I was registering for my silversmithing class today, and waiting was abject tedium. The local college is like an unwieldy machine from another age, its movements and progress elephantine. I waited in one line twice, each time for about 45 minutes. There were about 15 people in front of me both times, with 3 desks processing that line. I felt like above them should have been a sign reading "dozens and dozens served." Hopefully this is no indication of what the semester holds in store.

I read somewhere recently that certain great thinkers of our age believe humanity will bring about its own extinction. The thought process is that if we don't render the planet unliveable by virtue of nuclear war and its concomitant pollutions, then a hapless scientist will trigger some reaction or release a diabolical agent in a lab which will kill us all. I agree a reaction may occur that sets the very planet tilting asunder, killing all carbon-based life forms, but I don't think it will occur in a laboratory: I think the reaction will occur in a church in a suburb of Dallas. I have just come from that church, having narrowly escaped with my life. These agents of chaos doomed to make worlds collide are a pair of ladies. Lynn is a lady of a certain age with a bustline stretching clear to the next county replete with large pendulous necklace dangling from the precipice. Unfortunately, Lynn is a very huggy person in a grandmotherly sort of way, and after you've nearly drowned in her embrace, you will stink of her cheap and bountiful perfume until next you bathe and shower. The odor is eyewatering, hideous and strong. A hug from Lynn always makes me feel as if I'm carrying the essence of a thrift store about with me, cubic miles of worn, unwashed clothing, skin cells of countless humans clotting my olfactory. Anita is a lifetime chain-smoker with skin the color of foie gras. Think braunschweiger or vienna sausage i.e., not healthy. You know when you leave a vase of flowers sitting after it has lost its bloom, and you dump it out and a green foglike odor nearly flattens you? That's Anita's breath. Anita is in the autumn of her years and has hygiene issues. Why think of petty niceties such as a good personal washing when there are so many cigarettes yet to be smoked in this world? Bad enough to sit a mere 12 feet from Anita and smell her Eau de Dew Da Day, but the coughs were what got me--from that distance the odor of her diseased lungs made me gag. So, here is my theory - if Anita and Lynn should come in close proximity, the demons which conspire to outstink all others would engage in an Armageddon-like battle, in effect achieving cold fusion. The outraged ions, glancing off each other, would set afoot on the planet an odor so implacable as to extinguish life as we know it. So, if sometime in this lifetime everything ceases to exist, well, I'll know why.

People have been telling me they've heard Terminator and Charlie's Angels were bad movies. Well, I've seen them both and I liked them. I don't go to the cinema to see a flick like that and measure it against "Withnail and I," "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" or "A Clockwork Orange." I base my judgement on whether the film seems a satisfying diversion or not. It's not that I don't have an opinion on flaws I too can see in these movies, just that I think the good outweighs the bad in many cases. I am honestly thrilled to bits when I can unequivocally recommend something like Finding Nemo, but for everyone to be so smug and superior seems a bit disingenuous. Righteous indignation from the public (we have higher standards, they seem to say) is fatuous indeed in the age of Reality television.

OK. I finally saw the latest Star Wars installment, that clone war thingie,and I have some questions for someone more versed in Star Wars than myself. First of all, didn't that Dooku guy look like a Harry Potter wannabe on that airborne moped thingie near the end? When I saw that, I said "Ciao!" a la Eddie Izzard. Also, that Djago Fett (sorry, don't know the spelling on these names) had that 1950's japanese spaceman outfit with the jet pack--what's with all the retro stuff in this one??? I half expected someone to shout "Will! Penny! Get back in the ship! Danger, Will Robinson!" Uniblab could have blended nicely, or the maid from the Jetsons. Oh, and where'd they get the annakin actor? A soap opera? Ewan Macgregor seemed natural in his role, but it's too bad he couldn't have been the hot-blooded Annakin, oui, ladies? OK, I realize that Annakin and Amidala have been through a lot together, what with nearly getting executed and all, and we know from eps 4-6 that they are destined to, um, er, be together, but... OK. She IS a politician, and heck - if she had to break up with that 12 year old artist, don't you think she's going to resist the impulse to give up the bootie to a guy who slaughtered a Bantu village? ...and on that score, aren't we all just filled with dread of the scene in the next installment when Amidala lay dying in dramatic fashion and Annakin gets a chance to flex his thespian chops for real? I mean, the chest-heaving nightmare scene fills me with forboding of what's to come. ...so THAT is why Anakin's voice morphs into James Earl Jones: he's ashamed of all the whining he did in his early years and will try to appear butch. And it's a sad statement that the only actor to totally kick out the jams was Yoda, an animated character. Ass kick did he. Anyway. All that is by way of saying I loved it. Can't wait to see it again.

A very disturbed person I know (one who can't say "thank you" for huge favors but instead offers the old saw "Kum by yah") quotes someone named Dr. Phil with annoying frequency. I assume Dr. Phil is in some way affiliated with either Survivor, The Bachelor, or Oprah! since those sorts of shows are the constant companion of said offensive person. I do not begrudge the public access to armchair psychology, and I do believe there must be a great deal of good that comes of people talking of their woes and sharing their stories of extracting themselves from said painful situations. However, when one's main source of fodder for conversation with live human beings is to recount psychobabble gleaned from these tv programs, I feel some reflection is required. Much has been made of the term "co-dependency" which is an annoying notion in and of itself. On my planet, people depend on each other, and not always to meet psychologically unhealthy needs. It's called having relationships, and while things may not always be a perfect balance in the give/take department, nothing and no one is ever perfect, and somehow people manage to be happy together in spite of the flaws and imbalance. In a recent chat with the Dr. Phil acolyte (I'll call her "Jane") I happened to mention that my husband utterly forgot my birthday a couple of years ago. She said 'Your husband forgot your birthday because you gave him permission to forget your birthday.' Excuse me? People are being led to believe that they are responsible for the actions or inactions of another person? Allow me to say that before we were married (key phrase, that, as everything changes) my husband's first birthday gift to me was a food processor and a $1000 handbag, which set a standard I expected to be kept for future such events. At no time did I say, imply, or think "Honey, my standards have dropped and I give you permission to forget my birthday and special events in the future." Is it no longer common knowlege that some people are just inconsiderate jerks who act in ways abusive of all who are misfortunate to be in their inner circle? Is it not possible that a person who is generous and kind in general could have been momentarily thoughtless? We have passed the politically correct buck to the point that the offender is no longer responsible for their actions in any situation, and the victims are to be blamed in every situation. All this great advice and myriad tips for better living notwithstanding, Jane is one of the more miserable people I ever have met. If she asked me, I would say "You have allowed the television to make you miserable. You have given the tv permission to ruin your life. Try something different and go out and HAVE a life!" Occasionally I complain that I don't seem to have enough time to accomplish all I need to on a daily basis. I could blame the computer (my personal idiot box), but the fact is that I am the sentient adult in this situation. Rather than sit around whining and dreading all I have to do today, I am going to practice what I preach, and right now, I'm walking away from my tormentor.

I saw Guy Ritchie's remake of "Swept Away" starring Madonna. Not as crappy as I expected after the pic was so soundly lambasted by critics--it was funny in what seemed intentional ways. Madonna looks a bit rough a lot of the time, and once she is on her back on the beach and you could count her ribs. She looks like a bin liner full of plastic hangers. If she were a piece of chicken, she would be the last one left in the bucket, all dry and stringy. I think the criticism of her acting in general has been off the mark--for 20 years she's acted well enough to persuade millions she's a good singer.

Visiting the Pacific Northwest, I have come to the conclusion that I wear more makeup and hair product than every woman I have seen in the past 7 days combined. I suppose to them I look like the whore of Babylon. That's ok. In this case, I don't mind being the negative example: someone has to step up to the plate and inspire these women to look scrawny and dull. I wear that mantel with pride. Someone pass me a doughnut.

"You couldn't get a clue during the clue mating season in a field full of horny clues if you smeared your body with clue musk and did the clue mating dance!"

--Edward Flaherty

Oh the humanity! Oh cruel fate that has torn them asunder! Nicolas Cage seemed poised for a major connection with the King ever since his dweeb-cum-Elviswannabe turn in _Peggy Sue Got Married_. Then Patricia Arquette did the ding-dong honeypot Elvis fanatic in _True Romance_. WHY oh WHY would any guy divorce Patricia Arquette??? But I digress. Didn't we ALL already know Lisa Marie was a bit tetched? Marrying someone else from a famous family who grew up in the spotlight was bound to be fraught with nightmare problems, not to mention her prior marriage to the über-peculiar Michael Jackson. Early buzz on the Lisa Marie/Nicolas union was that Nicolas wanted to close Graceland to the public and live there. In Memphis. Imagine living with the sham-luxe 70's decor of the Jungle Room. I'm guessing Lisa Marie didn't find that such a quaint ideer, considering her wealth is expanded exponentially per annum by virtue of the white trash cavalcade that trots through the disused home of the King. Incidentally, one of my favorite Elvis stories involves his longtime maid at Graceland, who arduously collected hairs when she cleaned around his "throne" for years and years. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was collecting artifacts with which to festoon its new showplace in Cleveland Ohio several years back, this maid offered for sale the baggie of toilet hairs. There were no bidders. Michael Jackson is known for odd predilections, including ownership of the skeleton of David Merrick, the elephant man. My little Gordian Knot theory on Elvis would have been complete if Michael Jackson had tracked down the Elvis maid and bought that bag of pubes. Someday, in the Enquirer you'll read the post-mortem inventory of the gloved one's creepatorium, and listed will be an odd ziploc bag of short-and-curlies, and you'll remember I told ya so.

She is draped across the sun-warmed mosaic tabletop, another page peeling from her finite stack of days. Her little body is heartbreakingly beautiful with its twitching paws and wet nose, and a taut little belly whose spots tan and darken when the long fingers of sunlight creep farther through our windows in winter months. If it could be bottled, I would keep this moment forever.

I awoke at 6:00am today, too early to get up. I went back to sleep and had the most amazing dream. I was in a car, driving out of a city on a very long bridge which traversed the confluence of several rivers. My mother and father were in front, I was in the back seat and free to focus on the frozen city and churning river. Suddenly, a great tidal surge of water burst the banks of one branch of the river, rushing the main and flooding the banks as I looked back. We passed another branch and the same thing, then we were across the bridge, climbing a road chiseled into a dark rocky crag. Icy snow coated everything like a century of dust, when a huge wave came across the top of the mountain crashing to the road behind us. I looked back on the cold bitter scene, all that destruction unfolding like a poem. Then we were over the mountain, and I saw Big Ben rendered in crystal-like ice, falling.

Good cafeteria food is the next best thing to eating at Grandma's. I fear that with the demise of the Baby Boomer population, good cafeterias will go the way of the Drive-In theater, and then where will we be? I regularly visit a cafeteria which has been a fixture in Dallas for nigh-on to seventy years with an unchanged menu for nearly as long. The food is impeccable--the angel-kissed cousin of the slop that is served up in similarly titled national chains.

I count my ability to quash my gag reflex as a mark of distinction. Ponder my ability to never miss a beat eating my heavenly egg custard at my favorite haunt whilst geriatric Mr. Hokka Loogie tries to cough up his emphysema in the booth directly behind me. Call me Miss Jackson, because I'm in control.


I found myself eating in one of those national chains recently, as the Dallas cafeteria I love was not convenient to our locale, and I was bent to the will of people too annoying to argue with. Despite my inimitable ability to suppress the involuntary actions of my alimentary canal, I found it a bit, um, distasteful to be sitting in the very cafeteria where my cousin's brother-in-law had a disturbing anti-culinary experience. At this point allow me to say that I'm very open-minded about the choices of others when it comes to cuisine. We all have our little preferences. Just because I don't find toenails appetizing, who am I to begrudge my little Jack Russell Terrorist the fruits of my clippings? As goes my doglet, so goeth the population, apparently. This distant relation was sitting in that very cafeteria (who knows--perhaps at our very table?) with the bald-faced bad taste to attempt to eat potato-skins slathered with cheese, bacon, chives, and other usual aneurism-on-a-plate style toppings. One particular 'tater-skin was extra-chewy. He said it tasted exceedingly foul, and was kind of rubbery, but he kept thinking it would start to taste better. Hello? Eventually, he abandoned this notion and spat the offending article from his mouth, only to find it was the severed finger tip of an employee who had self-amputated in the kitchen there recently. Person ran from the establishment, finger in tow, and contacted a lawyer. Good thing, too, as he came down with Meningitis. Coincidence or Psychic Phenomenon?
Let us review: Be picky about cafeterias, never under any circumstances order the potato skins, and if it tastes nasty and is rubbery, spit that shit out!

I know a guy who had a spectacular wreck in his Trans Am when he was in high school. Driving while under the influence of testosterone, he achieved such momentum that the inverted vehicle sped unabated on the pavement, glass T-tops bursting and pulling the butt-length blond hair of his girlfriend between the roof of the car and the road surface as she dangled from her safety belt. He is my husband's brother. If my spouse and I breed, that will be in my children's gene pool. That, and my death-row relative. I pray for daughters.
Welcome to my world.