Merry Christmas, Panky!
Author Archives: Tata
Everybody’s Got A Little Light Under the Sun
Why does this manicotti look different from all other manicottis? Because I made half the crepes with whole wheat flour. The stuffing for the whole wheat crepes includes sausage and wild mushrooms, to capitalize on the nuttier flavor. I liked the image of the manicotti on the stove in the apple-green kitchen. It’s kind of pretty, which strikes me as a very funny thought.
In other funny thoughts: people have different philosophies about gifts. Some folks say gifts should be things you wouldn’t buy for yourself. My favorite gifts are the ones that I use in everyday life. My brother Todd gave me an insulated jacket I’ve worn for twenty years now and it’s got one frayed corner. That’s a good gift. Pete feels pretty much the way I do, and for Christmas, he wanted a wheelbarrow. Last Sunday, he picked out the component parts at Home Depot. As we went through checkout, I said, “Shhh! That’s his present and it’s A SECRET!” The cashier lit up.
So, yeah. I gift-wrapped a wheelbarrow. Thought I wouldn’t? I had to call Daria and tell her: “Dude, I totally gift-wrapped a wheelbarrow.” Daria said, “You…Tyler! Domenica gift-wrapped a wheelbarrow! How’d you do it?” “I am a geeeeenius,” I said. “That is how.”
I figured I should take a picture of this pretty quickly because the cats were very interested in helping me by eating the ribbons and subduing the paper and will probably help us unwrap the moment we leave the house. Happy Christmas Eve, if you celebrate this. Happy Hanukkah, if you celebrate that. Happy Wednesday, if you don’t. I mean, who can live without those?
Too Much Heaven On Their Minds
Johnny, our Southwest Bureau Chief, reports from the house of his father-in-law’s swift decline.
Jesus! You’ve started to believe. The things they say of you. You really do believe. This talk of God is true!
We were sitting around, deafened, going through motions. I sat in his chair to keep it from sitting empty and becoming the ghost at the feast. We turned on the teevee, just to do something, and what was on OnDemand but Jesus Christ Superstar. Because it had Jesus in it, that’s what she wanted to watch. The Crucifixion was a bit much, under the circumstances, but it comforted her to know that he was in the arms of Jesus. It struck me as it never did, of course, when I was a child and still somewhat Jesus-centric in my thinking, that the show was about Jesus only peripherally, that Jesus here is spoiled and given to tantrums, that Judas is the star and by far the more interesting character, that Christ’s agony in the garden was as nothing next to his, that Judas was crucified as surely as Jesus was. It also struck me what a parody the seventies were of themselves. The show is set in the modern day of its time, but even then it seems like they’re spoofing some earlier generation’s excesses, like sychronized swimming movies.
What then to do about this Jesusmania? How do we deal with a carpenter king? Where do we start with a man who is bigger than John was when John did his baptism thing?
I can’t get the songs out of my head now, of course. I’m going to have to get the record on half.com and listen to it two hundred times in a row to get it out of my head, like I do with ABBA and Tony Orlando and Dawn when I fixate on them.
Did your family get into Superstar? In mine it was dynamite. We played the record and acted out the parts by the hour, wrapping a towel around our shoulders to play Pontius Pilate, whose name always confused me when I was a kid because I didn’t think they had airplanes then. My mom was in love with Ted Neely. My cousin Bubba’s high school put on a production, lip-synching to the record. I’ll bet they couldn’t believe their good luck that they had a black dude to play Judas! I didn’t of course put two and two together all at once that, as the song goes, He’s just a man (and I’ve had so many men before, in very many ways!), but it struck me even as a child that until then all the nuns and the priests ever told us about Judas was that he got up one day and sold Jesus for thirty pieces of eight. I can’t claim I was so wise that I figured out then I was being had. But the bomb started to tick in the back of my brain that the greatest story ever told wasn’t the whole story.
When I was in seventh or eighth grade, a few seasons before Johnny and I met, a traveling theater group did Superstar at my school and we were invited to be the crowd. During the crucifixion scene, my feet grew roots and I forgot myself, there in the aisle of the auditorium. I suddenly understood why people prayed, even if I couldn’t buy the to whom. Someone put arms around my shoulders and walked me through a door, which I could not have done myself. Sometimes, the light shines through me, but I don’t know from where.
Ted Neely? Ian Gillan. Yes, that Ian Gillan. All other Jesuses just don’t do it for me.
The play has its faults, but its treatment of Judas is what makes me love Jesus Christ Superstar. He’s human and heartbroken, loved and betrayed himself. The stakes are unbelievably high for Judas; it is truly important to observe and understand: Jesus is not Jesus without Judas. Judas must love Jesus more than life itself. There can be no Christianity without Judas.
In all the commotion Johnny has forgotten I have this tattooed across my back.
His Car Is Warm And Dry
Behold! Princess Drusy has subdued the sapphire tissue. It marauds no more! Note that the pink rubber ball cowers in a corner, fearful that the brave hunter will give chase. She is a fury, a blaze of claws and incisors. The ball, observed, doesn’t stand a chance, though for now the hunter has other interests. You, for example. You might be delicious.
Are you, in fact, delicious?
The Garden Where Nothing Grows
Tata: I’ve been weighing my compost, which is just quirky enough that I thought I should mention it.
Daria: What? Yes…
Tata: It’s unscientific because the scale belongs to Ted, the tenant who is also Mom’s chiropractor and who is wrong about everything, and the scale cannot be calibrated.
Daria: What do you mean he’s wrong about everything?
Tata: We go to Wegman’s and buy vegetables that cost a fortune and when we see him at the house he says, “Oh! Wegman’s! Everything’s so cheap there!” And let me tell you, he’s got some very stinky ideas about women.
Daria: He’s a good chiropractor, though. Mom says he really helps her.
Tata: Yeah. So weighing the compost is like performance art with broken numbers and an audience of mushy pineapple.
In the space of four days, I took outside 5.09 pounds of compostable material. That included two cardboard egg cartons I shredded by hand while I was steaming mad about Ted’s generic bitter pronouncements about the nature of male-female relations. The pieces are very tiny. They’ll turn into something useful a lot sooner than Ted’s bullshit will.
The giant kitten, whose name this week is Lulu, is very pushy. She wants our attention a lot of the time, she wants the good scratchy-scratchy nails and she’s first to the food bowl, which is working Topaz’s last nerve. Working Pete’s is finding cat yak all over the place. “Whoa!” he says, “Help!” It doesn’t stink, so clean up is easy for me, but the downside is: it doesn’t stink, so sometimes we don’t find it right away. Last night, the kitten lay between us on the couch as we watched TV, then went off on some urgent kitten business. Some time later, I noticed she’d left us a surprise. A pile of cat yak between us. Surprise! We both sat there for a moment, staring, because neither of us heard, saw or smelled a cat tossing her waffles between us on the couch, so it was impossible for it to be there. It was so impossible, Pete couldn’t see it for a moment because the colors of the regurgitated cat food matched the Mexican blanket on the couch, which was a thoughtful touch on the kitten’s part, really.
Unto Others As You Would Have A Turn
Sometimes it’s hard to feel fucking peaceful.
Insurance loophole claimed in fire deaths
Company says smoke that killed 3 was ‘pollution’
Wha – wha – what?
An insurance company with a potential $25 million liability from a 2007 Houston office fire is claiming smoke that killed three people was “pollution” and surviving families shouldn’t be compensated for their losses since the deaths were not caused directly by the actual flames.
Great American Insurance Company is arguing in a Houston federal court that the section of the insurance policy that excludes payments for pollution — like discharges or seepage that require cleanup — would also exclude payouts for damages, including deaths, caused by smoke, or pollution, that results from a fire.
Here is a brick.
Hold onto that. You might need it.
Before we go on, I’d like to make a point: we will all be dead a whole lot longer than we are alive. I assume you’re alive, but you know what they say about assuming. A lot of people in every story believe in an afterlife in which they will have to explain their actions. Okay, continuing then –
Great American has asked U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal to find that the deaths caused by the smoke, fumes and soot from the March 2007 fire set by a nurse working in the building will not be covered by the policy because there is a specific exclusion for pollution and it mentions smoke, fumes and soot.
“Listen, Saint Peter, I couldn’t not do it, right? Millions of dollars were at stake, not to mention our S&P rating. Plus, it had the merit of being practically diabolical – oops…”
In October, vocational nurse Misty Ann Weaver was sentenced to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty to three counts of felony murder and one count of first-degree arson for setting the fire to conceal that she had failed to complete paperwork on time.
Great American’s legal request, filed in late November and set for hearings in February, notes that there are four pending lawsuits against the property owners for wrongful death and injury, and contends that the insurance company should not have to pay on any of them.
Kevin Sewell, the Dallas lawyer who filed the request, did not return phone calls Tuesday afternoon. Great American spokeswoman Diane Weidner said company policy is to not comment on pending litigation.
“I can explain! Let me explain! See, the people were already dead, so it wasn’t like we were hurting them or anything, and who knows, maybe they really liked smoke. It’s tasty on ribs, am I right?”
Seth Chandler, a University of Houston Law Center professor who teaches insurance law, said while the insurance company’s maneuver wasn’t out of bounds, it will test the limits of the law.
“This is pushing the boundaries of the absolute pollution exclusion,” Chandler said. “We’re going to have a battle between the literal language of the policy and the way people speak of pollution.”
A question of semantics
He said the issue is an ongoing conversation between the courts and the insurance industry. Chandler said he doesn’t know of any other Texas cases on this issue. Nationwide, he said, even carbon monoxide poisoning has been found to be covered by insurance despite a pollution exclusion.
Despite this slightly-less-evil fucker’s assertion that it’s all words it is NOT all words. This is a question, as so many are, of common decency. That insurance companies employ vicious bastards is one of the main reasons insurance companies cannot be trusted, and there is nowhere where they prove it day in and day out like on the issue of healthcare. Frankly, the whole premise of health insurance doesn’t make any sense when insurance companies are for-profit since there’s no incentive to provide decent healthcare. There’s plenty of incentive to deny claims. Every denied claim is greater profit. We’re in sad shape, but there’s a glimmer of hope: the incoming administration has promised reform.
The Obama transition team is having people organize house parties to give their thoughts on health care reform. They are open, deliberative processes. So of course the insurance industry is seeking to sabotage them.
Now, about that brick…
Shiver I Feel So
Dear Lou Dobbs,
One of these days, because you don’t seem to be stupid, 
you may realize how much damage you have done to America. On that day, your racism and class issues, which you’ve been playing out in public for a very long time, may finally be clear to you. You’ve been biting the hand that feeds you. I mean that literally. You castigate the people who grow and raise and slaughter and transport and prepare everything you eat, and clean up after you. Are you aware of them? I suppose not. But you are violating a very important little rule: Don’t screw with the people who take care of you. That can’t end well.
It’s time you started looking up the economic ladder for the causes of our current economic armageddon. Only there will you actually see what’s happening, though I doubt you will ever look. If I were you, I’d start overtipping everyone in sight, because it’s completely impossible no one’s spitting in your dinner.
Bon appetit,
Princess Ta
Sway Through the Crowd To An Empty Space
Set your recording devices: our friend Minstrel Boy plays Jeopardy Wednesday night, which is tomorrow. I personally do not own a recording device, though I hear they’re the bee’s knees. Twenty three skidoo, you know! Anyhoo, MB – the fellow on the right – enjoys military history, making chocolates and lapsing into French. The fellow on the left, well, I don’t know. I think he was on The XFiles or something.
A few days ago, the woman who buys paper towels for our department bought a bale of ’em in a brand that wasn’t recycled. I growled. Then I growled some more.
Tata: Have we given up on buying recycled paper towels?
Joanne: They weren’t on sale.
Every so often I receive a gentle reminder that I am a space alien. Look! Here is one! Watch, as I do not switch to my native tongue:
Tata: W – what?
Joanne: We run out of paper towels at sometimes inconvenient moments and the brands we like are not on sale, so we go with a different brand. It’s just timing.
Tata: I’ll get coupons.
Yesterday, I left coupons for Marcal products on her desk. She’s a nice person but we share a cubicle wall and the sound of her voice makes me mildly homicidal. Every afternoon, she eats 10 baby carrots, which I know because everyone knows.
BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE –
By the fourth carrot, Lupe and I are emailing each other from ten feet apart.
Tata: Kill me.
Lupe: Got a carrot costume?
SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW.
Tata: Why haven’t you killed me yet?
Lupe: Oh no. We survive this together.
BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW. BITE. SNAP. CHEW.
In the silence that follows, we mourn the little carrots that fell victim to the day’s carnage. We know that if not for their sacrifice, untold suffering would visit our basement office. Or maybe she’d bring celery. In any case, yesterday, Joanne approached me, coupons in hand and a new plan in mind.
Joanne: Thanks for the coupons. Is this the only recycled brand?
Tata: No, there are quite a few now.
Joanne: Does Shop Rite carry them?
Tata: They should. If they don’t, you could make a fuss. I do.
Joanne: Does Wegman’s?
Tata: Wegman’s certainly does.
Joanne: What about the prices? Are they so expensive nobody buys them so the stores don’t carry them?
Tata: No, stores carry them. And if you buy them, the stores will carry more. It’s too late for us to say this doesn’t matter.
Joanne: Have you seen them in Shop Rite?
Tata: I don’t have a Shop Rite, but they must carry them.
Joanne: Thanks for the coupons. I’ll watch for the sales.
Tata: This for me is putting my money where my mouth is. If it’s a couple of dollars more, then fine. I’ll live with that. I’ll try to keep you supplied with coupons, okay?
Joanne: Okay.
This conversation boggled my tiny little mind until I realized: she’s a New Yorker, and not just any New Yorker. She’s from Queens. She knows where her grown children are at every moment. She knows which doctors practice which specialties. And nobody is going to beat her for a dollar. So not only will I keep her in coupons, I will find out which stores she shops in and scope their merchandise. She will appreciate my ability to eviscerate a grocery bill for the Common Good.
Before we bought the composter, I was uncomfortably aware of how much compostable material was going out in garbage. Yesterday, I tossed 12.5 oz. onto the pile. Yes, I weighed that. I’m easily amused. Though it’s winter, the temperature changes have been frequent and crazy; material inside the composter continues to degrade nicely. In addition to this, Pete set up a large square pen like this image except that it is small, round and I pinched it from answers.com. Our leaves are turning into mulch and they need lots of air to do so, giving us the opportunity to spend an hour playing with pitchforks. Our neighbors must enjoy this. I know that if I weren’t me but saw me flinging piles of decaying crap with a pitchfork two-thirds my size, I’d microwave some Orville Redenbacher and summon the kids. “Children,” I’d say, “some lessons must be learned through experience, but some – yes, a special few – can be learned by watching others make exciting mistakes. Please pass the popcorn.”
That Borders My Back
In the words of the great sages A Halo Called Fred, the finest band that ever let me play guitar without injuring myself on the strings, “Have you ever woken up in the morning, having had a little too much to drink the night before, and said to yourself these magic words?” I say, don’t limit yourself to hangovers. Sometimes, you just feel like –
The Blues, The Reds And the Pinks
Detail. Light Bulbs, 2008 72×96″ Depicts 320,000 light bulbs, equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.).
Though I am a delighted homebody who weatherstrips windows and doors for fun, I can judge with the gimlet eye of an art critic. This exhibit is worth your time and consideration. Now please excuse me. I’ve got to help install something made of rubber, foam and recognition of the obvious.
Poor Impulse Control 