webcowgirl

God, today's column by Maureen McDowd had the most gorgeous metaphor in it (taken from Leon Wieseltier of the New Republic), which I will now quote: "[Obama] is ... not the seed but the flower of the civil rights movement."

Yes. That is it, perfectly. Please be our next president.

In other, digestively upsetting, news, the Justice Department has upended the right of members of the civil service to be chosen without regard to their political affiliation (this being the true face of "political correctness," not what the conservatives complain about when they say their freedom of speech is being crimped, but rather true Orwellian control at the root).

Meanwhile, this article about the "sworn virgins of Albania" really caught my eye - declaring that you are a man when the man of the family has died, and then being treated like one for the rest of your life ... in such a conservative society? Fascinating!

So Paul Krugman, my favorite columnist in the world, has an article about how America ought to be thinking about living in the age of expensive gas. It's not about no cars; it's about tremendously more fuel efficient cars, of the sort we were starting to transition to before the bizarre rise of the SUV "during the cheap-gas 1990s." He said we also need to be building and using public transportation systems, to a much greater extent than at present; and, ultimately, we may need to look at changing where we live. He's right, though, this is the change that's going to be really difficult to make, because it only takes 3-5 years to get over the pain of buying a gas-guzzler, but a house, and entire communities of houses, will take decades to change into more close communities. I've got a long time to see how things evolve; life is going to be interesting. (And my long-distance travels will become a thing of the past; better get those tickets bought for Australia for Christmas 2009!)

There's another article about food waste in the US. I'm curious about what the relative rates of waste were between the US and the UK. I find it difficult to buy items at the grocery store in the quantities I need here; so many things are pre-packaged in twos and fours when I am looking for ones and threes that I feel it's difficult to avoid waste here for meat and vegetables. (US stores are pretty enthusiastic about having all vegetables sold in you-set-it-up bulk other than, say, delicate berries.) I also think people aren't nearly as good about using their leftovers here as they are in the states, but maybe I only have a limited sample to deal with. Also, it seems to me that the US uses more preservatives in food than the UK does, and food really does go off very quickly here - most bread in just three days unless it's refrigerated. I personally would prefer longer shelf life and less stuff going in the garbage.

The polygamist issues continue. I've been following these people since the mid-eighties, when I found out they had been living in the Arizona strip for decades.

China is getting a huge influx of foreign doctors, which I consider great news given the numbers of injured and the, um, occasionally primitive nature of Chinese hospitals (especially in rural areas) - a situation not helped at all by the fact that the, er, hospitals have just been through an earthquake. And it's clearly time for me to donate some money: the NYT has a list of places to donate on their site. Here's where my Sweet Pound Sterling can really make a difference. I think Americares will be my charity of choice - and I know they'll help with Burma, too, if they can find a way.

Tonight: "The Birthday Party" at the Lyric Hammersmith.

It is 5 PM and I am still at work. I am making double time, but, still. I am tired. It has been a long day and I am ready for it to be over.

This is funny if you're at work with me now (as opposed to the LOLYamory pictures, which are funny on their own):
So there's this thing you can do that brings down the website, and is basically normal behavior? HA HA HAH! (It's funny because it's true.)

Also this:
So there's a table that shows you 100 things? And if you have over 100 and try to add a new one you get an error? But if you delete one so there's more room, it pulls item 0 out of the database so you still really have 100 still because the DB doesn't limit how many were saved to it in the first place? (Really, this is total comedy.)

And:
Shouted out: PCP looks good.
Response: That's TCPIP, you idiot! PCP is drugs!

Uh, in other news, people are remembering again that we've got an idiot in the White House, the question being how did they ever forget, but 911 didn't change MY opinion of him. From the NYT: "But this economic crisis has been going on for months, and all the president could come up with sounded as if it had been composed for a Rotary Club and then delivered by a guy who had never read it before. “One thing is certain that Congress will do is waste some of your money,” he said. “So I’ve challenged members of Congress to cut the number of cost of earmarks in half.”

"Besides being incoherent, this is a perfect sign of an utterly phony speech. Earmarks are one of those easy-to-attack Congressional weaknesses, and in a perfect world, they would not exist. But they cost approximately two cents in the grand budgetary scheme of things. Saying you’re going to fix the economy or balance the budget by cutting out earmarks is like saying you’re going to end global warming by banning bathroom nightlights."

Anyway, she goes on to just rip him a new one. I'm not sure who this Gail Collins is, but I think I might like her.

The US campaign has definitely reached new levels of hysteria. (It's the dancing girls in his mouth that really cracked me up.)

I had a great conversation about politics in the US (and the UK) with spikeylady and ciphergoth tonight, while full of Thai food and white wine. Two more days to the Ohio election, and Barack Obama has money from us now helping him do whatever is necessary to secure the Democratic nomination. Per this article in the New York Times, Obama's got "a lean and mean political machine that gets the job done," and I expect the money will be spent in phone banks or doorbelling - putting people on the ground to make it happen, like the campaign I participated in in '96.

I decided about ten years ago that money was the thing I could give that mattered most, far more than my paltry vote or even hours of volunteer work, to either an arts or a political organization. It was what they wanted from me the most, too. I'll send out more when the generals roll around, you know it.

Wow. Because the Washington state Dems have chosen to go with a caucus for selecting the presidential candidate instead of doing it via ballot (with the Washington state primary election - a hollow fraud now, ignored by both parties), I am now

OFFICIALLY DISENFRANCHISED and unable to participate in the primary presidential elections in the United States. If you're not in the military, or going to church on Saturday, or disabled, they won't give you a waiver.

I would have to fly to the United States to physically participate.

I am furious. I will never give the Washington State Democrats another penny of my money.

PS: My cold has moved into my chest, and I wasn't having a fever again this afternoon - the office was for some reason at 26 degrees (85 or so for the 'merkins).

It's gorgeous outside today. Fall is taking it's time this year. I'm glad it's not too cold outside, but more than happy to leave summer behind (except for the shortening days). I will be unable to resist the urge to go out to lunch.

It's election time back home and I've actually managed to get my ballot in. I'm almost a pure Stranger ticket voter, though I couldn't handle voting for Jean Godden even if she was the only one on City Council who told Mayor Nickels to stick it. Supposedly he's creating a Dubya style "ignore the legislative branch" government in Seattle - couldn't say I didn't see it coming. I'm also voting against the transportation taxes - too much freaking money for roads and the Sound Transit expansion to Tacoma is just stupid. Why can't they wrest control of the rails away from the money sucking freight companies and actually develop a decent train system? I despair.

I've also put in a special request to a friend who's moving here for a solid influx of Mexican groceries. Just looking at the website where they were selling this stuff was making me drool last night. I've completely run out of tomatillo sauce and red enchilada sauce. I sure hope he comes through! I've also got several cookbooks on order - with luck shadowdaddy will come back from the states with the raw power needed to keep my food going for years!

So, we spent twenty years fighting a "war against drugs," destabilizing governments in Central and South America, putting black men in prison in droves.

Then some guys flew some airplanes into some skyscrapers, and people went, "Ooh, er, maybe we should have caught that." And maybe if we'd spent the money we'd spent on the war on drugs training people to, I don't knows, speak languages that weren't Russian and Chinese we might have.

Now we're fighting a war on terror. Piles of money are going toward fingerprinting everyone who wants to come the the US, filling the coffers of Halliburton and Blackwater, and finding way to decrease civil liberties and freedom of movement and limit immigration, in the name of "protecting the *cough* homeland." We're doing things Americans once whispered happened in the Soviet Union and Chile (tortures, disappearences) and people are telling each other they have nothing to be afraid of if they're not guilty of doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, on the home front, we've had rolling power blackouts, the complete destruction of a major US city by well-anticipated weather problems, the collapse of a heavily used bridge in another major city for no reason at all and now the southern coast of California burning up in uncontrollable wildfires.

You just wonder, should we maybe be spending our money on improving our infrastructure, dealing with natural disasters, and improving the state of The States rather than waging a "war" in a foreign country and a, er, war against the civil liberties of people at home and across the world?

You just gotta wonder, I say.

Flying colors, basically, though I come in a bit late. "But since you're here late every day it doesn't really matter. Just get in your seven hours." Wow! To think there might be a day where I only worked seven hours!

This article in the NY Times almost made me cry, and not just because I like cats. No, it was the last paragraph that hurt. It all leads back to this article, which asks, "Why don't Americans admit that we're lying to ourselves?" I'm not, I just don't know what action to take to fix the problem. America’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques have a grotesque provenance: “Verschärfte Vernehmung, enhanced or intensified interrogation, was the exact term innovated by the Gestapo to describe what became known as the ‘third degree.’ It left no marks. It included hypothermia, stress positions and long-time sleep deprivation.” America. Fuck yeah.

In the "less depressing" vein, for my tea loving friends, may I recommend this article on visiting tea plantations in Darjeeling, featuring my very favorite, the Makaibari estate. It's time to travel. And sound advice for good living: Get a big dog and have that dog sleep in your bed with you. Dogs know nothing of mortality, and they share that peace with you.

Harriet Miers withdraws? Awesome. What great news to wake up to. We've seen what happens when you staff government agencies with cronies, and it was damned well about time the line got drawn somewhere.