big brass balls

last night in paris, a guy snipped a padlock, broke a window and stole a bunch of very famous paintings out of the museum of modern art. he swiped a picasso, a braque, a matisse, a modigliani and a leger. estimated value between $300 and 600 million euros.

the THREE overnight guards on duty "saw nothing". video shows a single masked man, before the surveillance system was disabled.

the frames were disassembled rather than shattered, so there remains hope the canvases were not damaged.

while i admire the audacity, this kind of theft is so staggeringly selfish it makes me very sad at the same time. a collector, with both more money than croesus and some serious pathologies, no doubt arranged this heist. the paintings will sit in his mansion evermore (am i the only one imagining a secret room behind a revolving faux bookcase kinda set-up?), where no one but the kleptocrat will ever see them again. he cannot even share them with friends, nor boast of his accomplishment.

but the stoopid starts here:

the director of the neighboring modern art museum palais de tokyo, pierre cornette de saint-cyr, called the thief or thieves "fools."

"you cannot do anything with these paintings. all countries in the world are aware, and no collector is stupid enough to buy a painting that, one, he can't show to other collectors, and two, risks sending him to prison," he said on television.

"in general, you find these paintings," he said. "these five paintings are un-sellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them."

i realize to a parisian there are no other cities on the planet, but i should like to remind this fellow of the gardner museum theft of 20 years ago. 13 paintings, including a rembrandt, a degas and a vermeer (his "the concert" is thought to be the most valuable missing artwork in the world), plus a few other objets, were hauled off into the night and effectively disappeared. two guys simply bluffed their way into mrs. jack gardner's manse, handcuffed the guards and smashed and sliced their way into anonymous notoriety. no credible leads in two decades, and the frames hang empty on the walls, as if in mourning. despite a $5 million reward offered by the museum and an expired statute of limitations, all those pretty things remain just gone.

the state of things

out the other afternoon, i was meeting a friend in a place that's kind of new, but in a neighborhood sorely in need of exactly what it wants to be. it was towards the end of the workday and a wine rep i knew was in there peddling some summer juice. he works for one of my favorite suppliers and is a good egg. he tasted with the manager (?) and left her bottles to share with the staff, one of which was a barbera.

now, i can only guess this woman is in charge of the small wine list, which is why she was tasting, right? the bartender asked which was her favorite, and she answered the barbera, but she mispronounced it, the accents in all the wrong spots. now, i can only guess her rep had called the wine by its name at least once, right? so she'd heard the word only a few minutes prior. even IF she'd never heard of it prior to that day. um, the 3rd most widely planted varietal in italy, not one of the hundreds of krazee obscure grapes that are commercially not viable yet still trail all over the country.

the bartender held it up to his nose. "is it like barolo?" which to me meant he'd never had a barolo, which is fine, because they can be expensive, he's young and works in a neighborhood joint. to which she replied, "um kinda."

GAAAAAHHHHH. NONONONONONO!!

just for starters, barolo is from the nebbiolo grape, while barbera IS the grape. stylistically, barolos are like giant ultimate fighters, muscular, powerful, overpowering when young but lithe with moves that matter with some age, while barberas are mostly easy-drinking fruit-forward jesters, not built to last.

this chick had no idea what she was talking about, drinking or buying. and she has a job doing it. awesome.

fakin' it

i do not:

• have nail tips, acrylics, stencils, decals or shiny dots, french, or reverse french, manicures on my hands or feet
• wear a toe or thumb ring
• have a pierced lip or nose (so don't need that plastic spacer in the hole when i work that everybody can totally see anyway)
• have hair or eyelash extensions (omg! like they totally last like 2 weeks and only cost like, $50, which is like awesome cuz it's one less thing to do everyday!!)
• go tannin', so i'm not the color of an oompa-loompa
• buy moisturizer that has newborn baby- or horse-by-products as an ingredient
• get my brows or beaver waxed (especially by a russian)
  
• dye my hair la brea tar-pit black
• iron my hair flat with japanese enzymes for $275
• have my girlfriend come over, listen to rhianna and do my hair for fun
• have silicone, botox or collagen in me anywhere
• think lite cool-whip or lean-cuisine pizzas are good diet foods
• own anything by ed hahdee, pink or juicy
• have a white handbag
• mistake knock-off gucci, prada, rolex, coach or movado for the real stuff, which, um, i know a waitress cannot afford and also know your townie thug-friends get you the fakes for cheaps off the truck
• confuse cubic zirconium with diamonds
• have covers for my cellphone that match my fake donny-bourke bag or are studded- rhinestone-glittery
• wear colored contacts on dates
• wear sweat-pants shopping (or anywhere, really)
• own sweat-sets
• own spanxx (two x's cuz they're extra-strong?)
• own uggs or even moreso, fake-uggs
• put clothes on my pets (not even a special celtics sweater during the play-offs)
  
• watch the hills, gossip girl, man vs. food, dr. phil, dr. oz or oprah
• read twilight books or cosmo
• believe that book "the secret"
• see chick flix
• go to strip-clubs on dates, or with a posse of my bff's for lap-dances from the pole-girlz, cuz it's (not) a fuckin' riot
• go to foxwoods, mohegan or vegas for the weekend
• see mariah or beyoncé in concert
• think julia roberts is awesome
• call oddballs "gay", unless they are, cuz weird or strange is something else and the geh's should get to keep their own word
• do oxy, percs, vicodin, valiums or coke for a night out (or in or whatevs)
• have a bebeh with a guy who was unemployed when i got knocked up and remains such, nor do i have another bebeh with his friend
• have any ex-bf's in jail
• have a bookie, astrologer, psychic or shady accountant as part of my personal care squad
• have face-book fights or frenemies
• have fist-fights at the bar with girls from my high school
• think slapping your bf is ok, and is, in fact, the proper course of action, "when he deserves it"
• cheat on my boyfriend (then cry to my bff's that i "done something fuckin awful" and i hope he doesn't find out cuz he'll fuckin' kill me...)

guess i'm not a real girl?

uncle sam does not want you

a group of 130 retired military brass has organized and calls themselves "mission: readiness". they released last week's figures (in the post below, but before) about all the kids who are too fat to enlist. they got that data from the cdc. in 1987, 6 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds, or about 1 out of 20, were obese. In 2008, 22 years later, 23 percent of that age group — almost 1 out of 4 — was considered to be obese. from a footnote to a quarter of the population in a generation.

the military rejects the obese because there is no "safe" way for them to drop enough weight during basic training, if they could even get through it. a generation of kids who played on x-boxes instead of outside, they can't do push-ups, pull-ups or run.

using additional pentagon info, mission: readiness, led by general wesley clark, issued a document claiming that 75% of americans eligible for duty are unfit to serve.


the ineligible population breaks down this way:

• medical/physical problems, 35 percent.
• illegal drug use, 18 percent.
• mental category V (the lowest 10 percent of the population), 9 percent.
• too many dependents under age 18, 6 percent.
• criminal record, 5 percent.

put another way, only 4.7 million of the 31.2 million 17- to 24-year-olds in our country are fit to serve. of the larger number, only 12% are inclined to do so. my brain explodes trying to extrapolate that number then for realz.

2009 saw every branch of the military exceed its recruitment targets. it's the economy, stoopid, ya know? but when the job market improves and there are more openings at home depot, how many kids will still be lining up for desert camo togs? some of that also came from waivers. these may be issued for a guy with asthma who has translation skills or a petty drug offender who's good with a gun, like sarah palin's son. (ya know, the one ya don't hear about?)

the guys at mission: readiness foresee a crisis by 2030, much of it driven by the obesity epidemic.

the horny chinese soldiers dying as virgins (for lack of females in their demographic) and the angry muslim soldiers dying for virgins may not have much to fear in the near future. our kids are too fat to climb the rope ladder and too stoned or dumb to read the instructions on the parachute.

full-cricle waistlines

in 1946, president truman instituted the federal school lunch program when he learned that many teenagers showing up for service were malnourished. too skinny to swarm the normandy beaches and too weak to haul big guns and ammo through german forests. it was a matter of national security to fatten these kids up, and no surprise that many of them came from rural and inner city areas. too poor to dodge the draft and just not enough pennies in the cabin or tenement for 3 squares a day.

this past week, daniel ruf died trying to make weight and join the marines. he was at the gym in a plastic bag, worn over a scuba suit, working out in a 100 degree room. he had also been taking diuretics and diet pills.

an autopsy determined multi-organ system failure due to hyperthermia, dehydration, and "exercise with occlusive gear" as his cause of death. the coroner's report also said ruf was "moderately obese;" his bmi was 34.3 and he weighed 226 pounds—45 pounds over the military cut-off for a 5-foot-8 male. the marines will accept you if are 10% overweight . they'll burn and shame that excess off you in boot camp.

at this point, 2 out 10 young men and 4 out 10 young women are too fat to join the service.

childhood obesity has tripled since 1980.

talking to a mom the other day, she is required to pack 2 snacks for her child for the school day, and this is in addition to whatever she eats at lunch. so that is eating 3 times between 8:00 and 2:00. my friend is slim and so are her kids. she's hoping they stay that way.

on the train last week, i saw two very fat moms (sisters, by the look) and their roly-poly kids, who were bouncing off the walls, seats and doors. this was to be a 45-minute trip that began at 11:15 in the morning. safe to assume the kids had already had breakfast and lunch wouldn't be too long in the future, right? both mothers had "snack" backpacks. one bulbous little boy was eating a cupcake and doritos at the same time, pausing only to guzzle gatorade. another of the tubby tykes had fistfuls of twizzlers and there were tiny ritz sandwich cookies being gnawed. i'm no candy nazi and there was plenty of junk food in my house growing up, but do these moms ever put a cover on the feed trough? if the kids are all overweight now, which was unquestionable, all that's left is to develop even poorer eating habits and get fatter. and sicker.

over the last few decades the idea has come about to "graze" and eat all day. small meals. i have my low-carb arguments about why this is a terrible idea, but even adhering to conventional wisdom, it's clear nobody knows what a small meal is anymore. a cheeseburger, small fries and small coke at mickey d's is 810 calories. a big mac, large fries and large coke is 1350. which do we think more people order for lunch? have you seen the size of apples in your local market lately? except for the macs in bags, i stopped buying them a few years back because they were too damned big to finish. those green and red monsters are close to 200 calories. that's a "snack"?

even on the subway, when i see infants and toddlers, more often than not, they are eating something -- something carby. cookies, crackers, cheeze-its, those nutri-grain bars, raisins, and/or drinking something fruity. lots of times i see very small kids with sports drinks! is sitting in a stroller really plowing through that kid's electrolyte stores? really, momz?

the mother of the boy who sweated to death is suing the marines, even though her boy was not yet one. it remains unclear if this kid died due to his own irrational desperation to make weight, which if this is the case he's about as a sharp as a sponge and we're all better off he was never issued deadly weapons. if, however, it was the result of a recruiter desperate to make quota, it's a whole other enchilada.

in the sugar-and-salt-dusted face of that little fat boy on the train, i see the wide and bloated visage of the now dead young man only about 10 years older whose mother likely fed him all day long too. these kids don't just blow up from american chop suey and tuna melts from the lunch lady. it's the parents who need the learnin', 'cept nobody done gone talkin' 'bout dat.

school lunches have been a popular punching bag for years now, and i know michelle obama has her finger in that pie to make cafeteria fare more healthy. but that's only 1 thirty minute period of each kid's day.

there are people who are too fat to fit in roller coaster and ferris wheel cars and too wide for baseball seats. how long before we have to butter kids' hips to squeeze 'em into the tank?

talkin' 'bout jesus, everyday

jesus in the tree bark and in the grilled cheese samich. if i recall, there recently was a potato jesus someplace too.

well, happy easter to all you catholic faithful, because our nazi pope has decided to unfurl the shroud of turin, for only the 5th time in 100 years. it was last seen in 2002 after its extensive restoration. its next appearance was scheduled for 2025, but that has been hastened way upwards.

oh, noes, it is most certainly NOT "religious tourism", but an "opportunity for the faithful to meditate, pray and contemplate on the mystery and extraordinary suffering of christ."

last time this rag was out, over 1 million came to gawk.

in 1988, 3 independent labs carbon-dated separate pieces of the cloth and placed its origin between 1260 and 1390, offering it was simply a brilliant medieval fakery. pt barnum must roll in his grave about this hoax successfully baiting the sheeple for 5 centuries! "egress this way," indeed.

the nuns indoctrinated me to the pope's infallibility, that he is the mind and voice of god here on earth, so i am quite sure that ratzi does not mean this as any kind of icon smoke and mirrors to distract from all the euro-pedo's now flaming up all over the continent. including his personal approval of the transfer of rev. peter hullerman, from within his own district. he directly received a memo advising the priest not be allowed to work with children, had to give up drinking and attend private therapy. none of this happened. the pervert was quietly moved to a different parish, a chess piece in a frock, and eventually convicted of further molestations.

there is not enough red silk papal cloak cloth to smother these fires. we thought it was bad here in boston. now it is in ratzi's own house.

oh! lookee over here, i found a piece of the true cross!

would jesus be fat too?

so a professor and a minister walk into a museum...

the minister is also a professor and the guys are brothers. they did a study of paintings of the "last supper" done over the last 1000 years. to my frustration, this is a large swath of time and they don't break it down into different eras, like the advent of safe canning, the industrial revolution, the assembly line, modern health codes for food safety (thank you, upton sinclair), mr birdseye and his flash-freezing, the post ww II pesticide era of farming, which dramatically increased agricultural yields, or our modern era of biggie fries and all-u-can-eat buffets.

but anyway...

using special enhancement software, they found that, over the past 1,000 years, the size of the main meal has progressively grown 69 percent; plate size has increased 66 percent and bread size by about 23 percent.

so, if, instead of a few sheets of dry matzoh, he'd had unlimited breadsticks and mountains of butter, would jesus have been too fat to walk on water? cuz he is always krazee skinny in all pix. with his not so secret flings with whores like mary magdalene, and the whole water into wine thing, i never took jesus as an ascetic.

would jesus super-size?

eye bleach, i beg you

what a dirty week. just... ew.

john edwards' mistress rielle hunter has a spread in esquire. ahem. yes, i said spread. the pix are mostly of her in a man's shirt, a pearl necklace (uh-huh) and no pants. come hither stare and such. including the just totally icky one of her on the blackmail baby's bed with stuffed barney (is he still a thing?) and dora the explorer dolls. she still with no pants. who does this? who poses on their infant's bed with a fuck-me face in a national magazine? to rehab their reputation, no less?

i have no idea what the interview has to say cuz i don't care. i find it staggering that this woman wants to be in the public eye after what she has done and with whom. nary a care for the little who that once grown will click a mouse and see all this garbage, nor the much bigger who's living with their dying mother who see this garbage now.

another of the tiger woods harem has come forward this week with tawdry bits. 4 months after the elin beat-down a porn star with balloon boobs named joslyn james published over 100 dirty tiger sexts. we'll cruise on the fact that by profession a porn actress has no shame and at best a fluid sense of boundaries. other people's dirty talk is always just kinda sad -sounding, i guess, but he wants to slap her, call her dirty names, admits he'd have stage fright for a golden shower (giving, not receiving; tiger has a shy bladder? c'mon, right? his father never made him pee in the bushes rather than lose course time?) and order a turkey club. not all at the same time.

weirdly, the transcript is all just him. she has a way better cell-plan than i do since mine only saves about 20 texts, clean or dirty. much like the blue lewinksy dress it will bring her 15 seconds of mainstream media attention, but then what? again, his kids will get to click and get sick in just a few years. regardless of how nice or not-nice is tiger's wife, she is freshly humiliated. james' family must be thrilled how all those ballet lessons panned out.

then lastly, a nice girl indeed finishes, if not last, than in the mud. sandra bullock, 8 days after her oscar win, got faced with front page frontals of the tattoo model named "bombshell" mcgee, who claims to have been having a year-long affair with bullock's husband, jesse james. james has been married 3 times, and is a cult reality tv guy, who pimps out hogs or some such. i'd read his name, that he essentially pretended to be a descendant of the outlaw, but this whole story makes me yearn for that "coward robert ford" to rise from the dead and come a slingin' with a six-shooter.

somehow bullock went from a joke (miss congeniality) to an oscar winner/powah-playah, with staggeringly profitable movies under her belt. a broad who won a razzie AND an oscar within weeks of each other and showed up to accept each award graciously has become america's real sweetheart. in her oscar speech, and other interviews, she thanked james for "always having her back." that it was the first time in her life she'd had that, and how profound and wonderful it was. she'd used her money and muscle to help james get custody of his kids.

tits mcgee got $30k from a rag for lots of dirty j.j texts. sexts from james for the year they were banging, and including some just days after the oscars. she calls him "vanilla gorilla" saying he has a ginormous dick. (even though gorillas typically have small penises relative to other hominids, but i think she skipped that class in bio.) other stuff has piddled out about her supposed neo-nazi sympathies (and tangentially that james' 2nd wife, a porn star, is married to a felonious neo-nazi), and generally unsavory associates and demeanor.

like tiger's porn actress, mcgee has different boundaries (and they both have sex-cam websites!) than your average jane. all that's swell and i'm not here to throw stones at mistresses, nor the husbands who keep them. my glass shatters too easily. what does make me sick is the lack of regard for collateral damage. the kids. the families, the wives.

just like the man keeping a mistress, there used to be a code of conduct for the girlie. first rule? shut up. be discreet. it blows my mind that these women out themselves. that botoxed conga line of chicks who sucked tiger off? they came out for what ? a chance to be on howard stern? is that the highlight? an asterisk in tiger's wiki about being no.6, no. 16, or no. 696?

jiz-bum james and inky mcgee already dwelled on the seamy side as far as careers and associates.

hunter (her third known name) ran with dark shadows chasing her for all her adult life. she came from money in florida and was a competitive equestrian. her lawyer-father died of cancer while under fbi covert investigation for very likely culpability in a show-horse-electrocution-for-insurance-money-scam.

she then ran hard and fast with that nyc brat pack crowd and was the basis for a jay mcinerny character in his 1988 novel, "my so-called life". "allison poole" was pathologically sexual, riddled with std's and conned her b/f for money for an abortion she never had/needed. by most accounts, hunter was not embarrassed, but rather relished being the source for allison.

she met edwards in a bar.

i have had sex with married men. i have had affairs with married men. i always justified it in my head putting it all on the guy. *I* wasn't doing anything to the wife or the kids. it was all his choice. i just happened to be available and attracted. if the guy made noises about leaving the wife he got dropped like a hot rock. that was never gonna be on me.

i kept myself sufficiently removed that it never went beyond a fling with those guys.

except when it did.

and she found out.

she wrote to me.

she demanded to see my correspondence with him.

trumped, destroyed, by my own hubris, there was no way i would pour gasoline on the flames. to what end? it would only feed her self-flagellation and in no way could help him or salve any of my pain.

i felt ashamed.

i cannot, cannot, cannot, comprehend these women all falling over themselves, pushing their push-up bras in the faces of the paparazzi, to publish sexts and tapes and voice-mails and stuff about socks (eliot spitzer's ashley dupree... oh, so long ago, in a more innocent time).

"hell hath no fury blah-blah" goes back to zeus and hera. (although she frequently lashed out by punishing his bastard offspring, like driving hercules mad so that he'd kill his own wife and children.) yet no matter how many times i witness the scorched earth policy of somebody like mcgee or james, i am dumbfounded. they become emotional agent orange. why intentionally hurt the wife? the fucking kids? what have they done to be a party in your greek tragedy?

they don't get the guy back. they don't look smart or powerful or sexy. they look like cheap discarded toys. they don't even get rich! snaggle-crotch mcgee got like minimum wage for her junk. how does any of this make them feel better? most of america writes them off as money-grubbing whores.

as for hunter, she is a whole other vile species. trying to become some sort of media celebrity while appearing as nothing more than a circling vulture.

they all make me embarrassed by women.

goldilocks and the 3 nightclubs

spent the weekend with the owner and all 3 nights were about the music. or let's say were supposed to be about the music.

friday, we made a brief appearance at a local hang. upfrontedness: the place has little pretension to be anything other than what it is. budwesier chandeliers, keno, pool tables, dart boards, $8 pitchers. i've never had anything but friendly service from the gals behind the bar. i've got all my teeth, which puts me ahead of most of the regulars, but i've only ever gotten smiles from them, and never been made to feel unwelcome. plus i kinda like a "real" joint. not to be confused with the "faux" dive bars, like lucky's and bukowski's, that cropped up in the 90's.

an acquaintance of the owner's was playing, and as he is wont to do, we made out to show our support. collectively they were not much better than a bunch of high school kids in somebody's basement banging away, like monkeys without thumbs, on christmas presents of fenders and gretsches. they seemed to be enjoying themselves which was more the point. the owner shook some hands and we made it an early night.

next night was a cd release party for a band that includes one of the nicest guys i have met in a very long time. the guy so nice you can't figure out why some clever cookie hasn't scooped him up, except to realize girls his age are still chasing bad boys and telling guys like him they"are too nice." and "let's just be friends." all the band mates are decent chaps too and i've seen them play before. they don't suck and in the year or so i have known them have come leaps and bounds.

what's the problem, noodle, you ask? the venue. ack. although a stone's throw from the owner's door, the place just sucks. total 1000% suckage. last year we went a few days after it opened for this same band. doors opened at 9:00. people were streaming in and we got some comfy seats in great eye-line of the stage.

amble up to the bar for brews. a kid is stocking the cooler. young chicks in slut costumes are rushing about, but not doing a thing. i finally ask the barback and he tells me the bar isn't open yet. wtf? why are you charging a cover and letting people in? there is a bar downstairs, we could have cooled our heels down there in the meantime. it begs the bigger question of why nobody was in to stock at like, oh, 8:00? whatever. downhill from there. barwench so stoopid she couldn't use her bottle opener. the decor looked like sybil and all her split personalities went shopping at a foreclosed nightclub auction. just stoopid. lit up margaritaville palm trees, go-go-cages, cheesy booths with dumbass names. a fetid wall fountain frothing foamy ooze. just awful.

the sound? impenetrable at best. bass, bass, bass. then more bass, bass, bass.

so under duress and in an elephant in the room triad, i'm dragged there again. same shit, different day. bar not ready, (bar manager 101: people at a bar want to drink. they want to drink right away. they then get tipsy early. THEN, they drink even more. if you're not ready to roll at the opening bell, you are losing money. oh, and, if you were maximizing your profits there, perhaps you could comp a few beers for the guys playing instead of being so fucking miserly?) barsluts doing nothing but flashing their beavers, (uh, what's a seabreeze?) ALL the downstairs taps are out of service. it was after midnight before a cocktail whore came over to ask if any of us wanted a drink. she'd been flitting about all night and i'd never once seen her carrying a single thing. 2 of 4 toilets backed up with paper and feces at 10:00. i thought it impossible, but the sound was even worse. so bad, i didn't care enough even to get up and take a look at the guys on stage. so shitty, that if the same bands played on my deck, i wouldn't recognize a single song. so god-awful, that the promoter commented on how many peeps leaving complained that the sound was for shit. (this guy is so out of his head, he thought they were out of their minds!) the place is truly one of the most god-awful shit-holes i have ever been in.

sunday, we came into town, headed for one of the regular hangs. this place is a bare-bones gem. (regardless of how the above shitty shit-hole self-monikers.) great beers on tap, cheap prices for city standards, barkeeps who can pour a proper pint, make a generous cocktail and manage to make eye-contact when busy. the sound is just spot on, no matter who we see or when. NO COVER. EVAH. a friend of mine is a member of one of the best bands this city has ever spit out and they are back together. bygones indeed gone and they sound fucking amazing. guitar, harmonica, cocktail kit for drums and a low-strung thingie for bass. it's rock-n-roll like it oughta be: loud, dirty and with a sense of humor.

not every band is as good as these guys. in fact, damn few. i know that. but if the rest of it falls even remotely within those lines... a few drinks and some decent sounds, ya know -- a good time, shouldn't be all that hard to get just right. why is it then? huh?

face-palm

i am near to done with the times.

ffs.

an ostensibly lib op-ed guy, a british jew ex-pat (right?, lol) had this in his column today, re: health care reform:

Aren’t Republicans about choice?


wtf, man! republicrats haven't been about choice since nixon. gaah. i just need to go to bed, i guess, but how do these guys sleep?

more than i can chew right now

i am trying to fix myself. the broken bits. the parts that snap like a steel bear trap when threatened. the pieces that cut my soul and heart like jagged glass and make me cry in the night.

i am looking, searching, trolling. reading. sometimes you need a break. sometimes you visit places that hold warm memories, like-minded folks and a semblance of understanding. and then... nobody was expecting the spanish inquistion! no really, you're looking for fluff and then you get more than you bargained for.

this is a paste/copy/edit i stole from somebody who ain't no dummy, a sadist/dominant, so that i can more easily track the info i need and ponder the ideas (my blog, my rules, and this is all unfinished biz)

from him, in a thread about how common a rape fantasy is for women, although not for me:

Marianne Noble lists three "psychological traits associated with masochism":

• a desire for perfection
• a fear of intimacy as a kind of assault upon the self
• a particularly emphatic sense of individuated selfhood.

The second one -- fear of intimacy -- was a surprise, but then I thought of all the masochistic fantasies ... forceful, penetrating fantasies. I think there are women who want to be intimate but aren't comfortable opening up to intimacy, so they long for a forceful figure, a demon lover or vampire or rapist (or mebbe, my thought... and uh, in real-life, not twilight movie-- or a dominant completely set on autonomy...) who will force her to open up to him.

Someone who has "a particularly emphatic sense of individuated selfhood" is someone who feels independent; she knows who she is, she knows there's no one like her, she feels unique. Sometimes she might feel special, in an enchanted way, and sometimes she feels alone, in a dejected way. Her sense of self is so pronounced that she is always aware of how different she is from others, and she feels isolated.

So she daydreams about dominant figures who will overwhelm her, take her away from herself, make her forget her name, her face, the clawing boundaries of her body, her distances. She wants to encounter a force that will demand she give herself to it, holding nothing back, until she opens and aches and loses herself. Until she loses her self, the self that can be such a burden.

like herpes too

just like her mom, just when you think you're done having to hear about her, bristol palin is right back at you. now she has been hired to "play herself" on a show called "the secret life of the american teenager." the main character is coping with being pregnant AND a teen! omg-- get the most famous american unwed teen mother on the phone!!

i dare say, there is nothing secret in this girl's life and why does this family still feel so compelled to whore her and her uterus out for money and press? she got knocked up on high school, while having sex under her mother's nose, so why is she being put forth as a role model? unlike most teen moms, she has money, access to child care and the ability to pursue higher education if she desires. she is a privileged white girl with just a little bit of an "oops", i guess?

oh, yeah, and she's smart like her mom too. she had this to say on good morning america:

"Regardless of what I did personally, I just think that abstinence is the only ... 100 percent foolproof way to prevent pregnancy."

more nanny state nonsense

under the auspices of the american academy of pediatrics, dr. gary smith, who heads the center for injury research and policy at nationwide children's hospital in columbus ohio, released a paper yesterday asking that hot dogs, wieners, frankfurters, what have you, carry warning labels. not because they are laden with sodium, nitrates and toenails, but because that they are a choking hazard for small children. not content to simply nanny parents of toddlers, he suggests that the food with an ancient pedigree (yo, forcemeat goes way back. ask any peasant of olden timey days, k?) be redesigned.

"no parents can watch all of their kids 100% of the time," smith says. "the best way to protect kids is to design these risks out of existence." jeebus, kids wind up in his emergency room cuz they are choking on food, so oscar meyer better step the hell up and fix this.

yes, by god, let's outlaw cylindrical foods. grapes and bananas, you had better look out! we are so coming to get you!

gee, i don't know. maybe parents could cut the things up? or maybe, even, i don't know, not feed crap to their kids? just sayin'.

i know you are, but who am i?

long long before this noodle was a twinkle in anyone's eye, my maternal grandmother was having an affair with one of nyc's finest. ahem. he was not her first, nor, i presume, last. (however, he did endure. they wound up married after my grandfather died and stayed together til he died a few years ago.) when his wife discovered the infidelity, she issued an ultimatum. he chose his not-wife. an annulment was easily had, she took their son and disappeared. i do not know if he ever contacted the boy or vice-versa. they vanished.

this was before my mother was even a pre-teen.

their affair was long-running by the time i was born. i have no recollection of how his presence in our lives was explained, but i saw him more often than i saw my grandfather, who was occasionally estranged, ostensibly to punish my mother, and frequently on the road for work. he and my grandmother had long ago stopped sharing a bed or a room. when he retired at 40, he spent much time upstate at his cabin. was he alone? who knows? whenever i asked to go up, i was told it was " not a place for girls."

my grandmother referred to this other man by two different names, even in my grandfather's presence. i'm guessing she was pretending he was two separate people, but i have no idea what my grandfather knew or truly thought. they saw each other nearly everyday, many times after my grandfather had made dinner she would just split. he'd park around the block and she'd walk to the car. even when family was visiting, she would rush to go, then return several hours later.

at some point, this man and my grandmother bought a cottage at the shore. a low-slung 3-bedroom waterfront bungalow with mimosa trees in back and front. i was told i had my own room and there would be a bicycle there for me. even though i was profoundly uncomfortable with this cop -- he was oafish and stupid and broke nearly everything material that he touched -- i was excited to get away. my mom was single, angry and struggling, i was often alone and this would be at the beach!

then i got the talk. and it was the same talk i got many times after. i had to pretend that she was not my grandmother, but my aunt . to neighbors, absolutely, and oh, yes, his sisters, brothers-in law, nieces and nephews are coming for a party so for them too, and don't make me punish you for getting this wrong. i was six. won't take a rocket scientist to figure that in the excitement of the party, and needing the only person i knew inside in the house, i called out to her. to this day, i remember and feel fear over the ire in those icy eyes. one of the girls was named nanette, which is close enough to what i called my grandmother, so she was able to laugh it off that i was mixed up and silly. when everyone was gone, i was beaten, yelled at for being "so stupid" and sent to bed weeping.

over the years and still as a wee noodle, i was brought round as her "niece" to his mother and other of his relatives. many of them were sicilian widows with plastic slipcovers and snippy dogs. i was terrified of these seemingly ancient crones, their shivering pets, dark man-less houses and saying the wrong thing, so i was afraid to talk and too nervous to eat, which made the old ladies upset as well. lose-lose for noodle.

what kind of foundation is that for a kid? "i love you, now pretend you are not mine?" let alone a latch-key kid whose father's parenting is non-existent. some might fault my mother for allowing me into those scenarios. i cannot. she doubtless endured them as a girl, and feared her mother's volcanic wrath far too much to object. if she even saw harm in it? i don't know. we all only have our "own" normal, eh?

cue to grown-up noodle.

when i did fall in love, it always was men more emotionally damaged than myself. "if i just love him enough, more than enough, that will be enough to heal him." i didn't try to change or control them, but perhaps that is what they needed -- someone manning the rudder in the relationship. i had never seen a functional loving relationship up close, and was too full of my own self-loathing to conjure it.

cue to the owner finding and taking me.

with his family "over there", he was careful to keep me at an emotional bay, all the while encouraging me to fall and fall and fall. it was like being trapped in a net, dropping deeper and deeper into a bottomless sea, with the only escape i desired being allowed more intimacy with him. never in my life have i known a person i was lost without.

cue to after the deluge. to kind of now.

we are not like other people. our relationship, the lack of balance and what works best for us is not conventional. our danger sex is almost besides the point. i don't necessarily feel a need to explain any of that. we enjoy being together and out. more than one acquaintance has said they've never known a couple who laughs together as much as he and i. that speaks volumes, yes? he has cared for me and supported me in ways my family never did.

yet the owner feels semantically challenged whenever asked the simple question, "are you seeing anyone?" rarely is he at a verbal loss, and yet two years post-divorce, he still says, "no," and thus deny my existence. this query has come from people who have seen us together, and not just once. that negation, that disavowal, is truly more than i can bear. much of that is him wishing to preserve the possibilities for bedding other women, but it still feels a lie to them and a storm of stones over my heart and a jackboot to my devotion each time he does it.

my work and his hectic social ambitions keep us apart far more than ever before, perpetuating my non-existence, or at best the image of being incidental. he is out and about most often now with other women and there seems little chance on my end, nor inclination on his, to change that.

i find myself adrift and afraid more than i like. i have drowned it more than once in martinis. he fills his life so easily without me, i think, "i guess i don't matter," and it only hammers home even further his renunciations. out-of-sight, out-of-mind. bon homie, sex, massages and music are all easily had with the click of a mouse or a short stroll. i am not in walking distance, nor of a schedule that allows for spontaneity.

where does this leave me?

waiting. alone.

crutch much?

6 days into being sober, i got to work and a handful of my co-workers were deadly hung-over.

one had failed a difficult certification test the day prior. one he thought he'd ace. beers, manattans, wine AND gimlets made him forget the pain for the night and knocked him out cold.

another had been stood-up by a blind date. i'm guessing of the match.com variety, but she looked too wobbly and still too sad to ask. she had pouted in her apartment, then felt like not being alone, so headed down to her local and did some serious damage.

yet another had been on a 3-day bender from valentine's day. her last relationship ended last year on v-day, so she and some other angry single girly-friends all went on a tear. her face was puffy and hair dirty.

the hostess also looked out-of-sorts, but that's her coke habit more than the booze.

since we dispense and are surrounded by liquor, i suppose it's easier to be open about what we did the night before. it's a running joke that booze is a balm.

it's no secret that the restaurant industry attracts unstable sorts and addictive/self-destructive behaviors seem to be the norm. is it different, really, elsewhere? we have brokers, lawyers and bankers in there tossing back every night. some guys are monday-friday martini regulars. lord only knows what their wives think they are actually doing. still slogging away in the office, i presume.

on the phone with an old friend yesterday, she told me of a recent party she and her husband attended. one husband out of work 18 months, another cut down to 1/4 time. others warily holding their collective breath with lay-offs still in the cards. more than one wife broke into beer-tears. said friend was happy to not be one of them and was again thankful her husband is thriving in his new position and their mortgage whittled way down.

i admit to using the liquor as anesthesia. it ceased to become a simple social lubricant awhile ago. why else am i having drinks at 1:00 in the morning when i get home from work? will i ever be that person who can shut her own self off? will i ever stop being so afraid?

today is only day 8, so i don't know the answers. but i am last asking the questions.

not high, but dry

this weekend was a perfect storm for us restaurant folks. a 3-day weekend with valentine's day falling the night before a monday holiday before school break. those red-sweatered lovebirds who got locked out of sunday came saturday and the even bigger procrastinators were sweetheart bookends on friday and monday.

towards the middle of my 3rd double yesterday, i was bleary-eyed and jello-brained. "do i have a box of tissues?"; "you eloped and only came here to have cake? here? for CAKE?"; "no, little fat boy, we do not have diet root beer, snapple or butterscotch pudding." mother of god. when it at last ended and i got out of the building -- "oh! that's what the sky looks like" -- i felt much calmer. there was no wind, the water was still and the air lacked its recent bite, but i was bone-weary. my norm on a night like that would have been to walk down to the swanky hotel and saddle up for a nice big-girl martini. feel the tension just ooze out of me and then slide home like a happy relaxed noodle.

no. i promised myself and the owner i am on the wagon.

when at last i got back to the noodle house, and the shoes and bra came off and the bath was running, i heard the wine calling me. no, i told them, i am not drinking. i was exhausted, but knew the owner was in the area, likely on a date with his new prospect, so sleep would just not come.

i could get up and have a nice glass... nope.

by the time he called to tell me about his not-date, it was after 2:00. the riot of voices in my head after that nearly hijacked sleep for the rest of the night, but i finally got the committee to shut the fuck up and managed a few hours.

today, no work, but errands and i snuck in a movie because the weather was so foul. my habit is a drink either before or after, or at least with lunch. i abstained. it was harder today.

puttering and making dinner here i normally have wine.

blogging at night i normally do too and when catching up on my tivo.

no, no, no.

my fingertips on a glass is a near constant when i am not working or under the eyes of the owner. it's reflex, it's habit, i like the taste and i like how it makes me feel. the trouble is, lately it's never just one. ever, and i fear i'm becoming compulsive about it. i can't stop myself, i've made numerous scenes and i have had blackouts. i have embarrassed the owner and shamed myself. i am that person talked about by people who don't know me as the drunk messy too-loud chick in the bar.

how is that the woman i have become?

alcohol keeps tight the lid on the well, hiding the goblins, dragons and mean irish ladies who haunt my dreams. it keeps them out of my days. it shunts away all that i can't face.

today is day 5.

how long before the demons see the screws are loose?

fat girl

during the holidays, as always, i worked like a crazy person. lots of doubles, few days off and erratic sleep all left little time to cook or even shop for raw snacks. this coincided with a period of making myself nuts tracking my food and weighing every morsel i ate, so i stopped. it was all too stark a reminder of the anorectic calorie-counting and food neurosis of past bouts.

i continued to shrink, to the point of pants dragging on the pavement, even though the scale didn't budge. i admit to eating treats i shouldn't have. cookies and candies were everywhere, including my own house. never gorged, but i'm not supposed to have any. staff meals were a challenge as they are typically a carbo-feast one day it was garbanzos, rice, french fries and chicken nuggets. just yukkkkkk. as a release and an excuse, my drinking increased too, especially the late-night, "just home and need to unwind, so i'll have a glass or 3..." habit, which i thought i had kicked. my weight didn't decrease, held steady, but i noticed my work shirts were much looser. still shrinking.

the scale's recalcitrance was making me despair, so i finally stopped weighing. my menstrual cycle also was behaving strangely so that increased my terror of digital truths.

holidays finished, work at a reasonably human pace, i got back on the scale a couple weeks back. the same. gaaaaaah.

only rational action is go back to basics. i have been bringing my lunch and getting a mostly good balance of what i "should have." (damn the skittles yesterday.) tracking my carbs. unrelated to my weight, i'm going on the wagon for awhile. (another post-- the pain remains too raw...) am very curious what will happen with this new eating and no booze. a few years back trying to cure my bird flu, i went dry for 9 days. it did not help my health, nor did i lose a pound or an inch. now i realize the weight stasis was due to my broken insulin response, so one of my 1st tangential thoughts on drying out really was to the see the difference.my consumption has been extreme for months now.

goal of a week dry and healthy foods before i dare chance the scale.

this morning, manipulating my naked body, the owner asked what i weighed for the 1st time in months. it must be worse than i thought. i swear to god, i can no longer tell what the fuck i look like when i see myself in the mirror. could i ever ? his question, not at all unreasonable, made me sick and embarrassed. we had set a goal weight for me, with particular and peculiar rewards. for ages it has felt like it will never come. i had given up daydreaming about the ministrations i crave under his hands. yet another failure.

he has recently met a woman he finds appealing and attractive. youngish, but not too very. he is again playing the bill clinton game of "define is" when asked by their mutual friends if he has a girlfriend. respective to our dynamic he absolutely does not, so with his semantic gymnastics, they hear he is not seeing anybody. which makes me nobody. she has met him twice now, while he was without me as an encumbrance, in very friendly environments and i imagine him to only have been charming and warm. each enjoying the others' company on an open playing field.

for him i was out of sight, out of mind, knee to knee with a fresh prospect.

for her, an attractive, intelligent and respectful, fun, SINGLE guy - jackpot.

for me, by his words, she is slim, pretty and perfect. all the things i will never be.

everybody panic!

BLIZZARDPALOOZA!! SNOWPOCALYSPE! THE END IS NIGH!!

before a flake had fallen, schools were closed, flights canceled and parking bans enacted. the entire district where i work was closed by massport, leading many of the major employers in the area to shut for the day.

i checked the weather before bed and expected to awake to a winter wonderland. nothin'. as a good little new england noodle, i went home to get on my blizzard gear, most the courtesy of ll bean. the practical and frugal folks who made those boots i have had since college and my ski coat which will never see a lift or lodge, but i'd be really warm if ever thrown down the matterhorn. gloves, scarf, layered sweaters, hat, etc. i was roasting on my way to work, but the snow had started so i felt ready.

by lunch, it was doing nothing. no wet from the sky. city streets empty. nonsense.

by rush hour, it did look possible to achieve actual blizzardiness, with that knife-like wind and hard pellets of ice stinging my face. per usual, the blue line was fucked so 10,000 people were sardine-canned into each car to get under the water over here to eastie. my station was closed with a power-outage, so i trudged home the longer way. frankly, i kind of like that raw in small doses. as an urbanite, i'm not out in nature much and appreciate the reminder of its ferocity.

the whip and whistle of very hard snow and determined wind sent me off to dreamland and again expected mountains of white in the dawn. i laughed out loud because i can see grass the ground-cover of snow is so meager.

the major bollocks of that blizzard of 2007, when the entire commonwealth hit the road at the exact same time and caused utter marathon gridlock remains fresh in everybody's minds, fer sure. but this chicken-little shit is beyond the pale. it's new england. it gets cold. it fucking snows. put on your big-girl pants or move to nevada.

real amurricanz, redux

lazy blogger, i've become, off cheating on other boards, but this was too good to take a pass.

our old friend the slutty stewardess has been flogging her book and raking in speaking fees from hyped-up teabaggers. this morning in nashville, she made a crack about obama being charismatic guy with a teleprompter. she apparently was too busy doing her hair to watch his face-off in front of the congress last week, which was unscripted, off-the-cuff and during which he eviscerated most of the republicrats with his smarty-pants-ness.

anyway, her usual blah-blah-blah, then she sat down for a little q & a. during which she could be seen looking at her hand. i've pasted a large format of the pic so you know I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.

like a 4th-grader cheating on a test, she wrote her talking points on her palm.

"Energy"
"Budget (cut?)
"Tax"
"Lift American spirits"

she had crossed out "budget" and replaced it with "tax cuts". even she doesn't know which she is for? or was she not sure what the guy would ask her?

she cracks at obama for using a teleprompter, (uh, shrub did too...), but apparently isn't smart enough to use one. also proving she isn't smart enough to know that people in the audience all have little devices that take pictures. pictures that make points and do not go away because they are instantly on the twitternets and spread all over the world faster than she can shoot a wolf.

in case we need proof that even cheat sheet can't help this broad, here is the word salad she offered in reply to the question, "what should a republican congress's top 3 priorities be?" palin replied, "stop spending," "energy policy," and something about hugging and speaking to god:

"I think, kind of tougher to put our arms around, but allowing America's spirit to rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God fearing nation where we're not afraid to say especially in times of potential trouble in the future here, where we're not afraid to say, you know, we don't have all the answers as fallible men and women so it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again. To have people involved in government who aren't afraid to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness that you know – they have to be afraid of what the media said about them if they were to proclaim their alliance to our creator."

now i know why she hates the word "retard."


thanks to huffpo for this bright spot in my day, lol.

photographs & memories

much of my life i was quite the ham and always taking and being in pictures with friends, but i haven't been willingly photographed in years. friends have snaps of me holding my hand over my face. for the longest time, i just sadly chalked it off to aging badly, my face looked so puffy and round in pix. in fact, just yesterday i found a picture of me from the summer of pain, on a trip to napa. my head looks like charlie brown's.

last month i attended a b-day party with the owner and "had" to be in the "girls" picture, all of us lined up. shown only a small version of it inside the camera, it was the first time in forever i did not hate how i looked. neither my ass nor my face looked fat. although my hair was behaving badly from the humidity in the kitchen, lol.

last week, the owner took a shot of me at the end of a long day. the lighting is very dark and it is just from the shoulders up, but i can actually see the angles and such of my face.

after a month of not, i measured myself again yesterday and more inches have gone, including 2 more from my back. maybe i should be measuring my head!

on someone of such small stature a little can make a big difference. this summer: short sleeves!