Leezer

For those of you Googling “American Idol,” welcome to my blog.  As I’ve learned from my Stat Counter, there are many avenues to my blog, none of which I’m particularly proud.  Apparently, Googling, “Bleached Anus,” will get you here, as will “I ruv it asian,” as will “poop.” (No surprise there.)  I’m expiramenting a bit to see if I can win Time Magazine’s Blogger of the Year award just by using a common pop-culture term in my title.  Tune in later for the results.

In the mean time, I was tagged by Expat to complete the following exercise:

- Post the rules on your blog
- Write six random things about yourself in a blog post
- Tag six people in your post
- Let each person know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog
- Let the tagger know your entry is up

This is not going to be easy because I have no secrets to share. I’ve actually written just about everything there is to know about me, which frightens me into oblivion. 

Now, Expat indicated on her blog that we are virtual twins. This is true.  There are a few minor differences, however. First, Expat does not have the same hang-ups about religion as do I.  Second, Expat considers listening to others’ differing points of view as a challenge and a growing experience, while I consider the same experience merely annoying and a waste of precious time. Third, Expat is a true adventurer, having lived all over the world and having raised a kind, well-functioning family unit at the same time.  I could not do this.  Here’s to you, Expat!

Here are six random things, hopefully heretofore unpublished:

• Every night I wear a t-shirt to bed that says, “Ask me about my explosive diarreah.”  My husband thinks I’m irresistible.
• I scored in the thirteenth percentile in the Spatial Orientation section of the pre-college tests (this is out of 100, folks).  This is the exercise that requires you to figure out which way the wheels are turning. If you think THIS is bad, Leezerslawpartner, one of the best attorneys in the whole US of A, scored a SIX! He told me, “I didn’t even think this was possible.”  Adorable, that one.
• I secretly think I’m sort of funny-looking.
• I am so weary of telling my seven-year old, roughly seven times a day, how old our two-year old Shih Tzu is in “human years.”  Now I just tell her “Two. same age as he is in dog years.”
• My best friend Ruthie from childhood died in 1994.  She’s in nearly every dream of mine. Recently, in such a dream, I asked her,”why are you always here.” She said, “that’s our agreement. I’ll always  be here whether you need me or not.” It’s sort of comforting.  MCS reminds me a lot of Ruthie but I don’t tell her very often out of fear I’ll creep her out.
• In the fifth grade, I held two older girls hostage in the girls bathroom.  They couldn’t leave until they said the secret password, “shoes in your mouth, yeah yeah yeah.”  After the bell rang and we were discovered missing, the sixth grade teacher found us, sent the hostages back to class, and told me I would be the first female in Lake Youngs Elementary School history to receive a hack. He pounded the hack paddle into his palm, then at the last minute he let me go, sans hack. I’m sure a lawsuit from my parents was the only thing that stopped him cold.

Tagged:  Mae, Lisa, Lengli, Naynay, Pixie, Kitkat

I’ve been a little out of sorts lately. Either it’s the Saturn retrograde or it’s close to the end of the season for my two favorite shows, American Idol and Dancing with the Stars.  Now, I have a professional degree. I’m not opposed to using latin terms when I want to appear like a know-it-all.  But I hoard my childrens “Littlest Pet Shop” toys because they’re the closest thing to living in a pod I can come up with - I mean the little toys live in the pod, not me, but I can live there vicariously.  And I love mind-numbing tv shows made for imbeciles. Oh well.

So last night’s American Idol featured Neal Diamond songs.  This is really scratching at the bottom of the barrel.  I love Neal Diamond and all, but I just can’t watch him without thinking of Will Farrell’s impression of a Neal Diamond concert in which Will (as Neal) talks to the audience about picking up a drifter - a man - and having sex with him.  Some mental images will live on.

And I find it a little upsetting that my favorite, Michael Johns, was voted off before Neal Diamond night. I can imagine him crooning, “Cherry,” - She’s got the way to move me, Cherry! -  with his shirt open to his navel and all the girls in the audience taking off their panties and throwing them on the stage. 

Speaking of panties, I heard yesterday on the radio that Roger Clemens and his friends are big fans of some up-and-coming fifteen year-old country western singer. They attended one of her concerts in which Roger stood in the front row and threw her one of his jerseys.  The media is reporting that the two have become “friends” and the relationship is purely “platonic.”  Now let’s think about this a bit.  Roger Clemens has two or three sons.  I believe the oldest is a grown man, or at least he’s in college. His wife is a body builder who abuses steriods and other prescription drugs.   Not that her bad habits have anything to do with his unhealthy relationship with a minor, it just makes the story a little more salacious.  So apparently Roger’s adoration of the jail-bait singer has progressed to the point that he’s now getting more attention from this spectacle than he did for perjury (remember his testimony before congress that he never used steriods).  All I can say is “Ewwww.”  And to the girl, where are your parents?  I wonder if the girl (Mindy) knows if Roger had to take little round bandaids wherever he went so the injection site on his buttocks wouldn’t stain his designer slacks.  Maybe she put his bandaids on for him.

That’s all for now. I wish I had something a little more interesting to share with all of you, but I’m a working mother of two small children whose back always hurts and one of the children is home with a cold.  

Today as I sat in my office reading George Will in order to delay accomplishing anything of value, I ate a Combo Number 1 from Thai Castle which theoretically is supposed to contain phad thai but usually is screwed up in some manner so I get extra curry or too much sticky rice.  The lime wedge included in my meal was far too tiny to be taken seriously, even as a Corona-accompaniment.  In any event, I gripped the little nugget between my thumb and forefinger and pressed as hard as I could, aiming for the congealed glob of carbohydtrates.  Pulp and juice squirted over the front of my blouse and down my forearms, then the little bastard shot out of my hand and behind the prefabricated office shelving upon which I’ve appropriately arranged my Dwight Schrute bobblehead and photos of my children. 

“Ah screw it,” I thought, not rising to locate the renegate citrus wedge.  “I’ll smell it when it starts to rot, then it’ll be easier to find.”   I went back to my meal and unfastened the top button of my J.Crew Heritage Chinos.  If only I could belch unnoticed.

And speaking of eating too much, today is the first full day of the calendar year in which the sun is in the sign of Taurus the bull.  Taurus is the sign of good food, good drink, and material possessions.  Never give a Taurus a card that says, “I owe you ten kisses,” or “Good for a free afternoon away from the kids.”  A Taurus doesn’t want this crap. He wants a bottle of Dom Perignon or a Rolex or a cabin next to a river.  A Taurus is all about the bling, baby.

Not so with Scorpios, who generally eschew luxury to make some kind of statement.   I am a Scorpio, the sign of death, rebirth, regeneration, and reinvention.  The symbol for the sign is the Phoenix, the mythical bird that is consumed by flames then is reborn from his own ashes.   The closest I ever came to this experience was when I was eleven and my family went to see our neighbors, the Battles, on Christmas Eve.   In the downstairs guest bath was a lit Avon candle (Mrs. Battles was an Avon lady) inside of a ceramic representation of Holly Hobby.  (Holly Hobby looked a little rough - more like Janis Joplin).  I leaned over to sniff the patchouli scented wax and one of my braids caught fire.   I interrupted my Mom as she set the Triscuits and the cheese ball on the dining room table and asked her I smelled like Joan of Arc. 

My daughter is a Scorpio, also.  This doesn’t surprise me in the least because I believe in poetic justice, therefore I forsaw having a daughter exactly like me.   Granted, you’d have to be a believer in astrology to accept as truth the proposition that those born under the same sign possess similar personality traits, however, she does happen to be like me whether or not the stars have anything to do with it.   My mother thinks it’s amusing when I cojole my daughter at the dinner table as she drags her hair through her soup.  

But then there are  the Capricorns (goats).  I don’t know which I’d prefer - being born under the sign of the goat or (in the Chinese Zodiac) the cock:  “Hi! I’m a cock!  What’s your sign?”  My mother is a Capricorn.  If she’s representative of her sign, then Capricorns have no tolerance for throwing away broccoli stems and they can read the Exorcist cover-to-cover without losing a wink of sleep.  This is, obviously, entirely unfair to my mother, whose lovely attributes defy description in a silly blog such as this.

This said, I don’t believe in astrology.  I do, however, believe that one’s blood type should dictate the types of foods one should have in his or her diet.   O-Positive.  Steak, steak, and more steak.

My Mom’s high school principal’s name was Harry Dick.  Or Harry Balls, I can’t recall, but she reminds of this fact once a year or so.   Her point, aside from the obvious entertainment-value in the name itself, is of the importance in bringing a child into this world with a name that does its owner justice. 

We named our first daughter Georgia for a couple of reasons; first, my husband and I love the Ray Charles song, Georgia On My Mind.   The song is soulful and a bit mysterious - you don’t know if Georgia is a person or a place.  It doesn’t really matter.  Hearing the song always made me wish my name was Georgia. 

 Second, my husband  is from Virginia, and we sure as hell weren’t going to name our child Virginia.  (I once related this rationale to a stranger at a dinner party, only later to lean over with an outstretched hand, “by the way, my name is Lisa.  What’s your name?”  Her response: “Virginia.”)  Giving our precious girl the name Virginia would undoubtedly require us to console her on a regular basis when other children realized how much Virginia sounds like vagina. 

Georgia - the name and my daughter -  reminds me of a Weeping Willow -  lacy, feminine, strong, steamy, and ageless.  Somehow I knew this about her before she was born.  That, or I’ve projected onto her those traits I value.  I think it was also the only name upon which we agreed.

I’ve longed to name a daughter India, which was a common name in Victorian England.  Perhaps because England occupied India.   Upon further reflection, a British person naming a child India may be considered tasteless, like naming a child Appartheid, Harper’s Ferry, or The Killing Fields.  Some good things likely came out of the British occupation of India, but placing my child in the position of needing to justify her name seemed a tad unfair.   Our baby sitter’s name is Enola.  A few days ago my husband asked her,

 ” . . . like the WWII Enola Gay?  The one that carried the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima?” 

I was afraid he’d ask.  During this questioning I implored him with my eyes, She’s only fifteen!  She didn’t give herself the name!  Leave it alone!

Nonetheless, India, like Goergia, is a strong, steamy, yet ageless name.  

When we adopted Anna from China, the name India didn’t make the short list because the last thing we wanted to do to our child who doesn’t look a thing like us was to saddle her with an oddball name.  So we picked about the least ethnic-sounding name we could think of:  Anna.  It was the perfect choice.  She loves her name and refers to herself in the third person:  “Anna wants wa-wa; Anna go nigh-nigh; Anna go poopy!” 

Expat Princess believes - and I whole heartedly agree - that a name should look impressive when printed upon a college or law school diploma.  I question whether the Shittheads, the Shanias,  and the Fantasias really want their names printed Harvard Diplomas.  But perhaps the names won’t be printed anywhere at all, or will be printed upon state liquor control-board operators’ licenses.  Not that there’s any shame in that.  Don’t send me hate-mail telling me how bougoise I am.  I just think a child should be given as much of a head start as possible. 

Speaking of names that do their owners justice, I know a woman who named her son Justice, but I believe she spells it differently.  What a wonderful name, Justice.  Unless the child becomes an adult-film star.  In that case Harry Dick is more appropriate.

• Paper toilet seat covers.  You put one on the toilet seat, the middle part falls in the water, gets heavy, and pulls the whole thing into the water.  Then you think, “Well, I’ll tear the center out altogether.”  Doesn’t work.  The whole ring tears in half. So then you get another one.  It does the same thing!  Finally, you just take some toilet paper and line the seat with that.  It falls off too.  I’ve resolved to just take disinfectant cloths wherever I go.

• Three-quarter sleeves.  These types of sleeves serve only to accentuate the primate-quality of my arms.  Sleeves should be long or short.  One or the other.  And don’t even get me started on cropped pants WITH a three-quarter sleeve shirt.  Basically the wearer of the outfit looks like a child who has overgrown his britches.

• The five star spiciness rating system in Thai restaurants.  These are useless.  Every time my husband and I go to a Thai restaurant, we do the same expirament:  He orders three or four stars and I order one star.  The food always tastes identical.

• Tylenol.  I understand giving Tylenol to a kid (Ryes Syndrome) but for an adult, its about as effective as a piece of liccorice.

• Antennae on cell phones.  Does anyone use these things? Are they just there for show?  Cell phone coverage is coverage is coverage.  The four-inch plastic stick doesn’t help with dropped calls coverage gaps.

• Deoderant tampons. If you need a deoderant tampon, then you should see a doctor.

• Cliff Notes, law school study guides and other academic short-cuts.  When I was in law school, the hulabaloo during the first few months of school as a 1L was which study outline/guide  to buy.  Most, if not all, of us bought a bunch of these in the first year, and by the end of school virtually no one was using them.  Why?  Because there are no short-cuts.  Shortcuts are exactly that - doing something fast and sloppy.  Kind of like the way my husband skiis - really fast, but without proper form because he doesn’t Stem Christy (plant his pole properly).   While certainly dry reading, the law school texts contained every thing we needed to know.  All else was trifles.

• Waterproof Bandaids.  These are bandaids that are clear where the brown strip is supposed to be.  Utterly, completely, infuriatingly useless.  I am always cutting my fingers nearly to the bone whilst cooking because, despite my comments above, I tend to chop quickly and sloppily.  I’ve endured too many showers rinsing the suds out of my hair and recoiling in agony as my long wet hairs pull through the inside of a deep cut.  So I tried the waterproof bandaids. (I’d just as soon wear a soggy pair of underpants than a soggy band-aid).  The water-proof kind are merely a sales gimmick.  My shower drain inevitably becomes a sad graveyard for these clear-plastic soldiers. 

President’s Day is Monday, February 18th, and I don’t know about you but I am dying to pay my respects to our founding forefathers by studying their hair. It’s too bad I live on the West Coast and not in Philadelphia, where the presidential “hair album” is scheduled to be on display at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences from February 16th -18th.   The hair album belonged to Peter Arvell Browne and contains locks of hair from twelve presidents who lived during Browne’s  lifetime, 1762-1860.   Apparently, it was not uncommon to ask famous people for their hair in those days, and it was not uncommon for hair to be given.  The hair album contains locks of hair from Washington (brownish-gray), Jefferson (reddish-gray), and James Monroe (hair color unknown).

I really don’t want to see dead peoples’ hair; I don’t care who they were when alive.  I don’t want to see their fingernail clippings or their boogers either.  The curator of the National Academy thinks the display will be a success, because “It gives you a sense of who they [the Presidents] were as people.” 

I disagree. 

I have had an ongoing obsession with Abraham Lincoln for as long as I can remember. I’ve read most of the Lincoln biographies written, I have books of photographs of him, and I’ve read his writings.  I even travelled to the Ford Theater and saw the chair he was sitting in when he was shot.  The chair is still covered with his blood and sits in a glass case in the basement of the theater.  In a nearby case is Lincoln’s top hat, his watch, and, yes, a lock of his hair.   If Lincoln’s corpse was also preserved under glass in the theater basement, I doubt staring at it would give me any more sense of Lincoln, the man, than staring at a photograph. Reading Lincoln’s words gives me only a rough approximation of his spirit.  I’m not too interested in his blood type or other facts about the container embodied that spirit.

I once read a magazine article comprised of letters from women about their worst bosses.  One letter in particular stood out from the others:  a woman took a job as an administrative assistant for a man who, during her first week of work, requested that she ask all the female employees in the office for a sample of their pubic hair so he could place the samples under glass domes like the ones pocket watches hang from.  

While there may be an elegant segue from that anecdote back to locks of hair from dead presidents, I don’t know what it is.   But maybe there’s a connection between Browne and the world’s worst boss.  Maybe they were both searching desperately for an organic connection to something they, themselves lacked.  Or maybe they’re both weirdos.

Update:  After Mae’s comment about Mozart’s hair, I had to google it for myself.  Look what I found:

Che Guevera’s hair:

Napoleon’s hair:

Jefferson’s hair:

Mozart’s hair:

And (drumroll) I’ve saved the best for last, Alexander Hamilton’s hair!

This is a picture taken at sunrise this morning near my neighborhood.  The snow is beautiful but, generally speaking, people in Seattle don’t know how to drive in the snow.  Even in their SUVs and front wheel drive vehicles, they hit the brakes on ice then wonder why they spin.  Better yet, they get nervous and leave their cards smack dab in the middle of the road.  Idling.  I don’t know where the drivers go, maybe they just start walking home.  We never cease to be amazed at the aftermath of abandoned vehicles when a storm hits.

But in more important news, most people who read this blog know I’m a huge fan of Martin Luther.  He was really the first revolutionary I learned about in college, which is not surprising considering I minored in Religion at a Lutheran college. Luther was the first person with the balls to say “stick it” to the Catholic church.  From January 28th, 1521 to May 25th 1521, the Catholic Church reviewed Luther’s 95 Theses (”heretic” writings) and considered whether he should be excommunicated, executed, or both.  This five month-long period was referred to as the imperial Diet of Worms.  Not because people ate worms, but because the trial was held in a place called Worms, and a “diet” was a term used in those days for church teachings, recommendations, and haranguing. 

Here’s what went down:

Luther joined an order of Catholic monks when he was a young man.  All the dudes in his frat busied themselves with various forms of self-abuse, like whipping their own backs with cats-o-nine-tails (leather cords with spikes at one end) and sleeping on beds of nails.   Martin didn’t understand this, thinking that if Jesus meant what said when he said he took on the pain and sins of the world, then why should we continue to beat ourselves up all the time?  “Phooey with that,” Luther said, “I’m my own man.”

To understand the implications of Luther’s hard-ass position, it’s important to understand the role of the Catholic church back then.  The Catholic church (Rome, the Pope, and his minions) were THE government, THE law, and THE last word on everything.  The Bible was read in Latin, only by priests, and regular Joes weren’t allowed to own or read a bible, which would have been futile for the average citizen as he or she most likely did not speak Latin in sixteenth-century Germany.   The Church translated “God’s word” for the average Joes, and the translations went something like this:

• The Catholic church is the only church God recognizes;
•  We popes and priests are the only people God listens to and your prayers and confessions have to go through us;
• God wants you to give me your money - It’s for a good cause! Your gift of money will please God and he’ll let your heretic relatives out of pergatory (a limbo state halfway between heaven and earth but not as fun as either);
• If you don’t mind, we’ll use some of your cash to support our concubines and bastard children. God would want that;
• God loves you only if you do these things;
• If you don’t do these things, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, says I can kill you.

 Well, Martin thought this was a bit much, even for the draconian age in which he lived.  His head raced with arguments and rebuttal.  His blood boiled with rage over how the Church treated his poor, hungry, fellow Germans.  So he put quill to paper and started to write, and write, and write, and write . . .

When he came up for air he had finished his 95 Theses which he rolled-up like a telescope, tied with a piece of dental floss, and kissed before putting on his coat and marching himself over to the castle doors of Wittenburg.  There he nailed his 95 Theses to the doors, the Theses being in German of course so everyone could read them. The Theses denounced the Catholic Church’s corruption and argued that every man, woman, and child is entitled to communicate directly with God, and that people are “saved” by their faith, not by filthy transactions with the Church.  Then Luther set about to translating the Bible into German.  This took awhile.

Well, you can imagine how pissed the Pope was.  He rattled off a letter that demanded Luther ”march his butt” over to the castle, remove the Theses, and say he was sorry.  Luther refused.  The Pope excommunicated Luther, to which Luther replied, “Neener neener I didn’t want to be in your old club anyhow.”  The Pope demanded that the German King turn Luther over to Church authorities for trial and the King refused.  The German people had two new heroes - Luther and his protector, the King.

But eventually Luther figured he’d face the music, and he travelled to Worms to hear the Church hate on him for five months.  He didn’t stay for the outcome, though, thinking that the Church was taking way too long to make a decision.  After his departure, the Church declared Luther a heretic and said Jesus wanted him dead.  By then Luther was in hiding.  Experts speculate that he spent his remaining days in the Bed and Bath section of the Wittenburg Wallmart because they kept finding longish-black hairs on the display bed sheets.

By then the Reformation was fully underway, and people - including some Lutherans - would continue to kill and maim each other in the name of God.

A few points of clarification:  During the Nazi occupation of Germany and Europe, Hitler was reported to use some of Luther’s writings to argue that Luther, Germany’s iconic mascot, was anti-semitic (didn’t Hitler’s mother ever teach him that two wrongs don’t make a right?).  I doubt this rumor.  Here’s why:  Luther had plenty of opportunity after the Reformation commenced to join his countrymen in bloody battles for the cause. These bloody battles were symptomatic of Lutheran in-fighting and resulted in many other Protestant religions: Methodism; Presbyterianism, and so on.   Luther was a man who walked the talk, and he refused to lower himself to violence and destruction, irrespective of the righteousness of his position.  Therefore, it simply doesn’t follow that while he refused to take up arms against the very church that hunted him, he’d advocate the burning and destruction of the Jews.  Just doesn’t add up. 

A final point:  the Catholic Church has had a lot of bad press over the centuries, some of it deserved, perhaps some of it not deserved.  But the protestant reformers were as guilty of violence and desecration as the Catholics.  I’ll save that lesson for another day when we study Tudor England.

Luther’s final words in his own defense at the Diet of Worms: Hier stehe ich. Ich kann nicht anders. Gott helfe mir. Amen.  (Translation: Unfortunately, laser hair-removal hasn’t really worked for me.)

Peace out.

A lot of fuss has been made of late about the va-jay-jay, what with that Dr. Odd Oz character being on Oprah all the time and Oprah needing a euphamism for the thing.  But I submit that “va-jay-jay” is too pedestrian, too informal, and lacking in the bearing and dignity appropriate for said Sweet Spot.  Here’s my list:

• Ho Chi Sin City
• Formidable Ike and His Band of Brigands
• Karen
• Helmut the Younger
• Grotto of Pleasure, Grotto of Pain
• Elysian Field of Dreams
• Kimchi Caliope
• Canned Ham and Eggs
• Minuet in V
• Grass-Fed Ginger Rhizome
• Vanessa

1. Exfoliate
2. Become a Legate of Rome
3. Pimp my Ride

So the other day I was wondering whether or not humans might exist in a parallel universe or universes coincident with this lifetime or whether time as we know it is linear only; but if it is linear then perhaps it is only linear within our cerebral cortex but to a more advanced intelligence it is possible to experience time in a non-linear fashion or, alternatively, experience time all at once which then would sort of contradict the idea of time as a unit of measurement.   For example, each day that I awake I am Leezer who is married to the same man I’ve been married to for twenty years, with two kids and a nice satisfying job as an attorney, who worries occasionally about growing old and paying the bills but is by and large a very happy woman; but who is to say that part of my psyche is not attached by an invisible thread to a consciousness in ancient Rome where I am a gladiator who likes to be fed peeled grapes while staring at young boys and worshipping gods that provide an abundance of wine and prevent hair loss? 

 But then I don’t think knowing the answers to such questions will help with any of the day-to-day tedium such as my proclivity for confusing the words prostrate:

with prostate:

Or in emptying the viagra-spam from my e-mail account at work or in ensuring that I remain a vigorous and physically appealing woman despite approaching the second half of my life and figuring out how to get my kids to eat more vegetables.    I am forever bored by many things such as putting gas in my car and getting my hair cut and listening to people complain about the government and worrying about taxes so the idea of a parallel universe is a welcome escape. 

My head hurts so much now that I must go drink a caffeinated beverage and contemplate the international markets.