It's fashion week in London. Today I walked past a real, actual fashion show going on in a disused church, with strobe lights and screaming and everything. Sadly, the logo was too cool and speshul for me to make out the designer's name.
So let's talk clothes. English clothes.
First, I gotta establish my fashionista creds. Today, just as an example of my sartorial elegance, I'm wearing a sweater that is old enough to attend kindergarten and has more pills than the medicine cabinet at Judy Garland's house. In addition, I'm daringly sporting two-sizes-too-big jeans that are more 'fat pants' than 'phat pants'. And to tie it all together, my rubberized riding boots. Hey, it's raining. Whaddaya want from me?
Needless to say, when I walk into a room Sarahca Jessica Parkaca isn't exactly shaking in her Manolos at the prospect of losing her style-icon crown.
But despite not being without my own fashion sin, when I see some English trends, I just can't resist casting the first snark.
Would you yourself like to play along at home and dress up as a 'with-it' London Laydee?
It's easy if you follow the four F's: Flowers, Feathers, Fur, and Fetishwear.
The overall effect to shoot for is that of an elderly dowager with incipient dementia, who is lightly sozzled and all dressed up to bag the village curate at Lady DeWithers' next tea-and-ecstacy party.
If observers are asking themselves, 'Is she homeless or just really, REALLY rich?', then you are doing it right.
So, let's pretend you're getting ready for a big night out.
First, grab the tweed hotpants that you wear to the office in your job as a high-powered securities trader. At work, you pair them with black opaque tights, but this is party night, so go get your electric puce opaque tights.
Do NOT get sheer tights of any colour. In fact, do not OWN sheer tights. They are not okay. You wouldn't want to sleaze up your winter-wear Daisy Dukes with something that revealing, would you? No, of course not. You're way too classy.
So that covers the Fetishwear nicely, but I'm not seeing flowers here! Quick, grab a fake flower brooch. If it's smaller than your head, it's not big enough. Return it to the store and get something bigger.
Now, pin it to your black 'body-conscious' camisole top. Hell no, you don't need a sweater; it's the balmy month of February, fer cryin' out loud.
But is that enough Floral? Naw, not really. Hey, how about some flowers in your hair? Put a couple behind your ear. Hey, it worked in the 1930's. Ooh, the '30's. Wasn't that War fantastic? Didn't we look awesome in our uniforms? Mmm, how about all the delicious spam. Good times!
Snap out of it -- let's get back to the present, 'cause you're showing a severe deficiency in dead bird parts! How about a super-skinny lavender Feather boa? Yes -- perf! -- it'll match your skin tone as you head out into the winter night wearing hotpants and a silk tanktop.
Don't forget a handbag. Here's a trick: if it won't hold the corpse of a yearling fawn, then your bag is probably too small. And if it's tattered and ragged and looks like it might smell of cat pee, you are golden. Remember, you want to keep up your pseudo-homeless mystique. It's so bohemian, just like Sienna Miller or that one bearded guy who sleeps outside the Chinese grocery store just off The Strand.
Lookin' goo-- OMG! Don't forget SHOES!!!!
This year, there are only two types of shoe that you are allowed to wear: Uggs or bright red Dorothy Gale flats. But the rule is quite firm: if you want red, you have to wear those black opaque tights, and you've already picked puce.
Uggs it is, then.
Yeah, it's true that they offer zero arch support, and some grouchy people say that wearing white, Furry boots in a country where it rains daily and mud-season lasts from September to July is a titch impractical, BUT they are the one and only warm thing in your entire wardrobe. So you go, Ugg girl!
Okay, check the mirror: do we look pretty? No? Fantastic!
Do we look whimsical? Yes? Nice one!
But is it mere Bjork-level whimsical or is it full-fledged great-aunt-on-a-bender-getting-dressed-in-the-dark whimsical?
All right! Great work. Let's go.
Man, that curate will never know what hit him.
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Monday, 23 February 2009
MoanDay: We Shall Fight Them in the Gardens!
Once again, it's been ages since I updated. It's because I've got this new boyfriend who's been taking up all my free time. His name's Hammer, and...
Well, okay, he's not so much named 'Hammer', as he is a hammer. And he's not so much a 'he', as he is an 'it'. But we've been having so much qualitay time that I think I could be forgiven for a touch of anthropomorphism here.
My annual unfeasible garden makeover is in red-hot medias res, and it consists of me building from scratch and installing new raised beds all around the edge of my tiny yardage. Why? Because I love the pain. Love it. Cannot get enough. Why do you think I own a chihuahua/Jack Russell mix?
Um, but it's also because nothing will grow in our actual soil, y'know the stuff that came with the house. In fairness, 'soil' is probably too generous a term. Mrs. Kincaid's second-grade class could have one hell of an awesome arts-and-crafts hour with the stuff because it is neither more nor less than 100%, solid, elementary-school-grade, suitable-for-building-coil-pots CLAY.
Also, it is a ruthless killer that makes Charlie Manson seem like a laid-back kinda guy that you wouldn't mind having as a sitter for your goldfish while you're in Newark for that management-strategies seminar.
I wouldn't begin to try to list all the living things the CLAY has taken in the nearly-three years we've been here, but as a mere taste let me tell you that we have carefully, lovingly sown grass seed at least six times in those years and then, when that inevitably failed, spent a ton of money and back-pain putting in sod.
Is there any grass out there now, as I'm typing this? I dunno. Do monstrous hell-weeds with roots that reach to Sidney count as grass?
Then there's the honeysuckle. *crosses self* Oh fragrant vine, we hardly knew ye.
The poor little poppies never even stood a chance. 'Cometh up as a flower' is right.
My theory is that raised beds can save my future seedlings because they will be filled with superior, store-bought dirt (it hurts my soul so badly that I'm going to the store and paying for dirt. Next thing you know, people will be charging money for freakin' water.)
And thus, I've been making these raised beds, which my friend the Internet alleges are SO simple that even a child could put one together.
Speaking of which, yesterday, I'm out there sawing and hammering my little heart out when I look up to see six of my neighbour's grandchildren lined up along the low fence that separates our yards just staring at me working. Village of the Damned much, kids?
This is another reason that I need raised beds. I must have the ability to grow some tall flowers or shrubs or really anything would do -- maybe I could grow a big brick wall. Do they have seeds for those?
It's just too creepy to know that you can be out there in the backyard minding your own business, maybe reading some Nabokov or perhaps Anais Nin, drinkin' ye hooch, sunbathin' in defiance of all Surgeon Generals everywhere, thinkin' your grown-up thoughts about sex, violence, tobacco or one of the other major taboos, and then suddenly you look up to meet twelve identical blue eyes, all of them roughly three feet off the ground, all of them disapproving, all of them boring into the depths of your sin-smeared adult soul and going 'Ick!'.
This does not promote relaxation, at least not as I would define the experience.
And so I fight on, although it's beginning to feel like the Big Push will never end. I was so adorably sure that I'd be able to finish off the project this weekend (was I ever really that young and innocent? *sighs*). But no.
Now this piece of lumber is splitting along the grain, now that one hasn't been measured exactly-exactly-EXACTLY to the 1/16 of a cm and consequently this whole bed won't go together, now the man of the house has to go off to the pub for four hours just when I need him to hold this one thing for me while I hammer it into place...You get the idea.
But I shall battle on, unwearied, for the plants and for the kids.* Because that's the kind of garden warrior I am.
*Okay, it's not so much 'for' the kids, as it is 'to get away from the kids', but it is about the kids, so isn't that the same thing in the end? The same spirit? No? Yeah, I guess you're right, it isn't. *hangs head* Behold: I am a TARRYBUL person.
Well, okay, he's not so much named 'Hammer', as he is a hammer. And he's not so much a 'he', as he is an 'it'. But we've been having so much qualitay time that I think I could be forgiven for a touch of anthropomorphism here.
My annual unfeasible garden makeover is in red-hot medias res, and it consists of me building from scratch and installing new raised beds all around the edge of my tiny yardage. Why? Because I love the pain. Love it. Cannot get enough. Why do you think I own a chihuahua/Jack Russell mix?
Um, but it's also because nothing will grow in our actual soil, y'know the stuff that came with the house. In fairness, 'soil' is probably too generous a term. Mrs. Kincaid's second-grade class could have one hell of an awesome arts-and-crafts hour with the stuff because it is neither more nor less than 100%, solid, elementary-school-grade, suitable-for-building-coil-pots CLAY.
Also, it is a ruthless killer that makes Charlie Manson seem like a laid-back kinda guy that you wouldn't mind having as a sitter for your goldfish while you're in Newark for that management-strategies seminar.
I wouldn't begin to try to list all the living things the CLAY has taken in the nearly-three years we've been here, but as a mere taste let me tell you that we have carefully, lovingly sown grass seed at least six times in those years and then, when that inevitably failed, spent a ton of money and back-pain putting in sod.
Is there any grass out there now, as I'm typing this? I dunno. Do monstrous hell-weeds with roots that reach to Sidney count as grass?
Then there's the honeysuckle. *crosses self* Oh fragrant vine, we hardly knew ye.
The poor little poppies never even stood a chance. 'Cometh up as a flower' is right.
My theory is that raised beds can save my future seedlings because they will be filled with superior, store-bought dirt (it hurts my soul so badly that I'm going to the store and paying for dirt. Next thing you know, people will be charging money for freakin' water.)
And thus, I've been making these raised beds, which my friend the Internet alleges are SO simple that even a child could put one together.
Speaking of which, yesterday, I'm out there sawing and hammering my little heart out when I look up to see six of my neighbour's grandchildren lined up along the low fence that separates our yards just staring at me working. Village of the Damned much, kids?
This is another reason that I need raised beds. I must have the ability to grow some tall flowers or shrubs or really anything would do -- maybe I could grow a big brick wall. Do they have seeds for those?
It's just too creepy to know that you can be out there in the backyard minding your own business, maybe reading some Nabokov or perhaps Anais Nin, drinkin' ye hooch, sunbathin' in defiance of all Surgeon Generals everywhere, thinkin' your grown-up thoughts about sex, violence, tobacco or one of the other major taboos, and then suddenly you look up to meet twelve identical blue eyes, all of them roughly three feet off the ground, all of them disapproving, all of them boring into the depths of your sin-smeared adult soul and going 'Ick!'.
This does not promote relaxation, at least not as I would define the experience.
And so I fight on, although it's beginning to feel like the Big Push will never end. I was so adorably sure that I'd be able to finish off the project this weekend (was I ever really that young and innocent? *sighs*). But no.
Now this piece of lumber is splitting along the grain, now that one hasn't been measured exactly-exactly-EXACTLY to the 1/16 of a cm and consequently this whole bed won't go together, now the man of the house has to go off to the pub for four hours just when I need him to hold this one thing for me while I hammer it into place...You get the idea.
But I shall battle on, unwearied, for the plants and for the kids.* Because that's the kind of garden warrior I am.
*Okay, it's not so much 'for' the kids, as it is 'to get away from the kids', but it is about the kids, so isn't that the same thing in the end? The same spirit? No? Yeah, I guess you're right, it isn't. *hangs head* Behold: I am a TARRYBUL person.
Wednesday, 18 February 2009
Man'sBestFriendsDay: In the name of all that is good and decent, NOT THE BRIAR PATCH!!!
Well, it's official: I share a house with a full-fledged sociopath.
How does something like this happen to a nice girl like me? Actually, it's more common than you'd think. About 5% of the population qualifies for diagnosis with this personality disorder, so take the number of gay friends you have (they're 10% of the population) and halve it, and that's how many sociopaths you know.
And one of the sociopaths I know is my 10-pound chihuahua-mix dog, FiFi.
You must be joking, I hear you say. That sweet little big-eyed angel couldn't possibly be a sociopath, but I took her to the vet for a tooth-cleaning yesterday and it all came together for me; I realized what was going on in that black-and-white head of hers.
Contrary to popular belief, most sociopaths don't go out and kill people (although they would if they thought that they could get away with with it, and Fi definitely would off next door's cat if she thought she could). No, they act pretty much like anybody else.
So what are the most common symptoms?
1. Risk-Taking
2. Charm
3. Manipulation
And, let me quote the clinical psychologist Martha Stout here:
4. 'The most reliable sign, the most universal behaviour of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.'
Let's look at FiFi's behaviour at the vet's with this in mind.
We got to the vet and Fi batted her eyes at the room in general. I'm not speaking metaphorically here either, she literally bats her eyes at people, like Bugs Bunny does when he's in drag to trick Elmer Fudd.
'Aaaaaaaaaaw,' said the receptionist and immediately rushed around the desk to give FiFi a big hug.
The vet tech came out to see what was happening and, 'AAAAAAW,' she said taking FiFi from the receptionist to give her big kisses.
Finally the vet came out, 'I need you to sign this release form,' he said. Well, he's a man. But he did spend considerable time rubbing her tummy. Case closed.
And Archy goes RARARARARARARARARARARAR at the other dog until I have to grab him by the collar, apologize to the owner, and drag him away.
Fi, meanwhile, folds her paws and smirks.
Problem is, knowing Fi has a severe personality disorder that could easily escalate into a full-scale chihuahua crime empire in the future does nothing, repeat nothing to immunize me from her ploys.
I confidently predict that when she starts whining and pawing at 4 am tomorrow, I'll hop up in the full belief that it's 7:30 and I should get her breakfast. Most often, I don't wake up enough to find out the actual time 'til I've finished feeding her.
People, a final word of advice: learn from my example and avoid buying pets that are smarter than you are.
How does something like this happen to a nice girl like me? Actually, it's more common than you'd think. About 5% of the population qualifies for diagnosis with this personality disorder, so take the number of gay friends you have (they're 10% of the population) and halve it, and that's how many sociopaths you know.
And one of the sociopaths I know is my 10-pound chihuahua-mix dog, FiFi.
You must be joking, I hear you say. That sweet little big-eyed angel couldn't possibly be a sociopath, but I took her to the vet for a tooth-cleaning yesterday and it all came together for me; I realized what was going on in that black-and-white head of hers.
Contrary to popular belief, most sociopaths don't go out and kill people (although they would if they thought that they could get away with with it, and Fi definitely would off next door's cat if she thought she could). No, they act pretty much like anybody else.
So what are the most common symptoms?
1. Risk-Taking
2. Charm
3. Manipulation
And, let me quote the clinical psychologist Martha Stout here:
4. 'The most reliable sign, the most universal behaviour of unscrupulous people is not directed, as one might imagine, at our fearfulness. It is, perversely, an appeal to our sympathy.'
Let's look at FiFi's behaviour at the vet's with this in mind.
Risk-Taking
Fi has always believed that the best way to cope with traffic is to run straight into and let the drivers sort out the rest. For this reason, I had to carry her across every street we came to on our way to the vet.
But when we cut through the park and she saw another dog that she wanted to bully, she jumped right out of my arms regardless of the fact that she was about twenty feet up (in chihuahua feet, that is).
Then she raced up to huge, hideous Staffordshire Terrier (they're like pit bulls, but taller) and told him exactly what she thought of his face, breath, and dress sense (none of it was especially flattering).
She does this a lot to big dogs, especially with Rottweilers and Doberman Pinschers. Maybe she has a thing about Germans.
Charm
We got to the vet and Fi batted her eyes at the room in general. I'm not speaking metaphorically here either, she literally bats her eyes at people, like Bugs Bunny does when he's in drag to trick Elmer Fudd.
'Aaaaaaaaaaw,' said the receptionist and immediately rushed around the desk to give FiFi a big hug.
The vet tech came out to see what was happening and, 'AAAAAAW,' she said taking FiFi from the receptionist to give her big kisses.
Finally the vet came out, 'I need you to sign this release form,' he said. Well, he's a man. But he did spend considerable time rubbing her tummy. Case closed.
Manipulation
Pot-stirring, instigating, 'the games people play' -- call it what you will, Fi does it better than seventh-grade girl with a grudge.
Her preferred manipulee is her younger, more genial 'brother' Archy the Brussels Griff. God love him, he's a good-lookin' guy, and he's far from dense, but in NO WAY is he any match for Fi's wiles.
We took Archy with us to the vet because Fi is better behaved outside when he's with her. Interestingly, he's worse behaved when he's with her. Walking Arch alone, he doesn't bark, he doesn't chase joggers or try to swallow styrofoam food containers. Walking with her -- well, these things are not entirely unheard of.
On our walk home I had to carry Miss Fi in a doggy-carrier/pocketbook-thing, because the vet says she's not allowed to walk for three days. Plus, she's groggy from the sedation.
She can't do her own terrorizing of redonkulously outsized opponents, so every time we see another canine, Fi whines this little whine, which I swear means, 'Oh my Gawd, Arch, did you heah what he just said about yawr mothuh?'
And Archy goes RARARARARARARARARARARAR at the other dog until I have to grab him by the collar, apologize to the owner, and drag him away.
Fi, meanwhile, folds her paws and smirks.
The Play for Sympathy
So we're walking home, Archy is barking at everything he sees, and it's taking us an hour to make the 20-minute walk across the park because EVERYONE in the park needs to stop us and inquire after the health of our delicate blossom. Allow me a brief playlet:
Dog-Walking Friend: Oh no, what happened to FiFi?
Me: She's okay, she just had her teeth cleaned.
DWF (cooing): Oh, it must be so frustrating for her not getting her usual walk.
FIFI arranges herself to drape more languishingly over the side of the bag. She keeps the front leg with the bandage from her sedation in prominent view.
Random Stranger: What happened to your dog? Did she break a leg?
Me: No, she's fine, she can walk again in a couple days.
RS (too lost in Fi's eyes to hear a word I say): Poor little thing, it must be so hard for her with the other one down there walking as usual.
Fi yawns preciously and recieves a tender head-pat and concerned clucking noises.
Old Lady: Aw, look at the little love. Is she poorly? Here, I just bought these for my doggie.
She hands me a dog treat of an appropriate size for a Neapolitan Mastiff. FI licks her chops.
Fi: Aaaaah yes, it is well.
FIN.
So, the point is just this, FiFi HATES WALKING LIKE POISON. And to say she 'likes' riding in her bag is like saying that Dylan Thomas 'liked' the odd, occassional alcoholic beverage now and again.
She will go through any amount of whining, pawing and general shennanigans to get me to pick her up and tote her around like she's a rajah and I'm her personal elephant.
I've spent years training her out of the habit. But she's not above looking depressed and languid and last-little-girl-to-be-picked-up-from-play-group about riding in her favourite bag if it gets her that extra drop of sympathy from her audience.
Oh, she's good, I'll give her that.
Problem is, knowing Fi has a severe personality disorder that could easily escalate into a full-scale chihuahua crime empire in the future does nothing, repeat nothing to immunize me from her ploys.
I confidently predict that when she starts whining and pawing at 4 am tomorrow, I'll hop up in the full belief that it's 7:30 and I should get her breakfast. Most often, I don't wake up enough to find out the actual time 'til I've finished feeding her.
People, a final word of advice: learn from my example and avoid buying pets that are smarter than you are.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
EtTuesday: Hestia? Way Kewl
So, clearly, someone is not happy with me.
Earlier this year, we got mice, yesterday was our water was cut off, today the dishwasher broke in the middle of a cycle, and then after I washed an entire load of dishes by hand, I blew a fuse -- not the fun cathartic kind of blowing a fuse where you write an entire blog entry about ways your husband annoys you, either.
No it was the kind of blowing your fuse where you're about halfway through making dinner and you find yourself in pitch darkness, save for the meager light from the lit gas rings under your pans. And then realizing you don't know where the fusebox is. And calling your husband to ask where it is, only to discover that the phone needs electricity to function (who knew?) and then opening up both the laptops (on battery power) so you can finish cooking by the light of their screens. Good times!
I say 'I' blew a fuse, but ackshully I'm not at all convinced. The following electric things were on: the uselessly dim 'eco' overhead lightbulb, the oven, the radio, the electronic mouse repeller (which may or may not be useless; too early to tell).
Does that sound like a lot? 'Cause I've definitely had all those things and more on at a time in my torrid, electricity-wasting past without a problem.
No, the answer to my domestic drama definitely lies beyond myself and my poor eco-management skills, beyond my husband and his abiding inability to rinse a damn plate, beyond the dodgy cowboy construction team down the road that burst our water main.
It came to me once the lights were back on and I was hitting the Greek (not a new boyfriend, the actual language. It's homework, you pervs). The answer is...HESTIA!
Yes, Hestia (also known as Vesta, of virgins fame, to those who prefer Latinny stuff) is key. I've clearly honked her off and she's paying me back in her own particular area of expertise. So, just like Obama is putting a ton of Republicans into key positions in the hope of softening 'em up, allow me to dedicate this entry to buttering up the goddess of domesticity.
Why is Hestia so kewl?
Well, first off, she is the only Olympian goddess on record as being nice. Her epithet is even 'gentle'. If you've ever read the story of, oh, say what Artemis did to Acteon, you'll understand that this makes her pretty special. Not in the South Park sense of 'special', let me clarify. Good special.
Yup, she's the kind of 'special' that wouldn't want to make my washing machine die tomorrow in a flood of suds that warps all our floors. She would definitely never make our microwave explode hurling pieces of glass and plastic deep into my kitchen walls. And I just know that she is far too nice to let our exceptionally antiquated heating system give up the ghost before the cold weather ends.
Also, Hestia is kewl because she represents both family and purity. Kind of like another famous holy virgin, Hestia is maternal and nurturing and protective and would never make our roof start leaking until the plaster falls in right over our bed at night while we're sleeping, crushing us both into pudding.
And Hestia is peaceful. She famously refused to marry either Poseidon or Appollo, because she didn't want to cause stress and strife on Mt Olympus. See, she likes a quiet life for herself and people who respect her. That's why I know she's not the kind of goddess to let a plague of giant carnivorous grasshoppers infest the walls of our humble, Hestia-respecting home.
Did I mention I love Hestia?
Earlier this year, we got mice, yesterday was our water was cut off, today the dishwasher broke in the middle of a cycle, and then after I washed an entire load of dishes by hand, I blew a fuse -- not the fun cathartic kind of blowing a fuse where you write an entire blog entry about ways your husband annoys you, either.
No it was the kind of blowing your fuse where you're about halfway through making dinner and you find yourself in pitch darkness, save for the meager light from the lit gas rings under your pans. And then realizing you don't know where the fusebox is. And calling your husband to ask where it is, only to discover that the phone needs electricity to function (who knew?) and then opening up both the laptops (on battery power) so you can finish cooking by the light of their screens. Good times!
I say 'I' blew a fuse, but ackshully I'm not at all convinced. The following electric things were on: the uselessly dim 'eco' overhead lightbulb, the oven, the radio, the electronic mouse repeller (which may or may not be useless; too early to tell).
Does that sound like a lot? 'Cause I've definitely had all those things and more on at a time in my torrid, electricity-wasting past without a problem.
No, the answer to my domestic drama definitely lies beyond myself and my poor eco-management skills, beyond my husband and his abiding inability to rinse a damn plate, beyond the dodgy cowboy construction team down the road that burst our water main.
It came to me once the lights were back on and I was hitting the Greek (not a new boyfriend, the actual language. It's homework, you pervs). The answer is...HESTIA!
Yes, Hestia (also known as Vesta, of virgins fame, to those who prefer Latinny stuff) is key. I've clearly honked her off and she's paying me back in her own particular area of expertise. So, just like Obama is putting a ton of Republicans into key positions in the hope of softening 'em up, allow me to dedicate this entry to buttering up the goddess of domesticity.
Why is Hestia so kewl?
Well, first off, she is the only Olympian goddess on record as being nice. Her epithet is even 'gentle'. If you've ever read the story of, oh, say what Artemis did to Acteon, you'll understand that this makes her pretty special. Not in the South Park sense of 'special', let me clarify. Good special.
Yup, she's the kind of 'special' that wouldn't want to make my washing machine die tomorrow in a flood of suds that warps all our floors. She would definitely never make our microwave explode hurling pieces of glass and plastic deep into my kitchen walls. And I just know that she is far too nice to let our exceptionally antiquated heating system give up the ghost before the cold weather ends.
Also, Hestia is kewl because she represents both family and purity. Kind of like another famous holy virgin, Hestia is maternal and nurturing and protective and would never make our roof start leaking until the plaster falls in right over our bed at night while we're sleeping, crushing us both into pudding.
And Hestia is peaceful. She famously refused to marry either Poseidon or Appollo, because she didn't want to cause stress and strife on Mt Olympus. See, she likes a quiet life for herself and people who respect her. That's why I know she's not the kind of goddess to let a plague of giant carnivorous grasshoppers infest the walls of our humble, Hestia-respecting home.
Did I mention I love Hestia?
Monday, 16 February 2009
MoanDay: Sayonara, Martian
Did you know that over 30,000 men a year are ritually eviscerated with a huge kabuki sword by a wife, girlfriend, or friend with benefits?
No, you probably didn't, because it isn't true. But only because our high levels of estrogen mellow us out and we know that we'd be the ones stuck cleaning up the mess...as usual.
Why? Why do men persist in approaching their women in the one exact way that is garaunteed to make her say, 'Hey honey, how do you feel about Japanese theatre...?'
There are roughly a bazillion books out there telling men how to behave to women, but men aren't reading them because they're men. They don't read any books that are not about explosions, explicit sex, or explicit sexsplosions.
Men figure, 'Hey, if I ever want to understand about the gendered nature of communication styles, I'll...wait a minute, that will never happen! Let me get back to reading Mitzi Chestington, Arms Dealer to the Mob.'
Meanwhile, their wives are painting their faces white with huge exaggerated black eyebrows and trying on kimonos.
Today saw an example of the kind of thing I mean.
It began when we came home from the park where the dogs had rolled -- not wisely, but too well -- in what we laydees might choose to call fox...remnants. (For any Americans unfamiliar with the British urban fox, it is a prolific and pungent 'remnant' depositer; the odor is reminiscent of skunk).
The dogs were literally caked with filth. No leashes off, no uncollaring, go directly to bath, do not collect 200 kibbles. I placed Fi in the tub, unhooked the shower head...and...NOTHING HAPPENED.
'AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEE,' I remarked with what I considered stoical restraint. I raced to the kitchen sink: nothing. Fiddled with our antiquated water heater: nothing.
'AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE,' I reiterated, with a tad more emphasis. 'What do they call the water authority in this stupid country?'
I riffled through our telephone directory, and if I ripped a few pages in my haste, bear in mind that there were two uber-stanky dogs at my side, still leashed up, just panting to roll on my couch.
No dice. The only thing under water was 'Bottled Water Delivery'.
I opined, mildly, that the phone company was on more intimate terms with its mother than is usually deemed healthy in Western society.
Now it was time for the big guns. In the words of Bonnie Tyler, 'I need a hero!'
I called the man of the house and calmly and cogently put the problem to him.
'Now take it easy,' he said, 'this is nothing to have a nervous breakdown over.'
STRIKE ONE.
Never tell a woman what's worth having a nervous breakdown over.
Do you know why fathers have only been allowed in the delivery room since the 1970's? It took that long to get it into their heads that saying, 'Jeez, honey, what are screaming about? It's only a baby, nothing to have a nervous breakdown over,' was a less than helpful birthing-partner strategy.
Similar to labour, not having water is a pain women experience on levels men will never understand. Women are essentially cats, as is widely reflected in popular slang, and if we cannot clean ourselves at closely spaced intervals, we are liable to scratch up the good furniture something fierce.
'Why don't you call the Water Board?'* he said.
STRIKE TWO.
Never give us unsolicited suggestions.
First of all, it implies you think we're mentally challenged. Do you seriously think we haven't thought of your first, obvious suggestion for ourselves? No, men, what you do is you WAIT and LISTEN to the problem. Then, when asked, you may respectfully offer an idea or two.
So, I called the Water Board: There has been a water main break on Tyler Street and service will be interrupted until 6 pm [it's now 12:30 pm]; thank you for calling.
I call the man of the house again: What about the laundry? What about the filthy, filthy dogs who are STILL on their leashes and think Mama must be on crack 'cause she won't let them go? What about the fact that I need to shower before class? How will I make tea? What about the toilet? Where will I go? What will I do?
'You know, if you keep rehashing all this you're just going to make yourself feel worse,' he says.
STRIKE THREE. Fetch my mask and my good obi, Tanaka-san!
Never keep us from discussing our problems at length.
Okay, maybe on Planet ChestHair 9 (I refuse to believe men are from Mars; the only life there is bacteria and most men I've met are definitely too tall to be bacteria), 'rehashing' your problems makes you feel worse. You guys get all depressed when groups of men you've never met before can't kick a ball as effectively as other groups of men you've never met before, so really anything is possible with you.
But on Planet Princesstonia, the one and ONLY thing that makes us feel better is the chance to discuss, at length, the things that are bothering us. If we do it to you men, you can just nod; you don't even have to really listen. In fact, it works better if you don't even listen because then you won't be tempted to offer suggestions (see Strike Two). Telling us not to 'rehash' is like telling a computer not to defrag -- prevent us, and we'll crash on you just when you're downloading something reeeeaaaally good.
Yes, I know all this stuff isn't exactly news to anyone (except men - remember? They've just gotten to the part where Mitzi goes undercover as a cheerleader at a small Midwestern college), but that's all the more reason to say it. Ignorance of the law is no excuse!
And now if y'all will forgive me, I've got a tea ceremony to get to. Keeps the ol' hands too busy for swords, don'tcha know.
*(Come on, seriously now -- 'Water Board'? What is this, Iraq?)
No, you probably didn't, because it isn't true. But only because our high levels of estrogen mellow us out and we know that we'd be the ones stuck cleaning up the mess...as usual.
Why? Why do men persist in approaching their women in the one exact way that is garaunteed to make her say, 'Hey honey, how do you feel about Japanese theatre...?'
There are roughly a bazillion books out there telling men how to behave to women, but men aren't reading them because they're men. They don't read any books that are not about explosions, explicit sex, or explicit sexsplosions.
Men figure, 'Hey, if I ever want to understand about the gendered nature of communication styles, I'll...wait a minute, that will never happen! Let me get back to reading Mitzi Chestington, Arms Dealer to the Mob.'
Meanwhile, their wives are painting their faces white with huge exaggerated black eyebrows and trying on kimonos.
Today saw an example of the kind of thing I mean.
It began when we came home from the park where the dogs had rolled -- not wisely, but too well -- in what we laydees might choose to call fox...remnants. (For any Americans unfamiliar with the British urban fox, it is a prolific and pungent 'remnant' depositer; the odor is reminiscent of skunk).
The dogs were literally caked with filth. No leashes off, no uncollaring, go directly to bath, do not collect 200 kibbles. I placed Fi in the tub, unhooked the shower head...and...NOTHING HAPPENED.
'AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEE,' I remarked with what I considered stoical restraint. I raced to the kitchen sink: nothing. Fiddled with our antiquated water heater: nothing.
'AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE,' I reiterated, with a tad more emphasis. 'What do they call the water authority in this stupid country?'
I riffled through our telephone directory, and if I ripped a few pages in my haste, bear in mind that there were two uber-stanky dogs at my side, still leashed up, just panting to roll on my couch.
No dice. The only thing under water was 'Bottled Water Delivery'.
I opined, mildly, that the phone company was on more intimate terms with its mother than is usually deemed healthy in Western society.
Now it was time for the big guns. In the words of Bonnie Tyler, 'I need a hero!'
I called the man of the house and calmly and cogently put the problem to him.
'Now take it easy,' he said, 'this is nothing to have a nervous breakdown over.'
STRIKE ONE.
Never tell a woman what's worth having a nervous breakdown over.
Do you know why fathers have only been allowed in the delivery room since the 1970's? It took that long to get it into their heads that saying, 'Jeez, honey, what are screaming about? It's only a baby, nothing to have a nervous breakdown over,' was a less than helpful birthing-partner strategy.
Similar to labour, not having water is a pain women experience on levels men will never understand. Women are essentially cats, as is widely reflected in popular slang, and if we cannot clean ourselves at closely spaced intervals, we are liable to scratch up the good furniture something fierce.
'Why don't you call the Water Board?'* he said.
STRIKE TWO.
Never give us unsolicited suggestions.
First of all, it implies you think we're mentally challenged. Do you seriously think we haven't thought of your first, obvious suggestion for ourselves? No, men, what you do is you WAIT and LISTEN to the problem. Then, when asked, you may respectfully offer an idea or two.
So, I called the Water Board: There has been a water main break on Tyler Street and service will be interrupted until 6 pm [it's now 12:30 pm]; thank you for calling.
I call the man of the house again: What about the laundry? What about the filthy, filthy dogs who are STILL on their leashes and think Mama must be on crack 'cause she won't let them go? What about the fact that I need to shower before class? How will I make tea? What about the toilet? Where will I go? What will I do?
'You know, if you keep rehashing all this you're just going to make yourself feel worse,' he says.
STRIKE THREE. Fetch my mask and my good obi, Tanaka-san!
Never keep us from discussing our problems at length.
Okay, maybe on Planet ChestHair 9 (I refuse to believe men are from Mars; the only life there is bacteria and most men I've met are definitely too tall to be bacteria), 'rehashing' your problems makes you feel worse. You guys get all depressed when groups of men you've never met before can't kick a ball as effectively as other groups of men you've never met before, so really anything is possible with you.
But on Planet Princesstonia, the one and ONLY thing that makes us feel better is the chance to discuss, at length, the things that are bothering us. If we do it to you men, you can just nod; you don't even have to really listen. In fact, it works better if you don't even listen because then you won't be tempted to offer suggestions (see Strike Two). Telling us not to 'rehash' is like telling a computer not to defrag -- prevent us, and we'll crash on you just when you're downloading something reeeeaaaally good.
Yes, I know all this stuff isn't exactly news to anyone (except men - remember? They've just gotten to the part where Mitzi goes undercover as a cheerleader at a small Midwestern college), but that's all the more reason to say it. Ignorance of the law is no excuse!
And now if y'all will forgive me, I've got a tea ceremony to get to. Keeps the ol' hands too busy for swords, don'tcha know.
*(Come on, seriously now -- 'Water Board'? What is this, Iraq?)
Saturday, 14 February 2009
Dramaturday: Entertaining Ms. Mehitabel
Well, I missed a couple days' worth of posting because things have been a mite busy at the Casa de Cutty Bark. February means two things in my life: Valentine's Day pressure to be all smooshy (hate it, hate it, hate it, I'm happily married and I STILL hate it), and an overwelming desire to start planning another redonkulously overambitious garden makeover.
In aid of the latter, I've been spending a lot of time in the hazy netherworld of B & Q (stands for Buy...a ton of overpriced jetsam and Quit...your project when you realise you measured everything wrong because you were using inches instead of centimeters, you feelthy American peeg). I could do an entire treatise on the epic unhelpfulness of the B & Q employees, but not today.
No, today is Feb 14th, so let me tell you about an actual date that I had with my actual husband: we went to the thee-ay-tuh in London proper and saw Entertaining Mr. Sloane, starring Imelda Staunton and some other people.
This is my kind of Valentine play: no hand-holding, no gooey looks, just sex, blackmail and murder. Aaah, that's better.
Most plays/musicals set the bar so high that no matter what you say afterwards to your beloved, it will sound flat and hollow and leave him wondering why you can't just occasionally give a twenty-line soliloquy in iambic hexameter comparing his left elbow to the curve of the Tiber River. After this play, all I had to say was, 'I like that tie on you,' and he was just glad that I hadn't kicked him in the bojangles.
Y'know, romantic comedy is a pernicious-yet-pervasive force in the universe, and I blame Shakespeare (or possibly the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, or Queen Elizabeth I -- you take your pick). He might have had a way with a word, but he started a long and ugly chain of 'romantic' plays, then movies, that I as a woman am constitutionally required to like but DON'T.
The most obvious of Bill S's crimes is Ro & Jo, 'cause where did all that star-crossing lead? Bleah, right to things like frickin' Love Story (excuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that title), Titanic (Why did I see that twice, you ask? Easy: big crashy/splashy effects), and that other one, y'know the one with the all music and dancing. C'm on, it's really famous... What's it called again? Oh yeah: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo!
Then ya got The Taming of the Shrew, which begat all those 'I hate you, I hate you, I love you' comedies like Sweet Home Alabama (Dear Ms. Witherspoon, yes you are very cute, but in future please remember that comedies are, by definition, supposed to be funny), that Heath Ledger one Ten Things I Hate About You (a seriously odd movie. Can't decide if your target audience is tween or adult? Split the diff and make a film that's inappropriate for BOTH!), and the over-referenced behemoth When Harry Met Sally (where there is an element of humour. See that team Alabama? It can be done!).
And what about the cross-dressing ones? As You Like It and Twelfth Night have any number of descendents, including 'real' movies like Tootsie, and not-so-real ones like Just One of The Guys (I have never seen it and as God is my witness, I never will). There are also less literal adaptions where someone pretends to be something he/she isn't like Legally Blonde (at least there's a chihuahua), She's the One (which I've only seen through a combination of its repeated cable airings and my own chronic insomnia; 90 minutes of my life that I could have spent sleeping, alas!), or the recent grotesquerie that is The House Bunny (which there is not severe enough insomnia in this world to make me sit through).
Okay, yes, Bill S. (or Earl of O., Frankie B., Queen Lizzy, whoevs), you're very cute and your plays are actually fun to watch, but does that excuse their noxious legacy? If I give Archy a piece of Stilton cheese, yes it's delicious, but is the resultant smell his fault or mine? Why did you give people the idea that if you have enough forced banter, then plot, character, pacing and motivation are superfluous?
But surely, I hear y'all saying, there cannot be a woman on earth who is truly immune to the power of romantic comedy flicks? Go on, you secretly love them, don't you? Fess up, you are planning to watch one with your honey tonight, aren't you?
Mmm...yes'n'no.
With luck, I shall watch the same flick that I watch every V-Day. Is it a romantic comedy?
Well, it's got witty, rapid-fire dialogue, a star-crossed pair from different worlds in a love that society cannot condone (R&J) , one character with a bit of a temper problem who must learn to open his heart (ToftS), and another who doesn't mind a bit of gender-bending disguise to realise his dreams (12thN/AYLI).
Yup, Silence of the Lambs it is. Happy Hannibal, everybody!
In aid of the latter, I've been spending a lot of time in the hazy netherworld of B & Q (stands for Buy...a ton of overpriced jetsam and Quit...your project when you realise you measured everything wrong because you were using inches instead of centimeters, you feelthy American peeg). I could do an entire treatise on the epic unhelpfulness of the B & Q employees, but not today.
No, today is Feb 14th, so let me tell you about an actual date that I had with my actual husband: we went to the thee-ay-tuh in London proper and saw Entertaining Mr. Sloane, starring Imelda Staunton and some other people.
This is my kind of Valentine play: no hand-holding, no gooey looks, just sex, blackmail and murder. Aaah, that's better.
Most plays/musicals set the bar so high that no matter what you say afterwards to your beloved, it will sound flat and hollow and leave him wondering why you can't just occasionally give a twenty-line soliloquy in iambic hexameter comparing his left elbow to the curve of the Tiber River. After this play, all I had to say was, 'I like that tie on you,' and he was just glad that I hadn't kicked him in the bojangles.
Y'know, romantic comedy is a pernicious-yet-pervasive force in the universe, and I blame Shakespeare (or possibly the Earl of Oxford, Francis Bacon, or Queen Elizabeth I -- you take your pick). He might have had a way with a word, but he started a long and ugly chain of 'romantic' plays, then movies, that I as a woman am constitutionally required to like but DON'T.
The most obvious of Bill S's crimes is Ro & Jo, 'cause where did all that star-crossing lead? Bleah, right to things like frickin' Love Story (excuse me, I think I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that title), Titanic (Why did I see that twice, you ask? Easy: big crashy/splashy effects), and that other one, y'know the one with the all music and dancing. C'm on, it's really famous... What's it called again? Oh yeah: Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo!
Then ya got The Taming of the Shrew, which begat all those 'I hate you, I hate you, I love you' comedies like Sweet Home Alabama (Dear Ms. Witherspoon, yes you are very cute, but in future please remember that comedies are, by definition, supposed to be funny), that Heath Ledger one Ten Things I Hate About You (a seriously odd movie. Can't decide if your target audience is tween or adult? Split the diff and make a film that's inappropriate for BOTH!), and the over-referenced behemoth When Harry Met Sally (where there is an element of humour. See that team Alabama? It can be done!).
And what about the cross-dressing ones? As You Like It and Twelfth Night have any number of descendents, including 'real' movies like Tootsie, and not-so-real ones like Just One of The Guys (I have never seen it and as God is my witness, I never will). There are also less literal adaptions where someone pretends to be something he/she isn't like Legally Blonde (at least there's a chihuahua), She's the One (which I've only seen through a combination of its repeated cable airings and my own chronic insomnia; 90 minutes of my life that I could have spent sleeping, alas!), or the recent grotesquerie that is The House Bunny (which there is not severe enough insomnia in this world to make me sit through).
Okay, yes, Bill S. (or Earl of O., Frankie B., Queen Lizzy, whoevs), you're very cute and your plays are actually fun to watch, but does that excuse their noxious legacy? If I give Archy a piece of Stilton cheese, yes it's delicious, but is the resultant smell his fault or mine? Why did you give people the idea that if you have enough forced banter, then plot, character, pacing and motivation are superfluous?
But surely, I hear y'all saying, there cannot be a woman on earth who is truly immune to the power of romantic comedy flicks? Go on, you secretly love them, don't you? Fess up, you are planning to watch one with your honey tonight, aren't you?
Mmm...yes'n'no.
With luck, I shall watch the same flick that I watch every V-Day. Is it a romantic comedy?
Well, it's got witty, rapid-fire dialogue, a star-crossed pair from different worlds in a love that society cannot condone (R&J) , one character with a bit of a temper problem who must learn to open his heart (ToftS), and another who doesn't mind a bit of gender-bending disguise to realise his dreams (12thN/AYLI).
Yup, Silence of the Lambs it is. Happy Hannibal, everybody!
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Man'sbestfriendsDay: Archy + the Known Universe 4 Evah
For those of you playing along at home (Hello? Hello out there? Echo! <echoechoechoecho>), I'm posting this entry verrah verrah late because it's been a rather tight day. I went and got my haircut (I split the diff - a long bob), my riding lesson was moved forward an hour, I cooked scallops for the first time (it involves pulling off red fleshy lumps - bleah), and I went to the park with the dynamic duo.
The last item's not unusual; we go to the park almost every day, but today was incredibly time-consuming. Why? Because Archy is madly, passionately, ardently and irredeemably in love with every living creature on this planet -- and some inanimate objects as well.
If you haven't met the Archinator, he's a Brussells Griffon. And before you ask, it's that dog from As Good as It Gets with Jack Nicholson. No, not Men in Black, that was a pug. Yes, I know. He looks exactly like that dog, I know. But it's different breed, I swear on my Kennel Club membership.
Usually Archy's lifestyle choice (omniamory, I think it should probably be termed), is not that big of a problem. Whenever we're walking and we see a carbon-based life-form, we simply stop so he can briefly say, 'Hello, I'm Archy, nice to meet you, I wuv you,' and then we move on.
But today I made the ginormous mistake of hitting the park around 3 pm. It must have been the peroxide poisoning from the hairdressers, but I forgot that school gets out around 3 pm.
What follows is a short playlet demonstrating what happens when we hit the park after school:
RANDOM 12-YEAR-OLD MALE: Aw, wicked man, it's that dog out Men in Black, innit?
ME (gormlessly): Yeah. [Thinking: no, that was a pug, dammit!]
ARCHY: Hello. I wuv you THIS much!
Five minutes of excited cuddling is followed by awkward, lingering retreat on part of ARCH and I. We walk about a yard and a half.
RANDOM 3-YEAR-OLD FEMALE: Doggy!
ME: That's right, it's a doggy.
RANDOM MUM: Aw, isn't he sweet?
ARCHY: Allow me, please, to place my tongue on your hand! As a token of my wuv! For you!
R.3Y.O.F: AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!
ME: Come, Archy, come on boy.
RANDOM MUM: There's nothing to be afraid of darling.
ME: I'm SO sorry [Thinking: if you're child is phobic about dogs, why can't you warn me first, insufferable maternal unit?]
R.3Y.O.F. calms down and tries to pet my other dog FIFI by striking her violently about the head and neck with a tiny, tiny fist. We prise ourselves away and make it all of ten feet before encountering a HORDE OF MIXED SEX 16-YEAR-OLDS.
HORDE MEMBER 1 breaks off in mid-snog of HORDE MEMBER 2 as we approach, ARCHY in the fore, straining to get to the new people.
HORDE MEMBER 1: Sick! Hey, miss, that dog is sick, right!
ME (alarmed): What? Why? What did he do?
HM1: Nuffing, he's well cool, innit? He's sick!
ME (feeling 103 years old): Oh, yeah. Thanks. [Thinking: is that what kids say now? It's dumber than 'bad']
HM2 (noticing FIFI): OAOW, look at the titchy one! Can I pet him?
ME: Ummmmm, sure. She's a girl, actually.
ARCHY is going completely mental trying to get the attention away from FIFI and back to himself. I have to chase FIFI and hold her in my hands before she will be submit to petting; she is seething gently yet steadily, much like Mt. St. Helens must have in the days before the big blow.
Eventually, we tear ourselves away and make it another five feet....before we see a large family with a big, old labrador. The love theme from Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet kicks in as ARCHY swoops across the grass to her side.
ARCHY: Ah, mon amour, at last you have come!
OLD LAB: Sorry, have we met?
ARCHY: Only in my dreams, cherie. Only in my dreams. Say, is your father a garbageman?
OLD LAB: No, why?
ARCHY: Oh, I just thought he stole the stink from the garbage cans and placed it in your fur.
OLD LAB: Why, you sweet talker!
FIFI: YAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAYAP!
ME: Sorrysorrysorry. No, she doesn't bite. Yes, she's always been like this...
ARCHY: Oh, look over there -- it's a Cavalier! Oh, wait, it's a boy. We-ell, I s'pose just this once... Hey! You over there! I wuv you! [He vanishes into the middle distance]
Archy's firm belief that he is personally responsible for spreading the love is quite endearing, but I'll think twice before we hit the park at rush hour again. I asked FiFi, and she completely agrees with me on this one.
Yap.
The last item's not unusual; we go to the park almost every day, but today was incredibly time-consuming. Why? Because Archy is madly, passionately, ardently and irredeemably in love with every living creature on this planet -- and some inanimate objects as well.
If you haven't met the Archinator, he's a Brussells Griffon. And before you ask, it's that dog from As Good as It Gets with Jack Nicholson. No, not Men in Black, that was a pug. Yes, I know. He looks exactly like that dog, I know. But it's different breed, I swear on my Kennel Club membership.
Usually Archy's lifestyle choice (omniamory, I think it should probably be termed), is not that big of a problem. Whenever we're walking and we see a carbon-based life-form, we simply stop so he can briefly say, 'Hello, I'm Archy, nice to meet you, I wuv you,' and then we move on.
But today I made the ginormous mistake of hitting the park around 3 pm. It must have been the peroxide poisoning from the hairdressers, but I forgot that school gets out around 3 pm.
What follows is a short playlet demonstrating what happens when we hit the park after school:
RANDOM 12-YEAR-OLD MALE: Aw, wicked man, it's that dog out Men in Black, innit?
ME (gormlessly): Yeah. [Thinking: no, that was a pug, dammit!]
ARCHY: Hello. I wuv you THIS much!
Five minutes of excited cuddling is followed by awkward, lingering retreat on part of ARCH and I. We walk about a yard and a half.
RANDOM 3-YEAR-OLD FEMALE: Doggy!
ME: That's right, it's a doggy.
RANDOM MUM: Aw, isn't he sweet?
ARCHY: Allow me, please, to place my tongue on your hand! As a token of my wuv! For you!
R.3Y.O.F: AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!
ME: Come, Archy, come on boy.
RANDOM MUM: There's nothing to be afraid of darling.
ME: I'm SO sorry [Thinking: if you're child is phobic about dogs, why can't you warn me first, insufferable maternal unit?]
R.3Y.O.F. calms down and tries to pet my other dog FIFI by striking her violently about the head and neck with a tiny, tiny fist. We prise ourselves away and make it all of ten feet before encountering a HORDE OF MIXED SEX 16-YEAR-OLDS.
HORDE MEMBER 1 breaks off in mid-snog of HORDE MEMBER 2 as we approach, ARCHY in the fore, straining to get to the new people.
HORDE MEMBER 1: Sick! Hey, miss, that dog is sick, right!
ME (alarmed): What? Why? What did he do?
HM1: Nuffing, he's well cool, innit? He's sick!
ME (feeling 103 years old): Oh, yeah. Thanks. [Thinking: is that what kids say now? It's dumber than 'bad']
HM2 (noticing FIFI): OAOW, look at the titchy one! Can I pet him?
ME: Ummmmm, sure. She's a girl, actually.
ARCHY is going completely mental trying to get the attention away from FIFI and back to himself. I have to chase FIFI and hold her in my hands before she will be submit to petting; she is seething gently yet steadily, much like Mt. St. Helens must have in the days before the big blow.
Eventually, we tear ourselves away and make it another five feet....before we see a large family with a big, old labrador. The love theme from Zefferelli's Romeo and Juliet kicks in as ARCHY swoops across the grass to her side.
ARCHY: Ah, mon amour, at last you have come!
OLD LAB: Sorry, have we met?
ARCHY: Only in my dreams, cherie. Only in my dreams. Say, is your father a garbageman?
OLD LAB: No, why?
ARCHY: Oh, I just thought he stole the stink from the garbage cans and placed it in your fur.
OLD LAB: Why, you sweet talker!
FIFI: YAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAPYAYAP!
ME: Sorrysorrysorry. No, she doesn't bite. Yes, she's always been like this...
ARCHY: Oh, look over there -- it's a Cavalier! Oh, wait, it's a boy. We-ell, I s'pose just this once... Hey! You over there! I wuv you! [He vanishes into the middle distance]
Fin
Archy's firm belief that he is personally responsible for spreading the love is quite endearing, but I'll think twice before we hit the park at rush hour again. I asked FiFi, and she completely agrees with me on this one.
Yap.
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Do'sDay: To Chop or not to Chop...
Here we goes again!
For lo, winter is past and the rain is over and gone. (Well, not really, but in a normal English winter, it totally would've been by now). And the time for the cutting of hair is come.
Seriously, it is time for a haircut, drastic or otherwise. The last time my locks felt the bite of a goodly pair of shears was, by my calculations, July or so. It's so easy to get lazy with hair when it gets past a certain length. And, man, mine is definitely past any number of lengths. I'd venture to say it hasn't been this long since I was 18 years old.
And that's really the nub, isn't it? Long hair may be cute on some coltish filly on the verge of blooming womanhood, but for a lay-dee in her 30's?
[Okay, okay. Since I know readers who knew me when will take issue with the above description, I'll admit that I not so much 'coltish' in my teens as 'hedgehoggish' -- you know, small and round and prickly?.]
There's a fantabulous British expression that haunts my waking hours and racks my restless sleep: 'Ooh, get a look at 'er. Mutton dressed as lamb, I call it.'
Ouch, but isn't it so devastatingly on the nose? The woolly, slimy nose?
Examples? Um, Madonna leaps athletically to mind and then strikes a weird kabuki-inspired pose. Geez, woman, you are OLD. And that's fine, it's okay to be old. What is creeping out all and sundry is that you insist on aping the yout' : you stole your tumbling blond locks off some prepubescent, Pony Club, princess-obsessive, and you stole your bulging biceps off a kid named Cody who works out daily in his mom's garage, affects a muscle shirt, and insists that everyone call him C-Dog.
And what about Angelina Jolie? I'm pretty sure we're the same age, which I like to think is not OLD, but doesn't her hair just scream: 'If I grow this stuff long enough, I just know my prince will come climbing it up one day!' Doesn't it look like it belongs on one of her innumerable pupae? Doesn't it actually make her look weird and sad and like she's still working through those times daddy wasn't there by clinging to the hair-style she had when he left? Whatever Happened to Baby Jane much? No? Well, maybe that's just me. But leaving pseudo-psych aside, someone that beautiful shouldn't need to look like she's trying that hard.
Going even further down the age ladder, what about Jordan/Katie Price? Again, not totally sure on this and can't be bothered checking, but I do believe she's YOUNGER than I. And could her hair make her look any older? *Shudder* I'm s'posin' the plastic surgery's got something to do with it, but day-um. That huge pile of dark straw on her head is like a black-hole sucking all available youth and light from its immediate vicinity. J/KP easily passes for a desperate 50-year-old ex-showgirl who's attempting to pass for 30...and she IS about 30! Put her next to Janice Dickinson and I double-dog-dare ya to tell the diff.
Super-long hair past a certain age is like wearing a sailorsuit and a big dumb hat. You don't look younger. Actually, the trappings of childhood only serve to highlight your maturity. Plus, it creates a weird Uncanny-Valley-of-Age effect that can create a high squick-factor and land you on Jerry Springer.
So how old is 'a certain age'? The bar is constantly moving these days, in favour of Crystal-Gale-aping grammas. But just cuz everybody's doin' it, don't make it right. If all your friends jumped off the Botox Bridge, would you?
And where does all that leave me? My hair is certainly not in the Rapunzel league yet, but the longer is goes past my shoulders, the harder it is to cut. Its like it takes on a life of its own, sucking out your own good judgement: you can't cut me, I'm soooo loooooong.
My brain says, 'Bobs after 30 are classy. Long locks after 40 are trashy.'
The hair says '*Bleep* you brain, what have you done for us lately? That didn't even rhyme properly. And did I mention that I'm naturally curly?'
What will tomorrow bring? We shall see.
We shall see.
For lo, winter is past and the rain is over and gone. (Well, not really, but in a normal English winter, it totally would've been by now). And the time for the cutting of hair is come.
Seriously, it is time for a haircut, drastic or otherwise. The last time my locks felt the bite of a goodly pair of shears was, by my calculations, July or so. It's so easy to get lazy with hair when it gets past a certain length. And, man, mine is definitely past any number of lengths. I'd venture to say it hasn't been this long since I was 18 years old.
And that's really the nub, isn't it? Long hair may be cute on some coltish filly on the verge of blooming womanhood, but for a lay-dee in her 30's?
[Okay, okay. Since I know readers who knew me when will take issue with the above description, I'll admit that I not so much 'coltish' in my teens as 'hedgehoggish' -- you know, small and round and prickly?.]
There's a fantabulous British expression that haunts my waking hours and racks my restless sleep: 'Ooh, get a look at 'er. Mutton dressed as lamb, I call it.'
Ouch, but isn't it so devastatingly on the nose? The woolly, slimy nose?
Examples? Um, Madonna leaps athletically to mind and then strikes a weird kabuki-inspired pose. Geez, woman, you are OLD. And that's fine, it's okay to be old. What is creeping out all and sundry is that you insist on aping the yout' : you stole your tumbling blond locks off some prepubescent, Pony Club, princess-obsessive, and you stole your bulging biceps off a kid named Cody who works out daily in his mom's garage, affects a muscle shirt, and insists that everyone call him C-Dog.
And what about Angelina Jolie? I'm pretty sure we're the same age, which I like to think is not OLD, but doesn't her hair just scream: 'If I grow this stuff long enough, I just know my prince will come climbing it up one day!' Doesn't it look like it belongs on one of her innumerable pupae? Doesn't it actually make her look weird and sad and like she's still working through those times daddy wasn't there by clinging to the hair-style she had when he left? Whatever Happened to Baby Jane much? No? Well, maybe that's just me. But leaving pseudo-psych aside, someone that beautiful shouldn't need to look like she's trying that hard.
Going even further down the age ladder, what about Jordan/Katie Price? Again, not totally sure on this and can't be bothered checking, but I do believe she's YOUNGER than I. And could her hair make her look any older? *Shudder* I'm s'posin' the plastic surgery's got something to do with it, but day-um. That huge pile of dark straw on her head is like a black-hole sucking all available youth and light from its immediate vicinity. J/KP easily passes for a desperate 50-year-old ex-showgirl who's attempting to pass for 30...and she IS about 30! Put her next to Janice Dickinson and I double-dog-dare ya to tell the diff.
Super-long hair past a certain age is like wearing a sailorsuit and a big dumb hat. You don't look younger. Actually, the trappings of childhood only serve to highlight your maturity. Plus, it creates a weird Uncanny-Valley-of-Age effect that can create a high squick-factor and land you on Jerry Springer.
So how old is 'a certain age'? The bar is constantly moving these days, in favour of Crystal-Gale-aping grammas. But just cuz everybody's doin' it, don't make it right. If all your friends jumped off the Botox Bridge, would you?
And where does all that leave me? My hair is certainly not in the Rapunzel league yet, but the longer is goes past my shoulders, the harder it is to cut. Its like it takes on a life of its own, sucking out your own good judgement: you can't cut me, I'm soooo loooooong.
My brain says, 'Bobs after 30 are classy. Long locks after 40 are trashy.'
The hair says '*Bleep* you brain, what have you done for us lately? That didn't even rhyme properly. And did I mention that I'm naturally curly?'
What will tomorrow bring? We shall see.
We shall see.
Monday, 9 February 2009
Moanday: Escape from Rodentia
The time has come for a full and frank discussion about mice.
Some of us laydee types still retain the hard-wired genetic Eek-Response to these little critters. These are the lucky ones.
Others, like myself, have been conditioned by a lifetime of exposure to positive media depictions of rodentia in films like The Rescuers, The Rats of N.I.M.H., and Midnight Cowboy to replace the Eek-Response with the Aaw-Response.
Sounds good, right? We've been freed from our irrational feminine fears and may now wear trousers and go work down at the munitions plant at our leisure. But soft! What happens when a girl who's been liberated from the Eek-Response is faced with the unmistakable evidence of a mouse infestation in her own home?
Complete and total moral collapse. And that's what I'm living right now. It ain't pretty.
When I first saw what I naievely believed to be 'the' mouse, the Pinky-and-the-Brain-washing of my youth kicked in instantly.
'AAAAAAW!' I cooed. 'He is so PWESHUSSSS! I will love him and pet him and name him George.'
'Let's get a trap,' said the Man of the House.
'Noooo,' I said. 'Well, okay, we'll get a humane one. Because he's so SWEEEEEET.'
Within days, the facts of life they never gave you in Steamboat Willie hit me squarely, but thankfully metaphorically, in the eye.
Mice poop. They do it, and they really don't care where they do it. Also, they're quite good and jumping, climbing, and opening cupbpards. TO STEAL YOUR FOOD. And humane traps? Pfff, mice are WAAAAY too smart to fall for those old things. Why do you think scientists are always hanging out with mice? To plagiarize their brilliant mousey ideas, duh.
Also, mice have a lot of friends. Friends that they ask back to your place without even checking with you first. Friends with benefits who create even more mice, new mice who are stealing and pooping and partying in your Ikea kitchen units.
Mice, in their most essential form, are nothing less than incontinent, criminally insane, sexually loose supergeniuses. There, I said it. Somebody had to.
I know, I know, I could get in huge trouble for saying this. If I don't post again, you'll know that agents of rodentophiliac media have gotten to me and I'm strapped in a chair somewhere with my eyes taped open, experiencing re-education through an endless loop of Tom and Jerry.
Until such time as they get to me, I've called a carpenter to see if he can find where they're coming in and stop it up. Then comes the reckoning.
Humane no more, Mickey.
Some of us laydee types still retain the hard-wired genetic Eek-Response to these little critters. These are the lucky ones.
Others, like myself, have been conditioned by a lifetime of exposure to positive media depictions of rodentia in films like The Rescuers, The Rats of N.I.M.H., and Midnight Cowboy to replace the Eek-Response with the Aaw-Response.
Sounds good, right? We've been freed from our irrational feminine fears and may now wear trousers and go work down at the munitions plant at our leisure. But soft! What happens when a girl who's been liberated from the Eek-Response is faced with the unmistakable evidence of a mouse infestation in her own home?
Complete and total moral collapse. And that's what I'm living right now. It ain't pretty.
When I first saw what I naievely believed to be 'the' mouse, the Pinky-and-the-Brain-washing of my youth kicked in instantly.
'AAAAAAW!' I cooed. 'He is so PWESHUSSSS! I will love him and pet him and name him George.'
'Let's get a trap,' said the Man of the House.
'Noooo,' I said. 'Well, okay, we'll get a humane one. Because he's so SWEEEEEET.'
Within days, the facts of life they never gave you in Steamboat Willie hit me squarely, but thankfully metaphorically, in the eye.
Mice poop. They do it, and they really don't care where they do it. Also, they're quite good and jumping, climbing, and opening cupbpards. TO STEAL YOUR FOOD. And humane traps? Pfff, mice are WAAAAY too smart to fall for those old things. Why do you think scientists are always hanging out with mice? To plagiarize their brilliant mousey ideas, duh.
Also, mice have a lot of friends. Friends that they ask back to your place without even checking with you first. Friends with benefits who create even more mice, new mice who are stealing and pooping and partying in your Ikea kitchen units.
Mice, in their most essential form, are nothing less than incontinent, criminally insane, sexually loose supergeniuses. There, I said it. Somebody had to.
I know, I know, I could get in huge trouble for saying this. If I don't post again, you'll know that agents of rodentophiliac media have gotten to me and I'm strapped in a chair somewhere with my eyes taped open, experiencing re-education through an endless loop of Tom and Jerry.
Until such time as they get to me, I've called a carpenter to see if he can find where they're coming in and stop it up. Then comes the reckoning.
Humane no more, Mickey.
Saturday, 7 February 2009
Liter'aturday: It Lives
Walking along the icy sidewalks of Olde Londonne Towne recently, I saw one of those styrofoam hamburger containers floating in a puddle. It had popped open and the top half of it was acting like a sail as the Bitterre Winterre Winde blew it hither and yon, and finally into the gutter.
Of course, my mind was instantly transported to the wide, wide world of Stephen King, more specifically to his most awesomest book of all: It. If you've read it (or should that be It?), you'll know why. If not, then why not and what have you been doing with your life?
I can think of no book other than the Bible that can more truly be said to have something for everyone: Love! Hate! Flying Maggots! Adorable Urchins! Regional Pride! A Thing with the Head of a Doberman Pinscher Wearing a Clown Suit as it Offs a Mental Hospital Attendent!
The love apect of the novel alone is so encyclopedic. It has got every kind of love I can think of: puppy/adult, straight,/gay, abusive/saccharine.
C.S. Lewis could have used this novel alone as the basis for his definitive study of affection and spirituality, The Four Loves. Watch this:
Storge - This is the love of the familiar. People with this kind of love often have little in common except shared life experience, which is why it is often defined as family love. Brothers Bill and George who are necessarily separted in their interests by their big age difference yet have what is perhaps the central relationship of the novel are, of course, the number one example in It. But there are lots of other examples: Richie and his parents, especially his mother, who loves him intensely and yet wishes that she could have had 'a pretty little girl she could have understood'; the Losers' Club and Officer Nell, separated by the gulf between child and adult and yet united in small-town familiarity and fondness; Mike Hanlon and the town of Derry itself...
Philia - This is friendship love. Well, yeah, I would say so. You got the Losers' Club en masse and in their individual relations to each other, Henry Bowers and his gang (I know they're bad, but I think they like each other and you can't convince me otherwise), Adult Beverly's galpal Kay who is willing to risk her life for Bev (but interestingly, not her good looks. Feminist-reactionary much, Steve?)... C.S. Lewis defines philia as having its roots in a common interest. And what common interest could be more compelling than a Killer Clown from Outer Space? I can't think of another book I've read (and trust me, I've read a few), that better captures the experience and intensity of childhood friendship.
Eros - This is the kind of love most people think of when they think of love. Mwah, mwah, let's hold hands/crank the Barry White/dress up as giant stuffed animals...whatever the individual is into, it's romance, baby. In It, eros is less important that the other kinds of love, which I find totally refreshing 'cause IMHO people tend to overrate this one's importance in life and literature, but it's there. Y'got Bev and Bill, Ben and Bev, Bill and Audrey, Stan and his wife, Eddie and his mom....Oops, did I just write that? But hey, go talk to Mr. King. It's not my novel.
And, finally, Agape - Yays! It makes me so happy to read about this kind of love, because it is most arguably the most important and yet nobody seems to write about anymore: it's the completely disinterested love of one's neighbour. Jesus love, in other words. Lewis says Agape has nothing to do with that beloved's actual personality or individual worth, which is why some people actually experience it as kind of insulting (ie, 'I don't want your charity!'). Agape is the kind of love that made people risk their lives to save Jews who were complete strangers to them during WWII. It's what makes people donate blood or volunteer at soup kitchens or force their child to go the birthday party of the most unpopular kid in class. It is bustin' with Agape. The Losers all exhibit it in their willingness to give up their lives for their fellow kids, and the force 'Beyond the Turtle' exhibits it in its (Its?) intervention in the characters' lives.
Even more interesting to me though, is the way King uses a kind of anti-Agape. It, the Killer Clown thing, is a personification of this negative force in the way it enjoys pain, fear, death, regardless of whether the character is on Its side or not. In fact, It kills at least as many 'bad guys' as 'good guys', which is puzzling until you realize that this is the exact inversion of Jesus hangin' with taxmen, ho's and pharisees.
Even more poignant than the supernatural element though, is the anti-Agape of the townspeople. Again and again, King presents adults who have both the power and the opportunity to intervene favourably (even life-savingly) in the lives of children and choose not to do so. Why? Because they fail to see the children as their responsibility.
Perhaps the best example of this is the almost throw-away story of Dorsey Corchoran. In this brief interlude within the larger story, we meet an abused kindergardener whose teachers are aware of his danger but unaccountably fail to do a thing about it. When I read It as a 14-year-old, I could not for the life of me figure out why this non-supernatural, seemingly unrelated story was plonked in the middle of the novel. From my current vantagepoint, I believe it's in the center of the story because it's central to the story: demonstrating what happens when people reject Agape creates an incredibly strong imperative for the reader to embrace it (because the alternative is to embrace It).
So, anyway, you don't have to be interested in all this pseudo-philosophico-religious stuff to enjoy It, because it also works simply as a cracking creature-feature. It is damn long, but I heartily recommend it to any and all who have yet to meet It.
Of course, my mind was instantly transported to the wide, wide world of Stephen King, more specifically to his most awesomest book of all: It. If you've read it (or should that be It?), you'll know why. If not, then why not and what have you been doing with your life?
I can think of no book other than the Bible that can more truly be said to have something for everyone: Love! Hate! Flying Maggots! Adorable Urchins! Regional Pride! A Thing with the Head of a Doberman Pinscher Wearing a Clown Suit as it Offs a Mental Hospital Attendent!
The love apect of the novel alone is so encyclopedic. It has got every kind of love I can think of: puppy/adult, straight,/gay, abusive/saccharine.
C.S. Lewis could have used this novel alone as the basis for his definitive study of affection and spirituality, The Four Loves. Watch this:
Storge - This is the love of the familiar. People with this kind of love often have little in common except shared life experience, which is why it is often defined as family love. Brothers Bill and George who are necessarily separted in their interests by their big age difference yet have what is perhaps the central relationship of the novel are, of course, the number one example in It. But there are lots of other examples: Richie and his parents, especially his mother, who loves him intensely and yet wishes that she could have had 'a pretty little girl she could have understood'; the Losers' Club and Officer Nell, separated by the gulf between child and adult and yet united in small-town familiarity and fondness; Mike Hanlon and the town of Derry itself...
Philia - This is friendship love. Well, yeah, I would say so. You got the Losers' Club en masse and in their individual relations to each other, Henry Bowers and his gang (I know they're bad, but I think they like each other and you can't convince me otherwise), Adult Beverly's galpal Kay who is willing to risk her life for Bev (but interestingly, not her good looks. Feminist-reactionary much, Steve?)... C.S. Lewis defines philia as having its roots in a common interest. And what common interest could be more compelling than a Killer Clown from Outer Space? I can't think of another book I've read (and trust me, I've read a few), that better captures the experience and intensity of childhood friendship.
Eros - This is the kind of love most people think of when they think of love. Mwah, mwah, let's hold hands/crank the Barry White/dress up as giant stuffed animals...whatever the individual is into, it's romance, baby. In It, eros is less important that the other kinds of love, which I find totally refreshing 'cause IMHO people tend to overrate this one's importance in life and literature, but it's there. Y'got Bev and Bill, Ben and Bev, Bill and Audrey, Stan and his wife, Eddie and his mom....Oops, did I just write that? But hey, go talk to Mr. King. It's not my novel.
And, finally, Agape - Yays! It makes me so happy to read about this kind of love, because it is most arguably the most important and yet nobody seems to write about anymore: it's the completely disinterested love of one's neighbour. Jesus love, in other words. Lewis says Agape has nothing to do with that beloved's actual personality or individual worth, which is why some people actually experience it as kind of insulting (ie, 'I don't want your charity!'). Agape is the kind of love that made people risk their lives to save Jews who were complete strangers to them during WWII. It's what makes people donate blood or volunteer at soup kitchens or force their child to go the birthday party of the most unpopular kid in class. It is bustin' with Agape. The Losers all exhibit it in their willingness to give up their lives for their fellow kids, and the force 'Beyond the Turtle' exhibits it in its (Its?) intervention in the characters' lives.
Even more interesting to me though, is the way King uses a kind of anti-Agape. It, the Killer Clown thing, is a personification of this negative force in the way it enjoys pain, fear, death, regardless of whether the character is on Its side or not. In fact, It kills at least as many 'bad guys' as 'good guys', which is puzzling until you realize that this is the exact inversion of Jesus hangin' with taxmen, ho's and pharisees.
Even more poignant than the supernatural element though, is the anti-Agape of the townspeople. Again and again, King presents adults who have both the power and the opportunity to intervene favourably (even life-savingly) in the lives of children and choose not to do so. Why? Because they fail to see the children as their responsibility.
Perhaps the best example of this is the almost throw-away story of Dorsey Corchoran. In this brief interlude within the larger story, we meet an abused kindergardener whose teachers are aware of his danger but unaccountably fail to do a thing about it. When I read It as a 14-year-old, I could not for the life of me figure out why this non-supernatural, seemingly unrelated story was plonked in the middle of the novel. From my current vantagepoint, I believe it's in the center of the story because it's central to the story: demonstrating what happens when people reject Agape creates an incredibly strong imperative for the reader to embrace it (because the alternative is to embrace It).
So, anyway, you don't have to be interested in all this pseudo-philosophico-religious stuff to enjoy It, because it also works simply as a cracking creature-feature. It is damn long, but I heartily recommend it to any and all who have yet to meet It.
Friday, 6 February 2009
D.I.Y.day: Tuppence a Bag
So, the weather continues suckacious, and more snow is foretold for tonight. Yays.
But as sorry as I feel for myself (and believe me, my self-pity is at least Great-Dane sized on the dogometer), the birds are in an even worse way. How do I know? Because I'm actually seeing them.
The thing about yippy little dogs is that, well, they yip, and either the local birds find this frightening or aesthetically offensive, and so in spite of my many attempts at making them feel at home, they turn up their beaks and give our garden the go-by.
But now that the snow is everywhere, there are hoards of pathetic-looking blackbirds, crow-esque things (are they ravens? Almost certainly not, but it would be kewl if so), pigeons (the fat American type and the slightly less fat English type), and any other not-very-interesting bird species you can think of are shuffling around out there, grasping tattered shawls over their heads with one wing and holding the other out in supplication.
One starling had a little crutch and newsboy cap. It was trying to sell newspapers to get money for its little sister's medicine.
Aw, come on, I said to myself, these are the least interesting birds you've ever seen. They're not even pretty colours. They can fend for themselves.
But this morning I went out to do poop-scoop patrol and a little ragged robin sidled up to me.
'Spaysuhshainplaze?' it said.
'What?' I asked. 'I didn't quite catch that.'
'Spaysuhshainplaze,' it twittered again.
'Could you try that one more time, a bit slower?'
'Spay. Suh. Shain. Plaze,' it bellowed.
'O-oh, spare some change please,' I echoed as the light dawned. 'No, I'm not giving you change. You'll only spend it on meth.'
'Nao I waon't,' said the robin. 'Oi'll buy tay.'
'You'll buy a tray?'
'Nao, what are you simple or somefing? Oi will buy ay cup of tay.'
I put my hands on my hips. I grew up in New Haven, so I like to think I know how to deal with pan-handlers.
'Look,' I said, 'if you want a cup of tea, I can run inside and make you one right now. You don't need any change.'
'Nao,' it said, 'just spaysuhshainplaze, cuz Oi tell a lie. Oi raly wanted to use the monay to buy food for my baybays.'
'Ahem,' I answered, 'I'm not dumb. I've seen that David Attenborough thing. You won't have any babies until springtime. In fact, sir, I put it to you are that you are a dishonest robin.'
'Nao, nao, nao,' it replied. 'Oi 'uz just troyin' to play on yer sympafies. Troof is, I just want to get enough monay togevver to get over tuh Spain fer the rest of the winter. Cuz Oi've got a medical condition what makes the caold bad fer me.'
'I'm very sorry, but I just don't believe you.'
'Look, just spaysuhshainplaze an' I want bovver you again. On me muvver's loif.'
By now I was getting fed up.
'No way. It's robins like you that are creating a drain on our society. Get a little, bird-sized job.'
'Gimme 50P,' it said relentlessly.
'No.'
'30, then.'
'No!'
It puffed up its feathers.
'I tell you what,' it said, 'how's about you, right, go and get some feeders and that, make good, everyone's happy.'
This seemed reasonable.
So off I went to B&Q (=British Home Depot) through the slush, over the un-sanded, un-gritted, unshovelled sheets of ice that are our pavements and shelled out for sunflower seeds, 'fat balls' (no, seriously, that's what they're called), and flaxseed mix.
I get back, hang it all up around the yard, feel like a good samaritan.
Two hours later, I go outside to see how it's getting on and that damn robin has set up a kiosk and was selling MY seeds to the other birds. He had a big rook working protection to ensure nobody took any food without paying for it.
Oh well, I thought, at least he's staying out of trouble. He's trying to make something of himself. He's self-employed.
But then, after dinner when I went to let the dogs out, I found that baggy on the birdfeeder by the window.
DAMN YOU, METH-HEAD ROBIN!!!!!!
But as sorry as I feel for myself (and believe me, my self-pity is at least Great-Dane sized on the dogometer), the birds are in an even worse way. How do I know? Because I'm actually seeing them.
The thing about yippy little dogs is that, well, they yip, and either the local birds find this frightening or aesthetically offensive, and so in spite of my many attempts at making them feel at home, they turn up their beaks and give our garden the go-by.
But now that the snow is everywhere, there are hoards of pathetic-looking blackbirds, crow-esque things (are they ravens? Almost certainly not, but it would be kewl if so), pigeons (the fat American type and the slightly less fat English type), and any other not-very-interesting bird species you can think of are shuffling around out there, grasping tattered shawls over their heads with one wing and holding the other out in supplication.
One starling had a little crutch and newsboy cap. It was trying to sell newspapers to get money for its little sister's medicine.
Aw, come on, I said to myself, these are the least interesting birds you've ever seen. They're not even pretty colours. They can fend for themselves.
But this morning I went out to do poop-scoop patrol and a little ragged robin sidled up to me.
'Spaysuhshainplaze?' it said.
'What?' I asked. 'I didn't quite catch that.'
'Spaysuhshainplaze,' it twittered again.
'Could you try that one more time, a bit slower?'
'Spay. Suh. Shain. Plaze,' it bellowed.
'O-oh, spare some change please,' I echoed as the light dawned. 'No, I'm not giving you change. You'll only spend it on meth.'
'Nao I waon't,' said the robin. 'Oi'll buy tay.'
'You'll buy a tray?'
'Nao, what are you simple or somefing? Oi will buy ay cup of tay.'
I put my hands on my hips. I grew up in New Haven, so I like to think I know how to deal with pan-handlers.
'Look,' I said, 'if you want a cup of tea, I can run inside and make you one right now. You don't need any change.'
'Nao,' it said, 'just spaysuhshainplaze, cuz Oi tell a lie. Oi raly wanted to use the monay to buy food for my baybays.'
'Ahem,' I answered, 'I'm not dumb. I've seen that David Attenborough thing. You won't have any babies until springtime. In fact, sir, I put it to you are that you are a dishonest robin.'
'Nao, nao, nao,' it replied. 'Oi 'uz just troyin' to play on yer sympafies. Troof is, I just want to get enough monay togevver to get over tuh Spain fer the rest of the winter. Cuz Oi've got a medical condition what makes the caold bad fer me.'
'I'm very sorry, but I just don't believe you.'
'Look, just spaysuhshainplaze an' I want bovver you again. On me muvver's loif.'
By now I was getting fed up.
'No way. It's robins like you that are creating a drain on our society. Get a little, bird-sized job.'
'Gimme 50P,' it said relentlessly.
'No.'
'30, then.'
'No!'
It puffed up its feathers.
'I tell you what,' it said, 'how's about you, right, go and get some feeders and that, make good, everyone's happy.'
This seemed reasonable.
So off I went to B&Q (=British Home Depot) through the slush, over the un-sanded, un-gritted, unshovelled sheets of ice that are our pavements and shelled out for sunflower seeds, 'fat balls' (no, seriously, that's what they're called), and flaxseed mix.
I get back, hang it all up around the yard, feel like a good samaritan.
Two hours later, I go outside to see how it's getting on and that damn robin has set up a kiosk and was selling MY seeds to the other birds. He had a big rook working protection to ensure nobody took any food without paying for it.
Oh well, I thought, at least he's staying out of trouble. He's trying to make something of himself. He's self-employed.
But then, after dinner when I went to let the dogs out, I found that baggy on the birdfeeder by the window.
DAMN YOU, METH-HEAD ROBIN!!!!!!
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Thaddle-Thore Thurthday: Dashing Through the Slush
What is love, anyway?
I thought I'd check with St Paul because he's been quoted at every wedding I've ever been to [except mine], and he tells me that love
I thought I'd check with St Paul because he's been quoted at every wedding I've ever been to [except mine], and he tells me that love
does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.To this I have to say, 'Mr. Apostle, that is very sweet. But you're begging the question, sir. Did I ask what love ISN'T?'It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not
easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love
does not delight in evil but rejoices with the
truth.(Cor. 1:13)
And then I say ten Hail Mary's and feel bad about sassmouthing our saint, and I turn from King James to King Features Syndicate.
Yes, where better to find the answers to what love is than in Love Is...? So I Googled my way to today's strip and learned that:
Love is...Bountiful
(Casselli, 2/5/09)
Today, love also appears to involve the usually naked kidult couple wearing Huck Finn outfits and picking apples.
My first reaction was, 'WTF? Apples in February? Does Casselli have a profound love of huffing silver spray-paint or merely a profound contempt for nature itself?' Then I went on Wikipedia and found out dude is Australian, so actually I guess those are Braeburns and it's late summer there and it's all fine. Sorry. I overreacted, and I apologize.
But my second reaction was, 'Good golly, you oddly-sexualized-and yet-genital-free bobble-heads, you are EVEN LESS help than St Paul. Love is Bountiful? What does that even mean? That I should sex up my nearest tree to increase our harvest? Wasn't there something like that in The Wickerman? And we all know how that ended!'
So, okay, clearly you can't rely on other people to define love for you. Thus, I now try it for myself. Here goes:
Love is...slip-sliding over ungritted, solid-ice pavementsto get on a stanky-smelling, bumpy-riding busto ride on a teeming commuter-hour trainto walk down an unlighted park path with possible Ted Bundysbehind every treeto ride around and around a school that is ankle-deep in slushuntil every muscle in your body is yodelling Queen's greatest hits
and...wait for it...
this is the best bit...
PAYING for the
privilege(Mehitabel, 5/2/09)
Yes, only horse-addicts know the true meaning of love. (Um, no, not that kind of horse, otherwise Amy and Blake would still be together, n'est-ce pas?)
Last night's group lesson was especially challenging as I've been out of commish for the last 6 weeks or so with Repitious Flu and all my muscles, such as they are, have become very comfortable with the idea that their main use is for sitting on couches rather than horses.
But even with all this unpleasantness, I consider that luck was with me, because I got to ride Bobby.
Have you ever met a Bobby type? He's a little over 14H, fat as you like, and about 26 years old. And he is not afraid to play the age card whenever it seems conveeenyunt to him.
This was Bobby when I was a beginner rider:
'Oh *cough cough* sorry I can't go any fast, missus *wheeze*. The rheumatiz is playin' up. *Pitches forward violently* Dear me, did I stumble and almost send you over me ears, love? Well, I am an old man, what do you expect? *Comes to a dead stop at K and causes a massive horse pile-up behind him* Hmm, some interestin' clouds up there. Does that one look like a bunny to you?'
But I long ago discovered the secret of Bobby. It is carrots.
If you give him one carrot before lesson and two after, he is a different horse.
This is Bobby now that I'm a novice:
'D'you see that big sorrel thing up there ahead of us? Who does she bloody think she is, I'd like to know, prancin' along like a soddin' show-horse. 'Ere, watch this. *Attempts to zoom up the backside of of 16H 10-year-old* Ha! You don't like that, do you? Maybe you'll think twice next time before you go around bein' taller than me. What a liberty! Now then, what's that great lug over there doing? Call that a canter? *flies past 17H 13-year-old with backward look of profound contempt* Oh, what's that you want up there, missus? You what? Half-halt? We-ell, awright, but it isn't everyone I'd do it for, mind'
God, I love him SO MUCH. He's like a beautiful Vermeer that I've painstakingly uncovered after years of chipping away at a sad-clown-with-puppy overpainting.
I can only imagine what it will be like to ride him when I get a few more years worth of competence under the ol' belt. When I say my prayers, I include an addendum that he'll live long enough for me to find out.
Yup, that's love.
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
First Post!
First post! Well, this is exciting, innit? Where to start commentating?
It's tricky, because as an American female living in the UK, I've only got one major media role-model to follow when it comes to cultural commentary: Gwyneth Paltrow, and she is a perilous paradigm at best.
But why, I hear you asking, would you not want to emulate this bodacious, blonde, bazillionaire babe? Jealous, hmmm?
Um, no.
In fact, if I had to wear those crazy-painful stilletto shoes she teeters around in, there wouldn't be enough money or fame or being-married-to-a-rock-star in this universe to make it up to me.
But while I feel her pedal pain, she irks me severely in the way that she copes with her ex-pat status. Most of you only get to see her in one media arena, British or American, but not both, so allow me to elucidate.
Gwyneth Paltrow Syndrome (GPS) is a rather junior high tactic for living a life between two cultures.
When GP gives an interview to Americans, she talks about how AWESOMELY free-spirited and life-affirming ye Yanks are in comparison to those stuffy old Brits with their brollies and their rigid class system and their mad-cow en croute. Hey, did you know that they call standing in line queuing? What a bunch of dentally-challenged freaks, am I right?
Then, when she talks to the British media, what does she do? If you said, 'Well, Mehitabel, based on what you've already said here, I'm betting she says the exact opposite,' then give yourself a macrobiotic, organic, hand-milled, fat-free cookie.
Yes indeedy, in the UK press Ms. P. portrays Americans as a bunch of uptight, McDonalds-gorging, Starbucks-swilling, culturally bankrupt puritans, while only the dear, authentic British know the value of REAL food, REAL theatre, REAL ale...
Now, believe me, I don't want to be overly harsh because I absolutely get the temptation she faces.
Who hasn't bitched to Kelly about Chianti's telling Cody Kelleher that you said you thought his brother was wicked hot when that was TOTALLY supposed to be a secret and also, did you see what she was wearing on Tuesday, OMG, who does she think she is, Alyssa Milano or something?...and then turned around and bitched to Chianti about the fact the Kelly borrowed your brand-new acid-washed jeans and spilled vodka-spiked grape Kool-Aid all over them and then she didn't even say sorry, and also did you see what she was wearing on Wednesday, OMG, who does she think she is, Demi Moore or something?
And still, as much fun as this is, by the time we're, oh I dunno, let's say 15, most of us have figured out that this type of two-facing makes us Not Very Nice People. So we stop doing it. Mostly.
In this little blog, I do want to share my observations on some cultural differences....oh, okay, let's be honest about this: I want to vent, vent, vent. But in the interests of avoiding GPS, I shall attempt to balance any nasty observations about one country with an equally nasty one about the other. Or, hey, maybe even something nice if I'm in a really good mood. That's fair, right?
Well, I'll try, anyway.
But say -- as long as you're here anyway, did you see what the Queen was wearing on Thursday? OMG, who does she think she is, Princess Grace of Monaco or something?
It's tricky, because as an American female living in the UK, I've only got one major media role-model to follow when it comes to cultural commentary: Gwyneth Paltrow, and she is a perilous paradigm at best.
But why, I hear you asking, would you not want to emulate this bodacious, blonde, bazillionaire babe? Jealous, hmmm?
Um, no.
In fact, if I had to wear those crazy-painful stilletto shoes she teeters around in, there wouldn't be enough money or fame or being-married-to-a-rock-star in this universe to make it up to me.
But while I feel her pedal pain, she irks me severely in the way that she copes with her ex-pat status. Most of you only get to see her in one media arena, British or American, but not both, so allow me to elucidate.
Gwyneth Paltrow Syndrome (GPS) is a rather junior high tactic for living a life between two cultures.
When GP gives an interview to Americans, she talks about how AWESOMELY free-spirited and life-affirming ye Yanks are in comparison to those stuffy old Brits with their brollies and their rigid class system and their mad-cow en croute. Hey, did you know that they call standing in line queuing? What a bunch of dentally-challenged freaks, am I right?
Then, when she talks to the British media, what does she do? If you said, 'Well, Mehitabel, based on what you've already said here, I'm betting she says the exact opposite,' then give yourself a macrobiotic, organic, hand-milled, fat-free cookie.
Yes indeedy, in the UK press Ms. P. portrays Americans as a bunch of uptight, McDonalds-gorging, Starbucks-swilling, culturally bankrupt puritans, while only the dear, authentic British know the value of REAL food, REAL theatre, REAL ale...
Now, believe me, I don't want to be overly harsh because I absolutely get the temptation she faces.
Who hasn't bitched to Kelly about Chianti's telling Cody Kelleher that you said you thought his brother was wicked hot when that was TOTALLY supposed to be a secret and also, did you see what she was wearing on Tuesday, OMG, who does she think she is, Alyssa Milano or something?...and then turned around and bitched to Chianti about the fact the Kelly borrowed your brand-new acid-washed jeans and spilled vodka-spiked grape Kool-Aid all over them and then she didn't even say sorry, and also did you see what she was wearing on Wednesday, OMG, who does she think she is, Demi Moore or something?
And still, as much fun as this is, by the time we're, oh I dunno, let's say 15, most of us have figured out that this type of two-facing makes us Not Very Nice People. So we stop doing it. Mostly.
In this little blog, I do want to share my observations on some cultural differences....oh, okay, let's be honest about this: I want to vent, vent, vent. But in the interests of avoiding GPS, I shall attempt to balance any nasty observations about one country with an equally nasty one about the other. Or, hey, maybe even something nice if I'm in a really good mood. That's fair, right?
Well, I'll try, anyway.
But say -- as long as you're here anyway, did you see what the Queen was wearing on Thursday? OMG, who does she think she is, Princess Grace of Monaco or something?
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