Colonial Pistachio Bookshelves on Toast, With Love

Subject line in today's best spam e-mail : "colonial feeling." What can that possibly mean? Is it supposed to make me feel sexy? Rich? Powerful?

Breakfast. Pistachio Mystic cookie. Mm. On a related note, a person can only eat so many Everything bagels in bed and still feign surprised indignation when they wake up with poppy seeds and sesame seeds stuck to their face and hair the next morning.

Considering how much time I spend thinking about words and language, there sure is a frequency of jumbly nonsense falling out of my mouth, like a fistful of pots and pans clattering down the stairs. My most recent crime against logic: "Books on toast." Although, it turns out, some event at a writer's festival shared the same name, so maybe I'm not entirely nuts.

Via MSNBC: "A woman's body was found wedged upside-down behind a bookcase in (her) home...family members said they believe she fell over as she tried to adjust the plug of a television behind the bookshelf...her family thought she had been kidnapped and contacted authorities. Family members scoured her room for clues but found nothing, though they did notice a strange smell."

A guy on the online dating service I'm trying out sent me an e-mail, and immediately made his profile invisible, presumably because he'd made a match elsewhere. But his e-mail was so personalized and charming! Not at all an obviously generic cut-and-paste that he'd sent to every woman in Chicago between the ages of 18 and 40! Look at the details! Clearly he knows me. He truly knows me, Bella, the whole person, and - dare I say it? - LOVES ME. From the e-mail:

"Hi!
I came across your profile and you seem nice. I liked almost everything you wrote andsooo.... here I am! Someone special..."

Back To It

Hope your holiday was nice. I've got an entertaining post about my trip home half-written. In the meantime, some cuteness. Hey, it's something.

Childhood Crush Tag

Coaster Punchman has tagged me - directly this time - and the theme is childhood crushes. He also tagged Beth and Bubs.

My romantic life thus far has pretty much been a series of misguided and unreturned affection, so I'll do you the favor of just hitting some emblematic highlights. Here goes:

First grade. My family moved from our roots in Indiana to the very different climate of Arizona, ostensibly so my dad could take time off from his stressful job and get his blood pressure under control. (This was at a period when my parents had kids in college, a rebellious, frequently expelled high school kid, and high-maintenance little ones as well. The details that explain why was the opposite of a low-stress environment constitute a tragicomic novel in themselves.)

This was also my first exposure to anything that could be described as ethnic diversity, a concept I found intriguing. I developed an immense, almost incapacitating crush on a little Mexican boy in my class. His name was Jorge. Big brown eyes, sweet smile, totally adorable. Apparently he had a thing for little blonde girls (yes, I'm a natural blonde, but let's not get into that right now), because he stared wordlessly at me as much as I did him. I was utterly smitten, which of course meant I couldn't speak when he was anywhere near, and only communicated through punches and pinches. Our love was not meant to be. A year after landing in Tucson, we packed the family station wagon again, and headed back to central Indiana, to the familiar comfort of Midwestern blizzards and town after town of cornfields and white people. Oh, sweet little Jorge. I think of you still.

(Incidentally, this experience must have imprinted a lot of the kids in my family with a predilection for ethnic, specifically Hispanic hotties, because my siblings have fallen insanely in love with and paired off with an impressive assortment of Cubans, Brazilians, Colombians, and Puerto Ricans. Why, hello, Benicio. Winkety wink.)

Second grade. I was always a precocious and voracious reader, and early on began reading my older siblings' books in earnest. I dug into something my brother A. brought home from school, called Tom Sawyer, because of the very cute boy on the cover. He was reckless, and rebellious, and more than a little wild. It mattered not that he was fictional. It was love.

Fifth grade. Then there was Alan, the very cute blonde boy who returned as much affection for me as Tom Sawyer had. That was the year I got a Q-Bert wristwatch for Christmas, which made me THE coolest girl in school for about two weeks. This was during my "second tallest girl in the entire class, acne already kicking in, one boob bigger than the other, braces with rubber bands and headgear I had to wear to school, unflatteringly large glasses with my initials in the corner, Mom insisted that tight poodle perms were a good choice" (and no, I am not making a single one of those details up) phase, so I was willing to work whatever marginal social advantage I had to be closer to Alan. The watch was pretty much it. Everyone wanted to play Q-Bert, incuding Alan. I let him, but the catch was, I would never remove the watch from my wrist. This was a policy put in place to protect the watch. Of course, this also meant that Alan would actually touch me for as long as five minutes at a time. It was magical. It was thrilling. Then the battery wore out, and I slid back down the social ladder like it was greased with Crisco.

I'm heading home to Indiana to fall unthinkingly into dysfunctional family behavior patterns, sneak out behind the barn for furtive smokes, and stuff my turkeyhole, and won't be posting again until next week. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Coaster Punchman's Gross Tag

Here's my contribution to the game of gross tag that some of my blog friends (including Coaster Punchman) are enjoying (or not enjoying, as the case may be).

Years ago, when we were kids, my brother dog-sat for the neighbors while they were on vacation. The dog was nervous when the neighbors were gone, and would poo in her indoor concrete-floored kennel instead of going in the yard, as she would when the family was home.

My brother walked into the dog's inside kennel (linked to an easily accessible outdoor run) to find a big pile of sloppy poo, which he would then move to gaggingly clean up, and inevitably throw up in the middle of. (He's always been quite squeamish. Even listening to descriptions of gross things incites his gag reflex. I, on the other hand, can shovel horse poo and change diapers all day with no problem.)

The dog (whose name was Dandy - somehow this is important to the story) would then happily lap up his puke, before he could shakingly run over to clean it up. On each following visit, it would be the same thing all over again, except, of course, after the first time, it was actually his vomit she was pooping each visit, which then inspired his next round of puking.

We still laugh disgustedly at this sometimes, and refer to it as "the circle of life."

Old Gay Picasso Cream Puffs and Evolving Chimp Hairstyles

Remember that charming English geriatric YouTuber? Now there's a 92-year old blogger. He was a Canadian tv host. And he's quite funny. Here's what he had to say about cannibalism: "In times past, among some of the Pacific Islands peoples, since a butchered human very much resembled a butchered pig, it was referred to as "long pig". I presume these cannibals ate only their enemies, not their family members, no matter how tasty they may have looked." (via BoingBoing)

More evidence that the womb environment makes men gay. "It adds further weight to the argument that lesbian and gay people should be treated equally in society and not discriminated against for something that's just as inherent as skin colour." (via BBC)

Oh, crap, I hate it when I accidentally punch a hole in my Picasso.

Dude, if I ever get married, it's going to be in a wedding dress made of cream puffs.

Watch your back, homo sapiens. Chimps are more like us than apes...and they're evolving faster than we are. "..our clock began to slow down about 1 million years ago, and today it is 3 percent slower than that of the chimp and 11 percent slower than in the gorilla.. (via MSNBC/Live Science)

Today's style specials include Great Big Hair, and the Feathered Back Hair Site. Doesn't it make you nostalgic for the days of Aqua Net and Paul Mitchell?

Jargon Chicago In Centerstage Chicago

My much appreciated Jargon Chicago editors were interviewed on Centerstage Chicago as part of their "hip Chicago bloggers" series on Oct. 31. (I'm going to be featured in a few weeks as well.) Look how cute Josh and Elizabeth are, with their glasses, dueling laptops, and coffee cups.

I'm On The Front Page Of Gapers Block

Gapers Block gave me a little shout-out today. (Thanks to K-Rock for letting me know.)

"New And Notable Chicagobloggers -

"A few new blogs on chicagobloggers.com worth mentioning...very well-written blog Bella Rossa caught my attention with this post title: 'Gabriel Garcia Marquez Shoots Reese Witherspoon, and I Can't Walk in These Heels.' All worth your time."

Awww...I love you, too, Gapers Block. (They were also kind enough to mentioned The Bastion when we launched, and I've exchanged some friendly e-mails with Gapers Block's publisher, Andrew Huff.)

I Can't Stop Laughing At This

A trailer for an upcoming animated feature that's actually a totally separate, live-action project. The bee (Jerry Seinfeld, or his stunt double) taking a dive is the funniest thing I've seen all day.

Comedy and Creative Tidbits

I went to the Spitfire show Wednesday night on behalf of the Bastion and had a couple of great conversations with Jena Friedman, an i.O. chick, and Laura Mannino, a visiting comic from NYC who produces the Mintyfresh shows at Mo Pitkins. (I know it's lazy, but here's the link to what I wrote about that.) It was so great to get out of the house after so many weeks stuck indoors, and dang if I didn't need a laugh and some comedy chat.

Sloan joined me later, too, and it was a fantastic night. K-Rock is hesitant to write about the Spitfire girls on the Bastion, since she's their producer, and she's loath to admit her important role in Chicago comedy these days, but I'm here to tell you the girl is a brilliantly talented producer, and all of her hard work results in the creation of some wonderful moments between creative people. (Ya hear that, girlie?)

I came home feeling very lucky once again to have been tapped to run the site, because it gives me such amazing access to really smart, cool comedians. Everything I ever dreamt about comedy when I still lived back in Indiana is right here at my fingertips, and I count it as a huge blessing. All I really have to do to do my job well is hang out, be interested and friendly, and ask questions. Early on after Nate offered me the job, I felt a little underqualified. "I just moved here, and I really don't know that much about Chicago comedy," I said. Now I realize that didn't matter. I didn't have to know everything walking into the situation. I just had to follow my curiosity and learn as I went.

Sloan recently filmed a Daily Show audition for a comedian friend of ours, at the behest of his manager, (not sure if it's okay for me to mention the name, so I won't), which is just another example of our lives overlapping and us pulling a lot of cool creative people into our circle of friends. She also has lots of my crazy-ass comedian friends asking for her help with their short comedy films, which is totally awesome, and yet, takes time away from the million and two short films we want to shoot together.

It seems like every conversation we have, especially the kind that include random tales of urban ridiculousness and often awkward and annoying situations, ends with us screaming with delight and going "can you imagine if..." and then us fleshing out a comedy short film. Of course, Sloan has to finish up that pesky science degree first, freeing her up for more time for all the cool opportunities that are presenting themselves for her.

Also, I'm hot on a that book idea I've been mumbling about. I'm pressing my Second City teacher and mentor Nancy to keep me committed to seeing it through to the proposal stage. I've reformulated the concept of my first book a million times, and now I've locked onto a theme I know will work, and potentially be really good stuff.

On that note, I've got some "real" writing to do, so I'm outty. See ya laters.

Questionable Dates

The online personals adventure continues. In the first week, my profile has garnered many a long look, several winks, and the addition to several "hot lists." I have to say, there seem to be a lot of cute, intelligent, creative men in Chicago. And of course, lots of lonely weirdos. I was immediately winked at (twice) by a 55 year old man in Evanston, despite capping my age limit for potential suitors well below the 55 mark. What the hey?

A few observations:

It is recommended that you share several recent close-up photos of your face, to give people an idea of what you look like in a current everyday situation. Why, then, so many pictures of people on cruise boats, or with with Kodiak National Park in the background? Are we going to hike with grizzly bears after meeting for coffee? I'm sure you want people to know that you're outdoorsy, and active, but come on. This isn't a travel brochure.

More puzzling than that: photos of multiple people. One guy offered a photo of him and his friends in a limo. First of all, you're not fooling anyone with the pimped out limo stuff. You were going to your cousin Tina's wedding. Also, crop that picture, dude. Or am I going on a date with you and two of your friends? That could get a little complicated if things end up getting steamy. Unless we go in the limo, as is kind of implied by your photo choice.

Other photo silliness: in some cases, people offer more than one photo, one of which is so much older than the other that it looks like two different people. Is that you and your dad? Do I get to choose between you? Oh...no. The young guy and the old guy are both you. But I only get the old version.

Also, sideways and upside down photos. One guy said he was a graphic artist, but his picture urgently needed to be rotated 90 degrees. This does not bode well for potential romantic encounters. Unless he can make out at a 90 degree angle.

Estella's Revenge

My recent essay "All About My Mother" is going to be in the December issue of Estella's Revenge. Thanks to Dale for the introduction. Yay!

Mary Tyler Moore Gets Personal With Maria Montessori, and Explores the Origins of Life

I can't believe I've forgotten to mention that I had the pleasure of being MTM'd. Yes, I reached out to the delightful Coaster Punchman, and he left a beautiful, custom rendition of the Mary Tyler Moore theme song on my voicemail while I was recuperating from surgery. I played it on speaker phone for my mom. And cried. Twice. It was really sweet and touching. Thank you, CP. You truly are bestowed with awesome powers.

What else is new? I'm toying with the idea of snagging comedy dates by way of online personal ads. Yeah. I can't believe it either. But it's hard to meet people, and several friends have had good luck meeting some pretty cool people this way. I spent some time last night perusing the local matches on one site, and had my interest peaked by several interesting candidates. I also noticed a lot of cliches - suspiciously heavy photoshopping (what are you trying to hide?), conspicuous "look, I have black friends" pictures, fuzzy, long-range photos taken from what must be LandSat geosynchronous satellites, and more. Wish me luck.

Why does it not surprise me to read in a recent New Yorker profile that Sims and Spore mastermind Will Wright was a Montessori-educated child? Everyone I've ever known (including my darling niece and creative cohort Sloan) who grew up with the influence of Montessori educational principles has been a fantastically imaginative and problem-solving human being. From that article: “Montessori taught me the joy of discovery...It showed you can become interested in pretty complex theories, like Pythagorean theory, say, by playing with blocks. It’s all about learning on your terms, rather than a teacher explaining stuff to you. SimCity comes right out of Montessori—if you give people this model for building cities, they will abstract from it principles of urban design.”

I have lost countless hours of my life to Sims and Sims 2 (and wisely decided not to reinstall the game the last time my laptop crashed) and am scared at the thought of trying Wright's latest opus, Spore. It sounds absolutely fascinating. "The game draws on the theory of natural selection. It seeks to replicate algorithmically the conditions by which evolution works, and render the process as a game." A game designed by someone as brilliant as Will Wright, who's equally as enchanted by Powers of Ten and Drake's Equation as I am, is a danger to my personal productivity.

"The Kindness of Strangers"

I just sent this to Six Sentences. Let's see if they bite.

"The Kindness of Strangers"

She had never made the wish aloud, which is the lesser part of why she was shocked to wake up one ordinary morning and find that two hundred pounds of protective, insulating fat was simply gone from her body, and, far from being saggy and old-looking, she was fit and strong and beautiful for the first time in her twenty-eight years.

Initially terrified by the unfamiliar state she now found herself in, then sedated by an overwhelming cascade of neurotransmitters released by an inhumanly instantaneously evolving spiral of DNA, she huddled under a sweltering pile of blankets in her bed until her mother knocked urgently on her bedroom door, then entered to assess the transformation.

Her mother surprised her further by, rather than betraying any disbelief, expressing a grim resignation and quietly saying, "It is your time."

It was convenient that she'd never established any social bonds and had a job she could unremarkably disappear from, because now her mother packed some money and a few other things for her into a small suitcase, put her on a ship to the other side of the world, and hugged her goodbye, saying through tears, "You must call me once."

When she did call her mother, it was to confide her dismay in finding that, in her new location and form, that the kindness of strangers was a relative thing, as she was taken aback by the gracious opening of doors and other everyday courtesies from strangers, the kind of people who scorned or ignored her in her previous incarnation, and she felt alienated and apart from humans in a whole new way.

Her mother's vocalizations through the telephone triggered yet another immediate evolution in her DNA, her muscles instantly building mass visibly under her clothes, and her jaw setting with resolute predatory purpose as the instructions came across the telephone line, the most important of which was "Be sure you cull the right ones."

Edit: Just heard back - they're going to publish it on the 25th. Yay!

Gabriel Garcia Marquez Shoots Reese Witherspoon, and I Can't Walk in These Heels

Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I don't know why I dreamt of him last night and woke up thinking about him this morning. I hope it's not one of those "Bella dreams about people, and they die the next day" kind of thing. (Seriously, it has happened. Don't cross my path.) Here's a 1999 New Yorker profile of him. Also, a very cool short live action/animation film, based on a Marquez short story, made by a Colombian friend of mine.

Yesterday Sloan and I actually sat still for a daylong photoshoot with a fun photographer/graphic artist friend she recently met on a video shoot for Josie Aiello. (Actually, he says he's not an artist; I disagree.) We used my apartment, since I have a white couch and a white wall to work with, although I'd forgotten about the egregious mountain bike tire tracks I've somehow managed to smudge across every vertical surface in my home.

I urgently need a decent author photo that doesn't make me cringe with "oh, fug," and doesn't make me look like Deep Frost Robotron 2000, like my current author photo. (That was the cream of the crop of a two hour self-directed photoshoot last May. What can I say? Like any other normal human being, I hate having my photo taken, and by the time I got to that one, I was so irritated that I couldn't fake a smile anymore.)

Reese Witherspoon is a plucky lass (or at least, she plays one on the big screen). Did you know she had it written into her contract that she would keep all 63 pairs of custom-designed Jimmy Choo shoes from Legally Blonde? Really, you 'd have to be dumb not to go for that.

Speaking of which, British design critic Stephen Bayley has said of high heels: "It is the flagrant lack of practicality that makes high-heeled shoes so fascinating: in terms of static mechanics they induce a sort of insecurity which some find titillating...her bottom sticks out like an offering. At the same time, the lofty perch is an expression of vulnerability, she is effectively hobbled and unable to escape. There is something arousing about this declaration that she is prepared to sacrifice function for form."

Friday Fuzzies

My mom went home yesterday, so I'm feeling pouty today. Slept in way late, missed a few urgent phone calls from my friend in Africa who's been trying to catch up with me for the last week, am behind on e-mail and everything else. I need to call my nephew, my niece, and tons of other people.

What else? Centerstage Chicago is going to interview me in a few weeks, as part of their series of articles on "hip Chicago bloggers." Apparently all the extra hard returns I haven't had time to erase on Bella Rossa don't diminish its bloggity fabulosity. Rawk on. Here's a link to their interview with my blog pal Donny B., who namechecked me when asked to name his favorite Chicago blogs. Presumably my interview will be the same format.

On a totally unrelated note, K-Rock and I both love, love, love the Playground Theater but, as library and word-oriented girls, are bugged by the spelling of their new series of shows - "Grafitti." I love how she and I are so on the same page (heh, a bad pun) about funny little things like this. I'm also quite sure The Playground would not be bothered in the slightest if we pointed this out to them.

I'm Back!

Yep, I'm switching back over to Blogger. They've added a few features that are just too sweet to pass up, plus, you know, there's the "free" thing. Love that.

I'm going to transfer all my Typepad posts, THEN go back and fix them (there are some unnecessary hard returns and spaces, but everything else is fine), and we'll be up and running in no time. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

Bring Your Towel, Fat Edna, and Blog 'Til You're Pain Free

Lil' bits of interesting ideas may be all I'm capable of for this post, so here they come.Apparently I'm kicking off a "Science Fiction Authors Biography" streak, because now I'm wading my way through Wish You Were Here, the official biography of Douglas Adams, the man who treated this terrestrial reader, and millions of others, to the indescribably wonderful Hitchhiker's Guide series. Oh, bless you, Chicago Public Library. I've only read the prologue, and it's already a ton of fun.

Too funny to go unrecorded, an overheard: "Well, you're fat, too, and I don't even know Edna." (Followed by a "hanging up the phone" gesture, from someone venting about a family member's tendency to talk a lot of negativity about people unknown to her.)

It's remarkable how reading someone's blog can make you feel like you know them, and emotionally tie you into their lives. There have been two instances recently where bloggers I've followed for just a short time have encountered adversity and difficulty, and I (and many others) have reacted with the same care and concern I would for a "real" friend. Instance one: my friend Nudle (who I know through Nancy) turned me on to a blog that was well-written and very engaging, and suddenly the author became sick, began undergoing chemo, and then fell silent. That author's son offered some explanation in his own blog. She's plugging along but decided to stop chronicling her experiences. I still think of her. Instance two: a Chicago comedian, writer and performer I hadn't met but had read was in a terrible car accident, and, months after I wished him well on the Bastion, sent us a message letting us know he's getting better. Truly, the Internet is made of people.

Today I'm going cold turkey off my pain meds. I'm feeling remarkably good, and am miles ahead of friends I know who have had similar procedures and were still in terrible pain and totally dependant on others at this point in recovery. I don't tolerate pain meds all that well, and they have a tendency to give me really crummy nightmares after a certain point, as they are starting to do now. Nightmares of the apocalyptic and, unfortunately, terrifically detailed and intricately plotted kind. I'm really sick of it. I'm also eager to reclaim my diurnal clarity of mind. (Yeah, "diurnal" is the opposite of "nocturnal." Didja know? I didn't, 'til I googled it.)

To prove my relative level of strength and hardiness to myself, I'm going to trot off to the gym after finishing this post, and put a very slow but victorious half-hour in on the treadmill. Take that, recovery timetables!

All About My Mother

My mom has been here for over a week caring for me after surgery, and may well be here for another week until I'm entirely independent again. Her help and support and love have been indispensable. It's been quite a bit of fun. And it's been a learning experience.

My mother has had five children. Many people who see her energy in action don't guess she's 69 years old. She is blonde, 5'2", teeny-tiny, and to paraphrase my niece Sloan, is like a bulldozer fueled by love, and operates in a very "Here I come, and if you don't want to get squashed, get out of my way" mode.

It's funny that Sloan used those particular words. In the photo of my mother at left, taken here in Chicago in 1939, she is adorable. Cute as a bagful of buttons. But don't let the angelic blonde ringlets fool you. According to the uncle who took this photo, she is pointing with her left hand because she is issuing him the instruction: "Get out of my way." Even as a tiny little girl, she had a very strong sense of self, and a clearly defined path she wanted to pursue.

She is intensely loving, hilariously opinionated, and mighty mighty powerful. I love her more than I could ever express.

Things I didn't know, or am newly appreciating, about my mother.

She is in love with Wentworth Miller. She knows Wentworth Miller is 6'1". She knows he graduated from Princeton. "God, he's handsome." She suspects it is wrong to feel so warmly about someone young enough to be her own child (her fifty-plus years of marriage to my father notwithstanding), nevertheless, Mondays are very important evenings of television viewing for her. Last Monday we missed the first half-hour of Prison Break and she almost blew a gasket.

Every time she ends a call on her cell phone, she looks at the screen on her phone and announces the duration of the call she just made. She realizes this is unnecessary, because she always follows it up with a "not that it matters," or a "I know you don't really care," but she still reports the minutes and seconds anyway. The last time she spoke to my dad, it was seven minutes and eighteen seconds. Not that it matters.

She has a gift for unusual turns of phrase. "Soup in a basket." That's what she called an unusual hip-shimmy she performed while attempting to avoid stepping on Calpurnia's tail while hopping into bed with me the other night. "What the hell was that?" I said. "The mashed potato? The frug?" "I call that one 'soup in a basket,'" she said, laughing like a nutter. I don't know what that means. But I know it's funny.

She's very particular about her television preferences.

Issue number one: Closed captioning or no closed captioning? I know, you're expecting that it's the older person who wants to see the words scrolling across the bottom, but actually, it's me, the word nerd. As an writer, I like to see the script while I'm listening to the words coming out of characters' mouths, but it annoys Mom. My TV is quite small, so the closed captioning ends up taking up the lower 1/4 of the screen, blocking out a lot of the picture. Whenever she watches tv at my house, or I've committed the grave sin of turning it on at her house, she sputters "Words! Words on the screen!" until I wrestle the remote control away from her and turn it off. She's actually called me from her house after I've visited to demand that I give her step-by-step instructions for turning it off.

Issue number two: Star Trek or Antiques Roadshow? Mom loves Antiques Roadshow. I find it boring, but then, I can pop a Vicodin, roll over, and forget the universe. Mom is a recognized master bargain hound who can pick something unremarkable out of the ten cent bin at Goodwill (on Senior Citizens' Day, when she gets an additional 30% off) and sell it for $195 on eBay. I've seen it happen. Hitting the jackpot someday on Antiques Roadshow would be like reaching Nirvana for her. On the one occasion I did win the Antiques Roadshow vs Star Trek argument, we watched a few minutes of Deep Space Nine. That was an argument I was soon sorry to have won.

For years, I've used a special term of endearment for my mom, based on something that the character Quark calls his mother on DS9. "Moogie." She thought it was cute. It was something I seemed to have come up with on my own, so she especially liked it. I addressed birthday cards to her using this name. She's signed e-mails using this name. Dad actually seemed a little jealous that I had a special name for her, but not him. He tried to appropriate it for himself. "It's me, Doogie," he'd say on the phone. "There's no such thing as a Doogie, Dad, sorry."

It was all well and good until earlier this week when I won the war over the remote control and used its power to flip over to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It was an episode that centered around the Ferengis, particularly Quark. "Eww, what are those?" Mom said. "Those are Ferengis," I said. "Oh, well, they're hideous." I had forgotten she was a little squicked by actors with all those alien prosthetics on their faces. Walnut-headed Klingons? Forget it. She doesn't want to look at that stuff. "But the storylines are densely plotted, and there are so many classic dramatic frameworks in Star Trek stories," I've said. "Blech," she'll say.

"Oh, Mom, this might be the episode that has the real Moogie in it!"

"The one you named me after?"

"Yes! You'll finally get to see her! Ferengis are this really
piggish, materialistic species, but they revere their mothers, which is why I..."

"Oh my god, is she one of those things? Ferengis?"

"Um, yeah."

It was all downhill from there. It was, indeed, the episode with Quark's Moogie in it.

Quark's Moogie, unfortunately for me, is the picture of loveliness at left. Mom saw her namesake.

"Oh, my god!"

I fell silent. I considered my poor judgment. I waited for her response.

"Bella?"

"Yes?"

"You should call me Mom from now on."