Friday, October 31, 2003
Halloween Highlights -- The daughter woke up with her first-ever shiner -- the result of her falling onto an elbow during a Powder Puff practice last evening. Her right eye is a gothic purple-and-black stain; she looks like Tammy Baker caught outside in a rainstorm. "Wow," I say, "you could go to your Halloween party tonight as Tanya Harding!" (daughter frowns) "OK, how about you do up the other eye and go as a heroine addict?" (daughter scowls). We go in later to see the principal to discuss her absences this semester. "Wow," says the principal with a scratchy Dorchester accent, "you look like crap!" (daughter laughs!).
The son goes to a Halloween party tonight which touts a guest list of four thousand college students. I guess it is the biggest D.C. bash of the year and the son, who will be dressed up as Italian Mafioso, is most excited. And true to his donned character, he somehow scored four V.I.P. tickets that get him and his friends straight to a V.I.P. table -- two drinks apiece included. The rest of the hoard must stand in a five-block-long line waiting to get in. It all sounds gruesome to me but then that's just me. I might add that it also scares me to think of 4,000 masked grown-ups assembled at one tightly-packed target within the heart of the nation's capitol...
The sign outside of the convenience store I passed today on my way to work read, "Please take off your mask before entering the store. Thank you. The management."
Hubby, daughter, and I have been fighting since yesterday evening about who has to go out and buy a couple of bags of candy in the event we get some trick-or-treaters tonight. Hubby tried to evoke his VP stature -- a stature I snuffed out quickly with a reminder of who the braniac was who sent the hammer sailing down the stairs to gouge a hole in the wood floor. VP of Stupidity would be more like it. I predict we will all give in at the end and have nine bags of crappy candy to show for it. I hate Halloween.
The son goes to a Halloween party tonight which touts a guest list of four thousand college students. I guess it is the biggest D.C. bash of the year and the son, who will be dressed up as Italian Mafioso, is most excited. And true to his donned character, he somehow scored four V.I.P. tickets that get him and his friends straight to a V.I.P. table -- two drinks apiece included. The rest of the hoard must stand in a five-block-long line waiting to get in. It all sounds gruesome to me but then that's just me. I might add that it also scares me to think of 4,000 masked grown-ups assembled at one tightly-packed target within the heart of the nation's capitol...
The sign outside of the convenience store I passed today on my way to work read, "Please take off your mask before entering the store. Thank you. The management."
Hubby, daughter, and I have been fighting since yesterday evening about who has to go out and buy a couple of bags of candy in the event we get some trick-or-treaters tonight. Hubby tried to evoke his VP stature -- a stature I snuffed out quickly with a reminder of who the braniac was who sent the hammer sailing down the stairs to gouge a hole in the wood floor. VP of Stupidity would be more like it. I predict we will all give in at the end and have nine bags of crappy candy to show for it. I hate Halloween.
Thursday, October 30, 2003
I got a house call from the Massachusetts Family Institute today... MFI is one of many lobbyist groups that float in and out of legislators' offices propagating their agendas to all who will listen. What an interesting meeting THAT was said the sassy 40-something-liberal who had no idea what MFI was all about. i.e. Anna comes face-to-face with a little-old-lady-clad (even so she wasn't a little old lady) fundamentalist extremist adamantly opposed to the homosexual lifestyle. So eager to get to her pitch, she makes no inquiries about me – where I live, where I’m from -- all the clues that might have given her vital information in terms of who she was up against.
Things started out innocuously enough. MFI's advocacy work in helping unwed mothers care for their children and their out-reach program that encourages unwed fathers to get more involved with parenting sounds good to me. Then ka-bam-out-of-the-blue she blurts out what turns out to be the crux of their agenda: to enlist support for the upcoming vote on a house bill that would affirm and protect marriage as being a unique union between one man and one woman.
"We cannot affirm the homosexual lifestyle because, among other reasons, it is likely to kill those who practice it..." Then, "Any other type of sexual relationships outside of marriage between a man and a woman may look in some respects like a marriage, but they are simply counterfeits."
The woman from the organization kept referring to homosexuals and lesbians as people with "same-sex-attraction-disorder" -- something I presume she thinks one can drug back to heterosexuality. She also proposed (as does the MFI website) that homosexual marriage would jeopardize 'traditional' marriages (man/woman) and furthermore invite polygamy and incest.... (????). She pulled out 'statistic' after 'statistic' showing that children brought up in same-sex relationships display behavior and traits opposite to their actual gender; in other words a boy brought up in a same-sex relationship exhibited more feminine traits. She says this derogatorily, as if feminine traits were a very, very bad thing.
There is a long, long, long pause before Anna decides how far out on a limb she wants to go. After all, my colleague is out getting a sandwich and my boss isn't around to witness first-hand what is said....
"Well I'm sorry that the Representative is not in right now to hear your views. I really don't know at the moment how he plans to vote on this issue but I can assure you that I will pass along our conversation today so that he fully understands your position. Now would you mind if I asked you just a few questions and express a few of my personal thoughts on this? Do you have a few minutes?"
"You read the newspapers right? (and I can imagine just what those newspapers are too). You’ve studied history? Would you not agree that the most aggressive acts and violent atrocities against man and beast over the course of mankind's recorded history have been perpetuated by men? Men whose masculine traits you so resoundingly endorse? What exactly would be so wrong with an effeminate planet other than a little PMS bitchiness on occasion? This issue you seem to have with feminine traits... can you tell me a little about that? Did it have something to do with your mother?"
I then debunk the procreation angle (based on a 1965 court ruling that husband and wife have the right to use contraception), remind her that this wouldn't be the first time the institution of marraige was challenged (inter-racial marraiges were against the law up until the late forties in many states), and asked her what gave her the right to try and shove her Judeo-Christian edicts into my constitutionally secularly-based government. The woman is clearly growing more and more flustered by the babbling minute. And then the bombshell...
You know I am originally from San Francisco. My partner and I moved out here in 1989 so we've been here fourteen years together. You said you had a few minutes didn't you? .... Heh can I help it that the poor woman leapt to 'certain conclusions?' "Thank you so much for coming by. I appreciate your listening to my views, which of course are not necessarily reflective of the Representative."
DO NAIL CLIPPERS COUNT? In yesterday's blog, I forgot to mention the nail clippers I carry around in my Coach survival bag which at least by airline standards, should be counted as a weapon. Some might argue that my knobby knees count as weapons too. In fact they should probably be registered with the police as very dangerous weapons. And I would hope that they would have dangerous consequences should the need arise (this is meant as reassurance to the person who wrote she is worried about me walking in the parking lot alone... thanks btw).
Things started out innocuously enough. MFI's advocacy work in helping unwed mothers care for their children and their out-reach program that encourages unwed fathers to get more involved with parenting sounds good to me. Then ka-bam-out-of-the-blue she blurts out what turns out to be the crux of their agenda: to enlist support for the upcoming vote on a house bill that would affirm and protect marriage as being a unique union between one man and one woman.
"We cannot affirm the homosexual lifestyle because, among other reasons, it is likely to kill those who practice it..." Then, "Any other type of sexual relationships outside of marriage between a man and a woman may look in some respects like a marriage, but they are simply counterfeits."
The woman from the organization kept referring to homosexuals and lesbians as people with "same-sex-attraction-disorder" -- something I presume she thinks one can drug back to heterosexuality. She also proposed (as does the MFI website) that homosexual marriage would jeopardize 'traditional' marriages (man/woman) and furthermore invite polygamy and incest.... (????). She pulled out 'statistic' after 'statistic' showing that children brought up in same-sex relationships display behavior and traits opposite to their actual gender; in other words a boy brought up in a same-sex relationship exhibited more feminine traits. She says this derogatorily, as if feminine traits were a very, very bad thing.
There is a long, long, long pause before Anna decides how far out on a limb she wants to go. After all, my colleague is out getting a sandwich and my boss isn't around to witness first-hand what is said....
"Well I'm sorry that the Representative is not in right now to hear your views. I really don't know at the moment how he plans to vote on this issue but I can assure you that I will pass along our conversation today so that he fully understands your position. Now would you mind if I asked you just a few questions and express a few of my personal thoughts on this? Do you have a few minutes?"
"You read the newspapers right? (and I can imagine just what those newspapers are too). You’ve studied history? Would you not agree that the most aggressive acts and violent atrocities against man and beast over the course of mankind's recorded history have been perpetuated by men? Men whose masculine traits you so resoundingly endorse? What exactly would be so wrong with an effeminate planet other than a little PMS bitchiness on occasion? This issue you seem to have with feminine traits... can you tell me a little about that? Did it have something to do with your mother?"
I then debunk the procreation angle (based on a 1965 court ruling that husband and wife have the right to use contraception), remind her that this wouldn't be the first time the institution of marraige was challenged (inter-racial marraiges were against the law up until the late forties in many states), and asked her what gave her the right to try and shove her Judeo-Christian edicts into my constitutionally secularly-based government. The woman is clearly growing more and more flustered by the babbling minute. And then the bombshell...
You know I am originally from San Francisco. My partner and I moved out here in 1989 so we've been here fourteen years together. You said you had a few minutes didn't you? .... Heh can I help it that the poor woman leapt to 'certain conclusions?' "Thank you so much for coming by. I appreciate your listening to my views, which of course are not necessarily reflective of the Representative."
DO NAIL CLIPPERS COUNT? In yesterday's blog, I forgot to mention the nail clippers I carry around in my Coach survival bag which at least by airline standards, should be counted as a weapon. Some might argue that my knobby knees count as weapons too. In fact they should probably be registered with the police as very dangerous weapons. And I would hope that they would have dangerous consequences should the need arise (this is meant as reassurance to the person who wrote she is worried about me walking in the parking lot alone... thanks btw).
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
Something about popping open my umbrella as the rain started up this morning reminded me of a recurring dream I used to have as a child. Only I can't quite remember the details of the dream other than the warm feeling I got knowing that I had everything I needed with me for any-and-all of Anna's contingencies (which may or may not necessarily be what everyone else would consider a contingency). Perhaps this dream was a vision into the future. Certainly the self-contained preparedness I felt while I walked under the cocoon of my umbrella evoked that same satisfied feeling I vaguely remember from my childhood dream.
To this end, I have with me at all times my urban survival bag (by Coach), which contains everything I deem necessary to optimum commuting. Contents:
1) my wallet with monthly subway pass within thumb-and-index-finger-reach so that while I am walking, I can easily reach my hand into my purse and pull out the card without stopping. My wallet also contains cash, credit cards, and a road-side service card.
2) my work shoes because getting to my office requires a significant walk from the station. The walking shoes I wear are a pair of black suede Steve Madden sneakers which, while still sneakers, are a tad more elegant than the white gym shoes I see a lot of women wearing but can't bring myself to don.
3) One of the three magazines to which I subscribe (the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, or Harper's), plus one book
4) One water bottle
5) A Brookstone umbrella (resistant to blowing inside-out when windy but poorly designed to retract)
6) Sunglasses
7) Miniature sewing kit
8) A tape measure (you just never know what you might want to measure)
9) A brush (sometimes)
10) Altoids and Advil
11) Lipstick
12) Small hand cream
13) A trigger-snap keychain hooked to the strap of my purse so that I never have to go rooting for my keys.
No cell phone you may have noted. That would take the fun out of real urban survival and I maintain gives you a false sense of security. No flashlight. No food. And no weapon of any kind.
The survival bag and the urban commuter (me) have become a fine-tuned machine over the last 10 months since I started working in the city. Locking the car, swiping the T-pass, grabbing the free paper, choosing the T-car that puts you closest to the exit, picking the seat least likely to attract someone's extra poundage spilling onto your lap (a seat next to a pole or in a corner I find is best), bounding the stairs and not the escalator, crossing the street diagonally when the 4-way walk sign turns green, etc. have become as sleek and efficient as the tiger navigating the jungle.
Almost. An absolute essential feature to a successful, harried-free commute is the fine art of anticipation. Like a good hunter, you must be able to seize an opportunity in a split second. Driving your car you feel the lane you have to move to. Or maybe it's not so much feel as it is the quick-second-culmination of cues that prompts you to accelerate quickly and zip over to the lane that just opened up to the right while the car in front of you slowed down suddenly due to some obstruction in the road. Or, factoring in the weather on a warm, sunny summer evening, you avoid the back beach road. Or doing a speedy once-over as you enter the train, you seat yourself as far away as possible to whomever you in a nano-second have deemed likely to cough contagiously in the immediate vicinity of your air space. Or, you don't disembark at your usual station, but the one before it if it's raining because you know the entranceway to that station always floods and your shoes will get very wet -- except in summer when you can take off your sandals and wade through the water in your bare feet. Few are willing to do this and so you have just avoided the crowds making their way over to the drier station.
Luck -- is helpful...like the time the telephone pole landed across the roadway just after I drove past it. The not-so-lucky cars were stranded for hours because the divider barriers made it impossible to turn around...
Agility and strength -- are crucial components to timely, manageable commuting. Sprinting two blocks, or skipping down stairs three at a time if all the external cues tell me I can catch the approaching (or waiting) train can mean the difference between getting home at 5:30 p.m. (I've a government job, remember?), or 6 p.m. i.e. the sudden rush of warm air that gets expelled from a tunnel when a train is approaching and which you can feel all the way up on the sidewalk leading into the station tells me to MOVE! Applying your gym-buffed muscles to shoveling out your car from under a snow drift without the worry that your back will go out or that you'll freeze to death because you only have the strength to lift baby-scoops of snow is a great thing too.
Trouble Spots -- Any good urban survivalist has a keen sense of 'smell' -- an awareness of subtle changes that indicate things are not OK. Like the jungle animal, the difference between enjoying a life swinging from trees and being somebody's next dinner is analogous to locking your car door with you safely inside listening to a Fionna Apple CD and the not so pleasant scenario of you not quite hitting the Lock button in time... My new parking spot at the T-Station is just such a trouble spot. It is poorly lit, somewhat abandoned, and it is now getting awfully dark early. So is this potential danger worth the four dollars I am saving a day because I happened to just get a parking sticker that allows me to park for free on this lot? Well if I weren't such a highly subsidized woman and instead a single mother supporting two kids on the meager salary mentioned in one of my previous blogs (Oct. 14), the one that would leave me with about $1000 disposable income for the entire year without having yet bought food, the one that is being eaten away at because the state's budget woes are being pushed down onto the people who can least afford it, well I wouldn't even be able to contemplate such a question, would I*...
* I bet you all were starting to wonder how I was going to weave my liberal agenda into this blog, weren't you?
To this end, I have with me at all times my urban survival bag (by Coach), which contains everything I deem necessary to optimum commuting. Contents:
1) my wallet with monthly subway pass within thumb-and-index-finger-reach so that while I am walking, I can easily reach my hand into my purse and pull out the card without stopping. My wallet also contains cash, credit cards, and a road-side service card.
2) my work shoes because getting to my office requires a significant walk from the station. The walking shoes I wear are a pair of black suede Steve Madden sneakers which, while still sneakers, are a tad more elegant than the white gym shoes I see a lot of women wearing but can't bring myself to don.
3) One of the three magazines to which I subscribe (the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, or Harper's), plus one book
4) One water bottle
5) A Brookstone umbrella (resistant to blowing inside-out when windy but poorly designed to retract)
6) Sunglasses
7) Miniature sewing kit
8) A tape measure (you just never know what you might want to measure)
9) A brush (sometimes)
10) Altoids and Advil
11) Lipstick
12) Small hand cream
13) A trigger-snap keychain hooked to the strap of my purse so that I never have to go rooting for my keys.
No cell phone you may have noted. That would take the fun out of real urban survival and I maintain gives you a false sense of security. No flashlight. No food. And no weapon of any kind.
The survival bag and the urban commuter (me) have become a fine-tuned machine over the last 10 months since I started working in the city. Locking the car, swiping the T-pass, grabbing the free paper, choosing the T-car that puts you closest to the exit, picking the seat least likely to attract someone's extra poundage spilling onto your lap (a seat next to a pole or in a corner I find is best), bounding the stairs and not the escalator, crossing the street diagonally when the 4-way walk sign turns green, etc. have become as sleek and efficient as the tiger navigating the jungle.
Almost. An absolute essential feature to a successful, harried-free commute is the fine art of anticipation. Like a good hunter, you must be able to seize an opportunity in a split second. Driving your car you feel the lane you have to move to. Or maybe it's not so much feel as it is the quick-second-culmination of cues that prompts you to accelerate quickly and zip over to the lane that just opened up to the right while the car in front of you slowed down suddenly due to some obstruction in the road. Or, factoring in the weather on a warm, sunny summer evening, you avoid the back beach road. Or doing a speedy once-over as you enter the train, you seat yourself as far away as possible to whomever you in a nano-second have deemed likely to cough contagiously in the immediate vicinity of your air space. Or, you don't disembark at your usual station, but the one before it if it's raining because you know the entranceway to that station always floods and your shoes will get very wet -- except in summer when you can take off your sandals and wade through the water in your bare feet. Few are willing to do this and so you have just avoided the crowds making their way over to the drier station.
Luck -- is helpful...like the time the telephone pole landed across the roadway just after I drove past it. The not-so-lucky cars were stranded for hours because the divider barriers made it impossible to turn around...
Agility and strength -- are crucial components to timely, manageable commuting. Sprinting two blocks, or skipping down stairs three at a time if all the external cues tell me I can catch the approaching (or waiting) train can mean the difference between getting home at 5:30 p.m. (I've a government job, remember?), or 6 p.m. i.e. the sudden rush of warm air that gets expelled from a tunnel when a train is approaching and which you can feel all the way up on the sidewalk leading into the station tells me to MOVE! Applying your gym-buffed muscles to shoveling out your car from under a snow drift without the worry that your back will go out or that you'll freeze to death because you only have the strength to lift baby-scoops of snow is a great thing too.
Trouble Spots -- Any good urban survivalist has a keen sense of 'smell' -- an awareness of subtle changes that indicate things are not OK. Like the jungle animal, the difference between enjoying a life swinging from trees and being somebody's next dinner is analogous to locking your car door with you safely inside listening to a Fionna Apple CD and the not so pleasant scenario of you not quite hitting the Lock button in time... My new parking spot at the T-Station is just such a trouble spot. It is poorly lit, somewhat abandoned, and it is now getting awfully dark early. So is this potential danger worth the four dollars I am saving a day because I happened to just get a parking sticker that allows me to park for free on this lot? Well if I weren't such a highly subsidized woman and instead a single mother supporting two kids on the meager salary mentioned in one of my previous blogs (Oct. 14), the one that would leave me with about $1000 disposable income for the entire year without having yet bought food, the one that is being eaten away at because the state's budget woes are being pushed down onto the people who can least afford it, well I wouldn't even be able to contemplate such a question, would I*...
* I bet you all were starting to wonder how I was going to weave my liberal agenda into this blog, weren't you?
Tuesday, October 28, 2003
SPANKING THE SUSHI For trashy porn I'm thinkin' Japan beats everyone hand's down (there is a pun in there somewhere). This lifted from Harper's Magazine, which while a great intellect-challenging magazine is very stingy with its online content it shares, and so I have typed this for you...
From an August 2003 program guide for the Japanese adult-entertainment channel Paradise TV, which claims to have more than 100,000 subscribers.
7:10 A.M.: The Ultra-Excitement -- Lost Virginity Night: Search for a Virgin, Choose Her, and Try Her Out
9:00 A.M.: Ghosts in Saucy Photos10:00 A.M.: Huge Release -- Sexual Harassment Heaven: Embarrassed Amateur Girl Put Through Erotic Hell
10:55 A.M.: Female Announcer Cum & Vaginal Juice Eruption Show
12:30 P.M. Gather Everyone! How About Gang-Raping Me?
4:30 P.M.: Instant Fellatio, Instant Insertion. Sex Party Where Sex-Crazed Women Eat Men
5:25 P.M.: Serviced by a Bumpkin Babe. Travels of a Dirty Man Who Gets A Blow Job
6:30 P.M.: The Best Inverted Pussy Countdown
7:25 P.M.: The Losing Virginity Show. Pick the Virgin, Watch the Night She Loses Her Virginity
8:25 P.M.: Strategies for Sneaking in on Women at Midnight
10:00 P.M.: Movie--He's Home. Tomorrow's Urine.
Heh, as long as I'm typing (and lifting Harper's articles) -- some slogans submitted to the U.S. Air Force Academy last August. The school solicited suggestions to replace one of its mottoes, "Bring Me Men," which was deemed inappropriate last March, following the discovery that rape and sexual harassment of female cadets were endemic at the institution.
Adapt or Perish
Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic
Air Force, No One Comes Close
Attitude Determines Altitude
Bring Me Free People
Bring Me Men and Women
Bring Me Your Finest and Best, Who I Can Shape into America's Finest Warrior Leaders with Boundless Intellect, Integrity, Honor and Character (try getting that one on to a bumper sticker....)
Bring Me Youth
Bring Us Humanitarians
Bring Us Your Best and We Will Do the Rest
Choose the Right
Courage, Candor, and Competence
Cross into the Blue
Days of Youth and Inexperience into Warriors
Dominators of Air, Space and Information
Fight's On
Fit to Fight
Freedom Isn't Free (Winner of the Anna Bloviation's Award for Best Tagline [out of dismal pickings)
Freedom, Let's Roll
Gateway to Cadet Heaven
Global Air And Space Power
Go Air Force
Grasp Them, Feel Them, Learn Them, Be Them, Our Future Leaders (I'm sensing a 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Individual Here...)
Great Minds Discuss Ideas
I Am an American
I Believe I Can Fly
If We Should Have to Fight, We Should Be Prepared to Do So from the Neck Up Instead of from the Neck Down
If You Come, We Will Develop the Leadership in You and You Will Shine
Journey Future Conquering the Challenges and Maximizing My Fullest Potential on "Destiny Way"
Keep 'Em Flying
Kiss My Afterburners
Kiss My Thrust
Let's Roll
Match My Mountains
Never Repeat the Past
No Fear Here
Off We Go
Oh, I Have Slipped (Winner of Most Muddled)
Our Workplace Is Air and Space
Patriotism, Bombs Bursting in Air, Rockets Red Glare
Put the Honor Code Up There
Reach for the Airmen's Skies
Sunward I've Climbed, and Joined the Tumbling Mirth of Sun-Split Clouds
The Air Force Kicks Sky (Runner-Up of the Anna Bloviation's Best Tagline Award)
The Air Force: There's No Business Like It!
The Blue Zoo
The Road to Dreamality
The Word "American" Ends in "I Can"
To Conquer at All Cost
Today "The Same," Tomorrow "The Change"
Total Force Leadership
Up, Up, The Long Delirious Burning Blue
We Need You in Air
We Own the Air
We Own the Sky
Without Desire, the Mind Ceases to Exist
World's Best Air Force
You Are Remembered for the Rules You Break
Your Mission Is to Fly and Fight and Don't You Ever Forget It
From an August 2003 program guide for the Japanese adult-entertainment channel Paradise TV, which claims to have more than 100,000 subscribers.
7:10 A.M.: The Ultra-Excitement -- Lost Virginity Night: Search for a Virgin, Choose Her, and Try Her Out
9:00 A.M.: Ghosts in Saucy Photos10:00 A.M.: Huge Release -- Sexual Harassment Heaven: Embarrassed Amateur Girl Put Through Erotic Hell
10:55 A.M.: Female Announcer Cum & Vaginal Juice Eruption Show
12:30 P.M. Gather Everyone! How About Gang-Raping Me?
4:30 P.M.: Instant Fellatio, Instant Insertion. Sex Party Where Sex-Crazed Women Eat Men
5:25 P.M.: Serviced by a Bumpkin Babe. Travels of a Dirty Man Who Gets A Blow Job
6:30 P.M.: The Best Inverted Pussy Countdown
7:25 P.M.: The Losing Virginity Show. Pick the Virgin, Watch the Night She Loses Her Virginity
8:25 P.M.: Strategies for Sneaking in on Women at Midnight
10:00 P.M.: Movie--He's Home. Tomorrow's Urine.
Heh, as long as I'm typing (and lifting Harper's articles) -- some slogans submitted to the U.S. Air Force Academy last August. The school solicited suggestions to replace one of its mottoes, "Bring Me Men," which was deemed inappropriate last March, following the discovery that rape and sexual harassment of female cadets were endemic at the institution.
Adapt or Perish
Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic
Air Force, No One Comes Close
Attitude Determines Altitude
Bring Me Free People
Bring Me Men and Women
Bring Me Your Finest and Best, Who I Can Shape into America's Finest Warrior Leaders with Boundless Intellect, Integrity, Honor and Character (try getting that one on to a bumper sticker....)
Bring Me Youth
Bring Us Humanitarians
Bring Us Your Best and We Will Do the Rest
Choose the Right
Courage, Candor, and Competence
Cross into the Blue
Days of Youth and Inexperience into Warriors
Dominators of Air, Space and Information
Fight's On
Fit to Fight
Freedom Isn't Free (Winner of the Anna Bloviation's Award for Best Tagline [out of dismal pickings)
Freedom, Let's Roll
Gateway to Cadet Heaven
Global Air And Space Power
Go Air Force
Grasp Them, Feel Them, Learn Them, Be Them, Our Future Leaders (I'm sensing a 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Individual Here...)
Great Minds Discuss Ideas
I Am an American
I Believe I Can Fly
If We Should Have to Fight, We Should Be Prepared to Do So from the Neck Up Instead of from the Neck Down
If You Come, We Will Develop the Leadership in You and You Will Shine
Journey Future Conquering the Challenges and Maximizing My Fullest Potential on "Destiny Way"
Keep 'Em Flying
Kiss My Afterburners
Kiss My Thrust
Let's Roll
Match My Mountains
Never Repeat the Past
No Fear Here
Off We Go
Oh, I Have Slipped (Winner of Most Muddled)
Our Workplace Is Air and Space
Patriotism, Bombs Bursting in Air, Rockets Red Glare
Put the Honor Code Up There
Reach for the Airmen's Skies
Sunward I've Climbed, and Joined the Tumbling Mirth of Sun-Split Clouds
The Air Force Kicks Sky (Runner-Up of the Anna Bloviation's Best Tagline Award)
The Air Force: There's No Business Like It!
The Blue Zoo
The Road to Dreamality
The Word "American" Ends in "I Can"
To Conquer at All Cost
Today "The Same," Tomorrow "The Change"
Total Force Leadership
Up, Up, The Long Delirious Burning Blue
We Need You in Air
We Own the Air
We Own the Sky
Without Desire, the Mind Ceases to Exist
World's Best Air Force
You Are Remembered for the Rules You Break
Your Mission Is to Fly and Fight and Don't You Ever Forget It
Monday, October 27, 2003
If I could be granted a wish by a genie to become a New York Times bestselling author, would I want to do it knowing that Dale Peck was out there? Talk about slamming an author:
"The Black Veil is the worst of Rick Moody's very bad books.... The plain truth is that I have stared at pages and pages of Moody's prose and they remain as meaningless to me as the Korean characters that paper the wall of a local restaurant. Actually, the comparison is not particularly apt, because I know that the Korean writing means something, but I am not convinced that Moody's books are about anything at all." -- Dale Peck The rest of Peck's scathing review
I can only imagine how Peck would tear up The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, a book I just finished... With 53 reviews in on Amazon's Customer Review page, The Piano Tuner boasts a four out of five star rating. Not bad for a 27-year-old med student with a curriculum vitae most of us can only dream of. Here's my review:
I give the book a TWO. Mechanically, Mason keeps his writing Lego-block simple and I admire the fact that he doesn't try to wade into literary waters he is most obviously not ready to swim... Unfortunately this makes for tedious reading at times, especially for someone like me who loves the tap-dancing prose of a Salman Rushdie or John Irving. In fact on more than one occasion I felt like I was reading someone's high school creative writing paper. But Mason has obviously done his homework and so what he lacks in lyrical aptitude he at least makes up for in imparting a rich history of 19th century Burma along with everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-an-Erand-piano but were afraid to ask.
The stylistic shortcomings of the book don't bother me nearly so much as the review hype on the back cover -- I seriously wonder whether these critics actually ever read the book they have been assigned or if instead some grunt intern doesn't just hand them a one-page summary of the book after which the reviewer reaches down to the bottom of his/her velvet-adjective-sack and like fairy dust, sprinkles a few choice (completely arbitrary) descriptive words onto the back of the dust jacket. I say this because 'seductive' (NY Times), 'gripping' (USA Today), 'profound' (The New Yorker), 'luminous' (LA Times), this book is NOT. It's a quiet, well-researched book; the meat-and-potato prose follows a boring English piano-tuner-chap -- one, who having spent his whole life 'tuning' pianos scattered throughout the parlors of London, has also managed to 'tune out' the great big world he now beholds in astonished wonder. Not surprisingly, he is reluctant to go back to the wife and fog he has left behind -- or to use a pun: back to the same old tune. All in all a pretty good first book to come out of a now 27-year-old med student. However, the book is certainly not of the caliber the reviewers would have us believe.
"The Black Veil is the worst of Rick Moody's very bad books.... The plain truth is that I have stared at pages and pages of Moody's prose and they remain as meaningless to me as the Korean characters that paper the wall of a local restaurant. Actually, the comparison is not particularly apt, because I know that the Korean writing means something, but I am not convinced that Moody's books are about anything at all." -- Dale Peck The rest of Peck's scathing review
I can only imagine how Peck would tear up The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, a book I just finished... With 53 reviews in on Amazon's Customer Review page, The Piano Tuner boasts a four out of five star rating. Not bad for a 27-year-old med student with a curriculum vitae most of us can only dream of. Here's my review:
I give the book a TWO. Mechanically, Mason keeps his writing Lego-block simple and I admire the fact that he doesn't try to wade into literary waters he is most obviously not ready to swim... Unfortunately this makes for tedious reading at times, especially for someone like me who loves the tap-dancing prose of a Salman Rushdie or John Irving. In fact on more than one occasion I felt like I was reading someone's high school creative writing paper. But Mason has obviously done his homework and so what he lacks in lyrical aptitude he at least makes up for in imparting a rich history of 19th century Burma along with everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-an-Erand-piano but were afraid to ask.
The stylistic shortcomings of the book don't bother me nearly so much as the review hype on the back cover -- I seriously wonder whether these critics actually ever read the book they have been assigned or if instead some grunt intern doesn't just hand them a one-page summary of the book after which the reviewer reaches down to the bottom of his/her velvet-adjective-sack and like fairy dust, sprinkles a few choice (completely arbitrary) descriptive words onto the back of the dust jacket. I say this because 'seductive' (NY Times), 'gripping' (USA Today), 'profound' (The New Yorker), 'luminous' (LA Times), this book is NOT. It's a quiet, well-researched book; the meat-and-potato prose follows a boring English piano-tuner-chap -- one, who having spent his whole life 'tuning' pianos scattered throughout the parlors of London, has also managed to 'tune out' the great big world he now beholds in astonished wonder. Not surprisingly, he is reluctant to go back to the wife and fog he has left behind -- or to use a pun: back to the same old tune. All in all a pretty good first book to come out of a now 27-year-old med student. However, the book is certainly not of the caliber the reviewers would have us believe.
Sunday, October 26, 2003
NOBODY wants to hear about a funeral service. So I'll keep it short. The family was heroic in that they had the courage to confront the community in addressing the rampant drug and alcohol problem amongst this town's teens. The father kept it together -- so much so that it perhaps signified the chasm between father and son. He was able to talk about son almost abstractly. He joked. Mother inconsolable.
NO SEX FOR HUBBY. Heads up guys. There are two things you should absolutely avoid doing if you have any aspirations of having sex with your wife, girlfriend, significant other. As I am wife, I will refer to the following two examples citing a wife/hubby scenario. Action One: As wife spends two days trying to pull the house back together following a four week face-lift (the house, not me) -- as she stands on a ladder touching up paint and/or scrubbing the dust off the walls, DO NOT WALK BY WITH A MUG OF COFFEE EN ROUTE TO YOUR COMPUTER TO CHECK EMAILS AND COMMENT WHAT A NICE ASS YOUR WIFE HAS. Action Two: Do not boast throughout your adult life of being the smart guy with the PhD and then do something so utterly stupid, that a two-year-old would not escape a reprimand for having done something so absurd i.e. when wife requests you give her the hammer so that she can hammer tight the can of paint from whence she was painting the entire afternoon, DO NOT TOSS THE HAMMER DOWN THE STAIRS! I'm assuming my PhD hubby took innumerable physics courses in his lifetime. Something I did not. But even I would understand enough to know the weight/velocity/DANGER aspect of sliding a hammer down the stairs. What was I supposed to do, CATCH IT??? Out of self-preservation-reasons, I did not attempt to catch it and so said hammer thudded down the carpeted stairs and then clanked loudly onto the newly refinished wood floor. Need I say that there is now an estimated $150 gouge in the just-refinished wood floor. I slept in the guest bedroom -- reneging on my interest and promise of sex that evening. And there is the difference my friends. In spite of how mad I was and how defensive hubby got, he still could have had sex very easily and happily. I maintain that I am by no means in the minority by stating that there are few women who could enjoy sex under these circumstances. Not that semi-conscious dreams don't do wonders to repair a botched romantic evening. Like in a Scrooge dream-sequence, a host of sex ghosts -- past, present, future, and make-believe -- came forth to honor the nice ass on the ladder.
INCONGRUITIES:
Reading in the NY Times this Sunday morning that a UPenn graduate (same college daughter was so enthralled by) is waiting tables during the week and bartending on the weekends because there is no job to be had: What to do After UPenn.
Reading in the NY Times of reverse immigration: thousands of Mexicans make their way illegally across the border as almost-as-many Americans cross the other way to snap up real estate in Baja, Mexico: What Goes Around Comes Around -- Sort of.. .
Being such a liberal and having an overwhelming majority of conservative friends.
Loving good, well-written literature as well as trashy, soap opera porn.
While applying a semi-gloss-white-Benjamin-Moore paint to the baseboard behind the toilet in the bathroom, sipping a cold glass of $17.00 Solex Chardonnay. Noting that paint-stained hands holding a chilled-glass of wine look funny.
Having the patience to perfectly paint a room, not a brush stroke in sight, but unable to have the patience to cook something artful (let alone tasteful).
In the damp basement, on a Sunday late afternoon, gently scrubbing between the wooden slats of our living room shutters (all 520 slats) that need finally to be re-hung. I wonder what the rest of the world is doing while I am doing this. I wonder what my cleaning lady is doing.
My house gleams but I haven't given myself a pedicure in two months. It shows.
Loving my home at the same time wanting to move.
NO SEX FOR HUBBY. Heads up guys. There are two things you should absolutely avoid doing if you have any aspirations of having sex with your wife, girlfriend, significant other. As I am wife, I will refer to the following two examples citing a wife/hubby scenario. Action One: As wife spends two days trying to pull the house back together following a four week face-lift (the house, not me) -- as she stands on a ladder touching up paint and/or scrubbing the dust off the walls, DO NOT WALK BY WITH A MUG OF COFFEE EN ROUTE TO YOUR COMPUTER TO CHECK EMAILS AND COMMENT WHAT A NICE ASS YOUR WIFE HAS. Action Two: Do not boast throughout your adult life of being the smart guy with the PhD and then do something so utterly stupid, that a two-year-old would not escape a reprimand for having done something so absurd i.e. when wife requests you give her the hammer so that she can hammer tight the can of paint from whence she was painting the entire afternoon, DO NOT TOSS THE HAMMER DOWN THE STAIRS! I'm assuming my PhD hubby took innumerable physics courses in his lifetime. Something I did not. But even I would understand enough to know the weight/velocity/DANGER aspect of sliding a hammer down the stairs. What was I supposed to do, CATCH IT??? Out of self-preservation-reasons, I did not attempt to catch it and so said hammer thudded down the carpeted stairs and then clanked loudly onto the newly refinished wood floor. Need I say that there is now an estimated $150 gouge in the just-refinished wood floor. I slept in the guest bedroom -- reneging on my interest and promise of sex that evening. And there is the difference my friends. In spite of how mad I was and how defensive hubby got, he still could have had sex very easily and happily. I maintain that I am by no means in the minority by stating that there are few women who could enjoy sex under these circumstances. Not that semi-conscious dreams don't do wonders to repair a botched romantic evening. Like in a Scrooge dream-sequence, a host of sex ghosts -- past, present, future, and make-believe -- came forth to honor the nice ass on the ladder.
INCONGRUITIES:
Reading in the NY Times this Sunday morning that a UPenn graduate (same college daughter was so enthralled by) is waiting tables during the week and bartending on the weekends because there is no job to be had: What to do After UPenn.
Reading in the NY Times of reverse immigration: thousands of Mexicans make their way illegally across the border as almost-as-many Americans cross the other way to snap up real estate in Baja, Mexico: What Goes Around Comes Around -- Sort of.. .
Being such a liberal and having an overwhelming majority of conservative friends.
Loving good, well-written literature as well as trashy, soap opera porn.
While applying a semi-gloss-white-Benjamin-Moore paint to the baseboard behind the toilet in the bathroom, sipping a cold glass of $17.00 Solex Chardonnay. Noting that paint-stained hands holding a chilled-glass of wine look funny.
Having the patience to perfectly paint a room, not a brush stroke in sight, but unable to have the patience to cook something artful (let alone tasteful).
In the damp basement, on a Sunday late afternoon, gently scrubbing between the wooden slats of our living room shutters (all 520 slats) that need finally to be re-hung. I wonder what the rest of the world is doing while I am doing this. I wonder what my cleaning lady is doing.
My house gleams but I haven't given myself a pedicure in two months. It shows.
Loving my home at the same time wanting to move.
Thursday, October 23, 2003
If you never hear from me again there's good reason i.e. never incur the legitimate wrath of a seventeen-year-old-daughter. If you caught my October 16 blog in which I posted her Political Process test for all to examine, take, and pass within 50 minutes, I have since lost her test she lent me to blog. This is bad, bad, bad because she needs it NOW in order to study for a mid-term. I KNOW I put it in a place somewhere safe between home and our bed-and-breakfast at which we were staying during floor sanding. But where, oh where is it....
Daughter got her SAT college entrance exams score back. She did well but it’s all meaningless today. Not even a perfect 1600 or valedictorian status is a guarantee you'll get in to the college of your choice. She, hard-as-she-is-on-herself, is not as pleased as I am with her results. Were I to have to take the SATs today I might have matched her in English but would have been lucky to get a score of 50 on the Math portion. Meaning that I wouldn’t even get into a local Community College these days. Suffice to say daughter's transcripts, SAT scores, and lunar/star alignment have sealed her fate one way or another. I say to her 'Relax honey. With your Austrian-Terminator genes, you will do well wherever you go. Unfortunately college recruiters have saturated her with the idea that it has to be a certain college or otherwise she has failed.
Apropos fate. This is hard to write. My town has lost another teenager in the course of one month. I didn't know well the girl who was the age of my 19-year-old-son and died last month in an alcohol-related car accident. But I did know this boy, age 18, who died the day before yesterday and was in daughter's senior class. He was funny. Strawberry blond and freckled. I car-pooled him to dozens of soccer games. Parents nice. Maybe the father was a little hard on his two boys. He coached soccer. Mother a devoted volunteer and community advocate. A beautiful house out on the most exclusive parcel of land available in an otherwise exclusive town. The freckled strawberry son dealing drugs. A fight. Exasperated parents who issued an ultimatum: 'Get out -- we are unwilling to be a part of this anymore.' The son who leaves with his friend. Completely wrecked, they stop by the side of the rode to sleep. She wakes up. He doesn't. At least that's the story from the kids who knew he was dead before the police ever found him. Cell phones. Supposedly OxyContin -- same stuff Rush Limbaugh was addicted to. They call it hospital heroin. Life goes on. EXCEPT when you lose your child. Except when the last thing you maybe said to your child was Get Out. It doesn't go on. A good friend of mine with four kids said to me once, 'Strangle them in your kitchen if you must. But don't ever throw them out of the house..." I will go to the funeral this afternoon with about everyone else in town. What the hell can you say. And by the way, this town's kids don't have any alcohol or drug problems...
Daughter got her SAT college entrance exams score back. She did well but it’s all meaningless today. Not even a perfect 1600 or valedictorian status is a guarantee you'll get in to the college of your choice. She, hard-as-she-is-on-herself, is not as pleased as I am with her results. Were I to have to take the SATs today I might have matched her in English but would have been lucky to get a score of 50 on the Math portion. Meaning that I wouldn’t even get into a local Community College these days. Suffice to say daughter's transcripts, SAT scores, and lunar/star alignment have sealed her fate one way or another. I say to her 'Relax honey. With your Austrian-Terminator genes, you will do well wherever you go. Unfortunately college recruiters have saturated her with the idea that it has to be a certain college or otherwise she has failed.
Apropos fate. This is hard to write. My town has lost another teenager in the course of one month. I didn't know well the girl who was the age of my 19-year-old-son and died last month in an alcohol-related car accident. But I did know this boy, age 18, who died the day before yesterday and was in daughter's senior class. He was funny. Strawberry blond and freckled. I car-pooled him to dozens of soccer games. Parents nice. Maybe the father was a little hard on his two boys. He coached soccer. Mother a devoted volunteer and community advocate. A beautiful house out on the most exclusive parcel of land available in an otherwise exclusive town. The freckled strawberry son dealing drugs. A fight. Exasperated parents who issued an ultimatum: 'Get out -- we are unwilling to be a part of this anymore.' The son who leaves with his friend. Completely wrecked, they stop by the side of the rode to sleep. She wakes up. He doesn't. At least that's the story from the kids who knew he was dead before the police ever found him. Cell phones. Supposedly OxyContin -- same stuff Rush Limbaugh was addicted to. They call it hospital heroin. Life goes on. EXCEPT when you lose your child. Except when the last thing you maybe said to your child was Get Out. It doesn't go on. A good friend of mine with four kids said to me once, 'Strangle them in your kitchen if you must. But don't ever throw them out of the house..." I will go to the funeral this afternoon with about everyone else in town. What the hell can you say. And by the way, this town's kids don't have any alcohol or drug problems...
I had a very nice lunch with a good friend of mine (also a conservative I should mention), who on occassion also reads my blogs. He wondered why I would waste time defending the French. Not even their renowned food or wine are enough to compel him to defend this stagnating socialist country. He has never liked Brie, thinks the California and Spanish wines are equal if not better to French, and gives high marks to Armenian (I think he said Armenian) cognac. So who needs France? No wonder he so admires the Tour-de-Force-Ms.-Joan D'Arc 2003 . Personally, I think the conservatives are just mad that the French came out on the moral high ground this time with respect to the war in Iraq...But more on the French in a moment.
I can say with absolute certainty that had I been born in the 17th century, the conservatives of the day would never have had the opportunity to burn me at the stake for my liberal rantings since I never would have braved the Atlantic ocean on a tiny boat stuffed with a hundred-or-so-Pilgrims -- none of whom had ACCESS TO A BATH.
These were my thoughts early this morning as for the first time in weeks, I stood under my new shower head in my nearly completed -- at least to the extent that I was able to take a shower -- bathroom (not that I have anything against being surrounded by a gaggle of let-it-all-hang-out-seventy-something-Russian-émigrés trimming their toenails and loofa-sponging each other's flabby backs first thing in the morning at my health club up the street...). However, our sink is still not hooked up and I am waiting for a special shower rod because wouldn't-you-know-it, our bathroom is an unusual size that requires a 66"-long pole, one which I hope dearly will arrive any day now given the automated response sent to me after I completed the online transaction: 'Thank you for your recent order #501813 at XXX-Store. It will be handled quickly by our crack team and shipped out as soon as humanly possible.' For now my shower rod is an old curtain rod nailed into the ceiling. Heh, that's why they invented plaster, right? Did you also know that you can bid for a custom-built radiator cover on eBay and pay with PayPal?
And if anyone doubts that being a persuasive and articulate bitch doesn't come in handy sometimes, read further: I just got off the phone with the corporate office of a certain plumbing company to follow up on my complaint that no one had showed up to my house as promised to install a tub last week and mistakenly thought that a 'gee-sorry' after the fact would do it. Nope.
ANNA BLOVIATION'S STICK: Yes, I understand BUT..., (in the transactional analysis bestseller I'm Ok You're OK, everything you say before the word 'but' doesn't count; what you really want to say and mean comes after...) -- This was promissory epistle I believe they call it in legal terms Mr. Corporate-Plumbing-Guy (I have no idea if this term actually exists but I thought it sounded good); I incurred an expense based on a promise you reneged......................(stick, stick, baseball bat) ............If this cannot be resolved satisfactorily (to my satisfaction buddy, not yours), I feel compelled to contact the Consumer Affairs Department and speak with my state government colleagues over there.... (I don't know a soul over there actually).
ANNA BLOVIATION'S CARROT: I can see, Mr. Corporate-Plumbing-Guy, that you are a very savvy marketing person and understand the concepts of Relationship Marketing-TM. After all you took the time to call me back from your Cincinnati headquarters and are really making an effort to listen to my concerns. I can see that you understand that $150 (the time my contractor stood waiting around for your no-show plumber), is a relatively insignificant amount to pay to keep a potential customer over the course of a lifetime (the alternative being that I will bad mouth you up and down this customer-lucrative-wealthy town for all its worth). I should be receiving a check by the end of the week.
So my conservative electronic acquaintance mentioned in my last blog doesn't agree that there is anything redeemable to say for the French and furthermore maintains, despite my points, that the French are the most insincere and morally bankrupt government in Western Europe replete with all of the false posturing of a European Jimmy Swaggert. His biggest gripe seems to be his contention that the French reaped billions from the UN Oil-for-Food Program, and that they 'stood by while Saddam rebuilt his army and redirected vast sums to his personal accounts.' Which isn't to say he doesn't think France isn't a beautiful country with a wonderful cultural center -- if only they weren't so morally degenerate. How so? IS THERE ONE FRENCH CHILD who does not have access to free health care when it is sick?
It would REALLY be helpful if this guy would broaden his Fox News horizons (this applies to liberal media exclusivities too). People like this drive me to extra glasses of Chardonnay in the evening. How did I end up with all of these narrow-band-Conservatives in my life anyway? Oh yes of course: I am a sassy forty-something liberal determined to change the world whether it likes it or not...
Yes, the French did make billions off of the UN Food-for-Oil Program. So did a lot of countries not the least of which was, my dear electronic correspondent friend below, America . Big U.S. oil companies profited whilst American foreign policy wonks spent almost a decade throwing bureaucratic pebbles into the cogs that might have kept thousands of innocent Iraqis alive. At one particularly morally-degenerate point (if we are going to be calling a kettle black), a shipment of powdered milk was detained on the grounds that the Iraqi's might use it in a chemical weapons experiment. Denis Halliday, then head of UN humanitarian operations in Iraq, finally resigned his post in disgust:
UNITED NATIONS COORDINATOR RESIGNS OVER OIL FOR FOOD PROGRAM
Here a little more reading: THE TOLL AND DEATH FROM U.S. LED SANCTIONS and HALLIBURTON PROFITS FROM SANCTIONS
I can say with absolute certainty that had I been born in the 17th century, the conservatives of the day would never have had the opportunity to burn me at the stake for my liberal rantings since I never would have braved the Atlantic ocean on a tiny boat stuffed with a hundred-or-so-Pilgrims -- none of whom had ACCESS TO A BATH.
These were my thoughts early this morning as for the first time in weeks, I stood under my new shower head in my nearly completed -- at least to the extent that I was able to take a shower -- bathroom (not that I have anything against being surrounded by a gaggle of let-it-all-hang-out-seventy-something-Russian-émigrés trimming their toenails and loofa-sponging each other's flabby backs first thing in the morning at my health club up the street...). However, our sink is still not hooked up and I am waiting for a special shower rod because wouldn't-you-know-it, our bathroom is an unusual size that requires a 66"-long pole, one which I hope dearly will arrive any day now given the automated response sent to me after I completed the online transaction: 'Thank you for your recent order #501813 at XXX-Store. It will be handled quickly by our crack team and shipped out as soon as humanly possible.' For now my shower rod is an old curtain rod nailed into the ceiling. Heh, that's why they invented plaster, right? Did you also know that you can bid for a custom-built radiator cover on eBay and pay with PayPal?
And if anyone doubts that being a persuasive and articulate bitch doesn't come in handy sometimes, read further: I just got off the phone with the corporate office of a certain plumbing company to follow up on my complaint that no one had showed up to my house as promised to install a tub last week and mistakenly thought that a 'gee-sorry' after the fact would do it. Nope.
ANNA BLOVIATION'S STICK: Yes, I understand BUT..., (in the transactional analysis bestseller I'm Ok You're OK, everything you say before the word 'but' doesn't count; what you really want to say and mean comes after...) -- This was promissory epistle I believe they call it in legal terms Mr. Corporate-Plumbing-Guy (I have no idea if this term actually exists but I thought it sounded good); I incurred an expense based on a promise you reneged......................(stick, stick, baseball bat) ............If this cannot be resolved satisfactorily (to my satisfaction buddy, not yours), I feel compelled to contact the Consumer Affairs Department and speak with my state government colleagues over there.... (I don't know a soul over there actually).
ANNA BLOVIATION'S CARROT: I can see, Mr. Corporate-Plumbing-Guy, that you are a very savvy marketing person and understand the concepts of Relationship Marketing-TM. After all you took the time to call me back from your Cincinnati headquarters and are really making an effort to listen to my concerns. I can see that you understand that $150 (the time my contractor stood waiting around for your no-show plumber), is a relatively insignificant amount to pay to keep a potential customer over the course of a lifetime (the alternative being that I will bad mouth you up and down this customer-lucrative-wealthy town for all its worth). I should be receiving a check by the end of the week.
So my conservative electronic acquaintance mentioned in my last blog doesn't agree that there is anything redeemable to say for the French and furthermore maintains, despite my points, that the French are the most insincere and morally bankrupt government in Western Europe replete with all of the false posturing of a European Jimmy Swaggert. His biggest gripe seems to be his contention that the French reaped billions from the UN Oil-for-Food Program, and that they 'stood by while Saddam rebuilt his army and redirected vast sums to his personal accounts.' Which isn't to say he doesn't think France isn't a beautiful country with a wonderful cultural center -- if only they weren't so morally degenerate. How so? IS THERE ONE FRENCH CHILD who does not have access to free health care when it is sick?
It would REALLY be helpful if this guy would broaden his Fox News horizons (this applies to liberal media exclusivities too). People like this drive me to extra glasses of Chardonnay in the evening. How did I end up with all of these narrow-band-Conservatives in my life anyway? Oh yes of course: I am a sassy forty-something liberal determined to change the world whether it likes it or not...
Yes, the French did make billions off of the UN Food-for-Oil Program. So did a lot of countries not the least of which was, my dear electronic correspondent friend below, America . Big U.S. oil companies profited whilst American foreign policy wonks spent almost a decade throwing bureaucratic pebbles into the cogs that might have kept thousands of innocent Iraqis alive. At one particularly morally-degenerate point (if we are going to be calling a kettle black), a shipment of powdered milk was detained on the grounds that the Iraqi's might use it in a chemical weapons experiment. Denis Halliday, then head of UN humanitarian operations in Iraq, finally resigned his post in disgust:
UNITED NATIONS COORDINATOR RESIGNS OVER OIL FOR FOOD PROGRAM
Here a little more reading: THE TOLL AND DEATH FROM U.S. LED SANCTIONS and HALLIBURTON PROFITS FROM SANCTIONS
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
WHEN THINGS ARE GOING BAD, BLAME THE FRENCH -- at least according to a wayward conservative electronic acquaintance of mine who brought the above Fox News link to my attention. Both he and Fox News seem to have a real problem with the French... In a nutshell, this article would suggest that the French are morally despicable secularists who reject Judeo-Christian doctrines and are all-in-all an ignorant, clumsy lot of cynical orgiasts. Hmmmm. A little touchy are we that everything the French predicted would happen in Iraq has indeed come to pass? And yet my conservative email acquaintance continues to accept Bush Jr.'s blatant and ever-more-widely-acknowledged lies, his inability to articulate a coherent sentence, his undoing of the past fifteen years of diplomacy -- all in the name of besting the purportedly degenerate and morally corrupt French. It is quite disturbing, really, and I can only surmise that this gentleman at one point had some Franco-traumatic event occur in his childhood that he should probably enlist the services of a psycho-therapist to resolve.
OK, perhaps Marquis de Sade was a bit over the edge but all in all the French have a marvelous way of balancing noble causes with the realities of human nature. The Americans, on the other hand, place everything on impossibly high moral pedestals (thanks to the repressive Puritans) and so are forced into a lifestyle of hypocrisy, dichotomy, and impossible-to-fill-shoes.
If there is an upside to Arnold becoming Governor of California, it is that perhaps the American electorate will be finally able to acknowledge that you can be good at one thing and imperfect at another i.e. you might have stellar qualifications to run a city, state, or nation but have flaws in other aspects of your life (not that I am sure that Arnold has any stellar qualifications other than to make blockbuster B movies). Welcome to being human! The French have long been able to do this.
One of the more arrogant, presumptuous, and oh-so-utterly-American-centric quotes in this French-bashing article contends: "French nation-building assumes the values of secularism, with all its rosy assumptions and real politick. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq, in which the utter blackness of human nature held sway for so long -- and threatens to return. For all their noisy humanitarianism, secularists tend to have a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world."
First of all, the French have had DECADES of experience dealing with Arab countries (hence their warnings). The Americans, for all ostensive purposes, ZILCH, save for a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Shah of Iran (followed by a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Saddam Hussein). So why we would call the French 'clumsy,' as opposed to the US (particularly in light of our post-war Iraq record), is just a tad baffling I think. And the notion that the French are 'turning a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world' is hysterical quite frankly. If anything, the French are hearing the religious sentiments of the world. So what this quote should really say is something like this:
"American nation-building assumes the values of idealistic, at-present-right-wing self-righteousness, with all its naive and rosy assumptions. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq from the standpoint that America would be so naively insolent as to assume that a nation 'darkened by the utter blackness of human nature' would submit to another nation equally baggaged with its own utter-blackness-of-human-nature [please inquire should you want examples] -- one that would preemptively attack, occupy, and dictate a two-year plan over said country based on a pack of lies sold to the world by a hawkish administration. For all their noisy bravado and bully tactics, these evil-doer-saviors tend to have a hopelessly and dangerously oblivious eye to world sentiment that demonstratively objects to their strategy...."
OK, perhaps Marquis de Sade was a bit over the edge but all in all the French have a marvelous way of balancing noble causes with the realities of human nature. The Americans, on the other hand, place everything on impossibly high moral pedestals (thanks to the repressive Puritans) and so are forced into a lifestyle of hypocrisy, dichotomy, and impossible-to-fill-shoes.
If there is an upside to Arnold becoming Governor of California, it is that perhaps the American electorate will be finally able to acknowledge that you can be good at one thing and imperfect at another i.e. you might have stellar qualifications to run a city, state, or nation but have flaws in other aspects of your life (not that I am sure that Arnold has any stellar qualifications other than to make blockbuster B movies). Welcome to being human! The French have long been able to do this.
One of the more arrogant, presumptuous, and oh-so-utterly-American-centric quotes in this French-bashing article contends: "French nation-building assumes the values of secularism, with all its rosy assumptions and real politick. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq, in which the utter blackness of human nature held sway for so long -- and threatens to return. For all their noisy humanitarianism, secularists tend to have a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world."
First of all, the French have had DECADES of experience dealing with Arab countries (hence their warnings). The Americans, for all ostensive purposes, ZILCH, save for a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Shah of Iran (followed by a botched relationship with the corrupt, American-supported Saddam Hussein). So why we would call the French 'clumsy,' as opposed to the US (particularly in light of our post-war Iraq record), is just a tad baffling I think. And the notion that the French are 'turning a deaf ear to the religious sentiments that animate most people in nations around the world' is hysterical quite frankly. If anything, the French are hearing the religious sentiments of the world. So what this quote should really say is something like this:
"American nation-building assumes the values of idealistic, at-present-right-wing self-righteousness, with all its naive and rosy assumptions. It seems an especially clumsy strategy in countries such as Iraq from the standpoint that America would be so naively insolent as to assume that a nation 'darkened by the utter blackness of human nature' would submit to another nation equally baggaged with its own utter-blackness-of-human-nature [please inquire should you want examples] -- one that would preemptively attack, occupy, and dictate a two-year plan over said country based on a pack of lies sold to the world by a hawkish administration. For all their noisy bravado and bully tactics, these evil-doer-saviors tend to have a hopelessly and dangerously oblivious eye to world sentiment that demonstratively objects to their strategy...."
Sunday, October 19, 2003
I read once that one of the driving forces behind establishing a public school system in the New England colonies, above and beyond all of the altruistic, visionary stuff, was to basically get a whole lot of trouble-making, roaming kids off the streets. It was a practical solution really: build brick fortresses to lock down unruly Huckleberry types under the pretense of enlightenment.
Our schools still do just that but now it has of course become a whole new marketing-savvy ball game directed at very specific target markets and designed to prolong the growing-up-process for as long as possible. Why? Well is an 18-year-old individual out on his own likely to have a lot of expendable cash laying around at the get-go of his/her career? Likely not. But what if you can somehow make that 18-year-old dependent on parents for at least another four years because those parents have a mole-hill-to-a-mountain of more disposable income accumulated than said impoverished youngling? Why you've just thought up a brilliant way to pump billions of dollars into an economy highly dependent on CONSUMING more and more.
Daughter and I just went down to visit UPenn in Philly. A pit of a city on the outskirts and not because of all of the smoke stacks and signs of industry. After all there has to be industry somewhere. A pit because all of that industry looks like it is just holding on for its miserably-dilapidated, worn-down dear life. And may I just say that the new location for the Liberty Bell, a 60-block-round-trip-walk from our hotel, is rather strange -- they expect you to stand in a quarter-mile-long line to see a bell housed under a glass chamber to which you must snake your way around a plot of green Commons (we opted for the looking-from-a-distance-view which meant we got to see the bell but not the crack... Darn.
UPenn is a beautiful and impressive campus. When all is said and done, they want $40,370 a year for out-of-state residents. Loved how when daughter and I inadvertently landed in the Philly-resident Open House and picked up one of the folders there, a staff person, after realizing we weren't locals, ran after us and grabbed the folder out of my hands. "Oh, may I have that please? You need to go over to College Hall for your presentation. I'm sorry." God forbid I see all of the marketing promises made to in-state students in their glossy brochure let alone see the in-state price break they get. The $40K-plus for out-of-state residents doesn't include laptop, trips home, Abercrombie sweaters, or care packages. An estimated 19,000 students will be submitting applications to vie for the 3,000 or so freshman spots available and the privilege of paying this tuition plus hikes over the next four years. But if you are so lucky to get chosen (and luck is pretty much what it comes down to these days), you feel so relieved, so special, so elite that you'd be willing to pay anything. If you don't believe COLLEGE hasn't become a business no different than selling Gap jeans Click On This Link; Noel-Levitz is an enrollment management firm that gives colleges advice on how to attract the students they want. The site says, "The analysis prepares your institution to compete effectively in its marketplace and to distinguish itself from institutions vying for the same student populations."
For another significant group of youth's geraffle [a word I just made up from my German-speaking origins meaning not quite perhaps up to college snuff but wanting to make something of oneself above and beyond dead-end jobs] -- there is the military. This is where being a wealthy country really comes in handy. We can blissfully afford to keep a large swath of testosterone-spastic tendencies good n' tired via the US Army, Marines, Navy, etc. And provided these younglings don't get killed in combat, they get some very good job training/college education to boot. The alternative would be horrendous as anyone who has been unemployed for a long time knows; no job messes with your head in bad ways. Imagine all of these young men now serving in the military instead roving around in today's economic environment unemployed... Not good. Not good. Just look at all of the troubles the Saudis are having for not having figured out a plan for how to keep the idle hands of 70% of their population under the age of 25 busy even though they have gobs of cash with which to have come up with a strategy of some kind. No plan spells trouble with an upper case T.
The 'fringe' dead-enders (those who end up with the McDonald's and Wal-Mart jobs), we try to keep appeased with cheap food that makes them so lethargically fat they don't have the gumph to protest that they have no health care benefits and have no chance at the 'American Dream' advertised on 564 channels 24/7. Resounding success to report on this front.
And then there is Europe's youth. Which thanks indirectly to the U.S. can afford all of its progressive social programs given that they pay about 2 to 5% on military vs. the U.S. spending 26% federally. The Europeans, for all of the aesthetic uumpa I truly adore, remind me of petulant teenagers sometimes: "I hate you but could you drive me to the mall?...." kind of thing.
"So," my visiting European brother-in-law inquired as he looked around my A-bomb disaster house in the midst of renovations, "do you still have a cleaning lady coming in?"
"Why?," I asked. "Does it look like we need one?"
"No, no, I was just wondering..."
"Every other week," I answered. "Do you still have Theresa coming?"
"Well we have cut down her hours now that the kids are grown. We only have her four hours a day now instead of eight."
"Four hours a day... [a cultural disconnect occurs at this moment]. Have your kids ever made their own bed on washed their clothes? You realize that you are all spoiled brats... " I say this in just such a way that he can't tell whether I am teasing or not. "Well you must go back and say that your poor American brethren had an inch of dust all over the house and gave you passes to the nearby health club so that you could take a shower!"
Our schools still do just that but now it has of course become a whole new marketing-savvy ball game directed at very specific target markets and designed to prolong the growing-up-process for as long as possible. Why? Well is an 18-year-old individual out on his own likely to have a lot of expendable cash laying around at the get-go of his/her career? Likely not. But what if you can somehow make that 18-year-old dependent on parents for at least another four years because those parents have a mole-hill-to-a-mountain of more disposable income accumulated than said impoverished youngling? Why you've just thought up a brilliant way to pump billions of dollars into an economy highly dependent on CONSUMING more and more.
Daughter and I just went down to visit UPenn in Philly. A pit of a city on the outskirts and not because of all of the smoke stacks and signs of industry. After all there has to be industry somewhere. A pit because all of that industry looks like it is just holding on for its miserably-dilapidated, worn-down dear life. And may I just say that the new location for the Liberty Bell, a 60-block-round-trip-walk from our hotel, is rather strange -- they expect you to stand in a quarter-mile-long line to see a bell housed under a glass chamber to which you must snake your way around a plot of green Commons (we opted for the looking-from-a-distance-view which meant we got to see the bell but not the crack... Darn.
UPenn is a beautiful and impressive campus. When all is said and done, they want $40,370 a year for out-of-state residents. Loved how when daughter and I inadvertently landed in the Philly-resident Open House and picked up one of the folders there, a staff person, after realizing we weren't locals, ran after us and grabbed the folder out of my hands. "Oh, may I have that please? You need to go over to College Hall for your presentation. I'm sorry." God forbid I see all of the marketing promises made to in-state students in their glossy brochure let alone see the in-state price break they get. The $40K-plus for out-of-state residents doesn't include laptop, trips home, Abercrombie sweaters, or care packages. An estimated 19,000 students will be submitting applications to vie for the 3,000 or so freshman spots available and the privilege of paying this tuition plus hikes over the next four years. But if you are so lucky to get chosen (and luck is pretty much what it comes down to these days), you feel so relieved, so special, so elite that you'd be willing to pay anything. If you don't believe COLLEGE hasn't become a business no different than selling Gap jeans Click On This Link; Noel-Levitz is an enrollment management firm that gives colleges advice on how to attract the students they want. The site says, "The analysis prepares your institution to compete effectively in its marketplace and to distinguish itself from institutions vying for the same student populations."
For another significant group of youth's geraffle [a word I just made up from my German-speaking origins meaning not quite perhaps up to college snuff but wanting to make something of oneself above and beyond dead-end jobs] -- there is the military. This is where being a wealthy country really comes in handy. We can blissfully afford to keep a large swath of testosterone-spastic tendencies good n' tired via the US Army, Marines, Navy, etc. And provided these younglings don't get killed in combat, they get some very good job training/college education to boot. The alternative would be horrendous as anyone who has been unemployed for a long time knows; no job messes with your head in bad ways. Imagine all of these young men now serving in the military instead roving around in today's economic environment unemployed... Not good. Not good. Just look at all of the troubles the Saudis are having for not having figured out a plan for how to keep the idle hands of 70% of their population under the age of 25 busy even though they have gobs of cash with which to have come up with a strategy of some kind. No plan spells trouble with an upper case T.
The 'fringe' dead-enders (those who end up with the McDonald's and Wal-Mart jobs), we try to keep appeased with cheap food that makes them so lethargically fat they don't have the gumph to protest that they have no health care benefits and have no chance at the 'American Dream' advertised on 564 channels 24/7. Resounding success to report on this front.
And then there is Europe's youth. Which thanks indirectly to the U.S. can afford all of its progressive social programs given that they pay about 2 to 5% on military vs. the U.S. spending 26% federally. The Europeans, for all of the aesthetic uumpa I truly adore, remind me of petulant teenagers sometimes: "I hate you but could you drive me to the mall?...." kind of thing.
"So," my visiting European brother-in-law inquired as he looked around my A-bomb disaster house in the midst of renovations, "do you still have a cleaning lady coming in?"
"Why?," I asked. "Does it look like we need one?"
"No, no, I was just wondering..."
"Every other week," I answered. "Do you still have Theresa coming?"
"Well we have cut down her hours now that the kids are grown. We only have her four hours a day now instead of eight."
"Four hours a day... [a cultural disconnect occurs at this moment]. Have your kids ever made their own bed on washed their clothes? You realize that you are all spoiled brats... " I say this in just such a way that he can't tell whether I am teasing or not. "Well you must go back and say that your poor American brethren had an inch of dust all over the house and gave you passes to the nearby health club so that you could take a shower!"
Thursday, October 16, 2003
I just came across my daughter's high school senior Political Process quiz and thought I would share the questions with my readers. The students were given one period to complete this test -- complete sentences and specific examples were required throughout:
1) An informed citizenry is necessary in a democracy. Why? give specific examples.
2) What problems/concerns do TV stations and newspapers have to consider in carrying out the responsibility of "informing citizens" in question #1? Give examples.
3) Based on what you are aware of, how would you vote in the California recall vote/ election on October 7th. Why? (At least 2 serious reasons)
4) Why do some newspapers put the comic strip Doonesbury on the editorial page?
5) How important are circulation, ratings, market share in the business of media? Why? Give examples.
6) On Sept, 11, 2001 there was almost round-the-clock coverage of events. Why was this create [not my typo] a major problem for networks/stations? An opportunity?
7) Many believe "impeachment" removes a President from office. What would you say to inform a person about how a President is removed from office?
8) a. What is a primary election? b. A general election? c. When (specifically) are general elections held in the US?
9) Pick two: Define/Identify and tell WHY each is IMPORTANT: ombudsman, anchor persons, demographics, editorial/op-ed pages, a share of stock, a subsidy, conference committee (in a legislature), extradition, injunction, punch card ballot, New York Stock Exchange, Profiling
10) Cartoon Analysis (there is a picture of Massachusetts Governor Romney carrying a lab coat that has on it the lettering "Scientific Proof." He says to an executioner wearing a t-shirt that reads 'Death Penalty,' "You'd look much better in a lab coat.") Answer the following: a. Who drew the political cartoon? For what paper? b. What objects and/or people do you see in the cartoon? c. What is the message of the cartoon?
I think this teacher has A.D.D. quite frankly. He is all over the place. And I don't know about you but I get exhausted just reading the questions here. Nonetheless, this is the kind of test I would have easily aced in my day. It's perfect for those who excel at pithy bullshit. If, on the other hand, you had asked me to solve an algebraic equation or differential, forget it... In fact I used to get so nervous prior to a math test that I carried around a little dispenser of talcum powder that I would rub on my hands so that the pencil wouldn't slip out of my sweaty palms.
1) An informed citizenry is necessary in a democracy. Why? give specific examples.
2) What problems/concerns do TV stations and newspapers have to consider in carrying out the responsibility of "informing citizens" in question #1? Give examples.
3) Based on what you are aware of, how would you vote in the California recall vote/ election on October 7th. Why? (At least 2 serious reasons)
4) Why do some newspapers put the comic strip Doonesbury on the editorial page?
5) How important are circulation, ratings, market share in the business of media? Why? Give examples.
6) On Sept, 11, 2001 there was almost round-the-clock coverage of events. Why was this create [not my typo] a major problem for networks/stations? An opportunity?
7) Many believe "impeachment" removes a President from office. What would you say to inform a person about how a President is removed from office?
8) a. What is a primary election? b. A general election? c. When (specifically) are general elections held in the US?
9) Pick two: Define/Identify and tell WHY each is IMPORTANT: ombudsman, anchor persons, demographics, editorial/op-ed pages, a share of stock, a subsidy, conference committee (in a legislature), extradition, injunction, punch card ballot, New York Stock Exchange, Profiling
10) Cartoon Analysis (there is a picture of Massachusetts Governor Romney carrying a lab coat that has on it the lettering "Scientific Proof." He says to an executioner wearing a t-shirt that reads 'Death Penalty,' "You'd look much better in a lab coat.") Answer the following: a. Who drew the political cartoon? For what paper? b. What objects and/or people do you see in the cartoon? c. What is the message of the cartoon?
I think this teacher has A.D.D. quite frankly. He is all over the place. And I don't know about you but I get exhausted just reading the questions here. Nonetheless, this is the kind of test I would have easily aced in my day. It's perfect for those who excel at pithy bullshit. If, on the other hand, you had asked me to solve an algebraic equation or differential, forget it... In fact I used to get so nervous prior to a math test that I carried around a little dispenser of talcum powder that I would rub on my hands so that the pencil wouldn't slip out of my sweaty palms.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
I just watched my first baseball game in about twenty years. Long and boring really, although I do like the close-ups of the pitcher as he tries to maintain a poker demeanor whilst throwing a 95-mile-an-hour-pitch he hopes his batting adversary will miss miserably.
Rooting for the Yankees I was -- for the sole self-serving purpose that the Red Sox would be ousted and son would have one less thing from which to be distracted in his $40K 'sophmore college experience.'
As you can see from my ill-informed previous blog, I thought last night's game was the deciding game. Obviously not. I called son just after the Red Sox's win this evening to tell him of my disappointment that the Yankees hadn't prevailed whereby he good-naturedly, and loyally, hung up on me. So much for his having been born in Austria.
Rooting for the Yankees I was -- for the sole self-serving purpose that the Red Sox would be ousted and son would have one less thing from which to be distracted in his $40K 'sophmore college experience.'
As you can see from my ill-informed previous blog, I thought last night's game was the deciding game. Obviously not. I called son just after the Red Sox's win this evening to tell him of my disappointment that the Yankees hadn't prevailed whereby he good-naturedly, and loyally, hung up on me. So much for his having been born in Austria.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003
SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE MOTHER Yes and thank god the Red Sox lost tonight! If hubby and I are to be spending $40K on college tuition, I am thrilled that there will be one less evening my son will be distracted by an inanely long baseball game. Of course he is probably at this moment drowning his sorrow in a twelve-pack of Coors...
I can't crap believe it! The MBTA just raised the parking rate from $3 to $4 dollars a day and a fare increase for the subway is due to go into effect soon too. Let me back up and first describe events leading up to the parking rate increase. For the past ten months, I have been parking my car in Lot X and walking past what for all ostensive purposes was an MBTA-owned junk yard -- an ill-cared-for piece of land used to store mounds of sand and salt in the winter to melt the snow on the roads. A rusted-out chain link fence surrounded the property and I was really never able to ascertain why this was necessary. To keep people from stealing salt? Or the accumulated trash? The old washing machine that had inexplicably landed there?
Last week a gaggle of carefully-watched convicts was out-and-about cleaning up the place inbetween ogling the women walking by. Well let me re-phrase that. The convicts did a half-ass job of cleaning up the trash and ripped out the one and only beautiful thing that adorned this miserable 3rd-world-looking plot -- a wild rose bush that clung rebelliously to the fence and bloomed gorgeously pink in mid-summer (they kept the rusted-out fence). In came the tar and yellow lines. And voila! Another parking lot that puts you a few feet closer to the subway station (honestly not a bad thing in the winter). Up went the new pricing information: $4. So all of the neighboring parking lots (some MBTA, some private) raised their prices too. Ironically the lot closest to the station costs only $2.50. The problem is you have to get there at about 5:30 a.m. to get a spot...
Guys. As state employee I make $29,000 a year. How do I afford to drive an Audi, plan trips to Jamaica, and endure careening-out-of-control house renovations? I am a highly subsidized woman... Which doesn't mean that on any given day I don't have a highly evolved imagination that cannot clearly envision life were I to have to actually live on the above-mentioned income. I won't drill down to the nittty gritty but let's just look at some basic numbers. I pay exorbitantly for health insurance (relatively speaking), taxes, a measly life insurance policy, and my monthly MBTA pass. This brings my net pay down to $17,500 a year. Subtract out $3,400 in commuting costs (parking, subway, car insurance, and gas). Now I am down to about $14,000. Now let's say I were lucky enough to land an apartment at $1000 a month that could accommodate my teenager still living at home (almost inconceivable in the state of Massachusetts which ranks almost #1 in the country as far as having the least affordable housing). Hmmmm. I do believe that leaves aprox. $1,000 f***** dollars to live on for the year? Meanwhile I have a son who goes to a college that costs $40,000 a year and a daughter headed down the same track...
Now let's please just remember that in the grand scheme of things, I am by no means considered the "bottom of the pile." Like how about some of my disenfranchised constituents who for lack of any other alternative, are living migrating up to campsites in New Hampshire to live. Even when these campsites close down for the winter.... They just collect their stuff and move further into the woods...
Math never was my strong suit so correct me if I am wrong here but I think one gets the point. If you think this is OK and just the way life in America should be, please click on 36 Reasons to Vote for Bush and the Republicans
Last week a gaggle of carefully-watched convicts was out-and-about cleaning up the place inbetween ogling the women walking by. Well let me re-phrase that. The convicts did a half-ass job of cleaning up the trash and ripped out the one and only beautiful thing that adorned this miserable 3rd-world-looking plot -- a wild rose bush that clung rebelliously to the fence and bloomed gorgeously pink in mid-summer (they kept the rusted-out fence). In came the tar and yellow lines. And voila! Another parking lot that puts you a few feet closer to the subway station (honestly not a bad thing in the winter). Up went the new pricing information: $4. So all of the neighboring parking lots (some MBTA, some private) raised their prices too. Ironically the lot closest to the station costs only $2.50. The problem is you have to get there at about 5:30 a.m. to get a spot...
Guys. As state employee I make $29,000 a year. How do I afford to drive an Audi, plan trips to Jamaica, and endure careening-out-of-control house renovations? I am a highly subsidized woman... Which doesn't mean that on any given day I don't have a highly evolved imagination that cannot clearly envision life were I to have to actually live on the above-mentioned income. I won't drill down to the nittty gritty but let's just look at some basic numbers. I pay exorbitantly for health insurance (relatively speaking), taxes, a measly life insurance policy, and my monthly MBTA pass. This brings my net pay down to $17,500 a year. Subtract out $3,400 in commuting costs (parking, subway, car insurance, and gas). Now I am down to about $14,000. Now let's say I were lucky enough to land an apartment at $1000 a month that could accommodate my teenager still living at home (almost inconceivable in the state of Massachusetts which ranks almost #1 in the country as far as having the least affordable housing). Hmmmm. I do believe that leaves aprox. $1,000 f***** dollars to live on for the year? Meanwhile I have a son who goes to a college that costs $40,000 a year and a daughter headed down the same track...
Now let's please just remember that in the grand scheme of things, I am by no means considered the "bottom of the pile." Like how about some of my disenfranchised constituents who for lack of any other alternative, are living migrating up to campsites in New Hampshire to live. Even when these campsites close down for the winter.... They just collect their stuff and move further into the woods...
Math never was my strong suit so correct me if I am wrong here but I think one gets the point. If you think this is OK and just the way life in America should be, please click on 36 Reasons to Vote for Bush and the Republicans
Monday, October 13, 2003
I have no idea who sponsored this study nor whether one has to swallow to reap the benefits of this particular act but here it is for what it is worth...jist .
Sorry to have nothing pithy here. Perhaps I am too busy with my new 'cancer prevention' program. Perhaps I am too busy with putting my house back together after two weeks of floor refinishing and bathroom renovations -- neither of which are over in one way or another.
I am 'touching up' after everyone and every thing. My hands are ravaged. My trip to Jamaica in November -- manicure, pedicure, and massage included -- are what keep me going at the moment...
Sorry to have nothing pithy here. Perhaps I am too busy with my new 'cancer prevention' program. Perhaps I am too busy with putting my house back together after two weeks of floor refinishing and bathroom renovations -- neither of which are over in one way or another.
I am 'touching up' after everyone and every thing. My hands are ravaged. My trip to Jamaica in November -- manicure, pedicure, and massage included -- are what keep me going at the moment...
Thursday, October 09, 2003
THE PURITAN GHOSTS GET THE LAST LAUGH The bill to allow the sale of alcohol on Sunday's was defeated in a roll call vote of 63-81. Even the powerful Speaker of the House's "yes" vote wasn't enough to make his lackeys kowtow.
My main beef with the 'no' vote (other than the inconvenience of not being able to buy a bottle of wine when I want), is the blatant conflict between church and state.
Back in colonial times, Puritan church members in the Massachusetts Bay colony, bored out of their New England-wintered minds, had nothing better to do than to come up with repressive laws designed to inhibit anyone having any fun what-so-ever. Thus were the Blue Laws born -- edicts to regulate public activities on the Sabbath, which meant Sunday to the Congregationalists of that day. Which is why viewing public executions (of heretics mostly) on the Boston Commons no doubt became so popular -- at least it was something to do besides sit at home and crochet.
My main beef with the 'no' vote (other than the inconvenience of not being able to buy a bottle of wine when I want), is the blatant conflict between church and state.
Back in colonial times, Puritan church members in the Massachusetts Bay colony, bored out of their New England-wintered minds, had nothing better to do than to come up with repressive laws designed to inhibit anyone having any fun what-so-ever. Thus were the Blue Laws born -- edicts to regulate public activities on the Sabbath, which meant Sunday to the Congregationalists of that day. Which is why viewing public executions (of heretics mostly) on the Boston Commons no doubt became so popular -- at least it was something to do besides sit at home and crochet.
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
SILVER LINING As any eternally optimistic Californian will tell you: nothing bad is ever going to happen. And in the unlikely event that it does, there is always a silver lining. Bathroom still gutted thus rendering your house unlivable? Yes but the wood floors you just had refinished will have longer to "cure" and thus be more impervious to scratches. Arnold Governor? ..............................Wait a minute I'm still thinking....................................................I know! Now that embarrassing indiscretions of the past are no longer show stoppers for seeking public office, we may finally start to see some good qualified candidates coming up to the plate.....Or did we forgive Arnie his transgressions just because he was a celebrity?.... OK how about this silver lining: it might be a great resume booster for my Austrian husband's career, especially that he really sounds a whole lot like Arnold. And no he has never, as far as I know, walked up to a woman, pulled up her shirt, and taken a picture of her boobs....
DOUBLE STANDARDS Anyway I can't wait to see the Republican's spin on this one.
THE PURITAN GHOSTS LOSING THEIR STRONGHOLD AS THE LEGISLATURE APPEARS POISED TO ALLOW PACKAGE STORES TO OPEN ON SUNDAY. The days of frantically hunting down a bottle of Chardonnay to accompany the fine braised chicken hubby is preparing on a Sunday may become a thing of the past as Massachusetts lawmakers get ready to roll back the colonial-area blue laws that forbid selling alcohol on Sundays. The House and Senate leaders expressed support Tuesday for a bill that would allow, but not require, cities and towns to issue licenses to sell alcohol on Sundays. Works for me! My boss, however, inexplicably voted against it...
NATIONAL DEPRESSION SCREENING DAY October 9th is yet another birthday. Forty-four. Where do they come from so damn fast? Ironically the Commonwealth has just declared this day National Depression Screening Day. Or perhaps ironically not.
DOUBLE STANDARDS Anyway I can't wait to see the Republican's spin on this one.
THE PURITAN GHOSTS LOSING THEIR STRONGHOLD AS THE LEGISLATURE APPEARS POISED TO ALLOW PACKAGE STORES TO OPEN ON SUNDAY. The days of frantically hunting down a bottle of Chardonnay to accompany the fine braised chicken hubby is preparing on a Sunday may become a thing of the past as Massachusetts lawmakers get ready to roll back the colonial-area blue laws that forbid selling alcohol on Sundays. The House and Senate leaders expressed support Tuesday for a bill that would allow, but not require, cities and towns to issue licenses to sell alcohol on Sundays. Works for me! My boss, however, inexplicably voted against it...
NATIONAL DEPRESSION SCREENING DAY October 9th is yet another birthday. Forty-four. Where do they come from so damn fast? Ironically the Commonwealth has just declared this day National Depression Screening Day. Or perhaps ironically not.
Tuesday, October 07, 2003
A Note From A Fan:
Dear Anna Bloviations,
"At K-Mart I flipped thru some costumes with my daughter the other day -- very tacky but just to feign interest in Halloween... They have 'chubby size princess costumes' that I thought you'd like to research along with those new bigger, SUV-size caskets!!!" (see Anna's Sept. 28 blog).
Dear Fan,
No wonder K-Mart is going bankrupt. Most of the bigger retailers have long recognized the growing trend towards plus sizes and have simply incorporated bigger sizes into their regular departments thus avoiding having to use adjectives that might demean the customer e.g. chubby or husky. Here's More (no pun intended).
Regards, Anna
This 'chubby' trend is one that more and more often I come in direct contact with i.e. on whom do you think a heavy person is going to spill his or her extra poundage when choosing a spot to sit on the train? The other big guy already spilling, or all 125 lbs. of me? Ever notice how often passengers on planes request a seatbelt extender these days? Or how about all of that annoying crunching at the movie theater as patrons munch loudly through their XXL barrels of buttered popcorn? Or why does a Size 4 fit me fine in the States but when I bring a bunch of Size 4 outfits into my dressing room in Europe they are usually way-too-small-for-me?
Experts today have yet to identify what exactly the cause is other than to say, "The reasons aren't fully understood, though the likely causes include high-calorie diets and insufficient exercise." Hmmm. How illuminating.
I've no problem with a little overweight. It's obesity that confounds me. I again go back to the analogy of the 5lb. bag of sugar. Strap 20 of those bags onto your body for a day and see what it's like to be 100 pounds overweight. Now try sixty of those bags to see what it's like being 300 pounds overweight. It is just heartbreaking to see a sixteen-year-old girl with this kind of weight waddling down the street, and unfortunately she now represents 15% of children ages 6-18 in the US.
Well to my snobby and critical European friends and family, I can at least account for about twenty of those extra pounds American adults carry around with them. Put cigarettes back into every American mouth like the rest of the world and I'd bet you'd see a drop of between ten and twenty pounds right there. I would also tell them that Russian women still beat Americans hand's down in the extremely-obese-department. Da! Da! Look At The Chart
OK but how to account for the additional 300-plus pounds...Socio-economically those pounds are predominantly to be found at the lower end. Well if a society constantly barraged you with media messages that happiness was just an Abercrombie-sweater, BMW, trip-to-the-Bahamas, Tiffany's necklace, new dishwasher, and big house away, but you had no chance in hell of ever affording any of that glitter and in fact weren't sure how you were going to scrap together your next rent check, where would you go to get comfort? What gives you instant gratification and doesn't cost a lot? 99 cents at McDonalds, that's what. For the more affluent there's Prozac.
PAY NOW OR PAY LATER. Insurance companies aren't yet picking up the tab for stomach stapling, a procedure more and more obese Americans are having done but they might end up doing so given the astronomical back-end costs associated with diseases linked to obesity. Heh Mr. Insurance, Will You Reimburse me $40,000?
Dear Anna Bloviations,
"At K-Mart I flipped thru some costumes with my daughter the other day -- very tacky but just to feign interest in Halloween... They have 'chubby size princess costumes' that I thought you'd like to research along with those new bigger, SUV-size caskets!!!" (see Anna's Sept. 28 blog).
Dear Fan,
No wonder K-Mart is going bankrupt. Most of the bigger retailers have long recognized the growing trend towards plus sizes and have simply incorporated bigger sizes into their regular departments thus avoiding having to use adjectives that might demean the customer e.g. chubby or husky. Here's More (no pun intended).
Regards, Anna
This 'chubby' trend is one that more and more often I come in direct contact with i.e. on whom do you think a heavy person is going to spill his or her extra poundage when choosing a spot to sit on the train? The other big guy already spilling, or all 125 lbs. of me? Ever notice how often passengers on planes request a seatbelt extender these days? Or how about all of that annoying crunching at the movie theater as patrons munch loudly through their XXL barrels of buttered popcorn? Or why does a Size 4 fit me fine in the States but when I bring a bunch of Size 4 outfits into my dressing room in Europe they are usually way-too-small-for-me?
Experts today have yet to identify what exactly the cause is other than to say, "The reasons aren't fully understood, though the likely causes include high-calorie diets and insufficient exercise." Hmmm. How illuminating.
I've no problem with a little overweight. It's obesity that confounds me. I again go back to the analogy of the 5lb. bag of sugar. Strap 20 of those bags onto your body for a day and see what it's like to be 100 pounds overweight. Now try sixty of those bags to see what it's like being 300 pounds overweight. It is just heartbreaking to see a sixteen-year-old girl with this kind of weight waddling down the street, and unfortunately she now represents 15% of children ages 6-18 in the US.
Well to my snobby and critical European friends and family, I can at least account for about twenty of those extra pounds American adults carry around with them. Put cigarettes back into every American mouth like the rest of the world and I'd bet you'd see a drop of between ten and twenty pounds right there. I would also tell them that Russian women still beat Americans hand's down in the extremely-obese-department. Da! Da! Look At The Chart
OK but how to account for the additional 300-plus pounds...Socio-economically those pounds are predominantly to be found at the lower end. Well if a society constantly barraged you with media messages that happiness was just an Abercrombie-sweater, BMW, trip-to-the-Bahamas, Tiffany's necklace, new dishwasher, and big house away, but you had no chance in hell of ever affording any of that glitter and in fact weren't sure how you were going to scrap together your next rent check, where would you go to get comfort? What gives you instant gratification and doesn't cost a lot? 99 cents at McDonalds, that's what. For the more affluent there's Prozac.
PAY NOW OR PAY LATER. Insurance companies aren't yet picking up the tab for stomach stapling, a procedure more and more obese Americans are having done but they might end up doing so given the astronomical back-end costs associated with diseases linked to obesity. Heh Mr. Insurance, Will You Reimburse me $40,000?
Monday, October 06, 2003
Oh good lord I wouldn't be surprised if you were to soon read in the paper about a mother and daughter both found dead in the B&B apartment they are sharing for another week together -- hands wrapped around each other's throats in a tight stranglehold. Yes the novelty of our mother and daughter 'bonding time' at the B&B has most definitely worn off. The dog is getting edgy too. She is none too happy about the cat she claims is terrorizing her every day that we leave her downstairs while we are gone.
In between the cat fights this weekend, I spent most of my time wiping down the fine powder-like film of sawdust that has settled over every nook and cranny in my house -- the house we still can't move back into until our bathroom is functional again, which looks to be another week. The problem with wiping down everything is that it is like spring pollen on your car; you wash but it is futile. A few hours later the film is back again.
In my attempt to reign in home improvement costs that seem to have taken on a life of their own, I am taking back projects I had assigned to the contractor. Like the painting. I do a better job anyway. I've got red-brick in the dining room; white coffee in the kitchen and my office; I'm thinking of a tobacco or brown-paper-bag color for the living room.
My Austrian mother-in-law would be proud. No one can clean a house like the Austrian and Swiss and during my five-year sojourn in Austria, I picked up a trick or two. After finishing up the kitchen wall with a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore Eggshell Coffee White yesterday afternoon, my eye went to the light switch -- a piece of plastic that for many years has been switched on and off by many hands (some cleaner than others). Next thing you know I have an old toothbrush in hand and am cleaning away the fine black grime on the light switch and in the crevices of the screws holding on the plate.... I know. I know. But when my house finally is pulled back together -- most of the walls painted, floors re-finished, glass polished, wood furniture re-oiled, light switches brushed clean, I am sure that there will be a cumulative "WOW" effect that should we sell the house will be worth my ravaged hands.
Hubby is in the U.K. giving a 60-slide presentation to the sales force -- he is enviably oblivious to all of these endless logistical and tactical strings to be considered and dealt with here at home let alone the mess. If daughter and I survive each other over the next week, you might instead read in the paper of a deranged mother and daughter (and dog for that matter) attacking clueless hubby/dad/master who called out "Hello?" as he walked into his gleaming house from his 11-day business trip abroad.
My new subway read is the Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason. I finally finished Franzen's The Corrections. For about a week thereafter, I was feeling positively FUNCTIONAL sans the DYS.
In between the cat fights this weekend, I spent most of my time wiping down the fine powder-like film of sawdust that has settled over every nook and cranny in my house -- the house we still can't move back into until our bathroom is functional again, which looks to be another week. The problem with wiping down everything is that it is like spring pollen on your car; you wash but it is futile. A few hours later the film is back again.
In my attempt to reign in home improvement costs that seem to have taken on a life of their own, I am taking back projects I had assigned to the contractor. Like the painting. I do a better job anyway. I've got red-brick in the dining room; white coffee in the kitchen and my office; I'm thinking of a tobacco or brown-paper-bag color for the living room.
My Austrian mother-in-law would be proud. No one can clean a house like the Austrian and Swiss and during my five-year sojourn in Austria, I picked up a trick or two. After finishing up the kitchen wall with a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore Eggshell Coffee White yesterday afternoon, my eye went to the light switch -- a piece of plastic that for many years has been switched on and off by many hands (some cleaner than others). Next thing you know I have an old toothbrush in hand and am cleaning away the fine black grime on the light switch and in the crevices of the screws holding on the plate.... I know. I know. But when my house finally is pulled back together -- most of the walls painted, floors re-finished, glass polished, wood furniture re-oiled, light switches brushed clean, I am sure that there will be a cumulative "WOW" effect that should we sell the house will be worth my ravaged hands.
Hubby is in the U.K. giving a 60-slide presentation to the sales force -- he is enviably oblivious to all of these endless logistical and tactical strings to be considered and dealt with here at home let alone the mess. If daughter and I survive each other over the next week, you might instead read in the paper of a deranged mother and daughter (and dog for that matter) attacking clueless hubby/dad/master who called out "Hello?" as he walked into his gleaming house from his 11-day business trip abroad.
My new subway read is the Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason. I finally finished Franzen's The Corrections. For about a week thereafter, I was feeling positively FUNCTIONAL sans the DYS.
Friday, October 03, 2003
THE ARNOLD CIRCUS HAS INFILTRATED MASSACHUSETTS -- I am starting to think that perhaps unbeknownst to me I was abducted by aliens with a cruel sense of humor and that said aliens have dropped me onto another planet very similar-looking to Earth save for the fact that its inhabitants are hell bent on seeing me in a straight jacket pounding my head against a wall... Or maybe, unbeknownst to me, I am like Jim Carey in the Truman Show -- a hapless in-the-dark stooge caught up in a work of theater I think is the world. Maybe the show is called Do Dumb Things in the World and Watch Anna Go Insane. OK Television Audience, we know that she was just dissin' her home state of California being so far gone that it looks like the Terminator has a serious shot at the Governor's office. Let's see what she does if we print in the newspaper that her surrogate state Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts is set to endorse Arnold Schwarzenegger for Governor of California. And while we're at it, let's have a canary yellow Hummer pull up next to her at the subway station parking lot this morning and have a twenty-something guy get out whom she recognizes from the town she lives in and which begs the question as to why he needs such a colossal-afront-to-the-planet to drive 12 miles on a perfectly-paved flat road.
THE TELEMARKETER CALLS ARE FOR YOU SUCKER, NOT ME Pretty funny that 11 of the top executives who are challenging the federal registry in court have themselves listed their telephone numbers on the Do-Not-Call-List.
AN OBESE DOG VS. A NON-OBESE DOG A big upside to the B & B where I am staying this week is that my friend invited our dog to stay as well. Heidi is a ten-year-old Australian Shepard -- a very sharp Shepard in the sharp Shepard department. She is well exercised and eats a healthy dog-appropriate diet. The only annoying incurable trait that she exhibits is the high-pitched-ear-piercing yap that she feels compelled to let the neighborhood hear each and every time we head out the door for a walk. This lasts for about one minute and then she stops. Basically the more exercise you give her the more she wants i.e. you cannot get the dog tired; she just gets in better and better shape. So in some respects she is high maintenance.
Having tasted the freedom of the romp outdoors, having played with a tennis ball or Frisbee regularly, having been trained to understand the boundaries of a world filled with cars, squirrels, and small children, she knows the difference between a good day and a day where her masters are too tired or busy to let her be an active member of the world we introduced her to. And boy does she let her disappointment be known if we don't live up to our contract with her. ENTER OBESE SADE Sade is my friend's two-year-old flat-coated retriever tub who is keeping my dog company at the B & B. Sweet as a pea, complacent, and relaxed, she carries around her leash in her mouth not knowing its purpose. Her expectations are few; her leash her pacifier. Is she unhappy? No I don't think so. She is surrounded by a loving family. The fireplace is warm and she is content to lie in front of it. The food plentiful. The cats her friends. THE PARALLEL -- I will leave it to you to draw parallels to our lethargic, water-bottle-sucking, stuffed-with-over-sized-portions-of-food nation and my dog story....
THE TELEMARKETER CALLS ARE FOR YOU SUCKER, NOT ME Pretty funny that 11 of the top executives who are challenging the federal registry in court have themselves listed their telephone numbers on the Do-Not-Call-List.
AN OBESE DOG VS. A NON-OBESE DOG A big upside to the B & B where I am staying this week is that my friend invited our dog to stay as well. Heidi is a ten-year-old Australian Shepard -- a very sharp Shepard in the sharp Shepard department. She is well exercised and eats a healthy dog-appropriate diet. The only annoying incurable trait that she exhibits is the high-pitched-ear-piercing yap that she feels compelled to let the neighborhood hear each and every time we head out the door for a walk. This lasts for about one minute and then she stops. Basically the more exercise you give her the more she wants i.e. you cannot get the dog tired; she just gets in better and better shape. So in some respects she is high maintenance.
Having tasted the freedom of the romp outdoors, having played with a tennis ball or Frisbee regularly, having been trained to understand the boundaries of a world filled with cars, squirrels, and small children, she knows the difference between a good day and a day where her masters are too tired or busy to let her be an active member of the world we introduced her to. And boy does she let her disappointment be known if we don't live up to our contract with her. ENTER OBESE SADE Sade is my friend's two-year-old flat-coated retriever tub who is keeping my dog company at the B & B. Sweet as a pea, complacent, and relaxed, she carries around her leash in her mouth not knowing its purpose. Her expectations are few; her leash her pacifier. Is she unhappy? No I don't think so. She is surrounded by a loving family. The fireplace is warm and she is content to lie in front of it. The food plentiful. The cats her friends. THE PARALLEL -- I will leave it to you to draw parallels to our lethargic, water-bottle-sucking, stuffed-with-over-sized-portions-of-food nation and my dog story....
Thursday, October 02, 2003
Extreme Ironing How pleasing to see this article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal yesterday and I do think I might be considered very qualified to join this new sport. I have long had a penchant for ironing (see Saturday, July 19 2003 blog). Or here is an excerpt:
Admittedly one of the stranger things I do while ironing is to envision an overhead video camera taping what would be equivalent to watching a professional sporting event on television, but a sporting event that requires the commentators to speak in a soft-spoken voice -- much like golf. I am the Tiger Woods of ironing. I imagine two moderated whispers giving play-by-play commentary with respect to my intricate ironing finesse. Occasionally they also make reference to the inferior techniques of my inferior invisible competitors.
MUSEUM PIECE REALITY When I was a girl, I remember my mother inviting friends over to our little San Francisco apartment to play bridge about once a week. They sat around a kitchen table my step-father had crafted from old planks he had found near his art studio -- smoking like chimneys they would, and drinking a gallon bottle(s) of cheap Gallo wine with a screw-cap top because that is all they could afford and because, well, savoring sips of buttery Chardonnay from a bottle that required a cork screw really wasn't the point of the evening anyway. Occasionally someone would remember to walk down the hallway to the living room to put on a new record on the phonograph or flip the record and carefully lower the needle to hear Side B. There would be a crackle until the needle found the first groove and then music. On these carousing evenings of bridge, I could usually be found on the living room floor leaning against an enormous pillow my mother had made from a south-west-Indian-patterned material, and had stuffed with two sacks of peanut-sized bits of foam rubber. Here I sat to watch my favorite show, the Mod Squad -- the black-and-white, rabbit-eared TV and I impervious to Chet Baker and his band wafting out of the loud speakers. I could tell you that we had one black rotary telephone with a party line, which for the too-young-to-know crowd meant that you shared a line with another Bell Telephone subscriber (Bell being the only telephone company one could subscribe to). There was no way to tell if the phone was in use other than to pick up the receiver and listen for a dial tone. If instead you heard voices, you quickly hung up or issued a perfunctory 'oh, sorry' and then hung up. I could tell you too that parked outside in the driveway was my mother's Datsun 1600 SP311 convertible -- at the time an affordable racy silver sports car that I might compare to a Miata today. Had she held on to it, the car would probably be worth a fortune; only 23,000 were made and I never see hide-nor-tail of one on the roads (Click Here and Scroll Down to the Datsun Fairlady 1600 to See What One Looked Like). I could tell you that I had just recently grown out of saddle shoes and had metal roller skates with a key to tighten them up snug to my Converse sneakers. The list goes on and suffice to say that none of the above-mentioned artifacts are, or ever were, a part of my own kids' reality growing up. If I were to detail the above-mentioned evening to my children, it would simply not provoke a reaction other than maybe a renewed confirmation of how old their mother is. Whereas if I told this story to someone closer to my age they would likely come to certain conclusions about my family life. At the very least I would get a raised eyebrow about the gallon bottle of Gallo.
Which brings me to Screw Caps -- a perfect example of the clean-slate marketing approach that allows marketers to repackage old products that not one generation before would have elicited stifled snickers, if not a horrified sneer. The above link is from Paul Reidinger's Without Reservations, a regularly featured column in the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper (SFBG), and one of my favorite reads of the week. Reidinger is a restaurant critic extraordinaire, and also offers up insightful culinary commentary that is remarkable in its ability to use gastronomy as a barometer of the world at large. If you are planning a trip out to San Francisco and want to know the restaurant to go to, Reidinger is a must read!
Admittedly one of the stranger things I do while ironing is to envision an overhead video camera taping what would be equivalent to watching a professional sporting event on television, but a sporting event that requires the commentators to speak in a soft-spoken voice -- much like golf. I am the Tiger Woods of ironing. I imagine two moderated whispers giving play-by-play commentary with respect to my intricate ironing finesse. Occasionally they also make reference to the inferior techniques of my inferior invisible competitors.
MUSEUM PIECE REALITY When I was a girl, I remember my mother inviting friends over to our little San Francisco apartment to play bridge about once a week. They sat around a kitchen table my step-father had crafted from old planks he had found near his art studio -- smoking like chimneys they would, and drinking a gallon bottle(s) of cheap Gallo wine with a screw-cap top because that is all they could afford and because, well, savoring sips of buttery Chardonnay from a bottle that required a cork screw really wasn't the point of the evening anyway. Occasionally someone would remember to walk down the hallway to the living room to put on a new record on the phonograph or flip the record and carefully lower the needle to hear Side B. There would be a crackle until the needle found the first groove and then music. On these carousing evenings of bridge, I could usually be found on the living room floor leaning against an enormous pillow my mother had made from a south-west-Indian-patterned material, and had stuffed with two sacks of peanut-sized bits of foam rubber. Here I sat to watch my favorite show, the Mod Squad -- the black-and-white, rabbit-eared TV and I impervious to Chet Baker and his band wafting out of the loud speakers. I could tell you that we had one black rotary telephone with a party line, which for the too-young-to-know crowd meant that you shared a line with another Bell Telephone subscriber (Bell being the only telephone company one could subscribe to). There was no way to tell if the phone was in use other than to pick up the receiver and listen for a dial tone. If instead you heard voices, you quickly hung up or issued a perfunctory 'oh, sorry' and then hung up. I could tell you too that parked outside in the driveway was my mother's Datsun 1600 SP311 convertible -- at the time an affordable racy silver sports car that I might compare to a Miata today. Had she held on to it, the car would probably be worth a fortune; only 23,000 were made and I never see hide-nor-tail of one on the roads (Click Here and Scroll Down to the Datsun Fairlady 1600 to See What One Looked Like). I could tell you that I had just recently grown out of saddle shoes and had metal roller skates with a key to tighten them up snug to my Converse sneakers. The list goes on and suffice to say that none of the above-mentioned artifacts are, or ever were, a part of my own kids' reality growing up. If I were to detail the above-mentioned evening to my children, it would simply not provoke a reaction other than maybe a renewed confirmation of how old their mother is. Whereas if I told this story to someone closer to my age they would likely come to certain conclusions about my family life. At the very least I would get a raised eyebrow about the gallon bottle of Gallo.
Which brings me to Screw Caps -- a perfect example of the clean-slate marketing approach that allows marketers to repackage old products that not one generation before would have elicited stifled snickers, if not a horrified sneer. The above link is from Paul Reidinger's Without Reservations, a regularly featured column in the San Francisco Bay Guardian newspaper (SFBG), and one of my favorite reads of the week. Reidinger is a restaurant critic extraordinaire, and also offers up insightful culinary commentary that is remarkable in its ability to use gastronomy as a barometer of the world at large. If you are planning a trip out to San Francisco and want to know the restaurant to go to, Reidinger is a must read!
Wednesday, October 01, 2003
Well it's not April Fool’s Month obviously but I wish it were. So now I just keep hoping that one of the television networks will tell us that the California Governor's Circus is a new pilot for a television program to compete with Bachelors, or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, or one of those surreal MTV reality shows. If this is not the case and Schwarzenegger ends up the new Governor of California, I'm afraid I might have to nix my plans to move back... Come on Democrats! Get off your cynical self-infatuated butts and vote!
My week’s sojourn at the B & B while the floors get re-finished is working out quite nicely. In its heyday, this 300-year-old house looked out majestically to the harbor as cod-laden fishing vessels and small trade boats came into port. As the family's fortunes took a turn for the worse (I’m speculating here), parcels of land around the house were sold off until it reached its present state of being almost completely boxed in by other houses. Nonetheless, a special charm remains -- particularly the third floor loft which my friend has transformed into a bed and breakfast suite with glimpses of water views from its quaint windows. The whole house has been completely refurbished following a major fire last year and is now an architectural masterpiece. How they got those massive tree-sized timbers down the narrow driveway, up to the third floor, and then managed to criss-cross these massive 1200 lb., 35-foot-long Spruce beams into a Swedish blond lattice of Vermont yellow pine and spruce I cannot imagine. I’m not sure that the Historical Society knows this but there are now two beautiful skylights that spill centripetal rays of warming light into the living room below. Whoever did the work was an artisan to be sure but there had to have been a fair number of expletives expended getting the job done. The plumber did an impressive job too. It is a 300-year-old house with eight shower-hungry adults living in its bowels and yet the water is always hot and the pressure amazing.
I don't dare go out at night though. Because you see in the other suite upstairs still lives my friend’s foster child. He had moved out for a while but I guess he is back. Three teenaged girls weren’t enough for my friend and so she took in an eighteen-year-old boy her eldest daughter brought home one day like a stray cat. He is adorable but TROUBLE is his middle name. I'm sure he would like nothing more than to distract daughter from her SAT studies for a few hours... Every evening his rock music pulses through the thin walls that separate our two suites. Probably it is just my protective-mother-imagination, but the rhythmic drumbeats seem to thump our membranous wall like a mating call -- our wall a condom (a good quality one I hope) protecting my daughter from the adorable trouble getting stoned on the other side. Oh please. Just let her get through all of this college-application-crap and into the school of her choice (or at least the fourth school of her choice). I’m so close to the finish line and do not need any unhappy nor unintended surprises at this point.
A girl my son went to school with died last night in a car crash. Drinking. Speeding. A car wrapped around a tree. Nineteen. Poof. Gone.
My week’s sojourn at the B & B while the floors get re-finished is working out quite nicely. In its heyday, this 300-year-old house looked out majestically to the harbor as cod-laden fishing vessels and small trade boats came into port. As the family's fortunes took a turn for the worse (I’m speculating here), parcels of land around the house were sold off until it reached its present state of being almost completely boxed in by other houses. Nonetheless, a special charm remains -- particularly the third floor loft which my friend has transformed into a bed and breakfast suite with glimpses of water views from its quaint windows. The whole house has been completely refurbished following a major fire last year and is now an architectural masterpiece. How they got those massive tree-sized timbers down the narrow driveway, up to the third floor, and then managed to criss-cross these massive 1200 lb., 35-foot-long Spruce beams into a Swedish blond lattice of Vermont yellow pine and spruce I cannot imagine. I’m not sure that the Historical Society knows this but there are now two beautiful skylights that spill centripetal rays of warming light into the living room below. Whoever did the work was an artisan to be sure but there had to have been a fair number of expletives expended getting the job done. The plumber did an impressive job too. It is a 300-year-old house with eight shower-hungry adults living in its bowels and yet the water is always hot and the pressure amazing.
I don't dare go out at night though. Because you see in the other suite upstairs still lives my friend’s foster child. He had moved out for a while but I guess he is back. Three teenaged girls weren’t enough for my friend and so she took in an eighteen-year-old boy her eldest daughter brought home one day like a stray cat. He is adorable but TROUBLE is his middle name. I'm sure he would like nothing more than to distract daughter from her SAT studies for a few hours... Every evening his rock music pulses through the thin walls that separate our two suites. Probably it is just my protective-mother-imagination, but the rhythmic drumbeats seem to thump our membranous wall like a mating call -- our wall a condom (a good quality one I hope) protecting my daughter from the adorable trouble getting stoned on the other side. Oh please. Just let her get through all of this college-application-crap and into the school of her choice (or at least the fourth school of her choice). I’m so close to the finish line and do not need any unhappy nor unintended surprises at this point.
A girl my son went to school with died last night in a car crash. Drinking. Speeding. A car wrapped around a tree. Nineteen. Poof. Gone.
