Le maudit Mo D.

ont ont ont

For some strange reason, I like separating the Verm from the Ont. I find it pleasant. I know, weird, but I never claim to be anything but.

Verm. Ont. is lovely, as predicted. Here is a bad photo of the view out my studio window:

That would be the Gihon River plus VERMONT FOLIAGE AT 50%!!! I am staring at a golden maple. Be very jealous.

I admit to bouts of homesickness. Bouts of Bobsickness and Burritosickness, all though the food here is very good. So much depends upon Bob and Mexican food in my life. No improvisers here. At least no one I'd peg as an improviser.

Most of the toilets here are right in front of big windows! And my bedroom window looks down upon the studio where they do the life drawings. Nudity! Lack of privacy!

It's a little weird to be here but good nonetheless.

ascension

I'm halfway to Vermont. Sitting idly in the jetBlue concourse at JFK. So shouts to my NY peeps. This is as close as you're going to get to me being on your soil. jetBlue is moving their concourse to the I'm sure much plusher Terminal 5 next month and I'll get to see it on my way home. Anything's better than this half mall/half bus station set-up they've got here. Ugh.

The flight was "eventful," what with two failed landing attempts. There was a ton of fog and cloud cover and as we were coming in for a landing, there was a quick change of plans and the plane jerked upwards--WHOOSH!

I do appreciate the TV sets on jb. I learned of the passing of Paul "Delicious Salad Dressing" Newman, watched some bloviating on the prez debates, watched pretty boats blow away in the harbor in Portland, ME (New England hurricane?) and saw the episode of SatC in which Charlotte has a failed intercourse attempt with the hapless Trey.

Verm. Ont. Three. More. Hours.

Ont. Verm.

Foliage is reported to be at 40% which means peak will be in 10 or so days. YAY! LEAFY LEAVES!

There will be photos. Trust.

borpelessness

Well, four weeks from today I come home from Vermont!
In two days I leave!
That's 26 days with NO BOB! How is this going to work out?
I do weeks away from Bob a few times a year, but not four consecutive weeks.

This is good.
I will then MISS Bob, which will make me love him more, right?

with great wealth comes great assholishness

I have some experience with being rich.
Not at fancy private college
But my childhood. The one where my mom and I had food stamps while everyone else had millions??
Yeah, that was me.

We still had Christmas with them every year.
And I saw things.
I knew I couldn't have "things" like my cousins, but I grew to not want them anyway.
And I understood things this way:

Many rich families
(at least the ones I've seen intimately)
raise their children in the same way
the Republican government
sees fit to treat Wall Street.

Rich folks
are kind of like
fraternitiesthemilitaryimprovisersladycollegealumnae.
They stick together.
Ever read "random family" by a. n. leblanc (class of '86, HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)
imagine that, only when a buddy gets sent off
to white collar prison
(i know a few people who went to white collar prison due to tax evasion)
everyone rallies around that family
and talks about
(wait for it...)
HOW TERRIBLE IT IS THAT HE HAS TO GO TO JAIL!
and
FUCK THE GOVERNMENT!
Never
Maybe that douche should have paid his fucking taxes!!

Nope.

I understand why rich people hate taxes.
I understand why rich people hate government.
Most of the rich families I grew up with/around didn't get shit-tons of money handed to 'em.
They were the working rich.
They took insane financial risks and came out ahead.
This was in the '50s and '60s.
They all had sons who couldn't cut it.
Resentment,
Smashed German luxury cars ensue.
What you don't do
Is tell your son to go get a job stocking shelves at Safeway.
He stays in the business.
And develops a drug problem.

Some of the grandsons of these elite families have huge police records.
My favorite is the grandson of one of my grandfather's rivals
Picked up for masturbating in parking lots of senior citizen homes.
(not making that up!)

Taxes are like
Some asshole scooping your hard-earned bazillions out of your pocket
And handing them to some
Poor person.
They forget about things like roads
And the police officers hired to protect their shit.
They forget, so quickly.
When you have a lot, you have a lot to lose
And a paranoia sets in.

And so
This bailout thing?
Based not on sound fiscal policy
Or the will of the American people.
This is how rich folks raise their kids and
Save their buddy's asses
Money will cover any mistake
Transgression or lack of
Basic intelligence.

This is just that,
multiplied by 700 billion.
I've seen it before
This is just the way the rich take care of each other.

i heart skype!

My cell phone won't work in rural b.f. Vermont, so I signed up for Skype so Bob and I can chat. Video phone! Like the Jetsons! Like the future! Whee!

My Skype username is mod*v*** if you want to chat.

sweaters!

I just ordered some sweaters and am having them shipped to me at the Vermont Studio Ctr!

I'm a douchebag!

quotefest

I'm not much of a MoDo fan, but Ms. Dowd did hit this on the head today:
(EDIT: Miss Gifted just now reread it and indeed she outsourced her column to A. Sorkin. Dude, bring back Sports Night!)

(Spoken by fictional President Bartlet from West Wing): Because the idea of American exceptionalism doesn’t extend to Americans being exceptional. If you excelled academically and are able to casually use 690 SAT words then you might as well have the press shoot video of you giving the finger to the Statue of Liberty while the Dixie Chicks sing the University of the Taliban fight song. The people who want English to be the official language of the United States are uncomfortable with their leaders being fluent in it.

Yep.
Being smart sounds really great until you realize that American society prefers retards to smart people.

Think I'm being facetious? Look up how much we spend on special education vs. gifted education. The US, on the whole, is more interested in educating 'tards to grow up to get a job wiping trays at Burger King instead of nurturing those fearsome, unnerving gifted kids and educating them on a suitable level so that they can have MDs by 20 and a cure for cancer by 35.

And a well-spoken presidential candidate? Well, he's Unamerican, of course. I'm not even going to go into the race thing.

Obama had me at fucking hello.

this is great

I rarely crib anything from other blogs but this is pure genius. From sociologistsforobama.blogspot.com:
I'm a little confused. Let me see if I have this straight... (I hope I'm not offending anyone)

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

OK, much clearer now

return to me, pigeons!

The Internet is an amazing thing. It seems that in the last year or so, since joining Facebook against my will at the behest of my friend Alex Q., who is one of those hyper-successful Ladycollegians who commands respect like nobody's bidness, I've been reconnected with a huge number of peeps from my past. People from C-Juana High I've barely thought about over the last fifteen years, a variety of college-era pals, ex-co-workers who apparently don't think I'm a huge pain in the ass, people I was sure had blown me off but hadn't, Fresno people from eons ago, friends-of-friends, people I barely spoke to at some improv function, people I only know through the Internet, and my little brother's teenage pals.

It seems as though our society really needs this huge electronic buffer zone to contact people, be it under the guise of "professional contacts" or "merely upping my number of friends for reasons of competition/self-satisfaction." I do not judge. I want to jump into everyone's arms. People are great! Unless, well, if I hate you, but I only truly hate two people and neither of them are on Facebook because they're OLD, so fuck it. Let's be friends.

experience better living

Over the past month, I have received mailings inviting me to join august and elite organizations like AARP and the American Airlines Admiral's Club. Though I am honored that they feel that I have arrived and am ready to take advantage of luxuries like 15% off the bill at Olive Garden and the ability to shower at the airport, I am neither over the age of 55 nor have I ever flown first class in my life, so I must assume that my name landed on their lists in error.

I also don't know anyone who touts their Admiral's Club membership, possibly because I don't know anyone who is actually a member. I suppose if one travels for their business, the Admiral's Club is a convenience that makes those biweekly flights to Tokyo a little more comfy. It seems like an antiquated practice, cosseting one's self away from the filthy, madding airport crowd to take advantage of beds, open bar, free Wi-Fi, and showers on the basis of status. That is elitism in action, yes?

Getting 15% off the bill at Olive Garden is not elitist, however.

All this talk of elitism as it pertains to American politics tends to chap my lily-white bottom. There was a time when I thought that being an "elite" was a good thing. I went to an "elite" college and then moved to Texas and took up librarying and improvising, neither of which smack of elitism, but I still occasionally get some elitist sugar from the Ladycollege and I like that.

I had a more "elite" upbringing than Obama, yet because he's intelligent, articulate, and well-spoken, he's "elitist?"

So being dumb, even as you possess millions of dollars and are invited to high-end shindigs, makes you not an elitist and therefore better than a man who comes from humble origins but parlayed his talents and passions into a political career advanced by his gift of oration?

Ugh.

Anyway, if Obama is a member of the Admiral's Club, I suppose we should keep mum about that, yes?

austin weather

Today's Austin temperatures have been perfecto.

This weather is like make-up sex. Austin's meteorology knows I was out fooling around with my number one lovah Western Mass and am soon to spend my October with Vermont, so it reached out its usually prickly arms with some cool 70 degree breezes and said, "Come here, baby. I know we had a rough summer together, but I can make it up to you. You can go on a long walk today and not get sweaty. Here, I'll even give you some overcast, because I want you to be happy."

And I am happy! Except for DFW. That still smarts.

(Funny that SMART has two meanings, intelligence and sharp pain. They're kind of the same, yes?)

Tomorrow I have some freelance research work at Harry's, but I plan to make time to call Fresno School District and ask about getting my gifted child testing records, if they still exist. I don't know what the records laws are surrounding this, but I must get to the bottom of this alleged 180 IQ thing.

no T&T

For the first time in the past nine years since I left Northampton, I did NOT eat at Taipei 'n Tokyo during a visit. I was trying to avoid the pitfalls of nostalgia, and wasn't really in the mood for Chinese.

this jest really is infinite

He had the brain I want.
And the fame I want.
And the accolades.
And the fans.
And the genius.
And a Genius Award.
And even that wasn't enough.

I'm still here and I still haven't finished Infinite Jest.

Oh, D.F.W.
You and Elliott both.

starting over

It occurred to me today that moving back to Noho, Mass would mean starting all over, even though I used to live here.

I saw a group of first-year Smithies wandering the used book store. I could tell that they were Insta-Friends, i.e. housemates who just met last week. Either they will end up lifelong friends or they'll be ambivalent about each other by November. Then I remembered that being 32 in a town with no improv scene, I have no Insta-Friend mechanism. And starting over would be hard.

There appears to be this new lecture hall place on Main St. where one can attend free lectures for fun. Tonight's topic was urban design. I didn't stop in, but the venue was intriguing.

storm talk

What is this talk of storm, and will I end up trapped in Massachusetts? Weather brag: 62 degrees, sunny skies, and the slightest suggestion of leaves about to turn. Again, I come back to the mamaland and its as if I never left, if not for small, irritating changes at local business. As I type this, the Haymarche is subjecting me to forced table service and forced breakfast-ordering, when what I really want is a warm rice salad, which I apparently cannot order for another 1/2 hour. The ground floor is still a field of laptops. Noho is lovely. The UPS men are women. There is more traffic. What's up with that?

And there are men in the basement here. Men! Who'd have thunk they have men now? I miss this place.

So if I'm trapped in Mass. another day, I'm not going to cry about it. I hope that everyone's house withstands the gale force winds and falling branches. Although last time this happened, Austin didn't even get a sprinkle and there was mass mayhem at the Allandale HEB, with bottled water and canned food sales jumping through the roof as long lines of paranoid shoppers went apeshit and caused problems. Let's not have a repeat of that.

Have you seen my kitchen? Photos at flickr.com/photos/mocakesandfrosting

Everyone rally 'round Bob. He flies to Chicago today for his meeting with his past and potential future employer. Did I mention they might send him to Sweden? To some remote corner of the Swedish coast? Somewhere near Copenhagen, which is in Denmark, sort of like how Northampton is closer to Hartford than Boston.

I think I may drive up to Marlboro College, where Little Bro is talking about going. It's in southern VT, about an hour away from here. I don't know how I feel about Little Bro going to a school in the middle of nowhere with only 330 students. Okay, I think that's a bad idea. Ladycollege had 2700 and they were all women and even that got small. I'd say he's narrowing his dating possibilities, except I went to a women's college and I generally don't date women. Hmmm...

I am pro-LB half-assedly following in my footsteps and going to Hampshire, as he can take classes at two prestigious Ladycolleges, and I think he'd like that. I could totally see him taking Women's Studies at Mount Holyoke and making friends with a gaggle of babydyke MoHos. Also, uh...there is stuff here. I am going to Marlboro to check for stuff.

I should mosey down to the CDO and get some resume counseling or something. I totally forgot I could do that and therefore do not have a current copy of my resume. Damn!

clutching my pearls

Let me start out by saying that when you visit the fine establishment that is T-bird Coffee, one must seriously consider ordering the "Frappe," for its cold and sweet goodness is like a flavor power surge that starts in your mouth and blasts through your whole body.

Over the last few days, I've been forwarded the same anti-Sarah Palin screed by numerous Ladycollege acquaintances. This is typical Ladycollege activism, this culture of agreement. I was there during the Clinton years and there wasn't much to crow about back then, so I can only imagine what our 2000s sisters have been through in terms of fighting the good fight and being a typical Smithie collusionist pain in the ass.

You've got to give the Repugs credit: they chose such a hollow reed for a candidate that anyone can cast her as anything they like. On one side, she can be Sarah the hot hockey mom who plays with guns that rednecks can feel good about whacking off to, and then over here on my side we've got a harpy bitch who forces her teen into a shotgun marriage while firing the town librarian for not banning books at her behest even though Palin can't read and lives only to shoot oddly-named white babies out of her clown car vagina. At any rate, its typical that the Repugs, in their historic nomination of (gasp) a woman, chose one so grossly underqualified so as to either set her up to fail or to assure that she'll be nothing but a Stepfordian mouthpiece for their dangerous policies. Also, they like to highlight how she is more like a man. Those people are sick, I tell ya. Sick, sick, sick!

So I keep getting this same heated letter from people I only vaguely communicate with and though I know their intentions are good, the thrust of this missive is to get people who write about why they are against Sarah Palin and send their heartfelt feelings on the matter to two women who run a website featuring people's reasons why she sucks.

I'm not so concerned with Sarah Palin the person. I'm more against McCain, insofar as he's a liar, an opportunist, has cancer, is old, is batshit crazy, cheated on his incapacitated wife, keeps trying to steal the identity of Tom Cruise's character in Top Gun (the gayest movie ever made), let Bush & Co. get away with defaming him and kowtowed to their bullshit for eight years with his dick taped up somewhere near his bum, and now that he's ripped that tape off (eeeew...) he thinks he's a real man and wants to be our hillbilly bumpkin war hero president and doesn't know how many houses he has. I hear the answer is seven.

I don't hear these activist undergraduates coming out against McCain. They're all up against Palin, and I don't think it's because McCain's fragile health and ability to perform the duties of the POTUS. No, I've seen this shit before, and a decade later it still haunts me because every time I open my mouth, I reactively worry that my friends will ostracize me for saying the wrong thing. They don't hate Palin because she's a suck-ass bitch conservative who wants to turn over Roe v. Wade and likes to shoot her gun and her mouth. We're hating on her because there's no one we hate more than an anti-feminist woman! Where do they find these bitches and why do some of them matriculate at the Ladycollege? (btw, I defend their right to do so)

Still, this whole things just reminds me of Ladycollege ideological intolerance. I'm still scarred from all that fucking shit from a decade ago. Listing all of her disgusting predilections on a website doesn't sound like activism to me. But panties are getting in a wad because she's A WOMAN! And being A WOMAN also nets you round-the-clock media coverage, wheras dumb male VP candidates barely get a yawn and a ball scratch from CNN.

I am prepared to come out against the entire Repug ticket, but I'm at a point where if I cannot be offered positive, effective activism, even if that simply means sending some money to the Obama campaign, I can't be bothered. This just sounds like bitching. We need to rise up and do and be more.

Onto more important things, like the latest episode of MAD MEN!!!

First of all, I love Jimmy Barrett. He sort of looks like our pal Hujhax, but in a shorter way. I've always had a soft-spot for corny mid-century Jewish comedians, and I'm sorry to see his story come to a close. Gotta love the scene where he tells Betty that Don was doing his wife. Jimmy and Bobbie were swell, swell kids, with a lot of spunk. Jimmy's dress-down of Don was priceless! I love this show!

And how about that bird's-eye view into Sal's sham beard marriage? The dude is queerer than a cat fart and he's stuffed behind the suitcases and the Christmas ornaments and he's got his head in the hangers, but he's got a wife! Who he just can't love, even though he clearly tries really hard but sometimes, when an attractive young man is present, he'd rather fondle that guy's lighter than pay attention to her. Let us not forget that homophobia hurt a lot of straight women, too.

Also, the status struggle between Joan and Jane was superlative. And Betty the Litterbug! I guess it will take her until 1971, the year that the famous Crying Indian PSA hit the airwaves, to figure out that littering is wrong.

I will really miss the Barretts.

addendum

Chicago facts:

We will know in a week or so if this is for sure or not.
We will be here during the election so we can Obamanos.
If we end up staying for the long term, we will sell our Austin house and buy a Chicago house with a guest room so we can have all our friends come stay with us while they take improv workshops or tour the city's all-you-can-eat Polish buffets.
I am going to cry over the awesome backsplash that was installed today that I probably won't get to enjoy. The real cruelty of this situation is the timing. "Your kitchen is beautiful and awesome now! And now you have to move! Mwah ha ha ha ha!"

Also, nothing against people who go to Chicago to be big improvisers. Bob and I don't hold that as a big goal, though we do plan to take classes at Annoyance/iO once we get settled.

coat shopping

So we might be moving to Chicago.
There it is.
This is not an attempt at hitting "the big" in improv. No sirree. This is all nuclear engineering in action. Bob's bird has flown. Classes at the Annoyance are only a diversionary tactic to keep me from being sad and/or intimidated and/or overwhelmed by packing up my shit and moving the week I get back from Vermont.

On the bright side, I get to buy a new WINTER COAT!

If we were going to my beloved Massachusetts, I would get a stylish, tailored wool coat, but since we're going to Chicago, home of the one job for which Bob would be willing to live in snow again, I think I have to invest in one of those "ARCTIC RATED TO -40 DEGREEZ!" models.

I could look like a giant ambulatory turd in this model.

This could either be a tribute to T-square's famous silver jacket OR my attempt to pander to the local pipe-sweating community. "Hey! I'm aluminum!"

This one easily doubles as a Grim Reaper Halloween costume. Just add plastic scythe!

Anyway, let this be a lesson that if you spend your summer depressed and loudly complaining about how you never want to spend another summer in Texas, then you'll have to move to someplace that will match your Texas summers with brutal, unrelenting winters. Somewhere that isn't pretty, doesn't mean anything to you, but has improv and a few friends and all-you-can-eat Polish restaurants.

Be careful what you complain about.

stove of sadness

Something happened yesterday. I cannot comment on it at this juncture. But in one quick minute, the way I look at my daily world changed drastically. And I got sad about my new gas range.

Bob and I selected a supernana Kenmore Elite stainless steel gas range with convection capabilities, the ability to self-clean, and a host of nubby buttons that you push to tell it what to do. It is sort of tall (like me) and fancy-looking, even though it was mid-priced and on sale for $300 less than what it goes for. It epitomizes all that is grown-up in my current life: the kitchen remodel that I commandeered, the dinners I look forward to cooking again, the shiny ring on my finger and the big writer's residency I am about to embark upon.

Except something happened yesterday that made me sad when it got delivered.

Nobody died, but someone might be disappearing for a while.

Are you enjoying Palingate? I sure am. I like to be reminded that the Repugs want to make sure that they believe in rewarding women of low accomplishment with big jobs they aren't prepared for so they can fail gloriously and send the message that the big jobs should go to the men while the girls stay home and glower at their abstinence-practicing spawn. What do you want to bet that Chelsea was on the Pill throughout her teen years regardless of whether she was schtupping anyone? If Chelsea had turned up preggers, she would have been whisked off to Europe for an abortion and we wouldn't know the first thing about it. What do you want to bet this teen pregnancy thing was a total gambit to send a message to the evangelical far-right, showing a woman frog-marching her own child into marriage to some dumb 18-year-old boy and raising a child as an example of "doing the right thing," even though that "right thing" is going to give her daughter a profoundly unhappy start to adulthood.

I have to wonder if my mother's take on this was equally conservative, for had I turned up pregs in high school, I would have been summarily forced onto the clinic table. Funny. She forced me into becoming a person who she doesn't like very much. She'd probably like beleaguered mother-of-a-teen Mo a lot more than the version she got. And designed.

Seven days until Noho; 24 until Vermont.