Author Archives: Wistar

It’s not just our vestigial tails

List of human evolutionary leftovers.

Hey Rolling Stone Magazine

I know you’re ultra liberal and in touch with the youth and irreverent and everything, but make up your mind whether you want to try for a serious piece of journalism, or use blow job metaphors and the word “fuck” in your political articles. Rolling Stone writing is the equivalent of your precocious 12-year-old cousin’s conversation – the cousin that peppers all his sentences with swear words so you’ll think he’s cool and give him one of your Heinekens. The first (web) page of this piece, The Great Iraq Swindle: How Bush Allowed an Army of For-Profit Contractors to Invade the U.S. Treasury, is almost comically “Rolling Stone“/Hunter S. Thompson. It’s written in the second person and contains the following editorial:

This is the triumphant culmination of two centuries of flawed white-people thinking, a preposterous mix of authoritarian socialism and laissez-faire profitĀ­eering, with all the worst aspects of both ideologies rolled up into one pointless, supremely idiotic military adventure — American men and women dying by the thousands, so that Karl Marx and Adam Smith can blow each other in a Middle Eastern glory hole.

But eventually the writer settles down and produces a decent, if sickening, piece on military capitalism and profiteering. Read at your own risk.

Rolling Stone writer: I have this terrific story that’s going to blow the lid off Iraqi War spending. This piece is important. It’ll put your magazine in the atlas of serious journalism again.

Rolling Stone editor: Okay, but can you spice it up a bit by dropping in a couple hooker and BJ metaphors? And remember I pay triple for the word “fuck-up,” both as a noun and a verb.

Signs of a Small Town

You have seen all the local vanity license plates three or four times.

Haven’t heard from Duane for a while

Here is a Bodo’s bagel for him:

____________

Top half bagel

_____________

Smoked turkey

_____________

Lettuce

____________

Tomato

_____________

Mayonnaise

____________

Bacon (to fatten him up)

_____________

Bottom half bagel

Words I often want to use casually in conversation but then don’t, because I realize at the last minute I don’t know quite how to pronounce them

1. Irrevocable

2. Inconsolable

Where are the accents? No matter how many times I look up the pronunciations on Dictionary.com, I still can’t remember.

3. non sequitur (I can never say this word casually enough.)

4. coven (somehow I always find myself wanting to talk about witches, but with a hard or a soft O?)

The Wife, Part 2

Just finished Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife, and I loved it. It’s not only written in strong, muscular, and beautiful prose so transparent that you can see Wolitzer’s images in your mind’s eye, but it’s also a great story, full of depth and ideas. It has surprises and non-surprises, depictions of gender that resonate as true and some that don’t quite seem fair, and it is layered with contradictions, but the book gives the reader a lot to think about. I want to do a post soon on “feminine” versus “masculine” writing, an issue that Wolitzer explores in her book, but it is very late and I want to sleep on the novel for tonight. Ms. Wolitzer seems like a novelist that “owns the world” (in her words).

A few weeks ago I told myself that I wouldn’t read another novel about a novelist for a long time, but this one snuck up on me.

Things I Contemplated Buying Today for Friend Going to Burning Man

1. A childrens’ lunchbox. Nixed because it was too “90s rave culture.”

2. A bottle opener shaped like a flamingo. Beak seemed sharp – dangerous.

3. An envelope for business cards. Is she going to be handing out business cards at Burning Man? Probably not. You don’t want those people knowing where you work.

4. Condoms. She’s already stocked up.

5. Drugs. All I have is Tylenol PM and a couple Vicodin left over from dental surgery. That’s not going to cut it in the desert.

6. Some anti-Bush, pro-liberal buttons. Isn’t that just assumed?

7. Cute purse. Oh wait – that was for me.

8. A decorative thermos. Wasn’t nearly big enough to hold the two gallons of water you have to drink every hour you’re there.

9. Chocolate. A) It would melt. B) People would assume it was laced with something and then they’d be disappointed and perhaps take it out on my friend.

10. An escape pod. jjjjjk.

I settled on something very ordinary (albeit Mexican), and something she can easily re-gift to new friends, and something that can double as a travel case for LSD. I’m a good shopper.

PS Thank you Cha Cha’s and Paper Rock Scissors.

Best Salad in Town

Today I was walking down the mall to get a salad from the Blue Ridge Country Store (across from the post office, beside Bagby’s sandwich shop, near the Pavilion), and I saw my cousin’s husband walking toward me with the telltale cardboard salad container, and for a moment we stopped to gush about how amazing the BRCS salad bar is. And how the same amount of awesome salad would cost you $15 at Whole Foods while it only costs you $5 at the Country Store. I said “Surely these prices can’t last,” immediately embarrassed that I sounded like an infomercial, and he responded “Maybe enough customers just buy iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing, balancing out those of us who want red bell peppers and spring greens.” We stood there thinking deeply about lettuce and we had a bonding moment, perhaps greater than any moment we have shared at all the Murray Thanksgivings and Christmases. Salad brings people together. It brings families together.

This will not be my last post about the Blue Ridge Country Store salad bar.

The Wife

Today I started reading The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. So far it’s great. Almost too great. Sometimes I don’t trust contemporary books that are so well-written. Sometimes I doubt that they can be meaningful as well. There are good novels, where you sit back and say “Wow, great sentence” over and over again. Or “This girl must have an MFA from a prestigious NYC grad program or a history of winning writing competitions in lit journals.” And then there are novels that are so good the writing becomes invisible, and all you see is story. I will let you know what I think at the end.

Update on the end.

Armenian Princess

I don’t want to neglect Diana. Diana and I are in the Recluse Honor Society. Diana comes home from work, reads The Odyssey, watches Carnivale, and makes thousands of dollars worth of beautiful jewelry. She sits on her smoky rug and tweezes sterling silver into necklaces for hours. Sometimes she reads my blog. Sometimes she picks up the phone when I call. She is the best person to have breakfast with in Northern Virginia. We share a love for eating our boyfriends’ food. I am always pleased when I can get her out of the house.