stories about my family

toward the end of world war II, my father's father, the tall and somewhat scrawny son of french-canadian immigrants, lied about his age so he could enlist in the military. at seventeen, he was assigned to the coast guard, and between 1944 and 1945 he toured southeast asia extensively, spending the majority of his active duty in the philippines. once the war ended, his ship was stationed in a japanese port as part of the occupation. my grandfather was not pleased about this. it was one thing to be a thousand or so miles from japan, keeping an eye on the enemy, but the idea of having to share a shore with them, to walk and live among them after all those months and years of being singularly focused on destroying them, knowing they had been every bit as hellbent on destroying him, made him extremely ill at ease. not that there was anything he could do about it, and he's always been the sort to make the best of whatever situation he finds himself in--so off to japan he went.

lo and behold, it wasn't even awful. the nearby town accepted the crew's presence (outwardly, at least), the girls were very pretty, and sometimes the local theater showed american movies. while he understood it was in his best interests to remain vigilant, he started spending more and more of his leisure time away from the boat--where his shipmates didn't do much of anything besides gripe about having to babysit the japs and drink themselves sick--and in the town. one night while he was walking along the main street a young boy, maybe seven or eight years old, ran up to him and followed him along the road, asking for money. my grandfather isn't sure now whether he would have given the kid any money if he'd had it, and maybe if there'd been some change in his pocket this story would end differently, but there wasn't any change; all there was was three-quarters of a hershey bar. chocolate he could part with, especially less-than-scrumptious war-ration chocolate, and he handed it over. the boy's eyes grew huge and he started talking excitedly, but my grandfather couldn't make heads or tails of it; he understood that the boy was happy, though, so he smiled at him and patted him on the shoulder before he continued on his way.

about a week later, my grandfather was standing in line outside the movie theater when he felt someone tug on his sleeve. he looked down and saw that same boy, and he reached into his pockets, turned them inside out, and said, "no candy." but the boy grabbed his arm again and started pulling for all he was worth, trying to get my grandfather to follow him. gramps thought about it for a minute--it wouldn't necessarily have been impossible for some adults he had told to have talked the boy into luring my grandfather into an ambush; after all, an enemy who has surrendered doesn't magically turn into an ally--but in the end he let the boy drag him down the road to his home.

from the entrance they descended a small staircase into a tiny room, where six pairs of eyes turned silently toward them. the boy raced over to his family and started in on an animated speech involving much wide gesturing and some jumping up and down, the gist of which was not at all apparent to my grandfather. none of the listeners offered up any clues in terms of facial expression, and my grandfather started wondering what he had gotten himself into. finally, the oldest man in the group, presumably the boy's grandfather, rose and filled a cup. he held it out to my grandfather, motioning for him to drink. my grandfather, who still had no idea what was taking place, motioned back, "you first." after the old man drained the cup, my grandfather accepted a drink of his own, and then, finally, everyone in the room smiled.

the boy's family managed to get across that night, through their very minimal english, my grandfather's very minimal japanese, and extensive charades, that the boy had brought the chocolate home to share it with them and had told them all about his friend the soldier. they thanked him many times and offered him what little food they had, and my grandfather was more moved by their sincerity and kindness than he could remember ever having been. the next day he got his hands on a japanese-english dictionary and an entire hershey bar and went back to the boy's house to thank the family properly for welcoming him into their home.

over the next several months, my grandfather came to think of that family as his own. whenever he could he would gather up leftovers from the ship's kitchen and bring them along on his visits. he and the boy spent hours poring over the dictionary, teaching each other new words for things they'd been talking about all their lives. the men talked about the war, what it had done to their countries, how much they all wished everything that had been done could be undone. the day before he was scheduled to depart, my grandfather went to the house with all the food and supplies he could carry and told his family, with a speech he had pieced together on his own and rehearsed for days, that he would not see them again. everybody cried, but silently and reservedly, and my grandfather left them and returned to his ship.

the next morning when he went up on deck, he saw his family on the shore, waving. behind them was another family, and another, and another, dozens of people my grandfather had never seen before, all smiling at him and waving.

"who are these people?" my grandfather called out, sweeping his arm toward the crowd.

"they are our friends, and they are your friends," the boy's father answered, "because you are our friend."

all those months, the family had been taking the food my grandfather had brought them and sharing it with almost everyone they knew. a simple act that had cost him nothing had touched and bettered the lives of an entire neighborhood and convinced everyone involved that even among enemies, even in war, you can find someone who will see you only as a person and offer you what he can.

the crew didn't know what to make of the scene, didn't understand what was being said or why my grandfather was weeping. one shipmate asked who the fan club was, and my grandfather told him, "they are my friends." this statement and his lack of interest in drinking himself unconscious at the end of every day left the other sailors with little to say to my grandfather, but he was all right without them, and anyway, they were on their way home. after he married and started a family, he showed his children important words in the japanese-english dictionary. when my sister and i were young, he showed them to us.

"this means 'give' . . . this one says 'love' . . . that one is 'friend' . . . let me teach you how to say 'hope' . . ."

stories about my family

the miracle of pie

when i was about two years old, or somewhere between two and three, the whole maniacal herd of us—my parents and i, my father's parents, his two younger brothers, his sister, and maybe one or two dates—went out to dinner. no one can remember what time of year it was or why we were out, and no one can remember where we were, but the food was good enough and everyone was happy. i was still small enough to be in a high chair and was sitting at the head of the table, from which point i could see everyone and everything, and one of the things i saw was that someone had gotten a piece of pie for dessert.

very politely and peaceably, as that was the sort of child i was, i turned to my mother and said, "mommy, i'd like some pie." and mommy said, "no, you don't need pie." and i said, "no, but i would like some." and she said, "no, you had enough, we'll have dessert another day." and i said, "tim has pie." and she said, "you're not tim."

i, apparently, thought that was a ridiculous and offensive dismissal of my wants and needs, and i slapped my tiny palm down onto the tray of the high chair and shouted, "if one person has pie then everyone should be able to have some, and i'm a person and i have my rights!"

the table, and the tables around us, got very quiet. tim, my youngest uncle, who, incidentally, shares my birthday, was only about eighteen at the time and had no interest in firm parenting. he did, however, have an interest in my burgeoning sense of social justice and my seemingly inborn antipathy to the rabid capitalism and self-centeredness that was preparing to sweep the nation, so before anyone could laugh at me and permanently sully my love of fairness, he said, "you're right, joon. i'll share it with you."

and a pinko was born. now i substitute things like "health care" and "access to higher education" and "the right to get married and live happily" for "pie," but the tiny palm slaps down with just as much force and optimistic adamancy. my uncle, a god among men, got married and moved his family down to georgia and managed to raise two kids who are pretty sure they represent 25 percent of the state's pro–gay rights constituency, and i couldn't love them more or have more hope invested in them if they were my own. the four of us on our best day can't get my grandfather to stop feeling "sad about the queers," but we sure as hell make sure everyone in the room gets dessert.

monday punch-in-the-face blogging: the thanksgiving issue

what i'm giving thanks for this year, darlings, is the strong evidence proffered by my own personal nature-versus-nurture drama that one can easily triumph over one's genetics when it comes to character development and intellectual curiosity. here are five things spoken by my paternal relatives last thursday that made me want to throttle them to within an inch of their lives:

1. "muslims need to be wiped off the face of the planet." (said by my aunt)

2. "i pray for the muslims to accept jesus. i believe that if they could just learn to love christ, they wouldn't be such bad people." (courtesy of my grandfather)

3. "no talking about religion or politics." (spoken by my father approximately seven seconds after i began to attempt to explain the difference between muslims and islamic extremists)

4. "why can't these people just get the hell over themselves?" (dad again, after a brief news report about a group of native americans who staged a small, peaceful protest on thanksgiving)

5. "that wasn't murder, that was just mankind making progress like it's been doing for centuries and centuries. they weren't using all the land." (dad again, making the third time the charm, after i pointed out somewhat sharply that this was, after all, a holiday celebrating the day europeans began their steady invasion and elimination of an entire race of people, and that the remainder of that race had very little to celebrate and a whole lot to be upset about)

when i objected after comment five and tried to wrench some explanation out of dear old dad for how it's o.k. to kill innocent people under any circumstances, he reverted back to his favorite standby: weak pacifists like me would have handed the entire planet over to hitler. this, tragically, is the end of the majority of my conversations with my father, but not necessarily the end of the evening; that comes very shortly after the conclusion of this conversation, when i march out into the kitchen, tell my mother that her husband is the reason i will never believe this world is a decent place to raise a child in, grab my coat, and run out. but perhaps we really should allow it to come to blows just once, and see if that helps any. christmas is right around the corner, after all.

sunday best-of blogging

best holiday album: the jingle cats' meowy christmas. since i stopped living with imo, no one but toadie will let me listen to it all the way through. we love it to death, though; in fact, it's the only holiday music any of the three of us can stand. it appears to be one of the tests of true friendship for me, along with a willingness to laugh until you cry at bloodsucking freaks and vast sentimentality over the sad plight of cujo. go ahead and sample the cat rock yourself, and you let me know whose side you're on.

best/worst dog: my parents have a chihuahua named peanut, whom i don't know well, as they got him after i moved to boston and i don't usually get home more than once every three or four months. he is unnaturally attached to me, though, considering how little he's seen of me, and whenever i spend the night at my parents' house he sleeps on top of me and stands guard. any time anyone comes to the doorway of my room he stands up on my hip and growls, and if the intruder comes within less than two feet of me he goes berserk and bounces around barking and snapping until a more secure perimeter is established, at which point he lies back down as though nothing happened. i think it's pretty cute, especially since he's such an itty-bitty (and relatively toothless) critter, but my parents, who take freakishly good care of him, are less amused. my mother has been nearly bitten by him trying to remove him from me in order to bring him outside to pee, and that's bad, 'cause he should know that no one needs to worry about being killed in her sleep by my mom—if she's going to do away with you, she's going to do it to your face. still, though, it's pretty funny. but wrong. but funny.

best photo of the friendliest stray cat in italy:

that's toadie's leg he's wooing. you can see his much shyer female companion entering the frame from the far right, and on the left you can see our hostess' glorious yellow plastic boots. in the back there you can see the slushy lake that symbolizes the soles of all of our shoes for the last three days of the trip, but this was the first of those days and we didn't know how moist things were about to become, so we were all pretty happy to hang out in the muck and caress the locals. apparently they were happy with that as well. think of us fondly, kitty, and know that we carry your heart in our hearts.

best exchange from a crime drama: the following was transcribed verbatim, but i can't remember now what show it was on, because i was transcribing it from my bed after weaving in and out of sleep for fifteen or twenty minutes:

"fresh off an airplane from a conference, and BAM! i got seminal fluid."
"some things never change."
"what?"
"cocaine."

most socially oblivious comment made by a radio personality: "i hope you don't have too long of a walk from the parking lot to work today, because it is frigid outside." and if, by either choice or necessity, you make use of public transportation, or you couldn't afford the heating bill this month because all three of your kids are on antibiotics for strep and you haven't had health insurance since you got laid off in october, or you just got kicked out of the last available atm vestibule in the city, well, it sucks to be you. maybe you should try and get a gig as a dj, 'cause it's snug as all get-out in this here booth.

best cousins: the children of my father's baby brother are both such phenomenal human beings that every time i see them i want to pack up and move to georgia just so i can see them a little bit more. the boy will be graduating with his master's in may, two years ahead of schedule, and already has a job lined up as a math teacher in a public high school near athens. he's a supergenius and is always happy to spend hours talkingwith me about incredibly dorky things, but he also shares my exact tastes in movies and books, and all of my political and social views. when he was born i was about five years old, and i was obsessed with him and tried to claim him as my very own baby. today i would be every bit as thrilled to be able to show him off as my son, but i'm pretty content with the current situation. his sister, who is about a year and a half younger than him, is also a genius and an outstanding writer, but has decided she would rather spend her summers on the road with the warped tour than taking extra classes, and i think that's equally fabulous. she's wanted to be everything from a veterinarian to a music journalist (hmmm, who does that remind me of?), and right now she's thinking about maybe interning with a small music label and then looking into PR, but i tell her every time we talk to try everything before she makes any decisions, because you can't be sure about it until you're there. her mother doesn't necessarily appreciate this, but i couldn't care less, because i'm pretty certain it's the best possible advice. college will be there whenever she needs it, but the time won't be. we both get very excited about stripped-down indie rock and sanrio paraphernalia, and we both want to maul andie macdowell. she happened to drive to new york city a week after i did, and out of all the stores in manhattan we both have the clearest, happiest memories of yellow rat bastard in soho, which each of us stumbled upon accidentally. if everyone were lucky enough to have two friends of their caliber built right into the family there might not be any more frivolous law suits.

best new year's resolution; stop putting things off. and i don't mean washing the dishes or starting that book you bought three months ago or cutting back on white flour, i mean the real things. everyone has, or at least i imagine everyone has, a vision of the way his or her life would be if everything were just right, and still we trudge through days that are nothing like that vision, largely because we are waiting for the opportunity to get everything right all at once. well, i'm not going to do that anymore. i'm going to make a baby step towards the big, shiny picture every chance i get, starting this week, when i'll meet with someone about a new job. it's not exactly the job i fantasized about in exactly the city i've been dreaming about living in, but it's a lot closer to it than the job i've been hating going to lately, and that's all that ought to matter. it's true that you can never reach a point if every time you make a move toward that point you only halve the distance, but it's also true that all that halving will get you a hell of a lot farther away from the place you wanted to leave. so i choose motion, and happy travels to all of you, too.

sunday best-of blogging: the moment of silence issue

best last bit of advice: in the note she sent me before i left for italy, my grandmother told me to "remember everything!!" she sent me three disposable cameras and a notebook, and though i've been not so diligent about relaying my memoirs to all of you, i took her seriously. my most mundane moment might turn out to be someone else's favorite story, but i have to keep it long enough to talk about it in order for that to happen, and anyway, no experience is without some sort of significance. now, anyone who spent any time with my grandmother over the last five years or so knows very well that she did not remember everything, but she remembered to want to, and i think that might count a little bit more.

best way to spend christmas: with the people you love most, even if you have to be together in a hospital room, even if one of those people you love most can't be with you at the end of the day.

best three songs to hear later on as you're driving home in the rain: "night swimming," rem; "long december," counting crows; "today," smashing pumpkins

and that's all i'm going to say about that.

my holiday season, or Why I Won't Listen to You Whine About the Difficulty of Sticking to Your Diet With All These Holiday Cookies Around

my grandmother (the zippy irish-catholic one, not the portuguese teenage-mother one) was admitted to the hospital tuesday for reasons no one has been able to pry out of my hysterically shrieking aunt or my belligerent brute of an uncle. we knew she'd been sick since october, and while she claimed it was just a nagging cold, my grandfather told us a few weeks ago that she secretly felt like hell and was getting worse all the time. we're pretty sure she has pneumonia, and we're completely sure she was supposed to have surgery today for an aortic stenosis. she had multiple bypass surgery over a decade ago, and she's been mostly well since then, but it's tough to take perfect care of your body when you're a short, round woman in her seventies with no income and a husband who can't walk from one end of the house to the other without at least a little assistance. i have no idea who'll take care of him while she's recovering. more troubling to me at this point is that i have no idea whether or not she actually is recovering; i didn't hear from anyone this afternoon and couldn't get a hold of anyone this evening. my poor sister called me yesterday while i was at work, crying so hard she couldn't even breathe to speak. when she came back into her body she told me she was sure our grandmother had died, because of the hysterical and/or belligerent messages, all bereft of actual information, left by our relatives. she kept asking me to call our dad (it's his mom), but since he switched jobs a year and a half ago i don't even know what town he works in. i, here in boston, didn't know anything had happened at all until i was knocked on my ass by my desperate, breathless baby sister and was busy fretting over my tiny cat, who had x-rays tuesday that revealed a left kidney the size of a malnourished grape and an airway pattern consistent with chronic allergic bronchitis. i'm not fretting over her just now, as she's sleeping sweetly in my lap and not feeling badly about anything. i am, in fact, not fretting at all. i'm completely calm. i'm packed for manhattan, i'm leaving my phone on, i'll take what comes as it comes.

but i do not care how much chocolate you've eaten this week (i see it too, you know, i pass all the same counters and tables you do and i don't eat it, IT ISN'T THAT BLOODY DIFFICULT) or how fancy the electric razor you bought for your boyfriend is, and i was not moved by that awful diamond commercial, and i haven't played a video game since my atari 600 crapped the bed back in 1992, so i'm not impressed by whatever thingy with the guns and the cars and the secret lap dance, i just . . .

i have things on my mind. it doesn't mean you can't talk to me, but it does mean you have to say something.

so. as there's nothing i can do for anyone by staying, and no one seems to desire my assistance anyway, i'm looking forward to wandering around nyc and not speaking to anyone for the next three days. i hope you all have a pleasant weekend. try to do a genuine thing, if an opportunity presents itself. i'll thank you for it when i get home.

sunday best-of blogging

best song to let coffee dribble over your shocked, slack jaw to as your eyes widen in numbing horror:

Real Media | MP3

uh, thank you (?), think progress, for making sure the right brothers don't get mistaken by the power-pop set for just one more guitar-driven we-*heart*-blink-182 derivative drivelfest. this here's a band with a message, instead of a buttload of liberal LIES. that eminem, man… what a pinko. this is exactly the sort of activist anthem america's mall-roving hipsters need to wake them up and get them involved. perhaps it will convince some of them to enlist. perhaps the right brothers themselves will heed their own call to arms. but then, i guess we really do need them here at home; who else will thumb their noses at cindy sheehan?

best travel advice: "now, if any italian men pinch your bottom, don't you get angry; it's a compliment. i know sometimes you get a little upset about those things, but you have to remember that you're in a different place." courtesy of my septuagenarian irish-catholic grandma. what a peach, eh? i didn't argue with her about it, but i have a feeling that the random squeezing of one's body parts by a stranger is frowned upon around the globe, although i'm sure that in some places it's gotten away with pretty frequently. i don't approve of it in any location, though, and i'll do my best to speak their language and politely scrape their cheese into an inconspicuous pile underneath my napkin, but i'm an american girl and ain't nobody pinching my bottom. maybe it's just that grandma's a product of a different, surprisingly less uptight era. when she and my grandfather were dating he was playing drums in a jazz band, and my favorite story of theirs is how one night he took her to see him play in a gay bar, and before he went on stage he pointed out a transvestite at the bar who'd been giving him the eye; every once in a while, from behind the drum set, grandpa would look over at him and wink, and when he giggled and waved back coyly grandma laughed so hard her cape codder shot out her nose. now that i'm thinking about it, i remember my mom complaining frequently about my grandfather's habit of patting her tush on her way past when i was young.

best out-of-the-blue infatuation: mine with catherine zeta-jones as velma kelly in chicago. i had zero interest in this movie when it came out, being a decided non-fan of both the majority of broadway musicals and the entire cast. i'll tell you what i am a huge fan of, though: 1920s fashion. so over the past few days, as bravo has been playing the movie on a loop, i've paused on it enough times to have seen almost the entire thing, and miss catherine has stolen my heart right away. i still can't stand that zellweger, though, and i'll admit that my distaste for her is now fueled by a huge amount of resentment over how much better she looks in those little flapper frocks than i do. i don't generally wish that my body were built more like that of a 12-year-old male farm hand, but i think it's the ideal figure for those get-ups. so sad. catherine, though, has this delicious little roll of chub that peeks out over the top of her bodice now and again:




yum. murder is wrong, it really is, i believe that through and through, and i didn't change my mind when it was bebe neuwirth singing an angry, indignant song. nevertheless, when this particular velma says they had it coming, i'm with her.

best reason to return to 1991: so i can never watch aeon flux on mtv's liquid television, thereby eliminating my reflexive loathing for the current movie version. for all i know it's very good, but i'll never have anything to do with it, because i'm such a nostalgic elitist.




picture i like found here, picture i like not so much found here. eh? you decide.

best subject for late-night introspection: why am i so taken with vengeful, gun-wielding women in black bustiers? let's change the subject, shall we?

best canine miracle: about two months ago a little dog, part shepherd, part who-knows-what, was admitted to the hospital as an emergency after having been hit by a car. the person who had hit her had tied her to a tree on the side of the road, called the police and given them her location, and taken off. the critical care staff got her more or less stable and wheeled her in for x-rays, which revealed a crushed pelvis and a right femur in so many pieces we weren't sure we'd find them all. the surgeons weren't convinced they could repair it completely, and because she was ownerless at the time, no one was sure whether or not we'd be able to help her at all (the financial office is sickeningly strict. you wouldn't believe how many patients we have to turn away. animals aren't people, blah blah blah, but if human institutions ran themselves with the kind of cold iron fist this one does, there'd be no more concerns about overpopulation), but we held her overnight and did as much as we could, hoping someone would claim her soon.

well, i don't know how it happened, but her owner did manage to track her down. it turned out they were from new orleans and had come to massachusetts to stay with a friend while katrina was blowing their house down. they made it all the way here safely, just so their friend's nincompoop landlord could let the dog out for no reason in the middle of the afternoon. stellar. she got her surgery, but when she left the hospital two weeks later she couldn't walk at all, and her potential for independent mobility was pretty uncertain. she was a trooper, though, and incredibly sweet. you can't help but root for the poochies who lick your hand while you're tugging on their shattered legs.

so we were all thrilled to death to see her running down the hall this week, wagging her previously lifeless tail at everyone she saw. her radiographs show that she's healing beautifully; she'll always be stiff on her right side, because it's now more machine than dog, but she doesn't seem to care at all. pain-free, eager and able to frolic as a little dog should—the world's happiest ending. i wish more katrina stories ended so well, or even half so well. it's something, how quickly we stopped following them.

best readers*: megan and dina, who have very kindly offered to supply me with snacks and postcards that are more readily within their reach than my own. you guys are totally the cutest.





* everyone else who made it this far ties for second, and if i could i would wrap each and every one of you in something fleecy and feed you tiny cupcakes.

sunday best-of blogging: the dirty issue

best mood music: pj harvey's rid of me. rowwrrr.

most equivocally dirty vacation destination: tacoma, washington, as evidenced here and here by my trusty on-the-scene double-entendre reporter, spine.

best indicator of your need to seek professional assistance in conquering your homophobia: i recently had to treat a pomeranian (a very small, very poofy dog) for a spinal injury that had left him unable to control his hind legs. the owner had kicked him after he had mounted another dog because he was ashamed of him for "acting gay." now, anyone who knows anything at all about dogs recognizes that mounting behavior* has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the top dog asserting his (or her, because confident girl dogs will do it too) dominance over the, um, bottom dog, whatever gender it might be. it's nothing more than proving one's rank, and, while you probably want to control it to keep your dog from becoming too dominant in its dealings with you, it's far less suggestive of one's intimate nature than walking around with a tiny fluffy moppet at the end of a ribbon. go ahead, call me judgmental, but i really do believe that a person's taste in pets says ten thousand times more about that person's character than their taste in anything else. the dog is back on all four feet now, at least physically, and hopefully there's some group therapy in that man's future.

mr. winkle says, "i wufv coochie!"

best educational short or series: the senior chemistry collection put out in the early 80s by TVOntario. i caught the pieces on covalent and ionic bonding at 4:30 in the morning this past wednesday (thanks, new hampshire public television!). i paused on the channel initially because i thought monotonous chemspeak would be something comforting and familiar enough to lull me at last to sleep, but when the animation started i couldn't tear my eyes away. here's the visual offered with the explanation of the formation of a water molecule: a giant red oxygen atom with full, pouty lips and half-closed eyelids tipped by long, luxurious lashes is bouncing gently at the center of the screen. one small hydrogen atom enters from each side of the screen, grinning dully. when the hydrogen atoms spot the object of their irrepressible attraction, their eyes bug out of their electron clouds and they lunge at her, one glomming on to either side of her plump scarlet form. as they unite, madam oxygen closes her eyes and emits a satisfied sigh as her smile stretches from ear to ear. a moment later, the film attempts to explain to us why the two male hydrogen atoms can't help but struggle against their attraction for each other. as their protons and electrons lead them in a dizzying series of towards-then-away dance steps, their confused and saddened faces tell the deeper story. we believe the tale is going to end in wuthering heights–style heartbreak as the atoms retreat, defeated and ashamed, but suddenly the narrator swoops in and reminds us that the farther the atoms get from each other, the stronger their attraction becomes, as the distance overrides their repulsion. from across the room their gazes meet, and at last the two rush at each other and fuse, their eyes swirling ecstatically in their sockets. cue the bass line! i had to get up for a glass of water. no wonder they can only show this between 4 and 5 a.m.

some other things that i'd loved to have snickered at while watching this in my actual high school chemistry class:

• the non-anthropomorphized illustration of two ionically bonded hydrogen atoms looks like a pair of giant, firm, perfectly pert black breasts, complete with cherry-red nuclei for nipples.

• when the short is trying to explain how sometimes a flash of bright light is enough to break certain weak chemical bonds, they use the example of a man taking a flash photograph. the man is wearing nothing but a speedo and a leer.

best flavored lip gloss: lady licious's pussy pucker pot in "don't need no MANgo," which, in addition to being deliciously vegan and life-affirming in an "even those bitches from sex and the city couldn't rock it bachelorette style like i can" kind of way, also bears the giggle-behind-your-hand-worthy slogan, "for the tastiest lips north of the hips." the site offers all kinds of cruelty-free goodies, including vegan condoms, so now not one of you has any gosh-darned excuse. not that that will keep you from making them.

bonus quiz!

which of the following quotes were dirty in their original contexts? the answers will be published in next sunday's best-of post, so don't bother pleading with me for hints in the meantime.

1. "it smells like a wicked good pickle back here!"

2. "when we're on football, we get the best high school action around!"

3. "come on, my little femur, give me purchase…"

4. "wooooooo!!! wooo hooooooo!!! wooo—OW! oh, shit. [crashbangscuffle] OWWWWW!!!"
"are you okay? what—did you fall?"
"yeah, i'm… my leg cramped and i… forget it. whatever. yeah, i'm fine. sorry."

5. "dusty tells jennifer that if he sees her going down he is coming in after her."

6. "all right richard walsh!"
"ready to go over? knee up, take it on top. reach up ... one more time like this ... now make it tighter ... turn front, let's see it now, here we go..."
"you've got it!"
"squeeze hard ... that's it, squeeze tight ... michael, you ready?"
"ready!"
"let's do it!"
"open it up! hold it on the side, knee comes up ... over ... squeeze it tight ... point those toes..."


now, everyone wish my grandma a happy birthday! happy birthday grandma! grandma was thrown out of high school one month before her graduation because her mother had gone to the principal and told him my grandmother was secretly pregnant. (great-grandma was, by all accounts, an especially nasty woman. i never met her, myself, because she disowned my mother a few days before her wedding.) my grandmother was also married at the time, but even if she hadn't been, to refuse to let her finish her last few weeks of school because she'd been sexually active is nonsensical at its surface and reprehensible at its heart. it isn't like she was in danger of going into labor while taking a final exam; she wasn't even beginning to show. while i'm in no way suggesting that high school is a great time to start your family, if it happens, people in positions to do so should help you make the best of it, not punish you arbitrarily. bad 1950s america! but good grandma, who toughed it out and raised herself a mighty fine daughter.






* not to be confused with mountie behavior, which can be more than a little flamboyant.

sunday best-of blogging: the family/unfamily issue

best $10,000 wedding theme:



this trounces any wedding i've ever heard of, including the spectacle a friend of mine witnessed where the couple rose up through the floor in a glass box to the theme from rocky and the plan shane koyczan and i came up with to perform all of our vows as charades. and look, there are accessories:



it'd almost be enough to make me want to go through with it, if i didn't know better; $10,000 is a hefty sum, and i can think of a lot of things i'd rather set it aside for. i can't really see the point of ostentatious weddings. i mean, marriage should be something that you enter into strictly for the sake of yourself and the person you're marrying, right? why the need to put on a big show for other people? i feel like weddings are how couples prove to other people that they're in love, but if all the right reasons for getting married are really there, you shouldn't need the bells and whistles. maybe if i met someone who'd let me have hello kitty and the charades . . . maybe not. i wouldn't eat that cake, anyway.

best song to abandon someone at the altar to: "in a big country" by big country.

best reason to live with toadie until my dying day: she gives the most amazing gifts. look at this stuff:





fun! and then there was a mag-mirror compact with this on the lid:



the "ride with hitler" thing is sort of an inside joke; when the united states was making its first baby steps in the invasion of iraq, i got into an argument with my dad (a two-term busher, which he is, at least, less proud of now than he was a year ago, though i can't say he's truly repentant) about the premise of confiscating weapons of mass destruction. my argument was that i was nearly completely sure we were never going to find any such things in iraq. my father started out calmly enough by telling me i was a callow and idealistic pinhead, and he finished up by throwing something possessing a significant amount of mass across the room and shouting that people like me would have let hitler take over the entire planet. i was a bit taken aback by this. i knew there had been a lot of hitler references and comparisons being bandied about by the gung-ho wingers, but i hadn't expected my own flesh and blood to be suckered by them. we got into a lot of knock-down political brawls about bush leading up to and throughout the first four years, but this was one of the worst. it was also one of the last of the truly ghastly battles, though, since i was completely right, and because since then bush has managed to do nothing right for this or any other country. my dad voted for him initially because he didn't want gore to foster an era of Big Government, and he voted for him again because he thought he would Safeguard the Nation Against Terror . . . . well, the ridiculous "if you won't invade iraq, then you *heart* nazis" debate is one of my favorite wounds to tear open and rub salt in whenever i find myself watching the news with my dad. he's never out-and-out apologized, because that wouldn't be his style, but his new politics-related silence speaks volumes.

holy sidetracked, batman. anyway, toadie gave me these wonderful things and a red vinyl Devil Bear wallet, and she wrapped all of them in faux-mexican wrapping paper featuring icons like El Roadside Santa and La Unconscionably Cute Duckie. i wuv her, even if her parrot does eat my chairs and wake me up with his shrieking every morning.

best thing about the einstein doll featured above: you can take all of his clothes off to reveal more clothes, which you can not take off. under the pants and sweater, albert is wearing another pair of pants and a white undershirt—FOREVER. his sweater is very well-made, by the way, and something i wouldn't mind wearing myself. did you know einstein was only 26 when he broke his relativity theory? it's okay, i've still got time to one-up buddha and/or jesus.

best reason for my subtle* canadian accent: it's an insupportable theory, of course, but i tend to blame the accent on the outlandish quantities of you can't do that on television that i ingested as a child. my frequent lapses into southern and irish accents are much harder to explain, but i've stopped worrying about them. i ams what i ams.

best reason** to stick your tongue out at the parents television council:

We were alarmed to find that the three worst shows on prime time broadcast television are being marketed as family-friendly when, in fact, these shows are none other than wolves in sheep's clothing.

Families should not be deceived. The top three worst shows all contain crude and raunchy dialogue with sex-themed jokes and foul language. Even worse is the fact that Hollywood is peddling its filth to families with cartoons like The Family Guy and American Dad. These two shows have contained scenes in which characters are shown having sex and topics such as masturbation, incest, bestiality, and necrophilia are routinely discussed.

There are several high quality shows on this list that families can watch together and not be caught by surprise over filthy dialogue or graphic sex and violence. However, it is clear that Hollywood does not care about families as evidenced by the fact that we could only cite nine shows on prime time that were deemed safe for family viewing. That is outrageous. Network executives should be ashamed and millions of families should be offended at their actions.

you're right, parents television council, hollywood doesn't care about families. hollywood cares about money and ratings, because that's its job. millions of families probably would be offended by its actions, if they weren't so busy providing it with money and ratings. how about instead of spending hours and hours watching all of these evil, smut-peddling, rakishly irreverent programs just so you can shake your finger at their producers once a year, you turn off your fucking televisions? i would like to remind you at this point that britney spears and christina aguilera, two of the foulest little strumpets i've ever laid eyes on, made their debut on the cloyingly family-friendly mickey mouse club, so maybe "more 7th heaven marathons" isn't the answer after all. but what do i know? i'm just a freak with a red vinyl jacket who likes to get drunk while watching adult swim, whose new sunday lineup is to die for, by the way, which brings me to my final item:

best newfound reasons to be a goofy child instead of have one: squidbillies and 12 oz. mouse. awwww yeah.



* it's subtle overall, but my oots and aboots can be glaring at times. i have no theory as to why the accent is more pronounced on some days than it is on others.

** second best reason: it's parents' television council, you twits.

i'm perfecting my long-distance jumps.

heads
Originally uploaded by juniper pearl.

james joyce drank. a lot.
not that it didn't work for
him, but there it is.


i *heart* neil halstead. i also seize any opportunity to incorporate photographs of doll parts into clothing designs. this one, for instance.

for those of you who might not know about it, having a day off in the middle of the week is stellar. i'm the only one in the coffee shop at eleven in the morning, the only one who can hear the very loud music coming out of my room all afternoon, the only one laughing at me when i dance with the parrot on the couch . . . dy-no-mite.

so, apparently there are some people with some misgivings about some things. i'd like to tell a story for the hecklers.

my grandparents' first date was a double. they arrived with different people, they left together, and they stayed that way. they've been married for, i think, fifty-three years, maybe fifty-four. they raised four children in a one-floor two-bedroom house. my grandfather held down at least three jobs at a time all his life and has never said a mean word about anyone. my grandmother claps her hands and squeals like a preschooler when she's excited. i never understood how they managed it.

last summer my entire family went out to dinner. at one point my grandmother leaned across the table to scold my grandfather, who was holding a plate in the air and scraping some kind of sauce off of it with his spoon. my aunt told her to shush, at least he wasn't licking it off like he would have been at home. grammy conceded the point, but not without making a series of disgusted faces and noises at the idea. "what, you've never licked a plate in your whole life?" my aunt asked. my grandmother is like me and won't lie if she can help it, but she wasn't happy about having to admit that, well, perhaps she had, when she was very very young. my grandfather, who had been laughing silently to himself the whole time, asked, "maybe when you were nine or ten?" "no, charles," she sighed, "i'm sure if it happened i was quite a bit younger than that."

my grandfather became suddenly serious and said to his wife, "i wish i could have known you when you were nine or ten, dorothy."

"why," my aunt asked him, giggling, still their baby, "so you could have gotten together and licked some plates?"

"no," he said, not smiling even a bit, "i just think she would have been a very nice little girl to know."

my grandmother blushed, lifted a hand to her hair. she was seventy-three years old. i am sure that if something happened to either of them, the other would follow over the edge of the world inside of a day.

don't you tell me it doesn't happen. it does. i've been watching it happen all my life. it's everywhere.

it's everywhere. look closer.

cat got your . . .

brittle douglas fir
drops brown needles on my rug
and prays for sweet death.



meet ophelia.

here she is, all six pounds of her, perched on the windowsill like a shiny black nugget of feline perfection, her one-inch-diameter exquisite kitty feet that absolutely ruin me with their cuteness tucked up underneath her waifish little ribcage, her tail dangling straight until the very tip, which curves up in a tight fish-hook "u." she knows i'm talking about her now, she's giving me her audrey hepburn face, fierce diva that she is. my little monster. and all mine, i've single-handedly spoiled her into this demon starlet. but i had no choice, you see. the little ninny kept trying to die on me, she loves me that much. at least, i suppose it's love, in some contorted girl kitty form. it isn't how i might have gone about it... here, i'll just tell you.

ophelia came with a twin brother (unidentical in everything but temperament, who was later named andrew for no real reason) the summer before i turned 15, when they were both about eight weeks old. our kittens were two of four, the litter of a family friend's cat. the whole furry lot was tumbling about clumsily in a cardboard box when we arrived. i walked over to the playpen and looked in, and ophelia dropped another kitten's tail and stretched her round baby body up towards my face. none of the others paid one whit of attention to either of us as she tried to haul herself up over the side. as decisions go, it was one of the simpler ones i've made. she dug her tiny claws into me immediately; i had no say. every morning from then on i woke up with a very small, very warm four-legged body draped across my neck, half-tangled in my hair.

five years later, when i was living in my first apartment and ophelia was living in my parents', and living there very happily, i might add, a stray cat that my friends and i had been looking after gave birth to three black kittens. i kept them in my bedroom from the time they were born, all three, and only one of them ever cared to sleep in my bed. so he was kismet, and he stayed with me, and we were utterly content. and when i brought him to my parents' house with me for a visit, ophelia tried to kill him, and when i brought him back to my apartment with me ophelia tried to kill herself, in a hopelessly girlish and catty passive-aggressive sort of way.

she stopped eating. just like that. she didn't want to be around the other people in the house. she developed a sudden, profound and unprovoked loathing for her brother, who up until then had been quite fond and protective of her. she spent nearly 90% of any given day on top of the kitchen cabinets, hissing at everything and nothing, not eating. when i came home for christmas a month and a half later she had full-blown pancreatitis and had lost a pound and a half, which isn't much, except when it's over a sixth of your body weight, which it was. so i was concerned.

my parents were not concerned. they told me i was making it up. then they told me that the real problem was that she wanted to be a supermodel, that actually she ate all the time and then when no one was looking she hid in the basement and stuck her tiny kitty paw down her throat. less than funny, i found that. considerably less, especially since my mother had come down with an alarming gastrointestinal ailment of her own about two months after i first left home for college my freshman year. from what i understand no concrete diagnosis was ever made, but she didn't seem to be able to keep anything she ate in her body, and she lost near to 40 pounds in something like four months. the first semester of college i went home every weekend, knowing it wouldn't fix anything. there was just that obligation, the need to do my fair share of suffering. the tendency of my immediate family members to go to pieces in this manner is more or less how i wound up in worcester in the first place instead of in athens, ga, where i had been offered full tuition coverage including books, room and board; it's why i didn't even bother to respond to cornell when they told me i had been waitlisted. i had applied to those schools in a moment of feverish delusion, thinking, like all of my other classmates, that college was something you did for yourself, that it was where all of your ultimate becoming could finally begin. but i knew even before i'd put the stamps on the envelopes that i was kidding myself; i wouldn't go. such a complete removal, that sort of extricating... five other college applications went unmailed. i found them at the bottom of my locker at the end of the year. but that's neither here nor there. as i was saying...

every day for my entire christmas break i sat on the bathroom floor with ophelia for close to an hour, hand-feeding her. if i could get a full eighth of a can of food into her i considered it a triumph. it was the only time she ate. her eyes were sinking into her skull. she walked around with her belly tucked up from pain. she continued to attempt to murder kismet every time she saw him. my family continued to ridicule my excessive concern. i didn't know how i wasn't insane.

i finally forced my mother to agree to sit with ophelia while she ate so that i could go back to school. kismet and i returned to worcester, and i called home every few days to make sure ophelia was okay, and i was always assured that i had nothing to worry about, and kismet and i went home in march for spring break,

and nothing had changed. there was ophelia on top of the kitchen cabinets, her stomach sucked up into her spine, her fur standing on end, my mother puttering about below her as if every kitchen ceiling housed a sickly, enraged, emaciated black cat. and i knew that she wasn't going to get any better that way.

so i left kismet there, the doing of which broke my heart as he tried to climb into the carrier that he knew was his and had been hiding all his toys in, as he ran in front of me when i tried to walk out the front door with ophelia in my hand instead of him, confused as all get-out because i had never left him anywhere before, ever, in the just over a year that he had been alive. but leave him i did, because what else could i do, ophelia had picked me just the same as he had, and she had done it first, and i owed her...

which seems to have been precisely what she was thinking, because inside of two weeks she was better than new, eating and playing and jumping up onto every newcomer's shoulders and in her sleep all wrapped around my throat, just like old times. brat, rotten conniving selfish sneaky deceitful brat.

but don't i love her more than life. and i understand, almost, i think, at least a bit, how all those boys in relationships with girls that make me want to strangle myself with my own intestinal tract can be in love with those girls. so they're snotty, and they're selfish, and they're vain and demanding and whiny, and when you go out for an hour without telling them where you're going they're standing at the door howling when you get home. so what? because sometimes in the middle of the night you wake up and you don't know why, and you turn your head and there she is next to you, purring in her sleep, and you reach over and put your hand very gently on the back of her head, and she stretches silently and curves into you, and her tiny sigh is the only exquisite sound.

is that right?

my kismet has grown up just fine. he's four and a half now, about the size of a small moose. he loves my dad. when i visit he stays right with me the whole time. i bring him toys, he hides them in his bed and sleeps on top of them like a furry hen. i love him desperately, i miss him every day.

but here's my diva, all glossy and spry and convinced she's the queen of the universe . . . we do what we have to do, i guess. these damned ties, all these senseless insurmountable loves that keep us all the ways we swear to ourselves we aren't going to be anymore, that keep us in these places that we can't for the life of us figure out what we're doing in. i hate this city. i hate this state. i'd pack one duffel bag and leave everything for a cot in a hostel in new orleans

if there weren't all these strings, if any of them might stretch.

meet ophelia. here, on my thigh, the holes are small but they're deep, you can see all five, in a circle, white scars and red wounds where she sinks her claws into me. and next to them, here, this is a birthmark, it's the same as my sister's, you'll find it on all of us, my sister, my mother, and me.