An open letter to the good folks at Polyvinyl Films, manufacturer of “stretch-tite” plastic food wrap:

Gentlemen...Be aware that over the years I've had a less than harmonious relationship with plastic food wrap in general. No offense to you personally, but unrolling just the right length of wrap and cutting it cleanly has proven problematic, often, frankly, frustrating beyond reason. The wrap sucks itself back onto the roll and hides the seam. Or it tears and comes out in stretched, distorted, shapes. Sometimes it doesn't stick, not even a little bit, dammit. But mostly? The cutting mechanism doesn't work properly or doesn't work at all. More than upsetting.

I'm always switching brands, looking for the Holy Grail of plastic wraps...one that works perfectly and allows me to live a happy and fulfilling life.

So it was with a mixture of excitement and skepticism that I opened my new box of “stretch-tite” that I bought at my friendly, neighborhood Publix grocery store. Ignoring the fact that I am not charmed by intentionally misspelled names in a lame attempt to win the cute vote. You know, “Krispy Kreme” stuff. I went for it anyway. The instructions said: “Break perforation here and bend back” and I did, pulling out a big crumpled mess of wrap that immediately stuck to itself like a snake dipped in crazy glue. I tried to tear it off, ripping it against the cardboard teeth. No luck. And then I just went ballistic, wrestling with that anaconda knot of wrap that loved only itself. I wanted to smash things, do damage, go full tantrum right in my own kitchen. It's like road rage...a surprising, flash flood of anger and an instant lust for violence. Taking a deep breath before I smashed everything within ten feet, I looked at the top of the “Stretch-tite” box and read: “See bottom of box for directions” which I did. It seems that in my haste, I had failed to complete step two. After I did so, the plastic wrap was perfect...it stayed neat and ready to unroll, did so smoothly and cut cleanly at exactly the right spot.

It's funny how I had let my assumptions fill the gap left open by my ignorance. I thought I was done after step one and allowed my past experience with plastic wrap to push me into dark thoughts and childishly destructive behavior. I was surprised by the out-of-proportion violence I had felt just moments before, when I was humiliated by the directions on a box of plastic wrap. A lesson learned. corned astronaut lady to the headquarters of Polyvinyl Films, Inc. for a bit of random retribution 
Next time I will take a deep breath, slow down, and try a different approach before I automatically reach for my guns.

But that's next time. Right now this new camera isn't uploading my pictures to the fucking laptop the way it's supposed to and it's really starting to royally piss me off...

Odd Man Out

Every day I am reminded of how at odds I am with the culture we live in. Don't offer me tickets to the Magic Kingdom, I'm not going. Most things Disney, Kardashian, Vegas, mainstream TV...cause me to feel bad...about us. I have no “Midnight Madness Sale” bug nor any interest in the contents of the local mall. Right wing Republicans won't see me at any of their meetings, nor will I be in the congregation of any priest, reverend or guru claiming insider information while passing the plate. For me, Eddie Arnold, handed down the boring gene to George Straight who gave it to Allen Jackson who helped spawn almost all of the country pop artists on any mainstream radio today. All of it a big yawn. Put on some Steve Earle or Lucinda Williams for me. Please don't make me live in a “planned community” where my McMansion is a clone of every other house on the block and to which I sadly tie my identity, even though it is actually owned by Bank of America. Misplaced priorities and the pursuit of mediocrity rule here in the States. It's not so much that we're bad people, we've just lost our way and don't know how to get back home.

Kid Life

Every weekday morning for more than twenty years, my Mother drove my dad to the train station and picked him up there again at night. Like the other housewives, she would slowly pull into the semicircle of cars inching forward as everyone got close to the station for a perfunctory “goodby” or “hello” peck on the cheek. Sometimes if the train was late coming back in the evening, I had time to put pennies on the track, overlapping the edges, hoping they would fuse into a line of mashed and distorted Lincoln images, post Ford's Theater images reflected back from fun house mirrors. Dad practiced law in a building at 5 Broadway. He was mostly fueled on Cokes, cigarettes and stress. Mom wore dresses with pearls, just like June Clever. That was in the 1950's and 1960's. It seemed to me like everyone on Alden Avenue lived similar lives. Dr Ingram, next door, only had to go downtown for his work and Mr Robinson on the other side was a paint chemist who worked from home. He developed special paints for the Brooklyn Bridge to keep it from rusting. He was my buddy and often gave me little vials of mercury to play with. I swished it around in my mouth just to feel it's liquid weight. Dr Ferguson, across the street was a prominent entomologist who often took his son, my best friend Donny, and I down Lawrence Avenue to Egypt Hills for a morning of insect collecting. I had a cyanide jar to kill the bugs I planned to mount in one of the old cigar boxes on the top shelf of my closet. Although I knew it was poison, I often took deep breaths of the deliciously almond scented vapors, and when I didn't die, I did it again. Our Ford Fairlane 500, with tail fins ready to fly us off into space, baked in the summer sun on the asphalt driveway. The metal parts, pretending to be all innocent and shiny, waited in ambush to burn any exposed flesh foolish enough to make contact. No seat-belts, of course.

Those were dangerous days when ignorance was bliss and every road trip to visit my Grandparents in rural Virginia came complete with a kids cornucopia filled with 22 bullets and Cherry bombs. I long for those simpler and often more exciting times, in fact, I wish I had a nice supply of cherry bombs right now. I would dip them in glue and BB bullets and shove the fuse up the filter end of a lit cigarette. That would give us a good five minutes to get away. Just like those old days, we would be long gone. 

I thought I had all of his music, long buried among those vinyl time capsules still crammed into Orange crates I so lovingly brushed with three layers of shellac a lifetime ago. Certainly I played the “Together” album at least 1,000 times... just flat wore it out. Many nights were spent blowing harp to his music, a small wooden tray with shake and Mr ZigZag sitting nearby. But this album slipped by me somehow, so now is the first time I've even seen it. Of course we couldn't Google everything back then, so if it wasn't in my local head shop/record store, The Penguin Feather, it didn't exist for me. These days I can order it from Amazon with just a click or two of the mouse. Those guys are nice enough to keep my credit card on file so getting it from them couldn't be easier. In fact, it's too damn easy, too clean and precise. I miss the hours spent pouring over the record bins, talking about the new offerings with fellow travelers in the old Victorian house that was the Penguin Feather. Just opening the front door, its arthritic hinges squealing their objections at being forced to move, multiple layers of paint flaking off the frame like colorful potato chips, I would inhale deeply from a blast of scented air, heavy with incense, and salivate like a Pavlovian dog.

Simple guidelines to help us all avoid demonic possession...

Some things here are no brainers. I mean, who would go to “Marijuana & Pot parties”? I sure don't want to get hooked on hard drugs. And I caught a few of these just in time. Like the yoga class I was about to start...or an increased effort to go more in the direction of vegetarianism. Looks like I ducked a bullet with both of those! I never give out candy on Halloween anyway, so that's no biggie. I dedicate that special night to attending my advanced Vampirism meetings. Oh shit! I just saw that is on the list too! Oh well, scratch that. This boy is not about to open any doors to demonic possession. No way!

Gypsyon Girl...

She's been chomping at the bit. Riding almost three months of work at the Whaler, with a growing need to GTFU out... of the Whaler and the country. Headed to the South Pacific this time. I ask her of plans when the yoga workshop in Fuji is over...but she has none. That's what she gets high on these days, the challenge of going anywhere in the world, parts unknown, with full confidence that she knows how to knock on the door of opportunity...and if that door doesn't open, I mean ASAP, she'll smash it down, drag that MF out by the feet and have her way with it...

At the YMCA

In the late 1950's the YMCA held swimming classes for boys. Nude. Not the girls, not the adults, they wore bathing suits. But the boys swam nude. I hated that and the second floor picture window looking out over the pool didn't help. I could see the faces of Mothers up there, smiling and laughing. Why did they make us do that? I recently Googled  it...the claim was that the “Y” wanted to keep the fibers and dyes out of the pool. If that doesn't sound like a load of bullshit I don't know what does. I mean, didn't the suits of women, girls, and grown men have the same fibers and dyes? But they made us boys strip before entering the pool. They thought we didn't care. Boys aren't modest, right? They’ll hardly notice.

My mother would drop me off at the front entrance and I would walk straight through the building and exit the back. One hour and fifteen minutes later I reversed my steps. Back door to front to car. “How was swim class?” “It was good.” I lied, my hair wet from the drinking fountain.

In Summer camp, boys were treated with the same kind of heavy handed disrespect. Camp Waywayonda had a large central bathroom and showers. Toilets lined the wall in a concrete room the size of a basketball court. Twenty toilets in a row, side by side with no dividers between them. My feelings were of no consequence, like I didn't matter. The attitude seemed to be that boys were on par with dogs. Oblivious to social norms, little more than dirt magnets living for a baseball diamond or a football field, mindless rough play, worms and gross stuff. Shoats.

I could care less about team sports and I thought the nude swimming, the lack of privacy and ganged toilets were the first step toward marching us into fake showers. Totally dehumanizing. I despised it. But I was just a little boy who had no voice and didn’t matter much.

One step often leads to another, so every morning, when the camp counselor at Waywayonda had all the boys in our cabin line up in front of him and strip, it didn't set off any alarms. He sat in a chair, facing us at the head of the line. One by one he told us to step up to him as he fondled our genitals and told us of his plans to become a doctor. I thought it was weird, but I was getting used to weird stuff, after all, I was just a boy in a system that treated us like goats. We weren’t protected like someone who mattered, girls or adults.

The attitude is still out there, for grown men too. We don't care, they think. Men can pee anywhere, like cattle. I went into a service station rest room that was set up to accommodate several men at the same time with a toilet, a urinal, and a sink, all in a row, no dividers. Who does that? Is someone really going to sit on that nasty public toilet while another guy splashes into the urinal next to his face? Please. But men just want a beer and a big game on a wide screen TV, right? Maybe a night out at Dave & Busters? They have lots of games with balls that mesmerize grown men in the same way my neighbor’s terrier is single mindedly obsessed with a stolen golf ball.  Even the ads portray men as overgrown boys, unable to make a meal or wash clothes, we couldn't possibly read and follow a recipe...clueless oafs, stupid as a stone...but we love them. The wife, wise and all knowing, just smiles and shakes her head when dad tries to cook a turkey, still in the wrapper.

Men can't change a diaper or cradle our own child in our arms without mom hovering nearby waiting for us to become distracted in the ninth inning and just drop them. No gardening, no housecleaning, no meal planning...we are big stupid lumps of insensitivity in a home where Mom knows best.

I'm tired of it. It's time to grow some balls and fight back. My gender is only one part of who I am. Women aren’t alone in their battle to prove that their brains, not their twin globes of adipose tissue, are their most important assets. 

Are you listening you gonads?