Caveat Emptor -or- How Not To Buy a House

3,500 Lbs. of Bat Guano Found in Attic

BALLSTON SPA, N.Y. — An upstate New York couple didn't think a few bats in the attic were much of a problem when they were buying a house last summer.

Months later, they found out how wrong they were when they discovered more than a ton and a half of bat droppings up there.

Nick LaBoda and Jenna Caputo say a home inspector informed them about the bats. They called an exterminator, who told them to wait a while before removing the bats because the babies were too young to fly.

Then they forgot about the bats until they smelled a foul odor in January. When they checked the attic, they found dead bats and piles of guano.

An exterminator says hundreds of bats had been living in the attic, leaving behind 3,500 pounds of droppings.

It cost $25,000 to clean up the mess, and the couple's insurance company wouldn't cover it. They're fighting it out in court.

Pretty Lady has no sympathy for these people at all. Because:

1) Who would buy a house without even glancing into the attic? Attics are Extremely Important! Pretty Lady herself would make a point of visiting the attic on her very first perusal of a potential homestead! Attics could contain trunks full of antique dresses, or Private Archives, or Chippendale furniture, or swords, or skeletons, or first editions, or hundreds of bats!

2) If the attic was large enough to sustain 3,500 lbs of bat guano without collapsing the ceiling, these people's incuriosity as to the contents of said attic was even more inexcusable. Such pedestrian minds do not DESERVE any attic at all, bats or no.

3) Who in their right minds would pay anyone $25,000 to remove bat guano from their attic? That, by Pretty Lady's calculations, is seven dollars a pound! For that kind of cash, Pretty Lady would have no trouble spending a couple of weeks with a shovel and a case of heavy-duty garbage bags.

4) Did these people not even think to contact a fertilizer company, or several, and auction off their guano to the highest bidder? Pretty Lady is willing to bet that whoever cleared it out is making more than a pretty penny on the transaction.

5) If these people knew they had bats in their attic, why did they not gather every evening at sunset, with a couple of lawn chairs and some beer, and watch the bats come out, first in ones and twos, in corkscrew flight configurations, then in a massive, eerie and awesome cloud? Pretty Lady has traveled to more than one exotic location and paid good money to do this.

In conclusion: These people are stupid and boring, and deserve whatever trouble comes to them.

Platitude Peddlers

A dear friend of Pretty Lady's once recommended to her that she obtain Paolo Coelho's 'The Alchemist' as literary fare for a long plane journey. Pretty Lady is still vaguely irritated. Not only was the text in question ridiculously inadequate to occupy her even halfway to Charles de Gaulle, the storyline was suspiciously familiar. It took a mildly exasperated New Yorker profiler to jog her memory; it was based on a story from 'A Thousand and One Nights,' which Pretty Lady first read at the age of six or seven. No wonder it seemed a bit clichéd.

Pretty Lady cannot really begrudge Mr. Coehlo his overwhelming Popular Success. He seems harmless enough. She is merely mildly disheartened, at the incontrovertible evidence that the vast majority of human minds are shallow, plebian, unimaginative, unoriginal, and not only satisfied with such pablum, but actually uplifted by it. The fact that these people are easily manipulated comes second, in her selfish opinion, to the fact that they are staggeringly boring conversationalists.

Well, there you go

More proof that in a degraded society, bad manners will land you in prison:

I had never before been in a prison of any kind, for any reason, let alone such a filthy, decrepit, Victorian heap of stone and sadism as the Scrubs. That I found myself there at all may be put down to a collision of intractable forces -- first, my own loudmouth pigheadedness, which has landed me in trouble before; second, a humorless and probably exhausted flight attendant; and, third, the heightened tension now common to air travel, thanks to real and imagined threats to public safety resulting from the worldwide "war on terror."

...

My sins, in brief: When the cabin crew refused to radio JFK to see if I'd left my laptop at the gate and also declined to move me to another seat, "an altercation ensued" -- not physical, but verbal, with the flight attendants becoming snootier by the minute and me becoming, well, let's say, more American. I behaved badly in-flight, yelling at the crew, "I am an American citizen! You are our lapdog ally!" and other remarks of a vulgar and unhelpful nature. Very vulgar, I'm afraid: At one point I called that tired stewardess the worst thing you can call a woman -- you all know what it is -- but by then I was in full-blown air rage, something the airlines used to understand but, on the evidence, no longer do.

Pretty Lady finds it oddly poetic, if not exactly comforting, that calling a British stewardess the c-word will land a person in a Deep Dark Dungeon for an indefinite period of time.

The Psychodynamics of Polarity

MikeT swings the wrong way:

I'm not sure if some of these feminists are actually people sometimes. They often come across as MIT-designed artificial intelligences because of their ability to craft superbly hypocritical content. No normal human can deplore something in others, see it in themselves, and then celebrate it when they're doing it the way they're doing it!

Mike, Mike, Mike. Such behavior is anything but artificial. It is deeply, deeply human.

You see, Mikey-poo, 'these feminists' that you are referencing are certainly people. The sad and unfortunate proof of this fact is that they are damaged people.

Pretty Lady has often noticed that the Most Radical members of any given social, political or religious movement are the most highly likely to be reeking of Unresolved Trauma. In throwing themselves into Activism, they are pursuing the time-honored tradition of 'making lemonade from lemons,' 'learning from the past,' and 'making sure that that Horrible Thing Does Not Happen To Anyone Else.' As such, Pretty Lady has nothing but compassion for them.

The fact that they often go much, much Too Far in their endeavors, get hold of the wrong end of the stick, or attempt to make an apple into an orange by making the Personal into the Political is, sadly, par for the course.

Once a person realizes how often this sort of thing is true, it tends to decrease her will for engaging in Matters Political at all, at all. Because a problem cannot be solved on a level other than at its source. If the problem is, indeed, Personal Damage, a Political Solution will not be forthcoming, and any attempt to argue politics with a damaged person is doomed to failure and frustration.

As a tangential, but perhaps relevant, matter, Pretty Lady read a splendid essay while standing in a bookstore this weekend, about problem-solving in backwards villages and in hospitals. It seems that whenever there is a problem with an obvious solution, that solution can never be effectively implemented by outsiders coming in and imposing it. For example, all efforts by well-meaning Westerners to march into Africa and tell them to curb the AIDS problem by using condoms have been abysmal failures; all attempt to curb the spread of disease in hospitals by urging doctors to wash their hands, similarly so.

However, if an outsider goes into a hospital, assembles the healthcare workers, and asks them, "How would you suggest we make it easier for you to wash your hands between every patient?" reams of Excellent Solutions pour forth, and are implemented.

The trick is, once these solutions are found, to go into the next hospital and ask the same question. Simply attempting to implement the successful solutions will not work.

So, MikeT and friends, the next time you hear someone declaiming thus irrationally and hypocritically, Pretty Lady suggests that before you confront them with their blatant hypocrisy, that you first STOP. Stop and ask them, "What's this about? What's the problem? What happened?"

Solutions may not be found, but you, MikeT, may learn something.

UPDATE: The book was called 'Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance' by Atul Gawande. It was good enough to read standing up, but was not yet out in paperback, so Pretty Lady didn't buy it.

The Female Gaze

Pretty Lady has commented before, in passing, on her impatience with those pusillanimous, victim-type females who quail, rant and whine about the objectifying and aggressive qualities of the Male Gaze. It is her firm opinion that those who are reduced to impotent fury by a mere rude gesture on the part of another are beyond any reasonable assistance, whatever Draconian Legislation or re-vamping of Societal Mores might take place as a result of their activities.

And seeing as how she has been on an Old Movie binge of late, she is delighted to discover that Anthony Lane agrees with her.

Film theory has dwelled, with justice, on what is called the objectifying male gaze—that is, the power of the camera to ogle and depersonalize, and to encourage the viewer to follow suit—without always remembering that, at Hollywood’s height, there were plenty of people who could take that gaze like a punch and throw it right back. Stanwyck, by her own account, had practiced the response long before she stared into a lens: she recalled meeting the playwright Willard Mack in New York and regarding him “with impudent assurance, just to keep from turning around and running away.” Master your own fear, in other words, and you end up frightening others.

Pretty Lady is no Barbara Stanwyck, to be sure. But she rather doubts she will ever again be seriously intimidated by Latino construction workers, Italian limosine drivers, or knots of callow adolescents who are inclined to express their appreciation of her person by hissing, whistling, or using coarse epithets. For she has never once experienced any negative consequences from the simple act of nodding courteously at her admirer and walking on; occasionally she will even bestow a smile or a wave on the fellow, which is deeply appreciated.

You see, ladies, it is paramount to understand that a vulgar male who behaves this way is not serious in his attentions toward yourself. It is, simply, Not About You, except in the most tangential way. He is attempting to prove his masculinity to his peers, express himself as a True Male in the world at large, and giving tongue to his inarticulable feelings about the female in general.

It is then entirely your choice as to how to receive this chance attention in passing. You may choose to rail against nature, biology, and the vagaries of social class; you may choose to engage on a social, political and emotional level with these immutable forces. You may get All Worked Up, and have your day ruined.

Or you could think, "Yes, that's right, I am the most gorgeous thing you've seen today," and leave it at that. Because in Pretty Lady's experience, it is statistically improbable that the vulgar fellow, thus encouraged, will chase you down and assault you. In fact, he is much more likely to be intimidated.

Ingredients of Evil

Regardless of its illustration of obvious fact that if a person possesses a hammer, the whole world begins to resemble a sticky-outy nail, Pretty Lady quite liked Cintra's article:

Malignant narcissists seek a "narcissistic load" -- their drug of choice -- which is ATTENTION. Positive attention and negative attention are one and the same -- attention is attention. People suffering from this disorder tend to blame others for their difficulties, fly into a "narcissistic rages," and seek revenge as their due. Attention is the drug, the victory, the raison d'etre -- the narcissist simply needs to be the center of attention, and will get his fix by any means necessary.

Cho's successful domination of the news cycles condones, justifies and rewards his behavior... and encourages it in others who suffer from this affliction. Infamy is the same thing as Fame, for the malignant narcissist.

She wonders, though; is it genuinely, thoroughly true that an essential component of Evil (and Pretty Lady will not entertain the notion that Evil is merely a semantic construct, and is prepared to pulverize those foolish individuals who seriously propound it) is a need for Notoriety? Are those evil people not equally dangerous who hide in the shadows, fearing and loathing the light beyond all else?

She must think on it.

Receiving Clues

Pretty Lady had an Annoying Client Encounter this weekend. This person had the temerity to call her on a glorious Sunday morning and peremptorily demand an appointment within the hour.

"You must book in advance," Pretty Lady replied. More than one hour in advance, she explained. Pretty Lady is Flexible and Accomodating, but not so accomodating as that, particularly for persons with whom she has had no prior connection.

After much whining and confused logistics on the side of her potential client, and much soothing pragmatism upon the part of Pretty Lady, an appointment in two hours was agreed upon.

Pretty Lady hustled; at the time appointed, the doorbell did not ring.

Shortly thereafter, Pretty Lady plugged in her cell phone, and discovered that for reasons unknown, the client had called her Other Number and left a message requesting the selfsame directional information with which she had already been explicitly provided.

Pretty Lady returned the call and re-stated the information. The client declared, "I don't have time now."

Pretty Lady blew a gasket.

Normally she doesn't do that. She understands, normally, that people in pain become confused, and do foolish things. She is generally patient, understanding, accomodating, flexible, and only occasionally stern and unyielding. Moreover, blowing up at even potential, flaky and needlessly whiny clients is bad for business; she is nothing, generally, if not practical.

So after hanging up on the never-again client, she did what she should have done first, which was to call the friend with whom she had been feuding and make it up. Because she knows, and has always known, that when a person blows a gasket, it is never about the Situation At Hand. It is about the Past. The Past is, definitively, Over. And she is happy to declare that the Present is lovely.

In Search of Equality

Pretty Lady cannot, for the life of her, understand why all these forward-thinking women are so upset with a gentleman for simply making his boundaries known:

When my wife found out she was pregnant, which was an accident, her instant reaction was that she wanted an abortion. There we were in the bathroom with the home pregnancy test kit in hand reading positive for pregnancy and she gets all histerical, crying and raving on and on about how her life is now ruined and how she can’t go through with being pregnant, etc.. I told her it’s her choice, but if she kills my baby (has an abortion) that I would divorce her in a heartbeat and I would never speak to her again.

The ladies present all found this reaction to be horrendous, dreadful, and in violation of the woman's basic human rights, if Pretty Lady is reading them correctly.

Pretty Lady has only to ask herself, well, what if this situation were reversed? What if Pretty Lady found herself with child, and the other responsible party insisted that she dispose of it, because he was unwilling to assume the responsibilities of parenthood?

Well, Pretty Lady's response would be precisely along the lines of the gentleman's words above, and she rather suspects that most of these Up In Arms women would feel the same way.

So, what is Pretty Lady to make of this? Sadly, it seems all too clear that there is a Double Standard still flourishing mightily, even among the vanguard of Female Progressivism.

The Path to Freedom

Pretty Lady, in her wild, untrammelled, Bohemian life, often meets fascinatingly Progressive Thinkers. Pretty Lady being who she is, is always charmed. There is nothing she likes better than a late-night conversation about oft-misunderstood doctrines of seventeenth-century philosophy, and the tragic results of these misinterpretations extrapolated into the present day. She can really get her teeth into a good discussion about the Problem of Evil, the glamorization of misanthropy, and the crumbling edifice that is Modern Society.

Pretty Lady's fundamental problem in forming long-term friendships with these sorts of people, however, stems most unfortunately from these same roots. A person who views the flaws in Modern Society with a clear and jaundiced eye is inclined to reject all of its conventions wholesale. And Pretty Lady is pretty darn tired of supervising serial attempts to reinvent the wheel from scratch.

Because a nearly universal hallmark of this sort of Progressive Thinker is a categorical rejection of the notion of Commitment. 'A Trap!' he naturally, progressively thinks, as soon as he shudderingly considers the hellish tangles woven by Family, Society and Culture; 'I shall avoid it, and then I shall be Free! Free to Improve the World, living by my own inner guidance and unfiltered notions of Right and Wrong!'

Oh yes, Pretty Lady has heard it dozens of times before. And she sighs, hangs her head, and continues upon her unwilling and solitary Bohemian path. For the only true entrapment is the pathological need to keep all of one's options eternally Open.

This notion is, to the Progressive Thinker, so counterintuitive as to be utterly unconsidered. But to Pretty Lady, having been a dancer, it is and always has been obvious.

For freedom is Movement; Movement is Change; and to move and to change, a person has to put one foot in front of the other. Then--and pay attention--a person has to commit her entire weight to that foot in front, in order to lift the foot in the back, and move it to another place. In other words, without commitment, no movement is possible.

Pretty Lady felt this fact most acutely during the years she was hobbling around with an injured ankle. It is very difficult to keep putting one foot in front of the other when one foot is not holding one's weight; progress is miserable and slow. During those days, Pretty Lady often thought of her unipedal condition as a metaphor, for being in relationship with a person who is permanently Undecided as to whether or not this thing is for him. Nothing could happen, nobody could go anywhere, because any new logistical situation required the re-negotiation of the entire affair.

This is not to say that a Free Thinker ought to commit her entire future on the basis of one late-night conversation, or even several. A true Progressive makes her commitments cautiously and carefully, after due consideration, plenty of time, and assembling of Facts. But then she must leap, she must spring, or she will never learn to Fly, which is the only reason anyone should ever take up dancing. A leap into the air requires trust, and a relinquishment of control. The commitment-phobic would-be Progressive never gets that far.

Furthermore, the fact of categorical commitment-avoidance does not mean that commitments are never made; it merely guarantees that such commitments are of the lesser-of-two-evils-at-gunpoint variety. For a refusal to decide is a decision in itself, and one that Pretty Lady inevitably will fly away from.

In Praise of the Maiden Auntie

Tsk, tsk. Little Voxy-poo is all Up In Arms again, about the disaster which is College Education for Feminist Non-Brood-Mares. It seems as though fully one-third of college educated women are failing to breed! The horror!

Or perhaps not. Sometimes it seems to Pretty Lady as though her anti-feminist friends have two parallel brains; the brain that sanctifies the female as the Nurturess Over All, and the one which allows that some women are Fiends Incarnate, who should have their fallopian tubes cauterized at birth.

Really, boys! How many psychotic, neurotic, frenetic, generally messed-up females have you have the priviledge of knowing, and do you really think that all of these women ought to be in charge of babies?

It has been Pretty Lady's unfortunate experience to have encountered a great number of messed-up persons of both genders, Pretty Lady being a magnet for that sort of thing. And the sober conclusion that she has come to, after knowing these sorry people in an intimate way over a long period of time, is that some people should not breed.

One of the most interesting things she has noticed in her ad-hoc psychoanalytic adventures is that the vast majority of persons who were permanently scarred by a Mommy from Hell had mommies with abnormally high IQs. Pretty Lady doesn't know whether female valedictorians are more likely to mess up their children, in an orgy of thwarted ambition, or whether they merely are able to do so in more flamboyant ways.

Be this as it may, it strikes Pretty Lady that providing college educations to all potential Fiends Incarnate is a grand filtering process for weeding out the psychos, and safely installing them in civil-service middle-management positions, where their sadism can find a relatively harmless outlet. Ultimately, this race of twisted pseudo-humans will die out, or morph into cool-ass Maiden Aunties, an archetype for which there is ample historical precedent.

Because in Pretty Lady's considered opinion, the way to save Western Civilization is not to produce more forcibly Western Civilized humans at all costs. It is to produce stable, well-adjusted humans, who are pleased with their lot in life because they voluntarily chose it, and wish to pass this well-adjusted bliss along to the next generation. Creating a generation of traumatized individuals who were unwillingly raised by Mommies who would much, much, much rather have been backpacking through Nepal does not serve this end.

The Structure of Discourse

Hmph. It seems that Pretty Lady's Troll Count is up to two! She is not certain What This Means--has she Arrived? Or has she merely Slipped? It is so difficult to tell.

Pretty Lady hates to stoop to mention that Imus person, particularly as, to her knowledge, she has never heard Imus doing whatever it is he used to do, before the recent Unpleasantness. But the issues with the Unpleasantness, she hears, have something to do with Freedom of Speech.

Pretty Lady is, of course, All For freedom of speech. She is a very firm believer that when a person possesses factual information to the material detriment of the Powers That Be, whatever powers they may be, one has a duty to coherently assemble this information and Speak Out. Her understanding is that the framers of our constitution believed likewise. The reasoning behind this freedom, so her recollections of high-school history class go, is that if the Powers That Be go down the wrong track, and start oppressing people or doing something else stupid, Freedom of Speech is one of those early-warning trip-switches that keep the whole shenanigan from going down the tubes.

As far as she knows, the framers of our Constitution did not think too much one way or the other about people's freedom to utter inane, untruthful vulgarities about complete strangers. They didn't have to. The rules for this sort of behavior were laid down in a parallel social code which has nothing to do with the Constitution; these rules are called 'Manners,' and Manners strictly declare that such behavior is Rude.

There are still, Pretty Lady understands, a contingent of persons who assert that Manners are trivial, unneccessary, and downright Oppressive. They feel that adhering to such an archaic and arbitrary code trammels their Creative Self-Expression; they feel that they are using their vulgar diatribes to some Higher Purpose, whatever that may be. They have a perfect right to feel this way.

However, Pretty Lady asks that such persons, before spewing their offensive trash, first make a coherent, rational, fact-based case for why they believe that such trash is providing a point of departure for constructive discourse. If their point is conceded by a majority of Pretty Lady's polite friends, they may proceed unhampered.

If, however, Pretty Lady and a quorum of her most trusted associates deem that such commentary is providing no direct, indirect, tangential, or purely diverting information regarding--well, regarding anything, this commentary will be excised from the record. Pretty Lady hates to be draconian, but she has to draw the line somewhere.

Because when Manners are discarded by the majority, eventually someone somewhere will become sufficiently offended to bring the State in. And then it is All Over. No Freedom of Speech, ever again. So, in supporting Manners, Pretty Lady believes that she is enhancing, rather than assaulting, the cause of Freedom.

Optimism Day

Darlings, Pretty Lady is terribly sorry to have neglected you. But at least she has been smiling at you. The truth is, she had so many things to say all at once, she found herself unable to say any of them. Also, she has been so engrossed in dear Cintra's book that she hasn't been getting enough sleep.

Perhaps this is the reason that, although she seems to see something with startling clarity, she cannot at all communicate right now.

"You just loved crucifying me. You loved inducing cancer in my head, terrorizing my heart and ripping my soul all the time...You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic, bored life you were extinguishing. ...Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and impaled upon a cross and left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain your whole life."

---that deranged young man

"The journey to the cross should be the last 'useless journey.' Do not dwell upon it, but dismiss it as accomplished. If you can accept it as your own last useless journey, you are also free to join my resurrection. Until you do so your life is indeed wasted. It merely re-enacts the separation, the loss of power, the futile attempts of the ego at reparation, and finally the crucifixion of the body, or death. Such repetitions are endless until they are voluntarily given up. Do not make the pathetic error of 'clinging to the old rugged cross.' The only message of the crucifixion is that you can overcome the cross. Until then you are free to crucify yourself as often as you choose."

--A Course In Miracles

Sometimes it seems to Pretty Lady that the purpose and gift of the deranged is that they show us ourselves, in such caricature and clarity that we cannot look away or deny it. For this, on some level, and in some way, we may be grateful to them.

Bette Davis Overload

Pretty Lady has figured out that the chief benefit of her new hairdo is that it goes so well with her CarolAnn Wachter hat collection.


Sadly, if this phase continues, she's going to have to invest in another tube of Pompeii-colored lipstick. The old one has fossilized from lack of use.


Ah, well. Back to the twentieth century with thee, Bette, dear.


Update: How do y'all like this for a new profile photo?

Okay, that does it

Pretty Lady has formally capitulated to her Little Brother. She just sent him a note to this effect. Her mind is made up. It is High Time for her to purchase a firearm, and learn how to use one. Not necessarily in that order.

Pretty Lady's Little Brother has expressed some Quiet Concern about her safety, in the past; he even went so far, back in her San Francisco ghetto days, as to present her with a stun gun for her personal use. Her sadomasochistic then-boyfriend expressed some prurient interest in the possible erotic side-effects of the recreational use of this weapon, but did not go so far as to volunteer as a test case. She parked it on the molding above her bedroom door, and as far as she can recall, it is still there.

But as pacifistic and fundamentally uninterested in weapons as Pretty Lady may be, she has always trusted that her Little Brother, and others like him, were Around. It is still her instinct, whenever something pesky and mechanical requires attention, such as the starter on her car or the drainpipe under the sink, to drop her hands and call for Little Brother, even though he lives half a continent away. Similarly, she never worries overmuch about deranged lone gunmen bursting through her door and spraying bullets everywhere, because something in the back of her mind relies upon Little Brother to unclip the 9 mm. from under the dashboard or silverware drawer or kitchen table or wherever, and take the fellow out.

It is slowly beginning to dawn upon her reptile brain that not only does Little Brother live too far away to arrive in a timely manner, but when he got here he probably wouldn't be allowed to traverse the Holland Tunnel. Not with all those weapons in his trunk.

However, if Pretty Lady put her mind to it, she would probably be a fairly successful weapons-smuggler, simply because she's Not The Type. She can't imagine that it would occur to the most paranoid police officer to frisk her or her Pathfinder for contraband, after she rolls down the window and greets them with a cheery invitation to do so. At least, they have never done so in the past.

(Vehicle registration card and insurance, though--that's another matter. Pretty Lady hates paperwork.)

At breakfast this morning, Pretty Lady was mildly irritated by the sound of helicopters. After a bit, she glanced out of the kitchen window; several of these ominous machines, marked 'NYPD,' were hovering nearby, carooming back and forth over the canal. An experimental call to '311' produced nothing but a beeping noise. The radio continued providing perky little updates on the war in Iraq, and NYTimes Online supplied more reams of grainy video about the Virginia Tech Shooter. Queries regarding 'Helicopters Over Gowanus Canal--Breaking News' turned up a blank.

Let it be known that Pretty Lady is not becoming a Paranoid Right-Wing Freak who looks over her shoulder at every suspicious noise. She is not Cowering, she is not Terrified. She has simply decided that the sensible thing to do is to have a few more Practical Tools at her disposal. She's got the power drill (or rather, her neighbor has it, this week), the socket wrenches, the pliers, the iron and the vacuum cleaner--all, come to think, supplied by the A.A. in gentler days. A shotgun or two would not come amiss, perhaps rolled up in a failed canvas, or strapped over the studio door.

In other news, Pretty Lady volunteered for an ad that said 'Hair Models Needed,' and lucked out! She got the cucumbers-on-the-eyelids treatment, bergamot conditioner, and the Best Haircut Ever, for free! Of course she tipped. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.

Go read this

Now.

Wow

Pretty Lady and Dano struck gold yesterday evening. They highly, highly recommend that you all visit Edmar Castaneda's website and listen, although the experience will necessarily be dimmer and less all-enthralling than sitting in the back room at Barbés and hearing him play a live WFUV broadcast. He does not precisely play; he dances, joyfully, with his Columbian harp. Pretty Lady has never seen a roomful of slightly intoxicated alternative-radio fans hunker down in quite such a hypnotized fashion.

UPDATE: OOP! It was WFMU radio. Where Pretty Lady came up with WFUV, she doesn't know...hmph...

On Integrity

Pretty Lady is delighted to discover that her Daddy has a fan club! A fan club, moreover, not dominated by aficionados of state-of-the-art fighter planes!

So, to wash a little more Angry Atheist venom out from between her molars, Pretty Lady would like to indulge in a bit of instructive Daddy-worship, if it's all the same to you.

The legend in Pretty Lady's family goes back to her Great-Granddaddy, Pops. Pops owned a hardware store, out in the middle of nowhere. Folks would come into this hardware store, stating their interest in purchasing a new stove.

"What's wrong with the old one?" Pops would inquire.

"Dunno, it just stopped working."

"Have you tried changing the whosamajiggy?" Pops replied.

"Nope, can't say that I have," said the customer.

"Look, I'll make a deal with you. Take this little whosamajiggy, put it in the old stove, and see if that takes care of the problem. If it doesn't, then I'll sell you a new stove."

Well, dad gum if that didn't take care of it.

Perhaps you dears may wonder how Pops stayed in business at all, what with his extreme unwillingness to part with high-ticket items upon explicit request. Well, his attitude bred such unaccountable loyalty in his customers, that along about Great Depression time, Pops stayed in business when nobody else did.

This habit of looking out for the rock-bottom interests of all parties to transactions, and not merely those of self, then, is a multi-generational tradition in Pretty Lady's family. It is part of the air we breathe, and at this point is scarcely subject to conscious consideration. Pretty Lady practices this habit in her own business, unlike her former employer the Wall Street chiropractor, whose business plan entailed corraling a few paralegals and UPS couriers with generous health-insurance plans, and threatening them with crippling disabilities if they didn't come to see him three times a week. Pretty Lady got pretty sick of rubbing down the same hairy-backed UPS guy all the time, she can tell you that.

When Pretty Lady's clients ask her how often they should come in, she invariably replies, "Listen to your body, dear. You're responsible for your own health, and I wouldn't want to bankrupt you. Although if you wait longer than six weeks, we'll be starting again from scratch."

Pretty Lady is thus not rich, but her clients trust her.

Back to Daddy, though--one of the things about Daddy is that Pretty Lady has never, never, never heard him adhering to a legalistic argument in order to weasel out of an implied responsibility. Perish the thought. Once a commitment is made, it is total and unquestioned, no matter if unforeseen and inconvenient circumstances arise. Daddy is the Rock of the extended family; he has shepherded his parents, siblings, cousins, wife's siblings, stray friends and offspring through more sticky and embarrassing and, sometimes, financially draining crises than anyone has bothered to count. Nobody has ever heard Pretty Lady's Daddy utter the words, "Well, I never said I would...". He simply does, and does not hold a grudge afterward.

At the same time, Daddy never pretends to be someone he is not. Early in her parents' marriage, they moved to a new town where some distant cousins were members of High Society. Like good cousins, they invited Pretty Lady's parents to High Society dinner parties. Daddy, a young engineer, was seated next to many expansive oil millionaires who casually discussed the charter jet they'd taken to the party in Baja last weekend, with their twelve best friends. Daddy was rather bored, but polite.

Then the complimentary tickets to the High Society Ball arrived. Daddy returned them, with thanks, and the comment, "Thank you very much, but I am afraid we cannot afford to sustain this kind of lifestyle." Mommy kept a stiff upper lip.

Many times in latter years, particularly in adolescence, Pretty Lady suffered from snide comments and party-invitation-exclusions from Noveau Riche social climbers, who were aspiring to membership in the High Society clan that Pretty Lady's family had voluntarily exited. The knowledge that this sort of thing is gauche, tacky and low-class in the extreme did not entirely make up for her empty social calendar--but really. As Daddy says, and Pretty Lady concurs, those people are boring anyway! Why bother?

(Now, of course, when Pretty Lady goes home, the society ladies who volunteer at the Modern Art Museum are all agog to hear about her latest New York exhibition, but that is all by the way.)

And it goes without saying that cheating on his taxes, or on Mommy, is something so inconceivably beyond the pale in Daddy's universe that it does not bear discussion.

Whenever Pretty Lady has an ethical decision to make, the first question that springs to her mind is "What would Daddy do?" When she once borrowed a friend's five-year-old, factory-second camping tent, and the tent was subsequently stolen out of her trunk, she paid the friend the original cost of the tent without question. Then she received another call. "For another two hundred dollars I can replace it at REI, with a money-back guarantee. The old one had a money-back guarantee. Please give me two hundred dollars more."

At the time, Pretty Lady had not only suffered a robbery, but an assault, and was surfing friends' couches while searching for a home in a safer neighborhood. She was barely making financial ends meet in the ghetto, and needed to come up with the down payment on a new and more expensive place. She was also in a state of shell-shock. Her first inclination was to hang up on this so-called 'friend' and never call back.

But, after much consideration, and discussion with other friends, she sent the girl a two-hundred dollar check. Then she cut the connection.

"I didn't want to worry that I wasn't fair to her," she told Daddy afterward.

"You did the right thing," said Daddy. Which made it all worthwhile.

Pretty Lady Runs Screaming from the Room

Darlings, Pretty Lady has a confession to make. It has been a rough couple of years for her. You see, upon moving to New York City, Pretty Lady made a Stupid Mistake. She got involved with a paranoid, psychotic, abusive individual.

It has taken Pretty Lady a great deal of Quiet Time to mend the after-effects of her relationship with this person, on her sensitive psyche. She has tended toward an unwonted Reclusion. She has done a lot of yoga, and taken some road trips. She has, as you all know, blogged a lot. She is doing much better, now; thank you for asking.

One of the things that Pretty Lady has done, to distract her mind from horrors best left undescribed, is to Meet New People. She has gone seeking in Different Horizons; she figured that whatever was drawing her toward paranoia and psychosis, would be likely avoided in territories having nothing to do with Angry Atheists from New York City.

And now this.

9/11 was minor in comparison to biological/nuclear terrorism. If, instead of a couple of buildings collapsing, a tactical nuclear device were to be detonated in New York harbor, rendering all of Manhattan and depending upon wind direction, all of Long Island instantly uninhabitable for a period of up to 30-60 days and hazardous for decades afterward? If instead of a single city, this was multiplied by tactical nukes going off in multiple coastal cities, and add in an EMP burst, launched from a container ship in the Gulf which takes out most of the electric grid and all communications systems?

Desert Cat, you are channelling the Angry Atheist. This text is ripped verbatim from a typical Angry Atheist rant.

Crom, you too. And even Boysmom is in on it.

Pretty Lady is feeling faint. She is Reeling. She feels as though the world is collapsing down to one diseased, paranoid psyche, with her in it. There is no escape. None! Do you hear? Pretty Lady has gas in her Pathfinder! She has the zero degree down bag, she has bolt-holes both North and South, she's got a good pair of boots, a big box of safety matches, a tent and knowledge of basic woodscraft!

BUT THIS WILL NOT SAVE HER. She sees that now. Nothing can save her from the voices in her head. The voices of Doom, of Stasis, of Fatalism; the dirty bomb that is forever about to hit Manhattan, the reason all optimistic and healing endeavors are pointless, the reason Pretty Lady's affection and joy is never the center of anyone's heart, but merely a pleasant and temporary distraction.

Desert Cat, it is too late to save Pretty Lady's sanity. She is, and has always been, a Marked Woman.

'I Beg Your Pardon?' Department

AVON PARK, Fla. -- Police arrested a 6-year-old Florida girl and even handcuffed her when she acted out in class. Police officers said Desre'e Watson, a kindergarten student at Avon Elementary School in Highlands County, had a violent run-in with a teacher on Thursday.

"I was scared," the little girl said.

Police claim the little girl got angry and began kicking and scratching. She even hit a teacher attempting to intervene in the disturbance.
...
The kindergartner was booked in the Highland County jail and was charged with a felony and two misdemeanors.

Via Fetch Me My Axe.

How very strange

Pretty Lady does not understand at all why people think this would be useful:

A recent outbreak of antagonism among several prominent bloggers “gives us an opportunity to change the level of expectations that people have about what’s acceptable online,” said Mr. O’Reilly, who posted the preliminary recommendations last week on his company blog (radar.oreilly.com). Mr. Wales then put the proposed guidelines on his company’s site (blogging.wikia.com), and is now soliciting comments in the hope of creating consensus around what constitutes civil behavior online.

Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Wales talk about creating several sets of guidelines for conduct and seals of approval represented by logos. For example, anonymous writing might be acceptable in one set; in another, it would be discouraged. Under a third set of guidelines, bloggers would pledge to get a second source for any gossip or breaking news they write about.

Bloggers could then pick a set of principles and post the corresponding badge on their page, to indicate to readers what kind of behavior and dialogue they will engage in and tolerate. The whole system would be voluntary, relying on the community to police itself.

“If it’s a carefully constructed set of principles, it could carry a lot of weight even if not everyone agrees,” Mr. Wales said.

This strikes Pretty Lady as being quite similar to the USDA requiring farmers to submit to draconian standards in order to obtain a USDA-approved 'organic' label. It seems like a whole lot of fuss for not very much. Pretty Lady has not, as yet, seen the need for any 'manners' labels on her blog; she simply says, "Darlings, behave," and you darlings do. What is so difficult about that?