Welcome To Our Multicultural Sharing Session, Now Cane Yourself

I don't know if it's because I'm chronically self-employed and, like The Fly, have become increasingly unfit for public company. I suppose it's possible that I'm part of a government conspiracy whereby Republicans were brainwashed into thinking they were San Francisco Values liberals and placed in unimaginably trying situations to test military intelligence's brainwashing efficacy. Or maybe I'm just a bitch. Because I find politically correct San Francisco do-gooder meetings like the one I attended yesterday only slightly more tolerable than digging out my own eye with a llama toenail. (Admittedly, they are funnier than digging out my eyes with llama toenails.)

The background: My son attends a federally funded free pre-k for disadvantaged children. How? Because I am a resourceful motherfucker, that's how. In any case, in exchange for grant money, we have to save receipts, write lots of mushy treatises featuring the words "community building" and "social justice" and "kindergarten readiness" and go to meetings where we do trust exercises, build community and say those words.

Went to one yesterday.

The cast is always the same. It has been the same since the Campaign Against Apartheid meetings I attended as a UC Berkeley freshman in 1986, and it's the same now. To wit:

I spend so much time caring, I don't have time to shower

Before Umberto dumped me for a rich chick from Taos

• Earnest Social Justice Do-gooder(s) -- They come in several varieties. Good-looking African American Man With Questionable Grammar. Self-loathing White Man With Ill-advised Dreads. Jew #1. Jew #2. Jew #48. Fiery Latina With Cleavage is a perennial favorite.
• Earnest Social Justice Gay Person Who Dresses Better than Other Social Justice Do-gooders -- Usually a guy. Usually in a pastel button-down shirt. Usually wears cologne to drown out the pervasive smell of patchouli. Usually in touch with his inner Harvey Fierstein.
• White Chick in Guatemalan Shirt With Expensive German Shoes Who Only Speaks Spanish* -- She went to Zihautanejo in 1987. And 1989. And 1991. 1993. 1996. She fucked a guy named Umberto. Skipped a year when her mother died, then did a solid 8 months at language school in Guatemala or Bogota. She has been to Santaneca and Costa Rica and Belize. She never met a Day of the Dead tchotchke she didn't buy. She used an El Salvadoran sperm donor. The great disappointment of her life is that her kids' immersion-school Spanish sounds like a Taco Bell commercial.
• Angry Muslim Chick in Chador -- She will wield her veil like a gun. She will somehow look sexy even when saying things like "we were empowered to build community." She will peer down her Semitic nose at your Semitic nose and wonder if JAPs really do lie there and do nothing when fucking their husbands, like she does.
• Fat Black Dyke With Rainbow Earrings -- She will work for a church of dubious theological origin and refer to her personal savior as "she." She will be a breath of fresh air, often snorting aloud when our peers say inane things about community and social justice and empowerment. She will stare unapologetically into the grant administrator's lazy eye and say, no, she did not bother to collect any receipts to show how she spent his money because who is he, Jesus H. Christ? She will not wear a bra, even though she desperately needs one.
• Embarrassed White Liar -- That was me. And my friend Amanda (comically, as she came from another pre-k and I did not expect to see her there, but she is apparently also a Resourceful Motherfucker).

After the humiliating mob scene at the buffet, which was paleo-approved and featured processed string cheese and strawberries (too big to be organic), we were asked to go around the table, introduce ourselves and give a status update on our "projects" (AKA, parties with poor, non-English-speaking people in attendance where we spent the federal government's money on chicken wings and other items that cultivate kindergarten readiness). I was unsure what name our (shady-ass) pre-k was supposed to use this week, so I mumbled something unintelligible (and vaguely Arabic-sounding).

There were two highlights, both of which I vacated my inner happy place to enjoy, while working my way through a ginormous, federally funded, empowering pile of GMO strawberries.

Highlight #1: When the White Chick in Guatemalan Shirt (WCGSWEGSWOSS) self-deprecatingly explained that because she could not capture in words -- er, English words? -- how very empowering spending their money had been, she had commissioned a film of said. Excuse me, a piece. Voila! In popped the DVD, complete with tinkly ethnic music, cute brown faces studded with the occasional towhead and lots of ugly urban educational corridors getting ruthlessly greened by stinky hippies in German shoes. Have you ever had to maintain a smile for 15 minutes when you were sobbing inside, lest you be accused of being insufficiently committed to social justice? It's neat...in a fortnight at Auschwitz sort of way.

Highlight #2: When the Earnest Social Justice Gay Person Who Dresses Better than Other Social Justice Do-gooders (ESJGPWDBTOSJDG) broke down and prostrated himself before the Cantonese translator, tearing at his pink blouse and offering to seppuku himself because he was unable to read -- and therefore accept -- grant packets in Spanish or Cantonese. As the gentleman in question was a hunchbacked fag of Japanese heritage, I found it perplexing that his suffering credentials were found wanting. Glancing around at my fellow moneygrubbers -- excuse me, attendees -- I was surprised to see nods of approval as he rent his clothing and kneeled in supplication, his twisted little back shaking with self-loathing.

See? You can't make this shit up. Anyway, long story short, I told my lies, put away my kaffiyeh and walked the gauntlet of homeless perverts to get to the MUNI station. It was a good day for social justice. And community. And empowerment.

*I am so eternally fascinated with WCGSWEGSWOSSs that I feel I must devote an entire paragraph to capturing their essence. Surely you've seen them: They thrive in such settings as Occupy events, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Rainbow Co-op Market and public immersion schools. They do inexplicable things, like speak Spanish to Romanian tourists and visit Chiapas. I guess the best way to convey their mystique is to provide a piece of dialogue featuring yesterday's WCGSWEGSWOSS engaged in conversation with her children (whom she dragged to the soul-killing two-hour social justice-infused meeting, as WCGSWEGSWOSSs are wont to do):

WCGSWEGSWOSS: Hola, [insert name of Fiery Latina With Cleavage]! Como esta, chica? (to kids, hissed: Tell her your names! In Spanish! In Spanish!)

[Kids fight back, all but screaming at their mother that their hard-fought immersion education has failed, and they still think of Spanish as the language they order burritos in.]

WCGSWEGSWOSS: [patting ethnic necklace] It's. So. Great. To. See. YOU! Did you go to [insert unpronounceable Aztec-ish name here]? Did. You. LOVE. IT?!?

FLWC: Um...actually, it was 100% humidity, and my mother was kidnapped and gang-raped--

WCGSWEGSWOSS: Maravilloso!

 
 

The Girls' Version of Fight Club

"Girls only" admonition strictly enforced

My 8-year-old daughter is a visionary. She is also stubborn. This means that she is a stubborn visionary. Watch out for stubborn visionaries, my friends. They will stop at nothing to create a small slice of beauty and grace, even if it means leaving a trail of destruction and misery in their wake. They are the terminators of the creative world.

Lucca decided she wanted a girls' club. For a year, she planned it, plotting endlessly in secret, tattered notebooks. Six months passed while she nagged us for a spot to call her own and fiddled with member lists. Finally, her dream was realized, and the sun shone again. (Because we are San Francisco apartment-dwellers, her dream was realized in one half of a cramped, sunless sunroom, which she shares with her dad's office. Hey -- nobody ever said dreams were roomy.)

I find the manifestation of her creative spirit (angst?) fascinating, so I took some pix of the clubhouse and its contents.

Of note: Lucca is a slob. That said, she manages two domains that do not resemble Khost. One is her bed, where neat stacks of books, gardening encyclopedias and seeds wrapped in balls of toilet paper (!) stand sentry pillowside. The other is her clubhouse. Note the difference between Lucca's side and Gabe's side (an endless source of embattlement in our home).

Club side: fresh as a fairy-infused daisy

Dad's side: hmm.

Radness: My childhood bible, immortalized by the next generation

 

 

 

 

 

Semiprecious stone, withered illustrated balloon & assorted crap collection, housed in bon bon and egg crates

Written by another club member...if only life stayed this simple. Not sure what "weiner" game involves but vaguely afraid

Literally dozens, if not hundreds, of fairy drawings protect club members from free-floating testosterone

Oy gevaltz! Fairying is tough in this economy

Love this one. Leonardo who?

These fairy worshippers do not discriminate on the basis of color or creed.

Aging With (Or Without) Dignity

Botox, my ass

The other day I was applying my usual casual dusting of powder eyeliner when something got caught in the applicator brush. Gee, I thought, that's weird. Maybe a dust bunny floated up somehow?

After several attempts to dislodge the offending blob, I realized, with a flurry of horror, this salient fact: The offending object was my own eyelid.

(Cue scary music.)

At this juncture, we excavate the gimmicky yet amusing literary device embraced by literate children of the 1970s: the multi-path storyline. Thus:

If you are under 40, continue here. If you are 40+, jump ahead to where it says "If you are 40+, you poor aging motherfucker, continue here."

Anyhoo.

Here's the deal, sweetcheeks...er...sweetcheekses? Everyone thinks she's going to age gracefully, accept the natural deterioration of the flesh, embrace Metamucil, book an Elderhostel...you know, the usual litany. They're wrong. Everyone thinks that until her own eyelid droops over her eyeshadow brush and swaddles it like a human flesh pig in a blanket.

There are other shockers. Like the pain of childbirth, better to find out now, I propose. Among them:

The thickening: you can starve but you can't hide

• Everyone gets hemorrhoids.
• Dark spots will start to dot your face and hands. You will worry about them being cancer. By the time you work up the courage to let the dermatologist see you naked, you'll be dead.
• Crepey chest strikes like that. There is no escape. One minute you are a reasonably attractive 30 or 40something woman; the next you are Anne Ramsey.
• Loud music sounds really...loud.
• You're jealous of people in their 30s. Or, as you like to call them, infants.
• Knees look a lot like Shar-Pei dogs from the right angle. By the time you're 45, that would be any angle.
• The thickening. Just...the thickening.
• Your liver rebels against the only thing that makes you happy: sulfite-packed red fucking wine.
• Spider veins, sciatica and broken capillaries, on sale now!
• Nose hair.
• Ear hair.
• Upper lip hair.
• Back hair.
• Chin hair.*
• Gray fucking pussy hair.
• You pee when you sneeze.
• You forget things like...um, yeah.
• Marriage means forever unless you undergo a messy divorce or one of you dies. This means that you have to endure him experiencing and complaining about all or most of these things as well. (Oh, well--you can dye your pubes together on Friday night after Betty White.)

 Need a break? May I suggest a chamomile tea with Metamucil?

*No fucking kidding.

If you are 40+, you poor aging motherfucker, continue here.

Chances are, you have already experienced some of the indignities detailed herein. Perhaps you have done personal work toward acceptance. Perhaps you are one of the lucky few who has escaped all but a few of these graceless scourges. Perhaps you have figured out how to brew the perfect sulfite-free wine/Botox/Metamucil cocktail. Perhaps.

Mind you, there is a plus side, and not just in dress sizes. For one, you can stop sucking it in--really, who gives a crap? Then there are the "ma'ams"--it is fun to pretend you are an Antebellum southerner, goin' home to the plantation house after a long day of whipping slaves. And if you forget your sunglasses, just pull that ole' eyelid out like an awning. Females, you still have currency with the 70+ set, some of whom are not on ventilators. All in all, a reasonable trade-off for the corporal trappings of youth.

Lest you feel this essay is overly negative, I offer you a reason for hope: this.

What I Really Do: San Francisco Mom

Why Valentine's Day Sucks Donkey Member

If this is what true love looks like, I'll take the other kind, thanks

It's nothing original, but I really, really hate Valentine's Day. Who thinks up this shit? Dudes! I know -- let's make everyone celebrate their love by forcing them to mount a giant public extravaganza to prove their love, involving muffin top-producing undergarments, a mediocre dinner, crushed expectations, and C-list babysitters who may or may not have been charged with unauthorized possession of methamphetamine in the state of Oregon.

Yuck, I say (oh, and pass me one of those pink hearts...yeah, the one with KISS ME SANS TONGUE FOR ONCE, ASSTART).

I propose we take a look at the process itself. Perhaps, by analyzing the steps involved in doing Premature Spouting Geysers of Passion Day the way the Hallmarkers want us to, we can begin to understand why the day that is supposed to be saturated with amour instead feels like climbing Machu Picchu with an amorous monkey on your back.

The fundamental truisms of Bleeding Ventricle Day are:

1. Love heals all -- except the indigestion you'll get from the overpriced yet second-rate menu you are forced to eat because all the good restaurants were already booked months ago by the kind of people who actually make Valentine's Day plans five months in advance.*
2. The more complex your plans, the greater the likelihood you will not be signing divorce papers at this time next year -- So you haven't had good sex in eighteen weeks? The wife still fuming over that fishing trip to Vegas thing? Not a problem. All-you-can-eat manicotti at the Olive Garden followed by a moonlit walk on the beach, the latest Reese Witherspoon, a peridot charm necklace and 68 minutes of oral should do the trick.
3. It's not about sex, it's about pink things -- What? You think Val Day should be about intimacy and passion and -- let's just say it -- a nice, dirty fuckfest with your honey (or somebody's honey)? Sorry, pal: It's about fuzzy, pink, glittery hearts and chocolate with soy lecithin in it. Didn't get the memo? It's not too late. Just trot thee over to Tiffany's and buy something shiny and glittery and pink.
4. You are the only unwilling singleton in the galaxy -- Yes, it's true: Everyone, up to and including that coworker with the peculiar interest in anal fissures and eyebrow-melting halitosis, has a date and is luvin' it!



And you say he's not romantic

5. We need another excuse to eat shitty candy -- We Americans never met a HFCS-stuffed morsel we didn't like (preferably doused in sprinkles and deep-fried in canola). Now that we've finally figured out how effin' fat we are, we need excuses to satisfy our insatiable lust for self-sabotage. Maybe you can't buy me love, but you can buy me a ginormous pink chocolate sprinkle-covered banana dick.
6. Your kid must give a card to every kid in the class, even the one who stole his iPod and gave him a purple nurple -- It's one of the peculiarisms of modern Heart on a Stick Day: the unfortunate dovetailing of the anti-bullying movement and helicopter parenting has resulted in the bizarre directive that kids must pretend to "love" all their classmates in equal measure on game day, and prove it by providing them with an insincere (if appropriately sourced) "valentine" on which kid has illegibly scribbled his name and stapled a handful of branded stickers, pink shiny hearts or shitty-tasting school-approved candy substitute.** Mom, my kids wail as I cane their backs in all the best non-scarring spots, forcing them to applique yet another foam heart to an origami heart backing, why do I have to make one for [blank]? I hate [blank]. He's a dick. Isn't midnight past our bedtime?
7. Handmade cards that required hours of grueling craftiness are not appreciated -- See #6.
8. You are expected to post your Sweetmeats With Hannibal Lecter Day tale on social media -- In case you didn't know, it's a competition. God forbid you prepare a seven-course oyster-studded menu, serve it up cinched into kidney-shifting Victoria's Secret, douse your spouse in whipped cream and try every position in the Kama Sutra without anyone else knowing every climaxtastic detail. God forbid the world at large doesn't know how deep, how without limits, your passion for what's-his-name, the sperm donor, is.
9. You will see other lovers, some of them young and feckless, others mature but seemingly, impossibly happy, holding hands and making out blissfully in public parks while you drag your sweaty brood to a Ross, where you will buy your spiritual-life-partner a synthetic scarf with a run in it as a symbol of your timeless passion and wonder if it is legally sanctioned to not have sex with your spouse on Evisceration of the Chest Organ Day. You will then panic about the state of your libido, marriage and mortgage payment. -- Where do these people find the will? The time? The scarves that don't run? Why does it suddenly seem like everyone else knows something you don't? About love, marriage and keeping the thrill alive in spite of the fact that you have examined each other for evidence of graying pubes?
10. Your husband will ask you (disapprovingly) why you have not yet redeemed your holiday Good Vibrations gift certificate  -- Make no mistake: the fact that you have neglected visiting everyone's favorite sex toy parlor and procuring an Oh My Gush Kit in favor of buying food, earning a living and showering is proof positive that you are lacking, to quote America's jilted sweetheart Jennifer Aniston, "a sensitivity chip." Offering to mend the error of your ways by off-labeling the Sonicare will not produce the desired chuckle.

And so, you see, we are set up to lose before we've even begun to suckle our lover's blue-veined inner wrist. We can't succeed at celebrating our love along with 313 million other Americans because our expectations are too high, we're locked out of the troughs of which Zagat approves, little Dakota is a dick, and the trials of navigating Gimme a Hickey, Honey Day drained us of any desire we might have had to ride our spouse like a filly on this, the hallowed Day on Which We Publicly Proclaim Our Vaunted Passion for the One With Whom We Share a Checking Account When We Aren't Hiding the Income We Spend on Web Porn Memberships.

Best of luck to ye all.

Love,
Kim





*Studies have shown a high correlation between early Valentine's Day reservation-setting and voting for Rick Santorum.
**Suggested shitty-tasting candy substitutes are: almonds, raisins, fruit leather and Clif bars***.
***Constipation warning.

My son is a greedy fucker

Yes, it's true: Zev Raphael Wasserman is greed personified. Avarice. Untrammeled consumer lust. Acquisitive madness. (Mad acquisitiveness?)

Brazen covetousness wrapped up in one reasonably cute, skidmarked 5-year-old package.

I know we're not supposed to call our kids "fucker," but if there is another word for those possessed by the psychopathic compulsion to annex every plastic doohicky west of Toys R Us, I don't know it. Sometimes it seems as if we can't go 90 seconds without a growly entreaty for yet another wall-eyed stuffie, automatic weapon or remote-controlled car.

I'll see you a Wii and raise you a jet, bitch

As his fifth birthday approaches, the demands have increased in frequency and scope, such that his most recent petition -- delivered at bedtime in a flurry of screams and flailing limbs -- called for delivery of a live snake. A snake! Motherfucker, I thought, visualizing the urn of wine I was going to drink as soon as the drugs took effect and his eyeballs rolled back, and I thought you had balls to ask for a vintage VW Bug last week.

Here's the weird part: We never say yes. Never. We aren't the kind of weak-willed parent-mats whose resolve crumbles like a Turkish rotunda in the face of a few (hundred) tears. No. We're strong. Consistent. And cheap. Did I say cheap? At times, watching his small face redden with a cocktail of rage and perceived deprivation, I am reminded of the shrill admonition delivered by the Take-Back-the-Night people in the 1980s: What part of "no" don't you understand?

Yet, somehow, we carry on. We enjoyed a moment of comic relief (AKA, revenge) tonight at Zev's expense when, impatient with our ineptitude at inserting the ball gag, our daughter called down from the upper bunk with great cheer, "Zev, you're just like Dudley!", inciting another round of wailing.

Yeah, reading Harry Potter has its bennies.

Rationally, I know he will outgrow this unsavory behavior. That we will socialize him toward a more holistic view of, um, material wealth and, you know, world domination.

But right now, he is Gordon Gekko in pull-ups.

Stop Crying in Your Philz, San Francisco

Junior Niners fans eat honors students for merienda

I can't remember the last time I saw San Franciscans this disconsolate. Must have been when that cokehead guy realized he was too old to go to frat parties. Or maybe when we found out we were all going to die crazy.

It was a season to be proud of, for sure. But apparently some weren't ready to let the dreams of glory die a natural death. Some San Franciscans are rightly wondering, what now?

I'll tell you.

Everyone knows idle hands are the devil's tools. So get up off your sad-ass, you know, ass, and find a constructive way to channel your angst. Stay active. Think positive. Here are some ideas:

1. Pray for Kyle Williams. Dude could use a pep talk. Or maybe a security detail.

2. Be glad you aren't a Carolina Panthers fan. (What the fuck is Carolina, anyway? Do they suck so bad they have to share?)

3. Think about baseball. With global warming and all, it feels like it's just around the corner.

4.  Go skiing. So what if a weekend in Tahoe will set you back $2000, require 16 hours of driving and net you three runs before you retire to the lodge with a $12 toddy and a strained groin? Afterwards, you can brag to all your East Coast friends that you could go surfing and skiing in the same day, you simply choose not to.

Hi. I'm an investment banker.

5. Get an emo haircut. Seriously. Where else can grown-ups get away with this shit?

6. Have another baby. Yep. Just pop that Clomid and break out the turkey baster. Think of it as your contribution to the next generation of Niners fans.

7. Join AA. Close your eyes when they start with the sobriety stuff and substitute "Niners fandom" for drinking. You doubt? Take this test and see how sick you really are.

8. Blog about knitting. Or hating knitting.

9. Open a restaurant. (Hell, it's easier than being a Carolina Panthers fan.)

10. Pass out plastic bags to dog owners (my version of community service).

Hopefully, these suggestions will help you during this dark time. Also, there is Bar Agricole.