And baby makes three....or four....or five.....

Okay, enough starfucking. Let's get real for a moment.

I work in a very fertile office; perhaps I should amend that to read, a very fertile MIDWESTERN office. And I work with a bunch of designers, and designers, generally speaking, tend to be female (yes, there will be future posts on hysteria, hormones and thongs, all of which are painfully rampant in my place of employment, but not right now). Typically.



Now, I've been in this job for four years. And in that four years, we've had engagements, weddings and knockings-up. Lots of 'em. Surnames are changing faster than Britney's hair (or lack thereof). So what happens in an office when any of the aforementioned Life Events occurs? Showers are tossed and envelopes are passed, because I have nothing better to do with my laughably paltry salary than to go in with about 40 other people on a high-tech stroller that does everything but parallel park itself and brew espresso.



Yeah, I don't think so.

Now, I like having fun. I'm nice. I have the patience of Job (most of the time). I participate in quite a few office functions. But moreso and to the point, I am single. I have a cat. I have friends. But I do not have a husband, and who knows if one will be presenting himself to me in the foreseeable future. And I don't plan on having kids. But I AM adopting more pets. Someday.

So there won't be showers for me (unless I start throwing myself New Pet Showers, which wouldn't be a half-bad idea, but I'd have to get the pets first). No envelopes circulating with other people's cash stuffed into them for my giddy benefit. No pastel-sprinkled cupcakes to wreak havoc with the glycemic index of 40 sedentary cube-dwellers. No sitting around a conference room participating in tragically insipid shower-themed games, but in that, I feel I'm being truly merciful. Frankly, I should be thanked.



There is, in fact--surprise!--another baby shower this week, or early next week, but I declined it; I've decided enough is enough and put a personal kabash on all manner of Office Shower Involvement. A girl's gotta have some boundaries.

And as it so happens....I've discovered I'm not the only one.

8 ball in the corner pocket & 70's schlock

Was greeted this morning on my Earthlink homepage with the entertainment headline "Britney shaves head, gets tattoo," or something like that.

Of course, I took a closer look and, caffeine kicking in & curiosity piqued, I jumped over to the ever-reliable PerezHilton. Indeed, the girl has seriously gone around the bend and now resembles a startled, slightly-fuzzy billiard ball. Yeah, screams for help and all that. When you're a 20-something bazillionaire who didn't have a "normal" (and what IS that, anyway?) childhood and was thrust head-first into scrutinized pop-stardom adulthood, I think it makes you a little screwy.



I've never been a fan of her music; I did see a drag queen at a local club perform to "I'm a Slave 4 U" and I actually kinda dug that whole slick, sleek pop-ish, sexy and really quite hot (yes, yes, I REALLY want to be a drag queen, most people know this about me....) metaphor, but other than that, not really a fan of her flavor of over-produced musical bubblegum.

She's been acting out for a while, but this is pathetic. It's a nervous breakdown made public; it's also too bad she spawned kids at such a young age when it's obvious she's so NOT emotionally developed herself. She's sort of going through all the bizarre acting-out teenaged stages she missed by being in the biz and, as the theory goes, you must go through all stages in life--at some point--to grow up. For some people, they just come later....



Apparently depression and alcoholism run in her family, so I hope her ass lands in recovery (or there's an intervention on her behalf); if she's serious about it, it'll be here in MN at Hazelden, NOT some swanky "recovery" center in the Bahamas. Please.

Speaking of over-produced musical bubblegum, I Net Flix'd "Phantom of the Paradise" and I highly recommend it. It came out in '74, is horribly dated and terribly over-the-top, but it's GREAT! It's a tongue-in-cheek rock musical/fable with one of the (seriously) best scores ever, written by the bizarre but extraordinarily talented Paul Williams, who is the WEIRDEST little shag-haired, strawberry-blond aviator-glasses-wearing chipmunk-cheeked squeaky munchkin-like dude in the world of entertainment. But he penned such Carpenters faves as "We've Only Just Begun" and "Rainy Days and Mondays," and he wrote all the songs for the Muppet Movie, my fave being "The Rainbow Connection" (ah, Kermie!). And he's done many others. Lots of talent in a strange package.



Anyway, this flick is a kick, with touches of "Phantom of the Opera," "Faust" and "The Picture of Dorian Gray," not to mention overtones of pulpy, kinky 70's porn. I'm SO ordering the soundtrack. Oh, and I'm pilfering my brother's original poster to frame & hang right next to "Hedwig!"

Nip/Tuck

I am suddenly fascinated by bad plastic surgery. Sort of. And perhaps only fleetingly.

But there. I said it. I confessed. I know, I know. Your eyebrows have risen substantially, your lips are pursed and you've unconsciously cocked your head to the side. You're thinking, "God, really? Plastic surgery? You mean, cause you want it? Rhinoplasty? Sacks of saline in the chestal area? A butt lift?"

No. Not for me. Not ever. Not electively. I think it's creepy and gross and invasive and rampant and bizarre. And I really hadn't thought much about it until I was perusing another guilty pleasure last night, the Queeny gossip website PerezHilton.com, who occasionally posts links to other websites (I guess as a favor). There was one about plastic surgery, and it made me curious, but I'd surfed away from his site before clicking it, so I typed "Celebrity Plastic Surgery" into Google and found a "Bad Plastic Surgery" site. The site wasn't bad (well, it wasn't great, either), but the surgeries were.



And there I stayed, agog and idiotly fascinated for....a while. Now, what I don't get is why Christina Aguilera ever thought her perfectly decent and naturally-proportion Real Boobs were insufficient. Why do women buy into that? I guess it's all part of the biz, but that tiny, skinny chick pumped 'em right up. Why did Jennifer Aniston want a nose job? I like uniqueness in people. WASP-y button noses aren't all they're cranked up to be; I have one, courtesy of my dad, and it runs and gets clogged and needs the hairs plucked out of it like everyone else's. In the end, it's still just a nose.



And the lips! The lips were most fascinating of all! There is a tragic Drag Queen (is there any other kind, really?) called "Bree" although, actually, I think she might be transgendered, who has gone collagen-mad, and the outcome is horrid. She looks like she had a major allergic reaction to a plate of shrimp scampi. They're huge. They look like those fake wax lips I used to buy as a kid around Halloween. And then there's Meg Ryan, who's looking....not so cute anymore (why do white chicks with thin lips think fat lips will improve their looks? Fat lips are just fat lips. Are they hoping some adventurous lover will chew on their mouths while they're meshing? Is that the deal?). When lips are so fat they can't even close, I think it's kind of a problem. Clay Aiken? Really not a looker to begin with (I'm personally not a fan of redhaired men), and now he's even scarier with collagen lips and bonded teeth. NOT an improvement. Eww.



And what can be said about poor, misguided Mickey Rourke? So many face lifts, his ears are practically meeting at the nape of his neck. Gads. And then there's the increasingly evil-looking Katie Couric who has obviously moved on well past the "America's Little Sister" moniker; her forehead and browline are all botoxed-out, and she looks mad. In fact, she looks like she has permanent "Smelling Shit" face. Or really bad cramps.



Of course, there's that famous Manhattanite who has had so many surgeries, she's a strange, cat-like, implanted, pulled, pinched, puffy & tucked alien-looking thing at this point. And, much like an accident along the highway that compels you to stare and rubberneck, I couldn't look away.

Some of the others, we're already all too familiar with: Liz, Liza, Michael, Janet....

And then, of course, there's Courtney Love. And really, what more can be said? Except maybe, oy vey.

Body Rocks

So, I've been having pain and stiffness in 3 of my fingers (pinky on the left hand, middle & ring fingers on the right), located in the last knuckle joint closest to the fingertip, and it's worse upon waking, but tends to diminish as the morning wears on and my fingers get stretched a bit.



In researching this, I have concluded it is arthritis, which I've only noticed this year (and which is exacerbated by the cold weather here). This is the major reason I've begun to overhaul my diet and revisit vegetarian/veganism, actually. Besides, I'm an A- blood type and, according to the blood type diet, I'm a "natural vegetarian," so it could even be that what little meat I've allowed myelf to consume has had a negative effect on my body.

Anyway.

I was talking to my mother yesterday and she theorized, in addition to cold & diet, that perhaps I was "somaticizing" the pain in my fingers, the definition of which is: "To convert into physical symptoms," such as grief, anxiety, anger, etc.

So I said, "You mean, like, I want to choke He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named? Or bitch-slap the daylights out of him?"

And she said, "Well, you know...." in that way that means, Oh, hell YES, you do.

Now, I admit, I HAVE had daydreams of drafting & delivering the most profound and eloquent You're-an-Asshole monologue to this former friend of mine, and on a purely rational level, I know it would be highly detrimental to all aspects of my well-being to resume dealing with someone so damaged and toxic. On an emotional level, however, well, let's just say that daydream has not yet completely fizzled out. Hence, the Somatic Theory.



So, as tempting as that whole bitch-slapping scenario may be, I think it probably makes more sense to just go find a good Acupuncturist instead.

This is me, not relating

Okay, so, I semi-watched the Grammys last night, and I say "semi" because I was simultaneously engaged in a phone call with a friend of mine in Portland for whom the Grammys were not yet on.

She was anxious to see the Police and their much-hyped "reunion" performance, which was a fairly blink-and-you-miss-it affair. They were good, but it was a totally self-indulgent (well, when is it not?) version of "Roxanne," with the newly-shorn and middle-age-buff Sting bending the lyrics to please himself and the whole thing coming off like a much-improved garage-band jam session for the nostalgic. I was partial to last year's opener, the holographic Gorillaz and Madonna, which, together, was just totally far-out and futuristic and, well, way cool.



Later, they had some badly thought-out "tribute" to the Eagles with the prim Carrie Underwood, the bland, syrupy-sweet I'm-as-exciting-as-Velveeta country singin' American Idol winner from a few seasons ago doing embarassing covers of "Desperado" and "Life in the Fast Lane" (so, really? She's been "up and down this highway/haven't seen a Goddamn thing?" Can she even say "Goddamn?") and I simply had to mute it after a few moments to preserve the sanctity of the original versions. No, no, no. God, no. What tripped-out Grammy producer thought THAT one up?? She attempted to really "get down" to the lyrics by squeezing her frosty-shadowed eyes shut and tossing her teased blond locks and stomping her little stilettos once or twice onstage as only a pretty blond virgin can (I'm sorry, but she wouldn't be quite this dull if she got laid), but it didn't help. It was laughable.



"Faster, faster, the lights are turning red." Uh, yeah. Don't think so.

However, Shakira was shakin' all over for God and the Universe, and it was a total trip. It's like, she kind of warms up then gets going, and then all bodily hell breaks loose and I felt myself developing major whiplash from watching her. She's, like, quadrupally jointed or something. But then, if my abs looked that good, I might bare & shake them every chance I got, too.

There was a quick audience shot of Imogen Heap looking like a stoned Mother Nature, with a wild-assed hairdo. But I kinda liked that she was all weird looking.



And I was relieved to hear that Smokey Robinson still had decent pipes, though he's getting that surgically-enhanced look of permanent surprise around the eyes somewhat. Ah, well.

There was also this call-and-vote deal for three identical and not very exciting young Beyonce wannabes who sat in the front row, clutching hands and looking about as perky and hopeful as three Little Sisters during Rush Week. The idea was to phone in your vote and the "winner" would get the honor of a nationally televised Grammy Moment (in this case, a duet) with none other than Justin Timberlake. And this is where I know I'm 41 and not relating, cause I was like, who are they, why do I care, and why does everyone think Justin is all that? I know people do. I have friends that do. And I even like one or two of his earlier frothy pop tunes. But I'm just not wetting my panties over the man. No.

I was glad the Dixie Chicks got recognition. If you haven't seen "Shut Up and Sing," you need to. Period.

Anyway, I'd had enough and got into bed with the NY Times Arts & Leisure section, and there was a blurb about PBS' new "Bram Stoker's Dracula," which I'd considered watching instead of the Grammys. And I shoulda. But then I wouldn't've had the colorful phone coversation with my friend in Portland. Or this blog entry today.

Well, maybe next time.

To Veg or not to Veg

That is the question that I am currently mulling.

Something has hit me again in recent days, or weeks, about the prospect of returning to a vegetarian diet. I was a vegetarian for, I don't know, maybe a decade (I even inspired a few other people to adopt the diet, one of whom now considers me a sort of "traitor to the cause" because of my 180 after I got him to stop eating meat), and I did it for ethical reasons, primarily; I love animals, I grew up with a fairly motley assortment (the requisite dogs n' cats, a couple of goldfish, hamsters, pastel candy-colored budgies, even a salamander from our own backyard that escaped its "pen" and which I eventually found, dried up in a dust bunny in a corner of the living room; I also later learned their skin has a sort of poison in it, much like toads, but luckily I never actually touched it), and I was always rescuing them, like stray dogs and hurt Mockingbirds, all of it. So it stood to reason that consuming them was antithesis to this big-hearted Florence Nightengale-of-Animals thing I had going.



Not to mention, I was also pretty militant about not eating meat and proudly wore my PETA t-shirt everywhere.

That changed when I tried to give blood after 9/11 and watched the iron-poor blood droplet fall from my pricked fingertip and drift, weakly and lazily down to the bottom of a glass of water, while my friend's rich blood plummeted like an anchor. My blood was declined, so while my friend continued with her donation, I promptly left the bloodbank and crossed the street to the burger joint to chow down, a gesture which effectively positioned me in the world as a carnivore from that point on.



I still wore the PETA t-shirt, but only to sleep in.

Lately, though, it's been the growing awareness not just of global warming and the terrible, horrible impact cows have on the environment (read about it sometime, go on), and the fact we're a big, fat, sick nation with heart trouble and colon cancer and joint diseases and raging hormonal imbalances and gout, but the fact that, at 41, I've recently noticed a soreness in a couple of knuckles on my hands (ah, God, this "aging" thing!), which I'm assuming is the onset of arthritis, exacerbated by the cold, cold weather.

Now, the American Way is to say, "Aw, give me a shot o' cortisone or some pills or a smear of Ben-Gay," etc. in an effort to control the symptoms, but that's lazy. That's uninformed and really, terribly unenlightened. My first thought was, oh, shit. My DIET.



Even now, I don't eat that much meat, but I crave it and when I want it, I have it. Which is, I don't know, once every couple of weeks, I suppose, and probably in conjunction with the ebb and flow of my cycle.

I was sharing this renewed mindset with a Buddhist friend of mine today, a years-long vegetarian who listed the reasons to not eat meat:

"Ahimsa," which means non-violence;
Health;
Spirituality;
Environment.



Who can argue with that? I just think I'm "there" again, for whatever inspecific or specific reasons. I love cooking, and I'm no longer completely unconscious about food and what it does to your body (no, I haven't had a bowl of Cap'n Crunch for at least 20 years), I generally make much better choices now (although last Friday was a riot of Tater-Tots, gloppy pasteurized cheese dip, kosher hot dogs and hard cider at a happy hour with a friend of mine, for which I paid dearly the next morning), and I'm generally conscious of keeping my iron levels respectable. And I guess I do feel that part of "paying rent" on the planet means being conscious of my own impact on it.

There is a saying that goes, "Live simply, that others may simply live," and when I think about how ridiculously indulgent and overly-rich (in all ways) and self-centered and indifferent the Western Mindset generally is (and our meat-centric diet is part of that), I kind of shudder. I think it'll be a process for me, though, because having grown up in proximity to the Pacific Ocean, I do love seafood, and certain habits are ridiculously hard to break.

And I have a honkin' frozen turkey breast in the freezer. Sigh.

But the thinking, the renewed consciousness, is a beginning, again, and a great one. For me. And I'm excited about it, as if I'm slowly reawakening after a long, long snooze.



As they say in the program, One Day at a Time. Oh, and Live and Let Live. Which, I think, even applies to animals.

Ahimsa.

Gettin' jiggy wit it

So, there's this Sunday NY Times essay about "designer" dogs--some new cross-breeds, like "Puggles" (Pug/Beagle mix) and "Boggles" (Pug/Boston) and some other non-pug mixes, etc.

It really brought to light how over-bred pugs (pure pugs) in particular have become; so much so, in fact, that the poor, loaf-like dears can't even SCREW without human intervention, and it's really quite a bizarrely fascinating, amusing, involved and ultimately pathetic scenario.



They start by bringing the bitch into heat, whether it's her time or not (that, right there, is weird), and then they trot the stud over, who takes one whiff of the hot mama and, eyes buggin' and tongue lollin', attempts to mount her, and this is where the fun really begins. Since they've been bred to be totally blocky with stubby legs, they really can't, uh..."connect," as it were, so as the stud nears, um, "completion," he is helpfully finished off and the contents (paltry, from what I understand) are then collected in a baggie.



Seems to me we've hit a collective new low as a species when we have to jerk off a pug.

The rest, well, it's something along the lines of inserting the collected contents into the bitch and then, well, digitally stimulating her (I guess she has to get SOMETHING out of the experience), and then it's finally over (I'm not sure how the denoument is actually DETERMINED, if she has the pug version of The Big 'O' or if it's timed or what) and everyone--pugs and owners--all settle down into a happy, post-non-coital afterglow and smoke cigarettes. It wouldn't surprise me if the owners actually asked the pugs if it was good for them, and frankly, I'm not sure the pugs would know any different. Which is pretty sad.



It's too weird. As anyone who knows me knows, I adore the breed....but can I really support artificial pug f*cking?

Suck it Up

So here's the deal in these parts, as of today, Saturday, 2/3/07, and extending through some time on Monday:

It's butt-assed cold.



Now, being an expatriated Californian, "cold" used to mean something entirely different. It meant, oh, 50 degrees, a bit cloudy, and maybe a few gusts of wind to blow a little pollen around so my sinuses would get allergically clogged. And I thought that was the depths of sheer misery.

Oh, how wrong I was. So very, very wrong.

Feeling a need for "change," (perhaps this is more a personality flaw, as I am seeing it now--or at least this weekend--rather than a healthy exploration of boundaries and a need for growth and psychic expansion and coming into myself and all that shit), I willingly--and, if I remember correctly, completely CONSCIOUSLY, because there were no drugs involved, no downing of copious amounts of alcohol, no gun-to-the-temple type of coercion around this decision, nothing of the sort--picked up and left the "temperate" Pacific Northwest where I had previously been living (ah, that word is right up there with "tropical" in my mind!) for the FREEZING Midwest.



My mother is a permanently, happily, fixedly expatriated Chicagoan, living in California (since her teens), and when she got wind of my plan to escape to the nation's midsection, she was, frankly, agog.

"You've never felt a winter like THAT," she assured me. "I remember the wind from Lake Michigan. It was bitterly cold. You've never really experienced weather like that before."

Now, I am known for stubbornness and, since she is a parent, I, of course, thought she was merely raining on my parade and decided she was merely embellishing things in a last-ditch attempt to keep me from moving so far away, so naturally I ignored her warning and split. I mean, millions of people live here and stay here and work here and gobble hot dish here. Even other expatriated Californians. How bad could it be?

"Okay," she'd say, one eyebrow arched skeptically, her voice rising markedly on the second syllable to denote my utter foolishness, "but I think you'll be sorry."



Of course, on THIS end of things, most of the natives I encounter--when I begin to bitch and moan about the weather--fold their arms and turn away from me ever so slightly, cheeks tinged pink with the flush of some flavor of Scandinavian heritage and, eyes squinting suspiciously at this sputtering, fuming West Coast Creature-Like Thing in front them, ask, "How long have you been here?" When I reply, "Five years," they throw up their arms and smirk and say, "Oh, well. WEEELLLL. YOU haven't experienced a 'REAL' winter at ALL. This is nothing."

Nothing? I'd say the mercury plummeting to below zero is not "nothing." It's past "nothing," as a matter of fact, slipping right down there into the negative digits.

So I've discovered it's best to simply shut up about it, because there is no mercy here among the natives when it comes to winter weather.

I somewhat recently heard the phrase, "Suck it up, candy-ass," (however NOT directed at me) and that's pretty much the inference when I begin to groan. So I am doing the only thing I can, faced with three days of howlingly freezing winter weather: I am attempting to put a positive spin on things. I'm making pancakes. I'm drinking a strong, dark mug of Peet's (probably the West Coast's finest, dark coffee); I'm sitting in my flannel robe; I'm going to read, watch my netflix DVD, and tap around on the laptop. And I'm telling myself this whole thing, the sound of the wind occasionally throwing a burst of ice against my window, the plummeted mercury, the flannel-wearing, is "cozy."



And I am trying--trying very hard--to suck it up.