Ew

This is one of those cheap rip-offs of another news outlet’s story. I heard this one on NPR a few weeks ago, and ta-da! Here it is, brand new from the AP.

I only post it here for the headline they slapped on it:

Love Grows From Back Seat of NY Cab

Because, hey, discounting the obvious frolicking, I hate to think of what this headline literally means. I mean, really. We sit in those seats, too.

Playing in My Sleep

Two of my favorite dreams I’ve ever had:

1. Simply, I dreamed of the word “elevator.” I broke it down in the dream to these pieces:

elle—“she” in French, e (with accent on top)—“is” in Italian, va—“goes” in Italian, a—“to” in Italian, torre—tower in Italian.

So: elle e va a torre.

Elevator.

In short, she goes to the tower.


2. I am in a forest with my father and a bunch of friends. We are playing a game that has to do with the trees. In order to leave the forest, we must solve the game. The forest is darkening rapidly, and there is lightening off in the distance, so the pace feels rushed. A steep drop rims the edge of the woods, which is why we can’t get out. The game involves interpreting the patterns of single large paint dots on trees that have tremendous trunks. For instance, one has a large green spot, another a yellow one, another red. The name of the game is “semalog”—“sema” from “semantics,” “log” because of the trees, and because of the puzzles, “logarithms.”

Stunning.

 


NYT caption: Iraqi voters living abroad today show off the ink used to confirm they have voted.

A Fine Story

As usual, there's no byline on this AP story, but I wanted to call attention to it, as much for the story itself as for its fine style. It's not easy to do a news-pegged feature that everyone else hasn't done and that is well-written to boot.

CNN.com - Truck driver rushed to aid train wreck victims - Jan 27, 2005

Motherfucking Fuckers

This morning I heard on NPR that Dick Cheney made remarks at a Holocaust remembrance forum in Krakow basically equating this administration’s agenda to the fight against the Nazis.

Here’s what he said:

“The story of the camps remind us that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted," Cheney said.

I’ve had it. Blashphemers.


[Addendum: see this CNN article called "Cheney's Auschwitz Outfit Raises Eyebrows" for further irritation.]

The New Oldest Profession?

The owners of a site called pilldaddy.com have bought space on a man's arm for $500. They have tattooed him with the name of their site as a kind of advertisement. The man, Joe Tamargo is the CEO of a company he calls LivingAdSpace.Com, and he has five more spots on his body up for sale on eBay. No, actually, four, I think, because one has just been sold to savemartha.com, a group of people who want the president to pardon Martha Stewart when she gets out of jail.

 


Selling bits of your skin for cash-what does one think of this? Tamargo, for one, obviously, thinks it's great. He told Newsday recently:

"You'll see, this is going to catch on. There are tons of people who will want to do it."

Tons? I feel this is probably one trend that is over before it starts. Then again, people will do anything for money, right?

The people at savemartha.com agree: "We think Joe may just the first of many. Would you be willing to get a tattoo for Martha?"

Poor Things

Snow on the cars in Brooklyn make them look like this dog's head. 

Cr-Cr-Cr-Crambone

Anybody remember "Crambone"? Well, goshdarnit, you should. My entire office is kicking back and singing this right now, and I can't stop laughing. Have a listen.

But what do YOU think they mean?

It’s Friday freaky fortune hour!

Let’s see…what do we have today?

Well, freshly extracted from their golden brown skins, today’s fortunes are these:

“Friends long absent are coming back to you.”

and

“Your skill will accomplish what the forces of many cannot.”

Grab em up, kids!

For myself, I can only imagine that my friends long absent and on their way back to me are those I will see in May. You see, in the year 2000, while living in Venice, my friends and I made a pact to meet up in five years. To make it easy on ourselves, it became known as the “20-05 Pact”: we will meet in New York on 20.05 in 2005 at 20:05. Lately, some of the Italians, Brits and Croatians in the pact have been getting jiggy with the planning, which is all very exciting. I can only imagine how many of them I can stuff into my apartment before the floor collapses…but hey! A pact’s a pact!

Otherwise, maybe it is referring to the crazy people I will probably hang around with tonight. I mean, it’s been a whole week since I’ve seen them and nearly died in the process…

And as for my skill, what can the forces of many really accomplish anyhow? Isn’t that some kind of obvious put down? Can’t I do more than lots of people who can’t do anything? Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi…

Making the Day So Much Finer

This day has taken a real upswing. Beginning with the lowest low point, the inaugurblech all day, then slipping on iced over, burned up comics in a burned down house for a story, to this...to the fine photograph of my friend's ass I dare not publish here! For fear of reprisal. Lady Fab, you win ultimate points and respect for the beauty of the photo as well as for the unabashed sharing of the beauty.

(For those who are not LF, there was a reason she showed it to me that has to do with weird pornographic standards of prudish freaks.)

(For those who are LF, thanks for making my day!)

Wait, this just in...
From an IM conversation that popped up while I was finishing this entry:

[Friend seemed distracted earlier, here is her reasoning. I will call her Bella.]
Bella says: hey
Bella says: sorry
Bella says: my friend was sending me pictures of boobs. it was distracting.
Bella says: i became like a deer in headlights

Seems like everybody's day is looking up, doesn't it?

Dreams for the Crazy

So cheers to all, I’ve been ill yet again. I’m on my second round of antibiotics for the month, which, secondo me, is just horrific. But there is one good thing to come of all the recovery time: bizarre dreams. Be it a combination of medicines, isolation from the living world, sickness itself, whatever, dreams seem stranger this week.

And I’m guessing nobody wants to hear other people’s dreams, so stop reading now if you like.

This first one, I’m not sure I had while actually sick. It may have been the night before I took to bed, hm. Anyway, my dog, some dog, my dream dog had been licking my arm in the dream. Big, extravagant licks. And my cat, my dream cat, came along and insisted on smelling where the dog had licked me. “But why do you like that?” I asked the cat. “What does it smell like?”

“It smells like curtains,” the cat told me.

Dream number 2.
A drunk man lives on my roof. He is homeless, typically in a ratty sleeping bag, with his hair matted. I have just discovered he lives there, and I’m not sure how not to offend him while not being sure if I can feel safe around him. So I hike back downstairs with him shouting things after me, very uncomfortable and frightened.

Downstairs, there seems to be an informal dinner party thrown by my parents, while two of my lovers are wandering the apartment. “Look! This brownie mix shows you how to make pot brownies!” one of them says. “Ha ha ha!” my father laughs, while my mother wonders aloud if pot and brownies are the only two ingredients in pot brownies. “We’ll be staying over,” one lover declares, while the other flips her long blond hair and makes off with the mix.

Dream number 3.
There is a birthday party or some such party for a childhood friend with my same name happening in some basement somewhere. I have not seen her for years, but she has asked me to make a final toast to her later in the night. I seem to drift off to sleep, and when I awake, I am hazy, everything is fuzzy looking and dark, and I think to myself, I must need some espresso. I declare this to fellow partygoers, and I head upstairs to make the coffee.

It is the kitchen of an ex’s parents, a fancy one on Park Avenue. I root around for their cafetiere, one of the huge ones. I find my own ground coffee in a small compartment that is mine in the wall, and I begin to wash and fill the cafetiere. Oops, I realize that I have filled the wrong section with the grounds. So I wash that out and I fill the right bit. No, that is still wrong. By now, I have spilled grounds all over this fancy kitchen—on the table top and drying dishes and the silverware in the slightly open drawers, and any minute now I must head back downstairs to toast my namesake. In the meantime, the only part of the toast I can finalize is that I will make a joke that when this woman was recently offered a raw egg white to eat, she not only ate it, but asked if she may have another one. One final time and it seems I fill the thing correctly, only to not assemble it back together and put it on to heat in pieces.

The dream goes on in circles from there. While I never give up on making the coffee, I do attempt to clean up the grinds and hurry to make it for the toast. Telling it this way gives it a very Andy Warhol-film feeling. Repetitive, quiet action. Then again, maybe there is a hilarity to it, Marx Brothers, but with anxiety.

Kicking Back Like You Wanna

Just now I took the unusual step of retreating to the kitchen to drink some coffee. It’s been a stressful day, working two big stories, and I just wanted to put my feet up for a minute. So there I am, feet literally up, and in peeks my boss.

Boss: [Blink. Stare.]
Me: I just needed to drink some coffee.
Boss: Wait, so you’re taking a coffee break? I’ve never actually seen someone take a coffee break.
Me: I think that’s what I’m actually doing.
Boss: [Wide-eyed] Awesome.

Keep On Rockin In the Idiot World

Mo’ Dowd writes today about the phenomenon of powerful men marrying service-industry women. Here are some excerpts:

“I'd been noticing a trend along these lines, as famous and powerful men took up with the young women whose job it was to tend to them and care for them in some way: their secretaries, assistants, nannies, caterers, flight attendants, researchers and fact-checkers.
Men think that women with important jobs are more likely to cheat on them.

“Women, by contrast, did not show a marked difference in their attraction to men who might work above or below them. And men did not show a preference when it came to one-night stands.

“The study found that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to get married, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.”


This makes me feel all agog. Which only goes to show how frighteningly naïve I can be. Then again, with the divorce rate what it is, maybe that proves how terrifyingly stupid these matches are. “Prospect for marriage”? Like, who cares anymore anyway?

The Secret Lives of Secret People

In a NYT article today about keeping secrets and double lives, I was stuck on this description of “repressors”:

“… in a series of experiments over the past decade, psychologists have identified a larger group they call repressors, an estimated 10 to 15 percent of the population, who are adept at ignoring or suppressing information that is embarrassing to them and thus well equipped to keep secrets, some psychologists say.

“Repressors score low on questionnaires that measure anxiety and defensiveness - reporting, for example, that they are rarely resentful, worried about money, or troubled by nightmares and headaches. They think well of themselves and don't sweat the small stuff.

“Although little is known about the mental development of such people, some psychologists believe they have learned to block distressing thoughts by distracting themselves with good memories. Over time - with practice, in effect - this may become habitual, blunting their access to potentially humiliating or threatening memories and secrets.”

See, now, I can’t stand these people. The kind who have low anxiety and think everything they do is okay. Who “blunt” their experiences in order to remain unhurt. But this is what this country appears to strive for—isn’t that what all those “who moved my cheese” self-help books are about? What all that “I look good” and “I’m the best” talk-show attitude is about? I get the idea that there is a place before neurosis that would probably serve most of us well to try to find, but this, this “repression,” well, even the word implies that it is too much, self-protection gone too far. (Although that’s obvious, I know. What’s not is the naming of this type this way.) Isn’t this what leads to homophobia and xenophobia and so many other-hating phobias?

I wonder how similar this kind of person is to another type mentioned in the article:

“In a famous paper on the subject of double lives, published in 1960, the English analyst Dr. Donald W. Winnicott argued that a false self emerged in particular households where children are raised to be so exquisitely tuned to the expectations of others that they become deaf to their own longings and needs.

“"In effect, they bury a part of themselves alive," said Dr. Kwawer of the White Institute.”

Not Such Good Faith Agreements

Pope Pius XII, left, and his successor, Cardinal Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli, who became John XXIII.
 


The New York Times > International > Saving Jewish Children, but at What Cost?

Sent to me by J with this message: "oops! they did it again. those crazy catholics!"

Honestly, one of the most fascinating stories I've read in a while. Not surprising--the secrecy--which is probably what makes it all the more fascinating.

The lead: "In October 1946, just a year after the defeat of the Nazis, the Vatican weighed in on one of the most painful episodes of the postwar era: the refusal to allow Jewish children who had been sheltered by Catholics during the war to return to their own families and communities."

No, It Isn't

Here I was, interestedly scanning this NYT story about the writer who was killed up in Massachusetts a few years ago. Police are seeking to test the DNA of all the men in the town to try to match some semen found on the dead woman’s body. And then I get to the first voice in the story to speak against this DNA collection:

"I think it's outrageous," said Dick Seed, 44, a Truro sign painter who called the American Civil Liberties Union to complain.

Dick Seed.
Ha.
Ha ha.
Ha ha ha.

I refuse to believe this.

Exhaling Slowly

I've been following the wreck that is the Gonzales confirmation hearings today. I think it was Wonkette who said the choice of Gonzales is the "and your mother, too," to Cheney's "fuck you" to Patrick Leahy. Sounds right to me. It's so very, very miserable.

Also miserable, although perhaps less far-reaching, is the small animal that seems to have taken up residence in my chest. When I breathe deeply, something releases a small whine. About a half a second's worth--a quiet "whee."

Breathe: "whee."
(Shh.)

(It's probably sleeping. And I think we should leave it that way.)

It's Friday afternoon and I'm doing my very best to produce fine stories and be worth my meagerly reimbursed salt, but all I can do is wonder if I will be well enough to venture out this weekend so that I may further indebt myself to the demons who made me so very sick in the first place. This is a ride one can play on for a while at a time, one I try to step off every so often, but would rather not. I am, however, amazed by certain people I know who manage to never sleep and still be functioning members of society. At least of some kind of society. Maybe a secret one. That would explain it.

From the Beginning

Deliquent writer I am these days. But I have an excuse, and no, the dog did not eat my blog entry. Flu has bound up my head like an ancient Chinese woman's feet. (Tight, painful, restricted.)

That plus a dead Internet connection at home has made for no entries. Ah! But soon I will have the dangerous high-speed cable modem after all these years of dial-up. I feel chills coming on…

Oh, the delirium.

And I hope everyone's had a merry New Year. I did. A merry New Year into the merry next day--i.e. I gave myself the flu I deserved, it seems.

2005 begins with a boom.