You Can Have Your Caviar and Eat It Too!

Fir$t Home, $econd Home, Boarding $chool, Hoarding's Cool!

The New York Times may be dying, but at least they are going out with aristocratic panache. This is only the latest installment in their covert series The Plight of the Overlords, in which they cover such broadly appealing and inspirational topics as womb rental (now priced to sell!), Wall Street housewives forced into the indignity of gainful employment, support groups for girlfriends of investment bankers, and $400 shrines that CEOs can use to cast new spells on the distributors of bail-out cash.

I, for one, am struck by the fact that the Times accepts as a given that the very first thing a Wall Street family must do is set aside $16k for ski vacations.  Personally, I’d find it more prudent for these pirates to set aside bail money.  But I trust the Times to provide sound advice for the hideously rich.  After all, they apparently know their audience.

lightning bulb

what you wished for.

Our dreams are as kites on strings; effortlessly soaring, but quietly waiting to be yanked from the heavens to the sod.  They are not meant to be more than we are.

As children we imagine the impossible, and the fantasy flourishes easily, comfortably, and without judgment.  As adults, we thresh our thoughts, parsing the productive from the preposterous.  This is done in the name of efficiency, or at least normalcy, and is a perfectly functional way to live.

The light bulb goes on above your cartoon head and you are blessed with an idea worth sharing.  Maybe the idea is so good it gives other people little light bulb erections, which spread like electrical-metaphor wildfire until no one can see the stars at night anymore.

Or maybe, the idea is so good, that the bulb bursts.  You can’t share bursting bulbs because they aren’t electrical at all; they are meteors, entering our orbit and then melting into dust and gas and bits of glass.

So what happens when the eureka moment strikes, when the tiny shard of truth embeds itself in the sole of your brain?  Those of us who live in the real world where only real problems matter and everyone realizes how really real reality is, we pull out the tweezers and neosporin (to prevent infection).

I think I prefer to leave it in, whether the real world and its tweezers like it or not.

Fating It

Must Have Liked My Yellow Jersey

It’s almost claustrophobic.  Not suffocating, not crushing, but in a way, its freeing.  Its the feeling I had on a sunny morning last week, while riding my bike, 35 mph down the back side of Bear Creek Road, when a bee struck me in the chest.  At that speed injuries come quickly and easily, so I had to make a choice:  would I look down, examine my chest, and claw at the offending insect?  I might look too long, veering into the oncoming lane.  I might lose control of the bike, striking some pothole while only holding on with one hand.  The bee might sting me anyway, perhaps had already done so.

So I didn’t look.  I rode on, reaching 49 mph, the fastest I have ever gone on that road.  When I slowed, the bee was nowhere to be found.  That feeling is fate, or maybe its fatalism.  It is the acceptance of what is, and what will be.  It is absurd to descend into such a state when the flick of a wrist could end your life, but perhaps that’s the whole point.

Some Wintermint Tic Tacs on a Red Carpet... in my GUTS.

Today’s mild epiphany follows the same logic as the bee-bike choice.  On Sunday I realized I might be coming down with Salmonella, and chose to do nothing.  I’ve had it before in El Salvador, so I know I can probably beat it.  Plus there’s Cipro in my medicine cabinet.  On Monday, I spent the day at home, in the throws of the full array of symptoms, and debating a trip to the student health center.  On Tuesday, I woke up for work, took the BART to Oakland, and helped people solve their housing crises.  It totally worked.  Except that today, the howling in my bowels returned mid-class, as if to remind me “you’re hella sick, Skeeter.“  I should probably lie around in bed watching hulu and eating some vegetarian equivalent of chicken noodle soup.

But as it turns out, I’m on a bike going 35 mph, and there’s no time to check my shirt for bees.  My work is too exhilarating and my classes too demanding for me to get better in the fun way.  Thankfully, there’s always time to take some Cipro…

La Pastilla Mexicana Casi Funciona Igual

In Which I Combine Nutter Butters With Ritz Bits

don't be fooled, this is NOT a peanut.

The curse of perfectionism is that it can compel you to follow through on a terrible, despicable mistake, even after you know what you’re doing is horribly, blood-curdlingly wrong. Do Not Mix Nutter Butters with Ritz Bits. Don’t do it.

They tell you not to mix advil and alcohol, not to dry your hair in the bathtub, and not to drink soda after eating pop rocks. But no one ever mentions the catastrophic, oft-fatal interaction that can result from the mixture of two supposedly benign Nabisco products.  I can’t believe I didn’t stop at the first sign of trouble.

only 10 more ritz bits before something magical happens!

Something in my stomach is alive, and its very angry.  I think it wants out, and I’m afraid it may be growing teeth.  I can only hope that it gets big enough to burst through my chest before I take my 24 hour Con Law exam – I would hate to spend an entire day writing about stare decisis only to succumb to the alien baby hatching in the fertile agar of two entirely chemically derived peanut-like flavor substances.

Behind The Times

my nanny goes really well with the plantation-style architecture!

This article (see photo), that article (especially the part about the professional book club facilitator), and this column (weekly advice for people with a second home) make me want to barf.

Seriously, the New York Times should hire someone, whose full-time job will be to critique the patrician sensibilities of this graying, bourgie publication.  Oh wait, they did! Too bad after-the-fact rationalizations don’t effectively neutralize the metallic taste of aristocracy.  The best thing for that is milk, (but not the Organic $7/gallon kind).

Thank heavens for the internet age, which is battering this once-mighty argosy of journalistic integrity.  Soon they may be forced to find revenue other than full-page Gucci propaganda to bouy this gilded galleon.  Perhaps a bit of middle-class appeal will be worth more than just increased readership: it could be the price of keeping this formerly formidable frigate above water.

Bloviators!

You can’t be any geek off the street.  Gotta be handy with deceit, if you know what I mean, earn your keep!  Bloviators!  Mic up!

What Real Americans look like

San Francisco is Bill O’Reilly’s latest target.  His producer’s footage looks positively Berkeleyesque!  Note how he comments that he wouldn’t go to The Presidio at night, and that Fisherman’s Wharf (the only other part of SF that O’Reilly has heard of) has “dope everywhere”.

What’s truly disturbing about O’Reilly is his capacity for bloviation (speaking with undue grandiosity, over-expansively and self-importantly).  H.L. Menken’s description of Warren G. Harding perfectly encapsulates bloviation, both in its subject and its form.

He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.

I’m now considering renaming the blog “Dark Abysm of Pish”.

the monday to end all mondays

Today in my cubicle, which is far less oppressive than it looks in writing, I overheard a co-worker describe this as the ultimate monday, sluggish from the feasts and family of Thanksgiving and aprehensive of frenzied shopping, planning, travelling, and loose-end-tying that mars the otherwise wonderful month of December.  It was grey today, which gives me a sense of slowness and tardiness much like the feeling you get when you wake up several hours late and everything happens several hours early as a result.

Yet the dullness, the foggy palor cast across the bay area, brings focus.  This must be how it feels to need ritalin- by selling off a portion of your alertness, by turning down the volume of your very mind, the cloudiness becomes its own clarity.

Today I am my Portland, Oregon doppleganger.  I’m wry today, more sarcastic than usual, my smile shows fewer teeth, and there is a deliberation to my movements.  The energy in my legs flows nicely into my forearms, where I trap it, rationing it out to my fingers as is called for by these electronic words.

This may be impossible, and thus far, everything I have ever thought has passed with time, but I’m suddenly quite fond of Mondays.

Black Friday

this is so much better than shopping online!

Shopping!  Consume Exciting, New, State-of-the-Art Products!   America!  SALE! BUYBUYBUYBUYBUY!  Happiness!  Shoes, Games, DVDs!  Everyone will be jealous of your apparent prosperity!  Presents for everyone!  recession PLASMA SCREENS!  U! S! A! X-Mas now 30% off!  Family time: buy none, get none free!  CREDIT CARDS!

…

or you could read a book.  maybe somebody on your christmas list could recommend one.  you could even chat about it afterwards.

shopping is just as worthwhile, though, i guess.

A Rant

Yesterday the Bloodmobile refused to draw my blood.  Here I am, showing up early, filling out paperwork, all amped up to give of myself unto (into?) others, and they’re like “nah, we’ll pass.”

WTF?!  Turns out I’ve visited a place they have deemed “risky”. So why don’t they just test my blood?  They’ve gotta be screening the stuff, right?  So I ask, why not just test me for the risk disease (malaria) and get it over with?  They don’t test blood for malaria.  WHAT?!  “Sir, please don’t raise your voice, but we don’t test the blood for malaria.  We can’t.  That’s why we screen out risky donors.”

So the integrity of this country’s blood reserves is protected from malaria (and apparently a bunch of other sketchy shit) solely by the honest disclosure of blood donors.  Oh yeah, there’s also a “in the last 12 months” clause, after which point malaria, hepatitis, and all the other diseases they can’t test for just vaporize.

Then there’s the MSM issue.  Any dude who has had sex with a man, even once, since 1977, is prohibited from giving blood.  Now, I know this seems like an HIV-related provision.  However, women who sleep with bisexual men are not prohibited.  Men who sleep with prostitutes are not prohibited either, so long as the prostitute was a lady, and the infectious act took place before “the last 12 months”.  I think its pretty obvious why the MSM prohibition exists, since it obviously does not effectively prevent the introduction of HIV into the blood supply.  Its because gay blood can turn you gay.  And gays are gross.

queer eye for the blood guy

Ew… gay platelets.

NOTE: The Red Cross has objected to the gay donor ban as “scientifically unwarranted,” but the FDA refuses to lift the ban.  Props to the Red Cross- they can be my bloodbank anytime.

Drought

It’s been two months since I posted last, probably because my insomnia had abated.  That bloodshot, anxious, early morning hyperfocus that kicks in when the glow of the computer screen has begun to blur your vision- that is the perfect time for writing.  It’s when the mind is at its most derisive, when sarcasm blooms in the stinking mulch of weariness, when numbness brings clarity.