hand is the most beautiful, perfect thing in existence.. the pinnacle of creation thus far. The wing (as in bird wing) is a completely inferior apparatus. Moved with pity for birds, he finds a way to engineer chickens with human hands instead of wings.

All goes well until a poultry farmer realizes the commercial possibilities of the birds. He confines them to pens, forcing them to lay huge amounts of eggs and pack them into egg cartons themselves! He is able to charge extra for the "hand-harvested" eggs.

Maybe it's obvious why my novel writing aspirations never get past the earliest concept stage. Oh well, I've got a blog now, baby. Speaking of baby, Loon 2 is awake....