Faces of Death

I recently was following some links around and found myself in a most unlikely place: it all started innocently when my coworker and I were talking about the literary women whom Ernest Hemingway might have been friends with and who may have had an effect on his affectionate incomprehension of the female sex, the opinion of Hemingway's female characters held by modern feminists, and how the feminists who were perhaps his influences might have reacted to his female characters (that's the nice thing about working with teachers, sometimes you get into these really great academic discussions at work); in the course of the discussion I was talking about a woman writer who I think was friends with Hemingway, was certainly a force in the expatriate literary salons of 1930s Paris, and whose rather grim and humorless lesbian novel I had read in two separate classes in one semester ("Queer Love in Literature" and "The Modern British Novel"), but whose name I couldn't remember to save my life; so hunting up "literature paris 30s queer" at Google, I found my way to this odd Manitoban directory of queer people in history; I had to look around a good deal on the page I found before I came across the name Djuna Barnes, which settled my curiosity about the name I had forgotten, but the conversation was pretty much over with already and it didn't matter except to get the name out of my head; while poking around at the Canadian website (surprised somewhat by the sheer number of names, though many people were included on the most specious of evidence), I saw a name that rang a bell, John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer; I had no idea Gacy was gay (or even homosexual), so I followed a link in the entry to this quite macabre site; and once there, I was immediately absorbed in the accounts of various homosexual serial killers.



I was rather surprised to find these accounts so riveting. Under ordinary circumstances, I don't care for blood and gore, murder and mayhem... I don't read horror novels much, seldom ever see horror movies, and am no fan of violence in art or music. In fact, I tend to become unduly upset when, in the course of the film or book or whatever, a young person is killed — especially if the person is beautiful, or if the death was particularly painful or terrifying to the victim.



On the other hand, though I tend to shy away from horror fiction, I have a fascination for vampires, especially the beautiful and elegant Anne Rice variety. There's a sexual intimacy involved with vampiric killing, a sensuality and carnal ecstasy to the death, a kind of love for the victim, which I think is what makes them alluring as something other than just a killer. Characters like Gilles de Rais (of whom I first read in Quentin Crisp's How to Have a Lifestyle, in which the Baron de Rais was held up as an example of a stylish murderer) and John Wayne Gacy killed in a distinctly erotic manner, and such stories fascinate and repel me at once. Besides, the sex-and-death theme are almost universally fascinating (for reasons that I personally don't understand, but there are psychological studies that show the two equate almost automatically in the human mind... something I shall have to study one of these days).



But I think, in this particular case, it is the clinical tone of the true-crime report that makes these accounts easier to handle. The focus is more on what makes a killer kill, and how he is caught, rather than the effect on the victims, the terror inspired and the horrors endured. The victims were not ignored, of course, but I didn't find myself dwelling on them until I started encountering photographs in the articles, and by then it was the trail to justice that captured my imagination.



It baffled me that these men could go on killing and killing without getting caught. Granted, police method and forensic science have come a long way in recent years, and in the past it was often only a blatant piece of chance idiocy on the part of the killer that would bring him down (such as Randy Kraft, who was pulled over for drunk driving, with a corpse and a puddle of blood in the cab of his truck). But so much of the time they had chosen their victim pools well — several killers focused on homosexual loners, others preyed on transient types like sailors and truckers and runaways. If there were no bodies lying about, the police usually assumed that the young men just up and left for parts unknown, as young men tend to do, especially if they're homosexual.



The thing I'm finding, though, as I read these horrific accounts, and even more when I encountered actual post-mortem crime-scene photgraphs (nothing too graphic, but you could see that the boys were dead) dotted about among live photographs of the victims, is that rather than sickening me, they make me appreciate life so much more. When I think of how easy it is to kill someone, rather than being disgusted or appalled, I instead start thinking what a marvel the human body is, with one thing connected to another thing, and all the sensations and textures, pleasure and pain, and the whole miraculous mechanism poised in this precarious balance.



It also puts me in mind of an idea that I had once, quite a while ago, that it's the very ephemeral nature of living beauty that attracts us... the beauty of something that will grow old and die, or die at the height of its beauty, is so much more moving and fascinating than the beauty of something permanent and durable. It's why the young are more beautiful than the old, the living more beautiful than the inanimate — a beautiful man is more beautiful than a beautiful statue; a beautiful woman is more beautiful than a beautiful painting; a beautiful flower is more beautiful than a beautiful jewel, and a beautiful sunset is more beautiful than a beautiful mountain.



However, though it is the death that makes the beauty greater, it seems a terrible crime to end the beauty wilfully. Wasteful and awful and vicious to deprive the world of any of its beauty. And I find it odd, though not inexplicable, that my appreciation of beauty seems to have been enhanced by detailed accounts of such wanton destruction of that same beauty.



But now I think of it, one of the great draws of murder-mystery fiction is that it gives one a sense of justice and order... for although murder and mayhem, destruction and evil abound in such stories, there is always a detective who solves the mystery and brings the malefactor to justice. The horror of the killing is tempered and redeemed by the climax of desirable comeuppance. It gives one a sense that all is right with the world when an evil person is caught, when the forces of right track them down and punish them. It's all very satisfying, in its way.



Still, aside from that benefit, I am still repelled by the gruesomeness of these stories I've been drawn into. I feel this great need to read or see something pretty and happy, where nobody dies and everything turns out well at the end. Something Disney, perhaps, where only the wicked get killed and even then it's off-screen and quite bloodless; or a nice romance or comic novel with plenty of laughs and no tears at all. Any suggestions?

Precipice Bayberry September

Not to mention arsenide, constrain, psychoanalysis, choral, foxhole, bare, hypothalamus, circulant, brittle, Angeles, charity, wind, Margery, librate, dialect, empty, obsolescent, humble, coinage, temple, cormorant, frown, admixture, centrifugal, depute, christen, core, cationic, ostracism, Carroll, Aubrey, executive, bisexual, drunk, inhibitor, culvert, Bonaventure, lease, hale, nervous, aristocrat, bestseller, clot, fuselage, pleasure, salivate, volunteer, joke, Lowell, mastery, ancestral, bystander, bracket, efferent, sidle, accompany, credo, aurora, sprang, businessmen, circuitry, eclogue, hum, Taft, whup, snigger, Birmingham, fungi, dichloride, cornmeal, alleyway, Arlen, urbane, bosonic, depredate, lighthearted, stone, wolves, alike, cicada, infrared, hexameter, Parr, inveigle, grillwork, parachute, checkerboard, combinator, clamber, portent, and ringlet. So there!



I don't know why, but I get the biggest kick out of these seemingly-random words in spam emails. I don't understand the purpose of all the words and names, but at least everything in this spam is spelled correctly (though I had to add punctuation and capitals), so unlike the usual run of spam. Some of the combinations spark the imagination, as well, such as "ancestral bystander" or "grillwork parachute" or "bestseller clot." Like the names of indie bands: Live at the Warfield, Choral Foxhole opens for Eclogue Hum and Infrared Hexameter!



But aside from the entertainment of random word generation, I have often wondered why people bother with spam. I understand that it costs absolutely nothing to generate and is therefore an economically attractive advertisement; but I wonder, what is the rate of return for this form of sales pitch? In my experience, spam and telemarketing are so universally reviled that it is difficult to imagine the target audience that actually responds positively to such techniques. What, I wonder, is the percentage of recipients who click on these links and graphics saying "Oh, yes, I do believe I can add inches to my penis with a pill (even though it's physically impossible to do such a thing, unless you taped the pill bottle to the end of your penis, your size is as immutable and hereditary as the shapes of your bones and the placement of your hair follicles)," or "Why, I would simply love to send all of my bank-account routing information to some anonymous person claiming to be the relative of a deposed African despot so as to help him launder his embezzled funds!" or "By jiminy, I really must see Paris Hilton having sex with a herd of goats!"



Of course, I can imagine people being interested in buying prescription drugs without a prescription, but I wonder at their naïveté in thinking that the licensing-mad US Government would allow a legitimate company to sell prescription medication without a prescription, and that the only way they'd get away with it is to offer placebos with fancy names. And do people really believe that the powerful cable companies would actually allow the sale of a mechanism that unscrambles pay channels? Do they not realize that the media industry controls the government? It's one thing to tap into physical cables, with the help of a disgruntled or greedy cable-installer, Comcast and AT&T can't guard every hub and employee, but I doubt very seriously if anybody could get away with manufacturing and selling these gizmos in public... unless, of course, they didn't work.



Well, I suppose hope springs eternal, and all that. And I actually do know people who are attracted to doing things on the sly, getting around Big Business by hook or by crook, involving themselves in an amazing amount of labor to avoid paying a few dollars into The System. And then there are people who believe you can get stuff at the Dollar Store that is just like the stuff you could get at Sak's, who think that the only difference between brand names and generics is the packaging, who believe that with enough persistence you really can buy unexpected antiques and real jewelry and original paintings at garage sales for reproduction prices.



But then, you know, people like that are likely to sign up for things; wouldn't it be more efficient to only spam the people who want the bargains and the go-arounds and the cheats? I know my sister is always signing up for coupon programs and "get such-and-such for free" gimmicks and stuff like that, she's a total easy mark. But not I. When I was five years old, my Grandpa Manners taught me something that I never forgot: There's No Such Thing As "Free."



When I was little, one of my favorite pastimes was going through the car wash... it was so much fun, back in the days when you could still sit in the car while it was going through the wash, safe and snug inside as the windows were bombarded by hot suds and hot water and hot wax and great cylindrical brushes and those cool moppy-curtainy things. One day we were at the gas station, where I read the sign over the pumps that said "Free Car Wash," and started pestering Grandpa to go through the wash, even though the car was quite clean, just because it was free.



But he explained to me that it was only free if you got a fill-up at the full-service pump (the fine print), and so you would end up paying at least the same amount of money in the difference between the self-serve price and the full-serve price while filling his twenty-gallon Chrysler tank: the purpose of the free car wash was to get you to spend more money on gas. He even wrote it out for me on a piece of paper, there would be a difference of four dollars and some-odd cents between the gas prices, and the car-wash by itself was only three-fifty (this must have been, what, 1972? Now a car-wash is twenty bucks at least, and don't even think you'll get it for free with any fill-up... you can't even get it for free with a complete lube and fluid change).



For some reason, that moment and the explanation really took root in my mind (I even remember which gas-station it was, the Shell on Piedmont and Pleasant Valley, it's still there), and I have viewed the word "free" with suspicion ever since. When someone says "free" to me, my first question is "what's in it for them?" And the answer is usually pretty close to the surface, if only you look.



Like those "eleven CDs for a penny" programs, where after you get the first set of CDs you are sent one or two wildly overpriced CDs that you don't really want (a dollar or two over general retail, and then with shipping and handling added on... note that it's always "shipping and handling," which is more than the mere postage) every month for the rest of your freaking life, and it's harder to cancel your subscription than to legally change your gender. By the time you cancelled your subscription, you've spent more on the CDs, including the eleven-for-a-penny ones, than you would have spent on the whole lot at Tower.



They do the same thing with book clubs, and seed-and-bulb clubs, and then there's the Gevalia coffee club where you get a free coffee-maker (which they claim is comparable to a $50 Braun but is really closer to a $15 Oster, though it at least comes in a lovely shade of green) and then you pay for a pound of not-very-good coffee every week at Starbuck's prices (plus "shipping and handling" of course) for ever and ever.



On the other hand, there is this line between gullibility and optimism. My very dear friend Dalton sent me an email some weeks ago about a freebie program that only asks you to sign up some of your friends in order to receive free movie tickets. I have been considering it, since for every person you get to join you receive a pair of movie tickets to any movie you like... the cost seems less than the reward; and Dalton's not stupid, or even gullible (though, I must incidentally point out, he used to have a lovely green Gevalia coffee pot), he just prefers to trust people until forced to not trust them, to initially assume that people have good intentions, to give the benefit of the doubt — where I tend to go in the other direction: the moment I read the program's webpage, my first instantly-wary question was, "what will they do to us once we've joined?" Spam us to death? Call us up on the phone and ask us to buy stuff? Try to get us to sign up for more things, like term life insurance and time-share presentations and entertainment coupons? Use us in some sort of alien lab experiment? The "get a friend to join" thing always sounds like a pyramid scheme, and is even what kept me from joining Friendster for a long time. I am suspicious, very suspicious.



So, much as I respect Dalton's optimism and good instincts, I will wait a while to join until I feel fairly certain that the hidden costs of these free movie tickets aren't more expensive than the tickets would have been at retail (with snacks). Maybe all they want to do is work up a focus-group of people who like seeing movies in theatres. Or maybe they want to encourage people to go to theatres so as to get them into the theatre-going habit (like drug-dealers do... the first high is always free). But my Grandpa's voice echoes in my mind thirty years later, "There's no such thing as free!"



Captialist corporations are fundamentally immoral creatures, much like wild animals, intent only on growth and propagation without any realistic limitations (being owned by people who think a twenty-percent return on capital is a reasonable expectation), barely constrained by industrial regulation, so I am very careful about placing my trust in them.



On the other hand, you can go too far in the not-trusting-Big-Business thing. For example, you really have to place a certain amount of trust in your banking institution and the billing centers of your various utilities and services. Caroline has absolutely no trust whatever and always pays all of her bills in person, with money-orders, retaining names and receipts for fear that some random employee will screw up her account or steal her checking-account information (though, interestingly, she loves free and will go miles out of her way to obtain objects she doesn't really want just because they're being given away); I on the other hand let my service-providers have direct billing access to my checking account because not having to remember to pay bills is a huge benefit in my life, one I am willing to pay for, at the cost of risking mistakes.



Besides, my giant-corporation bank has always been very trustworthy, every time there has been a mistake or a problem they have rectified the situation with courtesy and speed. But then, my bank makes a good deal of money off me, I think last year I paid over two hundred dollars in finance charges for account fees and transfers and overdrafts. Ain't nothing for free.



But I am always willing to pay a fair price for a good product. And while I love a bargain, I never really think that I'm paying considerably less for something than it's worth... if I am willing to pay more than I'm charged, and if the seller wanted to get more for it, he or she would. Nobody sells something for less than they paid, unless they are getting a substantial tax-loss credit for it. And if a vendor can afford to sell something for seventy-five percent off, then the person who bought it at full price must have been willing to exchange that extra money for the goods or services... if not, they're getting ripped off and have only themselves to blame.



I would certainly resent my bank fees if my bank didn't do exactly what I want and offer exactly the services I need. I know I resent the hell out of the DMV for making me pay fees for something I don't want... I mean, why would I cough up annual registration fees to pay the salaries of CHiPs who pull me over and then charge me more money in the speeding ticket? And I resent state and federal taxes to a certain extent, as well, paying for government expenditures of which I do not approve. But the cost of avoiding these expenses is potentially much higher than the cost of complying. The System is a rushing rocky river, and it never pays to row against the current... your choices are to get off to the side bank (where the bears and ticks can get you) or just steer down the middle.



My metaphors are becoming a little too mixed, perhaps because I have been jotting in this entry for just a bit too long... in my usual fashion I started writing it this morning before leaving the house and have been returning to it in jabs and starts all day in between work tasks. As a result, I have quite forgotten what I started off to talk about, having meandered down a stream of consciousness to a rather unlikely and unexpected destination. A good writer always knows where to end a piece of writing. But I'll just stop here because it's 6 p.m. and time to go home.



Rum, nonetheless, exhibitor, stile, endurance, Minsky, messenger, medlar, Costa, brandywine, threadbare, ass, McCracken, abutted, cinema, pleasure, demarcate, balloon, addition, antique, deliberate, inquire, econometrica, repairman, lens, offspring, diagnosable, Uniroyal, ammonium, royalty, inhospitable, diode, fray, ordinate, inaccuracy, Morrison, fibration, arrest, bounce, gunshot, dental, melon, bobble, dapple, dam, explicable, bindery, splice, platoon, godlike, lithe, elephantine, empiric, joystick, misogyny, fiasco, Fayetteville, anamorphic, diffusive, Valois, backside, cowherd, catechism, considerate, ruinous, pontific, beauty, arsenal, mayhem, denotative, Acapulco, asteroidal, bran, compunction, kinematic, assemblage, cornet, mulligatawny, torrid, demiscible, prosthetic.



Bye!

Oh, Please, No!

It's back to work today, and I'm not loving it. The first thing on my desk today, after deleting the mountains of spam (144 pieces over two weeks) and the answering-machine blanks (why don't people hang up as soon as they hear it's a recording, instead of waiting for the beep and then hanging up?) is all the dross and leavings of last year's mad dash out of the office. Bills, mostly. I had intended to come into the office on the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas to do those, but you'll remember I had that nasty cold as well as Christmas itself to deal with, so I let them slide.



It's such a simple task, too... just put the checks in the envelopes, attach the check-stubs to the invoices, mail the former and file the latter. But then there're the hours of resentment over how this isn't actually my job, it's actually someone else's job for which he is getting paid and I am not, and resentments always slow me down. And then while I was sorting the mail I found a letter explaining that there is a flawed formula in my per capita report spreadsheet and we owe the national affiliate for three months of underpaid dues (not a lot, but fractions of cents add up after a while).



And of course the office has been closed up for two weeks, so the carpet fumes have been building and the place is just a trifle smelly... and it's much too cold to open the windows. Though I must say it was a pleasant feeling to arrive in such a tidy office after the vagaries of home (I haven't cleaned diddly-squat in my house, those damned children kept getting in the way... and just when I get rid of the children I have to go back to the office, it's not fair!) Plus I get to start a new Daily Log notebook, starting off with a clean slate, tabula rasa as it were. If only I could close the old Daily Log and shove it in a drawer somewhere with all its unfinished tasks magically forgiven or obsolated.



But okay, do the bills and file them... done. Go get a bear-claw and coffee and ogle at the pretty boy at the counter (I finally found out his name's Ryan, I'd been calling him Pirate Boy for reasons that shall remain obscure because it's too long a story to put in parentheses), send some faxes, sort some mail, and voilà here comes Mr. Boss Man! Whom I haven't seen in a month, he started winter break early to attend his daughter's wedding in Bermuda (but he still called us every day on his cell-phone, drat this modern technology). And who first thing asks me to write out a full description of what the bookkeeper is supposed to do (like paying the damned bills) so he can make him do it. Ask and you shall receive, whine and get your own way. It makes me feel all better, and vindicates my coming in at ten a.m. (completely unrelated, but still...)



So now my old log is closed and stashed on a shelf (it can't go too far away, I'll need to refer to it) and my fresh new log is opened here with a fresh new cup of coffee and a nice clean desk... and now I have nothing pressing to do. Starting back to work in the new year is always like this, I get so accustomed to working on immediate projects under great pressure at the end of one semester, and then it all suddenly melts away before the beginning of the next. This is the time to undertake those time-consuming projects that I never can manage to do when there are so many other things interrupting me, like getting my filing done and updating databases and what-have-you; but it's so hard to motivate yourself when you're not actually putting out fires.



Oh, well, no need to start pressuring myself to do a lot of work on the first day back. It'll be quiet like this for the rest of the week, most of our members will stay away until the 14th, when the students come back. There's plenty of time to file and update and tidy.



In the meantime, I was trying to think of something cultural or literary or otherwise of general interest to talk about (my work isn't that interesting to me, so it must be boring you to tears). I haven't been reading anything new lately (grazing lightly through Nancy Mitford and Quentin Crisp just to pass the time), haven't seen a new film in a while (or even a new-to-me old video), and television has been living up to its reputation as an electronic wasteland.



The Simpsons last night was funny, in a way, at least I was amused by the anti-children sentiments (so timely), but I didn't sit and watch the whole thing. I was just too thrilled to have the living room back, I guess, without Jessie and Alex planted on the Disney Channel and scattering their stuff all over the place and arguing with each other, so I spent the whole evening surfing blissfully between channels, stopping for The Simpsons but mostly dancing about from The Forsyte Saga on PBS (such handsome men) to platinum-clad diamonique jewelry on QVC (ridiculously high prices, and what is "diamonique" anyway?) to Jackass on MTV (I love watching half-naked straight-boys injuring themselves) to Samurai Jack on Cartoon Network (dashing animation and offbeat humor, not to mention Mako's voice) to The Frighteners on SciFi (I had no idea what it was about, but kept trying to figure it out anyway, because murderous ghosts and Michael J. Fox just didn't seem to go together), and everything in between.



One of these days, I am going to sit down and watch The Forsyte Saga from the beginning. I keep falling into the middle of it and can't figure out what the hell is going on and how these people are all related to each other. I suppose I could read the book, which I bought for Grandmother when she watched the series, but I think I taped it then, when it was first aired, I should see if I can find the cassettes. I love Damian Lewis, he has such a fascinating face, especially in the tight-mouthed, slick-haired characterization he brings to the role of Soames Forsyte; and then Ioan Gruffudd is no slouch, either, all that ever-so-sexy Welsh goodness, I loved him in Horatio Hornblower (again with the seafaring fantasies, and I'm not alone, either... ooh, look, fan fiction!) and in Wilde (nude scene!) and in the risible 102 Dalmations (where even his beauty was eclipsed by Cruella's amazing costumes); and then there was Gina McKee (sorry, no good weblinks) who played Irene, such a beautiful woman, so unusual-looking, delicate yet durable, I could just watch her walking around doing nothing — and then of course it's a period film, with all the fabulous costumes and opulent sets and other costly whatnots that I love so.



It occurs to me that there should be a whole section at the video stores for Period Films. I find those tend to be my favorites, whether they're comedies or dramas or thrillers. I just love anything with lavish costumes and sets and all that stuff from other eras. Especially the eighteenth century, with all the lace and satin and high-heeled shoes and wigs and paint on the menfolk, and twice as much on their women, and those vast overdecorated rooms, the horses and carriages, the decadence of it all. Or England in the thirties, that's always fun, with the Moderne fashions juxtaposed against the Augustan architecture. The baroque periods of the sixteenth as well as the nineteenth centuries, with all that extra fabric and wood all over the place. Films about ancient Greece and Rome always cheat the costumes, the skirts are usually too long and the men all wear anachronistic underpants, but I still watch them.



We were talking the other day, a group of us at dinner, about the feeling that one should have been born in another time. So many of my friends feel like anachronisms in their own time; I know I do. But as we sat talking about all the historical periods that would have been nice to live in, we had to agree on the caveat that we'd need to be rich in those periods. The lives of the middle and lower classes were just too dreary in those past times, never before have those classes enjoyed the luxury and hygiene and freedom that we require today.



But really, with sufficient money, this era would be quite as comfortable and elegant as any other. With enough wealth you could surround yourself with period rooms and wear period costumes and ride period transportation to your sick little heart's content. I think the whole point of the modern era is that all the best things of all the past eras are still with us, still valued... even more valued. In other times, the old was routinely thrown out for the new, antiques weren't of any value until the civilizations that made them were dead and gone at least five hundred years; but our age is one where nostalgia and art-history are practically religions. And without modern inventions like film and television, we wouldn't have those past eras to look at, even... we wouldn't know what we'd missed.



Besides, there is freedom in the modern age that we didn't have in the 'Thirties or the Renaissance or any other time since Christianity and Islam spread their grim claws over the Western world. At no other time since the Fall of Rome could homosexuals be legally open about themselves and their love-lives (and there were times in the Roman days when it wasn't allowed, either). And if you ask me, velvet doublets and powdered wigs would no fit compensation for the open availability of love from another man.



Freedom and education are definitely worth the gracelessness of our modern art and architecture. And let's not forget modern health care, dentistry, exercise, nutrition, and media... they may be uncontrollable monsters sometimes, as problematic as plagues and popes have been in the past(and we still have those), but I'd hate to have to live without them entirely.



Well, I suppose I've babbled on long enough and wasted enough company time. I'm going to go do some filing for a while, then eat lunch and read some Horatio Hornblower fan-fiction. There's something about sailing-ships full of men, privateers and explorers and kidnapped cabin-boys, buggery on the high seas, Herman Melville and The Pirates of the Caribbean, open shirts and knee-boots and long hair and tight pants, the interplay of civilization and barbarism encapsulated on a wooden vessel and surrounded by danger and the unknown... it really sparks my imagination.

What's It All About, Elmo?

I don't get Elmo... what's with the high-pitched freak voice? Why do children relate to that? I remember watching Sesame Street as a kid and feeling lulled and comforted by PBS children's programming, where everyone talked slowly and distinctly and kindly to each other. I lived for Mister Rogers, he was so calm and quiet and kind. And then Big Bird and Snuffleupagus were my favorite characters on Sesame Street, you could fall asleep to their voices.



But now Sesame Street is just as shrill and enervating as The Electric Company was, with Rita Moreno and Morgan Freeman screaming across the stage every five minutes. And apparently every male creature has a female counterpart now, either a wife or a girlfriend or a sister or a mother, when in the olden days of my childhood almost all the puppets were comfortingly male or neuter. The whole world's going to hell in a handbasket, I tells ye.



The funny thing is, none of the children I know watch Sesame Street, ever. My little cousin Alex has the Hokey Pokey Elmo, which "Santa" brought him for Christmas, and he plays with it all the time (that voice — "oopsie, I fell down!" — it's driving me mad), as well as every other retail incarnation of the shreiking red monster; but he and his sister Jessie spend the entire day watching Disney Channel and Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon (channels 55, 54, and 53 respectively). They never, ever watch PBS. They can't even be bothered with Discovery Channel or the Learning Channel or any of the seventy other channels on Comcast Cable Oakland. Jessie turns to the Lifetime Network at prescribed times of day to catch The Golden Girls and The Nanny (though I can't imagine why, she's too young to catch two-thirds of the jokes), and sometimes they come in here and play The Sims on my computer, but otherwise they're glued to those three children's channels sixteen hours a day... none of which offers a single drop of educational value (actually, Nickelodeon and Disney do offer educational programming, early in the morning, but that's when Jessie switches over to Lifetime).



As a result, they are both functionally illiterate and yet quite depressingly histrionic in their speech and mannerisms. Alex is six years old and can barely read a kid's menu, but he can swivel his head and roll his eyes just like all the slapworthy brats on That's So Raven (okay, that's pretty cute, but still). Jessie has perfect recall of every episode of Sister Sister and has memorized the rotation so she never misses the episode where Tia (or is it Tamara? it really doesn't pay to care) sings "Stormy Weather," but doesn't know her own mailing address or telephone number.



It will be interesting to see what fruit this will bear when the children become adults. I mean, all the educational programming that was shoved down my generation's throats from cradle to puberty doesn't seem to have engendered a super-race of happy intellects... mostly we're all too smart for our own good and it leaves us cynical and dissatisfied with life (and unable to remember anything unless it's set to music, à la Schoolhouse Rock and Time for Timer).



The generation of my parents were a generation of people disappointed to discover that there's no such thing as the families they were brought up to believe in by Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best and Ozzie and Harriet; the programming that was meant to entertain as well as instill specific moral values created a whole Baby-Boomer generation of dissatisfaction and rebellion. Maybe this coming generation of Disney-programmed automatons will be more focused and productive and content than we poor Baby-Boomers and Gen-X-ers seem to have turned out, programmed as they are not for morals or intelligence but merely consumerism.



On the other hand, with today's generation of children I have a rather skewed sample available to me... the offspring of single mothers who shouldn't have been given custody of a houseplant, much less a child. There is another type of tot that is somewhat hidden from my view, the home-schooled or private-schooled children of dedicated (perhaps even overly-so) parents who aren't allowed to watch television or who are directed with the modern equivalent of the educational television I was brought up on, like Reading Rainbow, or Veggie Tales which apparently teach nutrition as well as Bible stories, or Blue's Clues, none of which any child of my acquaintance would be caught dead watching.



I know that out there in the great world there are children whose parents take parenting very seriously, taking classes and an actual interest in the well-being and proper training of said children, who are't allowed to eat refined sugar and processed foods, who are disciplined according to the latest in psychological methods. My more distant cousins, I've heard, are like that, and elsewhere in my yuppified neighborhood are children who spend every waking moment being taught something by their au-pairs and pre-school teachers and home-schooling moms and carefully limited television exposure and supervised play-dates and so on and so forth.



Those children are even more frightening to me than the sugar-bombed illiterates in my family. Perhaps they'll be the ones telling the Disney-addicted kids what to do, the new aristocracy of the coming century, set apart and empowered by their organically-fed bodies and strange ability to think original thoughts that aren't based on an old episode of Lizzie Maguire and to survive for more than twenty minutes without electricity. It boggles my mind to think about it.



But then, I am somewhat detached from the question, since none of these children are mine. The benefit of childlessness is a fascination with what might happen to the entire world twenty years from now, rather than what will happen to a particular individual twenty years from now. While I do of course care how my niece and nephew and cousins and what-nots will fare in the coming years, it's really more of an intellectual question than it is for their parents, who have a personal stake in, and biological focus on, that outcome.



In the meantime, though, I think I'll sneak the batteries out of Hokey Pokey Elmo's ass (hee-hee-hee, THAT was FUN! it screams). It was cute for a couple of days but now it's just irritating. But I'll leave the television alone, I don't want any kids detoxing around the house because I took away the electronic heroin. That's just not pretty. Pray there are no blackouts.



Today's episode was brought to you by the letter C.

One Resolution: No Expectations

That was my resolution last year, too. And no sooner did I write down a no-expectations resolution, but that I followed up with a bunch of "goals" to shoot at, which are all full of expectations anyway. And then I suggested that I revisit the "goals that aren't resolutions" next year and see how I did. So here it is next year: let's have a look, shall we?

Twelve Goals for 2003

1) Do something about my sexual hang-ups... therapy, dating, bath-house, whatever. I don't have to get laid this year, I just need to be proactive about becoming a sexual being with other sexual beings. Nope, sorry, just as frigid and fucked-up as always. I have experimented with new masturbation methods, and given thought to newer fantasies, but that's pretty much it. And I feel even more conflicted about it, too. As attached as I still am to an ideal of celibacy, I am horny as hell and just want to fuck someone.



2) Finish my formal 12 Steps. I am currently waiting for my life to quiet down a little so I can do the rather contemplative 8th Step, but I know I will resist the foot-work 9th Step. But I want to finish this year. I really, really do (that reminds me, being on vacation I forgot what day of the week is currently up, and that I forgot to call my sponsor yesterday). Okay, I did my eighth and ninth steps, but that's as far as I got. I'm not sure what to do about my tenth step. Maybe I should ask my sponsor. Who I haven't talked to in, like, a month.



3) Learn to write short, economic sentences. I always say that you can't break the rules until you've learned them, and while I have no intention of actually abandoning my beloved purple prose, I would like to have a better feeling for other styles informing my style of choice. How's this for a short, economic sentence: whatEVER.



4) Learn something physical... maybe tap-dancing, maybe aerobics, maybe horseback riding. But teach my body to do something unaccustomed. I don't think the elliptical machine at the gym counts, does it? And I started learning Pilates but crapped out after three sessions.



5) Win the Miss Gay Marin Pageant, no matter who I have to kill. I WILL HAVE THAT TIARA! The Miss Gay Marin Pageant never happened. The Galaxy Girls disbanded, I guess. But I did get my Hallowqueen Pageant tiara, so I guess maybe I half-succeeded on that one.



6) Fall in love with someone. A little crush, but he lives too far away and that maddening Practical Prude voice that ruins all my fun keeps pointing out how horribly inconvenient it would be to become even remotely involved with him. Plus he had a big crush on someone else. Someone very not-like-me, which got the Craven Coward voice chiming in with "you're obviously not his type." He was at the dance last night and I thought about working myself into position to kiss him at midnight, and then it suddenly occurred to me that I didn't know how to do such a thing. I don't think I've ever flirted with anybody in my entire life. Which struck me as unaccountably pitiful.



7) Buy more earrings (I have so many bracelets, but almost no good earrings). Well, this is another half-success: I did buy more earrings, some of which are fabulous — but I bought far more bracelets and rings. I am just more attracted to bracelets and rings because I can see them when I'm wearing them... unlike necklaces and earrings and brooches, which can only be viewed in a mirror.



8) Find a new job. Well, I was going to, but then my crazy boss left and I got a new not-so-crazy boss, so I figured I'd wait and see what happened. And what happened was that the economy went straight into the crapper and all those attractive new jobs were gone. So here I am at the same job, and I guess I'll stay at least as long as my current boss does.



9) Start (and maybe even finish) my novel about Danny Vandervere and how he becomes friends with Baron Valerien de Seguemont and falls in love with Marque Willard-Wilkes while simultaneously extricating himself from a circumstantially-evidenced accusation of murder. I can't be a novelist until I finish at least a first draft of one novel. Not one word. But then perhaps the world of literature is better for the omission.



10) Get rid of this damned gut, by hook or by crook. I am not entirely averse to liposuction, though I don't think I'll be able to afford it... and I don't want a six-pack or anything like that, I just want to regain an uninterrupted view of my own cock. Hey, I got one!!! Okay, maybe it's not gone completely, but I can see my hip bones and I wriggle comfortably in a 34 waistband again.



11) Clean my room at least once. I started it a few times, but I have yet to succeed. After the last post, I edited it so many times that by the time I was actually finished tweaking it, I was too tired to do anything else and so spent the rest of the afternoon in bed.



12) Be nicer to Grandmother. I wasn't notably nicer to her, but I have been better at not getting angry when she makes me repeat things, and I've learned not to even try to talk to her unless she's looking straight at me and not chewing. I still wish she'd get a hearing-aid though.

Well, I guess I didn't do too badly. It's a good thing I wasn't really expecting to do well on them, or I might have to find myself disappointed now.



What strikes me, though, is that last year's New Year's Eve post was another instance of how I say one thing and then turn right around and do the exact opposite. The hardest kind of honesty for me to achieve is honesty with myself: do I really believe what I'm saying? Do I real feel what I think I'm feeling? Am I really addressing the problem that is at issue, or am I wandering off on an easier-to-tread side-path?



The thing is, though I say I am happy being on my own and celibate, I still want to fall in love with a man and have sex with the man I love and to make a habit out of having sex with that beloved man... a relationship, if you will. Despite all the impracticalities of sharing my jealously-hoarded time and personal space with another human being, aside from all the sexual and emotional hangups that I seem to treasure like Bilbo did the Ring ("It's still in your pocket, Bilbo"..."Well, so it is, how about that?"), regardless of all the logical impossibilities thrown up by my living situation and my pathological fear of rejection, and in complete disagreement with everything I have been known to say on the subject as well as my strong and sincere distaste for falling into such a trite romantic paradigm, I still on many levels just want some man to love me, fuck me, and go on dates with me. And yet, at the same time, I don't.



It really sucks when both sides of a mutually exclusive argument are absolutely true. And the whole love-vs-celibacy thing is just one of the many contradictions that fill my life. I don't even know where to start, or what to do.



Well, we shall see what we shall see. I think for 2004 I'm going to let myself off the hook for real and not expect anything for the year. I'm just going to waddle on through and see what happens. Really let go and actually let God. For though God helps those as helps themselves, I don't seem to have gotten very far with anything I've thought to do... I mean, if this is the best I can do with my life, it's time to turn it over, you know? 'Cuz let me tell you, it may just be the depression talking or it may just be that I'm coming down with a cold, but whichever way you slice it I'm simply not happy right now. And that I want to change in 2004.



So Happy New Year to you, my darling. Wish me luck, for I wish you the best.



Hugs!

Cleanup

As soon as I'm done here, I'm going to start cleaning my room. Again. I have the theory down pat, now I just need to put in the practice. And I have the time today, I don't have any other errands except my homegroup meeting tonight. I even have the energy. And it will thwart the desires of small children, which is one of my great joys in life (my little cousins, who are staying with us all week, love to play The Sims all day long, but I don't let them into my room when I'm here).



The last few days I have been recovering from Christmas. On my birthday, after writing the previous thought-provoking survey, I went out shopping with Caroline as I had planned. The Jessica McClintock outlet was rather a disappointment: they had very little in my size, and the prices were not as cut-rate as they had been in the past. Last year I bought five gowns for under two hundred dollars, the year before I bought seven for $150, but this time I only got two gowns and a blouse-and-skirt for $220. I think this might be the last time I plan Jessica McClintock on my birthday. The Great Mall was less of a bust, I bought five karaoke CDs of big band and jazz standards, and got a big bagful of bargains at the Gap Outlet (I have decided to embrace my "straight" look... it keeps people guessing). But in general I bought less stuff for more money, and was vaguely dissatisfied.



I've been doing a lot of cleaning the last few days. Saturday I put the dining table back in order and put away all the china and silver that had already been washed. On Sunday I finished cleaning up after the Christmas dinner. Grandmother has been in bed with holiday exhaustion on top of her cold, so everything was just sitting there in the kitchen, stacking up higher and higher. So I loaded the dishwasher twice and washed all the crystal and remaining china by hand, and then started on the roasting pans and whatnot. And then yesterday I got my nails done, bought a few more things at the Gap (great after-Christmas sales), picked up the party favors for the Living Sober New Year's Eve Dance, and bought a new pair of black dress shoes to wear to same (something I've been intending to do for ages, since the black dress shoes I currently own always give me blisters)... which isn't really "cleaning," but can be considered "cleanup" errands, and felt very satisfying anyway.



And I've found that, though my temper tends to be a little short after doing an hour or so of dish-washing or rug-vaccuming, I don't seethe with resentment and anger while and immediately after I'm peforming the chores (as I usually do). In fact, I'm actually giving some thought to having a weekly Chore Day here at the house. A day to mop the kitchen and bathroom, to degrease the range, to scrub out the toilet, to do some laundry, to vacuum rugs, to run a duster about the knick-knacks. Perhaps not all at once, because none of these chores really needs to be done on a weekly basis. It's only people like Grandmother who think so.



Grandmother was a career housewife, spending at least eight hours (and often twelve) every day actively engaged in cleaning, cooking, mending, child-rearing, grocery-shopping, and errand-running... but I don't think she ever really thought about housewifery in terms of a professional job, as many modern women do. Taking care of this house and its inhabitants was a full-time (and then some) job, and she performed it admirably for a very long time. The thing is, when you get old you're supposed to retire, not because you "deserve" the rest but because you are no longer capable of doing your job. The whole point of being old is to physically decay.



But Grandmother doesn't see it that way. To her, aging is an illness that should be got over. To her, housework isn't a job that you get to retire from, it's a condition of life, as common and necessary as defecating (which also becomes increasingly difficult as one ages, but still has to be done). To her, a woman's personal worth is measured by her ability to keep a dust-free, clean, and visibly tidy house and to cook three delicious and nutritious meals every day (as well as by her modest behavior and conservative appearance, and the behavior and appearance of her descendants regardless of whether or not she raised them herself).



What makes all of the above very difficult is that none of this comes naturally to her. Grandmother, if left to her own devices for the last fifty-eight years, would have developed naturally into a hardcore slob. She is a bigger and much worse packrat than I am, she is as careless of method as a ten-year-old, and she has an untidy mind where faith is the final answer to everything and the unexamined life is the only life there is. But she was raised in a large farm family where everyone was expected to do his or her share of the work, the men in the fields and the women in the house, and a falling-off of effort was noticed; and then she lived for forty-three years as the wife of a neat-freak Chinese Libra who grew up with servants and expected everything to be as smooth and clean as a new glass window. She always had someone's expectations to meet, you see; as a classic textbook codependent, that was as big a motivator as she ever needed. And she was young enough to be able to maintain the effort of subjecting her natural self to the desires of others.



Now, though, not only does she lack the physical strength to carry out her accustomed chores, but she doesn't have anybody's expectations except her own to deal with. I personally couldn't care less what the lawn looks like. The only times I notice dishes in the sink are when they smell bad or when there are so many that I can't get the coffee pot under the faucet. If guests drop by unannounced, it's their problem if the living room is untidy or the dining table piled with newspapers... if they want tidy, they should call first, a week in advance.



On top of my indifference to cleanliness (if I can't smell it, it's not dirty) is my strange psychotic rage that has been activated pretty much every time I've found myself doing household chores. I've always felt like I'm being punished when I wash dishes or mop floors. Probably because my stepmother decided one day, quite out of the blue and without any warning, that having four children in the house meant that she had a built-in workforce. Under her new "I'm watching my soaps and cooking dinner, and that's it" regime, extra chores were always assigned as punishments (as was television restriction... and such punishments were handed out liberally, like plastic beads at Mardi Gras). I hate housework, is what I'm trying to say, and then when I am reduced to performing housework I get so angry and resentful that nobody can talk to me afterward... especially the person who made me do the chore. So while Grandmother is exclaiming on how nice and clean everything looks, I just glare at her and slink off to my room to be alone, robbing her of even the vicarious joy of housework.



Between her body's increasing inability and her grandson's resentful indifference, instead of doing anything much, Grandmother makes lists of things she wants to get done. For example, "Clean and oil the kitchen cabinets," has been on the lists for a long time. This will require the purchase of Murphy's wood soap and Old English furniture polish in light oak color (not Olde English, which is a malt liquor but is the same color). We already own these items, but will not be able to find them when we actually start to do the job. It will then require that all of the cupboards be emptied, because of course the insides should be cleaned as well as the outsides (although the insides are laminated and only need dusting, but Grandmother doesn't really grasp the concept of laminated wood... all wood must be oiled and polished and never have anything wet or hot or cold touching it, So Sayeth the Lord, Amen — even when it's veneered plywood). Worn and cracked places will have to be sanded down and refinished. And then the cabinets will have to be reloaded in such a way that all of the items can be placed on the bottom shelf, which is the only one she can reach.



She does all this work in her mind, writing out her little lists, fretting about what people must think of her that she let her house get so seedy, and is so exhausted by all of it that she can't even go over the cabinet doors with a little Lemon Pledge, which is really all they need. The same goes for the rest of the wood furniture in the house. And then there are the bug-choked window-screens, the grease-filled metal filters over the range vent, the dull and damaged hardwood floors, the dark bathroom grout, cobwebs in the furthest reaches of the ceiling, the mirror tiles that are falling off the dining room wall, the chipped places in the driveway, the drawn-up place on the kitchen linoleum, the dust under the refrigerator and behind the washer, the attic, the garage, the basement, the closets, the car, the back deck... it goes on and on and on.



And while I can sit here and make fun of Grandmother's baroque mindworkings and antiquated ideas about cleaning methods and shocking codependency, those mindworkings and ideas and codependency remain exactly the same. No amount of arguing will budge the mind of a faith-based thinker (and believe you me, I have tried... I've spent the last ten years trying to argue Grandmother out of her medieval mindset). So it behooves me, the reason-based thinker and the methodologist and the organized mind of this household, to think of different solutions that do not challenge her ideas. Such as doing the work myself. And as much as it galls me to even consider taking on a weekly regimen of loathesome housecleaning, the rewards of such work are becoming more attractive as the cost in anger and resentment has apparently subsided somewhat.



For example, doing more work around the house will grant me a little more leverage whenever I want to do something that Grandmother might disapprove... it's easier to go out at night when you know you did housework earlier that day, and it's easier to keep Grandmother in check about my privacy and my social needs if I am making her happy in other ways. As I've learned working in a Union, the only truly effective form of leverage is Tit for Tat. I polish your floors, you get your nose out of my drag room.



It will also give me a greater sense of belonging in my own home, to contribute more to the common weal in exchange for my room and board than just chauffering Grandmother around and doing most of the grocery shopping and errand-running. Although I know, on a logical level, that what I do provide is a valuable service and one that would otherwise cost Grandmother a good deal more than the amount of food and electricity I consume, there is the little matter of the debt I feel I owe Grandmother for taking care of me when I couldn't take care of myself. She is the one who made my childhood bearable, she is the one who gave me a home in my upheaved teenage years, she is the one who took me in and made me go back to school when I had run to the end of my tether with my "independence," she is the one who finally gave me that little push of truth that sent me to AA and helped me change my life.



I don't intend to become a slave, mind you. I might go over the cabinets with some Lemon Pledge, but I'll be damned if I'm going to sand the corners or empty the cupboards or do anything else that is patently unnecessary. I'll be happy to put some Orange Oil Cleaner on the exposed parts of the hardwood floors and give them an occasional lick of the dustmop, but I flatly refuse to empty all of the furniture out of the rooms, roll up the rugs, and get down on my hands and knees to go over every inch of the 600 square feet with a wad of steel wool and a bottle of Old English (dark walnut color). And no matter how much she begs and pleads, I will not allow Grandmother to "help" me by explaining how to do each and every chore I already know how to do, using far more words than are necessary or even decorative to explain it. I don't do teamwork.



Before I get started on all of that, though, I am going to clean my room. I don't like too much "tidy" in my personal space, but I do want to see my rug, and I need to get things put away where I can find them easily when I want them. I also need to be able to get in and out of bed and my desk-chair without having to lift my knees above my hips, high-stepping to the alarm-clock or the door over the piles and piles of stuff. And today I have the time (though I have spent a lot of the time I had by writing the above). So off I go!



If I don't write again before Thursday, a happy New Year to you. For myself, 2003 was about experiencing and accepting the person I am and have become; 2004 is going to be about becoming the best person I am capable of becoming. And 36 is one of my "lucky" numbers, so I am looking forward to a banner year.



Cheers!

Happy Whatever

It's my birthday today. Come tea-time (I put Mother into labor right before Christmas dinner and made her wait forty-eight hours), I'll be another year older. I'm not feeling particularly excited about it. I wasn't real thrilled with Christmas, either. I am really just not excited about anything right now. I'm simply tired, on some very deep level where my physical, spiritual, and emotional selves intersect.



But birthdays are a good time to look forward and look backward and sort of take stock. Since my birthday and New Years come so close together, I tend to spend the last week of the year thinking about the Year in Review. And then earlier this week I found a survey at Webguerrillas (who got it from Small Hands who got it from The Living End who got it from Traci Jean) that got me thinking, so I fill it out here for you.

2003 in 40

1. What did you do in 2003 that you’d never done before?

Sang in public. Solo, even. Onstage. It was very liberating, though I have to admit I wasn't very good.



2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

No, and no.



3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

My half-sister had a daughter, named her Payton Veigh for reasons that escape me, but then I can't claim that we're particularly close.



4. Did anyone close to you die?

No, thank heavens.



5. What countries did you visit?

I haven't even been out of the state this year. In fact, I don't think I've been any more than eighty miles away from home all this year.



6. What would you like to have in 2004 that you lacked in 2003?

Passion.



7. What date from 2003 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?

October 31... winning the Hallowqueen Pageant. I'll not soon forget the sensation of being wildly applauded by five hundred people.



8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

Losing twenty pounds.



9. What was your biggest failure?

Not completing my four remaining formal Steps as I intended. I got stalled on eight and stalled myself on nine, and am not in the mood to make any formal tenth yet.



10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

I've had a couple of colds and a flu, broken some nails, but nothing serious.



11. What was the best thing you bought?

A new car (Miss Jane, a 2002 Ford Focus, liquid grey).



12. Whose behavior merited celebration?

Caroline's. She's made much progress, done a lot of growing, and achieved a great deal this year.



13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

Da Gub'ment.



14. Where did most of your money go?

eBay vendors and Ford Credit.



15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?

I don't think I've been really, really, really excited this year.



16. What song will always remind you of 2003?

"I Never Do Anything Twice," with which I wowed them at the Hallowqueen pageant.



17. Compared to this time last year, are you:

- happier or sadder? Sadder. I've been depressed a lot this year, but this holiday season has seen me pretty down, where I remember being much more imbued with Christmas Cheer last time.

- thinner or fatter? Thinner. Twenty pounds thinner. I hadn't seen my cheekbones since I quit smoking five and a half years ago.

- richer or poorer? Poorer... the same income as last year, but way more expenses.



18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Spending time with friends. I didn't make enough time for it, and then my friends are so busy too.



19. What do you wish you’d done less of?

Wasting money on things bought over the internet that did not meet expectations and which I don't need and which I probably won't ever use.



20. How will you be spending Christmas?

I spent it here at home with family and tradition, being bored and tired and overworked.



21. Did you fall in love in 2003?

No. I wish I had.



22. How many one-night stands?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I haven't had sex with anybody in seven and a half years.



23. What was your favorite TV program?

Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. I know it's a cliche response, but that show has given me hours of enjoyment.



24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?

I don't hate people. No, wait, I hate lots of people, I HATE STUPID PEOPLE WHO GET IN MY WAY, but I have always hated them and will always hate them, and I don't hate them individually.



25. What was the best book you read?

I guess Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I read so many books, and I can't quite remember which ones I read this year or last year or some other time. And then I re-read them. I've re-read several favorite books this year, like Love in a Cold Climate (Nancy Mitford), Gaudy Night (Dorothy L. Sayers), Around the World with Auntie Mame (Patrick Dennis), and Me Talk Pretty One Day (David Sedaris).



26. What was your greatest musical discovery?

Ute Lemper. I just love her voice... not beautiful in the traditional sense, but weirdly satisfying. And the wonderfully obscure Noiresque by Sandra Lawrence, which I bought for the cover-art and enjoyed immensely. I even got an email from Ms. Lawrence, who found my website because I'd written a post about her album. Apparently we have identical grandmothers. I never wrote back to Ms. Lawrence, the email came at a time when I was terrifically busy. I wish I had written.



27. What did you want and get?

More stuff. I just love my stuff.



28. What did you want and not get?

A really nice black fox boa with heads and tails and feet and all. I really had my heart set on it, and I couldn't find one (though I wasted a lot of money on near-misses).



29. What was your favorite film of this year?

Have I even seen any good films this year? I think I've only seen three or four movies, it was kind of a dry year. X-Men 2 was, I guess, the best 2003 movie I saw in the theater.



30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?

I'll be thirty-six at four-fifteen this afternoon. I'm going shopping at the Jessica McClintock outlet, my traditional birthday treat. I'm also getting my nails done, and there's this pair of earrings at a local jeweler's that call out my name, and then I'm hitting the Great Mall.



31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?

If I knew, I would have done/got/tried it already.



32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2003?

Wearing inch-long acrylic nails and dazzling cubic zirconium bracelets from the Suzanne Somers collection and still managing somehow to appear straight in my überbland Gapwear.



33. What kept you sane?

Sane? Am I still sane? God knows how I managed it... or rather, I know that God managed it.



34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?

I've had a total bone for Travis Fimmel all year. Honorable Mention chubbies to Orlando Bloom, Tom Welling, and Colin Farrell.



35. What political issue stirred you the most?

The whole Gay Marriage thing. It's been interesting to watch.



36. Who did you miss?

Oh, lots of people. I miss Mary Jane (I haven't seen her in so long, we haven't hung out since we saw X-Men 2), and Dalton (even though I see him often, I haven't been able to spend much quality time with him), and I missed Kevin (though I got back in touch with him), and all the other people in my life that I just didn't get to spend as much time with as I wanted to.



37. Who was the best new person you met?

Oh, it's so hard to choose... but I'll pick Eric, whom I met in the Living Sober Musical and who made me feel good about myself a lot.



38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2003

People are always more willing to help than I dare to hope.



39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.

Is that all there is?

Is that all there is?

If that's all there is, my friends,

Then let's keep dancing!

Let's break out the booze lube

And have a ball,

If that's all

There is.

("Is That All There Is," Peggy Lee, 1969... little known fact: the song was based on a short story by Thomas Mann)



40. What about 2003 will you never forget?

I have a feeling that someday I will forget everything I ever knew. And a lot of this year will be a blessing to lose. But I know that, no matter how riddled my brain becomes with Alzheimer's and senile dementia, I will never ever manage to forget my one little line in the musical: I know some drag queens who are into it.

________________________________

So that's me. I reserve the right to re-edit the above as many times as I want in the next twenty-four hours. But now I am going to go to bed so I can get some sleep. Gotta be fresh for my Birthday Shopping Spree. Kisses!