heat makes ya strange

exiting the movie theater yesterday into the blast furnace that was kendall square, my friend and i walked while weighing our options for the closest a/c. i see a guy wearing a skull mask. with a blue oxford shirt, madras shorts and loafers. he is with a friend and they both are carrying small plastic shopping bags. they stop on a traffic island. we watch. the skull man takes off his shirt. he is tall and lean. he starts shimmying into a sun dress, takes off his shorts, then tops off the summery ensemble with a saucy pink beach hat. his friend goes mexicali.

yes, we watched the wardrobe change. yes, all kinds of people stopped and took pix, cuz everybody has smartphones, so i know i'm not the only person sharing this bit of freak. we strangers all watching got to share a laugh too.

skullman and bandit carried on, as did we, to the next excellent adventure.

friends in lowell places

last weekend was the annual folk festival. number 23, and anybody who reads me knows it's all right outside the owner's door. this year he's far more knit into the local fabric so decided to have people and beer. or beer and people, i guess. i offered that should include food, so got promoted to on-site caterer, which was dandy with me.

friday kicked it off with steamed lobster, warm potato salad, wine and then outdoor music. but the outside stuff was very so-so, so we went inside. we were drunker by then and saw some peeps we knew, but it was getting rocky, especially for me, and the next day was a-gonna be long.

walk-in brunch and nice people brought mimosas. neighbors, friends. sky cleared and out we went. it's tough to choose because there is so much from which to choose! a musician-friend picked his favorite venue and something none of us really knew: tuvan throat singing. at first we had an obstructed view and assumed much of the sounds must be coming from instruments. as we crept closer, we saw that, no, almost all of it was coming from within. 2 notes held and manipulated simultaneously-- a sustained low note while humming an eerie, whistle-like melody. add in a thrumming rhythm similar to that of a jaw harp, but produced vocally-by the same person, at the same time. human bagpipes, whose rhythms came from the hoofbeats of horses, the winds of the steppes and rushing water. like much native music, they sang of beautiful women, nature, horses, battles and drinking. it gave me gooseflesh.

the sounds were too foreign for too many, so we scored seats eventually and stayed on for a q&a panel, that included one of the tuvans, an a capella gospel quintet, a blues singer and a honky-tonker. each got to do a little stuff-strutting, then were encouraged to do a song together. "amazing grace." trudi lynne on lead and the boys backing her up with strings and harmony. lovely. the tuvan listened with a cupped ear. no sooner had lynne hit her last note then he began it tuvan-style. dropped faces of awe on-stage. who knows what he was saying, but it was 2-pitch perfect and magnificent. within seconds, everybody re-grouped and did back up for him. it was truly breathtaking and brought down the house. the universality of music. "grace is everywhere."

we stayed on mostly to gape at the physical beauty of the afro-brazilian group that was up next, capoeira luanda. the slender hips, long hair and 12-pak abs would make the straightest of men think twice, lol.

back home for the dinner shift. mad table-load of food and the owner had laid in ridiculous quantities of beer. one of the nicest things about these types of affairs is the surprise of who actually shows up. the full band that is one of the owner's faves came for a quickie before their show and were full of raves about various items being "the best i've ever had!" neighbors, boston friends of mine, with an elderly aunt and uncle in tow. (i hope i am half as cool as aunt rita when i grow up!)

as people came and went we were cross-talking trying to explain the tuvans to the musicians and finding that a challenge. my hands were occupado and nobody seemed willing to enlist the net for audio. turned out no need, because one of the owner's neighbors can do it and so did! what the fuck!? amazing.

tight window, since we were hot on the heels of m. and his guys to see their alley show. the air was warm, the beer was cold and the sound was sweet. not once, not twice, but three times a damn uke band blew the sound, lol.

the owner's man-crush band was up next and sounded great. (even if our view of the local guitar-god was obstructed by the horns.) really really great. some of the folks with us were not really "live music" types, maybe a big concert at the garden kinda thing, but not back alley stages. they loved m. and they loved j. what's not to like?

there was more beer and some tequila, for everybody-not-me and a wee bit more music. we all could congratulate ourselves on being not *that* drunk! sunday was left-over brunch, muggy air and a few nibbles of music, (next year, note to self, pass on the klezmer band) but the sox and the a/c made a siren song. hey, we don't recover like we used to, ya know?

although the owner dismissed the food part of the weekend as "what have you", ya know it's a hit when everybody just stands around the buffet, demanding recipes. which i never really have and confounds people utterly, lol. besides the ratification, i enjoy seeing people enjoy food, a little (even a lot) libation and each other. there is something self-affirming when you see the nice, funny interesting people you know and that they like you. that you know your "friends" will like each other. that you can be generous with your home and your spirit.

it was one of the best weekends i've had in a long time. funny. i've had quite a lot of those lately. :)

kids today

went way out of our demographic last night with the owner and caught a rancid show at the "new" house of blues. all the funk is now faux, but whatever. there are very few venues that size in the city so it is what it is.

first act, a canadian outfit that leapt on stage right on time. (punctual punk rockers? what the what?) lead singer jumped around and had the high pitch scream thing down. all in skinny jeans and playing fast-fast-fast. for his in-between patter he joked about our quartet of champion sports teams and got booed for being a mapleleafs fan, lol. he also just couldn't gush enough about how "nice, kind and gentlemanly" were the other guys in the other bands on the tour. he was effusive in his thanks to the crowd.

rancid was up next and they killed. they weren't the headliners, so the set was on the short side, but they packed it with standards like "time bomb" and "ruby soho" plus some new stuff, like an acoustic beauty that included a stand-up bass and a mandolin. owner's only complaint was it wasn't loud enough. he was right.

last, the headliners, rise against, whom we didn't know, but it was clearly "their" crowd. they were good, but we didn't stay to the end.

now. here's the thing.

the owner and i rocked away many nights of our misspent youths in smelly smoky clubs. the floors were sticky, the bathrooms toxic and the music ear-shattering. boston and cambridge were both throbbing with live music every night, cheap, if not free. we each had our favorites and saw more than our share -- spending plenty of mornings after with ringing ears and hoarse throats. yeah, aerosmith and the cars were on the radio, but i was at the rat and jack's having my skull split by the dead kennedy's, the circle jerks, the cramps, the pogues, social distortion and sonic youth. the clash, elvis (the skinny angry english one, yo) and x. i was at several ramones concerts that devolved into riots with really pissed-off cops. the on-stage destruction wrought by the plasmatics (chainsawing televisions and driving onstage in a car wired to blow up) made townsend's guitar-smashing look like kid's play. (btw? wendy o. was wearing electrical tape on her topless nipples a generation before you saw a microphone, lady gaga, you poseur.)

england and the states were in the grips of thatcher and reagan. everything was fucked. these musicians were young and royally enraged. they cursed, they drank, they spat at the audience and they overdosed. they smashed stuff. "fuck you!"

on the floor? moshing and crowd surfing. very drunk revved-up guys colliding and tossing each other around -- really hard -- a testosterone-charged raging bull of a crowd. fights broke out, people got hurt, bones got broken and there was blood. guys from the band often leapt into the crowd, or the crowd would muscle its way onstage. mayhem.

last night? yeah, the kids knew the words and they did the fist-in-the-air pumping. there was a barrier between the crowd and the stage and a long line of guys in polo shirts(!) behind that. kids would get airborne, passed along, laughing, and then gently handed off to the waiting arms of security, who toddled them off to the sides. when a guy fell down moshing, somebody offered him a hand and a pick-up. girls were down there, laughing and kind of dance-pushing, danger-free. the mohawks all wilted by the middle of the night. (psa: ya need glue for those danger spikes, kiddo, not aquanet.) nobody got punched, nobody challenged security and i don't think anybody got thrown out.

is there no more angry youth? life is too soft with i-phones and $200true religion jeans?

a little googling today: the guys of rise against, besides being members of peta, are identified with the "straight edge" movement. they don't smoke, drink, engage in recreational drugs or casual sex. it was a hall full of "nice kids", with lots of boys likely on ritalin. the tall guy blocking my view actually let me stand in front when he saw how small i am! instead of head-banging me, the guy to my left just shoulder-bumped me in the beat!

these are not gonna be the kids who write something like "debby gibson is pregnant with my 2-headed love child,", "dr. fucker, m.d.," and sure as hell won't re-do "too drunk to fuck." none of them even reacted to elvis or ian drury on the pa between bands! i'm guessing cuz they were too busy texting their elsewhere friends to be involved with what was happening then and there.

sigh. does this make it a better world? unless you're mormon or amish, i always thought youthful rebellion and shocking the olds was "normal". boundary-pushing and limits-testing. the only limits these kids seem to press are on the x-box.

yeah, back in the day. i r old.

relatively delicious

the owner is having a party and i get to do the food. double yippee for me for the mass cooking and i also like shindigs, lol. with some time on my hands these days, i noodled extensively on the menu and realized that it's been ages since i've bought a cookbook. i donated dozens when i moved and only kept my proven and most dirty and dog-eared volumes. if i'm not riffing off something i saw at work or eating out, (yes, stealing is perfectly acceptable here!) most often now i am trolling the web.

i don't do dessert much so log on often for that. the chemistry involved in baking is fascinating to me and it requires an exactness for the proper result that savory cooking simply does not.

upside is many professional chefs and bakers have websites and blogs these days, so you can easily find recipes from dorie greenspan, david lebovitz or even the god pierre hermes.
the downside to the netz free-for-all is the explosion of untrained cooks and hobby bakers blogging. they get a camera and imagine themselves the new martha. some of these have actually scored book deals, so persistence can pay, but i don't put in much faith for a few reasons. first is they rarely are producing an original (which is probably a good thing) but most often just copying a cake from the food network or some such nonsense. second there is a puppy-at-your-heels syndrome to certain sites, like chocolate & zucchini, or posh & becks, who seemingly are linked to every cooking blog i've ever seen. "i saw this something or other on clothilde's blog and just HAD to make it!!" i can almost hear her shrilly girly-girl excitement. then a stampede ensues and every blogger on the planet is making gramercy tavern's ginger bread or nigella's clementine cake. (which is awesome, actually.) this same tiny circle winds around enthusiast sites sites like chow too. if i see one more obsequious prostration about ina garten or zuni (i mean, c'mon, you need a fucking recipe to make a caprese salad?) i'll claw out my eyes with an icing spatula. lastly a staggering number of web recipes begin with supermarket product, like boxed brownie or yellow cake mix. simple baked goods like these come together usually in 2 bowls (sometimes even 1), in a matter of minutes, and lack chemicals, stabilizers and stuff you can't pronounce. if i'm in the kitchen, why do i want betty crocker in there too?

a few promising goodies made my list. another bonus of the web is you can search and compare. if the ratio looks unbalanced you save yourself wasted time and no product has to be an epic fail. unless of course, you are clueless, lol. cornbreads and muffins have endless variations, regional preferences, and some are better suited for certain uses -- like you don't want a really moist version as turkey stuffing but it will rock toasted with good butter. a prolific and photo-abled lady has a dorie greenspan that looks right and i have infinite trust in d.g. sometimes the recipes can be sloppily transcribed and corrections come from readers, so as a double-check, i scrolled through the comments. one i'll paraphrase:

"these were the worst muffins i've ever had. i didn't have corn meal, so subbed out jiffy muffin mix. i wanted them to be healthy, so used whole-wheat flour instead of white. i didn't have canola oil so subbed in extra virgin olive oil. i omitted the sugar. my arm hurt, so i mixed the batter in the food processor. they were like hockey pucks and went in the garbage."

lady, really, you should have mixed dog turds in there too because you are, yes, that clueless.

i made it last night and it was exactly what i wanted, and yeah, i followed the recipe.

my final rant comes from the over-the-top gaga reactions to stuff readers have yet to make. they see the picture and go all pavlov's dog. my head starts thinking, "well, sub out some brown sugar for the white, add ginger, more blueberries... oh! and nuts!" the beauty of this kind of adjustment is that none of it will upset the balance of the ingredients. ratio. ratio. baking is ratios.

on the cornmuffin blog, the woman dissed the 1-2-3-4 cake baking ratio numerous times. it's ancient and simple: 1 cup butter; 2 cup sugar; 3 cup flour; 4 eggs. that's it. it's foolproof and housewives and cook-servants could remember it even if they couldn't read or write. if it ain't broke, ya know?

without leaving my house, i went to france. i found the simplest of cakes. it's the first cake french children learn to make. little kids can do it because you can use a yogurt cup. dump the yogurt in a bowl and then use the cup to measure out everything else. and, yeah, it's a 1-2-3-4. i made it lemon instead of plain and will gild the lily with blackberry preserves, lemon curd and lemon cream. but it's from some old french lady a million years ago who could make it in her sleep. it's foolproof and it's a keeper.

like herpes

you can't always see it, but it's always there. it won't ever go away and will be erupting unexpectedly and be annoying til you die.

sarah palin had an op-ed piece in the washington post. (see: why newspapers are dying. does her base of mouthbreathers read the paper? don't they get all their info from bill o'reilly and god?) unfortunately, it was typed. apparently the editor chose not to run the original hand-written version with hearts over the i's, "todd n sarah 4-ever" doodled in the margins, smiley faces and caribou carcasses drawn on the back. so sad.

"Unfortunately, many in the national media would rather focus on the personality-driven political gossip of the day" stop picking on me and my family!! will one of the old white guys tell her to stop whining and grow a pair? ffs.

"American prosperity has always been driven by the steady supply of abundant, affordable energy. Particularly in Alaska, we understand the inherent link between energy and prosperity, energy and opportunity, and energy and security." don't ask me how i inherited a surplus and left wasilla $22 million in the hole, though, k? at this time last year oil was at $144 a barrel. currently it's at about $65. alaska, with 90% of its revenues coming from oil, looks to be in the red for over a billion this year. no more milk and honey for you, sarah. that's it, beat feet and quit because that means you're not a quitter. show you don't have the skill, knowledge or moxie to tackle a problem of governance because you're off to other problems besides the ones that are part of your job.

"Our nation's debt is unsustainable, and the federal government's reach into the private sector is unprecedented." explain to me again your justification for putting your hand in the pocket of the oil companies and raising the oil tax in alaska from 10% to 25% last year, plz?

"We are ripe for economic growth and energy independence if we responsibly tap the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil. Just as important, we have more desire and ability to protect the environment than any foreign nation from which we purchase energy today. " does that mean god must love the arabs alot more, cuz he gave them oceans of accessible oil? weird, huh? he gave them so many dead dinosaurs which turned into fossils so fast! less than 6000 years from brachyosaurus to bubbling crude!

the eco-system in places like the arctic wildlife refuge, where sarah would like to drill, are breathtakingly fragile. they don't repair themselves as quickly as those in more temperate climes. in prudhoe bay, from 1996 to 2004, there were some 4,530 spills of more than 1.9 million gallons of diesel fuel, oil, acid, biocide, ethylene glycol, drilling fluid and other materials. an average of about 1 major spill every day, either in the fields or on the pipeline.

explain again the viability of off-shore and arctic drilling, in remote areas, with uncertain returns for finite resources? oil companies all have downgraded the estimates of the world's oil field reserves. even with ever increasingly better extraction technology, not everything is exploitable, and the cost of transporting it from the wildest parts of the globe make it a pound-foolish endeavor. the most pie-eyed estimates are that off-shore and arctic oil would be at least a decade away and supply between one and nine month's worth of our current consumption. excellent long-range planning.

further, the u.s. does not establish oil prices -- that's a global market issue. if we magically did become a surplus producer, (maybe if we pray harder?) oil companies would be selling to the highest bidder -- like, mebbe china? -- not just pumping it for free to real amurricanz.

"Many states have abundant coal, whose technology is continuously making it into a cleaner energy source. " cleaner than what? burning bubonic plagued zombies?

"We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia?" um, yeah, we actually buy most of our crude oil and petroleum from canada, eh? you can see how friendly the canadians are from your house, right? i know you can't see mexico, our 2nd largest supplier, but they wear those festive hats and siesta alot. they like us too, cuz they keep coming to visit and work, even though you don't like them brown people taking our jobs at the tyson factories and the wal-mart. russia sells most of its oil to europe and china is a gobbler, not really an exporter. pesky facts!!

"Can America produce more of its own energy through strategic investments that protect the environment, revive our economy and secure our nation? " i know you spend a lot of time talking to god, so maybe start looking up instead of down, sarah? cuz your god also made the sun and the wind. which are free and limitless. they are new industries in which the u.s. can excel with the right kinds of forward thinking, investments and incentives. that does not mean, "drill, baby, drill." that's old school thinking, k, sarah? it's not mavericky.

in fairness, palin is trying to argue against obama's cap and trade program. uh, in fairness, she doesn't.

baby's got back

when in rome?

this pic turned up yesterday and was given further context today. context to make obama look like less of a perv. i don't care, and that takes all the fun out of it.

you've got 2 ridiculously powerful men, each with a hot wife. each doing what straight men everywhere always do. sarkozy's smirk is priceless!

i will guarantee both men laughed about this pic over wine with dinner and are not going to say god forgives them for lusting in their hearts, or that they were looking at the appalachian trail of her hemline and not crossing the line of her spaghetti straps.

cute ass is cute ass, and i like a man who thinks so too.

god loves you, no matter what

celebs were dropping dead like a stardust plague had hit the hollywood hills and then came the flora-dora bravura performance of another outed and rascally fundy peen. senator ensign of nevada must have been kneeling on raw rice til his knobs were bloody, thanking jesus night and day that his sins would get a media bye. oh tut, tut dusty desert wanderer, your dirty laundry is finally getting some air.

she was the treasurer of his pac, and the wife of one of his senior aides. the hamptons and ensigns had been friends for decades, "united by their conservative christian faith." ahem. when their house was burglarized in late 2007, the hampton family was graciously welcomed into the ensign home. with that lovely christian gesture of "mi casa, su casa," ensign decided, "su esposa, mi esposa" and began the affair, under his wife's nose and with a bunch of sunday school students playing x-box in the den.

ahem.

other men on the hill, notably sen. coburn of oklahoma and other members of "the family", tried to convince him to quit the ho, but no. they tried telling him to pay off the sub-prime loan on the hamptons' overly-leveraged home -- to the tune of $1 million -- to make the harlot and her cuckold leave town. he scribbled the above cursory note, but disavowed it, told everybody he was in love with not-his-wife and kept banging her.

coburn is a phsyician and now claiming doctor/patient privilege for his chats and likely strong-arming of ensign. except coburn is an ob/gyn. yeah, a lady doctor. so what the hell kind of treatment was he offering? "uh, john, my friend, this may feel cold at first and then hurt a little bit..."

the hamptons were paid $25,000 as "severance" so that's being investigated.

but then this lovely little golden nugget came to light:

"in april 2008, ensign's parents each made gifts to doug hampton, cindy hampton, and two of their children in the form of a check totaling $96,000. each gift was limited to $12,000. the payments were made as gifts, accepted as gifts and complied with tax rules governing gifts." no technical violations, no taxes owed and a handy keep-mum sum. if all the hamptons take money from the ensigns, are they all whores now, not just the mom?

ensign's parents became richy-rich when the dad divested his shares in the mandalay casino group --that deal netted about $300 million. a 51-year-old "god-fearing" man went home to mommy and daddy and fessed up he was diddling not-his-wife. "daddy and mummy? i've been putting my you-know in not-my-wife's hoo-hoo and uh, if i pay her directly i might get in some doo-doo, so can you pay off my whore for me? oh, yeah, and i brought home a bag of dirty underoos for the wash too."

in case the text above is too small, i've pasted my favorite bit:

"i walked away from him and my relationship with him has suffered terribly. i know he loves me and i know he loves you. he wants to restore darlene to me and wants to restore doug to you. more than that he wants to restore our relationship to him."

yet another god-thumping guy, a pentecostalist, a promise-keeper, a member of "the family", another anti-choice/opposite marriage champ sticking his dick in not-his-wife, but knowing what god wants and thinks. no, dude, ya know what ? if there is a god, he also thinks you're a lying two-faced douchebag.

yes, yes, i know i'm jaded, but i still believe most politicians marry out of convenience, and often for money. they are aggressive opportunists, accustomed to getting their way no matter the fall-out. they make picture-frame families and set their wives into a uniform of helmet hair, pearls and a boxy suit. pop out a few kids and spend precious little time at home. they pander to god-lubbers who continue to lap up the pablum. their emotional and sexual lives grow as hollow as the core of their personal values. then like a crash dieter who hasn't had ice haagen-dazs for weeks, they fall head-first in the tub of indulgence.

with tv on summer hiatus, at least the republicans are offering a new episode each week. too bad the story arcs are all the same.

behind door number not-so-sure

numbers are tricky things and i nearly spat my tea this morning when i saw that according to a usa/gallup poll, 71% of republicans would vote for palin in 2012, and 75% believe she has been unfairly treated by the media.

from the back, i'll say most who admit any party affiliation would say their candidates are treated with negative bias by the press. but for somebody who says she's a tough strong chick, a survivor, a competitor and not a quitter, palin is awfully whiny about her press coverage. wha-wha-wha-wha. i'm supposed to answer your questions? like with a sentence and a grasp of the facts? boo-hoo.

from the front, i got further down the article, exhaled and can thank budget cutbacks for my unnecessary alarm. the sample was only 1000 registered voters. typically these sorts of things ask at least 10,000. (sadly no pie-chart from usa today -- they must be cutting back on color graphics too.) so the pool only held 321 democrats, 323 independents and 316 republicans, with a margin of error of +/- 3%. so within that context we're looking at about 235 people who answered their land-line phone, actually took the time out of their busy day watching their programs and taking metamucil, talked to a telemarketer and said they lerved sarah.

then again, you have to wonder how the question was phrased? "if sarah palin was running against hugo chavez, ted bundy and osama bin laden, would you vote for her?" "if she could help get that brown secret muslim and his pickaninny kids out the WHITE house, would you vote for her?"

i can exhale again remembering who really is sarah's base: they believe that the earth is 6000 years old, that abortion should be banned in all states, all the time, that homosexuality should be banned, that everyone should go to church and parks fully locked and loaded, and that al gore invented global warming. they reject reason and science for hysteria and superstition. they are not interested in understanding the world outside because it's different and thus, scary. and also wrong. everybody that believes what they don't believe is wrong, wrong, wrong. and going to hell to burn forever.

the fringe republican bar is so low, that she can sail along on a wink, smile and a prayer and say nothing even an in-depth deconstruction can translate into sense. it's like she speaks in a high-pitch tone that only biblical dogs can hear it and respond accordingly.

but she's a giver, cuz she said this yesterday:

"Don't know what the future holds," Palin said Tuesday on ABC. "I'm not gonna shut any door. That — who knows what doors open?"

(dear jesus, i hope there aren't any books behind any of those doors! love, sarah.)

i can't quit you

he wouldn't shut his pie-hole (really could have stuffed it with hot dogs or blueberries competitively over the weekend since latin bewbies now seem off-limits), but sanford got a pass with the media well-distracted.

plans for the funeral for the dead white-ladyboy pedophile, oxi-clean man and an angel all laid out. cuddly karl malden and evil incarnate macnamara both croaked too. ethnic uprisings, presidential coups, italian earthquakes and obama in russia, and in our harlequin romancer's home-state, a rampaging serial killer murdered 5 people and turned out to have a rap sheet 25 pages long.

lucky for him, he gets to keep playing gubbner! bonus points cuz his girlfriend wasn't his sister or his cross-eyed cousin, AND he paid back some money he might have maybe used that probably wasn't his, i guess. AND he cried ALOT, so he must be truly sorry. his peeps also liked strom thurmond for like 150 years and it's said the lt. gub is an even bigger wacko who might also be a GAY, and we all know god cannot forgive that. so mr. folksy fornicator gets to keep digging holes, praying and crying. god held open the same old door to the gub's office, shut the door to the family manse and locked sanford outside the gate on a prez bid in 2012.

but my favorite milf doesn't want to play governor anymore, so she just won't. nobody pays her no mind up there in the wilds, when she comes down the media is mean; lame ducks and dead fish, her kids voted unanimously, god talked to her and actually serving out the term for which your beloved alaskans (real amurricanz) elected you would be the work of a quitter. ( i love opposite-talk!!)

recently she visited kosovo and this is part of what she said about the troops:

"they're bold, they don't give up, they take a stand and know that LIFE is short so they choose to NOT waste time. They choose to be productive and to serve something greater than SELF..."

yup, they're serving their country and finishing their tours of duty. ya know, like they swore to do when they signed on. honoring country before self, even if it can suck.

she went to 4 different colleges in 5 different stints before finally graduating. she quit the first committee chair position she was given. she's been dogged by ethics investigations with more allegations in the pipeline. a blazing book is due to hit the stands detailing her divaliciousness, her slippery grasp of pimping whatever she deems "truth", even when the first dude says it's not and a life-long unwillingness to learn or to prepare herself with pesky stuff like facts. and she and her lawyers issued a VERY long treatise threatening to sue, sue, sue anybody, that writes, broadcasts, blogs or even thinks to dream anything about sarah that she say's just ain't true. so there.

but my favorite part of her 20-minute amble (what is it with these windy nonsensical god-smackers? do they struggle with being concise cuz god is yelling in their brains?) was this:

"If I have learned one thing: LIFE is about choices!"

but by all means, nobody else should be allowed that choosing stuff. ever. especially when consequences may be personal, long-ranging and /or affect your family.

so now that the pesky tether of a real job and its coinciding ethics is gone, she can rake in money, run around the lower 48, pose for lotsa cheesecake shots and watch that christian lady she hired write that book that she herself got hired to write. (spend time with her kids? nah...) i'm guessing there will be places that pay her to appear, but really, she should take a page out of paris hilton's playbook and not talk when she gets wherever. she consulted with the darth vader-cheney and cross-dressing thrice-married giuliani. pill-poppin' sweatso-fatso limbaugh says it was a "brilliant move". golly, i need to check meghan mccain's twitter feed! what does the new hip guard have to say about sexy sarah cutting loose?

the good and bad news about her resignation is that she will be in our faces ALOT more than i'd hoped. her isolation up there didn't keep her warm and nourished in the spotlight that feeds her narcissism.

god may be opening doors, (such a gentleman!) but for now it looks mostly like to the kathie lee hour of morning chats. but he knows all about doors and paths and the future and talking to sarah, even when she channels him, like, ya know, all direct-like. and he'll tell her exactly what she ought to do and it will be like awesome and real, because it will be exactly what she wants to do too! god is awesome.

so welcome back to them both in the spirit of freedom and being amurricanz.

red state blues

pondering morality, how it wanders and why so many feel so compelled to pontificate about theirs, i stumbled upon these bits:

• of the states that voted for mccain, 8 of them are in the top 10 for divorce rates.
• demonstrating the true value of abstinence-only sex ed, red on the map holds 8 out of 10 spots for highest rates of teen pregnancy.
• states where residents agree that “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage” have higher subscription rates, to on-line porn, with utah leading the heaving pack. these are the same people who also agree with the following when asked by pew surveys:
  
  "Even today miracles are performed by the power of God”
  
  “I never doubt the existence of God,”
  
  “AIDS might be God’s punishment for immoral sexual behavior."
  
  and once again, somebody did something bad and claims that god is telling him to keep on, keepin' on. why wasn't god telling him to not cavort south of the border? to honor his wife and children -- ya know like sanford told everybody else to do, until he found somebody that made him not want to do that? if god told him to jump off a bridge? if he's pulling king david out of the old testament as a parallel, is he just waiting for god to take one of his sons as tribute? david actually had a pretty bad time of it post-uriah snuffing, but context is such a bother. rather than allowing him to continue to self-flagellate in public, can we just stone him in the town square? send him out into the desert in a hairshirt?
  
  
  regardless of the lack of objective evidence, most americans believe in god and a huge number also believe in angels. (well, he'd be awfully lonely without them, i guess.)
  
  
  more than anything, it's the narcissism that's creeping me out. he won't shut up about *himself*. his wife was well down the list when he was passing out the"i'm sorries". maria was first, cuz yeah, the whole getting caught thing sucks. the purple prose of the emails and the whole soul-mate nonsense make him sound like some 14-year old girl gone all pms and emo about johnny depp. (or chace crawford, or a jonas brother -- i don't know who kids like now, ffs.) he's in this lavender fog of sunsets and walks on the beach and puppies. you admit not loving your wife. if maria is all that, pack up and go. hand jenny the keys to your ditch digger and git. or has the latin lady lovebox closed up shop?
  
  the god dodge is just that. conveniently, he and sanford want the exact same thing! wow, that's a miracle! i'm changing my mind, i'm thinking...
  
  course, them god thumpers loves them some revelations cuz it's all vengeance and stuff burning. i'm thinking sanford forgets the part where "fornicators and adulterers will not be allowed into the kingdom of god" and that they will "burn forever in a lake of fire."
  
  both sanford and our friend sarah palin were talking this week about god opening doors for them. careful where you put your foot, kids, cuz eternal hell is very hot..
  

more crying, more spilling

sanford won't quit. out and wining yesterday, so thankfully only saw him blubbering, no sound. just as i predicted, his 27-minute tearful amble down confession lane last week was less than truthful. other romps with his south american soul-mate, other almost break-ups, oops-yeah, i used state money but i'll quick right pay that all back, other ultimatums from his hair-helmeted spouse were part of his teary quivering conference yesterday. and also almost cheating with other floozies. but he "didn't cross the ultimate line" with them. what does that mean? state line? equatorial line? belt line? the tan lines of which he's so fond? penetration? falling in love? tell us, gubbner, what's this line of which you speak?

have they learned nothing? this same saga has been played out how many times in recent years with philandering politicos? dogged muckrakers are gonna dig up your dirt, ok? jfk's tomatoes going in and out the white house backdoor is a custom long dead and you are now under 24/7 scrutiny, with a passel of jackals waiting for you to trip over your moral code. "yes, i have sinned. no comment." anybody wanna give that a shot next time around?

so sure of his own righteousness, sanford vilified bill clinton for "most importantly breaking his oath to his wife", hillary. cut to 2008, and he's banging a tv personality and groping her in bars. they also had years of e-mail and phone correspondence before actually boning.

so if your respect for your wife, your children and your god are so central to your self-identity, why did you keep on with this woman? if feelings started to stir, shouldn't you have dug some more holes in the backyard til they were buried and dead? guys who walk the walk actually resist temptation, ya know? instead, you find yourself in buenos aires deep in a latin lady love-box.

he still has not said he will quit her.

he has also called it a "love story", and that he told his problem-named-maria that "he was trying to fall back in love with his wife." now, i'm no expert on monogamy, but heating it up between the loins of a latin hottie sounds like the biblical opposite of good quality opposite marriage-building.

can somebody punch him in the mouth and make him shut the hell up? spare himself, his wife and those boys any more public embarrassment?

my understanding is that the governor of south carolina holds very little real power, and that nobody, but nobody wants the lt. governor to ascend a step. i don't think the guy needs to resign because of his wandering willy. however, he lied to his staff and his security about his whereabouts for a week. he now has admitted using state money to get laid. uh, yeah, that's all criminal, ok?