crying over spilled milk

the internet is an amazing tool. from fact-checking to community building, it is a marvel -- a speedy little probe, at your service.

geeks get their geek on in various niches, whether it's fantasy sports, music fan pages, french pastry blogs or message boards.

i spend a fair amount of time on a food board, and have often been amazed at how helpful folks can be. i'm also frequently stupefied by how clueless people can be, but that i should be more used to, i guess, lol. someone recently had a bunch of threads about lobster bisque, and how could she get hers to be the same color as it was on the bobby flay mpg file she had downloaded. WHAT? let's begin with why you're watching a chili/bbq guy to learn about bisque. how on earth could you possibly discern the true color of his product via a crap download? and why does that matter, more than the taste? she wanted to add paprika, chopped tomatoes or jarred pimentos to make it redder; do you serve it with the broken shells? can i use cornmeal to thicken it? i don't have sherry, can i use beer? she seemed utterly unconcerned with the flavor, but obsessed with the color. yes, yes, i know we eat with our eyes, but christ, lady.

so, i found myself flummoxed by what should have been a simple dish. pudding. tapioca pudding. the owner wanted it. i've never made it, and don't like that sort of thing. (milk, yuk, texture, yuk, bland, yuk... etc., lol) he has no cookbooks, so i went to the internet. a million ways to make it. now, the basics of pudding, custards and quiches (even ice cream) are all essentially the same. the foundation i get. but the strangeness of the tapioca pearls was what got me. and everybody had a different method.

owner was convinced a crockpot would be a snap. again, a new foray for me, lol. i'm madly distrustful of hands-off cooking. even a long slow oven braise offers aromas as it bubbles away. short version, milk broke and tapioca was still raw after 5 hours. garbage. next stab, tapioca was ruined simply from soaking for a short period.

pudding is a quick dish. a fucking english nursery classic (why do ya think ALL british desserts are called pudding?) that can be stirred together fast with little skill.

so i call on the hounds for help. what do i get? a link to some housewife's page that explains how tapioca is made from manioc ( i know that already, tyvm), how to make bubble tea, and several replies explaining how they make and gussy up minute tapioca. and that their "dh" doesn't know the difference. (another time i will rant on wives who infantilize their husbands through food... gah.)

so, either they suck at reading comprehension, (a huge issue on the net) or just feel like blahblahblahing (another huge issue on the net.) bottom line: zero help.

k.

home now. i go to a classic 1960s "nytimes cookbook", edited by craig claiborne, then "joy of cooking", "fanny farmer". ALL use quick tapioca. lastly, the bible: "larousse". quick-fucking tapioca. modern richard sax? quick tapioca. "old world kitchen"? too old, tapioca hadn't gotten to europe yet. dead end.

c'mon now. either this is one of those sadistic pranks from the owner or i am overlooking something very basic. i need to go back to muffets and tuffets, i guess.

then again, if anybody's mom has a solid recipe for eyeball pudding, please let me know. :)

hate on 02138

bless its pinko little heart, but the people's republic of cambridge is just ripe for hating. now that harvard square is the outdoor equivalent of a middle american mall, there isn't even that claim to quirkiness anymore. the self-satisfied smugness of most residents would be hilarious, if they weren't so annoying and entitled. i reluctantly thank the war chests of the schools and the generous alumnae for places like the sackler and the fogg, ok?

kendall square is its own enigma -- all those blank-faced big buildings. the walking-around geeks during the work-week do little to put your mind to rest. oh, sure. no cloning, no genetic scrambling, no chemical mutations, no nuclear seepage. gah.

but it's got that theater.

i went to see "food, inc." today. not for edification, but to fill some time and get myself out of my neighborhood. nothing i didn't already know and the video clips, even of slaughters, were not terribly distressing. pbs has shown footage far more graphic.

where's the hate, you ask?

this woman behind me. sucking on her giant soda, made of corn, in a cup made of petro-chemicals. eating candy, twizzlers, also made of corn. crying when they showed little chicks getting zapped in the head. frankly it didn't look like a bad way to go. fuzzy chicken babies are fluffy bits of cuteness, i get that, but they just got laid down under a little metal press and *zap*, dead. they didn't even peep. but lib-lady was sniffling and protesting the cruelty to her viewing partner.

then she was sobbing. loud, gasping sobs while a forklift was shoving around a downer cow. yes, it's horrible to see, it's cruel, it shouldn't happen, but that shit has been in the news for several years.

we'll leap to her probably being a vegetarian. being in cambridge, plus the native american inspired outfit, plus the sensible hair. ok, assuming that, shouldn't she know this stuff? wouldn't that be one of the reasons she IS against eating meat? she clearly was too stoopid to rage against the industrial farm complex and forego her big gulp of coke.

when i returned from the restroom she had composed herself, and there were no more slaughterhouse scenes.

throughout the film, there were sniffling shocked murmurs from various corners. ok, ivory towers all that, NONE of this was groundbreaking info, and the authors who did most of the commentary, eric schlosser and michael pollan, published their books several years ago, already, ffs.

there was a scene on joel palatin's polyface farm on chicken killing day. he is a poster boy for biodynamic, small, sustainable farming. his abattoir is outside, all the cleaning and eviscerating are done by hand. he talked about his fight with the fda and how they wanted to shut him down. his chickens tested at 130 pp million for bacteria. factory farm birds, which get steam-cleaned and washed in ammonia before packing, showed over 3000 pp million. he kept his outdoor op. the chickens are placed beaks down in a funnel-shaped contraption, their heads poking out the narrow hole. ffffft, neck sliced and blood drains. people went crazy.

lost in their self-righteousness, they couldn't even see that they were exactly the type of people, separated from the food chain by shrink-wrapped boneless skinless chicken breasts, that the movie was criticizing. a farmer like palatin WANTS you to know and to see his animals are clean and healthy and he's killing them carefully for your dinner. it's not wrong or shocking or cruel.

don't hate the place, hate the people.

idjits.

we are the world

shut it.

i already know i'm gonna sound like the old crone, wheezing on: "back when i was a little noodle, i had to walk to school, uphill both ways, in the snow, no boots. mastodons and the jersey devil chased me to eat my homework (that was TYPED on onionskin PAPER!) and hookman drove the school bus."

i don't know if it's possible for anybody under 30 to understand the universality of the dead folks in my last post.

the average american home had one tv and there were only 3 major broadcast networks. evening news, local, than national, ran from 6-8. prime time tv was 8-11, and the more grown-up shows, like dallas, were on after 10. cable tv was scarce and did not have independent programming. this meant there were only 3 programs airing at any one time, from which to maximize, or negotiate, your viewing pleasure. so, after dinner was washed up and if your homework was finished, you sat in the den with your family and watched tv. lack of remote controls and viewing options meant no channel surfing. vcr's were not yet on the market, so you watched it live, or you missed it.

over 20 million households watched "all in the family" every week, for 5 years of its run.

shows like m*a*s*h, charlie's angels and laverne & shirley scored way up there too.

over 100 million viewers watched the series finale of m*a*s*h.

85% of all american households watched some or all of "roots", which ran for 8 consecutive nights.

johnny carson was the ONLY late night talk show on tv, so generations grew up watching ed back him up, night after night.

there were no dvr's or vcr's. no hbo, bravo or cnn. no internet. no video games. (pong got old, very fast, trust me.)

my mom may have been ironing or mending or sucking back a big tall vodka rocks, but she knew who the meathead was and same with lenny and squiggy. even if she wasn't really "watching", ya know?

am radio stations outnumbered fm more than 2 to 1 in the 70s, and long-format was in its infancy. satellite radio? huh? satellites were looking at the moon back then.

michael jackson sold more albums than anybody except elvis presley. "thriller" sold over 40 million copies. that album, and the video with 9 million units sold, remain the biggest selling of each of all time.

mtv didn't broadcast its first video until august, 1981. (yeah, we all remember who was 1st, but do you remember that pat benatar got 2nd play? "you better run", for the win, tyvm for playing.)

michael jackson was the 1st black artist played on mtv and that wasn't until "billie jean" in 1983. the video that killed radio? (well after they refused to air rick james who was topping the charts and rightfully bitching how racist the honchos were.)

mj, along with lionel richie, wrote "we are the world". 45 artists sing on that record. (madonna was invited but turned them down.)

over 12 million of those farrah swimsuit posters got sold. she posed at her house, and chose a one-piece to hide a childhood abdominal scar. (no word on how she got so nippley though.)

unless you were amish or mormon, did you not see "jaws", "star wars" and "rocky"?

80 years of radio and 40 years of television, most of us shared our evenings. our dads (stepdads, whatevah) worked 9-5, paused at the water cooler or coffee nook and had a smoke; we opened our lunch boxes and laughed about archie and his hebes or the fumbles of hot lips houlihan and frank burns. i don't have a single friend (of my age, ahem) who didn't see carol burnett as scarlett with the green velvet curtain rod dress and golden tassel hat or kojack's lollipop.

for those with vested interests, there is much gnashing of teeth and waving of battered wallets for the ongoing media splintering. the modes and options are staggering. the old record industry is dead, regardless that the record companies try to clobber the new organic model into submission. that singing genie is not getting stuffed back into the victrola box.

the viewing options for media boggles the mind of an ol' gal like me. (who wants to watch exploding mayhem on a tiny pc or handheld pda screen? yet, kids do.) i race along with net gossip and celeb news yet have little context and zero knowledge about who many of these plastic celebs might be. (audrina partridge? speidi? hayden panetierre? the american idol factory of belters? and that last, i know i'm a freak, cuz it seems like everybody watches that. between gaiken and glambert and who's the fat chick who now looks like meatloaf? i could care less. dunno what they even sound like.)

i'm not longing for back in the day. don't get me wrong. i loves me some tivo. but i can't help wonder if there is an assumption and tacit acceptance of greater difference between us all, than there once was, and that really is. if that's the fuel for the fire of red vs. blue and me vs. you.

then again, the breaking news of mj's death yesterday crashed twitter and aol instant messenger. google stalled and wikipedia froze for over 20 minutes. amazon downloads for his music rose over 700%. yeah. 700% , plus. cnn on-line and such had double their normal traffic. flowers, stuffed animals and scrawled papers got stuffed in fences from his childhood home in gary, IN, to the american embassy in moscow.

i dare you not to tap your foot to "abc", or "that girl is mine".

laughter, sex and music. they speak to all the world.

the summer the 70s died

david carradine, then the first second banana, ed mcmahon. then back-to-back, farrah fawcett and michael jackson, within hours of each other.

carradine's end was tawdry, trussed up nekkid in a thai hotel room. ex-wives and sex-toy sellers sliming out from under rocks onto the tv for a few seconds of airtime to discuss his proclivities. if you divorced the guy because his kink freaked you out, why go on larry king? why attach yourself to something you abhor, that nobody wanted or needed to know about you and your famous ex? if any love remains in your heart, grieve privately. if you think the guy was a sick perv, offer your own note of grace to his unfortunate and accidental death. stay home and shut up. if you own a dildo store, well, whatevs, i guess. so everybody's kung fu fightin' for a slice.

mcmahon was sick, broken-down and broke. his mansion had been rotting from invasive mold, he had defaulted numerous times on his mortgage and had a tangled skein of lawsuits with contractors, doctors and attorneys. (at one point, he was estimated to be worth over $200 million. he was behind less $500k on the house, but won $7 million in the mold suit. why was he still in arrears on the casa? i will never comprehend hollywood money. although booze and roulette aren't generally considered sound investments. nor are ex-wives. but he only had 2 of those...) supposedly his last whore-wife/widow was a compulsive shopper. thirty years on the couch with johnny, bloopers with dick clark, star search, all those publisher's clearinghouse ads, blurbs for bud, game shows... where was the dough, ed? in the end, he was a very sick old man, who spent the last month of his life in the intensive care unit with pneumonia, dying from bone cancer .

he never stooped to writing tell-alls, never blabbed about behind-the-scenes or aired anybody else's dirty laundry, of which i'm sure he saw and smelled LOTS, having been in show biz 70 years. old school. any of you twittering kids taking notes? oh, right. you forget how to write on paper and tweets are for twits and only 140 characters. that will not do for teaching grasshopper life lessons in dignity. even though that guffaw of his, that i heard nightly from my parents' tv downstairs, was anything but, lol.

farrah had been dying for awhile. only 1600 american women receive a diagnosis of anal cancer each year. it's very rare, and most often a result of hpv infection. so, yeah, butt sex can give you cancer, kids. she thought she beat it, but when it came back, she jetted off to europe for all sorts of dubious alternate "cures". her "friends" and long-time lover ryan o'neal were all over tv, "mourning" her imminent demise. seriously? when was the last time you saw kate jackson or alanna stewart not on tvland, ffs? or o'neal in the news NOT for drugs or guns? nipped, tucked, washed-up and washed-out, vampires on her deathbed. they even made some sort of maudlin documentary in her final days, that aired on nbc. o'neal was going on about finally marrying her before she expired. undying amore? um, i'm thinking money grab, that his "paper moon" and "love story" loot went up his nose long ago. yuk.

she had made that krazee letterman appearance and had a reality show, "chasing farrah." ( i think.) i watched part of an episode. it was too much trainwreck even for me. she was out of her mind, looped on something, utterly illucid and surrounded by sycophants. she'd already had a lot of very poor plastic surgery and her beauty was bent and broken, ruined by bad knives and unseeing vanity.

that hair, that smile. her red swimsuit and her role as jill munroe and america's first taste of "jiggle tv" ("once upon a time, 3 little girls went to the police academy"... holy crap!! lmoa, sexist, much?) were blips in her life, yet cast giant shadows over any later accomplishments or aspirations. she was brilliant in the "burning bed", won raves for "extremities" and i think i am the only one who saw her quiet remarkable performance in "the apostle" with robert duvall.

her only kid was in and out of jail and rehab. her looks fading, her mind unreliable (even if it was from meds), and her health abandoning her, i so wished she had just stayed home. forbidden the hyena frenzy on morning chats and larry king. gaaaaaah. why do you want to be dying in prime-time? it was all too ghoulish, and i admit i am a sicko.

but farrah doesn't get the front page today because the king of pop appears to have gone out much like the last king, from a drug overdose. demerol. the tox screen will take weeks, but something tells me that won't be the only elixir he was getting from his own personal dr. nichopolous.

is there a secret sub-specialty at certain med schools for hollywood doctoring? recently i had to have a rib re-located by my doctor. she has been my doc over 15 years. i fainted from the pain. she gave me tylenol, ffs. i know enough money means essentially no barriers in your life. when it's mountainous bankrolls in the hands of the ever-increasingly loony, we see the same sad end over and over. the doctor as enabler, to keep his lifestyle up and running too. never mind that pesky, "1st do no harm" caveat, eh?

a prodigy, beaten and called "big nose" by his abusive father. at 5, little michael was already kicking it on stage and it wasn't long before guys like sam and dave and barry gordy were helping push the train. i remember the brothers had a variety show, just like donny and marie, and i pranced in my danskins, with full-on jazz-hands, on the living room shag when they sang "one bad apple". "off the wall" and "thriller" (still the best-selling album of all time) were part of my high-school soundtrack, and we played the albums over and over and over. our moms surely knew the words as well as we did, lol. his videos were dazzling epics, and he was the first black artist to get aired on mtv. he was the most popular performer in the world.

then he moonwalked right into krazyville. his hair caught on fire. he built neverland because he "never had a childhood." he married lisa marie presley. that interview with the 2 of them and diane sawyer was so surreal, it was like a fever dream. their kiss? aaaggghh... bubbles the chimp, emmanuel lewis, plastic surgery and ever lightening skin. he morphed from a little afro'ed black kid to diana ross, to a broken down white spinster lady. recent shots of him without a nose and melted ears...

maccauley culkin, sleep-overs and jesus juice. pretend admiral outfits and peter pan. little boys with cancer, litigious parents and gag orders. what dying kid's make-a-wish is, " i wanna sleep in michael jackson's bed, mommy"? rehab, lawsuits, more rehab. baster babies named curtain rod, blanket and futon. (or some such.) self-exile in bahrain, to fuck little camel jockey boys with impunity, i guess? hundreds of millions of disappeared dollars ballooning into ever bigger hindenburgs of debt. strings of canceled tours and charities that never saw a single promised dime.

apparently, u.s. law states a dead person cannot be libeled. i don't know what kind of recourse an estate would have, and the shark fight over his fortune (whatever that now means) and legacy will be horrible. papps were parasitically on-site so there are shots of his face under an oxygen mask, his lifeless body being rolled into the ambulance. (his hair was perfect..) the 911 call is on-line already. cnn followed his body from his rented mansion to the medical center. candids of his mother and siblings in the e.r. are posted on tmz. yes, the guy was completely cuckoo, but he was one of the most brilliant pop talents ever, as well as a son, a brother and a father, ya know?

imelda marcos, hugo chavez and corey feldman all had something to say. eddie van halen (smoking secret guitarist on "beat it"); martin scorsese (director of the "bad" video); dick clark, quincy jones and madonna all made statements as did sir elton. elizabeth taylor is too overcome to speak. arnold schwarzenegger, al sharpton and heidi montag piped up too.

there will be moonwalking at the eiffel tower on sunday and a philipino prison guard has already organized his 1500 prisoners into a synchronized dance tribute to "thriller". not all the memorials will be tasteful, i guess, huh?

really, though, there was no other logical ending for him, was there?

i need a bath.

escandolo

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things i saw on my summer vacation

besides things that i did NOT see, like those listed below, we didn't really do much sight-seeing, other than the citadel. who knew the owner was driving nearly 700 miles each way just to eat? lol.

we accidentally walked by canada's oldest anglican church, and the original site of dalhouisie college, now halifax city hall. saw st. mary's basilica, with its 128 ft. spire. strolled the pedestrian mall of granville st., and the waterfront of sackville st. skirted the public gardens.

poked our heads into the krazee economy shoe shop -- a ziggedy string of rooms, formerly of function and production, now a bar. had a draught at maxwell's plum. noted as a hotspot, but i think we old folks were just out too durn early to rub elbows with the beautiful people. however pretty the locals might be towards last call. the asthmatic tourette's guy drove us outta there.

on sunday, we saw the windy sideways rain that must depress the hell out of haligolians while it drenches and freezes them all winter.

we did not see a moose or a whale.

we did see a very drunk albino struggling to stay upright while crossing the street, as well as a very bottom-heavy dwarf lady swilling cheap chardonnay.

locals saw the strangeness of a woman in a skirt: me. i can't tell you how many SHOCKED looks i got, plus unabashed once- and then-once-again-overs from men, women and the gayz. weird. add wolf-whistles the few minutes i was alone. is there some local custom that legs get aired only in july and august that wasn't on the novia scotia homepage? i knew enough to wear long sleeves to morocco, ya know?

my favorite sight of all? the owner, off the clock, off the grid (mostly), free of cares or places to be, for longer than i have ever seen him, in almost 8 years of him having me. i was there as his companion and his convenience. it was very liberating and very fulfilling to be just that, without a personal agenda. we didn't squabble in the car, negotiate over drinks or meals, or tolerate something for which the other had zero interest, in the name of keeping the peace. no art galleries, no schedules, no theater or fou-fou spots trying his patience. tv, food, beer, sex and naps when he wanted. he did indulge me with oysters, but he likes those too.

separately, we each have traveled to spain. he with his wife and kids and me with an ex. i lost track of how many times e. made me cry on that trip from his relentless dickery. although he's very much not a whiner, i know the owner's trip to that sunny laid-back place was neither.

besides the stoopid sadistic hell of wallpapering a room, i don't know that anything demonstrates a couple's compatibility more so than travel, especially on a car trip. over the oysters, the owner observed his amazement at how often we agree. that together we must most often be right, because otherwise, it would be impossible for me to be that obsequiously and consistently harmonious -- especially after having called me mouthy and opinionated only the day before, lol. we don't have the tension or self-induced pressures of having to prove ourselves smarter or better than the other. we're both brainy and well-rounded. he knows stuff i don't, and vice-versa. there is no struggle for balance or power, because he has it and i accept that. i also understand it doesn't lessen my worth or his faith in me. if anything, it strengthens it, because i keep the pact.

after we were back home, i didn't need or want to "get away" from him, which really surprised me. i missed him as soon as i left his side.

we're good.

it's good.

i'm lucky.

the 51st state

highway driving often affords only the ugliest views of the cities and towns that got bisected for roadways. the view of the garden state from the turnpike is less than verdant, so in fairness to our kindly neighbor to the north, i'll pass on the cheap shots for cities like moncton (fastest growing region east of toronto, and canada's first officially bi-lingual city; motto : resurgo.) and amherst, with its glut of fat folks, fast food chains and deep discount stores (motto: faith in our people, pride in our products; birthplace of wyndham lewis.)

one thing small towns all over america have is the *need* to be noticed. how to get drivers to actually detour off the highway and spend a few minutes and some dollars.

in no particular order of geography or silliness, these are some of the claims to fame we passed on our trip to halifax:

• salisbury-- home of the silver fox (kenny rogers is canadian?)
• perry -- easternmost town in the u.s. (contiguously speaking, but who is to quibble?)
• nackawick -- home of the world's largest ax
• new maryland -- new brunswick's last fatal duel and final resting place
• sackville -- cultural crossroads of the maritimes
• new brunswick -- no small wonders (only big ones?)
• oxford -- blueberry capital of canada
• oromocto -- home of camp gagetown, a large canadian forces base (which tested agent orange and agent purple in the 60s, and now has dioxin levels at 143 times the canadian council of environmental ministers guidelines for maximum exposure.)
• bedford -- a traditional stopping place (for miqmaqs, or what?)
• stewiacke -- 45th parallel mid-way between the equator and the north pole (saw that claim a number of times actually)
• truro -- hub of nova scotia (also home to bible hill, which the owner misread as "bible hell")
• petitcodiac river valley -- home of magnetic hill (canada's 3rd most popular natural attraction)
  

alas, our trip was too short, and we didn't have time to stop, although the ax NOT used by paul bunyan did intrigue. maybe next time.

one little bittie thing that irked the owner was the bi-lingual road signs in new brunswick. at this point, can any french-speaking canadian with a driver's license NOT read english? really? do they have to label it both "rue" AND "street"? "chaussee" AND "road"? then boop, cross the water to nova scotia where all the signs are all english. as trivia, 62% of new brunswickers claim english as their "mother tongue", as do 92.5% of novies. qui sont tous les lecteurs français? strange bit of pacifying politics, that, eh?

up north thataway

ROAD TRIP!!!

it's been years, but with the owner's recent acquisition of his new favorite thing, we packed up and went -- in search of one of his old favorite things, lol.

it's surprising even to me that despite my long proximity to it, i've only had one other trip to canada. that was a for a friend's wedding in toronto, where i spent the long weekend barhopping in short skirts and high heels, dodging horny exes, and wannabe exes ( a massive feat of willpower regarding the ruggers, lemme say) and placating a petty friend who always got pissed by the proportion of male attention i got vs. what she did. (gee, dunno, your whiny bitch face is kind of a boner-killer, maybe?) so, lots of booze and laughing, a very good time, but very little contact with actual canadians or the country itself.

we plotted a slow route up, top-down, with hopes for sun. weather gods smiled and shined, although we didn't wish hard enough for warmth, cuz it was unseasonably cold.

first real stop was the now mandatory duckfat for poutine and paninis in portland. yup. just as amazing as always. in town and fed earlier than we expected, we wandered over to an open mic night. on tap, an old fave, old thumper. the music, meh. a fun bar to revisit another time for certain, in spite of the weirdly hyped-up pregnant announcer.

crash in a cheap motel, in a room right next to the ice machine.perfect. :)

sunny day next, contrary to the forecast, but we're far up and close-ish to the water, so know it's a crap-shoot. sevens and elevens, so we stopped for sunblock.

doesn't take long in that neck of the woods for the peeps to get sparse and the trees to get dense. right about when you're wondering what the heck locals do for work, we passed a sign for ewegurt. a friendly old lazy dog greeted us, and we had our pick of maple or plain. with a bag of fresh and cold csa strawberries, we had a quick picnic on the water at the fort point lighthouse. 1200-pound fog bell still on display. the lighthouse, although now automated, is still active. we happily discovered we were tramping on the grounds of yet another american fuck-you to the brits during the opening salvos of the revolution: via the commands of the loyalists then in charge of fort pownall, british sailors snuck ashore one night in march 1775 and secretly removed the fort's guns to keep them out of rebel hands. in response, the rebels burned the blockhouse and filled in the moat to prevent the british occupation of the fort. good times, lol.

somewhere way up, we stopped for a late lunch. lobster roll for me, lobster stew and a scallop roll for him. piles of onion rings and fresh iced tea. friendly low-key service and we were stuffed and happy, then back on the way.

destination that night was campobello island, summer playground for fdr's family and other richy-rich new yorkers. although it once held many of those summer homes and giant hotels, only a few buildings remain. fdr's cottage among them, and i'm guessing the island's big draw. breathtaking harbor views, but a warren of tiny rooms, all spartan in their utility. of course they were extra protestant and the mother looked terribly dour, even in the unsmiling tradition of the day. (i'd forgotten fdr had contracted polio only as an adult, and it turned out that this island was where he succumbed. when we heard that he had arrogantly built a 9-hole golf course on local grazing ground, it wasn't much of a leap to think a local may have gotten some real revenge.) felix, the neighborhood fox, trotted boldly across the back lawn. ( i named him. the nice women who now staff the place lacked the imagination to have done so, lol.)

next door and not often open to the public was the hubbard cottage. even wealthier than the roosevelts, but the place i would have preferred to party, with its open floor plan, sunny colors and wrap-around porch. not to forget the picture window of flawless glass that framed the bay.

next? cheapest. lobstah... on ... the ... planet. not a din of dining options on the quiet island, and when i sheepishly asked the market price for the buggers at family fisheries resto, i was told $7.50 a pound. no, not per ounce, and yes, cooked. so yeah, lobstah for lunch AND dinner.

adirondack chairs, wine and a chilly sunset on the lawn by the water of our inn, the owen house. hummingbirds, bald eagles and cormorants all getting busy as the day dwindled. it was so nice... to just sit. just sit til we were too cold to sit out any more.

not having prayed to the ferry gods, it wasn't yet running, so more driving. no real disappointment to the owner i guess, other than missing out on what was likely some breathtaking scenery.

record time to halifax. no surprise in the hot rod, i guess, but we were early everyplace we went. not sunny, not warm, but not raining as predicted. we'll take it! the downtown is ringed by a postcardy neighborhood of rambling victorians, and the city itself is low-slung. a very charming link of townhouses is the halliburton house inn, and our room was a gem. a short walk to the raison d'etre of the trip -- the henry house and seafood stew for the owner. it had made him a happy man by accident many years ago. that and a pint of old peculiar and he was happier still, all over again. my mussels were great and garlicky and our server was again a very nice and friendly young lady. patio weather for the maritimes, so we sat out and people-watched. who knew halifax was a homo hot-bed? everybody knew everybody and it would put the south end to shame, fer sure.

we bar-crawled a bit, up- and downhill, and near to home, stumbled upon bearly's, that night hosting carson downey. smokin' solid r & b covers, and extra fun for me watching the extra-white people "dance". what the hell were they hearing in their heads, and were their spines fused? cuz nary a swaying hip, besides my own, in the joint. i know canucks ain't exactly showy, but "circumspect" is hyperbole for how still and quiet that crowd was. carson must be used to it, cuz he and the guys rocked out anyway.

next day we had our history lesson at the citadel. an impressive fort, completed after its usefulness had passed, because artillery improvements moved more quickly than infantry lugging and piling up granite blocks. we tagged along with a choir group from the american south. fat women with bad haircuts and fanny packs, complaining of painful knees while climbing a few stairs. oy. my inner history nerd got her dork on though and the park ranger kid in the organ-grinder monkey hat did a swell job of showing us about.

down the hill for lunch. for an area that ships out some of the tastiest oysters i've ever had, raw bars are a rare treat up there. of the two, we picked "the warehouse", a barn of a place on the water. which really was "on" an asphalt lot with no view. no matter, the server was yet another sweetie and the bivalves did not disappoint. 5 local varieties, expertly shucked and served on a mountain of chipped ice. killah good. is it that so many canadians are land-locked, or too many choir groups who want fish and chips? hard to figure why so little demand for such a treat.

dinner was the prix-fixe promo at our hotel. a tiny dining room that seats maybe 40. seafood from smoked salmon to black cod, all just right and very pretty on the plate. the chef knew exactly what he was doing -- even when sneaking the bacon into the scallop course.

early the next day, we were headed home and we were in a rocket, the owner stopping as little as possible to get home asap. 11 hours without a break, really, but he did it. it was the only time we couldn't have the top down. even for him, it was just too cold. it also drags down the speed a bit and he wanted pj's and a sofa. and more lobster. yes, more lobster. we scrambled to get some lively kickers on the back end of father's day and steamed up a few.

we crashed early and it was done.

he still has a pile of canadian bills in his wallet. lobster prices are predicted to fall even lower. when do we go back? :)

more dumb whores

coming across this from relentlessly twittering dumbass meghan mccain, i was going to take a pass. but with this cited in krazee-close proximity, i just couldn't.

mccain is whinging about double-standards and liberal media bias. boo-hoo. how letterman would never make a rotten joke about a dem female, well, cuz we all know he's a lefty kid-raping nyc pervert. how sad she was about how the media treated her mother and palin during the campaign and are just such a big passel of pinko meanies.

she seems to forget (or happily ignorant) that comedy is a free-for-all and public figures are fair game.

she might be repressing the time her father called his wife
a trollop and a cunt, in front of his full campaign bus.

or her father remarking that chelsea clinton was such a dog because janet reno was really her other parent.

or perhaps she doesn't remember limbaugh's "jokes" about chelsea clinton being the white house dog. that for months every time he had a story about the first daughter, he began it with a sound clip of a pack of barking dogs.

she must not have heard this charmer from g. gordon liddy (yeah, the watergate crook, who now has a radio show syndicated in 160+ markets) about supreme court nominee sotomayer: "let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate. that would really be bad. lord knows what we would get then."

so in case republican misogyny isn't sufficiently apparent, we'll toss racism on the fire:

a gorilla escaped from a zoo in south carolina. on his facebook page, long-time republican activist, and aide to the state's attorney general, rusty depass wrote: "i'm sure it's just one of michelle's ancestors - probably harmless."depass told a local news outlet he was talking about the president's wife, first lady, michelle obama.

for equal opportunity hate, we've got anne coulter describing democratic delegates as: " corn-fed, no make-up, natural fibre, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons”. and if mccain is truly amnesiac, she must completely forget when ultra con laura ingraham basically called mccain "fat".

i'm not quite sure which confounds me more: that mccain and palin and their buddies continue to natter on and link a 14-year-old girl to a joke that wasn't about her, but now is, stretching it into all kinds of wacky taffy about old perverts and little girls and self-esteem and statutory rape, or that they seem to be willfully ignoring the context of the joke to get air-time. because... can they really be THAT stoopid so as to not get it?

shutupshutupshutupshutupshutup.

media whoring

"Saturday night, Sarah Palin is going to drop the first puck at the Philadelphia Flyers' hockey game. Then Palin will spend the rest of the game trying to keep the hockey players out of her daughter's penalty box." --Conan O'Brien

this was from last october, during the presidential campaign, but copied yesterday on a message board that was going back and forth on the current letterman/palin media-generated spat.

palin attended that game with her 7-year old daughter, but none of her kids is specifically named in the punchline. just like letterman's joke -- no name, just a safe assumption we're talking about the slutty baby mama kid. nary a peep from the press or palin that o'brien's joke was offensive, that he was a pervert and talking about kid-fucking.

oh, wait... maybe cuz back then she was in the news every minute of every fucking day? and now she's roaming around desperately trying to stay relevant? why isn't anybody pissing and moaning about how she whores out her kids for media bites?

blood on whose hands?

it's no secret i cannot watch nor tolerate the shouting heads, like fox's o'reilly and hannity, free-agent coulter or radio maniacs like limbaugh and michael savage. (staggering that great britain won't let in the latter -- how's THAT for a big steaming cup of "shut the fuck up"?) no ethics, no morals, no hearts. only the fever chase for ratings, attention and dollars.

clips do pop up on-line, so it's not like i sail on the glassy waters of a nutter-free sea. i don't often watch, but when i do, it's further confirmation why i don't. but it's also an important reminder of how the "other half" thinks. not to tar all cons with that fetid brush, but these guys rile with what they got. somebody who can explain and defend their political stances in a rational way will get my ear; we can agree to disagree, shake hands and be on our respective and merry ways. but when the guys up-front are just ranting it doesn't make me want to listen. "new faces" like palin, jindal and cindy mccain seem verbally retarded. how the hell can i parse that gobbledy-gook when it's like listening to narnian? don't they have media coaches? hell, i know CHEFS who have taken classes to become more telegenic.

last year, james addkison opened fire in a knoxville unitarian church. 200 people were in attendance watching children perform a play. he killed a man and a woman. yeah, ok the guy went off the rails. his estranged wife was a congregant, which may have been a connector. in his house, investigators found "liberalism is a mental health disorder" (by savage), "let freedom ring" (by hannity), and "the o'reilly factor," (by o'reilly). they also found "100 people who are screwing up america" by bernie goldberg. granted, the goldberg book isn't a tome to incite, but very handy to have a list like that all printed and portable, eh?

addkison's lawyers quickly agreed to life with no possibility of parole. four days after he was sentenced, he released a "manifesto" -- which he had actually intended as a suicide note, having assumed that the cops would have gunned him down during his rampage.

some snips:

• Know this if nothing else: This was a hate crime.
• This was a symbolic killing. Who I wanted to kill was every Democrat in the Senate & House, the 100 people in Bernard Goldberg's book.
• Someone had to get the ball rolling. I volunteered. I hope others do the same. It's the only way we can rid America of this cancerous pestilence.
• Kill them where they gather.
• I'd like to encourage other like minded people to do what I've done.
• Go Kill Liberals.
• This was an act of political protest.

the first and last points leave no doubt this was an act of domestic terrorism.

this morning i woke to a clip of salon editor joan walsh being besieged by o'reilly. yup, she's a left-coast lefty and pro-choice. she's my today hero. she never raised her voice, never lost her cool and reduced o'reilly to
a foamy blathering street cur. wait for the near-end where all he can sputter is: "My constitutional rights say I can say what I say, you can say what you say, as vile as you say it, you can say it, and I would never condemn you for saying it. You are misguided, you have blood on your hands because you portrayed this man as a hero." how's that for rational discourse?

recent posts of mine have concerned the assassination of dr. tiller in kansas. also murdered in a church. o'reilly regularly referred to the doctor as "tiller the baby killer" and to his offices as an "abortion mill." almost all media accounts call the dead man an "abortion doctor" instead of what he really was, an ob-gyn, who owned and operated a woman's health clinic, where he performed safe and legal procedures for women from all over the country, regardless of their ability to pay.

on a forum where i have been debating this killing, an american poster called tiller's clinic a "tottenhausen" -- death house. that choice of the german phrase was creepy on too many levels. same forum, another poster: "this abortion doctor used incinerators to dispose of babies. think about that and take pause." incendiary much? when i posited that cremating an adult was exactly the same, he insisted that it was not, as if happy wriggling infants were being tossed into a fiery pit.

a white-supremacist anti-fed loony shot up the washington d.c. holocaust museum this past week, killing a guard. an african-american guard. he only stopped firing when he was shot.

when liberal leaning pols are in charge, right-wing violence upticks. demonstrably. but what happens when the cons are in charge? were the dark eight years of bush and cheney shredded by lefties killing lethal injection doctors or bombing nra offices? nope. has anybody that is anti-death penalty ever targeted or threatened a prison, guard or doctor who participates in executions? nope.

facts: the economy is in the tank. the ranks of unemployed continues to rise. the values of people's homes and saving are disintegrating before their very eyes.

fears: capitalist icons like general motors are collapsing. homos are getting married, getting babies and will be having public butt sex in front of your kids, which will destroy your opposite marriage. a black man with a strange name is in charge. he's secretly, but surely, a muslim and that's all kindsa bad. he pals around with terrorists and drug dealers. he's talking and stuff to guys we're supposed to hate, cuz they hate the real amurrica.

o'reilly and his cronies "do" hate speech. they distort or ignore the truth. sure, libs have their own shiny rainbow prisms, but air america has tanked in far more markets than succeeded. more americans get their news from fox than any other single source.

this is a rant. i'm conflicted.

i abhor censorship. but i fear what happens when too many people hear only one side, and that side is hostile and deceitful. they then find comfort and support for their fears. ask germans and rwandans what happened when hate spewed from the airwaves, and those large and in charge sought scapegoats. sheeple follow without reasoning.

it makes me sad and afraid.

it's sunny for the first time in days. i'm going to bathe my eyes in art, and my heart in friendship.

wasilla-billies redux

she's baaaaaaaaack...

i stopped watching letterman ages ago. he got all soft after the birth of his son, and watching an aarp member drool over insipid starlets was too molester-pervyish -- like a heavy-breather *just* outside the playground. somebody get the creepy old guy a bib, ya know?

apparently he made a tasteless joke. which was part of his shtick, if anybody can recall when he was actually funny, sharp and relevant. he pushed the envelope of crassness -- mocking several famous people all in one punchline. on late-night tv. the kids and grams and gramps all asleep and safe from being offended.

except the voracious media maw gave it legs on the morning shows. four fucking days later, the mother of all those white trash kids is still yapping about how out of line letterman was. this from the mom who pushed her knocked-up underage daughter and her dumbass redneck boyfriend into the international cultural and political spotlight, as a show of superlative family values. a young couple who broke up as soon as the election was over and the baby was born. the father of the girl had promised her a new truck if she'd ditch the loser boy. which she did.

so now the woman who couldn't answer custard soft questions from katie couric, is all tut-tut-tut and putting down her high-heeled footsies. if you watch the clip of her with matt lauer, she nearly says, "riot..." but stumbles, backs off and then asks amurricanz to rise up, blah blah. ( i was staring at her slutty stewardess hairdo and frozen forehead and had stopped listening already, so lost the thread. if she had one. besides that letterman is a meanie.)

wiping the spider glue from my ears, next i heard something about statutory rape and girls having low self esteem.

dunno, mrs. governor, how do you think those women in your town felt having to fork over the money for their own fucking rape kits? that's gotta be an ego-charge and krazee grrrl-power empowerment right there.

whatever might be left of palin's base -- them real folks who hate the book lurnin' and are praying for the end times during commercial breaks for american idol -- they were not watching david letterman. his lame-ass remark would have gone off to hulutv archives and died. instead, this attention whore, who is articulate as a fruitfly with tourette's, is flogging her 14-year-old kid's "self-image". hearing her mom use the words, "statutory rape," "low self-esteem" and "alex rodriguez" all in one sentence on national tv, is willow now refusing to leave the house? yuk. yuk. compound the yuk factor that a-rod is a man-whore who banged madonna. who banged dennis rodman. (need eye-bleach yet?)

from the same show with lauer:
palin's spokesperson: "it would be wise to keep willow away from david letterman."

lauer: "are you suggesting david letterman can't be trusted around a 14-year-old?"

palin: "take it the way you want to take it. it's from the heart."

so, it's ok to infer that a very famous man might be a pedophiliac rapist? he does work in nyc, so that's probably true, right? or is your heart full of beetles and leprosy?

the red sox game is the only tv i watched this week and i STILL cannot escape this inane story.

palin believes god answers your prayers. can i pray her away? or at least off-air?

gah.

terrorists win again

the family of murdered ob-gyn dr. tiller announced yesterday his clinic will be closed permanently.

death by kung fu grip

a dead american discovered in a bangkok hotel is not going to have a happy ending -- and likely did not get that way because of one as a bonus from a "love-you-long-time" pro. make it an american celebrity and the odds grow slimmer. actor david carradine found hanging by his neck while on location had my circle and me waiting for the rest of the tawdry details.

sho' nuff, naked with a cord around his throat and genitals. his lawyer and family are crying foul, that it was not suicide, nor accidental, a la michael hutchence. earlier today a thai tabloid leaked a supposed photo of the crime scene. it's from the rear, so thankfully no cock shot, but his hands are quite clearly above his head. jerking off would have been impossible, unless his "patience, grasshopper" training lent him some tantric tricks and he could do it hands-free? dunno. it will be weeks before the autopsy is complete and details released, and sadly, by then, it will be old news and any links to perps long gone in a southeast asian summer storm. it's a vulgar end to an interesting guy's life. "kill bill" indeed.

a good friend and i touched on it yesterday, laughing in that thoroughly modern way about how seamy it was, especially the thai hotel aspect. years ago, the cord on the cock would NOT have been in the news. about a decade ago, i remember a long article on auto-erotic asphyxiation (ny times? too lazy to search) and how it was most often the family requesting it be listed as "suicide" on the death certificate. that seemed to them less shameful than an accidental death by extreme wanking. one woman fought her in-laws tooth and nail, because a suicide meant she wouldn't get any of her husband's life insurance. she took them to court and won. i doubt she goes there for thanksgiving anymore.

my friend is gay, so by some people's accounts, has had "kinky sex". but for the buttsex, he assures me it was always very vanilla, and the brief glimpse i gave him into mine, via our being discovered way back, left him very uncomfortable.

he was flabbergasted that anybody could find this sort of activity arousing. i'm thinking the assessed risk is so extreme in his head that it would crush any pleasure potential.

i'm no babe in the woods and i know people actually do it and most manage not to die. however, i can't think of any *relatively* safe way to do this kinda thing by yourself. you're hanging and choking for air, for god's sake, with the end of it being a mind-blowing orgasm. in that state, few are of a mind to make a split-second decision.

we all know i have little risk aversion, and that i score high, even for so-called "high sensation seekers". i crave intensity, perv on pain and fear. terror has held me in his grip and i only want to dance again when he lets go and i collapse to the floor sobbing and incoherent. being strangled during sex, choked, denied the oxygen i need to live is one of the most erotically charged sensations i am allowed. is there anything more vulnerable than my life under his very thumb? anything more formidable than a man taking that power to its edge?

it's not something i would ever do alone. it's not *just* the blood rush alone that gets me. it's somebody else deciding whether i live or die. yeah, it's more convenient for him if i don't expire, cuz then the cops don't get involved, but there is a long sliding scale between breathing freely and death. it would be sheer idiocy to do it to myself by accident.

"i like your christ..."

"i like your christ, i do not like your christians. your christians are so unlike your christ." ~~ghandi

if he was a scripted character in a movie or a tv show he'd be hooted off the screen for being so far over the edge of stereotypical as to be cartoonish. yet, this red state freelander with numerous arrests both for possessing bomb-making materials and flipping the bird to various state and federal laws, and who often loudly pronounced his tenets of justifiable homicide for abortion doctors is the middle-aged white guy in custody for yesterday's shooting of dr. tiller in his wichita church.

morris wilson, commander of the kansas unorganized citizens militia in the mid-90s, said he knew scott roeder fairly well."i'd say he's a good ol' boy except he was just so fanatic about abortion. he was always talking about how awful abortion was. but there's a lot of people who think abortion is awful."

so yeah, just that "one lil murdering doctors who perform a legal, life-saving procedure is right and good and makes jesus smile" stance was a bit much, but, aw shucks, otherwise a great guy with whom to go shooting and drinking and building pipe bombs in the basement.

his connections to operation rescue have clear electronic and physical links, although now they're backing away. "yeah i kinda remember meeting him, but that's it," is a paraphrase from the newish and more cuddly leader of the group, troy newman. roeder posted numerous times to various websites affiliated with the group and attended their rallies in different states. doesn't indicate he was part of the inner sanctum, agreed, and yes, i'm sure there is some possibility another nutter was using this as a screen-name. um, yeah.

"someone" using the name scott roeder posted on 09-03-07 on a site sponsored by operation rescue called chargetiller.com, that tiller needed to be "stopped."

"it seems as though what is happening in kansas could be compared to the 'lawlessness' which is spoken of in the bible," it said. "tiller is the concentration camp 'mengele' of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgment upon our nation."

also under the same name in response to an invite from operation rescue to a may rally was this:

"bless everyone for attending and praying in may to bring justice to tiller and the closing of his death camp. sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the pastor, deacons, elders and members while there? doesn't seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to tiller."

yes, what could possibly be wrong with harassing a man, his family and his neighbors in a house of worship? our baby jihad crushes their privacy, beliefs and the sanctity of their *christian* church.

today, randall terry added this to yesterday's charming quotes: "( he is) now concerned that the obama administration will use tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions." well, hell, we can all agree assassinating somebody is a rock-solid method of cease and desist, so why should that be a problem?

in a public appearance last year, ann coulter had this to say about abortion-clinic doctors and health care personnel who were murdered as either having been shot, "...or, depending on your point of view, had a procedure performed on them with a rifle."

no surprise to find bill o'reilly fanning the flames here, right? most often calling him "tiller the baby killer," the doctor was mentioned at least 28 times since 2005 on the show. both he and his lawyer were ambushed by o'reilly cam-carrying butt-boys, forcing them to call 911.

according to salon.com: tiller, o'reilly likes to say, "destroys fetuses for just about any reason right up until the birth date for $5,000." he's guilty of "Nazi stuff," was on 06-08-05; a moral equivalent to NAMBLA and al-qaida, was on 03-15-06; and "this is the kind of stuff happened in mao's china, hitler's germany, stalin's soviet union," was 11-09-06.

have a look for yourself here and here and more still here.

i am not so specious as to blame coulter or o'reilly, or any of their other oily ilk, for being responsible for this tragedy. i believe they are soul-less fiends of capitalism and opportunism, who found a niche in which to make beaucoup bucks and maintain major media limelight presence. i'd be shocked if either of them have any true foundations, ethics or personal philosophies that guide their behaviors, other than the map to the bank.

where i do find fault is that they are given so many very public platforms for hate speech. countless arenas and millions of dollars to disseminate false information for nothing other than shock value. the fringe right is not shy in advocating violence to achieve their means. not a single "pro-lifer" has been hurt or killed by the other side in this fight, ya know? if people or property are violently attacked, damaged or destroyed, if fear is the weapon of choice to stop actions of those with whom *we* disagree, it's fucking terrorism. it's jihad. in this case of dr. tiller and those killed and wounded before him, it's religious absolutism run amok. randall terry's justification of this bloody deed is no different than some desert imam saying death to the west. NO. DIFFERENT.

dr. tiller's family, including 4 children and 10 grandchildren, issued a statement which read in part: “george dedicated his life to providing women with high-quality health care despite frequent threats and violence. we ask that he be remembered as a good husband, father and grandfather and a dedicated servant on behalf of the rights of women everywhere.”

amen.