The Reach of Nelson Marans

Blogging on my Q from the dentist office's waiting room a few weeks ago, People did a story on couples who have sex every day to improve their marriage. Our old pal Nelson weighs in: "When is there time for meaningful conversation and other requirements of a proper relationship?"
Oh, Nelson.
The couple responds: "It's not like we were locked in a bedroom 24 hours a day!"

Cousin News

I want you to know that my family members are not just famous for their art and dance, they are also entrepreneurs and politicians.

My cousin Malachy has started a T-shirt company. I will add a link when I can find it again.

My mom's cousin Tom is running for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont.

Robert Novak Admits He's a Tool.

Finally, Tool.

More Awesome Then Even The Obama Video

Woman runs sword into foot during Wiccan ritual.

Souuuuth Side!

Thanks to JZ for passing along the link to this video. Watch about a minute into this Obama video to here him represent!!

Totally totally awesome.

A Backward-Looking Futurist

I've been kicking around some new career ideas lately, and a new one dawned on me. I think I should be a futurist. How does one go about becoming a Futurist? Actually, I don't care. Because I can plausibly guarantee you that my Futurist career is not going to extend beyond this blog post. But no matter.

Here's what I know about Futurism: (1) They have names like Alvin and Newt; (2) they think human remains should be shot into space rather than being buried here (my dad believes this, I think); (3) they think the Dow will hit 36,000 by the year 2007.

With that trusty data under my belt, I'd like to pitch my Futurism paradigm on you. But first we need to travel back in time, to 1989. I was a high sophomore, and my religion teacher was Sister Peggy. Sister Peggy was wise in many ways. Her prior gig had been as a chaplain at Rutgers and she admitted to keeping condoms in her sweater pockets to give to undergrads. This shocked the shit out of me in high school, but that's not the point of this story. Sister Peggy once said something along the lines of "In order for the Third World to become Second World, to First World must also become Second World." Her view of Christ ran along the same lines - that he didn't call on us to all become poverty-stricken beggars swearing off the pleasures of capitalism (or whatever gives us our pleasure), just that we all had to strive for some kind of equitable middle class for everyone. Her theories on this have knocked around in my head all these years, and I agree with them.

My Futurist theory is that Sister Peggy could be right, and that we could all gravitate towards a more equitable middle ground. And I think that the global climate crisis will facilitate it. I have read two articles in the past week about European towns who have shifted the use of their energy. Add it to Al Gore's challenge. Let me be totally pie-in-the-sky optimistic here and argue that, if we achieve this weaning, it could have dramatically positive effects on the economies of underdeveloped countries (in addition to the global benefits) because they can skip the nasty coal-burning industrial revolutions and move directly to cleaner, cheaper, more renewable resources. Jobs will be created, standards of living raised. While we in the US are powering down our voracious consumption, others can join the grid.

I recognize that I have some very cynical readers out there. And that its a stretch to convince y'all that going green is god's work, so I will lay off now. Plus, I have run out of Futuristic ideas for the moment.

Nana Shows How Its Done

If you read the comment to the prior post, you are probably worried that I might be in a whole heap of trouble with my mother-in-law. And I may be. But Nana's post points out exactly what's wrong with the Boomers in "Just Don't Call Me Granny". Most important difference: Nana is unashamed of being a grandmother, and she's a good one. She happens to go to hear bands on Saturday nights not because she is trying to capture her youth but because, well, she likes music, dancing and doesn't need to be in bed by 10 p.m. the way I do. Nana is NOT the problem.

Its not engaging in youthful activities that is annoying about Boomers, its when they pretend they have a monopoly on youth that is annoying. Another operative piece of Nana's comment is the fact that she works. Nana also owns property, makes prudent financial plans, and looks out for her offspring in very clearheaded ways. I.e., she's an adult. She doesn't smoke pot with her kids or divulge the details of her sex life. Thank God. But since my teen years, I have known parents who do those things, failing to understand the boundaries between their own youthful experiences and their children's lives. I can 100% guarantee you that our parents did not have friends who got high with their parents. Boundaries, people.

And now that we are older, they are also refusing to cede territory in the workplace and in politics. This was a bigger problem I had with Hillary and Bill than many other things. They could not grasp that they were not the Hot New Thing, and their sense of entitlement was totally galling. Anyway, that's just one example. As I said yesterday, I can't really pull all the strings together. But don't worry Nana, or Mom, you are NOT the problem. Actually, you might be the solution.

Trying to Get My Temper Under Control

There is one screed, one complaint, one rant, that I have in me that is so vitriolic that I dare not blog about it. It concerns the Babies of the Boom. Oh, how they annoy me. Not any one in particular, but the whole damn lot of them. Every few days, some toss-off article praises their adorable habits or condemns their voracious hunger for public welfare and my blood boils up. I try to formulate a pithy post that brings all my disparate responses together, and I can't. Its a strange area of writer's block. So instead, I will just present these items without comment, and maybe over time, you can see what my problem is.

Just Don't Call Me 'Granny'

And credit to the Oakland City Attorney John Russo (Thanks to A Better Oakland):

Baby Boom politicians have done a uniquely bad job of bringing along new talent. And there are a lot of theories around that. Is it because the Baby Boom generation, having grown up self-identified as the youth generation, cannot conceive outside of itself being the youthfulness, and therefore, doesn’t think of itself in a role as sort of wiser, older, mentoring younger people along and prefers to point the finger at younger people?

This quote is seemingly unrelated to the article above, but then again, it isn't. The refusal of some in the Baby Boomer generation to acknowledge their own aging (and subsequent inability to grow up) has an impact in many aspects of our lives, and we are grappling with that fallout on a daily basis on a national level and even on personal levels, when more senior employees refuse to share wisdom and cede responsibility to younger people, for example.

Awright, so I said I wouldn't comment. But I will return to this topic.

Banal Points, volume 254

Frank Sinatra:Mrs. Robinson::William Shatner:Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

No, seriously.

Sometimes I Hate the Bay Area

I was feeling so warm and fuzzy about the SF Firefighter, that when I saw the headline Newcomer sitting in a tree near Berkeley protest, I actually dared hope that the newcomer was a California condor, or at least a turkey vulture. But no, of course not.

And then, I got this comment on my old post about my former dentist:

anonymous said
What mean comments to say about a good dentist, Mr. Mckinzie.
One might think a certian person is angry because of all the lies.
Dr. Mckinzie is the best, his office staff is extremely nice, and attend to your every need.
I could not ask for a better dentist than Dr. Mckinzie patient.

It made me chuckle. Glad to know he's out there, trolling my blog.

Sometimes I Love the Bay Area

My glee at this takes me surprise. A San Francisco firefighter was snapped riding topless with Dykes on Bikes during Pride and it seems she might have been wearing her badge (a no-no) on her corset. This is the sort of thing that I would assume my reaction would be to be very annoyed, and scoff at the silliness of SF. Instead, I think its sort of awesome. I particularly love that the firefighter union president took it all in stride.

We were able to contact fire union boss John Hanley - up on the fire line in Butte County - who told us that while he hadn't seen the photos, "I'm sure it wasn't a Fire Department badge."

Just roll with it, baby. Since this is ostensibly a family blog (ha!), you can click here for a photo.

Truly Random Thoughts

Today's Most Unsettling Headline: Mukasey Pledges Vigilance on Elections. The dude is a scary Skeletor (okay, so its not exactly Separated At Birth) and the word "vigilance", in the wake of Mugabe's recent "get out the vote efforts", is not what you want to hear from one of Bush's henchmen.

In other news, I have nothing else to report in the way of random thoughts. What's on my mind lately is not random at all. In In increasing order of time spent thinking about each topic, I am preoccupied with:
1. what I should blog about;
2. my car;
3. the Presidential election;
4. my budget;
5. why we have no beer in the house other than Miller High Life and should I have a scotch instead?;
6. my job.

I have these things to say about these topics, respectively:
1. It's evident from this post that I have nothing to blog about.
2. My car is fine now.
3. I really don't have a big problem with Barack Obama's faith-based initiative stuff, and I will explain later why this is, and its not just because I am big sucka for everything BO does and says.
4. It continues to require my participation on the "income" side. As long as that happens, there is nothing to worry about.
5. It's left over from the NASCAR trip, and we ran out of drinkable beer, so yes, probably.
6. It breaks a rule of mine to blog about this topic.

Let me elaborate:
1. Yes, I do.

2. There's a pump that pumps coolant to the hybrid battery and it broke, but they replaced it so now the car won't think its overheating unless it actually is.

3. Obama's faith-based initiatives are not rooted, unlike Bush's, in a desire to end government and spread Christianity. I think he has very explicitly described why his plans do not infringe on separation of church and state, and I think he will be good about enforcing that (dare I say, he'll be vigilant?). The Saul Alinsky model of community organizing encourages the organizer to make coalitions with all willing allies, even if it's just issue-based. In Chicago, churches, mosques and synagogues play a prominent role in alliances for political change, social justice and social services. Obama's ideas grow out of that tradition, not out of the missionary tradition of the evangelical church that Bush paid lip service to. An important component of Obama's program is not that its faith-based, but that it wants to support community organizations. This leads to. . .

My second reason for being interested in his approach - and I will be referring to The Wire in a moment - is that the existing frameworks for delivering services and making social change either don't work anymore or never worked. In The Wire, Bunny Colvin helps implement this school-within-a-school at Tilghman Middle School, where they take the worst kids out of the classes and give them intensive instruction. It helps the wild kids and it helps the other kids to have the disruptive children out of the classroom. But when Bunny and the professor plan to go to the mayor to pitch it on a broader scale, they get shot down by the school district woman and left out in the cold by the mayor's staff, who file their report in the circular file cabinet. If small projects work, why not fund them and let them work? We don't need to make them national. They don't need to be made into their own bureaucracy. Just fund them and see how far they can get on their own steam. Contrast Bunny's project with the No Child Left Behind/teach to the test model implemented in the rest of Tilghman and you will see where the real progress happened. To be corny about it, maybe we don't need a social security blanket, we need a social security patchwork quilt.

6. Knight of Nothing recently asked, "Why do bloggers abandon a post?" It's a good question. (He also inspired me to write the above on Obama). In response, I articulated some rules I have about this blog:

The main reason I abandon a piece is that I have written something that violates a rule of mine, and I can't figure out how to say what I want to say without violating the rule. The rules are things like, speaking ill of someone who can be identified to others, talking about work, talking about my husband or kids in too much detail (so that they could be identified to a casual reader). I also abandon when I have forgotten my point or am failing to make one.

As you can see from the present post, I don't always abandon a post when I tread on a rule. Arguably, this post has violated nearly every rule I have, especially that last one.

Baffling Spam

At work, we have a spam filter on so I don’t have to see much spam. It’s very effective, so every few days I log on to make sure it hasn’t caught a personal email from a friend who for some reason might have sent me an email about Nigeria, Viagra, watches and stock tips. There’s usually nothing there. But lately there have been a lot of emails which have the subject “you look really stupid” or “what a stupid face you have here”. I have to admit, its pretty effective. I am dying to open one of these emails to see what it could possibly be about. So far, I have held off but if the taunting continues, I don’t know how long I will be able to hold out.

Update: Now all the spam is saying "alaiacon is a moron". How galling is that!?

Worth Mentioning

Bush has appointed the first female 4-star general, which I think is interesting. Since I went on a tirade last week about how I don't think it makes a big difference when women are in positions of high authority, I am not going to go all ga-ga, but I do think its worth mentioning as sort of cool.

This is totally unrelated: Has anyone else seen the new Cool Whip in a can commercial? It is virtually indistinguishable from a KY ad. They are straight pitching it as a sex aid. I guess its cool that they are exploiting its full market potential, but it sort of turns my stomach too.

In Case You Are Wondering

It would be rough on my family, with the rigors of the campaign and the possibility of moving to DC, but I am also willing to be Obama's VP, if asked.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Venture Near

Sometimes B will call on his way home from work and say, "How are the kids?" and I will say either, "They are great," or "The monkeys are flinging their poo." That makes the kids laugh hysterically and Q will say "poo" over and over again.

But I'm kidding when I say that. My children know better than to use their feces as a projectile. And - we've worked on this - biting isn't allowed either. But its uh-mazing the number of Trustafarian parents who don't teach their children these lessons. So then you have these problems:

BERKELEY — After tree sitters hurled buckets of human excrement at arborists who cut traverse lines and removed wooden platforms Tuesday, the raucous day came to a head when a tree sitter bit an arborist so hard he was sent to the hospital with an arm wound.

The biter goes by the name Millipede. This is unusual. According to experts at Texas A&M:

Millipedes do not bite; but when disturbed they can produce an irritating fluid (using repugnatorial glands opening at the base of the legs). This fluid can irritate eyes, blister the skin, produce an unpleasant odor and cause allergic reactions in venom sensitive people. Some species can squirt their fluids several inches.

That sounds about right. Enjoy lock-up, Millipede.

Summer of Love

I want to commemorate the momentous occasion of legal marriage for all that has arrived in California today by saying that not only does gay marriage not erode my own straight marriage, but it makes it stronger. I far prefer being part of an institution that is equal and non-discriminatory and my marriage is a better one because now more people can share and enjoy its gifts and responsibilities.

And in that vein, I hope y'all caught the Onion-esque article in the Times the other day: Gay Couples Find Marriage Is A Mixed Bag. Talk about articles that write themselves. I hope they follow it up with "Straight Couples Find Marriage Is A Salmagundi."

Some Final Notes on the Campaign, National Edition

Sami asks an intriguing question in a comment below. He asks whether any of these women exist, these women who purportedly will not vote for Obama because he beat Hillary and because of the sexism of the campaign, but will rather vote for McCain. Frank Rich argued in his column yesterday that these women do not exist. Or rather, that the Democrats need not fear that, by November, these women will not have come around. And I think he's right. The women who are fiercely loyal to Clinton are also fiercely loyal to reproductive rights, and feel strongly against the war and for the environment. So at the end of the day, they will vote for Obama or stay home. The stay-at-homes may, in the end, be a small enough part of the liberal base not to affect the election.

However, they are a very vocal minority. Today's example is the "outrage" over Obama hiring Patti Solis Doyle. The WaPo reports Clinton insiders feel "shock" and "a slap in the face" over this move, supposedly intended to signal that he will definitely not be considering Clinton for the veep slot. Last week, the NYT reported that Clinton donors are waiting-and-seeing, for I don't know what. (one commentator pointed out that as soon as the big donors realize that their precious dreamed-of ambassadorships are slipping way if they don't step up, they will get on board).

What do these things mean? It means that there is a group of Hillary supporters who cannot shake their sense of entitlement about Clinton's candidacy, and feel the need to vent it publicly in a way that can only be described, in a sexist way, as a hissy fit. (While the phrase hissy fits is "gendered", I don't think that the act of throwing these public tantrums are the sole terrain of the white women who support Hillary. But I will save my Baby Boomer rant for a separate post).

Let me back up a little here and tell you that last Friday, Mr. Scob and I saw Susan Estrich speak. Estrich is the author of a book The Case for Hillary Clinton (which is discounted at Amazon down to $7.99). Since Estrich herself was pretty indignant that the media had highlighted such petty details as Hillary's voice and style of dress, I won't describe hers, except to say that a) Jackie Mason called, and he wants his schtick back and b) she never met a Marlboro Light she didn't smoke, I think. Anyway. The woman is one of the most accomplished public intellectuals in the country and hinted ever so slightly that she actually has a more nuanced view of gender in America than she let on, BUT I completely disagreed with her on 96% of what she was talking about.

Specifically, she is still aggrieved by the fact that there are only a few Fortune 500 CEOs who are women, and that women are still a minority in the partnerships of major law firms, and there are only 12 female senators, and that worst of all, we still need to wait for a woman POTUS. This is all predicated on a belief that the world would be a more just, kinder, better run and more equitable place if women were in charge. I happen to not agree with that underlying assumption but putting it aside, since neither of us have been able to test our hypothesis, she is basically saying this: If only all of the people in charge had certain physical attributes, the world would be a better place. Sorry to be so dramatic, but how is this different from eugenics, or Nazi anti-semitism or any other racist system? I don't support the status quo, but I also don't see how gender characteristics alone will change society.

Of course, I am not sure that Susan Estrich or Hillary Clinton want to dramatically change society. They want to change the social order - so that women will have the power. But they don't want particularly to upend the hierarchical model. Estrich said something particularly telling (imagine this shouted through gravel): "Well, sure, it's all equal at the bottom!" Actually, its not. Its an intense pecking order "at the bottom", where everyone is trying to reassure themselves that they are not, in fact, at the bottom, by shitting on other people. Racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, are much more pronounced "at the bottom". It's "at the bottom" where you really feel what it means to make 63 female cents on the male-earned dollar.

And so yeah, Sam, I do think there are women who exist who think that somehow its more in their interest to either vote with the political elite or withhold their own power in protest against interests of others. Five months is a long time, of course, and by November these folks will remember what their broader values are, but they won't like it. This was supposed to be their election and now it isn't and they are going to pout.

The Water Shortage Has Not Hit This House

While East Bay MUD is talking water rationing, my kids have been on a bathing tear in all this heat. I am not sure why higher temperatures also necessitate wiping themselves all over with dirt and over-ripe fruit, but it does, and so they bathe.




And then there's the other one, who can't even make into the tub before he needs to get wet.

Good Reading

I present this without comment. Actually, no, I have to say "WOW."

Also in my wheelhouse tonight. Spot on.