Author Archives: iasshole

Monday WHOOSH

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Hello hello Asspeople in my Asscave, I am taking five minutes to tell you that I got called into work today. Guess the famous and sparkly name on everyone’s lips? That’s right, Your Asshole. People are quitting and the regular employees have latched onto me like a chav onto a Juicy bag. On one hand, I love this job, on the other, it doesn’t pay enough to live, and on the third hand that sprouted after the Pockyclipse (the scifi I am writing right now is making me demented) there is nothing else going. I was a little sad this weekend when I got called into work after discovering that I was indeed scheduled to work and had shit the bed. I felt less stupid when six others were no-shows as well, because the dates on the schedule were wrong.

I spent the time productively. Jobs I applied for: drama secretary (presumably I keep track of all the drama), some other kind of secretary that I have forgotten already but it’s in my email, grocery store night stocker (ha ha, I almost wrote stalker), and night hotel desk clerk, and finally, sucking dick for drug money.

Also it is important for you to know that I dropped Strudel off at school today and ran home. I pretty much run all over my neighborhood now, in my street shoes and regular bra and all. It is more doable now that my poor boobs have shrunk and now that I’ve been running for longer distances. I was late for an appointment the other day because I was watching the slow clock in the house without realizing it, and I ran there, making it in about two minutes instead of five on foot. I love it. I am also crazy impatient and am like WHY WALK WHEN YOU COULD RUN??? I see people and I’m like “hi bye” and run away because I’m part Tarahumara now and some crap. So now I’m that person: I’m in UR neighborhood runnin around like an idiot.

Speaking of Strudel, she shouted her way through the night again. She has ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS been a noisy sleeper, so my confession is that instead of feeling any sympathy for her soon-to-be-fearful-fours little nightmares, I feel more like OH FFS WHERE’S THE GIANT BELL JAR WHEN YOU NEED IT. I know, I know, earplugs or close the door, but if there’s a true emergency, I can’t miss the sound of vomiting or whatnot.

Have a good day, and if not, I feel your pain ™.

Hey It’s Saturday Post Some Fucking Carps

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I am supposed to be out gallivanting right now, and by “gallivanting” I mean “doing whatever I can find to do downtown that’s free.” Instead I am sitting at home with some bottles of Special Effects on my head that I found in the back of the cabinet. The cool dark brown sort of faded out to a dreary auburn color, so I am hoping that the red goo will make it look a little brighter, and yet still interviewable.

I’ve been hanging out at the library a lot lately, with the hobos, whom I kind of feel just a couple of degrees removed from right now. I don’t know how long things can carry on like this. When do you start making deep cuts? Do we really need the internet at home? I thought about selling the car, but who would buy it right now? Don’t go anywhere–don’t need the car. I tried to figure out my Xmas list this morning, and I am worried about that, too.

I cut my own hair this morning for the first time since July. It’s kind of fortunate that it’s so long, because it’s pretty easy to cut, one little section at a time. I had split ends like whoa from all the tiny combing and abuse with the lice thing. Also, I can finally say that the lice are gone. I don’t think I finished telling you about Listerine?

After giving up on the lice creams from the drugstore after two rounds and still having the crawlies, I went for the big amber bottle of Listerine. The first time I saturated my hair with it over the tub and put a shower cap on for a couple of hours. Afterwards I tipped my head over the tub and rinsed out the Listerine and watched bugs fall out. I don’t know if anything can be more happy and more depressing at the same time. I followed up with some conditioner and combing and lo, more bugs. Way more results than with the drugstore stuff. This was followed by a week of constantly rechecking and pulling nits, and they seem to be gone for now.

More awesomeness: I talked to SeaFed about Christmas scheduling last night. We also talked about the fact that Franny has been having stomachaches for the past two years and I am testing her by changing her diet to be gluten free, since it seems there’s a correlation between her eating pasta and bread and having a stomachache after. In the few days that she’s gone gluten-free she has had no stomachaches, which could be a coincidence, I know, but it’s hopeful since she used to have them daily. Then we are to put her back on gluten for five days and see if they return, and if so her doctor will order tests to see if she has Celiac’s.

SeaFed told me that she doesn’t get stomachaches at his house, unless it’s around the transition. I almost laughed, because she told me she gets them all the time, especially since her stepmom was making spaghetti a lot at one point. He also basically came out and told me that she was having them because Strudel’s dad and I broke up. Of course it’s my fault. Of course her stomachaches of two years were caused by the terrible conditions at my house and our recent break up. He conceded that sometimes he has a tendency to “gloss over” things (I immediately had a flashback to coming home to find Franny covered in her own shit and him on a different floor of the house, or me crying during fights and him falling asleep in the middle). He’s lucky he lives an unimpeachable life; how terrific that Franny never has stomachaches over there. It’s times like these that I have to remember he never really believed me about anything that was important with the kid, even, like, scientific facts. I can’t for the life of me figure out why I don’t spend more time talking to him.

Back to Page 73

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Sepulchre! by Kate Mosse! Pages 73-251.

Where were we? Oatmeal pouts around 1891 Paris, and Cream of Wheat cavorts around 2007 Paris. There is a mystery that is not very mysterious. The book marginally improves, I will confess. Ad nauseam.

Go! Cream of Wheat continues to shutterbug her way around town. I had almost forgotten about the business with the tarot cards when I deigned to pick the book up again, but I should have known it wouldn’t be far behind, as the inside flaps feature illustrations of the critical cards in the fictional deck used in the book. Which, as I recall, was one of the things that enticed me into taking this book home in the first place, one aspect of the siren song of this book that led me to the literary rocks that I currently find myself mired in.

But wait! Zut alors! something is going on in the south of France. Suddenly, for the next chapter, we are taken to the estate that is the destination of both CoW and Oatmeal. There’s a British bloke there who seems to own the joint now that it’s all a hella historical hotel. There is some kind of funeral taking place there, involving the owner’s brother. The deceased’s son is there, and oh, he’s rakishly handsome and crap. Is this CoW’s Anatole, except probably not blood-related? Or maybe they are…CoW is going there to do a little research on her Debussy business, and other research on a long lost relative who had a picture taken in the town the estate is outside. Could this book be promising an incest double header? Suddenly I am imagining this book ending with everyone vomiting everywhere like in a modern movie as all the family ties and liaisons are revealed. But not me. I will be standing back slow clapping.

Can I tell you that next there are three chapters devoted to a tarot reading? THREE CHAPTERS? Of course CoW is skeptical, yet she chooses to spend her money this way anyhow. I think we are supposed to identify with her through this device, but it really just gave me a case of the “mehs.” When I am skeptical of something, I find it best to not spend my money on it. Especially since CoW is waiting for her book advance or some shit (do they still really do those for young, unpublished authors? I thought you had to cough up the doc first.). Much like Oatmeal was unable to convince us that she was spunky, intrepid, and headstrong, CoW is unable to convince the audience that she is sensible and scientific by bucking off her research and spending money she doesn’t have on something she doesn’t believe in.

In the end, she redeems herself somewhat by getting away with the reader’s tarot cards and “forgetting” to pay, due to being too disturbed by the veracity of the results. This just means that you are a credulous, easy mark, CoW. Also, that the author is using lame plot devices as the keystone of this very, very long novel. CoW claims to feel bad about “forgetting” to pay, but I cannot believe a word out of any of the characters’ mouths anymore.

Meanwhile, back in 1891, Anatole and Oatmeal prepare to flee Paris. I say flee, because Anatole seems determined to get out of town without leaving a trail indicating where they went. He keeps switching carriages and departs from a different train station than the one their carriage initially took them to. The reader begins to get the impression this is about more than debts, but what yet is unclear.

Blah blah traveling, blah blah mountains. I am a little shocked that the author did not see fit to describe the entire three-day journey, but maybe she hasn’t completely killed off her editor yet a la The Later Works of JK Rowling. The servants are dispatched to collect frere and soeur but the hoopty they usually ride in is broken so they have to hoof it to the estate. WELL I NEVER, Oatmeal bleats, and stamps her little boot again. They are taken into the back of the estate, which is kind of a hot mess compared to the front, and Oatmeal baaaaws loudly about the weirdness of the situation and how ghetto it all is. During this whinealogue, of course, enters Auntie Isolde, stage right. “Sup ingrate,” she says, but nicely.

Paris: DUN DUN DUNNN. Page 141: something vaguely interesting happens for the first time. The villain behind Anatole’s flight materializes in their Paris apartment, where their mother, who as you recall was on the barricades during the revolution (“When the beating of your HEAAART matches the beating of the DRUUUM…”) is tied up with piano wire or something. Victor Contstant, complete with a mustache that is sadly, not long enough to twirl, looms and attempts to squeeze information out of dear maman about Anatole’s whereabouts. Victor is prone to thinking of women in terms of “sluts” or “whores” and in his spare time enjoys cutting a bitch and menacing tiny street children. Dear maman, we know, is an actual toughie, because of the Revolution thing and because she carries on with Major Pompousass, some guy who supports her as a widow and all she has to do is listen to him bloviate and condescend. I left out the scenes with the two of them as a couple in the first recap, because I just couldn’t go there, but know that Major P. is the source of the lulzy “blackguard” quote. So we suspect that Victor won’t be able to get any real information out of her, but it will, of course, be a testament to how dangerous he is by what he attempts with maman.

Victor monologues in his head about how his former lover left him and later took up with Anatole, after which Anatole and nameless lover realize that Victor has a permanent case of the Mondays so they fake her death. But Victor sees her walking around Paris later.

PROTIP: After faking one’s death, leave town.

In the end, Victor kills dear maman, does the horizontal EWWYUCK Are You For Real? with her corpse, and frames Major Pompousass for the crime. YAAAAY! I mean, boo, no, even Major P. doesn’t deserve that framing. Being a blowhard is criminal, but technically not a crime, if you know what I mean.

At the estate, Oatmeal reads creepy historical ghost stories about the estate and nearby town and country, helpfully provided by Anatole. You can just see him chuckling to himself. I know life in the country can be dull, but why set up little miss wild imagination here with something that is going to make her peep her petticoats? Ah yes, it keeps the plot moving along with the tarot cards and such. Perhaps it’s just that Anatole is distracted being with his aunt whom he has never met, and yet seems overly familiar with…his blonde, young, attractive aunt who is described as looking like the woman on the inside of the cover on “The Lovers” tarot card with a young man with dark hair, alongside a tarot card with a young woman with long copper curls who looks like Oatmeal’s description.

[I think a lot of what you get out of a book depends on where you’re at, of course. How clever you are, how versed you are in the particular conventions of a genre, if you have read the author’s previous work. Ideally, if there is a mystery afoot, I like the author to be a couple of steps ahead of me, sprinkling hintlets here, foreshadowing there, a couple of red herrings for fun. You want the unfolding and the ending to be credible, to make sense. There are books on the other side of Sepulchre that are so dense you are tripping over yourself and in the end you say, “So the Vicar did it. Who is the Vicar?” So for one I think the illustrations hurt the book, because they confirm what you sense may be true. I don’t think I am a fricking genius by any stretch, nor am I a mystery reader, but I think I may be too smart for this book. C’est la vie, dude. If people are smart enough to craft a whole novel, though, I have to wonder how they can write airport novels. Do people set out to write airport novels? It is a mystery. Also, I want nachos or ramen SO badly. Or maybe just a salt lick.]

So, after recovering from another concussion from yet another plot anvil, we move back to 2007. Cream of Wheat shows up in town, just in time for the funeral, and checks in at the hotel, and gets the key to DUN DUN DUN AGAIN Oatmeal’s room.

The only thing of note in these final passages before page 251, imo, is 1. That CoW meets the deceased’s son, Hal, in the bar of the hotel, and they start with the googie eyes immediately. If this will stop the walking around and describing every park bench, sign post, and every picture taken I am for this liaison. However, I am suspicious that CoW will retain the ability to be boring even in the presence of a handsome man. 2. Word of dear maman’s death does not reach the estate because Anatole covered their tracks so well, and the children are wondering why they haven’t heard. 3. Oatmeal reads the original owner’s account of messing with evil spirits and the tarot at the sepulchre which is on the land somewhere nearby. It sounds like a bunch of hilarz Victorian first-person mumbo-jumbo, which it is, with demons clawing at backs and blood running down the walls and other scenic crap like that. Oatmeal takes off and checks out the sepulcre for herself and it’s pretty much as creepy and groady as described and she ends up fleeing like a ninny. Oatmeal drunkenly brings all this hooey up at a dinner party they throw at the estate to the man who wrote the first ghost/history story and it turns out he’s all psychic and crap because he refers to Anatole and Auntie as “your brother and his wife and unborn child” (or maybe he just looked at the illustrations too). Oatmeal’s all BACK UP THE PHONE, HOSS but she’s all disorderly and then the party ends!

NEXT UP! The word “judder” is used for the 5,000th time! The Da Vinci Code and DC tour is referenced yet again! Are these bad signs? Of course they are! Stay tuned.

Dear MF Diary: Fangsgiving 2008. No spirit animal…YET.

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1. Yesterday I took Franny to get her ears pierced, one of those little lady rites of passage I suppose we all go through at some time or other. I got mine done at six and when I was eight they closed up due to me wearing some crap Claire’s earrings for several days in a row. I think I was swimming a lot that summer and they were corroding or something gross like that. Then I was re-mallgunned at ten. Currently I have six holes in my ear; three were mallgunned and three were piercing shopped. I am very proud that Franny’s first unnatural holes in her body were done by a PRO. FESSIONAL. PIERCER. (*is smug*)

She kind of jibblied around a little bit and I brought her back to Earth with a gentle “Hey, this is a big girl thing, so you gotta sack up and act like a big girl for this.” She held very still and listened to directions and, unsurprisingly, thought it was going to hurt worse than it did. Now she has sweet little hoops with captive beads and they look so cute. I feel relieved to finally have fulfilled my birthday promise, despite the fact that spending any money is making me cry right now.

2. I got turned down for yet another job where I made it to the multiple interview stage and got another “We thought you were a really strong candidate, etc.” This is starting to affect my self of steam. In a way I am relieved, because I thought the job sounded dull, and would be tough as a resume stepping stone (it had a weird job title and was kind of nichey writing) but I see another yellow bill come into the mailslot today and I think it certainly would have been better than a poke in the eye. I should have an interview next week for a position that has “editor” in the title, which excites me. I am ready to give blood to get one of these increasingly rare positions.

3. Retail job is going well…except for the fact that my lazy typety type ass is not used to being on my feet for 6-8 hours. When I come home from retail job, I disappear into a pit after barely being able to get the kids done for the night and sleep for 11 hours. I am not kidding. I wake up refreshed and wonder where my day went.

I got hazed on my first day on the floor. A regular employee came in with the foulest mood I had ever seen, and this is someone who spent 5+ years in record stores surrounded by aspiring Jack Blacks-in-High-Fidelity of all stripes. I introduced myself to her and she pointedly ignored me and picked up the phone. Then she told me that if I “put anyone off” with my nose ring I should direct them to her. I told her I wasn’t worried because I’ve had it for half my life now and when I smile people know I am friendly. I mean, it’s Seattle, FFS. People don’t really bat an eye at me. Then the adorable gay boy who took me under his wing was singing and she said, pretty loudly, “Could you be any more flaming?” I forgot how different retail environments are. Sexual harassment, non-PC statements, and just plain-old nastiness just run rampant. I know this happens in offices, too (I have seen it, for sure) but it seems like everything boils down to the lowest common denominator when you slap someone behind a register.

By the next shift she decided I was non-useless, and now I seem to be in the clubhouse somewhat. She has been shoving the ESL/tourists off onto me because I have always had a knack for understanding the Japanese and a lot of patience. Now I hear her call across the store: “SJ! Translate!” I have to say this is the most fun retail job I’ve ever had. Yesterday I was talking to someone about this knifemaster I was reading about in Oly and the difference between Japanese and American knives. The company ethos dictates that you just pretty much stand around talking to people all day. It’s much less dismal than, say, the time I put in at Tower or even the indie stores.

4. Yesterday on the way back from work I was listening to the Nippers, and they were interviewing this lady who wrote Things That Makes Us [Sic] (GET IT??), about grammar. Additionally, she is a founding member of SPOGG, which, you know, right on for grammar analness but yesterday on the radio she was actually espousing correcting our friends and loved ones when they stray off the grammar trail. I was a little saddened by this, because she seemed whip-smart otherwise. She likened correcting people’s grammar to pointing out the fact your friend has spinach in their teeth. I say no to this. She claims that your friends will thank you, I claim that they will not call your pompous presumptuous ass back. Unless this is a form of public trolling, in which case I say WELL PLAYED. IRL lulz are hard to come by, and should be seized when possible.

5. Fangsgiving. I am thinking about my mom today, thanks to an email exchange I was having with my friend and neighbor, who is helping me with my Hester Prynne problems, thank you babby jesus. I was telling him about adventures in cooking for my mother, the ingrate.

1999. I am living in a rambler in Phoenix with SeaFed. We also have a roommate who thinks that we’re crazy and who is chased out by my mother and sister’s presence eventually. My mother was with us after fleeing the East Coast and her third marriage. I had discovered that I liked to cook after becoming the gothic trophy wife of my drug-dealing husband and finding that I had both too much money and too much time on my hands. I was really starting to get my chefery on at this point. Since we were a small gathering of four for Thanksgiving that year, I decided to get schmancy and make cornish game hens with a honey-apricot-herb glaze of my own devising.

They turned out beautifully. Golden, fruity, crispy around the edges. Stuffed with nuts and scallions and crap.

My mom’s response: “I can’t believe you didn’t make a turkey.”

2000. Franny is a wee little six-week old sprog and we have all caravaned to the PNW’ed (booooo) and are housesharing in Shoreline. I am vaguely and stupidly excited about the prospect of us all Fangsgivinging together in the house, me, my mom, my sister, and now Franny. I wanted to contribute, so I offered to make stuffing. I decided on cornbread and I made an unholy fuckton. I even did it “right” and made it a day or two before so it could dry out a bit beforehand. Verily it was delicious.

My mom’s response: “Mmm, I think I prefer StoveTop.”

2005. I am crammed into the shittiest yet nicest apartment we can afford. Daniel comes over, as well as my sister and mother, who deigns to let me have Thanksgiving at my house. I was very pleased with the company and the group effort.

My mom’s response: “This meal does not contain enough organ meats.”

Conclusion: if you are cooking for someone who is a StoveTop-eating, gibblet-munching, persnickety ass, don’t expect great things. This year I am making it Southern style with bourbon gravy, cornbread stuffing, and beans-n-bacon. NO ONE will be persnickety. Happy Fangsgiving.

P.S. Renee Khan and others, I am working my way through Sepulchre and even taking notes. FOR JOO.

Breakin’ News: Can I Sit With You, Too? Is Available

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You may remember a few months ago when I got published in Can I Sit With You? and did readings here and in California and NPR did a story and we all became millionaires with Kleenex boxes on our hands. Oh, wait, not the last part, since the book raises money for charity, but let’s keep the Kleenex box part of the scenario.

So, editrixes Shannon and Jennifer have done it again and have released Can I Sit With You, Too?, which is packed full of even more stories of childhood craziness. Here is the official blurb:

Can I Sit With You Too? is the second collection of stories from the Can I Sit With You? project (www.canisitwithyou.org). These new tales represent an even wider range of schoolyard experiences, including best friend disappointments, new kid fears, harsh discrimination, living with disabilities, and emerging sexuality. By sharing moments from kindergarten through high school, these stories once again remind us that we are not alone: chances are, if it happened to you, it happened to someone else, too.

I think this would be a great holiday gift for say, someone you grew up with and have known forever, and have been through some of this gnarly stuff with, as well as an older kid or teen. Also features an introduction by Some Asshole.

Buy Can I Sit With You Too? Right Now!

Support independent publishing: buy this book on Lulu.

MAAAverick; Or, Witness as I Throw Motes at People’s Glass Houses

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Do you remember at the beginning of the summer when I wrote about letting Franny walk herself to school and the helicoptery flack I was getting as a result?

Well, friends, hell has frozen over. Today I am walking the girls to school when I see childrens A, B, and C walking together but otherwise unaccompanied to school.

Child A has lovely parents but is a manipulative bully. She’s the kind of child who hisses lovely things when the teacher isn’t looking like, “Give me your pencil or I won’t be your friend” and swoops in and takes a kid’s seat when the kid gets up for water, and then acts all innocent upon the first child’s return. I reluctantly allowed a playdate with this child last year because she has a long history of playing with Franny while at her dad’s house.

[As an aside, I told Franny that a tactic for dealing with her was to shame her. When Child A did something sneaky and manipulative, I suggested that Franny should call her out, loudly. “WHY DID YOU TAKE MY CHAIR?” Franny said this was successful and got the child to pick new targets. I should tell you about this year’s bully. She makes Child A look like amateur night.]

There was a friend schism for a while during the divorce after the whole SeaFed getting the mommies at school to sign paperwork attesting to his awesomeness after knowing him casually for three months. I didn’t really trust anyone for a long time, because I know the busybodies and gossips, lo they walk among us. There were mommies who were reporting various things that SeaFed was doing to me, totally unprovoked and unasked for.

So finally I said, well, okay, let bygones be bygones, they have all been in this school together for many years, let’s try it. Child A left the house, picked up by one of her very nice parents, I turn around, and Franny is in tears about some weird psychodrama involving Child A and Strudel, who Franny felt was being treated unfairly. The fact that she couldn’t even really describe what had happened made me think that the mind-fuckery was going deep. I asked Franny if she wanted to keep doing this. She said no, but she kind of dithers on it. This year they are in separate classes and Franny’s teacher has expressed relief about this, because she sees Franny is under a lot less pressure. I think a lot of people want to be friends, but they don’t know how.

The point of this long ass build up is that Child A’s mother offered Franny a ride home last year when she saw that Franny was all by her lonesome for two whole blocks. I do not resent the offer, really, but it was a clearish late spring day and it was more about people meddling, no matter how well-meaning.

Children B and C. That is more complicated, though I will spare you the details. Suffice it to say her children are stunted and neurotic due to some of the most pernicious helicoptering I have ever seen. The mother of children B and C got in Franny’s face last spring and told her that she didn’t think Franny should be walking by herself, which undermined Franny’s confidence, made her angry, and made the teacher decide to hold Franny back for five minutes every day so she could walk on her own, happily independent and unharassed.

This mother’s youngest is two years younger than Franny and a year younger than Franny was last year when she walked alone. You can say, yes, well, at least they’re walking together. With the way they have been helicoptered, I would not trust those children to be able to make it out of a wet paper bag with a map, flashlights, and a trail of breadcrumbs.

The icing on the cake is that they were going in at the same time as my kids, for the earlybird program, which the mother of children B and C had previously referred to as “glorified daycare for parents who just want to ditch their kids,” despite having friends whose children are in the program and claiming to respect the choices of women with careers. And people ACTUALLY ASK ME why we’re not friends anymore.

Book In Progress Review, Why Not

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Page 73: In Which Our Heroine Starts Wondering About the Provenance of the Word Broccoli, and Has Heroes Finished Downloading Yet? A Portentous Sign.

Kate Mosse (no, not that junky stick insect one, but presumably not pronounced to rhyme with Bob Fosse), has gifted the world with the current doorstop I am reading, Sepulchre, as well as a previous book titled Labyrinth. I picked up Sepulchre because, hey, cool title, and a quick read of the flap told me that it was set in and during one of my favorite periods of art history, 1890s Fronce. And then apparently there is a mystery involved at some point involving an estate and crazy tarot cards and it was all sounding very Wuthering Heights-esque, which is good. I like some over the top Romantic freakout. Notice I said Romantic, not Romance.

It is important for you to know that I am actually a very forgiving reader. Oprah says to give a book fifty pages, and on that matter she is the boss of me. Everyone writes a little differently, and sometimes it takes me or them a while to warm up and start really getting into the story. But this starts corny and just gets worse from there.

Sepulchre flashes back and forth between the main character of the 1890s story, and the current day main character. I suppose at some point their stories will intersect, but they are both so dull it will be like someone rushing up to you VERY EXCITED that they have discovered this great new taste combination, oatmeal and Cream of Wheat.

Nineteenth-century Oatmeal, who is called Leonie, is a plucky, spirited, beautiful, self-possessed, curious seventeen-year-old who happens to resemble a Rossetti painting and lives upstairs from Achille Debussy, who, have you heard? has just started going by “Claude.” And so another author births another Mary Sue into this world. Oatmeal’s cher Maman was On The Barricades Throwin’ Shit (cue Les Miz soundtrack) It’s like watching paint dry. I mean, it’s like watching history happen!

Oatmeal’s brother, Anatole, seems a little more interesting. One of the first scenes unfolds at the opera house where some impolite motherfuckers start beating ass because the orchestra is playing Wagner. Don’t like Wagner? Stay home and nurse your consumption, then. Oatmeal gets ditched at the opera because Anatole was a no-show. Why was Anatole a no-show and then shifty about why he was late? Could it be that he, BFF of the soon-to-be-famous composer Debussy, was involved in the riots somehow? If these mysterious plot anvils are a sign of the deeping mysteriousness to come, then I will just have to stop right here and fuck off for some absinthe in sufficient quantity to forget passages like these:

But her looks were misleading. Oatmeal was determined rather than obedient, bold rather than modest, a girl of contemporary passions, not a demure damsel.

…Which is funny because not four pages later the riot starts and Oatmeal is stricken with fright, gets her dress caught on a floor bolt, does nothing to intervene when a pro-Wagnerian is stabbed to death mere feet away from her, and has to be carried out by her frere perdu. Where’s your bold now, Oatmeal? When you tell us one thing and show us another, the reader feels cheated.

So there are flowery passages like these, with a smattering of unnecessary high school level French a donkey could probably figure out. The first time Oatmeal opened her mouth, she spoke Fronch, and I immediately was all SACRE ROJO this could be an interesting literary device. [Aside: I am mixing my genres here but I have to say I enjoy Dexter when the cops slip into Spanish without subtitles. It seems very natural, and I don’t catch every word. This is something I also enjoyed about Firefly, the Chinese swears. I don’t need to be spoonfed to understand and enjoy the story.] I flipped ahead and saw that it was just second-year French mixed up with English. Suddenly I was imagining Brad Pitt stumbling his way through Interview with a Vampire, or Kevin Costner as Robin Hood: Alan Rickman What Are You Doing Here?

I was going to leave the previous paragraph be, but I have to elaborate some, so you can understand the full measure of the fail. The precious and selective use of the French, the presentation of the nineteenth century to the modern American outsider…it’s jarring, and it keeps the reader out of the action. We don’t need to be told with regards to the history of a diagonal boulevard, “a nervous French king sought a safe and direct route to his evening’s entertainment.” WHAT? A FRENCH king you say? In France? Thanks for clearing that up. We get too much exposition by the way of wordy passages relating to history, while at the same time we seem to need to hit every nineteenth-century set piece (the gas lamps, the elbow-length silk gloves, “Don’t freaking call me Achille” Debussy), as well as every ninteenth-century attitude (“Of all the insolent, impertinent scoundrels,” he growled, leaning back in his chair. “Quite disgraceful. Who does the blackguard think he is, insulting you in such a manner.” LOL, blackguard).

After the opera fracas, the reader further discovers that Anatole has gambling debts, he gets his ass beat on the street by masked miscreants and seems to be generally in deep merde, and so has a reason to get out of Dodge for a while. HOW CONVENIENT, then, that a letter arrives from a distant tante inviting plucky, bold, impetuous Oatmeal to come and stay at her estate in the South of Fronce to which Oatmeal immediately stamps her petite chaussure and replies with “EEK, what if it sucks sooo bad?” Narrator, why are you trying to convince us that Oatmeal is something she’s not? Are you her PR or something? Anatole says, “Hells yes, I’ll go with you!” Why is Anatole not the star of this book?

And then it seems to be increasingly veering off into incest territory. Oatmeal obviously has a thing for her brother who is le bad-ass, and as she makes a list in her head of the reasons to go visit mysterious auntie of mysteriousness, she caps with “To have Anatole to myself.” So now I’m thinking, well, at least this is turning into good slash fiction. Oatmeal want a little cayenne in there? 10-4, whatever. I can read this in bed, unlike the Hobbit slash (JUST an example) on the internet. But I turn the page, and…

OH NOES, It’s October 2007, and there are more Mary Sues to trot out and torment the reader with! Meet Cream of Wheat (CoW), twenty-eight year old academic, genius, retired genius musician (“She wrapped her violin in its red silk cloth and put it away in the blue-velveteen-lined case. Loosened her valuable bows, clipped them in place in the lid. Put the block of golden rosin into its special compartment. Stood the case in the back of her closet and left it behind when she left Milwaukee and went off to college.”) Wrote more sentences without subjects to heighten the emotional impact and depth of CoW. Betrayed the reader repeatedly. Who then wandered off to do something else.

It is a bad sign when chapters on the 2007 side begin with “The rest of the afternoon went according to plans.” NO, NO, BORING! You’re doing it wrong. Throw someone off the bus FFS, or arrange another riot. There isn’t even an Anatole in 2007, skipping out of his bets and getting le beatdown. CoW has a supposedly deep and secret background of being abandonated by her mother…and then going on to have a perfect genius life after. Oh, I see. If you’re going to be all melodramacakes, then at least give us a Dickensian history to go with it. CoW is merely wandering boringly around Paris snapping pics of all the places that Debussy slept. CoW is going to write the most radical Debussy bio ever. There are descriptions of park benches. There are descriptions of hotel decor. This is a description of how you can feel robbed, even by a free library book. Oh, there is something about a tarot card lady “CALL ME NAO FOR YER FREE READIN” but I don’t care.

So when I fling the book aside to do something interesting, like play Progress Quest, CoW is about to go stay at the estate, now a five-star hotel, that Oatmeal was headed towards with the mysterious auntie and all. When worlds collide! The mystery endeepens, except OH YEAH, nothing has happened of real interest yet! Will I finish this book? Only if on the very next page rocks fall and everyone dies. Emerging from the rubble is the only survivor from the current narrative: Anatole, Le Bad-Ass!

Teal deer Version: Anne Rice in a Lincoln Child/Douglas Preston sandwich. DNW.

Utter Licentiousness

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Okay! AnEmily tells me via comments that OG Listerine is the way to go to nuke the little bitches off your head but good. Two nights of Nix and something like $40 later did not fix me up. I have the suggestive typing thing built into my browser, my favorite, and interestingly it suggested “listerine kills lice” as I began typing Listerine. Hooked on Groogle works for me.

TODAY! We have a trip to One (1) Fred Meyer! We purchase many showacaps. And generic Listerine, which was two bones cheaper and when I compared ingredients they were the same! Here I sit with OG Antiseptic Mouth Rinse on my head, dabbing at the occasional drips that leak out of my purple and white polka-dotted pink cap.

According to my learnings at the People’s Pharmacy with Joe and Terry Graedon, you can also do a second step and squirt your head with white vinegar to loosen the FLEA SPIT JIBBLIES JIBBLIES JIBBLIES JIBBLIES

…and then supposedly some of the nits will rinse out. Apparently some parents even use it as a preventive measure, spraying it in before school on Mondays. Interesting.

And when the lice are gone, I can drink the rest of the juice. HA HA, just kidding. I only drink green Listerine. Listermintz! MmmmmMMMMmm.

Tomorrow: I talk about something else beside fucking lice! I promise to let you know if the OG Antiseptic Mouth Rinse works, though.