rubba pubba

This is a phrase from a Frank Sinatra tune that we like to say when things are getting SPICEEEEY!

Anyways, a new family game is "Lifetime Television" which has replaced "Witness Protection Program." How you play is you stare at strangers until you see one who has that "victim" look -- she's oh, say, about 38 and has a few kids, or just one with an EXTRA SPECIAL personality. And of course, she's single. She could be a widow with fond mems of the ol' hubby, etc., or a divorcee (ooh! That tingles! I'm suddenly five years old and my mother is kaffe klatching with her friends about "what Maisie knew" and it's a bit of a dirty secret -- D.I.V.O.R.C.E.) So, irregardless, the gal with the "victim" look is either a merry widow (with a bra to match?) or an embattled divorcenik. If divorced, the ex is probably a rich and arrogant "businessman" who is trying to get custody of the kids by trashing the rep of the mom, or, he's a redneck construction worker with a stringy greasy ponytail, a truck, a lotta skeezy friends, a cabin where he headquarters seasonal roadkill shoots, etc. And this one is also after the kids but not because he's got issues about the (now) working class mother, but because he "owns them kids" and the ex, too, as it turns out. He's. not. a. nice. guy. And eventually it comes to a showdown where he's plotting, then moving toward concretion of plans, to kill the ex-Mrs. Except for, aha! she's got an old college friend who returns to town. Really, it's one of her single days ex-boyfriends and they ended it amicably, and perhaps even over a misunderstanding orchestrated by their scheming ambitious parents. He then went off to Iowa or somewhere godawful in the middle of America while she attend Community College in the hometown. He's now a middle manager or start up professional, an engineer or something arcane and harmless requiring a pocket protector (which in Lifetime Code is an indicator of seriousness and sincerity.) He's a bit of a stalker himself, but the good kind. He checks out her house in the wee hours because he's still in love with her, and because he's noticed some violations of the building code he wants to write in his pocket notebook.

So, now it's about an hour and a half since the beginning of the "Family Lifetime" movie game, and about 6-8 days into the plot. Our victim is tied up in the basement, or handcuffed in the trunk of a car, or locked in the cabin outhouse (if her ex is the ponytail dude) and for about ten commercials, we are treated to short shots of her biting on her ropes or jiggling the lock helplessly. Meanwhile College Friend is stalking her house and has noticed that her garage is unlocked and the car is missing. For 2 days!!!!! And Heatherette, the daughter who goes to a special school for kids with ESP or kids with extra limbs or kids with a lot of accessories relating to kittens, is wandering around on her own (for 2 days!!!) forced to eat peanut butter sandwiches and takeout because NOW SHE HAS NO MOTHER!!!! Well, Heatherette has just about had it with this loser existence and she goes out to meet her friends at the mall (but wait! isn't it after 9:00 p.m. as shown by a quick pan to the kitchen clock?) And, while walking to the mall, a very sleazy homeless person who is reeling drunk crash-walks right into Heatherette! College Friend is man-on-the-spot and lands a good one on Homeless Guy's jaw, telling him to "Stay away from her and don't come back unless you want some more!" thereby winning Heatherette's emotional gushing in his direction. Improbably, she hugs him and gets into his car. However, we know he's not a predator, but a nice guy, because even at this late hour, he's still wearing his pocket protector! She weepingly confesses that she hasn't seen or heard from her mother for two days and is worried sick over it. Ever so quickly, College Friend gets her to tell him where the father's secret hideout is, because it goes without saying that the father is the culprit. Rush Rush Rush, fisticuffs, gunfire, stuffed squirrels flying everywhere around the cabin and mom is saved! Also she confesses that College Friend is Heatherette's real father, not the pathetic corpse lying on the floor of the cabin. Cut to one year later: mom, college friend and Heatherette on vacation in the Bahamas yukking it up on the beach. The End.

For Your Delectation, Ladies and Gentlemen

Can it really be, Ladies and Gentlemen, all that simple, that all that needed to be done was to place an order on HSN with the husband's suffragium and then, when the package arrived, some 7 days later, priority mail, said husband placed the band on the left hand with appropriate wording, and the unscratchable, breathtakingly shiningly brilliant tungsten (aka wolfram) band was MINE! I tell you, MINE, all MINE?

Was ever a woman so thrrrrilled by such a trifle? Well, yes, t'was I, when first this same husband placed the pink gold circlet upon mine finger some years ago under like circumstance. Had I not borne several children in the interrum and found fruite pyes such a compelling diversione on my childbed so sore, this sayme gold circlet would still be upon mine finger now. But alas, even running upon airport tarmackes and sittinge and typing vaste long upon worde processores wryting bookes and artycles has not kepte me from shedding stones that I gained whilst gravide with childe. Thus a new marriage ringe my brydegroome didst find me on the InterWebbe this day. And upon my finger he didst putte it. Oh Joy! Oh Yes! Yes! Yes!

The 10 Day War

You ask where have I been. Friday, May something or other. The day before Doomsday. I decide it's high time I take on the Feral Half Acre. Three Ponds. A Small Patio set with criss-cross pavers, last seen in 2005, before I lost my 3-D vision, before I decided it's okay to fall on my arse on a weekly basis, even in front of people while doing physical feats of derring do, or, feats with potentially silly outcomes, i.e., gardening. I, singlehandedly, will clear brush. If our fearless president, who knows nothing about farming or government or social philosophy can do it, I, who know nothing about farming, and a little about government and much more about social philosophy, can do it. However, it turns out, the key element IS knowing something about farming, and not social philosophy. So, the president ought to continue to clear brush while I should stay indoors and deal with social philosophy, more likely.


To continue, armed with little more than garden shears, I cut down football fieldsful of wisteria vines, kudzu, feckless weeds, needless plants that did ask my permission to live amongst the herbs and roses in my lovely backyard secret garden. The remainder, I reason, will be a fig tree, several well-trimmed boxwood hedges, the pink roses, the red roses, the irises, the pickerels in the ponds, the white rose amongst the daylilies, the daylilies of course, and what forgotten fragrant hyacinths may have survived my hacking and general purge of several generations of hurricanesworth of immigrant usurpers of my precious grounds.


However, in my absence, a feverish virus has stealthily crept into the in-betweens and everywhere and lashed every open space of MY body. (See above photos, which should be studied by all who seek to cultivate one's garden BEFOREHAND) While I have been cutting the known vines, stems, roots, leaves, bulbs, clumps and other nasties away, these newcomers have been pinching and poking at my arms, neck, and face. My pants are loose, so I hitch them up and so, whatever is on my gloves goes onto my waist! My shoes come untied, so I yank off my gloves and re-tie them and so, my hands get all sticky with some godawful stuff that turns out to be urushiol oil! And then I get it on my other body parts (modesty forbids). All this blooms over the next few days and it looks approximately like this: http://www.poison-ivy.org/rash/index.htm Omigod!!!!!!


The test of physical vanity now follows. It turns out I care not a fig if anyone sees me as a red patchy person. I am truly ugly now, a mess of red weepy bubbles and sores, a leper, a veritable outcast, someone who should be coated in rags and what is worse, I have developed a limp, from falling down a stair. Not stairs, but a little bitsy stair. All my considerable weight on one foot, smushing down on a few little bones and it really hurts, so I limp. Should I get a cane? I have some nice ones. But no, I limp, like some medieval wanderer. Perhaps I should develop a croaking voice, or wear a hood. Exude a bad smell, like wormwood, or anise. Or garlic! Well, this is a bit overdramatic. Best to just take the prednisone, slosh on the cortisone cream and be done with it.

The good news is that the teas from China and Africa will arrive in about a month to console me!

Logic Woes and Rock 'n' Roll

So, here's the thing that happened in my logic class on Thursday. There's an exercise in the textbook (which I $#%#@Q^$T%^T$#@QFC$#Q#@ HATE more than I love, I daresay) that we are analyzing together as a class activity. The goal is to determine whether inductive arguments are strong or weak, cogent or non-cogent. The particular argument is: "Since rock 'n' roll has been around for 100 years, it will probably be here for one more year." The class correctly analyzes the argument as a prediction (duh) that is strong since the past pattern is a pretty long time and the future extrapolation is a pretty conservative short guess. (ditto - and - duh). And now the anvil falls on all our heads because I start cracking up. And this is where I suppose I get the reputation for thinking of my students as having a cultural gap that must be overcome because of, ahem, their, ahem, age? I say, "I, er, am, er laughing, tee hee, because, er, not that I was there or anything, but, it's kinda funny imagining rock 'n' roll in 1907! . . . !!!!!!!!" (long pause) (and I mean a very very long pause. and I mean I was the only one who thought this was funny. seriously. I'm not kidding. There was not a sound in the classroom. Nary a giggle nor a haha.) So, one of my students shouts out in a clear, ringing dulcet tone: "How long has it been around then -- 20 years?"

Now, I must pause, since it was my turn to gather my resources and not turn into a quivering mass of giggles. That would make rock 'n' roll what, originate in, well, er, 1987? I guess that could be alright. The beginning of rock could be, say, when Madonna sang "Like a Virgin" or would it have been Cyndi Lauper singing "Girls Just Wanna Have Lunch?" Nah, that was that guy who sang Amish Wonderland. I'm getting all mixed up. Iggy Pop? I've got to go put batteries in my clapper. So I sez, think Elvis. Think 1950 and there was another pause. So, once again, it's not up to me. It's almost time for me to retire. Another 50 years and I'll be ready for my bionic amygdala.

Nineteen Minutes

Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult, is eight of your worst nightmares, in ascending order, by my personal scale:

1. You did your job badly as a judge, since you were not really objective but you were too subjective to understand the difference between subjective and objective (Alex).
   
2. You got caught between your professional and your personal obligations and each prevented you from doing your best job at each (Patrick).
3. You raised your children the best way you knew how, but it wasn't good enough to prevent the society that really raised your child from turning that child into a monster and then maiming and killing it (various parents of slain teenagers).
4. You tried your best to know the truth about what mattered to you, but somehow the truth slipped between the facts (Lewis).
5. You tried to be as humane as you could in every circumstance, from your relationships with your family to your relationships to your clients (women in labor), but somehow, they went their own way and left you behind (Lacey).
6. From the time you were a child, you were too good for this world and wanted to be left alone, but they provoked and provoked and wouldn't stop provoking. Finally, you did what they wanted you to do (Peter).
7. You were only as good as you had to be and then you were never good enough, but no one but you ever had to know this unless by some terrible accident, the truth came out. Then, the truth came out (Josie).
8. You were a casual mother, a phone it in mother, a hope it works out, but not giving it much thought mother. Then, when it looked like you had lost your child and it looked like she was never going to come back, never, you got a second chance. And you didn't have any idea what to do with it (Alex).
   

Stormy Weather

This isn't exactly a beautiful day by most people's standards but I think it's lovely. The sky is grey, like the Crayola crayon. My car is getting its air conditioning fixed finally and I have some great new ideas for reprising "Diary of a Stalker" especially now that I have a scanner in my office. I think I can do a flashback of the stalker when he was a wee lad and just beginning to get his chops as a stalkerboyo. Also, he's just gotten out of prison again and begun to realize that he's behind the times and all the other stalkers have laptops and can really do some serious spying, while he is living in a 50's world of Gig Young and Rock Hudson. Well, f--k it, he declares, I'm going to do what I do best! I'm going to stalk the good ol' fashioned way, thru the living room curtains! (For those of you who don't know who the stalker is, he's witty, he's urbane, he's the gentleman stalker! -- I'll be putting the scans on just as soon as I can grab some computer time here at the Rutherford Salt Mines.)

Gentlemen and Players

I'm almost done reading Gentlemen and Players, by Joanne Harris and I didn't realize that she was the author of Chocolat. G and P is a delicious revenge story, but so far I have no notion of what the specific act is that is being avenged. I do know that a lifetime of horrible injustice and misunderstanding is the subject of vendetta (cosmic justice) and for this, two characters are intertwined and become narrators, victims and perpetrators, all at once. The climax is yet to come. I can't wait.

I have also begun Jen Lancaster's Bitter is the New Black and I find myself strangely sympathetic to Jen, who is nothing like me, except in her compulsive aggressive perfectionism, judgmentalism, narcissism, antisocialism and neologism.

I've been trying to read Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, highly recommended by CG, whose recommends are always firstrate and challenging. This one is too, especially since it's about the lives of children and don't let it fool you and make you think it's about bioethics or apocalyptic endtimes or somesuch. It takes your lungs and squeezes them hard and you forget to breathe while you are reading just like you did when you read Cat's Eye and The Handmaid's Tale. "How were we to know we were happy?"