WTF Friday: I Started A Joke Which Started The Whole World Crying

Posted on 02/27/2009 by Jane Devin

Other Person: You know, you should lighten it up sometimes. Your blog can be depressing.

Me: I know. I’m just not all that funny, though.

OP: You’re not totally unfunny.

Me: Really? I once cried during a Damon Wayan’s comedy sketch. Do you want to know why?

OP: No! Write another piece about your vagina. That was funny.

Me: To you and maybe two other people. And my vagina wasn’t the least bit amused. I had to eat a half a box of chocolates to make her happy again.

OP: You’re blaming that on your vagina?

Me: She rules the roost.

OP: Um, you know that it’s not really a separate entity, don’t you?

Me: Right. Like I’d give myself mood swings and hot flashes.

OP: Back to what I was saying. Do you think you could write something that doesn’t call up images of slums and exploitation or, as Doris put it, exceed anyone’s quota of Sturm und Drang?

Me: Ha! Doris has a death counter on her site. She’s not as sunshine-y as those twinkling blue eyes would have us believe. Besides, my new blog boyfriend Ryan liked the piece on George, and so did my artistic BFF, (and the mother of boys so cute they make my eyes hurt), Kris. Annie, Anne, Ann, Julia, SusanS, Mary, and Melissa, even if it was a little close to home for her. . .

OP: OK, now you’re just shamelessly throwing out link love. Why don’t you write about something funny that happened to you this week, instead?

Me: Well, I did watch two women declare their undying love to each other on Facebook after a very brief, long-distance courtship. I thought that was funny, but only in lesbian-land. They’ll be together for three or six or eight years now.

OP: Three or six or eight?

Me: Yes, don’t ask why. Those are the magic numbers that follow instant, undying love. Although if it’s six or eight, the last three to five years will be hell. By the way, did I tell you I have a blind date this Saturday?

OP: I thought you swore off of blind dates since the Pillsbury incident?

Me: It was Play-Doh, and it was therapy for her. I just didn’t expect that she’d tell me her life story through clay finger puppets on our first date. Her mother was neon pink by the way, and the rest of the family was blue. Do you think there’s any significance to that?

OP: No, Freud. Sometimes a blob is just a blob. So are the same friends setting you up this time?

Me: Rorschach had the blobs, not Freud. They always looked like uteruses or butterflies to me. Sometimes the uteruses had ghosts or scary sex images in them. Like this one:

rorschach

OP: Okay, wow, I really didn’t need to see that. Why are you going on this blind date again?

Me: Well, I could stay home and write my thoughts about the blogger who told me about keeping a pig’s head in a bucket in her garage, and all the nightmares I’ve had since.

OP: Good god - please no!

Me: Okay then, blind date it is. And who knows? Maybe she’ll be as amusing as that one who told me that wearing a bra was capitulating to the patriarchy.

OP: That wasn’t funny.

Me: You had to be there. It’s always the ones who are like a 52F that think bras are a conspiracy against women.

OP: Can you blame them? By the way, I’m pretty sure that even if I was a lesbian, we’d never date.

Me: Is this where I’m supposed to ask why?

OP: God only knows what you’d write about me.

Me: I’d totally write about your addiction to the Rabbit.

OP: I’m weaning myself. It just doesn’t do much for me anymore.

Me: I think the next step up is a jackhammer, sister.

OP: Yeah, anyway, so glad we don’t date. Can we get back to you?

Me: Sure, just let me finish this post I’m working on first.

***

So what do YOU see in the Rorschach? Any WTF dating experiences you’d like to share? You know, just between us?

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George Rindahl Saved By Positive Thinking

Posted on 02/26/2009 by Jane Devin

Last November, a churning stomach ache and bowel problems sent George Rindahl to the doctor’s office, where he was diagnosed with an acute parasitic infection, which can cause diarrhea, burning sensations, remarkable fluid loss, extreme itching, abdominal bloating and distention, as well as exhaustion and pain.

After picking up generic, horse-sized antiparasitic drugs from the pharmacy, Rindahl returned to work at The World’s Happiest Place where, after two years of unemployment, he had recently found a job as a ticket-taker.

Rindahl, who holds dual Masters degrees in physics and engineering, found it difficult to cope after being laid-off from the engineering job he held for twenty years, but after sending out several hundred resumes and exhausting his network of personal connections, he realized that any hopes of returning to his former glory days were futile. It began to dawn on the 58 year-old that there was always someone younger, less expensive, more eager, and more educationally up-to-date to take his place.

Being the pragmatic sort, Rindahl realized he could not continue to support his middle-class lifestyle with a savings account that had nearly been wiped out by the latest downturn of Wall Street. Rindahl sold his home, boat, and most of his furnishings at a loss, splitting what little remained with his then-wife, Marjorie. Tired of her husband’s excessive hand-wringing and bouts of uncontrollable sobbing, the fashionable Mrs. Rindahl filed for divorce and went to live in Sedona, AZ where she is presently running a retreat for ex-partners of the formerly wealthy.

Alone, nearly-penniless, and living in a studio apartment furnished with a 1970′s sleeper sofa and a hot-plate, Rindahl took the advice of his sliding-fee county therapist, and took the first job offered to him. The pay cut, from $160K a year to $8.50 per hour was a painful transition for Rindahl, whose self-esteem tended to be attached to his ability to provide for himself and make a decent living. It was this attitude, according to 26 year-old M.S.W. counselor and certified chakra healer Tiffani Young, that was keeping Rindahl from experiencing true happiness.

“What George needed to do was re-frame his experiences and see them not as setbacks, but as opportunities for growth. Instead of thinking ‘I can’t believe this is happening to me’, George needed to be thinking ‘this is all happening for a reason‘ and to trust that the reason would ultimately reveal itself to be good and enlightening,” says Young.

Rindahl wasn’t too sure. “Let go and let the Universe is a hard concept,” he explains. “It assumes that there is a wise, rational authority that’s really invested in each of our lives on a microscopic level. That didn’t make sense to me given the level of needless suffering in the world, but then Tiffani’s words began to ring back at me…who am I to say what’s needless? Who am I to judge the necessity of plagues, starvation, violence, or even my own situation? That was the first step in my recovery — to realize that the Universe, in Her infinite wisdom, always provides what’s needed even if our less evolved human minds can’t always grasp the reasons.”

Rindahl’s tentative recovery was tested when his supervisor at The World’s Happiest Place informed Rindahl that he had not worked there long enough to accrue any sick days and would not be paid for any time he took off. Rindahl was also warned that he was still on his 90 day probation, and that things like being absent or tardy wouldn’t bode well for his future career.

“I’ll admit it,” says Rindahl. “I was angry. I stood out there in the chilly wind, with my stomach on fire and my bowels cramping and tried to do my job, but it wasn’t easy. I had to run to the bathroom every few minutes with explosive diarrhea, and there was always a line. On my third or fourth trip, my supervisor caught me and told me I couldn’t take anymore unauthorized breaks. I tried to listen, but I just couldn’t hold it anymore. I ran to the bathroom, pushed my way to the front of the line, and took the first open stall. When I got out, my supervisor informed me that he was writing me up for inattentiveness and a bad attitude.

“I felt like punching him, but then I remembered Tiffani’s words. Let go and let the Universe. So I did. I thanked the young man for being so diligent about his work and returned to my station without complaint. And yes, I had an accident in my pants, but then…there really are no accidents, are there? And sure, I got fired, but only because the Universe had something better for me in mind.”

On Tuesday, Rindahl, who is presently a guest at the Bakersfield Homeless Mission, explained his new found peace of mind to a small crowd of huddled others waiting for the Mission’s doors to open. “It’s not what happens that determines your happiness,” he emphatically explained to the men, “it’s how you choose to feel about what happens. Like when I got mugged and lost my last twenty dollars and two front teeth? I could have seen that as a bad thing — I could have mourned the loss of my previously alright appearance and the last of my bus money — but instead I asked myself: What lesson am I meant to learn from this? What is the Universe trying to teach me? The answer, dear gentlemen, was humility. Once I really processed that, I began to see how my arrogance had been holding me back from achieving the kind of bliss the Universe bestows when we are open to Her possibilities.”

Rindahl’s lesson was cut short by the ringing of the 5:00 dinner bell and the rush to get inside the warmth of the building, where industrial-sized vats of soup and loaves of day-old bread were waiting. The premature departure of his unwitting students didn’t bother Rindahl. “It is what it is,” he said. “There is no failure, you know, only opportunities to learn — and tomorrow is another day full of glorious opportunities.”

Rindahl still sees Young on occasion, not so much for therapy anymore, but for continuing moral encouragement. “I am just so proud of George,” Young says. “He has really turned his life around by thinking positive, and by making the choice not to let his self-esteem be ruled by circumstance. He has turned sour lemons into sweet lemonade. We could all learn a lesson from George.”

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The Winston Woman

Posted on 02/24/2009 by Jane Devin

I saw her standing in the checkout line the other day. She was wearing a black leather jacket, and the pair of Vuarnet’s I’d given her for her 35th birthday. Her dark hair was messy, and there was an air of do-not-care about her as she waited her turn with a container of yogurt, a couple of apples, and two packs of Winston cigarettes.

The do-not-care was, at one time, intriguing. The shock of worldly disengagement, the thrill of social laziness, the nothing matters except me, us, and this moment of it, left me feeling displaced but somehow lucky –- as if I’d accidentally stumbled upon the cure for a lifetime of raw nerves and anxiety. Do not care. Nothing matters. Have a cigarette.

The Winston Woman loved her cigarettes. I remember how she’d tap the box swiftly several times against the palm of her hand, deftly remove the cellophane, and then tenderly slide one of the tender white bodies out of its shiny red dress. With a one-handed flick of an antique silver lighter, she’d set her nicotine love on fire, caressing it between curled fingertips as she slowly inhaled a smoky kiss. Sometimes there would be rings in the exhale, perfect o’s that dispersed, one right after another, into stratus-like clouds.

The smoke seemed to bring about an air of confession, but being guiltless left the Winston Woman with little of importance to confess. Instead, she’d speak of inconsequential things with a sweeping, heady charm. The meeting she forgot, the ninety shades of white she found at the paint store, the employee who made a show out of cleaning her desk and phone every afternoon. The most hollow trivialities were fattened with dramatic gestures and laughter. There was something tough-but-vulnerable about the Winston Woman that left me wanting to take her side in any argument. Of course she missed the meeting – it was scheduled too early. Ninety shades of white were 88 too many. Her employee was an obsessive, anal-retentive prig.

And nothing really mattered during these storied times except her, us, our sequestered moments, and our silent partner — the ever-present, collusive cigarette.

There came a night, though, when the last of the nicotine lovers lay used and finished, tamped out in the dirt in front of a remote Montana cabin, where we had gone to escape from asphalt and traffic. A check of coat pockets, luggage, and the car came up empty. Unfortunately, it was after 11 p.m. and the nearest store, 35 miles away, was three hours past closed.

“We have to go,” she said.
“There’s no place to go. Nothing will be open until the morning.”
“Something is open somewhere, we’ll just keep driving.”
“Just go to sleep. We’ll leave as soon as we wake up.”

Her voice started rising and within minutes the carefully constructed Winston Woman began falling apart at the seams. She began to panic, her voice edged with fear and anger. She’d never be able to fall asleep. Who chose this place? It was hell. How could there not be one 24-hour market anywhere around? Her brown eyes narrowed at me as if I’d somehow conspired to make her miserable.

We drove a choppy 22 miles on dirt roads in the black of night until we reached the highway, and then 53 miles until we spied the yellow lights of a sleepy all-night truck stop with an ancient cigarette vending machine in its lobby. I scavenged my car for change, finding just enough for a pack. On the drive back, after smoking one cigarette, the Winston Woman slept with her face pressed peacefully against the glass. Her do-not-care look was back, her features smooth and relaxed, her mouth slightly open as if anticipating her next fiery kiss.

The Winston Woman paid the cashier and my eyes followed her outside, where she slid into the passenger side of a waiting car. I saw her shoulder move in a familiar way as she tapped her cigarettes against her hand, and I realized that I did not miss her or her daily rituals. I picked up a bag of tangerines, a loaf of bread, and a pack of Marlboro Lights, and then fed my change to some worthier cause on the way out.

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WTF Friday: We Missed The Gravy Train

Posted on 02/20/2009 by Jane Devin

As I was gathering materials and enough righteous indignation to bring you another WTF Friday, a light bulb went off. Surely, I thought, there’s a job out there for me reporting nothing but meaningless trivia. Plenty of people seem to be making their livelihoods this way, and I’m sure I could write a compelling two paragraphs about Angelina taking her daughters to an art store. In fact, I could probably cover that, plus Pamela Anderson’s naked ass, and Lindsay Lohan’s consumption of a Big Mac before noon — which would leave me plenty of time to write about something meaningful — like how a sleazy gossip site like TMZ managed to get a picture of Rihanna’s battered face from the files of the LAPD. Or the sense of entitlement that goes along with deciding to re-victimize a woman, and make a few bucks by exploiting her pain. (No link provided, because I think it’s disgusting, and that a couple of people need to lose their j-o-bee’s).

This edition of WTF Friday doesn’t aim to ask any deep questions, though. Taking the lead from some big, popular publications, we are instead going to ponder the inane and irrelevant with all the lightheartedness we can muster in a world where puffed-up provocateurs like Rush Limbaugh make more in a month than many of us will earn in a lifetime.

Oh yes, I know, my kindred American dreamers. It’s all about working hard, keeping our noses clean, and paying the bills. The working-class ethos of my ragtag childhood are ringing in my ears at this very moment. There’s no such thing as cheap Oxycontin, a free lunch, or a free ride. People with lots of money work really really hard and make wise decisions. Just ask newly-minted millionaire Dustin Dibble, age 25.

Dibble had to work (the bottle) really hard in 2006 in order to get drunk enough to fall into the path of an oncoming subway train. He lost part of one leg, but was so inebriated that he doesn’t even remember falling. A New York jury recently awarded Dibble 2.3 million dollars after his attorney convinced the jury that the conductor was 65% at fault for not stopping in time. Dibble stumbled onto the track when the train was about 180 feet away.

Elaine Hess of Florida also recently raked in the big bucks — $8 million of them — because her chain-smoking husband died in 1997 after a forty year habit. 8000 other Floridians are standing in the same lawsuit line, waiting for their slice of a $145B class action award the State won from big tobacco several years ago. Never mind that these billions could have been used to fund actual health care costs, cessation programs for smokers, and prevention programs — all of which were originally part of several State’s cases against big tobacco. Instead, let’s make a few millionaires, buy some golf carts, hire a dogcatcher, build a museum… because. Well, didn’t we just talk about shit garden economics, and the vegetables it grows?

The question on everyone’s mind though should be What Really DID happen to Anna Winthour’s Thumb? If you don’t know who Anna Winthour is, then we’re pretty much on the same page. I didn’t know either, but my fashion is pretty much limited to tatty sweaters and faded jeans. In the world out THERE, where the super-riche and fashionable people live, Winthour is the editor of that thick pile of ads otherwise known as Vogue. The mystery in the fashion world this week wasn’t why women can no longer find jeans without lycra in them, or why Vera Wang designed such hideous clothes for Kohl’s, it was why Winthour was wearing a Band-Aid on her thumb. This incredibly important story is complete with a slide show, and the relieving news that Winthour miraculously healed — even if the reporter’s emails to Vogue did go mysteriously unanswered.

It might also behoove you to know that “Hillary Clinton’s Glasses Make Rare Appearance in Seoul”. And yes, thank God, there’s another slideshow.

My point is — we seem to have missed the gravy train, people. As far as I know, there is not one paid reporter of meaningless news, or multi-million dollar lawsuit winner among us. WTF? I think some of us may have taken that whole work-hard-keep-your-nose-clean-American-dream thing a little too seriously.

So how was YOUR week? Any WTF’s you’d like to unload?

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The Zucchini Stimulus

Posted on 02/19/2009 by Jane Devin

I was a 16 year-old wanna-be love child in a lace shirt, faded jeans, and moccasin boots. Bill was a real 30-something hippie, who had camped out at Woodstock and demonstrated at Berkeley. He drove an old Volkswagon Bug the color of chewed-up Wrigley’s gum, and was fond of quoting both Carlos Castaneda and Ayn Rand, sometimes in the same sentence. In Bill’s mind, there was no real span of difference between a Peruvian mystic and a Capitalist philosopher-novelist. “A million fucking ideas, that’s all the world is. The ideas stop, we stop. We turn back into bacteria, or protoplasm, or fucking zucchini.”

“Zucchini?”

“Yeah man, vegetables. Look around, half the world is there. They’re planted in their shit gardens, sucking in whatever nutrients they need to survive, but they’re not living, man. They’ve ceased to have ideas bigger than the vine they’re clinging to, whether it’s religion, academics, the rat-race, or something else. Whatever else you do, beware of that. Don’t become a fuckin’ zucchini.”

Most of the people I’ve met aren’t remembered, at least not vividly. Although I only knew him for a couple of years, Bill stuck with me. I’ve spent thirty years with the zucchini analogy branded in my brain, and have done my best to avoid becoming a clinging, myopic vegetable – which wasn’t nearly as easy as I thought it would be. There’s something about being hurt, struggling, overwhelmed, or frustrated that seems to stop life on a macro level. The world of ideas becomes less important than the need for a Band-Aid, a break, or an immediate solution – even if the solution is temporary, or detrimental in the long-run.

I’ve managed to keep myself out of the shit garden for the most part, if only because I love the idea of potential. I love knowing that, barring death or a cruel disease of the mind, the human brain can keep on learning, thinking, and creating up until the last of its neurons are fired and its gray matter grows cold. I get a special thrill out of stories about 70 year-olds graduating college or middle-aged artists having their first art show. Stories like that stoke hope, no matter how slim, that it really never is too late – not for a degree, for talent, for love, for dreams – not for anything.

I wonder, though, if it’s not too late to change America back to the innovative, thriving power it once was. I can’t be the only Democrat who believes that the bank bailout, and now the $900B(+) Economic Stimulus Plan, is like the governmental version of a shit garden. After browsing through the 1071 page document, I’m convinced that we are fertilizing soil for the benefit of the vegetables among us.

Bureaucracy is often a self-perpetuating monster, and the collective greed of big corporations has been well-documented. These are the major beneficiaries of spending in the bailout and stimulus packages, and for decades into the future, taxpayers will have the noose of this debt wrapped around their collective necks.

This stimulus package is just one humongous gambling marker, and the ideas within it seem to have sprung from the same kind of mentality that compels chronic gamblers to throw good money after bad, hoping that if they spend enough, Lady Luck will grace them with a winning streak. It’s irrational, it has no grounding in reality, but even otherwise smart people will rub their lucky pennies, throw a pinch of salt over their shoulder, or appeal to the fates when they’re losing.

The ideas contained in the bailout and stimulus plans cater to the chronic spenders and vegetables in our midst – there’s not an original thought or innovative, long-term approach within either package.

America didn’t become a superpower due to its government bailouts. We got there with revolutionary inventions – by the creation and manufacturing of goods no other country had, or could produce as well as we did. We got there by being innovative, competitive, and tireless in our search for ways to improve life for people here and around the globe. We got there by opening doors of opportunity, paying decent wages, making housing affordable, and being willing to challenge traditions and social policies that impeded human potential.

Greed and avarice overtook America during the Bush years, particularly in the corporate and banking sectors. It seems to me that the way back to greatness isn’t going to be found in borrowed money, mass bailouts, or by reviving sagging bureaucracies, but in a new vision that incorporates and rewards innovation, attempts new strategies, and insists on ethics.

Instead, we’ve just tilled a massive shit garden, and I think many working class Americans understand that, even if they don’t have a degree in economics. Most of us are aware that if someone stood out on the street tomorrow handing out $10 bills, people would take them, regardless of need. Free money is free money. There’s no innovation there, and no incentive to spend it wisely, or with the long-range interests of the country in mind. The zucchinis will plant themselves quickly enough, sucking up everything they can until the garden is dry.

My friend Bill was right. We are a world built on ideas, and the finest ideas aren’t contained in any one school of thought. Beyond every other consideration, our humanity, and our common desire for better circumstances, binds us.

“Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.” – Carlos Castaneda

“Whatever their future, at the dawn of their lives, men seek a noble vision of man’s nature and of life’s potential.” – Ayn Rand

I’m not sure what any one person can do at this point to avoid shit garden economics, but as a nation of newly invigorated citizens I hope we demand accountability from all of those who seek to plant themselves there, and insist that those who show signs of wasting their handouts be plucked from the program.

And, of course, we have do whatever it takes to keep new ideas from flowing out of the hemisphere and into the vacuum of apathy.

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The Thick-Thighed Women of Roller Derby

Posted on 02/16/2009 by Jane Devin

Spellbound in front of the television set at eight, nine years old, I’d watch the thick-thighed women of roller derby growl, sweat, and scuffle their way around the track, flying their opponents into the rails with a body slam or, when the referees weren’t watching, by the hair. Much of it was choreographed, like WWWF wrestling, but the WWWF only occasionally featured female matches as a token, whereas roller derby was dominated by women. Unlike the waifish and highly-stylized punk Suicide Girls of today, the roller derby queens of the 1970′s earned their smeared mascara and torn stockings the hard way.

I’d lace up my white, metal-wheeled skates and race myself around the blocks of Valmar Place and Severn Drive, pretending to be a jammer making my way through the pack and around the rink, occasionally having to elbow Dee Bauchery or Shirley Trample out of my way.

Outside of the Olympics and occasional gymnastic or ice skating championships, female athletes were mostly invisible in the 1970′s. The wealthier girls in my neighborhood might have taken dance lessons, but the closest most of us got to any sort of organized athletics was tether ball or softball at school. Women’s roller derby was over-the-top and theatrical, but it also showed that women could be strong, competitive, and successful, even if — especially if — they weren’t cute, 88 pound pixies.

I was a little disappointed when a roller derby movie, Kansas City Bomber, came out in 1972 starring Raquel Welch. I thought I’d prefer someone like Ali McGraw, who was both tomboyish and beautiful, but Raquel’s athleticism surprised me. I later found out that she did most of her own stunts for the film.

I recently learned that roller derby, in all its theatrical, punk-feminist glory, has been revived, and that there are almost 300 roller derby leagues currently playing around the nation. Why did this have to happen now, when I’m about two decades removed from my prime? I so would have joined in my twenties. I could have been Jamie Demolition according to this roller derby name generator. I could have been somebody. I could have been a contender.

Dreams die hard, but it’s nice to know that roller derby lives on for the next generation of rough and tumble girls.

So what would your roller derby name be?

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