St. Scobie's Mock Whiskey

Totally Random

2012-01-24T21:30:00.000-08:00

Regarding the State of the Union address: I only have one novel thing to say about it. Much was made by liberal tweeters and bloggers that this was the most hawkish peacetime SOTU address they'd ever heard, or that they couldn't believe that civil institutions were being called on to act like the military. They either feared the civil liberties implications of that, or thought it diminished what the military is fighting for. That is, the military is disciplined so that we can have an unruly civil democracy. Those were the critiques of his frequent military references.

I actually think Obama was trying to make a subtler point, which is that Congress and its members chose to serve their country - were elected to do so - and yet exhibit very little of the organization and sacrifice that our soldiers show. I think he was contrasting Congress with the military as being do-nothing, even unpatriotic, in their resistance to any bi-partisan compromise. Or maybe that is just what I'm reading out of it because that is what I think.

On a totally different topic, here's my best maternal wisdom from today, "If there isn't vomiting and diahrea at the same time, I don't think you can call it the worst day ever." In fact, we had neither. Just an over-dramatic 8 year old and his over-dramatic mother.

What else can I tell you about? That KeN album I mentioned in the prior post? Meh. It sounds like a late Tsunami album baked too long. But it's definitely about having kids. I will probably enjoy it on shuffle. I wish Carrie Brownstein had kids and loved something over than Rock And Roll, because the Wild Flag album completely kicks ass. It just doesn't make me feel cool. It makes me feel like she's cool. In re: Florence and the Machine. My cousin said, "No men like Florence and the Machine." Which is true but a little wierd because it sounds like if Queen were women. (In my head, men like Queen. Not sure why I think that). I don't like it as much as Wild Flag.

Oh, and I watched some Mitch Hedberg on YouTube. Funny. Not like make-me-wet-my-pants funny, but more Steven Wright-chuckles. So Thanks, Mario, wherever you are.

Riot Moms, part 2

2012-01-15T12:54:00.000-08:00

Out of curiosity, I am trying to track down music by rocker moms - women who were making music when I was in high school and college. I started at the beginning (of my musical interests) and looked for Jenny Toomey and Kristen Thomson of Tsunami. Toomey works for the Ford Foundation, after founding the Future of Music Coalition with Thomson. She doesn't seem to make music anymore, at least that she publishes.

Thomson lives near Philly, and has a going concern called KeN. First rocker mom discovered (I snooped on Facebook; she definitely has a kid or 2)! I downloaded their 2006 album. I will let you know if it's any good.

Any suggestions for lady rockers I should similarly snoop on?

New Year's Resolutions 2012

2012-01-05T20:54:00.000-08:00

It used to be something of a ritual around here that I would review my old New Year's resolutions and then write some new ones. I never got around to it last year, but one resolution was to find a new job, and I did that, so I feel like it was an accomplished year.

It's hard to know where to go with resolutions this year. I don't want to rest on my laurels, but I've come to like a lot of things about myself, and I don't really like sacrifice all that much. On New Year's Day -- well, actually later that same night -- I made an insane list that has items like

26. Watch some Mitch Hedberg stand-up

27. Thank Mario

I'm actually so mortified about what else I may have put on that list that I am afraid to go back and look at it. And it suggested a modest but obvious resolution of

1. Drink a bit less.

Which hasn't been all that taxing so far.

One friend we saw this weekend held the view that effective resolutions had to meet certain criteria. First of all, they need to be specific. He's right; "I will lose 5 pounds by exercising 3 times a week and eating 100 fewer calories a day" is more effective than, "Lose some weight." But it's also a little boring to make goals like that.

Another criteria, they should not be boring. He said that after he'd challenged himself to do a 100 mile bike ride, and then did it again, that really crazy resolutions do not exist. Many people can do most things (putting aside major barriers). The only stuff left is Jackass-type stuff. But if you set goals that make you less boring than you end up a better or at least more interesting person at the end of the year. He was considering trying out guitar (he's already a pianist, so not a stretch) or writing a book about a really weird case he worked on. In that vein, I am thinking about taking singing lessons. Actually I think I will resolve to:

2. Take a singing lesson

I think I have maxed out my resolution making abilities for the night. What did you resolve to do in 2012?

What Else Did I Want to Blog About?

2011-12-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

The major lack of mom rock in this world, and no, I do not mean Adele. Why are there not more non-country mom bands, singing convincingly of what a pain in the ass early middle aged parenting is? Literally dozens of great bands sang about the trauma of suburban teen existence. Where are the riot grrls now? I want some decent punk mom rock.

Totally Annoyed About Today

2011-12-27T22:10:00.001-08:00

Okay, not totally. I thought I had posted a few blog posts recently via their mobile/email capabilities, but here they aren't. Not sure they were worth recreating. One concerned a proposal to blog 300 words three times a week, which I obviously have not accomplished.

So what else is annoying me?

1. The fact that, re-reading my Oct 17 post re: the Occupy movement, I was clearly right, and yet no one, even my spouse or closest friends read this blog, so it does not fracking matter. Oh well.

2. Threat marketing. What is this, you say? This is when a company markets to you by threatening you. Here's an example. I cancelled a Capital One credit card about six months ago. We'd paid off the balance and the rate was not favorable, blah blah blah. Anyway, since then, every few weeks, Capital One emails me with an enticing offer, like 0% interest and a really high credit line, and then they give me a date by which I must accept the offer. Before that date, they send me escalatingly shrill emails threatening me that this is my last chance, I am making a huge mistake, I will never see a rate like this ever again, etc etc. It feels like an abusive relationship writ very small. Honeymoon, threat, bigger threat, deadline, cooling off. Honeymoon, threat, bigger threat, and so forth.

Another example: we get San Francisco magazine, a very glossy affair which purports to showcase SF's upper echelon. We never ordered this magazine, and yet every month, it comes with a paper wrapper declaring that our subscription has ended and we must contact them to renew. The whole thing is in a plastic bag. If I had an ounce of energy for this, I would beg them to stop sending me the whole thing, since SF's "upper echelon" is among the lamest "upper echelons" that have existed since the beginning of time.

I do not understand a marketing strategy that berates people for not buying something that they do not want. The only plausible evidence that this works is in Dr. Suess's Green Eggs and Ham, and I don't even find the ending believable in that book.

An Idea for the Occupy Movement

2011-10-17T21:57:00.001-07:00

Let me be pretty upfront about this: I don't know very much about the Occupy Movement. Here are some things I know about it.

1. There have been a lot of Occupy demonstrations in different cities lately.

2. They use a human bullhorn, which is annoying and awesome and brilliant (since you'd expect the social movement of the social media generation to be hamstrung by restrictions on electronic gear).

3. The NYT is treating them like a font of adorable Style section content.

4. They don't have a set of political demands.

This last part seems to be annoying a lot of people, including some folks within the Occupy Movement. It annoys me too, a little bit. I agree with them (I think) but I have some fears about this component of the movement. Fears include:

1. A lack of coherent platform along with sporadic violence and the presence of Naomi Klein suggest a WTO/Seattle riots anarchist movement that could backfire on sympathetic Dems.

2. It's easy for this to get boring and stale and marginalized.

3. So much energy being wasted on committees for basic life functions has doomed other movements.

There's an article on this particular conundrum (Protesters Debate What Demands, If Any, to Make) in today's NY Times (see above). I tend to agree with the sentiment expressed, "“Like Frederick Douglass said, ‘Power concedes nothing without a demand.’ ”

So how can the Occupy Movement make demands (as they probably must) without undermining the core element that make it unique (it has no demands)?

Let's look at Douglass's maxim, and ask, "who does the Occupy Movement see as having power?" The first and more obvious answer is, "Wall Street." But a second, almost as obvious answer, "The People," since they are mobilizing people to assert their critique, and believe it is "The People" or "the 99%" who should rule our country. They do NOT think that "the Government" has power right now. Or if the Government has power, it is being mobilized by Wall Street against the interests of the 99%.

In this view, demands made on the Government are pointless because the Government does not have the power or will to act on behalf of the 99% or against the interests of Wall Street. That's why the Occupy Movement does not have political demands of the Government. Demands made of Wall Street are being made, but are not being acceded to: agree to be taxed, be prosecuted, be redistributed. These are not demands to which Wall Street will willingly accede, and the Government will mobilize in Wall Street's favor to ensure no other means are used to press those demands (i.e. the police would not allow violence by protestors).

I'm just guessing here. I have spoken to no actual Occupy movement participant and have not read any of their literature or websites or anything like that. That said, . . .

The best and most original course of action would be for the Occupy Movement to make its demands of "The People". A good first one is, move your money to credit unions. I will accede to that. They should demand that people vote, that people shop at farmer's markets, and local stores. Vote their stocks. If they can explain to me how to do that in concert with other shareholders, I am totally in. If this is a people's movement, than it should be about the deconsolidation of wealth via the (buying and saving) power of the people. They should set up a Kiva or Kickstarter for people's mortgages and student loans.

Just as none of their protest techniques are unique (except maybe that bullhorn), none of the "demands" that they should be making of us are unique. Their use and development of these and similar ideas as a platform for a new movement would be, though. And I think the 99% are listening. Or at least a majority of them are.

Conundrum

2011-07-07T21:30:00.001-07:00

For as long as I can remember, I have been against music nostalgia, especially in people who didn't experience particular bands in their initial heyday. Specifically I am talking here about Deadheads.

(Aside, people who like music that sounds like it ought to be from another period, e.g. jam bands, also annoy me. On the other hand, people who like Yma Sumac, the Limelighters, Julie London and Mario Lanzo do not annoy me. So maybe it's just Deadheads and jam band fans who annoy me. But that doesn't let me address my conundrum so my aside is not relevant.)

Let me start again. I've always thought that people should like the good music that is being made "now". At least, I thought that until I thought the music that is made "now" is not as good as the music that was made "when it was good." I think the late 80s through mid-90s were a particularly golden period for music, both rock and rap, and my musical tastes haven't evolved much past that time. I hadn't really noticed that I had become a music nostalgic though, until a friend sent me a link to Riot on the Dance Floor, a documentary about City Gardens, a punk club from my youth. The interviews are with bandmembers from some of my favorite bands, and wow, does everyone look old. Okay, so they were older than me then, but it didn't seem like it.

I'm not gonna go on punk nostalgia trip here. Actually I am worried that the strict cultural moral code of my youth now requires me to reject myself, hate me, find me to be stupid and flaccid and lame. Which of course I don't, but out of affection for myself want to embrace. Does that make any sense? I love my younger self like a child, and like the parent of that child want to agree with her!

The Rise and Fall and Rise of Critical Thinking

2011-05-22T21:52:00.000-07:00

Bill Keller has an editorial in the NYT Magazine called The Twitter Trap, which bemoans the decline of, well, everything due to the rise in social networks. He basically blames Twitter and Facebook for the death of critical thinking, I think. While I know some who may share that sentiment, I would argue that curmudgeons have bemoaned the death of critical thinking before such a thing was born. I think it is probably the plot of Bye Bye Birdie (girls besotted with pop star can focus on nothing else). Back-in-my-day-ness requires a near-distant utopia of critical thinkers who've evolved unwittingly into idiots due to the rise of the printing press/telephone/Xerox machine/computer/etc.

But why is Bill Keller picking on Twitter? I can think of at least 10 things off the top of my head which are easily more to blame for the death of intellect. For example,

1. Spending too much time with one's children. In our utopian past, multiple generations raised our children, freeing us to commune with eachother, engage in political organizing, and become economically literate. Now I spend a solid 6 hours of the day discussing Star Wars and sharks. Critical faculties: DOA.

2. The length of professional sports' seasons. WTF hockey and basketball? Go away.

3. talk radio

4. laundry. Have you noticed how much there is, and how the clean stuff never gets folded?

5. video games*

6. MTV*

7. bridge, canasta, Trivial Pursuit, Settlers, etc. Basically any board game that grown-ups will meet to play.

8. Email*

9. matching our shoes to our bags

10. the casinos (basically pathological #7)

* These are pastimes which once wasted huge hours of my life, and no longer do, except for video games, which have migrated through every platform I've used. You can read about it in my autobiography: From Frogger to Tetris to Farmville to Cut the Rope: One Woman's Journey through Non-Violent Videogames.

Anyway, my point? Keller is sounding an alarm that has been sounded so many times that no one really believes it or cares. This too shall pass. Twitter will just get absorbed and shelved in its rightful place in the world, and people will be roughly as smart and as stupid as we've ever been.

Finally Having a Thought Longer Than a Tweet

2011-05-15T21:42:00.001-07:00

Can't promise it will be any good, though.

I finished A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan the other night. I'm becoming such an old lady that I promptly began referring to it as The Geek Squad, until Mr. Scobie reminded me that that is actually a commercial service provided by a major electronics chain and not a Pulitzer-prize winning novel. And why is it P-p winning? If it is truly the best fiction book written this year, then I definitely don't feel bad for not having read the others.

Goon Squad isn't bad, per se. It just isn't memorable, or novel. It's structured like a set of short stories which are entangled by shared characters and referenced situations (i.e. something that happens in one chapter/story will be referred to in another). The styles of the stories differ, as does the voice - one of the better ones is actually a Power Point presentation by a 12-year-old. Which is adorable and brilliant, right? But let me ask you something: would any of the following writers ever have written a Power Point presentation to get at the loveliest denouement of their novel: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Bellow, Roth? How about Jane Austen pr Joyce Carol Oates? How about Judy Fracking Blume? No, they would not have done that. Why? Because they are masters of voice and narrative and don't have to resort to trickery and stylishness and something that seems vaguely like magical realism but is really just spacy, lazy omniscience.

This is all the rage now. The "good" books are all jump-cut and we are expected to be kept off-base by switching stories and narratives. This is why I didn't like (and didn't finish) Cloud Atlas. It was too precious that it was a set of nesting stories. Ditto The Imperfectionists: although better written than Goon Squad, it took way too long to begin weaving its stories together. Hell, since I didn't finish that either, it maybe never did.

I want to be told long, involved character-driven stories. I don't even mind if they are, in fact, magical realist. Or scifi. Take Infinite Jest. I've decided IJ is probably science fiction. That's okay with me. It has a consistent style, strong characters, limited enough in number to be really engrossing, a distant but familiar world where politics and technology are ours, magnified. And the subplots are woven together, not mashed up or folded in on eachother without actually touching.

Why am I going on like this? I'm annoyed that I have nothing to read, and that maybe the books that I should be reading are the ones I had already written off. It's also possible that I am jealous of these writers. I have this sense that I could tell a better story but fear that I can't. Or won't.

15 Seconds of My 15 Minutes of Fame

2011-05-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

2011-03-17T10:59:00.001-07:00

I had the distinct pleasure of getting to sing The Day that Paddy Murphy Died to my kids in the car this morning. They were baffled. It put me in the mind of this, from Season 1 and Season 5 of The Wire. (Profanity, so don't watch if that's not your bag).

Some Thoughts on Wisconsin and the Labor Movement

2011-03-12T19:16:00.000-08:00

Those of you who know me well may wonder why I am not on the ramparts (at least rhetorically) about the Wisconsin labor war that has reminded people that collective bargaining is actually controversial and necessary. Don't get me wrong: I think that workers' rights to join unions, collectively bargain or otherwise join together for their mutual aid and benefit, is fundamental. Freedom of association, speech, to contract - it's there in the U.S. Constitution. I recommend you read Section 1 of the National Labor Relations Act. The United Nation's recognize these as inalienable human rights; this puts the Wisconsin legislature on par with Colombia and China, where workers are deprived of these rights, and activists are subject to aggression by the state.

And/so/but what? What do the unions have to do with all this? What do the unions, as the legal institutions charged with enforcing these rights (rather than the government), have to offer in furtherance of collective bargaining rights? Even if the right side ultimately prevails in this war- and even if Scott Walker was using the budget shortfall as a Trojan horse for the deprivation of these rights - many state and local governments are hamstrung financially by their collectively bargained pension and healthcare obligations.

I'll be blunt: unions have been part of the problem. And workers aren't really buying what unions are selling. Unions blame a range of factors for their organizing and public image problems: bad labor and immigration laws ("if we just pass EFCA!"), dirty employer tricks, the proliferation of individual rights, worker fear, weak Democrats, etc. etc. The fact is, unions had it much harder at the turn of the century. No laws or laws criminalizing unions, actual violence against workers, no political power. But people wanted collective bargaining power (not unions per se) and they were willing to stand up for it, the way folks in Wisconsin are today.

So what can unions do about it? I don't claim to know the answer. But I have some ideas. First of all, unions need to change the way they offer services to their members. Currently, unions assign staff based on their members' employer. These people are responsible for knowing all of the collective bargaining agreements with each employer, and enforcing the agreements with grievances. They might also collect dues or do political fundraising, and might know a little bit about their members' benefits. Some unions also have an external organizing staff that is trying to organize new members. Staff are chronically stretched, and are expected to have a super-human range of skills (legal advocacy, negotiations, employee benefits, counseling, organizing, political skills, communications skills) with hardly any staff development opportunities. In reality, 80-90% of their time is spent dealing with 2% of their members, "the squeaky wheels" who have grievances pending. Union staff take their frustrations out on the employers they interact with. The "Employer" becomes the cause of all their problems. They associate their work with the problems of their members vis a vis their employer, and never consider the underlying work, or industry itself. They also fail to advocate for their silent majority of members, who have a diminishing sense of the value their union brings to them.

Unions need to organize themselves differently. They should have advocates who litigate grievances, negotiators who bargain all contracts, employee benefit specialists, political departments who advocate for legislation and regulations that benefit both workers - in their work - and their industry, and external organizers. They should have extensive training and education departments committed to upgrading worker skills based on the latest technology (rather than fighting it). Each of these departments would offer services to union members without regard to their employer, and would regularly confer with one another about their industry norms, standards and future.

This wouldn't fix everything, but it isn't lipstick either. Until unions take responsibility for the things they can control, they aren't going to be perceived as relevant to most American workers. I wouldn't want to join an organization which claims to be (or seems to be) powerless about the very problems about which I seek its counsel and protection, either. (I say this as a member of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, Communications Workers of America, Local 32035)

I've tried to focus these thoughts on areas where unions are solely responsible (internal bureaucracy/governance). But there are other areas where unions are, or could be, jointly responsible. Public pension investment, for example. A co-worker yesterday asked me, rhetorically, "Who thought it was a good idea to invest public pension dollars solely in the private sector, without government regulation? Why didn't the unions stand up and say, there needs to be a framework for how this is invested? It is the public's trust but it's governed by Wall Street." Failing to raise that question soon after the Taft-Hartley Act was passed (or any time before the Great Recession) is a factor in pensions becoming a huge liability for public employers. Wall Street treated pension funds like slush funds in ways that no state treasury could ever be abused.

In a similar vein, why are mandatory subjects of bargaining limited to wages, hours and working conditions? Why are unions NOT required to bargain about industrial and employer issues? If an employer has a problem, they currently solve it in a vaccuum without any input from the union other than (1) don't lay off our members or (2) don't cut our wages/benefits. What if an employer said, "Hey union, look at this pile-of-shit problem I have. It's yours, too. You must solve it with me." This actually happens on the boards of some Taft-Hartley benefit plans and in some labor management partnerships (and some other countries) but by and large, unions are like petulant teenagers, grieving everything and demanding bigger allowances. Outside of apprentice programs (operated separately from unions), very little thought is given to the state of the workers' crafts or the state of the industry in which they labor.

Scott Walker and the state of Ohio have actually played this wrong. By trying to eliminate collective bargainig, they've reminded workers of what they wanted all along. If Walker had demanded that the unions be jointly accountable for Wisconsin's budget problems and had them sit at the table, he either would have had a partner in solving his problems or he would have been able to demonstrate that the unions are incapable of true collective bargaining. The only party that loses that gamble is the unions themselves. . . .

Bummer

2011-03-10T21:39:00.000-08:00

This from a local listserv: "Anyone know where to buy Bisquick-Gluten-Free (a relatively new product) around here? Our baseball team is gluten-free, dairy free and chocolate-free, and I’m up first on snack! (Stuck out at Whole Foods, Berkeley Bowl…)"

Mother-in-Law, forgive the profanity

2011-02-23T20:52:00.001-08:00

'cause Honey Badget don't give a shit.

3 hours well-spent

2011-02-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

I need someone to admit that my homemade reusable snack bags are adorable, so that I can admit that they are probably not functional

The Uber Taunt

2011-02-05T17:53:00.001-08:00

On the day before the Super Bowl, my 4 year old says to his father: "Who's winning the Super Bowl?"

"Nobody. The game isn't until tomorrow," says Mr. Scobie.

"So you don't even know who's winning?!" says the kid in his most sarcastic voice.

This is on top of both kids being basically nonplussed that the Pats lost 3 weeks ago, and claiming that they will be rooting for the Steelers tomorrow.

Dream of the 90s

2011-01-30T20:45:00.001-08:00

Best Euphemism of 2011

2011-01-06T21:34:00.000-08:00

"finalize the expulsion"

Officials: Woman swallowed 91 heroin pellets
http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/01/06/michigan.drug.mule/index.html

Good Time for a Change

2010-12-19T21:41:00.000-08:00

We watched The Town last night. Good movie. Highly recommended. Heist movie that transcends the conventional genre. Better than The Departed. Etc. Etc.

No, I mean it. It was this good. For 18 years, I've been in the Matt Damon camp. I've felt highly certain that if he'd met me before he met the Italian bartender, she'd still be tending bar. But Ben Affleck's performance + Affleck's excellent directing + Affleck's attractive similarity to my husband means: Ben > Matt. I know; I can't believe it either.

Here are the only two pieces of cognitive dissonance in the movie: (1) the car chase through the North End that appears not to result in fatalities (but is still awesome) and (2) the lack of Muffin Top on the townie girl played by Blake Lively. Where does an Oxy addict get abs like that?

My Friend "Glen"

2010-12-09T22:07:00.000-08:00

After the Rapture exhibit at the Orlando World Center

2010-12-06T15:20:00.001-08:00

Catching Up on Those New Year's Resolutions

2010-12-05T14:31:00.000-08:00

A funny conversation that I had recently caused me to go check my 2010 New Year's resolutions, and with a month left in the year, I can tell you, there's no way I can get back on track. I'm not sure which one if most off-track, but the only one I am going to comment on is the book one. I committed to read one new book each month, and the only books I can be sure I've read are: Freedom, I'm Down, Squirrel Meets Chipmunk and The Angel's Game. I didn't finish the last two, but I only have one chapter left in Squirrel so there's a chance I will pull through. I've already reviewed Freedom.

I want to speak briefly about I'm Down. It's a memoir by Mishna Wolff, who was mainly raised by her father, a white man who believed, or at least acted as though he believed, that he was Black. To his core. Her evidence of that her father held this belief is entirely demonstrated in recounting how he *acted* Black, since his voice in the book is absent except for when he's yelling at her or being proud of her athletic prowess. I don't know if those are things that Black Men are "known" to do or not, and she doesn't claim that they are. But she also doesn't claim that they AREN'T. She mostly shows her dad out of work, playing dominoes, cadging beers and rooting for her at athletic events, until he is emasculated by his very sexy younger (employed) wife. And then Wolff claims that her dad thinks he's Black, and I was left with the feeling that she was just applying racial stereotypes to her dad, instead of pointing out that White Men can be irresponsible, poor, loving, cowardly, etc etc. just like everyone else. Or maybe she was pointing it out, very subtlely. Very very subtlely.

Now, I don't actually think Wolff is racist at all (or rather, I don't think she is any MORE affected by racial stereotypes than the rest of us). In fact, being racist is a charge leveled against her by her Black stepmother, and it is devastating to her. And she examines that charge, and decides that it is code for other things that aren't racism, like she's ambitious and opportunistic and resentful and disconnected from the family as her father imagines it should be. But it could also be a little bit of racism. Later, she does seem to acknowledge that a lot about her life was poverty, and not race. I wish that the story of her reconciliationas an adult - with her father, with her (racial or class) identity - was in the book, rather than ending in the voice of her young teen years.

I don't want to sound overly harsh. One reason is, this book was recommended by friends, who felt that it was written in a similar style to mine. And I agree with them. The fault with her writing, and mine, is that it often elides certain points which seem so obvious to make that we actually fail to do so. With a little bit of thought, I "get" Wolff. I just wonder what I'm missing.

This Helps

2010-11-22T22:30:00.000-08:00

As you can probably tell from 2 posts ago, I've been feeling a little glum lately. This helps. I'm now trying to think of a mistake I can admit making so that I can post it on that site. It's a little embarassing how few of my mistakes can be shared without me feeling awful. I guess that is the point. At least it's not an embarassing awful foot-in-mouth disaster that is making me feel glum. So I've got that going for me.

Dick Van Dyke Called, He Wants The Conch Shell Back

2010-11-21T22:51:00.000-08:00

Just when I had given up hope about ever blogging about anything wierd ever again, Joan Baez fell out of a tree. "I sleep in a tree all summer long." True? False? Don't know. Stupid? Yes.

This isn't even the wierdest celebrity news of the month, since Dick Van Dyke was rescued by porpoises when he passed out on his surf board and drifted out to sea. I'm not interested enough to speculate wildly beyond "alcohol vs. dementia" here, but I do wonder what else is out there, celebrity-wise.

I guess this is what we have to look forward to, with the descendence of the Baby Boomers. Van Dyke is older than that, but he's really just a harbinger. Or is it a bellweather? Anyway. Whereas he was once on the cutting edge of TV, I fear he is now on the cutting edge of elderly celebrity conduct. Betty White has lulled everyone, with her sharp comic timing, into thinking she's the norm. But really, Sean Young is the norm. Possibly even Margot Kidder is the norm.

Whoever the norm is (Shaq?), it is not going to be pretty. Or rather, it might be pretty, but it will certainly be crazy.

Should I Keep This Up?

2010-11-21T22:34:00.000-08:00

National Blogging Month really makes a gal focus on the important things. Like, should I keep blogging? I haven't really felt inclined most days. Plus, I went back to the beginning of this blog, and it was way better then. It used to have silly themes and random stories, and attempted at originality. Barely any of that exists now. Most of my snarky one-off comments have moved over to Facebook and Twitter, or I just keep it to myself because I am too worried that someone I work with will find this blog and it will be a disaster for my career. As I "mature" (and I mean that in a bad way), I worry more and more that this blog might be a platform for some terrible self-destructive revelation that triggers my downfall. Not like I am a big celebrity or anything, but that happened to a guy I tangentially knew, so I am paranoid. Add in the fact that I barely ever read new books, watch new movies* or buy new music - much less stalk the Montgomery Advertiser or Nelson Marans - and there is practically nothing to say.

Here's what I thought I would do. I thought I would do a poll of my various options at this point and let you, the readers, be the judge of this blog's fate. But then I decided that I was too lazy to figure out how to add a poll, so instead, I will just list the options, and you can comment on them. Be aware, if I don't get comments from certain people, I will assume that this blog has lost its core readership, and I may not continue it.

1. Stop blogging; I follow you on Facebook.

2. Stop blogging; I follow you on Twitter.

3. Stop blogging at this website; I will follow you onto a software platform that is easier to post to.

4. Keep blogging here. **

5. If you get fired from this or any future job because of any content or revelations on this blog, I promise to employ you at your last rate of pay ad finitem to continue this blog.

6. Yo no leer en Engles.

* We watched Scott Pilgrim vs. the World last night, and I really liked it. Best line from a tertiary character, "Their first album is so much better than their first album."

** You will need to add some vaguely flattering remarks if you vote for this one, as I am feeling very down on the quality of the blog at this time.

Baffled By the Limits of Social Networking

2010-11-16T23:03:00.000-08:00

Last night I blogged about how odd it is that my college development office hasn't discovered Google. This evening, I had a nice night catching up with my mom about her various lifelong friends and their adult children. This is the verbal equivalent of reading Christmas card letters; the whole time you are thinking, "Whu?" but your mouth is saying, "NO! And then what did you say?!" because you can't believe so-and-so works at ESPN, or got divorced, or is Christian, or missed a funeral of a family member. (It's best when it's all 4, but that literally never happens. It would be a Gossip Utopia).

Once my mom left, though, I had to check Facebook to see whether any of these folks are plugged into the matrix. The overall picture I get is that Facebook's 500 million members do not include the offspring of my mother's friends. Which would make them the perfect match for my college's development office's Lost List. They are truly lost, I think. Except that my mom probably has their address.

Anyway, I am not planning on going to my college reunion, but I wonder if I should host a reunion of my virtual memory, where I invite all the people I think I know, based solely on the fact that I've been kept apprised of their lives these past 35 years. It's a stretch to get them to travel out here, but I am sure we can find a central location in the Midwest that would suit us all just fine. God knows what we'd talk about. No, literally, God probably does know. Most of my mom's very long-time friends have some religious affiliation, so I am sure we are either a lopsidedly heathen crew or most of them are itinerant preachers. Either way, God is probably keeping tabs.

Development Office Fail

2010-11-15T21:40:00.001-08:00

We got a letter today about our 15th reunion from college. On the back of the letter is a Lost List - people for whom the college cannot find any contact information. A number of the names are completely new to me, but two of them are good friends of mine. They are both on Facebook, and at least one of them is also friends with the Reunion Co-Chair. A Google search of one of them turns up almost 600 references to her specifically, as well as her company and her political contributions. Google searchs of other classmates result in LinkedIn profiles as the first result.

Does the Development Office not know this? Or is there some ethical issue with them doing any kind of research to find these individuals? There are only about 65 "missing" people; one of the reunion co-chairs could make short work of this in an evening, with an open bottle of wine beside their computer. I'm tempted to track them all down, except that I have no intention of going to a reunion or contributing even in-kind to my alma mater (except for glowing updates to the alumni magazine demonstrating the superiority of my friends). In other words, I want to find them all, but I don't want to help the college find them. But if I did the research for any purpose other than for the college, it would be insanely creepy and wierd.

And those of you who are wondering who is on the list, one is a female living in Britain who has a political resume, and the other is a male living in Chicago who is from western New York, and is probably reading this blog. And wanting to stay lost.

What's Up?

2010-11-10T21:31:00.000-08:00

Hey homeys. Or is it homies? Whatever. I'm just over here revelling in my homemade bolognese sauce, which is fully awesome, and not worrying myself about blogging. Other things I am "worrying" about: Thanksgiving dinner.

Today's NYT Dining section threw me for a loop. Now I've gotta cut the whole bird up before I cook it? What do I look like, Sam the butcher bringing Alice the meat? Or else buy a digital thermometer? Where was Bobby Flay with this nonsense back in 2006 when the NYT did their last decent turkey recipe, and I only had to make little foil hats for the turkey's "breasts"?

I'm hosting T-giving this year for my sister and her in-laws, and possibly A Very Special Guest. My sister is extremely pregnant and I am hoping for some madcap shit whereby the brussel sprouts induce labor. Panic and hilarity WILL ensue. Our family actually has a lot of experience with Thanksgiving drama: my stepsister's daughter was born basically in the way that I've just described. And, before I was born, my great grandfather died on Thanksgiving morning and my gram and her mother made dinner regardless for the waiting hordes (6 kids, etc). In case you are wondering where I get my aggressive practicality, legend has it that my grandmother said to her mother, as the funeral director took her father's body out of her house, "what do we do now?" and my great grandmother said, "Well, make dinner. Everyone's got to be hungry."

And speaking of family, my cousin Kate has a new installation in LA that you should check out, if only by visiting this website.

The young activist

2010-11-08T20:57:00.001-08:00

Our seven year old is presently engrossed by sharks. Engrossed doesn't cover it actually. Obsessed really. And all he wanted was a set of shark jaws. He didn't even want them as a gift; he decided he would buy them with his own money. For three days straight, he requested paying jobs to finance this purchase. He quickly went from $17 in savings to the needed $24 by sweeping the walk, emptying the trash and the dishwasher (separately), putting away his clothes, and other things that probably weren't worth the quarters I was doling out.

When I realized that this purchase was about to become a reality, I tried another tactic. How about adopting a shark instead? He liked this idea but offered two friendly amendments: 1) let's do both and 2) let's pay to tag a shark instead. That costs about $2000. The idea fizzled because he wasn't willing to wait to collect the adoption sum before buying the jaw.

(In case you think I am a wuss who can't stand up to a 7 year old, save it. I can't. This child is relentless.)

My next approach was to inform him that the jaws are only harvested as a byproduct of awful shark finning. I got a blase look that told me he was pleased that they were using more than one part of the shark before they threw it back.

We not only bought the jaw, but he got another for his birthday from certain loving family members. And then a co-worker found one in her attic and gave it to him. Now that we own 3 shark jaws, he has suddenly decided that finning is an evil which he will personally battle. After proposing a series of gruesome actions we could take against the Chinese and Thai governments (whom he believes are responsible for failing to outlaw finning), he decided that our country needs to take action. How, then, can a seven year old seek redress of his grievances? "Barack Obama needs to stop them!"

Let me translate: "Dear President Obama: Can you help us from from people stop finning Love Liam Dooley". I sent a helpful translation on a post-it note just in case someone is motivated to read this letter. I will let you know if we get a response. Good luck getting a shark jaw of your own after this!

Can't Pull It Off

2010-11-04T23:00:00.000-07:00

I'm too rusty to post anything new tonight. It was a crappy day - jury duty, a flooded kitchen, a monumental temper tantrum (not gonna say who it was. . . ) (it was mine). It's Thursday night, which means there is television on. So I'm gonna pass on trying to be funny or smart today. Check the archives for something hilarious or insightful. KTHXBY.

November 3 Blog Post

2010-11-03T22:07:00.000-07:00

Woo hoo! I've made it three days in a row!

After you read this (likely to be underwhelming) post, I highly encourage you to read this post by my neighbor. It's really thought-provoking. How do we raise our kids not just with the right values in the moral sense, but in the civic sense? And I don't mean that like, making sure they vote and don't shirk jury duty. But how do we help them understand themselves and one another as citizens? What do we mean when we want them to be proud to be an American? And how do we fit it in with the other minute details we are trying to impart. I spend so much time trying to get my kids to put their napkin on their lap, I can barely imagine the luxury of answering these questions. But they are good ones.

I am particularly keen on parenting today. It's my older son's 7th birthday, and I can hardly believe it. Here he is when he turned 3.

And here is he is with his little brother yesterday:

Really really really hard to believe. How do I (we) turn these little Greasers into grown men? Still beyond my comprehension.

November 2 Blog Post

2010-11-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

Again, I can't think of a title, but I have plenty to blog about.

Feeling pretty vindicated on my Nevada senate analysis, even if the House is going Republican.

Terrifying, isn't it? It's worse than just my high school uniform. It's my face transformed into Cathy, wearing my high school uniform. One thing I do like is the verisimilitude of this nasty sweater to my uniform sweater. Although this sweater is threadbare enough to be see-through, I didn't actually wear it in high school. My high school sweater was bulletproof polyester, and was "embroidered" with the school name over one breast. I am wearing men's boxers under the skirt - a trend abhorred by Sister Patricia and a num I can only remember to be named Sister Puella (Latin word for "girl") because that is how she addressed us, "Puella, read the next paragraph A-Loud."

And speaking of nuns, and this is an awkward transition, but since it's also Dia de Los Muertos, I thought I'd share a few pictures of my favorite deceased. The first shows my grandparents at a Halloween party - yes, my Pop is the nun and my Gram is the monsignor - and the second shows my grandmother with her older sister, Rita. Aka Sister Immacula, sans habit. All three of these folks are among the most influential in my life. Viva Marie! Viva John! Viva Rita!

Talk about Effective

2010-10-25T22:54:00.000-07:00

Now THIS is a good campaign ad:

2010 Endorsements

2010-10-18T21:38:00.000-07:00

I understand that the Vote By Mail folks already have their ballots, so I thought I would do an endorsement post, or at least round up the best of what I understand people like me should want to vote for. I'll get some obvious and easy ones out of the way:

Gov: Jerry Brown

Senate: Barbara Boxer

Secy of State: Debra Bowen*

*favorite politician in Cali

I'll stop here to mention a couple of logistical things. If you'd like to Vote By Mail, it's not too late to sign up. In Alameda County, you can register to Vote By Mail up until October 26, but that seems like it's cutting it kind of close (since it's next Monday). If you vote by mail, don't forget to add extra postage; this year's ballot will cost 78 cents to mail. Back to work:

Lt. Gov: Gavin Newsom

Controller: John Chiang

Treasurer: Bill Lockyer

Attorney General: Kamala Harris

Insurance Commissioner: Dave Jones

Board of Equalization: Betty Yee

9th Congressional Dist: Barbara Lee (although it would be nice to have a choice in this spot one day)

14th Assembly Dist: Nancy Skinner

If you live in a different assembly district, let me know, and I might have some idea how you should vote. For example, I like Sandre Swanson.

For judicial retention, the only judge I know on the list is Martin J. Jenkins and I can definitely recommend him. He used to be a federal judge, and he's very smart. I think he left the federal bench for financial reasons. How frakkin' sad is that? Federal district court judges make $169,300 a year - just slightly higher than a first-year associate at a major firm.

Speaking of judges, I think I am going to support Victoria Kolakowski for Superior Court Judge Office #9. She's in a run-off with John Creighton, who is in the District Attorney's office. Too many judges have law enforcement/prosecutor backgrounds, and Kolakowski's experience will provide more diversity of legal experience (among other things) to the bench.

State Superintendent: Tom Torlakson

AC Transit Director, at large: Joel Young (based solely on the recommendation of a co-worker)

Now, the Propositions are dicey. My first impulse is always to vote NO on all of them in protest of the whole govern-by-proposition process. But then I get in the weeds and find that occasionally a proposition does something that I want to happen, and it can't or won't happen legislatively. For example, Prop 25 lowers the legislative vote requirement to pass a budget from two-thirds majority to a simple majority (except for taxes). I think that's a good idea. California is completely paralyzed by its budget process. So Vote YES on Prop 25.

Prop 19 is a lot tougher. This legalizes marijuana for non-medical purposes. In general, I support legalization with a hold-my-nose proviso. Literally. I completely hate the smell of pot. Some amount of fear-mongering works on me in this area. On balance, I think that this is a good idea, and we might not have a better proposition or piece of legislation any time soon. YES on Prop 19.

Much easier: Prop 23. Vote NO. California's groundbreaking pollution control laws should be left in effect.

Sorry that I am skipping around here. I will summarize in order, plus add a few that I am too lazy to summarize for you.

Prop 19: YES

Prop 20: See below

Prop 21: YES (State Parks Trust Fund)

Prop 22: NO (would tie the state's budget hands even tighter)

Prop 23: NO

Prop 24: YES

Prop 25: YES

Prop 26: NO

Prop 27: See below

Prop 20 and 27 are the really tough ones. The voter guide I got is not helpful either. Props 20 and 27 are two sides to the same coin. Prop 27 eliminates the redistricting commission created 2 years ago that took post-census redistricting away from the legislature. Prop 20 would continue the redistricting commission. The Democratic Party opposes Prop 20 and supports Prop 27. If both pass, whichever initiative gets more votes will be the law. To understand why this issue is so difficult, read this blog post. It helps explain why the Democrats oppose Prop 20 but why maybe you should support it. I haven't decided on this one myself. I'm inclined towards supporting Prop 20, actually, but don't feel like I have all the arguments sorted out, partly because the Secretary of State voter guide has totally insane arguments about the topic. I'd be interested in what others think, if you've made it this far....

You are going to think this is wierd

2010-10-16T17:41:00.000-07:00

The other day, I saw this really beautiful bird in a parking lot near my office. It was eating some loquats that had fallen from a nearby tree, and had beautiful red-orange feathers in its tail and at its neck. I tried to take some pictures but the bird waddled away before the iphone could snap. Anyway, I was super-excited to identify it today as a Northern Flicker. The one I saw was a male, I think, because it had a red mustache. Possibly the only beautiful red mustache in the world?

Don't worry that I am going to turn this into a birding blog or something. As you can see from my Twitter feed to the right, I actually commanded the people of Los Angeles to kill their roosters this morning after two woke me up with their infernal cawcawCAW before the sun came up. Stupid roosters of Los Angeles don't even know what time they are supposed to crow.

Musings

2010-10-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

A lot of people think that the internet is speeding up information - that by having the internet available we can get information overload. I'm starting to find it has the opposite use. I'm not unique to notice this. Many critics argue that, on the internet, you never get exposed to alternative perspectives, or get news that's outside your interest, because you stay exclusively on sites that share your world view. I'm noticing a different kind of filter. Rather than only visiting sites that have content that I already care about, I am using the internet to block real time information that I might find upsetting. Like I can't watch this miner rescue on CNN, even though the TV is about 30 inches away from me. I'd rather have it filtered and screened by the internet, just in case something terrible happens.

And speaking of terrible things happening, did you know that squirrels can get depressed?!?!? Thanks to my mother-in-law who vigilantly reads the Bay Area news so I don't have to, I can now worry about renegade animal shelters. And what is the word where you believe certain species have a greater entitlement to rescue then others? Species-ist? That's me. DON'T RESCUE SQUIRRELS AND RACCOONS. It's called natural selection, bee-otches. Get used to it.

And speaking of Bay Area news, I strongly encourage you to read the Bay Citizen. They have some sort of strategic synergy etc etc with the NY Times, which has greatly enhanced the NYT's California coverage, and they are miles better than the SF Chronicle and the Oakland Tribune, truly two of the most craptastic papers in any major metropolis. If in fact that's what this is.

Oh and this too

2010-09-30T22:46:00.000-07:00

Chuckling Over Here

2010-09-30T22:34:00.000-07:00

And this is apropos of nothing, but we are reading Harry Potter to our son, and I've noticed that J.K. Rowling really overdoes it with the adverbs. Just too many of them. And now I am watching Project Runway, and noticing that Tim Gunn uses too many as well. Like, how many ways can a person tell another to consider the "Piperlime accessory wall." "Use it thoughtfully . . . fiercely . . . appropriately . . ." And now in general, I don't want to here any word that has a -ly suffix.

Freedom

2010-09-13T22:36:00.001-07:00

Okay, I have successfully finished a popular novel roughly contemporaneous to its publication date and I feel the need to celebrate a little with a meandering and unhelpful review.

Jonathon Franzen's Freedom will definitely find its place on college syllabi as soon as its published in paperback. The theme is right there in the title and any time you stop to remember that, you chuckle, because there it is, in the novel, being fiendishly costly and soul-crushing. Only those who lack freedom seem really free and yet seem maddenly flat, as characters. I'm thinking of Connie and Lalitha here, fellow readers. Freedom's political extremism and wacky family politics recall White Teeth, without having the freshman over-achieving silliness that novel had. Franzen deserves the comparison to Gatsby, if only because a body of water at its center is the locus of the main characters' dreams and aspirations, and so much goes awry for people for whom the reader feels so ambivalent.

Anyway, I'm being vague because the novel is too complex to summarize, and because I only finished it 10 minutes ago and haven't digested it completely. Two thoughts: Clarence Darrow said, "Freedom is a hard thing to preserve. In order to have enough, you must have too much." Freedom, the novel, holds a mirror to that, and makes me wish that it weren't so. I wish we could be freer with less.

Internet "Hiatus"

2010-09-07T22:22:00.000-07:00

Unlike my sister, I can't maintain a blog and read an actual book at the same time. In fact, I can barely read books at all anymore, blog or no. The last book I remember reading was Netherland. I am sure there has been one since but if so, I can't remember what it is. So I am dialing down all non-work internet time to read Freedom by Jonathon Franzen. Good so far. More news as events warrant. This means I will only be able to update my Twitter feed like once every other night.

Happy Labor Day!

2010-09-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

I'm going to try to spend my Labor Day weekend not watching the funeral march of the Labor Movement that is daily passing through my life. Instead, I thought I'd share a couple of my favorite union videos:

Completely Off Topic

2010-08-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

From fear I've bored some of you to death with my inquiry on the origins of current fashion (aka "the fruitbowling of hipsters"), I thought I would share some things that made me laugh recently.

F U Penguin (h/t j lav). I particularly enjoy Tibetan Fox.

Granite State of Mind.

And the newest video from Ted Leo and the Pharmacists:

Ted Leo And The Pharmacists - "Bottled In Cork" (Official Video) from John Hodgman

Take a whispering class!

All Is Not Lost: Buy American, pt. 4

2010-08-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

All I had to do to answer my own question was basically walk out the front door and down the street. I walked over to College Ave (local retail/restaurant zone) at lunch today (I was strenuously working from home and needed the break) and walked into the first clothing store I saw. Most of the clothes at Bella Vita are made in San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley, although the woman at the counter said it was pretty challenging to find clothes where the material is also made locally or even in the U.S. She said that a lot of clothing makers who want to be "local" do look for American-made fabric, and that they find most of their local goods on Etsy. One of the clothing lines there was Modaspia, which is made in the Sierra foothills in Cali.

A few stores down, Atomic Garden had quite a few American- and California-made clothes. I got a dress and a sweater by Stewart + Brown (made in LA). They also carried Podolls ("Grown and Sewn in the U.S.") and Prairie Underground (made in Seattle). They also carried Clary Sage, which seems to be organic workout clothes, "grown and sewn in Northern California."

I then tromped further along College, and stopped in at Crush on College. I got a cute sweater for $50. It was made in China, as was most of their stuff. I felt 30 seconds of guilt about that, but then a part of me felt better knowing that at least I was making a conscious choice. I could buy my guilt away, I guess. Anyway, that did send me to Atomic Garden to buy the items I had been waffling about. I also stopped in at Cotton Basics, and learned that their clothes are made in the U.S. - even better, Oakland - and sold at three Bay Area stores.

Buy American, pt. 3

2010-08-18T21:43:00.001-07:00

Well, this has become one of the biggest topics on this blog since the John Roberts' confirmation hearings, huh?

I want to address a few of the comments in my previous post. First of all, I wasn't suggesting that we consider this on a macroeconomic level, considering the tariffs and protectionism that entails. What interests me, actually, is the lack of consideration we are giving it on a microeconomical scale. And it's true that clothes, as manufactured products (arguably different from food)* require a multi-level approach. There is the question of where the clothes are made, and then there is the question of where the materials are produced. Oddly, the following should bring some solace: the U.S. is still the biggest cotton producer in the world and the biggest cotton exporter (per Wiki, so have it at, nerds). In point of fact, the materials that much of our clothes are made from (at least mine) are actually grown in the U.S. and exported to China, Bangladesh, Guatemala, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, etc. where it is made into the clothing that is shipped back here (and the remainders are sent to be sold in markets in less developed countries, no doubt).

And I'm not suggesting a "movement" per se. I just find it curious that we (those of us willing to pay $6 for a gallon of organic milk, etc) are not curious about where our clothes come from. Is it because we don't put them in our mouths? Since their toxicity isn't really something we question, we don't ask questions? Or is it because most of the U.S. clothes manufacturers who tout that fact make ugly clothes? Al, I am not suggesting you try to buy only American-made clothes. But just try looking for a couple of pieces and let me know whether you can find any you want to wear.

DCV, I am am unconvinced that a rise in productivity in the manufacturing sector is a measure of success for anyone other than those companies still operating in this country. Manufacturing employment in this country has fallen by 10 million jobs since 1980 (CBO data and Natl. Assn. of Manufacturers data). Imagine where we would be if those 10 million jobs had not been shed by trade agreements and outsourcing, but instead had reached the productivity levels we see today. There would still be jobs lost, but it would have been a much softer landing. I also have enough of the millenarian in me to be freaked out that our country does not make anything. Where would we be if the rest of the world decided not to sell us their shit? Or changed its prices? Okay, so now I am back to my macroeconomic level discussion that I promised not to have, and frankly don't want to cross swords with DCV if JFB does not fully have my rhetorical back.

*I said arguably, so that means you don't have to argue with me about food manufacturing practices. I know it's complicated. Thanks.

Buy American, pt. 2

2010-08-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

Of the retailers I emailed about whether any of their products are made in the US, one was kicked back as a bad address (Sierra Designs) and one responded. Here's what Banana Republic had to say:

Thank you for your email and interest in our products. Our merchandise is manufactured in different parts of the world, including the U.S. If you would like to know where a specific item was made, please email us again with the item's six-digit style number, and we'll do our best to
find the information for you.

Also, the country of origin is sometimes posted on the product page under ?About this product?. In some cases, it will say "Imported" so you know it was not made domestically.

We hope this is helpful, but if you would like to speak with one of our representatives, please call us at the number below.

Kudos for a response that at least addresses what I asked. Now how about the products? Although 27 items came up in response to the search for "Made in USA." on the BR website, none of those were. I found a monogrammed merino wool/silk sweater (item 784324) that was. The 'stars and stripes' Pima cotton T shirt is NOT made in the USA.

What is my point? I guess the more I think about it, the more surprised I am to realize how little is made in this country. Hipsters agonize over where their food is grown, and strenuously patronize local businesses, but think nothing of the fact that the goods they buy were made overseas. Foodie friends: What percentage of the furniture you have purchased is from Ikea?

I'm not trying to guilt anybody here. The reality is that finding American goods that are affordable (or even not affordable) is very difficult. We got the Brooks Brothers catalog today and they tout that much of their current line is "imported". The other two suggestions were Rag & Bone and Bonobos. I've emailed their customer service peeps to see if its true.

To summarize: Clothes made in the US include American Apparel, at least jeans by BB, one sweater by BR and possibly two other American designers. If this isn't ripe for a movement, I don't know what is.

Buy American

2010-08-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

I was waxing sentimental about my alarm clock the other morning because I've had it for 14 years and there isn't anything wrong with it except its ugly. My prior alarm clock was also super-old when I gave it to my friend D. For all I know, she still has it. These archaic, super-strong alarm clocks were making me feel the warm fuzzies about American-made goods. And by the way, I just *assume* these alarm clocks are Made in the USA.

(Just checked) Nope. This one, at least, was made in China, by a Japanese company.

Recently, I've been thinking about how I can do something to spur the economy. I feel largely powerless in this Great Recession. We are blessedly well-employed and the value of our over-mortgaged house is one of the few in the country that hasn't tanked. But I don't have any plans to create hundreds of jobs by opening a manufacturing plant, so what exactly can I do to help out here?

The best I could come up with was to buy more American-made goods. Some of my recent purchases of consumer goods have probably not been Made in the USA. I just got a new Mr. Coffee coffeemaker. It was made in China. I've put my Mexico-assembled Volkswagon out of my mind for the purpose of this discussion.

As it happens, I need some new clothes. This caused me to wonder: Could I buy only American-made clothes this go-around? This is probably going to remain a thought experiment. There are very few women's clothes manufacturers in the US. The most recognizable one is American Apparel. Putting aside the creepola owner of that company, their clothes are a bit "young" and "casual" for most of my needs. I found a list of other companies at this website, but I found it pretty uninspiring. Schaefer Ranchwear USA Designer? Alpacallure!??? The exclamation point is theirs, not mine. Carhartts. New Balance continues to make only its ugliest styles in the US.

Men don't have it quite as bad. Brook's Brothers still makes some of its clothes here. And although Levi Jeans are made in Guatemala and Mexico, they've recently teamed up with BB to make some jeans in the US for sale at Brook's Brothers.

I feel despair. But wait, Dov Charney to the rescue. Just today, he declared that hipsterdom is dead, and that American Apparel will move to a preppier line of clothes. I just checked the website; he ain't there yet. The clothes are still pretty porny. I found a reference on the web that said that Chip & Pepper and Rag & Bone both make their clothes here. But I can't find other verification outside of a random Yahoo! Answers column.

At this point, this seems like a giant mystery to me. Where did all the American fashion go? Is it truly all gone?

UPDATE: I sent inquiries to J. Crew, The Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Sierra Designs asking if any of their products are manufactured in the US. We'll see how that goes.

Stuff I'm Thinking About

2010-08-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

When I'm not thinking about the rest of my life:

1. Do people ever get tattoos of moles? I don't mean the animal featured on the cover of the NYT Science Times today. Or what if you had to have your belly button removed (for medical reasons, or because you are Adam and never had one), would you get one tattooed on so that potential mates would not be totally creeped out? Just pondering future tattoos, that's all.

2. This blog had its 5th birthday and I completely neglected to mention it. Sorry, blog. I hope for your sake that Twitter and Facebook fail but that the publishing industry doesn't recover. Maybe then I will be back more regularly.

3. I read an interesting blog post today: Things That Never Happen. I feel like I could have written it before I tried to consciously stop speaking in absolutes. (Now I just do it unconsciously). But I agree with it and generally raise my kids in this way when I can get them to stop climbing my legs/following me into the bathroom. But what it doesn't address are the true things to fear. I am leery of letting my kid go around the block because there are so many driveways, and people in California tend to floor it out of their driveways with their eyes closed, even though all their Prius's have the camera that shows them what is behind them when they are in reverse (and which I suspect they all ignore). I wish there were a way of calculating their risk from stuff like that.

4. We just spent two weeks on the East Coast: one in Maine and the other in Boston, and I've come away from it with two competing desires. Maine made me want to give away all our stuff and live simply, possibly as lobstermen. Boston made me want to have a manicurist who does house calls. Have not squared these two impulses except to revert to my normal life, which is somewhere in between. One other thing worth noting about Boston was that I found myself at a Black Eyed Peas show, which I felt could have been lifted from a David Foster Wallace novel, where the band is invented by a marketing firm that relies heavily on focus groups in the tour cities. And the Boston fans are thrilled by how closely tailored the band's act is to their tastes. The Peas sampled House of Pain, for G---'s sake. And U2. Who might as well be from Boston, right? Anyhow, it was fun to hang with my family, but I felt slightly like an anthropologist.

5. In addition to 5 years of blogging, it's also been one year of running. I started on vacation last year (Aug 7-14). I started tracking my miles in January, and have run 322 miles since then. Hoping to do 500 miles in 2010. Trying hard not to regret that I didn't start earlier. I wonder what else I've been poo-poo-ing all these years that I need to try?

What's Going On

2010-07-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

This is just a mish-mash post. Enjoy.

This morning, my 6-almost-7 year-old asked us, "Do you know anyone from the '60s? Who lived in the 60s?" He was quite surprised to hear that his grandparents all were alive at that time. I am sure that they will be thrilled to learn that he thinks it is the ancient past. Akin possibly to "the Ordivician".

A co-worker of mine (a single man in his early 30s) was lamenting to me the other day that many of the women he meets in CA are really pretty and nice on the outside, but are sort of cold and petty and mostly concerned with their looks. This was in a discussion about reasons he might move to Chicago. I think he must run with a pretty shallow crowd but I did endorse the idea that the women there are nicer. This got me thinking about the geography of niceness, which allows me to indulge in the sort of gross over-simplifications I so enjoy:

East Coasters: Act surly and mean, are actually really nice people.
Midwesterners: Act nice, are nice.
West Coasters: Act nice, are not always nice.
Southerners: Act nice, are nosy.

Finally, I have a confession to make. I was in an airport today, agonizing over my reading material choice. The only magazine that really grabbed me was the Harvard Business Review. WHAT THE HELL?!? I bought it, but not before grabbing a Vanity Fair to put on top so no one would see what I was reading. What is happening to me, and is there an antidote?

A question

2010-07-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

I know this is incredibly wierd to ask, but it has been baffling me all day. What is the name of the shape of an almond or an eye? Is it just "almond shaped"? The shape I mean is round on the top and bottom but meets at a point on the sides. Thank you, math geniuses for this help in advance.

My Book Proposal

2010-07-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

You know how it's all the rage to do something for a year and then write about it? Well, it is the rage, and it has been for like 20 years. The projects have just gotten more outlandish. For example, in high school, I read a book about a man who spent a year at Harvard's Divinity School, and then wrote a book about it. More recently, a guy lived only by the rules in the Bible for a year, and wrote a book. Another read the Oxford English Dictionary. One woman read a different book every single day for a year. Another guy didn't throw out anything, including his own bodily waste. I may be free-styling with that one, but you get the picture.

A minor hobby of mine is to come up with something I could do for a year, that would be wierd, but not uncomfortable, and then write a book about it. Actually, my hobby is to think about thinking about that, but never actually coming up with anything. I had my first idea tonight though, while reading the L.L. Bean catalog. What if I only wore stuff from L.L. Bean for a year? Including those heinous mom khakis that bag at the area between your waist and your hips? And Bluchers. Every day, 365 days.

Could I do it? Would my husband still find me attractive? Or would no one notice (my bigger fear)? Is this book deal worthy? Would L.L. Bean vanity-publish this? I realize that this proposal needs some refining, but I want you to know that I've finally jumpstarted my new hobby, "imagining one year projects that could be pitched as book proposals".

Truck Nutz! Errrr, Nissan Nutz!

2010-07-07T22:51:00.001-07:00

My kid noticed them first. "Mom! What are those!?"

What is the right answer? Here are some options:

(a) Fake car testicles

(b) It's a weird joke, honey. It's supposed to look like a scrotum on that car. But even if its funny, it's really a private part, so we don't laugh at it, okay?

I, of course, went with (b).

More About My Grandmother

2010-06-29T22:43:00.000-07:00

It's a popular adage that women turn into their mothers whether they want to or not, and I've come to accept some small quirks (singing everything) while probably not confronting others. But I've always hoped that I would turn into/be more like my grandmother, as you might surmise from my eulogy of her.

However, there were a few habits of my Gram's that I had hoped to avoid. First, she had enormous earlobes, which were the result of her multiple and heavy earrings. That's right. My grandmother wore giant heavy gold earrings, more than one in each ear, and they made her earlobes giant, like some urban legend told to 8 year old girls before they go into Claires to do the deed (i.e. pierce their ears).

Second, she shoved Kleenex into the sleeves of her shirts and sweaters. When she changed clothing, they tumbled out like chunky snowballs. While she could produce a clean tissue like a magician, you never wanted to use it, fearing its history. I do this when I am sick now, but I don't think I've gone the whole way, kimono-style, like Gram.

Finally, she would "grease" her feet every night and put on running socks because of her dry skin.

I now do this. And I am not NOT 91 years old. Or even 79, or 56. But I do it. Just did it 10 minutes ago. Is this the Dorian Gray-like price to pay to acquire some of her grace, wisdom and charm? I guess I wouldn't have it any other way. But I hope someday to develop my own wierd quirks that can't be blamed on my mother and hers.

My New Theory About Guilt

2010-06-17T21:59:00.000-07:00

I spend a lot of time pissed off about my job and about certain ideals I once held sacred, but since I want to keep that job and possibly get another one in the future, I have kept quiet about the many theories I have developed about said ideals, and just stew in them. This is w/r/t The Internet, by the way; if you ask me in person, I will spout off at length and possibly to my own career detriment about these issues.

But anyway. I've stumbled upon a theory I can share. Which is a theory of conservation of guilt. Today, I was thinking about this oil spill and feeling simultaneously shitty and nonplussed about it. Shitty, because it is an awful terrible gaping gash in our earth that is spoiling a huge area of our planet. Nonplussed, because there are so many awful gaping badnesses spoiling our earth. Not just environmentally, but also in terms of human life and decency. On top of it all, John Edwards goes out every night and drinks white wine and hits on women. OH MY GOD. STOP. It's all to disgusting to process.

That's a lot of stuff to feel guilty about, right? But what I don't feel guilty about is all that crap that the Catholic Church wanted women to feel guilty about for all those years. Catholics and women and Jews overall seem a lot less guilt-tripped than we were 30 years ago, and I bet a lot of us have been feeling pretty relieved about that. We are not stressed about premarital sex, birth control, having lustful thoughts, eating bacon. I, for one, am pretty pleased about all that, especially that last one.

But while we may feel free of certain kinds of religious guilt, we are now encumbered by far more embarassing social and humanistic guilt. It must even out. While I don't feel even the slightest twinge about missing Mass for the past 20 years, I feel completely awful about all the Sierra Leonan children who are missing limbs and cuddling automatic weapons. And oh, the oil spill gives me a knot in my stomach. Thus, the conservation of guilt. For everything you would have felt guilty about in the past, you will now feel at least equally about something else.

The Car Post

2010-06-12T21:23:00.000-07:00

We have two cars. The "other" car is a 1997 Honda Civic, and it is primarily driven by Mr. Scobie on days when he decides to drive to work (rather than BART) or when we both need to drive some place at the same time. This car is usually referred to as "the old car", "the other car", "the Honda" or "(Mr. Scobie's) car". But today, I needed to drive to San Jose, and Mr. Scobie said, "Can you take the crappy car?" and I said, "sure" but when I got in the car, I thought, What a master of re-branding he is. So now I guess the Honda will be known as "the crappy car". The next step from there is a new car, of course.

The other thought I had in the car was, Can you change someone's preset radio stations if the stations are super-corny? Another thought I had was, The popularity of the Segway in San Jose is what is keeping the rest of us from wanting to move here. I didn't tweet either of those thoughts because I was driving and I didn't want to die on 880.

Who? Me?

2010-06-01T22:29:00.000-07:00

What am I up to? Oh, just moonin' around in my SF Giants/Fanta slanket. Finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest long before the witching hour, mainly because I inhaled like 400 pages of it last night. I'd share a picture, but the one that was taken of me has not been shared with me, and in any case, I probably just look like an orange lump.

Nothing else is going on, and I am trying to keep it that way. I want everything outside of my family and friends to shrink down to nothing. Or rather, some paraphrase of Grover Norquist keeps coming to mind. I often find myself thinking, "I want to shrink this ____ to where I can drown it in the bathtub." Where "this" isn't the government but some more personal bureaucracy. I don't want to be more specific, but man, being a grown-up is complicated. I saw this guy today who had a sweatshirt that said, "Capitalism is a death machine" and I got so annoyed. When did it get more complicated than that? WHY IS EVERYTHING SO NUANCED NOW?

And Tipper and Al are separating? GOD DAMN. I've already lived through my parents' divorce once. Why does this keep happening to me?

Which reminds me of a story. It's a boring one, but bear with me. Mr. Scobie used to call me Tipper Gore. Man, did that ever burn me. It used to make me so mad. Now, I don't care. Of course, he doesn't call me Tipper anymore; he calls me Al. If it's possible to be both, what will happen to me when they divorce? *head exploding*

Action Packed Week

2010-05-21T17:37:00.001-07:00

First of all, how cute are these children? I took this picture with an iPhone app that makes everything look like an old Polaroid. Or as my cousin said, an app that makes your children look exactly like you in old pictures. The sleeping bag is SOO earlier this week, when the grown-ups had to take turns camping in the kids room in order to fend off robbers.

Notwithstanding the Crime Spree we faced, the really exciting event this week has been The Loose Tooth. Or possibly The Loose Teeth, or maybe Loose Tooth I and Loose Tooth II. The whole thing has not shaken out yet, but yesterday, Li opened a tupperware container with his teeth (I know, I know, you're thinking, What, you stupid hippies! Haven't you taught your children to fear anything real?) and that resulted in major loosening of a lower front tooth. Anxiety about the loss of this tooth resulted in such award-winning performances as this one, last night:

He's biting his lower lip in order to protect his bottom teeth. He did that from 6:00 pm last night until around 1:30 this afternoon, when I convinced him to try a popsicle (up to that point, no food or water had entered his body for that entire time). TaaaDAH! Instant relief! The other tooth is pretty jaunty too, so I'm hoping the T.F. makes two visits this weekend (Tooth Fairy, not Tom Frank. Although it would be good to see him as well).

The other thing that happened was that a bird flew in the back door yesterday evening, and flew around the house and got freaked out and pooped liberally and hid under the couch. It took much coaching and furniture-moving to get the bird out. It was the most exciting thing to happen to me in a while, but then again, I haven't lost a tooth in years, so what do I know.

A Few Installments of A New Feature

2010-05-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

I've decided to start a new feature called "If I Loved . . . , My Life Would Be Awesome" where I would tell you about things which, if I loved, would contribute to a more awesome life on my part. It goes like this:

If I liked walking on Legos, my life would be awesome.

If I liked sleeping on stacks of Bob books, my life would be awesome.

If I liked hearing the Fantastic Fox theme song whistled flatly, my life would be awesome.

If I like decorating with sleeping bags, my life would be awesome.

I acknowledge that some kinder-hearted among you might see these conditions are sweet blessings, and I'm not discounting that possibility. That's why I am trying to imagine a more awesome life out of the awesome life I already have.

Completely Random

2010-05-11T21:47:00.001-07:00

Now that I've tried to start blogging again, I've really noticed how little people blog these days, unless they are professional bloggers. And maybe they don't blog either, since I don't think I actually read any professional bloggers. Anyway, its too bad. I like reading my friends' blogs. For example, I was really happy today to find that T&A Lady had posted. Its a pretty funny post. Notwithstanding the fact that she accurately calls out her ex-boyfriend's non-wisdom, I do have to say that the sentiment against sweat pants outside the house was a strong one in my family. So strong, in fact, that I think I may have rebelled for some years by clinging desperately to a really ugly maroon pair from high school. So deep was my affection, I cut them up and put them in my fabric bin; I intend to use them some day in a quilt, or pillow, or some other novelty gift for my husband, who hates them.

Which is a bummer, isn't it? That men (at least good ones) don't find women attractive in old sweatpants? And its a bummer for men that women don't think that SportsCenter is lady porn. So I guess we're even.

I ran another race on Sunday. And oh mother, was it punishing. It was only a 10k ("only", ha!) but it was in Redwood Park, which is very hilly and it was raining and muddy. So I am half-happy with my time. The reason I am even mentioning this is that I noticed that the race organizers posted on their Facebook page today that several people intentionally cheated in the related 30k. What is the point? If you are punishing yourself by running this insane race, why would you then cheat? I don't think I've ever cheated just to cheat. Strike that. Yes, I have. Sometimes I check for a hint at the back of the Sudoku book. Is that the same thing? It doesn't seem like the same thing.

Finally, I strongly encourage you to kill an hour or two watching Nowmov. Especially you, Seamus. This is my friend's new venture, and it is completely addictive. It's like Pandora mixed with Chatroulette mixed with basic cable. With Brazilians. And lots of Justin Bieber. But you can skip those videos. Anyway, enjoy and spread the word.

Deep Thoughts

2010-05-05T21:07:00.000-07:00

Still on the music thing, but in a different genre altogether (assuming George Michael and X-Ray Spex are not in the same genre). I was thinking about the following lyrics: "Though its easy to pretend, I know you're not a fool."

How obnoxious and condescending is that? If any "friend" of mine told me that it would have been easy to pretend that I was a fool, I would be so pissed off.

Although now that everyone knows that most of my waking thoughts are song lyrics from the '80s, they would not be mistaken for thinking that I'm half-witted, I guess.

Musical Influences

2010-05-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, Liam asked me if people ever have pet rats, which caused me to sing*, "Freddy tried to strangle me with my plastic popper beads, but I hit him back with my pet rat. Yes, I hit him back with my pet rat!" Li thought this was hilarious, so I spun Germ-Free Adolescents by X-Ray Spex for him in the car the next day. It only took one chorus for him to sing along to Plastic Bag. "My my-nd is like a plas-tic bag (do do do do do do doo)."

I was so proud. I mean, even prouder than the fact that both my kids love Ozzy (well, Crazy Train). But here's the trick. X-Ray Spex released that album in 1977. The year my sister was born. I was three, the same age as my younger son. It was old when I discovered it in 1991. So how can it be cool for me to be playing it for my kids? It just isn't, right? It's the equivalent of my mom playing Phil Ochs and The Band and Simon and Garfunkel**, which was still mildly contemporaneous with my early childhood. So in essence, I am even more of a throwback than my mom was when I was a kid. ~~~ Does not compute ~~~

This marked lack of coolness is something I've never adjusted to. Time to just own up to it and bust out the Doobie Brothers, I guess.

* I have this genetic condition that I inherited from my mother, and passed to my son, whereby I sing non-relevant song lyrics in response to friendly questions. This would drive Mr. Scobie "insane" if he weren't already in that condition due to our children's horrible table manners and their shambled, broken-toy-strewn bedroom.

** I still love The Band and Simon and Garfunkel. Here is my friend Dave's answer to the question "Beatles or Rolling Stones?": "Simon and Garfunkel", and he's right.

Two Steps Forward, One Tiny Step Back

2010-05-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

This post is about Oakland. Back in September, I wrote about how impressed I was by O-Town's burgeoning night life, and last month, I was thrilled to run the half marathon in the Oakland Running Festival. This weekend, we stopped by the re-opened Oakland Museum of California, which was packed with people, and I felt particularly proud to watch the immigration rally/protest circling Lake Merritt from the roof of the OMCA. OAKLAND! REPRESENT! Even the NYT caught wind of Oakland's resurgence this weekend.

But amidst the fun and the Diebenkorns, there was one small thing at the OMCA that made me shake my head. It was the Holistic Hooping demonstration. Oakland is not going to make it to the next level of cool with this hula hoop-based fairy costume sex therapy dance nonsense. And I know that one of them will find this blog post and disagree, so I just want to let that hooper know that when my old dentist's wife started anonymously commenting on this blog, it ended with me giving detailed testimony to another dentist's lawyer in a related litigation matter. So think again, hula hooper.

I've decided to chalk the wood nymph hula squad up to Berkeley and continue to give O its due. But if I see a diaphonous cape or felt upper-arm bands in the vicinity of a hula hoop in Oakland again, I WILL downgrade Oakland to a B+.

And Again

2010-04-28T22:40:00.000-07:00

I was reluctant to tackle the subject of our trip to New Jersey, but then I found this website, for the Westmount Country Club, and I realized it was selfish to keep it all to myself. My grandmother's repast (post-funeral lunch) was held at The Westmount, and she would have been in her glory at this place. And I don't mean because she was some old school guidette. Far from it;my grandmother was amazed at tackiness, and would have been thrilled to spend an afternoon soaking up the Westmount and tossing off one-liners at its expense.

Let me back up a bit. My grandmother died April 6, 2010, after a very long and full life. Now that's she deceased, I know that I'm at liberty to tell her age, but when she was alive, her age was not commonly known or shared.

Here's my grandmother's obituary. There was no doubt that her progeny would travel to NJ for the services. Due to the fact that there are no hotels in Clifton, NJ, my uncle reserved a block of rooms at the Holiday in Totowa, just up Route 46 from the church. As an aside, I need to note that my husband and non-NJ cousin mis-pronounced Totowa in various ways, and I had to fight the feeling that their mispronunciation was intentional. It's Toe-toe-WAH, not tot-uh-wah or tuh-TOE-uh. I decided that I don't answer for NJ anymore, and didn't bother to correct them. Plus, I'm probably wrong anyway. The hotel was attached to a night club that doubled as the breakfast buffet. I didn't have the good fortune to visit Ruby's Lounge, but some phrases my family who did visit used in reference to it were, "milling about", "sexy dancing", "old" and "jarring".

Stepping aside from the hilarity of the Ho Inn and the Westmount, I must say that my Gram's mass was very moving and appropriate. I hadn't felt deeply miserable about her passing because it wasn't unexpected, but the mass felt just right for acknowledging who she was and creating a safe space for feeling that sadness. I was lucky that my mom took me up on my offer to speak a few "Words of Remembrance." I share them below, because I figure, I already shared them in public once, and I've already eulogized an old neighbor on this blog, it's only right to honor my grandmother.

When I first heard that Gram had died, I had a flash of self-pity where I thought, "I didn't get to say good-bye to her." Then I realized I had talked with her just a few days earlier. In fact, most of her children and grandchildren spoke to her in the weeks before she died. I talked to Gram almost every week in the past few years, and I can tell you, she was ready for this. In some ways, she was curious about death, almost impatient. I know that she was ready to pass.

Our familiarity makes it hard to remember anecdotes about my grandmother. But I do remember that in the last year they owned the house in Lavallette, Gram learned that a serious winter storm was headed towards the house, and the house hadn't been closed for the winter. She literally tossed me in the car and drove down there. (I think Jack was there.) She worked quickly to lock windows, turn off the water, whatever needed to be done. I am sure that I was no help at all. Before we left though, we walked down to the beach. It was the only time I remember seeing dolphins at Lavallette. Gram turned to me and said, "We should go swimming!" It was pretty classic. She had a way of making the routine seem spontaneous, and by extension, I felt so *included* in everything she did.

When I was very young, Gram taught me how to answer the phone, make a pot of coffee. She let me watch the Today show with her at the kitchen counter , and she'd send me to buy donuts at Cozy Joe's. I felt so important! So grown-up! It seems silly to remember such little things about a woman who accomplished so much. She graduated from Fordham and got her Master's degree in the 1940s. She had a professional career when Irish Catholic women were not professionals. Then she had a family when most women at that time would be considered an old maid. Gram was one for the history books and yet my whole life, I just took it for granted. Of course she did all that. NO big deal; I'll do that too! Sometimes she used her maiden name, sometimes she used her married name. No big deal; I'll do that too!

In fact, Marie Winberry Costello has many names. To the older grandchildren, she is Gram. To the younger, and to her great grandchildren, she is Memaw.

Regardless of what we called her, she was crazy about all of us. The younger kids were beautiful, hilarious and, wonderful. I never heard her use baby talk until I had kids. Rachael got Gram to shoot a music video a couple of years ago. She thought you were all hilarious. Every time she was with you, she was 70 years younger.

And making Gram laugh was one of her favorite things in the world.. When I got married, I asked her how I could have a long and happy marriage like hers. The first thing she said was, "Keep laughing with one another." She and Pop definitely did that. The other advice she gave me: "Never speak ill of his family, no matter how long you are married." And, "Feel free to go to bed angry - you'll know in the morning what you were really mad about." But keep laughing was the main advice I try to use every day.

I wanted you to know how much she appreciated that you could make her laugh.

What about us older kids? What did we mean to her?

There are enough people she loved in this world that I cannot say that we meant "everything". But the five oldest grandchildren were all the products of divorces by the time we were in our early teams. Each of us struggled in ways and through issues that Gram and her children never envisioned that we would.

And for that, Gram, above all, admired us. She was so proud of us. Every time I talked to her, she bragged to me about my sister, my cousins, my husband, my sister's husband, my cousin's husbands, my cousin's wife. She bragged to me about my own kids. She bragged to me about ME. She didn't understand everything that we did, but she thought we were all just amazing. And she respected us. Not just once were coping adults, but throughout our lives. She trusted us to answer her phone, make the coffee, hear some adult news - because she respected us, and our intelligence.

When I talked to Gram that last time, we didn't have any deep conversation. She had questions about being a criminal defense attorney - she was watching Law and Order - and wanted to know more about a half marathon I had run a few weeks ago. But she also let me know again, in simple ways, that she was really impressed by me, and more important, she was at peace with her own future.

The level of love and respect that I got from Gram, I got to reciprocate almost weekly. While I don't feel like there's anything I didn't say to her, I want to say this to you: If you want to remember my Gram, then take excellence for granted, respect eachother, and above all, keep laughing together. Thank you.

Another Blog Post, Finally

2010-04-26T21:33:00.000-07:00

I've really been struggling to think of something to blog about lately. Obviously, the non-blogger side of me has been winning. I'll try to rectify that tonight, if I can. But coming up with a blog post was really challenging, especially since I DVRed the final episode of Project Runway, and I really should watch it tonight. It aired 5 days ago and the whole Western world knows who won, and I have been intentionally ignoring any source of information that might reveal the winner. So I really need to see it before the news blackout breaks down.

But okay, here I am.

Went to Jersey this weekend. Can't even begin to tackle this topic, I've reverted to such a neophyte weakling-blogger state. I just don't have the physical and emotional constitution to tackle New Jersey right now. It's like I've had blogger pneumonia, and I need to ease back into it.

Here's a topic I can handle: I finished reading Union Atlantic by Adam Haslett yesterday. I can't really recommend it. It got great reviews I think. Actually, maybe only my mother-in-law liked it. I don't know. It was on the cover of the NY Times Book Review, and I therefore assume they gave it a good review. Only Saul Bellows or Don DeLillo would get the cover and also a bad review, right?

Why did I dislike it? A few reasons:

(1) It was Gatsby-esque but not in a subtle enough way to be anything other than derivative.

(2) Speaking of derivatives (buh-dum-bum), the story involves a stock market crisis that takes place at the beginning of the war in Iraq, thus causing the reader to be forced to reckon with two monumental national disasters simultaneously. But the crisis feels anachronistic or something. Or maybe you are supposed to shake your head and lament that we never learn from our (snore).

(3) The main character is boring as shit and totally unlikeable. And not unlikeable in a Saul Bellow character way, where you can't wait to read what ludicrous prejudice is going to be next attributed to this character. It's more like, "Okay Doug is a power tripper, and now he's taking his shirt off again." (flip, flip, flip)

(4) In fact, all the characters are unlikeable, really. At least in small ways. And the things that are supposed to make them complex and interesting, aren't. Nate is gay? OMG! I just thought he was goth!

Had enough snark? I can't say I hate the book. It has enough interesting elements to be worth finishing.

UPDATE: I just checked the NYT review. It's pretty close to glowing, so heck ,maybe I'm wrong. But it reminded me of the talking dog bit, and that made me decide that, yup, I might hate this book.

Update on the Twitter situation, and Day 2 of SD

2010-03-03T22:41:00.000-08:00

After I invited everyone to follow me on Twitter, my spouse let me know that I require new followers to be verified by me before they can read my posts. None of you asked to follow me, so I assume no one else tried to follow me there. Probably because you are mainly Luddites who are ambivalent about even reading this so-called blog. Anyway, I added my Twitter feed over there in the right hand column, so you'll have a reason to check back in even if I am not updating the blog.

As for Day 2 of San Diego, all I can say is, Legoland is nirvana for a 6 year old boy. Mine literally ran from place to place, overwhelmed and thrilled by the whole thing. It's probably the best theme park for kids that I've ever been to. My kids are anxious to return this weekend (not happening).

I've Found Something New to Be Annoyed About

2010-03-03T22:25:00.000-08:00

In case you thought I'd gotten mellow and maybe more accepting of the world around me, I wanted to let you know that I have a new pet peeve. It is the use of quotation: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting the same results."

I'll admit that the first time you hear this quote, you might think "HA! Isn't that clever? And so true...." but in reality, it is rarely true or even descriptive of the event under consideration. This particular iteration of this nonsense is attributable to Meg Whitman, criticizing Jerry Brown's decision to run for Governor. Say what you will about Jerry Brown and crazy, but this isn't actually him repeating himself, expecting the same results.

Another context in which I heard this quote was a meeting at work where someone was bemoaning the failure of program to reduce workplace injuries. The program was never actually fully implemented. I practically bit the woman's head off, and had to restrain myself from giving a lecture about the failure of LBJ's Great Society or War on Poverty or whatever and even now I don't know what that means. In other words, if you don't do something, you can't turn around and say that you did the same thing over and over again.

On reflection, this is just one quote that people use to sound smart and pithy and right without actually having to be thoughtful and articulate and creative. Which describes the use of quotes generally. So I am going to amend my pet peeve to include the use of all quotations in verbal communication.

It Didn't Seem Like Such A Bad Idea At the Time

2010-02-27T21:07:00.000-08:00

Mr. Scobie decided to go to CO for a ski weekend with his brother and friend around the same time that I realized that I had a Southwest voucher that will expire in June. So I got the bright idea to take the kids to San Diego for the same weekend, so we could hit Legoland and the Zoo. Now, I've been informed by both Mr. Scobie and his brother that they would also like to visit Legoland and the Zoo, and while I understand that, I also know that I cannot plan a non-skiing trip during the winter for the whole family without some serious backlash, so I went ahead and booked it. Way later than I should have, but the money is spent. This blog post is not to cry over that spilt milk. Instead, I will compose this post as though it were Twitter status updates I had made throughout the day. In fact, I didn't have time to tweet, what with all the yelling and driving rain, but I know a lot of my readers don't follow me on Twitter so I thought I would give you a taste of what it's like to read.

6:22: Up, fed, dressed out the door!

6:22: F! Forgot my coffee and the NYT. Not going back now, already at the end of the block.

6:38: Nasty odor wafting over OAK causing kid to fake-retch is IDed as landfill fumes by security guard. Mystery solved.

6:43: Practically no one at the airport.

6:46: Kids ecstatic to see Southwest airplanes; out of proportion to their abundance.

9:01: Safe flight, safe landing in SAN.

9:33: Car reservation for Mary Dooley found for Tuesday not helpful to me.

9:47 On the road to Legoland.

10:25: Legoland closed. Would be a total disaster if not for killer earthquake/tsunami

10: 25: For perspective, i mean.

(Those were actual posts)

11:30: After more than an hour of tears and recrimination, we are resigned to make the best of it: San Diego Zoo, give us all you've got.

3:49: Hippos are amorous, time to head out.

4:35: Did not get $91 worth of San Diego Zoo.

5:35: Hilton Club Lounge cheese selection not up to unacknowledged expectations. Milk containers don't open with adult assistance.

5:36: more tears and recrimination. Back to the room.

9:41: listening to the yapping of the participants of the San Diego Dog Show who are also guests here tonight.

That covers Day 1.

Literary Detective Work

2010-01-28T22:25:00.000-08:00

Today, someone commented on one of my first posts Who is Scobie?

What is one to make of "Scobie" being the name of the saintly main character of THE HEAR OF THE MATTER?

It's a good question, right? The first book of the Alexandria Quartet, from which I took the name Scobie, was published in 1957. The Heart of the Matter was published in 1948. It's possible that Lawrence Durrell was inspired by Graham Greene. I was wondering if both characters were both inspired by the same person. Both Joshua Scobie and Henry Scobie are police officers, posted in Alexandria, Egypt and Freetown, Sierra Leona, respectively. Beyond that, I have no idea what the similarities are, since I haven't read Heart of the Matter yet.*

Based solely on a Wikipedia search, I've got these candidates:

Ronald Scobie, a British army officer

Scobie Breasley, an Australian jockey

Jonathan Scobie, alleged rickshaw inventor

James Scobie. He's a dead gold miner. Definitely read the story on the link.

It would not surprise me if both Greene and Durrell were familiar with all four. Just guessing, but I bet Greene was inspired by Ronald, and Durrell was inspired by the other three all rolled together.

* I may read it this weekend. Or I may not. I love Graham Greene so much that I find it hard to read him. I mean, he's easy to read, but his books are very intense. To me, qua lapsed Catholic.

Mind Reader

2010-01-28T22:20:00.000-08:00

Are there any topics about which you know that you and your partner disagree to such an extent that you avoid raising the topic, even if you've never discussed it before? The personal example that comes to mind is sweater pills. I don't really care; I assume Mr. Scobie thinks they are unacceptable.

What the? vol. 2 clarification

2010-01-25T21:58:00.000-08:00

Just a brief follow-up to the post below:

1. By kneeless women, I didn't mean heroic wonder athletes like Sarah Reinertsen, who can probably pee anywhere she wants. In my mind, I envisioned a person who had complete legs which just did not have a joint midway to the floor, making lap creation a complete impossibility. I now hope that this physiognomy doesn't exist so I don't have to write something else hilarious.

2. It turns out that this product may be targeted towards transexuals who are transitioning from female to male. While this explains better which women might be interested in standing to urinate, it doesn't explain how this product solves their problem. I imagine a new female-to-male on an outdoorsy date with a woman, overcome with a need to relieve himself. How exactly does he employ the P-MATE in a way that doesn't kill his chances with his date?

So much in this world is just beyond my grasp.

What the? vol. 2

2010-01-24T22:05:00.000-08:00

In the department of "problems I didn't know I have, solutions I don't want", my friend Jen shared a link to this website. That's right, P-Mate USA has finally brought a product to market that helps a woman (I assume; I guess men could use it too) pee standing up. Peeing standing up has never been an aspiration of mine, so I guess I was never really looking for this product. But I want to keep an open mind, so I've created my own FAQ about this product:

1. Why? Some women want to pee standing up. Also, some women find it hard to squat down to pee. Others don't like to hover over dirty toilets in the Port Authority. Fair enough. The pictures on the website show adventurous women, setting off on hikes, bike riding, looking at the Jersey City skyline - you know, adventure stuff.

2. But if they feel awkward squatting down in the tall grass to pee, how much easier will it be to stand upright with a little origami penis sticking out of their pants? It won't be. In fact, adventure women are unlikely to need this product. Adventure women love to do the wild wee. UNLESS THEY DON'T HAVE KNEES. That's right. It's hard to squat if you don't have knees, so this product is for you, adventurous kneeless women. God bless ya! Get out there!

3. Does it really constitute an endorsement if

Ellen DeGeneres
Emmy-winning host of
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
was gifted a pack of P-Mates
backstage at the
2009 GLAAD AWARDS on
Saturday, April 18th at the
Nokia Theater in Los Angeles.

I'm gonna say, no, it doesn't.

4. How do I dispose of this product? Apparently you can recycle this item, but I am sobered by the thought of the Waste Management employee considering which pile a damp, smelly triangle of badness should be thrown into. Which strongly suggests that this should be composted instead.

5. No seriously, who uses it? From a close reading of the website, and in particular the testimonials and photos pages, the answer is: Europeans and people at Burning Man, which means the same thing. No one has ever accused me of being either, so I will get back to work on my patent for a compostable upright urination device.

Best Line of the Night

2010-01-22T21:24:00.000-08:00

A line shouted in anger by my 6 year old: "You are NOT a genius, and you are NOT a millionaire!"

Second best line in re: our house, by Mr. Scobie: "It's tiny, but at least it's expensive."

My Family

2010-01-21T14:55:00.000-08:00

While I have been a complete slug this month, other members of my family have been doing dazzling and brilliant things. First of all, read my sister's blog post on Haiti. She's so smart.

Meanwhile, my father Joe, who is running against Deb Mell (sister in law of Rod Blagoyevich) for state assembly, grabbed a huge endorsement from the IEA this week. Check out his campaign website here. Please support him as a volunteer or contributor!! The primary is coming up and he can use all your support.

What's Up With Me, vol 3

2010-01-11T21:57:00.000-08:00

First of all, check out my newest endeavor.

The rest of this post will just read like a Jackie Harvey column because mostly I just continue to play cultural catch-up with the rest of America. For example, we saw Julie and Julia - or is it Julia and Julie? - this weekend. Didn't like it. Didn't even finish it. Meryl Streep was of course blah blah blah awesome blah blah overacting blah blah blah, but the parts with Amy Adams were excruciating. Unless you are paying her by the minute, if you have Meryl Streep on contract, why would you spend even one second of your movie on mousy-squeaking boring ass Julie Powell typing on her computer? I hereby call a moratorium on movies showing blogging. Its barely passable as a hobby; why does anyone think I want to watch someone blog?

I realize that writers and screenwriters are facing this Modern Dilemma whereby technology nows solves all kinds of problems which previously permitted all kinds of dramatic tension in a story. For example, cell phones and Google probably eliminate 68% of all detective stories and 83% of all romantic comedies. So be it. Adapt or die. But showing a woman blogging is not an acceptable adaptation. Its boring. I invite any of you to come over and watch me blog. Except for you, if you are a creepy person who has developed a fetish for watching women blog. You can't come over.

Where was I going with this? Ah, yes. Other cultural fare I have tasted. I read Asterios Polyp. It's good. It's not the greatest graphic novel of all time or anything, but its very beautiful. I don't like when a graphic novel needs to end with a ludicrously cruel twist of fate. Comic artists are the most diehard cynics I've ever known. Rule: If you permit a character in a graphic novel to fall in love, they must die a truly bizarre death or be profoundly unhappy in spite of this gift of a human they can share their lives with. Crumb and Pekar come easily to mind in that last category. I won't say what happens in this book, but I do wish the second to last page had been left out.

Okay, back to my nascent art career.

Bad Feminist?

2010-01-05T22:16:00.000-08:00

We watched The Hangover* last night and I about died laughing. This is the kind of movie my kids will know every line of in 10 years. Okay, maybe hopefully more like 15 if I am a good mother. I recall that at the time this movie was released, I heard that it was misogynist and had no strong female characters. Seeing the movie confirmed for me that I am apparently incapable of thinking like a good feminist anymore, because my reaction after watching it was: Of course there were no strong female characters! It was a bachelor party movie! And somehow its misogynistic to show strippers IN VEGAS!?

No one should expect to see strong female characters in bachelor movies, old war movies where women didn't see combat, football movies (but see Any Given Sunday. Or don't.). It would make very little sense for a narrative realism perspective, and they aren't necessary to make a decent movie.

Also kudos to the filmmakers for building a movie around a city's tourism board slogan.

* Actual dialogue in my life:

Mr. Scobie: What are you blogging about?

Me: The Hangover.

Mr. Scobie: You mean the one you had Christmas morning?

Me: No, the movie we watched last night.

Mr. Scobie: You should also blog about the one from Christmas.

This Is A Test

2010-01-02T21:07:00.001-08:00

I got a Flip for Christmas, so bear with me while I test whether I can post a video.

Let me know if you can view this. Thanks.

10 Years Ago

2009-12-31T19:19:00.000-08:00

The conventional wisdom is good riddance to this decade. In general and historical terms, I am in agreement with that. But this decade has been way more eventful than the one before that, and for that I am glad, largely for the corny and obvious reasons that I am now happily married with two beautiful children.

On the eve of Y2K, Mr. Scobie and his girlfriend, me and my boyfriend, another couple (who were on the verge of breaking up because of his imminent enrollment in treatment for pot addiction - which addiction was not in evidence that weekend, as no drugs that I know of were consumed) and a friend of ours rented a house at Brigantine, New Jersey. Brigantine is just north of Atlantic City, and I have no idea why we decided to go there. It had to do with the coming Rapture. I think we figured that if the shit went down, we probably wouldn't notice in a place like Brigantine. Which would have been true, if the shit had gone down. As you know, it didn't. I wish I could say that Mr. Scobie and I realized at that point that we were with the wrong people, but that didn't happen for another year. The whole weekend was, at the request of another attendee, a "PG weekend", so I don't have much else to report.

My mom, for her part, spent New Year's Eve that year hosting friends from the commune where she'd lived from 1971 until 1973. That "community" was millenarian, and among the numerous reasons my parents left was my mother's fatigue of waiting for the End of The World. Anyway, to finally have The End upon them, my mother and her friends mostly found hilarity in the whole situation. The visiting couple's daughter, who had renamed herself Rainbow, was now herself a part of a apocalyptic community. She and her husband had stockpiled food and made their own mattress out of hay (to absorb nuclear radiation). Her mother memorably said, "I've lived through that. Now, when the end comes, I want to be one of the looters."

That doesn't exactly exhaust my memory of this night 10 years ago, but it comes close. Me and the D posse gotta roll to our NYE party. Have a great New Year!

New Year's Resolutions 2010

2009-12-29T19:42:00.000-08:00

A fun trip to Ano Nuevo state park to see the elephant seals today inspired me to do my New Year's resolutions a little in advance of the day itself.

But first, let's review my 2009 resolutions:

1. Get a job;

Check. Started my new job March 18, 2009.

2. Be more patient, and less angry, with my children.

This was too amorphous. I can't tell whether I was more patient and less angry with my kids than I was in 2008. Since I don't hit my kids, and DCFS doesn't check in, I don't have any metrics for this goal. This leads me to create a new New Year's resolution rule: There has to be something quantifiable being achieved. I.e. there must be a metric. Mr. Scobie is good about this. His resolutions are all "read 2 books a month, see 2 movies a month," etc., etc.

3. Less beer, more red wine.

Again, who knows. My calorie theory was quickly debunked by my MIL, who pointed out that a typical glass of wine has 6-7 ounces in it, not 3 or 4. And I just like beer.

In case you are curious, here are my 2008 resolutions, and how I did in 2008. And how I did in 2007.

Okay, now enough with the walk down memory lane. Here we go:

1. Run the Oakland half-marathon March 28, 2010. In fact, I already registered. I can run about 5 miles now, at a pace of about 9:45, so I think it's doable.

2. Read one new book a month. "New" means that I haven't read it before, not that it is newly published.

3. One "date" each month with each guy in this house. So one date with my husband, and one activity alone with each of the kids.

4. 100% of LMP employees in Unit Based Teams, 75% of UBTs are high-performing teams by the end of 2010.

5. Work "slap in the face" into my vernacular.

What are yours?

More Ten Word Restaurant Reviews

2009-12-15T13:11:00.000-08:00

My last post misses the mark in two respects. My friend actually asked for some vegetarian options, and wanted a neighborhood where there might be some shops open late. This being Oakland, its hard to tell whether you can find a store open late, since even the restaurants close at 10. And me being a carnivore, I am not a good one to go to for vegetarian options. So I thought I would do a few more reviews in shop-y districts, which are also likely to have decent menus that include vegetarian options.

Rockridge (from yesterday's post: Oliveto, Filippos):

Uzon: only get take-out, good sushi, cute space, agree with Anonymous

Rikyu: more good sushi, expensive but tastier. Boringest location in all Rockridge?

Garibaldi's: Where your parents might eat if they were rich here.

Pasta Pomodoro: Like its siblings, big pasta plates, outdoor seating, does job.

Crepevine: Hard to get behind crepes, big lunch menu, good lemonade

Ben 'n Nicks: Every Saturday, kid-filled bar, love the nachos and beer.

Cactus: Allegedly Chez Panisse spin-off, delicious Mexican, no table service. Great.

Khana Peena: Wierd dome, great tikka masala, cost too expensive for Indian.

Currylicious: Bad name, hard to find, really fresh, tasty, they deliver.

Okay, that covers all the places that I have eaten at between Rockridge BART and the intersection of College and Broadway. Many many shops in that stretch too, if shopping is your bag.

As an aside, I fully endorse Anonymous (actually, its just Pat) on Barlata and Dopo. Dopo and Cesar are located on Piedmont Ave, another shop-filled neighborhood. Barlata is in Temescal, near Pizzaiolo.

Barlata: good tapas, house wine in a small carafe, totally awesome.

Dopo: nice owner, great Italian food. Again with the small portions?

Dona Tomas, Temescal: High-end Mexican by Flora owners, where Pizzaiolo rejects eat.

Ten Word Reviews

2009-12-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

I got an email from an old friend today asking that I blog more. November sort of wore me out on the blogging front, but I thought I would give it a try. The other thing she asked for was some restaurant recommendations for Oakland. So I thought I would do some 10 word restaurant reviews:

Oliveto, Rockridge: Lighter fare downstairs, and less likely that a pig died.

Camino, Grand Ave: Long tables, slow service, no off-season limes. Good food.

Flora, Telegraph/17th: Art deco bar, yummy lunch, political Oakland "celebrities", get reservations.

Filippo's, Rockridge: Take kids every Friday, cheap meal, would like bigger portions.

Luka's, Grand/B'way: Great beer, fries, pool table. Remember the Hofbrau? Luka's better.

Franklin Square, Franklin/B'way: Only had lunch, downtown Oakland has a 'scene'. Pretty good.

Pizzaiolo, Temescal: Delicious fried chicken, egg on your pizza. Can't go wrong.

What Is My Problem?

2009-12-02T13:59:00.001-08:00

I find it almost impossible to sit still in long meetings. Is this normal? I feel like a child.

More Family

2009-11-29T21:24:00.000-08:00

Once again, my cousins are blasting past me with their bad-ass talent. While Rachael may be only rapping her winter dance invites, my cousin Zoe is tearing it up at the Yerba Buena Arts Center's Left Coast Leaning Festival on Thursday night. (I don't actually know if Zoe "tears it up"; based on what I've seen of her work, I don't think that's totally accurate. If you want to see what I mean, google her on YouTube, or "YouTube her" at zoe | juniper). Meantime, her sister Kate has artwork showing in PARIS! Paris, people, is in FRANCE! I have nothing in France! Nothing!

I need to go quell my inadequacies.

Brussel Sprout success

2009-11-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Ella for this brussel sprout recipe. I tossed some pancetta in for good measure, but even without it, this recipe rocks. Also, you don't have to shred the sprouts. I ran out of time and just quartered them. Also, I didn't use a half pound of shallots, either. I used one and a half shallots.

In other words, I made a different dish based on this dish, which was excellent. I credit the original recipe and Ella for that success.

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I have so many things to be thankful for that I won't enumerate them all, but thanks for coming to read my blog!

Nothing to report

2009-11-25T21:28:00.001-08:00

But I have posted over at Fungus Everything. It's mushroom season, people.

Housekeeping

2009-11-24T21:55:00.000-08:00

This blogging every day thing having been wildly unsuccessful, I will still try to prop it up with some not interesting posts, before giving up almost entirely.

What's in my head? That song that goes, "oooo, your body girl, makes the fellows go, oooo" rinse, repeat. It's driving me insane. I don't even know where it's from.

I need to find a good brussel sprout recipe for Thanksgiving.

T & A Lady has some great questions about the mammogram debate that I'd like to validate. First of all, kudos, all the right questions. I don't have all the answers but the problem with mammograms is something like this: 4 out of 1000 women under the age of 50 who are NOT screened will get breast cancer. 3 out of 1000 women under the age of 50 who ARE tested will be found to have breast cancer. That is statistically insignificant, and may cause to unnecessary further testing and procedures, which have non-negligible costs to the healthcare system. The cervical cancer screening debate (whether to get a PAP smear before age 21) is actually more troublesome, because in addition to the statistical insignificance of early detection, women who undergo an unnecessary procedure to remove benign tumors which may be found in screening (and which would otherwise go away on their own) may result in fertility problems. So now the unnecessary screening has created a health risk. I got all this from a New York Times article I read last week but which I am too lazy at this moment to hunt down.

But the whole debate points up something I find even more irritating and troubling and which I run into more frequently now that I work more closely with health care, and that is a lack of interest in, or understanding of, evidence-based medicine. Doctors have lobbied so hard to be taken seriously over the past 1.5 centuries, that we mistake them for scientists. And while many of them are, the practice of medicine is remarkably driven by intuition, litigation-avoidance and guesswork. Maybe most doctors in the fee-for-service model don't have time or access to peer reviewed data (not paid for by Big Pharma) and statistics that could help shape care. The particulars of this are interesting (to me) but the bigger point I wanted to make is the failure to view health care through this lens is one of many problems with the healthcare reform debate. Just irritating scaremongering.

We are here for Thanksgiving, hopefully doing lots of hiking, eating, running, movie viewing and trying to not get on eachother's nerves. Have a great holiday weekend.

Rogues' Gallery

2009-11-22T21:53:00.000-08:00

Do You Ever Do This?

2009-11-22T21:46:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I am really bored, I employ one of two mind games to distract me. Both involve looking at people and imagining things about them, and both result in me getting completely creeped out. In one mind exercise, I look at people and imagine that they are on drugs. In the other mind exercise, I look at people and imagine that they are the opposite gender than the one they obviously present. Specifically, I look at men and imagine that they are women, and look at women, imagining them to be men. This largely results in me thinking, "That is a really pretty man" or "That woman is super masculine". In the other exercise, I just get creeped out/impressed by how many zombie-junkies there are that manage to get through the grocery store without freaking out.

The problem with this active imagination stuff is that it can be hard to stop doing once you start. Also, when you blog about it, your friends think you are really wierd.

Miscellany

2009-11-15T13:52:00.000-08:00

I don't recommend this to my mother or mother-in-law. Wire fans, have at it.

This, on the other hand, should be right up the grandmothers' alley:

This was the hairstyle he had to have.

The Last Generation

2009-11-13T22:14:00.000-08:00

I'm not given to wistful, generational hairsplitting, but after that Veterans' Day post, I've been trying to think of other things particular to "my generation" (in my mind, that means people born in 1974). Aside from not serving in armed conflict, what else is particular to us?

We are the last generation to follow the Grateful Dead. And there are probably precious few younger than us that religiously followed a jam band.* I never followed the GD or a jam band, and in fact openly ridiculed others who did, but still, at least it stopped with us.

We are the last generation to be born without a computer keyboard at our fingertips and the first generation to know what to do with one if we see it.

Okay, that's as far as I can get. Can you think of any others?

* For more on my views about jam bands, read this post.

The Things You Do For Love

2009-11-12T21:32:00.000-08:00

Some time before college, probably around Christmas 1991, but possibly a year or two later, I got a pair of red plaid flannel pajama pants from my stepfather. These pants were very cozy, but so ugly that they were probably a contributing factor in why Mr. Scobie did not ever bust a move despite being my roommate for three years of our early adulthood. This summer, I finally threw them away, after many false starts (I actually rescued them from the trash and the fabric-for-quilts pile more than once). I got rid of them because they ripped, although that wasn't the deciding factor. I think I finally realized that I wanted Mr. Scobie to stick around longer than the pants, and was tired of hearing him ask that they be thrown away.

Well, Regret, thy name is the red plaid flannel pajama bottoms, because it is freakin' cold up in here.

My 801st Blog Post

2009-11-11T21:30:00.001-08:00

Last night, I swear I was gonna blog but I fell asleep at 9:30. I should have done it when I got up at 4:40 am. I can't believe I am still awake right now.

A few months ago, I reported that I was starting a "boot camp" exercise class and that I would update you about that. I haven't - not because I haven't gone, but because I've taken it seriously enough that I don't have anything wry or facetious to say about it. In fact, I had boot camp tonight and it kicked my ass.

Probably not as much as real boot camp would kick my ass though. Reflecting on Veterans' Day today, I struggled to name even a handful of my friends and peers who have served in the military. Mine must be the first generation in history to claim that. We might be the last generation to claim it, too, given the number of people younger than I am who have enlisted and served during two wars in the past 8 years.

Part of me wants to go on a ramble here about Ehrenreich's Blood Rites (a really good book). But in honor of Veterans' Day, I'll just leave it at this. I am grateful to the men and women who serve in the military so that the rest of us don't have to, and for their sacrifices, which I doubt I can match off the battle field in any way.

Forget What I Said About Politics Fatigue

2009-11-09T21:39:00.000-08:00

So there's one political race that has me interested these days, and not just for personal reasons. My father's race for Illinois state assembly became unexpectedly exciting today (well, at least to the incumbent). Turns out the incumbent might not have minded her Ps & Qs when she filed her election petition a few weeks ago. One of the funnier things about that link is that "blagojavich" is right there in the url. Even at its most technical and off-hand, the Sun-Times, and most other people, link Deb Mell to her more famous brother-in-law. That was Joe's first suspicion that she might be vulnerable. Being too careless to register to vote may turn out to be the bigger reason she goes home at the end of her term, though.

Trying to Explain a Couple of Things

2009-11-07T21:32:00.000-08:00

My previous post inspired as much commenting as I typically get around here, and it seemed to be focussed on "why Twitter?" I thought I'd take a whack at explaining it. As Beth noted, blogging is like long-form Facebook - a regular status update for your far-flung friends and family. In other words, Nana, Facebook is short-form blogging, where you can follow the musings of your far-flung friends and family. I agree that if you don't really care what your sophomore year chem lab partner thinks about the weather/healthcare reform/her asthma, Facebook might not really be your bag. My answer to that is, unfriend her; I find the format to be easier to navigate than jumping around to people's blogs.

Twitter is like that, on speed. With a 140-character limit on posts, you really get bare minimum updates. Which is why Twitter isn't really for updates. At least not of the sort it was originally intended for. "Having coffee with no sugar this morning." "My hip implant is itchy!" and "ayn Rand R cool!" don't tell you much. Twitter is interesting as an exchange of ideas and the rapid fire news update. I learned about Michael Jackson's death, the Fort Hood shooting and the passage of healthcare reform faster on Twitter than from any other news outlet. In that regard, it's only useful if you follow the right number of people. Too many and you really can't follow what people are thinking. Too few and you don't get the "cloud" effect of everyone expressing themselves simultaneously. So what is the "right" number?

I have 325+ friends on Facebook, and only 35 followers on Twitter. I follow 99 people on Twitter. I estimate that only about 40 people regularly read my blog. That might be generous. In any case, I had to blog tonight and thought I would speak in defense of social networking for some reason. Mr. Scobie thinks that all these things are akin to being in the Matrix by the way (he encouraged me to "take the blue pill" today) but I think they just are what they are.

Blogging: Harder Than I Remembered

2009-11-06T13:39:00.000-08:00

Ugh! Here it is November 6 and I've already failed to blog 2 days out of 6. And unless I blather on about my kids or how annoying I think phone conferences are, I don't have much to say. Other things you don't need to hear me say include:

The shooting at Fort Hood is terribly tragic.
Tuesday's election probably doesn't mean anything about Obama.
It sure is getting chilly now that it's raining.
Typing on the iPod is inferior to the Blackberry QWERTY keys, but its browser and apps are more functional.
One shouldn't wait until 2:30 in the afternoon to eat lunch.
The "point" of Twitter and Facebook continues to be lost on a lot of people, including my contemporaries, who are not the old farts they'd have us believe that they are.

Wow, the list of things I shouldn't blog about is almost endless. What should I blog about?

Carcetti's In Trouble

2009-11-04T22:24:00.000-08:00

This Politic Wire headline O'Malley Could Face Trouble in Reelection made me chuckle. For you non-"Wire fans", the character Tommy Carcetti is widely believed to be modeled after Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland. That may be putting it too subtly. Other than getting a chuckle from that, I didn't have much response to this year's election. I just felt a deep, deep sense of exhaustion about this year's races, mainly because none of them concerned me directly. I didn't ignore them entirely, but my interest this year was a mere fraction of what it was last year. We have off-years for a reason.

The one race I am watching closely is the Illinois Assembly race for the 40th District. I've got my money on the dark horse. That's right, Joe Laiacona for Illinois' 40th Assembly District. Check him out, home slices.

The Birthday Boy

2009-11-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

Liam turns 6 today. A lot of times when kids have birthdays, their parents say, "It seems like only yesterday (sigh) . . ." I don't fee like that. I feel like I've had this kid for a long time, and can't believe he's only been around for six years. I don't know why that is. It certainly isn't because he acts older than six. Maybe it's hormonal. Like at this point, having forgotten what he was like as a baby, I would be biologically conned into having another one. Well, that ain't gonna happen. Anyway, photo of the birthday boy to follow.

What I Blog About When I Blog About Blogging

2009-11-02T11:15:00.000-08:00

Apparently, November is National Blog Posting Month. In order to counter my extreme inertia w/r/t the Internets, I thought I would informally participate. Not sure why. But it means I will try posting at least once a day through the month of November.

The title of this post doesn't mean anything, by the way. It's a riff on What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami, which I just finished reading. That title is itself a riff on What We Talk about When We Talk About Love, by Raymond Chandler, which I haven't read, and probably won't, since they are short stories and I don't read short stories. But anyway, the Murakami book was pretty good. I don't really like him as a novelist but he's very approachable and likable as a memoirist, and I am trying to turn myself into a runner so I liked the sustenance it provided in that regard.

And so why am I doing that?, you are probably wondering. Or actually, you are probably thinking, Why are YOU doing that? And I don't think I have any particularly novel reasons. I wanted an efficient exercise option, and I got myself strong enough to do it, so in August, I just started. And I like it, and it feels good, and I want to keep doing it. And in order to take it from just an exercise to something that I keep doing, I feel the need to give myself the new identity of runner. Because if you call yourself that, you have to do it. If you call yourself a runner and don't run, then you are really just an a-hole, and lying.

It also feels good to get to age 35 and find that you have new things inside of you that you can be. I want to keep finding new things inside of me. It makes me feel young, which strangely I have been feeling a lot of lately. I thought that I went through "so much" as a kid, and thought I was "so mature", but now that I have rounded the bend of this decade and see 40 on the distant horizon, I feel like I've had a pretty great life and not experienced much at all. At least not many bad things. And in order to keep having new experiences, you have to keep yourself open to being a new person, or at least having new parts of yourself. All of this dawned on me this weekend because I finished Murakami's book, and its sort of about that, and also because a friend tricked me into running 4.5 miles on Saturday, and it wasn't that hard, and it felt great, and it almost felt like I had run through a wall (3 miles) that I didn't know I had put up for myself. Which means there are other walls that I can run through, if I just let myself.

Nelson Marans, Back in the Game

2009-10-25T22:00:00.000-07:00

Once a master, always a master. Nelson Marans has a letter in the New York Times Fucking Magazine today. No, I'm not kidding. And possibly for the first time, I agree with him. I tip my hat to you, Mr. Marans. (But I'm too lazy to dig up a link, so if you aren't a subscriber, tough.)

A Problem I Have

2009-10-25T21:46:00.000-07:00

The other day I blogged about how I thought the Internet was dwindling in popularity and strongly suggested that I would start talking on the phone again. Truthfully, that isn't going to happen. I have found that I don't particularly like talking on the phone. This made me think that I would revert to older forms of communication: letters, telegraph, etc. Maybe get a party line just to phone Doc or the constable if the kids get ague or a donkey goes missing.

There's something I dislike even more than talking on the phone though, and that's listening to voice mail messages. I have a real aversion to them. At home, I go weeks without checking the voicemail box (voice mailbox?) and get really wound up about checking the messages on my two work phones. I have to psyche myself into it. On my cellphone, I delete them without listening to them as often as possible (when I called the person back while they were leaving the message, for example). It makes me very anxious. I had this problem when I was a lawyer too, but I would just whip myself into dealing with them 99% of the time, because the number one thing that clients hate is not getting called back. Now that malpractice isn't hanging over my head like the sword of Damocles, I can barely deal with them.

Someone I know suggested that I get Google Voice. You get one phone number and it rings to all of your phones, or none of them. The salient feature, for this discussion, is the voicemail transcription, which allows you to never listen to voicemails, and instead get them as emails. Along with its other features, it goes in the absolute other direction from Morse Code that I was dreaming about. But does anyone have any better ideas?

Cutest Scary Ghost Clown Ever?

2009-10-25T12:55:00.001-07:00

The Internet Is Over

2009-10-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

My blogging laziness is not particular to me. Admit it, you check fewer websites since the election, and your friends' who once consistently blogged are really sluggish, if they still blog at all. Most of your email is junk mail, and you aren't even as swamped at work as you once were. Everyone who accidentally Replied All with, "YES! L is a totally f----ing nightmare!" has gotten their emailing under control and have returned to face-to-face gossip. Okay, so maybe Facebook and Twitter are siphoning off a lot of the traffic but they have lost much of their novelty and are already facing stagnating membership numbers.

I think we are all headed back to the phones -- the land lines even! Or better yet, our desire to communicate, which was spurned by Bell's invention, is finally finding satiety, and we can all go back to something simpler and less communicative. Like gathering around the fire with our banjos and fiddles. Or turning in early. Or reading almanacs. I can't wait! You read it here first!