Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

Hey, guess what? It's time for a re-telling of the asparagus fart story. It's been eight years since I've told it and seventeen years since it happened. This is for Adam.

When I first moved to Massachusetts, I was poor. I'd left New York with nothing but lint and a looming student loan, and after a weird summer spent in my parents' nuthouse, I was living with my first boyfriend in the basement apartment of a squat brick building in Reading, Massachusetts. The apartment wasn't a dump -- it was clean and warm and everything worked -- but it was small and dark. The only natural light came from a sliding door that opened onto a tiny concrete area that the portly property manager had called the "patio." That descriptor was a bit of a stretch, and being 22 years old and therefore constantly turning the sarcasm dial up to eleven, we spoke the implied apostrophes whenever we referred to our, um, "patio." Sub-level, our view from the "patio" was the commuter rail train track, just in front of that sat the building's blue gape-mouthed dumpster, and butted up against the "patio" wall, we faced off with the bumpers and grills of the cars parked against the building. There on the cement "patio" we could enjoy eau de dumpster, the massive purple-line trains rumbling to-and-fro hourly, and the clangorous comings and goings of our neighbors. But only up to crotch-level.

Hub, who was good with tools and armed with a handy knowledge of basic construction principles, crafted us a kitchen island out of particle board, and he also made our "couch" from a plank of plywood set on four cinder blocks and topped with the lumpy old futon cushion from my college apartment. The couch was also our only bed for awhile until we bought an air mattress. We didn't have a real TV, but we did have one of those radio/TV combo things, with the antennae and a little four-inch black and white screen. This we'd hooked up to a Nintendo we'd inherited from somewhere so that we could play very tiny games of The Legend of Zelda with our noses three inches from the screen. I want to say that we were 22 and in love and didn't care where we lived, but we were 22 and in love and we couldn't wait to trade up to a place that didn't make us suicidal in the mornings.

Such was the setting for our post-college lives.

We needed to get out of there. For that, we needed money. I had a job in retail and Hub was temping, but we needed more if we were going to pull ahead.

Poring through the want ads, we applied for the only part-time job that seemed easy to fit into our work schedules. We got a paper route. We were gonna deliver the Boston Globe in Hub's earwax-colored 1988 Toyota Corolla.

Aside from the fact that you have to show up at 3am, and that it's relentlessly there every single day, including weekends and holidays, a paper route is a pretty good deal. At the time you could pull in an extra $600 a month, which is huge when you're looking for another nickel so that you'll have two of them to rub together.

We charmed the boss and got the job easily, and then there we were, suddenly part of this whole paper carrier sub-culture. We didn't fit in at all. Say "paper route" and you think of some eleven year old tossing papers onto front porches from a bag strapped to the handle bars of a bike. This isn't THAT kind of paper route. This is different. In the middle of the night a silent contingent of gray people in pilled gray sweatsuits and flannel, squashed fingers in fingerless gray gloves, converge upon the main newspaper distro centers. They come in station wagons, they come in vans. Exhaust fumes in the pre-dawn mix with their cigarette smoke. They don't say much but they work steadily, piling load after load of newspapers into their vehicles, then they drive away in a cloud smelling of Dunkin Donuts, old sneakers and smoke. They regarded us as interlopers, two young, pink newcomers, this tall, skinny long-haired dude and his little paper bitch. Driving away from the gray stares, Hub said, "I'm driving and you're working back there. They think you're my paper bitch!"

"They all wish THEY had a paper bitch!" I cried.

This is like, serious paper delivery, whole stacks to apartment building lobbies, hotels, and businesses. The way we'd work was, Hub would drive and I would sit in the back seat prepping the papers, which towered in a stack beside me. I'd fold each one into thirds and secure with a rubber band. In heavy snow or rain I'd also sheaf each one in a plastic bag. On a route like ours, it was mostly bringing single papers to individual homes, and smaller stacks of ten or fifteen to some kid's house, which is where the eleven year old comes in -- we were the ones bringing the papers TO the kid who could later be seen tossing papers onto front porches from a bag strapped to the handle bars of a bike. Or more often what we witnessed, being driven around by exhausted, puffy moms in the family minivan.

I could usually prep a good number of papers in the time it took Hub to drive us from the distro center to the route's beginning. Then we'd split the job of exiting the car and running up to the drop site. We did this every single day, covering several routes in Reading and Wakefield. It was hard being at a job in the middle of the night, but like most humans with eyes on the prize, we adapted. Hub had it harder, because he had to come home, shower off newspaper-reek and go to his temp jobs. Being in retail, I could catch some sleep for a few hours before the store opened at ten.

Aside from the pitiful little radio/TV combo, the cinder block couch/bed and the depressing sub-level apartment, another side effect of being poor was that the supplies in our kitchen were pretty much limited to pasta, pretzels, and peanut butter.

As soon as we got more nickels to rub together from all our hard work, we started buying better, more nutritious food. Hub and I both liked to eat a lot of vegetables, and I particularly had an unfortunate penchant for the vegetables that are on the expensive side. I'm okay with a green bell pepper, a bargain at fifty cents. But my heart soars for a red bell pepper at two bucks - if you've never lived below the poverty level, I'm here to explain that a buck fifty makes a big difference.

One night in deepest winter, I went wild and bought asparagus, out of season. I could have gotten about five pounds of carrots for less than that few forkfuls of asparagus. But I LOVE asparagus, I saw it, and I splurged. That night I steamed it and served it up with some roast turkey.

Now, it's a well known fact that men fart more often than women. I did some research on farting (nothing I can show you, just trust me) and my research results show that women fart about half as often as men do, and it's never as putrid nor as forceful.

Wanna know what levels the playing field? Asparagus and turkey. Both at the same time.

For all the months that Hub and I did that paper route, we have few specific memories of it, but neither of us will ever forget a day we called Fishbowling with Asparagus and Turkey Farts.

It's Massachusetts, so it was icy, unforgivably cold in the wee hours of the morning after the asparagus and turkey dinner. We were driving all over hell and gone delivering those Boston Globes. The whole time, I was farting like a football team after a chili cook-off.

I farted so much that there was no oxygen left in the car. My gut gasses had replaced every molecule of breathable air, leaving only a stench so foul I cannot even put strong enough words together to explain it. My farts were so thick and heavy that they just hung there like air biscuits, each one barely getting a chance to dissipate just the slightest bit before another one would let go with a voluminous whoosh. They were forceful, too. I wouldn't have been surprised to turn around to find actual visible green clouds coming out of my ass like they do in cartoons to represent poison odors. I had never smelled such a smell coming out of me before. It was rancid.

I didn't expect sympathy from Hub, which was good, because I didn't get it. "Evil!" Hub was yelling, trying to steer the car on the icy roads while simultaneously pulling his sweatshirt up over his nose and mouth. He was doing everything possible to avoid breathing it in, but it wasn't avoidable. "OH GOD, FOUL!"

It was relentless. I couldn't stand to be around myself, but there was nowhere I could go. It was also FREEZING out, we tried but it was too cold to even open the windows. To make matters worse, this was when the Toyota was having exhaust problems, so we couldn't even turn on a fan.

"Ugh--GOD! What the---holy HELL!" Normally, Hub and I would be arguing about whose turn it was to exit the car to bring the papers up to the houses. On that frigid morning, we argued about who had to stay in the car fishbowling with my death stench.

Eventually the turkey/asparagus methane frappe I'd created in my digestive system worked itself out. In the coming months and years, once we were solvent enough to afford plenty of vegetables on a regular basis, our digestive systems learned how to process asparagus. Needless to say, we never again did combine asparagus with turkey on the same day, and I haven't done it in all the years since that day. It may have been seventeen years ago, but I am quite certain that Hub is telling his version of the same story to his lovely wife and her family whenever the topic of "turkey farts" comes up in conversation. (You'd have to know Hub to realize that it's not unlikely that such a topic would come up in conversation. He's got kids now but that hasn't changed his sense of humor, and farts will never not be funny.)

Looking back, the paper route was a genius idea. We did earn enough to move to a better apartment, got a new car, one with exhaust fans that worked, and we got better jobs. When we quit the paper route, our boss was sad to see us go. "Youz was good carriaz." Carriers.

You know what, we WERE good carriers. I was an excellent little paper bitch, farts and all.

(continued from Part 1)

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During one of its incarnations since it began a whirlwind decade ago, this unevenly-penned, self-indulgent, occasionally-entertaining online wordfest of mine briefly featured a section devoted to my neighborhood. Anyone 'memba that? It's gone now, obviously. Unless you're reading this in the future and I've put it back...I might have done...soooo, if something says "Rock City" in the menu anywhere, such is the dynamic of blogs. Things change.

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"Why do you do this?"

A simple enough question. Why it made me tearful? That part isn't so simple. This is a bout between me and my own whiny self pity, so if you're not in the mood or are sick of people griping about the economy, move along, nothin' to see here.

So, this was yesterday, and "why do you do this" was my Joe asking me why do I insist on looking at real estate online when I know perfectly well that we can't buy anything, not now, and not in a future visible to anyone without rose-colored glasses? See, I've been looking at ZipRealty and Trulia for...well, a few years at this point. I pore over the price reductions, the number of days on the market, the calculated down payment amount if you have three percent, if you have ten, the amount you would need on hand for closing costs...

The reason he asked me this question just at that moment was by way of response to what I had just said to him, a bitchy statement bitten off like a chunk of ice, put in the form of a question, accompanied by me pointing dramatically out the window, across the street, to the condo units whose windows face our own, Commonwealth Avenue and the B line train between us.

"$528,000 for one of those places. Can you believe it. Can you believe over half a million." I correct myself: Commonwealth Avenue and the B line train and a phenomenal, monumental lifestyle gap between us.

"Why do you do this?"

"Why shouldn't I? I need to know what's out there." The knowledge I have amassed since 2007, about square footage and roofs and vinyl siding and furnaces and taxes, I could write a book. A depressing book. 2007 was, by the way, when those half mil condo units were built. We saw them go up. Nicely enough appointed, but nothing spectacular, and anyway, situated above a pretty loud sports bar and pizza place that's open 'til 3am, with a convenience mart on the corner. There is no parking. While they were constructing them, they hung a banner touting the "coming soon" and it read $750K. We wondered who they thought lived in this neighborhood? The fact that half of the units remain empty might answer that question: nobody lives here who can afford this property. This is a neighborhood of students, young professionals and middle class folks, plenty of working class and laborers and new residents, mostly from Russia and Haiti. $750K? This is upper Allston, not Newbury Street. "$528,000 is their ROCK BOTTOM," I added.

I just wanted Joe to share my outrage at this, further evidence that we're priced out here. We can either become country mice (or at least suburb mice) who own, or remain city rats who rent.

Still seated before my laptop, I clicked over to a property I had found. Not here in Boston, but in New Jersey, in the town where his parents live. I read aloud the listing, pausing to make note that this is a townhouse twice the size and less than half the price of those units across the street, and about five times the size of our apartment. 2279 square feet. The mere thought of all that open space made me choke up a little. High ceilings. Two car underground garage, grill range with a conventional AND a convection oven. Two refrigerators. Hardwood floors. Granite counter tops. Recessed lighting and skylights, All stainless appliances, a wood burning fireplace, a huge patio, finished basement, tons of storage, walk in closets, a master bath with steam shower and jacuzzi tub. Air conditioning! And $235K. Not that we're moving to New Jersey, it's just one of the things that could happen in the world. Taxes are high, but then, I'm living in Taxachusetts right now, so...

"Why do you do this? It makes you sad and cranky. We're fine, we have each other."

"I know it makes me sad and cranky. But Joe, I don't know what we're doing. We're stuck."

I do feel stuck sometimes. Stuck in a tiny apartment with a fridge shorter than I am and a single external (windowed) wall. That's where the tearful part comes in; he's right, we ARE fine, and we love each other more than any two people can possibly dare to dream. I told you this entry was a bout between me and my own self pity. We're healthy, we're frugal, we have no considerable debt left. Just a student loan at this point. Trying to save, but it's going sooo slooooow. At these times, blowing my nose and dabbing my wet cheeks, I try to remind myself there was a time when "saving" was a laugh, when it wasn't just a grumble about how bills are taking away all my money, but a dark, wolf at the door feeling of gravity because there WAS no money there to give up to bills. It's been many years since I've literally wondered where my next income was coming from and whether or not I could survive on Ramen and Wonder Bread.

Yes, I'm saving. I have been working numbers lately trying to figure how how long I have to save, and at what rate, before there's enough in there to even consider a car? Because, oh yes, I would need a car first in order to even think about buying a home, because clearly "in the city" is just not going to happen. I'm gonna end up in a nice home, but if you asked me to bet on the odds of an easy commute via public transportation...? No bet.

(And then what do I do with Joe, who doesn't even want to learn to drive?)

I just can't help it, every now and then I get into these sad sack modes where I NEED MORE SPACE. For example, I was so happy to get a KitchenAid for Christmas, I actually wept. But every time I have to move two things to get it on the counter to use, I get into the sad mode. Whenever we do laundry and it's a clothes hurricane in here, I get into the mode. My friends come over and have to crowd onto my small "apartment size" Bob's Furniture couch, and despite the happiness brought by my friends, I get into the mode. Whenever I get on hands and knees to sponge the winter sludge from the doorway area, I get into the mode. My kingdom for some kind of foyer or entry space that a person enters first, before the living room proper, so that winter's salty wet muck isn't a moat I must leap in order to enter my bathroom.

I satisfy such occasional self-pity by talking to myself like I'm a bratty child. "Listen, Veruca Salt," my logic brain has to tell my inner whiner, "You have regular eggs, nobody needs a golden goose, you little snot. There's people with no eggs at all, they'd kill for your regular eggs, now shut up and go to work or you'll really be eggless." I kind of suck it up to stay happy. I AM happy. But now and then I get back on Trulia or ZipRealty and ask "Why not me?"

In October when I went to visit my old childhood girlfriends, I had this same talk with one of my best friends in life, my soul sister when we were twelve. A lot like me she is, we even have similarly-minded men we've settled down with, and she's a gal whose finances meant she had move back in with her mom, with husband and kid in tow. It's symbiotic, her mom needed the help, too. So she's back in her girlhood bedroom where we used to have sleepovers gazing up at Duran Duran and Rick Springfield posters, read Stephen King aloud to freak each other out and record elaborate talk shows into her tape recorder. I commiserated with her about the impossibility of this economy, saying "I just don't know how people are doing it."

How are people doing it? How do people have weddings and vacations and kids and dogs and cars and a house?

Right now we're living comfortably, but that is only because we live simply: we never take a vacation to anywhere, we have so far skirted the car payment and upkeep, we shop using coupons and avoid extras such as big cable TV packages and any product that starts with a "i"...

I keep saying that getting just a LITTLE ahead would be great. I don't even want a million dollars. My whole life would change for like $15k or $20K right now.

"Why do you do this?"

Maybe it's just a matter of keeping my eyes on the prize, to remember why I work so hard and to have all the necessary knowledge when I finally get there. You have to constantly think of ways to pare down and keep more money. Already, a day later, I put a bunch of my books up for sale on Half.com, and tomorrow I'm going to kill the MCI long distance, we don't need it. Save, save, save.

Eye of the tiger.

Ding ding.

I see you over there in the menu bar, Weight Watcher's tab, don't get all lonely because I haven't touched you since summer. I got stuff for you too, I just haven't felt like writing. And you know those Facebook statuses? They've been taking the place of Low Budget Superhero. Almost a decade of writing, and it's coming undone because I can now post my thoughts in 220 character micro-blogs throughout the day and night, getting immediate and satisfying comments from every other obsessive Live Feed button-pusher. You know who you are! I have no legitimate claims to outrage, having been the cheerleader whose rallying whoops enticed at least five people to join. If you're tweeting because of me, I'm sorry.

I do need to write up the essay about that October trip. I just need like a, I don't know, a decompression? Like a couple of weeks off with no TV and no Facebook. So that I can write about Facebook and how it's blurring the normally linear timeline of our weird little lives. Come on, your old boyfriend commenting along with your best friend from fifth grade and your new boyfriend's mom is just...well, you'd never find all those people in the same room. Worlds colliding, rainbows connecting.

You'll notice there's no longer any commenting available HERE. This I changed so that I could control a spammer problem I was having, but I think I'll keep it comment'less for awhile. The people I would want to hear from, you know how to reach me if it's so important. And there's always the Facebook comment, because you know I'll be posting this to my profile...what a brave new world we live in, hm?

So much going on, so much. Let's see, well, the earthquake in Haiti is the worst thing I've seen in my lifetime. Here at home, the nation's economy is in the toilet. Last night was the State of the Union address, and while I'm still an Obama Mama, I just feel like it was too much salesy talk, finger pointing, platitudes and "in a perfect world" promises. OH, and too much applause by the Dems for what really amounted to a pep rally! Anyone else annoyed by that? When did that start, the constant applause during the SOTU? I don't recall that from when I was a kid. I don't know what any of the answers are, I just know things need to change. That's what drove the commonwealth, which was rocked by the Scott Brown win last week. Because nobody knows what to think past "what the f....?"

Joe's still not working. While I must say I like that he's picked up this new hobby of cooking, I would also like to, oh, maybe buy a house? Or at least a condo? My credit is only in the high six hundreds and my savings is like two or three paychecks' away from not-existing. Realistically, we need both incomes and his superior credit if we're ever going to move out of this tiny apartment. It's hard to believe October was a whole entire calendar year since he was laid off. I'd just made an appointment with a Realtor to look at some condo's, and by the time the appointment day came around, he was out of work. Thanks, Universe, yer hilarious. That was a good one.

Joe has become quite the cook, though. Last Thanksgiving, I mean 2008, he watched me taking down a raw butternut squash and turning it into a delightful soup and, when he turned out to love the soup, acted like I'd just leaped a tall building in a single bound. By THIS Thanksgiving, he had experimented with a number of different variations on butternut squash soup (with apple, with leeks) and made a big pot to take over to his sister's house. Leeks? A mere few months ago he had to call me from the grocery store with list in hand.

"Which ones are leeks?"

"They're with the swiss chard and kale." That didn't help at all. I suspect he thought "swiss chard" and "kale" were some kind of fish.

"They look like scallions, but bigger and fatter...scallions look like leeks' mini-me."

Now he's expertly washing leeks ("That's not easy, baby!" "I know, I found a video online!"), crisping them and using them to top his culinary creations. It just proves that old adage about the clouds and the silver lining. "Oh, 2009? Yes, Joe didn't have a job for one single day of it, but on the plus side, he learned to make a perfect pie crust...from SCRATCH." We may have limped along on one income, but holy moly...fresh pie!

Actually, it's overstating to say we're "limping along." We're fine. We can live perfectly fine on one income. For one thing, they just keep extending the unemployment bennies, though we won't discuss how much of that goes straight into paying for health care. For another, we don't have any of life's luxur...I mean money pits. No house, so no lawn to care for or snow to remove, there's no repair bills for big appliances because we own no big appliances. No property taxes, heat is part of our rent. No car, so no insurance or gas or repairs. No pets, so no food or vet bills. No kids. When I think about it all, you know what? I don't know how people are doing it. Even just adding a car right now would change our whole financial picture. And I have decent income!

How are people doing it?!

Are they living on credit? We only got credit cards because, last year, our mortgage adviser dude said we both lack revolving debt, which hurts our credit for home loans. Meaning: you guys actually SAVE UP for what you want to buy? Oh, that won't do, you need to fling credit cards all around so we can see that you...have...credit?

I am sorry, I still just do NOT get the whole credit dance. It's retarded, and yes I know that's un-PC language, and since I'm already offending your delicate nature, it's motherfucking retarded. If you're frugal, non-extravagant, careful to live within your means with habits such as saving up for the big ticket purchases and only buying them when you have the money, it's the same thing as being a deadbeat loser. Really? REALLY? Credit score what? It is my belief that CREDIT SCORE should only be the jumping-off place, not the be-all and end-all factor that spells out a person's entire financial story. There's so much more to define a person's financial responsibility than just that score. I care about being careful with money, that's all. Score THIS, hosers. Makes me want to live somewhere where I can give you a chicken and a goat in trade for a hut.

People are angry. I'm angry. There's going to be a lot more flag-waving in 2010. What's your flag going to say on it?

One of my co-workers...FORMER co-workers...made his own stimulus package. Sticky Fingers decided to sneak out with about twenty grand worth of electronic parts. Can you even imagine? It's a pretty good story too, but I'll save that for another day.

Al ist klar, der kommisar.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. (Oscar Wilde)

There's nothing special about autumn that would necessarily lead to my total abandonment of all writing. No all-consuming life events, no tragic finger injury, no kind of projects or extreme busyness to account for the past six weeks of Low Budget Superhero complete and total silence. Not even a lack of ideas. I've even had IDEAS, lots of 'em, fraught with Sarah Palin, Project Runway, guns, babies, quirky coworkers, School House Rock, cops, "As Seen On TV" products -- y'know, the kind of perfectly inane fodder that could garner a couple hundred words a day, easy.

So how come no entry since October 6th? I dunno. I guess I haven't felt like it. I haven't had the words at hand. I'd launch the blog tool that creates a new entry, gaze at the blank page for awhile, be unable to...start...then realized it ain't gonna happen, close the laptop and watch a movie. Or play a few hours of Sim City. Take a quiz to make sure I can still place all fifty states on the map. Whatever. I mean, plenty of stuff happened since October 6th. I just didn't have the words to write about it...they just wouldn't come.

Anybody else who writes just not feel like writing? Words not coming? I joked to Joe that maybe it's no coincidence. Maybe, just maybe, it's a universal-word-count-balance thing. Let me explain. See, I know a few people participating in this challenge, this NanoWriMo thing where they're actually writing a book in one month, and maybe if they have to somehow churn out fifty thousand words in a single month (!), then some of us have to back out and write ZERO words.

Y'know. Like maybe there's only so many writeable words in the universe, floating invisible in the air. I didn't use any for six weeks so the Nanowrimozians could have them. Maybe when they're done with their insanity, the words'll come back to me.

I guess we'll see on December first. I'll use the extra day to make out my Christmas card list.

By the way, I disabled all commenting for awhile. Too many hacky comments, I have to figure out how they're getting in and plug the hole, then I'll re-establish commenting here.

I'm working on a write-up of the reunion weekend. Until then, notice that my hair is still crazy after all these years.

My friends are looneytoons. In a good way, especially when they make me laugh when I'm feeling hungry and cranky. There's a message board where a buncha truculent music types hang out during the work day, and in response to someone's post that there's gonna be yet ANOTHER Indiana Jones movie, there came a rush of fake movie titles. So far my favorites are:

Indiana Jones & the Pre-existing Condition
Indiana Jones & the Early Bird Special
Indiana Jones and the I Forgot What I Came In Here For

This can go on all day. And probably will.

The latest barrel of hot viscous suck-juice to get dumped on the Internet is this thing called automatic comment generator, or blog comment widget. I'd like to track down the person who thought this kind of marketing would contribute to society and ask them a question or two, the first being simply: "What the fuck?"

But let me tell you why.

Some of you guys remember this, my online diary, from way back when it was called Jungle Sweet Jungle, so named for the inspiration provided by Geoffrey Holtz' book, Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind "Generation X" and the slant of my own writings, which was, is, and I guess will always be me searching for a foothold in history. Home, sweet Home. I don't crochet doilies, so I made a diary. Okay, blog, if you must. My first-ever post was about my erstwhile ebay addiction, where I spent my 1990s-boom era fat salary...a moment of silence for the dot-coms...on dust-collecting trifles like Brady Bunch lunchboxes. That last sentence ought to be in the dictionary under "Gen X."

So yeah, I'm in my ninth year here. Changed the name five years ago, changed the tools I use to do it, changed the style around a bunch. But I'm old school. I still only link to other diarists (okay, bloggers) that I actually read and enjoy. I still don't sell ad space (like, who would buy it). And I still view Low Budget Superhero as basically an adult version of the forts I used to make out of my Wonder Woman blankie and a couple of dining room chairs. You can come in if you want to, but you have to wear this Burger King crown and sing "Sesame Street" with me.

APPARENTLY, now that there's like eleventy-jillion blogs, and blog is a word now, and many of them have grown into quite the respectable (or at least oft-quoted) online news magazines, and everybody and your dog has one, and some have been made into books and movies, there's a great focus on making money from it. And part of that money-making hunger is getting more clicks. Clicks, clicks, clicks, it's all about the clicks, at the expense of basic Netiquette. Me, I hold no truck with this predatory practice of "generating more traffic" to one's blog by installing a fake comment widget.

Oh, you didn't know about the fake comment widget? Then your blog must have a WAY better defense against spambots than I do here at Low Budget Superhero. I've been battling these things with increasing fervor for years. I've tried everything on my utility belt except the shark repellent. Sometimes my arsenal of blockers wins, sometimes the hackers that write these spam codes win. I shake my fist at you, evil geniuses! I shall smite you with my strong words!

The idea is, these money-hungry dingleberries want more clicks, so they employ one of the comment spambot tools, and configure it for certain key words. Then it'll automatically go all around the web and leave comments in other blogs. With a link back to theirs. I don't know how they get past some of the things they get past! But they do. They'll leave you a comment right now, see if they don't. By leaving a fake comment with their link, they think this is going to get you to click on their link, because you think you got a comment. If it looks real enough, you'll leave it sitting there in your comments section and maybe some of your readers will click, too, and then...somebody...somehow makes money off that. I don't know quite how, I'm not good at that kind of thing. I still haven't worked out precisely what went on there at the end of Trading Places with the crop report and the whole "turn those machines back on." I've only been pretending to understand it for 26 years.

I get these automatic comments every damn day. My site here is set up so I get email saying there's a comment on one of my posts, and I have to log in to approve it first. Now, sometimes it's really you guys, which I adore and encourage, even if you don't agree with me -- but most of the time it's some horrendous auto-generated nonsense message that I just delete. I tell you, I must delete ten of these a week. They're insidious. I get auto comments with tracks back to websites as far reaching as shoe stores, phone companies, printing houses and dating sites. The worst offenders are online gambling sites and, of course, that mack daddy of the Internet, porn. What do they say? Occasionally the comments are somewhat normal, though just a little bit off...like, it could almost make sense when viewed in a certain way. For example, on my post called Oblique Strategies for Life, "Janice" posted this:

Well, yeah, true. But does it really pertain to the topic? Kinda not. I do know a Janice, too, so that one took me a few minutes to inspect. I may have even mentioned her in an entry, which may even have been the trigger for the auto-commentor. I knew it wasn't my Janice because the trackback url didn't make sense. Some handbag clearance website. That one pissed me off because they got me --I clicked it. I clicked it just to make sure it wasn't my Janice merely being loopy in her comment choice. She can be loopy now and then. She recently broke her ankle just walking. That takes a certain loopitude. But no, it wasn't her, it was some damn bot.

Other auto-commenter aren't so clever. Sometimes it's a bunch of random character gobbledy-gook that fools no one. Some are English words, but strung together into nonsense, like this one that repeated for about a week straight on a single post of mine. It read simply:

Then there was "Mort from Tonga," whose engine thought an appropriate reply to "I Don't Have The Guts For Health Care Reform" was this ramble:

Hey Mort, how about I "learn YOU into a rack with assets and companies." And what's with the sad emoticon? Christ, he's rude, crazy AND a downer. This is just terrible, terrible stuff.

I Googled for the widget applications so I could see how these marketing geniuses justify such spamming. Here's what one of them says:

You see that? This is only the beginning.

We have their word.

I was driving my Geo Prism, my first car that was "my" car, commuting from my apartment in Somerville to work at GiantSuckingSound.com in Billerica. I generally listened to WERS on the radio. A song ended, and news broke in, reporting that a plane had hit one of the towers.

I thought that was so strange and unfortunate! My first thought was literally "How did that pilot hit the WORLD TRADE CENTER, it's not like you can't SEE it." But I was envisioning a LITTLE plane, a Cessna or something, and assumed it would come out that the pilot lost control or the engines failed. I didn't think of damage to the building at all-- they're HUGE, a small plane crashing into one would mean closing a few floors for repair at most, and hopefully the people inside saw the plane in time and ran for safety.

I think the reporter thought that, too.

But not a few minutes later, the flustered reporter came back and said that ANOTHER plane hit. That was the first time I felt any dread. I switched to a news station. It became more serious and the world darkened a bit. It wasn't a little plane. Big plane. And not just one, which may have been a believable accident...two planes. No accident. We didn't even know yet about the other planes.

I got to the office park, quickly parked the car. I saw "the smokers" outside. A group of women who took smoke breaks together, they would step outside this certain door. They were clustered outside that door and one of them, Corrine, had a radio. Everyone looked ashen and stunned. I hurried past them into my office and turned on my radio at my desk, shoved my laptop into its dock and turned it on, while snatching up the phone to call Hub. I either woke him up,, or he'd just woken up -- he was in grad school at the time. "Turn on the TV," I said.

"What channel?"

"Any channel."

He watched while I listened in, the horror increasing. He turned up the volume so I could hear. He described what was on the screen. People running. Smoke. Blackness. When the towers fell, he told me. I wanted to not believe him, but I heard it. I could actually hear it. I think we tried calling all our NY friends. I think I may have tried to work. I know we hugged each other and there were tears. I know I went home later and watched and re-watched the footage. The running, the screaming, over and over again.

A few weeks later we went camping in upstate NY with Z and Fatima, Jeff and Zephyr. They needed to get out of the city, and we really needed to spend some quiet time with them. Z and Fatima are Arab. There was a lot of meaningful discussion and hugging. They're wonderful people. They'd cooked food and brought it on foot to the workers at Ground Zero. Hot food, coffee.

Kind of like Arthur Dent in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when he tries to fully internalize that the earth had been demolished by Vogons to make way for a hyperspace bypass, I couldn't get my head all the way around "the towers are gone. New York doesn't have the twin towers anymore. Thousands of people died horribly." It was too much to think about, I couldn't accept it. Instead, little realizations would come to me and fit through a crack in my wall of nonacceptance. I broke down when I remembered the T-shirt I had when I was little, with my own face on it, that my parents bought in a novelty shop at the top of the World Trade Center -- they took your photo and made you a T-shirt. And remembered and revisited bits of an online diary I'd followed for years, then called Cubegirl, whose actual cube had been in an office in the towers and who'd cheated death only because she'd very recently fallen in love and moved to Boston...I'm proud to say I know her, now, so it's weird to think of her as "cubegirl" anymore. Or just every movie (or episode of Friends) that used a skyline shot of NY, featuring the towers, was enough to send me into a fresh bout with sorrow.

This will be a day of remembrance for my whole life, and I guess my main wish is that it's the worst thing I'll have as a firsthand fact of terrorism. So many people in the world have seen so much more. Bombings and worse.

As for the men and women in uniform keeping us all safe, "thank you" doesn't even cover it.

I want to hear one good reason why national health insurance cost can't be on a sliding scale based on individual income and expenses. Just one good reason. I, for one, would welcome that at this point. Because from everything I'm reading, hearing and watching, I'm starting to worry that health care "reform" is simply going to be new legislation stating that every person must buy health insurance, and that nobody is addressing the COST of it nor the list of benefits included.

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I didn't so much clear yesterday's Hurdle of Blah. It's more like I kinda shuffled up to it, stared at it awhile, drank a second cup of coffee, nudged it aside with my butt as I plodded past. Hey, I got to work and did my stuff, didn't I? Leaping over hurdles is for next week.

This is the kind of mood when I just do not get people. Every day there are new feats of Stupid that trumped yesterday's, and there will be still more Stupid tomorrow, and yet the world manages to spin around the sun and we do it all again the day after that.

Some are Big Stupids, like Michael Vick, that Arizona pastor who is publicly encouraging his flock to assassinate our country's leader, everything Sarah Palin says, and whatever unholy thing that makes Paris Hilton famous.

Most are Little Stupids.

On most days, I just gawk at the Little Stupids, even when they add up and make me question mankind's survival. I just say "If traffic is so bad at five o'clock, why do you still leave at five? It's the same thing every day!" I say "Dude, of COURSE you're tired, you went to bed three hours before you're due at work!" I say "Hey lady, I'm no expert, but wouldn't it be better if you wait for the walk signal before darting out into traffic, then that cab wouldn't have almost hit you?" I leave friendly notes in the restroom that say "Don't pee on the seat, thanks." I handle the Stupid and maintain a level of Happy.

But on days like this, the Blah days, I can't even bear to look at the Big Stupids face-on, and the Little Stupids make me want to go home and hide under my covers. It's like the more Stupid there is, the more it eats away at my normally sunny disposition and leaves me wondering just why the hell am I so happy all time?

I might have a new way to gauge the Stupid level.

Every single shopping cart at Stop N Shop bears a clear notice stating that the wheels will automatically stop turning once the cart gets a certain distance from the store's electronic sensors. Do you get it? The cart won't GO. You can't take the cart with you when you leave the store. Yet every single day there's a sad little cluster of dead carts, in the exact same place on Everett Street, shining under the afternoon sun like a chrome monument to that day's fresh batch of Stupid. Some days as I walk past on my way to get some lunch, there are six, seven, eight carts.

I muse "What was the first guy thinking." OK, he's easy. Let's assume he didn't or couldn't read the sign. We live in a very mixed neighborhood, you will hear any number of languages walking around. It's one of the things we like about living here, it makes for awesome bodega's and funky little eateries and an overall cool "neighborhoody" vibe, where you can still get a cup of coffee that doesn't come from Starbucks, a bunch of flowers that doesn't come from a Kabloom, and an ice cream that doesn't come from a Baskin Robbins. Plantains and golumki and knishes and karaoke and falafel, we got it all. Not all signs are in English.

But then what was the second guy thinking? He doesn't need to understand the sign saying "cart will stop." He can clearly see the stopped cart. But then, maybe that guy didn't get the connection between that cart, quite immobile, stranded on the corner near the bridge where that homeless guy sleeps and huffs his Reddi-Whip cans, and his own cart, which is about to lock its wheels and grind to a halt.

But how about that third guy. And the fourth and fifth. Because by then, it's like a friggin' cart pile-up. Look, if I'm walking along a wintry sidewalk and I see five people flailing on the ground ahead of me, I'm gonna say "Hm, must be icy up there." I won't need a sign warning me "Icy Sidewalk!" No language is needed, no college degree, not even a high-school equivalency. Just your eyes. You could land on that corner from another planet and "get it." Cart stops here.

Yet every day. Every single day, new batch of dead carts.

Just like the pollen count I check each morning on the weather scan channel to see how the air quality is that day, I'm gonna start doing a cart count to see how the Stupid quality is that day. One or two carts, I can expect to get a lot done and no one will piss me off. Three to six carts, it'll be a busy day and I will require some good music or a good hard workout to clear out the Stupid. Over six, and everybody just better watch out. You want to talk to me, bring chocolate.

If only I could go home and hide under the covers on those goddamn 9-cart days.

Or is it the blah's? Blahs. Blah's. I dunno, some words look wrong both ways. Either way you spell it: meh.

I haven't had a tummy ache in a couple of weeks, but I just feel blah! I got the blood work results -- no apparent gallbladder issues, and liver and pancreas look fine. No results from the ultrasound but I assume they'd have called right away if anything was amiss. I guess I should just keep doing the food diary (kinda HAVE to, counting the Points on Weight Watchers!) and see if there are any triggers in common. I'm definitely leery of the Vitalicious gluten-free, sugar-free low-fat mini-muffins now...then again, I ate four of them in one day. (Well they're SMALL).

I didn't go to work today. I just felt too...blah. Treating myself to movies (13 Ghosts remake, and I Love You, Man and a re-screen of Sneakers). Work tomorrow, so I'm mentally working up towards a blah-clearing hurdle!

It's three minutes to midnight on Thursday. I've sipped my last drink of water until after my ultrasound in the morning. Gotta go in on an empty stomach.

Ultrasound?

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This video that I posted earlier tonight on Facebook is worth reposting here, even though at this point I don't think anyone reads Low Budget Superhero who isn't also a Facebook friend. Unless I've blocked you and you don't yet realize it, which probably means you suck, so go away.

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Here's what happened.

Last Friday I left my apartment for work. Out in my hallway I said, "Ugh, what is that smell!"

I wrinkled my nose in disgust. Something smelled like old cheese and feet. I clomped down the stairs, where I spied my first floor neighbors' doormat heaped with their shoes...they leave their shoes in the hall for some reason...and there on top was a nasty, germy, black-with-street-muck pair of flip flops. "OH GOD," I thought, hurrying past and out the door to Commonwealth Ave. Ah, sweet escape into...well, into soupy humid air, but still, better than the rank cheese/foot combo. I took a deep breath and set off on my walk to work. Only...hm, I still smelled the smell.

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I just found this in my Facebook "Notes." It's from January. I forgot all about it, but parts of it made me chuckle. We're such changeable creatures, we humans, that even 7 months later I'd have some different answers. Well, not "answers," as there was no question for this one, it just said to write 25 random things about yourself. Here's what I wrote:

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"Saturday, March 24, 1984. Shermer High School, Shermer, Illinois, 60062.

'Dear Mr. Vernon: We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. And what we did was wrong. But we think you're crazy to make us write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us.'"

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Just thought I'd mention it. I went ahead and started a new section for the sole purpose of writing about Weight Watchers. I figure that when other people yammer on about this kind of personal thing when I'm not ready or willing to pay attention I'm always bored to the point of shitting myself just so something interesting happens. In other words, you guys who could give a fuck about what size pants I'm currently wearing can ignore it, while those of you who're interested can happily read my diary of a fat chick. See the menu bar for the "WW" and check it out if you want. Weigh-in days are Tuesdays. Thanks!

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2009/07/30/mass_man_charged_in_neighbors_killing/

Last night, Christine (some of you know her as Hunzi) posted on Facebook that "Jeffrey is missing." Her friend hadn't been seen or heard since Friday. This morning I saw a foreboding update. Jeffrey was found. This poor young man was murdered with an ax in his own home, driven to the state line and dumped. Horrifying, absolutely horrifying. Please take a moment to think positive thoughts for my friend, her friends, and Jeff's family. Christine, Andy, everyone, I'm so sorry for your loss.

OK, it might be because I'm feeling rather vulnerable and quite anxious about this Weight Watchers thing (this was day one! what if I can't do it! what if it's too hard!) but I'm about to get all philosophical on your ass. Asses. Collective arses.

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Well, that was an interesting three days. Interesting, frustrating, annoying three days.

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After the hubbub died down and things were quieter, Joe's mom contrived to get me alone, because she had something very important to tell me.

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Forgive the badly-barely-punned title, it's too nice a day and too gloriously lazy to come up with anything clever!

I'm poolside at Joe's parents' place in New Jersey, it's a gorgeous afternoon. And this is the actual "first taste of summer" we've yet had.

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My favorite coverage of Sarah Palin's resignation happened six days after her loopy Wasilla press conference.

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Let me preface this by saying something about Brian Eno: Before summer of 2002, I didn't know a whole lot about Brian Eno. I never bought a lick of Brian Eno music. I never subscribed to the school of ambient music at all, in fact. So how did Brian Eno change the course of my life?

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Heather posted a Bostonist.com blog about the utter horror that are flip flops. My friends know enough not to wear flip flops around me, I cannot abide them.

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I was struggling to get through a particularly gnarly workday, but when my co-worker ventured out into the rain and brought me back a tuna sub (thanks Jeff!) I tried to shut out all the frustrations and take an actual break.

One hand on the sandwich, the other on my mouse, I tried to take my mind off work for ten minutes. Facebook tipped me off that E News online was streaming the Michael Jackson service. I came in during the latter half, and I couldn't watch it all (a "break" at my work is, well, not so much) but I caught bits of it.

And you know what? All you haters can kiss the back of my butt.

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Jen and munk were Facebooking some frustrations tonight. The topic? Outsourcing North American call centers to the other side of the planet. Mostly to India. Now, my Spidey Sense told me that some people were, if not offended, then surprised that Jen and munk would be so blunt about this, but I totally get what they're saying. I hate it too.

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