tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27463072923723553412024-03-13T13:04:55.800-04:00I Don't Understand Anything AnymoreA writer's blog with humor, commentary, and some sex.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-29411223291354599172018-12-20T08:34:00.001-05:002018-12-20T08:37:12.573-05:00To see my new play "The Tragedy of the Election of the Citrus King"... ticket link! https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/3745443In which a Citizen struggles to understand the Tyrant’s rise to power and the way forward for our country, while the Trumpist reveals and defends the reasons for voting for the demagogue.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-55976278910044134422017-01-05T16:50:00.000-05:002017-01-05T16:50:44.704-05:00The Coughs Died About the Same Time as the Baritone...I was recently at a hospital ward during the flu epidemic of 1918. No - wait a minute - that wasn’t it. I was actually at the Met for a performance of “L’Amour de Loin”. I guess all the coughing made me think of my years as an army nurse in the tuberculosis ward… wait a minute; I’ve never been a nurse in a tuberculosis ward! I guess I just thought I was for the two hours the opera (otherwise lovely) lasted. This was just another in a series of performances I’ve attended where the coughing is part of the show. Unstoppable, inevitable and yet mysterious, like whatever the upstairs neighbor is doing.<br />
<br />
The coughter (to coin a new expression) falls into these various categories and seems to convey the following meanings:<br />
<br />
Messages to the theatre at large.<br />
<br />
Explosively loud knock-you-off-your-chair cough. Multiple times throughout the performance. Randomized.<br />
“This is for my wife, who set up dinner with her boss and his wife and I can’t stand them and their pied a terre and his dental practice, and we had a big fight about it before we left and I’m still mad and I didn’t want to come to this pompous bloated walrus show, but my wife dragged me to it and so I’m going to make her life miserable.” <br />
<br />
Go-to-hell-cough. If a cough can be a threat…<br />
“I voted for Trump! Yes! I did! I’m a contrarian! I cough against the machine!”<br />
<br />
Angry. Loud. Sharp. Cough!!! <br />
“$150? For one ticket? You gotta be kidding me.” <br />
<br />
COUGH. PAUSE. COUGH.<br />
“I have a two-bedroom, two bath prewar apartment on the upper west side.” <br />
<br />
Declarative cough. A shouted bark.<br />
“My father coughed and his father before him. I too shall cough at the Met.”<br />
<br />
Cough. Uh hem. Cough cough cough.<br />
“I love show biz!” <br />
<br />
Messages to people in nearby seats. <br />
<br />
Throat-clear segues into surprise cough, which becomes proudly claimed. <br />
“I don’t like these seats. And I don’t like this guy in front of me with all his opinions and his stupid laugh. Therefore I cough.” <br />
<br />
Cough cough kaff kaff. Hmm. Hmm. Cough! <br />
“Your arm is on my armrest.” <br />
<br />
BLAT! COUGH!! KAW KAW!<br />
“Don’t look at me like that, with your little hat! Why the hell do you think they put rests in the music? Sheesh.” <br />
<br />
COUGH COUGH COUGH. Loud and wet.<br />
“Your perfume is not making me cough, but I just don’t like it or you.” <br />
<br />
Pathetic, realistic and wet: cough cough, cough cough.<br />
“I’m old. Coughing is all have left – don’t take this from me!”<br />
<br />
Public service. Ah-CHOO, COUGH, COUGH.<br />
“This part is too quiet. It’s boring. I’ll help liven it up.” <br />
<br />
Harumph into COUGH.<br />
“I have power over all dominion: all that I see and sit near.” <br />
<br />
Group Coughs<br />
<br />
Coughing sometimes spreads like the wave at a Yankees game. One guy starts it in the upper left balcony and it segues to some moron in the middle of the mezzanine and then two guys pick it up in the orchestra but they overlapped so one of those guys has to do it again, to make sure he gets his in free and clear (this is the same guy that says a joke twice if he thinks you missed the punch line). Someone else realizes it’s a coughing-wave, so he jumps in immediately after the two clowns in the orchestra seats, and then someone wants it back in the balcony so there’s a brief coughing tug-of-war until somebody’s wife puts an elbow in his ribs.<br />
<br />
The Upper East Side Gang of 8. Kack, Coff, Coff! <br />
They may not have stood up to Joe McCarthy but they are sure as heck going to stand up against that soprano! <br />
<br />
Group Cough conversation.<br />
Slight cough: “The fix is in.” Slightly louder cough, two times: “Trump will win it, Putin guarantees.” Throat clear that degenerates into coughing: “Great. Ok, now we’ve got that nailed down, what do you guys think of this show?” Loud but respectful series of coughs: “Not bad for classical music.” Gentle cough indicating someone should end the conversation: “Yeah it’s not Pavarotti (who I saw twice) but I’ve been to worse. Signing off – COUGH-GAG-HACK!”<br />
<br />
I started to imagine that there were coughs written into the LED supertitles.<br />
“What kind of man would love cough cough hack me, a simple peasant…” “I love you who has come to gag caw caw hack embrace me…”<br />
<br />
Both the baritone and the coughing died at about the same time, and the duty of coughing was done for another day. As the curtain fell and the audience lumbered crankily toward the exits, and as I paged through my program trying to figure out what I had missed, I made a note to myself to bring an entire box of cough drops the next time; not for me, and not to gently offer a neighbor who might be inclined to vocally expel his phlegm, but so I could take aim at a cougher and possibly bean him with the full Smith Brothers Cherry Cough drops experience. <br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-36966652484280457262016-05-24T11:06:00.003-04:002016-05-24T11:08:04.760-04:00F--- That S---, You F---ing A-----!<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpwG7tjhkRYag_hoaIOyHzfQbwEzZwKeQ6PKm8B9rCdShUPRB3Zaz96N-OCNJua0uJSkn5RYw6WwUreCCGHIXn5yc-t1GT9C0UlysEjkjjUnzyRMHX3y8Hrs3asVktEbHz5viIOwX7420/s1600/IMG_0031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpwG7tjhkRYag_hoaIOyHzfQbwEzZwKeQ6PKm8B9rCdShUPRB3Zaz96N-OCNJua0uJSkn5RYw6WwUreCCGHIXn5yc-t1GT9C0UlysEjkjjUnzyRMHX3y8Hrs3asVktEbHz5viIOwX7420/s320/IMG_0031.JPG" /></a></div><br />
It started with the children's-but-really-for-adults book "Go the F--- To Sleep" which was a clever and hysterically funny title for new parents who are losing their minds from lack of sleep. And now, in the American tradition of "more is better" and "beat an original idea into the creative ground" it has gotten a little out of hand. This image from the humor section of the local bookstore.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-39830306946831544192016-05-05T16:01:00.000-04:002017-03-23T16:57:08.835-04:00I Don't Understand Why Everyone Is Jealous of Me! I Hate Being So Beautiful! (A Modern Love Parody)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbaVuL_Fwt1mE7BZBHUQbnLODYy9hUx1ctdcayR3RpWeF9ltltSvsvvL8UI0gb-cubCKxcjiXHTZgAGDhild3nvQQQ3Ff8zsX98i-1uVZR27FT871H7JxkbthyphenhyphenuOz9XFPaHQ5mjxcVLCk/s1600/17156031114_868c637703_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbaVuL_Fwt1mE7BZBHUQbnLODYy9hUx1ctdcayR3RpWeF9ltltSvsvvL8UI0gb-cubCKxcjiXHTZgAGDhild3nvQQQ3Ff8zsX98i-1uVZR27FT871H7JxkbthyphenhyphenuOz9XFPaHQ5mjxcVLCk/s320/17156031114_868c637703_z.jpg" /></a></div><br />
I was 19 and gorgeous, but for me my beauty was always a curse. I know you regular people can barely comprehend this, but we who are gorgeous suffer. Terribly. As long as I can remember, I’ve been given compliments. “You’re so pretty”, an Aunt would say, meaning well. “You are adorable” would say a Grandparent. Little did they know that I hated their attention, their flattery, even though I had just asked them, “Am I the prettiest little girl ever?”<br />
<br />
As I grew up, men cat-called me, fought over me; I hated it. I tried not to invite more than two men over at a time, but because I’m too good-looking to remember things, it happened again and again. I would let some random guy follow me home, forgetting I had a boyfriend and in fact was going to his home; as you can imagine it became awkward. But when you’re super good-looking, this is what you have to deal with. You are forced to develop coping strategies.<br />
<br />
Time and time again, men would fight over me, and the coffee table in the living room would become the victim. Fighting men must have fallen atop of and smashed my coffee table 10 times that year. I was lucky; my parents simply kept replacing them. They asked me once to just get a wooden one or perhaps to stop inviting two men over at the same time, but I just liked those glass ones.<br />
<br />
That year I was attending an Ivy-League school on the Upper West side which shall be unnamed, oh ok, it was Columbia, and I lived alone in a loft my parents had bought for me. It was the top floor of a renovated industrial building in Tribeca – but I hated its airiness, its numerous closets (why must there be so many of them?), its granite countertops and Miele appliances. They made me angry. I didn’t clean or cook, or shop – doing chores made me feel inexplicably sad. My empty refrigerator, cold and bright, mocked me. My friends, those few that I had, suggested, “For Pete’s sake, just go grocery shopping!” but I became clammy at the idea of all the men staring at me and lusting after my body in those places where men went, to stare at women like me, and so I could not.<br />
<br />
Instead I ordered in. I was terribly lonely so I slept with the Chinese food delivery guy. I would throw him out afterwards – without a tip. That was the kind of person I was then. I also slept with the doorman, the guy that collected the change from the washers in the laundry room and the guy who installed my Ikea cabinets. It did no good. I continued to suffer. I hated myself for being so good-looking. People didn’t realize the burden I carried. <br />
<br />
Even though my parents had paid my for education - my SAT scores were so high they sickened me - and gave me a generous monthly stipend, for reasons that are hard to explain, even to myself, I worked as a stripper. It was as tawdry a joint as you can imagine, and I hated the way men looked at me when I was up on the pole stripping – as if they had a right. Perhaps I didn’t need money the way that the other girls did, but I was desperate in my own way; the pain of being gorgeous was almost more than I could bear, and this seemed one way to dull the pain. My logic was the logic of an idiot, but I was only 19.<br />
<br />
I knew that people exchanged glances behind my back when I told them in great detail about the professors who wanted to sleep with me – I hated their judgment. I felt powerless against their envy and this drove me into the arms of even more men. My loft was becoming a disaster area – the lack of my housekeeping skills and the constant fistfights between the various men that were showing up was taking its toll. I hated my need for men and theirs for me, and was ashamed and then I did it again and again. Why? I was great in bed (or so they all said; who really knew the truth?) and it made me feel validated, and yet sickened, and yet exhilarated and yet somehow sad. But happy too. But more sad than happy.<br />
<br />
My enormous breasts were crippling – to me they were nothing more than oddly buoyant and pointed nuisances that drove men wild and so I wore a talisman that dangled into the crevasse between them, so that men, instead of crassly thinking how hot I was, would know that I also was a talented metal-smith and welded jewelry out of old fire escapes that I had sat on smoking after having sex with other men. Yes, I smoked.<br />
<br />
After stripping I would find solace at after-hours clubs where I treated the bouncers like footmen and “forgot” to tip the bartenders and shouted loudly that “I need another drink!”. I may have come off like a giant asshole, but it was a front: I was only 19; afraid, insecure, and cowed by the men who desired me, and whose SATs were probably average at best.<br />
<br />
I was miserable. I drank whiskey exclusively, except when I was drinking vodka or Tequila, or entire bottles of wine which I would share with the guy at the wine store who I slept with – I was simply too miserable to not ask him to come back to my apartment to sleep with me. How I hated being beautiful and sought after. Leave me alone! I would shout at the men I invited to my apartment. They looked at me as if I were nuts. I didn’t blame them. Perhaps I was.<br />
<br />
I would often retreat to a nearby coffee shop to work on my novel – I knew I was a talented writer but my talent only made me miserable. I thought of what my creative writing instructor said to me as I left his apartment after sleeping with him, just after I stepped on one of his vintage LPs, weaving with the post-lovemaking dizziness of our 9 orgasms – all of which I hated. I apologized – rare for me (I was 19 after all), but he only said, “Jesus, what is your problem? I thought you left a half hour ago! You’re letting the air conditioning out!” <br />
<br />
As if that was the problem.<br />
<br />
At some point, I met Kevin. He was a musician, yet kind, yet with a lot of money, and he looked at me differently than the others. He thought I was gorgeous and hot, of course, but he also knew that I was smart – at some point during lovemaking my SAT scores had slipped out – and he was interested in my mind. We went for long walks on the promenade – I felt a need to prove to him that my long legs, which I hated, were good for something other than wrapping around him when my sexual hunger got the best of me. But he liked walking. And he liked talking. And finally, I realized that he wasn’t impressed with my beauty and wasn’t put off by my sexual insatiability or the fact that my loft had its own elevator – he saw the real me. For the first time, I was with a man who understood me, and asked nothing more from me than to listen to me play the harpsichord (I’m a talented musician as well, but he doesn’t seem too jealous) or listen to me recite my poetry for yet another slam.<br />
<br />
Reader, I settled down with this man and now we live together in my loft. I made room for him here; it wasn’t too difficult as it’s a three bedroom so there’s plenty of room for the two of us, as well as a recording studio, a wine cellar and a room for me to paint – I’m an amateur painter with two paintings at the MOMA – and we have made a simple yet meaningful life together. Now that I have someone to share the burden of my beauty, someone who cares nothing about it, and understands that it’s not my fault I’m so hot, I have gotten a new coffee table and that’s where my coffee table book of my photos (published by Taschen) sits even as I write this. <br />
<br />
I still suffer. I still hate the beauty that stares out at me from the wall of mirrors in the living room and in the bedroom and kitchen, and especially the recording studio, and the little one I put in the freezer, but as long as I have Kevin, and we have each other, and especially he has me, I think somehow, we’ll get by.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-55385016302999346312016-04-29T12:57:00.000-04:002016-09-08T20:35:39.598-04:00I Don't Understand Why No Winks?? My Profile is So Great!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdkcCfLD4EHbd-hSPANzFm8jkka24z7RpMCD7CHrO1iAnJC69AbXGwEnV0Vy7xck4i6gX-KQSGW3KJgngZXkDVf3U_2gEjGnw07M0OjdDFD1rZ1Aj-RaKS_SgNZMeQMfANWDII9Ut58q4/s1600/p872607315-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdkcCfLD4EHbd-hSPANzFm8jkka24z7RpMCD7CHrO1iAnJC69AbXGwEnV0Vy7xck4i6gX-KQSGW3KJgngZXkDVf3U_2gEjGnw07M0OjdDFD1rZ1Aj-RaKS_SgNZMeQMfANWDII9Ut58q4/s320/p872607315-3.jpg" /></a></div><br />
What am I like? Well, let me ask myself. What are you like -- oh, sorry, I didn't know I was on the phone - sorry, I'll wait.<br />
<br />
OK, now, let me ask you if I may: What are you like? Are you like, some kind of a stalker who won't take no for an answer? Or perhaps a person who uses an online dating service to post pictures that are 6 years old in an attempt to lure some poor schmuck to the rocks like the Sirens in that movie "Jason and the Argonauts"? Or was that Jason and the Golden Fleece? Anyway, the one that got the Oscar for best supporting Cyclops.<br />
<br />
Or, continuing this line of questioning: are you generally a nice person who hasn't had sex since 2002 and is just a little anxious? Perhaps a combination of all three? But not a stalker really, at least that's what my friends say (except for maybe David but he's not a friend anymore, not since he sent that mass email about what he called my "problem" which was really not my problem but his which most everybody wrote me back to tell me).<br />
<br />
Most of my friends would say I was fairly "normal", just like you probably, and I like all the same things that "normal" people like, for example: long walks on the beach with a metal detector; jumping into public fountains in a wet suit and snorkel collecting spare change; going to shows and shouting out the lyrics to all the songs along with the cast; hitting the rowing machine at the gym while singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat", or, alternatively, “Michael, Row Your Boat Ashore”, and also making friends with guys who are bench pressing 200 lbs. right when they’re sucking in their guts for that big lift.<br />
<br />
As you can tell from the pictures, I am in pretty good shape for someone who's 45, even though I'm not 45 and I am 37, and my friends are also 37 and I was born in 1971 or 78 (I can never remember). I like to do all the things outside my apartment that other "normal" people do, like shopping for food and toilet paper, and sometimes going to Starbucks and "having it my way" by spending twelve minutes constructing a drink out of all the adjectives they have on the overhead signs. Sometimes I like to go to Starbucks and just sit and listen to people at the other tables, and sometimes I interject my opinions in their conversations just to be friendly. Sometimes I'll join them at their table, just so I don't have to yell. Every once in a while you get a meanie who doesn't want to listen and looks at you like you're some kind of a nut, but I just usually handle that by knocking their mocha latte onto their laptop. Typically, when I come back (I like to visit Starbucks several times a day) they're gone and never return, which is OK with me! As you can tell, I am very social and a lot of fun!<br />
<br />
So you might be thinking: why do I have all this time to go to the gym and to Starbucks, but why would you think that unless you yourself were unemployed? If you are one of those judgmental suspicious types, maybe we just aren't meant to be. You might want to ask yourself, why do I always make these negative assumptions about people? Maybe that's why you're still single and have to resort to an Internet dating service, did you ever think of that? Don't you have any friends who could fix you up? Anyway, since you're wondering and even though I don't really care what you think, I do have a job and it is fairly high-paying which allows me to be in actual semi-retirement (even at the age of 39!). But more on that later.<br />
<br />
A typical day for me is to wake up (I don't need an alarm, usually the people pounding on my door to turn down the volume on my TV is enough to rouse me), get dressed (by myself, silly!) taking care to turn my socks and underwear inside out, then I take my medicine, and head out for breakfast. I used to go to a local diner but I found that the Episcopal Church offers such a great breakfast special which even comes with a free orange, that you'd be an idiot and a snob to pass it up. And I hate snobs! Right after breakfast I head over to Starbucks where I like to work at my job, which involves typing on my computer and looking at the screen and occasionally looking up to see who else has come in.<br />
<br />
I have all the hobbies that "normal" people do, including working out, reading, leaning out my window and yelling "Watch out below!" and waiting to see what everyone does, and dancing. I am a great dancer and will get up and perform at the drop of a hat, or a strategically placed dollar, and I don't necessarily have to have a partner. Sometimes I just get up on the table and let loose, but not at Thanksgiving and never on the kids' table, so don't worry!<br />
<br />
And you, what are you like? Well, you are single or you can get out of the house regularly between the hours of 2 and 5:30pm. You like to have sex but you don't always have to have the lights on, and you aren't adamant that your partner takes off all their clothes or even gets in bed with you. You are fit and healthy and willing to be tied up and left for hours on your own without complaining or wondering what the point is (sometimes I like to go shopping and you never know when the urge will hit me!). You also have your own apartment that you own and that there's no way you could get evicted no matter how many cats you had or how loud you had your TV volume turned up or if you liked to check the recycling bins for cans and bottles late at night when it really shouldn't bother people.<br />
<br />
So I hope there's someone out there for me; I haven't had that much luck on this particular site, even though I have had a few "repeat" customers (Melvin622 if you are reading this, you can forget about me coming back out to the oil rig!), I am a real believer in that old adage, "There's someone for everyone," or is it, "As long as you don't take the bracelet off, you're not breaking parole"? I look forward to hearing from you!<br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-87635209686511790442016-04-28T15:08:00.003-04:002016-05-02T15:20:28.745-04:00I Don't Understand How Anyone Can Cast Stones. We're All Morons At Something.<br />
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(Photo credit: the Ricky Gervais Show)<br />
You read a lot about how stupid and greedy those people were who in the early aughts bought homes they couldn't afford with money they didn't have, resulting in bundles of "toxic" mortgages that, when they ballooned in cost, began the collapse of the house of cards it turns out the U.S.'s and in fact, the world's financial system was built upon.<br />
<br />
Many people look askance at those who bought homes virtually without money, who perhaps bought a second home they intended to "flip" at a profit. And yes, some of these people were "greedy" and "ignorant" and blind. Perhaps many of them.<br />
<br />
But just for one moment can we consider the path that was laid out for them by the people who permitted them to make those purchases? The banks and mortgage brokers who looked at these people's assets and paltry income and nodded sagely and then offered these hopeful buyers a new-fangled instrument called a "no-income verification" loan, which in fact was created for just these very people?<br />
<br />
These folks (the borrowers) weren't ever in a position before to get a loan; perhaps their credit was bad, perhaps they had an erratic employment history, perhaps they simply didn't have any money beyond a modest down payment, which in some cases was dropped from the traditional 20% to 10 or even 5%, just to make it easier for people "just like them". But now, bankers, professional "money people" are telling them that yes, they can afford it! Their assets have been examined by professionals who examine assets for a living, and even though these potential buyers had little money and low-paying jobs, it turns out, there is a way they can do it! Or so they are assured.<br />
<br />
These buyers didn't set out to buy above their means. But the truth is, in many, many cases, they didn't understand what they were getting into. Like all of us do in some aspect of our lives, they trusted the experts.<br />
<br />
They sat down with professionals, white collar guys and gals who explained it all to them, who told them that their house would be increasing in value, that in fact, they could borrow against the increasing value of their home, that they could sell at a profit in 5 years (before the mortgage reset at a much higher rate), thereby improving their credit, giving their child a place with a yard to grow up in, finding a modicum of independence from a landlord, and finally realizing the "American Dream". And when it sounded too good to be true, and when these first time buyers doubted it themselves, these mortgage brokers patted their hands and assured them: "Look, I've been in this business for 15 years. There's never been an opportunity like this. This may be your only chance, ever, to own your own home, now's the time to get in, mortgage rates are at their historical low and real estate prices will continue to climb! In fact, you'd be a fool not to."<br />
<br />
Who didn't buy this on some level?<br />
<br />
In fact, in this era of specialization, who doesn't trust the professionals to lay out a path for us in some field that we don't understand, nor are expected to know all about?<br />
<br />
Who among us hasn’t boarded a plane with the implicit belief that the pilot has flown this particular type of plane thousands of times before, and knows what to do if the plane stalls? That the wings have been de-iced by the professionals who do this every day? That the pilot’s mental health has been vetted before he was given control of a passenger plane? We all assume we're getting a pilot like the hero Sully, but the fact is, we're not, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it, because in this specialized world, you have to operate on faith. Not faith in God (although for some there's an element of that too), but faith that the people you're putting your trust in, know what they're doing.<br />
<br />
You have to hope that the babysitter you hired is not hitting your kid when you're at work, that the bus driver who's operating your tour bus winding along those cliffs in Mexico hasn't been drinking, and that Con Edison is truly charging you for the electricity you're using. But do you really know?<br />
<br />
How could you?<br />
<br />
You assume the FDA will keep you from eating tainted peanut butter or spinach, but as it turns out, it doesn't. In 2008, six people lost their lives (and over 500 became ill) eating not just peanut butter from a jar, but a product that they might not even have known included peanut butter, trusting as they did that the "professionals who make these products wouldn't knowingly poison them? Trusting the professionals.<br />
<br />
And it's not just the middle class or a group of uneducated consumers who have recently been victimized. How about the wealthiest 1% in the world who were ripped off by Bernie Madoff, trusting him, or his agents, with their life savings?<br />
<br />
The SEC whose very existence is predicated on preventing just such crimes, and catching just such thieves, blatantly ignored 5 years worth of warnings from whistleblowers who wrote to them multiple times that Madoff's investments were a scam, that his greatest work was a giant Ponzi scheme.<br />
<br />
And yet thousands of highly educated and sophisticated investors assumed incorrectly, naively, perhaps stupidly, based on assurances from their financial advisors that their investments were going into high yielding stock funds, even though it seemed impossible that the returns they were getting could be as high and as consistent as they were.<br />
<br />
And it turns out, Madoff was only one of what will surely turn out to be dozens of investment crooks who have been stealing money from rich, sophisticated investors, pension funds, museums, philanthropic institutes, and Ivy League universities, all of whom had highly paid professionals on their staffs steering the money toward the "best" investments, those funds with the best returns.<br />
<br />
Immediately after Madoff, three more massive investment thieves were uncovered: Paul Greenwood and Stephen Walsh (of the WG Trading Company) managed to steal (what seems paltry in comparison to Madoff), $667 million from mostly New York investors, (unlike Madoff who actually went global), and Mark Bloom (who ran the North Hills Fund) and who apparently learned at the knees of those two masters and in 2001, started his own theft ring.<br />
<br />
Greenwood and Walsh ripped off Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh among other clueless, naïve, some might call "greedy, ignorant, and blind" investors. Probably unfair to well-meaning and educated board members who were making decisions based on the expertise of highly trained financial advisors.<br />
<br />
But there is a truth in the world now that is unavoidable and that truth is that: no one can be an "expert" on everything. No one person can know everything, and so we rely on "experts" who, for whatever reason, we choose to advise us in matters we don't completely, or deeply understand. Not just financial matters, but everything. The world as it exists now means that we go to professionals for almost every repair, for every product we need, for any health care question.<br />
<br />
When my mom was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, the oncologist and her internist sat us down and gave us the options, such as they had determined. She could get radiation only, or combine it with chemo. She could do them simultaneously or one after another. If the tumor in her throat shrank enough, they suggested she could get an operation that would cut out that part of her esophagus that was affected and yank up her stomach to attach to the part that was left. Sounded horrific.<br />
<br />
After they laid out all the options they asked her what she'd like to do. She looked at me; I looked at her. What would she LIKE to do? She'd LIKE to go home and watch TV, and probably, knowing her, smoke. But no, the professionals had told us what options she had and she was now being asked to make a choice.<br />
<br />
It was like Sophie's choice. How much pain do you want to endure? None of it will probably work, and you will suffer horribly with every option, but if you're very, very lucky, and beat all the odds stacked against you, it just might work. The professionals gave us the facts and we made the decision. And this is how the world works. You consult with the professionals, you make an "educated" choice, and you are the one who suffers.<br />
<br />
Because I was the only family member with her, she looked to me to help her make the decision. I told her to take both chemo and radiation; get it over with was my thought, and see what happened. And so she did, and what happened was the combined treatment was too much for her weakened system, and within 6 weeks she suffered total organ failure and died of what seemed to have been a heart attack. I had the hospital do an autopsy because I couldn't understand what caused the heart attack, and the ultimate irony was that the tumor had actually shrunk. And so, it was the treatment that killed her. The treatment I suggested; the treatment that was one of our options and that we chose based on "professional" expertise.<br />
<br />
So when I hear people complain about the stupidity of people, the unfathomable greed of "poor" people buying homes they can't afford, I can only dredge up that old expression: "Let he who is without sin (or in this case, guilt), cast the first stone". Or more specifically: “Let he who has not relied on the wisdom of those who ‘know better’, criticize those who did.”<br />
<br />
Perhaps you didn't buy a home you couldn't afford, but perhaps on the advice of professionals, you invested your IRA in stock mutual funds, or perhaps you trusted your money to a brilliant investment fund that had nothing but positive returns for the last 20 years, and now your savings are decimated.<br />
<br />
(And, oh, by the way, those "lucky" ones who pulled their money out before the scandals broke are not so lucky after all. Unfortunately for them, they were required to return the money they so cleverly pulled out of their accounts, since, as it turns out, it's not "theirs" but belongs to the Justice Department since it was not earned but simply transferred from one victim's account to another's. Soon they will be sued by the Justice Department for that money, and if they don’t have it, perhaps they’ll have to stop paying their mortgages; perhaps they’ll even have to sell their houses to earn it back.)<br />
<br />
So those geniuses who thought they "got out just in time" or who thought they beat Madoff at his own game, and who crow at those who left their money in these non-existent funds, are just as screwed as those whose money simply vanished. Not so clever, and not so lucky after all.<br />
<br />
So none of us are as smart as we think, and one doesn't truly know whom one can trust; with your money or your life. The only thing we can do is our best, and hope we don't stumble into the way of a thief, or simply, a wrong decision.<br />
<br />
And finally, perhaps, we should all have a little compassion for others before we leap to judge them.<br />
<br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-50936455868766311792016-03-25T13:15:00.000-04:002016-04-30T15:38:20.751-04:00I Put My Thong On Sideways... Again.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEITbv3wZE-b5ol6iY0hO2lpnxT7yZGww0EAEJ4aKB-qzvTW1tWjBJ4NMt5tTu12WcJaImroLpa1dk1W3pkewjK44MxMO61_JDLvXcxzQBTT-Lo30U82_Ya_O7CFPOvbtS-09R1v-2cgs/s1600-h/P1010001.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEITbv3wZE-b5ol6iY0hO2lpnxT7yZGww0EAEJ4aKB-qzvTW1tWjBJ4NMt5tTu12WcJaImroLpa1dk1W3pkewjK44MxMO61_JDLvXcxzQBTT-Lo30U82_Ya_O7CFPOvbtS-09R1v-2cgs/s320/P1010001.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291586290721262866" /></a><br />
You'd be surprised (or I suppose men would be surprised; not women who wear these things) how easy it is to do. This happens to me fairly regularly, me with my undies on sideways, and sometimes I catch it before the jeans go on, and sometimes I 'm in a hurry and don't figure it out until I get home and wonder what all the weird, pulling was down there (when I was younger, I might have gotten some sort of thrill out of it - now I am just annoyed), and then I have a good chuckle once I figure it out. I'd like to say my old boyfriend used to chuckle heartily along with me, but no; the boyfriend was always appalled at this; he thought it was inconceivable. We're no longer together. <br />
<br />
I mean, it happens! Thongs are like this, this triangle of cloth, with three sides, three openings, and a front and a back. Geometry was the only kind of math I was good in at school, but this thing is like a really hard geometry question on a standardized test, with a misleading drawing and no multiple choices below. In the half-dark of my bedroom, in the morning, when I'm tired, every corner of the thing looks the same; every corner offers a pocket where the… goods go. Here's me, standing there at first, with all the confidence in the world, on one leg, thinking I'm getting dressed. Still on one leg, I see it's one of these inscrutable pairs (question: why is a single piece of clothing referred to as a "pair"? This query includes "pairs of pants" but not "au pairs"), of which I have a few. There are a few pairs in the drawer but not a lot, and since I only wear them for dates, or the prospect of sex, they rest, for the most part, untroubled by my hand, which is why when I pull them out, it's like, "Oh these are nice! When did I get these? How do these work?" <br />
<br />
So OK, now I realize there's going to be some trouble ahead, so the raised leg gets lowered; I'm going to need my balance, in fact, all my faculties if I'm ever going to get these on. <br />
<br />
The tricky ones are the ones without the identifying tag at the back (that makes it easy!), and are small and cute, like a Russian doll's headscarf, with perhaps some ruffles. Sometimes, the little ruffles go in the front and sometimes they go in the back, so here's me, turning it back and forth, back and forth, trying to figure it out. <br />
<br />
Say I choose putting the ruffle in the front. Ok, I've made a commitment. That leaves those three holes. And you'd think it'd be obvious, the pelvis on (most) women being slightly larger than her thighs. But we're dealing with a thong here, isn't that the thing David used to slay Goliath? (And what was David doing with a pair of women's underwear? Was Goliath standing there thinking the same thing? "What the hell, Dave, where did…" THWACK!) And it's meant for war. It's meant to baffle and lull its enemy into a false sense of security by its tiny flimsy little self, cute, sweet, weak. But man, it is powerful. But I'm getting ahead of myself.<br />
<br />
So back to the triangle. Now I've got a front, and a back (probably) and I know your ass is supposed to sort of be exposed a little in the back, so I'm thinking the back part of the material should be kind of smaller than the front… but not on this pair. This pair, every way you turn it, you have the same amount of material. You've got about one inch of material on each of the three sides and so even though I have a back and a front, I'm spinning them around and around, like a guy spinning plates, really, or like a girl trying to get into a game of Double-Dutch, trying to figure out how do I get in.<br />
<br />
After a while, I just stop spinning, sigh and climb in anywhere, just so I can get dressed. I have, on occasion, felt that weirdness you feel (or women feel), when you've got your underwear on sideways, where you can't take quite a full step over to the dresser, because something's pulling on your… parts. Since I'm not a regular thong-wearer, sometimes I just chalk this up to: this is the way these things feel, and this tightness in the wrong (or right) places, is just part of the deal, as is feeling the material of your jeans on your bare butt and trying to remember if you put underwear on at all, since it seems nothing is coming between "you and your Calvin's" if you know what I mean.<br />
<br />
But sometimes I have to go to the mirror and look, because it's the only way I can confirm my suspicion that all is not right with the world, or at least with my panties, which, at 6:30am in your bedroom is where your world starts.<br />
<br />
And yes, there I am, looking unsexy, ridiculous even, with the little hanky sort of listing to the side, with the middle part really taut across my belly, and on the left side, the material kind of puckering out because I've stuck my leg in the part where the whole body is supposed to go. If you've ever seen one of those ads for weight loss where the formerly fat guy climbs into one leg of his old gigantic pants, that's sort of what this looks like.<br />
<br />
This is not a good look. Even alone, just you, it's not a winner. When the ruffles are going kind of vertical but on a slant, instead of parallel to the floor, this is a problem. So I take 'em off and start again, and, it has happened on more than one occasion, sometimes when I put them on the second time, they're still wrong!<br />
<br />
And that, sir, is why I was late to the meeting.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-80102690201441184402016-03-17T09:45:00.000-04:002016-04-30T16:00:53.954-04:00I Don't Understand What's Going On Upstairs??<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4hbXDtDb5_hxCfDP6h01feD2plokkUCWx1VywCMog-m1NDQQIyEAwZkGAAeSwUTb1ePZM3g_akNQXNx0fvzXjLjUoD8xcn47B7i45eFe7erz3JQLkRAqKBrX4avbbR9yBYps6abgF89o/s1600/Curious-Cat-Looking-Up-1050x700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4hbXDtDb5_hxCfDP6h01feD2plokkUCWx1VywCMog-m1NDQQIyEAwZkGAAeSwUTb1ePZM3g_akNQXNx0fvzXjLjUoD8xcn47B7i45eFe7erz3JQLkRAqKBrX4avbbR9yBYps6abgF89o/s320/Curious-Cat-Looking-Up-1050x700.jpg" /></a></div><br />
I have put my earplugs now, and I can just barely hear the sound of rocks being tumbled in a cement mixer in the apartment above, so now I can gripe. It’s noisy here. Real noisy. I recently bought my first apartment in NY.<br />
<br />
I was living the cloistered contented life of an Upper West Sider, living in a solidly built, Pre-War building, with walls a foot thick, taking the quiet for granted, clueless and happy. But I was renting and wanted to own, and so I departed that gentle place.<br />
<br />
After the typical tortured search, I found a place I could afford to buy, in a Post War building. My new apartment was the right size, a decent price, in a good location. Being a Post War building meant it didn't have the details of my old place – in fact it looked a little like a hospital inside – but it was immaculate and on a block I loved, and did I mention it was affordable?<br />
<br />
The noise didn’t begin until the second month I’d been there. It was the most amazing sound: the crisp, clipped, clomp of high heels, treading down the public hallway upstairs. I sat up and did the human equivalent of cocking my ear as I heard the key upstairs inserted into the lock, the turning of tumblers, the entrance of the high heel-wearing neighbor above.<br />
<br />
As my eyes widened (which they do, by the way, whether or not you can see the remarkable thing happening), I heard her (I assumed it was a her – I hadn’t yet gotten into the fantasizing part of this sonic experience), put her lead-lined handbag on the floor, kick off her heels – into the wall – and pound into the kitchen.<br />
<br />
After a few minutes of quiet, I relaxed. I comforted myself with the thought that there must be some special level of humidity in the atmosphere, carrying the sound in a particularly extreme way, like how you always hear a train when it rains, or a lawnmower when it’s sunny outside, and never any other time.<br />
<br />
An hour later, I was lying in my bed and I heard the woman above clomp into the bedroom above me, and heard her take off her high-heeled shoes again – didn’t she already take them off once?? – that I knew this would be my acoustic fate. As I lay there, now with my book on my chest, I heard her take off her shoes two or three more times, each time flipping them handily off her big toe against one wall or the other. I imagined she was seated and about to recline when I heard her get up and walk around the room WITH HER SHOES BACK ON. (With no actual visual evidence I started now to try to deduce what was going on up there. Fantasies began forming, not of the fun variety).<br />
<br />
It was like “Ground hog’s Day” or a Stephen King novel. The shoes would not stay off her feet, and she could not stop walking around. Even more bizarrely, as I followed her path with my eyes marking my own ceiling, it seemed that she was walking on every inch of her bedroom – criss-crossing here, tossing the shoes off on this side of the room, and then the next.<br />
<br />
Where is the bed?? I thought to myself. In every bedroom I’ve ever known, you can’t traverse the entire floor because: there’s a bed in the way.<br />
<br />
But no matter how I tried to visualize the space above, she kept thwarting me – because she walked here, there, and everywhere, as, I assumed, she tried to shake off those horrible shoes (Manolos?) that kept re-attaching themselves to her feet!!<br />
<br />
I finally fell into sleep (dreaming about Savion Glover trying to put out a fire) until 6am the next morning.<br />
<br />
My eyes opened without my moving my head because I was on a certain level, still asleep. Working nights means that I sleep in, at least until 7:30am, and this particular morning, my body couldn’t believe that I had set an alarm. Only it wasn’t an alarm.<br />
<br />
The woman upstairs gets out of bed and, yes, she already has shoes on. She must sleep in them I think. They must be sleeping stilettos. In a new state of amazement, I listen as she clomps to one edge of the room. A moment, and then I hear her pull out a Titanic-era steamer trunk from her closet, dragging it to the middle of the floor where she unzips it. (I know most steamer trunks don’t have zippers – this one apparently does). She unzips, and then she unzips some more, and then I hear the zipper chattering yet again, or in another direction, and then again she unzips, and then one last long unzipping makes me sit up in bed. This is ridiculous. How many zippers does this thing have?<br />
<br />
But it’s the packing that gets me standing.<br />
<br />
For apparently she is (I imagine) a shoe salesperson, and she stores her 600 shoe samples in various bedroom closets, and when she leaves each morning, she packs by yanking out pairs and throwing them across the room into the suitcase. Clomp, Bang, Clank, Whap. The banging continues, until she’s finished, and then she zips the trunk’s eleven zippers up again. Finally, she sets it upright and drags it away. Some mornings she has a limp as she drags, making the whole thing fairly sinister.<br />
<br />
Suddenly the walls of my apartment shudder with the slamming of her door, and the world is still again. A picture tilts on the wall.<br />
<br />
Since then, I’ve come to know her and her partner well without ever having met them or even seen them. He arrived the next night, unzipping his suitcase (!) for he too it seems, is a shoe salesman. He (apparently) sells steel-tipped work boots. Each night, when they get home, the routine is the same. They tip their suitcases onto the floor of the bedroom, spilling the shoes out into an enormous pile (there’s room because there mustn’t be a bed). And then, each takes turn putting the shoes on and clomping around the room showing each other the new product line. Sometimes he wears the heels, sometimes she wears the boots. Each time a route is completed, they ceremoniously remove the shoes and throw them against the wall.<br />
<br />
They also (apparently) sell steel cylinders, perhaps thermoses? which they carry from the bedroom to the living room and back, dropping 4 or 5 in each direction. They may also sell aluminum pots, small dogs with unclipped toenails, cymbals, gongs, cue balls, and loose marbles.<br />
<br />
There is occasionally an electrical motor of some kind that sounds in the bedroom. This thing is fascinating to me in its mystery. Even as I lie there at 1:30am, exhaustion tugging at my eyelids, I still muster the strength to marvel at the mystery of this sound. There’s electricity involved, simultaneously grinding, creaking and buzzing.<br />
<br />
It must be a winch I imagine, perhaps used to lower the bed from the ceiling or tilting down from the wall, like a drawbridge. Even in my semi-conscious state, I admire their clever use of space.<br />
<br />
Revenge is not called for since these two are blameless – this is their job (I think). Everyone needs shoes, and I get a sense they’re good at what they do, or at least they have an enormous inventory. But I can’t do nothing.<br />
<br />
My newest idea is to start painting. Buy some Benjamin Moore white, and start rolling it on the ceiling. Just start that first layer of paint that every Pre War building started with in the early 20th century, lapping on another coat every year for the next 80 years, until my ceiling is 5 inches thick and soundproof.<br />
<br />
By then I figure the market will have improved and I can just sell the place and go live in an Ashram. As long as it’s in a Pre-War building. <br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-46164801237942054372016-03-08T14:20:00.000-05:002016-04-30T16:05:27.192-04:00Is It Just Me? I Don't Understand How Someone Can Misplace $40,000.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC06Xb7XiD1un1OX5lfHolqNLkzoWWgyzCHma4m_yDR08id2-0MmWxO44a1vWD3XwzGQaqiEpSDGA2qqw1LBrAN0qr6EVemY69E3yp6l5pk0mEVZfyS35hYLm9ftSjgAZM4n4VX3MLkV8/s1600/3560d919b0dbcb09c7e3569370085e8a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC06Xb7XiD1un1OX5lfHolqNLkzoWWgyzCHma4m_yDR08id2-0MmWxO44a1vWD3XwzGQaqiEpSDGA2qqw1LBrAN0qr6EVemY69E3yp6l5pk0mEVZfyS35hYLm9ftSjgAZM4n4VX3MLkV8/s320/3560d919b0dbcb09c7e3569370085e8a.jpg" /></a></div><br />
Forget all this twaddle about people going broke and losing their homes and living in tents and not having enough money to buy milk and bread and Tall skim frappuccinos.<br />
<br />
If you just look around, like open up empty boxes left in a corner of your office hallway, you too can be rich!<br />
<br />
I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon of money being lost. Misplaced. Forgotten. And we're not talking a tenspot. <br />
<br />
For example: in 2009, the New York Times reported (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/us/26cash.html) that a little box was left on the counter at a car dealership in Orlando filled with $40,000 in cash. The box was small and unassuming, unmarked, unlabeled, unnamed, containing a mix of old and new bills, none of it “dirty”. Cash. $40,000. That someone “left” there, the assumption being (since no one there could recall threatening to break someone’s kneecaps if they didn’t “pay up”) it was left “accidentally”.<br />
<br />
So my question is: how the hell does someone put $40K in a box (in a box?), take it somewhere for whatever reason, whether it’s on its way somewhere else or not, and then, like a $12 pair of sunglasses or a $3 New York umbrella, leave it on a counter? Forget about it?<br />
<br />
When I go to Duane Reade for a pack of gum, occasionally I drop a quarter on the way from my hand to the clerk’s. When that happens, all commerce stops for 10 minutes, while I hunt for it in among the Snickers bars under the counter. I enlist the help of the salesperson who is apologetic and equally concerned, and sometimes someone in the line behind me will join in the search. This is for a quarter. I am slightly less anxious about dimes and nickels, but I will take a moment for those as well. Pennies? Eh.<br />
<br />
But $40,000 in cash? That I would not walk away from. Not only would I push the Snickers bars out of the way but I would tear open the counter with my bare hands, knocking People Magazines and Chapstick out of the way, clawing and scratching like a terrier until I found that cash.<br />
<br />
Forget about the ridiculousness of having that much cash on hand, and the equal insanity of putting it in a cardboard box; how could you just leave it somewhere, because, why? You got a really important text message from your spouse about picking the kid up from school? Did an old flame friend you on Facebook? Did you get a raise or get fired? WHAT could distract you enough to forget about your $40,000??<br />
<br />
I guess it wouldn’t have come to this - a post - if it weren’t for the frequency with which this happens. Why work for a living when, in April of 2008, you could find $140,000 (in cash) on a street in Cerritos California, tied up in bundles of twenties? Left (again, “left”) by a Brinks truck on its way to make a deposit (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/04/09/state/n113337D59.DTL&tsp=1).<br />
<br />
Or the more modest $10,000 left in December of 2008, on a grocery store bathroom in Federal Way, Washington, by someone who was moving (http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=230943)? Hey it’s not $140K; maybe some people would leave it holding out for the bigger payout, but, you know, it’s better than a quarter. <br />
Or what about one of my favorites: the $97,000 that was found in another bathroom (it pays to hang out in bathrooms despite the experience of some Republicans), this one a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee (http://www.blinkx.com/video/lady-finds-97-000-in-a-cracker-barrel-bathroom-and-gives-it-back/ONajwyt8uqhyH1SHcCvsVw) in the SAME MONTH as the $10K was left in that Washington water closet? (Proving I suppose that absent-mindedness occurs at every latitude and longitude…)<br />
<br />
The $97 grand was in a purse, which makes slightly more sense I suppose than a cardboard box, or a paper bag, the more typical conveyances for wads of cash to be left in. But then, who leaves their purse hanging in the public bathroom? Where are you car keys or your bus pass? Your sunglasses? Your cell phone? How did this lady get home? Even if you forgot about the $97,000 you had jammed in there; what about your breath mints???<br />
<br />
In October of 2007, another $65,000 was “dropped”, “left behind”, “lost” by another armored car (http://www.sptimes.com/2007/10/05/Southpinellas/Hey__65_000_in_cash__.shtml) near St. Petersburg, Florida. A sanitation plant employee found it lying in the roadway near the garbage bags. It wasn’t in one of those cool canvas bags with the single dollar signs on it (which I know they come in from years of “Batman” reruns), no, it was in a PLASTIC BAG. Apparently it had been run over several times. It apparently dropped out of the back of an armored car which had recently passed through.<br />
<br />
Hey, forget about bolting sheets of lead onto your truck! Just CLOSE THE BACK DOOR. Write it on your hand if you must, as soon as you put your hollow point bullet-loaded gun away: “Note to self: Close back door of armored vehicle!”<br />
<br />
In Littleton, Colorado in 2005, a teenager left the $50,000 his father had given him “to start a new life” (http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local/4926337/detail.html), on top of his car and DROVE OFF, spilling the money all over the roadway. I too have left stuff on top of my car and drove off; many cups of coffee, a few cans of Diet Coke; at least two times, the gas cap after pumping my own gas. <br />
But I just know that if I left, like, the change from buying the newspaper, or say, $50,000 in cash, I’d have this little niggling feeling like, “Where the heck is that $50,000 in cash? Darn, it was just here…” Not to mention, WHY WOULD YOU PUT IT ON TOP OF YOUR CAR IN THE FIRST PLACE??<br />
<br />
It’s much more common of course for people to leave cash in taxis, along with the iPod, or iPhone or iGlasses. And that’s what happened in July 2007, in Manila, when someone left $17,000 in a “motorcycle taxi” (what’s that?) (see: http://hubpages.com/hub/Taxi_driver_returns_lost_money_worth_US17000).<br />
The other favorite thing people love to forget about: priceless Stradivariuses. (Stradivarii?)<br />
<br />
In April of 2008, some guy left his $2 million dollar Stradivarius in the third row of a shuttle van he’d taken from Newark after returning from a concert in Texas (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90252259). So, you might ask yourself, when you’re exiting the shuttle, “Ok, I’ve got my rolling bag, my camera, and my house keys. Now what am I coming home from? Why am I here? Oh yeah; I just was in Texas performing on my $2 million dollar Stradivarius. Well, I’ve got my house keys; I’m good to go.”<br />
In May of 2004 (http://articles.latimes.com/2004/may/18/local/me-cello18) a Stradivarius cello valued at $3.5 million dollars was left on the owner’s front stoop in California. Some lady found it a few days later near a Silver Lake dumpster.<br />
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In October of 1967 (now we’re going back), some guy in LA left a “Duke of Alcantara” Stradivarius violin either ON TOP OF HIS CAR or maybe (he can’t remember) in his UNLOCKED car when he went grocery shopping (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/pearl101794.htm). Who goes grocery shopping when you have a Stradivarius in your car?? Can’t the Pop Tarts wait? Can’t you go home and drop off the (in this case, piece of crap, valued only at $800,000) instrument before you go into Waldbaums to buy your arugula??<br />
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And again, who puts their Stradivarius on top of their car? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?? I am starting to understand the $50K, but the Stradivarius??<br />
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As it turns out, even those people whose names are synonymous with their instruments can forget their names, er, instruments in the back of taxis as Yo Yo Ma did in 1999, forgetting all about his $2.5 million cello on the way to a hotel from his home in Manhattan (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19991017&slug=2989399). Did I mention he was in the taxi on his way to rehearse for a concert that night, which would certainly have been a boring concert without his cello?<br />
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And the most amazing thing of all? All these wads of money were either returned to the owner, or pending return (except for about $29,000 that the teenaged boy lost in increments of $100 bills). That’s pretty cool.<br />
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I once found a $20 bill on the sidewalk and I was happier than a clam for 2 days. I felt lucky, privileged, attentive and in the right place at the right time for the first time in my life. Clearly, I was wrong.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-71558134211672340942016-02-20T14:18:00.000-05:002016-05-14T15:57:28.584-04:00I Don't Understand How Your Lululemon Leggings Get You In The Front Row! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj9Wsh_r3fpjcG8498gBk-jWu43XkI7_hpYaqBQA_zD1un03CZPuA2LgTAefo8UYVobYr4ZX8wuhL5Nn7lstBTQ5yhM5B9RaFZ4MgU4hrp8FITtly6ALMf0kiOiocyo4rflqQJ9mE5SQ/s1600/o-WOMAN-EXERCISING-1980S-570.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkj9Wsh_r3fpjcG8498gBk-jWu43XkI7_hpYaqBQA_zD1un03CZPuA2LgTAefo8UYVobYr4ZX8wuhL5Nn7lstBTQ5yhM5B9RaFZ4MgU4hrp8FITtly6ALMf0kiOiocyo4rflqQJ9mE5SQ/s320/o-WOMAN-EXERCISING-1980S-570.jpg" /></a></div><br />
If there's a lingering doubt in the mind of anybody regarding a woman's ability to fight on the battlefield alongside men, I suggest those doubters head over to my gym and try to get into my aerobics class on the half hour, when Stretch Those Sinews lets out and the Shrink-Your-Big-Butt Step Class attempts to enter using the same doorway. <br />
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Getting into the classroom and claiming your spot on the studio floor is like a Knicks-Bulls game in overtime. The slamming you see on the rugby field? The full-force body-checking you watch at professional ice hockey games? Nothing, compared to the elbow jabbing, hip-checking, Capezio bag battering mayhem that erupts as we attempt to squeeze through the single door into the workout studio. Watch out, that Evian bottle is loaded and the safety catch is off; you're going to be sloshed! Duck! She's got a backpack and I think it's loaded -- with leg weights! It's like merging on a particularly vicious LA freeway where your fellow travelers are dressed in tights, thongs and Avia cross trainers. At the heart of the struggle is -- what else in New York? -- real estate. In this case, a prime spot on the studio floor.<br />
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At my aerobics studio and at most others across the city, country and the world, we women know the drill. Those just finished with their class know better than to try to exit while we're on our way in; rather than be flattened by stampeding hordes of Lululemon-clad Amazons, they stand aside, backs pressed against the studio wall and watch, eyes wide, as we pour through the doorjamb, a multi-colored mob running in a panicked frenzy as if it were an Entemann's give-away; charging toward the "best" spots (the ones in the very front with the full-length mirror view), or just a spot claimed out of some neurotic habit.<br />
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Once inside, personal workout space is claimed, staked out and protected as strictly as territory delineated in the Treaty of Versailles. Water bottles and aerobic shoes are dropped into little white piles all over the room as boundaries are marked. Women stand stiffly, hands on hips, legs wide, defying anyone to enter their tiny exercise realms. Any negotiations for additional space are purely symbolic: no one's budging. Latecomers plead for an extra inch or two, attempting to nab even the tiniest view of themselves in the mirrors from their spots in the back of the room, next to the dreaded radiators. (Next to the radiators is no man's land, where you spend the whole class trying not to jump your jack onto a hot metal picket.) They'll get an inch if they're lucky -- if the leotard-wearer blocking them shifts to the side that much -- granting maybe a view of a shoulder or a hip. But once all the invisible lines on the hardwood floor are drawn, and the exercise music starts, the battle really begins.<br />
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You just don't know how frightening exercise can be until you've experienced an aerobics class in almost any exercise studio in America. This is a world where women's thighs run the show, don't let anybody kid you, and there's no better place to experience that truth than in a mirror-lined room with 25 women who are not completely happy with their figures. You can read their minds: "Why do I have to have hips at all? I'm obviously never going to have children!" they're thinking, as they rip off their jackets and throw backpacks helter skelter under the coat rack. "I love this class!" one woman lies to another. You can tell she's lying because she's earlier made reference to the fact that this teacher is the hardest. "You get a really good workout with Don!" she assures a newcomer. Translated, she's really saying, "I made it through the class without actually crying and I want the world to know!"<br />
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We'd all rather be home watching Oprah, let's be honest. And yet, we women do love an event where we get to see what everyone else is wearing. It's like a party, only with fewer clothes. There's the American Beauty, whose socks and shoes always match her jogbra. I don't know how she does it, but somehow she manages to pull it off three times a week. Then there's The Dancer, wearing leg warmers and what look like sauna shorts. This woman is the picture of grace. She knows what they're talking about when they order an arabesque, while the rest of us are just throwing our legs out in back, trying not to look like a dog burying something behind him. There are even a few punkettes looking for that sculpted look cigarettes and coffee alone just can't accomplish. They sport black Converse high tops, stitched bustiers and fishnet support-hose. And then there are the usual types that populate every exercise studio: the ones who are carved and chiseled into shapes that defy any intake of nourishment; the ones in full make-up who reapply their lipstick just before class; and those new to exercise, who look like they never saw a tennis shoe prior to 2000 and always thought the weights in the weight room were car parts.<br />
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Once the instructor starts the warm-up, the ones up front had better be good, or at least have sharp outfits, because if they don't, the ones behind will creep into their territory and do homicidal arm lunges within inches of their backs. Interlopers try to sneak, floorboard by floorboard into each other's space during the "grapevine" (step, cross, step, KICK!). Some women protect their fiefdoms by jumping wildly, flailing their bodies in such a way there's a chance of suffering grave bodily harm if you inadvertently leg-lift yourself onto their property. We've all learned to stay far back from the one in a skimpy black outfit who fends off encroachments by flinging her dreadlocks in a mad whirlpool of aerobic enthusiasm. Think "Ben Hur" and lethal, protruding spokes on chariot wheels...<br />
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Then there are the ones who attempt figure intimidation; flaunting their iron hard bodies in thongs and modified G-strings; in short, one-piece unitards; in screaming paisley-patterned Pranas whose design defies all warnings that loud patterns make the wearer look fat. "What are YOU doing here!" the rest of us scream silently. Since they're always in the front row, we have to stand behind them, fuming. We're forced to dodge their butt as it swings its way toward us during the squats; obliged to stagger our kicks so we don't boot them into the next row. Every once in a while though, I let a high kick fly and I fan 'em, like a pitcher fans back the batter, just to let them know I'm back there. It's every woman for herself, truly survival of the fittest, and also of those whose outfits fit best.<br />
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But we all have our strategies and this is mine. I go to class three times a week. I wear the baggiest t-shirt I can scrounge up, a pair of my ex-boyfriend's boxer shorts, one long sock and one short sock, and Keds. Plaid Keds. I limp into the back row right before the class starts, dragging my Step platform behind me (the idea is I'm too weak to lift it). I position it upside down like a blue canoe and then I stand there pretending to ponder the mystery of where the risers go until the instructor, with a thinly veiled look of contempt, suggests I come up front since I'm obviously an exercise moron. <br />
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It's been 6 weeks now and he still hasn't caught on. I've managed to get to the front row every time and, although I never look as cool as the women who surround me, I'm happy. Like finding a cheap one bedroom apartment three times a week, it's my little real estate victory. The front row, across from the mirror; the best piece of property in the whole studio! <br />
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Let it be a lesson to outsiders: aerobics are not to be taken lightly. As we improve our bodies, we hone other skills. Strategy, negotiation and finally, compromise come into play within these mirrored walls. And once we get up to speed, we're a force to be reckoned with: we women (and men) who, for forty minutes, move with the music, in step, as one, together! (Somewhat together.) We become a team, a unit, a unified wedge of cardio-active machinery! Give us a task and we'll complete it, as one!!<br />
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Just don't stand in front of us.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-31685214742212212262016-02-07T09:10:00.000-05:002016-04-24T18:04:31.259-04:00I Totally Do Not Understand How to Tell if It's On or Off. I Mean, Everything.Back to things I don't understand anymore: remember when buttons for off and on were understandable? Clearly marked? Made perfect sense?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixKR2o-_XmRNToavebh5jB85jRUpNLz9x4789bSETJhhTLscWkw28EZAecoHuGdqxKaGZw_DfG2TTQZOf06SL9Ua1M5HOLEqqEWU39PkJv35kw55YznSs6fYHLXzA7AwyfGOHuYbgZS3I/s1600/GoodButton1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixKR2o-_XmRNToavebh5jB85jRUpNLz9x4789bSETJhhTLscWkw28EZAecoHuGdqxKaGZw_DfG2TTQZOf06SL9Ua1M5HOLEqqEWU39PkJv35kw55YznSs6fYHLXzA7AwyfGOHuYbgZS3I/s320/GoodButton1.JPG" /></a></div><br />
When you knew that when you pressed a button, and it responded, the power would be on? And when you pressed it again it would obviously be off? Because it was clearly marked "power"?<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMYND-O4M8jyUR71BX4_YPVgRH24C1mRPoW9aCpUl2kikrvmxV8atMWhuSgh0GQYCT4kMnVIX3dUGXdaGpUohe17iNRQLKzQL1y1E4OXstrHc4MxJE6RpWC84nhBbaT2qLVzRpKbmKTSo/s1600/GoodButton2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMYND-O4M8jyUR71BX4_YPVgRH24C1mRPoW9aCpUl2kikrvmxV8atMWhuSgh0GQYCT4kMnVIX3dUGXdaGpUohe17iNRQLKzQL1y1E4OXstrHc4MxJE6RpWC84nhBbaT2qLVzRpKbmKTSo/s320/GoodButton2.JPG" /></a></div><br />
These days we have the "smiling cyclops" which indicates nothing when it's pressed. It offers no information, it assists you not, and one might actually forget if one has pushed it, because if it is pressed and nothing happens, one might believe it hadn't been pressed at all.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDHQTULM9_fn8G_Arvaqbvf9edMldbkY6BYG3OiEQ4BKNBIzvvozEd7NYzO5xnNwLqW6Vcc60bZbOXIyNgWZ7XXZCTxnkNJAKvdnC1J_cq7GVf7OtDDkilwU-eIm54bOIzamET5vYHWXM/s1600/photo-3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDHQTULM9_fn8G_Arvaqbvf9edMldbkY6BYG3OiEQ4BKNBIzvvozEd7NYzO5xnNwLqW6Vcc60bZbOXIyNgWZ7XXZCTxnkNJAKvdnC1J_cq7GVf7OtDDkilwU-eIm54bOIzamET5vYHWXM/s320/photo-3.JPG" /></a></div><br />
So today's "I Don't Understand Anything Anymore" post: the contemporary and ubiquitous off/on button. I don't get it. Whose bright idea was this?<br />
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Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-68473442667912140972016-02-03T07:55:00.000-05:002016-04-24T15:16:19.602-04:00Um, I Don't Understand How to Operate Your Shower...I'm one of those who travels for the holidays; not to anywhere interesting but to the homes of friends and family who put me up in the spare bedroom, on the couch, or who kindly kick their small children to the floor so I have a place to sleep. These small children still seem to like me, because I'm their Aunt who they don't see that often and so I have the advantage of always being a novelty to them. Kids between the ages of 5 and 14 have a kind of instinctive caution about talking back, rolling their eyes, using the kind of foul language reserved for the bowels of slave ships, and borrowing my clothes, which they reserve for their parents and those who they see regularly. In fact, as long as I show my face only once a year, they actually roll their eyes TO me, in a conspiracy against their parents, and how "dumb" or unreasonable they are, especially when those parents ask them to eat vegetables, turn off the video games, or not to have sex with the goth guy in homeroom.<br />
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So all in all, it's great, except for the problem of the shower. I live in NYC where, on the Upper West Side where I live, the shower valves haven't changed since 1941 and therefore have a "Hot" device and a "Cold" device, clearly labeled, separated by a natural distance and incredible in their logic and simplicity.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztM5x1GE-KAIE9zMRSXerxWM7xuVbGye2a0lQIIS2l2iKQQEl62MRecbOaf6Go08D-zZ2ciGk1687K-ngfEaot1PHnNTO96n509G2gHgEqts-IqX0s0Q5qAkkBioYlqf_kSFXBDQjsj4/s1600-h/MyFaucets.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztM5x1GE-KAIE9zMRSXerxWM7xuVbGye2a0lQIIS2l2iKQQEl62MRecbOaf6Go08D-zZ2ciGk1687K-ngfEaot1PHnNTO96n509G2gHgEqts-IqX0s0Q5qAkkBioYlqf_kSFXBDQjsj4/s320/MyFaucets.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287051412897204626" /></a><br />
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I mean, just by looking at them, you know: 1) how to turn the water on, 2) how to make the water "Hot" or, alternatively "Cold", 3) how to get the water to come out of the overhead valve onto your head, 4) how to turn it all off at the end of the event. You can also figure out fairly quickly what to do if the water is: 1) scalding and your skin begins to redden and peel off, 2) freezing so that everything made of flesh rises in self-defense, 3) brown with chunks.<br />
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Let me be the first to report that this is not true outside of Manhattan. Apparently everyone else in the world lives in a house that was built post WW2, and at some point, some smart-ass engineers decided that having separate faucets was "too much trouble" or maybe simply not cool, and started building these things into one unit so that the person of average intelligence, and perhaps even people with advanced degrees, cannot figure out how to take a shower without being injured or asking a 7 year old for help.<br />
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This phenomenon is most obvious at the gym, where a shower needs to be fast, not only because other people are waiting, but because there’s always a chance that the naked girls with the “buns and abs of steel” might shove you out of the way because, let’s face it, they’re stronger and worked out harder and need showers much, much more than you.<br />
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I don’t live far from my gym, so usually I work out and walk home and shower there, with my normal, logical shower that leaves me confident and cheerful at my ability to operate something mechanical without breaking it or having to call in professionals. But sometimes I have to shower at the gym because I’m headed somewhere other than home and I don’t want to have people do that sideways-shifting-away-on-the-subway-bench that I do sometimes when people are… let’s say, unfragrant. So at my gym, here is what I’m faced with:<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNq1RbVGKos_vy3EuxaXxVbOG5HB1Zr5BPSCNE4zDXOkSrqakc0vg_m7L6jMIRwDCdTo7vUYHN3YwMYfRylroCo6cQEDv8WmKWJERcQr_0UDV5QNtEwav8JDhRYI1bh7OyCwCheQcKVqQ/s1600-h/P1010001.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNq1RbVGKos_vy3EuxaXxVbOG5HB1Zr5BPSCNE4zDXOkSrqakc0vg_m7L6jMIRwDCdTo7vUYHN3YwMYfRylroCo6cQEDv8WmKWJERcQr_0UDV5QNtEwav8JDhRYI1bh7OyCwCheQcKVqQ/s320/P1010001.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287129839424330210" /></a><br />
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Now I get the color scheme, ok? I get it. Red is hot, and blue is cold; this is common most cultures and I don’t want to visit the countries where it’s not. But… please. What the hell? There is no way to figure this thing out without getting in there and just – doing it. This means, in my case, getting alternately scalded and frozen, at least twice, until I find the mid-point of water comfort. Those shrieks and whoops coming from the third stall? That’s me, and I’m alone and there is in absolutely no sex involved. The small crowd that gathers around the extra towels awaiting my exit exhibit the collective expression of a group that is concerned, but maybe not enough to risk their own lives to find out what is going on in that glass chamber. And of course, upon my exit, I act like I don’t know where the yelling came from either and walk out shrugging blithely at the be-toweled clique.<br />
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And the problem only gets worse outside of Manhattan. This is Cleveland. House of Brian. Nice house, modern, many bathrooms.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbwzyu49JEd47vqWg8BHRdGGHBNNPeri-YyXzNuuBB4GsXUgcJ2Je6BcJQTkFx3JKhU7NTF3oBaP1ZSz2aaNDaHOi_ZIjbJxFbpSVIpZapH3H4kVJDr59G0TGrOuysj0nIuNvXtbi7sbE/s1600-h/P1010002.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbwzyu49JEd47vqWg8BHRdGGHBNNPeri-YyXzNuuBB4GsXUgcJ2Je6BcJQTkFx3JKhU7NTF3oBaP1ZSz2aaNDaHOi_ZIjbJxFbpSVIpZapH3H4kVJDr59G0TGrOuysj0nIuNvXtbi7sbE/s320/P1010002.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287140407131511906" /></a><br />
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There’s an “H”, a “C” and an “Off” which you’d think would make things oh-so-obvious, but is it hot when the faucet handle is pointed at the H or when the handle is pointed at the C? Why isn’t there an arrow? Where’s the color scheme? There are many teen-agers at this house and if you think I’m asking their help, when I’ve already been humiliated not only playing Wii baseball, but even the low-tech board-game “Risk”, you’re nuts.<br />
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My family is a “Four Christmases” kind of a deal, so from Brian’s house, I went on to Alison’s (his ex-wife and my friend), also built in the era of the ambitious engineer. This shower is in the redone basement, and so it’s super special, and makes even less sense. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumxo7umbJDC908wjpZQ4NglS7BSZ0vMjciRhBvQMCjsrvBdkiP5HEphVU9IRUtIe9yKRcFcHaLFZc6qMg-YakiXx7nqsGlN3cM0yrNGWJ17wmUtWmOWJh8gPmGhGqn7R3EXiB1DLNVB8/s1600-h/Alison'sFaucet%231.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumxo7umbJDC908wjpZQ4NglS7BSZ0vMjciRhBvQMCjsrvBdkiP5HEphVU9IRUtIe9yKRcFcHaLFZc6qMg-YakiXx7nqsGlN3cM0yrNGWJ17wmUtWmOWJh8gPmGhGqn7R3EXiB1DLNVB8/s320/Alison'sFaucet%231.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287140830153778418" /></a><br />
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It’s a kind of diamond shape (and tastefully, looks like an actual diamond! Your guests will actually think you have the Hope Diamond in your downstairs bathroom!) and comes to a point, leading one to believe that if you point the point at one of the key letters (H, and C), you’ll have Hot or Cold water. Getting started here is the issue. You pull it out and then you have to dodge that spray until you can snake your hand in there and adjust it until you can safely get the whole body in there. A flushing toilet somewhere in the house can add layers of confusion and trauma, trying to understand whether it’s you controlling the spray, or some outside agent, and whether you should passively wait until things settle down, or go bold, adjusting wildly as armies of 13 and 14 year old girls dab their make-up upstairs, tossing little tiny pieces of toilet paper away, flushing each time, in their quest for Bratz-like slutitude.<br />
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I also visited Kelly who just redid her bathroom (what’s wrong with having an old, functional bathroom? People: leave your showers alone!).<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ1lPFyyfR1sfRAE0NahrGX6uH1nTpJYyXNykqDUECAk0KKaNFxNgoShFxiuHK2SmYfJYUXKskCOtUetSIqyNdQZv__Ow2Se6bs0bQUhmaKhYUu0l9iv5vzJno_kLhrkriptSi-K5HGJc/s1600-h/Kelly'sFaucet.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQ1lPFyyfR1sfRAE0NahrGX6uH1nTpJYyXNykqDUECAk0KKaNFxNgoShFxiuHK2SmYfJYUXKskCOtUetSIqyNdQZv__Ow2Se6bs0bQUhmaKhYUu0l9iv5vzJno_kLhrkriptSi-K5HGJc/s320/Kelly'sFaucet.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5287141471363348306" /></a><br />
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This one stumped me utterly. The Barbie was ecstatic: I was glum. What’s that long metal thing over there? What does that do? How can that help matters? Why do we need extra devices protruding from the spigot? It was getting late and people were waiting for me for yet another blended family walk by the water. I tried, I honestly did, but ultimately I had to open the bathroom door and call for assistance. Her 7 year old, with an expression reserved for people who visit regularly (that is: disdain, annoyance), showed up and said, “Let me do it” and she did, getting it right the first time as I towered above her, wrapped in a towel, reminding her that I had a Masters and a driver’s license and also many boyfriends and my own apartment, which didn’t seem to impress her. This one required doing something under the faucet at the bottom, which I pretended I understood (like when I took Chemistry and stared dumbly at the blackboard for a whole semester), just so I could preserve some dignity and not let the little girl get the upper hand. “Oh yeah,” I said, “that’s what I thought, it’s so simple, much easier than mine at home,” I suggested.<br />
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The holidays are over and I’m back home and I’ve been taking showers with no problem at all, and planning my trip to Miami in March, hoping against hope that either the retro-rebuilt town hasn’t touched the showers since 1941 or has redesigned them for the simple-minded, or perhaps, that a smart 7 year old is down the hall.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-72074820251131699142016-01-29T09:34:00.000-05:002016-05-24T11:38:41.877-04:00Fingernails: I Don't Get it. They're Dead and Yet Still Giving Me Problems<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiur0MQiLeRItkqVeTTBPZKnL6FcVgMfGMOCQM-O42YtBdbKFKy0XLsajeJoD91y368GL5xgQ0n_530q5RmXownyBDjQeGnHMiczQ7GqB97EKcdCZxO16GY9yThwJvbCdll6lLW6rA4zYI/s1600/3D-Firearm-Weapon-Fingernails.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiur0MQiLeRItkqVeTTBPZKnL6FcVgMfGMOCQM-O42YtBdbKFKy0XLsajeJoD91y368GL5xgQ0n_530q5RmXownyBDjQeGnHMiczQ7GqB97EKcdCZxO16GY9yThwJvbCdll6lLW6rA4zYI/s320/3D-Firearm-Weapon-Fingernails.jpg" /></a></div><br />
It’s an internal conflict from which all women suffer - one that forms one of the basic struggles of female identity. It’s not dress size or hairstyle, career path or marital status. It’s our fingernail length.<br />
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Some people trumpet their identity via the buttons they wear on their lapels. Others have bumper stickers. When it comes to women however, fingernails are a crucial barometer of the female self. I am them and they are me: the truest bellwether of a transient identity. <br />
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In my life they've been long and polished (the "Young Business Woman" era) or short and dirty ("The Artist Years"). They've been a different length on each finger like a ragged graph of the stock market (“The Happy Gardener”). There have been periods where 9 were long and one short (snapped it using trying open a CD), or the left hand has been short and the right long (learning the guitar). They've had 6 coats of $15-a-bottle polish during some phases and gone stark naked during others. Every once in a while, I go through a period where I don't think about them at all. It doesn't last more than a week.<br />
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I have traveled extensively and bravely between the most extreme territories of fingernail length. I have explored the rugged inner realm of nails bitten-to-the-quick, and I have journeyed to the outermost regions of nail length, exploring the netherlands of practical fingernail possibility with talons extending a half inch beyond the tops of my fingertips.<br />
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In college as an art major I wore them short. I had to, of course: I was an artist. I wore overalls and clogs and wore my hair long and wild. My fingers were serious and functional and even if my paintings were mediocre, I was to be taken seriously.<br />
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A few years after I graduated however, I found myself curious about the world of women with beautifully done nails. Sometimes, wishing I were that kind of a woman, I too would get my nails done, and for a time, I would be one of those women. My posture would be better. I would toss my hair. I'd use my fingers more, to point at things that really didn't need to be pointed out; to run my finger down lists; to touch-tone dial. I would handle things gingerly, with the pads of my fingers. It affected my whole physical self: when I ran with long nails, I'd run "like a girl". Breaking one would induce dismay and anxiety. Sometimes I'd catch myself admiring them as if they weren’t attached to me: watching them twinkle as I pushed elevator buttons or set the dial on the washing machine to Permanent Press. <br />
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My fingernails have been an Almanac-like measure of my mood at various times in life. At one point in my dating past, a date could look across the dinner table at my hands and know approximately what his chances were for an extended evening (shaved legs were an equally reliable measure). If they were painted at all, that was a good sign. To know my fingernails was to know me. Sometimes, in the biblical sense.<br />
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Most women will tell you that their fingernail consciousness was raised initially by their mothers who typically guide their daughters from: “For heaven’s sake, that dog can dig his own holes!”, to our first introduction to the proper way to use a nail file. Not baked in a cake to break out of prisons like my four brothers insisted, but gently, on one's finger tips, in one direction only, at first making the nails pointed and then rounding them, carefully pushing back the cuticles so the "moons" show. That was then. <br />
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Things have changed, fingernail-wise. Like everything else that can adorn a human body, the decoration of the fingernail has come to mean something. These days you have moody colors that are mixed in blenders, mostly dark, from deep burgundy all the way to the very popular black. There are deep purples, dark blues and rich greens with glitter mixed in. You can have nails as metallic as the side of a toaster or striped like a zebra hide. If you put plain pink on your nails and still frequent the lower East side, you're saying something about who you are... and who you aren't.<br />
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Culturally, there are fingernail differences as well. Black and Hispanic women seem more likely to sport exotically long nails, painted with patterns that would make Juan Miro envious, perhaps imbedded with a jewel. There's the classic "French manicure": the white-tipped, flat-topped style which prime-time TV actresses and female newscasters seem to favor, representing both approachability and responsible journalism. And then there are the bright red claws of porn stars and men's magazine models, meant to both intimidate and entice.<br />
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I always thought having someone else do one's nails was a silly luxury -- until I had mine done. It’s like handing over one part of your body to the curators of a particular wing of a museum. Your nails become the fine canvasses a staff of experts are trained to restore.<br />
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My informal research (conducted across countless manicure tables) has revealed that most nail operations are run either by rows of small, lovely Asian girls, or in spas and hair salons by middle-aged Eastern European women with oddly smooth skin. When we sit down before them and extend our hands, what do they think? It’s a question that kept me away from the table for years. What must they think of a woman who can’t do her own nails? Now, I assume they are just waiting until I leave so they can get their own nails done. <br />
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Unlike hair salons, we don't walk in and ask their advice; generally women know what they want in a fingernail. Frankly, I've always been afraid that if I did ask for advice, the news would be bad; that I'd be nail-cast: "Honey, bright red just isn't you. You're just not the type. Here's a nice pink." You mean you don't see me with a jewel? It's that obvious I'm not a "Purple Passion" person? Can I at least have a darker shade of pink??<br />
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These days, my nails are plain: unpainted, mid-length, kind of between here and there, sort of 5'5", brunette, Midwestern average. Sort of like me. And for now, I'm content. But I see blue on the horizon. And it’s called “Midnight Sky Metallic”.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-22070382883037937062016-01-11T13:46:00.000-05:002016-04-24T15:25:23.994-04:00The Book Club: A great place to discuss Angelina Jolie's upper arms. And, oh yeah, books.I was incredibly flattered recently when a friend whom I consider one of the most sophisticated and intellectual of my circle, invited me to join her book club. It's not that I don't already have many other intellectual things to do with my evenings (as long as "The Simpsons" is over), it's just that I was thrilled to participate in what has become the urban equivalent of sorority rush. So many of my friends had started or were already in book clubs that I began to fear I wasn't going to get asked to "pledge". In cities across America, large and small, book clubs are taking the place of extra-marital affairs as distraction for intelligent urban women, and if you haven't yet been asked to join a book club well, either you're a Foreign Legionnaire hiding out in a distant, sand-locked outpost of the desert, or more likely, it's only a matter of time.<br />
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For the present generation of women, book clubs became popular when Oprah began reading and promoting books on her daytime television show. This was of course in the days when first-time book authors were poor and grateful for any crumbs of attention that might be tossed their way, unlike the present, when 21-year-old authors are annoyed if they are the second guest on Leno. Soon after author Jonathan Franzen became irrationally insulted when Oprah read his book "The Corrections" and lifted it from the oblivion wherein it would have most likely lingered, Oprah decided she herself didn't want to be in a book club, complaining that there just not enough "good books" (perhaps she meant "humble authors"). <br />
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The book club baton was passed to Kelly Ripa, which had the potential to make even the most bookish of us give up the whole thing for periodicals. But instead, the reading thing has become a newly found old pleasure that has sort of wafted into our collective unconscious like the smell of fresh bread through an open window. Book clubs provide today's over-extended women an acceptable way to socialize without the guilt of it being purely leisure. <br />
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Many people talk about how they used to read all the time when they were young and how much they used to love it. I for one, remember getting books for Christmas, usually Nancy Drew mysteries, and spending all that day reading, not speaking a word to my brothers (who were busy outside in the back yard with their own Christmas gifts, attempting to put each other's eyes out). Even then, girlfriends would pass beloved books to each other: mostly sweet, girlish stories about girl sleuths or clever airline stewardesses. These were supplemented of course by books we considered "sexy", by Erica Jong or Philip Roth, found on our parent's bedside tables or more likely, under their beds. A book that had a scene where two people disappeared into a bedroom or any mention at all of anyone's "panties" would send us into red-faced paralysis and would be passed around with guilty terror at slumber parties for the whole slumber party season. <br />
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(I could top even those by pulling out one of my father's medical journals, wherein photos of bizarre genital afflictions were guaranteed to send at least one girl screaming out of the room. These were met not with titillation but with wonder and would change the party dynamics so that instead of talking about sex, we'd end up discussing seriously tangential topics like, "What would you do if you didn't have any eyebrows?")<br />
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But most people find they just don't have time to read. It takes a certain kind of a commitment, not unlike exercise or marriage, all of which ultimately make you feel good but are awfully hard to start. So I was extremely pleased when my girlfriend Pam called me and asked if I would be willing to join her book club to which each core member had invited one friend. "How does it work?" I asked. "'How's it work?’ It's a book club!" she responded. "We choose a book, we read it and then we get together and talk about it. How hard could it be?" Not so easy as it turns out.<br />
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First of all, when you join a book club it means you actually have to read the books. No kidding, there's no way around it. And not every book is going to be one that you want to read or would even enjoy using as a paperweight. At these moments, when you see the nine hundred page life history of Moses Cleveland held up for your approval, you must either say "Yeah", "Nay" or "No way, Sister"! Of course the latter is generally considered rude, and reserved for gigantic leather bound books with dictionary sized print and tissue paper leaves, pulled out just as summer is starting and it's all we can do to finish our "OK!" magazines. To ensure that no one goes away thinking they'd rather have joined a knitting circle, the book decision process is a fairly democratic one.<br />
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The first thing we do in my book club is weigh the book. By that I don't mean we weigh its length against the time we have available or weigh it against other books of its genre, or weigh its educational value versus its entertainment ratio. I mean we actually weigh the book. Each of us in turn gets a chance to heft the book, holding it in one hand or both hands, lifting it up and down slightly, turning it over, seeing if it gets any lighter if we split it open and heft it again. <br />
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We utilize our own personal sense of weights and measures: "light" weighs about as much as a single fork: that would be your Penguin paperback and your pithy-quotes-at-the-cash-register type books. "Not too light" would be the approximate weight of a pair of strappy sandals in a shoe box, like for example, your latest Abused-Intern Tell-All, or the: I'm-A-Married-Woman-Who's-Having-Trouble-Having-It-All novel. A middleweight book might balance the scales against a wooden cutting board, depending of course on the thickness of the cover; those would be your "Memoirs of a Geisha" or a biography of someone with very little to say like, perhaps, Larry Birkhead. <br />
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"Heavy" as far as we're concerned would be the approximate weight of an empty clay casserole dish: those would be your original hardback editions of a typical Tom Wolfe novel or any one of the recent Looking-Back-At-the-Last-Century-By-an-Attractive-Newscaster tomes. "Too heavy" would be the weight of a full casserole dish, with maybe lasagna in it, which would include Webster's dictionary, anything by Salman Rushdie or any biography of a philandering politician from the '30s. It's not precisely that these books are "too heavy" in content but that they are in fact, just too heavy and have the potential of spraining your wrist if you try holding them with one hand, and will, in fact, demolish anything below them in your purse. They can be used effectively for self defense: one can always throw them at a mugger.<br />
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So now you have your assignment, and the first thing you do is look at the calendar and count each of the days between now and the date you have to finish the book, figuring in several days of trashy magazine reading, one or two Sunday papers, a couple nights of reality TV, and at least one indecipherable instruction manual for yet another digital product.<br />
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And then comes the reading. Not every book makes you long for the moment when you'll be alone with it, to crack its spine and dive into its world. Some of them sit on your nightstand like a fat Buddha, arms crossed, glaring at you, wondering when you're going to pick them up and get to work. Some of them make you so depressed by the third page that you have to rush out to a magazine stand to buy a "Vogue". There've been afternoons when I've sat among piles of laundry and dirty dishes, one eye on the clock, reading frantically to finish before the meeting that evening. <br />
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But every once in a while there's that one you'd never have picked up on your own: a book that is utterly enchanting or hypnotically interesting, or which makes you giddy with its observations and glad that there are writers like these. At those moments, you remember your love of reading, happy to be an explorer once again. <br />
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Our meetings are held at each member's house in turn about every six weeks. The reunion itself usually takes a good thirty minutes before we even get to the book, as follows: 4 to 5 minutes of telling each other how fabulous we look, 2 minutes denying how fabulous we look, 3 minutes complimenting each other's home furnishings ("Is that new?"), 2 minutes discussing how difficult or how easy it was to find the furnishings, 12 minutes talking about our spouse, child or boyfriend (or lacking those, the cute guy we rode up with in the elevator), and then roughly 8 minutes where we tell each other how we're doing ("I don't know; lately I've just been in a funk. Do you think I should get my teeth whitened?" to "We have finally concluded that my sister-in-law is an idiot," to "I've decided to get implants."). These are crucial bonding moments and are essential to the expediency of the actual meeting. Without them we've found the group tends to get distracted during the book discussion, breaking into subgroups to discuss shoes and Angelina Jolie's upper arms.<br />
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Like I assume most book clubs brag, our membership is made up of women who are strong, smart, independent thinkers who are, more importantly, very, very funny, capable of hilarious and pointed opinions. The discussion of the books is always interesting. A book we all love is rare, translating into an hour of favorite moments recalled and favorite lines reread aloud with reverential enthusiasm. More frequently is the book we all hate, for which the evening turns into a trash fest of the author, his or her beliefs, and the book jacket photo. The most passionate discussions erupt around book endings: half the group disappointed that for example, it didn't end happily; the other half insisting that it couldn't. After we've dissected the book to our heart's content, we eat (fattening food at a friend’s house doesn’t count), drink (lots) and chat, sometimes about topics the book has generated, more frequently about how unbelievably expensive it is to get a hair cut these days.<br />
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Once the selection of the next book has been made, our evening, for all intents and purposes, is over. Reluctantly we gather our stuff and head out, but the rate of chatter that starts up as we're nearing the door is like last call at a singles bar. We say our good-byes like we're standing on a dock watching a ship pull away, as we leave one world to reenter another.<br />
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New friends were not the point when the book club was started; we have barely enough time for our own. But being with new people, discussing things outside of the realm of redundant days and predictable conversation has been a powerful thing; an opportunity to use our intellect for more than figuring out how to gracefully exit a department store after our kid has thrown up on the clerk. It's not the books that keep us juggling our schedules, it's the whole package - the camaraderie, the conversation, the pure haven it provides in the context of lives filled with errands. For me, it has become a necessity for health and well being: like an aerobics class for the brain.<br />
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If you haven't been asked to join a book club (yet), start your own. The way I look at it, it's an organization devoted to the protection of at least one natural resource we can all get behind: our minds.<br />
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########Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-4773140253048756892015-12-28T15:30:00.000-05:002016-04-28T15:31:29.119-04:00Where Did They All "Vanish" To? A Mystery. Have you noticed, as I have over the last few years, the abundance of articles with the phrase "vanished" in the title, along with "disappearing", "dying", and "perishing" (simply I suppose because writers are just getting tired of the word "vanishing")? Here's a small sample:<br />
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"Honeybees Vanish, Leaving Keepers in Peril"<br />
"Chinook Salmon Vanish Without a Trace"<br />
"Saving the World's Vanishing Shark Species"<br />
"Vanishing Chilean Sea Bass"<br />
"On Emptying Seas, A Vanishing Way of Life"<br />
"Vanishing in the Wild, Mountain Gorillas"<br />
"Louisiana's Vanishing Wetlands"<br />
"Coral Reefs Vanishing Faster Than Rain Forests" (they're winning!)<br />
"Vanishing of Frogs, Toads Tied to Global Warming"<br />
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and of course,<br />
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"The Vanishing Middle Class" (whose relation to Global Warming is the fact that those who control and blindly support big industry are out-sourcing and down-sizing at such a rate that your kids will be the only thing not vanishing, because they'll be living with you, never having found a job.)<br />
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More recently I've read about:<br />
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"Northeastern Bats Are Perishing and No One Knows Why"<br />
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and an update on the frog situation:<br />
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"Link to Global Warming in Frogs' Disappearance is Challenged"<br />
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The frog article makes the case that perhaps global warming plays a part but in fact it's a fungus that's killing off the frogs. Yes, Virginia, in many cases of these "vanishings" it is true, a mysterious fungus, or a mysterious cancer or a mysterious virus is what is killing off these species (check out the recently documented decimation of Tasmanian Devils).<br />
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But that's like saying it's not global warming that is flooding the low-lying parts of the world, it's water! Or it's not global warming that's shrinking glaciers, but excessive heat! It's part of the game that has even purportedly "intelligent" people dodging the issue entirely. "Having lost the argument about whether in fact life forms are disappearing, let's debate about what's making them disappear and make absolutely sure that we don't get blamed for this!" (they cry). "Whatever it is, it's not us!" (they cry) "...and who gives a hoot really whatever it is, as long as we don't have to change our lifestyles or admit we were wrong!!"<br />
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I know a few people who have, on principle (the same principle that guides those who believe it is impossible for man to have walked on the moon as well as the principle of "someone else will pick it up"), refused to see the Gore documentary "An Inconvenient Truth". These people believe it to be full of political propaganda and hysteria, and perhaps also, the truth, which, once commonly accepted, won't help any of those who still want to buy a Hummer. And insisting that they will never view the film, they have missed out on the indescribable fascination of watching as, systematically, almost all the catastrophes that Gore predicted 5 years ago when he first started to give his presentation, have come to pass. (If only he could predict the moves of the stock market as accurately!)<br />
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I don't know a better argument against the idiocy of denying that global warming is going to cause us some big hurt (and by us, I mean the world, and even rich people who are in another part of the world but whom we still bump into at Starbucks), than the fact that scientists on the side of the deniers never even heard of Global Warming until Gore and the world's environmentalists started yelling about it, and when their predictions started coming true, well, the naysayers (generally the political right) had to get some guys from the same think tank they hired to keep the tobacco companies in the black ("smoking is GOOD for you!") to start saying that Global Warming is natural, periodic, inevitable and has nothing to do with Greenhouse gases, and man-made pollution.<br />
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But if that's the case, and now, even these GW deniers say that GW is going to cause problems in the future, then why didn't these scientists (or "scientists") start warning us about it long before Gore? You've noticed that now even some conservatives (e.g., Michael Gerson of WaPo, and The Heritage Foundation) are conceding to the fact of GW. What they won't admit is that it's man-made. <br />
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But why, if it's a natural occurrence, did not one scientist on the conservative side predict the destruction of coral reefs, increasingly severe hurricanes, and decimating heat waves that were foretold ten years ago by Global Warming scientists and which we have been seeing the last few years? Wouldn't that have been helpful? I mean, the scientists who deny it now, could have as easily denied it then when the facts emerged and the reasons for the facts were just being promulgated.<br />
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Why didn't they (these climate change deniers) notice or predict, as Gore et.al. has and did, that there would be disastrous economic consequences of GW, along with preventable loss of life (remember the 2003 heat wave that killed 14,000 in France alone?), and suggest that perhaps we ought to worry about neighborhoods in low lying areas, along with our record albums stored in the basement? <br />
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Doesn't that seem odd?<br />
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Why were environmentalists who believe GW is man-made able to predict and warn about the problems that we face today, 40 years ago, but those scientists who are trying to sell us on the "natural cycle theory" totally silent, and caught off guard? Maybe they’re not good scientists.<br />
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But the reason, unfortunately, is more than simple incompetence. It’s because these anti-GW "experts" are pushing a theory purely to protect conservatives' investments in big industry. You don't hear them reminding us that they predicted melting glaciers and poles and killing heat waves, and that these phenomena were all completely expected in the grand scheme of things. Because those who deny global warming now, or even those who admit its reality now, never saw it coming.<br />
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It was the environmentalists who noticed that glaciers were receding, heat waves were becoming more frequent and increasingly lethal, droughts, devastating fires and floods were increasing in severity, and suggesting that, even if you lived on the prairie you might still consider investing in a row boat to tool around main street. The average environmentalist has been predicting issues related to GW for about 40 years. And in the last few years, the only brakes on this environmental juggernaut have been applied by those crazy tree-huggers and their insistence on truth.<br />
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Those nuts!<br />
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So what can you do with naive ignoramuses who continue to ignore and downplay this issue? Same thing you have always done - argue as much as you can stand, and then when they start getting all emotional and start attacking your virtue, your patriotism and your hairstyle, walk away.<br />
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Unfortunately sometimes you're sitting across a dinner table from them and although you may have the impulse to pass the mashed potatoes - to their heads! - you must not, because that's rude and not worth the loss of perhaps a very good side dish.<br />
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And you know what eventually happens? As much as these deniers argue and huff and puff and make fun, they quietly come around. They come over to our side of the argument so surreptitiously that we who have been warning and doom-saying never get to gloat (darn!). But that's OK, because even better than gloating is to have people convinced that this is a real issue and has to be addressed.<br />
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And people who were once in denial, once they "get it" become really passionate! People who convert (to anything) are typically even more devout than those who were raised with a certain set of beliefs. You know how people who quit smoking are absolute vigilantes when it comes to smokers? And become much more hardline than people who never smoked? Well that's how converts to environmentalism are. Guilt, more even than greed, is good!<br />
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So I welcome naysayers. I have to. I know they will eventually see the light (one more violent hurricane or drought or devastating flood in the red states ought to do it). Now we just have to work on the ones who don't believe in evolution. Forget about the ones who don't believe we walked on the moon. Let them hold onto something!<br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-56626058617263146032015-12-27T15:51:00.000-05:002016-04-19T19:57:20.325-04:00I Can't Get This Fucking CD Open...In keeping with my theme of not being able to understand anything anymore (your shower, my thong), I explore the American specialty of sealing things so that you cannot open them without breaking into tears.<br />
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It’s a typical day at dcvdickens’ house. I rise and head for the kitchen where I put up water to boil for the coffee and figure out how I want to break the fast (sleeping being the only way I can manage that particular diet strategy of not constantly eating).<br />
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A box of cereal (purchased on sale – perhaps a “remainder”) so that instead of the usual $4.95, I got it for $2.99 – a steal when it comes to a box of flakes, let me tell you. Why the price of cereal follows so closely the price of a gallon of gas I don’t know, but it certainly seems to. But I digress. Because that’s sort of what I do. Sometimes my mind wanders and I forget the whole thread of what I’m trying to discuss as I find a pile of cracker crumbs on the cutting board and go to brush them off and notice that I don’t have any paper towels and start looking for the grocery list to add it and then realize I also need Cumin, which is a great, versatile spice that you can put not only in Indian food but many other… anyhoo.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5gXhhe7qc0XohJa8gmdFdDLmbxBVmlyoOhQOvQ7yAouckLEk39Yf23amS64IsBFtkBNAKq2HqX9oGOigPL6r4u4y_J5Pa3pEg-Ko058voZ8HEcsfFyy5H7ZLoNtGFdN593PvQJkPdy0/s1600-h/P1010124.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb5gXhhe7qc0XohJa8gmdFdDLmbxBVmlyoOhQOvQ7yAouckLEk39Yf23amS64IsBFtkBNAKq2HqX9oGOigPL6r4u4y_J5Pa3pEg-Ko058voZ8HEcsfFyy5H7ZLoNtGFdN593PvQJkPdy0/s320/P1010124.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323155519047579266" /></a><br />
<br />
The cereal box looms large, protective. It seems to sense I’m going to try to open it up and separate its contents from its container and it’s going to do whatever it can not to let that happen. <br />
<br />
Somehow, since approximately 1998, cereal makers have decided it’s not enough just to want to have a bowl of cereal – you have to really, REALLY want it – and they now use a sort of Super Glue on that top seal that impedes easy entry, so much so that you have to be wiling to wrestle that plastic interior bag to the ground and pummel it to get to the goods. This is what happens. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ReVhIcCjBQoR7TzkH5OA0MQxFKaXApxnR6zm_yI_v5gtN_MdwUgd8DFD1LSmhV-hpVBJdnRB2Rsgsy7pbzDCJ5xnVw-q_7tnzjo9KOgqXJWOgYZKOmCsevpT2DJXBTFKfkDHTVpGWG8/s1600-h/P1010126.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7ReVhIcCjBQoR7TzkH5OA0MQxFKaXApxnR6zm_yI_v5gtN_MdwUgd8DFD1LSmhV-hpVBJdnRB2Rsgsy7pbzDCJ5xnVw-q_7tnzjo9KOgqXJWOgYZKOmCsevpT2DJXBTFKfkDHTVpGWG8/s320/P1010126.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323155843819811618" /></a><br />
<br />
So you end up opening the bag from the side upwards, rather than from the top down, leaving a giant cereal bag rip on the side. This wouldn’t be so bad in itself IF the cereal makers glued the bag to the inside of the box keeping the bag in there while you poured. This no longer is the case. They need all that glue for the top of the bag, so when you pour your cereal, the whole friggin’ thing slides out into your bowl. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQO1NBDVUkXHvBFG8tiO9nREe2WFQhlOsQ_zKYapMRqUqYl4dqaK6StWdYn9FDTXEFLXfuZA0ECnI1F5JN86DQnN782w2E6_RC3iEEyk918nHHfanO_HZ20ka4Hgrf__0RQexdScyT-2U/s1600-h/P1010128.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQO1NBDVUkXHvBFG8tiO9nREe2WFQhlOsQ_zKYapMRqUqYl4dqaK6StWdYn9FDTXEFLXfuZA0ECnI1F5JN86DQnN782w2E6_RC3iEEyk918nHHfanO_HZ20ka4Hgrf__0RQexdScyT-2U/s320/P1010128.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323156244755974946" /></a><br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv2I6I_-wwtDpBuA2aXYqMD83IPrHShyR-BIjXVsxAJsUdmc7LoWap1tRkEzzI1x5M-dHrKS_F9D6Kcgb2xVu2qfypAwB3gi-sUctLlwLo8yGmNa7LGHfODrp0OI3VTlJfIwm01nk0RLw/s1600-h/P1010130.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv2I6I_-wwtDpBuA2aXYqMD83IPrHShyR-BIjXVsxAJsUdmc7LoWap1tRkEzzI1x5M-dHrKS_F9D6Kcgb2xVu2qfypAwB3gi-sUctLlwLo8yGmNa7LGHfODrp0OI3VTlJfIwm01nk0RLw/s320/P1010130.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323156518057273762" /></a><br />
<br />
Now you have enough cereal for 9 people. If there aren’t 9 people waiting for cereal, you must shovel the extra 8 servings of those flakes back in the ripped bag and stuff the ill-fitting bag back into the box (use your foot if you have to).<br />
<br />
Milk.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuX093-UmNt2glewU-e6kazoa7I1cK8pxU-8j_KeGBzyVlYBCmi5KJlgjnm9C5Arxd1wViahhNDFdd5DNRh996MLf3hHF1MJUpDPa1Z_8f89DWUA1JbaVaFcCU9nR10r2dqot_FSpxcs8/s1600-h/Milk%231.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuX093-UmNt2glewU-e6kazoa7I1cK8pxU-8j_KeGBzyVlYBCmi5KJlgjnm9C5Arxd1wViahhNDFdd5DNRh996MLf3hHF1MJUpDPa1Z_8f89DWUA1JbaVaFcCU9nR10r2dqot_FSpxcs8/s320/Milk%231.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323156827102577314" /></a><br />
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The American fashion of hermetically sealing everything but your Stock portfolio continues when you try to get that milk carton open.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPdPa_esKY1jSswOMjmTk0ffzGgBiBEb5wESbTc4h0Y2x9LAQjB00aVKZOHfuLZ0EB5aHoeGeF-7zxXk7UprDG163BiSSZgLc-1UNVaFAg_hAGtf5-UV-WErH-WCh-CqdooxAIjBKNHwI/s1600-h/Milk%233.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPdPa_esKY1jSswOMjmTk0ffzGgBiBEb5wESbTc4h0Y2x9LAQjB00aVKZOHfuLZ0EB5aHoeGeF-7zxXk7UprDG163BiSSZgLc-1UNVaFAg_hAGtf5-UV-WErH-WCh-CqdooxAIjBKNHwI/s320/Milk%233.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323157089985297330" /></a><br />
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My “Milk Carton Open” knife. Can be found in most hardware stores.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpRsvCzeBf_mL1CJWEjj_s1q9AwHAbtHNhZO53GQ1s-jbbpkzZ5yDc-DolDlyUuauVjuNEiJoigAAVF-ta9J9zGmM-E05oRHGOSxaCgJwjmh8oEsJaM9g3ZRtxXspg5xo8zBKh0E_ftk/s1600-h/Milk%234.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpRsvCzeBf_mL1CJWEjj_s1q9AwHAbtHNhZO53GQ1s-jbbpkzZ5yDc-DolDlyUuauVjuNEiJoigAAVF-ta9J9zGmM-E05oRHGOSxaCgJwjmh8oEsJaM9g3ZRtxXspg5xo8zBKh0E_ftk/s320/Milk%234.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323157364650009250" /></a><br />
<br />
Now that it’s open, it will easily pour, and I mean everywhere because the spout is totally deformed and weird, so make sure you have some of those paper towels handy!<br />
<br />
How about some bacon and eggs?<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzmmqvzhmbx8OrvdeYXyoxmEUEJ7kGtjpU7CzDe3PWrSxJ0Rn0vaUTAvHIb-j4UurA_KWMutPNYMf3ArftoKykX2X6ydAQ99PsdPobhOHvUHZzg5yGfXUS8zSEElZBm9LLHoj_OwCetX4/s1600-h/CanadianBacon%231.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzmmqvzhmbx8OrvdeYXyoxmEUEJ7kGtjpU7CzDe3PWrSxJ0Rn0vaUTAvHIb-j4UurA_KWMutPNYMf3ArftoKykX2X6ydAQ99PsdPobhOHvUHZzg5yGfXUS8zSEElZBm9LLHoj_OwCetX4/s320/CanadianBacon%231.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323157676782119874" /></a><br />
<br />
Forget the bacon. I thought by “going Canadian” I’d have packaging that made sense. Nope. Their culture may have provided us some great comic talents, but we’ve exported our Super Glue.<br />
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After breakfast, I decide to blow my nose. This is not inevitable, but for purposes of this blog, must fall here.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsiV9NLfZI4zuxY8xfsylum20UJR13EsKyOH4NqIUGZ0odyBXMe5nTo51W2nNtDix19Y92vCQeri-7JR1OgEwNkey2yNxSCr8qjE6q1GsCTaa3G-SdIinKU0o592-FgVynLDFZFJXl6CQ/s1600-h/Tissues%231.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsiV9NLfZI4zuxY8xfsylum20UJR13EsKyOH4NqIUGZ0odyBXMe5nTo51W2nNtDix19Y92vCQeri-7JR1OgEwNkey2yNxSCr8qjE6q1GsCTaa3G-SdIinKU0o592-FgVynLDFZFJXl6CQ/s320/Tissues%231.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323158221270326034" /></a><br />
<br />
The arrow indicates to pull up, easily tearing open the little pack just along those handy perforations. The perforations turn out to be decorative and the arrow is not a separate piece of material that might help with leverage but also purely decorative. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDpfaq6GuXJ1DPy-p4Wo-vVudUvHotQhtdz_iPoi08fwavU1-_2GnzfFHBm6jIA8xZUjo7xSoQgBwIpyw1r3NDkPZsAUFFFW8ihVzqKhHmOOzF9GZvKk3kWfVWHw5B-M-grMq8mmRa2Ys/s1600-h/PocketTissueHnads.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDpfaq6GuXJ1DPy-p4Wo-vVudUvHotQhtdz_iPoi08fwavU1-_2GnzfFHBm6jIA8xZUjo7xSoQgBwIpyw1r3NDkPZsAUFFFW8ihVzqKhHmOOzF9GZvKk3kWfVWHw5B-M-grMq8mmRa2Ys/s320/PocketTissueHnads.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323158465793892226" /></a><br />
<br />
Therefore, ripping it open like you would rip apart a head of lettuce is the only alternative. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihNzNJOWXhsSDiekdrv2wqexTJHbrUJdgJnmQwWT6vrPx67rkWiwEs0Hmcda2skyLljFObIB97Xs8FpWeUIZtqXZztIP_zis8NX3rJRFgurFeLQuV_YA9TEfi34NyaqaoIVfL2sG2Yk3k/s1600-h/TissueOpen%233.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihNzNJOWXhsSDiekdrv2wqexTJHbrUJdgJnmQwWT6vrPx67rkWiwEs0Hmcda2skyLljFObIB97Xs8FpWeUIZtqXZztIP_zis8NX3rJRFgurFeLQuV_YA9TEfi34NyaqaoIVfL2sG2Yk3k/s320/TissueOpen%233.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323158797153918578" /></a><br />
<br />
Especially if you have allergies and need a tissue before fluids overcome your ability to sniff them back up into your nasal cavities.<br />
<br />
Later that same day, I attend a friend’s child’s school play performance. Outside, immediately before the show, we get the camera gear ready. This requires a DV tape.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSibuq4gq1COg0VddDa9ElHgfMA1DH9gq9cyjt3bFRcHiYWItjAhQHLXGuxvjlEu5v9OaPz74OSF1MCucL5tH0APw8eT35YtRtmA6gA7LHT1VnYBO1YMJVorYfC1DPK_QE4ZiapXqHIc4/s1600-h/Cassete%231.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSibuq4gq1COg0VddDa9ElHgfMA1DH9gq9cyjt3bFRcHiYWItjAhQHLXGuxvjlEu5v9OaPz74OSF1MCucL5tH0APw8eT35YtRtmA6gA7LHT1VnYBO1YMJVorYfC1DPK_QE4ZiapXqHIc4/s320/Cassete%231.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323159046614959698" /></a><br />
<br />
The kids are massing we hear, it’s about to begin. “Can you get it open?” my friend asks, panic rising.<br />
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Not really. Where the fuck is the strip? Is there a strip? Are these corners vulnerable??<br />
We hear the kids starting in the auditorium. This is not as urgent as some things, like say, toilet paper, but it’s up there and my friend is depending on me. Hurry!<br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh89IL0-fhJRVSimfsjl83Gv2OEXUv5TG0XmKZzSKpXqnFbmNy_PT_ve15whMMjUZOeqtTGrF436QeLUt0MnFa0ixUuEjT6faPjDueZvZD2KgYagMCcqqRFVge_Y86dGkCtYBeEEPG2UMA/s1600-h/Cassette+%232.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh89IL0-fhJRVSimfsjl83Gv2OEXUv5TG0XmKZzSKpXqnFbmNy_PT_ve15whMMjUZOeqtTGrF436QeLUt0MnFa0ixUuEjT6faPjDueZvZD2KgYagMCcqqRFVge_Y86dGkCtYBeEEPG2UMA/s320/Cassette+%232.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323159294721256578" /></a><br />
<br />
As my friend started to get hysterical, I resorted to my teeth. Sparing you the picture, mostly because we didn’t take one as it wasn’t even funny anymore.<br />
<br />
Back home, how about some music? This was a good movie, and I got the CD for free and why not load it into iTunes?<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaHx0jhc34dMZIWo93W2yK-r47ugfG5uU_ZYxVV-gBjl791yURy4G3HHIIb4pLBtrXUJwDAB-40qlU1RIMdDtLxdRMdW4ovYOg67D0akC6KoaoAVNDhFvmu16vLdWzAgEsTuDX_fdfREw/s1600-h/CD%231.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaHx0jhc34dMZIWo93W2yK-r47ugfG5uU_ZYxVV-gBjl791yURy4G3HHIIb4pLBtrXUJwDAB-40qlU1RIMdDtLxdRMdW4ovYOg67D0akC6KoaoAVNDhFvmu16vLdWzAgEsTuDX_fdfREw/s320/CD%231.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323159749136270434" /></a><br />
<br />
Why not? Because I can’t get the thing open. There’s no easy way to open a sealed CD. CD manufacturers have perfected the art of sealing their product, which is the real reason the music industry is in trouble and the reason people have resorted to downloading; because they can’t get their fucking CDs open. <br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDP6L3jUW9NZI7-nvX5e_xtHBIVCweyfl03fRvekTqx62RrskGDh37HHo_-cQ-7B5V1E9NUhK3nO-EG-Xo86JhgBly49qJCJkGLqoPhAgOdGxzq5L8RlLShI-ILc6PU6XEoZCUWxLsbzw/s1600-h/Cd%232.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDP6L3jUW9NZI7-nvX5e_xtHBIVCweyfl03fRvekTqx62RrskGDh37HHo_-cQ-7B5V1E9NUhK3nO-EG-Xo86JhgBly49qJCJkGLqoPhAgOdGxzq5L8RlLShI-ILc6PU6XEoZCUWxLsbzw/s320/Cd%232.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323160414627584338" /></a><br />
<br />
Can't use my special "Milk Carton Knife" because they don't allow us any sharp weapons at work.<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYmlYHaApEzsPhAiik9nMewDSIb7aM1WsEhqSKbOvv-V1Jme8RvDhNN-pptiKF_BZnnjbY1cR2Mr2tKnnNYUvtxzoAmuSEkIdRFIoKpPIrqVlGmti6zQNSmbFw7h_innts9o9MQHZPqPk/s1600-h/Cd%235.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYmlYHaApEzsPhAiik9nMewDSIb7aM1WsEhqSKbOvv-V1Jme8RvDhNN-pptiKF_BZnnjbY1cR2Mr2tKnnNYUvtxzoAmuSEkIdRFIoKpPIrqVlGmti6zQNSmbFw7h_innts9o9MQHZPqPk/s320/Cd%235.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323163099552475954" /></a><br />
<br />
And of course, inevitably, later that day:<br />
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<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_DVLkpf080IbEhncwEbM12aXB7vN3WL29bpl04WFjXvdwptNHUXtxRbMxniZd0cKq947GK2-BRT2F-1M9-qymHqPbqMpmn0jhGDCpz7GNU8EUMSLi9S86bc2yA-JcVfGsqkzm-DHGhA/s1600-h/CdDemolished.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgC_DVLkpf080IbEhncwEbM12aXB7vN3WL29bpl04WFjXvdwptNHUXtxRbMxniZd0cKq947GK2-BRT2F-1M9-qymHqPbqMpmn0jhGDCpz7GNU8EUMSLi9S86bc2yA-JcVfGsqkzm-DHGhA/s320/CdDemolished.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323163548274960706" /></a><br />
<br />
*Sigh*<br />
<br />
Reading is highly underrated and my brother got me a subscription to “Wired”, sort of the last magazine I’d ever want a subscription to (unless they had a special feature on “Getting Your Electronic Products Open Without Losing A Fingernail”), but of course it’s the thought that counts.<br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_lW_Rz_vzuUZri11kHyIdlTsO_LXV4pMpShq2C7V9VSkVh9F1KmZ6sE3zneO6-du9ricVROd5NXQMTxyJNP4Sun95M9hLfdiqDnPq4Q4Iu8wwwKxsfDq0XN9f-X2OMaKRL37Za6ald0/s1600-h/Wired%231.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjx_lW_Rz_vzuUZri11kHyIdlTsO_LXV4pMpShq2C7V9VSkVh9F1KmZ6sE3zneO6-du9ricVROd5NXQMTxyJNP4Sun95M9hLfdiqDnPq4Q4Iu8wwwKxsfDq0XN9f-X2OMaKRL37Za6ald0/s320/Wired%231.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323163894372009890" /></a><br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1QhI2hNxsw2j92C0B0X8FoVm_fpdjG3q_3lZUG7Is_3K-B3aIOI9HslgSVPxAygqJjS3MWesPBTI3q0bYBEUgDZMPl4VdxUTJeOE9xad7c8MM_MRwwDazM3nq8auNuobw7dbBrg5Oex4/s1600-h/Wired%232.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1QhI2hNxsw2j92C0B0X8FoVm_fpdjG3q_3lZUG7Is_3K-B3aIOI9HslgSVPxAygqJjS3MWesPBTI3q0bYBEUgDZMPl4VdxUTJeOE9xad7c8MM_MRwwDazM3nq8auNuobw7dbBrg5Oex4/s320/Wired%232.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323164124688828690" /></a><br />
<br />
That looks promising.<br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSZ-GGBZLMuO6InnarD3mHDMpKRDol6paASQ4FNJDPYgWhfZCQQoeBctr1Kvjr-oCLlcUh-p7agr8MqNlQF9Bk_OSOaBGQX62C4BIIa5fnEvv2ftx625YsuvM-6SWw6YNCNvPfU_5eNX4/s1600-h/Wired+%233.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSZ-GGBZLMuO6InnarD3mHDMpKRDol6paASQ4FNJDPYgWhfZCQQoeBctr1Kvjr-oCLlcUh-p7agr8MqNlQF9Bk_OSOaBGQX62C4BIIa5fnEvv2ftx625YsuvM-6SWw6YNCNvPfU_5eNX4/s320/Wired+%233.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323164425689288402" /></a><br />
<br />
But this is really how I feel.<br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6okM2k8RUUdKuEa7EANUXTZTruDKsY6NegTRN_J-xnC8BJG9eYSA1dGijqaY12Na37ayjED5W2qVBH-2nOiXEEnd5xT9ednxmRQXqGMVOdoKLYR1ArHgsBHrC5JkSfNIioD3iB6FQKI/s1600-h/WiredButcher.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE6okM2k8RUUdKuEa7EANUXTZTruDKsY6NegTRN_J-xnC8BJG9eYSA1dGijqaY12Na37ayjED5W2qVBH-2nOiXEEnd5xT9ednxmRQXqGMVOdoKLYR1ArHgsBHrC5JkSfNIioD3iB6FQKI/s320/WiredButcher.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323164724116501218" /></a><br />
<br />
But you know, reading takes a distant second to having sex!!! <br />
<br />
<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivxp0mbxCVRWpyHtdEv0jGmN-3uKDCxP93SKitmyGaClUiGt-gWaym2jvK5i0e1jj9CECIb63cTyI-JKnPD72kacrkcpJestw2z4tAVi2Iawd1B5APY-d-6CIdwVR-NElaXUApNv7HXus/s1600-h/P1010134.JPG"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivxp0mbxCVRWpyHtdEv0jGmN-3uKDCxP93SKitmyGaClUiGt-gWaym2jvK5i0e1jj9CECIb63cTyI-JKnPD72kacrkcpJestw2z4tAVi2Iawd1B5APY-d-6CIdwVR-NElaXUApNv7HXus/s320/P1010134.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323165078905085874" /></a><br />
<br />
Oy. Remember what I said about toilet paper being an emergency? THIS is an emergency.<br />
<br />
Please tune in next week, when I’ll explore the connections in back of my TV set and demonstrate how easy it is to figure out which speaker has blown.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-46107520951117393112015-12-25T08:33:00.000-05:002016-04-24T18:15:14.439-04:00Merry Christmas to all from the world of "House and Garden"! <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIrX-yUq-VAETZk4ooOame1EKvMj299KlpB0ZFPEKW1InAeYlAAYLc7WqL-lKDb8LQSO2fGyIasMHfB-2MQk9US313wyweT5z2tiUI7wFuYk4asKvK6baYbs9jNGoCv_aWnHKYF_eldAE/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left:1em; margin-right:1em"><img border="0" height="183" width="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIrX-yUq-VAETZk4ooOame1EKvMj299KlpB0ZFPEKW1InAeYlAAYLc7WqL-lKDb8LQSO2fGyIasMHfB-2MQk9US313wyweT5z2tiUI7wFuYk4asKvK6baYbs9jNGoCv_aWnHKYF_eldAE/s320/images.jpeg" /></a></div><br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-1507634256019340452015-12-04T11:00:00.000-05:002016-04-24T15:42:00.928-04:00My Boyfriend is Waiting But My Hands Are Still Wet: a Tragedy in the Theater BathroomT'was a date that I wanted to happen and did<br />
<br />
With a man whose attentions for which I did bid<br />
<br />
Using sweetness and batting of eyelids so coated<br />
<br />
In make-up that friends of mine nodded and noted,<br />
<br />
I couldn't lift up my own eyelids to see,<br />
<br />
The person across in the mirror: it was me.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The lipstick I wore was so pretty and pink,<br />
<br />
It said on the advert there'd ne'er be a kink<br />
<br />
In approaching a man for his favor to seize,<br />
<br />
For as soon as they saw it they'd ask me to "Please,<br />
<br />
Kiss me, I beg you!" it said "Guaranteed!"<br />
<br />
(And cost me just twenty-two bucks, a small bleed).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So ready I was for the man of my dreams,<br />
<br />
That I shaved my legs twice with a number of creams,<br />
<br />
And my underarms too, so that they were as bare<br />
<br />
T'was if I'd made use of that product called "Nair",<br />
<br />
Which stunk to high heaven if one can remember<br />
<br />
And always left fuzz on your grill and your fender.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So next up was choosing the outfit to wear,<br />
<br />
Something sheerly seductive to lure to the lair,<br />
<br />
This man who I'd wanted for more than a week,<br />
<br />
Since the first time we'd met and I'd had just a peek<br />
<br />
At his talent at kissing which made my face blush.<br />
<br />
In fact, in 8 days, I'd developed a crush.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So into the closet I plunged with a passion,<br />
<br />
To find the right outfit, no slave me, to fashion!<br />
<br />
For when it is up to a girl to seduce,<br />
<br />
The clothing one picks must not bag or be loose.<br />
<br />
The tighter it fits is the key to the night:<br />
<br />
If you cannot breathe, then you've got it just right.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And find it I did! This white blouse made of cotton,<br />
<br />
For peasants intended, but that was forgotten<br />
<br />
Since women of urban adventure did pick<br />
<br />
This pattern for access so blatant and quick,<br />
<br />
That neither of you had to wait for too long<br />
<br />
To begin the concerto where sex is the song.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I paired it along with a skirt that was slim<br />
<br />
(even though my lush hips made the look somewhat grim),<br />
<br />
But paired, the two bits set me up for the role;<br />
<br />
The sum of these parts, just as great as the whole.<br />
<br />
And the very last touch was just that: of perfume,<br />
<br />
Like a Siren, this man was to face me: his doom.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The doorbell did ring right on time; I did note<br />
<br />
That perhaps he was as happy as me to be smote<br />
<br />
By a partner whose skills were so obvious to see,<br />
<br />
That perhaps he'd spent 8 days too, thinking of me,<br />
<br />
Because that's the best way to approach the first date:<br />
<br />
With a hunger and wonder and lust that can't wait.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So open I did (just the door - don't be crude),<br />
<br />
Since the guy was outside, and not one to be rude,<br />
<br />
I invited him in (the apartment - you pervs),<br />
<br />
Having had two white wines just to settle my nerves.<br />
<br />
He had eyes just for me (I thanked God, since I noted<br />
<br />
The dining room table with dust it was coated…).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And thus it began just as well as I'd hoped<br />
<br />
For it seemed into trouble we'd gladly been roped.<br />
<br />
It almost seemed pointless to go out to the show,<br />
<br />
Since watching most everything else we would know,<br />
<br />
That the hero and girlfriend would bond at the end.<br />
<br />
Let's just stay home! For themselves they could fend!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
But no, the whole point is sweet torture of course;<br />
<br />
All the petting and leaning and sexual Code Morse,<br />
<br />
(Or at least that's what women are wont to pursue;<br />
<br />
For the best way to keep the attraction brand new<br />
<br />
Is to drag it as long as one possibly can.<br />
<br />
And that is the difference twixt woman and man.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So off we did go, to the subway we entered,<br />
<br />
But toward one another, our eyeballs were centered.<br />
<br />
And even though people did bump us and shove,<br />
<br />
If you'd looked at we two, you'd have thought "They are in love!"<br />
<br />
And finally to the theatre we came,<br />
<br />
With hands copping feels (that's the name of the game).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So for hours (just two), we sat close in the dark,<br />
<br />
Sharing popcorn and bloodlust and fire and spark,<br />
<br />
Touching elbows and fingers and shoulders and thighs,<br />
<br />
But respectably so, noting neighboring eyes,<br />
<br />
As Solo and Kylo did banter and weave,<br />
<br />
And explosions and battles did rumble and heave.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
(Just as much as our hearts in our mutual chests;<br />
<br />
If they'd read our two minds, we'd be under arrest.)<br />
<br />
And so finally, FINALLY, credits do roll,<br />
<br />
'Cause the heat and our passion have taken their toll;<br />
<br />
He can barely stand up, and me too, I'm not well<br />
<br />
(If we're Catholic at this point, we're going to hell...).<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So wanting to wash up (from popcorn, my dears!),<br />
<br />
I head to the bathroom, to check out the mirrors,<br />
<br />
And fix my ridiculous hair since I know<br />
<br />
That my partner has mussed it (we were in the last row),<br />
<br />
And to pee and prepare for the evening to come,<br />
<br />
Anticipation for which caused my body to hum.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And so I did all of those things that I said,<br />
<br />
Left my stall to wash hands and to check out my head,<br />
<br />
When the worst thing a person can see in that room,<br />
<br />
Did appear in my sight, dragging me into gloom.<br />
<br />
Instead of the towels of paper you see,<br />
<br />
Were those fucking hand blowers that really irk me!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
They show up in bathrooms; the last thing you'd wish<br />
<br />
For they are as useful as bikes to a fish.<br />
<br />
You can stand there with only two drops on your hand<br />
<br />
And the blower will blow it all over the land,<br />
<br />
But it won't dry you off, because that's not its job<br />
<br />
For it only makes noise, like a torch-bearing mob.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And so, there I was, holding hand into space,<br />
<br />
Cooking flesh for no reason, as always the case,<br />
<br />
And waiting and waiting for drops to disperse,<br />
<br />
Which is part of the battle and part of the curse.<br />
<br />
Just amazed at the ultimate nothing it dries,<br />
<br />
And resenting the option to wipe on my thighs.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
So now it's been minutes and longer I fear,<br />
<br />
I've lost track of time, in my battle in here,<br />
<br />
With the man of my dreams tapping toes right outside,<br />
<br />
Yet I can't come out til my hands I have dried.<br />
<br />
I'm mad at these things! Wreck my life, will they now?<br />
<br />
For decades they've dithered, and I've made it my vow…<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
… to not let this thing get the better of me,<br />
<br />
Yes, I'll stand here as long as the bathroom is free,<br />
<br />
Wasting energy, time and the patience of folks<br />
<br />
Gathered round with their own hands, awaiting for pokes,<br />
<br />
In the air blast which nothing it does, take my word!<br />
<br />
So long have I stood there, I feel like a nerd.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And slowly the bathroom does empty of others<br />
<br />
No sisters are left (and there never were brothers),<br />
<br />
Still shaking and waving my hands at this thing,<br />
<br />
‘Til tears in the corners of my eyes do sting.<br />
<br />
For I realize that 45 minutes have passed,<br />
<br />
And who wouldn’t wonder why his girl is last.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And think as I do of this handsome young man<br />
<br />
With blue jeans and white shirt and lovely firm hand,<br />
<br />
A-waiting out there as concessions do close,<br />
<br />
And he’s getting bored now, and beginning to doze.<br />
<br />
But still in the palm of my hands I do find<br />
<br />
That the moisture is clinging; to me it does bind.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And finally lights flicker off in the halls,<br />
<br />
And all the employees depart with fond calls,<br />
<br />
To each other, “is everyone out of this place?”<br />
<br />
“Ah, no,” they respond, “there’s a nut in no haste,<br />
<br />
To retreat from the bathroom where her hands are wet<br />
<br />
From the useless devices in there, I’ll just bet.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
And just as the last light is ready to dim,<br />
<br />
I give up the battle so hungry for him<br />
<br />
And that body be-clothed in that fitted white shirt,<br />
<br />
That I wipe off my hands at the end of my skirt.<br />
<br />
And so I emerge worse for wear and still damp<br />
<br />
To an empty theatre, a-glow with one lamp.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
For my date has decided that this was enough,<br />
<br />
After waiting one hour, he's left in a huff,<br />
<br />
Thinking I was the one who had cast him aside,<br />
<br />
When in fact in my mind I’d imagined the ride<br />
<br />
That I’d hoped we would share to the end of the wire.<br />
<br />
And so this is the reason I hate the Hand-dryer.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-73641735701972826972015-11-27T13:00:00.000-05:002016-04-24T15:10:43.492-04:00My short story "House and Garden" is available!Here's the cover of my short story (novelette), "House and Garden", a para-normal story of a woman who hates gardening and the garden that hates her back. It's available as a Kindle Single, on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/House-Garden-Deb-Victoroff-ebook/dp/B00UDJE9MI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1461524891&sr=8-1&keywords=victoroff<br />
<br />
I hope everyone who loves to read will take a chance on this! It won't take you long to read, and perhaps it will transport you in the way a good story can. That's my hope at least!<br />
<br />
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Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-6044375861302162632015-11-05T15:56:00.000-05:002016-04-24T19:20:54.379-04:00Why Stop at 16 Babies When You Could Have 160? I Don't Get It.In the light of Nadya Suleman's (The Octomom) delivery of 8 babies, while 6 others waited at home, and the interesting support of her by many with conservative leanings, I offer this satire. (Note that as of 2014, Nadya is on public assistance, her house is in foreclosure, her husband has divorced her and her parents are bankrupt. No one seems to give a shit what happened to the actual children...)<br />
<br />
FOX news was first on the scene early this morning to report that a woman in northern Minnesota has given birth to 167 babies, or more accurately, is still actually "in childbirth" with 54 little infants left to recover from her distended uterus.<br />
<br />
Apparently (it has not been confirmed) the mother had been ingesting Clomid and injecting progesterone for several months in an attempt to steal the recent record of 96 live births set by Kelly Davis at the Wisconsin State Fair last spring. Ms. Davis herself was the only entry in the widely promoted competition, being the only contestant who fulfilled the minimum qualifications of at least 12 simultaneously delivered children prior to the event. (Apparently this will not be the case next year as several women are in training now for the event and the reported $500 first prize; second prize being a brand new humidifier). Ms. Davis sheepishly told the judges that she originally had wanted to compete in the Apple Pie baking competition but her oven broke down last year and she hadn't had the money to have it repaired so she figured she might as well enter the Live Birth competition. <br />
<br />
The as yet unidentified mother of the 167… oh wait, we're getting news that it's not 167… looks like there was a chamber in the cavernous uterus which has just recently been discovered and there are apparently between 20 and 25 additional babies in there, playing jump rope with the mother's lower intestine (along with a treasure chest filled with gold dubloons). This will make the delivery tricky as there were only 116 doctors on call for this event and experts say in a delivery of this size, it would take between 120 and 125 ob/gyns to assure the safety of the mother and her newborns. <br />
<br />
Fox News reports however that Mrs. Helene Johnson from the Millstein Middle School has offered her third grade class, who were coincidentally visiting the hospital on a field trip, to help catch the babies as they pop out and carry them to the giant Bouncy House where they are being stored until someone can figure out what to do with them.<br />
<br />
It's reported that the new mother's other 45 children are healthy and happy at home with her husband who has converted their garage into something resembling an egg-laying factory, with six stacked rows of box-like structures, each child having their own 3x5 enclosure and watered and fed with a series of hamster water bottles.<br />
<br />
The mother, who is in excellent health and enjoying the attention of the press even while she squeezes out her 15th set of triplets, is granting interviews on a selected basis, with Harvey Levin in line just behind Wendy Williams and Barbara Walters, each of whom have come bearing gifts; in Wendy's case, 175 stuffed yellow bears presently stored in an Allied van parked in the hospital loading dock. (The 72 scrub nurses standing by apparently asked Williams if she’d lend a hand changing 41 of the babies who need clean diapers, but Williams demurred, citing journalistic objectivity.) <br />
<br />
There were earlier reports this morning of a small group of protesters standing outside the hospital calling the competition despicable, arguing that no one family could possibly handle more than 85 infants at one time, but these naysayers were quickly shouted down by hundreds of fans of the young mother, smiling and waving even more stuffed yellow bears.<br />
<br />
When asked what she planned to do once she healed from the grueling ordeal of delivering now what seems at last count, to be 182 premature infants, the young mother smiled and said, "There are a lot of people out there who want children to love and I plan on finding them, either through Craig's list or Ebay."<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-66342002179998867912015-10-29T12:26:00.000-04:002016-04-24T15:40:44.967-04:00I Don't Understand Women Who Do This and Men Who Let Them...He's not bad looking, he's a nice guy, and he seems to adore you. And yet, you can't help but treat him like an irritating cowlick -- always in your hair and unable to do anything right. You find yourself making fun of his friends, his clothes, his hobbies and his habits and you hate yourself for it. What's going on? You're dating a "Doormat Man". <br />
<br />
Most everyone finds themselves in one of these relationships at some point in a dating history. It starts like this: an arid, dune-filled dating landscape stretches before you when a guy whose best virtue is that he's available turns up. As he's courting you by reciting the story line from last night's "Seinfeld", you're playing badminton with the idea of going out with him. "Maybe," you think. "Naw. Well, maybe. Naw!" Prospects look otherwise grim and hey, at least he's not married you think. So you give him your number, half hoping he won't use it, but knowing that within 72 hours, you'll get that call.<br />
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Getting the first call from a new man is one of the most exhilarating experiences in a woman's life -- most of the time. But when this guy's voice comes over the line, all that goes through your head is: "what was I thinking? Should I pretend that whoever he thinks he's calling moved out, why, just yesterday?" But you're a "nice" person. You can't do that. So you settle in for ten minutes of hemming and hawing on his part (you're filing your nails) before he can get to the BIG question. If you're in a charitable mood you might offer, "Yes, actually, I like Jonathan Demme movies too." While he takes that opening and runs with it though, your idle mind turns to thoughts of good old Aunt Tillie who, as family lore has it, was saved from spinsterhood when she unexpectedly fell in love with dull, reliable Ralph (now "Uncle" Ralph), a somewhat lumpy suitor who pursued her relentlessly for years until he finally won her heart. And then it occurs to you that Aunt Tillie was 2 years younger than you are now, when it finally happened.<br />
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"O.K.," you interrupt, "Sure. I think I'd enjoy that," you say to whatever he's come up with. And even as you hang up the phone, you wonder at the mysteries of womankind who accept dates from men they really don't want to go out with.<br />
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Women are by nature, charitable, sympathetic, nurturing creatures whose first instincts are to soothe and comfort. So it must be said that when we accept that first date from someone who we know is never going to win our heart (nay, not even score too well against it), we always have THE BEST INTENTIONS. Perhaps our first impression was wrong, we think, giving the fellow the benefit of a host of doubts. Maybe I'll learn to love him, we speculate. Maybe he's got a sense of humor á là Billy Crystal in "When Harry Met Sally". Maybe he'll gain more confidence when he sees me in broad daylight.<br />
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And sometimes, we're evil and think: Maybe he's got a brother...<br />
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"Gee, you look great," he offers hopefully when you open the door, and the strangest kind of irritation wells up in you. It's not that you don't appreciate the compliment (any compliment), it's just that you really want to tell him, "Please don't try so hard!" But he doesn't know how not to try so hard. And you, with nothing better on your dance card, fighting your crawling skin, see him for the second time, and then a third, and soon, you find yourself transformed from mild-mannered nice girl into SUPER WITCH.<br />
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He's created a monster and you are she. You find yourself committing every crime in the Code of Dating Ethics and inventing a few new ones. You don't ever really listen to him (and yet you've always been such a "good listener"). You don't bother to conceal flirting with virtually anyone else who might be handy. You drop the phone three times per call because you're juggling two other tasks while he hangs on the other end. You've been "too tired" to have him up to your apartment for the last two months. <br />
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Strange, petty things about him drive you nuts. "Do you always have to blink that way?" you ask him, not really as a question. But instead of calling you on it: "And how would you like me to blink, your highness?", he apologizes. "Gosh, sorry!" he offers. "I'll try not to blink like that anymore." And now, for some reason, you're really mad.<br />
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When you socialize with a couple like this, you spend all your time cringing. Out for dinner with the gang, they sit across from each other, he, staring at her adoringly, reminds you of a lovesick seal. Meanwhile, she's flirting madly with the men on either side of her, and the 16 year old bus boy. Her date asks a question in an attempt to join the conversation and she rolls her eyes. He laughs at one of her jokes and she rolls her eyes. You haven't seen so much eye-rolling since Linda Tripp said she was "just trying to be a friend". You can't help but wonder why he puts up with it. It's almost as if she (or we, if we're in such a relationship), is purposely being outrageous, trying somehow to provoke him into... something! Defending himself, yelling at her, walking out and slamming the door.<br />
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On the surface of our thoughts when we're the ones doing the eye-rolling, we're thinking, "What does it take to get this guy to tell me to jump off a cliff?" But deeper inside us, in that reasonable self hunkered down in social hibernation, another voice asks, "Why am I being so mean?" Every evening we say goodnight to this guy with a sigh of relief and an hour later, the bad feelings start rolling in -- guilt for treating him so badly, and anger, at him, for letting us. The truth is that we're angry at him for letting us be the worst we can be, instead of the best.<br />
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A good relationship provides more than companionship. The best of them make us feel good about ourselves, glad to be with someone who is, in many respects, the half that makes us whole. Those cheery older couples who refer to one another as "my better half" are speaking of a symmetry in their lives that calms them when they're threatening to strangle the neighbor; that offers an objective opinion when the handmade birdhouse turns out looking more like a dish drainer; that reminds them that they're more wonderful than they know, or not as wonderful as they think, whichever they need to hear. <br />
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When a prospective partner can't provide that symmetry for us, our inner ogre comes out, beats up the Helen Hunt side of us, and turns into the playground bully. Oddly enough, bullying makes such men try even harder. They become kinder, even more gentle and more obsequious than ever. They turn into "Doormat Men". Exactly the wrong approach. When you look at them, all you see is a quivering dessert. You find yourself humming "J-E-L-L-O" during conversational breaks. What self-respecting person, you marvel, would allow his girlfriend to treat him so, well, disrespectfully? <br />
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Therein lies the answer. A man (and of course, this applies equally to a woman) who "takes" such treatment, probably does not have much respect for himself. He may feel he deserves to be treated like a sock hamper because he thinks he's somehow unworthy. He may have grown up in a household where he became the whipping boy for an unhappy, angry parent. Or he might have been the always unfavorably compared brother to a sibling who was the "star" of the family. Sometimes just having been largely ignored during childhood shapes a personality that expects to be ignored; an invisible person for whom any attention, whether positive or negative, is better than none.<br />
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So now we find ourselves in such a relationship, and wonder about our options. We can end it and throw ourselves back into the pool of wandering, dispossessed single women, staggering through cities, arms upraised like something out of "Night of the Living Dead", or we can stop and reevaluate. Life is short (as women who have wondered if they'll have one more date before they die are well aware of). If we meet someone who cares for us, this is a good thing. A real thing. <br />
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Think once again of "Aunt Tillie". She lived the dating life that, demographically doesn't look likely for this generation of women. And yet, she settled for good old Ralph. Take a second look at your boring beau. What would happen if you treated him honestly, told him what you were thinking, kindly? You know, a bird in the hand... might just be the falcon we're searching for.<br />
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If after reconsidering him and being honest with him, he still wants to bring you your slippers in his mouth, maybe you should bail out while his ego and your image of yourself as a "nice person" are still intact. But perhaps you can forge a new relationship. After all, something about him made you say yes to that first date (apart from the fact that he asked you!). And maybe someday, in a not too distant future, Aunt Tillie and Uncle Ralph will be dancing at your wedding!Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-62632053556657364002015-10-25T13:59:00.000-04:002016-04-24T15:34:10.693-04:00Horoscopes For September 2015HOROSOPES FOR ALL THE GODDESSES THAT WE ARE<br />
By DEB VICTOROFF<br />
#36 in a series (Oct. 2015): <br />
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1) ATHENA - the Smart One Who Never Got The Guys Until She Got Contacts (March 21-April 19)<br />
It’s the end of the summer and you find yourself obsessing about the 14 pounds remaining from your goal to lose 15 when you started your diet in June. Your exercise sessions with your personal trainer did not go as expected (he expected you to show up: you did not), and so a new plan is in the works. You resolve to watch what you eat, and this does not mean, as it has in the past, watching how high you can mound your plastic plate at the few remaining barbecues left this season, nor adding up the slices of pizza and dividing the number of people to determine how many slices you can take and still be invited to the next kid’s birthday party. Losing weight takes only two things: determination and unfiltered cigarettes, so get yourself a pack and get to work. <br />
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2) JUNO - the One Who Says She's Happily Married (April 20-May 20) <br />
September brings the lower humidity that Juno loves, as well as a hairstyle that doesn’t require she turn sideways when entering or leaving a room. Seriously; how much product can one put in one’s hair before becoming a fire hazard? This summer was particularly bad, when Juno was invited to a party and retreated to the bathroom to look in the mirror after one guest attempted to put his glass on her head and play her teeth, thinking she was a piano. A short haircut might be just the thing for next summer or perhaps a wig made of fiber optic cable.<br />
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3) APHRODITE - the Impossibly Thin-Thighed (May 21-June 21)<br />
September is the time of the year that the kids return to school, unfortunately right on a path that runs through your backyard. It wouldn’t be so bad if they were quiet and respectful but kids these days are loud and armed and will kill you if you ask them to “keep it down”. In fact if you try to be subtle by putting a finger to your lips and saying “shush”, a 3rd grader will launch a rocket-propelled grenade into your garage. You might try to fence in your back yard or perhaps dig a deep hole and fill it with sharpened stakes but the last guy who did this had an unflattering movie made about him and had to move anyway. Patience is a virtue, as is having a big mean dog. <br />
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4) DIANA - the Bargain Hunter (June 22-July 22)<br />
The 9th through the 24th will be mild with winds from the northeast causing unseasonably cool weather and the occasional freak rain of frogs. This will be of little note or concern to Diana unless of course she’s the meteorologist for the local news in which case, she’s got a lot of explaining to do. For the rest of the Dianas, the abundance of frogs will simply make their kids’ science projects a delightfully simple proposition, testing the theory of the number of frogs it takes to fill up a convertible if the top is left down, which was a trick question on the early version of the SATs if we can recall. Use this opportunity to learn more about the natural world and prepare for the “end of days”. <br />
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5) DEMETER - the Condom Bearer (July 23-August 22)<br />
A distant relative asks you if he can borrow money. The wisdom of loaning money to this guy who throws money away the way Rush Limbaugh does words, in his attempt, like a boy with a crush, to get President Obama to look his way, is questionable, even if you are a Republican and have a lot to spare. There will always be some people who cannot handle money and should be kept to an allowance, or penned in a small room where they are fed and watered and watched by benevolent hosts. You may recall the last time you lent money to a family member, they said they were using it for school and ended up buying a 62” flat screen TV and they still won’t invite you over to watch “Mad Men”. Practice saying “No” or “Yes” with 15% interest. <br />
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6) VESTA - the Lover of Laundry (August 23-September 22)<br />
This month brings a health crisis you were not expecting and which is both painful and painfully embarrassing. Since you live in the United States, you most likely don’t have a job, and also since you live in the U.S. you also don’t have health insurance. Head over to the local emergency room, or if that hospital has closed (due to bankruptcy as a result of free treatment of those without insurance), there’s always the free clinic, or if that has also closed (due to bankruptcy), then ask one of your friends if she has any left-over penicillin from that time in Cancun. Cooler heads prevail in the Health Insurance debate and you can rest assured you will be covered in time for your funeral. <br />
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7) PERSEPHONE - the One Who Never Wears White After Labor Day (September 23-October 23)<br />
Happy Birthday Persephone! In this day and (your) age perhaps it’s time to give up on your archaic stand against wearing white after Labor Day, particularly since the public is just grateful when women wear clothes that cover their lower abdomens and men wear clothes that cover their lower extremities. You never thought you’d see the day when young men who wanted very much to be considered “tough” would actually pull their own pants down and wander the streets as if they’d been recently humiliated at the playground or were trying to get into a fraternity with an especially cruel initiation. What happens when these young men go dancing you wonder, let alone climb stairs or retrieve objects on top shelves? You become intensely grateful that you are as old as you are and that the men in your age-appropriate category still keep their underwear an uninvited guest until you request its presence.<br />
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8) LEDA - the Wearer of Tu Tus (October 24-November 21)<br />
The 10th through the 17th offer a window of opportunity in which to make amends for an overreaction to a friend’s irresponsible act. Even though that friend continually leaves you standing on street corners waiting for them, their cell phone ignoring your rings until it starts raining and you don’t have an umbrella and the place you guys chose to meet doesn’t have an awning or anything so you’re not only wet, but freezing and still she doesn’t pick up and then you think maybe she got into some terrible accident or met foul play because that could really be the only reason not to pick up her phone when you made plans tonight, for God’s sake, and so now you are thinking maybe you should call her parents, but you don’t have their number, and you think the battery on your phone is going to die anyway, so after 45 minutes on the corner you head home, in a state of deep anxiety and don’t hear from that friend until she calls you a day later, and says, “Hey, how are you?” and you say, “Where were you last night” and she goes, “Oh, I must’ve forgot, I was cleaning my apartment.” If you want to make amends it’s up to you, but just to let you know, the 18th through the 28th are for building additional deep and seething resentment. Your call!<br />
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9) ECHO - the One With All the Good Gossip (November 22-December 21)<br />
Keep your dreams alive by acting on them. Whether your dream is to meet that cute guy in your writing class or to sleep with that other guy you met earlier in the writing class; whether you want to finish your PhD or finish vacuuming up the kitty litter in the bathroom, you should be able to fulfill all your dreams with hard work and perseverance. Your mother always used to tell you this, but who listens to their mothers, and she had no idea when she said that, that you were thinking of getting your tongue pierced, and brother did she change her tune when you fulfilled THAT dream! But whether you dream of scaling Mt. Everest or climbing a step-ladder and finally figuring out what the hell’s in that box hidden in the back of the closet, don’t let anyone say “no” to you. Unless of course that particular box is in your boyfriend’s apartment, in which case we predict that fulfilling this particular dream will turn into a nightmare. <br />
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10) PANDORA - the One Who Always Overpacks (December 22-January 19)<br />
Your job has got you stressed out and filled with anxiety. Although you asked for this position last year, they’ve only just now decided to give it you, after slashing the budget in half and laying off about 2/3rds of your co-workers, especially the ones who were really fun and who knew all the best YouTube videos which everyone used to send to each other and sometimes would gather around one guy’s desk to watch together after lunch. Have the higher ups recognized you as the responsible one, who was often the first to say, “Hey, maybe we should finish that report…”, or the unpopular one, who no one would ever listen to when you’d say stuff like that? You should realize that whatever your boss sees in you, your co-workers resent the fact that you got the promotion. No more “Wedding Dance” videos for you!<br />
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11) PSYCHE - the Headcase (January 20-February 18)<br />
The 23rd is a great day for finding love; whether it means rekindling an old romance or initiating a new one, keep your eyes open for the signals that mean you are about to make a connection. Sometimes we’re blind to the signs that others are sending to us, whether those signs involve shy glances or loud explosions in which all the windows of the nearby buildings are blown out, one must always be aware of the ways in which potential mates try to claim our attention. Perhaps the guy who just dropped his whole plate of pasta on the way back from the buffet meant for you to look up, particularly since he dropped the pasta on your head. Now’s the time for you to wipe the red sauce out of your eyes and exchange a soulful glance with him, unless of course he meant to impress the girl with the enormous breasts sitting behind you, who seems to be laughing a little too hard for someone with such a flimsy bra. <br />
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12) PHOEBE - the Unlikely Sit-Com Star (February 19-March 20)<br />
Phoebe is stunned when this month, a Republican Senator says something that makes sense, offering it up in a professional and courteous way, listing his reasons in a polished and cogent argument that reflects a good deal of research, solid facts, and an admirable grasp of the issue. His stand is something that is both intelligent and forward thinking, as well as clearly aware of years of American history on this topic… oh, wait a minute. Saturn and Neptune are totally fucking with us. This is about as likely as Phoebe having sex with George Clooney, and Phoebe is not even interested in George Clooney! Saturn and Neptune have got to come up with a new bit. Seriously you guys. No one was ever gonna fall for that.<br />
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Bonus Horoscope (for those who didn't like their own sign)<br />
13) THALIA - the Upper West Side Theater (aka the Leonard Nimoy) <br />
This month, the chickens come home to roost. This doesn’t necessarily mean you have to get a permit for a chicken coop but is just a figure of speech and refers to what happens when you fool around with your tennis instructor without finding out that his wife is the one who sets up the automatic ball feed thingy. You might want to wear a helmet to your Saturday session, and by the way, if in fact the chickens have come home to roost, and your instructor’s wife is in charge of the henhouse, what’s going to be coming at you from the ball feed won’t be tennis balls.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-36855451370955673192015-10-20T23:08:00.000-04:002016-04-24T18:47:03.097-04:00I like him. Him? Not so much. Pt. 2We were awkward, but me more than he. He only seemed to be playing the part of the awkward guy for my benefit. In fact, I felt that he had reviewed me, found me acceptable and was settling in to see how I did for the rest of what he needed to evaluate. Would I be smart and sassy? Clever and quick with a comeback? Would I be too sweet? Or too forward? Would I touch him too soon, or seem repressed and reserved – too prim? What was he looking for? I could be nothing but myself because as intuitive as I am, I didn’t know. I started asking questions because his online profile was too vague to get a handle on him. What had happened with his wife? I knew he was divorced. He’d been married for 28 years. 28 years! What had I been doing all that time? Dating, going to grad school, working, dating, moving, dating, writing, dating. Lots of men, so few I cared about that I’d begun to think there was something wrong with my heart.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-74415193045220496862015-10-16T16:04:00.000-04:002016-04-19T20:03:50.376-04:00I like him. Him? Not so much. Pt. 1I stumbled across him online. He came up on "match" after I responded to someone else. I couldn't believe how cute he was. We had a playful back and forth email correspondence, very brief, the way I like it. I really, really wanted to meet him, not write to him, and his notes: flirty, brief, forward but polite, indicated the same. <br />
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Our first date was one of those let's-have-a-drink-and-see. I wore what I'd worn on another date during which the guy told me how attracted he was to me, and how much he wanted to kiss me (I didn't want to kiss him or even shake his hand frankly), but because the outfit seemed to be a success, I would wear it on all my first dates.<br />
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I got to the bar first, walked halfway in, looked around and didn't see him, but when I turned to look back at the door, there he was, not a foot behind me. I was startled and stepped back. I may have inwardly gasped; I hope I wasn't uncool enough to actually gasp aloud. I was startled partly because of the suddeness of his appearance, but more, at how attractive he was. (I have to say, I don't know that he would be attractive to all, but to me, there was that chemistry that hits you hard and makes you immediately nervous and unsure of yourself... that primitive excitement that comes from being naturally thrilled by a man.) A head taller than me, with a perfect swirl of mostly salty colored hair. A look on his face of utter confidence; of knowing what you want. <br />
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I took a step back and looked down to recover a bit, and then back up. He was smiling and did not step back. "Hi." he said. It was the sexiest single syllable I've ever heard uttered. "You're Bette?" he asked. And for once in a long while I was so glad that, yes, I was. "You wanna sit up here, or in the back?" Frankly I wanted to stand and just stare, but I said, "Let's sit up here..." up at the front of the rustic, cozy bar (the "All State", a great place to meet someone for the first time by the way, now torn down and an empty lot, soon to be condos I assume).<br />
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We pulled two chairs up to the bar that ran against the wall, two of only 4 chairs up there, which is why it was so perfect... no one could sit too near us to listen to the inevitably awkward conversation of two complete strangers trying to make a romantic connection. I was nervous, but the good nervous: the excited nervous you get when something good is happening, or about to. I relished the feeling. <br />
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Unlike many people, I kind of love these meetings: I'm good at them, I like people, I am amused by the whole process, and I am always so hopeful that whatever guy I'm meeting might be a guy I could like, or at the very least, with whom I could spend an hour practicing flirting. 6 out of 10 are of these guys are "OK". 3 are “eh” or worse. Sometimes right off the bat you realize the guy is a numbskull, or 30 pounds heavier than his photo, or older than his photo or has grown a moustache in which you see an embedded crumb. Some of them try too hard, or are too nervous, or perhaps already an asshole, looking over your shoulder or figuring out if they should buy you a drink or not. Buy the drink, jerk! you think. It's the very first, easiest and most obvious way to show that you're not a loser! If it's after 5pm and they order ice tea or a Diet Coke, I know it's not going to work out. To get through this, we need some alcohol!<br />
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He immediately asked what I was drinking - as always, white wine for me. It gets into my blood system faster than beer and for some reason, I always associate it with socializing, relaxing, opening up. He walked over to the bar and in those moments I looked down at myself. Am I attractive? Should I fluff my hair? Why didn't I look in the mirror one more time before I got here? Is my eye make-up smudged? Could he possibly be half as attracted to me as I am to him? Oh please, I hope so. Half as much would be enough. I had just enough time to slip off my coat before he was back with two glasses. Did he look at my body as I was taking off my coat? Does it look ok? My body isn't one of those that knocks guys over... it's average. I wished it was great. I wished, for him, that he was as excited as I was. He smiled at me. God - that smile.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2746307292372355341.post-58639499737726053202015-10-05T16:58:00.000-04:002016-04-19T19:59:26.346-04:00Looking For Peter Mehlman, serialized, Pt. 1Like most struggling New York writers, I'm far more interested in reading about other struggling writers who have somehow "made it" (ranging from landing a villa in Tuscany to landing a studio apartment with heat) than actually writing anything. <br />
<br />
I’d read a lot about writers who had gone to LA and were suddenly being paid to write, which seemed like such a great idea, and I began experimenting with the idea of being not a New York writer but an LA writer, that is; someone who writes sitcoms. This means you have to write sitcoms of course, but more importantly, it means you have to include a third party into your solitary life: the “agent”.<br />
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As a matter of fact I’d been lucky enough to get not one, but two agents and fairly quickly; it’s just that they were perhaps unlucky to get me. The first one died shortly after she signed me (she was, I’d been told, a living legend in the business and then evidently decided to become just a legend) and then tragically, the next agent who agreed to represent me lost her husband in the World Trade Tower disaster and left the business. I felt a little depressed about these encounters and tried not to feel personally responsible, but another part of me wanted to avoid dragging someone else into this most personal endeavor, and so I decided to forgo the agent thing, and just keep writing and hoping someone read my stuff and liked it.<br />
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I knew this was in fact possible, having heard of the success of a once-struggling Manhattan-based writer who started out writing humor essays (like myself), and who had written one especially hilarious article that convinced Hollywood he was funny enough to let in the "We'll Pay You For This" Club. This tale was one that fledgling writers had been passing around for years and so, one day, I decided to track the apocryphal article down. What made this urban legend particularly intriguing was that the writer who had made it "really big" (meaning that now people write about him) was Peter Mehlman, one of the original writers of "Seinfeld". <br />
<br />
Having exhausted by phone all of the tips that a fellow humorist had offered ("I think it was sometime between 1982 and 1988, in the 'New York Times Magazine'. No, it was the 'New Yorker'. No, no wait, it was the Op Ed page of the 'Times', that's where it was. No, wait a minute, now that I think of it...."), and unable to compose a concise or coherent question to submit to Google (I tried: “Peter/Mehlman/article/got/job/Seinfeld” and “Peter/Mehlman/hired/Seinfeld/basis/one/essay/funny” and got subjects ranging from admiralties on British ships to the entire oeuvre of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss.), and wanting to see if I could track down the actual article using the skills I’d learned watching “Law and Order”, I hit the street to begin my investigation. <br />
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I decided to start at the landfill for all written words in Manhattan: The New York Public Library.Bettehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14284633430412918937noreply@blogger.com0