It’s called “shopdropping”. It’s shoplifting in reverse. People take things into stores and leave them there for various reasons of their own. You can read the whole story in the New York Times, but the upshot is that folks, many of them artists, are subverting the stores. The religious right is into the deal, they put Christianist/Creationist flyers and cartoons in science magazines and gay/lesbian themed books and magazines. On the other hand, atheists are moving Bibles into the science fiction/fantasy shelves. Apparently, its been going on since 1989 when activists traded GI Joe voice hardware for Barbie voice hardware and vice versa to make some kind of feminist point about stereotyping. A “sad” example is people who return pets and just abandon them at Petco, including dropping hamsters into “dry” fishtanks.

I love this idea, too!

In the post below, there’s the suggestion that having sex three times a week is a real health advantage with respect to heart attacks and strokes. Of course, my blogging friends like Flibbertigibbit and MCARP have picked up on it. However, I realized that I’ve never had a long term relationship that averaged three times a week after the first few weeks of that hot-as-fire infatuation. I’m not sure I know what it would look like or how such a relationship would work. If you know anyone who has experienced such a thing, I would like to hear testimony and don’t care if it’s anonymous.

Scientists have recently come to some possible conclusions as to why this might be so. It may be as simple as a loss of being touched. James Coan, PhD, a psychologist in the departments of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Virginia, found that, for a husband, just holding his wife’s hand is enough to reduce the stress associated with the anticipation of pain. Regular sex helps insulate a man from chronic stress, and that can pay off in increased longevity: In a study of 1,000 middle-aged men by researchers at Queen’s University in Belfast, men who had sex at least three times a week had half the risk of heart attack or stroke of men who had sex less frequently.

The whole story is about how terrible it is for us poor, picked on middle aged divorced men.

I may have to rethink this whole “non-attachment” and “hiatus” movement going on in the blogosphere. I mean, heart attack and stroke, that’s pretty serious stuff.

I don’t know crap about the validity of anything in the story linked above, but I can tell you this about divorced men: they turn into whining bitches when the topic is their divorce. Men use the term “bitch” as a disrespectful idiom for a certain woman or stereotype of a woman, it’s used rather loosely as you all know. In the most general use of that term, a 40 or 50 something guy can turn into instant bitch over his divorce. Like the tee-shirts, zero to bitch in 60 seconds. I sometimes wonder about how gender specific the word “bitch” is (despite the obvious literal reference) because the very definition of bitch is a guy on a tear about his divorce. The very widespread perception is that the deck is stacked against them and that they take it in the shorts like a man or they cry about it, but that they take it in the shorts either way. I’m too close to that forest to see the trees and offer no divorce lawyer wisdom. I just think that’s the widespread perception among divorced middle aged men. And if you think a man is not emotional or doesn’t show his emotions, just try him out on this topic. You may get more than you ask for. Men get red in the face angry and, under the influence, weepy. They will complain and whine and threaten and stamp their foot and right there throw a tantrum like it’s the expected thing for a grown man to do in public. It’s everybody else’s fault, it’s not fair, blah blah and blogblah.

First, let me admit that “cranky” isn’t precisely the word to describe me. In fact, it’s perhaps a little bit kind.

I can be damned difficult and I have been lately for many of those around me.

My blog yesterday generated some blowback.

And, I suppose I could rationalize and justify myself to a fare-the-well as I often do.

However, when I’m at odds with several different people at the same time and when those people have several different types of relationships — family, professional, associational — one must consider the notion that the common denominator is, well, me.

One part of problem that is me is something that was in yesterday’s post: I’m attached to my expectations and let them turn into resentment. I’ve got a strong notion of how things SHOULD be, and when things don’t turn out that way, I get resentful and snippy and maybe even just downright rude and impossible to please.

I have some sort of Miracle on 34th Street idea of how Christmas should be.

I have a Sleepless in Seattle, Casablanca idea of how romance should be.

I have a Gay Talese “Thy Neighbor’s Wife” idea of how sex should be.

I have a To Kill a Mockingbird idea of how law practice should be.

Oh, how I wish it were only so simple as for me to simply see that I’ve bought into some myth or another fostered by the media and to just get right with Jesus about how the world simply is.

But, there’s more.

I’ve also got this deeply invested sense of myself (who knows exactly what the right words might be) and I’m opinionated and very articulate and accustomed to being right and capable of brushing aside all argument to the contrary.

Whenever I feel that my expectations are being challenged, I go into a mode that loves precise and vivid speech delivered emphatically. You read it all the time in this blog — a sense of entitlement to be heard and believed and understood and, ultimately, persuaded by me that I am 100 percent right in every nuance.

Another SHOULD.

There are a great many other SHOULDS.

Everyone in the entire world SHOULD give me some slack when the moon is at its ebb or the clouds have been around for three days or more or when I magically decide there isn’t enough money in the checking account or whimsically decide that a cadre of middle age women must line up to be chosen to enter my harem.

I SHOULD be the best read Oklahoma blog. Hell, I should be the best read blog in the world. What are those people thinking?

The SHOULDS stretch out to magnificant lengths, far beyond the horizon.

Every SHOULD an expectation, every expectation an unripe resentment to kick off some more crankiness.

And for every SHOULD, the strongest points about my personality, the treasures and talents of intelligence, education and articulation, become daggers in the heart of my contentment and serenity because I’ve used them badly.

One of the most ironic and sad parts of all this is how much I hate confrontation and adversarial relationships. It consistently makes me sad and hurt to be in a disagreement. Once it’s at its end, I always rake myself over the coals for my missteps and poor choices. As many of you know, I dislike practicing my profession and this is one of the reasons — my job consists of picking fights and my interior won’t let me “win”.

When I said in yesterday’s post that I couldn’t tell you what I want for Christmas but that I’ll sulk if no one gets it “right”, that’s funny because it is absolutely the hard rock truth.

I can’t be pleased.

That is not a statement that should be taken as relating to Christmas alone.

I can’t be pleased by me and I’m not about to let anyone else be pleasing to me for very long in any relationship of any kind.

I hate confrontation and arguments, but I seem to start them at every side.

So, there you have it.

And screw you and the horse you rode in on.

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The snow finally started about 7:30 this morning and the latest reports I read say that all the alarmist stuff about 4 inches of blizzard conditions is maybe not so much after all.

Sinatra HAD to go out and the first snowflake that hit his face and he is screaming to get back inside. Now, it’s my fault he’s wet.

I thought I had an agreement, perfectly reasonable, that if I ran into a must-have Christmas present for one of my children or grandchildren that Mom would share the cost and the present would be from both of us. I found out last night after 11 p.m. that my “agreement” is that I will do all of Mom’s Christmas shopping and tell her the amount of the bill. I was already frustrated with the holiday and now I’m a bit testy. In fact, this morning I had to apologize for snapping at her. Worse, it seems I sent an email intended for a certain woman to my friend Ultimate Fastpipe who had no idea why I was waxing eloquent about a scented scarf. Distracted? No, why?

I thought my daughter’s family — can we say “grandkids” boys and girls? Sure we can. — was going to stay with me over the holiday, but it turns out she plans to stay with her Mom again. I’m disappointed, I must say. Son Jack will be performing in New Orleans and won’t be coming home and will get his check in the mail Christmas.

I’ve got less money for shopping this year than normal and the bad weather put a crimp into the limited time I had.

I’m ready to just give up on the whole thing, to tell the truth.

The real problem isn’t with the weather or money or anything else except my expectations. My expectations rather reliably become my resentments. In fact, they seem more than anything else to be premeditated bad feelings. In a very MCARP sense, I’m attached to my expectations that the holiday will be picture perfect and the season will be filled with movie magic. Instead, it’s bad traffic, bad tempers and bad choices and my first instinct is to blame the world and those I love the most.

Even knowing all this, I still am ready to give up on the whole thing.

Here’s a little slice of the hell of Christmas:

Daughter, what does your husband want for Christmas?
A white shirt, Daddy.
A white shirt? OK, what kind of white shirt? Full sleeve, half sleeve, short sleeve? No pockets, one pocket, two pockets? Button down or spread collar? Silk weight, cotton weight or denim weight?

Nothing is simple at Christmas.

And, I still don’t know what kind of white shirt to buy.

What to get Mom for Christmas? She owns 3,000 square feet of stuff, every imaginable kind of stuff. What she needs is a train that left the station many, many years ago and anything she sees that she wants, she buys for herself. Impossible.

Hell, for that matter, I myself am a bitch to buy for. If you ask me what I want for Christmas, I’m stumped. Whirled Peas?

But, if you don’t get it right, I sulk.

So, now let’s talk about post-ice storm Christmas traffic at Penn Square. I live at 63d and May. My major east-west routes are 63d Street and N.W. Highway. Penn Square is at Pennsylvania. The traffic light is out at 63d and Penn, just north of the giant mall. Impassable intersection. Yesterday, traffic was backed up to Villa on 63d, squeezing through the Penn intersection one car at a time at the temporary four way stop. Two cars go through and everybody honk at the idiot who can’t figure it out, the lather rinse repeat. I’m losing my mind sitting in traffic and the LAST thing I want to do is go to the mall or otherwise participate in the Christmas consumerist madness.

If I could work my will, every idiot with Merry Christmas on his lips would be boiled in his own Christmas pudding and buried with a stake of holly in his heart.

Dogs barking the tune “Jingle Bells”. ‘Nuff said. I’ll turn my radio back on after New Year’s because I also don’t want to hear the countdowns of the Top 100 of 2007.

Speaking of New Year’s, I don’t have a date and I don’t have plans. Amateur drunk drivers dominate the streets and everyone gets sweaty trying too hard to have too much fun. YUK.

But I’ll miss out on that midnight kiss from When Harry Met Sally in which my long lost love is returned to my arms for a happily ever after. And that will make me bitter and cynical and … oh, no difference? Nevermind.

The 15th Marquis of Ennui

THIS IS A DIGITALLY PROCESSED FEW SECONDS FROM THE BILL MURRAY MOVIE “LOST IN TRANSLATION”. REMEMBER ALL THOSE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT WHAT HE SAYS TO SCARLET JOHANSON AT THE END OF THE MOVIE? HERE’S WHAT HE REALLY SAID, SO DON’T WATCH IF YOU DON’T WANT TO KNOW:

SPEAKING OF SPOILERS … Some feminazi (just a joke, girls, but with a grain of truth to make it funny and not simply disgustingly chauvenist) forced Wal Mart to take some holiday panties off the shelves. The panties say on the front “Who needs credit cards?” Well, here’s the story on Fox News. I think it is funny. When I first started reading the story, I thought sure it would be fundies and I guess that shows my own personal bias against the far right, but NOOOO, it was a slash from the far left fringe of feminism. I may not admire the sentiment or the materialism or the commercialism of Xma$ (and, I don’t, as luck would have it), but this is just a tempest in a teapot. You cain’t force folk to have common sense and you cain’t make ‘em have good taste. It just ain’t happenin’. Rolling one’s eyes and shaking the head slightly to vigorously and then just walking on by was the correct answer. Not only are there better things to worry about, but sometimes what a thing needs most is a good lettin’ alone. Now, all that’s been accomplished is that a few pair of pink underwear that would not have sold all that well will be instant hits in other stores. “Banned at Wal Mart” is my new marketing slogan for all the Marquis of Ennui products at a spamming website near you soon.

Laocoon Blogblah, 15th Marquis of Ennui,
writing from his villa at Pont du Ennui
this 22d hour of the 13th day of December
Year of Our Lord, 2007 (C.E.)
Where weather has turned my hometown
Into a Third World Country of SUV driving idiots.

Nothing says Christmas in Oklahoma quite like a big ole’ blob of commercialism on the luxe edge.

Yes, again this year, Blogblah!!! proudly presents

drum roll please

THE BC CLARK JINGLE!!!

G’wan, you know you want to hear it.

I lost both internet and electricity last night about midnight, but my lights came back on midafternoon and my internet service came back on about 1020 p.m., so less than a day. As far as I know, Mom and my sister Susan are huddled in a room with kerosene lantern and gas grate.

I used a battery powered blowup air mattress to stay in front of the fireplace last night and was pretty toasty warm. I kept a fire going for most of the day and there’s a merry one crackling in the fireplace as I type. The hot water heater still worked, so I got a steamy shower in about a 50-degree house. I used sheets to block off the living room and kept the drapes closed to retain the fireplace heat in the living room, festooned with candles. (I’m not gay, I’m single).

I figured out how to make coffee this morning: I used an all metal pan over the gas pipe in the fireplace to boil water for a French press. Soon after, I headed for the Red Cup, where a good number of all the folks I know stopped in. I thought I’d get internet at the Cup, but they had the same problem I did: the dsl line was down. They did have electricity and I ate there and drank far too much coffee.

The cat has thought it quite an adventure and has scurried about under my feet and treated the living room bed as a carnival of delights, dancing over the furniture and bouncing off the walls. He sure as hell doesn’t want out, though. Even with a fur coat, it’s damn cold, especially when the sun goes down.

There’s an awful beauty to this weather. The glinting ice everywhere is lovely in its own way and reminds me of the ice castle scene in Dr. Zhivago. On the downside, the trees in this town have taken a terrible beating. Everywhere you go, nature has pruned cruelly and killed indiscriminately. I saw trees split in three all the way to the ground. Huge limbs blocks streets everywhere I go and despite the efforts of many public teams and personal efforts, there seem to be new limbs falling for all those that get picked up or dragged off the street. Finally, tonight, the rains washed off more ice than they left, but the temperatures are headed back below freezing before morning and ice and snow is predicted for the weekend.

Despite all this and the 22 hours of inconvenience, I’m still a pretty happy camper as in the last post. One result of the storm that is wonderful is that several of us gathered at GaryB’s for dinner last night and he is one darn good host. It was scrumpdelicious and I made a happy plate. Got to see the poor unwashed still without power who are bunking in with the G-man and that made me grateful for the power I did have by then, in addition to the day of hanging out with the crew.

The primal pleasures of a real wood fire draw me. I like tending a fire. I like watching its changing shapes. I’m glad I don’t have to go outside and cut wood and haul it and do this to keep warm, but as a matter of enhancing an already warm life, it’s a visual and aromatic pleasure for me. I like thinking about the architechture of the fire, banking it for coals or rustling it back up into a merry blaze. At my age, I imagine the golden glow of the light is flattering to me, which is a crying shame since I share the glow of the fire with no one (sniff. poor me. anyone falling for this shit? no? OK).

Speaking of which, I’ll stop here to tend to the fire.

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I’m all right with the world today.

Much of the time, as many of you know, I suffer from a common character flaw of alcoholics, the non-specific anxiety syndrome that comes from seeing disaster around every corner, an expectation of catastrope, a sense of impending doom, the expected punishment for my unknown failures.

Not today.

Today, I’m all right with the world.

Not only do I not care that the weather is horrible, I celebrate it. I’m in a warm house, dishwasher and laundry going to keep it from being so dry, listening to my newest CD purchase, the opera “Il Travatore” featuring Placido Domingo.

In the back room, I’ve got five DVDs of movies I’ve never seen. Last night, I watched “Hollywood Land”, about the suicide of the actor who portrayed Superman in the 50s television series.

I’m provisioned nicely. Not only shall I not want for food, but I have delicious and wonderful cold-weather fare, including but not limited to hot chocolate.

I’ve spent a good bit of the day reading the New York Times and dabbling on the ‘net with the cat ensconsed on my lap.

I’m alone, but not at all lonely, and that gives me the freedom to listen to music few of my friends would relish, the liberty to read the paper for an extended time without interruption and the ease to indulge my movie moods.

I had a lovely dinner last night and today feel sated and content with my fate.

Of course my finances are a mess, but no one will mess with me on Sunday in the midst of this ice storm. At least for the moment, I’m safe.

I have a merry little blaze crackling in the fireplace. For primal reasons I’ve never cared to try to understand, a fire is a great comfort to me, even if it’s decoratively attenuated from its pre-civilization utility.

I understand not a word of the opera, but the passionate power of its emotionality is transporting; you can feel the pain, the love, the hope and hopelessness of the story without knowing a damn thing about the music. It’s the art of opera, in my opinion, that it is able to strum our emotions no matter how ignorant we are of the form.

My biggest political worry — that Bush would unilaterally launch a military attack on Iran — has been quelled by events and I haven’t picked up the bug about the polling and political campaigns yet. It’s just not as important to me right now as is the white cat hair on my black turtleneck.

My Charleston sister is enjoying 70-plus degree beach house parties and it’s a comfort to me to know that she’s well and happy.

My Mom called about some trivial matter and I’m so grateful that she’s well, happy and still in possession of her faculties. She is a blessing in my life.

My daughter and I have been conspiring to be Santa and that is such a complete joy that it makes me smile to paw through our emails. My son is deeply involved in a New Orleans Christmas stage production and that makes me proud and pleased.

I recently read that each day we can choose to be happy or sad and that it’s the same amount of work either way. Today, that doesn’t seem so true. I work damn hard at being unhappy and this seems so utterly effortless.

I must admit there on the edge of this Era of Good Feeling there’s just a tinge of schadenfreude at those single-minded consumers who are fighting to shop for Christmas in this weather. Just thinking of their misery makes me smile.

So, that’s it from the House of Ennui.

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Bush is either a pathological liar or a moron, Keith Olbermann opines, and either way unfit to be president. This expresses well my own opinion. Keith goes on to tap Cheney as a “warmonger.” Impeachments and war crimes trials are a moral imperative, in my view. Please watch the smoking gun on Iran and the NIE that exposes this administration’s perfidy.

Atlanta Public Access TV superstar Alexyss Tylor explains that the spiritually encoded information in a man’s penis when combined with the spiritual codes in the vaginal canal can make women shoot somebody in the face — or at least slap them — during sex when it occurs to a woman that he might be sharing that dick with somebody else. I’m kind of getting to understand things a little better I think after watching a few of these episodes. I’m not sure her mother, also on the show, completely understands the concept. It’s really complicated, but I’ll let her explain:

In another episode, she thinks that women should support each other with a vagina power pussy police. Yeah, I’m thinking that this is The Answer. You see, mens got a lesser brains that thinks it can share around but that’s only because mens think pussy got no face and they balls get tingly with being bored and they start chasing around, despite they wedding band that is a noose around the nuts and a true nut bracket. I’m not telling it right because I’m just a lesser brained man, I guess. Here’s the straight stuff right from Alexyss Tylor, Pussy Pilot:

I was just too busy giving dick away while y’all at work and at church to figure this stuff out, I suppose.

OK, enough with that. I want to make a serious point. Grab ahold of your chairs, ladies. This woman’s statements and thinking is no less wrong and offensive and ignorant than some of the things I hear every day from the “nice” ladies in my life. Yes, you college educated, middle aged, middle class, articulate women who read my blog and talk to me every day. I mean bloggers who whine about men and coffee companions who pontificate about gender and the role of men in their romantic and sex lives. I mean my sisters, my closest friends and my X girlfriends, virtually every single woman I know and with whom I have had some conversation about men and relationships. Yeah, you, too.
I recently had a long conversation with a radically feminist woman attorney, in private, in order to tell her straight out that I am offended by many of the things she says about men. Sometimes I want to scream at some of you I talk to in coffee houses and elsewhere.
You are just wrong. You are as wrong as this poor, ignorant woman in the videos.
You engage in magical thinking. You too broadly stereotype males. You engage in massive non sequiturs. You have become the sexist beasts you berate.
Here’s a few news flashes for you:
1. Not all men are dawgs
2. Not all women are nurturing
3. Testosterone is not the root of all evil
4. Your personal vagina is not all that special
5. Prudish attitudes about sex are not ordained by God, if a divine providence exists
6. Men are not required to understand you by God, human law or even common sense in order to be acceptable to the angels, society or the criminal justice system
7. Just because you think relationships would be better if “he” would do things your way doesn’t make it so
8. Indira Ghandi and Golda Mier both took their nations to war, so shut up about that women as benign leaders crap
9. St. Paul does not speak for me nor a whole lot of other men
10. Estrogen alone does not make you a better person
11. Being different from you does not make us worse than you
12. A great many men pay their child support, love their children and are good fathers
13. Some women physically abuse their husbands/boyfriends
14. Power, control and manipulation games are not admirable in a relationship, even if you do it very well
15. It is intellectually dishonest to demand equal treatment while simultaneously demanding unequal treatment
16. It is not always your prerogative to change your mind just because you have a vagina
17. PMS is not an acceptable excuse for unacceptable behavior
18. Taking out the trash, walking the dog, mowing the yard and getting out of bed to turn off the last light are not exclusively the province of men.
19. The best cooks in the world are almost all men
20. Breasts and a vagina does not make your taste in clothes or interior design inherently better than mine

Last, but not least:

Our mothers taught us to act this way

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