Don't Whack That Mole

I don't usually read articles about Beauty. They can be hard on your wallet. Still, the one in the paper recently about achieving lush brows caught my eye.

There are lots of beauty articles. They're there to keep the ads for beauty products from running together. I ignore them. Play Up Your Cheekbones! Not applicable. I'd need joint compound and a Sharpie. Best Swim Suits For Your Body Type! Got it. Something in a split-level, with an awning and good foundation plantings. A Firmer Bottom In Ten Steps! No thanks. My bottom is plenty firm and it took way, way more than ten steps.

But I read the whole lush eyebrows article. I never had lush eyebrows, but at least I had eyebrows. My mom told me I was lucky to have them, because she didn't. Since I take after my mom, I should have taken that as a warning.

Because one day I noticed they had gone away. No note or anything. I don't  know if they got paler, fell out, or just rode the last estrogen bus out of town. One day they simply weren't there; I looked like Mrs. Potato Head between renovations. Now obviously it couldn't have happened overnight, but I hadn't noticed. That's kind of normal, that lack of attention. It's why some men spend more time on their hair the less they have. Bit by bit their hair falls out and doesn't come back, and day by day they attempt to patch things up, until after a few years they have a routine that produces an effect everyone finds highly comical. But they keep doing it. Don't they realize how it looks? They do not. When you're coping with hair loss one day at a time, every day requires a new affirmation that you have things under control. I used to work with a guy who parted his hair just above his right ear and glued the longest strands over the top of his head. It's his last battle. He parted his hair a little further down the mountain every year and sent the troops charging up, but in time the forces were depleted. Now they don't even make it to the top of the hill. One day all he'll have to send to the fight is mercenary ear hair.

Another fellow on my mail route was well into his dapper nineties and still spent the better part of each morning creating his coif out of optimism, red dye and back hair. He had eighteen long strands at the base of his neck and he motivated them with antique hair gel and sent them up his nape and over his crown, where they sat curled up on his forehead like a thin, damp rat. I admired him, I really did. He just wanted to look nice, and everyone who looked at him smiled back, hard, so he knew he was doing a good job.

I, too, for a while, was able to imagine I still had eyebrows, because if I rumpled my brow into little hills, the shadow they cast mimicked the original equipment. As a woman, I don't have that much of an eyebrow ridge. It's the men who have a prominent jutting forehead, part of the original gorilla kit they still enjoy. I've only got enough of a ridge to fluff my remaining eyebrows. For years now they've strung themselves out up on that hill, brave, thin little soldiers peering out over the landscape, only to be picked off by sniper zits from below. Who were probably tipped off by a mole.

And I know just which mole. It's hunkered right up there on the eyebrow ridge, and I've had it all my life. There was always a little nubble under the skin, but it wasn't anything anyone noticed. At least I don't remember it casting a shadow before. I don't remember it getting in the way when I watched TV, or sending out for its own pizza. The only thing I can conclude is that the mole ate my eyebrows. If we sliced it with a lancet, fur would fly. I'm afraid to have it removed.

So I read the whole article hoping for a revelation. Apparently the key to achieving lush eyebrow growth--you'll want to jot this down--is to quit pulling them out. You need to get all your brow hairs on the same growth cycle, because otherwise the ones you want will stay underground in case you were planning to tweeze them too. They're very sensitive that way. Mine are presumably so sensitive they react to other people's eyebrows being plucked, because I've certainly never done it. Also, in extreme cases, you can have a transplant of your own hair into your brow. This could work out. You know, depending on the source.

As far as I'm concerned, we missed a genetic bet not crossing Frida Kahlo with Martin Scorcese. Their descendants would have to mow their foreheads, but for the sake of humanity, it would have been worth it.

Horticulture, Homeless Dave, and Homicide

Russian scientists just grew an antique campion plant from a 32,000-year-old seed, and I can't even sprout an aster from last year's seed packet. They claim the campion seed had originally been buried in a burrow by a squirrel, where it froze solid, and was only recently recovered and prodded into life. It's hard to count that many rings in a non-woody plant, but if the age estimates prove out, it will be by far the oldest plant to have been generated. The scientists in charge are pretty confident after interviewing the squirrel in question, who was found at a local library looking for the card catalog and muttering to himself. They're excited about growing an old campion next to a new campion and studying the evolution of a plant in real time. But they'd better keep a close eye on it, or somebody might take it, like Homeless Dave.

That's what happened to our lemon. Homeless Dave was but one of a surplus of Daves we had in the neighborhood; we have enough that everyone can have one of their own. We've got Big Dave, Little Dave, Store Dave, Old Dave, New Dave, and Republican Dave, who moved away in search of lower taxes. My Dave ("Old Dave") had befriended Homeless Dave, if by "befriended" you mean "didn't run away screaming." Homeless Dave was a toothless Vietnam vet with a mohawk and a drug problem and a voice that could make bridges go up and down. He favored feathers, large knives, shiny objects, really large knives, and psychotic breaks. He would show up at inopportune times (although, to be truthful, no time was particularly good) and bellow conversationally until you gave him some money or food. Dave, who has a saintly nature he tries to obscure with curmudgeonliness and targeted flatulence, paid him attention and cooked him gummable meals. One cold night, while we slept, he came by and built a raging bonfire in the Weber and dragged it under the eaves of our house where he was trying to escape the wind. Dave brought him inside long enough to get a hot meal in him and sent him away while I crossed Social Work off my to-do list. Homeless Dave was a pain in the ass. I wished him safe and warm and happy and in Central America.

About the lemon. We had a lemon tree we'd bought that claimed to be hardy to 20 degrees. And it was. It was hardy, but that didn't mean it was in a good mood. We kept it outside in a pot and knitted sweaters for it and spooned juice into it and sang to it and bought it a Savings Bond and finally, after about ten years, it began putting out experimental fragrant flowers, a few of which finally resolved into tiny fruits around five minutes to winter. We watched them carefully as they struggled to grow, and after about eight months they began to veer yellow, and we lost all but one, but that one got fatter and yellower until Dave pronounced it just about ready to eat. One summer day he came around the back of the house to find Homeless Dave mopping juice off his grin. "GREAT LEMON, NAMESAKE!" he said. "BEST I EVER HAD!" And Dave fingered his pruning shears while contemplating his chances of successful homicide against a well-armed crazy ex-Marine. Ultimately he let him go with stern words and an omelet.

Homeless Dave showed up with useless gifts, scavenged or stolen, but he meant well. One time he pounded on the door before dawn with an attitude and a knife that wouldn't have looked wrong on Orion, demanding attention from my Dave as he was trying to leave for work, and Dave told him he'd worn out his welcome. We don't know where he is now, but if he showed up bearing a bouquet of 32,000-year-old campion flowers, it wouldn't surprise me in the least. And that would be a blow to science. I'd also watch out for Monsanto. If they even think they can engineer a shortcut to pre-frozen vegetables, they're going to try.

Hurts So Good

Here's what my friend Jim said: "Joe Blair carves out a place in your soul. Too bad it hurts."

You've never seen a book review on this site, and I don't want to start now. So I'll finish now. Joe Blair's first book is for sale. You should buy it. Joe Blair tells the truth better than anyone I know. By The Iowa Sea is a memoir, but genre doesn't matter much to me: if something is well written, that's all I ask of it. You can write about pod people or you can rip bodices, but be sly, be graceful. Choose the right words, and I'm yours. Joe's words take my breath away. They remove the last defenses against understanding his life.

And what's to understand? The facts are these: Joe and Deb married with the usual optimism, assuming that great desires as well as mundane joys would be fulfilled. They had four children. All children rearrange one's future, but their fourth, Michael, stole theirs. Severely autistic, sweet, and infuriating, Michael requires 24-hour care and more love than most people know they have. And he tests that love every day. For Joe, the prospect of an affair presented a glimpse of a less-burdened future, and he found it irresistible. But it's not the end of the story for a man with the habit of truth.

Here's how you know a great writer: his words change you. I don't even know how Joe does it. We were introduced by a mutual friend that at least one of us had never met, on Facebook, through an earlier association with a grand online literary experiment called FieldReport, and--well, as they say, it's complicated. One day Joe posted a link to a piece he had up in the New York Times "Modern Love" column. It staggered me. It was about his son, his almost--almost--unknowable son. Yes, Joe and Deb's future has been derailed by the demands of the boy's care, but their duty goes deeper: someone is living in Michael's body, and they bear the responsibility of learning who it is, because no one else will. This falling tree will make no sound unless they are there to hear it. It takes a lot of love to fend off despair. And there's no guarantee there will be enough of that to go around, for the other children, and for each other.

He doesn't put it this way, of course. He's not fancy. He lays out his hopes, his assumptions, his desires. And then, right next to these, his reality, sliding in so sharp we don't feel it going in. He leaves out the extraneous introspection and the philosophizing, and trusts his reader to inhabit the space between the life he wanted and the life he has. And because we do that work ourselves, we are there.

And because it is reality, it is not without humor. If Joe wasn't funny, he wouldn't have lasted this long. His readers will not be unscathed, but he has mercy on us.

Memoir sometimes makes me cringe. Sometimes the author names names and scatters rage; other times he seems to be working towards absolution by extravagantly blaming himself. Me, I can't write it. I am not willing to own all my truth, let alone tell it. I can express grief over the loss of a well-loved soul, but I am loath to reveal much about the living. It's hard to tell what Joe might leave out--certainly not his doubt, his exasperation, his failures, his infidelity. But instead of cringing, I'm on his side, on the side of his family. Because his aggravation is threaded through with forgiveness. He even forgives his son, who is innocent of malice. Forgiving the innocent may be like cleaning soap, but he does it--must do it--anyway. And every day. Even rarer, he forgives himself.

There's no melodrama in here. This prose is simple, supple, and valiant. Here's one truth: muscles cannot grow stronger without something to resist. And Joe Blair, because he must face his responsibility and his burden, is able to learn how large love can be, in a way that those of us of whom less is asked may never do. That's really something.

I've been proud to have Joe Blair in my skinny blog roll for a while now. If you would like to see why I'm so fervent about him, here's the New York Times essay that shredded my heart. And here's how you can order By The Iowa Sea. 


We will return to our regularly scheduled snortfest on Saturday.

An Eight On The ICKter Scale

Unusually strong earth-shaking has recently been observed in all corners of Oregon, with reports of aftershocks still coming in. Officials have determined that the epicenter is to the north, in the state of Washington. Although experts say it was not an unprecedented event, nothing of this magnitude has occurred in the area in recent memory. The temblor has been traced to the passage of gay marriage legislation in February, resulting when a movement that had begun deep underground pushed closer to the surface. There is a consensus among frightened citizens that the fault began in California. Survivalist groups are forming to defend heterosexuality as citizens prepare themselves for the imminent collapse of their marriages. "You can't tell me this sort of thing won't endanger marriage," says concerned citizen Leviticus Primrod. "Just last week, my wife Lurleen says to me, she says, 'I'm moving in with Darla Sue if you don't quit picking up chippies at the Five Spot,' she says. And Darla Sue's hot."

In the forefront of the defenders is the Million Mom movement (motto: "because we said so"). The Moms, towing many of their estimated hundred thousand nervous gay children, will march on the state capitol as soon as they replenish stocks of sanctimony and juice boxes.

Elsewhere, predictions vary as to the effects of the event on marriages in general, with some claiming there is no imminent danger, and others warning of the possibility that innocent bystanders will be damaged by sightings of public displays of homosexual affection. Preparedness experts are recommending that people take precautions such as strapping their children to the closet and laying in a two-week supply of bile. In the case of another earth-shaking event, we are reminded to hunker down under a rigid belief system and keep our hands over our ears and eyes.

Don't Skip This

This is our first Leap Day ever on Murrmurrs, so I didn't want to skip over it. It takes us, as a planet, approximately 365-1/4 days to get all the way around the sun and back again, and that isn't divisible by anything useful, so we just throw in the extra day every four years, which makes people born on February 29th feel special. It's the least we can do for them, since they die so young.

But we didn't always do this. Julius Caesar got the leap ball rolling, in 45 B.C. It had to be nerve-wracking back then for the ancients, watching their calendar wind down, inching closer and closer to zero, with no idea that at the very last moment Jesus would come along and spin it back the other direction again. On the other hand, it probably gave them a steely view of reality that brought their own lives and work into focus, and they got a lot done. In contrast, we A.D. folk see our lives spooling out into a hazy distance, and are so confounded by the notion of Forever that we waste our time polishing up our piety to trade in on the good seats in heaven, no matter who gets hurt. Or, we play Farmville.

But before the Julian calendar, even without the tension of the dwindling years, things were a mess. The Roman calendar had twelve months, for a total of 355 days in the year, which wasn't really enough to seal the deal, solar-wise. So they put in a fake month between February and March, but not every year. Some years would be 355 days, and others would be 377. Then they left out the bonus month at odd intervals so that the calendar would be right every 24 years. That got it close enough for government work, but unfortunately the Pontifex was in charge of deciding when to heave in the extra month or leave it out. The Pontifex was supposed to be outside of politics, but he had power and, often enough, a fondness for a certain party, sort of like Chief Justice Roberts, so if his buddies were in power, he'd opt for the long year no matter what. It was like they gerrymandered Time. Before you knew it, it was snowing in July and people were bringing hot dogs and sparklers to Thanksgiving dinner.

Worse, even if someone honestly put in the fake month right on time, it didn't mean the word got out to the hinterlands. Those folks would charge right into March too early, and before long they knew who won the World Series before anyone else did, and totally cleaned up. Something had to be done.

Finally someone suggested they just go ahead and make every year 365-1/4 days long, but people got all jumpy on that last day, when the sun snapped right off and fell back over the horizon just before noon. So they decided to round down and add a day every four years. For the most part that did the trick, but it still got things enough out of whack that we lost a day every four hundred years. Only the most anal people noticed; you could spot them frowning and tapping at their calendars and holding them up to their ears. These kinds of people have a way of being annoying and eventually the Gregorian calendar was developed to settle them down. It's just a refinement; we still add a day every four years, except in years divisible by 100, mostly. This works pretty well. The other way of going about it would be to pass legislation declaring that the earth travels around the sun in precisely 365 days. That'll have to wait for a Republican administration.

Rolling Out A New Welcome Mitt

With two more primaries coming up on Tuesday, polls continue to show Newt Gingrich tracking well among the pissy, and Rick Santorum is coming up hard on the rear. Concerned establishment Republicans have begun to express doubt about Mitt Romney's package, and he has been advised to take new measures beyond declaring expediency as a bedrock principle. Work is being done on the personal as well as policy front, with an emphasis on the steadfastness of his positions, including some that are still under construction.

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Details are sketchy, but according to his new hair tousler, Mr. Romney and a fresh dog will begin touring the country in a bus, the Rolling Plunder Express. Fidough, a certified pound mutt with a stars-and-bars bandana, will have the run of the top of the coach, where he will bark the bark of freedom. To project vigor and enthusiasm, Mr. Romney will bound out at every stop and roll up his sleeves just enough to reveal Nascar logos on his special holy underwear.

It is thought to be the best strategy to own up to his Massachusetts health care plan, under which all residents are affordably covered, by stressing that this was a youthful indiscretion, for which he is very sorry. He is expected to introduce a bold vision in the health care debate that will slash costs dramatically by endorsing a new line of Christian Science Medical Centers. Those who complain that the franchise amounts to little more than a chain of Jell-O restaurants with no ambience will be promptly accused of waging war on religion. After emotionally recalling his own hardscrabble upbringing in utero, he will unveil a new proposal, which will cover every citizen from just before fertilization to birth, equipping them with tiny little concealed-weapons permits and other protections under the full extent of the law. In addition, innocent future American lives will be saved by the passage of the Sperm Empowerment Act, under which contraception will be defunded and semen delivery system enhancement pharmaceuticals will be offered for free in little candy dishes by the door at Walmart. Failure to enact this will be spun as discrimination against the elderly sperm hosts. Women will benefit, inasmuch as roughly half of the resulting fetuses are projected to be women, after nine months of incubation, labor, and up to eighteen wallet-draining years of care.


In other areas, Mr. Romney is on record as affirming that the sacred institution of marriage is between one man and one woman, at a time, although he believes certain accommodations might be made to confer many similar rights to homosexual couples, as long as such a union is not called marriage, but rather "a filthy abomination in the sight of the Lord." He further pledges to podcast a weekly ecumenical Prayer Breakfast featuring plenty of pork products.

On the energy front, Romney will continue to castigate Obama for nixing the Keystone project, which, he will point out, would bring thousands of temporary jobs to America building the pipeline to transport Canadian oil to a gulf port for export abroad, until we have a chance to devastate our own resources.

His experience as a businessman will be touted as giving him unique insight into slashing the bloated federal budget, beginning with the elimination of ethanol subsidies, except in the corn-producing states, and the elimination of all military bases in states with fewer than four electoral votes. Regarding the military budget, its growth will be reined in to two digits. Under the Romney Doctrine, excessive military force will be limited to regions with serious mineral resources, and the grateful recipients of our military attention will be reminded that freedom isn't free, although we would be happy to work out an extended payment plan.

How To Make Money On Your Ass

Viggle has created a new app for the iPhone that rewards you for the time you and your fanny spend parked in front of the TV. And I say it's about time. We're not doing this for our health, you know. The phone recognizes what shows are on and awards you points for minutes spent watching--more for certain shows, and bonuses for commercials. Accumulate enough points and you can win a five-dollar credit at Burger King. The Sloth Fairy slides the credit right into your phone, and you can redeem it if you ever scrape yourself off the sofa. To thwart people who cheat by leaving their phones in the TV room by itself, the app will be triggered by a methane detector. Viggle is hoping to increase the size of the TV audience, and this should do it.

I spend more time than I probably should watching TV. My intellect is too weak to overrule my body, which overvalues physical comfort, and whenever I'm comfortable I do not care to be dislodged. If I'm stretched out on a recliner in a quilt with a lap mammal and a remote, torpor ambles right to the top of my list of virtues. I also have a real hard time getting out of a hot shower, where you don't even really need to leave to pee. Bed is the best of all. I won't get out of it until I have to. I sleep in a cold room under a stack of quilts high enough to press a diamond out of a briquette. I can ignore a sense of duty for hours before removing myself. The last time I felt as good as I feel in bed, I was in a uterus.

We don't use any fancy devices and have only an old-fashioned cable TV, so our habit is to find a show we like and a channel that syndicates it and schedules it hour after hour for months on end. The Boston Legal years are a blur. Next up was the House marathon. We've seen every episode of House three times but keep thinking there might be one we've missed. I began to suspect I had spent too much time in front of the tube the day our neighbor's basement flooded. A committee convened, but nobody could figure out where the water was coming in; the walls appeared dry; it seemed possible it was coming up from the sewer through the bathroom drain, but there was no good explanation. Things were getting tense, as they always do when men are equally confounded but don't think they can pitch a hissy fit in front of each other. After about a half hour of batting around possible diagnoses, I found myself thinking:  it's sarcoidosis. It's always sarcoidosis. Except it couldn't be sarcoidosis, because we'd only been there a half hour. In another fifteen minutes it would look like rhabdo or a rare tropical infection. I poked at the wallboard thoughtfully, with an air of engagement, and let the men puzzle it out, confident that the solution would arrive at the 55-minute mark.

The morning I woke up with the theme to Two And A Half Men going through my head, I knew I had a problem, but that I'd think about it after logging another couple hours in bed. Things are often clearer in the light of day.

But that night, in the blue television light, I realized I have no problem at all. I'm going to get me an iPhone with a Viggle app and go for the grand prize: ComaDoze, the memory-foam recliner with the built-in Cheez Doodle dispenser and insulin pump. Don't bother me, I'm working.