Jean Baudrillard said “There is nothing funny about Halloween.  This sarcastic festival reflects, rather, an infernal demand for revenge by children on the adult world.” 

The only Halloween I really remember was at 11 or 12 … I think the last year I knocked for candy.  I went out with my best friend Anne, and we only trick-or-treated as a decoy for our parents.  We were really in it for the shaving cream and gooey tomatoes her brother gave us.  Shaving cream in October, if I remember, was harder for small-town kids to get than beer – so that we had some was a huge deal. 

I was a fried egg that year, but it was that first thrill of crime that I remember, and having cool stories for school the next day.  That glorious taste of being “grown-up”, like Anne’s 15-year-old brother, Alan.

Today Curious George picked up all the mail and gave it back to the mailman — crazy Monkey!

Trick or Treat everyone.  Wheeee!

I hate selling the house because it means we have to show it and that means we have to be neat and picked up and the beds made and all that rot.  Every day.  Every minute.  Tonight, for crying out loud, 6:00 they come – where will we eat? 

A.’s doing all the work, but I’m the one tired of it.  It’s been, what, a week?  I’m mad at everyone who looked but didn’t buy, snooped in my closet but didn’t call back … what’s the deal, you got a problem with my house? 

One guy, A. heard him, was complaining about a corner, some paint chipping off the corner outside, by the trellis.  So A. will paint it, I would have given up.  Who cares about the stupid paint, give us a check so we can go! 

Not only that, Gary the weird sidewalk blocker down the street, the neighborhood villain, stole one of our signs.  So I knocked on his door last night and told him to give it back like I was five.  “Give it!”  “No, you give it!”  “No, you!” 

Hmm, there was something else I thought.  Oh yes, cookbooks.  Please send me your favorite cookbooks.  Not the physical objects, but the names and why you like them.  Or your mother’s cookbook, or something.  Nothing new and known — no Rachael Ray — write to me about the really old yellowed ones, or the ones about Spam (is it Scrapple in the East, are they the same thing?)  Anyway, I’m pitching a column, I’ll tell you all about it later but first I need some cookbooks, some stories about cookbooks, some ideas.  Thanks.  You’ll be paying for my pool toys.  I’ll let you use them. 

… is the creepiest thing i have ever, seen, ever.  There is nothing creepier in the whole wide world forever, since the beginning, and evermore.  Ever.

As you were. 

Gary Wills (Pulitzer Prize winner for Lincoln at Gettysburg, plus author of like six thousand other books), talks about G Dubya and the Faith Cats in New York Review of Books:

Bush promised his evangelical followers faith-based social services, which he called “compassionate conservatism.”  He went beyond that to give them a faith-based war, faith-based law enforcement, faith-based education, faith-based medicine, and faith-based science.  He could deliver on his promises because he stocked the agencies handling all these problems, in large degree, with born-again Christians of his own variety.

Anyway … it’s still Sunday, I have stuff to do.  Bye.

This one’s going out to you, A., on this lovely Friday afternoon, the papers all signed and dotted and you and I the proud, freaked owners of two homes – hopefully not for long.   

 

(Psst, everyone else! That cute little door there is to your own separate guest quarters.  Come out, you don’t even have to see us!)

 … I’m being a huge baby today, whiny and self-pitying and yelling at A. because he’s there.  Also because I don’t have a personal trainer or a driver, or a jester, a baker, or candlestick maker plus someone to keep the house clean every minute for when the Realtor calls.

Junior’s sick and I was grumpy about losing my free time this morning, and resenting the extra work, but then we started talking about Bob the Builder and how they turn the clay figures into animation but still use real toys, not clay, for the machines and then we played a few rounds of Mancala.  All of a sudden, without my knowing it, I was appreciating the company and the sun and the tiny little bluebirds hopping around the backyard.  Go figure. 

Write a book in six words today, then have a martini.  Plus one for me, per favore.  Grazie.

This made me laugh.  Echoes of Lynn Cheney and who was the other one? … A guy, some conservative guy wrote a sexy book.  Oh, yeah, Scooter Libby.  Anyway, the candidate for Texas State Comptroller wrote something called “A Perfect Match” with “plenty of moaning, panting and stroking,” which obviously makes her outrageously unsuitable.  The book, by the way, is out of print.  Duh.  “Moaning, panting and stroking” is so 50s! 

It also made me laugh because I rewrote a sex scene yesterday while I was looking for an excerpt to post.  I like it a lot but not quite ready to post it yet.  It’s not crazy — no dogs or chickens, and no moaning or panting … or stroking really.  It’s just a very typical sexual transaction between two people who have been married for some time, one of whom has something else he or she’d rather be doing.  It’s funny, I think.  I’ll post it later. 

This is all I have today because we’re showing the house and my son’s home and there’s no news anyway.  Is there?  I don’t know.     

“In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.”  (David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress)

Go back to sleep.

 … Buying a house is so dumb.  All this work and all those papers we signed, then our seller accepts another offer and we have 72 hours to come up with the money like a bad mob film — A.’s off getting a bridge loan, whatever that is.  So we wouldn’t get all stressed about it, I said this morning:  “Let’s just agree right now, and be fine with it, that we’ll be in way over our heads, lose both houses, you’ll work at Shari’s on the weekends, I’ll be bitter and start to smoke.  I’ll take in sewing from the rich ladies in town and the kids will need to be a lot smarter than we planned if they hope to escape our wretched life with appliances on the porch.”  We shook on it, and it’s cool. 

It takes forever to write a stupid book.  I’m emphasizing the quirkiness now, particularly Ellen’s strange little pile of friends — a comatose lover, a psychotic ex-felon, imaginary sister, tadpoles — because I fear Little Children has captured the ordinary suburb, the ordinary malaise.   Mine, then, will be extraordinary.  Maybe tomorrow another excerpt. 

Today, a New Yorker story, and an art piece from The Nation.  Ta-ta. 

… but then he took it back.  I *heart* A.

I know, I know: ”He’s Not Smart” – Ooooh, big news flash!  But still it’s funny, isn’t it sometimes?  To just pretend it’s a funny movie or something.  He’s just funny.