A Trail of Brain Crumbs.

Hey, did you miss me? Well, that makes both of us. I feel like I’ve been wandering around these past few months in a sort of blog fog. Weather pattern for my head: intellectually cloudy with a certainty of haze. Or maybe I’ve just been mired in a blog bog; sunk into a sludge of sentient senescence and all I have to show for it is a mummified mind.

My brain on Bog.

Nah, I think I’ll go with the blog fog (though in truth, I’m quite fond of my sludge of sentient senescence for its pleasing, alliterative tingle.

Agnes often wondered who might please her alliterative tingle.

As I’ve been wandering lost on the moors of thought lo these many months, fighting my way through the dense fog and haze, my brain has been pro-actively dropping little morsels here  lest I need to find my way back, or possibly to help me find my way out.  They include, in no particular order the following:

My Dog Remus

 I once had a wonderfully dim dog named Remus (his twin brother was the devilishly handsome but regrettably more tempermental Romulus). Remus’s mother is a Shar-pei, lab mix, and his father was, I think, I greyhound bus or possibly a dump truck. Somewhere along the line, a hound dog slipped his genes into the mix because Remus could howl up a storm when he wanted to, and when he wanted to seemed to hinge solely on one factor: whether or not a dog in his immediate vicinity was barking. When we had three dogs, this was not an entirely infrequent occurrence, but what separated Remus from the other two dogs was that he had no idea what he was barking at. Or what the other dogs were barking at. But he enthusiastically gave it his all. Why have I been thinking about Remus even though he’s been gone for almost ten years?

Because recently, Indiana representative Marlin Stutzman (R) said this about the government shutdown: “We’re not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don’t even know what that is.” 

Man, I miss Remus.

Shutdown vs. Slimdown.

We are now entering week two of our government shutdown. Unless you watch Fox News, in which case, we are merely in a "slimdown" as if we were put on this collective diet and have discovered to our amazement that wow, this means we can throw away our government fat pants.  Um, okay. It is sort of like convincing yourself that a quarter pounder is dietetic because hey, you could have ordered the big mac.

Language, people!

While we’re on the subject of language, here’s a sundry list of language things that irriate me:

1) Government pronounced "Gummint.” It is a political entity, not a compound word made up of two breath fresheners.

2) Nucyoolar. 

Say it with me, ready?

New.

Clear.

Again: New.  Clear.

Got it? Put it together. There ya go! Nuclear! (see how it has the world CLEAR in it? That’s a hint.)

3) The phrase “The American People”, when it appears anywhere near a congress person’s mouth.  If a congress person feels awkward or unsure about what to substitute when the itch to employ this phrase overwhelms him or her, using the term “my constituents” is a decent place to start. If this doesn’t go far enough, then either of the following phrases is an acceptable alternative: 

1) “My good friends over at <corporation x>” 

 2)  “those amazingly persuasive lobbyists who have some really good points and incidentally contribute waaaay more to my campaign funds than any of y’all have ever ponied up.”

4) The word “negotiate” when it is spoken by anyone who has a tendency to confuse it with “demand your way on everything and when you don’t get it, try bullying, throwing temper tantrums, and holding your country hostage until you do get your way.” It can be a nuanced difference I know, but language is powerful, and I just think the word should only get to be used by people who know enough to understand that "compromise" is not a four letter word, and that Honolulu is not a suburb of Nairobi. 

Book Club

So, I joined a book club recently in my neighborhood and we had our first meeting the other night. It was fun but I accidentally used the word 'seminal,' and then trotted out TS Eliot.  And this was after Gina made me promise I’d try to use regular words. She knows how I can get. But I’d had a glass of wine and it just happened. It's really embarrassing to have to admit you're a pretentious drunk. I wasn't trying to be, but I'm still feeling a little douchy about it.

Baby Season! (Permits not Required).

We have fecund friends these days, and the New Year is poised to positively explode with babies. Gina and I remain content to run our retirement home for gracefully aging canines but look forward to periodically taking in the various small children with whom we will be acquainted, and introducing them to the delight and wonders of sticky things before returning them to their parents at the end of the day.  Hopefully, before they poop.

Subtopic 1: Pregnant Women, and also Garfunkle and Oates.

  Having never been pregnant, and not really planning to be, I think this song is hi-larious, which probably shows that breederless women are also smug. . .

Subtopic 2: Odd Behavior.

I’ve noticed this funny thing that happens when I baby-sit our Newphew Leif. I feel this sort of hamster ball of sudden and urgent importance envelop around me. Leif may be the catalyst for its appearance, but as his appointed protector and defender for the next three to five hours, I am fully at the center of its orbit. One afternoon, my mother and I took him for an afternoon into Boston––which, if you’ve ever been in a city, this won’t surprise you––was filled with people. Brimming with people. People at the crosswalks, people walking in the park, people standing in great big viscous globs all over the halls of the science museum. The problem is, the stroller that we for him is approximately size of an oil tanker and maneuvers just as easily. As we pushed our way through the crowds, parting the intransigent crowds like a molasses sea, I am not proud to admit that ensconced in my hamster ball of importance that I was, it occurred to me more than once, MERCIFUL HEAVENS PEOPLE, GIVE US SOME ROOM, CAN’T YOU SEE I HAVE A CHILD? Any doleful wail, however, from the lips of an OPC (other people’s child), and I darkly think: Gah! Have mercy on our eardrums, for criminy's sake. Perhaps this is nature’s way of showing me I probably should stick with dogs.

The Birds and the Bees.

My friend, Sarah, recently and successfully harvested her own eggs to donate to her sister and brother-in-law.  If it takes a village to raise a child, she and her family’s collective efforts prove that it also sometimes takes a village to make a child in the first place. It also takes, I am told, an arse load of needles, a not insignificant amount of funds, loads of hormones, and harrowing trips into Mass General.  But she braved it all; the needles, which squick her out, and Boston rush hour traffic, which would squick anybody out, and the torrents of hormones which gave me sympathetic PMS just to hear about. And all for a sister who, for the first two and a half years I knew Sarah, was only ever described to me as “soooooooooo annoying.” (When I had opportunity to augment Sarah’s historical accounts with my own empirical data, I drew a different conclusion but I do not fault Sarah for her initial reasoning[1].)  Anyway, all of this is to say that I am so proud of Sarah for undertaking this process and emerging from it like a champ. It also illustrates a most fundamental but often overlooked truth about how babies are made. The three ingredients needed are, in no particular order: An Egg, A Sperm, and A Womb with a View. (That last one is Gina’s little brain child. Isn’t that adorably clever? I think so too.)

Sorry, Porkchop

So, Pennsylvania’s Lehigh County Commissioner, Tom Creighton said recently: “The state has a ban on same-sex marriage, so why should the county be offering benefits for same-sex marriage? I don’t feel the county should be looking for new ways to give away taxpayer money. Next it could be giving money out to people’s pets or whatever. No, it probably won’t go that far.”

 You never know. It’s a slippery slope from marriage rights to diamond studded litter boxes.

Is that a genuine Ermine wrap PorkChop????

The Pil Ville

Gina and I have a new television obsession. It’s not new television, it’s a new obsession. Once upon a time about ten years ago, PBS started making ‘house’ series reality shows. For instance, “Frontier House” takes three regular families and flings them into the wilds of Montana for five months where they must live as if they’re in 1883. That means they have to live in modest cabins (that they have possibly constructed themselves) and build their own privies, haul their own water every day, milk cows, chop wood, harvest four effing tons of hay by scythe, not wear underwear, and do everything as if they are actually homesteading, and the year is 1883. It’s sort of reality television meets historical immersion.  And it's fitting, I think, that we discovered this treasure ten years into its existence. This is why I like PBS. With a focus on history and the past, my technological lolly gagging doesn't seem so hopeless. 

Anyway, the last of these series that we saw was Colonial House. This one's premise throws a bunch of people into 17^th century New England colonial life complete with a Governor, various servants sprinkled amongst the landed gentry, and mandatory Sabbath attendance, and then says, "ready, Go!"   I kept calling it Pilgrim Village which in due time became Pil Ville.  It’s a great show and not just because of the poofy pants the guys have to wear, though that certainly helps.  The shows consult historians and period experts to try and replicate as authentically as it can the worlds of history each show portrays, but being a reality show, it allows 21^st century people to be their 21^st century selves. The people who are chosen to be on the show like to philosophize about whether they might have ‘made’ it or not in the "real" time periods.  One of the fun things Gina and I like to do is speculate about our own chances of survival had we happened to live in those days. We ponder our various assets such as our robust constitutionals and hearty work ethics, and debate whether our fortitude and pluck would have helped see us through, knowing all the while that whatever we say is hogwash because the first thing that would happen to us if were actually in 17^th century New England is we'd be tried for witchcraft and burned at the stake.

Carolyn Heinz. Queen of Pil Ville

And not to give away any spoilers, but there is a woman on Colonial House that is the actual living embodiment of every character ever portrayed by Catherine O’Hara in any Christopher Guest movie. 

Catherine O'Hara Queen of Satire

Drag Queens.

And so we return to Drag Queens. Why? Because Drag Queens make everything better. Not all drag queens, obviously, just the awesome ones. RuPaul's Drag Race has started again and so we are happy campers.  Once upon a time, when I had just watched an episode of Drag Race, I had what I thought was a brilliant flash of profound insight. Ready? The fractal property of drag queens as demonstrated through Jinkx Monsoon.  Allow me to explain. Or just walk away now, that’s fine too.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Subtopic BONUS!

 Official Fan Art.  I am both proud and a little sheepish about this. Ah, I'm mostly proud, who am I kidding?

You've seen this before, but recognize the pictures on the shirts? Aw yeah, who nerds out at the varsity level!

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[1] Sibling relationships sometimes just need to age for a few decades before they mellow and mature. Like a good cheese.