I know it’s been a while. If you want to know some of the details about why it’s been a while, you can read about them on my other blog, bipolarjan.wordpress.com.
But now that I’m well and truly off track, I thought I’d ask what you’d like to see next.
The choices at the moment are:
Muffin Bones and Winnebagos
Butt Check
How I Became an Amazon Martian
Vote for you favorite, or cast a write-in vote. I’m curious to know what I’ll be doing this week.
In my last post I joked about moonshine. The reality is quite different.
Moonshine is sometimes presented as a defiant protest against the government, which wants to tax everything fun and make a profit on it while soaking the common people. And right now, that’s a pretty popular – even populist – sentiment.
Media portrayals of moonshining, while not universally positive, have sometimes given it the cachet of harmless, if illegal, rebellion – think Dukes of Hazzard. Let’s outsmart them pesky revenooers (actually ATF agents) and race fast, sexy cars and yell yee-haw a lot.
And I’m not denying that can be a good ol’ way to spend your time, as long as you don’t crack up that spiffy car trying all those impressive special-effects stunts that defy the laws of physics as well as traffic.
And we all know that Prohibition didn’t work. You can’t keep people from drinking if they really want to. It’s as old as civilization itself.
But during Prohibition, alcohol consumption and rates of alcoholism actually increased. The temperance movement was counter-productive.
And “bathtub gin,” like moonshine whiskey, being unregulated (more outlaw fun defying the damn gummint!), had no quality controls. A lot of moonshiners didn’t care, or maybe didn’t even know, the effects of using the wrong copper tubing or automobile radiators for their stills, or mixing the product with wood alcohol (methanol). They probably should have suspected that the rat poison, bleach, embalming fluid, or paint thinner added to give it an extra kick would be less than ideal, though. The lead and antifreeze were bonuses.
Blindness, liver damage, alcoholism, and death were the best-known side effects. Others included seizures, nerve damage, and partial paralysis, either temporary or permanent.
So yes, I did grow up in a family that thought “That Good Ol’ Mountain Dew” was a fun song for children. And I did have an uncle that made or bought moonshine – we kids were unclear on that – and hid it in the corncrib. (Digression: Ironically, he was named Uncle Sam. There was also an Aunt Jemima somewhere in the family tree. True story.)
But I’m not going to encourage drinking actual moonshine. I won’t even buy the cute Mason jars of whatever it is they sell in state-approved liquor stores labeled as moonshine. And I’ll pass on Outback’s moonshine-flavored entrees, thanks.
Watching Chopped on Food Network, I noticed that all the baskets contained some kind of moonshine and that the guest judge was from Outback Steakhouse.
Math may not have been my best subject, but I can put one and one together and usually come within spitting distance of two or thereabouts. I said to myself, “Self, I bet Outback is having some kind of moonshine promotion.”
I was right. Within a couple of days I began seeing the commercials. I have also seen “moonshine” for sale in the liquor stores. This is just wrong. The wrongness of it rattled around in my brain and caused this vision.
Me [in Outback Steakhouse]: Any specials today?
Server [perkily]: Why, yes! We’re featuring our new Moonshine Entrees!
Me: Tell me about them.
Server [still perky]: Each of our superb meats has been infused with the authentic flavor of moonshine!
Me: You mean it tastes like airplane glue and smells like kerosene?
Server [puzzled]: Why, no! It’s a sweet rich flavor that enhances all our dishes.
Me: So where do you get your moonshine?
Server [resuming perkiness]: It comes from our warehouse on the weekly truck so you now that every batch is fresh!
Me: Yeah, that’s about how long my uncle used to age his. But he kept it under the corn crib instead of in a warehouse.
Server [still trying]: We make sure the quality is consistent and always imparts that special moonshine kick!
Me [impressed]: So you know that it always causes the jake-leg wobbles and the blind staggers?
Server [beginning to fold]: Really, I don’t think…
Me: Yeah, that’s the other good thing about moonshine. After your kidneys shut down, it goes to your head and you can’t think.
Server [losing it]: Perhaps you should see the manager.
Me: If I can still see her, it ain’t the best moonshine.
Server [nearing tears]: It’s really nothing like that!
Me: Then you’re obviously not using my uncle’s recipe. It was a big hit at all the family reunions. He’d get plumb crazy and start firing off his single-shot rifle. Gives a person a sporting chance. Not like those AR-15s everyone has nowadays. Tell me, is this an open carry state?
Server flees, returning with the manager, who gives me a coupon for a free dinner. At the Olive Garden.
Of course, I wouldn’t really do any such thing. For one thing, it would be mean, and for another I can’t really afford to eat at Outback. And of course the dialogue probably wouldn’t go as I imagined. And I’d be thrown out on one of my ears.
But still…
Our youngest cat, doing her impression of Grumpy Cat.
This seemed like a good idea at the time. We used to call Dushenka “Li’l Bit” when she first chose us. Now she’s more like Pudgy Bit.
Either way, she did not seem thrilled to be asked to pose for a holiday picture. Not that the Fourth of July means much to cats except begging for barbecue and hiding under the bed.
They should like it though, if only to maintain their reputation for independence.
I had a mammogram today and it raised questions in my mind. Not about whether mammograms are a good thing, despite the new study in the British Medical Journal that said they don’t really help. My mother had breast cancer and a mastectomy. She survived. A dear friend had a lumpectomy. (Digression: By accident, it almost became a complete boobectomy. Her breast survived.)
When my doctor told me to schedule the test, I admitted to him that I don’t do the breast self-exam thing every month. I told him I couldn’t feel anything out of the ordinary, not even after another doctor gave me the fake boob with the different sized lumps to practice on. “My breasts are weird and lumpy,” I told him. “All women’s breasts are weird and lumpy,” he replied. Good to know. And, yes, there have been plenty of volunteers who’ve offered to help. So don’t even go there.
I dutifully scheduled the test, especially since I think that now, thanks to the ACA, insurance has to pay for the whole thing. (Further digression: The thing that caused the most resistance to the ACA, in my opinion, was letting its opponents get away with calling it “Obamacare.” That and not emphasizing that it wasn’t health care reform, which scares people. It was insurance reform, which only scares insurance companies.)
(I think I was working up to making a point somewhere. What was it? Oh, yeah, mammograms. Questions. That was it.) My questions were not about the actual test, but about the process.
When I entered the elaborate medical photo booth, the tech asked me, as usual, to remove my clothing above the waist and put on a cloth gown with the opening in the front. She told me to open the door a bit when I was ready.
Leave me alone with nothing to read and I start thinking.
I said to myself, “Self, why does she want me to put on that extremely fashionable gown when she’s going to see my weird, lumpy breasts anyway?”
When I discussed this with my husband later, he said that some people are modest.
“About what?” I asked. “They know the tech is going to see their boobs.”
I thought some more. “When the mammogrammers snap the pics, the techs ask you to uncover one breast at a time. Why is that? Are modest people okay with exposing one boob to a stranger, but not two at once? Plus, the tech touches them. If they’re going to be modest, isn’t that the bigger issue?”
I was on a roll. “And that whole leaving the room while I change is silly. They could save time – and laundry bills for the gowns – if they just said, ‘Strip to the waist and stick ’em in the machine.’
“They should reserve that delicate sensibility crap for first-timers. Everyone else just wants to get it over with as quickly as possible. Am I right?”
My husband said he didn’t know, which is probably true, since he’s never had a mammogram.
So, what’s the take-away here?
When I have a mammogram, I already know that someone will see and touch my breasts. And I’m okay with that.
But if I see my pictures on the Internet, I’ll really be pissed.
UPDATE (IRONY ALERT)
The mammogram I was so flippant about revealed a cyst, which has gotten larger. Tuesday I go for a follow-up mammogram and ultrasound. Even more people will see my breasts, and I’m still OK with that.
Lately I’ve been involved in a number of grassroots efforts, crowd sourcing, and increasing the bandwidth of various projects (other people’s, not my own).
It’s the modern version of networking. I can’t increase the sales of a friend’s book or a favorite local restaurant, but I can let people know where to find it. I can’t rescue a stranger from poverty or foot (paw?) the vet bills for someone else’s cat, but I can contribute something. I can’t speak authoritatively about a lot of subjects, but I’m a whiz at knowing where and how to find information.
In a way, it’s like the Six Degrees of Separation (or Kevin Bacon) theory – if I don’t know how to do something, one of my friends or one of their friends does. It’s one of the reasons I’m on Facebook, despite its many flaws. It’s similar to a giant “Phone-a-Friend” lifeline from the old version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
“The hive mind” is just another way of saying “brainstorming.” “Signal boosting” is tech-speak for “spreading the word.” “Crowd sourcing” is the modern way to “pooling our resources.”
It’s an answer to the question “But how can I, one small person, make a difference?” And it’s a way to “stand on the shoulders of giants” to see farther. Come to think of it, it’s a lot of the reason we have WordPress blogs.
If you’re interested, here are some groups that do crowd-sourcing:
Kiva.org (rotating micro-loans to help alleviate poverty)
DonorsChoose.org (funding for individual teachers’ classroom projects)
Kickstarter.com and GoFundMe.com (fundraising for creative projects or personal needs)
I’ve made donations through all of these and never regretted it.
And while I’m at it, here are a couple of friends of mine whose signals I am boosting:
TomSmithOnline.com and thefump.com, for those interested in Dr. Demento-style music (FuMP = Funny Music Project)
Rejectedprincesses.com, neglected kick-ass women of history and myth who would never make it in a Disney movie
What organizations or projects would you like to promote? Just leave a comment below. No waiting for the beep.
This being Friday the 13th, black cats are on my mind. I’m not superstitious, so neither the date nor the cats bother me, but they do bother a lot of people.
A pass-along this morning said that black cats (and black dogs) in shelters tend to be overlooked and are killed disproportionately. Another common rumor is that black cats are adopted at Halloween by Satanists (or teenage wanna-be Satanists) to sacrifice in horrible rituals.
Snopes.com says the evidence is inconclusive on that last point, although they also mention people who want to “rent” black cats as party decorations. I don’t know if this actually happens, but I doubt that it actually works. Cats of any color are more likely to spend a Halloween party behind the sofa or ralphing on the snack table than posing prettily in a tableau of pumpkins. (Digression: Hairballs are pretty grody, so I guess they could be considered decorations, if you’re the horror-fan sort of party-giver.)
I don’t believe cats are bad luck, because I don’t believe there’s any such thing as an all-black cat. As far as I can tell, they are required by law to have at least ten white hairs somewhere on their bodies. Show-offs prefer the chest area.
But I have a confession: I have never owned a black cat. (Digression: My mother-in-law has. No comment.) We did once have a lovely tuxedo cat named Shaker. She had, in addition to the white chest, white whiskers and adorable little white feet. She had a lot of dignity, but then spoiled the effect when she jumped off my lap at the vet’s, made a break for it as fast as her tiny little feet would carry her, and ran headlong (bonk!) into the glass door. It was so sudden that she couldn’t realistically pull off the “I meant to do that” look. Nice try, though.
We did have a black guest cat (a foster) that I named Joliet. (Digression: Here’s the story. I had a black friend named Darryl. I couldn’t call the cat Darryl because she was female (Darryl Hannah notwithstanding). My friend Darryl came from Joliet, IL, so I named her Joliet in his honor. It didn’t matter, because everyone misheard it as Juliet and called her that.)
We might have kept Joliet, but she proved to be a brazen thief. (If she were he, we could have called him Joliet Jake. Or Darryl, I guess, except Darryl wasn’t a thief. Never mind.)
One night we were eating in front of the TV and had a large steak on a plate on the coffee table. Joliet did not choose the typical cat ploy of sniffing daintily at the edge of the steak and making the pitiful “nobody-feeds-me” face. She swooped in and grabbed the whole thing, then raced across the living room with it. From our vantage point it looked like a steak with four feet and a long black tail fleeing the scene of the crime. We recovered the steak, washed it off, and ate it anyway. We were not so well off that we could afford to waste a steak.
(Digression: Once I was cruising the cheap meat (reduced for quick sale) section at the grocery. A guy, obviously embarrassed, picked up a couple of steaks and said, “I feed these to my dog.” “Yeah?” I said, tossing some into my cart. “I feed them to my husband.”)
Anyway, we decided that Joliet and another family would be happier with each other. Looking back, we may have made the wrong call. She never brought us any bad luck. We just needed to train her to steal steak from other people and bring it back to us. Then again, trying to train a cat is difficult enough, never mind trying to train one to give away stolen meat.
The other day I was talking with an old friend about my time at Cornell. I was concerned/regretful/annoyed that I had wasted my time there. There was so much more I could have done if only I had been properly prepared and focused.
Digression: He was excited. “Hey! I had sex with an Ivy League coed!”
Cornell had what they called “distribution requirements,” meant to broaden a person’s education by forcing them to take classes outside their major and even outside their College.
Digression: They also made everyone learn to swim and/or pass a swimming test. I cheated. I can still barely swim.
Of course I was an English major in the College of Arts and Sciences. Here’s what I took in addition to poetry and Chaucer and Shakespeare and Creative Writing and all that stuff:
Astronomy (with Carl Sagan)
History of Science in Western Civilization (with L. Pearce Williams)
Communications
Bee-keeping
Russian
French (Literature. In French.)
Intermediate Archery (twice)
Linguistics
Cinema
Wine-tasting (now there’s a surprise)
And a bunch of other stuff that has been lost that in the Swiss cheese that is my memory.
And what use is all that? Except for being on Jeopardy, which I never have been? Or laughing hysterically at The Simpsons when Ned asks that alternatives to Darwinian evolution be taught and Principal Skinner suggests, “Lamarckian evolution”? What possible career could all that prepare me for? I’m not an expert in anything.
Surprisingly, I realized, it prepared me for exactly the career I have: writer and editor.
I can’t write or edit for specialized or technical journals, but I can write and edit the hell out of general interest material and educational fodder for developing young minds.
I know just enough biology to explain how vaccines work.
I know just enough politics to tell the differences between socialism and fascism.
I know just enough art to differentiate Pointillists and Cubists and Impressionists.
I know just enough Greek and Latin roots to explain words like “apnea.”
I know just enough religion to tell you what “original sin” is. (Hint: It’s not sex.)
I know just enough history to tell about Catherine the Great. (Hint: She didn’t die having sex with a horse.”)
I know just enough psychology to tell you the differences between grief and clinical depression.
I am a generalist. My education may not have been deep, but it sure was broad. (Hint: Do not call me a “deep broad.” I know just enough martial arts to make you regret it.)
The last time I even contemplated going to my high school reunion (Fairmont East) was the 25th iteration.
I was terrified.
I went to a high school friend (Mary McCarty) for advice. She was quite helpful. She also wrote about my panic in the local paper (Dayton Daily News).
Here’s what I told her: “Over the last quarter century I’ve confronted and dealt with a number of pieces of my past and tried to make my peace with them. High school, however, is not one of those things.”
Mary did note that “Janet … had more reason than most to be apprehensive. She had been one of those kids too brainy, too head-in-the-clouds, to comprehend how to navigate the social firmament.”
Spot on.
I got my hair done for the event and told my stylist to make me look “successful and sane.” She replied, “Oh, no, here comes the wish list.” “At least I didn’t ask for young and thin,” I pointed out.
I went, taking along my husband and telling him and my dear friend Kathy, who had flown in from the West Coast, not to leave my side. I’m sure the husband came as a surprise to most people there, proof that I had at least managed to navigate that particular social firmament.
I survived it all. My big insight: “Not everyone hated me.”
Mary was much more philosophical: “In adolescence our images are refracted through so many distorted lights – the way we see ourselves, the way everyone else sees us, the way we fancy everyone else sees us. What mattered was that we could all talk face to face, as adults, as equals, as friends.”
It is now approaching time for our 40th reunion. Do you think I am any calmer this time around?
Well, maybe. I don’t have the energy or the attention span to get all worked up about it.
Will I go? Probably not. It’s like the Tower of Terror at DisneyWorld – I did it once and I’m glad I did, but I have no desire to do it again.
Besides, the people from high school that I want to be in touch with – like Mary and Kathy – I still am in touch with, in person or via Facebook.
At this point I have nothing to prove.
I’m an obsessive, insatiable reader, and have been since I was four years old. But lately, there’s a trend in books that annoys me mightily.
It’s the names.
I understand that authors want their books to stand out, but I want characters that are memorable for their dialogue, actions, and thoughts. Not a bunch of stupid names.
I’ve got a little list. (And they’d surely not be missed.)
First, let me say that I’m not including science fiction and fantasy books in this rant. Those authors can make up names all day long. (Though the wizard named Alanon made it impossible for me to read that series.)
Digression: Has anyone else noticed that new prescription names sound like alien overlords? Xeljanz. Vioxx. Or damsels in distress? Lunesta. Levitra.
Romance novels may be the worst offenders, though off-putting names can occur in any genre. I think the worst I’ve seen was a couple whose names were Ben Heat and Rebecca Sweet. Ick. Just ick.
Then there was a couple named Faith and Royal. (Royal’s last name was Baxter. I couldn’t help myself. I kept thinking Royal Bastard.)
Last names that are meant to define character are irritating too: Knight, Savage. Another notable was Lexy Baker who was, well, a baker. Like the readers couldn’t figure that out.
First names too: Taffeta (nickname: Taffy), Bliss.
The ones that really annoy me are the cross-gender names. I know this is a trend in real life, not just in books, and we’ll just have to live with little girls named Taylor and Jordan and Madison. Thank you so much, Splash!
But this is getting ridiculous. Here are some actual names of female characters I’ve seen:
Clyde
Josiah
Noa
Dallas
Sloane
I don’t know why those characters aren’t in therapy.
And while we’re on the subject, puns for book titles have gone over the top. I mean, Maui Widow Waltz? Come on. Really?
