On Tim Hetherington's Infidel

Obviously, I dig war stories.  I just do.  I dunno.  I'm kind of a sucker for heroism and bravery and toughness and what not.  Because I don't do any of that personally, so it's fascinating.  


Finally, I got my hands on Tim Hetherington's Infidel, which is a photo book and companion to Sebastian Junger's War (they also made the film Restrepo, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2010, about their time as embedded war correspondents in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan.)


While War is really well done and gives you background information on the men and events in the photographs, Infidel can stand alone.  It's a beautiful book of photographs of men who defend a lonely, desolate and dangerous outpost, where life is 'like a cross between a men's social club and a prison - mixed with a dose of heavily armed camping.'


My favorite part of the book is the last sequence of photos of the soldiers asleep.  We've seen them in during firefights and rough-housing and looking at porn and playing cards and cleaning their weapons.  And then we see them vulnerable:  'You never see them like this,' Hetherington says to Junger, who recounts this in the introduction to Infidel.  'They always look so tough, but when they're asleep they look like little boys.  They look the way their mothers probably remember them.'


Tim Hetherington was killed in April of 2011 while covering the fighting in Misrata, Libya. He was hit by mortar fire and died before he could receive medical treatment.  His funeral was attended by several members of the 173rd Airborne, with whom he was embedded with Sebastian Junger.


For a good look at some of Hetherington's brilliant photographs, go here.


To buy War, go here.  To buy Infidel, go here.   Both are excellent books worth owning and loaning out.

Almost Weepy

Have you ever felt so sad and low that you can't even muster up tears? Or maybe it's just sad and low, to a certain edge, but not any further into true dripping sorrow? Like the feeling one gets just before orgasm, except for crying? Like you need just one more minute of one more horrible thing – don't stop, right there, oh god YES – and then you'd start full-on bawling?


I was Almost Weepy yesterday. Bereft for no reason. All the usual measures of comfort – books, donuts, my favorite TV shows – didn't cut into it.     


I do not like crying. I wasn't a cry-baby little kid. I'm not a crying kind of lady. Crying happens maybe, I dunno – three times yearly? Not a crier.


But Almost Weepy happens every so often and I don't get it. I'm blabbery and honest, which makes some people label me as 'negative.' True enough. But I'm mostly happy. I'm mostly sunny. I'm mostly cognizant of my good fortune. My reasons to live.


But then I have a weird day. I dunno if this corresponds with the arrival of my Monthly Days of Lady Rage, because I rarely track that kind of thing. Maybe it does. Probably. It doesn't feel like depression. It feels like near-boredom. It feels like something is broken in me, some nameless gland responsible for pleasure.


I tried all day to find that thing that would soothe me and fix it. Things that make me feel accomplished or pleased or like cracking a smile at Life In General. And nothing worked.
I finally took a walk with my dog Pablo. I listened to some good music. I looked at the pond. I was pensive. I was blown-away at how sure I felt that something was Wrong, though I couldn't pinpoint the cause of the Wrongness. So I just let it happen. Felt Almost-Weepy. Pablo didn't care. Or notice. I wished I had longer to marinate in this state, sort of stare at it from across the bar, I guess. But I had Shit To Do.


So I snapped on my face and took off Pablo's leash and went back to pretending I was okay. And then I wrote this.

from Meg Cabot's Abandon

What was wrong?  Everything.  Nothing.  I didn't know.  I couldn't think.  I felt as if the Milky Way, hovering above our heads like a celestial pitcher, had suddenly overturned, pouring suns and planets down my throat.  Stars seemed to be shooting out of my fingers and toes, the ends of my hair.


- from p. 260 of Meg Cabot's Abandon, Scholastic, 2011.

Early AM 5k and Patrick Ness and Rain and and and

Everyone hated my guts about running Saturday morning's 5k (which started ungodly early, 8am, ridic) but after it went in the ole rearview and we stuffed our guts with breakfast at Hazel's, everyone was feeling awesome.


Matilda during the 5k walk:  
"This sports bra?  Is more of a sweats bra."  Also:  "My vagina feels like something climbed into it."


Also, she struck up a conversation with one of the people marking the route, who had dogs that appeared to remind her of Manchee from Patrick Ness' The Knife of Never Letting Go, which you need to go read if you haven't already.


My fantasy life would be a dual marriage to John Green and Patrick Ness.  Monsters of Men won another award and here's Patrick Ness being a goddamn genius.


Stop raining, Rain.  No one's interested in you.  Everything's wet enough.

Sad Feelings

Today is my last day of classes.  I always get full of regrets on the last day.  What didn't we cover?  What could I have done better?  What did we spend too much time on?  Not enough?  I worry that I barely know my students.  I feel like they might feel slighted.  That I didn't pay enough attention to them or their work.  I didn't pay enough attention to their work.  Because their work is...theirs.  Their problem.  I can't pounce on it.  I feel nervous about doing so, that I'm not entitled.  I worry that I didn't well-represent the Loft.  That I didn't please them.


Teaching fulfills my need to please.  At least it's in a way that provides me an income.


Next week, it's back to being a Mom.  Matilda and I will go to the beach.  If it stops raining.  If it doesn't, we'll watch movies in the basement while I try to clean up down there.  Our basement makes the one in The Silence of the Lambs look like a Victorian parlor.


Next week, it's back to query letters.  And working on my new draft.  Seeing how I can make up fake people when I get a bit of time.


Next week Adrian goes to Singapore for 21 days.  I will have to mow the lawn.  I will have to sleep with Matilda.  I will have to cook.  I will not be able to kiss his freckly upper lip.


Next week, I can read all the books that came for me this week at the library.  


I feel bereft and rich, simultaneously.

from Stephen King's On Writing

Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.


from p. 145 of Stephen King's On Writing:  A memoir of the craft, Pocket Books, 2000.


Pretty relevant, given some of the excerpts from YA vampire books I made my students suffer through today...

from Melina Marchetta's The Piper's Son

It's the joy of smoking for him.  Isolation doesn't have to be explained when you're leaning against a brick wall with a cigarette in your hand.  Rolling your own is better.  It takes more time, and Tom has all the time to spare.


from p. 99-100 of Melina Marchetta's The Piper's Son

Ten Petty Satisfactions

1. Importing music into iTunes and then throwing the CD into the garbage.
2. Exfoliating after I shave my legs.
3. Having more stuff in the recycling bin than in the trash.
4. Getting out the Murphy's Oil Soap and dusting the piano.
5. Eating raspberries out of the backyard garden instead of breakfast.
6. Hanging all whites on the laundry line and then smelling them before I take them down.  
7. Rearranging the magnets on the refrigerator to my exacting standards.
8. Swearing.
9. Returning a huge pile of books to the library, only to walk out with another huge pile.
10. Throwing out clothes that I never wear.

Getting To Know You

Every summer when I teach, I plan these social mixing activities where I can put kids at ease with me and each other. They tell their favorite bands and TV shows and whether they have siblings and pets and whatever and I do the same. We all partner up and 'get to know each other' and it's all groovy and awkward and necessary in a room full of introverted smart kids who like to write.


Do you know how difficult it is for me to describe succinctly myself? My hobbies and likes and dislikes? In a sanitized, easy-to-swallow form? It's like a personals ad, only I'm not writing it to attract anyone.


My name is Carrie. I like coconut popsicles, dogs, running and hanging laundry on the line.
My name is Carrie. I hate making the bed, traffic, pantyhose and Wal-Mart.
My name is Carrie. Please call me Carrie. 


That is all so boring, though. Instead, I would like to say something true like, My name is Carrie and I hate weddings.


But that makes me sound crazy, right? Who hates weddings? People loving each other?  A party based on booze and cake? What's your problem, you horrid wretch of a woman?


If I wasn't so pressed for time and space, if I was convinced that 13-17 year olds would be able to capture all the nuances, if I thought it would help me teach them better, this whole idea of knowing me authentically, I would tell them the whole story. I would tell them that I have never been a girl who dreamed about her wedding. I have never been a girl who wanted to walk in a room in a princess dress and have all eyes turn to me. I have never been a girl who could stop biting her fingernails. I don't dance. I don't like flowers or wearing my hair up. I don't like public displays of affection.


I have only wanted a man who was so taken with me that he'd scoop me toward him and not let go. Who would listen to all my shit and laugh at my jokes. There is no ceremony for that. Everything I do is rooted deep in my own self-horror. Everything I do – even writing – is to get validation that I am not a shitty person. But the validation from a wedding is a sham. The Hokey-Pokey? Standing in a church? Bouquets sprayed with fixative so they don't wilt? It's a crappy facsimile. A paste buckle ritual for a girl who hates diamonds. Talk, not action, gilt, not gold.  So much rubbing for so little warmth.


The validation I want is true and intimate and vulgar. I want to be petted and grabbed and whispered to in the dark and told I'm lovely. Like you'd pet a handsome dog with soft fur. That's what I want. But I don't get that from my beloved. Because if he were the kind of man who would pet my hair and tell me I'm lovely, I would think less of him, would think him weak and shitty and stupid. To be loved by me, he has to be better than me, this puppy who wants to be petted, this child who can't sleep in the dark, this beggar grabby for coins. 


This doesn't make any sense. This doesn't even make for a good relationship. But neither do weddings, right? Weddings have nothing to do with the relationship, right? They have to do with money and family and Jordan almonds and romantic slow songs and the church of your upbringing and seed pearls and cumberbunds and rehearsed toasts and a hotel ballroom with a removable dance floor and cater waiters and a whole bunch of people who have no idea what your voice sounds like when you're naked in the dark with another. 


A wedding doesn't symbolize true connection.  It has little to do with whether someone can give me what I need, what I can't provide for myself.  Adrian fixing everything that breaks and nodding at me, and surprising me with random affection, shaking his head at my flightiness, laughing when I'm funny, knowing that I must stop seeking approval from everyone else but myself.  None of those things about him were clear at our wedding.


That is why I hate weddings. Kind of hard to explain that to a class of kids you're just meeting, though. 


My name is Carrie. I like herb gardens. I like hot wings. Venice is my favorite city in the world. I don't dance or drink whiskey. I don't like air travel. I used to teach high school Spanish.


Why don't you teach high school Spanish, anymore, Carrie?


Because I can't hear very well and when I'm using my receptive skills, I'm weak and listening becomes high stakes stress. Because I'm bad at the precision which is verb conjugation. Because I don't dance or sing or like to lead educational field trips to El Burrito Mercado. Because loving Neruda is different than knowing how to ask for directions. Because I don't want to do anything in Spain but eat calamari sandwiches and smoke black tobacco. Because the only country in South America I still want to visit is Argentina, where, good luck with the Spanish, because the accents there are CRAYZEEE. 


My name is Carrie. Here were some of my favorite activities in South America:
Drinking rum and lemonade and make out with boys behind discotecas.  Sitting outside little stores on the curb drinking beer until finishing the bottle and returning it to the shopkeeper for the deposit. Playing three-handed bridge after a hike in the rain forest in Ecuador, which involved crawling through a cave of bats.  Bowling in the giant shopping mall in Bogota that was guarded by men carrying automatic weapons. Rambling drunkenly with taxi drivers at 4 am while my travel companion's hand inched toward me across the dark backseat. 


I cannot teach in a formal school because I am a terrible role model. 
I used to grade my students' homework while watching television. 
You must not know this about me. 
Please understand that I like watching turtles swim. 
I enjoy reading.

I got married when I was 24.

I have one daughter.

I live in a yellow house.

I'm half-Armenian, half-Norwegian and I love Chopin's Preludes for piano.

My name is Carrie.  Good to meet you.

Read This: Some Good Young Adult Books

Vintage by Steve Berman.  I wasn’t sure about this book, though I’d seen it recommended on a couple of different sites.  Mostly because I wasn’t sure I could accommodate all of the following in my head at once:  Teen Goths, Emo Boys, Ghost From The Past, Gay Runaway Kid Who Never Has Had A Boyfriend.  However, the way Steve Berman writes it, all of those things went together spectacularly.  I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the swoon involved in two boys getting together, but I completely did.  It was total excellence.  A good book to read in autumn.  I think I’ll get my own copy and read it on Halloween.  (Also, Berman pulls off the same stunt that Jeanette Winterson does in Written On The Body with the main character.  Which isn't easy to do.  And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then you'll just have to read Written On The Body, won't you?)

Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld.  I am partial to stories that feature the following:  pranks, drunken parties, summer camps, demeaning teenaged Mcjobs, and boarding schools.  Prep only encompasses a couple of these, but the last thing especially.  What Prep does really well is give us a character who doesn’t know herself, internally or externally.  Lee’s not sure where she belongs in any social circumstance, and that sounds pat, but it’s true and rendered well.  And her lose-the-old-V-card scene is a Hall of Famer.  So heart-breakingly true.

The Boy Book by E. Lockhart.  Is this an issues book?  No.  Is this a book about difficulties with friendships and liking boys and your weird parents and dealing with fears and being yourself and not getting over broken relationships?  Yes.  Ruby Oliver is just so damn rad.  I can’t wait to read the other books that feature her.  Also, she lives on a houseboat.  How cool is that?  Very cool.  Cooler than you or me.   

Stay by Deb Caletti.  This cover doesn’t really fit what’s going on inside this book, but don’t let that dissuade you.  It’s an amazing book about how relationships can go from intense to dangerous.  Clara is running from one such relationship and in the process learns some difficult truths about her parents’ relationship as well.  This description could really take a dull turn in the wrong hands, but Caletti executes it very well.  It's clear she's read her Gavin De Becker, but not in that she has Clara follow all of The Gift of Fear's recommendations to the letter when it comes to the obsessed Christian.   I liked seeing how Clara tried on different roles, exploring who she was, which rang so damn true to me.  (You know how certain people can make you believe things about yourself that aren’t necessarily true, but you don’t realize that until you play that role and find out how wrong it is for you?  No?  Okay, then.  Just me?  Okay…REALLY?)   Anyway, the story takes place in the Pacific Northwest and so there was sailing and shipwreck ghost stories and a boy named Finn and a weird old poet lady who makes seaweed salad and there’s a reflective voice from an adult – the narrator writing about herself as a younger woman – which you also see in Sittenfeld’s Prep, which makes the story sweeter.  At least for me, since I’m also an adult.  I think I’m an adult, at least.  When I want to buy liquor or do anything prurient, I’m totally an adult. 

The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot.  So, Meg Cabot doesn’t need any more money or press, but I can't help mentioning this, though I'm late to the party.  But damn!  The hype about this series isn’t wrong.  At least the first book, which I adored.  ADORED.  The main thing is that Mia is allowed to be funny.  And while I know Christopher Hitchens doesn’t think women are funny and that most men don’t value witty women (because why?  because men want to be witty ones, with the women clapping and laughing?  Which is just…a total head-scratcher.  Who doesn’t want to be around a funny person in the sack?  Or in general?), I value this in a book because if I think you are funny I trust you more as a human and a character.  I’m excited to see the other books in this series, as there are approximately one million of them and I love that feeling, when you like a series and know that a whole fleet of unread books await you.

Almost Perfect by Brian Katcher.  Okay, if you can figure out how to write a story with a boy narrator who falls in love with a girl who is really a boy and make it swoony and compelling and uncomfortable and sad and realistic and cringe-worthy, then fucking go for it, man.  Because that shit isn’t easy.  And Brian Katcher’s done it so well.  This was such a cool book.  Loved Logan, our narrator, even though as he made the wrong moves and said the wrong things and had the world’s most messed-up head due to his consuming attraction to Sage, the boy who wants to be a girl. 

Nightshade by Andrea Cremer.  Due to it being about werewolves, I liked this book and am excited for the follow-up book.  The world-building's tremendous and complicated and makes Nightshade one of those books where you get all giddy about the series to come just to see what else lurks beneath the complicated structure.  I like Calla, our main heroine girl - she's very kickass and Girl Power and constantly being tempted sexually, which, hello, is very realistic, at least for me.  The only issue I had was that the romance aspect hit some wrong notes for me, and since this is a love triangle book, that was hard to overlook.  There were a lot of fingers trailing down cheeks and hands cupping faces and while I don’t need to see fluids exchanged or anything, when the two guys in a love triangle are both doing the same moves on the same girl, it’s hard to pick a side. Change that shit up!  (Not that it matters, because I've already picked a side, actually. I'm totally waving the big foam finger for Ren, which I feel shy about, because it seems too obvious and one-sided and probably says a lot about me, since Ren’s the Main Alpha Wolf Pack Badass guy.  But I just can't help it;  he's well-developed beyond the description I've given there.  Also, isn't Ren the guy in Footloose played by Kevin Bacon?  Who is also fabulous - this cannot be a coincidence, amirite?)  But the other choice, Shay, does too much poetry-quoting.  (I know.  It’s a thing of mine.  Like men wearing sandals, one must tread carefully with the poetry-quoting where I'm concerned.)  But maybe this will all change?  Also, another reason I enjoyed this book was that there was some pretty cool feminist stuff going on in terms of the Wolf Pack New Order that I have a feeling Calla will challenge, as well as some bigoted assumptions on part of the Keepers on the issue of queer relationships.  That’s very promising for future books, so I can get past a few quivering fingertips on blouse buttons and all. I really like how Cremer deals with that age-old problem of What Does A Werewolf Do With All His/Her Blown-Out Clothes Whenever There’s a Form Change, Just Walk Around Naked Or Stash Clothes In The Woods Or What?  She sort of blows past all the ham-handed awkwardness of the problem entirely in a way that is highly brilliant. 

On My Spouse

* Adrian talks on the phone more than a teenaged girl.  


*  "I don't care about our wedding," he said to me, when I was having a freakout about wedding planning back in 1999.  "Once I gave you a ring and asked you to marry me, it was settled in my mind already.  The rest of it means nothing, as far as I'm concerned."  At the time, I wasn't really comforted by this.  Now, I think he was on to something, as our wedding was an absolute cock-up.


* If there is machinery involved, he will a)  help you b) fix it when it breaks c) be happier about whatever it is.


* He comes from a family that likes practical jokes.  Jumping out when you're walking in the door with a huge sack of groceries and scaring you so that everything goes flying everywhere.  Then he dies laughing.   I am never prepared for this.  Once I was so startled by this, I started to cry, and I am not one of those crying ladies. My family doesn't do jokes like that.  I have never found this kind of fastball-to-the-nuts humor funny.  Therefore, I am an eternally gullible victim. 


* If you want to get him to do something, spin it so that he can be heroic in some way.  This isn't easy.  How can you make loading the dishwasher of epic importance?


* I think he was put on this earth to listen to me ramble.  And then he laughs if it's funny or says, "Uh huh," if it's not.  Then goes back to thinking about particle physics or something he read in Motor Trend or quadratic equations or whatever the hell.


*  His hatred for camping is in equal measure to mine.  I only like Nature at a comfortable distance.  Like in a picture, or in my backyard, or in a park with trails.  Don't ask me to sleep in it, or anything.  He doesn't like Nature because there aren't any machines in it.

* He does not wear cologne.  Unless he feels fancy, if we're going out somewhere, which rarely happens.  Then he wears this Givenchy stuff called Pi, which we bought in France on our honeymoon.  We say that it 'smells like math.'  It just smells like man cologne, though.  Math smells terrible, as we all know.

* A few days ago, I caught him lying in Matilda's bed, cuddled in her pink bedspread, with the dog beside him, reading The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest. 


*  Likes:  Atomic Fireballs, Dropje (icky black Dutch licorice that looks like it's made from old tires), boobs, motorcycles, Mythbusters, science fiction, making giant carb-laden breakfasts for big groups, spontaneity, loose women, cribbage, Ars Technica


* Dislikes:  lipgloss, Papa Murphy's pizza, to-do lists, going to the grocery store, flannel sheets, pajamas, anything religious, blue cheese dressing, dog leash laws, going for walks, carmelized onions

Writers Boys Like

A short list of writers that men tend to list as their favorites:


Kurt Vonnegut
Ayn Rand
Jack Kerouac
Hunter S. Thompson
Chuck Palahniuk
Cormac  McCarthy
Walt Whitman
Charles Bukowski
Henry Miller 
Tom Robbins

    Robert Heinlein
    Edward Abbey
    David Foster Wallace
    Thomas Pynchon
    Philip Roth
    Douglas Coupland and Douglas Adams
    Don DeLillo
    Denis Johnson
    Jim Harrison
    Neil Gaiman
    William Gibson
     
    Still formulating theories as to why this is.  One noticeable one is the existence of only one female on the list.  Hmmm...

Adrian Is Truly A Nerd

I roll over and wake him up and he's all disoriented, as usual. I'm lucky he doesn't grab me by the throat and scream, "WHO SENT YOU!" because he's a very heavy sleeper. Also, he sleeps with one eye partially open. Which is very creepy, but I'm used to it, now. Matilda does the same thing.

I ask him what kind of crazy dreams he was just having. I never remember my dreams. This might be why I usually hate listening to other people tell me about their dreams.

But Adrian tends to be brief in his summarizations, plus his dreams are usually insane, so he gets a pass.

He says, "I was in my lab at the University of Minnesota, in the basement, which was very dirty so I was cleaning it out. And fixing a bike at the same time. Then Sam came over to help with that. And the Black-Eyed Peas, too. They were driving a yellow Suburban. And the Black Eyed Peas were bullying somebody, this kid – in SONG, no less. So I gave them the finger and told them FUCK YOU."

Attention, World

NB:  Above is the only instance in which a male person may wear sweatpants in public and not be splattered by my vomit and/or scorn.  Should you not be Alex Pettyfer, please plan accordingly.

from Eireann Corrigan's Ordinary Ghosts

I woke up this morning, trying to remember this passage from a book that I admire the hell out of and it was driving me crazy until the wonders of Amazon's Search Inside were revealed to me.  Here it is, in all of its pure understated hilarity:

We sleep together.  I mean we do the other stuff, too, and that's unbelievable.  I understand how people write songs about sex and manuals on it.  I get why people buy it.  And why people tell you not to have it.  Because, I mean, there doesn't seem to be any point to doing anything else afterward.


- p. from 267 of Ordinary Ghosts by Eireann Corrigan, Push Fiction, 2008.

On Prurience

Every single thing I want to write about today is too dirty to discuss in a non-locked forum.


I am thinking about it because I have an endeavour that involves teaching at a new place and I don't want the prospective people to Google me and get all exercised that I use the eff word or talk about sex or cop to drinking alcohol or watching television or porn or whatever other horror that gives uptight people tingles in their nethers.


Every single thing I want to write about today is not anything I want any of my current students to know about me.  I hate it when I mention something online and then a real-life person will mention it back to me in real life and I'm all WHA? because I'm fairly old and apparently don't get the scope of my Friends List and that people actually read the crap I put out.  I would like to be an Entire Whole Person to my students, but if you teach, you are supposed to be a Role Model and Wholesome and Moral and Diligent, which means you must hide 95% of all the good stuff about yourself.  *sighs*


I don't like reading memoirs anymore.  I'd rather be confessional in fake forms.  But sometimes I like to box up what I'm feeling in words, too, just to get it out there. Just to see how it looks, all that jumble in my head.  Of course, this is considered weird, except everyone knows they are all going around thinking the same dumb stuff I am, only I'm dumb enough to say it. 


But why am I dumb for saying it?  If we all think it?  We're all naked under our clothes, you know.  So, what's the big damn deal?  You're as dumb as me, Everyone Else.  I'm just a faster typist.

Sunday Morning Church Service: A Run In Seven Parts

ONE. AC/DC, "Shook Me All Night Long" (The part where I think about sex. Just like in real church.)
TWO. Pinback, "Good To See You" (The part where I run through a cloud of cigarette smoke from one of the people in Kordiak Park. I normally enjoy smelling cigarette smoke. But not when I'm gasping for air already.)
THREE. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, "Runaway" (The part where I don't think about anything because I'm really busy trying not to step in goose poop.)
FOUR. Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Hey Oh" (The part where I consider how well Flea has aged.)
FIVE. Rage Against The Machine, "Born Of A Broken Man" (The part where I run super fast and feel megalomaniacal and kick everyone's ass with martial arts.)
SIX. Jason Walker, "Down" (The part where I get all moody and pensive and have what Matilda calls 'Sad Feelings.' This helps when going up hills.)
SEVEN. Dave Matthews Band, "Crash Into Me" (Annnd, we're back to the part where I think about sex. Again. Full circle, baby.)

On My First Tattoo

It hurt part of the time.  Like an actual needle puncturing deep.


It didn't hurt part of the time.  Like just humming and vibrating near the skin.


I can't stand the smell of A&D ointment.


Maybe listening to music on an iPod would help, as hearing the humming of the needle thingie is psychologically gross.  Just like listening to my own labored breathing while running is psychologically overwhelming to me.  But if I'd done that, then I couldn't hear Mark, the guy who did my tattoo, tell me to roll over.  Or hear Jen, my cornerman and best cheerleader friend in this, tell me things that took my mind off the hurting.  Jen who designed my tattoo.  Which is beautiful and I love very much.


I don't really feel like showing anyone or explaining it because it takes forever and also I feel like I need a handout with the source poem material and Cliff's Notes and probably some laminated flash cards, too.  Plus there's an intertextual reference, too.  GOD.  Leave it to me to get a geeky tattoo that practically has its own fucking footnotes.


You may see my tattoo, but be warned:  there will be a quiz afterwards.


Do I have to show it to you here in the street?


Getting your tattoo while at a party is actually pretty cool.  Even if you're lying on a massage table in the kitchen while people float in and out.  They stop and look at you with encouraging faces and are nice.  Your friend Jen holds your hand like you are having a baby vaginally and she talks about stuff so you can think about her words instead of thinking about owww, omigod, owww...


A&D ointment REEKS.  I'm so glad Matilda's baby butt was so lovely and rash-free - I can't stand this stuff.


My husband got so drunk while I got my tattoo.  I am never around when my husband gets drunk.  The last time I was around my drunk husband, he wasn't my husband and we were 16 and at a house party at our friend Ben's and I was drinking cherry brandy and I don't know what he was drinking.  He can drink a lot more than most people.  This is because he's Irish, maybe?  He acts like a naughty five-year-old when he's drunk, in case you are wondering.  And yes, he was babbling a little and yes, he wanted to smoke cigarettes and go to Dairy Queen.  Normally Adrian's a badass.  When he's drunk and I'm getting a tattoo, we have role reversal.

Consoling The Unemployed

I went out to be social out of my home last night and four of the eleven people present were unemployed.  It was a good thing there was alcohol.


I have been unemployed on and off for the last ten years.  By choice.  I could be teaching Spanish to a passel of ungrateful high school students right now.  Except that I don't really care about Spanish - speaking it or teaching it.  But I spent time and money learning the trade of teaching, only to pitch it into the compost heap of life.  I know it's crazy.  I gave up all that glamour to be an unpaid writer.  Go me.


It hasn't been all leisure, of course.  I have been underemployed.  I have temped.  I have watched people's children for cash.  I have written bullshit ad copy and other weird things for cash.  I have worked in a thrift store, which was, by far, the best underemployed job I've ever had.  If I could be a master of puppets, and change a bunch of things about that job, so I could go back there and work, including assassinating the manager and hiring back all my favorite hilarious people, I would so take that job to the end of my life, digging through thrift store donations and laughing at freaky customers and coming home with new weird shit every night, like 70's t-shirts and 57 bars of prescription acne soap and every excellent book in the world.


But that's over. Now I sit at home and play a backstop to my own kid's needs and the needs of others' kids, while writing stuff about fake people that I should probably attempt to publish.  Every so often, I actually get an I-9 and work a little, again, teaching kids about how awesome it is to make up their own fake people and discuss the fake people others have made up.  What a wonderful world we live in that this is possible.  How lucky I am.


However, I have a patron, in my sciency-husband.  This is why we don't live under a bridge, because he's crazy enough to believe in my idea that I should spend my days making up the happenings of my fake people. But not everyone is this fortunate.  And it's taken me many years to get comfortable with my weird pseudo-50's housewife-loony-woo-woo-unemployed choice.  In that sense, let me list some ways you can console the unemployed people you know, beyond using all your connections and networking and resume editing skills (which if you aren't already doing, get on that, you dick):


1)  Take them out to eat and drink.  Unemployed people are miserable.  They need more pleasure.  More endorphins.  It's hard to get out of bed when you really don't have to.  But it's not really fun to stay in bed, either, when you know you ought to be working.  You need more pleasure as a metric and motivation to keep up your will to power, your joie de vivre, your raison d'etre, your [insert French phrase here].  If anyone knows pleasure, it's those French people.


2)  Buy them porn.   See above on 'pleasure.'  This could be literal.  Or it could be their personal favorite stuff, like junky tabloid magazines or mystery novels or circus peanuts or the entire box set of Battlestar Galactica.


3)  Be An Audience.  Let them tell stories about their pathetic misery and laugh with them about it.


4)  Shut It With The Advice.  Don't tell them what to do, unless it's a job lead you have and you have technical instructions.  No one wants to do what other people tell them to do.  It's just fundamentally gross.


5)  Give them your antidepressants.  Seriously.  Especially if they don't have insurance.  Depression sucks even when you are employed.  People who don't use pharmaceuticals in this case are really doing themselves a disservice.  Science is your friend.  You got 80+ years, barring a bus hitting you or some other unforeseen illness.  Don't waste them suffering, especially when the chips are down.

Bang! Right Across The Face

Often, while reading young adult fiction, I wish I could reach into the book and just SLAP the narrator/main character.

Sometimes this isn't directed at the character so much as the author, who is badly portraying teenagers and pretending to be cool, that he/she knows what they might sound like, act like.  But the SLAP I'm talking about isn't in those instances.  This is a SLAP because I CARE.

I want to yell:

"Where are your condoms!  Just go buy condoms!  You don't have to be 18 to buy condoms, dummy!"

"Stop being friends with that bitch!"  

"Just tell your mother the truth, already!"

"He totally likes you, just talk to him and you'll see!"

"Nothing good can come of your obsessing over this!"

This kind of SLAP is a good sign, I think.  That I'm invested, that I'm concerned, that I'm frustrated that this fake person isn't seeing the whole picture, or isn't being all he/she could be.  

Today, while finishing up Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep (go read it, it's good), I wanted to take our girl hero Lee by the shoulders and shake her and scream, "Don't ask questions that you don't want answers for!"

And then I wanted to cry, because Lee's heart was breaking and she was totally clueless and inert about all relationships, not just secret sexual hooking-up ones, and what the hell did she know?

I never want to go back to that adolescent time when I didn't know any of the crap I know now.  So treacherous.  And so much better to remember the time when everything was a first, or new, or uncertain.  I like uncertainty sometimes.   I mean, it's romantic, to imagine going back, armed with all my know-how, but I don't regret all of my dumb high school moves, because, how else was I going to learn how to be the amazingly cool brilliant genius person I am currently?  

*pause to let sarcasm sink in*

But I don't mind going back with these fake people in books, to the point where I'm sitting alone in my living room this morning, petting my dog and reading a book and wanting to SLAP someone who doesn't exist and getting such a demented, perverse thrill out of the fact that this type of activity exists and this is why it's all about books for me and why I can never do anything worthwhile in life besides think about books and words and writing.

I have so many other things I should be doing right now.