What's Going On

Nothing much

I spend much of my life sorting and folding clean laundry. There are only 3 of us, how can there be so many clothes? On the front end, I have established a new system. I used to have a 3-bin sorter thing I got at Target in my laundry cupboard, only when our old AEG died and we bought a new machine, which resembles a large shiney space station, I could no longer actually get at the clothes waiting to be laundered. Now I have two mesh hampers in our hallway. They are portable, so when one is full, off it goes for its contents to be soaked, spun, and fluffed. They are also colour coded: one for darks and one for lights. I will train the male people in our unit to learn how to use this system. Otherwise, in spite of my adamant feminism, they will not get near my lovely new machine, nor are they allowed to fold. It seems like a safe enough outlet for whatever psychological malfunction this obsession of mine could be categorized under. And before you smirk, know that I am not alone.

And the world laughs with you

Last night, I ended up at Burger King's with a friend and 4 incredibly wired children. For the most part they stayed outside in the outdoor play area, but every now and then one or two of them would break into the restaurant while we were ordering the food. "We're going to keep them outside," I told the large, very pleasant Hispanic man behind the counter. We had just had the most confusing exchange regarding my ordering of a "beggie bacon." I felt so bad, he kept repeating this, and I kept apologizing for not being able to understand what in the hell he was talking about. He, meanwhile, was just trying to translate "garden burger" into something that was actually on their menu. Regarding the children, by now I was paying for god knows what, I went on, "we're going to lock them out there. Then we are going to leave." He laughed heartily in the most friendly way. He thought I was joking!

Alborada!

My favourite telenovela is coming to an end, I think. I am sure the last time I watched it I saw the words "Ultimas Semanas" blazoned across the screen. I didn't realize that telenovelas actually end and don't go on for forty years with the same characters for ever and ever, like American soap operas.

Anyway, it's my favourite in that it is the only telenovela that I watch. It's set in the 18th century, a period of time in which people didn't talk so fast. Most of the time I watch it on mute so I get the closed captioning and read it furiously as the dialogue flies back. One good feature of this show, and it may be common to all, is that after characters A & B have an intense and impassioned discussion, and after character A leaves the room, character B will handily summarize what just happened for character C, which gives me two chances to get any kind of meaning from the exchange.

Many of the characters are related, but I don't really watch often enough to know how. I think I just figured out that two of the women characters, Hipolita, the main female love lead and mother of the born-out-of-wedlock Rafael, and Catalina, saintly and sweet, may be sisters. This is a huge break through. Plus the evil villain guy of indeterminate sexual orientation is called Diego. This is also a great clue, because now I know when they are carrying on about something and Diego's name comes up, it is something bad they are talking about. If I didn't have to watch the text whizz by, I could watch the actors' facial expressions, but I don't have that luxury.

The main male love interest, Luis, father of Rafael, is in frequent sword fights. The latest fight seems to have been mostly an excuse to get him to take off his shirt and leave it off for many episodes while he recovers. Most times when I tune in after a week or so, I find one character or another recovering from a sword fight. It was a perilous era. Luis's wife, Esperanza, whom he apparently hated, finally died a few episodes ago after pretending she was pregnant (or maybe she was but it was Diego who was the father. Possibly?) and falsely claiming to witness a vision of the Virgin Mary. She died of some sort of fever, I think. She was very, very unhappy about Luis and Hipolita, and everyone was incredibly mean to her.

Anyway, I love historical fiction. I love the way that every shot of the big palace, where a lot of the characters seem to live, always has about 20 servants sweeping and cleaning. I love it that I can understand entire phrases at a time, and that people on the show actually say things like, "Como estas? Bien y tu?" just like I learned in Spanish class. And I love it that I just discovered a very thorough blog that not only details everything that happened in each episode, but also translates the dialogue. I may just figure out what the hell is up with Juana before it all ends.

Throw them to the lions!

All of a sudden the New York Times's pet conservatives, you know, the guys they keep in cages on the Op-Ed page so we liberals can throw metaphorical produce at them and poke them through the bars with rhetorical sticks, are renouncing the war in Iraq. I think they are still clinging to the invasion as a righteous act, but everything after that first landing of US troops, they're out of the blue all shocked and appalled at the incompetence. Why do they think we have been calling those bozos bozos all this time? It isn't because we all just pathologically hate Bush Republicans, we justifiably hate them because they are stupid and vicious. Now do you get it?

Back to the harbingers of spring California style, as in how do you know it is spring when the flowers are always blooming? Well here are some clues: the gardens are alive with the electric lemon-yellow of oxalis. Flowering fruit trees are dumping out pollen at outstanding rates and levels. Bluebells are out, along with the freesias. Neighbourhood tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils are on display and the whole town looks like an Easter egg. New birds appear in the still-bare tree branches, birds we haven't seen since last year. My favourites are the jays who show up in spring and fall and race around my yard yelling at everyone they see.

Dates

Yesterday was the 3rd anniversary of the Iraq invation. Happy Birthday Iraq! Hope you are enjoying operation Enduring Fuck Up.

Today is the first day of Spring? Is that right? Here in California, spring starts the day after New Years, when all the spring plant-y things start showing up. Before you know it, there are daffodils all over the place. Of course, it never stops here does it? Something is always waving colourful petals around, attention seeking. Plants which are decent summer bloomers in other parts of the continent are planted here as winter annuals. Winter annuals! What a concept. There is no relief from yellows, reds, oranges, pinks, greens. When I first moved here I got weary in the late winter months, craving a nice monochromatic grey colour scheme for my outdoor life, so my eyes could rest, before the really intense flowering season started. Now, I think I'm getting used to it. Luckily it has rained like crazy for the last month, so my eyes have enjoyed some desaturation, even as the reservoirs fill up to water the next year of floral madness.

What's for breakfast

I asked my son this question once, well, actually it was what do you want for breakfast, and he replied, "Anger."

I have been seething with anger these last few days, and thinking of my friend who was recently diagnosed with a serious psychological disorder. She had been experiencing a lot of anger due to a marital situation and, thanks to the ineptitude of the medical profession, ended up with her brain exploding, sort of, and in hospital.

As I fumed away the days, heart racing, head about to burst, I was able to blanket the e-niverse with angry, affronted emails to all the people with power over the target of my rage. Even as I could picture the snaps and sparks of synapses short circuiting, I could expel the heat and fire through my fingertips. Zap you fucker, how's this for your permanent personnel file? I even got to go a meeting and shout at the offender, not in volume, but in that I'm-on-the-edge-and-I'm-taking-you-all-with-me kind of voice that makes everyone else at the table very uneasy. It felt great, like I’d just spend the past week in a marathon yoga session, breathing.

My friend had no such recourse. There is no Director of Spouses to whom you can blast off incendiary complaints demanding corrective action. She was in a sealed box with her anger and no exhaust vents.

Family units fulfill many of our primal needs, but at a cost.

I Lied

Of course I have time to Google "Ignorant idiot," and in doing so, I discovered that the book I must have read at some point in the mid-eighties was: "Stand on Zanzibar." This is a 650-page book, full of details, characters, and plot development, but it appears all I took away from it was the title of a book written by a character called Chad Mulligan. The book was actually entitled "You're an Ignorant Idiot," and now I am left to wonder whether I read another book which ripped this off, or if my own fevered brain conflated "I'm OK, You're OK" with "You're an Ignorant Idiot" to create a new fictional book title.

Regardless, my friend Ruth thought "I'm OK, You're an Ignorant Idiot" was hilariously funny and the two of us flogged that joke until it was well past dead and in need of a decent burial.

Either Or

While stewing about something that happened at my son's school, I asked myself, as I frequently do, are these people stupid or mean? Or maybe both? I often ask myself the same sorts of questions about Republicans, religious fundamentalists of all stripes, and the NRA.

For some reason, this whole train of thought leads me to my all-time favourite Melrose Place quote, when Dr. Peter Burns asks in exasperation, "Do you think I'm insane AND stupid?"

Which further puts me in mind of my favourite made-up book title, "I'm OK, You're an Ignorant Idiot." I just tried googling this to get the citation right, but let me tell you, googling on the words "ignorant idiot" gets you "about 2,830,000 pages" and as much as I'd love to scroll these endless links to people overflowing with venom and vitriol, I don't have the time right now.

No Ambition

I was thinking this morning about people with wildly successful careers, like Hilary Clinton, or Madonna, or even, ya gotta love her, Gale Norton, and how they are different from everyone else who is just as smart, and creative, and talented but not what you'd call wildly successful in the way Condoleeza Rice is.

We comfort ourselves by noting our soulfulness, our sensitivity, our quirkiness both neurological and biochemical, and we know we are interesting. But we are not ruling the world.

He's Listening

Last night, I got a call from a hearty recorded voice. "Hi! I'm Harry DingleNuts from Eyewitness News!" it greated me. I agreed by pushing number 1 to take a phone survey. Results to be broadcast tonight! The survey voice was much calmer and wanted to know such things as: do I belive that Islam had been high-jacked by extremists (push 1) or not (push 2); is American policy in Iraq making things worse (push 1) or not (push 2); is oppression of women Islamic (push 1) or cultural (push 2); and oh, some other not too badly though out questions, all of which could amazingly be answered in binary code. Who needs nuance? Why bother with pushing 3 or 4 or 6? Of course I came in with all the right liberal responses. It was easy. Islam: a great religion! War: bad! Support our troops: bring them home! Thinking nervously as I selected my responses, Dick Cheney is listening in right now to all my digital beeps and boops and putting a mark next to my name.