The Plain Brown Dirt of Kilimanjaro

Much nicer than snow. Yay, global warming!

I talked to my friend Dot on the phone Friday night and, per her advice, turned my pillow-top mattress over, even though only one side is meant for sleeping on, and that not only smote the pillow top for making my back hurt but did certainly provide a firmer sleeping experience, plus when I knocked on it, it made a drum-like hollow sound. I guess that mattress was a basically a box of air with some soft stuff stitched to the top.

I considered just putting a topper (a separate pad) on top of the bottom of the mattress, but in the morning I realized the surface was pretty concave, so I took the bus over to Sleep Train and bought a Tempur-Pedic mattress, which is like kind of like taking a spa mud bath, except that it’s not full of other people’s pubic hair: if you stuck in just one finger, it would go way in, but resting your whole body on it results in almost a floating sensation.

After one night, my back pain was considerably eased, and after the second night, it felt better still.

My mother asked, “How come you can’t buy a computer until you save up the money, but you can buy a mattress any time you feel like it? You know, if you’d buy a really large computer, you could sleep on top of it.”

I was enraged to hear a report on KQED this week about ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel harassing and even physically attacking women who refuse to move to the back of special religious buses. Later I read an account of such an incident in which a woman was spat on and kicked in the face for acting as if she thought she was an actual human being.

As noted elsewhere, something is more than a bit wrong when people demonstrate how much they love their deity by acting like thugs. The rise of ultra-orthodoxy in any religion is alarming, since it always translates directly into oppression of women and gays.

My mother says that Sam Harris says the most vicious hate-filled responses he has gotten to his books (The End of Faith and Letter to A Christian Nation) have come from Christians, which should be a jaw-dropping surprise, but of course is no surprise to anyone at all.

Why is it that if I am extra-religious, it means you will need to give up some of your cumbersome civil or human rights?

Perhaps the ultra-orthodox of all religions could instead demonstrate their devotion by rushing to the back of the bus themselves, foregoing education beyond the third grade, refusing to take more than fifty percent of the salaries offered for their jobs, and doing all of the cooking and cleaning in their homes. Each could adopt ten homeless children or else spend weekends cheerfully volunteering at the abortion clinic.

One of the requirements of ultra-orthodox Jews is modest dress for women because revealing garments may make it impossible for men to control themselves, which should sound pretty familiar by now, from another popular religion.

Perhaps the true man of religion could manifest impeccability by refraining from raping (and, while we’re at it, beating, maiming or mutilating) women even if he sees a woman on the bus in a faux leopard-skin thong.

I myself am disheartened by the sight of women dressed like Britney Spears, for different reasons. While I believe people have every right to dress like strippers, and while I vow to do my best not to rape any such person I may encounter, to me it seems like capitulation to a sexist ideal, the big clue being that only women are required to do it.

It makes me sad that women willingly buy and wear tight, uncomfortable, constricting garments which then mark them as bimbos who deserve whatever mistreatment they receive. Hasten to I Blame the Patriarchy and read about the Orange County police officer who ejaculated on a woman driver he pulled over and was acquitted because the woman’s line of business happened to be stripping.

Also on KQED, I caught a man singing the beautiful song “We’ll Be Together Again.” It was Frankie Laine, whom I confess I had never heard of, since he was never in Metallica.

He was a white singer who sounded black, and was a stepping stone between the smooth, crooning style of Frank Sinatra and rock and roll. When Nat King Cole was unable to get sponsorship for his TV show, Frankie Laine, the first white artist to do so, tried to help by appearing on the show for much less than his usual fee.

My father once, democratically, began an anecdote about the olden days by saying, “When your mother and I were little girls … ” So I have sent them this email, the answer to which may improve my already excellent opinion of them:

“Gentlemen,

“When you were little girls, were you fans of Frankie Laine? Did you have any of his albums?”