The Wild Winds of Fortune

Nonjustifiable violence.

2012-02-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

I haven't been listening to a lot of country songs in the past few years, so have missed a lot of music I might have otherwise enjoyed. I wrote in the last post about Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead." I like this song. I find songs about strong women very appealing.

It's not as if there is no precedent. Martina McBride dealt seriously with the issue of domestic violence in "Independence Day." It was a somber song, told from the point of view of the girl orphaned by her mother burning the house down with her and her abusive husband within. There is no justification, just sadness and understanding. "I'm not saying it's right or it's wrong, but maybe it's the only way," McBride sings. There was no outcry from country music listeners -- the woman dies in the process of killing her abuser. Murder-suicide is okay.

And then there was "Goodbye, Earl." The Dixie Chicks blew up a tornado of controversy when they released this lighthearted ode to killing a guy who "walked right through that restraining order, and put [his wife] in intensive care." Many people were outraged; the song was banned from a lot of stations, and those that did play it often followed it with a PSA and the number of the battered woman's helpline. (Not that this was necessarily a bad thing.) You see, in this song, the women killed the abuser and got away with it. They weren't punished.

"Goodbye, Earl" is a recognition of the way that the system often fails victims of abuse. And it celebrates women who refuse to take it, who act in their own self-defense. Because that is what these songs are about, self-defense. (The Rocket Scientist, when he first heard "Gunpowder and Lead," far from condemning the woman in the song, speculated on whether she was using buckshot or slugs, and which would be more effective.) I would bet that any man sitting in house fending off an attack from someone who has assaulted him before and whom the victim had every expectation would try to hurt him again (as in "Gunpowder and Lead") wouldn't even be charged -- at least probably not in Texas, which is where Lambert hails from.

I have no problem with these songs.

I do, however, have a big problem with Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats."

For those of you who have not heard this little gem, it is told from the perspective of a woman who is outraged that her boyfriend is in a honky-tonk, and who believes he is going to cheat on her. Note: she doesn't actually know that he is cheating on her:

Right now he's probably slow dancing
With a bleached-blond tramp
And she's probably getting frisky
Right now, he's probably buying
Her some fruity little drink
'Cause she can't shoot whiskey

[emphasis added]

So, in the face of his potential infidelity, what does she do?

I dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little souped-up 4 wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seat
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights
Slashed a hole in all 4 tires
And maybe next time he'll think before he cheats

This is not empowerment. This is violence. Admittedly, it is violence against property not a person, but it still violence intended to send a message. A chilling message. While she may simply intend this to be revenge, and she is going to walk away from the relationship, her boyfriend would be quite justified in wondering if the next time she would be taking a Louisville Slugger to his head.

If a man did this, he would be seen as a potential abuser. No one would find it light-hearted. Women's groups would be speaking out, as well they should. In this case, men's groups (who often take positions I disagree with) are screaming, as well they should be.

Abuse is abuse. Violence is violence. The gender of the victim is totally irrelevant.While the statistics on sexual abuse indicate that women are the victim of sexual abuse much more often than men, the stats about domestic violence are much, much more even.* The Resident Shrink says that in her practice victims of domestic violence are evenly split along gender lines.

People make Tiger Woods jokes. They don't make Rihanna jokes, for the very reason that domestic abuse is a serious topic, and beating up women is not acceptable.

But it is -- or should be -- no more acceptable to attack your husband with a nine-iron than it is to slap your girlfriend. It is no more acceptable for a woman to terrorize a man by destroying his car, than it would be for a man to do likewise. Such abuse should never be celebrated in song, as though it were trivial and worse yet, deserved. Infidelity, real or imagined, should result in breaking up at the most, not violence on one side and terror on the other.

Men deserve to have their pain treated with the seriousness it calls for. Women deserve being treated like adults, to be called to account for the injuries they do to others.

Pain -- and accountability -- do not recognize gender. In this case, neither should we.

*And this is not even to address the problem of women to women domestic violence, or man to man. Just as domestic violence often knows no gender, neither does it know sexual orientation.

QOTD: and you thought those Southern ladies were pushovers.

2012-02-18T12:56:00.000-08:00

At a recent concert, Miranda Lambert held up a sign made by a fan which read "Take notes, Chris Brown" just before she launched into "Gunpowder & Lead." The song is about a woman waiting on her porch with a gun for her abusive boyfriend to show up.

“I’ve been in a world of hurt with Chris Brown fans lately … but see, I just have to speak my mind because where I come from, beating up on a woman is never okay... So that’s why my daddy taught me early on in life how to use a shotgun.”

Another new song. Heh.

2012-02-18T12:31:00.000-08:00

I have been living in a cave for quite a while: I just discovered Cee Lo Green's "F*** You." I am in love.

I am sitting in the public library with my head phones, and grinning ear to ear and tapping my foot. I can't help it. I am desperately trying to keep my shoulders from dancing. This thing is great. And it is not like any of us have ever felt this way. Nope. Not at all.

For such a bitter lyric, this is really a very cheerful song. I should probably not play it around the house, though -- I am trying to get my kids to stop swearing. Heh.

Music of the soul.

2012-02-17T12:19:00.000-08:00

Darkness is a harsh term don't you think?
And yet it dominates the things I seek
"Roll Away Your Stone," Mumford and Sons.

So, you buy the new music. You listen with one ear and half your brain, thinking "that's really nice" for Bruno Mars "Just the Way You Are," or "interesting -- sort of a country/rap hybrid" for Jason Aldean's "Dirt Road Anthem." And you work your way down the "Purchased" playlist, sipping your mocha and procrastinating on emailing the Rick Steve's people. And then...

A song comes on. After the first verse, you quickly go to iTunes, and restart it, listening closely. After the song is done, you replay it, and go online to find the lyrics and read along with the music. And you breathe deeply and marvel at the universality of the human experience, that someone on another continent could write a song that so closely fits into your soul.

I did not write "Roll Away Your Stone." Marcus Mumford did. But damn....

I cannot say I would have written it if I were a songwriter. I don't think I would have had the emotional honesty to do so. But I am very glad he did.

The great banjo work is mere lagniappe.

Curioser and curioser

2012-02-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

I have a very small* readership. Looking at my Blogger stats, most of my posts get, oh, 10-12 hits the week after they are posted.** If it is an important post they can get a few times that over a month. But there is one post that has gotten a lot of hits for no reason whatsoever I can think of.

"The reason for the last post" has gotten 86 hits in two weeks. All that post contains is an explanation of how posts deleted on Blogger still show up on Google Reader. I was testing a statement made by a panelist at a privacy symposium.

I just can't understand what the interest is.

*but exclusive, intelligent and sophisticated
**There are quite a number of people who have told me that they read WWF on Google Reader, LiveJournal and the RSS Feed. What those numbers are I have no real idea. The Blogger stats mainly tell me what posts spark interest, and a very vague idea of how much traffic I am getting. Adjusting for traffic from spam sites, readership has been slowly growing over the past year., which pleases me. Not that I am doing much to actually advertise the blog: I only rarely post links from here to Facebook, for example.

Salt for thought.

2012-02-17T11:19:00.000-08:00

Today the Starbucks I was at was out of sea salt for the salted caramel mocha. I was annoyed at this, but mostly because I had paid for a SCM, and was only handed a caramel mocha. I complained about this, and was told "We didn't know we were out of salt when you ordered." That was it. No offer to make me anything else, no card for another drink another time. Definitely lacking in the service department.

I thought of going to the Starbucks website and complaining. But the thought that is keeping from doing so is this: I rarely go to their website to report when I have exceptional service, so is it really fair to go simply to complain?

Yet another coffee conundrum.*

*The primary one being, if you view buying drinks as effectively "renting" space at one of their tables, how frequently should you buy drinks? My current view is about one every 60-90 minutes, slightly less frequently if you get food. Less frequently as well if the place is not very crowded, or if you are at a trestle table with five other laptop users.

Clarification...

2012-02-16T16:18:00.000-08:00

In my "Beautiful, again" post I identified "obsessive pursuit of given objectives" to be a flaw. I never meant this to be work or art objectives. I meant things like... 1000km through Bavaria in a day. Going from St. Louis to Chicago through Iowa for no other reason than to say we've been to Iowa. Visiting all the missions between here and LA (or as many as humanly possible) on one trip....

Wait, that was my idea.*

Nevermind.

*And let's not forget the Great Barney Hunt of Christmas, 1992, or The Search For Optimus Prime of Christmas, 2006.** Or the "let's find a laser pointer in Amsterdam" fiasco (they're illegal in the Netherlands). All of these were my fault.

**The first of these involved calling or going to every toy store in the Metro D.C. area, and being put on numerous waiting lists and finally getting one on December 23 only because someone else failed to get to the toy store at Tyson's Corner between 11:00 a.m. and noon to pick theirs up. Because I started late, Optimus Prime required calling toy stores in four counties (Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and part of Alameda), only to find them the day before Christmas at... the Target a mile from our house. They had got a late shipment in, and because they were trying to unload them, they had them 10% off. A toy store in San Francisco wanted double the price for the damned thing. I refused, and kept calling. I don't know what became of good old O.P., but we had the Barney for years and years after the kids had outgrown it because I could not bear to part with a toy I had gone to so much trouble for.

We're bad, we're bad, we're bad

2012-02-16T08:32:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like getting up early so your kid can carmelize the sugar on the tops of the creme brulee he is taking in to school for his French class. The hardest part is getting said kid awake enough that you trust him with the blow-torch.

We're not talking about some cutesy, namby-pamby little kitchen torch here, either. It is a full-size portable ~~Benzomatic~~ Burnzamatic* propane torch. The uses listed on the side include soldering copper, loosening frozen bolts, and putting up lead gutters. Not a single word about creme brulee.

We're a tough crew, here. At least when it comes to custard-based desserts with crunchy sugar on top.

*Seriously. Thanks to the Rocket Scientist for the clarification.

2012-02-15T19:31:00.000-08:00

The Virginia legislature has once again shown that they have no respect for the dignity of women.

Make no mistake, transvaginal ultrasound is an invasive procedure. To have it done because there is a suspicion of ovarian, uterine, or cervical cancer is one thing. To force it to be done for no other reason than to get a higher resolution picture of a fetus than is otherwise possible, on a woman who does not want this procedure, is ... words fail me.*

Add to this the pending "personhood" law, and once again I am glad I do not live in Virginia and (ashamedly) that I do not have daughters. Fortunately, there is an exception for women who have miscarriages. But even if it just means that women (those who are able to) will have to go elsewhere to get reliable contraception,** at its heart this is a simple declaration that women do not count, except as incubators for children. And that some of those children only count as incubators, too.

Yes, I am pretty sure that if it made it to the Supreme Court, it would be overturned. That makes it no less reprehensible, and those who vote to pass it no less dangerous to women.

*Someone on Facebook commented that if it were done by anyone else, it would be rape by foreign object. That seems about right to me.
**And even then, does this mean that police can search women and confiscate their pills? And what about women who are only visiting the state?

This is me, patting myself on the back.

2012-02-15T18:07:00.000-08:00

[This is my exercise in self-esteem. Please feel free to ignore.]

My job coach told me to take time to appreciate myself. In that spirit, I decided to reread my last two weeks of posts as though they were written by someone else.

I discovered that, although the writing was uneven, on the whole it was fairly good. More importantly, I've decided that if the person writing this blog were someone else, I'd like to meet them in person because they seem interesting and amusing.

Maybe I should ask myself out to coffee.

Beautiful, again.

2012-02-15T17:34:00.000-08:00

After my post the other night, "Pretty and Beautiful," I have been trying to tease out what I find beautiful.

Uniqueness. The late great Amy Winehouse was beautiful in spite of all of her issues because she always came across as unabashedly her totally-unlike-anyone-else self. Uniqueness is not always beautiful (there is also unique horror, and unique evil), but it goes a long way.

Humor. Many of the people in my life whom I consider beautiful (male and female) have active senses of humor. As Jessica Rabbit said about Roger, I love them because they make me laugh. There is a particular type of humor that appeals to me: sly, intelligent, occasionally self-deprecating, and aware of the absurdities of the world. These people understand -- and appreciate -- irony.*

Compassion, gentleness, warmth, intelligence, curiosity, critical thinking skills, fierce determination, emotional strength... the beautiful people I know have most (or all) of these. Not all the time, but enough that I cannot help but notice and admire them. Not that they are perfect: perfect people are not interesting. They have flaws ranging from insecurity to obsessive pursuit of given objectives** to anal retentiveness to flightiness to a tendency toward crankiness to occasional "fluffiness." I am willing to overlook these, as they overlook my insane disorganization, inability to follow through, and almost pathological self-doubt.

I am also a sucker for people who write well.*** Staunch insistence on proper grammar and adamant refusal to use "leet speak," or whatever the abomination so many people use in texting or IM is called, makes my pulse beat a little faster. I am also captivated by creativity, by the ability to take nothingness -- paint, light, metal, ideas -- and turn it into art.

Beautiful people know that the world is a complicated place, while understanding that there are things on which compromise is not possible. They are willing to recognize -- and more importantly, admit --when they are wrong.

Note: not politics or social views. The beautiful people in my life range all along the political spectrum.**** I don't think all of them are right on everything, but then again, they think I'm dead wrong on some things, too. They like me anyway, as I do them.

Because they have so many of these characteristics, I have a feeling that the beautiful people in my life would enjoy talking to each other. (Once all of them that are shy got comfortable.) I keep having fantasies that they could be drawn together in one room. (Preferably playing "Apples to Apples.")

I think it would be a simply amazing party.

A beautiful party.

*That would be irony in the true sense, not in the Alanis Morrisette sense.
**See "Clarification."
***On the purely physical side (because like every one else I occasionally can be shallow that way), I find I have a pronounced weakness for people with blue eyes or a Southern accent, or both.
****I have to confess that a few people I heretofore had thought of as beautiful became Tea Partiers and birthers in the past few years, and they dropped off the list. I do not have trouble with conservatism per se -- I have some self-identified conservatives on that list -- as long as there is a minimum level of intelligent thought behind it. The birthers and Tea Partiers don't pass that test. I still love these people, but I tend to view them with sad bewilderment.

No. Just no. And don't call me "sugar," either.

2012-02-15T16:43:00.000-08:00

Dear barista:

I am not your "dear." I only see you on those rare occasions that your work schedule and my visits to this particular Starbucks (which is neither of my usual ones) coincide. It's bad enough that you ask for my first name* just for the privilege of getting my overpriced coffee, but this level of familiarity is completely unacceptable.

The only service people who get to call me "dear," or "hon," or any other cutesy honorific, are either a) the barista at the Starbucks I do go to most of the time with whom I actually have real conversations occasionally or b) waitresses at greasy spoon diners in the South, preferably if they are older than me, and that simply because it is more or less traditional.

I bet you would be seriously displeased if I called you "sweetie."

A disgruntled customer.

*And don't think I have not thought of giving "Ms. Greene" as my name for that.

What do you mean, this isn't a federal holiday?

2012-02-15T16:33:00.001-08:00

Happy "50% off all chocolate in red heart-shaped boxes" Day.*

*No, this joke is not original to me. I first heard it years ago on LiveJournal. I've never claimed to be all that original.

2012-02-15T15:24:00.000-08:00

I have not watched the Grammys in years. By some odd chance I ended up watching on Sunday night, and it made me regret that I had gotten out of the habit. I ended up listening to the nominees and performers on iTunes, and I picked up some new music.

Bands such as Mumford & Sons, which I had heard of but had never heard, are now on my laptop. I had already been introduced to Adele, but her performance on the show was incendiary. * There was Dave Grohl, whom I have decided I am in love with, after his speech about music when the Foo Fighters won Best Rock Album for Wasting Light. I had already had some Foo Fighters, but not this one. (“Learn to Fly” pops up on a lot of my playlists, and I am positive “Walk” will, likewise.)

After checking them out, I am not impressed by Bon Iver. Nicki Minaj’s Exorcist-inspired numbered was simply unfathomable. I may be a simple creature, but I prefer my music unburdened by ridiculous storylines (unless it is a musical). If she was trying to be shocking, she was treading ground well-tilled by Madonna years ago with “Like a Prayer.” I still do not get the attraction of Katy Perry. Jennifer Hudson singing “I Will Always Love You” in tribute to Whitney Houston was moving.

It was lovely to see that Brian Wilson’s voice is still intact after all these years, even if Mike Love’s isn’t. And while I loved Sir Paul doing the tail end of the song-cycle from Abbey Road** the multiplicity of guitar solos was excessive. While I like the work of each guitarist, giving them what seemed like more time than the rest of the number was altogether too much. I found myself saying “enough already!”

The Chris Brown issue I have already touched on.

So now I have new Foo Fighters, and some Mumford & Sons, and am looking to maybe getting some Civil Wars and Lady Antebellum. And the Amy Winehouse/Tony Bennett duet,*** which again I had heard of but not heard.

New music is good. Coming out of stagnation is even better.

* She did as good a job turning a failed relationship into music as Alanis Morissette did with Jagged Little Pill and “You Oughta Know.”

**I used to sing “Golden Slumbers” to my sons when they were infants.

*** Carrie Underwood needs to learn not to sing over her partner – especially not one as iconic as Bennett.

PETA does it again.

2012-02-14T11:10:00.000-08:00

I can't tell whether to be amused or infuriated by PETA's latest legal manuever: they have filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Diego claiming that the orcas at Sea World are being held in violation of the 13th Amendment.

That's right. PETA is arguing that the whales are slaves. Because, after all, the law doesn't actually state that the Constitution is restricted to one species. "It's a new frontier in civil rights,"Jeff Kerr, PETA's general counsel, was quoted as saying, “Slavery does not depend on the species of the slave any more than it depends on race, gender or ethnicity.”

To equate the fate of present day amusement park animals with the plight of millions of enslaved African Americans in the antebellum South is the sort of bizarre thinking that can only come from the people arguing that slaughtering animals for meat is the equivalent of the Nazi Holocaust. It is -- or would be -- laughable, except that this stupid case will eat up court time, energy and resources that could be better spent on other things.

While I have no sympathy in particular for Sea World, I do feel rather sorry for the District Judge, Jeffrey Miller. I am looking forward to seeing his ruling on this. Personally, I think he should decide simply that PETA* doesn't have standing to sue here, but that's mainly because I think it would mess with people's heads.

Undoubtedly, whatever he decides will get appealed.

And perhaps PETA has a point: if a corporation can be a person, why not a cetacean?

*Or any other humans -- only the whales.

Not to mention attracting wildlife.

2012-02-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

Red Headed Menace: It was a really interesting exhibit on water usage. Did you know some large percentage of water in this county goes for landscaping? When people could set up systems using captured rains...
Me: Wait, what??!?!?!
RHM: What's wrong?
Me: Oh, wait. I thought you said "brains."
RHM: That would work too, but it would be far less efficient.

What is so very very wrong with this picture?

2012-02-12T23:50:00.000-08:00

Chris Brown performed at the Grammys tonight. The local newscast reported that it was the first time he had been at the Grammys since he dropped out of the 2009 show.

Funny. They did not mention why he had dropped out.

Chris Brown dropped out because he brutally beat his girlfriend, Rihanna. Somehow, that doesn't seem to matter anymore. What sort of message does that send to every victim of abuse in this country?

Sasha Pasulka at HelloGiggles answers that question.

Pretty and beautiful.

2012-02-12T23:44:00.000-08:00

Taylor Swift is pretty. Very pretty. Very pretty in a traditional Hollywood way. And she sings very well. She is fresh, and pretty, and her music -- the admittedly small amount I've heard of it -- is full of energy.

I like her work.

Adele is beautiful. Stunningly beautiful. She is not merely pretty. She has presence. She does not look like all the other pretty singers out there. Her music is powerful.

I adore her work.

I don't know how else to explain the difference between the two concepts.

2012-02-12T17:28:00.000-08:00

Hey, want to impress your loved ones -- or your loved one's coworkers -- this Valentine's Day? Don't buy chocolate truffles, make them. This Martha Stewart recipe is a good starting point.* (There are more difficult recipes out there -- most involve butter. I like this one because it is, as Alton Brown might say, so gosh-darned easy.) You can adapt it quite nicely by using flavored chocolate, as long as it does not have lumps in it; Cost Plus sells some tasty chipotle chocolate. And, if you are good at this sort of thing, you can carefully melt some chocolate and dip the truffles in them and coat them with things like very finely chopped crystallized ginger instead of the traditional cocoa. It scales up and down, as well: the basic recipe is one ounce of heavy cream to two ounces of chocolate, although it is difficult with larger amounts to know exactly how long to let the mixture sit. You can get nice decorative boxes from party stores or craft stores.

So, am I doing this for Valentine's Day? Of course not. The Rocket Scientist is.

*Let the truffle mixture cool until it is just spreadable, and it makes a wonderful, if rather stiff, icing for chocolate cake. The Rocket Scientist's favorite cake from me is a dark chocolate cake, with truffle icing made from chocolate with 72% cocoa. The kids don't like it because it isn't sweet enough. The Rocket Scientist once said it was "a cake for consenting adults."

At some point, did they stop teaching civics in schools?

2012-02-12T16:38:00.000-08:00

So, Rick Santorum wants to overturn any decision the Supreme Court makes declaring bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.

Mr. Santorum, you can't do that. The Supreme Court gets to decide what's constitutional, you do not. Now, you can drag your feet and nitpick and try to get similar bans through by narrowing the scope of the ban, but that is a different matter. Those tactics have a long and dishonorable history, reaching back to Andrew Jackson and his role in Indian removal from tribal lands in the South to foot dragging by the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration regarding segregation to the Bush and Obama regimes' fight over the fate of Guantanamo detainees.

It is quite disturbing that you -- and so many others -- have this bizarre idea that the Constitution, specifically the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment, has anything to do with supporting "the will of the people." The will of the people is frequently dead wrong, not to mention dangerous: "the people" have been in favor of, among other things, slavery (in the South), segregation (supported more widely than just in the South), and against not only allowing same-sex marriage but interracial marriage .

No, the Bill of Rights does not exist to protect the majority from "judicial tyranny," but to protect the minority from the tyranny of majority opinion. That so many people misunderstand this simple fact makes me wonder when we stopped teaching about the Constitution in school.

And it does not help that the writer in this case also does not understand the way the Court works. In non-constitutional matters, Congress can legislatively overturn a Supreme Court decision. The first bill signed by President Obama upon taking office was the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which specifically corrected the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear. The President can push Congress in those cases.

And this idea of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage? It might be successful. I have lost a lot of faith in my fellow citizens. More than that, I have lost much faith in both Congress and state legislatures to follow the actual will of the people. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center poll, 46% of Americans support ending bans on same-sex marriage, more than the 44% who favor continuing them. Given the margin of error was 2.5 %, that amounts to a dead heat. However, both the national and state legislatures have shown themselves willing to kowtow to pressure from smaller but very vocal interest groups.

But more to the point, why is this such an issue with you? Contrary to what you and your fellow fundamentalists claim, gays being allowed to marry will have not one bit of significance to your own heterosexual marriage, or those of others. At its heart, this an attempt to force the rest of us to submit to your religious convictions. Which really is against the Constitution, namely the First Amendment.

And if what you say is true, if same-sex marriage really does imperil the sanctity of your own, then your marriage is a weak and easily broken reed. If that is the case, you had no business getting married in the first place.

What's next? Chutes and Ladders? Twister?

2012-02-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

During the Superbowl, NBC showed an ad for the upcoming Battleship movie. This led to a discussion in my Facebook* about what board game might next be adapted for the screen. I was proud of my suggestion of "Candyland," deeming it too ridiculous for contemplation.

Guess what? Yep. I couldn't believe it either. Although if a studio is going to adapt such a stupid idea for a movie, it is only fitting that it star Adam Sandler. It had to be either him or Rob Schieder.

Good Lord, people. I was only joking.

Oh, and as even more proof that there are people in Hollywood with less imagination than your average mainframe, at one point Universal was going to make "Ouija." A friend of mine once suggested "Pong: The Movie," and maybe that would be the natural next step -- backwards.

These movies are product placement taken to their (il)logical extremes.** If that's the case, I would much rather see a full-length movie starring the Coca-Cola polar bears.

*The best use of Facebook, by far, is to liveblog events that you are stuck watching by yourself. (Nobody in my family likes watching football.) Thanks to FB, I spent the entire Super Bowl chatting with friends in such disparate places as New Jersey, Sacramento, and San Jose. It was a blast -- and I intend to do the same thing for the Oscars. I cordially invite any of my FB friends to join me!
**Actually, the Caveman series a few years ago, starring the Neanderthals from the GEICO commercials, ranks right up there.

Knock-Knock. Who's there? Go away.

2012-02-11T14:06:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I spent the day running around looking for items for a party we were throwing at the house for the Resident Shrink's birthday, and driving to Casa da Fruta to get the specific type of glazed apricots covered in chocolate she likes, and calling game stores and book stores and Judaica stores in a futile attempt to locate "Apples to Apples, the Jewish Edition." (She ended up getting an Amazon.com printout of the game, due to arrive Tuesday.) The day before I had spent trying to get a VGA cable and VGA-Thunderbolt adapter.* Oh, and going to the Giradhelli factory outlet*** store in San Leandro to get all the chocolate I lost in betting the Resident Shrink's mother on the outcome of the National Conference Championship. (Had the Niners won, I would have gotten Real New York Bagels. Rats.) And my regular Thursday afternoon group.

Last night was the party at our house. I was actually social for a whole three hours! I am not a party person. Although I can spend hours on end with people I like and know well, three hours at a party was a stretch, since I was not engaged in a joint project or game.**** (Give me a game -- almost any game -- and I will hang out with even total strangers forever.)

Today was spent in appraiser training for Destination Imagination, a wonderful program for schoolkids that pushes them to exercise creativity and judgment in solving challenges. One of the best parts is that no one outside the team -- including parents -- can help them. At all. Which from a parental standpoint takes a lot of pressure off, only to be replaced with the stress of having to bite your tongue to not say "That thing is never going to fly." Four years ago, when the Red-Headed Menace was in DI, I volunteered to be an appraiser and chose to be the Timekeeper/Announcer. I have been doing it every year since, even after I ceased to have a kid involved in the program. Being TKA allows me to indulge the frustrated actor in me, and means I don't actually have to judge anyone. I hang out with the kids beforehand for a few minutes, which is fun, and then present them to the audience. (I always do the improv challenge. It is amazing what really bright elementary and middle school kids can come up with in five minutes, given a relatively small amount of information.)

I have been cheerful and charming throughout. But after all that, I think this t-shirt is very much in order.

*Note to self, before I forget it: You still need to hunt down the HDMI-Thunderbolt adaptor. Try Fry's.** Or the Apple store.
**For those out of the SF Bay Area, Fry's is Geek Nirvana. Sort of like Radio Shack, only much much bigger and with more annoying commercials. Each store (at least of the original several -- I don't know if it is still true) has a different "theme." I shop at the "Old West" store in Palo Alto -- I seem to recall that the one in Campbell has a "Babylonian" Theme.
***I am still trying to wrap my head around the idea of a chocolate company having an outlet store. And it's just down the road from the Entemann's Bakery outlet store, which just isn't fair.
****Oddly enough, I am fine in a workplace situation, even a work-related social situation such as a coworker's birthday party, perhaps because in those situations there is something to talk about.

Mother God

2012-02-10T10:22:00.000-08:00

In her blog, Rachel Held Evans reports on a call by John Piper, evangelical pastor, to preserve "masculine Christianity."

...God has given Christianity a masculine feel. And being God, a God of love, He has done that for our maximum flourishing both male and female... He does not intend for women to languish or be frustrated or in any way suffer or fall short of full and lasting joy in this masculine Christianity. From which I infer that the fullest flourishing of women and men takes place in churches and families that have this masculine feel.

Evans calls upon men to answer this, rightly pointing out than women's responses to misogyny tend to be dismissed as the "rants of 'angry feminists'." She also invites women to participate, of course -- speaking out against one's own marginalization is always a good thing.

So, Reverend Piper, all I have to say, in the words of the Psalmist, is

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
   my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
   too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
   like a weaned child with its mother;
   my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
   from this time on and for evermore.

Psalm 131 (New Revised Standard Version)

Image of God as mother. Or is that not too direct for you?*

*Piper would not be the only pastor to have problem with this psalm. I was once having a discussion about feminist theology with a clergyman of my acquaintance, and he claimed that there were no feminine images of God in the Bible. I recited this psalm (my favorite, along with 121) to him, and his first question was "what translation are you using?" When I replied "the New Revised Standard," he insisted on seeing it. That was not too difficult, as copies of the NRSV were in back of every seat in the church.

Visioning music.

2012-02-10T00:21:00.000-08:00

There is no day so bad that Aaron Copeland's "Appalachian Spring" will not make it better.

I close my eyes, and I am back east, in the Smokies. I can see the light leaves on the maples and birches budding out stark against the deep green of the pines and firs. There are dogwoods, too, just beginning to leaf and already in bud. They will burst out blooming, soon, their pale pink and white flowers presaging the blossoming of the grander wild azaleas and magnolias.

There is Greenbrier, with the barn, and the deer in the mist rising from the meadow in the early evening. And the narrow road we drove down with trees curving overhead like a canopy, where we startled the black bear. It was a tossup as to who was more frightened; he must have been -- he left first.

There are the trails, forking like Robert Frost's in "The Road Not Taken." Each heading its own way, but unlike Frost's, with hope of turning and returning, with the prospect of another trail diverging and another adventure just over the ridge.

I can almost smell the clean air and feel the exhilaration of springtime. Normally, spring is not my favorite season, since summer -- that dreadful time of year -- follows so close upon its heels. Especially in Georgia, where I lived after college, and where spring lasts all of about two weeks before the heat settles in like an omnipresent oppressive cloud. Summer in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is crowded, with the clean air overcome by automobile exhaust.

I am an ocean person, deep down to my core, not a mountain person, but the Smokies in springtime are glorious. It has been far too many years since I have been there, but "Appalachian Spring" makes me remember what they are like.

That can make any day a little better.

Did you know that "earworm" is the literal translation of the German "ohrwurm"? Now you do!

2012-02-09T19:16:00.000-08:00

At any given time, I don't really get an earworm. I get earworms, plural. All too often, one tune will chase another around my head like squirrels around a tree.

Sometimes, it starts with something I hear, which for melodic, lyrical, or historical (either mine or the song's) reasons will remind me of something else. (The absolute worst earworm? Weird Al's "Christmas at Ground Zero" morphing seamlessly into "Jingle Bell Rock.") Sometimes it's pretty random.

Tonight's earworms come courtesy of the Moody Blues and the band It's A Beautiful Day. "Your Wildest Dreams" drifted into "Tuesday Afternoon" which for no discernible reason flowed into "White Bird."

This led me to buy the latter two songs from iTunes. iTunes loves it when I get earworms -- half the time I do not own the music in question and am compelled to go out to buy it. Come to think of it, that's probably how I ended up buying "Heart of Glass" by Blondie.

Aaarrrrgggghhhh. Just writing the name of that song has readjusted the jukebox in my head.

Time to go listen to some Garth Brooks.*

At least it's better than Madonna.

*To my friends who despise country -- you know who you are -- stop snickering. It's not like I am making you listen to "Friends In Low Places." I like it precisely because it does not tend to get stuck in my head, although "Two Pina Coladas"......aaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhhh.

Note to self.

2012-02-08T14:00:00.000-08:00

Two mugs of coffee plus a Venti Salted Carmel Mocha would be enough to give anyone the shakes, let alone someone who has some tremors to begin with. What you gain in pure speed in typing (and clarity of thought) you lose in having to go back and correct all the typos from your fingers not hitting the keys accurately in the first place.

Good luck in getting to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight.

That's my boy.

2012-02-08T13:03:00.000-08:00

At school, The Red-Headed Menace was asked to describe his personality. He termed himself as being, among other things, "quixotic." Just like his mom.*

*On the whole, he did a good job of describing himself, which if nothing else shows self-awareness.

Closets -- and attics -- can be lonely places.

2012-02-05T14:43:00.000-08:00

In his talk at Stanford, Judge Alex Kozinski decried the extent to which so many of us live our lives in public these days. We have lost a sense of what it means to be private, he mourned.

As examples, he talked about cell phones, and the intimate conversations we are often forced to overhear, and people who blog the most intimate and embarassing facts about themselves and those they know. There is no sense of propriety anymore, in Kozinski's view.

To some extent he has a point. With the exception of a my circle of friends, there is no one whose sex life is of any interest to me whatsoever. Even with those friends, I usually don't want to hear details. The only sex that has ever mattered to me is that I am involved in, and I am not talking about that in any great detail except to the other party involved.

But there is another side here. So much of what we have deemed private we have deemed shameful. We did not talk about homosexuality, or mental illness, or rape not because there is inherently something private about it, but because to be homosexual was to be an abomination, to be mentally ill was to be a threat or at the very least an embarrassment, and to have been raped meant that to some people you were ruined forever and that it would have been better if you had died. We forced gay Uncle Bob to stay in the closet and crazy Aunt Agatha into a metaphorical attic not because we were protecting their privacy but because we were protecting our standing in the eyes of our neighbors.

Keeping people in closets and attics means to keep them alone. Being isolated means that you develop a very real sense of just how broken you are, how much you are a lesser human being than those around you. It is soul destroying.

Breaking that "privacy" means reclaiming your humanity. Breaking that silence is reaching out to others. You are not alone -- you are never alone. You are one of God's children, too. You matter.

In this blog, I have written three posts about what many would consider "private" (i.e., shameful) issues. There is another that I have written that I took down. Aside from the two posts accessed by students looking to finish their term papers, these posts got more traffic than any others. In the case of the three still up, I have gotten email and other feedback from people saying "Thank you for writing this." One in particular, dealing with my experiences after the birth of my first son, resulted in women telling me that reading my story gave them the courage to face their own, and to begin to heal. In the case of the post I took down, before I did so it was picked up by a website specializing in the disorder about which I wrote.

I was talked into taking down the one post. I regret now having done so. I do not regret the others one bit. They were important: if they helped at least one person say "thank God, there's someone else out there who knows what this is like," then they were well worth whatever potential embarrassment may result.

So yes, many people -- myself included -- are airing private matters in public. We have let the world know that being gay does not make you a bad person, that being mentally ill does not mean you are not worth loving, that having survived being raped means that you are stronger than you understand. We forgo that privacy, we shatter that silence, we open those closet and attic doors, in order to be recognized and accepted as full human beings.

We speak of these things, as hard as it as, so that we are no longer alone and invisible. We speak of these things so that others will know that they are not alone, and that they need not be invisible.

We speak, so that we and others may live in the sunlight rather than the dark closets and shadowed attics.

We speak, so that we may live.

Covering myself.

2012-02-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

I am sitting in my favorite Starbucks, with Joni Mitchell playing in the background, trying to say good things about myself. It's very hard. I have finally gotten the hang of tweaking my resume for individual openings. It's this cover letter that is driving me nuts. Selling myself is hard, and when I try it comes out sounding forced and stiff.

There are very few jobs that I am an *exact* match for. That does not mean I would not be good in that job. The position I am applying for is a case in point: they want someone who can manage projects. Check, did that at PAL. They want someone who can multi-task. Check, aside from having to do that at every job I have ever held, I was a stay at home mother -- multi-tasking is what we do. They want someone who can analyze, write and present ideas clearly and concisely. I think that speaks for itself, at least to those of you reading this.* A problem solver and quick learner. Check and check -- a boss of mine once described me as her "utility infielder": throw a problem to me and I take care of it. Can work independently or as part of a team. Check, just ask the people at PAL, the Census, or Kara. Sensitivity to persons with mental health, developmental and other disabilities and/or past community service work. Check and check -- I can handle people in crisis with tact and sensitivity, as I have to do when I answer client request calls at Kara.

But they also want....

Access. I have had a one week introductory course in Access a year and a half ago, and remember none of it. I have had more recent exposure to Exceed, a similar piece of software for donor tracking, but even that has been pretty limited in scope. But I have a lot of experience with learning online databases: at PAL, I used two, at the Census, I had to learn two,** and at Kara I have had to learn three. I learn quickly, and am very comfortable with reading manuals and learning on the fly. I am positive that I can learn Access tolerably well in a few weeks, especially if I read manuals on my own time outside of work, which I would probably do.

They would prefer someone who is fluent in Spanish or Vietnamese. That is the only part of their qualifications that not only do I not have, I have no hope of attaining, at least in the short term. They state it as a preference, however, not a requirement.

I would be good at this job. I can see myself doing it. From their description, it sounds like a job that I can grown into and can grow with me. I am sure that I can do this, and most likely do it very well.

I just wish I could explain that in this stupid letter.

*Okay, so maybe not so much the "concise" part. I'm working on it.
**One of them was the regular Census database, the other was a database so confidential that if you left your desk with it running (even if it was not up and visible), you would get fired. You could find out a scary amount of information from it: during training, we were only allowed to use ourselves (not even our spouses) as test queries. My record included the address of my sister-in-law. There was no real temptation to use it for nefarious purposes: our use was tracked, and looking for information on people we were not instructed to would result not only in termination but possibly prosecution.

New word to hate.

2012-02-04T22:44:00.000-08:00

At the privacy symposium I went to, I heard a word I had never heard before. It goes on my list of words I absolutely detest for aesthetic reasons, along with polyamory and gifted (as a verb). That word is ....

"Monetize." As in "You found a way to monetize your information."*

*shudder*

I guess it's not enough any more to say things like "Did you find a way to turn a profit on this?" I am all for using fewer words, but this one is simply ridiculous.

*Actual quote from a discussion about drones and privacy.

What you can find at .gov, if you look hard enough

2012-02-04T21:06:00.000-08:00

Proof that the people at the Copyright Office have a sense of humor:

How do I protect my sighting of Elvis?
Copyright law does not protect sightings. However, copyright law will protectyour photo (or other depiction) of your sighting of Elvis. File your claim tocopyright online by means of the electronic Copyright Office (eCO). Pay thefee online and attach a copy of your photo. Or, go to the Copyright Office website,fill in Form CO, print it, and mail it together with your photo and fee. Formore information on registration a copyright, see SL-35. No one can lawfullyuse your photo of your sighting, although someone else may file his own photoof his sighting. Copyright law protects the original photograph, not the subjectof the photograph.

From What Does Copyright Protect?*

[Edited to add: upon further reflection, I wonder if this was actual query received in the Copyright Office. I know that in my time at the Census, we kept a board with the most bizarre things people said to the enumerators (without any personal information, of course). I expect most customer service people have something similar, if only in their head.]

*I was looking at this to see if I could find out what it means in the U.S. for architectural works to be copyrighted. I wimped out and resorted to using Wikipedia instead. This came about because I was looking for pictures of Paris, and there was a note in WikiMedia: "Photographs taken of buildings located in France can only be uploaded to Commons if the copyright on the building has expired, because the Copyright Law of France forbids the publication or commercial use of photographs taken of copyrighted buildings. The copyright term in France for buildings is the lifetime of the architect + 70 years + the end of the calendar year."In the PowerPoint presentations I'm preparing, I was only planning to use a picture of one recent building (Centre Pompidou). It is a spectacularly ugly building (at least until you get used to it) so leaving it out won't be that great a loss.

Quotes of the day, and an analogy

2012-02-03T22:24:00.000-08:00

From Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals:

"In this Twitter world, having law enforcement monitoring you just increases your fan base."

"People these days often shout so loudly on their phones that using the phone almost seems superfluous."

About an episode of Jerry Springer he watched, [it used to be] "Cheating was a foible, and cheating with one's wife's sister would be in bad taste, to say the least."

Also, talking about a woman who blogged about a man with whom she had sex, "...we learned that he likes spanking. Who doesn't?"

Of course, he also said some things about bloggers. : "Bloggers are the type of people who wake up in the morning thinking that the world waits for their every thought. I know I've offended at least half of you... They put their every thought out there: full-baked, half-baked, and frequently unbaked."*

*****************

And the analogy, from a friend of mine: our intellects and our ambitions are like a mountain. Some of us are used to going to or being at the top. We identify ourselves by the small amount at the top of the mountain that we reach that others may not. When we fall short of that mountaintop, we identify ourselves by the amount we fall short rather than the totality of the rest of the mountain.

*There is a blog post (yeah, I know) just waiting to be written about the concurrent rise of blogging and reduction in social interaction, and how people talking about things that were "too private" is not necessarily a bad thing.

The reason for that last post

2012-02-03T18:21:00.000-08:00

I am attending a symposium on privacy, as I said a couple of posts ago. In one of the sessions, a panelist (I can't remember his name without looking it up, except that it was not Eugene Volokh) was discussing the new European privacy laws. He talked about the underpinning being "the right to be forgotten."

He then said that Facebook and Google already had mechanisms which would allow you to take down embarrassing information that you placed on the web yourself.

No. At least, not in the case of Blogger blogs.

In the last post, I was testing whether I could take down a post and have it disappear from Google Reader. I already knew the answer; I was doublechecking that I was right. [Edited to add: D'oh! If you are reading this on my blog, as opposed to Google Reader, you can't see the last post because I deleted it.]

Occasionally there is a post I think better of later, usually because I was posting late at night and my judgment was impaired. Or because in retrospect I felt the post was whiny. Or because I had decided not to publish it (but still wanted to keep the piece of writing) but had hit the "Publish" button rather than the "Save" button. I have tried to remove them to no avail.

Once something is on Google Reader, it is there forever. I have read other complaints about this from other bloggers on the Blogger forums. The explanation I have seen given is that it is an RSS feed and once something is out there, it is out there. I do understand about RSS feeds -- I set up the RSS feed for LiveJournal to access.

But if it is an RSS feed, how come I can edit posts? I can't edit the posts that have been picked up by the regular RSS feed, but I can and have it show up in Google Reader. It may be that there is some process by which one can write to Google and get them to delete posts, but I have yet to see it. [Edited to add: the test post did not appear on LiveJournal, which uses an RSS feed.]

I'm not arguing one way or another about the European policy privacy, or privacy in general, simply making an empirical observation.

I think I like this guy.

2012-02-03T13:28:00.000-08:00

Mandy Patinkin says his favorite drug is Viagra.

[Predictably, and perhaps sadly, the comments have been overrun by Princess Bride references. Okay, so he was Inigo Montoya. Give it a rest, already.]

Rightful places.

2012-02-03T10:33:00.000-08:00

[Written last night by hand. And yes, I do put footnotes in my handwritten drafts. I live for footnotes -- or haven't you noticed? I'm weird that way.]

Sad to say, there are not a lot of things which will draw me out of my hermitage (other than spending time with actual friends). My social anxiety -- bordering on mild agoraphobia -- has become too acute. I'm working on overcoming it.

One of those things, however, would be "The Privacy Paradox: Privacy and Its Conflicting Values," a day and a half symposium at Stanford Law School. The first session covers drones, which are interesting, but for me the meat of the symposium is tomorrow, with discussions on medical records and privacy; data gathering and politics; and privacy, tort law and the first amendment.

This is why I am sitting one of the large classrooms in the law school. I know no one here; I cannot figure out if this is a bug or a feature.

I am trying to appear invisible. Maybe that's why I wore all black. On the other hand, on a whim I wore my most outrageous earrings, red chandeliers with drops that fall almost to my shoulders. They were my effort to reclaim my unique sense of self. They were to give me courage.

They're not working.

Returning to Stanford Law School is always am emotionally fraught experience for me.* I am proud I went here: a degree from Stanford, in any discipline, is most decidedly not chopped liver.

Yet that pride competes with a vague shame, a sense of failure for the direction my life moved in that I did not use my degree much. I feel like I've let the side down, so to speak.**

This symposium, which covers so many areas of interest for me (medical records privacy! data gathering! politics! the First Amendent!) is one of the few things to overcome my reluctance to revisit what actually was a very good place for me. I learned a lot here, and not just law. I learned a way of thinking and being in the world. Regardless of where I went after, this place changed me, for the good. I need to get back here more often, if for no other reason than to remind myself that, yes, regardless of whatever I have done with my life, I am intelligent enough to have belonged here once. To belong here today.

*There is also a more defined sense of panic. The last time I was in this specific classroom I was taking Tax, a class in which I did not do particularly well (I ended up taking it pass/fail, if memory serves) and which I hated every minute of, Professor Bankman's skill as a teacher notwithstanding. I have to keep reminding myself that I also took Evidence in this room, which I loved and in which I got an A.

** I feel the same way about Wellesley. My alma mater is also the alma mater of secretaries of state, astronauts, high-profile journalists, and Miss Manners. Had the Democratic primaries gone differently in 2008, it would have been the alma mater of the first woman President of the United States. (It was also the alma mater of the best teacher my sons had in middle school.) It's a heady thing to live up to.

2012-02-03T10:03:00.001-08:00

Yes, I changed the design. Hope you like it. In case you didn't notice, the background is the picture I posted in "Understanding Vincent."

Shopping local

2012-02-02T21:33:00.000-08:00

There is a new grocery store in my area. It is a Fresh & Easy, part of a chain that, if memory serves, began in Britain. I love this place.

It is small, about only 2/3 the size of the nearest Safeway, and probably 1/4 of the mega-Safeway they are building a couple of miles away. The produce tends to come pre-bagged, but all the produce I have gotten so far has been of good quality. Their pre-made meals are tasty, and they have a number of in-house products that far and away beat other store brands. (Everyone in my house loves their pre-made puddings.) They also, amusingly, have some British goods as well. Their prices are comparable -- or lower than -- Safeway's, and their milk prices are lower than Costco's.

We can't get quite everything there: we still do a lot of bulk purchases at Costco (teenage boys? "Plague of locusts?") and Fresh & Easy doesn't carry unscented cat litter, which is a must in our house because the scented varieties give me migraines. Nonetheless, they carry almost all the things we need. And it may be silly, but I actually like checking myself out. If I forget the linen bags, I can put my goods in one bag rather than the three that the Safeway baggers use.

There is a lot of emphasis these days in the sorts of political circles I travel in on "buying local." By this, people mean buying locally grown produce (organic where possible) to help reduce the carbon footprint. By this measure, this store fails, miserably.

But in another way, it succeeds quite well. It allows people in the neighborhood to walk to the store rather than having to get in the car and drive. People can send their kids to pick up a few items. More importantly, it transformed a store which had stood empty for years, serving as an eyesore and a trouble spot, into a clean and bright business.* I support them as much as I can.

And I think that's okay.

*Kudos also to the Starbucks, which created a neighborhood meeting place where none had existed, and kept the shopping strip it inhabits with the F&E from closing completely.

The Politics of Soundbites.

2012-02-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

I hate “gotcha” politics.

I long for a mythical era when people of good intent coulddiscuss their differences rationally, and not look for every sound bite thatcan be taken out of context and used to bludgeon their opponent.* I want people to be judged on the content oftheir ideas, not the particular phrasing of their statements.

I never thought that I would be saying this, but Mitt Romney is being treated unfairly.

In an interview after the Florida primary, Romney was quotedas saying “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” Shocking! Cold-hearted! And this from a man who aspires to bePresident!

Republican opponents, Democrats and liberals (the last twoare not interchangeable) jumped all over this. People were quick to make metaphorical political hay while the spotlightshone brightly on the beleaguered Republican frontrunner.

The problem is that that statement was part of a largersentence that puts Romney in a different light.

“I’m not concerned about the very poor,” Romney said… and thenwent on “We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. "

That is a much different statement. Does Romney have a grasp on just how tatteredthe safety net is and what poor support it offers for people who depend on it? Probably not. Will whatever solution he has to fix the holes work? Given his views, Ithink probably not. But believing that the safety net takes care of the very poor so that we don't need to concentrate on them as much is not the same as saying that the very poor can go hang.

I don’t necessarily think Romney is acold-hearted man. I think he may be outof touch with how most people live,** but then I think that of all of the GOP’scandidates. He is the only one that Ithink is rational, which quite frankly counts for more than his occasionalmissteps.

And seriously, compared with Gingrich hinting that millionaires are eligible for food stamps and that one could go to Hawaii on them, or thatyoung people have a bad work ethic and that students should be made to serve as janitors in schools (ignoring the real, hard, full-time work that goes intobeing a janitor) – who is more out of touch? And more to the point, who islikely to hurt the country less? A man who believes in fixing the holes in thesafety net, or someone who questions whether it should exist at all?

*I know this is mythical: see Wikipedia on the 1824 and 1828elections. In some ways, the nastinessof today’s politics has nothing on that period of American history.

**That betting Perry 10K thing? I still can’t understand what people find sooffensive about that. Romney has the money,Perry has the money, and unless you find gambling inherently sinful, that moneyis theirs to do with as they please. Do people really not know how wealthythese guys are?

DInnertime Conversation.

2012-02-01T21:28:00.000-08:00

Discussion at dinnertime:

Periods of classical music.

Tchaikovsky.

The 1812 Overture.

The War of 1812 -- both Napoleonic and American theatres.

Napoleon's attempt to capture Moscow.

Hitler's attempt to capture Moscow.

The Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, and how Hitler was stupid for opening a second front.

Technologies and transportation during W.W.II, including why diesel would have been much better than steam, but was not possible due to the need for petroleum to be used elsewhere, armaments transported by rail, the specifics of British rail during the war, with a small detour to discuss the Maginot line and the taxicabs of the Marne in W.W.I.

The difficulties Hitler would have faced in invading America.

How one would geographically structure an invasion, and logistical difficulties, with a brief detour into a debate about whether New York or Texas would be more of a problem for invaders. (Including quotes from Casablanca.)

The participants: an aerospace engineer with an interest in history; a former lawyer who has a B.A. in History, specializing in 20th Century European History; a teenaged railroad savant; and a student currently taking AP Modern European History.

This actually is not that unusual a conversation for us, although it is often subjects other than history. (Politics is a big topic, so are various scientific issues.)

I love my family.

What do you talk about over dinner?

I'm illiterate in classical music, remember?

2012-02-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

I just asked the people in the room (Railfan and The Red-Headed Menace) if they would mind me playing music.* Since I knew they would not be happy with me playing my standards playlist (see yesterday's post), I asked if they would mind classical.

"What period? Romantic? Baroque? Impressionistic? Modern?" RHM asked.

How should I know? This having children more knowledgeable than me can get to be a real pain, sometimes.**

* I suppose I could have been an autocrat and simply turned the music on, but I am trying to teach my children manners, and absent a good reason to be autocratic, I try to avoid doing so. That said, there are times when "because I said so" is not only a good reason but the only possible reason.

**My answer was "How should I know? I think it's a mix." I then started off with his favorite Vivaldi piece, so he was mollified.

Would this make Elrond a rook?

2012-02-01T19:39:00.001-08:00

Railfan just described a game he was playing as "a cross between chess and Lord of the Rings." Maybe it's just me, but I am having a lot of trouble visualizing this.

2012-02-01T19:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I met with my job coach. She is a wonderful woman, full of warmth and encouragement. We talked about my edited resume and my hobbies, and I told her about the Paris Powerpoint project (which at this point qualifies as an obsession more than a hobby), and we set up dates for mock interviews and clothing analysis. She pointed me towards some job openings I have to send in resumes and letters for.

"You need to take time to appreciate you," she said. "You're so busy looking towards the past and comparing yourself to other people, and looking towards the future and worrying, that you miss what is special about you right now. What you have done in your life.

"Pat yourself on the back, once in a while."

I don't think I know how to do that.

Who needs Xanax?

2012-01-31T10:07:00.000-08:00

Today's playlist consists of standards sung by Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole, and more contemporary singers such as Diana Krall, Josh Groban, and Michael Bublè.* I am turning into my parents, clearly. (I also slipped in Adele's "Someone Like You." I'm not sure why.)

This is my Valium list. Why take benzos when you've got "Unforgettable" by Nat King (and Natalie) Cole, let alone Dianne Reeve's version of "One for My Baby"?

*And Lady GaGa. She and Bennett did a fun version of "The Lady Is a Tramp" on his Duets album. The girl can sing.

Good questions.

2012-01-30T23:07:00.000-08:00

How do you keep the music playing?
How do you make it last?
How do keep the song from fading too fast?
"How Do You Keep The Music Playing?" Lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman

The Rocket Scientist and I were married in 1983. This was our song, of sorts. It captured the fear of two people entering into the most intimate and emotionally charged relationship of their lives.

How do you lose yourself to someone
And never lose your way?
How do you not run out of new things to say?

We married young, at least by today's standards. We were engaged in college, and were married one month after I graduated. We didn't know what we were getting into. We realized this. We got married anyway.

We had to fight to get married. His family, and my priest, were dead set against it. We got married anyway.

And since we know we're always changing
How can it be the same?
And tell me how year after year you're sure your heart will fall apart
Each time you hear my name

Today is not an anniversary. It is not thirty-two years since we met, or twenty-nine since we got married. The memories came to mind today because on iTunes I discovered a version of this song by Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin which I love much more than the original by James Ingram and Patti Austin. It is sung by people who are older and wiser both than we were at the time and even than we are now. People older than us still asking those same questions.

I know the way you feel for me
is now or never
The more I love the more I am afraid
That in your eyes I may not see forever

The fear is still there, at the back of my mind. I don't think it ever completely goes away for most people.

Relationships change. Ours is no exception. You cannot see forever in people's eyes; it is simply a good thing to see today. The heart no longer falls apart at the mention of a name. But that does not mean the end: the energy new relationships have mutates and deepens into a different sort of strength. Once you weather enough storms, you find equilibrium. And God knows, we have had our storms, our pain, our share of train wrecks.

I can't say we will be married forever. Contrary to the fairy tales, I think that is an unrealistic thing for most people to say. I know or have heard of too many couples that got divorced after being together even longer than we have. Life happens; people change. The world around you becomes a different place. You become a different person.

I do know this, however. If tomorrow I were to walk away, or he were, soon I would be on the phone or IM or sending emails seeking solace or counsel or just a laugh -- or he will. He will probably always be my best friend,* and I his, regardless of our status as as partners or even a romantic couple.

If we can be the best of lovers
And be the best of friends
The music never ends

I don't think we've done half-bad.

Love you, babe.

*And hopefully traveling companion. Unlike a lot of couples, we travel very well together. We both love seeing new places and having adventures, and have the capacity to roll with the punches. I have often told him that if we got divorced, I would still want to travel with him.

Understanding Vincent.

2012-01-30T14:10:00.000-08:00

My friend Cathy is in town. On Sunday, we went to Natural Bridges State Park in Santa Cruz. Fortuitously, we arrived shortly before sunset, and were able to watch the sun sink into the west over the horizon.

It was amazing. The sky was an array of reds and pinks and intense oranges that would be difficult to impossible to recreate with any brush. The sea was a patchwork of blues and pinks and gold reflected from the sky, and the cresting waves were golden white. Farther out towards the horizon, the dying sunlight disappeared, and the sea became once again a blue reflection of the deep blue sky overhead.

There were egrets walking the shoreline at the edge of the surf. In the sunset, they turned a very pale golden pink from remnants of the sunlight and the light reflected off of the waves. If you described them, you might use the word "white," but they weren't, not really.

The photograph Cathy took, while beautiful, does not capture the experience. In addition to the visual intensity, there was the chill breeze and the cries of the seagulls, as well as the companionship of friends watching the end of the day, and all made it special.

I have always had a theory, totally unsupported by biographical information as far as I know, that Vincent van Gogh killed himself because the disconnect between what he experienced in the world and what he was able to communicate became too great. You can sense that in the whirling globes of "Starry Night," and in the restless waves of "Wheat Fields with Crows."

I understand this. The words I have are even more inadequate than the colors at Vincent's disposal. I can't capture what it is I see around me in any form that feels like it approaches my experience. For many people this would not be a problem, but for people like me who want to share the world, who want to be able to say "Look at that!" and know that other people see it too, this disconnect is intensely frustrating.

Sometimes the world is almost too beautiful to bear.

Entitled. Or maybe not.

2012-01-30T13:35:00.002-08:00

I used to never put titles on my posts. It seemed too much bother. However, I have been trying to do better about this, because it seems to make the pages easier to read.

There is a post I am currently working on about my experiences this past Sunday. The perfect title for it would be from the Nick ~~Drake~~ Cave* song, "There She Goes, My Beautiful World." I was dismayed to remember that I had already used that title for this post.

Rats.

*It does help to doublecheck the artist's name before you post.

Punishment.

2012-01-29T12:38:00.000-08:00

Today's musical playlist is comedy. I've been listening to enough depressing ballads lately, I decided to refrain from inflicting them on everyone else here. I am sitting in the dining/living room, the Red-Headed Menace is on the sofa, and the Rocket Scientist is in the kitchen homebrewing (it is a small house -- 1100 sq feet, 5-6 residents).

One of my selections is Kip Adotta's "Wet Dream." I love this piece to death. It drives both RS and RHM up the wall. The reason in both cases are the simply awful puns.

It's like Tabasco sauce. My eldest son has yet to find a food on which he will not put hot sauce -- except for possibly ice cream. I really don't care for it -- my tastes tend to be more ... subtle. (The Not So Little Drummer Boy says that they are not subtle but boring.)

Puns are like hot sauce. Certain types of minds (mine, for example), think they are screamingly funny. Perhaps people like me have simply never progressed beyond whatever age it is that revels in wordplay and silliness. Perhaps we like them because they allow us to pretend we're smarter than other people. Those other people find them stupid. Those other people find them annoying.

Oh, well. I just need to find similarly warped minds to hang out with.

Edited to add: Speaking of warped, my favorite song on this playlist is Tom Lehrer's "Masochism Tango." Railfan and Red-Headed Menace hate it, which simply makes it even more lovely in my eyes, er, ears.

Just another sign of the times.

2012-01-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

Listening to Weird Al's "One More Minute" (the best breakup song ever, and the reason Weird Al deserves to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), I had to explain to the Red-Headed Menace what a Rolodex was.

I feel so old.

ETA:

Then there was this exchange:

Me: "The legend you are about to hear is true. Only the needle should be changed to protect the record."* [looking at RHM] You have no idea what that means, do you?
RHM: No, not at all.

Sigh.

*From Stan Freberg's "St. George and the Dragonet." That allusion is lost on all of my offspring as well.

Why I love Barney Frank.

2012-01-27T10:06:00.000-08:00

From a New York Times interview with the representative for the 4th District of Massachusetts:

You’ve long argued for the decriminalization of marijuana. Do you smoke weed?
No.

Why not?
Why do you ask a question, then act surprised when I give an answer? Do you think I lie to people?

I thought you might explain why you support decriminalizing it but don’t smoke it.
Do you think I’ve ever had an abortion? I don’t play poker on the Internet, either.

For Barney Frank, I'd even consider putting up with Massachusetts winters again.

Take meeeee home...oh muddah faddah...

2012-01-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

The problem with going to sleep listening to the "Dance of the Hours" segment of Fantasia is that you wake up with your brain stuck on Allan Sherman's "Hello Muddah Hello Faddah."

"And the head coach wants no sissies, so he reads to us from something called Ulysses..."

I suppose it depends upon your definition of "fun."

2012-01-26T19:29:00.000-08:00

A little over a year ago, I took a class on the newest iteration of MS Office. During class, I made an eight-slide presentation that had thirty-six animations in it.

Just imagine what I can do with fifty to sixty slides. This is going to be fun. At least for me.

Watch out, world. I have PowerPoint and I am not afraid to use it.

Wow. That must be a pain.

2012-01-26T18:03:00.000-08:00

The guy who just sat down next to me in Starbucks brought his computer. Not a laptop, but a full-size iMac G5 with a tower and everything. Guess he's planning to be here quite a while.

Which reminds me, I need to go home -- I've been here long enough myself. Time to go make dinner.

2012-01-26T17:51:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, during a discussion about the State of the Union address on Fox News, Stephen Moore, usually a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, said “This idea of all the members, Republicans and Democrats sitting next to each other, that’s like date rape."

No, Mr. Moore, it's not. This is what date rape looks like.*

*He is not the first to use this insanely offensive analogy: Grover Nordquist once said "Bipartisanship is another form of date rape." I sincerely hope that these men never have their wives or daughters learn first hand the meaning of the term. Edited to add: I have just had it pointed out to me that being male does not automatically shield people from being raped. That is true, but I have to confess that being terribly human, I would not be as upset if Moore or Nordquist got raped as if their relatives did -- not because they are men but because they are poor excuses for human beings. It has now been pointed out to me that that mindset views rape as punishment -- "they had it coming to them." The person pointing this out is absolutely right, of course, and is on this issue a much better person than I am. Of course, no one should ever have to experience being raped.

Restless.

2012-01-26T17:28:00.000-08:00

The nonprofit I volunteer at is planning their Spring Gala, which is our major fundraiser for the year. This year's theme is "April In Paris." At our planning meeting, someone suggested that it would be cool to have movies about Paris playing in the background (sans sound) during the pre-dinner cocktail reception.

This is why I am sitting cursing MGM (who is, according to the Copyright Office records, the rights holder here) for my inability to find a place to write to request permission to show An American in Paris. (It was so much easier to find where to get permission for Warner Brother's April in Paris.)* And wondering if the recent Supreme Court decision in Golan v. Holder means that even early silent films are off limits without permission. Goodbye, Georges Méliès. (Even though his films are fantasies which would not show shots of Paris, his works are pretty well known and would be of interest following Scorcese's Hugo -- which is a wonderful movie I enthusiastically recommend.)

Our other option is to use a slide show of public domain pictures of Paris. Fortunately, the Internet is greatly helpful: I spent a couple of hours online yesterday and found easily 50-60 shots which I can use. Everything from the Eiffel Tower and the Mona Lisa to Père Lachaise cemetery and Sacré-Cœur cathedral. I have yet to locate a public domain picture of one of Hector Guimard's Art Nouveau Metro station entrances, but I am sure one is out there.**

The problem for me is.... I want to go back to Paris. NOW.

It's odd to be homesick for a city which I have only seen three times in my life, for a grand total of less than two weeks. I have felt it before, that longing for somewhere far away, although it is usually centered on London or Madrid. (And every time I see one of them, the Lord of The Rings movies fill me with a desire to be in New Zealand.) In both cases, I have spent even less time there than in Paris.

Maybe it is just getting older (my excuse for everything these days, it seems), but I am restless. I want to roam, to feel that excitement of trying to figure out the signs in a language I do not speak or navigate strange roads where people drive on the other side. I want to see the misty hills of Scotland again. I want to lose myself in the corridors of the Louvre. I want to sit at a cafe on the Plaza Major and have churros con chocolat.*** I want to walk along the Keizersgracht and watch the boats carrying the tourists go by. I want to see the malachite room in the Winter Palace, and wonder what it must have been like for the czar to sit there while the Russian people rioted outside, and how in some ways those everyday Russians are the ancestors of the Occupy movement.

I want to leave here and... just go. There is some outside chance I will go to Italy in the fall, and that will help. I will hopefully get to see Rome, Florence, and Milan. But even that is not an unmixed blessing.

I'll just have that many more places to long for when my eyes are discontented with the horizon in front of me.

*There are probably better movies to use; both of these were primarily shot on sound stages. I'm looking into it.
**If anyone reading this has .jpgs of these -- or any other Paris pictures -- that they would like to donate to the cause, you can email me using my profile.
***Actually, the best churros con chocolat in Madrid are at Chocolateria San Gines, 5 Pasadizo de San Ginés. Oh, my God. They are so decadently good. And, according to Wikipedia, they also have a branch in .... Tokyo.

Phantom of the iTunes

2012-01-24T12:32:00.000-08:00

How in the world did I end up purchasing "Heart of Glass" by Blondie? I don't even really like it. And while I like the Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy" okay, I can't remember buying it. Nor can I remember buying K.T. Tunstall's "Black Horse and Cherry Tree," although I do really like that one. And there is the continuing mystery of how "Fade Into You" by Mazzie Star (a band I can never consciously remember even knowing about) ended up on my iTunes -- I did not purchase it, as far as I can tell.*

This bugs me.

*At least from iTunes. I have been buying more music downloads from Amazon lately.

Never knew I was funny, did you.

2012-01-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

There are a great many jobs out there that are done by freelancers. Writing greeting cards is one of those. Many years ago, I toyed with the idea of writing cards, but then something got in the way (most probably my realization that writing them was harder than I expected) and I did not follow up. (The story of my life, really.) I also started writing trivia questions, which I found both easier and more interesting.

While cleaning on Saturday, I discovered the box in which I kept the few that I did attempt. These are probably ten years old at this point.

****************

While your mileage may vary as to whether these are amusing or not, these are some of my favorites (italics indicate interior text):

Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way! Have you ever wondered, jingle all the way to where?

For your birthday, you should go out to dinner -- and for once, don't eat like a bird! Besides, most restaurants don't even serve earthworms.

For your birthday, I would give you a perfect rose, gentle waves lapping on a Caribbean shore, a beautiful tropical sunset with cotton-candy clouds... None of those would fit in the envelope.

You know you've been in the hospital too long when you start trying to color coordinate your medicines with your hospital gown!* Get well soon.

I miss you! The dog misses you! The cat misses you! The goldfish misses you! Well, I can't really tell about the goldfish -- he's not very articulate.

I don't miss you. I really don't miss you. I am also Napoleon Bonaparte III.

Mom, I wish I could say that, now that I have kids, I sound just like you, but I don't. Hey, don't make that face! It might freeze that way and then where would you be?

Queen Victoria had eight children, all but one of them without anesthesia. That could explain why she was so seldom amused.

The best things in life are green: shamrocks, beer, Kermit the Frog.... Gee, I didn't know he was Irish.

You're the top! You're the Coliseum! You're the double grande decaf mocha with extra whipped cream! Okay, so I'm no Cole Porter -- you're still the best.

Graduate, remember, as Alexander Pope said, "a little learning is a dangerous thing." Does this mean you're now a menace to society?

Son, as you graduate and move into the big exciting world on your own, there is only one thing I want to say to you.... I want all my earrings back before you go.

A college student is a bit like a caterpillar. He spends four years growing and changing, turning into a beautiful winged creature that graduates to fly free upon the breeze... Only to be eaten for lunch by some large corporate bird. Happy Graduation, anyway.

So you're engaged. You're not really off the market, you know... You're just in escrow.**

*****************

Since there is nothing under the sun that is new, and people do tend to think alike, I would not be surprised at all if some variant of these has appeared on the card racks at Safeway in the past ten years. Still, I thought some of you might find them amusing.

And hey, if I can just find some stock photos that would match them...

*I am on a variety of meds, and once was sorely disappointed when my doctor changed the dosage of one of them to discover that the color of the new pill clashed with the color of the others. Right now, my meds all fall on the pale yellow -- pale orange -- tan spectrum., except for the iron supplements, which are an annoying shade of dark green that just does not go well at all with the rest.

**This actually was a conversation I had with a college classmate when I got engaged.

You can stop shuddering. Really.

2012-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

My new favorite drink? Two ounces of Red Stag Black Cherry Bourbon (no, it's good! really!) and a can of Coke. Sort of a bourbon cherry coke.

Gee, I never knew that....

2012-01-24T11:24:00.000-08:00

On Sunday, I was listening to NPR, when one of the commentators stated that no detainee had ever been arrested on U.S. soil. Funny, I never knew Chicago was not in America.*

*Seriously, Padilla's plight should give pause to anyone who is not bothered by the 2012 NDAA.

The making of a policy wonk

2012-01-20T16:40:00.001-08:00

I just came home to find the Red-Headed Menace watching C-SPAN, which is playing the sound feed to the oral argument in the Texas redistricting case.

2012-01-19T13:04:00.000-08:00

I have not written much about SOPA/PIPA, mostly because there were so many people being so much more eloquent about the dangers of the legislation than I would be.* I could not think of anything to say that would not simply be a pale imitation of others' words.

So this is just an observation: when people whose livelihoods depend upon the security of their copyrights start raising the alarm, it is a bad bill.** (See also.)

A friend of mine on Facebook pointed out, though, that every one of us who illegally downloads a song, who can't wait for that episode of their favorite show to come out on DVD, who gets movies off of Pirate Bay, contributes to the very real problem that these bills allege to correct. My hands are not clean, but more and more these days I am trying to be careful about where I get material.*** (I was relieved when iTunes started carrying Criminal Minds, because that meant that there was a way to see the episodes without waiting for reruns. I had not been watching the episodes I missed because there was no way to do so legally.)

I know artists, photographers and writers. They are able to make a living doing what they do because they can control what happens with their work. The same is true of those who make television, movies and music. They need and deserve to have their work protected. All of us can help with that.

I am not naive enough to think that if all of us stopped swiping things the efforts to pass bills like SOPA/PIPA will go away; I'm cynical enough to think that these are as much about power and control as they are about protecting artists. But we can stop being the users who prop up the drug cartel.

*That's never stopped me before, I know.
**And you have to read this. I won't describe it, just... read. I nearly snorted my Salted Carmel Mocha through my nose.
*** I actually bought Weird Al's "Don't Download This Song" for 99 cents from iTunes, which my children found incredibly funny.

Because I'm weird, that's why.

2012-01-19T00:23:00.000-08:00

New playlist:

"Recruiting Sargeant"    Great Big Sea
"Number Six Driver " Eddie From Ohio
"Margaritaville"    Jimmy Buffett
"I Don't Know How to Love Him" Yvonne Elliman (From Jesus Christ Superstar)*
"Willkommen - (Cabaret)"    Joel Grey
"Bleecker to Broadway"    Eddie from Ohio
"Tainted Love"    Soft Cell
"Sweet Baby James"    James Taylor
"Brown Eyed Girl"    Van Morrison
"Vivaldi The 4 Seasons (Winter) I. Allegro Non Molto"    Antonio Vivaldi
"Rocky Raccoon"    The Beatles
"Passionate Kisses"**    Mary Chapin Carpenter
"And So It Goes"    Billy Joel
"Water Colors"    Janis Ian
"End Of The World"*** Great Big Sea
"The Rainbow Connection"    Sarah McLachlan
"I Never Was to Africa"    Ferron
"I'm Yours/Somewhere Over The Rainbow"    Straight No Chaser

It's a playlist of songs that remind me of people for whatever reason, arranged alphabetically... by the first name of the person the song reminds me of.

Some of them, any regular reader of this blog will know (Vivaldi....hmmmm), but others... Let's just say that if you read this, and know me well, you may think you know to whom to assign each song . You may be right, but more probably not.

There are some strange segues in here, but that's okay. The people I know are an eclectic lot.

* Edited to add: I changed this because I used "Helplessly Hoping" on yesterday's playlist. Some people have more than one song.
**For the Rocket Scientist: no, this one is not about who you think it is.
***Neither is this one, probably.

"I've got this fear of falling I'm trying to overcome..."

2012-01-18T22:46:00.000-08:00

I love Eddie from Ohio. (Thank you, Cathy, for introducing me to them.) "Number Six Driver" is one of my favorite songs.* Tonight, I was listening to another song by them, "Gravity," when I had such a startling thought, I had to replay the song several times.

Is this a song about a woman considering suicide? Okay, fleetingly ("You and I both know I'd never jump"), but still...

Or is it an extended metaphor for fear of commitment?

Or, most likely, the woman is just batshit crazy.

I think I may need to go to bed at this point. The fact that my mind equated commitment with suicide has me a bit worried.

*Although I think I may like Robbie Schaefer's version better.

Nope. Not me.

2012-01-18T22:37:00.000-08:00

On tonight's Criminal Minds episode, Dr. Spencer Reid (played by the gorgeously geeky Matthew Gray Gubler) was lamenting the fact that he had not changed the world, and he was already *gasp!* thirty. "Do you ever have the feeling you haven't lived up to your potential?" he asked fellow agent Emily Prentiss (played by the stunningly beautiful and sexy Paget Brewster) ..."By age thirty, Nikola Tesla had discovered alternating current."*

Oh, I don't know anyone who has ever felt like that. Not at all.

And the Red-Headed Menace was wondering why I was laughing through that scene.

*With me, it was always "Alexander the Great conquered the known world by the time he was thirty."

2012-01-18T15:18:00.000-08:00

As someone who has had her fair share of doctor visits, I am very familiar with that standard pain chart -- the one with the faces on it. I can never figure out exactly how to use that to quantify pain.

Thanks to Hyperbole and a Half (the same person who brought you "The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas"), I now have a better one.

Okay, so he had his own motives...

2012-01-18T13:58:00.000-08:00

The Red-Headed Menace was so incensed by the Wikipedia blackout that he wrote his Representative and Senators about SOPA and PIPA. I'm rather proud of him.

I did not see the text of the emails, though, so I am not sure if he mentioned that actually he won't be eligible to vote for another three years.

Today's playlist

2012-01-18T12:34:00.000-08:00

What I am listening to in the car today, as selected last night:

"Cloudy"    Simon & Garfunkel
"Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight " James Taylor
"Don’t Ask Me Why"    Billy Joel
"Down in the Boondocks"    Billy Joe Royal
"Drops of Jupiter"    Train
"Drift Away"    Dobie Gray
"Find the Cost of Freedom (Digitally Remastered LP Version)"    Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
"For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her"    Simon & Garfunkel
"For What It's Worth"    Buffalo Springfield
"From A Distance"    Kathy Mattea
"Gravity"    Alison Krauss & Union Station
"The Dangling Conversation"    Simon & Garfunkel
"Gravity"    Eddie from Ohio*
"Helplessly Hoping"    Crosby, Stills & Nash
"Hey Hey Whay Can I Say?"    Hootie and the Blowfish
"Hunger"    Voices on the Verge
"Fade into You"    Mazzy Star
"I Can See It Now"    Mary Chapin Carpenter
"I Never Was to Africa"    Ferron
"I'll Be Seeing You"    Judy Collins
"I'm Yours/Somewhere Over The Rainbow"    Straight No Chaser
"Preowned"    Elizabeth Gooen
"Send in the Clowns"    Glynis Johns**

Not the most cheerful set of songs. I might want to opt for something more upbeat. Then again, it could be worse: this playlist does not include "Hallelujah" on it.

*At some point, I keep thinking I should so a playlist of songs with the same title that are completely different.

**If the only version of this song you have heard is Judy Collins's, run right out and get this one. Judy Collins has a sweet, pure voice, completely devoid of the emotion this song demands. Judy Dench's and Barbra Streisand's versions aren't bad either.

Today is fired. And it's not getting a recommendation, either.

2012-01-18T12:18:00.000-08:00

So this morning, I had to deal with a son who, by virtue of waiting to take his meds until 6 pm yesterday was up until 3. I did manage to finally get him out of bed for him to be only a couple of minutes late to school, with no breakfast.

I myself did not have time to get breakfast. And I discovered after I had put it on -- and it was too late, as I was heading out the door -- that the shirt I was wearing had a grease spot on it. Just a small one, and barely noticeable among the leaves of the pattern, but still... things like that bug me. I usually catch them when they come out of the washer, and deal with them, but this slipped through the cracks.

The reason I was so rushed was that I had a meeting with a job counselor to go over my information and my references. The organization has two offices, one in Palo Alto and the other in San Jose, about twenty minutes apart if I drive like a madwoman, and thirty if I drive in a rational manner. I got to the Palo Alto office five minutes early (because job counselors are sticklers for punctuality, as well they should be), only to discover that I had written down the wrong office on my calendar. (Not completely stupid: the last time I had met with her had been at the Palo Alto office.) She was tied up in meetings the rest of the day and can't see me until next Monday afternoon.

On the good side, she mentioned she has some leads that might be a good fit for me. I also spent time downloading my recommendations from LinkedIn so that I could send them to her. It gave me a chance to reread the glowing things my former supervisors said about me, and perhaps help ease my sense of stupidity and incompetence.

[Edited to add: Upon returning home, I noticed that the person responsible for putting the trash bins at the curb hadn't, and the truck had already been by. That means that I have to arrange a special pickup. Grrrr.]

Oh, what the heck. It's too late for lunch, but is anyone up for coffee this afternoon or evening? My day is thus far completely devoid of planned pleasant activities.

And boy, could I sure use one.

So that's why I'm sneezing...

2012-01-17T22:42:00.000-08:00

It does make a difference when you keep forgetting to get your anti-allergy medications filled, when you are allergic to the cat which sleeps on your bed.

How did I not know of this?

2012-01-16T21:42:00.000-08:00

I am, for the most part, a classical music illiterate. With the exception of the odd piece here and there, if it wasn't in either of the Fantasia movies* or a Bugs Bunny cartoon, I likely haven't heard it.** (Okay, so you can add "Also Sprach Zarathustra." I did see 2001, after all.) There is Pachelbel's "Canon in D Major," Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony," Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture" (mainly from Independence Day concerts by the Boston Pops when I was in college), and the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah (mainly from Christmas church services), but really not much else to speak of. Oh, and you can throw in "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," by Bach, which was the processional for my wedding. (The "Ode to Joy" from Beethoven's Ninth was the recessional.)

The Red-Headed Menace is developing a serious taste for classical music. And he has introduced me to Vivaldi. Especially the "Four Seasons." Especially "Winter."

Wow. Just... wow.

*I would like to note that I heard "Rhapsody in Blue" many years before Fantasia 2000, and it may just be my favorite piece of music in the world. I once commented that if it came down to a choice of never hearing it again (or Copeland's "Appalachian Spring," for that matter), or giving up sex, I would probably opt for celibacy. While I think I may have been exaggerating, it was not by much, and I still think it would be a tough call.
**I also know a lot of fifteen second snippets of famous classical music pieces that are used as ringtones. (E.g., part of "Flight of the Bumblebee," something from "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," fifteen seconds of the "Moonlight Sonata" ...) You can stop shuddering any time now.

Forever and ever and...

2012-01-16T21:23:00.000-08:00

Me, while driving a very tricky road while taking the Red-Headed Menace and Railfan to a lasertag tournament: "Pat, slow down. You'll definitely be late if you get us killed."

Railfan: "And if you do, in the afterlife, we will spend eternity nagging you that you made us miss lasertag."

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows: Eh.

2012-01-11T15:44:00.000-08:00

I love Sherlock Holmes. I love the original Conan Doyle stories, and I love Jeremy Brett's iconic television portrayal.

The way I coped with the first Robert Downey Jr. Sherlock Holmes movie was to think of it as an entirely different animal totally unconnected with the books. It worked. I enjoyed it; the plot was relatively harmless and the homoeroticism between Downey's Holmes and Jude Law's Watson was amusing and, quite frankly, rather hot.

Once was enough, though. This second time around I found the plot a bit confusing, and the interplay between the characters a little forced. Sadly, the eye-candy, while as pretty as before, simply wasn't enough to hold my interest.* But what annoyed me most of all is something usually found these days in 3D movies.

I am tired of movies having with chase sequences featuring slow or stop-motion visuals that clearly exist only to show off the special effects. There are only so many slowed bullet impacts or frozen explosions I can see before I get really impatient. Guy Ritchie could have easily cut the running through the forest scene in half just by not overindulging in showy "look-at-me!" shots.

Give me storytelling over empty flash any day.

*I do want to note, however, that Jared Harris was great as Moriarty: menacing without ever becoming a caricature.

Please indulge me, once again

2012-01-08T15:15:00.000-08:00

I admit it. I am obsessed, monomaniacal even sometimes. But please, indulge me. If you find this tiresome, please feel free to skip to another blog.*

I am watching Sondheim! The Birthday Celebration. Some observations:

I adore David Hyde Pierce. Even given that someone else probably wrote his material, he presented the "let's do Sondheim in all the world's languages" bit perfectly. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Switzerland works for me. [ETA: Actually, looking at the show, he was one of the co-writers. So he did write his own material. Even funnier.]

The reason to love "America" is not Sondheim's lyrics, which are troubling, to say the least, or Bernstein's music, which is wonderful, but Jerome Robbin's incendiary choreography. There's nothing quite like seeing a bunch of stunning women dancing and flipping their skirts.

I understand why the more risque lyrics for "We're Going to Be All Right" never made it onstage during the original run of Do I Hear a Waltz -- it premiered in 1965. I'm not sure they would have flown. The line "Lately he tends to hit her" sung in such a jaunty manner would be jarring even today. (Which was probably the point.)

The "Sweeney Todd" running gag is amusing.

A lot of songs from Follies in this program. The choreography on "You're Gonna Love Tomorrow/Love will See Us Through" is interesting, with the brief interaction between the Sally character and the Ben character, given what happens in the play. Also, is Jenn Colella really barefoot? [ETA: No, of course not. Those are just skin-colored shoes. Can't say I care for the look.]

Chip Zein and Joanna Gleason are just cute together. There is an obvious affection between them which shines through the original production of Into the Woods (available on DVD). (Joanna Gleason's Baker's Wife was the best thing about that production -- even more so than Bernadette Peters' Witch.) (And the intro comment: "[this play] explored the twisted pathways of the human psyche, and consequently is now performed by schoolchildren across America" made me snicker, because Railfan was one of those children.)

I understand that, at least in his television career, Mandy Patinkin is a diva. But man-oh-man, can he sing with nuance and meaning."Finishing the Hat" almost makes me cry. The ache of a man forced to choose between the woman he loves and the work he is compelled to do is overwhelming. And "Move On" -- such chemistry between him and Peters. When at the end of the song Patinkin whispers "I love you" to her, he clearly means it, and her "I love you too" is equally heartfelt.

And oh my God, is Michael Cerveris gorgeous. Shaved heads generally do things to me, and those smoldering eyes... He was once quoted as saying, "Anyone who finds a murdering barber sexy is someone you gotta be kinda nervous about, but I'm grateful for any attention." Well, then, be nervous about me all you want, but he just takes my breath away.

Hee hee, I love the interplay between the two Sweeneys, George Hearn and Cerveris. The latter pulling out the razor, and the look on Hearn's face is priceless. Hearn does a lovely job as Judge Turpin in "Pretty Women," and it would have been nice if they had done it in a production together. Patti Lupone makes a great Mrs. Lovett, and "A Little Priest" is the funniest of Sondheim's songs.

David Hyde Pierce finally got his chance to sing in different languages. Cute. And "Beautiful Girls" is the one song that sort of works for.

All the divas on stage in red: stunning.

I have seen Patti Lupone sing "Ladies who Lunch" before, in the cinema version of Company. The way she sings it is very different from the iconic Elaine Stritch version: her phrasing accentuates the jazzy Latinate beat of the piece, whereas Stritch's straight ahead delivery obscures it. Very different takes, but both are great. Stritch jumping up at the end to hug Lupone and say "I'm so proud of you" was heartwarming.

Again, a lot of songs from Follies -- three out of the six sung in this segment (four counting the "Beautiful Girls" intro). "Losing My Mind" might just be the best song about unrequited (or marginally requited) love ever written.** Not that I have ever felt like this. Nope, not at all. Marin Mazzie [ETA: helps to get the actress's name right] makes you feel all the pain and confusion that this state of mind carries with it. Again, stunning.

Audra McDonald's classical training shines through. The woman is an opera singer -- and while a lot of Sondheim's songs would be overwhelmed by that, those from A Little Night Music aren't (except Desiree's, which were written for an actor Sondheim and Prince had yet to hear sing (Glynis Johns) and whom they assumed had limited singing skills). "A Glamorous Life" works well with McDonald's voice.

Follies again. "Could I Leave You" may just be my favorite number from that show*** and Donna Murphy's version is the best I have ever heard. Her performance here, as well as Alexander Gemignani's "Something's Coming" and Bernadette Peter's "Not a Day Goes By" are the primary reasons I want a CD of this show. Murphy captures the bitter sarcastic humor (she had the audience laughing at a couple of points) before sucker-punching everyone with absolute rage.

Have I mentioned that when I die I want to be reincarnated as Bernadette Peters? No? That voice. That hair. That porcelain skin and hourglass, Gibson-girl figure. And that ability to convey emotion. "Not a Day Goes By" had me in tears.

Elaine Stritch doing "I'm Still Here": incredibly appropriate. I am sure that Stritch got the standing ovation in spite of a few flaws in her performance out of recognition of how the song reflects her realities and for all she has done over the years. She is truly a beloved figure.

I am so glad they had actors sing these songs. Not only was it nice to see people who had an actual connection with and obvious warmth towards Sondheim at work here, but these songs are meant to be acted -- body language is so important in conveying their meaning.

The Broadway chorus singing "Sunday" clearly affected Sondheim a lot, which is totally understandable. It is a gorgeous soaring piece, sung with feeling by a lot of people who know how to sing.

Finally: how like the honoree to say something sweet, short and on-point. In his writings, he comes across as a rather reserved (if very funny) man, and this was clearly in evidence here.

I so wish I could have been there that evening.

*Maybe I should wait on those two other Sondheim posts until later in the year. I mean there is boring and then there is booooring.

**Okay, so it is not unrequited, but she is trying to figure out exactly what it is.

***It is "my I'm so mad at someone I could kill" song. Even when it is no one I am in a relationship with where the words are at all appropriate, singing allows for the catharsis of a LOT of bitterness.

The Artist: a non-review

2012-01-08T00:49:00.000-08:00

I have just returned from seeing The Artist. Lovely movie, I think. I really liked what I saw, and was very impressed with the two leads.

However, I cannot review this movie because I did not see all of it. Unlike Black Swan, where I had to leave the theater because I felt so freaked out, during The Artist I .... fell asleep.

What can I say? A large dinner, pain meds, soft seats, nice music, and no dialogue create an atmosphere quite conducive to napping.

Personal PSA II

2012-01-07T11:32:00.001-08:00

Calloo Callay! My cell was at Stanford Lost and Found. I am now reachable by phone again.

I know it seems odd to blog about this, but there are several people in my life who, thanks to RSS feeds, may well see posts from here faster than FB posts.

Personal PSA

2012-01-05T18:16:00.000-08:00

For anyone who needs to contact me, I have lost my cell phone. Email is the only way to get hold of me (unless I am on YM and you know my user name).

Maybe we do need some stinkin' badges

2012-01-04T12:44:00.000-08:00

I like scientists, engineers and techie people.* On my Facebook friends' list, I have a couple of rocket scientists (one of whom, The Rocket Scientist, is also a geologist), a former physicist, an Oxford-trained mathematician/engineer, a forensic scientist, a clinical psychologist, a research psychologist, someone who does not have a degree but who has done extensive fieldwork with NASA, another engineer who worked on the Hubble Space telescope, a former biomedical engineer, a veterinary student, and a whole bunch of computer designers/programmers/sysadmins. And a sociologist. And a paramedic/firefighter who used to work with large animals.

I think many of these friends would qualify for the Science Scouts. Created by the Science Creative Quarterly (I really need to do a post just on it), The Order of the Science Scouts of Exemplary Repute and Above Average Physiques (OOTSSOERAAP) is composed of people** who meet the following criteria:

- not opposed to alcohol.
- fond of IPCC reports (especially the pictures).
- mostly in agreement with the"truth."
- into badges.
- grieving for the slow and miserable death of the Hubble Space Telescope.
- possibly possessed of supernatural powers.
- not in the business of total world domination
- committed to the constant and diligent presentation of science stories, be it to editors, producers, directors, educators, relatives and/or friends of various ilk, in an effort to lessen the gap that is this thing we call public scientific literacy.

I am not sure that any of my friends possess all the criteria, but some of them come close. At any rate, all of them would qualify for at least one Science Scout merit badge.

The clinical psychologist? The "Sexing Up Science" Badge. The researcher without a degree? The "MacGyver" Badge. The Paramedic? The “Knows How to Collect Semen From More Than One Species” badge. (Note: this is species other than human; in the paramedic's case, that would be at least horses and cows.) The Red-Headed Menace? The “Special Auxiliary Child Member of the Order of the Science Scouts” badge, for "children who are alarmingly smart about things of a scientific nature."

Both rocket scientists would be eligible for a large number of these, especially the "I AM Actually a Freaking Rocket Scientist" Badge. The Rocket Scientist who lives with me and I were going over the list last night, and he would be eligible for somewhere between fifteen and twenty of them, including the "I Have Gone an Entire Month Without a Bath for Science" Badge.

Many of the people in my life (including all three of my children) would either already own The “Has Frozen Stuff Just to See What Happens” Badge (LEVEL III) ("in which the recipient has frozen something in liquid nitrogen for the sake of scientific curiosity") or don't only because of a lack of access to liquid nitrogen. (Two of the three children would already qualify for LEVEL II, "in which the recipient has frozen something in dry ice for the sake of scientific curiosity.") Not to mention the “Totally Digs Highly Exothermic Reactions” Badge. (These same two children have at various times expressed interest in getting C-4 for their birthdays.)

Many of these badges get to the heart of what is so enchanting about scientifically-minded people: such people are, almost without exception and pretty much to a fault, curious about the world around them. They want to know not just that things work but how and why things work.*** Sometimes they are even willing to break things to figure this out or to make things work better.

Definitely deserving of a badge or two, don't you think?

*I have hung out with scientists and engineers, and I have hung out with artists. Although there are exceptions, generally speaking, scientists and engineers are more interesting and have better senses of humor than artists. Lawyers as a group are highly variable.

**It does not actually specify people. I suppose a sufficiently advanced robot could qualify. Or a space alien.

***This is less than enchanting if the "hey, let's see what THIS does" people do not adequately clean up after their experiments.

While watching "Return of the King"...

2012-01-02T21:27:00.001-08:00

...why do dwarves speak with a heavy Scottish accent? I keep thinking they should sound German.

Exit?

2012-01-02T14:12:00.001-08:00

Jean-Paul Sartre was right.

It has been a year.

2011-12-31T18:15:00.000-08:00

This was ... a year. Not much else to say about it. Although it had its less-than-stellar moments, the first quarter was mostly filled with excitement and hope; although not everything was horrible, the last was filled with illness and sadness. (Interestingly enough, that was the opposite of the pattern of 2010.) Averaged out, it was a mediocre year. I just wish it had not been so streaky, as one says in sports parlance.

I don't think I have the energy or time this evening (I am going out for New Year's in the first time in years -- wearing The Corset) to write up the year that was. I may save that task for tomorrow. Or not, as the case may be. I am certainly not going to write new resolutions: last year's were really good, and I left so many of them unfulfilled, I am going to recycle them.

Goodbye, 2011. Hello, 2012. Here's to you being the best of all possible years. Or at least better (and more consistent) than this one.

Pout

2011-12-29T21:53:00.000-08:00

Why is Sondheim: The Birthday Celebration from 2010 not on CD? I can't watch it in the car or when I am doing something else.

2011-12-28T14:21:00.000-08:00

I am currently reading Look I Made a Hat, by Stephen Sondheim. It is the second volume of an annotated collection of his lyrics; this volume covers 1985 to the present, and includes not only Broadway shows but pieces written for film, and odds and ends such as the song he wrote for Leonard Bernstein's 75^th birthday.

Sondheim allows readers inside his mind during the creative process. Even more so than in the first volume, he is talking to those who are – or want to be – artists. The hat makers. His prose is clear and wryly self-reflective, and a joy to read. It is in many ways all that I aspire to as a writer.

This volume allows me to learn the songs I try to sing along to in the car. As a singer I am quite limited, with problems in phrasing, only a mediocre range, and a tendency to sing flat. What I lack in talent, however, I make up in enthusiasm, and many of the songs I love to sing are Sondheim's. As difficult as I find him to sing alone, I can sing along with them if I know the words.I particularly love his patter songs, but the speed at which they are sung often makes discerning the lyrics difficult, at least for me. (Also, lately I have had trouble distinguishing sounds and words, disturbingly so.) The first volume allowed me to learn the words to “Not Getting Married Today” fromCompany, and even better, “The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me-Oh-You-Do-I'll-See-You-Later Blues” from Follies. This volume allows me to learn all the words to “Putting It Together” from Sunday In The ParkWith George* and “Into the Woods” from Into the Woods.

I find the thoughts for posts springing from his lyrics. I am trying to find the time to put together and polish a post on the care and feeding of muses, and how much one quatrain from “Finishing the Hat” defines the relationship between the two main characters in the First Act ofSunday. (It will also contain a reference to Prince's “Little Red Corvette.” It makes sense in context, I promise.)

There will hopefully be a post about the artistic drive and the ways in which it can be damaged from very early on. I too want to be able to say “Look I Made a Hat,” but all too often put obstacles in my way. Or how maybe what I do here is my art, as well as my passion.

There will also be a post about “A Moment in the Woods” from Into the Woods aboutwhat those moments actually mean.

This post is a bookmark, to be sure, but in its own way it is also a love-letter. Mr. Sondheim, you are quite the hat maker.

*Sondheim also includes the different versions of "Putting It Together" which he has written for variousoccasions and differing artistic occupations. It is really a song about the cost of Art, not the price of art. Of course, the entire musical is about that.

Symbolism?

2011-12-27T14:13:00.000-08:00

Fulton Street in Palo Alto does things fancy for the holidays: much like Willow Glen in San Jose, every house is decorated, many of them extravagantly. Each house has its own small Christmas tree at curbside bedecked with familiar oval shaped Christmas tree lights. Even the streetlights -- built to look like early twentieth century streetlamps -- are decorated. It is an impressive and cheering holiday sight.

That said, it is perhaps unfortunate that they choose to color the streetlights red.

YKIOK

2011-12-26T19:38:00.000-08:00

On Friday, the Resident Shrink, the Rocket Scientist and I went to see A Dangerous Method, starring Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley and Viggo Mortensen in an account of the relationship between Carl Jung and a young woman who was his patient and became his mistress and protege, and Sigmund Freud.

Eh. It was a bit long for my taste, and I found my mind wandering. On the other hand, if you are into spanking, this may be the movie for you. Not a lot of scenes, mind you, but several... and besides, Keira Knightley is gorgeous even when being spanked.

The ghost of Christmas recently passed

2011-12-26T19:27:00.000-08:00

It was a good Christmas, more or less. I spent most of the day in my room with a migraine (courtesy of the woman in front of me at church with the perfume containing bergamot oil) and I tripped and rebroke my little toe (which is now swollen and purple again and sticking out at a strange angle), but everyone else seemed to have a pleasant holiday.

The food was good, if excessive. We will be eating turkey, dressing and sweet potatoes for the next several days. We still have some roasted parsnips and carrots left, but sadly the cranberry-goat cheese tarts are all gone.

Perfume aside, church was a moving experience. The pastor at All-Saints' Episcopal Church in Palo Alto gave one of the most thoughtful -- and thought-provoking -- Christmas Day sermons I have ever heard. As soon as it is posted on the website (the Christmas Eve homily is up, but not that for Christmas Day) I will link to it. It is well worth reading.

As predicted, we did not open gifts until 12:30, to the annoyance of Railfan but nobody else. Everybody got things they wanted, with the most well-received being Railfan's X-Box and copy of Halo Reach. He and the Red-Headed Menace have spent most of yesterday and today trying not to accidentally kill each other (electronically, that is).

I got the second volume of Stephen Sondheim's collected lyrics, and his observations on them (as well as so many other things), Look, I Made A Hat, which was listed on my Amazon wish list as "what I most want for Christmas." Continuing the Sondheim theme, I also received Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies, by Ted Chapin, who was a production assistant (i.e., gofer) for the show. I also got Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark. I am hoping to learn from the last one ways to write more compellingly.

I am still feeling melancholy, with a strange sense of loss and homesickness. Christmas is the time I most feel out of place in my adopted home. I don't long for a white Christmas, having never had one, but a warm and green Christmas would be nice. The Christmas song which keeps running through my head is not a religious carol, as in most years, but "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas." (That would be the version sung by Judy Garland in Meet Me in St. Louis, with its strangely bittersweet lyrics: "Someday soon we all will be together, as the fates allow; until then we'll have to muddle through somehow.") Not going East this year, even though I know it was the right decision made for the right reasons, didn't help.

The unmooring of the holiday from its spiritual roots which has been occurring the past several years hit home. The religious symbols of the season, which as the result of a crisis of faith had come to feel vaguely fraudulent, were also a comforting link to the past, to my past, which seems distant and out of reach. There was no Advent wreath, no Lessons & Carols service. I have become that most mocked of Episcopalian stereotypes, the Christmas and Easter church attendee. The words and visuals of the season, which help make it a season rather than simply a few weeks at the end of the year much like any other except with better food, were missing.

For very complicated family and other reasons, I have had limited contact with many of my friends recently. Yet another person I care about moved away earlier in December, leaving for the Sacramento area. I do not make friends easily or comfortably, and losing those I have hurts. Friends did invite me to go see A Christmas Carol with them, and I had lunch with another, and that was lovely, but underscored how I isolated I have been feeling lately. One of my current goals is to change that: two friends and I are meeting for lunch later this week (not my suggestion, although I was more than happy to follow up on it). There is a whole world of people out there: I just need to meet some of them, and see the ones I already know more. As I grow older, I need connection with other people in ways I never did before.

My writing has suffered. My hope -- to write more than I did in either November or October -- proved beyond my reach. I am seriously thinking of taking a formal hiatus from blogging so that if I am not writing at least I am not feeling guilty about not writing. I am kept from doing that by the suspicion that doing so would have a negative impact on my mental health, and the belief that the unseen readers of this blog are in some sense my friends too: I need to feel that there is someone out there, as delusional as that may seem sometimes. Not so delusional, though: there are a number of people who tell me that they follow this blog through either the RSS feeds or Google Reader. That carries its own frustrations, sometimes: my friends know a lot more about what is going on in my life than I do about theirs, even those I follow on LiveJournal or Facebook. Communication needs to run two ways in order to be meaningful. A particular need of mine lately is to feel that I can be of as great support to my friends as they are to me.

Time to move on. Time to think about the new year, and what I need. This year, which started in hope and excitement is ending in somber reflection. This is the way the year ends, this is the way the year ends, this is the way the year ends, not with a bang but with a whimper. Looking over my Eleven for '11, I achieved so few of them that I am going to simply list them as my resolutions for 2012.

After all, if the world is going to end in twelve months, it would be nice to have something to show for it.

2011-12-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

For anyone confused about the religious and social dynamic that caused me to think of killing myself in the incident recounted in this post, read John Shore's "Pastor to Rape Victim: He should have killed you. At least you'd have died a virgin." My upbringing was Roman Catholic, not fundamentalist Protestant, but at that time the mindsets towards women and rape victims was the same.

God help us all, but that young woman most especially.

Tradition

2011-12-25T01:55:00.000-08:00

We live in a multi-cultural household. This year Christmas falls in the middle of Hanukkah.

The Resident Shrink's menorah sits on the entertainment center next to the decorated Christmas tree. Two nights ago, she made latkes for us, as she has for the last several years, in what has become a tradition for us on the second or third night of Hanukkah. Tomorrow, the Rocket Scientist and I will attend a church service in the morning, having muddled our timing tonight so as to miss the eleven o'clock service that we would otherwise have gone to. Christmas Eve church has been a tradition for he and I since before we were married. (It was easier back when I was a Roman Catholic, and Christmas services started at midnight.)

There will be turkey, which is traditional, because I chickened out on my intention to suggest having prime rib for once. There will be cornbread stuffing, and yam casserole, and home-made cranberry sauce. New this year will be roasted red-pepper soup and cranberry-goat cheese tarts.

Traditions change as years go by. The main change in tradition is that no one feels any need to get up before the crack of, oh, eight o'clock.* We're all adults now, and have managed to learn to cope with delayed gratification. In fact, given that RS and I are going to church, we may not even open presents until --gasp! -- close to noon.

It is odd. Something about this Christmas seems melancholy. I think it is because Christmas morning really is for small children, and we don't have any around, and won't, at least for (knock on wood) many years yet.

Traditions seem much more important when you are trying to pass them along.

*Except for those years in which we have really big turkeys, in which case the poor sucker on turkey duty has to get up earlier than everybody else. This year we have a much smaller turkey than usual, so nobody will need to get up at six.

Note to self

2011-12-25T01:32:00.001-08:00

Pat, dear:

It is always possible to add more ground chipotle pepper to the stuffing if you want to later. It is much harder to recover from accidentally doubling the chipotle in the first place.

The rum added to the eggnog might not have been helping, either.

Peace on earth, good will toward men

2011-12-25T01:29:00.000-08:00

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

Luke 2:8-14

For those of you who celebrate it, I wish you a joyous and peace-filled Christmas.

Alternative holiday decorations

2011-12-25T01:20:00.000-08:00

Tonight the entire household - including a friend that the Not-So-Little Drummer boy brought home from college with him -- did our annual tour of Christmas lights. We were heading down streets in the Willow Glen area of San Jose, looking for the twelve-foot tall reindeer,* when a discussion arose about why almost every house had a light-bedecked tree in their front yard, even in cases where it clearly did not match the rest of the landscaping. The general consensus was that there must have been some neighborhood rule requiring Christmas decorations.

Well, what about non-Christians? We came up with some alternative suggestions for seasonal (or not) decorations:

A giant blow-up menorah.
An upside down pentacle done in dark blue lights.
"God is Dead" written in small LEDs.
A simple large question mark.

And my favorite:

Written in twinkle-lights, "The Neighborhood Association made me put this up."

*The Willow Glen Reindeer even have their own Facebook page.

Protect the Internet

2011-12-21T20:10:00.000-08:00

I'm tired tonight, but this is important.

If you don't know what the Stop Online Piracy Act (in the House of Representatives) is, or the Protect ID Act (in the Senate), read this article from the Stanford Law Review. I could explain it, and why it is such a horrendous idea, but Mark Lemley, David S. Levine, and David G. Post do such a great job -- so much better than I could (not surprising as they are professors of law) -- that it seems silly to reinvent the wheel.

[Edited to add: You can read Cory Doctorow's take on it here, here and here; and here is Mythbuster Adam Savage's opinion. I think the second link -- Cory Doctorow's column on what this will do to everyday Americans -- should be required reading for anyone who accesses the Internet or even owns a computer.]

After you've read it...

Contact your Representative and Senator. Time is short.

It's break. You're bored. You've had too much eggnog...

2011-12-20T14:45:00.000-08:00

You need a diversion. Check out the "History of English in Ten Minutes." It will take closer to fifteen to work your way through it, given buffering and everything, but it's well worth the time.

And, more generally, check out openculture.com, for more free learning opportunities.

It sure beats fretting about your Chem grade, which you can't do anything about at this point anyway.

Dear Josh Groban...

2011-12-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

I love your Christmas music. Your voice seems tailored to fit well with traditional religious carols. However, when you changed the words to "What Child Is This?" you not only lost the theological meaning, you lost much of the human interest, as well.

Singing "Raise, raise, the song on high, his mother sings a lull-a-bye" lacks the emotional depth of "Raise, raise the song on high, the Virgin sings a lull-a-bye." After all, "his mother" could refer to any baby born on December 25th.

If the content of the religious carols as written bothers you enough that you change the lyrics, maybe you should not be singing them in the first place.

Not fair.

2011-12-16T17:30:00.000-08:00

I got my flu shot yesterday when I went into the doctor to get the results of my foot x-ray. They gave me a paper with the list of possible side effects, but the nurse said I was unlikely to get them since I was getting the inactivated vaccine. Those side effects were:

Low-grade fever. Got that.
Muscles aches. Got that.
Sore throat. Got that.
Tenderness and swelling at the injection site. I have a hard, hot, red spot about 2.5 inches in diameter on my upper left arm; it hurts to move my arm, like it does after getting a tetanus shot. Boo.
I'm not sure if the headache is related, but it sure feels like it.

I know this is meant to keep me from getting really sick later. But did I really have to get all the minor side effects, short of a severe allergic reaction or Guillane-Barre?

Hmph. I'm in just the mood to go online Christmas shopping this evening. I am sure not going outside anywhere.

Establishing a demilitarized zone

2011-12-16T17:12:00.000-08:00

My room has been traditionally Penwiper's stalking ground, metaphorically speaking, especially my bed. (She likes to watch television.) Either cat is allowed in here, though, and Pandora hides in my closet a lot. (It has lots of semi-open boxes for her to crawl into.) Both cats know how to open the door from the other side if it is not securely latched (headbutting and pulling with front paws in that order).

Just now, I heard the creak of my door while almost napping (Vicodin for my foot and the aftereffects of a flu shot can do that). When I got up, Pandora had come in, pushed the door shut securely behind her, presumably by headbutting it, and sat down in front of the closed door.

No. I refuse to have a turf war in my room.

Oh, come on. Where's your aesthetic sensibility?

2011-12-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

Me: That's a lovely shade of purple.
The Red-Headed Menace: Not on a human foot, Mom.*

*I broke my little toe. It swelled, and the top of my foot turned this really lovely patchwork of purple, lilac and magenta. I have at least three different shirts that would color coordinate nicely with the bruises.

2011-12-14T21:26:00.000-08:00

I know correlation is not causation. I know that.

However , it seems clear to me that a Vermont fraternity being suspended over a survey question which asked "who would you rape?" stems from the same societal forces that result in, according to the most recent studies, nearly one in five women in America having been subject to sexual assault.

Also, of some relevance to the Plan B issue (and my post on my experiences), nearly half of rape victims reported that they had been under eighteen when they were raped.

Aftermath

2011-12-11T00:38:00.001-08:00

Writing the last post was an intensely emotional experience. Although tempted to do otherwise, I wrote it stone-cold sober, more or less stream-of-consciousness, in the form you read it. I made a few changes to correct small grammatical errors, but otherwise it is as it came forth from my brain. Afterwards, I was drained, and sad.

Writing my story was necessary -- it was my way of processing news I found very upsetting. The post was born of fury at the small-minded worldview of people I would have hoped knew better. And that is the charitable view: the thought that this was some sort of sop to conservatives, that the well-being of young women was sacrificed for political expediency, reduces me almost to incoherence.

Writing my story was necessary; publishing it was not. I decided to do so after posting the text to my friends' list on Livejournal and having women thank me for writing it and encouraging me to publish. I have also had suggested to me that I should submit it to other places. I am considering that.

I am tired and sad. Yet I have not been struck by the feelings of shame and dirtiness I was afraid might result from revisiting the rape. I have been helped by the memory of a conversation I had earlier this year at a time when I was very triggered and vulnerable.

Remember H.R. 3? That was the bill that would have limited the rape exception for abortion coverage to forcible rape. I wrote a post about it. That might have been the end of it for me, except that when I was reviewing the post it struck me: my rape didn't count. Even if I had dared to report the it, there was no way that I could show it was forcible.

I fell apart. Although I did not have visual or aural flashbacks, I was overwhelmed by feelings I thought I had left far behind. I felt broken, dirty, useless and unlovable. I took three showers a day, until my skin became cracked and infected from the frequent washing in tankfuls of hot water.

I felt I was losing my mind. I had thought I had long ago found peace around this. I had read others' stories, and told my own (albeit in a distanced and incomplete way*: I always left out details about my father and the reason I did not report it). I had posted my story in my Livejournal as part of Rape Awareness Week. I was healed, or so I thought.

I realized I could not go on like this, and started calling people. After two unsuccessful calls ("revisiting my rape, call me" was not a message I wanted to leave on voicemail), I reached my friend the PLD. He was busy, but arranged for me to call him back in forty-five minutes. When I did so, he listened to me talk about my brokenness, my shame, my feeling that I was worth less than the dirt under my feet.

He started, "I can imagine..." and then he caught himself. "No, I can't imagine. I've never been through anything like this, so although I can understand how horrible you must be feeling, I can't know what it's like, and don't want to belittle it by pretending I can."

His comment was unexpected, and exactly right. It not only expressed sympathy, it recognized and honored the enormity of my experience and the feelings associated with it. He went on to reassure me that I was, in fact, a wonderful person who had a great deal to offer the world. Although I was still shaking when we hung up, I had started to feel better. It took a couple of days, but I was able to move on.

That conversation has stayed with me. It reminds me of my strength. It reminds me that what happened to me was significant, that my feelings around it are not craziness but a natural reaction to a horrible event. The comments I've received in my LiveJournal and elsewhere from other women who have read my story remind me that I am not alone: telling our stories is the first step towards creating change, so that hopefully one day far in the future incidents like this will be extremely rare. Both of those together have meant that I could write about what happened and not feel worthless or ashamed. I'm not only going to be all right, I'm okay as things stand. I did not even come close to having the feelings I had last winter.

I don't think I ever told him the effect his words had on me. And I need to thank those who have responded to what I wrote. So here goes:

To the women who have responded to my story: thank you for your encouragement. It has made me feel that what I say matters. It reminds me once again that "the personal is the political," and that all policies affect real human beings, and that the first step to change is knowledge.

And to my friend: I don't know what to say, except... I hope you understand how important that conversation was to me. Thank you.

*Edited to add: so incomplete, in fact, that the Rocket Scientist told me that he learned things from my post that I had never told him, and we've known each other for over three decades.

What about the girls, Mr. President?

2011-12-09T21:45:00.001-08:00

“As the father of two daughters,” Obama said. “I think it is important for us to make sure that we apply some common sense to various rules when it comes to over-the-counter medicine.”

There was this girl. She was young and naive. Because of other family dysfunction, she spent a lot of her teenage years raising herself. There was a lot she didn't know about the world, even more so than other teenagers.

She had a friend. This friend had a car and a boyfriend who lived out by the beach. The girl had had no chance to learn to drive, but didn't think about the possible consequences of being in a location miles from home with no way out.

It was a warm evening in late July. The friend, her boyfriend and his friend who lived next door began drinking. Although she actually had never drunk much (just a glass of wine when she turned eighteen, three months before), the girl joined in.

It is at this point that I have to stop. The third person, which I had thought to use for this story until the end, will not do. I use it sometimes to protect myself when telling this story to people I don't know, as a way to distance myself from what happened.

This time, I have to tell it as myself, as my own story. Making it about some theoretical girl protects me, but it also minimizes what I went through.

I and my friend Lorrie went out to the beach to visit her boyfriend, Doug, and his friend who lived next door, named Gary. All of us were drinking: the booze started with beer, and moved on to rum and tequila. Heady stuff for a young woman who had had no exposure to any alcohol but a glass of red wine on her previous birthday.

Lorrie and Doug moved from kissing to necking to the inevitable decision to have sex. They kicked me out of Doug's half of the duplex he shared with Gary, leaving me alone with no place to go. Had I been more street-smart, I would have stayed in the car until morning. Instead, I accepted Gary's suggestion that I come into his place.

I was drunk. Very, very drunk. I had never been drunk before in my life, and was having trouble coping with the room swimming around my head, let alone walking much. I sat on the bed, while Gary bolted the door.

I am not going into all the details. There are details I don't remember because I passed out. There are other details that I could remember if I tried very hard, but the memory of them would break me. Although every once in a while something happens to leave me feeling shaken and broken, I have not had actual waking flashbacks in a very, very long time and am not going to risk triggering one now.

There are details that I remember that I can relate. Unless I try very hard, I cannot remember what my rapist's face looked like, because my mind protects itself. I do remember the house, though, and the pink stucco walls. I remember begging "please no, please no, God please don't do this I'll do anything you want just please...." and I remember having my arms pinned down. To this day I am likely to react badly if my arms are immobilized. Once, in the middle of a mutually consensual tickle fight, I kneed a man in the groin -- hard -- because he pinned my arms down.

Afterwards, while Gary sprawled on his bed, having fallen asleep, I went and took a shower. I ran the shower until all the hot water was gone, got dressed, unbolted the door, and went to the car. When Lorrie stumbled out early in the morning, I said nothing of what had happened. We drove home, with her chatting away about Doug, oblivious to my silence.

I said nothing to anyone. I had to say nothing to anyone.

My father was an ex-Marine who took a very dim view of people hurting himself or his family. He was never abusive towards his wife or any of his kids, but when he felt his safety or ours was threatened he could become violent. I knew that he had once hooked a man in the neck with a fishhook who was trying to run him off his fishing hole with a motor boat. When the man approached him at the dock, Dad pulled out a filleting knife. I knew that many years before, when my eldest sister was run over in our driveway by a delivery truck completely by accident, Dad had gone out with a shotgun looking for the driver. Fortunately, his hunt was unsuccessful.

I knew where he kept the revolver, and the ammunition. I knew as well what would have happened had I told my dad what had happened -- or if he had heard it from anyone else. Dad would have blown Gary's brains out. (I would have been lucky: there are families where the first fatality would not have been the rapist but the girl.) While I would have had no problem with Gary's death, I could never have lived with my dad spending the rest of his life in prison because of me, because of what I thought I had done.

Because in my own mind, it was my fault. I had grown up a Roman Catholic, and like far too many of us had internalized the vile idea (not from my parents but from the priests) that sexual violence was the fault of evil women tempting men into lust. Gary was simply acting on his natural instincts. Although I was never sure of what exactly I had done to tempt him, other than being drunk and female, I was sure it was something. I was a sinful woman who had essentially only gotten what she deserved.

I was terrified that I might be pregnant. I spent three weeks praying to the God I was sure hated me that if nothing else I not be pregnant. Being pregnant would mean that my horrible secret would be exposed. I was prepared for pregnancy, though: as I said, I knew where my dad kept his gun.

When I hear someone -- in this case, the President -- say that Plan B or other emergency contraception should be kept behind pharmacy windows, available only to those over seventeen, I shudder. I think about my rapist, and my dad, and the gun that would have ended my life had I been pregnant. Yes, I would have been old enough to purchase Plan B had it been available, but what of sixteen-year olds? Sixteen is old enough to be a junior in high school. Old enough for a girl to drive, but according to the administration (in complete disregard of the FDA's position on this), not old enough to take steps to protect her health.

No one should have to go through what I went through. Rape is horrific enough, but to disallow medicines to young girls that would lessen the damage is almost unthinkable to me. Not every rape is reported -- sometimes for very good reasons. And in those cases, withholding drugs that help to ensure that a young woman will not have to carry the additional burden of a pregnancy by her rapist is obscene.

People think about what parents want. Sometimes even the victims think primarily about the good of their families rather than their own well-being.

Someone needs to think about the girls.

2011-12-09T20:58:00.001-08:00

I am pretty sure that I am preaching to the choir. At least, I hope that I am.

Another teenager, this time in Tennessee, killed himself in response to being bullied. It sounds terrible, but I am not particularly surprised.

This Daily Kos post contains two powerful videos. The first, by a boy named Jonah Mowry, talks about the terrible pain of being bullied. The second, equally moving, is from a bully who harassed Jonah, apologizing and explaining the origins of his bullying.

I know grown adults who as children literally lived in fear of their lives from bullies. I know people whose lives were destroyed, who were forced to reconstruct their sense of self slowly, bit by bit, and who bear scars -- physical and psychological -- that will never go away. People who were driven to the brink of suicide. People who today as grown adults struggle to cope with PTSD as a result of this trauma.

There is another, larger price to bullying. Schoolyard bullies can turn into adults who commit violence. Gay-bashers do not spring full-fledged into adulthood: they are nurtured from a young age to hate and to use that hate to justify hurting others. Every man holding a "God Hates Fags" sign, who thinks that some African countries have the right idea when they jail or execute homosexuals, was once a boy who might have felt justified in torment he heaped upon others.

Violence begets violence. Exclusion and hatred beget more exclusion and hatred.

As the Red-Headed Menace observed, sometimes the whole world is too much like middle-school.

Politics

2011-12-08T18:34:00.001-08:00

I really should end this hiatus from political blogging. There are just too many important things out there that beg to be commented on.

There is the Defense Authorization Bill. A thorough post on that will come along at some point, hopefully, but let me just observe that it passed 93-7.* That means that a whole lot of Democrats had no problem with it, which is appalling, or were relying on President Obama to veto it,** which is cowardly, or were sure the Supreme Court will declare the objectionable parts unconstitutional, which is foolhardy and callous. Foolhardy, because you can never predict how any given Court will rule on anything. See Ledbetter v. Goodyear, or Kelo v. New Hampshire, or, much more to the point, Korematsu v. United States. Callous, because if there is an as-applied challenge to the law, it means someone will have had to go through a lot of anguish. Even when (not if) there is a challenge to the law on its face, it will cost money to pursue this through the courts, money which could be much better spent elsewhere. And yes, I know there is some language in part of the bill (I actually have read it) which states that American citizens are not included -- except that is not what a lot of the Senators who voted for it claim. I find that very instructive. If nothing else, it means there is ambiguity***, which should always be construed to result in the worst case scenario, because it usually will.

There is the Regulations From the Executive in Need of Scrutiny -- or REINS -- Act, passed by the House, which would trash the regulating power of the Administration. A quick reading of the bill shows to it be even worse than reported by the Huffington Post, which is not often the case. A more detailed post on the Act requires a very thorough reading of the bill, so that I can talk about just how bad it is. (Or not, as the case may be. Sometimes things are not as bad as they would seem at first blush.)

There is the decision by the administration that Plan B and other emergency contraceptives should not be sold on store shelves but by pharmacists, and available to women under 17 only by prescription. Obama claimed he was thinking of parents with that last one, but he should have been thinking of teenage girls. Teenage girls sometime face not just restriction of their reproductive rights, but actual violence if they are discovered to be having sex. Not to mention that there are teenage victims of rape or incest who for whatever reason cannot tell their parents or the authorities.

There is Rick Perry's assertions about how Christians are persecuted, but that really is old hat. Fundamentalists have been claiming this for years.

There is the Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass Prenatal Nondiscrimination (PRENDA) in the House, but I don't think my blood pressure is up to that one right now. It was a little high last time I went to the doctor, and discussing this bill is sure to send it through the roof.

There are various insane statements by Newt Gingrich, but I think I'll ignore him for now.

See? Too many important things happening in the country. You would think that people would ease up in December.****

*Good for Republicans Thomas Coburn, Oklahoma; Mike Lee, Utah; Rand Paul, Kentucky; Democrats Thomas Harkin, Iowa; Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden, both of Oregon; and the wonderful Independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

** Obama has says he will veto it, but for other reasons.

***Reading it over, I was struck by the inconsistency of several provisions. So yes, I do think it is ambiguous.

****I know. Everyone wants to get things passed before they go home for the holidays, and the "Christians are persecuted" meme resurrects itself every December.*****

*****Pun not really intended -- but I like it anyway. I think Jesus would have liked puns.