a freaky respect to the kumquats of Herve Villechaize

hide and seek
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

If you say to me, "I think Do-it-yourself Mad Libs sound stupid and unfun!" I will say to you, "You are wrong!"

You print out the words to Seasons in the Sun or a recipe for Waldorf salad, or, whatever, Lincoln's second inaugural speech, and solicit random words to replace key words in the text. So you get:

When in the land of flatulent raindrops it becomes handy for 678 people to accelerate the crumbly bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the bats of the earth, the separate and equal prestidigitation to which the Post-It notes of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a freaky respect to the kumquats of Herve Villechaize requires that they should declare the cappucinos which impel them to the separation.*

Trick is to get the right number of replaced words.

In other Things I Really Wish Would Happen, I wish there was a spelling bee for grownups in this town. They have one in Brooklyn, and now one in Seattle, and I keep pressuring the library to do one as a fundraiser - cash bar! prizes! public humiliation! I would win! - but so far no bites.

Also, the new book I hate myself and want to die had me cackling away for twenty minutes. How much do you despise Total Eclipse of the Heart? Did you know it's over 7 minutes long? How many seven-minute periods in your life do you not get back because they played it on the radio so much? Does its total psychotic awfulness make more sense now that I'm telling you it was written by Jim Steinman, the guy who wrote Paradise by the Dashboard Light for Meatloaf? Sure, turn around, bright eyes, and scare the living shit out of me.

And All By Myself - covered by Celine Dion! Ow! Rip my ears off before you subject me to that.

And, for my brother, Lucky Man by ELP is now officially a terrible song.

*Actual Mad Lib concocted in the librarians' office during a recent dull moment.

Hot day on Cross Street

Picture 335
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

Here they come! Click here and adjust the delay to 1 to see the virtual flipbook.

Religion retard

Second best
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

So, I've already established that I am not, as they say, a person of faith.

I'm not sure they say that. I might have made it up. I like it though - it is almost a funny thing to say, if you load it with enough faux delicacy, and yet it is a perfectly descriptive and nonconfrontational way of saying I don't believe in God. Gods. Any god. People can get really itchy when you say, "I'm an atheist."

"Atheist" always sounds like there's a big gang of us out there, actively campaigning against Him. Well hell, I don't give a crap, believe what you want, especially if it makes you behave more nicely.

I didn't believe in god quite early. In fact, when I was a kid, I didn't think anyone did. I went to church every week, sang in the choir, but it all sounded like mythology to me. I liked mythology. It wasn't until much later that I realized that most mythology had been religion at some time.

Very very sucky, when looking at a Tibetan thangka illustrating some 400 Tibetan Buddhist deities, to say (to a Tibetan) "That is some cool mythology you guys have." Tibetan history has been continuously documented for like 4,000 years. Those deities aren't mythology, they're history. Culturally insensitive much? Oh sister, that's my middle name.

Once, I was training a group of curators and registrars at the Jewish Museum on the software my company had installed. I was groping for an example from their collection that might illustrate how the database handled composite objects: objects that are made of separable pieces.

I said, "Take, for example, a seder plate. A seder plate has the big round platter and then the, what, 6, 7, 8, little bowls."

Thirteen pairs of eyes rolled in unison. I've never seen anything like it. It was like Busby Berkeley meets Woody Allen.

On my lunch break I snagged a book in their gift shop and discovered: seder plate? One big plate, yes, with 6 spaces (which may sometimes be dishes): one for the charoset, one for the egg, the karpas, the shank bone, and two places for the bitter herbs. Not gonna make THAT mistake again.

Anyway, at the age of 8 or so, after church one Sunday, I asked my mom something like, Dag, how can that preacher live with himself, doing all that talking about something that doesn't exist? She kind of swallowed her gum and then had a conversation with me that left me entirely unconvinced.

Not to say I'm not interested in religion - no, I'm a fan. Of the imagery and the ritual, of course, not the dogma. Growing up going to a Presbyterian church, we didn't have saints, incense, Hebrew, ritual food, special clothing, crap smeared on the forehead, man we barely had curtains.

So I love all that crap. It's like a tenth-generation American who grew up on food cooked with soup, who as soon as she could, started eating and cooking food from cultures that use spices. In fact, it's exactly like that.

My first exposure to serious Catholicism came in 1994 when I traveled the Mediterranean countries by myself. I don't know dick about saints, but I quickly realized that I didn't really have to. That stuff was made for illiterates, and so the stories are right there in the visuals. You can piece it all together, and that's so great.

I made long lists of the saints I had seen -

• Barbara: holds a building
• Roch: shows people the wound on his thigh
• Lucia: has eyes? on a plate

I collated all the information from the statues and paintings I saw in Spain, Portugal, France, and Italy, and later looked 'em all up. UN believable. Saint Agatha, who had her breasts cut off because she wouldn't have sex with someone, was later claimed as the patron saint of bakers and bell-makers, because literacy had declined and people thought those lumps she held on a platter were buns or bells, and not in fact boobs.

That is so cool.

I was mesmerized by the exhibit that my old museum put on about Haitian vodou (it originated at the UCLA Fowler Museum). The exhibit designers created representations of shrines to Ogou, Danbala, etc, massing together iconic objects preferred by these entities: a Darth Vader figurine, a certain brand of rum, perfume, colors, materials. And it turned out that visitors to the exhibit... tossed offerings to the spirits. MetroCards, cigarettes, etc. The intention of the exhibit was unimportant. Merely putting these objects together in the same place invoked the entity. If playing cards, smokes, a mirror, and something blue were blown together by the wind into the end of an alley, that place would be a place to entreat that spirit.

This comes close, to me, to the origin of the idea of sanctity. Sanctity as experienced in the world. You come across a spring, a flowering tree above it, and you are hit with the feeling of specialness. One way to translate that is: God was in that place.

Haitian vodou appropriates the images of Catholic saints and some of the icons of the Masonic tradition. I like that. To me, it gives the Haitian spirits more validity: everybody knows what Papa Legba likes, and when a Haitian spotted a picture of Saint Francis, he thought, "Legba wears brown - this is totally Legba, he'd love this!" It is the opposite of assimilation, the opposite of conversion. "Hey thanks missionary guy, I know just what to do with this!"

Doesn't take anything away from the saint. The Haitian knows that the concept expressed by that icon is separate from the image itself, and that he can use it in a different way, without offense to this spirit that the white guy is yammering on about.

It's the same with me. I see the picture of Saint Rita with a nail in her forehead, and I know just what to do with that. I'll draw a comic! A comic about domestic abuse and how much crap women take sometimes. Doesn't take anything away from the saint that somebody is praying to. She is not her picture. She is not even her story.

I heard something on NPR the other day about how the mikvah, the traditional Jewish ritual post-menstrual immersion bath, is now being appropriated as a feminist gesture. The implication of uncleanliness has been discarded, and women are now using the mikvah to get in touch with the sanctity of their bodies, to symbolically cleanse themselves of bad experiences, etc. Some rabbi expressed concern that it might become trivialized, stripped of its spiritual origins, "like feng shui."

Well... was Taoism really harmed by the feng shui fad? Sure, a lot of people hung a lot of crystals without understanding why, but has there been an overall decline in the respect granted the ancient traditions of China? Have spiritual practitioners of feng shui suffered?

Worse things could probably happen to Orthodox Judaism than the acculturization of the mikvah. Joe Lieberman, for example.

One of the big benefits of being a stone atheist is - I don't want to say a buffet approach to the rituals of this world, because I still don't participate in a single freaking one (except for the feng shui, I rearranged the wind chimes after reading part of Move your stuff, change your life) - but appreciating the icons and rituals and observing that the buffet approach can be beneficial. Cross-pollination can indeed stimulate new growth in new directions.

There's a lot of crap that people have to deal with in this life, and we should accept succor and remediation where we feel we can find it.

I still think it's all horseshit, but then, I used to read palms.

get em while they're hot

get em while they're hot
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

"Strength AND Leadership!" he boasts... but, sadly, no lips.

The panties are not the point

portulaca (look at me big)
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

1996. Ok, so the first man I married, my ex-husband, let's call him "Scott." Scott was his name actually, but my memory always puts it in those verbal quotes, like an alias. The name didn't suit him, should have been something less normal, something crusty and artistic, like Gil, or something teenage and furtive, like Kevin. He was a painter and a sculptor, and made a good living in a sought-after job as an exhibits carpenter at the Guggenheim Museum.

Anyway, my ex-husband, "Scott." Was always after me to wear more alluring underclothes. He liked satin, he liked lacy stuff. I myself am more of a form-follows-function person. I shake my head just thinking about slick synthetics, scratchy lace, what have you. No, I say - no. It goes like this:

1. Hygiene
2. Comfort
3. There is no number 3
   

I know, I sound like a podiatrist.

Luckily, I considered his requests to be so cliché, so run-of-the-mill, that my self-esteem never suffered a hit. I figured his underwear thing to be about aesthetics – some kind of Vargas thing. So much was, with him.

And I didn't care too much one way or the other, so after he had made a few comments on the subject I said, "Well since it's your idea and you work next door to Victoria's Secret, go on your lunch break and buy me whatever you like. I'm a size 5."

Soon after that, he came home with the dinky little pink striped shopping bag in his large paint-spattered hand. In it were a couple pair of nylon satin panties trimmed with plastic lace. I tried them on and changed my mind. He had bought cheap uncomfortable crap. I told him to return them and next time I'd go and help pick something out.

The bag sat by the door for a couple weeks - he kept forgetting to take it back. Then the credit card bill came. The Victoria's Secret charge was $93. Whoa! "My god Scott, that crummy underwear cost ninety bucks? We are taking it back RIGHT NOW."

We took the N train to SoHo carrying that ridiculous Chihuahua of a shopping bag (huh. THAT’s what Paris Hilton reminds me of) and the credit card statement. The receipt was in the bag. We returned the two pair of panties and the clerk handed us some $30, not the $90 I expected. I cocked my head. I revved up – I am a good remonstrater. She cut me off by handing me the receipt. It clearly showed an original purchase of 6 pairs of underpants. I looked at Scott. The clerk's eyes shifted between us.

Scott said, "Can we not talk about this here?"

I said, "Very well."

On the broad stone doorstep of the Victoria's Secret on Broadway in SoHo, I said, "Who are you buying lingerie for?" I mentioned a co-worker of his, "Christine" (also her real name), who clearly had a crush on him.

He said he wasn't buying underwear for Christine, and he said again, "Can we not talk about this here?"

Well, it's not like we were just going to forget the whole thing, and I was feeling eerily rational and clear-headed, so ok, we walked on down Prince Street. I felt a bit great, actually. I was clearly in the right, and let’s just say that hadn't been the case in most of my previous experiences with jealousy/infidelity/whatever the fuck was going on here. And I didn't have that dizzying who-is-this-man sensation. So I puzzled it out.

I didn't really think he was attracted to Christine, she was in fact both mean and unattractive, and already wore cheap satin underwear. You could see it over the back of her jeans. And he pretty much didn't know any other women.

Finally I said, "You're not buying lingerie for... yourself?"

And he said, "Yes." Pretty quietly.

We're on Wooster, walking down the cobbled street, past the cast-iron fronted buildings, possibly the most fashionable place in the world. You see pictures of that street in a million ads, car commercials where super-attractive dreadlocked guys using brooms are spotted grinning at you from the sidewalk as you glide past on leather upholstery.

What I’m saying is, if you're going to have an unreal conversation, good place.

So my mind clicks through what I know of fetish objects. According to The Kinsey Report (I read the part about long-hair fetishes, thought maybe I should know), fetishes are perfectly normal unless they become fixations. I make my conclusion: well, ok. I can accommodate this in my worldview. We walk on.

Then it occurs to me to ask: "You don't… wear them… yourself... do you?"

And he says: "Well, yeah!" As if to say, "Well gosh what ELSE would a 32-year-old 6-foot-3-inch carpenter from South Dakota be doing with ladies underpants!"

I knew - I knew - that what he was talking about wasn't all that weird. I read Savage Love, hell he could have been into fisting, he could have been into something really unpleasant. And good grief, I was married to the man: naturally I would work with him within any set of parameters. The parameters weren’t just shifting, though: they were inflating and flipping around like a fire hose with every syllable he dropped - the standards of deviance on my internal graph of sexual norms were sliding WAY away from the top of the curve. But like I said, we were in SoHo.

I processed the idea of Scott wearing panties - where did he keep them, when did he put them on - and I said, "Well you don't wear them to work, right?"

And he says, and for some reason this really embarrasses him, he says quietly, "Yes."

I then said, and this seemed totally reasonable to me at the time, and still does, and I do not believe there is hidden anger or hurt in my train of thought although just about everyone else who hears this story, um, does - I said, "Well, wearing them to work seems like a bad idea. You got that giant table saw, the drill press, the SawZall for god's sake - you need to concentrate. Wearing those things might make you distracted, and if you got hurt at work and got put in an ambulance – I know EMT’s, Scott, trust me – when those assholes cut off your clothes in the wagon and see that you're wearing ladies' underwear you are NOT going to receive the highest standard of care because they're gonna be wasting time cracking jokes."

Nothing but caring in that train of thought, I am telling you.

So, new territory for me. Also for Scott, I imagine. We tried to accomodate his dumb-ass little fetish – this was my marriage, you know, you bend. And at least I didn’t have to wear that tacky crap. Well. He left me before too long anyway. Started sleeping with Christine, wrecked my apartment.

How stupid was this guy, you wanna know. Why did he allow himself to end up in such a position, getting interrogated in public about something so private? Mmm-hm.

It’s my guess that the panties were not the point. I think he had this little push-pull relationship with concealment and revelation. I think he set up secrets so that he would be discovered (later, this became more apparent, when it came to light that he had used our credit card to spend a lot of money on 8^th Ave.). I think he was looking for a reprimand, like a child. And in the marital context, that's just icky.

I think he picked me out in the first place, blonde and blue-eyed, glasses and an office job, for my appearance of wholesomeness. This I resent: being someone's erotic patsy. Nobody likes being appreciated for their naiveté. But I am guessing my response to his whole panty-fetish setup was unsatisfactory. I have a feeling I was supposed to jump on a chair and say Eek.

So, ha.

All the power you need

smile
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

"I'm a supa-hero. And I have lots and lots of x-ray visions."
"Is that right?"
"I have x-ray vision from my eyes so I can see things far away. And I have finger x-ray vision and that makes things distapear."
"Disappear."
"Distapear. And I have knee x-ray vision and that's FIRE GAS!!!"
"Oh my word!"
"And butt x-ray vision!"
"Your... butt has x-ray vision?"
"Yeah!"
"So... what does the butt x-ray vision do?"
"My butt x-ray vision keeps things safe!"

The sleep of reason

log in sunlight
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

Weirdly, I have been having nightmares. Nightmares, weirdly, I have been having. Nightmares. Weird. Isn't that weird?

How many non-fictional adults (besides veterans, sadly) have you heard of who wake up in the middle of the night rigid with fear because a dream was so freaky? Rigid with fear, I'm not kidding. 4am and I am wide awake, cold sweat, whole body flexed and aching.

And it's not like I'm having nightmares about irresponsible babysitters, or ants, or even about my husband's brain. No, my nightmares are intricately plotted, quite exotic, and intensely cinematic. In other words, absolutely nothing like my real life.

In fact, I am comfortable telling even total strangers about my nightmares because they feel so utterly unrelated to my waking world. I'm about as well-adjusted as I've ever been. I haven't had a bad dream in years, and even then I dreamed that all my teeth fell out. Or I had to take a final exam in a class I thought I'd dropped. You know: the two most common dreams in North America. So all of a sudden experiencing these horrible things - it almost feels like 'something I ate,' a la Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend.

Except... would cheese (or in my case, gin) prompt visions of an unbelievably sinister, eyeless, charred-looking demon trying to insinuate himself into my house to suck the life out of my children? A demon who communicates via the gunky eye and nose secretions of a neighbor child?

Or... would a bad piece of sushi cause me to rewrite the movie Jacob's Ladder for myself, casting Tom Cruise as a violent psychopath who tortures his family (Nicole Kidman and two little girls) before moving on to recruit the inmates of an insane asylum and pull the head off a nurse? I mean, this was a nightmare with a framing device for god's sake. In my dream I was happily watching TV and came upon this movie. I thought to myself, "God I can't stand Tom Cruise but I heard he was amazing in this," and then I watched the movie and couldn't turn it off.

Wrecks me the next day, because I can't get back to sleep. Plus it just leaves a bad taste in my brain. Tom Cruise, yeesh.

They're not all ghastly. The other morning I told Bob at breakfast, "I had another bad dream last night. My camera was broken! And you were cheating on me."

He says, "I was cheating on you? And that comes up after the broken camera?"

Yeah you'd think that would bother me. I'm guessing that since in my dream his new girlfriend was a good-looking Asian woman, not a three-headed mermaid with teeth where her tits should be (for example), I just figured the whole thing to be more or less benign.

My camera, though, that would be a nightmare.

[more animal noises]

my hero
Originally uploaded by pwilnyc.

Remember the babysitter who spaced on what time she was supposed to pick up my four-year-old from camp? She wasn't particularly contrite when I called in a panic, nor did she apologize at the end of the day. Fine. I wouldn't have accepted an apology with any kind of grace.

So, she emailed this week:

I was just curious if you needed me to babysit [Big Man] and [Mr. Three] anymore, or not. (and if you did, could I have a schedule for the rest of the times when you'll need me?) I'd appreciate it, thanks!

I emailed her back:

Thanks, [Ex-Babysitter], but we've found somebody else.

The reply (totally unnecessary unless you have a pathological need to have the last word):

that's what I expected. More timeliness though next time in telling me would have been appreciated. Have a good summer.

Timeliness, huh? If I hadn't conquered my own pathological need to have the last word (and this doesn't count!), I would email her back, hoping that some good advice might make up for my shabby treatment of her.

I would express my chagrin that all the plum snowball-stand jobs will have already been snapped up, but I would point out that given her inability to retain pertinent details, she's going to be looking for jobs a LOT, so in the long run she may thank me for releasing her into a tough job market.

I would recommend that she play to her strengths: fancy education and glossy hair. I would caution, however, that a veneer of professionalism is not only somewhat unnecessary when we're talking about a 6-hour-a-week babysitting gig, but can lead to misunderstandings when the employer interprets the language of professionalism as evidence of sort of a minimum level of professional behavior.

My most valuable advice to her, though, as she makes her way through the exciting whirl of job interviews, first days of work, and subsequent dismissals, would be to keep her chin up. I would say:

[Ex-Babysitter], a lot of ex-employers are going to try to point out your weaknesses and refuse to give you references after you've burned down their chicken place because you forgot to turn the fryer off when you left for the day. That kind of negative feedback could eventually take the edge off your Gibralteresque sense of entitlement.

Don't let it! That sense of entitlement is all you've got, really, so you should keep it wrapped up safe: buff and polish it, until its glare blinds all potential employers... so that saps like me will hire you even when more qualified and personable candidates are available (and luckily, I'm talking about [Current Babysitter], who is fun and prompt and easygoing and who doesn't bring a BOOK when she comes to babysit two boys under the age of 5).

Have a good summer!

In other words: you flail, I bail.

Personality DNA

Roll that log over and see what crawls out...

Animated Leader

Though admittedly, I might not have linked to this silly quiz if I had taken it and it came back labeling me, say, "Sluggish Drone".

My Personal Dna Report

Some things you may not know about your neighborhood librarian

One or many may apply, depending on your neighborhood and your librarian.

• Your neighborhood librarian is probably female, but you knew that.
• Your neighborhood librarian is a public servant with a postgraduate education.
• Your neighborhood librarian has a postgraduate education and decided to work in public service.
• Your neighborhood librarian reconsiders that decision from time to time.
  
• There's about a 35% chance your neighborhood librarian has a tattoo.
• If your neighborhood librarian is under 40, it's more like a 80% chance.
• Your neighborhood librarian may think murder mysteries are a bore, but she can recommend one for you.
• If your child is screaming in the library, it is almost for sure that your neighborhood librarian has been there, and does not judge you in the least.
• Your neighborhood librarian has a thriving healthy marriage built on frank dialogue and shared interests.
• Your neighborhood librarian has been so thoroughly dicked-over by her ex-husband that she has sworn off dating entirely.
• Your neighborhood librarian is an avid gardener.
• Your neighborhood librarian thinks Nature is out to kill her.
• Your neighborhood librarian is going to dress up for Otakon.
• Your neighborhood librarian doesn't really get this "manga" stuff. Isn't it just comic books?
  
• Your neighborhood librarian is a natural blonde.
• Your neighborhood librarian can't remember her natural hair color.
  
• Your neighborhood librarian is a cat owner.
• Without exception.
• You are correct in surmising that your neighborhood librarian has a larger vocabulary than you do.
• Your neighborhood librarian owns at least one garment that laces up the torso.
• In your dreams, pal.
• Your neighborhood librarian smoked entirely too much pot in the 80's.
• Your neighborhood librarian knows entirely too much about opera.
• Your neighborhood librarian thinks it's idiotic that people try to ban Captain Underpants.
• Your neighborhood librarian thinks there's a lot to be said for Captain Underpants.
• Your neighborhood librarian has tried out the booger-dodging game on the Captain Underpants website.
  
• Your neighborhood librarian volunteers at her neighborhood school library because the school can't afford a professional librarian, and that's not ok.
• Your neighborhood librarian would like to get paid.
• You may be surprised by how much your neighborhood librarian knows about computers, even if she is much older than you.
• Your neighborhood librarian does not support the USA Patriot Act.
• Your neighborhood librarian can identify that book that your book club is reading, but you forgot the title and don't know the author, but it was something about sewing? and China?
• Your neighborhood librarian does not say everything she is thinking.
• That's why she has a blog.