Thankful

I don't eat turkey at Thanksgiving anymore. It kind of grosses me out, quite honestly. I can still remember eating it one year and getting a piece of uncooked skin. Gross. This year, I am making lasagne. Last year, I made spaghetti. The year before, my mother tried to cook a turket breast and didn't cook it long enough, so we basically just ate stuffing and mashed potatoes and pie.

One year, she made Cornish hens. Why she thought this might be a good idea, I don't know. One usually does not serve a Cornish hen to a seven-year-old. But, whatever. I probably just ate mashed potatoes that year, since I hated stuffing at that point.

Is there a regional thing with stuffing and dressing? I was discussing Thanksgiving with someone this morning and they referred to "dressing." I always call it "stuffing." I knew what he was talking about but it still struck me, because I so rarely hear to it referred to as dressing. Is it a southern thing? An east coast thing? Or a midwest rural thing?

I've eaten out a couple of times for Thanksgiving. Once in New York, with my mother. We only nearly killed each other about five times during that trip, most notably when I dragged her up to the Cloisters by taking the longest subway ride ever, then walking uphill for a half mile or so. She wasn't pleased. But I wanted to see the unicorns.

We went out a couple times when my dad was still alive, too. He liked the brunch routine at the local fancy hotel. Pots of potatoes, mounds of stuffing, slabs of turkey. Paired with omlettes cooked to order, breakfast sausage, oysters on the half shell, sushi and a long table filled with dessert. I know that buffet spoke to him, reflecting, as it did, the Puritan spirit of deprivation and self-restraint.

Mostly, when I was in high school, we'd go pick up my grandmother and go to my great-aunt's house for Thanksgiving. My second cousin would bring his humongous dog and his east-coast wife and his sister would show up with whichever artsy-fartsy dude she was dating at the time. Everyone would argue about politics and I'd be the only kid at the table, thankful, mostly, that I didn't have to share my family with any other children or, worse, have to sit at a kid's table.

My great-aunt is gone now, as is her husband and my grandmother and my dad. I don't get to see many people from my family anymore. My great-aunt's house had belonged to her parents, my great-grandparents, and I hope whoever has Thanksgiving there nowadays enjoys it as much as I did.

This year there will only be a few of us, eating lasagne in a condo in the cold north woods. But I'm thankful for what I've had. And for what is yet to come.

The Big Three

I've lived in the Rust Belt for a large percentage of my life. My father worked, during his summers in school, at a steel mill in eastern Ohio. Friends from college went to work for Ford. I've driven foreign cars in fear through the streets of Detroit. I've spent nights in hotels with the logos of car manufacturers stuck on the side, 60 stories up. I went to grad school with people whose parents got them full-body warranties on their Jeeps. Full body. That included tire changes, even.

I marked trips from one town to another by the auto manufacturing plants I passed. I've driven through Flint, passing hulks of buildings that could be full of people making trucks or could be as empty as a Coke can. I know enough to look for the display outside of the plant, so you can see what vehicles are manufactured at that location. I know better than to drive my Mini onto the lot at UAW. I park down the street.

I have no doubt that the auto companies have squandered a lifetime's worth of knowledge and money, pissing it away to line pockets and fabricate golden parachutes. I know that the unions, similarly, have hamstrung management into providing full medical and retirement benefits in an age when most people have no coverage whatsoever and, if they have any, still have to pay out the nose once in a while. I understand that if the union gives up an inch, they think management will take a mile and they'll lose everything they ever fought for in the first place.

But a union can't exist if there isn't anywhere to work and, more and more, that's the way it is looking. The companies, labeled as fat cats and environmentally unsound and technologically inept, aren't going to make it much longer. And, frankly, they are reaping what they've sown. They've spent a lot of years paying lobbyists to keep Congress from setting air quality standards that would affect them. And they were about twenty years behind the times at making their cars affordable and problem-free. Now that they're finally starting to see the light, it is too late for them.

I know that people are angry about the auto industry, that the companies have made ridicuous amounts of money and have apparently pissed it all away, with nothing to show for it. But at least they are companies that make something, that manufacture something, that develop and produce a product. Not like AIG or WaMu or other financial institutions, that simply move money from one account to another, or sell insurance, or collect interest.

GM and Ford and Chrysler have something to show for their work. They contributed to the structure and growth of this country. Without them, we wouldn't have the infrastructure we have today. We wouldn't have a lot of things. And we wouldn't have been able to do a lot of things. Like put out fires with fire trucks. Or get kids to schools on school busses. Or, you know, win WWII. With tanks and planes and Jeeps, all manufactured in plants in the U.S.

If these companies go bust, if they close up shop. Not only will they put thousands of workers out of work, they'll close shop for the folks that make the lights in the dashboards. That manufacture the carpet on the floorboards. That make tires. That make headlights. That do car repair. That sell cars.

We've shipped so much elsewhere. People in Indian call centers are handling my American Express account. We buy clothes from China and India and everywhere else. Toys aren't manufactured here, even as children are getting poisoned by paint in those same toys. And the people who tell you to buy American? Those are the same people who aren't going to give Detroit a loan.

I feel like, in a few years, I'm going to be living in a jobless wasteland.

So much for buying American.

Remember When Sean D. Wore a Tutu?

My mother watched "The Edge of Night." I don't remember too much about it, frankly, other than she used to iron while watching it. I'd play on the floor with my Lite-Brite and listen with one ear to whatever was going on. Not much, apparently, since it got cancelled at some point.

She was also big into "All My Children" or, as we called it in college, "All My Kids." I remember the very old days, when Tad was very, very young and Palmer could still ambulate. And there was Erica. Erica Kane. Who had a sister named Silver who had an affair with Erica's husband, if I remember correctly. I named a stuffed flamingo I got for a birthday gift in her honor. Man, if you're willing to cross Erica like that, you deserve your name in lights, not just tacked onto a stuffed flamingo.

I watched that one, on and off, for years. All through Cord and Tina. And Tina and Todd. With the old Tina and the new Tina. Good stuff. Wasn't the dad from "The Nanny" in that, too? Or was that "Guiding Light"? I can't remember.

I did the whole "GH" thing, too, as a kid. I remember going home from the pool in the middle of summer just to watch Luke and Laura get married. Because marriage between a rapist and his victim is...viable? Whatever. And then that whole deal with the Ice Princess and whatnot. And poor, poor Robin and her AIDS diagnosis. I see she's on some nighttime show on the Soap Channel. Is she still sick? Or is she the Magic Johnson of Port Charles?

But the big one? The granddaddy of them all? "Days of Our Lives". Without a doubt, the longstanding favorite during college. So much so that we would schedule classes around it. And when that didn't work? We'd tape it and sit around and watch after dinner and before cracking that history of Mary Chestnut we had to finish.

When I was in college, Sean D fell in a well and went deaf. Hope was gone and Bo first hooked up with Carly, who was helping Sean D to regain his hearing. Then he began hooking up with Billie after Carly got locked in a coffin by someone. Billie's hot, hot brother, Austin, was going to marry Carrie, the wonderful, sainted sister of that bitch, Sammie. And they were both daughters. Of the best, most ridiculous, most awesome couple ever.

John and Marlena. Of course, Marlena thought John was Roman, her husband. But Roman was dead and John took his place. But Roman wasn't really dead and came back. And so Marlena had two Romans to choose from. Who looked, talked and acted absolutely nothing alike so I was never quite certain exactly how it was that Marlena could have believed John was Roman but, whatever. Turns out, John was a priest, too, which made all the sex-having with Marlena a bit problematic.

I think Marlena ended up throwing Roman over for John, even though her story line with Roman was supposed to be the storyline to end all storylines back in the day. Roman looked a lot older than Marlena by the time he came back in the 90's, you know, and soaps aren't so kind on wrinkles.

John also performed an exorcism on Marlena. Which was all kinds of awesome.

Anyway, it appears that they're both getting the ax. The show can't justify their salaries or some such malarky, so they're leaving. Or being asked to leave. Or showed up and found his priest collar and her silk dressing gown on the cold cement streets outside the studio.

This is pretty sad for a show that, for all appearances, really did try to keep people on for long times. That's what makes soap operas so...well, I can't say good. But relatable. They aren't lying when they say you can walk away for two years, come back and be in the story lines within a week. That's because the characters are constant, the family connections are constant, the scenary is constant and very little changes. Even with all the action swirling around the youngsters on the programs, there were still shots of the old Brady clan every once in a while, particularly around the holiday shows. The fact that they're getting rid of John and Marlena is pretty sad, in its way.

I thought soap opera actors just slowly faded away, like old soldiers. Instead, their jobs are getting outsourced. But there will never be a couple like John and Marlena.

Except for Marlena and Roman. No, not that Roman. The other one.

Sunday Afternoon

I went to see "Tropic Thunder" yesterday at the cheap theatre. Because I will pay to watch Robert Downey, Jr., read the phone book in sections alphabetically. But I would rather pay $3.50 than $10 to do so.

On my way there, I drove down one of the main drags in town. The street with the mall. And the other mall. And every franchised restaurant known to man. Or the hollowed out, empty buildings that housed old franchise restaurants that are now closed and gone forever.

It started to snow as I was driving. The temperature was just about 35 degrees. The snow wasn't sticking, yet, but the streets were wet. It wasn't nice out.

I saw a man as I drove past one of the major intersections, bounded by gas stations, a strip mall and a Mexican restaurant. He stood at the edge of the parking lot of the strip mall, which houses a sushi place, a tobacco emporium and a big and tall store, as well as a number of empty storefronts. It is an area which can be busy as all hell and simultaneously completely empty.

He held a sign on a big piece of poster board. The kind I used to use for Social Studies projects. Like when I did the project on Indiana when we each had to pick a state to research. Or the report on hemophilia.

"Family Man. Will work for food and diapers."

I've seen a couple other people with signs like this in the past few months. But no one has been standing on the side of the road in the cold, with snow melting on his baseball hat on a Sunday afternoon. I haven't seen someone out there on a day when he must know that everyone driving past him is going to the mall, to the grocery store, to Best Buy, to get something for someone for Christmas.

I thought of how humiliated he must be. I thought of how ashamed he must be. And I thought of how much courage it must take for someone to go outside with a sign like that, to subject themselves to the pitying stares of others, in order to try to scrape up some money or food to provide for his family.

I cried all the way to the theater. And I didn't laugh much at the movie.

Thanks, Internet

So I'm just surfing the 'net, hitting my usual spots for afternoon time killing. Then I hit Jezebel and learn that, if you shove a clove of garlic up your vagina, it will stop an oncoming yeast infection.

But don't cut up the cloves. Because that shit burns.

God, I love the internet.

Wastin' Away Again

You know, when your fall-back job...the job you swear you'll go get if you ever get fired from your "career job"...like bartending in Key West...seems like it will be eliminated because of economic downturns? That is a very sad day.

My Real America

There was quite a bit of talk in the recent election about "real America." How some places in this county were the "real America" while other parts, presumably, were not. Of course, if I wanted to be a real bitch, I could point out that, in fact, Canada is part of "real America", as is Mexico, since we're all part of North America and, in fact, our country is actually known as the United States. But that might be considered splitting hairs.

I know to what the speakers referred when talking about "real America." Real America is small towns surrounded by acres of farmland. Huge high school football fields flooded with lights in the middle of pitch-black prarie. Real America is mom-and-pop grocery stores and going to the post office to pick up your mail instead of having it delivered to your doorstep like they do in the city. Real America is where people stop and help you change your tire when you're stranded on the side of the road. Or where they will give you directions when you're lost.

When politicians talk to crowds about "real America," what they're really trying to do is create fear. Fear of the "other." They know that country mice from small towns across the flyover don't know what goes on in the coastal cities. In many cases, they don't care. Their children may move there, along with the slightly swishy music teacher from the high school, but they themselves don't need to. Or want to.

And when they do visit, go someplace like New York? It might as well be another country. It might as well be Paris, without the weird tower and the Mona Lisa. The people are all in a hurry and don't talk to you and no one will give you directions and just what is the hurry, anyway!? The food's expensive and the people are rude and it is too noisy and smelly. And that woman at the restaurant where you had lunch made fun of my midwestern tourist tennis shoes loud enough for you to hear.

And people from the cities feel the same when going into the flyover. The great cultural wasteland. Where people still wear fanny packs and shop at Wal-Mart and will ask the most personal questions. And they keep saying hello, which freaks you out to no end. There's no Bravo on cable, only the Big Ten network. Everything closes at 9, except the country bar at the county line, and no one serves booze on Sunday. How do people live like this?!

When politicians try to tell us that they're happy to be amoung "real Americans, what they're really trying to do is to turn us against each other. They want to divide and conquer. They want us to forget that we're all in this together. They want us to hate and fear each other, even though we use the same forms to pay taxes, carry the same passports, watch the same television shows, read the same books, fly the same airlines, have the same rights to vote and check out library books and all drive on the same side of the road.

We're all a part of this. "From sea to shining sea" is how the song goes, and it isn't wrong. New York City and Los Angeles is just as much a part of all of us as Paducah, Kentucky. We're all invested in this great American experience, for better and for worse. Nothing is more illustrative of this now than the mortgage crisis, which begat the credit crisis, which begat the failure of the Big Three, which could begat the loss of three million jobs in this country. Three million? Can you imagine?

And when I read a story in a book about how, after 9/11, when people in a certain neighborhood in New York found out that rescue workers really kinda needed toothpaste because they weren't getting to go home very much? That people in that neighborhood bought out toothpaste from every corner shop and bodega around? Until the only toothpaste left was Sensodyne? And then someone bought that out? That they were buying that toothpaste for workers from all over the country?

Even though I live in the flyover, those rescuers and the people who bought them toothpaste are just as much real Americans as I can ever hope to be.

Good morning

So I'm driving into work today, taking the usual route. I look for the man and his dog but I haven't seen them in a few weeks, since it started to get colder and the time changed and all. I'm thinking about reading about the election and what I might write about on here this morning, if I get around to writing anything at all. I'm thinking about a summer night a couple of years ago when I talked politics with strangers and how it is funny when you turn out to be right.

And I'm driving down the last long straightaway into the office, through a residential area filled with college apartments and small houses, right on a five lane road close to a major intersection. Traffic is just starting to get heavy, just before the school buses start trundling through town, picking up children and delivering them to be indoctrinated for the day.

There's this woman, standing at the end of her driveway. And she's got a black cape on.

"Well, that's odd," I think to myself. "Halloween is over and that isn't a bus stop that she's standing at so I wonder..."

And as I'm thinking these things, I'm driving toward her. I was the first car at the last light so there are no cars in front of me. Just a long stretch of empty street. And, as I drive toward her, she starts to take off the cape.

"...so I wonder...oh. She's...hmmmm...totally buck-ass naked."

She calmly flashed my car and the cars behind me. Then she folded the cape back over herself and calmly walked up to the house behind her. There was no screeching and clutching of the cape, with a panicked run back to the house, which is what I would have done if I were in here shoes. I watched in the rearview mirror as I continued on my way, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

I stopped at the stop light and looked at the guy next to me. He didn't look at me, kept his eyes on the road ahead. I can only imagine that he didn't see her. Or that he gets flashed by women more frequently than I do.

So now I'm left wondering. My friend with the local police force is off today, so I can't call him. I'm not even sure what house she went back to, frankly. And reporting someone for that is kind of a bullshit move.

Besides, I can only assume she lost a bet.

To Spite My Face

I've heard all this wailing and gnashing of teeth from gas station owners about how they aren't making any money anymore because the oil companies make them raise the price of gas and the states make them charge taxes and so no one comes into the stores anymore to buy pink coconut snowballs and corn nuts and fountain soda with the little ice cubes shaped like scored pellets that split into little discs when you bite them...just so.

Whoo. Sorry, lost myself there for a sec.

Anyway, that's a fallacy. I mean, yeah, the oil companies are bastards. See, for example, Exxon/Mobile's record profits this last quarter. Please, I'm crying them a river over the prices they have to charge because there aren't enough refineries and the hurricanes and blah de blah blah blah.

And I understand that the governors are abusing you and using you to boost the sagging economies of state governments, particularly in the rust belt. I know the entire transportation budget is made up of gas taxes and the little foreign man running my BP station is tired of charging me the extra howevermany cents per gallon because we have a Democrat running our state government.

HOWEVER. The real reason no one goes into the shitty little gas station stores anymore? Is because you have to pay at the pump or prepay for your gas. Because assholes have driven away from the pumps without paying. Those are the same assholes who don't have auto insurance. But, anyway, when you pay at the pump, what the hell is the point of going inside to buy a soda or a pack of gum or any number of impulse purchases that someone would usually buy if they could go in the store with their credit card AFTER having pumped their ten gallons of gas.

And, with prepay, you take your $10 bill or your $20 bill and you say, "Give me this much gas at pump whatever" and they do and you don't go back in to buy anything. Because you've already been in there and spent all your money. You're not going back in.

This point was driven home this morning when I found gas at $2.17 a gallon. I drove in, all excited, like it was Christmas morning. I wanted a Diet Coke so I hit the "pay inside" button. Which was still functioning. With no signs indicating that it could not be used. And after having done so, I get a tinny voice from the loud speaker telling me I have to prepay with a card or pay inside before pumping. So I start to prepay with my card, resigning myself to punishing them by refusing to go inside to buy a drink.

By this time, the nozzle is in my car and I've been standing there long enough to start washing my windows. And the voice then says, "You have to take the nozzle out and restart."

At this point, I want to throw the squeegie through the window of the joint.

I put the nozzle back in the pump and wait for the screen to clear, telling me to insert the card. I stare at the screen. I stare and stare. And stare.

And then I got in my car and drove away. And bought my Diet Coke somewhere else. And my gas.

Conception

I was invited to a baby shower this past weekend. Unfortunately, going to a baby shower includes bringing a gift for, you know, a baby. Luckily, I knew they were going to have alcohol at this particular party, so the shopping would, eventually, be rewarded.

I went to the snobby baby store. Not the huge box store that is associated with the giraffe store. And I think every medium-sized town probably has the snobby baby store. The store where they sell ridiculously overpriced baby clothes, baby shoes, toddler wardrobes, Gucci diapers and gold and diamond encrusted rattlers. Okay, I exaggerate. However, how much can a store conceivably charge for a onesie? Even one made of organic cotton and post-consumer recycled waste?

So I go. And I'm cranky. Either because of the pain in my shoulder from stress or the lack of sleep due to the pain in the shoulder or the carbohydrate overload of breakfast only an hour or two beforehand. So I'm not a happy camper going in. I figure I'll find something small, pay and get out in ten minutes or so.

It is Saturday. The place is dead. There are two women at the register and one person buying something. I start to look around, overwhelmed by the vast walls of fleece and Egyptian cotton and whatever other fancy fabrics are used to make things that dreams are made of. I'm quickly tired and crosseyed by the colors and so I simply stand still, waiting for someone to come help me.

Instead, I get to listen to fifteen minutes of gossip. Gossip about out-of-wedlock pregnancy, shotgun weddings, how episiotomies were created to help Asian women undergo natural childbirth (I think--frankly, I was dazed by that point), pediatricians, etc, etc, ad nauseum. The customer, apparently, knew one of the women working and felt the need to catch up on at least the last year's worth of gossip, since she didn't know the employee had 1) gotten engaged; 2) gotten pregnant; 3) gotten married; 4) had the baby; and 5) got a job at this hellhole. In that order.

Finally, she left, after promising to catch up next week over a latte. I can hardly wait.

By this point, I wanted to kill someone.

"Are you looking for something?" One of the women finally asked.

"Um, yeah." How could you possibly tell? "I've got a baby shower. It is a second child. I don't know the sex. I hate you." Okay. I didn't say the last sentence.

"Well, we have these socks..." she pointed to a large display.

"Fine." I grabbed something sex-neutral. "Wrap it."

I paid and left. Finally.

I'm sure that, after I left, the two of them had a long conversation about me. And how I clearly am having problems conceiving. What else could possibly create a mood that bad?