Send in Another Victim of Industrial Disease

Good Lord. Is it just me, or are we getting more and more sensitive by the minute?

Perfume Odor Sends 34 to Hospital

First cigarettes, now perfume.

Live or die, Party People. But don't ruin everything.

Hip to Be Square

Each year round about this time, my young gal's fancy suddenly turns from flirty skirts and strappy sandals and beachy hair to starry-eyed musings about . . . yes . . . FALL. Never mind that the temperatures are hovering in the high nineties and my cooler runs 24/7 and I can barely stand shoes on my feet, much less clothing on my body. Never mind that BCBG, Banana Republic, and J Crew have begun their strategic assault upon my in box with daily promises of 70 percent off and free shipping and everything but a passel of pit bull puppies and Johnny Depp to hand deliver them.

Non.

At this point in the year, my wallet has become Fort Knox and I the $15-an-hour Rent-A-Cop assigned to prevent its breach.

That's because I know that come end of August, the stores are going to be brimming with an entirely new season's crop of cozy knits and suedey boots and tailored pants and woolen caps and unless I want to spend all of October de-pilling last year's sweaters, I must start saving my . . .

. . . wait a minute.

What's this?

Crap.

I knew it, just knew it.

I knew there would eventually come a time when, in response to 1982 calling yet again to ask for its shoulder pads back, designers everywhere would simply decide to hang up the phone.






If ever in your life you've wondered whether your wardrobe simply would NOT be complete without a Pepto Bismol-colored, shipping crate-sized "cocoon coat" in which to drown your fashion challenged sorrows? Well, wonder no more:

Mute Monday: Medical

You Never Know Just How You Look Through Other People's Eyes

The religious people in Moi's life frequently tell me, "God is always listening." And the New Agey, whee-oo, spiritshul folk likewise assure me on a regular basis that, "Everything's connected." Then there are the Leviathan-esque skeptics who roll their eyes at me and assert: "Life is nothing more than random coincidence."

I haven't fully worked it out for myself yet, but on occasion, I do get these little tweaks from the universe to remind me that, nope, I really don't hold much faith in the third option. Take this long-lost friend of mine from junior high. I don't know if it works the same way today, but when I went to junior high in the late 1970s, social status was stratified into what we referred to at the time as "cliques."

This long-lost friend occupied the top clique of coolness in my school. Think: Jodi Foster in Foxes cool. She was tall, she was beautiful, she had perfectly feathered hair and a complexion unblemished by anything other than a smattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Her Dittos fit like a glove, and her Candies were never scuffed. She smoked cigarettes with the elan of a grown up and taught me to drink whiskey without barfing it back up.

I felt like I'd been granted one of the greatest gifts in the world, to hang out with her and her buddies. Okay, so one of her posse and I hated each other with a white hot passion (it was a boy thing), but my pal, she never judged, never took sides, and somehow managed to remain friends with both of us. She was just that cool. She was smart, too, graduating at the top of our class, and her cultural instincts were always spot on. While everyone else in our graduating class was petitioning for the ubiquitous "Free Bird" as class song, she whipped up a campaign to override the vote with David Bowie's "Changes." We stayed friends until our first year of college when we slowly drifted out of touch.

I've thought about her a few times on and off over the years, but for some reason last week, she popped into my head more strongly than usual, occupying front and center that spot in my cerebral cortex or wherever the heck fire it is that my brain stores its memories, bringing with it a flood of crystal clear reminisces of our six-year-long series of adventures. Several days later? She found me on Facebook and sent me the loveliest email about how she thinks of me on a regular basis and how our time together in school are some of her fondest memories.

And if you don't think I didn't immediately pull out the tattered and battered year book from out of the filing cabinet and have a good gully washing cry over all those fabulous memories, well, you'd be wrong.

Any of you hook up with someone long-lost recently?

You Want It All But You Can't Have It

Dear Barry Oh, So Now You Think You're My OB-GYN,

I know you've been trying real hard these past seven months to make me your girlfriend, but I gotta tell ya, dude. Snazzy suits and honied speeches aside, it's just not working for me.

You should know that it's you, not me. Because if you think you're going to stand in between one of the most sacred private relationships allowed an individual – the one between me and my doctor – you're wrong.

Now, you work on a REAL plan to eliminate the insurance companies as middle men, remove the mouths of your D.C. buddies from the assholes of the pharmaceutical companies, and return medicine to the free market so costs can truly adjust accordingly, then maybe we can go for ice cream.

Until then, you're going to have to anesthetize this bitch for me to listen to you.

Sincerely,
Moi

Mute Monday: Flora and Fauna

God Shuffled His Feet . . .

And then went and put something decent on them and then on THAT day, gave this directive.

If you could see me now, you'd see me doing a happy dance. In heels. In my running shoes. Heck, in my slippers. In anything but the most gad awful ugly ass things to ever grace a human foot. No more. Now, if only we could do something about sweats and capris. One day at a time, one day at a time.

It's Like Being Low

I'm slowly beginning to put together a play list for the La Luz race and I'm finding myself craving some of that wall of sound effect from Old School electronic and ambient music – Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno, Fripp, Jarre, Laurie Anderson, Gary Numan, and Bowie's unparalleled Low. If you don't have Low on album or CD, do yourself a favor and go download "Crashing in the Same Car" and this song, which contains some of the greatest pop music lyrics ever written.



What are you craving aurally these days?

Mute Monday: Classic

Stuck in the Middle With You

Was it Douglas Adams who once said he could never get the hang of Thursdays? It's a weird day, isn't it. Colored a dark blue/purple/black. Like a bruise. Or one of those wide shouldered, space age Claude Montana outfits from the '80s.



Today's Thursday is a pause in my work week to do a trial run up La Luz with S.B. and a couple friends, one of whom is running it with me this year. He's the dude I wrote about last year who in his mid forties suddenly took up running and within a couple months was doing marathons. He's one of those "natural" runners. Smoked me on my own hills in my own 'hood yesterday morning. He's going to post a great time, while I, simply, will have a great time, plodder that I am.

What day of the week is your weird day?

Was It the Cure? Hope Not.

Michael Jackson everywhere today and I'm beyond sick of it. I never liked him at all and that's the honest to goodness truth. Really. Not even when he was little and still such an innocent little puppet. "Billy Jean" is one of the creepiest songs ever and we won't even go there with "Black or White."

Sorry for those who did love you that you're dead and gone, bud. Sorry you messed it all up like so much spoiled rotten spilled milk you can't get back in the bottle. Sorry you did what you shouldn't have done with all those little children. Sorry your death has become yet another opportunity for our media to go hog ass wild in the only way it seems to know how these days because it sure isn't giving us anything of substance about Iran or the greedy bastards in our senate rubbing their bloated hands over the fatted cash cow of Cap and Trade.

I'm grumpy today.

But I like this song very much.

Mute Monday: Independence

Happy Fourth of July

Obamarachnid

See this little dude(ette)? I discovered it yesterday, hanging from a thin section of silk about half way down from the middle of my office ceiling. It stayed there all afternoon, doing nothing except moving up and down, up and down, from the ceiling to the floor of my office and back again.

I thought it would be gone this morning. You know, to do whatever it is spiders do. Like eat the GIGANTIC stupid ass flies that keep dive bombing me while I sit at my desk. They're like some lumbering insect equivalent of a C-130, seemingly incapable of navigating with any kind of speed or grace the airspace around my desk, instead careening themselves blindly into my computer screen or the window ledge.

Or my face.

Yew.

But, no. The spider is STILL HERE and, as near as I can tell, it hasn't done anything to negatively affect the fly population nor has it accomplished anything else of any significance for that matter. Like vacuuming the carpet or dusting my desk.

Here is it, just moments ago, moving back down its little silk thread, where it nearly plunked itself down on the Ivanator's head. Now it's moving back up again.


I am tempted to coax it into a jar and move it outside to my lettuce beds, where a certain bunch of roughneck aphids have recently set up camp. Because every other creature in this house has a JOB, fer cryin' out loud. I don't care if you have eight legs and are the size of a pumpkin seed – NO SLACKERS ALLOWED!