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“Put on your red socks, darling, and let’s go dancing!”

It was a helluva Monday morning. The weather forecast said 80 degrees, so I threw on my summertime office attire: a pair of cropped cotton gray pants, a slinky light-weight flowered blouse, and my German-engineered sandals. At 7:30am, I walk to the train station in the brisk morning chill, shivering like a wet mule under the weight of my laptop, my French books, my lunch, and all of the personal accoutrements that I will need until I return home at 8:30pm.

On the train, I stand by the doors with my bags ratcheted between my legs, struggling to physically handle the New York Times while intellectually overcoming the distraction of the Spanish-speaking woman talking on her cell phone in a barrage of rapid-fire retorts. The train is running at reduced-speed through maintenance zones, and we arrive at South Station 50 minutes later.

I walk to my office, a billion ‘to do’ bullet points unorderly floating in my brain. Phone calls to make. Emails to write. Decisions. Decisions. Must buy stamps. Must buy new train pass. Must send birthday card. What’s for dinner tonight? What did I need to buy at CVS? Jesus Christ, did I do my French homework? And oh yeah… my job. Tee-hee.

I rush through a crosswalk just as the Don’t Walk sign stops its warning flashes, and come face-to-face with an elderly street person who is shaking a small Dunkin Donuts cup to rattle the coins within. He looks at me and grins. He doesn’t have any teeth. “Put on your red socks, darling, and let’s go dancing!” he booms, bobbing slightly in place.

I continue to walk. I make it about a block before I turn around, battling the stream of oncoming commuters that I am now walking against. I approach the panhandler from behind and drop a dollar in his cup. I sneak away. He is homeless, toothless, and carrying a cup of coins. He is the happiest-looking person I’ve seen all morning.

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By Meredith – October 22, 2007

Sun, Sand, Surf, and Foliage

When the fall foliage is peaking, the automatic urge is to head to the forests, probably because, well, there’s a lot of trees in the forest. Look at that explosion of red! That outburst of orange! That flare of yellow! And how they all blend together to form a patchwork of color!

But with the temperature hovering near 80, we headed to Crane’s Beach in Ipswitch for some frolicking in the sand dunes and picnicking aside Ipswitch Bay. The colorful foliage amid the white dunes was quite striking. Mr. Pinault photographed some dramatic contrasts…



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By Meredith – October 21, 2007

The Political Leanings of Drunks

I had an hour to kill in Boston’s Back Bay/Fenway neighborhood, so I headed to the original Bukowski’s Tavern, the only nearby bar where aging hipster bartenders sling beers brewed by Trappist monks to people who weren’t in the area shopping at Copley Place or Newbury Street.

I sat at the bar and ordered some kind of Weizen. I pulled out an Atlantic Monthly magazine. I hated to be that person sitting in Bukowski’s and reading at the bar, so I tried to look nonchalant and unabsorbed. Occasionally, I would look up and smile at nothing, or stare meaningful at my beer.

Before I left, I went to the restroom. Someone had meticulously penned on the wall in black marker “i wanted to overthrow the government but all i brought down was somebody’s wife” and attributed it to Bukowski. It made me giggle.

Today I sought the source of the Bukowski restroom quote, imagining it to come from a story but it’s actually the title of poem. The poem touches on politics (“We plotted to overthrow a tottering dynasty”), but overall it’s a fine example of Bukowski’s iconic uninhibited maleness (“[I was] always drunk as possible, well-read, starving, depressed, but actually / a good young piece of ass would have solved all my rancor.”)

The part of the poem that I get stuck on, though, is this: “I guess she felt as I: that the weakness was not Government / but Man, one at a time, that men were never as strong as / their ideas / and that ideas were governments turned into men.” Hmm. Okay, I think he’s saying that governments are good ideas that are poorly executed by men. I must have read it about fifty times and I still can’t fully wrap my brain around it.

But, why the heck am I trying to decipher Bukowski’s freaking political philosophy? If the title of the poem didn’t clue me in, certainly the last line should: “I would have to get / very drunk again.”

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By Meredith – October 20, 2007

The Red Sux

I have not been a devoted baseball fan since the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies, who improbably battled all the way to the World Series (and lost to Toronto). This mulleted and paunchy bunch won my heart with the sheer unlikeliness of their superior athleticism, epitomized by first baseman John Kruk, who was once parodied dead-on by Chris Farley and is now a ESPN “analyst” who says insane things like “I’d rather have my leg cut off than hit against a knuckleballer”.

In fact, living in Red Sox Nation for the past 12 years, I’ve grown quite anti-baseball. I’ve never witnessed any phenomenon like the Red Sox, which induces grown adults to block out everything in order to focus on a boring, drawn-out, repetitive sport, and stake all their happiness and self-worth on the outcome.

After last night’s Red Sox loss to Cleveland, which puts Boston in a 3-1 series deficit, the mood is perceptibly grave… it’s life or death. “They’ve been in tough spots before,” one man pontificates in the sandwich line at Viga. His voice raises, and people rip their hungry eyes from the foccaccia-stuffed comestibles to stare. “They can come from behind and win a playoff series. They did it to the Yankees. They can do it to Cleveland. This is a team that’s all about comebacks. This is a team you never stop believing in!”

Many people applaud this crazy man. I’m sure the fact that he looks like a CEO and he’s with a woman who looks like a young Candice Bergen helps his cause. But for me, it just pours a bit more salt on the plot of soil called “baseball” that lays fallow in my brain.

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By Meredith – October 17, 2007

Tales from the Rails

I pause ever-so-briefly while climbing the steps to board this morning’s Boston-bound express train. From within the double-decker car, a distinct buzz emanates: Scores of unrestrained vocal cords, vibrating disharmoniously in affected, outraged nonchalance. Dear lord. Teenagers.

Upon stepping into the car, I am welcomed by a cluster of shiny-haired, jean-clad high school girls (sophomores, I’d bet), one of whom looks directly at me while half-screaming “Doesn’t anyone get off this train?”

I push my way through the crowd of 12 or so girls, who buzz about how their male counterparts have migrated to other cars in order to find seats, and how they want seats, and how they don’t want to stand for the 35 minute ride into Boston. Welcome to the real world, ladies, where none of those dozing old fat dorks in suits are even considering chivalrously ceding their comfort for yours.

They do not think to sit on the stairs that they’re flanking, so I sit on a newspaper on the top stair. I can block them out of my vision with a New York Times, but I am two feet away from the epicenter of the conversation, which borders on mind-numbing tedium until it turns to the Natick Collection and Chanel purses.

“Nobody at Framingham High has a Chanel purse,” one girl is saying. “I mean, that’s, like, what? A couple thousand dollars? I mean, that’s ridiculous.”

The girls fall silent until someone says “Well, maybe people have Chanel purses, but they’re not taking them to school.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” the first girl says. “I mean, I would never bring my Chanel purse to Framingham High. It would be gone in two minutes.”

Everyone rushes to agree that they would never bring their Chanel purses to school.

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By Meredith – October 16, 2007

Dying Wishes

The British charity Age Concern conducted a survey of 100,000 elderly people about their preferred funeral rites. The results suggest that being buried alive is a preoccupation, with many people asking to be certified dead, have a mirror held up to their face, or be buried with a cell phone.

Being buried alive is a primordial human fear, as it removes the quick or unconscious elements of natural death and forces a prolonged, solitary, premature head-on confrontation with mortality.

But rest assured, and in peace: These days, getting prematurely buried in a coffin is impossible. Even if you do fool the coroner, it’s impossible to cheat embalming.

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By Meredith – October 16, 2007

Particularly Lessing’s Cats

Back in my college years, I handed my best friend Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook, which appealed to our conflicted academic Riot Grrrl sensibilities. Last week’s announcement that Lessing was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature made me want to call her so we could mutually gush and express dorky joy over Lessing’s historic recognition.

Although my BF went on to develop a strong liking for Lessing’s work, unfortunately for me, I followed The Golden Notebook with Lessing’s debut novel The Grass is Singing, which struck me as overwrought and simplistic. I then picked up The Fifth Child. Such a cool idea for a book (a family’s middle-class happiness is destroyed by their disturbing fifth child named Ben), but unsatisfying and poorly executed.

Then, some years later while browsing a used book store, I found a Lessing book called Particularly Cats. This thin autobiographical tome features Lessing’s meditations on cats she has lived with, and centers around Grey Cat and Black Cat, whose actions and temperaments she describes with the obvious admiration of a cat lover. The book instantly appealed to me, the subject matter was well-suited for Lessing’s prim and detached writing style.

Particularly Cats never appears on the lists of Lessing’s selected works that float around since she won the Nobel, because the Nobel Prize is not awarded based on anecdotes about domestic cats. One analysis of her Nobel commendation prizes Lessing’s writing for grappling with the question “in an age that values the individual, how is the individual supposed to stem the tide of what appear to be the increasingly catastrophic forces that threaten our world?”. Whatever. I like her stories about kitty-cats.

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By Meredith – October 15, 2007

The Berkshires

In the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, a raw wind bears a touch of Canada, blowing the green out of the leaves, quickening our walk, kindling our appetites, and chilling even staunch New England souls like myself who regard Old Man Winter as a minor deity.

I want to plunge my hands into the guts of pumpkin. I want to take a hayride, to bounce against the soft warmth of hay as the tractor pulls our wagon through mazes of 10-foot corn. I want to bite into an apple and taste the crisp sweetness of autumn’s bounty. I want to snuggle under a blanket and listen to the wind as it quiets the bugs, the birds, and all else that crouches mute under the waning moon.

berkshires

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By Meredith – October 14, 2007

Googles

For about 80% of the search engine phrases that bring people to this web site, I instantly recall the post of origin. Such is the steely grip that my own writing has on me.

For example, the search phrase had a poppy seed muffin yesterday taking a drug test today is the result of a post when I was in a similar predicament this past summer. brussels sprouts bitter and buggy comes from last year’s post about cooking yummy, bug-free brussels sprouts. running elvis pictures is the result of one such indelible photo from when I ran the Broad Street Run more than 5 years ago. And, incredibly, I still get about 100 hits a week about that idiot Fabian Basabe from a series of derisive posts in January 2004.

However, I profess complete ignorance regarding lumberjack baby by jackal. And I really don’t recall writing anything about soothing,red,itchy,dog butt. And funeral home scandal necrophilia… I’m clueless, really, but not too surprised.

INTERROGATIVE
is gum allowed while taking the gre
are feces of green color fine for those who eat a lot of vegetables
can you take unopened bottle of water on plane
what movie does the line “you shut your mouth when you’re talking to me” come from
how does the average man lose his unhealthy midsection
how many bananas are eaten at the oscars
how to cook brussel sprouts trendy

QUOTATIONS
teacher “saying the word retarded”
guiltiness turkey “social work”
humor spoof “my precious” pants off fat actor
“everyone has had more sex than me” subtitle
cambridge “central square” clipboard dreadlock
husband “hedonistic behavior”
public footpath “leeds castle”
nyc escort “stevie”

MISSPELLED
tallest mountain peeks and rage
pi-wee german’s bike
cole miner 6 men trapped in sand
orgy dating dairy blog

CELEBRITY
bill gates spanked as a child
marilyn manson cursing and mocking jesus christ
joan crawford stag movie
video of meredith vieira lap dance
haruki murakami lederhosen swiftly
topher grace and his lexus suv
ashton kutcher spanked child
is fabian basabe really rich
hate fabian basabe. i want to beat the living crap out of him
is billie joe mentally retarded
is paul banks of interpol married
jenna bush crotch

EVERYTHING ELSE
mens cologne and the bottle is shaped like a man’s torso
seasonal mood disoder in women associated with husbands going hunting
natural way to get adult urine smell out of clothes
snopes: red bell peppers have more vitamin c than oranges
moms who train there daughters to be lesbians
fung wah tee shirts
urban language how’s the chub
television commercial analysis oreo pizza
french men haircut phrases
necklace red sox players
retard jargon
methacton evil hill
methacton hs repeating a grade
hollywood tuna stewardess
sexual organs of the girl
mountain dew’s ode to the classic comic strip spy vs. spy
pictures of lime green pimps
multitudinous great crowd and jehovah witness
typical inseam measurement for men 6 feet tall
sending sperm via usps letter
pinnacle of cuteness

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By Meredith – October 12, 2007

Geek Philanthropy

Microsoft co-founder and multi-billionaire Paul Allen comes off like some sort of playboy jock, what with his ownership of the Seattle Seahawks and Portland Trailblazers as well as 3 monster yachts that are often mistaken for cruise ships. But with his funding of a pioneering telescope array designed to search for extraterrestrial intelligence, obviously he’s a truly a geek at heart.

The Allen Telescope Array was unveiled today, with 42 of the planned 350 radio dishes already collecting data from the nether regions of the universe. The 20-foot diameter pivotable antennas will scope out astononomical objects and phenomona such as supernovas, black holes, and little green men.

Anyone who commits their life to finding aliens is naturally optimistic about the existence of ETs. A SETI astronomer involved in the project predicts “I think we will find (signals from intelligent civilizations) by 2025.” Says a professor of astronomy “I expect the telescope to be fully online when we find that first Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star, so we can point the ATA at it and listen.”

This $50 million project hinges on several gigantic assumptions, one being: that this Earth-like planet around a Sun-like star is either directly aiming a beacon at us, or outputing radio signals as haphazardly as Earth’s traditional television broadcasts that allowed aliens to watch “I Love Lucy.” (Our modern methods such as cable television and direct-broadcast satellites emit few signals into space, which is a relief to humans cringing with embarrassment over the last decade of TV programming).

Still, at the very least, the ATA will stock the public’s interest in and their listless imagination in regards to astronomy, so the endeavor is not a complete waste of Paul Allen’s money… not like the Portland Trailblazers or something…

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By Meredith – October 11, 2007