Squid Pro Quo

all americans

In the most recent New Yorker there is a nice tribute to the late J.D. Salinger.  I did, however, take issue with this quote:

"In American writing, there are three perfect books, which seem to speak to every reader and condition: 'Huckleberry Finn,' 'The Great Gatsby,' and 'The Catcher in the Rye'.  Of the three, only 'Catcher' defines an entire region of human experience: it is- in French and Dutch as much as in English- the handbook of the adolescent heart."

Having read all three of the aforementioned books, the latter two twice each, I see a glaring problem with this statement.  Every reader and condition?  Really?  I can see how that may seem.  I'd hate to wrap up American literature in those three "perfect" books in which a fairly large group of people are starkly underrepresented.  Not every group of people has to be a part of every story but come on...those three books are so....what's the word I'm looking for...

Well I'm sure this certain group of people will have their experiences better represented in perfect American fiction just as soon as they are done shopping, having babies, and learn to read something other than Cosmo and Twilight. 

Time to go for a run.  I'm going to try to remember that I'm not the only clown in this rodeo, and hopefully others will follow when throwing around superlatives about the American experience. 

I've been congratulating myself recently on being less predictable than usual. I am in the middle of cleaning out my closet and I've begun to see a pattern.

Three guesses: what color(s) is my underwear right now?

required reading

I could read wikipedia all day long.  Is there a job I could get that would allow me to do that?  I think I would really excel. 

For a while, I've kept a bookmark folder of most (but not all) of the interesting articles I've read on wikipedia.  I'm not sure why I've done this as I have never once returned to the folder...until this morning.  Oh man.  It's a goldmine.  A mine full of gold. 

It would be CRIMINAL of me to keep this collection of links to myself.  So get ready to not get any work done today because you're about to take a dip in the magical pool of wikipedia

• Culture-Bound Syndrome- diseases and other maladies invented and isolated to certain cultures.  I'm most concerned with Ghost Sickness (American Indian) and Brain Fag (West Africa).  I kind of think restless leg syndrome is an American version of this, but I'm sure I'll be hearing from them via email telling me I'm wrong.  I do know lots of brainy fags though. 
• Casu Marzu- A Sardinian cheese made with live maggots.
• 1700-1750 in fashion-  Don't know why, just thought this was interesting
• Sailing Stones- hugeass rocks that move on their own/magic/some natural explanation
• Bonsai Kitten- internet hoax
• 2007 Boston Bomb Scare- on the moon, nerds get their pants pulled down and they are spanked with moon rocks.
• Meta-Joke- jokes about jokes
• Cluster ballooning
• Avant-garde
• List of Fatal Bear Attacks in North America
• From Hell- a letter written by a man claiming to be Jack the Ripper
• List of books banned by governments
• Paper and Pencil Game
• Bloop- underwater sound recorded and thought to be made by a sea monster
• Placebo button- I knew those close door buttons on elevators were really just giving me the finger
• The Human Condition- a painting by Rene Magritte
• Kastenlauf- european drinking game
• Dandy- a gallant man who places importance on physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies
• Needle Ice- subterranean moisture brought to the surface via capillary action
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights- thou shalt not waterboard?
• Satanic Ritual Abuse
• Conversation Theory- how we talk to each other
• Wolfe +585, Senior- the man with the longest personal name ever
• Santorum- filthy redefinition of everyone's favorite republican former senator
• Double Entendre
• Nannie Doss- female serial killer
• Island of California
• Coso Artifact- spark plug found encased in a 500 thousand year old mineral.  Maybe Creationism is accurate?
• Hòa thượng Thích Quảng Đức- self immolating Vietnamese Buddhist monk
• Fainting goat- these guys are awesome
• Object sexuality- attraction towards inanimate objects
• Prisoner's dilemma- part of game theory
• Museum of Bad Art
• Robert Mugabe
• Kilroy was here
  
• Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft- legal dispute between microsoft and a high school student
• Alien Abduction Insurance- is there a public option?
• Love dart- in short, it's a snail penis
• Axon- are you cognizant of every synapse?
• Incidents at Six flags parks
• Franz Reichelt- died jumping off the Eiffel Tower in a homemade parachute suit
• Mass hysteria
• Shugborough Inscription- real life Da Vinci Code.  It's mystery time!
• The Spins- vom dot com
• Missing White Woman Syndrome-  I can't wait for this to work in my favor someday.  Not blond though...
• Jon Stewart's 2009 criticism of CNBC- yup there is a wikipedia page for this high school drama
• Snow White and the Madness of Truth- Swedish installation art
• Human vestigiality- parts of our bodies we've evolved beyond like the appendix and wisdom teeth.  forget what i said about Creationism above.  I'm back on Team Monkey.
• Dante's Divine Comedy- the wikipedia page is much easier to read than the actual text
• Green Man/Charlie No-Face- western Pennsylvania urban legend
• Montauk monster
• Abolitionism (bioethics)
• Postdiction
• List of Inventors killed by their own inventions
• Continuous Partial Attention
• List of collective nouns- these are so strange.  a parliament of owls.
• Vassilis Paleokostas- escaped from prison twice
• One Red Paperclip- how a man made a series of trades and went from a red paperclip to a house
• Frank Abagnale- the Catch Me If You Can man
• Dancing Plague of 1518- catch it!
• Andy Warhol
• Josef Fritzl- kept his daughter captive in the basement for 24 years
• Michael Malloy- you can't kill him
• Nils Olav- a knighted penguin
• The World Famous Bushman- found at Fisherman's Wharf
• Psychological pricing
• Freedom Tunnel- under Riverside Park in Manhattan
• Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

You're welcome.

smoking is a bitch

bonus post of the day!  being a better blogger!  2010!  And now that typepad has a "quick compose" option I can share my thoughts with you all day long.  Is that really what you want?!?!

I'm one steamed little clam.  I was just outside walking my legal adviser (formerly my tax accountant) Ignatius "tennis ball head" Reilly King-Stauffer and I was allegedly (I was counseled to use this wordage) smoking a cigarette.  a petite cigar.  Anyways, a man jogs about half a block to catch up to us and says in a heavy accent, "how can you do that?!"  I have no idea what I've done.  Did I forget to pick up some poop I didn't notice?  "smoke!  You are too pretty to smoke! How can you do that to yourself? You have a nice dog,too!" 

I'm generally reasonably fast on my feet, but not today, friends.  I just gave him the stinky fish eye and said, "okay....see you around, then"  Now of course my mind is racing with comebacks that will never be. Something about how the dog shoots hot loads of meth?  I hate this feeling of missed zinger opportunities. 

I did however remind myself of my favorite stranger-commenting-on-smoking moment that happened to me in the FiDi sometime this past year.  I was standing and he was walking and he shouts out, "Those things are going to kill you!" and keeps moving.  I yell back, "that's debatable!" thinking that would be the end of it.  Oh no.  He comes back and says something like, "You really shouldn't do this to yourself!  Look at that face! It is definitely killing you."  (I'm beginning to think these scoldings are really just a San Francisco way to hit on women) and without missing a beat I say, "My face?!  LOOK AT THAT SUIT!  THAT is what's killing me!"

Maybe it's better in my head, but I still enjoy that one.  Now that is a zinger I can live with.

performance enhanced

two coasts, same lofty ambitions

I’ve seen almost every episode of MTV’s Jersey Shore, which is NOT easy for someone who doesn’t even have a TV. 

 

I’m lying.  Right in your wonderful faces.  It was the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  I spent New Years Day holed up with 3 terrifyingly smart women taking in a marathon of the greatest reality show of our time.  We laughed, cried, fist pumped, became insecure about our skin tones, and left the experience a little greasier than we started. 

 

I’ve never been to New Jersey unless you count the Newark Airport.  It’s safe to say I may never go to New Jersey (unless you count the Newark Airport), but I can’t help but be fascinated by the grotesquerie. 

 

I’m convinced that one of them is a secret genius.  (sidenote:  In high school, my senior superlative was “most likely to secretly be a genius” which I found and still find offensive.  So you’re saying that my genius doesn’t SCREAM in your face like some oiled-up Guido who has misplaced his creatine?)  If they’ve been raised in a culture that doesn’t value intelligence or at  least intellectual curiosity, then it’s no surprise that they all sound like dumbasses.  It’s a numbers game.  Not every single one of them can be that stupid.  There is a really smart person among them pretending to be stupid because it increases their social currency. 

 

So I spent the entire marathon session of Jersey Shore (the only marathon I’ll ever run) trying to figure out who’s the rocket scientist.  It’s not Snooki.  I think I can weigh in on that one confidently.  It’s not JWOWW.  I am still doing behavioral research on the rest, field notebook in hand.  Right now I’m leaning towards Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino.  Brandon made the excellent point that he was clever enough to come up with the best j-shore nickname.

 

I think if I were to run into The Situation at Karma, or any equally stroke-inducing nightclub, it MIGHT go a little something like this after about 4 shots of SoCo and lime:

 

: “By the way Leslie, you look absolutely radiant tonight and without the use of body glitter!  Absolutely astounding.  But to pick up on the conversation we left off before the simulated sex on the dance floor to the impossibly loud k-hole beats, I think the use of violence against women in the work of Flannery O’Connor is a sarcastic wink that exposes the macabre nature of a misogynistic society.  This allows her to expose the injustices and dangers women face on a daily basis while skirting the dreaded stereotype of the humorless feminist and producing masterful works of enjoyable fiction.”

 

:  “Sitch, may I call you Sitch?, I think that is a very thoughtful critique.  However, we’d be remiss in our analysis if we did not examine the way race and the Catholic Church intersect gender issues in O’Connor’s dark narratives.  And thank you for the compliment.  You may be the oldest member of the cast, but your eyebrows are as groomed and youthful as those of a 16-year-old girl. "

 

And then we’d hit the hot tub.

 

It could happen.  Or I’m wrong about the entire theory and they’re all functionally illiterate members of a self-selecting population. 

 

While I’m still sorting out my methodology, it’s amusing to come up with Jersey Shore nicknames of my own.  My new friend Tara received the moniker Post-Katrina or PK as she can only process events once she knows if they are pre or post Katrina.  I was given the name “West Coast Snooki” or “Snooki West” when mes amies discovered Snooki and I share the same performance enhancing drug of choice: the Bump-It.  I prefer my name to be The Cobra.  Deadly silent until it strikes quickly with venom. 

 

I just noticed too late that Beth has beaten me to the punch in discussing JS.  However, I believe there is enough shore to share.

 

What are your Jersey Shore nicknames?

new year

Happy New Year, bitches.

We made it through 2009, which was without a doubt the worst year of my life.  It was mostly uneventful and spent aggressively nestling into dread, gloom, and a near constant state of Chihuahua-grade anxiety.  If anything has to happen this year it’s getting me out of my own head.  I’ve lived in there for too long worried about my sanity, potential, value, intelligence, and broken family.  NO MORE.  I’m so sick of acting like a total vagina all the time. 

I know I was mostly dead inside because I stopped doing the things that used to make me feel like me.  Leslie things.  I used to read the New Yorker cover to cover every week.  I didn’t do that in 2009.  I got a new subscription for chrimma, and really relished reading the whole thing yesterday in a sun spot on my ex’s couch.  I even found myself calling John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods, a dickface out loud.  It’s like the old me was starting to flow through my veins again and I didn't want to take something to get rid of it.

Speaking of reading, I did not read nearly enough of what I wanted to in 2009.  I may have mentioned my lifetime goal of completing the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels (the board's list, not the reader's list, you fools!) and I don’t think I read a single thing on the list last year.  I spent most of it reading trashy volumes of Tales of the City, and of course it took forever to read all 800 fucking pages of Underworld by Don DeLillo.  I’m back on the right track by being about a quarter of the way through The Golden Notebook.  (sidenote:  someone at the airport told me they love the movie version with Rachel McAdams.  I didn’t laugh.   I’m already nicer.  See below.)  I’ve now just noticed this book is not even on the list.  F.  eff eff eff. 

2009 wasn’t just a macabre horror show.  I made a habit of exercise, began eating better, and weaned myself off the red rollercoaster conflict capsules known as Effexor XR, a drug my mother wants to strap me to a table and re-administer by force. 

I’m going to let you in on my resolutions.  Not because it’s a new year.  We all know that time is merely a grim abstract humans invented to organize and document their slow march towards death.  I’m making resolutions because I’m just sick of being a horrible needy bitch teetering on the brink of a catatonic insanity.

1)       1.  I am going to get a job this year.  I’m smart (debatable) and I make a good employee when I’m not     busy being fired.  I will keep this job for a reasonable amount of time.

1a) When I have a new boss, I will not be insubordinate.  I will NOT tell my boss I hate his or her face.  I will NOT call him a fake.  I will NOT tell him to stop taking his erectile dysfunction out on me.  I will NOT demand he wear nicer pants.  I will NOT call him “pocket sized”. 

1b) I will be on time.  I will be timely.

2)       2.  I am going to be nicer. 

3)       3.  I will respect that Nyquil is not a recreational sleep aid for when I’ve had enough of being conscious. 

4)       4.  I will give people a chance.  If someone age appropriate wants to talk to me in public, I will allow it.  I will stop engaging the age inappropriate.

5)       5.  I will not be a flake.  If I say I’m going to be somewhere or do something, I will do it and not bail.  I will YES more. 

6)       6.  I will be less fatalistic and dramatic.  Every car ride I take is not certain death.  Getting cold edamame is no reason to reenact violent hari kari complete with the sound effects of my intestines hitting the table.

7)       7.  I will think about others more and less about myself.

8)       8.  I will be a better blogger.

9)      9.  I will join a book club.  I’ve always wanted to.

10)    10.   I will allow people to hug me and not visibly recoil in horror when they come at me, arms agape.

I’ll stop at 10 although there is much more I could improve upon. If you'd like to read the embarrassing details of my New Year's Eve, they are here.  However I did not yell across the bay.  A lady does not raise her voice above the whispering wind, amiright?  I haven't raised my voice above a grumble in years.

bold, frankinbitch, and brrrr

Welcome back to the land of the living, bitches.  I've been a bad baby. 

Every now and then I get waves of anxiety and the form the most recent one took was freaking out about not being able to control who reads what I put on the internet.  Now the obvious solution to this is "don't put shit on the internet!"  but how much fun is that?  None fun.  The answer is none fun.

I went to Pittsburgh for a few days.  Pittsburgh is the city where beauty and the ability to regulate one's own blood glucose levels without assistance goes to die.  I spent enough time with my family to declare them all mentally ill beyond repair and even came this close to getting my mom to smoke grass.

I had a birthday in the middle of it all.  Went to Nashville after Pittsburgh and inhaled enough first and second hand smoke to last me through 2010, the year I hope to be done with that vice forever.  I turned 26, absorbed some friendly racist banter among Tennesseans and almost got into a brawl with an octogenarian on the flight back to San Francisco. 

I severely needed a break from SF, or so I thought.  I was ready to fall to my knees and kiss the sweet gay earth when I landed today.  The holidays really tested the tensile strength of my sanity, and I was only saved by the white knight known as a bottle of generic Mexican Xanax I found in my mother's bathroom.

I would have taken photos of the horrifying clown show that is the other side of the country, but my only remaining point-and-shoot camera had its lens smashed while in the care of a friend whose friendship I am not exactly acknowledging.  Not because of the camera, of course.  This was a person that actually made me feel lonelier than actually being alone. Have you ever met someone like that?  I barely knew this person at all and decided to just cut off all technology communication and hope the issue resolves itself.  Phone, facebook, email, whatever.  I'm calling it the "Full Earhart", as it's losing all communication with someone and falling off the grid.  Is that in poor taste?  I'm open to wittier suggestions.  We've all had to duck someone at some point or another.  I'm sure someone has done it to me.  Perhaps it works both ways.  The elusive Double Earhart.  2010, I promise to not be such a stone cold bitch.

To end on a more uplifting and hopeful note, here is a picture I took of the man standing behind me in the security line at the Nashville airport at 4:30 am:

 

His breathing was like that of a rhinoceros. 

Now I must go catch up on watching Dirty Jobs and come up with an outline for a strategic plan on how to better stalk Mike Rowe in 2010.  I can't just give up and fail like I do whenever I resolve to stalk various D-list celebrities.  No.  Not this time.  This will be my year.

dughfest 26.0

For my friend Brandon's birthday I was invited to spend the day with him and his mom up in Napa.  It was my first trip up to wine country, and of course, it was as breathtakingly beautiful as you might imagine. 

 

Birthday boy and his mom

I still haven't forgiven that transvestite for this terrible haircut.  Not that there is anything wrong with transvestites it will just make me very reluctant to let a man in a corset cut my hair in the future.  It looks a little better straightened:

 

ugh...vain.

For dinner we went to  Baker Street Bistro.  The food was delicious.  I bravely tried a bite of B's sweetbreads for the first time in my life.  The service was pretty bad, though.  I had a great time, nonetheless.  Brandon's mom was so sweet and generous to put up with me for the whole day.  We spent a lot of time in Napa talking about how great it is to be in California where you can go to something like a wine tasting in jeans.  We're so casual.  I made a hypocrite of myself when I totally got lost in a gigglefest staring up the leg of this man at the restaurant last night:

That's a dangerous game he's playing with those shorts.

stars upon thars

Wow I’m on a roll posting, aren’t I?  I wanted to get in there and comment on the surprising response I’ve gotten for my last post.  I appreciate your emails and input.  Clearly you bitches are angry about all sorts of injustices, and I’m just glad I’m not the only one.   Never be complacent about a world so deeply flawed.  Money is the only thing that motivates Americans.

I woke up today feeling extra sorry for myself.  I’m dog sitting at my ex’s and if you’ve been down Divisadero in the past several weeks you’ve noticed the endless pinko stimulus construction project adding a median to the street.  The jackhammer action started around 7, which means the dog barking also started around 7.  I was convinced no one in the world has a life as tragic as mine.  I’m exhausted and drowning in noise.  I left my glasses AND my cell phone charger at my apartment. My sister keeps threatening to abandon her husband and child to join the roller derby.  I let a Native American transvestite give me the worst haircut I’ve ever had last month and oh yeah…I DON’T HAVE A JOB!

To put the whole miserable noise thing in perspective let me paint you a more visual picture...

Oh here I am spending a lovely warm and sunny afternoon reading the fourth installment of the Armistead Maupin (what a name!) Tales of the City series, Babycakes.  Idyllic, n'est-ce pas?

Now lets take a look at what is actually out that window:

 

Now I had a whole post written about the recent events in Maine voting to take away the right for homosexuals to legally marry and how I can't believe this country is so filled with Star-Belly Sneetches who go on and on about the importance of stars and how they are truly critical to the pursuit of building a family unit and thus the pursuit of happiness because WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?  And when the other Sneetches want their chance at stars, and families, and love, and happiness they say, "oh my goodness no.  It's just not natural.  These are just for us.  What if one of my star-bellied children has to hang out with your degenerate Sneetch offspring and thus are taught that there are all sorts of Sneetches with all different kinds of bellies who just want to live their lives"  By the way the "it's not natural" argument is always the most bewildering to me.  It's as if some think homosexuality does not occur in the natural world.  Does this mean gay folks are supernatural?  They all hover in this paranormal plane of existance made up of Williams-Sonomas and glitter?  The animals don't know they are sinning.  WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE PENGUINS?! 

But that post I wrote was lost in a computer hiccup just now so I have no eloquence left in me.  Here are some more pictures instead. 

Because I am a woman trying to gain employment, I will not post a picture of me IN my Halloween costume but here it is none the less.  I went as everyone's favorite 80's classic song by Dexys Midnight Runners.  It consisted of this shirt and jeans.  Easy.

My sincerest apologies to the good sensible wholesome people who read this blog.

And finally, three fabulous Tennesseeans in a dark lower Haight bar:

talk to you bitches later.

that's politics, bitch

I was talking to my sister and she asked me if I had seen a sketch by Chelsea Handler.  My response was, “No.  I don’t watch her.  She’s an anti-vaccinationist.”  I could hear the eye roll over the phone.  Typical Leslie in action.

There has been a lot of op-ed, blog posts, and talk in general about “separating the art from the artist”.  American celebrities are so outspoken about a myriad of issues, each of which will be extremely personal to someone, somewhere.   Because so many actors, musicians, politicians and otherwise public figures demand to be more than vessels through which their work travels, choosing entertainment has become an exhausting task.  

As a lunatic liberal I am really not trying to take away anyone’s freedoms.  I just think society in general has to have a structure where we don’t have to suffer from extreme socio-economic imbalances, we can choose to opt out (or in) of religion, and to generally not be exploited by assholes.  I just want everyone to be safe, happy, healthy, to not be discriminated against, and free to do whatever he or she wants. 

Living in San Francisco, the city of recreational outrage, it’s easy to stray from that central dogma.  I get so distracted by boycotts, protests, and media frenzies.  My family on the other side of the country is all too familiar with my tendency to reject something based on a disagreement in politics or thought.   Maybe there is such a thing as going so far left that you come back around to the other side full circle.  In other words, if I disagree with so much, eventually I’ll be confined to my house forever having shut everything down by my thought police tendencies. 

Here is a list of people, places, and things I have avoided in the past, present or both:

-Scientologists (Tom Cruise and his movies)

-Anti-vaccinationists (Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Chelsea Handler)

-PETA members (basically everyone in Hollywood)

-Creationists

-Rape apologists (re: Roman Polanski and the recent amendment proposed by Senator Franken)

-Prop 8 Supporters (there is a database of who supported this financially that I have referenced several times)

-Misogynists (American Apparel)

-Racists

-Restaurants that serve foie gras

-Disrespectful Pro-Lifers (pro-life people don’t bother me.  People who think its okay to kill abortion doctors do)

-English-Only movement supporters

-Birthers

-Health care reform opposition

-Sanctimonious vegans (Natalie Portman who compares being okay with eating meat to being okay with rape)

-Anti-union (Whole Foods, starbucks)

Not all of the above can be associated with businesses to not give my money to, but certainly if I caught wind of affiliation I would prevent further patronage.  I know that can’t be everything I’ve gone off the deep end about.  They are just the issues I can think of off the top of my head.  While a lot of them are no-brainers (who would support known racists?) listing everything I disagree with makes me feel like the most intolerant person in the world, which is the opposite of what I am trying to achieve here. 

I’m interested...what have/do you avoid(ed) with your wallet for political reasons?