The New Porn

Please forgive my recent absence; I've been feeling a bit under the weather. As such, I've been watching rather more varied TV than usual, and have been struck by what appears to be a burgeoning new television genre: I call it "Job Porn."

Several years ago, Job Porn emerged in the form of auto-related programming, with fare such as "Monster Garage." Basically, this was a show which enthralled men and puzzled women; a bunch of guys take a scrapyard reject and turn it into...a different car that does stuff. There was a great deal of men yelling whilst dangerously close to terrifying shop tools, and a happy closing scene in which the happy owner of the old-new car appears sufficiently overjoyed and impressed.

Fast forward to the present, and Job Porn has become a pan-network phenomena. Each weeknight, ratings seem to indicate that red-blooded American males cluster pantingly around their tellies to watch...fellow red-blooded American males do their jobs. Fishing and crabbing shows seem to be perennially popular, as do shows about just how crappy and dangerous jobs can be. What is it about watching freezing, miserable guys lose fingers and Frenchmen who rake centuries-old sewers that fires the imaginations of America's white collar hordes? I have my own ideas.

Porn is now the Old Porn. Any cable subscriber is now privy to essentially endless reams of substandard cable soft-porn. Access to birth control and post-feminist thinking means that a new generation of Western women are more ready than ever before to explore- and enjoy- the carnal pleasures of life, often after only a few dates. I want to make it clear that I'm not judging women (or men) in my previous statement; I'm only stating the facts of mainstream, modern life. The mystique of "does she or doesn't she" is no longer central to womens' desirability...because she most likely does. In fact, as statistics have borne out in the past 10-15 years, the girls who protest most loudly that they "don't" are the likeliest to "do." Just, you know, without using condoms. So what's a guy to do?

Enter Job Porn. Nobody sane and/or credible is going to deny that the post-9/11 world and current economic meltdown aren't on everyone's mind and lips. As was the norm during this country's Depression-era, most men that still have jobs these days count themselves lucky, and most entrepreneurial dreams are on hold, if not utterly cast by the wayside. And the fantasies laid out, so to speak, in common porn media are nowhere near as fantastical as they once were...more like the stuff of inter-office IM traffic. So where do daydreams trend? Job Porn.

Whether it's watching stoic men's men fell trees, wrassle flounder or stalk the posh, snappy suites of early 1960's Madison Ave., American guys have fallen head over heels for Job Porn. Millions of men pine away, in cubicles across the nation, for a job that offers something more than the next month's rent and decent health insurance. Any guy can go home to "HOTT RUSSIAN MODELS 4 U," but can they wake up filled with the moxy that it takes to make it on a snow crab trawler? A safe, biweekly payday can't kill the secret yearning to spend five days a week knocking back old-fashioneds, smoking Luckys and castrating business rivals by the bushel.

And why should it?

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vlxi6Ec92kw

OMFAT camp!!

So I'm at the in-laws' house today, and everyone else is out at the diner. I'm home with The Child, who is beyond exhausted, and not exactly in a out-in-public kinda mood. I'm watching "Fat Camp" on MTV, and man! Is this show ever prime snark material!! It has 100% of the pathos of "Intervention," with roughly 110% less edginess, and a stunningly total lack of empathetic response generated towards the show's subjects.

Case in point: the constantly-crying, diabetic, hypothyroid homeschooled girl. She is genuinely pitiable, but is also a shining example of the case against homeschooling. When her cabinmates begin to mention, after a hot-looking day of physical exertion, that she should think about taking a shower, she just. doesn't. GET. it. She seems both totally unconscious of both the need to shower after all that exercise AND unaware of and/or unable to process the feedback from her peers. I found myself thinking at her in pity/exasperation, "Girl! I understand, completely- your cabinmates may be MAJOR bitches! But, SRSLY! If those bitches- all of whom are big gals themselves- are telling you you need to jump in the shower, just jump in the freakin' shower!! Those bitches are telling you that YOU STINK, and they're probably not just making that shit up!! If your mom thinks you're too 'sensitive' to go to real high school, then she probably never mentions when you have stinky pit-itis..."

Now, I will freely admit that I was quite often fodder for full on bully feeding-frenzies back in my HS salad days, and that is why I know that snarky "suggestions" to (in my case) run a comb through your hair and do something about your groucho-brows are most often grounded in some measure of fact. Bullies and bitchy girls are not particularly known for their creativity; if you have personal pong issues, they will latch onto that. For example, the only person who's mentioned my eyebrow issues and cracked-out hair in years is my own mom...who did not exactly consider yours truly to "sensitive" for HS, or for anything else, not to put too fine a point on it. (Ski school? Alone? At age 11? In St. Moritz? And I don't speak German? These were the sort of "challenges" that my mom was certain I could rise to with gusto. So- trust me here- I know all about rough social situations...and I still can't ski, btw.) Suffice it to say, as a former brace-faced, cokebottle-lensed, groucho-browed, hairy-legged, frizzy-haired dyed-in-the-wool DORK...well, let's just say I know what greases those bully crankshafts. Oh, yeah; and I've been fat, too. Probably forgot a few others in there, but cut me some slack- I've been trying to forget most of the above awkwardnesses for the past 10 years or so. Thanks, MTV.

This segways neatly into my next case study: the wannabe bully kid. This is a kid who seems to think that dual popped collars and a nasty, bitchy attitude are slimming accessories. He reminds me of the proverbial kid in the remedial class who gets off on calling his classmates retarded, then talks to himself all day about how he doesn't belong there, but doesn't even sound believable to himself. So Mr. DualPop is one of those prince charming types who refers to all the girls as bitches, hos, sluts and assorted other affectionate epithets, as well as telling everything that stands still long enough how some girl who rebuffed him has an ass out to THERE. I mean, srsly- I think I saw him telling a tree about that poor girl's junk-trunk. He seems to wander around in a sort of daze, like a transitory-amnesia-that-he's-at-fat-camp-too. He is endlessly shoving his not-inconsiderable bulk into everyone else's beeswax, to the extent that I was worrying about him getting it stuck there via inertia. He's like some weird, chimerical combo of my overweight, yenta-ish grandma, the ubiquitous HS fat kid who aspires to be a "real" bully and the equally-ubiquitous, weird, socially-inept guy who smells funny and has terrible acne, but who still makes occasional, painfully-gauche attempts to be one of the guys. He finally gets his own big 'ol booty hauled into the camp director's office when his fellow campers finally get their fill of hearing another fat kid make endless fat jokes about girls who could probably fit their entire bodies into one leg of his fat kid pants. When the camp director- who seems to have roughly modeled his affect after Tom Arnold's portrayal of Quinton McHale- calls Col. CollarPop on his toolish behavior, the kid variously cries, protests, lies, lies about protesting and crying, and whatever other combinations of that might be possible.

By the end of the 2 hour show, one thing is certain: I will never, NEVER send The Child to Camp Pocano Trails, or whatever it's called. Smoking counselors behind the cabins? Check! Creepy unsocialized kids tossed in to sink or swim? Check! The kind of bullies you have to assume parents sent their kids to Fat Camp to get AWAY from combined with rampant, seemingly unmonitored first-time sexual experimentation? Check and check!

There was a bit of a heartwarming moment at the end, when MC Collapopz submits- via a chain of acquaintances, natch- a long, handwritten letter to the young lady he's just spent the summer attempting to skewer, (and yes, double entendre very much intended...) in which he alternately apologizes for telling everyone and their body-mike about how humongous and ugly she is, moralizes about how he's spent all summer defending her from people talking about how humongous and ugly she is, says "she'll always have a place in his heart" and maintains that she should do the mature thing and get over being P.O.'d at him so they can be friends again. Okay, that was not the heartwarming part, I just got a little worked up again. The heartwarming part was watching the girl and her friend tear his cheese-spouting arse to shreds and crumple up his sweat-stained little attempt at face-saving.

I just noticed that it's about 100F in the room I'm in, which might be a factor in ratcheting up my snarkiness. But there is still a big chunk of raw, bullied kid inside of yours truly, which has led to me being an adult- and a mom- with a big, no-guff-taking-from-any-swine chip on my shoulder when it comes to bullying, which has been, with time, mellowed by a healthy dose of late-blooming, constructive conformity. So I hold myself to my own standard: would I snark any of the above to the faces of those confused, bitter, deeply hurting adolescents? Yes, yes I think I most likely would. If any of the bullies in my past had been subjected to a no-holds barred dressing-down by an adult and/or authority figure, it might have put a good, constructive scare into their desperately needy, self esteem-challenged little butts. And, if a well meaning adult had treated the ME of my past to a well-intentioned, desperately needed brow wax, I might have been saved several years of trauma. Not to mention a lifetime of obsessive eyebrow-tweaking.

It got late. I'm actually in need of a bit of a shower myself, at this point, as my inner alpha-teen has helpfully pointed out. And not that I have any food issues, but I haven't eaten anything all day besides a donut hole and a splash of milk in my tea. At some point, maybe I'll blog about some issues from my youth that I don't have, well, issues attached to...you know, whenever I figure out WTF they are.

And yes, the ski school story is 100% true. With a happy ending, no less: I snuck away when the instructor was yelling (in German, of course) at a fellow novice, and found a place that served amazing house-made bratwurst with a beer and grainy mustard sauce, spaetzle and bircher meusli. Even then, I had my priorities straight.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaZOXF83zBg&feature=related

OMFA!

So I finally managed to get to the Titian, Tintoretto & Veronese retrospective at the Boston MFA today; I'd really let it get down to the wire, as the show closes tomorrow. It was just as spectacular as one would imagine it would be, and this is coming from someone who went in with pretty durned high expectations. Of course I got busted within 5 minutes for snapping a (flashless, natch) picture...or rather, attempting to, since the exhibit was srsly packed, and all I ended up getting before the VSO got to me was a smeary orange blob.

IMO, the highlight of the show was not the religious and mythological works, although they were truly stunning, but rather the entire gallery devoted to commissioned portraits. I have a deep fascination with portraiture; there is something which strikes me as almost mystical about these snapshots, as it were, of individual humans, captured and held like preserved specimens of themselves...while the living, flesh-and-blood humans aged and withered until finally- to paraphrase Charlotte Bronte- both subject and artist had "for generations...been coffin dust." When I look into the liquid, sympathetic eyes of a Romanized Egyptian lady, rendered in almost impossibly fresh-looking encaustic on the outer wrappings of her ancient and lovingly preserved mummy...I feel something very akin to touching the hem of some Divine garment. When I looked today into the faces of two Venetian children, so vividly, vigorously alive, I really did (and still do) feel some aching, massive sense of eternity that is hard to contain; I have tears in my eyes now, just recalling the yawning sense of time that seemed to arch between myself and all those vital, dark-eyed ladies, gentlemen and promise-filled youths of The Veneto. Some had such fiery, intelligent stares- it was very easy to imagine them willing themselves- with some supreme pygmalion-esque effort- into the future, that they could forever continue to challenge their fellow humans with bold, even haughty gazes:

"I dare you to relegate me to obscurity"

I was struck with a profound, vanitas-like pang as I stared (for I don't even know how long...) into the mischievous face of the young heir to a Venetian silk-trading fortune. The museum card stated that his father, having casually "removed his glove" was holding the child in a "tender" fatherly embrace. I perceived- or seemed to- a different scene altogether. The child's attitude reminded me of nothing so much as my own family snapshots, in which my young nephew irrepressibly squirms under the grasp of whichever adult is attempting to keep him in the mis en scene. The Venetian child looks- to me- to be eternally caught in an intensely human (and humanizing!) moment of rebellion against his father's, and perhaps the artist's, attempts to constrain him within such an overformal canvas. The father's hand plays almost absently with the boy's delicate gold necklace; exactly the sort of possessive familiarity that The Child chafes under. In the adjacent frame, the boy's sister crumples handfuls of her mother's sumptuous silk skirts, holding the fabric up in a timeless gesture of infantine defense whilst peering around her mother's hip in timid curiosity. The woman gazes over at her husband with barely-concealed archness, "Is this over yet? The children are restless..." She clutches in one hand a martin pelt, said to be a talisman for safe pregnancy and childbirth. I am still, hours later, overwhelmed with curiosity; was she pregnant when she sat for this portrait? If so, what happened to her, and the child? How many children had she borne- and lost- before finally these two beat the odds and survived long enough for their parents to begin investing in them cautious aspirations for adulthood? I feel burnt by the unfairness of it all, that 400 years gape between me and this fellow young mother, that I need not ever feel the stark terror she must have known, that her children will not live to see another spring, that she will never rise from childbed, that her husband's ship will be lost...I want to resurrect her and her children, but there is nothing, nothing I can do.

Past and present seem, in my consciousness, superimposed seamlessly upon and around each other with a psychedelic clarity. In my mind's eye I see the hubble deep field images; it seems foolish and petty that I could be powerless to reach through a short span of centuries and lay hold of any of the vital, incandescent fellow beings that stare out with such ageless calm from their respective frames.

The last comparable exhibition I saw was the El Greco show at the Met, years ago now. I went with a friend who died several years later. Perhaps this is the root of my somewhat melancholy postulating on the subject/s above. I think with surprising frequency of my friend, and how impossible it seems that anyone so vital could be absolutely, irrevocably physically gone. Like those Venetian children, he will never age in the eyes of the world. I honestly don't know if it would feel better, or worse to see portraits of those same children in their old age. Because what I really want is for them to be alive now!

The show was truly fabulous; if you get a chance to see it tomorrow, you should definitely go. Sorry to be so pensive. Just happens, sometimes.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEzxchU4RUY

Ummm...where TF did your house go?

So I'm feeling basically pretty crappy today/tonight; I think maybe it has to do something with the chocolate mousse that I ate after it sat out all night. Ooops. D'oh.

In any case, I'm stuck in the room getting my weekly Duggar fix, and I'm just...confused by this week's ep.

The story seems to be that the Duggars make a trip to build a new laundry room for the Bates, their even more pronouncedly "we're religious! look at our clothes!" friends from somewhere else that isn't California of New York or Indiana. The Duggars- ever the aw-shucks publicity hounds- wrassle up what appears to be every contractor, builder and supplier in the area and get them to "donate" their time and materials, proudly proclaiming that they only paid $400 for labor. Once again, they seem to attribute this directly to divine intervention, and not to struggling mom n' pop businesses desperately hoping for any publicity they can get. One supplier even says through a grimace/grin that Jim Bob's "an old pro...who's probably stuck it to the diaper companies a couple of times."

Jim Bob, this is not quite the glowing compliment of that you seem to take it as. That is the type of "compliment" that would perhaps better be appreciated by folks such as Kenneth Lay, Bernie Madoff and their compatriots. But, last I heard, the ability to effectively "stick it to diaper companies" and all the inherent implications is more Mr. Burns than WWJD.

But, back to the show. Okay, so Jim Bob is going to "surprise" the Bates with a new laundry room. However, "visionary" that he is, he just gets totally caught up in the excitement, cut to footage of parts of the Bates home being demolished, cut to time-lapse of the Bates home being gutted, cut to somebody talking about the "frustration" of 50(!) people having to share 1 bathroom...aaand, the Bates have a massive, brand-new, steel-roofed home that they never asked for. And the kicker? No laundry room. Jim Bob says, offhandedly, that they never did get around to adding that laundry room...he says he figures the Bates can use their "old" space to do laundry. Which, um, is what I thought they were doing, before you came and dropped a huge Monopoly game-piece on their house and called it their new house.

Remind me never to indulge the Duggars if they somehow happen to enter my life and offer to babysit. I can just see it- us coming home from Date Night to find The Child has vanished...only to be replaced by a dozen larger, less attractive, donated Children and a "you're welcome" note.

If anyone's in the area, please feel free to drop off some delicious noodley soup and crispity crackers, because feeling ill regresses me. Obviously.

In Summation:

http://galleryoftheabsurd.typepad.com

Surprise: Agoraphobia!

So I'm back from my moderately ill-fated NYC adventure. Long story short, I lived in The Village and Lower Manhattan longer than anywhere else in my adult life. I was never a big fan of Midtown, with its ginormous Molochs glassing and steeling all over my shiz. My parents very generously booked me a room next to theirs in Midtown; when I stepped off the elevator, the first thing I saw was a shiny plaque proclaiming that the 12th floor was the transitional home of "23 Freed Americans, Former Hostages of Iran...Were...Guests Here on th 12th Floor, January 28-31, 1981..."

Okaay. So 4 days on the 12th floor is preferable to being held hostage in an occupied embassy for 444 days. And the 12th floor is so proud of this fact that it felt a need to transmit its ebullience via plaque. I can only imagine what the other floor's plaques must commemorate: a "better than Entebbe" floor? A "cake walk for USS Indianapolis survivors" floor? The 24 hour "beats naked subzero punishment laps in the Gulag" exercise room?

This is where my mind goes when I'm anxious. And then when I suddenly burst out in anxious-hysterical giggles after a long anxious silence and someone asks me what TF I'm giggling about, I say something like "heheheeeAchilleLaurohehaaha!" Because, the thing is, nobody can ever accuse me of not having a sense of humor about, like, pretty much everything. But I HAVE been accused of having a sense of humor about, like, pretty much everything, aka "you awful, insensitive harpy!"

Problem is, I'm VERY sensitive. I'm so freaking sensitive that if I didn't try to find ways to laugh about awful bloodcurdling things, I wouldn't be able to function. I'd be like a goth in an SNL sketch, but even less funny. So being back in NYC for the first time in many years, sans the DH and au The Child was even harder on my already fragile-feeling psyche than expected. As usual when it comes to such things (which I will doubtless blog on about at a later date) my timing was way, waaaay bad. Here is the rundown:

I have to explain to my dad why the soldiers are searching cars at the Midtown tunnel. Some diplomatic security guy pounds on the car when we start to enter the hotel garage; he, along with the rest of the world, didn't see the plate in the rear window. Elevator lets us off at 12th floor, where I'm greeted by the aforementioned cheery plaque. I need to pick up and send business faxes, so I go down to the hotel business center. I overhear two hotel employees talking about something involving "exploded...people on their roofs...all but 2 are missing...not even an hour ago, etc." Everywhere I look, people are gathered into worried-looking little knots. There seems to be an epidemic of palmtop checkage. In my years away from The City, I have yet to lose my NY Manners, so I approach a hotel staff-knot and inquire, "What the heck am I missing here? Did something just happen? I'm really thinking I missed something big, right?" I am told that a violent midair collision has just occurred over the Hudson, that nobody knows why it happened, that we all hope it isn't terrorists, that there was an explosion and thousands of people saw it and couldn't do anything maybe it was because they opened the Statue of Liberty back up...I feel the bottom drop out of my stomach. It actually feels like I got physically kneed in the gut. I see huge goosebumps heave themselves up on my forearms. I numbly go through the motions of sending my faxes, thank the still-kibbitzing staff, and somehow make it back to my room. There is no interwebz in the room. My mom comes in and begins reading to me about the crash from a news feed on her phone, and I suddenly realize I can't listen to another word. My head is full of fire and smoke and sirens and fighter planes and empty streets and I am literally shaking from head to toe with useless adrenaline.

I never set foot outside that hotel. I stayed in my room, playing solitaire, reading, watching tv, fighting with The Child over bed space and trying not to think about 8 years ago. Or 20 years ago. Or any of the other times. My mom kept "encouraging" me to just "deal with it, face it"and other maternal gems that I'm sure I'll be tossing out in a decade or so. Problem is, when it comes to the particular set of neuroses in question, I feel quite justified in throwing out the ol' Mr. Rochester special, "I do my best, have done it, will do it."

My mother has only the vaguest concept of what, exactly, I have faced and dealt with. In truth, I don't even know that I do.

There was a time, 5 years ago or so, when I was traveling with my then-fiancee (now the DH) on a flight that was scheduled for a brief stopover; no changing planes, just refueling. Not long into the +/-3 hour flight, I became aware of a growing sense of...off-ness. There was...something...about the vibration of the engines against the soles of my feet. I tried hard, and I CANNOT stress just how hard, to convince myself that it was all in my head. I tried meditating, and when that didn't work, I tried medicating, which served only to make me feel vaguely-sedated terror as opposed to shrieking in the aisles panic. I looked down the length of the plane, and saw a fellow with a regulation wiffle-cut sitting on the aisle several rows ahead. he was sitting rigid as a statue, his single visible hand gripping his armrest. His knuckles were white and trembling. I suddenly got a whole helluva lot more scared.

I decided that, if the plane touched down safely for our stopover, I would walk off, dragging my then-fiancee if need be, and wait for a connecting flight. I was even willing to sacrifice my checked bags; I didn't want to make a huge fuss, or at least I didn't think I wanted to. I just wanted off that plane. BAD.

The plane landed safely, thankfully, and with a bit of an unexpected twist...at least for my fellow passengers. As we taxied to the gate, the pilot came on the PA and said that the planned stopover would not be occurring. We would need to change planes. Another plane was meeting us at the gate. There was no explanation. I didn't lose my checked bags, perhaps the true miracle of the day.

I am not someone overridden and/or overwhelmed by irrational phobias. I face my fears constantly, and successfully. But when I make the decision not to try facing them, there's most often a durn good reason. I'm far from insulted by racist allusions to rats and cockroaches...I'm happy being the first to know a ship's sinking, and the last to perish in a radioactive nightmare scenario. I stayed in that shoebox-sized hotel room on the happy hostage floor, and when we left The City, I got right back to my life.

Take that, life.

p.s. I wrote this in a massive hurry...apologies for any grammatical/syntactical/spelling/whatever related errors. k thx bai!

Fast & Loose & Literalism= Me, Annoyed

Yet again I find myself fascinated/irritated with self-proclaimed "Bible Believing" Christians who seem to play fast and loose at sanitizing, ignoring and even inventing scripture whenever the slightest shadow of hermeneutic dissonance crosses their consciousness.

The ever-dulcet Michelle Duggar just proudly proclaimed on my DVR of "18 Kids and Counting" that Jesus said to "do unto others as you would have them do for you." I can only assume that she was attempting to refer to the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself," which, although scriptural, is initially found in Hebrew, not Greek scripture. The supposed commandment to "do unto others, etc." was actually a statement made in the Babylonian Talmud attributed to Rabbi Akiva, (often called "Akiva's One Foot Torah") but the trouble doesn't end there, because even Rabbi Akiva didn't say it. The actual statement quoted with such pride and confidence by Mrs. Duggar appears- in that form- nowhere in either Hebrew OR Greek scripture. The original statement of Akiva would most likely be considered offensive and possibly blasphemous by Christians of the Duggar's ilk, as it could be interpreted as calling into question the necessity for complete and utter belief in and/or knowledge of scripture as the means to salvation. Indeed, it pokes fun at those who do become rigid and over-convinced of their own correct path.

It calls to mind the now infamous statement of Joshua Duggar's new father-in-law, describing the reasoning behind the rather spartan wedding celebration: his statement was to the effect of "When the bible talks about 'wine' it actually means 'grape juice.'"

I'm sorry, but that wasn't what it meant. Nope. It just...wasn't. Noah did not get himself into trouble from hitting the grape juice. No group of Romanized Judeans would have stuck around at a wedding to drink grape juice. Holophernes probably wouldn't have slept through having his head sawed off if he'd been tossing back Yehudit's primo...grape juice. I could go on, but I suspect I've made my point.

I will say this- if you feel that it is a violation of your faith to drink wine, okay. 1.8 billion Muslims agree with you 100%. But please, do not make a big production of your belief in scriptural infallibility...just so long as scripture agrees with YOU.

I mean, gee, I personally would feel a lot better if what was actually MEANT when Greek scripture referred to the soldier piercing Jesus' side with a spear was "the roman soldier tickled Jesus' side with a big feather." And, hey, why not? If "saying" and "meaning" are mutually exclusive...why the heck not?

Boy howdy! I can't wait to get started on MY version of what scripture actually "means" as opposed to all those pesky, not-agreeable-to-me things that it "says!"

First up on my list: when it said in Genesis "tree of knowledge," it actually meant "tree of life."

'Scuse me while I go be immortal, k thx bai. Right?

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaqo2IhH4kw

Edit/Addendum to the August 5 Post

Update: I am, as expected, unimaginably sore this morning. Between the too-heavy Beretta, the recoil from the too-heavy Beretta and the lack of Pilates for the past few months, I feel roughly as though I spent yesterday playing catch with a 40 lb. medicine ball. That, or possibly some novel circuit training protocol involving chin-ups, push-ups and being repeatedly kicked by a mule. But that is clearly a far more awkward simile, so I'm going to just stick with the medicine ball comparison. Still totally worth it, though! I'm already looking forward- with a vengeance- to heading back for another go-round with a nice, adolescent boy-size boomstick.

Also with slightly less DEET; I seem to possess a near supernatural ability to become very literally covered with mosquito bites over every square inch of exposed (and often not-so-exposed) skin while those around me get off with nary a nibble. While I've been told by an extremely credible source that my mosquito-magnet mutant ability is most likely related to an unusually efficient O2/CO2 metabolism, good pulmonary function and thus technically a healthy sign...even so, all I can say is all the puffing power in the world is cold comfort when I'm eating Benadryl like candy and soaking in calamine whilst my allergic asthma-troubled DH remains in skeeter stealth mode. I'm sure, of course, that it's a clear grass-is-greener issue, but there are plenty of times I'd rather need an occasional huff of albuterol than lose sleep as I scratch myself bloody and spend mornings wandering around in a post-Benadryl haze. In any case, I soaked myself in hi-grade DEET to the extent that my lips, gums and tongue were numb, my skin took on a saran-wrap like sheen and the fumes rising from my sweaty self burnt my eyes worse than the powder blowback. I did not, however, sustain a single bite, so in hindsight it still may well have been an acceptable unpleasantness.

In a Gift of the Magi-ish twist, my gift to the DH (a shooting vest and shooting glasses) were replicated by my in-laws. At least the vest. Thankfully, their gift is a lightweight mesh and mine was a heavier, leather padded model, but still, I feel a tad crappy for not double checking with them first. Live and learn, I suppose. Naturally, the DH was his usual gracious self, and being the practical sort of guy that he is, I have no doubt that he'll make good use of both vests; considering it's still in the 120 degree fahrenheit range back on our home turf, the mesh one may turn out to get a heckuva lot more use for the next few months.

My purchase for me, on the other hand...sadly, I can't see much use for a crab trap in the low desert. Maybe I can rig it out for crayfish with some extra mesh...word on the interwebs is that you can catch bushels of the invasive little bugs less than an hour from my house. SoCal etouffee, here I come!!

After I catch my bluefish, that is. So, um, crap. On reflection, I may never get to go home...

Many 'Appy Returns!

Today is my wonderful DH's birthday. I'm doing something akin to praying that his gifts will arrive on time; I had them shipped- ostensibly- to his parents' house instead of our summer house because that's where we are- ostensibly- soon to be heading. The summer house is a bona fide hot mess, and when I say "hot," I mean only that the A/C is not on and the mugginess inside is such that fat drops of condensation have formed on the granite countertop near the sink and every bit of cloth feels damp and has that moldy-towel smell. The Spiders, upon whom I perpetrated a terrible genocide less than a week ago, have returned in full force and are again to be found in every corner and right angle in the house. I'm tempted to make a short film entitled "The Eternal Spider" but that would probably be in very poor taste...which is my way of saying "I have no idea how to make and produce a short film." (I'm not a particularly "sensitive" type when it comes to "those" type of parodies...I still maintain that humor is the most effective weapon against tragedy and oppression; and now for my second Mel Brooks reference in 2 days: please refer to, like, most Mel Brooks films. That is all.) In any case, The Spiders have returned en masse, and now cheerfully occupy much of the house, again. I am tempted to make a Duggar reference, but will not, because that would be both nonsensically hyperbolic and just plain obnoxious, and I try to refrain from the aforementioned. They are not funny literary tools, and even Mel Brooks would never resort to anything but comedically-driving hyperbole. And the most venerable Mr. Brooks, while going for the societal jugular in the name of comedy, is not one to stoop to pure obnoxious mean-spiritedness. (Important newsflash for "Conservative Comedian" types, a la Fox's immediately-defunct Daily Show so-called "alternative:" straight-up mean humor, racist humor, sexist humor, and all other humor-against-the-disenfranchised-by-the-disenfranchiser is NOT FUNNY to ANYONE except the person perpetrating it, and their fellow discriminators/sycophants. When Mel Brooks was "mocking" African-Americans, he was actually mocking stoopit white people, and if you didn't/don't get that, please desist from attempts at humor-making, posthaste! k thx bai!)

And now for a brief intermission: please insert a nostalgic birthday montage (HERE)

Okay! Magic happened, and it is now many hours since I began writing this post...while you were enjoying the birthday montage, the DH and I were loading up The Child for a trip to Grandma and Grandpa's house; they had very generously offered to watch The Child so that the DH and myself could enjoy a rare, Child-less date. (And when I say "rare," I mean it! We've seen maybe 4 movies, tops, since we married.) It was due to storm, so after dropping off The Child we hurried off to the sporting clays range for some good, clean, all-American, lead-fortified fun. Damn straight!

I know that I recently posted that I am not the sporting type. That's not entirely true; I was feeling quite sporting today. But then, just speaking words such as "skeet," "trap" and "long rabbits" puts one in a sporting sort of humor, a la Jay Gatsby in his Oxford days. I also felt a great deal more sporting after I broke a few clays...there I go being all goal oriented again.

The Beretta favored by the DH was too heavy for me, to put it mildly. It actually became such a task to hold it up the last few stations that aiming was a joke; just managing to lift it shoulder-high felt like a victory. I will be sore tomorrow. I can't even imagine how sore.

The DH liked my gift! *phew!* And his birthday dinner was yummy, albeit the service was interminable and The Child needed shlepping to and from the bathroom at least six times.

When we returned to my in-laws' home, The Child was so amped on a combination of exhaustion, cake and doting attention that It didn't get to sleep until around 11pm. (The cake in question was, btw, fabulous, and a credit to the Italian heritage of this island's bakers.)

And now, here I am, writing the rest of my blog, tired beyond belief and barely if at all making sense. I think I'm just about done for the day. nighty night and a last happy birthday!

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yaw7qX_ZDNE&feature=related

Gooooooooooooooooooooaaaaal!!!!!! (oriented)

Today was the first day of the rest of my clamming.

After a brief hiccup at the Southold town hall ("You can't turn the doorhandle. It doesn't open then," said the helpful chap who found us wandering around, bewildered that the building was locked at midday.) we became the proud recipients of official Town of Southold/Non-Resident/Non-Commercial Shellfish Permit(s)! We also became the confused recipients of a very thick, very grainy stack of photocopies telling us a great many things that I, at least, had no freaking idea how to interpret. Oh noes: we can't fish in our own creek? Oh, wait, we can if we are South of the Southern Southward something-or-other, and leewards of the osprey pole on the North-facing quadrangle, and only on alternate November 27ths. Or something. I am, admittedly, a very poor reader of maps, and after paying $50 for my permit, became panic-fully convinced that our entire area was "closed to shellfishing," After more careful map-reading, the DH discovered that we WERE in fact on the right side of the osprey pole, and so we were happily off clamming! Right after I got lost for like an hour looking for the bait shop so I could buy a clam bucket and a little net for The Child.

Okay. So NOW, we were happily off clamming! We just clammed up a storm! We were clamming here and clamming there, and having a great old time. Or rather, the DH was clamming up a storm, The Child was proudly putting empty shells in the clam bucket and catching enough laver in his net to feed Wales. I was determinedly fishing! I was fishing the "sporting" way, sans bait, with naught but a flashy lure and determination! Boy-howdy, did I ever fish! I fished, and I fished, by myself and not by myself, as my family clammed and kayakers came and went and every osprey on the island ate its fill of bluefish and then flew back to assorted Southy quadrangulous poles to laugh at me. I fished until the waters around me were alive with bluefish snapping mosquitoes out of the deepening dusk and I kept fishing when massive, ornery crabs suddenly burst forth from the eelgrass as though by prearranged signal, causing the DH to scoop up The Child from the crabbily roiling shallows. The DH and The Child returned to the house. I backed gingerly out of the water as foot-long crabs surrounded me, menacingly waving their claws like interpretive dancers trying to be trees. I stood on the shore, changed lures for the umpteenth time, and kept casting away, flashily and with determination. I caught laver. I caught more of that freaky Old Gregg hair stuff. I almost caught an osprey and went to federal prison, but didn't. I changed lures again, and kept casting into the by now crazily-jumping bluefish 20 feet from shore. I vowed to stay all night if need be.

After an indeterminate period of time, my dehydration-enhanced concentration was broken by a repetitive, urgent sound; it was the DH, hollering my name in a fashion both repetitive and urgent. Duh. As I turned to holler back, I noticed a somewhat confused-looking fellow on a bike doing his best to evince disgust at all the hollering. And then, I noticed something else! A tug on the line!! A BIG tug!! I hollered something unintelligible at nobody in particular, but I did notice that bike-man quickly rode away. I tugged, the (giant fish!) tugged back, and I ever so gently, carefully- brimming with pride- reeled in my line. Something very large and pale was at the end, fighting hard! As I delicately reeled in the last few feet, I finally got a glimpse of my (giant fish!)

A very large, pale, hard-fighting crab. I lost the crab. I wandered off towards home, feeling neither flashy nor determined. I told the DH that fishing without bait was dumb, and I was never doing it again. He said that it was more challenging, or something like that; that it was about the experience. I said screw the experience, I wanted my bluefish.

He said he forgot how "goal oriented" I was. He was right. I am not the sporting type. I am the type who wants to catch a fish, and preferably, many fish. I mean, sure I enjoy communing with nature and all that...as long as I catch my fish.

But at least we had all those clams, right?

Um...not quite. so after we had them all in the bucket, and swished them clean and all that happy stuff, I was stricken by an attack of law-abiding citizen's paranoia. I once again tried to make sense of the grainy photocopied maps provided by the town hall, and my paranoia increased. There were grey areas delineating off-limits areas, and grey areas delineating open areas. And the pages of regulations accompanying the maps appeared to delineate regulations either contradictory or completely unrelated to the maps. It felt sort of like trying to get legal advice from a Mel Brooks script, except less funny.

The DH put the clams back in the creek.

We ordered pizza and a chicken parm hero.

They were out of sandwich rolls, but luckily I am feeling less goal oriented on the hero front than the bluefish front. Mostly I just feel itchy. Very, very itchy. I just took 2 Benadryl but they don't seem to be working.

It was a really exciting day! I am proud of my family. Bluefish can wait; The Child wants to cuddle and that's just about the best thing ever. My goals just got reoriented! And I couldn't be happier.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2Z6tDSb6c8

Crabs, Sad, Sharks, Fish, Guns, Happy

I've been feeling oppressed by the news from Tel Aviv; a (still unknown? WTF?) gunman entered a GLBT center and opened fire with an automatic weapon, leaving at least 2 dead and many wounded. Quite a few blogs, as well as comments to news stories covering the incident, seem to be trying to turn it into a "this is what you get" type of situation, as opposed to the pure tragedy that it is. There has been a barrage of finger pointing regarding alleged Israeli war crimes, (I say "alleged" because if only one thing about the ridiculously, obscenely ongoing Israeli-Arab conflict is true, it is that not every Israeli action is a war crime, just as not every Arab action is a bid for freedom. Both sides have perpetrated acts both shameful and inhumane- that's all I'll say about that!) alleged Israeli discrimination, alleged Israeli nation-stealing and the standard chorus of straight up anti-semitic BS. This is, to me, is essentially taking a big, fat poop on a tragic event and calling it icing. Because if there is one thing that can be said, indisputably, in Israel's favor, it is that it is the only- the only- nation in the Middle East in which GLBT people may legally exist as such. It remains a criminal, and often capital, offense in every other country in the region, as well as being grounds for quasi-legal "honor killing" by one's family.

It is in this climate that the unique GLBT community of Tel Aviv has evolved as perhaps the sole "open" community in the Middle East. Israel (indisputably in her favor, as I said) grants asylum to the possible victims of GLBT-related honor killings, which has made it the Mecca, as it were, of openly GLBT Arabs, North Africans, Turks and many other ethnicities and cultures. The Israeli GLBT community may well be the ONLY community in Israel- perhaps the Middle East as a whole- where Jews, Christians, Muslims and others coexist as merely fellow human beings.

This is why the attempts by bloggers and various internet gadflies to turn this event into a politicized "payback" are more than just wrong...they are almost obscenely dehumanizing and minimizing. This was not a crime perpetrated in revenge upon Israelis as a whole, although the vast majority of Israelis have openly and vigorously deplored it. This was a blow struck against a minority, composed of minorities, in a nation of minorities. This was not a blow struck against oppression or disenfranchisement of a people...this was a blow struck against diversity, against tolerance in an attempt (which I dearly hope to be futile) to preserve old, familiar hatreds.

I could, of course, be wrong; very little information has been released regarding this incident. But what I do know is that the community attacked is targeted, easily and often, by the fundamentalist demagogues of every faith in the region. Tel Aviv's pride parade has been a thorn in the sides and a mote in the eyes of a multitude of fear-mongering, hate-spewing religionists for many a year. It is, ironically, one issue upon which the fundamentalist, anti-progress "leaders" of the region's 3 major faiths are reliably in agreement. If this attack serves to destroy the brave emergence of Tel Aviv's GLBT community, then it will be a sad testament to the victory of hate over love, all in the name of faith. And thus a truly terrible loss, in the end, for faith.

In other news, I went fishing today for bluefish in the salt creek outside the summer house. I waded out into thigh-deep waters, looked down into the murky, opaque, seaweed-clouded swirls surrounding me and tried very, very hard not to think about Shark Week. Specifically, the 1916 fatal, unprovoked attacks in Raritan Creek, N.J. Nope, I was not thinking about Shark Week AT ALL as I felt...something...delicately scrabbling at the fresh scratch on my ankle and scuttling over my foot. I was definitely not thinking about Shark Week when...something else...suddenly snapped loudly at the surface a scant yard to my right, nor did I think of leeches when I thought I saw one swimming by and yelled to my DH, "HEY!! MARINE LEECHES ONLY GO FOR FISH RIGHT?!?" to which he very sensibly replied, "THE CHILD IS SCREAMING IN MY EAR AND IT LOST A SHOE, I'M SORRY BUT I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!" at which point I decided I would just really stop thinking about leeches and yelled back to the DH, "UM, OH NOTHING...DID YOU FIND THE SHOE!?" which he had not.

After the DH had very amazingly agreed to take The Child back home, still single-shoed, I stuck around, determined to catch dinner. I honestly don't even know what I was thinking when a long, thick, brownish segment of cattail rose to the surface several feet in front of me, but it was something like "Hunh! how odd that a segment of cattail would float to the surface in such a, well, intentional appearing manner!" I was still bemusedly looking at the segment of cattail when it suddenly bent in freaking half and LOOKED at me with its pointy, very definitely non-vegetable-kingdom FACE!! So, it was not a segment of cattail, as you may have guessed by my clumsy dramatic lead-up. It was some kind of pipefish, which- excuse me- I was like totally unaware lived around here. Weird little pointy face and all! Who knew!?

I caught nothing but some green hairy stuff and big, squeaky clumps of laver. Which, when just emerging from the water, tangled in my rig, looks quite distressingly exactly like Old Gregg's head.

I was still out there, not thinking about whether I'd rather catch a shark or have to drink bailey's out of a shoe, when my family called me in for dinner.

In Summation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg

p.s. Some ladies in a little inflatable raft found the shoe! Woot!!