Happy Holidays!

Good will towards men, etc. The holiday season has had the desired effect--I've lost track of the days and have a seemingly endless supply of chocolate and jellybeans to hand. Lovely. I felt only vaguely guilty when I went to the gym yesterday and spent 50 minutes squeezing a weird spiky ball between my thighs (it was Hello Kitty pink, folks, which made it almost palatable) and realised I would instantly undo all of my good work with the gobbling of just two chocolate coins.
We spent Christmas with my brother and family after catching a Christmas Eve performance of the Nutcracker. Love that ballet, and I don't care how ubiquitous/cheesy it may be. The music is beautiful, the costumes are beautiful, and I have been watching the SF Ballet do it since I was 5. So there.
Other Christmas season highlights:
* Admiring the giant swan in the window of Marc Jacobs on Fillmore St. Bizarre fun.
* A quick burger and bloody Mary at Harry's after picking up some fabu gifts. I love giving good gift.
* My third-ever manicure. I finally broke down and went to the little nail studio across the road that I have been spying on for the past year. I picked a pale pink polish called Bubble Bath.
* The twinkly snowflake lights on the side of the Sak's building. So pretty.
* A verrrry strong Margarita in the Carnelian Room, at the top of the Bank of America building. The view is gorgeous--the bay and city laid out for you as if you were a despot. I felt teary, jubilant, nostalgic, and slightly giddy all at once.
After bidding adieu to the family the day after Christmad we headed to Carmel, a cutesy little seaside village that has turned into a caricature of itself. Dad lived there and practiced medicine when he first moved to the US. Every shop smells like vanilla cupcakes. And it costs $9 to do the 17-Mile Drive made famous by the Pebble Beach golf course and US Open. And if that weren't enough to turn you off, the first ever Thomas Kincaid gallery opened in Carmel 15 years ago. If you're not familar with him, he's the most collected living artist today. He depicts ideal chocolate box-style cottages and village scenes and is known for his technique with light--everything looks all twinkly and elf-like. He designed a whole housing sub-division in my birth city, Vallejo. He makes me feel nauseous but I couldn't stop myself from diving into his gallery and having a giggle. If Santa had known about that, I'm pretty sure I would have been left off the sleigh route. Ah well.

Sentimentality alert

Feeling nostalgic today. And sick. I have been sick all week--nasty flu-ey congestion and fuzzy head--and nostalgic for about three weeks. We finally made a firm decision about our future--we're heading back to New Zealand next year. I resigned from my job yesterday and that's all folks. I'm glad we have a plan of sorts because I am the original girl with a plan. If I'm not heading somewhere with some objective in mind I am pretty miserable. So that's good. But I love living in San Francisco. It's a childhood dream come true and while I always knew it was temporary I guess I figured it would be a more longterm move than it's turned out to be. We have been here a year. We flew into New York on September 1, 2006 and we moved into our chilly wee apartment last December. So we've experienced all the seasons here and watched our neighbors gorgeously OTT decorations change from St Patrick's elves to Easter bunnies and eggs, to summer flowers, to Halloween ghouls, to Thanksgiving cones of plenty, to Christmas wreaths--and all of it wonderfully American in scale.
Today is cold but sunny. I had to drop Tim off for his Saturday business class and then drove home along California St, past the Bank of America building (tallest in the city, home to our money manager), past two cable cars, past the Fairmont Hotel and Tonga Bar where we have yet to go, past Grace Cathedral where we attended an ANZAC service, past Fillmore St where I do so much of my window shopping and we do our laundry, past the Jewish Community Center where I work out, and finally past our block with its Edwardian apartment buildings and fancy home shops. It is all so pretty.
* * * *
Enough bellyaching--we went to the Dickens Fair last weekend. The Cow Palace, a huge South SF venue for bullriding competitions and monster truck shows, was transformed into ye olde London. Or, I should say, the area where they keep the cattle and such for the big shows was transformed into ye olde London. The big domed Palace itself was a happy place for me as a child. My family used to go for the bullriding and equestrian shows thanks to Dad's country boy roots. My favorite part was intermission when we would eat Mom's egg salad sandwiches while the rodeo clown entertained us. He had huge overalls and tiny dogs would emerge from his pant legs to jump through hoops. I think there may have been a tiny spider monkey too, or that could be a 7-year-old's embellishment. In any case, it was cool fun.
So last Sunday we went to the animal area, where 25 years ago I admired blueblood horses, and it was packed with costumed folks and jewellery stalls and food places, and more costumed folk doing skits and singing bawdy songs. We watched the Irish and Scottish dancers for a while and ate some fried oysters and tried on some hats (a Robin Hood cap for T and a floral wreath for me) and headed home.

Joy Luck Crap

Finally. Fortune cookies for a chica like me. Read in the NYT today about a fortune cookie company in Queens that asked its writers to come up with some more contemporary fortunes. The results include:
“Your problem just got bigger. Think, what have you done?”
“Perhaps you’ve been focusing too much on yourself.”
“It’s over your head right now. Time to get some professional help.”
Love, love, love. Next time I get a fortune cookie I am going to be extremely disappointed if I get a crap fortune like “Don’t worry, be happy” or “Today is an auspicious day.”

Hillary

We went to Hillary Clinton’s rally in Oakland yesterday. It was exciting to see a little piece of history unfolding before us but she pushed our patience by making us stand in the street for two hours—with 14,000 other people—while one California politician after another made speeches and a gospel choir sang, I think, five songs.
There was an exciting few minutes when Mayor Hunky stormed on to the stage and shared a couple Bible verses (it’s worth noting that this is a man who slept with his best friend’s wife and when he got caught immediately went to rehab). I still think he’s dishy, though. A lot of people think he’ll be Governor of California before too long.
When Hill came on the crowd perked up but I still got the feeling a lot of the folks were fans of Bill and were making do with Hill cos they’re nostalgic for the mid to late-90s, when the US had low unemployment, cheaper gas, and we weren’t embroiled in a sticky oil war.
***
Coming home on the bus tonight I was victim to a sleazy jostler. I have experienced a number of these guys now. They use the movement of the bus as an excuse to lean against you, getting right into your space and lingering there without invitation. It is the perfect social crime—it takes you a while to figure out what they’re up to, no-one else really notices, and you feel prim and fairly ridiculous saying anything to the jostler. So these guys get away with it. Tonight’s guy stunk of cigarettes and BO. He kept checking his watch, really leaning down to see the face, and I noticed he had thick yellow fingernails, quite long, and a silver rose ring on one finger.
After he lurched off the bus, another creepy guy sat next to me. He wasn’t a jostler but he smelled like rotting peaches.

Dammit! If I'd only had another month...

How cute is this?

A Tortoise's Great Escape

Morning Edition, August 9, 2007 · A rare tortoise disappeared from a Virginia zoo. It's not clear whether a visitor freed it or it slipped out on its own, but it was gone. The Burmese Mountain Tortoise raced away with the speed a tortoise is famous for. Zoo staff found it seven hours later in a patch of bamboo just 20 yards from its pen.

You can hear all about it here.

Shiny boots and no good reason to feel cocky

Little bit of excitement on the train this morning. I stepped into the car to find not one but three BART police standing in the doorway with their big black boots and official somethingerothers strapped round their waists. I don't know if they pack heat, but they're got suspicious bulges on those belts. Little cans of mace, perhaps? They might have simply been commuting to work--surely one of the (only) perks of being in the BART police force would be free travel--or they might have been on their way to kick some sad homeless loiterer's butt. In either case, their presence made me feel decidedly less safe.

Itchy and scratchy

Vodka had to go to the animal hospital today. I noticed this morning when I cleaned out the hams’ cages that he had a horrible big scab on his tummy, and that he had lost fur under his neck and on his legs. He was also scratching like mad. It happened so quickly; he was fine a few days ago, nothing amiss, although I must admit that, given his bitey behaviour when we was a teen ham, I am always careful when I handle him and don’t often see his tummy. I did some quick online research and learned that he might have mites—very contagious and devilishly difficult to get rid of—which sounded like a real treat. I considered going to the pet store for some anti-mite spray, but the poor little dude was damaging himself with his scratching and biting.
So Tim rang a couple of vets until he found an animal hospital with experience treating “pocket pets,” as Voddy’s kind are known in the biz, and we were told to arrive any time after 3.30pm, when the doctor with expertise treating rodents and reptiles would be in.
We got there at 4pm, having first driven to 9th Street instead of 9th Avenue, to learn that the reptile/rodent man was stuck in traffic. It took an hour for him to arrive during which time a swarm of children crowded round Vodka’s cage and demanded to see him (he was tucked up in a wad of toilet paper trying to pretend he was roaming the Siberian steppes) and played a game of opening and shutting the surgery door over and over. Finally, a family with two sick dwarf hamsters—chocolate colored ones who’d gone off their food—went in to see the doctor. Soon it became apparent that at least one of them was a goner. Well, we couldn’t help but form that impression when the older boy came out of the exam room saying, “He’s going to kill Twinkie. I don’t know why Mom’s crying. Hamsters only cost $3. We can buy more.”
Another hour had passed.
A girl with two bottle-cap sized turtles disappeared into the exam room. Outside, a guy with headphones and a floppy blue sun hat started to dance on the footpath in front of a shiny green pick up truck, admiring his reflection. He really got into it. He had no shame whatsoever. After 10 minutes or so he sat down with a flourish, opened a book and read aloud as if making a speech, say a State of the Union address, to a crowd of thousands. A homeless guy wearing an eye patch and pushing a shopping cart full of plastic bags, and boxes, and goodness knows what, trundled past. He parked his trolley, chatted with the dancer/orator, clapped him on the back and yelled a bit. Pulled out a harmonica and began to play. At which point Tippy Toes Blue Hat began to dance again. I am not making any of this up.
Another hour had passed.
Finally, it was our turn. Vodka was weighed—he is a hefty 49 grams—and examined. The vet pulled off the horrible scab and invited us to touch it. It looked like cheese and felt like that old-fashioned almond icing that ends up on Christmas cakes. He turned the lights off and shone a UV light on Voddy’s tum to check for ringworm, which, he explained, glows apple green. It did. He took a skin scraping and checked the sample for mites under a microscope. All clear. And then he cleaned out the cheesy abscess behind the scab which, it turned out, was like nothing he’d ever seen. It went on and on, so deep that when he reached the end of the cheese he could see through Vodka’s skin to his liver. “You could stick a pencil eraser up there,” he said. “Now you have a little kangaroo hamster.”
Another hour-and-a-half had passed.
So Vodka is fine. He has a big hole in his tummy which I have to keep an eye on in case food and other debris gets stuck up there. I have to clean it out with an ear swab every month or so. And for the next week I have to spread vaginal cream on his chest and under his arms to deal with the itchy ringworm.
As soon as we got home he jumped into his wheel, his favorite spot in the world, and hunkered down for some quiet time. I am willing to bet money he was supersonically screaming at Lime: "They poked a hole in my tummy and now I have to wear lady cream. What the f***!"

Ewww

The sun is shining, there’s a lovely breeze coming through the window, it’s nearly lunchtime, and I am not in the mood for a rant, BUT I am repulsed by news that a woman in Arkansas has just given birth to her 17th baby. I love kids, I want kids, I am looking forward to kids, but this is just not on, people. The world is so overpopulated it’s making the elephants cry, physically this many pregnancies is a burden no woman should bear, surely her older children have had enough of the baby-a-year scenario (who wants to bet Mom and Dad are going to wake up one day soon with a posse of socially deficient little monsters on their hands?), and Mom’s hair? Just horrendous.
But I defer to someone who can outline the situation with far more finesse. San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford wrote this piece in 2005, when Mr and Mrs Arkansas brought baby #16 into the world.

God Does Not Want 16 Kids
Arkansas mom gives birth to a whole freakin' baseball team. How deeply should you cringe?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Who are you to judge? Who are you to say that the more than slightly creepy 39-year-old woman from Arkansas who just gave birth to her 16th child yes that's right 16 kids and try not to cringe in phantom vaginal pain when you say it, who are you to say Michelle Duggar is not more than a little unhinged and sad and lost?
And furthermore, who are you to suggest that her equally troubling husband -- whose name is, of course, Jim Bob and he's hankerin' to be a Republican senator and try not to wince in sociopolitical pain when you say that -- isn't more than a little numb to the real world, and that bringing 16 hungry mewling attention-deprived kids (and she wants more! Yay!) into this exhausted world zips right by "touching" and races right past "disturbing" and lurches its way, heaving and gasping and sweating from the karmic armpits, straight into "Oh my God, what the hell is wrong with you people?"
But that would be, you know, mean. Mean and callous to suggest that this might be the most disquieting photo you see all year, this bizarre Duggar family of 18 spotless white hyperreligious interchangeable people with alarmingly bad hair, the kids ranging in ages from 1 to 17, worse than those nuked Smurfs in that UNICEF commercial and worse than all the horrific rubble in Pakistan and worse than the cluster-bomb nightmare that is Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise having a child as they suck the skin from each other's Scientological faces and even worse than that huge 13-foot python which ate that six-foot alligator and then exploded.
It's wrong to be this judgmental. Wrong to suggest that it is exactly this kind of weird pathological protofamily breeding-happy gluttony that's making the world groan and cry and recoil, contributing to vicious overpopulation rates and unrepentant economic strain and a bitter moral warpage resulting from a massive viral outbreak of homophobic neo-Christians across our troubled and Bush-ravaged land. Or is it?
Is it wrong to notice how all the Duggar kids' names start with the letter J (Jeremiah and Josiah and Jedediah and Jesus, someone please stop them), and that if you study the above photo (or the even more disturbing family Web site) too closely you will become rashy and depressed and you will crave large quantities of alcohol and loud aggressive music to deflect the creeping feeling that this planet is devolving faster than you can suck the contents from a large bong? But I'm not judging.
I have a friend who used to co-babysit (yes, it required two sitters) for a family of 10 kids, and she reports that they were, almost without fail, manic and hyper and bewildered and attention deprived in the worst way, half of them addicted to prescription meds to calm their neglected nerves and the other half bound for years of therapy due to complete loss of having the slightest clue as to who they actually were, lost in the family crowd, just another blank, needy face at the table. Is this the guaranteed affliction for every child of very large families? Of course not. But I'm guessing it's more common than you imagine.
What's more, after the 10th kid popped out, the family doctor essentially prohibited the baby-addicted mother from having any more offspring, considering the pummeling endured by her various matronly systems, and it's actually painful to imagine the logistics, the toll on Michelle Duggar's body, the ravages it has endured to give birth to roughly one child per year for nearly two decades, and you cannot help but wonder about her body and its various biological and sexual ... no, no, it is not for this space to visualize frighteningly capacious vaginal dimensions. It is not for this space to imagine this couple's soggy sexual mutations. We do not have enough wine on hand for that.
Perhaps the point is this: Why does this sort of bizarre hyperbreeding only seem to afflict antiseptic megareligious families from the Midwest? In other words -- assuming Michelle and Jim Bob and their massive brood of cookie-cutter Christian kidbots will all be, as the charming photo suggests, never allowed near a decent pair of designer jeans or a tolerable haircut from a recent decade, and assuming that they will all be tragically encoded with the values of the homophobic asexual Christian right -- where are the forces that shall help neutralize their effect on the culture? Where is the counterbalance, to offset the damage?
Where is, in other words, the funky tattooed intellectual poetess who, along with her genius anarchist husband, is popping out 16 funky progressive intellectually curious fashion-forward pagan offspring to answer the Duggar's squad of über-white future Wal-Mart shoppers? Where is the liberal, spiritualized, pro-sex flip side? Verily I say unto thee, it ain't lookin' good.
Perhaps this the scariest aspect of our squishy birthin' tale: Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation. Is that an oversimplification?
Why does this sort of thoughtfulness seem so far from the norm? Why is having a stadiumful of offspring still seen as some sort of happy joyous thing?
You already know why. It is the Biggest Reason of All. Children are, after all, God's little gifts. Kids are little blessings from the Lord, the Almighty's own screaming spitballs of joy. Hell, Jim Bob said so himself, when asked if the couple would soon be going for a 17th rug rat: "We both just love children and we consider each a blessing from the Lord. I have asked Michelle if she wants more and she said yes, if the Lord wants to give us some she will accept them." This is what he actually said. And God did not strike him dead on the spot.
Let us be clear: I don't care what sort of God you believe in, it's a safe bet that hysterical breeding does not top her list of desirables. God does not want more children per acre than there are ants or mice or garter snakes or repressed pedophilic priests. We already have three billion humans on the planet who subsist on less than two dollars a day. Every other child in the world (one billion of them) lives in abject poverty. We are burning through the planet's resources faster than a Republican can eat an endangered caribou stew. Note to Michelle Duggar: If God wanted you to have a massive pile of children, she'd have given your uterus a hydraulic pump and a revolving door. Stop it now.
Ah, but this is America, yes? People should be allowed to do whatever the hell they want with their families if they can afford it and if it's within the law and so long as they aren't gay or deviant or happily flouting Good Christian Values, right? Shouldn't they? Hell, gay couples still can't openly adopt a baby in most states (they either lie, or one adopts and the other must apply as "co-parent"), but Michelle Duggar can pop out 16 kids and no one says, oh my freaking God, stop it, stop it now, you thoughtless, selfish, baby-drunk people.
No, no one says that. That would be mean.

Sick habit

I have been stalking writers again. Online. They're not necessarily writers I like or even read, but I can't keep away. I keep checking in on this perky young thing called Diana Peterfreund who writes teen novels and ocassionally poses for romance novel covers. She is prolific--three books in about a year-and-a-half--and quite the little marketer. At the moment she is taking part in a challenge to write 70,000 words in something like a month. I am jealous and admiring at the same time although I can't imagine how you could produce 70,000 good words in a month.
I also like to keep tabs on Miss Snark, a publisher who recently stopped blogging but left her archives online, and this literary agent based in little ol' Denver who keeps making big sales. The Jennifer Trio--Weiner, O'Connell and Crusie--are other fave stalkees. They are all chick lit writers I have read at times when I needed a nice, comforting, caramel-choccie kind of literary experience, andf they all have feel-good websites that make you believe they are much like yourself except exponentially more successful.
But theirs are not the sort of books I wish I could write. Mostly I like stuff that makes me feel just a leeetle uncomfortable, like this new short story collection I just finished reading, Twenty Grand by Rebecca Curtis, about misfits and freaks with money woes. Loved it, and in a week or so, when it's had time to settle, I'm going to read it again. I would be stalking Rebecca Curtis, but she doesn't have a website. Yet.

Of science writing, Sinbad and acceptable haircuts

Hey folks, apologies for the long absence—it’s been a bizarre couple of weeks at work. I am not going to rehash it cos I don’t want to give it any more of my energy, so let me tell you about a science writers’ function I went to on Tuesday. I went along to network—the very thought of which makes me snort—and learn a bit about alternative energy. Did you know that the technology exists to shoot small mirrors into orbit which would travel together in a clump and reflect sunlight away from the earth, thereby reducing global warming in specific regions? If China decided tomorrow to blast a bunch of mirrors into space to reduce their trapped emissions, they could do it.
I mostly wanted to meet some science writers who might be interested in writing for the science section I edit. (If anyone had said to me back when I was writing fashion copy—capelets are chicer than ever!— that I would soon be wrassling with stuff like carbon sinks, parasitic bacteria, the mating dance of the lance-tailed manakin, and thermo-organic electricity or whatever it’s called, I would have swallowed my own tongue.) But this is the situation in which I find myself, so gimme your business cards, freelance science writers!
I went along with one of our dear interns, who is a real science writer and a microbiologist to boot, and we had an hilarious time. For starters, the venue is this seedy waterfront bar called Sinbad’s which has nautical rope-trimmed bar stools, baaaad paintings of the bar as viewed from the Bay, and, inexplicably, many hanging pot plants. The food is so typical of crap buffet food that it is actually impressive. I had steak, chewy as dinosaur skin and covered in a congealing paste of canned mushrooms and brown sauce. Accompaniments included limp green beans and stale bread. The coffee was room temperature and there wasn’t enough milk. It was of the most memorable meals of my life. The man sitting next to me, a chemist with a column in some chemistry publication, got very close to my face and sent spittle droplets onto my plate. He was charming, however, and terribly worried for his daughter, who just graduated with a degree in women’s studies.
The speaker was a whiz-bang engineer from Berkeley who is one of the leading lights in the anti-carbon crowd and had an all-too-thorough Power Point presentation on the whole energy crisis—from the Kyoto Protocol to mirrors you can shoot into space. By the time we left I was hopelessly confused and yawning and deeply amused. I am half tempted to join the science writers' group so I have a legitimate reason to return to Sinbad's and watch sleazo businessmen pick up unsuitable women.

BTW: I finally screwed up my courage and got my hair cut today. I have been scared of hairdressers since the incident in February when I ended up with chunky toilet hair. I am still in budget mode, so the notion of paying $100 for a cut—not to mention color, wash, blow dry and service tip—and then loving my hair and getting sucked into paying for said procedure every 12 weeks, well it’s just not something I can consider right now. So, I went to this little place about two blocks from the apartment that Tim frequents. The turnoff for me all these months has been the big sign in the front window: Men, women, children $14. I love a deal but I spent more than that for two drinks at a rooftop bar in the Mission last night. However, things had got so bad on top of my head (I’m pretty sure I overheard the hair above my left ear telling the crown crop it was time to consider mutiny) that I threw caution to the wind and made the acquaintance of a nice Chinese lady named Daisy who sat me down and chatted at me for 45 minutes or so and—hey voila—I have decent hair again. She had an unorthodox approach to layering that made me nervous: pulling random strands of hair above my head and attacking with scissors from all different angles. A couple of times the scissors got stuck in my hair and I thought, uh oh, toilet hairstyle #2, but somehow she pulled it off.

Baby shield

I am intrigued by those new strap-on baby carriers that position the infant facing forwards on their parent's stomach like a shield. The baby's arms and feet dangle in mid-air, the breeze hitting their cheeks and ruffling their peachfuzz hair, while the parents go about their business, often accompanied by a purebred dog. The strap-on families tend to look cheerful and photogenic, like catalogue people. Do the babies ever wonder, just what in the heck am I doing out here in front? Am I supposed to protect this person? Should I hold up my fists? Why doesn't the dog have to dangle like this? Anybody?

It's all about the quality squirrels

I've been working on the Berkeley campus for more than three months and have finally strayed beyond the fringes of my office building by taking an official campus tour. First interesting note: the bright-eyed students who lead the tours have to walk backwards the whole time, so they can maintain eye contact and pepper guests with witty bon mots about the Blues. So I learned a lot of useless trivia, which I love, and got to watch three guys dressed in blue and yellow sportswear trying not to trip over their feet for over an hour. Fab-u-lous.
There was a lot of blah-blah Free Speech Movement, blah-blah biggest university library west of the Mississippi, blah-blah Pac-10, blah-blah Go Bears. And then there was the interesting stuff.
Best trivia snippets:
* The highest point on campus is a belltower; bones belonging to the natural history museum are stored in the tower because it maintains a near-constant temperature.
* The campus squirrels have been voted America's friendliest.
* A fountain on campus memorialises a homeless dog named Ludwig who scraped together a living by begging food from students and loved to play in the water. After his death, mourning students did the right thing and named the fountain for him, thereby claiming another honor for the campus--only American uni campus to have a fountain named for a dog. Go Bears!
* And, best of all, Berkeley has produced 20 living Nobel Prize winners, seven of whom still work on campus. Each of these seven has a car park labeled NL, for Nobel Laureate. I have seen them with my own eyesies. Apparently there have been instances when more than seven of the Nobel guys have been on campus for a function and some have gone without carparks.
While the tour did not have the desired effect, I guess, which was to make me feel misty about my association with the university (Go Bears!) it did make me think about my own alma mater and how badly I blew it. I had the grades to get into Berkeley and lived an hour away, but I chose to go study in Salt Lake City, where it snows and coffee is considered a racy stimulant and if you're not Mormon you're not worth much of anybody's time. Strangest choice of my life. And I don't recall any squirrels on that campus. Certainly not chubby, chattery, elfin comics like the ones at Berkeley.

I could not bring sexy back

My sampling of group exercise classes at my gym continued last night with a humiliating foray into Dance Fusion. This is advertised in the class schedule as a nice primer, appropriate for all skill levels, and less intense than the other dance classes. Lies. Damned lies. What it was was an hour of the most nauseating, cringe-inducing moves from a Britney Spears/Justin Timberlake video repeated over and over and over again. There was the hip grind, the flirty head snap, the hip hop kick, the Flashdance spin, the Michael Jackson Thriller-style groove walking, and the Flashdance super-fast running in place. She's a maniac, maniac on the floor. And she's dancing like she's never danced before. Well, that's for danged sure.
The instructor, as charming and flamboyantly sweaty as you could want, told us to "Have fun with it, ladies. Mix it up" but there was not a lot of joy to be found in that room. It felt like an audition for some terrible reality TV show, and the other dancers were determined to make the cut. They leapt and snapped and kicked their way into a frenzy. I meanwhile, hugged the back wall, half a beat behind the music and on the verge of nervous tears, my teeth drawn back over my lips like a pissy hamster.
And they call this sort of activity healthy.

You don't think it's, uh, you know?

So a weird thing happened on the way back from the movies last night. We went down to the Kabuki Theatre in Japan Town (five minutes from the apartment) to see Once, this cute little Irish film about a Dublin busker who falls for a girl from the Czech Republic who sells roses on the street. It was a lovely wee film; I recommend it.
But that is not the point of this story. The point is that on the way home we turned from Sutter Street into Presidio Street, just near the lot where Muni rests the city buses between shifts, and we passed this pale, long, rumpled lumpy thing lying in the road. It looked exactly like a body. It looked exactly like the body of a homeless person sleeping in a blanket in the middle lane.
"What was that?" I asked.
"I dunno. Whaddya think?" said Tim
"It doesn't look good," I said.
"No. Should we stop?"
"I think so."
"Yeah," said Tim, pulling over and parking.
A lady in a Beemer station wagon pulled up beside us. "Do you think that's, um, you know?" she asked, pointing back at the lump. "It's a bit short," she said, "for, uh, you know. But we should call someone." She pawed through her handbag and patted the passenger seat. "Do you have a phone?" she said. "I can't find mine."
"Have you got your phone on you?" Tim asked, turning towards me, possibly the least likely person in a three-block radius to have a cellphone, given my passionate loathing for them and the alacrity with which I lose mine and let the battery run down.
"Nup."
"I'll go have a look," said Tim, jumping out of the car. He walked back to the lump while the Beemer lady and I looked at each other and made worried faces.
"It looks a bit short for, uh, you know," she repeated.
"Yeah." I craned my neck to see Tim's reaction as he neared the lump. I thought I'd be able to sense if it was, uh, you know. But I couldn't. I twisted in my seat. I didn't think to remove my seat belt. It felt like 10 minutes, but it was probably two. Tim returned.
"Well?" I asked.
"I dunno. I called out, but nothing happened. There's a fire station up there." He pointed past the nose of our car, towards the corner. "I'm going to go tell them."
He took off in the dark; I watched until I couldn't see him any longer.
Two more cars passed the lump, slowed and stopped. Car doors opened. Three people gathered next to the lump. They yelled. They kicked the lump. It bounced into the air. They kicked as a group, three figures kicking in unison, and kicked it right to the curb.
Huh.
Meanwhile, Tim had returned from the fire station and jogged back to where the lump had been, to talk to the kickers. And then I heard a BLOOP emanating from the fire station. I turned and saw a red glow. BLOOP-BLOOP-GRURRRR. And then, like a bad joke, a fire engine eased out of the fire station, lights revolving, siren wailing, and drove a block towards us.
Beemer lady and I looked at each other. "I'm out of here," she said, accelerating towards the stoplight.
Tim and I watched the fire engine come to a stop near the kickers. BLOOP!
"It was a pillow," said Tim. "A big pillow."
"Nooo!" I said.
"Yeah."
And we laughed and laughed.

Dirty mouth

My mouth tastes like a bag of stale potato chips mixed with cigarette butts. I've been sick for the past two days--coughing and sleeping and coughing some more--and have that weird spacey feeling you get when you are sick and think hmm, perhaps I won't be going back to work tomorrow, or next week; perhaps this is just my life now. It wouldn't be so bad, sitting around on the sofa with a liter of ginger ale and the remote control. It's boring and makes you feel about as useful as a lump of cheese that's started to turn, but it's not demanding and there's no commute, so it's not all bad.
Today I read about Nicole Richie's shocking weight loss, and the blonde girl off Grey's Anatomy (which is not a programme I can be bothered with but her new film sounds fun), watched a really good Magnum PI episode in which he reunites a couple of Russian defectors, and compared presenters on two of the shopping channels. I really got into it, actually.
One woman, sadly crippled by her stumpy fingers (if you're going to spend your working life displaying jewellery and facial cleansers on TV, you gotta have long, impressive fingers, I feel), was all about the hard-sell: she waved a sterling and semi-precious gem pendant around for a bit and then slashed the price: "That's $39.99, ladies, no $35.99, that's $34.99...that's $30.00...$29.99...that's an unbelievable value that you just wouldn't find retail. These are going fast. That's $19.99! I don't believe it. That is the cost of the materials alone, that just does not take into consideration the craftsmanship you're looking at here."
The other woman, a groomed Southern lady, sat with her ankles crossed like Jackie O, and concentrated on the different ways you could wear the gold chains she was selling, and let me tell you, you just would not believe how creative you can get when you have to. She was shortening necklaces into chokers and looping them around her wrist multiple times as bracelets, she was working out how you might use this pair of earrings in the workplace or to add some kick to your outfit for a summer BBQ, how this piece might work with gemstones and how this stunner could become your new signature look. "Buy this today and you can enjoy it all summer," she said as she fondled a $440 chain made of large circular links, some highly polished and some textured, all Italian crafted.
I was entranced. It took my mind off the bad taste in my mouth (and the weird white spots). It's days like this that make me wonder if trying to have a career and give a poop about it is a waste of time, because I am just as happy watching people sell jewellery on television. And I don't even buy it.

That's entertainment?

I just got back from the gym all steamed up, not from the cursed elliptical machine, but from the bizarre Dateline MSNBC program I watched while climbing my way to gluteal improvement. It's called To Catch A Predator and I'd heard about it, in the way you hear murmurings about troubling, exploitative television, but I'd never watched it before. I didn't have much choice tonight because the screen attached to my machine was broken--I couldn't change the channel, and I couldn't turn it off, and I couldn't even get rid of the closed captioning. So I watched it, like you watch a snake swallow a mouse on a nature program. Not because you are enjoying it, but because there is something horribly compelling about seeing base instinct at work.
I will spare you the details cos they are just horrendous/absurd (in one case involving Cool Whip, an American whipped cream substitute, and a cat), but here's the basic outline: men were lured to a Florida house to meet with a 14-year-old boy or girl--depending on their preference--they had encountered in an online chat room, for sexual purposes. But ba-ba-ba-boom, they weren't meeting a 14-year-old at all, but some super-tanned blow-dry guy with a camera team.
He met them as they wandered the kitchen/lounge, looking for the child they'd hoped to meet, directed them to sit on a stool at a kitchen breakfast bar on which sat a plate of cookies and a vase of flowers, then interviewed them. At this point they did not know they were being filmed. He asked them if they had ever met children for sex before, and what in the heck did they think they were doing, and did they realise their behavior was unacceptable. And then he revealed his identity, just as two camera men came out of hiding. But that's not all, folks. Then he told them they were free to go--except when they got outside, police literally jumped from the bushes and pushed them to the ground. This was ostensibly for the benefit of concerned parents everywhere.
Now, I am not for a moment defending these men, ranging in age from 20 to 61, gay and straight, married and not, fathers and not. They were there to harm children, no doubt about it. But explain to me the public good that is achieved with this candid camera-style sting? (The men's faces were not obscured, their names were revealed, their personal lives sliced open.)
Result? The men's families are humiliated, their careers potentially destroyed, their anonymity at the supermarket gone. The men are arrested and charged and yes, put out of action for a brief time, but is that enough? Where's the follow-up care/treatment/prevention? I can't imagine Dateline MSNBC feels any responsibility towards these guys and their families. Forgetting that, is it an appropriate role for me, as a television viewer, to judge men whose lives I know nothing about, and who have been coerced into breaking the law by a television network which stands to profit from its trickery? Should that really be what passes for entertainment--and it is presented as entertainment; the news-value window-dressing is fooling no-one.
I try not to get lathered up about social issues just before bed, but I left the gym feeling quite nauseous.

Nasty and kinda nice

I have not been able to stop thinking about this place since I went with Tim a few weeks ago. And even though it's disgusting, I almost want one of these.
I have just learned how to link, and I like it.

Kicking butt

It really is a year for unexpected experiences. I saw my first karate belt exam yesterday, and loved it! I didn't have high hopes, cos it seemed like it would be a long, drawn-out affair (which it was) and the only person I really wanted to see was my 17-year-old American niece, who was going for her black belt. But it was fascinating, watching people who had worked literally years for their five minutes in front of the big judge and either blew it from an overdose of nerves, or triumphed in spite of themselves. The students ranged from adora-tots in too-big suits to reeeally intense guys who, I sensed, might not have had much else going on in their lives--pure speculation, but I had three hours in which to entertain myself until our girl came out. Anyway, she was great: precise, clean movements, and when she got kicked in the stomach in the sparring section of the test, it made her mad enough to get aggressive in a black belt-appropriate way. So she got her belt. It's worth noting that earlier she had sat her SAT exams (for entrance to university) and later was going to her junior prom. She'd gone in for a pedi which she scratched doing kicks etc.
What's the deal with overachieving teens? I admire them--my other nieces, the NZ ones, are similarly confident wee powerhouses--but it sure makes you feel like a potato. I was a supremely unmotivated, lazy, miserable teen. I didn't want to do homework, or play sports, or develop any kind of useful/diverting hobbies. My favorite thing was to sit around with a book--well, that hasn't changed--and my second favorite thing was to make fun of striving girls who had better things to do with their time. I was militantly anti resume-shoring activities like volunteering at old folks' homes, or doing Duke of Edinburgh stages, or getting good at languages or musical instruments. Mostly, I thought the kids who were really into that stuff weren't exactly genuine--that they were ticking boxes that would prove useful later when they were job-hunting, and that their clubbiness was all about networking, which given that I went to boarding school is not actually far from the truth, I'd wager.
Anyway, I'm glad adolescence doesn't last more than seven years cos it's a bitch.
Today has been hot. We packed books, sunscreen, the New York Times, etc and headed for Chrissy Field, where there is a lovely beach, and sat in the sun reading, drinking lots of water, and meeting new dogs. A teeny poodle came up to say hello and her fur felt like cornsilk. I could have popped her in my pocket and run away with her.

Back from the rabbit hole

Here I am. I disappeared down the rabbit hole for a while there. Just finished my first production cycle with the magazine. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are, getting a publication through the birthing process is tough—it takes longer and is much harder than it bloody needs to be. But there you are: it would be silly to complain, wouldn’t it, cos I know just how much worse it could be. We drove past the bookstore last night after a night out—dinner at a Nepalese restaurant and a function at the UC, listening to a four-star general talk about his Cold War tour of duty in Germany. (Are we geek chic, or what?) He was funny—much funnier than I thought four-star generals were allowed to be. Anyway, on our back to San Fran, we passed the bookstore, all lit up like a nuclear power plant, and realized that people would still be in there, ringing up purchases and shoving books in bags, smiling away like third runner-up in Miss Idaho Potatoes, and I just felt sick for them. Probably an over-reaction, but I was tired and had polished off a bottle of Indian beer, then been trapped in a hot auditorium with no air circulation.
We’ve spent the past couple weekends exploring our city. I really liked the Mission, after having discounted it after a tense, rainy day spent there looking for cheap furniture. (We went into a shop with secondhand household stuff and found a homeless man sleeping on one of the sofas, poor sod.) After we’d toured Mission Dolores itself, one of the 30-odd missions that form a spiritual spine up the state, we hit the pavement. Of course, I found jewelry I wanted—rings with vintage buttons as the centerpieces. Adorable. I bought one with a brass bird alighting on a branch. Then we stumbled on a bizarre gothic store selling “artful” taxidermied items. I was enchanted with a standing white mouse to which the artist had added two extra paws, so it looked like that Indian goddess. Bird skeletons were dressed in petticoats and hats and such. A wooden cabinet with many tiny drawers was stocked with oddities such as raccoon penis bones. I hate to think what one does with a raccoon penis bone but I bet it’s interesting. I felt a little ill when we walked out, but if Tim hadn’t been there I would have stayed much longer.
BTW. This morning on my way to the train I saw the guitar-strummin’ country boy with the red mohawk again. I think he’s Australian.

You can't be serious

Walking down Telegraph Ave to the second-hand bookstore today I passed a young blonde woman of apparently robust good health sitting on a corner, wrapped in a blanket. I have a lot of sympathy for homeless people but this girl rubbed me up the wrong way. For one thing, there was no discernible reason for her to be there. I could hear Dad on my shoulder: Why don't you get a job, you lazy pup?The world doesn't owe you a living, young lady. For another, as I passed she said, "Gimme some money." As bald as that.