Like the proverbial train wreck, it was simultaneously horrifying and fascinating. I could not stop listening. No, not the latest Miley Cyrus album. Worse.
Twice now I've found myself tossing my work aside to stop and take notes in a public place, trying to describe an auditory experience so bizarre I knew I had to write about it, even though it is as uneventful and commonplace as a bird flying or dog barking. It's gotten under my skin. I doubt my meager powers of description are up to the task.
Only an outsider, detached, uninvolved, could accurately describe it. If you've ever lived in an apartment with paper-thin walls and accidentally overheard your neighbors having sex, you know what I mean. At first you're like, "What the hell is--OH. Oh. And--ew. I really didn't need to hear that." Funny how when you're not involved in the act yourself it sounds so--ick.
You know what I mean? If I had not known what I was hearing, I wouldn't have known what I was hearing. If I had not had the context of my surroundings and my eyes to reassure me, I would not have known where I was, or what, exactly, I was hearing. I might even have called the police.
I was on my lunch break, trying to get some freelance work done outside the office. It is hard to transcribe sounds but here it goes.
BEDLAM. Bedlam like the famous lunatic asylum. The sounds were not human. The high-pitched howl of a werewolf, ululating, ooooohing and woooo--wwoooo---wooooing, wailing in a singsong howl that could have come from a dog. Then a guttural shriek--it sounds like an oxymoron, to but that's what it was, simultaneously deep-voiced and screechy, like an animal with its leg caught in a trap. Another long low moaning, like an adult in the throes of passion. There was screaming, howling, and deep, gurgling, gulping sobs, all at once, simultaneously, like dogs howling at the moon in unison.
One sound is a multisyllabic, operatic, drawn out yowl, hitting high and low notes, almost a yodel, only not bright and cheery like a Ricola commercial, more like an extended cry of physical agony or spiritual crisis. It goes on and on and on. It's the kind of cry you might hear from a woman in childbirth, or a man dragged off a bloody battlefield, having his arm amputated without anesthesia, or a parent who has just lost a child.
One sound recalled old-fashioned dubbed-from-Japanese Godzilla movies, a kind of deep, throat-tearing roar that makes my throat sore just to think of it: "Raaaah! Raaaah! Raaaaaaagughhggh!" Try clearing your throat of phlegm at the same time you shout for help at the same time you are being beaten with a leather strap--if you can imagine that sound, it might be close to what I heard.
Underneath it all was a quiet, serious moaning. I envisioned the worst: a rape victim, or the survivor of a landslide or hurricane that has claimed her whole family. She sits alone, frightened, in pain, huddled in a ball, rocking herself back and forth, covering her head, moaning, whimpering, a sound of pure, pleading, desperate sorrow.
But not crying. In this atmosphere, crying is prosaic. Too ordinary. Too identifiable.
I'm not exaggerating. I'm being completely serious. I didn't even have PMS--there was no hormonally induced heightened sensitivity to smells, sounds, and random glances that would make me want to push someone off a curb into the path of an oncoming bus just for wearing too much cologne or having their Ipod volume turned up too high.
Occasionally, a sweet, giggly Muppet laugh broke through the lunatic choir. It is so charming it brings unexpected delight. And then the continuous low moaning overwhelms it, morphs into the uninhibited throaty groan of an old man on the toilet, "uhhhnnn," or perhaps a hysterical cackling, followed by psychotic, savage, guttural yawps of starving apes fighting over the last scrap of fruit.
One sound is close to the sound a dog makes if you try to touch it while it is chewing on an old bone, a savage, snapping snarl that lets you know it can and will bite if you don't back off.
Another reminds me of that sound a cat makes when it is hacking up a hairball and you feel the vomit rising in the back of your own throat in some kind of sympathetic reaction, and you try to swallow it, hold down the bile and turn away. Urp. Ulp. Ugh.
The cacophony is bone-chilling, fascinating, yet frightening. Because it doesn't sound human, but it is. It's the same hair-raising feeling as when when you walk alone in the dark and suddenly feel you're being watched, or hear a noise you wish was just a squirrel but know was a human footstep. Or a bear. Something large, in any case, and threatening. Something is not right here. The instinct to flee kicks in. But you know your best bet is to stay silent, and hope whatever is out there in the darkness, making that sinister sound, does not find you.
It's like passing a homeless person on the street who is clearly suffering a severe mental illness, moaning and squealing and uttering sounds no sane person would make unless in extreme pain, and for a moment, feeling survivor's guilt just for being mentally competent, you wonder if maybe they really are being literally tormented by demons, except demons don't exist.
You feel uneasy because they are human and yet making sounds that are clearly not: not logical, not communicative, not even musical, not even on the base level of an infant crying for food or attention. It's a noise made by a human, but it's not a human noise, in the sense that any other human could interpret or understand its purpose. I think of the young Helen Keller, blind and deaf and struggling to communicate, flailing, making sounds she can't even hear.
Twice now I have witnessed this and each time I found myself abandoning my work to take notes, trying to capture the experience of sitting off calmly and silently to one side while surrounded by this crazed, demented, animal, monstrous bedlam.
I'm speaking, of course, about the children's room at the library.
Lest you think I'm being overly dramatic, I want to say that I have three nieces, and I walk past playgrounds all the time. I live near a park, in a neighborhood with plenty of kids of all ages. I know about the ear-splitting, high-pitched shrieks, the squeals of joy, the random eruptions of enraged bellows. I am accustomed to the shouting, yelling, screaming, stomping, sobbing and laughing of little children, screeching as they run around maniacally. And the whining...oh yes, the whining.
Nothing prepared me for this. All of the tables in the downstairs adult reading room were filled with men reading magazines and women typing on laptops. So I went upstairs to the children's library, which has plenty of empty seats and tables. The stereotypical shushing librarians are nowhere to be seen--this is more of a public play room, with toys and building blocks and a Purell dispenser thoughtfully mounted by the door. The books and computers are one side of the the room, the play area for toddlers on the other.
It was quiet for a few minutes, and then they arrived. Like wild dogs, they travel in packs. I guess there is a preschool nearby that lets out around 2 or 3pm. The pack splits in two: moms on one side, hired caregivers on the other. The children are in the middle, sending up a sound the likes of which I have never heard before.
It feels wrong to keep comparing preschoolers to animals, but I can't help it: that is how they sounded: inhuman, freakish, eerie. I thought, if I had kids, I'd be one of those women, sitting there talking, acting like this is nothing unusual, instead of sitting there with ice water trickling down my spine as I tried to place these animalist yawps into some kind of context.
If you heard these sounds, and did not know you were sitting in a children's library, I swear, you would not know they were children.
If you had not seen the children, playing with toys, surrounded by watchful adults, you would have dialed 911. If I closed my eyes, I might have thought someone was being murdered. The little dark-haired girl making the Godzilla-like roaring and grunting--I would have thought a rutting bull moose had made its way upstairs and was knocking over bookshelves.
There is really no point to this blog post. I just had to share. Because these two- and three-year-olds FREAK ME OUT. It's like Lord of the Flies on a daily basis over there, except at least the kids in the book were older and could speak in a recognizable language. Listening to these kids--and from where I sit, I can't really see them, the room is divided by a large partitioned cubicle-type work area where the librarians sit--makes you wonder what the hell it is to be human, and how we get there, and if life begins at conception, well, when does humanity begin? When does civilization begin? We know when life begins, but when do we become people?
A visit to the children's library might very well be the cure for creationist thinking. You could not possibly doubt we evolved from monkeys after hearing these kids. Even the monkey house at the zoo makes more sense. Pass the Ritalin.
Friday, December 18, 2009
Sunday, December 6, 2009
P.S. Your Cat is Strange
Returning to the scene of my most recent crime against personal dignity, I was confronted by Nelly the cat, who refused to allow me to retrieve various personal effects (inexplicably scattered around her house--how did my hairbrush end up under someone's bed?!) until she had been petted and given water.
Clearly, Nelly is also too hungover to bother with things like cups or bowls.
If anyone needs me in the next 24 hours, my head will be in the sink, with the cold water running. I don't know where the rest of me is ending up, but my head will be in the sink. My parents told me not to take candy from strangers but no one ever said I couldn't take hangover tips from cats.
Clearly, Nelly is also too hungover to bother with things like cups or bowls.
If anyone needs me in the next 24 hours, my head will be in the sink, with the cold water running. I don't know where the rest of me is ending up, but my head will be in the sink. My parents told me not to take candy from strangers but no one ever said I couldn't take hangover tips from cats.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Out, You Demons of Stupidity
It only took about 10 years, but I finally did it. Following a bout of unrelenting bad luck culminating with being abandoned penniless and desperate 2,000 miles from home without a place to sleep by an unreliable addict relative on a bender, forced to rely on the kindness of friends and strangers (and by the way, when did I become the kind of woman who gets her way by dissolving into tears in public? But I've tried it three times in the last two months, and let me tell you, IT WORKS!), only to be followed up with returning home to find my car broken into and the CD player stolen, I finally managed to convince even my most coldly logical, practical, and un-superstitious friends that, actually, there is such a thing as "luck," that it comes in varieties good and bad, and that I really do have bad, bad luck.
Now I know how missionaries feel when they convert a pagan to Christianity. Finally, even the doubters are forced to admit I attract negative energy like Jessica Simpson attracts lousy boyfriends and dog-stealing coyotes. If John Mayer shows up on my doorstep strumming a guitar, me and my little aura of doom will be sent off to Afghanistan to topple Al Qaeda.
But it's OK, I can be flippant about my drug-addicted relative who left me stranded (for FOUR DAYS!), violated automobile, and negative bank account. Because soon, my troubles will be over.
So what if, in the last two months alone, my cell phone died, my car failed inspection, my toilet seat broke, and an attempt to have some furniture delivered resulted in a) public tears, b) family rift, c) my very first ever attempted bribery, and d) $220 down the drain? So what if my kitchen sink AND bathroom sink both sprung leaks and flooded the floor, and I stepped on and broke my only pair of glasses (and I don't have a vision plan)? So what if I lost my subway map, my nice leather gloves, and my pretty new scarf that I'd only worn four times? So what if the zipper broke on my cheap handbag, right in the middle of an important meeting where I was attempting to look professional, only to have scraps of paper, three different types of lip balm and gloss, Santa Claus-themed hand cream (Stocking Stuffer '08; thanks, Mom!) and, of course, a tampon suddenly on display. That is all behind me now.
So what if I go to the doctor for a hepatitis booster and am told, unsolicited, that I probably can't have kids any more as my eggs are now too old and rotten ("I don't really want kids, so it's not an issue for me, thanks" -- "Oh, but lots of women your age have had healthy children, I'm not saying you can't, just that it will be harder now" -- "But I don't want kids" -- "Well, it's not too late, but it will certainly be harder for you" -- "I'm OK with not having kids! Can I have my booster shot now please?")
[Yes, the doctor lectured me on an issue that is not an issue for me, then actually left without giving me the my vaccination, and I had to ask the receptionist to go find her and bring her back to give me the shot, because in her zeal to tell me I'm too fucking old to have kids I don't even want, she left without actually giving me what I came there for. But I forgive her, because this was in Manhattan, land of the Menopausal Mom, where a childless woman in her 30s who sees her doctor has only one thing on her mind. Seriously, try finding an ob/gyn in Manhattan who ISN'T a fertility specialist.]
So what if my boss is actively trying to sabotage me? So what if my family arrived three hours late for Thanksgiving, bitching about traffic and in foul moods, while I spent pretty much the entire day alone in the kitchen, stirring shit? So what if the turkey was undercooked? History.
All of this is behind me now.
My sister is somewhat, shall we say, more susceptible to belief in the supernatural than I am. She believes in ghosts, spirits, demons, Heaven, Hell, and tarot cards. She's also more of an optimist: she believes that when your car breaks down and requires $600 of work at the same exact time you are given a $560 bonus at work, that this is the work of God, stepping in to help you by providing you with the money you need. I believe it's the work of Satan, who knew I had already charged a $600 plane ticket and needed that bonus money to pay it off.
Needless to say, she too is convinced of my "bad mojo." My endless stream of misfortunes has even become an affectionate family joke, as in, "We'd better not invite Catherine over for Christmas or the roof might cave in and we'll all get struck by lightning, ha ha. No really, you don't have to drive home this year. We'll mail your gifts!"
Enter my new best friend: the White Sage Smudge Stick.
This thick bundle of aromatic dried leaves resembles the world's fattest joint, and, according to the package, its "incredibly strong, aromatic resins" and "pungent scent" are often used in purification rituals. My sister promises that it will cleanse my home of negative energy.
Smudge Stick was a gift that my sister brought to me for Thanksgiving, but not before she made sure the holiday began in the proper spirit by calling my mother at 9am and saying, "Catherine called. She said Thanksgiving is cancelled. The roaches ate the turkey." (Which was not true-- the roaches were occupied with a half-eaten hamburger left on the floor specifically to distract them from the turkey.)
(Just kidding. I do not leave food on the floor, only mouse poison and unopened bottles of Diet Coke.)
Unfortunately, by the time she arrived with my salvation, the Smudge Stick, I'd already attempted to cook the turkey...which ended up an unfortunate victim of well-intentioned maternal sabotage and my own turkey-roasting insecurities.
"It says on the package to loosely stuff the turkey," I said, reading directly from the Butterball label.
"I always pack my stuffing in tightly," said my mother, who was roasted probably 45 more turkeys than I ever have or will. So I stuffed it in tightly, insuring, I realized later, that it would have no room to expand once it heated and filled with hot air, and came bursting out of the turkey's ass like the world's largest baseball-shaped hemorrhoid.
"It says to cook it at 325 degrees," I said, again reading from the label.
"I always put mine in at 350," said my mother.
"Maybe your oven ran colder than mine. My oven thermometer says it's at 325 exactly."
"Well, I don't know...you can risk it if you want...I always do 350...but you can do what you want, it's YOUR turkey." (Read "funeral" for "turkey".)
I hung up the phone and turned the oven up to 350.
Four hours and thirty minutes later, I checked on the turkey. According to the meat thermometer, it was ready--180 in the thigh, 165 in the stuffing, which meant it should be done, and 4.5 hours was the recommended roasting time on the Butterball label. Of course, a meddling guest was putting the meat thermometer in the freezer, then taking it out again, and repeatedly jabbing the turkey, so I have no idea if this reading was accurate.
Last year I roasted a turkey with great success, and it cooked in a mere 3.5 hours, despite weighing 4 pounds MORE than this turkey, which after 4.5 hours at 350 did not seem to be done. For some reason this year (DARK CLOUD OF EVIL HANGING OVER HEAD), luck was not on my side.
"I'd leave it in longer," says my mother. "I don't think it's done."
Given her considerable roasting experience, I'm about to take her advice and put the turkey back into the oven, when she delivers her final act of maternal sabotage: "But then, I like dry turkey."
Ah, yes, dry turkey! Everyone knows you don't want of those MOIST, JUICY turkeys! Tender turkey meat--ugh! I feel sick even thinking about slices of turkey so juicy they need no gravy or cranberry sauce. Dry turkey--that's what you're aiming for! The longer it sits in the oven dehydrating, the better! Tender turkey is for wimps--people like us need turkey as dry, tough, and hardened as our leathery and withered little souls. So I take it out of the oven.
Of course, I did not yet have a chance to fumigate with the smoke of the White Mountain Sage, so it did not have a chance to work its power. The turkey turned into a nightmare, white and mostly cooked on the outside, and oozing globs of red slime and bloody juices on the inside.
"That turkey looks like it was shot, not butchered," said one guest. "Normally you'd never see blood pool up in the bottom like that! They usually hang them and drain the blood before packing them. I've never seen that before!"
This year my traditional Thanksgiving beer, drunk once I'm done cooking and can celebrate leaving the sweltering kitchen and joining the family to eat, was supplemented with two or three more.
Everything else turned out fine. It was as if the stuffing, cranberry sauce, various potatoes and pies were extra tasty, to make up for the turkey refusing to cook. The turkey was de-stuffed, shoved back into the oven at 400 degrees, and left for another hour, after which it was cooked, although at that point no one was hungry.
My brother called from Alaska to congratulate me. Despite the fact that only two hours had passed, thanks to the miracle of cell phones and text messaging, and despite being in another time zone, he'd already been informed of my attempted salmonella assassination. "I heard you tried to take them all out in one fell swoop," he says. "Nice job."
Everyone went home, and I tried to relax. At least no one had a heart attack or food poisoning. That was something to be thankful for--we all had our health (that is, all of us except the unfortunate black sheep suffering from drug addiction and family censure, which becomes more depressing every time I think of it).
Then my mother called, after having gotten lost on the way home. She has a Garmin GPS but didn't bring it, "because we knew where we were going," except the whole point of the GPS is that she's now old and therefore should NEVER BE WITHOUT A GPS, proving you can lead a horse to water but if you give the horse a GPS it will still get lost on its way to the water trough because how can you force the horse to use the GPS unless you implant it in the horse's head and then activate it with a remote control device?
After that, I instituted a new tradition: the ritual post-Thanksgiving purification of negative energy.
I followed the instructions, lit the end of the White Sage Smudge Stick, then blew it out. Let the purification begin!
The stick begins to emit streams of smoke. And more smoke. Boy does it smoke. Thick, creamy pale smoke fills the apartment. I open the windows. Out, negative spirits! Soon I'm choking and coughing and my eyes are watering, but it's nothing a little Sam Adams can't cure. I wave the stick around the apartment. I feel like I should be chanting. I'd feel ridiculous, but again it's nothing the Sam Adams can't cure. I've done worse things under the influence than attempt to ritually cleanse my dwelling of evil spirits that spoil my turkey and steal my car radio.
How do I know, exactly, where the negative energy is coming from? The bedroom? The bathroom? The kitchen? I make sure to fill the entire apartment with smoke before dousing the tip of the stick in water, then collapsing into bed with my laptop and my beer. I thought it would smell like incense, but it smells more herbal...piney, and sort of like really strong potpourri. At the very least I hope it smokes out the roaches.
I might have to purify the car, too (which just started making this funny rattling noise whenever I press down on the accelerator, which does not bode well for my holiday travel plans). I'd bring it to my office, except I'm afraid the power of the White Sage Smudge might cause the building to collapse--intense negative energy is all that's holding that place together. The only way that place could be cleansed is with a virus ten times stronger than H1N1. I'm trying to decide: if I get laid off, is that a sign that the ritual expulsion of evil is working, or not?
So far, the weekend hasn't been too bad. I'm going to smoke out the negative mojo every day for a few days and see how it goes.
I have noticed one positive side effect of the sage-scented smoke: the scent of rancid turkey grease that usually hangs in the air and saturates my hair for at least 3 days following roasting seems to be gone. Hair that doesn't smell like rancid turkey grease--surely this is a sign.
Now I know how missionaries feel when they convert a pagan to Christianity. Finally, even the doubters are forced to admit I attract negative energy like Jessica Simpson attracts lousy boyfriends and dog-stealing coyotes. If John Mayer shows up on my doorstep strumming a guitar, me and my little aura of doom will be sent off to Afghanistan to topple Al Qaeda.
But it's OK, I can be flippant about my drug-addicted relative who left me stranded (for FOUR DAYS!), violated automobile, and negative bank account. Because soon, my troubles will be over.
So what if, in the last two months alone, my cell phone died, my car failed inspection, my toilet seat broke, and an attempt to have some furniture delivered resulted in a) public tears, b) family rift, c) my very first ever attempted bribery, and d) $220 down the drain? So what if my kitchen sink AND bathroom sink both sprung leaks and flooded the floor, and I stepped on and broke my only pair of glasses (and I don't have a vision plan)? So what if I lost my subway map, my nice leather gloves, and my pretty new scarf that I'd only worn four times? So what if the zipper broke on my cheap handbag, right in the middle of an important meeting where I was attempting to look professional, only to have scraps of paper, three different types of lip balm and gloss, Santa Claus-themed hand cream (Stocking Stuffer '08; thanks, Mom!) and, of course, a tampon suddenly on display. That is all behind me now.
So what if I go to the doctor for a hepatitis booster and am told, unsolicited, that I probably can't have kids any more as my eggs are now too old and rotten ("I don't really want kids, so it's not an issue for me, thanks" -- "Oh, but lots of women your age have had healthy children, I'm not saying you can't, just that it will be harder now" -- "But I don't want kids" -- "Well, it's not too late, but it will certainly be harder for you" -- "I'm OK with not having kids! Can I have my booster shot now please?")
[Yes, the doctor lectured me on an issue that is not an issue for me, then actually left without giving me the my vaccination, and I had to ask the receptionist to go find her and bring her back to give me the shot, because in her zeal to tell me I'm too fucking old to have kids I don't even want, she left without actually giving me what I came there for. But I forgive her, because this was in Manhattan, land of the Menopausal Mom, where a childless woman in her 30s who sees her doctor has only one thing on her mind. Seriously, try finding an ob/gyn in Manhattan who ISN'T a fertility specialist.]
So what if my boss is actively trying to sabotage me? So what if my family arrived three hours late for Thanksgiving, bitching about traffic and in foul moods, while I spent pretty much the entire day alone in the kitchen, stirring shit? So what if the turkey was undercooked? History.
All of this is behind me now.
My sister is somewhat, shall we say, more susceptible to belief in the supernatural than I am. She believes in ghosts, spirits, demons, Heaven, Hell, and tarot cards. She's also more of an optimist: she believes that when your car breaks down and requires $600 of work at the same exact time you are given a $560 bonus at work, that this is the work of God, stepping in to help you by providing you with the money you need. I believe it's the work of Satan, who knew I had already charged a $600 plane ticket and needed that bonus money to pay it off.
Needless to say, she too is convinced of my "bad mojo." My endless stream of misfortunes has even become an affectionate family joke, as in, "We'd better not invite Catherine over for Christmas or the roof might cave in and we'll all get struck by lightning, ha ha. No really, you don't have to drive home this year. We'll mail your gifts!"
Enter my new best friend: the White Sage Smudge Stick.
This thick bundle of aromatic dried leaves resembles the world's fattest joint, and, according to the package, its "incredibly strong, aromatic resins" and "pungent scent" are often used in purification rituals. My sister promises that it will cleanse my home of negative energy.
Smudge Stick was a gift that my sister brought to me for Thanksgiving, but not before she made sure the holiday began in the proper spirit by calling my mother at 9am and saying, "Catherine called. She said Thanksgiving is cancelled. The roaches ate the turkey." (Which was not true-- the roaches were occupied with a half-eaten hamburger left on the floor specifically to distract them from the turkey.)
(Just kidding. I do not leave food on the floor, only mouse poison and unopened bottles of Diet Coke.)
Unfortunately, by the time she arrived with my salvation, the Smudge Stick, I'd already attempted to cook the turkey...which ended up an unfortunate victim of well-intentioned maternal sabotage and my own turkey-roasting insecurities.
"It says on the package to loosely stuff the turkey," I said, reading directly from the Butterball label.
"I always pack my stuffing in tightly," said my mother, who was roasted probably 45 more turkeys than I ever have or will. So I stuffed it in tightly, insuring, I realized later, that it would have no room to expand once it heated and filled with hot air, and came bursting out of the turkey's ass like the world's largest baseball-shaped hemorrhoid.
"It says to cook it at 325 degrees," I said, again reading from the label.
"I always put mine in at 350," said my mother.
"Maybe your oven ran colder than mine. My oven thermometer says it's at 325 exactly."
"Well, I don't know...you can risk it if you want...I always do 350...but you can do what you want, it's YOUR turkey." (Read "funeral" for "turkey".)
I hung up the phone and turned the oven up to 350.
Four hours and thirty minutes later, I checked on the turkey. According to the meat thermometer, it was ready--180 in the thigh, 165 in the stuffing, which meant it should be done, and 4.5 hours was the recommended roasting time on the Butterball label. Of course, a meddling guest was putting the meat thermometer in the freezer, then taking it out again, and repeatedly jabbing the turkey, so I have no idea if this reading was accurate.
Last year I roasted a turkey with great success, and it cooked in a mere 3.5 hours, despite weighing 4 pounds MORE than this turkey, which after 4.5 hours at 350 did not seem to be done. For some reason this year (DARK CLOUD OF EVIL HANGING OVER HEAD), luck was not on my side.
"I'd leave it in longer," says my mother. "I don't think it's done."
Given her considerable roasting experience, I'm about to take her advice and put the turkey back into the oven, when she delivers her final act of maternal sabotage: "But then, I like dry turkey."
Ah, yes, dry turkey! Everyone knows you don't want of those MOIST, JUICY turkeys! Tender turkey meat--ugh! I feel sick even thinking about slices of turkey so juicy they need no gravy or cranberry sauce. Dry turkey--that's what you're aiming for! The longer it sits in the oven dehydrating, the better! Tender turkey is for wimps--people like us need turkey as dry, tough, and hardened as our leathery and withered little souls. So I take it out of the oven.
Of course, I did not yet have a chance to fumigate with the smoke of the White Mountain Sage, so it did not have a chance to work its power. The turkey turned into a nightmare, white and mostly cooked on the outside, and oozing globs of red slime and bloody juices on the inside.
"That turkey looks like it was shot, not butchered," said one guest. "Normally you'd never see blood pool up in the bottom like that! They usually hang them and drain the blood before packing them. I've never seen that before!"
This year my traditional Thanksgiving beer, drunk once I'm done cooking and can celebrate leaving the sweltering kitchen and joining the family to eat, was supplemented with two or three more.
Everything else turned out fine. It was as if the stuffing, cranberry sauce, various potatoes and pies were extra tasty, to make up for the turkey refusing to cook. The turkey was de-stuffed, shoved back into the oven at 400 degrees, and left for another hour, after which it was cooked, although at that point no one was hungry.
My brother called from Alaska to congratulate me. Despite the fact that only two hours had passed, thanks to the miracle of cell phones and text messaging, and despite being in another time zone, he'd already been informed of my attempted salmonella assassination. "I heard you tried to take them all out in one fell swoop," he says. "Nice job."
Everyone went home, and I tried to relax. At least no one had a heart attack or food poisoning. That was something to be thankful for--we all had our health (that is, all of us except the unfortunate black sheep suffering from drug addiction and family censure, which becomes more depressing every time I think of it).
Then my mother called, after having gotten lost on the way home. She has a Garmin GPS but didn't bring it, "because we knew where we were going," except the whole point of the GPS is that she's now old and therefore should NEVER BE WITHOUT A GPS, proving you can lead a horse to water but if you give the horse a GPS it will still get lost on its way to the water trough because how can you force the horse to use the GPS unless you implant it in the horse's head and then activate it with a remote control device?
After that, I instituted a new tradition: the ritual post-Thanksgiving purification of negative energy.
I followed the instructions, lit the end of the White Sage Smudge Stick, then blew it out. Let the purification begin!
The stick begins to emit streams of smoke. And more smoke. Boy does it smoke. Thick, creamy pale smoke fills the apartment. I open the windows. Out, negative spirits! Soon I'm choking and coughing and my eyes are watering, but it's nothing a little Sam Adams can't cure. I wave the stick around the apartment. I feel like I should be chanting. I'd feel ridiculous, but again it's nothing the Sam Adams can't cure. I've done worse things under the influence than attempt to ritually cleanse my dwelling of evil spirits that spoil my turkey and steal my car radio.
How do I know, exactly, where the negative energy is coming from? The bedroom? The bathroom? The kitchen? I make sure to fill the entire apartment with smoke before dousing the tip of the stick in water, then collapsing into bed with my laptop and my beer. I thought it would smell like incense, but it smells more herbal...piney, and sort of like really strong potpourri. At the very least I hope it smokes out the roaches.
I might have to purify the car, too (which just started making this funny rattling noise whenever I press down on the accelerator, which does not bode well for my holiday travel plans). I'd bring it to my office, except I'm afraid the power of the White Sage Smudge might cause the building to collapse--intense negative energy is all that's holding that place together. The only way that place could be cleansed is with a virus ten times stronger than H1N1. I'm trying to decide: if I get laid off, is that a sign that the ritual expulsion of evil is working, or not?
So far, the weekend hasn't been too bad. I'm going to smoke out the negative mojo every day for a few days and see how it goes.
I have noticed one positive side effect of the sage-scented smoke: the scent of rancid turkey grease that usually hangs in the air and saturates my hair for at least 3 days following roasting seems to be gone. Hair that doesn't smell like rancid turkey grease--surely this is a sign.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Mucus, Potatoes, and Missing Rubber
I find it hard to believe I ever thought flying was fun. The more I travel, the more reasons I find to become a homebody...although not in the domestic sense, more in the lunatic, hermit shut-in sense.
First there was my hellish flight to Alaska, a 13-hour flight that turned into a three-day ordeal. Then this week I flew to California on a business trip. We boarded the plane without incident, but fifteen minutes after we should have taken off, the captain made an announcement.
The captain is young and has a certain doofus charm, in that he tells a story like a six-year-old, leaving in every detail. There is a problem with the plane. But don't worry! Not a big problem! It's just a little--the mechanic noticed--I mean it's not a big problem--OK, see, what it is, is, a tiny piece of padding that cushions the wing is broken off--or missing--it's just a four-inch piece of rubber, actually, that's all. And it's missing. And technically we don't need it to fly. But, to fly without it, you need to file maintenance exception paperwork, which is time-consuming, so the mechanics will just order up a replacement part and have that fixed in a jiffy.
20 minutes later: The captain makes another announcement. The replacement part has arrived. But, well, it doesn't fit. The mechanics are just going to file it down, to make it fit, or cut it, or something, and then we'll be on our way, with our four-inch piece of rubber.
20 minutes later: OK, the four-inch piece of rubber doesn't fit, because, apparently what happened is, the old part broke off and half of it is now jammed into the hole and they can't fit the new piece in because the old piece is still in there, so they're just going to try to drill that old piece out, except that might take a while, so, um, they are going to look for that missing paperwork again, because really we don't even need this four-inch piece of rubber. And, in case they can't find the paperwork, the captain is going to request a replacement plane.
An eternity later: Well, folks, the mechanics can't find the right form number. But they're looking for it! And as soon as they find the right form to fill out and submit, we'll be approved to take off. Without our four-inch piece of rubber. But don't worry! It's not a safety issue! He has two little children at home with his wife and he is going to see them tonight! He absolutely would not fly this plane if he thought it wasn't safe!
Meanwhile I'm thinking, Screw safety...PAPERWORK? Seriously? I hope this was just an outdated figure of speech. They haven't yet heard of that marvellous invention, the computer? They can't submit this form electronically? I'm imagining the mechanics in a dusty back room, rummaging through filing cabinets full of triplicate forms with white, blue, and yellow tissue paper separated by layers of carbon paper. Come on, even the IRS accepts on-line filing!
Later: They've found the right paperwork!
Much later: BUT, well, folks, it's a lot harder to cancel a replacement plane than it is to file the paperwork, in fact it's almost impossible to cancel a requisitioned plane--I guess replacement planes are sensitive and don't take rejection well. So, after 2.5-3 hours on the runway, we will be deplaning and then re-boarding our new plane, which has all of its rubber in place. Even though, we now have both the paperwork and the new rubber part.
I finished reading the book I thought would last me through the entire flight before we even leave the airport. Fortunately, having flown Kafka's Airline to Hell and Back before, I am prepared, and have two more paperbacks in my carry-on. Every one of them deals with violent death.
5pm: I arrive at my destination, only 5 hours late.
I shouldn't complain about the delayed flight considering what awaited me at my destination: a convention for ear-nose-and-throat physicians. At one exhibitor's booth I watched them test implements to flush heavy mucus from nasal cavities--using peanut butter to simulate the mucus. I will never look at a jar of Jif the same way again.
I almost picked up a Larry the Larynx plush toy for $10, but I'm not sure my six-year-old niece would go for it. I mean, it didn't even have arms or legs. It was basically a stuffed tube with a smile.
There were some cute sticky notes shaped like tracheas and inner ears and body parts I couldn't even identify. I was tempted to get a few. If you receive a notepad shaped like a cochlea in your Christmas stocking this year, you'll know I'm your Secret Santa!
I kept passing this booth that seemed to have a number of brown, vaguely potato-shaped objects laid out on the counter. I was racking my brain, trying to guess what part of the ear-nose-throat anatomy could be considered potato-shaped. Adenoids? Sinuses? Blobs of ear wax? What is a brown and oval and has to do with otolaryngology?
Finally I asked the guys working at the booth, "What is that?"
The answer:
A POTATO.
This company's product is designed to stop bleeding, and is made of potato extract. Hence, the potato promotional toy. I haven't measured it, but it looks to me like a four-inch piece of rubber.
First there was my hellish flight to Alaska, a 13-hour flight that turned into a three-day ordeal. Then this week I flew to California on a business trip. We boarded the plane without incident, but fifteen minutes after we should have taken off, the captain made an announcement.
The captain is young and has a certain doofus charm, in that he tells a story like a six-year-old, leaving in every detail. There is a problem with the plane. But don't worry! Not a big problem! It's just a little--the mechanic noticed--I mean it's not a big problem--OK, see, what it is, is, a tiny piece of padding that cushions the wing is broken off--or missing--it's just a four-inch piece of rubber, actually, that's all. And it's missing. And technically we don't need it to fly. But, to fly without it, you need to file maintenance exception paperwork, which is time-consuming, so the mechanics will just order up a replacement part and have that fixed in a jiffy.
20 minutes later: The captain makes another announcement. The replacement part has arrived. But, well, it doesn't fit. The mechanics are just going to file it down, to make it fit, or cut it, or something, and then we'll be on our way, with our four-inch piece of rubber.
20 minutes later: OK, the four-inch piece of rubber doesn't fit, because, apparently what happened is, the old part broke off and half of it is now jammed into the hole and they can't fit the new piece in because the old piece is still in there, so they're just going to try to drill that old piece out, except that might take a while, so, um, they are going to look for that missing paperwork again, because really we don't even need this four-inch piece of rubber. And, in case they can't find the paperwork, the captain is going to request a replacement plane.
An eternity later: Well, folks, the mechanics can't find the right form number. But they're looking for it! And as soon as they find the right form to fill out and submit, we'll be approved to take off. Without our four-inch piece of rubber. But don't worry! It's not a safety issue! He has two little children at home with his wife and he is going to see them tonight! He absolutely would not fly this plane if he thought it wasn't safe!
Meanwhile I'm thinking, Screw safety...PAPERWORK? Seriously? I hope this was just an outdated figure of speech. They haven't yet heard of that marvellous invention, the computer? They can't submit this form electronically? I'm imagining the mechanics in a dusty back room, rummaging through filing cabinets full of triplicate forms with white, blue, and yellow tissue paper separated by layers of carbon paper. Come on, even the IRS accepts on-line filing!
Later: They've found the right paperwork!
Much later: BUT, well, folks, it's a lot harder to cancel a replacement plane than it is to file the paperwork, in fact it's almost impossible to cancel a requisitioned plane--I guess replacement planes are sensitive and don't take rejection well. So, after 2.5-3 hours on the runway, we will be deplaning and then re-boarding our new plane, which has all of its rubber in place. Even though, we now have both the paperwork and the new rubber part.
I finished reading the book I thought would last me through the entire flight before we even leave the airport. Fortunately, having flown Kafka's Airline to Hell and Back before, I am prepared, and have two more paperbacks in my carry-on. Every one of them deals with violent death.
5pm: I arrive at my destination, only 5 hours late.
I shouldn't complain about the delayed flight considering what awaited me at my destination: a convention for ear-nose-and-throat physicians. At one exhibitor's booth I watched them test implements to flush heavy mucus from nasal cavities--using peanut butter to simulate the mucus. I will never look at a jar of Jif the same way again.
I almost picked up a Larry the Larynx plush toy for $10, but I'm not sure my six-year-old niece would go for it. I mean, it didn't even have arms or legs. It was basically a stuffed tube with a smile.
There were some cute sticky notes shaped like tracheas and inner ears and body parts I couldn't even identify. I was tempted to get a few. If you receive a notepad shaped like a cochlea in your Christmas stocking this year, you'll know I'm your Secret Santa!
I kept passing this booth that seemed to have a number of brown, vaguely potato-shaped objects laid out on the counter. I was racking my brain, trying to guess what part of the ear-nose-throat anatomy could be considered potato-shaped. Adenoids? Sinuses? Blobs of ear wax? What is a brown and oval and has to do with otolaryngology?
Finally I asked the guys working at the booth, "What is that?"
The answer:
A POTATO.
This company's product is designed to stop bleeding, and is made of potato extract. Hence, the potato promotional toy. I haven't measured it, but it looks to me like a four-inch piece of rubber.
It was free, and I loved potatoes even before I knew they had valuable medical uses. I could already tell the rubber potato would be a big hit back in the office. Not as awesome as the Fleet EneMan plush superhero enema bottle, but much more ergonomic for throwing across the room in a fit of rage, and bouncing off a cubicle wall, and leaving on someone's chair or desk as a mysterious, wordless message, like instead of "Soon you'll sleep with the fishes," something like "Beware, the potato is watching" or "Soon you will be deep-fried."
The best part though came later that night. I stopped at Nordstrom's on my way back to my hotel, tried on some clothes and perfume, and ate a salad for dinner in the Nordstorm's cafe, then stopped by the ladies' room. Where the potato rolled out of my coat pocket and into the stall next to mine without my noticing.
I was washing my hands when a woman came out of the stall behind me, holding the rubber potato between two fingers. "Is this yours?"
Yes. Yes, that is my rubber blood-coagulating potato. Thank you very much.
Sunday, September 20, 2009
I Really Disliked Glee; Also, Did I Go to School on Mars?
I've been making an effort to narrow my horizons and watch more television lately, which led me to download the pilot episode of Glee, the high school glee club comedy that had received such good reviews. I can't say I really liked it--I've never seen a show with so many unpleasant, stupid, shallow female stereotypes, and yes, I have watched America's Next Top Model! Seriously, EVERY SINGLE WOMAN on this show is a shrill, manipulative, neurotic, bossy, backstabbing caricature, even the supposedly down-to-earth little brunette glee girl who, um, tries to steal another girl's boyfriend, which in my opinion makes her just as unsympathetic as the stuck-up cheerleader.
The married women bully their spineless schlub husbands--one asks permission to use the bathroom, and is denied. It's not even biting satire, just unfunny. Meanwhile, the only attractive adult male on the cast is married, yet not in the least bit convincingly heterosexual. Paging Hugh Jackman! Rumor has it you may be gay but at least you can sing AND dance AND play straight. This song-and-dance show needs some testosterone before the women explode in a giant pent-up estrogen bomb. Yes, I'm a sexist pig. What these women need is a man!
I also had trouble sympathizing with the poor little lonelyhearts guidance counselor after she counsels a student with bulimia by cracking a joke about the gag reflex, then flirts with the married man. WTF, can none of the women on this show find a man of their own? I mean, sure, in my own high school half the teachers really were screwing each other, but I thought this was supposed to be a comedy, not Melrose High 90210 XOXO Gossip Glee.
I made it ten minutes through the second episode before giving up. The second episode starts with Spineless Schlubby Husband #3 telling his son how he lacked confidence in life and a man needs balls if he's going to accomplish anything. Yeah, especially if he wants to write a TV show with realistic female characters that don't make me want to commit mass gynocide!
ANYWAY, it did make me start wondering about depictions of high school in movies, books, and on TV. Admittedly my references are dated (Heathers, 10 Things I Hate About You, Beverly Hills 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Breakfast Club), but watching Glee made me realize that not much has changed in the high school genre over the years. I am starting to wonder: Did I attend school on Mars? Was my school part of some kind of government experiment? (I wonder this about a lot of things actually.)
I went to a medium-sized school in rural Pennsylvania, with 200 kids in my graduating class of '91. The school had a total of about 1000 students, not counting the junior high across the street.
Maybe it was because my school was so far out in the sticks, but the usual Formula as set forth by the Gospel of the Breakfast Club just didn't seem to strictly apply. I know you have seen The Breakfast Club, but to refresh your memory, five kids, each part of a different clique, are assigned to Saturday detention. They are forced to interact, work together, and learn to see each other as complex human beings, despite their labels: Jock, Nerd, Criminal, Princess, and Basketcase. The Basketcase girl today might be considered more of an artsy Goth, but the rest are close enough to current stereotypes.
I just don't think these labels applied at my school, which was almost entirely populated with ordinary, well-rounded, complicated people. Like, human beings. The labels applied; they just didn't stick. In general, kids swapped labels, wearing two or three at a time, or ignored the labels and did whatever they wanted. People grew and changed. A boy who was a Jock freshman year became a total Basketcase by senior year (druggie, Beat poets, long hair, tie-dye, always late to school and class because he stopped wearing a watch so as not to be bound by the false constraints of society.) Particularly, the crossover between the Nerds and the Princess or Popular kids was extremely high. Most of the popular kids were not ditsy, spoiled shopaholics, but honors students. What can I say--flunking algebra was just not considered cool. It was not unusual to see a group of football players studying with nerds or kids in the marching band during study hall. Who else would you turn to for help with trigonometry?
I can't believe that my little hick town high school was so unique. Is it because it was totally hick? Maybe in a larger school, in a big city, people need to form tighter cliques in order to have an identity apart from the crowd. My school was more like a small family-owned company where every employee has to play several roles, because there isn't enough staff to go around.
For example, one varsity football player in my class was part of the Jock/Princess crowd, but was also a skateboarder who wrote poetry and published his own zine and solicited literary contributions from the Nerd/Basketcase crowd. We had study hall together, so although we were not friends outside of school, we'd sit in the library and talk about books. He obviously was not pressured to pick on me or ignore me because I was not part of the popular crowd. If this were a high school on TV, he'd be throwing a Slushie in my face and making lewd comments and tripping me in the hall. Instead he shared copies of his poems. Alas, he did date a cheerleader, but he also took honors English and math--hardly a stereotypical dumb jock.
I saw TV shows where jocks beat up on druggies or nerds, but never thought it happened in real life. As I once put it to a friend, "The jocks can't beat up on the druggies--then who would they buy their drugs from?" Our football players were routinely stoned, which might be why we only won one game in two years. Come to think of it, this might also explain the unusual mellowness of my school's cliques. (Hmm...could a solution for bullying really be this obvious?)
Contrary to the usual image of the cheerleaders as popular, beautiful superbitches, our cheerleaders were not voted on by the student body but chosen by the coaches, who to their credit based their choices on merit. We had a fat cheerleader with a pimply complexion who also played flute in the marching band. So much for the Popular Cheerleaders vs. Hopeless Band Camp Nerd cliché.
We had a knobby-kneed, bony, kinky-haired cheerleader who wore glasses and was otherwise distinguished for being the only student to receive a Perfect Attendance award for all four years of high school. Being a cheerleader did not win her automatic entry into the popular crowd, but she wasn't a total outcast, either. She probably couldn't have dated the handsome, popular jock--the rules of mating would require more Clockwork Orange-style tampering with human nature to make that happen--but no one stopped her from shaking her pom-poms.
We had cheerleaders who were pretty and popular too, of course. But it wasn't like an exclusive club, more like just any other school activity, like yearbook or track. True, the football cheerleaders did seem to outrank mere basketball cheerleaders (there were two squads as I recall, not sure why) but so what--any girl who wanted to could cheer. They weren't into advanced gymnastics or choreography, so no backflips or splits were required, just enthusiasm. Probably if a girl in a wheelchair had wanted to cheer, she could have made the team.
On TV, the cheerleaders are rich, bitchy ice queens who rule the school with sarcasm and sex appeal, phony shopaholics who are 16 going on 26. Maybe I'm being cruel, but I don't recall there being enough genuinely beautiful girls in my class for anyone to pull off that attitude. Even our homecoming queen was a popular girl known for being both smart and nice to everyone. She was pretty enough in a plain way, skinny, with freckles, light brown hair and eyes. But she was far from stylish or flashy. She lived on a farm and often wore jeans and plaid button-down shirts and boots to school. She was part of the 4H Club and was the kind of girl who entered calves in competitions at the county fair. Hardly your typical Bridezilla-like prom queen, or Gossip Girl material.
My younger brother was a varsity football player who grew up to be a schoolteacher. I know I've heard this line more than once: the lunkhead footballer bullies the nerd, who spits back, "Laugh now, someday you're going to be working for me!" I think that must be the writer's wishful thinking rather than reality, where being athletic does not exclude the possibility of being smart enough to have a white-collar profession. President Obama is often shown playing basketball with his friends. Is he just a stupid jock?
Maybe my school felt more relaxed because although some kids definitely had more money than others, we were all at roughly the same socioeconomic level, and we were so isolated that it wasn't like anyone could buy clothes from anywhere other than the same two malls within an hour drive. Unless you drove two hours to New York or Philadelphia you were stuck with the local mall.
Also, the status symbols in the 80s and early 90s were not nearly as intense as today--we didn't have cell phones or I-Pods or $250 Coach and Louis Vuitton handbags, or Tiffany's sterling silver bracelets. But you did have to have, say (straining memory), Bongo or Guess jeans and Reebok or Nike sneakers. We obsessed about brand names, but the brand names weren't SO far out of reach--even a poorer kid could usually work a part-time job after school and afford at least one pair of $60 jeans (which was at the time considered expensive--no-name jeans would be $25-40).
Stuff like I-Phones and $150 Lucky jeans hadn't yet hit the scene. My sister tells me that now my 15-year-old niece is not content with drugstore cosmetics like Revlon and L'Oreal; she is angry that she can't shop at Sephora and buy $40 MAC powder like her friends. Maybe it's just that today's princesses have it a lot harder than we did in the 80s.
I'm wondering if my high-school experience was truly that unique, or if it's just easier, for the sake of drama and simple, one-dimensional characters, for writers to keep falling back on The Formula. Even in The Breakfast Club they eventually realized that there was more to themselves than the labels slapped on them by adults. So why do kids put up with these tired cliches? Isn't it kind of boring? I just don't even find it entertaining anymore.
I'd much rather watch a TV show that reflected my stranger-than-fiction reality, where chubby girls became cheerleaders, a super-hot girl won a scholarship to an elite private school purely based on academic merit, the popular 16-year-old blonde got knocked up by her 25-year-old boyfriend, the rich kid worked at Kmart because his father wanted him to grow up "with values," and the jock coached younger kids in an after-school sports program.
I think this sounds like a job for the cable and premium TV networks! HBO, Showtime, A&E, where are you when I need you? You've made a show about a mobster who sees a therapist, a suburban stay-at-home mom who sells marijuana, a high-school chemistry teacher who manufactures crystal meth to pay for his cancer treatments, a serial killer who is one of the good guys. Surely you can come up with a show set in high school that isn't totally stupid?
The married women bully their spineless schlub husbands--one asks permission to use the bathroom, and is denied. It's not even biting satire, just unfunny. Meanwhile, the only attractive adult male on the cast is married, yet not in the least bit convincingly heterosexual. Paging Hugh Jackman! Rumor has it you may be gay but at least you can sing AND dance AND play straight. This song-and-dance show needs some testosterone before the women explode in a giant pent-up estrogen bomb. Yes, I'm a sexist pig. What these women need is a man!
I also had trouble sympathizing with the poor little lonelyhearts guidance counselor after she counsels a student with bulimia by cracking a joke about the gag reflex, then flirts with the married man. WTF, can none of the women on this show find a man of their own? I mean, sure, in my own high school half the teachers really were screwing each other, but I thought this was supposed to be a comedy, not Melrose High 90210 XOXO Gossip Glee.
I made it ten minutes through the second episode before giving up. The second episode starts with Spineless Schlubby Husband #3 telling his son how he lacked confidence in life and a man needs balls if he's going to accomplish anything. Yeah, especially if he wants to write a TV show with realistic female characters that don't make me want to commit mass gynocide!
ANYWAY, it did make me start wondering about depictions of high school in movies, books, and on TV. Admittedly my references are dated (Heathers, 10 Things I Hate About You, Beverly Hills 90210, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Breakfast Club), but watching Glee made me realize that not much has changed in the high school genre over the years. I am starting to wonder: Did I attend school on Mars? Was my school part of some kind of government experiment? (I wonder this about a lot of things actually.)
I went to a medium-sized school in rural Pennsylvania, with 200 kids in my graduating class of '91. The school had a total of about 1000 students, not counting the junior high across the street.
Maybe it was because my school was so far out in the sticks, but the usual Formula as set forth by the Gospel of the Breakfast Club just didn't seem to strictly apply. I know you have seen The Breakfast Club, but to refresh your memory, five kids, each part of a different clique, are assigned to Saturday detention. They are forced to interact, work together, and learn to see each other as complex human beings, despite their labels: Jock, Nerd, Criminal, Princess, and Basketcase. The Basketcase girl today might be considered more of an artsy Goth, but the rest are close enough to current stereotypes.
I just don't think these labels applied at my school, which was almost entirely populated with ordinary, well-rounded, complicated people. Like, human beings. The labels applied; they just didn't stick. In general, kids swapped labels, wearing two or three at a time, or ignored the labels and did whatever they wanted. People grew and changed. A boy who was a Jock freshman year became a total Basketcase by senior year (druggie, Beat poets, long hair, tie-dye, always late to school and class because he stopped wearing a watch so as not to be bound by the false constraints of society.) Particularly, the crossover between the Nerds and the Princess or Popular kids was extremely high. Most of the popular kids were not ditsy, spoiled shopaholics, but honors students. What can I say--flunking algebra was just not considered cool. It was not unusual to see a group of football players studying with nerds or kids in the marching band during study hall. Who else would you turn to for help with trigonometry?
I can't believe that my little hick town high school was so unique. Is it because it was totally hick? Maybe in a larger school, in a big city, people need to form tighter cliques in order to have an identity apart from the crowd. My school was more like a small family-owned company where every employee has to play several roles, because there isn't enough staff to go around.
For example, one varsity football player in my class was part of the Jock/Princess crowd, but was also a skateboarder who wrote poetry and published his own zine and solicited literary contributions from the Nerd/Basketcase crowd. We had study hall together, so although we were not friends outside of school, we'd sit in the library and talk about books. He obviously was not pressured to pick on me or ignore me because I was not part of the popular crowd. If this were a high school on TV, he'd be throwing a Slushie in my face and making lewd comments and tripping me in the hall. Instead he shared copies of his poems. Alas, he did date a cheerleader, but he also took honors English and math--hardly a stereotypical dumb jock.
I saw TV shows where jocks beat up on druggies or nerds, but never thought it happened in real life. As I once put it to a friend, "The jocks can't beat up on the druggies--then who would they buy their drugs from?" Our football players were routinely stoned, which might be why we only won one game in two years. Come to think of it, this might also explain the unusual mellowness of my school's cliques. (Hmm...could a solution for bullying really be this obvious?)
Contrary to the usual image of the cheerleaders as popular, beautiful superbitches, our cheerleaders were not voted on by the student body but chosen by the coaches, who to their credit based their choices on merit. We had a fat cheerleader with a pimply complexion who also played flute in the marching band. So much for the Popular Cheerleaders vs. Hopeless Band Camp Nerd cliché.
We had a knobby-kneed, bony, kinky-haired cheerleader who wore glasses and was otherwise distinguished for being the only student to receive a Perfect Attendance award for all four years of high school. Being a cheerleader did not win her automatic entry into the popular crowd, but she wasn't a total outcast, either. She probably couldn't have dated the handsome, popular jock--the rules of mating would require more Clockwork Orange-style tampering with human nature to make that happen--but no one stopped her from shaking her pom-poms.
We had cheerleaders who were pretty and popular too, of course. But it wasn't like an exclusive club, more like just any other school activity, like yearbook or track. True, the football cheerleaders did seem to outrank mere basketball cheerleaders (there were two squads as I recall, not sure why) but so what--any girl who wanted to could cheer. They weren't into advanced gymnastics or choreography, so no backflips or splits were required, just enthusiasm. Probably if a girl in a wheelchair had wanted to cheer, she could have made the team.
On TV, the cheerleaders are rich, bitchy ice queens who rule the school with sarcasm and sex appeal, phony shopaholics who are 16 going on 26. Maybe I'm being cruel, but I don't recall there being enough genuinely beautiful girls in my class for anyone to pull off that attitude. Even our homecoming queen was a popular girl known for being both smart and nice to everyone. She was pretty enough in a plain way, skinny, with freckles, light brown hair and eyes. But she was far from stylish or flashy. She lived on a farm and often wore jeans and plaid button-down shirts and boots to school. She was part of the 4H Club and was the kind of girl who entered calves in competitions at the county fair. Hardly your typical Bridezilla-like prom queen, or Gossip Girl material.
My younger brother was a varsity football player who grew up to be a schoolteacher. I know I've heard this line more than once: the lunkhead footballer bullies the nerd, who spits back, "Laugh now, someday you're going to be working for me!" I think that must be the writer's wishful thinking rather than reality, where being athletic does not exclude the possibility of being smart enough to have a white-collar profession. President Obama is often shown playing basketball with his friends. Is he just a stupid jock?
Maybe my school felt more relaxed because although some kids definitely had more money than others, we were all at roughly the same socioeconomic level, and we were so isolated that it wasn't like anyone could buy clothes from anywhere other than the same two malls within an hour drive. Unless you drove two hours to New York or Philadelphia you were stuck with the local mall.
Also, the status symbols in the 80s and early 90s were not nearly as intense as today--we didn't have cell phones or I-Pods or $250 Coach and Louis Vuitton handbags, or Tiffany's sterling silver bracelets. But you did have to have, say (straining memory), Bongo or Guess jeans and Reebok or Nike sneakers. We obsessed about brand names, but the brand names weren't SO far out of reach--even a poorer kid could usually work a part-time job after school and afford at least one pair of $60 jeans (which was at the time considered expensive--no-name jeans would be $25-40).
Stuff like I-Phones and $150 Lucky jeans hadn't yet hit the scene. My sister tells me that now my 15-year-old niece is not content with drugstore cosmetics like Revlon and L'Oreal; she is angry that she can't shop at Sephora and buy $40 MAC powder like her friends. Maybe it's just that today's princesses have it a lot harder than we did in the 80s.
I'm wondering if my high-school experience was truly that unique, or if it's just easier, for the sake of drama and simple, one-dimensional characters, for writers to keep falling back on The Formula. Even in The Breakfast Club they eventually realized that there was more to themselves than the labels slapped on them by adults. So why do kids put up with these tired cliches? Isn't it kind of boring? I just don't even find it entertaining anymore.
I'd much rather watch a TV show that reflected my stranger-than-fiction reality, where chubby girls became cheerleaders, a super-hot girl won a scholarship to an elite private school purely based on academic merit, the popular 16-year-old blonde got knocked up by her 25-year-old boyfriend, the rich kid worked at Kmart because his father wanted him to grow up "with values," and the jock coached younger kids in an after-school sports program.
I think this sounds like a job for the cable and premium TV networks! HBO, Showtime, A&E, where are you when I need you? You've made a show about a mobster who sees a therapist, a suburban stay-at-home mom who sells marijuana, a high-school chemistry teacher who manufactures crystal meth to pay for his cancer treatments, a serial killer who is one of the good guys. Surely you can come up with a show set in high school that isn't totally stupid?
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Invisible Books, Disappearing Readers
Stephen King recently wrote a book commissioned by Amazon, specifically by and about the Kindle. It’s a novella called UR. I don’t have a problem with authors writing works on commission as long as they’re clearly stated to be such--I figure it’s no different from being paid to write TV commercials or ad copy. It is only $2.99.
What bothers me is that it is only available on Kindle, and that I only found out about it when a friend who just bought a Kindle told me about it. (Update: it is now also released as an audio book.)
I know it’s not illegal, but it strikes me as a little sleazy. By commissioning their own works, Amazon creates an elite class of books available ONLY to those able to afford a $300 device. What a kick in the teeth to King’s long-time fans who cannot afford the Kindle.
And how cruel, really. Books always seemed truly democratic, available to anyone with a public library card. (Or without, if you have the patience to read while sitting in the library.) You could be 12 years old. You could be poor. Maybe you’d have to wait for the paperback, or wait for the library to stock it, or wait for a friend to loan it to you, or find it used or on the Barnes & Noble clearance rack for $4.99. But generally, I never noticed my choices of reading material were limited by cost.
Thank to interlibrary loan programs, I'm not even limited by location--a godsend when I was growing up in a rural town with a tiny two-room library. Audiobooks, Braille and large print books made reading material even more widely available. Books were not one-of-a-kind Picassos hanging in a rich man's private library. Books were mass-produced, and anyone with a half-decent education could walk into a library and read.
Enter the e-readers.
I've only read a few reviews of various e-readers and they all seem to focus on the same things: the complaints of the privileged. The color of the screen, not having physical pages to quaintly rustle and turn, rhapsodizing nostalgically about the smell of ink on paper, the lack of illustrations, not liking the choice of font. It's just like election season, when everyone talks about whether or not a candidate ever smoked pot or how much they paid for their clothes rather than the real issues. Who cares about the cosmetic quirks? They'll get worked out. I'm more concerned about readers, the people, than readers, the product.
Nicholson Baker wrote an essay in the New Yorker that made me want to do something I would not do with the expensive and breakable Kindle: throw the magazine across my living room and hear it hit the floor, which is a very satisfying expression of frustration. I zoned out when he compared jokes, reading a passage from a print book: funny! He reread it on the Kindle: not so funny! Um...what? Was he joking? Maybe I didn't get his snark because I was reading it on paper. I guess I should read the New Yorker's online edition to see if that was e-funnier.
Will the King book eventually be published on paper? Even if it comes out in a year or two, that seems more fair—let those who can invest in a Kindle read it first, as long as eventually it makes it way to the rest of us unwashed, low-income, late adopters.
By making it Kindle-only they create two classes of readers, the haves and have-nots. Those who can afford to read certain authors, and those who can’t. It seems almost hateful. Maybe spiteful is a better word. This turns the world of reading into a gated community, a country club with a pool where only members can swim.
A company like Amazon could afford to create a stable of authors under contract to write only Kindle books. I'm sure many authors would jump at the chance to trade wider readership for guaranteed income. Are there going to be entire groups of authors that those without electronic access just never discover? How do authors feel about this? Would the average, non-bestselling, struggling author care that her book was not on library shelves where poor folks might find it? Will e-readers make certain books invisible?
I didn't even hear about the new Stephen King book--actually, it's a novella (182KB, not sure how many print pages that translates to). This also disturbs me. Normally you can't help but hear about a new Stephen King book, whether you read him or not. There are people carrying it on the train, people leaving it in the lunch room at the office. You see it in the window at Barnes & Noble. You don't need to be plugged into the world of book reviews to know about it; it's just out there via cultural osmosis, the same way I know that Project Runway, a show I have never ever watched, switched cable networks. And I don't even have cable.
E-readers make books invisible. I suppose if you want to read smut on the train without your fellow passengers knowing, this is a good thing. But I like seeing what people are reading. I like seeing books and authors I never heard of. I like looking at the person on the subway, trying to guess what they are reading. The elderly lady in the church hat and sturdy shoes? Must be a Bible. Nope--Twilight. Well, you can't judge a book by its cover, or a reader by her age and outfit. E-readers don't just make books invisible, they make people invisible, impenetrable.
I'm just feeling disgruntled: it figures that new technology now forces me to overhear inane cell phone conversations, something I hate, yet will soon prevent me from checking out what people are reading, something I adore.
Can you share e-books? I had to read a book for my reading group* recently that I did not want to purchase as a $25 hardcover. My disposable income is limited, and I just wasn't willing to part with it for this particular book. I was #69 on the library waiting list. There was no way I'd get it in time for our next meeting. (*Yeah, I'm trying to kid myself, hence "reading group" not "book club." I'll let you know how that works out.)
So, a friend loaned it to me. I trade books with friends and sister ALL THE TIME. I guess people of a certain income don't do this, because I haven't seen it mentioned when discussing e-reader drawbacks. Sharing books promotes wider readership, not to mention friendship and actual face-to-face conversations. Anyway, I liked the book, then recommended it to a friend. Considering I was not going to buy this book, no way no how, I feel like the author got a fair deal: at least he gained a happy reader who spreads good reviews. I get a free read, and he gets more fame. I now know the name of Jonah Lehrer. Maybe I'll read his next book. Maybe I'll even pay for it. (Probably not--I'm library-centric these days--but you never know.)
But you can't share e-books unless you hand your Kindle over to someone, and who would share such an expensive device that also contains your whole library? Not the same as passing along a Sookie Stackhouse paperback, and don't worry if you spill coffee on it or take it to the beach and get sand in it, it was $5.99 at Target. E-readers make books less social, if more portable (and after lugging 9 books with me to Alaska, I definitely see the advantages of e-books). It just makes books more selfish, somehow. You can't read an e-book and then pass it on to a friend or donate it to your local library or school (or prison, as the charity Books Behind Bars does), or trade it for credit at your local used bookstore.
People say they buy more books with the Kindle, since they're so cheap, and since, as I just learned from reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, people are more likely to overspend and make rash purchasing decisions when paying with plastic. Yet I can't help but think that e-books cut down on readership--sales may increase, but actual readers decrease, since that book lives only in your personal e-reader library and is never shared.
Library books and trading books with friends is essential to my reading habit. I read a lot and I read fast. If I'm really engaged in a story, I can tear through two or three in a week. $9.99 per book seems cheap unless you realize that for someone like me, that's $120/month, plus tax. Young kids are even worse--I see parents stagger out of the library with bags of picture books, 10 or 20 at a time. It makes me sad to think that the lower classes of readers, like me, who read a lot but don't spend a lot, will disappear when books go exclusively digital.
Friends recommend books all the time, but I find I often will read it only if a friend literally puts it in my hands and says, "You HAVE to read this!" Because I am a crank, I often need to be forced to open my mind to other people's influences. I like what I like and I know what I like. If they just tell me about it, well, sure, I'll add it to my list and get to it someday...but if they hand it to me, and it's sitting on my nightstand, piled up, visibly, and I have to get it back to her sometime--then I'll actually read it.
Being pessimistic and prone to reading a lot about dystopian and apocalyptic futures, I'm just worried that entire classes of books will, effectively, disappear behind the gated community of expensive technology. At first it seemed that new technology was getting cheaper and cheaper, and everyone had a cell phone and MP3 player. Lately it seems like the class gap between those who have access to technology and those who don't is widening. Everyone assumes that if they have something, everyone else does, too.
As someone without cable TV--I decided internet access was more important--and currently without a cell phone, I assure you this is not true. When television switched to digital, the government was apparently shocked to find so many people still did not subscribe to cable.
(Thanks for that, by the way--instead of getting all basic channels, I'm now limited to ABC and PBS. At least I can watch "LOST" next year. And WTF is with PBS in New York; do they ever air anything besides cooking shows and Gwyneth Paltrow driving around Spain?)
On the plus side, I watch a lot less television. On the negative side, I can't watch television even when I want to. I worry that someday books will go the same way as my NBC and CBS.
Yes, I'm paranoid. But if they did it with television, why couldn't they do it with books? It could be a new ecological initiative to save the planet and decrease our carbon footprint. Mandate e-books only, and let the poors scramble to afford e-readers for the kids and affordable book-subscription programs.
I pessimistically see a future where instead of PETA throwing blood on fur coats, we'll have angry eco-ragers throwing the soil of Mother Earth in our eyes as we try to read a book printed on a murdered tree. Stephen King should write a book about that. I'd read it, if I could.
What bothers me is that it is only available on Kindle, and that I only found out about it when a friend who just bought a Kindle told me about it. (Update: it is now also released as an audio book.)
I know it’s not illegal, but it strikes me as a little sleazy. By commissioning their own works, Amazon creates an elite class of books available ONLY to those able to afford a $300 device. What a kick in the teeth to King’s long-time fans who cannot afford the Kindle.
And how cruel, really. Books always seemed truly democratic, available to anyone with a public library card. (Or without, if you have the patience to read while sitting in the library.) You could be 12 years old. You could be poor. Maybe you’d have to wait for the paperback, or wait for the library to stock it, or wait for a friend to loan it to you, or find it used or on the Barnes & Noble clearance rack for $4.99. But generally, I never noticed my choices of reading material were limited by cost.
Thank to interlibrary loan programs, I'm not even limited by location--a godsend when I was growing up in a rural town with a tiny two-room library. Audiobooks, Braille and large print books made reading material even more widely available. Books were not one-of-a-kind Picassos hanging in a rich man's private library. Books were mass-produced, and anyone with a half-decent education could walk into a library and read.
Enter the e-readers.
I've only read a few reviews of various e-readers and they all seem to focus on the same things: the complaints of the privileged. The color of the screen, not having physical pages to quaintly rustle and turn, rhapsodizing nostalgically about the smell of ink on paper, the lack of illustrations, not liking the choice of font. It's just like election season, when everyone talks about whether or not a candidate ever smoked pot or how much they paid for their clothes rather than the real issues. Who cares about the cosmetic quirks? They'll get worked out. I'm more concerned about readers, the people, than readers, the product.
Nicholson Baker wrote an essay in the New Yorker that made me want to do something I would not do with the expensive and breakable Kindle: throw the magazine across my living room and hear it hit the floor, which is a very satisfying expression of frustration. I zoned out when he compared jokes, reading a passage from a print book: funny! He reread it on the Kindle: not so funny! Um...what? Was he joking? Maybe I didn't get his snark because I was reading it on paper. I guess I should read the New Yorker's online edition to see if that was e-funnier.
Will the King book eventually be published on paper? Even if it comes out in a year or two, that seems more fair—let those who can invest in a Kindle read it first, as long as eventually it makes it way to the rest of us unwashed, low-income, late adopters.
By making it Kindle-only they create two classes of readers, the haves and have-nots. Those who can afford to read certain authors, and those who can’t. It seems almost hateful. Maybe spiteful is a better word. This turns the world of reading into a gated community, a country club with a pool where only members can swim.
A company like Amazon could afford to create a stable of authors under contract to write only Kindle books. I'm sure many authors would jump at the chance to trade wider readership for guaranteed income. Are there going to be entire groups of authors that those without electronic access just never discover? How do authors feel about this? Would the average, non-bestselling, struggling author care that her book was not on library shelves where poor folks might find it? Will e-readers make certain books invisible?
I didn't even hear about the new Stephen King book--actually, it's a novella (182KB, not sure how many print pages that translates to). This also disturbs me. Normally you can't help but hear about a new Stephen King book, whether you read him or not. There are people carrying it on the train, people leaving it in the lunch room at the office. You see it in the window at Barnes & Noble. You don't need to be plugged into the world of book reviews to know about it; it's just out there via cultural osmosis, the same way I know that Project Runway, a show I have never ever watched, switched cable networks. And I don't even have cable.
E-readers make books invisible. I suppose if you want to read smut on the train without your fellow passengers knowing, this is a good thing. But I like seeing what people are reading. I like seeing books and authors I never heard of. I like looking at the person on the subway, trying to guess what they are reading. The elderly lady in the church hat and sturdy shoes? Must be a Bible. Nope--Twilight. Well, you can't judge a book by its cover, or a reader by her age and outfit. E-readers don't just make books invisible, they make people invisible, impenetrable.
I'm just feeling disgruntled: it figures that new technology now forces me to overhear inane cell phone conversations, something I hate, yet will soon prevent me from checking out what people are reading, something I adore.
Can you share e-books? I had to read a book for my reading group* recently that I did not want to purchase as a $25 hardcover. My disposable income is limited, and I just wasn't willing to part with it for this particular book. I was #69 on the library waiting list. There was no way I'd get it in time for our next meeting. (*Yeah, I'm trying to kid myself, hence "reading group" not "book club." I'll let you know how that works out.)
So, a friend loaned it to me. I trade books with friends and sister ALL THE TIME. I guess people of a certain income don't do this, because I haven't seen it mentioned when discussing e-reader drawbacks. Sharing books promotes wider readership, not to mention friendship and actual face-to-face conversations. Anyway, I liked the book, then recommended it to a friend. Considering I was not going to buy this book, no way no how, I feel like the author got a fair deal: at least he gained a happy reader who spreads good reviews. I get a free read, and he gets more fame. I now know the name of Jonah Lehrer. Maybe I'll read his next book. Maybe I'll even pay for it. (Probably not--I'm library-centric these days--but you never know.)
But you can't share e-books unless you hand your Kindle over to someone, and who would share such an expensive device that also contains your whole library? Not the same as passing along a Sookie Stackhouse paperback, and don't worry if you spill coffee on it or take it to the beach and get sand in it, it was $5.99 at Target. E-readers make books less social, if more portable (and after lugging 9 books with me to Alaska, I definitely see the advantages of e-books). It just makes books more selfish, somehow. You can't read an e-book and then pass it on to a friend or donate it to your local library or school (or prison, as the charity Books Behind Bars does), or trade it for credit at your local used bookstore.
People say they buy more books with the Kindle, since they're so cheap, and since, as I just learned from reading How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer, people are more likely to overspend and make rash purchasing decisions when paying with plastic. Yet I can't help but think that e-books cut down on readership--sales may increase, but actual readers decrease, since that book lives only in your personal e-reader library and is never shared.
Library books and trading books with friends is essential to my reading habit. I read a lot and I read fast. If I'm really engaged in a story, I can tear through two or three in a week. $9.99 per book seems cheap unless you realize that for someone like me, that's $120/month, plus tax. Young kids are even worse--I see parents stagger out of the library with bags of picture books, 10 or 20 at a time. It makes me sad to think that the lower classes of readers, like me, who read a lot but don't spend a lot, will disappear when books go exclusively digital.
Friends recommend books all the time, but I find I often will read it only if a friend literally puts it in my hands and says, "You HAVE to read this!" Because I am a crank, I often need to be forced to open my mind to other people's influences. I like what I like and I know what I like. If they just tell me about it, well, sure, I'll add it to my list and get to it someday...but if they hand it to me, and it's sitting on my nightstand, piled up, visibly, and I have to get it back to her sometime--then I'll actually read it.
Being pessimistic and prone to reading a lot about dystopian and apocalyptic futures, I'm just worried that entire classes of books will, effectively, disappear behind the gated community of expensive technology. At first it seemed that new technology was getting cheaper and cheaper, and everyone had a cell phone and MP3 player. Lately it seems like the class gap between those who have access to technology and those who don't is widening. Everyone assumes that if they have something, everyone else does, too.
As someone without cable TV--I decided internet access was more important--and currently without a cell phone, I assure you this is not true. When television switched to digital, the government was apparently shocked to find so many people still did not subscribe to cable.
(Thanks for that, by the way--instead of getting all basic channels, I'm now limited to ABC and PBS. At least I can watch "LOST" next year. And WTF is with PBS in New York; do they ever air anything besides cooking shows and Gwyneth Paltrow driving around Spain?)
On the plus side, I watch a lot less television. On the negative side, I can't watch television even when I want to. I worry that someday books will go the same way as my NBC and CBS.
Yes, I'm paranoid. But if they did it with television, why couldn't they do it with books? It could be a new ecological initiative to save the planet and decrease our carbon footprint. Mandate e-books only, and let the poors scramble to afford e-readers for the kids and affordable book-subscription programs.
I pessimistically see a future where instead of PETA throwing blood on fur coats, we'll have angry eco-ragers throwing the soil of Mother Earth in our eyes as we try to read a book printed on a murdered tree. Stephen King should write a book about that. I'd read it, if I could.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Swag
At dinner with friends, I mention that I attended Book Expo at the Javitz Center and picked up a lot of free books. Someone comments that "there is no good swag in publishing."
I beg to differ:
Everyone pretends they don't recognize my little friend. I wonder why? This plush, fuzzy little darlin' is but one of the many, many perks of working in medical publishing.
You know you recognize him! Maybe the rear view will jog your memory:
It's about time the humble enema had a worthy mascot. Wearing a cape, no less!
Keep him by your pillow--you never know when disaster may strike. At any moment he may be called upon to fly off into the night on a mission of mercy.
Medical publishing: where the salaries are low, and the swag is even lower.
I beg to differ:
Everyone pretends they don't recognize my little friend. I wonder why? This plush, fuzzy little darlin' is but one of the many, many perks of working in medical publishing.
You know you recognize him! Maybe the rear view will jog your memory:
It's about time the humble enema had a worthy mascot. Wearing a cape, no less!
Keep him by your pillow--you never know when disaster may strike. At any moment he may be called upon to fly off into the night on a mission of mercy.
Medical publishing: where the salaries are low, and the swag is even lower.
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