Sometimes, a lady amuses herself to such a degree that she has no other choice but to share her comedic near-genius with anyone who has the misfortune or, em... I meant, sorry, celestial blessings of golden winged (accent on last syllable) angels to be standing within a 4,000 mile radius. As long as they're American. And unemployed. And living with their moms. And wearing an eye patch. (Not everyone who wears an eye patch is a pirate.)

I am back in the retail saddle this holiday season. I was recently sharing my discount at the C&B with my man friend Brian, and his purchases were supposed to be shipped to his sister in Chicago in time for Christmas. Having such astute readers as I am privileged to enjoy, you'll no doubt guess that these items did not, in fact, make it to Chicago in time for Brian to present them to his mother on Christmas Day. Or Boxing Day. Nor, as it turns out, will Mrs. Brian's Mother be able to enjoy a meal cooked in her new pots anytime before the second week of 2008.

Sure, I'm supposed to be rewriting my resume and tweaking my cover letter in order to secure a position away from the soul-squelching realities of desk duty in 240G. But in the meantime, here's a taste of my giggly genius.

[== & == ampersand == and such == Magic 8-Ball == then I was all like == Associate Vice Provost without Portfolio==]

Dear sir,

We regret to inform you that the items you purchased at our establishment were not properly processed for shipment. Due to a significant oversight on our part, the items you purchased on Tuesday 18 December at the University Village Festival of Commerce were not picked up by UPS until Wednesday 26 December. We do realize that that was eight days later than common sense and the laws of good customer service would suggest. We are so very, very sorry. For reals.

In our defense, it is the holiday season. Our associates are tired. And underpaid. They are routinely asked to be nice to people who are not nice to them. While customers such as yourself --well-informed, educated, properly groomed, possessing exceptional conversational skills-- are what we'd like to consider our "base" or perhaps, in the vernacular of today's youth, our "peeps," the sad reality is that there are people out there giving holiday shoppers a bad name. It is with a heavy heart that I will admit that sometimes offering good customer service (something for which we at Crate & Barrel are known) is beyond our reach. Sometimes we might accidentally on purpose shove your items to the back of the shipping shelf in a fit of malaise, exhaustion and/or existential retail despair. Had we known it was you, sir, whose items we so callously ignored, those items would have been hand delivered to your beloved sister so that your mother might have enjoyed a very merry Christmas.

We prostrate ourselves at your well-shod feet and hope you can find it in your heart to forgive us. We do appreciate your business and look forward to welcoming you into our establishment again sometime very soon. We offer an array of finely crafted artisanal Mayan cookware, hand blown glassware from Poland and many many thousands of items of questionable workmanship made in China.

As I write this, your purchases are in a land called "Hodgkins, IL" en route to your sister, Nora M, in Chicago, Illinois. UPS anticipates a 3 January delivery. Why it will take UPS another seven days to deliver these items a mere 18 miles is a question I cannot address with any authority at this time. Your tracking number is _________________. You can visit your purchases online here: wwwapps.ups.com/WebTracking/track. Your shipping costs have been refunded to Ms. Berolzheimer's credit card. We understand that Ms. Berolzheimer is an employee in the aforementioned University Village store. We hear she is an exemplary employee, and rarely show up for her shifts more that 15 minutes late and no more than half in the bag.

Thank you for your patience and understanding in this matter. We wish you and yours all the best in 2008. We look forward to misplacing your future purchases with the same flair and joie de vivre for many years to come.

Yours,

Gordon Segal
Owner, founder, distinguished elderly gentleman of significant means.

Gratitude attitude.

I have lately felt compelled to be as as clear, vocal and abundant with my appreciation and delight at the people in my new Seattle life as possible. There were so many weeks and months of griping and hand wringing, when the job and the not knowing weighed too heavily. These things are still with me, but its been good to stay mindful of what works and of the bounty. Next thing you know I'll start embedding pictures of cornucopias and farmers smiling next to the bushels of corn that are such a huge part of the economic problem---oh, sorry, I digress. After taking a quick look at Jamison's blog I was reminded of a couple of other things for which I'm grateful. In this season of giving thanks (and here I should admit that I started this post a few weeks back), I thought I'd share with you three faithful readers a couple of things which fill my heart to brimming.

But before I do -- I know, the suspense is killing you -- let me just say as clearly as I can, that I love Thanksgiving. Love it. Sure, turkey is gross and if I did eat it, I wouldn't eat the turkey that most people serve, because its largely over-cooked, dry and slightly chalky. Why not just have some meatloaf? Wouldn't that a be a better holiday tradition? Why is there no holiday for meatloaf? Discuss.

On with the gratitude.

1. Good, thoughtful, writers I have the pleasure to know. This list is longer than reason can bear, but here's a list of a few of the authors and blogs I'm glad make my world bigger... Cara Bertron, James Loter, Miss Peck's evolving voice on arts and life in Northeast Florida, my dad, Helen Harvester, Brendan Healy, and, once upon a time, my grandfather, whom I miss.

2. Q-tips.

3. Oxyclean: toxic, perhaps, sure. But *best cleaning product* ever is allowed a flaw or two (seconded by Soft Scrub with Bleach. Makes me want to clean something right now just thinking about it. Or it would if every muscle and joint in my body wasn't screaming in agony after yesterday's football game. But more on that another time.)

4. Television: 30 Rock, The Office, Mad Men, Deadwood (RIP), Arrested Development (also RIP), Lost, Grey's Anatomy (yes, I know its lame and really just a nighttime soap opera, but still...) and Project Runway. Say what you will about TV and how it melts the brain, but there is excellent watching to be had these days. Really, ask anyone.

5. This autumn blanketing of pitch black darkness. Surprisingly.

What about bacon?, you say. Yes, bacon, of course, always bacon. But along with the word "fuck," I think perhaps I've given enough air time to bacon. And as J'Lo and I are soon to be making our own bacon, I suspect there will be many many more posts about bacon in the weeks and months to come. Get ready.

Thank you. And thank you and thank you. Issues of god aside, I am blessed beyond all telling.

(p.s., I am grateful for New York. I miss it. Here are just two examples of her raging excellentness)

"This is my dance space. This is your dance space. I don't go into yours, you don't go into mine."



You who stand too close to me and rattle on with your pointless, not very imaginative, and often small-minded stories, take heed. I like my dance space. And I stopped listening to you about 7 minutes ago. I am an actress, and I make a very good "I am listening to you and care about what you are saying" face.

Picking your battles.

Its interesting, the battles I pick. Power in some places, powerlessness in others. Duh.

I can pick a mean fight with people in the travel industry. Delta airlines screwing you over? Can't get the "view room" you specifically asked for, six months ago? I'm your gal, unleash me on those poor unsuspecting customer service professionals and they're toast. By the time I'm done with them, you'll likely get not only an apology, but upgraded to a suite with a free mini bar. And, c'mon, who doesn't love a mini bar?

You might mistake me for someone who regularly stands up for myself and, as they say, "takes no guff." In fact, I have near-crippling anxiety about confrontation of almost any (non-travel related) sort. Many, many years on the couch and this one still eludes me. When the topic of assertiveness comes up and I reveal my inability to grow a pair, the person(s) with whom I'm conversing always looks sort of puzzled, or laughs, sure that I must be kidding? "You? But you're so strong-willed. Lord knows you have no shortage of opinions..." Yes, I know. I know. But confrontation? No thanks, I'll be hiding under this coffee table, thanks.

There is a difference in standing up for something, and confrontation. I'll ask your forgiveness that I'm not able to draw such a clear line in the sand as I wander down this road which may or may not...eventually...arrive at a point.

A recent battle: I was writing a follow-up note to a phone interview I had for I job I didn't get. I looked for a word that was more interesting and dynamic than the plain old white bread of "after."

So here I am, minding my own cranky business on Thesaurus.com/Dictionary.com and just three listings below "after" is the listing for the morning-after pill which reads as such:

"morning-after pill

Part of Speech: noun

Definition: birth-control pill

Synonyms: abortion pill, Brompton, Brompton's mixture, RU-486"


RU-486? Really? In the definition offered by Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus?

This is how our side is losing. Losing the battle of language and branding.

I wrote them a note and asked that the definition be amended.

"Please remove RU-486 from the definition. RU-486 is the drug used in medical abortions, something entirely different from the morning-after pill, often known by its brand name "Plan B." RU486 is Mifeprex (Mifepristone) commonly called "The Abortion Pill.""

(Plan B® is not RU-486 (the abortion pill). Because Plan B® is used to prevent an unplanned pregnancy, it will not work if you’re already pregnant. If you take Plan B® and are already pregnant, it will not affect your existing pregnancy. See http://www.go2planb.com/ForConsumers/Index.aspx.)

I once wrote a short well-worded note to a journalist? blogger? I can't remember now, but they referred to "partial birth abortion," a loaded and contentious term. The terms is one coined by the other--winning--team for the medical procedure "dilation and extraction," (or "D&X" or "intact D&E"). "Partial birth abortion" is an extension of an astonishingly successful branding campaign. "Partial birth abortion" isn't a medically accurate term, but because it's graphic, incendiary and disgusting and most people are intellectually lazy, the term stuck. Of course people want to ban it, I would too if the things that the right wing Christian team says were medically accurate and not just a clever urban legend meant to weaken the pro-choice majority. To further illustrate, just try using "anti-choice" instead of "pro-life." We're all pro-life. As a rule, we don't drown kittens or kick old ladies as they wheel their cart slowly down the aisles at QFC. The people who do are known as sociopaths. Those in the anti-choice movement have been so successful at branding that those of us who are firmly in the pro-choice camp have been using "their language" for a very long time. We lost that battle.

Waking up to your own language can be something of a revelation, even a revolution. Where did it come from? Who owns it? Did she really just say that? WTF.

This is apparently one of the only battles for which I can muster any ammunition. Its usually the case that my indignation, frustration and disgust do not line up with an action plan.* Its a particular impotence that's got hold of us all, it seems. It's why I'm not lying down in traffic to protest the war in Iraq, or sending my discretionary money to a left-leaning political entity in order to assure that another asshat republican doesn't end up dragging our country further into the mud. See, here I am again with my myriad opinions, and what revolutionary steps am I taking? Writing in my blog. How risky and envelop pushing! Everyone has a blog. At least when we all relegated our squishy feelings and self-righteous opinions to the dog-eared, tear-soaked pages of a cloth-bound actual paper journal, we spared the rest of the world our deepest, self-indulgent thoughts. I apologize again for adding more traffic to the navel-gazing nets.

Thanks for reading, I need to go to sleep. But not before I drown some kittens. That's how my people are. That's how we roll.

*"action plan"? Thanks IMAC. Next thing you know, I'll be integrating terms like "deliverables" or "scoping study." But then again...

(I'm re-posting this from my friend Helen Harvesters blog on myspace. She's rad.)

--I Hate Burning Man --
(or "we don't need vacations to remind us to be artists" -and- "a smug bunch of exclusionary fuckwads")

Helen:
Monday, August 20, 2007

I Hate Burning Man


Apparently I don't know how to put a fucking picture on my blog. How humiliating. Here's a link:

Okay, so these people are dirty, and strangers, and her hair is henna-ed. That's not what pisses me off.

I "get" the "idea" of Burning Man. All my friends are going in a few a days, so I've been doing some image searches and research and all that. Apart from the naked people, I also I saw lots of beautiful photos of lovely statues and enormous wood edifices. I saw happy people doing whatever the hell they pleased, owning themselves and their ideas and living as fully as they wanted and acting on their impulses. For the most part, I liked what I saw. I just don't understand why it has to take place on Mars.

Why do you have to shut out the rest of the world to have a "collective artistic experience"? What's so "collective" about a few thousand strangers running into the desert for a week and cutting themselves off from everyone they love who happens not to come? Forget the people you love. What about the ARTISTS on the outside? What selfish insularity. I think you need to invite the world IN to have a "collective artistic experience".

Conclusion? I'd rather go to the Olympics than stupid old Burning Man any day. Even if they ARE in China. As a consumer on planet Earth, I'd know I was welcome.


Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:

A) I'm not going to Burning Man.

B) You'd only get foot rot if you went.

C) We work hard as artists in our life; we don't need vacations to remind us to be artists. We live the life most of these people want. It's harder than they think.

D) I *totally* want to go to Beijing in 2008. My ShiFu is competing!

Posted by Whiskey Tango Foxtrot on Monday, August 20, 2007 at 11:31 AM


Helen:

1) Yes! You are my friend! And you are not going! Hurrahspendeverydaywithme.

2) I don't want to. Go or get foot rot.

3) You got it with C). "Let's go into the desert and roll around in the mud and fuck and dress like lampshades and be uniformly unique. It's so easy to be artistic. It's so fuuuuuunnnnnn." (one week later) "God, I feel alive. That should last me for a year. Time to go back to Microsoft."

Of course, it means more coming from you than from a sell-out like me, but I really needed health insurance.

Posted by H.T.L.H. on Monday, August 20, 2007 at 8:03 PM


juniper:

I always liked you, Helen Harvester. You and your Burning Man hating ways are a-o.k. with me.
I have a lengthy rant in me, but we'll see if I can change it up for something a bit more coherent and brief.

The Seattle Burners I know are a smug bunch of exclusionary fuckwads. There, I've said it. (Though now I'm remembering that Chris goes to BM, and I like him, so we'll give him a pass.) Their art is so pure, don't you know, they're all "pansexual" and poly-amorous and not interested in the commercial capitalist trappings of life outside their desert oasis of sex juice and mushrooms.

And I found out there's something there called a Beaver Eating contest. I'm throwing up a little in my mouth just thinking about it.

They make me want to purchase a big fat print of a Thomas Kincaid painting at Wal*Mart and hang it over my Pottery Barn Sofa while drinking a venti Frappuccino and listening to Celine Dion in my Juicy Couture terry cloth track suit.


Posted by juniper on Tuesday, August 21, 2007 at 4:08 PM

I went to high school with these guys. I made out with the drummer, Eugene, at some point (junior year?). I can't begin to explain why this makes me so happy.

Apparently, there is a documentary out there about them --the unband-- entitled: "WE LIKE TO DRINK: We Like To Rock'n'Roll." Must get my hands on it. Must view. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Really.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6rTkp1dek4

Self protection like bacon.

I had lofty ideas about posting my wow-deep thoughts on my self-protective nature, but then the bacon-love took over and has gotten the best of me. Is anyone surprised? No, I thought not.

Prune used to serve this meaty-deliciousness like something out of a pork-basted dream. Gabrielle called it a "Bacon Chop" though I've yet to find its true butcher-cut name sake in my carnivorous travels. Apparently, this one --


can be found in the UK at a magical place called Hiltons Butchers. God bless you Mr and/or Mrs Hilton. You will be well cared for in the afterlife.

CATCH BREATH F

Not knowing has a weight.

Of course there's the "anti-weight," the vacuum, of knowing the answer is "no." But is it any worse than the inevitable, shoulders-pressed weight of "yes"? It’s the inevitability that gets you. This weight you carry around, without a recognizable name or signature scent, it makes you worthy of suspicion, a person of interest. You see what I mean.

Not knowing has a weight of indeterminate size and heft. When I asked you to scratch my back that time, and between us, we couldn't find the spot that was "oh yeah, right there, thank Jesus, that's it!" It was the same. So unsatisfying. Effort was made, as it is still.
We both shuffle away, ashamed somehow in our collective ineffectual shapelessness.

Not knowing can be the kind of sexy with too many X's. X's enough to make your randy Aunt L blush a little, though too many, certainly to have shared with your Ma. I make that face you tried to describe once, drawing out the catch breath. And there was that time –remember?—at New Years or Christmas, the winter L died, when we all made fun of her taste in men and back-zip stretch pants and Avon as "the only way to go, sweetheart, so remember I told you." These stories we share make the intimate scraping of uncertainly a little less hungry. We make time with not knowing, drawing out the in. and. the [wait] [wait] out.

Not knowing sat a little too close to me at the Bergen street F train today. I looked down at my red shoes and fingered the hair at the back of the top of my head and wondered yet again if it was possible to grow a cowlick at such a late age. I made mental note to ask you, though no doubt something else will take precedence before I make it home. When I go to tell you 3 days later it won't be relevant or even a little bit funny. Fuck.

"Yes, it was the F."
"Yeah, I know, always the way, right? ... You figure there's got to be someone who was waiting for the G. Must've made their night at least."
"Just past 10."
"Sure, me too, long night."
"Sorry?"
"No, I don't ever finish it. I'm more of a Wednesday gal."
"No, its o.k., I like to chew on it all week. It helps me fall sleep."

Remind me of that the next time I see you.