A Sticky Predicament

Four too few, six too many.....

Once upon a time, if you met someone at an event in another city and the two of you hit it off, chances are that would be that. Okay, you could send a card or a letter, or maybe even call, but that took guts, which were in shorter supply back then. But now you can just Google that person, or friend him on Facebook or email him and that person cannot run, cannot hide, cannot escape the all-seeing, all-knowing Interweb. And the more successful the person has been in the past, or the more prolific, the more you can uncover about what he does, who he knows and how he lives. It's certainly a good way to separate the wheat from the chaff, saving you from years of unnecessary interaction with someone who may actually be wrong for you as a friend.

But you meet people all the time, and even many you don't like one bit send you friend requests on Facebook. What should you do? You confirm. At least I confirm, as long as I know who the person is. It means nothing but it makes people feel good, and prosperous and popular, like that matters in the end which it does not, but few of us think about the end when we are safely ensconced in the middle.

It's tricky, though, because having too many Facebook friends is a turn-off. Like, just who the heck do you think you are with those thousands of friends--a rock star? Or worse, a politician? What you want is not too few, but not too many. Like prunes.

Why Flying Sucks

Okay, so it's a tired old subject, but it always delivers. Two days ago I flew the unfriendly skies and once again met Man's Folly head-on in the form of the TSA cops who keep us all safe from 4-ounce bottles of shampoo. In light of recent bombings in Boston, specifically those two crazed individuals who had eluded the law for years despite being on CIA and FBI watch lists, I was in no mood for their childish shenanigans implying that I might be a terrorist. But there I was anyway, stripping down to almost my skivvies, along with the rest of the traveling public.

The thing that bugged me the most, besides them "confiscating" and "discarding" the unopened bottle of water they found in my purse, was how seriously those folks go about their dumb business. The woman in charge of me fairly barked that she had to "inspect" what was in my hand--it was my boarding pass and they specifically had instructed me to hold onto it. Then she had to "clear some suspicious areas"--namely, feel the zipper on my cargo pants and fondle my breast underneath the piece of jewelry on the shirt covering it. She could see it was a decorative pin, but she had to feel it anyway. All this nonsense was performed after I had stood inside the giant x-ray machine holding my hands over my head and with both unshod feet squarely inside the big yellow footmarks, having my internal organs nuked. Naturally there was nary a smile on anyone's face; instead the mood was as somber as if I were about to unload a magazine of ammo into the crowd.

I offered to just take off all my clothes and in fact started to, which caused the lady to shriek, "that's not necessary!" Still, she never cracked a smile or let on that the whole business is ridiculous. Only I knew that deep inside my carry-on bag was a really big bottle of hair conditioner, way over the legal limit.

Spongy Brain Syndrome

Scene outside the window in my mind.

Either I have seen too many movies for my own good, or my brain is too spongy. Whatever the cause, I now am stuck with certain scenes in my head that I'd do a lot better without. Like right now, I am relaxing in a seventh floor hotel room overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. It's a lovely view, to say the least. But as I look out at the breaking waves and the beautiful golf course visible below, I am reminded of the tsunami scene in The Impossible where everything goes all to hell in a matter of seconds, and I keep expecting that to happen, even though there has not been an earthquake anywhere today to the best of my knowledge. But that's exactly what happened in the movie--nobody knew there had been a earthquake thousands of miles away, and then BOOM. (Those golfers don't stand a chance.) What's really dumb is that tsunamis don't really get higher than the third floor....

Similarly, every time I back my car out of my driveway I think of the scene in Adaptation where Chris Cooper backs out and crashes into a truck that's barreling along and loses his front teeth and also kills his wife and aunt and uncle. Cooper got an Oscar for his performance, and I get to see it again and again every time I back out of a driveway. I wonder if he does too.

Those were a couple of memorable scenes.

Wait, Wait....Don't Tell Me

If it were not for the Internet, few of us would know 95% of what we know about the lives of others. Instead we would be blissfully ignorant, without a clue that insanity, hatred, bad taste, poor grammar, and stupid pet tricks are rampant among the masses. Imagine waking up in the morning and just having to make breakfast for yourself and your family, plus the cows and goats and chickens if you live on a farm, and not hear a word about bombs and terrorists. I want that life.

But I'm not living that life; I'm plugged in. Like Neo in the Matrix, I get up and log on and it starts--the barrage of extraneous information, like how to apply mascara so it doesn't streak in the rain, or where to get the best cheeseburger in Kansas City, or whose skeletal remains were found in a shallow grave 30 miles from nowhere overnight, or how the incensed mother of the bombers claims they were framed and that the whole thing was staged, complete with fake blood and the citizens of Boston all bit players.

There's so much I wish I didn't know. If you see me, please don't tell me.

Hoping for the Best

Some of the local fauna of Amelia Island.

I last visited Amelia Island 26 years ago. I am going again tomorrow, and staying at the very same hotel, which is apparently newly renovated and now offering Segway tours of the property. (Note to self: do not do that!) At the time I was three months pregnant and my father had just died, and what I remember most about that particular trip is crying. On the beach, in the hotel, at the pool, it was boo-hoo. While it was indeed a lovely setting in which to cry, I automatically think of the whole place as a bummer. This is unfair to the Amelia Island Chamber of Commerce, so I welcome the opportunity to revise my bad impression.

This time I am not pregnant and I am well over my father's death, so it should be a lot better. Still, there will be a few of those "rubber chicken" dinners, since I am accompanying my husband on what is for him a business trip. Besides that, I am girding myself for the fact that Florida, while close, is not Haiti, which means it could be the same old, same old if I'm not careful, and that is just about the worst thing that can happen after you have endured the airport security lines and the creepy flight stuck inside an airborne cattle car for like five hours, and with a change of planes too. (Up and down twice in one day.) To pretend I am somewhere interesting and foreign, I will avoid all media, ingest only weird foods and strange drinks, and imagine that the people on the Segways are exotic animals with wheels for feet. At the very least, I don't need to get any shots.

Clearing the Air

I once asked a lawyer friend what modern would life would be like without so many of his ilk, and he said right out: "People would fight a lot less." If nothing else, lawyers sure do roil the waters.

They also obfuscate--one of my favorite words even though it means a bad thing--at every turn. Right now, as the lilylivered punk who callously wrecked so many lives last week recovers in the hospital, a crack team of defense lawyers is gearing up to keep his head from rolling. Since he could not afford his own lawyer one was assigned, and by all reports she is "tenacious and wise," with an admirable track record. One of the most experienced and successful public defenders in the country, Miriam Conrad heads the Federal Public Defender Office in Boston. FYI, this particular case is right up her alley; in 2001, she defended "shoe bomber" Richard Reid for trying to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner.

I beseech Ms. Conrad to quit defending scumbags and instead let the younger of the two terrorist brothers receive the justice he deserves: to have a few of his own limbs blown off. This would be an appropriately updated version of the old "eye-for-an-eye" Code of Hammurabi, which dates back to 1772 BC. In fact, I say let him keep both his eyes and watch the whole thing. That sounds unduly cruel, I know--and he's such a good-looking young man! But many of those people he injured so severely, just because they showed up in Boston that day, are also young and good-looking. Where is their defense team?

Blah Blah Blah Ginger

Gary Larson's best cartoon.

I declare war on the following words: amazing, awesome, unbelievable, fantastic and brilliant. Unless of course whatever it is one is describing actually is any of those things, which is highly unlikely. Chances are if something were truly amazing, the person would not be hanging around Facebook saying how amazing it is but would instead be calling CNN or FOX or People magazine to arrange an interview and become the next big thing with an amazing story.

The English language is going to Hell in a handbasket, whatever that means. I guess a hand basket is a basket one holds in one's hands, like maybe the one Little Red Riding Hood took to Granny's house. I personally have never seen anyone carrying a handbasket, and if they had one, would they necessarily be on their way to Hell? Are there a lot of these baskets in Hell? Also, is hand basket one word or two?

I am streaming my consciousness here today because A, this is my blog and B, it doesn't matter if I have 212 readers one day and 89 the next, or if it's about something pithy and profound or dumb and annoying--nothing changes in my life. So maybe today will be an 89 day; big deal. My son has gone off to live alone in the woods of Northern Maine for several months and I am worried/excited/nervous about it. I hope he doesn't starve/get rickets/ meet up with an axe murderer, because let me tell you, he brought along an axe that could do the job.

I need more coffee.

Waiting for Spring

It's still winter where I live. Well, maybe not winter, but certainly not spring. There are no flowers yet, although I did see the tip of a yellow daffodil poking out of the ground yesterday. Waiting for warmer weather, I read. In case you missed it the first time I printed it in this space, here is a wonderful poem by Billy Collins: 

I Chop Some Parsley While Listening To Art Blakey's Version Of "Three Blind Mice"

And I start wondering how they came to be blind.
If it was congenital, they could be brothers and sister,
and I think of the poor mother
brooding over her sightless young triplets.

Or was it a common accident, all three caught
in a searing explosion, a firework perhaps?
If not,
if each came to his or her blindness separately,

how did they ever manage to find one another?
Would it not be difficult for a blind mouse
to locate even one fellow mouse with vision
let alone two other blind ones?

And how, in their tiny darkness,
could they possibly have run after a farmer's wife
or anyone else's wife for that matter?
Not to mention why.

Just so she could cut off their tails
with a carving knife, is the cynic's answer,
but the thought of them without eyes
and now without tails to trail through the moist grass

or slip around the corner of a baseboard
has the cynic who always lounges within me
up off his couch and at the window
trying to hide the rising softness that he feels.

By now I am on to dicing an onion
which might account for the wet stinging
in my own eyes, though Freddie Hubbard's
mournful trumpet on "Blue Moon,"

which happens to be the next cut,
cannot be said to be making matters any better.

-Billy Collins

Richie Havens, Free At Last

I never cared for him personally, not being much of a folkie, but still I'm surprised at the lack of news concerning the death of Richie Havens, a world-famous singer and songwriter who was as big as you can get back in the sixties. He opened Woodstock, for crying out loud. Seems like it might be somewhere in the news besides my morning Wall Street Journal, which means he must have died yesterday. Havens is most famous for his song, "Motherless Child," more popularly known as "Freedom."

How odd that a newspaper actually brought me some news.

Joke of the Day

A man in Scotland walks into a bar. 
He approaches a couple of women and asks, "Say, are you two ladies from Scotland?"
 One replies, "No, we're Wales."
"Oh, I'm sorry--are you two whales from Scotland?"

Print Is So Last Week

As a former magazine and newspaper art director, writer and illustrator, I have long bemoaned the coming obsolescence of print media. But guess what--it's no longer coming, it's here. The indisputable evidence arrived in my mail today in the form of The Week, a periodical that promises to deliver "All You Need to Know About Everything That Matters." The latest issue's cover photo is of several bloodied spectators at the scene of the Boston Marathon bombings (yawn), and carries the headline: Who did this? It goes on: "As a shocked city grieves, investigators hunt for a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. But the funniest part is that the magazine is dated April 26, 2013, which is four days from today. Apparently they are quite confident that they're ahead of the curve. I can only hope that amid all the heads rolling around their editorial offices, someone notices my subscription cancellation.