Pristine Angie’s Good Homemaker Adventures at www.d332.com

A person’s memory is a palace of shrines, devoted each to a moment in time. Some are nurtured, while others refuse to be discarded despite repeated attempts. Some shrines are attended to more than others: candles blaze joyously around such bright moments, even though it is not entirely clear the source of incandescence.

I have been visiting one such corner of my interior recently.

It all began on a workday lunch, when I dropped in for an artery chokefest at the local cheese hut. It turned out there was a cantankerous all-u-can-eat buffet under way, with a workforce for that shift consisting of one employee.

I sat there and watched dozen after dozen of variations on the unmistakable gesticulation of people who have had to go without food for a scandalous three- four- hours. Tensed fists were brought down reproachfully on tabletops in frustration, how dare one be kept waiting when $4.99 had been spent per head for a towering feast of yeast?!

Amidst the madding crowd, a bespeckled youth shuffled back and forth, his movement greased by teflon, completely untrounced by complaining groans for his head on a platter. I’m watching this young man glide pass the big spenders and it really made me think. Is grief, anger, and unhappiness a mere illusion which cloaks our joy? How is it that most of us have it in reverse? Surely, nobody can be in the state of sunshine round the clock, but as time runs out, we all seem to have fewer moments of brightness.

I repeatedly return to the point where I went to the counter to pay my bill. Much like a prisoner who traces the outlines of the open skies from within his cell, I go over each crease of his youthful face to further secure a place in my palace for the memory of his sweet optimism.

The Gap uses Audrey Hepburn in the Paris den dance sequence of Funny Face and AC/DC Back In Black to sell new season slim black pants.

*sigh* I never shop at the Gap and I’ve always found all their ads up to this point annoying, but I have to admit, whoever the new guy is in their creative ad campaign, don’t let him or her go!!

I mean, combining two of my favorite childhood idols together this way is just a positive delight.

Now I think it’ll be wonderful. It’ll be awful nice….

if they’ll combine two more of my favorite things together:

Kryzstof Penderecki Anaklasis/Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima

+

Abe Vigoda

= Starbucks’s New Frapputopiatté !

On the ninth year anniversary of this website, I have been thinking about some lively discussions I have had on the web in the past few years. While most tend to remain comical, there were a few that were close to my heart, one of which involves those who have arrived at a position of a working trans girl.

Before a debate begins over the terminology working girl, let me just say that while I am aware of the implications of the hierarchy in labels and the power that simulacrum yields, a battle over labels is a red herring which diverts attention from the real topic at hand. The more we haggle over words, when we should be focused on what the word represents, the farther we get from discussing the issue.

The problem was that amateur crossdressers at a Trans* bar in New York City bemoaned the influx of professionals. Those who rely on their looks to put food on the table will, ironically, abstain from a rich menu to continue restocking the cupboard. The discrepancy in waistlines, among other superficial procurements, was the source of the discontent among the amateur dressers. Against the professional working girls, how could the weekend warrioress possibly compete for the attention of another married man?