oooh. shiny! part deux Mmmmm. Etsy!

oooh. shiny! Fuck Netflix. What you want--what you really, really want--is a rent-by-mail membership at Facets.

Of course if you have local independent brick-and-mortars you should support them, and oh how I do. But if you're like me, and you enjoy tormenting people with Chinese socialist realism from the 1940s, and all those movies are out of print and apparently nonexistent except for one VHS copy, you cannot exist without a Facets membership.

So I ordered my next movie for class.

"Anything else?" the helpful person asked.

And with that question I went to my Happy Place, where there are no hurricanes, no cancer, no Bush administration, no No Child Left a Dime, no Paxil constipation. Only unlimited rentals of Elevator to the Gallows and Messidor. Of course remaining in the Happy Place is expensive ($25/month), but it's more convenient than chanting my mantra ("Puppies and kittens. Puppies and kittens. Puppies and kittens.").

I couldn't even answer. "Uhhhh...." I said.

And you can cancel anytime.

crawling with idiots As I was coming home from class today I sat through a light behind a guy in a pup truck. He had two bumper stickers: "Keep Austin Smokin'" and "I'm So Sick of Stupid People." I want to party with that guy.

Twice in town stupid people have ripped off part of the billboards that say "Babies Were Born to Be Breastfed." (It's a public-health initiative in Texas.) Like the word breastfed--not even an actual breast or a baby but the letters we juxtapose to indicate the relationship between a breast and a baby--is going to cause somebody to freak out. The fuck? Ironically there's a Hooters down the road from the defaced sign I saw today in Williamson County, where there seems to be severe oxygen deprivation or something. The word "breastfed" is taboo or some shit, but the fucking Hooters logo, globular and visually suggestive, heralds a family restaurant. I'm used to stupid people losing their shit over breastfeeding, but this surprises me. It's a word.

Unless hired goons from Nestle are defacing the billboards. Anybody got any intel on hired goons from Nestle?

Give it five, maybe seven more years, people, and mark my words: There will be a class of Designated Sexual Women (they will all look like Jenna Jameson) assembled in a central registry, available like library books, and the rest of us will all be wearing burqas. Americans are such stupid people.

Also stupid: My mom's doctors, who say she has breast cancer.

random observations of chicago In no particular order:

• When mothers of preschoolers travel alone, they can expect to experience alternating sensations of panic and elation, and their behavior is observably erratic.


• Relatedly: On my return trip, the security personnel decided an unaccompanied mother of twin girls in a double stroller was some kind of risk and detained her at length, leaving her wailing children parked alone twenty feet away. They screamed so loudly and at such length that I practically shit myself with worry, and I think at one point I relactated. People, don't do that, okay?


• A number of quad rugby players (see Murderball) arrived contemporaneously at O'Hare from another flight, and I was so wound up by that point that I'm pretty sure I freaked out all over them about how cool their sport is. I guess I might have made an ass of myself. But it *is* cool. Shortly thereafter I was intercepted by The Other J., who had driven down from Madison and acted as my handler throughout the remainder of the evening (i.e., keeping the general public safe from me).


• The reading went well. I didn't plotz, shit myself, relactate, or fall down, which is how I spell success.


• I visited sex shops in two states in less than a 24-hour period. During one of these visits, The Other J., who will henceforth be known as the International Leather Daddy, stealthily withdrew a crop from a display and whapped my ass without warning, causing me to scream so loudly (shock mostly) that meatpackers put down their saws to ask, "What was that?" Don't ever turn your back on the International Leather Daddy, not even if you've known him since eleventh grade and he's basically Like a Brother. The man is not to be trusted.


• The Other J. and his girlfriend J. (why does everybody's name start with J, anyway?) persuaded me to do stuff that will get a woman Kicked Off the Playground. They also have the world's greatest cat. Coincidence?


• I can explain why I love the midwest, why I am suffused with joy whenever I am north of Oklahoma, in three words: Fried. Cheese. Curds.

Rescue Heroes With everything--and with today being September 10--it doesn't feel right to discourage Baldo's rapidly burgeoning interest in the Rescue Heroes, which (I now realize) is a sort of Tonkafied team of first responders with cybernetic bodies and large phallic tools; I think he caught wind of them at preschool. For those of us who have chosen to Walk the Line--by that I mean we neither blanket our children in organically produced silk squares nor present them with Bop-Its after the cord has been cut, but seek an middle path between egregious consumerism and its converse--this is a tricky matter.

Is there, I wonder, a category of Rescue Heroes slashfic? They have names like Billy Blazes and Wendy Waters and Jake Justice, so of course they must let off steam by getting in a big lubricated pile after a particularly grueling emergency. I'm especially interested in Wendy Waters, for obvious reasons. She may have lessons to teach womankind.

We got a Rescue Heroes book yesterday at Half-Price. It had been squirreled underneath a shelf by some crafty shopper, but Baldo dug it out and fell in love with it on the spot. And so we went to the checkout with our stack of semi-respectable books, Baldo grasping Billy Blazes, Firefighter with juvenile glee, and there we waited in line with a collection of truly horrified-seeming people. Those dewy, not-having-children people.

Katrina II I've been following Interdictor's LiveJournal, which has live cam feed from New Orleans. A big caravan of buses just went by, escorted by the National Guard. I had counted twelve buses and was waiting for more when the phone rang--it was J.--and I tried to answer it in my office, but for some reason the phone is unplugged, so I'm all like, "Hello? Hello!" and the phone was still ringing.

Anyway.

Fuckin' A, it made me so proud. So proud that it's finally getting better.

J. and the Baldinator made two stops today to drop stuff off. Baldo is getting into the swing. Friday we had donations, and he wouldn't get out of the car, so I had to depend upon the kindness of two hot women passing by. (I love it when that happens.) Today, however, Baldo is very excited over the Unloading and Loading and Trucking aspects of disaster relief. We told him that a number of construction machines would doubtless be involved in clean-up, perhaps even draglines. Our success in parenting this child is contingent upon our ability to relate things to construction equipment: tooth-brushing, nutrition, personal safety, numeracy, sharing.

"There's death and disease everywhere, and there's no leader to be found. That's as criminal as anyone who takes a TV."--The Rude Pundit.

Katrina This morning I was marketing for the family unit, and as I delightedly discovered whole-wheat coucous (with milled flax) on sale, I thought, reaching, "How fucking fortunate am I not to have to loot this today?" Guilt set in. Then I sat myself down for a talk: You know what, it is fortunate, and that's okay. You'd have to be an idiot to be thankful for the reverse--a state of emergency, threats of cholera, and people arming themselves against paramedics. Just get your damn coucous, feed it to your people, and be genuinely happy for yourself while you are genuinely sorry for others. Then tomorrow, go back and get peanut butter and tuna and diapers, as many as you can afford. And somehow we will all limp along because that's what the human race does; nobody understands that better than mothers.

I think I will enclose some soy-nut butter in the package, too. Some of those unlucky bastards displaced by our global-warming shitstorm must have peanut allergies. They must. It's you people I'm thinking of now. I don't want a Red Cross volunteer to hand you a peanut-butter sandwich and send you into anaphlactic shock. After everything you've been through already, you don't need that. So by hook or by crook, I will get you a nut-free alternative. As God is my witness.

(Lots of people snicker when they hear a phrase like "nut-free" or "nut dust," and let me tell you I am so past that now.)

Yesterday was my first day of teaching. It was strange to be back on the campus I attended as a Young and Sensitive Flower (which I was then--not to generalize about others). Back in those days we used Pine or Elm to read our e-mail. I felt like a dinosaur. It is nice, however, to be remembered by some of the five or six professors of yore still alive and kicking around campus these days.

I have dreadful blisters from wearing Real Shoes. Perhaps it is verily time for us to hang up all of our Real Shoes and wear ugly, evacuation-friendly footwear. After September 11 there was this big shockwave through the fashion community about ugly, evacuation-friendly footwear--shoes you can wear in that handbasket to hell of ours. It's time.