SIDE EFFECTS

If you take a person who is right-handed and make him switch to writing with his left hand, you run the risk of creating dyslexia—dyslexics of the world untie! The brain just doesn’t have that kind of elasticity; it specializes, side to side, lobe to lobe, region to region. Different parts are in charge of different functions, just like some of us write code, or sell coffee, or clean the litter box.

Creative functions are often mapped to be right-brained functions. Oh and by the way, whichever side of your brain is dominant, it drives the opposite hand, like we were all cross-wired when God created Adam. My question is, say you take a left-handed person, someone with a theoretical greater aptitude for painting, drawing, writing—WRITING. Say you take left-handed writer, a person dominated by creative function, working from his right brain and accustomed to using his left hand to imagine his art AND THEN YOU GIVE HIM A KEYBOARD on which to write. You invoke use of both hands! What then happens to cognitive function? There’s got to be some effect. If it’s important enough not to change writing hands to preserve mental stability, what does sudden two-handed involvement create? How does it change use of brain sidedness? And what effect does that have on the writing?

Certainly this would not work for a person with a severed corpus callosum—the connection of the two hemispheres of the brain. Both sides must think together in order to tell the fingers how to move. Or does it? What do I not know?

The keyboard went through 26 variations (one for each letter of the alphabet) before it standardized at the QWERTY (your upper left alphabet keys). It had to be redesigned so all the letter arms wouldn’t stick together on the old manuals when they moved up to strike the ribbon. Makes me wonder, though, about the bias of the consonants and vowels, those assigned to the left. How do we use those in the language today differently perhaps from the time before the emergence of typewritten text?

Here’s the thing. Left-handedness, the left, has long been considered bad. Of course the social bias has begun to lift in modern times, but it’s still more difficult to find left-handed scissors. B. F. Skinner teaches us that behavior can be learned by either positive or negative reinforcement. If long-term, culturally ingrained behavior has given us a bias against the left for centuries, how could we believe we created and use an alphabet-scrambled keyboard unbiasedly?

I know there are writers who’d swear by their Underwood, or their Dell, but how do you scratch your head in the middle of writing or enjoy a cup of hot beverage? You have to take your hand off your art to think or to sip. How can this be productive? Progressive?

Musicians are shaking their heads at my questions. How many instruments do you play one-handedly? The kazoo? Musicians always have to play both-handedly, compose that way too. So this is a dumb debate. But I still wonder how different music would be if, say, a piano keyboard were arranged backwardly, descending notes left to right. How much of our language has to do with its written and read form left to right? How is our culture affected? How would we be different if we wrote English from right to left? Does opposing primary brain-sidedness in a culture cause conflict? Is war a side effect?

HIGH PATHETICAL

If a man were a complete sentence—Mr. Complete Sentence, let’s say—his person would be the subject and so he would start off naked. Well, we would have to DO something about that, wouldn’t we? So we’d put his underwear on and his underwear would be the verb, or he could wear swimming trunks, in which case he’d be all set—the man and his swimsuit would be a complete sentence, noun and verb: “Jesus wept.” Indeed. Of course the man might want to do something more elaborate than swimming, like going to work or taking a trip and so we could put more clothes on him, shirt and undershirt forming prepositional phrases to support the central noun. His watch would be an adjective (and if he were Mrs. Complete Sentence he’d have a lot more adjectives as women often do) and his belt is the adverb because it describes how the verb is covered. Oh my, we could be getting into dangerous territory here. Let’s not even talk about what forms a period or an exclamation point! ! Let’s not talk at all. I’m tired of talking. Sentences are often too long and should be commuted, right? Right? All this nonsense only proves that I’d be a disaster at early childhood education, and at politics.

ADD VICE

A person without a vice is a dangerous thing. Have you tried practical jokes? I find them wonderfully appealing, but there's always revenges you have to keep ducking. And I'd avoid victimizing anyone under your own roof. You really don't want retaliation to visit you in your home. I miss working in an office with co-workers who were always ready prey—the copier loaded with hot pink paper, the paper clips all linked together, a whole birthday party for someone when it isn’t her birthday. Still, now I have the neighbors, some of them. You have to choose wisely who can take a joke, someone who would play a joke back on you, then avoid that person like the avian flu.

What makes a bad habit a good bad habit? Does it have to be ingestible? Does it have to be something you can pick up at a gas station? I drink hot tea. I mean hot tea! It's a habit, but I don't think it could ever be classified as bad! You certainly couldn't get it between the pickled eggs and lotto tickets. Tea indeed! Plus it's way too unexpensive. Tea!

Surfing? You can't put that in your mouth. Besides, it has a spiritual reputation. If you can't mix it with peyote, I don't think you can classify it as vice, nor any sport for that matter, except golf maybe, but who counts golf as sport? I thought that was just another name for adultery. Adultery isn’t a vice because it’s so strictly a sin, listed by name on Moses’ tablets. It’s not petty enough to be vice. Besides, who has time for a fling? If I had time for a fling, I’d have time for way more shoes than what I have.

Look, if you’re not going to take drugs or caffeine or alcohol, and you can’t do extreme sports all the time, you might want to consider putting on a shirt and tie and riding around town on a bicycle because Mormonism is about the only bad thing there is left that doesn't cause acid reflux.

Angelina

Can someone explain to me the appeal of Angelina Jolie? I was watching “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” the other night and couldn’t help but think, for the millionth time, that there’s something rather ridiculous about our collective fascination with “Angie”. For one, does she always make that face? At the beginning of one of her movies I’m sure she’s making a face. But then as the movie goes on I have to entertain the notion that she’s not making a face at all but that I’m seeing her features in repose. Always a bit disconcerting to imagine that kewpie-doll pout at all hours of the day, in sleep, while reading, while working out, etc.

Now, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is a terrible movie, and I don’t want to judge her too harshly based on her work therein, but I think it’s probably a bad sign when you find yourself thinking, “Man, Brad Pitt is way more talented and classy than his co-star.”

That thought occurred to me about twenty minutes in. Then, near the climax (which, for these two randy assassins, is a “no-pun-intended” affair), I had another thought that was equally disturbing: “Man, Brad Pitt is acting circles around his co-star here.”

Not sure you could describe what she does as “acting.” Angelina seems to have three primary faces which she employs at random in her scenes. There’s the “I’m beautiful and mysterious” face with the eyebrow cocked and the pillowy lips outthrust; that’s apparently the default. Then there’s the “I’m angry as hell and about to take you out” look, which varies from look number one in that the upper pillow is drawn back to show some teeth. Finally there’s the “this emotion is rather strong. I might cry” look, which builds on looks one and two by adding an uneven crinkle between the eyes.

Now, I don’t know if Angelina has had plastic surgery or not, but I’m often uncomfortable watching those who have (Jerry Jones, Michael Jackson, Melanie Griffith, Robert Redford). I get nervous for these people. I’m worried the face won’t hold up, that during an exchange with the interviewer (presumably an editor can remove these moments in television or movies) the reconstructed face will make a false move, will betray itself as less and human. I’ve seen it happen. A sudden smile, a laugh, an expression of surprise is marred by a series of muscles that turn left instead of right, and the face conveys baffled rage, for instance, instead of cosmopolitan amusement. I’ve seen it happen so many times that I really have a hard time watching anyone who’s had extensive work. I had the same worry about Angelina before I realized that she’s solved this problem by limiting herself to the above three expressions, all of which she’s mastered (other stars, take note).

So I got to thinking; I’d like to change my mind. I’d like to be convinced. Can someone explain the appeal of Angelina Jolie? Don’t tell me about breasts or legs; let’s face it, lots of women have those (almost all!) and some in superior proportion, etc. I want to know about star power, charisma, talent, some combination of above. If that fails, can someone at least tell me a decent movie in which she’s starred? I couldn’t come up with anything. There’s the Tomb Raider series (practically unwatchable), Mr. and Mrs. Smith (literally unwatchable) and then…what else? Girl Interrupted was good, I guess. But all Angelina did was scowl and smoke cigarettes. I’ve seen parts of Gia, and it wasn’t bad but all Angelina did was scowl and smoke cigarettes. I mean, can this girl *act*? Does that matter?

One final note. Yes, I’m aware she might be a person of high moral character, a hard-won virtue resulting from years of reckless living. She apparently supports certain charitable causes. And yes, her reckless times were suitably lurid. She once had relations with her brother, for instance, and once kept a phial of blood around her neck. But then, her vices were rather ostentatious, weren’t they, and on further reflection, nothing out of the sex/drugs/rockandroll ordinary. So I’m still looking for some reason to find her significant. If I were Jennifer Anniston, I’d be pissed. I’d be watching Mr. and Mrs. Smith and thinking, “He left me for this? A stop light has more range than this woman. I was in Good Girl. Did anyone see? I was in Good Girl.”

DRAG MOVIES

TSOTSI is not the South African remake of the Dustin Hoffman film, TOOTSIE, not at all. At no point does young Tsotsi, radical as he may be with his violence and subsequent moral turn-around, at no point does he dress in drag—not to hold up a man on the subway, not to harass a man in a wheelchair, not to force a woman at gunpoint to breastfeed a baby.

It wasn’t his baby. He stole the baby, but that was by mistake, everything else was intentional. He shot the mother and I couldn’t figure out why she was coming back toward her car as Tsotsi was stealing it, the viewer doesn’t find out until you hear the baby cry. Long away from the crime scene, long away from its mother, long away from where the car functioned, Tsotsi takes the baby with him. In a hopelessly surprising move, he puts the baby in a shopping bag and begins his change. Tsotsi is at the end of his rope, where he can hold on no longer, and now he holds a baby as well. Priorities shift. Paradigms change. The baby needs a change!

How a newspaper diaper works in conjunction with excess neglect is beyond my suspension of disbelief, but okay. It’s a movie, no human beings were harmed in the making of this….but Tsotsi is seen killing ants off the baby’s face, so red flag to the animal rights activists. Maybe they were computer-generated ants.

Anyway, with a lecture on decency in his head, a lecture delivered by a friend whom he beats to cosmetic oblivion, all Tsotsi needs is some tenderness. He finds it in his care of the infant and tenderness begins to grow inside of him. He gives the baby back. He refuses the easy answers and he gives the baby back to the arms of the father, not on the ground or in the shopping bag, not following police instructions, he gives the baby back into the arms of the father. Then he gives himself up, a christ with arms extended away from his body, ready to give all of himself. Roll credits.

The South African setting doesn’t particularly inform on nationality or ethnicity. (Or if it does, it’s lost something in translation.) The story could have happened anywhere poverty exists outside of opulence, and vice versa. It could have happened in English as easily as it happened in Tsotsi-Taal. Despite the violence, despite the cute baby, despite the beautiful breast feeder, this morality tale does not stretch beyond archetype. It is interesting/amazing that someone could make that kind of changed in his life, but it’s only entertaining to that point, simply to know that it happened, otherwise it drags. It is not interesting to let the story play out. It is more interesting as a story that is told and not shown, unlike TOOTSIE.

UNFITTED SHEETS

My mother told me not to have sex in a sleeping bag. It just wasn’t a good idea. She did not elaborate. However, she failed to warn me off deep-fitted sheets.

My bed wears garters. Yes, garters. Elastic runs corner to corner, side to side and clamped down on that ever-loving fitted sheet. Without the garters, the sheet flips off in the middle of the night, or in the middle of something else, and wraps up around your head. It’s quite an astounding fright. It might be something that would happen in an Edgar Allan Poe story except it happens too instantly—snap! And your head’s wrapped up in the corner of your fitted sheet.

This wouldn’t happen with a standard mattress, except I don’t have a standard mattress. Oh no. I had to get a deep mattress with a pillow top. Surely if they make the mattress they’d make the sheet for it. Not so much. If that were really the case, no one would manufacture mattress garters. Mattress garters! I tell you, put some stockings on my bed’s four legs and it’d be ready for a night out!