Bardem Bardo

Javier Bardem just puts everything in perspective. When I do that insomniac cable movie oracle thing, he often pops up to set me straight. Usually, I get him in Before Night Falls, writing in a Cuban prison and smuggling his work out in Johnny Depp's ass. There are a lot of reasons that movie's hard to watch, not least that I feel about small enclosed spaces the way Winston Smith feels about rats. When they push Reinaldo Arenas into that solitary box, I have to hit the change channel button for a few minutes, always.

Last night, Bardem showed up in an exquisitely lit muddle called Goya's Ghosts. Goya's in my top five painters (him, Manet, Hokusai, Hans Hoffman, Remedios Varo, if you care) but this thing was just a mess, a half-baked Amadeus redux from Milos Foreman, sad to think. Bardem rocked yet another wacky hairstyle (which I can relate to, since I just got my hair colored REALLY red this go around) as an inquisitor priest turned French revolutionary turned Inquisition victim. Natalie Portman got tortured a lot, again, dag, and Goya went deaf and cringed with tinnitus, which I also could relate to (I'm losing my hearing from Meniere's and actually watched a lot of the movie on mute, because the neighbors have started to complain about the TV being too loud at night).

Not anywhere near the league of Before Night Falls, but still helpful, reminding me of a few home truths:

1) Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
2) Things aren't really That Bad for you, dear.

Finally getting back to where my muscles are humming and feeling happy again.

My daughter declares that she is making a magic potion. "It makes everyone pretty on the inside." She is stirring a plastic container with a handful of beads and sequins inside. I want the first taste.

Photo: A Bruce Weber I stole from Vanity Fair; I freely confess without use of The Question.

A Prayer On Being Made Redundant

I'm going into a year of not buying anything, which of course necessitated buying things. There was a trip to Target for two pairs of running/yoga pants and four pairs of emergency backup underwear. Despite my feelings about "things," I was pleased to see that Champion now has girl-size running skirts, yoga pants, and workout capris, with pink banding and piping. My daughter wanted one and I caved--she always needs pants, since she grows like a weed and every pair becomes capris in two or three months (while we're still taking in the waists). There's still, shockingly, a lot of talk about certain things being "not for girls" or "not wanting to be sporty" among my daughter and her friends, and if it takes a sparkly running skirt to change that thinking, it's OK by me.

Add to the consumer frenzy a couple of bra tops and a clutch of perfume samples from ScentBar--it's a lot easier to survive on a giant jug of Dr. Bronners for a year if you know you've got something good to put on afterward.

Of course I'm seeing all these books I want. I'll have to re-learn how to use the library. The last time I did this was about five years ago, and I was too busy/tired to go anywhere but the children's section of libraries.

A half-dozen signs have been steering me to Elizabeth Hardwick, so I picked up Sleepless Nights again, since that's what I'm having plenty of: "When you travel, your first discovery is that you do not exist."

I wish I were traveling. I have been getting smacked down, stomped on, talked to condescendingly, snidely, evilly, sniffed and snorted at, blown off, oh, it goes on. This world is telling me: Shut up and go away, you silly old woman. In the past few weeks I've seriously considered stopping everything but work, running and gardening, becoming a recluse but for the necessity of work. When you put yourself out there, you get put down; it's the law of averages. My spirits--eeny, meeny, sesameenie--say wait until the full moon. You'll hear something that'll tell you whether that's the way to go.

The Church of England has issued prayers for those who have been laid off as well as those left behind. I wish the Rev. Ike would put out his version.

You've Officially Been Chopped and Screwed

In a hard day spent trolling for business leads, I discover that Wegmans plans to give out free antibiotics, but Busch Gardens has opted to stop giving out free beer.

There's something so wrong about this world. Will you help me fix it?

"We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us"

Been having nightmares for a week--all set in past newspaper jobs, and I'm being relocated, told to fire people, fired myself, told to rip up sections and redo them in ways I know are wrong. Could use some sleep. Am running despite huffing uphills and cramping on the downslopes and almost sliding on my ass down the rotting timber stairs set into the trail off Connecticut Avenue. Did the Melvin Hazen today; the streams are clear and bubbling up over the stepping stones.

I'm reprinting a long email going around Paganland from Starhawk, the writer and Pagan innovator. This is one of the few commentaries I've seen that gets it. Too often, I listen to the progressive left, and their argument devolves into hate speech and anti-Semitism. As a Jew and a Witch and a pacifist who has lived with both sides, Starhawk grasps that we're all in the same boat. It makes me determined to see whatever I'm denying, whatever I've chosen to relegate to shadow, to the "other side of the boat," because ultimately that's all I can do.

This is probably the only time I'm going to post anything regarding this issue; this goofball blog isn't really the right place, but fact is I plain like her writing, and she is a gardener.

Dear friends,

All day I'’ve been thinking about Gaza, listening to reports on NPR, following the news on the internet when I can spare a moment. I’'ve been thinking about the friends I made there four years ago, and wondering how they are faring, and imagining their terror as the bombs fall on that giant, open-air prison.

The Israeli ambassador speaks movingly of the terror felt by Israeli children as Hamas rockets explode in the night. I agree with him— that no child should have her sleep menaced by rocket fire, or wake in the night fearing death.

But I can'’t help but remember one night on the Rafah border, sleeping in a house close to the line, watching the children dive for cover as bullets thudded into the walls. There was a shell-hole in the back room they liked to jump through into the garden, which at that time still held fruit trees and chickens. Their mother fed me eggs, and their grandmother stuffed oranges into my pockets with the shy pride every gardener shares.

That house is gone, now, along with all of its neighbors. Those children wake in the night, every night of their lives, in terror. I don’'t know if they have survived the hunger, the lack of medical supplies, the bombs. I only know that they are children, too.

I’'ve ridden on busses in Israel. I understand that gnawing fear, the squirrely feeling in the pit or your stomach, how you eye your fellow passengers wondering if any of them are too thick around the middle. Could that portly fellow be wearing a suicide belt, or just too many late-night snacks of hummus? That'’s no way to live.

But I’'ve also walked the pock-marked streets of Rafah, where every house bears the scars of Israeli snipers, where tanks prowled the border every night, where children played in the rubble, sometimes under fire, and this was all four years ago, when things were much, much better there.

And I just don'’t get it. I mean, I get why suicide bombs and homemade rockets that kill innocent civilians are wrong. I just don’'t get why bombs from F16s that kill far more innocent civilians are right. Why a kid from the ghetto who shoots a cop is a criminal, but a pilot who bombs a police station from the air is a hero.

Is it a distance thing? Does the air or the altitude confer a purifying effect? Or is it a matter of scale? Individual murder is vile, but mass murder, carried out by a state as an aspect of national policy, that’'s a fine and noble thing?

I don'’t get how my own people can be doing this. Or rather, I do get it. I am a Jew, by birth and upbringing, born six years after the Holocaust ended, raised on the myth and hope of Israel. The myth goes like this:

“For two thousand years we wandered in exile, homeless and persecuted, nearly destroyed utterly by the Nazis. But out of that suffering was born one good thing--—the homeland that we have come back to, our own land at last, where we can be safe, and proud, and strong.”

That'’s a powerful story, a moving story. There'’s only one problem with it--—it leaves the Palestinians out. It has to leave them out, for if we were to admit that the homeland belonged to another people, well, that spoils the story.

The result is a kind of psychic blind spot where the Palestinians are concerned. If you are truly invested in Israel as the Jewish
homeland, the Jewish state, then you can'’t let the Palestinians be real to you. It'’s like you can’'t really focus on them. Golda Meir said, “The Palestinians, who are they? They don’'t exist.” We hear, “There is no partner for peace,” “There is no one to talk to.”

And so Israel, a modern state with high standards of hygiene, a state rooted in a religion that requires washing your hands before you eat and regular, ritual baths, builds settlements that don’'t bother to construct sewage treatment plants. They just dump raw sewage onto the Palestinian fields across the fence, somewhat like a spaceship ejecting its wastes into the
void. I am truly not making this up—I’ve seen it, smelled it, and it’'s a known though shameful fact. But if the Palestinians aren'’t really real—--who are they? They don'’t exist!-- —then the land they inhabit becomes a kind of void in the psyche, and it isn'’t really real, either. At times, in those border villages, walking the fencelines of settlements, you feel like you have slipped into a science fiction movie, where parallel universes exist in the same space, but in different strands of reality, that never touch.

When I was on the West Bank, during Israeli incursions the Israeli military would often take over a Palestinian house to billet their soldiers. Many times, they would simply lock the family who owned it into one room, and keep them there, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days—--parents, grandparents, kids and all. I’'ve sat with a family, singing to the children while soldiers trashed their house, and I’'ve been detained by a group of soldiers playing cards in the kitchen with a family locked in the
other room. (I got out of that one--—but that'’s another story.)

It’'s a kind of uneasy feeling, having something locked away in a room in your house that you can'’t look at. Ever caught a mouse in a glue trap? And you can’'t bear to watch it suffer, so you leave the room and close the door and don’'t come back until it'’s really, really dead.

Like a horrific fractal, the locked room repeats on different scales. The Israelis have built a wall to lock away the West Bank. And Gaza itself is one huge, locked room. Close the borders, keep food and medical supplies and necessities from getting through, and perhaps they will just quietly fade out of existence and stop spoiling our story.

“All we want is a return to calm,” the Israeli ambassador says. “All we want is peace.”

One way to get peace is to exterminate what threatens you. In fact, that may be the prime directive of the last few thousand years.

But attempts to exterminate pests breed resistance, whether you'’re dealing with insects or bacteria or people. The more insecticides you pour on a field, the more pests you have to deal with—, because insecticides are always more potent at killing the beneficial bugs than the pesky ones.

The harshness, the crackdowns, the border closings, the checkpoints, the assassinations, the incursions, the building of settlements deep into Palestinian territory, all the daily frustrations and humiliations of occupation, have been breeding the conditions for Hamas, or something like it, to thrive. If Israel truly wants peace, there’'s a more subtle, a more intelligent and more effective strategy to pursue than simply trying to kill the enemy and anyone else who happens to be in the vicinity.

It'’s this--—instead of killing what threatens you, feed what you want to grow. Consider in what conditions peace can thrive, and create them, just as you would prepare the bed for the crops you want to plant. Find those among your opponents who also want peace, and support them. Make alliances. Offer your enemies incentives to change, and reward your friends.

Of course, to follow such a strategy, you must actually see and know your enemy. If they are nothing to you but cartoon characters of terrorists, you will not be able to tell one from another, to discern the religious fanatic from the guy muttering under his breath, “F-ing Hammas, they closed the cinema again!”

And you must be willing to give something up. No one gets peace if your basic bargaining position is, “I get everything I want, and you eat my shit.” You might get a temporary victory, but it will never be a peaceful one.

To know and see the enemy, you must let them into the story. They must become real to you, nuanced, distinctive as individuals.

But when we let the Palestinians into the story, it changes. Oh, how painfully it changes! For there is no way to tell a new story, one that includes both peoples of the land, without starting like this:

“In our yearning for a homeland, in our attempts as a threatened and traumatized people to find safety and power, we have done a great wrong to another people, and now we must atone.”

Just try saying it. If you, like me, were raised on that other story, just try this one out. Say it three times. It hurts, yes, but it might also bring a great, liberating sense of relief with it.

And if you'’re not Jewish, if you’'re American, if you'’re white, if you'’re German, if you'’re a thousand other things, really, if you'’re a human being, there’'s probably some version of that story that is true for you.

Out of our own great need and fear and pain, we have often done great harm, and we are called to atone. To atone is to be at one--—to stop drawing a circle that includes our tribe and excludes the other, and start drawing a larger circle that takes everyone in.

How do we atone? Open your eyes. Look into the face of the enemy, and see a human being, flawed, distinct, unique and precious. Stop killing. Start talking. Compost the shit and the rot and feed the olive trees.

Act. Cross the line. There are Israelis who do it all the time, joining with Palestinians on the West Bank to protest the wall, watching at checkpoints, refusing to serve in the occupying army, standing for peace. Thousands have demonstrated this week in Tel Aviv.

There are Palestinians who advocate nonviolent resistance, who have organized their villages to protest the wall, who face tear gas, beatings, arrests, rubber bullets and real bullets to make their stand.

There are internationals who have put themselves on the line--—like the boatload of human rights activists, journalists and doctors on board the Dignity, the ship from the Free Gaza movement that was rammed and fired on by the Israeli navy yesterday as it attempted to reach Gaza with humanitarian aid.

Maybe we can'’t all do that. But we can all write a letter, make a phone call, send an email. We can make the Palestinian people visible to us, and to the world. When we do so, we make a world that is safer for every child.

Please feel free to repost this. In fact, send it to someone you think will disagree with it.
Starhawk

www.starhawk.org

A Tree Is Nice

All these people did was write a poem, and look what happened:
--$50 to Potomac Appalachian Trail Club (membership plus $15 on top)
--$15 to Friends of Roan Mountain (Tennessee, Dave's cause)
--and 10 Euros to Kick It Out, a campaign against racism and homophobia in football (soccer), cause that's where Dave's t-shirt is coming from.

The winner is DaveTree, who is not only a professional poet, but studies tree DNA. It was inevitable. I hope I got the line breaks right. Winner first, rest as I found them:

Note to Trees

Trees, it's almost Thanksgiving
and as promised you're coming
naked--along with all your
relatives hauling acorns beechnuts buckeye
nuts moldy maple wings and such.
Leave them at the door.
Don't start in on gifts to the poor
squirrels and other fluffy rats,
and don't ever lapse into that annual rant after
several glasses of wine, death is
the mother of beauty. Death is a motherfucker.
The place cards are set
yet once more--be on your best
behavior; don't forget who this day is for.


John does his usual start-snarky-then-pull-your-heart-out magic:

"TREES"

I think that I shall never see
A chance to fuck under a tree.

A tree whose branches have caressed
A bodice ripped, revealing breast;

A tree that keeps a secret for more than a day,
And shades us from the sun when clothes fall away;

A tree in whose bark we’d carve our names
Who never chooses sides or blames;

Upon whose roots our flesh has lain;
Intimate with soil and pain.

This willow dream made by fools like me,
It’s close to God, to fuck under a tree.


Amateurzac puts one in mind of Fargo. Tan that hide, my friend!

A Cautionary Tale

The most beautiful tree
I will ever see in my life
Was the mulberry that grew in the backyard
With a thick, powerful trunk;
Broad deep-green leaves for shade
In the 100-degree summers,
Delicious fruit that made
A perfect purple mess in the spring,
Shadows and memories playing year round;
Roots, deep and ancient.
I cried and cried and cried
As it went through the wood-chipper
Screaming with metal and agony
One branch at a time.

Rachel speaks to an eternal paradox:

Every time my hands touch paper I touch a tree,
Sucking up the dark water,
Encasing space
Felled, stripped and pulped
Stretched out before me your white corpse
Shaved into thin sheaves
Waits for new born words

Mark is full of brotherly love, despite everything:

The trees around Philly
reach and find only me
their fingers have fallen
their digits have stopped
adding
i smile as i read
and i know she is getting better
with her poetry
it is exciting to witness growth
as so much around me withers...
she was here and she was as still
as i
the trees around here
cover only me.


Rionn Fears Malechem (hmmm) wrote two, at my demand:
Trees are strong, and trees are fun
Trees get bigger in the sun
If I could climb a tree and sit
I'd get right back down, in a bit.

AND

On reaching out, I pause
rather like a tree
paused, reached out
If I had bark I'd be its double,
Although less certain of purpose

Liz moved deftly from the universal to the particular and back again...

Debating between quitting
or screwing off so thoroughly
that my boss has no choice
reminiscing about my own
American Girl Dolls.
One, Molly, a family tradition
One, Addy, my own savings
led to my grandmother's dismay
remember when there were only 3?
From 8 stories up
the trees of Takoma do their autumn trick
for my enjoyment and distraction.
memory, dolls, trees and motivation...
something's gotta give!

Thank you from the bottom of my roots. The contest will return next year, if I have anything to say about it.

Live Blogging New Year's Rockin' Eve

10:50: Ryan Seacrest is interviewing the Jonas Bros.

Ryan: So, tell me, what's the wildest thing you've ever seen a fan do?

DH (cutting in to answer for the boys): Well, Ryan, it involved a cucumber and a cigarette...

A Winged Creature Perched on the Suspension Bridge

Got lucky today and fished this out.

Exit 98
Some people ask me where it is,
And I say, "You're there." Throw back a little fake koan.
Detachment provokes a slim selection of reactions:
Frustration, mostly; some are spurred
To try to get through it, breaking or slipping;
Last are the ones who smile and settle, satisfied.
But to you and you alone I'll tell the real story:
It's an easy road, well maintained, laid down
By some appropriation long ago paid off,
Metamorphosed into favors shaping a future
That will never quite balance out fairly.
Not the way that veers into the barrens,
Where the branches block the sun and the taproots
Suck at spilled blood, nor the one that crumbles
Into the shifting slate the surf becomes in midwinter
Churning over bones the fish nibble clean.
It's the turn for the ones who choose not to try
For the last chance. Penultimate.
The place for the ones who don't go there.

Photo: A construction of the Jersey Devil, an uncharacteristic image from some ad-ridden website full of bad jokes and old stories and photos of the kind that circulated on emails of years gone by. I would credit its creator, but that remains as mysterious as the rest of it.

Sweatshops and Cold Sweat and Sweaters

Time still dogging me. Spent too long with the paper as usual, but read a lead like this one, on the story of WaMu's downfall, and you can't put it down. Meth-sniffing loan officers, kickbacks to Realtors, creative documentation, inflated appraisals...

What gets me is that people who were used to normal, simple bank employment were pushed to sell home loans to anyone, anytime they could. If they didn't make their quota from their places behind the teller's cage, they were bused to a boiler room after working hours to pitch home equity loans. The workload, of course, came down on them as well: One office with 108 people and "several hundred" new loan files a day.

"I'd typically spend a maximum of 35 minutes per file," she said. "It was just disheartening. Just spit it out and get it done. That's what they wanted us to do. Garbage in, garbage out."

Now, of course, even the shareholders, who pushed this process with their own greed, are screwed. I wonder if the CEO fears bodily harm, she asks, purely abstractedly and with the kindest concern? I can't stand the thought of how the ad industry contributed to all this, as well.

Elsewhere in medialand, I check out the top songs and etc. of 2008 to see what I've missed. I really miss not seeing theater because of lacking babysitting and money. That I miss. But I do hear songs on the radio. OK, I love M.I.A.'s Paper Planes, in fact it's been on my mental rotation for more than a year (I don't have an iPod, not safe to run with one, can't deal with the tech, can't afford the toys, so I play songs in my brain to myself as I run through my days). But it didn't need to get tricked up with literally sh**ty lyrics from the sufferin' Kanye like "how it feel wake up be the sh*t AND the urine" and from poor Lil Wayne, who must have been overworked in the sweatshop of his own making to come up with lyrics like "swagger tighter than a yeast infection." (BTW, I don't agree with all her lyrical assessments in that link, but some are pretty funny.) With my diet and lifestyle and luck, that's not an experience I've dealt with for a good long time, but when I cast back in my memory, I seem to remember that swagger would have been the last word I'd apply to that situation.

Another pick is Beyonce's infectious "Single Ladies," whose message makes me a little sick. It sent me scurrying to the bookcase for Adrienne Rich's A Wild Patience to see if I could find something better that would possibly scan. Not quite, but follow the bouncing ball:

In a world where
property is everything
You belong to
your daddy then the man who chooses
If you fail to marry
You are without recourse
If you're married you are
leeee-gally de-eead

My used copy of this book has "no rights" written in a sweet, rounded cursive in the margins, a helpful message from the last student who owned it.

I have a bad memory. I can remember the precise moment a three-year depression lifted--on an airplane en route to Tampa, smoking a cigarette, wearing a mint-green pastel jersey suit, listening to Thomas Dolby (ironically, "Flying North") on a Walkman (!), but I can't remember the year without looking things up and counting backward and even then it's a challenge--it was sometime in the early 80s is all I know. I remember dancing on a chair at BA's house after the mushroom dip; I remember the exact way a lover described a costume worn by a comic book villianess that gave him a hardon, I remember what a stranger said to me sitting around a fire in October, I remember my daughter's first word.

But I cannot remember birthdays, ages, dates, names, phone numbers, addresses, whether I made that appointment, or the combination to the community garden shed. I am in grave danger of losing my plot, because all the family health problems meant I didn't do enough fall weeding and cleaning. So I was out there today, weeding and filling old shopping bags full of wood chips and compost and walking them back to my plot, two at a time, because I couldn't open the shed and get a wheelbarrow. I was the human wheelbarrow. And on a climate-changarama day like this, near 70, I was sweating.

I got two particularly warm Solstice presents: My sister-in-law filled an old 1800 Tequila bottle with malt vinegar, scotch bonnet peppers and spices to make me island hot sauce; my mother gave me a cashmere hoodie to replace the one that accidently got put in the dryer and now fits my daughter.

Right now, I have put my daughter to work, perhaps in violation of child labor laws. She is to sort an entire drawer of hair accessories. She's grown her hair long once, cut it off and donated it, and is going into second-growth stage now, about shoulder-length. In the process of her work, she has covered herself with hair clips. Her only pay is going out for Chinese chicken tonight. Can you spare ten cents a day for this child? You already are, if you're a DC taxpayer, cause that's about what the schools end up getting.

Love and Sweat to you as the countdown continues.

The Deeper the Cushion, the Better the Pushin'.

Goodbye Harold Pinter. A link. And a link.

"It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. ..

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable."

He actually talked about Nicaragua in that speech. But I forget. That never happened, either.

PS: I know, poems, I'm gonna do it, just been holidayed to death. You know, if you show up with one more in the meantime, you could be the big winner...Anyhow, gotta do it before tomorrow. That's the new moon. Jesus, I'm totally getting my candles mixed up. A beeswax for Solstice, the littles in the menorah, then a big white jar candle for new moon, don't hardly know what to light up first some nights.

Photo: Mountain Weasel by Karunakar Rayker; Wiki Creative Commons.

PPS: No harm to any animal occurred or is implied by the juxtaposition of that headline and photo.

It's All Going Down, So Grab a Big Honkin Toblerone

I am trying not to give in to bitterness and rage over the prospect of my friends and family either losing their jobs or being worked to death. (If that sounds like exaggeration, after the last newspaper layoffs I made it through, I ended up with 12-hour shifts, and no additional money, none, none, none. Someone I worked with crashed her car, probably because she hadn't slept in days. They laid off near 2/3 of the staff and added eight editions. I also once got laid off while I was still recovering from a c-section, but I was eventually hired back. So I have earned my trauma.)

I am trying not to punch the wall over the prospect that now that I finally have time to write, the publishing industry tanks. I am trying not to hear my father's voice in the continual communication that all I love to do is valueless.

I am trying not to waste my fury on the humans who traded my daughter's future for cocktails and handbags. It's not the first time that island has been the scene of such a monstrous mortgage.

I spent much of the Solstice face down in bed, with a candle lit, trying to see if there is a crack in the wall, and I saw it in, of all places, the Sunday newspapers. Which tell me that those "in charge," the "experts" are lost. "We have no playbook," they say. "We don't know what anything is worth anymore." "We don't know how to value anything." "We just have to wait to see how far it goes." "No one knows how far it will go." "No one knows what anything is worth."

Their ignorance widens the crack until it becomes a window into which I can wedge my will, like that slice of sun that comes through the stones on the darkest day. So, men, if you don't know what's worth anything, I'm happy to tell you. The only things worth a damn are art and beauty, love and magic, sex and pleasure, talk and spirit, health and laughter, the earth and her creatures. That's my ecomony, I am the expert, I set the interest rate, and I live a luxurious life within my means, and nothing else matters.

That's it. I'm over the edge. We're living on crazy old lady time. It's my world now.

So I'm going to start a poetry reading series, if the brave people who offer a venue stick with it; I won't be reading, I'll just be presenting others and doing open mike. And if they don't, I'll find a place. And I'll keep writing, because it's worth millions. Mr. Boog in Salon seems to think so, as long as I can repurpose my format to fit the times. But alas:

"There were hedge fund guys with no background in publishing buying up publishing houses," says André Schiffrin, founder of the New Press and author of "The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read." He explains that corporate owners of major publishing houses expected impossible 15 to 20 percent profit margins in an industry with traditional margins of 3 to 4 percent. "They were part of that whole feeling that you could make money by buying and selling companies, rather than by selling books. At some point it comes to a dead end."

Wow, that's the same exact thing that happened to newspapers! Gee.

Anyone want to serialize my detective novel for iPhone consumption? Come on, I've already proven my willingness to give away the good thing for far less than minimum wage many times over; give it a try.

Photo: Santa strawberries, from the UK Inspired by Chocolate and Cakes blog. She's a genius.

"Marshmallow to Marshmallow"

My holiday present came yesterday, when The Batman (so called because he used to keep a baseball bat at his desk to scare reporters) sent the link to the annual Regret the Error Best of the Year, with corrections from media worldwide. Scroll down to find so many, many mistakes, including faked photos and big bad-word typos. I'm happy he didn't forget the New Media:

Best Blog Correction
Back in January, The Consumerist reported on a rather vulgar-yet-amusing post on Wil Wheaton’s blog. After seeing the Consumerist post, Wheaton contacted them to clarify things. From the resulting Consumerist post and correction:

Wil Wheaton (of Star Trek: The Next Generation) would like you to know that he does not and will not endorse AAA Insurance. UPDATE: We initially reported that Mr. Wheaton disliked all of AAA. Not so. He tells us:
“I’m happy with the rest of the AAA services I’ve used, and continue to use. The insurance, though, can eat a bag of dicks.”
We regret the error.

This is my personal favorite:

The Guardian:
Gore Vidal was once head-butted by Norman Mailer, not the other way round. Vidal described the altercation as “marshmallow to marshmallow” when asked about it at the Hay festival 2008 (Diary, page 9, G2, May 27).

There's also a link there to buy the whole book. In poking around the links sent, I also found a present everyone can use, a rundown on How to Spot a Plagiarist or Fabulist, written by the second-greatest living copy editor. Somebody cares!

"Wake the Ghost, Shake the Lie, Unchain Time"

Io Saturnalia, the original reason for the season, whose peak used to be reputedly (and disreputably) celebrated Dec. 17. Just by chance I'm listening over and over to "The Body" off the Gutter Twins' Saturnalia. Just because I can't go for more than a week without one of my Big Dark Brooders. Dulli said in an interview that they were "the Satanic Everly Brothers"; well, then, this is Pluto's Canon in D.

Feeling Pluto and Saturn not heavily but surely, paring, grinding, polishing away at me. "You'll learn," they mumble, "this time." A warm wind blew in today and I'm hoping it holds so I can run through it in the morning.

Saturnalia is the feast where the masters switch places with the servants. Don't tell the guys at the gate, but this one's not planning on going back to her old place when the festival's over.

Image: Callet, Louvre

Slave to Love

I love Mickey Rourke, or maybe I used to love Mickey Rourke, or maybe I love to watch Mickey Rourke, that would be it. His recent interviews have been a spooky patchwork of artifice, dissembling, and resignation, much like his recent face. It would appear to be a case of what is on the outside reflecting what's within. I miss seeing his handsome face, but more I'll miss seeing that expression in his eyes that says he knows what you want better than you do, and that he feels the sadness and the beauty alike of that knowledge.

That's called acting, and he's doing a different kind now. They're talking Oscar for The Wrestler, which if babysitters are forthcoming, we might actually see, even though it's directed by the catastrophist Darren Aronofsky--"try heroin and you'll end up in the hands of a big (black, of course, come on, Darren! much more likely she'd be condemned to a short life as an independent operator) pimp with your arm rotting off in a southern jail and the refrigerator chasing you around!" Subtlety is not the boy's strong point, but, hell, subtlety isn't everything.

What's kind of funny is that I ran into this article on Amy Tuteur's The Skeptical OB blog about the nicely funded anti-meth ad campaign just not working up in Montana. I always like her take on skewering scientific and medical studies and statistics when warranted. And doing anti-drug and other social improvement ads is one of the most interesting challenges you can get in the business (and there's good money in it, too. The bright boys at Crispin Porter Bogusky partially made their name on the anti-tobacco Truth campaign, in part because they had the cash cushion to do kid focus groups and play the ideas out for a while). But unfortunately, the Montana anti-meth campaign's super-scary, alarmist tactics aren't doing the job of discouraging potential or present users. Who's one of the big-name directors brought in to execute the Montana ads? Darren Aronofsky.

I'm certain all involved had the best intentions. One of the commenters on Tuteur's blog, who says he used to work with Gay Men's Health Crisis, says the problem is that the people creating the ads are a million miles removed from the audiences they're trying to reach. Plus, the pitch to people in poverty, near-poverty and tribal cultures in Montana is going to be way different from a pitch to a gay man in NYC.

I'm reminded of a very long ago conversation with Jill Matrix, in which she said the most effective anti-drug ad she'd seen was the one with the tagline: If you smoke pot, nothing will happen.

So: "If you do meth, the Man wins," how's that sound? Trouble is, for too many, the Man wins no matter what, so why not rot yourself away? A problem that can't be solved through better advertising.

Back to love. The acoustic version of Hey Ya finally caught up with me. This song moves me anyhow, but add a big guy with an acoustic guitar and it tears me up.

Photo: Week 7 of 9 1/2, I believe.

Generation Jones and the Doom of the Fourth Estate

So the media meltdown continues as the Tribune chain has filed for bankruptcy. What this doesn't have in common with other businesses in crisis: No one is asking for more than the usual handout, I mean bailout. What it does have in common: Blame the workers, hurt the workers, screw the workers.

The rumor I got is that those who graciously took early retirement are having their payments and maybe health benefits held up since the whole deal's now hit the courts. Who do these workers and people trying to collect their pensions think they are? Everyone knows when a business fails, it's the fault of the ones out there doing the work. The ones flying around and collecting millions in salaries and commissioning ice sculptures are just trying, trying as hard as they can, but those workers keep bringing it all down. They ask for so much. They live like kings.

So now we'll be stuck with the Post, and that's floating around on a deck chair among the icebergs too. Gotta love a paper you pick up in the hangover haze and it tells you you're a member of the the dumbest generation of the past 200 years. OK, maybe dancing with that gangster-looking guy WAS dumb, but give me a break. The Outlook piece uses the Generation Jones tag on us--that undernourished slice of a generation born between the boomers and GenX--and claims we had the worst test scores, the worst education, etc. The Millennialists, he claims, are the really smart ones.

That Generation Jones tag's got trendy Gladwell-wannabe all over it, but I kind of like it anyway, with its shucks-shuffle rhythm and undertone of illicit, unrelieved longing.

We Jonesers were alternately neglected and demonized as children? Check. We were subject to weird educational experiments (at the hands of boomers, I might add) and classrooms depleted by inflation and municipal failure? Check. We were so terrified by our free-lovin', boozin', Ice Stormin' parents that we started dressing preppy and voted for Reagan? Ah, here's where we splinter. A faction of us became obsessive autodidact punks instead.

And we're so dumb? Here's a little test: Generation Jones gave us Henry Rollins. The Millennialists claim Britney Spears. Your witness.

Speaking of newspaper cutbacks, Die, Sunday Source, Die, with your hilarious stabs at fashion and absurd "product testing" crew who write like 7th-graders ("I don't usually use anything but Ivory soap, but this body lotion smelled kind of good, like Lemon Pledge? but it felt all goopy? and made me cold when I put it on, so I threw it away. But if you like body lotion maybe you might like it. It costs $75.")

Well, I won't have it to kick around anymore. The Post claims the staff will be sucked into the Style section. Better this than subject us to more pages full of interns trying to pretend they care about heels and mascara ("I'm just obsessed with mascara--I have a dozen different kinds," one lied recently) when we know all you little DC vixens really want to talk about is the dangers of protectionist trade policy to the international economy.

Oh, and Barack Obama? Jones.

Photo: Henry, a pub job.

Cookies and Cognac

My Hot Friend E and I eventually made the scene for Santarchy Saturday night, but we actually ended up hanging out spending a lot of time talking about the future and the nature of love and happiness, including during a leisurely dinner at La Forchette (where I once was seated next to Christopher Hitchens, back when he was a physical wreck and I liked him better that way) in our Santa-ette costumes. Then we danced a lot at Heaven, where I really enjoyed a long, changing, strange mix of DJs. Mmmm. It’s been a long time since I’ve asked for a toy under the tree, but this year could be the exception.

We were cooling off in Hell when this lovely round man walked by, took a look at us, and burst out laughing—but not in a bad way. After some hugs, he ducked behind the bar (apparently he works there) and asked what we wanted to drink. E said “cognac,” which led to a long ritual involving trips to the back, two lighters and a pack of matches, but here’s how it went: He opened three miniatures, poured each into a snifter, then laid each snifter on its side, then ignited them one by one, doing a sort of swirly fire dance with each flaming snifter before presenting them to us. The whole time, he was giving a sort of diatribe on beauty, the importance of finding bliss during your daily work and life, and the ignorance of mixing cognac with Coca-cola. This was no Tom Cruise in Cocktail; it was voudoun god. Did I mention it was midnight? We drank, we ladies went to the ladies room, where we stood and looked in the mirror and laughed ourselves silly, and when we came back, he was gone.

Thank you, Santa.

Five reasons to watch the Elvis Costello talk show, based on the first one:
1. At least 20 minutes of props handed to Laura Nyro.
2. Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton John.
3. I’m thinking “who’s that guy on keyboards” and it turns out to be Alain Toussant.
4. There’s this songwriter I never heard of, David Ackles, who I now want to check out.
5. They just start and stop songs at random because they’re all really good musicians and they can.

It’s going to be sad when we’re all poor and depressed and starving and can’t do these kinds of things anymore. Santa, we need you.

Three Items, Of Which the Second Could Be Regarded as Cleavage

I'm really intrigued by this--haven't read any of the poems, but I want to. Grace Cavalieri (who does so much for so many poets) reads from her new book Anna Nicole 2 p.m. tomorrow, Sunday, at The Writer's Center, in Bethesda.

BAker sent me this tool that purports to psychoanalyze your blog,and I was afraid to look at it, but I tried it. It basically said I'm a Libra (an emotional performer). Which is accurate but not too scary.

And Santa (eBay) finally brought my husband the Miles Davis On the Corner sessions. The box art is amazing, featuring not least a sort of frieze of an old-school funky cartoon characters embossed on the box, bell-bottoms, hoop earrings, platform shoes, big hats, big hair. One lovely lady in a leotard actually has one forthright, raised nipple perfectly embossed.

Photo: Shamelessly ripped off from Time corporate. Those Guess adds were so startling in the world of emaciation and dirge--it was all, like, who IS that woman?

Oh, My Darling

It is the song that must be sung this season in the Cougar household whenever one of the sweet little citrus fruits is opened: "You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorrrrrry, Clementine."

Which is fun for me and DD but leads to many questions from a 7-year-old: "Why is she lost and gone forever? Why is he sorry?" She assumes the singer is male. Interesting.

"Well, he just thinks she's gone forever. But really she just swam downstream a little bit and she'll pop back when she's had a little time. She can't call him because the song is from the old days and far away, so he's feeling bad, but he'll feel better in a little while."

She's buying it. "What's escalating for a mine?"

Simulcra Victorious

One of the highlights of a trip to Cali to see the parents is the visit to the Jelly Belly candy factory. They're masters at creating an illusion of flavor (the factory, not my parents, well, actually, they are too). Think it up, and they can conjure it, from madeleine to mangosteen. I spent a migrainous night bombed on painkillers and plowing through my free factory tour-size bag and reading, just wondering what flavor was going to visit my mouth next.

It's much like Demeter Fragrance Library does with perfumes (they're the makers of Dirt and Gin and Tonic scents, ah, the boys of summer!). In fact, Demeter actually did a co-brand with Jelly Belly to make a couple scents, including Fruit Salad.

So it goes with my pseudonyms, my extra people. They have more concentrated, carefully formulated scent and flavor than I do, and more interesting lives as well. One of them recently joined Facebook, something I/me would never do. It's too complicated and you can't control what comes into your world as well as I can here. But she got the little "be my friend" thing from someone way back whom I like a great deal--let's call him the Celtic Tiger, and watch him cringe--and who's so busy I worried I might lose touch if I didn't keep the avenue open. So "she" said yes, and has begun to write of herself in the third person.

I write a lot of poems in the second person--it's so lonely in there, I'll just rope you in with me, accuse you as I do myself, project it all onto you, you, you, my reader, my double--but even for me, writing fiction in the second would be too affected. That famous experiment perished in the 80s, speaking of cringing.

On the plane home, I read in an overripe November issue of The Atlantic that splitting oneself into multiple selves is not only not pathological, but could be critical to survival and happiness. I could get all poetic and tell of how when the lightning struck a year and a half ago, I split into many parts, knowing one life would just not be enough for me anymore, and tell of the tree with three trunks I saw in Rock Creek Park, but I'll let the authorities speak instead:

"We used to think that the hard part of the question 'How can I be happy?' had to do with nailing down the definition of happy. But it may have more to do with the definition of I. Many researchers now believe, to varying degrees, that each of us is a community of competing selves, with the happiness of one often causing the misery of another. This theory might explain certain puzzles of everyday life, such as why addictions and compulsions are so hard to shake off, and why we insist on spending so much of our lives in worlds--like TV shows and novels and virtual-reality experiences--that don't actually exist."

BTW, I'm keeping the contest open a little more, but if you're not inclined to write a poem for charity, here's another place your dollar could go: Mumbai Orphans Fund. Nothing fake about it, and thanks to the Professor of Osculation for the tipoff.

Photo: The Young King in Jelly Bellies, from a UK candy site.

"If By R&B You Mean Roots and Berries!"

I heard "Right on the Tip of My Tongue" the other night, and it sent me off on an Itunes hunt that led to a bunch of Thom Bell masterpieces and Philadelphia soul. Like most things involving Teddy Pendergrass, it soon got out of control. One odd thing that popped up was a tribute mix album called "The Barack Obama Victory," featuring Harold Melvin, The Stylistics, the Staples Singers...here we thought it was a bunch of insufferable hippie college boys who got this election won, but it was my peers behind it all, after all.

So here's MY thankful mix to grind nutmeg to: Right on the Tip of My Tongue, Brenda and the Tabulations; Children of the Night, The Stylistics; Love TKO, Teddy; Never, Never Gonna Give You Up, Barry White; He Was a Big Freak, Betty Davis; Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time), The Delphonics; Trouble Man, Marvin Gaye; Win, David Bowie; Come Go With Me, Teddy; More News from Nowhere, Nick Cave; Hurt So Bad, The Delphonics; End of the Line, Roxy Music; Betcha By Golly, Wow, The Stylistics; Feel the Fire, The Essential Teddy Pendergrass...

Photo: My new fantasy is John Legend in a forest ranger outfit. This'll have to do for now.

The Gods Must Be Crazy

I've been reading little bits of The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson; it's one of those complicated, romantic, erudite, tricky books that make you feel smart but are still fun to read--like Possession, or (an obscure favorite) Girl in the Swing or, in some ways, the works of Jack Salamanca (criminally underrated and one of my teachers). I'd put Neil Gaiman in there too but he's just too much fun.

Anyway, it's about a guy who was a right bastard and a porn star who gets burned nearly to death in a car crash and encounters this psych patient who starts telling him she knew him from a Middle Ages monastery and has the languages and the illuminated manuscripts and all the rest of the accoutrements to prove it...she keeps feeding him gourmet food and reading him Dante...it flips around in time and etc., and has a lot about suffering and God (the Christian one) but not enough to mean you can't read it while you're sick in bed.

While I'm only halfway through, and it's pretty amazing even if it weren't a first novel, I've got quibbles, the biggest being that this guy keeps claiming that his old self, the pre-toasted bastard, wouldn't have gone near this woman because she's TOO CRAZY, and you know that just doesn't ring true. Because she's good-looking and solvent; she's actually rich from being an artist (and that doesn't ring true, either, but hey, it's romantic). So she's maybe schizophrenic, maybe bipolar, definitely delusional, so what? He still would have tapped it, "old self" or new. Because honestly, there's nothing tastier to a troubled player than a hot lunachick, tell me I'm wrong.

If he'd really had a massive change in character, he'd have learned to love a middle-aged woman who wears I Heart My Terrier sparkle sweatshirts and would sit with him for hours watching Everybody Loves Raymond reruns. Anyone can love a beautiful crazy rich artist.

He does share this priceless sentiment about our impending holiday season:
"In my childhood, I'd had a succession of Christmases when [my caretakers] spent the money originally intended for my presents on methamphetamine; in my adulthood, Christmas meant fucking a woman who was wearing a red felt hat."

And check out the author photo on the back flap. Wouldn't kick him out of bed for eating lithium, either.

Speaking of which, took kids to High School Musical III finally, long-delayed due to illness. My new crush is Troy's dad, yes indeed. (My handle, if you haven't guessed, is ironic. Anything under 30 years old doesn't do much for me.)

Photo: St. Dominic's book barbecue. So much for spiritual enlightenment in the Middle Ages. He was a big pain in this ass to the Cathars for years. What's depicted is a smackdown--he threw his books and those of the Cathars on the fire, and only theirs burned, thus proving they were heretics (and deserved to go the way of their books). Pretty icky way to prove a point, but better than a shootout, I guess. Wiki Commons.