Politics Friday

Still very much considering this Tumblr rollover... Perhaps next week. In the meantime, just a few more fun political links. (You know, to counteract all that ridiculous French pop music.)

First, the worst op-ed ever. Or, at least, just a very bad one. I don't so much care if they denounce McCain or not (though the press could stand to do that a bit more), but these arguments against Obama continue to be moronic.

People keep asking how Obama could have lost in PA after outspending Hillary 3 to 1 -- and talking about how it's impossible for him to win white men. Well, he gained support among white men, seniors, white women, and those earning less than $50,000 a year compared to Ohio. Plus, on the subject of outspending, well, he has more money to spend -- and doesn't that say something about the viability of his candidacy?

Finally, on the absolute absurdity of the Clinton campaign's "We are winning the popular vote" argument. That only applies if you include Florida and Michigan, where Obama wasn't even on the ballot, and ignore the caucuses. For someone who denies that the election is "about the math" and given that her supporters were, until recently, arguing that this is a race about delegates, she seems to be getting desperate. Seriously, it's one thing to argue that she is gaining back momentum, and that's why she should stay in the race. It's another thing to bitch about a system that she was totally okay with when it started... and that is an established way of nominating candidates in this country. You can't change the rules in the middle of the game, and I just hope this spin isn't actually convincing anyone.

Ooh, and! Just as a bonus, a bit on the candidate's spouses. Bill Clinton is still a liar (make sure to read the transcripts). And McCain says mean things to his wife. I don't have any dirt on Michelle Obama. I kind of think she's awesome.

Yeah, so I read DailyKos a lot. So sue me. This is literally a brain dump of everything I've talked about and thought about in the past day and a half.

Yelle

I have these new friends who are Francophiles. They both studied in Paris and one of them lived there for a while too after college. Thanks to these girls, I've now been introduced to something awesome: Yelle.



I had heard of Yelle through random music blogs, but never really taken the time to listen to her. She is this fab French pop singer who is basically like Feist if Feist was really bouncy and crazy and fist-pumping on stage and actually French instead of just something of a Francophile (and Canadian, which is close-ish to being French). I have no idea what any of her lyrics mean except sometimes she says "Yeah!" and apparently she has a song making fun of the "French Eminem" (to quote my friend Zoe) and another one about her best friend, her vibrator. And she puts on a damn good show. We saw her at the Independent and it was basically like a great dance party with lots of fist pumping and jumping. I have such a girl crush now. I mean, just look at her:

And if you think that outfit is ridiculous, you should have seen her dress last night -- red silk, with "smells like teen spirit" in giant capital sparkly black letters on the front and an outline of a clown face on the back. Loves it!

Equal pay?

Thanks to Justin for drawing my attention to this fun piece of news:

Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.

"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."

Hate away, please.

I especially like this part:

McCain stated his opposition to the bill as he campaigned in rural eastern Kentucky, where poverty is worse among women than men. The Arizona senator said he was familiar with the disparity but that there are better ways to help women find better paying jobs.

"They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else," McCain said. "And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them.

Because, you know, clearly the only reason why women are not being paid equally is because instead of being educated and training they were birthin' babies.

(here)

Electability

Aside from the racism stuff in PA, this was my must-read of yesterday (another casualty of quick blogging as a result of Blogger's 4pm downtime incompetence). It basically puts a big hole in Clinton's "more electable" argument.

I should add that I don't mean to antagonize people with this. I don't think Clinton should withdraw from the race, and I don't think Obama's campaign thinks that either. But it will be very hard for her to win it, and I do think that the longer Obama and Clinton struggle with each other the better McCain's chances are in the fall. So my sights are on that. I do believe that the Democratic party leaders should try to push superdelegates to make a decision by or soon after the May 6 primaries, because we need time as a party to regroup and recover from all this madness. And, I also believe that the decision should be in Obama's favor (obviously). I just wanted to clarify my standing on this for my pro-Clinton readers, and I hope you think I'm being fair-minded.

"Just too extreme for NC"?

I wanted to post this yesterday but Blogger was down for a scheduled update or something. It always goes down at like 4pm PST, which I don't think the people of Blogger realize is the worst time for it to be down because it's the end of the work day here and you are always sort of stalling for time because you can't start a new project at work but instead are just trying to do little things. At least, I am. However. Back to it.

So the news of yesterday is that the North Carolina Republican party plans to run an ad starting Monday that shows clips of Reverend Wright and says Barack Obama is "just too extreme for North Carolina." It's ostensibly against the two Democrats running for governor there, but obviously it's not really, and it's more useless shit. What's interesting about it is that McCain is denouncing the ad and saying that "There's no place for that kind of campaigning, the American people don't want it, period." I thought this was pretty fascinating because that piece on McCain in the David Foster Wallace book I mentioned a while ago on this blog talks about how smooth McCain and his team were in 2000 as far as subtly negotiating the negative aspects of campaigning, in order to benefit from others' negativity and gloss over his own. Sadly I loaned the book to my mom, so I can't find the spot, but it was nevertheless the first thing I thought of when, at the gym today, I saw some bit on CNN saying that McCain can look like a friendly teddy bear by denouncing the ad, but that he will still benefit from the ad being out there because a) it's already out (God bless, or is it God damn?, YouTube), and b) it's not like he really has much right to complain about it I guess. Of course his campaign vehemently denied that charge, but it's still pretty fascinating.

Another reason I'd like to see Obama go up against McCain this November is that I really think that it might lead to a more civil campaign than if Clinton was in the race, just because too many people hate her and because she's such a lightning rod for all this quibbling shit.

The ad has been taken down in a few spots (like the New York Times' Caucus), but you should probably be able to see it over at Wonkette. It's classic terrible campaign ad.

Race in PA

So, this will surely bring out the comments, or the peanut gallery, or you know, the two people I have reading this who post a lot when I talk about things like this (you know who you are):

Sixteen percent of white voters said race mattered in deciding who they voted for, and just 54 percent of those voters said they would support Mr. Obama in a general election; 27 percent of them said they would vote for Mr. McCain if Mr. Obama was the Democratic nominee, and 16 percent said they would not vote at all.

Just fantastic. Right before I read this, I had been thinking the obviously stereotypical although still partly true thought: "doesn't success among white working class voters in rural areas probably mean success among the more racist sections of our society?"

According to these exit polls quoted in the Times, the answer to my question is essentially yes. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here's my favorite person ever, Nora Ephron, on the subject:

This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don't mean people, I mean white men. How ironic is this? After all this time, after all these stupid articles about how powerless white men are and how they can't even get into college because of overachieving women and affirmative action and mean lady teachers who expected them to sit still in the third grade even though they were all suffering from terminal attention deficit disorder -- after all this, they turn out (surprise!) to have all the power. (As they always did, by the way; I hope you didn't believe any of those articles.) To put it bluntly, the next president will be elected by them: the outcome of Tuesday's primary will depend on whether they go for Hillary or Obama, and the outcome of the general election will depend on whether enough of them vote for McCain. A lot of them will: white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them.

I had to add that last quip at the end because Nora's acerbity when it comes to men just warms my cold heart.

(Before you say it, yes, I know that like 90% of black voters vote for Obama. So I get that this is a two way street. But I reserve the right to be indignant about this kind of example of enduring racism in this country.)

(Two more posts on the subject here and here.)

Dysfunctional Family Tree

Ah, further clicking on websites is good. This cartoon makes my drawing fingers itch. I really would love to do a similar chart for my family, except, you know, that might be bad somehow. (Not that I don't love my family, but exaggerating weird characteristics would result in a similar chart.) At least, on the Internet it would be.

(via)

"the next Hillary"

I have a friend who is working on the Clinton campaign. She's actually working, not just volunteering, as it's part of her regular job (she works for a small, Emily's List type place). We have had a few diplomatic conversations about the campaign and I respect the reasons she's supporting Clinton (basically it seems to boil down to the "Day One" experience argument, plus feminism). One thing we talked about this morning, in the middle of her Election Day madness (she is on the ground in Pittsburgh this week), was how, win or lose, what we'd like to take from this election is this idea that we are the next powerful women in this country. As she put it: "what I realized last night was that if Hillary doesn't get this I think that as a young woman and a feminist this is our wakeup call, this is our launching ground. It will be up to our generation to produce the next Hillary."

I'm not supporting Clinton, but that is not to say I don't incredibly sympathize with her. I do agree that she is in a tough spot, and a lot of the reasons she is disliked and forced into corners and coming out to "twist the knife" as Obama put it is because things are not easy for her as a powerful woman in a male-dominated field, or even a male-dominated world. She is damned if she does, and damned if she doesn't. And I don't like the way that makes her behave (and I also don't think that her personality is entirely a product of the way our society treats women, but it's a significant part of it), and I want Obama to win because I want fresh blood and I believe in his movement and I think it's amazing that someone has gotten the whole country excited, and for a lot of reasons. But I do want a woman president someday, sooner rather than later, and I think that my friend is right about this being a wake-up call. We have to be able to find another way to be a woman in this country, to embrace our femininity and our strength, to be powerful without being or being called bitchy or shrewish, to show weakness from time to time without losing our footing and the respect of others. I hope we can do that, and I believe we can. (Yes, we can!)

On that note, I've got my fingers crossed for Obama in Pennsylvania today. Polls are all over the place and there's no way to predict, I'm just hoping for something good.

Footnotes.

Orges sent this to me, and it's hilarious.

(via)

Bookish brews

This. Is. Awesome.

Now I'm about to go on a ramble. The other day I was idly talking to Dan about how I could accompany my autobiography with a beer tasting. Much like how Rob in High Fidelity can musically illustrate his life, I can illustrate my life through beer. Then yesterday Justin sent me this link, which argues (not unreasonably) that starting an autobiography about your life with booze is one of 40 things that all drunkards should do. So the autobeerography idea got a little tainted by the whiff of, well, alcoholism. However. I still think it's pretty awesome. I would start with tiny sips of Miller (an homage to my dad letting me sip it as a kid). Then I'd move on to a Corona with lime, the first adult beer I ever had. Then, a game of quarters with Coors Light bottles (my hands used to actually get injured from twisting off bottlecap after bottlecap. I'm still a little shocked that my quarters skills were so good, and that I survived). Some Rolling Rock, because, believe it or not, that was my beer of choice for most of sophomore year (I would hide my personal stash in my closet to keep other people away from it). Then on to some English bitters or real ales, in honor of my time abroad in Oxford (really, when my beer appreciation began). Then some good ol' American craft brews, like Fat Tire or Sierra Nevada, my beers of senior year. And then Tequiza, the beer that got me and Sean started on our mad beer obsession. Some highlights from said obsession, including a New York region tasting in honor of the 60 beers I lugged back across the country. Then I'd have to throw in some PBR, because without it San Francisco would not be the same, and finally some various killer beers I've had recently, like perhaps a Magnolia strong beer, and a Double Daddy.

Anyway, all that is just to say that this beer and books conceit is really cool, and if I wrote a novel I'd definitely pair it with a beer. The question is, which one?!

(from Bookslut)

Move On, indeed.

Primary story of the day: Clinton trash talking MoveOn.org

In some ways I feel like I need a Tumblr to post about these thing the way I want to. A quick hit. On the other hand I wonder if I need to post, all over the internet, the blog posts that anyone else could read on their own without me directing them there. Still, this one is pretty interesting. Clinton gave Obama shit for being overly liberal and elite (elitism being the main charge, but too liberal being the submerged innuendo, because you know all those anti-gun gay San Francisco atheists who go to Obama fundraisers), and now she is rejecting MoveOn for being too liberal, and all I can think is that this is all a good sign. Not for the election, but for the truth in the idea that Obama is the candidate working to change up the stereotypes and privileges and old way of doing politics. At least, that is one way of looking at it.

I'm tired of hearing Hillary Clinton sound like a Republican talk show host. Well, a mild one.

Not long now until we see how all this shit plays out in a real election. Crossing my fingers.

America and Muslim countries

There is a pretty interesting article about the founding fathers relationship with religion, and, therefore, the separation of church and state. All this bullshit about the country being founded by evangelicals is wrong, which I guess I sort of knew (Franklin, Jefferson and all that), but didn't really know with a lot of conviction, I suppose. I guess I figured when people talked about that they meant all the Pilgrims and such, not the founding fathers themselves. However, that's not the issue here. What stood out to me in the article (although I liked the whole thing) was this particular passage:

In June of 1797, just three months before Tyler’s novel was published, the American captives in North Africa were freed by the Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President John Adams. The treaty’s Article 11, an assurance that the United States would not engage in a vengeful holy war, read, “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian Religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Mussulmen; and, as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions, shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

I know we're not in a holy war or anything, and terrorism is a legitimate problem, but it's just an interesting comparison to George W's language about evil and such.

You can read the whole thing here. (That was just a tiny part of it, most of it is not about Muslim countries at all.)

Square fruits

I've seen this everywhere but it's pretty cool. This guy took great photos of foods that take the shapes of their containers. I could really imagine these blown up big on someone's wall, maybe at a sort of hip diner type restaurant even, but at a hip someplace. My favorite one is the raisins, although the peas made me kind of long for eating frozen peas, still frozen. On that note, it's pretty much frozen grape season.

Related! I just found out yesterday that in Japan, watermelons are square, to make them easier to fit in the fridge. Seriously!

Family Portraits

My dad sent me this awesome old photo today. I clearly remember when we took it... I don't remember why, but it was early in the morning on some weekend when I was in high school, and for some reason Dad dragged us out to take photos even though we were all kind of disheveled still. Actually, our best family photos are taken in situations like that. What amazes me about this one is my hair. I'm like some kind of Lady Godiva or something, only with clothes.

See what I mean about the best family photos being taken when we're all disheveled?

Olafur Eliasson

I'm still bummed I only got to see the Olafur Eliasson exhibit at the SFMoMA once. It was really amazing... sort of awe inspiring, the kind of exhibit where you are sort of stunned into silence. This morning I stumbled across the New York Times review of the Eliasson show happening in New York right now, at the MoMA and P.S.1. Man, way to make me jealous I don't live in New York. There is a slideshow, however, so I can pretend. Plus, I can be satisfied that I got to see the Weather Project in London approximately a million times. If only I could be some kind of self-sustained billionaire and could fly back and forth the country for weekend trips to see things like Murakami exhibits and Patrick Stewart in Macbeth. Blah.

Plus, Olafur Eliasson is so fun to say.

London Town

I am a sucker for the New York Times' "36 hours in..." travel feature. I don't really know why -- the kinds of things they recommend would take much more than 36 hours, but I guess you don't need to take it literally. I was thrilled to see a piece on London this morning, and then even more excited when I realized it was 36 hours in literary London! I really need to go back there, primarily because the three days I spent in London when it was actually sunny and somewhat springlike were some of the best I ever had there, and I think a week sometime in the summer would be awesome, albeit tourist heavy. (Compare that to the city on Christmas Day.) But I've never seen a play at the Globe! I've never had a picnic in a park there! So this piece definitely stoked the flames of London love. I haven't been to any of the spots except the Globe and the British Library, which, by the way, is amazing. One of my favorite experiences there.

Now, to sit at work and be grumpy.

He sucks, that's why.

Another reason to not like McCain.

Obama's post-debate thoughts

Obama bites back. He's right, too.

Thinking of David Cross sexually freaks me out.

This is really weird.

Facebook Lexicon

Facebook's Lexicon is probably the coolest thing Facebook has done since photos. I haven't played around on it that much but just the examples I've seen have been such a glimpse at the zeitgeist, it's more interesting (sorry to be saying this, employer) than Google Zeitgeist. Look at these two links and the spikes... the insane clustering around New Year's Eve and Halloween in one, and then just Halloween in the other. The first one is especially interesting.

What I want is to be able to localize it just to San Francisco and check out how frequently people post "drunk" or "hangover" on the day of and after Bay to Breakers, otherwise known (at least by some of us) as the best day of the year.

Edit: I just checked out how "Clinton" and "Obama" compare and it's pretty interesting too. You get both "Super Tuesdays" (Feb and March), and there's an obvious Obama bias, no surprise. I added "Hillary" and that ups the Clinton count, no surprise.

Credit goes to Peattie for pointing this out to me.

Debating the debates

I've reached this point where I show up to work and read like 800 blog posts and news articles purely about the 2008 Democratic primary campaigns. Literally. I can't help myself, and I feel like each one, separately, contains at least one nugget of awesome important information. I've been trying to decide if that just means I've been sucked in or if it's because what I should do is turn this blog into what it has been almost by default lately, which is a source for pro-Obama and anti-McCain news. After the debate last night, you know I have lots of opinions. I didn't watch it but all sources seem to indicate it was a disaster, not entirely because of Obama's performance (though that was, again according to all sources, not great), but because the ABC moderators spent the entire first half of the debate talking about entirely pointless non-issues instead of anything serious that is actually facing the country. No war, no health care, no economy. Just all the bullshit. It's incredibly not surprising and incredibly disappointing and incredibly rage-fueling. And Hillary Clinton just went with it, which I know does not surprise many people (at least those who are anti-Clinton liberals), but I had been clinging (oh! bad word) to this notion that Clinton was not as bad as everyone said. But after all this, I'm just so frustrated that she's buying into this, or rather, that she's selling this. She is not a victim right now, she's a perpetrator, and I get the feeling it's been like this all along and I just didn't really want to admit it. But she is doing John McCain's job for him. How royally fucked up is that?

A few links...
-The entire debate on NYTimes website
-I've become freakishly hooked on Andrew Sullivan's blog, perhaps because he's as information-addicted as I am, even though he's one of those conservatives where I don't actually understand why he's conservative, and in general I try to read liberal-biased media (ha! some would say that's all media, but after yesterday, really, how could you agree?), even though that sounds stupid of me
-"Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?"
-A really interesting blog post about whether or not there will be backlash against Clinton for her negativity, and a lot about the "narratives" going on right now in the campaign (this is a "damn the MSM man" moment for me)
-All about the "shoddy, despicable performances" of the moderators last night. Highlight:

Obama was right on the money when he complained about the campaign being bogged down in media-driven inanities and obsessiveness over any misstatement a candidate might make along the way, whether in a speech or while being eavesdropped upon by the opposition. The tactic has been to "take one statement and beat it to death," he said.

-Interesting pair of info about the definition of the "middle class" in America:

Sens. Clinton and Obama used different definitions of “the middle class” in answer to Charlie Gibson’s attempt to extract from them a “no new taxes” on the middle class from them. Hillary Clinton defined the middle class as families earning an income lower than $250,000, a definition with which I’d agree. Basically, that’s all but the top 1% of income earners. Sen. Obama’s definition was families earning an income below $75,000. I think that’s an extremely narrow definition. It doesn’t even include all of the fourth quintile who to me are obviously middle class. (via)

Compare that to this:

Charlie Gibson has been asserting that $200,000 is a solid middle-class income, blissfully unaware that just 3.4 percent of U.S. households have an income of $200,000 or more. You could be richer than 96 percent of your fellow citizens, but still just folks to Gibson.

This one particularly pisses me off because yesterday at the gym I was watching Lou Dobbs (I avoid cable news like the plague except on election returns nights, but it was on the big screen with subtitles) and they showed Michelle Obama talking about how her family was working class and Obama had just recently paid off his student loans and then immediately afterwards, another lame-ass "gotcha" move from the lame-ass TV networks, Dobbs said, with a gleeful look on his face, "But that was just before the Obamas released their 2007 tax returns and they made 4.whatever million dollars this year!" As though this proves that they are elitist, because they make money now. GAH.

I promise I won't exclusively post about this kind of stuff, since I don't exactly want to turn this into a hotbed of controversy, but it's all I can think about this morning. (That, and how to mitigate the effects of the Double Daddy and the Brother David I had at Gestalt last night. Prescription for overdosing on carbohydrates, admittedly in the form of sugar alcohols? MORE carbohydrates! Bring on the cereal and the Vitamin water!)

On a side note, which is not actually a side not but really a segue in my head since that's the way I'm operating today, I kind of feel like making one of those statements where I promise to be honest on my blog more often. Like the fact that I currently am hungover. Or whatever. But the point is just that I feel like I've neglected this poor thing and it could be better than it is.

So apparently the election isn't the only thing on my mind. It's just the primary thing. Which reminds me, if you are an Obama supporter, now would be a good time to donate.

Contemplating

Thinking about switching to Tumblr. How do we all feel about that?

Finding the moon

I just found out about the Knopf "Poem-a-day" mailing list, which apparently exists in April because it's National Poetry Month (incidentally it's also national grilled cheese sandwich month!). I feel like it's copping out somewhat to just pull poems from their list and post them here, as though I found this gemstone in the rough. Still, I wanted to post this one for two reasons. First, that there was a pretty interesting piece about O'Hara in the April 7 New Yorker, and second, that during our time in Belize we had an ongoing debate about where on Earth (forgive the scientific inaccuracy of that cliche) the moon was. We couldn't find it at all, any night, until finally we woke up at 5am to go diving/snorkeling way off the coast and there it was, the moon, glowing real as can be in the balmy morning. So this is in honor of that.

Avenue A

We hardly ever see the moon any more
so no wonder
it's so beautiful when we look up suddenly
and there it is gliding broken-faced over the bridges
brilliantly coursing, soft, and a cool wind fans
your hair over your forehead and your memories
of Red Grooms' locomotive landscape
I want some bourbon/you want some oranges/I love the leather
jacket Norman gave me
and the corduroy coat David
gave you, it is more mysterious than spring, the El Greco
heavens breaking open and then reassembling like lions
in a vast tragic veldt
that is far from our small selves and our temporally united
passions in the cathedral of Januaries


everything is too comprehensible
these are my delicate and caressing poems
I suppose there will be more of those others to come, as in the past
so many!
but for now the moon is revealing itself like a pearl
to my equally naked heart

--Frank O'Hara

The New York Canon

Since I need more lists in my life I was pretty interested when the New York Canon -- all the books about New York that you supposedly need to read (since 1960 or something) -- came out in New York magazine. I am sadly delinquent in reading them though, perhaps because I don't live in New York? Either way, I've only read one -- Kavalier and Clay -- and I have almost zero recollection of it.

What would you consider part of the San Francisco canon? I feel like I wouldn't fare too well at that either. I've never even read "Howl."

Side note: I've only seen 12% of the movies in the "canon," which means... something. I've read less than 4% of the books, though. Wow. It's these kinds of things that lead me to feeling stressed about behind behind in consumption of media.

(hat tip to Ellen for reminding me I meant to write about this)

Food Porn

So maybe it's because I signed up for a 12-week nutritionist program thing at work (because, well, why not?), but I've got food diaries on the brain. I hate to say it because I think it's only cute when tiny little girls say it, but I do really love food. It's just so delicious! (Dumb statement of the day.) It's no wonder, then, that I'm fascinated with blogs of food -- all my recipe blogs, and then these two I discovered the other day. One my friend Sara pointed out to me, and it's the blog of this girl who pretty-near obsessively chronicles her entire diet, including repeats like tofurkey sandwiches and oatmeal. I think the appeal of this one is in the control factor, which thanks to reality and Courtney Martin, I know is part of every woman's thing with food. Or at least it's part of mine. Then, the other blog I discovered through kottke, like everyone else on the Internet, and it's just these two architect women in New York who photograph all their lunches out... and, perhaps more bizarrely, all their incredible delectable afternoon snacks. They are seriously all these divine looking pastries, and I think I read this blog mostly just wondering how the women writing it aren't 600 pounds (which they could be) and diabetic. Still, that kind of wonder-at-delicious-looking food is a sort of fun feeling, even though I doubt that it's entirely healthy for me.

I used to also read Simply Breakfast, which is a photographer who documents all her breakfasts. I did once get a great idea for a breakfast from it, so that is pretty sweet. (Oh man, now having sudden craving for my avocado cheese toast, which I should more accurately call Simply Breakfast's avocado cheese toast.)

Now I think about it I think I am drawn to these sites for the same reason I am drawn to 3191 and Postcards From Yo Momma -- they are like little archaeological records of someone else's life, and I am left to put together the pieces and build up an imaginary person behind the food photos. And the sites also give this impression of order and stillness, the way I imagine my life could be if I were a superwoman.

The Internet is weird, I realize, but I love it.

Titanic food

I'm assuming that this doesn't count as confidential.

My "local" (i.e. 2 minute walk) cafe at work has themes each week. Last week it was something like Chinese takeout. This week I couldn't figure it out, except that I knew there were lots of delicious things (or at least, delicious sounding things. I haven't eaten the whole menu, nor am I likely to) -- baked apples, pork chops, roasted new potatoes, asparagus galore, and so on. I was a little confused, however, by the names of the salads and sandwiches, which were things like "Kate" and "Leo" and ... well, names from the movie Titanic.

Well, then through a series of random events occurring exclusively on e-mail lists I discovered that the theme of the week's menu is all food that was served on the Titanic, which explains so much. Then because I am an internet whore I (accidentally) stumbled across this list of the menu from the last meal served on the Titanic, and I am having a blast comparing it to my work menu. Let's just say that the salmon with mousseline sauce is incredibly delicious. (Though I haven't seen any squab or oysters yet. Even Google has limits.)

Random story!

(via)

Obama, Elitism, etc

Well, I know I'm full of promises for blogging more frequently but I have just been running around like mad. Since returning from Belize, I've had exactly two nights home alone and every other waking minute I've been surrounded by other people. Not exactly conducive to blogging. Also since returning from Belize, I've gotten re-sunburned, thrown one (semi) party, inaugurated the ridiculously amazing summer in San Francisco, taken up my soda habit again, gone to one baseball game (and been offered tickets to two others), and watched the newest episode of the office two and a half times. You get the idea. It's been busy, in the way that my life is always busy for totally unproductive reasons. (Until last night, when I finally paid my taxes and washed all the dishes that have accumulated since last Thursday.)

I need, need, need to do my big Belize post, but that won't happen today. Instead I'd like to post a few takes on the whole Obama "elitism" fracas. I have been trying to catch up on my campaign news, and suddenly I find myself super embedded in all these he-said-she-saids (literally and figuratively!). I believe that Obama could have phrased it all differently, but I don't think this should stand in the way of electing him. (I hope that it blows over in time for Pennsylvania.) I also just finished "Dreams from my father" which was pretty fascinating for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was Obama recounting his time as a community organizer in Chicago, when he spent all his time with the working class (albeit the black urban working class, or however you want to put it), and I never got the sense that he looked down on them. He sympathizes. He understands bitterness, and he is conflicted about elitism and class differences. So I stand by him still.

Here are a few interesting pieces:
-this one, which is comparing Obama's comments to some that Bill Clinton made back in the day
-a piece by Katherine Seelye of the Times, whose columns are consistently fascinating, about how the story was broken (broke?)
-good ol' Arianna Huffington, talking about how Hillary Clinton is using the GOP's tactics to tear down her own party (I normally have a pretty strong resistance to that line in the media, but I'm getting to the point where I agree with Huffington)

On the subject of Huffington, the piece in the New Yorker a few weeks ago about the death of print media/newspapers is actually much more interesting than I expected it to be (despite the incredible irony of the New Yorker, a mag whose average subscriber age has been increasing every year for ages, writing about the death of print media).

More later!

The Grapes of Wrath

I reread the Grapes of Wrath for the first time on the plane home from Belize. (I love plane reading, I finish whole books all the time.) I am now all filled with thoughts from it. It fits in so perfectly with my crazy love of other people. I have three main books/movies that reinforce what should be the obvious ground rule of life, which is that other people are what matter and your relationships with other people are what is sacred in this life. I had dinner with a friend the other night who has just been broken up with, and it was a sad dinner, but it was a happy one too because I felt like I was building another relationship, and like I was being part of a support network for someone. I believe so strongly in the support network. At therapy, just prior to my dinner with my friend, I went on a mini-rant about it, and I kind of feel like the conversations I have with my support network are infinitely more valuable and productive than the ones I have with my therapist. (You may say that perhaps I should get a different therapist, and I agree with you.) But anyway, the point is there are three books that I believe in.

In About a Boy, in the movie at least (I haven't read the book in ages), Marcus decides that "Two people aren't enough. You need backup. You need three at least." Wholeheartedly, I concur. You can never pour all of your anxiety and worry and need into one person, and you can't keep it to yourself either. You need backup.

Then there is Kurt Vonnegut. The advocate for the extended family. I believe in many ways I achieve that with my own "urban family." I need to reread Slapstick so I can find the precise moment where the main character declares that everyone in the country will be assigned new middle names which will connect them to other folks in an artificial family. But really, all of Vonnegut's book reinforce the same point, which is why I love him.

And then there is the Grapes of Wrath. When I read it this time I was shocked by how much more it stood out to me than the last time I read it. It just meant more, resonated more, glowed more, was more luminous. Anyway, so I am about to quote away:

"Before I knowed it, I was sayin' out loud, 'The hell with it! There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. It's all part of the same thing. And some of the things folks do is nice, and some ain't nice, but that's as far as any man got a right to say.'...I says, 'What's this call, this sperit?' An' I says, 'It's love. I love people so much I'm fit to bust, sometimes.' An' I says, 'Don't you love Jesus?' Well, I thought an' thought, an' finally I says, 'No, I don't know nobody name' Jesus. I know a bunch of stories, but I only love people. An' sometimes I love 'em fit to bust, an' I want to make 'em happy, so I been preachin' somepin I thought would make 'em happy.'...Anyways, I'll tell you one more thing I thought out; an' from a preacher it's the most unreligious thing, and I can't be a preacher no more because I thought it an' I believe it...I figgered about the Holy Sperit and the Jesus road. I figgered, 'Why do we got to hang it on God and Jesus? Maybe,' I figgered, 'maybe it's all men an' all women we love; maybe that's the Holy Sperit--the human sperit--the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of.' Now I sat there thinkin' it, an' all of a suddent--I knew it. I knew it so deep down that it was true, and I still know it."

-- the Reverend Casy

Sometimes I don't know why I bother writing much because some people have written things so much better than I have already. (These are the times I want this to be more like a Tumblr, so I can just post quotes and things and not feel the inadequacy of my own writing compared to people like Steinbeck. But when it comes down to it, I can't keep quiet and I need to write my mangled prose anyway. Can't keep me quiet, I guess.

Whew.

I am back. I got back late Sunday night and have not stopped since. Work yesterday, therapy, dinner, drinks, and then work again, and tonight I am going to the Giants game, and then tomorrow work again, and finally a chance to breathe tomorrow night (and unpack, and do laundry. If I'm being honest I might just do what my roommates have already done in their weaker, lazier, busier moments and just take it in for a wash. For shame). And by breathe, I hopefully mean blog about my epic, amazing trip. For now all I can say was that it was exactly what I needed, and more than I expected, and just all around awesome and eye-opening and comforting and enriching, and I could not have gone on a trip with better people. I feel so good about it now.

I am of course still running around a bit at work, and wading through the literally thousands of accumulated blog posts in my reader (and articles on The Caucus), but the first blog I caught up on was Postcards from yo momma, and I realized partly why I like it so much. First of all, it has an element of surprise like nothing else. And it's hilariously true, and it actually is true, which is obviously part of the appeal. There's such an interesting demographic mix, parents who are clearly hip to the net, parents who can barely type, parents who are eloquent, those who can barely spell, city dwellers, country dwellers, homebodies, hicks, cosmopolitan world travelers, people who have great relationships with their kids and those who are begging for their child just to listen. I love trying to puzzle out the hints contained in each post, try to guess at the relationship, the circumstances, the context, everything. I love the sheer humanity of it. But the other thing I think I love about it is the mom-ness of it. I mean, I love this mass sisterhood of mothers, all around the country, all in many ways the same despite all their differences, and all so overflowing with love and worry for their kids. It's like they are all shades of the same family. And I love that the love is so great that it's goofy and over the top and exaggerated, and I feel good that someday I, too, can be a crazy mother sending crazy e-mails to her kids, and I can also be part of that sisterhood of moms, and I can be shameless about it, and I can be yet another member of this crazy, aching humanity.

Plus, where else can you get such nuggets of unexpected wisdom.

mom: I hated kayaking so much this weekend I used the F word on Dad
mom: He kayaked away for awhile and I was lost
mom: stupid me
mom: don't use the F word unless you can find home
mom: but he felt sorry for me cause I was paddling backwards at one point
mom: actually, I found backwards more relaxing
mom: but he thinks I was just incompetant

Don't use the F word unless you can find home. How true.

(here)

I am off!!

Well, it's finally here... almost. I still have errands to run, iPod playlists to create, a bag to pack, nails to paint, and so on, but in 12 hours I will be on a plane to here:

I have never gone on a tropical vacation, never gone to a beach to do nothing for a week... I cannot wait. My pile of clothes for my suitcase is all brightly colored prints and includes zero long sleeves or pants. I'm sort of running around frantic today (last night's Justice show did not help my mania, despite its awesomeness), but I know that as soon as I get there I will feel a weight lifted off my shoulders.

In other news, because I'm going to Belize, I've spent the entire work week aggressively managing a to-do list. It's actually been very productive, and then just now, sort of spontaneously, I completed a project I have been meaning to finish since mid February. I needed a new sign-up system for this program I run, and suddenly I realized it was easier to finish setting that up than to continue with the system I already had. Who knew? I feel like this is an awesome way to end the work day before my vacation. (Except actually, my team of three is going on an "off-site" today, getting our palms read! So this won't actually be the end of the day.) I feel really good about setting off for my vacation on a high note. Now if I can only manage to do all the errands I need to do tonight and make my bed before I take off... and if Stanford wins the basketball game today that wouldn't hurt either. I'm crossing my fingers...

I won't be blogging for the next week, and I have little pains thinking of my Google Reader going unread for a whole 9 days. But I will return refreshed, replenished and determined as usual. I am looking forward to it.

(photo from here)

This is your life!

I really wanted to post a YouTube video of that old Sesame Street skit where the little chick and bunny move the blocks around into different shapes including a chair. But I couldn't find it. (Google/YouTube search failed me somehow!) So instead, enjoy "This is your life!"



Sesame Street is freaking genius.

Spam is Poetry

Yet another idea I had for the Internet and didn't act on, Spam is Poetry is all about how spam is... well, you know, sort of poetic sometimes. Proof that I've talked about this before:

me: i am clearing out spam email

got some weird ones

titled

phoenicia

proserpine

3:08 PM some spam comes in series, almost like found poetry

John: ha

me: school god comet compass navy

3:09 PM John: WOW

me: shop air spoon aircraft carrier hammer

John: these are incredible.

The other day I got some awesome spam. It is obviously all sex spam, whatever it's trying to sell me (I clearly don't click on the links). But it's reminiscent of those surveys that you had to take in high school to assess whether you had like a healthy sex attitude/life -- that, or it's like a purity test. Either way, here is a small selection of the more than THREE PAGES' worth of this spam that I transcribed today:


I wanted to dominate the other person.
I wanted to give someone a sexually transmitted disease.
It was an Initiation rite to a club or organization.
The person was mysterious.
It became a habit.
I wanted to see what all the fuss is about.
I wanted to see what it would be like to have see while stoned (e.g. oon marijuana or some other drug).
I wanted to punish myself.
I wanted to gain access to that person's friend.
An erotic movie had turned me on.
I got "carried away".
Because of a bet.
I wanted to increase the number of sex partners I had experienced.
It was easier to "go all the way" than to stop.
It seemed like good exercise.
I was tired of being a virgin.
I wanted to express my love for the person.
I desired emotional closeness (i.e. intimacy).
I wanted to have more sex than my friends.
I wanted to become more focused on work -- sexual thoughts are distracting.
I wanted to reaffirm my sexual orientation.
I wanted to feel closer to God.
I was slumming.
I was married and you're supposed to.
I wanted to keep warm.
I wanted to change the topic of conversation.
I wanted to relieve me menstrual cramps.
I wanted to be used or degraded.
It was a romantic setup.
The person was famous and I wanted to be able to say I had sex with him/her.
Someone dared me.
I wanted to impress friends.
The person had alot of money.

All typos, by the way, are exactly verbatim. Spam is weird!

Pastors

In case you care about Hillary Clinton's religious affiliations, read these two articles.

Obviously, I believe that politicians' religions should have nothing to do with their electability, because it shouldn't influence their policy and should be kept private. And I'm not trying to drum up gossip about Hillary Clinton, who I am fully voting for if Obama does not get the nomination (unlike these folks). I don't like muckracking. However, I'd like to us to consider the creepiness of everyone's contacts, not just Barack Obama's. Like, especially this guy, whose endorsement John McCain sought out.

(All this via my own obsessive Googling and New York Times reading.)

Postcards from Yo Momma

I'm actually horrified I didn't think of this idea before someone else did. I suppose even if I had, it wouldn't have gotten big, since I am not an ex-Gawker Media employee. Needless to say this website is HILARIOUS. (Disclaimer to my mom: don't be offended. I haven't sent any of yours in.)

This Side of Paradise

My book club met yesterday to talk about our second book, "This Side of Paradise." I had to make a monumental effort, even for me, to finish it, since I started it Monday night and had only read 53 pages (of 282) by the time I left work yesterday afternoon. So I read like mad and finished it in time for the meeting. I reviewed it on GoodReads, so I won't belabor my review here, but I wanted to pull out one of the exceptional quotes from it. (There were quite a few, but this one is the most alluring.) I'm filled with dreams of floating this week... only a few more days until I'll be floating myself in the ocean.

Often they swam and as Amory floated lazily in the water he shut his mind to all thoughts except those of hazy soap-bubble lands where the sun splattered through wind-drunk trees. How could anyone possibly think or worry, or do anything except splash and dive and loll there on the edge of time while the flower months failed. Let the days move over - sadness and memory and pain recurred outside, and here, once more, before he went on to meet them he wanted to drift and be young.

--F. Scott Fitzgerald

Booze.

Um, good to know, I guess:

Recent studies have shown that heavy drinking does more damage to the teenage brain than previously suspected, while the part of the brain responsible for judgment is not even fully formed until the age of 25.

“If we were to argue that responsible drinking requires a responsible brain, theoretically we wouldn’t introduce alcohol until 25,” said Dr. Ralph I. Lopez, a clinical professor of pediatrics at Weill-Cornell Medical College who specializes in adolescents.

This blog entry brought to you by a 24 and a half year old who has been drinking for more than 6 years...

(via)

Peep Show!

It's already all over the Internet but, as expected, the Washington Post "Peep Show" contest yielded some pretty awesome Peep dioramas. You can see the whole slideshow here. My favorites are 2, 8, 19, and 36, although quite a lot of them are ingenious and it's quite shocking how much you can make a Peep look like a famous person (see Christian Siriano in #34, Randy Jackson in #32).

Really stretching back into memory now...

Something someone said at work reminded me to look this up. This poster was up in my dentist's office when I was growing up (it is probably still there), and I read it over and over again at each of my semi-annual teeth cleanings. It's totally cheesy, but something about it still resonates with me. Maybe it's the simplicity of the message (I especially like the parts I bolded below), and a little trick to its rhythm that makes it memorable, or maybe it's just the memory I have of it and of sitting in the slightly-too-cool room in the squeaky leather of the dentist's chair...

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:
Share everything. Play fair. Don't hit people. Put things back where you found them. Clean up your own mess. Don't take things that aren't yours. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Wash your hands before you eat. Flush. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. Live a balanced life - learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Take a nap every afternoon. When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup - they all die. So do we. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned - the biggest word of all - LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all - the whole world - had cookies and milk at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

It can't come soon enough.

Dan sent me this article for the Belize "mindset."

I am in the ocean, doing nothing, just bobbing.

I am facing a golden-sugar beach, a low pink hotel, a thatched palapa baking in the heat. To my left, a long crescent stretch of bay, a cradling arm around a basket of blue. To my right, a stone jetty. Beyond it, a port full of oceangoing tankers and the cliff-hugging city of Manzanillo. Behind me, the limitless Pacific. All around, pelicans loitering in the swells, which lift and gently drop me, my arms out, toes brushing velvet sand.

Boy, howdy. Sunscreen at the ready.

(P.S. Also, derrumbes is a great word.)

Outside Lands

I'm beyond words excited for the Outside Lands festival in SF this August. I was disappointed by the Coachella lineup, but this one is right in my own backyard and cheaper, plus it has Radiohead. The kicker for me is Wilco, since they were supposed to play at Coachella when I went in 2004, but then Jeff Tweedy had to go into rehab. Blah. I feel vindicated!

The only worry is that tickets go on sale while I'm in Belize... may have to find a designated ticket purchaser.

Jezebel's Past Fashion 08 - Easter

This gallery, as I expected, is awesome. Plus, it reinforces something I really never thought about until very recently... the Easter Bunny is kind of creepy!!

Close to the finish line

I feel like my life the past couple of weeks has just sped up dramatically. Suddenly I am flying to Belize in four and a half short days! I would like to be able to say that I am completely ready, but I am not even close. And this weekend was pretty crazy in parts, so I definitely did not get the chance to relax and get things in order. Still, I am hoping that Belize will help me with that. Once the rush to get there and be ready for it and packed and all that, I feel like I am just going to crash, and that is what I want to do. I am absurdly excited about the prospect of doing nothing for a week. I really need it.

This weekend was actually very calm until yesterday. My friend Elizabeth had given up meat for Lent, and so she/we replaced Easter with the "Meat Blowout." I can't even tell if that sounds disgusting anymore because it's been a major calendar item for the past, well, forty days. The MB(o), as Elizabeth abbreviated it, featured prosciutto with melon, bacon-wrapped scallops, slider burgers with blue cheese, and lamb kabobs, and was generally delicious. (We also had scalloped potatoes, salad and a quinoa dish I'd made, but almost no one ate any of that stuff except the potatoes.) Accompanying this feast was my friend Peattie's grandmother's signature recipe for Lynchburg Lemonade. It's a little shocking how much meat and alcohol the group of us (maybe 15 people total) consumed. The rest of the day went as you would expect... an hour or so finishing off the lemonade in the park, and then a group of us watching movies at my house. Tragically, I was so tired that I went to bed before the conclusion of the second movie (which was Clueless. We were at that level of intellectual ability).

So that was a rather raucous end to an otherwise calm weekend. Friday night I had dinner with Dan and then fell asleep watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (You thought I had moved on, didn't you?) Then Saturday I shopped for hours, buying things for my Belize trip. I didn't really have an exhaustive list, but I wanted some summery things and a new bathing suit. I'm very disappointed with the lack of styles of suits right now... J. Crew has so many of them online but they had like 6 in the store. I basically bought the entire mall, so in that sense it was a productive afternoon. That evening I went to dinner at Delfina, which was fantastic. I'd never been there and it was a real treat. I had the halibut, which was super creamy, and the capers on top were almost toasted so they were vaguely crunchy. Sounds strange, but it was delicious.

Last week I was feeling pretty sanguine about things... I knew I had a lot to do but it felt manageable. I don't feel much differently now... it's not like I have a massive to-do list. I just feel the pressure of time passing, like I'm being forced to accelerate faster than I meant to. It is a good thing that I have tonight free. I feel like going home and collapsing for a little while and letting the stillness happen.

Easter

I really, really, really want to send this picture into Jezebel for their "Past Fashions" feature... they are looking for retro Easter pictures and I think this one is pretty fab. But since it's my sister, not me, who is the more amusing one here, I just couldn't bring myself to e-mail it in. It's just not fair to do it without asking her permission. Like posting someone's IM chat on your blog without asking.

(Partly I like it cause it's so classic California. The poppies and everything! And I'm trying to sit all daintily and you can tell Lucie is either having a grand old time or really sick of wearing that dress and sitting on an awkward rail for so long.)

YouTube Views of Obama's Speech

More!
Do you ever think to yourself, what would the 60s or whatever be like if we'd had YouTube back then? How many mashups would there have been of the "I am not a crook" Nixon thing? How many views would JFK's assassination have gotten, or videos of protests and police beatings? It's an interesting metric that we are used to using now, but I wonder how it would have applied back then.

Sigh

Note to self: Just because New York Times commentators are reading the New York Times does not make them necessarily the brightest tool in the shed. I say this mostly because while stumbling around the site this morning (honestly, people say Wikipedia is hard to extract yourself from, but every time I click on one article on the Times I have to click on at least two more) I came across this blog post from Nicholas Kristof, whose political leanings are kind of obscure to me but who sometimes I end up reading just because. And then I read the comments and then I got really angry. I know it's silly and pointless to get angry about dumb people in America or the world, but sometimes I can't help but get steamed when people entirely miss the point. The second comment on this post made me want to shake the person who wrote it. It's so obviously what Obama talked about in his speech that I couldn't really handle the fact that this person missed the point, and it's also so damn smug.

Luckily there were some better comments out there. Still, this is why politicians rarely talk as openly and candidly about issues like this as Obama did on Tuesday, and this is why I could never be a politician -- I take these minor instances of single people missing the point and misinterpreting far too seriously.

I think the overall point that is really bothering me is this idea that because he happens to be extreme, that we should disregard Wright at all costs without inquiring as to how he became extreme. That is part of Obama's point and it's all over the liberal Internet. On "The Root," which has been/is called "the black Slate," I came across this piece:

Two thirds of whites believe that blacks have achieved or will soon achieve racial equality. Nearly eighty percent of blacks believe that racial justice for blacks will not be achieved either in their lifetime or at all in the U.S.

Ok, so these are self-reported, and so it doesn't mean that there is no racial justice or equality, or that we are actually in a dire strait like this. But it matters that people think this way. It matters that black people in the U.S. feel left out. It matters that white America is completely up and arms about one man's comments, and yet men like Jerry Falwell have been around for EVER spouting terrible shit all the time. To quote another NY Times commentator: "most white Americans have no clue about the common nature of discourse in a variety of African American communities... [Emily's note: No shit.] To some degree this isn’t out of willful ignorance; it is simply the luxury of the majority. White communities do not have to understand black communities or realities in order to survive and prosper (or at least have not had to up to now; it is arguable that in our current world even white communities have to become more conversant in other racial/ethnic/religious/national realities simply to survive). By contrast, black communities have had to understand white communities in order to survive in a society dominated by white privilege." These feelings matter, because those feelings contribute to actions and behavior and voting and law and grand concepts like freedom and equality. And I believe that we need to ask why these feelings exist, and how we can work to assuage and soothe them, across the board, across racial and religious divides. Anyway, as a pretty privileged white girl with no real academic knowledge of racial issues, I am probably putting my foot in my mouth here, but I still feel a pretty gut instinct wrongness about a lot of this ongoing dialogue, and it makes me sad.

In other news, people in the U.S. think racism is a bigger problem than sexism. I think had I answered the poll, I would have said they were both equal problems, but I would have been tempted to put my notch on the sexism side. Just so you know.

I suddenly have this urge to go watch the West Wing and cocoon myself in a comfortable, fictional political world instead of this real one, which is a mess.

St. Paddy's

My lack of a camera (I have this theory that mine is broken, but have yet to actually replace the batteries and check to be sure) prevents these little updates from being as interesting as they should, but oh well. Monday night was the second meeting of the Dirty Apron Kitchen Club, the cooking club that my friends and I have, er, cooked up. I insisted that we had to have corned beef for St. Patrick's Day, and boy, did we. Dan spent the afternoon (he was off work, having used his floating holiday to celebrate his Irishness) boiling the corned beef to awesome levels of tender flakiness. I got home slightly early in time to frost Guinness chocolate cupcakes (with green sprinkles!) and mix up some soda bread muffins with dill. The menu in the end was as you'd expect: corned beef, cabbage, carrots and red potatoes, soda bread muffins, and for our one friend who is pescatarian for Lent, seared salmon with caper-raisin butter on top. (So good!) The meal was accompanied by lots of Guinness and a few Irish Car Bombs, and someone was thoughtful enough to bring Irish music, so we had a pretty great time. For fourteen people including all the booze it was only about $7 a person, proving once again that cooking for yourself is a great idea. I also had the opportunity to put my food processor to work. I'd never actually used it before despite borrowing it from my parents more than a year ago! (Don' worry, though, Becca used it once.) It's remarkably easy to use and clean up after, and I'm feeling the cooking urge after all the baking and blending I did.

Generally speaking cooking seems to be in vogue as of late. My friends and I have started a "brunch club" cooking brunch on weekends. We've only met three times, and I missed the second time because I was in LA, but we've had great success. The first time we just had scrambled eggs (omelets were a bust) with tater tots (Laurel's request), bacon, and English muffins with jam. The second time I went (third time total) we made really tasty French toast, and one of our friends also made an onion, tomato and cheese tart as well as a sort of caprese salad with avocados. In addition to that Justin and I have been cooking dinner more frequently on weekends, which is really soothing to me. I miss cooking so much! Saturday we made steak, with chimichurri, mashed potatoes and a wilted spinach-and-grape-tomato side dish. I am craving that spinach dish all over again... it was surprisingly good given sometimes spinach can be kind of dusty and strange tasting when cooked.

Now back to ogling recipes at work...

To be a runner...

It's no secret that I am not athletic. I was on the swim team for my freshman year of high school, but quit a month into my sophomore year. I played one season of girls' softball in fourth grade. That's about the extent of my athletic capabilities. I'm terrible at all team sports, and it is usually like pulling teeth to get me to participate in them at all. (You need to twist my arm, and then be patient with my utter suckitude. Although I usually do end up enjoying it.) The only "sport" I particularly like is kayaking, and I'm not actually good at it, I just like it a lot for some reason. Anyway, all this is just background for my newest aspiration, which is that my spring goal is to be able to run six miles in a row. I've never done that. The farthest I've ever run is three miles in a row, back in fall 2006 when I developed this actual exercise habit and enjoyed it. But I have always hated being a slug, and I don't like feeling uncomfortable in my own body, which is the way I feel whenever I have to participate in something physical (which can be as basic as walking up a hill that's a little steeper than I'm used to, but can also be my awkwardness throwing a Frisbee), and so I'm trying to take concrete steps. I have that strange kind of resolve that sometimes comes upon you for no discernable reason, when suddenly you enjoy going to the gym, and you feel weird not doing it for a day. This happens to me very rarely so I am capitalizing on it. My roommate, Dan, is a marathon runner, and he's set up a Google calendar for us to keep track of my running and for him to set me up on a program to train up to six miles at a normal person pace. (Right now, 6 miles would take me more than an hour to run.) It's pretty exciting! I just felt like sharing. I will probably post about whatever milestones I reach as I (fingers crossed) accomplish them. So far, I'm at 2 miles in a row, and my projects for tomorrow and Friday are to do interval training and then to run outside for a bit, as an adventure. Pretty jazzed!

Twenty Percent Time

This shocked me:

Many if not most of those dead are from my generation. They were twenty-somethings who, like me, have lived with this war for 20% of their lifetimes.

I was talking to someone the other day who was saying that her entire political life has been lived under the Bush administration. Mine is similar. Even though I was aware of politics before that, it was mostly just a few hot-button issues (abortion, welfare, affirmative action, the Lewinsky scandal). I have developed my (slightly more) nuanced view of politics under the auspices of our current government.

The fact that this war has been going on for 20% of my life is horrifying. I can only hope, and do my best to ensure that we do not elect McCain and continue this bullshit.

(full article at DailyKos)

Oh, to be a cultural attache

Belated, but: I want this job so badly.

Does anyone want to hire me in a similar role? I am cultured. And good at the Internet.

Er, take it back

Sorry, this will be my last post on a political note today. Apparently there's a sort of ridiculous "strike" going on on DailyKos. One of the pro-Clinton bloggers on the site is refusing to write anymore because the site is biased towards Obama. This is the kind of shit I find hilarious and fascinating due to my obsession with the Internet and all things blogs. I mean really, only in this modern age. Here's some background on the "strike"/boycott and here is Kos' take on the matter (which happens to also be a pretty eloquent little argument against Clinton). I used to try to read DailyKos daily, and it was too much for me (like trying to read the entire New York Times every day, or finish the New Yorker each week), but I'm checking in now and finding it really fascinating. It is great to have a non-"mainstream" source for political news (although really it's so popular that it's sort of mainstream as far as blogs go). That and the New York Times' "Caucus" blog are my go-to sources these days.

More on the speech...

I'm still processing all this to-do over Obama's speech yesterday. I know I really liked it, and I agree with the commentators who are saying that it's historic, honest, etc. I know it's getting a lot of coverage but there's no sign of what it may do to him (or for him) in the polls or in Pennsylvania. But mostly I almost feel like it's not even getting the credit it deserves. I don't think it matters if it helps or hinders him in the long run, because even if he doesn't win, it is a great speech and an incredibly important one.

I want to quote my dad here just for good measure and because it's true:
I think it's interesting that some people in this country are all of a sudden pissed off that some politician has a preacher that supports him, that then says something stupid. What the hell? this is the kind of stuff that has been going on for years now. without the anger this particular story has brewed up.
Bush has been getting advice from crackhead, thieving liars, for the last seven plus years. Of course this is when he's not getting advice from his imaginary friend.

Alright, enough about that. I'll get back to blogging non-political things.

Hear-hear!

Mr. Obama seemed to be arguing not only for his own candidacy but also against the often-reductive nature of presidential politics.

--Jodi Kantor, the New York Times

Not this time.

Barack Obama's speech on race today is really good. It was partly a disavowal of the controversial Rev. Wright's beliefs, and I think it did a decent job of that. But it went far beyond that. It was direct, it was compassionate, it was extremely well written, and it was just generally awesome. It also did a good job of addressing the issue of race without highlighting Obama so much as the candidate of a certain race, or however you want to put it. It wasn't about his background or his ability to unite people because he has a diverse heritage, but about clear sightedness and empathy. I wish I could have seen him deliver it live.

Plus, I really liked how he candidly addressed some of the bigger controversies of recent times (Ferraro, and the issue of whether he was "too black" or "not black enough," the idea that his "candidacy is somehow an exercise in affirmative action; that it’s based solely on the desire of wide-eyed liberals to purchase racial reconciliation on the cheap") without seeming to jab at anyone, just being honest. Some highlights:

The profound mistake of Reverend Wright’s sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society. It’s that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country – a country that has made it possible for one of his own members to run for the highest office in the land and build a coalition of white and black; Latino and Asian, rich and poor, young and old -- is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past. But what we know -- what we have seen – is that America can change. That is true genius of this nation. What we have already achieved gives us hope – the audacity to hope – for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

It goes on. Really a great speech. Rumor is he wrote it himself.

P.S. Just found this:

I will be watching it later.

The College Admissions Machine

The irony of Keith Gessen, Harvard grad and founder of elite(ist?) litmag N+1, writing an essay about how hard it is for kids to get into top colleges and more importantly the machine of college admissions (including cliche bullshit application essays) and calling out authors of books about that subject on they're members of the "so-called American meritocracy", is not lost on me.

And yet, somehow, the meritocracy keeps chugging along. Both Jager-Hyman and Samuels — along with just about everyone else — agree that things have gone too far with the college admissions game. “Destructive and anti-democratic,” Nicholas Lemann called it in “The Big Test,” his superb social history of the SAT: “It warps the sensibilities and distorts the education of the millions of people whose lives it touches.” I would go further: in a post-ideological age, the admissions frenzy has become its own ideology. My Russian parents, for example, while too sophisticated to disapprove of drinking or smoking, were not above suggesting that “Harvard” might not like it. Harvard might be mortified; Harvard might take it amiss. Harvard is coming to dinner — please tuck in your shirt.

Even worse than the temporary psychological distortion is, as Lemann argued in “The Big Test,” the permanent sense of entitlement the admissions game provides. Winners can plausibly claim they participated in a brutal competition (even if many potential competitors were never told about it). So we owe no one anything. Many of the people I went to school with became doctors, public advocates, television writers who bring laughter to the American people. But most of them became, like my friend who believed that getting into Harvard was the hardest thing in life, investment bankers. We meritocrats have not, generally speaking, used our fantastic test-taking abilities to build a more equitable world. In fact, buoyed by a sense of the fairness of the process, we may have done the reverse.

But he has a point. (I am sure Gawker has torn up this essay and it is mildly ridiculous, but it does speak to a lot of the issues involved with attending a top university. Entitlement is a real problem, and one I think about a lot.)

How to kiss someone with braces, and my own humiliation.

So, I am going to get braces. I know!! I don't know yet if they are going to be Invisalign, ceramic or metal. If it's either of the latter I am going to freak out. I told my friend Marcin at work and he was asking what things you can't eat or drink if you have them, and if kissing is weird. So I did some Googling to prove to him that there is actually (or mythically) a possibility of getting your braces stuck to someone else's braces. (I will say now that I don't know anyone with braces so I don't think this will be a problem no matter what.) So then I freaked myself out even more by stumbling across a bunch of articles online about kissing with braces and I pretty much just died. There is actually an eHow article about how to kiss someone with braces! Kill me now!

Honestly, put yourself in my shoes, a 24 year old who will soon be a metal-or-plastic mouth, and read this thing. I guarantee you will cringe.

Hot Mess

Whenever I read Urban Dictionary I am reminded of the fact that my life is relatively pure. 90% of the entries on there reference lewd acts I have zero interest in even thinking about. That said, it's pretty darn enlightening and amusing to peruse some of the definitions. For example, this morning I was talking to Ace about the phrase "hot mess." I defined it as a particularly vivid mess, or a mess that you've earned somehow. Frequently the creation/evolution of the hot mess involves alcohol, i.e. "I'm such a hot mess, I showed up to work drunk/hungover/in the same clothes as last night" (I have not done that!) Or "I was a hot mess last night." I feel like the vividness comes from some intense living of life, which leads to you being something of a disaster. (I should disclaim here that the reason we were talking about this today is that we stayed up too late last night for no reason and rolled up to work feeling terrible and looking not much better. My yellow sweater is not particularly helping, nor is the fact that I have a pile of work to do.) Anyway, so hot mess is a great, great term. Urban Dictionary has a few definitions I appreciate:

"someone who would by no other means be sexy but for some odd reason is. Most likely due to their disregard for self, or humor, or just kuz they're dumbasses"

"adj., Foustian in origin. Used to describe things that are extreme. Must be used in context for the listener to understand whether it is positive or negative. In the negative sense, it takes on a tone of high sarcasm." (so not an adjective, though)

Ok, thus ends my vocabulary post of the day. Back to work, really!

Political Hot Messes and me

I'm actually really trying to focus on work today, and so blogging this week has been a little bit on the back burner. Some stuff that's come up, though:

Justin sent me this awesome NPR slideshow of politicians' wives "standing by their men" in times of crisis. There are some great ones. Some of the wives look just exhausted (Spitzer's wife in particular). The looks on the men's faces are pretty classic, too, Nixon's in particular. God, what a disaster all this stuff is this week.

More from Justin, this video casts even more doubt on our country's politicians and makes me just plain angry.

A pretty interesting (and faster to read than you'd think) piece about the grudge between Obama and McCain.

I am looking forward to the weekend... this week has been more tiring than I expected it to be. It started Sunday night, when I decided that four strong beers at Toronado was a really great idea, and then Daylight Savings Time has completely messed with me. I'll be grateful to sleep in Saturday morning, but I need to buckle down and do some preparation for my Belize trip. By preparation, I mean shopping, but sometimes it feels like hard work.