the rich will always be rich

americans are going ballistic at the latest round of AIG bonuses -- $165 million contractually due to execs in the financial products division. yup, the same guys that broke the world. (that the total pay-out for 2008 and 2009 is actually $450 million seems to be getting lost in the blather) while some krazees are defending them as a necessary means of retention, ya know, keeping the really good guys on board (are psych evaluations part of this bail-out plan? cuz that's fruitcake nutso to say in your outside voice), bottom line is it's on paper. it's a legal obligation. that there seemed to be no performance standard required to receive a staggering bonus is something for another time when we visit opposite-land. the president, the treasury secretary and even andrew cuomo are all going brimstone and "up with this we will not put", but they're kinda stuck. it's like this plan was drafted on a cocktail napkin after too many gibsons in a final fuck-you gesture by the previous administration. that whole "let the market regulate itself" worked out so well, it made perfect sense to give all these recipients carte blanche, right? just push mountains of untethered money at them and it will all work out perfectly. (or maybe they had just watched that "dallas" episode where bobby wakes up in the shower and the whole season had just been a dream?)

rep. elijah cummings of maryland, a member of the house committee on government oversight, said he had been communicating regularly with AIG’s chief executive, edward m. liddy, about the bonuses ever since december. mr. cummings said he was particularly concerned that the bonuses were supposed to be paid by march 15, adding that he assumed treasury officials had the same worries.

from today's ny times:

“i assumed that they were well aware of it and would take appropriate action” before the march 15 deadline. “in light of the biggest quarterly loss in history, you would think that AIG and mr. liddy would have been able to convince folks who were supposed to be getting these retention payments, based at least in part on performance, that they might want to voluntarily not take all or part of them.” i almost spat my tea reading this. guys with history's most bloated sense of entitled hubris, working under a bail-out plan that required zero transparency and even less accountability, are supposed to suddenly do the right thing? instead of taking the money and running? on what planet does cummings live? "aw, shucks, c'mon guys. make nice? once ? please? with a cherry on top?" except the cherry is the no-strings-attached gajillion dollar pay-out and a soon-to-be life of leisure on a tropical island or swiss chalet for these execs.

yesterday iowa senator charles grassley suggested in a radio interview that AIG executives "come before the american people and take that deep bow and say, i'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide." now some pundits are pointing at grassley and shaking their heads over such crazy-talk from the cornfields. republicans aren't exactly known for their comic delivery and the seppuku bit is over the top only because it was reserved for samurais who had tainted their code of honor. the whores at AIG and their money bros had none, so certainly don't deserve the glory of falling on their own swords. i do seem to recall a couple of european financiers committing suicide last year when the edges began to fray, but i can't think of a single failed american ceo who has stepped down out of this whole mess. the big 3 in detroit and the money houses still standing all are still run by the same white guys who ran them into the ground, and our economy and future right along with -- as gm goes, so goes the country, eh?

as this debacle continues to spiral, i don't know who should be more ashamed. i do know that nobody involved in any of this -- nobody-- seems to have a sense of contrition. it's being played as an "oops" instead of a melt-down.

and the guys with the money? they still have it. they hire sheryl crow for parties (northern trust got $1.6 billion) and commute on private jets (ceo of bank of america --$45 billion). at the christie's auction of yves st. laurent's estate a hand-made chair from the early 20th century sold for about $28 million -- 10 times its pre-show value. one chair.

"he who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year. " ~~ leonardo davinci

not.

we can't afford that

• the metropolitan museum of art has laid off 74 people, and warns of more layoffs to come. we cannot afford art.
• the number of foreclosures in NYC rose 44% last month. we cannot afford homes.
• last year, american families lost 18% of their total wealth. that adds up to $11 trillion. we cannot afford wealth.
• the leader of china says he's "worried" about the trillion dollars in US treasuries his country holds. we cannot afford credit.
• six flags is on the verge of bankruptcy. we cannot afford fun.

but madoff is in the clink. that's something, anyway.

all men are liars

more than once, i've danced to this song at a wedding and drunkenly wondered the odds of that particular union succeeding. i mean, really? your first official party as mr. and mrs. and bridezilla includes that on the playlist?

i don't check my voicemail everyday, i look at the caller id. lots of "unavailables" and "privates" and "out of areas". anybody i'd like to talk to would call my cell anyway. plowing through the cache last week, i heard a gruff voice who only called himself a "blast from the past". now, if anybody reading this knows me, that doesn't really narrow it down much. it wasn't until the third message and the familiar whine of "geeze, aren't you ever home?" that i pieced it together.

back story:

it has been close to 20 years since we first met. with friends at one of our usual haunts i was on the prowl. i saw him and decided. mercenary that i was, he didn't really have a choice. he wasn't the first, nor would he be the last, to be surprised at how open i was about what i was after, and no surprise to me he ditched his friends when he realized he'd hit the jackpot. my apartment was walking distance, on a posh street in a swanky building.

he wasn't allowed to stay over and i didn't give him my number, but a few weeks later, aided by liquid courage, he rang the bell. his luck, because i'd just gotten home from work. "ya know, this isn't the first time i've come by. aren't you ever home?" he was cute, it had been fun, so i let him in. after a few more visits proved his dedication and capacities, i surrendered my phone number. i made no secret that there would be times he wasn't welcome and more than once i shooed him out because i had plans for which he was making me late. he was a sport about it, i'll give him that, even when he expressed a rather puritanical astonishment. i mean, c'mon, i let you come by and told you we had less than an hour before i had a date. put on your pants and get the hell out, ok?

this went on for years. whenever i asked if he was seeing somebody, he'd ALWAYS say, "not really." i knew it was less than true, but if he felt like she (or they) didn't warrant mention, so be it. whenever i was in a fit of monogamy, he politely stayed away. he'd check in every few months to see if the coast had cleared. when it had, he'd be right back over. all those years, i never once called him or visited where he lived. i never even asked. over time, i met many of his friends all of whom expressed amazement at "how long" i'd been around. lol. if they only knew what i was doing around elsewhere.

after i finally extricated myself from the alcoholic latino, b. rang me up just days after e. had moved out. i swear he was over to my house in minutes. did he call from, like, around the corner? he had been seriously involved with somebody too, but that was over now. how he'd missed me. how he couldn't believe all those years how lucky he'd been to have me. how he loved me. WHAT? since when? almost from when i met you. um, you never thought to mention it? he had wanted to get his career in motion, get settled, be more serious and then see where i was in my life. i called crock of shit. he didn't care what i believed, he was saying it now and could we be together? i was very jagged from my break-up and said i have no idea. we both were living on the north shore then, and his house wasn't far. he confessed having stalked my house more than once. um, creepy tmi, tyvm.

we saw each other more frequently then we ever had. it was strange, but in a nice way. i almost started to relax.

one morning in bed. he swore his love again. i had yet to say it. then he dropped one of the biggest bombs possible. "i'm going to get married." i nearly vomited. the one from before had given an ultimatum. blah blah. he was still talking when i told him to please stop talking. i don't care what she said to you, or "is making you do." get out. but-but-but. get out. i couldn't allow him the pressure valve of confession. (long ago, i learned the power in that little maneuver, lol.)

he called shortly after they'd had a baby. no. i do not want to see you. i was involved with the owner. i certainly didn't need another married man in my life. jeebus. he was friendly and jokey as always. i was frosty to say the least. "i still care about you." "no, you just wanna get laid." "well, i'd come over if you let me." "um, no."

best estimate, that call was about five years ago.

i don't know how long it's been since he's crossed my mind, but it doesn't surprise me that he's again sniffing around. now he's got three kids. he's been looking all over for me. he's found the google stuff, of course, but seemed surprised i wasn't on facebook. i'm not on facebook so people like you can't find me. he's been here. i wasn't home. really, no surprise to either, right? "i'd come over if you let me." no surprise there and you suck. "um, no." bitching about his kids. complaining about his wife. she's not that nice to me -- not like you always were. "we all make choices." how he shouldn't have let me go. "you never had me." but could i have had? "it doesn't matter now." he just would like to know. "it doesn't matter, and either way, i'm glad it didn't happen." he assumed that i wouldn't let him at me because i had a man. "i do, he's a good one, we've been together a very long time. that's not why you can't come over."

he was sitting in the dark, in the driveway of his rambling farmhouse. it was late. his kids and likely his wife all asleep. some of his friends still ask about me and why he hadn't married me.he was whining about the life that he had chosen and how he wished it was different. how he thought it might have been better.

please stop.

we all make choices.

he assured me he will call again. i assured him i don't care.

blinded, not by science

the vatican this week is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of darwin's "the origin of the species." by having a seminar about evolution.

notably excluded from the invitee list were members of the "discovery institute", who espouse creationism and intelligent design. in fact, nobody who believes that hooey was invited. to the vatican. to. the. vatican. the organizers said they had barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy.

most of the world is ok with it. the pope is ok with it. he is not in conflict that evolution can coexist with faith. pope john paul II articulated the church's position most clearly in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, saying the theory of evolution is "more than a hypothesis."

my thoughts on faith aren't relevant here. yet i am again dumbfounded to realize that half of americans do not believe in evolution and think the world is less than 10,000 years old. i mean, c'mon, there are not THAT many mormon science teachers. i first learned about evolution from nuns, for heaven's sake.

in a poll i read today, 44% of americans could not name a "famous scientist". of those who *could*, they most frequently named bill gates, al gore and albert einstein. none of whom were scientists and one is dead.

bush famously crushed science during his tenure. any truth supporting climate change or rational discussion of deforestation, the effects of toxic waste, strip-mining, pesticides, big-ag, nasa discoveries, blah, blah, blah (god, i'm a broken record) was subverted or buried. cnn has let go all its science people. science coverage on the tv news is nearly non-existent unless a rover goes rogue, and although my papers still have a science feature on tuesdays, i somehow suspect that's not the case in smaller towns or more shrill publications.

obama has already got physicists (climate guru) and science geeks hard at work. what worries me is how much time has been lost. an entire k-8, or junior high to senior year school career being taught only enough rote and bad science to pass standardized tests. the equivalent of a generation. our tradition of curiosity, imagination and innovation squashed by disinterest and disinformation.

of course, maybe now that hedge funds and banking have lost their get rich quick sheen, perhaps some of those bright young things might actually think to look to the stars -- through a telescope and not at the hamptons.

tax dollars hard at work

discussing obama's stimulus bill, one of our country's congressmen had this to say:

Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) "The American public expects for us to get in and know what we're voting on, but there are very few members from Congress that are going to have time to actually read this thing. This is not light reading," Boozman added. "It's difficult reading, it involves policy and things. Right now, because of those things, I will probably vote against it."

yes. it's really long. it's got numbers and stuff. who has time to read all that? what's he busy doing? diddling staff pages? is he kidding me? who reads most of the crap that gets passed? anybody? nobody read the damn patriot act either, but that malevolent document sailed right through both houses.

then again, i know arkansas scores near the bottom of states' literacy rates, so maybe the guy can't read at all.

and as the michael phelps bong hoo-hah continues, that town sheriff rounded up 8 kids to arrest and netted less than an ounce of pot. even stoned, that's not funny. (of course here, it's not even a crime, lol.) isn't there some internet bully the cops can stalk, or craigs' list hooker teachers in that neck of the woods? what's a boss hog to do these days?

even the pretty must suffer

this week, in resexenomics.

from the ny post:

"the perks at Fashion Week are taking a weird turn downmarket. High-powered fashion editors and retail merchants - who in seasons past have hauled off gift bags of Victoria's Secret lingerie, Calvin Klein perfume and Estée Lauder cosmetics - will be treated this year to McDonald's, Budweiser and Jell-O."

while mclattes may be steaming backstage, i have yet to see a pic of anna wintour cradling anything but starbucks in her bony hands this week.

ky is also in the swag bags, so at least the fashionistas won't have to bone in dryness. although if you're really busting the budget, i suppose you could use the jello for lube and still have a snack afterward.

the copy reads: "his excites. her's delights. together they ignite." some kind of binary sex bomb? lots of spontaneous combustion between the sheets may tax our already underserviced and overburdened fire departments, so be careful with this stuff, kids! (lighter fluid is probably cheaper anyway...)

on a happier note, pernod-ricard reported a surge in sales last quarter, up 16%. they own absolut, which, if anybody was watching, ran an advert during the grammy show, and in some markets during the superbowl. hard booze hasn't been on tv commercials in decades, but when car dealers and red lobster cut back their ad budgets, something has to fill the airspace and pay the salaries for the skeletons on "gossip girls".

can't afford a night out? so huddle in front of your amish electric heater, get your honey in your snuggie, crack a 6-pack, lube up and get down.

drunk sex may just save our economy, america. count me in.

more octo-momz drama

credit for prescience, please. :)

side-by-side pix of krazee octo-pussy and angelina jolie show an eerie likeness made possible only by blade and syringe. the yearbook photo of nadya shows a very different face than the carved and poofed one she now presents to the media's maw. she has sent fawning fan mail to the jet-setting baby hoarder. if there is justice, the state will take all nadya's kids and make angelina and brad take them. no passports required because i doubt they are as photogenic as the hand-selected benetton brood of the jolie-pitt's, but at least the kids will get 3 hots and a cot.

several years ago, she received a pay-out disability check of $160,000 after she was injured on the job -- during a riot in a mental hospital. yes.

she has used that money for her plastic surgery and ivf treatments. unemployed and with no spousal support, she receives food stamps and state aid for three of the six children she already had, who are each handicapped. she has no health insurance and the hospital that held her and still has all the infants is asking the state for over $1 million in reimbursement for this circus. california is $42 billion in the red. how soon before villagers with pitchforks and torches hunt down mother of the year and bury her flayed body in a shallow grave? suburban coyotes smell the air and are licking their chops, hungry for the rare and delicious baby-fat.

her flaks issued a statement that some church gave her a house. church spokesman replied she has never been seen at service, and has denied any knowledge of her or of giving her anything. never mind a house, not even a card. although they are very happy she didn't have an abortion. ahem. of course.

nadya plans on returning to school in the fall to get a degree in counseling. (physician heal thyself...) she will use her student loan money to support the brood. um, isn't that dough, like, for books? not pallets of enfamil? will she put all the babies in a wheelbarrow and bring them to class? who the hell will be watching all her kids?

the doctor supposedly responsible for abetting this side-show is now under investigation for implanting 7 embryos in a 49-year-old woman who is now pregnant with quadruplets. this one already has 3 adult children but wants to share new pitter-patted joy with her new much younger husband. uh, isn't 49 a bit outside the fertility window for one, never mind FOUR?

thankfully, octo-pussy now claims she is done having babies.

not to be outshone, tabloids from across the pond today published a story about a 15-year-old girl and her THIRTEEN-year-old boyfriend who just had a baby. the boy's voice has yet to drop and he is 4-feet tall. he looks like he is 8-years old, i swear. he does not get an allowance and has no idea what nappies cost but swears he will be a good father. his father has popped off 9 kids with various womenz. both kids live in council housing. an english minister is "so so very happy the children did not choose abortion". ahem. of course. and let's thrill to their decision to try to keep this baby and add to the dole that the teen mom's six siblings and single mother are on already. future's so bright ya gotta wear shades, right?

we now conclude today's trainwreck reviews. carry on.

baby hoarders

i blame angelina jolie.

this mother of a recent litter of octuplets is proving more of a freak-show each day. we now know who she is, that she and her tsunami of a womb bankrupted her parents and that her entire brood, all 14, including a set of twins, were conceived via in-vitro. she had a single donor years ago and ziplocked a bunch of frozen eggs.

no job, no husband, no baby-daddy, no visible means of support, other than her freaked-out parents, yet some doctor(s?) kept popping her up with fertilized eggs. "please, sir? may i have some more?" she always wanted "lots of kids", according to her mom, but was diagnosed infertile at a young age. stuffed up tubes or something. if there is really a hand of god at work, he was at least trying there, don't ya think?

GAAAHHH!!!!

she has hired TWO publicists and is fishing for a $2 million payday from oprah, sawyer or some such flak. "she just wants to make sure her babies have a secure future." actual quote. are you fucking kidding me? how far does $2 million go, split 17 ways, after the pampers and the enfamil stop coming for free? who will pay for the massive bill incurred by this freakish feat of science? who will pay for the special medical needs of these premature infants as they grow into delicate toddlers and teens? who will pay for the years of therapy these kids will need because their mother is a fertility froot loop?

the last mother who birthed octuplets called it a "blessing from god". if a doctor, a needle and a deep freezer are involved? uh, god is not between your legs.

with in vitro, the common practice -- and the ethical medical guideline -- is to "selectively reduce" the number of fetuses. so if more than 2 of the eggs "catch", the mother is advised to kill off the others. abort. nobody dares call it that, but the preferred euphemism really pisses me off. yeah, she could just as easily be killing off an albert einstein or a jeffrey dahmer, but who knows because the *pfft, baby, baby* is random. a doctor cannot force a patient into this option, but most women, having gotten this far and spent that much, make the mercenary decision to cull the embryonic herd. like most women, i have a conflicted view of abortion. a teen-aged girl, suffering the consequence of a broken condom must do the walk of shame into a clinic, past mary's on the half-shell and screaming haters, if she can even get to one anymore (thanks, george w.); but a well-off woman will be nestled in the quiet cocoon of a posh office having a "necessary procedure." "cup of early grey, mrs. so-and-so?"

frankly, i'm also not very sympathetic to middle-aged women who spend tens of thousands to force their wombs into submission. they either waited too long and misjudged their bodies' clocks or their husbands' swimmers are bent or laggardly, or what have you. i appreciate the egotism of wanting your own mini-me (look! i made that!), but i'm also a keen believer in the natural order of life. again, hand of god...eight is not enough, nor is apparently 17, because there is a show on cable now called "18 and counting." a website, a tv show, a blog, a book, ad nauseum, all about this conservative religious couple in arkansas that just keeps pumpin' out babies. they each were under 20 when they married. he has run for public office, apparently his only platform being that he is anti-choice. other than everybody having bad hair-dos, they seem like good parents. they are financially secure, work in their own business and none of their neighbors are talking smack about them. strange enough in this day of joe the plumber getting air-time, but everybody says the kids are nice and well-behaved.

transportation is provided by nine vehicles, including a 21-passenger bus. (which really only means they own 9 cars.) although where the hell they all go together, besides mega-church on sunday, is a complete mystery to me.

the kids are home-schooled, according to a christian program. i suppose if they were sucking up tax dollars for books and pencils and special ed classes, more folks might be squawking dirt. (am i wrong in recalling that home-schooled families get a tax rebate?) the family belongs to an evangelical christian movement called quiverful, which much like "taken in hand," teaches that the women are submissive to the men and the kids submit to both parents. like the exiled lds polygamists, the girls wear long dresses and modified mullets. quiverful holds that children are a blessing from god and that husbands and wives should gladly accept all the children they are given.

"we are just so grateful to god for another gift from him," said jim bob duggar, the dad upon birth of number 18. (couldn't he just have the one first name? jeebus, lol.)

neither the california nutcase nor this southern couple are being *given* babies. no stork is dropping them off on his busy global rounds, nobody's leaving them under cabbage leaves. i can't begin to fathom that doctors continue to enable the former (again, ego -- look what i made!!), and the duggars just won't "waste" the seed. hell, even the pope is ok with pulling out.

the duggars continue to conceive naturally, and the mother remains healthy.

ms. california is another story. is the ama on this yet?

they may seem two ends of the spectrum but both ends are whoring themselves and their KIDS out for dough. for fame. maybe to recruit more quivers.

if you can't be meryl streep or robert altman or yo-yo ma; or tom brady or giselle; or stephen hawking or stevie ray vaughan; if you aren't pete doherty, lindsey lohan, paris hilton or even amy winehouse, i guess fertility is the new option for your 15 minutes.

yuk.

pre-conceived notions

this is not my first recession nor downturn. there were mini quakes in the late 80s and the dot-com bust hit our fair city pretty hard. i gotta admit, i don't miss the hubris of those fidelity guys. (more fucking ARAUJO!!! followed by "i can't imagine making any more money." yeah. actual quote. where is he now? selling his used shirts?)

but this?

waiters do not get "laid off". business drives the schedule, so if there isn't much, and you're low man on totem pole, you're out of luck. BUT, you still "have a job", ya know? it's about volume.

today, my day off, i got a string of beseeching e-mails: "laid off." "let go." "no room on the schedule." etc. good, solid people i would love to clone. my own employer has us all in a panic with the savage paring of the payroll, and we don't have a helluva lot going on the next few months. so little the few of us remaining are full of gallows humor as to whom might be next. we all know it's "me". (the generic me, not me myself, lol) whaddya do? the best you can is it.

any mis-step might be the last.

never.

nothing.

nothing like it.

scariest times evah.

i'm glad i don't have kids right now.

knowing me, knowing you

in between tasks today, i had some lively discourse on a local board. my participation waxes and wanes with my free time and the topics running.

the recent opening of a place with a french 3-star michelin chef attached has people going crazy, lol. the project got waylaid when the original management company pulled out and that delayed the opening by about 8 months. luxury condos are attached and it sits on very pricey waterfront property.

caveat: i have not been to the restaurant. in fact, i was offered a chance to go last night for drinks, but my foul-weather gear made me feel under-dressed. my expense-account wielding companion agreed so we'll try another night.

the boards were a-twitter with talk of $20 martinis, but next to nothing about the food. (dial up your way-back machines, my friends, and i was a bartender at the place that broke the $10 glass of wine ceiling. the office chix in keds/anklets/anne taylor went insane.) the economy and the weather have kept many away, but an astonishing number had fierce opinions about a place they have never been. lmao.

the op sparked related threads. one poster and i had an interesting back and forth in all of them. he eventually linked his website. it has his picture. i know him. i laughed out loud. while polite, he always treated me as a lackey when dining in my places of employ. yet my nom de net allowed me the veil so he instead saw me as somebody passionate, knowledgeable and *equal*.

in that same set of threads someone began stalking me with the j'accuse of "tell us where you work, or your words don't mean jack." the site is tightly moderated, so all his queries did get deleted, but not before a bunch of "whoa, dude, how dare you?" replies popped up. i like to think i post in a thoughtful and passionate way -- my devotion to food and grape apparent and articulate. my defenders agreed, lol.

strange small world.

the web derailed my life once, ya know? not again, my friends. not again.

baker's dozen + 1

GAH.

the california woman who recently birthed a litter of 8 already has 6 children, including a set of twins.

i realize doctors are not ethics police and cannot force patients into choices, but, um, fertility treatments for this woman? are you fucking kidding me? she has proven sufficiently fecund, don'tcha think?

rumor has it that she lives with her parents and no "father(s) of the brood" is present.

who is paying for all this?

how long before she is on oprah?

is eight enough?

earlier today, a woman outside los angeles gave birth to OCTUPLETS. six boys and two girls, some weighing less than two pounds. delivered by caesarean, they all were born within five minutes of each other. what -- scooped out like fish teaming in a barrel?

the mother is expected to be in hospital a few more days, but the infants will be in at least two months.

doctors were quite candid about mothers who conceive with fertility drugs "selectively reducing to a viable number of fetuses." that she chose to carry all of them as long as possible was "unusual".

oh, and it was so crowded in the womb, docs thought she only had seven wrigglers in there. surprise!

forty-six medical staff were involved in the delivery.

the babies were nine weeks premature. three of them could not breathe on their own.

the mother of the *first* set of octies born in the u.s. calls it a "blessing". no. it. is. not. it's science and ego run wildly amok.

this is so profoundly wrong and garish on so many levels i'm speechless. truly.

who are these people?

the news that precipitated my recent trip home was horrible. not a thing that had ever crossed my mind in its bleakness -- it skipped the generational sequence, ya know?

guilt and anxiety battled it out in my head and heart as i rode down to ny in the dark. the years of silence, preceded by years of hurt, misunderstanding, selfishness, and confusion. i mean, everybody's family has its own brew of dysfunction so why was i so poorly equipped to deal with my own? honestly? long ago, i just decided it wasn't worth it. from a very young age i was given no emotional foundation and while still a teen, the finances dried up too. caught up in their own anger, and still playing emotional tit-for-tat, i could no longer harness the energy for it. at first it was surprising how easily they gave up on me. then... not so much.

i was alone. for real.

my mother and grandmother had always been fierce. bitter disappointed tempests who often reduced me to tears by the volume and power of their rage. rarely did i fight back, hoping to let the storm pass without adding to the ledger for future accusations. it was astonishing how tightly they held onto every hurt -- actions from my childhood, when consequences couldn't be understood because i was a CHILD living in a very confused dynamic. expected to be truthful and kind, yet party to deceit so often it makes my head spin to think about it now.

years pass. who are these people? they are my family and they are old and sad and alone and afraid.

my father cried upon seeing me, couldn't meet my eyes and confessed a very difficult relationship between he and my brother. a sibling to whom i feel no familial tie, really -- i've met him twice and both times he was a sulky quiet teenager. my father's guilt over my mother and me was apparent. but... so? let it go already. yeah, you treated us both awfully, but my mother was impossible and so complicit, right? me? it was so long ago, whatever i felt is buried so deeply i now only feel uncomfortable at his emotional displays. he stepped up for once in his life and offered to help at least cart me around a city i forget is so big. thank you.

part of my grandmother's decline is par for her age, i suppose. heading towards 90 and having had several bad falls. nothing ever broke, but years of standing at work followed by years of sleeping on the couch (still!) cannot be good long-term spinal strategy. the true shock was her brownstone actually being the grey gardens i nightmared it would be -- the cats, the smell, the rotting walls, the filthy kitchen and bathrooms, the trash, the overgrown yard and undone laundry. bedrooms that had become giant litterboxes for feral cats. my mother had been living there and her room, bathroom and even the bathrobe still on her bed were just filthy. which meant she was unwell for a very long time. she had always been a fastidious housekeeper, eat off the floor if you wanted kinda person. let's just be thankful blogger hasn't added a scratch-n-sniff widget yet.

this was my first visit to a nursing home. it was clean and didn't smell! my mother was getting her hair done. she didn't recognize me. she was in a wheelchair. she looked a million years old. her two front teeth were broken, i'm guessing in a fall, (of which i guess there were many) but that seemed impolite to ask at this point. we waited over an hour for her to be finished and then for whatever reason, my grandmother was in a huge fit was to leave. i ventured alone the next day, contrary to my grandmother's determination that i join her at some old folk's hoo-hah at the church. my mother seemed "in the moment", i guess, but only just there. she responded to my remarks, but never more than a few words. she knew about obama though and was amazed i'd met him. (even though "he is not the right color to be president.") she holds her resentment still about her mother, my father and the aunt who was the one who finally bothered to track me down. she was either confused or ashamed about some issues, like where is your car, where is your stuff and what the hell happened? i lobbed softballs, but none of what she had to say matched anybody else's accounts.

so now what? exit my own life that i've built for better or worse? in its present state, i could not live at my grandmother's. even regular weekly trips down to clean wouldn't make a dint in the dire state of the place. my perilous financial state will not allow me to rescue anything or anybody. my signature anywhere could prove to be my ruin.

part of my own disavowal of emotional quid pro quo was that there never was any "quo". saber rattling and blackmail, yup, but the returns were miserly. so i'm stuck in this tail-chase of what do i *owe* them? again, it's all on me. my phone hasn't rang, no e-mails or notes in the post. i can make my own rules, i suppose, but again, i have no play-book.

i promised my mother magazines. i will start there.

curtains

in the wizard of oz, much goes on about paying "no attention to the man behind the curtain." if that damn wizard wasn't irish, i'll eat my grandfather's shilaleagh.

"lace curtain irish" was a long-ago slam to those putting on *airs*. the first yuppies. your windows might look pretty to the street, but inside your house must still be a boozy caterwalling free-for-all, cuz god knows.

my first confessions involved curtains, not doors. the openings cloaked by heavy velvet red drapes -- obvious much?

i was a young young noodle (yes, that young) when i became aware of the curtains my family kept drawn. not asking others meant you didn't open up for others to ask you. don't say this, don't say that; i'm sure i recall only a small amount and yet it seems like a giant lead apron. i do remember heavy prepping before parties at the shore. my mom was never there. my grandmother's boyfriend's family... there was a woman whose name was "nanette", so when i screwed up and said, "nanny", i got a pass. it was many years till i wondered if that's why i was told to call her that.

well into my life as an adult, i know i don't *share* well. i guess i feel like i have too much to hide! frequently i am amazed by what others tell me. (sir bob might be a whole other post...) often i think they feel safe sharing because i don't. think about it. much like chaunce, i admit, i do "like to watch."

today i answered emails that had lingered too long, from women who have known me most of my life. friends. right? for over a year, i've been unsure of the best (?) way to explain the not-so-new dynamic of the owner and me. he's divorced now, i'm in the clear, right? ahem. no matter how i feel, their lives make me wonder what they truly think. i'm happy, he's happy, but on somebody's back? ack. they tried an intervention over the black eye, so we'll just see here.

and then? i had to tell them about peg. it was profoundly hard (then & now) to type " she's never coming out." they knew her as the sharp redhead with the jaguar, who let them skirt the truth if they got to our house on time. used to keeping secrets, i guess she felt as long as they were inside by curfew, all was cool. even when their moms called, peg never ratted out my friends. she did clue them in and make it VERY clear she would not lie on their behalf again. it worked. everybody wanted to stay at our house, lol.

recently they've all sent me family snaps. it's the holidays. i realized it's been ages since i've had a pic snapped. like -- years. for so long, i hid, and i still feel unsure about that. ( sidebar?) if there is no pic with my face, i don't exist. right? with the owner, it still feels safer to be hidden.

man vs. woman, again

from this morning's ny times:

One mother in TriBeCa, who is married, at least for now, to a Wall Street executive, put it rather bluntly: “My job was to run the household and the children’s lives,” she said. “His job is to provide us with a nice lifestyle.” But his bonus has disappeared, and his annual pay has dropped to $150,000 from $800,000 a year. “Let me just say this,” she said, “I’m still doing my job.”

since the crash, the times and its upscale sisters have all spent a fair amount of column-width on the newly spartanized lifestyles of the former masters of the universe, many of whose families were in the 1950s model of dad as breadwinner and mom at home. yes, these modern women had staff, botox and s.u.v.'s, but most of them gave up lucrative careers in their prime. hey, we all make choices, ya know?

time after time, (as if you need further proof of my masochism, i do keep reading the bits) i am dumbfounded how these women simply will not adjust or bend. they might go an extra week between blonde root-touch-ups, but won't forsake their $200 haircuts. they choose to keep buying $300 jeans and their kids' clothes at ralph lauren. why the hell are they still shopping? oh, right, cuz that was part of their job description.

but what really gets me is the blame. we face an economic meltdown of cataclysmic proportions, its depths still unknown and unfolding, and these wives fault their husbands. it's not seen as a time to pull together, scale back, make different choices, experience life as less of an acquisitional race, maybe get a job (!) most americans would view a salary of $150k as quite comfy. yo, ashley, boohoo about that in flint, michigan why don'tcha? many of these men were victims of hubris, which wasn't unique to the individual, but endemic to the institutional culture. yet their mean carbo-deprived wives see only personal failure and betrayal and not a gigantic paradigm shift. eat an english muffin (ok, just half) and step outside yourself for just a sec, maybe?

a woman who works for me is in the midst of a divorce, details of which i'm fine not knowing. the genesis of her remarks last night aren't so germane here, but the message was essentially any woman is an idiot who goes out of her way, even one inch, for her man. that he should be crawling before her at all times. she thought i was insane for taking the commuter line back and forth to see the owner. if i were meaner, i suppose i could have offered that i clean his house too and watch her have a nervous breakdown, lol.

heading back to the vipers' nest, i guess i've spent a little extra time of late pondering where and when so many women become so parsimonious of spirit, why they don't see it and why they don't put on the brakes. i watched sadly as so many people got hurt by it for so many years. souls blackened, love crushed, my own emotional development suffocated for so long.

let's hope it's enough to know i want better and i expect more, while being fully aware it's up to me to make it so.

distance

one of the more popular family anecdotes about little noodle was "the time she ran away". just past the age of 8 months, i was walking. whether it was the lure of the shoes or ambitious independence -- you make the call.

honestly, i'm sure having something that small toddling around had to have been a royal pain for my mom who frequently played single mother for stretches. she was shoe shopping (yup!) and i was being a "brat", so she put me outside the store, in the stroller, with admonishments to "stay put! i'll be right out. don't you dare move!" all that was left of the transaction was to pay, and when she did and came to fetch me, i was gone. being better behaved, the stroller had followed instructions, but i was nowhere in sight. we were in a very busy shopping neighborhood of brooklyn, on a wide avenue. she ran to the corner, screaming my name. nothing.

she dodged traffic, across the street to the police station. a childhood friend, who still carried a torch, tried calming her down and ran outside with her. they crossed the street.

he canvassed the other shoppers, people in the nearby stores. how could nobody see what happened? unlike today, with milk-carton kids, amber alerts and sex offenders, it wasn't off the charts to take your eyes off your kid for a second, so i can only imagine the panic in my young mother's heart. she wasn't yet 20.

no doubt it felt like a life-time, but i had been missing about 15 minutes when ronny (the cop) saw my hot pink beret bopping through the crowd. he ran and swooped me up in his arms, my mom fast on heels. of the 100s of adults i passed, not one thought to pick up this baby and look for her mom? wtf, ya know? or did i look that determined, lol?

best they could guess, i had simply walked a big square, all the way around the block. i wasn't crying or upset, in fact was laughing with delight.

from as far back as i can remember, i tried desperately to get away. i begged for sleep-away camp (which i got for several summers, and cried hysterically when i had to go back home. on parents' day, when they were always hours and hours late, i secretly hoped they'd not show, even though the counselors always worried about me being alone); i pleaded for boarding school (which i did not get); vacations, i went off by myself as much as they'd allow. if we had to sit separately on the plane, i was thrilled and pretended i was traveling alone. when i got a car, i would sometimes drive backroads aimlessly, just to get out of the house.

when it came time to choose a college, boston was acceptable because i could be home in a few hours if there was an emergency, and we all joked "ha-ha", that it was far enough away they couldn't just drop in on me.

as soon as i moved away patches of silence, emotional distance, punctuated the miles between my home and theirs.

the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, my mother insisted i wasn't allowed to remain in the city and had to come home. it was a long hot summer in that house and i cried often and ate little. one of the last teary exchanges ended with her saying, "you don't ever want to live home again, do you?" in my anger, i heard it as a j'accuse, don't ever even think about it, you little bitch, but she could have just as easily been dying inside knowing how bad things were between us, and that i never would.

this last stretch? i am not even certain quite how long. i know how long i have been with the owner, and i think it is longer than that.

as months turn to years, you stop wondering why and it just *is*.

then something you never dreamed comes true and you have to bridge the miles. in lots of directions.

the question remains how close do i get and still stay safe?

can't make this stuff up

“the bush administration took a lot of pride that homeownership had reached historic highs, but what we forgot in the process was that it has to be done in the context of people being able to afford their house. we now realize there was a high cost.”
~~former treasury secretary john w. snow being quoted in the ny times.

from 2003 - 2006, snow served as the 73rd secretary of the u.s. treasury. before that appointment he worked in the reagan white house, having earned a ph.d. in economics from the university of virginia. currently he's serving as chairman of cerberus capital management, which among other things, owns 80% of chrysler.

on a wire

saturday i went to see the documentary, "man on wire," about the frenchman who toddled between the twin towers in 1974. a supernaturally focused funambule, he has also crossed the sydney harbor bridge and the louisiana superdome. the world trade center caper took 6 years to execute. he spent 45 minutes in the air, back and forth about 8 times, and because all of it was so illegal, no press was summoned. there is no video, but there are photos of him 1/4 mile up in the air. there were moments when he simply laid down on the wire, surrounded by the morning.

when he at last felt finished, and fell into the impatient "octopus of arms" of pissed-off nyc cops, he was accosted by reporters and gawkers. what fascinated him then, and now in hindsight, is how the most asked question was "why did you do it?" he felt it a peculiarly american inquiry, and wasn't so banal as mallory to say "because it's there." all along, much of what thrilled him was the scheming. he watched old tommy gun/bank job movies for mind-set, lol, and spent hours criss-crossing a cable in his yard. to mimic the wind potential, his friends would yank with all their might to sway the wire he walked. he never once fell. yet he always knew that any step he took that august day could be the one to his death.

there are times in life when "why?" is a question with a simple answer. "because it's the right thing to do." however, when the query is posed in view of behavior with a negative or unpleasant impact our internal dialogue can get thorny and unpleasant. when a pattern emerges, that unresolved conflict grows like a painful cyst. my thick head can only go under so many times while i try to swim through the waves too strong. there is the fear of facing it, and deeper still, the fear of admission with the subsequent failure of self-management. which brings judgement. i am then terrified of the disappointment... the closing of the door.

and yet? i know quite well my behavior in all its feebleness is a response, not an instigation. and yet? a year later, i continue to display my insanity and weakness and keep walking into that same pointy stick over and over and over and never say "ouch" out loud. i drown the pain with an ocean and can't look for a raft. past training has taught me there was nobody around with a paddle. this is not solely talk of the owner, but my family too. there may have been some in my life to whom i could have reached out, but i was, am, always too afraid. the loathing is now so deep, i'd rather waterboard myself before somebody else gets to it -- just leave me in the drift and be done with it.

this morning, talk of emotional water wings in my near future. maybe i am not alone.

this isn't really news...

except that it involves a mom in wasilla. not THAT mom, but the mom of the kid who knocked up the daughter of THAT mom, so there is a bit of rubbernecking and epicaricacy.

the mother of bristol palin's baby-daddy is facing 6 felony counts for selling oxycontin. she's bucking convention since wasilla is known for cooking meth, but won't she make a fine granny?

this is a sad and not funny story of flat broke, bored trashy people in a miserable morass of a crap-hole town using and selling drugs to briefly escape the dull pain of their shitty lives, and it would not be news that the mother of a high school dropout who's marrying some idiot girl he impregnated was arrested for using drugs except that at some point we were all instructed to respect these folks as Real Americans. actually, the republicans were sort of right, these people are the truth of america's small towns, and that is why as a whole we decided to elect the smart, educated, well-off urbanite aspirational black couple from Chicago instead of the angry vietnam veteran and the scary PTA pageant creationist with the fucked-up trashy family.

'tis the season

gather round, boys and girls, for a troika of stories 'bout the holidays in the hood.

walking from the "t" last night, i heard them long before i could see them. f-bombs and the c-word ringing in the cold air. approaching the now-notorious bar where a girl-fight resulted in some cheek being bitten and spat to the ground, the guy was kicking the driver's side door. she was screaming. people were looking. bar patrons standing in the open door, watching. a friend came over, but quickly dodged away. don't know what the chick behind the wheel said, but her "boyfriend" then threatened to "punch her in the neck". new one, to me anyway. unless she had just had a tracheotomy or recent stitches to a knife wound, then i could see the threat.

kept walking and two short blocks away the street was jam-packed, cordoned off and lit up like a july noon. a movie crew at the police station. fake news vans all over, real and costumed cops drinking coffee. never mind the white trash domestic violence banging around the corner and still within earshot, k?

then around in the square. n-star or some such with a ladder in a hole in the pavement. hard-hats keeping warm with coffee too. detail officer in the street. also in the street, a barefoot woman slurring at the cop. she was laughing too, but he kept having to grab her so she wouldn't just collapse. legs of rubber and arms grabbing at the air, i have no idea what she was on about, but she thought it was hilarious. n-star guys just kept staring. this was about 2 blocks from the police station, and you know the cop had a radio and all those over-timers had cell phones. somebody, anybody, get that zima-crazed broad out of the street? it was below freezing -- where the hell were her shoes? "do you want me to call somebody?" i asked. nope. duty cop said he was all set. somehow, i got the feeling he didn't feel like doing drunk tank paperwork or interrupting the movie shoot. (those union guys really hate to be interrupted.)

was santa watching? cripes.