bird flu, or much a-twitter about nothing

I've been down for the count for the last few days with some sort of bug. I don't think it's the Minnesotan Swine Flu or the Chinese Chicken Flu or anything with a ready-made vaccination and health care debate talking points attached, but it is almost certainly an animal-transported virus of foreign origin. Maybe a Peruvian Nutria Infection or the Brazilian Wax Flu, or something equally debilitating.

Or it could just be a cold. In any case, I will no doubt be dead by sundown.

In the meantime, I've been filling my TheraFlu and NyQuil-fueled haze with all manner of facsinating endeavor. I read six back issues of the La Times Travel sections and planned an imaginary trip to Germany for next month. I emptied my spam folder of 167 emails entreating 'Gloria' to get back in touch with 'Brian', 'William' and 'Mrs Charles Lowenhart'. I played with my Blogger template and lost my favorite 'Simpsonized' profile pic. I spent a half a day attending a virtual pagan ceremony with some passing rogues and bards, tracked a couple of vampires to their lair (only to run in panicked fear when the fight turned ugly) and joined a motley crew of Rangers attempting to guard it's borders against...well, I'm not sure what, exactly, to be honest. But our weapons are totally cool! And I finally signed up for Twitter.

I have absolutely nothing to say on Twitter, just as I have nothing to say on FaceBook, Wordpress or here, for that matter. And I know very few people who subscribe, or admit to subscribing to the site. But when I heard that Paris Hilton and Demi Moore were bitchslapping each other over the relative sluttiness of Moore's 15 year-old daughter's attire, I knew I had to be in on that conversation. Which is frankly hilarious.

I signed up, tossed out a single tweet (I forgot to include the obigatory exclamation point!) and started following anyone who showed up on the first list that appeared. I chose on the basis of those whom I thought would amuse, intentionally or otherwise ~ Wil Wheaton, Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard among the former; Demi Moore, of course, who is 'Feeling a deep need to clean my closets out!' among the latter. Heidi Montag, whose bio reads 'I love Jesus!' next to a picture of herself onstage in some sort of gold see-through underwear is 'Getting ready for church!' Kirstie Alley cannot shut up about, well, anything: Airports: Hello Denver.. Only passing through.. Prettiest airport ive ever seen. Boyfriends: Jonny Boy didnt dump me... That made me happy... Lol Haters: Wow.. The idiots are out in full force today.... Will have to name them so that u can bop them twittet style..

It is endless, pointless and just the thing to penetrate a fever-induced haze. I may never leave the house again. Oh, I know I'll get bored with it soon ~ okay, I'm already a little bored with it: Heidi Montag cant wait to talk to you all on#SayNow at 310-220-0244 later today! (Pimping? On Twitter? How dare you!!??) ~ but in the meantime I have learned two things.

One) That Paris Hilton, beautiful, vacuous, inexcusable bimbo that she is, is living a truly, miraculously, fabulous life: Oct 23 :The U2 Concert was incredible!!! Bono rocks! Such a talent, inspiration and total Rock Star! Love him! Oct 24: We just had lunch with Pete Rose, the baseball legend. He's such a nice guy and such a character. Later Oct 24: Had such an amazing day today! Back at The Hard Rock Hotel, going to take a lil disco nap before the night starts :) To her credit, she seems to be enjoying this incredible life, even if not entirely understanding it.

Two) I do not need to feel bad about never having anything to say. As Mark Twain so aptly put it, "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Now there's a guy who would have given good Tweet.

d'oh!

I lost my Simpson-me profile toon. I cannot for the life of me remember what I named it and Vista, contrarian evil that it is, will simply not help me find it. Which is why I never play at changing things in here. Change is bad. Me no likey change.

D'oh, oh d'oh is me.

Universal Health Care: SVU

Protect Insurance Companies PSA from Will Ferrell

last of the summer tomatoes

There's a group of Daily Painters whose widget appears somewhere on this page and whose work ethic I much admire. It's astounding to me how quickly and effectively they can produce such lively small scale paintings in such a short amount of time.

Me, I tend to plod, over-think and obsess with even the simplest subjects, resulting in canvases of overwrought mushiness and confusion. Much of this is no doubt due to a lack of training on my part, since I have no idea what I'm doing and am making it up as I go along. But quite a bit is probably due to essential personality flaws as well, as I tend to plod and over-think and obsess about everything, resulting in a brain and life of overwrought mushiness and confusion. Maybe because I'm still making that up as I go along, too. Funny, you'd think I'd have it down by now.

So when my husband came home and plopped some tomatoes down in the basket on the counter, I popped some blue hydrangeas in a vase and thought, hmn, I bet I could do this in a few hours(!) and quickly set out to try, you know, to loosen up my brain a little. When, to the surprise of no one I didn't finish that day, the canvas sat for a week, the tomatoes were eaten and the hydrangeas started turning green.

Hmn, I thought, I like that much better! More color, better contrast. Turk was promptly dispensed to the farmers' market for more fruit and I added some green to the blue.

Later that afternoon, as I noted that the flowers had started turning brown around the edges and imagined the tomatoes in a nice insalata calabrese for dinner that night, I threw a little sienna into the petals and finally called it a day. Before my bright little Still Life with Tomatoes turned into a picture of an empty basket and a couple of dry sticks in fetid water: Stilled Life: Study of a Too Literal Mind.

And I wonder why no one wants to sit for my portraits.

summer reading

To all the slack-jawed yokels and Yosemite Sam wannabes proudly strangling free-speech and the democratic process in town hall meetings across the land, as well as to their media handlers and other mad prophets of the coming Apocalypse I would like to recommend picking up a copy of T.R. Reid's new book, The Healing of America.

I would further recommend that, rather than using said book as you normally would, say as a beer coaster or something to burn at the next Birther bash, that you actually look at the pages in a genuine attempt to discern their meaning. And if that's proves to be too difficult, perhaps a kindly visiting child could interpret them for you. That's why we make you send them to public schools. So they can help you to help yourselves.

In the meantime and for the rest of us, Reid has laid out the Five Myths About Health Care Around the World in a sensible, comprehensive and thoughtful fashion. I first heard Reid speaking this morning on NPR and was so impressed with his broad knowledge and reasoned compassion that I immediately went online in search of the book. I'd like to send one to each of my Congressmen and women as well ~ can a constituent give their legislators required reading lists? I very much doubt it. But I'm sure as hell gonna try.

Health Care: We all get it. We all pay. What could be fairer than that? Or more democratic? It's the American way. Dammit.

why I love Barney Frank

Finally. A congressman with the cajones to speak Truth to Idiots. And obnoxious dining room furniture. Because the Nazis ~ well, they were all about the health care.

Those who cannot read history books are doomed to make complete asses of themselves in public forums.

who will give me Xanax when you're gone? a thoughtful debate in free rant form

One of the advantages of having a blog that nobody reads is having a blog that nobody has to write. This has been a pleasantly liberating experience for me, and I have appreciated the time spent cleaning, cooking, and writing cranky letters to my reps, many of which begin with the phrase, "Dear Lame Duck Governor Schwarzenegger; I am writing to urge you to follow the courageous example of fellow LD Gov Sarah Palin and quit while you are still a viable entertainer..."

Another benefit of having a de facto private page is being able to write whatever you please without concern for diplomacy. Therefore, if you are offended by poorly written postings of a political nature that fly in the face of your considered beliefs in UFO's, the integrity of Dick Cheney or the wisdom of Elizabeth Hasselbeck, be forewarned: this is not the place for you. You will not like what you read. And if you are a member of the anti-Obama Birther movement, you will not understand it.

At long last we elected a president ready, willing and able to take on the enormous task of reforming the massively dysfunctional health care system in this country, only to see what is a truly heroic effort of monumental proportions being once again derailed by the health care industry itself. In a manufactured 'grassroots lobby', funded by the insurance industry and Big Pharma and whipped into a frenzy by a conscious-less right-wing media, pitchfork wielding citizens are showing up at town hall meetings screaming spontaneously memorized Republican talking points about roving death panels prowling the country eager to toss Granny down the shoot and faceless, uncaring federal bureaucrats replacing the compassionate and caring corporate bureaucrats currently coddling you, your family and that $200 bottle of Viagra.

Holding up copies of their own birth certificates, carefully preserved in Ziploc baggies these informed consumers of the best of American punditry demand to know why no one has looked into the fact that Barack Hussein Obama was almost certainly born on a UFO somewhere off the Beta Quadrant, the product of a human woman and an alien race of beings committed to bringing health care and gun control to a struggling populace.

As Peter Sagal of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me put it ~ the government wants to give the American people health care. And they don't want anyone to give them health care. Motto: Give us Liberty And give us Death!

I am sick and tired of the will of the majority of the American people as expressed by the electoral process being subverted by corporate behemoths and their Republican operatives in the legislature and media. I am sick and tired of bullies taking over the democratic process. I am sick and tired of self-righteous, misinformed, hotheaded zealots shouting down any voice raised against them. Just because you're loud doesn't mean you're right ~ my god, didn't your mother teach you anything? Don't make me come back there and euthanize you.

I am sick and tired of a propaganda machine so efficient in it's systematic demonization of intellectualism, education and indeed of any knowledge based on actual proof of fact that there are people out there who honestly believe that the government of the United States of America is coming to euthanize its citizenry.

Seriously, people. Get a grip. The administration is trying...to bring you...health care. Don't let the bullies scare you. We can do it. We voted for this. Change. It's a good thing.

And I am sick and tired of being sick and tired. Of people.

Where's a roving death panel when you need one?

a long and winding road

I actually, finally finished a painting today.

I'd been working on this particular canvas on and off for, quite literally, years now. I've posted pieces of it over the centuries, I think. But it just never seemed to be finished; there was always some element, some signifier that would be missing and would not let me put it to rest, as I probably should have long ago. Until today, when I picked it up, added that which I suddenly knew it needed and voila! C'est complet. I regret that I cannot get a decent picture of it no matter how hard I try, mostly because it was, at one point in it's travels, poorly and unevenly varnished by its creator in a hurried fashion before it was ready, causing it to pick up light and reflection in unappealing ways. And then again, perhaps it won't photograph prettily because it is, in fact, unlovely, an idea which does not displease me overmuch. It always was an unruly child ~ errant, frustrating, even, dare I say it? ~ ill-conceived. But what the hell. It's mine.

I call the picture "Journey," and in the course of those long and winding years it has been on one of it's own. It has undergone considerable revision, both in content and intent, it's direction and execution meandering far and wide, gathering paint, dust and ephemera along its way. Until it emerged to become the thing that it is; dark, dense, and not at all what it imagined it would be when first conceived. Like life, and most of our journeys. Or so I imagine. This one's mine, for what it's worth. Because I made it so. And no one chooses my path but me.

smile

I love those ad spots for Hulu, the ones starring Alec Baldwin and Dennis Leary claiming to be aliens providing us with mindless entertainment so they can suck our mushy brains dry. "Because we're aliens, and that's how we roll." This never fails to crack me up. My mushy brain responds to humor, and the truth of the jest.

The very cool image above is of a postcard collage created by my very talented pal Robbie, and which she sent me for my birthday. Very clearly on the surface is the message, "Honor Time," while invisibly, beneath several layers, are buried the words, "Life is Messy."

I've been thinking a lot about time lately; about how I've spent it, how much of it is lost, how much I might have left. That it was once my friend, and now very clearly is no longer. And I am forced to acknowledge that I have not always honored time, thinking, as one does, it to be in endless supply. I know, of course, that it is not. It is precious, finite in unpredictable ways and I have not been giving it it's due, spending far too much of it, in the words of my favorite aliens, in my bliggity blogs and facey spaces, cyber worlds and tweety places. I revel in a lot of pointless nonsense.

That life is messy is true as well, although I cannot in truth say mine has been. As lives go, mine has been a lucky one ~ full of love and affection, comfort and ease, often in spite of my best efforts to the contrary. This fact surprises me still, and I am grateful for it. But life is sorrow as well, and the passage of time highlights this inevitability.

I was looking for something in some old journals the other day and came across an unattributed quote (for I am not scrupulous in private diaries) "Accept sadness as a condition of life, not a transitory effect to be obliterated in a fourth act blizzard of good feelings, but something that can only be kept at bay..."

I've no idea where the passage came from, but I have always known the sentiment to be true. The older I get, the more I feel the wisdom of it. Perhaps that's what all the mindless, noisy, candy-coated entertainment is about ~ keeping the sadness at bay. This too has it's place.

I've just been listening to Brooke Shields speaking at the memorial for Michael Jackson, whose early death is a testament to the importance of honoring time if ever there was one. In memorializing her friend Brooke introduced the song Smile, written in 1936 by Charlie Chaplin with lyrics added later by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons. I've always loved the song ~ it is happiness steeped in melancholy, given depth when sung with the wisdom of one who knows.

Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you’ll get by
If you smile through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll see the sun come shining through for you

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying

Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

silly birthday stuff

Every year on my birthday my mother would call and read my horoscope to me from the daily paper. Even when she got quite elderly and could no longer manage it on her own, my brother would dial the phone and put her on. I can still hear her sweet, clear little voice, with its faint traces of New York and ever-so-slight hint of a lisp, carefully imparting my fate for the coming year. I thought it was loving, cute and funny. I will never stop missing it.

I know I haven't been nurturing my happy little corner of Bughouse Square here lately ~ the Real World has been demanding more of my time than I generally like to give it, and the myriad domestic emergencies and annoyances have not been of the even mildly interesting kind (although I did get my first speeding ticket in 23 years - good for me!) So I thought I'd throw together a cheerful, quickie collage made up of silly birthday stuff made entirely online. You know, just something to say hi to my friends and possibly kick start my lagging creative energies. For the background I photographed the darling blouse my husband had given me as a gift ~ a frothy, filmy, girly thing, so pretty and youthful I nearly wept with delight, both at the gift and what it said about his illusions about me. I didn't even mind that it was a size too small and had to be exchanged. I combined it with textures taken from collage materials a friend had given me (thanks Robbie!) and a mountain of miscellaneous doodling, noodling, cutting and pasting in Photoshop, most of which got appropriately, but painfully, tossed.

I will not embarass myself by telling you how long it took me to come up with this bit of fluff. Suffice it to say that I could have baked the cake, drunk the martinis, sewn the blouse and woven the matted background. Then probably gone off and painted a massive oil. But I do like it. It's a collage of sorts. I wish I'd done the real, tactile thing though ~ for the life of me I don't know why I thought this would be quicker. Or easier. At least at the last moment I did think to get 'Mom's' horoscope in, which makes me happy.

I suppose I will always think of my mother on my birthday, not because it is the day she gave birth to me; she did not. That was done by another woman, a stranger to me now, and on this night I look up into the black sky and wonder if she is still alive ~ if she ever remembers the day, and thinks of me. And it doesn't really matter and never has, because as soon as I see that first shining star, I know that little Ruthie does. And always will.