how do i not love thee?

let us count the ways...

up-front apologies to bill and leaving aside my aversion and overexposure to expensive weddings and even the institution of marriage. i will discount the behind-the-scenes mayhem at my place of employ that's concurrent with most events. at least once a weekend i do a hammah-dance of "can't touch this." but this one?

a glorious day that should make the entire world wish it lived in this city. sunny, with that slightly briny breeze blowing sailboats across the charles and frisbees and footballs across the commons.

5-figure wedding.

11:15 scheduled start-time for ceremony. 90% of the guests fidgeting in their seats. no groom. dad whips out his cell. he's looking for parking. huh? you bought validated parking in the garage. while he claims to be circling the block with his homies, bride is hurling upstairs, alternating with sips of champagne.

chatting up the officiant while we all wait, he tells me in their pre-whatever interview, the husband-to-be seemed "miserable." silently, i wonder if this is an expensive shot-gun wedding.

11:25: groom arrives. ok, we can start. nope. neither the groom's mother nor the bride's father is yet on-site. what kind of parent shows up late for their own kid's big day?

11:45: at last we can go. i help arrange the bride for her grand entrance. her 4-foot train is filthy with shoe-prints. nothing to be done now. ffs, who was stomping on her dress before she even saw anybody?

"i do." everybody claps and cheers.

reception: pictures, drinking, happy people oh-so-badly dressed. "what not to wear" should have been filming. weird, kind of, because the bride looked storybook pretty and her bridesmaids too were elegant in taupe satin cocktail dresses that were perfect for an afternoon wedding. very wise she hadn't asked an aunt for help with all that.

meal: usual hiccups of "oh, i can't have dairy," and "oh, my kid can't have wheat," blah, blah. we're used to that.

appetizers: bridal attendant returns to the kitchen with groom's plate of shrimp. he's ALLERGIC to it. shellfish of any kind will kill him. WHAT? his wife didn't know this? or didn't care? he never saw the menu? later, i discover together they have a 12-year-old son. even if they went their separate ways for awhile as young accidental parents sometimes do, how could this have escaped everybody?

people in unhappy or unraveling relationships often complain of their partner's lack of consideration or self-centeredness. i have been a painfully close witness to the disenfranchisement this creates, as well as the resulting resentment and heartbreak. with the reality of human nature, i can understand the deterioration that may occur through years, particularly in people who were never very outer-directed in their empathy.

my family's fractured dynamic never wove a "happily ever after" sampler pillow for me. but this? some ladies' magazine my mom read used to (?) have a column called "can this be marriage be saved?" i often thought it should be called "should this marriage be saved?" horrible but obvious question on this couple's wedding day. jeebus.

stop making no sense

working lots of hours, filled with barely contained disgust and even something approaching sadness, as well as this weird sense of aversion, i've been swearing off my usual news outlets this last week or so. the base corruption at the heart of the imminent bail-out (did you know 90% of american home-owners are in good standing on their mortgages?). i also suspect this $700 billion figure is being cooked up with the same crystal ball (or is it crystal meth?) that estimated the cost of the fucking big dig. *leaders* in both the senate and house have been deluged by negative feedback from voters on this anal fiscal rape, yet not one is willing to defy lobbyists so close to election day. the "let's play opposite land" of mccain's apparent untethering to reality makes me sick. no longer riding around on the "straight-talk express", he flails like an epileptic drowning in the undertow. obama has said nothing of substance recently which steams me too. (although, perhaps he's taking a page from fdr's playbook and refusing to become smeared or attached to our era's economic hooverville? hh kept asking for help, even after fdr won the election, but prior to being inaugurated. fdr told him over and over to go pound sand. buchanan leaned on lincoln too, but he stayed above the free-state/slave-state fray til actually in the white house.)

if not for sadists in my life who insist on sending me clips, i would not have seen any of the couric-palin mini-series unfolding on cbs. cringe-worthy doesn't even begin to approach the lack of articulation shown by this woman. sentences to nowhere, anybody? to wit:

COURIC: And when it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this — to stay informed and to understand the world?

PALIN: I’ve read most of them again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media —

COURIC: But what ones specifically? I’m curious.

PALIN: Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years.

COURIC: Can you name any of them?

PALIN: I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.

never mind my persnickety twitch at her lack of noun-NOUN agreement, but is she so stoopid she can't produce the name of a single newspaper or magazine? (rhetorical. puh-leeze, don't prolong this.) how's that look for thinking on one's feet? bush had the hubris to admit he refuses to even read the paper. ok, so she isn't there yet. it clearly doesn't occur to her that reading is fun-duh-mental and might help her public speaking? never mind being able to hit back some softballs lobbed her way by couric.

it's just further proof of the absolute disdain the republican party holds for the american people. toss in a bimbo so everybody gets distracted (that means *you* american media!!!) from the real and fetid messes everywhere.

"morning in america"? then please, don't wake me up.

noodle note

much like an editor's note...

while doing a quick search for the girdle image down below, i was reminded of a few tidbits for which i didn't have time this morning.

the contraptions women once strapped on under suits and chemises, even in the hottest of weather, (liz taylor in "cat on a hot tin roof", anybody?) weren't really designed to make a size 14 look like a 6. the concept was to disguise and restrain any jiggling girly bits as much as possible. even mary tyler moore "slept" in a bra as mary richards on that pull-out couch. very few women then were all that FAT, ya know? it was prudishness on display, not the concealment of piggishness.

marilyn monroe's dress size is often slagged about to make modern fat women feel better somehow. we've all seen her lost eyes and jello on springs walk. we've seen her upskirted in the "seven year itch" and steam-whistled in "some like it hot". (where she actually was in trouble with the studio over her weight, which was then her heaviest at about 140 on her 5'6" frame...) curvy, buxom, female -- fat? no way. most of her clothes and all of her costumes were custom-made, so her *size* is kinda moot. her studio stats put her at a 23" waist. fat? uh, no. women were actually smaller -- thinner-- so vintage sizes correspond much differently to today's bodies.

we'll leave this at the impossibility for a big-busted/small-hipped woman to buy a fitted dress off the rack. not to mention how the digits then skew. mock the amount of clothes i may seem to have, but i can count my dresses on less than 2 hands. i can't zipper a size 14 dress, but a size 6 skirt fits just fine. men will never get this, i guess. nor will they get the number obsession that stretches from the closet to the scale. (oh, it's getting late and my noodle is wandering...)

lastly, i read an interview with an actor in that show "swingtown", which takes place in the 70s. he's frequently shot poolside and looks very trim with nice abs. he was complaining about having to drop weight for the role and always being starving -- because peeps back then were so much thinner. imagine that. most actors are fanatics about their weight and bodies, especially those not on the a-list and so vying for parts. has our national appetite increased that much? not everybody smoked then, and nobody on the show does, lol. even sarah michelle gellar, this summer much mocked for her cellulite, warned that *we* regular peeps shouldn't try to look like them, since being skinny is soooooooo part of their job.

we'll leave aside the freaky-skeery skinny out there, in the celeb skeletor-land of girl-womenz like keira knightley, courtney cox and victoria beckham. dried figs to marilyn's melons?

me? i just wanna fit in those damn pants, lol.

other ladies' pants

perhaps it should be "pants"? ya know, the air quotation mark kinda thing?

yesterday i had a pre-production meeting with a co-worker. we both were wearing fitted black skirts that fell slightly above the knee. she is about my height, and about 12 years my junior. she mostly wears skirts, and i'm frequently struck by how the legs of somebody so young can so utterly lack muscle tone.

she shifted in her chair and i caught a glimpse of very ugly beige. omg. yup. she was sausage-stuffed into some sort of control garment. shapewear. bodywear. what would it be called? bigger than a girdle cuz it went past her upper thigh.

the owner was incredulous in finding a news article about this stuff. we have more than once poked our fingers at somebody who could visually benefit. am i shocked that she was wearing it? actually, yeah. it never occurred to me. i don't think of her as "big". not shapely, really, but very far from objectionable, as the owner might put it.

and i sped back in time to junior high and girls stuffing their bras. what happens when the boy sees what is not, or nowadays, what actually IS, contained within? and does it make like a boingo sound, or maybe a squishy noise, when it's sprung free?

jeebus.

long pants, the ladies' version

a quick tally today shows it's been 54 days since i've worn pants. looks to be sunny and warm for awhile still, too. in my previous job, the kitchen was so swampy, i wound up having to wear water-proof clogs and cheap black pants everyday to prevent getting slimed.

the owner's dictum, the mini-staycation i enjoyed, the stunning string of gorgeous weather, my new job that often has me going days without even entering the kitchen (which is often empty anyway) all have brought a very pleasant wardrobe change. the icing on this cake is my diminishing size. skirts that haven't slipped over my butt in years are now out and about. i'm also enjoying the calf extension and hip-sway a girl gets walking in pretty high heels.

the mouse turd in the layer cake? i'm still not yet small enough for my old slacks. i'm holding weight in places i never did and it's being hormonally stubborn. phooey. the first month or so of working out regularly i watched pounds evaporate. yup, very good for an instant gratification gal comme moi. although i'm getting back into more and more outfits, the depletion of me is now achingly slow. i know all about melting fat and building muscle and i'm working hard -- feeling that pang of superiority watching chubsters take a stroll on the treadmill, while i sweat my ass off. literally, i guess, just not fast enough for my liking.

ok, enough whining. it doesn't burn many kcals. off to the gym. i have to have size 4 slacks in my near future. :)

church and state are no longer separate here

a tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious.

~~aristotle

i have gone on here about bush's terrifying world view that armageddon will make everything alright. he trammels the constitution and sovereignty of nations, yadda yadda. now we've got his demon redux in an up-do. palin believes god wants a pipeline and that invading iraq was part of *his plan". her young unwed pregnant daughter is following god's will.

my own faith (or lack thereof) in god aside, i am sick to death of people speaking for him. their hubris in claiming he speaks TO THEM. directly to them. ffs!!! if he's all that, isn't he kinda busy???

GAHHH!

where would jesus drill?

it's a small world, redux

a ny times reporter this week offered up his impressions from talking to many "average mohammeds" in cairo. he spoke with dozens of peeps in cafes, markets and university quads. with both mccain and his pitbull eager to blow up more places and show the world who's da boss, i found it deeply disturbing.

it was a sentient and nuanced piece -- the reason i still read the news. the majority in that region distrusts its government and disbelieves the msm -- that outlet seeming to be no more than a propaganda arm for _____________(insert mubarak or another hookah-pal here.) further, they will not be swayed from thinking that israel and the u.s. are in cahoots on all world matters, large and small.

he found no one who thought al queda was responsible for the attacks on 9/11. no one. how could a few guys in remote caves pull off something so devastating? they all had *incontestable* truth that no jews went to work at the world trade center that morning. (pentagon never seems to figure in these sorts of things, but i don't imagine that bloc as much of a haven for semites anyway.) the u.s. and israel did it as an excuse to make arabs look evil and as an excuse to invade iraq. they hold no doubt. none.

from the article:

"there are arabs who hate america, a lot of them, but this is too much,” mr. abbas said as he fidgeted with his cellphone. “and look at what happened after this — the americans invaded two muslim countries. they used 9/11 as an excuse and went to iraq. they killed saddam, tortured people. how can you trust them?”

even this egyptian is suffering from the dissonance.

i couldn't subject myself to any of the covention airtime. even i am not that masochistic. however, flak after flak has beaten in the point that neither palin nor mccain mentioned the economy in their speeches. americans often uninsured, losing their homes, jobs and hope held no spot on the republican platform.

in a strangely related piece, fdr's articulate words have again been brought forth for me.


seventy-two years ago, in his renomination acceptance speech at the democratic convention in philadelphia (before an audience of over 100,000), fdr rose above the boiler-plate rhetoric of political speeches and spoke of his generation’s “rendezvous with destiny.” he warned of the perils to the nation of economic inequality. “liberty,” he said, “requires opportunity to make a living, a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.”

roosevelt’s words echo across the decades because they resonate with the very meaning of america, a meaning that is so much deeper than what our politics now seem to be. “we are fighting,” he told his audience, “to save a great and precious form of government, for ourselves and for the world.”

in a global poll of over 30,000 people, a staggering margin supported obama for president. tens of thousands of miles away, they know our president still can make or break the world.

we have broken it.

much of the world still believes we can make amends and move ahead.

can we?

will we?

money talks

immediately after sarah palin's speech at the rnc, mccain received $1 million in contributions.

in the same time frame, obama received $10 million.

i can hope, right?

celebrity bizarro land

last weekend, both madonna and michael jackson turned 50. back in the day, they were the queen and king of pop. hit after hit on top 40 radio, spilling out of dorm rooms, jukeboxes and clubs. amazing videos. pepsi commercials. soundtrack of the 80s and early 90s, for many my age. (never owned an album by either, fyi, but could sing along well enough after a few drinks.)

regardless of what their flaks say, i think it safe to posit both have gone under the knife. and safe to say to VERY different results, lol.

she remains an international icon. her concerts sell out at whopping sums and she still pumps out hit singles. she looks amazing. (those arms!) kabbalah la-la and a-rod rumors aside, she's a wife, mother and superstar, 25 years running.

he celebrated his birthday with cartoons and cookies. he has gone beyond strange looking with a nose that no longer stays attached to his face. he is mired in debt and foreclosure battles, even after buying out much of the beatles catalogue. when was the last time he made a new record? can he even sing anymore? he seems far too frail to moonwalk. last known to be living in bahrain? let's not even talk about those kids under the veils.

further whackness...

lynne spears, mother to trainwrecks britney and teenage single mom jaime lynne, called a posh l.a. baby store and ordered a gift -- baby burp cloths to be sent in her daughter jaime lynne's name to that another unwed mom-to-be in the great white north, bristol palin. (whose hockey hunk b.f. i totally would have done in school.)

lastly, little lost mackenzie phillips. her tv sister valerie bertinelli making a comeback, skinny again, ditched the booze-bag husband, and has tv deals. poor mac -- arrested at the airport holding heroin and coke. now headed to her 10th stint in rehab. jeebus.

please... hurt me

welcome to the opposite land in which this noodle lives.

on a relationship forum i used to frequent more often, there were countless cyclical threads that all essentially began, "please, don't hurt me." the heart, the soul, the psyche as precious candy glass and the lover (most often the female making the plea, so the hapless dude) was left to tread on always shifting eggshells.

these women had been hurt before and wanted no more of it. it always struck me as an impossible burden and then secondly, a terrible projection. what man or woman could possibly meet that expectation? to *never* hurt you? few wake up in the morning intending to hurt their beloved, ya know? so she always held the other at arm's length -- waiting. what a horrible set-up for failure. for both.

then there is noodle.

this is not the post to delve into the black dark of the why.

recently, i dared to posit aloud that the owner is less angry in general, so perhaps less inclined to hurt me and engage my masochism. he agreed. he said he "doesn't carry it like he used to."

it made me so happy for him. truly. the mantle under which he struggled for years is coming undone. :) yet, it was a lingua verum of our own and something i treasured. how do i now explain that i *need* to be hurt when it's something he no longer feels compelled to do?

the other day (and night before) i got used hard. like most women would never want. the kind that makes you bleed and cry. the kind that makes you not want to sit down. the kind that makes you want to crawl inside the man who knows he can do that to you. the kind that makes you weep with pain and relief and joy on the way home.

i remained woozy and stoopid for a nice while.

allowing/wanting myself to be hurt opens me to a vulnerability i don't know how to get to elsewise. the welts, the weals, the tear-stains, the submitting to the power of *you* brings me to a place i feel should be for you.

will you allow me that?

let's hear it for the ladies

cindy mccain and laura bush were pushed forth to make speeches tonight at the republican convention in st. louis. neither is an elected official, nor seeking public office, but i guess their men are off doing manly stuff and stopping biblical force weather. i wouldn't watch them on tv, for fear botox would squirt directly through my screen into my face.

on another note of "defensive, much?"...

a favorite and level-headed npr reporter was interviewing palin's spokeswoman today. here's the bit i heard:

npr: has gov. palin ever traveled outside the country?
flak: her son is leaving any day for iraq.
npr: yes, i know, but this is about the governor. has she ever been abroad?
flak: since when has being a governor not been sufficient qualification for being vice president? we are done here.

um, ok.

NOW! i find out her unmarried teenaged daughter is knocked up. brilliant.

:)

rainin' on the rnc parade

maybe there is a god?

hurricane gustav has been bearing down on the gulf coast for several days. this time authorities seem to have their act somewhat together and evacuations, preparations and curfews fell into effect several days ago. katrina remains a raw memory (not hard to forget if you're still living in a fema trailer, i bet), so 2 million people hotfooted hopefully to safer land north and west. mayor nagin of new orleans told residents they "need to be scared". a few hold-outs remain, holed up with tobacco, canned beans, guns and ammo, but his words seemed to have the desired effect. as i type, the storm keeps moving but a big question mark remains about what mother nature has in mind.

from today's ny times:

"we are hoping and praying gustav runs out of steam,” said lt. gen. robert l. van antwerp, the commanding general for the corps of engineers, as lightning flashed in the clouds over lake pontchartrain behind him.

maybe he should have been *praying* harder over the past 3 years to get the damn levees and t-walls built faster?

i digress.

mccain and his cons now must scale way back on the hate fest. opening night in st. louis is basically canceled. balloons and bunting are unseemly when you've got millions on the move to save their lives, eh? the next few days will force minute-to-minute decisions, having no disaster emergency precedent by which to choose the *right thing to do.* a sunshiney spot in the storm is that bush and cheney will NOT attend the convention, making it impossible for any pix to be taken together of the nominee and the least favored president in us history. visual, if not idealogical, distance thanks to a mighty wind.

riddle me this, kind readers: wtf were mccain and palin doing down there? he is a senator from arizona. not what i'd call hurricane central. she is, well, i wrote that all yesterday. gidget goes to the gulf, ya know? (did she bring a jet-ski, hoping for rad waves?) there is NOTHING they can do to help or assist authorities who are presumably busting ass to keep everybody's shit together. even shrub has the sense to stay away. shouldn't they stop sucking valuable resources? landing planes, motorcades, security -- all that could have been avoided by conference calls and e-mail. OH, WAIT! then there would be no pix or video of mccain and palin looking concerned in the rain. AND, OH! mccain cannot use the internet.

gustav is the lead story on cable and the net, making the republican convention an also-ran.

maybe this will turn out to be a breath of fresh air after all.

that girl

more republican pandering and offense.

palin is supposed to attract the disgruntled hilary supporters? other than common plumbing, what have these 2 women in common? can the media truly be THAT disingenuous??

we'll skip all the crap about her flip-flop on the "bridge to nowhere" and her effortless from-where-the-hell victory over hated and notoriously corrupt old hacks in her into-the-wild home-state. for now, we'll take a pass on the ethics scandal involving her pointy elbows and sharp pencils trying to get her ex-brother-in-law state-trooper canned. her youth, her visual appeal, her *feistiness* (um, gidget as 2nd in command?) her *first-dude* of a husband who is also a champion snow-mobiler. is there another female governor that can gut a fish in a trice? hell, this one can probably flay a bear in minutes just to bolster her anti-protection stance.

isn't the dirty lil secret that she is supposed to secure the ultra-cons who were not pledging to mccain and the evangelical bloc? she's in bed with big oil and gas, anti-gay, pro-gun, anti-conservation and favors creationism in the public school curriculum. she is anti-abortion.

james dobson of "focus on the family" announced earlier this year that he wouldn't and couldn't vote for McCain. today he pronounced himself converted, thanks to a ticket that now includes someone for whom "the sanctity of life" isn't just a political position.

palin has a 5-month old son with down syndrome. as an older mother, she took the test and decided to continue the pregnancy and have her son. "a blessing..." blah, blah, blah.

amazing that my head remained attached to my neck when i found this in a response thread in a ny times blog: (proves how dubious science is, i guess...)

"I’m a pro-choice Democrat, and it appalls me that 90+% of women who receive the diagnosis of Trisomy 21 “choose” to abort. This means that either (a) only liberal democratic women get pregnant with fetuses with Down syndrome, or (b) there are an awful lot of hypocritical Republican women out there."

please don't get me wrong, i laud palin for staying true to her core belief here. i do remain disgusted that such a private decision should be made part of her public and political persona. further, she was allowed to make a choice, something she wants to deny all other women, many of whom clearly share most of her politics. perhaps they don't have her access to nannies and such? her husband has 2 jobs plus a demanding hobby. she is a governor who will be stumping hard the next 2 months to win the white house. they have 5 children. who's tending the baby?

a "heartbeat away from the presidency" holds brand new meaning here with a very old dude whose ticker and health are so much in doubt. he's got almost 30 years on this lady! if mccain drops during an inaugural ball dance, how's palin gonna respond 6 months later to putin going all kruschev and pounding his shoe about ossetia? the cons have been trying to paint obama as inexperienced. what the hell does that make palin?

on some nattering head show, pat robertson (why is that loathsome reptile still sliming around with any say-so?) referred to palin more than once as "that gal". rush limbaugh (that big fat idiot) called her a "babe". are you for real? after the months of misogynistic horse-whipping of hilary, these guys turn the condescension onto one of their own? gaaah.i hope she can take dictation and type. maybe she can help mccain "make a google", as he still puts it.

lastly, ya gotta wonder: is hillary laughing so hard she wets herself, or beating some illegal maid with wire hangers right about now?

quotable

"she's got gaps, i got gaps, together -- we fill gaps."

~~rocky balboa on love

more of the same

"perhaps it was god who put these two great resources right next to each other. just to see what people would do with them." ~~ JOHN T. SHIVELY, chief executive of a consortium seeking to mine copper and gold near alaskan rivers that also nurture salmon.

yes. i'm sure that's exactly it. and if you listen carefully, god will tell you exactly what is the right thing to do.

a mineral deposit of staggering value, but of a finite amount, vs. the world's largest salmon run which produces an amazing amount of wealth each year and has renewed itself for millenia. mining of the gold and copper will release toxins into the river that will likely destroy it and kill off the fish forever.

what would jesus do?

conserve this

in a letter to his campaign manager, dated Oct. 26, 1904, teddy roosevelt wrote: “i must ask you to direct that the money be returned to them forthwith.” as roosevelt saw it: “we cannot under any circumstances afford to take a contribution which can be even improperly construed as putting us under an improper obligation.”

he was running for his first full term as president and had discovered a $100,000 contribution from standard oil.

if anybody else's head besides mine explodes trying to imagine this from any modern candidate let's just collect our spattered brain matter and move forward, ok? (i'm vaguely recalling a last-minute scramble to distance from that filth-monger abramoff, but that's an unnecessary digression here.)

after mccain flip-flopped on off-shore drilling, he pocketed $1.1 million from big oil and big gas in TWO WEEKS. no pretending here that obama's hands haven't dipped into the pool of texas crude because they have, however his "tax the hell out of the oil companies" stance hasn't exactly opened the hearts and minds in exxon's boardrooms -- most were small checks from employees.

in yet another flight of fantasy, mccain this week described himself as a "roosevelt republican." either he is completely ignorant of roosevelt's accomplishments and philosophies, or blithely assumes the same of the american public. (very sadly, either holds equal weight, i guess, huh?) so let's take a quick trip in the way-back machine to compare and contrast the republican party of 100 years ago and today, and we'll use mccain's new-found hero as the vintage model.

the rough rider has long been admired (or hated) as a trust-buster, for regulating industry and curbing the excesses of giant corporations. he favored the imposition of an inheritance tax and though a man of means, fought his party’s coddling of the very wealthy. he pushed for fair and equitable railroad transport rates and safer food and drugs. he was the first president to call for universal health care and national health insurance (!!!)

what really makes my forehead vein throb from mccain's bald-faced lie is the modern republican attitude towards the environment and roosevelt's crusades for conservation. if polar bears or peregrine falcons were found to contain oil, no doubt mccain would happily and personally wring every single one dry. (roosevelt's coinage of "good to the last drop" holds some serious irony here, lol.) when roosevelt became aware of the slaughter of birds for ladies' feathered hats, (5 million noble birds per year, like egrets and herons -- many mowed down by semi-automatic weapons) he decreed pelican island a sanctuary, the first piece of the national wildlife refuge system. his understanding that the iconic buffalo was nearly gone led to the establishment of 5 game preserves. he doubled the number of national parks, created 150 national forests, and was ultimately responsible for the guardianship of some 230,000,000 acres.

he was one of harvard's first naturalists, an avid bird watcher and wrote eloquently and lyrically about the natural world. he was friend to both muir and burroughs and wrote 35 books. republicans today attack anyone well-spoken or whom offers intelligent discourse as "elitist". (where's that damn eye-rolling icon?)

from a 1907 speech:

"in utilizing and conserving the natural resources of the nation, the one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight... the conservation of our natural resources and their proper use constitute the fundamental problem which underlies almost every other problem of our national life."

i've blogged previously about bush's disregard for the consequences of his recklessness because of his whole infuriating and ignorant armageddon thing. yet the cons are putting on another con-job for the american public with this damnable off-shore drilling hoax. best guesstimates put recoverable oil around 20-30 billion barrels. much of it is off california, which has stated in no uncertain terms there will be no drilling off its shores. subtract those barrels from the pool and that leaves possibly as little as 7-8 billion. if we start drilling this minute, none of it will see the light of day for another generation and that is what the world currently consumes in about 3 months. yeah, a 90 day-supply. how's that for long-range thinking with the bonus potential to devastate and despoil our beaches, gulf and oceans?

teddy was no white knight. he was a jingoist and a racist, a social darwinist. (that part certainly fits many neo-cons, though.)

somebody please explain to me when conservatism, the act of conserving, a committment to responsible stewardship, entered the upside-down universe of the heedless exploitation of our people and our lands?

anybody?

it's a small world

the owner introduced me the other night to a new acquaintance. she was friendly and pleasant, although i was highly distracted by her patchouli and choice of shorts.

(her parade of fatty snacks after confessing a gastric band op deserves a whole other post, but i digress...)

i was subject to an agenda, so i wasn't making waves, just nice.

she is one of those people who never leaves their circle of safety. she lives with her sons, near her mother, in what is basically a *neighborhood* of lowell. she works in lowell. she grew up in the community. one of the ticket takers at our show was her cousin.

yet she'd never been to the lowell folk music festival, now running nearly 30 years. she was completely unaware of the series to which the owner holds a pass for summer music in the park. she'd been to 2 concerts in her life the night we brought her to her 3rd. and THOSE had been over 20 years ago. she'd never heard of the guy we were seeing. she never goes out for a drink or dinner. the thought of salmon and asparagus (the owner's entree before we met up) made her squicked. she never goes to a movie.

she asked me what i did, i paused and said "sommelier". blank stare.

that i live in boston was amazing to her -- she'd be lost and afraid.

this woman served in the navy with her husband and proved to be amenable to our designs, so i'm not saying she was laura ingalls in a hoodie. but... but... but?

a recent study by a cell phone company in japan tracked users by the gps in their phones. (yo, they don't have the same privacy laws we're so blithely surrendering without a whimper, k?) something like 80% never traveled or called more than 2 miles from their home.

a recent article in the atlantic got lots of buzz: "is google making us stupid?" my dearest friends and i use it as that long tail of culture and economics. we lose too much time in links to new ideas, writers and video and music. stuff we never would have found at the multiplex or the mall, even if we went to either. but the rest? they don't get stoopid, they just stay that way.

sorry but i don't have a link to a lulz kitty video here. i suck.

proof i remain an idealist: i like to think just maybe that woman will youtube bruce hornsby or remember the wine i knew she drank and have a day with a new difference.

it can happen.

censors, creationists, racists, evangelicals, neo-conservatives... all wanna make the world smaller. knowledge is dangerous. scope is treacherous.

one of the best parts of my life is knowing people who know the world is big. and THAT'S why it's scary.

hunters, gatherers and fiddle-faddle

the galapagos finch is an icon of darwin's theory of natural selection and remains a favorite to study. every year since 1973, members of that bird population, both parents and chicks, on the island of daphne major, have been weighed, measured and marked. their survival depends largely on their ability to open pods for seeds. in years of abundance, all birds thrive, but if the season is scarce, smaller beaked-birds die in droves, taking their puny genes with them.

over the course of 3 decades, annual measurement of finches shows that both body size and beak size evolved significantly, but they didn’t do so in a smooth, consistent fashion. instead, natural selection jittered about, often changing direction from one season to the next. as the abundance of different seeds fluctuated, so too did the beak sizes. however, if the measurements had been taken once every 10 years, or only then and now, the changes in beak size would have been wildly underestimated.

as part of my recent quest for better health, i keep stumbling upon the paleo-diet. in a nutshell, you eat what oog the caveman did. (stop snorting with laughter, please.) i appreciate the intent, but struggle both with the execution and the "i drank the kool-aid (or antelope marrow)" mania. the theory is to consume only what would have been available to our bipedal ancestors before farming and animal husbandry changed the menu. they bolster their argument with studies of modern hunter/gatherer tribes, the older members of which show no evidence of heart disease, osteoporosis, hypertension, tooth decay and general western-type age-related maladies. supposedly accidents and infections killed off most of them, while the less clumsy spent their dotage eating berries and sleeping alot.

day in the life: slow amble through latest leafy glade, bending or stretching to gather roots, fruits, seeds, leaves, etc. piling that all up in a basket of some sort, then hauling that load back to base. maybe a stroll with some pointy sticks to a nearby stream bed or shoreline for trout or pike. the occasional big romp to take down a beast. (the raw foodists tend to diverge off the path prior to the campfire/meat part, but i digress.)

i read "clan of the cave bear", too, ok? lots of all that sounds pretty groovy and peaceable, and supposedly a good amount of time was spent together in your little gang, relaxing and bonding, living your day with the cycle of the sun. naps were big, too, lol.

estimates are that these early folks accessed about 400-500 different edibles over the course of 4 seasons. we evolved with a simple gut that allows us to be omnivores. it was necessary for survival, ne c'est pas? contrast this with modern man? while our supermarket aisles groan with bags and boxes (10,000 new processed food products are introduced every year in the u.s.!!!) average joe eats a only a handful of foods, mostly grain, lots of fat and stuff nobody can pronounce.

what about the finches you ask? lol. what flies in the face of the paleo-proponents is the presumption that our bodies haven't changed in all this time. that smacks of stoopidly ignoring science. finches evolve flibbity-jibbity in a generation, but man hasn't shifted a midge in millions of years? we have been farming and herding for 10,000 years, but cooked lentils and cheese are toxic?

i'm not prepared to completely toss the genetic baby out with the bean cooking water. only 3 generations ago, my people were from places too poor to keep cows. sheep's milk wasn't really a *thing*, and hard cheese became a condiment, rather than a staple. nobody in my family drinks milk, we all hate it. even the feel of it on my tongue grosses me out. babies and small children have a digestive enzyme for milk proteins. unless kept active, that enzyme goes the way of baby teeth. on a date many years ago, he insisted we have ice cream. "sure, i haven't had it in ages." within hours, it was like food poisoning. i was in a fetal position in the back of the car and spent 12 hours wanting to die.

the other genetic contradiction here is the presumption that the plants and animals of long ago are the same as what we today buy shrink-wrapped and plu-stickered. even if i kept my own garden, my fruits and tubers would be very different than what those folks picked and scratched.

"eat food. not too much. mostly plants." ~~ michael pollan, "the omnivore's dilemma"

it's laugh out loud easy, isn't it?

i'm trying. here -- have some parsley salad. :)

mikey likes it

yeah, but he died eating pop-rocks and coke ;)

this is a small detail of much recent rumination about my changing/aging body and all that implies. (add the owner's distaste for what he sees and yeah, i've been getting busy... but i digress...)

all my life breakfast has been a trial. my parents would have half a slice of toast and a cup of coffee, but felt i should have *more*. school days, that meant cereal, right? i hated milk, so would crunch on the quisp/lucky charms/cheerios and sneak the remaining moo-goo to the dog, under the table, her tail-wagging (hello, pavlov.) one freezing kindergarten morning, my dad was who knows where, and my mother was late for work, she decided to make oatmeal for me. it was so gross in my mouth i cried in the dark beginning of day. not to sound tragic, but my mom knew she'd lost the battle. yuk. (shut up, dr. freud, about associations, k?)

cut to grown-up noodle.

i'm not inclined to eat unhealthfully, but my career and schedule make my day and fueling needs strange and erratic. every so often, i decide my diet needs re-tooling.

this happened a few months ago. so, um, duh! have breakfast! have a whole-grain breakfast!! i bought the colon-blow organic cereal, the plain yogurt to replace the milk and the fruit to make it less like pile-shavings. it really was tasty. and i was quite regular. (never really a problem, anyhow, but i do have a thing about that.) but 2 or 3 hours later? i was starving, and i'd already consumed more than 25% of my daily calories, with 16 or 17 hours waking hours ahead. disaster walking.

i felt bloated and puffy and hungry and out of whack.

ok, the cereal- for-breakfast thing is a conspiracy from big-moo and big-ag. way back when, kellogg was considered a nutso.

am i finally ready to start listening to my own internal self ?

i know lots of skinny healthy folks who have a big bowl of crunchy kansas goodness every morning, but finally i know it will never work for me. i don't doubt there are genetic variances in what may be best for different peeps, but i'm not prepared to lay it all down to heritage -- too many of us in the states are too much the mutt. if i did, i should have a guiness for breakfast and lunch (sandwich in every glass) and some green veggies cooked with a hint of pork (plus wine :) for dinner. actually that doesn't sound so bad, lol.

i'll stick with my fruit or toast to start, my big meal late day and then something light later. it's the only way to keep myself fueled while going til 2:00 am or later, ya know? that guy who said you shouldn't eat anything after 6:00 pm? you know he went to bed at 10:00.

there's more, but this is enough for now, lol.

carrying on

why do i even read it, when i know it will just piss me off?

karl rove, describing obama: "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

gaaaahhhhh.

if i envision anybody skulking against the wall at a posh private club, making snarky remarks, it's rove. prior to his political ascent, what club would have let obama through the whitey-white doors? some mixed-race dude, who sounds muslim, with no pedigree or legacy reference? yet guys like rove can paint willy-nilly with that sloppy old brush and have it stick.

bush the elder, who infamously had never seen a supermarket plu scanner, managed to slant dukakis, a 1st generation son of greek immigrants, as a hoity-toity pinhead. (granted, he's a bit wonky, but far from out-of-touch like the blue blood tossing the muck.)

obama's father ditched when he was 2, he and his mom bounced around, she eventually remarried and farmed him out to various relatives. without alumnae letters or legacy leeway, he got himself into some of our country's most prestigious schools. (did you know he declined to indicate race on his harvard admissions app?) his first major job was as a community organizer on some of chicago's grittiest streets. can we say, "bootstraps", everybody?

last night on my pointy-headed npr, a reporter was interviewing some little kids in texas. they heard obama belonged to al qaeda. that he built bombs. that he was a known terrorist. they are not reading this shit on cereal boxes, now are they?

admittedly, part of the problem for dukakis, gore and kerry is they just couldn't/wouldn't play as dirty as their republican adversary. we are in the doldrums of august, so the drumbeats have yet to really begin. i know i'll be sickened on a regular basis before that november tuesday. go ahead, ask me why i don't watch tv news.

recently, i saw this on a print. it was a quote i'd never seen, but will stick with me:

"Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionaries."
~~fdr

they built this country. it's not a matter for shame.

these neo-cons excel at painting "the other" as dangerous. the only danger i see obama presenting is to the sickening status quo that has brought this country to its fiscal and moral knees.