Severe Alert!

Mysterious stuff falling from the sky is indeed cause for alarm.



May I humbly suggest grauple as a possible culprit?

The Year in Review

The year started with Northern cardinal the first bird of 2005. Got second job. Attended writing workshop. Big snow. All melted. Big snow again. Shoveled with Mormons. The Steelers lost. Iraqis voted. Discovered blogging. Birded Grosse Ile. Went out with a guy who brought a book of logic puzzles on a date. Accidentally toured Plymouth trying to get home from Canton. Worst family visit ever. Heard “Stairway to Heaven” played on the harp at the Toledo Museum of Art. The Pope died. 82° in April! Then 3" of snow. Dyed my old black dress so the armpits are black again. Went to bat house workshop. Someone stole my garden faerie. Bought Ditty Bops CD. Spider in my tea. Neighbors’ car caught fire. Invited to join new writing group. Ran into new writing group members at Ann Arbor Book Festival. Early morning departure for Point Pelee spring camp-out. Bopped on head by bluejay nesting in the garage. Saw "Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill." Neighbor across the street took trumpet lessons. Radishes wouldn’t grow. The Pistons lost. Got DSL. Power outage. Dumped by logic-puzzle guy. Tried to get tan. Didn’t win the lottery. Cucumbers grew. Bought another Ditty Bops CD. Went to Grand Rapids for Petra exhibit. Met Aunt T. Dragged a canoe down the Huron River. Enrolled in college. Followed Hurricane Katrina news. Laughed at Tom Robbins. Made soft pretzels from scratch. Won my first Photoshop contest. Knitted one scarf on the train to Chicago and one on the way back. Swarmed by ladybugs. Crazy Jaguar-driving lady just about bashed me in a construction zone on the way to a Chinese restaurant. Very windy. Michigan lost. Uncovered a mouse hiding under the overturned bird feeder on the porch. Penn State won. Ate Thanksgiving dinner in the dining room. Visited the outskirts of Wooster, oHIo. Found out cat food is cheaper in Kalamazoo. Drank some Flemish ale. Managed two laps of the ice skating rink and only fell down once. Ate too many cookies. Nuthatch took peanuts from my hand. Looking forward to the first bird of 2006.

Proof!

Those are my fingers sticking out of the window.



Santa brought me a digital camera, so I'm practicing with it and documenting nuthatch fearlessness along the way. See more at my Flickr page.

Makes Tense to Me

From Savage Chickens

Who Writes These?

Actual headline in today's Ann Arbor News: "Impotence drugs don't reach predicted heights."

Hrm...

Happy Birthday, from Me to Me

Isn't this mini graphics tablet from Macally just the most darling little peripheral?

When I saw it online, I immediately coveted it. I was excited when it arrived yesterday, then went through a brief period of blind rage while trying to remove it from the impenetrable fortress of its packaging. We've since sorted out our differences and are settling into a more comfortable working relationship.

Some Yankee Candle Scents You Won't Find This Holiday Season

• Baked Beans


• Cat Box


• Lowenbrau


• Gorgonzola


• Electrical Fire

Birthday/Christmas/New Year's Wish List

The Carnivorous Edition

Recycled Container is for the Birds

Late last fall, I bought some bay scallops from the market on the corner. They were delicious in a clear stock with carrots, celery, and leeks.

The plastic container displayed a 5, which meant I couldn’t put it in the recycling. So I nailed it to the wooden sill outside the bedroom window and filled it with birdseed. Sylvie and I were soon watching small winter birds eye-to-eye.

Last week a marauding squirrel, intent on the peanut mother lode, made a daring leap from the porch roof to the makeshift birdfeeder. I hardly believed my eyes when I saw it scrabbling for a paw-hold on the smooth plastic rim, half a second before it fell twelve feet to the earth, pulling the cup down with it.

Too bad the cat was asleep - she would have enjoyed that spectacle. I poked my head out the window to see if the audacious little rodent was okay. It sat up on its haunches, wiped its whiskers, and bounded off for the neighbor’s yard.

This morning I finally got around to tapping a new nail into the sill and reinstalling the container. Even though I continued to fill the other feeder - the expensive wooden one from Audubon - apparently many birds, including most of the tufted titmice, prefer the open cup. As soon as it was back in place, a flurry of feathered visitors dropped by. Air-traffic control was sorely needed as a chickadee and the red-breasted nuthatch narrowly, and noisily, avoided colliding mid-air. An enthusiastic white-breasted nuthatch overshot the landing strip and bounced off the window into the bowl.

At the bowl today: black-capped chickadee, tufted titmouse, red-breasted nuthatch, Carolina wren, white-breasted nuthatch, brave-hearted (aka dark-eyed) junco (never seen ‘em on the windowsill before), house finch, blue jay (teetering precariously).

On the feeder: downy woodpecker, white-breasted nuthatch, red-breasted nuthatch, black-capped chickadee, American goldfinch. Last year’s male red-bellied woodpecker has not yet made an appearance.

There was also a pair of cardinals on the ground, probably feeding on the spillage. The nuthatches in particular seem to throw a lot of seeds aside, almost as if they weigh them and only take the heaviest ones away to be hammered into hiding places beneath the walnut tree bark.

Ayyyyyyy!

The Kimmijo, she does not remember the how or the when of coming across the shoe blog of the Manolo. All the Kimmijo knows is that the shoe blog of the Manolo is a bright and playful spot on the Internets where her data-entry weary eyes may rest.

Hawks in the Snow

On the long drive over the rivers and through the woods to (and from) grandmother's house, I entertain myself by counting roadside hawks. Michigan and Pennsylvania usually yield more birds than oHIo, since I-80's wide and fast, but a wee detour past K's brought oHIo's count up this time.

I don't record my count, so I've forgotten it already. Most of the hawks present clear field marks as red-tailed hawks, although with a blurry fraction of a second for identification, I probably couldn't pick out a rough-legged unless one shook its feathered shank at me.

Although the hawks are definitely in the rain today, I changed my photo to a wintertime hawk in the snow. Besides, someone told me my other picture looked like Ann Landers peeping through a mail slot.

Snow

Thoughts of you.

The Red-Breasted Nuthatch is Fearless!

The merry little band of freshly black-and-white chickadees hung out in the lilacs while I hung out the window to refill the feeder with sunflower seeds, safflower seeds, cracked corn, and those oh-so-delectable peanuts. The red-breasted nuthatch, on the other hand, hung off the feeder while I filled it, just to get first dibs.

Last year one landed on my hand. Quite bold little birds.

Update, 4:36 pm: Now the nuthatch is sitting on the windowsill, eep-ing softly, totally unconcerned that there's a cat going ballistic on the other side of the glass.

Image from What Bird

Unbutton Your Pants

Here come the holidays.



Forbes has a visual feast of a slide show on the world's most fattening holiday foods (complete with recipes, so you can totally blow the diet). Despite having just eaten brunch, I'm drooling over the Norwegian Julekake and the roast goose. (But the Austrians can keep their fried carp - ew.)

How Ap-peel-ing (har har)

Okay, so here I am, innocently checking my Yahoo! mail when...when...this thing starts jiggling on the right side of the frame. It's...it's getting bigger...it's jiggling towards me, right at me. It's...it's a banana...with...with fruit on its...head? Does a banana have a head?

And is that a teeny-tiny skirt it's flouncing around in?

I watch in horror as the banana stops vibrating, only to drop its fruit and...strip...to reveal full, firm, succulent...mortgage rates. Gah!

Sadly, I managed to break my trance and take a screen shot only after the banana ceased its obscene dance. Now I keep clicking "Refresh," trying to get it to come back instead of getting back to work.

See what moral corruption stems from dancing phallic-symbol x hoochie-mama bananas?

Freeway Blogger in Ann Arbor

It's about time. I finally saw my first Freeway Blogger sign in Ann Arbor tonight.

Sadly, I'm not sure what it said - I didn't even see it until I was right under it. It's not a huge sign, and it had a lot of words. The first was "Impeach," and "Congress" was on there too. Also, night had fallen, snow flakes were blowing sideways, and I was travelling at 76 mph with a Ford Expulsion on my bumper.

The sign hangs over I=94, between 23 and State Street. Just where all the red-state Buckeyes coming into town for the game will see it...

Compare and Contrast

Today's headlines on Yahoo! News:

Woman Weds Teen, Spends Honeymoon in Jail
Tornadoes Barrel Across Midwest, Southeast
San Francisco Passes Sweeping Dog Laws
Harriet the Tortoise Turns 175

Today's headlines on CNN International:

Sunnis demand Iraq torture probe
Iraq official admits detainees abused
U.S. admits using white phosphorous
Human bird flu in China, one dead

A Wee Question

Is it premarital sex if you never get married?

Only 41 Days 'Til Christmas!

Can't find that perfect gift for a special someone? Check out the fine quality goods available on the Internets!


Incredible detail!

Not available in stores!

No need for watering this desert beauty!

I Miss My Brother

On this day, the day of my 100th blog post, I am thinking forward to Christmas shopping, prompted perhaps by retailers cramming it down our throats and a radio station already playing carols.

Honestly, I don't know if I can take 55 days of Andy Williams...but I digress.

My grandmother is really the only family member I enjoy shopping for any more. My mother says my grandmother is hard to buy for, but I don't think so. She's interested in her garden and the animals in the yard and in puttering around the kitchen, and she enjoys kitschy home and garden stuff. It's the other family members who are difficult to buy gifts for. Mom buys all her own Rosamund Pilcher and John Grisham books before anyone else even knows they're out. Dad doesn't fish or golf as much as he used to, and then again, he has everything already. My sister puts together wish lists of Chanel perfumes, pashmina sweaters, $40 tweezers, and cosmetic surgery, but I usually just get her a basket from The Body Shop.

The gifts I wind up giving seem generic and impersonal. I mean, I could do a $25 basket from The Body Shop for a Secret Santa operation.

Now my brother was the one who was fun to shop for. He was so much more engaged with the world and appreciated the weird, wild, and wonderful. When he experimented with Asian cooking, I special-ordered a rice steamer and some Chinese straw sandals. When he developed an interest in heirloom vegetables and seed preservation, I got him a do-it-yourself seed collection kit.

Last Christmas I found the seed kit, unopened, under the bed in what is now the guest room. My heart flinched - he didn't like it? Then I remembered that that particular Christmas was a month before he died, that he didn't live to collect any seeds, and that was why he didn't use it.

I slid it back under the bed.

This year, I want to get him this carnivorous plant terrarium. No one else in the family would think it's cool the way he would. The way I do. I've lost my ally, the other family member who thought like do, the one I could sit at the holiday table with and whisper snarky remarks to about the others.

I know the Salvation Army gets a lot of crappy toys from the dollar stores as donations. This year they're going to get a couple of carnivorous plant terrariums.

Michigan Rock Redux

Thanks to A. for the use of a scanner - I finally can post the image of the rock shaped like the lower peninsula. Here it is in all its plywood and masking tape glory. Since MLive took away my link from the earlier post, here's the text too.



Harris Diehl, of Broomfield Township, Mich., found this rock, in the shape of Michigan's Lower Penninsula, while in his field. Diehl was "just pickin' stone" in one of his family's fields in Isabella County when he stumbled across an unusual rock. Diehl brought it home and decided it could make a good educational display.
The Associated Press


---BROOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) -- Harris Diehl was "just pickin' stone" in one of his family's fields in Isabella County when he stumbled across an unusual rock.

"It looked enough like Michigan so you could recognize it right away," said Diehl, a property manager and sometime developer.

The flat rock is, indeed, shaped like the mitten of the Lower Peninsula. There's the Thumb over to the east, an indentation that looks like Grand Traverse Bay up to the northwest and the curve of the Lake Michigan shoreline south of Ludington is almost duplicated on the piece of glacial stone.

Diehl brought it home and decided it could make a good educational display.

"Rick kind of took over," Diehl said. "He's the artist."

Rick is Diehl's son-in-law Rick Huzzey, a process operator for Dow Corning Corp. in Midland and an amateur artist. With the mini-Michigan bolted and sealed to a sturdy piece of three-quarter-inch marine-grade plywood, Huzzey began the job.

"Here's Hartwick Pines," Huzzey said, pointing to a representation of the famous stand of virgin white pine near Grayling. Painted along the shoreline are "most of the lighthouses" that draw tourists and guide Great Lakes shipping.

Like a map in an atlas, he's painted in the products for which Michigan is famous.

Holland has its tulips. Around Traverse City and the Leelanau Peninsula, he painted grapes and cherries; a couple of sugar beets decorate the Thumb, the state's prime sugar-growing region.

Michigan's manufacturing and retail base isn't forgotten, either. In the Saginaw Valley, Huzzey painted the logos of Dow Chemical Co. and Dow Corning.

In southeastern Michigan, there are the logos of Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG and General Motors. The Grand Rapids region is designated with the logo of regional retail giant Meijer.

"All of the major roads in Michigan are there," Huzzey said.

And pointing to a gold star just a little west of the center of the peninsula, he smiled.

"That's our house," he said.

But the Lower Peninsula isn't the entire state, and Diehl began scouring the fields for a companion rock that could represent the Upper Peninsula.

That wasn't easy.

He was searching for a rock that not only had the right shape, but the right color. He finally settled on a chunk of stone that's shaped like the portion of the U.P. east of Marquette.

That's now bolted to the plywood and decorated as well. Diehl added a representation of the Mackinac Bridge, complete with tiny cars, to complete the project.

Around the edges are painted the state flag, fish, stone and other state symbols. Currently, the 250-pound-or-so representation in Michigan stone and plywood hangs in Huzzey's shed, but the family wants more people to see it and learn from it.

"We would like to display the rock in libraries in small communities," Diehl said. "Maybe senior citizen centers."

Even though it's heavy and hard to hang on a wall, the men point to the fact that it's solid on the wall of the shed. Eventually, they'd like to find a permanent home for it in a park, museum or library.

"It's a little bit of everything about Michigan," Huzzey said.

No Coloreds Allowed

My sister instant-messaged me the other day from “Burg,“ the small town in Pennsylvania where she lives with my parents. Seems the rules for the downtown business Christmas decorating contest have changed.

All lights must be white.

Christmas lights have always been a big deal in the small towns of western PA. Stringing them was an annual autumn ritual. Dad would bring the boxes up out of the basement and we’d dance around him as he untangled the lights on the floor in the kitchen. We supervised as he plugged them in to test them - huge, old-fashioned, three-inch-long tapered globes in opaque orange, white, green, red, and blue - and change any burned out bulbs before taking them out to drape them over the spruce in the front yard. We used the same type of lights inside on our live Christmas trees.

On December nights, we’d bundle up in swishy nylon snow pants and pile in the car to tour the neighborhoods. Nearly every house was lit in some way, ranging from a few electric candles in the windows to full-blown, electric-meter-spinning, Santa-threw-up-on-the-house complete encrustation of homes in tiny pink flashing lights (yes, there’s a specific house I have in mind).

As years passed, the big-bulbed lights burned out and were replaced by smaller, safer strands of what the British call “fairy lights.” In short order, these were available in a wide array of colors and styles, so that one house soon became all blue lights, another all red and white, and so forth. In one neighborhood, where the professionals lived (i.e. the high-school teachers and the orthodondist) mostly white lights prevailed. We maintained our tradition of multi-colored strands.

Then, one year, suddenly, all-white was all the rage. It seemed like 75% of the mostly blue-collar, former mining town wanted to emulate those educated people up on Highland Avenue. We were teen-agers by then, and growing more aware of the homogeneity of our hometown. Christmas was definitely the only real winter holiday - Hanukkah and Kwanzaa and solstice were just stories in books put out by uppity academics who think they’re better than us working class folk. There were no black people or Jewish people in town. There were no openly gay people or pagan nature worshippers, or if there were, they certainly didn’t let on. For a few years, there was a family of doctors from India, complete with Hindu gods, but they soon took their sacred cows to other pastures. Being bright and curious, my sister and I started to sense there was something lacking - if not outright wrong - about our little town.

As we slowly drove through the neighborhoods that December, my parents simply didn’t like the look of the all-white decorations, finding them cold and perhaps a little cheerless. But to my sister and me, the white lights took on the symbolic meaning of no diversity, lack of tolerance, failure of imagination, and resistance to changing times.

“No coloreds allowed,” my sister said, and we laughed, but it was, sadly, kind of true.

You have to understand, this is the land time forgot, and when an African-American man did turn up in town last year, the only thing people could comment on was that he looked like football star Jerome Bettis. Sports and gangs are still their main references for men of color.

Now the edict has come down from the office of the community development director that the downtown businesses shall be all white this holiday season. Of course, if a business doesn’t want to participate in the contest, they don’t have to, and can put up a giant blue menorah if they wanted, but I doubt anybody will. Prizes will be awarded, and the dying businesses of this shrinking town need every cent and every scrap of recognition and promotion they can get. My sister reports that plenty of downtown stores are going out of business or are already shuttered, yet the development director continues to spin that things are great and continues to attempt to up-scale and gentrify the town. “It’s like she thinks Burg is the new Palm Springs or something,” my sister said. Only there’s no work, no money, and people are leaving in droves instead of coming to visit.

The area has simply failed to keep up with the pace of modern life, reminiscing about the days when coal when king and perhaps relying too much on a dream of attracting tourists - a solution from the outside rather than from within. The place is stuck in a tar pit of old habits, out-moded social mores, and brain drain.

I wonder if anyone is really fooled by the covering of twinkly, sparkly, misleadlingly-pure white lights.

OMG

I just logged onto Yahoo! and at first glance I thought the picture of Harriet Miers was Barry Manilow.

Huzzah for the Modern Luddite-esque Lifestyle

As someone whose Macintosh studio display is larger than her single, rabbit-eared television set, I was amused by this blog entry and subsequent comments.

O for a voice like thunder, and a tongue
To drown the throat of war! - When the senses
Are shaken, and the soul is driven to madness,
Who can stand? When the souls of the oppressed
Fight in the troubled air that rages, who can stand?
When the whirlwind of fury comes from the
Throne of God, when the frowns of his countenance
Drive the nations together, who can stand?
When Sin claps his broad wings over the battle,
And sails rejoicing in the flood of Death;
When souls are torn to everlasting fire,
And fiends of Hell rejoice upon the slain,
O who can stand? O who hath caused this?
O who can answer at the throne of God?
The Kings and Nobles of the land have done it!
Hear it not, Heaven, thy Ministers have done it!

-- William Blake, prologue to King Edward the Fourth

Also performed as "Lullaby" by Loreena McKennitt.

Speaking of Religion...

I finally found something I can believe in.

By Popular Request

The 23rd Qualm

Bush is my shepherd; I dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.
He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international disgrace for his ego’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of pollution and war,
I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control, they discomfort me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement forever.

There is No Teacher Who Can Teach Anything New

Buy the book instead.

Quote of the Day

Where there is an art, there is a science.
Where there is a science, there is an art.

Art is feeling.
Science is fact.
Feelings must be combined with fact before anything new of value can be created.

Science and art are inseparable in creative development.

-- Alden B. Dow

From the latest newsletter from Flying Sheep Yarns.

She is as in a field a silken tent

Friday cat blogging.
P. in town.
Swarmed by ladybugs on U-M campus.
Train whistle blowing.

Found

That Found guy has gotten some local press lately. Found even came up in conversation with my writers’ group last week, as a source of inspiration for poems, characters, and such. So I decided to pay closer attention to the random bits of flotsam that drift into my path. Here is what I found this week:

• a corroded penny


• a dollar bill


• a handwritten list of places to buy home-brew supplies


• a dead nuthatch with ants crawling out of its eye sockets

The dead bird is the only one I didn’t pick up, though I was tempted, and it would be in my freezer right now if decomposition hadn’t already started. I restricted myself to turning it over with my foot.

I have always had a strange attraction to dead things, even as a child. Perhaps especially as a child. Every shoebox that came into the house wound up buried in the backyard, filled with leaves, grass, and flowers, topped with a deceased chipmunk or defunct sparrow. As I got to be a teenager, I held fewer funerals, but the impulse remained.

After I learned that Percy Bysshe Shelley was cremated on an Italian beach, I wanted to set the little pyres on fire, but never actually did. Perhaps I should have become a chef, arranging quail flambe on beds of exotic greens.

Part of my interest stems from the philosophical pondering that a dead animal induces. Where did that spark of life go? What was it to begin with? If I’m not careful, I can easily lose half a day gazing into the middle distance mulling unanswerable questions.

But mostly I like dead things because they satisfy my earthly curiosity. What does that nuthatch’s bill feel like? Or a squirrel’s tail, or a deer’s tongue? Unless you’re doing scientific research or wildlife rehabilitation, you probably don’t have many chances to find out unless the poor creature’s dead.

Thankfully, I am not alone in this tactile inquisitiveness. At the Field Museum last week, looking up at the bones of Tyrannosaurus rex, my friend leaned towards me with a twinkle in the eye and a whisper, “How fast do you think the guards would be here if we broke the light beam?”

Battin' 1000

Two people today have uttered exactly the same sentence to me: "Don't look for logic." Which is kinda trippy, 'cuz they're the only two people I've actually spoken with today, and talking about totally unrelated topics.

Oh, and don't look for logic from iTunes. It just followed 50 Cent with Patsy Cline.

Come for the Violent Sci-Fi, Stay for the Tranquil Theology

There's a free showing of Blade Runner tonight -- at the Jewel Heart Tibetian Buddhist Center.

Where else but Ann Arbor?

The Centaur is Restless

Sagittarians love to travel, and it’s been far too long since this one’s been any further than Grand Rapids. So before the second job starts up again and I’m locked in a two-month death spiral of work-class-work, work-class-work, I’m taking a train trip to Chicago this weekend.

I was told to bring clothes suitable for a nice restaurant. This evening I held a mini-fashion show in front of the full-length mirror. Too bad most of my dress-up clothes have somehow shrunk and now smash my boobs into unnatural forms or push up little Appalachian ridges of Panera-induced pudge (I admit I’ve seen mio caro once or twice on the sly). The black tank dress will have to do until I somehow dredge up the will power to stop drinking beer and eating cheese on everything.

I thought I’d try to entice D. into guest-blogging from a landscaping roadshow in Columbus, oHIo, this weekend, but to no avail. You’ll have to wait until Monday evening when I return. Maybe.

Why Do Fools Fall in Love?

Savage Chickens has the answer.

Please Don't Eat

the condoms.

From Dr. Johnson's Cat.

Rock Shaped Like Lower Peninsula Made Into Display

Yep.

There's an accompanying AP photo of the display in the Ann Arbor News, but I am unable to find it online. Too bad - the Leelanau and Old Mission peninsulas are quite impressive for having come out of a farmer's field.

Michigan Renaissance Festival

It's all fun and games until someone throws out their back lobbing tomatoes at Pester the Jester.

Friday Cat Blogging

I needs me a digital camera so I can blog the Meowy One more often.

I Know This is a C++ Programming Class, but Can I Do My Assignment In Pascal?

The back-row students in my Photoshop class were shocked - shocked! - that we have an assignment due on Tuesday. Adult students in a four-credit college course were whining amd whinging, trying to weasel out of doing homework with excuses so lame they needed to be shot.

The real ripsnorter came when one woman asked, "Can I do it in Paint Shop Pro?"

They Like Me, They Really Like Me

Inspired by a friend's farking, I entered my first-ever Photoshop contest on Worth1000's beginner's board.

The source picture was a sunset over a landscape. I spent about two and half hours on Saturday trying to turn the mountain in the background into an erupting volcano, and failed miserably. So I extracted the hill in the foreground, played with the levels and color balance so it greened up, desaturated the sky, then applied a layer gradient of blue to white. I added a stock image of the Irish coast and voila. My submission was complete.

I was pretty happy with it. But I was surprised - and delighted - to get the e-mail notification this morning that I WON!

The Envelope Please...

As usual, I was half a month behind in picking up the Ann Arbor Current magazine. Somehow I never remember to find one until the month is nearly over.

Wish I had picked up the September issue sooner. The 2005 results of the "Reader's Picks: Best of Washtenaw County" were awaiting my perusal and subsequent amusement. With 80 bajillion categories, some of these “bests” are the only business in town in their category. Best Blues Venue? Since the Bird of Paradise has flown, there’s really only the Firefly Club left. Best Central European Restaurant? As is repeatedly pointed out, Ann Arbor is not Chicago, and if there’s another central European restaurant here besides Amadeus, please let me know.

Most Amusing Result? Best Blog: annarborisoverrated.com.

All Apologies

I have been thoroughly taken to task for my mischaracterization of conditions on “Survivor” as “cushy.”

“It’s no beach blanket bingo,” an e-mail from Chicago informs me, and provides a list of tropical horrors endured by the contestants: miserable humidity, open sores that don’t heal, malnutrition, dehydration, vomiting, snakes, jellyfish stings, torn muscles, etc, etc.

I...I...I am so sorry. I thought I exaggerated my humble opinion for humorous effect...since that’s pretty much what I do on this blog. I admit I carelessly tossed that post off without much thought. In fact, reading it again, I see it's not even particularly coherent.

My deepest apologies to anyone who was offended by my failure to acknowledge adequately the trials of reality tv participants. A complete review will be conducted. I take full responsibility.

When Will We See Survivor: Reykjavik?

Someone asked me today if I watch “Survivor.” I hardly watch TV at all, and especially disparage reality shows, so the answer was, no, I don’t watch “Survivor.”

The show might be more interesting if the contest were occasionally held somewhere other than a tropical island. (Yes, I know Guatemala isn’t an island, but go along with me here.) Tropical islands can be pretty cushy environmental niches: lots of food, few predators, don’t need clothes. Perfect habitat for Homo sapiens.

Which is why I’m always so amazed by people like the Inuit, who live in a harsh climate far, far from the warm savanna where humans evolved. Maybe “Survivor” would appeal more to me if the contestants had to figure out how to keep from freezing to death, had to sew their own sealskins, or had to contend with other top-of-the-food-chain species. Say, polar bears. Or better yet, Siberian tigers.

(As an aside, some folks are startled when they find out I grew up in a place where black bears routinely amble alongside the roads. One who wasn’t was Dmitry, a PhD candidate I dated while at Ohio State. He grew up near Vladivostok, and while on family picnics would occasionally see tigers in the woods.)

Heck, cold-weather “Survivor” probably wouldn’t even need to be that extreme. Just take a couple o’ Sun Belt boys (and gals) and drop them in Marquette for the winter.

Bird Nerd Humor

From my favorite news source, The Onion.

Why Am I Always Tired?

10:45 pm
The neighborhood is quiet, save for the trills of insects and frogs. I'm sleepy, so I start getting ready for bed. I slip into my nighty and give the cat her midnight snack.

11:00 pm
I read for a few minutes under the covers.

11:15 pm
I switch off the light. Kitty curls up behind my knees, purring.

11:30 pm
The neighbor comes out onto the porch. She's yelling into her Nextel. The other end of the conversation is audible too: crackling, annoying chirp, and all.

12:00 am
The neighbor's raucous laughter dissolves into a fit of smoker's cough. She goes inside, slamming the door behind her.

12:20 am
I fall asleep.

2:00 am
The male half of the neighbors arrives home in a mufflerless car. Honking of horn, yelling, cussing, and door-slamming ensue.

2:30 am
I turn over and go back to sleep.

3:36 am
Something soft and warm is pulsing against my arm, accompanied by wet smacking sounds. It's the cat, and the sound is coming from her mouth as she grooms so vigorously the headboard vibrates. I hate that noise, but I love my cat. I sigh and decide to try to wait her out.

3:42 am
I start tapping on kitty's spine, right at the base of her tail. She hates that. She swipes at me, then nips at me, then jumps down from the bed with a thump. Mission accomplished, I pull the sheets up over my ears and go back to sleep.

5:30 am
There's a herd of wild ponies in my apartment. Oh no, it's just the cat, ricocheting off the furniture. She bounds onto the bed, jabs one paw (exerting 500 ppi) into my left kidney, says, "Ffft," and hits the floor again, running.

5:33 am
I shuffle to the bathroom without turning on the light.

5:35 am
I crawl back under the covers and reset the alarm from 6:30 to 7:00.

6:45 am
The school buses start trundling down the street, air brakes huffing. I turn off the alarm and cover my eyes with my arm.

7:00 am
I get up. In the mirror I look like a ghost with two black eyes.

7:20 am
I get in the bathtub, wash my hair, then turn off the cold and let the tub fill up with hot water. I sink down so I'm in up to my chin and close my eyes. I open my eyes and it's

7:55 am
Shit. Now I'm behind. I forego the weight-lifting exercises I've scheduled for myself for a few sun salutations. I always feel too tired to heave the weights around.

I don't know why.

Joy of Rural Life #182

Nearly-palpable clouds of freshly squeezed skunk pong wafting in through the screens.

Makes my chocolate cake taste like a bad memory of Grolsch.

Om Shri Ganeshaya Namah

Not Much to Say

I’ve had some time off this weekend, to give myself an opportunity to de-stress, rest up, and get prepared for the busy months ahead, and to work on a couple of essays I’ve started.

I haven’t done any of that. My time’s been spent cycling through my bookmarks of news sites and blogs and sitting outside in the sun reading The End of Faith and The Geese of Beaver Bog.

I’ve been too distracted and restless to do much else. My jotted-down topics for lighthearted blog posts - a dream in which I was bald, a rant against drivers who don’t pull up far enough to let the car behind them reach the drive-thru window, my nominations for worst copy writing ever - seem woefully inappropriate. Anything I have to say about the Gulf Coast reduced to a third world country, or our preznit set to repeal the entire 20th century once he shoves his Supreme Court nominations through, is already being said, and said better, on other blogs. I really have nothing new to add. I’d just be another toad in the the chorus.

So I’ve procrastinated, and now I’ve got to do all my reading for class and everything else today. Someday I’ll get around to renewing my membership in the Two-Headed Turtle Society.

I’m not even back at work yet, and I’m already looking forward to my next break, the fall Point Pelee birding/camping trip. Actually, there was quite a lot of bird chatter this morning. With the air conditioning finally off and the windows open, the morning discourse is audible once more. A Carolina wren sang loudly while his mate churred back to him. Goldfinches burbled and the merry band of resident chickadees (who have already made short work of the sunflower in the garden) called incessantly. Earlier the bluejays noisily faced off with a squirrel; now they’re making their squeaky hinge calls. Some geese flew over, honking. I think I heard sandhill cranes croaking in the distance. But then again, sometimes I want to hear cranes so badly that I think I occasionally hallucinate them.

Hey Jimmy Carter

W. might want to borrow your sweater.

Update 4:20 - Yahoo! News done went and changed the headline on me. Original: Bush urges Americans to curb gas purchases

You Are Not a Winner

One Sunday, a classified ad caught my eye. A community edition of the Ann Arbor News needed a page designer/copy editor. That’s what I do.

Like many employers nowadays, they wanted a lot (degree, two years of experience, proficiency in three different software applications, a high level of language ability, proven proofreading skills, perfect attendance, chipper attitude, great standardized test scores, type O blood) for not much in return (part-time, no benefits, “flexible schedule” - read “on call on our terms,” but hey - we might let you work four days a week!). Still, I reviewed my resume, composed a decent cover letter, and prepared to send it off. The ad listed an e-mail address. I weighed the pros and cons of attachments vs. plain text and opted for the cover letter as text and the resume as an attachment. I figured it would show them I know how to make a pdf.

I clicked “send” and the e-mail went off with the little swooshing noise the program makes. Within a few minutes, the e-mail program whistled that I had new mail. My cover letter and resume were returned to me as undeliverable.

In college I had a pencil that had “I are a English major” printed on the side. I held the newspaper clipping up to the screen and went over the address letter by letter. I had entered it correctly. I Googled the community newspaper and clicked on “contact us.” They had spelled the address wrong in the ad.

I suppose they really do need someone with proofing skills. Tempted though I was to point it out in my cover letter, I did not. I resent the e-mail to the correct address.

Yesterday I got my rejection notice. Naturally, it’s not my first, so I know how these things usually go. “We will keep your resume on file, blah blah blah.” Not this one. This is just about the bluntest letter I’ve ever received. It is three sentences long:

Sentence one is basically a thank you.
Sentence two: “As we narrow the field of applications, you will not be among our finalists.”
Sentence three pretty much says, “Good luck, loser.”

I’m not a finalist? :’-(

Well, that’s okay. I don’t want to work for you anyway. ‘Cuz not only do you not know your own e-mail address, but you also got my street address wrong on both the envelope and the letter.

Thank you for deigning to reply to my mail. Unfortunately, your performance does not meet my requirements at this time. Best of luck in your continued search.

Ooo Ooo That Smell

Life literally stinks at my place.

This week at work we received one of those periodic e-mails that C. is going to shoulder the loathsome task of cleaning the communal refrigerator, and we need to remove by end of the day Friday anything we don’t want thrown away. I pushed around ancient yogurt cups, T.’s cans of Fresca, and A.’s leftover Arby’s sandwiches, and found in the back a Rubbermaid container of mine, full of forgotten three-week-old broccoli. I put it in my big, patterned Nine West bag and threw it in the trunk of the car.

After work, I went to a nearby park with a coworker. As we pulled into the muddy parking lot, a foul, gaseous odor assaulted my nose. I assumed it was the mud, since my coworker seems like the kind who would be decent enough to fart after we got into the woods. We took our walk, and after I dropped her off, the car still smelled stinky.

When I arrived home, I opened the boot of the car - and was hit with an eye-watering stench. Rubbermaid had erupted, leaving nauseating green broccoli pee in my bag. I haven’t smelled anything that bad since the turkey vulture and the fox were in the same room at the wildlife rehabilitation center.

I dumped the offensive vegetable remains in the outside trash can. Rubbermaid came inside with me, followed by the stench. I shot a big squirt of Joy into the container and ran the water as hot as it would get. The odor lingered like a visiting in-law. I grabbed the Lysol from the bathroom and sprayed it into the air in every room in the apartment. I wiped out the Nine West bag with a Lysol wipey-sheet-thing. “Crisp Linen” seemed to quell the demon smell.

With the reeking container contained, I turned my attention to kitty, gave her a good scratch, and spooned out some canned Friskies into her bowl. Then I walked into the bedroom to discover two piles of cat yack. With a sigh, I got paper towels and the carpet cleaner and cleaned up the barf.

Within fifteen minutes the cat was yowling under the bed. “Sylvie,” I called. Hopefully I sounded inviting and not pissed off.

“Come here, kitty cat.”
“Yeow-ow-ow.”
“Kitty! Come here, boo-boo.”
“Yee-owwww!”
“Come here, kitty.”
“Hack-a-hack-a-hack-a...blargh-gh-gh-gh-gh.”

I sighed again and went back for more paper towels. I returned to the bedroom. There was Sylvie, sitting in the middle of the floor, looking at me with imploring green eyes. “You never barf in the same place twice, do you?” I asked her.

Under the bed is storage. (Yes, I know it’s bad feng shui and impedes the flow of chi.) I pulled all the boxes and bags out from the under the bed to find the puke pile - thankfully it was not the whole way in the far corner. Pacific Salmon in Sauce is already pretty soft, and after 10 minutes in the cat, it was warm and even more pungent. I practically had to mop it out of the carpet.

As I dumped handfuls of partially digested cat food into the trash I sniffed. The broccoli remained. I re-Lysoled, including the Rubbermaid container this time. I went to my desk and started working. Minutes later, I couldn’t concentrate. I could smell rotten broccoli again. The reek wouldn’t die. I wasn’t going to be able to sleep or do anything. I snapped the lid on the Rubbermaid container, tied a plastic Meijer bag around it, and marched it out of the house. I went back inside. Ah, much better.

Anyone walking into the apartment that night would have expected a séance, judging by the number of Yankee candles burning.

I awoke this morning, patted Sylvie’s silver fur, stretched, and took a deep breath.

Is that a soupçon of Pacific Salmon in Sauce?

I've Got a Secret...Not

Since discovering PostSecret a few weeks back, I’ve wanted to climb on the bandwagon. I’ve been trying to think of a secret of my own to send in.

I can’t think of anything.

The site states that your secret has to be something you’ve never told anyone before. Being a Good Student Who Follows Instructions, I feel bound by this. The problem: I’ve told everything to somebody. Obviously different people are privy to different secrets. If P. knew things about me that D. knows, she’d flip her gourd.

What secrets do I have? That I eat butter out of the dish? My dad knows that. That I helped a friend’s sister try to run away with her boyfriend when we were teenagers? Half my family and half of hers knows that. That I only pretend to understand Noam Chomsky? That I think Professor Snape is sexy?

Does a lack of secrets mean I’m uninteresting? Does it mean I'm unusually honest? Does it mean I’m not bad enough, or that I’m a blabbermouth? Does it mean anything at all?

There has to be something...

Sign Outside Chiropractor's Office

Pain is inevitable.
Misery is optional.

For the first time in nearly ten years

I have a student ID card.

Really, I just got it for the prestige and the movie discounts.

Usually I Just Erase Their Mouths

From PostSecret

Men and Other Reptiles

“We had a yard sale,” my mother told me on the phone last week.
“Don’t be sellin’ my stuff!” I replied.

I get attached to stuff, even stuff I haven’t physically seen for years. When I was in elementary school, I had this pair of black winter boots that I wore for years. My family teased me about them, and said they looked like Cossack boots, and tried to get me to wear other, newer boots. I refused. I liked the boots. I loved the boots. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t just let me alone about them.

I sure would like to have boots like that again.

My family has no heirlooms. We get rid of everything. My great-grandmother’s player piano and all the rolls for it, the carnival glass, the Fiestaware - all gone. Practically nothing remains to be handed down from generation to generation. I have my grandfather’s goldstone cuff links and a few books, including an old copy of “Black Beauty” that a teacher inscribed as a gift to my great-grandfather in 1909. If I didn’t have it, it probably would have been in the yard sale stack.

“We found something of yours in with your sister’s books,” mom continued.
“Don’t sell my stuff!” I hyperventilated.
“I’m sending it to you.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Something one your friends gave you,” she said. “You’ll see.”

I scritched my head over that. Something a friend gave me? Surely it wasn’t the red wax bust of Lenin, with a candle wick in the center of his bald head, that N. brought back from Russia for me. I’m pretty sure that’s one thing I did throw away. I’m pretty sure I’m still peeved that everyone else got cool Red Army flasks and slender Egyptian perfume bottles, and I got a Lenin candle. (“You’re not girly enough for the perfume bottles,” she said. “And I thought this looked more like you.” Bite my ass, N. Even after all these years, bite a little communist star into it.)

The package from mom arrived yesterday. I tore open the padded envelope and there was “Men and Other Reptiles,” a small volume of quips and quotes that “runs the gamut from subtle teasing to bitingly on-target barbs.” There's lots of Mae West, Dorothy Parker, and Zsa Zsa Gabor: “I want a man who’s kind and understanding. Is that too much to ask of a millionaire?” sort of stuff. There are a few more amusing entries: “Show me a young man who actively embraces Republicanism and I’ll show you the world’s most boring date.”

But my favorite part is on the end leaf, an inscription to me (mammal) from D.

Hiroshima Paint

I was out last week with a friend in Ann Arbor, who was telling me about the Hiroshima stencils on the sidewalks. Walking to Sabor Latino, we looked at the shadows and counted how many stencils the artists had used.

After dinner, we walked to Wurster Park, played on the swings, and patted Henry (a shepherd mix whose tag reads, “The Greeter of Wurster Park”). We got ice cream at Washtenaw Dairy and headed back to the car.

We returned to the parking lot from a different direction than we left it. At this entrance, there was a dashed line. The line curved sinuously over the asphalt. We laughed when the line led us back to its source in one quadrant of a parking space: a huge splatter of white that looked suspiciously like Hiroshima silhouette paint.

Rites of August

It’s August. Time for corn on the cob.

I come from a long line of prodigious corn-eaters. At one time, my small family, then consisting of me, my sister, mom and dad, Uncle M, and my grandparents, could easily put away two dozen ears at dinner. In recent years, as the family and times have changed, we’ve slowed down a bit.

Almost every late summer lunch or dinner included corn on the cob. With so many small farms in our region of western Pennsylvania, fresh corn was readily available at roadside stands or right off the back of a truck parked at the edge of the field. Brown paper bags originally filled with ears were soon filled with husks and silk of the palest green. We kids used to marvel at how fast my father could shuck an ear of corn, taking all the silk off in one tear. With our small hands, it took us a while to clean an ear, almost the same time as it took him to do six. We would “Ewww” over the worms and dad would cut them out with his pocketknife.

While we stacked the corn on a platter, hamburgers and hotdogs sizzled on the grill. The corn would be served as the last course. Apart from cucumbers, which my grandmother usually smothered in sour cream and pepper, there was never anything green or remotely like a salad.

The uncontested patriarch of corn on the cob was my grandfather. Pappap loved his corn, and his early August birthday coincided with the first fresh harvest. He would lean forward from his chair at the head of the table in my grandparents’ humid kitchen, grab the topmost ear from a steaming golden pyramid, and get to work. At least three sticks of butter and two salt shakers sat in strategic locations on the table. Pappap usually had his own. His preferred method of butter transference was to roll the corn right on top of the stick.

We all ate our corn the same way, like a typewriter. Left to right, carriage return, roll the top away to get to the next row. No one ever cut the corn off the cob. That would be sacrilege.

Conversation at the table centered on varieties of corn. My mother and I preferred “Silver Queen,” white, small kerneled, sugary sweet. But “Silver Queen” usually matures later, so in early August we were more likely to have what is called “Butter and Salt” or “Butter and Sugar,” for its yellow and white pattern. Sometimes I think we ate regular old field corn, waxy and with huge gold kernels that stuck to our teeth like caramel. My grandmother and father liked this best, joking that they would be happy eating with the cows. If Pappap had a preference, it never showed.

When the feasting was over, Pappap would heap his denuded cobs and destroyed napkins on his plate, exhale heavily, and wipe the butter from his glasses with the edge of his corn-splattered white t-shirt. Sometimes part of a kernel would hang from a strand of his silver hair. Picking his teeth, he’d push away from the table and say, “I need to take a shower.”

Tonight I truly felt his granddaughter, as I turned away from the table, two empty cobs on my plate, fingernail between my teeth.

Bomb Shelter Potatoes

Earlier this evening, something cracked. I’ve been feeling low for a while, but I’ve been putting on my brave face and trying not to let life suck ass through a straw quite so much. After all, life could be chewing my ass, and that would definitely be worse than a little sucking. Still, like I said, after work I broke, and I curled up in the middle of my bed and cried in a chest-heaving, nose-running way that I haven’t cried for a long time.

After I stopped, I lay there sighing and stroking the silver fur of my good and patient kitty, who was waiting for her canned food. I got up and walked to the kitchen with her wrapped around my left ankle. I spooned some gloopy, and evidently delicious, chicken-and-tuna stuff into her bowl and washed my face. I wasn’t sure if I was hungry myself or slightly sick to my stomach.

Comfort food is what I needed - something warm and filling and non-diet. Someone told me that when it comes to stressed-out eating, women tend to go more for fatty and sweet (chocolate, cheesecake) and men more for fatty and salty (French fries, pizza). Here once again, despite my obvious female features and mouth-foaming heterosexuality, I sift out on the same side as the boys. Fried chicken. Mozzarella cheese sticks. Macaroni and cheese.

Mac and cheese sounded particularly good. I opened the cupboard, replaced the blue plastic margarita glass that toppled out, and pushed aside the tea and sugar to see if I had any mac and cheese in stock. I didn’t. But I did find, scrunched way in the back, a package of instant mashed potatoes.

In the absence of macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, complete with a dammed-up lake of butter, started to sound pretty good. But were they okay? The potatoes came from my grandmother, who sends me home with bags and coolers full of food every time I visit. The last time I visited was Christmas, so the potatoes were at least eight months old - maybe older. She might have given them to me at Thanksgiving, or even Easter. It’s a bit mysterious why she gave them to me at all, since I have never prepared instant mashed potatoes for myself and have never (knowingly) eaten them at her house either.

I smoothed the rumpled bag, looking for an expiry date. There wasn’t one. I suppose they don’t expire. I suppose that’s why you can store them in your emergency kit, right next to the duct tape and plastic wrap. “With sour cream, chives, and imitation bacon,” the package read. Yummy. I boiled the water and dumped ‘em in.

While the potatoes rehydrated themselves, I sliced a cucumber from the garden and rinsed the last of the arugula that I bought at the farmer’s market on Saturday. On one side of the plate I had fresh, tasty, organic produce; on the other side, highly processed Frankenfood that openly admitted the artificiality of its bacon bits. I laid a knife between them so the potatoes wouldn’t eat the arugula before I did.

I created a satisfactory pool of butter and sampled my first forkful. They weren’t too bad, though they certainly were not my grandmother’s homemade mashed potatoes. They were rather bland and sticky, and the bacon bits didn’t do much for me. Nevertheless, I ate half the pot, pretending all the while I was savoring the finest macaroni and cheese, properly baked with bread crumbs on top.

As I sit here simultaneously working and writing this, the potatoes are resting in a cold lump in my tummy. Perhaps the bomb shelter potatoes will put me out of my misery. Perhaps I will explode like a sea gull full of Alka-Seltzer. Or perhaps it’s nothing a little vodka and tonic wouldn’t fix.

I Think the Photo Should Have Been at Zingerman's

Another one from The Onion.

Predigested

I receive a gift subscription to Reader’s Digest on a yearly basis. The jokes and Mary Roach’s column are usually good for some mild amusement. The rest of it...meh. After reading it for most of my life, I’ve come to understand why they call it a digest. It’s the intellectual equivalent of unflavored yogurt. Bland, pallid, and already partially digested for you.

The pap has become more and more pre-chewed over the last few years, and the conservative bias really shows. Or maybe I’ve just gotten more discerning or too big for my britches. Snippets even shorter than the articles now take up the first few pages. I’m not sure who finds the “Word Power” feature a challenge, with words like “emit.” “impending.” and “dissenter.” But I think I will look up “tchotchkes” in the American Heritage Dictionary 1) Just to see if its there and 2) If an Indo-European root or any cognates are listed.

The August 2005 “special” 1000th issue is particularly rich. They’ve focused on “14 Amazing Trends That Will Change Your Life.” There’s an article on data mining and ineffectual ways to try to shore up your eroding privacy. There’s an article on self-scanners in grocery stores and automated customer service telephone calls. There’s an article on using religion to market more tchotchkes to people. Like it’s a good thing. I guess God’s a capitalist. (And a Penn State fan - that’s why the sky’s blue and white.)

And then there’s this charming piece of spin, the one that nearly made me spit a Cheerio across the room: #5. “Making Your Job Work for You: With the coming labor shortage, you’ll have more freedom, more flexibility, and maybe even a fatter paycheck.”

Ha ha ha ha! Ha ha haa ha ha!

How do you know your two benefitless jobs are providing you freedom, flexibility, and a fat paycheck? Elaine Chao, Jack Welch, and Citigroup say so.

Personally, I think they should have included Janis Joplin: "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

According to wikipedia, the University of Guelph “stated publicly that they carry the magazine only as an example of propaganda.”

Those Canadians! Ha ha!

*sigh*

Dumb Quotes

I noticed this morning that most of the "smart quotes" in my previous post curl in the wrong direction, away from the words they are supposed to embrace. This must have happened because I cut the text from MacJournal and pasted it into Blogger.

It irks me. I'm irked that something so trivial irks me, but irk me it does.

Lil' Kim and the Twins

No, I did not write the letter to Dear Prudence asking for advice on how to handle comments about one’s short stature. Although I’m 4’11“ too, it didn’t wreck my self-esteem (I had family for that). Still, I know of what the letter-writer speaks.

I’ve had people use my head as an armrest, for instance. While out walking or in a crowd, I am evidently invisible and get run off the sidewalk or stepped on. Then there’s being physically picked up and whirled through the air, without warning, against my will, while in a restaurant or mall parking lot, which actually happened once or twice on first dates. The boys were astonished that I didn’t want to go out with them again. ”But you’re so little and cute,“ they whined, as if a woman’s littleness and cuteness validated their ”just not able to help myself“ excuses and I should be flattered by their violation of my space.

Of course, there’s a fine subjective line here. Being teased and called ”Shorty“ and being whirled through the air can be fun within the proper context. And if I don’t see that piano or dollop of condor guano headed down from the sky - please, pick me up and move me.

For most people I encounter, the novelty of my lack of height is dissipated somewhat by the novelty of my huge boobs. By some genetic quirk my pygmy body’s got ta-tas better fitted for an Amazon. (Well, the left one anyway, they’d cut the right one off.)

I deal with infinitely more comments about my bosom than about my height, all of them rude, most of them from supposed adults, and women are as bad as men.

Prudie advises the cute little lady that folks probably don’t realize they’re offending her and to list examples of some contemporary stars who share her height. This sounds sane and reasonable and grown-up and it’s not what I do.

Maybe I have too much choleric humour, or maybe it’s because my Mars is in hot-tempered Aries, but folks know when they’ve offended me. ”Better than fat legs,“ I hissed at one woman, giving her a scornful head-to-toe glance. ”The twins are fine, I’ll have a Coke,“ I said with a vicious smile, to a waiter after he asked my breasts what they’d like. If he looked at them after that, it was surreptitiously.

Yes, they’re amazing, wondrous even. I know everyone will look at some point. Just don’t stare. And if you know what’s good for you, do not - ever, ever - ask if they’re real.

Brutal Newsweek-Slapping Spree Leaves 34 Dead

Despite having the windows closed and the a/c cranked for, oh, the entire summer, a posse of flies somehow broke into my apartment. I came home today to find the kitchen windows abuzz with an absolute horde of fucking flies. Well, okay, they weren’t actually in the act of fucking, but they obviously had reproduced sometime recently, because there was a shitload of ‘em.

There are Jains who adhere so strongly to non-violence and non-killing that they wear masks to avoid breathing in tiny insects. I admire the strength of their principles. The flies should go find a Jain’s house.

The latest copy of Newsweek was the closest thing handy. I subscribed when a coworker’s daughter was selling magazines for the Girl Scouts. I usually read the political cartoons, captions, and graphics, then skim the rest of the articles in about fifteen minutes. Along with the Ann Arbor News and cat food cans, Newsweek is good for recycling. And bug-killing.

Within seconds I had perfected a fly-splattering, wrist-snapping technique. The green bottle flies were only stunned by direct blows and I quickly found it was best to hit them at an angle with the magazine folded in half. This ruptured their exteriors, and even if it didn’t always kill them outright, it at least left them dangling from the window panes, stuck there by their giant exploded eyes.

Five minutes later, the carnage was over. The cat came back out from under the desk while I collected the casualties and scrubbed the guts off the windows. The pages of Newsweek bear multicolored stains and a hairy leg or two. My only regret is that it wasn’t George Will’s turn to write “The Last Word.”

Update: 11:30 pm. The body count now stands at 41.

There's a Moonwalk in my Backyard

All week my neighbors have been pounding, sawing, and buzzing away at some big project in their backyard. Yesterday I thought the Chelsea Summerfest was going in over there, they had so many of those white picnic shelter tents set up. Since I can’t see over the palisade fence (which resembles a fort in an old western), I really couldn’t tell what they were doing. For one brief, shining moment I even thought they might be moving - all the shit was cleared off the porch - until I realized that the shit had simply been moved to a temporary pile in the front yard.

Smoke and classic rock started billowing from their back porch mid morning. I shut all the windows and turned the air conditioner on. I went to run an errand, took a spin of the rather-diminished Summerfest sidewalk sales, got a steal of a deal on a toilet bowl brush (sans caddy) at the hardware store, and returned home. There was a note stuck in the door asking my permission to have a moonwalk installed in my backyard near the tree line. I was to holler over the fence to let them know.

So I went to the back and hollered over. Then hollered again. On the third holler the chef looked up from the sizzling grill. “Mmm - burger,” said my dieting stomach. I tried not to drool and told her the moonwalk was okay.

She thanked me and was truly appreciative. She explained it was a party for her son’s graduation and said I could come too. Really, despite my grousing, the neighbors are not bad people. And seeing the amount of stuff and money going into this shindig, I’m thinking they might be eccentric millionaires, who prefer their vintage Broncos with genuine rust and haven’t moved to a nicer house because they cannot bear to part with the twenty-foot, bright yellow “Wolverines” carving that seems permanently fixed in the backyard.

The moonwalk went up about two hours ago. Part of the palisade came down to allow passage between the yards. The kids are bouncing around screaming and the adults are putting their cigarettes out on the lawn. The Rolling Stones are blaring from a boombox on the porch.

That sappy penguin movie is playing at the Michigan tonight. It might be a good night to go.

Meep Meep

Another car story.

On the way home today, I happened to glance in the rearview mirror to see a bright red Aztec screaming up Freer Road. I honestly thought they were simply going to plow through me. I tapped on the brake, just enough to make the light come on and hopefully alert the driver to slower traffic in the 25 mph zone.

The Aztec crossed the double yellow line into oncoming traffic to pass me, cut me off, then braked 500 feet later, waiting to turn left into the school complex.

Naturally I leaned on the horn. Only instead of a huge Wagnerian blast to match my fury, I got a tiny, ineffectual meeeep, tuned an octave above middle C. The only problem with the little Korean car is the little Korean horn. The Aztec occupants probably thought there was a small child on a bike somewhere near by, if they heard the horn at all.

I’m glad I’m home.

Mercury’s retrograde until August 15. Everybody’s losin’ it. Hang on and be careful out there.

I'm watching

this eBay auction. But only because I missed out on this one.

Just Like It Sounds

Since I magically acquired additional vacation days at my “real” job, I took one today to stay home and catch up on some work for my second job (the “unreal” one).

The phone rang and I got up to answer it. The caller ID displayed “Unknown caller,” so I was pretty sure it was a telemarketer, but I was bored and answered it anyway.

Turns out it wasn’t a telemarketer, but a surveyor. I had a hard time understanding the woman on the other end of the line, who sounded like she had an adenoid problem, but I gathered she wanted to collect some information about how I get my news. I consented, and she asked the first question.

“What county do you live in?”
“Washtenaw,” I replied.
“Where?” she asked.
“Washtenaw County,” I said.
There was a pause. “Could you spell that please?”
I spelled Washtenaw.
There was a pause.
“Just like it sounds,” I said, which is exactly what D. said to me when I said “Huh?” before I moved here.
She was clearly nonplussed, but remained professional. “That’s all the questions I have. Thank you for your time.”
“Thanks!” I said brightly, and hung up. At least it was some amusement for the day.

I think there is an unwritten rule that every place must have names designed to separate the natives from the tourists, the residents from the outsiders. Back in the Greater Johnstown Statistical Area, your pronunciation (or mispronunciation) of Conemaugh Hospital and Menoher Boulevard could mark you as an in or an out, a person with roots there or a newcomer.

In my various moves around the midwest, I’ve blundered into several of these myself. The Native American place names are understandable, but it’s the slaughtered European cities that crack me up most. Versailles and Cadiz are not pronounced the same way in oHIo as in France or Spain. I never imagined Milan could be MY-lan. But after a year, I’m learning my Michigan patois. Maybe soon I’ll qualify for townie status.

Just don’t get me started on Saline.

Today I Woke Up Sad

This morning’s dream was a documentary, set in a village somewhere in Afganistan; leathery old men, young girls with shiny black hair, lots of talking and gesticulating. I turned over and rubbed my aching sinuses, wondering how my subconscious came up with this this time.

The throbbing beneath my cheekbones echoed the distant rumbling of thunder. I knew this was a big storm just by listening - every two or three seconds, another low, rolling wave resounded. Going over the dream, I thought about the book “Kite Runner” that I read this summer, and then jumped to the installation of thousands of pairs of shoes on the Diag that I saw yesterday. Each pair of shoes represented an Iraqi civilian or American soldier killed in Iraq. I wondered if someone on the exhibition team had the job of watching the news or listening to the radio to find out how many shoes they would need to add the next day. I wondered if they had a big crate of shoes and military boots that travelled with them - how many would they need?

I sighed and put my hand down to pet my good and patient kitty, curled up by my hip, waiting quietly for her breakfast. The weather approached rapidly and soon I could see the lightning flashes even through my closed eyelids. Kitty doesn’t like the thunder, and hopped down to creep under the bed. I tend to sleep on the right side of the bed, as if saving the left side will make a lover appear. Well, they do say if you act as though you already have everything you want in life, it will come to you. A well-rehearsed fantasy of a man with strong arms starts up in my head, but the lack of a real partner hurts too much this morning, and I can’t have who I want and should stop thinking of him, so I turn the fantasy off. Who are “they” anyway? Do they know what it’s like to have a heart that feels like a boiled tomato when you split the skin and all the guts run out? I sighed again and rolled over to the left side of the bed.

My shoulders ache from all the time spent at the keyboard during the week. Some yoga usually helps for a while, but the ache soon comes back. I pulled myself into a modified “child pose,” knees to my chest, forehead to the mattress, arms stretched above my head. “Child pose” looks like a Muslim at worship. I breathed in long, slow, deep breaths to soften my belly and breathed out tension and affirmation that I am connected to the cosmos, and as such I am enough, and have everything I need to handle whatever life brings my way. As my breath curled out of me it carried little prayers, that my house would withstand the thunderstorm, that my heart would survive the storms of its own strange passions, that the world would outlast all the shit and hate and fire we rain down on it and each other, and someday heal.

The rain pounded at the windows and the thunder shook the house. I knew I should get up, feed the cat, do the laundry, go buy the newspapers, write this out. But I didn’t. I stayed there for a while, just another small mammal sheltering in her nest, another member of a race of wee, cow’rin’, tim’rous beasties whose plans gang aft a-gley.

My Hyundai Ate the Ditty Bops

Two or three months ago, I heard a song called “Ooh La La” on the radio one night and it was such a strange song to hear on the radio, all old-timey and foot-stompin’ and twangy (and with a cricket interlude), but with such light, sweet, clear harmonies that I had to know who it was. A short Google search on the lyrics delivered the Ditty Bops. I bought their eccentric little CD shortly thereafter and it’s been in my car since.

On the way to work earlier this week I put the CD in the stereo as I pulled out of the driveway. The music should have started right away, but it didn’t. I was at the stop sign at the end of the street before I realized something was wrong. I pushed a few buttons. Nothing happened. I looked around. The CD wasn’t lying in the tray or on the floor or on the seat. It wasn’t anywhere.

My bewilderment grew as I traveled down Freer Road. I tried to eject the CD, but nothing came out. So tried it again. And again. It was obviously not there. By now I had picked up a tailgater, a big brown Buick, but they were going to have to wait. The fabric of the universe had torn open in my Hyundai and the Ditty Bops had been sucked down a wormhole into another dimension.

I put another CD in the stereo. The Pet Shop Boys started up immediately. Now I was really, truly baffled. I looked in all the jewel cases, just in case there was ergot on my Chex and I hallucinated putting the CD in the stereo. The Ditty Bops sleeve was empty.

Sure, Einstein came up with that whole E=mc² thing, but the CD didn’t blow Washtenaw County off the planet when it inexplicably converted itself to energy, so it had to be somewhere. I ejected Neil Tennant mid breathy vocal and started prying at the stereo, digging my nails into the little gaps between the unit and the dashboard. A plume of dust blew out behind me as both passenger-side tires dropped off Jackson Road into the gravel. The Buick backed off about a hundred yards.

There wasn’t much else I could do, so I journeyed on to work, occasionally pursing my lips and scowling at the radio. The stereo did not come with the car. My parents had it installed for me as a gift, since the original car radio had a cassette deck, but no CD player. There’s a small gap above the stereo, maybe the thickness of a disc. I can hardly believe that a CD would fit in there without my deliberately pushing, hard, on it, but still, it’s the only logical place where the Ditty Bops could be.

Interestingly enough, other people do not have logical reactions to this. One friend gasped, “I hope everything’s all right with your car. That happened to my husband and the next thing he knew, the alternator was shot.” Someone else suggested in all seriousness that I pop open the hood to see if I can grab the CD from the other side.

Huh?

As I see it, I have two options: 1. Buy a new Ditty Bops CD or 2. Have the stereo removed to pry the CD from the Hyundai’s ravenous jaws. I’m thinking 1. sounds like the path of least resistance.

Just got home from Meijer

Actual contents of shopping bag:

One (1) bag cat litter
Eight (8) cans cat food
One (1) box Typhoo tea, 80 count
One (1) two-pound bag organic cane sugar
One (1) canister McVities milk chocolate digestives (more on these later)
One (1) box instant pasta salad mix
One (1) six-pack tonic water
Four (4) limes
Six (6) “Barbeque Bucks” Michigan lottery scratch-off tickets

And I wonder where my money goes.

First Fruits

This year’s vegetable garden is just about the sorriest one I’ve ever had. You know from previous posts that the radishes didn’t turn out. The lettuce bolted and went all to seed before it even leafed out. What is there has been salad for the bugs. I’ve been lazy and let the grass and weeds encroach on the edges.

Early in the season, it became evident that the cucumbers were my best, brightest hope. I set up a cage around them so the guy who mows the lawn wouldn’t mow them too. I lovingly trained the vines to climb the cages, coiling the soft baby tendrils around the wires. Today I was both rewarded and downcast.

First, the reward. Today I picked two firm, dark green, five-inch cukes. They were just waiting for the rain that finally came this week to plump out. There’s a third that will probably be ready tomorrow. I rubbed the spines off one and ate it, sun-warmed, right there in the garden. It had a satisfying crunch, mild flesh, no seeds, and not the least touch of bitterness.

For bitterness, I pulled some of the salad greens that have survived - deeply notched, oak-leaf shaped leaves with a pungent, almost radish-like flavor, stronger even than arugula. I think it’s some sort of cress. Its peppery heat contrasted nicely with the cucumber for a little mid-afternoon snack.

The carrots are still making a valiant effort in soil that is really too hard for them. I pulled one up and it was about half an inch long by five microns wide. I ate it for dessert. I think I detected a molecule of carrot.

The bad news is that I’m not the only one snacking in the garden. Every black-eyed susan bud has been chewed off. Every piece of cucumber vine that sticks outside of the cage has been chewed off. Chewed-off ends, rather than neatly clipped ends, implicate deer as the culprits rather than rabbits. And the cucumber cage is tall enough that a rabbit would probably need stilts to reach some of the vines.

The vines on the ground remain unnibbled (perhaps because of their cover of weeds). So I gently unwound all the soft green tendrils and laid the cucumbers back on the ground. I tied some soap scraps to the wire cage, although I suspect soap’s efficacy as a deer deterrent is a myth perpetrated by Unilever. The approaching thunderstorm will probably dissolve all the soap anyway. Just as long as it makes the cucumbers happy...

Kim's Online Dating Tips

• If you say you are educated, be sure you spell “educated” correctly, or at least come close.


• Do not refer to the “stigma of meeting online.”


• Do crop your main photo so only you are in it. Do not simply cut your ex’s head out of the picture, leaving her body hanging by its hand from your shoulder.


• Choose a nickname that does not include the number 69. “NoCreditsNoClue” isn’t a good one either.


• The suggestions offered on the site to help with writing your headline are...suggestions. If you copy and paste one into your headline, you have the same headline as the thirty other guys who just did the same thing.


• If you state you are 25 and you last updated your profile on August 10, 2000, you are 29 or 30 now. Time to freshen that up, bud.

Got one of your own? Leave a comment...

Chain of Fools

Today I received an actual, honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned chain letter in the mail. The US mail. You remember the postal service? Yeah. This isn’t some sorry chain e-mail promising me a million dollars from Bill Gates or threatening that I will eaten alive by rabid hamsters if I don’t forward to thirteen people in thirty-nine seconds.

This letter came with a scratch-off instant lottery ticket. I am to retype the letter with my friend’s name at the top of the list, and add my name in slot two. Then I am to send a scratch-off lottery ticket to six people I know, or return the unused ticket to my friend if I don’t want to play.

Well hell, I want that lottery ticket. “Over $3 million in prizes from $9 to $90. Top prize: $9.000.” The music from the Pennsylvania lottery (which my sister once pointed out sounds oddly like the intro to Megadeath’s “Symphony of Destruction”) plays in my head when I look at it. I’m warming up the edge of my dime right now.

I guess if I scratch off the ticket, I have to play, and then I’ll have to venture into Meijer to buy lottery tickets for six lucky people in my address book.

I remember the last time I participated in a chain letter scheme, back in the summer between high school and freshman year of college. A different friend sent me a letter with a pair of underwear as part of a “pretty panty” exchange. I was instructed to buy a pair of pretty panties for the next girl on the list, and if I kept the chain moving, I would receive no fewer than sixteen pairs of new, sexy panties.

The next girl on the list requested size twelve. I headed to Boscov’s, the department store where the grown-ups seemed to shop, and found some size twelve ladies’ underwear. Do you know how big size twelve ladies’ underwear are? Hint: I could wear them as a bolero vest. Nevertheless, I found a suitably lacy, satiny, aquamarine-colored pair that fit the bill. They went into the envelope and off to the unknown recipient.

Weeks passed. I did not receive any additional panties. Not one single pair, pretty or otherwise. I complained to my friend, but she really didn’t have anything to say about it.

Well, I scratched off my ticket. The odds of 1:4.88 were just too great and I didn’t win a dang thing. But it’s all right. I should receive thirty-six different tickets in the next few weeks.

Happy Bastille Day

Just in case anyone thinks bombs bursting in air make for a violent national anthem, here is a translation of La Marseillaise:

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
Bloody standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens
Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

How about I just send an animated Blue Mountain e-card instead?

Ciao, Mio Caro

The caption on the right should read: “Non-Exercise (Time Kim spends at a desk working two jobs so she can pay her own health insurance costs. Ironic, no?).”

I spend way too much time at the desk and way too little time getting any measurable exercise. And it shows. In the past two years, I have gained twenty pounds. I plugged my numbers into one of those little BMI calculators on the Internet and it spat out a “26.” Not obese, but definitely over the limit.

Now I appreciate everyone who tells me I look good. I appreciate all the guys who tell me I’m sexy. I appreciate it, I do. But the scale isn’t lying and the zipper on my nice shorts ain’t gonna hold if I try to force it closed.

I can understand why some people think I haven’t gained much weight. I didn’t suddenly grow a huge gut. My butt hasn’t ballooned. I have some muscle tone. Still, I can tell where I am a little rounder, a little fuller. And when I put on certain bras, my cups runneth over.

Lack of exercise isn’t the only culprit in my expansion, though. Since I’ve never been on a diet in my life, I really had no idea what I’ve been eating. So I spent a few days this week tracking it, writing everything down. Everything being calories, fat grams, carbohydrates, and protein content of everything I’ve consumed.

Holy frijoles.

The biggest surprise: my favorite sandwich at Panera Bread. While I realized that the Italian Combo, a variety of meats and cheeses on ciabatta was not actually good for me, I had no clue how fattening it really is. This bad boy packs 1050 calories, 486 of them from the 54 grams of fat in it. Of course it’s nice that it also contains my daily requirement of protein, since if I eat one it’s nothing but iceberg lettuce for me for the rest of the day.

Ciao, Italian Combo. You are so good; I’ve thoroughly enjoyed you. No, no, no, it’s not you. It’s me. I’ve changed. I’m sure you’ll find another soon. Really. Take care.

Small Town News

My friend D. and I once talked about how we think everyone in America should have the opportunity to live in such a pleasant town as Chelsea. Sure, it might not be for everyone, but everyone should have the opportunity to live in a safe neighborhood, with shopping and art and restaurants within walking distance.

Still, however much I try, I cannot seem to muster much interest in local government. A major story in Thursday’s Chelsea Standard might give a clue as to why. Yep, I’m sorry I missed the sandwich board debate.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking Chelsea and I am glad that there are people who run it and people who want to keep their businesses here (especially Cranesbill Books - thank you, Cranesbill Books). But this seems like much ado. The sandwich boards don’t detract from downtown any more than the horrid, touristy new purple and green street signs do. In fact, I rather appreciate the sandwich boards, because in Chelsea a few businesses have variable hours, and if the sign is out then I know they’re open. (Here I interject that I’m sorry I wasn’t able to buy more knitting supplies at the now-closed Gathering Basket, but the shop was rarely open at a time when I could patronize it.)

Besides, the way people drive in this town is a bigger impediment to foot traffic than an entire obstacle course of sandwich boards. Drivers speed down residential streets at 20 miles over the posted limit. ‘Cuz you know, Chelsea’s huge and it takes forever to drive that mile to Pamida. Cats are run over, parents with small children put out big fluorescent admonishments to slow down. Drivers treat stop signs like green lights and practically mow down pedestrians trying to get to the post office. My favorites are the ones who wave you across, only to drive around you when you’re in the middle of the street. I have considered carrying a bag of ping-pong balls, or some other small, projectile objects, to lob at their windshields as they narrowly miss my toes.

Yeah, okay, rant over. Yeah, I know. Take it to City Council.

Here There Be Tractor Pulles

The Onion reports on the discovery of Michigan and the rest of the Midwest.

If I Could Save Tan in a Bottle

A few weeks ago while waiting for a movie to start at the Michigan Theatre, my companion asked me the name of the familiar tune that was being played on the historic organ. It was “The Girl from Ipanema.” The Girl from Ipanema is tall and tan and young and lovely, which, with the possible exception of young, is just about everything I am not. So I made up new lyrics for my non-Brazilian-beach-strolling self: short and pale and kinda dumpy, the girl from Pennsylvania’s walking, and when she walks she stubs her toes and says...

Yeah, I’m about as short and white as they make ‘em. I am a pale creature of the northern forest, and I think that’s why I’m okay with Michigan winters: I belong to cloud cover, snow cover, quilted covers.

Summer is another story. Summer fashion, in particular, is another story. My exposed flesh comes in one of two colors: translucent white or boiled-lobster red. My numerous freckles bloom in the sunlight, and they might become populous enough to meld together, but I’m not really ever tan. I do not remember being tan since I turned twelve. Oh, to live in a time when a woman’s fairness was praised, instead of worrying whether I am blinding passersby with the brilliant light reflecting from my legs.

“I use one of those self-tanning lotions,” said C., the blonde, girly-voiced receptionist at work, “I leave it on for a while, then wipe it off real good before I go to bed.” She waved her ringed hand at me. “You should try it.”

When I was in CVS yesterday, selecting toothpaste from an entire aisle-full of it, a section of golden bottles caught my eye. I paused before the display of self-tanners. My eyes flickered from shelf to shelf. Do I dare try it? I don’t want to be orange. They say they have better formulas now. C. doesn’t look orange. What a bewildering array of choices. Do I want lotion or spray? Light-to-medium or medium-to-dark? Do I need one with aloe? Do I need a separate one made especially for my face? The prices vary wildly, for no discernible reason other than brand name. I’m not paying $25.00 for 6 ounces of cream that might not get used. I took the $5.00 bottle of light-to-medium lotion and put it in my basket. Then I put it back. Then I put in my basket.

Once home, I stood in the bathroom and read the label. It says to distribute thinly and evenly, to wait 2 to 3 hours for full effect, and to wash your hands immediately after application. The cream is white and smells funny. It is harder than you think to distribute it evenly. I rubbed my legs and arms and put the bottle in the cabinet. I caught sight in the mirror of the pale triangle shape around my neck made by my tank top. I got the bottle back out and rubbed the triangle. I put the bottle back. Then I thought about the backs of my arms. I got the bottle back out and rubbed the backs of my arms. Then I put the bottle back and washed my hands and waited.

Nothing really seemed to happen. I went outside and read in the sun for a while. I came back in. Still pale. I cooked dinner, ate. Still pale. Surfed the web. Still pale. Oh well.

This morning when I got up, I turned my legs and arms in the light. There’s a bit of color to them. Not orange. Hey, I think it might work. But I don’t like the unnatural brown, jagged lines around my ankles. I scrub them off in the bathtub and apply more self-tanner. I am humming Jim Croce. I am happy. I am no longer a pasty Michigander. I get dressed and vogue for the mirror. Yes, I am tan and lovely. I drive to Ann Arbor and walk around. I am smiling. I am tan and young and lovely.

I am walking up Liberty Street and the sun is warm. What’s that smell? It’s sort of plasticy. Some city workers are cleaning up after the parade. Maybe it’s a trash smell. I am in Borders and sipping a vanilla Italian soda. I am tan and lovely and smiling at a dark-haired guy. What’s that smell? Something burning in the cafe? I am walking down State Street and the sun is warm and the Diag is green. What’s that smell? I sniff my arm. What the hell? It’s me.

I drive back home and look in the mirror. The backs of my arms are blotchy. The pores on my shoulders are dark, like I’m studded with poppy seeds. There’s an oval stain on my wrist and a corresponding white oval on my knee. I scrub the stain. It’s not coming off. Apart from the white spot, my legs look better than my arms. Still, they smell. So I took a second bath for the day and dusted myself with some baby powder.

I think I need to talk to C. about her self-tanning secrets before I try this again.

Otherwise, I’ll just remain a whiter shade of pale.

A Simple Plan

K. dumped me on Monday. He’s been acting cranky for weeks, but he didn’t say it was anything about us, so I didn’t think (too much) that it was us making him cranky. “I’m tired of relationships,” he said. Well, I get tired of relationships too, but I rarely cut them off once they’re started. I continue to try, although sometimes too hard or for too long. I’m human. It’s what I do.

So my personals ad is back up on that Internet dating site. After several months' absence, I had forgotten how annoying so much of it is. It’s annoying to carefully craft a profile, only to have it completely disregarded by men I have nothing in common with and who are 10 years over my stated age range, but who figure they’ll give it a shot and contact me, repeatedly, anyway. It’s annoying to take the time to write thoughtful introductory e-mails and send them to what seem to be thoughtful, intelligent men, whose bills I seem to fit, only to have them ignore my heartfelt missives. At least I answer the senior citizens and tell them I’m looking for someone closer to my own age.

But the worst are the ones who instant message right off the bat.

“Hi,” Jaguar526 messaged me last night (not his real handle). “You put your 4'11. Are you really that short?”

“No,” I fired back, regretting the absence of a sarcasm point on my keyboard. “I added two inches to make myself seem even more imposing.” I mean, c’mon. Who lies that they’re not quite five feet tall?

“Really?” he replied. Yep, a sarcasm point would come in handy.
“No, I’m teasing. I really am that short.”
“You must like short men.”
“I like some of them. Some of them I don’t.” I finished paging through my search results on the dating section of the site, which are pretty much the same as my search results on the relationship section.
“What kind of man do you like?”
“Tall, dark, and handsome,” I wrote, even though 1) I know I’m not supposed to write in clichés and 2) I like tall, redheaded, and handsome too. I hadn’t looked at his profile yet, so I clicked on it.

Oops. He’s 5’2”.

“Heres my picture,” he typed. From the camera angle, it’s obviously a self-portrait. He’s not bad looking, with wisps of brown hair across his forehead, blue eyes, a cleft chin, and a crooked nose. He seems to be in a kitchen. “Do you like my picture?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied. “You’re cute. And I see you like cereal.”
“Im J.,” he said.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Kim.”
“Im loanley.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Come have a drink with me.”
“You mean right now?” Uh-oh. There’s a feeling that I’ve already inadvertently encouraged him a little too much, just by answering him.
“Yes.”
“J., you live in Upper Sandusky. That’s in Ohio.”
“Its not far.”
“I’m in Michigan.”
“Its not far.”
“It’s too far for tonight.”
“Please come. Im loanley.”

I am torn between pity and loathing. I know what desperate loneliness feels like, like hanging onto a cold granite cliff by your split and bloody fingernails, and your chest is hollow and the wind is howling and the buzzards are circling overhead. I have frightened away good men with too-soon displays of saggy, pallid, naked need. And I know it’s not the way to go, because I have no more desire to get sucked into someone else’s need than they wanted to get pulled down into mine.

“I’m sorry,” I tell J. “I’m not going to have a drink with you tonight.”

Perhaps I take this all too seriously. Perhaps my problem is that I veer between treating it all like a joke and treating it all like the end of days.

Before I ended my online session, I read one gentleman's profile that did catch my eye. “Enjoy the Haiku” is his headline from Edmonton, Alberta:

Find the One, then leave.
It was such a simple plan,
but I am still here.

Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-- W.H. Auden

Suspended Animation

Ever think about the fragility of our modern life? How all our computers, lighting, refrigeration, and 21st century gadgets rely on the 19th century technology of electricity? Every once in while, just when you’re about to forget that, the power goes off.

I had come inside from outdoor chores to cool off in the a/c a bit. I was laughing heartily over an article about Internet dating on Salon when the studio display blacked out. At first I though maybe a fuse had blown. After all, it is an old house, and I was running the computer (with new DSL hook-up, woo-hoo!), the stereo system, the air conditioner in the bedroom, the fan in the kitchen, and the dryer in the basement all at the same time. All I would need to do would be to plug the toaster oven in, and the house would probably have a melt down.

I flipped a few light switches on different circuits to make sure. The VCR wasn’t blinking and the ‘fridge wasn’t humming. I took the jeans and t-shirt off my magnetic David and put his tighty-whities on. Things heat up quickly in my upstairs apartment.

During the outage, I did all the stupid things I usually do when there’s no power. I tried to play a CD. I flipped the switch in the bathroom and was puzzled for a moment that no light came on. I so take for granted that the juice is flowing that when it’s not, I’m a little baffled. And I don’t consider myself to be too-terribly addicted to my techno-devices. Half the laundry was drying on the line. I passed several hours in the morning reading on the porch in the sunshine, sans electricity, and didn’t miss it.

I considered driving to Meijer or someplace cool, but decided against it. The cat came to see what I was putting in her dish, turned up her nose at the ice cube, and crept under the couch. I busied myself with cleaning some jewelry, a rather tedious task I had been procrastinating on. A man who lives in the gray apartment building across the street came out and looked up and down the empty street, then turned around and went back inside. The elderly lady who lives on the corner was whisked away in a blue mini-van, hopefully to air-conditioned comfort.

By the time I got my copper necklace restored and two of my four defunct watches ticking away again, the refrigerator had rumbled back to life (and none too soon as at the hour-and-a-half mark I began to have concerns for my fresh chicken). Of course I had to check my e-mail right away. The a/c is cranking on “Max Cool” and making quite a racket. I can’t believe it’s nearly seven o’clock already. Absorbed in a mundane task, enfolded in warmth and silence, I found a bit of flow, a caesura in the data stream. I feel like I’ve been meditating. Although I’m right back in the fray, multitasking already, there’s a core of calm that wasn’t there before. Maybe I’ll turn everything off more often.