What a rip!

Mr. Tang on the phone just now:

"If I hear one more time how funny Laura Bush is, I'm going to shit my pants. She was reading someone else's speech, for godsakes, and not even doing a good job of it. Kee-rist."

Indeed, Mr. Tang, indeed.

Conversational snippet I'm glad I didn't hear the beginning of

"That's just about when GAW-ID.... will begin to PUN-NISH you."

Conversational snippet I wish I'd heard the beginning of

"Maybe you should just become a male prostitute."

My! Eyes!

I hate to judge, but anyone who can watch this video without a look of horror on their face is a straight up idiot.

Is that judgy? That sounds judgy.

All I know is that Johnny Ramone wants his look back-- and there will be revenge from beyond the graving for using his look in the service of this particular work, for which the secondary meaning of the word "cheese" was invented.

Misanthrope Soap on a Rope

Holy shit, did you know the Pope died?

Oh, Mr. Tang and I have been enjoying that one all week. I had no idea of the god-like status of the Pope, the universal adoration he enjoyed. I kind of thought of him as a gay-hating old crust who thought women were icky unless they were churning out babies. But you can't get away from protestations of Pope-love. I would not be surprised if Osama released another videotape just to let people know that he's bummed out about John Paul, too. Jesus himself did not get this much hooplah when he died, and, uh, isn't Christianity actually named after him?

Here are the diverse and unlikely sources from which I have heard mention of the Pope's new status as a heavenly winged creature:

1. The Palo Alto Daily News (Stick to reporting exciting stories about which city council member frowned at which library commissioner... I think other outlets have the international news all taken care of.)
2. Bono, at a U2 concert (he removed the rosary the pope had given him and kissed it and hung it on the microphone... awwwwwww)
3. Two old ladies in Rascal scooters heading out from the old folks' home across the street ("He had all kinds of problems," they said, as they scooted away)
4. Sports Illustrated (apparently JP played a little hockey in his youth)
5. Every flagpole between here and San Francisco

Thankfully the news has not troubled the pages of intellectual not-spot US Weekly, a magazine so shallow that they only mentioned the Asian tsunami because a swimsuit model was injured.

I mean... am I really alone here? I don't particularly give a crap about the pope. He was a sick old man and I felt for his suffering, but I certainly wouldn't stand in line for 24 hours to see his corpse. Don't hate me.

Q. Who would be hating you? This is the Audience of One.
A. Well, self-hate is the most virulent kind, don't you think? Don't hate me... me.

Q. Any cheese updates?
A. Yes, have been enjoying a nice cotija... it's salty and good. Also had a nice Exlporateur the other night. Don't even want to know the fat content. I think if you have it with red wine the fat is magically eliminated.

Time to shop, ladies!

If you're like me, then you truly do love the spring cleaning. You like to make lists of different rebellious household areas that need to be brought under control, and you love to tackle those areas with an OC intensity that sees nothing wrong with wrapping a chopstick in a cloth to get up into all the nooks and crannies and understands that you can't really call a room CLEAN, can you, until ALL THE BASEBOARDS are completely dusted off, top and sides. You like placing the items that were loosely jumbled onto shelves in boxes, bins, or baskets, neatly sorted by kind. You might like all this so much that after a particularly satisfying re-org you might wander by the newly defeated area a few times just to revel in it. You might pull open the pantry door and pretend to want a snack, just so that you can pull out the Sweet bin and the Savory bin to your own intense admiration.

Okay, most people probably aren't like me. But then again, there are enough to keep both Hold Everything and The Container Store in business, so who knows.

Where was I going with this? I have wandered far afield from my original intent. Yes, fields, now I remember. If you are like me, then during your spring cleaning you will sort through your closet to remove outdated, worn-out, or unloved clothes. Then you will stop to survey your closet with some discontent and perhaps chide it for rarely producing the outfits of your fantasies. You'll say, "Clothes, why do you insist on exposing my upper arms? Why are my collarbones an open book to you? How dare you exploit the privacy of my knees? Do I really have to go all the way to Pennsylvania to get that Amish look?"

And the answer is a hushed and reverent, "No!" For a small sum that is truly Christ-like in its benevolence and respect for the pocketbook of the modest woman, you can not only get your own dowdy custom-made dresses, but you can inflict them on your daughters as well. The site even has that rarely-seen-and-greatly-missed foundation garment, bloomers, which it describes as being "great for horseback riding," which instantly made me think of the Little House on the Prairie episode where mean Nellie tricked Laura out of her beloved horse Bunny. The bloomers are in a section called Lingerie, and I have to say that it is an insult to the French to use their sexy word to describe these offerings.

I found this site, incidentally, from another one called Ladies Against Feminism, which I was pretty convinced was a Betty Bowers-like parody. But upon further review, I really think that it is not. It is scary, deeply scary, although I certainly have found a community that would applaud my sitting at home on my ass while Mr. Tang works all day.

Whew, done for the day.

I just made an appointment with a therapist! Time to email Mr. Tang for my praise.

To quote Keanu: Whoa.

Had a real uplifting moment the other day. I was pecking away at the computer--no, no, that makes it sound like I was actually writing. I was doing nothing near so productive, merely absorbing the productive efforts of others while my jaw hung about 1/8" from the closed position and my breaths passed shallowly through lips wet with spittle. It was fairly late in the day... about the same time as now, actually, round about 4pm, the time at which, in training left over from corporate whoredom, I fall into a stew of self-loathing about the uselessness of my day and my complete lack of success in achieving any of the goals I laid out for myself in such a peppy and ultimately doomed fashion in the morning shower. Oh, except this particular morning I hadn't showered-- can't remember why, but probably I got up so late that I was really hungry, so I decided to shower later and eat first, and then I took my cereal while reading online news, as is my habit, and then I got utterly sucked up in reading online blogs and playing online poker or maybe Scrabble, or really anything in the entire world I might do besides put my brain into gear and move forward with my life. So very inert am I, so very much the human equivalent of neon, only not as bright nor as useful, that if I achieve only one thing on the lengthy list I have of Positive Things I Need To Do, I pat myself on the back and call it a day, after first chronicling my accomplishment by email to Mr. Tang, who works 14-hour days yet always responds with warm praise. Sweet Mr. Tang.

(Oy, I really do not have the gift of making succint paragraphs. Always I got dinged for this whenever writing had to be handed in for grades, the long paragraphs and the long sentences. But it's my style, I would say, my voice. No, it's crap, was usually the response. You know the Grammar Police function in Word? Always it was underlining my sentences with green squiggly lines and telling me my sentences were too long and unweildy. Eventually I had to turn that feature off, because I'll be goddamned if I'm going to be copy-edited by an animated paper clip.)

So on this particular day the accomplishment I was pursuing with all the fervor of President Bush demanding social justice for gays was finding myself a therapist. Before I got the old dingeroo at the last job Mr. Tang and I had agreed that I would take the position, which I was very reluctant to do, but at the same time get some career counseling to find out what I am meant to do with my life. Although I never did get a career counselor, very quickly the answer became clear: I was meant to torment every boss I have with my insolence, scorn, lack of tact, and theatrics. I don't mean to; it's my nature, just like the crappy long sentences. After my brief and tortured tenure there it became clear that the counseling I need is going to have to go a bit deeper than which Myers-Briggs type I am. I hate with white hot fire to work for anyone who I perceive of as being dumb or political or unconcerned with the unique and fascinating humanity of each of his/her workers, etc, etc, and that pretty much rules out 99.9% of all potential bosses. As a friend put it to me yesterday, I am virtually unemployable. Hm. Sad... but true. So true.

So I am in pursuit of a therapist to help me work out my authority issues so that I might become a happy corporate monkey, but the thought of that depresses me, getting my head shrunk just so I can numbly fit into the corporate world, but then... that's okay, because I was already depressed anyway by my complete lack of courage in pursuing any alternates to corproate monkeydom. But maybe the therapist can do something about that, too? So I got a list of area therapists from my insurance company and, instead of skimming through it and calling a couple I spent about half an hour painstakingly tabbing through the columned list to make the right hand column line up perfectly, the whole time saying to myself, "Stop... STOP... no, STOP.... stop fucking around! Call! Call!"

And the closet in the room we use as an office is covered with mirrors... sometimes during the day I will glance back over my shoulder to confirm that... yep, still cute. Only on this particular day I caught an accidental glance and stopped dead with horror. Oh, I think it's important to mention here that among my other vices I also have a secret addiction to Spaghettios, and as long as we are being brutally honest, I will mention that on occasion I will simply open a can, stick in a spoon, and begin my dining experience straight away. Oh, don't make that face. I mean, it's Spaghettios. It's not like heating really enhances the delicious herbs and spices. Nonetheless, I do have the sense to carry on this habit entirely in secret, as if I were sipping at cooking sherry, because if Mr. Tang knew he might think less of me. Did I mention that Mr. Tang is a little particular with what he eats? I can reliably gross him out by licking yogurt off the foil top after opening. He is very tender that way.

So, to sum up, there I am, already filled to the brim with my usual 4pm loathing, and I see myself in the mirror. I am unwashed and my hair is rough and matted. I am in a robe. At 4pm. It is clear and 80 degrees outside, but I have been inside all day, busily hating myself for my procrastination. I am unemployed and depressed. There is an empty can of Spaghettios on the desk beside me with a spoon coming out of it, and I am scrolling through an onscreen list of therapists so that I might become better in the fine art of sucking up.

YES! Take that, Life, you bastard! I finally have you where I want you! I'm on top o' the world, and I'm strapping on a jet pack! Next stop, the face of God!

Yep, quite a moment.

On the bright side, that Irish cheddar really is very nutty and delicious. I think I'll go have some now.

Useless... and yet fascinating

There's something vaguely Bridget Jones-y about this blog, less the pining after gentlemen, of course.

Woof

Wow. It seems that even when my goal is to goof off I can't stay focused. I'm starting to think I got some serious issues. And now I'm not even doing so well with the fake money in Texas Hold 'Em. Oh, I'm still ahead-- don't worry about me and my fake solvency. Just that I'm no longer Queen O' The Fake World. No longer a fake high roller. When I roll into the fake casino, I no longer receive a fruit basket and a showgirl sent discreetly to my room in the evenings. I've been knocked down a fake peg or two. Sigh, yet another thing I suck at.

Attended a classic SF event last weekend, the Urban Iditarod. This, I'm good at. It involves dressing up in a vaguely dog-themed costume and pulling a shopping cart along the streets of San Francisco, stopping every half mile or so to drink. Actually, drinking at all points during the event is strongly encouraged-- usually by the time I get to the starting line I'm so hammered that I'm already doing that thing where you stand far, far too close to your conversation partners while declaring your life-long admiration of them and weeping. My team is usually composed of either all women, or women and men made to dress like women, and our costumes tend to run towards the skimpy. We are all agressive flirts, so it is usually our job to kiss up to the police to keep them from chasing us away from our stops. "Oooooo, your big black boots and bristly mustache are so sexy, and they don't make you look at all gay!"

I love this event, because it underscores some things I really love about San Francisco. I mean, there we are staggering down the middle of the street holding tallboys or what have you, quite often displaying a lot of flesh... and the cops merely say things like "Keep to the sidewalks, please," without even bothering to enforce even that feeble regulation. And for me, personally, it's not about the drunken shenanigans, but about the learning. For instance, this year I learned that the race seems quite amusing to older residents of Chinatown, who could almost always be counted on to giggle as we passed, even while their children and grandchildren looked on with horror. Also, I learned that food rummaged from garbage cans can be quite tasty. Luckily, I learned this only second-hand, from a 22-year-old slacker named... um, Clark, I think, or Chester. Something nerdy with a C. He had an angelic face and various patchy tufts of hair and de riguer huge things in his ears. I'm guessing there might have been a tattoo or two under his clothes. He told me that he scrounges food from garbage cans, but when I stopped and had a fry or two off the plate of a tourist sitting in the sun, he was shocked. Everyone's got their level of comfort, I guess.

That trick of eating off the tourists' plates is pretty old hat-- we do it every year, but I'll be damned if it isn't worth a chuckle every time. Out of us, that is-- the tourists don't know what to think. Strangely enough, no one ever gets too upset-- some even laugh. Their checklist for San Francisco included visiting Alcatraz, eating clam chowder from a sourdough bread bowl, and seeing either some freaks or gays, or maybe both... and look! Here are freaks right here, and we didn't even have to go to Haight Ashbury! Wait till the folks back home hear about this. My, my. One year I was hanging out with this guy who had had throat surgery and couldn't talk. His team was dressed as the Scooby Doo gang, and because of his speechlessness he was Scooby. He had a pad of paper and a pencil hanging around his neck that he used to communicate. Usually when I take the food I'm real gentle... I saunter up, poke at the plate a bit, and select something small like a fry or a sip of beer. But this guy was really wasted so he would just roll up and start pawing around, grabbing up entire chicken strips or pieces of fish, completely ruining their whole meal. His victims would look pretty upset and horrified, but then I would indicate the pad of paper and say, with an apologetic shrug in my voice, "He's <whispering> deaf." And they would nod understandingly and squelch their disapproval of my little Helen Keller.

This year we got routed out of Washington Square Park pretty quickly, which was too bad, because it has been the scene of many a memorable Iditarod moment, such as when I smoked a huge doobie with some hippies or bought a coat off a homeless gay prostitute. He charged me three dollars for it, which I had Mr. Tang pay for, and as I put it on and exulted that I could have gotten such a great coat for such a miserly sum, he said, "I'll pay you three hundred never to wear it again." Mr. Tang has a much more traditional fashion sense that I do. Washington Square Park is also where I dressed up a 58-year-old father in a huge foam bone costume without really telling him that it meant he would be chased and tackled by doggies, and where I kneeled in a large pile of actual dog shit while making a cheerleader-esque pyramid. There was a certain existential pleasure in that, but it was quite fresh and intensely stinky.

I am a very lazy individual, and the majority of my energy in each Iditarod is dedicated to finding ways that I might get to the next pit stop while doing as little running or walking as possible. Through the years I have ridden in or on a limousine, a horse-drawn carriage, a taxi, a bus, the back of a minitruck, a flat-bed truck carrying Doggie Diner heads, a little electric car, and my crowning achievement-- the back of a police motorcyle. The very first year I ran the Iditarod I was supposed to be running behind the cart steering it as we passed through a park where artists lined the sidewalk selling their art. But my team was too energetic and they didn't heed my continual whines to stop and walk, so I just let the cart go, and it instantly careened right into an art stand and sent the paintings flying everywhere. Earlier I had driven the cart into a Mercedes. Did we leave a note? Let me remember.... no, we didn't. One of my teammates one year got too drunk to walk anymore, so she was loaded into the cart for hauling... turns out that if you're pretty wasted a bumpy ride in a shopping cart is not what you want, unless you are Mary-Kate Olsen.

My friend JJumpJoyful is already planning themes for next year. That's her job. She comes up with themes, and I create an ear/headpiece based on the theme. It's good to have a purpose in life.

Q. How's the cheese going.
A. Very well, very well. Finished off the smoky cheddar, and now in celebration of St. Patrick's Day Mr. Tang and I are on an Irish cheddar, which is very nutty. Mr. Tang loves a dry, nutty cheese.

Glow

Oh, oh, I totally forgot to 'splain the reason for the title on my previous post. See, it was my first post, so virgin, right? But the reference was to an interaction I had with a janitor which rates as my personal all time favoritest conversation with a cleaning professional. I was at a job where I tended to work very late, so I often saw the cleaning guy. He didn't speak much English, but with my limited Spanish I had established that he was from Venezuela and still had a daughter there, who he hoped to bring over soon. He showed me a picture of her. He was very nice.

I had a bunch of kitschy krap all over my desk, to showcase my fun-loving personality of course. One day as he was cleaning he stopped the baccuum (As in, Ees okay baccuum?) and picked up my glow-in-the-dark Virgin Mary. He held it up and said, "La Virgen Maria." "La Virgen Maria," I responded. Then I took it from him, cupped my hands around it, and peeked inside them. I held my hands up to his eyes and said, "Glow-in-the-dark." "Glow-in-the-dark," he repeated. We both nodded solemnly and went back to our work. I don't know his reaction to our conversation, but I was damn glad to think that to his 30-word English vocabulary was now added the completely useless phrase "glow-in-the-dark."