She's Writing a Novel

First they came for the corporate jet owners, and I said nothing because I didn't own a corporate jet.

Then they came for the billionaires and millionaires, and I didn't speak up because I made less than 250,000 annually.

Then they came for the rich, and I didn't say anything because I considered myself middle-class.

But then I realized they had come for me, and there was no one left who would speak out for me.

Speaking of stealing. Someone stole my car last week. For what reason I'm not entirely sure -- a 1996 Saturn can't possibly have much street value aside from scrap. So I can only conclude that my poor reliable steed wound up in some south philly chop shop, and I will never see her again.

It's almost hard to be angry at this point, and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it hasn't hit me that my car is really gone. When someone pick-pocketed my wallet right out of my purse on Valentine's Day a few years ago, and subsequently went on a multi-thousand dollar shopping spree with my credit and debit cards, I spent a few days alternately bawling and spewing bile. Never mind that I was fully reimbursed (at the price of no small hassle; I must have spent hours on the phone with India and filling out claim forms), it was the violation that put me on the emotional verge.

It wasn't just that someone created a diversion in a restaurant, reached into my bag,
and helped themselves to my hard-earned money. It was the fact that they somehow felt entitled to do so. And I told people then, and I feel the same today, that if my credit card had been used to pay off a medical bill, or buy food at a grocery store, or put gas in a car, I might not have felt so used. Desperation can lead people to consider actions they would otherwise find morally reprehensible. But it's a long road in America toward exhausting all your options, and I'm not too nice of a person to say that most people are too lazy to travel the full length of that road before they decide turn on their neighbor.

Reading through my bank and credit card statements was when I began to get REALLY angry. $500 at Old Navy. $300 at a sporting goods store. $32 on gourmet burritos. $120 at a novelty hat store. Another $350 at a different Old Navy. $150 on a set of acrylic nails. $50 on assorted cab rides. $400 on, get this, registration at an urban religious camp for children! I went to the website. Someone had used a stolen credit card to pay for their children to "Learn to Mirror the Actions of Jesus Christ in the City." Are you fucking kidding me. That's when I threw up. Maybe if you weren't so busy using other people's money to pay for your fake nails you could be a mirror of christ-like actions for your children yourself, you fucking cunt.

But maybe somewhere in her twisted and entitled mind she figured that the girl she had ripped off would just get refunded for the fraud, so no harm no foul. And anyway, that girl was in a nice restaurant in a nice part of town, which meant that she had to be just another rich white girl who probably didn't even work for her money. Her life is easy! She didn't deserve it! So stealing from her is really just evening out life's score.

It's terrifying to me how many people think this way. That they're owed something, or that their obviously wrong actions are somehow justified in the name of righting historical or systemic wrongs, real or perceived. That it's OK to take it out on the people you believe to represent the people that you feel did you wrong.

Even more terrifying to me is the thought that she just simply didn't give a shit; that she was capable of narcissism to such a degree that it didn't occur to her that in giving to herself she was taking from another. She didn't have 4 thousand dollars of her own money to spend, which means that she couldn't understand what it is to earn 4 thousand dollars, which is why it was so easy for her to piss it all away in the span of 6 hours.

Anyway, my car. It's gone. And unlike the money in my bank account, it's most likely not ever coming back. It's not fair. But it is what it is, so I'll live with it and move on. Unlike most people I encounter anymore, I've already learned life's two biggest lessons. Number 1: Life isn't fair. And Number 2: Shit happens.

Last week featured a big ol' pile of Number 2. Here's hoping this week wipes up after it.

I just had a nice little snack of cous cous with flax seeds and agave nectar. That sentence makes me want to punch myself in the face for being such a hippie douche, but I must admit that it was both tasty and satisfying without leaving me digestively impaired.

For much of my life I accepted that the act of eating was something that would leave me curled in a distressed ball of agony. As children, my brother and I dubbed these episodes "intestine squeezes," because it felt as if our entrails were tying themselves in knots and having seizures. Today this would probably be diagnosed as IBS, but I have since realized what it was (and probably, what most IBS actually is) -- eating garbage will trash your body. Growing up we were not allowed to have much sugar, but almost everything we ate was processed. We also went out to eat a lot, and not to any of these all-natural locally-sourced totally-organic jerk-off restaurants (which, despite their overkill on self-congratulation for serving real food, must actually be congratulated on serving real food). There was a summer where I ate grilled cheese and french fries from a diner for lunch almost every day. I never got fat, but the food had its revenge by leaving me doubled over for hours on end.

The decade after that is mostly a blur of cafeteria food and prepared food eaten out of my car between school and work or work and school. By the time I left college and had a 9-to-5, I was subsisting on frozen burritos and sour cream. When I met the Russian lover, I warned him that I almost always had painful cramps after eating and I probably had some condition. He brushed it off, and several weeks after he had been cooking for me and taking me to restaurants that served fresh, quality food, I realized that it had been ages since I'd spent hours in fetal position after a meal.

Of course. Duh. Processed food is the devil, and high fructose corn syrup is his bride. But how many of us really know that? And how many of us make choices that take this into account? Among those of us who cut our hair and don't live in painted vans, I mean. Even though I "knew" the food I was eating was bad for me, I didn't know what else to eat. It's like dating an abusive guy that you just can't leave, because he's too familiar and the alternative is what? Even a brief stint working at Whole Foods didn't change my fundamental approach to eating. That only came when I had the way I ate fundamentally changed for me, and I could notice the changes that made for my body.

The cous cous is a new venture; when it comes to starches and grains, we've been white rice and potato people, with the occasional pasta mixed in. That sounds pretty healthy until you listen to the health nazis and they tell you that those are the worst of the good things you can eat. So now I'm on a mission to try all the various grains and such that the hippie nazi health douches recommend: quinoa, bulgur wheat, brown rice, wild rice, buckwheat, etc. The cous cous is already a winner with me; it tastes good, it's practically easier to make than cold cereal, and there is something about the texture that's fascinating.

This is where the Paleo diet people come in and writhe around moaning that grain is the root of all evil and we should be eating like cavemen. They may possibly have a point from an evolutionary biology perspective, although I still feel like the whole fad is the creation of some guy who had a bad breakup with a vegan. The Paleo diet, if you didn't know, is basically the inversion of the vegan diet (which by now we are all intimately versed in because those killjoys will just never shut up about what they can and cannot eat.) Paleos and vegans will agree that fruit and vegetables are awesome, and dairy is bad. But that's the extent of their commonalities; paleos shun any food borne out of the agricultural development of our species (grain, potatoes, legumes). Their ultimate food fantasy is the drive-thru from the opening sequence of The Flintstones.

Well, those hardcore paleo people may all have tiny asses and exemplary bowel movements, but I think a little bit of flab and some occasional constipation is a small price to pay for a life that includes real pizza.

If you ordered a paleo pizza, you know what you'd get? A tomato.

I took a sick day today; for the past two weeks, I've been "under the weather." This is the best term I can come up with to describe the perpetual state of feeling just about to fall seriously ill with some flu-like malady, but never actually getting balls-out sick. I'd rather just get it over and done with in a few concise days of intense suffering; instead, I've been slowly taunted with a general sense of fatigue, a ticklish on-and-off almost-cough in my chest, and a low-grade fever.

It's hard to know what to do. Rest? I've been trying that. Push through business as usual? I've been doing that, also. But today when I woke up my first thought was "NO." No way was I dragging myself to work, no way was I sitting at my desk all day. I called out, fell back asleep, and slept until noon. Then I spent all afternoon lying back in bed watching terrible television and sipping orange juice. Now it's evening and, after a full day of mental and physical rest, I feel just about the same as I did when I awoke. I can't continue to take the days off work to vegetate in defense against such a vague and half-hearted assault on my immune system.

Whatever the little devils infiltrating in my bloodstream are, it seems they've achieved a sort of stasis with my body. My white blood cells have become complacent neighbors; the bad guys next door aren't that bad, they've determined. They may have socialist ideas but they're not violent revolutionaries, so why go on the offense? Live and let live. NYET. This is how nations drift toward communism, and this is how I spend weeks on end not feeling good enough to be well nor feeling bad enough to be sick.

My new strategy will be to bait the stealth insurgents into showing their true colors so that my noble white knights find themselves called to arms at full strength. It's time to stress my system such that the attackers can no longer hold themselves back and go in for the kill. I should then get good and proper sick, at which time my body will finally make the effort to make me good and proper well again. No more of this acceptable state of ailing and malaise; it's time to provoke the enemy and rally the troops and decide a winner once and for all.

America, you may consider doing the same.

I just got back from running errands; it started pouring outside while I was out. As I was approaching my front door, some guy came running out of a nearby alley, clutching an open umbrella and bobbing it up and down in the air while he kicked his heels together-- as if he were starring in some old Hollywood musical. It would have been charming, except he was ranting with inarticulate glee as he stumble-danced down the street.

Living in Philadelphia has taught me to expect the best of people, so I automatically assumed that the joyful oddball was a bum who had just successfully snatched someone's umbrella. It was a fine umbrella, and he was ecstatic about it. My other thought was that he was a bum with an umbrella who had just successfully snatched something else -- maybe a wallet, or an iPhone.

Either way, nobody sober and sane is leaping through the air and fist pumping an umbrella when its pouring rain on a dark cold night in Philadelphia. I hustled to my apartment steps. He turned around at the next intersection to come back the way he came, for no more apparent reason than his heel-clicking and musical raving, and when he caught sight of me in spandex gym clothes he let out a catcall and picked up his pace. I had the keys ready to go and the front door locked behind me before he had taken even ten steps in my direction.

Even when the harassment is harmless, it's still harassment. I didn't care to find out what had made Happy Feet's day, aside from my leggings, because in this city the answer is almost never anything good and almost always cheap gin at best.

Happy Halloween! This is my favorite holiday, after the Thanksmasnewyear season. I don't care much for Thanksgiving or Christmas or the New Year as the days in and of themselves; it's the entire season of lights and food and booze and cold air and cuddling that I love. Halloween is sort of the kick-off for that season, but its charm is unique.

As a child the obvious draw for me was the candy; Halloween is childhood's Mardi Gras. Glorious, unrepentant excess sanctioned by your peers and unmonitored by your parents. We built sugar stashes that kept us high for weeks. Sure, dressing up was fun...hayrides, haunted houses, blah blah blah. But the real joy was being able to panhandle neighbors and strangers for hours and come home with a pillowcase full of chocolate.

As an adult female, the candy is what I strive to avoid. I can stop myself from buying candy bars at the store. I cannot stop myself from dipping a fist into the office bowl of fun size Snickers. A week of readily available goodies threatens to undo the thousands of lunges and squats I've endured to fit into autumn's skinny jeans. Damn you, Halloween candy! No wonder the neighborhood ladies were always so keen to give it away.

On an esoteric level, I enjoy the macabre and the celebration of darkness before we enter the season of lights; it's somehow appropriate to acknowledge the base and deprived and awful before we spend months patting ourselves on the back for spreading charity and sharing love. I also think we all appreciate the opportunity to become something other than ourselves for no good reason. For most women, this involves some form of slut-dom.

The cultural conversation around the Halloween slut trend seems to agree that this is bad, and obviously women feel pressured to hypersexualize themselves. I'm more inclined to think that Halloween has afforded women the opportunity to be the total public whores they secretly want to be, and I'm more curious about why we appear to have so many sexually repressed adults in our so-called open-minded modern society.

Part of what's wonderful about America is that you can dress like a ho if you want to; you can also wear a burka if that's your choice. There may be judgement, but there's no prosecution. Is a sexual object necessarily a bad thing? Feminists told us it was; men were wrong to want it, and women were wrong to provide it. Yet the popularity of objectifying and sexualizing anything conceivable as a Halloween costume would seem to indicate that both men and women in this country wouldn't mind a few more outlets for old-school female objectification.

In the name of fueling a trend I find both cathartic and hilarious, and therefore awesome, I put forth my own (untried) suggestions for unexpectedly suggestive costumes:

SLUTTY REFRIGERATOR:
Dress in a skintight silver lame minidress; affix take-out menus, finger paintings, tacky magnets, and photos of loved ones to the dress.

THE VICTORIA'S SECRET SEMI-ANNUAL SALE:
Wear anything you like, or nothing at all, as a base. Cover as much of your being as you care to in a haphazard jumble of mixed bras, panties,and thongs (the trashier the better).

THE SEXY SERVER RACK:
Entwine yourself in CAT5 cables and a mount a few strategically-placed motherboards. To spice up the evening later, announce to your male escort that you're afraid you're about to go down, and they need to schedule a maintenance window with you.