Kosher Eucharist / יוקאריסט כשר

I resign, bitches.

It fits the meter pretty well, doesn’t it? If my French hadn’t decayed so much, I’d try to write out a whole collaborationist version of “La Marseillaise,” but I had a hard enough time even getting camping supplies when I went to New Caledonia.

I have a new goal. Remember how I made that generic fitness New Year’s Resolution, like everyone does every year? I’ve made it more specific.

By the end of this year, I am going to meet the recommended minimum entrance requirements for the French Foreign Legion, according to random guy on the internet who claims to have been a Legionnaire.

You probably assume, as I did, that the minimum physical requirements for anything French were “Eat a wedge of brie in one minute without throwing up, successfully make love to a woman who hasn’t bathed in ten days, and run away from a threat.” Turns out that’s for the regular French Army. The Legion is more hardcore, probably because it’s full of foreigners. Here are the recommended minimum physical entry requirements, according to Dude Who Was In It And Wrote A Book:

- 30 pushups.
- 50 situps.
- Climb a 20 foot rope without using your feet.
- Run 8 kilometres with a 12 kilogram rucksack in less than one hour.
- 8 chinups with your palms away from you as you grip the bar.

This will be incredibly difficult, but at the end I will be a titan. A juggernaut. A terrifying war god. An avatar of virility. And I will get mad tail. I refuse to allow a French person to be stronger than me. I want it to be a conscious decision that I’m not in the Foreign Legion, breaking up riots in French Whateveria, every day.

Also, the tail.

I will inform you of my progress, or Mikeleh will inform you of my hospitalization.

So, the other day, Mikeleh and I went out for lunch. At 5:30. We enjoyed some delicious Mexican food (the first person who pipes up with “it’s not Mexican, it’s Tex-Mex” can suck my blistered pole) and drove back to the house content and sated.

We arrived at the house to see Aunt and Cousin’s Fiance wrestling (rassling, really) the dogs into the back of Aunt’s pickup. Cousin came over to the car and said, “Well, a lot of terrible things happened just now.” So, of course, my mind flipped through Arabs, Communists, drug-resistant staph, tornadoes, a Hilarity Clinton win in… anything, cancer, famine…

“That dog you found got into the chicken yard and killed all the chickens.”

Michael stared fixedly into space. I covered my mouth like a matron interrupting a hand job after lights-out. We held these poses as Cousin went through the body count (70% mortality rate among hens) and a lurid description of a wheelbarrow full of dead chickens. “Anyway. we’re taking the dogs to the other house and putting them in the yard. You should… not be here. Aunt’s Boyfriend is… y’all should not be here.”

So we drive to the other house.

Me: I am so embarrassed.

Kike: Oh, my God.

Me: I am so embarrassed.

Kike: Does Aunt’s Boyfriend have a gun?

Me: I am so embarrassed.

Kike: This is terrible. Oh, God.

Me: I am so embarrassed.

Kike: That was a serious question about the gun.

At the other house, Cousin and Cousin’s Fiance had a talk about how gross the blood on the dog is. Aunt shared some dog training tips: “I’ve been too busy. Boyfriend has had plenty of time to take that dog to the chicken yard, show him a chicken, and tell him ‘no.’ That’s all you have to do. I’d've done it, but I’m too busy. Anyway, it’ll blow over. Boyfriend will start drinking in two or three hours and he’ll calm down. We should all stay away from the house until then.”

So we dorve to Nearby Town and bought Aunt and Aunt’s Boyfriend a gift. Then we go drunk with Cousin and Cousin’s Fiance. Then we snuck back into Aunt’s house, c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y and q-u-i-e-t-l-y. Aunt heard us, of course, and got up up to tell us that “peace reigned in thouse house once more,” and they had had a chicken funeral earlier.

Then, today, a wildfire nearly burned down part of town (really,) marking the fifth time somewhere I live has been wholly or partly evacuated for a natural disaster. (Jarrell tornado outbreak, Ivan, Katrina, Rita, and random wildfire.) There’s never a dull moment out here.

Oh, great Caesar’s fucking ghost.

Faithful readers of this erratically updated blog will recall that I have, at best, a deeply ambiguous relationship with what has chosen to anoint itself “the gay community.” On the one hand, boys and the Scissor Sisters. On the other hand, grown men calling each other “girl,” Sex on the Beaches (Sexes on the Beach?), Madonna, organizations with the words “lavender” and “pink” in the titles, gay drama, “condom fatigue” (are you fucking kidding me?), being lumped in with transsexuals and the intersexed for no real reason at all except that it’s easy to have all the freaks in one place, strangers asking me if I “pitch” or “catch,” strangers touching me, coconut rum, and “Queer As Folk.” My friend Nora says I’m one of only two actual, factual gay people she knows who complains about “faggots” - the other is her officemate from Houma, Louisiana, who explained to her that “you know, there are gay people and there are faggots. Like how there are niggers and black people.”

So, yeah, I go on tirades about “Goddamn fairies” that could be lifted from the Fred Phelps Christmas album, “The Only Goddamn Showtune You’ll Ever Hear Me Sing Is ‘Ain’t Nothin’ Like A Dame’ From South Pacific.’” And yeah, I don’t like the cookie-cutter girly squeaky all-I-am-and-ever-shall-be-is-a-big-ol’-mo pansies. But do you know who pisses me off always as much?

Fucking, Goddamn, straight people making a fucking point.

I tried to discuss this at the time, but I was too busy scrambling for my digitalis to do so. Remember when J. K. LGBT. Rowling announced that Dumbledore was family? And there was hue and motherfucking cry? Jesus wept! That was the stupidest goat-ass media storm since that whole flap about “Iraq,” or wherever. A minor character in a series of fucking children’s books, for children, is gay in the author’s mind. There’s not even (apparently) textual evidence for it. And everyone cared. People were happy about it. Over-fucking-joyed. Happy that an imaginary wizard had a very hard life and was stung by unrequited love because of a deeply held secret. Seldom have puerility and insensitivity made such an awkward marriage.

And, fuck. Bareback Mountain? Give me a Goddamn break. Yes, it was a very good movie. Yes, Heath Ledger (God rest his soul) and Jake Gyllelenehyellall and the sweeping vistas of British Columbia were all visual treats. It did not “change the way I thought about film,” in the words of one reviewer, and it certainly didn’t change the way I felt about love. It changed the way I felt about drinking games and Jake Gy….ll. It did not roll the sky up like a scroll. It’s well-acted hot guys on a mountain. Calm down.

And now, even the fucking cartoons are in on it. From Defamer:

The Advocate: Which character do gay fans respond to the most?

Seth McFarlane: Generally they respond to Stewie, because he’s arguably the most complex character. …we delved into the idea of his confused sexuality. We all feel that Stewie is almost certainly gay… we treat him oftentimes as if we were writing a gay character.

The Advocate: If a house party full of America’s gay celebrities literally burst into flames, which one would you run in to save first?

Seth McFarlane: John Travolta. But if he’s not there for some reason, how about David Hyde Pierce? I’m acquainted with him and he’s a good man. And if we ever did a Family Guy Broadway musical, we would need him to play Stewie?

Je. Sus. Wept. Patronizing much? They treat him as if they were writing a gay character… how? I know, I’ve seen the show, I like the show, but how do they treat him like they’re writing a gay character aside from the blatant gay references? Are there pages of Tennessee Williams-esque stage directions including phrases like “After having masturbated to a picture of Andy Roddick, Stewie comes in?” Does the staff take a Gloria Gaynor moment? I’m not even going to get into the “Towering Queenferno” question, because I can’t even articulate why it’s maddening, but it is. What really strips my screw is that people are going to hail this as a “victory” for gay rights. You know what was a victory for gay rights? Lawrence v. Texas. Remember? The Supreme Court case where we got rights? Not a fucking cartoon infant.

And you know who really, really annoy me? The straight couples who refuse to marry until “every American has the right to love!” La-dee-fucking-dah. Don’t do me no favors, kid. What, they think they’re gonna put Justices of the Peace out of business? Las Vegas Elvises lining up for unemployment? Ministers moonlighting at the gas station? IT WON’T DO A FUCKING THING EXCEPT IMPRESS YOUR FUCKING BERKELEY FRIENDS. I feel like these people’s parents insisted on going to the black high school, and that their distant forefathers stole one of the smallpox blankets from the Indians. Useless fucking gestures. Are the stationery companies going to riot and make Congress let the fags wed, because no one is buying first-anniversary paper? Give me a fucking break. You know what my real, actual friends do about my homosexuality?

Treat me like a person, not a sideshow attraction, and occasionally introduce me to a nice boy. Because they’re my friends. And I don’t give a good Goddamn who, if, when, or how they marry.

“Fuck” count for this post: 12
“Goddamn” count for this post: 5
Number of dollars I bet you someone comments on this post only to complain about my use of the word “nigger”: 5

My thighs are sore two days later, which I guess makes sense because we went for like an hour and a half.

I kind of wish I wasn’t talking about going powerwalking with my cousin.

LOL LATE

Yeah, yeah, we didn’t post for a while. We moved, it was holidays, and for about a week I couldn’t look at the blog without screeching “SORRY TO RAIN ON YOUR HATE PARADE!” Save me from dour Yiddishists. Anyway, yeah. So Mikeleh, who I’m thinking of calling “This White Man’s Burden” and I have been living in what used to be the stable of my aunt’s house and tripping over piles of detritus since mid-December. There was only one bed in the room when we got there, so we have no idea if my family thinks we’re asshole buddies or not. Mike has already been invited to both family weddings taking place this year, and his birthday is written in the calendar, so… make of this what you will. We’re about to move into Ancestral Home / Bagach, a WONDERFUL and brightly colored house my cousin is vacating to marry her handsome, employed fiance. We may raise chickens. Anyway, to change the subject as rapidly and jarringly as a woman looking up from a blow job and saying “I want to have a baby,” here are my New Year’s Resolutions.

1) I will do that health shit.

Vegetables, fiber, flossing, blah blah blah.

2) I will keep up with my book club.

Because I am a bookish spinster.

3) I will finally beat “Super Castlevania IV.”

I have been trying since I was eight. I could never get past the pterodatyl-skeleton-monster.THINGS ARE GONNA CHANGE THIS YEAR, PTERODACTYL-SKELETON-MONSTER. PRAY TO YOUR FOSSILIZED, 32-BIT GOD, BECAUSE I WITH MY MUSCULAR THIGHS AND WEIRD LONG CHAIN WILL END YOU.

4) I will go to Lourdes.

The pope has apparently offered a SUPER dispensation for visits to Lourdes in this 150th anniversary year, and after a certain incident in an alley in Christchurch last year, I’d like to reset my Purgatory clock. In my defense, he looked like he was at least fifteen.

5 and most important) I will have sex with a Canadian.

Mikeleh, in his more playful moods, likes to call me “a whore.” Apparently, having a blank wall map on which you color in the countries of origin of your conquests, with the goal of amassing a giant contiguous “empire” somehow implies promiscuity. I consider it a perfectly reasonable expression of my inner creative self, which likes to fuck brown dudes.

Anyway. Contiguity. There’s a big blank patch cutting Alaska off from the Lower 48, and that cold, white stretch of the map reminds me of the cold, white stretch of North America I’ve never… sampled.

Seriously, how have I not by now? I feel like I’ve had a reasonably full life: I’ve fled a natural disaster. I’ve slept with a Colombian. I’ve been an “internally displaced person.” I’ve slept with an Italian. I’ve graduated from college. I’ve slept with a Mexican. I’ve lived abroad. I’ve slept with a Greek. I’ve been to the Holy Land. I’ve slept with a New Zealander. I’ve performed at Lincoln Center. I’ve slept with an Englishman.

How have I not had a Canadian? I have not mounted a mountie, tapped for maple syrup, or scored a goalie. Nor have I… that’s all I know about Canada. It’s cold and they have the Queen. It’s… up there. Laughing at me. But you wait, Canada. I’ll get you yet. It might be a tall, expressionless mountie. It might be a prim, cheese-smelling Quebecois. It might be a dour Maritime lobsterman, or even - although, God, I hope not - a stoned, filthy, dreadlocked, hackey-sacked British Columbia hippie. But it will happen, Canada. By 2009, one of your boys will have a warm, itchy memory of me, and I’ll have a big red colored-in space above home.

Since the response to our “fag hag / violent homosexual rape” post was so positive, albeit kind of awkwardly eager, Kosher Eucharist Presents: Every Man’s Greatest Fear; or, Take My Wife, And Kill Her, Please:

Chris: We must never marry.

What if we married and had Couple Dates?

“If we invite the Lastnames, we’ll have to invite the Other-Lastnames.”

Us, our wives, and two other couples. Around the table. Talking about tapas and our wonderful trips to Helsinki.

Michael: Oh…oh God.

Chris: We are standing in the front yard with beer.

Your wife and my “Wife” are making Arugula Yam Compote, failing, and calling Boston Market.

Thanksgiving, 2014.

A bungalow for four is rented in Oaxaca.

One wife spends the whole time crying.

Michael: The other spends the whole time insecure about her bathing suit.

Chris: An elaborate lie is constructed so we have a weekend in Atlantic City.

Michael: I almost want to cry.

Chris: This is so terrifying.

One of the marriages fails.

The strain of “Trying to be friends with them both” causes the other to collapse.

Michael: “We brought you here today because we love you very much, and we’re worried about you, and we want to talk to you about your drinking.”

Chris: Screaming recriminations.

“It’s Chris’ fault. Any MAN who cheats is an asshole.”

“It’s Carlos’ fault. I don’t like him.”

AA.

“Hello, Michael.”

Tokens.

Michael: Muffled sobs coming from the bedroom.

Chris: A divorce lawyer.

Michael: “Your honor, is there any way that I could not have visiting rights?”

Chris: Children.

Syler if it’s a boy, and Skylar if it’s a girl.

“Chris, I want to consider moving to state with more liberal adoption laws.”

Imagine that phrase.

Michael: “Michael, we’re late for Lamaze.”

“Michael, you’re not breathing with me.”

Chris: “Chris, your lovemaking is distant recently.”

Michael: “Michael, I think this is a good time to bring up my feelings on circumcision.”

Chris: “Chris, I want my mother to move in with us.”

“Chris, I want your mother to move in with us.”

“Chris, I want you to hold me. No, not like that.”

Michael:”Michael, I’ve been reading about the macrobiotic diet, and…”

Chris: “Chris, I’ve booked us a package tour to Ibiza.”

Michael: “Michael, let’s spend a year in an old villa in Tuscany.”

Chris: “Chris, I’ve been learning about Eastern religions.”

“Chris, let’s spend some time at a commune in the Pacific Northwest, so we can really reconnect.”

Michael: “Michael, I want the children to be raised in both faiths.”

“So they can choose for themselves.”

Chris: “Chris, I want us to be secular humanists.”

“Chris, I love you forever.”

Michael: “Michael, kiss me like you did in Jerusalem.”

“Michael, look me in the eyes.”

Chris: “Chris, I want you to fall asleep inside me.”

Michael: And finally, they arrive at the nuclear option.

Chris: Let’s post this one.

They want drunk conversation logs, they’ll fucking get them.

Michael: Let’s play a game.

Michael: Fat Girl Sirens.

Michael: In which, when we are at a bar together, we pretend to be flaming long enough to attract them, at which point we viciously rip into their flesh.

Chris: I want to try this:

Chris: So we’re in a bar, and some Fat Girl befriends us.

Chris: Let’s see how long it takes her to allow you to roughly manhandle her tits, and then say that we “lied” to her when you tell her you’re straight.

Michael: Wait! I don’t want to roughly manhandle fat girl tits!

Chris: …Why not?

Michael: I have exacting tit standards!

Chris: It’s like playing with Play-Doh, but more misogynist.

Chris: You could leave a bruise!

Michael: I can’t even walk into a crowded supermarket for fear I’ll brush against a person!

Chris: Not a person, a fag hag. You can grab one and squeeze as hard as you can.

Michael: Ewwww.

Chris: Or you could just hold down drunken frat boys.

“Are you sure I’ll get in Kappa Pi for this?”

“If you leave without speaking when I’m done.”

Michael: See, I’d rather do that.

Michael: My misogyny is such that, despite my sexuality, I’d rather manhandle a man than a woman.

Chris: And you’d aid me in a brutal homosexual rape just kind of for homeboys?

Michael: Hey, doggs is doggs.

Chris: I really hope the government reads these conversations.

Here is my problem with George Bush:

He is so universally reviled that I can’t say anything about it. The man’s approval rating recently dipped below that of Jimmy Carter (who should have remained a peanut farmer in Plains, Georgia) to tie with the hilariously abysmal Watergate numbers of Nixon - bottoming out with the loud screech of a muffler scraping asphalt. Only Truman, who actually Pushed The Button, has gotten a lower approval rating since the Gallup poll was initiated during King Franklin’s reign.

Okay. So? Comfortably over half the people in the country hate the man. The most positive impression anyone in my sphere has of him is a kind of slothful disgust. So? I can’t add to this. What else is there to say? I’m increasingly fascinated by the endless ability of hippies and Europeans to keep talking about him. They don’t get tired of it! It’s like a woman talking about female trouble, except while women are constrained, marginally, by believability (”Her ovary got so swollen it eventually burst out of her body”), the hippies and Europeans will say anything about George Bush and believe each other.

“Dude, did you know he has a familiar in the form of a white toad with a child’s face? He makes Condoleezza hold it up during press conferences.”

“Zis does not surprise me. Ve have heard she gives it suck from a poppet during the Armistice Day black mass.”

What… how could I compete with this? Anything I said would just be too obscure (you know, with familiars and poppets and all that). The other card in play in my “I can’t really talk bad about him despite how I feel” hand is peer pressure. I’m so used to having “extreme” opinions (”Bring back the pillory! Nuke Beirut! A martini does not contain vodka!”) that I cannot make myself express mainstream sentiments. The minute I open my mouth to say “I hate the son-of-a-frigid-cunt,” my childhood self rears up and demands that I continue to be the weird kid and refuse to conform. My tongue cleaves to the roof of my mouth, and can only be unlocked by the phrase “I want to drown Ayelet Waldman in a bucket of Midori Sour.”

Finally, I can’t badmouth him because I hate the puerile, and the people for whom anti-Bush is their anti-drug wallow in it. Have you seen the “Good bush, bad Bush” t-shirts, with the president’s face next to a snatch? How do I even attack that? You like cunt hair more than a dynastic presidency, fine. Don’t tell me. I can tell that you loved Scary Movie 4 just by looking at your shirt. Go somewhere and get stoned and do something stupid in the misguided hope that it’ll get you pussy. And even this imbecility pales in comparison with the “bushitler” campaign. George Bush mishandled a natural disaster, deceived a nation, botched what should have been an easy war, and has enriched the powers of his office at the expense of the constitution, judiciary, and Congress, and for these he should be damned. However, Hitler started a war that lead to the death of, at a conservative estimate, 62 million people, looted or destroyed the cultural heritage of a continent, tried to exterminate several ancient peoples, and brought the wrath and opprobrium of the world on his country. There is no comparison except in the minds of fools.

So, in conclusion, he’s an asshole, but we’re not talking about it. Happy Armistice Day, and happy birthday, Mom.

First, it was the Che shirt.

Fat, white, Western capitalists bought and wore the Che shirt (and other, less-ubiquitous bobs of Kommunist Chic), either ignorant or uncaring of what Che would have done to them. (Killed them, and then bombed their country with a Russian nuke.) They were cool, hip, pink, one with the revolution, and the fact that the Che shirt may well have been made in a Guatemalan sweatshop made them no nevermind. They were fighting the man, one day of bland, mindless consumerism at a time.

Then, it was the kaffiyeh.

Dames, faggots, Krauts, the educated, people who like to vote, Christians, people who like to survive bus rides - they bought the kaffiyeh. Vitriolage, civilian bombings, honor killings, acid vats, political killings, Islamic fundamentalism as a governing force, and of course, Europe’s favorite motif, dead Jews, all wrapped up in a neat little incredibly unflattering headscraf/neckscarf/dishrag/”it” accessory, complete with inconvenient tassels.

Well, of course, I had to get on the bandwagon. If appalling violence is to be the new fashion statement, I want to be in on it. So, in the spirit of allegedly-political-but-really-just-for-grins-bloodshed, I give you:

The brown shirt. It’s simple, it’s economical, it’s about Nazis, and (best of all!) it’s made from organic free-trade fabric.

Remember, remember the fifth of November:
Gunpowder, treason, and plot!
The king and his train were like to be slain;
I hope this day will ne’er be forgot.

Happy Guy Fawkes Day! Oh, what might have been…

Leave it to the International Pinko Jihad Fucking Herald Tribune to finally goad me into writing the Serious Gay Post.

First, read this, if you can stand it: Gay enclaves on the verge of being passe

This article is a Jello mold of stupidity; I can’t find a good place to cut first.

Okay, found one. While I understand that it must be sad and traumatic to see your neighborhood losing its flavor, it happens. “Gay” neighborhoods are especially prone to this, because the tenants tend to have dual incomes, either no or well-planned-for children, and keep the house up, all of which lead to gentrification, blah blah, this song has been sung before by people who cared more about urban planning than I do. In short, shit happens. But part of what they bemoan here is the fact that they are not getting new “immigays” (Get it? From immigrants? And gays?) because there are more options for gay people.

Wow, how fucking terrible. The “new generation” of homosexuals doesn’t feel confined to six or seven urban enclaves, but feels freer to live where they want and do as they please? What a motherfucking tragedy. What a wreck of the White Ship, Triangle Shirtwaist, Edmund FitzGerald five-alarm shit sandwich shoes-on-the-wrong-feet disaster. You can’t get poppers in Terre Haute! (You probably can.) They don’t sell gay porn at the truck stops in Alabama! (They probably do.) If we’re not walled in, with a cask of Midori taking the place of Amontillado, how will we even know we’re queers?

Oh, right.

This is one of the major problems (I cannot believe they’ve provoked me into typing this phrase) I’ve had with my own… I can’t bear to end that with the word “sexuality,” so we’re going to go with “drive down Boyfuck Lane.” They, The Gayfia, want you to be gay in a way. Fucking boys isn’t enough, regardless of however much vigor, glee, and Astroglide you bring to the activity. You have to listen to this, drink this, vote this, think this, dress this, act this, fuck this. If you’re not shrieking, either about a perceived injustice or a pair of shoes, you’re not doing it right. Well, I don’t like that. Someone bought me a Sex at the Beach at a bar once, and I swear to you I almost hit him. If you take no other knowledge away from this blog, learn you this: Men drink bourbon. If the name of the cocktail is a “racy” sexual reference, it is not for men. (Nor, incidentally, women: it is for girls, of either sex.) I don’t even want to get into what’s wrong with the overwhelming majority of “gay” music, but I’ll tell you I’d a damn sight rather listen to a whiskey-stripped voice sing about a broken heart than… you know, I can’t finish this joke, I’m so annoyed. Fill in the blank with the awful throb-music of your choice. Do you realize that some of these people, adult men, actually refer to one another as “girl?” And use feminine pronouns? How… how is this not insulting? “I have sex with men, therefore any masculinity I possess is void, therefore I am a prepubescent female, albeit one who gets her ass waxed?” It bewilders, infuriates, and confounds me that I would have to explain to these people why I badly want to move to the country with my straight best friend so I can drink whiskey, play Playstation 2, make beer, and listen to the blues.

“But…there’s not a gay scene in Givat Chofesh.”

“Exactly.”

I’m reminded of a conversation I had with Michael once, where he quoted someone he knew as having said “You know, for me, being gay is about wanting to fuck other men in the ass.” Can’t we get back to the basics?

Why is everyone an idiot?

I don’t know if this has made the news anywhere else, but a few weeks ago some people got arrested here. They had been camping in the woods and training to use guns and napalm. They appear to have been a mix of Maori separatists, white sympathizers, and (surprise!) Muslim volunteers. So they did a sweep and arrested these guys, some of their associates, and took their guns and napalm.

The hippies are furious.

Less than a week after this happened, before all the facts of the case had been disclosed, a “massive” protest was organized in Dunedin, and now there’s another one in the works in Christchurch. The predictable shrill, ungrammatical “Police are the REAL terrorists!” posters someone named “Sharky” made at home out of clip art and vague memories of Clash cover art have been plastered over the walls. Accusations of fascism fill the air like the dank scent of patchouli. The women are grimly brushing their armpit hair into Boudica-like battle plaits, and the men are Xeroxing really, really aggressive broadsheets.

I don’t understand. Guns are only bad when white people have them? Napalm is fine to use in New Zealand, but not Indochina? The people who were arrested were not “terrorists” but “activists,” according to the Damnhippies. So where is the line for them? Planning to kill, maim, and destabilize is fine, as long as… what? You’re killing whitey? You’re too incompetent or hesitant to actually do it? You’re only setting fire to introduced species?

I fucking hate hippies. That’s all I’m saying. Go suck a dank nug and be quiet. And shave.

KE has woken up from its hibernation to pee, look into the refrigerator, and to pump a new blog. 2 birds, 1 blog is the new hot shit, and it would greatly behoove you all (You all is, by now, Rachel and parents) to read it. It follows the established pattern of “Two best friends write a blog; one of them is Catholic, not straight, and a drunk and the other is half-Jewish, has a tattoo, and is a drunk.” There are more similarities, but they have aliases and I ain’t wanna accidentally post a Clue that would reveal their Clark Kent identities. Anyway, read them, and read us once we start back up.

KE II has been on an informal hiatus because the hairy, gassy love of my life (Michael is more like a Cairn terrier than you’d think) and I have been busy. We’re neither of us dead, yet - although I guess if one of us dies before you read this we’re left with a Schrodinger’s Misanthrope kind of situation - but KE will probably not get back up off the ground until late this year. We do, for real and for true, plan for it to, though.

That said, I’d like to open today’s frothing polemic with a quote by Leo Stein, brother-in-law of Alice B. Toklas: when asked his opinion of women’s writing, he said, “If you can get their minds off their wombs, you can help them to some kind of intellectual development.”

Certain American women have become medievalists. They can’t read Latin and they think “She-Wolf of France” is the sequel to “An American Werewolf in Paris,” but medieval they are. Ignorant of the deeds of Edward III, they emulate his wife. Philippa of Hainault can be regarded as the perfect template for a medieval queen - she was pretty in a subdued way, cheered for her kindness, and gave birth like a hysterical salmon. She’s one of the few royal women of history to have been inconveniently fertile: her five surviving sons’ descendents would, in coming generations, have a high old time throwing each other off the throne every few years.

Centuries passed, suffragettes shouted, and women gradually became people. Barbie’s tits remained impractically hard and high, but now they strained at suit jackets and lab coats in addition to ball gowns. Birth control expanded beyond crossed fingers. Jane Roe gained the freedom to furnish her womb as she saw fit, and proceeded to change her mind. (”It’s a woman’s prerogative!” which makes me worry that Ruth B. is going to backtrack on a few cases herself.) A woman who was not even particularly attractive ran for President! From the halls of Sarah Lawrence to the shores of Berkeley women, girls, womyn, grrrls, and others with cunts actual and theoretical proclaimed that they were more than a nagging hole to be used for men’s enjoyment and the propagation of the race.

Some of them missed the telegram.

A certain type of woman began to feel… like something was missing. Was it because they were uneducated? Was it because they were unemployed, or worked in a tedious, low-paying job? Was it because “Mama’s Family” stopped bring syndicated? Never-used synapses sparked. Helen Gurley Brown haunted their dreams like Fruma Sarah, screaming “fulfilment!” instead of “pearls!” Years of race memory came rocketing out of the past, spun around the Lifetime network offices three times, and punched these women right in the ovaries. They needed to reproduce. Hard. Now.

Then, one of two things happened. In the first situation, for some reason - a twisted tube, the evil influences of stars - the buckets of nervous, watery seed the women’s’ husbands dutifully discharged into them (every other day, under the covers, between 11:23 and 11:25,) failed to bloom. She rolled, she measured, she evaluated, she even came once, but her womb lay fallow. So she went to the doctor’s office, and in the waiting room she met another lady. This woman was amazing! She was a former Miss Western Auto Stores (Western Nebraska)! She and her husband ran their own greeting card business - from their home! In Kansas City! Everything she did, she did in a big way, which is why she decided to have a litter instead of a child.

Roil, boil, toil and trouble, the doctors mixed and tweaked and injected:

Oompa, loompa, doompety-doo
I’ve got a pile of zygotes for you
Oompa, loompa, doompety-don
Why simply whelp, when you can now spawn!

A child is a gift, a delight and a joy
Everyone loves a new girl or new boy
So after one little jewel, why go and stop there?
With our help you can now breed like a hare!

Have quad, or quint, or septuplets…

Oompa, loompa, doopmety-dense
Pay no heed to any consequence
So what if they have cerebral palsy
You and your litter will be on TV!

So, lo-and-be-fucking-hold, the blessed day arrives, and the labia are torn asunder… and asunder… and asunder… and asunder… and asunder… and asunder. CNN breaks in with a news story, everyone in America thinks “Oh, God, what have the Arabs done now?”, and it is announced that Miriam Biggs, of Attwater, Utah, has been delivered of seven children, named Melrose Place, Sherman Oaks, Peyton Place, Twin Peaks, Beverly Hills, O.C., and Dynasti [sic]. America coos, briefly, and goes back to watching CNN too see what the Arabs have done now. Bleeding-hearts with poor abilities to extrapolate and needlepoint samplers on the walls sends cases of formula. The father, whose genes are now spread more successfully than Borges’ (think about that), gets a soundbite in which he discusses being blessed, the Lord, being blessed by the Lord, and makes a nervous non-joke about having to care for seven infants. The mother lies in the hospital bed, surrounded by well-wishers, and with her swollen belly, gaping cooze, and beatific smile (from the morphine) reigns briefly as a parody of every ancient symbol of fertility. In the article, it is briefly mentioned that the largest baby weighed two pounds and nine ounces, and that all the infants will be in the hospital indefinitely.

The babies are necessarily premature, probably only a little over half term. Just because a baby can, with extraordinary effort, survive outside the womb at 22 weeks does not mean it’s wise to force them to. A medical professional who works with infants can recognize premature babies until they’re late toddlers. They’re that delayed. Even if you chart normal development from the proper due date, they’re still far behind. Did you know that very premature babies hate, hate, hate to be touched, because their skin isn’t fucking finished? We’ve all seen the stories of developmental delay in babies who aren’t given nurturing human contact - imagine extra months of that, at a time when, according to God, they are not supposed to be outside of a uterus. No part of them is ready for the world, and it shows in their subsequent medical histories - if they live. Multiples, because they were crowded, are even smaller and got a proportionally reduced share of nutrients.

So, depending on the hospital and health of the babies, we-the-people may be forced to listen to a grim “Seven little, six little, five little marvels of modern medicine” as the babies are carried off by the very opposite of the old age they should have been able to expect. The parents will weep tears that, though heartfelt, are still those of a crocodile. Because of their desire to have “a whole bunch a babies!!!!” peripherally desired children were brought into this world, passed a few difficult and neglected days, and made their exits.

Sometimes - usually, even - all or most of the litter survives. Do you think they get good care? Six, seven, or eight babies at the same time? How old do you think they get before their parents can tell them apart? Eight simultaneous teethings! Eight simultaneous puberties! Eight simultaneous goings-to-college, in theory! They’re all going to be in the same grade! How are these people going to afford braces, field trips, fucking piano lessons? They are going to be hard-pressed to keep food in the children’s bellies! But of course, “the community helps.” Why the fuck should “the community” subsidize your fucking personal Little League team? These people had more children they could afford knowing full well that they lived in a town, a state, a country, that had people who would fund their fertility because they wouldn’t be able to stand seeing the children underfed and neglected. This is the most astoundingly callous and selfish behavior imaginable, but since it’s about parenthood, that Holy Grail of biological imperatives, it’s allowed. The selfish and fecund are allowed to bet their children’s welfare on a roll of the dice of human kindness. Even beyond the financial issues, which are towering, can these people be good parents? Can they listen to their children’s worries and dreams and make-believe attentively? No, of course not, because one of the other children will always be screaming, vomiting, or trying to get on the roof. I suspect that the children in these situations seldom develop in their parents’ minds beyond being “the children,” a vast and ill-formed entity, a nebula of Family Fulfilment. Who can keep track of eight different systems of imagination concurrently?

I wonder if this isn’t actually the beginnings of a Huxleyan dystopia. Instead of incubation in vitro, as in Brave New World, we’ll simply cram the wombs of the venal and the simple so full of embryo that all the survivors will be born stunted. Deprived of adequate care throughout life, they will not have the gumption or upper-body strength to resist working in the mines. As humanity (ostensibly) evolves towards intelligence, we must ensure ourselves a steady supply of chimney sweeps and homeless schizophrenics. If this isn’t the case, it means something even more sinister: that the doctors who do this are doing it because they can, because they want residual fame, and so more and more couples will pay him to build them a fleet of tards. With no regard for anything except that this stack of fetuses will buy him a week in Vegas with a variety of hookers, he creates hopeless life after hopeless life. If we are determined to place a medieval value on fecundity, we should do the same to medieval justice, and burn these doctors at the stake. I bet your average doctor-bonfire is just round enough to allow eight children to sit around and roast marshmallows.