Lydia’s Blog

The day before I left for Europe, my Mom and I went to that Apple Store to get me a free Ipod. You see, we’d hoodwinked them the day before into selling us a computer at a 10% student discount. (I worked my tormented ABD act pretty hard…) In our rush to not be discovered, we declined the accompanying offer of a rebate for the full price of a new Nano. “No thanks!” Ugh. Stupid, stupid….

The next day, we had already installed AppeCare, and were feeling pretty bold about this ruse. We decided to go back to the Apple Store to claim that Ipod after all.

The first guy we spoke to refused out request outright. The deal would only be valid at the time of original purchase.

My Mom and I both put on our individual “hurt, but graceful enough not to wallow” shows for this guy.

“I mean, I understand—but tomorrow I’m flying back to Germany where they don’t even have music…” I think I remember saying.

The guy went in back to get his manager. We were so close to winning.

The manager came to the front. He was a really smiley, positive guy, probably around my age. He wore a black Apple t-shirt. No great shakes to look at…just really, really nice.

He chided us about the rules again, then winking, and saying he could basically (and he never does this) postdate our original receipt, making it look like we’d bought the computer that day.

After that announcement, the Steier ladies became very chatty, as people do when they know they’ve gotten away with murder. We cackled on to the manager about the weather, politics—whatever, as he re-entered our purchase data and adjusted the receipts. He’s chirp along, every so often—smiling the entire time.

I think we were in the middle of a flan vs. custard debate when I saw this guy’s scars. Enormous, purple scars rising vertically from the base of his palms—nearly to his elbows. The scars were so fresh that you could clearly see where every stitch had been anchored; two rows of dots on either side what must have been quite an epic laceration.

Suddenly, I felt worse than I’d ever felt in my life. This poor man, who only months earlier had felt so isolated, miserable, or just plain low, that he saw the need to open his own veins, was standing before us, grinning agreeably, and falsifying documents so that I could have a free new Ipod. My ill-begotten Nano.

My beautiful new black Nano.

If that doesn’t buy me a place in hell, I don’t know what will. Maybe I’ll get a discount.

If I were an advertising firm bidding for the contract for Guerlain’s new perfume for women, first, I would run screaming, or at least protest vociferously if they suggested the name “Insolence” for the product.

I mean, Insolence? Why not impudence, incompetence or incontinence? Sure, it almost certainly sounds better with its French pronunciation, but that’s no excuse. Insolence is basically a big mincy word for “rudeness”, with an implied context of attempted insubordination and general smug smartassiness. An idiot can be rude…but in order to be insolent, you have to be kind of intelligent, as well as hell-bent on being a dick. The word insolence can’t even be turned on it’s head, like the Italian word “cattivo”, which when used earnestly can be defined loosely as “mean-spirited”. Raise an eyebrow, and the word means “naughty”.

Still, the fact remains, I’m not really sure I want to smell like Insolence. I’m cool smelling like Eternity, Issey’s water, Pleasures, the number 5, Hypnotic Poison and even the color Black. You’d best believe I’d like to smell like White Linen or White Diamonds. Sure I could smell like a Red Door, bring it on. Insolence, though—not so much.

But let’s imagine that the suits at Guerlain were unwavering in their desire to so unwisely name their product. Fine. So, you (as boss of our hypothetical firm) put your most savvy ad execs on the project of devising a campaign to counteract the obvious silliness of a perfume called Insolence. They put their heads together, pull long nights, rack their brains for a quirky, unusual angle to justify or even compliment the ill-chosen name of the product. After several days of lost sleep and munching Adderal like TicTacs, your crack team presents their airtight proposal to the suits at Guerlain.

During this meeting, you’re not sure what horrifies you more, the crack team’s botched abortion of a campaign concept, or the enthusiastic manner in which the Guerlain suits appear to be responding to said monstrosity. Before you have time to drop to the carpet, in search of your jaw, grinning drones on both sides are energetically shaking hands. “Oh, well”, you think, “that’s a lot of fucking poppy…”. You shrug to yourself, as you make your way back to your corner office to make a phone call.

“Get me Hilary Swank.”

Yes, folks, Hilary Swank is the face of Insolence (which in itself is a masterpiece of irony). Forget the fact that she’s one of the ugliest women ever to touch those top echelons of Hollywood fame (ONE OF, I said, this is not an a essay about Reese Witherspoon, who sadly lacks talent in addition to looks). Forget even the fact that she’s the only person who qualifies to be and actress but NOT an entertainer. Nobody but nobody wants to smell like a gangly tomboy, and you can bet your sweet ass they won’t want to smell like an insolent tomboy.

Obviously the people responsible for this campaign realized this problem, probably upon seeing Ms. Swank arrive for the photo shoot, all scrawny, flailing appendages and overbite. “Hmmm”, thought the photographer, “I’d better work some real black magic in order to make this abomination look like other great perfume-ad sirens: The Paltrow, The Zeta-Jones, The Rossellini…”

Well, let me get right to the point in saying that the photographer and graphic designer currently have egg on their faces and turd all over their hands. Rather than making La Swank into, say, the Goddess-like, naked, prone, Sophie Dahl (from a wiser era in Guerlain’s history), they ended up making her look like a jaundiced pre-operative transsexual that suddenly found him/herself topless in a subway station (and the train is approaching). Beneath her mannish countenance, it says “Hilary Swank pour Insolence.”

Seriously. Check out this ad campaign and tell me if it’s not THE MOST RIDICULOUS thing you’ve ever seen. You know, part of me doubts that there even is a Guerlain perfume called Insolence. Maybe this is an advertising agency’s idea of fucking with us, taking the piss, throwing the wool over our eyes, etc. I mean, they’re counting on a few total impossibilities here:

a.) That the unwashed, Guerlain-buying public won’t know what Insolence, or Ansolawce means.
b.) If they do know what Insolence or Ansolawce is, they’d want to smell that way.
c.) They find Hilary Swank sexy, appealing, or even mildly tolerable.
d.) They’d want to smell like La Swank and/or an insolent pre-op transsexual

Now I don’t want to wish suicide upon the advertising execs and suits at Guerlain, but I do hope that, seeing this campaign, that they’ve at least considered it, however briefly. Or if not suicide per se, perhaps severe and irreparable self-mutilation…like, say, spades in the eyeballs (which probably still wouldn’t keep them from attempting graphic design in the future).

But you know, maybe it’s not their fault. Maybe they’re just catering to what we give them…

Oh friends…has it come to this?

Things I love about Stuttgart:

My apartment

Things I hate about Stuttgart:

Everything else*

*Except my job. That would go in the “it’s pretty good I guess…” pile.

I try to think of other shitty places I’ve lived. Oberlin, Ohio is an unmentionable sinkhole of a town…but then again in college, you can barely see past the coke-dusted end of your nose. Maybe I just didn’t notice. Pittsburgh was nobody’s idea of heaven…stil, it had some really fantastic bits. Brevard, NJ…tiny and crappy, but also quaint and charming. Tyson’s Corner, Virginia…ugly, sprawly and soulless yet somehow awe-inspiring in it’s total lack of humanity. Hmmm. Living in Graz is like living in an enormous cupcake, aesthetically and atmospherically. New York is New York and Berlin is Berlin, both amazing, and made only moreso by the people whom I adore who populate said cities. Now Stuttgart.

You know…I’ve gotten to thinking…maybe I’m not quite as hardcore as I thought I was. I remember saying to myself in college, “fuck stability and partnership…as long as I’m doing good work I’ll be happy”. And to be totally honest, I have always maintained that stance.

And here I sit, a heap of dear friends whom I’ve alienated and hurt, a family that can’t count on me to be around for weddings and births, an engagement that seems to have been dismantled bit by bit until there was nothing left, and to top it all off, I’m in Stuttgart. “As long as I’m doing good work” just gets emptier and emptier as a consolation.

I guess the ideal scenario is to be in a great place, surrounded by great people, doing great work. You know, at least in Berlin there was some constellation of the three but this…this!? It sort of makes me ill just thinking about it.

And rather than vomit on my brand newly spankity laptop, I guess I’d better just fuck off to bed.

I’m probably going to get drunk tonight. I figure I’ll do that to parrot CNN’s semi-tacky decision to webcast its original footage from September 11, 2001. You see, on that fateful day, I sat around my Pittsburgh apartment with two fabulous homos, one coach/accompanist and one playwright, playing “we’re under attack” drinking games. My TV only got NBC at the time, so we watched that channel, and whenever they aired their stock footage of “gleeful Arab woman dancing in the street”, we’d drink a shot. Unfortunately, they showed this clip at least once every ten minutes. After knocking back two bottles of Jose Cuervo, one of JD, a bottle of Ouzo (a present from Donny Zara, bless him) and half a jug of Arbor Mist…we began a heated argument against and in favor of driving out to the Flight 93 crash site and offering the rescue workers and investigators conciliatory handjobs. The “against” faction won in the end, and we decided to call it a day. I woke with my face caked to my pillow with my own vomit on the morning of September 12.

As you might possibly ascertain, I’m not very passionate or political about 9/11, or its legacy. This is not the case for some other people in my life. My mother, for instance, is a comprehensively researched conspiracy theorist.For about two hours a few days ago, she filibustered (solitarily, to be sure, to an invisible congress) about the unbelievable luck the hijackers (if there were any, of course) had to score a “perfect” day (cloudless, no wind) on September 11. The words “coincidence” and “luck” have been erased from her working vocabulary. We celebrated the big “5” by watching “Loose Change”, the movement’s leading documentary. (Let it never be said that I don’t love my mother).

A good friend of mine from grad school lost two uncles that day, both worked in the South Tower. I’m pretty sure that words like “unmanned drones” and ideas like “steel will only melt at temperatures exceeding those of the plane crashes by 1000 degrees Fahrenheit” are among those of which he’s appreciate hearing less that “it’s time for your prostate exam, please bend over and relax”.

On radio and TV programs today, I had to endure the remembrances of an entire series on imbeciles, on which very nearly NO ONE had experienced any direct or personal loss from 9/11. (I don’t live in the New Yorky part of Connecticut, you see).

Nauseating platitudes like:

“Nine-eleven was our generation’s call to duty.”

“On that day, a piece of America’s heart collapsed with those buildings.”

“That awful day made America better and safer, in the long run.”

Let me tell you about the legacy of 9/11…it’s fucked me in the dumper just about every time I’ve flown internationally (about 25 times) in the last five years. It’s made Europeans cynical toward and Middle Eastern/Northern African/West Asians scornful of me in my country of residence.

But at the heart of it, let’s face it. The three thousand plus that died that day (and their families) have been turned into political bargaining chips. For the dicks on the conspiratorial left. For the total assholes on the ranting, flag-waving right.

That’s awful. The widows and widowers don’t need that. Nor do the orphans.

Rather than sweeping the events of September 11, 2001 under the rug for 364 days of the year, then whipping out our “sentimental and contemplative” side just in time for the speeches and breast-rending orgies…

Fucking do something. If you’re against what the “legacy of 9/11” has become…educate yourself about alternative theories, write your congressperson, join a march, choose a candidate in the upcoming election who reflects your view and put in some serious hours to support him/her.

Or if you venerate the “legacy of 9/11”, get in the game. Lobby for adequate health care for all those first responders and volunteer construction workers (from all over the U.S.) who have been suffering chronic and debilitating respiratory symptoms due to inhaling asbestos, concrete and glass at ground zero (the Heroes, come on, you remember them…). Donate your time and money to the numerous charities that have been founded to support 9/11 orphans. Become active in the task forces and lobbying organizations that are still struggling to guide rebuilding efforts in lower Manhattan.

If you REALLY love the militant angle of the “legacy of 9/11”, figure out who from your community is currently serving his/her duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. Write them. Send them care packages of the local treats native to your town or city. Bake casseroles for their families. Devote time and money to organizations that donate supplementary equipment to U.S. troops on duty. You support those fucking troops. Live the goddamned ribbon, for the love of Jesus….

But DON’T just scratch your ample ass for a year until that one day comes—where you decide to call into a radio talk show and yammer on about how much 9/11 affected you.

Therefore as I did that day, I do once again….raising a glass and fully owning my complete and total apathy…

…and wanting to deliver a swift roundhouse to my fellow apoloticos who on this day refuse to walk this lazy walk…

And why, we ask ourselves, has the Kittensnake only produced two posts within the last month?

Well. She’s definitely got excuses. Don’t even bother to ask what they are.

Anyway, stay posted. September 14th is the official “go” date for the “way-to-go-on-getting-your-bloated-alcohol-saturated-ass-back-to-the-fatherland-but-not-even-a-city-worth-mentioning-but-thank-god-’cuz-at-least-there-your-candy-ass-is-so-isolated-and-sad-that-all-you-have-to-do-there-is-feel-sorry-for-yerself-n-write” re-kickoff of the Kittensnake blog.

Stay tuned.