Dear John

Today being Valentine's Day there are multitudes of those chalky little candy hearts to be had. You may remember these from elementary school. They say things like "Cutie" and "Be Mine" and "Love Ya". But today I picked one up that said "Good Bye." Ouch. That's a break up that's going to require a little therapy.

"Yeah, I thought things were going really well, you know? We had planned a romantic valentine's day-- I brought her flowers and she gave me a bag of candy hearts with little messages. Cute right? But turns out that every single one said 'Good Bye'. Then she walked out."

Third time's the charm?

I write this knowing that it may not reflect the new millenium sensitivity that we are meant to display towards any type of difference, but heck.

In a later chapter of Nick Hornby's delightful book, he references a book about autism written by the mother of two autistic sons. The author also has a third son who does not have autism, which presumably makes for a nice change. The thing that I find absolutely flabbergasting though is that the boy without autism is the youngest of the boys.

What?

1. First of all, if you already have two autistic sons, how do you imagine you will have the energy to raise a third child at all? How would you have the energy to have even, say, a goldfish?

2. If your first son was autistic you might perhaps think, "We love him, of course, but this is not entirely what we imagined. Let us have another child who may let us fulfill our original vision of parenting." Fine. I can see this. But when your second child is also autistic do you really roll your genetic dice again?

I am baffled by this. And yes, I am a terrible, heartless person. Obviously.

Love for a friend, love for a stranger

My friend Cathleen, whom I love because she is witty, ridiculously smart, literary, dramaturgical, and a snappy dresser, just loaned me The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby, whom I love for many of the same reasons. Now, let's be clear. I don't actually know Nick Hornby, so I have to hold out on a couple of things. First of all, I don't think he's a huge theatre fan and, having never seen the man, I have no idea how he dresses.
So far, if you're keeping score, that's Cathleen: 5, Nick Hornby: 3.

However, funny? He's got funny nailed down. To wit, his musing on Zoe Heller's Desperate Characters:

Toward the end of the book, Otto and Sophie, the central couple, go to stay in their hoilday home. Sohie opens the door to the house and is immediately reminded of a friend, an artist who used to visit them there; she thinks about him for a page or so. The reason she's thinking about him is that she's staring at something he loved, a vinegar bottle shaped like a bunch of grapes. The reason she's staring at the bottle is because it's in pieces. And the reason it's in pieces is because someone has broken in and trashed the place, a fact that we only discover when Sophie has snapped out of her reverie. At this point, I realized that with some regret that not only could I never write a literary novel, but I couldn't even be a character in a literary novel. I can only imagine myself saying, "Shit! Some bastard has trashed the house!" No rumination about artist friends--just a lot of cursing, and maybe some empty threats of violence.

Poor forever

The reason I will never be rich is that whenever I look at the job listings outside the nonprofit section, I am overwhelmed by this sort of nonesense:

XYZ Ltd. provides technologies and services for optimizing the production and playback of entertainment content in the professional and consumer markets.

Please. Is that even English? Besides, don't you think that secretly "playback of entertainment content in the consumer market" translates to "watching a DVD in your living room?"

Unbridled passion

1. Last night, I was valiantly trying to get to Berkeley, but was stuck in maddening rush-hour traffic trying to merge onto 580. It was that sort of back-up where every time a little space opens up drivers are filled with hope and scoot their cars eagerly forward to fill it. Except the driver in front of me. The driver in front of me seemed to be suffering from a seriously delayed reaction time such that the space in front of her would widen and stand empty for long stretches before she would suddenly realize it and move ahead. What's more, when she would finally go forward, the car was listing significantly to the right with only occasional corrections. Since we were in the far right lane it wasn't as dangerous as it might have been, but still erratic enough that I was glad to be behind her where I could keep an eye on her.

Was she drunk? Sleeping? Typing on a laptop? No. Further peering in through the back window revealed that actually she was making out with her boyfriend. Making out with one's boyfriend in a car is a time-honored tradition, but it is best done in a parked car. It is an exponentially more difficult feat to execute in a moving car when one half of the couple is the driver. After about fifteen minutes I guess she came to the same conclusion--she pulled onto the shoulder and turned on her hazard lights so they could get serious.


2. Grafitti scratched purposefully on a windowsill with a ballpoint pen reading, "I do love the world."