Madoff Trial Over; The Trial of Maria P. Continues

A gaggle of some thousands of MBAs R Us trip in, steps ahead of the peasants with the torches.

"Can you tell us what to say so they'll give us the rest of their money?"

"They don't have any money."

"They can borrow it, and then give it to us. Write something we can tell them to make them do it."

"I don't know if I can."

"If you don't, I'll tell my daddy to tell your boss to fire you, bitch," hisses one.

They chain me to the computer with the straps of their big ugly handbags, worth more than I have made in months, and tape a health insurance card to the screen, for motivation. Because they understand employee compensation. They know what motivates and sustains employee efforts.

"What do you do for people?" I ask. A young master pauses in his labors of mixing a pitcher of sweet, fruit-flavored cocktails long enough to suck in his gut and snort in my direction.

"What do you mean?" another asks.

"People won't give you money unless you can show you can do something for them," I gasp, trying to sit up. "I don't know what to write. I need something to go on."

"We don't have to DO anything," one says.

"We analyze the environment and shape action-oriented strategies that get results!" one crows.

"We deliver solutions! We're comprehensively solutions-focused!" roars another.

"But what do you do?" I ask. "What do you do for the money?"

"We deserve it!" another snips. "We're smarter than you! We're smarter than anyone! We're the smartest ones in the room!"

"What do you make, what do you give, what do you do--" One shoves his tie into my mouth to silence me. I notice it's a knockoff.

A woman begins, with the tip of her perfectly manicured index fingernail, to carve into my skin my health insurance group number. A man joins her, carving with a sharpened key to his Lexus. They etch the number, over and over, deeper and deeper, into my flesh. They get results.

Photo: From Greenaway's Pillow Book; a more pleasant prospect.

Mix Tape

I can't stop listening to the radio, even on days like this, when I hit the buttons and get Kansas, Eagles, T-Pain, Rascal Flats, NPR Airbag. Mrat. The best station in the city is WHUR, but as much as I like Michael Baisden, I wish they had more locals on, and sometimes I'm just not up for all that Quiet Storming. Internet radio is a touch better. DH usually has KCRW all around the house, but when I get up early to make the pancakes, I turn to the Technicolor Web of Sound psychedelia, which even replays ads from the old days (Cream doing a beer ad, speed kills, etc.). And of course I enjoy DJ Booger X, Tuesday nights 7-10--who doesn't?

But when you go back, way back, back to the time of Bertha Butt and the Butt Sisters...there was Radio Mitch, which was actually a series of cassette tapes, mix tapes, that he made just for a small army of acquaintances. I don't even remember how many there were, but BA found an old one and put it on a CD for me and I've been listening to the first two songs on it ever since. That's because it comes out as all one track, so I have to keep going back to the beginning, because I don't even want to go past the second song, because it is ELEKTRA by THE REIVERS, and I really, really, really used to love that song.

Except I can't remember where or when.

I know it. I know the words, I know the bassline--maybe I learned it once? But I don't remember where or how or when I heard it, when I must have heard it over and over. The years from 1976 to 1990 have two things in common--I own blurred memories and I didn't own a television. At some points I didn't have a stereo or even a radio, sometimes just an AM one in the car (used to love WOL), sometimes just a little portable picnic player, as Alex would call it, to play cassettes. A lot of people (save for BA, who bailed me out a couple times; I ever win Powerball, she gets half) don't get how poor I was then and how crazy the work was. The work + school together later was tough, but the starting out work the first time I left school was the worst. Whenever I think about getting laid off I get flashbacks to the employment office woman telling me I had to wear more makeup and cut my hair and dress more professionally, and there I was sitting in the new black suit, $40 from Dress Barn, $40 of rent money, and that sweet, sweet saleswoman who said so reassuringly that "black worsted goes with everything, it's so versatile." Shoulder pads. Me wearing it with the thrift store blouses. Trying to stretch out birth control pills over a day and a half because I couldn't afford them, and getting pregnant, and the car breaking down, and hitching to work, and the miscarriage, the bad one that landed me in the hospital, and my parents coldly and angrily bailing me out, and, as I recovered, my mother taking me for a haircut.

One's tempted to despise the 80s, but they gave us Joan Didion's The Last Thing He Wanted, which I dipped into the other night to find a description of the Omni Mall in Miami, which I used to live next door to, in the late 90s when it was long past its glory, and got stuck in--the book, I mean, not the mall, but sometimes in that haunted castle built on powder, too. Check this out: "It is hard now to call up the particular luridity of 1984." And: "I see now that there will be no Resolution Trust to do the workout on this particular default, but I did not see it then. Not that I shouldn't have. There were hints all along, clues we should have processed, sifted for their application to the general condition. Try the day we noticed that the banks had called in the paper on all the malls, try the day we noticed that somebody had called in the paper on all the banks..."

It's scary. It's about reconstructing a version of events. Out of the odd details you can remember clearly.

But goddamn, what a great song. "From sober....to sultry....I got you on my mind, in all soft-talking time..." Why do I know it? Did I use that phrase in a headline? "Sober, to sultry." Did someone make me a mix tape called that? Did I make someone a mix tape and call it that? Will I regret asking these questions? But I like the song. When I heard it, my heart lifted. Did I lose a good memory?

Image: I used to love that comic, too.

Big Hard Green Globes

With the Miami Herald on the shelf at the Dollar Store and the Sun-Sentinel limboing lower now, it is up to Gourmet magazine to do (excellent) investigative reporting on slavery in Florida's agricultural business. You might avoid certain strawberries as well; the people who pick them are prone to having children with tragic birth defects.

I don't buy out of season, and I try to stick to local. But there are folks, some related to me, who live not far from Immolakee who say that by doing so I am harming farmworkers more, that these people want these jobs, that they're grateful for them. (They say worse things, but I'm not quoting those.) I say, I don't want to enslave and poison people and I'm not grateful to be able to play a part in it, so what about MY needs?

Again the fallacy that the only solutions are those we've experienced, that we can't envision anything new.

It was about this time last year that I forced DH to leave the relations during our vacation and go with me to Lake Okeechobee, because I wanted to see where Zora Neale Hurston had written about and I wanted to hike part of the levee around the lake. Despite some health problems at the time, I found some beauty there: strange birds, long flat stretches of swamp, dragonflies mating in mid-air. But the lake bottom is riddled with arsenic; in drought, it catches on fire; in floods, it fills with farm runoff and massive fish kills follow.

ON ANOTHER topic...

This is in honor of Nathaniel Mayweather's impending nuptials. Yay, Fancy Lad! We like seeing you so happy. (You HAVE TO watch at least until the "grab the butt" part.)

I didn't write for a while because I was in a killer depression. Then I heard yesterday a "this day in rock history" item about Janis Joplin being fined for obscene language onstage in Tampa, and I thought, bitch, the least you can do in her honor is get out of bed and go use some obscene language. On whatever stage you can find.

Chapter XXIII: In Which I Join a Badass Gang

I am wearing a bandana for the next few days. DD saw me in it and said: "It looks like you've been working very hard, mama." I have this genetic thing where I grow lumps on my head, and every 10 years or so I have to get them cut off. Ewwwwww I know, it's totally Alien. Or the karmic retribution for working in advertising. So the removal process today was a little complicated, and now I have a small bald spot and blue stitches and just yuckkiness on the top of my head. And the only thing I can think to do is wear a cotton bandana, because at least that's clean and breathable. Luckily, I have plenty, from running. I have purple, teal, turquoise and pirate. What does that say about my sexual preferences, I wonder?

On another note. Sad news. Much like what happened to my brother-in-law, about 8 years ago now.

"In An Interstellar Burst I Am Back to Save the Universe"

I was Jonesing furiously to hear "Airbag" and couldn't find OK Computer anywhere, so DH downloaded it for me, kind man, and I over-and-overed it all the way to Annapolis and back, and between that and the trees and being reminded of Vanity Fair, and also that movie The Object of Beauty, when Malkovich was sexy, I came up with this.

And I certainly have been something of an airbag lately.

A Sharp Retort
I agree it's a cheap way to pass the time,
But how can I feel sexy when I'm not liquid?
Maybe if we were living like outlaws again--
Now that's a life to get you pumping,
Go in and out the windows, that keeps you young.
But not these dull duns on the front stoop, please;
Not living like palace fleas, feeding on the fringes
There's got to be someone out there for whom
A glance is as good as a promise--
Oh debt, where is my stain?

Jai Homo-Loving Son of a Gun

Was it the long run, or the salmon with rice noodles I made? We dozed through yet another awards show, on a pile of newspapers.

DH: Penelope Cruz should get it because she's so hot.
Me: Daniel Craig keeps getting all mixed up.
DH: Natalie Portman. Smokin hot.
Me: Yeah, but they're going to feel bad about this whole Joaquin Phoenix thing when it turns out he's suffering from undiagnosed mercury poisoning.
DH: Tina Fey. Preeeetttttyy!
Me: Yeah, but she's anti-stripper, so I'm not so crazy about that.
DH: I love Melissa Leo.
Me: (As Joel Gray addresses Sean Penn): Great, have the gay guy talk to the gay guy.
Me: (As Christopher Walken addresses the guy from Revolutionary Road): Great, have the crazy guy talk to the crazy guy.
Me: (As Cuba Gooding Jr talks to Robert Downey Jr): Great, have the Junior talk to the Junior. Or maybe, um, oh.

UPDATE, really important update: How could I forget, John Legend. Nutmeg. Nutmeg. Mmmm, nutmeg.

"Doesn't Anybody Notice That Our Knuckles Are Turning Blue?"

Even though it was my business to do so for some years, I never gave a shit about the Oscars or any of those other awards shows. Tonight, I'm looking forward to the Oscars. Why? Seeking cheap escape, that's why. I'm like one of those Depression-era women clutching her nickels to buy a ticket to go see that "My Forgotten Man" number one more time.

The New Yorker rundown is the only one telling the truth about the sorry nominees this year.

Speaking of telling the truth, YOU HAVE TO read this. That's a joke around the Cougar household, because certain relatives are a little on the controlling side, constantly telling me I HAVE TO go to an expensive restaurant or resort or watch this year's pretentious hit show or similar thing I don't want to do and can't afford. (All I ever want to do is groove, lie in bed, and write poetry, fuckers.)

Unfortunately, the full essay is available only by subscription. The free bloggers on this guy's site are tearing it up, on topics ranging from the dangers of space junk to investigative reporting on Navy testing off the Oregon coast, and you can read them for free, but there's a big chunk of prose you get only through subscription. I can't believe I'm shilling for this dude, AGAIN, since I've got my differences with him on several levels, but this taste will maybe show why reading this just made me jump up and walk around the room. Yeah, it's ironic, the not-buying-it woman saying pay for this, but I do buy art, books (carefully), I do still buy the privilege of seeing performance.

It's been years since I got screamingly sick of being told I was supposed to help the world by spending money I don't have on crap I don't need; similar time frame for being disgusted at myself for working in advertising (even for nonprofits). But I'm also very trapped; there are certain things I've signed up for and can't creep out of now. I've been clearing little honest and adventurous and true spaces for myself around the corners, just through being crafty and creative, but it takes such an enormous amount of energy. It's like I've been staying up late and using odd hours when no one is watching to dig an escape tunnel out of a prison, and now I wonder how many people are going to show up wanting to use it, and they're all welcome, but here I am not even knowing if it goes anywhere.

And I'm claustrophobic. But all I can do is keep digging.

Anyway, here's the Eric Francis that you HAVE TO read:

"Yet what is really driving all this consumer debt? Is it the need to conform? Are we covering some deep insecurity? Are we consuming because we have issues about our ability to create? A consumer-based economy is clearly the result of the feeling that we're not creative people. Compared to vacations in the Bahamas, art supplies and musical instruments are cheap. Most of what we consume either has nothing to do with creating; or it could, if we applied the imagination to make it so. But that takes, well, imagination, and the boldness to use it. Learning to play the guitar takes practice.

Yet as most creative people will tell you, it's difficult to make a living based on what you make. Most of us don't actually purchase the work of craftspeople, artisans or artists; we purchase manufactured items -- and all artists know it because most of us have to do something else to put food on the table. And often when art is purchased, it is done as an investment by the purchaser rather than for its own sake. The value goes up when the artist dies. I jokingly tell talented young artists not to accept payment in heroin. I learned this from an art dealer.

"...Besides showing up as sex-phobia, our emotional problems are congealing around money and specifically debt. Americans consume mindlessly, and it long ago turned into a full-blown habit. Admittedly, we are pushed to consume on a nonstop basis by the most expensive educational campaign in history -- advertising.

Addiction is an inappropriate response to an emotional issue, and it is often hidden from view (veiled, like the 8th house). We have accessed debt at unimaginable amounts to finance this addiction. As a culture, we utilize our brainpower to rationalize our behavior rather than use it to recognize and define the problems underlying our addiction; or to turn our energy toward creation. The act of thinking has been co-opted in the service of our addictions. We feed our imagination titillation and fantasy to the point of total distraction. We shun the use of our creativity for problem solving, for pleasure, for beauty.

Why do we do this? Here are some questions we might ponder, provided this week by my friend Kelly after she looked at the chart:

-- What are the emotional issues that are underlying our addiction? What are we avoiding? Why is any loss so difficult to deal with?

-- What price are we willing to pay before we recognize that emotional processing should be part of our daily rituals, just like brushing our teeth, or eating? It is part of the maintenance of living.

-- Why are we holding onto our paradigm of reality even when it is clear to any rational being that it is self-destructing? Doesn't anybody notice that our knuckles are turning blue?"

Photo: Despair.com, telling the truth about business and getting ripped off for a decade.

Falling Rock

My hearing is getting so bad that the only time I can listen to music is when I'm alone in the car. I can't really hear it unless it's at high volume. (It's not from listening to too much loud music, by the way. It's called Meniere's disease. Probably didn't spell it right.)

At home, my daughter or the neighbors complain. So last weekend I'm driving DH and DD up around mountain roads because my Hot Friend E offered us a couple beds in a ski place she rented for her family. And DH has got the weird iPod thing working where he plugs it into a cassette tape and then it plays through the speakers. He usually plays random stuff and most of the time I'm all, ohhhh, please can we turn it off and put on an Elvis Mitchell podcast. And he's playing random stuff and we have this conversation.

Me: I kind of like that song. Who is it?
DH: It's called LCD Soundsystem.
Me: It sounds old. I like it.
DH: I think it's a Joy Division cover.
Me: That doesn't sound like Joy Division. I don't know that one. But maybe my hearing's just so bad I don't recognize it. It sounds too happy.
DH: Happy? He's saying everything falls apart and you think that's happy?
Me: I thought he was saying "It's going to start." Can I turn it up?
DD: (from carseat in back): Will you please turn down the music? I can't sing when it's too loud.
Me: It could be falling apart in a happy way.
(Same song starts playing again, but it sounds a little different.)
Me: What, does this band just do one song over and over?
DH: No, I think this is John Cale singing it.
Me: But it's the same band? Who is this band this time?
DH: They. Are. Called. L. C. D. Sound. System.
Me: So they're the same and they're doing one song. Why do they do the same song?
[pause]
Me: Don't make fun of me for going deaf. Is it like a tribute?
DH: I think there is a Joy Division tribute album, but it's not this one.
Me: I know there is a Joy Division tribute album. It sucks. I mean, are they like a Joy Division tribute band, like Lez Zepplin? Wow, that would be cool, a lesbian Joy Division tribute band. What would they call it?
DH: It's the same band.
Me: (Thinking: Ha ha! Black Lab! They could call it Black Lab!) This is cool, because the first time I heard Joy Division it was on this cassette tape? And I was listening to it going to the prison up by Antietam to visit this guy. And it was weather like this, all gloomy.
DH: Who were you visiting in prison?
Me: He was a friend of my friend MR, you remember her? I knew him from being around, you know, but she wanted to visit and bring him some stuff, like sweats and stuff, a bible, you know. He got all born again in there. He wasn't violent or anything, just (mouths, because of daughter) *drugs*. But she was out west, so she couldn't go see him, so I went instead.
[Pause]
Me: This is a different song now. What is he singing? "Going around the bend--in Africa?"
DH: "If you do it again, I'm gonna freak out."
[Pause]
DH: "So do it again."

So, did you guess the song? It's "All My Friends," and it's NOT a Joy Division cover. LCD Soundsystem does, however, cover No Love Lost, an obscurity from the days when Joy Division was called Warsaw. So maybe my hearing's not so terrible after all.

Repurposed

Some co-conspirators on That Wretched Facebook thing are doing lists of favorite covers. Here, with just a few recycled bits, is my list of favorite covers that will never happen.

Barry White, "Theme from The Beverly Hillbillies"
Cass Elliot, "Hate On Me"
Marc Bolan, "Baby I'm-a Want You"
Freddie Mercury, "Evenflo"
Jim Morrison, "Ride Like the Wind"
Bob Marley, "Renegade"
Kurt Cobain, "Hit Me Baby One More Time"
Robert Palmer, "Think Before He Cheats"

Please add as inspiration strikes.

Layoffs have gotten closer. It's not right to say anything more specific, even here; I'm safe for now, but infuriated. Trying to detach. I mean, when you come down to it, what did you expect? Why does it come to such a surprise to us that we're worthless and disposable in this system?

But that's only in this system. In what realm are we precious and prized, and why can't we arrange for that one to be our consensual reality?

The door is always open wide...

Get Ready for the Judgment Day

"If you don't feel looming dread, you're not very bright." That's what Edward Albee is quoted as saying in the Post, and it's good enough for me. However, I woke up this morning inexplicably happy. Here are some happy things for you.

--The movie's horrifying, I understand, but I like this trailer because it kills on cliches, and plus, the dancing kilt guy. Some people say it's a feminist affront; I disagree--well, maybe the movie is, but the trailer, no, because a dumbass cliche is a dumbass cliche, whether it's girly or not.

--Not since encountering the incisive work of rock critic Ronald Thomas Clontle have I been so impressed by such an omnibus, a panorama, of rock history. This cavalcade rules.

--One of my friends has threatened to act this out at the next PTA meeting.

--How could I have forgotten this???

UPDATE: My bad, my bad: Bad link on Tres Chicas the other day. Good link on Tres Chicas.

The Grammies Wuz Trippin

And I was falling into a dream
Over the New York Times magazine...
Little Nick Jonas gets shook up by Wonder
and misses his cue--but his brother knows what to do...
Don't sleep in the subway, Kanye...
Tired eyes and a tight tank top for Kate Winslet,
Looking well in the Chelsea Hotel.
MIA bounces like the bee girl reincarnate
Proud mother of a brood of boasts.
Robert Downey Jr. puts his kadas through the difference engine
and finds the solution. Then Thom leads the samba drums
and shining brass into a Trouble Man for our time--
Et cetera, et cetera, et tu...

You Can't Shoot the Fiddler in the Middle of the Show

Finally got around to opening, reading, and, thanks to a longish drive to and from a witch convention, listening to the two CDs of the Oxford American music issue. You get a lot for your money with that thing, all kinds of short essays of all types, at least one on each tune, plus usually a story, some poems, and a couple of features. The piece on Elton and Betty White, who I am so happy to now know about, had me shouting out bits aloud to DH. Photo of Arthur Lee looking like a bodhisattva (and sad story of his last days). Very very good piece on "Lawson and Four More" that explores the question of where you draw the line on what you call an authentic outsider--a topic this magazine should take on in every last issue, because it's sticky and endemic to southern culture nowadays and certainly to this magazine--through taking apart a piece of music by skilled players that was intentionally produced to "sound garage." It's got a knockout punchline, in that the band evolved into Big Star (and the ethereal "For You" is on the second disk, btw).

But then there are the blaps and tweets, like the dreadfully earnest Peter Guralnick recycling his stuff on Jerry Lee (just listen to the song) and a multi-page pant about Neko Case, in which the author works the conceit of spending a day with the band to the near death of all concerned, even the poor publicists'. It starts with some line about remembering watching a woman licking a strawberry ice-cream cone, and just gets worse; wank, wank, McSweeney-flavored wank for six freaking pages. I sure hope y'all didn't pay this guy by the word.

Too many of the women artists I hear now sound like they've been processed to fit in as the soundtrack to the obligatory emo montage at the end of a network drama--a little acoustic strum, a little trebly warble about staying strong when all feels bleak. Or maybe they're all the same person. And then I think of artists like Lynn Blakey and Lori Carson not getting their due and I'm all like, I'm just going to listen to the Stylistics again. I know it's not a bad thing to have your song on an emo montage, hell, it happened to Joni Mitchell and the cash is not unwelcome, but you know.

So I had little hope for the song itself, even though I'm sure my husband has played me the album it's off before, and plenty of New Pornographers as well. He's always waving the Latest Things under my nose, but my tastes are so particular and peculiar that I can't settle and listen for long; I have no patience unless it knocks me out and forces me into it. I'm sure like many others she's been part of all kinds of cool kids' bands that I haven't bothered checking out, so just STOP, OK? What I'm saying is I like this one song, if that's allowed? And that I had that wonderful experience of having my assumptions trashed?

In the first 30 seconds or so, I'm wondering, did Wanda Jackson ever record with Lee Hazelwood? Same rodeo-rope phrasing, just yelping it out. Showdown and tumbleweed guitar, her own, I hear, and those metaphysical lyrics, with just enough specificity thrown in to be mysterious:

Compared to some, I've been around
But I really tried so hard--
That echo chorus lied to me with its "hold on,
"Hold on hold on hold on..."
In the end I was the mean girl
Or somebody's in-between girl
Now it's the devil that I love.
And it's as funny as real love.
I leave the party at 3 a.m.,
Alone, thank god,
With a valium from the bride.
It's the devil that I love.

I played it over and over, missed my exit, dipped down to cross the Patuxent and looked out at the ice breaking, played it again, and played it again.

Once I got home, DH enthusiastically played me the rest of the album it's off, salivating about a new one she's got coming out, but nothing grabbed me the same way. I'll check out her second, which is supposed to be more country.

So there's MY wank. And they say women take longer. To its credit, OxAm also has a shorter piece on Case by Greil Marcus, call it a wan. The best of his take on "Hold On Hold On"--"driving fast around the turns." Maybe we all shoulda just left it at that.

And I'm rooting for Anthony Hamilton in the Grammies.

Photo: Was delighted to find one of her with guitar instead of just looking fetching, but lord, read that cover line, oh you poor thing to have to listen to that kind of drivel all the livelong day. Does put one in mind of Yates' "It's certain that fine women eat a crazy salad with their meat."

Headline: It's got a good Clarence Gatemouth Brown song on it, too. No fiddle players were harmed during this production.

PIA

My arm hurts too much to write (beyond 8 billable hours required to get paid). Resting for a couple more days. Scared cosmos is saying you must never write anything fun again.

Ice Ice Baby

Sweater Weather
A community of chatterers says "Don't--
"Don't--Don't you deserve a rest?"
They counsel: "Listen to small pains
Now, they're harbingers, a twinge, a throb
A bulletin, if only I had known,
If only I had seen, had stopped,
It's not too late for you
To change your course--"

So I retreat to the sheets, but I don't
Stew there, they're sweet with soap scent
Still. I'll look back on this king-size
Mattress as one of the last luxuries
Before the fall. I can only take
So much dreaming, and force myself
Down that road again, squeeze out drops
Of salty ice, breathe smoke, curse the slip
That comes between my feet and the earth.

We're all bundled now against anyone
Detecting our true shapes. I squint
Against the cold and try to make you out.
Maybe my hands, gloved or numb,
Could feel your form, somewhere between
The coats and the blankets, the layers of fleece.

In a season of sweaters--
It's an old joke--but
Would you hold it against me
To crave warm skin?

That's about trying to run in winter, when everyone says tsk at your age you're courting knee replacement, you've already put your eye out and you don't even realize it yet, and also about petting a cat curled up on a pile of coats on a bed.

Anyway, two wonderful things I know: After several tests, the breast bump is benign, as I knew it would be, and I am still dead set against the overuse of sophisticated diagnostics when genetic evidence doesn't warrant it. But we'll never get (efficient and ultimately less costly) individualized medicine unless we have a system that's not tied to job or other similar factors for health insurance; the potential for genetic discrimination is too high.

And John wrote a great poem on here, check the comments under Jan. 22; I like to think of it resting there for those adventurous enough to discover it.

It's Always About Jobs

Whole lot of flapjack over New York Times Magazine article on What Women Want (in Bed). As Jezebel puts it, what women appear to want most is to talk about what women want.

It was pretty funny Sunday morning, when I was curled up in a corner in the waiting area at my daughter's karate class, plowing through my pile of newspapers as the children battled, and one of the karate dads came over to borrow a section or two, as he sometimes does. While my eyes were scanning the Book Review, I did catch a glimpse of his hand reaching out to pick up the Magazine, then pulling back quickly from the flaming cover illustration and going instead for Sunday Business. Keeping it safe.

I admire the researchers' work, and it's certainly important, but I don't know--there's so much variation in our anatomy, much more in our brains. Can you really pin down what makes ALL women feel hot? The article does make a few good points: Arousal is not consent (which should be printed on beer bottles). That women do not necessarily "need" "intimacy" and "romance" to enjoy sex. And that "making the relationship better" and "talking more about your feelings" are not always the route to better sex.

Sometimes it can be a good idea to just shut up.

I'm off to watch the second installment of Masterpiece Theater's Wuthering Heights. Talk about your eye candy. Ruins Emily's prose, but I am liking that Heathcliff.

Oh, and the answer is: freedom and worship.

(Oh, and the insurance industry is the next up for a crash, and something like 30,000 jobs lost today? I take it back, we can talk about sex, please, can we just talk about sex instead?)

"Hello, Mr. Soul, I Dropped By to Pick Up a Reason"

Yogi Tea, make up your fucking mind, come on, I pull up one chamomile teabag and the fortune-cookie like paper tag on the teabag says "The soul is projection. Represent it." Oh, yo yo yo, yogi tea, representin' all up in the house, what the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway? If it's projection, why would I want to represent a projection, if such a thing were even possible, I mean it's like a movie of a movie, right? So the next teabag says "The soul is the highest self" and I'm all, OK, which is it? WHICH IS IT? I need to know, because I'm in a haze of "flu-like symptoms" and I don't even like chamomile, and speaking of representational, I look in the mirror and I see something by Lucian Freud, or fuck, by Francis Bacon and I feel every minute of my years.

I hate Yogi Tea, but I love my new Friday yoga teacher. She plays Tom Waits during class.

The Day's Sharp Sparkle

If all you know of Elizabeth Alexander's poems is the Inaugural reading, you're in for some good stuff when you go to her website. Reviews were mixed, but I liked the ambition of applying the praisesong form to everyone in America. I think I caught a contrast between the language of sharpness, thorn, glitter--the established edifices, the old guard--and the smoother sounds speaking of the rest of us, the everyday, the underneath.

I had seen her Hotentot Venus poems, but I didn't know some of the others, like this long poem all about what happens after you give birth. This is just one little chunk, not the most lyrical and it suffers a little out of context, but one that will make you shake your head in recognition, from the longer Neonatology, on her website.

I think the baby needs to eat. The baby’s hungry.
Look! He’s making sucking noises. Look!
His fist is in his mouth.
Why does the baby sleep all day? How
does the baby sleep at night? Three feedings? Huhn.
You need to let that baby cry.
You need to pick that baby up.
You need to put that baby down.
Kiss the baby too much, he’ll get heartburn.
What are those bumps on the baby’s face?
Why is the baby crying so?
That baby needs to eat, and now.

I found I rediscovered simplicity in language from spending so much time with my own baby. I got back rhythms and short lines. Metaphors and analogies had to simplify, too, as she got older, to explain things to her limited experience. Nature came back to me as a metaphor and teacher, because we spent a lot of time outside, that is, when we weren't hiding from snipers and "terrorists." It makes sense that birth makes you think of death; she briefly writes a parallel to her baby in her womb and a person in the hold of ship; I get stuck in the airport security line and think of boxcars. I know my own poetry can only suffer in comparison on the page, but this is what I mean--it's a piece out of a poem called TSA.

At security, they make me sip the breast milk
From the plastic baby bottle
To prove it’s not poison.
I don’t say anything.
I know better than that.
Do what they say and don’t say
Anything. They can do anything
They want. Don’t ask. Don’t try
To tell them anything. I smile—
Not too wide—and nod, even though
I can’t hear them very well. What if
I can’t understand what they want me to do?
What if they can hear
The hysteric babble in my mind, now
Rising in my throat? Yes, it’s true,
I want to say,
It’s true this is breast milk,
But it’s dangerous, so dangerous,
I shouldn’t have it here.
They tell me it’s full of my body’s toxins,
They tell me the bottle is leaching poison,
They say there’s plastic inside of me
And the plastic’s gonna get her, too.

Plastic in the water, plastic in the bottle,
Plastic in the mommy, plastic in the baby,
Plastic in your nose, plastic in your toes,
Plastic in the seeds, plastic in the root
Plastic in the stones at the bottom of the river
Plastic, plastic, in the air, plastic, plastic everywhere!
Ma’am! Ma’am! Ma’am! Ma’am!
Please keep moving! Move on through!

Nutritious and Delicious

I'm a member of the DAR. My mother put me in it. She's one too. It's not like I asked for it or ever do anything with it; it's just sort of there, creeping me out. And it doesn't get me discount tickets to Constitution Hall. I've seen some good shows there--Laurie Anderson, Black Crowes, Mary J. Blige. But it still creeps me out.

Bundled up the baby girl and took her down to the Jefferson for the witches' broom dance and to hear Caroline Casey speak. Blew me away as usual; one quick riff was on how Dick Chaney is allergic to pomegranates and we should envision him surrounded by pomegranates. I can see/feel it, all the vivid red bursting seeds bubbling around him and him thrashing, his thin lips stretched and screaming in horror at being surrounded by all that life, all that juice, all that healthy sexy fruity goodness.

A long walk back to the Metro, but DD is a trouper. DIY vendors had set up shop on all corners, about 10 per jumbotron screen. The screens were broadcasting the Lincoln concert again. People were walk/dancing around the memorial throwing their hands up to "Shout." Black people were doing that, to Garth Brooks. My goodness. I got a t-shirt for Favorite Cousin, but even though I wanted an Obama family tote bag, I'm not buying anything for me this year. My friend BAker got me an Obama lighter Friday, so I'm a happy girl.

Everyone wants a piece of something from these days; so many people love this next president and his family and everything about him. People want to sing for him, work for him, paint pictures of him. It's such an astonishing energy to be surrounded with, after that eight-year case of food poisoning. It's as luxurious as swimming in pomegranate juice.

Look Upon My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair

Rick Warren's just another hick Amway salesman. The Christian churches are full of these dweebs--they make nothing, invent nothing, generate nothing to help any economy but their own; they do not sow, nor do they reap; they just build pyramids like any ego-driven pharaoh. But theirs are based on air--you don't even get a bottle of detergent for your trouble.

The New Age world and PaganLand have their share of charlatans, but they are fewer, less powerful, and often they actually have to work for a living in addition to plying their woowoo wares. And one at least gets some perspective and insight from many of them--not the recycled Dale Carnegie Warren has built his bestseller and speaking engagement empire out of (and probably the most diligent form of recycling this vaunted "environmentalist" has ever done).

It was hilarious to me that Warren boasted of "giving donuts" to the gay protesters outside his church. That's just so wrong. Gay men don't eat donuts, and the lesbians have so many ethical food issues and obscure allergies that they can't eat them either. (Awww, don't hate me for making fun--I'm just one of those poor bicoastal creatures who just can't make up their minds, remember?)

It's not so hilarious that he sold a shred of integrity to the Syrians in exchange for a photo op on the road to Damascus. Bleh!

Warren's "place at the table" in the Inaugural ceremony could be an indication of how easily Obama is able to be conned, could be a cynical move, or maybe, just maybe, it will show a hateful egoist how real grownups at the big table are capable of behaving toward each other in a civil society. See? Let the Jews and Gays, whom you have proclaimed will not get into heaven, show you how it's done.

Whatever, I'm hoping to be at the table with the witches Monday, making magic for all of y'all.

Feeding the Head that Bites You

A story about people being impoverished by "healthcare costs" flared up in a major newspaper today, but why bother saying which one? It's not like it's their story or anything. It was done in "collaboration" with Kaiser Health News, a new nonprofit media foundation. The vogue thing to say nowadays is that nonprofit foundations will take over as mainstream media (newspapers) die (without health insurance for the people who lose their jobs). So I hope you like your news being brought to you directly by corporations whose mission statements proclaim they have a stake in "shaping" certain issues. Just because they're nonprofit doesn't make them holy.

At the same time, without this foundation, there would be no story at all.

I just don't like a single part of it.

The story attempts a helpful sidebar on keeping down Your Healthcare Costs, but I don't think it helps much, so I wrote my own:

1. Even though the only food you can afford is subsidized corn syrup pressed into traditional dinner-shape servings and we want you to work 18 hours a day, don't get fat.
2. Don't get diabetes, either.
3. Don't get cancer or asbestos poisoning or injured from lifting my garbage cans, day after day after day past the age of 50.
4. Fight my wars, but don't get wounded.
5. And a special note for the ladies: Don't have children, don't have sex, don't use birth control, and don't get abortions. If you do have children, don't let there be anything, you know, "wrong" with them, mmmK?
6. Never, ever skip paying a health insurance premium--how else am I going to afford my boob job, bitch?

Simple, reasonable measures lead to reasonable savings for all!

The other supposed savior of the fourth estate is online discourse, a paradise of trolls and mental dwarves laboring in the darkness. Today, they filled the comments field on this story, telling people with cancer and heart disease that they should stop being fat illegal immigrants and just get over it. (Even though no immigrants of any kind were harmed in the production of Kaiser's story, the trolls just had to bring that issue to the party anyhow.) I'm like, Jesus, there are so many comments here about a couple of white guys' appearance! So two of the guys featured weigh a few pounds, maybe that's because they haven't been healthy enough or had the cash to hit the gym lately! Is the penalty for being big death, now?

Putting it all in perspective is an escaped troll now "working" at the American Enterprise Institute, who actually gets quoted in the story. He says these people just expect too damn much (like staying alive!) and that their expensive benefits could "preempt the use of resources for other services, such as buying Viagra for the rich fucks at MY foundation, which will soon be placing a story all about the tragic epidemic of limp dicks among right-wing policy analysts in what used to be your city and your nation's newspaper. Pay to play, baby!"