My Cat is an Oppressor.

The weather got very cold here last night, down to the mid-20s. What was our cat doing? Sitting in her toasty warm (yay wood-pellet stove!) living room window, licking her paws and staring out at one of the neighborhood strays sitting on the front porch. Our next-door neighbor feeds the strays, but a lot of them love to sleep in our yard, and this one, known as "Big Boy," is huge and loud and chatty and affectionate. So he's sitting on the porch morosely, staring straight inside, directly at Paola who is sitting on the couch looking down on him like Marie Antoinette. If a cat could smirk, she would have been. This stare-off of cruelty went on for about ten minutes before we removed Paola and tried to give her some empathy by taking her outside for a few minutes. It didn't do much. Seriously, how do you train a spoiled housecat to not completely throw her good luck in the face of the less fortunate? I think cats might just be fascist by nature. I'm not sure if that makes dogs communist or not.

Anyway, Happy Halloween, y'all!

Just Scary, Not Cute

The Thirteen Scariest People in America. I find the judge and the academic to be particularly scary, for obvious reasons (Kevin MacDonald seems to be a good argument against tenure).

Class rant ahead: I have a theory about Halloween that's been percolating for a few weeks now. Halloween is the holiday of the poor and disfranchised and dispossessed in the U.S. This is aside from all its Saturnalia connotations or pagan elements. It's the time when we actually acknowledge that the world is a scary, fucked-up place full of monsters under the bed and capitalists in the closet and warmongers and acts of violence and cruelty committed for their own sake. Compare this to Christmas*, when we are expected to spend frantically in order to prove some notion of universal love and peace and brotherhood -- nothing's scary, everything's beautiful and pure! Classic bourgeois denial mechanism and an annual chance to make yourself feel better (yearly visit to the shelter or church collection plate), along with providing a "much-needed boost to our economy." Halloween on the other hand is cheap and easy -- it's a fun holiday in the trailer park or housing project because most people with access to 99 cents for candy and a needle and thread for costumes can afford to participate in some way (and food stamps work for pumpkins -- later they become pie!). Again, compare this to Christmas (or Thanksgiving -- both falling unfortunately at the end of the month) when those without money or feasts or presents for their kids invariably feel like crap in comparison to the highly commercialized, shiny, sparkly, non-scary lives they're supposed to have. And bags of donated food or old clothes do not make that feeling go away. Goblins of the world, unite! (I also have a theory that working-class folks are more likely to dress up in scary, as opposed to cutesy, costumes -- admittedly based solely on my series of Halloween parties this weekend, but that's another story.)

*Disclaimer: For all my trash talk now, I will totally be rhapsodizing about Christmas and decorating like crazy in approximately a month, because I am a contradictory person and because I have a huge overcompensation thing going on for my own years of donated food Christmases. Plus I am a sucker for pretty things and Christmas is all about the pretty. But I also know that my experience of a pretty Christmas now comes at the price of all those who live in a scary world 365 days a year. So Halloween still feels a lot more real.

The Cute and the Scary

Yesterday was a day of much festivity and fun. We spent the bulk of the day making crafts and cupcakes, then attempted to run a gauntlet of three separate Halloween parties.


I think the kitty is my favorite.


We ran out of vanilla with the white frosting, so we used (apparently copious amounts of) rum. A dab on your finger was kind of like taking a shot. Let's face it, Martha would totally approve.


What I made yesterday pre-cupcakes: I don't understand how I can wield kitchen shears and wire cutters on the above candy and bead concoctions and never manage to hurt myself but tomatoes foil me. I think it's psychological. I secretly hate tomatoes! We also watched The Neverending Story while I made these. My next animal is named Atreyu.


This boy got hit on by a weird old man at party #2. It's the blond curls. Very Cindy Brady, if she were a Eugene barista from Maine who hadn't shaved in a while.


Little Miss Sunshine, complete with cotton batting barrel-chest, and a cat. Sadly, people mostly could not guess this one at all (and most of them hadn't seen the movie -- I ask you, what are they doing with their time that they are not seeing this movie?). At party #2, someone thought these might just be her normal clothes and tried to politely compliment her on her glasses. Others thought perhaps she was an aerobics instructor.


Olive attacks a pumpkin at party #1.


Pumpkin guts. We managed to spill the bucket of seeds on the floor a moment later. People love it when we come over.


The second "Hell House" variation spotted on the drive to the last of the festivities. There was an ambulance parked out in front -- we were trying to decide if it was for the folks that fainted after seeing the horrors that await sinners, or whether it was part of some reenactment of What Happens When You Drink. Or Dance. Or Smoke. Or Laugh. Laughter is of the devil!

As is the photographer's way, I totally forgot to get a picture of my costume. Picture a cross between Annie Oakley and Jessie (because of the braids) from Toy Story and you've got it about right.

OK -- I need to do some non-crafting work today, like on my slavery syllabus. Sometimes I would like to be sponsored to make crafts and cook and decorate all the time. And that, I know, is where I've completely bought into the domesticity script. I don't deny it. Just because gender is performed doesn't make it less powerful. I'm sure there's a special room in Hell House for feminists.

Terror in the Corn!

Hit the corn maze last night with some of the history folk. Misty, foggy, ten-foot-high corn stalks, screaming tweens, and the occasionally well-timed chainsaw toting madman jumping out of the corn as we wandered in circles getting lost (and eventually finding the way out) make for some authentic Halloween fun. More pictures on E.'s blog.

Two things:

1. I make a yummy tofu pot pie and red lentil moroccan soup. And I in no way dropped a pie on the floor after taking it out of the oven. That would be ridiculous. But if I had, hey, at least I would know myself well enough to make two, just in case. The second one had a kitty on it! Luckily, since my friends are grad students, they can't be too picky over what they eat and are more than happy to consume food off the floor.

2. I also totally did not trip over a corn stalk and fall on my face in the maze. But if I had, at least it was not because my shoes were on the wrong feet. It was the corn! And my special powers of instant karma were intact, since F. fell as well about ten seconds after laughing hysterically at me. Take that, corn demon!

Yay for Gluttony!

OK, the good thoughts or dark rituals or whatever you all did paid off. As of last night and this morning, Paola has eaten all her food within about ten seconds flat of it being placed in her bowl, and is back to acting aloof and distant, just like the cat we all know and love. That snuggly, quiet, affectionate behavior when she was sick was deeply freaky, y'all. I can now go back to pretending she will outlive me. Which, given her New York street kitty survival skills and my prediliction for slicing open veins while chopping carrots (again today! -- I blame the inventor of knives), seems more than likely.

Beware of Redhead

I assumed my bad mood (see below) would persist throughout the day and was fully prepared to launch a ruthless assault on the 60-odd midterms I just received as well as terrifying some hapless LSAT students later tonight. Then I realized after leaving the house this morning that my boots were on the wrong feet. Sadly, this is the third time this has happened with these boots -- they're tall and high-heeled (of course) and vaguely cowboyish, which can make it confusing, but still, one should be able to tell which shoe to put on which foot after the age of 3. They're not uncomfortable when on backwards (though my roommate has told me that the words "not uncomfortable" have no meaning when coming from me in relation to footwear).

The last few times this has happened I have made it all the way to school before someone else, usually E., noticed. Since I was on the bus when I figured it out and since it requires more than one person to remove my boots (I don't want to talk about it), I couldn't exactly whip them off right there, though I'm certain everyone would have enjoyed my fuzzy red snowflake socks. So I wore my shoes on the wrong feet all over town, around the bus station and on two buses. Along the way I stepped on the dangling strap from some kid's backpack and nearly sent him flying into a group of people. I had to sit in the very back on my second bus, which meant that despite my height my feet were dangling off the ground by a good inch (do they make the back seats for GIANTS? seriously). It was at this point that I concluded that I am way too ridiculous to be copping an attitude. I am a slapstick version of myself. Now, instead of being careful of my bad mood, you should just plain be careful. Watch your step after I eat a banana! Or if there's a meringue pie nearby! Plate glass doors, beware! And as many of you know, I cannot be allowed within two feet of a sharp implement (this includes paper) without likely cutting off or otherwise maiming some part of myself and possibly others. I'm my own version of Calamity Jane, except that everything that comes out of my mouth isn't an unintelligible string of profanities (not everything). I think I might need to start wearing a safety helmet when outdoors and some sort of safety mittens in the house. They would go well with my ability to turn regular shoes into clown shoes.

On another note, after spending an hour and a half staring at a class of midterm-taking, sniffling-in-unison undergrads, attempting to intimidate them into not cheating too blatantly, I have concluded the following: the kids at this school are really weird-looking. Kind of like a bunch of little aliens with colds. I blame inbreeding.

P.S. My apologies to those of you with clown phobia or "coulrophobia." I blame my evil twin.

Shut Up White Jesus!

OK, first things first: Please say a prayer, mantra, chant over a candle flame, light up some rolls of hundred-dollar bills (isn't that what you lawyers do to win a case?), whatever, for P-kitty's health. She went off her food for three or four days a few weeks ago, not eating and laying around like a little black furry pile of lethargy. We took her to the vet and ran a battery of ridiculously expensive tests that were ultimately useless as they all came back fine. Then she started eating again and seemed OK. Now she's been not eating or eating very little for the last several days. I don't know what this is about, but I know this needs to stop. Any of you who know Paola know that this is NOT a cat that goes off her food. And, unlike other animals -- dogs, etc. -- if a cat is acting funny it's probably a big deal because they have a very high pain tolerance (like redheads). She's nine years old -- apparently this qualifies her as a senior cat. I am not having any of this kitty mortality crap, so do whatever you need to do.

Second, white Jesus really needs to back the hell up. Yesterday I read a lo-o-ong article by my white Jesus law professor -- so named because at one point he stood in front of class, spread his arms out wide, lowered his head and said, unjokingly, "I can't leave -- (Elite Ivy League Institution) needs me." Not that he needed that half-million dollar salary, he's just sacrificing his desire to go out there and be a social worker in order to be where he's needed, teaching a bunch of mostly legacies or rich kids how to be even richer. It's rough, but he's just a giver. This goes back to A.'s comment on academic gurus from the other day -- this guy has a huge following as a guru (which I totally admit to being a part of, when I'm not ripping on him as a dilettante). And of course, what annoys me the most is that when he thanked our section -- by number -- in the preface to his article he didn't even remember our name, the name he insisted we take as a sign of rebellion against the institutional numbering. Whatever. Then I got to watch white Jesus on "Lost" get strapped to a table like a grungy, shirtless, naughty saviour and sacrifice himself for others. I can't deal with all this faux-selflessness. It's making me grumpy this morning. I need to see some people openly acknowledging the greed and shallowness and selfishness at the root of their choices and actions. I'm going to go read the Wall Street Journal.