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.

Deviled eggs and deviled bus drivers

I have mentioned before that the people in our apartment building are not very friendly, except our lovely landlady and a lovely law lecturer who moved in after us. Well, the two of them invited the whole building to drinks tonight and we were the only ones who turned up--which was fine cos we've had drinks with them on the deck out back before and we don't need the others, but really, isn't that just rude? Our landlady made deviled eggs!
Apparently one guy even leaned out of his window to ask our landlady something about his fly screen or something and then said, sorry, couldn't linger, he had to go "get some exercise."
I was late cos of my commute. I got the jerkwad bus driver with the gold bracelets who goes so fast people beg him to take his foot off. After a ride on his bus I always feel as if my teeth are loose.

Naked

Hmmm. So it turns out people other than my friends and family are actually reading this thing, which makes me feel rather exposed—ridiculous, I know, given that this is a blog and the whole point is that other people should be able to read it. Tee hee. But these last few months, I really have felt that this was like a souped up postcard. We hung out with the sea lions at Fisherman’s Wharf, wish you were here, etc. My first indication that strangers were frequenting the blog was when some guy left a comment advertising his book. I thought that was pretty cheeky but, hey, writers have to market themselves these days, so fair play to him. Then, I had my YA author visit. (See Ha! I deserved that for further information). Now, through secret squirrelly computer detective work, I know that I have at least once had a reader in Mexico. Exciting, no? Also, I seem to have a small following in New Jersey.

Burned potstickers and peanut butter

Tim is at class tonight so I had a dumb dinner. He really is a most excellent husband--he rang when I was on the bus to tell me how to cook frozen potstickers: throw them straight in a pan of hot oil, brown for three minutes or so, add boiling water to the pan (almost enough to cover), cook for a further five minutes, and you're done. Except I burned them, the fire alarm went off, I had to stand in the foyer fanning the smoke detector with my blazer, the pan boiled dry, I spilled half the potsticker sauce on the kitchen bench, and after all that I was still hungry. At which point I improvised with dessert: chocolate chip cookies smeared in peanut butter.
Another weird day at work today although, unlike most, it ended with champagne. One of the girls at work is getting married, hence the champagne. I edited stories about a potential biological control for fruit flies, a woman who sells accessories made from antique brocade, and an artificial nose that, when tested in Berkeley, sniffed out cocaine, meths and pot. Hence the weirdness.

Ha! I deserved that

Apologies to Diana Peterfreund, who took a peek at SanFrantastic. (BTW, this is my first celebrity visit. If I mention Ryan Phillippe, will he turn up here too? Please?) Turns out the writing challenge she is taking part in is 70 days, not 70k words. And she only writes a book a year... Which still makes me feel like a lazy bum.

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.

The surreal world

There’s a woman on television shouting at a group of investment advisors. “What are the financials?” she shrieks. “It’s been a sharp week for the market. Is it still possible to invest in stocks without losing money?” Given that the men are portfolio managers, it seems rather a waste of time.
She is one of CNN’s many Sexy Presenters, the ones who wear heavy Sophia Loren-style eyeliner, spill cleavage, and look as if they are about to bite your shoulder. When I lived in the US in the early 90s the CNN ladies were iron maidens, wrapped tight as bandages in jewel-toned blazers (red! green! royal blue!), their earlobes stretched by the weight of their shield-like gold clip-on earrings. They gave the impression that they were always tired, that after they deconstructed Clinton’s first 100 days in office they were off to a kindergarten open house, and then a cocktail party at the hubby’s office. I’m not for a moment suggesting that you can’t be both attractive and authoritative but I felt a fondness for the battle-mommies that I don’t feel for these lush chicks who waft across the screen in Manolo Blahniks and bed hair.

***

It was a bad morning in the Montgomery BART station on Friday. The man with no legs who usually panhandles up on the street corner had taken the elevator down into the station and positioned his wheelchair right by the exit, so commuters had to pass his outstretched hand to get to work. The drunk guy who is usually asleep on the tiled floor, a brown-bagged bottle in hand, had propped himself up against the wall and was gazing into the middle distance. I can’t figure out how old he is—his hair is mostly grey, he’s lost a lot of teeth, his skin is red and leathery, and his circulation looks very poor indeed given his purple feet, but he could be in his late 40s. The punk cowboy—cherry red mohawk, motorcycle boots, studded leather pants, studded leather vest, fleshy bare arms—who often performs in my station of a morning stood across from the drunk guy strumming his guitar and singing Johnny Cash. “Because you’re mine, I walk the line...” It was a surreal scene, and hard to dismiss.

***

Craigslist has been good to us. For those of you who are unfamiliar, it’s like a giant newspaper classifieds section, except it’s online, free, and offers a ton more stuff. We found our apartment on Craigslist, I got my job through Craigslist, and now we’ve made our first purchase through Craigslist. Craig, by the way, is a San Francisco guy who made millions when he sold his site, and still manages it. There are hundreds of Craigs in the Bay Area and Silicon Valley. It makes you sick.
Anyhoo, Crowded House is playing in Oakland at the end of next month and Tim was determined to go. I too was keen, but felt a bit conflicted about it because I had been given the job of procuring tickets to their earlier concert at a winery down south and…didn’t. Was in dog box for several days. But I redeemed myself by stumbling on the aforementioned tickets on Craigslist. I emailed the seller and sent my cell number, which made me feel all nervous cos what if the seller was a psychopath, or direct marketer or something? Didn’t hear a peep for days and thought the tickets must be gone and I would have to move to the dog box permanently. But, luck shone on me yesterday, cos the seller, a softspoken man named Peter, rang and said the tickets were still available. I could have them but would need to drive to a supermarket in San Ramon (40 minutes away) to get them because he didn’t want to send them through the mail and would not accept a cheque from me. Pain in the butt. However, we were already at SFO dropping off our friend Steve (Hi Yvette!) so figured we may as well take a tiki tour of the East Bay and get tickets at the same time. We arrived, cash in hand, at Nob Hill Foods in San Ramon—hot as Hades and a nasty shock after the mild cool in SF—and met a boy-man holding a white envelope. It was Peter, not scary or weird at all. He’d won the tickets in a radio competition and his good fortune became our good fortune: he gave us the tickets for $50 a pop, significantly less than the going rate. Thank you, Craig.