The Jinx Gene

I love Dan Savage. I know that the odds are good that he'd despise me if he ever met me, but I have been unwaveringly grateful for his existence since I first became aware of who he is. He's obnoxious and uncompromising and funny.

So when I recently read a book for book club that made me think about the nature of marriage, it was only natural to finally read Savage's The Commitment. I'm still only partway through it, but I knew he was a kindred spirit. He explains that a huge part of his reluctance to get married, even as gay marriage became legal here and there, was rooted largely in a superstition about joy that's rooted in his family's experience of Catholicism:

We share the jinx gene, my mother and I, although in her case it’s more explicitly Catholic. When your life is going along nicely, when things are looking good, the correct posture to assume is one of gratitude, absent of any hint that you expect your good fortune to last. It’s kind of a defensive crouch. Good Catholics don’t presume. The moment you start to expect things to continue going along nicely for you—the moment you begin to believe you’re worthy of the good things in your life—God gets all Old Testament on your ass and does something vicious, something insane, something totally uncalled for. He gives you lupus or He allows Satan to slaughter your children and cattle or He delivers Ohio to George W. Bush.

I have had this superstitious attitude for as long as I can remember. It has actively sabotaged relationships. One ex-boyfriend chastised me for saying something like, "if you're still around in November, we can...."

"If I weren't planning to be here in November, I wouldn't be here now, dammit," he'd say.

"I know, but you can't just say stuff like that in front of God."

"I didn't know you believed in God."

"I believe in God's ability to suddenly realize that in spite of life's efforts to make me totally crazy, I've found an awesome boyfriend who's in my kitchen making coffee and...oh my God, did you take out the garbage?"

"Yeah, well, last night there was fish, and I thought..."

"Ssssssssh! No one must ever know how happy you make me! You can never tell anyone, ever, ever, ever!"

Try as I might to explain my superstition, he never took it as the compliment it is. The more important something is, the more incredibly critical it is not to take it for granted, because then if it's rescinded you'll feel incredibly stupid. The more conversational immunization you get ("it might be nothing," "sure, he's nice, but who knows how long it will last" and "he seems perfect now, but I'm sure I'll be single by Christmas") the more fabulous the guy is.

This has several unfortunate results. First, the person in question starts to feel like he's dating a crazy person. Which, let's face it, ain't wrong. But it's not that I'm actually expecting the bad stuff. It's just that I'm certainly not going to start expecting the good stuff, because dude, don't you know the bad stuff considers that an engraved invitation? So far no one's cracked the code. Maybe another former Catholic is the answer, but Dan is the first guy I've ever heard of who gets it, and he's gay, taken, and, as I mentioned, would not like me much anyhow.

Second, if you believe that your intention has any effect on reality, I'm screwed for sure. I have friends at work who remind me of that all the time. "Katy, think positive." I am. In here where it's safe and no one can see me. I'm not nearly as cynical as it looks from the outside. But there's a lot to be said (although I think The Secret is BS) for committing to the life you want clearly, audibly, observably, and intentionally. If nothing else, other humans are often more than happy to help you, but they're a lot less likely to try to help a get-off-my-lawn curmudgeon who seems to second-guess every break she's ever gotten than to help someone who seems positively focused on their own future.

But I think the worst thing is that people--the people I care for the most--often have no idea how much they mean to me. I recently surprised a friend of mine by telling him I loved him (when someone's going in for surgery, the bad stuff pretty much already has its engraved invitation, so you get an automatic exemption to say what's on your mind). I'm not sure whether he was surprised that I cared--I hope not--but he was certainly flabbergasted to hear it. I'm glad the surgery went well and gave me a chance to fix this totally messed up dynamic.
Not that it'll be fixable. Like most things I'm sure it will stick around being a voice in my head that tells me not to be happy too loud, telling me I can't do things, telling me not to be too outspoken about my hopes and dreams. But I'm hoping that one of the dividends of age will be some ability to power through all that and act in accordance with my beliefs. And in the meantime, Dan Savage's voice is pretty loud, so maybe he can drown the other fuckers out once in a while.

Why Are Women So Stupid?

I say this as a stupid woman myself, and I speak, of course, of fashion. Not that I'm a slave to fashion, unless it is the fashion of doing everything possible to wear comfortable shoes and avoid dry cleaning. (A fairly large percentage of my work wardrobe is intended for use either hiking or in the ocean. Anything that I can wash at home, put in the dryer, and then hang up wrinkle-free is a big plus, and I don't particularly care if I'm going to wear it to the office instead of to the ocean. If you take off the advertising patches that are all over the clothing, who's going to call you on it? And who in an IT department gets to hike or see the ocean, anyway?)

But I still fall victim to plenty of choices that are made to appease other people rather than myself. Shoes are my bete noir. I have a lot of shoes. This is because if I were left to my own devices, my entire shoe wardrobe would consist of Chuck Taylors and chunky but whimsical sandals with a sole made by Jeep, and I keep buying these in the hope that someday I will...I don't know. I guess I hope to retire and wear whatever damn shoes I want for the rest of my life. But at work, I don't want to be pigeonholed as a cranky lesbian or singled out for flogging by our obsessively dress-conscious overlord, so I tried to wear heels. I bought very expensive "comfort shoes" with a short heel. They weren't sexy heels, but they ticked all the boxes for office wear. And I wore them for three years.

And I got corns and the beginnings of some uncategorized and freakish bony protrusion for my trouble. When I could no longer expose my feet in public, I knew the time for remedial action had come. I've now been wearing the same pair of flats to work every day for about two months. They are utilitarian and (I hope) inoffensive, but they aren't stylish, and it pains me somewhat. Not as much as the corns, however, which have mercifully disappeared since I stopped wearing the heels of doom. The bony mutation has not really responded to the flat-shoe therapy, so it's probably here for good. But at least I can now wear flip flops in public without shame. (Not at work, of course.) And the iron overlord of dress sense hasn't commented on either the flatness of my shoes or the obscene lack of variety in my footwear, so thank God for that.

My comfort, in my stupidity, is my knowledge that I am not alone. On two recent trips to the city I saw a lot of women who were wearing...okay, I'm going to call them leggings, because that's what these women clearly think they are. But only some of them were leggings. One woman was wearing what I would actually consider tights. I could see ALL of her underwear. It's a look, I suppose.

And if she looked like she was enjoying wearing her foundation garments as outerwear and exposing her undergarments to the world, I would say, well, good for her. But she wasn't. Her hand was CONSTANTLY wandering around back to check on the state of her underwear. She could have saved a prospective repetitive stress injury by merely asking passers-by, who were not only able to see her underwear but all of whom noticed it by virtue of the fact that none of us could look away. At any given moment the transient population of about ten feet of sidewalk were riveted by her underwear, which was hard for any newcomers to the vicinity to ignore.

Even the women wearing legitimate leggings were all concerned about the state of their underwear--in all cases justifiably so. And although it was comforting to note that the thong, previously the hallmark of feminine fashion stupidity, has receded into the background, I was so sorry for these women who felt they had to make constant adjustments for their comfort or decency. I submit that if we allow this trend to continue, we ladies are on the verge of losing the moral high ground from which we command men not to watch football with their hands down their sweatpants.

Why, for the love of all that is holy, WHY? If you're rocking a look, more power to you. Rock on. But if someone somewhere has convinced you to leave the house in something that is rampantly uncomfortable and makes you feel hideously, middle-schoolishly self-conscious, then WHY are you wearing it? You are not rocking said look. You are just suffering hideous discomfort in public.

And it is in this spirit, IR's, that I have ordered three pairs of flats with cushy rubber non-skid soles. Women, I beg of you, reject stupidity and wear whatever the fuck you want.

(You should really try being a steaming hypocrite. You get to blame Cosmo and shop for shoes for the good of womankind. It's awesome.)

Therein Squats the Toad

I just had to say it, because today in a meeting I so desperately wanted to say it and held back because I didn't want to be involuntarily committed. But you know when you have this whole beautiful set of things that should fit together all nice and neat and then there's this big old bastard of a problem square in the middle making sure that none of the nice pieces can talk to each other? To me, this is the perfect phrase to use when you sense that the person you're describing the situation to finally grasps the ugliness of the problem you must now solve together.

Therein squats the toad.

I feel better now. Thank you.

I Love Pointless Meetings!

Apparently our thoughts can change our feelings, so we should make an effort to spin our thinking so that we view all things in a positive light.

I love pointless meetings!  The more circles a meeting goes in the better!  Here's my recipe for an awesome, awesome meeting.  This is a meeting for making decisions:

1. Look at an option.
2. Determine that we love it.
3. Hug it and kiss it and tell everyone how special it is.
4. Suddenly find something wrong with it.
5. Cast it aside like week-old fish.
6. Look at another option.
7. Determine that we love it.
8. Hug it and kiss it and tell everyone how special it is.
9. Suddenly find something wrong with it.
10. Spurn it.
11. Realize that the thing that was wrong with option 2 is not wrong with option 1.
12. Pick up option 1 again.
13. Determine that we love it.
14. Hug it and kiss it and tell everyone how special it is.
15. Wait!  Something is still wrong with it.  On to option 3!
16. Option 3 is very special.  We love it.
17. Hug it and kiss it and tell everyone how special it is.
18. Holy crap!  Something is wrong with option 3!
19. Option 3 must die.  It's evil and wicked.  What were we thinking!  Back to option 2.
20. What was wrong with option 2 again?  Discuss at length.
21. Discover deep and important and wonderful things about option 2.  Take it to dinner at your favorite restaurant.  Promise to love it forever and ever.
22. Oh, shit.  Whatever was wrong with option 2 still sucks about it.  Who would have guessed!  Down with option 2!  Fie on it!  Spit in its eye!
23. Hello option 1, you sexy sexy thing.  We love you. 
24. End the meeting with a statement like, "So all the options are still on the table, right?  Yes?  Excellent!" 

Whatever you do, don't offer to test an option so as to eliminate it on the basis of empirical data.  Where's the fun in that!  And for God's sake don't point out that for the prorated burdened headcount of the time all the individuals in the meeting have spent, we could have paid someone to solve the problem in a fairly spectacular and sexy way.  Where's your sense of adventure?

It now occurs to me that the word "pointless" in the title of this post is pejorative.  I'll need to work on this whole positive spin thing.  Excuse me while I evaluate several ways of solving this problem...

Surgeons and the God Complex

You know how people always talk about how surgeons have a God complex? Yeah, that's totally real. The surgeon who performed my second emergency surgery in a week has cast-iron balls and he's right about everything all the time...except when he isn't. My wound is infected because he gave me inaccurate wound care instructions, and even when I questioned his stupid method and explained that I had had this same surgery before, he said, "Well, that may be how they do it where you're from, but here we do it this way." Oh, okay, Mr. Balls of Steel.

I was quite happy to follow his instructions, because they were much easier, and the wound seemed good two days later. But now it's infected. Naturally it waits until the weekend to do this, because that's when you can't do anything about it without going to an emergency room where they'll just carve you into a million pieces and leave you for dead.

So we called him today in an effort to get some guidance on the matter. His wisdom? "It's always going to be infected." Um, really? Then what the fuck did I need your services for exactly? And if I did need you, shouldn't we have installed some kind of permanent apparatus to deal with the infection? It took the testimony of a nurse to convince him that it needed further attention, and I don't even want to explain what we had to do with it. And now I'm basically not allowed to sleep until it heals because I have to supervise the damn thing every hour or else it will sprint off into the land of infection again--it literally gained ground while I made myself dinner.

I try to be a model patient, really I do. I once had a conversation with a friend of mine who was in the hospital all the time, and she explained that it was best to be positive and sweet and hardy and brave and follow instructions without fail all the time--that you got good treatment that way, and that if you broke down and admitted that you were upset the medical establishment will basically drop you like a hot potato and leave you to rot in your own depression because, frankly, they can't afford to be sucked in. But today on the phone with the surgeon, I verbally frosted his precious cast-iron balls until I was absolutely certain they won't thaw out until New Years 2011. I got courtesy antibiotics for my trouble, which was a moderate consolation prize. But honestly, watching him cover his privates with a clipboard the next time he sees me will be way more satisfying.

I can fully appreciate that, as he reminded me in my initial examination, "it's not like you have cancer or anything," and that is some comfort to me, it's true. But I'm still a 38-year old woman with a gaping hole in her chest and I think I'm allowed to ask whatever questions I need to in order to feel comfortable that I'm doing the right thing about it. And I deserve to have those questions answered completely and with respect. So now that he's made me totally paranoid about infection, he can share the fun a little by being paranoid about his balls. It's only fair.

Which makes me wonder a little about the God complex. Maybe it's not true. I have a hard time imagining God being paranoid about his balls. Maybe it's more like a Pope complex. You know, "I'm infallible and super awesome, but just in case anyone else thinks I'm an asshole, I'll ride around in this bulletproof popemobile."

Have I mentioned how much I hate spiders?

I think I may have mentioned how much I hate spiders. So tonight I'm watching The Biggest Loser on my fat ass, which is conveniently located on my sofa. And I look over and there's a large unidentified object on the ground. And it's vaguely spider-shaped, but it can't be a spider. I mean, it just can't. Because it's huge. Forget a quarter. This thing is the size of half a dollar bill. I dogleg around behind it, and damned if it isn't a spider. Like the kind that come on plastic rings this time of year. Only he isn't on a plastic ring. He's on my carpet. And turns around so that he's watching me.

So I did what I always do in these situations. I called someone who's hundreds of miles away. The last time this happened, a spider effectively treed me on the sofa and I called my friend in Arizona. Yeah--I lived in New Mexico at the time. As the spider bobs up and down trying to figure out just how much silk it's going to need to immobilize me while it sucks my body dry, my friend is like, "Honey, I can't do anything. You know if I lived even 20 miles away, I'd come running, but you have to sleep before I can get there. Hit it with a shoe." It wasn't until hours later when my then-husband arrived and shrieked like a teenager in a horror film that he believed how big the spider was. (My ex-husband killed it with a shoe. He was a good man that way.)

This spider could eat that spider for lunch. And would--because, you know, they're cannibals. And I got divorced, so there's nobody to kill the spider.

I run back to the sofa and call my cousin's husband. "Bill, Bill. There's a spider in my house so big that he casts a shadow. And he's watching me."

"Well, he's probably not watching you, because he's a New York spider. I don't think you have poisonous spiders out there, do you?"

"I didn't think we had giant spiders, but the survey says yes we do."

"Do you have a New York Times?"

"No. I read it online."

"Oh, well then you'll have to get a book and wrap it in paper."

Genius. I wasn't fooling around. I got an encyclopedia so big that when I put it in a Trader Joe's bag, the handles of the bag tore off. The spider, no fool, got under a chair. It took me five minutes of coaxing from thousands of miles away to move the chair and throw the encyclopedia at the spider. And I kid you not, it made him really mad. Instead of his legs being out in creepy-crawly mode, he shooped them up under his body to make himself really tall and threatening like the tripods in War of the Worlds (except an octopod). Not to be deterred, I got the Oxford Guide to the Bible and threw it in another Trader Joe's bag. (He must not have been doing very well for all his big show, because he stood there looking mad as hell while I did this.) I was a little concerned, because it wasn't as big as the encyclopedia, but it turned out that greater maneuverability was an asset.

At least, I think it was. I'm scared to pick up the bag. And all the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I look at it. I'm counting this as my workout for the evening because my heart rate was definitely in the fat-burning zone.

Church of Chuckology? Where do I sign?

This morning on NPR they did a story on radical evangelist atheists--you know, like Richard Dawkins. It was a moderately disturbing story about how these people believe that religion is actively dangerous and must be actively opposed by rational men and women of the world, and the slightly absurd notion that this militant view is causing a schism in the atheist community. (Dude, as schisms go, that's not really going to make it into the top ten, is it? I mean, you've got your Urban VI, your Martin Luther, hell, even your Henry VIII. But the guy who separated the unbelievers from the less strident unbelievers? I find it hard to believe that's real schism material.)

For the record, I'm not real sure I disagree about the danger of religion. Religion is many things--a comfort, a blessing, an incentive to make the right decisions, and an awesome tool for, well, tools who want to control politics, abase women, and excuse appalling injustices on pretty much every continent except Antarctica. But I'm an agnostic, not an atheist (you have to have much healthier self-esteem than I have to be an atheist--I could never be so full of myself to claim absolute certainty that there is no God), and far be it from me to oppose people--and there are plenty of them--who truly want to make their faith a force for good in their lives and the lives of others. I reserve the right to make fun of them sometimes, but that's about as militant as I get. And I think a lot of agnostics and atheists envy the truly devout their faith, even if they think it's a divine madness. Let's face it, it seems pretty comfortable to know what's going to happen to your eternal soul.

Sometimes I kind of wish I could join a religion. Unfortunately my experience with Catholicism left me so mistrustful of organized religion that my one try at attending a Buddhist meditation retreat nearly gave me a panic attack. In case you didn't know, Buddhists are about the least "militant" sect out there. You go to a Buddhist temple and they're like, "have a cup of tea. We do this. If you'd like to do this, you should stay. If not, well, at least you had a nice cup of tea." They are definitely not out to recruit you or control your thoughts--they'd be pretty happy to observe their own thoughts, thanks. But there was a bit of the meditation where they chanted together, and it reminded me so much of mass that I just had to leave--it was all I could do to keep from crawling out of my skin before we got to a moment where I could flee without disturbing other people.

So it is with great interest that I read that Chuck Lorre is starting a religion that is, if you will, informed by Buddhism, but which probably doesn't involve synchronized chanting and probably doesn't involve getting dressed up or going anywhere. Yay Chuckology!

All of which is just my way of saying:
The Big Bang Theory is awesome.
Wil Wheaton is also awesome.
Wil Wheaton and Sheldon in a duel to the death? It may not be communion with the eternal, but I was totally there in the moment.

So...Much...Cleaning!

I have a friend coming to stay with me for a few days. We've never met before, because we were virtual colleagues, but we've kept in touch and I've really enjoyed her friendship.

Unfortunately for all concerned, I'm that kind of person. Meaning that when I have company I'm most comfortable if there's been some kind of effort made to make sure that the place doesn't look like:

1. A bomb hit it
2. Frat boys live here, spewing empty pizza boxes and beer bottles at regular intervals and leaving items to rot in the refrigerator until they either become science projects or actual college students
3. The home of someone who is about to be parted with his/her children by Family Services on grounds of not providing an appropriate home

When I'm left to my own devices, all of these types of entropy and more happen in fairly short order. Lately I've been fortunate enough that a specific human comes to my house once or twice a week, and that tends to keep things reasonable. I do things out of respect for this human that I wouldn't do for myself (like picking up most of the shoes that tend to congregate under the coffee table, and keeping the fridge clean and happy, and cleaning the bathrooms as though the ladies on "How Clean Is Your House? were invading with swabs to count bacteria). I don't know why I don't respect myself enough to do those things for me. I kind of wish I did, because I actually enjoy having the place clean. It is so exciting to be able to get up on a Saturday and just make tea or coffee without washing a tea/coffepot, a mug, a spoon, and a coffee/tea measuring device. Thrilling!

Unfortunately, the afore-mentioned human isn't around any longer, and so it's taken a couple of weeks to shake the place free from the entropy-gnomes. I have collapsed and recycled moving boxes. I have found homes for all that weird shit that needs a home (like the cords to every electrical device I've ever owned--hands up if you need another RCA cable! No, I thought not.). I have unearthed the guest room bed. I have purchased pillows to live inside the guest room bed's nice shams, and said shams have been ironed and stuffed and lovingly arranged on the actual guest room bed. I have purged my wardrobe of clothes that won't be worn again. I have found the surfaces of my desk, kitchen counters, and coffee table. I have vacuumed up some of the many, many, many colonies of spiderwebs.

(An aside. Did anyone ever notice that Charlotte's web never had a pile of carcasses under it all the time? Charlotte was one dainty spider. I think she hid the bodies to avoid freaking Wilbur out. My spiders aren't so particular. I think my own frat-boy mentality has been a corrupting influence. And let me just say that based on each spider's body count I'm in no hurry to evict any spiders, because I'd be overrun with other insects.)

At this point the guest could walk in and although there would be things that would bug me, it would all be copable. I'd just like to fix a few more things before she comes. Too bad work starts tomorrow...

This American Life Livecast

Last night I attended the "This American Life" livecast, which is an annual event where the radio show is broadcast live to theaters all around the country.  I won't talk about all the details because it will air this weekend (or you can download the podcast on iTunes).  I was surprised, thrilled and (in a very, very limited way) disappointed.

 

The disappointment was minimal.  I was really looking forward to seeing David Rakoff, because I thoroughly enjoyed his hilarious comments on television in last year's live episode.  "Thoroughly enjoyed" is inadequate--I had to run my mp3 player back over and over to replay his description of one of the heroines of "My Super Sweet Sixteen."  But apparently David was relegated to a separate video, which I'll have to hunt down this weekend.

 

I was surprised because the tone was a wee bit darker than last year's episode.  I don't have a problem with dark.  One of the stories made me cry, and I don't have a problem with that, either.  Both "This American Life" and the Moth podcast dip into the sadder side of life occasionally--personally I never consider these stories dark.  Life isn't all fabulous, and most of the stories are about getting something good about something bad--even if sometimes the only good thing that you can get out of it is the fact that you tried to get something good out of something bad...if you see what I mean.  Anyway, I've come to accept that most people think of this as "dark," and there was a definite downbeat turn to this year's livecast.

 

It didn't make it any less thrilling for me, though.  The most moving story was Dan Savage's beautiful tribute to his mother, who passed away this year.  I really identified with Dan's feelings about growing up Catholic, and it was great to hear about his mother's negotiation of her faith, especially once she knew that Dan was gay.  Dan's story was sweet and wistful and powerful, and I really appreciated the opportunity to share it, even though there's something heartbreaking about watching someone's voice catch as he tries to talk about someone he misses so much.

 

The close second, for me, was Mike Birbiglia's narrative of the obsession he developed after being t-boned by a drunk driver.  The surprise of the story was well worth preserving--I'll just say that our theater lapsed into dead silence, followed by a collective gasp and a palpable sense of wonder.  This is the kind of story for which the phrase, "truth is stranger than fiction" was coined.  I'm telling you, it's not the kind of story people seem to want to sit down for these days, but it's the good kind.

 

If any of that sounds like your bag, you can get the podcast from iTunes, check the listings for your local public radio station for This American Life, or see it the theater again on May 7.

Sushi and Kyle Chandler's Hair

In a desperate bid to keep myself awake until 9, I ordered sushi and sat down with reruns of "Friday Night Lights." I would not normally watch a show like this. There is football. There is praying. There are characters who think this is how life is. (Actual exchange between characters: "Do you think God likes football?" "I think everybody likes football.")

I'm not big on the football. I'm not big on many sports, but of all of them, football is the one that earns my ire the most. Why? Universities all over this great nation spend more on athletics than on education. Education? You know, the MISSION of the university? Yeah. Apparently the mission of the university is to have a football team, and the classes are an unsightly byproduct. And don't even get me started on the salaries we pay to coaches (or the fact that we sometimes pay them obscene figures to go away because they don't win football games--God, do I want a job where I get paid millions of dollars for fucking it up).

Then there's the praying. I left the Catholic church a long time ago, but by the time I left I had pretty much done my time with the praying. Organized religion is...well, it's not my cup of tea. And kids praying spontaneously? I want to get them into a deprogramming lab as soon as possible.

But I love this show. I love almost all the characters (except for one cheerleader, who could yet redeem herself if she'd just grow up a little). I love the coach's marriage, which is one of mutual respect, sexual attraction and a credible handful of that insane frustration that only a spouse can produce. I love the sharply observed detail in every scene. I love the fact that the phrase "identity politics" finally means something fresh and entertaining and, for the most part, roundly portrayed. I love the humor, which is way smarter than a show whose premise is football (the giant bake sale that actually siphons money AWAY from education) deserves.

It has its faults. The paralyzed quarterback can see the football field from his hospital bed (come ON!). Lyla is that cheerleader we all avoided in high school, and honestly, why would we want to spend time with her now? The show falls prey to some of the cliches endemic to its genre (the big game, the athletes running in the rain, the inspirational pep talk that comes not a moment too soon). And, as critics have pointed out, the show "tackles" racism (I couldn't resist), but the Texas town is a little black and white--chicano culture is suspiciously absent. But it's a quibble, really. It's the kind of quibble you come up with when a show is daring you not to love it.

And, quite unexpectedly, I love Kyle Chandler's hair. I had never really noticed it, but when Drunken Bee started recapping Friday Night Lights on Television Without Pity, she started ascribing motives and feelings and misgivings to Kyle Chandler's hair, and I have to say, it's improved my experience of the show immensely.

I swear, in every scene, his hair is emoting, vying for an Emmy. When he's frustrated with the A/C, his hair is all, "I could NOT care less, man," when he's at the car dealership opening, his hair is all "Ciao!!"

It becomes quite the narrative flourish. Kyle Chandler's hair offers folks hamburgers. Kyle Chandler's hair protests that it forgot its daughter's dance recital because it's undercaffeinated. I find myself reading the recaps with quite the crush on Kyle Chandler's hair. It's so dreamy. What will it say or do next?

Chicken-Eating Spiders...No, Really

I'm sure no one remembers this post. The memory of the dinner (or, more accurately, the dinner conversation) is burned on my brain in letters of fire, because this was the first time I met someone who had personally seen huge-ass spiders in their natural habitat. So whereas before, my knowledge was theoretical, nature-channel knowledge, now it was urban legend knowledge--the spiders had happened to a friend of mine when he was visiting a foreign country. And I knew another friend whose childhood vacation home was infested with big roaming spiders she could hear walking on their hardwood floors. The spiders were closing in.

At the time I comforted myself by joking with my girlfriends about how the spiders might eat chickens. Oh, how we laughed. What a funny image. We laughed until we cried.

Well, the spiders in Peru actually do eat chickens. I can hear the spider saying, "Who's laughing now, girls?"

The spiders, they scare me. Excuse me, I have to go rent Arachnophobia.

Another Reason I Have No Business Hiking

Well, that's not true. I enjoy hiking, actually. I prefer walking, because it seems more civilized, and it typically requires less specialized gear. Also, there's less of a chance that my survival will hinge on having to eat a spider. And I simply couldn't eat a turtle. Because if I did survive, my cousin would never speak to me ever again. Ever. And life would no longer be worth living.

So it's a damn good thing I'm never ever planning to go hiking in French Guiana.

Read the whole thing, because the money quote is in the third-from-the-last paragraph. Yeah, the one about the amazing spider diet (better than Atkins!) and with cooking tips (hint--if spider were on a menu, there would be a little star next to it warning that it would be cooked to order but that the restaurant wasn't liable for what might happen to you if you ordered it rare).

Something tells me these boys are going to be more grateful than most for their Easter dinner today, even if they wouldn't normally have celebrated the holiday.

My Worst Date Was Not THAT Bad

My dating karma is...patchy. Vying for worst dates ever are:

1) The date who took me to the arcade to watch him play video games.
2) The date I almost missed because I was stuck at a Catholic group hayride, which culminated in an argument over prioritization of dates versus hayrides.

The arcade probably wasn't so bad. I mean, I see the guy's point. Star Wars was still cool (this was long before Lucas sullied it) and he was very, very good at video games. So, you know, I suppose he was sort of playing to his strengths. The hayride thing, well, that was bad. We should have called it quits immediately. Turns out that Catholic hayrides are not good for either one of us (I have hay fever and a crippling terror of organized religion--who knew?). And if you can't get through your first date without hurting each other, I'm sorry, it's just not worth it.

Since then my dating karma has gotten a lot better. Don't get me wrong--it still sucks. I date infrequently. No, seriously. Once every six months is a good year for me. At least one man walked away from me as though I didn't exist when I approached him. One man, in the course of trying to get me to go out with him, argued that "no" can, in fact, mean "yes." (Excuse me, I think I left the gas on in my fortress of solitude. Don't call me. Ever.) But at least when men do finally take me out, I have a really good time. In fact, I think trend analysis shows the dates are getting better and better.

At no point has a date ever ended in murder. Especially not a murder where the defendant pleaded the "whoopsy doodle" defense. (The defense can be paraphrased thus, without losing--well, anything, really: "Whoa. I don't remember shooting anybody. That had to have been an accident.") Dude, what you already did was bad enough. Is it really necessary to employ a "defense" that's a mockery of the law (and also of the collective intelligence of the human race)?

Should I Let YouTube Waste My Time?

This charms me unreasonably.

Lacy Underthings

This makes me happy in that kind of way that makes you look for the devil emoticon in your Instant Messaging software, only to find that your company has blocked said emoticon because it's an evil icon. Eeeeeviiiiil ... Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.

Sorry. Lace-makers whose previous clients included the Pope and Queen Elizabeth have recently branched out into making lacy underwear (including thongs--the official underwear of the devil himself). Apparently being lace-maker to the Queen doesn't support a whole village like it used to. The Internet, on the other hand, can support a village in its sleep, especially if photos of hot women modeling thongs are involved. Naturally, half the village has their knickers in a twist (because the same lace that once adorned the Queen's table is now "being worn on people's backsides." Well, not exactly the same lace, probably). Fortunately, the other half is so busy counting their money that they don't care.

I Feel Bad

And not the guilty kind of bad I usually feel. Instead, I feel like I've been on a cycle of crack and downers for the last three days. Sometimes 3-day meetings do that to me. To any reader who was there with me over the last three days, seriously, it's no reflection on you. I just need things if I'm going to spend three days with a bunch of people. Like air. And possibly alcohol.

But at least I'm faring better than these little guys.

I'm a genius!

Because I could have told them this. This is why the room that I was in laughed hysterically when our fearless leader said that now that the layoffs at our company were over, everyone must be chipper and ready to go, right? You betcha, honey. We'll be right with you. Right after we finish updating our resumes, absorbing our fallen colleagues' workloads and generally trying to prepare for an uncertain future. But after that, we'll be whistling while we work. Honest.

To her credit, my manager has been a star. She's encouraged honesty when we're overworked and found solutions. In other departments, people are actually being told that it's not overwork, it's an opportunity. Oh, sure, because I was looking at it without my rose-colored glasses. And my crack pipe. I have got to stop mislaying that.

Obesity Is Someone Else

Apparently someone took a bathroom scale out on the streets of London and introduced four men to the concept that they were obese. Their reactions are spectacular. They all deny that they're obese. Not one of them thinks the Body Mass Index might have a point. Three of them happily pose for photos to prove they're not obese, one of them with a cheeseburger in his hand.

Now, I'm not saying they look morbidly obese. Most of them look fine. And nobody's saying the BMI is perfect. It's a universal rule of thumb, and as such it's probably going to be wrong once in a while. And hell, the article says that Brad Pitt is overweight according to his BMI. Whatever we may think of Brad, I don't think any of us want to accept that assessment.

But the wholesale denial was fascinating to me. Had they gone out on the street and weighed women, I wonder what the women would have said? My guess is that many of them would have agreed.

I still remember the day I discovered that I was obese. (I've been a healthy weight for 3 or 4 years now. But that first shock sticks with you.) So I can't say I don't identify with these men. And my coworkers were right behind me in my denial. They said, "Katy, there's no way you're obese." The big-boned argument? Yeah, we tried that. We found a test that used your wrist as a measure of your frame size and then adjusted your target weight accordingly. I was still obese.

But never in my life did it occur to me to publicly revile the BMI while holding a cheeseburger. I love the cheeseburger. That's some serious moxie.

An Ideal Boyfriend

Dating is rough.

No, really. I know this isn't news, but every once in a while, something reminds us of the essential truths of life.

Just ask my acquaintance whose boyfriend got rip-roaring drunk this weekend, picked a fight, and came home and peed all over the sofa.

I have to say, I would never have considered this when gazing out the window, compiling a mental list of traits my ideal boyfriend should or shouldn't have. My list is pretty general. I'm lookin' for someone reasonably solvent, reasonably responsible, and entirely non-violent. There are some other essential traits--intelligence, a sense of humor, a sexy voice. And yes, okay, I'm partial to someone who makes me crazy hot. But it would never have occurred to me to sigh dreamily and add, "And you know what else would be great? If he never peed on furniture."

Now, we know. You leave that off the list at your peril.

Just goes to show that when you're gathering requirements, it never pays to overlook the bleedin' obvious.

And by the way, the dating scene in Phoenix is SO bad. How bad is it, I hear you ask. The dating scene in Phoenix is SO bad that peeing all over someone's sofa isn't even a dumpable offense.

Do you hear me, world? The dating scene here is so bad that, officially, someone who pees all over your sofa is still considered a catch.

What's that I hear? I'll tell you what it isn't. It isn't the sound of someone urinating on my sofa. Sometimes there are compensations for being single.

Ain't No Paradigm Shift Wide Enough

Naturally, during my meeting, I IM'd a buddy at work to tell him about the rooster crashing our phone meeting. He asked me whose rooster it was, and I theorized that it might belong to (or at least live near) the lady phoning in from the Philippines. I said that now my mental note card for the Philippines reads, "Contains giant spiders, some people obsessed with racecar driving, and possibly roosters."

He knows I've refused to go camping on the grounds that there are bugs out there in nature, so he advised me to hie myself off to the Philippines, there to conquer my fear of insects by communing with their giant spiders. (Later I shared his theory with some of the other women in the meeting, and we engaged in a lively debate over whether the spiders would eat the roosters or the roosters would eat the spiders--my money is on the spiders, personally.) My colleague's assertion was that it would be a paradigm shift that would alter my life for the better (possibly enabling me to go camping).

Let me tell you right now, ain't no paradigm shift wide enough to make a dinner-plate-sized spider okay with me.

But the rooster--he's all right. I hope he comes to more of our meetings in the future.