Davis, Ca: An area woman with an odd name (for privacy, we’ll call her Sharma Shaltonen) has confounded the many health care providers in her town.

Her cranial sacral therapist is dismayed by her eyes: “Even when she’s relaxed, with her eyes closed, it’s like I’m looking at someone in R.E.M. sleep.” The therapist suggested the primary care physician do a brain scan.

“I already have,” he complained, shrugging his shoulders. We were hoping to find something to explain her symptoms–we would have been happy to find alien eggs about to hatch–at least it would have been some kind of explanation.” Her physician had earlier sent her back to a neurologist she’d seen some years before, but “he just sent her back to me–he said he didn’t know what to do then and he didn’t know what to do now and wondered why I was wasting his time.”

Sharma’s chiropractor was equally confused. “I talk about her all the time,” he began. “I’ve never seen a patient who was so flexible and who’s bones were so unyielding. I can twist her into a pretzel, but I can’t get the bones to release.”

Sharma’s allergist was perhaps the least confounded. He at least understood what was wrong with her, at least within his own specialty. “She’s allergic to everything except mold and cockroach dander. She’s difficult to treat because any time we raise the dose on the allergen treatment, she goes into shock.” The allergist is hopeful, though, and thus has her on seven different treatments/medications. Two were added today, as Spring is coming. This particular doctor, whose entire practice is made up of people with allergies, refers to Ms. Shaltonen as his “allergic” patient.

We tried to reach Sharma for comment, but when our reporter arrived at her office, we found her on the floor, covered in student papers, seemingly asleep, with her eyes twitching.

The patient (front), apparently about to faint on another woman.

• At what point does something (e.g. a hairball) become so fossilized that you can be excited when you discover it rather than upset?

• In the news this week: The woman who does the voice of Bart Simpson phoned a bunch of people to ask for money (she was shilling for Scientology) using Bart’s voice. The show keeps having to disassociate themselves from the religion/shilling. The media isn’t helping since it headlines its stories with things like “Bart Simpson is a Scientologist.”

• We have a new word: saddlebacking. This is the practice of engaging in anal sex to preserve “virginity.” A lot of those abstinence-only girls who go to weird proms with their dads are doing it now. I knew several girls in high school who did it. I thought it was stupid (anal sex has the word sex in it), but I’m sure they would remind me that I was the one who got knocked up. Yes, but not in the ass.

• House this week started to tackle a really interesting issue. A woman adopted a child after wanting one badly, but didn’t feel anything for it. This could have been productive–a lot of mothers, not just adoptive mothers have this problem. Unfortunately, the problem was solved with a little looking into the baby’s eyes.

• W signed something dangerous before he left office.  Health care providers in this country are protected if they would like to withhold your contraception.  They are not required to provide you with a referral to someone who actually will do the job, either.  This issue has been coming up a lot in the past few years.  Some pharmacists have gone so far as to refuse to give a woman her prescription back, forcing her to go back to the doctor before she finds a pharmacist who will fulfill the order.

This makes things especially difficult for those women who need emergency contraception.

These workers say that they shouldn’t have to go against their morals.  It results, of course, in forcing their morals on other people.

If eating pork was against my religion, but I worked in a restaurant that sold it, I wouldn’t be allowed to refuse to fill the order.  I definitely wouldn’t be allowed to be holier-than-thou to those who ordered it.

If you don’t want to ring up something your place of business sells, don’t work there.  Go work in a Catholic Hospital pharmacy (where they often don’t carry birth control).  Or go work in that town in Florida the Domino’s CEO built–contraception isn’t allowed in that town at all.

• Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, is my new hero.  I got a major crush on him when I heard him speak on Friday at UCD.  He’s brilliant AND able to give a brilliant lecture.  He spoke without notes in a gorgeous British accent about economics and food availability and poverty.  And he was funny.  I picked up some whiffs of Izzard, so when I got to meet him briefly after the talk, I asked him about it.  He confessed that he worshipped at the altar of Izzard.  I’ve always said that Eddie should be a History Professor.  Now that I’ve met an Izzarian Prof/Author, Eddie may have a run for his money in my fantasies.

I'll always think of him as Raj Izzard

• Neil Gaiman has gotten an award for The Graveyard Book.  It’s an amazing story of a boy who grows up in a graveyard–raised by the ghosts and something that is likely a vampire.  I like this so much better than The Jungle Book.

• I’ve been giving myself a break by going to Discworld.  Terry Pratchett is always great, but this week I read Wyrd Sisters and Witches Abroad.  The former is a mash up of several Shakespeare works, though Macbethis the main source of fun.  The murdered King’s son grows up in a theatre company while the witches try to figure out how to depose the usurper without “interferring.”

Witches Abroad is a sequel of sorts.  It’s part travel narrative (take three very different women –think odd couple plus one more odd), send them into various lands with foreigners, and have them stumble across a series of fairy tales in progress and you have one of my new favorite books.  I mean, it’s not going to replace Eddie or Raj, but it’s great.  And the opening is perhaps the most thoughtful and beautiful discourse on stories I’ve ever read.

• Finally, it looks like I might get my class after all, but since the last one was cancelled just two days before the term started, I’m still sort of holding my breath.

It has been brought to my attention that the only full-time “real” doll repairman hails from my current hometown: http://machochip.com/2009/01/slade-fiero-fixes-real-dolls.php

Does that say something about my quiet little burg?  I’d like to think so.  I’ve often spoken lovingly of my liberal Mayberry.  I won’t go on and on about how cool it is, I’ll just give you some facts and you can make up your own mind.

1.  We apparently have a plan in place to start giving the squirrels birth control because there are too many of them.

2.  We have a vital, vibrant downtown that’s walking distance from campus.

3.  We will soon have the world’s only “green” target.

4.  We apparently abhor billboards, high signs, and excess night light–there are laws in place to keep our skies visible.

5.  We have been on The Daily Show multiple times.  We have been made fun of for having a professor study (and create) Asian male centered porn, for our whiny Republicans on campus having their own “coming out” day (they feel oppressed!), and for our toad crossing (which didn’t work until it was redesigned).

6.  We have also been in national news for the gang of wild turkeys who loiter in the graveyard (which is my backyard) and for a neighbor calling the police on another neighbor for disturbing the peace by snoring too loud.  The latter, by the way, was a weird piece of performance art, designed to make fun of what makes national news.  The snorer was not in on it and was terribly embarrassed.

7.  We have a really cool university with amazing faculty, but maybe the best thing is that we have one of the few wine making degrees in the world.

8.  Our tallest building is nine stories.

9.  We usually can’t feel the earthquakes that happen around us.

10.  Our schools are really good (because our housing costs are atrocious).  Most of the parents of children in this system have higher education degrees, so we’re demanding, too.

11.  There are no traffic jams, but we’re close enough to big cities like Sacramento and San Francisco to go right to them if we miss being angry drivers.

12.  We have almost as many bikes per capita as China.

13.  We have the only running London double-decker buses in the world now that London doesn’t use them anymore.

14.  We have a great micro-brewery.

15.  Julie, Julie was filmed here.

Finally, of course, I live here, as do many of my friends.  And while it’s great to be in Davis, I have to admit that I’m kind of bitchy today because it looks like I might not get my workload class for this Spring (as I didn’t this Winter) and thus I have to have income loss-induced panic attacks.

Warning: they're all driven by UCD students!

A few things. 

1. My new matchflick column is out:  http://www.matchflick.com/column/1862  I order you to see 11 fabulous performance (stand-up) films.

2. Obama is doing well so far.  I think his interview with the Arab channel went well, even though the networks here seemed jealous.  Thrilled that Guantanamo is closing.  I’ve never understood how we still have that place (or why Cheney thinks it’s not under U.S. dominion when it totally is).  Finally, Obama has rescinded the global gag rule.  For those who don’t know, the gag rule keeps us from giving aid (including by paying part of our U.N. dues) to any health agency that might mention abortion.  I understand people’s feelings about abortion, but refusing to give aid is, to use a cliche, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.  It doesn’t assure that any one abortion will be stopped, but it does insure that those children who are born will get less aid, less medication, etc.  And yes, you might not like your tax dollars going to a humanitarian organization that might use the “a” word, but I pay taxes for shit that you like and I think is offensive and abysmal.

3.  John Updike died yesterday.  I haven’t read as much of his work as I should, so I don’t have any brilliant analysis to give you here, but we’ll miss him.

Despite what comic book guy (aka Jeff Anderson) says, this Sunday’s couch gag was one of the best. If that box isn’t for sale already, it should be.

The main plot of this episode: Lisa gets a best friend. It’s sad from the beginning–we know it won’t last; this is a sitcom. Still, the story is sweet and funny.

The best bits: Lisa’s friend, Juliet, has an “academic” father who’s obsessed with his research subject: John Grisham.

Lisa and Juliet (who have a star-crossed love) are obsessed with Josh Groban. (I’m not saying their love is gay–it’s just homosocial, the way young girls’ friendships are.)

Homer nonchalantly drinks out of a coffee mug clearly labelled “NED.”

The girls write a book–a fantasy utopia. Feminist utopias are actually a subgenre of their own.

We learn that Groundskeeper Willie was Dr. William MacDougal before he went through Ellis Island.

Apparently, they make a cream just for peaches.  I wonder if there’s one just for strawberries in Springfield.

Apparently, Lisa and Juliet are the two brightest writers this side of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (said workshop is thrilled to have been mentioned).

Finally, as Homer says, “Writing is hard.”

(By the way, I don’t see what was so awesome about the Fall Out Boy credit song.  It’s not that different from Greenday’s.)

By popular demand (see Courtney, you’re popular!), my blog is here at last.

We’ll see whose reading and see how it goes. I do respond to peer pressure, so comment often! (Just don’t try to get me to smoke.)

It occurs to me that this slightly more public site (more public than facebook and myspace) may get new faces, so maybe we should have a glossary.

“at school/work”–I teach writing and literature at a university.

“Du”–my best friend & co-author

“the book”–current writing project by famous Simpsonologists, Du & Dr. Karma

“Ken”–due to Ken’s work putting this site together, I won’t call him btp (boyfriend-type-person) here. (He probably doesn’t like that name because he wants to be htp.)

“the boy”–my teenager

“book club”–my weekly group of book lovers and friends. Formally, we are the Margaret Atwood Book Club of Davis (as made famous in the credits of the film, Julie, Julie), though we read other authors, too.

“Isis,” “Osiris,” “Mahahes”–the cats

“The Monkey”–the monkey