By Beauty Damned

Addict Fights Back

I'm sorry, but this chaps my little hide. Now listen. I understand that smoking causes cancer and heart disease. I think it would be better for all of our health if nobody smoked. I am all for banning smoking inside bars, restaurants, airplanes, movie theatres, buses, subways, malls, etc. But unless our government decides to make it illegal altogether to smoke cigarettes (and starts doing something about all of the pollution that enters our atmosphere every single day due to the industries and corporations that continue to chug out emissions unregulated), nobody better tell me that I can't smoke while walking on a public sidewalk.

The Associated Press reported Aug. 26 that the Dublin, Calif., City Council has given a preliminary nod to a local ordinance that declares secondhand smoke a "public nuisance." The move makes it easier for residents to take obnoxious smokers to small-claims court, where they can seek damages of up to $7,500.

"We have to legislate civility at times," said Councilwoman Kasie Hildenbrand. The state of Utah and the city of Calabasas, Calif., already have secondhand-smoke nuisance laws on the books.

Under the law, smoking would still be permitted in private homes and backyards, and police would not be empowered to cite residents for nuisance smoking.

Do you know how F'ing irate I would be if someone took me to small claims court for smoking in public and sued me for $7,500 for magically activating their right to be a sanctimonious, moneygrubbing A-hole? It would not be pretty.

At this point I think it is appropriate to admit that here in NY, I get dirty looks and shitty gestures all the time, simply because I am a smoker. I have had people downright order me to put my cigarette out in a public place or say things like "you shouldn't be smoking." My canned responses are, "you shouldn't be discriminating" or "mind your own business."

The worst part is that I know I need to quit. I've been smoking since the 9th grade when I liked to stand on the corner outside of Santa Monica High School with my goth-surfer friends (yes, there is such a thing in California) drinking half-coffee, half-hot chocolate from the AM/PM. Camel filters just went so well, made me feel so cool. Smoking made me feel like I fit in with all the older girls who my boyfriend knew, made me not feel so young and dumbfaced. If I had a cigarette, I could pretend to be like people who I thought were cooler than me.

That illusion ended many years ago, and I am left with an addiction to something that I think used to be fun, and still is sometimes, but is mainly just a burden that I wish I could unchain myself from.

Despite all of this. Despite firsthand addiction and education in the realm of tobacco litigation, I do not think it is okay to discriminate against people who smoke. I wish I could say that the answer is better education. And it is - getting literature and public cessation programs out there. But I think that there is a degree to which - as long as smoking is made to look cool and harmless - teenagers are going to start smoking. It's a great battle to stop tobacco companies from appealing to the youth. The only answer is to plant the seed in a person's conscience that they need to quit. For themselves. For their loved ones. And in defiance of an industry that has taken so many lives and billions out of the wallets of those victims. I know it is inflammatory (NPI) and controversial to call smokers "victims," but as a smoker, and also as someone who has seen the energy and capitol that is invested in the defense against that exact statement, I assure you that categorization comes from a balanced perspective. For all the money that I have shelled out to Big Tobacco over the years, I will never get anything good back. I may even get something really goddamn bad in return. As a person who has a lot of confidence in my ability to shape my own fate, I hate to admit it, but it is only %50 about an individual's decision to quit, while the other 50% is fighting an addiction that is unfuckingbelievably difficult to overcome. And since I didn't create cigarettes, the only thing I know about why that is, is because someone else created them to be that way. Smoking isn't just about being low-class or too pathetic and lacking in common willpower to quit.

Nonetheless, anyone who has read this blog knows that I am very wary of legislating morality or civility as it is defined by people who lobby for prohibitive laws that relate to personal consumption or behavior that has virtually no adverse affect on any person other than the person performing the act. No one can tell me that if a person walks past me, or even stands beside me for an entire 5 minutes, and is "forced" to inhale my secondhand smoke, that it is offensive enough or harmful enough that anyone should be entitled to sue me for any amount, much less $7,500. Not as long as we aren't allowed to sue industrial polluters, the oil industry and individuals who drive motor vehicles for putting the majority of the carbon monoxide in our air. There's another thing: the idea of someone who drives a car that consumes massive amounts of oil and spits out emissions, having the nerve to tell me to stop blowing tobacco smoke into the sky, makes me want to kick that person in the crotch.

Ballad of the Cockroach

This one is for you Jen. You wanted the details, and here they are....

I wonder how Howard would react - or if he would revel in the irony - knowing that I used four of his precious books - books that I took from his apartment during the poignant aftermath of his death - to kill a big, huge cockroach that was roaming my apartment. "The Norton Anthology of English Literature," "Seven Plays by Bernard Shaw," "Roget's Thesauras," and of course, the icing on the murderous cake: "The Works of Oscar Wilde." I only stacked the other three on when the uncannily resilient creeature was still alive and apparently squirming after three hours beneath the Anthology of English Lit.

I saw this same roach for the first time a few days before while I had company for the weekend. Nothing like having houseguests witness a massive cockroach running across your living room floor. Luckily, my guests were old friends from Oregon, and were not the least bit prissy about it, though Kate was clearly as skeeved out at the thought of it running over her foot as I was, since we both jumped up onto the furniture as soon as we saw it scurrying around. I sent Matilda after it. Of course, Matilda played the whole catch and release game until the fucker escaped under the couch. Matilda camped out vigilantly for a long time, but it looked like the beast had given her the slip for good.

Now here I was four days later, sitting on my sofa, when I saw it again. He looked fatter than last time I spotted him, and that hideous shadow larger, quite like a blimp atop those horribly long legs, as he waddled across the carpet carrying the extra girth that he'd acquired during his stay in my home. This time I wasn't going to take any chances with the cat or this creature escaping into my closet, so I grabbed the nearest, largest book I could find, which happened to be the Norton Anthology, and I slammed it down on top of the roach with a vengence. You have to understand that this is one of a few creatures that I have an incredibly difficult time mustering any compassion for whatsoever. My Buddhist roots fly straight out the window when it comes to cockroaches, and if they get near my shoes, then things get personal. I want them dead. I know that sounds so wrong, but it's honest.

After slamming the book down on it, I got on top of the book and stood on it, using all my might to press every last one of my 125 lbs. into my feet and down onto the book. My weight has never felt so meager as it did at that moment, feeling like it would be impossible to put enough pressure on the sonofabitch to kill it properly. One thing I don't like is terminator bugs that require a great deal of effort to kill. I like to know that if I'm taking another sentient being's life, it's quick and painless for everyone involved. Roaches are of a unique caliber of sentient being. They are not fragile like other living things. They are highly evolved and adept at protecting themselves against demolition, and that could possibly be the thing about them which is most disturbing.

I left the bug under the book for a few hours while I went to have dinner at the cafe down the street. When I came back, I scooted the book a bit to check on the status of the cockroach's demise. As soon as I moved the book, I saw the long, slender feelers and part of its body, the color of which might be one of the few colors in nature that I find absolutely repugnant - an oily blackish-brown - squirming. The feelers reached up languidly - not so much grasping for life as dancing tauntingly, as if to say, "look at me! I'm still alive!" Not a single atom of my being felt merciful. I was sickened by the mere fact that any creature could survive that kind of blunt force impact. Anything else would have died. But not a cockroach, especially one of this size. He just laid himself right down flat and lived on. When I recounted the story to my father on the telephone later, he said, "well you know that it is in a cockroach's nature to enjoy being squeezed, which is why they like to live in tight spaces. You probably gave him the thrill of his life." This revelation only sent another tremendous shudder down my spine.

After piling on the other three books, I got ready for bed. Under the covers, trying to stop my heart from palpitating about the hideous creature that lay "suffering" beneath that stack of Howard's books, I knew it was silly to feel grossed out and even a little bit guilty - a totally selfish guilt though, not merciful guilt, because that would have been beyond my capacity at that point - about the idea of going to sleep with Mr. Cockroach dying slowly underneath a stack of books. It's not like I parked my car in my garage with a homeless person lodged in the windshield, but for some reason, my conscience still drew a comparison. It bothered me to know that the cockroach was likely to still be alive. It bothered me in a weird, Dawn of the Dead kind of way.

This incident occurred last Thursday or Friday. I have yet to lift the stack of books for fear that the beast is just waiting to be let out. It's not possible. Is it? There is something definitely wrong with me. For all I know, the thing has turned to tar under there.

A Nice, Relaxing Death Theme

MUMBAI (Reuters) - A new restaurant in India's financial hub, named after Adolf Hitler and promoted with posters showing the German leader and Nazi swastikas, has infuriated the country's small Jewish community.

'Hitler's Cross', which opened last week, serves up a wide range of continental fare and a big helping of controversy, thanks to a name the owners say they chose to stand out among hundreds of Mumbai eateries.

"We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people's minds," owner Punit Shablok told Reuters.

"We are not promoting Hitler. But we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different."

But India's remaining Jews -- most migrated to Israel and the West over the years -- say they are outraged by the gimmick.

"This signifies a severe lack of awareness of the agony of millions of Jews caused by one man," said Jonathan Solomon, chairman of the Indian Jewish Federation, the community's umbrella organization.

"We are going to stop this deification of Hitler," he said without elaborating.

The small restaurant, its interior done out in the Nazi colors of red, white and black, also has a lounge for smoking the exotic Indian water pipe or "hookah."

Posters line the road leading up to it, featuring a red swastika carved in the name of the eatery. One slogan reads: "From Small Bites to Mega Joys."

A huge portrait of a stern-looking Fuehrer greets visitors at the door. The cross in the restaurant's name refers to the swastika that symbolized the Nazi regime.

"This place is not about wars or crimes, but where people come to relax and enjoy a meal," said restaurant manager Fatima Kabani, adding that they were planning to turn the eatery's name into a brand with more branches in Mumbai.

The swastika has its roots in ancient Indian Hindu tradition and remains a sacred symbol for Hindus. Nazi theorists appropriated it to bolster their central hypothesis of the Aryan origins of the German people.

This restaurant has reached new heights in asininity. I'm having a very hard time understanding how anyone could think this would be okay. That's like someone in New York opening up a restaurant that boasts an Osama Bin Laden theme. Actually, taking the likeness of any one person and plastering it all over your restaurant is really weird. But putting a Nazi-Hitler theme in your restaurant and then insisting that it's a wonderful place to relax and aimed only to make itself memorable? That's just stupid and naive on a level that I cannot even wrap my head around. There are other ways to make your establishment memorable without exalting a murderer and minimizing a travesty of unthinkable proportions. Also, I don't know what it is about Hitler's mug and a room full of swastikas that just fails to really put me at ease. I think maybe something like a happy buddha and a trickling fountain might be the better way to go if tranquility is really the aim. Weird, weird, weird.

Pizza

I love Fridays. I love them for so many reasons, but one of the biggest is that I can eat pizza or a cheeseburger without even the smallest hint of guilt.

Pepperoni pizza is one of my favorite things on earth. There is nothing like that first bite, when you lift the droopy, cheesy slice up to your face and tilt your head back just so that perfect corner will slide into your mouth blissfully. It's funny how certain foods can have such tight connections to happy times in your life and forever bring you comfort whenever you eat them.

When I was a kid I used to go with my dad to his office in Century City. It was always really exciting for me to go all the way up the elevators to the 27th floor. I liked putting my nose to the glass in his office and looking straight down at the busy street below. You could see the pizza place across the street from that window. "NY Pizza" it was called. Getting a slice there was one of the many things I loved about visiting my dad's office. It wasn't like other pizza that I'd had. There is a lot of what I like to call "hippie pizza" on the west coast. Don't get me wrong, I love that stuff on a whole other level. Throw pesto, artichokes, red onions, feta and tomato on a whole wheat crust and I'll tear that shit up. But in New York most pizza chefs don't know what an artichoke is and would be hard-pressed to have a sense of humor towards any bastard who would suggest putting such a thing on top of a pizza. And that's how NY Pizza was in Century City. Authentic NY style. All I knew as a kid was that it was greasy, had a super thin, crispy crust, and it looked just like the kind that Joey Ramone was cruelly deprived of in Rock N' Roll High School while being forcefed "alfalfa" by his slimy manager. And it was good. So. Fucking. Good.

After many years in New York, there are times when I think if I see another greasy, flat slice of pizza, I'm going to throw a hippie fit and demand that one of my friends in Southern Oregon mail me a slice before I have to tie down a fat Italian man and force him to learn to identify an artichoke. But then I remember Joey Ramone. I remember being 9 and looking down the verticle slope of my dad's office building at NY Pizza and the pure joy that I felt when he would take me there during his lunch break and it was just me and him and a few slices of greasy pepperoni, and then it all comes back. Like today. Looking out the 29th floor of my office building in NY, there is also a pizza place across the street. Though that particular pizza place lacks the same nostalgic quality of the one in L.A., it does seem a little ironic that about 18 years ago I never could have known that one day I would work in a big city on the other side of the country from where I stood, equally high up in the sky, yearning for a greasy slice just like the ones I had with my dad back then.

And that's when I take my ass to the counter of one of hundreds of NY pizza joints and get the one thing that will almost certainly put a smile on my face. A flat, cheesy, crispy slice of pepperoni pizza. Aaaaaah.

Viva La Mexicana

This is an incredible story:

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Three Mexicans who survived for nine months as their small fishing boat drifted across the Pacific Ocean tossed two other men overboard after they died of starvation during the journey, officials said on Thursday.

The three were rescued last week by a trawler more than 5,000 miles from Mexico's Pacific Coast fishing village of San Blas, where they left for what was supposed to be a routine shark fishing trip last November.

Stranded on the high seas for nine months, they stayed alive by eating raw birds and fish and drinking rain water, but the government said on Thursday that two other men perished during the ordeal and were thrown overboard.

"At the start of this fishing trip, there were five people on board the boat. Two of them would have died shortly afterward," Miguel Gutierrez, a senior official at Mexico's foreign ministry, told reporters.

"They refused to eat, and that's why they died," he said, and rejected suggestions that the survivors may have eaten the bodies of their dead companions.

The story has captivated Mexico but the survivors did not mention their dead companions when they were interviewed on Wednesday by radio and television stations from the boat that rescued them near the Marshall Islands.

Gutierrez said a survivor told a government official that one man died in January and the other in early February.

"It is natural that people who have spent nine months on the high seas, in the conditions they survived, would not have their complete story straight away," said Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez.

A local government official in San Blas said on Thursday that no one there knew two other men were on board the very basic 25-foot (8-meter) fiberglass boat.

The survivors' families had given them up for dead, and were astonished to learn from news reports that they survived.

"Now you see that miracles exist," said Marina Estrada, the aunt of one of the fishermen.

The three men were skinny and sunburned after their ordeal but are otherwise in good health.

The Taiwanese fishing trawler that found them is expected to return to port in the Marshall Islands next Monday. The survivors will then be given medical checks and flown home.

I just finished reading Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer. Great, great book. Still, somehow the story of Chris McCandless's 4 months in Alaska and ultimate starvation pales in comparison to the thought of being stranded at sea for 9 months. All the same, I highly recommend that book.

Friends for Days

These are two of my best friends in the whole world. I miss them a ton right now:

This is me surprising Jenni in Vegas for her birthday last October. I want to do that again.

This is me and Darcie at a Bodega in Brooklyn. She can't make it this summer because she's a busy real estate agent, but she's here in my heart.

This is us in Vegas. Like I said, I want to do that again.

Your Lips Are Moving (Make It Stop)

This is one of the most disturbing things I've encountered on the internet today. Actually THE most disturbing thing.

"He's perhaps a smite too zealous"

Actor Stephen Baldwin is the born-again, George Bush-loving Baldwin brother, but who knew he's also a fan of threesomes in the bedroom?

"I like to ask friends of mine, happy couples who seem to have a pretty good marriage, I will ask them, 'How's your sex life?'" Alec Baldwin's little brother writes in a new book excerpted in the upcoming Esquire mag. "They will say something like pretty good or okay or no complaints here. Here's what I tell them: Imagine taking a healthy sex life and inviting the power of God into that exchange."

Baldwin also seems to prefer a muscular — make that violent and aggressive — form of religion.

"I'd always imagined Jesus was the sweet, cuddly, loving dude, and suddenly I find out he makes Conan the Barbarian look like Conan the wimp," he says. "He didn't come with a guitar singing Kum Ba Yah. Jesus brought a sword to the earth, and he is still swinging it."

As for Baldwin himself, "God has called me to go and make disciples of the youth of America. That is what I am going to do. And if you try to stop me, I am going to break your face."

One question for Stephen Baldwin: Why are you talking?

Awe and Bewilderment

It's raining cats and dogs. We've been having crazy weather this summer. Really super holy shit hot and humid with a good dose of heavy thunderstorms and a cherry on top. I can't say I've been loving it. We have gotten a couple of great beach weekends here and there, but we've also had a lot of thunder and lightning and muggy, overcast skies. The thunder has been more intense this year than I ever remember it being since I moved here. It cracks and crashes so loud that it makes me jump. Sounds like fireworks are going off in my living room. And then it pours. And then it is deathly quiet. And then again the sky begins to rumble...

It's supposed to clear up in time for a weekend, so that's the good news. I don't know when this turned into a goddamn weather blog, but that seems to be about the most interesting thing that's going on at this very minute.

Everybody knows what's going on in the news. British "Islamo-fascist" terrorists. Always good news for Bush and Blair. Babies being asked to sip their sippy cups to prove that it's juice or formula and not "peroxide-based explosive material." Is this really the world we live in? What the hell IS going on?

I get a hundred petitions in my email inbox every day and I sign almost all of them. Save the baby seals. Stop offshore drilling. Prevent abortion from being banned. Stop preventing gay people from marrying. Stop stoning women to death in the middle east. Stop Wal-Mart. Stop Exxon-Mobil. Stop the torture of innocent animals for product testing. Stop destroying the planet. Stop the genocide in Darfur. Stop the torture and murder of practitioners of falun gong in China. Stop short-changing schools and libraries while spending millions on war. Stop building nuclear weapons. Stop appointing assholes to the U.N. and the A.G. and the S.C. and anywhere else that Bush can find to give another asshole a job.

But there's no petition to stop people from trying to commit mass murder. I'm really glad these people didn't succeed with their big, shitty plan.

Seriously. What the hell is wrong with people?

Stupidity Is A Disease: Please Medicate

It's crazy how much relevant news just flies right by me these days, but even crazier that when sifting through headlines, the things I find most attention grabbing are things like this:

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German scientist has been testing an "anti-stupidity" pill with encouraging results on mice and fruit flies, Bild newspaper reported Saturday.

It said Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilize short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

"With mice and fruit flies we were able to eliminate the loss of short-term memory," Ropers, 62, is quoted saying in the German newspaper, which has dubbed it the "world's first anti-stupidity pill."

Now there's a GREAT idea. What I wouldn't give to be able to drop one of those in someone's drink every once in awhile...

They Want Me

I've been accepted to The New School for General Studies!!!!!!!!!

A new chapter of my life begins.

Gloating

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my sadness upon returning from my vacation in Oregon and resuming the restless lifestyle that prevails in NYC. Well I'll admit now that I was feeling mighty sorry for myself and taking quite a bit for granted.

Since then I have done myself a favor and joined a gym again. This time, rather than Equinox where the pool was in the cavernous underbelly of 2nd Avenue and 54th Street, where no natural light shall ever cast, I joined a gym that has a rooftop pool with a retractable atrium roof and a sundeck. This is to be my salvation from the grueling heat and humidity and the teeming sidewalks of this filthy grit filled smogstrip called Manhattan. :o) Can you tell how much I love this goddamned city? I love it. I love the shit out of it so much, it makes me sick.

But now I am happy. Now that I have a sanctuary. Now that the idea of immersing myself in 12 foot deep water is not the mere pathetic fantasy of a hopelessly claustrophobic Oregonian transplant...

Jen and I are going to go this weekend and be pool bunnies. Now that I have a membership I can bestow free guest passes upon my loved ones.

In my next blog entry, perhaps I will tell you about how I was attacked by an irate Russian bat-woman in the subway last week and her subsequent stalking activities... but for now, I'm all smiles because I'm off to the pool! The Russian hussy may have busted my beloved Prada bag when she spazzed the fuck out, but she can't take away my glorious tan, that bitch. Eat meeeee!!!