The Cheek of Day

A trip to traffic court is not unlike a trip to the airport before a flight. There is the careful selection of clothing for the event, the long drive early in the morning, the mental wrestling over which book to bring, and the inability to sleep the night before from nerves. Such was my morning this morning.

As for the outfit, my wardrobe is overrun by neutrals at the moment, so I did as I have been lately and went with Eight Layers of Beige. Even the silk long-john shirt underneath it all was beige, as were the wool tights. On the bottom, I opted for jeans, imagining that in Seattle anything more would seem overly calculating. And no one wants to seem overly calculating to a traffic judge. As for the book, it was an odd choice, since I would not normally bring a novel when the interruptions to its reading would not be of my own choosing but imposed from outside, but since this novel has its own built-in interruptions I think it was just as reasonable a choice as nonfiction: Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. And I wore slim brown tasseled loafers, since I seem to be having a difficult time keeping my balance in flats and can use the practice.

I had to be there, faraway, at 8:30. Obviously, the commute would involve rush-hour traffic, so I figured that doubling estimated driving time and adding .5 more on top would be the best idea, since no one wants to seem late, either, to a traffic judge. I don't actually know how long it would normally take me to get there, since I don't 'actually' 'normally' get there at all. I only have the ticket from driving to go look at a piece of furniture (which I had the strength not to buy, even though I felt awful for wasting the old lady's time) and getting so confused that I was driving very slowly and poorly on the same stretch of road more than once and not availing myself at all times of all available signaling devices as I tried to figure out where it was the GPS was trying to get me to go, and whether it was more correct this time than the last. I gave the trip 2 1/2 hours, since it seemed like it would normally take about one. This would allow for traffic, for getting to alternate routes if traffic were not moving at all, and for getting lost and righting myself at least once.

It wasn't hard to be ready at six since I had not been asleep yet. I wrote down the directions from Google and entered the address in the GPS, as well, my customary practice. If one fails, I still have the other, since my mind is of no help in such situations.

The traffic was not bad. In fact, it was hardly traffic. And all along the way I was accompanied by a truly astonishing sunrise on my left with views of the snowy Cascade Mountains and Mt. Rainier glowing pink. The whole experience was so lovely and refreshing and energizing I even got into the fast lane for a while. Then I thought, Who'm I kidding? and merged right. But even then, though, I was going over the speed limit and got where I was going with an awful lot of time to spare, especially considering the hour of the morning.

The court building was easy to find (well, with GPS it was easy to find) and was right in the middle of what seemed an enormous nine-pointed star of strip malls. It being seven AM, they were no more open than the courthouse was, and it was too cold to sit in the car and read. The only place open seemed to be the Denny's back by the highway, but I hate pancakes as well as beef-barley soup. My only salvation for wasting time seemed to be the 24-hour Walgreen's drugstore. Since I need to find a new lipstick strategy, anyway, it was a welcome diversion.

My lipstick problem is thus: this summer I was very brown. In the past, I have kept a little bit of glow over winter by popping into a tanning salon sporadically. I started the practice on the advice of a friend who suggested it just as a way to get a blast of powerful heat and relayed that I could even put on a sunblock and use it for nothing other than raising my core (reptilian) temperature. That way I would have no need of difficult, tense, and accusatory conversations with myself over being vain.

I didn't bother with the sunblock, though, because I could never remember it. And, frankly, it was amusing to me to see me looking bronzed and rugged in January.

However.

This winter I have been warmer than usual. Maybe I have simply been more careful, or perhaps I have actually gained a bit of insulating fat; I don't know to what I should attribute this shocking and promising change. Quite separate from that issue, however, I have also wanted to see just how pallid I can get, how I look as a study in etiolated Victorian Yankeedom, and especially if the freckles on my cheeks will fade away. Toward the end of last summer they had sort-of, well, massed, in a terrifically unbecoming way, such that my cheeks tended to look darker than the other bits, and giving me a somewhat 'ruddy' character, even though they, and I, weren't actually red.

Well, now I am not ruddy, genuinely or merely apparently, thank God, but my lipsticks are either too red or too brown for this new, wan self. The pallor makes the brown ones appear too orange, and the gorgeous 1940s/50s reds look better in photos from the 1940s and 50s than they do on me, here, now. I have any number of taupe selections, too, which I think suit me fine, but between the beige outfit, the beige eyeshadow, the beige nails, the beige lipstick, and my incredibly small size, I would be nearly imperceptible and end up dying, unnoticed in a corner booth, of starvation waiting for service at some overpriced wine bar or noodle house.

So berry it is.

They have a slight jolt of color, signifying that I am, in fact, there, and that these are my lips - but not enough to overpower the other elements. I bought two lipsticks and their nail polishes, and I think they look quite nice, but I feel sad in swearing off red clothing until July, when I can again wear lipstick and nail color that don't clash with my complexion.

And, as a final note, I wasn't supposed to be in court at all. I am not sure what I did, and even less solid on what I failed to do, but whatever I thought I mailed in did not, it seems, get to where it might have under ideal circumstances.

I guess I'm paying that ticket after all.

And it still was a lovely, lovely drive. And had I not gone, I never would have, in all my life, seen a sign that said:

Auto Sheepskin
Shoe Repair
Mink Blankets

It Has a Brother!

"Whitewash picket fence wall-hanging plant holder, can be hung inside or outside."

Or, preferably, burned inside or outside, its noxious leaden fumes gassing into oblivion the perpetrators destroying this piece's potential for inspiring other misguided and impressionable DIYers to replicate its purported folksy charm.

All That Is Wrong with the World

It's a chair! No, no, no, it's a fence! Wait, no, it's a table! Yes, no, a...birdhouse? Not quite, not quite, no, em, a desk? No, couldn't get the legs in there, between all the shelves...

What is this thing? What preternatural evilll was responsible for its design; what inhuman, diabolic insensitivity to reason and decency enabled its execution? Why was it made, and does it go indoors or out, this white-picket birdhouse desktablebookshelf étagère-seat?

Malediction Redux

And by the preceding of course I did not intend any slur against the Uzbek language. The imprecation was instead a reference the degree of difficulty - and by extension presumed lack of satisfaction - in apprehending an Uzbek webpage the average English speaker would encounter, from the alien Turkic grammar itself (possibly rendered in Arabic!), to Turkic and Arabic words spelled out in ill-fitting Cyrillic or for that matter Uighur pinyin or even Uyghur Siril Yéziqi.

Get Your Own Bloody Flag!

To those of you who hope to dictate the topics or timbre of this blog I have a couple things to say.

One is that it is not your blog. I should think this would be apparent, as it is my picture and my words which figure most prominently herein. But since it clearly is not as obvious as all that, here is my flag. I am planting a flag, so this space is now mine. You are welcome to stay, and have a mint julep or a Bloody Caesar according to your country's custom and some of those canapés over there, and listen to a story or a rant, but you cannot move in and take over the territory. That I have put my flag down here proves that.


Secondly, you should understand you are not my demographic. You are one person. One person is not a demographic, unless that one person is me. That I myself could be construed as my onlylonely target demographic is evidenced by the fact that I use the words 'patently' and 'frankly' with the same frequency as I use the word 'the,' as well as the fact that I employ my own idiosyncratic punctuation scheme in which I italicize words in quotation marks all the time in some kind of super-double quotativity -- and yet don't care. I don't care because this is my blog not my dissertation, and I don't care because if you are not sufficiently entertained as to keep reading, then you should by all means not continue reading.

Unless your intent in continuing is to ascertain before offering me a book deal whether my egregious lapses in syntax, my meretricious embrace of both high and low diction, and my slipping between overdone Latinate multi-clause monstrosities and staccato Anglo-Saxon gunfire can be ameliorated with the assistance of a patient and judicious editor.

Which it is not. Your intent, I mean.

So, if you are disenchanted, if you don't care how much sandalwood or oud I used in the last perfume, if you don't want to hear that I think none of the candidates is qualified to steer this Narrenschiff out of the shoals, or that in an effort to save time I electrocuted myself by toasting bread while bathing, or that I ate nothing but licorice over the weekend, or that I am contemplating making a flip-book of clothing items in order to make outfit selection a more organized and enjoyable procedure, then the best I can do is to relay a rumor recently passed to me that these Interwebs have some kind of 'page' on which you can write your dream of an electronic reading or viewing selection, and the Interwebs will then write for you suggestions of where you can go to find that. If I have been shorter of shrift on the travails of the house of Gucci than you might like, or if you wish I had talked more about the origin of the proscription against the split infinitive in English, then maybe you will find your dream elsewhere. In the meantime, click 'NEXT BLOG' at the top of this page. And may it be in Uzbek!

Blowin' in the Wind

I was finally brave enough to tackle the wine cabinet redo, and I don't know what to think. I do know I did as best I could. As you can see in the 'after' pictures, the cabinet is covered in nice marquetry veneers. I say 'nice' because it looks nice and took some time to do, but also because the piece is old so the depth of the veneer exceeds that of paper.

However.

I have a deep-seated and possibly pathological desire to be polite, commingled with a distaste for shopping. These two tendencies taken together (and so far, I haven't been able to take them apart) mean that I sometimes encounter great difficulties when trying to buy things. I don't go into stores to browse: I go in stores to get the one, or three, or six things I know in advance I want or need to get from the store. If it turns out they do not have the items, I leave. I am not, in other words, tempted to buy a bathtub because there are no more pruning shears, nor a new lampshade because the store ran out of my brand of stockings. I recently went to a lot of antique stores looking for a particular type of settee, and one with upholstery I would not have to change immediately, as well. The settee still eludes me, but I did not turn to dining sets or hall stands to anesthetize my feelings of setteelessness.

Still, though.

The situation is different when in response to an advertisement for an item I go to someone's house. I cannot contemplate the horror of a day spent going to several strangers' houses to look at various single items. If you place an ad and I call you, it means that I want to come your house, buy the item, and take it away, assuming the photos and description are more or less accurate. However, once I am there those conditions shift. I realize I am in your house and in that house I am passing judgment on an item you own. Yes, I am not a guest; yes, this is, despite the surroundings, a business transaction -- but I don't want to be mean. Rude. And I don't want to have got your hopes up for nothing.

Moreover.

By this point, as well, I have driven, at great risk to myself and other travelers, to wherever it is that you have your house and your possibly-unattractive-in-person piece of furniture. Perhaps, as was the case with the wine cabinet, I did so in the dark and was in the process nearly driven into a cow pasture at the urging of a less-than-inerrant GPS. At some point -- and almost four-wheeling in a farmyard is as solid a point as any other -- it is simply the case that I am 'all in': I am going to buy that hideous piece of Bombay Company MDF loathsomeness photographed through Vaseline and described as 'gorgeous settee 1880s Victorian Eastlake must see xlnt cond' no matter how much it hurts to do so, for to do otherwise would make me look like a fool for having driven so far for nothing. At least to myself it would make me look like a fool. And since, as you all know, I'm a) the only one who has to live with me and b) not one to suffer fools gladly, I can't afford that sort of rancor between me.

But still also I don't want to hurt your feelings.

So, prior to looking at the wine cabinet in person, I asked what were those 'designs' on the front in the two faraway photos, and what were they made of. The very nice lady said she thought one was a flower, and the other, well, she couldn't quite tell. She was happy enough to send me photos of them, but they were huge and I was as ignorant as her as to how to scale them down for viewing from within this solar system, at least on a then-dying computer with about three programs left on it. Fair enough, I thought, the rest of it looks quite sexy, and I've never been out to that village (but I bet they have livestock nearby!).

In short, the cabinet was unusable in its state at the time. The Seventies were a challenging period, I realize: so much change, tumult, and uncertainty, as though all the moorings were coming loose everywhere, equally, fully. Fashion, popular music, design, and graphic art reflected the confusion. By the middle of the decade, 'hippie look' design was mainstream in clothing as well as home decor. Housewives sewed granny dresses and quilted skirts, découpaged and scalloped-edged everything in sight, and stuck cork embellishments on anything not actively running away from them.

Such was my cabinet's fate.

This unlucky chump had been the victim of the Seventies hat trick of cork, scalloped edges, and the ubiquitous mushroom-as-decorative-motif. The mushroom, moreover, and the 'flower,' which turned out to be a leaf, appeared to be products of a Ladies' Intro to Metalwork class. Plucking the metallic flora merely solved the glare problem; there was still the issue of the incongruous texture, shape, depth and appearance of the cork appliqués, which were painted in shades ranging from black, brown, and 'natural' to metallic gold.

I first thought of taking the hacksaw to it, and getting the depth of the appliqués to a sliver, over which I would simply paste something more in line with the original lines and look of the piece. They would still protrude a bit, but not two inches and, more importantly, not hideously. Then, positioning the tool first one way and then another, I realized there was no way that attack would be possible as the plane of the front is interrupted by molding at the top and base. I could have someone else do it, of course, someone who knew about these things, someone with expertise, but that would be cheating.

Now, I don't receive much child support from my exhusband, so it is a good thing he came in handy on a Christmas visit when he stuck his penknife a bit under one of the cork bits and emboldened me terrifically by his revelation that the adhesive was loose and elastic, as well as by his prediction that removing the grisly duo would be simple and quick. Still, he is an exhusband, and it took me a few more weeks before I grew the confidence to begin to test what I still considered to be no more than a hypothesis about the state of my glue.

My glue, it turned out, was quite healthy.

Accordingly, I slathered both doors with copious amounts of oil in hopes of loosening it and the cork ovals without damaging the veneer unduly. The scheme largely succeeded, and no veneer ripped off, but once the cork was removed it turned out that the final embellishment to the ovals, the dark brown paint around the outermost edge, was applied after they had already been glued on. Additionally, although I hadn't damaged the veneer, there were in fact gouges in it which appeared to have been what precipitated the 1970s modifications. I sanded enough to even out most of the surface, but there would have been no way to get below the absorbed paint and the deeper gouges.


So, I decided on two-tone gold leaf under stain in a geometric pattern that echoed the existing geometric pattern. Yes, it is not original, but not much about this cabinet was by the point of making that decision. I know it is not more authentic, and I am not sure it is much better, but I am absolutely certain it is not as bad.

With glowing hearts we see thee rise

Fascinatingly enough (or not), my reunion with the Blackberry occurred late Tuesday of last week. In all my excitement I might well have failed to notice, anyway, but had we renewed our vows the day previous instead, there would have been a three-hour interruption in our recommitment ceremony and ensuing celebration.

For me (and that I am alone in this perspective as in so many others is proven by the absurd furore this caused), a couple hours twice a year of uncertainty as to whether I have any incoming emails seems a manageable risk and tolerable cost when weighed against the other 8750-something other hours of instantly-updated connectivity. Moreover, that the outage's scope is attributable to the fact that all data sent by all Blackberry users, regardless of carrier, must pass through RIM's two network operations centers in Canada, makes me so happy I wish I could send money, flowers, and handwritten love notes to Research in Motion directly. Did last Monday's short-lived BB breakdown bring the US and global economies to a crushing, grinding halt? No. But I find the idea that thousands of advance-copy HR memos on new breakroom policies and rough-draft PowerPoint presentations from hemorrhoid-treatment salesmen had their full, momentous impact delayed because something went wrong in Waterloo terribly, terribly amusing.

'For everything you have missed,

you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.' (Emerson) Trite rubbish, of course, but I don't know any profound quotations about Blackberries by heart, and nothing in the text on either the BB or T-Mobile websites struck me as an uncannily profound opening for this bit, so we are stuck with me searching on a 'quotations' website for something marginally utile. So, Emerson it is; you can accept it (and 'lose something else!' thereby), or forgo this whole, dull posting and do something truly worthwhile, like reading some Merton or Jefferson, or listening for owls out in the woods.

Alright, praise God, the Blackberry is fine. The Blackberry is fine, and so is all of my so-called data, and so now when you call I will know who you are and answer the phone. Well, not the phone, of course, but the 'handheld,' the PDA, the 'device.' And maybe my knowing who you are will mean I will not answer the phone. But at least I will be making an informed decision.

In all my conversations with T-Mobile during this tedious ordeal terrifying crisis, it was only in the last two, after the Blackberry was once again cooing contentedly in my hands, that anyone mentioned there was such a thing as insurance for my device. The second time, after the person explained the basics of it (6 dollars a month gets you a replacement phone for 50 dollars or something in case of damage, theft, loss, or being me), I was daring enough to ask how long ago it was that this bold new idea was introduced. She or he let me know this was hardly a new idea, and that my telephone travails of the past many years could have had a quite different character had someone told me of this before...

Hmmm. I think it is like when I was sometimes having to spend three or four hundred extra dollars a month in overage charges: they see a good thing and don't want it to end, so no one makes a suggestion. Then, when I finally make a comment about it seeming like perhaps a change might be in order, I get a more perceptive one on the line who says he can't believe no

one ever called me and ran down the options before, that that's just crazy, that someone should have called, that he's never it wouldn't he can't understand why they. I suppose it's entirely conceivable that anyone looking at my records might just think I buy a lot of phones because I like change (--->). But if there are any notes somewhere on my account, 'stopped working after three months' and 'stolen with purse on ill-starred New Years Trip' have little to do with a zest for variety, even in the most generous or ESL-inspired reading.

At any rate, welcome home, little Blackberry. I have done the previously unthinkable and backed everything up. I have updated the software and loaded a picture of the neighbor's cat for the homescreen. I have read the NY Times on Opera, updated my Google Maps, added a new email account, deleted the 789 messages that were waiting to herald its rebirth, attempted anew to type coherent emails with enormous thumbs on microscopic keys, and had the pleasure of once again looking like an unrepentant Star Trek fan driving down the highway with a blinking light in my ear.

From now on I swear I will be a more careful and adept user. I will put the device in its little disabling holster when not in use so that neither my lipstick, purse lining, nor pointy hipbone on the other side of my coat pocket dials calls I don't intend. Second, now that I know what it is from the brief tutorial after the update download, I will use the 'escape' button located conveniently beneath the trackwheel (yes, it's an older model, because manifestly I can't be trusted with the newer ones) to exit screens I used to have to remove the battery to leave. I will keep the device synched to the computer and to reality to the greatest extent possible. I will not be reckless with battery life, and I will not cram SIM cards in past the point they should go. If I need to remove the SIM card and find I cannot, I will seek professional, or at least semi-professional, help. Torque will never be applied in the extraction or insertion of SIM cards. And lastly, I will endeavor to utilize Google Maps on the Blackberry in conjunction with GPS to preclude being three hours early, or one hour late, for anything ever again.

"'There is no man,'

[Elstir] began, 'however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived in a way the consciousness of which is so unpleasant to him in later life that he would gladly, if he could, expunge it from his memory. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man--so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise--unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded....We are not provided with wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can take for us, an effort which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.'" (Proust, Within a Budding Grove)


I pray to God it is not that I am 'growing accustomed to,' or acquiescing in, or failing any longer to notice, the winter such that I can no longer naturally and effortlessly be as splenetic as I have every right to be. After all, it is only the beginning of February, I am nearly at the 49th parallel, and thus there are many, many more weeks of short, dark days made darker by an unremitting low-hanging grey sky. I may have plenty to be thankful for, but there is still much to lament. At least for another eight weeks or so. And while I think equanimity in the face of some hardship is a hallmark of maturity, I think the Dylan Thomas approach is perhaps the sanest when choosing one's coping mechanisms for Northern winters. It may not perceptibly change objective reality, but you'll feel more alive after screaming in the snowy woods, and the slight elevation in blood pressure may help warm you up a bit.

Mature? Perhaps not; perhaps so. I think denial is in the main unduly demonized. Yes, we need a scapegoat, clearly, for the world's ills, but I remain unconvinced that it has to be the one that lets the individual get on with life! Rage, rage, fine; play a little hockey, hit the heavy bag, burn off some angst and cabin fever snowshoeing or sitting on a foreign beach pretending it's not still dismal where you're heading back to in 6.5 days 4 hours and 36 minutes -- and then go back to work, get back to living and resume waiting for April. Nothing is solved, obviously, but scant little generally is, and still somehow we manage to put our boots on the right feet again and get out the door.

That perhaps is the true model of maturity: getting on with it. Accepting that at times it truly is every bit as wretched as it seems and still having the courage and audacity (and, I will maintain, 'denial,' as it is popularly used) to put the boots on once more and head out into it. Certainly existentialists, whether of a Christian or atheistic bent, would stand with me there. Taking the nihilo, sticking an ex- in front of it, and finding within oneself what can be made of it.

Still, as Proust reminds us, we were not always wise, and if we have attained to any measure of wisdom now we might well look back on one or two habits or inclinations of our youth and wince. I was reminded of this today in a conversation about some film now out, which I thought I remembered as having Jeremy Irons in it - Jeremy Irons, who was once something different, or so I like to believe, but who has now become to films of the Double-Aughts what Michael Caine was to films of the Eighties and early Nineties: to wit, the scrubby, middle-aged Englishman who will take any part in any American film, no matter how bad the part, no matter how meritless the film.

I wouldn't care were it not the case that Jeremy Irons, along with Charlie Rose, Sartre, and William F. Buckley, were my Deep Dark Crushes of middle high school through early college. I adored that Buckley loved and wrote passionately about words despite all his other interests and careers; I loved that Rose's interviews were longer and more in-depth than the norm but that he was always even-tempered and polite; Sartre is an obvious and not uncommon one; but in contrast to all those I suspect that my Irons crush was based solely on the fact that regardless of role he was always effete, etiolated, and wan. He could take any part he wished, and still look and act completely morbidly tubercular in it. For me that was sufficient base for an abiding passion at the time.

Now of course, the stages of my psychosexual development having passed through such 'fatuous or unwholesome incarnations' as the foregoing, I must admit I do indeed feel quite mature by comparison in my quest for the six-foot Jesuit-schooled, Indian-riding, multilingual, finish-carpenter sailboat-racing poetry lover with a thing for Stravinsky, skirts, Mastiffs and Malagasy prosimians...

No News. Absolutely None at All.

For my mother's friend Claire, a picture of the neighbor's sexy, sexy cat.

Dear Vista,

Although we have not been together a long time, I feel I need to be honest and tell you our relationship is in trouble. I have been patient and faithful thus far, but it has been hard. I know you will not be surprised to hear me repeat that I have nothing but fond feelings for your predecessor, XP, and remember quite happily the years we shared together. As you are well aware, we did not end the relationship voluntarily, quickly, or easily; our bonds were severed due to the death of the perishable body he inhabited, and we both tried as long as we could to stay together despite ever-increasing odds.

I admit I was lonely by the time I met you. In the last weeks of XP's life I could only be with him one or two hours at a time; in his last days, our precious time together narrowed to minutes. His congenitally poor ventilation system weakened and whined until he could no longer even feebly cough out the cat hair, the incense dust, the errant biscotti crumbs and minute Egyptian-glass debris -- the cruel, cruel insults of this too-material world of which he never wished to be a part yet heroically tried to surmount.



I didn't expect a replacement, Vista. There is no room in my heart for another XP, let alone Win 95. We all have our great romances, our soulmates, and I did not demand that you be one of them. Still, I am not the sort who looks for 'NSA' relationships. I had hoped at least you would treat me with respect, that you would honor my very meager requests of you. Have I loaded you with unwieldy programs, failed to conscientiously monitor CPU usage, clogged Startup with needless tasks, or been other than extremely cautious and considerate in every possible way?

No, I have not. And I don't ignore you and certainly don't ask more of you than you should be able and willing to give. Moreover, I support you in your personal growth and well-being: I actively encourage your agility and physical fitness by running every manner of scan on your behalf every day. I have you inoculated six ways to Tuesday -- and I don't even do any questionable things for which that should be necessary. I just do it because I value you and want you to stick around. And yet you behave as though I am taking you for granted, you passive-aggressive, self-righteous, opaque, whorish, game-playing varlet!

So let me say this to you now, Vista: XP was a Mensch. He did what he had to do and he never complained. He was sufficiently confident in himself such that this confidence was readily extended to others. XP never whiningly asked me if I was absolutely SURE I wanted to open a program or change settings; he knew that I was a big girl and trusted my decisions. XP didn't have to use Apple widgets or garish 3-D to win my affections. He didn't have to advertise his 'snipping tool' to let me know it was there. He was understated; he knew I was smart enough to feel around and find it if I needed it, just as I would with his registry once we were intimate enough. He earned my loyalty not by trickery and flash, but by participating fully in the relationship and always keeping up his end of the bargain.

Vista, I'm sorry it has to end this way, but I have given you more than enough chances. Day after day you abandon me yet again just when I need you most, and recoil back into yourself, as distant as though we had never met. I know I was rash, I know I was bereft and lonely and I turned unthinkingly to the first OS I saw. But, Vista, it's been months and you still don't want me to touch your registry keys. You continue to try to keep me out of everything. There is no Us, and the way you are, I don't think there ever will be. Maybe it's my fault and not yours; maybe you were never expecting to be in a relationship in which something was expected of you, in which you would have to be 'on' so much of the time, where you would really have to be part of a team and not be able just to shut down and be alone whenever you felt like it.

I just know I feel misled. Dirty. Used. Yes, I had heard some things about you, but maybe I thought you would be different with me -- after all, I ask so little compared to other people. Maybe I thought I could change you -- but unlike 95, 98, or XP, you refuse to change and grow. You are like a bitter and stubborn, yet somehow unnervingly cocky, old man, Vista, and I wish I had never come to know you.

Angrily,
Me

Trust no one unless you have eaten much salt with him.

Perhaps I should have then, according to Cicero, at any rate, shared today's heavily feta-ed spinach and pasta dish with the people I bought my last car with. The problem is (other than the fact that the feta was eaten today and the car was bought a few months ago) (actually it was eaten, and this post mostly written, more than a month ago, before the, ahem, issues)-- if there is a problem, and I'm not sure that there is -- that I honestly do believe everything people say.

There are two qualifiers: I endeavor not to put myself in circumstances clearly mitigating against an atmosphere of trust, and I am more than capable of rescinding the trust once it is clear it is no longer warranted. For example, to satisfy the first condition, I don't go to car dealers. The second should be obvious: I wouldn't buy the Brooklyn Bridge twice. Even from an old lady. With flowers in her chignon.

The people I bought my newest car from were very nice, though. They lived on a houseboat and I liked their rug. They had some friendly cats, and they told me their names. They also lived close to me, which I admit probably earns them at least a lower branch on the trust tree a priori, in terms of (obviously logically untenable) ingroup/outgroup status. They showed me the new car they were replacing my new one with, and the trade made sense and adduced to their argument - and thus my faith in them.

I asked what was wrong with it, and they said nothing other than the lock on the passenger side needing to be disengaged from the inside. For me, this is not a problem, as any passenger I might have would be far more likely to want to be escaping from the car, rather than attempting to break in to savor my questionable navigational powers. When we took a test drive, the brakes seemed weak, and I overcame my concern over seeming rude with Valid Arguments (to myself) about Reasonable Questions (to them) and therefore asked about this. In retrospect, I less asked than provided my interlocutor an answer proactively by suggesting that it was perhaps simply the contrast of having to stop such a big heavy car as this versus merely imagining a stop in my tiny hatchback and having it come true. I could push my other car to most destinations and not lose much time. It is very small.

He agreed with my suggestion and responded that, yes, that was probably it, and they had had the brakes serviced recently. It was a matter of becoming accustomed to them, which I would, as he had.

I still haven't, though. I still try to leave eight car lengths between me and the car in front. In inclement conditions, which, it being January, are frequent, I try to double that when possible. And today, at the garage, my oil change mechanic confirmed my initial impression that there might be something wrong with them. What, he suggested, was largely wrong was that there weren't any. Stopping being one of the three things I most look for in a car, I am forced to get them fixed.

I do feel sad, though. Not just that the seller patently lied, but also that I was truly that dumb, or imperceptive. However, in my defense, there were no odd noises. The car is nearly silent, most particularly when compared to the other one, which is made of paper. Additionally, the last oil changer (at a chain oil-changing place), failed to notice anything, despite their 1200-point Vehicle Inspection. (He did, of course, notice all manner of irrelevant things he'd be happy to replace, after which overhaul I would have spent enough money to have bought a third car and a Vespa.)

I loathe putting money into cars, however. I don't mind tires and oil changes. Spark plugs make sense, too, as does keeping one's muffler from dragging on the ground. But there is a limit, and all I want is a little (or large) box that starts and goes and stops. And has a heater. Alright, a good heater, with a good fan, the sort that heats up as though there were no water in the radiator and stays there, on high, bringing me bliss and fueling my thermal fantasies from September to May.

I don't mind spending money on a pretty vase, or furniture for the neighbor's cat, or flowers, or wine, or taxis. Imagine life without taxis available when just what you need is precisely a taxi and nothing more: it's a horrid thought. In any language. And it doesn't matter what they cost, because what you need is a taxi -- and here one is! How amazing! Always a blessing.

But I suffer from what amounts to an eternally-inchoate (thank God, because were it ever worked out it would be yet more ludicrous than it already is) conspiracy-sort-of theory regarding certain products and services. One, obviously, is car service and car parts. I don't believe all car service at a garage should be priced at the same rate: some jobs are easy, and some require fine troubleshooting. Turning a couple lug nuts is one thing, but often mechanics must utilize their brains and not just their brawn, resorting to analogies, logic, tricky diagnoses, comparison of all the options - and sometimes mustering a good bedside manner, too, which is not at all necessary when you simply have to relate We topped off the coolant, or The coolant looks fine. I can hold my own hand through that.

This distemper also extends to the purchase of certain products that we have allowed to become necessities. I in no way mean to say I am exempt from this enslavement, but merely that each time I acknowledge it I am more piqued. I live alone, and not in a family of seven; therefore I only seldom need to buy any of these, and I suspect this lack of frequency has prevented me from becoming inured to the injustice.

In this list are garbage bags and lightbulbs. They cost practically nothing, and in the first case I very rarely have need of them, and in the second they last far longer than anything of that price should be expected to. Yet in both cases I am resentful not only that I need them, but that there is nothing else that can be reasonably substituted. I could in theory use bedsheets if I had an unusual quantity of garbage -- but I don't have any old ones nor can I imagine doing so if I did. And candles and television sets have attributes in common with lamps -- but one can't read by the light of a television, and reconfiguring an entire home for candlelight would certainly require a level and amount of effort I could much more sanely and enjoyably direct elsewhere.

The most galling purchases, however, I always note as TP on my list and always end up buying all together, as I can never remember, once I get there, what my discreet notation system was meant to convey this time. I find purchasing any of the three difficult and embarrassing, as each is a stark and irrefutable admission of frailty, and of impending death. Each screams at the clerk and the moribund mortals behind me, in its gaudy or discreet packaging, that however glorious the undying soul may be, for this brief flicker in its eternal existence we are stuck haplessly inside these markedly inglorious fleshbags, urinating, defecating, menstruating, and accumulating gingiva as we variously await, bemoan, or battle the inevitable. And in the meantime, we buy as many products as we can to conceal and combat the true nature of our bodies and of life itself.

None of this would be as excruciating as it is, I suppose, if I were an average grocery-store customer, if my cart were piled high with all manner of distracting items. Food can divert the attention; the reader of my cart could focus on the pleasures of the flesh rather than its inevitable decay as he took note of the artisan breads and local cheeses and pounds of finocchiona and bresaola. But it's no use for me keeping large quantities of food on hand, and I hate bread. Therefore, there is never a cart piled high. There is never, frankly, need for a cart at all. I can always get by with a little basket, and when I muster the courage once again to parade my weakness before my peers, the terseness of the message renders it quite easily read to even the most pressed for time.

I do try to throw a few ringers in: wine, flowers, licorice... Of course, a basket of toilet paper, tampons, toothpaste, wine, flowers, and licorice looks rather egregiously like someone who is not succeeding magnificently in coming to terms with death and its precursors. 'Denial' these days is a far graver sin, we are told, than anything John Calvin or Billy Sunday warned us about. So perhaps directness is preferable. Or at least au courant.

However, as comfortable as I genuinely am with some of my atoms eventually ending up in potting soil, I suspect it is the intentionality that can be read from my purchases that most disturbs me. In other words, I presume that my fellows at the supermarket have come to the conclusion, via analogy to their own lamentable position, that my body engages in all manner of bodily functions just as theirs do, and that mine, like theirs, will one day cease to do any of them, and that I, like them, am in the meantime doing what I can to make the consequences of these functions less unpleasant for others and myself. What I don't enjoy is the declarative aspect of the purchase: it is though I am assertively announcing my intent to evacuate my bowels and rid myself of some spare endometrial bits. I am sharing with strangers information I'd rather keep private, if we can assume that the overwhelming majority of toilet-paper purchases are practical and not based on some kind of wild whim after having heard of this invention and its potential uses in home decorating or weaving or somesuch. I cringe every time I have to carry a pack of SuperQuilty around a store knowing that I have thereby given permission and incentive for everyone who sees me to picture me using it for its intended, sole, horrific purpose.

Call Me!

I had to go cold-turkey on my cell-phone addiction briefly, which means I was, in fact, completely incommunicado telephonically, as I haven't had a landline since the Great War and I've never bothered with VOIP. The reason? A cell phone serves all my needs: I can use it at home just as easily as in the car!

And normally my 'system' serves me well. I have a one-million-minutes-per-month plan, and I have five 'friends' whom I can call at any time without using any of those minutes. Gone are the months with surprise overage charges of two or three hundred dollars. Plus, I have been with T-Mobile since the days when we had to strap our forty-five-pound 'car phones' to the roofs of our Datsuns anytime we wanted to carry a passenger, or freight larger than an evening bag, so every time I talk with them I receive shocked and somewhat disgusted but nonetheless effusive thanks for my unwavering loyalty.


This gratitude has come in handy, as I tend to go through a number of phones per year and have then to change my plan each time to suit the features of the model I haven't lost or broken yet. I also have to call a lot to figure out how to use the features or software on the phone I'm just becoming acquainted with. (As well as the regular 'Please send me a new phone as soon as you can no the cheapest one no I don't care what it has yes I need a phone not a camera no I'll buy one I like later when I'm not at work crying into an office phone and deactivate the old one ASAP it's on a flight to Bangkok and I have no phone!!!! Help me pleeease!' calls.)

Now, as you can well imagine, unless I am at work, where I can comfortably cry, slaver, cajole and whine into the multi-line, my refusal to have a landline or VOIP has its unpleasant consequences each and every time I lose, destroy, or have stolen another cell phone. This last time was especially egregious, it being winter and me being about 90 pounds and the few pay phones remaining in this very wireless city not being enclosed in metal and glass as in Ye Olde Days when people used them for purposes other than setting up drug deals. It was wet, it was windy, it was cold, and I was small. Eventually quite grouchy, as well, as each time I attempted to set up my prepaid, stopgap account (which it turns out was unnecessary anyway) it seemed either I had forgotten yet another bit of crucial information, or the customer service person I reached was not privy to a different but equally crucial bit of crucial information at his end.

Much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth ensued, interrupted by bouts of shivering and clattering teeth and trips home to sit in front of the heater, after which a restorative and healing sleep was inevitable, swift, and full. The following day I spoke to a better-informed representative at great length who informed me the whole prepaid scheme was unnecessary and yes, contrary to what I had been previously told, he could indeed use an old SIM card to restart my account on a different phone.

Now I have that account on that different phone, and perhaps the Blackberry will come back to me, along with all the Terribly Important Information locked inside itself and its SIM card. For the future, though, I now have the delightful comfort of knowing that although the prepaid phone costs about sixty dollars a minute to use, it is nonetheless a phone, with a number and account and working 'send' button which I can use in two months from the comfort and privacy of my own home to order a new phone when I lose or destroy the current one.

In the meantime, call me: I don't have your phone number...

Apologies to the Monkeys

Let me be clear: I don't hate monkeys! I realize now that between the descriptions of my personal struggle to write this blog unfettered and my disparaging remarks about the candidates' lack of individuation I may have come across as a unforgivable speciesist, or a raging crypto-neo-Darwinian! Far from it. I love the little monkeys! All of Primata are my friends; from their scent glands to their tapetums to their strangely-modified digits and the sacculated stomachs of cercopithecoids they, and their wondrous adaptations, give beauty to my days and sweet dreams to my nights. I just don't want an Alouatta in the White House, or a Daubentonid as an editor, pointing that crazy 'finger' at the screen or in my eye (-aye)...

...like spires above some group of edifices, firm-footed on the earth, yet scaling space and heaven

'Other states indicate themselves in their deputies, but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors; - but always most in the common people. Their manners, speech, dress, friendships; - the freshness and candor of their physiognomy, the picturesque looseness of their carriage, their deathless attachment to freedom, their aversion to everything indecorous or soft or mean, the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one State by the citizens of all other States, the fierceness of their roused resentment, their curiosity and welcome of novelty, their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy, their susceptibility to a slight, the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors, the fluency of their speech, their delight in music (the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul), their good temper and open-handedness, the terrible significance of their elections, the President's taking off his hat to them, not they to him, - these too are unrhymed poetry. It awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it.' --Walt Whitman

I am seeing less and less unrhymed poetry in this terribly significant election as it continues. I admit that for a while I was almost excited; it felt not unlike a sporting event, albeit with rather grave stakes: so many strong candidates, shoo-ins Giuliani and Clinton toppled or well-matched by underdogs, a seeming unusually rich diversity of candidates, all in the midst of two wars, a nascent recession, raging global anti-American sentiment, a tormented and much-reviled administration, and the mortgage crisis and falling housing prices simultaneous with soaring fuel and heating costs.

Not to be glum, but the fact is I don't think anyone is up to the task. Not the candidates we have, nor anyone else. However, the enormity and variety of these and other problems at least serve to illustrate the scope and difficulty of the challenges awaiting the next sworn defender of the Constitution, while the risible pettiness of so many campaigns thus far demonstrate how little suited to the task are the candidates, the two viable political parties, and the campaign system.

To begin with, apart from Ron Paul and John Edwards (and may God bless both of them and grant us a future in which we will have more Candidates with Individual Platforms), and bracketing John McCain for the moment, the nature of the system, or process, has ensured that our selection at this stage of the campaign consists of candidates trying to prove that they are the most Republican of the Republicans, or the most Democrat of the Democrats, as those terms have come to be understood in recent years. Not only does this result in exhausting recitations of party platitudes, but we are also subjected to brain-numbing internecine schoolyard taunts as candidates for this insanely demanding position attempt to persuade us not that they are agile of mind and able to rise to new challenges with brave, fresh ideas or established, proven strategies (knowledge of which gleaned from long immersion in world and American history and political science) -- but that whatever fresh hell emerges during their tenure they will not be blinded by global or domestic realities and instead reliably make decisions based on what most conforms to current Party ideology, and damn the torpedoes.

Kim Jong-Il would be proud.

This does not solely result in a lack of choice (who are these candidates? what do they really stand for? what would they say were they allowed to be candidates, rather than merely apparatchiks? alright, fine, I guess I'll vote for the one with better hair), but as well an acculturation to it, a (tragic, really) resigned sense of This is how it is, then, I suppose...

And therefore we just live with it, and sooner or later we won't know any better. We listen to the Democrats one by one say universal health care is nice, and we let each Republican in turn assert that his respect for life is greater than that of all his fellows. And neither getting inner-city children liver transplants nor preventing suburban pregnancies from terminating has anything to do with the other 9,000 components of the job.

And this is a job, after all (megalomania and messiah complexes notwithstanding), and one that, moreover, involves a great deal more than thumping a pulpit. One that, indeed, will necessarily involve a great deal of ratiocination, negotiation, argumentation, and diplomacy. That we have a Constitution as well as separation of powers and a great big elected legislative branch means that this country cannot be run by the Old Testament, or Sharia, or the Klingon code. Some acknowledgment of this fact, a nod here and there to the (political?) realities of politics and governance, not to mention the nature of a republican state, would go a long way toward lessening the resemblance of most candidates to lip-synching monkeys.


But this stultifying sameness, this need for all serious contenders to prove themselves the most rigid Party Man, stifles true debate. The sole perceptible difference between Clinton and Obama at this point appears to be that Clinton is a white woman and Obama is a black man. Under ideal circumstances, that would be a less than convincing pitch in either case. Sadly, however, because it is all that we have, that means we get to base our Democratic-candidate analysis and decision upon which hairstyle we would prefer to look at for four to eight years. Clinton's has more room for variety, and not merely in terms of cut but potentially color, as well, so that is well to bear in mind. As for the Republicans struggling to convince us that the one time they casually dropped the the word 'choice' in 1972 they were really referring to the embarras de richesse at Baskin-Robbins, the one-upsmanship is equally otiose.

Two results come to mind: one is that due to all the ludicrous ideological sniping and personal insults we are confronted with a constructed antagonism between all same-party candidates until the end of the Primaries, at which point two of these hitherto (radically, as we were told incessantly) incompatible individuals will alter their rhetoric entirely and embrace each other as long-lost clan brothers, devoted adherents to the same glorious cause momentarily blinded by other concerns now forgotten.

The second nausea-inducing consequence of this doctrinaire, blindly party-centric approach to promulgating and maintaining a 'platform' is the apotheosis of rigidity. Any candidate who has reconsidered, moderated, or changed a position is lambasted - regardless of issue or consequence - as alternately traitorous (to the Party) or (the lesser charge) weak-willed, a 'flip-flopper,' insufficiently prophetic or, more accurately, too willing to take changing circumstances into account. In other words, circumstance, fact, geopolitical knowledge, the Constitution, wisdom, and the long- and short-term good of the country should not determine policy: Party doctrine must.

To my mind, however, the ability to consider new facts and developments is an asset; what comes of utilizing this skill can be good or bad, but of itself and independent of consequence it is a virtue and a blessing. Certainly changing course radically is not always the best option, but neither is sticking to a course of action or a mode of thought when it is patently not working. What does work is being able to choose among various options, and that possibility is predicated on being able to think, consider, analyze -- something apparatchiks are not paid to do. I used to believe in Santa Claus, and I used to wear footed pyjamas. I long ago changed my position on both, and I have never since awakened of a morning filled with regret or self-loathing over being weak willed, reckless, or capricious from having altered my stance. In the best of all possible worlds, political candidates and elected officials would be granted similar permission to evaluate, assimilate, contemplate, and apply new information as they see fit --and be adjudged on the consequences of their decisions rather than being pilloried for the audacity of daring to think.

Ess, Bench, Sei a Mensch!

And while we are on the subject of stupidity, I would like to expatiate a bit on one of my long-held peeves: use of the content-free, yet so perniciously, routinely, and vacuously turned-to word 'classy.'

Now, I hear you rustling in your chair, getting ready to object, 'It can't be content-free, since I know what it means!' And I see your point (somewhat): there is a meaning, to some extent. My problem is that that meaning is now predicated on air, which is a bad thing to predicate most things on, unless those things are respiration, or flying.

I say now because things have changed a great deal in the past few centuries. These days it's harder to find a daimyo, serf, lady-in-waiting, knight errant or invigorating pas d'armes than it is a suburban mother of three driving a sensible mid-size sedan. First it was that whole business with Gutenberg, then Diderot, Condorcet, Rousseau, Kant. The Church, King, and God got disentangled, and Man with his Declaration of Rights stepped into the vacuum. Then came Marx, Lincoln, child labor laws, compulsory education, corporations, self-made men, literate freedmen and chimney sweeps.

(And et cetera.)
Add in the First World War, department stores, film, dance halls, television, and ascendant America, and what remains in the 'developed world' is demotic American culture writ large. Class distinction is a monetary distinction only, no longer rightly carrying with it connotations of difference in education, refinement, or taste in amusements. Popular culture, now the prevailing cultural expression, filters 'up' from the masses or out from the advertising industry and routinely influences 'high' art. Meanwhile, in countries where there still exist aristocracies, their scions grow up listening to the same rap and rock as do most other teenagers worldwide.

In the U.S., having taken the Enlightenment seriously, or at least the parts of it we felt applied to men of European ancestry, we wanted no truck with hereditary title, and sought instead to create a sort of meritocracy and a culture of opportunity. A poor man could through industry become rich, and some did. And then they realized that they weren't acting as they imagined rich people to. They hadn't the training. They hadn't acquired any acquired tastes. They didn't know a cantata from a canticle, couldn't tell Burne-Jones from Botticelli. So rich boys were sent away to learn Latin and Greek and history and politics as their European (economic) counterparts did, while rich girls learned ladylike arts and comportment at finishing school, the better to resemble people with money who had a family history of being people with money.

But it is all quite different now. We still have a robust tradition of philanthropy amongst the very wealthy in this country, and of that we should be proud. But with regard to 'class' being a reliable predictor of erudition, conduct, diction, taste, or 'classiness,' I need only point to George W. Bush and Paris Hilton as two notable examples among many with regard to which that is patently not true. Examples pertaining to either of these two admittedly egregious cases are too numerous to mention, obviously, but I think Bush's question to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso in 2001, 'Do you have blacks, too?' (drawn from a conversation they were having about difficult race relations in the two countries, according to Cardoso), is just as good as any I might pick, as it is nicely multilayered in its resignation to (optimistic reading), or embrace of (more realistic version), ignorance, insularity, ineptitude, and indelicacy.

And perhaps that is where the problem lies. On the one hand, there is nothing to aspire to. On the other, the major cognitive divide in society is between youth and age. Both categories are fluid and subjective, but since 'youth' is widely believed to be a 'state of mind' rather than chronological fact, it can be learned, attained, much in the manner of adulthood in days past. The youthful demotic is now normative. Being young is what the old aspire to.

Fame is what matters, and it is viewed as simply Popularity on a much larger scale. Bush is the Homecoming King because he is in the White House; Ms. Hilton the Queen because her images, flattering or otherwise, are everywhere. He enacts variously the role of the sitcom buffoon, the warrior-hero, the rodeo cowboy, and the child king eternally under the tutelage of this or that éminence grise.

He is under no obligation to behave with the 'dignity befitting his position,' as his position is Star. He is the Captain of the Football Team; what he does or says is cool, or, more alarmingly, correct, by virtue of his having done or said it. His imprimatur is sufficient. The same with Ms. Hilton or other celebrities, or by virtue of the fact that a particular item is sold at a particular store. There is no global warming because George Bush says it is a fiction; I must buy these shoes (or a cheap knockoff of the style) because Saks says they are desirable. I must listen to Phish, or go to Burning Man, because (at 40, or 50, or 60) the kids I think look 'coolest' (or is it more comprehensible, and more as I envision my youthful self?) do...

In any of these three cases, I think the root problem is the same: immaturity, a symptom of which is the inability to think for oneself. This willful ceding of all higher-level though to the monarch and to Madison Avenue, which would have scandalized the thinkers of the last few centuries had they been forced to witness it, is routine for us now. Second nature. Nearly ineluctable. This tendency is evidenced in our pandemic of not voting as well as in our voting, as noted previously, for people we fancy we would 'like' were we to encounter them in a social situation. It is also apparent in our decisions about where we live, why, and what criteria we routinely turn to when meeting others.

But more on that then. Time for bed and books and sweet dreams,

so whatever it was I was going to say about Lautréamont with regard to all this, and whatever Grand Pronouncements I was hoping to get to about stupidity, cupidity, faux anything, the unconquerable vacuity of the newly rich and poorly educated, and the few (very few) defensible occasions on which one might wear a tweed jacket (I know, I knooooow, and it hurts me far worse than it does you, but some people simply don't listen to their clothing consciences!) will simply have to wait.