Post poetry for national geek, I mean poetry, month. Guaranteed conversation stopper.
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maybe you’re gonna make it after all…
or maybe not.
Hey, if you’re slowing to a crawl, thanks to the soul-crushing, voracious ghouls chasing you, here’s a bit of a pick me up: a site that will tell you, based on your birthday, about all the fascinating people who died before they made it to your age.
If cheating mortality ain’t good enough for you, I’m not sure what is. Thanks to the literary folk at NewPages for this one…
Wanna see how relatively young I am?
I’ve outlived Phil Lynott by almost a week. He was a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of rock group Thin Lizzy. He died of heart failure and pneumonia on January 4, 1986, when I was 13 years old.
Franz Fanon was two weeks younger than me when he died on December 6, 1961. He was an author of “The Wretched of the Earth” and advocate of anti-colonial violence. He died 11 years before I was born.
I’ve outlived Jacques René Hébert by two weeks. He was an editor of radical newspaper “Le Père Duchesne” during the French Revolution. He died of execution by guillotine on March 24, 1794, 179 years before I was born.
Bruno Hauptmann was about two weeks younger than me when he died of execution by electric chair on April 3, 1936. He was a perpetrator of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.. He died 37 years before I was born.
See? Fun.
Superheros
Peanut and I were hiking and passed a group of teenaged girls, probably 17-19. They had stopped and were cleaning up after their dog, a feat I found impressive since there were, I think I’ve mentioned this, three teenage girls in the middle of a hiking trail. No witnesses, no garbage cans.
So we walked passed, and they continued on…about half a mile ahead I passed a bag on dog poop sitting at the edge of the trail. I thought about picking it up, but I was feeding Peanut (in the backpack) and needed two hands clean to divy up sliced tofu. So I walked past the disgusting remains of a jerk who felt compelled to clean up but not dispose of his ward’s waste.
But guess who stopped and picked it up? Those ladies behind me engaged in a conversation about how gross poop is, and as I turned around to look, the young lady already holding a bag of poop bent down and grabbed the second bag. Different color, different…um…size, so clearly not her dog’s poop.
I told her she was the nicest human on the face of the earth. She blushed and all the girls fell back, waiting for Peanut and me to hike away and leave them alone. I did. Peanut asked what was going on, and I explained.
Kids these days.
Perspective
To whomever found my blog yesterday by searching Google for the phrase “when things feel out of control,” know you are not alone.
I cannot count the times I have Googled “good god what have I done,” and “ideas for doing things a lot differently than I am right now,” and “help I’m going to kill my husband or kid or both,” and “what if I can’t make it through today,” and the like. I have even contemplated buying URLs for a support group of people like us: wwwmyhusbandisanasshole.com is available as is http://www.someonepleasefindmeasittersoIdon’tlosemymind.com and http://www.someoneshootmebecauseihatetoday.com
Most of the people reading this blog empathize with you. We would all gladly share stories of when we felt so out of control we thought the answer, if there was one, might be at the end of a terrified web search. And we all made it through to mock our own lives another day.
I hope you found something in your search that made you feel better that a lot of life is out of control, and that nothing can get you through like taking each minute as you can, however you can, and praying to whatever quantum physical force you think might listen to please, please let me make it through this hour.
Best of luck, and I hope something I wrote at least made you laugh yesterday. I makes me sad that I can’t find you through all those anonymous stats, just to tell you everything will be okay. I hope someone tells you that. It will be. I think.
Pouring your heart out through nasal passages
I had a really clever post lined up at dinnertime, but once toy cleanup and bath and jammies and teeth and light show and stories and songs and all that jazz wound up I drew a blank.
And in my mentally weakened state, I’m pondering this deep bit of uselessness: can we compost snot?
If you toss used tissues, they end up in a landfill. Bad. If you flush used tissues it uses valuable water and expensive waste treatment. Bad. If you flush used tissues only when there is other, less savory solid matter in the toilet, too, the sewage treatment involves straining out the wood pulp and the mucus and the white blood cells and the microbes to make pure biosolids, which are composted.
So if the water treament facility composts my kid’s snot, can’t I?
And there you are, ladies and gentlemen. No bottom to the housing market, but the bottom of my intellectual development. The lowest I’ve sunk in my brain dead tenure as a stay-at-home idiot. I could have been a contender. I had game in all twenty of my previous careers. I was a fundamentally bright person.
Now I’m contemplating disposal methods for green Kleenex. Summa cum laude.
When the world stops
Words fail me…a friend just posted a link on his facebook page about a boy he worked with…
Zachary Cruz was walking from kindergarten to his after-school program and was killed by a car.
His parents, grad students at Cal, have set up a memorial page. There’s a link to help defray their son’s funeral costs, and info about the Oxnard and Berkeley memorials. Two weeks before his sixth birthday.
Can you imagine?
Can you help, please?
“This amazing, wonderful little boy that I worked with for the last two years died Friday in a tragic traffic accident in Berkeley on his way from kindergarten to his after school program. He was mind-bendingly sweet and adorable, a really old soul. His parents, grad students at Cal, have set up a wonderful memorial website for him and could use help to defray funeral costs. Check it out and make a donation if you can…”
I am in blog withdrawl
I haven’t written in what seems like ages, and I don’t have time right now. I’m presenting at a conference in a few minutes, my first professional work since Peanut was born and I abandoned graduate work to raise him.
My questions for you are as follows:
When did reader response come back as a valid form of literary criticism? Why do film studies dudes get away with that?
When you’re in the movie theater, the sound of shoes suction cupping their way across the floor raises my hackles because it makes me think of the sticky, nasty, sugary spill through which they are walking. So why, at the end of naptime as I’m drawing my paper to a lovely conclusion, is that same sound, this time of little feet in grippy-soled socks walking across the hardwood floors to my room, the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard?
Old ideas and new options
Hey, file this article under “I’ve been thinking inarticulately about this so thank you for putting it into words for me…”
In The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, Matt Miller purportedly offers some lucid and well researched arguments for rethinking some of our assumptions. To wit: your kids aren’t going to be more prosperous than you, forcing companies to provide health care is completely drowning them in unfair expenses, free markets are an illusion, and taxes need a total overhaul.
I’m totally putting this on my huge stack of books I’m gonna read next.
Pizza and chocolate
You want to know what my problem is? (Yeah, I know. ha ha. How funny. She made it sound as though she only has one. Ha ha. That’s funny because I have a list this—————– long and she thinks she only has one…Shut up. You’re funny, you’re right, but you’re missing the point. Now hush and listen.)
My problem is twofold. First part–we have no chocolate in the house. Haven’t for a while. No cookies, no ice cream. Nothing with nougat or marshmallow or fudge. We have nothing fun in this house. Second part? Nobody delivers chocolate. Want pizza? Someone will bring it to your house. Want flowers? We can bring those right over. Want some Thai food, Chinese food, Indian food? No problem, we deliver. Fruit? Someone’s now delivering fruit, too, in little skewered topiaries. But there is no take-out industry based around my need for sugar-laced theobromine.
So here’s my idea. Thai place? Add chocolate to your menu. Pizza joint? You, too. Chinese restaurant? This stuff is pretty shelf stable and anyone willing to have it delived can’t be too picky. Offer it next to the lychee gel and the sweet wontons.
And now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve never seen a take-out Mexican place. What gives? I’ll tip well on a burrito that you bring straight to my place while I’m working at home. Or while my kid is coughing up regurgitated green snot. Or while my newborn (hypothetical newborn—don’t slam me with emails) goes through a growth spurt and sucks me dry, chained to the rocking chair with no break between nursing sessions, even to pee. I could totally use Mexican food delivered then.
But only if you’ll bring it with chocolate. Hell, I’ll buy a vacuum from a door-to-door salesman if you show up with chocolate when I call. Those m—f—ing Girl Scouts wrote down my deepest desires and then said they might deliver by the end of the month. What the f–k kind of customer service is that? Two month turnaround on chocolate? I could get my ass out the door and to the store if given two months.
Take-out chocolate. Desserts delivered on demand. Ice cream if you need it, when you need it. Please, someone steal this idea and make it reality. Please. Because if you don’t, I have to do that, too. And I can’t even get off my ass to go get some chocolate, so how am I gonna get off my ass to deliver your chocolate, too?
Stress fractures are the new little black dress
Wanna feel good about your third month on crutches? Show up at the Cal all-comers track meet every other Saturday morning. Taking your fee and marking your hand will be the entire cadre of Cal on crutches, a small but gorgeous contingent of young men with stress fractures. Cutie Number One has a hairline crack in his femur. (Don’t get me started about what I could do to alleviate his pain.) Cutie Number Two has a stress fracture in this third met. Oh, really. I have one in my fourth. Maybe we could…oh, wait. You’re fit and, like, 20, and I’m not fit anymore because of the little dodgeable I chase around on my crutches. Have I mentioned my husband and three year old and weaning weight? Oh, you notices all three, eh? Yeah.
I guess we’re not meant to be.
But at least I feel a little more comfortable surrounded by other glass feet.
Book release
One of my favorite photographers just published a book of images as captured by her possessed (as in totally wack-job alien spirit took hold of her camera and made absolute freaky pictures from the potentially banal shots) digital camera. This first book of images is a selection of freaky images the camera created from shots of JG’s neighborhood.
Go check it out. It’s freaky. Buy it for the freaks in your life.
Inauguration without a t.v.
Whether you’re employed in a place without television or plan to be at home Tuesday without a television or work really hard but plan to be in a place without a television because society doesn’t value what you do and you can’t afford a television, you might want to thank the kind people over at newteevee.com for posting this detailed list of where to get your Hope and Change online Tuesday at 9 am pst.
(I guess my last bit about not affording a television is silly because linking from a blog to another blog that details live feeds implies access to a technology that costs a lot more than a television. But still…)
New Year’s meme
Picked up this meme over at Dr. Brazen Hussy’s blog…I’d better warn you, I hate these things. I only ever answer to CIH, and I don’t know if she reads this blog.
1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
blogged
2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. I try my best every day, and every day fall short and resolve to do better the next day. My goals are far too Sisyphean to be broken out by year.
3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Like next to me on a train? No.
4. Did anyone close to you die?
Several ants right next to the front door did. But no humans.
5. What countries did you visit?
Your life must be far more glamourous than mine. Can’t you ask which rooms of the house I visited?
6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
A finished novel, a publishing contract, an accepted journal submission, a babysitter, uninterrupted sleep, money—wads and wads of it so I could do better about helping those without.
7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
September 15, 2008. Two reasons, both of which you know.
8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
I didn’t terminate the existence of my child, my Spouse, or myself.
9. What was your biggest failure?
I don’t believe in failure. There’s a lot of shit I could have done differently, but I didn’t. I’m already over it.
10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Another stress fracture. But the cancer hasn’t returned, so I’ll call it a healthy year.
11. What was the best thing you bought?
Bought? Bought? What kind of lameass superficial consumerist bullshit is this? All metaphysical and then a question about stuff? Lame. (Except, I could mention that really awesome cold press watercolor paper for Peanut’s watercolor projects and a couple of really satisfying CDs.)
12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Sometimes everyone’s.
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Sometimes everyone’s.
14. Where did most of your money go?
Down the toilet of the dual lies of the stock market and the real estate market. Plus a bit too much to chocolate, but see previous answers to get what I consider righteous justification on that.
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
In the moment: the first six straight days of sleeping through the night. Towards the future: publishing both academic and fiction in 2009.
16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
I don’t associate music with years, but rather with moods. So you name the mood, I’ll name the album. Otherwise, next question.
17. Compared to this time last year, are you:a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?
Every moment is a happiness roller coaster, I’m much heavier since we weaned, and much poorer in terms of money. But I have a happy and healthy family, so the above options are totally moot in the “eggshell or antique white?” realm of silly distinctions.
18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Living in the moment.
19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Wasting time online.
20. How will you be spending the New Year?
Sober, tired, with a long list of things to do.
21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I fell in awe.
22. How many one-night stands?
Just this year? Whew. That’d have to be…counting here…sheesh…including that one it was…none.
23. What was your favorite TV program?
Top Chef; then we got rid of the TV and swore allegiance to Jon Stewart and The Daily Show.
24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I’m not okay with the word “hate.” Strong dislike? Many. But after the October Rolling Stone piece on McCain, he’s moved very close to the top of the list. Right after his pick for VP.
25. What was the best book you read?
In 2008? The Best Non-Required Reading of 2007. Because I’m a little behind. (Not that I’m an ass. I’m just not caught up on my reading.)
26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Tie: Incendio and Blammos
27. What did you want and get?
Happy, healthy, sold house, family for M&S
28. What did you want and not get?
Finished novel, affordable Bay Area housing, answers to all my questions, a call from Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader telling me that the answer is yes, regular exercise, regular peace and quiet, PhD, fortunes without fame, a lot of other things I could control but didn’t bother to, and a lot of other things I couldn’t control and therefore c’est la vie.
29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Saw very few, and for now have to say the The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Nope, wait. The Wedding Date. Nope, wait. Juno. Yup, Juno. Was that this year? Maybe Diving Bell for this year and Juno for last year. No. Wait, Dan in Real Life. Yes. Dan in Real Life. Was that this year? (We could go on and on like this. Go with anything clever and funny and basically vapid and you have my answer. Does it really matter, anyway?)
30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I don’t remember what I did, though I know it involved a museum for children and a painful foot. And trying to go to a restaurant and having to settle for something I didn’t want that turned out to be a lovely experience. I was relatively young and comparatively really old.
31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
More sleep.
32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Put on something that is recently way too snug. Wear it all day. Sleep in it. Wear it the next day. Sleep in it. Wear it until I go for a run. Change to running clothes, shower immediately, the repeat the process.
33. What kept you sane?
Who told you I was sane?
34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I don’t much fancy celebrities because they always turn out to be human, and that’s the worst kind of disappointment.
35. What political issue stirred you the most?
The country in which I live finally voted for hope rather than fear. But also for homophobia, so I was stirred two different ways.
36. Whom did you miss?
Ben.
Bob. Anne. Jack.
Kristin. Amelia. Natalie.
37. Who was the best new person you met?
Kylie.
38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Every day I spend worrying about doing it right is another day I don’t quite get it right. So I either have to stop worrying or do it right.
39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
And. And but so. And but so then. We all fell in love with living again. (see it here)
Happy New Year?
It’s midnight three time zones away, I mailed my unfinished book to KGT, and Spouse says my backrub doesn’t start until hulu is loaded, so can I call it quits early?
I remember when it was important to stay up until the year actually clocked by. I remember when it was exhilarating to start the year with a kiss and a promise to make things the best, ever.
Now it’s important to get to bed as early as possible, and to start the year with a modicum of patience and good will toward humanity.
So can I go? Please?
Shirts for the new year
McSweeney’s has a new year of shirts subscription available. As they say, “if you’re an art love who is also naked”…click a little.
NaptimeWriting 