The red and the black

If you haven't ever sat bolt upright in a massage to say "Ow!" then, my friends, you haven't lived. Likewise if the massage doesn't leave you sore for the next couple of days and segue directly into a cold that keeps you from going into the office.

The woman who administered this stern treatment also scolded me, which is kind of fun. I liked her scolding better than that of the Stalinist relic who gave me my first ever massage, after I lost my job during the transit strike. "What did you major in?" barked the Cossack. Upon hearing my answer, she shook her head in disgust. "Oh no, you will never get job with that." She then advised me to find an older man to look out for me in my next office and not to trust other women, who will necessarily be back-stabby.

Anyway, this woman told me I wasn't taking good enough care of myself. My entire right side, she informed me, is screwed up. Her best efforts over 70 minutes hadn't really made a dent. (So she claimed. I felt dented all over.) She gave me a very disapproving look, to which I responded meekly. When I was leaving, I gave an elaborate tip.

It's always nice to be validated, even, or especially, in one's troubles. I didn't have time to explain, nor did she seem to care, *why* my body is dysfunctional. But I have a wild idea: It's because I don't know how to properly manage sadness and anger.

Over the past six months or so, I have been to four funerals / shiva calls and spent significant time at the bedside of dying people in two different hospice facilities. I've taken off work and traveled and helped bury the dead and eaten round things and listened to people cry. Where I should have felt sad, most of the time I was furious.

By contrast, a once-good friend has hurt me more deeply than I have been hurt in years. I should be justly enraged; I try to be. Thinking in strong words helps for a while ("How DARE you?"). Eventually, though, I keep sliding back into mystified whimpering ("how could she?").

Worst of all, there's nothing I can do about anything. I have had almost no agency in any of these situations. The stress of that might be worst of all.

Sadness is a liquid; anger is a solid. My poor body has been melting and freezing and melting again. Is there any wonder it's a mess?

This is not bragging

I'm just saying, publicly, that I feel I made the right decision in marrying the person I did.

Hey sweetie,

You now have an appointment for [time] tomorrow with Simone at the [place] on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn. It's Swedish massage, though she can do "deep work" if necessary. Just tell them that the class was purchased as part of a series under my name.

Does that work for you?

Love,
B

In a time when, apparently, people are spatting about their relationships on the You Face, it's got to be worth it to extend some gratitude on a blog. Right? Right.

Also, I love you and you and you and you and you. You, less so. (You know who you are.) And if any of you buy me an impromptu massage, I will bless you on the Internets too.

Contents are (marginally less) fragile

I knew Friday was going to be rough when I started off the morning by almost stepping on a cockroach in my bare feet.

Friday *was* rough, as expected. Even by the evening, when I abandoned all attempts to feign normalcy and instead went to the gym for an hour, I was faced with a Very Special Episode of "What Not to Wear" starring a cancer survivor who had lost both her breasts as well as ninety pounds. "Now that she has beaten cancer through sheer determination," said the voiceover, "she faces another challenge: how to dress her new body."

Luckily all my energy was going into propelling my body forward on the treadmill, so I had no strength with which to pummel the screen.

Yeah, Friday sucked, as did Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. There were bright spots! If you were with me on any of those days, you made them bearable, so thank you. Overall, though, I felt like a plucked chicken, and not even a tasty one.

Then, this morning, I woke up to a brilliant, sparkling sky. Suddenly I am sympathetic to all of God's children. I am nodding and smiling. I am identifying with everything I read, like this, via Finslippy:

I've been feeling ever since like I should wear a shirt that reads, "CONTENTS ARE FRAGILE," and actually that we should all wear that shirt, so that we can all remember to be kind to each other, because life can be so hard, and we're only here for a little while.

Yes, Alice, goddammit! Yes. I embrace you! Mwah!

And you, Morning News Tournament of Books! Come over here, you old so-and-so. You are almost making me weep with happiness. (At least so far. I cannot vouch for what will happen if Wolf Hall and other favorites of mine from 09 don't keep advancing.) Quotes like these made my morning:

Let's say that the standards that apply to people-—the basic character-defining requirements—=are that a person be funny, smart, and kind. This is my rubric and possibly yours. If a person is funny, smart, and kind (or two out of the three) any other flaw can be forgiven.

It has never occurred to me to apply the same standard to books, which have an aesthetic dimension not even touched in the funny-smart-kind paradigm. And yet ...

Yes, TOB! That is exactly right! Thank you.

You know what else is sublimely right? This chart matching famous writers with their day jobs. YES. I cheer for you, Lapham Quarterly. Hurrah!

Maybe Mr. Ben sprinkled MDMA on my Oatmeal Flakes this morning. After four days of Fester Gloom walking around (who has, to be honest, been making guest appearances in our apartment all month) I couldn't blame him.

Gen-dar

I just took an internet test to discover what gender my brain is. This test seemed reliable to me because a) it's British, and b) it's six parts.

Going in, my assumption was that my brain would be roughly 130% female because I'm told my body shape, baby-face, and negligible amounts of body hair correlate strongly with having more estrogen than a soybean field. There are other stereotypical reasons I would think so, too: I am hyper-verbal but scared of numbers; I am equally indifferent to cars and sports, unless there is a narrative to follow (or, failing that, something pretty to admire); and at times I hate myself, as female-type people are wont to do.

Speaking of which, I watched the Oscars Sunday night. The best parts of the ceremony, in order:

3) "George Clooney threw me into a pool."

2) The Horror montage, perfectly described by David Rees: "Kill Everyone with your Chainsaw … the Dolls are Alive … Dreaming of Murder … Blood and Gore Will Cleanse Your Soul … The Baby is Satan … I break your feet … eat a rat for dinner … big-ass freaky ears and eyes … Frankenstein wants a kiss … the Headless Horseman rides again … Alfred Hitchock’s “Too Many Birds” … screaming and yelling … people staring at each other …long hallways with kids in ‘em … I see dead people … bloody monsters that you have to kiss … blood coming out of elevators … rats and mucus … mouths and teeth … AND THAT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, IS HORROR."

1) The fact that Bigelow won for Best Director and then got to win again for Best Picture. The audience understood the moment Barbara "Liberal Jewish Feminist" Streisand walked out to present the first of those awards that Bigelow was going down in history, but the second win was still a happy shock. As Dana Stevens put it,

it's unbelievably gratifying to see a woman who does fine, small-scale work triumphing over a man who erects massive monuments to his own vanity. Bigelow's victory makes it seem like hard work is worthwhile, because someday someone will recognize it, no matter how loudly that asshole at the center table is talking about himself.

I quibble with the idea that the Hurt Locker is "small-scale." Um, it's a war movie. It's about men and guns and battle and heat and exhaustion and explosions. Did I mention men? I don't think there is a single speaking woman in the whole thing. We're not exactly talking about a well-mannered Jane Austen adaptation here.

I do love the fact, though, that in two speeches Bigelow got around to thanking "firemen" (!) and still didn't slip in a reference Cameron, her ex-husband and co-front runner. Didn't you expect her to mention him, at least? To say some cursory "thank you" for ... I don't know, something? At least I would assume that would be the gracious, self-effacing, feminine thing to do.

Back to the point: how did I fare at the gender test?

Part I was a look at spatial understanding, something about lines and angles. "If you scored 18 - 20: You have more of a male brain [emphasis added]. On average, men outperform women in this task and those with more mathematical knowledge tend to score quite high as well. In past studies, 60 per cent of the people in this range were men."

Well, that's a shocker! But it may be an outlier. How about Part II, which is more about objects changing position? "If you scored between 0 - 33%: You may have more of a male brain. Scientists say men tend to under perform in this task. The corpus callosum, the part of the brain that links the right and left hemispheres, is a fifth larger in women. This means women can process visual and other signals at the same time more easily than men. There is also a theory that oestrogen levels in women give them an added advantage in spatial memory."

Sorry, test. I scored low because I was afraid to make a mistake (points were deducted for incorrect answers as well as awarded for correct ones). All of the things I guessed, however, were right. I played it safe. What's more female than that?

Still, it was kind of exciting to be seen as male for two questions. Then the test took a turn for the physiognomical: It wanted to me actually gauge my hands, which betrayed me. My empathy & sensitivity to emotion results, which came next, were off the charts. Though I have a better-than-average appreciation for systems (for a girl), I suck at mentally rotating shapes. I must have been asleep the day they covered that in school. Oh wait! Just kidding -- they never taught us how to do that. Is this one of those "innate" IQ things?

I screwed myself by knowing significantly more synonyms for given words than either men or women are supposed to know. Come on! The word for that is not "female," it's "dorky."

To add insult to injury, the test insinuated that I am a lesbian by pointing out I like men with "feminine" faces. (Ha!)

And so I ultimately come in exactly as "female" as the average woman taking the test. Go skew their results, would you, please? Man, it sucks to be average.

PC / JC

On the way back from finally seeing Avatar, I hear a couple across the car from me discussing the Academy Awards and the meta-narrative of Cameron vs. Bigelow: Who Gets Custody of Oscar.

The conversation is very run-of-the-mill and I zone out, paying attention instead to the Daley article in the New Yorker. Then I hear the boy say something is "political." My antenna goes up.

GIRL: Really?
BOY: Of course it is. You remember that movie, Brokeback Mountain?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: That was nominated for Best Picture!
GIRL: Really?
BOY: Yes! And you know what it's about?
GIRL: Yeah.
BOY: And *that* was nominated for Best Picture! Even though it was about ... *that*! It's just 'cause it was politically correct. Now, if it was a good movie, I wouldn't mind ...
GIRL: I never saw it.
BOY: Me neither, but still ...

This reminds me of the time when I was about thirteen and my mother took me to the Algonquin hotel. I was a passionate devotee of Dorothy Parker's, and I sat where she had once held court soaking up the Vitamin D. At least, I did, until my reverie was broken by the sound of a man a couple tables away lecturing his female companion on my favorite author. And he was wrong! More wrong than a cat being thrown out into the snow.

My mother could tell how incensed I was. I glared and shook my head and snorted like a horse but the man kept talking in his pompous, Master of the Literary Universe kind of way. "Please can I go over there and correct him," I asked my mother. "He's pretending he knows all this stuff and he doesn't!"

In this case, I will content myself with saying to you, the Internets: that boy is a fool.

Of course, it is tempting to dismiss anything you find distasteful without feeling like you first have to sit through it. Especially in our digital age when we can easily access the proxy opinions of friends, or "Fox and Friends," why bother exposing yourself to something whose agenda you suspect you don't want to support?

A friend and I were recently discussing this in relation to, as it happens, Avatar: Is it fair to hate it without having seen it? Especially with an international blockbuster that seems to have been covered quite in depth by the media, it feels pretty easy to get a sense of whether you'll like it in advance. (Good questions to ask yourself: How did you feel about Titanic? Fern Gully? Cats? [The animal, not the Broadway show.] How do you feel about white male protagonists with one-syllable "J" names? Great. Lastly, mother-goddess worship. Is that a deal breaker for you?)

Well, I decided to take myself to see it, by myself, to decide in as much of a vacuum as possible how I felt about it. There are my primary reactions. *CAUTION: SPOILERS*

1) James Cameron can sure make movies. I found myself thinking like a film student a lot of the time: "Those two characters are going to kiss at this point. Wait, but will they? They're not human; why would they kiss? American audiences expect it even though it doesn't make sense in this context. I wonder what Cameron will -- oh, there they go! Well done."

Assuming that Titanic and Avatar are about equally long, I would give you excellent odds that the first kiss between the couples in both films happen at roughly the same time. Like, within five minutes of each other. Because there is a kind of science to this and Cameron knows how it works.

I also made mental notes of the characters who seemed marked as Dead Meat and, indeed, most of them bit it. In a couple of cases I was surprised, which is another Well Done for JC.

Overall, I enjoyed the experience. I was carried by the narrative. I was impressed with the visuals. At times I was moved and at times I laughed, though a couple of those chuckles came at the expense of particularly ham-handed lines of dialogue. The movie was long but I didn't get bored.

But:

2) the story -- specifically the politics of it. Oy. I don't need to get into this; others, more prestigious and better suited to the task than I have done it already (here, there, and everywhere).

It should be noted that right-wingers think "Avatar" is a tree-hugging, socialist fantasy:

Writing in the Weekly Standard, conservative commentator John Podhoretz called the movie's clash between heavily armed humans and an indigenous tribe of aliens as "anti-American, anti-human." In an upcoming piece in Commentary magazine, Stephen Hunter writes that "the movie essentially decodes into a 1960s pseudo-intellectual's power-trip dream." A headline on a piece by John Nolte, editor of Andrew Breitbart's conservative Big Hollywood site, declared the movie wasn't for Heartland America: "'Avatar' Is a Big, Dull, America-Hating, PC Revenge ..."

Hee! I love conservative outrage. For more from the left, here's Dan Savage on the film's sexual politics. He's not happy either.

To all of that, I will only add that the film's gender politics do get points from me. Most mainstream movies pass the Ms. Test only on a technicality. JC gives us several interesting, active female characters. Even the warrior princess kicks ass, and not just once, like, when a maternal instinct helps her save a baby rabbit. She hunts and flies and fights; her dad gives her his huge bow and arrow. She doesn't need saving. Well, once, a bit, but then she does some excellent saving of her own.

In short, the women are just as developed as the men (which is to say, not much, but this is not a deep, character-driven flick). For an action movie, that's not nothing.

Here, however, is where JC falls short:

3) the tails. WTF, JC? You give these 10-feet-tall blue-skinned cat-people *tails* and then do nothing with them? Think of the possibilities! Think of the children! (We barely see the children. What are the little Na'vi doing all day? Plugging their braids into everything they can find?) Many people, including one of my favorite high school teachers, would kill to have a tail. That showed a lack of imagination, Mr. Cameron. I am disappointed in you.

Overall? I liked it better than I thought I would. It helped to have expectations set to virtually zero. And now I can feel even more morally superior to that little blond idiot on the subway than I would have felt already.

Water fountain FAIL

Online here: http://cheezburger.com/View.aspx?aid=3232033792.

In a hospital, no less! The very one where my doctor told me again, "Life is not fair," because I confessed to being angry, still, that my father died and then my uncle immediately thereafter.

I *know* life is not fair, you sweet, well-meaning, occasionally ridiculous Russian! One of my best friends just got back from a work trip to eastern Congo, Somalia, and Rwanda, and other places where people SUFFER and DIE -- or, suffer and have to flash back to the horrors they faced for the rest of their lives. I can accept that life isn't fair rationally and still have emotional reactions. Can't I?

"Well," he said, considering. "How long ago now did your father die?"

October.

"Hmm. Well, two months is the standard mourning period ..."

Out of spite, as I left, I took this picture and submitted it to Failblog.

This evening, I finally geared up to go to the gym. On the way there, I stepped in a melted glacier, soaking one foot all the way up to the ankle. When I limped to the finish line, I discovered the Y had been closed since 4:00 PM.

Yup, still angry.

"But not at a person?" he asked.

No, just in general.

"Okay," he said. "So it is not pathological."

Phew!

I hope the rest of you had a more cheerful snow day.

Food, glorious food

The best pizza in NYC?
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

It was an extremely food-happy weekend this weekend. No special occasion: Mr. Ben and I did turn nine years old on the 17th, but we weren't celebrating that. (I still want to hit up Good Fork in Red Hook, though, which was our original anni-day plan scrapped in favor of sitting on our new couch and watching old episodes of Mad Men.)

FRIDAY: Dinner at Motorino, the best pizzeria in New York, according to Sam Sifton. Like the intern who talks too much in staff meeting, Mr. Sifton, the new NYT restaurant critic, seems to be trying to make a name for himself right away as a kingmaker & all-around fearless guy. Bold choice, Mr. Sifton.

His gambit worked. Certainly I was enticed, with a small circle of friends, to squeeze into the space that once held another fantastic pizzeria, Una Pizza Napoletano. We split three pies, some less kosher than others. (I picked the sizzling bits of pig off of my slices but those who indulged seemed to enjoy it immensely.)

Even at 5:55 PM, there was a line for a table for four. We were seated almost an hour after we arrived. Still, the pizza really was terrific; the tiny pools of oil on the buffalo mozzarella were so good they would send your eyes flying upwards into your head while the sounds of angels filled your ears. Best pizza in New York, though? I can't say. To me, the best slice of pizza is whichever high-quality one I'm eating at the time. Bonus points if I'm hungry and if I've been waiting for a while in the cold.

Dessert at the cozy Italian bakery situated just close enough to Veneiro's that no one goes in, except skittish-looking loners and family clusters. I did not partake myself, since I can't do sugar, but I do love the smell of cappuccino.

SATURDAY: Undistinguished except by the excellent bittersweet hot chocolate Mr. Ben and I enjoyed during the Accomplice: the Village show that took us around NYU on an ambulatory, interactive theater experience / scavenger hunt.

SUNDAY: This is when we really got into gear. With a different circle of friends, I embarked on a Lower East Side eating tour. Because it was self-curated, we indulged in foods that were not exactly designed to complement each other: pickles straight from a room full of barrels, freshly baked hamentaschen & whole-wheat bread, crystallized-ginger donuts from the Donut Plant in honor of Chinese New Year, banh mi, and finally bubble tea. Everyone was fit to explode, though no one person tried everything.

Next up: Tour Dumpling! This, people, is why we live in NYC.

It's all in how you see it

I would think that flying a plane into a building is a pretty black-or-white act, especially in our post-9/11 world. What is terrorism if not an attempt to intimidate people into acting in a certain way because of violence or the threat of it? If I demonstrate that I am willing to kill people for what I believe politically, whether I believe in lower taxes or global jihad, I become a terrorist.

Or -- and here where it gets tricky; you might want to sit down -- a hero.

The daughter of a man who crashed his small plane into a building housing offices of the Internal Revenue Service called her father a hero for his anti-government views but said his actions, which killed an IRS employee, were "inappropriate."

Joe Stack's adult daughter, Samantha Bell, spoke to ABC's "Good Morning America" from her home in Norway. Asked during a phone interview broadcast Monday if she considered her father a hero, she said: "Yes. Because now maybe people will listen."

His actions, which included murder, arson, and the destruction of federal property, were "inappropriate." Because they were successful, however, and "now maybe people will listen," he's a hero.

The daughter went on to say, "'But if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished,' she told ABC. 'But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government.'"

That government workers deserve to be killed? That our taxes are so high (in Texas, mind you, where there is no state income tax) that we are entitled to resort to extremism and destruction? What exactly does she agree with? Or, in this age of Tea Partying populist anti-government paranoia, does it not even matter? "Injustice," she says. Injustice towards whom? About what? I am trying to stay calm, trying to understand what on earth she is talking about. I am not having an easy time.

I would like to knock on her door and ask to come in and have a nice quiet polite chat where I ask her whether she now identifies with the hypothetical daughter of a 9/11 hijacker who thinks her father is a hero. Because what's the difference? Are Muslims terrorists and white men who act out merely "inappropriate"?

And then I will put down my cup and look her in the eye. Very quietly, I will say, I have been to three funerals and four shiva calls in six months. I have traveled to Connecticut for death and to North Carolina and to DC and to Westchester. I am tired, and I am angry, so angry that I am probably clutching the table right now. Because how dare anyone think that he is entitled to kill people, to fly a plane into a federal building just because he believes something? My mother works in a federal building and my father used to. I don't care what you believe; you can die for your beliefs, if you feel that strongly about them. But how dare you take other people with you to prove a point?

GodHatesFigs.com

My favorite spam-fax from the Westboro Baptist Church is all about Figs. It's also a clear rip off of Jeff Foxworthy.

"You might be a good fig if you:

• confess that Jews killed Jesus, and repent and mourn that grievous sin;
  
• put away your lie that God will bless you for pretending to eat kosher;
  
• recognize that Israel is doomed because of the Jews' proud sin."

More likely you are an evil fig.

"You might be an evil fig if you:

• would rather starve than eat the Bread of Life, whom you proudly crucified;
  
• Loudly proclaim that you're entitled to land you stole in your disobedience;
  
• Are proud of the bloody butcher's apron known as the Israeli flag."

Until we got this sheet, I didn't know why the sensitive and intelligent folks at the WBC chose to send the company I work for faxes everyday. (One we get frequently mentions Matthew Shepard, who it says "has been in hell these eleven years.") Now I realize: it's because we're evil figs! Although I'm not sure we loudly proclaim we're entitled to anything, or that we would turn down any free food, even the Bread of Life. Still, we meet the general requirements.

Guess what, Westboro Baptist Church? I may be an evil fig but I've got one up on you. Hear that whooshing sound? That's me turning the other cheek.

Oh yes. That's right. I FORGIVE YOU. I have out-Christianed you, and on Ash Wednesday no less. So stuff that in your fax machine. And have a nice day.

True story!

My tiny little college roommate gave birth to a giant baby! Well, both my roommates were tiny, and Catholic, and had short straight hair and small breasts and adorable faces, now that I think on it. But here I'm referring to the second roommate of the two, the one who got married, oh, just about NINE MONTHS AGO.

Kaboom!, as the scientists say. Two math-majors meet, mingle, and as a result new life walks the earth. Their union has already produced something more substantive than the US Senate has managed to produce in years. (Using the life of One of God's Children to score political points? Is that below me? Should it be, *Sarah Palin*?)

I am in shock. She squeezed 9 lbs and 4 oz of something live and kicking out of her canoodle today. While I was doing what, browsing Facebook? Thinking about the worst possible first/early date movies? (My picks, aside from Slate's winner "Closer": "Quills," "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover," "the Dreamers," and "Belle du Jour." All movies that seem like they should either be sexy or fun or both and end up being horrifying.)

Oof. Well, regardless, happy life, little newborn baby! And congratulations all around.

100%?

I am baffled by the idea that there can be a 100% chance of anything. "Taxes," suggested a friend this morning. Okay, fine: death and taxes. But anything else? Even the fact of the sun rising, the earth continuing to spin, the sky being up and the ground being down, gravity, entropy, cereal ...

Surely the scientists at weather.com are rounding up? I would be much more comfortable with a percentage that allowed for the element of sheer randomness and chaos in our lives -- 99.8% even. Am I alone in this?

I Hate the Future

While browsing through old journals for the mem-wa, I came across this curt poem I wrote four years ago, when I had just been laid off from Job #2:

I Hate the Future

I hate the future

dark car
on a dark street
moving

Something bright may sit
behind the tinted windows

All i see
is the barreling forward
the peaceful air it displaces

Four years later, employed again (Job #5!), housed again (Apartment #4!) and married, I am elated to discover, some things never change.

Laughing like the guy from 'Mary Poppins'

Mr. Ben and I watched In the Loop (2009) Saturday night, and it was the most gleefully foul-mouthed thing I've come across since the Aristocrats. Also the most hilarious.

Simon Foster: Tobes, I don't want to have to read you the riot act but I am going to have to read you some extracts from the riot act, like section one, paragraph one: don't leave your boss twisting in the wind and then burst in late, smelling like a pissed seaside donkey.

Toby Wright: Look, alright, I was late for the meeting, Simon, I am sorry, but it's not like I threw up in there, is it?

Simon Foster: No, you're right, I'm being unfair. I should be thanking you for not throwing up. Well done, you're a star. You didn't wet yourself, did you? You're in the right city. You didn't say anything overtly racist. You didn't pull your cock out and start plucking it and shouting "Willy Banjo". No, I'm being really unfair. You'd got so much right, without actually being there in the beginning of one of the most important moments of my career. Thanks, you're a legend.

...

Jamie MacDonald: Hi, Toby, Toby. Very pleased to meet you. Please sit down. Now, right, that's enough of all the fucking Oxbridge pleasantries.

Toby Wright: What's Oxbridge about saying hello?

Jamie MacDonald: Shut it, Love Actually! Do you want me to hole punch your face?

Even the deleted scenes were funnier than anything else I've seen this year, with the possible exception of Up in the Air.

Mr. Ben and I had a rather Brit-themed weekend, what with the "Full English" brunch at Chip Shop and reading Harry Potter aloud as we cooked. It reminded me that I really, really want to go to Britain. The lake country! Stonehenge! Oxford! Cranford! (Is that a real place?) I want to go every damn village I've ever read about and, while Mr. Ben is distracted by the Tower of London or something, make out with every cute, tall, deadpan, angular, well-dressed bloke I can find. And I wouldn't say no to Kate Winslet, either.

Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't need my love

But he has it anyway:

I think it's most worth noting that "I forgot Obama was black"--in all its iterations--is something that white people should stop saying, if only because it's really dishonest. One way to think about this is to flip the frame. Around these parts, we've been known, from time to time, to chat about the NFL. We've also been known to chat about the intricacies of beer. If you hang around you'll notice that there are no shortage of women in these discussions. Having read a particularly smart take on Brett Favre, or having received a good recommendations on a particular IPA, it would not be a compliment for me to say, "Wow, I forgot you were a woman." Indeed, it would be pretty offensive.

The problems is three-fold. First, it takes my necessarily limited, and necessarily blinkered, experience with the fairer sex and builds it into a shibboleth of invented truth. Then it takes that invented truth as a fair standard by which I can measure one's "woman-ness." So if football and beer don't fit into my standard, I stop seeing the person as a woman. Finally instead of admitting that my invented truth is the problem, I put the onus on the woman. Hence the claim "I forgot you were a woman," as opposed to "I just realized my invented truth was wrong."

Ditto for Chris Matthews. The "I forgot Obama was black" sentiment allows the speaker the comfort of accepting, even lauding, a black person without interrogating their invented truth. It allows the speaker a luxurious ignorance--you get to name people (this is what black is) even when you don't know people. In fact, Chris Matthews didn't forget Barack Obama was black. Chris Matthews forgot that Chris Matthews was white.

(Emphasis mine. The wisdom, however, is all his.)

freakish and disproportional

I INQUIRED about the price of a ladies’ tuxedo jacket, since I couldn’t find the tag, and learned that the jacket was not sold separately from its matching black satin teddy ($1,700).

“Would you still like to try it on?” one of the tattooed ladies asked.

“I’d rather see it on you, actually,” I replied.

She very sweetly and immediately obliged.

I inspected the peplum and the Balmain-esque shoulder pads. “It’s a very small size, isn’t it?”

“Well, I’m a 32D, so it fits great,” my helper said in response.

It was refreshing to hear a demi-couture jacket’s merits discussed in terms of cup size. I was surprised that a 32D didn’t look at all freakish or disproportional, like a Japanese robot or Pam Anderson during her Kid Rock phase.

Is it my imagination or does this seem like the opening of a mediocre piece of erotica? Maybe handling all those ben-wa balls made this author feisty. Regardless, I'd appreciate it if, in the future, she kept her surprise that ordinary-sized people are not, in fact, hideous monsters to herself.

Pamela Anderson is 36DD, which would translate to a 32G. Not that that makes her freakish, either, but the author may as well get her insulting facts right. Seriously, Meghan McCain is on the right track here, and you, Cintra Wilson, are feeding guppies to the piranhas of women's insecurity and body-hate.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: WTF, NYT.

Body Image

My friends have seen me naked. NO I'M NOT OVER IT. I wish I could go through their memories with steel wool.

On the plus side, I have now been to Spa Castle.

Over the five or so hours I was under-clothed, I was treated with complete respect; over the next twenty-four hours of my regular life, ironically, I was sexually harassed once and hit on twice. Which is to blame: the lingering glow of relaxation, or the patriarchy?

EDITED TO ADD:

Shots of the coupliest New Years Eve ever are now up on Flickr. Although here it looks like I am being attacked, rest assured that those hands belong to people I love.

New calling

PHONE: Ring! Ring!

ME: Hello?

T.: Hi, sweetie! I have some bad news.

ME: Okay, shoot.

T.: You can't be a bridesmaid at my wedding ...

ME: Okay, that's okay ...

T.: ... because we want you to officiate!


CONFIRMATION EMAIL: Congratulations! You are now a legally ordained minister for life, though you may relinquish your credentials at any time. AS OF Thursday the 14th of January 2010 YOU HAVE BECOME A MEMBER OF THE PRESTIGIOUS CLERGY. You have earned a title worthy of admiration and respect.


And a new chapter begins.

I wonder whether being the minister will be more or less fun than being the bride. (I also wonder whether I'll ever get to be a bridesmaid, but as I recognize that anxiety is both perverse and premature, I won't dwell on it.)

A quick assignment

1) Take a look at this picture.

2) Read the accompanying short article.

3) Then read the comments. Yes, I know, there are over 300 of them. Here's a handy trick I learned in college: Pay attention to what comes first and last and skim what's in between. Or, to get straight to the point, relax your eye to see only the word "health/y."

Whoa, right? Who knew it mattered that women who are paid to look a particular way are "healthy" -- and also that we all agree about what that word means? Maybe I'm sensitive to this issue because I've been so recently immersed in the randomness of cancer. My father was far less healthy than my uncle and he died three years older. From farther away, their deaths are indistinguishable, despite one's purported health and the other's neglect.

Another example comes courtesy of Jezebel: Carrie Fisher, who, as she puts it, used to be "pretty" and isn't anymore. Of course, when she was bikini-ready, she was on ten kinds of drugs, and she's now fat because of psychiatric treatments that keep her moderately sane. ("This is my medication overweight. I barely eat anything and I wind up looking like I've been combing the city for donuts.")

All of which is to say: Health is not as easy to read as we assume it is from a person's physique.

Okay, I hear you saying, rolling your eyes. But these people are exceptions! Or, as my friend Jenn put it, "The AMA would disagree with you."

I'm sure it would. But that doesn't make the AMA right. Jenn and I went on to discuss the issue:

me: these things are averages, not destinies. in any event, i don't think a woman's health has any impact on her ability to model clothes. skinny or fat, i think the only question is Does she look good? and Do the clothes appear to advantage on her body?

Jennifer: I agree. Also, i've seen enough runway shows to confidently say that size zero models still have cellulite

me: ... thank you, honey.

My favorite comment, which I think takes the health fixation to its natural extreme, says, without any apparent irony, "Models ideally would be women who ate right, exercised regularly and managed their stress."

ROLE MODELS, ideally, should eat right, exercise regularly, and manage their stress. MODELS should show up, look purty, date Leonardo diCaprio, and be of whatever size works for them professionally. Models are more than billboards. But they are less than superheroes. I don't care if Kate Moss has a coke habit the same way that I don't care if politicians get their kicks from necrophilia (though I draw the line at screwing with socks on).

Diabetes! Heart disease! OBESITY EPIDEMIC! I'm just saying it so you don't have to. But feel free to say anything else.

and now for something completely different

Help me out, internets! My everyday boots are shredding on the inside, no doubt from my extended bouts with grief, and I need a new pair stat. They must be what I call Good Clomping Boots. Nothing dandy or flimsy, these boots have to take me into Mordor if need be, or into the icebox of North Dakota.

Complicating factors: 1) I like pretty things; 2) My money likes to hibernate year round.

So, what do we think? Buy these now? (Fluevog, on sale for $99)



Or these? (Fluevog, on sale for $99)



Or should I wait for these to be available again (Frye, via Zappos, on sale for $197? These are sort of the ideal.



"Other" is also an acceptable option.

RIP, 2009

My uncle died less than 24 hours after I returned from the North Carolina hospice. The final episode of his life, which began with the diagnosis and ended with his last breath, unfolded over seven weeks.

In seven weeks, his body unraveled. That's unthinkable. And so I am unthinking. I am in hiding, more or less. My poor family. All the men are gone. First my grandfather, then my father, and now my uncle. We are a collection of widows and children and me, a married child.

Please hurry up, 2010, and bring your friends 2011-2019. Tell them all to be kinder to us than the last year was.