Category: neck deep in the zeitgeist

is this too much to ask for?

I’m in danger of straying deeper than ever into bad stand-up territory here, but what is it with women and soap? First of all, don’t get me wrong; I love being in women’s bathrooms, whether it’s at a party, or at a friend’s house for dinner, or just dashing in to hide a web cam. Many of my male friends, it has to be said, are musicians, so it’s always a treat to be in a bathroom where I don’t want to wash my face again immediately after drying it on the sole all-purpose towel, and the shower curtain doesn’t try to hold a conversation.

But ladies, where’s the soap? No, the soap. I can’t tell you how often I’ve nearly washed with a candle or a seashell, or how much time I’ve spent with hands in the air like a surgeon, trying to determine which blue glass bottle might contain something vaguely soap-like. I don’t want to tone. I don’t want to exfoliate. I just want to wash my hands after I micturate. And don’t you want me to, too? “When I stayed with Adda, I found this in the bathroom, and I still have no idea what it is. If it had been in the fridge, I probably would have eaten it.” If I do find a bottle that looks like it could have soapish characteristics, it often turns out to be lavender comfrey ylang ylang astringent pore lotion with extract of Tibetan monk. Not only do I not want to waste your expensive product, but I don’t want to come out smelling like Richard Gere’s linen cupboard.

And if there is soap in bar form, it is often made from something unimaginably bizarre, or it looks like a gummi bear, or it has some cute shape that would be ruined after one use, or it looks like it cost eighty bucks a bar and carving it was the life’s work of elderly French nuns. Am I really supposed to wash my hands on the soap model of Notre Dame cathedral, lather until the flying buttresses are gone, then toss it back all wet into the decorative basket?

Maybe I should just take a cue from Ryan, soap-wise. His theory is that all bottled items for use in a bathroom are basically the same, and I can’t argue authoritatively against that. Hand soap, face soap, body wash, shampoo, conditioner: interchangeable according to him. Please keep that in mind if you catch me washing my hands with your toothpaste.

there is something oddly compelling about this picture

There’s a TV show called “Airport on the Discovery Wings Channel “a.k.a. the World War II Airplane Channel – not to be confused with the plain ol’ Discovery Channel, the Discovery Times Channel, the Discovery Mountain-Biking-and-Faux-Finishing Channel, the Discovery Animals-Doing-It Channel or the Hitler Channel”. The show follows people through the course of a day at Heathrow “abbreviation LHR: I like to know these things. In fact, you can look them all up and construct your ideal itinerary; I’d like to fly from MMM to OOH by way of HUH.”

What in the hell was I talking about?

Oh, yeah, the show. I love airports and I love traveling, but even so I’m not sure why I like watching it. Obviously they aren’t going to follow someone around who is having a pleasant and uneventful experience. It’s always things like the bridesmaid who has forgotten her passport and is begging the duty manager for Sri Lankan Air to hold the plane another ten minutes while she waits for someone to bring it “he did” or a group of Ethiopian athletes who don’t speak English and the airport information officer who has to try to make them understand they are a day early and in the wrong terminal “he didn’t”. Any given episode perfectly recreates the tension you’ve felt during your worst airport experience, and then gives you new stuff to worry about, like the fact that people apparently are shipping big bags full of baby crocodiles all over the world.

The show demonstrates that while English is the lingua franca of air travel, it isn’t American English or British English – it’s Airport English. Soon everyone in the world will be speaking in cadences simultaneously sing-songy and robotic and using impossibly overblown and obfuscatory phrases. “The title of this post is an announcement I heard at some small airport in the US. What does it really mean other than “testing”?” There will be a term to describe the moment when an airline official stops smiling and being conciliatory and becomes matter-of-fact and unapologetic. “On practically every show you get to watch the Cyprus Airways duty manager go through this transition 20 times as she explains to passengers that their flight is overbooked and they have the choice of going the hell home or accepting these peanuts and a Tom Clancy novel found in a seatback pocket and maybe there’s some room available in the hold.”

In the US, the style seems to remain faux-friendly longer. The last time I flew, I forgot to take my little pocket knife off my keyring. Obviously this raised some concerns among the security staff, and I was taken aside by an officer who explained very thoroughly and even cheerfully that I could not bring my knife onto the plane. Honestly, if he had just said, “What in the hell were you thinking, you moron? I would have been fine with that.

In other countries, airline employees seem to reach the moron-naming stage more quickly. On last night’s episode, the camera followed the activities surrounding, coincidentally, an Icelandair flight from LHR to KEF. “Hey, I gave you a link. Look it up.” Four of the dorkiest young men you could possibly imagine were checking in and discussing how they had chosen their destination. The alpha dork says, “Iceland’s got quite a good reputation for women” His friend, the second-biggest dork on the planet, grins broadly under his bowl haircut and says, “Definitely” There’s a brief pause while all four dorks dork dorkily into the camera, radiating their fervent hope that they will have better luck with the ladies of Reykjavík than they have traditionally enjoyed in Staines or Barking or whatever suburban dorkhole they usually dork around in. “Possibly Dorking.” Then you hear the ticket agent say, “I don’t fancy your chances”

REUTERS/David Bebber

From Reuters:

British performance artist Mark McGowan performs his artwork entitled ‘Sausage, Chips and Beans’ at the House Gallery, London in this photo taken November 14, 2003. McGowan intends to spend 100 hours sitting in the bath of baked beans with sausages strapped to his head and two chips stuck up his nose in support of the traditional fried breakfast which he views as an important part of British culture.

Do you think the NEA would give me some money to sit in a bathtub with Egg McMuffins strapped to my head? I mean, I do it anyway. I might as well get paid for it.

Speaking of traditional English breakfasts, I’ve had a nice hearty serving of spam lately. I’ve received emails from Headache G. Ethelred, Dramatist G. Brawlers, Stuffing F. Extinction and Clergywoman V. Sucrose. And my new mortgage broker, who is so fab that he just goes by “Juan,” thought it would make me feel better about trusting my financial future to him if he included this information:

I had to contemplate the math about eating dogs for a long time. Interest rates are lower than they have been in 40 years.

I appreciate that kind of outside-the-box thinking. You’re not going to get a cost/benefit analysis of dog eating from Merrill Lynch, are you?

I’m not even going to talk about GW’s visit to the UK, since Adda has already nailed it.

At her urging, I turned on CNN to try to see the footage of him doing his high school graduation walk. Now I remember why I don’t watch the news anymore. While I was waiting for the top stories, I saw the “CNN International Minute.” A whole minute for the Rest of the World? How do they manage to find enough material every day? And apparently Michael Jackson has a new album coming out or something.

“CNN Poll: The rap – will MJ ‘beat it’? Vote now.”

We’ve already figured out the chronology:

flight to avoid prosecution

negotiated surrender

celebrities band together in his defense

suicide watch

year-long televised trial

one year in Club Fed

tearful breakdown on Barbara Walters as he discusses his childhood

first album out of prison goes platinum

You heard it here first.

don’t worry, it’s not what you think

Yesterday morning I came downstairs to find that pattern of brown marks on my carpet. Naturally, having an animal in the house, I suspected the worst, but on careful examination “by careful I mean not sticking my nose in it – and no, I didn’t taste it” I determined it was in fact the most sublime of brown substances, chocolate. “I suppose it could have been carob, but my mass spectrometer is out for calibration.” Momentary relief was replaced by panic when I realized that <a href=”Hastings might have eaten some overlooked piece of candy from the party. I checked him over quickly, apologized for my poop suspicions, and then did a web search for “cats and chocolate”

If your cat has eaten, licked, smelled or even looked at chocolate, he will be dead by the time you get to the end of this paragraph. But unless your house looks like the deck of a tramp steamer full of refugees after a typhoon, he’s probably fine.

“I hope you’re not reading this on your lunch break.”

Just to be safe, I stuck a garden hose in him and ran it for about ten minutes, then squeezed him for a while.

Still, that left the mystery of how they got there. I suddenly realized they had some of the same geometric patterns as crop circles. Obviously, the marks on my carpet are a message from our alien overlords “and if someone wants to get my attention, chocolate is a good medium to use”. After studying the patterns for quite some time, I have deciphered the meaning:

Happy birthday. Eat whatever the hell you want.

Yes, today is my birthday. I am 38, and what a useless birthday that is. When I turned 35 I became eligible to run for president, and passed gratefully out of the MTV demographic. “I have since had the opportunity to indicate my age group on a survey as “35-70″ Thanks.”

Thirty-six was at least mathematically interesting. Bill, who got there a month before me, left me a message saying, “Just wanted to know if you felt like four nine-year olds, two 18-year olds, or like me, half of a 72-year old””

Thirty-seven and 38 just seem like way stations on the road to 40, but I’m okay with that. I know a lot of people are nostalgic for their 20s. Not me. I was a total dipshit back then. If you don’t believe me, check out the haircut in my <a href=”1988 passport photo.

why do I always have to make a face?

The problem with throwing a party and having dozens of your favorite people show up is that you don’t get to talk to anyone for more than five minutes. Saturday night I hosted ScorpioFest 2003, a co-birthday party for Samantha, Jenny, Catherine and, also, me. At the risk of having this post deteriorate even further into 15-year old girl territory, I will just say this:

I have the kewlest friends!!!! You guys are AWESUM!!!!!! :” :” :”

I will remember the party fondly while I am spending tomorrow night, my actual birthday, in a homeowners’ association board meeting. I’m not sure it gets more 38 than that.

The party was trans-oceanic, with Adda and Andri joining via web cam and IM. Owing to wireless network annoyances “plus the fact that it was 4:00 a.m. in Iceland” the conversation went basically like this:

hey

hye

who is this?

are you there?

Taavi’s feet smell like corn chips.

camera locked up again.

… followed by a discussion of a papier mache marital aid that has no place in a family blog. Plus, Adda kept arching her back and saying we could private for 20 credits.

Jesse and Rebecky brought me a pair of badass shades to go with my badass new jacket. “I’ve been calling it Jacket, but I should probably call it Mr. Jacket, or “sir.” I’m not sure I’m man enough for it. I think it’s sneaking out at night to stick up convenience stores.” The sunglasses kind of took me over, like the thing in that thing where the thing takes over that guy. “”No, Sunglasses! I don’t want any more vodka! “Shut up and drink or I will concentrate UV rays into your corneas”” I’ve posted photos from my Sunglasses Period in the gallery.

There’s lots of cheese left over. I had half a wheel of Brie for lunch. Spencer, for some reason, brought an enormous bag with four apples in it, and it’s still here. It’s kind of surreal, or even Surrealist. “Bag With Four Apples will remain on exhibit at the Plooble corporate gallery through the month of November.