Sam's Creek Blues

I never used to drink beer. I preferred the far more efficient (if less sociable) gin approach. I kept bottles of Fosters in the fridge anyway, though, because my co-workers tended to drop by a lot, and they were beer guys, back-slappin' Southerners in flip flops, and we'd sit out on my balcony in plastic chairs and I'd chain smoke and they'd take long, cold draws and make me laugh about whatever was upsetting me, if there happened to be something upsetting me, which there usually was. I never drank it myself, though. Then, one time, totally out of the blue, and for no reason apart from Jerry Douglas's dobro, the inkling took hold of me and I sat out in the plastic chairs alone, taking long, cold draws and watching the sun go down over the Atlanta Highway.

I remember flying down Vaughn Road with the windows down and Bruno’s bags full of Healthy Choice turkey dinners defrosting in the back seat with this blasting, blasting, blasting so loudly that I could feel it in the backs of my thighs. And it’s acoustic.

Little pockets of happiness filled with fairy dust and zing. Frozen forever in suspended, rose-colored animation, just how I like it.

I can't help missing the days when I didn't really have a mindset.

Now, I’m overtaken with homicidal rage the second I set foot inside a grocery store. Screaming hellions ripping things from the shelves while their corpulent mothers jiggle ineffectually after them. Overpriced slop, rotting vegetables. Mushy, brown apples.

Lettuce used to taste as luxuriously symphonic as raw honeycomb and cream cheese.

This must be one of the crappiest places in the western world.

Ah, songs.

Yay.

Back when spell-check was a thrilling new concept with virtually endless entertainment possibilities, my friend and I entered the name of every family member, musician, band, celebrity, lowlife, acquaintence, historical figure, city name and dead politician we could think of into auto-correct. Something, and I can’t remember what, was auto-corrected to "Ripping Sensual Funghi." Those three words moved me so much that I vowed right then and there that I would find a way to incorporate them into as much as possible as often as possible as long as I remained on this good Earth.

Today, one more teenage dream came true.

Lookit Muy (for what else can the title be?)

I should peer out from under life’s gray straightjacket a little more often, because I almost always end up getting clocked across the jaw by a gun butt of pure, uncut sunshine.




That’s right! New series! Woot woot! *mixing it up*

To the other, non-Australian reader of this blog, I implore you…familiarize yourself with the bottomless well of asthma-attack gasp-laughter that is Kath & Kim . Post-haste. I haven't been so delighted from down under since I was eleven and Paul Hogan corrected my fellow countrymen’s typically-inferior knife-identification skills.

Plus, this little tidbit of information

“…the fourth season will introduce characters played by…Little Britain's Matt Lucas”

made me emit the involuntary, ecstatic moan of a rapture frenzy which is not always advisable in an open-plan office situation but I am JUST! THAT!! EXCITED!!!

Happy legal viewing, Australia! And to the rest of us…by any means necessary, okay?*

No-ice!

*I do not officially condone the viewing of ill-gotten torrents hint hint wink wink call me I'll love you forever.

Mike Gordon Meandering

I like Mike Gordon's hotline.

I like Mike Gordon's hotline in the same way that I like Mike Gordon's music. Quietly, and with shame. And then more shame about the original shame. And a couple minutes of wondering just how big a tool I actually am. And then a mini-exsitential crisis. Followed by a little more shame.

I mean, the man actually has a hotline. I think he just likes to record himself. But then, that's the basis of any musician's career. Why I am inclined to hold that against him remains a mystery so deeply buried within my psyche that it must be intertwined with some kind of womb issue. There's no other explanation. After all, music the one aspect of my personality that I've never felt the need to beg forgiveness for. I'm one of those people that would marry albums if they'd let me. Cosmic Slop. Head Hunters. Axis: Bold As Love. Forever Changes. A Space In Time. Can't Buy A Thrill. Joe's Garage. Houses of the Holy. Pearl. I'd have a dress and a cake and a priest and bridesmaids and black calla lilies and I'd be the worst polygamist on the planet and they'd do a documentary on me for the Discovery Channel. I'd load them all onto my iPod and take them to Costa Rica for our honeymoon. I love music with irrational intensity. I'm not even embarrassed about wanting to have seventeen babies with Alvin Lee based solely upon his guitar solo in "I'm Going Home." Genius has always been like a giant, phallic death ray.(Call me, Alvin!) And I don't just mean wirey, nubile Woodstock Alvin, either. Present-day, chubby, leather-vest, grandfather Alvin has only to say the word. (Seriously. Call me.)

I sincerely believe that the precedent I set when I was four years old and choreographed an interpretive dance routine to express my love for Chuck Mangione's Children of Sanchez should have negated any embarrassment that may have gotten in the way of flinging my soul at Mike Gordon's feet the first time I heard "Clone". Besides, he's never accepted a knighthood or married a Playmate or collaborated with anybody who used to be in a boy band. He hasn't been clubbing in L.A. without panties on. He hasn't allowed reality T.V. cameras to follow him around with a microphone pack poking out of his trousers. He's never asked me to accept public intoxication as an indicator of his artistic credibility. By all accounts, I should be offering up my ovaries to him by now. Why? Why can't I do it? What is standing in my way? Why is his hotline a covert morning ritual that makes my face turn hot with chagrin despite the fact that I'm religious about it because it always makes me giggle?

Like everything else Gordonesque, I have no idea. Part of me finds it extremely suspect that he would maintain a hotline for the specific purposes of recording his "like, duuuuude" verbal swaggering in the first place. Something in me snaps into the fetal position when I think about the hundreds of fans who call in and listen to it and leave him breathless messages, the contents of which I can't even bear to think about. It also bothers me that I am one of them, even though I NEVER HAVE AND WILL press nine to leave a message OR the pound sign for more options. Okay, maybe I did the pound sign thing once. Just to see what would happen. And then hung up in such a panic that I knocked over my paperclip holder. Maybe. But I keep doing it anyway, because I can't resist the pull of his relaxed timber and his sweet, conversational, it's-three-in-the-morning-and-I've-just-finished-off-a-bottle-of-gin musings. I still like hearing American accents as long as they're not yelling "OOOH! KICKASS! THEY HAVE KFC!" when I'm trying to walk downtown. Plus, he's funny. Plus, there are books I want to read now because he keeps recommending ones that sound interesting. I don't know if I'll ever get around to it since the mere notion of buying a book that I know I am buying specifically because it was recommended to me by Mike Gordon via his hotline fills me with so much dread that I'm sure I'd run screaming from the checkout line at Borders, if I even made it that far, but still, I like it. It's nice. And horrible. And nice.

Why?

Reason continues to elude me. Thanks, Mike Gordon. Am I being sarcastic? To quote Random Grunge Kid in the classic Simpsons Homerpalooza episode, I don't even know anymore.

I think I need a honky-tonk vacation.

I am kind of wondering if I should lean more toward biker-chickdom in accordance with my 3rd-decade metamorphosis plan, even though I’ve only been on a motorcycle once in my life and it scared the bejeezus out of me. I really like tattoos and leather. Plus, I already talk like one, so it would be a bonus to have my appearance more accurately reflect my proclivity for effword usage.

Someone needs a nap.

I never cease to be amazed at how busy I am. I keep stepping back, trying to re-asses, economize, work out where corners can be cut and time can be saved. I’m a bare-minimum gal, after all. I always have been. I’ve never subscribed to the philosophy of overachievement. Even "achievement" is a bit of a stretch for me. I mean, sure, I complain about being a thirty-two year-old minion and blah blah blah no respect and blee blee blee waste of college degree and bloo bloo bloo no intellectual stimulation whatsoever but I suppose the flat truth of the matter is that if I really wanted to be the Senior Commissioning Editor and BFFs with all of the Lord Snotburies and Professor Sir Dookiepantses in this entire town, I could be. It would require a whole lot more effort at work, though, and a lot less watching of humorous talking-dog videos on YouTube when I’m supposed to be attending departmental briefings, so at the end of the day, I'm not sure how worth the effort it would be. Not that the Senior Commissioning Editors don’t do more jerking off under their desks than I could ever hope to dream about, but then of course I don’t have a misleadingly prestigious-sounding degree and practicable oral sex skills.

Why are so many people so anxious to entrust so many things to a person with this much apathy? I think that says more about them than it does about me.

Weirdos.

Adventures of an Italanglimerican Asthmatic

I do not, and may never, posses the superb, succinct verbal-dagger artistry of the most recent object of my swooning fandom, but I'll self-consciously throw myself into the murky depths of Michael Moore bandwagonism nonetheless.

It's very difficult to ascertain exactly what the arguments against Moore's new film, Sicko, are. The summation of the preceding "journalistic report" to the instantly classic, 10-minute Moore diatribe on CNN was essentially, "Michael Moore is right. Our health care system sucks. Here is some stuff that may or may not look kind of sort of sketchy if you squint your eyes really hard and spin around three times while holding your nose and downing a fifth of vodka. In sum: he's right." But I think--I think--the vapors that Big Pharmacy are desperately grasping at can be summarized in the jerkoff Hannity & Combs piece that my husband sent to me at work this afternoon:

1. Americans have the shortest waiting periods EVER!
2. Nations with socialized medicine pay so many taxes that working people have live in shacks and eat dirt and sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" while drug addicts and gypsies eat caviar and take money baths!
3. The cases Michael Moore features in his movie are isolated and never actually happen in real life!

A personal-experience rebuttal might not be the most statistically effective, but dammit, I know I'm right, so here it is.

A signifiant chunk of the four and a half years I spent living as an adult in my home country are wacky, free-wheelin', students-with-no-health-insurance anecdotes. It was all very fun and Kerouacian until the end of my first semester at college, when I thought I was going to die because I have asthma and couldn't come up with the $250 I needed for that month's medication. My (goddess of a) doctor managed to amass a grocery bag full of drug company samples--tiny little inhalers worth about ten good squirts each--to hold me over until the next semester's worth of academic scholarship money came through. Had it not been for her generous resourcefulness, I would have been in serious trouble, and what followed were four long years of similarly touch-and-go, cloak-and-dagger rain dancing to keep me from suffocating in my sleep. And trust me--it was very, very far from isolated.

When I arrived in England, ignorant of just about every facet of English life and receiving little help from my similarly befuddled boyfriend (who was still a fairly recent arrival from Italy), I lost many, many hours of sleep panicking about what was going to happen to me when my medication ran out. I'd heard vague rumors about the NHS, but I wasn't married yet, and only in England on a temporary six-month visa that did not, as far as I knew, entitle me to any citizenship rights, whatever they might have been. I wasn't allowed to work. I had virtually nothing. All I knew was that everything seemed to be about a hundred times more expensive and, if that also applied to medication, I was well and truly fucked.

After putting off the inevitable until the last minute, I braced myself and registered at our local National Health Service clinic. Name. Nationality. Contact phone number. Known medical issues. "Asthma", I wrote shakily, feeling like I was filing for bankruptcy.

"Let's set up an assessment," the receptionist chirped. "Say, tomorrow at 11?" (Total waiting time--approximately 21 hours.)

I couldn't bring myself to ask her how much it was going to cost.

The next day, I submitted to the usual peak flow tests and symptom-trigger questions, the cash register in my mind chinging madly with every word that came out of the doctor's mouth. He handed me a prescription containing the Anglicanized versions of all the necessary preventative and rescue meds, and I made my way to reception with my credit card clutched in a sweaty palm, praying that they accepted credit cards that may or may not have been maxed out.

The receptionist looked surprised to see me standing there. "Do you need another appointment?"

"No, I need to...pay," I choked.

She looked utterly confounded. "Pay for what?"

"The doctor?"

"Pardon?"

"What?"

And it went on like that for a couple of passes until she was able to identify my accent.

"Oh, you're American, aren't you?" Bless her. Trying so hard not to laugh.

And, I must say...five years on, and I'm a full-fledged legal immigrant with a big-girl job and an easy familiarity with the NHS system, and I still can't help but feel like a cat burglar every time I skip out of there without greasing any palms.

I learned about prescription costs in a similarly embarrassing fashion. I was moaning to a patron of the pub I worked in, and I said, "I have these prescriptions to get filled, but I'm broke! I'm going to die or something!"

"No, it's not so bad. They'll cost £6."

"What? Why? Do you have asthma too?"

"All prescriptions cost £6, no matter what it's for." Unspoken subtext: "Oh, you're American, aren't you?"

As I struggled maintain nonchalance while the Hallelujah Chorus resounded in my head, I went home and slept the first night of beautiful sleep I'd had in months. And I kissed the sky and did bell kicks all the way there. I mean seriously, you can't imagine. After four years of life/death constantly in the back of my mind,it was better than winning the lottery.

These days, my monthly NHS contribution is automatically deducted from my paycheck. If it was so astronomical that it actually affected me in some way, I'd be able to tell you exactly how much it is, but it doesn't, so I can't. If I'm drowning in taxes, I guess my nice life and I are just too busy enjoying unobstructed breathing to notice.

I'm aware that the system isn't perfect. I'm aware of the issues, and there certainly are issues. But when you're young and sick and frightened--terrified--and you don't know where your next breath is coming from, and then, for the first time in your life, you're told that everything is going to be okay, and then it IS okay, and you weep with relief...your punching fist tends to want to penetrate your computer screen and shove itself down Sean Hannity's knobby little throat.

And, today, an Australian puppy is spared.