A Thousand Times No

There’s been a spate of articles in the press this month about the “Slut-o-ween” phenomenon: women using Halloween as a get-out-of-jail-free card for pop-tarting. When asked about the holiday during a recent fundraiser for Philadelphians Against Santorum (the senator, not the frothy mix), columnist Dan Savage expressed puzzlement over grown-ups appropriating what was once essentially a children’s holiday. After you become an adult, he dryly noted, you can wear a dog collar or get completely trashed any night of the week, any time of year. What’s the point in restricting yourself to a single annual blowout?

So I transgress. Last week’s release of Firefox 2 neutered my favorite browser theme for several days. I stepped out with Dutch import PimpZilla, which proudly bills itself as “the theme with bling.” (See what happens when you legalize the world’s oldest profession? It leads to all manner of vices, like open-source code development.)

A few quick clicks outfitted my workstation with golden scrollbars, fuzzy dice, a leopard-skin print, and ultra-plush pile. Everything was great, until I mentioned to a Web-savvy friend that I had been keeping company with PZ. His message was instant indeed: “I’ve seen it. You are not my friend anymore,” he deadpanned.

Aw, where’s the love? This is not the Stern reaction we expected. There’s something to be said for knowing how to treat a trick. Just say it quickly, because any more talk of post-post feminism could land us all a thrashing from Katherine Graham’s ghost, faster than you can say “Unredacted.”

My left thigh has been sporting a stunner of a bruise for the past couple of days. Picture something the shape and color of a good-sized eggplant stamped right below my hip, and you’ll get the idea.

Just how did I land a date with Mel N. Zana? I got “doored” on my way to work on Friday, caught near the Penn bookstore between a row of parked cars, a young man in a suit standing in the bike lane, and the back door of a taxi. The young man had been leaning into the back window of the cab for a while, and I assumed that he was saying goodbye to the passenger in the back seat. I waited for him to step out of the bike lane. As he moved aside and I rode forward, the back door of the cab swung open, smashing directly into my leg.

I howled in pain, but managed to keep my balance and stop the bike. The twenty-ish woman who had thrown open the door said, “Did that hurt?” It took a few moments for me to eke out a slow “Yesss…” Before I could say anything more, she began stonewalling in a Slavic-inflected singsong: “Well, you seem to be fine. It was unavoidable, there was no way either of us could have known, we were just both in the same place. These things happen.”

I glared at her, appalled by her cavalier attitude. “Just how do you know I’m fine, and not seriously hurt?” I asked. “Well, if you are really hurt,” she replied blithely, “the taxi is right here. They can take you to the hospital, it’s not a problem.”

By now, the cab driver was leaning out the window on the passenger side, a crescendo of honks rising in traffic behind him. “Oh, sorry baby, I’m so sorry. Sorry! Sorry!” After gingerly wriggling my left foot and bending my leg, I reassured him know I wasn’t seriously injured. “Don’t worry, you didn’t do anything,” I said.

The young man in the suit had remained standing silently in front of my bike. He was clearly taken aback, but he finally spoke: “Are you going to be okay?” he inquired, genuinely concerned. “Yeah,” I replied. “Thank you for asking. But you had better tell your friend that she — ”

“Oh no, she’s not my friend,” he blurted out. “I don’t know her at all! I was just trying to hail this cab.” Ah, proof positive that the woman who whacked me was stone-cold: even a Wharton MBA candidate instinctively recoiled from her.

Soon enough, I ended up biking away. As I rounded the next corner, I saw Miss Door Prize standing at the intersection. “By the way, my leg is fine,” I called out — adding, while flashing a Philly turn signal, “…and so is my finger.”

…

In all seriousness, though somewhat shaken when my morning commute turned into a contact sport, I was fortunate to escape with nothing worse than a deep bruising. Getting doored can result in major head injuries, bodily harm, and even death.

So I’ve taken to calling my little aubergine buddy my “Thanksgiving Bruise,” as it might still be visible a month from now when the turkey hits the table. But more to the point, I do give thanks that my only souvenir of this encounter is a temporary tattoo. By the standards of cyclists I know, who count a broken elbow and a twice-broken hip among their injuries, I’m lucky. A very lucky purple piker.

Yesterday evening, a friend expressed a craving for something “kebab-y” for dinner (night after Eid + skeptical lapsed Catholic = halal skewering), so we rolled into the eponymous Kabobeesh in West Philly. The restaurant is housed in an old Paramount steel diner car; in a previous incarnation it was the American Diner. The central counter and tabletop jukeboxes are long gone, replaced by a large-screen television and more Scoville units than you can shake a meat-laden stick at.

When we first stepped in, I was the only female there. As the evening wore on, other women came and went. One decked head-to-toe in black, nothing but her eyes visible behind her niqab as she waited with her husband for their takeout order. A trio of bespectacled East Asian students giggling as they divvied up a vegetable samosa in partes tres. A half-dozen young Pakistani women, their scarf-covered heads arching together like a loose clutch of flowers.

As for food, the kebabs were delicious, served up with warm tandoori naan and a small salad that was a showcase for an amazing, slyly piquant dressing. Since each platter came with a vegetable side dish, we asked for spinach with potatoes. On that count, it was not our night: no spinach. So we settled for mixed vegetables, and chickpeas that packed as much heat as a precinct house.

Later, we happened to pass a Popeye’s joint emblazoned with the slogan “We do good ba-you!” Of course, they don’t serve spinach, either. But there’s always the words of “The Spinach Song” to tide us over, delivered with just the right sauce by Julia Lee:

I didn’t like it the first time
I had it on a date.
Although the first was the worst time,
Right now I think it’s great.
Somehow it’s always hittin’ the spot,
Especially when they bring it in hot.
I didn’t like it the first time.
But oh, how it grew on me!

My vegetable love should grow, indeed.

Today, on what would have been his 81st birthday, the New York Times opens a piece on credit card security with a nod to the late King of Late Night:

“They call it the ‘Johnny Carson attack,’ for his comic pose as a psychic divining the contents of an envelope.”

A team of computer science researchers discovered security holes in credit cards that used RFID, the same technology used for EZ Pass and FasTrak on toll roads. Using around $150 in off-the-shelf parts, they were able to cobble together a device that could read the cardholder name, card number, and card expiration date from a freshly minted credit card — while the card was still sealed in its mailing envelope.

That sold me on getting a replacement for an RFID credit card I had been issued last fall. I’m not fundamentally opposed to RFID; one of my most memorable small joys in SoCal was purchasing a Happy Meal using a FasTrak behind the Orange Curtain about six years ago. But I’m not keen on getting an RFID chip in my passport, and I asked for some assurance about the RFID technology in my credit card before I began using it. The issuer told me that two-way encryption and a transmission-specific token was used to keep the credit card information private. Turns out this was bunk.

I asked for an RFID-free replacement credit card tonight, and it’s on its way. In the mail, pace Carnac.

The Parking Goddess exercises her power yet again. Last night, she ignored several minutes of pleading, including admonishments in Polish, banishing a friend of mine to the far wilds of Delaware. Nie parkować. Yet just now, upon my return from a pet shop run (with over eighty pounds of cat goods in tow), she moved a panel van to make room for my Mini Cooper du jour. Was it the extra chocolate I was carrying in the back seat? Is she down on Poles, up on cats (but neutrally silent on polecats)? Far be it from me to presume to know.

Spam Karma has just informed me that it has blocked my first blog spam, preventing a robot-generated comment from appearing under the previous blog entry.

Gee, I feel…prodigious. Who needs Vi@gr^ when spam can inflate your ego, not to mention your id?

Nearly two weeks ago, I contacted the Philadelphia Streets Department to ask them to address a parking problem in my neighborhood. Phone calls to their Customer Service Hotline repeated left me tangled in a phone tree until I dropped into voice jail. I never managed to speak with a human being, and my email to them received neither acknowledgment nor reply.

The issue? On an arterial road leading out of South Philadelphia, the bike lane had been blocked for well over a year by a construction trailer. Making hay while the chain-link fence shined, the city placed temporary street parking in front of, and behind, the construction squat. (The corresponding construction on the back side of the site, which resulted in new housing for noted restauranteur Stephen Starr, finished several months earlier. Perhaps he understands how to ensure prompt service?)

Then, one day, everything vanished: the construction trailer, the fence that had effectively taken out an entire car lane — and bike lane, to boot. The car lane returned. The bike lane did not. Mind you, the lane was there, painted clear as day, but completely covered with cars. Legally parked cars. The “temporary” parking signs, a nod to the neighborhood’s car congestion issues, seemed poised to become permanent.

That’s when I tried to speak with an actual human being in the Streets Department. I was completely thwarted, and yet there is a Santa Claus, bringing an early holiday Miracle on 22nd Street — the “No Stopping/Tow Away Zone” signs magically reappeared. (As G-Ho denizen B Love jubilantly proclaimed, “Stop the presses: 22nd Street is free!”)

I no longer need to be 110-decibel-honked within an inch of my life during my morning bike commute. The work of city employees, or the Parking Goddess? You be the judge.

I’ve been getting my RDA of Dickinson for the past several weeks, courtesy of the folks at dailylit.com. Bite-sized portions of a literary work of your choosing are served up to you by email, a tasty option for anyone fond of serials.

In the case of Miss Emily, it’s just as well that I’m being spoon-fed. Out of nowhere, the recluse whose work we sang to the tunes of “Yellow Rose of Texas” or “Hernando’s Hideaway” will quietly pass along a bite of something so rich that it chars the heart.

Like this:

THE BATTLE-FIELD.

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the June
A wind with fingers goes.

They perished in the seamless grass, –
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face.

The Belle of Amherst is in the house; Hernando just got served.

When it comes to that great metropolitan blood sport, street parking, I’ve been blessed.

If you’re trying to avoid the automotive circle of hell in which all who enter spend an eternity (or at least 45 minutes) scouring for a single space, there’s luck, there’s good fortune, there’s serendipity. There’s also simply not owning a car. But even a pink-slip virgin like me gets the urge to parallel park now and then. (Oooh, love Hertz.) What’s a city driver to do?

Friends, meet the Parking Goddess. She is the all-powerful entity who can place an open patch of curb within shouting distance of your front door. She smiles upon those who venerate her; she punishes those who defy her. And for some reason, she seems to be awfully fond of Choward’s Violet Mints.

For years, my sporadic pleas to a generic Parking Deity proved fruitless. “Perhaps the Parking God is angry with us today,” I would nervously joke to one disgruntled visiting driver after another. But one day, as I wondered aloud whether the Supreme Parking Authority might actually be a “she”, a parking spot opened almost as soon as I finished my thought. Soon after, I began consistently invoking a feminine demiurge, and my parking karma markedly improved. Apparently, even divinities can be touchy when it comes to gender identity.

I began leaving small tokens of my gratitude when easy parking appeared — candies balanced on parking meters, libations poured in sacrifice onto the curb. After a shockingly good run of parking following my first violet mint offering, I attempted to hoard more of the tidy, tiny square sweets as a form of insurance. But violet mints are scarce in cities, so from West Point to Jim Thorpe, I’ve seized every fleeting opportunity to restock.

Curiously, many of my male friends do not believe in the Parking Goddess. They resist making oblations or requesting aid, and snidely refer to her aloud as “The Parking Fairy” or “The Parking Genie”. As you might have guessed, she gives as good as she gets, taunting them by opening convenient curbside spaces only after they have parked a good half-mile away. Yet she is merciful still, sparing them from Ultima Thule parking locales that might force them to — cringe! — roll down the window and ask for directions.

Last night, long after city cars were tucked in for the duration, she held open a curbside spot just a few doors away from my home. Short on violet mints, I laid out an assortment of miniature candy bars instead. By morning, the chocolate had vanished, wrappers and all.

Philly’s annual literary happening, the 215 Festival, kicked off tonight with a word nerd love-in at the Central branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. David Rees got dozens of people to scream aloud in the library’s recently restored lobby, gleefully putting the “bozo” back into that Beaux Arts space. Amy Sedaris supervised the creation of a monster cheese ball that was served to audience members on crackers that she derided as too-healthy crap. John Hodgman, world-class hobologist, expounded on gypsies, tramps, and peeves. (”He’s the guy in those commercials about PC versus Mac,” a greying man sitting behind me helpfully explained to his acutely adenoidal date. “Which one is he, the Macintosh or the Apple?” she squawked. “And why would a writer try out for a commercial about a computer?”)

But I was there to see Jonathan Coulton, the man who can cover “Baby Got Back” with a banjo, bard of code monkeys everywhere. He just finished cranking out 52 consecutive weeks of new music with his “Thing A Week” project. Who better to ask to provide theme music for my podcast?

Forewarned about the nature of my blog, Jonathan was obliging enough to turn me down. He told me he’d already been approached by several other podcasters to compose music for their shows, and had not yet produced any custom tunes specifically for that purpose. In the spirit of fairness, he couldn’t very well say “Yes” to just me, even after I tried to bribe him with an offer of homemade cookies. As a self-supporting creative artist, he’s going to take Muse over Mammon, and he wasn’t planning to make his way by writing jingles for Mad Ave or anyone else, despite his talent for penning killer hooks.

I went in for the recycling angle. “How about music you’ve already written?” I asked. “Could I use something you’ve already produced, minus the lead vocal track?” That was something he could probably swing, Jonathan said. In fact, at the request of another Coulton fan, he had already been toying with assembling karaoke versions of many of his songs. He asked me which song I had in mind.

“When You Go,” I replied. It’s an a cappella piece that opens with a jaunty 3/4 rhythm, rolling right into a sucker punch of a chorus:

Fold my heart up small
Or break it into pieces
Find somewhere and keep it there
Take it when you go

With the words in place, it’s poignant. If you’re in the midst of a breakup, it’s an outright weeper, a fact to which I can sadly attest. But remove the voice that tells the sad tale and it’s sweet, old-school close harmony that remains. “Take some lemons and make lemonade,” Jonathan said. And so I will.

(Note to self: Send Jonathan a batch of monster chocolate chip cookies anyway. He deserves them.)