Baby Blues.

After a week of forced relaxation, Alex has fallen into a weird sort of funk, a sadness mixed with the occasional irrational tantrum. Usually he's a pretty laid back guy, so rolling around on the floor kicking and screaming because Steve wouldn't let him stash fresh green grapes in an old briefcase, letting them roll around unwrapped and loose, smells of self-created drama to me.

Two days ago he told Steve he wanted Maddie and Sophia and Evan, the children from the houses surrounding us, to come over and play.

"They all moved away last summer, remember?" Steve reminded him.

"Yeah. They're all gone, and my throat hurts, and I can't have any chicken patties. I used to be able to have chicken patties, back when I was a baby. Now all I can have is mushy food. I have no friends, and I can't go to school anymore, and I can't play outside, and all I can eat is oatmeal, and my ears hurt."

Steve called me over the swell of violin music. "He's depressed," he reported.

We should have seized the moment as a teaching opportunity, dressing him in black and introducing him to Joy Division. Instead, I was tempted to take him to Chuck E. Cheese. I thought that cautionary tale told by the doctor was going to teach me about how well he would feel in five days. Instead, the actual lesson turned out to be that after five days of forced rest, your four-year-old will grow bitter and depressed. No wonder that mother took her kid to that hypermanic sensory assault - watching your child slowly morph into Robert Smith isn't pretty. Four years old is way too young to be singing the blues.

Yesterday he got to leave the house for the very first time, but even then the leaving was bittersweet - it was a trip right back to the very same man that drugged him and stuck a knife down his throat. When I told Alex we'd be leaving the house, his eyes cleared and brightened. When I told him where we'd be going he gave me a look that very clearly said: There is no God.

He and I hadn't had such a bad day before that, either: while Christopher was napping, Alex and I had been outside, cleaning the garage. Since we bought the house, the garage has morphed into the home of the Ghost of Christmas Past. Five years of plastic crap and Happy Meal toys were strewn throughout the garage, not to mention the oversmell of cat pee from that fluffy orange asshole next door who evidently has been using our garage as a bachelor pad to pick up frisky lady felines. Clearly, he is married to the gray lady cat who lives with him and does not want to shit where he eats when he slinks into our garage to commit adultery.

So the little fuckwad has peed somewhere in the garage, and we're not sure where. We think it's over on the far side of the space, past the mounds of Buzz Lightyears and old car seats. After about 2 hours of picking through piles and piles of Weeblos, miniature playing cards, and random brightly colored bits of who-knows-what, I was very seriously tempted to rent a leaf blower and just blow all that shit out of the garage and into the street.

Rich people, what do you do with all this crap your children accumulate? We are poor, and do not buy our children toys very often. And yet we have more toys in our home than square feet. How does this happen?

Even though I never did find the cat pee, enough progress was made where I could at least feel like I got something accomplished, and filled 4 large boxes and 2 black trash bags full of stuff to give away. [No, we will not have a yard sale. Our neighborhood has the lamest yard sales ever. Nobody is rich here. If poor people are getting rid of their clothes or furniture, I guarantee it's complete crap. Don't come here for your yard sales. Go to Wilmette. "Oh, that? Yeah, we just couldn't find a place for that Matisse. I'm asking fifty for it, but go ahead and counteroffer, if you want." Besides, if I wanted to sit around all day hoping someone will buy something, I'll go to work. At least I've got the computer here.]

After Christopher woke up from his nap and the garage was half-way under control, Alex and I entered hot negotiations about where we were going to go, to the Doctor's office (me) or please, for the love of God anywhere else (him). I finally convinced him by agreeing to let him wear his jean shorts and promised him that the doctor may allow him to eat a hot dog for dinner. As long as we made it to the appointment, that is. He reluctantly agreed, and by two-thirty we were backing out of the driveway, maneuvering around all the toys and an overlooked remaining sofa cushion from the dearly departed Putrid Couch.

A note about the time here: before the boys were born, I was always on time for things. Always. Unless I didn't want to go and was deliberately dragging my ass. Now, I can't get out of the house unless I'm running a minimum of twenty minutes late. I can't even trick myself into being early. Always. Except yesterday! Yesterday we were going to be ON TIME. This is what I should have made the paper for, this extremely rare manifestation of punctuality.

We get to the hospital and take a ride in a glass elevator from the parking garage to outside, which was, sadly, the most exciting thing that had happened to Alex in a whole week and was almost worth the price he had to pay in order to do it. After checking in with the receptionist, I led the boys into the closet-sized, toyless "playroom". It contained a table, 3 puzzles containing 4 or 5 pieces, and a copy of Highlights. The boys correctly gauged the room as lame, and amused themselves by sitting on the child-sized table. I was sitting next to them on the child-sized chair, reading about Goofus and Gallant [Note again - was Gallant always such a boring-ass buzzkill? Holy smokes, what a milquetoast.] when out of nowhere a woman rushed us.

"The baby's on the table! The baby's on the table!"

Here's what I said in response: I'm watching him.

Here's what I meant: Okay, look. I'm sitting 3 inches from him. I know he's on the table. I also know you don't think it's appropriate for him to be sitting on the table, and that you'd rather he be sitting quietly in a chair, playing with one toy at a time, in the Montessori way. If you'd like to help me accomplish this, you can help me out by 1.) putting actual toys in the toy room 2.) putting a book or two in the toy room. Maybe it isn't ideal that he's sitting where he's sitting, but look: he isn't going to hurt your table. He isn't going to hurt himself. He's not bothering your other patients. He isn't crying. He isn't noisy. I'm alone with two small children. The most valuable, sanity-preserving thing I can do is to pick my battles. I choose to have him sit quietly here, letting him go through my purse in lieu of toys, rather than to have a huge battle to force him into a chair just so you can cast your approval over.....What's that smell? Oh, no. OH, NO. I LEFT THE DIAPER BAG AT HOME. I MADE IT ON TIME JUST TO LEAVE THE DIAPER BAG AT HOME.

I take Christopher by the hand and go to the receptionist desk.

"Is there anywhere in the building where I could get a diaper? I have made a horrible, horrible mistake and forgot the diaper bag."

Answer: no.

Frog was appalled that a very large medical building connected to a hospital would not have any diapers, but let me tell you, the medical establishment wants no truck with the likes of me. Even if they had a room full of diapers they'd still sit on it like Smaug on the treasure, because once you give one airhead a diaper, you've got to give all the airheads a diaper, and then where would they be? Some doctor's offices tell you they won't let you throw your dirty diapers away in their garbage cans either - pediatricians! - but to this I say, Parents, unite and revolt! Really now.

One of the receptionists took pity on me and kindly suggested we go up to the Family Practice on the fourth floor, because there might be another mother there who would float me a diaper. Just as I'd made the decision to do so and I began to try to round up Alex, who had squeezed himself comfortably into a triangle shape cut into the playroom wall and was loathe to extricate himself, the nurse told us the doctor was ready for us.

"Room One," she said, and shimmered off, leaving me to wander around the suite trying to find it, asking staff members who flitted by like ghosts wearing pink and blue teddy bear jackets.

Once in Room One, I realized I had no choice but to remove the diaper, clean his tush, and pray. I soaked several towels, threatened Alex to keep him from playing with the adjustable examining chair, and began. In the middle of this ordeal, which was even more hideous than I had anticipated, the doctor walked in. I apologized profusely to him for stinking up the room and destroying one of his magazines.

"That's okay, do what you have to do. Don't worry about it," he reassured me. "By the way, there's some over here behind the chair."

What? Christopher was never over by the chair!

"Oh, Alex," I groaned. "Et tu, Brute?"

Him tu. Even worse than Christopher, I saw when I left Christopher briefly to check out the backside of Alex.

"Christopher is peeing on his clothes," said Dr. Peters.

I whirled around. "Auuuuughhhh! No, Christopher! Oh, no!"

I heard a noise behind me. In the middle of all this, the doctor was very clearly, openly laughing at me.

I stared at him. "You're laughing?"

He tried to compose himself, then gave up.

"I'm sorry," he said, "but I have twins, and they've nailed me so many times...It's funnier when it happens to someone else."

This was the moment when I realized that I was dealing with someone after my own heart, and despite the fact that he was standing there, giggling away at my suffering, it made me feel better about things.

In spite of the raging fire down below, Dr. Peters had examined the top part of Alex, proclaiming him to be doing very well and was clear to eat hot dogs, but nothing crunchy or spicy or peanut buttery, for another week. And no school.

He tried to leave.

"Wait," I said. "My husband told me I had to grill you about his ears. They seem like they still really hurt him and we need to make sure there is no infection. As you can see, I do not have time to grill you, so let's just pretend that I did and get to the bottom line about his ears - what would you tell me?"

"I'm 99.99% sure he doesn't have an ear infection. I'd be surprised if his ears didn't hurt, in fact. Blame the adenoid removal. He'll feel better by next week, I guarantee it."

Then he left. A few seconds later a nurse came in with a plastic bag, a plastic padded sheet, and adhesive tape. I folded up the padded sheet to MacGyver up a diaper and secured it with the tape, put the peed-on clothes in the bag, and made a silent vow to write that nurse a thank you letter for saving the day. I didn't put a makeshift diaper on Alex, preferring instead to tell him to hold his water, damn it, because I know he can.

He did.

So it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and Alex is coming along nicely. But next time, if I have to choose between diaper bag/late and no diaper bag/on time, I'm just going to go ahead and be late. Seriously, though, Dr. Peters, please put some toys in that toy room. Can I interest you in taking some of ours?

Tonight's Incident Has Been Brought to you by Irish Whiskey.

Elderly Man: I just got out of prison, you know, the jail down the street, and walked over here."

Me: Ah. [mouthing to the man in the store who was buying gifts for his wife, "Don't leave!"]

Gift-Buying Man: [nods and mouths back, "Okay."]

Elderly Man: Yeah. It wasn't right, to have to spend the night in jail like that. It wasn't my fault.

Me: Oh?

Elderly Man: No. See, I thought it was a woman I was picking up over there on Broadway, but it wasn't! It was a man in a dress! I thought it was a woman, but it was a man, and then they got me and took me off to jail. And I had to stay there all night! All night long! I didn't know it was a man!

Me: Yeah, they can fool you like that.

Elderly Man: Hell, yeah! That shouldn't be allowed. It should be illegal to let men dress up as ladies of the night and fool people like that.

Gift-buying man: You do know that it's illegal for anybody to dress up as a "lady of the night" and actually behave like one, right?

Elderly Man: [Blank stare]

Gift-buying Man: Prostitution is illegal whether women do it or men, so it doesn't matter what men wear.

Elderly Man: [angrily] You are being a pain in my ass! You go away and let me talk to this young lady!

Gift-buying Man: No.

Elderly Man: You got no reason to be here anymore! You go away!

Gift-buying Man: I'm not leaving.

Me: Sir, is there anything I can help you find?

Elderly Man: Uh, can I have a job?

Me: We're not hiring right now, but you can fill out an application, if you like.

Elderly Man: No, I don't want to. You got five dollars?

Me: No.

Elderly Man: Can't you give me just five dollars?

Gift-buying Man: Would you like to go back to jail?

Elderly Man: Nobody respects the elderly these days. Everybody's a smart ass white boy or a man in a dress. It's just not right. [leaves.]

How Steve Avoided Certain Death.

We were at home, doing the day's post-mortem when Steve said abruptly, "Oh, somebody mailed me a rock."

"Somebody mailed you a rock?"

"Yeah. A shiny black rock."

"Just a rock?"

"Yeah."

"Nothing else?"

"No. Just a polished black rock with a date engraved on it."

"What was the date?"

"4/21/04."

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. I looked it up. April 21st is Administrative Workers Day, but that's it."

"Does that date mean anything to you?"

"No."

"Think."

"I have been! It doesn't mean anything!"

"Was there are return address on the box?"

"No. Nothing."

Why would someone mail Steve a rock? What does that mean, to anonymously mail someone a rock? When someone gets a dead fish in the mail, it means someone is dead. The same thing with a bullet. So what does a rock mean, that someone is going to hit him in the head? Throw it through the store window? What?

As soon as I got on this line of thinking, I was toast. This rock was clearly a threat, but from whom? I couldn't think of anyone Steve had pissed off enough to spur someone to make such an oblique threat. Maybe it was some freak who had an issue with the store in general? And what kind of lunatic would polish a small black rock until it became smooth and shiny, then take it to an engraver's and have a date put on it, put it in a jewelry box on top of soft white cotton batting, wrap it and tape it up by hand, hand stamp it, and mail it? There was a certain amount of effort put into this message, whatever it was.

"I thought it was just some sort of promotional material," Steve suggested.

"But why would they just send a rock? Why wouldn't they put a return address on it, or some sort of small card? Why just a creepy black rock?"

I got to see the rock myself the next day. It was even creepier seeing it for myself. The only clue on the box was the postmark, showing that it had been routed through Palatine, a suburb on the Northwest side of the city.

"Who do you know in Palatine?" I asked him.

"Greg."

"Why would Greg mail you a rock?"

"He wouldn't."

"Call him anyway and ask him."

"No, I didn't mail you a rock," said Greg. "Why would I do that? It sounds like a death threat to me. That's weird and creepy."

The UPS carrier thought it was weird and creepy as well.

"It sounds like a death threat," she said. "You should go to the police."

"You think?"

"Yes, definitely. And I think you should close the store on that day. That's a Wednesday? Well, it's not as bad as a Saturday, but I don't think you should take the risk."

So I called the local precinct and asked if anybody else had received an anonymous rock in the mail. The officer wasn't very helpful.

"It isn't against the law to mail someone a rock," she said.

I knew that, I said. I explained the dead fish/Godfather/sleep with the fishes message.

"I was just wondering, you know, if it meant anything."

"It's your husband's property," she said. "We can't help you. If he wants to call and file a complaint, he can."

"I don't want to file a complaint. I just want to know if anybody else has gotten a weird rock in the mail with a date carved on it."

"Look," she said. "The date means something to your husband. If he says it doesn't, he's lying. He's probably cheating on you."

"........"

"Ask him again what the date means. He'll know."

"Why would some woman send him a rock in the mail? If she wanted revenge on him, why wouldn't she just do the normal thing and call me? And if he's cheating on me, why would he show me the rock?"

"Men are crazy and stupid," she said flatly. "They do all kinds of dumb stuff they shouldn't do."

"Hm," I replied and hung up, disgruntled. I called Steve.

"The police say you're cheating on me," I told him.

"I am not!"

"Why would the police lie? They are trained to detect bullshit. What does the date mean?"

"I don't know!!"

"Really, what does it mean?"

"I don't know!"

"You know, I'd much rather the date be the due date of your illegitimate child than the day you're going to get whacked, so I think it would be much better if you just told me."

"Stop it," he said. "I'm starting to get upset."

"Fine. Bye, Cheater," I said and hung up on his protestations.

Not that I thought he was cheating. Even if he had the inclination, there's no way he could work in the time to have an affair, and he even if he had the energy for subterfuge, he couldn't afford hotel room fees and dinners out. Besides, there's no woman in the world that's going to mail him a rock for that sort of thing. A rock? No way. It was nice to have the opportunity to needle him though, and I had the law on my side, too, which was always a plus.

Cutie John stopped by to say hello. I showed him the rock.

"That looks like a death threat," he said. "I bet it's some sort of religious lunatic. You should call the other sex toy stores in the neighborhood and see if they got rocks in the mail."

Ah!

I called one of our competitors and explained the situation.

"That sounds like a death threat," she said. "Let me go back in the office and check to see if we got any rocks."

They didn't.

"Call me back when you find out what's going on," she said.

"Okay. Please call me if you all get a rock."

She said she would.

Bria came by, wanting to see the rock.

"That's creepy!" she said. "That's clearly some sort of threat."

By now I was convinced Steve was going to go up in flames on April 21st.

I started calling engravers in the Palatine area to ask them if they had recently engraved a rock for anybody. Nobody had. I gave up when I realized there were hundreds of jewelry stores in the area, and calling every single one of them would take weeks.

By this time I had infected Steve with my paranoia, and he had been reduced to calling an engraver or two himself before giving up.

The following day, I accosted our mail carrier and showed her the rock and the box it came in.

"Oh, yeah..." she said. "I remember delivering about two other boxes that looked just like that one yesterday."

I pounced on her. "Do you remember where you delivered them?"

"Businesses. I don't remember which ones, but definitely businesses."

"Sex toy stores?"

"No...But hey, if I deliver any more, I'll let you know!"

She didn't deliver any more. Things were quiet for about a week. Stylists from next door kept stopping by to see if were still alive. Steve got sick and we closed the store for a day, almost causing our UPS carrier to have heart failure from worry.

My paranoia had been slightly assuaged by the fact that other businesses had received rocks as well. I still had no idea what it meant, but at least it wasn't strictly personal anymore.

"If it does turn out to be a promotional thing, I'm going to kill whoever's idea it was. How could anybody be so stupid to mail somebody a rock? What a bad idea!" I complained to Bria when she came by to give her pig vagina tutorial. She agreed that whoever was in charge of the rock-giving should be shot at dawn.

A week later Steve received a letter in a brown envelope. The envelope paper was made of the same material the rock box was wrapped in. It was the second mysterious message, I just knew it. I tore open the envelope. Seconds later, I was on the phone with Steve.

"That rock you got, would you say it was a Hard Rock?"

Steve started laughing. "Oh my God. Was that from the Hard Rock Hotel?"

"Yes! They're inviting us to their grand opening V.I.P. party!"

And here's the truly hideous thing - I can't even call to yell at them for terrifying me. Why? Because we provide them with the gift boxes that they leave for their guests. They are our biggest client.

Anyway. I don't think we can go to their party. On April 21st. But I think I'm going to hang on to that rock anyway.

The Putrid Couch.
(1999-2004)
R.I.P.

It's always sad when anyone dies." - Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), when asked about her thoughts on the passing of political foe Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC).

My number one Google search in my stats isn't "sex toy stores" or "blowjobs" or even "Jamie-Lynn DiScala" (although that's a close second).

No, the number one way people find this blog is by Googling "One Good Thing Putrid Couch". Not surprisingly, it pops up right up, front and center, and ready to appall everyone with its vomit stains and foul smell.

And today the Putrid Couch has become even more famous due to a mention by Chicago Tribune writer Maureen Ryan, in a lovely

article about the blog.

Unfortunately, after Ryan had interviewed me, the Putrid Couch became unbearable even by my extraordinarily low standards when Alex spent an entire day peeing on it. This crime went undetected until Steve sat on the couch and was subsequently traumatized. This morning we kicked it to the curb, and after donning their hazardous-waste protective suits and gloves, the sanitation workers picked it up and took it away.

I know many of you will be mourning the passing of the Putrid Couch. Out of respect for its many, many fans, I have asked Pinky, a blogger who is less...what is the word?...oh, yes - stupid - than me about putting up photos and such, to put up a memorial photo of it for you. If she does, I will post a link ****here****, in this very same entry. I will not make a special post just to post something so embarrassingly disgusting. You'll just have to come back and look later on.

And speaking of me being less-than-savvy, the thank you e-mail I wrote to Mo for writing such a nice article keeps bouncing back to me, so I'll have to mention here how impressed I am that she managed to be both accurate while simultaneously making me sound much cooler than the raging dork that I actually am. This alone is proof of Ms. Ryan's tremendous talent.

Thanks, Mo.

P.S. - Maureen Ryan will be guest blogging for Eric Zorn while he and his family are on vacation all next week, so everybody please check her out.

Typical.

4:00 a.m. Steve and I get in an argument about exactly who is going to set a good example for whom and get out of bed first. We both fall back asleep until 5.

5:00 a.m. Christopher wakes up, slugs back a bottle of milk, and lies in my arms until 5:15. We had planned to be out the door at 5:30, at the latest.

5:15 a.m. I get up, shower, get dressed, change Christopher's diaper, pack a diaper bag. Steve loads the car while I try to wake up Alex. He acts like a teenager about the whole thing, pulling his blanket over his head and muttering darkly.

5:40 a.m. Steve picks up Alex, pillow, blanket, and all, and throws him in the car.

6:15 a.m. We arrive in the outpatient surgery waiting room at the hospital. Alex is very cooperative and cheerful. Christopher is a maniac. We fill out paperwork, and shuffle from place to place to place. The anesthesiologist shows Alex the masks they'll both get to wear. Hey, kiddo, the hospital's just like Mardi Gras! Masks, drugs, a swift descent into unconsciousness, and a raging hangover! Huzzah!

The surgeon explains again to Alex what is about to happen to him, then fixes me with a stern eye and tells me the tale of the Bad Mother who allowed her kid to go to Chuck E. Cheese 5 days after his tonsillectomy, only to have the child suffer bleeding as a result. I wonder, did she let him eat that god-awful pizza? Because if she did, he may have a point about her parenting skills. Otherwise, it just clued me in to how well kids are doing a few days after surgery and how very difficult it will be to get him to get two weeks worth of bedrest.

A nurse wheels Alex away for his surgery. We walk with him as far as they will let us. Alex and the nurse continue on down the hall. I hear him brightly say to her, "Hey, where are we going?"

Every single person on the hospital staff refers to Christopher as "Alex's little sister." The bob haircut - it's not just for little boys who want to be Prince Valiant anymore. It seems it's not for little boys, period. Steve and I correct no one. When asked his name, we take great delight in telling them, "Chris". I briefly wish we'd named him Patrick.

8:30 a.m. The surgeon comes to chat with us. Alex is just fine; everything went very well, it's over except for a sore throat. He gives us a laundry list of things to feed him the first week: yogurt, ice cream, popsicles, pudding. The second week he can upgrade to tofu dogs and boiled eggs. Or downgrade, depending.

9:15 a.m. Alex comes down off the anesthetic and freaks out. A nurse comes to get me. I follow her to the recovery room, he's screaming his head off and sobbing, hysterically fighting the nurse. I get in bed with him. He alternates between clinging to me and fighting me. The nurse says this is normal, that he's confused. He begs for a glass of water. She gives him one full of crushed ice. He gulps it down and belches louder than any belch I've ever heard. Several nurses applaud. After about 15 minutes, he calms down. We are taken to another waiting room where Caillou is playing. I discuss Caillou with him, why he is a four year old boy with no hair? Does Alex think he's related to Charlie Brown? Alex doesn't know. He wants to go home. Steve and Christopher meet us in this room. I dress Alex and we go home. Both boys fall asleep in the car. Steve takes a truly excellent photo of both of them, zonked out, with Christopher holding an enormous chunk of Alex's hair in his fist. Never let it be said that Christopher misses an opportunity to even the score. Oh, is your throat sore? Are you ill? What a shame.

If I know who you are, and you'd like to see this photo, (and I know you would), e-mail me.

10:00 a.m. Steve drops me off at the grocery store to get Alex's Tylenol with Codeine at the pharmacy, and jello. I see a game of Operation on the clearance table. It seems like fate.

10:30 a.m. I make lunch for everybody. Alex gets oatmeal. He wants a veggie burger. The first of many culinary disappointments for the tonsil-free.

11:30 a.m. I am ready to go to work. Steve and Alex are in front of the fire. Steve has begun to read a Shel Silverstein book of poetry to him. I find out later that Alex made him read the whole thing. Christopher, sensing I am about to leave, cries and cries. Argh! Alex says, "See you later, Mama. Daddy, don't stop reading."

12:00 p.m. I call Frog to tell her what happened. I had e-mailed her on Monday when she was taking a day off to tell her about his surgery. When I didn't hear from her, I called her. "I'm glad you called and told me," she said. "I wouldn't have wanted you to think I was blowing you off if you had e-mailed me about something like that and I didn't answer."

"Oh, I wouldn't have thought that," I assured her.

"Yes, you would have," she said. (Yes. I would have. Even though it is stupid and wrong and is beneath us both.)

12:30 p.m. On my way to the store I help a very old woman cross the street to get to the bus stop. Our paths cross quite often, and it's always the same. She takes my arm and chats cheerily away about the weather, about how it was supposed to be warm, but look! Here it is, cold, and she without her gloves! She pretends to offer me money, and I pretend to be outraged by her suggestion. I walk away from her, wildly hoping she's picked my pocket. That would be awesome! She'll never see eighty again, she's invisible to most of the world, why not turn to a life of crime?

12:45 p.m. I walk past the hair salon and see Cutie John with a client. I press face up to the glass, puffing up my cheeks and blowing air out my mouth. I wait. Cutie John notices a shadow in the window. He looks up, sees me, and ends up almost shaving off the side of his client's head in surprise. I laugh and laugh.

1:00 p.m. I have the following phone conversation: "Sir, if you want your girlfriend to stick her entire arm plus a shoe up your ass, it's not really my place to judge you. However, if you insist on taking advice solely from an employee of a sex toy store and don't call a reputable source of sex and medical information such as San Francisco Sex Information to get more extensive help to learn to receive anal fisting without causing permanent damage to yourself, you will open yourself up to many, many more concerns, the least of which will be what I think of you."

I spend the rest of the day unpacking the 15 gi-normous boxes that have arrived from vendors. I don't think about much else beyond imagining the beauty of a world without styrofoam peanuts. This is broken up by a customer who has come in to buy a bachelorette gift, selects the Rabbit Pearl, then thinks: to hell with her. I'm keeping it. Also a man with a dog comes in who had been busily schmoozing a woman with a matching dog. Very 101 Dalmations, except with labs. He needs a pen, quickly! to give her his phone number. He leaves the store again, saying, "I don't know why, but I feel much happier about my day now that I've been in there!" For some reason, the woman does not find this as funny as he does.

8:00 p.m. I spend time envying bloggers who are better than me, such as Wonkette, who writes,

Are assholes drawn to the District by some
force of nature? Like a giant mother asshole
calling her young?

I spend at least five minutes pretending I wrote that.

8:15 p.m. I think about Brooke telling me that the only thing I thought was good writing on the "truth hurts dot org" freako Fundamentalist site, the whole "spider dangling over the campfire" thing, was not actually written by the person who smote me for my liberal (liberal? That's a sin, too!) use of profanity, but by another fire-and-brimstoner. I wonder how God feels about plagiarism.

8:30 p.m. Steve calls to tell me he was forced to read Shel Silverstein twice, cover to cover, and he is tired.

Now, p.m. I type three different paragraphs trying to come up with a clever way to say that today was my entire life condensed down to one single day. I erase all three. I decide I should have answered Kevin's e-mail instead, the one asking why I don't give my anal sex tutorial via the blog that I always claim to be giving in the store. Oh, well. Too late now. Sorry, Kevin.

The Last Meal Before Execution.

I bet you thought the super-groovy (almost) anything goes last meal of the condemned was done to give the sucker one last hurrah before the curtain rings down forever. Partially, yes, that's true, but I learned today that there's another, more quiet reason: the warden is easing a guilty conscience. Guaranteed.

We left the house in the early afternoon, playing out in the front yard, crawling in and out of the Ski Car, turning on the hazard lights and wipers, playing with the automatic locks, locking up the steering wheel, slamming the door on an outraged baby brother.

Then we took off to the park, and not the crappy neighborhood park, either! No! It was the kickass downtown park with the imitation train and the superduper slides and tons of kids.

Then, then! We went to Party City, a veritable Mecca of cheap plastic crap and we ran around wreaking havoc until they spiraled out of control, running in opposite directions until I ended up losing them several times. When I had corralled them both, we left for TGIFridays for piglip eyeball hotdogs and msg fries!

Then we came home and played out in the backyard! In the nude! (NOT me!)

Then we had ice cream!

During ice cream, Alex said, "Mama, this has been the most wonderful day!"

Most wonderful. Yes. I'm so glad to hear you say that. Because tomorrow morning at 6:00 a.m. you're having surgery to have your tonsils and adenoids removed, and by 7:30 life is totally going to suck for you.

I'm so sorry, my poor baby.

He was warned, but kept responding with non sequitors like, "Broccoli makes you strong!" So who knows what he understands?

But in two weeks, he'll be able to breathe easily for the first time in two years. He'll be able to swallow without feeling like he has a "bowl full of dirt in his throat".

He had his last supper tonight in preparation for two weeks of popsicles and applesauce and pain medication.

I may not be able to blog for a couple of days, maybe not until Friday.

Please keep my poor little guy in your thoughts.

Thanks.

Finding the Fun in Fundamentalism.

It's been a slow day at the store. Very few whoremongers and sodomites have been coming in today, so I was left with two very unappealing choices: 1.) dust, or 2.) fool around on the internet, looking at fundamentalist Christian websites. After getting inspired by World O'Crap's admission that she spent an entire evening reading about fundie antics, I was convinced. Laziness triumphs yet again! So after visiting Vision Forums, a blog called "Abominations" and another site that was named something like "Homo and Hell are both four-letter-words that begin with H", I was rewarded by finding a website called "where the truth hurts dot org", which for obvious reasons (Jesus Tap Dancing Christ, are these people nuts!) I will not link to, but if you're in the mood for a good smiting, this is definitely the place to go. The site, run by the Johnston Family of central Ohio, have a fabulous section called "Confessions". Click on it and you can confess to a sin of which you are guilty, such as "Divorced and Remarrieds", "Democrats", and the most horrible of all, "Charles Stanley Fans". I clicked on that last one, and quite frankly I couldn't weed through all the Bible verses to figure out what Chuck did, exactly, but whatever it is, it must be pretty awful if it's up there with the sins of "Homosexuality" and "Parent Dishonorers".

It was difficult to figure out which sin I wanted to lay at the feet of the Lord, but after much soul-searching, I selected, and I'm sure you'll all agree that this was the correct choice for me, "Potty Mouth". Here's what I got:

God is fed up with your foul language! He is sick of your four-letter potty-talk. If your words were tangible, you would be a nasty, stinking sewer! Your language is full of talk about filthy things because your heart is filthy. Jesus plainly said that you can know a man’s heart by what comes out of his lips and that a good man CANNOT speak evil things. Jesus also said that you would be judged for every idle word you speak (see references below). You had best tremble in fear for all of your foul language, because GOD ISN’T DEAF!!! He can hear you. He is quite displeased when you take the holy name of “Jesus Christ” or “God” in your lips and use it like a four-letter curse word to express disgust or anger. How dare you use the holy name of God in such a foul way! He is furious with you when you curse your neighbor or when you call him or her foul things. You should fear Him! He holds you like one would hold a spider hanging by his own thread over a raging campfire. He has more disdain for you and your foul language than we do for the most conniving and venomous serpent. God despises you. ETERNAL HELL is light punishment for you.



Well, fuck me.

Oooh, Who Writes Your Ad Copy?

Why, Jesus does! Jesus' General, that is. If you aren't addicted to his blog yet, you really should be. General J.C. Christian is a leader in the Religious Right, and a fiercely heterosexual man, like Spartacus in those old gladiator movies. He can always be counted on to be right on top of current events, like the recent goings-on in Dayton, Tennessee.

For those of you who, like me, spent your junior year of high school in U.S. History furiously taking non-stop notes, notes that read like this---

can you come to the movies with me on saturday night?

I THINK SO - I HAVE TO ASK MY MOM.

okay good because i think brian is going to be there and you need to tell him that i like him.

OK.

---you may not remember that Dayton, Tennessee was the home of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial.

do you think he's cute? do you think he likes me?

YEAH I THINK HE DOES. KRISTIN PASSED ME A NOTE IN BIOLOGY AND SHE SAID SHE HEARD ERICA AND DAWN SAYING THAT KEVIN HEARD HIM SAY HE WAS WATCHING YOU THREE WEEKS AGO IN P.E.

omg!!!!!

I KNOW!!!!!

Oh, all right. The 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial was the trial of high school Biology teacher John Scopes, who was charged with illegally teaching the theory of evolution. William Jennings Bryan, an attorney who ran for president on the Democratic ticket three times, led the crusade to banish the theory of evolution from all public schools. Famed attorney Clarence Darrow headed up the defense, and the trial became the first of the many "trials of the century" in the 20th century. Maybe not the first. More like the third, if you put the Lindbergh baby and Leopold and Loeb before Scopes. Anyway, if you don't know the outcome of the trial, go here to find out. Or you could just go rent Inherit the Wind. Whatever you like.

So those crazy kids are back in the news yet again, this time in the form of the Rhea County commissioners unanimously voting to ask Tennessee lawmakers to amend the state law to make homosexuality a prosecutable "crime against nature". Commissioner J.C. Fugate also asked if there was any way they could enact a ban on homosexuals living in the county, in sort of a gentle, God-loving, Faggot-don't-let-the-sun-set-on-your-head kind of way.

Bria from the hair salon next door came by to discuss a Mysterious Incident that will be discussed here (don't go away! Stay tuned!) as soon as it resolves itself. I told her about the plans of the Volunteer Staters and she snapped, "Oh, sure. Tell those farmers to pull their dicks out of pigs first before they start talking about crimes against nature!" then proceeded to tell me way more about pig vaginas than was absolutely necessary, and way more than someone who cuts hair when she isn't pursuing a Women's Studies degree had any business knowing in the first place.

But back to my original topic: General Christian, and why you should read his blog. He's been working hard, very very hard, to assist the Rhea County board of tourism, coming up with slogans to draw in like-minded citizens to their neck of the woods.

"Rhea County: No Same-Sex Monkey Business Here!"

That's a winner, don't you think?

Two Stories - My Assistant Director, the Junkie, and The Most Creeped Out I Have Ever Been.

Frog told me that since she blogged about an old boyfriend, I had to as well. I'm not so sure that's true. I usually prefer to block former boyfriends out of my memory completely, but since this particular one is directly involved in the creepiest moment of my life, I have no choice but to remember him. But first: Larry the Junkie.

My boyfriend, S., and I used to live together in a four-flat in Asheville, North Carolina, during my last year of college. A pack of junkies lived right across the hall from us. They hailed from New Jersey, and for a while the only thing that stood about them were those awful Yankee accents. Larry, a dark haired man in his late twenties whose name was the name on the lease, had an uncle that lived in Asheville. On a condition of his release from prison, he was instructed to attend NA and work putting up drywall at his uncle's company. He brought Danielle, his girlfriend, with him, who was not, and had no intention of being, clean by any stretch. This made life difficult for Larry, who wanted to do drugs as badly as he wanted to stay clean. So he was constantly shooting and regretting, shooting and regretting.

S. and I were watching tv one night when we heard shuffling noises and whispering out on our balcony. We opened up the door leading outside just in time to see three figures jump off our balcony and take off running down the street. Seconds later, the police were knocking on our door. We pointed them in the right direction, and they took off. Seconds later, again, there was another knock. It was Larry, sober and apologetic. His girlfriend, he said, had been allowing people to hide stolen property in their apartment in exchange for drugs. He thought he might be going to jail again. Could we watch his cat? And did S. have a suit he could borrow for court? S., who was recovering from drug addiction himself, was sympathetic and loaned him one of his suits for his court date.

Larry managed to get out of serving time, but the suit was never returned. S. figured it was sold for drugs, but he did know that was a possibility when he loaned it to Larry, so he never bothered asking for it back. But Larry decided we seemed nice, and began coming over to watch tv, initially bringing a six pack of PBR that he never drank until he realized S. couldn't drink it either, so the six packs turned into Coke.

Larry seemed to appreciate having S. next door, and began to rely on him as a source of support. Occasionally Danielle would come over, sometimes high, sometimes not. She was more tolerable when she was high. When sober, she would rail on Larry for not being S., and make a point of wishing she were me, as I was so lucky to have S. and to be in school. Which may or may not be true, but that information, when brought to the table, makes for a lousy couple-date. When high, she would just sit there and love everyone and giggle at the tv.

People kept going in and out of the apartment next door on a semi-regular basis, all addicts. Larry seemed to be keeping them in check, however, and nobody ever bothered us.

In January, I had received my senior project assignment: Adapt Romeo & Juliet to fit a 30-minute time period, and direct it for the stage. My budget was fifty bucks. I would lie in bed at night, listening to Larry and Danielle fight, and wonder what kind of bullshit assignment I had been given. "I should just cast the star-crossed lovers next door, put them on stage and let them duke it out," I thought.

Oh, shit. I leaped out of bed and grabbed the paperback copy of R&J, eliminating every scene in the play except for the two main characters. The good thing about Shakespeare, which is, not coincidentally, also the bad thing about it, is you can take the text completely out of context and twist it around to mean anything. One of the rules was that I could cut the dialogue, but could not rewrite it. So anything that was said had to be verbatim from the script. I worked all night long blocking it, starting with an opening scene of R&J in an apartment, happy and in love and ended it with them O.D.'ing in the end, which really isn't that far from what actually happened, when you think about it.

I cast my actors at auditions. My Juliet was a drama major, a very talented young woman who bore more than a passing resemblence to Camryn Manheim. All her life, she'd been cast as the Grandma, the mother, the spinster librarian. For my purposes, she didn't need to look like an ingenue, she needed to look like a college student who took a wrong turn and ended up an addict. I heard when she saw her name on the cast list, she sank down to the floor and cried, sobbing, "I'm the princess! I'm finally the pretty one!"

I was really hoping she wouldn't change her mind about the whole princess thing when I had Romeo backhand her across the face when she wouldn't give him money for drugs in Scene V.

I had my script, I had my actors. Now I needed Larry. The next time I saw him, in front of his apartment, I asked him if he would help me with the play I was directing.

"What would I have to do?" he asked. I explained to him that he would have to come to early rehearsals and talk to the cast about what it was like to be an addict. How did he become one? Where does one get drugs? How do you use them? What materials do you need? How can they make it look as real as possible? What does it feel like? What should they look like? What should they wear? What is the proper addict/dealer etiquette?

I was totally unprepared for his response. "You want me? To teach at a college? You want me to give a lecture to college students? Me? Teaching?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Will they be graded?"

"Kind of. I'll definitely be graded on how well they do. I'd also, you know, need you to come to a few rehearsals to make sure we're getting it right."

"I'd be your assistant?"

"Sure."

"Assistant Director?"

"If you want. I was thinking "Creative consultant" or "Advisor."

He got so excited he slammed the door in my face. I heard him on the other side of the door, yelling to Danielle: "I'm going to be a college professor! I'm going to teach!"

The first day of rehearsal we met in my apartment. Larry showed up before the cast and crew, hair slicked down from the shower and combed with a severe side part. His face and neck were red from a shaving razor. He wore a spotless white blazer, tan pants, and loafers with no socks, which is I think his impression of what one wears on the lecture circuit. He was sober, manic, fidgety. In Jersey, he was a gangbanging thug, a man respected and feared. But in my college apartment, in front of wealthy suburban kids, he was afraid. When Juliet extended her hand in introduction, he bent over it and kissed it.

He had brought his works with him, and several empty baggies that had once contained herion. They were small pieces of folded wax paper, stamped with pale blue stars. He had bought them, he said, on a street corner in the Bronx. He told them about his dealer, about getting arrested, about committing robbery to get money for drugs. About how he had wanted to own a restaurant, but didn't think it would ever happen for him now. About how he lost the right to vote.

He finished and stared nervously at them.

"Does anyone have any questions?" I asked the cast. The actor playing Romeo cleared his throat.

"Why do you tap the side of the needle like that?"

"To get the air bubbles out. You don't want to shoot an air bubble into your bloodstream; it'll go to your heart and pow! you're fucked."

From Juliet: "Can anybody just go up to a dealer, or do you have to know them first?"

"Well, usually they're gangbangers, right? So you kind of have to know somebody in the family and get an introduction before they'll sell to you. At least, the ones with the good shit. Although you can get shit off a street corner if you look like you're looking for it. They get a lot of white girls from the suburbs looking for it, but it's not a good idea for a girl to go alone. Girl addicts end up in somebody's stable most times if they're not spoken for."

From Romeo again: "When you nod out, can you get up and function, or are you just stuck there?"

And on and on they went, gathering information. It was one of the greatest nights of Larry's adult life. He had expected the rich college kids to look down on him, and here they were, respectful and wide-eyed, treating him like he knew something about something.

"Will you be coming to see the play?" asked Juliet.

"I'm the assistant director!" said Larry, smiling wide. "I gotta come!"

"Oh, good," said Juliet. "You've been so great; I've learned so much. Thank you! We couldn't have done this without you."

The lighting designer was one of the crew members that had attended Larry's lecture. Based on what he had heard, he designed the opening of the show, which had been blocked to show Romeo shooting up with a phony retractable needle, to have the lights all in red before the injection, and flood with cool blue instantly after. Larry lurched in his seat when he saw Alan's work with the lights at the technical rehearsal.

"That's it! That's exactly what it feels like, red to blue. How did he know that? How did he get that from what I said? I never thought of that, that you could show how somebody felt by using lights like that."

I made Larry go through every single bit of the play, changing whatever he felt wasn't realistic, keeping what he really loved.

On opening night, he showed up alone, wearing the white blazer/tan pants/loafer ensemble, but this time he had added sunglasses. I handed him a program and showed him his name with the title of assistant director. He removed his glasses and stared at it for a long time.

"You put me in the program?" he said.

"Of course I did. You worked hard. You earned credit."

I saw him later on, walking up to faculty members, pumping their hands. "Name's Larry. I'm the assistant director. Look at that on the program, eh? Assistant director. That's me!"

They nodded politely, then backed carefully away and sought me out.

"Oh, yeah. That's my neighbor. He lectured the cast on what it's like to be a junkie."

"Oh. Oh. Of course," they blinked.

I ended up getting an A, but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. The actress playing Juliet had put the credit at the top of her resume, and Larry, for one brief moment, was in his glory as a respected intellectual at a university. I could have gotten an F for all I cared.

Three weeks later the tenants in the apartment next door got a tip that they were going to be raided for fencing stolen property. Overnight, Larry and Danielle disappeared. S. and I walked through their empty apartment, the floor covered in dustballs and crumpled scraps of paper. S. walked down the hall into their bedroom.

He called for me, his voice odd. I went back into what was once their bedroom. S. was standing in the empty room, in front of the open closet door. The sole occupant of the closet was S.'s suit, hanging on a wire hanger, fresh and clean and wrapped in dry cleaner's plastic.

The Creepiest Moment of My Life

After Larry and Danielle's disappearance, Stacey and Scooter moved in. Unlike Larry and Danielle, they did not do drugs. Exactly like Larry and Danielle, they got in knockdown, drag-out fights late at night in their bedroom, separated from ours by a wall. We would lie in bed and debate which was preferable to have to listen to at night, fucking or fighting. At first we thought fighting, until Scooter began beating up Stacey. The police came to the apartment building way more often than they did in the Larry era. Larry and Danielle may have been yellers, but they were never hitters. Scooter was a hitter as well as a yeller. Typically, the other men in the building began expressing their disapproval by shunning Scooter. Also typically, he didn't care. Finally, after what was probably the eighth guest appearance by the police at Chez Scooter, he was arrested. The rest of the building quietly celebrated, and things were quiet for two weeks.

We didn't see Stacey for a while, but that wasn't unusual. She often picked up extra shifts at her job as a nurse at the county hospital, so she was rarely around anyway.

I left the building for my waitressing job every morning, counting down the seconds until the acting job I had landed in Pennsylvania began and I could leave town for a Real Job. S. was taking a summer school class, and we were walking out of our apartment together when I noticed that the hallway smelled a bit funky.

"Do you smell that?"

"No."

"You don't smell that?"

"No."

"That funky smell?"

"Oh, the funky smell!"

"So you do smell it!"

"No."

And so on for about two weeks. Finally, we walked out into the hallway one morning and our eyes watered.

"Okay, you smell it now, right?"

"Holy shit, is that what you've been smelling?"

"Yes!"

We sniffed all over the landing, trying to pinpoint where the smell was coming from. I inspected Stacey and Scooter's front door.

"Oh. Here. It's coming from their apartment. No doubt."

S. concurred. We tested the door. Locked. When Larry and Danielle lived in the apartment, the screen door on their balcony had been torn. Reaching through the tear, you could open their glass door and get into their apartment. So we went out onto our balcony, climbed over the rail, dropped onto the eave over the apartment building's main door, and climbed onto their balcony. It was neatly furnished with clean, attractive patio furniture and a small hibatchi grill. S. slipped his hand through the tear and unlocked the hook and eye lock on the screen door. The glass door was unlocked. We stepped in, then tripped on ourselves backing back out again. If the smell was bad in the hallway, it was completely overpowering in their apartment. We put our shirts over our faces, squinted our eyes, and stepped back in.

The balcony was adjoining the living room, the first room we walked into. The first room where we realized something was horribly, horribly wrong. A knife was jammed into the wooden coffee table. The same knife, we assumed, that had been used to slash the upholstery on the sofa and chairs to shreds. The television had been kicked in. Worse, Stacey's purse had been overturned, her credit cards and driver's license ripped in half, her checks and wallet photos shredded. Glass from some unknown source was all over the dining room floor, and the table and chairs were over turned. Big, gaping holes peppered the walls. It was horribly quiet, except for the chirping birds outside, and that audible smell; that rotten, decaying smell.

The smell grew stronger the further into the apartment we walked. After you walked through the living room, then the dining room, the apartment split off into two parallel hallways, one leading to the bathroom and, at the end of the apartment, the bedroom. The other led to the kitchen and the laundry room.

We walked down the left hallway, the one that led to the bedroom. The light in the bathroom was busted, the medicine cabinet mirror was, too. The toiletries were floating in the toilet and in two inches of grey murky water in the stopped-up bathtub. The bedroom was empty, only a slashed mattress on a bed, the sheets and bedspread knotted on the floor. Stacey's clothes were torn off the hangers and lay in a snarled heap on the floor. Other than that, nothing. The smell wasn't as bad back here.

We walked back out to the dining room and started down the hallway on the right, toward the kitchen. Right before we got to the closed kitchen door, S. stopped and looked down. On the floor in front of the kitchen door was a thick, dried trail of black blood. It crawled up to the kitchen door and slid under the crack in the bottom. I froze. S., his hand shaking, pushed open the kitchen door. On the floor was a bloodstain, the biggest bloodstain I had ever seen. The biggest one I still have ever seen. My stomach heaved both from the smell and from horror. Black flies buzzed over it. It was easily five feet long, and over a foot wide. The bloodstain, I saw, was a continuation of the trail of blood that stopped in front of the refrigerator. There was a lot more buzzing and a sickening clicking noise coming from inside.

I clapped my hand over my mouth, and I can't tell you why I did this, but I started laughing uncontrollably, giggles squirting out through my fingers even though I know my face was green. It had to have been, because so was S.'s.

He was in front of me by a couple of steps, and in what had to have been the bravest thing he ever did, he reached out to open the refrigerator door, even though he knew who he'd find in there.

He stopped, his hand on the handle, and turned to me.

"Get out of the kitchen," he said. "Don't look at this. You don't want to see this. Get out." I didn't move. "Didn't you hear me?" he yelled. "Get OUT. GET OUT. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE BEFORE I MAKE YOU. GET OUT."

I backed out of the kitchen, out of the line of sight of the refrigerator. I could still see S.'s partial profile as he stared at the bloody mess of an icebox, taking shallow breaths under the cotton tee shirt he'd pulled over his nose. With one swift pull he opened the door.

A few days later, I pulled into the driveway and saw Stacey sitting on the roof, smoking a cigarette. I joined her seconds later.

"Why do you have a refrigerator full of hamburger?" I asked her.

"My dad's a butcher," she replied. "I moved back in with mom and dad after Scooter went to jail, but my dad stored extras in my apartment refrigerator. I knew Scooter'd come back out and come back after me. Unplugging the fridge was just a habit I picked up from my mom. I forgot I had all that stuff in there."

"We thought you were dead. We thought it was you in there." I said, still a bit pissed.

"What part did you think was me?" she said pleasedly. "The chicken or the venison?"

"Ha ha," I said sourly.

"Nah, Scooter can't kill anything but my driver's license. He needs to pay for that, making me spend all day at the DMV. I wasn't even there when he tore up all our stuff. Stupid fool, all that was his furniture, not mine."

I really feel she should have been more contrite about the whole thing, really. Not only did that experience take about two years off the lives of S. and me, but Joe and Frank, the maintenance men, cursed her solidly for two full days as they shovelled rotten, maggot-filled meat out of the refrigerator.

"I an't saying she shouldn't have left," said Joe as he grimly scrubbed the kitchen floor. "I'll kill that boy myself if he show up again. I don't know why she had to unplug the goddamn refrigerator. I'll never understand that."

Sorry for the anti-climactic ending. You weren't hoping she was stuffed in that fridge just to make a good blog entry though, were you?

This Is For Dan.

Reader Dan said in the Comments Lounge that he is bummed that the potty mouths at Virgin are making making men look bad. I agree, Dan. The fact that these urinals were designed for men, approved at every level to go in, most likely tested and marketed to a focus group of men, then breathlessly announced by the media as something men are going to love does make men look bad. But thanks to Christine Cupiaoulo, dammit, Cupaiuolo, I can alter what I said yesterday when I wrote that complaints were received "presumably from men as well as women" to "definitely from men as well as women."

From The New York Daily News:

Councilman Philip Reed (D-Manhattan) called the urinals inappropriate, disgusting and sexist. In short, he didn't like them. And he wasn't alone.

"There's something wrong with someone who thinks that urinating symbolically into the mouth of a woman is quirky and fun," said Rita Haley, president of the city's chapter of the National Organization for Women.

"It displays a horrendous lack of social consciousness," Haley added. "The (urinals) are disgusting, degrading and humiliating to women and they encourage the abuse of women."

Councilman John Liu (D-Queens) suggested designing urinals in the shape of the face of Virgin Atlantic founder, Sir Richard Branson. "They should not have any problems with their own face being on these urinals," Liu said.


So John Riordan of Virgin is someone who Dan thinks makes his gender "look bad". On the long drive home last night I was thinking about which women make me cringe. I ruled out Ann Coulter and Laura Schlessinger as being not only too obvious, but also untrustworthy since they so clearly don't believe what they espouse, Coulter just to get attention and sell books, Schlessinger because she's never once practiced what she preaches.

So here's who I came up with:

Paris Hilton. Her good points: she is kind to animals, she works for a living instead of living off her inheritance. What she did that made me cringe: She posed naked for Vanity Fair, lying on her back on the beach with her legs open and back arched, covered in crumpled twenties and surrounded by men. Thanks for that, Paris.

Any woman who dates John Wayne Bobbitt, post Lorena. Please, ladies. He may be missing a penis, but that will not stop him from kicking your ass. No, you aren't going to be the special one that he treats well. Really, you're not. He can't hold a job, he can't fuck, he can't stop himself from punching you in the face. Strike three. He's out.

And seeing as how this makes for a neat closure, I can now add the designer of the potty mouths, Meike van Schijndel, to the list, who said this in response to the complaints:

"The thought that this urinal only represents a man peeing in a woman's mouth never even occurred to me while making it...Lighten up. (It's) just a cartoonish looking mouth. There are worse things in the world to get all worked up about."

Argh.

I Couldn't Figure Out How to Write an Entire Blog Entry Out of These.

Does anyone want to wager on which one of The Wiggles is going to wind up in prison? I'm not necessarily suggesting anything seditious with a child. Maybe domestic violence or possession of cocaine discovered when one gets pulled over for a DWI. My money's on Greg Wiggle. He just looks like he's kind of an asshole.

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I watched a man get hit by a car today, right outside the store. It was moving really slowly, so rather than rolling over the hood of the car and smashing the windshield, it was more like the car just gently pushed him to the ground. The driver of the car leaned out of the window and shouted at the man he struck, with more than a twinge of hysteria in his voice, "Why didn't you watch where you were going?!? Why didn't you pay attention?!? Wassa matter with you, huh?"

In response the man got up and briefly Riverdanced in front of the car before continuing to cross.

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I've been wanting to write an Open Letter to the late snow we've gotten over the past week, but I only get as far as "GO THE FUCK AWAY." and I feel like I've pretty much covered it.

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So they were getting ready to install these urinals in the men's bathrooms of Virgin Airline's VIP club at JFK in the shape of women's mouths. I had planned to write about how I seem to come across, judging by the e-mails that I get from a lot of men, as that sexxee Susie Bright kind of feminist, who fights for the empowering right to give blowjobs, and how that may be partially true, but the naked contempt in those urinals made me feel like I'd been punched in the stomach. I want to love men. I really, really, really do, but it's not easy to do when I feel like Nancy Kerrigan screaming, "Why are you doing this to me?" and clutching the kneecap you've just clubbed. So just so you know, I roll my eyes reading Bright a lot more often than I do reading Dworkin. She never said all hetero sex was rape, by the way.

But now, due to the volume of letters received, presumably from men as well as women, they're not going to do it. John Riordan, VP of Customer Services, is scratching his head with a boyishly charming, gee-shucks confusion, saying, "We just wanted to be, you know, quirky! We didn't want to hurt anybody! We had no idea that our slogan, 'A target no man will ever miss' would be taken as woman-hating! And besides, it was a woman's idea to begin with! So the rest of you are just quirk-haters! Waaahhh!"*

Ah, yes. The power of tokenism. Mr Riordan, my husband thought it was disgusting and embarrassing. Do you think maybe they could cancel each other out?

*Yes, I'm paraphrasing. He didn't really cry.

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Everytime I brought a new boyfriend home, my family would always take great pains to tell him the story of when I was eight months old and had an unfortunate incident with a leaky diaper. Every. Single. Time. And you know, I've had more than one boyfriend. I've had more than five. Having that story told more than twice is way too many. But yesterday on the radio a woman phoned in to discuss the topic of "When Families Embarrass You With Tales of Your Youth" and said that when she was eight she mistook a piece of poo on the floor for a Raisinette and ate it, and that's the story her family tells all her boyfriends. Suddenly, a leaky diaper story isn't entirely bad.

********************************

I was carrying a 12 pack of toilet paper across two blocks on my way to work, mildly embarrassed about it until I realized that, yes, I would rather be walking down the street with an armful of buttplugs than toilet paper and what the hell has happened to me?

*********************************

Owen Wilson, how do you expect me to have sexual fantasies about you when you do ads for such shitty beer? Jesus. Don't you have enough money without having to sell yourself to Michelob Light? Keep inflicting such horrible things on me and we're through. Okay, that's it. We're done.

This Will Only Be Funny to Some of You.

Not so much you new readers, sorry. But to those few who were reading here back on January 10th may remember the entry I wrote about a man who wrote a letter to the editor of a local paper, complaining that because the paper put a Muslim girl on the cover to accompany a feature story about Ramadan, that Christians were somehow being persecuted. I titled the entry, "I hate to interrupt your valiant attempt at self-martyrdom, but I was wondering - how are you going to get that third nail in?"

In the Comments Lounge, someone corrected me, informing me that there were, in fact, four nails, not three. This caused a heated battle to break out in the Lounge, with some people on the side of three nails, and a few others on the side of four. Links to photos showing crucifixes with the number of nails clearly shown were provided on both sides to boost their respective arguments, and the conversation began to degenerate into musings about how much money it would save if only two nails were used. Finally, it was decided that to be truly economical, one could use only one nail and just fold the victim up like an origami chicken and call it a day.

And yesterday, one of the instigators of that fight e-mailed me this news item. Usually, when people e-mail me funny stuff, said stuff usually merits a "Heh" from me. This had me literally screaming with laughter to the point where Alex asked me what was wrong. If you remember this fight in the Lounge and find this article as funny as I did, well, as the e-mail sender said when she signed off, "See you in hell."
Link.

Man treated after attempting to nail himself to cross


Associated Press

HARTLAND — A Hartland man was treated at a Pittsfield hospital after he nailed himself to a cross. The 23-year-old man apparently was trying to commit suicide Thursday evening in his living room, the Bangor Daily News reported.

Somerset County Sheriff Barry DeLong said Monday that no charges will be filed. "There is no crime here," he said.

Police said the man appeared delusional and told them he had been "seeing pictures of God on the computer." He told them he had not seen the hit movie "The Passion of the Christ," which depicts the Crucifixion of Jesus.

Lt. Pierre Boucher said the man took two pieces of wood, nailed them together in the form of a cross and placed them on the floor. He attached a suicide sign to the wood and then proceeded to nail one of his hands to the makeshift cross using a 14-penny nail and a hammer.

"When he realized that he was unable to nail his other hand to the board, he called 911," Boucher said.

It was unclear whether the man was seeking assistance for his injury or help in nailing down his other hand.

Hartland Fire Department members responded, said Boucher, and cut off the wood while it was still attached to the man's hand. The wood and the victim were taken to Sebasticook Valley Hospital, where the nail was removed.

Boucher said he did not know whether the man received further treatment.

My Heart Belongs to the Disgruntled Employee.

Which I think is why I'm such a lousy boss. I fully expect hourly wage employees to be disgruntled. I heard my landlord, who is also an art dealer, ripping into two of his employees a couple of months ago, along the lines of: "You know what? You work for me. When I hired you, I hired you to do what I want you to do when I want you to do it. I don't want to hear about your homework or your college obligations. That's not my concern. If you can't get your shit in a pile and remember who's paying your rent, then you can go look for another job somewhere where they'll put up with your shit."

And I thought: That'd be me. You need to work for me. I'll put up with your shit.

And then I thought: I wonder if he'd come and yell at my employees for me? He's really good at it.

Not that they need yelling at. They do pretty much what I expect them to do: they show up to work, they bathe and wash their clothes regularly, and they don't steal anything. In my book, that makes them well worth the peanuts I pay them. It's fine with me if they take a weekend to do a play or go home to visit their mothers. Whatever. Just let me know when you're coming back. It has been suggested by some (Steve) that I'm somewhat of a pushover. That's probably true, but unlike, say, George Bush, I know too well what it's like to sweat in some McJob with some asshole threatening your job security every single day and making your working life miserable. It's been my experience that if you treat your employees like they're thieves, they'll steal. If you treat them like they are deserving of your contempt right off the bat, they'll behave contemptibly. And while my blase attitude has caused them feel free to do their homework at the counter all day when they aren't surfing the Internet on my computer, not one employee has stolen from me, and not one has ever abused the trust I've put in them.

But my landlord does get a lot more done in a day, I'll give him that. If you blend us together, you get Steve. He's pretty good at making them work without making them hostile.

That being said, I have a soft spot for disgruntled employees in general, even though I fail to create them myself. Hearing them complain about the general suckiness of their jobs never fails to cheer me up; I don't know why. When I went to Strange Cargo to pick up the tee shirt for Portia's little girl, I saw a back wall of mannequin heads with all sorts of wigs perched on top. In front of the wall was a piece of rope stretching wall to wall. Attached to the wall were 26 signs (I counted) all variations of: DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH THESE WIGS. WE ARE SERIOUS. IF YOU TOUCH THESE WIGS WE WILL LAY DOWN THE SMAKE ON YOU AND YOUR FAMILY AND SEND YOUR WHOLE LIFE UP IN GREAT FLAMES OF DEATH.

I asked the employee behind the counter, "How many people touch the wigs anyway?" The corners of her mouth turned down.

"Well, it's almost Cub season. Those signs are for the drunks. If you're sober, you know, we don't really care if you touch them. But during a Cubs game, there are so many drunks coming in here, messing with the wigs, being assholes..." she paused, then looked me right in the eye and said sourly, "They blow right past those signs anyway."

Yup. Then they walk past my store on the way to their car and scream, "DILDOS!! LOOK!!! HEY LOOK AT THAT OH MY GOD!" in sort of the way 11 year old boys do, except, you know, 11 year old boys are generally much better behaved.

Yesterday I took the boys to a restaurant where I used to work, and where I nurtured to perfection that special flavor of bitter that is only found in people who work in the service industry. The owner of the restaurant was generally a great boss and a very generous man, but when you're a bartender you tend to perfect the art of eye-rolling regardless of how well the boss treats you. Back as a patron years later, I noticed a man who was one of my regular customers back in the day. I cheerfully watched him for a while, remembering what an exquisite pain in the ass he was. No matter how busy and frantic it was in the restaurant, he could be counted on to demand his server to explain every single charge on the bill. ("Yeah, that's a glass of tea and a bowl of soup. Yes, a bowl of soup is $3.50. Yes, it does say that on the menu. Yes, it does. It's right there in front of you. Well, why didn't you tell me it wasn't hot? No, I'm not going to take it off the bill. You ate the whole thing.")

When the lunch rush had died down a little bit, I called the server over to our table. After, of course, she had spent a considerable amount of time going over the bill with him, then trying to catch up to the rest of her customers' needs.

"Hey, have you ever waited on that guy in the corner there?" I asked her.

"No," she replied.

"I used to work here, years ago. He was one of my regular customers, and I was just wondering: Is he a big a pain in the ass as he used to be?"

"Oh, he's been horrible! He's been running my ass off, over there, complaining about everything, acting like there's nobody else in the restaurant! And I've been slammed! I'm having a hard time waiting on other people."

"I hope you're not expecting a decent tip," I warned her.

"Oh, no way. No, he's been way too difficult," she said knowingly.

"Has he mentioned that his wife is close personal friends with Senator Clinton?"

She cracked up. "Yes! Yes he did! I suppose if I don't give him good service he'll send her in to yell at me!"

"You'd better be shaking in your boots, Missy!"

"I am!"

By this time Mr. Difficult Namedropper and his companion had left. She went over to the empty table, then turned to me, holding up a dollar and giving me that smile I find so endearing, the smile of the Disgruntled Employee.

The New Issue of Expository Magazine Is Out.

With my article in it. And, if you hunt around, you'll find the only picture of me on the net. It was taken at 3:30 in the morning. Both boys, who are in the photo with me, are awake and snappy. I want to die. Since the column is going to be about motherhood, I thought it was appropriate. If you like the magazine, make sure you drop publisher Tina Coggins a line and say so.

Eavesdropping At Starbucks, #1

Dude #1 - That book is a bunch of bullshit lies.

Dude #2 - You haven't even read it.

Dude #1 - It's a bunch of liberal, anti-American crap!

Dude #2 - Why is it anti-American? Because it looks at U.S. History from the point of view of blacks and Indians?

Dude #1 - It's just another liberal who hates his own race and makes up lies!

Dude #2 - First of all, Howard Zinn is a leading historian, and even if you were right, how is being anti-white anti-American?

Me, thinking: They're talking about *People's History of the U.S.*! I'm reading that book right now!

Dude #1 - If you want to teach your kids to hate America, that's your problem.

Dude #2 - (Sighs. Says nothing.)

Behind the back of Dude #1, I catch the eye of Dude #2 and hold up the book. He grins. Dude #1 looks around. I pretend to be engrossed by the pastry window.

Dude #1 - What are you looking at? Oh. Girl.

Eavesdropping at Starbucks, #2

Starbucks employee, singing behind the counter:

Oh, I've got's to pee.
Oh my, oh meeeee.
Pee pee pee.
Use the lavatory.
Lavoratory
Lavoratory
Laboratory
Laboratory!
Igor, Igor
Ee-gor, whee!
Look at me
I've gots to pee.

P.S. - I think I'm getting too carried away with this blog stuff. I woke up last night, paranoid I'd gotten Howard Zinn's name wrong, and would have gotten out of bed to come change it if Christopher hadn't been sleeping on my head. Anyway, I checked this morning and sure enough, I'd written "Zell". Ugh.

Random Product Review
or, This Is a Very Personal Post; Please Don't Read It.

The Kama Sutra line of massage oils and sensual products is sort of a must-have line in any more upscale toy store. They've been around forever, and is a pretty decent line that people have heard of and trust. It would hurt us badly if we didn't stock it, in sort of the way a Leonardo DiCaprio film festival would produce hundreds of raging teenaged girls if it didn't show Titanic. One of the products they make is Honey Dust. Honey Dust is a powder, almost all corn starch, and is lightly flavored and scented with honeysuckle and honey. It's one of those products that smells yummy and tastes yummy, but you'd still be hard-pressed to come up with a practical way to use it. The Kama Sutra company suggests that you sell it as "a dry alternative to massage oil, a good way to create friction without you and the sheets greasy". You can also try saying "Sprinkle it it on bedsheets using the accompanying feather duster to give the sheets a silky feeling. No staining! All natural! Vagina friendly!" This works okay, so that's how I've been pushing it. A couple of months ago, one of my customers came in to purchase some of it, and tipped me off to a new use: drying up the notorious "wet spot", a problem that men gleefully create then disappear to their side of the bed, leaving their mates to deal with while they snore away. So I tried using this approach after her comments. Evidently, this selling angle strikes a deep, deep chord in straight women, because I've yet to fail at selling it when I bring this use up. I would assume it's also a matter of importance to gay men as well, but I have no first hand knowledge of that, since my presence at any sort of gay sex gathering would be like multiplying a negative number into a series of positive numbers - it would de-gay everything and make the whole end result negative.

Erk, I got sidetracked in my reverie of single-handedly destroying all that hot gay sex and lost my train of thought. Where was I?

Oh, right: the wet spot.

I had the opportunity to test this particular use for Honey Dust myself the other night. Alex has been waking up in the middle of the night lately, convinced that the "monkey monster in the wallpaper" is going to eat him, so he's been horning in between us in the small hours of the morning, snuggling up under the covers and forcing Steve's head off the pillow as he takes over and claims it for his own. Steve was concerned about the combination of wet spot + child, so I had the bright idea to give the Honey Dust a try.

You know, there's something to be said for introducing new things in the bedroom after many years of marriage, because as soon as I came out of the bathroom with it, Steve perked up and became pleasantly chatty instead of going to sleep, lying there in the dark, propping himself up on one elbow and contentedly giving me instructions.

"No, it's more over to the left."

"Don't get the feather duster in it; just sort of shake it over."

"What is this supposed to do?"

"It's supposed to absorb it," I replied, dusting away.

"What, like cat litter?" he asked.

"No, it doesn't have the clumping action of cat litter. More like sawdust over an oil spill."

"Oh. Sort of scratchy, isn't it?" he remarked cheerfully.

"No. Go to sleep."

So he did. I put the Honey Dust away and got back in bed. My customer was right. It dried up. Unfortunately, Steve was also right. It was scratchy. So the choice you must make is this: would you rather sleep in a puddle or a sandbox?

After lying there for about an hour, unable to sleep, I concluded that a sandbox, while still uncomfortable, is still preferable. Yes, dry and scratchy beats cold and wet, definitely, I thought as I lay there, pondering the results of the experiment and neurotically waiting for Christopher to wake up. When 4:30 rolled around and he still hadn't started crying, I became convinced he was dead. Dead! While I was busy having sex! Oh, the guilt! Eventually I had worked myself up into such a panic that I ended up creeping into his room around 5 to see if I could hear him breathing. He was fine. Finally reassured, I went back to bed and drifted off for about 5 minutes before the Monkey Monster chased Alex out of his bedroom and into ours. 40 minutes after that Christopher woke up. So, again, I ended up getting about three hours of sleep that night.

But hey, at least I learned something.

Comfort Food

I have this ridiculous morbid obsession with true crime stories, fueled by the prolific ghostwriters of John Douglas, the former head of the Behavioral Science department at the FBI. He's written about 8 of these "hunt the hunters" books, and why not? It's not like he'll ever run out of material.

In one of my favorite Douglas stories, he talks about a pair of police officers doing a random drive through of a local Lovers Lane. They drive past one presumably empty sedan before coming upon another car with tell-tale steamed-up windows. They pull up next to the parked vehicle and walk up to the car, shining their flashlights into the interior. As suspected, the occupants of the car, a man and a woman, were happily screwing away. The officers tap on the glass and put a halt to the festivities, telling them to put their clothes on and go home. The man in the parked car grows indignant, saying, "I can't believe you're making us leave! The guy in that other car is having sex with a chicken!"

"Whaaaa??" say the officers. The couple insist that it's true. So over to the other car go the cops. They sneak up to the car and peek in the window, and sure enough, the more traditionally-minded man was right. Douglas was made aware of this incident, because not only was the man having sex with a chicken, he also was videotaping it. Evidently, this videotape has been making the rounds of police precincts for years. Douglas has seen it. And of course, he goes on to make his larger point, that the man, who was having sex with a chicken but was talking in abusive language to it like it was a human female, was someone police needed to keep close tabs on, and not just in order to warn poultry farmers.

Like Douglas, our very own Frog has also worked with sex offenders. I'm not sure how we got on the topic of discussing her former line of work, but I suspect, knowing my morbid curiosity, I probably wheedled the conversation around to it. Picking up the conversation where it became interesting, she told me that the creepiest thing about her job was the normalcy of most of the residents. "They were just...nice guys," she said. "They could have been anybody's husband or boyfriend or brother. They were polite, soft-spoken. They'd walk me to my car at night..."

"Wait a minute," I interrupted. "They'd walk you to your car?"

"Yeah," she said. "It wasn't a great neighborhood where the place was, so it was nice to have that."

"So it's better to have a man you *know* is a rapist walk you somewhere than it is to walk alone past someone that you don't know whether he's a rapist or not?"

"Oh, no, they weren't rapists," she corrected me. "They were voyeurs, chronic masturbators, guys who had sex with vegetables in public places, flashers..."

"Vegetables?? Sex with vegetables?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, that's what I don't get about men. How can they get busted sticking a carrot up their ass, and everybody knows it, yet they can still walk around with their head up? I just don't get that."

"That's exactly what it was! A carrot! In fact, we couldn't even serve carrots at the residence because it was too much of a trigger for him!"

"What do you mean, a trigger?"

"Carrots were too sexualized for him. And you know," she continued, quite seriously, "that's a big problem that he really needed to overcome because carrots are everywhere. It's not like kohlrabi where you kind of have to seek it out."

By this time I'm laughing hysterically.

"So what you're saying is, this man had an uncontrollable sexual attraction to carrots?!?"

"Yeah."

Honest to God, that's just taking the idea of "comfort food" to a whole new level. How does that even happen? And how does one develop an out-of-control sexual attraction to anything?

Our hands-down best seller in the store is the Rabbit Pearl. Easily half of its popularity is due to having been featured on Sex and the City a few years back. The easiest way to sell this vibrator is to remind women that this is the toy Charlotte got addicted to and ended up unable to leave her apartment, so great was her attachment. But you know, that's fiction, exaggerated to make a humorous point about how much fun the Rabbit Pearl is. In reality, in the two years I've been working in this industry, I have yet to hear of anybody developing an actual addiction to masturbation as the result of using a vibrator.

And vibrators I can understand. Its sole purpose in life is to give someone an orgasm. Can't we all understand developing a certain affection for such an object? I myself am a fan of the penis. Every night for the past eleven years I've slept next to someone who not only owns one but is reasonably generous about sharing it. Additionally, I spend 12 hours a day surrounded by literally hundreds of replicants that sit quietly on the shelf and never, ever tell me I'm hogging all the covers. Yet even though I have such luck to spend the majority of my time surrounded by my personal turn-on triggers, I manage to get through the day only having the urges to pee, sleep, eat lunch, and call home to check on the kids. And carrots? You've got to be kidding. There are thousands of toys in the world much better suited to stimulating the prostate than a carrot. Unless he has some sort of rare disease that forces him to take a daily suppository of beta carotene, I really fail to see the appeal there.

So in honor of Mr. Carrotbutt, I spent a few minutes creating some erotica, just for him.

Honey Bourbon Carrots

1 pound hot throbbing carrots, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds*
3 T butter
3 T bourbon
3 T honey
3 T water

Throw everything into a skillet and saute it until carrots are tender. And for the love of all that is holy, please don't fuck it.

*The original recipe called for baby carrots, but I felt that was inappropriate.

Happy to Help.

For the person who found my blog looking by Googling, "Where can I find sticky rice for sushi near Laurel, Mississippi?" Right here, babe.

For Trish and Lauren

Over at Feministe, Ms. Lauren has posted a typical sample of some of the hate mail she receives. The sender of the e-mail seemed to think it was very important to inform Lauren that one can get one's Russian girlfriend to agree that feminism is a very, very bad thing, indeed. Trish has posted some of her mail from Big Uglies in the past, as well. When I first read Trish's hate mail, I meant to pass along a helpful hint from Eric Zorn's Notebook but forgot. Since hate mail has reared its ugly head again, now is as good a time as any.

Last month, Eric posted an entry taken from the online Journal of pop singer Moby:

do you remember a few years ago when my email address got leaked to the moby-hating public?
did i ever tell you what i did?
well, let me tell you cos i think it's pretty funny...
i set up a program that identified strangers who were emailing me, and whenever a stranger emailed me they received an automatic response along the lines of:
'thank you for your interest in moby!
as a new moby fan you have automatically been enrolled in the moby fan club.
you will be kept up to date on all of moby's activities and releases.
welcome to the moby fan club!'

so a typical exchange looked like:

ajerk@ajerk.com
moby you are a prick i hate you you suck your music sucks
you are bad.

moby@moby.com
thank you for your interest in moby!
as a new moby fan you have automatically been enrolled in the moby fan club.
you will be kept up to date on all of moby's activities and releases.
welcome to the moby fan club!

ajerk@ajerk.com
no, i hate moby! take me off of the fan club!

moby@moby.com
thank you for your interest in moby!
as a new moby fan you have automatically been enrolled in the moby fan club.
you will be kept up to date on all of moby's activities and releases.
welcome to the moby fan club!

ajerk@ajerk.com
no! listen to me! take me off of the fan club!

moby@moby.com
thank you for your interest in moby!
as a new moby fan you have automatically been enrolled in the moby fan club.
you will be kept up to date on all of moby's activities and releases.
welcome to the moby fan club!

i don't know, call me petty, but i thought that it was pretty funny.
obivous, but funny.
-moby



So Eric tried it himself:

What I have started doing, ...and what I commend to anyone who receives a vile screed via e-mail, is to borrow the format of a reply that pop star Moby reportedly uses:

"Thank you for your interest in Eric Zorn! As a new Eric Zorn fan you have automatically been enrolled in the Eric Zorn Fan Club. You will be kept up to date via e-mail on all of Eric Zorn's activities--column topics, speeches and other public appearances -- as well as special offers that our sponsors feel will be of interest to readers of Eric Zorn. Welcome to the Eric Zorn Fan Club!"

I've used this about five times since adopting it last month, and it works even better than I'd hoped. Three of the jerks never wrote back. Two responded with wild, frantic, threatening letters demanding that I not put them on my (non-existent) spam list.

To those letters I responded, of course:
Thank you for your interest in Eric Zorn! As a new Eric Zorn fan you have automatically been enrolled in the Eric Zorn Fan Club. You will be kept up to date via e-mail on all of Eric Zorn's activities--column topics, speeches and other public appearances -- as well as special offers that our sponsors feel will be of interest to readers of Eric Zorn. Welcome to the Eric Zorn Fan Club!


I am sure neither of them would mind a bit if you tried this out yourselves.

The War of the Rabbit.

The history of any country, presented as the history of a family, conceals fierce conflicts of interest (sometimes exploding, most often repressed) between conquerors and conquered, masters and slaves, capitalists and workers, dominators and dominated in race and sex. And in such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, as Albert Camus suggested, not to be on the side of the executioners. - Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

At the risk of forcing you to reconsider your opinion of yourself as a thinking person, I encourage you to be on my family's side in the War of the Rabbit, despite the ruthless viciousness of the war we declared on our next door neighbors and the bloody, bloody carnage we left in our wake.

The war began at dawn. The enemy line was marked by a four foot high grey wooden fence that separated our backyard from that of our neighbors. It was five years ago, Summer, 1999. Steve and I had just moved into the neighborhood, and were busy unpacking boxes and painting the room that was to be Alex's nursery. Keith, our new neighbor, was one of two people who had introduced himself and invited us over for beers. The other neighbor wanted to sell us Amway. We took Keith up on his offer and delighted in inviting Mr. Amway over, then running next door for beers while Mr. Amway stood outside our front door and rang the bell. I was 7 months pregnant with Alex, Keith and his wife, Julie, had a year old baby girl. We were negotiating neighbor relations in a comradely fashion when they made the fatal error of teasing us about The Rabbit in our front lawn.

Look - it wasn't our Rabbit. The previous owners displayed a certain amount of questionable decorating taste, including one room painted crimson on the top and solid black on the bottom to represent the Chicago Bulls. That particular room was complete with an overhead light in the shape of a basketball hoop with a ball halfway through it. Another room was painted babyshit brown with fuzzy leopard print lightswitch covers. An overhead lamp that was literally taken from an Applebee's restaurant hung from the dining room ceiling. The downstairs half-bath had a paintjob that was a pastel nightmare reminiscent of the mass murder of an easter basket. The Rabbit was a 3 1/2 foot tall topiary lawn ornament, nestled in the day lilies in the middle of the front lawn, a grassy monument to bad taste. I know, I know, I've mentioned enough times that our house looks like a white trash bed and breakfast, what with the missing piece of aluminum siding over the garage and the car in the driveway that hasn't worked in six months, but at least we know it looks bad. At least we didn't set out to horrify people on purpose.

We'd had plans to evict The Rabbit from the daylilies as soon as we got around to it, but at the moment it was tucked behind the pear tree like a long-eared sniper, taking unsuspecting people down in shock one by one.

"You probably like it, don't you?" Keith asked, smugly sipping his Corona. "You're going to leave it there, maybe give it some gnome friends, or those geese. Yeah, you'll give it those geese that people dress up according to the holiday, so it can have some company. Why don't you get one of those metallic balls that sit on those pedestals? I don't even know what those things are, but I hear all the classiest people have them."

This was an insult not to be borne.

Late in the night, The Rabbit's efforts to position itself as a member in its new family were formally rejected. It was charged with treason, and executed by hanging. We tied a rope around its neck, and, in the name of Martha Stewart and Mr. Blackwell, hung the wretched thing in the Anderson's backyard, draped over the back of the fence.

In the morning, when Julie let her dogs out, she counterstruck. By afternoon, we noticed The Rabbit, still hanging, had been flipped over the fence onto our property.

The bunny was back in our court.

Again, we struck under the cover of darkness. Sneaking behind enemy lines, Steve crept to the Anderson's front yard, hiding The Rabbit in the hyacinths growing on the side of the garage. This was a tactical error, as the female General of the Anderson Army had had formal surveillence training as a member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. She spotted The Rabbit while returning from the grocery store the next day. A week later, The Rabbit was found perching perilously in our willow tree.

Being descendants of war-loving people, we mobilized, setting up a War Room and drawing out glorious plans for decimation. Taking the opportunity on a Sunday when the Andersons were visiting an ailing relative, a 12 foot ladder was purchased and The Rabbit was positioned on top of their house next to the chimney. This time the weapon went unnoticed for three days, until the Andersons threw a dinner party and one of the party guests asked them why they had a topiary rabbit on top of their house. Score!

Casualties were even more severe than we had hoped for, as it was then revealed that the male General was afraid of heights. He refused aid from the Red Cross and instead spent a week courage-building and climbed up and removed the rabbit himself.

Months went by. The smoke cleared, and we thought we had won. Then, on the night of August 8, 1999, the Andersons proved capable of military strategy and broke into our garage while we were at a suburban M.A.S.H. unit, welcoming Private Alex to the barracks. The Rabbit was placed in the trunk of the car we had not taken to the birth, and was not discovered until 6 weeks later, when I took it to the grocery store.

The Andersons must be destroyed.

No mention was made of The Rabbit's discovery, but a quiet call was made to Keith's place of employment. He had foolishly told us where he worked, as well as the name of his immediate supervisor, who betrayed him with frightening ease, not to mention an impressive display of talent for tactical warfare.

A week later, Keith walked into Techlabs to be greeted with furtive looks and giggles. A mysterious current of group energy was in the air, and Keith heard whispers all around him as he walked toward his office. By the time he reached his door, he was sure he was going to be replaced. His gut feeling was right. Sitting at his desk was our grassy friend, complying with the dress code in a white button-down shirt and tie.

The phone rang at our house. It was Julie.

"So. Why do you let your husband leave the house in such ugly ties?" she asked me.

She may have been talking tough, but they were on the run and they knew it.

"Feel free to give it back," I said, "but I promise you we can keep this going for years, if need be. You're a Special Agent. Your husband is in computers. I, however, am an out-of-work actor. I have absolutely nothing better to do than come up with plans for your family's destruction."

In an act of desperation, The Rabbit was thrown hastily into the sandbox in the backyard. Blood was in the water. It was almost over. We waited. Thanksgiving arrived, bringing Keith's father, a Dallas resident, with it. Invited over for the post-dinner football game, we were introduced to the senior Anderson. Information was exchanged. Another turncoat was revealed. An address to a home in the Dallas suburbs was found by Wilson family spies.

A week before Christmas, UPS brought boxes of presents from Keith's father. One box contained toys for the baby. A second box contained a gift for Keith, a gift for Julie, and a 3 1/2 foot tall topiary rabbit, wrapped in bubble wrap.

Completely demoralized, the Andersons waved the white flag out their back window and surrendered.

4 years passed. Keith lost his job. Julie had another baby and quit the bureau. He was offered, and accepted, a job in Texas. They moved in the summer of 2003 and took everything but The Rabbit. That they left behind the pear tree in our front yard, exactly where it had started out. They left no forwarding address.

Or so they think.

God, I Am So Computer Savvy.

I have RSS feed now. Never mind that I don't really know what RSS feed is, or why it's a good thing to have, or that I stole the implementation of it directly from Echidne. We'll all just accept the fact that I am a computer genius and never, ever ask me to prove it.

Today's blog entry brought to you by the fine folk at Strange Cargo. Strange Cargo, bringing the world's finest eclectic crap to you so you can kitsch up your apartment. Once again, that's Strange Cargo, 3448 N. Clark Street, Chicago, Illinois. Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

As per the request of Portia in the Comments Lounge of my Sunday entry, I took a small detour on my way into work and stopped by the above mentioned store to see if they had any more "Even I Think George W. Bush Is a Punk Ass Chump!" youth tee shirts for Portia's daughter to wear. To simplify things, I told the heavily-pierced, black haired cashier that my kids were given the tee shirts, and that a "mom in my playgroup wanted one for her daughter" and did they have any more?

Now, you could twist and turn things around and say that, loosely speaking, Portia and I are in a Blogospheric playgroup together. You could say it, but you'd be full of shit, and you know it. I was lying. A small, unimportant lie that hurt no one, told with the purpose of not having to get into "See, I have this online journal, and this woman, Portia, she has this online journal, too, and we both have kids, and well...We didn't really *meet* while blogging because originally we met, well, we haven't really met but you know what I mean. I mean, we got to know each other online about 3 years ago while we...."

Augh! How hideous! A lie, I thought, would be much cleaner and neater than this online geekery. But lies are lies, and they can still bite you on the ass. As in:

"We don't have any more of those shirts," she said. "But you know, go talk to the manager back at the counter and see if maybe he has some left that I don't know about."

So I stuck to my story with the manager, spinning my tale of us suburban mommies being all rebellious in between diaper changing by dressing our rug monkeys up in shirts with naughty words on them, hee hee!

But here's what he did. He grabbed a plain off-white tee shirt off the rack and held it up for me to see. "What is she, about this size?"

And here's why you should never lie: I had to stand there and eyeball the tee shirt size to fit the body of a child I have never seen before in my life. Rather than confess that as far as I knew, Portia's daughter could be 6 feet tall and weigh 520 pounds, I thoughtfully said, "Hmmmm, yes, I believe she takes a Youth Medium...perhaps a Girl's size 7?"

He looked at the tag. "This says Youth 6-8."

That'll do. So he went downstairs to the basement and screenprinted up the shirt just for Portia's daughter and gave it to me for free.

Wasn't that nice? So if you ever have a need for a second hand Chicago police shirt or a used porkpie hat, please do me a favor and buy it at Strange Cargo.

And Portia, if it turns out to be too small for her, just iron a Playboy decal onto the back and turn it into a sexee baby tee. That'll be all right, won't it? Sure it will.

Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shalt be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three.

I notice that Christine Cupiauolo, whose name I spelled correctly for the very first time without having to flip web pages back and forth repeatedly to keep checking, has updated her links on the blog roll, adding some men's blogs. Not to worry, though, she's kept them safely corralled in a new category titled, "Men We Love". G. made the list. So did Amp over at Alas, A Blog. (They're moving servers over there, that's why no link here.) And a blog I have not yet read called Rebel Dad. So, just the three then. Just three. G., Amp, and Rebel Dad.

Do you understand that, Eric? Mykull? Dave? Sour Bob? Christine does not love you. So for God's sake, quit calling her.

I Know All the Lyrics to That Song You're Singing!

This morning I snooped around the business of one of my competitors, checking out prices and inventory and just generally playing Secret Squirrel. Their cash register has a sign similar to the one I have hanging on the wall, but in blunter language:

WE DO NOT TAKE RETURNS ON ADULT MERCHANDISE OF ANY KIND!

I couldn't resist asking the cashier, who endeared herself to me by wearing a shirt exactly like one of Christopher's, "Do a lot of people try to return stuff?"

She rolled her eyes and launched into a tirade.

"Oh, my God, yes! All the time! And they pitch a fit when we tell them no. I mean hello! that's disgusting! Not to mention it's against the law! Sure, if it's broken, we test it in front of them, which is still gross, but anyway if it doesn't work we'll give 'em a new one, but you'd be amazed how many stupid people just don't like something and think it's okay to bring it back! Like, I'm a complete stranger! Why would I want to touch something you've stuck up your butt??? And then there are the people that don't want to buy anything because we think we're going to sell them a used one. A used vibrator! Why would we do something like that? How bad would that be for business! God, people are so stupid! Why are there so many stupid people in the world?"

Scratch the surface of any adult toy store worker and you'll find someone who desperately wants you to know she does NOT want to touch anything that's been up your butt, thank you very much, and she can not believe you don't know this. Seriously. Why don't you know this?

Anyway, that put me in a good mood for at least an hour. And while I'm on the subject of stupid people, I'll tell you about a customer I waited on when I worked for a large adult toy store chain out in the suburbs.

We were getting ready to close up, me, Sheila, and the manager, George. Company policy dictated that the male:female ratio had to be 1:2, and that all closing employees had to leave the store at the same time. Most of the time nothing happened, but once in awhile teenagers would sweep through the parking lot looking for female employees to harrass, so it wasn't such a bad policy. Here in Lakeview nobody gives a damn, so it's never a problem, but out in Suburbia people seem to take a different view on things. To wreak petty revenge on this suburb, whose name rhymes with "Snaperville", I will tell you its dirty little secret: of all the stores in this particular company for whom I worked, of which there were 18 spread across 6 states and the Virgin Islands, this suburbiest of conservative suburbs sold twice as many anal toys than all the other stores. You'd think this would reflect a more laissez-faire attitude, but no. Quite the opposite, really.

So we were getting ready to leave, vaccuuming and Windexing the counter and watching the clock, when a woman came running in. The car she leaped out of was idling out front, a shadowy male figure inside it at the wheel. She was in her mid-50's, with long bright yellow hair on top and a just-past-the-butt miniskirt ending in fishnet stockings and stilettos down below. She was panting slightly as she reached the counter, leaning her cleavage over it. "Hey, you guys got any lipstick? I'm on my way to meet my boyfriend's parents for the first time, and I forgot to put on lipstick."

"No," said Sheila. "Well, I mean, we've got these, but they aren't really....."

"You got it in red?" demanded the woman.

"Uh, yeah, but..."

"Give it to me, let me see."

Sheila handed over a tube of red lipstick. When the lipstick was closed it looked okay, but when the woman took the top off and twisted the bottom to bring the lipstick up, it whirled up into the shape of a penis.

"Oh, this is perfect, just perfect!" said the woman delightedly. "This will be hilarious! A real ice-breaker!" and she paid for the penis lipstick and ran back out again.

You know, I don't know why my own in-laws don't love me more. Sure, I may sell sex toys, but at least I waited 10 years before springing penis-shaped lipstick on them. That's got to count for something, don't you think?

Sweet, Sweet Vermin.

We used to have one hell of a rat problem out back behind the store. Steve forbade me to take the trash out to the dumpster at night, on grounds that 1.) I was pregnant and 2) could only wear this one pair of Old Navy sandals thanks to swollen ankles. After bravely brushing the tears from my eyes due to the loss of this chore, I agreed that I was in no position to play Chicken with the rats, who, by the way, ain't afraid of what you got, so bring it on.

One rat running on a wheel behind the glass of a ten gallon tank is one thing. Thousands of hungry ones running amok in the back alley are another thing entirely. Because of my valiant husband, my exposure to this problem was limited to one extraordinarily squashed one in the gangway (what the hell happened there?), another squashed one in the middle of Clark Street, and my dealings with Pest Control one sunny summer day.

A lot of people who make their living zipping in and out of people's homes and places of business doing maintence, repair, and deliveries think that because I own the store, I also own the building. Sadly, this is not true. I have to pay rent to a man with the fabulous name of Slaymaker every month, just like the tenants who grew frustrated by the volume of bald-tail menaces in the beer garden and called the City to kvetch. So out came Hector around lunchtime. He asked me to take him through the store and out to the backyard. I tried to make it clear to Hector that I was a lowly rent payer, but it was difficult to disabuse him of the notion that I was not, nor was I married to, the owner of the building. Matters were made worse by the fact that Slaymaker's brother-in-law was out back in one of the garages. You'd think it would be made better by this, and typically it would have been. However, Mrs. Slaymaker is Japanese, and, oddly enough, so is her brother. His English is far superior to my Japanese, but almost anybodys is. [Thanks to Styx, I can say "Thank you, Mr. Roboto", and thanks to Sesame Street, I can count to three. That's pretty much it. No, wait: That is it.]

Being free of a Babelfish, Hector decided he would pretend like he didn't hear me say I didn't own the building, and continued to talk to me about "what I needed to do" and "how much this was going to run me." Okay, Hector. Whatever you say.

"So, see, you got all these holes in the concrete here," Hector pointed out. "You gotta fill all those holes, and jeez! Look at all the holes in the ground. Those are nests in there, you know, filled with 'em."

The J-b-i-l and I stood there while Hector began pointing out all the rats he could see just standing there.

"Oh, yeah, there's at least eight that I'm looking at now - that's really bad. That means there are so many they can't all hide in the daylight. If things were under control, they'd all be hiding. There's a baby one, right there looking out of that hole in the ground."

I followed the direction of his gesturing cigar tip. About 10 feet away in the overgrown grass sat a small brown rat. Resting on its haunches, its pink nose twitched in the air. A soft, cool breeze gently parted its fur as the sun shone pleasantly down on its little head. It looked back into the hole for a brief second before gazing back out at the garden, clearly enjoying the nice weather.

"It was probably looking to see if its mother was watching him," I thought.

And that was that. It was too late to see it as abominable filth. I made the mistake of anthropomorphisizing it. Once I had acknowledged the fact that the little rat was happy, sunning itself and secure in the knowledge that its mommy was right there to protect him, it made me totally unprepared for what came out of Hector's mouth after that.

"Well, I'd better take care of that one while I'm here at least," he said. There was no hostility or disgust in his voice, just a matter-of-fact voice that accompanies statements like, "Well, I'd better check the mail" or "Well, I'd better get off the phone now."


"I don't have my equipment with me today," he continued, "but I wore my boots."

AUGH! BABY KILLER! HE'S GOING TO CRUSH THE SKULL OF A BABY RIGHT IN FRONT OF ITS MOMMY!

"Um, hold on there a minute, Hector," I said. He looked at me. I went on, with the sheepish feeling that I was making a big, pregnant, hypersensitive, unreasonable, girly ass of myself, "I know that you have to get rid of these rats. I know that means killing them. I know that they're dangerous and disease-ridden. But I, um, made the mistake of thinking about it as a baby instead of as a plague carrier. And I can't stand here and watch you kill a baby. So I'm going to leave now and let you decide on your own whether baby-killing is something you'd like to do today. Whatever you decide, I don't want to know about it. At all."

Hector gave me a patronizing look that clearly said "Pregnant women. They'll just get silly over any sort of baby." This would have been annoying but for the fact that I think I probably deserved it. Whatever. He refrained from making any sort of move one way or the other until I went back into the store.

Now that I think about it, I haven't been back there since then, so for all I know they're all still back there. So is it dead or not? Until I go back out to the beer garden, that baby's just going to have to be Shroedinger's rat.

Hey, I Know What I'll Do! I'll Post Other People's Funny Stuff Instead of Coming Up With Stuff On My Own! That'll Be So Much Easier! Why Didn't I Think of This Before?

From Ernie:

Every other weekend or so, my friend - let's call him "D" for sake of anonymity - spends the night at our place. You see, every so often his roomate throws bisexual sex parties in his apartment, and things get awkward. Sometimes it can be inconvenient stepping over a threesome while you're washing dishes or side-stepping the giant sling while returning from the laundromat. You know how it is.

"You know," I said to him, "you have just as much of a right to the apartment as he does."

"Yeah," he says. "But he pays more rent than I do." And that was that.

Hey, who am I to argue? At least it makes for some entertaining conversations over dinner.

D: So, my roommate installed a gloryhole in his bedroom closet door.


You know, that sentence uttered anywhere else in the country would send people running to their local confessional booth. Our house though, we don't even bat an eye. Welcome to California. Anyway...

Ernie: A gloryhole. In the closet. So you're watching TV and all you hear are these drilling noises, like it's no big deal?
D: Something like that.
Paris, the roommate: Wouldn't, uhm, splinters be an issue?
D: Naaah, the door isn't too thick; it was bought at IKEA.
Ernie & Paris: ...
Paris: What was the door called? BLOJAAB?
Ernie: You need an umlaut over the A's. BLOJAAB.
D: Okay guys, I get the joke.
Paris: Don't forget the slash over the O so it's BLOJAAB!
Ernie: Personally I find the name KOKSUCKIR much more...
D: Stop it.

Now, many of you will feel bad for the perfectly good closet door with a hole drilled through it so a penis can be put through the orifice. That's because you're crazy - it's a door. It has no feelings. Besides, the new one is much nicer.

From Matthew:

I almost missed my bus yesterday. As it was pulling away from the curb I ran alongside it, waving my arm, and the driver kindly brought the behemoth to a stop and allowed me to board.

Moments later, as I sat panting in a seat halfway back, I could hear the driver's voice boom from overhead. He was having a private chat with the person sitting in the front row and was clearly unaware that the intercom was on. I, and everyone on the bus, heard him say, "I probably wouldn't shouldn't have stopped for that guy, but I kinda felt sorry for him. He had such a dopy, desperate look on his face as he ran."

From Makura:

FRAGMENTS OF PHONE CONVERSATIONS WITH MY JAPANESE MOTHER

*You Should Marry A Carpenter*

JM: Isn't it nice that E. have carpenter husband so can fix her house? You should find handy carpenter man and marry so when you buy house he can fix all up for you.

[Indignantly wanting to retort that I don't need a man to fix up my house for me, while simultaneously having to acknowledge to self that being rather clever when it comes to assembling put-together furniture does *not* count as having significant carpentry skills.]

AH: Mom, I'm gay! Remember? Besides, aren't you the one who's always criticizing anybody I've ever dated who's short of a Ph.D. or an M.D. [i.e., 99.9% of everyone I've ever gone out with] as being "ambitionless"? So now you're changing your tune?

JM: Well maybe you not gay. Maybe you just too fat to get man anymore. But maybe you can marry handy carpenter man and he could be very useful for fixing house.

AH: Tell you what. A carpenter son-in-law? Not going to happen. But if it'll make you happy, I'll find a nice carpenter *woman* and marry *her*, and then you can have a handy carpenter *daughter-in-law*. What do you think of that?

JM: Don't be stupid. No such thing.

*On Dealing With the Fuzz.*

JM: What's the matter with you? You forget to take allergy medicine? Sneezing, sneezing!

AH: I took it, but it's not helping.

JM: Ack! I bet you rubbing nose like crazy in public. Don't do that.

AH: No I'm not.

JM: I don't care even if allergy season, don't ever rub your nose in public because that's the Drug Abuser Salute. If Polico [pronounced pole-ee-ko] see you do that you going to be arrest.

AH: [Laughing] Mom, I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to throw someone in the pokey for rubbing their nose in public...there needs to be a little bit of Search, a little bit of Seizure, a couple of warrants...

JM: Don't joke about. Not funny. I had nightmare you smoked marijuana and went to jail and then all night long I can't sleep. So when Polico pull up next to you in car make sure don't look at him, otherwise he think you guilty of something and you end up in jail.

*On Musical Taste*

JM: You have somebody in your house? I can't talk private if somebody there.

AH: Nobody's here...I'm just listening to music.

JM: Good grief! I thought what that crazy sound? *Wooooo woo woo!* I thought maybe one of your mongrel cat in heat. What kind crazy music you listen to?

AH: You mean Joni Mitchell???

JM: You too old to listen to that crazy music any more. Everybody going to think you a hippy. I don't know what's wrong with you. Junior high time you listen to that Throat Cancer Singer.

AH: You mean Rod Stewart???

JM: I don't know who that is. He keep singing "Do You Think I'm Sexy" but so stupid. Nobody think he sexy...I think he have throat cancer.

Amity writes about the delicious decadence that is the sex life of the garden slug, but it's better served with the photos that she has up, so you'll have to trot over there and see for yourself.

And I linked all these bloggers, along with the lovely and talented Penny from My So Called Lesbian Life. And Casimirland. And my fellow Knife-Wielding Feminist blogger Limpet, of Limpet's Journal. Sour Bob, too.

About That Class Assignment in Human Sexuality at Columbia.

Dear Dr. Rigoldi,

Of all your students who have come in here to interview me about the store as part of their assignment, Andrea was the only one who asked detailed questions and walked around the store asking questions about products and taking notes. Everybody else just asked how long the store had been opened, which I assume was a question you told them to ask. Therefore, you should give Andrea an "A" and flunk everybody else.

Just thought you might like to know.

Eric, Amanda. Amanda, Eric.

Dear Eric Zorn,

I know how much you enjoyed being introduced to Jocelyne Wildenstein. In the same spirit, please allow me to introduce you to Amanda Lepore.

Amanda, Eric is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. Eric, Amanda likes to give doctors an awful lot of money for non-essential activities.

I'm sure you two will have a lot to talk about.

Love,

Leigh Anne

P.S. - Don't forget to tell Mo about this timewaster. (Thanks to Trish for the link.)

Smartlips.

I do love the old ladies who shop with me. Seriously, they're the best. They take a special sort of delight in buying vibrators that younger women usually don't. Many older women have told me that when they were in their 20's and 30's, there just wasn't anything available for women, and the only common vibrator was that nasty, noisy metallic silver one that I stock in the store but hate. They'll wag their fingers at me and mock-scold, "Where were you 30 years ago?!"

It's honestly one of the most genuinely rewarding aspects of my job, providing a space for these women that respects them and their sexuality in a world that would really prefer not to think of women over 65 at all, much less think of them as sexual human beings. So word is getting out among the senior set that my store is the hip place to go, which means I get a lot of phone calls like the one I got this morning. An older woman, whispering into the phone: "I saw your ad in the Reader for that Honey Bear. Do you have any left?"

"Yes, I do," I whispered back.

"Okay, good. I need you to send me one in the mail."

"Why are we whispering?"

"Because I'm calling you from Synagogue."

Me, in a normal tone: "What did you do, sneak out of services? Couldn't it wait until after?"

"That's enough out of you, smartlips. Are you going to send me that darn bear or not?"

"You'll get it."

"And I *work* here. That's why I'm calling you from here. I'll need you to send it to the Temple; they'll steal it off my front porch at home. Put it in a plain box."

"I always do. How do you want me to ship it? UPS Ground, 2nd Day, Next Day, or Priority Mail?"

"Well, gee. Just send it Ground. I've waited 67 years to buy one. It'd be kind of silly to bother with rushing it now."

How can you not love that? So I sent her that darn bear, and some soap, too, just for being her.

We Here at the Honeysuckle Shop Strive to Meet *All* the Needs of the Fine Ladies of Chicago. Well, Almost All.

Spring is nearing, which means it's time for Steve's bi-annual in-store date with his very favorite customer, Nancy, the Slobbering Drunk. Every season change brings in Nancy, held aloft on the fumes of what one suspects is probably Coors Light but might be a Miller Product, one never knows for sure. The fumes only partially do their part at sustaining her, and tend to betray her, causing her to stagger and flail wildly at the air.

Seeing Steve always fills her soggy little heart with joy. The last time she weaved into the shop she left with a bar of patchouli-scented soap. She picked up her conversation about it just as if she'd stopped by the previous day, rather than 6 months ago.

"Hey, you know that Hippie soap you sold me that I bought here that smells like hippies? Can I use that on my face?" She leaned over the counter to breathe out her question.

Steve leaned back. "Uh, yeah. You can."

"Can I use it on my face?"

"Yes. You can use it on your face."

"But it's okay to use on my face?"

"Yes."

"So for my face, it's okay to use?"

After about three more variations on this question, Steve finally realized that although he was giving her the truthful answer, it wasn't the right answer.

"No. Absolutely not," he said firmly.

She smiled, satisfied. "No, you can't," she agreed. "Because women's faces are very delicate. We women are very delicate."

Nancy had attracted the other customers in the store by this point, two delicate young women who seemed delighted by the exchange, and made themselves comfortable to watch the show, passing metaphorical popcorn back and forth.

Pleased to have an audience, Nancy began to regale the gathering with her views on sex and masturbation, often slurring off in a trail of gibberish that was forcefully punctuated by a waving fist.

Finally, in a slow, clear voice, she looked into his eyes and said, "You're being very quiet."

Steve shrugged. She plunged onward. "I haven't had sex in fifteen years."

Steve said nothing. She continued, "Could you, you know, take care of that for me? I have fifty dollars."

Before Steve could compose himself to respond, the observing women dissolved into hysterical laughter.

Nancy, having evidently forgotten that The Nancy Show had an audience, spun around toward the source of the laughter, lost her balance and frantically began wobbling back to the front door. She clung to the door frame briefly, vomited into the gutter, and disappeared.

"Wow! That was wonderful!" exclaimed one of the women.

"That made our whole night!" agreed the other one.

They may have been happy, but quite frankly, I'm a little pissed off about someone offering my husband fifty bucks to alleviate her sexual frustration. I've ridden that ride, and I'm here to tell you it's worth a hell of a lot more than fifty bucks. Fifty bucks, indeed.

Life's Little Irritants.

Don't you hate it when you have to get off the phone with your mother in order to tell some strange guy that you're not going to give him a handjob? I sure do.

Not to mention the fact that he didn't even have the decency, after discovering that he wasn't soliciting a prostitute, to slink out of the store, but instead chose to stay and browse. This caused the sole other customer in the store, a quiet, polite young man, to emit one of those tcha! gasps of disapproval. Eventually, Mr. Handjob realized that his company was unwelcome by both customer and staff, and left.

"Don't you hate it when some stranger comes to your place of work and asks for a happy ending massage?" I asked him.

"Oh, God yes!" he agreed, then apologized on behalf of his gender, which I thought was nice.