The privilege of absurdity

Garden & Gun

Garden & Gun - What a genius name for a magazine! At certain times in my life, I might have been disgusted. Now I can't help but admire it. Garden & Gun, perfect!

Man and wife

The failing eyesight of middle age isn't all bad; sometimes it makes life more interesting.

I just checked the Most Read listing in the online Seattle Times, the stories that generate the most clicks. At the top of the list was this:

Man who bred wife to moose gets 12-year prison sentence

I'll say! Who wants a guy like that on the streets?

But then I moved a little closer and realized it said:

Man who lured wife to noose gets 12-year prison sentence

Still sounds pretty odd, but not to nearly the same degree.

The story isn't bad, though. Just prior to Halloween last year, Mr. Sean Jennings of Spokane said he had a surprise for his wife. "I've set up a haunted house in the garage. Come look, honey!"

As they entered the garage, Jennings blindfolded and handcuffed the wife, and helped her mount a ladder. "You're gonna love it, babe!"

The woman started to catch on when her husband slipped a noose around her neck. The two struggled, but the wife was able to free herself.

Jenniings had originally faced a first-degree attempted-murder charge. He agreed to plead guilty to a lesser, second-degree charge, while he expressed great remorse and many apologies.

"He just felt horrible about the whole thing," said his public defender.

Violet eyes

Hollywood factoid: Elizabeth Taylor has violet eyes.
Scientific fact: Impossible.

Some people get poetic to the point of delusion about eye color. No one has violet eyes. Even Liz denies it. Early technicolor gave her blue-gray eyes a slight violet look, and the story spread (or the studio promoted it) from there. The claim of exotic eye color added to the beautiful actress's mystique. Some of her photos are touched up to add purple to her irises. Various Elizabeth Taylor dolls manufactured through the years have grape-colored eyes.

The only thing close to violet eyes in humans occasionally occurs with albino people. Now, most albinos have gray-blue eyes, not red ones. Albinism is the lack of melanin, and blue eyes don't come from melanin but from the natural bluish color of collagen reflected in the iris. Sometimes the blue color is translucent and the red from blood vessels shows through. But I've seen this and the effect isn't violet; it's pinkish red with a grayish fog on top.

More poetry: You'll occasionally read about lovely heroines with emerald-green eyes. Again, impossible. A rich, brilliant emerald color is the combination of rich, brilliant blue and pure, bright yellow. In real life, people have green eyes because the blue collagen color is interspersed with a yellowish amber pigment called lipochrome. Not enough pure color there to come close to emerald. The priciest stone your green eyes can emulate is jade—a dull olive green.

In the book Goldfinger, Pussy Galore had purple eyes "like a pansy." I figured the eye color description had something to do with the character's preference for same-sex lovers.

In Thomas Harris' novels, Hannibal Lector had maroon eyes. Definitely fiction.

Back to real life, I hear people claim all the time that their eyes change color. Well, sometimes eyes can look slightly different in hue, but the pigment cells haven't actually altered. I have hazel-green eyes; when irritated, they look very bright green. But that's just because the iris contrasts with the red in the irritated tissues. It isn't actually a different color.

Even better, some people claim that they, or someone they know, can change their eye color at will. Oooo-eeee-oooo.

I suppose that eyes, "the window of the soul," are just too precious to be given dull descriptors like plain blue, green, or brown. An atheist might say that the soul itself is a similar dolling up of human consciousness. But the eye color thing is worse because people will actually claim they've seen non-contact-lensed eyes that are purple or emerald or some other impossible color. Delusional, I tell you.

Conversation with Adelin

Adelin: "I'd hate to have the job of cleaning up dead animals in the road."

Me: "Yeh, some jobs are really gross."

Adelin: "It would be okay if it were dead people, but not dead animals."

That last line was delivered with a bit of a shrug, as if it were a perfectly normal way to feel.

Fireworks and Eternity

Various religions have their own ideas about what you do after you die. Even Christian version differ wildly. I've heard Mormons believe you become a god yourself (if you're male) and go off to rule some planet of your own out there. Jehovah's Witnesses limit heaven to only 144,000 residents, but they give other righteous folk a kind of rennovated earth to live in.

Most standard Christians who aren't particularly dogmatic have no detailed ideas about heaven. It's just a nice, happy place to hang around in after our hardscrabble earthly lives.

"Not so," said a Roman Catholic youngster I knew years ago. "Heaven is where you look at the Beatific Vision, for even and ever."

So that's all you do for eternity? Look at something? You give up fun stuff all your life and attend boring religious stuff all the time for that?

"But it would look so cool that it would be worth it," the good Catholic boy said with confidence. "Like seeing the most awsome fireworks display you can imagine."

I have a pretty good imagination, but I could never come up with anything I wanted to see for more than a few hours. And I probably like fireworks more than the average person. During my glamorous years, I thought of them as the ultimate bling. Even now I think they're beautiful, and great fun. Still, ridiculous as it sounds, the idea of my old buddy's Catholic heaven hits me every July 4 - you life a long struggle of a life, you die a painful death, and...you get to watch fireworks. Forever.

A horse of a questionable color

Consider this stallion's delectable golden-cream hue. The official name of the color is isabella. The term is also used to describe certain other animals of that color, chiefly dogs. Beautiful, isn't it?

The name of this pale tint has a unique origin. It is said to be named after Isabella, the daughter of Philip II of Spain and wife of the Archduke of Austria. The royal lady refused to change her "shift" (undergarment) until Austria conquered the Dutch city of Ostend. Unfortunately, Ostend held on for three years, and Isabella's unmentionables went unlaundered all that time. So yes, kids, isabella is the color of dirty underwear. Very dirty underwear. The dictionary definition "a yellowish brown" brings this home.

Still like the color of the horse?

Actually, this story smells a little fishy when you look at the dates. The Siege of Ostend took place from 1601 - 1604, and a reference to a "gown of isabella-colour" was found in Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe inventory in 1600. Well, okay, maybe the dingey drawers belonged to a different Isabella; the Queen of Castile from a couple of generations prior. This version of the tale is a little cleaner, probably owing to the earlier Isabella's near-saintly status. A virginal white blouse takes the place of stinky skivvies. The garment acquired a gold tint common to fine fabrics that have delicately aged.

But most likely, any version of the Isabella story is simply someone's romantic, if slightly odiferous, fantasy. For someone's attribute to establish his or her name as emblematic of that attribute, people have to know about it. One assumes, and hopes, that not many folks were familiar with the hue of a royal lady's unclean undies.

The probable explanation is far more bland. As the Europeans regard the color as more tawny than cream, Wikipedia suggests the word came from the Arabic izah, for "lion," and by extension, "lion-colored."

The only common thread in the stories is that lions don't smell very good either.

Jihad

Back in the mid 1970s, before the major anti-Shah unrest in Iran, the common American didn't associate people from the Middle East with terrorism. We disagreed with them over Israel and griped over their corner on the oil market, but we didn't fear or despise them as many do today. This was particularly true if you attended a state university, in which the friendly classmate who helped you with a homework problem in Physics 101 might easily be from Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. Their country of origin wasn't any big deal.

Nor did anyone laugh or exclaim when a small, chatty art student with a big toothy grin introduced himself as Jihad. That was the actual name of a pal of mine in college: Jihad. In a few years, everyone would know that word, but only the erudite had an idea of its meaning back then. Even then, it was regarded as  "some Arab thing" and therefore not too strange as a Middle Easterner's first name.

I have no idea what happened to Jihad after 1978 or so. I know he wanted to stay in America permanently where he could continue to dabble in art, poetry, and gourmet cooking instead of the less gentle life that awaited him in his native Syria. If he stayed here, he would have surely changed his name at some point. It amuses me now to think of this giggly little guy and his scary name. He was starting to go gray in his 20s, so he's now a silver-haired old-ish little guy. Named Jihad? It just doesn't fit.

Historical hysteria

Hillary Clinton noted that historically many races had gone on longer than hers.

 

“My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right?” she said. “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

 

Okay, it was an irreverent comment. She shouldn't have said it. But now everyone's going all hormonal and gasping about how Hillary hopes Obama gets a bullet in the head.

 

Are people truly unable to take a statement in the historical context in which it was made and interpret it accordingly? Clinton preceded the RFK remark by a similar one about her husband, who was not the nominee until late in the game. And is alive and well today. Had the focus of her statement been on assassination instead of late-in-the-game nominees, she could have brought up the names of any one of many political figures who have been gunned down.

 

My reaction to Hillary's statement was, "Damn, she's right. The Democratic nomination was still up in the air when RFK was assassinated, and that was June 5."

 

Of course, my reaction was also, "That was a bad thing to say. People will freak out and misinterpret it."

 

And right I was.

Fast-forward

For this year's Take Your Child To Work Day, we had a Harry Potter theme, and I enjoyed playing Professor McGonagall. I temporarily dyed my hair gray, stuck a pair of granny glasses on my nose, and went around with a prim and pruny expression. I had great fun. But I looked OLD!

When I was a kid, I remember an article in an old encyclopedia, probably from the 50s, about theatrical makeup. A series of photos showed the process of transforming the actor MacDonald Carey into an old man. I thought it must be interesting to have a flash-forward of what you'll look like someday.

Well, in Carey's case, it didn't work. The first time I saw him on TV, he was an old man: the benevalent patriarch in "Days of Our Lives." And he couldn't have looked more different from the young-guy-made-up-to-look-old back in the 50s. Back then, his thick dark hair was powdered white, and his face given shadows to create a stern and hawk-like appearance. MacDonald Carey as an actual old man was befuddled and bulldog-like. Big, saggy, and jowly. And his hair never turned white; it was dark with a silvery cast like Ronald Reagan's presidential coiffure.

And my own temporary transformation into old age? I suppose it's more likely to be true to life. Stern and hawk-like is probable as well. The unyouthful characteristics I am acquiring do not include fleshiness. That 's just not going to happen.

On a mundane note, the motor in the refrigerator seems to have died. That sucks.

That's not apple juice!

I learned about this curious and disturbing phenomenon while Antonia was in college.

During a visit home, we went grocery shopping. She had always enjoyed apple juice, and I asked her if she wanted some as we passed the juice aisle. "Uhhhh, no thanks. I'm reminded too much of certain containers in [ex-boyfriend's] place." The ex had several male housemates.

It seems an occasional male phenomenon to regard a trip to the bathroom as too taxing. Why not just grab a handy bottle or jar instead? You don't have to interrupt your TV viewing or computer gaming for an instant!

At a higher level on the disgustingness meter are those fellows who don't discard the container or its contents in fairly short order. I don't doubt that other nauseating variations on this theme exist. Just google "pee in bottles" and you'll find all kinds of confessions probably better kept secret.

Work on our convert-crawlspace-to-basement project has proceeded over the past year, and I have occasionally worried over the many hours spent down there by laborers compared to the lack of potty breaks...taken in an actual bathroom, that is. My anxiety grew when I saw sizeable numbers of empty soda cans collecting every day. And we all know that the more liquid taken in, the more productive the kidneys. I avoided going down to the site for a while because I knew what I was going to smell. I didn't feel I could do much about it either, not being the kind of gal who could march down there and say: "Boys! No peeing outside of toilets allowed! Argh!"

We finished digging out the place a couple of months ago and now have a concrete slab for a floor. It looks more like a living space and smells less like a urinal. This is an improvement. But it is not entirely uninhabited and I am still occasionally troubled by the paucity of potty breaks.

Trash day is Wednesday. Wednesday night the empty bins come back in the garage. I noticed, by the driveway where the trashbins stood, a water bottle half full of...apple juice? Uh, no, I seriously doubted that.

I don't normally assign Akki the icky tasks just because he's a guy. That's unacceptably sexist. But because this situation involves the waterworks of his own gender, I make him deal with it. "Uh, there's a bottle by the driveway with, uh, something in it, can you, uh, throw it away?" He goes out, comes back in looking mildly annoyed. Unfortunately, I didn't hear the garage door open, meaning he didn't throw it in the trash bin.

"Where did you put it?"

"I left it on [assumed producer of substance]'s truck."

Later, the truck is gone. I go outside, grimly expecting to see the bottle sitting on the driveway. It's not there, but I'm not home free yet. The green waste bin, filled with weeds and pruning leftovers, is sitting by the garage, awaiting pickup this week. I open it. There it is.

Normally, this might be okay, but we have fussy Martha Stewart-type trash collectors who pick through garbage to make sure everything's appropriated to the proper container. If it isn't, they typically leave a nasty note and refuse the entire bin. This happened to us last summer when an innocent plastic bag found its way into the green waste. It wasn't at the top either but quite a way down.

Or, instead of refusing the entire bin, they might pitch the bottle out. Which leaves us right where we started. 

When I related this to Akki, I expected his usual demonic facial expression when faced with these types of complications, but instead his look was one of great weariness; Satan finally tiring of human folly. He said he'll take care of it, and surely intended to. But memory fails him on small chores, even less disgusting ones.

Trash day rolled around again, and I reminded Akki of the bottle. He pawned the chore off to Kilian, whose chore it is to take out the bins. "Kilian! There's a bottle in the green waste; can you take it out and put it in the trash bin?" Kilian was suspicious, probably because Akki and I couldn't help snickering. He did it, came back, and shrugged, "it was just a water bottle." It was probably too dark outside for him to see the contents. And, being a proper and innocent lad, he wouldn't have suspected any liquid within it to be anything other than what the label on the bottle stated.

All potential suspects have since proclaimed innocence and blamed it on some unknown, and uncouth, passer-by. Perhaps there's a story behind it. One that I'd rather not know.