sen. arlen specter of pennsylvania switched parties today. he's now a demican, instead of a republicrat. he's tough on crime and national security, but is pro-choice. a member of the senate nearly 30 years, he did some very fancy maneuvering after being strong-armed by v.p. biden. his tenure in congress will be considered as all-democrat, making him one of the more senior senators with a likely reward of a plum chairmanship.
he will not change his voting patterns nor his stands. this was not a move to get to cloture. this was pragmatism, not idealism. 200,000 voters in his home-state switched parties last year. with no strong democrat set to run, specter was going to be challenged by pat toomey, former head of club for growth, the conservative anti-tax group. he narrowly defeated toomey last round, and the club had promised to gun for him hard this time around. the club has defeated several moderate republicans in the last several years, including lincoln chafee in rhode island, wayne gilchrest in maryland and heather wilson in new mexico. pennsylvania may be growing bluer, but its conservatives are getting redder by the day.
specter looked at his odds, and walked out of the tattered big tent. the one where only the shrillest and out-of-touch voices are heard. neo-cons like to tout how conservative american is. ya know what? it's not. it's a nation of moderates. they've learned nothing from the sarah palin debacle.
in a confession of hopeful rubbernecking, i almost can't wait to watch gingrich sweat and squirm under the hot lights in 2012.
michael steele, chairman of the gop, wasted no time and minced no words: mr. specter, he said, “didn’t leave the gop based on principles of any kind. he left to further his personal political interests because he knew that he was going to lose a republican primary due to his left-wing voting record. republicans look forward to beating senator specter in 2010, assuming the democrats don’t do it first.” and they're gracious too! not a single word of gratitude to an 80-year-old man who served his party nearly 30 years. here's your hat, there's the door. we will whip your old bony ass. that he could utter the word "principle" and not choke is kind of amazing too.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
other pigs who poke
am just wondering how soon before some crackpot christian conservative wingnut comes out and blames the swine flu and earthquake in mexico city on the gays? i mean, there must be some in mexico, right? all those colorful hats and margaritas? and they must be punished, right?
iowa joining the chablis-swilling liberal elite in allowing man-on-man matrimony somehow, some way, tipped an axis in the universe.
the end is nigh, my friends.
iowa joining the chablis-swilling liberal elite in allowing man-on-man matrimony somehow, some way, tipped an axis in the universe.
the end is nigh, my friends.
pigs and panic
only a few days in and i am already sick of it.
yes, flu is bad. yes, it can kill you -- if you're very old or very young or your immune system isn't up to snuff, which certainly is the case for oldsters and babies. 30,000 americans die EVERY YEAR from whatever flu happens to be floating around. unfortunately, much like the black plague and the flu pandemic of 1918, it's early in the season and not nearly as warm as it will eventually get, so the virus buggers have plenty of time to incubate and spread. however, at this point, the "outbreak" is being reported on a case-by-case basis, so it's spreading at a myopic snail's pace and less than .00001% of the population has been affected.
but, please, everybody BE VERY AFRAID!! and if cnn tells everybody to be afraid, hopefully more people will watch cnn, because they must know RIGHT NOW where somebody else may or may not have swine flu. and then will see ads for stuff like purell and be more afraid and buy gallons of purell to wipe down the door handle of the emergency room where they must get tested RIGHT NOW for swine flu because they feel tired. bad news there, because the doc has to send your spit off-site, then wait a few days to find out that you have seasonal allergies. but don't go outside. if you must, stay 6 feet away from everybody. which must be damn hard in mexico city, one of the world's most populous cities. sunday everybody stayed home, nobody went to watch soccer and pizza delivery joints ran out of pies because everybody was too scared to go out to eat. (poor guy who had that day's shift -- wonder how he feels today? sniffles or anything?) but the ninos are happy because school is closed! yeah!! (i think yippee is still yippee in spanish.)
yes, you twittering idiot, you can still eat bacon. yes, the influenza virus can live for short periods of time outside its host. (that's a question for fucking google, you moron, not rick sanchez.)
at the white house press briefing yesterday, a reporter actually asked, "when did you know about this?" like it was some mad watergate conspiracy that must be deep-throated into daylight.
another asked if obama was safe, basically because he touched lots of dirty mexicans last week.
makers of paper masks must be thigh-slapping and high-fiving like crazy this week. i mean, really? paper masks? are they made of magic paper? all too often i have seen people (often asians -- omg!! wonder if they had bird flu!) wearing those masks around here. i just assumed that they were on the defense and afraid of catching something, not helping the greater good and avoiding spreading something.
texas governor rick "let's secede from this socialist nation before it's too late!" perry has requested 37,000-plus units of tamiflu from the cdc to be sprinkled around his great state, just in case. suddenly he and the 57% of lone star republicans who agreed with him about giving the feds the boot look oh-so-pretty in pink, don'tcha think?
last time we had a swine flu sky-is-falling craze, the government spent over $130 million to develop a vaccine. which promptly killed waaaaaay more people than the flu. then the flu went away after about 6 months. like every other flu after the 1918 nightmare.
things i learned from my amazing google-fu today:
the 1918 crisis, which was REALLY bad, is often called the spanish flu, but actually originated here, in the u.s. soldiers from the rural south had it and brought it to europe with them. all influenza "a" viruses since then are genetic descendants from the one that caused that outbreak. so every time a 90-year-old lady dies from the flu, a wwI vet gets his wings.
and--
donald rumsfeld is a major stockholder in the company that owns tamiflu.
thing i remembered from a long time ago: when we took a school field trip to turtleback zoo i adamantly refused to be involved in the petting zoo. even then i knew not to touch pigs. yuk.
question: if a muslim or observant jew contracts swine flu, will he or she become an atheist?
here is a direct paste from the cdc website on how to avoid infection:
- Wash your hands regularly with soap and water, especially after coughing or sneezing.
- Or use an alcohol-based hand cleaner.
- Avoid close contact with sick people.
- Avoid touching your mouth, nose, or eyes.
how many people died from sars? or avian flu? until the bodies are stacked up like lincoln logs and zombies are roaming the streets in search of kleenex, i don't care.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
lawyers and the lawyers who lie to them
Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured alQaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.
this was written by john yoo in the wall st. journal after obama forbid the use of torture against prisoners. along with bybee, yoo wrote many of the d.o.j. memos justifying its use for the bush administration.
from 2001 to 2003, he was working directly with, and under the hands of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: bush's counsel alberto " i don't recall" gonzales, and cheney's counsel david addington. together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, as defined by the geneva and hague conventions and the red cross (to name but a few), very serious war crimes. these were government officials who set out to enable a brutal and systematic torture regime, and did so.
yoo helped lay the groundwork with his extraordinary memo that included this:
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
basically, that the president's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture. this perception of the president's potential unlimited scope was right up cheney's alley and the henchmen got to work.
gonzales and yoo worked for the justice department. the justice department does not make the law, nor is it above the law. its job is to enforce the law. the current cia director is asking for amnesty for any of his officers that were involved in the torture. yo!! they just got the notes from the doj! following orders, yo!
the timing of yoo's memos make it quite clear that the white house was booking paper to defend itself when the shit someday hit the fan. hey! they said it was ok!! that mexican guy and that korean guy!! yoo's paper hit the ground right before the most egregious offenses began at abu ghraib.
lawyers lie all the time. lawyers break the law. lawyers wind up in jail. lawyers have defended despicable cases throughout all of time -- slavery and jim crow anybody? a client finds the guy who will suit his agenda. ya think john gotti's lawyer thought he was innocent? mr. cheney? meet mr. yoo and his special brand of krazee.
when all this was being rammed through, no one, not even george tenet, did any research on the genesis of SERE -- survival, evasion, resistance and escape -- which had been created decades earlier to give american pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by communists in the korean war. these included days of shackling, walling, forced nudity and waterboarding. ahem. a 1956 study found that, "the communists do not look upon these assaults as ‘torture, but all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture.” worse, the study found that under such abusive treatment, a prisoner became “malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate.”
they did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. that the communists had gotten many more false confessions inspired by extreme duress than actual facts. nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading cia officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, only practiced on us army guinea pigs.
yet the policy was adopted at warp speed. we tortured countless numbers of men and women. and children.
mr yoo is now a professor of law at berkeley who writes books and blabs on "meet the press". many of his opinions were so off the wall that even the bush admin eventually repudiated them. he held one of the most despicable and perverted perceptions of the constitution i have ever read.
one of our founding father's more brilliant bits of paperwork was its concept of the checks and balances system instilled with 3 separate branches of government. the free press is loosely considered the 4th branch. congress knuckled under to bush in nearly every one of his tyrannical efforts post 9-11. the doj became a puppet. the media was content in being spoonfed lies and half-truths. failure to lockstep would have turned off even the trickle in their info spigot.
the seal for the dept. of justice says: Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur, which roughly translates to "who prosecutes on behalf of lady justice". i can only think she hides her face in shame these days.
this was written by john yoo in the wall st. journal after obama forbid the use of torture against prisoners. along with bybee, yoo wrote many of the d.o.j. memos justifying its use for the bush administration.
from 2001 to 2003, he was working directly with, and under the hands of, the two most important legal officials in the administration: bush's counsel alberto " i don't recall" gonzales, and cheney's counsel david addington. together, they deliberately created and authorized a regime of torture and other brutal interrogation methods that are, as defined by the geneva and hague conventions and the red cross (to name but a few), very serious war crimes. these were government officials who set out to enable a brutal and systematic torture regime, and did so.
yoo helped lay the groundwork with his extraordinary memo that included this:
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
basically, that the president's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture. this perception of the president's potential unlimited scope was right up cheney's alley and the henchmen got to work.
gonzales and yoo worked for the justice department. the justice department does not make the law, nor is it above the law. its job is to enforce the law. the current cia director is asking for amnesty for any of his officers that were involved in the torture. yo!! they just got the notes from the doj! following orders, yo!
the timing of yoo's memos make it quite clear that the white house was booking paper to defend itself when the shit someday hit the fan. hey! they said it was ok!! that mexican guy and that korean guy!! yoo's paper hit the ground right before the most egregious offenses began at abu ghraib.
lawyers lie all the time. lawyers break the law. lawyers wind up in jail. lawyers have defended despicable cases throughout all of time -- slavery and jim crow anybody? a client finds the guy who will suit his agenda. ya think john gotti's lawyer thought he was innocent? mr. cheney? meet mr. yoo and his special brand of krazee.
when all this was being rammed through, no one, not even george tenet, did any research on the genesis of SERE -- survival, evasion, resistance and escape -- which had been created decades earlier to give american pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by communists in the korean war. these included days of shackling, walling, forced nudity and waterboarding. ahem. a 1956 study found that, "the communists do not look upon these assaults as ‘torture, but all of them produce great discomfort, and lead to serious disturbances of many bodily processes; there is no reason to differentiate them from any other form of torture.” worse, the study found that under such abusive treatment, a prisoner became “malleable and suggestible, and in some instances he may confabulate.”
they did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. that the communists had gotten many more false confessions inspired by extreme duress than actual facts. nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading cia officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, only practiced on us army guinea pigs.
yet the policy was adopted at warp speed. we tortured countless numbers of men and women. and children.
mr yoo is now a professor of law at berkeley who writes books and blabs on "meet the press". many of his opinions were so off the wall that even the bush admin eventually repudiated them. he held one of the most despicable and perverted perceptions of the constitution i have ever read.
one of our founding father's more brilliant bits of paperwork was its concept of the checks and balances system instilled with 3 separate branches of government. the free press is loosely considered the 4th branch. congress knuckled under to bush in nearly every one of his tyrannical efforts post 9-11. the doj became a puppet. the media was content in being spoonfed lies and half-truths. failure to lockstep would have turned off even the trickle in their info spigot.
the seal for the dept. of justice says: Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur, which roughly translates to "who prosecutes on behalf of lady justice". i can only think she hides her face in shame these days.
head-spinning hypocrisy
in a further bid for transparency, president obama ordered the release of some justice dept. memos this past week pertaining to "enhanced interrogation" tactics -- torture -- used on detainees in abu ghraib, gitmo, cia black holes and other prisons. his entirely reasonable reason being that all the tactics within were already known. the case involving that scamp in camo lynndie england and her pals was 5 years ago already.
predictably, karl rove and dick cheney decried the release of the papers. "now the tactics are ruined!" "now the enemy will know what we do and how far we'll go!" (like a crying brat from whom somebody took his toys?) yup. ok, mohammed, when they capture you, just hold out cuz after 183 dunks they'll stop waterboarding you. piece of baklava, my friend.
these assertions were quickly followed by well, if our soldiers are captured, the crazed blood-thirsty insurgents would torture them. excellent -- governing by the "i know you are, but what am i?" method. (didn't their mom ever ask them about peer pressure: "if all your friends jumped off a bridge thingie?)
a former u.s. army psychiatrist, maj. charles burney, told army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the guantanamo bay detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
"while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al qaida and iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al qaida and iraq," burney told staff of the army inspector general. "the more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
anybody remember the "leaked" downing st. memo in which tony blair flatly stated that facts were being molded to push for the iraq invasion even though the evidence of a link did not exist? there was no proof of wmd's either, regardless of cheney's bold lies on tv a few days later.
the fbi, the government agency with the greatest knowledge of al qaeda in 2001, chose not to participate in the cia interrogation program after agents became uneasy about the earliest use of harsh methods in 2002 on abu zubaydah, a long-sought terrorist facilitator -- who was diagnosed as schizophrenic and turned out to be little more than a greeter, regardless of the lies george bush told on tv about zubaydah being a mucky-muck. after being tortured, zubaydah offered no more info than he'd already given.
alberto mora, a former general counsel for the navy,has said that some flag-rank officers believe that abu ghraib and guantánamo constitute “the first and second identifiable causes of us combat deaths in iraq,” because they galvanized jihadis. just this weekend over 159 shi'ites were blown up by suicide bombers in iraq.
in an interview with vanity fair last year, the fbi director since 2001, robert s. mueller III, was asked whether any attacks had been disrupted because of intelligence obtained through the coercive methods. “i don’t believe that has been the case.”
that assessment stands in sharp contrast to many assertions by bush and cheney, who on fox news said of the methods: “they did work. they kept us safe for seven years.” while scores were killed by jihadis in europe, no real plots have been foiled in the u.s. since 9/11. zero. absence of evidence and all that... just like the god-mongerers.
no soldier above the rank of sergeant was prosecuted in the abu ghraib scandal.
the men in the attorney general's office who authored some of these memos, and outlined the newly permissible torture are graduates of places like harvard and yale. they worked in prestigious white shoe law firms. one justice, jay bybee, a cubmaster for a local boy scout troop, wrote one of the memos regarding tecnhiques specifically for abu zubaydah. he advised 10 escalating steps, including face slapping, bug-in-a-box and waterboarding, which, he wrote, "does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ” he now has life tenure on the 9th us circuit court of appeals in san francisco.
idi amin -- bad.
saddam hussein -- bad.
pol pot -- bad.
general pinochet -- bad.
mao zedung -- bad.
hitler -- bad.
spanish inquisition -- bad. (really? nobody expected them?)
george bush was the first and only western leader to defy the geneva convention and "redefine torture". even by medieval standards, what our operatives did by express permission of the justice department was torture. men including bush, cheney and rumsfield ignored pleas from every armed service branch to not move forward in this fashion. they blithely lied to the press and to congress about evidence that did not exist to facilitate the agenda they held upon bush's election. it needed only one bad muslim to get the wheels moving. how do these men look at themselves in the mirror everyday and not slit their own throats instead of shaving?
i can't stand it.
predictably, karl rove and dick cheney decried the release of the papers. "now the tactics are ruined!" "now the enemy will know what we do and how far we'll go!" (like a crying brat from whom somebody took his toys?) yup. ok, mohammed, when they capture you, just hold out cuz after 183 dunks they'll stop waterboarding you. piece of baklava, my friend.
these assertions were quickly followed by well, if our soldiers are captured, the crazed blood-thirsty insurgents would torture them. excellent -- governing by the "i know you are, but what am i?" method. (didn't their mom ever ask them about peer pressure: "if all your friends jumped off a bridge thingie?)
a former u.s. army psychiatrist, maj. charles burney, told army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the guantanamo bay detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
"while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al qaida and iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al qaida and iraq," burney told staff of the army inspector general. "the more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."
anybody remember the "leaked" downing st. memo in which tony blair flatly stated that facts were being molded to push for the iraq invasion even though the evidence of a link did not exist? there was no proof of wmd's either, regardless of cheney's bold lies on tv a few days later.
the fbi, the government agency with the greatest knowledge of al qaeda in 2001, chose not to participate in the cia interrogation program after agents became uneasy about the earliest use of harsh methods in 2002 on abu zubaydah, a long-sought terrorist facilitator -- who was diagnosed as schizophrenic and turned out to be little more than a greeter, regardless of the lies george bush told on tv about zubaydah being a mucky-muck. after being tortured, zubaydah offered no more info than he'd already given.
alberto mora, a former general counsel for the navy,has said that some flag-rank officers believe that abu ghraib and guantánamo constitute “the first and second identifiable causes of us combat deaths in iraq,” because they galvanized jihadis. just this weekend over 159 shi'ites were blown up by suicide bombers in iraq.
in an interview with vanity fair last year, the fbi director since 2001, robert s. mueller III, was asked whether any attacks had been disrupted because of intelligence obtained through the coercive methods. “i don’t believe that has been the case.”
that assessment stands in sharp contrast to many assertions by bush and cheney, who on fox news said of the methods: “they did work. they kept us safe for seven years.” while scores were killed by jihadis in europe, no real plots have been foiled in the u.s. since 9/11. zero. absence of evidence and all that... just like the god-mongerers.
no soldier above the rank of sergeant was prosecuted in the abu ghraib scandal.
the men in the attorney general's office who authored some of these memos, and outlined the newly permissible torture are graduates of places like harvard and yale. they worked in prestigious white shoe law firms. one justice, jay bybee, a cubmaster for a local boy scout troop, wrote one of the memos regarding tecnhiques specifically for abu zubaydah. he advised 10 escalating steps, including face slapping, bug-in-a-box and waterboarding, which, he wrote, "does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ” he now has life tenure on the 9th us circuit court of appeals in san francisco.
idi amin -- bad.
saddam hussein -- bad.
pol pot -- bad.
general pinochet -- bad.
mao zedung -- bad.
hitler -- bad.
spanish inquisition -- bad. (really? nobody expected them?)
george bush was the first and only western leader to defy the geneva convention and "redefine torture". even by medieval standards, what our operatives did by express permission of the justice department was torture. men including bush, cheney and rumsfield ignored pleas from every armed service branch to not move forward in this fashion. they blithely lied to the press and to congress about evidence that did not exist to facilitate the agenda they held upon bush's election. it needed only one bad muslim to get the wheels moving. how do these men look at themselves in the mirror everyday and not slit their own throats instead of shaving?
i can't stand it.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
god is very busy
one of my biggest pet peeves (i know, i know -- so many, so little time) is the insistence of a certain type of christian that god is micro-managing their lives. he told both george bush and sarah palin to run for office; invade iraq and carry a down's syndrome baby to term. he has been directly responsible for countless afc, nfl and nba championships.
godless whore that i am, even if i DID believe, i'm logical enough to think the guy would be too busy to watch football. even if he does still kick back on sundays. (he has all that extra time saved cuz he doesn't have to go to church!) having the hubris to believe he's minutely concerned with *your* daily life is shocking to me. if i DID believe, i'd think of it as disrespectful. he should be a big picture guy and we should be managing on our own, tyvm, not asking god if i should wear black or brown pumps to the interview for cryin' out loud. back in the day, if you ran around saying god was in your ear, you likely wound up either in bedlam or sizzlin' and smokin' at the stake.
the latest god-jawing nincompoop is the miss california who lost the miss usa crown this past weekend. carrie prejean was asked by belligerently gay parasitic celebutard perez hilton if she believed in gay marriage. she answered:
"We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite. And you know what, I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."
"i think that i believe."
i assume there is a certain amount of verbal 2-stepping pageant girls learn to do around these sorts of hot button topics, much like politicians, but with boob jobs and veneers. i've seen clips and sorry, but it seems like hilton ambushed the girl. (punk'd mebbe?) she calmly stated her opinion. that's it. she didn't wish fire and brimstone or herpes of the ass to befall all the homosexuals. in the fall-out, hilton acted like a pissy high school girl, referring to prejean as a "dumb bitch" and a "cunt". woot! well done. way to elevate the discourse.
why anyone really cares what this girl thinks is beyond me, and it's not like she's the only person in the world to have that opinion, but even larry king has been in on it. ok, but here's what makes my agnostic teeth itch:
"Out of all the topics I studied up on, I dreaded that one, I prayed I would not be asked about gay marriage."
sooooo, god refuted your prayer and refused to help you win the crown. or wasn't listening, or was busy helping the red sox, or something.
oh, what? wait? no?...
"By having to answer that question in front of a national audience, God was testing my character and faith. I'm glad I stayed true to myself."
phew. he WAS watching the pageant. and so all good girlz go to heaven, according to the first responder on carrie's homepage:
"thank you for standing for what you believe in Carrie...God sees what you have done and He will honor you for that! Your "crown" will be in heaven one day...and that is really the only one that truly matters!"
carry on, friends. i have to talk to god about what's for lunch.
i see dead people
last night, the opening minutes of one of my shows was pre-empted by a boston police press conference. woo-hoo!! they believe they have caught the craig's list killer. sparkly high-tech (blackberry ping trail 1000 miles long from this kid), old-school shoe leather, many units cooperating, 24-7 investigating, blah, blah, blah. he was on numerous security cams and they had a couple other women whom he'd likely robbed cooperating. he was on a mini-roll with several victims in under a week.
epitome of "last guy you'd ever think". med student, engaged to equally waspy chick, registered at pottery barn and williams-sonoma. his facebook page is banal to the point of laughable. his fiancee e-mailed "good morning america" saying it's all a mistake, he wouldn't hurt a fly and they will share a meaningful life together after their marriage in august.
it's entirely possible cops do NOT have the right guy. our boston police have a dismal close rate on murder -- one of the country's worst, last year it was 44%, vs. the national average of 55% for cities of similar sizes. cities like milwaukee and seattle are over 70%. put another way, 6 out of 10 local killers are walking free. this year has been a very quiet one so far with only 8 murders, mostly due to carefully orchestrated gang ceasefires, moderated by neighborhood clergy.
the cynic in me says the murdered girl was white, with the seamy craig's list details adding a bit of juice to generate page views so the press has stayed on it. "but she was turning her life around! really!" dunno. an ad in the "erotic encounters" section of cl, doesn't really sound like best foot forward for a troubled girl. i'm not diminishing the pain of her death for her friends and family. she was somebody's daughter, simply engaged in risky behavior that went tragically wrong.
how many 1000s or 10s of 1000s of people place or answer on-line ads everyday, get laid and go safely home to dinner, ya know?
hot on the heels of the craig's list killer, worcester police set up a sting this weekend. 50 people were arrested and will be arraigned today for answering escort/massage ads. men and women, willing to engage in an anonymous encounter for cash. quelle surprise!! tax dollars hard at work, folks. so glad all those local meth labs are closed down, and the cops had nothing more meaningful to do on patriots' weekend.
last 4th of july, a homeless man named timothy finch was beaten to death in broad daylight, one block from faneuil hall. one of our city's busiest days, at tourist ground zero. 100s of witnesses saw both the fight and him dying. it was days before the story ran in the globe. no arrests. think any of boston's finest are still dogging that case?
epitome of "last guy you'd ever think". med student, engaged to equally waspy chick, registered at pottery barn and williams-sonoma. his facebook page is banal to the point of laughable. his fiancee e-mailed "good morning america" saying it's all a mistake, he wouldn't hurt a fly and they will share a meaningful life together after their marriage in august.
it's entirely possible cops do NOT have the right guy. our boston police have a dismal close rate on murder -- one of the country's worst, last year it was 44%, vs. the national average of 55% for cities of similar sizes. cities like milwaukee and seattle are over 70%. put another way, 6 out of 10 local killers are walking free. this year has been a very quiet one so far with only 8 murders, mostly due to carefully orchestrated gang ceasefires, moderated by neighborhood clergy.
the cynic in me says the murdered girl was white, with the seamy craig's list details adding a bit of juice to generate page views so the press has stayed on it. "but she was turning her life around! really!" dunno. an ad in the "erotic encounters" section of cl, doesn't really sound like best foot forward for a troubled girl. i'm not diminishing the pain of her death for her friends and family. she was somebody's daughter, simply engaged in risky behavior that went tragically wrong.
how many 1000s or 10s of 1000s of people place or answer on-line ads everyday, get laid and go safely home to dinner, ya know?
hot on the heels of the craig's list killer, worcester police set up a sting this weekend. 50 people were arrested and will be arraigned today for answering escort/massage ads. men and women, willing to engage in an anonymous encounter for cash. quelle surprise!! tax dollars hard at work, folks. so glad all those local meth labs are closed down, and the cops had nothing more meaningful to do on patriots' weekend.
last 4th of july, a homeless man named timothy finch was beaten to death in broad daylight, one block from faneuil hall. one of our city's busiest days, at tourist ground zero. 100s of witnesses saw both the fight and him dying. it was days before the story ran in the globe. no arrests. think any of boston's finest are still dogging that case?
Monday, April 20, 2009
please shut her up
So tonight, I am proud to join you in challenging the mold and the notions of what being a Republican means. I am concerned about the environment. I love to wear black. I think government is best when it stays out of people's lives and business as much as possible. I love punk rock. I believe in a strong national defense. I have a tattoo. I believe government should always be efficient and accountable. I have lots of gay friends. And yes, I am a Republican.
~~john mccain's daughter megan addressing a group of log cabin republicans this weekend. actual quote.
if i cared, or thought you could express anything coherently (which would mean you have cogent capacities) i'd ask what the hell you're talking about. more importantly, why is it considered news? you're a moron. there's a reason laura never let the bushy twinzies speak in public. please get married and go away.
~~john mccain's daughter megan addressing a group of log cabin republicans this weekend. actual quote.
if i cared, or thought you could express anything coherently (which would mean you have cogent capacities) i'd ask what the hell you're talking about. more importantly, why is it considered news? you're a moron. there's a reason laura never let the bushy twinzies speak in public. please get married and go away.
simple pleasures
yesterday the owner and i were invited to share a red sox game. somebody's boss not using his season's tix that day, so we pounced on the chance.
first, brunch, me and the girls (not very girly, i confess, and nary a pink sox tee among us) which was delicious and some run-ins with people we quite like. champagne and eggs with an unintentionally hilarious server. yeah, good.
the day started cold, but the sun was bright and determined. met up with the owner at the sold-out park and commenced to baseball and guinness. great seats, great game. sox won, even though some of their giants are still struggling. (papi, c'mon now...) a day game at fenway is pure pleasure, truly.
returned here with vague notions of late afternoon sunshine and pizza. owner revised my sound system much to everybody's happiness, although eventually i know it will be to my neighbors' annoyance, lol.
the wine and beer flowed, pizza was eventually had and the sun set over a different baseball game in my park.
my face hurt from laughing so hard.
food, friends, baseball, wine and music. and sex. a very good day. :)
patriotic acts
266 on 2. waterboarding was used 266 times on 2 men suspected of being al qaeada ops.
obama ordered the release of several classified justice department documents regarding torture on al qaeda suspects. bush gladly signed his name on the instructions, and denied it was torture because "no lasting harm" could come, even though historically and internationally the treatments were indeed called TORTURE. obama at least has the human decency to call it what it was and has sworn no more.
according to the ny times:
officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in august 2002 against abu zubaydah, according to a 2005 justice department legal memorandum. abu zubaydah has been described as a qaeda operative. a former C.I.A. officer, john kiriakou, told abc news and other news media organizations in 2007 that abu zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.
he lied.
while jack bauer always cracks his subjects on "24", zubaydah revealed no new information after all his near-drowning.
the same memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in march 2003 against khalid shaikh mohammed, the self-described planner of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. mohammed had confessed his role long before being tortured. whether he really was the master mind or is just some schmuck taking the fall like many a mob minion, we don't know.
cheney and bush used opacity and public silence to subvert justice and pervert all that is good about this country -- all the grace and dignity for which the world once admired the united states.
1000's are running through my city's streets today, and many thousands more cheering them on to the finish. on this day we locally commemorate the bravery of a few determined to throw off the shackles of tyranny and live their own lives, free from a government grown too large, too voracious and too cruel.
from thomas jefferson:
experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
less than 24 hours after the twin towers fell, while firefighters, police, emt's and civilians clawed through the smoking toxic rubble for survivors, plans were being finalized in the white house to invade iraq. an illegitmate trump and total subversion of national sovereignty. everything moves more quickly than in jefferson's time. even evil.
also from jefferson:
all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
only one senator voted against the patriot act in 2001, and most admitted not reading much of it. they rolled over, kneejerked and yelled "yea" to stripping americans of many basic civil liberties.
i'm thankful to our new president and his committment to transparency. i'm only wishing somebody less beholden to the status quo would stand up and call out our former president for what he was: a tyrant guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, who has shamed us to the world. while i wait for that, i'll ride my unicorn through the cotton candy forest and watch the glittery smiley seahoses frolic in my personal sea.
obama ordered the release of several classified justice department documents regarding torture on al qaeda suspects. bush gladly signed his name on the instructions, and denied it was torture because "no lasting harm" could come, even though historically and internationally the treatments were indeed called TORTURE. obama at least has the human decency to call it what it was and has sworn no more.
according to the ny times:
officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in august 2002 against abu zubaydah, according to a 2005 justice department legal memorandum. abu zubaydah has been described as a qaeda operative. a former C.I.A. officer, john kiriakou, told abc news and other news media organizations in 2007 that abu zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.
he lied.
while jack bauer always cracks his subjects on "24", zubaydah revealed no new information after all his near-drowning.
the same memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in march 2003 against khalid shaikh mohammed, the self-described planner of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. mohammed had confessed his role long before being tortured. whether he really was the master mind or is just some schmuck taking the fall like many a mob minion, we don't know.
cheney and bush used opacity and public silence to subvert justice and pervert all that is good about this country -- all the grace and dignity for which the world once admired the united states.
1000's are running through my city's streets today, and many thousands more cheering them on to the finish. on this day we locally commemorate the bravery of a few determined to throw off the shackles of tyranny and live their own lives, free from a government grown too large, too voracious and too cruel.
from thomas jefferson:
experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms (of government) those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
less than 24 hours after the twin towers fell, while firefighters, police, emt's and civilians clawed through the smoking toxic rubble for survivors, plans were being finalized in the white house to invade iraq. an illegitmate trump and total subversion of national sovereignty. everything moves more quickly than in jefferson's time. even evil.
also from jefferson:
all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
only one senator voted against the patriot act in 2001, and most admitted not reading much of it. they rolled over, kneejerked and yelled "yea" to stripping americans of many basic civil liberties.
i'm thankful to our new president and his committment to transparency. i'm only wishing somebody less beholden to the status quo would stand up and call out our former president for what he was: a tyrant guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, who has shamed us to the world. while i wait for that, i'll ride my unicorn through the cotton candy forest and watch the glittery smiley seahoses frolic in my personal sea.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
america the great...
... big fattie.the owner and i went to watch game one of the bruins vs. the canadians on thursday. local townie hang that happens to be very hockey-friendly. we'd gone the week before, and it turned out the locals were stranger-friendly too. place was hopping and we were lucky to get seats front and center for the game.
this week they weren't quite as busy but some of the same faces smiled back at us.
eavesdropping as i do, most of the peeps worked in hospitals or at the airport. solid middle class. the accents were harsh and everybody knew everybody's sistah. they're the people who never move away from home.
here's the thing. everybody was SOOOOOOO FAT. fat. fat. fat. the men all were big, but the women were enormous. like, circus-lady big. an especially porcine-faced woman in a pink fleece was having her birthday. she'd already eaten and then polished off a celebratory cake-pan sized brownie with whipped cream. she'd been drinking beer when we arrived, but then switched up to the oh-so-festive sex on the beach after the brownie. i watched the bartender make them. it was a 6-7 oz. pour. (6 count.) so just the booze in each drink was nearly 500 calories. during the game, she had 5. so she drank more than her daily caloric needs in 90 minutes. after dinner with beers and the brownie that was enough for 8 people. plus whatever she'd pig-piled on during the daylight hours.
apple martinis, cosmos, espresso martinis (when did those switch to being creamy drinks? wtf? some dastardly plot to make it even more fattening?) and lots of sex on the beaches. the drinks were large and the pours very generous. good qualities in a local for sure, but i just kept looking around in shock.
massachusetts is actually in the top 10 for "healthiest" states, so we're not as fat as mississippi or louisiana. that hardly seemed believable in that place. then if you look at it relatively, it's very scary.
recently read a long excerpt from the china study. after ww II, many autopsies were done on the young men killed in action. less than 30 years old, prime of life kinda guys. the shocker? nearly all of them had life-threatening artery clogs. of course most of them smoked, and contrary to what we like to think now, their diets were grossly unhealthy. meat, meat, meat, butter and finish dinner with pie. yet, they were much thinner. the average american man now weighs about 30 pounds more than those guys did, while being only one inch taller.
sure the nicotine sped things up for them. but the major difference? activity. americans walk from the house to the car and then sit all day at work, with the greatest exertion likely to be key strokes. i can't tell you how many times i've been met with disbelief that i *carry* groceries on the t, or that i've walked from point a to point b when it's cold.
while i struggle with my deteriorating self, my hormonal betrayal and my bad habits, i resolved that night to move, move, move. i have. i already feel better.
Monday, April 13, 2009
fed time 101
the ad reads:
Going from the Exchange Floor to the Prison Yard?
the owner of this company has revealed to the media that several members of the very anxious madoff family have contacted him to take his crash course for white collar criminals about to enter a world of hurt. although he was sufficiently discreet to not name names, most bets are placed on niece shana, who was the company's compliance officer. (laughing so hard -- tough to type that one.)most of the company's documents have her hancock on them, she is married to a former sec compliance officer, but gee, right before the house of cards collapsed she was honored by the girl scouts as a woman of the year. she can't be all bad, right? but i should think a few calls to martha stewart might be more helpful to shana. can you get enough newspaper strips in jail to make a comfy sit-upon?
a male madoff has also inquired -- perhaps the brother.
"i give people a wakeup call," said mr. levine, who is still on federal supervised release after serving 10 years behind bars for counterfeiting securities. his course costs $850. seems like a bargain when your social skill set is more four seasons than hangin' with busted homies.
below i've pasted some of my favorites from his website (italics mine):
meanwhile, a pair of madoff's mets tickets for yesterday's home opener at citi field fetched $7,500 in an online auction that ended with all the drama of a walk-off home run. two bidders wound up locked in battle on e-bay and drove the final price to twice the pre-sale estimate.
please see my earlier post on "the rich will always be rich".
a male madoff has also inquired -- perhaps the brother.
"i give people a wakeup call," said mr. levine, who is still on federal supervised release after serving 10 years behind bars for counterfeiting securities. his course costs $850. seems like a bargain when your social skill set is more four seasons than hangin' with busted homies.
below i've pasted some of my favorites from his website (italics mine):
- Getting Extra Time Off Sentences:(prison is crowded, you're not violent. odds are good.)
- The Drug Program (toilet tank gin is probably ok)
- Prevent Being RAPED (krazy glue your anus shut?)
- Prison Living Conditions (waaaaaaaaay worse than it looks on tv)
- The Daily Prison Grind (pointless monotony is kinda the point)
- Your 1st Day What To Bring With (leave your gucci slippers home)
- Inmate Personal Property (kiss it goodbye after your first beatdown)
- Inmate Etiquette & Politics (defer to all bad asses -- especially you mr. jew)
- Dealing With Other Inmates (they will not want to watch glenn beck -- don't ask)
- Avoiding and Spotting Informants (if you're not doing anything stoopid...)
- Dealing With Gang Members (skip the "yo mama" jokes)
- Defusing A Confrontation (squash courts no longer an option)
- Prison Slang & Lingo (you will never pull this off. see #3 above)
- Getting A Soft Shoe Permit (they still have minstrel shows?)
- Religious Services (it will get you out of your cell, just pretend you believe)
- Food Service-The Dining Hall (it's all spoon food and no egg white omelettes)
- Microwave Cooking Techniques (even really rich guys can use one of these. c'mon)
- The Commissary Inmate Store (buy LOTS of cigarettes to help with many issues above)
- Why Staff Lie & Dislike Inmates (lmfao)
- Inmate Civil Rights (stop thinking you have them anymore)
- How To Survive A Prison Riot (hide)
- Compassionate Release (fake cancer?)
- Calculating Release Dates(loads of time to carve hash marks into your own arm)
meanwhile, a pair of madoff's mets tickets for yesterday's home opener at citi field fetched $7,500 in an online auction that ended with all the drama of a walk-off home run. two bidders wound up locked in battle on e-bay and drove the final price to twice the pre-sale estimate.
please see my earlier post on "the rich will always be rich".
Sunday, April 12, 2009
ahoy, matey
the u.s. naval captain has been rescued, thanks to sharpshooters and darkness. authorized by the president to use "deadly force" the sniper could see a pirate's head and shoulderblades and blammed him. three of the four pirates on board the floating lifeboat were killed, one has been captured.
not having followed the story too closely ( the mouth-breathing by the media was frankly grossing me out), i was unaware that naval boats had been back and forth with the pirates since wednesday, providing water and food. couldn't they have shot just them to hell on one of those friendly outings? i also discovered that women are flocking to the cities where most of the pirates live when not sailing, kidnapping and blackmailing. the men have big houses, fancy cars, copious amounts of drugs and alcohol and several wives, so in a country as thoroughly broken as somalia, it's about as good a plan for a girl's future as the *no* other options she has.
most frequently we don't hear about these ships being seized. companies quietly pay the ransoms, nobody gets hurt and the pirates live to see another profitable day. while they were initially funded by dubious dudes in dubai, they now have plenty of their own cash to upgrade weapons, boats, gps and satellite phones. these are not just out of work fishermen. they are becoming increasingly sophisticated, while extending further outward to sea.
i did a bit of trolling because the barbary pirates kept popping up all over the place. they were state-sponsored, and just like merchants now, the white guys back then decided it was simpler and more cost-effective to pay tribute. president john adams followed this course, while the extorted money soon ballooned to 20% of the federal budget.
although jefferson had counseled against a big navy, his new presidency received a shake-down demand from tripoli of $225,000, plus $25,000 a year. he refused, war was declared and he sent some ships over to kick ass. afterwards offering congress an "oh, by the way..."
historically, back to the kidnapping of julius caesar by the cilicians, it had been found far more effective to squash these pests before they got out to sea. attack them in their home ports, not a little bit, but annihilate them. the ocean is a big place. how big are these anthills where these guys are shacking up? yeah, yeah, black hawk down. guys in flip flops brought down some very pricey birds, and we got trapped in a bad firefight. i'm finding it very hard to believe we can send smart bombs down chimneys, but we can't track pirates once they get out of their rubber boats. clearly we're not tracking them in their boats either.
convoys. safety in numbers -- hello!! even i get that.
weapons. these ships and their crews are unarmed. international waters, blah, blah. these pirates don't just appear out of thin air. with technology, they can be seen long before they get anywhere near their target. plenty of time to get secured weapons out from under lock and pointed starboard until intentions are proven safe.
stop paying. if the incentive goes away, so do the now broke-ass pirates.
stop pretending. somalia is a wreck. nearly 20 years of civil war. there is no infra-structure and no government to rebuild it. millions struggle with hunger and children are too poor to attend school. the millions and millions payed in ransoms each year could be far better spent on a humanitarian military coalition presence.
easy. yeah, that's it.
let's hope capt. phillips will get a few days at home to eat some marshmallow peeps and see his family. let's hope he doesn't feel like he has to go on oprah or *write* a book.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
are there women this stoopid?
The world's first "wellness bra", the Brassage, is being released in the US this week, for $59.Produced by Intimate Health, it promises to "stimulate lymphatic flow" to flush out toxins that other bras might trap. It's billed as a detox bra, because of the massaging bumps built into the sides.
this is an actual product. it is for sale. for real money. while i don't think i would mind my boobs being massaged, i'm only imagining annoying friction and a possible rash from bumps inside my bra.
not to mention this whole detox thing is making me nutty.
the only thing trapped by my bra are my boobs. the happiest part of my day is when they get set free. :)
Friday, April 10, 2009
public service announcement
coats and jackets will soon be packed away. today is a teaser of a day to go without.
ahem.
hola ! chicas and yo, sistahs! if i can see your bloomers cutting into your asscheeks or your cellulite rippling beneath your stretchy jeans, your damn pants be too effin' tight. put down the dunk-accino. step away from the quarter-pounder.
do your bit to make the world a prettier place to see.
those of us walking behind you thank you in advance for your consideration.
ahem.
hola ! chicas and yo, sistahs! if i can see your bloomers cutting into your asscheeks or your cellulite rippling beneath your stretchy jeans, your damn pants be too effin' tight. put down the dunk-accino. step away from the quarter-pounder.
do your bit to make the world a prettier place to see.
those of us walking behind you thank you in advance for your consideration.
more of getting the government we deserve
yesterday, texas state rep betty brown (R -- of course) caused a firestorm during house testimony on voter identification legislation when she said that Asian-Americans should change their names because they’re too hard to pronounce:
“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here? Brown said.
should we start first by telling her that *chinese* isn't a language? or just cut out her tongue with chopsticks so she keeps silently stoopid to herself?
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
other people's funny numbers
a food forum i visit recently had a thread that has run now to nearly 80 posts. the op's husband eats like a sheltered yet adamant infant, but she has finally triumphed over his envelope of tangy kraft (huh?) with her home-made pasta sauce. she discussed how many cans of tomatoes, how much water and how much meat she used. then asked *how many servings* of pasta this would cover. she referred to some measuring gizmo she owns that told her she had made 2 servings of spaghetti.how much is a serving, seemed a reasonable question from me, then i offered that everybody likes different amounts and that americans tend to drown their pasta in puddles of sauce. who the hell measures spaghetti sauce? is what really was going through my head. if you make more than you need or use, freeze it for god's sake. never mind my dismissal of who only cooks part of the box? (which the owner finds hilarious, but i chalked up his habit of that to him being so white.) everybody but me owns a microwave -- who doesn't like leftover spaghetti?
post after post... some kindly sharing sorts offered their own recipes, which included teaspoon, and fractions thereof, measurements of salt and pepper. wtf?
i heart harold mcgee and can go food geeky in plenty of ways. but if you've got your little chain of measuring spoons out for something other than baking, put down the dangerous tools, turn off the stove and get thee to an olive garden. toot sweet.
amazing some people ever get dinner on the table at all.
not so much fun with numbers
unemployment rates, bank bail-outs, detroit fixes, union concessions, home foreclosures, people murdered by maniacs -- the news has been filled with numbers ever climbing and alarming.
a little one passed my eyes on-line today: the number of licenses issued by the city of boston for d.b.a. (doing business as) in january-- 0. in february -- 0. usually that number is between 20 and 30. there is no license for "no longer doing business as", or "at all."
a little one passed my eyes on-line today: the number of licenses issued by the city of boston for d.b.a. (doing business as) in january-- 0. in february -- 0. usually that number is between 20 and 30. there is no license for "no longer doing business as", or "at all."
Sunday, April 05, 2009
shhhhh...
last night the owner took me to the boonies, a place with no streetlights to turn off, nor sidewalks to roll up when everybody was done with dinner. we joined a group of "uni's" at their coffee house to see a particular favorite singer/songwriter. another wonderfully talented woman well down that long string of internet musical gems. amy speace.
i loved her. her voice, her playing, her lyrics, her genuine warmth. we met her at the break and her smile was kind, her eyes engaged.
during an intro for one of her songs she talked about renting a cabin in the woods to clear her head and to write. she realized during her stay in the forest that sometimes we write the things we are afraid to say.
she didn't go quite so far as to say sometimes we are too afraid even to write.
yes. it's been very quiet in here. but not *in here*.
i loved her. her voice, her playing, her lyrics, her genuine warmth. we met her at the break and her smile was kind, her eyes engaged.
during an intro for one of her songs she talked about renting a cabin in the woods to clear her head and to write. she realized during her stay in the forest that sometimes we write the things we are afraid to say.
she didn't go quite so far as to say sometimes we are too afraid even to write.
yes. it's been very quiet in here. but not *in here*.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
the rich will always be rich
americans are going ballistic at the latest round of AIG bonuses -- $165 million contractually due to execs in the financial products division. yup, the same guys that broke the world. (that the total pay-out for 2008 and 2009 is actually $450 million seems to be getting lost in the blather) while some krazees are defending them as a necessary means of retention, ya know, keeping the really good guys on board (are psych evaluations part of this bail-out plan? cuz that's fruitcake nutso to say in your outside voice), bottom line is it's on paper. it's a legal obligation. that there seemed to be no performance standard required to receive a staggering bonus is something for another time when we visit opposite-land. the president, the treasury secretary and even andrew cuomo are all going brimstone and "up with this we will not put", but they're kinda stuck. it's like this plan was drafted on a cocktail napkin after too many gibsons in a final fuck-you gesture by the previous administration. that whole "let the market regulate itself" worked out so well, it made perfect sense to give all these recipients carte blanche, right? just push mountains of untethered money at them and it will all work out perfectly. (or maybe they had just watched that "dallas" episode where bobby wakes up in the shower and the whole season had just been a dream?)
rep. elijah cummings of maryland, a member of the house committee on government oversight, said he had been communicating regularly with AIG’s chief executive, edward m. liddy, about the bonuses ever since december. mr. cummings said he was particularly concerned that the bonuses were supposed to be paid by march 15, adding that he assumed treasury officials had the same worries.
from today's ny times:
yesterday iowa senator charles grassley suggested in a radio interview that AIG executives "come before the american people and take that deep bow and say, i'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide." now some pundits are pointing at grassley and shaking their heads over such crazy-talk from the cornfields. republicans aren't exactly known for their comic delivery and the seppuku bit is over the top only because it was reserved for samurais who had tainted their code of honor. the whores at AIG and their money bros had none, so certainly don't deserve the glory of falling on their own swords. i do seem to recall a couple of european financiers committing suicide last year when the edges began to fray, but i can't think of a single failed american ceo who has stepped down out of this whole mess. the big 3 in detroit and the money houses still standing all are still run by the same white guys who ran them into the ground, and our economy and future right along with -- as gm goes, so goes the country, eh?
as this debacle continues to spiral, i don't know who should be more ashamed. i do know that nobody involved in any of this -- nobody-- seems to have a sense of contrition. it's being played as an "oops" instead of a melt-down.
and the guys with the money? they still have it. they hire sheryl crow for parties (northern trust got $1.6 billion) and commute on private jets (ceo of bank of america --$45 billion). at the christie's auction of yves st. laurent's estate a hand-made chair from the early 20th century sold for about $28 million -- 10 times its pre-show value. one chair.
"he who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year. " ~~ leonardo davinci
not.
Friday, March 13, 2009
we can't afford that
- the metropolitan museum of art has laid off 74 people, and warns of more layoffs to come. we cannot afford art.
- the number of foreclosures in NYC rose 44% last month. we cannot afford homes.
- last year, american families lost 18% of their total wealth. that adds up to $11 trillion. we cannot afford wealth.
- the leader of china says he's "worried" about the trillion dollars in US treasuries his country holds. we cannot afford credit.
- six flags is on the verge of bankruptcy. we cannot afford fun.
but madoff is in the clink. that's something, anyway.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
all men are liars
more than once, i've danced to this song at a wedding and drunkenly wondered the odds of that particular union succeeding. i mean, really? your first official party as mr. and mrs. and bridezilla includes that on the playlist?i don't check my voicemail everyday, i look at the caller id. lots of "unavailables" and "privates" and "out of areas". anybody i'd like to talk to would call my cell anyway. plowing through the cache last week, i heard a gruff voice who only called himself a "blast from the past". now, if anybody reading this knows me, that doesn't really narrow it down much. it wasn't until the third message and the familiar whine of "geeze, aren't you ever home?" that i pieced it together.
back story:
it has been close to 20 years since we first met. with friends at one of our usual haunts i was on the prowl. i saw him and decided. mercenary that i was, he didn't really have a choice. he wasn't the first, nor would he be the last, to be surprised at how open i was about what i was after, and no surprise to me he ditched his friends when he realized he'd hit the jackpot. my apartment was walking distance, on a posh street in a swanky building.
he wasn't allowed to stay over and i didn't give him my number, but a few weeks later, aided by liquid courage, he rang the bell. his luck, because i'd just gotten home from work. "ya know, this isn't the first time i've come by. aren't you ever home?" he was cute, it had been fun, so i let him in. after a few more visits proved his dedication and capacities, i surrendered my phone number. i made no secret that there would be times he wasn't welcome and more than once i shooed him out because i had plans for which he was making me late. he was a sport about it, i'll give him that, even when he expressed a rather puritanical astonishment. i mean, c'mon, i let you come by and told you we had less than an hour before i had a date. put on your pants and get the hell out, ok?
this went on for years. whenever i asked if he was seeing somebody, he'd ALWAYS say, "not really." i knew it was less than true, but if he felt like she (or they) didn't warrant mention, so be it. whenever i was in a fit of monogamy, he politely stayed away. he'd check in every few months to see if the coast had cleared. when it had, he'd be right back over. all those years, i never once called him or visited where he lived. i never even asked. over time, i met many of his friends all of whom expressed amazement at "how long" i'd been around. lol. if they only knew what i was doing around elsewhere.
after i finally extricated myself from the alcoholic latino, b. rang me up just days after e. had moved out. i swear he was over to my house in minutes. did he call from, like, around the corner? he had been seriously involved with somebody too, but that was over now. how he'd missed me. how he couldn't believe all those years how lucky he'd been to have me. how he loved me. WHAT? since when? almost from when i met you. um, you never thought to mention it? he had wanted to get his career in motion, get settled, be more serious and then see where i was in my life. i called crock of shit. he didn't care what i believed, he was saying it now and could we be together? i was very jagged from my break-up and said i have no idea. we both were living on the north shore then, and his house wasn't far. he confessed having stalked my house more than once. um, creepy tmi, tyvm.
we saw each other more frequently then we ever had. it was strange, but in a nice way. i almost started to relax.
one morning in bed. he swore his love again. i had yet to say it. then he dropped one of the biggest bombs possible. "i'm going to get married." i nearly vomited. the one from before had given an ultimatum. blah blah. he was still talking when i told him to please stop talking. i don't care what she said to you, or "is making you do." get out. but-but-but. get out. i couldn't allow him the pressure valve of confession. (long ago, i learned the power in that little maneuver, lol.)
he called shortly after they'd had a baby. no. i do not want to see you. i was involved with the owner. i certainly didn't need another married man in my life. jeebus. he was friendly and jokey as always. i was frosty to say the least. "i still care about you." "no, you just wanna get laid." "well, i'd come over if you let me." "um, no."
best estimate, that call was about five years ago.
i don't know how long it's been since he's crossed my mind, but it doesn't surprise me that he's again sniffing around. now he's got three kids. he's been looking all over for me. he's found the google stuff, of course, but seemed surprised i wasn't on facebook. i'm not on facebook so people like you can't find me. he's been here. i wasn't home. really, no surprise to either, right? "i'd come over if you let me." no surprise there and you suck. "um, no." bitching about his kids. complaining about his wife. she's not that nice to me -- not like you always were. "we all make choices." how he shouldn't have let me go. "you never had me." but could i have had? "it doesn't matter now." he just would like to know. "it doesn't matter, and either way, i'm glad it didn't happen." he assumed that i wouldn't let him at me because i had a man. "i do, he's a good one, we've been together a very long time. that's not why you can't come over."
he was sitting in the dark, in the driveway of his rambling farmhouse. it was late. his kids and likely his wife all asleep. some of his friends still ask about me and why he hadn't married me.he was whining about the life that he had chosen and how he wished it was different. how he thought it might have been better.
please stop.
we all make choices.
he assured me he will call again. i assured him i don't care.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
blinded, not by science
the vatican this week is celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of darwin's "the origin of the species." by having a seminar about evolution.
notably excluded from the invitee list were members of the "discovery institute", who espouse creationism and intelligent design. in fact, nobody who believes that hooey was invited. to the vatican. to. the. vatican. the organizers said they had barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy.
most of the world is ok with it. the pope is ok with it. he is not in conflict that evolution can coexist with faith. pope john paul II articulated the church's position most clearly in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, saying the theory of evolution is "more than a hypothesis."
my thoughts on faith aren't relevant here. yet i am again dumbfounded to realize that half of americans do not believe in evolution and think the world is less than 10,000 years old. i mean, c'mon, there are not THAT many mormon science teachers. i first learned about evolution from nuns, for heaven's sake.
in a poll i read today, 44% of americans could not name a "famous scientist". of those who *could*, they most frequently named bill gates, al gore and albert einstein. none of whom were scientists and one is dead.
bush famously crushed science during his tenure. any truth supporting climate change or rational discussion of deforestation, the effects of toxic waste, strip-mining, pesticides, big-ag, nasa discoveries, blah, blah, blah (god, i'm a broken record) was subverted or buried. cnn has let go all its science people. science coverage on the tv news is nearly non-existent unless a rover goes rogue, and although my papers still have a science feature on tuesdays, i somehow suspect that's not the case in smaller towns or more shrill publications.
obama has already got physicists (climate guru) and science geeks hard at work. what worries me is how much time has been lost. an entire k-8, or junior high to senior year school career being taught only enough rote and bad science to pass standardized tests. the equivalent of a generation. our tradition of curiosity, imagination and innovation squashed by disinterest and disinformation.
of course, maybe now that hedge funds and banking have lost their get rich quick sheen, perhaps some of those bright young things might actually think to look to the stars -- through a telescope and not at the hamptons.
notably excluded from the invitee list were members of the "discovery institute", who espouse creationism and intelligent design. in fact, nobody who believes that hooey was invited. to the vatican. to. the. vatican. the organizers said they had barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy.
most of the world is ok with it. the pope is ok with it. he is not in conflict that evolution can coexist with faith. pope john paul II articulated the church's position most clearly in a 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy for Sciences, saying the theory of evolution is "more than a hypothesis."
my thoughts on faith aren't relevant here. yet i am again dumbfounded to realize that half of americans do not believe in evolution and think the world is less than 10,000 years old. i mean, c'mon, there are not THAT many mormon science teachers. i first learned about evolution from nuns, for heaven's sake.
in a poll i read today, 44% of americans could not name a "famous scientist". of those who *could*, they most frequently named bill gates, al gore and albert einstein. none of whom were scientists and one is dead.
bush famously crushed science during his tenure. any truth supporting climate change or rational discussion of deforestation, the effects of toxic waste, strip-mining, pesticides, big-ag, nasa discoveries, blah, blah, blah (god, i'm a broken record) was subverted or buried. cnn has let go all its science people. science coverage on the tv news is nearly non-existent unless a rover goes rogue, and although my papers still have a science feature on tuesdays, i somehow suspect that's not the case in smaller towns or more shrill publications.
obama has already got physicists (climate guru) and science geeks hard at work. what worries me is how much time has been lost. an entire k-8, or junior high to senior year school career being taught only enough rote and bad science to pass standardized tests. the equivalent of a generation. our tradition of curiosity, imagination and innovation squashed by disinterest and disinformation.
of course, maybe now that hedge funds and banking have lost their get rich quick sheen, perhaps some of those bright young things might actually think to look to the stars -- through a telescope and not at the hamptons.
Friday, February 13, 2009
tax dollars hard at work
discussing obama's stimulus bill, one of our country's congressmen had this to say:
Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) "The American public expects for us to get in and know what we're voting on, but there are very few members from Congress that are going to have time to actually read this thing. This is not light reading," Boozman added. "It's difficult reading, it involves policy and things. Right now, because of those things, I will probably vote against it."
yes. it's really long. it's got numbers and stuff. who has time to read all that? what's he busy doing? diddling staff pages? is he kidding me? who reads most of the crap that gets passed? anybody? nobody read the damn patriot act either, but that malevolent document sailed right through both houses.
then again, i know arkansas scores near the bottom of states' literacy rates, so maybe the guy can't read at all.
and as the michael phelps bong hoo-hah continues, that town sheriff rounded up 8 kids to arrest and netted less than an ounce of pot. even stoned, that's not funny. (of course here, it's not even a crime, lol.) isn't there some internet bully the cops can stalk, or craigs' list hooker teachers in that neck of the woods? what's a boss hog to do these days?
Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) "The American public expects for us to get in and know what we're voting on, but there are very few members from Congress that are going to have time to actually read this thing. This is not light reading," Boozman added. "It's difficult reading, it involves policy and things. Right now, because of those things, I will probably vote against it."
yes. it's really long. it's got numbers and stuff. who has time to read all that? what's he busy doing? diddling staff pages? is he kidding me? who reads most of the crap that gets passed? anybody? nobody read the damn patriot act either, but that malevolent document sailed right through both houses.
then again, i know arkansas scores near the bottom of states' literacy rates, so maybe the guy can't read at all.
and as the michael phelps bong hoo-hah continues, that town sheriff rounded up 8 kids to arrest and netted less than an ounce of pot. even stoned, that's not funny. (of course here, it's not even a crime, lol.) isn't there some internet bully the cops can stalk, or craigs' list hooker teachers in that neck of the woods? what's a boss hog to do these days?
even the pretty must suffer
this week, in resexenomics.
from the ny post:
"the perks at Fashion Week are taking a weird turn downmarket. High-powered fashion editors and retail merchants - who in seasons past have hauled off gift bags of Victoria's Secret lingerie, Calvin Klein perfume and Estée Lauder cosmetics - will be treated this year to McDonald's, Budweiser and Jell-O."
while mclattes may be steaming backstage, i have yet to see a pic of anna wintour cradling anything but starbucks in her bony hands this week.
ky is also in the swag bags, so at least the fashionistas won't have to bone in dryness. although if you're really busting the budget, i suppose you could use the jello for lube and still have a snack afterward.
the copy reads: "his excites. her's delights. together they ignite." some kind of binary sex bomb? lots of spontaneous combustion between the sheets may tax our already underserviced and overburdened fire departments, so be careful with this stuff, kids! (lighter fluid is probably cheaper anyway...)
on a happier note, pernod-ricard reported a surge in sales last quarter, up 16%. they own absolut, which, if anybody was watching, ran an advert during the grammy show, and in some markets during the superbowl. hard booze hasn't been on tv commercials in decades, but when car dealers and red lobster cut back their ad budgets, something has to fill the airspace and pay the salaries for the skeletons on "gossip girls".
can't afford a night out? so huddle in front of your amish electric heater, get your honey in your snuggie, crack a 6-pack, lube up and get down.
drunk sex may just save our economy, america. count me in.
from the ny post:
"the perks at Fashion Week are taking a weird turn downmarket. High-powered fashion editors and retail merchants - who in seasons past have hauled off gift bags of Victoria's Secret lingerie, Calvin Klein perfume and Estée Lauder cosmetics - will be treated this year to McDonald's, Budweiser and Jell-O."
while mclattes may be steaming backstage, i have yet to see a pic of anna wintour cradling anything but starbucks in her bony hands this week.
ky is also in the swag bags, so at least the fashionistas won't have to bone in dryness. although if you're really busting the budget, i suppose you could use the jello for lube and still have a snack afterward.
the copy reads: "his excites. her's delights. together they ignite." some kind of binary sex bomb? lots of spontaneous combustion between the sheets may tax our already underserviced and overburdened fire departments, so be careful with this stuff, kids! (lighter fluid is probably cheaper anyway...)on a happier note, pernod-ricard reported a surge in sales last quarter, up 16%. they own absolut, which, if anybody was watching, ran an advert during the grammy show, and in some markets during the superbowl. hard booze hasn't been on tv commercials in decades, but when car dealers and red lobster cut back their ad budgets, something has to fill the airspace and pay the salaries for the skeletons on "gossip girls".
can't afford a night out? so huddle in front of your amish electric heater, get your honey in your snuggie, crack a 6-pack, lube up and get down.
drunk sex may just save our economy, america. count me in.
more octo-momz drama
credit for prescience, please. :)side-by-side pix of krazee octo-pussy and angelina jolie show an eerie likeness made possible only by blade and syringe. the yearbook photo of nadya shows a very different face than the carved and poofed one she now presents to the media's maw. she has sent fawning fan mail to the jet-setting baby hoarder. if there is justice, the state will take all nadya's kids and make angelina and brad take them. no passports required because i doubt they are as photogenic as the hand-selected benetton brood of the jolie-pitt's, but at least the kids will get 3 hots and a cot.
several years ago, she received a pay-out disability check of $160,000 after she was injured on the job -- during a riot in a mental hospital. yes.
she has used that money for her plastic surgery and ivf treatments. unemployed and with no spousal support, she receives food stamps and state aid for three of the six children she already had, who are each handicapped. she has no health insurance and the hospital that held her and still has all the infants is asking the state for over $1 million in reimbursement for this circus. california is $42 billion in the red. how soon before villagers with pitchforks and torches hunt down mother of the year and bury her flayed body in a shallow grave? suburban coyotes smell the air and are licking their chops, hungry for the rare and delicious baby-fat.
her flaks issued a statement that some church gave her a house. church spokesman replied she has never been seen at service, and has denied any knowledge of her or of giving her anything. never mind a house, not even a card. although they are very happy she didn't have an abortion. ahem. of course.
nadya plans on returning to school in the fall to get a degree in counseling. (physician heal thyself...) she will use her student loan money to support the brood. um, isn't that dough, like, for books? not pallets of enfamil? will she put all the babies in a wheelbarrow and bring them to class? who the hell will be watching all her kids?
the doctor supposedly responsible for abetting this side-show is now under investigation for implanting 7 embryos in a 49-year-old woman who is now pregnant with quadruplets. this one already has 3 adult children but wants to share new pitter-patted joy with her new much younger husband. uh, isn't 49 a bit outside the fertility window for one, never mind FOUR?
thankfully, octo-pussy now claims she is done having babies.
not to be outshone, tabloids from across the pond today published a story about a 15-year-old girl and her THIRTEEN-year-old boyfriend who just had a baby. the boy's voice has yet to drop and he is 4-feet tall. he looks like he is 8-years old, i swear. he does not get an allowance and has no idea what nappies cost but swears he will be a good father. his father has popped off 9 kids with various womenz. both kids live in council housing. an english minister is "so so very happy the children did not choose abortion". ahem. of course. and let's thrill to their decision to try to keep this baby and add to the dole that the teen mom's six siblings and single mother are on already. future's so bright ya gotta wear shades, right?
we now conclude today's trainwreck reviews. carry on.
Tuesday, February 03, 2009
baby hoarders
i blame angelina jolie.
this mother of a recent litter of octuplets is proving more of a freak-show each day. we now know who she is, that she and her tsunami of a womb bankrupted her parents and that her entire brood, all 14, including a set of twins, were conceived via in-vitro. she had a single donor years ago and ziplocked a bunch of frozen eggs.
no job, no husband, no baby-daddy, no visible means of support, other than her freaked-out parents, yet some doctor(s?) kept popping her up with fertilized eggs. "please, sir? may i have some more?" she always wanted "lots of kids", according to her mom, but was diagnosed infertile at a young age. stuffed up tubes or something. if there is really a hand of god at work, he was at least trying there, don't ya think?
GAAAHHH!!!!
she has hired TWO publicists and is fishing for a $2 million payday from oprah, sawyer or some such flak. "she just wants to make sure her babies have a secure future." actual quote. are you fucking kidding me? how far does $2 million go, split 17 ways, after the pampers and the enfamil stop coming for free? who will pay for the massive bill incurred by this freakish feat of science? who will pay for the special medical needs of these premature infants as they grow into delicate toddlers and teens? who will pay for the years of therapy these kids will need because their mother is a fertility froot loop?
the last mother who birthed octuplets called it a "blessing from god". if a doctor, a needle and a deep freezer are involved? uh, god is not between your legs.
with in vitro, the common practice -- and the ethical medical guideline -- is to "selectively reduce" the number of fetuses. so if more than 2 of the eggs "catch", the mother is advised to kill off the others. abort. nobody dares call it that, but the preferred euphemism really pisses me off. yeah, she could just as easily be killing off an albert einstein or a jeffrey dahmer, but who knows because the *pfft, baby, baby* is random. a doctor cannot force a patient into this option, but most women, having gotten this far and spent that much, make the mercenary decision to cull the embryonic herd. like most women, i have a conflicted view of abortion. a teen-aged girl, suffering the consequence of a broken condom must do the walk of shame into a clinic, past mary's on the half-shell and screaming haters, if she can even get to one anymore (thanks, george w.); but a well-off woman will be nestled in the quiet cocoon of a posh office having a "necessary procedure." "cup of early grey, mrs. so-and-so?"
frankly, i'm also not very sympathetic to middle-aged women who spend tens of thousands to force their wombs into submission. they either waited too long and misjudged their bodies' clocks or their husbands' swimmers are bent or laggardly, or what have you. i appreciate the egotism of wanting your own mini-me (look! i made that!), but i'm also a keen believer in the natural order of life. again, hand of god...
eight is not enough, nor is apparently 17, because there is a show on cable now called "18 and counting." a website, a tv show, a blog, a book, ad nauseum, all about this conservative religious couple in arkansas that just keeps pumpin' out babies. they each were under 20 when they married. he has run for public office, apparently his only platform being that he is anti-choice. other than everybody having bad hair-dos, they seem like good parents. they are financially secure, work in their own business and none of their neighbors are talking smack about them. strange enough in this day of joe the plumber getting air-time, but everybody says the kids are nice and well-behaved.
transportation is provided by nine vehicles, including a 21-passenger bus. (which really only means they own 9 cars.) although where the hell they all go together, besides mega-church on sunday, is a complete mystery to me.
the kids are home-schooled, according to a christian program. i suppose if they were sucking up tax dollars for books and pencils and special ed classes, more folks might be squawking dirt. (am i wrong in recalling that home-schooled families get a tax rebate?) the family belongs to an evangelical christian movement called quiverful, which much like "taken in hand," teaches that the women are submissive to the men and the kids submit to both parents. like the exiled lds polygamists, the girls wear long dresses and modified mullets. quiverful holds that children are a blessing from god and that husbands and wives should gladly accept all the children they are given.
"we are just so grateful to god for another gift from him," said jim bob duggar, the dad upon birth of number 18. (couldn't he just have the one first name? jeebus, lol.)
neither the california nutcase nor this southern couple are being *given* babies. no stork is dropping them off on his busy global rounds, nobody's leaving them under cabbage leaves. i can't begin to fathom that doctors continue to enable the former (again, ego -- look what i made!!), and the duggars just won't "waste" the seed. hell, even the pope is ok with pulling out.
the duggars continue to conceive naturally, and the mother remains healthy.
ms. california is another story. is the ama on this yet?
they may seem two ends of the spectrum but both ends are whoring themselves and their KIDS out for dough. for fame. maybe to recruit more quivers.
if you can't be meryl streep or robert altman or yo-yo ma; or tom brady or giselle; or stephen hawking or stevie ray vaughan; if you aren't pete doherty, lindsey lohan, paris hilton or even amy winehouse, i guess fertility is the new option for your 15 minutes.
yuk.
this mother of a recent litter of octuplets is proving more of a freak-show each day. we now know who she is, that she and her tsunami of a womb bankrupted her parents and that her entire brood, all 14, including a set of twins, were conceived via in-vitro. she had a single donor years ago and ziplocked a bunch of frozen eggs.
no job, no husband, no baby-daddy, no visible means of support, other than her freaked-out parents, yet some doctor(s?) kept popping her up with fertilized eggs. "please, sir? may i have some more?" she always wanted "lots of kids", according to her mom, but was diagnosed infertile at a young age. stuffed up tubes or something. if there is really a hand of god at work, he was at least trying there, don't ya think?
GAAAHHH!!!!
she has hired TWO publicists and is fishing for a $2 million payday from oprah, sawyer or some such flak. "she just wants to make sure her babies have a secure future." actual quote. are you fucking kidding me? how far does $2 million go, split 17 ways, after the pampers and the enfamil stop coming for free? who will pay for the massive bill incurred by this freakish feat of science? who will pay for the special medical needs of these premature infants as they grow into delicate toddlers and teens? who will pay for the years of therapy these kids will need because their mother is a fertility froot loop?
the last mother who birthed octuplets called it a "blessing from god". if a doctor, a needle and a deep freezer are involved? uh, god is not between your legs.
with in vitro, the common practice -- and the ethical medical guideline -- is to "selectively reduce" the number of fetuses. so if more than 2 of the eggs "catch", the mother is advised to kill off the others. abort. nobody dares call it that, but the preferred euphemism really pisses me off. yeah, she could just as easily be killing off an albert einstein or a jeffrey dahmer, but who knows because the *pfft, baby, baby* is random. a doctor cannot force a patient into this option, but most women, having gotten this far and spent that much, make the mercenary decision to cull the embryonic herd. like most women, i have a conflicted view of abortion. a teen-aged girl, suffering the consequence of a broken condom must do the walk of shame into a clinic, past mary's on the half-shell and screaming haters, if she can even get to one anymore (thanks, george w.); but a well-off woman will be nestled in the quiet cocoon of a posh office having a "necessary procedure." "cup of early grey, mrs. so-and-so?"
frankly, i'm also not very sympathetic to middle-aged women who spend tens of thousands to force their wombs into submission. they either waited too long and misjudged their bodies' clocks or their husbands' swimmers are bent or laggardly, or what have you. i appreciate the egotism of wanting your own mini-me (look! i made that!), but i'm also a keen believer in the natural order of life. again, hand of god...
eight is not enough, nor is apparently 17, because there is a show on cable now called "18 and counting." a website, a tv show, a blog, a book, ad nauseum, all about this conservative religious couple in arkansas that just keeps pumpin' out babies. they each were under 20 when they married. he has run for public office, apparently his only platform being that he is anti-choice. other than everybody having bad hair-dos, they seem like good parents. they are financially secure, work in their own business and none of their neighbors are talking smack about them. strange enough in this day of joe the plumber getting air-time, but everybody says the kids are nice and well-behaved.transportation is provided by nine vehicles, including a 21-passenger bus. (which really only means they own 9 cars.) although where the hell they all go together, besides mega-church on sunday, is a complete mystery to me.
the kids are home-schooled, according to a christian program. i suppose if they were sucking up tax dollars for books and pencils and special ed classes, more folks might be squawking dirt. (am i wrong in recalling that home-schooled families get a tax rebate?) the family belongs to an evangelical christian movement called quiverful, which much like "taken in hand," teaches that the women are submissive to the men and the kids submit to both parents. like the exiled lds polygamists, the girls wear long dresses and modified mullets. quiverful holds that children are a blessing from god and that husbands and wives should gladly accept all the children they are given.
"we are just so grateful to god for another gift from him," said jim bob duggar, the dad upon birth of number 18. (couldn't he just have the one first name? jeebus, lol.)
neither the california nutcase nor this southern couple are being *given* babies. no stork is dropping them off on his busy global rounds, nobody's leaving them under cabbage leaves. i can't begin to fathom that doctors continue to enable the former (again, ego -- look what i made!!), and the duggars just won't "waste" the seed. hell, even the pope is ok with pulling out.
the duggars continue to conceive naturally, and the mother remains healthy.
ms. california is another story. is the ama on this yet?
they may seem two ends of the spectrum but both ends are whoring themselves and their KIDS out for dough. for fame. maybe to recruit more quivers.
if you can't be meryl streep or robert altman or yo-yo ma; or tom brady or giselle; or stephen hawking or stevie ray vaughan; if you aren't pete doherty, lindsey lohan, paris hilton or even amy winehouse, i guess fertility is the new option for your 15 minutes.
yuk.
Monday, February 02, 2009
pre-conceived notions
this is not my first recession nor downturn. there were mini quakes in the late 80s and the dot-com bust hit our fair city pretty hard. i gotta admit, i don't miss the hubris of those fidelity guys. (more fucking ARAUJO!!! followed by "i can't imagine making any more money." yeah. actual quote. where is he now? selling his used shirts?)
but this?
waiters do not get "laid off". business drives the schedule, so if there isn't much, and you're low man on totem pole, you're out of luck. BUT, you still "have a job", ya know? it's about volume.
today, my day off, i got a string of beseeching e-mails: "laid off." "let go." "no room on the schedule." etc. good, solid people i would love to clone. my own employer has us all in a panic with the savage paring of the payroll, and we don't have a helluva lot going on the next few months. so little the few of us remaining are full of gallows humor as to whom might be next. we all know it's "me". (the generic me, not me myself, lol) whaddya do? the best you can is it.
any mis-step might be the last.
never.
nothing.
nothing like it.
scariest times evah.
i'm glad i don't have kids right now.
but this?
waiters do not get "laid off". business drives the schedule, so if there isn't much, and you're low man on totem pole, you're out of luck. BUT, you still "have a job", ya know? it's about volume.
today, my day off, i got a string of beseeching e-mails: "laid off." "let go." "no room on the schedule." etc. good, solid people i would love to clone. my own employer has us all in a panic with the savage paring of the payroll, and we don't have a helluva lot going on the next few months. so little the few of us remaining are full of gallows humor as to whom might be next. we all know it's "me". (the generic me, not me myself, lol) whaddya do? the best you can is it.
any mis-step might be the last.
never.
nothing.
nothing like it.
scariest times evah.
i'm glad i don't have kids right now.
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