EW

At trivia tonight, the guy at the table next to ours pulled out a string of dental floss and proceeded to extract the debris from between each and every tooth. Then he held the string out in front of him and examined the results. Not one of the eight people at his table said a word about what he was doing. I couldn't tell if they just didn't mind this nasty display or if they were simply too aghast to say anything. I don't know the guy, but I've deduced from comments he has made that he's surly and self-centered. He seems like the type of person who when asked to desist from a rude behavior would just intensify the behavior — someone eager to enhance the hostile nature of his relationship with the rest of the world. I have heard him belch loudly at trivia, and to the chorus of "oohs" and "yucks" that followed he made no excuse, except to belch louder the next time. A class act, in other words.

But here's the kicker. When I pointed out to my two trivia mates that he was flossing at the table, they both acted like it was no big deal. One of them shrugged and said, "If you gotta, you gotta." And the other echoed that sentiment. I was completely astounded.

I will grant that I can sometimes be finicky about behaviors that most people seem to find acceptable. For example, I've never been a fan of the toothpick-giveaway at some restaurants because I don't especially want to ride home in a car with a bunch of people who are picking their teeth. Teeth-picking is a private behavior in my book, like Q-tipping your ears or cutting your toenails, etc. But many people don't agree, and I can live with that. At least a toothpick, unlike dental floss, can be used relatively discreetly.

But, seriously, can a reasonable, well-mannered (or even average-mannered) person think it's OK to floss your teeth at a table and hold up the results for everyone to see? Really? Have the virtues of flossing been so successfully marketed that people think it's an acceptable personal hygiene to perform in public?

MERRY FUCKIN' CHRISTMAS

Last night my mom said "fuck."

At the dinner table.

On Christmas Eve.

I feel this should be promptly recorded and notarized and filed somewhere official, but the courthouse is closed today, so my blog will have to do.

She was quoting someone else of course (some livid soul trapped in a long grocery store line) and her voice caught on the expletive as she tried to hurry over it. But she said it quite distinctly. Both syllables. No euphemisms.

Then she laughed.

ANOTHER QUEER BEGINNING

Gay men make everything better. Honestly, I just can't think of a single situation that wouldn't be improved by the addition of a gay man.

Today I was running a little late to work and was frustrated as I headed to my car and saw that it was covered with snow and ice. Crap! I'll be even later. So I got out my lame plastic scraper and started clearing the windows, when a cruddy old jalopy whooshed up to the curb in front of me. My neighbor got out and sashayed up the walk with a tall, skinny, bearded man in tow. This man was wearing giant black boots, a fur-trimmed red hat and a plush red Santa cape. Not suit. Cape.

Immediately this jolly St. Nick, a complete stranger, perceived my plight and said, "Oh! Don't you hate that! You're all ready to go, you're all dressed, and you come out to this!" swooping his splayed hand dismissively in the direction of my windshield. His other hand stuck delicately out of his cape, holding an ultra-long cigarette aloft.

I agreed that it was a bother.

"But it's so pretty otherwise," he said, gesturing more broadly, indicating all the rest of nature that didn't include my car. For some reason, I thought this is exactly the sort of remark my mom would make: that something was really annoying yet pretty. And then I had a realization. Gay men are so great because they're like our moms. Warm, expansive, accepting, always trying to redeem a bad situation, always saying obvious things with a sense of originality and nonobvious things with a total deadpan.

And like our moms they sometimes show a charming ignorance about who we really are. As he disappeared into the house, he cooed, "Merry Christmas! Don't break a nail!"

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

Is there something wrong with eating fruit from Chile? I mean, aside from it offending the eat-locally-and-seasonally types and encouraging bad agricultural policies and wasting fuel and promoting unfair labor practices? I sure hope not because I was beside myself with glee when — tonight! in December! — I saw bags of bing cherries heaped in the produce aisle at Checkers. Wow. My absolute binge food. I can eat a shocking amount of these in no time. And for $3.48 a pound. They must suck, I thought. But no. I sneaked one, as I always do with cherries and grapes to avoid getting a sour bunch, and it was fantastic. Wine-dark, plump and sweet, with just the right amount of tang. Tonight! In December!

But, seriously, if anyone can tell me that's it really bad to eat them, I'll think long and hard about that after I consume the remaining pound in my fridge.

Shouldn't an extreme amount of happiness in my tummy offset at least a little bit of evil?

If you say no to that, OK, maybe you're right, but read this fascinating piece from the New York Times next time you're tempted to eat a banana, Mr. Greenjeans. Here's an excerpt:

That bananas have long been the cheapest fruit at the grocery store is astonishing. They’re grown thousands of miles away, they must be transported in cooled containers and even then they survive no more than two weeks after they’re cut off the tree. Apples, in contrast, are typically grown within a few hundred miles of the store and keep for months in a basket out in the garage. Yet apples traditionally have cost at least twice as much per pound as bananas.

Americans eat as many bananas as apples and oranges combined, which is especially amazing when you consider that not so long ago, bananas were virtually unknown here. They became a staple only after the men who in the late 19th century founded the United Fruit Company (today’s Chiquita) figured out how to get bananas to American tables quickly — by clearing rainforest in Latin America, building railroads and communication networks and inventing refrigeration techniques to control ripening. The banana barons also marketed their product in ways that had never occurred to farmers or grocers before, by offering discount coupons, writing jingles and placing bananas in schoolbooks and on picture postcards. They even hired doctors to convince mothers that bananas were good for children.

OVERHEARD AT THE COFFEE SHOP

I'm in line. Guy walks in. He's avidly greeted by the three people behind the counter and a couple of customers. He seems important in a deliberately understated way. He's wearing crummy cotton sweatpants, but with expensive shoes. He needs a shave.

Guy: We got a lot of booze left over. We've never had this much booze left over before.

Girl behind counter (GBC): That was the best party in the seven years I've been here, maybe because half of downtown wasn't there.

Guy: It was lovely. I'm still beaming, even through this hangover. I knew almost everyone there. It's the first time I didn't have to say to practically everyone, "What's your name and what are you doing at my party?"

GBC: It was seriously fun.

Guy: And there's so much booze left. And it was the actual week of Christmas. Imagine that. A Christmas party near Christmas. I'm not paying for this coffee — in exchange for cleaning up. I think that's a fair trade.

GBC: Go right ahead. It's your coffee.

Guy: The best part was the romantic making out on the balcony. With all the Christmas lights.

GBC: That was romantic. Did you know that guy?

Guy: Not really.

GBC: That's all you did? Make out?

Guy: Yes. It was very Republican.

FAILED ADDICTION

Every now and again I get the urge to read a good mystery. This is despite the fact that I'm inevitably disappointed.

I'm always jealous of people who seem to find deep satisfaction in binge-reading a particular genre. It would be nice to have something like that in your life. I had an English professor in college who was addicted to sci-fi. His bread and butter was 18th century British literature, but his drug of choice was sci-fi pulp. He claimed to have a colleague in the department who spent every spare second reading ultra-trashy romance novels. I've never grasped the joy that someone who studies great literature (you know, the thoughtful stuff that requires time and effort and talent to make) would find in reading a pile of crap that took some hack with a dumb pseudonym about three days to type up. It doesn't make sense to me. But still I'm jealous. They're able to suspend a critical faculty in their brains and enjoy a thing on its own terms.

And it's not slumming. That I would sort of get. But it's nothing as self-conscious and cynical, and ultimately judgmental, as that. It's genuine pleasure without reference to a context of "value."

My ex-husband, a wise professional man, into his 30s (and probably still), would come home from the public library on weekends with an armful of sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks. He would lie on the couch completely immersed in some idiotic-when-you-really-stop-and-think-about-it tale of robots or androids or asteroids. His sense of contentment appeared almost religious. There was literally NOTHING he would have been happier doing at that moment. Which, of course, made me crazy jealous. I wanted my own complete-waste-of-time to lose myself in.

So from time to time I've tried to get myself hooked on mysteries. The other genres — romance, sci-fi, fantasy, western, true crime, whatever — just aren't going to do it for me. But the mystery genre has potential. I can become deeply engrossed in a good mystery. Who couldn't, really? But if I start reading some mystery novel and I notice a bunch of cliches or poorly described scenes (like "when he arrived at the morgue, Oswald found the coroner eating a meatball sandwich"), then I get restless and start losing interest in who died or how it happened or who did it.

A few weeks ago I saw an ad in The New York Review of Books for a smart mystery by an "energetic and imaginative British author," so I bought the book, and then about 200 lackluster pages into it I had this epiphany that, because I work for a publication, I should have had at page 5: "Wait a minute! Anyone can put an ad in The New York Review of Books." And calling a mystery British doesn't make it better. I fall for that every single time.

So I give up. I just don't have the genre-reading gene. I will have to stick to my usual ways of wasting time. I just wish they were more absorbing.

•••

Another thing: How do books break out of the genre identity and become "literature"? Why is "Rebecca" in the general literature section at Borders instead of with the other mysteries? Ditto "The Name of the Rose"? Who decides? One would think the principle is "if it's a really, really good mystery that people who read literature but not mysteries per se would also want to read, then it goes in literature." But when I was trying to find Tolkien the other day I went straight to the literature section and found zilch. The friendly Borders clerk told me Tolkien was only in fantasy. Huh? I don't get it. I suspect a system of misclassification, coupled with a tradition of highly exaggerated blurbs of praise, is keeping me from discovering the books I really want to read.

BEWUTHERED AND CONFUSTICATED

I walked out of my house this morning, prepared to gingerly navigate an icy path to my car, only to discover that some beautiful soul had shoveled my sidewalk as I slept — clean as a whistle. Who the heck was it? The houses on both sides are occupied by renters, and their landlord, who does all their shoveling, is not the thoughtful sort. Can it be the same person who placed a stuffed raccoon on my front porch and periodically leaves doughnut offerings to it? One day last winter the person left a fried egg with a sausage link. (I kicked the raccoon off my porch a couple of times, but it just reappeared, and the idea of messing with it just started to spook me; so there it remains).

Reveal yourself, kind — and maybe crazy — sir! Claim your just reward.

SWEETS, HOBBITS AND OFFICE NOISES

Erin and I are on a pie roll. Here's the banana cream pie we made last weekend, using Rick's mom's crust recipe and Martha Stewart's filling recipe. It was delightful. We ate the first piece while watching "The Fellowship of the Ring." In true Hobbit fashion, Erin suggested that we have Second Pie soon thereafter. Having a pie around to feast on for several days is really life at its best! Next up is chocolate or coconut cream.

Watching "The Fellowship of the Ring" put me in a Tolkien mood, so I started reading "The Hobbit" a couple of days ago. I hadn't read it since high school at the urging of an English teacher. I liked it then, but there was no way I was able to truly appreciate it — fabulous lines like "one morning long ago in the quiet of the world, when there was less noise and more green" and "Bilbo was sadly reflecting that adventures are not all pony-rides in May sunshine." And the fact that Hobbits love to eat and drink — a "big jug of coffee had just been set by the hearth" and mince-pies and buttered scones and seedcakes and pints of beer and ale. How delicious — in every regard.

In less tasty news, a new guy at work apparently can't walk without snapping his fingers, and it's making me homicidal. The count now is three whistlers, one nail clipper, two hummers/singers, two talks-way-too-loud, two gum poppers, one shares-too-much-personal-information, one talks-almost-exclusively-in-cliches-from-at-least-10-years-ago, and one Republican. It's almost like someone looked around and said, "Hey, we should get a guy who snaps his fingers while he walks, to further diversify our cavalcade of annoyance."

But let's end on a happy morsel. Here are some beautiful biscotti Rick made for me. He also gave me a bag of home-made peanut brittle, but I ate that before I could get a picture.