whiskey in a teacup . com

I had a dream a few nights about that Jared and I lived in a sort of communal lodge that was located directly on a lake. Every morning I would sit by the bay windows in the lodge’s den and watch this man, a big lumberjacky bearded sort of man, wade directly into the lake, submerge a plastic thermos (like one I personally own) into the water in a grand sweeping motion, and drink. While he drank he would stand up to his knees in the lake, facing away from me and the lodge and presumably reflecting on something while he looked out at the water and the ill-defined foresty/mountainy surroundings. One day I was describing this phenomenon to Jared when the man entered the den. “I was just talking about you,” I said. “Is it really okay to drink from the lake like that?” “No,” he said.

The psychotic team of homunculi who write the screenplays for my dreams really nailed the general malaise, dread, and discomfort that have crept up on me the past week or so. The gruff, self-important New Englander in me hates to admit this, but I could really use a nice spring day right about now.

Edit:  After writing this entry I very randomly came across this video, which omg hive mind.

There’s a great episode of The Simpsons wherein Principal Skinner has Superintendent Chalmers over for dinner. The meal Skinner is preparing is somehow set ablaze, and he blames the fiery glow coming from his kitchen on the aurora borealis. Chalmers rebuts, “The aurora borealis? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your kitchen?”

I asked myself a similar question today, when I realized that a breech in the space-time continuum had occurred within the confines of my handbag. In lieu of a purse I carry a medium-sized canvas sack with a shoulder strap. (It’s actually rather cute despite its utilitarian nature.) This sack is home to many, many items, but I am generally able to locate any desired object by sticking my hand in and rifling through for a moment. Today (a day off from work, while running an errand before heading to an exam) I approached my car in a parking lot, began rooting for my keys in my bag, and panicked. My searching fingers could not locate the keys. I removed various items from the bag, opened all the little zippered compartments, and eventually rushed back into the store to retrace my steps. It seemed highly unlikely that the keys could have fallen onto the floor without me noticing, but I had checked the bag thoroughly. While I searched the store (now starting to worry that I would be late for my exam), I hopelessly put my hand back inside the bag and felt around some more.

Suddenly, I felt a shape continuous with the electronic car beeper I keep on my keychain. I tried to remove it from the bag when I realized I was feeling it through the membrane of the bag’s nylon lining. I ran back out of the store and sat down on a bench to assess for tears in the fabric from which my keys had escaped, and through which I could retrieve them. No tears could be found; the lining was intact and the keys had apparently diffused through it and were now trapped beneath it. Fortunately, I carry a well-appointed leatherman tool at all times, so I was able to flick open the blade and make a small incision in the lining through which I performed an emergency keyectomy. Invigorated by my success, I drove off to my exam, perplexed by the implications of this supernatural hassle.

It all began last Thursday when, after an unusually abysmal experience on the treadmill, I returned home, said “fuck it, I’m not cooking tonight!” and decided to get dinner via delivery. To aid myself in this task I enlisted the rating system on foodler.com, which recommended a diner in a nearby square. On the menu was a smoked salmon, goat cheese, and caper sandwich, and upon reading the names of those three ingredients, all together in one magical sandwich, my body produced a physical response that bordered dangerously on the sexual. I ordered this intriguing sandwich, and subsequently I ate it, and lo, it was good.

The next night I forced my husband to take me to this diner. I again enjoyed the bounty of the sandwich. The next night, we stayed in and watched Netflix and ordered food, and I ate the sandwich yet again.

Sometime later I joked that all this salmon was sure to give me mercury poisoning, and that since there was no way I could stop consuming it, I would probably be dead soon. Around this same time I noticed a lump behind my jaw, under my ear, which I diagnosed as a swollen lymph node. To confirm this, I consulted a search engine in hopes of finding a nice anatomical drawing. Instead, the first link I stumbled upon was a website linking the swelling of that particular lymph node to (wait for it!) mercury poisoning. I knew this to be just a silly coincidence, but that night I did not partake of the sandwich. (Mostly I don’t want to get sick of it by eating it every single day.)

That brings us about up to date in this epic tale of a girl and her sandwich. Hopefully there will be many more chapters to come. Hopefully I will not post them to this blog, but depending on my level of heavy metal intoxication, I can’t promise anything.

Lately I’ve been really interested in this security-camera video of a guy stealing some bicycle tires. The soundtrack is a song written and performed by the bike’s jilted owner and it’s just glorious. This seems to be more than just a funny link to forward to your friends…it’s the sharing of a real experience, and making something almost beautiful out of something that undeniably sucks.

Also recommended is this story written by Dan (who I don’t know well, but who is sort of a dear friend once-removed) about his adjustment to living in NYC. To me, essays like this justify the existence of blogs and indicate their value as a means of communication slash past-time slash art form.

Bravo, sirs.

Today is my mother’s birthday, which I point out only because I refuse to miss a chance to link to this hilarious photo of her. She has tried many times over the years to deny that she was a hippie (claiming instead that the hippie stereotype was created by THE MAN to mock the free thinkers of her generation, which is a totally convincing and non-hippie argument). In rebuttal, I usually present the following evidence: 1) Her outfit in the aforelinked photo. 2) The photo taken from the same day in which she is flashing the peace sign. 3) Her collection of antique anti-war buttons. 4) The fact that in college, she was the drummer in a band called The Conspiracy. 5) The baggie of ancient-looking herbal matter that I found while admiring her collection of antique anti-war buttons. 6) The fact that she has worn a bra exactly once in the time I’ve known her, and even then only because I forced her to. 7) The subversive, psychedelic nature of the cover art of the eight track released by The Conspiracy circa the late sixties.

Relations between us have been strained these past few years. It’s hard because I am estranged from my father, and she is still with him and essentially refuses to condemn him for abusing me (and her, and my sister). I recognize this as a coping mechanism that allows her to survive, but it eviscerates me all the same. She thinks I’m as angry and depressed as I was when I lived with her because she has the singular ability to send me into a violent, screaming, sputtering rage within seconds. She doesn’t get to see how happy and calm I actually am, and I don’t get to see how much better she’s doing either. It’s a damn shame but we are trying to amend it.

Even though I know it’s supposed to be about romantic love, whenever I hear Bob Dylan’s “Most of the Time” I become acutely nostalgic for her. Of course, I also feel that way whenever I hear “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” by the Animals (I know that to her “this place” is her own head) and remember all the times I’ve seen her air-drum along with it, or when I hear anything by Fleetwood Mac and picture her doing a Stevie Nicks spin in her long skirt. It’s nice to realize that I do love her, and not just because she’s my mom.

Last fall, Jared had to take a business trip to Manhattan, and I went with him because it seemed like it would be a nice little break for me. It wasn’t, really, due to alternating intense rain and humidity, and the fact that we were there for September 11th. A co-worker of Jared’s also came along - a nice family man from Russia. One night he wanted to go to a restaurant called Russian Vodka Room.

The first thing we saw at the restaurant was the bar, where an array of women and men were sitting. The women had that cheap, sorry look about them.  They didn’t possess any great natural beauty, but they had the supposed trappings of beauty; expensive clothes and hair extensions and extravagant jewelry. It’s a look that you see on women who can’t reconcile the aging process, or women who are terribly insecure or just generally trying too hard. So those were the women. The men were alternately fat, bald, and stuffed into expensive-looking suits and were not accompanying the women, exactly, but mingling around them, buying them drinks.

This was not my scene, to be sure, but it was also not unexpected. We got ourselves a table by the bar. Seated at the table next to us were a young Asian woman and a young white man. The woman was a whore. I’ll tell you how I know this: I looked at her shoes.

For reasons of tact and morality I do not use words like “slut” or “skank” to describe other women, and I know that some women project the image of availability or promiscuity just for kicks, to get attention. And I know it sounds petty and ridiculous to claim to know that someone is a prostitute based on her footwear, and to bother verbalizing the assertion. But so it goes.

She caught me looking at her, and she looked back at me, and I swear we exchanged a silent communication between us: I can totally tell. I know you can.

I was sort of intrigued by the whole thing, and kept overhearing tidbits of her conversation with her date. These two people clearly didn’t know each other; it was a first meeting. The man kept taking calls and checking his phone while they ate, disregarding her. She told him she worked at Deutsche Bank.

Jared would later use this as evidence that the woman was not a whore; however, as I pointed out, she might be the secretary. She might answer the phone. She probably has some low-paying job and want to earn a quick few hundred in an evening, to supplement some more flamboyant lifestyle or to pay for school. This is a meme that I know is not all that rare in big cities: cute, educated girls with crappy jobs who supplement their income by working as escorts. Maybe their jobs aren’t even that bad and turning a few tricks here and there just makes them feel valued. It’s not a world I live in, but I can speculate.

The next morning at breakfast, Jared’s coworker told me he had been thinking about things, and he agreed that the lady was indeed a tramp. We had a laugh, we entered “she works at Deutsche Bank” into the lexicon of euphemisms for “she’s a whore” and went on with our lives.

On the heels of this Spitzer drama, I thought some more about our adjacent-to-hooker experience and realized why it unsettled me so much. This kind of upscale American prostitution does not carry with it the same degradation and desperation of poorer, more patriarchal societies. Middle-class American girls aren’t generally sold into brothels or forced into a business relationship with a pimp. They have plenty of options and they choose to be whores, and can solicit customers on the internet or elsewhere without any overhead or coercion. The thing that makes it so sad and vile, though, is that it seems so nonchalant. It was overwhelmingly obvious that Miss Deutsche Bank was on the clock at that restaurant; she made no efforts towards discretion. Should a whore have to hide her chosen profession and be ashamed? Well, I guess not. Different strokes, etc. But it’s not a pleasant thing to contemplate, to know that these people dining next to you will soon be in some apartment or hotel room exchanging cash for some brief, mediocre sex act before each returning to their jobs the next day, apathetic about the subtext of their actions: just two New Yorkers engaging in commerce.

Though this tampon ad is a play on one of the less flattering euphemisms for the female junk, I can’t help but be entranced by it.  The notion of hanging out around town with my Symbolic Vagina, buying it cappuccinos, getting our hair did…it’s not unappealing.

I am someone who keeps apprised of the day’s news mostly by osmosis, so I’d hate to sully the universe with another “blogger’s take” on the latest political sex scandal…but I will say this: 1) I always thought Eliot Spitzer was sort of cute, SO WHAT and 2) It has been really, really funny to see that image of him making a hilariously exaggerated “well, I’m fucked!” grimace on the front page of every newspaper in town. Who knew the human face could contort like that, or tell us so much about a man’s state of mind? It gets my vote for Guilty, Resigned Facial Expression of the Year.

You would do yourself a great disservice not to obtain and view the movie “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”. It’s about the long-standing rivalry between two Donkey Kong experts and the insane, foolish melodrama that surrounds them. Beyond being a riveting and lovingly-made documentary, it made me really think about the nature of competitiveness. I find it easy to understand wanting to be good or even great at something, but somewhat perplexing to want (to need!) to be the absolute best. I get that the notion of “the best” (especially in a video game context, where skill is correlated to a numerical point value) gives you something concrete to strive for; you can either get the highest score or you can’t, and if you can then you’ve unambiguously achieved something.

Many über-gamers have compulsive and autistic qualities about them and see the world in terms of math and patterns; it’s only natural they would consider ultimate success to be the attainment of a simple numerical goal.  However, despite the (amusingly overwrought and blatant) propagandizing of the movie, which insists on painting one player as the villain and one the hero, it becomes so clear to the viewer that winning is a distant second to simply being adept at and passionate about something, and to having others appreciate and revere your abilities.  What’s fascinating about the whole thing is that the gamers in question are two adults with jobs and families and other things of greater import going on in their lives, who are nonetheless totally obsessed with beating this arcade game, and each other. It’s risible that a grown man would cry over Donkey Kong, but it’s also rather touching.

In closing, I would be remiss not to state that the use of Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows” during a climactic montage of the two rivals is literally one of the most brilliant moments in filmmaking I have ever seen.

This morning as I lazed with my pre-work coffee, pondering the word of the day (”Lycanthrope! How might I use it in a sentence?”) I heard the ominous horking gag of my cat about to regurgitate her breakfast onto the kitchen floor. Ever a woman of action, I tore ass into the kitchen, grabbing a roll of paper towels on my way, and upon reaching the cat I laid out a makeshift placemat for her horkitude. She started backing away, and as she did this I edged the towels towards her, crying, “If you’re going to spew, spew onto this!” The emesis occurred, half on the towels and half on the floor, and she promptly set about eating it while I declared the whole thing a moderate success and went to fetch the spray cleaner.