Mallory's Camera

Oh, this is sad! 😢

The Pine Bush UFO Fair & parade is scheduled for today, and it is raining.

In the mid-1980s, Pine Bush, New York, was the UFO Capital of the Western World. Hundreds of reports described a V-shaped craft adorned with colored lights that hovered slowly and silently in the sky, a sighting that became known as "the Westchester Boomerang" 'cause I guess it was sighted in Westchester County, too.

Of course, Pine Bush is relatively near what was, in the mid-80s, a military base, Stewart Airfield.

I remain agnostic on the subject of UFOs.

And will probably toddle off to Pine Bush anyway in a few minutes 'cause short drive.

###

Meanwhile, despite the humid, hot, sticky weather of the past few days, I have been trying to hold off on AC because AC is terrible for the environment (energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions 'cause refrigerants.)

So, yesterday I bought myself a portable DREO fan, which I gotta say, is just amazing 'cause it keeps me cool even when the Patrizia-torium is a sauna.

DREO is made in China, which I don't like. I've been boycotting goods made in China since forever for a reason nobody really cares about anymore: Tibet.

But sometimes ya gotta buy what ya gotta buy.

The smoke from the fires in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and northwestern Ontario has hit upstate New York.

The rising full moon last night was blood red.

And the sky this morning looks like a diffractionless opal, a whitish translucent wash with the barest undercoat of blue through which the sun just glowers. I'd planned on taking it easy today anyway, because I kinda knocked myself out weeding the New Paltz plot yesterday.

Before:



After:



Doesn't look like I did a lot, does it? But it was four full wheelbarrows of brambles and other assorted weeds.

Harder work than I thought it would be, & I was kinda achey from all that squatting & pulling. So I figured I'd go easy on myself today. Resume weeding tomorrow, but get there while it's still cool out.

And that turns out to be a good decision because today I'm feeling a kind of generalized air hunger, some shortness of breath with exertion. Though whether that's from the smoky air or generalized anxiety I can't quite tell.

###

Said anxiety is due to Icky being even more of a dick than usual.

Last fall, after I closed down my garden in Hyde Park, I brought all my gardening stuff back here & stashed it in the shed because I thought I'd be gardening here this summer.

Then, six weeks or so ago, Icky announced that he didn't want to garden with me. Was it my breath? My ineffective underarm deodorant? My generally displeasing personality? No! It was that Icky does not like to work or play with others.

Fortunately, the good folk at the Hyde Park garden had just written me a love note: We miss you!

So, I decided to go back & garden there again. (And, of course, the New Paltz Community Garden just found some open spots, so now I'm juggling two gardens!) And I transported all my gardening stuff back to Hyde Park.

###

Then yesterday, Icky went on a tear because he decided all the gardening stuff in the shed belonged to him.

All day long, he fusillaged me with text: Those tomato cages are mine. I’ve had them since before I moved here. I put them all back there after the season

I texted back, As I said, I brought the 10 cages I used in my garden last year to your shed in October last year because I thought I was going to be gardening here this year. After you told me you’d prefer to garden alone, I took those same 10 cages—they were stacked on the left side of the shed—back to Hyde Park. That’s all I know, Iggy.

He texted: Where are my cages then? I put all the cages I used all of last summer in that shed. There are no cages now. I never saw yours in there.

###

This is the kind of petty hammering he does relentlessly & he is so fucking relentless that he usually gets his own way—because who in their right mind wants to spend hours texting about fucking tomato cages?

Finally, he called.

"Look," I said. "We're at an impasse. And I'm at a disadvantage in all my transactions with you since you own the house, so you have the power. Are you interested in some kind of compromise or should we just keep up the text chain till I move out?"

This was said with more bravado than I actually have, of course.

Moving out would be difficult at this point.

I'm an elderly cat lady and the rental situation hereabouts is not exactly clamoring for elderly cat ladies.

On the other hand, I'm an excellent tenant, and Icky doesn't want the house sitting empty for the 20 days of each month he's not on the premises.

And I suppose it's possible that I did grab some of Icky's tomato cages without thinking about it—though I'm certainly not going to admit that to him.

The compromise?

I'll bring back any extra tomato cages and check the slag heap at the Hyde Park garden where old tomato cages go to die. Bring him those.

###

The situation is highly anxiety-provoking because it reminds me how little control I have over my life.

Of course, because of the way I was brought up, it never occurred to me that one could control one's life simply by making wise choices. I was a waif bufffeted about by forces I couldn't control! And then as an adult, I kind of mythologized that choicelessness! Turned it into a philosophy. Became fatalistic.

I don't know what the answer is.

I do know many people who have organized their lives around making wise choices, and for many of those people life has worked out well, but for just as many, life hasn't.

The random factor is very, very powerful.

One of Icky's side hustles is dog-sitting.

He showed up here yesterday with an absolutely adorable spaniel mix, an eager-to-please guy named Tofu.

Pity the poor animal that is abandoned to Icky's care! Think puppy version of Oliver Twist at the orphanage or a canine Jane Eyre at Lowood.

I felt so sorry for poor Tofu that I volunteered to take him for a walk.

We hit the rail trail in a drizzle. But practically the moment we got out of the car, the sun burst from the clouds & within five minutes, the sky was blue & in my red sweater, I was overdressed for the heat!

My mood-o-meter swung from bleak to benificent in a heartbeat.

Which makes me think I do not have Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I have Angst-When-the-Sun-Isn't-Shining Affective Disorder.

I really should move to Nevada or Arizona or something.

###

Otherwise, I spent the day Remunerating & reading Barry Diller's autobiography, which I found quite fascinating.

When Who Knew first came out, it racked up huge amounts of press because Barry Diller is gay but Barry Diller is also Mr. Diane von Fürstenberg. (I must note here that back in the Jurassic when I was modeling, my two DVF wrap-around dresses were my proudest possessions, & I just love Diane von Fürstenberg to death!)

For years, the assumption was that Diane von Fürstenberg was a beard.

But, no, sez Diller in his autobiography. The two met & fell in love back at the dawn of time. They had passionate sex just like any other two people in love. And in between dates, Diller continued to have sex with guys.

Forty years later, they got married.

I don't understand why this is so hard for the maintream media—I am pointing my finger at yew-w-w-w-w, Daily Mail!—to comprehend.

Personally, genitalia has never been the determining factor in who I fall in love with.

I fall in love with men, I fall in love with women. And anyone I fall in love with, I want to have sex with.

(Although it occurs to me that I probably should have written that in the past tense because I doubt very much I am capable of falling in love with anyone anymore.)

Obviously, sexual desire is a spectrum.

But more than that, terms like "gay" and "cis" are essentially marketing categories—"gay" considerably more than "cis" because show me a marginalized group, & I'll show you a business development opportunity!

But anyway, Barry Diller's sexuality & love life don't interest me.

No, Barry Diller's horizontal leap from Hollywood mogul to digital tycoon is what interests me.

Today, Diller owns InterActiveCorps (IAC), a media fleet that used to include Match.com & Tinder, and still owns a lot of B-list cyber-publications. (People! Barry Diller owns People! I used to work there!) Diller also owns Expedia & all its subsidiary vassals like Tracelocity, OrbitZ, Hotwire, etc.

How do you end up owning all these companies?

Well, you start out in the William Morris mailroom, just like everybody else. And you devote the first 10 years of your career swinging from salary-star to higher salary-star, spending relatively little on status details.

And after you accumulate a stake, you start buying the little pieces of the Rube Goldberg machine that the tastemakers ridicule or overlook but that you see potential in because you have vision. Barry Diller bought the decidedly low-rent QVC because when he looked at it, he immediately understood that screens could be used for purposes other than telling stories.

That was genius-level insight.

I was around during the early days of the Internet, too, & I never had that insight! Although, of course, today—a mere 35 years later—it seems so-o-ooo obvious.

Also, Barry Diller refused to feel bad about his own failures. I mean, he registered them and felt disappointment, sure. But he refused to dwell on them. Describing a mega-deal-fallen-through to someone, he commented, They won. We lost. Next.

Which I think is a demonstration of extraordinary emotional intelligence.

Rained all day yesterday, so I didn't leave the house except for a couple of car trips for provisions (half & half, McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese—I actually like MickyD's though I limit my consumption to every couple of months because so-oo unhealthy!)

I felt kind of ill in a subthreshold way that was difficult to get a handle on. My asthma has been acting up. THC, it turns out, is an effective bronchodilator, which is good though even in small quantities, THC makes me loopy, which I don't like—although I dislike it less than the inhalers they actually prescribe.

I kept sneezing and my nose was running—so maybe some virus?

And my insides felt off. (Before the MickeyD's, smartass! 😀) Like if I thought about it very much, I'd feel nauseated.

Basically, I suppose, I just do not like days without sunshine.

When I finally assume complete dominion over the known Universe, I'm gonna make it so that it only rains at night.

###
I was gonna garden today, but it is raining again.

I still have to go over the bridge. Belinda invited me over for lunch, and she is planning an elaborate menu (since we haven't seen each other for six weeks or so), and I don't want to hurt her feelings.

Does seem ridiculous to me that my moods—and possibly my physical wellbeing—are so absolutely predicated around the weather, But they are!

Temps hit 40° F yesterday, so you know—fabulous.

I ran around outside for a couple of hours with my coat unbuttoned 'cause after 10 straight days where the temperatures never rose above 20°, 40° felt hot.

One warmish day was not enough to melt the white shroud of ice encasing the landscape, but by the end of the day, there were many more patches where the yellow grass poked through.

###

Mostly, though, I stayed inside and Remunerated because bills to pay, end of the month, etc, etc.

Adrienne sent me the PR materials she'd prepared for the Ulster County Democratic nominating committee. They included a truly horrifying photograph that made Adrienne look like the scariest old lady you've ever sat next to on a bus (American flag backdrop, though, so that was good.)

The PR materials also included what Adrienne thinks are the top political issues important to Wallkillians (Wallkillers?): (1) lack of medical care and transportation, (2) farm-to-table food, and (3) an art community.

And I am thinking, Say wh-h-hat????

The biggest political issue hereabouts is the current prison strike since prisons are practically the only industry in this part of Ulster County.

The Democratic Governor of New York State, Kathy Hochul, is very opposed to prison strikes and is helicoptering in National Guardsman to take the place of the prison guards walking the picket lines—which makes for kind of an interesting dilemma here in the heart of Trumplandia: Mouth-foaming Trump supporters are actually pro prison union here because their relatives, neighbors, & friends are the ones out on the picket lines.

If she wants to win, Adrienne is gonna have to be pro prison union, too, whatever the official Democratic party line is.

Also, Wallkill has no grocery stores or supermarkets. It is technically a food desert. That is an issue far more serious than access to urgent care clinics.

Adrienne spent most of her life in Queens, so she is conditioned to give knee-jerk, Big City answers to questions like, What are the most important local issues?

But honestly? I think Adrienne needs to spend some time in the reeducation camp.

###

And, of course, no sign from the person who used to sysop the Shawangunk Dems' website. Highly irresponsible, that, and a reminder that you must build redundancy in any time you're doing anything on the Internet.

Presumably, I can get Adrienne space on the Ulster County Democrats' server.

###

In the evening, I debated the True Function of Humor for an hour or so on the phone with Ichabod.

As noted, I am a Big Fan of humor and an especially Big Fan of inappropriate, politically incorrect humor.

I think the moment when you "get" a punchline is exactly equivalent to satori, that Zen Buddhism moment of profound insight when the true nature of reality suddenly becomes clear.

In my next incarnation, I'm gonna invent a religion entirely based on Holocaust jokes!

###

The conversation with Ichabod centered on two "jokes."

Louis CK: You should never rape anyone unless you have a reason like you want to fuck somebody and they won't let you.

Donald J. Trump: You can grab 'em by the pussy.

"The Louis CK quote is pretty funny," I said. "The Trump quote is not funny. But that's because it wasn't a joke."

"You don't think he was trying to get a laugh?" Ichabod asked.

"Oh, on one level, sure. The sheer absurdity of the situation. But honestly? He was telling the exact truth about his experiences as a mega-celebrity."

"How do you know?"

"Hey! I wasn't an entertainment journalist all those years for nothing!"

"But Louis CK was telling the exact truth about his experiences, too, and you thought it was funny!"

"That's true," I conceded. " I'm not entirely sure why it was funny. I'd have to think it through to analyze it.

In my dream, I wrote four perfect sentences. They just came magically into my head.

Wow! the dream me thought. I better write these down before I forget them.

And I did write them down—in the dream.

But when I awakened, I had totally forgotten them.

###

On Tuesday, I came down with a cold. Non-stop snoozles, runny nose, inability to focus. I gave up on useful work, and napped on & off, and read.

That vanquished the cold but then yesterday, driving home from TaxBwana, I was infected with a melancholy so deep I burst into tears & kept crying on & off the rest of the day.

Don't ask me what that was about because I couldn't tell you.

My two TaxBwana clients hadn't made that much of an emotional dent except that they were both old—the one, a 90-year old woman, sharp as a tack & physically vital, living on the remains of an ancestral apple orchard her family had owned for more that 100 years; the other, a retired NYC cop.

"Wait!" I said to the cop. "You used to commute from New Paltz every day to the Bronx?"

He had!

Maybe the 90-year-old lady had made me sad because maybe I was seeing the beginnings of cognitive decline in her: She was very flustered, and had only brought in pages 7 through 11 of one form that I needed to see Page 1 of. But hey! It was a mistake that many people far younger than her can—and do!—make & having taxes done is nervewracking for most people.

Anyway, I was sad, sad, sad, when I got home though that didn't stop me from doing useful work.

This morning I woke up with a right-sided backache that won't stop me from doing useful work but may stop me from going to the gym.

I can't figure out why my back would ache. On Monday, I actually did heavy exercise designed to phuck up one's back, & I was fine; yesterday, I did nothing. The ways of the aging body are mysterious!

###

It is bitterly, bitterly cold out. Temps barely brush freezing! But bright & sunny, and the angle of the sun is higher in the sky, which means the sun actually sheds some warmth.

The local meadows and pastures are still frozen beneath enormous plates of white ice that shine like polished glass. And likely to remain so for the next few days.

It is an eerie sight:

The good news: The red carpet looks at the BAFTA Awards were all fabulous. (My girl Demi, in particular, hit it out of the ballpark.)

The bad news: That storm was a MOTHERFUCKER.

###

When temps finally rose above 25°, I trekked out to my car.

My car was completely encased in half an inch of extremely hard ice.

Now! I have dealt with crème brulée cars before. A thin layer of glaze over the accumulated snow!

But I actually needed a chisel to get this ice off, even with the car going and its heater turned up to 80°+. I actually broke off part of one of my windshield wipers.

And the entire driveway was one large ice skating rink. My car does not have front-wheel drive & gets no traction on ice. So, this was a dilemma.

I’d told Icky that he was gonna have to get someone over to plow—or rather to scrape—the driveway but, of course, there was radio silence from Icky.

Oh—and did I mention that Icky once again let the furnace run out of oil so that there is no heat in the house? And it’s a holiday weekend!

What would Pa Ingalls do? I wondered, channeling everybody’s favorite prairie patriarch.

And grimly, I began digging out the lower part of the driveway.

Figuring that if I parked my car near the fence, at least I’d be able to get out when I needed to. (Just how I was gonna trek down 40 yards of ice to get to the car was a matter I decided was best left to the morrow.)

Temps were forecast to hit 40° that afternoon before plummeting back down into the 20°s, so there was only a very narrow window of opportunity for digging out before the ice turned into something like concrete.

I say “digging,” but, of course, it was more like “prying”—the snow underneath the ice was melting, but the ice itself was holding strong, and I had to remove it using Icky’s plastic snow shovel—which simply wasn’t built for that purpose.

I did this for an hour and a half.

Finally, I created a kind of Northwest Passage that I sent a fervent prayer to the Universe would serve as some kind of way out.

And since the bottom of the driveway has piss-poor drainage and therefore a tendency to collect large pools of water, I salted the hell out of it. Twenty-five pounds of rock salt!

###

As it turned out, I didn’t have to do any of this because after it got dark, Icky finally contacted the plow guy who cleared most of the driveway with his big antediluvian truck. (Those trucks lumbering around back country roads in high winter always remind me of armored dinosaurs somehow.)

Icky then testily texted—from fuckin’ Miami where he is attending some kind of Burning Man alumni event!—that I should spend tomorrow (that is today) salting the driveway.

I told him to hire one of the local neighbor boys & fuckin’ get the heating oil delivered.

Only I said it much more nicely than that because deep down inside, Icky knows he is a piece of shit & is therefore very, very sensitive to critical tones. The most effective way to deal with Icky is to shuffle & smirk: Yes, Massa Icky! No, Massa Icky!

###

It’s always fuckin’ something.

You can’t even really get upset about it because what would be the point?

The ice-prying was good exercise since the gym yesterday was closed due to inclement weather.

And the Universe was actually very kind to me! Because shortly after I got back inside the house, I noticed my FitBit was not on my wrist.

I am rather obsessive about tracking exercise & sleep stats, so I became mildly frantic. Thought for a moment it had fallen off while I was prying ice, but no, I could still synch it—which meant that it had to be within 30 feet (and so inside the house.)

Uttered one last prayer to the Universe while remembering Rule # 19 of Kerouac’s Advice to Writers—Accept Loss Forever.

And then.

On automatic pilot, I rose & marched into a part of the house where I never, ever go. And there was the FitBit.

Très étrange…

Also, I had a very nice hour-and-a-half phone chat with John L______, which brought me back happy memories of Monterey.

And I watched the fabulous Shadow of the Vampire with Willem Dafoe in the evening. Pa Ingalls never got to watch Shadow of the Vampire!

So, you know. Not an altogether bad day. Just an unproductive day in terms of useful work.

Shortly, I must venture forth into the tundra (a/k/a my driveway) & see what I can do about the river of ice that made it impossible to park when I got back from the gym yesterday.

I tried!

But car tires have no traction on solid ice.

The river of ice is there because Icky is cheap & doesn’t want to pay for plowing, so consequently, the tracks we make as we run our vehicles through the snow melt & freeze and melt & freeze again.

Icky is not currently not in residence & is not answering any of my texts, & it is supposed to snow again today—anywhere from four to seven inches—so I’m not entirely sure what to do.

I have about 15 pounds of rock salt at my disposal, and there’s a hardware store in town where I will get more when I venture out.

I suppose if I don’t hear from Icky, I will make my own plow arrangements if necessary and simply deduct the cost from next month’s rent.

It is always fuckin’ something.

###

Meanwhile, the sepulchral Snowglobe of Doom is back, so I am feeling angsty.

That’s reassuring in a way. It means my angst is most likely a product of Seasonal Affective Disorder rather than the state of the world.

I mean, the state of the world is massively fucked—but it was massively fucked yesterday, too, when I was in a bubbly, happy mood & the sun was shining.

Connect your own dots!

###

Today’s new state of the world massive fuckage:

JD Vance doesn’t think European civilization is worth saving.

This came out during negotiations around funding the war in Ukraine.

Personally, I think the only reason to fund the war in Ukraine is to save European civilization: I never fell for the “plucky Ukraine” propaganda, & I well remember—back in the days when it had a definitive article!—that country’s collaboration with the Nazis in World War II.

Before that, Ukraine was the site of numerous pogroms during which my non-collateral ancestors were gangbanged & tortured to death.

A few escaped! Hence—me!!!

But I have no great affection for Ukraine or interest in its sovereignty.

I do have enormous love for the countries of western Europe, which would suffer if Putin’s wet dream came true, & the USSR was reassembled in some fashion.

So, I do support continued funding of the war effort in Ukraine. Which is good for the American economy! Cause Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing get somewhere to dump product at inflated prices!

I am around 75% convinced, though, that Trump’s next big shock & awe move—maybe timed for the 2026 midterm elections—will be pulling the U.S. out of NATO.

So, I am hoping western Europe is gearing up its own native defense systems. (I’m sure China would help if they asked nicely!)

This will almost certainly involve cutting back on wonderful social safety nets. But I don’t see how that can possibly be avoided.