Whereas, "same sex" unions will cause a Gay Apocalypse, with "horses" and "riders" and everything, but we don't really have any evidence of that, so we're just going to make some shit up and then throw in an example of a gay high school student that has nothing to do with civil unions, but we sure do think it's scary; and

Whereas, we loves us some Rick Santorum, but not in THAT way; and

Whereas, gay people don't really want to make permanent commitments to each other or have things like hospital visitation rights, because they're just trying to make fun of us, and it's not our fault we don't know the difference between Gucci and Prada; and where all married heterosexuals are monogamous, including us, except for at that one office party, but that doesn't count, because we were really drunk; and where everyone knows that gay people have lots and lots of sex with lots and lots of other gay people, and promiscuity is bad for society unless we're the ones getting laid; and

Whereas, a penis fits nicely within a vagina; where it has been revealed throughout the ages by various deities, some fake, one real, that a penis fits nicely within a vagina; and where the failure to be awed by that truth is bad for the sacred union of penises and vaginas; and

Whereas, we wish gay people would be gay where our kids can't see them being all faggy, because watching people be gay makes regular folks--except us--want to be gay; and where our children must be protected from the tractor beam of gayness; and

Whereas, gay people can already give their stuff to other gay people, and we're ignoring things like tax laws here, because gay people probably don't pay their taxes anyway; and where gay people contribute to the moral decay of society by convincing our youths to become "male ice skaters" or "feminists" or "independent filmmakers"; and where didn't you hear us when we were talking about the lots and lots of sex that all gay people have; and where we have to stop them, for God's sake, I mean, give them an inch, and they'll take six; now, therefore

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Virginia:

1. That the Code of Virginia is amended by adding in Chapter 2 of Title 20 a section numbered 20-12.1 as follows:

§ 20-12.1. Marriage; legislative findings.

The General Assembly finds that the public policy of the Commonwealth of Virginia is best expressed by the phrase, "Marriage: It's what's for dinner. As long as dinner is hot dogs and bagels."

Today is a lovely day. Yesterday and the day before were hot, with highs over 100 degrees. Now, before you chime in with comments about how much worse you have it wherever you live, I would like to state for the record that your comfort levels have absolutely nothing to do with my comfort levels. (See "abscond with your popsicles," July 2002.) When people chime in about how much worse they have it than the person who has the gall to complain about, say, 102-degree DRY heat, they are essentially saying, "You are a huge wuss. Me? I am the Rambo of All Things Weather." And folks, that's annoying, because even if you were correct about your Rambosity in some sort of objective sense--which is doubtful--that would not change the fact that when it's over 100 degrees in my house, I get heat rashes, sit around sweating all day, and find it very difficult to get any work done.

We got an estimate recently of how much it would cost to fix this situation by installing central air. We were expecting it to be spendy, because installing central air is fundamentally spendy. Then, the guy started looking around.

"That's asbestos right there," he said. Ch - ching! went my mental cash register. "We'll need to get an abatement team out (ch - ching!) to remove that before we install anything."

"Your electrical panel needs to be upgraded," he informed us as we stood in the back yard. Ch - ching!

"Oh, and there's more asbestos up there." Ch - ching!

As it turns out, the mental estimate we started with plus four ch - chings! total around $10,000. That's less than we were expecting as the estimator tossed around phrases like "bubble suit" and "could kill you," but it's more than we were expecting for a house that's just under 1200 square feet.

So here's the part where I ask those of you who have a portable evaporative cooler which kind you have and whether or not you would recommend it. Jeff's study and mine are the hottest rooms in the house, but they are both small, so I imagine we could each get a relatively basic cooler and be comfortable enough to work during the day. (The only concern there is that Jeff does a good deal of work with computer hardware in his study, and we're not sure whether or not the moisture added to the air by an evaporative cooler would be bad for the boards he uses.) We might get one or two more coolers--perhaps bigger, perhaps not--for the living room and bedroom. Let me bask in your knowledge! Thrill me with your consumer savvy!

Just don't tell me that 100 degrees isn't actually hot.

There is a house along one of the routes Jeff and use to walk the dogs; we call it the "cat house." That's because there are always multiple cats in the front yard. We've made a habit of counting them as we pass, and we've seen up to eight or nine cats at a time perched in various spots. One of them is almost always sitting in a wrought iron bench near the front patio; this is obviously a coveted position occupied by the more dominant felines. You can usually spot another cat on the doorstep and one or two in the driveway. The others, when they are out in full force, take up posts on the lawn and sidewalk.

If you have ever spent much time around cats, you probably know how unsettling it can be when they stare at you. More than once, I've woken up to find my own little Leo looking at me intently. "Stop it, Mister Kitty," I tell him. He never listens. He just keeps on staring until I either feed him or kick him off the bed.

When you have half a dozen or more cats staring at you all at once, tracking you as you walk past their territory, the effect can be rather sobering. Repeat this experience enough times, and you will perhaps understand why Jeff and I have come to see these cats not as pets, but as sentries--especially since the guards' posts are never occupied by people. Human activity just doesn't seem to take place at that house. The lawn is a bit straggly, with weeds creeping their way onto the nearby pavement. There are no noises or open windows. We've never seen any evidence of departures or arrivals; there is a trailer in the driveway, but it doesn't seem to have been moved any time recently.

In our neighborhood, the mail is typically delivered through a slot in the front door. It is probably a good thing that I am not employed as a letter carrier, because there's no way you could talk me into reaching towards the mail slot in the cat house's door. "That's how they get you," I once told Jeff. "They pull you in through the slot, and then they surround you. Everything goes black. When you wake up, you are one of them."

Given my views on this garrison for felines, you'd think it might be a relief to discover that I've been wrong about the place--that there is an actual person living there. A person with two legs and no visible tail.

Under different circumstances, you might be right. Yesterday, as we came within view of the cat house, we saw a human in front. It was a little girl, perhaps six or seven years old. She was blonde, and she wore a pink shift dress. It was a warm day, and many of the neighborhood kids were out playing: they tossed balls to each other, teetered along the sidewalk on bicycles with training wheels, and pulled plastic wagons filled with toys and younger siblings.

The little girl in the pink shift dress wasn't playing. She was sitting on the wrought iron bench near the front patio, with her knees pressed together and ankles crossed beneath her. Her hands were folded neatly in her lap, and she was staring. She watched us as we walked, turning her head slowly to follow our movements. That's all she did.

I audibly let out my breath after we passed the house and were out of earshot, and I looked at Jeff, raising my eyebrows. He nodded. We had reached the only conclusion it was possible to reach: the girl in the pink dress was a shape-shifter, a cat in human form. Oh, sure, I suppose there is some possibility that I just watched a little too much X-Files back in the day, but if you come walk my dogs with me, perhaps you'll see the cat child, too.

And you'll never go anywhere near that house's mail slot.

Getting older happens gradually. In fact, as I once told the owner of a convenience store that was about a block away from the house where I lived at the time, "I was old enough to buy cigarettes two months ago, when you first checked my ID. I was old enough to buy cigarettes two weeks ago, when you checked it again for about the thirtieth time. I was old enough to buy cigarettes two days ago, when your tally was up to somewhere around forty. And today, I am still old enough to buy cigarettes. You know why? Because I get a little older every single day. I will never, ever walk into your store and suddenly be too young to buy a pack of Marlboro Lights."

So, yes, getting older happens gradually. But feeling older happens in little jolts. Maybe you turn on the radio and wonder what possesses people to listen to the crap you hear coming out of your speakers. Maybe you and your husband are loading your labrador retrievers into the station wagon and you realize, holy cow, my husband and I are loading our labrador retrievers into our station wagon. Maybe you laugh ruefully as you reflect on the fact that these days, when you make an expression, your face kind of does stick that way: you've got the wrinkles to prove it.

Or maybe you're clicking around on the Internet, and you come across a post in a Tim Burton community in which a 15 year-old girl describes The Nightmare Before Christmas as her "favorite childhood movie."

Little jolts.

Today's issue of "Los Angeles Times Magazine" is the "Men's Fashion Issue." "The Dashing Man," advertises the cover. "Suave. Sophisticated. Self-Assured."

Well, then! Let's have a peek, shall we? Since you won't be able to read the tiny text in the image, I'll blow up the part that applies to the man on this page.

Ah, Los Angeles in the springtime! Nothing says "I have unresolved Miami Vice issues and way too much disposable income" like wearing $3000 worth of Louis Vuitton clothes while you pretend to do yardwork.

I love this town.

There's a move in step aerobics called a "freeway." It involves turning as you go over the top of the step, such that if you start out facing the front of the room, you end up on the opposite side of the step facing the back wall. It is a very common move. Nevertheless, when I heard my step instructor call it out for the first time this evening, I could have sworn she said "slingblade."

Since I didn't understand what Keila was telling me to do, I just stood there until it dawned on me that I had misheard. I joined back in, but I couldn't stop laughing to myself as I imagined what a slingblade in step aerobics would look like. Do you hop up on the step while making a wide arc with one arm, simulating a slice? Do you move to the bench on the right while chopping the air menacingly? Do you run around the step while pushing an imaginary lawnmower?

It's been that kind of day. I've been walking into furniture a lot, too. Some people call it hell; I call it Hades.

My dog has become a vicious killer of opossums.

Ivy: Vicious Killer of Opossums

Napa: Enthusiastic Sidekick

I bear no great love for opossums. In fact, they are one of my least favorite animals. If you were to ask me, "Hey, Shasta, would you rather be locked up in a room with an opossum or with a dozen cockroaches?" I might have to go with the roaches. And I hate roaches. This hatred originated in Texas, where I lived for a time in an apartment building that was quite infested with these miracles of evolution. When your apartment building is infested with roaches, there is very little you can do in your individual apartment to keep them out of your personal space. Roaches, as you might know, have developed the ability to survive on lint. More recently, I have heard that some roaches have even started to burrow inside televisions and other appliances, where they live off electricity. This is fantastic if you are in a cyberpunk novel, but incomprehensibly creepy if you are not.

You think roaches can't teleport? Think again. Those bastards can just beam themselves into your cabinets if they put their diabolical little bug minds to it. Now, while it is something of a myth that everything in Texas is big, Texan roaches are indeed enormous. If you are a little girl who just wants to get a bowl so you can sit around in your Wonder Woman Underoos while eating Cap'n Crunch, the cockroach that ambushes you as you reach for the aforementioned bowl will seem approximately the size of a guinea pig. A guinea pig with a hard shell. And while you might think that Wonder Woman should just be able to get into her invisible jet and fly away from the vermin, I've got to tell you that escape isn't always possible.

Hopefully, this provides you with some scale--a measuring stick by which to understand the degree to which opossums freak me out on an intensely visceral level. They seem fundamentally, cosmically wrong, with their beady little eyes and their pointy little teeth and their naked rat tails. Have you ever had an opossum hiss at you? My god, it's terrifying. I can watch half a dozen zombie movies in a row with very little change in my blood pressure, but I think I would be totally incapable of watching a horror movie in which ill-fated protagonists battle troops of embittered opossums. That would be worth at least two thousand therapy points.

My dog Ivy doesn't like opossums, either. However, while my preferred approach would be to pretend that opossums don't exist, and to wipe all traces of encounters with opossums from my mind--surgically, if necessary--Ivy is a little more direct. She sees an opossum running across the top of our fence, she runs and jumps, and she does her best to make sure that the opossum will never again run across the top of a fence. Napa, who doesn't have the prey instinct that Ivy has but is nonetheless descended from bird dogs, does what she can to help out her packmate. I've tallied their kill count at four now, and who knows how many more they have injured?

Neither dog understands why Jeff and I aren't more supportive of their efforts to decimate the opossum population of North Orange County. I imagine they feel like the kid whose parents never showed up for her soccer games, because Daddy was too busy with his PBR and NASCAR on Saturdays, and Mommy was last seen at a truck stop in Tehachapi. Still, this communication barrier is not what's foremost in my mind when I have settled down for the evening with Jeff to watch a movie, and perhaps we've had some wine, and we're feeling quite relaxed--until we let our dogs out before we all head to bed, not realizing that Ivy is about to sprint after one of the grey, furry creatures she hates so much. When that happens, I am left to call the dogs in and peer out into the yard, where I can tell an opossum still lies--its status as a living being questionable--and wonder what to do. Is the creature suffering? I wonder, mulling over my responsibilities as a compassionate human being. Should I go out there?

Then, I experience what in addiction parlance is referred to as a "moment of clarity." I am seriously considering venturing into the darkest corner of my back yard while half-crocked, armed with nothing but hope and a bottle of Bactine, to mend the wounds of an animal that will probably spring at my throat like that killer bunny from Monty Python. At the very least, it will get me signed up for an endless series of rabies shots. Did I learn nothing from Jeepers Creepers? When somebody says, "I really think we should go back and check on those people who were wrapped up in a bag and dumped in a hole," what you say is "no." If that same somebody then asks you how you would feel if you were one of the people who had been wrapped in a bag and dumped into a hole, the appropriate response is, "Dead. I'd feel dead."

Am I the only one who is bothered by the widespread use of the word "troop" to refer to individuals? If a "troop" has become just one person, then what's an actual troop? A gaggle? A throng? A flock?

It occurs to me that I haven't publicly made it clear just how asinine I find the low-carb craze that has swept the nation. Here's the problem: diets as extreme as the Atkins Diet can be quite effective for rapid, short-term weight loss. Losing weight and then maintaining that weight loss safely is not a short-term activity; it's a long-term commitment. It's a commitment to health. People know this. However, people don't want to make a commitment to their health. People want to lose weight. So they do. And then they gain it back, because that's what happens when you take a short-term approach to a long-term problem. So a cycle begins: people get thin on the Atkins Diet. People get less thin when they go off the Atkins Diet. And because the reason people get sucked into this cycle in the first place is that they want to be thin, they start to feel like they should be on the Atkins Diet ALL THE TIME.

Look: Atkins is not a reasonable way to eat for the rest of your life. Carbs are not the Dark Side to your Force. They are not evil. They have a place in every reasonable diet, and they will not kill you. Cutting them out of your diet in favor of protein, on the other hand, very well might kill you. Sandra Woodruff, nutritionist and author of the Good Carb Cookbook: Secrets of Eating Low on the Glycemic Index, elaborates:

• Too much protein burdens the kidneys and liver, which have the job of excreting any excess protein that the body cannot see.


• High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets deprive the brain of glucose, its preferred fuel.


• High-fat meats and dairy products are rich in saturated fats, which raise the risk for heart disease.


• Pesticides and other environmental toxins accumulate in foods high on the food chain, so meats and dairy products (especially high-fat versions) contain higher concentrations of these substances than plant foods do.


• High-meat diets cause the consumption and pollution of far more natural resources than plant-based diets do.


• A diet high in meat and low in plant foods lacks the phytochemicals (nutrients found only in plant foods), antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals that delay aging and fight cancer, heart disease, and many other health problems.


• High-meat diets are very low in fiber and can cause chronic constipation and diseases of the colon.

(page 36)

Part of my irritation with the low-carb fad is the kind of irritation I feel with all sorts of things that oversaturate the American popular culture market, both as concepts and as products. The other part of my irritation--the larger part--is a very serious concern about the potential effects on public health of a diet that makes you feel guilty for eating an apple. An apple! I mean, Jesus, people. Book of Genesis aside, there are very good reasons why thinking of an apple as verboten is counter-intuitive. It probably should also get you on some sort of list of potential threats to national security. Homeland Security is watching you, apple haters! You're in their register, right next to the baseball haters and the people who say bad things about Mickey Mouse. Apples are good for you. Fourteen of them? Not so much. But how much intellectual work should it really take to figure out that it doesn't matter what you have at Souplantation if you eat three platefuls of it?

Let me be clear that I'm not holding myself up as a paragon of health, here. I'm not a paragon of anything. I just find it astonishing how hungry (cough) people seem to be for a formula--low fat, low carb, low whatever--because they are resistant to something most of them already know, which is that for the vast majority of people, the best way to lose weight and maintain that weight loss is to:

It's not rocket science. Most of us already know a good deal about healthier eating choices and at least a little bit about exercise. You know that dumping four ounces of ranch dressing on your salad does not constitute a healthy eating choice. You know that eating at McDonald's three times in one week is a bad idea. You know that the pint of Ben & Jerry's you just ate will go straight to your thighs. You know you didn't need to eat the entire box of macaroni and cheese. If you make these choices, fine: they're yours. I make them, too. But I also know that if I sit around eating Girl Scout cookies, drinking beer, and watching TV for a week, I'll gain weight and feel sluggish--and that if I want to counteract that, I'm going to have to: I honestly believe that most people who want to lose weight already know everything they need to know to do so in a healthy way--if that's what they choose. Most of us can also benefit from adding to what we already know with good sources of information. The cookbook I quoted above is one of the many good sources available; this particular book has six full chapters on the differences between refined and complex carbohydrates, as well as tables of data on the glycemic index of various foods and an extensive bibliography that cites sources not just on weight loss and carbs, but also on topics like insulin resistance and polycystic ovary syndrome. If you want to get complex about things, it's possible, and that can be a good thing. What I find distressing is the fact that the marketing that arose out of and continues to drive the low-carb obsession is so powerful that people would rather eat something that is labeled good for them than something that actually is good for them. I keep expecting that any day now, I'm going to walk into the mall and find that Cinnabon is selling a "low carb cinnamon roll," and would you like a tub of low-carb butter with that?

While I was in line at the grocery store last night, I saw a magazine--I think it was TV Guide--with a cover brightly announcing that inside, you would find information on the "Survivor Diet." As in Survivor, the television show, which simulates people being stranded on a desert island without any food. Life really shouldn't turn into an article from The Onion, I thought to myself as the cashier rang up my purchases. It's funny, but not funny ha-ha. Now I'm waiting for the "Apprentice Diet" to come out. It will be great fun to watch a bunch of thirty-somethings eat nothing but fajitas (they're fired--on the grill!) washed down with massive quantities of Trump Ice.

First things first: many thanks to sun_set_bravely and mabellongettifor the postcards and to mloconno for the care package! Michelle, the Rice Krispie treats were excellent, and you make a mean CD. It's quite possible that you and I are the only people I know who will not only admit to loving Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues," but will also put it on a mix disk. Elton owes us, man.

In other news, I've been terrible about updating lately, so there are some things you don't know. Here is one.

I am on an audio book binge. It takes some getting used to, this audio book business, because the way I listen is quite different from the way I usually read. When I read, I underline material, scribble notes in margins, mark especially important spots with Post-Its... it's a habit that is difficult to break entirely, even when reading for pleasure. I get twitchy when I don't have a pen or pencil handy. Because, you see, you just never know what you might find in a book; even the most wretched of potboilers could contain a passage that perfectly exemplifies something you didn't even know needed exemplification. If it does contain such a passage, you're sure to find it when you're nowhere near a source of ink. Hence the twitch--it knows.

Listening is different. I was about to claim it is more passive, but I don't want to overgeneralize, and really, the fact that I think listening is more passive than reading says less about listening than it says about me and the culture in which I've been raised. There are relatively few situations in which my job--the only thing I'm supposed to be doing at a given moment--is to listen. I think that's part of why academic conferences can be so tiring, in addition to jetlag and last-minute editing and uncomfortable chairs and all the other obvious reasons. Academics at conferences, when they aren't presenting their own papers, are listening to other peoples' papers, and most of them aren't particularly skilled listeners. The worst ones deal with their lack of skill by mentally composing elaborate responses to deliver during the question and answer session. I'm not talking about the people who raise tough questions and press speakers on their arguments, but about the people who stand up and blather for ten minutes about a topic that is only marginally related to the speaker's topic, and who manage to do so without asking any real questions. They can't ask real questions, because they only have a foggy notion of what the speaker actually said.

So this audio book binge has required some practice, some experimentation. I've figured out that I like to listen to them while I walk the dogs, wash dishes, file papers, or lie in bed unable to sleep. They are perfect for the times when I can't sleep, because the book keeps my mind from getting stuck in the endless loops that add frustration and anger to the insomnia experience. It still might take a few hours to nod off, but I'd rather fall asleep listening to a reader's voice than to the harridan in my head--the one who doesn't know the difference between trivial and important matters, and who sometimes won't stop talking until I feed her several milligrams of Ambien.

Yet the appeal goes beyond that. I often choose to listen to books that I probably would not choose to read any time soon: they aren't on any of my reading lists, have absolutely nothing to do with my field of study or my dissertation, and are often lighter fare. I'm not above listening to Dante while I scrub the toilet, but I prefer Neal Stephenson. And so I get to listen to The Sweet Potato Queens' Big-Ass Cookbook and Financial Planner, which I thought was going to be about a woman and her posse of drag queens, but is actually about Southern women who are funny in that particular way that only Southern women are funny, and who make recipes that involve ingredient combinations like bacon, cream, sugar, and cinnamon. I get to listen to The Da Vinci Code, and Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Professor and the Madman, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (which I last encountered some time during high school). I even listened to From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, because Claudia Kincaid is the patron saint of bookish girlchildren, and I felt like visiting her again.

Not all of my selections fall into the beach reading category. I like listening to audio versions of Shakespeare's plays. Last month, I finished a dual biography of Queen Elizabeth and Mary, Queen of Scots, as well as a survey of British history. More recently, I've started on Crime and Punishment, which, when I finish, will knock the items remaining on this list down to one.

It's good, this listening thing. Now, if someone would just invent some tiny, wireless headphones, I would be grateful for the opportunity to stop yanking out my earbuds when I get the cord stuck on things like doorknobs, desk corners, and elbows. While you're at it, please invent an automatic sunshade machine for the windshield of my car. Somebody already invented Jelly Bath, so you're off the hook on personal soaking products.

MY BROTHER BRET, CALLING FROM KOREA, WHERE HE LIVES: "I'm dating this girl from Colombia."

SHASTA: "What's her name?"

BRET: "Marcela."

SHASTA: "Describe what Marcela Wallace looks like."

BRET: "What?"

SHASTA: "Say 'what' again. Say 'what' again! I dare you--I double dare you, motherfucker! Say 'what' one more goddamn time!"

BRET: "She's kind of brown."

SHASTA: "Go on!"

BRET: "She's not bald."

SHASTA: "Does she look like a bitch?"

BRET: "What?"

SHASTA: "POW! I said, KA-POW!"

BRET: "Aaagh! Ooohhh!"

SHASTA: "DOES - SHE - LOOK - LIKE - A - BITCH?"

BRET: "No!"

SHASTA: "Good answer. Glad you respect your woman, little brother. Wouldn't want to have to make POW! sounds into the phone again. Don't go letting other men give her foot massages, now, you hear?"

Today, as I was leaving the acupuncture studio, I got a very strange look from a man I was quite sure I hadn't seen before. I was a little perplexed, since to my knowledge, I looked pretty ordinary. I might have had some marks on my forehead from lying down on the table during my treatment, but it seemed unlikely that anyone would think those marks so odd.

Maybe he just doesn't like the looks of me, I thought to myself as I got into my car. And then I caught a glimpse of myself in the rearview mirror. The removal of one of the needles in the back of my head had caused a thin rivulet of blood to trickle down the side of my face and dry there. It didn't hurt at all, but the aesthetic effect was quite striking.

What a missed opportunity, I mused as I drove away. Had I known what I looked like, I would have stared fixedly at the gawking man and slowly, wordlessly raised my arm, pointing a single accusing finger at him.

I got acupuncture for the first time today. I had considered getting it before, but my pain always seemed to subside just as I was on the verge of making an appointment, so I never went. However, I seriously tweaked my upper back and neck last Tuesday--either from lifting weights or from hauling around the vacuum cleaner, I think--and the pain got better over the weekend, but came back in a more intense form yesterday. This morning, I couldn't turn my head in either direction without wincing. I hooked myself up to Jeff's muscle stimulation machine for a while, took a Soma and Darvocet cocktail, and decided it was time to let a stranger stick a bunch of needles into me.

I filled out a couple of forms and told the acupuncturist why I was there. She peered at my tongue and my eyes for a while, and then led me into a treatment room. I put on one of those gowns that opens in the back and lay face-down on a massage table. The acupuncturist then stuck a few needles in my legs--one in each calf and a couple near each ankle--and several more on both sides of my back. She finished up by placing two needles in the back of my neck and two more in the back of my head. The needles all had a type of coil at the top, and when they were in place, the therapist scratched each coil to make it vibrate slightly.

Then, my acupuncturist asked me if I believed in Jesus. I was not prepared to be asked this question while lying face-down on a table with a couple dozen needles sticking out of my body.

"Uh--what?" I stuttered.

"Do you believe in Jesus?" she repeated.

I thought about hedging, since nearly every time someone asks you that question, they feel the correct answer is "yes," and my position here was somewhat compromised. I decided hedging would do me no good.

"No," I told her, trying to work into my tone the implication that I was really not up for any advice on the status of my immortal soul.

"Do you mind if I pray for you?" she asked.

No, I didn't mind, especially since she prayed in Korean. She might have been praying that I would be converted right there on the table, but seeing as how I don't speak any Korean, I was able to give her the benefit of the doubt. I decided to assume she was trying to get Jesus to give me some sort of celestial massage. After all, if I did believe that Jesus was my savior, I would believe that he cared about me and my back muscles.

"I can't heal you," the acupuncturist informed me when she had finished her prayer. "Only Jesus can do that. That's why I prayed for you."

"Well, I wish you had told me that when I walked in here," I responded. "If you had, I would have just gone straight to Jesus. You know, eliminate the middleman. What does Jesus charge for an acupuncture session?"

Okay, I didn't actually say that, though it did occur to me. The only sound I made was a noncommital grunt. The therapist left the room and said she'd be back in 20 minutes. I spent the 20 minutes paying attention to the tingly sensation I was feeling in my shoulder and trying to ignore the music, which was a crushingly mediocre collection of songs about God's love. Have you seen the South Park in which the kids join that singing group dedicated to spreading the word about the rainforest? "Doop-doop-de-doo, zatta-toot-WOW!" That's what these songs were like. I contemplated requesting some Skynyrd, because I thought it would be funny for a half-naked woman with a bunch of needles in her back to shout "Freebird!" over and over, but I knew I'd be lucky to get the Carmina Burana.

I was not lucky. However, I only had to endure four or five songs before it was time for the needles to come out. The therapist finished up my session by massaging my back and neck, and I was soon dressed and out of there.

The verdict...

PAIN OF TREATMENT: Negligible. Most of the needles didn't hurt at all. A few--the ones near an old ankle injury and the ones in the middle of my worst muscle knots--hurt slightly. And I really do mean "slightly."

RELIEF FROM TREATMENT: Significant. I could actually turn my head and look at where I was going as I backed out of my parking spot.

JESUS LEVEL: Highly elevated. This would not keep me from returning--in fact, I made a follow-up appointment for this Friday--but next time, I'm bringing the iPod.

After a brief discussion about the Ken doll's nipples...

SHASTA: "You know Barbie and Ken broke up, right?"

JEFF: "What?"

SHASTA: "Yeah, Barbie and Ken broke up. Mattel announced that it was 'time for them to move on,' or something like that. They needed to make room for a flashier Barbie. One that can get into all the clubs, wears more revealing clothes, and is available for casual sex to anyone with enough rum."

JEFF: "So the company just divorced them? Wait, were they even married?"

SHASTA: "No, they never did get married. A CNN article quoted a Mattel exec as saying they might have broken up because Ken didn't want to get hitched. All the Barbie Deluxe Betrothal Kits they sold were just the results of Barbie's optimism."

JEFF: "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free, eh, Ken?"

SHASTA: "Well, I think you could probably consider 43 years a common law marriage."

JEFF: "So who gets the 'Vette?"

SHASTA: "They haven't decided yet. The legal proceedings have gotten pretty nasty."

JEFF: "And Barbie has a new love interest?"

SHASTA: "His name is Blaine. He's a boogie boarder from Australia."

JEFF: "That's his profession? Boogie boarder?"

SHASTA: "Yeah. He's really tan, and he calls everyone 'mate,' even random old ladies on park benches and in lines at the grocery store. He doesn't say 'let's put a shrimp on the barbie' anymore, because he wants to be grilling cod, you know? Barbie's going to spend more time in the sun so that she can keep up aesthetically. Neither of them paid any attention to the lesson of Melanoma-Me Elmo."

JEFF: "I hate that Blaine guy already."

SHASTA: "The lawyers are shredding him. Plus, they've split the Dream House in two, and by order of the court, every little girl who owns one has to keep the halves at least ten feet apart. Kids have to check the calendar before they play at either half, because they can't spend time at Barbie's place when it's Ken's weekend. It's a mess, and the lawyers' fees have been huge."

JEFF, nodding: "Malibu Dershowitz doesn't come cheap."

D-City of Buena Park, Ban Sale of Fireworks
Vote Count Percentage
Yes 1567 49.6%
No 1593 50.4%

I really, really hope a Buena Park precinct or two has yet to be counted, because I was eagerly looking forward to not hearing explosions every fifteen minutes during the last half of June and first half of July. The "no on D" contingent has been vocal, sending direct mail with bullet points like this:

• Government takes away one more freedom


• Cuts $400,000 from our Community Groups


• Punishes All Citizens for the Actions of a Few


• Makes Traditional Patriotism a Crime

Even if we overlook the fact that the "no" side obviously feels that choices about capitalization are a matter of whimsy, I resent the implication that blowing shit up is a right. I also think it's ludicrous to claim that to ban fireworks is to banish patriotism, because if the only way you can express your overwhelming sense of pride in your community and country is to "set that there thing on fire," then you, my friend, are a piss-poor patriot. This is especially true when you consider that this issue is NOT ABOUT what happens on the 4th of July. If we were talking about one day, I wouldn't have been so delighted to see measure D appear on the ballot. What we're talking about is 3-4 weeks of extremely loud noises at irregular intervals. They're the kinds of noises that make you jump. The kinds of noises that make your dog shake, pant, and hide under your legs. The kinds of noises that have nothing to do with civic goodwill and a whole lot to do with being mu'fuckin Bruce Willis.

Let's take bullet points two and three together. You're selling $400,000 worth of fireworks. That's a lot of bang for your red, white, & blue buck in a town of just over 10 square miles. These are the actions of a whole lot more than "a few." Buena Park is one of only five OC cities in which fireworks are still legal, which means that every year, our town becomes the site for everyone else's pyrotechnic pilgrimages--and by "everyone else," I mean the 250,000 people who walk the two blocks from La Palma, Cypress, and Anaheim across city limits and into the BP DMZ.

Yeah, I know that the Buena Park Kiwanis Club and Assembly #231 of the International Order of the Rainbow for Girls make good cash hawking patriotism sticks every year. Whatever. Let them sell cake!

On a final note, I would like to say that if results from all the Buena Park precincts are included in these figures, then the fact that 3,160 people voted on measure D--in a town where over 60,000 people are 18 or over--is the most depressing thing of all.

You're not really supposed to love Los Angeles. Or if you do, you're supposed to do it ironically: you can love L.A., but only in a Randy Newman kind of way.

Part of the problem is that nobody really knows what anyone's talking about when they say "Los Angeles." "Los Angeles" could mean anything from south of the Grapevine to north of San Diego. It could mean any spot in the counties of Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Riverside, or Ventura--an enormous expanse of land that is home to over 17 million people. Your actual, physical experience of Los Angeles depends largely on your immediate neighborhood and the places you're able to travel by car. Forget the bus or the train; the chances you'll be able to get where you need to go with public transportation are slim. Jeff and I once shared an airport shuttle from LAX with a Danish family who came to do a quick Orange County theme park circuit and wanted to know how they might be able to get to downtown Los Angeles to do some sightseeing.

"Rent a car," we advised.

"There's no shuttle that goes that way?" the mother asked.

"Well, you could take an airport shuttle back to LAX and then take a cab to wherever you wanted to go from there," I answered, "but that would end up costing more than just getting a rental car."

"Could I take the train?" the father wanted to know.

I shook my head. "You could catch a cab, have them take you to the train station--which is about 20 minutes away--and then take a cab or buses to wherever you wanted to go, but that wouldn't be cheap, either. And you could spend all day just getting there and back."

I've lived here long enough to need periodic reminders of just how terrifying the prospect of driving in LA can seem to visitors. I forget how many people get that deer-in-headlights look when you give directions involving four different freeways. I forget what it's like to be truly afraid when nobody seems to be going slower than 80, or when someone who wants to go faster than that--there's always someone who wants to go faster--gains on you so quickly and menacingly that you mentally replay old hunting scenes from Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.

I actually like switching freeways: it breaks up the monotony of a trip, makes things more interesting. My former smoking patterns no doubt reinforced this. I went from smoking a pack a day to a pack and a half a day when I began commuting between Huntington Beach and Claremont four days a week. The trip was about 45 miles each way; I spent ten hours a week or so on the freeway (and considered it a reasonable, albeit longish commute). Stuck in traffic? Have a cigarette! Running late? Have a cigarette! Sick of all your tapes? Have a cigarette!

Eventually, the frequency of my responses to nicotine's siren song left my lungs feeling like they had ventured into waters sullied by a drunken oil rig captain, so I made an arbitrary rule: my commute took me along three freeways, and I could smoke one cigarette on each of them. Changing freeways suddenly seemed much more psychologically rewarding. If I needed pampering on a harrowing day, perhaps I would have an extra smoke when I reached the interchange from the 57 to the 22--a spot referred to as the "Orange Crush." Then, I would think about how I wanted a soda, because I can be ridiculously susceptible to the power of suggestion. Truth ads on the radio didn't make me want to quit smoking; they reminded me that I'd like to be lighting up again, especially at this point in my drive. After all, I'd come a long way, baby!

As for the freeway culture--and it is a type of culture, with its own sets of norms; indeed, the freeway culture is one of the few things that nearly all residents of the greater Los Angeles area have in common--once you're in, that's that. Gooble gobble, &tc. You might not be particularly fond of the Caltrans nation, but its natives rarely rattle you in any serious way. Yes, yes, I almost got killed today. What are we going to do about dinner?

A couple visiting from Denmark with their three children could hardly be expected to head over to the Hertz office with casual alacrity. Some might be happy to do so, but these tourists were not. It's just as well: you don't simply hop in a car and go sightseeing in downtown LA. You don't go downtown unless you have something to do there, something specific. Maybe you're seeing a play or visiting a museum. Being goal-oriented is the only thing that will give you the fortitude necessary to endure the labyrinthine freeway structure leading in and out of that particular area, where the signs are rarely posted with information as simple and helpful as "101 N." Instead, they say something like "Harbor Freeway" and then, in lieu of an actual direction, they give the name of a city you may or may not have heard of. Moreover, some of the freeways have more than one name. The 10, for example, could be the Santa Monica Freeway or the San Bernardino Freeway. Depends on where you are. Were you given directions that list numbers but no names? Are you unfamiliar with the geography of the Southland? Fabulous! Have fun going too far north and ending up in the parking lot at Dodger stadium!

A word on this "Southland" business: yes, that's what people call it here. Or rather, people on TV call it that. Heather Havrilesky, a television critic for Salon, refers to it as the Southland! (with exclamation point). I assume she does so because local newscasters--especially Paul Moyer--seem to take inordinate delight in pronouncing the word, which most people outside the Southland! would never, ever consider using in reference to the West Coast. The Southland is sun tea and biscuits with gravy and Flannery O'Connor and rocking chairs on porches. It's Alabama. It's Mississippi. It's Louisiana. It's not California. The exclamation point perfectly conveys the Hollywood touch people here give an otherwise normal word. The emphasis is so self-important that it's almost charming, like Jon Lovitz's "acting!" It's absurd, of course, but absurdity is always penciled in for lunch here in the Southland!

But back to your downtown excursion. Let's see how it went: you got confused, and you didn't know whether you were going north or south. Eventually, you tried exiting the freeway and getting back on again going the opposite direction, only to find you were going the right way in the first place. You fought your way across four crowded lanes of traffic at least three times, and you checked out the parking lot at Dodger Stadium. What did you manage to see when you eventually got downtown? Or, if you were on your way out of the downtown area--getting out is way harder than getting in; I blame the Eagles--what did you see while you were there?

Probably not much: some 99-cent stores, a couple of El Pollo Locos, some small establishments with signs in Spanish that advertise forged passports and driver's licenses. Some bars where you'll see the same faces at 2:00 pm and 2:00 am, features blurred with drink and smoke. (Blatant disregard of the state-wide smoking ban is a dive bar specialty). A handful of tall buildings. If you did enough wandering, you might have seen some scattered examples of more unusual architecture. Many of them are interesting, and some are quite beautiful, but few seem to fit with their surroundings: they are the Best Actor, not the outstanding ensemble cast. And, like the Best Actor, these standouts seem rather removed, perhaps even a bit unreal.

Let me give an example. You might have heard of the Westin Bonaventure; I had heard of it before I ever saw it in person. Amusingly enough, the source of my introduction to the Bonaventure was Fredric Jameson's Postmodernism: Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. I read selections from it for one of my grad seminars at Claremont, and I later returned to it when it appeared on the syllabus of one of my History & Theory classes at UC Irvine. It was slotted for the last week of classes, a time when my classmates and I were staring deadlines for all of our seminar papers right in the face. I chose to write on Postmodernism, and I honestly suspect I got an A on the paper simply because it was evident to the professor that I had actually finished the book. Completing your reading isn't generally considered noteworthy in graduate classes, but this is a decidedly big book, and the timing was bad, and Fredric Jameson's writing style is at best dense. Some of his harsher critics actually dismiss him as being altogether "unreadable." It's a mistake, because much of what he has to say is truly interesting. Of the four shiny towers that comprise the Bonaventure, he says this:

... with a certain number of other buildings, such as the Beaubourg in Paris or the Eaton Centre in Toronto, the Bonaventure aspires to being a total space, a complete world, a kind of miniature city; to this new total space, meanwhile, corresponds a new collective practice, a new mode in which individuals move and congregate, something like the practice of a new and historically originally kind of hypercrowd. In this sense, then, ideally the minicity of [architect John] Portman's Bonaventure ought not to have entrances at all, since the entryway is always the seam that links the building to the rest of the city that surrounds it: for it does not wish to be a part of the city but rather its equivalent and replacement or substitute. That is obviously not possible, whence the downplaying of the entrance to its bare minimum.

It sounds ridiculous, this idea that the Bonaventure is essentially a building that aspires to inaccessibility--until you go there. When you go there, you match up the address you had scribbled down with what you see in front of you, and then you drive around the building wondering how the hell you get inside. You might have to circle the block a second time before you realize that an opening in back of the building is actually the entrance to the hotel's parking garage. You descend a steep ramp, disappearing into the belly of the Bonaventure beast, and then you hand your keys to a valet who makes your car disappear.

Once inside, you find yourself in a lavish lobby with clear-glass elevators for each tower. Curiously, doing so doesn't seem to help you figure out where you need to go. Back to Jameson on this, who remarks on the ways in which the lobby seems intentionally disorienting:

What happens when you get there... can only be characterized as milling confusion, something like the vengeance this space takes on those who still seek to walk through it. Given the absolute symmetry of the four towers, it is quite impossible to get your bearings in this lobby; recently, color coding and directional signals have been added in a pitiful and revealing, rather desperate, attempt to restore the coordinates of an older space. I will take as the most dramatic practical result of this spatial mutation the notorious dilemma of the shopkeepers on the various balconies: it has been obvious since the opening of the hotel in 1977 that nobody could ever find any of these stores, and even if you once located the appropriate boutique, you would be most unlikely to be as fortunate a second time; as a consequence, the commercial tenants are in despair and all the merchandise is marked down to bargain prices.

I'm not so much interested in whether or not Jameson's description of the Bonaventure still holds true--or whether my own description of it still holds true, for that matter. The hotel might have changed since I last visited. If it has, the change is of no import. That's because what I'm getting at is not a singular description of what it's like to visit this particular hotel. What does interest me are the ways in which Jameson's impressions (and my own) of the Bonaventure capture an experience of space that is repeated elsewhere in downtown Los Angeles, and which, on a larger scale, is characteristic of the downtown LA area more generally. It's the experience of getting where you need to go and still not knowing where you are, of finally stepping into the center and discovering it's not the center at all--or if it is, being there isn't actually "centering," because the space somehow resists the bounding that would make it easy for you to translate your physical experience into a coherent conceptual map.

You probably won't be surprised to learn that I think this is crucial to understanding how "Los Angeles" can come to mean an expanse of several thousand square miles that contain more than 30 cities with populations of over 100,000 people. What do you do when your city doesn't have a center? You recenter, and then you recenter again, and again. None of these new spots is THE center of course, because there isn't one. But they continue to multiply as more people are drawn to the area, and this process of growth--the proliferation of urban simulacra--tends to happen along horizontal axes. The space spreads outward, not upward, sprawling in in a manner that has achieved its closest architectural realization in the strip malls so ubiquitous in these parts. They are links on a massive daisy chain.

I have all sorts of thoughts on what this might actually mean, and I might take up the train of thought later on. If I do, the cars on that train will look something like this: 1) LA: Not At All Chicago; 2) Some connections between sprawl, architecture, and individualism; and/or 3) The film industry and its function as the default conceptual "center" of LA. But now, I have to make some phone calls. There's a big storm, you see, and a good deal of water is leaking in through my chimney. I'm no seasoned homeowner, but I'm pretty sure that's not good.

It was our seventh anniversary yesterday, so we celebrated by going to the OC fairgrounds to see the Cirque du Soleil Varekai show, which was absolutely gorgeous. These performers do things with their bodies that really shouldn't be possible. I remember seeing a documentary on Cirque du Soleil in which one of the show's designers said that the performers literally trust him with their lives when they begin to execute the moves he has conceptualized, and after watching some of those acts, I couldn't help but think that the designer must have excellent powers of persuasion. "And here's the part where you dangle in the air from a rope looped around the back of your neck," he says, and nobody laughs at him. Or if they do, they laugh and then dangle in the air from ropes looped around the back of their necks, so the laughing doesn't much matter.

I think the show is so appealing precisely because of the danger. You are constantly aware as you watch that 75% of these feats could result in the death of at least one performer. You don't want them to die, of course. On the contrary. But you do want them to be human, and thus fallible, and thus fall-able--it raises the stakes. A couple of the artists made minor mistakes during their acts--one performer lost his balance while perching on his partner's feet, and one of the younger artists didn't quite manage to catch a rope after he tossed it in the air and did a few flips while it fell--and it occurred to me that a handful of minor flaws actually make the show better. Nothing gets the crowd behind an acrobat like watching him flub a move, get back up, and nail it the second time. If all the performers had to do everything twice, the show would get tedious, but a dropped rope or two remind you that the strap dancers who are on next could very well knock each other silly as they fly across the room, and the acuteness of that knowledge makes you draw in your breath a little more sharply, hold it a little tighter.

While Jeff and I were having cocktails afterward and discussing high points, I mentioned the juggler, who actually managed to keep several small balls in the air by juggling them with his mouth. His mouth! "If there's any physical justice in this world," I told my husband, "that man is gay."

The only negative was that going to such shows requires being around large batches of random public, and being around large batches of random public always exposes you to certain types of show-goers. In our little section alone, we had:

THE NARRATOR - This person feels an overwhelming need to translate visual stimulus into verbal stimulus. You might appreciate her companionship under certain circumstances--if you were blind, for example--but under normal circumstances, she tells you nothing you don't already know. If she does tell you something you don't already know, it's something you don't want to know, like how she "really has to pee." She's the kind of person who informs her friends that smoking is bad for them.

THE RHYTHM SECTION - She likes to stomp her foot on the floor when the music gets fast and emotionally stirring. This makes the event feel more festive, particularly when the floor is made of wood and makes deep, satisfying THUD noises. The reverberations on the back of your chair feel especially good when THE RHYTHM SECTION happens to be located right behind you. We will, we will rock you. We here at majorweather, inc. believe that THE RHYTHM SECTION enjoyed one too many high school assemblies.

THE HOPPER - THE HOPPER cannot stand actually moving within his own row. Inspired by all the leaping he saw before the intermission, he hops into his seat from the row behind him, kicking at least one person in the shoulder as he does so. THE HOPPER is one of those assholes who drives on the shoulder during rush hour, because he can't be bothered to wait around in lanes like everyone else. He's also fond of crossing double yellow lines and moving into the carpool lane whenever it strikes his fancy.

THE BITCH - THE BITCH absolutely must complain about the most egregious offenses committed by random batches of public. If she is seated directly in front of THE RHYTHM SECTION, she will loudly ask her partner about "the deal with the stomper" as everyone files out for intermission. If she is kicked by THE HOPPER, she will make sure he knows it hurt and recommend that he just ask her to get up next time. THE BITCH has been known to yell at little kids for littering. She is actually me. She can't help it, and she thinks it might be genetic.

The trouble with humans isn't just the smell.