Okay. I Couldn't Resist.

Jon over at Yowsa got fed up with all the spam mail he receives and decided to strike back. After getting the following email over and over today, I was inspired to do the same. Here's the letter I received. It's pretty much the standard.

Good day!!!

I have been waiting for you since to contact me for your Confirmable BankDraft of $500,000 United States Dollars, but I did not hear from you since for a couple of weeks now. Then I went to the bank to confirm if the draft has expired or getting near to expire and Dr.Wilson the Director United Bank for Africa told me that before the draft will get to your hand that it will expire.

So I told him to cash the $500,000 USD UNITED STATES DOLLARS to cash payment to avoid losing this fund under expiration as I will be out of the country for a 6 Months Course.

What you have to do now is to contact FEDEX COURIER SERVICES as soon as possible to know when they will deliver your Consignment to you because of the expiring date.

For your information, I have paid for the delivering Charge, Insurance premium. The only money you will send to the FEDEX COURIER SERVICES to deliver your Consignment direct to your postal Address in your country is ($150USD) One Hundred and fifty United States Dollars only being Security Keeping Fee of the Courier Company so far. Again, don't be deceived by anybody to pay any other money except ($150USD) Dollars for the Security Keeping Fee. I would have paid that but they said no because they don't know јhen you will contact them and in case of demurrage.

You have to contact FEDEX COURIER SERVICES now for the delivery of your BOX with this information bellow;

CONTROLLER: MR.JOHN KIRK COMPANY'S
NAME: FEDEX COURIER SERVICES EMAIL ADRESS:
(info_fedex11@yahoo.dk)
МHONE NUMBER: +234-708-489-3187

Finally, make sure that you reconfirm your Postal address and Direct telephone number to them again to avoid any mistake on the Delivery and ask them to give you the tracking number to enable you track your package over there and know when it will get to your address. Let me repeat again, try to contact them as soon as you receive this mail to avoid any further delay and remember to pay them thЏir Security Keeping fee of ($150USD)Dollars for their immediate action. Note this. The FEDEX COURIER SERVICES don't know the contents of the Box.

I registered it as a BOX of Africa cloths. They did not know the content was money. This is to avoid them delaying with the BOX. Do not let them know that box contents money ok.

I am waiting for your urgent response. Yours Faithfully,

Mr. Shawn Mark.

Here's my reply:

Dear Mr. Mark:

Such prodigious news! You may be aware of the critical financial situation we Americans are finding ourselves in. In fact, my bank was seized by the federal government only this Thursday last. People were lined up outside the bank for fear that they would not get their money back. I trembled at the thought of losing what is, for me, hard earned money.

I am indeed sorry I missed your previous message. My husband is a very jealous man and has been intercepting my email. I am afraid maybe that is what became of your last effort at contact. If you should get a call or an email from Mr. Steve Douglas, please make every effort to avoid speaking directly to him. If you must enter into conversation with him, please do not, I am begging you Mr. Mark, please do not breathe a word of our relationship. He would not believe it if you told him it was strictly financial. He would say ugly things about my virtue and insinuate that more than money was changing hands. You must understand, he has not been himself for several dismal years and every day his bitterness and mistrust grows like some foul weed choking off all our love and fond esteem. You must believe me, Mr. Mark, I have tried to be a good wife, but I am near my breaking point. With the financial markets in such collapse and my trust fund threatened, as well as the likelihood of foreclosure on our house, I have begun to wonder if maybe I have been wrong about putting all my eggs in one basket, for robbing Peter to pay Paul as it were. Let me be honest, my marriage is a sham, the love we had has wasted away like a corpse in July. No one knows this, not even Corrine, my best friend. We lunch every Tuesday noon and serve on numerous community fundraising concerns, but I have not been able to bare my soul to her. The weight of the silence that has built up around my husband and I has become untenable. I may be of a mature age, Mr. Mark, but I have needs. And they are not being met. In fact, Steve and I have not had sexual congress in many years because of an unfortunate hunting accident that left my dear husband's manly member somewhat misshapen and dysfunctional. Up until that time, Steve, was my husband in every way. In fact, I was quite unschooled when we first wed, but will be forever grateful for the world of wonder he introduced me to and to this day I regret that I ignored my father's admonitions to always, always, always, maintain the target within my site whilst pointing any high-powered weapon. Now Steve and I both bear the brunt of my impetuous and foolhardy practices. Indeed, it is out of guilt that I have maintained my quiet and resolute celibacy even though I am ashamed and devastated when I think of the years that I've wasted and the chances I've had to turn other men's eyes. I am not unattractive, Mr. Mark, and could have my choice of any number of eligible, mature men who not only know their way around the garden, as the saying goes, but are very careful where they plant the irrigation hose.

But to the matter at hand. Pardon my unseemly rush at disclosure, but I find myself opening up to you and I think it is because of the kindness you've extended me in looking out for my interests in this very delicate financial matter. There is so much cynicism in the world today, so much ugliness and mistrust. I am sensitive to these sorts of universal vibrations. My stern father taught me to believe in the Golden Rule and to suffer no fool kindly which, now that I think on it, seem to contradict each other. Perhaps the tension between these thorny truths has contributed to my waywardness and fed my restless nature in ways that I am only now becoming aware of. At any rate, you will find me ready to rhumba, as the saying goes and I will never forget the kindness you have extended to me.

But, Mr. Mark, I must confess, I do not know what Fedex Courier Service is. I have never had dealings with any such company. I asked Roy, my butler, and he seemed as perplexed by the phrase as I. It is no secret that Steve handles most of our business dealings with the exception of my trust fund - it's become a point of pride with him, the dear is compelled to exercise his manliness in every little way he can and I try to be supportive, but the cost is my own ignorance of such affairs! So if you could be so kind as to tell me how I would go about contacting the Fedex Courier Service I would be most grateful for your patience and sanguine nature. Are you sure Fedex Courier Service can be trusted or can you recommend another service. It occurs to me that if they would try to deceive me into revealing the contents of my box, it might be prudent to seek a more reputable company with which to conduct business.

I await your patient counsel.

Sincerely,

Elsbeth H.

For You Girl, Because #2

For You Girl, Because #1

Don't be yourself - be someone a little nicer.- Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

Hey Mama What's Rockin'?

After 12 straight hours alone with the kids, there are days when I find myself babbling. I start to say something to one of the kids like you know maybe you should stop screaming and you - you - you stop holding your sister by the ankles and making her scream I don't care if she asked you to do it that screaming is stripping my last nerve. Except it doesn't come out like that: it comes out like you you oughta not to do that cause you shouldn't oughta do that cause cause cause hey look at that wall. Bang bang bang. My head hurts. Ow.

It's like an out of body experience. I hear the words. I know I'm speaking but I can no longer make meaning or form coherent thoughts. This is one of those moments when you sound ridiculous and the kids know it and you know you've heard this kind of talk before - yeah, your parents used to talk like that. Their mouths would open and words would come out but they made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Those parents: ideally, they'd be around now and in your house (most likely laughing at you), but finally serving some sort of utilitarian function - like helping out with the kids. Like taking them out for ice cream or teaching them to throw lawn darts. Circumstances being what they are (parent's not dead but crazy- remember I said ideally) that is not an option for me.

So I'm learning to navigate this moment by taking a mommy time out. Oh sometimes a cocktail sure would be nice - and I've been known to load the kids in the car and drive to some kid- friendly place like Chevy's so they can have balloons and ice cream and some form of cheese or chicken and I can have a margarita with dinner. And after a reasonable time and a pitcher of water I take them home. I've been known to do that - though not too often because now that would be a problem wouldn't it? Or else I whip out the chocolate, sugar, eggs, flour, butter and vanilla and mix up a batch of brownies. Afterwards I hold the chocolate-covered spoon in my mouth like the serotonin just can't get to my brain fast enough which is absolutely true. Other times it's best to get the kiddies in the tub and playing so I can sit on the floor and regain my composure or at least my ability to turn thoughts into speech. There's also the trick of urging them into their pajamas with the promise of "hey you'll have lot's of time to read to yourselves in bed!" This never works never ever but I still throw it out there 'coz I've heard that if you repeat something long enough the information eventually takes hold. Like you have to repeat it a lot. Like zillions - no bazillions of times. Like you have to say it until the words lose all meaning and even the syllables - what are those? right? - even the syllables and speech itself, speech itself seems like about as useful as having a tail or an extra toe, and then maybe, maybe someday soon like after all those bazillion times, the kids will suddenly, inexplicably find themselves wanting to put on their jammies and get in bed with a really really good book without even pausing to demand cookies and milk. I wish they were like the dog.

You toss the ball throw the frisbee shine the flashlight and you and he can be amused for hours and he may even not eat a diaper or scarf your dinner when you aren't looking or puke on your shoes. The kids are not like the dog. But then again, they don't eat diapers - score! Here we are at the end of the day and they aren't tired oh no they maybe running on fumes but it only energizes them. It only adds to their determination to eek out the juice from this day. Sometimes all I can do is shut up and let them run it out. And this is fun, as long as no one is being bodily harmed, the house isn't being set on fire, and if - A Big If - I can take a step back and just enjoy them without being conscious of how freaking overwhelmed I feel. No lie. It's hard to manage this. But I've been working on it with varying degrees of success. Maybe it's about finding the strength or maybe it's the giving up of getting your way or just being so freaking tired that your head feels numb and you can't fight back anymore. But you take a step back and you see how alive they are and how this moment when the sun is just so and Marshall is sitting in the pasta pot and hugging Carter and Olivia is flitting across the room like a flower fairy is so very fleeting and what a gift it is, and there is a trail of toys and clothes and shoes and paper clips and books and tissue that leads from one end of the house to the other and spaghetti sauce is smeared on the table, this one moment is singular and will never, no not ever, not even in a bazillion years, this moment will not come round again.

Confirm Your Unsubscription

That's the message I received when I tried to unsubscribe from The Democratic Party email list. Get this: you have to wait to get a security code to unsubscribe (that's where the confirm your unsubscription message occurs). So let me get this straight, no paper trails for electronic voting machines, but security codes to unsubscribe from a party mailing list. 'Coz there's some vast right wing conspiracy of hackers who make it their mission to unsubscribe the devoted so they can't get their Biden/Obama magnets?

Why Do the Democrats Make It So Hard to Vote For Them?: Joe Biden Edition

So this is what the politics of change look like?

Money quote:
A senior Obama adviser, speaking on condition of anonymity, said his boss has expressed impatience with what he calls a "reverence" inside his campaign for his message of change and new politics. In other words, Obama is willing — even eager — to risk what got him this far if it gets him to the White House.

Wow. The kids'll come out in droves to vote now.

Right.

I won't vote for Biden. No way. It's almost as unsavory as voting for McCain.

Joe Biden

• Voted for the War in Iraq
• Only Democratic candidate to vote for the 2007 Iraq war supplemental funding bill that did not contain a withdrawal timeline.
• Said it would be unconstitutional for Congress to cut off funding for an escalation of the war in Iraq, as opposed to a full-scale denial of war funding.

A few Biden quotes that have been floating around the Republican blogosphere:

The only guy on the other side who's qualified is John McCain. MSNBC, October 30, 2007

John McCain is a personal friend, a great friend, and I would be honored to run with or against John McCain, because I think the country would be better off, be well off no matter who [won] - The Daily Show, August 2, 2005




Well, the point is, it turned out they didn't, but everyone in the world thought he had them. The weapons inspectors said he had them. They catalogued them. This was not some, some Cheney, you know, pipe dream. This was, in fact, catalogued.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: 1968 really screwed up this country.

Bookworm, grind, egghead, highbrow, intellectual, brain, genius, scholar, slacker

I wish this book had been around when I was in high school. I realize looking back that I shied away from fully embracing my nerdiness, the way most of my friends did, either because there was no other choice or it never even occurred to them to be otherwise. Sure I flaunted my individualism by quoting the likes of Emerson - "whoso would be a man (or woman in my case) must be a non-conformist" or "a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds." I confess: I was a dilettante or is that nerdilettante? (Right there proof of my nerdiness.) Apparently I wasn't alone in my unwillingness or inability to identify with the group. Benjamin Nugent recounts his own experiences denying his best friend and disengaging himself from the nerd pack in American Nerd: The Story of My People.

The first part of the book traces the origin of the word nerd and its evolution. It was a bit slow going for me even though I loved reading about how Anne Beatts and Rosie Shuster developed Lisa Loopner and Todd DiLaMuca* as well as the creation of that great late '90's show, Freaks and Geeks. Part 2 provides examples of the many ways the concept of nerd finds expression in our culture starting with two guys who are debate partners (yeah, I was a debater too). In my favorite chapter Nugent deconstructs nerd chic and explains some of the advantages to pretending to be a nerd - primarily as a way of downplaying class and gender differences. He also discusses the advantages of being a nerd in the workplace - a tangent I found particularly illuminating considering I live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area and identify with the frustrations of hanging out with creative types either of the engineer or artistic persuasion (hey, I'm an artist myself). This is the killer quote:

The fake nerd...is a way of dealing with constant threat. The threat, in this case, is a lot milder than that of nuclear war, but it's the single largest threat that hangs over the lives of creative professionals in major cities: losing momentum in your career, losing the aura of an up-and-comer, acquiring the odor of failure. The nature of work in the media, broadly defined, is that it's insecure and transient. Survival depends on maintaining a register of acquaintances who think you're good at what you do, think you're cool, want to hire you, have the power to do so, and haven't been rejected by you sexually. There's often a careerist hustle in the depths of friendships, even when the surface is calm...there is a new version of Richard Yate's immortal couple in Revolutionary Road, the Wheelers. They live in Park Slope, or Silver Lake, or Wicker Park. "God," they sometimes think, "in a way, wouldn't it be kind of nice to be an engineer in the fifties? Not really with all that sexism and conformity and general attitude of fascism, you know? And the discomfort about sexuality? But just not trying to be someone you're not?"

*Originally Todd DiLabounta until the real DiLabounta threatened a lawsuit.

Mmmmm. Pecan Pie Bars.

Can I tell you how good these are? Silky, chocolatey, sweet bourbon jesus good.

A Writer Stretches His Imagination 'til It Snaps

L. Ron explains Xemu in 8 minutes. 8 very long incoherent minutes. Or maybe my negativity is just a manifestation of my psychic trauma and upset and so on and so on.

Are You A Button Pusher?

You'll enjoy this time-sucking phenomenon. (h/t How About Orange.)

Memories of Fruit #1: The Persistence of Peaches

More peaches. Juicy and cold. No peach pie yet because we eat them too fast. But soon.

Growing up we had peaches in our backyard. My grandmother and I would sit out on the stone step at the back door on a summer's night and eat a peach we had just picked. The first bite was my favorite - puncturing that fuzzy flesh and then sucking up the juice right down to the pit. I remember the hard stone of the stoop under my bony butt. The hard stone where my great grandmother had fallen during her stroke. She lay inside in a hospital bed unable to speak and unable to walk. Sitting and eating the peach was our little thing - my gramma and me- a quiet close to a day spent bent over doing factory work or in my case talking to tulip trees barely held together by light and riding my wagon around the neighborhood.

A few years later, they started spraying the neighborhood for mosquitoes. The trees didn't die instantly. They deteriorated over time until finally they stopped bearing fruit. I have an enduring memory of them - their branches cut off, gnarled and grotesque against the darkening sky. I would sit out on the stoop and throw pebbles at their trunks. Or sometimes I'd hurl myself at their trunks hoping to wake up their roots. But no life was left in them. No matter how hard I shook. Finally, I sat down against the biggest's blackening base and waited. Just waited and cried. After my grandmother had them cut down I would stand on top of the stump and pretend I was the tree spreading my branches against the sky. Or I'd jump up and down on the stumps mindlessly aching for peaches.

From Blossoms
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

The Weight of Sweetness
No easy thing to bear, the weight of sweetness.

Song, wisdom, sadness, joy: sweetness
equals three of any of these gravities.

See a peach bend
the branch and strain the stem until
it snaps.
Hold the peach, try the weight, sweetness
and death so round and snug
in your palm.
And, so, there is
the weight of memory:

Windblown, a rain-soaked
bough shakes, showering
the man and the boy.
They shiver in delight,
and the father lifts from his son's cheek
one green leaf
fallen like a kiss.

The good boy hugs a bag of peaches
his father has entrusted
to him.
Now he follows
his father, who carries a bagful in each arm.
See the look on the boy's face
as his father moves
faster and farther ahead, while his own steps
flag, and his arms grow weak, as he labors
under the weight of peaches.

Both Poems by Li-Young Lee

Someday Maybe He'll Wrestle An Alligator

It's nearly four hours since I left home and I've yet to get the call that Carter cut off his hand so I'm supposing it was okay to let him use the box cutters. After all he was being supervised by the babysitter and it's not like we gave him an axe for Chrissake.

It went something thing like this:

"Mom, will you set up a play date for me? (our babysitter) says it's okay if one of my friends comes over."

"No, that's not such a good idea, Carter."

(If the babysitter only knew the hell that could be raised.)

"Why don't we cut out the doors and windows for your recycled city?"

My husband brought home three appliance boxes for the project and they're just waiting for the creativity to flow.

"Can I cut out the boxes?"

"I'll cut them out."

"Oh, why can't I? I've used boxcutters before."

"When?"

"Dad let me use them. He lets me use them all the time."

"Are you serious?"

"Okay, he let me use them one time."

"I'll wait and you draw the doors and windows and I'll cut them out."

Heavy sigh: "Okay, I'll go get a sharpie."

He comes back and starts to draw an elaborate matrix of windows and doors. There's no way I'm going to be able to cut them all out before it's time for me to leave. Finally the babysitter offers to do it. Great.

"Mom, can I please I cut out the cardboard?"

"I'll watch him," the babysitter offers.

So I said yes.

That's right. No! Hell no to the play date. Yes! Why not? To using the box cutters.

Lesser of two evils folks. Lesser of two evils.

When I came out one last time to check on him he was cutting out small windows and holding the instrument dangerously close the blade.

I played with a real bow and arrow when I was eight years old and I only got shot in the head once. You can't even tell now.

We Have Too Much Cabbage

Yes. That's right. Bet you can't even guess how many is too much can you? I bought a share in our local CSA (right down the road from where we live) and there has been a head of cabbage in our basket every week for about a month or so.

This week's came with the following note: These are indeed large. Do not be overwhelmed.

How much coleslaw can a body take? We're about to find out. Or I could freecycle it. Lest you think I jest - people give away food, used cosmetics, and dryer lint all the time. Waste not.

Ring a ding ding

Oh look how cute this is. I want it. I'm thinking of how much fun the kids would have if they managed to wrest it from my clutches.

Alton Brown Breaks Down the Apple Pie

This morning we eat a beautiful juicy peach and I've been thinking about peach pie ever since. I'm currently planning a pie-making day. It takes time to make a good pie and if you don't believe me, this episode of Good Eats confirms it.





Question: Does anyone have a grandmother, aunt or relative of any sort who has a pie bird? Have you ever heard of pie bird?

A Charmed Life: Growing Up in MacBeth's Castle

The strongest/most interesting parts of the book are Campbell's stories of medieval Scottish history and her descriptions/perceptions of the natural (sometimes supernatural) world around the castle. She relates well what it was like to walk in two worlds - the historical and the present and of her growing awareness of the rift between the two.

If I were directing MacBeth, this would be one of the source books even though Cawdor was never MacBeth's castle. Campbell captures the bloody battles and competition amongst the highland warrior clans explicitly - including a tale about Muriel, the only woman ever to be Thane, who was branded as a baby (strictly for identification purposes in case of kidnapping) and whose nanny bit her little finger off above the joint (when the feared kidnapping finally took place, just to be absolutely sure, should the girl ever return home that she was indeed the heir to Cawdor). Campbell's chronicles of her father's erratic behavior, addictions, and abuse along with a very long list of eccentric ancestors makes great material for creating the characters of MacBeth and Lady M.

Mr. Snow Miser: You done me wrong.

What is it with summer? Last year I contracted Fifth Disease (you may know it as Slapped Cheek) and had painful arthritic symptoms in my hands and knees for two months. Last week my back went into spasm during a water gun fight we had at a picnic for my husband's startup. Let me tell you it is painful. Still. It's been a whole week. A friend loaned me an inversion machine, but I can't lift it and since Roger is out of town - it is left sitting in the garage. I'd probably just get myself stuck on it and life would turn into one of those wacky I Love Lucy episodes.

I've been managing the pain by taking hot baths, icing, and taking Tylenol gel caps. Which was working fine until I burned my back by over-icing. This is something you should never do. Oh, we've all been warned - ice for no longer than twenty minutes. I studied sports massage and worked in a physical therapy clinic - I guess that's why I thought I was immune to the rule.

I was not. I climbed into the bath last Saturday and felt this hellatastic pain at one point on my spine. I reached around and a gooey gob of skin came off! Like I'm fucking Thomas Covenant!
I screamed for Roger to come look at my back. He reported that along with a small circle void of epidermis there were two long reddish rectangles on my back that resembled the cells on my icepack. The pain and the itch are exquisite.

Do Not Adjust Your Television Set


Andy on Love Boat. Does it get any better? No. It does not.

315 Johns: Authentic Warhol or Fo Fo Fo Faux?

When is a Warhol not a Warhol? Apparently when a Factory boy makes it and Andy doesn't know about it.

The title, “315 Johns,” sounds less like the name of an artwork than a headline describing a prostitution bust. But in the second volume of the catalogue raisonné enumerating the works of Andy Warhol, it is listed as a 1967 Warhol creation: a series of silk-screens made from a photograph of the artist John Chamberlain and arranged in a heroic grid.

And in 2000, documents show, Mr. Chamberlain sold it for more than $3 million to an unnamed collector after securing a declaration from the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board that the piece was genuine.

But in a lawsuit now making its way through state court in Brooklyn, Gerard Malanga, a poet and photographer, angrily contends there are a few problems with this. For starters, he says, the work was not Mr. Chamberlain’s to sell; for another, it should never have sold for so much because Warhol, who died in 1987, not only did not make it, but was never even aware it existed.

Nathan Coley: There Will Be No Miracles Here

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them. - Lemony Snicket