My brain is quiet today, so I don't really have much to post about.  Instead, I thought I'd snag Val's meme for today and play along.  (Although some of her answers were good enough, I don't think I can top them.)

Father_daughter

What is a physical feature you admire in both men and women, that you find yourself noticing or comparing when out and about?

Hubbicula and Spucko both have lovely hands.  Guitar players.

If you could "safely" explore an addictive or otherwise unhealthful or unsafe vice, which one would you choose and why?

Well, I've pretty much already covered this territory, as I think I've tried every drug except Ecstasy and it doesn't really attract me.  So I'm gonna have to think outside the box.  Let's go with sex.  I'd join a swinger's club or something.  (In Tampa we conveniently lived just across the alley from one, but we never checked it out.)  Or maybe I'd just start speeding a lot, since I never do that.  Be one of those people who drive 100 mph on the highway.

In which TV show currently airing would you like to be a regular character? Describe the character a bit.

Since Lost is the only show I watch, I suppose I'd have to be a regular character on Lost.  Knowing my luck I'd just be a red shirt, get blown up or buried alive or something.  The best I could hope for is that I'd be a hot enough chick to get killed.  Probably my Lost boyfriend would kill me.  Well, that sounds a lot weirder than I expected.

If you could be a member of the opposite sex for a day, what you would try out?

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News flash: the things that mothers say about their bodies affect how their daughters view their own bodies. 

As though there were ever any doubt. 

Some of my earliest memories are of my mother reminiscing about "the good old days."  Invariably the good old days were her college years, which wouldn't be all that strange if all her reminiscences hadn't orbited around how thin she was in college.  There are still tons of old black and white photos to back this up: My sloe-eyed mother, thin as a rail, except for her rather impressive rack, doing various collegiate things. 

I didn't inherit the family rack.  None of my sisters did either.  What we did get from my mother was a near-obsession with being thin.   By the time I was twelve, I was already dieting.  Because it was obvious to me that people were happier when they were thin.  My mother hated herself for not being thin, but she'd clearly been happy as a size 4.  Or so she said.

For my oldest sister, Elephant*, the self-starvation was a matter of control.  She could control what went into her body and that gave her power my mother couldn't take away.  Not that my mother wanted to take that away.  She loved how thin Elephant was.  I got that message loud and clear, because it was a system of reward.  Elephant was so thin that she couldn't get decent clothes in a store.  So my mother, a very talented but lazy seamstress, sewed Elephant an entire, fabulous, custom-tailored wardrobe. 

I got bupkis.   Until I lost weight.   Once I was 5'6" and 90 pounds, I had to have custom-made clothes and $100 blue jeans, too.  Self-starvation was a system of reward.  Deprive yourself and you will be rewarded.

You_sank_my_battleship

Children are a lot like computers--they can be programmed.  In fact, they are programmed, from a very early age, but parents rarely understand what kind of software they're programming their kids with.  We're like torpedoes with elaborate guidance systems, making our way toward the target that has been set for us.  Rarely is the target the one our parents think they've aimed us at, because we received our programming before they were even thinking of where to aim us.  We took our cues when we were small children and now that we're adults we can't be deterred.

Looking back, I can see that I have been moving headlong toward my mother's misery about her body.  Her self-hatred.  Seeing how unhappy she was and seeing what made her unhappy, I've spent years trying to dodge that fate.  I broke up with the first guy I ever loved, because I could see how I would learn to hate myself, to feel fat even when I wasn't.  I stopped paying attention to what my mother said about food.  I ate normally, gained some weight, hung out with lesbians and feminists and liberals.  Made it to this place where I liked myself.  Wasn't ashamed of my body.  I thought, "Great.  I dodged that fate."

Silly me.  No, my guidance system was still taking me to the same destination.  No matter how hard I worked to dodge it, I was heading there.  Pinging off obstacles, tracking my target. 

Knowing you're a torpedo doesn't mean you can stop being one.  The trick is figuring out how to reprogram yourself.  

*No, this doesn't refer to Elephant's size.  It refers to her destructive capacity.

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As many of you requested the story of me raiding my friend Spucko's attic with a loaded shotgun, I prevailed upon her to tell the story.  Honestly, it was a late night, I was probably more than a little drunk (always a good combo with loaded weapons), and thirteen years later, I don't remember the finer points of the story.  So, without further ado: Spucko's version of the events.

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My best friend Spucko boldly goes before me every year in turning older three months ahead of me.  That way she can warn me of any pitfalls of the next age.  Or that's the idea anyway.

Spucko and I have been friends for 15 years now.  We met in graduate school--my second year and her first year.  I was the president of the graduate student association, so it was my job to welcome the newbies.  Part of that involved playing hostess to newbies when they visited town to hunt for an apartment.  Luckily for them, I had a long, comfortable sofa in my apartment.  Unluckily for them, I stored my fencing foils hanging blade down from plant hooks in the ceiling over my sofa.  Many prospective and new graduate students woke the morning after arriving in town to stare up at the Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads.  Spucko took it with aplomb, although she still gives me a hard time about it.

The one thing that made her visit to me different was that at the end of it, I hugged her.  At the time, that brought the number of people I was willing to hug to its all-time high of 9.  (At present, what with people dying and not being readily replaced on that list, the number has stood at 8 for many years.)

She was there when I broke up with my crazy boyfriend, Killer Nerd.  She was there when I wiped out drunk and blacked my eye and generally tore up my face while hiking back from the annual grad student drunk-fest.  I once raided her attic with a loaded shotgun.  We survived the Master's Exam and thrived on banana mead.  We used our superpower of Literary Ultra Violence against all kinds of unsuspecting poets.  We have been trading the same moving favor back and forth for so long, we don't know who helped who move first.

In short, it's your basic best friend thing.  Happy birthday, Spucko.  I love you.

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What is your deepest, darkest fear?
Submitted by [Susan].

Being friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless, and unemployed in Greenland!

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My family is crazy and my mother is the worst of us, so it's no surprise that anything labeled a "Mother's Day celebration" would be screaming chaos on tall red wheels.

My parents just recently bought a house closer to my four sisters and further from me, but this means that the time has come again for my mother to clean out her sewing/craft room.  To give you an idea of the Herculean scope of this task: my mother's sewing room makes your nearest fabric store look like a hobby.  She's insane.  Dutiful daughters that we are, though, Liberty and Elephant and I make the trek to Mom's house to begin the sorting and disposing of years of accumulated fabric, craft projects, dolls, quilt books, and various miscellaneous.

Since I know you all love the highlight reels, here it is:

Mom: My steak isn't quite done.  Maybe I'll put it in the microwave. 
Me: Don't nuke your steak.
Elephant: Trade me.  Mine's more done.
Mom: Maybe I'll just put it in the microwave.  It's bloody.
(Dad goes on eating his steak in stoic silence, because Mom's steak is never right.)
Mom: Did everyone else's get done?
Me: No, mine's bloody. The way I like it.
Mom: So is mine.  I wonder if I should microwave it.
Liberty: Happy Mother's Day and quit being a whiny bitch.

Being woken on Sunday morning to a psychedelic light show.

Me: (hissed behind my mother's back at my sisters): No more fucking questions.  No more questions!  We don't care what that fabric's for.  The only question is keep or give away.
Mom: Oh, and these are the scraps from Dusty's quilt.
Me: No more reminiscing!  You can reminisce when you unpack the boxes!

Elephant: I can't believe you tell that story on yourself about peeing in a potato chip bag in a canoe.
Me: I have to.  It's a preemptive strike.  If I tell the most embarrassing story about myself that I can think of, it takes away your ammo.

Me: Cake or death?
Elephant: Can I have a piece of cake and then death?
Me: No, you can't have both.  It's cake or death.  Not cake and/or death.
Liberty: Pick death.  We want your slice of cake.

Followed by the studious sound of the four of us licking the lemon cream frosting off our cake plates.  (Amazing cake.)

Mom: I think I'll give that to your Aunt Jan.
Liberty: Yeah, she'll like that.  She's a panooch.
Mom: What's a panooch?
Liberty: She's a cunt.
Mom: (after five minutes of laughing): You made me wet my pants.

These are all just moments that weren't a maelstrom of screaming and flung fabric and insults.  Those are just impossible to transcribe.

SPECIAL BONUS LAUGH:  Just remembered this while talking to Hubbicula. 

Dad's lawnmower blew its spark plug, so at the last minute, he asked me to bring him my lawn mower.  To beat the rain, I had to skip most of my packing and prepping to leave.  Just threw some stuff into my book bag, loaded the mower in the truck and drove.  Skipped lunch. 

Arrived at Mom & Dad's to an empty house.  I stood in the kitchen for a moment, about to go out to the garage or the back yard.  Then I noticed in the dog's bowl: an egg roll.  Probably from their favorite Chinese restaurant.  Just lying there, waiting for the dog to come in and eat it.  I admit that for a good thirty seconds, standing there starving and sweaty, I seriously evaluated just how dirty the dog's bowl was.  How bad would it be to just fish that egg roll out and eat it?  Then Dad came in and I snapped out of it.  The dog got lucky.

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The birds!  I'm talking about those little great tit birds, you pervert.  Apparently they're doing well despite climate warming in the British Isles.  (I was going to add a picture of adorable baby tits to this post, but just as I was typing "great tits chicks" into Google, I realized how close to danger I was.)

I dunno, I just thought it was a brilliant headline.  One of those journalism success stories.

Swayte Jaysus.  It's Friday finally.  I wasn't sure we were going to make it here.  It's also Stop Day, the last day of the semester, which means I have twomore frantic weeks of work before the next stage of the Great Brain Tumor Hall Migration.  Then at long last: summer.  Quiet and calm and plenty of time to write and mess around.   And Vox! 

Also, as an open note to the rabbits in my yard.  Look, little guys, there are only four of you and I have a lot of dandelions.  So while the nibbling is adorable, you really need to pick up the pace on eating.  Thanks.

How's everyone else today?  I don't ask often enough, but how are you?

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Yeah, you better be saving your pennies, especially as they now officially cost more to make than they're worth.  According to data released by the US Mint, each penny now costs 1.26¢ to make. 

I used to just toss them aside.  Going through drive-thrus, I've been known to simply ditch the pennies out of my change, right there in the drive.  Guess I won't be doing that anymore.

Leave_a_penny

So, here we are, in the midst of some serious economic doldrums.  People are saying "recession."  People are saying, "looming depression."  I personally have been saying, "great googly-moogly" and "motherfucker."  Yet, we're still throwing money away to produce money that is of limited value.  Oh, sure, there's something special about finding a shiny penny on the ground, or carrying an old wheat penny around in your pocket for luck, but the fact that nearly every store I go in these days has a little plastic dish for people to deposit or borrow pennies from?  That's a sign. 

If you don't hesitate to leave your pennies in those plastic dishes, you probably wouldn't mind not getting them back in change at all.  Perhaps at last, that means we, as a society, are finally ready to say good-bye to the penny.  Round up all purchases to the nearest nickel and we would simplify a lot of transactions in addition to saving a bunch of money.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of $34 million a year. 

A current proposal in the House would not do away with the penny, but would take us back to World War II, when pennies were made of steel, a much cheaper metal than copper.  Because the nickel is also a profligate in these days of rising nickel and zinc prices, the proposal includes plans to make the nickel out of steel as well.  This is considered preferable to the "politically impossible" suggestion of doing away with the penny.  There seems to be some sense that people want to keep the penny and yet my brain keeps going back to all those discarded pennies.  Do we really want it?

And then, look at all the things we didn't want that we got: the war in Iraq, the USA PATRIOT Act, Guantanamo, tax breaks for the super wealthy.  We didn't riot over any of those and they're worried that getting rid of the penny is politically impossible? 

Don't, don't even get me started on the willful failure of the dollar coins.

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On viewing the first film footage of it, no one could agree on where the fire started.  The film crew with the best view had stopped filming and didn't restart until the back quarter of the zeppelin was engulfed in flames.  No one ever knows when tragedy is about to strike, and often no one is watching when it does.  As W.H. Auden observed:

... even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

So Icarus falls to his death while the farmer plows, and in the midst of the maelstrom of fire that consumes the Hindenburg in less than 30 seconds, startled cameramen race to capture the last few frames of death and destruction.

It's the blessing of modern technology.  That we have the pleasure and horror of gasping along with Herbert Morrison's live radio broadcast: "Oh, the humanity!"  To live that moment over and over.  Taste tragedy like live theater gone wrong, where the stage knife has no spring and Romeo gouts real blood, not ketchup.

The curse of that technology is that it leaves us breathless, cell phone cameras in hand, waiting for tragedy.  Waiting, not to live, but to document.

Hindenburg disaster

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Are you celebrating Cinco de Mayo?

This is something that always amuses and confounds me about America.  We're the descendants of a bunch of Quakers and Puritans and the like, but we will take any excuse for a drink.  We have this convenient excuse that we call "Melting Pot."  Oh, we say, there are so many cultures in America that we have to expect that we'll adopt a bunch of different holidays.

Yeah, only all we seem to adopt are holidays that allow us to drink copiously.  St. Patrick's Day?  We're on board.  Oktoberfest?  Bring on the pilsner.  Cinco de Mayo?  Mix up some margaritas.  Mardi Gras?  Laissez les bons temps rouler and show us your tits.

This is why I think various religious and ethnic groups need to think really carefully before they start promoting their own holidays in America.  Next thing you know, everybody's celebrating the Prophet's birthday with liquor.  Hell, I'm surprised we haven't co-opted Chanukah and turned it into an eight-day drinking game. 

So, I don't think I will celebrate Cinco de Mayo, but that's only because I don't like Mexican beer or tequila.  Now, give me a nice Belgian holiday and I'm on it.

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