June 2008 Archives

One of those things I didn't learn while I was still a practicing Mormon is that the opposite of "on the rocks" is "neat," as in, "I'll have a shot of herradura, neat."

Pretty soon, the drink (my favorite term, by far, for the sea) in general might just well be neat. As in, all the ice at the north pole just might melt this summer.

It's one kind of neat, but not another. In fact, this kind of neat in this context SUCKS, literally, in that it sucks heat into a dark liquid ocean and warms the planet up even more.

Yeah. That totally sucks.

I know I'm being the laziest blogger in the world lately, but hey, I'm busy. And at least I'm interrupting my laziness from time to time to bring you headlines and videos some of you might not have seen already. Like this. Which is awesome, and made me cry, with the discussion of looking at pictures of ourselves taken we were 13 years old:

Here's a great NY Times op-ed by Joe Blair, one of my friends my grad school, about the flooding in Iowa.

The guy who created that horrible racist button I mentioned earlier has apologized and withdrawn it, and the Texas Republican Party is DONATING TO CHARITY (probably the only time in the history of the organization it has ever done such a thing) the money it collected by leasing a booth him at the party's convention.

But all his nasty pins insulting Hillary and her gender? Those you can still buy.

In case you didn't see it:

Uh....

Well....

Turns out a couple in Utah created an Obama sock monkey doll, but these Utahns claim the doll isn't racist. No! Aimed at Obama supporters, it's "a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little," and something that helps us "really try and transcend still existing racial biases." They're shocked and hurt that so many people are REALLY offended by this horrifically offensive doll, and have concluded sadly that "there is an element of naviete [sic] on our part, in that we don't think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore."

The one bit of good news in this particular story is that according to the company's website, they will not proceed with the manufacture of this toy.

I don't want to ignore the fact that this toy is REALLY gross. But I do want to point out that the reaction to the toy supports Katie Couric's contention that truly egregious racism against Obama isn't tolerated by the mainstream, while truly egregious sexism against Hillary is shrugged off as no big deal. (You paying attention, Mr. Nighttime?) As she says, if Obama regularly confronted attacks equivalent to those Hillary endured, "the outrage wouldn't be a footnote; it would be front-page news." Indeed the sock monkey story was the lead story for the ABC news station I link to, and at the time I'm writing, the video of the news clip is the website's most popular clip.

There is one, uh, mainstream-ish venue, however, where racism is tolerated: the Texas Republican party. At the state convention, you could buy a button reading, "If Obama is President... will we still call it the White House?"

The answer to the question, is, of course, obviously YES. I mean, despite all the blockheads who've worked in the Pentagon, it's still referred to by a name denoting its five sides.

I have been obsessed with coverage of the flooding in Iowa, and every morning I look at photos of the damage and read news stories about the entire area and about my alma mater. Most of the images are very upsetting, and most of the news is devastating. I wanted to share this photo because it is not only upsetting, but witty and ironic, and I wanted to share this bit of information because it demonstrates a certain resilience and understated humor that reassures me that Iowa City will somehow manage to recover from this.

The easiest targets for violence are women and female children.

I don't know what to say about Nicholas Kristof's editorial on rape as a weapon. Of course I've known about things like this for ages; of course my understanding that this sort of thing happens is one reason I'm a feminist. I guess I'll quote a passage:

it has become clear that mass rape is not just a byproduct of war but also sometimes a deliberate weapon.

“Rape in war has been going on since time immemorial,” said Stephen Lewis, a former Canadian ambassador who was the U.N.’s envoy for AIDS in Africa. “But it has taken a new twist as commanders have used it as a strategy of war.”

There are two reasons for this. First, mass rape is very effective militarily. From the viewpoint of a militia, getting into a firefight is risky, so it’s preferable to terrorize civilians sympathetic to a rival group and drive them away, depriving the rivals of support.

Second, mass rape attracts less international scrutiny than piles of bodies do, because the issue is indelicate and the victims are usually too ashamed to speak up.

I guess I'll say this:

It took me a long time to realize that I liked Iowa City. I was often very unhappy there, but eventually I figured out that had more to do with the fact that I was in a PhD program than with Iowa City itself, which, I eventually saw, was pretty cool and remarkably livable. (It also got cooler the longer I was there. It's quite hip these days, or was, before it started filling up like a kitchen sink.)

Not so much now. You probably heard about the terrible tornado that devastated Parkersburg, Iowa a few weeks ago. Or the tornado that killed four boy scouts two days ago (and would have killed more except that the other boy scouts knew how to do things like apply tourniquets or give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the 48 who were injured). Now there's terrible flooding in eastern Iowa; downtown Cedar Rapids, all of the Coralville strip (Coralville being a suburb of Iowa City, where I lived for a few years when I first started grad school because that was the only place I could find an apartment--Iowa City historically has a very tight housing market) and much of the University of Iowa campus--including, I would guess, my old office, which was in the basement of the English-Philosophy Building--are under water.

Iowa City was recovering from a terrible flood when I moved there in 1993. This flood is already much, much worse, and the river hasn't even crested. I realize it's not Katrina, the typhoon in Burma or the earthquakes in China, but it's still pretty awful, and it's hurting a place I care about.

Katie knows what she's talking about:

I liked this little editorial from Salon:

Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 years ago, I went to Mexico with a bunch of other teenagers. It was my first big trip and it was OK, though I have to admit that Mexico is not one of the regions of the world that speaks to me most profoundly--I'm not into all that Aztec stuff. (And I do realize that is not the sum of Mexican culture, but it's what we focused on that trip--actually part of what we were doing was looking at sites that might have had historical significance in the Book of Mormon.... Whatever.)

We spent several days in Mexico City, which is where I had what I guess I could call my first smoothie. Down the road from our hotel was a little stand that sold fruit whipped in a blender with milk. I thought it was really novel: a milkshake without ice cream! Fancy that! My favorite flavor was strawberry. It wasn't all that thick and it wasn't all that cold, but it tasted good. And I liked ordering it: fresas con leche, por favor! It was fun to say.

Recently I have been saying not "fresas con leche" but "queso con fresas," because of this:

It looks sorta like a piece of cheesecake, but it's not: It's a hunk of cheese, more specifically, Yancey's Fancy Strawberry Chardonnay. That's right: it's cheese, flavored with wine, and studded with strawberries. It's really good.

Just for the hell of it, I tried making a grilled cheese sandwich with this. I don't recommend it. It wasn't bad; the flavor just wasn't as good as when the cheese was still chilled or at room temperature.

If you can find this, buy it, and eat it with fruit or a little chocolate. You'll be glad you did.

"Conventional wisdom holds that you can tell a lot about a man by the way he treats his mother, so why should Mother Earth be any exception?"

Judy Berman, a Broadsheet blogger, in Your fuel efficiency is so hot, commenting on research conducted by General Motors concluding that "88 percent of women would rather meet a guy with a fuel-efficient vehicle than a dude with a sports car."

One of the weirdest tourist attractions I've ever seen in my life is Lenin's body, and one of the scariest military rituals I've ever witnessed is the changing of the guard at his tomb. It was totally creepy to see these grim young men carrying rifles goose-stepping towards me--it was probably the first thing that gave me any inkling of what it would be like to live under military occupation.

Anyway, after the guard changed, we all got to file through the tomb and see the body. I got in trouble because my coat wasn't closed--the zipper was broken and I couldn't close it--and that upset one of the guards (actually more of a docent kind of dude; as I remember, the ones with the guns were outside the entrance); apparently you have to keep your coat closed so you are less likely to reach inside it and pull out a weapon. I showed the guard/docent that my zipper wouldn't work--which sucked, because it was February in Moscow, and I would have liked to be able to zip up my coat--and I guess he decided a 20-year-old American tourist wasn't that much of a security risk, because he let me trundle past the body with everyone else.

And I remember that I thought it looked waxy and green, and thought the innumerable statues and paintings and so forth EVERYWHERE YOU WENT were enough to let you know what the guy looked like--I certainly can identify him now. I didn't see why you needed to see his actual dead body, which, at the point I saw it, had been dead for sixty years.

Most days, I manage to love my country enough to be able to live in it, because A) even though it's done some really shitty things throughout its history (and especially of late), it's done some great things as well, and I keep hoping that the balance will be restored again; and B) it's my country, and loyalty works that way.

But this morning I read about these prison ships the government is doing its best to keep secret, and I don't even know how to feel or what to say about this latest atrocious barbarity, except OH MY GOD.