Who'll play with me on saturday afternoon

May 13

I am working on a bit of site redesign that would let me update more frequently, i.e., from work, which is good because we're about to hit our summer slow time, before the next wave of books come in.

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So I have had a policy on this page to avoid a lot of cursing; I know some family members (hi!) and more conservative friends occasionally read this, and for politeness’ sake, I tried to observe the same rules of speaking that I would at their houses.

But…this isn't their houses. If it's anyone's house, it's mine. And well, it’s cutting into my freedom to write honestly here. I do cuss, a lot, when I feel I can speak freely, which is with most of my friends and a lot of my coworkers. And when I'm writing down my honest thoughts, as I try to do here.

I like to think I cuss with purpose, that is, to make a point or make someone laugh. It’s just one conversational tool, true, but I don’t have any real reason to hold back on it. I never understood the religious line on cursing; why would God care? I did understand not teaching ripe words to 4 year olds who don’t understand what they’re saying, but I don’t think many of them are going to end up reading this instead of clicking on boohbah.com all day (along with the hordes of potsmokers and acid-droppers who loved Teletubbies too, created by the same people. What do they smoke in those studios, anyway? Man).

I’m nearly 33, I support myself, and if I want to cuss on my own damn webjournal, well, I will. If it offends, I urge you to click elsewhere, and feel free to send me angry emails, but I warn you, it will have no effect. This is me, and I like to cuss. That’s all.

Speaking of conservative friends, I have a funny story. Long long ago when emjaybee was 9 or so, she met a neighborhood girl who seemed very nice and who also liked riding bikes, playing with Barbies, and flying kites. Let’s call her E. So anyway, despite being a nice normal girl, poor E. was stuck with me as a friend when I was in my most annoying religious phase. I lectured, I harped, I made religious pronouncements, I had sudden crises of conscience about her brother’s Dungeons & Dragons books, which fascinated me nonetheless. Yet she put up with me (and her parents, too, although they were obviously amused by my 10 year old certainty about Life’s Mysteries. Thanks, Mr. and Mrs. H—for not throwing me out of the house. I know I was super annoying and ate a lot of your food besides.)

So anyway, I was still in that phase, or the final yet still annoying throes of it when I last saw E., in high school. I had moved before jr. high, and we both had different sets of friends, and different tastes after that. Our last parting was awkward, and that was all for us.

Then along came Google. I found E., emailed her, got a nice reply, and tried to set up a get-together. In the course of all that, I gave her this website address, and shortly thereafter, stopped getting email replies from her.

I figured, and still do, that that was OK--it is her prerogative. We were friends 100 years ago, and neither of us should feel obligated to try to restart that. All I really wanted to do was apologize for my former obnoxiousness, anyway, have a good time, a few drinks, talk about what we were both up to. But now I think I scared her off…that I’ve swung so far the other way religion-wise that we are on opposite sides again. I know this because my last Google brought up her fiance's website, which mentions the strong role religion plays in both of their lives and their relationship. Apparently when it comes to mixing religion+friendships, in this instance, my timing was way off. Now I’m the apostate and she’s the good Christian. Oh, the irony! I decided to quit emailing her after a few non-replies; I didn’t want to end up in Stalkerville, Population: Me.

But it’s possible E. still occasionally reads here, despite my evilness. Perhaps, like a trainwreck, it’s hard to look away. So in that possibility, I would like to say, I am happy for you E. I’m glad you seem to have a good life, and are getting married, and all that. You were a good friend to me, and I hope was at least sometimes a good one to you. Sorry if my ideological timing was bad for us; maybe someday we’ll both think enough alike to hang out together again

May 6

So yeah, I didn’t post another April entry. Technically, I owe you all a coke. But you have to come up to New York to collect it, so email me and let me know what bodega to meet you at. I’ve got my $1.25 all ready.

On my morning commute, I have two new weird people to watch. At the bus stop, there’s Dancin’ Guy, a tall black man who practices his dance moves across the street on the sidewalk. His moves look like women’s moves, though; like Janet Jackson’s last video or something. You know, those moves that involve a side step, turn, and extending the arm straight in front of you with your palm flat, sort of “talk to the hand,” and the other hand covering your face. Like the moves to the Rhythm Nation video, not the normal breakdance/posture moves you see guys do. I first I thought he didn’t even have on headphones, then was glad to see he did. I guess I thought that if the music in his head was so loud he didn’t even need headphones, that was more worrying.

He doesn’t have a tip hat or jar or anything, and doesn’t look homeless, or particularly crazy, other than the dancing. He’s just a guy who likes to dance at 9am on the sidewalk while the high school kids mock him and the commuters stare blankly.

Then at the station, there’s the AM New York lady, who for some unfathomable reason is allowed to loudly hawk her crappy free paper inside the station itself. The people who sell the Post have to stand outside, but she gets to take up valuable real estate in front of the turnstiles in a crowded station. What makes it worse is 1: she calls it “AM New YERK”, which is just wrong, making her sound like Dr. Evil. 2: She has a whole spiel about how great it is, “news, sports, classifieds, it’s free!” that’s way too peppy for the morning. I have to avert my eyes and walk around her every morning, wincing as her shrieking echoes off the walls into my sleep-befuddled ears. Shut UP, newspaper lady. If she just stood there handing it out…or if it was just available in a stand or something, I might take one. But now it’s a point of pride—I can’t reward the obnoxiousness. It’s probably for the same reason I’ve never seen Titanic; tell me something is “the greatest movie EVER!” and I’m less likely to see it. Especially if Celine Dion is involved in any way.

Spring continues to mess with our heads up here. 75 degrees is followed by 58 degrees, so your jacket is always too warm or too thin. But the trees have all leaved (leafed?) out, and there are flowers and blossoms in the park. And the cold does kill off some of the mosquitos, keeping me a little more West Nile Virus-free for the time being.

Have any of you ever played the game where you try to figure out how you reached whatever current subject you’re thinking about? I like to stop when I’m thinking about something and think backwards to where I started, seeing how my brain leaps from subject to subject. Yes, thinking about thinking, aren’t you impressed with me?

Anyway, today realized I was thinking about Yiddish, and stopped to figure out how I got there. This is how it worked:

I was walking past the supermarket and saw a cop on horseback. His horse looked like a quarter horse, the kind I used to ride when I took lessons, which led me to:
How I was one of those horse-crazy little girls, but how I never got into the whole cowboy thing; I never cared about the rodeo stuff, just riding, which led to;
How despite growing up in Texas, I have never liked cowboy stuff. Hats, boots, lassoes, and especially Westerns. I have always been bored stupid by Westerns, except for;
Blazing Saddles, which exposed the silliness of Westerns once and for all. Sure, it had fart jokes, but also, the old prospector speaking gibberish. I love that movie.
In fact, the movie got better as I got older, and could understand the jokes. Especially after I learned German and could understand Mel Brooks when he played an Indian chief who, instead of saying “How!” exclaimed “Schwartzes! Has du gesehen in deine Leben?” (Blacks! Have you ever seen in your life?). Which is Yiddish.

Here’s what I’ve been reading:

The Secret Garden. Very soothing in some respects, troubling in others. Have you ever noticed how much some English children’s books talk about food? Half the book has to do with fattening up the two main characters. You start getting the irrestible urge to eat porridge, marmalade, and biscuits after a few chapters.

Actually, the whole book suffers when Burnett starts focusing more on Colin and the sickly-sweet Dickon instead of Mary. Mary Lennox, spoiled, crabby, scared, and ready to fight, is by far the most interesting character, but after she brings Colin in to her secret, and starts becoming a happier, more “normal” girl, she is mentioned less and less. Which is a pity; even as she becomes happier, she has her own distinctive, contrary personality. Burnett seems to have gotten distracted by her own concentration on “Magic” and sentimental father-son reunions and angelic dead mothers. The very last chapter is all Colin and his father, with barely even a mention of Mary, who, after all, is responsible for finding the damned garden in the first place. It doesn’t seem right.

A nice antidote to all that is Shaking a Leg, a collection of essays by Angela Carter. She was a merciless British novelist, book reviewer and observer of culture, and was probably terrifying in person, but she is a joy to read. I first ran into her via her disturbing collection of re-written fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber.

Here’s an example, from her 1978 essay “The Box: Theatre of the Absurd,” about television commercials:

Nightly, the commercial channels spill out a cornucopia of images that would make a surrealist weep for joy. That caged and roaring Fiat, for example, with its direct, below-the-belt appeal to the id, the beast in you. And the child and dog at play with an immense roll of toilet paper. I can’t get over that one. Admittedly, both small children and dogs are magnificent, uncontrollable shitters. That must be the, as it were, under-correspondence, the thing you can’t help but think of when you see the commercial. So what the refulgent voice-over is really saying is a polite version of : “So and so’s bog paper cleans up more shit, better.” Yet this seems to me a perfectly acceptable slogan, if linguistically arguable(better than what?), and not absurd at all. That, I suppose, is why it can’t be used.

So yes, read her if you get the chance. Off I go.