Adventures in the Pointless Forest

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

On the way to Parma Heights.

Closer to home.

As you can see, I'm transforming this site into one of those lovely inspiring collections of evocative images that capture the beautiful in the everyday, the kind of thing that makes you want to step right into the depicted life and inhabit it. It's just the inevitable outcome of my natural tranquility and the beauty of everything that surrounds me.

Nerdtastic

Me: This is a nice typo: 'I like the oortability of a laptop.'

He: Cloud computing! HEYO.
 

Things I like

The other night, Steve asked me which was my favorite Twilight Zone. Despite the fact that there are any number of good classic options, I had to confess that the one I liked and remembered best, "A Matter of Minutes," wasn't from the original series at all and indeed wasn't even all that eerie. The plot is reminiscent of the later Stephen King novel The Langoliers (and Wikipedia tells me that it was in fact based on a Theodore Sturgeon story), but less creepy:

A married couple wake up one morning to the sound of construction. Workers in blue outfits, with blue vans and blue ladders, are busily taking all their furniture away and replacing it with new, identical furniture. Other workers are out in the street, building all kinds of things that already existed, artfully strewing litter about, and so on.

After some confusion, they meet up with the foreman. He explains to them that time is like a train, and every minute is like a train car. Each one has to be individually constructed and torn down later, once we're done with it. Our protagonists have somehow accidentally slipped into a minute a few hours ahead of the rest of the world.

Then there's a miniscule bit of narrative tension, because the powers that be don't want to let them get back to reality, but no one really tries all that hard to stop them. Eventually, they find their way to some out-of-the-way spot and hide out until their minute comes around, and poof! Time snaps back into place and all is well.

I loved this episode when I first saw it. It will already be manifestly evident to you why this is, even though it didn't dawn on me until well after the conversation reported above. To belabor the point:

• Forced layover
• In which nothing bad actually happens
• Despite some excitement and inconvenience to spice things up
• And there are no lasting unfortunate consequences
• Furthermore, you have pleasant company along for the ride
• And, thus, someone else who can share your memories of that time you had to spend three hours in the barren ol' future, where the faceless blue people are.

What could be nicer, really? Obviously the next step here should be to create a company called Inconvenient Inc. Sign up for their services and they will intervene in your daily life to cause carefully calibrated levels of disruption along any number of randomly assigned lines of mild adventure. Then, of course, you'll be in a Philip K. Dick novel, and you'll end up informing on yourself, joining a religion based on the principles of mercerized cotton, and hand-coding your emotions so that you feel more loyal to your employer. The choice is yours!

Another memorable forced layover

When I was just shy of seventeen weeks pregnant, I arrived back at my office at the end of a Thursday afternoon of lecturing to discover that OH GOD there was a dampness in my pants and that dampness was red.

Shit shit shit shit shit. I sent an instant message to poor Steve, who was incidentally sitting around the house waiting for my mother and cousin to arrive for their weekend visit, and called my doctor's office. The woman on the phone was very nice and soothing while I produced an unnaturally calm report on my state of affairs. She said things like "Don't hang up!" and "You sound less flustered than I do!" and after some consultation with a doctor, finally informed me that there was nothing in particular to be done right then, and that I should come in for an appointment at noon the next day.

I went home, told my mother and cousin what was going on, placed a request that we all do our best to ignore it, since there was nothing to be done, and passed the evening in a strange haze of roasting vegetables, buttering bread, and making pleasant chit chat. Everyone was lovely. I was, of course, sad. Steve and I went to bed, held hands, and said, "Well, either it's okay or it isn't." We fell asleep.

In the morning no one went to work. First, instead, we all went out for breakfast. Then we gave my mother and Louise keys to our house and sent them off to wander the neighborhood while we went to the doctor.

It was not my usual doctor, but someone else in the practice, an affable youngish guy with a head full of the kind of little curls that make Persian lamb coats so desirable. He immediately determined that the heartbeat was strong and healthy. He said "everything looks okay" about thirty reassuring times over the course of the examination. He smiled. We smiled.

"Now," he said, "everything looks okay. But of course you want to know exactly what happened. I'm going to call the ultrasound clinic and schedule you for a visit. You know they're very busy, but after an episode of bleeding we can sometimes get you on the schedule quickly. Come around to the front desk and we'll see how soon they can fit you in."

I put my clothes on and we went to the desk. Everyone was smiling. "Good news!" said the doctor. "They had a cancellation, so they can take you in about an hour. I'm so glad that everything looks okay."

We called my mother to bring her up to date, and got in the car. By then it was lunchtime. There wasn't time to go home to eat or to stop anywhere for a proper meal, but there was a Dunkin Donuts on the side of the road. "They sell bagels, sort of," I said. 

So we sat down at a little formica table at the Dunkin Donuts and ate toroidal foods together. Steve gave me some of his bagel with cream cheese, and I gave him some of my chocolate doughnut. It was the middle of the day on a weekday, and though we were at an exceedingly uncelebratory establishment in an exceptionally unfestive strip mall in suburban Cleveland, it felt like a holiday.

(The ultrasound was fine, of course, or I doubt I'd have quite such fond memories of the lunch. Again there was a doctor I hadn't met before, and again he was very pleasant. He had a thick Israeli accent in which he said "This is not associated with a bad outcome," which was just the kind of awkward but reassuring doctor talk I wanted to hear. He said that he thought probably we were having a girl, but that we shouldn't buy any clothing yet, and told us bashfully and proudly of the many achievements of his beloved son, who was born on my due date.)

Good times.

When Steve and I were young and rootless, we once took an unplanned, indeed enforced, vacation in the Colorado mountains. We had been peacefully minding our own business, driving across the country as our larger project and just then along Rt. 285 out of Denver, when a woman turned left suddenly in front of us, totaling our car. Everyone was uninjured, and the other driver was definitively at fault, but we had to wait for the insurance people to come hem and haw over our crumpled Toyota before they could proclaim it defunct.

It would take the adjuster a few days to get to us, so we were destined to spend some time in little Fairplay, which is incidentally a county seat and smack dab in the middle of the real live South Park, Colorado. Wikipedia tells me that in 2000 it had a population of 610.

We ate at all of the restaurants in town -- I think there were three? -- and got friendly with the local liquor store. Everyone soon knew our story and took special relish in the fact that the driver who'd caused all the trouble was from Breckenridge, a fancy-pants nearby resort town. "Oh, Breckenridge," everyone would say, with all the scorn and relish you can imagine poured into the name.

"Yeah, Breckenridge," we'd agree, and developed a little shrug that said: What can you do? Breckenridge.

The motel had DVD players you could rent, and a little library of DVDs to choose from. The proprietors were a husband and wife, and the wife said, "Oh, whatever else you do, you have to watch this one, it's my favorite movie in the whole world. No charge." It turned out to be the 1939 Wuthering Heights.

The town was dusty, dry, tiny, nearly empty. We drank cheap vodka and cheap orange juice in our motel room. I smoked clove cigarettes in the parking lot, and miraculously had plenty on hand. We watched lots of TV and walked around to see the meager sights.

It was a wonderful time, one of my favorite memories. I'd like to go back, except that of course it wouldn't be the same.

It's funny, because I think of myself as a great big stick in the mud, and I certainly have a long history of considering ALL CHANGE BAD. But provided that nothing actually tragic occurs as a result, it turns out that I quite like an occasional sudden disruption to my plans. I hope this bodes well for my future happiness.

I have another example that I'll save for next time. It involves a medical scare and a doughnut, and was what gave me the idea that I might actually find a certain kind of disruption generally appealing. Previously I'd thought it was just a special quirk of Fairplay.

What about you, though? Do you have episodes of enjoyable enforced changes of plans in your past, or is it always just upsetting? Is there a pattern that accounts for which changes are pleasant and which are a pain? There have to be more constraints on the appeal beyond disruption yes, tragedy no. What do you think?

Polly wants an anti-viral.

Back when we all thought the pandemic of our age was going to be the avian flu, Steve and I came up with the bright idea of getting a parrot and teaching it to say two things: "Birrrrd fluuuu" in a hoarse, rattling voice, and "[cough]".

Today I made the mistake of reading an article in the New York Times about a pregnant woman who was struck down horribly by H1N1, inflated "like a molten balloon" by a high-pressure ventilator, delivered prematurely of her child, who did not survive, and put in a coma for four months. I have a cold at the moment so this was a spectacularly brilliant selection. Yes, you think it's just a cold, because you have no fever at all and feel entirely fine and sprightly aside from a stuffy nose, and have done for days, but you never know. It could blossom into DEADLY MOLTEN BALLOON FLU at any moment.

Also, the article was called "Flu Story: A Pregnant Woman’s Ordeal," which is impressively puerile. Toy Story, Love Story, Flu Story.

Not much more to be said, there, really. Here, have a picture of the cat in some plastic:

He looks so innocent and hopeful, doesn't he? Also like a nun in the order of the Little Sisters of the Polymer Wimples. 

I'm off to steam clean my skull in an endless shower. Don't wait up.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes is a remarkable film.

 

Hello. I am Vincent Price and I like to play the organ in my shiny rain poncho.

 

I always put on my face before I go out.

This is my beautiful and silent assistant Vulnavia. In the background you can see the wax busts I've made of my intended victims.

She wears a vast array of deco costumes and helps me kill people.

 

For instance, this bird cage is filled with murderous bats.

This man is being exsanguinated.

And this gentleman has been brought down by a booby-trapped frog mask at a fancy dress ball.

The police are stymied.

Oh, I see. Vincent Price is following his own version of the ten plagues of Egypt, as he kills off all the members of the surgical team who failed to save his wife four years ago. Thank you, rebbe.

This movie also stars Joseph Cotten. Hello, Joseph Cotten!

It turns out that while everyone thought Dr. Phibes had died in a terrible car accident while rushing to the side of his dying wife, he was merely horribly disfigured. He'd also been rendered mute, but he's used his great acoustical expertise to rig up a way to attach an amplifier to a hole in his neck (through which he also drinks martinis) and connect it to a phonograph. This allows Vincent Price a number of excellent scenes in which he stares balefully and inflates his throat like a toad while a recording of his voice plays from elsewhere. 

I think my favorite murder is death by locusts. First, Dr. Phibes brews up some highly concentrated essence of brussels sprouts, as you do:

Then he drizzles it all over the head and neck of his sleeping victim through a hole in the ceiling and sends in the locusts.

They naturally chew all the flesh from her bones, because of the well known irresistible allure that brussels sprouts hold for all grasshoppers. Vulnavia dances a celebratory dance (not pictured).

One thing leads to another, as it will. Joseph Cotten is forced to surgically remove a key from the torso of his young son, an elaborate acid-dispensing device hanging like the sword of Damocles over his head. Dr. Phibes takes his leave.

 

That's his dead wife there next to him. Dr. Phibes will be joining her in the afterlife, or so it seems, via an infusion of embalming fluid. Then the floor closes over them, and the police are left, once again, at a complete loss.

Best of all, there's a sequel!

Browsing the film offerings at Hulu

"You're picking out all kinds of shit."

"I'm just going through what's available, although it's true that Side Out is an incredible turd."

"I made an incredible turd this morning."

"HA."

(quietly) "I did, too."

More cheers

Today, it is my intention to present something else malaise-dispelling, this time without any sneaky malaise-inducing discussion of death afterward. Let's see how it goes.

Several years ago, F. and I invented what I still think would be a really excellent reality program. It would be called Apartment Animal and would feature a series of apartment dwellers taking up residence with various apartment-unsuitable animals. Apartment Rhino. Apartment Goose. Apartment Minks. (The plural in the latter is critical. Oh Christ, there are fifteen deranged minks are tearing one another to pieces in the middle of my living room! Help.)

Japan, being Japan, seems to have independently invented something pretty much exactly along our proposed lines, only less about chaos and destruction and more about cuteness. Click here, as they used to say in the olden days, and see an actress spending the day in a small apartment, or a day-like stretch of time in an apartment-like soundstage, with two red pandas.

Cheering!

What happened there?

If you are suffering from Sunday malaise or something like it, let me recommend browsing through the archives of Improv Everywhere. Best known for staging mass depantsings on the NY subway, and originally given to staging events that were small in scale and a bit mean, they have over the last eight years inclined more and more towards the exuberantly bizarre and happy making. The Welcome Back stunt is a nice example, I think. I like to watch the video of the recipients being extremely puzzled but, it seems, genuinely enjoying the strangeness. It's cheering.

This small guinea pig story is also cheering.

The achy neck, scritchy throat, and strangely pressurized skull currently afflicting me are surely mere side effects of the flu shot I received on Saturday, not a sign that it came Too Late. Right? Right.

I think I had better have some tea.

While I do, let me tell you a story, or rather two proto-stories, about how my dad was very good at responding to the whims of a small child. Both took place in the car, as he was driving me from school or nursery school, probably to come hang out at his office.

He was, as I've mentioned, a secretary. Specifically, he worked in the music department of a university with quite a good music program. His office and the area just outside, which had a lovely enormous wood table to lounge on, were pleasantly full of students who found me a novelty. Taped to the door was a mystifying cartoon about something called an SAT. There were chairs with wheels on and a typewriter on which I was allowed produce pages of gibberish to my heart's content, while my father met with people and filled out forms on another typewriter, and arranged things on the phone. It was a nice place to visit.

Anyway, in the car. I was four or five. One day I announced that I would like to live in a mobile home. I had got some ideas from watching Sesame Street. It would be so much more fun, I said, to go to school in our house. 

"Oh but," said my dad, "look at that sign. It says that only vehicles of a certain weight can drive on this road. A mobile home weighs more than that. We couldn't drive you to school at all if we had one of those."

"Oh! Never mind then," said little me.

Another day I suggested that we should get a llama. (There was a bit on Sesame Street about a girl who took her pet llama to the llama dentist, apparently in a basement office somewhere in Manhattan.)

"You don't want a llama," he said. "They spit."

"Ooh, you're right, I don't! Never mind," said me.

What good parenting. No wonder I came out so well.

It was so long ago that he died. He never knew me as an adult or even as a full-fledged adolescent, and that of course goes both ways. I only ever knew him from a child's point of view. So generally, as I go through various grown-up rites of passage, I don't exactly wish he could have been there to see them, because it's so distant.

Of course I think about what it would have been like to know him that way, growing up, and how I would have liked that. It's just not "I wish he were here for this." But thinking about what life will be like with a baby in it is different. After all, I was a baby, and a little girl. I remember the latter, if not the former, and suddenly he's not distant at all.

I'm terrified of what it would be like if Steve died as young as he did. Please don't do that, Steve.

Dammit! This was not where I intended to wind up when I started writing. What was in that tea? I'd better go find a subway to take my trousers off in.