Merrill Markoe's Blog, page 7

A few years ago I was asked to appear in "The Aristocrats," perhaps the raunchiest non-pornographic independent film ever made. The idea was that many comedians would tell the same famously dirty joke in their own particular style, out-doing each other with vivid graphic detail. But as someone who has never been comfortable telling off-color jokes, I knew I couldn't compete with George Carlin, or Gilbert Gottfried in a prurience contest.  So for my version, I rewrote the material 180 degrees in the other direction. I made my contribution erudite. I set it in the world of performance art and dressed it up with references to Joan Miro, The Venice Biennale and Postmodern Neoclassical figurative painting. And I was able to make it so effete, cerebral and esoteric that I got myself cut out of the movie entirely, save for one line.

However, when the DVD came out, my seven minute contribution appeared in its entirety, And thus did it meet its proper audience at last: MENSA called to ask if I would speak at their annual Colloquium.

When I first got their E mail, I thought it was some kind of a mistake, a weird prank being played by one of my smart-ass friends. But when I returned their call and no one I knew answered, I became so utterly intimidated and consumed with the need for grammatical correctness in my speech that I could barely keep track what I was saying, so distracted was I by  the booming loop tape  in my mind of cautionary reminders about the rules for when to use "Who" vs. when to use "Whom".

Turned out that The Mensans had liked my contribution to The Aristocrats because it was the only version of the joke sporting the word 'entrails.' In fact, so amused were they by this  choice that they had thought of me when they'd decided that this year's Colloquium topic was going to be humor.

Sensing instantly that these were people who knew their way around comedy, after I calmed myself down I said yes. I figured I'd tell a few stories, throw in a couple more "entrails" jokes and I'd be home free. But the real reason I agreed was because I wanted to see what Mensans looked like. I'd always been kind of curious. To me they seemed an unknowable, and slightly spooky secret society along the lines of The Bilderberg Group or The Tri-lateral Commission. Like the Yakuza, if its rules for admission were based on SAT scores.

"Tough gig," said my boyfriend, when I pondered whether I'd done the right thing by saying yes.."If you bomb, you won't be able to use your usual excuse: Well, those people were a bunch of fucking idiots."

As the date approached, I checked the website promoting the event and saw my name posted near a quote from Aristotle, along side a changing slide show of photographs of Freud and Einstein. Both men had been artistically graffitied with a Groucho-nose-and-glasses, a disguise, I might add, that wouldn't have worked too well for either one.  Other scheduled speakers for the Colloquium included the author of "Humorous Interaction and The Social Construction of Meaning: Making Sense in a Jocular Vein," and someone whose topic would be" Exploring the theoretical, and empirical evidence for several psychological functions of humor."  Suddenly all the personal anecdotes I had planned to share with The Mensans seemed ridiculously simple minded.

In a panic, I began to try to upgrade my speech by doing some research. "Humor is arguably too complicated to learn without an assemblage of specific neural pathways or an associated cognitive module." I read in "The Evolutionary Origins of Humor." "Bingo!" I squealed happily. "There's my big opening joke!"

After checking in to The Doubletree Inn, where The Colloquium was to be held, I met with The Mensan who was in charge of the speakers downstairs in the hotel restaurant. He was an attractive, nicely dressed man of perhaps forty, who raised orchids, liked to kayak and used to work in bio-medical engineering developing a piece of apparatus that, when attached to a damaged spine, could move a paralyzed arm.

"I think you'll be fine," he said , after I outlined my speech for him. Sensing I was jittery, he then set about reassuring me that the Colloquium would be relaxed and feature an atmosphere of fun! To illustrate this, he mentioned the likelihood of  some annual after hours intra- Mensa hot tub hijinx. Though I was grateful he'd made the effort to soothe my fears, I was not reassured. It had never occurred to me until this very minute that Mensa might be a kind of Match.com  for people who tested well.

For most of the previous month I had been fretting about the proper wardrobe to bring to this event because the word "Colloquium" sounded so formal, and formidable. Yet multiple shopping forays throughout LA in search of Colloquium-wear had only puzzled slack jawed salespeople. After much fretting, I had selected an outfit that I hoped sat on the intersection of dressy and businesslike. But on the night of my big speech, as I entered the banquet room, I realized I'd worried in vain. My first viewing of Mensans En Masse revealed a largely white, mid-thirties and older group who seemed to favor the Bill Gates-determinedly-casual-aggressively-rumpled- approach to fashion. I needn't have worried at all. If there were people playing the vanity card, I didn't see them. There were no "I'm with Brilliant" or "Genius on board" tee shirts. One white haired gentleman in his seventies arrived dressed in a running suit and headband.

As a whole, they looked like who they probably were; middle-aged versions of kids from the high school Chess or Latin club who also entered and won The Science Fair. The well-known porn star Mensan and the famous actress Mensan were not in attendance. Both would have stuck out like Sumo Wrestlers at a PTA meeting.

And thus did I deliver my speech about viewing your life as comedy to an attentive friendly audience, relieved that no one heckled my grammar or fell asleep. The only dark note was one agitated Mensan man in his mid fifties who, post Q and A, seemed upset in perpetuity about  the childhood pain and bullying he'd suffered as the butt of callous jokes. "Why do people think its funny to be mean?" he fretted tearfully, over and over. "I don't know.  You should ask the programming guys at…well, everywhere.," I wanted to say as I looked at this living reminder of the fine line between humor and cruelty. Also I hoped I could get away from him as quickly as possible.

The fine line between humor and funny was on display the next day when I sat on a panel next to a man whose life work it was to wear a rubber clown nose to every event he attended. "Most people cant help but smile when they see it," he assured the audience, daring them to defy the comedy edict on which he was basing his whole act. (Though I was mainly reminded  of the way  its not smart to tell people when they should laugh.)

Since most of the scheduled events were over by early evening, by 9:30 I found myself back in my room at the Doubletree Inn with a lot of time on my hands, too much adrenaline from having spoken earlier and no idea what to do. I considered watching a performance by a Mensan  Shakespearean Improv group but rejected it after I slipped in to the back of the room  and found it so ponderous and frighteningly endless that I couldn't commit to taking a seat.

As I sat by my hotel window, looking idly down at a half filled parking lot and the small industrial park by a creek that lay just beyond, it suddenly occurred to me that I was ignoring a big entertainment opportunity: I had an unobstructed aerial view of the hot tub on the hotel roof top. Here was a chance to witness that famous playful side of Mensa. And maybe even see some of the Mensans themselves acting  dumb!  But after a couple of hours and one too many seven dollar beers from the Mini-bar fridge , when no Mensans ever showed up, I realized the theoretical and empirical evidence for humor known as a "joke" was on me.

The copy on this ad says "You'll need a lifetime to experience all the joys of Las Vegas. But if you only had a few incredible days, you'd need a plan to make the most of it."

And the photo shows us four people who really know how to make a fun plan!

They offer  a lesson to the rest of us in how today's beautiful people keep off the unwanted pounds! Because of all the things you can do with food, only EATING starts you on the path to gaining weight. So they have learned to see food as a toy! An accessory! A thing to have fun with!

These four have joined together to demonstrate a way to eat out that lets you have a fantastic night on the town and still leave as slim as when you first sat down!  Look how hard they are all laughing! You wouldn't laugh THAT hard unless you were having the best time ever! And as we can see, they have ordered many many desserts, not for eating but for room decor. They have arranged them in to a picturesque arc around the real attraction: a big group dessert that the whole table can share!  Cotton candy!  I personally have never seen cotton candy listed on a dessert menu at  a restaurant. But that is almost certainly because I do not know the cool places to go, like these four do!

The Cotton Candy for Four dessert is the perfect dessert  because it is both the most fun to play with and the least appealing to actually eat. Look at how the dark haired girl is actually putting it in her hair, which is almost certainly going to cause her to have to leave early when she notices that the spun sugar residue has made the whole top of her head gummy. But that just ADDS to her fun.  By leaving early, she will not have to eat so much as a spoon full of anything at all.

Her date, in the purple shirt, is having just as much fun as she is! He is so convulsed with laughter he had to close his eyes! Even if his dinner companion has to leave early, to keep from attracting ants,  that doesn't spoil his fun one bit! He has found more entertaining things to do with his silverware than eat! Clearly his date has seen him do this spoon-on-nose trick so many times before that she doesn't like to encourage him by  looking over at him. And despite this seeming rudeness, when the two of them look back on this special night in Vegas, they will both rate it a success knowing that neither of them consumed a single calorie.

The young man on the far left of the table has made a hilarious mustache out of his cotton candy because he knows that as long as he holds it in place between his lip and nose,  he will not have to make excuses for not eating.

Which brings us to the one girl who appears to have actually taken a bite of the cotton candy. She is a little more subdued than the others because she knows she has made a mistake. But she also realizes that she can quickly spit the whole mouth full back on to that big sloppy plate and no way anyone will even notice! That's why they serve it all formless in a big messy mound like that!! It is designed to be played with and spit out!

Here in example number 2. three gorgeous gaunt young people have ordered the spaghetti…knowing full well that the risks involved in ordering a dinner full of refined carbs will not apply to them! Not as long as they just HAVE FUN with their food and do not get side tracked by eating. This kind of behavior is so common with models that chefs no longer take it personally when they see beautifully attired people with amazing cheek bones spitting out everything they have ordered.

So the lesson is clear: Models definitely know how to have MORE FUN with their food than you do!

And taking all the drugs they can find  before dinner probably helps quite a bit too.

P.S.[image error] Ahem. Its not til November but if you're the kind of person who pre-orders books…(additional coughing) Also Barnes and Noble

Well, the Halloween yard decorations are for sale at Costco and you know what that means: its almost Christmas. Its also political season again.

Yes, I know its almost always  Christmas and Political Season.  They are two of the sado/masochistic traditions that  we as a country hold so dear that we celebrate them year round. True, elections lack the galvanizing economy boosting-gift-giving-ritual action. But come on!  They are also the gift that keeps on giving since they include everything else; They're a team sport,  a reality show,  a contest,  a holiday, a source of constant histrionic bulletins and  cataclysmic updates. They not only contain gossip, passion and petty arguments, but they're  full of  people who claim to be regularly communicating with Jesus!

Unfortunately arguing politically has always been a problem for me. I'm just not very good at it.  I usually know how I feel about the issues but rarely have I done enough exacting research in to the various historical details and precedents in each case to annihilate the arguments of my opponents. Or at least that is what I always thought was wrong with my approach.  But lately, as I watch things play out in Washington, as well as abroad, I have become convinced that all of my old assumptions may have been wrong. As usual I was being kept from a winning hand by too much over-achieving. That is why I have assembled the following tips on how a political argument is won.  I believe my pointers are useful to all, regardless of political leanings.

How to Argue Politics:

1.Begin by choosing an unshakable stance to which you are going to hold fast like you would to the steering wheel of a runaway vehicle with bad brakes.  Even when you sense you may be lurching wildly, or the steering wheel is unresponsive, just hang on tightly, no matter what you see or hear. As long as you are going a million miles an hour, there's no need to make any more adjustments at all,  Your extreme devotion to your eventual destination, despite what else anyone else says, will be your rudder, your anchor. (Think: Boehner in the budget ceiling debates.Or Sarah Palin when confronted on any empty headed counter-intuitive thing she says.)

2.Never allow lack of information to keep you from the passion you have for your side of the argument. Nothing needs to be solved. Your argument should  exist in an unencumbered vacuum where it should be allowed to circle back to the point at which it started.  No matter what side you are on, there are some excellent ways to make sure this happens.

If you are conservative and the other guy begins making some good liberal point involving basic ethics and human rights,stay your original course by having, at the ready, an ambiguous Biblical quote that can be interpreted as in support of anything. For example "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." If you'd rather not invoke religion,then another good argument-ender is :"If clean air and the environment means so much to you, how come I don't see you giving up your comfy home and your gas guzzling car?" Be sure to use as many complex metaphors as you can that reference Dwight D. Eisenhower or Barry Goldwater. Most people today can not remember who these men are and therefore will be helpless to refute them.

If you are liberal and faced with a piece of a conservative's  fiscal argument that seems too solid to dispute, it is always wise to invoke the people and customs of one European country or other to prove your point.  " The people of Switzerland don't carry guns and they have like one homicide a year.""The people of Sweden permit public nudity and drinking at every meal for the whole family and they have no rapes, ever." "The people of Belgium have socialized medicine and prescriptions cost a penny."" The people of Denmark have legalized drugs and drug related crime is non existent. Plus the rate of addiction is half of what ours is."  And if you are taken to task with the only real topper: "Well if the people of Europe all jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" you can simply answer "Yes. Because the people of Europe take better care of their infra structure than we do and their bridges are among the safest for jumping in the world."

If the people of Europe  do not appeal to you, the old "How can we waste millions on (war, supporting flailing dictators, tax cuts for the wealthy etc) when there are children starving in our own back yard?" is a time honored all purpose stall. (And this despite the truth that no matter how much  spending  is eventually curbed, or redirected and no matter which party has the majority in the Senate, the extra money is never going to be used to feed hungry kids (unless they somehow can band together and become The Church of the Hungry Youngsters, making them eligible for grants or tax exemptions.) As a liberal, your ace in the hole will be any parallels you might care to make to Truman or FDR. Feel free to totally fabricate your details, since almost no one you are arguing with will have the smallest grasp of what these people said or did.

3.Now as you begin your argument, remember that no matter what position you take, you'll need to open with one of the following: 'Understand that I love my country and support our troops." or "I may not agree with what you say, but I would defend to the death your right to say it." Say this with conviction, despite your own lingering doubts and suspicions that were you actually called upon in this capacity there is no telling what you could be counted upon to do.

4.Finally, remember that every single thing that the other guy says is definitely  wrong. There is no such thing as believing that someone is making a few good points on the other side of the argument. Taking in new information and changing your point of view in any way, ever, is considered weak.

5.No matter which position you have taken ,whenever you feel yourself starting to get confused or losing ground, feel free to stop for a minute, take a deep breath  and kill some time with a round of  blaming the media for distortions and bias. Both sides have equal rights to this.

6.Now get arguing! And take a hint from someone who used to work on talk shows: As much as possible tune out what your opponent is saying. Just Nod. Smile. Focus on the rolodex in your head. Make your points. Then say you have a plane to catch and get the hell out of there.,

P.S. Ahem. Its not til November but if you're the kind of person who pre-orders books…(additional coughing) Also Barnes and Noble

I resisted for a long time. I resisted it all. (As I previously noted a few blog entries ago…I'm also on Facebook.)

To be honest, life was fine without either of these things.  But I have a new book book coming out in November. (Pre-order it, won't you? Amazon or Barnes and Noble.)

I'm not sure why having a new book coming out equates to being on Twitter or Facebook. Especially since I am obviously going to be too embarrassed to do too much pimping or self promotion on either one. That little bit of misfortune was built in to my personality at a young age and no amount of de-programming seems to have much effect on it.(Although, here I am doing it right now.)

So far the only thing that being Twitter has brought to my life is the sudden need to write one liners every day, for free. Why THAT is a good thing is anyone's guess.

All that aside, there you have it. I'm on Twitter. (I should point out that  I'm not the only one! Yes. Its true. There are a lot of people on Twitter.) But…if you feel like it you can suddenly find me there. Uh, I mean follow me.

Now let us return to our regularly scheduled programming. And I will go back to trying to write a legitimate blog entry.

A couple of days ago,  I was unloading the packages from my shopping cart in to the back of my car in the Trader Joe's parking lot when a short haired young man in board shorts, a teeshirt and sun glasses came up to me.

"Excuse me m'am," he said, " But I'm taking a communications class and we've been asked to interview non violent people over 21. Just a couple of questions. Would that be okay?"

I shrugged.

"Are you non violent?" he asked.

"Well, for purposes of this discussion, I'll just say yes," I said.  Meanwhile, I was wondering, "He said 'A communications class.' Is he practicing being a news man? Or is this some kind of an anti-war thing? Does he want me to sign a petition?"

"Here. Let me show you my I.D." he said, taking out a big bill fold that looked oddly familiar, though I wasn't sure where I'd seen it before. From other sales pitches? Kids selling magazine subscriptions?

"If you're about to try to sell me something, don't bother," I said, "I'd be disqualified. I become violent when strangers tell me how to spend my money.."

"No no…" he said, "I'm just looking for sponsors in order to…"

"Forget it" I said, interrupting, "I don't want mints. I don't want magazine subscriptions. I don't want to make any donations right now."

"How about if I come to your house and offer my services for 24 hours." He said, " You can ask me to clean or order me around. I'm 18. I'm in my prime."

"It's a lovely offer," I said, now getting really confused because it was a kind of creepy thing to say since I didn't know him and so I couldn't tell if he was kidding or what. (I mean, its summer. Its hard for students to make money in the summer and….Naw. He was kidding. But still.)"But there's absolutely nothing you could be offering that I would be interested in buying…"

Eventually he shrugged, then he waved and walked off. As I turned away to complete unpacking my groceries (while trying not to further contemplate what would have happened if I had taken that guy up on his offer to come to my house and clean)  a second young man in the big long shorts approached. "I'm representing my communications class," he said,"…and I need to talk to non violent people who.."

"Forget it," I said, now ready to get in my car,  "I was just non violent for him."

"…are cver 21" he continued, "and who would .."

"No no no, I don't qualify." I said," I'm definitely over 21 but I'm violent now."

"No you're not." He said, chuckling.

"Yes I am too." I argued.

"No you're not." He said again, grinning.

"Yes I am so." I said.

"Oh, you are not," he said a third time and as he began to continue his pitch, a list of moves I learned when I took a street fighting class some years ago began to flip through my mind. I could do "heel palm". I could do "knee." I felt I needed to do something to make my point. So I  reached over and punched him.

Okay. I didn't really. I just got in the car and closed the door.

But Goddamn it… I should have. Just because of how much better if would have made the end of this story.

PS:

I have a new book coming out in November. If you are a non violent person over 21 and for some reason you could be talked in to pre-ordering it, you could do it here:http://tinyurl.com/3zyrhbc

I am a worrier. And don't think I  don't worry about that.  In fact, I just started a meditation course  to try and morph myself from a hand wringing anxiety sponge to  a beaming wellspring  of calm. While I am awaiting that transformation,  I continue to  fret about many things. One of them is not being able to keep my  emergency kit stocked with food.

There are two main reasons that I have this kit: 1.My lifelong bad habit of reading the newspaper  every  morning means that  I open each and every bright new day with some time that is specially devoted  to  empathizing with people I don't know who are dealing with devastating floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and military disasters. And 2. I live in California, a state that is  obsessed with reminding its residents that a horrifying earthquake is not just inevitable but long over due. While we are eagerly awaiting  it,  there are also fires,  mudslides and an intermittently bankrupt state government to keep us occupied. Fortunately for me, despite an unbalanced budget, they were able to find enough money to recently  put up some cheery signs on Pacific Coast Highway warning of the possibility of a tsunami,should conditions be agreeable.

Its hard for me to imagine my box of emergency supplies being very useful in an earthquake, tsunami or  fire since all three of them would require me to flee the premises. But I guess I read the grasshopper and the ants one time too many when I was a kid.  I plunged ahead and bought a big container in which to stash  food, water, a first aid kit and the roll of duct tape I still had from when  Atty. General John Ashcroft, of the Bush administration, insisted that we needed to be ready to seal all our windows with plastic sheeting.  Ah, what golden days those were for the duct tape business.  It must have seemed  like the arrival of a special better-than-Christmas TAPE holiday .  Imagine the corporate meetings they  had, trying to figure out what they could do to to keep the giant national duct tape celebration going.

Anyway, I persist  because  I somewhere deep in my soul I am preparing for a scenario in which my loved ones and I have survived that shift in tectonic plates or that dirty bomb terrorist attack and there we will be,  cut off from civilization for some finite period of time, wandering around in our sports jackets , looking too formal for our new  Mad Max landscape. After a few hours of that, it will just be a matter of time until the man and four dogs with whom I share my life will  begin staring at me and wondering what is for dinner. Definitely none of them will have put away any boxes of supplies. That much I know.  Nope, everyone will be looking at me like "So? Now what?".  Obviously it will have behooved me to have figured some of these things  out in advance.

The first time I shopped for this disaster food, I did my menu planning around the fact that in horrible circumstances, we would  all be pretty depressed.  Thus I bought things to eat that not only had a long shelf life but that might lift our spirits a little when we opened the box: Nuts, dried bananas, three kinds of jerky, high end canned soups. I got enormous flats from Costco of canned tuna or chicken, canned spaghetti, chocolate protein bars, malted milk balls. I bought so many of the  kind of tasty snacks  I try to stay away from because they're fattening that I began secretly to look forward to at least a small disaster so I could have a big hand full of bridge mix without feeling guilty.  And this impulse, of course,  lead me directly to an entirely different problem: It soon became impossible to keep my disaster supply box full of food .

It didn't take long for the raids to begin. Whenever I got hungry in the middle of the night or had been drinking sake , I would make a bee line for the terrorist supplies.   The nuts and dried bananas were the first to go.  Right after that I thought I'd have just one protein bar. But of course after the carton was opened,  all of them disappeared pretty quickly.   Canned beans? Sure, why not. One glass of cabernet and I'd be overcome with a romantic feeling about eating beans from a can that I've been harboring since I was in grade school watching old movies full of cowboys eating around a campfire. Mind you, I did't eat all my terrorist supplies in one bingey night. It  took me  a couple of weeks. But before I knew it, I had also consumed every can of the minestrone and the canned ravioli. By then, the only food left was a few cans of beets or  carrots. Those foods were safe because I never wanted to buy them in the first place.  I hate the taste of canned vegetables. (I also hate canned raviolis but they take on a certain gross reverse-appeal after a few glasses of wine.)

Eventually it occurred to me that my behavior left me with only one reasonable course of action.  I had  to force myself to fill my emergency preparedness box entirely with  cans of food I hate.  It was that or continue to have an empty emergency box that needed to be refilled, therefore rendering it useless as a disaster preparedness kit. This lead to a trip to Costco where I walked up and down the aisles answering the question "What else would I not eat if I were a little tipsy?"

True, an  emergency kit full of canned carrots and canned wax beans and canned beets is an emergency kit that will never be raided in the middle of the night. But its not going to do much to lift our depression after we're heading in to a second night without power or water, wondering when some helicopter is going to spot us gesturing wildly on the ground.   I can already hear the disparaging remarks from my neighbors who might need to rely on me and who are now faced with nothing but water logged beets and peas.   On the bright side I suppose by the time our lives resume in a normal fashion, we will all be slimmed down and full of vitamins .

Still, my dogs will fare okay. And that counts for something. I bought huge sacks of their usual diet.  Don't want to let down the dogs.  And  there's no danger of me eating their food in the middle of the night. At least I hope there isn't. I haven't tried it yet. Maybe its not all that bad. There are nice looking drawings of fresh salmon and vegetables on the sack. And a rushing stream. Peas still in the pod. Fresh tomatoes.  All in all, just one more reason why I better  hurry up and get further in to my new meditation class. A more relaxed and transcendent me isn't going to want anything to do with canned ravioli in the middle of the night. Maybe. Though I'm not so sure about the dog food.

I am a worrier. And don't think I  don't worry about that.  In fact, I just started a meditation course  to try and morph myself from a hand wringing anxiety sponge to  a beaming wellspring  of calm. While I am awaiting that transformation,  I continue to  fret about many things. One of them is not being able to keep my  emergency kit stocked with food.

There are two main reasons that I have this kit: 1.My lifelong bad habit of reading the newspaper  every  morning means that  I open each and every bright new day with some time that is specially devoted  to  empathizing with people I don't know who are dealing with devastating floods, earthquakes, tornadoes and military disasters. And 2. I live in California, a state that is  obsessed with reminding its residents that a horrifying earthquake is not just inevitable but long over due. While we are eagerly awaiting  it,  there are also fires,  mudslides and an intermittently bankrupt state government to keep us occupied. Fortunately for me, despite an unbalanced budget, they were able to find enough money to recently  put up some cheery signs on Pacific Coast Highway warning of the possibility of a tsunami,should conditions be agreeable.

Its hard for me to imagine my box of emergency supplies being very useful in an earthquake, tsunami or  fire since all three of them would require me to flee the premises. But I guess I read the grasshopper and the ants one time too many when I was a kid.  I plunged ahead and bought a big container in which to stash  food, water, a first aid kit and the roll of duct tape I still had from when  Atty. General John Ashcroft, of the Bush administration, insisted that we needed to be ready to seal all our windows with plastic sheeting.  Ah, what golden days those were for the duct tape business.  It must have seemed  like the arrival of a special better-than-Christmas TAPE holiday .  Imagine the corporate meetings they  had, trying to figure out what they could do to to keep the giant national duct tape celebration going.

Anyway, I persist  because  I somewhere deep in my soul I am preparing for a scenario in which my loved ones and I have survived that shift in tectonic plates or that dirty bomb terrorist attack and there we will be,  cut off from civilization for some finite period of time, wandering around in our sports jackets , looking too formal for our new  Mad Max landscape. After a few hours of that, it will just be a matter of time until the man and four dogs with whom I share my life will  begin staring at me and wondering what is for dinner. Definitely none of them will have put away any boxes of supplies. That much I know.  Nope, everyone will be looking at me like "So? Now what?".  Obviously it will have behooved me to have figured some of these things  out in advance.

The first time I shopped for this disaster food, I did my menu planning around the fact that in horrible circumstances, we would  all be pretty depressed.  Thus I bought things to eat that not only had a long shelf life but that might lift our spirits a little when we opened the box: Nuts, dried bananas, three kinds of jerky, high end canned soups. I got enormous flats from Costco of canned tuna or chicken, canned spaghetti, chocolate protein bars, malted milk balls. I bought so many of the  kind of tasty snacks  I try to stay away from because they're fattening that I began secretly to look forward to at least a small disaster so I could have a big hand full of bridge mix without feeling guilty.  And this impulse, of course,  lead me directly to an entirely different problem: It soon became impossible to keep my disaster supply box full of food .

It didn't take long for the raids to begin. Whenever I got hungry in the middle of the night or had been drinking sake , I would make a bee line for the terrorist supplies.   The nuts and dried bananas were the first to go.  Right after that I thought I'd have just one protein bar. But of course after the carton was opened,  all of them disappeared pretty quickly.   Canned beans? Sure, why not. One glass of cabernet and I'd be overcome with a romantic feeling about eating beans from a can that I've been harboring since I was in grade school watching old movies full of cowboys eating around a campfire. Mind you, I did't eat all my terrorist supplies in one bingey night. It  took me  a couple of weeks. But before I knew it, I had also consumed every can of the minestrone and the canned ravioli. By then, the only food left was a few cans of beets or  carrots. Those foods were safe because I never wanted to buy them in the first place.  I hate the taste of canned vegetables. (I also hate canned raviolis but they take on a certain gross reverse-appeal after a few glasses of wine.)

Eventually it occurred to me that my behavior left me with only one reasonable course of action.  I had  to force myself to fill my emergency preparedness box entirely with  cans of food I hate.  It was that or continue to have an empty emergency box that needed to be refilled, therefore rendering it useless as a disaster preparedness kit. This lead to a trip to Costco where I walked up and down the aisles answering the question "What else would I not eat if I were a little tipsy?"

True, an  emergency kit full of canned carrots and canned wax beans and canned beets is an emergency kit that will never be raided in the middle of the night. But its not going to do much to lift our depression after we're heading in to a second night without power or water, wondering when some helicopter is gong to see us.   I can already hear the disparaging remarks from my neighbors who might need to rely on me and who are now faced with nothing but water logged carrots and soggy wax beans.   On the bright side I suppose by the time our lives resume in a normal fashion, we will all be slimmed down and full of vitamins .

Still, my dogs will fare okay. And that counts for something. I bought huge sacks of their usual diet.  Don't want to let down the dogs.  And  there's no danger of me eating their food in the middle of the night. At least I hope there isn't. I haven't tried it yet. Maybe its not all that bad. There are nice looking drawings of fresh salmon and vegetables on the sack.  All in all, just one more reason why I better  hurry up and get further in to my new meditation class. A more relaxed and transcendent me isn't going to want anything to do with canned ravioli in the middle of the night. Maybe.

Yesterday as I left the supermarket, a  middle aged woman in a floral print blouse and nondescript black pants  blocked me on my way to my car. She looked a little beat up but, speaking as a person who often looks a little beat up herself ,  I didn't want to judge her.  At the same time, I thought it was pretty annoying the way she stepped right in front of me  and stopped my progress. Up until that point, I had been clipping right along, making very good time leaving that market. I hate that market. I couldn't wait  to get out of there.

But before I could begin to offer her any of the surly snarly attitude  for which I am internationally beloved,  she got my attention. "Do you know what pellagra is?" she asked me.

Pellagra!

Now there was a word I hadn't heard in casual conversation in a while.  Instantly I was impressed and interested. Apparently, I thought to myself, she is raising money to fight pellagra, a disease that has kind of fallen in to the  reliquary with scurvy and rickets. Good for her, I was now thinking, wondering when she was going  to lead me over to a card table. If I'm going to be corralled in to making a donation, I had concluded at this point, I'm glad its to fight pellagra. I mean, why should  all my funds only be going to more contemporary and fashionable diseases like cancer, AIDS and MS when pellagra goes over looked and unaddressed.  It  deserves my attention.

So I answered her. "Yes, I've heard of it." I said, " Isn't it a disease caused by a vitamin deficiency? Actually, I think maybe my uncle had it."

I threw that uncle thing in  to make the conversation a little more personally relevant . That way when she hit me up for funds, I'd have a better reason to be generous.

""No," she said, " It causes people to disappear. And then the birds get bigger."

"Oh. Right. Right." I said, now understanding why she wasn't carrying a clipboard or a cannister or offering me any pamphets"  I guess that isn't what my uncle had after all. Okay. Well, good. Thank you." Then I pushed past her and made a beeline  to my car.

And as I drove away, and revisited all the details of our exchange,  the thing that  I couldn't get over is that I THANKED HER.

I know for a fact that there are no nude pictures of me circulating anywhere . For one thing, I never had any taken. I'm just not the type to do that. I also felt that it would somehow take away from my work . By which I mean; how could I hope to make a living pointing out other peoples imperfections if mine were glaringly on display?  Which brings me to this: When did everyone everywhere decide they were so goddamn hot that they needed as many strangers as possible to see them naked? I mean, there has always been a group of people whose job definitions included naked posing. But  it didn't used to be most of us.

Just a few years ago, when people thought about fulfilling their potential, they didn't necessarily mean that they hoped they could one day rise to enough social prominence and popularity  to be permitted to pose for pictures with their butts sticking out . Back then,  a guy who looked like Anthony Weiner would have woken up in the morning, looked at himself in the mirror and thought "Well, I'm not the best looking guy but, know what?  I look pretty good. For me. I mean, for an average looking human who  looks a great deal like a ferret , thumbs up.  I'm doing okay."

But then it somehow  came to pass that Paris Hilton and her pals had so much  influence on the culture at large that being "hot" became part of every job definition.  And its left me feeling nostalgic for the time when there was still a nice range of different ways to display embarrassing egomania in a public persona. There were dignified loud mouths (see: Prince Phillip).  There were substance abusing show offs (see: Rose, Axel) even in the political arena (Kennedy,Ted).  You could present yourself as a brilliant scientist or an interesting smart ass and not  also feel the need to pose unclothed holding only  a towel. Really. Its true!  I swear I'm not making this up.  In those days, politicians with bad judgment used to date strippers and put them on the payroll.(See: Mills, Wilbur.) But now they've fallen under the influence of  that old feminist saying:"We have become the men we wanted to marry." Today's politicians have finally become the strippers they wanted to put on the payroll.

I've heard people say that the naked picture thing is now such a common  by product of internet social networking that its not even worth a raised eyebrow. Yet the  problem with a sexting elected official continues to reside in the notion that where human behavior and character is concerned, the whole is the sum of its parts. Because the only reason to even have an election is to pick out a special member of the group who can best represent that group's unified interests. On the other hand, if sending out pictures of your dick is now so ho-hum that it can no longer  even be classified as bad judgment, I guess those of us who still have it filed that way may need to  download some cultural software updates. Or move to Great Britain.

And having said that, I have to confess that I kind of count on not seeing naked lusty butt shots  of the people I most admire. I hope there are no naked pictures kicking around  of  Jane Goodall or Mark Twain or Robert Benchley or Kurt Vonnegut Jr. or Lynda Barry . I would be heartbroken to learn that David Attenborough had taken pictures of himself without his pants and sent them out to everyone who said they liked his BBC documentaries about shrews, terns and horseshoe crabs.  (And this despite the fact that I have noticed that every one of his docs includes footage of him sitting inches away from a pair of some bird, mammal or reptile who are smack  in the midst of coitus.)

So I guess I am calling for a return to a wide variety of colorful, interesting and individually chosen paths to ego-maniacal career destruction. It seems like a good idea to me to leave the naked dick and boob shot approach to those winners of the genetic crapshoot  in desperate need of some updates on their IMDB profiles.

Here is the piece they published.

But in case any one is interested, below is the piece before it was cut down by editors. It contains a few extra theoretical jokes. And if you were wondering how a piece like this is born in the first place: the topic was assigned

A Renaissance in Rudeness by Merrill Markoe

Perhaps you read about Lakeysha Beard , the 39 year old woman who was charged with disorderly conduct for talking loudly on her cell phone in the designated Quiet Car of an Amtrak train, as she traveled from Oakland California to Portland Oregon. According to the Oregon State Troopers who finally escorted her off, she had talked non- stop for 16 hours, despite repeated complaints and warnings.

At first I viewed this story as a perfect parable of modern-rudeness. I began to make a Gilbertian list in my head of other people I'd like to see similarly restrained.

I wished for the arrest of people who refused to maintain eye contact during a conversation because they were texting; giddy at the thought of cell-phoners in theatre audiences, restaurants and long lines being taken away in hand cuffs. But my joy was cut short when it occurred to me that even bothering to have a negative opinion about the above was casting myself as a relic from another age. I might as well be quoting quaint pieces of advice by Emily Post about ill mannered people who crinkle the cellophane on their candies during a matinee.

Add up the numbers and it becomes clear that everything we  knew about the working of manners has shifted. Lakeysha Beard is the brave herald of an emerging renaissance of rudeness.

In the old rudeness, rules were made to keep people from intruding on your privacy. In the new civility, the idea that you would have the nerve to claim any place that gets satellite signals as your private space is what is rude, because you are interfering with someone else's individual rights of expression. By entering any public or private space, even if you hold the mortgage, you are signing a generic release form, agreeing to be an extra, if not a principal player, in the blogs, feeds, videos, webcasts, podcasts and status updates of whoever else happens to be around.

Even in the Rest Room, you are with the multitudes. And everyone you see is in touch with everyone they know. The person in the stall beside you is talking to people in their dorm, who are skyping. The one on the other side is posting a picture of your shoes on their Tumblr.

In this updated model we are 7 billion people, each preoccupied with our own individual broadcast. If for some reason, someone is bothering you by talking too loudly on their cell phone, …. well, what's stopping you from calling someone yourself, Mr. Selfish Solitude?  And if the person you call is only half listening because they are playing Modern Warfare 3…well, so? By trying to put restrictions on the behavior of others, aren't you the one who is being rude?  What kind of an egomaniac are you to assume you are so fascinating that everyone should just drop everything else they are doing whenever you show up? Why should your story about what happened to you at work take precedence over the 439 people on Facebook who have been waiting for an hour to get a ROFLMAO?

In the new civility, it is you who is being inconsiderate, demanding the right to sit there quietly while everyone else is busily connecting. Who do you think you are, withholding LOLS and LIKES from those who have LOLed and LIKEd you? Don't you care enough about everyone you've known since grade school and the friends of your friends to at least post a picture of your dinner?

So we see that LaKeysha is not a bad example. She is the  harbinger of what is to come. In her details there is much to learn. For example: after the Amtrak authorities determined that Quiet Car rules had been violated,  LaKeysha was still permitted to talk for sixteen hours before she was escorted off. That train rolled through eleven more stations before the police made her feel "disrespected" By then, she was only one hour away from her home.

Here we see that within the new civility, there are indeed limits to be imposed on public cell phoners. Sixteen consecutive hours now defines the moment where acceptable phone calling disintegrates in to nuisance.

But these limitations are temporary. One day when we all have receivers implanted in our skulls, and no one ever sits quietly, not even during brain surgery, perhaps LeKeysha will be praised in text books as the woman who liberated the skies from remaining cell phone restrictions… finally freeing men, women and children to talk non-stop on flights all the way to Australia and beyond.

And… I gotta run . Sorry to be rude but Drew Friedman just posted a new picture of Shemp on Facebook. I want to be the first to give him an LOL.