Gossip and Wisdom

As you know, we’re now shipping people off to countries that torture their prisoners in order to extract information from them without having to dirty our own hands. Keeping that in mind, let’s talk about family holidays, and the gendered division of work. We all know the stereotype: women in the kitchen cleaning up and [...]

Speaking of Conspiracy Theories

Is it any coincidence that the show that prepared us to accept the egregious existence of a government conspiracy against the common person–The X-Files–was on Fox?

Strawberries

There was strawberry sauce on the cheesecake. I asked myself, “Is it worth the itch?” I said, “Yes.” Little did I know, the right question was, “Do you want to puff up like a giant marshmallow and inexplicably wake up from a weird-ass pain in your finger that alerts you to your puffy marshmallow status?”

Bob Edwards

Bob Edwards wonders why people aren’t more outraged. This is a good question. I have an answer: Conspiracy Theorists. For years, conspiracy theorists have sat on my TV presenting me with seemingly plausible “explanations” for shit that really has no good explanation other than individual idiocy. Who killed the Kennedys? Dr. King? Who keeps alien [...]

Amazon.com

Can a thing be both cool and depressing? If so, then Amazon.com’s warehouse is truly that. On the one hand, it’s enormous, like a forest of books and cds and DVDs all waiting quietly on three endless floors. Eighty-seven miles of shelves and pickers pushing carts back and forth and up and down. You order [...]

Things to do while I’m gone

I’m going to be in Kentucky for a few days, and so probably won’t be posting. In general, I’d just let you all flounder along waiting for new material–as happened when I went to Mississippi–but I wanted to brag and tell you that I’m going to English Major Heaven while I’m in Kentucky, because it’s [...]

A Top Five

Here are the top five awesome things that have happened in the past 12 hours, in no particular order. 1. I got up to go to the bathroom and take the dog for a walk and realized that it was only midnight and the music I heard was not my alarm but a neighbor’s radio. [...]

The Candy Machine

The point of having a candy machine is to facilitate the exchange of money for goods. If I have a dollar and your machine has a slot for dollars to go in, is it too much to ask that the machine actually accept dollars? Today, I tried all of my dollars and all of my [...]

Stonehenge–the Cheesy Show

So, I’ve now watched this “Stonehenge” show on the National Geographic Channel like five million times, because, at the same time it interests me (the “new” bit of information is that Stonehenge is not only a solar calendar but a lunar calendar as well), it makes me insane. The premise is that man was happy [...]

The Problem with Cars

Okay, so I am a big fat liar of the pants on fire variety, and not tiny cat pants o’flame, but my own trousers. I have the greatest mechanic in Nashville. He fixes my car and keeps it running and changes my oil and watches out for things like keeping my tires rotated and, whenever [...]

Most People Don’t Want Change; They Want Exchange

What’s going on between Susan Estrich and Michael Kinsley is one of those situations I immediately feel uncomfortable with and compelled to watch. Seeing a friendship go down in flames, playing out on a national scale is compelling. And I can’t say, maybe Kinsley is the biggest jerk imaginable and maybe Estrich has valid points, [...]

The Recalcitrant Brother

It occurs to me that I talk about The Butcher all the time and rarely about my recalcitrant brother. My recalcitrant brother is usually sullen or asleep. But sometimes he’ll catch you in rare moments, usually in the middle of the night at the kitchen table or at 5:30 in the morning as you’re taking [...]

What kind of music do you like?

The Libertine and I were standing out on a porch last night watching it rain and saying good-bye to folks as they stumbled to their cars and then down the streets towards their homes. He told me that he also had an aunt B. and asked me what kind of music I liked. Maybe because [...]

Charlie Birger

I finally finished the book I’d been reading, a biography of Charlie Birger. It was great, except that, unlike in the movies, just when it gets really good–the Sheltons crossed, Birger double-crossed, Newman gambling with his life–Birger is caught and hung. The climax comes too soon and too abruptly and then everyone who isn’t executed [...]

My Day with Annie Sprinkle

Yesterday, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Professor to convert me from my life of hermitry, I spent most of the day with Annie Sprinkle. First, we had a long, leisurely lunch and then, that evening, she gave a talk to a packed house at the artsy-fartsy theater. There are two things [...]

Tennessee–We put the TeeHee in State Politics

Last night, I stayed up late to watch the channel 4 news, which is the worst news in Nashville, which is what makes it the most fun. They always lead with the most ridiculous item. Fifty people could have been killed by a sniper in North Nashville, and they’d lead with a story about a [...]

Guantanamo

When my TV boyfriend Dan Abrams was talking about the female interrogators at Guantanamo rubbing themselves on the prisoners or pretending to wipe menstrual blood on them, he argued that it wasn’t any different from the many ways that law enforcement officers lie to and manipulate people they are questioning. He was more concerned that [...]

The Bulldog Breeds

I was thinking I ought to say something about bulldogs in general and something about my sloppy mingling of descriptors for Mrs. Wigglebottom–AmStaff vs. pitbull. And, I know that I’m wading into an argument that’s probably already ugly, but what good is the Internet if not for spouting off about stuff like you’re an expert? [...]

The Westminster

As I was waiting for Medium to come on, I was watching the terrier group judging at the Westminster Dog Show. The commentary at dog shows annoys me and I won’t lampoon it too much, because I certainly can’t do any better a job than the folks in Best in Breed did, but I will [...]

Southern Diet Frustrates Health Officials

Can there be any doubt how tickled I was to read “Southern Diet Frustrates Health Officials” on Yahoo! this afternoon? The article is all about how health officials are having a very difficult time convincing Southerners to give up “bad” foods. How hard? “Even at the Atlanta headquarters of the federal Centers for Disease Control [...]

Dear Gwen Stefani

If you truly believe that thinner and blonder equal hotter, you should, perhaps, not get on stage or on screen with this Eve person, because she shows you up, all the time. I hope you were as shocked as I was to see how your legs now look like vine wrapped poles and how fine [...]

The Luck Discussion, pt. 1

Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld Fated one is called, Becoming another– they carved on wooden slips–Must-be the third; they set down laws, they chose lives, for the sons of men the fates of men. –Voluspa, Larrington’s translation Overall, I really like Larrington’s translation of The Poetic Edda. I think she strikes a nice balance between rendering [...]

The Luck Discussion, pt. 2

What forces determine the kind of life a person will have? When my parents were here at Christmas, my dad told me this: My grandpa’s grandmother was deaf and unable to speak. Her father asked my grandpa’s grandfather to marry her because “some man had taken advantage of her” and she was pregnant. My grandpa’s [...]

The Luck Discussion, pt. 3

Magic and Superstitions So, concede to me for a few minutes that world views are codified into religions and philosophies and then linger on as superstitions before they are lost to history. And concede that this is how one’s family might be thoroughly Christian and still hanging horseshoes over doors or naming children after long-dismissed [...]

The Luck Discussion, pt. 4

People and Gods Once, I was talking this over with The Butcher, who is just about as Christian as someone who doesn’t give a shit about the divinity of Jesus can be (he doesn’t think that Jesus’ divinity or lack-thereof adds or detracts from the importance of what Jesus said). And we were speculating about [...]