Monthly Archives: October 2005

There is a reason posting has been irregular of late.

I don’t quite know how to say this. It will come as a shock to many, if not most, of you; it has certainly come as a shock to me. I considered trying to ease into the news, but all my efforts in that direction proved futile. So I’m just going to give it to you straight, as it were.

Last week, E.S. and I accidentally bought a dilapidated house in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, with the intention of fixing it up ourselves.

I realize that the words “dilapidated,” “Crown Heights,” “Brooklyn,” and “fixing it up ourselves” make no sense in a sentence part of whose subject is me. And yet they’re absolutely true, every one.

(For those of you not familiar with New York City history, Crown Heights is the neighborhood in which, fourteen years ago, a Chasidic man struck and killed a black child with his car and in which, the next day, a mob of black people, enraged at the inadequate medical care the child had received, stabbed an Orthodox Jew to death.)

By “bought” I mean merely “signed a contract to buy”; our ultimate ownership of the house is by no means secure, contingent as it is upon our getting a mortgage, coming up with money for a down payment, and most importantly not recovering the minds we’ve obviously lost.

But once you see the house you will understand why I’m hoping we stay lunatics for just long enough to close (in real estate terms, this means “finish the deal”):

Naturally, we’re leaving the sign up.

I am actually really upset that Harriet Miers has withdrawn from the nomination for the Supreme Court.

Because it seemed like she wasn’t smart enough or possessed of enough true ill will to do us any real damage.

And now who are we going to get in her place?

I’m scared, folks.

Every once in a while, when I start thinking there’s no hope for humanity–this happens about every four seconds–I come across something like Dawn of the Knitted Dead and realize that there might in fact be a glimmer of the thing with feathers somewhere on earth.

(Thanks to her for the link.)

Anybody who hasn’t read Barack Obama’s essay on the future of the Democratic Party must do so at once.

I know who I’m voting for in the 2016 presidential election.

Usually spam email impresses me with its creativity but not particularly with its insight or understanding.

Last week, however, I received a spam email with the subject heading “landlord cookie therapist.” And I thought, my God, that is exactly what I need. The body of the message turned out to be indecipherable even with considerable mental effort, so eventually I gave up, trusting that no matter what was on offer it was probably not something that in the end would bring me true and lasting happiness.

And then yesterday I got a message ostensibly from one Existentialist Q. Narcissist.

And I thought, wait, how did I send myself an email without realizing it?

Today I had a lunch meeting with a producer and a collaborator. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that I hadn’t been aware it was going to be a lunch meeting rather than a regular meeting, so I had lunch beforehand. Then, when I got to the lunch meeting, in order not to offend the producer by telling her I’d already eaten lunch, I ate lunch again. Then, after I got home, I talked to a good friend and learned about another good friend’s very well deserved career successes. This caused me to be consumed by jealousy and to cook and eat three cups of chocolate pudding.

Maybe I should have stayed in South Carolina. At least the weather was good there.

Not only that, but I gained four pounds in South Carolina.

To be honest, I preferred “Darlin’.”

Thank God we are leaving this place tomorrow. Today I ate alligator, and E.S., after hearing the local accent, has developed a loathsome habit of calling me Darlin’. The fact that this is not a common endearment here is far outweighed in his system of priorities by the fact that it drives me mad. Mad enough, in fact, to eat alligator.

I am in South Carolina, in the city where I grew up. Yesterday, E.S. and I went to the plantation that my great-grandmother owned until she gave it to the state for a park. I dragged E.S. around until we found the tree I used to climb on as a child when we visited her. Unthinking, I clambered up it again, and E.S., knowing such an opportunity was unlikely to present itself to him twice, whipped out his camera and took a photograph of me smiling in a tree.

I’m considering threatening to withhold sex from him until he deletes the photograph, but I think he knows the value of what he has, and will call my bluff. And then where would I be?

Actually, it occurs to me that I could pretty easily throw the camera in the Atlantic Ocean. Then E.S. might withhold sex from me for a while, but eventually he’d break down.

It’s really worth it, to prevent a photo that damning from entering circulation.

My computer comes back today. Apparently they were able to save most of my data. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the data I need is a proper subset of the data they were able to save. And, in the end, the price was slightly less astronomically high than I expected it would be. Not much, mind you–I still have to scrap my plan to buy a new computer–but at least I’ll be able to eat something other than Top Ramen noodles for the next year.

And, now that my computer will be back, of course the first thing I’m doing is going with E.S. to South Carolina, where I’m from. It’s entirely possible that he will meet my Uncle Bubba.

So if the world explodes between tomorrow and Thursday morning, when we’re scheduled to return, you’ll know why.