I’m not 100% certain where I learned this – I think it came from Martin Cruz Smith’s novel Gorky Park, but it might have come from another novel I read in my early twenties. See: everyone seeks himself in what he or she sees. Artists endlessly reproduce themselves in their work, which people kind of know. The Mona Lisa might have been DaVinci’s self-portrait, as any sophomore art history major knows. So in Gorky Park, forensic reconstruction of a skull is undertaken by a dwarf who says to the protagonist, “Trust the freak’s eye.” We don’t have to go that far to examine an image. For instance, I missed my soaps for a few days because I was buffeted by real life so I checked in for episode recaps. There, I found this image. What the hell?

At first glance, the residents of Llanview, PA have little in common aside from their penchant for drama. Diversity is the key word in town: Cowboys and cops, the wealthy and working class, lovers and enemies mix amidst a collection of different races, religions and families. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent these disparate individuals all share the desire to triumph in the one life we have to live.

Really? Why is the banner image six white people with blond hair and – as far as I can tell – blue eyes?

Trust this freak: you now know who the graphic artist is.

This morning, I had a fight on my hands.

Tata: I don’t wanna go to work!
Tata: We’re going!
Tata: I don’t wanna! You can’t make me!
Tata: Aw, come on, little camper! We can get some fresh coffee…?
Tata: No!
Tata: That’s it! I’m throwing you in the shower!

Man, she’s a BITCH! So I got dressed in the dark because Pete wasn’t really asleep. I can’t explain that. Anyway, some time later, I realized I was inching away from me.

Tata: What in glamorous tarnation are you wearing?
Tata: Pants. My co-workers like when I wear pants.
Tata: And what else, Missy?
Tata: I’m wearing – oh, help.
Tata: Yes, exactly. Your Inner Angry Toddler dressed you in pretty, pretty colors. In fact, all of them.

So I tried buttoning or unbuttoning, to make it look like I’d assembled this ensemble on purpose.

Tata: That shirt you gave me. I suppose you knew the buttons don’t unbutton.
Mom: Are we playing Anagrams?
Tata: I cannot unbutton this shirt. You have cursed me.
Mom: Are you at work?
Tata: I am, and they like when I wear shirts. But this one, I cannot unbutton, even on purpose. It’s permanent or something.
Mom: Now I remember: you didn’t graduate from high school!
Tata: That was then, this is now, and I have lefthanded scissors.

I am now wearing a modified, less terrifying version of the this morning’s outfit in tones of purple and brown. I’ve also discovered that standing in front of one’s co-workers and shouting, “HAVE YOU SEEN WHAT I’M WEARING?” will produce a wide variety of responses largely dependant upon what you’ve shouted beforehand.

Thus, you will be surprised I had the nerve to stare at this Go Fug Yourself picture of Traci Bingham like dogs stare at ceiling fans. I’d never heard of her before, so I figure she’s one of those starlets on a reality show I can’t name. She’s got lovely skin tone, a super shape, and she doesn’t look like one of those meal-skipping waifs, so yay. Anyway, Kali knows I’ve put on some get ups in my day, including a gold lamé toga I should have had dusted for fingerprints, so I observed this dress with milder mirth than others might, at least until Miss Bingham turned around. Irridescent fake snake skin is one thing. Fake dress is another one altogether.

In fact, it’s not a dress. It’s someone’s resumé.

Dear Traci’s Plastic Surgeon,

Princess Tata
Pun intended.

I once went out wrapped in cellophane, showing less skin than this. However, on the day you issue the demand for better video of your grandson, it’s mighty weird to mention your erstwhile hotness. You must trust me that I would never have mentioned either Miss Traci With An I, my closet full of industrial kitchenware and mismatched knits or my super-adorable grandbaby who now says, “Hi!” if not for the third picture, which caused me to scream, frightening my cats. My poor darlings! I simply wasn’t prepared, as a gal who treated every day of her late teens, twenties and thirties as one long costume party, to meet the almost certain Guest of Honor. Said Jessica of Go Fug Yourself:

…what can I say? There are literally no words in the human vocabulary that can express my horror/glee at the fact that you have gone out wearing a dress with a giant detachable ruffle, which you, at some point, removed and presumably shoved into your purse. I am terrified, and yet thrilled to the very marrow of my bones. That is all. I have no further witticism. I am so confused/excited. I’m going to go lie down with a washcloth over my forehead and attempt to parse my own emotions. Farewell.

Bravo! This is a fashion crime on a par with the Brinks Armored Car Heist, and I say that as a little old lady with her hair in a ponytail, wearing black shoes with a brown outfit. Even I was left – briefly! – speechless by the color scheme, texture and clashing patterns when I quit screaming. This dress reminds me of the weirdest parts of childhood, like pretending to be a mermaid and not noticing you can’t move. Like pre-teens auditioning for a dance troupe to “Hey Big Spender.” Like at every little girl’s birthday party before 1970 where Barbie stood in the center of a bundt cake, not at all like a human sacrifice up to her neck in festive butter cream. Friends, we are in the presence of greatness.

Fortunately, I smell clean.

This is from Politico, which is no left-leaning union newsletter. It is a conservative mouthpiece.

Consider this source very, very carefully, and the horror this portends.

According to one GOP lawmaker, some House Republicans are saying privately that they’d rather “let the markets crash” than sign on to a massive bailout.

“For the sake of the altar of the free market system, do you accept a Great Depression?” the member asked.

I have my feelings about the crisis, the negotiations, the package, the pricetag, the process, the players, the outcome and the consequences to the executives. All of these things aside – and I am not arguing in favor of the bail out – why are these employees of the taxpayers allowed within 100 yards of the Halls of Congress?

How do they show their faces in public without cream pies sailing through the air?

Fuck you, Jillian. My mother can catch a football, I can catch a football, and my sister Daria would kick your ass for thinking about reaching for the ball.

Dissing other women is NOT a great way to manipulate them into doing what you want them to do.

P.S. Wikipedia – indulge me, Poor Impulsives:

The enactment of Title IX has helped increase participation opportunities for girls and women in sports. Female high school athletic participation has increased by 904% and female collegiate athletic participation has increased by 456%.[21] An analysis of NCAA data shows that since the passage of Title IX, participation opportunites for collegiate female athletes of color have increased 955% (2,137 in 1971 to 22,541 participants in 2000).

A 2008 study of intercollegiate athletics showed that women’s collegiate sports has grown to 9,101 teams, or 8.65 per school. The five most frequently offered college sports for women are, in order: (1) Basketball, 98.8% of schools have a team, (2) Volleyball, 95.7%, (3)Soccer, 92.0%, (4) Cross Country, 90.8%, and (5) Softball, 89.2%.

In answer to the question “How many girls can do that?” where girls = female human beings under the age of 18, the answer is “A whole lot, more every year and fuck you, Jillian.”

I’ve been walking to work again. It feels fantastic to get out of the car and into the sunshine. The Albany Street Bridge over the Raritan River is four lanes of car and truck traffic, a pedestrian walkway on either side of the bridge and crazy intersections on either end. The time across the bridge is probably three minutes max, unless it’s rained and travelers negotiate thoroughfare. So long as no more than two people walk abreast or one person meets a cyclist on the bridge, it’s fine. Fortunately, a lot of people walk and bicycle across this bridge. Unfortunately, humans walk at different paces and today, someone without a bell on his bicycle pedaled right up behind me to pass me on my right. I almost clotheslined him by accident, and I only like to be violent on purpose.

On the other end of the bridge, the messy intersection is not just dangerous, it’s a completely foreseeable accident waiting to happen. Immediately in front of me is the ramp from Route 18 N to Route 27 N, where the driver manual for this state would suggest this ramp constitutes a lane of its own, and it should be, except some wiseass put a stop sign on a stick. A friend used to say, “Stop signs are for people who don’t know how to drive.” In this case, a number of bad things happen here structurally that are merely amusing and uncomfortable, compared with the other side of the highway, where I expect to see gravestones line the riverbank any day now. On 25 June, I wrote the NJDOT the following love note. Watch as I pretend to be a Normal Person*:

To Whom It Concerns:

I walk or bicycle between Highland Park and New Brunswick daily. Hundreds of people do, many of whom use the trains to travel on the Northeast Corridor line. During the Route 18 construction, the section of Route 27 passing under Route 18 has become a dangerous, dirty place to travel. There are three separate spots where travel is very bad.

1. The ramp where Route 18 northbound where it intersects with Route 27 south is great for drivers. Everyone on foot or bicycle is subject to unstable surfaces, bad angles and arbitrarily placed signs. This leads immediately to:

2. A single-file width channel of wildly uneven surface where foot and bicycle traffic fight road conditions and lose every. single. day. I cannot stress how much I dread passing through this fifty-foot gauntlet. Someone is going to get hurt here, if someone hasn’t already. It would seem logical to try the other side of Route 27, since I have to cross to get to work anyway but:

3. Where Route 27 north intersects with Route 18 and Johnson Drive, someone on foot or bicycle is going to get killed. That stretch of road is so dangerous I wouldn’t let my worst enemy out of the car there.**

I would be delighted to conduct a walking tour of this site, should the occasion arise. The construction has gone on a long time, and will continue for the rest of our natural lives, so it seems. These little matters do not generate the kind of attention five-car pileups do, but that doesn’t mean a badly designed pedestrian/cycle path can’t cause the same degree of injury or death. These are real situations faced by people every day. Some of them are reparable. At least one of them (#2) is EASILY reparable. I hope you will take into quick concern the people for whom you’re building those sidewalks that go nowhere and put safe sidewalks where people actually travel.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. I am certain I will be in contact with you again, possibly quite often.

Sincerely,
Princess Tata

I signed the name on my passport, sheesh! But there’s more: this intersection sits no more than 150 yards from the office of US Representative Frank Pallone, and in no way can the staff be unaware of this situation. I’m certain of this because, before I started the big push to move about two months ago, I called his office weekly to ask what Mr. Pallone was doing about it. At first, the staff was dismissive. Several calls later, I made them an offer: send a letter to the DOT before someone gets killed because afterward grandmothers will call CNN and say, “He never calls, he never writes, he chews with his mouth open and he fucking knew because I told him it would happen. You look thin! You should eat.”

That’s no threat. I’m simply not that kind of gal. On a daily basis, I see whole families walk under that bridge and women push baby carriages. A highway sign promises construction will begin next Monday but last week it promised repairs to start on the 8th. These signs must be regarded with feelings of hope and dread: one of the unnamed university’s urban planners told me confidentially her department had to have a talk with the NJDOT about not closing the bridge totally because religious people cross it daily to attend services. The DOT had no idea. If not for the devout, hundreds of people who cross this bridge every day on foot or bicycle for other reasons would be out of luck indefinitely. What the hell? This has been going on for years. Seriously: what the hell?

*Stop laughing!

**And she is SUCH a bitch.

Indulge me for just a second – or 4:33. With just over a minute-thirty left in this video, I start shouting every time.

This morning, I buzzed around my apartment and Today In New York was on in the living room. Mostly, I wait for the weather report but every two or three weeks, something catches my attention. This morning, during a report on seniors with AIDS, I heard the word abstinence and stopped buzzing. I saw an older woman saying, “As far as contact with a gentleman: forget it. Not me. No way.” I mean, whatever. So I went and brushed my teeth. Anyway, I went to work and couldn’t stop thinking about what I had nor had not heard. The video is posted to the Today In New York blog and I want you, and you, and you there. So, surrender, Dorothy. Here again is the video.

What is this report about, really? It starts out with a safe sex lecture at a senior center in Corona, Queens. Seniors are having sex and want protection from communicable disease, and recently a man “died of AIDS”, leaving – forgive me! – high and dry four elderly ladies who didn’t know he had the virus. Next thing we know, we have a city council member requesting funds for education programs, and here’s where the subject drifts from the one in the headline and bumps into a couple of weird Republican talking points.

The cues are subtle. The problems with inflection are minor until we get to this whopper in reporter Melissa Russo’s voiceover: “The commissioner would not comment on whether the city should spend tax dollars on more safe sex programs in senior centers.” I didn’t hear these words this morning. The next line is, “Of course there will always be some who practice abstinence.”

Later, the condescending kicker: “The sad part is I mean is – of course it’s good that these people are living longer lives – the sad part is if they’d known all along they’d live long their lives would have been so different.” (What a bitch that was to transcribe. I bet closed captioning typists slit their wrists when this reporter talks.) Sure, if they’d known that gigolo with the plaid jacket had the rabid gay disco plague, all those love-starved grannies might’ve stuck with platonic bingo partners, is that it?

There is so much wrong with this I’m going to miss stuff. Feel free to write your own book report.

First, the headline is A Third Of New Yorkers With AIDS Are Over 50. This story mentions that people with AIDS are living longer, and society will have to consider their needs. The report offers us a retirement-age activist who no longer worries he’s going to be cut down in his youth. That’s it. I’m not wearing a stop watch but that’s got to be less than 30 seconds in a report stretching past the four-minute mark. So, what is the actual topic? Our squeamishness, and we have it by the – forgive me! – buttload.

In 2007, a certain segment of the population believes that sex education must come with abstinence education or perhaps there shouldn’t be sex education at all. The blank stupidity of this assumption hurts my head. The simple fact is that most of us are not having sex right now. We know what not having sex is like. No one has to teach us that, which differs sharply from our need to learn about the health and function of our bodies. We are not born with an expert knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and proceeding without one can kill us. Further, we should know how bodies function sexually and how to protect ourselves from disease. This information can be taught to us in a simply factual manner. It is possible to present facts without coloring them with opinion, which may seem like an absolutely crazy notion we can examine after everyone calms down, but really. For instance: I can teach you how to apply a condom and what you do with that knowledge is your business. Period. Everyone should know how male and female bodies work and why; it is simply a matter of public health. So, why does the question of “tax dollars on more safe sex programs” come up?

Even if we quake in our shoes at the idea that teenagers have sex despite the fact that we did, we have to grow the fuck up and accept the idea that adults have sex. Our opinion, especially if we don’t like that idea, is unimportant. Adults have sex. That is a simple fact, and because adults have sex, adults should have a functioning knowledge of anatomy and physiology which a lot of adults do not possess, and where could one reliably acquire it? Instead of wondering whether tax dollars should fund safe sex programs, our reporter would better serve the public interest by asking that commissioner if he’s ready to fund a 24-hour sex education channel. For one thing, people don’t die of AIDS. They die of complications of AIDS. Those terrible deaths suck. And a reporter should be more careful with words.

The real subject of this report can be summed up simply: Gross! AIDS is too terrifying to inspire rational thought and my tax dollars buy Grandpa rubbers!

Next time, NBC news should send an adult.

This morning, I had just left the apartment complex along one of the tree-lined avenues of my town when ahead of me on the sidewalk I spied a man so tall his head brushed the leaves well above me. I watched him for a few minutes as I caught up. He was wearing a brown suit. As I got closer, I guessed he might be 6’2″ or taller with a stoop, and very thin. His left arm had a distinct palsy, and soon I saw his right arm had something odd about it too, though I can’t say now what it was. His brown hair was white at the scalp, but older men have some latitude when it comes to hair fashion so I didn’t think it odd that his hair was probably longer than mine. I soon came to a point where I was going to have to pass him and because it’s a very small town and if I piss someone off he’s going to spit in my snowcone at the next street fair, I have to be delicate about it.

Though I seldom step into the street on this particular tree-lined avenue at this hour because drivers are talking on cell phones, pulling on pantyhose and noshing toaster strudel without a thought for reasonably unarmed pedestrians and I am one, I did. Within ten steps, the gap between us closed and I turned to say a polite, “Good morning” to the person I’d just passed. I pass a lot of people. Usually, people smile and respond in kind and nobody worries about snowcones. This man stopped, bobbed and made a burbling sound. His face was doughy and his expression blank. The detail that caught my attention though was his belt: the prong was stuck through a hole, the end of the belt dangled a long way. It was the belt of a large man who’d lost a great deal of weight. I snapped my eyes forward, then turned back. Without looking at me, he took a step backward, then began to walk forward slowly. Ahead of me, in the distance, walked another man with a huge bag of laundry on his back, and ahead of him, on the other side of the town’s main drag sat a police car with lights on. That was three things in a row I did not expect to see on this normally tranquil spot. I looked around for toaster strudel.

I felt sick. I felt like I’d seen something I shouldn’t have. Maybe I was overreacting, but I was afraid he was having a stroke. Maybe he was fine and just really quirky. The other possibility, fresh in mind from having to corral Dad when he hallucinated, was that this man suffered from dementia and this morning he got dressed and went out because that’s what he used to do. I came to the corner of Tree-Lined Avenue and Main Drag, hesitated for a moment, then turned toward the bridge and kept walking. The cop was one traffic light away. The man was a block behind me. I thought I’d have an aneurism. I started arguing with me in self-defense.

Tata: What are you doing? We can’t leave that guy like that! He’s in trouble.
Tata: You’re a fucking drama queen, you know that? He’s probably fine. If he’s a mathematician, he’s probably better than fine.
Tata: You’re such a bitch! You’re more afraid you’re going to be embarrassed than that that guy needs an ambulance.
Tata: Shut it, that never happens. We’ve been wandering around for four decades and how many times have we ever called an ambulance? Zero. He’s an old guy out for a morning walk.
Tata: Coward!
Tata: Busybody!

Yeah, my insides spun like a like a funnel cloud as I crossed the bridge, then walked under Route 18. Standing on Albany Street, I dialed the town’s police non-emergency number and, marching along at a brisk clip, reported my suspicions to the person who answered the phone, and when I say this is a really small town, that person was probably someone walking her dog by town hall when the phone rang. Then I walked the rest of the way to work, rationalizing my decision to call the cops. I’m sure I looked really sane, what with the waving and “Would you shut up, please?”

For the last hour, I’ve stared at my office phone and wanted to call back. I haven’t. I’m scared the police will tell me I was foolish to worry and would I please not tie up their lines, thankyouverymuch? Or they’ll tell me they didn’t find him, or they found him too late. Why didn’t I call sooner?

I don’t trust me. That’s my problem, right there.

Sometimes, anger is the sane response.

Women a mystery to sex scientists

I could just fucking scream.

Researchers presenting their findings at the society’s sixth annual meeting are still trying to figure out which hormones and neurotransmitters make sexual arousal possible, where in the brain orgasm takes place, and which nerves control the genital organs. Much of their work is being done in rats.

“Now we’re sticking needles into different parts of the brain,” said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, the Boston urologist who founded the multidisciplinary group. “Whatever pharmaceuticals are proven to help … most likely will work in the central nervous system.”

Clinicians, frustrated by the slow pace of sexual science, want effective treatments for patients brave enough to seek help – a small minority.

Oh Jesus Christ, have these people never been to a frat party? And what’s the first solution springing to mind for a problem yet to be defined?

Although social scientists have been studying women’s sexuality for decades, medical science did not become interested until the advent of Viagra in the late 1990s raised the possibility that female sexual problems might be treated by medication. Viagra, which treats erectile dysfunction by increasing blood flow to the genitals, does not appear to work in women. In fact, no drug has been approved in the U.S. for the disorder doctors call female sexual dysfunction. That may be understandable, given that experts aren’t sure what female sexual dysfunction is – or even if it exists.

A pill? A pill! Someday, we will all look back at this and change the subject. And….go!

“Science must measure,” [Dr. Stephen] Levine said, “so we measure how many times the patient said she had sexual thoughts or desired sex in the last four weeks. But we don’t know what we’re measuring.”

To some members of the society, fearing that women’s sexual complaints are being turned into medical illnesses for the convenience of doctors and the economic benefit of Big Pharma, that admission was a breath of fresh air.

“I think it’s progress that we can spend two hours in this performance-driven society admitting that maybe we don’t know what we’re talking about,” said Ellen Laan, a psychophysiologist from the University of Amsterdam.

Oh look, fifteen seconds and I was already wrong – but I have competition.

Since the 1960s, researchers have operated under a variation of the simple model proposed by William Masters and Virginia Johnson that says the human sexual response starts with desire, progresses through excitement or arousal and ends with orgasm. But experts argued that notion might reflect the experience of men more than women, many of whom don’t see orgasm as a goal.

In recent years the field has moved toward a more complicated model based on the observation that many women go into a sexual encounter without being in the mood – perhaps they’re seeking intimacy or hoping to please their partner- and may not really want sex until after they become aroused.

But it wasn’t until very recently that anyone thought to test those theories by asking women.

Look, I don’t have a Ph.D. and a lab staffed by sweaty undergraduates. I’m not a genius with a three-page list of grants. I’m nobody in New Jersey; as a person who’s dated the Eastern Seaboard, I really hate that last line. For the moment, let us gently set aside talk of people injured by violence and abuse, because those are special people who need gentle care, and people experiencing the ebbs and flows of changing hormonal balances. We’re talking here about perfectly ordinary people who think there’s something wrong with their sex lives.

Sex starts in the brain. It also stops in the brain. Should I want what I want? Should nice people want to slick themselves down with Crisco and go two out of three falls? Should good people spend all afternoon on the kitchen floor before having a late lunch? Should decent people put on cowboy boots and play Rustler RoundUp?

Yes. Yes. Yes. To quote Molly Bloom: “…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Maybe a lot of women won’t come out and say, “Listen, porkchop, you smell like a fantastic night under the stars and our bed needs a seismometer but the one thing that sends me over the edge like a roller coaster car sailing off the tracks into screaming space is when I wrap my thighs around your neck and hold on for dear life” but why not? Lust is one of the most fabulous sensations our bodies offer us. Let’s don’t be afraid of desire. Sing out, sister! Are women afraid to ask too much? Are women afraid to ask? It’s true that lots of men won’t solicit the expert opinion. I find it helps if you’re holding the talking stick at the time the committee delivers its findings.

People who are not women: if you want to please a woman, which you must if you are any kind of lover at all, ask her what feels good. Ask her what feels great. Ask her what makes her see stars. If she’s only slept with selfish bastards, she might not know, which offers you the opportunity of a lifetime. Help her find out what makes her sing Sweet Mystery Of Life. You’re a hero! Tell her what you want. Stop thinking and making rules and should should should. Pour your whole self into the ocean that is your lover and the tide will rise.

No more of this “what do women want?” crap. Get busy with getting busy. And do it for SCIENCE!

Dear Accountanting Family,

How are you? I’m well. I’ve given it some thought. I’ve been your customer or client or adorable mess for more than twenty years now and you’ve done an admirable job of keeping me out of the hooskow. Everyone has a reason to be very pleased.

When we first started out together, getting my taxes done was pricey for a single mom making $5.50 an hour but well worth it, considering that gal couldn’t add and subtract. The cost of a simple tax return is still kind of pricey, but I propose we look at this from a long-term perspective. Chances are, your grandchildren will be doing my taxes in another thirty years because why mess around with success, eh? Whenever someone asks me about accountants, I send them straight to you!

Please consider charging me a bulk rate, by which I mean if we stacked up my tax returns for fifty years, that might constitute adding a wing to your office.

My proposal is very silly, but so am I, and that’s why we need each other. Happy Tax Season, friends!

Hugs and kisses,
Princess Tata