My very first job was as a file clerk at a place called City Electric, tucked into a corner of New York's garment district, near my high school. I made minimum wage, which at the time was $3.35. (Isn't it horrific how little that's gone up, considering the comparative economic changes of the ensuing 35 years?)

It's sad how little I remember about it (and a lot of stuff at that age); I recall the warm creamy yellow of the second-sheet carbon copies and the red invoice numbers in the upper left-hand corner. There was a subset of older numbers, which were in other file drawers. I realize now that those were just the ones where the individual store or salesman still had an old pad, but they seemed to be miniature archaeological exhibits.

I worked for some affable old men, Ben and Archie–and the big boss, who might have been a George–and who worked in the same room with the rest of us, with its high ceilings, hanging fluorescent lamps, and aged linoleum in beige, maroon, and black. No desk toys in those days–everybody's desks were piled high with stacks of paper. I think Ben was the accountant. (Which, if you think about it, made sense, him being in the invoice department.) They were incredibly nice, and I grew to love them dearly. I don't remember not wanting to come in to work.

I don't really remember exactly what City Electric did. I know they'd been around for at least a couple of decades at that time; their logo was one of those solid old-timey things with Art Deco lettering. But it had a sense of warmth and comfort that you find very rarely in the job market; a sense of timelessness.

I lasted the school year. I'm not sure if I got fired. I hope not. My memory is of not getting the job back the following year, or something like that. I'm not sure. The next job was at a company which bought up scrap steel and aluminum (with the creative name of Metal Purchasing); I think they both essentially laid me off because there wasn't any more work to do in the slow summer months.

(No, come to think of it, I wasn't fired, because I remember the first time I was, and what a shock it was to my system: I'd been working making sandwiches on a line in a fern bar somewhere, and I went pee too often. It's a jungle out there, with perilous roads overhung with alfalfa sprouts.)

But City Electric lives on in my memory as a cozy place, with it somehow raining outside, and the kindly Ben and Archie in their paper-filled corners providing a sense of stability. Working wasn't scary back then–no resumes, no training sessions, no pressure. I had a basic little job, and being able to handle integer counting, I did it well, and they liked me. I think on some level I've wanted to re-create that sense of solidity ever since.

But now I have the security (if not the money) of being my own boss. As I write this, the sky is that same comfortable grey, and I can have all the hot tea I want. It's just that writing is almost infinitely harder than counting some days (an irony if you look at the scores from every standardized test I've ever taken), and I don't have Ben and Archie to metaphorically cuddle me warm.

Oh well. Plinky prompt answered, blog posted. First stacks of the day put where they're supposed to be in the drawers of cyberspace. What next, those old-number outliers in the rich and strange land of original composition, or the humdrum task of wearing down my desk's stack of edit?

Ben? Archie?

(Plinky prompt: What do you do to stay healthy?)

Feh. Although at least I can answer this without gym guilt.

 Right now my main exercise routine comes under the Taoist philosophy of wu wei–do nothing, and everything shall be done. It’s making me crazy. This is me, being healthy on my butt. I’m the one transcribing New York Public Library menus (http://menus.nypl.org/ — kidding aside, it’s for a good cause) as part of my attempt to amuse myself while anchored to my couch.

And why, you ask? It happened like this:

I have arthritis in my knees, partially a side effect  of an endocrine glitch, hyperparathyroiditis, which is the adult form of rickets. Being quite heavy hasn’t helped, and I am solidly middle-aged on top of it. Thus, I’ve become used to being in pain when I walk. But by the spring of last year, it had become damn near crippling, and I limped my sorry butt into orthopedics.

The nice orthopods gave me cortisone shots which made me feel as if I were Gene Kelly doing a number entitled, “I Can Walk!” I continue to have a spiffy response to it, and every three or four months, I go in for a tune-up. Unfortunately, I’m one of those curious little souls who ask questions, and at tune-up #1, it was, “By the way, what’s this funny shooting pain?”

(ominous music)

Well, Skipper, it’s a sign that your Achilles tendon is considering going blooie. You hurt it over a year ago, but ignored it because everything else hurt too. It’s grown a lump the size of a large prune. ‘ja think that maybe you shoulda looked into this before?

I limped out in a boot, and was told to come back in six weeks. That was in the very beginning of last September, eight months ago.

It was the black foam variety, and after about a month it fell apart and was flapping like a pirate boot. They put me in an Aircast that was a smidgy too small because that was what they had.

(Re Aircasts: See the pic; they’re the things that look like part of stormtrooper costumes. The small weighs four pounds, and the medium five, which is like clumping around with a bag of sugar stapled to your shin. They have chambers which can be inflated to fit snugly, and three massively no-nonsense velcro straps. And every single time I would think of the shorter, heavier, infinitely less-cool-looking foam thing that had disintegrated, I would put it on with big chirpy love.)

Happily, when I went back for my checkup the prune had diminished–but now that it was gone, there was obviously a walnut underneath. Another month or so.

And for five months, I would go in every month or so, and the damned thing just refused to heal. Finally, the PA and I both saw the hand writing on the wall, or the toe scrabbling weakly in the sand, and the attending came in and said that I either spent six weeks booted-crutched-AND *O*F*F* it–or there would be surgery, which would entail the same thing anyway.

(more ominous music)

I’d seen a blog the night before (complete with oversharing pictures) about the horrors of this procedure, and I just . . . sort of . . . stopped after a while. I’ve had (really) over a dozen full-throttle abdominal procedures (girly stuff mostly) and think autopsies are kewl. But it looked like ow-ow-ow-ow-ow, so even though I know damn well you don’t blog if you have a normal outcome, I decided to be uncharacteristically compliant. I am now on a couch in a corner containing seemingly everything I own so I don’t have to fetch it. (You have NO idea how much you walk around at home until you hurt yourself.)

At least the new Aircast fits, which is a vast improvement, but it’s about a pound heavier, bringing it up to five pounds. The lump is getting smaller. But at five weeks, I’m not completely hopeful. One way or another, I see the truly spiffy PA in about ten days, and I will *not* be doing the Gene Kelly on my way out.

I want to dance. Hell, I want to walk. I want to not have carrying things up and down stairs to be tactically planned–it was enough of a pain in the ass without the boot, but at least once I was on level ground . . .

. . . it hurt, and I keep forgetting that. But I walked and danced anyway, and because pain is for weenies (as we are told by everything remotely associated with athletics), I toughed it out. I Just Did It . . . and now I’m Just Sitting On It.

I have a fish phobia. It’s not dire–I’m fine with pictures and whatnot, and I’m usually down with the Nova, but fishtanks can give me the willies, free or not.

The first time I saw one of those sucky fish glued to the side of an aquarium, I did the girly scream and dance. I was an adult. In public. And my most terrifying moment in recent memory, in terms of a sense of imminent doom, came while snorkeling in Hawaii. OK, coral–goes with the rest of the surreal I’m-really-here Hawaii experience; fish, yeah, they live here, I suppose, but they’re over there and I’m over . . . um, they’re over . . . um, there are a lot . . .

I heard myself scream through my snorkel, which was pathetic beyond belief, and I banged a uey and swam back to shore as hard and as fast as I could, which wasn’t very impressive, as I’m not much of a swimmer. It still literally makes me shudder to remember that desperate terrified battle to avoid . . . being touched or eaten or something.

I sobbed on the shore, until my spouse came to console me. He was nice enough to not be laughing very hard, but I was homicidal, as he’d checked the sitch out ahead of time and pronounced it largely fish-free. Apparently, between the time he’d been there and the time he’d fetched me back, somebody must have fed them one of those candy bar things, and they were . . . looking for more food. Which I already viscerally knew. (You can get these nummy sticks of about the size of a banana that will attract swarms of the things so they will come and nibble it out of your hand. This is incomprehensible to me.)

Big aquariums require me to be brave. But I like them. They’re sort of like horror movies with a gift shop. In fact, I like fish in the abstract–and in an attempt to man up to the piscine world, I used to own an aquarium. One with teeny fish, not the ones the size of a salad plate like in my doctor’s waiting room. I grew fond of them, and declared war on a snail infestation with self-righteous fervor.

But I never knew what the deal was. I’ve had a fair share of trauma in my fascinating life, but none involving fish as far as I knew. The flopping and skittering maybe? Nah. There are lots of things I’m not keen on touching because they move like that, but I don’t go screaming through my snorkel over them.

Then tonight, one of those childhood memories hit, and it makes sense now.

My dad was a fish tank guy, and I loved them. I would watch them for hours. Back when I was five, I loved going to the fish store and helping pick new ones out. He had a Jack Dempsey whom he named “Hannibal the Cannibal” for good reason, so we went to the fish store regularly. (Dad eventually gave up on the defenseless mollies and snackfood neons and switched to bigger, tougher fish.)

On one trip, I saw a tank full of the cutest itty frogs you ever did see. Adorable. Maybe two inches long. They stayed in the water, and swam around, and ate fish food. I was completely enamored, so Dad got some. That afternoon, I woke up from my post-shopping nap and heard my father cursing in the living room. I ran in to see Hannibal swimming around with the still-kicking legs of one of my tiny frogs protruding from his mouth. Oh, the poor, poor little frog! How horrible to get digested to death! My father extracted him, but of course it was too late.

Thinking back, this was the first time I had ever seen something I cared about being killed before my eyes–I had no control; I didn’t even see justice for my dead: Dad refused to flush him; for some reason he really liked the bastard. Hannibal the Cannibal became the repository for all my rage and fear; he himself had been a trusted (if despised) part of my life. Now this slimy little creature was swimming around unscathed and unrebuked, despite being a bringer of death.

Obviously an overreading in adult terms, but I was five. Come on now. Besides, 43 years later, I still want to bludgeon the sheeping thing to death with a chopstick. Poor little frog. I’m curious now as to whether the peaceable and upright, the clean-living and frog-eschewing fish I meet in the future will lose some of their terror after my squarely facing my trauma. I hope so.

Do sharks count?

1.5.10

(Plinky prompt: What are the 3 most significant historic events that have occurred in your lifetime?)

1) The 1969 Apollo landing. I was six, and what I remember was hardly being able to keep my eyes open, but gamely being there for it. I was on the fold-out couch in the living room, and had to be awoken when it got near. So I remember that small step for man being taken while I was in the unpleasant why-am-I-up? and why-am-I-doing-this? state of having pulled an all-nighter or getting up at an hour before oh-dawn-thirty for May Day to see the Morris dancers sing the sun up.

(I’d say something sententious involving the sunrise and celestial motifs, but then I’d have to slap myself.)

I did some quick Wikisearch, and found that it was at about 11-ish at night for me. I was allowed to stay up for New Year’s Eve, but I think this was different because of the anticipation involved. I did find myself crying; I think it may have been the first time I realized that there was something poignant about human history being made.

2) Right after I turned 27 in November of ’89, my world was small. I didn’t read the news, because it was depressing. I was an art major, and I admitted cheerfully that I was avoiding reality by reading science fiction. Then one night in the car, my husband turned to me, and casually asked, “So what do you make of all that stuff going on in Berlin?”

“What stuff going on in Berlin?” I asked innocently. I got myself a subscription to Newsweek the next day. Thus, the failure of totalitarian socialism marked the beginning of my understanding that I was forced to be a political animal. I realized that I *had* to start paying attention.

3) Just like everybody else over ten, 9/11. I was 38. Kid #2 and I were on our way to where I was teaching college. It was a horrible jolt when that plane crashed into Tower One. But I’d grown up knowing that planes hit skyscrapers; just ask the Empire State Building. Then the DJ came on again–and Kid #2, whom I’d thought oblivious in the back seat with his Game Boy, said “Ohhh shit.” I remember looking around at all the other cars on that stunning September morning, and the world driving by Johns Hopkins and the art museum looked just the same as it had 15 minutes ago.

About a half hour after that I was standing in front of my composition class at Morgan State. I had to be the grownup for a room full of terrified 18-year-old children. One young man said something bitter about how horrible it was to be stuck with Bush right then. I found myself digging within that amazing surge of patriotism those planes dredged out of most of us, and said, “He may be an asshole, but right now, he’s *our* asshole, and right now is when we all have to stick together.”

Right now I’m 48, and it looks as if we’re about to be plunged into an era of totalitarian conservatism. I feel powerless, and afraid–but deep down hopeful, because I know that our intellects can even break us out of our gravity well, that freedom chips and chips away against repression–and that when it all comes down to it, nothing is monolithic, and people find their bravery despite their fear.

I don’t recall how up-to-date the Gentle Readers are on the book adventure, but here’s the short form:

I finished the transcription–and found that the entire terrifying wordcount was *drumroll* 330,000. In other words, Moby Dick and a half, or a third of Clarissa. (Which I have in fact read in its original entirety and enjoyed, I’ll have you know.)

That’s one whole hell of a lot. I knew it was long, but . . .

I’d been thinking for a while that it needed to be split into two books, but even so, it would be too damn long. (When you’re soothed by knowing it isn’t as long as Clarissa, that’s not a good sign.) So I went for three books instead, and have three which are longish but not outrageously so. And I’ve been snipping as I go. At this point, I’m thinking that a couple of chapters here and there can just vanish. But maybe not. I’m conflicted.

I find myself feeling guilty about potentially taking more of the reader’s time than will be found worthwhile. On the other hand, science fiction and fantasy can run you into some long-ass books. So for now I’m more or less leaving it alone. I once had a Russian cabdriver who was a musician, and we talked a bit about art. He said, “Leave it alone. It will never be perfect; you have to just let it be what it is, and move on.” It’s not as if it’s the only book I have within me.

For a number of reasons, I’ve decided to stop waiting for fame and publishers to find me, and to self-publish. So here it is! The next step is to  have it turned into an e-reader format and put up on Kindle. Pandamian plans to be offering that functionality soon, but for now, I have some really neat-o web fiction there for you, and it’s free!

Go read it! Now!!

As of yet, there isn’t a comment function on the site, so if you have any, please just come back here and tell me what you think.

I hate politics. It makes me feel angry, threatened, helpless, and depressed. It grinds my nose into the murky broken-tea-bag grit at the bottom of a glass half-empty. But the Wisconsin issue just has me sick.

For the fraction of a person-percent of you happening upon this fleck of cyberspace long after this hoo-hah is done, the governor of Wisconsin, one Scott Walker, has descended into a small eddy of first-termer psychosis. (He is joined in this by his fellows in the House of Representatives, who have produced a budget based apparently on the principle of, “If I’m not too sure of what this thing really does, we’re getting rid of it.”) In short, he has claimed a “mandate from The People” on an issue which he never once mentioned in his campaign, and which he tacked onto a budget bill (which also gives him various kingly powers as sole arbiter of other stuff having nothing to do with the budget at all).

He decided to close up a budget shortfall with the sinews of his public employees. First, he demanded that they pay so much more of their benefit costs that at least one of my friends now needs a second part-time job to cover the gap. (Wisconsin public employees aren’t paid very well in comparison with either their counterparts in other states, or in private industry.)

Then he pretty much ended collective bargaining. Bad unions! Bad! After a couple of days, the unions rather meekly and politely rolled over and gave him all the monetary concessions he wanted–remember now, we’re talking about the budget, meaning money–but he needed to take the collective bargaining thing off the table.

(Mind you, he isn’t a total union-buster–he exempted the cops and the firefighters, whose unions endorsed his campaign. Members of these unions have now decided that “To Protect and Serve” means standing firm with their fellow citizens. Watch for a last-minute rider yanking those exemptions.)

Nope, no deal. Not budging. Ignoring money offer, still saying budget. (The thought occurs that he actually might not know what “budget” means.) So the 14 Democratic senators, miffed at this lack of necessary vocabulary, refused to come in and give quorum. (Before you scold them, remember that this bill was introduced only a week before the vote, with little time for analysis and discussion; and that at his point, due to the union concessions, the actual M-O-N-E-Y issue was off the table.) Walker took advantage of a vague bizarreness in the state constitution saying they could be “compelled to attend” sessions, and sent the state police to their front doors. They in turn took themselves down to Illinois.

Now here’s a bit of the psychosis part. First, they decided to deny the WI 14’s staff copying privileges. (And yeah, of course they pulled parking spaces.) Then they announced that the senators would be fined $100/day of their absence. Then . . . the governor announced that if they didn’t return to pass his bill, well gosh, he had to make up the money somehow, and he will pink-slip thousands of those employees. I wish I were making this up.

And oh yeah, the senators’ paychecks are no longer going into their direct deposits; they must come to the Capitol to pick them up. I am getting very worried for their pets. And maybe their kids.

Meanwhile, Mr. Walker is gulled by a prankster pretending to be David Koch into saying all sorts of dumb stuff, including admitting he had considered sending troublemakers in to make trouble in the middle of a peaceful protest demonstration.

Oh. Yeah. Protest demonstration.

For two weeks straight, there have been thousands of people at the Capitol; for a good bit of the time several hundred were actually camping inside the building itself. All perfectly peaceful. (Consider that this is the state which brought us both Ed Gein and Jeffrey Dahmer. Not only do they kill people, they eat them and make useful household objects to boot.)

First Amendment made beautiful. At one point, the estimate was 80-100,000. And they aren’t getting bored or tired. They get off work, and in they head. The teabaggers are going nuts. The very best part was the FOX News clip reporting completely fictitious violence (I have first-hand reportage, loyal readers) and . . . rolling a bit entitled “Union Protests”–showing palm trees.

Yeah, some teabaggers showed up a week or so ago, but maybe 5 or 6,000. Which sounds scary, until you compare it to the 75,000 people on the other side. They’re shipping some more in tomorrow, but bear in mind that the majority of the people in Capitol Square who are trying to save their collective bargaining rights are all citizens of Wisconsin. I’m looking forward to what will likely be FOX pinhead gloating on how far they had to dredge to bring up what they will tout as “wide and deeply entrenched support;” perhaps these non-Wisconsinians are the people whose mandate the governor of Wisconsin is obeying. I dunno.

I’m a Badger myself (BS Art ’89) and I am sick and heartbroken. I don’t think there’s a prayer in hell for this to end well. The Wisconsin unions are screwed, blued, and tattooed.

But people around the country–around the world, really–are noticing. Finally. I’ve been aghast at the stupidity of the liberals blinking amiably at all those hate and ignorance-filled Tea Party rallies. La la, let’s make intellectually humorous remarks about the gomers. Now Planned Parenthood is about to lose its federal funding. Hmm.

At the very least, those plucky Badgers, who are mad as hell and not going to take it any more, are showing the rest of the left their sad, lazy asses, and maybe we’ll get our country back. The one true and fair and face-slap thing the Tea Party is wanking itself about is their bleating, “Elections have consequences.” Yup. Sure do. But the great loophole in their argument is that we are a democratic republic. Meaning that the demo-‘s still have a say in the fact that the “equal power” part of that has been dead for decades, and perhaps now it’s time for the ball to start rolling against the oligarcho-‘s. And that ball will be made of Wisconsin snow.

Wisconsin is a beautiful place filled with friendly people and the only collectively-owned football team in the NFL. (This explains my confusion on Super Bowl Sunday, when the Heismann trophy was handed to the coach instead of the greasespot owning the team–and having had absolutely nothing to do with the win. “Oh,” I’d thought. “They finally caught on that it was dumb.” Well, no. But I digress.)

On second thought; no, I don’t. It’s all about the coach. It’s all about the players. It’s all about the people who do the work. It’s just too damn bad that the people with the clever signs in the 20-degree weather don’t get rings, ’cause they oughta.

On, Wisconsin.

You’ve all seen this one on Facebook by now:

GAME RULES: if you choose to play, grab the book closest to you right now. Open to page 56 and choose the 5th sentence. Publish it as your status and write these rules as a comment. Don’t choose the book you think is the coolest; use the closest one to you.

And my answer is . . .

A Collect for Saturdays

Almighty God, who after the creation of the world didst rest
from all thy works and sanctify a day of rest for all thy
creatures: Grant that we, putting away all earthly anxieties,
may be duly prepared for the service of thy sanctuary, and
that our rest here upon earth may be a preparation for the
eternal rest promised to thy people in heaven; through Jesus
Christ our Lord.     Amen.

— Book of Common Prayer

(Note that this, as are the majority of collects, is one sentence long. There are only three collects on the page, so you have to count the “Amen”s as sentences too. Note also that it’s pronounced KAH-lekt, etymology available upon request.)

OK. Fair enough. But . . . every single time this little game has come around for me, it’s the same damn thing.

I’m not what you’d call devout, really. In fact, for the past few years, the most God-friendly description of my attitude has been, “pretty agnostic at best.” (God and I have Issues.) Yet at every fairly widely separated time, the BCP has been the closest book, and I’ve had it out for random reasons sort of research related: A saint’s day; some overly irate response to some troll. Yesterday morning for some reason or another “O Holy Night” was stuck in my head, and as usual, that second “divine” came out like a rusty chicken. It’s a note well within my range, and I was fishing to see what the interval was. (My BCP has the hymnal in back.)

Anyway, it turns out that a) that’s not in our hymnal, b) it’s a major third, and c) beats the sheep out of me why I can’t do it.  And clearly, d) I’m bad at putting Mr. Book back on Mr. Shelf–or on top of the box under the stereo holding my daughter’s dried corsage from high school graduation and the occasional castrated mouse ball, as the case may be.

I thought it was weird that the BCP was always the winner, and for a while was wondering why, in a world of feast, famine, woe, and maniacal Republicans, the putative Almighty was all about me praying for Saturday. Then I realized that the answer was perhaps a little more disturbing–at least to me:

I really don’t read anymore. At least, not books.

Back when I started grad school (in English), I finally realized that most of what I read was inept crap; i.e., badly written (but published!) science fiction and fantasy.  Wooden characters exchanging featureless and stilted dialogue, highly predictable plots, you name it. I didn’t have time to read it, especially when plowing through the reading list for the M.A. exam.

By the time I got to graduate school #2, and its own reading list for the A.M. exam, I was so burned out that all I read was non-fiction. And then there was the dissertation, and the simultaneous beginning of my own novel.

I realized right away that reading other people’s stuff would be the kiss of death for me–I’d either ventriloquize that in my own work, or get depressed that somebody actually got paid for that dreck, or something. And I didn’t really want to.

So I stopped reading. Well, almost.

For the usual vague sorts of reasons that lead to your being friends with the best friend of your sister’s cousin’s best friend whom she met at the supermarket, I ended up being particularly enamored of Mr. David Weber and his fellows at Baen Books (see link in my blogroll)–and of Ms. C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner series. And I discovered manga; and re-discovered the graphic novel.

But I used to read a hundred books a year. (I kept track.) Now, I think it’s under ten. I’m really appalled by this. Is my brain shriveling? What am I doing with myself instead?

Well, I play more video games, and I do more art–but mostly I write. The huge majority of it is in my head as I wrestle with my characters and try to get to know them and to understand their motives. And I am distressed by this, but Facebook eats a measurable part of my days.

Maybe I’ll try giving it all up for Lent and hunting out a book or two. But only on Saturdays.

Today a friend shared that OKCupid has been acquired by Match.com, a site they had rightly lampooned as being essentially a waste of time. Fear not; as of this blog, they’re tweeting that they’ll still be free.

I used to love OKCupid, but then one day several years ago I was out with my laptop and wanted a profile picture for my new Facebook acount. I went by OKC to grab that one–and immediately got hit by a drive-by, Virtumonde–the one causing those pop-ups pretending to be Windows security alerts; fortunately easy to scrub since it’s probably the biggest PITA out there. (These people are as gods to the Internet, having saved my desktop from an even bigger menace literally right before I was about to reformat.) I panicked and *never* went back.

But when the news above came up, I was curious, so I Googled “OKCupid virus.” Apparently the nice folks at OKC had found and squashed it right away; it’s not their fault their advertisers are such sheeping scum that descriptions fail. What intrigues me is that I’d actually never done this before; never tried to fix the essential problem of “hey, this isn’t fun any more.” (We all know I’m all about the fun.)

Part of this was that this was the first virus I’d ever had, and I reacted as though it were cancer. (The nervous should not follow that link if they’re weak of tummy.

For a while, I was really bummed and self-pitying. I’m that drag on the market: the middle-aged divorcee. Being unnecessarily cynical, I had more or less decided that all the worthwhile men had already been snapped up. Worse in many ways is that I don’t tend to act my age, and on average my friends are at least ten years younger than I am. (Part of this is that raising a bright teenager who shares many of my interests shows me new shiny things.) OKCupid seemed my only hope. (Help me, Obi-wan Kenobi!)

How did I get to this place of desperately hoping that the Internet would fulfill my life in every possible way? Simple enough: One day, a friend sent me a link to one of those amusing quizzes, and I poked around for several hours.

I signed up. What the hell? I was (and am) intrigued by their algorithm, which indeed pulls up interesting people with whom you might actually consider being on the same planet. I wrote an embarrassingly gushy message to the very first hit–something like 80%ish–not realizing that it wasn’t that uncommon.  (To be fair, it was within the first five minutes of logging on, and I was heavily drugged from a very bad head cold.) Later, I discovered that a number of attractive young men in Italy have a weakness for tattoos.

I also got the usual responses, like the time that even before I could get through my no-thank-you, he  changed his profile picture to  . . . well, let’s just say that when I blocked him and added that the bodily part was actually particularly unattractive as such went, I was telling the truth. And the one who takes the biscuit was the man whose correspondence followed these steps:

1: A fairly normal letter commenting that I seemed to be cooler than most PhDs

2: A fairly explicit letter requesting immediate contact

3: A letter scathingly telling me that I was just like the other PhDs (and that this doctor-ness was in some way part of My Problem)

I can only guess that this man was assuaging his incredibly high rejection rate as a human being. What amuses me is that he is apparently unaware that he is smacked on the nose by anybody with a high IQ.

Then there was the guy who had Asperger’s, and whose perseveration was drawing erotic comics. He was charming, if a little weird, and I try to be broadminded, despite having a PhD.  His pouncing on me whenever I logged on, day or night, was annoying at best, as my reflexes for hitting “unavailable” are presumably poor. But I tried to be nice. Finally, (having Asperger’s) he shared that his natural style was essentially to appear as “love” when it was merely “like,” and moreover, he commented while talking of an ex-lover that he found stretchmarks revolting. (Two kids over here, ladies and gentlemen. Man up.)  Oh dear. For all I know, he’s still stalking my long-dead profile.

So the nice people running Virtumonde not only wanted my $19.95 to rid my computer of things like their virus, they crushed my hopes and dreams.

But something odd happened. Perhaps because this last chance was denied, I faded from the misery of “I’ll-never-find-anybody” to . . . “Whatever.” Contrary to mythology, this has not immediately brought suitors to my door–but I don’t care. My daughter has gone from actively discouraging any Mommy-competition, to nudging me to look about me; but I don’t care. Just don’t care. Used to. Used to care a lot. Don’t care anymore.

The way I’ve structured my life, I’m quite content, even happy; and I strongly suspect that a boyfriend would sorta get in my way. Which is terrible, but there it is. I can only hope and trust that if said boyfriend should ever weasel his way in, I would be fond enough of him to not mind. But from this end, I’m kind of doubtful.

The only thing I really miss is being snuggled.

What annoys me is that our Noah’s Ark culture puts singlehood into three categories: a) still looking but undiscovered, b) celibate clergy, and c) loser. I find underneath my satisfaction a tiny sadness that this part of life has been denied me, but I do wonder how much of that is because of Option C.  Is it just that the grapes are sour?

Don’t know. And, really, as a practical daily matter, I just don’t care. I’m just glad I got from “Nobody wants me,” to “OKI’mSingle.”

“Write a haiku about something that drives you nuts.”

As loyal readers know, I’ve taken to cheating on my posts and answering Plinky prompts, which ask a fairly random question every day and invites readers to answer.  The intent is to whack writers into producing at least something. Today’s prompt was the above.

They encourage you to write your own title, which most people don’t. (Today’s default title was “Seventeen Moras of Frustration.” Classical Japanese haiku is a bit more complicated than our Western versions. Among the differences is that it is written in moras. If you already knew what a mora was, you have gained my respect but lost an iota of my warm affection as a peer.)

Anyway. I always write my own, particularly since they stroke your ego by telling you that your answers get viewed more that way. (Hey, I’m honest.) So today, my answer was:

Resisted the urge to turn the title to haiku itself: I didn’t.

Well, there’s always pretentious writing like the above, Annoying, eh?

[Note to loyal readers lacking curiosity or caffeine: The title isn’t a haiku because it’s 18 syllables instead of 17; the first line above really is 17 syllables. Although “pretentious” would be hyphenated, which is cheating.]

OK, I’ll stop now. *whack*

Actual haiku below:

Ah, topical as always:

My cat caught a mouse

Last night. Back and forth they ran.

Morning: Where is it?

Adorable, eh?  And even truthful. These mornings indeed drive me nuts, one way or another. Well, the problem is that a) I came up with the notion of the title, b) I followed up with the first line–and c) it took a bit of effort to stop counting on my fingers with the next several things I wrote.

My brain loves this stuff. It’s toys & candy & a nice walk on a sunny day. I can do it for hours. And it also has a serious problem with automatically doing what are called “Tom Swiftys,” she said cerebrally.  I have to go back into my manuscript and take them out, partly because the fact that I do it so much indeed drives me nuts–and partly because the astute reader will pick up on it and it will drive them nuts too.

What’s a girl gonna do? I have the suspicion that it’s not Real Writing when I do it on purpose, and Bad Writing when I do it accidentally. But I also suspect that I’m wrong, at least about the first. At the very least, it reminds my brain that writing is FUN!! This, as any writer knows, is something of a contradiction in terms, as writing can resemble stabbing said brain with a fork and wonder why on earth one is doing such a pointless and frustrating activity.

But at the end of the day, I’m all about fun, because there ain’t a lot out there sometimes. When we find it, we should roll around in it for a while. It’s the light of our lives, she said sunnily.

Can I go home now?

Plinky prompt: If you could enact one new law, what would it be? How would it improve society?

As I sit here, I’m still working on the morning tea, and my first response to today’s prompt was, “Oh no, are they kidding? Boring, much?” But I’m cranky–not in the mornings, necessarily–and I knew I had an answer for this somewhere; and it only took me a moment. (What, you asked my opinion on something?)

At first I thought, “How about not enacting stupid laws?” Well, what do you mean there, Spanky? “Laws that hurt people.”

Now come there, hon. Let’s cue the background music. (Most good blogs should have background music. This used to have the actual YouTube file until it got pulled for copyright. No worries–you know how it goes.)

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

If you think about it, one of the main reasons laws exist is to keep people from being hurt by other people: Don’t shoot each other. Don’t hit people with your cars because you were stupid enough to go too fast or to drive drunk. Pay your freaking taxes so we can send the kids to school–all those kids will help support you in your old age, whether they’re yours or not, and it’ll work out better if at least some aren’t at McDonalds.

Laws make societies, whether they are written or unwritten; whether they are enforced by a cop or by your parents. And if you think about it, what they all boil down to is one thing–and getting that through people’s heads is the most important issue facing humanity:

Be responsible.

Be responsible for helping take care of the poor and weak. Be responsible for living within your means and trying to rise from poverty. Be responsible for maintaining the health of your body and not soaking it in poisons which are broadly demonstrated to be lethal. Be reponsible for making a home where your kids realize that school is important; where you read so that they will.

Be responsible for taking reasonable care that your country not be assaulted by outside enemies. Be responsible in allocating the amount of money your country spends on the military, so it is providing security instead of merely allaying fear. Be responsible in caring for what some people call your soul, and seeing that it is nourished by art and music and kindness.

You get the idea. Go into any tacky store and get some posters. I doubt that you’ll find many people who disagree with the general drift. But right now it’s what’s called an ethic, and I would have it be a law–and of course, it already is; but I would have the simple idea underneath ground into us bone deep.

Have our citizens examined, by essay; by commitee; have them account for their accountability. Assign the kids an exam every year where they talk about what the word means and what is expected of them. Have clever posters in every street announcing “Responsible” as if they said “Big Brother” or “Eat our Bad Food.” Teach from the cradle to the grave what the results of irresponsibility are; provide ministries that halp people who have difficulty in maintaining the idea–some gently (Are you mentally ill? Are you truly too poor to pay taxes? Did the schools and the posters and the parents and the exams fail to be efficient?) and others less so (Do you hear the music?)

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

What a better world it would be, if whatcha gonna do is to stand up and look your fellows in the face and say, “I did this. I was responsible; I had a choice, and I went the wrong way. I beat my kids. I chose money right now over my planet in the future. I voted for venal idiots, I hated the different, I twisted my god into my own human smallness. I turned the page of the paper that showed prisoners stacked four to a cell the size of a closet in a country that trafficks in children and lives. I stole what I didn’t need. I helped people destroy other people. I killed that girl. I tortured that dog. I used violence to promote my personal political opinion.

“I shot those people. I watched homeless kids play in the gutter. I avoided paying the taxes which help my society build its bridges and roads and protect me from invaders. I betrayed the trust of those who elected me. I wiped out my company’s pension funds.

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*

“And I ran that red light, because I was drunk, and you stopped me because I had already lost my license because I had done this before, and my laws were too irresponsible to hold me to it forever. I was going too fast, and I had dangerous things with me which directly encouraged pain. Maybe not all of them, but still.

“And I could have hit that car and killed those people and wiped out the joy of dozens of people who knew them, and all the good they might have done, because they were responsible–and I am not.”

*bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?
whatcha gonna do when they come for you?*