Redirect

Today's post is a guest post I wrote for Lisa's blog, Bored Housewife, so follow me over there today. The subject is fantasies...

Hemorr-Ice!

Dude, I got carded tonight when I ordered a Leinenkugel Red with dinner. Carded! At age 38...ish. Heh.

Speaking of heh, I came across a small sheet of product instructions over at my grandma's place today. Have you ever heard of Hemorr-Ice? This handy product is still available!? In short, Hemorr-Ice is an ice pack designed to reach hemorrhoids. It's the world's tiniest buttplug, and you store it in your freezer. When your 'roids are ailing you, take your Hemorr-Ice out of the freezer, lube it up, and stick it up your bunghole "for 2 to 5 minutes, depending upon the severity of your case." Does that sound a bit shocking? Don't worry—"The discomfort is short-lived and harmless." Then you wash it ("thoroughly with soap and warm water") and pop it back in the freezer for next time. (And please, don't mistake it for a popsicle.)

How long will the treatment take, doctor? "In general, the treatment period for Hemorr-Ice is two insertions per day, morning and evening"—say, with breakfast and then for dessert after dinner—"for one to two weeks. More severe cases may take as long as one month."

Helpful hint for parents: I bet Hemorr-Ice works wonders for the teething baby as well. (Although be mindful of the choking hazard it may pose.) Hemorr-Ice: Good for the whole family!

Four Things

Okay, Mignon tagged me for the Four Things meme. I haven’t really been reading these when various people have posted theirs, but hell, I’ve got to post something, so let’s do the meme.

Four jobs I've had:

• College cafeteria dishroom lackey (temporarily burned off my fingerprints)
• Video store clerk (they rented porn, too)
• College library Finder of Lost Books
• Editorial assistant

Four movies I can watch over and over:

• Sixteen Candles
• When Harry Met Sally…
• The Arrival
• The Sure Thing

Four places I've lived:

• Chicago, IL
• Park Forest, IL
• Northfield, MN
• Sorry, that’s it—but there were multiple abodes in each of those locales

Four places I've been on vacation:

• Prague, Czech Republic
• Orlando, FL, over and over
• Whistler, BC
• Driving through central and Northern California

Four websites I visit daily:

• Bitch Ph.D.
• One Good Thing
• Bored Housewife
• Chicago Tribune

Four of my favorite foods:

• Raspberries
• Chocolate
• Mashed potatoes with plenty of butter
• Skim milk
• Peanut butter (yeah, I know that’s five)

Four places I'd rather be:

• In bed with Mr. Tangerine, the kid asleep down the hall
• Anywhere balmy and peaceful, say, 72 degrees and mostly sunny
• On vacation somewhere I’ve never been (a tropical island, a European capital…)
• Sitting in a restaurant with close friends, having good food, conversation, and wine

Four bloggers I'm tagging:

• Mona
• The Feral Mom
• The Nut
• DoctorMama

Today's anatomy lesson

Today's lesson in female anatomy comes from Susie Bright's post about the G-spot. G-spot factoid I did not know: "If you're rubbing it in the absence of arousal, NOTHING will happen. You will yawn." Get started first, then tend to the G-spot.

Susie links to the G-Spot Center, which offers facts, how to, positions, testimonials, toys, and other resources. If you are a woman or you ever plan to be intimate with one, you might do well to read up. But maybe not at work—there are NSFW illustrations that, while they might be educational for your boss, maybe you don't want to be caught looking at on the company dime.

Recipe contest!

Hey! My friend flea is having an Embarrassing Dinner contest. This arose out of flea's post about dishes made with assorted "cream of" soups—objectively terrifying foods that you love anyway for nostalgic reasons. Flea's grandmother specialized in Broccoli Casserole with cream of mushroom soup; mine made us grilled cheese sandwiches exclusively with Velveeta.

If you'd like to enter an Embarrassing Dinner recipe you love (rule #1: "It must be something you have actually prepared and eaten, that you love."), head over to flea's contest post and leave your recipe in the comments. Flea, JT, and I will be the judges who select the three best recipes, and within the next two weeks, we'll get together to cook those three dishes, attempt to eat them, and try to persuade our children (ages 6, 6, 5, 3, and 3—JT's baby is hereby excused since he's not big on solids yet) to taste them.

Fresh ingredients play little part in the truly Embarrassing Dinner (see rule #2). Rule #3 is no red meat; flea and I won't eat it. Feel free to substitute veggie/soy/tofu/turkey/chicken replacements for anything in the beef or pork family.

Oh! I suppose you want to know what the prize is. The grand prize is an informative videotape entitled Fuck Your Way to Fitness and a "mildly alarming" sex toy (flea is the proprietor of the Honeysuckle Shop, of course). The two runners-up will receive as-yet-undetermined prizes.

P.S. The submission deadline is March 7, so you still have time to dig up your favorite Embarrassing Dinner!

Hey, womenfolk

Anyone else have a landing strip?

Spam is so boring

Lately, all my spam has been so dull. Most spams are "from" a person with a crazy first name (like Ernesztina or Nickolethia) and no last name, and they're 30% watches, 30% debt relief, 30% cheap prescriptions, and a smattering of miscellaneous penis alerts, stock tips, or mortgage offers. The debt relief category is killing me:

abolish all of your credi't card deb't so you can get command of your wea1th
Abolish all you are indebted for not even sending another cent
Abolish everything you are indebted for not even paying an other cent
Abolish everything you owe without paying another dime
Eliminate all that you are indebted for with out mailing an other dollar
Eliminate everything you owe not even paying another dime
Eliminate everything you owe not even paying another dime [Copycat!]
Eradicate all you owe with out paying another dollar
Get rid of all you are indebted for without mailing another cent
Get rid of everything you are indebted for not even paying an other cent

You see how unoriginal these subject lines are? Well, except for that first one—apostrophizing credit and debt a masterstroke. Here's what I'd do if I were writing these things. I'd mix up the word order a bit, and for the love of god, have these people never heard of a plugged nickel?

Here's my contribution (and spammers, please, feel free to use this subject line; you don't even have to attribute it to me:

Wipe out every plugged nickel of your obligations—every single one!

Yes, that sucks too—but this is spam we're talking about. But these people, they just need to quit with the without/not even sending/mailing/paying any more tropes. Really, now.

South Dakota's abortion ban

I know I've been doing a terrible job (or at least a not-terrific job) of updating this here blog. I will try to do better (and funnier), honest.

Right now, I want to send you over to Charlie's post about the new abortion ban passed by the South Dakota legislature. Charlie lists some key points that are often overlooked, and provides links to other posts on this important topic.

South Dakota's abortion ban was designed to be appealed to the Supreme Court, where the antiabortion forces hope the ban will be upheld by the current batch of justices. (I'm so sorry that Sandra Day O'Connor's husband was ill—if only this voice of moderation could be immortal and surrounded by immortal loved ones, eh?) There are those who feel confident that the Supremes will be reasonable and knock down the ban, but we don't really know what Roberts and Alito will do yet. If they prove to be good little friends for Thomas and Scalia, we're in a heap of trouble in the years ahead.

If only Bush hadn't picked up that electoral edge in 2004—sigh.

The Bad Finger

Last night, Ben asked me, "Which is the bad finger?" and gave me "the finger" but with his ring finger. I showed him which finger it's supposed to be, but told him it's rude to flip the bird at someone and it hurts people's feelings.

Like any clever child, Ben knows how to work the angles, so he gave himself the finger, and said, "Look, it doesn't hurt my feelings," and asked me, his mother, to give him The Bad Finger. (I refused. See what a good role model I am?)

Mr. Tangerine walked into the room, so I explained what Ben and I had been discussing. Good old Dad concurred with my judgment and told Ben not to wield The Bad Finger—and certainly never at school.

Ben knows that there are certain things that should be done only when one is alone. So he ducked into my bedroom, closed the door, and gave himself The Bad Finger in private! Then he opened the door when he was done, satisfaction achieved.

Add that to the list of things that may be done when one is in private: a wild rumpus for one, giving oneself The Bad Finger"...what else is there?

Essay of the month

Here's the best piece of writing I've read all month: Chris Clarke's post, "The cursorial life." It's about life, writing, and spiders. If spiders freak you out, you might want to skip it, but you'll miss out on some fantastic writing. Go. Read.

Catblogging

I do not care for cats. Yes, they can be fluffy and cute, but I don't trust 'em any further than I can throw 'em. Actually, that's a lie. I could throw a cat clear across the room, but I wouldn't trust it a centimeter. I get creeped out by the feeling of a cat's paw walking on my lap, I don't much care for them brushing past my shin, I don't like the chilly little nose, and I certainly don't enjoy their tongues.

It all goes back to when I was about five years old, and a neighbor's housecat got out. My sister went to pet the pretty kitty, but the pretty kitty was alarmed by this. The pretty kitty bit a chunk out of my sister's thigh, took a few nibbles out of her knee, and raked long claw marks up her shin. I got shunted off to the next-door neighbor's for a few hours (they had a vinyl-covered couch, and vinyl pathways protecting the mottled harvest-gold shag carpet—oh, the trauma!) while my parents took my sister to the emergency room (that's "casualty" for you Brits, isn't it?). My sister had long, narrow strips of first-aid tape striping her shin, small bandages on her knee, and a big dressing on her thigh wound. Cats being filthy and disgusting creatures (Do you dispute this? What do cats lick? Every part of their hairy bodies. Plus they walk in their toilets.), of course, that big bite wound became infected. My sister still has a good-sized scar on her leg, and I still bear the mental scars—an abiding mistrust and fear of cats. You can tell me your cat is sweet and loving, but I still won't trust it and won't want it on my lap.

This post was inspired by Becky's post on her gay cat, where I left a comment about my childhood pet's sexual proclivities. Yes, our English springer spaniel Abby (officially named Lady Aberlyn, after that freaky lady from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood) livened up every slumber party my sister and I had. We'd grab somebody's pillow, plant an idea in Abby's dog brain, and next thing you know, somebody's pillow is getting the humping of a lifetime. Some dogs hump people's legs, but our dog had a fetish for pillows. (Does this make you want to hear My Humps?)

A friend of mine once had two cats named Nigel and Mr. French. I believe it was Nigel who was a sexual deviant. His owner would wake up to discover Nigel gripping the blanket in his teeth, pulling it back and forth in his crotch. Sometimes he'd be in another room with a blanket, but getting off on the blanket in private wasn't good enough. He'd drag the blanket into the room where his owner was, strictly to have an audience when he yanked his blankie.

Another friend of mine has a boyfriend named Nigel, who apparently finds it surprising that Americans think "Nigel" is kind of a silly name, and breathtakingly British. (We do.) As far as I know, human Nigel has never heard about cat Nigel, but now that it's on the Internets, his girlfriend can send him the link and spare herself the indignity of recounting the sordid tale aloud.

I know Blogger has been misbehaving lately and making it hard to read or write comments, but if you luck out and it actually works, feel free to share your own stories of perversity in the animal kingdom, ailurophobia, or Nigels. (Something for everyone, eh?)

Whence they came

Rob Helpy-Chalk just posted a list of search terms that brought people to his blog. Herewith, some recent ones for Orange Tangerine:

butt cracks (Naturally!)

prostate massage pictures (Sorry, I got nothin'.)

how to age and rip your jeans (For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, why?)

i'ma women [sic] and my nipples are small (You don't say.)

orange twizzlers (Ew!)

indoor waterpark bacteria (Sorry, I don't know much on the subject.)

attractive brassiere implants (Really?)

sugar sandwich (I still haven't tried the butter-and-sugar sandwich, but I do like me some buttered toast with sugar sprinkled on top.)

john dodd beast car (I don't know how you ended up here, but try this search with quotes.)

And my personal favorite of this batch: tricks for voiding postpartum (Sorry, I had a C-section and have no information for you.)

Alternative Smut Writing Workshop

Okay, many of my readers are, like me, not part of the NASCAR demographic. Some of you were constitutionally unable to write a snippet of NASCAR smut. Because I am a compassionate soul, I hereby offer a few alternative writing assignments. Choose one of the following scenarios:

1. Good lovin' with a thinking woman's man (or woman, if you are so inclined); examples include Charlie Rose, Paul Krugman, Hendrik Hertzberg, Bill Clinton, but you are encouraged to pick your own intellectual hottie.

2. Good lovin' in an academic or professional setting.

3. Totally hedonistic realization of all your fantasies.

Could someone Windex the Johari window?

Do you want to tell me what you think of me? Then head over to my Johari window and toss some adjectives at me...

New stuff: Go fling invective at me at the negative Nohari window, too.

NASCAR-smut writing assignment

Becky the Absent-Minded Housewife left this comment on the NASCAR-romance post: ...his racing suit outlined every muscle, every rippling ridge of his well defined manhood. When he threw me on the hood of his Ferrari I knew that I was his and his alone, bending like a cheap fender to his steely will...

Okay, Becky has gotten us off. To a good start! Gotten us off to a good start, I mean. Your mission, should you choose to accept it—and I know you will, because nobody wants to disappoint Her Juiciness—is to compose your own excerpt from a smutty little automotive romance novel. The writing workshop is now open; please take a seat in the comments and show us what you've got.

So not my demographic

I do enjoy my Entertainment Weekly subscription. I always have something to read while brushing or flossing my teeth (DoctorMama, holla!) or sitting down to pee, and I stay up to date on the latest in show business, books, and music. Now, I won't pretend it didn't sting when The Most Fabulous Documentary That Ever Was (i.e., Wordplay) didn't rate an actual review from the EW critics who went to Sundance—but at least they were kind enough to include the crossword movie in their list of five Sundance breakouts.

Last week's issue of EW alerted me to the most important new development in the publishing world: NASCAR-licensed Harlequin romances. The first in the series is called Into the Groove. It'll be followed by two more titles this year and 19 next year. Now, if you're looking for out-and-out motor-sports smut, this ain't for you—NASCAR's keeping the books at a PG-13 level. Each volume will, I presume, involve a male race-car driver and a female love interest.

This is absolutely, positively, indubitably a book series I will never read. Why not? I am female, after all. But NASCAR? Ick. I'm a city girl, and us city folks are a tad less inclined to love motor sports. And Harlequin romances? Ick. Frankly, I just might be too smart for the NASCAR Harlequin combo. I daresay the NASCAR Harlequin vibe is aptly summed up by the Amazon customer reviews. At this writing, there are three reviews, averaging 4 stars apiece: two 5-star raves and one 2-star rave. Yes, that's right. One reader raved about the book ("It held my attention all the way, I can't wait for the next 2. I hope the next 2 are as good. Thank you from a true diehard NASCAR fan. Its worth reading.I give it the NASCAR NEXTEL CUP CHAMPIONSHIP!!!") and bestowed a 2-star rating on the book. The intricacies of both the 5-star rating system and the conventions of punctuation have eluded her. You see? I am in the Proper Punctuation demographic, not the NASCAR Groupie demographic.

I'm holding out for the series of romance novels involving infectious-disease epidemiologists who construct crossword puzzles. Now that could be hot. What? There's a market for that sort of thing. I'm sure of it.

Gee, you think?

NYT headline today: Some Democrats Are Sensing Missed Opportunities. "Democrats described a growing sense that they had failed to take full advantage of the troubles that have plagued Mr. Bush and his party since the middle of last year, driving down the president's approval ratings, opening divisions among Republicans in Congress over policy and potentially putting control of the House and Senate into play in November... 'We seem to be losing our voice when it comes to the basic things people worry about,' Mr. Dodd said."

Do you hear the resounding chorus throughout the land as people check out the NYT's home page today? All the voices saying "No shit, Sherlock," "Well, duh," "Hello, where have you people been?" and "Oh, come on! You're just noticing this now?"

Lofty aspirations

Ben's room. Last night, at bedtime.

Ben: When I'm a grown-up, I'm going to live here. I'm going to stay home with you, Mommy.
Me: You know, I might well be back at work when you're grown up.
Ben: Why?
Me: Because. It could happen.
Ben: Then I'll stay home and clean the house.
Me: You better believe you're gonna clean the house! When you're grown up, I'm not cleaning up after you.

Ben's room. Tonight, at bedtime. After recounting the above exchange to Mr. Tangerine (which cracked Ben up).

Ben: And I'm gonna play with my cars.
Mr. Tangerine (whispering to me): He'll line up all the cars in a row.
All: Uproarious laughter.

(The living room rug currently features 38 Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars in one row and nine in the next row. Ben insists that they not be disturbed.)

This 'n' that

Where I live, December was cold. Really cold. As in "one of the coldest Decembers in the past 140 years" cold. But I got used to bundling up any time I left the house and wearing my boots to trudge through the unmelting snow, and it wasn't so bad. Then, after Christmas, it warmed up, leading to one of the warmest Januaries (is that the correct plural of January?) in the weather annals. During the course of that month, I went to the mountains in Utah for Sundance, and damn, it was cold. I was out of practice with the bundling-up business, and it was just so c-c-c-cold. Now it's February, and while it's not as cold as the December nasties, it's colder than it was all last month. But I need not complain bitterly, for Santa Claus brought me toasty warm shoes. (Technically, I shopped for the shoes myself and gave them to Mr. Tangerine to wrap up as a Christmas present.) But I bought lovely chocolate brown shoes, and I kept finding myself wearing them with black tops, so now I've ordered a black pair. It's the only way I'll get through February, March, and the cold part of April. Omigod, slipping into these shoes is like swaddling your feet in warm blankets, no matter how long you're out in the cold. Sure, they're low-backed slides, but they're warmer than my boots. If your feet tend to get cold, these shoes will delight them.

Wow. Weather blogging and shoe blogging! For an encore, without further ado, not necessarily medically sound information on parasomnias. What's a parasomnia? It's a sleep disorder that involves some sort of activity while you're sleeping—it could mean sleepwalking, nightmares, sleep terrors, or strange behaviors that pop up during REM sleep. That last one is bizarre; people with REM sleep behavior disorder act out vivid, violent dreams while they're asleep. They'll talk or yell, punch, kick, or grab, sit up, jump out of bed, flail their arms—all of which can be most alarming if you're sleeping with one of these people. Can you imagine? (You know, Mr. Tangerine once bit my shoulder in his sleep. He must have been dreaming about snacking, eh?)

The most bloggable parasomnia hasn't been widely accepted by the medical establishment, and I can't say whether it merits being an officially sanctioned diagnosis. However, it makes for some good readin': Check out sleepsex.org and learn about "sexsomnia" (click a few links if you're bored). This is not to be confused with postcoital sleepiness used to relieve insomnia, nor with being unable to sleep because you've got sex on your mind. Nope, "sexsomnia" is sexual behavior that occurs, like sleepwalking, while a person is sound asleep from a neurological standpoint. It could be a man mauling his partner in the middle of the night and having no memory of it (and if he's not dreaming about foreplay first, hmm, that could be off-putting to the partner). It could be a woman having a really spicy dream and having herself a good ol' time under the covers, alone or with her bed partner. Or it could be a guy who pleasures himself in his sleep. Throw in a scenario in which a couple's sex life has dwindled—how would you feel if your honey never wanted to do it with you, but he or she woke you up nightly while having an unconscious wild rumpus for one?

You know what? I like that phrase: wild rumpus for one. Definitely more fun when you're awake, though...

Who can't you stand?

I found this link over at ding's house: It's "The BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America, 2005" list. I know you people are busy, so I've cherry-picked the highlights for you:

Michael Brown (#35), formerly in charge of destroying FEMA: A man of geological indolence, Brown makes lichens seem dynamic.

In the write-up for Kenneth Tomlinson (#32), who was hired to deliberalize PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the BEAST folks point out: ...Why is [it] that those who rail against "racial quotas" have no problem with affirmative action when it’s applied to newsroom ideology?

Then there's a Joe Lieberman (#28) quote that's ripe for a smackdown: "Freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion." Apparently, it also doesn’t mean freedom from asinine revisionism. (Lieberman irks me.)

Regarding Paris Hilton (#25): Squints inexplicably for photo ops, suggesting even minimal focus is beyond her. Her continued success as a celebrity famous for nothing, despite the eerie resemblance she bears to the inbred banjoist from Deliverance and a lack of talent so profound that others become duller as they approach her, indicates that something is fundamentally wrong with humanity.

The BEAST team doesn't much care for Karl Rove (#15): A greasy pig whose only distinction in life is his total lack of decency. Rove is decidedly not a genius; he is simply missing the part of his soul that prevents the rest of us from kicking elderly women in the face. His admirers have elevated fanatical, amoral ambition to the status of a virtue, along with lying, cheating, and negligent homicide, all in the name of "values." Quite possibly the worst person in the worst White House in American history.

BEAST's suggested punishment for the NYT's White House bootlicker, Elisabeth Bumiller (#14): The Times' reign as the "paper of record" is finally brought to an end when the paper’s headquarters are demolished by readers upon publication of Bumiller’s final dispatch, "Bush’s Taint: Sweet Like Honey." (Gotta love any mention of the taint.)

I always enjoy criticism of Bill O'Reilly (#10): Even Limbaugh must bow before O’Reilly’s unparalleled bullying skills and ability to deliver undiluted bullshit with an air of brusque authority. O’Reilly is so comfortable with his astounding hypocrisy that he didn’t skip a beat when he was publicly revealed to be a comically perverse sexual harasser, continuing to sanctimoniously moralize about the corrosive effects of rap music and intellectualism on American society. Main tactic against his critics, whose jobs rank among the easiest in the world, is to accuse them of his own methods: arbitrary smears, selective quotation, partisan motivation, and intellectual cowardice. Infuriatingly claims to be a political "independent" who just happens to parrot virtually every Republican talking point and equate mainstream liberals with Nazis and Stalinists. Claimed his call for abandoning San Francisco to al Qaeda bombing was "satirical," which is itself the funniest thing he’s ever said. An honest to goodness list-making Joe McCarthy wannabe, with the ACLU standing in for the Communist Party.

There's so much to say about Tom DeLay (#5), but this encapsulates it all: A politician so horrible, his prior career as an exterminator constitutes fratricide.

Bush and Cheney are #3 and #2, respectively, but more entertaining are the charges against the #1 most loathsome American, Pat Robertson: If Pat Robertson’s local Starbucks caught fire, he would claim that God was punishing them for giving him a caramel latte when he ordered vanilla. Robertson has always been a demonic charlatan with the credibility of Miss Cleo and a lust for Armageddon in his vile, rat-toad heart, but this was really his year to shine. In 2005, Robertson called on God to vacate seats in the Supreme Court (the almighty obliged, killing Rehnquist), advocated assassinating Hugo Chavez, said ‘judicial activists’ were a more serious threat to America than terrorists, called criticism of the war treason, said John Roberts should be thankful for Hurricane Katrina, which he implied was “connected” to Roe v. Wade, attributed Ariel Sharon’s stroke to divine retribution for the Gaza pullout, said “the Antichrist is probably a Jew alive in Israel today,” and implied that God would wipe the residents of Dover, PA off the map for rejecting Creationism. Not to mention raising huge sums of cash from his zombie army, much of which is diverted from his charity operations to his business interests, including African diamond mines. Has long advocated that America simply ignore the Supreme Court. Robertson’s God is an insecure, misogynistic, homicidal fanatic—just like Pat.

"Mom, I love airplane food."

...or so Ben announced tonight. Now that actual airplane food is hard to come by when you fly coach, though, what Ben considers "airplane food" is the McDonalds food purchased in the terminal minutes before our boarding call.

I've been erratic, scattered, and focused elsewhere lately, which doesn't make for a compelling blog. I haven't even been keeping up with my usual schedule of obsessive blog reading. Will these doldrums pass? Has anyone suffered from this and emerged from it as the same time-wasting Internet-obsessed person they were pre-doldrums?

Which reminds me—I did a crossword puzzle the other day that taught me a new term: mouse potato, or the computer-junkie equivalent of a couch potato. (A friend suggested combining both potato forms by sitting on the couch with a laptop and the TV turned on. Brilliant! Must purchase iBook immediately.)

Plus I still haven't repaid the sleep debt I accumulated during the Sundance Film Festival. (And yes, the current medical opinion seems to be that one can and should try to catch up by somehow reclaiming one's missed sleep hours. I edit some sleep medicine review articles each year. Ask me about parasomnias sometime. People can do some truly weird shit when they're physiologically sound asleep.) I sit here before the bright monitor, just past 11:00 at night, yawning away, trying to catch up on my residual Internet debt ("I can stop any time I want") and thereby sacrificing any chance of catching up on sleep.

Will someone please tuck me in?

Two bits

Rob Helpy-Chalk, you recently said you found Morgan Spurlock's facial hair a tad off-putting. Rob, this is for you.

Have you got one?

When disrobing before his shower this morning, Ben was overcome by intellectual curiosity, as often happens to a five-year-old.

Ben: Do firefighters have butt cracks?
Me: Yes.
Ben: Do ambulance guys have butt cracks?
Me: Yes, they do.
Ben: Do sick people have butt cracks?
Me: [Thinking As long as they're not sick with a raging case of noncrackitis.] Yes.
Ben: What about dead people?
Me: That...depends. [Thinking of cremation and advanced decomposition, either of which would pose a stern challenge to even the sturdiest butt crack.]
Ben: What if they're, like, skeletons?
Me: Then no.

(If you're reading this post months from now and wondering why there are no pictures of firemen with their pants off, I don't know what to tell you, other than good luck in your search!)

I'm back, but in name only

It was wonderful to get away for a grown-up's vacation at Sundance, away from the daily burdens of childcare and housework. Any stay-at-home parent needs a chance to get out of town and recharge every now and then, and I'm grateful to Mr. Tangerine for taking a couple days off work so I could do this (and thanks to my mom, who took Tuesday off work).

Alas, when I left for Utah, there were a few loads of clean laundry in need of folding and drawerifying. I came back from my trip recharged but exhausted (sleeping just four hours a night will do that to a girl), and facing an ever-expanding heap of dirty laundry. I washed a couple loads but still haven't started that folding, so I've got an unprecedented amount of clean and dirty laundry sitting in silent rebuke to my domestic attentiveness. Ah, fuck it. It'll get done sometime, right? In the meantime, I'm having a hard time pulling myself away from the computer (as if that's a new thing!). Why, there's Googling to be done! Is there anything new in the media about Wordplay? I must know! Would those articles be lost to history if I skipped a day of Googling? Of course not. But do I feel more compelled to fold laundry? Hell, no.

Wow, if you're still reading, you must be just as addicted to reading blogs as I am. This is strikingly dull blog fodder here.

I'm grateful to Lisa and her family for welcoming me into their home for five days. Lisa's an enviably relaxed mother to her twin sons—I don't think I heard her raise her voice once at the twin bundles of pure energy that are Max and Oliver. Lisa's hospitality extended to her PC, which gave me a chance to keep up with my e-mail while I was out of town. And luckily for all, Lisa's offer of lodging was not a ruse to sell me to the fundamentalist Mormons as a plural wife, and I did not turn out to be an axe murderer or identity thief.

One of the best aspects of my Sundance getaway was the socializing. I generally spend an awful lot of time at home, alone or with my family. At Sundance, I was with other people from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. I hadn't spent more than a few minutes in direct (not online) conversation with anyone there before I got to Utah, and some people were entirely new to me—and yet the intercourse was free and easy. (Who doesn't love using the word intercourse in lieu of conversation?) Lisa and the members of crossword gang are all great people—intelligent, witty, and often bloggerific.

Sorry this post was so nothing-laden. I felt duty-bound to write something, but my mind is woefully depleted of snappy repartee. And repartee implies more than one person doing the talking. Help me out here, folks. Give me something to reparteeize about with you. Please?

Shout-out from Language Log

A couple days ago, one of the crossword gang came across this Language Log post that refers readers to my other blog, Diary of a Crossword Fiend, for the Sundance/Wordplay scoop. After all the times I've cited Language Log posts over here, that made my day. (Or it would have, if I hadn't also been meeting famous people the same day.)

Sundance logorrhea

I'm back home parked before my faithful G5, four days of Sundance experiences swirling inside my mind. Here's what I've been up to since my last post:

I reached Lisa's house Friday afternoon, and we clicked like old friends. That's one of the best things about blogging—if two bloggers click online and via email, if they enjoy each other's perspectives and attitudes, that sympatico sense seems to translate effortlessly into real-life friendship. Lisa's little boys were delightful—it was been like being around my own five-year-old, only twice as noisy since Oliver and Max are twins. They remind me a lot of Ben. Lisa's husband and brother-in-law—both tall, handsome drinks of water—wrangled the kids so Lisa could join me for Sundance festivities. (Thanks, guys!)

My film festival experience kicked off with a party hosted by Wordplay director Patrick Creadon and producer Christine O'Malley's families (Patrick and Christine are married and have two little girls in addition to a bouncing baby documentary). This gathering was pretty mellow, and offered a chance for the crossword people and the filmmakers' relatives to mingle and get to know each other—we'd be seeing a lot of one another over the next few days. Patrick took the opportunity to thank a lot of people—everyone from the kin who had funded the movie to my crossword-constructing friend Vic Fleming, who helped arrange for Bill Clinton's participation in the movie; once the Clinton interview had been scheduled, Jon Stewart was suddenly so much more interested in appearing in Wordplay himself.

(Here's a promotional button for the movie. Buttons were also available with a pencil or a marker—but the cool kids solve crosswords with a glue stick.)



Many of the "stars" of Wordplay—NYT puzzle editor Will Shortz and several top crossword competitors—shared a spacious condo in Deer Valley (affectionately termed the Puzzle Palace). Lisa and I hung out there a few evenings, and had a wonderful time. Board games, blogging, wordplay, camaraderie, great food, and heavy drinking (well, if you count the milk we had when Stella baked blondies). We played a song-lyrics board game called Encore, and there was so much laughter you'd think we were all trashed out of our respective gourds. But nope, we were just high on witty banter. The kitchen table was often laden with laptops, and you know what? No one looked at you funny if you wanted to blog or do crosswords online. My tribe, my peeps.

Saturday morning, we went to the Wordplay world premiere. The movie had sold out well in advance of the festival, and a few hundred people lined up in the hope of getting into the screening from the waiting-list line. The process was inexplicable and chaotic, but eventually our entire contingent (except Lisa, alas, and the 200 people in line behind her) did get in to see the premiere (some of us at the last minute). The movie was fantastic, the crowd loved it, you'll laugh and you'll cry, omigod Jon Stewart was so funny (he may have to go on the freebie list), damn, Bill Clinton looks good these days (all right, he's back on the freebie list), yadda yadda yadda. Your faithful correspondent pops up on screen briefly a few times (and my name's listed in the credits in the "Also Featuring" category), and I'm the only one in the movie who curtsies. (Yes, I know that's a little odd. No, I don't know what I was thinking. And no, I don't regret looking a tad silly since it kept me in the movie! Someday, I'll meet Bill Clinton or Jon Stewart, and he'll think, "She looks familiar...where do I know her from?" And I'll curtsy, and it'll click: "Oh, right! We're in the same movie! Do you have time to join me for coffee?") I'm so glad I made the trip to Sundance to see the movie here—we crossword insiders did a lot of nudging and whispering ("Hey, there I am!" "Look, there you are again!" "Ooh, foreshadowing!"). I'm sure I'll see the movie many more times with other people, but the nudging and whispering won't be quite the same when the friends I'm seeing the movie with aren't, you know, in the movie.

That afternoon, Will did a well-attended book signing at Dolly's Bookstore on Main Street. None of our group needed Will's autograph, and generally we've done all the NYT crosswords so we don't need to buy the books, so instead we just held up the line by taking pictures. Here's a picture of me with Will (the mustachioed man in the center) and another Also Featured Wordplay cast member, Byron Walden.



After the book signing, Tyler Hinman, Stella Daily, and I did a little window shopping down Main Street. This bit of furry apparel caught our collective eye. The tag read, "For the man who has everything." Valentine's Day is coming up soon, ladies and gay men. You'll want to order your beau's fur thong this week.



Sunday, there was a post-premiere brunch at a restaurant that was a looong walk uphill. Good food, NPR puzzles with Will, good chats. CNN came to the party to interview the movie's crossword-solving stars. The CNN "entertainment anchor" Brooke Anderson was a hot blonde who absolutely stood out as "not one of us." (Way hotter in person than in that link.) I have no idea if CNN ever aired any of the footage, though...

Monday, Lisa and I met up with the gang at another Wordplay screening at the beautiful but cold Sundance Resort. I loved the movie even more the second time around. I've gotta say, I'm impressed with the structure of the film, the clever ways the filmmakers, the editor Doug Blush, and the graphics pro Brian Oakes pieced the threads together into a coherent whole that sort of followed the structure of a crossword puzzle. Great music in it, too.

You know who else liked the movie on Monday? Glenn Close. She approached the Wordplay/puzzlers group for conversation and photos (the movie star sought out our group, not vice versa!). She's absolutely stunning, and she's shorter than me. Who knew? Here's a picture. From left to right: Brian, Marie, Wordplay producer and director Christine O'Malley and Patrick Creadon (he looked blissfully happy for days on end), Glenn Close, crossword constructor Merl Reagle, and crossword-tournament stars Ellen Ripstein, Tyler Hinman, and Al Sanders.



Monday night, I accompanied fellow members of the crossword mafia (Ellen, Stella, Dean, Al, Tyler, Trip, and Brian) to a club called Zoom for a party held by the publicists trying to sell Wordplay and a few other films. People were turned away at the door if they weren't on the guest list—and the crossword geeks, of course, made the cut. There was no velvet rope, but it was pretty damn cool to be ushered into a private party. One woman actually grabbed Dean's coat in a futile attempt to ride his coattails into the party. (She was rebuffed.) The folks at the door did let a few outsiders in—we met Saturday Night Live comedian Rachel Dratch (actually, I merely passed her on the stairs) and documentarian Morgan Spurlock (Super Size Me). He's kinda hot in person, and we had a nice little chat and posed for a picture. I also found out that the editor of Wordplay, Doug, and I have some mutual friends. Small world. And either after I left Zoom or when I was upstairs, other famous people showed up at the party—their pictures are here.

My Sundance experience is now behind me. I've been ruined for all subsequent film festivals now—how could anything compare? Just...seeing movies? That I'm not in? Without parties with Hollywood insiders? I don't know about that. Anyway, you'll get a chance to see Wordplay yourselves later this year. Several distributors have been clamoring to buy the rights to the movie, so it's practically assured of having a theatrical release. And the Sundance audiences have loved the movie, so we're hoping Wordplay will find an enthusiastic audience, sell a zillion tickets, get great reviews, and win fabulous awards. Move over, March of the Penguins. Let the black-and-white seabirds make way for the black-and-white squares of Wordplay.

Automated out-of-office reply

I don't know if I'll get a chance to post again before I leave for Sundance (Sundance, baby!) at the crack of dawn on Friday, so here I am now. If I have time and can figure out how to post from someone else's machine, I might blog from Utah—otherwise, see you next week!

The lovely Lisa the Bored Housewife was kind enough to offer me a place to stay, and she's so domestically talented, she's even going to prepare home-cooked meals for me. I just might refuse to leave when the film festival is over. If she's got cable TV in the basement, so I'll be all set. At some point, though Utah will probably send me screaming back to Chicago. I hear they sheathe fashion magazines in discreet covers at the newsstands out there—as if Glamour is as morally shocking as Hustler. It's not as if I crave unimpeded access to fashion magazines, but you know what I'm saying.

I will be taking my threaded eyebrows and my new haircut (which will be wrought upon my head tomorrow) to a couple parties for the Wordplay contingent at Sundance, and I'll also be giving my longjohns a workout standing in line outdoors Saturday morning trying to get a ticket for the movie's world premiere. (What could be more glamorous than longjohns? Nothing, that's what. I'm going totally Hollywood this weekend.) I bought tickets for a fairly random assortment of movies, but I don't know how many of them I'll end up seeing. I mean, for starters, two fifths of the members of my freebie list—Robert Downey Jr. and Bruce Willis—are also appearing in movies at Sundance. See? We've got so much in common now. We're all in Sundance movies this month. I think it's fate...

A child's grasp of King Day

Ben’s off school today in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day. Last week, he learned about Dr. King’s legacy. He said they watched two filmstrips: Can this be possible? Are schoolchildren in 2006 still watching filmstrips? (I was always a smidgen envious of the go-getters who got to operate the filmstrip machine back when I was in grade school...)

Ben was telling me about King, but there are so many words in his full name, it’s hard for a five-year-old to get it right. I heard things like “Martin Luther Doctor King Junior” and “Martin Luther King Junior Martin,” and King Kong was mentioned more than once.

Ben was grooving on his garbled singsong rendition of “We Shall Overcome.”You know, I swear I never learned the song in school. “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” yes. “We Shall Overcome,” no. A tremendous shortcoming in my education, surely.

Anyway, I asked Ben, “What did Martin Luther King stand for? What did he say?”He replied, “That kids should be quiet so they can hear their teachers.” Ha! Yes, that’s right. Let us judge children not by the color of their skin, but by whether or not they are quiet so they can hear their teachers.

He learned about segregated bathrooms and bus seating. He learned that the civil rights movement tried to make things more fair for black people, but he didn’t really know what “black people” meant. (These people are brown, darn it! Ben, like most innocent kids, characterizes people by their shades of brown, tan, pink, and white rather than by the social construct of race.) So I had to explain that for the first time. I was hoping my mixed-race baby could get a little older before having to introduce the concepts of race and racism, but the words and lessons of Martin Luther King, Jr., are certainly an excellent starting point for that discussion.

Also? The kindergartners colored in little stapled-together coloring books about MLK. On the cover, Ben opted for the lime-green marker for Dr. King’s face:

Jeans advice

All right. Desperate to acquire some new jeans, I bought a pair at the Gap the other day. They've got the broken-in "left weave" denim and the "curvy flare" cut, and they look decent on me. However I am an adult. And these jeans? They have holes in them—one on the right knee, one on the left thigh. And preemptively holey jeans, quite frankly, are silly.

Question 1: Can I wear these jeans in public at my advanced age (late 30s), or must I return them for a refund? They're the first jeans that fit well enough for me to buy them after about three months of occasional shopping.

Question 2: If I do keep these jeans, can I wear them at Sundance? Is it in poor taste to let your long underwear show through the prefab holes in your jeans?

Headline of the day

"Turkey Moves to Save Poultry Industry."

Is this the pitch for a sequel to Chicken Run?

My latest conversion

In preparation for my first spendy haircut and my first venture into hair color/highlights, I figured I'd better get my brows tidied up. If I were to walk into that fancy-schmancy salon next week sporting a pair of meek caterpillars* above my eyes, I can't say I'd blame them if they shoved me out amid peals of mocking laughter and barred the door. So I made an appointment for brow waxing.

When I arrived, the "technician" (is there such a thing as tech support for waxing?) asked if I wanted my eyebrows waxed or threaded. Ooh! Threading! I'd been wanting to try threading, because waxing has been known to draw blood from my oh-so-sensitive skin. The technician has her own brows threaded and she's been performing the technique for six years, so I figured I'd be in good hands. Threading, like any technique that involves ripping hairs out of one's skin, hurts a bit. But while waxing always left the area around my brows reddened and irritated for the rest of the day, I left the appointment feeling perfectly fine.

Here are the results:



Would you please remind me to do this again in mid-February when the caterpillars begin nesting again? Thanks!

*No, I can't show you a "before" photo. It would be too alarming.

Fear and Loathing in the Brassiere

It seems like a lot of women have mixed feelings about their breasts. They're too small. They're too big. They're too droopy. They're shaped wrong. One's bigger than the other. They garner unwanted attention. They're painful. They're the subject of medical concern, or might turn cancerous. They're tubular. Men don't like them enough, or they like them too much. They changed after pregnancy. They changed after weight gain/loss. They have stretch marks or noticeable veins. They don't function as expected for breastfeeding. Bras don't fit, clothes don't hang right. Nipples are too big, small, flat, protuberant, dark, light, hairy, or inverted. Nipples are too sensitive or not sensitive enough, or they're too obvious when it's chilly.

Me, I’ve got about seven mammary complaints myself. Overall, I’m not dissatisfied with them, but I’m not thrilled either. The best thing I can say about them is that they’re remarkably soft. (No implants here!) And maybe someday I’ll seek a boost from a plastic surgeon (a breast lift, not augmentation).

Women, how content are you with your breasts? Do any of us absolutely love what we’ve got, or do we all have reservations? I never see this topic discussed, but I bet there’s a great deal that goes unsaid.

Washington, Lincoln, and Ogunleye?

Eric Zorn's latest column muses on the "euphonic symphony" of players' names in today's NFL. The Chicago Bears roster includes guys named Adawale Ogunleye, Oladele Brendon Ayanbadejo, and Israel Idonije—and yes, one of them is foreign-born: Idonije was born in Canada. The rest of the league includes many other players with non-European, not-traditionally-American names.

Celebrating their distinctive appellations celebrates that Americans from other cultures no longer have to "westernize" their names to fit in, Zorn writes. It wasn't long ago that the conventional wisdom held that Illinois voters would be reluctant to elect a governor with a hard-to-spell name like Blagojevich, or a senator with a "foreign" name like Barack Obama. As it turns out, not only did Illinoisans vote for Obama in droves, but the rest of the country wants a chance to vote for him, too. Zorn points out, Unfamiliar is not the same as strange. Foreign does not mean unwelcome. The beauty is both in the lyrical cadences of Ayanbadejo, Idonije and Ogunleye and in the recognition they provoke: National and cultural origins notwithstanding, these are also, now, truly American names.

I look at the names of my son's kindergarten classmates and see the future of the city. Zishan and Maham, Tinuola and Pedro, Michelle and Lynda. All of them are American kids, no more or less so than the Caitlyns, Tylers, and (alas) Brittneys.

"If you love somebody, set them free"

Did it vex you mightily that the Sting lyric followed the singular "somebody" with the the plural "them"? Were you taught that "if you love somebody, set him or her free" or "if you love some people, set them free" would be the preferred usage?

Well, rest your battle-wearied head, because Geoffrey Pullum at Language Log says it's OK. No less an authority than The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language takes the stance that they can follow a singular antecedent. Pullum writes, "It's a position that couldn't really be doubted by anyone who had devoted even a few minutes to looking at the facts of usage, be it literary (over the past 600 years) or everyday conversational. Excellent advice."

Pullum scorns the "American backwardness" of "Strunk and White, and their thousands of latter-day co-religionists such as Stanley Fish and the style guides of the Modern Language Association and the American Psychological Association. Why do these sources continue to damn singular antecedents for they in defiance of all the evidence of its constant use by respectable authors during at least the past six centuries? I have no idea."

I can accept the singular they, Sting or no Sting. But what I still vehemently deplore is the misguided use of the subjective I where an objective me belongs, as in the Bodeans song, "Good Things": "No, no, no, don't pass me over. No, no, no, don't pass me by. See I can see good things for you and I." I like the song, but I have no choice but to edit while singing along, making "for you and me" rhyme with "see I can see." (The Bodeans should have thought of that themselves.) And don't get me started on "just between you and I," okay?

Awards season

You know how some bloggers get all riled up about the Bloggies or the BoBs or the Blahblogs or whatever all those awards are? Well, I am the proud recipient of a few awards myself: The fabulous woman who goes by the moniker of Feral Mom has just bestowed the 2005 Feral Blog Awards. The brilliant and buxom writer Lisa and I tied for two awards: Best Writing and Best Rack. And the estimable DoctorMama tied me for the Smartypants Award. I am greatly honored, and I'd like to thank blahblahblah.

Is it unseemly to tout the awards one has received? Absolutely. But everyone does it, and I just want to fit in.

(Confidential to Sergei: You won't want to miss this award-winning post about testicular ultrasound.)

Sundance, baby!

In the words of The Clash: Should I stay or should I go? The Sundance Film Festival's computer e-mailed me today to tell me when I can attempt to buy movie tickets. My half-hour slot isn't on the first day of online sales (it's either the second, third, or fourth day), and I hear the locals have snagged a lot of the tickets for the weekend of January 20–22. The premiere of the crossword documentary Wordplay is on Saturday the 21st. And there are parties for the Wordplay contingent on Friday and Saturday, as well as repeat showings Sunday night and Monday afternoon.

Sounds like a blast, right? But what if I fly to Utah, only to find out that while I made a brief appearance in the rough cut of the movie, I've been abandoned during the final editing process? Then...I see an interesting movie about people I know, not including me. Which isn't a terrible thing. And I've gotten a lovely offer of housing from Lisa, whom I'd love to meet. And who doesn't like to escape Chicago in January...to go to the snowy mountains of Utah? Same cold wind, but more scenic.

Advice? Does anyone think it's silly to go?

U-Kill the punctuation

Swim where?

Here's the bottom of the rules and regulations sign posted by the swimming pool in a Minnesota motel.

















Choose your favorite aspect:

A. The inconsistent spelling and capitalization of swimwear (Swim Wear? swim ware?).
B. The awkwardness of the phrasing in "no children allowed under 12" and in the additional guidelines.
C. The fact that the motel's trying to evade any liability for people ruining their swimwhair (swimwere?) by donning non-chlorine-resistant garb. Who does that? Are people going for a dip in their fine woolens?

You want to know what rule was omitted but turned out to be sorely needed? Thou shalt not deposit a log in the pool. While our group was away for dinner, someone defiled the pool, so my kid and his cousins missed a chance to swim while the pool was sanitized.

The beauty within the city

Some people look at a big city and bemoan what is absent: wide open spaces, lush greenery, uninterrupted expanses of trees, spacious sky views.

I see the city for what it is—the bustling people, the huddled edifices, the constant hum of traffic punctuated by jets descending toward O’Hare, the dirty snow—but I take notice of the beauty and peacefulness it also contains.

Last week I spotted a new squirrel’s nest, a clutch of brown leaves nestled in the crook of a small elm tree in my back yard. Behind it is the back of a four-story building, the common brick dingy with age. Below it, there’s a chain-link fence and blacktop; just above it, utility wires. But from its nest, the squirrel can also see a mulberry tree, a maple, and many more small elms. In November, one of the elms still had green leaves; one bore yellow leaves; the others were bare. Above them all, framed by the neighboring buildings, we can see the blue sky, the clouds, the dark night sky—once, a lunar eclipse.

The bird species seen most commonly in my neighborhood would impress no birder: mostly sparrows and starlings, a few raucous crows, the occasional cardinal. But last month, I saw a robin (they don’t all hide out until spring). A broken water pipe seeps water, forming a streaming puddle oasis on a snowy hill. The robin was loitering beside the water, borrowing its relative warmth.

In warmer weather, even the most routine walk with a child becomes an impromptu nature trek. Here’s an anthill in the sidewalk crack, teeming with life. Over there, bees and butterflies paying their social calls to the flowers awaiting their pollinators. Squat down to pull a few weeds in the front yard’s groundcover and discover daddy longlegs, small spiders, earthworms, slugs. Pass under a fruiting mulberry tree, pull down a branch, and share some richly sweet, sun-warmed berries with your child.

Nearby, Lake Michigan offers rhythmic waves, swooping gulls and swifts, dragonflies, and deep green, swooshing algae. We seldom spy fish swimming by unless we linger at the harbor’s edge; sometimes the smell of dead fish wafts by, and that too is nature. The sound of the lapping waves, the coolness of the breezes, the endless blue horizon.

The nearness of the lake gives regular lessons in microclimate. When a warm day mingles with the cool water, it’s often a good 15 degrees cooler within a few blocks of the lake; every few years, the extremely localized weather conditions consist of dense, cool fog along the lakeshore when it’s warm and sunny less than a mile west. During the winter, the nights are warmer close to the lake.

Today, it’s uncharacteristically warm (near 40 degrees) and rainy for January. Low clouds or high fog obscured my view of a nearby highrise. Forty miles away, without a 50-story building as a backdrop, would I be able to see the dramatically low clouds and understand how close to the ground they wafted?

I love nature. But I feel so at home in my urban environment that I can’t imagine living where the mountains were designed by orogeny rather than architects and engineers. Nature will always insist on cracking the civilized façade, however, and even the most densely populated neighborhood must make room for the birds, the bugs, the sky, the breeze.

Christmas and bloody heads on sticks

Goodness, has it really been so long since I wrote anything here?

Christmas was good. Ben ceased impugning Santa Claus's methods and just enjoyed his new toys (though it appears that he wishes Santa had stolen a Lego police station on his behalf). He spent a couple days running amok with his cousins—as a bossy only child, Ben can't get enough of his three-year-old cousin's worship. It was nice not to have to prepare any food for a couple days, although we could have done without the bout of mild food poisoning. (Wanna guess how long it took for Tuesday's lunch to exit?)

The holiday season continues unabated, as I have yet to exchange gifts with my friends or my family of origin (and I have yet to wrap those gifts—what am I waiting for, you may ask? Apparently I am waiting for them to magically wrap themselves. What? It could happen.). There are some holiday get-togethers with friends on the schedule, my family's coming over on New Year's Day, and the annual Christmas Day brunch with my mom's relatives is on January 8. Twelve days of Christmas is for wimps: we're doing a solid fortnight of Christmas.

I read Kathleen Parker's column in the Trib today. I find I disagree with the majority of what she says, no matter what the subject may be. And today, she takes on bloggers. I don't read any of the types of blogs Parker harps on—the ones that exist solely pounce on mainstream journalists' failings, apparently—but her rhetoric was so entertaining I wanted to share a few excerpts with you.

Bloggers persist no matter their contributions or quality, though most would have little to occupy their time were the mainstream media to disappear tomorrow. Some bloggers do their own reporting, but most rely on mainstream reporters to do the heavy lifting. She's so right! The mommyblogging world, for example, would collapse without the framework of the news media. Not to mention knitting blogs. And diaristic blogs. And humor blogs. And blogs written as a creative outlet.

...[M]ost babble, buzz and blurt like caffeinated adolescents competing for the Ritalin generation's inevitable senior superlative: Most Obsessive-Compulsive. Even so, they hold the same megaphone as the adults and enjoy perceived credibility owing to membership in the larger world of blog grown-ups. ...Each time I wander into blogdom, I'm reminded of the savage children stranded on an island in William Golding's "Lord of the Flies." Without adult supervision, they organize themselves into rival tribes, learn to hunt and kill, and eventually become murderous barbarians in the absence of a civilizing structure. ...When a mainstream journalist stumbles, they pile on like so many savages, hoisting his or her head on a bloody stick as Golding's children did the fly-covered head of a butchered sow. ...When someone trips, whether Dan Rather or Eason Jordan or Judith Miller, bloggers are the bloodthirsty masses slavering for a public flogging.

All right, fess up, bloggers: Which one of y'all stole Piggy's glasses? And who should we vote off the island first?

That larcenous Saint Nick

Ben's rocketing toward a fever pitch of excitement over the impending arrival of Santa Claus. Mr. Tangerine and I apparently haven't been hyping the Santa mythology, though, because this morning, Ben asked his dad: Does Santa break into a store to get the stuff he needs and then go to your house? Does he do that? We took advantage of the teaching opportunity to mention the North Pole, Santa's workshop, and the elves. You know, if the boy would just take an interest in the classic Christmas cartoons from my childhood, he'd know all this already...

Dreaming of an Orange Christmas

You, too, can have an Orange Christmas. Here's how:

Procrastinate on all phases of holiday preparation. Put off shopping for gifts and sending out cards, but accomplish these duties just in the knick of time. Get that Christmas tree up and decorated no sooner than December 18, dress the kid in Santa jammies, and take a picture of him to enclose in the cards. (Procrastination is the Orange way, but so is pulling things off just ahead of the final deadline.)

Grow tired of your handful of Christmas CDs and order a new one that arrives on December 23. I recommend the jazzy remastered Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas. Sure, I already own the previous version (with fewer songs), but I appear to have misplaced it and totally forgot I owned it. Just found out this minute when grabbing that Amazon link. (I just looked on the shelf again and lo and behold, there's the old Ella CD. Hey, instant gift!) Anyway, who's better than Ella Fitzgerald? Nobody, that's who. And I can listen to it while wrapping presents...just as soon as I get around to starting on that.

Order yourself some loot and tell your significant other to wrap it up and give it to you on Christmas. I have good reason to believe Mr. Tangerine is giving me two fleece V-necks and a warm pair of Merrell clogs (they felt great in the shoe store!) this year. Somehow, he is perturbed by the convenience of this system. He feels guilty that I have gone shopping to buy things for him...and yet, this guilt has not motivated him to hit the stores and select his own gifts for me. Pfft!

Slather yourself in cheap self-tanner and see if you can't make your skin turn orange. Now, this is not the Orange way, but let us not unnecessarily constrain the Orange Christmas concept.

Clementines or tangerines in the Christmas stocking are a great idea—Santa always had a tangerine or two for young Orange back in the day. And no, that does not constitute cannibalism.

Whether the ground is blanketed with snow or not, you can still spray-paint it orange. Really. Try it.

Last, I wrote about "Christmas in September" a few months ago. The gist of it was to donate money in September to aid those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, in lieu of giving holiday presents in December. As it turns out, my extended family wasn't at all interested in this plan. However, we here at Casa Tangerine are incredibly lucky; we have a place to live, we have a degree of financial security, and our friends and family are all safe. So we're exchanging gifts as well as donating (again) to the American Red Cross Katrina fund; I listed a few other good places to donate in the "Christmas in September" link. If you can afford to do so, I encourage you to make a donation to aid those who are less fortunate than you—your local food bank, the Red Cross (Katrina, the South Asian earthquake, etc.), a shelter for abused women or the homeless, or any other organization that helps people.

Have a very merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, a festive Festivus, a warm Kwanzaa, a sunny post-solstice, or [insert your preferred celebration here]!

This one's for the mothers

Psycho Kitty had the brilliant idea to write some abecedarian doggerel, namely "The Mommy's Little Helper Alphabet." She invited me to collaborate on it, and the writing process was most educational. (I learned that we sure do talk about pharmaceuticals and sex a lot. And food.) Without further ado, we present:

The Mommy's Little Helper Alphabet

A is for amphetamines, that keep your mommy perky
B is for the Benadryl, that stops her getting jerky
C is for the chocolate, worth its weight in gold
D is for mama’s Demerol, when baby’s one day old
E is for eggnog, spiked with some rum
F is for...oh, don’t even pretend you don't know what F is for, people!
G is for Godiva (see C above)
H is for headache, when Mommy don’t want no love
I is for ice cream that fills the tummy
J is for a jacuzzi to make Mama feel yummy
K is for kisses—the kids’, so gentle; the lover’s, deep
L is for late night, when kids are asleep
M is for Midol, in case you must ask
N is for Nubain, to help labor pass
O is for orgasms—need I say more?
P is for pizza, delivered to the door
Q is for quiet, one minute’s enough
R is for rest (hey, remember that stuff!)
S is for sitters, who cut us some slack
T is for TV getting kids off our back
U is for underwire ‘cause Mama’s boobs are flappy
V is for vibrators that make Mama so happy
W is for whiskey, sipped out of a cup
X is for Xanax, when Mama’s worked up
Y is for “yes, Mama”--better than “no!”
Z is for Zzzzzz, off to bed we all go!

©2005, Psycho Kitty and Orange

Shiksa alert!

Remember the Seinfeld episode called "The Bris," in which Elaine has to hire a mohel to circumcise a friend's baby? This is the same episode in which Kramer sees a pigman in the hospital, and a suicidal jumper lands on George's beautifully parked car, and Jerry the godfather flinches during the circumcision and gets his finger sliced. You can read the entire script here (you'll have to do the voices yourself).

I just read it because I've been invited to a bris for the first time, and I had to do my research. Kramer tries to sway the baby's parents: Imagine, this will be his first memory. Of someone yanking the hat off his little man. I know you love your baby, but what kind of perverts would stand idly by while a stranger rips the cover off his 9-iron and then serve a catered lunch? As I understand it, this week's bris will be a little more breakfasty. I've been promised a morning of bagels and wine, which I can get on board with. I mean, who's got time for a full luncheon two days before Christmas? Presumably a whole lotta Jewish people, yes, but I'm not sure I'll be done buying and wrapping Christmas presents by this Friday.

Strange and lovely bedfellows

Top five reasons to share your bed with someone:

5. They warm up the bed on a cold night.
4. There's someone there to turn on the light and kill the imaginary spiders.
3. Spooning/cuddling.
2. Sex.
1. When you stretch while half asleep and get a charleyhorse, they will fix it for you while you holler "Ow ow ow ow ow!"

Top five reasons to sleep alone:

5. Some people steal the covers.
4. Snoring.*
3. Morning breath.
2. Sneak attacks.**
1. Dutch oven and related gaseous events.

*Unless you yourself are the snorer, in which case it's a charming affectation.

**Once, Mr. Tangerine bit me on the shoulder in his sleep. The moral? Don't let a man go to bed hungry.

What's on your lists?

Linkapalooza

The "Blogs I Read All Day, Every Day" blogroll is freshly updated. Let me tell you a little about the newcomers to the list. Every single one of them makes me laugh and makes me think. And if we had functioning teleportation devices, I would totally make out with all of these people. (At the same time.)

QWMaine.com is a funny man. He gets a little ranty at times (see today's post about the so-called war on Christmas), but it's all good.

Michael Bérubé Online is written by a literature and cultural studies professor, implausibly named Michael Bérubé. I confess my eyes do glaze over on Theory Thursdays, but I groove on the smart, funny, liberal, literate vibe. There's always a party in the comments thread.

You know who's right up my alley? DoctorMama. She's an internist with a toddler and a smart mouth. I mean, a smart brain. Or both, really.

The Assimilated Negro is often hilarious, but sometimes tugs at your heartstrings. (Nobody tell him.) He's the anti-gangsta's hip-hop connection.

In Screed, ding serves up regular doses of the political and the personal, and also occasionally dissects particularly egregious NYT articles. She's excellent company for margaritas and shopping, too. Mabuhay, ding!

Churp, Churp is hosted by Cricket, who is the finest insect of my acquaintance, bar none. (You hear that, Grasshopper?)

There's another liberal professor (it must be a plot!) at Big Monkey, Helpy Chalk. Rob's a philosopher, a dad, and a feminist.

After School Snack is a group blog written mainly by Elise (who guest-hosted at Bitch Ph.D. last summer), Matt, and Christopher. Plenty of politics, rants, links to good reads, and opportunities to list five things that please you.

If you appreciate nature writing, you'll dig Chris Clarke's Creek Running North. He seems to save his funniest lines for comments at Bérubé's blog, but you'll have to visit Chris's blog for the environmental/poetic/personal. Chris is the one who started up Blog Against Racism Day; like me, his spouse is Asian.

Figleaf's Real Adult Sex isn't exactly what it sounds like. Figleaf's a regular married man who writes thoughtfully about sex. (He took a cheesy URL out of its fishnets and and dressed it in respectable clothes.) He's also an avid participant in that Half-Nekkid Thursday business and takes some evocative photos.

Becky The Absent Minded Housewife is, as it turns out, Really Quite Funny.

Thought Concoction is where Mignon (a regular commenter around these parts) hangs out. She's one of those snarky moms I enjoy reading so much. Also, I just learned from her Blogger profile that she works as a pirate. In Montana! Boy, that must be some commute.

Grandma

My 93-year-old grandmother is at a rehab center. No, not the Colin Farrell/Robert Downey Jr. type of place, but rather a nursing home where she can get physical therapy to aid the transition from hospital to home. Anyway, she'd been laid up in the hospital for 10 days. Last night, at about 1 a.m. as Grandma tells it, a night-shift male nurse came in and offered her a shower. After going so long without bathing, it sure sounded tempting. But Grandma's a traditional old white lady with traditional old attitudes towards people of color, and the nurse/aide was a big, burly black man. So first she declined the offer. Then she thought to herself (and I quote what she told me), "You big dummy. They wouldn't have him here if he wasn't all right," so she got nekkid with a big, burly man. He washed her bits, he washed her body, he shampooed her hair. And she feels great! Of course you feel great, Gram—you just got naked in the shower with a man for the first time in your life! (I'm guessing. I suppose it's possible her past is more checkered than she lets on.) And he washed your bits for you!

What makes this story great, to me, is that Grandma chastised herself with the old "Sanford and Son" catchphrase, "You big dummy."

The memory party

Lisa and Cricket both asked their readers to concoct fictional memories. It's great fun to indulge in a paragraph or three of creative writing.

So make up a memory of something you and I experienced, write it up in the comments zone, and delight me (and yourself) with your imagination...

Holy war: the Pope vs. the Christian Right

According to this AP article, not all Christians believe that the best way to honor the spirit of Christmas is via Target circulars and store greeters.

Why, no less a personage than Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that Christmas festivities have been tainted by consumerism: "In today's consumer society, this time (of the year) is unfortunately subjected to a sort of commercial 'pollution' that is in danger of altering its true spirit, which is characterized by meditation, sobriety and by a joy that is not exterior but intimate," said Benedict. "Assembling the Nativity scene in the home can turn out to be a simple but effective way of presenting the faith to pass it on to one's children. The Nativity scene helps us contemplate the mystery of the love of God, which is revealed to us in the poverty and simplicity of the grotto in Bethlehem."

But what about the poverty and simplicity of ads for Target?

(Poor Target. The reproductive rights crowd is mad at them for allowing some pharmacists to refuse to dispence emergency contraception, and the Christian Right crowd is boycotting them. Who is left to shop at Target? Only the middle-of-the-road folks who skip the news.)

Are there no douchebags in Canada?

A couple months ago, I wrote about the word douchebag and my grandmother's unironic use thereof. Since then, do you know that at least 73 people have visited Orange Tangerine because they did a search for douchebag? Most of them are Canadian. What drives the Canadians to search the internets for douchebag information? Has douchebag-the-item never existed there? Or is douchebag-the-insult only beginning to catch on? If you are Canadian and can shed some light on this, please do.

The one time someone used the search terms "orange douchebag," it led to this linguistics-related post.

Update! Someone at Pixar just Googled douchebag and visited this site. I loved "Monsters Inc.," "Finding Nemo," and "The Incredibles," not to mention the "Toy Story" movies. I can't wait to see what Pixar does with douchebags! Fun for the whole family.

Required reading on bras

Bitch PhD explains it all in a DDD-sized post on bras. How to measure your proper bra size (the odds are excellent that you should really be wearing a smaller band size and a larger cup size). Where to shop. What brands to seek out. How to check for proper fit. Maternity/nursing bras. In the comments section, there are many more reader tips for situations Dr. B doesn't address, like bras for small-breasted women. Go read it, ladies, and send the link along to the women you know.

My only quibble is that Dr. B says to use the tightest set of hooks on a bra, whereas Oprah's bra experts said to use the loosest (leaving leeway to tighten the fit as the bra stretches out over time). I vote for Oprah's method, as it lets me fit comfortably into a smaller band size than I'd been wearing.

Additional info: Click this link for more on determining your correct bra size, courtesy of a bra-fitting expert who contacted Dr. B.

Kindergartner blogging

Clearly, Ben needs to drink more water. First he called his nuggets "party poo." This morning? He announced that his poop came out "single file." (Plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop, plop.) Which, I suppose, is better than coming out in buddy pairs, holding hands. Or in a stampeding mob.

What's your favorite potty metaphor?

Hooray for Westin Hotels!

Hotel rooms have enough mysterious stains and smells without adding cigarettes to the mix. According to this AP article today, the Westin chain is the first to go 100% smoke-free. Starting January 1, they'll have a no-smoking policy in the guest rooms, hallways, restaurants, and lobbies, as well as by the pool; anyone who stinks up a room by smoking will be charged a $200 cleaning fee.

Now, if Chicago would just pass a smoking ban for its restaurants and bars, I'd be all set. The City Council is contemplating a restaurant smoking ban, but I think they plan to exempt bars—why must the universe conspire to make it harder for me to go out drinking? Why?

Update: Hooray! The Chicago City Council just approved an ordinance today (Dec. 7) that bans smoking in virtually all public places in the city. Restaurant bars and taverns are granted 2½ years to come into compliance.

Yo, anyone going to Sundance?

There's a hot new documentary called Wordplay that will premiere next month at the Sundance Film Festival. You know it's hot when my beloved Language Log takes notice, right? And any doc that makes the cut at Sundance must be pretty damned good—more than 700 films were submitted but a mere 16 were selected for the festival.

"What is this Wordplay?" you ask. "I am intrigued." It's filmmaker Patrick Creadon's look into the world of crosswords, particularly the New York Times puzzle and its editor, Will Shortz, as well as the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and its übergeek competitors. Patrick was a ubiquitous presence at the tournament last March, but there was some sort of malfunction with his camera—it was largely incapable of being aimed at yours truly until nigh unto the end of the tournament. So I may or may not appear in this film, but at the very least, I know several people who are featured prominently in it and will be going to Sundance for the premiere.

I'm hoping that (1) I am not on the cutting room floor, (2) the camera did not add umpteen pounds, and (3) the movie gets picked up by a distributor and plays for months at theatres nationwide, because I have got to see it (and the movie could help explain some of my nuttiness to my friends who maybe don't quite get it). And think of all the Hollywood swells who might see the movie at Sundance! Do you think Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., or George Clooney might go? I bet they all love crosswords.

Fruit blogging!

Two things.

Thing the first: I am eating an orange at this very moment. It sounds autocannibalistic, or racy, but it's actually quite tasty.

Thing the second: You know how sometimes you try to peel a banana, and the stem end just won't crack open the way it should? And you may pull out a knife in your impotent rage to cut the peel, or keep wrestling with the banana until the top end is all mushy? Guess what: You are allowed to peel the banana from the other end. It works. In fact, it is culturally imperialistic to insist on opening a banana only from the stem end, because people in other countries are quite willing to peel from the other end.

Blog Against Racism

Let me give you my life story through the lens of race.

My parents grew up in white ethnic families living in white ethnic communities. After they married in 1964, they moved into an apartment in Chicago’s Marquette Park neighborhood—the site of some sort of demonstration against Martin Luther King, Jr.—not far from where my dad was raised.

After I was born two years later, they moved the family to a planned community known for its diversity. The suburb’s population, then and now, was mostly white and black, with a smattering of Asians and Latinos. When I was growing up, the black population accounted for about 20% of the town; it’s higher now. The school district included a predominantly black section of a neighboring town, and most of the children there were bused to our town. So my classes always included at least two racial/ethnic groups, sometimes four or five.

During my grade-school years, our neighborhood was diverse. There were mixed-race couples with kids; one such family had adopted sons who were Korean/African-American. A black family lived next door to us. A Japanese woman and her white husband lived across the street. There were white families and black families, and occasional singles and couples.

Then I went to small-town Minnesota for college. The school strove to attract a diverse student body, but they had a tough time attracting (and retaining) African-American and Latino students to such a white (and wintery) place. I remember a friend who grew up in Mankato arguing that there was no racism on campus, because after all, he wasn’t seeing it. My senior year, some students started up a White Students Against Racism discussion group, which I joined. One woman recalled the stress of being a retail employee instructed by her boss to watch the black customers to make sure they weren’t stealing.

After graduating, I returned to the Chicago area and got a job in publishing. There wasn’t much overt racism on display there, but I had a white colleague who took issue with her (Asian-American) editorial assistant’s use of a nickname on her business correspondence, saying it seemed “too ethnic.”

Then my Asian-American fiancé (the Mr. Tangerine we all know and love) graduated, and we got an apartment on the North Side. The Lakeview neighborhood is mostly white, but the area is still fairly diverse; not many poor people, no, but people of all colors and backgrounds, and a sizeable GLBT population. We got married (my relatives didn’t seem to have any reservations about his race—but then, many white people seem to have an easier time accepting Asians, being the “model minority” and all) and moved a few blocks north, closer to the partly poor Uptown neighborhood, but still in an area with largely the same demographics as Lakeview.

My husband grew up in a predominantly white suburb in Wisconsin, and reported sometimes feeling “different” as a result of his race. I didn’t want our child to ever feel that way, and we’re both so incredibly comfortable and at home in our neighborhood, we saw no reason to move to the ‘burbs after Ben was born. (Hell, I feel like a fish out water when I find myself in an almost-all-white environment; it feels like…something’s missing.)

“What about the terrible Chicago Public Schools?” the relatives quailed. As it turns out, Ben’s attending a good CPS magnet school just around the corner, and the student body reflects the city’s population: No ethnic group makes up a majority. Kids come from all over the city—some from 12 to 15 miles away! in city traffic! Some kids’ families are immigrants, hailing from something like 50 different countries. Different races, different religions, different languages, different cultures, different traditions. But they’re all learning the same curriculum and playing together; they all made paper turkeys before Thanksgiving (wait! unfair to vegetarians!).

I’m sure some of the kids attending Ben’s school will be exposed to racist attitudes at home and in society, but at school? I’m incredibly hopeful that the children who spend nine years in this multicultural environment will emerge from the cocoon as teenagers who can accept and look past differences, who feel completely comfortable being in the minority at times, who understand that every individual has something to contribute regardless of their color or background.

It’s unfortunate that most American children don’t have access to an educational experience like this. If they did, I believe the frayed edges and gaping holes in the nation’s fabric would be mended within a few generations.

Hey, December 1 is "Blog Against Racism" day

And I haven't written a post yet. Stay tuned...

A good morning

My husband nudged me awake. My eyes sought out the clock, which informed me that it was 7:28 a.m. Yoicks! Kindergarten starts at 8:00. I got dressed and rousted Ben out of bed, battling his sleepy reluctance to do anything but cuddle. I wrestled him into his clothes, attempted (unsuccessfully) to smooth out his tousled bedhead, and had the daily morning toothbrushing standoff (invariably it involves Ben asking, “What if I throw up?”).

Out to the living room, 7:45. Shoes on; coat on; hat, scarf, and gloves on. Backpack on. Dreading the cold air and feeling whiny about a sore throat, I opened the front door.

What’s this? Snow? Huh? Hey, it’s snowing! In an instant, a morning beset by minor woes became a perfect morning. There was just enough snow to give everything a clean white blanket, and to crunch underfoot in staccato bursts of sound like popcorn popping. Ben swiped a fingertip across a car window to peek in through the snow cover, finding it magical. He stopped walking and stuck out his tongue to capture snowflakes; I did the same.

We hit a windy pocket at the end of the block. The wind’s sting made us grateful when we rounded the corner and our faces warmed again. We heard two crows having a harsh conversation. We saw footprints in the snow from schoolchildren and adults, from large dogs and small, and talked about following one set of tracks to see where it led.

Ben entered the school building and I turned around to walk home, crunching snow in staccato bursts. The wind stang, but calmer air imparted a sense of peace, perfection. Birds clustered in a tree, fluffing their feathers against the cold, perhaps eating the tree’s tiny apples, so weighed down by the snow that many had tumbled to the sidewalk to be crushed underfoot.

Happy December, everyone.

Holiday shopping...for yourself

My friend Flea, the purveyor of sex toys and related products, is running a sale at the Honeysuckle Shop—40% off your purchase if you enter the coupon code BLOG at checkout. (Don't quote me on this, but I believe she includes batteries.) Hypothetically, you could order a $40 toy, pay tax and $7.95 in shipping, and end up paying less than $35 for an item that runs $50 at drugst0re.com. And you'd be doing business with an independent retailer. What's not to love?

K's most excellent joke

Last night, while walking home from the Restaurant of Braying Suburbanites, my friend K. said she'd read Jay Leno's joke about female suicide bombers—something having to do with the whole "72 virgins" deal. K. had a much better punchline, which you'd think the women on Leno's writing staff could have come up with. "72 virgins? Don't give me 72 virgins. Give me one man who knows what he's doing."

Mockery

Mr. Tangerine took Ben up to his folks' this weekend, leaving me behind to do grown-up things. I watched some TiVo (Maureen Dowd's recent appearance on "Charlie Rose"), did some crosswords, and ate some Thanksgiving leftovers before I motivated myself to shower and get dressed this afternoon.

Then I hopped on the bus downtown and went to Nordstrom's—my lingerie mentor Bitch Ph.D., a.k.a. the Distinguished Professor of Brassiere and Shoe Studies, had advised me that I must shop for bras at Nordstrom's, and that Felina was the brand that would offer foxy styles in my size. My goodness, those Nordstrom's employees are solicitous! They more than made up for the pestilence of out-of-town shoppers polluting Michigan Avenue this weekend. And if the good Dr. B ever gives you advice about bras, for the love of cleavage, take her advice! She is wise in the ways of the brassiere. Earlier this year, she recommended the Wacoal brand, and I now own five Wacoal bras. This fall, Dr. B said Felina, and I now own a lovely Felina demi-cup bra in a deep raspberry hue. I try on other brands, but invariably, what fits is what Dr. B has told me to try.

After my shopping expedition, I cabbed it to the local art cinema to meet an old friend, K., for the Claire Danes/Steve Martin/Jason Schwartzman movie, Shopgirl, which we both liked a lot. After the show, we crossed the street to a French restaurant I like so I could partake of poulet au curry crepes (yum) and French wine (two glasses, my tipsy-making limit!). Regrettably, the table behind K. contained six reasonably quiet men at one end and SEVEN LOUD WOMEN at the end closer to us. "Howler monkeys," K. called them. The woman in the mustard-colored sweater had a laugh that was bleatingly reminiscent of Tom Hulce's laugh in Amadeus. (So charming!) The rest of us in the nonsmoking room partook of a shared mockery of the jackals/monkeys—lots of eye-rolling and whatnot—but alas, the jackals/monkeys remained drunkenly oblivious to the how much their LOUDNESS really IRRITATED EVERYONE ELSE. K. and I concluded that this group Came From The Suburbs. No North Side woman would be caught dead wearing a velour Royal Stewart tartan top, I assure you. (Who knew such a thing even existed?) Nor a black sweater festooned with sparkly marquise-cut rhinestones. Nor so many bad, bad highlights in not-really-blonde hair. The LOUD laughter was punctuated at times by vigorous foot stomping, which did not abate even when the guy behind me stomped his foot in a call-and-response form of sheer mockery. Occasionally K. or I would bray in Amadeus-style laughter, to no avail—they who Came From The Suburbs were beyond reach. And good lord, they were intent on closing the place down. We'd hoped to outlast them, but did so only because we stayed to enjoy the peace for a few minutes after the LOUD PEOPLE left, even though the busboy had blown out the candles at all the empty tables.

Can you make me a promise, dear readers? If you happen to own any apparel in the velour tartan category, would you please burn it? It's for the best. Honest.