This has to stop, people. I mean it. Don't make me come out there and snatch those gawdawful trucker hats off of each and every one of your heads and beat you about the head and shoulders with it.

Once and for all: If you have all of your teeth, and none of them are brown or green, if you and your family are not the punchline in a Jeff Foxworthy joke, then you should NOT WEAR THE TRUCKER HAT.
Furthermore, if it has a brim, the brim should be worn over the brow, thereby shielding the eyes from sun and glare. See any photo of Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, or even Jimmy Buffett.

Wearing them backwards, while appalling, is still more acceptable than wearing them askew. Askew is not a viable fashion statement. Are we clear on this? NOT. A. FASHION. STATEMENT. Ever. Even if you are nominally a celebrity.



Maybe I need to repeat that.

DO NOT WEAR A TRUCKER HAT SEMI-SIDEWAYS ON YOUR HEAD.

It doesn't look cool. It only looks stupid.

And this trend?



Of wearing trucker hats not only askew, but too small? Are you people trying to make my brain explode, or force me to poke myself in the eyes with the sharp end of a charred stick?

It isn't even acceptable on a cartoon character. In real life? It is just wrong.

This is for my mother, who doesn't remember me. I was the light of her life, and one of the last stories she told (over and over as Alzheimer's robbed her of herself) was that I was the living doll she always dreamed of having. She would repeat the story of the day I walked to the end of the dock behind the house. I was still in diapers, there was no railing on the dock, and she stood at the foot of the dock and called me back, heart in her mouth, afraid that I would fall and be lost to her forever.
I didn't fall, but I am lost to her forever anyway.

Because she can't share this day with me, or these memories, I'll share them with you.

One of my earliest memories is of sitting in her lap, under the arbor by the kitchen door, at that same tin-roofed Cracker house on the St. Lucie River. She is singing to me. She is singing "You Are My Sunshine."

It is a Tuesday night, and the ladies are at the house for the weekly mah-jong game. The card table is set up in the living room, near my bedroom door, and I helped put out the candy dishes earlier. Now I am going to sleep, lulled by the clack of tiles, and the voices of the women as they play: "One crack. Three bam. Six dot. I'll take that. Do you know who I saw yesterday? Who? Four dot..."

I am so small that I am standing on a chair to see into the pan as she teaches me how to scramble an egg. She tells me to sprinkle a drop of water in the pan to see if it's hot enough. The drop should bounce. I tell her the pan is ready. It's only after the egg is cooking that she asks where I got the water, since I never got off the chair. I tell her that I spit in the pan. She doesn't miss a beat, just says "Those eggs are for your father."

She taught me about art, and always took a certain pleasure in reminding me that she went to Ringling Art School, whereas I didn't get accepted into Rhode Island School of Design. She taught me to sew, and to cook, how to play mah-jong, how to knit. She taught me a million lessons and there isn't a single one that she remembers, because she doesn't remember that she ever had a daughter.

I remember for her. Happy Mother's Day, Florence.

So my boss told me I can blog about work, as long as I don't name names or precise locations. Whoo-fucking-hoo. I've been sitting on this entry for a week out of fear. But now, I can blog it.
Last week we had a special event at the store, to premier a new product. We closed at five, and reopened at six. People, there was a LINE waiting to get in at six that stretched down the mall to the coffee shop.

Those folks in line didn't know whether to shit or go blind, because they had to decide: line up for the new product, or line up for tickets to Star Wars. Because, yeah, it's pretty much the same group of sox and sandal wearing, go to Star Trek conventions to practice conversational Klingon, home beer brewing nerds. Uber nerds. My people.

Really. I can't make fun of them too much, because, after all, I am their goddess: The Geek Goddess. I can identify the original Star Trek episodes in the 30 second teaser before the credits. I can talk tech talk: routers, bit rates, code. I know all the urban legends and where to go to on the internets to debunk them. Click here.

Since I'm too old to care about such things as appearances, I got to work the line wearing a pair of fuzzy animal ears that symbolized our new product. One of the managers made me lose the tail, which was a pity, 'cause sisters, I was working it.

Later in the evening, the mall rats came out to prowl. Where are these girls' mothers? The fat bellies hanging out over the low-rider mini-skirts, the black bra straps peeking out from under white tank tops, the dirty feet in sloppy flipflops. Skanks. We had a number of prizes at the event, but you had to be eighteen or older to win. Nevertheless, the mallskanks all wanted to play. Why? I kept asking them. You can't win even if you win. You have to be eighteen or older. A pair of them came back with "Together our age is over eighteen!" And I replied that divided by four, my age was almost 18, too. That scared them into leaving.

Then there was the U of Miami kid who tried to convince me that he needed a bigger discount, because he was a poor student. I told him that I was a minimally employed old lady, and he wasn't getting pity from me.

The managers were very happy with how I handled the door. I'm so proud.

The first time I heard the "Biggus Dickus" routine from Monty Python's Life of Brian, I was driving down Canal Street at about three in the morning, and I started laughing so hard that I had to pull over until the clip ended.
At the end of the routine, after the poor centurion has chewed his own lips off to prevent laughing in Caesar's face, Michael Palin says, with perfect comic timing, "He has a wife, you know.... her name is ... Incontinentia..... Incontinentia Buttocks." And the centurion looses it, and laughs and Brian escapes in the ensuing havoc.

I bring this up because my brother has a wife, too. I don't talk about my brother on this blog because I just don't expose that much of my real life here, no matter what you may think. You can interpret from these sentences whatever you choose. I will mention, however, that she is not funny, at least funny hahaha.

....

A couple of weeks ago on "Deadwood" one of the characters said "Fuck the future." and the response was "You can't fuck the future, the future fucks you."

I think that needs to be my new motto, embroidered on hand towels for company, and cross-stitched into a nice little sampler for the walls.

....

Well, I only came to say I must be going. And so, off I go to the studio and the sewing machine and the silk that calls out to be made into something of magic.

For the last time, spam-bots, I don't give a flying rat's ass about texis hold em, fffentamine,animated porn, stories of suspect nature concerning unnatural acts between species or family members, low-interest mortgages, c1alis or any other drug promising life-endangering hards-on.
Or would that be life-endangering hard-ons. One of my friends and I have been arguing the correct plural of hard on for years. She's a Military Brat and leans toward hards-on, likening it to courts martial. I say, even in the plural, there is only one per customer, so the plural occurs at the end, hard ons. We wrote to William Saffire but he didn't think it was a serious question, we suppose, since he never responded.

Anyway. I have no interest in any of the above listed topics, and I suspect that my readers don't either, so if you would just remove me from the list, I'd appreciate it.

Not that this plea will help. But I feel better for it.

In my aimless wandering around the internets, hopping from random link to random link off the usual site listed on the left, I stumbled across the Unitarian Jihad. This is from the mind of Jon Carrol of the San Francisco Chronicle, and it was so painfully funny that it made me spew coffee on my keyboard.

You have been warned. What follows is the communique to Jon from the Unitarian Jihad.
Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary.

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States! Too long has your attention been waylaid by the bright baubles of extremist thought. Too long have fundamentalist yahoos of all religions (except Buddhism -- 14-5 vote, no abstentions, fundamentalism subcommittee) made your head hurt. Too long have you been buffeted by angry people who think that God talks to them. You have a right to your moderation! You have the power to be calm! We will use the IED of truth to explode the SUV of dogmatic expression!

People of the United States, why is everyone yelling at you??? Whatever happened to ... you know, everything? Why is the news dominated by nutballs saying that the Ten Commandments have to be tattooed inside the eyelids of every American, or that Allah has told them to kill Americans in order to rid the world of Satan, or that Yahweh has instructed them to go live wherever they feel like, or that Shiva thinks bombing mosques is a great idea? Sister Immaculate Dagger of Peace notes for the record that we mean no disrespect to Jews, Muslims, Christians or Hindus. Referred back to the committee of the whole for further discussion.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with. Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity notes for the record that he does not have a moral code but is nevertheless a good person, and Unexalted Leader Garrote of Forgiveness stipulates that Brother Neutron Bomb of Serenity is a good person, and this is to be reflected in the minutes.

Beware! Unless you people shut up and begin acting like grown-ups with brains enough to understand the difference between political belief and personal faith, the Unitarian Jihad will begin a series of terrorist-like actions. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will not try for "balance" by hiring fruitcakes; we will try for balance by hiring non-ideologues who have carefully thought through the issues.

We are Unitarian Jihad. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. (Sister Hand Grenade of Love suggested that we institute a terror regime of mandatory hugging, but her motion was not formally introduced because of lack of a quorum.) We will require all lobbyists, spokesmen and campaign managers to dress like trout in public. Televangelists will be forced to take jobs as Xerox repair specialists. Demagogues of all stripes will be required to read Proust out loud in prisons.

We are Unitarian Jihad, and our motto is: "Sincerity is not enough." We have heard from enough sincere people to last a lifetime already. Just because you believe it's true doesn't make it true. Just because your motives are pure doesn't mean you are not doing harm. Get a dog, or comfort someone in a nursing home, or just feed the birds in the park. Play basketball. Lighten up. The world is not out to get you, except in the sense that the world is out to get everyone.

Brother Gatling Gun of Patience notes that he's pretty sure the world is out to get him because everyone laughs when he says he is a Unitarian. There were murmurs of assent around the room, and someone suggested that we buy some Congress members and really stick it to the Baptists. But this was deemed against Revolutionary Principles, and Brother Gatling Gun of Patience was remanded to the Sunday Flowers and Banners committee.

People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again! There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution.

...

Well, I had to join the jihad, of course, and have been issued my new name:

My Unitarian Jihad Name is: Sister Cutlass of Reasoned Discussion.

Get yours.