Government Gets My Bonus

$570 bonus minus Fed Withholding minus Fed MED/EE minus Fed OASDI/EE = $384 bonus. SWEET.

And you ask, am I FOR redistribution of wealth? Hell no.

We hear stories about wealthy people trying to get out of paying taxes and whatnot, I can't say that I blame them. I look at a bonus check like that and I feel like throwing up. If I had a check for $500,000 that was taxed at the rate I'm taxed now, I'd consider it too. Oh, I'm so greedy, right? Right. I work. I went to eight years of school for that modest bonus (not that I'm complaining, ANY bonus is awesome, but the fact that the government takes their enormous share is what's unsettling). I'm paying back student loans that I will most likely carry with me for twenty years or more. I did the leg work and found the job -- the government didn't GIVE me my job. So the problem here is that I am being punished for trying hard, while people who don't seem to try at all are being coddled and pampered and certain presidential candidates are promising to CODDLE them MORE.

Here's the kicker. If I really get my shit together and hustle and somehow manage to increase my earnings, this type of proposed tax system will take MORE from me and give it to the poor. That's a real great incentive.

Autumn, Grandma, and that Pensive Brooding Brought on by the Season

Where the H have I been? I'll tell you, it's been no cakewalk here. I've been deathly busy. But I don't feel like going into it, so, sorry, you'll just have to accept that I've been MIA for a while.

Let's see. A couple weeks ago I went to the Southern Festival of Books and I got a T-shirt with a dragon on it. The dragon is reading a book. So, that was cool. I can't really wear it yet, however. I have to wait until I'm not in Nashville, or at least until it's been a month. I saw someone wearing one somewhere and I felt sheepish. The shirt was $10, you can't beat that. I wear a lot of T-shirts and I haven't gotten any new ones in a while, so it was nice to find a cheap one that I didn't hate or that didn't have Hannah Montana on it.

I saw Robin Williams there, at the festival. A friend asked if I touched his butt and of course I did. No, joking. I didn't. I could have, he was that close. But it might have proven awkward. First of all, he's a human being; secondly, my life isn't a sitcom. It would be funny if it was, but you know, life is more than funny. I DID scream and tell him how much I loved Patch Adams. Joke, again. Not a funny joke and I've been using it a LOT when I relate the story. I just think it's funny to imagine me going on about Patch Adams.

But seriously, I like Robin Williams. I really do. Or at least I respect some of his work.

Autumn is here. I love autumn. My top two seasons are spring and autumn. I guess that's sort of cheating, because there's only four seasons and most people are going to say they love spring and autumn because those are the transitional seasons. Winter and summer are kind of tough because you get tired of the extreme temperatures, and they're just not as beautiful as spring and autumn. The transition promises something. Winter and summer are the equivalent of saying, "This is it. This is what I offer." And you have to just take it because there's no other option.

Who knows. There are ups and downs all year long and I guess it's sort of ridiculous to try to parcel your life into a top four or top five list. But it's kind of fun to try to categorize stuff, even though I get tired of always having opinions, and I begin to wonder what's the point? I don't know how I'm going to make it through an entire life having opinions and feelings. I've got to lighten up and learn how to be zen or something, otherwise I'm going to have a heart-attack at 35.

So, my grandma has been having a hard time. I can't go see her because she's in Utah, and when I talk to her on the phone it's only for a minute and then she wants to get off the phone. I guess I'm too real when I say to her, "I know you're trying to die, you silly old girl." Because she is. She's tired of life, I suppose, and every time something happens, like for example when she falls down and breaks her hip, she lays there and waits for the angels to come and take her away, and she's disappointed when her rescuer is instead my rail-thin cousin Ariana, picking Grams up with super human strength and carrying her inside out of the winter weather.

It's humorous and tragic, because I know it's got to suck to be 90 and to have outlived your husband and two of your kids, and most of your friends. It's got to feel lonely and irritating to have to depend on others. I'm sometimes ready to go myself, and I'm just a few months into 30. I mean, the world is a rough place. I know it's always been rough, and I guess that's why people get tired and they're ready to move on at 90. I just don't want her to go, that's all. It scares me because when she dies, I won't have her stories any longer. When I want to know what it was like in 1940, or when I want to know who my great-grandmother was and what she was like, I won't have my grandma to ask. When I want to know what it was like to live through the Depression, who will I ask?

My grandma is my link to the past and once she's gone, I won't have anyone to ask. My mom always says, of late, "'We all become forefathers by and by,' like Dan Fogelberg says." And she's right, and then it makes me want to cry. It's really mind-altering to realize that, to see your mother becoming the matriarch of your family, to watch your grandmother becoming a ghost. It's really really bitchy, sometimes, to think of this design. Life is this way to teach us things and the lessons are hard, but I guess if you let yourself learn, you become beautiful, like my grandma, and I guess that's when you're ready for the next phase of your existence. Something cool like that.

CNN Is the Devil

I'm wondering who, besides me, sits in their cubicles and reads the news. From time to time I do, and some days I get so DEPRESSED that I want to die.

This has led me to the conclusion that the news is the devil. Once upon a time I wrote about the devil room in the house Stoker and I bought -- which we converted to a harvest yellow in an attempt to overcome its natural gloom. So, I'm very familiar with the devil. The devil likes things to be black and dark and depressing. The devil room was black and dark and depressing . . . and it sucked the light out of the world. It took grueling hours of work to exorcise the demon and make the room livable and friendly and . . . yellow. Honestly? I wish the room wasn't yellow now. I'm probably going to have to go back and paint it again. Maybe a nice, flat black.

Anyway, the point is, I was sitting here, depressed as hell, when it dawned on me that the news is the devil, and I wanted to share this revelation with the masses, not that they'll listen, because . . . well, they're the masses and I'm not Bono or Oprah. And I guess it depends on your definition of devil. Mine is this: the devil ruins my life; the devil makes me want to give up; the devil robs me of hope; the devil makes me do my worst because I'm no good anyway.

Sound familiar? It sounds like a chant. Like I'm writing terrible lyrics to a heavy metal riff. Maybe that's why it sounds familiar. In any case, why do I read the news? I've been learning to cope with the daily onslaught of horrors, but some days they're just too terrible. Like today. Here's a sampling of stuff I read: babies in China dying because of poisoned formula; man on trial for brutally beating his ex-girlfriends' cat to death; woman still searching for her husband who disappeared over a year ago in Iran; Finnish guy murdering college students; E! online writing "obvi" to mean "obviously" (you can see why this one is so upsetting).

Ok, I don't mean to contribute by sharing the horrors myself. But I must be a masochist because I keep going back. And if I was more of an optimist, maybe I'd see more hope in those stories, hope for man's redemption or something, that there is still goodness in people, that they're all trying, they're all doing the best they can, that sometimes good people just get misled. The news doesn't cover that part of the story, and why would they? Sensationalism is what sells, right?

These days journalists suck. They have twenty seconds to pump out a story and thus their writing is awful and the stories are chopped up to fit the sensational tripe that attracts viewers. They have no pride in their stories. It's a news-mill. So what we end up with is a skewed perspective of the world and how it's doing. It feels like hell out there if we listen to the media, but it is it really any different than it's ever been?

At first I was sort of joking about calling the news the devil. I thought it would be funny to sound very fundamental, like an I-live-in-a-compound-with-my-religious-compatriots zealot that the news LOVES to crucify. I don't. That is to say, I obviously read the news and participate in the machinery of our great over-newsed society and so I'm clearly not one of THEM. I'm a news junkie. It's in my blood, I need a fix often, I've fallen prey to the CNN drug cartel. I can't believe this crap is legal. And now I realize I'm right. The news IS the devil.




Quite honestly, I do believe in a fallen angel named, variously, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, Mephistopheles, Ned Flanders, etc. I think it's important to remember the things unseen that have the power to sway us, including the Internet. Can you see it? No! You see a manifestation of it, this page for example, is not real. It's ephemeral. You would not be able to touch it if you tried. It's unreal, yet its effects on you are real. Right now you may be livid with rage that someone might suggest that there is such thing as a fallen angel or that the news does more negative than positive in our society because you worship at the altar of the holy fount of CNN. Proving my point, this page is nothing. It's an idea, and yet it has the power to influence you. The most real and powerful things in our world are the unreal, the unseen. Think about it. (Yes, yes, so true, I am a genius philosopher.)

Office Doomsday Narrowly Avoided!

At least for me. Some people weren't so lucky. I feel very fortunate at the same time as feeling like a huge ass.

Doomsday in the Office

Well today is doomsday for me. I have a meeting at one o'clock where I will supposedly find out what will be happening with the project I've been working on. About two months ago the manager of my department called us to a meeting out of the blue and told us we'd be putting everything on hold for sixty days while they determined what our future would be.

It was one of those moments of exquisite alertness. Prior to the sudden meeting, we had all just read the president's quarterly report. It was full of awful metaphors about the workplace being like a dance and other terrible pop culture references to things like reality shows. On the one side we're congratulated for being so fruitful and making loads of money and meeting goals, and on the other side he slaps us across the face with a 2x4 for not making MORE than the goal.

And then out of nowhere, in this report, he mentions my unit and says there's room for improvement with us.

And so we were all talking about that and fretting sarcastically that we were about to get the axe as we walked to the meeting -- because why would he even mention my unit if it wasn't some kind of corporate foreshadowing? And one person* brought up the incredibly funny stuff from Arrested Development about Black Fridays, and how George Bluth had everyone take their computers out to a moving truck, telling them they were going to be getting new computers, only to close the door of the truck once the old machines were in and tell everyone they're fired. Hilarious.

Office humor is the best, except for when it's your reality. We joked about getting the axe and then the manager of my unit told us, her face grim and unreadable, that they were putting a hold on all new contracts and other stuff. I was listening mostly to my breath and how quiet it was. Noticing how everything froze and instead of feeling upset, I felt this horrifying calm. I was shocked. I've never been so aware of how my chest rises and falls with each breath. I was suddenly aware of the sickening sound of the white noise they pump into the office.

I don't even remember a time when I imagined my life would be part of a corporation. I never did. I never knew what it meant. I never understood that my mom and dad would leave for work and sit in cubicles or offices and tap at keyboards and make up ideas and design things and get paid and get benefits, all to come home at night and feel a measure of security.

It makes sense to think of the farmer out in the fields, tilling and planting and hoeing and harvesting. It makes sense to think of a man herding sheep and tending them for their wool and feeding them grass and hay and caring about the weather because it affects his livelihood in a way much more urgent than whether or not he'll need an umbrella to keep the rain off his business attire. Those things, farming, herding, taking care of animals because you both benefit, those are intrinsic. They've been a part of our identities far longer than the cubicle and concrete.

When man relied on Nature to provide rain for his crops and sunshine and good health for his animals, it inspired reverence in him for the power of the unseen. There was spiritual potential for him because there were forces beyond the realm of man at work. People took part in the role of creation and something spiritual went on.

The office life is dead. We work in cold hard spaces with cold hard machines and it makes us cold and hard inside. Doesn't it feel that way sometimes?

Anyway, I know I'm romanticizing the things of the past. I know there were probably lots of lonely farmers in the world who really wished to buy a suit and go to Wall Street and sell their souls for wealth. I'm just really bitter for feeling like my future is possibly in the hands of someone who doesn't know its worth.



*Me.

Summer Visitors and the Books

Sally and Terry will arrive on Friday night, adding to my list of illustrious visitors this year. Sally and Terry are my parents and if you’re lucky enough to know them, you know what an adventure they can be. I was just telling a co-worker that the difference between my family and Stoker’s family is like that between the Greek family in (yes) My Big Fat Greek Wedding and the family in The Queen (the one about the queen of England), without the cultural differences. My family’s not Greek and Stoker’s family isn’t British aristocracy, but my family is fiery, loud, and opinionated and Stoker’s family is opinionated but pretty calm and quiet. They talk but it never gets heated. In my family dishes will be thrown.

Just kidding. But they will be.

Joking.

Stoker’s parents came for a visit this summer. I have no pictures of any of these visits. I just can’t do it. I forget to take pictures, but when I remember to take them, they always turn out hideous. I don’t have the photographer’s eye. And I can’t suspend my disbelief long enough to take them or have them taken of me. I always feel awkward with a camera in my hand.

When Stoker’s parents came, as a parting gift I gave his mom* a copy of the Annie Dillard book An American Childhood. It’s an excellent book and I know that she’ll identify with the kid in it because his mom was once a pixie, I’m pretty sure. The kid in that book is a pixie, a real doll. Stoker’s mom has never stopped being a doll, if you ask me. She has this girlish quality about her that really catches a heart, and you can’t help but fall in love with her. She radiates energy. She sits on the floor if she wants, with her legs tucked under her like a little kid. And she engages with the world, like she still has so much to learn, like the curiosity in her has never died. I love that about her.

I gave Stoker’s dad this book called The Soul of the Night by Chet Raymo. At first the book sounds like it might be a Harlequin Romance, but then you read it and die. It’s perhaps one of the most poetic books I’ve ever read. (I read it in Chris Cokinos’ class and I only mention him as a kind of nod and thank-you for having introduced that book to me. He deserves the credit for the introduction [which is almost as important as having written it]). The book connects the bigness of the cosmos with the author’s small life on the earth. He quotes poetry and relates it to his perception of the night sky and the place of the earth in the universe. I don’t do it justice.

When I met Stoker and was falling in love with him, I gave him two books to read. The Soul of the Night, which he read quickly and enjoyed, and Crossing to Safety, which he also enjoyed. That sealed the deal.
You just know someone is for you when they can read Crossing to Safety and love it, and read Soul of the Night and get it.

I’m probably a jerk for giving people books. like I’m the dispenser of all good books and beauty (I am), but I can’t help it. If I respect someone and love them, on some level I relate to them by sharing the books I love.

Math Matt stopped by for three days on his way to Atlanta a week or two ago. I met Math Matt at some point during my time in college. He’s my intellectual friend and he’s stayed a friend all this time and now he’s Stoker’s friend. We had a great time with him. He can talk about anything with you. I say something that’s on my mind, like if I said, the movie The Departed was good, Matt has a response to that. Most people just say, “Oh,” and that’s it, unless they agree with you. But Matt’s opinion about The Departed was that it was crap and he’ll explain why. You have no idea how much I appreciate hearing other people’s opinions. I’m so surrounded by my own opinions that sometimes I want to scream I need a fresh view so bad. Stoker and I agree on lots of things, you see. Usually we both hate the same movies and love the same movies. Before Matt left, we gave him a copy of We by Eugeny Zamiatin. It’s a Russian book that Matt hadn’t read (surprisingly), and since I had just read it and loved it, I decided that Matt needs to read it ha ha.

My protégé and younger sister, Cassi, spent the 4th of July with us, and we spent an embarrassing sum of money on fireworks while she was here. At first Cassi was unimpressed because in Utah fireworks are sort of lame. Just fountains that whistle Dixie. In Tennessee you can buy Roman candles and other insane fireworks that shoot into the sky and flower. Once Cassi realized this, she secretly loved the fireworks. I didn’t give Cassi a book because the entire time she was here she played Portal on the Playstation, read Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman (again), and then read Interstellar Pig, half the time hiding out in the upstairs guest room. It was a real vacation for her. Before she came there had been lots of talk of all the cool bike rides we’d take and other explorations. None of that happened. It was hot out, I guess.

So, my parents will be here soon and I’m wondering what books I’ll give them.


*Also, I was a horrible daughter/daughter-in-law this year and didn't get anyone Father's Day or Mother's Day presents.

Purchased: Carl Sandburg "Honey and Salt"

Tell me this cover is irresistible and I'll say "I know." Because I know. This cover is a beautiful example of 1960s style. What a gem.

It's an artifact of a time period and I'm in love. The bookstore owner asked me why I didn't get the collected works because it was right there on the shelf next to it and I said because I like this one better. I like the little paperbacks that say things on them like "50¢ slightly higher in Canada." And that feature cutting edge graphic art. Can you see the butterfly in that line drawing? It's too good to be true.

This collection has a poem that goes like this:

"Love is a door we shall open together."
So they told each other under the moon
One evening when the smell of leaf mould
And the beginnings of roses and potatoes
Came on a wind.

Late in the hours of that evening
They looked long at the moon and called it
A silver button, a copper coin, a bronze wafer,
A plaque of gold, a vanished diadem,
A brass hat dripping from deep waters.

"People like us,
us two,
We own the moon."

That poem is called "Moon Rondeau" and it was the first one I read when I found the book on the shelf. I bought it for the poem, which I really enjoyed, but also because the cover is so great. I paid four dollars for it. Can you believe that? I could have saved three-fifty if I'd been alive in the sixties and bought it then. THAT'S why they'll never invent time machines. Because then you can get around inflation and the government won't have anything to do with that.

One more thing. This collection features a poem with these line that I'm sure are famous, somehow:

Love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you take it deep take it dark
and take it with a lonely winding.

From the poem "Love Is a Deep and a Dark and a Lonely." Beautiful. For some reason, I think it's true. Love IS a deep and dark and lonely. But not just dark and lonely, A dark and A lonely. They're things that deserve articles because they're not just adjectives here. They're nouns.

Sometimes language baffles me and so I'm not entirely sure that adjectives can't take articles. Usually they don't. Usually articles only go with nouns. I think. Don't quote me on that. This isn't a grammar blog, this is more or less a bull shit blog. As in full of b.s.

So anyway. I really like buying books.



p.s. Not all poems in this collection are love poems. I just happened to find both of them first off because I'm a love magnet.

p.p.s. HEY! When did they take the cents symbol OFF the keyboard? Oh, right, when anything less than a dollar became an artifact of inflation. Or maybe it's never been around on keyboards? I don't remember.

Chekhov

There's something about Chekhov. I remember reading a review or an essay about him in The New Yorker a long time ago, back when I read The New Yorker (I don't anymore, pretentious jerks ha ha ha), and I remember finding it interesting. But I assumed that Chekhov would be a stuffy old bookish writer whose work I would find boring. And then I began reading, recently, some of Anna Karenina. A sort of fever started in me to consume as much Russian literature as possible. So I bought this small used copy of Chekhov's work, the Signet edition, from my favorite used book shop in Nashville (Books). The first story I read was "The Father." I read it quickly and then I read another story, "Peasants," and I was enthralled by his writing and the portrayals of the Russian people. He has such skill with language and my only regret is that I can't read his work in the original Russian.

At the same time I read A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (an amazing book), and I was very pleased to read his impressions of the Russians. He said of Chekhov that people had told him that Katherine Mansfield wrote great short stories, but once he had read Chekhov, Hemingway realized that Mansfield's stories were the equivalent of an old maid's tales (to recall from memory). One man's opinion. I have not read much Mansfield, but I can say that Chekhov is so widely read for a reason. I love his writing and have bought many more collections of his writing since then.

I'm not a huge fan of the short story genre, necessarily. But if you read his work it feels loosely strung together, a vast mural of the late 19th century Russia. It's quite beautiful.

My favorites so far are "Peasants," "He Understood," "The Dance Pianist,"In Exile," and "A Cure for Drinking."


View all my reviews

Cheating in the Olympics

I can't believe the Chinese are cheating at the Olympics. Oh wait, what am I saying? It's "for the good of the country."

At this point it's pretty obvious to everyone watching that the Chinese women's gymnastics team is full of twelve-year olds, and yet, no one seems able to stop them from lying to the entire world and continuing on as though they've done nothing wrong.

Honestly the rest of the Olympic community should have known they weren't ready to host the Olympics. Normally I'd say, "Hey, the fake fireworks display? No big deal. The lip sync fiasco? I mean, yeah, that's pretty insulting and cruel. But I'm over it." However, as I watched the women's meet last night, I realize that all of it matters and I'm NOT over it.

The picture China is painting is, for me at least, one of a nation full of automatons who are stripped of their will and free agency in order to do what is best "for the country." For a minute, I was feeling good will toward China and their efforts to impress the rest of the world. But as the Olympic games continue, I am compelled to no longer overlook the sins of their government. And I can no longer hold my tongue about the pollution in Beijing. From now on, when it's smoggy in Nashville and anywhere else, I'm going to say, "Where are we, Beijing*?"

It's one thing to have a coach who lies to his players (which is also bad, don't get me wrong), but it's another thing to have your government making passports stating you're sixteen when you're really only thirteen.

And it's even another to censor the press. That irks me too.

Am I a sore loser? Yeah. It's disgusting. But listen. How else is China cheating? In what other matters are they lying to us? All of them, probably.

So everyone has complained and complained about how the Tour de France has lost its glamour and appeal because of doping. Same here. It was no fun to watch the other gymnastics teams who were following the age restrictions competing against a team of eight-year olds. It would be the same as pitting a lightweight against a heavyweight. Where's the fun in that? The point of an age restriction is to even the playing field. When the restriction is ignored, the game loses its point.

I'm boycotting the rest of the games until the IOC does something about China's blatant disregard for the rules. I suggest the rest of the world do the same. Come on, now. Do as I say. It's for the good of the country**.



*I was overlooking the pollution in order to be polite.
**In this sense country means world. You'll no doubt agree with me that world wouldn't have had the same sarcastic ring to it as country.



I will probably keep watching the Olympics because I'm spineless.

Summer Is Just Another Word for Torture

The heat is ruining my life. I may have said something similar when I was living in Arizona, but only because it was. And it is now. At least in Arizona we had central air conditioning. Right now we're keeping our house cool with electric window units and fans. It's very ineffective and very trashy. The house we bought was built in the forties and none of the previous owners had felt inspired to get central air. We're inspired to, but first there are other pressing matters, like the roof.

Anyway, the heat is killing me. Each day that brings me both high temperatures and high levels of humidity wipe me out. The only thing I can do is swear, curse Tennessee, long for Utah and sometimes cry in frustration. Not to give you the wrong idea, I don't really cry. We have this air conditioner the previous owners left us and it sucks. Something is broken about it, I'm not sure what, probably the temperature gauge because it fluctuates so drastically, one minute it's 54 degrees and the next it's 83. When it thinks it's 54 it turns off and I swear at it and cut the power to it and then restart it. Stoker thinks it doesn't help, but I know it does.

Another thing that's killing me is the hills of Tennessee. Oft cited as beautiful in song, these hills are a bane and a curse and I curse them. The extreme heat and humidity and the hills have put the brakes on exercise. Last year I could tolerate it because I ran by the river amidst the trees and that lowered the temperature a little. Plus I ran home to the central air conditioner. This summer I run home and never cool down and I want to die. And there's no river and very few trees and everything is a hill. Stoker thinks I overdo it, but I assure you I do not. If you came to my house and we took a run on a day at 92 degrees and 65% humidity, or even 40%, you'd melt with me. And it wouldn't resemble a romantic song. It would be like a house of wax. There would be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. And swearing at Tennessee.

Stoker says there are lots of hills in Utah, but there aren't. There are mountains. When there's a sort of hill, it looks like a hill and feels like a hill. In Tennessee, there's some kind of weird optical illusion going on and you can't tell it's a hill with teeth until you're running up it and dying in the extreme humidity and heat.

Long ago my pioneer ancestors tried to settle in Missouri and then Illinois, but things didn't work out. So they moved on and eventually set up camp in the Utah territory. It was hard for them and stuff, but after living in a humid climate and having been to some of the places that didn't work out for them, I thank my lucky stars things didn't workout in the Midwest. The desert is a superior climate. So maybe water was scarce and harder to come by and maybe it was grueling to drag those rocks out of the quarries to build with because there weren't a lot of trees, those things worked out, right? Once you live in a swamp, it's always a swamp and it breeds swamp creatures. The desert breeds hearty stock. Tall, lean, strong people. I can't decide for sure if this holds merit, it's just my perception, I'm sure.

I'm telling you, the heat is killing me. I'm very depressed right now. That's probably not super obvious because I'm being so hilarious at the moment. But I am. I'm wilting like a flower in a damn car out in the sun.

I tried to find scientific proof that extreme temperatures cause depression and other problems in people. I don't have time to rummage through all the studies, so I let the BBC do it for me. They came up with this article on the effects of extreme heat on moods. So I'm right, then. Thanks for playing. Now I'm going to go cry and melt in the pointless heat.



p.s. Recently I read this line from a short story by Chekhov ("He Understood"): "It was a stifling June morning; the air was sultry, the leaves drooped, the dry ground cracked." And I finally understood the power of that word sultry. Sultry only has power if you've been exposed to extreme humidity. I hadn't until Tennessee. Do I obsess? I do, I know I do.