Saturday, Jun. 07, 2003 / 12:39 p.m.

~Just Different Things~

Last night was the second night of the week that involved no after work computer time. Just didn't even turn it on. And how nice, how nice not to worry about SPAM or who's reading this or who's not or who's hassling me here, or there, or anywhere, or how long any page will take to load, or how many hours of my life will be sucked from me while I sit in this chair being careful to look away every so often to protect my eyes from too much strain and glare, etc., etc. And after hours typing is not good for me either.

So, a night off. Ahhhh....

Not that my computer is the bane of my existence, on the contrary, it's obviously something I enjoy immensely, just being here, in this room, surrounded by books, and a cat or two sitting on the faux Oriental, cat toys strewn about, clicking on this link or that, reading diaries, or journals, or news stories, sending instant letters to people far away, or near. I love the Interweb.

Alas.

Night before last I was watching "The Daily Show" and an actor named Tyrese was on, and I may not be spelling his name correctly, but he did that laugh, that laugh thing I was writing about in the previous entry, the thing that sounds not quite like loogie hocking, but maybe like spitting, or maybe like hissing, but phlegmier, really hard to describe in writing, but I could illustrate aurally (verbally?) in a second, and I thought, Hey, he's doing it, that's IT! And I realized, as if I hadn't before, that it's a thing that's going around, like using slang becomes popular through imitation, this is a thing, predominantly African-American, i.e. black, as I prefer to say (hey, if I'm white, you're black, or else call me European-American, thank you), as I've yet to hear a white person do it, and not all blacks do it either, but I notice it at work every single day and it drives me crazy.

And Jon Stewart was giving the guy a hard time about his nearly unintelligible dialect and language anyway, i.e. ebonics, and threatened to break out the Yiddish! It was very funny really. These two men from totally different backgrounds, yet Americans, having difficulty essentially speaking the same language. I suppose it's the same between Croats and Serbs, or is it? Shiites and Sunis? No, I don't know how to spell those either, but America is not only a giant pot of melting cultures, it is very segregated, not necessarily always melting, and the differences amongst us are huge at times. Yet we're all just folks.

Then I heard a guy at work do it too, that thing, that back of the throat laugh thing. I'd initially thought it was only black women, but now I realize it's just black people, and as soon as I hear a white person or an Asian person or a Hispanic/Latino person do it, I'll add to my theory.

That it could be a trend, as in slang, as in fashion (Capris, anyone?) that is rapidly spreading across our great nation. As the use of 'like'. Loudon Wainwright III wrote a song about that one, it's called "Cobwebs", on his "Grown Man" album. Without mentioning the word at all in the song, it's clearly what he's alluding to:

"Yeah it mighta started back with Jack Kerouac
Probably more than likely it was Maynard G Krebs
It's the four-letter word that used to mean 'as if'
And the meaning's covered in cobwebs
Cobwebs"

Like how many people who hear this song, or read the lyrics even, like know who Maynard G Krebs is?! (I do! - but I'm old)

But really, I remember when Valley Girl Speak was brought to the East Coast through Frank Zappa's collaboration with his daughter Moon Unit in the song "Valley Girl", and we all imitated it, laughing at the ridiculousness. Now, oh NOW, if you watch a show like "The Bachelor" or "For Love Or Money" or any other program in which you have the misfortune to hear young women from across this country speak, if they're not from the South, they'll sound like that very Valley Girl Moon Unit made famous.

Grating, it is. I find it grating anyway, but I also find that when I speak really quickly I say things like, "So I'm like, oh my god!, and then she was like, oh my god!, and so then I was like...."

What IS that?

Hopefully, one day, this too shall pass. Along with that horrible guttural laugh thing the people are doing.

It so happens that one of my coworkers who does not laugh like that, Kukla, is going to go to a club with me tonight, and I'm pretty excited actually. I haven't been out, like 'out' (and there, 'like' means what it should mean, thank you) in some time. Months, I'd guess. But we shall hear live Bossa Nova, and this will be fun, I think.

And she'll be like, omigod, I love this club! And I'll be all, omigod, me too!

Hah!

Here's something else, really weird, when I come home, normally, first thing I do when I open the door is push whatever cat is right there back into the apartment. Second thing, after closing the door behind me and locking it automatically, of course, is plopping down on the floor to remove my shoes. Not for any spiritual reason, but because shoe bottoms are filthy and I don't want to track grease, or whatever, on my carpet, and my cats remain unvaccinated and I don't want to transfer any viruses, I'm just careful, shoes are dirty.

Okay, that's not the weird part. The weird part is that when I sat to take off my shoes day before yesterday I noticed my pants were unbuttoned and unzipped. And I had NO recollection of doing it.

I'd stopped to get the mail, I'd come straight from work, I had no memory of my pants being undone during the drive home, I must've come in and gotten a head start on the third or fourth thing I always do, change clothes. But I couldn't remember doing it. Freaked me out.

It's like when I'm looking for my toothbrush and I realize I've put it in the drawer instead of the medicine cabinet, where it lives. Or I look right at Norma and call her Gladys, or vice versa. I'm getting old, and that's scary.

So I'm listening to "Grown Man", because it is a good album, not my favorite of Loudon's (it does have some exceptionally beautiful songs on it though, like "Dreaming", one of my favorite songs of all time), and I miss him coming here anually to play at my favorite live music venue. I miss him. I hope he's all right. He'd gotten back to his acting, had a sitcom wherein he was a 'regular', but it was canceled, and now what? Where is he? I should research. (Last time I saw him perform I hung out after and shook his hand. He seemed so uncomfortable interacting with his fans, but I had to tell him how much I love his music, how much he means to me.)

Something else I have to research is the title of a movie I saw last night. The cable directory said it was "The Crush", with Alicia Silverstone, but clearly it was not. Andie McDowell played a headmistress at a school in England, and she had these two really close girlfriends who were all concerned about her spinsterhood, and their own, and then Andie meets up with this young hottie who used to be a student, and they begin a torrid affair, and, well, I love the 40 year old woman, 25 year old man thing, seeing as how I'm getting old. And I like young men.

But she was all worried about it, all 'hung up' on the age difference, and though he asked her to marry him, professed his love for her in front of her friends, she was cautious, too, too cautious, and went ahead with wedding plans, all the while keeping it a secret from the people of the small, and therefore quaint English countryside town.

And then? Oh man, as is typical of one of these stories, she's found true love, but she's 40, and he's 25, so she doubts it, right? And her friends are concerned he'll run off with someone else, so they try to frame him into cheating, and the plan goes awry, she sees him with her best friend, they fight, she throws him out of her lovely English Country Manor House, and he gets hit by a truck and KILLED!

Christ!

Yeah, yeah, how life affirming, how positive, YOU TOO CAN FIND LOVE AT ANY AGE, and it may just be with a guy who is outrageously exciting and attractive, and talented and FORBIDDEN, but it will be real, and you will doubt it until you LOSE him, and then it's too late.

Ah...... but you will be pregnant, and always have the baby to remind you of him. Him. The one you LOST because you were STUPID. And he died thinking you were ashamed of him. Grrrreat.

Sad, sad, tearjerker thing of a movie, with pretty scenery, and Andie McDowell, despite what you may think, can act her ass off.

There's a big Peace March happening today, and I'm not going. I don't feel a part of the Peace Movement here. Sure, I've jumped in, I've chatted, I've socialized, but I don't feel close to anyone. And despite the list servs which still tell me what's going on, like this thing today, no one ever writes to me personally to ask if I'm gonna be there. Like Meditation Boy, upon whom I had the big crush (speaking of younger men), nor even Sandy. Who is flaky as hell.

So fuck it. People are still being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, but there's nothing we can do. And Hamas is still organizing suicide bombings, and they'll never be happy, road map or wall map, or whatever, and Israelis are still killing Palestinians, and there's nothing we can do, besides get ourselves killed by tanks or tractors, or whatever, over there.

I feel helpless politically, and friendless, despite my fun, and former, excursions with Sandy. It feels over to me.

But tonight, Bossa Nova, baby. Something to look forward to.

Cost of the War in Iraq
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