greed is....

If you don't have a greedy friend, I suggest you run to the nearest mall or WalMart right now, and buddy up to someone, preferably a someone with a packed-to-the-rafters shopping cart or a someone tilting under the weight of ten Nordstrom bags. Tip: You'll recognize the uber-greedies because they're also sloshing a 32 oz. soda as they go thundering down the store aisles.

This is not to say that I'm free of greed myself. As my husband would acknowledge, I can mow through a bag of Pepperidge Farm Ginger Man cookies at warp speed. But, as with all sins, there's greed and there's greed. Being friends with a real pig is helpful in setting your personal greed benchmark, just having like that invaluable dirty friend, who hasn't tossed a pizza box since the eighties, can make you think better of your own crappy housekeeping. Plus, you learn things.

Way back when, before it was fashionable to be enormous, I had a huge friend who owned a car, which I didn't, and she was also something of a slob. A three-fer, in other words: greedy, car, slob. She had it all. When I was around her, not only did I have a ride, I felt like a living testament to The Balanced Life.

One day she offered to drop me off at home, but asked if I'd mind stopping by the grocery with her. Not a bit, I said. Going shopping with her turned out to be a transformative experience, as Oprah herself might say. When we meandered down the aisles, she'd give these sudden ::cries:: Oh my God!! she'd yell, look at that ham!!!! Then she'd lift a giant hock out of the meat case, oh so tenderly, and cradle it like an infant, beaming down at where its face might be, if hams had faces. Sweet Lord! she'd holler when we passed the bakery, Looky here!! Cupcakes!! Lemme just grab this box!!! And she'd stare into the clear plastic container like we were at Tiffany's gawking at a 56 caret rose-cut diamond. And on we went, pausing reverently like pilgrims in front of soup displays, blowing air kisses at Sara Lee cakes, tickling cheeses, etc. My intro to food porn.

Some years later, I became semi-friends with a different breed of greedhead. She was very attractive, worked as a graphic designer from her house, had a scandalous marriage in her past, a rotten teenage kid upstairs, and was born dead. On the wall, right next to the front door, there was a proudly framed news account of her lifeless entry into the world and her subsequent revival. She was also the kind of person who would take you hostage without a single qualm. I just need to run by Dillards, she'd say. Come with me. And I would, only to discover one thing leading into another, until I found myself home, finally, at 10 PM, with nothing in the house but a sticky carton of Chinese take-out for dinner.

My friend drove a big black late model Caddie, and bought stuff in quantity. She'd say she needed jeans, but this really meant she needed 24 pairs of them. She'd tell me she just needed a crew neck cotton sweater, and then bought 50 at one swoop. And on we would slog, buying the improbable amounts my pioneer forebears purchased when they drove into town twice a year. Except she did it every weekend: 36 Lady Hathaway shirts, 200 pairs of cotton socks, 15 pairs of Maine Trotter penny loafers, 200 tortoiseshell barrettes. This was fascinating to me in a lot of ways. First, why so much? (Ans. Because she wanted this much.) Second, why was it all the same dull pastel preppy shit? (Ans. Because dull preppy shit was what she wore.) Third, was this mountain of stuff just for her? (Ans. Yes.)

For me, seeing such a monstrous display of piggery bought a bit of self-forgiveness. After watching my pal buy 73 Ralph Lauren hoodies at one whack, my bingeing on drugstore eye shadow didn't seem too terrible.

But here's the deal: my food friend and my clothing friend would have argued until past sundown that they really needed this stuff. And they believed they did.

But don't believe me. Find your own greedy.

'tis a pity...

The Pity Party by John Wos

And a while it's been since last I posted, gentle reader. I've been up to my lightly penciled eyebrows doing accounting things, and writing nada. Still, thoughts have fluttered through the dark caverns in my head on their little bat wings. To remind myself of their fleeting presence, I've been collecting pictures that seemed reflective of my fancies. This glum little number was the best of the barrel after I Googled self-pity and clicked on Images.

The self-pity on my mind was that of the Republican party's hard right wingers. I've been wondering why it's such a favorite emotion in those quarters next, of course, to that crowd-pleaser, vein-popping rage. I'm thinking about this, because I got to see it in full flower on the Rachel Maddow show. One of her announced guests was David Frum, Bush's ex-speech-writer who coined the unfortunate axis of evil phrase, which started the dominoes toppling. He came on the monitor in a big fat sulk, the kind that always made my father chortle, Careful. Don't trip on your lower lip.

After Rachel's first question, which was on the order of, The McCain campaign, WTF with all the racist screaming? David said Rachel had no room to talk about irresponsible speech, and let loose a pissy stream of whine about Rachel's meanness and sarcasm. And Rachel did as she does, listened alertly like a doberman, ears cocked, and then asked why he thought her questions compared with people screaming Kill him! Treason! Off with his head! at the La Palin/McCain goon-fests. David pouted, then mumbled that Rachel had her own show, which was a public forum of sorts, and that, within her very limited arena, she had a duty to be more careful in her speech. (Cue snuffles, quiet sobs)

Watching him quiver and sniffle, I thought, Damn, I've already had you as a boyfriend several times over. Not David Frum, natch, but guys with lots of similarities, and most specifically that brand of drenching self-pity. During that dating period, when I was as close to a Separatist Feminist as I'd ever be, I remember some of my boyfriends screaming about dykey women having the fucking nerve to protest anything when they were sitting on a fortune to begin with. When I'd lash back at this cruel idiocy, they'd melt into a puddle of salty tears, and choke, See? Feminism makes you mean.

The first couple of times it happened, I gaped in amazement and said, You don't really think this cheesy bullshit is going to work, do you? And, yes, they all thought that cheesy bullshit would. Thing is, I was raised to believe this kind of reaction was despicable, and so, in turn, I only became more hard-hearted. This, I think today, was the right and proper response. Watching the Democrats on CNN, these past eight years, I realized they were treating Republican self-pity as though it was a genuine felt emotion rather than a bogus contender. Don't! I'd yell at them from my side of the screen. But they'd soldier on, every self-defeating one of them, making nice and caving in on warrantless surveillance, no SCHIPS for kids, more money for the Iraq mess.

I had a beloved aunt who referred to such gluey manifestations of self-pity as very inexpensive behavior. And now, thinking of her, that's where I'll leave things tonight.

It's good to be back.

Dinners and nightmares...

You might come here Sunday on a whim.
Say your life broke down. The last good kiss
you had was years ago. You walk these streets
laid out by the insane, past hotels
that didn't last, bars that did, the tortured try
of local drivers to accelerate their lives.
Only churches are kept up. The jail
turned 70 this year. The only prisoner
is always in, not knowing what he's done.

Richard Hugo, Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg

I'm picturing Wall Street today as looking like this pix I found. I think it would be great if it did, if all the traders, hedgers, and short-sellers just had it out, went apeshit on each other. Be helpful in getting rid of all that money-fear.

During a different time, my own forays onto Wall Street made me wonder deeply about humankind. I always landed there around 5 PM, and always seemed to be facing a solid wall of tramping people staring ahead blankly, into some psychic middle ground. If I tripped and fell in front of that advancing horde, I knew I'd wind up a flattened corpse, entirely covered with shoe-prints.

I was first in NYC during a crack in time, between the Beats and the hippies. It was a pretty good time, although we little bohemians didn't have a label for ourselves. We were all artists of some type or other, seeking each other out in the East Village, hanging out in Washington Square, just glad to be together like puppies in a heap.

The title of my post, Dinners and nightmares is the name of a book I happened on that year, by Diane diPrima. She was writing poetry when, outside of some brittle academic types, not too many women were letting it rip. The poems in Dinners are pretty hilarious, describing the kinds of meals you make when you're down to oatmeal, an onion, and maybe a crusty can of tomato sauce and you're not a Nothin-Says-Lovin-Like-Somethin-From-The-Oven gal to begin with. She writes about her innumerable guys, relationships about fifteen minutes long, and casual good/bad/let-it-go sex, with enormous ease about herself. It's a good portrait of life in edge city, which was where most artists lived back then. A time when, as Dylan noted, he once got paid for a gig with a chess piece.

I think a lot of us are going to be rediscovering edge city, and it's not too bad. Hard to believe now, but many of us grew up not expecting to make much money and not caring that we didn't. Voluntary poverty, Michael Harrington called it, in The Other America. What little glittery treasures were we after if not gelt? Raw experience, was one, going to a place few middle-class anglos went to, and so some of us took off for Kathmandu. Another was mouthing off in our liberal mags, often published in someone's apartment, or starting another liberal mag to mouth off in. And some of us were just what we were, like Diane.

Anyway, now that the Golden Calf is melting down, it's going to be innaresting to see what folks will find to do instead. Just putting it out there, but may I suggest attempting the unknown? The artful? Or the heroic?

It sure beats cruising some big box store for a case of macaroni and cheese.

As my wise husband sometimes says, There are higher ways to be.

And I say, hell to the yes. You bet there are.

In dreams, I dream...

The picture I posted is by Henry Fuselli, called The Nightmare, one of several he painted on that theme. He used to be a great favorite of mine. I was very young when I first saw The Nightmare, and it struck me as revealing something profound about women. Now I think it's more about a man's view of women, seen through the cultural dream of his time. And it's still a rip-snorting portrait of a nightmare.

It's 2:30 AM now, or maybe closer to three, and I can't sleep. Partly it's the financial mess, a fine mess built on dreams, illusions, delusions, and lies and fueled on greed. Luckily, I went broke after the tech bubble popped, then slowly, slowly began to crawl out. So I'm spared what so many people are going through: the shock of losing the life you thought you had.

At such times, when I can't sleep, then the megrims and the gremlins come. Nietzsche astutely remarked, With sleeplessness, one is visited by fears one conquered long ago. But tonight's fear is about nothing I've known. It's about the sheer immensity of this crisis, the hugeness of it curling over everything, like a tsunami roaring to shore. And, of course, once a big important fear like that creeps over me, the little ones come scuttling in on its coattails, ready to nibble a night's rest into lace. The one thing these anxieties have in common is that I can't do a thing about them at 3:20 in the morning.

Although it didn't help me tonight, I usually take 5 mgs. of melatonin before bed. If I take an extra half-tablet, I have dreams. They've never been bad ones, only lurid and panoramic, with lots of characters and bright scenery. Last night's was like that, although it dissolved like soap bubbles when I tried to recall it. I remember I rode a donkey, and wore a long skirt of blue-checked coarse cotton. And the guy Henry Paulson picked to administer his bailout billions, Kashkari, appeared as an auto mechanic, smeared with black grease. I recognized his shaved head.

When I'd call her in a panic, always very late, my mother would say, What in the world can you do about it right now? As I'd think about it, I knew she was right: there was absolutely nothing I could do, and I'd toddle off to bed.

Talking one evening with some other women, our chat turned to insomnia, and how it nudged our anxieties awake.

I repeated my mother's question, and mentioned what a comfort it was, when a friend nearby spoke up. My mother said the same damn thing, but I knew what I could do right then. I could drink Diet Dr. Pepper, smoke cigarettes and stay up all night, my girlfriend announced.

As soon as she said that, I thought, She's right! What a great idea!

So now I'm smoking, trying not to grab a Coke, but the dawn's coming fast.

That one...

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien,
As to be hated needs but to be seen;
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.

Alexander Pope, Essay on Man. Epistle ii. Line 217.

So if the Lords of Karma decided my earthly ride had gotten a little, um,...too elitist, and suddenly put me in charge of the McCain campaign, here's what I'd do. I'd slap a couple of strips of duct tape over La Palin's mouth, put some powdered Xanax in McCain's coffee, and force-feed Cindy McCain a cheeseburger. Then I'd thin out the skinhead factor at their rallies by posting a No Shirt, No Screaming rule. If I could do all that, I'm not saying McCain would win, but he might not get the ass-kicking that's surely waiting in the wings.

The problem with the McCain\Palin hate-mongering is just what Pope says. At some point, we all embrace the nightmare. So keep it up and you lose, McCain. Just keep talking about That One, mofo. Keep pointing out his vileness, his terrist social clubbing, his weird high-yeller otherness...and sooner or later the horror movie will no longer scare anyone. In fact, we'll begin to feel sort of furrily comfortable with our ghastliest fear. This truism is utterly predictable. Should the rotten GOP campaign go on long enough, a moment would come when the angriest, most church-bombing, Nazi-saluting, Palin-supporting dumbass would start loving him some Obama. I guarantee.

You see, like an elephant, your own Writer to the Stars has such a memory, she can recall when Psycho first came out. All the newspaper ads noted that a trained nurse! would be stationed in every theater, just in case... Those with weak hearts were cautioned not to attend at all!, at least in Arlington, Virginia c. 1960. Should you melt down completely, an ambulance! would transport you, as you howled, bit and scratched, all the way to a hospital! And now? Norman Bates has taken on the fond, strange-smelling, slightly embarrassing aspect of someone's elderly clocked-out uncle. That one... The one you have to invite for Thanksgiving. The one who mumbles to himself and who gloms the relish tray, then puts all the black olives in his pocket. That one.

This AM, as I was perusing various pix of Medusa, I was innarested to learn that she has come to be seen as a Gorgoneion. That is, as an evil diverting device. According to the classics, just gazing upon her turned men to stone. She was killed by Perseus, who used her head in battle against his enemies, who were promptly changed into enemy quartz. And then her image was transferred to the shield of Athena, a butt-kicking goddess if ever there was one. Most other evil diverting devices, I found out, were reflective, so that when evil peered into them it only saw itself. Is that why Versace used the Medusa as his logo? To deflect possible rock-star and botox-celeb cooties back onto their carriers? Something to think about, but not today.

Today, I'm happy Obama cruised into a classy win on the debate. I'm sorry McCain can't seem to get a grip and is, in fact, becoming a little Norman Batesy himself.

You know who I mean. John McCain.

That one.

Talkin' 'bout my evolution...

Courtesy: National Geographic

Professor Steve Jones, you have glued up my hopes for the human race, at least the ones I had this morning. And I hope you feel a little bit bad about that.

Professor Jones is a geneticist at the University College of London, who thinks humanity is about as evolved as it's going to get. After reading reports of the brutal Weimaresque crowds the McCain/Palin campaign is now attracting, I consider this bad news for everyone.

On the mixed-blessings side, however, it seems that dangerous times and low-rent practices are responsible for evolutionary change. Since we now live past the age of 25, natural selection has done about all it can for us. Farming has made humans about 10,000 times more common as a species, and globalization has done away with inbreeding. However you might feel about cousin-to-cousin, and even more unsavory marriages, their scarcity means we don't have the mutation mechanisms that could click us up the evolutionary ladder.

To cheer myself up, I remember that I've never subscribed to the F.R. Leavis idea about our collective selves. Crudely put, Leavis postulated what he called The Unchanging Human Heart, an idea that's still spooking around today. It's the mistaken I'd Like to Give The World A Coke outlook greatly responsible for conditions we're all suffering through now. It's a view unable to comprehend that some people might actively hate Coke. Those people might be the ancient Romans, for example, whose fave flavor was a spoiled-fish condiment they poured over everything like ketchup. And knowing that much, we can surmise the Romans would probably think Coke tasted like ass.

However, with an iron-clad sense of right, and convinced that the Iraqis would love WalMart if they got the chance, we've waded into a rats-nest war. We've dragged our ghastly fast food all over the globe, believing every national cuisine was a make-do until the Big Mac arrived. We've set up democratic elections for unprepared nations that deteriorated precipitously into thug-rule. Witness Russia, now back and badder than ever.

But factually, history tells us that we do change, if not physically, then intellectually. One glance at Wilma (pix shown above), ought to tell us that. Wilma is a reconstruction of a Neanderthal female, done by the National Geographic, based on Neanderthal skeletons coupled with computer calculations.

While we can see that Wilma didn't use a moisturizer, what we can't see is how smart she was, what her desires were, or if she had dreams of her future. And, not knowing this, we don't know if the Neanderthal extinction was a good thing or not. There is a school of thought that Neanderthals might have been smarter and more humane than the homicidal hominid who eventually evolved into homo sapiens. Us, in other words. Another notion is that the species managed to interbreed, so that we're all a little Neanderthal now.

Reading how a man screamed "Kill him!"during Palin's anti-Obama speech, I'm thinking about the snaky twists and turns history takes. And doing that, I'm wondering about Romans, Russians and Neanderthals. And I'm telling myself that humanity has changed direction many times before.

And I'm telling myself that Professor Jones can go screw himself.

We can still climb a bit higher.

Nothing good ever happens in Oklahoma...

I clipped this photo because it reminded me of a particular night during my high school years in Tulsa. It was the night I quit being A Girl, and I remember it vividly. I'd been lying on my bed, thumbing through a copy of Mademoiselle magazine. Back then, I consumed hag mags with the open-mouthed mindlessness of a True Believer. My questions about what I saw were only two: Do I look like this model? If not, what do I have to do to look like this model? Actually, at the time, I looked a lot like the girl pictured above, thanks to my savage bouts of anorexia and Kabuki make-up habit.

But on this night, something was different. For the first time, I noticed that my treasured Mademoiselle mag was crammed with godawful ideas. Mind you, I desperately wanted to believe every lousy notion between the covers, crappy or not, so that Girl Happiness would be mine. And the hag mags defined Girl Happiness as a shiny assortment of adjectives like thin! pretty! flirty! But for the first time, I was starting to notice that all the clothes cost too much, the models were too skinny, and every issue's theme was a self-improving replay of And You're A Slob Too.

My faith shaken but not toppled, I turned to another article called Teddy Bear Tricks. "Teddy Bear Tricks", it seemed, were a collection of shitty ways to manipulate your boyfriend. It listed a bunch of pointless lies and mean little actions described as flirting. I remember reading the whole thing, then thinking, If I have to do bullshit like this to be a girl, then I quit. And I quit that night. I didn't announce it, and nothing changed outwardly, but I quit wanting to be A Girl. What I would be instead was uncertain, but I knew it had to be better.

This is on my mind, after reading a post where the writer noted that what she really disliked about Sarah Palin was her being A Rules Girl. When I read that, I thought Aha! The Rules(TM): Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right: by Ellen Fein, Sherrie Schneider. In 1994, when I thumbed through that retro little screed, it was a compilation of all Teddy Bear Tricks since 1945. There they all were, those familiar do's and don'ts. "Make him chase you!" "Don't return his calls!" "Never go Dutch!" I'm sure it got into the nitty-gritty stuff too, like sending yourself flowers with a sentimentally-inscribed card, disappearing suddenly to take mysterious phone calls, leaving your perfumed panties at his place etc. etc.

Yeah. I think Sarah, with her winks and wrinkled-up nose, might be a Teddy Bear Trickster herself, a denizen of that place where every sentence is a marker on the road to Mr. Right or the White House, depending, and where every action is a lie.

Since she heaved into view, I've been trying to make sense of Sarah Palin's disarranged repetitive syntax. Some of it is clearly recognizable from beauty pageant contestants: I feel like we should strive to promote world peace everywhere. Some of it, like the aggression disguised as perkiness, is pure Teddy Bear. Some of it is, as Meghan O'Rourke writing for the XX Factor in Slate noted, a kind of deadly biz-speak:

Sarah Palin reminds me of a character in a George Saunders story. Saunders writes brilliant short stories about characters trapped in the American Dream^TM. They are workers at theme parks or Hooters-style restaurants, mummified in corporate-sponsored "flair" ... They speak in the same style of substanceless perk. They are to humanity what MSG is to flavor... Palin is, of course, far more successful than many of Saunders' characters...She buys into a whole vocabulary of signifiers that often don't signify very much, and she scaffolds that lexicon with winks, smiles, and carefully mimed gestural reinforcement. All politicians employ empty rhetoric...But I don't know that I've ever seen one employ superficial language with such a sense of palpable enjoyment at her... mastery. And just like Saunders' characters, she refuses to show vulnerability or hesitation, deploying rapid-fire prepackaged phrases like a missile shield... She loves to say "maverick" and "zero-base" and to recount how she once "quasi-caved" on an issue but didn't "compromise."

I've been known to quasi-cave myself, Sarah, but at least I wasn't a goddamn Girl when I did.