UM, WHAT?

A copier-fax combo at work crapped out last week, so we ordered a new one and then had to set up a time for FedEx to pick up the faulty machine and return it to its manufacturer (OKI-Data machines have the habit of failing to function, just so you know, in case you're in the market for a $450.00 fax machine with a three-week life expectancy). When I spoke with FedEx the day before the pick-up, a representative asked what time I'd be in the office, and I said, "Between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m." This picture shows my disposition when, at 3:30 on the day of the scheduled pick-up, I had a conversation with another FedEx worker who said, "Oh, you have to give them until 5:00 p.m. to show up. They can't really make it when they say they will. The drivers don't really do pick-up times." UM, WHAT? I truly am (generally) a patient and easy-going person, but it frustrates me immensely that FedEx would specifically ask me for a pick-up time and then, the next day, after I've waited six hours and through lunch, tell me they "don't really do pick-up times". I guess they only sort of do pick-up times. It's not as if I asked them to show up between 12:30 and 1:00 p.m. They had six hours. And I'd really like to complain about automated answering services and the impossibility of communicating with a recorded voice that has neither the ability to actually hear nor the capacity to actually reason … but you know how that is already. "I'm not in love with the modern world."

McDonough isn't Gotham.

Lately, it has been really hard for me to want to do anything other than swim and watch The Dark Knight. Nothing (seriously: nothing) else comes even close to being as good as The Dark Knight and swimming. Books are dull. TV sucks. McDonough isn't Gotham ... goddamnit. If it rains tomorrow, my only hope for happiness will be spending another nine dollars at the theater.

Just kidding! I certainly have sources of happiness beyond movie theaters and holes full of water; they are ...

A vegetarian's beef

… "beef" as in "issue".

The U.S. Army shoots live pigs and has soldiers stitch the wounds as part of their (the soldiers', not the pigs') training before deployment to Iraq. Seriously. It's called a "medical trauma exercise". I read this news story Saturday, in Sunday's early-released Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and my reaction to the news has seemed to resemble the stages of grieving, because I'm just now beginning to believe it's actually true the Army shoots pigs just to stitch them up again. The two meat-eaters I discussed this with expressed disgust over the practice.

A few months ago, CNN showed a video of a U.S. soldier in Iraq hurling a puppy over the edge of a cliff. The presenting newscaster warned watchers that the footage she was about to show was something like incredibly or extremely or painfully or devastatingly disturbing, and to omnivorous humans everywhere, it was.

In a way, these pieces of news are wonderful: They show how fickle and ridiculous our sensitivities are.

To the puppy-hurling soldier, the public response was shock and outrage; the military's response was purportedly to dishonorably discharge the hurler and the filmer of the hurling experience. The Army defends its shooting of pigs (to PETA, of course) by asserting that the exercise will likely save the lives of soldiers. The utilitarian logic used to defend the torture of Guantanamo detainees is similar: The suffering of one (presumably "bad" or "guilty") person is acceptable if it might help prevent the suffering of many (presumably "good" or "innocent") people. The math appears hard to argue with, until you realize the ideological foundations of the claim - which are the sanctity of life and infinite worth of the individual - and the inherent contradiction of the ideologies and the practices they inspire: Our belief in the sanctity of human life compels us to commit the ultimate degradation. (This contradiction also appears in capital punishment cases.) The difference with the pigs is that no one presumes they're guilty of anything. Would it be stupid to suppose that pigs, and other non-polluting animals, are victims of human ecological destruction (as well as our militaristically-accomplished imperialism)? Would sympathy for their inability to construct their way out of both destructions be ridiculous?

If I were to create career superlatives, under "Most Likely to Kill Animals", I'd probably list "soldier" somewhere around "police officer" and "professional wrestler". While it's definitely disturbing to see a solider hurl a puppy off a cliff, it makes a certain kind of sense. If the Army is supposed to be able to protect our country, its members should be able to easily kill a puppy or a pig. Aren't the interests of our country exceedingly more important than the life of a puppy? The interests of our country aren't served by killing a puppy, but apparently the interests of our country are served by shooting pigs. And it doesn’t seem like it should be easier to kill a human than to hurl a puppy if shooting pigs is part of military training and hurling a puppy is grounds for dishonorable discharge. We're confused.

Yay porn! Part II

While halfheartedly trying to formulate something like a convincing opposition to unsimulated sex in narrative film, a certain barrier kept appearing. Part of what lead me to oppose unsimulated sex in film was how deeply repulsed I was by 9 Songs, and the barrier that prevents my developing any reasonable opposition to real sex in cinema is my absolute adoration for the movie Shortbus. The sex in Shortbus is exponentially kinkier and more explicit (and not any more simulated) than the sex in 9 Songs. First, the trailer for Shortbus:



Shortbus' tagline: "You've got to get on to get off." I proffer the tears I shed during my first viewing of Shortbus as evidence that the film is the following: endearing, inspiring, and funny as fuck. (Of course I'm kidding when I pretend my emotional reaction to fiction serves as a basis for evaluation. Actually, I'm not kidding, and critical theorists can laugh, but their laughing won't make them right.) Shortbus - in its direct presentations of violent sex, group sex, auto-fellatio (with consummation, for real!), gay sex, accessorized sex - is wholesome in a way I can't really convey ... but I'll try: Shortbus is as wholesome as the fictions of Nicholas Sparks (A Walk to Remember, The Notebook) are emotionally dishonest and depraved, and if you agree with the latter evaluation, just trust me on the former (and also, I love you!).

So if Shortbus strikes me as so wholesome, what's wrong with 9 Songs? The entire movie is a man's fantasy. During the sex scenes, the female lead, Lisa, tells the male lead that she's "so wet" and then begs, "Fuck me, Matt", which Matt, after having Lisa beg a few more times, does. It's so porno-rrific. At least Lisa's boobs aren't huge, I guess … but that makes her even less of a presence.

So whether 9 Songs and Shortbus are "art" obviously depends on what art is, which sounds (and probably is) really pretentious. If I were to claim that unsimuatled sex in a movie is not art, I'd need to know what I was refuting, but because I'm not that ambitious and don't feel like looking up really flummoxing quotes by Picasso and Michelangelo and Bergman on the subject, my feelings on the films will have to suffice. It's all about the margins: They're so much more exciting. Shortbus, a movie about "the gifted and challenged" is poly-vocal and, for that reason, ends up being more of a challenge and a gift than the simple, unsimuated vanilla kink (belts, blindfolds - B.F.D.) of the two lovers of 9 Songs who, in between fucks, listen to live London rock.

Or maybe it's all about the auto-fellatio.

Will a solar prominence expand, tickle earth's surface and set all the rainforests ablaze if I'm allowed to utter a complete, uninterrupted sentence?

It had better not be …

(waiting for the cut-off, continuing with caution)

chanced.

Signs my cat might not be a genius:

Earlier today, I wore two Biore strips on my face to clean out my pores, and my brilliant kitty didn't seem to register the difference at all; she showed no alarm when I appeared to her with two huge, white stips on my face where my nose and chin normally are. Maybe she's so smart that she understands human dermatological problems and their at-home remedies. Maybe she'll write in her blog later about the signs that indicate her human isn't very smart, and maybe she'll post the same sideways, thumb-obstructed picture as evidence.

Yay porn!

While watching 9 Songs (a, to misquote David Dondero, "pornographic love story") tonight, I heard a most wonderful song. The song is probably wildly popular, but since I'm musically ignorant, my first exposure to it was via smut. So tonight, I celebrate porn for introducing me to my new favorite song, "C'Mon C'Mon" by The Von Bondies (very awesome music video below). One of the main issues of contemporary cinema is whether a film which contains very explicit, unsimulated sex (like 9 Songs) can be considered art rather than pornography, and the correct and hip answer is always: Yes, of course it's ART. If I ever felt like taking on a big intellectual project (teehee), it would be the project of proving that unsimulated sex in film is NOT art, for two reasons: 1. It doesn't strike me as art (but maybe that's due to my asexuality); 2. It deprives aspiring filmmakers of an entire frontier (i.e., it makes me feel creatively impotent). After a movie shows actual penetration, actual oral sex and actual orgasms, what's left? It's not an opening (not meant punnily), it's an end (again, not a pun). It has a monopolizing effect. Anyway! Here's the song/video:

Happiness is ...

When I'm not having suicidal ideations, being belligerent or getting sick, I realllllly enjoy being drunk. The first time I got drunk, I felt really happy and realized and said, "Wow! This is so much better than life usually!", and the next day, when I experienced my first hangover, I had a by-the-potty epiphany: "This is a lot worse than life usually." So although it feels like it at the time, happiness is not being drunk. And of course, happiness is definitely not being hungover.

There are two instances I'm recalling, both (one fairly, one very) recent, that felt like happiness in a very intense, but not overpowering, and pure way.

The first instance I remember happened almost exactly one year ago after my boyfriend's dad loaned me a vegetarian cookbook. The first recipe I attempted was for feta cheese and zucchini pancakes, and I made the attempt when I was home alone. I prepared a "in the kitchen" playlist, plugged my iPod into the speaker system and began to cook. Once I had combined all the ingredients into a batter, I was sure I had failed: The result looked way too dry and lumpy to form anything resembling pancakes. Still, the process, thanks to my so excellent music selection and love for combining dry and wet ingredients and slicing vegetables, had been really, really enjoyable. When I dropped a large spoonful of the batter onto a frying pan, I feared my fun was done, so I was shocked and elated to see the batter spread and begin to cook in normal pancake fashion. Less than five minutes later, I had produced my feta cheese and zucchini pancake, and it was truly delicious - sort of quiche-y, because of all the eggs in the batter. The efforts of that evening remain what I consider the most satisfying and successful time in my life. Truly. (It's probably really unfortunate that I'm not kidding.)

My most recent instance of supreme and serene happiness (the serenity is what distinguishes my favorite kind of happiness from other happy happinesses, like drunken happiness) happened last Tuesday. Because she couldn't get in touch with her yard boy, my Mom decided to give into my request for a lawnmower so that we could care for our own yard. To be cost and energy efficient, my Mom bought me a totally manual mower: a stand up and push machine. When I used it for the first time last Tuesday, and I could see the paths in the grass from where I had already passed, it was like a graph of how much grass ass I was kicking. And it smelled so nice! And my legs were super sore the next day! And my dogs ran around the yard, sharing in my excitement! And Eva Longoria called and asked me to come to her house next! So fun! I can't really convey the intensity of my feelings; I doubt they make any logical sense, and I don't want to make language leaps into the figurative and suppose something ridiculous like that there was something symbolically soothing about cutting the grass, each blade of which represented blah blah blah. It was probably purely physical. Just trust me: It was really good. I cut the grass again the Friday after, and I had been looking forward to going over the yard again tonight, but the rain is making that impossible.

But no worries. Happiness is also stormy weather, during which my favorite thing to do is watch the greatest (big-budget, implausible, action-packed) movie ever made: Jurassic Park.

Happiness is also knowing that your parents and/or parental figures will be going out of town in twelve hours. Mine are! Woo-hoo!

Signs my cat is a genius:

• When I wave dangly objects (keychains, a lanyard, iPod earbuds) in front of her face to chase, instead of attacking the objects, she attacks the source: my hand.
• When the door of a room she wishes to enter is closed, she stands on her back legs and paws at the knob.
• When I arrive home after having been gone more than a few hours, she stands on her back legs, wanting to be lifted, and when I lift her, she extends her front legs around my neck. I'm convinced she's imitating human hugs.
• She loves most Cape Cod chips, except for the new honey dijon flavor. She's right: They're terrible.
• Her favorite book is War and Peace.
• Her favorite movie is Annie Hall, and she laughs at all the jokes, proving that she's more than smart: She's also cultured.
• She sleeps with me, and I only sleep with geniuses; ergo, my cat is a genius.

The money struggle

The more money I spend on gas in the cars available for me to drive - a 2001 Suburban (V8) and a 1994 Caprice (V8), both of which are paid for and neither of which I own - the more inclined I become to convince myself that I can afford to make payments on a car that's more fuel efficient. But that simply isn't true: I cannot afford a car payment. But I can't afford to fuel these gas guzzlers either. In about a month, assuming I can get over this chronic slackerdom, I'll start back to school at Gordon College, and while I'm a full-time student I'll only be able to be a part-time worker, making car ownership even more impossible (as if there are degrees of impossibility). Even with a car that gets 35 miles per gallon (which is 3 and 2.5% as much as the Suburban and Caprice, respectively), I'll still be paying, like everyone else, $4.00 a gallon. (This morning, I paid $4.04 and profoundly hated life.) $4.00 for 35 miles is much cheaper than $4.00 for 13 miles, but a car payment for a more fuel efficient car would exceed that difference. In a sentence: It just really fucking sucks. It amazes me when people presume I have enough money to treat the planet well, as if I drive a 14-year-old Caprice because I am cruelly unconcerned about the welfare of earth. I'm reminded of Bertolt Brecht saying that morality is for those who can afford it.

Well ... I admit this reluctantly .... I could fill my weekends with work. Having two part-time jobs might make it slightly less impossible for me to make car payments (so perhaps there are degrees). And if I had two part-time jobs, I’d probably want to die from having to live a life so devoid of the pleasure of downtime. Just die. Die. Die. Die. And die again. My car could be my coffin. Just kidding. I'd surely die before it'd be paid off.

But! At work early this morning, I had an accidentally brilliant idea. I had eaten two eggs for breakfast, and they constituted something insane like 135% of my daily cholesterol (if I were a beast or a man who consumed 2,000 calories a day, and I'm not, so it's more like 270% of my daily cholesterol) and a bunch of grams of protein (which I need). Feeling fat and repentant for my heavy breakfast, I wondered: "What can I do with my eggs?", as in, "How can I expend the energy they've given to me, and how can I make up for the nastiness?" It'll be alright. I eat the appropriate amount of fruits and vegetables (mostly raw, as they're more nutritious uncooked) and drink at least two liters of water daily. My feelings toward eaters of gross foods range from pity to disgust. About my own eating habits, I feel only pride (arrogance, really). It's simply better to have a pure and healthy diet. Value systems and terms almost always seem either completely arbitrary or calculated for a certain person's or group's benefit, so I try to avoid using them, but when it comes to food, I say again: It's simply better to have a pure and healthy diet. My insides, should they ever appear for viewing, like after a really terrible car accident, will be much less disgusting than usual insides. Instead of being a pile of mushy, reeking guts, my insides on the side of the road will look like chunks of freshly cut watermelon. Each time I play tennis, I am amazed to note that my sweat smells like grapes, even though I never eat grapes - must be all the wine. And because I'm anemic, my blood splattered on the highway won't have that nasty metallic smell, and it'll be a much pleasanter color than that typical purple-red that turns brown upon drying: It'll be the perfect color combination of a gala apple and a very ripe tangerine, and it'll stay that way forever. I often have nightmares of all sexes (male, female, hermaphroditic) ejaculating really disgusting substances, like sausage gravy and pancake batter made with spoiled milk and rotten eggs; this proves two things at least: my asexuality and my disgust for impure diets. Anyway! That I had two eggs this morning (with cheese and a side of grits) really made me feel disgusting, and while wondering how to get the nastiness out of my system (spinach, broccoli?) it occurred to me that I could get rid of my other eggs for money - you know, the eggs that have the potential to make babies. I'm probably within the proper age range.

New car, here I come!