Chill of the Day

Shopping for Sniper Rifles. With international terrorists. At a nice gun show in suburban PA — probably someplace like King of Prussia Mall, which has hosted several gun shows to my certain knowledge.

You know, I grew up with guns. My grandfather taught me to shoot when I was 10 or so. We used an empty pumpkin can for a target. Later I took a hunter safety course, because you need to know how to handle them safely if you’re going to be around guns. So many teachers and students at my high school were hunters that the school was officially closed on the first day of deer season. My father always had guns around: rifles, shotguns, revolvers, even a semiautomatic rifle that he kept always with him in the bad days of the end of my parents’ marriage. But there’s a difference between someone like Grandpa Belles, a lifelong NRA member to whom guns were a tool no more glamorous than a shovel or a saw, and my father, who used them to terrorize others so he could feel big.

I know all the arguments on both sides, and I also know that the fanatics on both sides never really listen. I don’t discuss gun control any more than I try to argue with strict Freudians or the Reverend Fred “God Hates Fags” Phelps. Arguing doesn’t make a damned bit of difference. All I can do is try to take care of the people who get squashed by the issues, support the causes I believe in, and make my ideas and preferences known to legislators.

Pink Ribbon with Cigna

This only takes 30 seconds and you don’t have to do anything else.

If you go to the Cigna web site: http://www.cignafoundation.org/ and click on the pink ribbon, Cigna will donate $1.00 to fight breast cancer.

Only good the month of October. Pass it on!

Bad Attitudes

These showed up in my e-mail one day. They range from the amusing to the obnoxious. I am not responsible for the punctuation.

The ones I really like are #17 and #32.

1. I can see your point, but I still think you’re full of crap.

2. I don’t know what your problem is, but I’ll bet it’s hard to pronounce.

3. How about never? Is never good for you?

4. I see you’ve set aside this special time to humiliate yourself in public.

5. I’m really easy to get along with once you people learn to worship me.

6. I’ll try being nicer if you’ll try being smarter.

7. I’m out of my mind, but feel free to leave a message….

8. I don’t work here. I’m a consultant.

9. It sounds like English, but I can’t understand a word you’re saying.

10. Ahhh…I see the screw-up fairy has visited us again….

11. I like you. You remind me of when I was young and stupid.

12. You are validating my inherent mistrust of strangers.

13. I have plenty of talent and vision. I just don’t give a damn.

14. I’m already visualizing the duct tape over your mouth.

15. I will always cherish the initial misconceptions I had about you.

16. Thank you. We’re all refreshed and challenged by your unique point of view.

17. The fact that no one understands you doesn’t mean you’re an artist.

18. Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.

19. What am I? Flypaper for freaks!?

20. I’m not being rude. You’re just insignificant.

21. It’s a thankless job, but I’ve got a lot of Karma to burn off.

22. Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.

23. And your cry-baby whiny-assed opinion would be…?

24. Do I look like a people person?

25. This isn’t an office. It’s Hell with fluorescent lighting.

26. I started out with nothing & still have most of it left.

27. Sarcasm is just one more service we offer.

28. If I throw a stick, will you leave?

29. Errors have been made. Others will be blamed.

30. Whatever kind of look you were going for, you missed.

31. I’m trying to imagine you with a personality.

32. A cubicle is just a padded cell without a door.

33. Can I trade this job for what’s behind door #1?

34. Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

35. Nice perfume. Must you marinate in it?

36. Chaos, panic, & disorder – my work here is done.

37. How do I set a laser printer to stun?

38. I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.

After reading a list like this, I’m grateful for the job I have. Sure, I work long hours, and I do the jobs of 2 people, but I love the work and the people I work with. My job has a playful atmosphere, and my boss and co-workers give genuine respect for good work. It’s not the barbecues, free popcorn and soda, or the casual dress code that make the place (though they don’t hurt). It’s good, consistent feedback and honesty of management; we hear the numbers every week, and we know what our goals are. What more could I ask?

Nothing Wrong with Me that Two Weeks in Scranton Couldn’t Cure

It’s so easy to be homesick at this time of year. We’re in the middle of October, always my favorite season at home. The days are shortening toward winter, the weather is cool at night but warm during the days, and it’s all similar enough to remind me, but heartbreakingly different. No brilliant color. No breadloaf hills. No frost. No home.

At times like this, I look at our neighborhood with an accusing gaze. Built in 1975, this development is made of flimsy houses set too close together on streets whose curves have no relation to the landscape or any comprehensible human ordering. The whole place is curiously unreal to me: it looks like a town on TV with its bright clean streets, its cartoony architecture, its choice of four floor models, its palm trees and jacarandas. It looks like the kind of place sitcom families have their problems that can be solved in 22 minutes. Someday I expect to come home and find the set struck and a new arrangement of facades propped in place.

More than the domestic architecture here seems unreal. We live so far from the vigor and diversity of the city that I feel like we’re lost in an endlessly manicured suburban maze. I’m not talking about ethnic diversity (we have that), but socioeconomic diversity. And more — the honest bones of life. We’re shielded from the railroad tracks, the factories, the dumps, the other essential places that keep this neighborhood clean, well-fed, and perky. A bedroom community has the same problem and the same pleasure that many people find in an affair. You don’t have to deal with the messy stuff. You just come in and take your pleasure and leave in the morning with an empty feeling.

This particular development — and what an odd word that is, sounding like a euphemism for cancerous, disastrous change — was built to house Big Blue’s workers. Another IBM ghetto, amusingly enough, given that I just moved from the original home of IBM. Almost everyone I know who has worked for IBM is bright, thoughtful, competent, but I loathe both IBM’s personnel policies and the conformist corporate culture they enforce. I’ve never forgiven them for what happened to Binghamton and Endicott when they pulled out. Those towns are ghostly now. But at least the buildings are mostly old and solid.

OK, so what’s wrong with pretty new houses in a safe, clean family neighborhood? Somehow the whole place feels dishonest. Cities and rural areas are both much more close to the bone, much less prettified, than suburbia. You have to confront the consequences of garbage there. Here it’s so easy to ignore all that. Even the Goodwill stores are in strip malls.

Also, I don’t find the houses especially pretty, though many have beautiful gardens. In my critical eyes, they are designed for display and not endurance, built with no pride of craftsmanship: badly proportioned, flimsily constructed, with showy living rooms and claustrophobic bedrooms.

I love the rich complexity of Philadelphia streets, everything from Colonial porticoes to Victorian row houses (which at least had grace and often had beautiful detailing) to the postmodern humor of the giant clothes pin. (To be fair, that’s a statue, not a dwelling, but still.) I love the simplicity of plain farmhouses set in a grove of maple trees, and I love the dignity of their red or white barns. I love the variety and exuberance of San Francisco; even with its ragged districts, it is probably the most beautiful city in the world. There are some neighborhoods in Silicon Valley that seem coherent and neighborly, not like an alienated suburb. Other areas are just so beautiful that I don’t care about their flaws.

I know I’m bitching. I also know I’m homesick. I’m still getting over the wretched sinus/chest infection and I sound like the last act of a TB drama. I’m over-tired and on the raw edge of being peopled out. I need a weekend alone, enough rest, and the chance to come back slowly to myself. But even on the most perfect sunny days, when my heart is high, this neighborhood looks fake to me. It’s just that today I felt like bitching about it.

A Cord of Wood

My sister Leslie, who lives in southern West Virginia, sent me this response on the topic of changing seasons here in California.

> > We’ve ordered a cord of wood to get us through the winter

>

> Pathetic. Really!

And it’s true that wintering on one cord of wood shows what a soft life we have here in the Golden State. Nine or ten cords of wood might see you through an upstate PA winter.

Bad weather is relative. Back in January, the hot-tub repairman was complaining bitterly to me about what a dreadful winter we were having. He had actually had to start wearing long pants instead of shorts. I couldn’t work up a lot of sympathy for his plight.

I still vividly remember the terrible winters of the mid-1970s, when the temperature without wind chill got as low as 37 below zero (Fahrenheit — God knows what it would be in Celsius) and at one point, stayed well below zero for a month. In the late 1980s, there were plenty of winter days in the 20-below range. Later, there was the dreadful Philadelphia ice-storm winter: from January to April one year, we had 17 major ice storms. I can deal with snow, I can deal with cold, but ice storms are bloody dangerous, and I was terrified for Billy every day. I’ve dug out of blizzards, hid in the cellar from a tornado and raced another down the northeast extension of the PA Turnpike, watched trees come down in windstorms, taped the windows against hurricanes, counted the seconds between the thunder and the lightning. No question, the northeast can kill. Every bad storm has its casualty.

Here we have fires, droughts, the Santa Ana wind, and earthquakes. When people die from the weather, they die in batches. I could never understand why Michele didn’t get the Weather Channel on her cable service when she lived in the LA area. Then I discovered that prediction wasn’t a big issue there. Most days the weather didn’t vary, and when it did the destruction was likely to make national television.

We Did Get Fooled Again

From Slate’s hilarious page of Bushisms:

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

The Bushisms seem to be of four basic types:

1. Problems with basic grammar, especially subject-verb agreement. My favorite: “Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

2. Freudian slips. “If you’re sick and tired of the politics of cynicism and polls and principles, come and join this campaign.”—Hilton Head, S.C., Feb. 16, 2000

3. Blithering idiocies. “For a century and a half now, America and Japan have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern times.”—Tokyo, Japan, Feb. 18, 2002

4. The terrifying revelation of his inmost attitudes. “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were,” he said. “It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.”—Iowa Western Community College, Jan 21, 2000

I’m posting this in honor of our Congress’s giving its gracious permission to Bush to invade Iraq if he feels like it. Naturally, being the cynical old liberal I am, I suspect that we’re watching the tail wag the dog again. My position was perfectly summed up by this New Yorker cartoon from a few months ago.

Getting to know Dubya, though, has solved one enduring political mystery for me. With a son like him, no wonder Bush Senior thought Dan Quayle would make a perfect political heir apparent.

Middle of a Different Night

Once again, up to take more cough medicine. I’m well enough to be restless and still sick enough to be unable to do much. At least now I’m back to work, and I know the Lump is just a lipoma.

Middle of the Night

So where have I been the past few days? Sick with a combination of infected sinuses and bone-rattling cough. Plus the usual fever, sneezing, green gunk. . . . I’m up now for some Advil and a cup of hot herbal tea.

Update: California Burning

The fire is out, for those of you who have been following the Uvas Canyon blaze that has recently made breathing such an adventure in my neighborhood. While it was burning, I would go outside, inhale the fragrance of burning leaves, and think instinctively, “Oh, it’s fall!” Which it is, technically, but in California, that evocative fragrance doesn’t mean kids raking leaves onto a small bonfire. It means firefighters battling vast blazes.

Even here, though, there is a tiny hint of color in some of the maples. The days are getting shorter, and the harvest moon was beautiful to see. We’ve ordered a cord of wood to get us through the winter; the wood stove is our primary source of heat, since the house is heated by overpriced electricity. Through the winter, we can expect plenty of rain, daytime temperatures in the sixties, and nights down in the high forties. The Bay Area really does have a heavenly climate, though down in the valley the summers are too hot for my taste.

This perfection does breed a certain attitude in the natives, though. I carpool to work most days with a guy named Ed, who doesn’t believe in the charms of a more extreme climate. As he once said, “I won’t go anywhere that there’s weather.”

I confess, I too have an attitude. I keep catching myself thinking: How can there be Christmas out here? There isn’t any snow.

Things You Don’t Want to Hear Your Doctor Say

• “Can you still feel that? Really?”

• “Hmm, interesting.”

• “Hey, where did it go?”

• “My God, it has roots. Look, nurse. Look how deep it goes.”

• “Interesting.”

• “I’m going to have to dig a little deeper.”

• “Let’s see how much I can get out.”

• “This is really interesting.”

• “I’ll have to extend the incision.”

• “Here’s another chunk.”

• “Bizarre.”

• “Don’t we have any 3-0? I’m going to need something heavier to stitch this together.”

• “I’ve never seen anything like this is my life.”

• “Wait a minute, weren’t you the one who had a lipoma or something in your abdomen?”

• “Now, remember, the scar isn’t going to end up looking like the incision looks.”

• “Well, whatever it is, I got it all out.”

Which were, word for word, the things my surgeon said this afternoon. Not all the things she said; we also discussed Stephen King and Carole King and the way I used to say “Interesting!” when I was doing a Tarot reading for someone. (Drove the clients crazy.) There was some dialogue of the usual “Please hand me the cautery knife” and “Thanks for taking care of the sharps” kind. Oh, and of course I was a good patient and checked to make sure they had seen the ultrasound done during the visit to the Urgent Care Clinic. (They hadn’t; they went to look it up on the computer, but all they found was the interpretation: it wasn’t a clot.)

The Lump had shrunk considerably, and apparently it made a spirited attempt at escape at the first incision. I did get to see it: pink and wet and wrinkled and yes, with roots. I’ll know next week what it is.

Though much of the operation was conducted in a pleasant, bantering atmosphere, it was still hard to go through. Originally they said it should take no more than 5 minutes, start to finish. It took 45 minutes, though, and the next patient was considerably delayed. I don’t mind blood, but I disliked smelling the cautery knife scorching my flesh — not, as you might think, the smell of sizzling hamburger, but much more like burned hair. Worst of all, the radio was playing the Back Street Boys.

Also, the local anesthetic was really local, and the probing and cutting kept going past the edge of the numb places. (Yes, I did mention that, after the first couple of times, and yes, they kept adding more anesthetic.) Also, though they tried numbing the skin with a cream first to make injecting the anesthetic less painful, it didn’t kick in as fast as they’d hoped, and I ended up feeling the half-dozen needles of fiery local jabbing into my flesh.

That’s the physical and objective experience. The subjective was worse, at least at the beginning. Because I was, once again, lying there waiting to be sliced open. Medical procedures hit me in a deep, ancient, terrible place, a place of helplessness and pain and betrayal. Thus the wisecracking, the questions, the general cheeriness. I had to remember — actively remember through what I said and did — that I *could* speak, that if I let them know the anesthetic wasn’t working that they would do something. That I was not helpless.

Knowledge and mordant humor have always been my weapons against helplessness. And stories; telling it this way, now, I am releasing the pain, expressing it as I would express snake venom from a wound.

Anyway, what’s left now is a sewn-up incision that’s starting to hurt like hell. I came home and slept hard for three hours, then got up to eat supper with the family. It’s Paul’s birthday, so we had his favorites: steak, baked potatoes, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms. I skipped the steak, of course. Now I’m off to have some birthday pie with the family while Paul opens his presents.