feklar's Journal

4:40pm: Thoughts triggered by this post: http://thebloggess.com/2012/01/the-fight-goes-on/

It's funny, last week I had dinner with a friend. Afterwards, we were talking outside and I mentioned that one of my greatest fears for my Mom was that she was sub-consciously suicidal--that she wasn't trying to manage her diabetes and other issues, because she's secretly hoping to die. Then I glibly said it was so easy to imagine my Mom doing that because suicide has always been one of my fallback plans and it's weirdly discomfitting to be on the other side of the suicidal ideation.

My friend's jaw just dropped, she looked absolutely surprised, and said, "You mean you've contemplated..."

The first thing that popped out of my mouth was, "Of course. I'm a clinical depressive." I may have even shrugged. Depression and occasional suicidal thoughts are something I've taken for granted for so long, that I was really surprised at her surprise. There's a part of me that's like, "everyone isn't like this? really?" Another part of me that thinks "I'm fairly open about being depressive, is it really a shock?"

I'm not sure I ever had shame around being depressive. Maybe frustration--"along with everything else, depression too?! That's really not fair." I also get frustrated by all the stupidity out there about psychiatric meds. I'm still on the fence about therapy, I'm not sure it ever helped me as much as the meds, but the meds have worked fairly well for me for half my life. YMMV.

In any case, right now, I am depressed, but it's almost a relief to have an identifiable external reason for my depression. So often, in my major depressive episodes, I just feel like I'm in a black pit of despair and there's no real reason, it just is, and that sometimes seems to make the depression worse (also maybe one of the reasons therapy never worked that well for me). FTR, since one usually needs to put out a disclaimer when one confesses to depression (something I find annoying BTW) the pit doesn't feel very deep now and my suicidal thoughts are minimal.

1:14pm: Don't Panic. It is not a sign of the apocalypse.
My brother's new born (3 weeks at the time). Don't know who's holding him.

12:18pm: Sanity check request
I have a 20-something couple in my South Philly house, who, on the one hand are clean and pleasant enough, OTOH, they are kind of flakey.  They've been late (more than a week) with their rent several taimes.  This summer they actually both went out of town and forgot to pay their rent. When I called about it, they said they would be back in town in a few days and would pay then. The lease has a 3 day grace period and a $25 fee after that.  They've never paid the fee. I've never called them on it because, a) I've mostly had landlords nice enough to not ding me over the years (that said, I, in turn, didn't bug them with anything but major issues) and 2) I just don't like confrontation.

When I was in Memphis, I asked all tenants to mail to rent (or pay via back transfer which is free for BOA to BOA). I got their rent at least a week after the other two tenants' rent and was in the midst of planning my trip back to Philly. So I didn't deposit their rent until Thanksgiving.

Yesterday, I got this email:

I also wanted to contact you in regards to the rent checks. While the amount is still ok for us to pay, both C. and I transfer money each month from a savings account to a checking account for the money to cover the rent . That being said, would it be possible at all for you to deposit the checks at the beginning of the month? We both got hit with an insufficient funds fee just yesterday because there wasn't enough money in our checking account by the end of November for the rent check that was written for the 1st of the month.

We are doing our best to budget wisely and transferring a certain amount of money from savings to checking each month to cover certain expenses (rent, utilities, etc). If rent checks are due by the 1st of the month, would it be possible for the checks to be deposited within a week? 

I understand things can get busy, especially at this time of the year, but we would greatly appreciate your help!

So you know, you will have our rent checks for December tomorrow!

This is probably not the best time to annoy me as I'm stressed and depressed and now I'm on my period, crampy, stressed, and even more depressed.

On the one hand, her f'ing guilt trip worked. I almost sent an apology, because yeah, that does suck when people hold checks too long. But you know what? keeping track of that extra $600 in your account is your frickin' business.

On the other hand, it pissed the shit out of me. Can I get a check "due by the 1st" deposited within a week?  Well maybe if it was actually deposit with me sometime around the first, instead of the fifth or seventh.  Am I crazy?  Should I be frustrated with myself for falling for this? Argh.

In any case this was my response:

As for the checks, I am sorry you incurred a fee. While it is true I
held onto these checks longer than normal because I was travelling, I
usually try to deposit them within a week of receipt. I did not
receive these checks until mid-November--well after Rebecca's.  This
is not the first time your checks have been late, beyond the grace
period (3 days, though I usually wait a week before calling you), and
without the late fee.

That said, I again reiterate my suggestion from October to use direct
transfer from your Bank of America account to my BoA account. BoA to
BoA is free and I have thought for a while now that scheduling the
payments online might make it easier for you two to remember.

A lot of "grow up you entitled twits" snark was struck from it.

11:34am: A middle-aged lady's guide to proper ribs...with pics!
I seem to impress on certain foods when I first eat a version of them I like and then I never quite like any other version as well. They just taste wrong, even if they are objectively ok, or even good, which can be frustrating. One of those foods is BBQ pork ribs, which I don't seem to like anywhere except one place -- the Commissary (http://commissarybbq.com/). The rules of ribs:

1. Ribs should be served with slaw, a deviled egg, and baked beans that are almost as much sugar (in the forms of molasses, brown, and white) and pork as bean. There is also a roll. The roll is a mystery as no one actually eats it and it is often mediocre. If one is particularly ambitious, one can also get chopped pork, which should be mixed with the slaw and sauce to taste.



2. The ribs should be pit roasted until the sauce is fully reduced--almost crusty, not soppy or liquid. Proper ribs are quite moist, redolent and flavorful as is, but if you really need liquid (or a little heat), you can add sauce at the table.



3. The ribs should be thick and meaty and fall-off-the bone moist.



4. And last, but not least, no fat! Getting ribs covered with a slab of fat and globs of sauce is more than just wrong, it's yucky. My perfectly unscientific theory is that properly done pit roasting melts the fat into the meat, which is what makes it so tasty and moist...



5. Correction, last is the pie, which should have homemade crust and at least an inch and half of light and fluffy (NOT dry and chewy!) meringue. The traditional options are lemon, chocolate and coconut. All are acceptable.

3:06pm: Observations on driving across a third of the US: there are more white cars and way fewer black cars in the south. Seriously, I lose my car almost once a month, because it's a black sedan...like half the other cars in my 'hood or any given parking lot.

Rural Virginians and Tennesseeans have a much better grasp of highway ettiquete than people in PA, NJ or NY. I'm not talking about the optional nice stuff (like letting people in), I mean the common sense shit, that keeps people from having to do dangerous stunts to get by you. Like, shift left to make room for cars coming up the highway on-ramps. Don't drive in the frickin left lane unless you are going a minimum of 10 mph over the speed limit. If you haven't passed anyone in a while, go to the right lane. If someone comes up on your ass clearly going faster than and you are in the left lane, go right as soon as you can. I don't think I saw a single pass on the right until after I passed Knoxville and even then, I only saw 2 or 3. PA and NJ turnpikes look like slalom courses b/c of all the holier than thou assholes driving 65 in the left lane.

Pop music stations are pretty much the same, but there are a ton more religious stations. Farmers are apparently crucifying threesomes of cattle thieves.

I have passed hundreds of RVs.  I'm sure there weren't this many on the road when I was a kid. Also, every gas station has diesel.

You can buy fireworks and guns in the same place. Wildlife refuges have symbols for hunting.

12:14pm: elder care 2

so going to the senior center near me turned out to be not helpful. They gave me the number to Phila Corp for the Aging http://www.pcacares.org/ and said they couldn't talk to me otherwise.

when I called PCA, they said they couldn't do anything without first doing an in-home visit for an "assessment" of my Mom, which basically won't be possible until she moves up here, where the only place she can sleep is on the couch (ok, we'll move her bed up here). but I was trying to avoid the 2 adults living in my 1 BR apt for an extended period of time by finding out about housing and services in advance of moving her up here.  *facepalm*

9:57am: comments fixed?
apparently my anti-spam comments settings prevented people from commenting.  Hopefully you can now.  :-)

12:34pm: Doctor issues & miracle zit cure

So, spurred on by several issues, I finally found a new doctor.  Much as I want to support Mazzoni, they don't meet my needs. Previously I went to Jefferson, because it's easy, but the practice is massive and it's like visiting the doctor in a sports arena.  So I decided to try Rittenhouse Women's Wellness Center  www.rwwc.com/

Cheezy as it sounds, I liked it.  I had almost no wait and Dr. Rowbottom spent nearly an hour with me talking about numerous issues.  When blood tests came back she personally called me to talk about them--which is a nice change from, "Call us in a week for the results." Which leads to me calling, going through a phone obstacle course, the person I finallay talk to not knowing who I am, and ends with, "Well, if there were something wrong, we would call you."  Gee, thanks.

Anyways, one of the things she raised was my zits, which have never abated since I was 12 and now tend to be of the gigantic, deep, painful and long-lasting variety.  I actually was relieved when I got a whitehead--they at least go away quickly, unlike the deep festering cysts I was getting.

Anyways, she put me on topical clindomycin and retin a, which have worked wonders in about two months. I still have zits, but they are small and relatively short-lived.

So I'm sitting here thinking, "Why didn't I do this before?"

Then I remembered.  Back at Columbia, we had student health care with waiting lists for specialists. I'd already asked about acne treatment--I was 23 and about to interview with dozens of law firms--I didn't want to look like a zit-faced kid and figured every confidence booster could help. The RN could only prescribe fancy benzoyl peroxide but put me on the waiting list for a dermatologist.  After a couple of months, I got an appointment.

I'm so excited, finally, I'm going to get this shit fixed! I walk in.  The woman takes one look at me and says, "You have acne vulgaris."  Maybe I imagined her look of disdain and disgust. She really didn't say much beyond that and that my current treatment was appropriate. But I felt like she was berating me, like because of my petty vanity, I'd taken her time away from someone with a real issue.

Needless to say, I'd never asked a doctor about acne again.

Jesus, no wonder I have so many frickin hang-ups about doctors.

11:59am: Success?

I want to be excited. Last night we may have finally closed a deal I have been working on since October 2010. I think if we had signed off a few months ago after the exhausting SOW negotiations, I would be bouncing off the walls, but the last round of contract negotiations have been excruciating--and it's been my people putting me most through the wringer.

The irony is we are subbing to a global corporate boogeyman, but I have found them to be the more reasonable and flexible partner we've had, but there has been such an expectation that they will screw us, that I feel we've been the assholes. Which since I'm doing the negotiations means I have to be the asshole, which makes me extraordinarily uncomfortable. I think this is why it's so hard for me to be excited about finally succeeding.
 

3:01pm: My first X-Men
Last night I reread X-Men 172-173 (Wolvie's almost marriage to Mariko). These were the first X-men comics I ever read (lo those many decades ago), is it any wonder I was so instantly, irretreivably hooked? Both are available on Marvel Digital. If you don't have it, go to a Starbucks and log on for free and view them in all their digitally recolored glory.

First off, I love Paul Smith's art. He's not a household name, but his run is one of my favorites.



I particularly like how clean, crisp and uncluttered his panels are in these issues.



The fight scenes are beautifully choreographed and drawn (without a lot of expository ballons).



The other thing I like about his art is that he actually uses facial and body structure to distinguish characters. Kurt and Scott are skinny (compared to Wolvie and Collosus) and best of all, Ororo looks like she might be related to an actual African.



It doesn't hurt that the Brood saga is still probably my favorite arc.



In addition to the art, you couldn't come up with a better story line to hook me. Like the rest of America, I was totally into Japan, read Shogun and everything. And then there was Storm, Rogue and Yukio. They are everything I wanted and wanted to be--powerful, brave, athletic, confident...hot.

11:32am: Ruins of Detroit: Random Thoughts and Crackpot Theories

www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/index.html

While it hurts the architecture lover in me to see some of the old art deco palaces in ruins, I think the scariest ones are the places that were obviously functioning within the last decade, but went down so fast, they didn't even bother to move or sell functional furniture, equipment, or books.Thinking about this, I started to develop a theory around the tendency to just throw things away when we are done with them. Mined out that mountain? No problem leave a pit behind. Logged out this forest? There's another over there. Overfarmed this land? We'll clear the next valley. Overfished the bay? We'll go a few miles further out.

Americans are not the first or only people to do this (for that matter, animals do it too), but I think we are one of the few countries with the combination of wealth and huge tracts of habitable land that allows us to just abandon whole cities when we are done with them--or when they no longer meet the technological and/or aesthtic requirements of the populace.

China is another country I can think of with the right combination of wealth and land. I don't really know as much as I used to about China, but I think they do have similar 'modern ruins.' At times the Three Gorges Dam project has seemed like a massive exercise in abandoning the old for the new. I wonder if Europeans had more land they wouldn't have similar modern ruins. There are certainly enough abandoned cities in the European archeological record, but the current combination of land and population can't support mass abandonment.

Canada has the wealth and land, but very low population density, so I wonder if that is a factor.

Last thought: Again, my knowledge of history and anthropology isn't as up-to-date as it used to be, but it strikes me that most of the peoples who I remember as living in "ecological balance" were those who live in jungles, islands, desert borders. In short, areas where if you eat all the fruit, kill all the birds, defertilize the earth, that's it, no more, game over.

OK, last, last thought: In a college paper, I once made the argument that religion (specifically at the time, the old testament) provided moral justification for environmental destruction we perpetuate--after all we were given 'dominion over the earth' to 'subdue it' (wow, language of rape in the bible, again...). I think it is only relatively modern interpretation that has rephrased this as "stewardship." Even then there are those who seem happier to blame environmental problems on human sins other than bad stewardship: http://notesontheholybible.blogspot.com/2008/03/notes-on-genesis-5-mans-dominion-over.html
 

6:31pm: worst dr's visit evah

Stream o' consciousness ahoy...

had the most annoying fucking dr's appt yesterday. my 2nd wrist surgery is next week. had to do a pre op exam which involves bloodwork and going to a hackish dr's office for a 'physical.'

To be clear I can't say for sure if the Dr. is a hack, I only spent about 120 seconds with him, 60 of which was him listening to my chest with a stethoscope, 15 was noting that I did indeed have hands. the rest was spent on a phone call...his phone call. After a minute, he looked up and said, "I won't keep you any longer. You can go." and went back to his phone call.

The precursor to this august visit was a nurse doing my bp, pulse, weight and height. She told me to take off my clothes and put on a gown. they weren't doing an ekg--we did one in March when I did my first pre-op visit--so I said "why? He is just going to listen to my heart." She said I didn't have to and when I said I didn't see the point, she said ok and left. Then a boss nurse comes in and says I have to change. "It's policy." Again, I pointed out that he wasn't going to do anything that required me to be in a gown. She said, you're getting a physical, he needs access to...something, I was like, all right already, jesus.

My objection wasn't to the changing so much as the fact it was hot and I was sweaty and changing clothes -- especially bras, which they were adamant I remove -- is unpleasant in such conditions. and he wasn't going to do anything that required actual access to skin. then there was the sitting around in a gown for 20 minutes before the august visit at which he listened to my heart THROUGH THE GOWN and then forgot my existence.

Oh, and the creepiest thing about this office (it is not my hand doctor's, he's an ass, but the practice has some class), every available space is plastered with advertisments for wacky snakeoil medical cosmetics like "botox make-up" and chemical peels and things involving lasers that beautify you in some way. Just sitting there makes me feel skeevy.

4:54pm:
And the award for show I am most surprised to find myself engrossed with goes to the Killing. Although another relentlessly grim show, I find the characters are fairly nuanced and realistic. It is probably one of the most sparsely worded shows I have seen, but the actors convey the multi-layered storyby, you know, "acting."
 
www.amctv.com/shows/the-killing

3:32pm: The Borgias
Although it's not a fantasy, The Borgias is in the same mental category as GOT for me.  In contrast to GOT, I have really enjoyed the Borgias.  The sets and constuming are gorgeous--easily the best on TV--and the acting is excellent. The characters are nicely nuanced and the plot is twisty and diabolical. For all that it is about war and political in-fighting, the series is suffused with (dark) humor that makes it quite entertaining.

1:48pm: HBO's Game of Thrones

FTR, I haven't read the books and am not inspired to do so by the series. I was really put off by the first episode and it took a desperate lack of anything else to watch to get me to the rest. 

The weird thing for me is that most of what I dislike is what I usually give leeway for in action/fantasy/sf. I'm usually the "Ok, it was a little misogynistic and racist, but it was fun or  entertaining or pretty."  But here, not only is the show relentlessly grim with almost no sympathetic characters, but also I was really taken aback by how pathetic, annoying, or evil all the female characters are. Basically, female + unmarried, widowed, or disobedient to your husband = evil; at best if a woman isn't obeying a guy in some way, she'll create trouble. (FTR, the littlest Stark tomboy is actually sanctioned by her father, so not disobedient).  

Plus dark-skinned, eastern barbarian hordes and better yet, dark-skinned, eastern barbarian rape on super-white, blonde, blue-eyed princess! Seriously? Oh and how do the barbarian and the princess fall in love?  She gets a former prostitute to teach her sex tricks. Yep, the barbarians had just never figured out foreplay or kissing or the missionary position. I'm sure now that they have westerners to teach them about sex, their female slaves will be much happier.  Personally, I like the way Lucrezia is taking control of her marriage bed in the Borgias better.

The character I have come to like most is the Imp. I'm not a big fan of scatological humor, but he's one of the few, if not only, characters with more than one dimension.  (Compare to, say Ned = Honor!, the King = Debauchery!).

I'm intrigued enough to probably keep watching but....ok, I mostly want to see if my prediction from the first episode, that the bastard Stark, the Princess, and her mysterious dragon eggs will be the key to saving the world from winter.

Which brings me to my last pathetic gripe, so far the story isn't very magical.  I kind of like my sword and sorcery tales to have a little sorcery.  So far it's been more like moderately realistic and depressing medievallandia.

3:28pm:

Revisiting past resentments today. Grr, just learned last night that apparently my first gym trainer--whom I fired--has a bizarrely fat-phobic twist on why we "didn't click."

I have been working at the gym with a trainer since December. For the first 6 weeks I was working with C.  We were supposed to meet twice a week except she cancelled or rescheduled at least one appt per week for 5 of those weeks.  We were supposed to meet Tuesdays at 8:30 am.  She cancelled that appt 4 times in a row..and she cancelled by sending me texts at 6 am the morning of the appt.  As I am not a texty person, I often didn't see the texts until I was walking out the door, once I actually made it all the way to the gym.  Honestly, my take was:  she woke up and was like, "Fuck it, I'm calling in late..."

After 6 weeks (and 3 weeks of grumbling to V.), I finally called the manager and asked for a different trainer.  One who could meet in the evenings (because honestly, I hated the mornings as much as C. apparently did, but I wasn't fucking cancelling at the last minute...grrr).  The new trainer, E., is great. Last night E. mentioned that C. had told her that we "didn't click" and C. thought it might be because she tried to talk about diet to me.  First off, I think I shut down any talk about diet so fast that I don't even remember the conversation.  Second, WTF?  How does she overlook blowing me off at the last minute for 5 out of 12 appointments -- the complaint I lodged with the manager -- and decide it was really because I didn't want to be told about dieting?!?!?

I am imaging her logic as:

1. Well it can't be my fault.  I'm cute and peppy and everybody loves me.
2. But hey, she was fat. Everyone knows fat people hate exercise and they are only fat because they don't know how to eat right.
3. She didn't ask, but I tried to fix her!  I'm a good and kind person that way.
4. She resented me for shining the unpleasant light of good nutrition on her ignorant orgy of donuts and fast food.
5. She had the audacity to blame me (me!) to the manager.

Ok, she's probably not that bad and I am projecting my own ire and now-riled ugly self-image onto this whole thing, but again.  WTF?

I am all around happier with E. She's flaky in some ways, but responsible about the appointments.  I also think E. does a better job of listening to me and what I want.  I told them both my goal was not weight loss, but improving my core, general strengthening and pain reduction.  C. had me doing lunges, climbing stairs, once tried pushups (and was a little miffy when I told her with my wrists that was right out), and a lot of other crap that was making my knees miserable and didn't appear to strengthen anything. With C., I was almost ready to go to the doctor for an MRI on my knees.  But thanks to E., my knees feel better than they have in years--no MRI needed.

I was also pleased that when E. was telling me what C. told her, she said she told C., "Well, that was a mistake, she probably knows more about diet than us."  I wanted to hug her.  I feel like she didn't need to tell herself, "Self, I need to be respecful of this person's intelligence and stated goals, regardless of what society thinks her goals should be." It was just her natural starting point.
 

5:25pm: more jewelry--opinions welcome!

More stuff I am making for biunity to sell at pride.  What do you think works best?

So far of the people I have polled live, the simpler/low color style has been preferred, here are variants on the theme:




I have to admit, I really love the look of the 4-in-1 weave, even if it is less subtle than the link style above. Variants on the woven style:




Links with tags/dangling things.  I'm not as happy with the tags as I was hoping to be, so I'm kind of iffy on these.




These are intended to be earrings (no hangers yet), but I suppose they could also be pendants:



I do like this style, but the bi-color tags are awfully unsubtle looking.





Last but not least:  fancy bracelet that I made for myself.  This took a lot of time and I keep finding mistakes, but I like it.

1:09pm:
I was up 'til 3 last night working on this.  I really need to try to rein in my near OCD need to complete things before taking a break to sleep, pee, eat...

Is pretty cool though, eh?

2:30pm: Casino Resort Vaction Trip for Mom

I'm very excited, just told mom about a surprise when she arrives in June. I didn't tell her the complete surprise, just that I was flying her in through Atlantic City and we are spending the weekend there.

My mom is coming up for my next hand surgery and it turned out to be cheaper (by nearly $200) to fly her through AC on the way up. So I figured, why not use that $ and spend the weekend?

First I found this living social coupon for a room at the Tropicana+a show+$30 food+$30 slots for $129. The room would normally be $109, so even if the show sucks, still a good deal.

Then, I started looking at the cheaper places, but then I saw a scary Tripadvisor report (dated 5/5/11) on bed bugs in one of the places I was considering.  Eek.  All I need, so I started looking at the nicer places...

Then, I remembered how lustfully she always looks at some of the really fancy resort casinos, and she is my mom, so... I ended up making reservations for Caesar's.  Crazy ass expensive reservations.  Could only afford two days reservations, and won't be replacing my moldy carpets anytime soon reservations...kind of excited about it though.

2:37pm: proposal time

I just submitted a proposal (I spent most of Sat. night and Sunday morning writing) with 10 minutes to spare. sigh.  it would have been better to get it done thursday as one of my reviewers didn't get his comments in in time for them to be used and he's annoyed with me. 

OTOH if he had done them online in the doc and emailed them to me instead of by hand on paper, I probably could have gotten them in.

As usual, the recruiters tripped me up.  A large part of the problem is they are good recruiters, not good word processors/copy editors. But I kind of feel they were a little weak on the recruiting too.  We had to provide resumes for 14 roles and I wanted 2 per role.  We had a big resume review session a couple of weeks ago for 9 of the roles.  One of the roles didn't have suitable resumes, so we ended the session with 8 roles filled, 6 outstanding.  Over the course of the last week, I got emails with more resumes, so I assumed we were good.  Unfortunately, Saturday I realized I'd only gotten resumes for 4 of the roles...Ok, I should have been more on top of the emailed resumes, but I really do expect people to be able to self-manage at least that much, you know?

The other big problem is that the resumes need to be formatted, or more accurately, deformatted, so they can go into the proposal without fouling up its formatting, headers, footers, etc. and also so they don't look like crap.  Seriously, there are some fricken awful resumes out there from very high priced people.  In theory, the first 20 resumes I got had been 'formatted' for the proposal.  In reality, I spent about 4 hours this morning sorting, error-checking  and formatting resumes.

At the moment this is not a common enough task to require a FT person, but I am thinking it would be worth hiring a temp to do this in the future.  I am just leery of us finding one with the sheer anality required.

11:38pm: chain maille jewelry
So instead of writing the proposal I need to write, I've been making jewelry all day. So I have an all nighter ahead of me...this is an aspect of my masochism I do not understand.

Anyways, what do you think? 

This is the first one I finished between last night and today, I think it took about 6 hours.



The smaller woven ones have the same pattern and took significantly less time...thank god.  Then I started making a few simpler things.

 



I also tries a couple of experiments.  Here are some mobius rings, not sure what I think--I've never liked them even from vendors who know what they are doing, but they are clearly popular:

11:05am:
www.etsy.com/search

11:34am: Rammstein pics

newyork.timeout.com/music-nightlife/the-volume-blog/1326349/live-photos-rammstein-plays-the-izod-center

Overall I've been sad at the lack of press coverage of the Rammstein concert, but here are some pics.  V will like the Queen reference, but the text is a little lame..."German popular entertainers" Really?  Would have been nice if there were pics beyond the first 2-3 songs though.

3:10pm: Rammstein!

From my FB www.facebook.com/

Rammstein concert in a nutshell: In lieu of feigned sadomasochistic sodomy (for which they were arrested in the US), they had much fire, explosions, and feigned murder by arson...clearly more acceptable to US legal officials. Lack of sodomy notwithstanding, the concert was awesome.

They did have a pink cock-cannon that sprayed white paper swimmers into the crowd at the culmination of Pussy. It made me happy. LOL

10:32am:

I recently saw In the Next Room Or the Vibrator Play.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Next_Room_(or_The_Vibrator_Play)

I had kind of mixed feelings about it. It was cute and funny, but I ultimately felt it expended too much energy and focus on the trite primary plot (how the rich, heterosexual, white couple finds their way to happiness through the discovery of sexual pleasure via bizarre Victorian concepts--something ably covered in the Road to Wellville over a decade ago) while there are several far more interesting and painful subsidiary plots, as exemplified by this rather supercilious review:

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/theater/reviews/18vibr.html

Among the interesting plots are: the alienation of pregnant and nursing women from their bodies, the love-hate between a mother and a newborn who rejects her milk, the love-hate between a wet nurse and the infant who is supplanting her own, the irony of Christian iconography -- it is actually women who magically transform their bodies into sustenance, the invisible class of single, educated, semi-independent Victorian women.

I thought the most compelling character was Annie -- the midwife/gynecological nurse. She states she became a nurse because she was too old to be married and had no desire to teach children. She is highly educated and it is hinted more than once that she is actually a lesbian. It is also hinted that one of the main reasons Sabrina (the hysterical patient being treated with orgasms) has no "sympathy" with her husband is that she might also be a lesbian -- at a minimum she has a distinct girl crush on Annie, or at least her lectures on Greek philosophers and her skill with vulvic massage. In the end, Annie does kiss Sabrina and Sabrina rejects her which crushed Annie and me. I personally rewrote the ending so that Sabrina's boorish husband walks in on the kiss, dies in an apoplectic fit, Sabrina inherits his wealth, and she and Annie ably administer his businesses while living happily ever after.

Unfortunately, there was another half hour of play about the two main characters discovering sexual pleasure by having sex in the snow. Whatever.