Culture
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I Voted
We just got back from voting…It felt ridiculously good to see the names of a woman and a minority on that ballot. No matter which way it goes, today was a good day. I can honestly say that I have never, NEVER felt this way about voting before. We took Maya into the ballot with us, so she could watch history being made. A good day. Updated to add, I have not forgotten that Carol Moseley Braun and Al Sharpton ran last time. He’s a bit of a freak, and neither of them had much of a chance. This is the first time things have gotten so far as to…
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(Nearly) Wordless Wednesday
Think I’m kidding? Not even.
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The Rocky LaPorte Show
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yx2FKXg060U[/youtube](Update…look, through the miracle of YouTube, you can enjoy the first segment of this sitcom…you could then go back and watch more, if you want…I don’t know WHY you would want that, but hey, whatever floats your boat!) I answered the phone the other day, and the kind person on the other side of the line asked me if I would be interested in watching a 1/2 hour sitcom if they sent me a DVD, and then they would call me back and ask me questions about it. Cool, huh? And, to thank me for my time, I would be entered into a drawing to win $100 worth of valuable…
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Blog for Choice Day
Today is the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and the 3rd annual ‘Blog for Choice Day’. I participated last year, when the writing prompt was, “Why you’re pro choice“, as well as in 2006, when I declared that I think that the rights of the pregnant woman supersede those of the unborn child, and that the answer to the abortion question shouldn’t be to outlaw it, but rather, to improve medical care, education, and family planning access so that fewer and fewer women find themselves having to make this difficult decision. The writing prompt this year is ‘why it’s important to vote pro-choice’. In an election year, especially an…
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How To Look Good Naked
I caught an episode of Lifetime’s new makeover show, How To Look Good Naked, last week. The premise is that style guru Carson Kressley (of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy fame) takes a woman who is unhappy with her body, and helps her to come to terms with it…nay, to LOVE it, to flaunt it, to feel sexy in it. You can see an entire episode, if you wish, here. The episode started with the body-hating woman having a picture of her body, sans head, clothes only in her underwear, shown on the side of a building in Los Angeles, where Carson asked passers by what they thought of…
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Right Here, Right Now
A woman on the radio talked about revolution When it’s already passed her by Bob Dylan didn’t have this to sing about you You know it feels good to be alive I was alive and I waited, waited I was alive and I waited for this Right here, right now There is no other place I want to be Right here, right now Watching the world wake up from history I saw the decade in, when it seemed The world could change at the blink of an eye And if anything Then there’s your sign… of the times I was alive and I waited, waited I was alive and I…
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What to eat in the New Year
One of my gifts for Christmas this year was a cookbook, The Art of Simple Food, by Alice Waters. So far I’ve made exactly one meal using the cookbook, but I’m going to say, GREAT gift. Really, I think if one buys the right cookbooks, one needs very few, but they need to do certain things. They need to give you good, basic information about how to cook good food. That’s it. This book does that, including tips on putting together a great home kitchen (what knives you really need, what pots and pans, that kind of thing), and tips on how to make really good food, rather than just…
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If you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you!
From the John Denver/Muppet Christmas special, one of my all time favorites: Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat Please put a penny in the old man’s hat If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do If you haven’t got a ha’penny then God bless you! Which brings me, sadly, to the point of this post. I read yesterday, and then heard on NPR later in the day, that donations to charities are abysmally low this year.  The newspaper article was mainly talking about gifts of toys and clothing, both new and used. The radio story (from The News Hour) was about donations of food to food…
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Subprime Woes
I heard something on the radio yesterday that ticked me off. That’s nothing new, really, I listen to a lot of NPR, and there’s often news and politics involved, which often ticks me off. So of course yesterday the big news was the subprime ‘bailout’, a move by the Bush Administration to help a few of the folks out there who are destined to lose their homes because they will not be able to afford the higher payments once their mortgages reset into a higher interest rate. There’s an assumption among many that these people deserve to lose their homes, because they were gambling anyway, and took on more debt than they…
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Hold the Door…
This post, by Deb over at Punctuality Rules!, has had me thinking for a few weeks about holding the door. Back in July, I wrote a post about women who eschew the term feminist, because to them it divides us as women, or because they don’t like the stereotype of women who are unfeminine man haters, and wish to distance themselves from that idea altogether. I’m not sure why Deb’s post got me thinking again about my previous post, and the comments in that post, but it did. Whenever the issue of feminism comes up, the issue of holding the door open comes up. Some men were raised to believe…
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Once More, With Feeling
We had a bit of a Buffy-thon last night, watching several Buffy episodes, and I have to say, I miss Buffy. I wish there were something on TV now that I liked as much as I liked this show…something as funny and clever and poignant all at the same time. The last installment to any good Buffy-thon, if you want to end on a high note and you’re not going for closure (that would be the end of season 7, right?) is ‘Once More With Feeling’, the musical episode. I have this on my beloved iPod, actually, and I listen to it more often than I should admit. For you…
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An evening with the boob tube…
 First off, who amongst you goes out shopping on Black Friday? I have some family memebers who run out at 6am to get the best deals, and are home and toasty warm before we even get around to breakfast. It’s a fun tradition that they cherish. Other family members consider this a day to stay the hell home, safe from the hoards of crazed shoppers. Then there are others, like me, who could go out, maybe, if we take BART so I don’t have to park anywhere, but could easily be convinced to stay home with a good book or a few episodes of Buffy. Now, here’s a stupid…
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The North Karelia Project
Click to enlarge The other day I was coming home from donating blood (yay me!), and listening to The World on our local NPR station. They were discussing an experiment in North Karelia, Finland. In the 1970s, Finland had the world’s highest death rate from heart disease, and the death rate in North Karelia was even higher…40% higher. It was not unusual in the least for men to die from a heart attack in their 30s or 40s. Finland’s National Public Health Institute decided to launch a program focused on changing the eating habits in North Karelia, where the diet consisted predominantly of high salt-low grade pork, and dairy. It…
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R.I.P. Ming, World’s Oldest Animal
Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell ~ Shakespeare I learned via Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me the other day, of the sad tale of Ming, the world’s oldest animal. Ming, so named because he is believed to have been born during the Ming dynasty, was between 405 and 410 years old, and was old enough that he could have been served to Shakespeare himself, had he been dredged up a bit sooner. Hearing the story…
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Open Letter to Creepy Guy
Dear Creepy Guy, (Why say “Dear”? You are not dear to me. A better start would be, “Hey Asshat”) Hey Asshat, Just because you get some kind of creepy thrill from giving me the willies every morning on the bike trail doesn’t mean you’re going to stop me from walking my daughter to school. You ride by on your way to work (or wherever you’re going, I assume work because it’s the same time every day), and you stare at me, and sometimes you scowl, and sometimes you smile a skeezy smile, and once you blew me a kiss. Perhaps you think you’re sexy and charming, and I harbor a…