Well I let my aunt have it. [see blog below for backstory] I said something like "My wife was dissappointed that you couldn't bother to get her name right in the card you sent. I made it clear at your son's wedding that she was [first name] Bowman, did you forget? She is the last to have the name Bowman and its important that her new family respects and honors her decision to keep her name. Since I am the only one she needs to consult in the matter and I'm fine with it, anyone else with a problem about it should keep it to themselves. Fair?" How does that sound? I softened it up a bit with small talk about Turkey and grandkids. I left out a line about how we all respected her daughter's decision to add an "A" to the front of "Erin" so that it is spelled "Aerin." I'll save that for a later salvo. Some would say this name thing is a petty issue, but it has everything to do with respect. I don't want my domineering ol' aunt to bully my woman. Bullies suck. Especially bullies who make good lasagna and can't help having grown up in a crass German family.

On other fronts, I heard that Cage and Presley divorced. Shock of shocks. Four months and they have "irreconcileable differences." If you ask me, one of them was getting a bit of different sumn' sumn' on the side: probably Presley (she's hotter than Cage, at least to men). How can something be "irreconcileable" after only 4 months? That isn't even long enough to admit you were sorry you spilled Bordeaux on the brand new settee or dropped her shih tzu in the deep fat fryer.

Apparently all I had to do last night was think about how bad the new James Bond movie was, because I didn't sleep a wink. Don't worry -- its nothing unusual for an insomniac not to sleep. It makes me a bit loopy, perhaps, but Starbucks will come to the rescue (the coffee shop, not the obscure hero in the obscure novel from whence Starbucks Coffee derives its name). Loopy: this morning, for example, as I spent my usual hour skimming across the D.C. beltway in a little metal box, sucking roasted squash seeds and spitting most of the shells into a fairly empty coffee cup, I engaged in a little mental rant about the age-old convention of identifying married women by "Mrs." + their husband's first and last name (i.e. "Mrs. Eugene Frumpenhoellerdorfenboffer"). How utterly anachronistic. How demeaning. I've been incensed about this issue since I was a kid. Call it genetic feminism if you will. Its tough enough for a woman to give up her last name upon marriage, but losing her first name too is beyond the pale. Rediculous. The reason I was angry about it particularly this morning was because a) sleepless people are often hypersensitive and b) because we received a Thanksgiving card addressed to Clay & [Wife's Clever Pseudonym] Sails. My wife's last name is not Sails. She is the last Bowman of her line and opted to remain Bowman after marriage. My aunt, passive agressive old goat that she is (and bless her heart, too, because I still love her despite her irascibility), refuses to address my wife by her own last name. Instead she insists on referring to her as "Mrs. Sails." I can understand why SHE wanted to change her last name. SHE had one of the worst germanic maiden names imaginable -- worse than Frumpenhoellerdorfenboffer. But she should leave other people to their own names. At my aunt's son's wedding this summer my aunt addressed some party favor lolipops to "Mr. & Mrs. Clay Sails." Doubly intolerable. I told her pretty clearly that there was nobody named Mrs. Clay Sails, and not even anybody named Mrs. [Wife's Clever Pseudonym] Sails. She got tiffy. I implied that not addressing my wife by her chosen name was disrespectful. Now, alas, belligerent old pugilist that I am, I am going to have to break out the brass knuckles...problem is my aunt, (bless her heart etc.), outweighs me by 50 lbs...

After getting all bent out of shape about the name thing I managed to restrain the snapping dogs behind my eyes long enough to enjoy an annoyance free subway ride. A girl next to me sniffled the whole journey and probably doused me with invisible airborne paramecium but she was good looking so her germs probably aren't as harmful. I managed to occupy myself by gazing at my reflection in the tinted glass in front of my seat. No, I wasn't being particularly vain -- its just that if I moved my head at just such an angle I could superimpose my reflected face onto the back of the guy on the other side of the glass' head so that it looked like he...er I mean I...had his...I mean my...body facing one direction and his/my face facing the other way. Wierd, I know. These things happen. This little exercise kept me going for 45 minutes until I could stumble off the train and into Starbucks.

Once at the counter of the coffee shop I discovered I didn't have any cash. So I crossed the street to the bank. But it was closed. Of course it was. It was 8:35 in the morning. Banks are open from 9 to 3. Why? I don't know. I wish I had such a cushy schedule. (Oh wait, I'm a student. I do.) So I went to the ATM.

On the way I passed a sign advertising fresh made "Doughnuts" among other things. Aside from the "Mrs. Eugene Frumpenhoellerdorfenboffer" thing, one of my most pervasive pet peeves is people who spell the word "donut" "d-o-u-g-h-n-u-t." Yes, I am aware that this was probably the original spelling of the word and that it was because it was probably a bunch of "dough" sprinkled with "nuts" and deep fried, and I am aware that if anybody ever served me "do" with a bunch of "nuts" I'd punch them in the mouth for serving me shit with corn in it... But "doughnuts" is such a flabby word. Its so...its so doughy. Its positively fattening with all those extra letters. Better to keep it lean and healthy: D-o-n-u-t. Ahh...much better.

Anyway, I made it past that crisis and didn't buy any donuts (I actually hate donuts as a general rule regardless of how the name is spelled or how much sleep I've had). I went back to Starbucks, ordered a large coffee without mishap and started walking up to the Library of Congress only to discover that I was in the presence of the only thing I hate worse than inefficiently spelled words: leaky lids. Goddamnit if they can put a *&^%$# man on the *&^%$# moon and decipher the genome of a dust mite why WHY OH WHY can't they make a plastic coffee lid that wont spill little lukewarm driblets of coffee all down my *&^%$# knuckles when I walk? (Don't EVEN get me started on glass coffee pots -- those things dump coffee everywhere even when you haven't already jolted your nerves with caffeine.)

With a nose full of doughnut grease and a sleeve soaked with lukewarm coffee, I turned the corner and stepped right into a cloud, no a mob -- a pipe-wielding, slogan-chanting mob of pigeons voraciously devouring stale doughnuts being tossed to them by an ancient, cackling woman. Pigeons for god sakes. Pigeons. How I hate pigeons. "Rats with wings" (who said that?) I stepped among the foul flying vermin and they exploded in my face as if aiming to rend me limb by limb. Fortunately I managed to extricate myself, but I could feel their hostile, rheumy pink eyes upon my back as I left. Next time they would descend upon me and pick my brain through my eardrum or spray me with infected bird urine.

But James Bond. Last night when I couldn't sleep. That's why I'm here. I remember now. I have some important questions to ask about the movie. I need help understanding a few things. (Don't read the following paragraph if you haven't seen Die Another Day and think it will ruin the suspense. Note for the record: there is no suspense but then again we both know there is NEVER any suspense in James Bond flicks: the fun is seeing how many double entendre's bond can devise while spectacularly succeeding in his efforts to foil ever more villanous bad guys).

My questions:
1. Why did Icarus shut off when the bad guy got sucked into the turbofan? I thought the controls were in that silver suitcase thingy...
2. How did the General's son survive the fiery crash into the raging catract? This was never explained. He was just...still alive somehow later in the flick.
3. Why did that "diamond face" fellow follow Bond into the melting ice castle to kill him? He clearly saw the Icarus ray demolishing the place. Couldn't he have waited until Bond got out...IF Bond got out...?
4. Are we really supposed to believe that the incorruptable blonde agent was corrupted by a desire to have a gold rather than a silver medal at the Olympic games? C'mon. She was pure butch-dyke discipline (until she met Bond of course), and if she REALLY wanted to have that gold medal, would she really be satisfied knowing that everybody else knew she got it because the REAL winner died suddenly?
5. Why did Halle Berry's acting suck so bad? Didn't she just win an academy award or something?

Alright, so I was going to conclude this email by asking the superstitiously risky question "What Else Could Go Wrong?" but before the words came out of my keyboard, the Adams Building fire bell started ringing. Blaring more like it. A klaxon on DefCon 5 amplified by 18,000 square feet of echoey New Hamshire granite. Was it another anthrax attack? No. A dirty bomb explosion? Not likely. Wastebasket fire in Rare Books? Uh-uh. Just Clay Sails having to piss his guts out from drinking eighteen gallons of coffee. That's reason enough for a lengthy fire bell and an obligatory walk down 130 bladder-jolting stairs. Fortunately it was cold enough outside to freeze urine. After 15 teeth chattering minutes outside and 15 more minutes to get 500 bureaucrats through the metal detectors I was back inside, just in time to walk in on a meeting I'd already missed half of...

So now I ask (wincingly) CAN ANYTH

Munchy Food for Dope Fiends
In the subway today I saw a poster ad for Oreo cookies that cracked me up. Its a silkscreen depiction of a kid with headphones huddled on a couch eating an oreo. At least thats what it is when you get up close to it and really concentrate. Otherwise it is a kid smoking a joint. The wires of the headphones sweep way above his head like smoke trails and the white cream of the oreo stick right out of his lips like a zig zag. Hillarious. I tried to find a link to the ad on the web but haven't had any luck.

Reminds me of a Coke can I saw last year where the bottle top depicted looked like a phallus squirting juicy coke. (see: www.cancollector.com/ news/19991203c.jpg and look at the bottom can in the section called New "Bottle Cap" Design. The image I'm talking about has Japanese or Korean writing above it.)

Clay Sails' General Advice For Living Tip # 187:

Never order white sauce at an Italian restaurant. I know that red sauce has lost some of its luster with the ubiquity of Spaghetti O's, but the dozens and dozens of times I've gone to an Italian restaurant with somebody who orders white sauce, they've invariably been dissappointed. In the meantime, I always order ravioli or lasagna and have rarely been displeased. I could go into a spiel about how tomatos rule so why deprive yourself of them, but there's no need. Just trust me and do yourself a favor: let yuppie masochists order white sauce, you order ravioli.

A loyal reader has responded to my last entry (which you should read before this one if you haven't already):

Dear Clay Sales,

Your observation that keeping your wife happy by pretending you like the cake pan when she bought it mainly to please you sounds like the same thing as bad sex. The girl pretends she likes it to make you happy and you pretend you like it to make her happy, even though both of you are unhappy in the end. Especially if you have to cuddle when you're done. I hate cuddling. It reminds me of when I was eleven and Father Dooley called me into the choir room to help him dust the organ pipes oh never mind.

Speaking of sex, you ever done it in a cake pan? Man, that's something else. Just be sure the oven's off.

Here's to Clay Sales keepin it reeeeeyahl!

-- Loam Cruise

[thanks for the suggestion Loam]

I got home from school early last night at 11:00 p.m. to find my wife reading in bed. She told me to go into the kitchen and check out what she'd purchased from Crate & Barrel with a leftover gift certificate from our wedding. I was glad she'd gone out and spent the $. As much as I like to cook, I really hate shopping for kitchenware. And the only thing worse than shopping for kitchenware is shopping for sheets at a place like the "Linen Warehouse" (a whole fucking warehouse full of nothing but sheets? Why, O Cruel Gods of Tedium and Stasis must there exist 18,000 square feet of sheets? Is there no quicker way to devour a Saturday?).

Anyway, my wife couldn't find whatever she'd intended to buy so she bought a fancy cake contraption. She proudly demonstrated how the lever on the top of the pan released the tension on a hammered steel band that held a plastic lid in place that covered a steel thingy that wraps around a cake but can be released by twisting a knob, all of which sits on an ordinary, flat baking pan. She must have been intent upon her project because it wasn't until she'd gotten the thing disassembled that she noted my raised eyebrows and skeptical expression.

"Forget it," she said, turning away back to her book, letting the pan slip from her grasp to fall partly onto the floor.

Here's the backstory: My wife isn't much of a homebody -- she doesn't like cooking much and domesticity in most forms gives her the creeps. But lately we've been baking stuff -- cookies, gingerbread, banana bread etc. (I can make a mean scone using an English cookbook. American's can't seem to do scones at all without throwing in all sorts of weird dried herbs and unchewable berries). So my wife and I never baked before but have found it to be a moderately enjoyable thing to do on a whim and we're too disciplined at the grocery store to buy pre-made junk food.

After the pan hit the floor I immediately felt like a total jerk. Here my wife has purchased a kitchenware item out of enthusiasm for our new mutual baking hobby, and I have not displayed an appropriate amount of interest. Perhaps she had not realized until then that the reason I had never attempted to make a cake before was not because I didn't have the proper pan (which I didn't know existed), but because cakes rarely excite me. Part of it is that cake invariably has WAY WAY too much disgusting, sickly sweet, rainbow colored butter frosting. Gross. Gag me with a spatula. I'm into ice cream cakes, of course. I'm a certified, registered "ice cream guy." I'm also something of a pie guy. But that's not the point here at all. The point is my wife was excited about something she'd purchased, thinking I would appreciate it, and instead of making much of an effort to conceal my feelings, I give off an air of indifference, bordering on outright hostility toward the thing (it wasn't the pan, it was the label in FRENCH). Still it became abundantly clear that there was a sudden need for damage control...which I am horrible at because even when I know the right words I tend to spout at the mouth a bit more than prudence demands in the hope of winning my point.

Me: "I'm sure we'll use it. I've never made a cake before but now that we've got a pan to make one, we'll have to."

Her: [silence. reading. a page flips.]

Me: "How much did it cost?"

Her: "$40"

Me: (Doh!)

Me: "Well, we'll use it, won't we?"

Her: "Maybe"

Me: "You'll use it, won't you?"

Her: "I dunno. I'll take it back."

Me: "Listen, its not that I'm against having a cake pan, its just that I never knew we needed one. And I guess we need a big skillet with a lid -- did they have any of those?"

Her: "Yeah, for $100."

Me: "We also need a spice rack. Did they have a spice rack? Our spices are falling out of the cupboard."

Her: "Only ones with spices already in them."

Me: "I don't want you to feel bad about buying anything -- buy whatever you want. Its just that I've never considered the fact that a special cake-pan existed before or that I'd need or use one."

Her: "I don't want to talk about it anymore. I'll take it back."

Me: "Don't take it back. I'm used to the idea now. I love cake pans. How could I ever have gotten along without one? In fact, lets buy another one. We can each have one and bake two cakes at a time. His and hers."*

Her: [silence. reading. a page flips]

So this little exchange ended as one of the great, unfathomably convoluted negotiations of married life. Its a bit like O. Henry's Gift of the Magi in that she was trying to please me by purchasing something I'd like and in the end I was trying to please her by making her feel that she was pleasing me by pretending that I liked it. The essential tension in the exchange lies in the fact that it feels like a compromise to deny my authentical point of view that we have little need or space for a cake pan and other items might have been preferable. Yet it is clear that domestic harmony would have been better preserved by my instant acquiesence and approval of the controversial purchase. I guess the moral of the story is now that I am a proud owner of a cake pan I might as well learn to enjoy it.

I'll keep you posted on how it goes. I'm thinking a creme torte or Parisian mousse royale might be my test cake.

_________________________________
*note: I was not stupid enough to actually say this but it would have been funny in a cruel and unpardonable sort of way.

I know it is tedious for writers to write about writers, and musicians to sing about singing etc. and therefore it must be dull to hear bloggers blog about blogging (is that even grammatical?). But I don't promise not to be tedious. In fact, I promise nothing at all, which is good because if I deliver on nothing, (which I often do) expectations have been easily met.

Anyway, about blogging: blogging is a wierd medium of communication. I know "wierd" is a hopelessly imprecise term, but for the moment let it be. When I started writing a blog sometime last year I thought it would be a place I could write whatever I wanted without fear of reprisal or discovery and, possibly more important, without a care as to the content or quality. This was all possible initially, of course, because no one I knew even knew what blogging was, let alone that I, Clay Sails, had a blog and was using it as a vehicle to voice my innermost thoughts and musings. Yet what began as a vehicle for pure communication through anonyminity eventually transformed itself into a vehicle for pure communication through unfettered disclosure. It is a lovely irony. Here's how it happened:

Firstly, no one visited my site initially because...hey...there are SIX BILLION blogs out there. In the end, its mainly drooling pedophiliacs who scan blogs randomly and with entire armies of tortured, scantily-clad teenieboppers blogging on and on about cell phone conversations with Tim from biology class, my poor blog couldn't hope to compete. Secondly, I found that I didn't really have any deep, pent-up indictments of my fellow friends to voice. And who cares about some strangers secrets? Anyone who did would certainly be suspect in my book. Finally, I realized that when I wrote it was usually with a particular person in mind -- maybe to rehash an adventure we'd shared or finish an unfinished conversation we'd had, etc. Even when I'd blog about nothing in particular, it was often in a styleof banter I'd developed in a relationship with someone.

As word spread and more and more folks started reading I realized that I related to each person differently, and each person read my posts with different expectations. To some, I was a clean-cut preacher kid who said please and thank-you and listened to his mama. To others I was a guitar playing fool with frumpy clothes, or a corporate drone behind a keyboard, or a hatchet-faced killer on a demon bike that fateful night in Memphis... To some I was sensitive, to others an affable jerk. Maybe you and I fucked in the backseat of a car, or dropped acid and ditched class, or sang together in the church choir. Maybe we played night volleyball on a ship off the coast of Indonesia, or fried spam over a campfire. Maybe I rolled out of my chair laughing at something you said, or hurt your feelings with an offhanded snort, or whipped your ass in a board game and gloated about it. (And maybe not.)

However you might have known me, as each of you logged on, it steadily became more difficult to comport myself in a manner consistant with every way in which I had previously been known, or carried myself. Not to suggest that I've been masquerading my whole life and the mask has finally slipped off -- that gives me too much credit at your expense. It is more that I've lived a dozen different ways, changed over time, rambled across globe and country. I'm a student of people and people constantly teach me how to relate to them. With so much time and space and people crammed into this life, it is impossible in a public venue like a blog to contain it all or do any sort of image maintenance. And so I am left with no recourse but to be unabashedly myself: Clay Sails.

I do my best thinking in the shower. (I do my best singing, too, but for that you'll have to wait for the album to come out.) This morning I realized why we (humanity as a whole I'm talking about) feel so empty all of the time. I know, I know. First of all, how can I, Clay Sails, speak for all of humanity. I'm just a disembodied voice dissembling digital doggerel, right? Well, yes, but I can at least speak for all of the lifeforms who are, like myself (on my best days), carbon-based. Folks who have had every cell in their body replaced by pork lipids on the Dr. Atkins diet need not read this -- different universal rules apply. Disclaimers aside, here is why most of us feel so empty inside:

We are carbon based or, to put it another way, "based in carbon". This means that all of our cells and Strangelovian "juices" are primarily comprised of carbon. We need it. We rely upon it. It is life. Without it we would all be empty shells: saggy, enervated water-bladders with neither spine nor substance.

We also need oxygen. Oxygen is life. Oxygen is also 02 ("oh two"). We breathe in oxygen and yet when we exhale, what comes out? C02 ("see oh-two").

I can practically hear those carbon-steel wheels spinning in your brain.

Yes, folks. There it is -- the fundamental cause of our increasing emptiness. We breathe in a simple compound 02 and somewhere in the body (beyond the nose hairs) an atom of carbon is ripped from its place and affixed to every...single...molecule of air. We breathe out billions of molecules per breath. To put it another way, we are sloughing carbon like a leaky ash bin. And with each loss of our precious carbon we lose a little bit of our essence -- our very base. We are doomed to struggle this impossible struggle (can't breathe...must breathe). What is worse, we are destined to lose it. The only respite is death itself. Bad, unwanted, icky death.

Adding to our troubles, scientists also tell us that our bodies are 80% water. Water is H20 ("aich two oh"). That means each molecule is comprised of one hydrogen atom, and two oxygen atoms. By my calculation, there is very little carbon in water. This means that as carbon-based creatures, a full 80% of our bodily mass is already devoid of that essential element.

I ask you, why is this not being talked about? I for one am scared. How much longer do I have? Will I shortly breathe myself into a state of utter formlessness? I'm not just going to sit around and wait for my limbs to grow flaccid. I'm going to fight back, dammit. Fight against the emptiness before it overtakes me. I've got a whole box of pencils in my desk. Yeah, pencils! I'll gnaw on 'em like pretzel sticks. I've got other options as well. I'll pour charcoal into a bowl of milk and eat it like shredded wheat. My boss has a huge diamond around her finger: that's a fuckin' battery. That's essence recharge. No more empty me. I'm done losing.

You know how they say you shouldn't eat a bunch of junk food late at night because it turns straight into fat since you don't have time to burn it off etc. etc. Well, I was wondering as I'm sitting here munching a late dinner (corn nuts, wasabi peas & cinnamon gum)(anybody want a kiss?) if I could apply this quantity of junk food toward tomorrow morning's total. You know, get a head start. It just might work. This could be the new diet revolution of the 21st century. I'll write a book and make millions like Dr. Atkins. My idea certainly can't be any worse than his "all pork-rinds all-the-time" diet. Can it?

Which reminds me of politics...and the whole new tax strategy of balancing the budget by claiming money spent THIS YEAR on NEXT YEAR'S balance sheet. F'ing brilliant, whoever thought up that one. Somebody should vote me Diet & Budget Czar and give me a corner office on G Street. Plus a stipend of wasabi peas & cinnamon gum.

MSN.com seems to have gone downhill lately. Whatever happened to their journalistic standards? I opened up their homepage this morning and got the following headlines:

1. "Gay Sheep Offers Clues" (Thanks. Wasn't seeking any. Clues to what by the way? Wool fashion tips? Alfalfa recipes?)
2. "How to Stop Flowing Lava" (Great. We can use that in D.C.)
3. "Exclusive U2: The Band Tells All" (really all? Or just...some? Be honest here. All?)

Quick Clay Sails BLD ("Boring Life Details") update: mid-semester crunch time, bought a Fender American Strat for $350 at a pawn shop, will gush appropriately soon...fixed electronic music studio (now I can make Techno and Euro Trance, from now on just call me Ulle...)