I imagined pieces of fig bouncing off the bread only to be nabbed by the fearless squirrels that feast on everyone’s leftovers in this busy city park. I was impressed with the beauty and portability of a sandwich. Bread on both sides (either a loaf cut in half of two slices) and the filling in the middle. The ultimate, portable meal that’s been utilized time and again by the traveler or the busy and overworked. It’s said the Earl of Sandwich struck upon the concoction when he was trying to work and needed a free hand. Its sheer portability gives the item its right to call itself a sandwich. Anything without this does not. Open-faced sandwiches are colorful and fun but there is no portability or ease of eating them. Their multiple toppings teeter on the brink of oblivion if they’re picked up, almost forcing the luncher to pick up a knife and fork, taking the lunch food into the realm of upper crust snobbery as in Seinfeld’s Mister Pitt eating a candy bar with utensils. Is this the right way to treat a lunch food? I suppose the tartine could be engineered in some way to encourage the toppings to stay on it whilst lifting it like a noble savage instead. 

I guess something could be done like serving it hot, maybe with cheese, the melted goo acting like a sort of glue to hold things on. But then I guess something else already exists, a slab of bread on the bottom and the main event being the topping instead, the hot cheese holding everything on. But then it exists under another, noble name– pizza.

I’m tired off all the articles bewailing England’s fall in South Africa. I don’t want to hear anything more about that missed goal as if that would have turned the entire game around. I don’t want to hear the gnashing of teeth and tearing of hair and the calls for people to be fired and stripped of their citizenship or the calls for heads that are all over the British press.

England was an overrated team and only advanced because of an easy draw. Shut up already. Deal with it.

Germany exposed them for what they are. They made them look fat, they made them look old, and they made them look boring. England didn’t play *horribly*. Playing horribly means that you as a team didn’t play to your standards, that you were way off your par. Well, they just got exposed that’s what. This team was never as good as they were led to believe they were. That’s gotta hurt.

That being said, I’ll be damned if I ever cheer for a German team and I’m not going to start now. But the current national team is good and now, England knows it.

When I heard the sound of water dripping, I thought it was the sink. My kitchen faucet is old and disgusting and it drips a drop here and there. It’s audible when I’ve been too lazy to wash the dishes from dinner that night. That’s what I thought it was. But then I looked up from the manuscript I was thoroughly enjoying and was horrified to see the shimmer of water dripping from above onto the wall above my bedroom door. Water. AGAIN? Are you frickin’ kidding me?

I went upstairs and banged on the door but it was late and though I heard someone moving around inside, no one answered. I get it. I wouldn’t want to answer the door if I was just out of the shower and some strange person was banging on my door at nearly midnight. I wrote the person a letter, crammed it between the door and lintel and waited out a sleepless night.

Early this morning she called. Deeply apologetic and so sincere I couldn’t be mad anymore. Her mom was here to meet the plumber when he came. I called the property manager and asked the building maintenance man to be here when that plumber came to in a way represent my interests and have someone impartial assess the damage and give their opinion. The leak was hopefully fixed, her floor was spared, and my wall has begun to dry. We’ll wait and see.

She thanked me for being understanding, but really, what can you do? It’s not cancer.

The beginning of the article seems obvious but then gets more ridiculous as it gets closer to the end. While I’m not an undertipper at restaurants and salons and spas, when I read a diatribe about it, something feels off to me. As I read more of it, I can’t help feeling more and more resentful of the numerous outstretched hands who “deserve” these tips so they earn a living wage. Most service in this city is utter crap and I hate when people in the service industry or their apologists wax long-winded and moral about the issue. Suddenly, I feel like there’s a target painted more and more brightly on my forehead. “Tip us or we’ll poison you, even if we’re mean jerks who act like we own the place even if we can’t afford to eat here.”

Hey, your profession is your choice. It’s not my fault you’re underpaid. Hell, I’m underpaid and my job is harder, riskier, and exponentially more dangerous than you can imagine. I don’t get tips, nor would I ever accept one. An old lady once tried. She was sweet but part of me couldn’t help smarting a little at the gesture. What did she think I was, a fucking waitress?!?!

Tipping in a restaurant is one thing but expecting people to tip their building super is quite another. Sanity, please.

• Don’t bring food if you’re not asked to bring it. It’s an unspoken vote against the cooking of the host as if you don’t think you’ll like anything. If the event is a potluck type thing, then, yes, bring what the host asks you to bring. It’s never wrong to offer but it’s wrong to insist. If you are expressedly asked to not bring anything, bring a hostess gift like a bottle of wine or flowers or a box of cookies and understand its for the use of the host as a Thank You for the invite. Don’t expect it to be opened during the event itself.
• If it is a potluck affair and you have brought something, don’t take it with you at the end unless you are asked to do so. If you brought it, you’ve brought it. Don’t start packing up leftovers unless you are encouraged to do so.
• Don’t fling your shoes off unless you are asked to do so. Don’t wear dirty shoes that will track mud into the home. I hate to have people take their shoes off in my house. Some people like people to take them off. Abide by what the host asks you to do. To assume and subject others to your habits are their house is absolutely rude.
• Don’t get drunk. If you do, arrange your own ride.
• Unless you will anaphylax, eat what’s served to you especially at a dinner party. I don’t care how bad the cooking is.
• Don’t bring people who haven’t been invited. Don’t invite people the host hasn’t invited. There are reasons to have curtailed invite lists. At your party you can invite whoever you want, but not at someone else’s. It’s perfectly okay to call and ask if you can bring your sister who dropped in on you that weekend unexpectedly.

I don’t think I’m out of line. I hate how rude we’ve gotten as a society.

I was irate but I played dumb. I did my best doe-eyed expression and asked if she wanted one of them. “No,” she said, fat and blonde and stupid, “I just thought they sold them in baskets.” Yeah, whatever. Keep your pug nose out of my business, wench. She probably doesn’t even know what morels are. I hate when people think they know better. Perhaps next time, I should take the entire basket of creminis because, you know, they just sell the basket. Or what about the entire 20 pound box of white onions in the back, just because, you know, they sell just the basket.

I’ll stagger off to bed now. Today I hung the top bar of the new closet doors and bought the newest LP in my collection… Turkey.

P.S. I just wasted 2 hours watching The Time Traveler’s Wife. Eric Bana is stunning but the movie’s just awful. I hate time travel. It’s one of the unforgiveables in fiction for me. I’m still deciding whether I should bother ripping it or not. I doubt I’ll sit through it again.

For the hopefully uninformed, the Constitution does not protect “freedom of speech”. It upholds “freedom of the press”. I am not the press and my words etc can be construed as defamation etc since I don’t have a mandate to communicate news or opinion onto the news. I’m just a lone wolf howling in the desert.

P.S. The Constitution also does not uphold anything about this so-called right to privacy. That’s only a tradition, not a judicially guaranteed right. So, stop invoking it.

Ms. Zielinski, the fashion stylist, said her best friend, a man, told her once: “ ‘You are confident, have good credit, own your own business, travel around the world and are self-sufficient. What man is going to want you?’ He laughed, but I found that pretty depressing.”

So now being smart is a detriment? What’s wrong with people? Overall, this has become a society that rewards mediocrity, where exceptionalism is treated as some kind of a handicap and real handicaps as some kind of Get Out of Jail Free card. Give me a freakin’ break.

Be smarter. Work harder. What happened to men here? Is it so accepted that they’ll be overgrown children all their lives that so many have taken the path of least resistance? It’s in evidence all over this town, and you can tell just by how people dress. There’s the girl who’s put herself through the wringer to dress well and look good and there’s the fat slob next to her with a backwards baseball cap and some sports logo monstrosity. Excuse me while I go vomit.

Grow a pair already, gentlemen. There’s nothing wrong with being successful. There are too many dudes and not enough Men.

• I have the distinct feeling that I’m writing crap. I’m moving along with plot, but the word choice and the sheer musicality of language is suffering. I also wish I could dispense of the logistical facts and just throw the hot character into the mix already but he can’t leave where he is yet. Ugh! This thing needs more men but none of them can be away from where they are just yet.  Double ugh!
• SEPTA is still on strike and I wish they would all rot in hell. Unfortunately, the oncoming winter will not participate with my current means of transportation lately.
• Why is it so hard to find boots? All the ones I think are cute won’t last in the winter. All the ones that will last in the winter are horrid. Few fit me, of either kind.
• And this really makes me want to puke. Wait, maybe they should puke more often, the people in the story anyway. We’d all be better off. I mean, seriously? No one says anyone should be yo-yo dieting. Just stop stuffing food into your face every minute of every day. And work out, damn it. Don’t bitch about walking a few blocks. No one is saying everyone will be a size 0, nor can they, but no one should be a size 18 either. That’s just as abnormal as too teeny fashion models. Grow up.

In other news, I believe this story will get good. I swear to Dostoyevsky. I can fix the word choice and bad sentence construction later. I just need to get it on paper.

The End

It needs to happen. Health care reform needs to occur sooner rather than later because the current system is untenable and will end by bankrupting us all. Health care in this country is too expensive (the world’s most) and our population is mind-blowingly ill for the amount of money we spend on it (a statistic embarrassing among the first world countries). Now, people are ill in this country in spite of the health care system, not necessarily because of it. Amongst all the spending, there is a huge amount of waste, both on things that are not needed as well as plenty of penny-wise and pound-foolishness. The insurance model has turned it all into a business, along with the heartless pennypinching and backstabbing that comes with all business. A lot of health care standards practiced by medical professionals today are as much to protect against lawsuits as well as suiting the person who’s ill. These facts are undisputed. I didn’t make them up.

From all I’ve heard on CNN, The Daily Show, and the New York Times, it sounds like the reform is being plugged along backwards. A few things have to be gotten right before anything like “Health Care For All” can even become a reality on paper, nevermind a reality in reality. Firstly, the holes in the system that cause it to bleed money must be found and filled in. It’s too expensive, period. A large part that keeps costs up are lawsuits and the fear of lawsuits and the thought of lawsuits and the shadow of lawsuits that is in the back of every nurse, doctor, administrator, or student you have ever met or seen in a hospital or clinic or office. They may not admit it, but I’m telling you now WE ARE TERRIFIED OF LAWSUITS and most of what we do has the stain of the threat of litigation on it. Imagine the last time you wrote the wrong year on a piece of paper shortly after January 1. Now imagine that you did that while on your 16th hour, bleary with sleep, a in linoleum-covered room amid the din of pagers, phones, overhead call systems, monitors, and the sound of human wailing from the surgeon who’s late for a his flight. Now imagine that mistake could drag you to court, rob you of your license, your savings, your house, your car, your job your life. THAT is health care reality in the 21st century United States. Tort reform *must* happen. No one, NO ONE on this planet deserves to gain financially from an honest medical mistake. I don’t care if it made you paralyzed. No sob story should make anyone gain a dime. Furthermore, I don’t think cash settlements should be handed out at all. If it was an honest mistake, the plaintiff should be guaranteed care but anything over and above that needs to stop. Perhaps the money should be paid into a fund that will pay to guarantee that care but plaintiff should never get any money of any kind. Legal retainers should stay to keep the well-financed, powerful bar lobby happy. But that’s IT. No more crap lawsuits. Any health care reform that does not include deep tort reform is putting the cart before the horse.

Secondly, health care is too expensive. There needs to be a push for preventative care. Those who knowingly disobey medical advice should undergo the more extensive version of an AMA order. If you weigh 400lbs, you need to show you are making progress to take it off. If you flaunt your diabetes regimen, you need to feel the threat that something will be taken away from you. People, sadly, commonly respond only when they feel some kind of personal threat. I’m advocating something like high premiums, not a knee-capping by cousin Vinny.

Thirdly, we need to get away from the insurance model when it comes to health care. Insurance is a business. It’s a bet between you and the company. My homeowner’s insurance is basically me saying something will happen to my house, the insurance company is saying it will not. My money that I pay is my pound of flesh that I am willing to give up to secure the insurance company’s complicity should my bet fail. If all goes well, the insurance company pays nothing, gets to keep my money and continues to line its pockets. If something happens, they pay to fix my roof when a tree falls on it. The next year, we play again. The human body can’t be used for such a game. How can you make such a bet with something that we all KNOW will fail? That’s a guaranteed disaster.

The last thing is the siren song of reality, the thing Americans have the most trouble with. Man is mortal. And fragile. And death comes to us all.

You know what disagreement is? It’s normal, critical, and the best platform for real communication. Just nodding along with everyone is a self-defeating pantomime. We all know it. Until as a group we can stop being overly sensitive, irrational, and fail to communicate to solve problems, we’re just fulfilling all those stereotypes we’re also so fond of demonizing.

Grow the hell up or just don’t talk to me. I don’t have time for witches like you. And for the record, I was right.

Addendum: Something very cool. Now I just have to own my own business or something to take advantage of it.