Our kids

I started to write this post as a comment in response to this one over at Post Bourgie, but it sort of ballooned into a post of its own. I want to make it clear that, despite my conclusion, I don't disagree with Jamelle at all; what started off as a "yes, as a mom, I know that kids need things to do" comment turned into a criticism of the way that "public after school programs" for "at-risk youth" are always framed as if the only reason for giving [poor] kids sports or art activities were to "keep them out of trouble." Whereas in contrast . . . well, just read what I wrote.

You know, speaking as an upper-middle class white parent, you would not BELIEVE how much shit there is for my kid and kids in our socio-economic group to do after school: sports, arts classes, drama, "play dates," music lessons, and on and on. I don't sign him up for most of this stuff, and I have guilt about the lack of music lessons and playdates in his life, but I spent freaking fall semester ferrying his ass to different sports activities six days out of seven.

And of course there's tons and tons of stuff in the media about moms like me, and how overscheduled our children are, and whether or not we "need" to work to pay for all this stuff or "need" to stay home to make sure they get ferried around, and how back in the day darn it kids just played in the street with the neighbors and they all turned out fine.

But that's really b.s. I was in 4H, and on the neighborhood swim team at the homeowner's association pool, and in school plays and band, and did some community theater. The main difference is that most of the stuff I did was free or very inexpensive community- or school-based stuff, whereas the stuff my kid does is all things I pay for. And since it's not necessarily community-based, his activities usually aren't in the nearest park or at his school like mine were.

And of course, the point I'm making here is that we as a society have pulled a lot of resources away from kids activities, not least (I suspect) because the 70s started desegregating, and people in my social class started pulling out of public schools and weren't "comfortable" letting their kids play at public playgrounds or joining community-based programs any more--so we started paying for private schools and private lessons and getting really stingy about public funding for public schools and public goods like after-school programs.

People like me, who don't approve of that white flight bullshit, can nonetheless suck it up and pay for the AYSO soccer program ($80/semester), the TaeKwonDo ($100/month), the fencing lessons ($200/6 weeks). And we can of course complain about what a pain in the ass is is to run our kids to these things, but at least I *can* provide them for him. If I were poor, I wouldn't be able to.

I don't do it to "keep him out of trouble"; I do it because it's a way of letting him do and try things that he's interested in and that aren't provided at school, and because it's not healthy for him, mentally or physically, to just sit home and play video games all afternoon. But sure, one probable side-effect of his activities is blah blah mother-son time together, blah blah increased self-esteem, blah blah it probably *will* help keep him "out of trouble" if he gets interested in hobbies and pursues them (god willing) without my help once he's old enough to get himself places on his own.

It frustrates the crap out of me when people talk about the social problems of "urban youth" without recognizing that even with all other things being equal, the fact is that *all* kids need *something* to do after school, and that public funding for this stuff shouldn't be about charity or "public safety": it should be something we do because, well, because we *do things for our kids*, even if we grumble about what a pain in the butt it is. Yes, fine, public safety is a good side effect. But when we start talking about protecting ourselves (and I mean "we" as in "society, specifically the mainstream media" not "we" as in "you [black] people," just for the record) from our ("their") kids while at the same time talking about how "our kids" are overscheduled, without realizing the deep, deep irony and ideological underpinnings of these opposing narratives about what children need, we really are demonstrating how very fucking pathetic and screwed up and racist our standards are.

And You're Not Listenin to All I Say

Sure, you can say New Year's Eve is amateur night for revelers. But everyone has to start somewhere.

If you've got a squeeze, I understand the impulse to snuggle by the fire and dream about the coming New Year with the one you plan to spend it with.

For the unsqueezed, you just can't beat a house party on New Year's Eve. Not only is everything possible, hell, its likely.

All the elements for adventure are present. Bushels of tamales and fried chicken in the kitchen. Oceans of drink at the makeshift bar on the back porch. Bopping and shimmying in the front room. God knows what going on upstairs.

For everybody deeply in love, cuddle up and have a good night. Everybody else; press your jeans, iron your shirt, shine your boots. Lets party!

boyfriend, blogging, book

Sorry for the light blogging of late. Everyone's on holiday, obviously, including me. I'm sitting in a Minneapolis* coffee shop watching the snow (!!) and supposedly drafting some thoughts about a book proposal, though mostly I'm web-surfing since this is the first I've had the laptop open since Xmas, basically. I do, however, have Many Fascinating Posts that I need to write, but you know, visiting the boyfriend,** so after him the first priority is the getting-caught-up-on-the-internets thing, then the book proposal thing, and then maybe I'll get to you guys. In the meantime there's a ton of great stuff over at Jon Swift's year-end roundup, which has been keeping me from that book proposal all morning.



*I'm here. Visiting the boyfriend. Those of you to whom this is a shock--"but I thought you were married!"--can read the relevant posts down in the "best of" sidebar.

**Confidential to my dad: Dad, are you reading this blog after all? Does that mean you know why I'm in Minneapolis? Because I've noticed your unusual dearth of questions about my trip this time. So if you are reading, and we need to have a talk, we can. I hate being closeted about this anyway. That said, if you're not reading this blog and don't know, I'm not going to bring it up myself. So, you know, if that's the case, never mind.

And I In My Cap

OK, I'll have to make this fast. This area has been hit pretty hard by snowstorms over the last week and the utilities have been flickering off and on over that same period.

Myself, I don't mind so much. I've got nowhere to go and stocks of food and drink are sufficient to get me through another couple weeks under these conditions. After that, I'll have to switch to iron rations but I don't think it will come to that.

Its been sort of a lonely holiday, so far. The members of my household have decamped to the homes of various relations from Mobile Bay to Pig's Eye Landing till after the New Year, leaving me to hold the fort along the La Plata. At first it was kind of nice to have the place to myself, just me and the dogs and the cats and the cow with her calf.

But, you know, even splendid isolation loses its splendor after awhile. Even for someone as impressed with his own splendor as me. I. Me.

I like companionship. I like dinnertime conversation. I the dinnertime non-sequitirs and juxtapositions of thought raised at table by my niece's son.

The critters do the best they can to keep me company. Well, not the cats, of course. Its pretty well established that cats are useless when it comes to sympathetic treatment.

The dogs are enthusiastic about keeping me company but dogs are enthusiastic about nearly everything. I need more discriminate enthusiasm, enthusiasm focused right on me, not simply joy at being allowed to sleep in front of the fire instead of on the back porch.

The cow and her calf, what can I say? Bovine about sums it up. They have all the intelligence of dogs but none of the affection.

The wild critters are responding to the decline in noise and clatter by approaching closer to the homestead than they might otherwise.

Coyote's tracks are thick in the snow around all the buildings. Apparently, he's looking for a way in. Coyote and I are mortal and intractable enemies. The quietude has prompted him to probe my defenses. Bring it, Coyote.

Yesterday morning, around 4am, I saw a gray fox in the front yard, chasing his tail around and around and leaping at the shadows thrown by the yard light. You know things are quiet when fox feels at ease enough to play and make mischief in an atmosphere saturated with the scent of dog and human and tractor exhaust.

The wapiti regularly bed down in the lee of the cow barn but are usually up and gone before sunup. Not lately, though. Since the Christmas break, they are accustomed to loll in the shelter of the building, moving on only when harassment by dog gives them a headache.

When they tire of the dogs' yapping, they rise with offended dignity and move deliberately, unhurriedly, royally, towards the treeline. The dogs can't figure out whether to herd them or bring them to bay or put the run on them. In any case, the deep snow prevents them from circling and charging the wapiti so they just stand at the snowfence and bark until the elk disappear into the woods.

I'm invited to a New Year's Eve party tomorrow night but my attendance is hostage to weather conditions. The party is being held on the opposite side of the pass from where I am. Falling snow and blowing snow could render my reveling moot.

I'd hate to miss the party. There's going to be dancing and drinking and dining and probably plenty of non-sequitirs and strange juxtapositions. Plus, all the midnight smooching.

I'd really hate to miss that.

iPhone blogging

Here is a thread in which one can express hopes that Sybil's interviewers recognized her obvious superiority to all other candidates, and/or demand that she post a précis of the experience.

Fear God and Dread Nought

Got some books for Christmas gifts. When people ask me what do you want for Christmas? I say books. That way I make sure to get books for gifts.

Mostly I get secondhand books. I collect used volumes of works by a few authors, mostly P.G. Wodehouse. I like Wodehouse because he writes about aunties and because the world he writes about never changes.

I like secondhand books because they're cheap, they're broke in, and you come across some real treasures. I've found first editions at jumbles and yard sales. I've got a 1907 first edition Not George Washington someone found for me at a used book store in Eau Claire WI and a 1930 first edition Very Good Jeeves from a Buhhdist rummage sale in Telluride.

Mostly I like secondhand books cause I'm a sucker for anachronisms. I'm curious about relics; I'm fascinated by vestigial objects and sentiments and survivals.

I also got a secondhand copy of Castles of Steel, a naval history of World War One with emphasis on North Sea campaigns of the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the High Seas Fleet of the Kriegsmarine.

I haven't finished the whole thing yet but its pretty interesting. It appeals to me because, in large part, its about the survival of anachronisms and the disastrous consequences of mistaking sentimental attachments for realistic adaptations.


In the period preceding the 1914-1918 War, the major naval powers (England, Germany, France) and the minor naval powers (USA, Italy, Japan, Russia), underwent a revolution in the theory of sea power. Unfortunately, for their strategic aims, they missed it even while they were engaged in it. Which is usually the case with revolutions.

Or, more precisely, they were confused about which revolution they were in. Developments in communication, locomotion, aviation, and submersible naval craft had opened all sorts of opportunities for what we now call asymmetric warfare; the use of unconventional means and tactics by a nominally weaker power to offset the conventional advantages of the nominally stronger power.

Initially, the great powers did not recognize this revolutionary development. Because so much national wealth had been poured into the construction of battleships and battle cruisers, innovations in technology and tactics were valued only insofar as they augmented the power of the big gun squadrons. Instead of thinking how can we beat the enemy, they were thinking, how can we protect our investment.

Which makes sense, of course, until revolutionary developments render your investments null and void.

In fact, the whole notion of protecting their investment paralyzed the operations of the German and English North Sea fleets. Churchill, on-again, off-again First Lord of the Admiralty said of Grand Fleet commander Jellicoe that he was the only man who could lose the war in an afternoon.

The Germans left no such masterful quotes but thought pretty much along the same lines. The purpose of the High Seas fleet was to hynotize the Grand Fleet. The purpose of the Grand Fleet was to cork up the High Seas Fleet. Preservation of each fleet rather than the destruction of the enemy was the highest priority of both navies.

Not that a lot of fencing didn't go on between the two fleets. Each sought to lure the other into a tactical disposition where the enemy could be attacked and defeated in detail a la Trafalgar.

The High Seas Fleet feinted and head-faked all over the place in an effort to draw light elements of the Grand Fleet within range of heavy units of the High Seas Fleet. The idea was to attrit the Grand Fleet divisions in preparation for a decisive fleet action.

The Grand Fleet launched shake-and-bake operations to seduce the High Seas Fleet into voyaging far out into the North Sea . The plan was to interpose themselves between the High Seas Fleet and its protected bases to force a decisive fleet action.

And that was their conceptual problem. Each commander sought an 18th century showdown with 20th century instruments, not understanding the very decision they desired had been made obsolete by innovations of the intervening years.

For example, the speed, firepower, and extent of the two fleets had increased in quantum terms over the fleets deployed by Nelson and Villeneuve but the means of communication and detection had not. Although radio communications were available to each commander, they distrusted wireless signals and, instead, relied on visual sightings by picket ships and hoists of signal flags, just as had been done at Trafalgar.

At the climactic moment of the Battle of Jutland, the English commander, sensing the destruction of the German Fleet was within his grasp, desired his ships to close with the enemy and finish them off. He ordered his Flag Lieutenant to raise Nelson's signal hoist 16, Engage the enemy more closely.

The Royal Navy had retired that hoist from its signal book. The Flag Lieutenant improvised something along the lines of give em hell lads which was then repeated by hoists across the hundred miles of the Grand Fleet's dispostion.

By the time it reached the last ship in line the signal had been obscured by smoke and spray and was corrupted in the way messages passed along in the telephone game are corrupted. Intervening captains each interpreted the signal according to their immediate situation. Concerted action was impossible and the High Seas Fleet made good its escape by charging right through the mass of the English fleet.

So what's the point? Where am I going with all this?

I'm not sure, to be honest. Its a commonplace, of course that generals always fight the last war. Admirals too, evidently.

There could be a lesson for the current political situation here, too. The GOP is determined to fight it out along the old lines of race and religion and gay baiting and red-baiting. Democratic voters want to capitalize on the social developments of the last twenty years. Certain relics are retained (hello Rick Warren) for the purpose of confounding the enemy but carry the risk of confounding friendly forces as well.

But I guess, really, what I want to say is that its amusing, even comforting, to hang on to the certainties and conventions of the past but there's also risks to that. I guess I'm thinking about it because the year is coming to an end.

I guess I'm telling it to you because I'm trying to tell it to myself.

Why Do the GOP Hate America?

Can we now close the debate over whether the GOP attack line against Barack is racist or not? Cause it is.

I don't know if you've heard the latest bit of GOP propaganda but I'm not going to link to it directly cause its a bunch of racist bullshit.

I look forward to the deep analysis of how this is not racist and Barack voters should not jump instantly to charges of racism because it discredits bona fide charges of racism and the GOP is not the party of inbred mouth-breathers.

The only reason they cling to this line is racism. It can't be because its a politically effective line. I mean, this is how they campaigned all summer and fall. How'd that work out?

No, they cling to this line because it is who they are. America-hating, KKK loving, Jim Crow longing, jacklegged racists.

To put it in the kindest terms.

Christmas Eve, smell and eat

I am driving everyone around me crazy with preparation for and anxiety about MLA-related things. This very blog's proprietress has called me "the QUEEN of over-preparation." It's constitutional, but the next couple of weeks don't really lend themselves to peace of mind. After the 3 days trip to San Fran, the Vanes make a 12-14 hour drive to visit families (leaving the same day one Sybil Vane red-eyes back from the west coast). The visit will comprise 7 days and because it will include two families and a trip to sister Vane's new house in Near-ish City, of those 7 days only 1 will not involve 100+ miles in a car. Bah.

But for now, I get the next couple days in my own house with my own little family to start my own little traditions. One of which includes the massage I am getting today. Despite my best efforts at spazzing, I am feeling relaxed and cozy today. I attribute this partly to holiday music. Mr. Vane is obsessed with holiday music. He is physically incapable of walking into a store selling a holiday album without buying it; we have dozens. If the album features holiday songs being sung by a pop diva - Mariah, Whitney, Xtina - al the better. He may buy two copies. He is mercilessly mocked for this, but eventually the holiday music wears down my defenses. I suspect this is the opposite reaction from most of y'all, but there it is. Right now we've got Ray Charles/Betty Carter 'Baby it's Cold Outside' happening and I can't get enough.

The other thing that helps is Baby V has written a holiday song of her own. It goes:
"Christmas Eve, smell and eat
Do-do-doodley-do"
I'd tell you the tune except there is no tune. She sort of flatly "sings" it over and over and over. And now we are all doing it.

I know we're all humbug-y up in here for the most part, but I hope all of you have a nice day today. And tomorrow. And the next 365. And that you have yummy things to smell and eat today. And that, most importantly, you have someone in your life whose anxiety is best coped with through sticks of butter and cups of sugar.

RNC Followup - Random Acts of Political Theater

A little Counter-Propaganda Caroling for your holiday enjoyment.



More carols at nihilix

For those who don't know or need a recap; Bob Fletcher, Ramsey County Sheriff, was the public face of the police response to protests at the RNC. He began with a series of pre-emptive arrests which collected 'evidence' of 'terrorist activity' including three buckets of soon-to-be-weaponized urine. Rusty tools, bent metal, jars, paint, and other household goods were also seized. The rest of the week of the protest was an arrest-fest that got so out of hand even the Secret Service was wondering what was up with this Fletcher guy.

For those who are interested in supporting those swept up by Fletcher, you can check out the RNC 08 (eight kids with criminal terrorism charges - sheesh!), the Community RNC Arestee Support Structure (CRASS) or help the wonderful National Lawyers Guild. Follow the story on Twin Cities Indymedia. And this archive is totally amazing.

Lyrics:

12 days of protest
by the Counterprop Coaliton

On the first day of protest
Bob Fletcher busted me –
And a steaming bucket of pee!

On the second day of protest,
Bob Fletcher threw in jail …
Two rusty nails
And a steaming bucket of pee!

On the third day of protest,
Bob Fletcher threw in jail…
Three peaceful nuns
Two rusty nails
AND a steaming bucket of pee!

Twelve shoppers shopping
Eleven gawkers gawking
Ten Machining Ragers
Nine Funkers dancing
Eight pagans praying
Seven poor folks marching
Six Massers biking
FIVE AN-AR-CHISTS
Four journalists
Three peaceful nuns
Two rusty nails
AND a steaming bucket of pee!

This is some *quality* blogging, right here

Today between the Xmas tree place and the grocery store, I told Mr. B. about PK's recent brilliance. Mr. B. asked PK, do you know who wrote that? PK did. Do you know what play it's from? PK did.

Mr. B.: "So Shakespeare is considered the most important and best writer of the English language. . ."

PK: "But I still think Mama's pretty much up there, too."

grinch, c'est moi.

It's colder than Satan's anus in Chicago, a weather pattern that captures my current mood toward the holiday season perfectly.

I am about to mail 16 really bitter holiday cards and I've only bought one gift (for my dad) and don't really give a shit about anyone else. I'm committed to a friend's family Christmas Eve dinner and all I wanna do is curl up on my couch and drink champers straight from the bottle while dressed in my pjs and watch Bravo tv. Bitch's suggestively splattered gingerbread house below made me cackle (along with the un-holiday-like commentary) and if Rick Warren was standing in front of me, I'd unapologetically punch him in his tender, heterosexual, straight privilege, fundamentalist man-parts.

So consider this the Grinch space. Not in the holiday mood? Feeling like screaming while doing your last minute shopping? Trapped at your ancestral seat, haunted by the iron-jawed revenant of your adolescent past? Fantasizing about punting 'The Little Drummer Boy'? Share your pain here.

Buying a house at Christmastime is so fun

Update! On the real house! Which was originally supposed to close today (yeah, a few days before Xmas--great plan), but isn't, obviously.

So lessee. We've spent $350 on an inspection, $480 on a structural engineer,* and will spend $375 on an appraisal. The mortgage agent is getting pissy with me over whether or not I've provided him with evidence of sufficient fundage for closing costs, which irks because (1) I have; and (2) the closing costs have risen since we originally had a loan approved on the dead cat house (for $100k more than this house, by the way). So we're hoping to cut him off at the knees by getting a quickie approval on a VA loan (at a lower rate, since rates have dropped**) from the Navy credit union--Mr. B.'s doing that now, I think, which is probably why he isn't answering his phone.

Which I need him to do because I have to double-check that yes, he is okay with the fact that we have two bids on the knob-and-tube wiring: one for "about $3,000" and one for $12k. Given that Mr. B. was a wee bit uptight about the plumbing, at $3k (which the seller's agreed to pay for), he was surprisingly complacent about the electricity. Then again, he has some plan about how, since the electricity in the walls is fine, he can always just cap and yank all the ceiling wires and we can do without overhead lights until . . . whenever. (We have to get rid of the knob and tube within 30 days of closing, though, for insurance purposes.) I, myself, am not sure this will work, nor am I thrilled with potentially slapping $12k on a credit card since I have just shifted our debt to a low-interest-rate card and have SWORN to pay it off within the year. Then again, if I get off my butt and find some kind of solid work, I oughta be able to pay off the old debt and fix the electricity both, so.

Basically, we're buying this goddamn house. We should be moving in by the end of January, hopefully before my damn birthday. In the meantime, all my cash is tied up in closing costs, I have no idea how I'm going to buy a Xmas tree today, I still need to acquire a couple more presents, and Mr. B.'s next check is all going to go to our current exorbitant rent, which means that the automatic withdrawals early next month (PK's 529 plan, our car insurance, the motherfucking credit cards) will come out of. . . .

my ass, apparently.

There is a bright spot, though. I found someone on Craigslist who was giving away one of those expensive wood backyard play/swingsets--they needed to make room for a new Xmas trampoline--to anyone who'd come and disassemble the thing and cart it off. So Mr. B. spent all weekend making multiple trips to a town about 40 miles off, and now we are the proud owners of a backyard playset for PK that has a playhouse, a climbing wall, swings, monkey bars, and a spiral slide. Plus it's recycled (which PK approves of) and it didn't cost us a couple thousand bucks (which I approve of). And no, it isn't an Xmas present because the parts are too enormously huge to hide, and anyway, Mr. B. says there is NO WAY IN HELL he's putting it together again until it is in its final resting place.


* Good news: the engineer confirms that yes, bolting the foundation and filling the crack with mortar will indeed be sufficient. Hallelujah. Now I just need to double-check with the insurance that "bolting," which isn't the same as "retrofitting," will be good enough. (Apparently "retrofitting" involves nailing plywood to the underside of the house and the foundation. Why plywood with nails would be superior to fucking clamps with bolts, I do not know, because I am not an engineer.)

** Apparently when you get a loan approved by a bank, the bank holds you to that rate, even if you end up buying a different house, under a different pricing structure (i.e, you end up paying higher closing costs) months later. Of course, if rates had gone up, ours would have too; but if they drop, nope, no dice. Be forewarned, people.

The real war on Christmas

If we're all done arguing about fundamentalism, perhaps we can come together in our mutual admiration of my amazing talent at pastry-making. Note especially my skill with the royal icing.

Turning Movement

In politics, an absurdity is no handicap - Napoleon

Hero Reverend Dr Joseph E Lowery will give the Benediction at the Inauguration.

You know Dr Lowery. Leader of the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Leader of the Selma-to-Montgomery March. Founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Council. Intimate of Dr King and the King family.

Dr Lowery speaks for everyone who knew this day would come.

Here he speaks truth to power at the funeral for Mrs Coretta Scott King.

The Queen of Soul will perform at the Swearing-In for the Inauguration. She sings for everyone who knew this day would come.

Also on the program is the preacher Rick Warren, apparently on behalf of everyone who was afraid this day would come.

Do you know what's nearly impossible?

Getting the traces of vomit out of your ear when it has been directly vomited into.

Do you know what else is hard? Not collapsing into a ball of self-pity when you have grading to finish and a million things to prep for your first MLA experience, about which you are quite nervous, and your kid projectile vomits into several of your upper orifices at once.

Chocolate-covered peanut butter squares

If I keep needing to do this, I swear, I'll start a food/recipe/craft blog, ok? But in the meantime, please indulge me. This evening, after my dinner of a bean-and-cheese burrito, I found myself inexplicably craving a sweet dessert. Now, I'm not a huge sweets person, and I mostly enjoy baking so I can give the food to others. But in general, I'll take savory over sweet forty-nine times out of fifty. Tonight, however, I had a mad craving for something sweet and delicious. What I really wanted was cheesecake, and I even had cream cheese and everything, but I was not about to venture out in 6-8 inches of snow at 9 pm for some graham crackers, okay people? After perusal of my kitchen and surfing around on the web, I came up with some baking ideas that I could execute without running out to pick up a damn thing (side note: I never thought I would be the sort of person who had all the ingredients to bake something just sitting around, without needing to go shopping. I find it kind of terrifying). Okay, well technically this isn't baking. Did I mention that my oven still doesn't work? Yes, it's my fault that I didn't harass our landlord about it, oh, two months ago. After enduring my promises that I would call for several weeks now, a certain somebody broke down and did it. I'm horrible. But our landlord really talks a lot, ok? Like, a lot. It drives me insane.

What I want to know about these "peanut butter balls" is what kind of sugar crack are all these peanut-butter-ball-lovers smoking? Because I used about half as much sugar as every single recipe I found called for, and they are still really, really fucking sweet. Thank god I tasted it before I threw all the sugar in there. Whew. Rich. Delicious, but rich.

I also mixed a few elements from a couple different recipes.

Ingredients:
—1 cup peanut butter (I used Jif crunchy reduced fat--it's what I had in the cupboard)
—6 tbsp butter, softened
—1 cup powdered sugar
—8 oz dark chocolate (I used some fancy Trader Joe's bars I just got as a gift-this is chocolate to eat out of the wrapper, not baking chocolate)
—1 tbsp shortening

Equipment:
—Fridge & freezer
—wax paper
—cookie sheet
—sifter

1. Mix together peanut butter and softened butter until thoroughly blended (you could use a mixer but I just used a wooden spoon and my MUSCLES BABY)

2. Sift powdered sugar into the mixture, about a 1/4 cup at a time, mixing thoroughly after each blanket of fine delicious sugar.

3. Once it's all thoroughly mixed, divide the dough in two and shape half of it into a log, about one inch in diameter.



You can see all the powdered sugar that I was ready to use but was then like "holy fuck this is so sweet already!"

4. Chop the log into little circles, about a half-inch wide. I smushed the sides so some of them became more like squares, while some I nudged into circularity. Get creative. Because dude, making candy is fun. Why the hell haven't I done this before?



As you can see, I put the circles/squares on wax paper on a cookie sheet. You can see the little pieces of peanut. Because it's crunchy peanut butter, yo. Why do all the recipes advocate the non-chunky kind?

5. Repeat with the rest of the dough until it's all cut up into cute little shapes. Put in the freezer for at least an hour (I got distracted chatting with my sister and left it in for about 90 minutes).

6. Take your sheet of fanciful peanut butter chunks out of the freezer and set on the counter. Now chop up your chocolate into chunks and put in a microwaveable something-or-other.



My boyfriend brought that nice pyrex measuring cup into our relationship. I would never buy anything that nice, because I hate pleasure, and strive for self-denial in the kitchen.

Just kidding. I bought a $50 knife last summer, after much harassment.

7. Put the tablespoon of shortening atop the chocolate, and nuke it all for about a minute, until it's melted. Stir it all up. I'm not sure what the shortening is for, but since the recipe that advocated it didn't call for paraffin wax or a double boiler, I assume it's got something to do with making the chocolate liquidy.

8. Using a tiny fork, lower your squares into the chocolate so they're dunked. I only half-dunked some of them, because I like to mix it up. Let the chocolate drip off before placing back on the wax paper. Repeat until all are dunked!



You've got to admit, that looks really fucking tasty, doesn't it? Did I mention that I cut a few of the pieces into a "x" shape? I was playing tic-tac-toe with peanut butter and chocolate. I really think the dark chocolate is a good choice, both because it looks better, and is tastier. Let's check that out again.



It still looks good.



Yup.

9. Put the cookie sheet in the fridge to let the chocolate set, probably at least thirty minutes. Then take out a few to eat (you won't be able to eat more than a few at a time, because damn they are rich), and put the rest in a container lined with wax paper in the fridge.



After you eat a couple, try and figure out what the hell you're going to do with all the rest of this candy.

Hasn't someone optioned The Bell Jar?

I hope the bitches at Agnes Scott start a serious ruckus over this. Short story: like many schools with picturesque campuses, Agnes Scott brings in extra revenue by basically renting out portions of the campus for film shots occasionally. Louisa Hill, guest-blogging at the Bilerico Project, writs a scathing piece about the indignity of having racist, sexist, and heterosexist films being shot in the midst of her supposedly safe learning space for women. What's worse, students eating in the cafeteria were recently recruited by filmmakers to make-out with each other as extras in a film's "Lesbians Until Graduation" scene. Hill writes,

To understand the mindset behind these actions, let's examine how the filmmakers put up signs that said that if we entered certain areas on our campus (including our main quad with our library and humanities building), we were granting the production crew permission to reproduce our images "throughout the universe for all of eternity." This same utter entitlement to our bodies was reproduced in the way that the production team assumed that just because we were on (our own) campus and that we were women, they could recruit us for this degrading "Lesbians until Graduation" scene.

Preach it. It's a good piece, you should read it. We all know about the funding crisis in higher ed; it's responsible for a lot of the things we bitch about on this site. But while we lament the devaluation of teachers and students that results from poorly compensated faculty and shitty resources, we aren't calling for that coffer to be filled through the devaluation of the feminist (and humanist) sensibilities of students (and faculty) on campus. Students shouldn't have to consider making out as extras in a film in order to pay for their library.

(hat tip, you know who you are)

Inaugural Bitch DIY: Rock N' Roll Lightbox

If I've said it once, I've said it fifty times: I have a bit of free time lately. So, yesterday, I embarked on an only moderately ambitious DIY project that I thought would make a cool gift for my boyfriend's newly-organized "office" (we have a 3-bedroom apartment, so we each have an "office" that neither of us has even set up until recently). Well, in my haste to do the thing, I forgot to take pictures. So when I was so pleased with the result that I made another one for myself, I made sure to get all the gory details on film.

It's basically a copy of the concept here. I made my own illuminated canvas except I tried to eliminate as many steps and materials as possible, because I'm lazy and cheap.



Materials:
—pre-stretched, primed canvas on frame from art supply store (mine was 20"x20", on sale for like $8.00)
—acrylic paint (I used a big bottle of craft paint in "pearl black")
—paintbrushes of varying sizes (get the smallest one you can find for detail, and a big-ass one for the open spaces)
—outlet-to-socket adapter ($2.00 from Home Depot)
—extension cord (I got a 6-footer for just over a buck at HD)
—lowish-watt lightbulb (mine was 40 watts and that low-energy kind)
—staple gun (not really necessary, you can use nails instead)
—hammer and nails, scissors, pencil

1. Pick out what you want to put on your canvas. The original example had "good night" which I thought was sweet, but I wanted something a little more edgy/abstract. I ended up going with the fragment "a fraction of the sun" from the Built to Spill song "Carry the Zero" (You have become/what you thought was dumb/a fraction of the sun). Then pick a font. I picked this one from site that I am obsessed with dafont.com. It's best to use a font where the interior of the letters are just straight black, as opposed to say, this one which I really like but is not suitable for this purpose.

2. Print out your word/phrase in your chosen font in big-ass letters (like 300 or 350 point font, people). You might not even be able to get a word on a page, which is okay, you can just cut and tape them together. You want it to be the size that it will actually be on your canvas.

3. Tape up the words so they're lined up straight, just how you want 'em.



4. Tape the words to the back of your canvas with masking tape, right in the position you want it (with the printed side against the canvas). Right in the center would look good, but try out other options; I went with a lower-right quadrant placing. Now, the original instructions call for a lightbox, but I certainly don't have one and I figure most people don't. To trace the letters, I leaned my canvas right up against my Ikea globe lamp to shine light through it. I bet if you dig around, you can work up a similar rig. Once you have your improvised lightbox, trace the letters.



See the light shining through the back? You can take the paper off the back now, but I left it on for extra guidance in painting.

5. Paint around the outside of the letters. If you're not used to working with paint, this may take a while, especially if you chose a complicated font like my dumb ass. But you'll get the hang of it pretty quick. This is why having an extremely small paintbrush is mega-helpful. Make sure to get the paint as thick as possible. You are not only going for color; the thickness of the paint is what blocks out the light.



I'm making progress!



Finally done.

6. Paint the rest of the canvas. One option is to make it as smooth as possible. Having done that on my first try, I decided to really glob on the paint to give it texture so it would look col even in the daytime when the light wasn't on. I was going for a "mountainous" look here. For ease of globbing, I actually started squirting the paint directly on the canvas and spreading it around. Good times, people.



I left the edges deliberately unfinished and ragged because I thought it looked cool. On my first one I had paint evenly including the sides of the canvas. If you globbed it on thick like me, best to let it dry for 4-5 hours or overnight. However, if you used a regular amount of paint, you can wait a lot less and even speed up the process with a hair-dryer (which is what I did on the first one).

7. Now for light! Here are your materials:



Extension cord, outlet-to-socket, and lightbulb. What's this outlet-to-socket thing you speak of, you say? Here's a closer look.



Grimy fingernails=proof that I've been painting. Now attach the socket to the extension cord, and staple the cord to the sides of your canvas frame so it hangs right in the center of where your words are. If you don't have a staple gun, you can do what I did when I got frustrated with mine: hammer a nail halfway in, then hammer sideways to bend it over the cord and hold it in place. Below we've got one staple and one nail.



8. Almost done! Now, you want your canvas to sit a little off the wall, both so the cord has room to hang down and so light spills out the sides. So I just put a nail sticking about 3/4 of an inch in each of the four corners.



9. Put in the lightbulb, and hang it up! I use two nails on the wall about four inches apart (make sure they're level).



10. Looks great, but now I see that the paint is not quite thick enough right around the letters, so the light shows through. So I go get my tiny paintbrush, and leaving the thing right on the wall with the light on so I can see exactly where it needs work, I touch up the light spots.



Much better! And there you have it. If you're curious, here's my first try, the one I made for my dude:



That is, of course, from the Wilco song "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart." Which is not supposed to be any kind of hidden message or anything, don't worry. I used "ultramarine" blue paint for that one and this font.

All told, a few hours, lots of fun, and a pretty sweet product. Major mistake: extension cord really not long enough. Go for a 12-footer. Thing I thought would be a problem but wasn't: the original used un-primed canvas, and I thought my primed canvas wouldn't let the light through right. Not a concern.


Woo DIY.

Two things

1. A good way to improve a shitty mood is to "take your kid" to the petting zoo set up in the parking lot of the big shopping center and let a couple of deer and half a dozen goats chew on your hem while a llama nudges your ear. Having a wallaby grab your forearm and a pot-bellied pig rub up against your shin helps too, as do the cuteness of the duck and the foofy chickens, even though they won't let you actually pet them.

2. File under "holy shit": PK just now, sitting at the table eating a snack, musing to himself: "To be or not to be, that is the question; whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them."

Me: What did you just say?

PK: To be or not to be, that is the question; whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or take arms against a sea of troubles and, by opposing, end them.

Me: Are you reading that off of something?

PK: No, I read it in Calvin and Hobbes once, and I heard it on the Addams Family.

Me: OMG. . . . Do you know what it means?

PK: Not really.

Me: See if you can figure it out.

PK: To exist or not to exist, that is the question. Whether in this person's mind it is better to take on kind of bad side effects of having outrageous fortune, or whether it's better to prepare for a sea of troubles and to stop the sea of troubles from really getting to you, you kill yourself.

Me: How'd you get that?

PK: I just figured out what the words meant as I went along.

Me: Ho. Lee. Crap. There are college students who can't figure that out.

Dear Anonymous

Get a username, and use it. Thank you.

Men just don't know!

This piece by Sadie at Jezebel raises an interesting question: who do women "dress for"? Actually, it's kind of an obvious question because there is no universal answer that applies to all, or even a majority of women, or even a consistent answer for most individuals. However, I tear down before I build up, so I first have to call bullshit on this: "I'd also say most women don't dress for men — who for the most part don't care or, if pressed, at the end of the day like figure-friendly stuff and are baffled by much that is awesome."

If you've heard this once, you've heard it a million times. Can most men tell the difference between a $100 handbag and a $300 handbag? No, but neither can most women. Are they up on what's this month versus what's last month? No, but neither are most women (including me). But the idea that men just "don't notice" clothes or shoes or hair is absurd. What kind of men have all the fashion and romance writers been hanging out with?

First, the anecdata. Basically every man I've been close with, including boyfriends, good friends, my dad (and let's not forget my brother, who is way more fashionable than me, but he's very image-conscious so not a great example) has borne no resemblance to this "men just don't care/notice/understand about clothes/shoes/hair" mantra. My boyfriend, for example. Would probably CLAIM that he didn't care or notice what I wore. Would probably read the sentence I quoted from the Jezebel piece and voice recognition. And in a sense, not "caring" is kinda true in the grand scheme of things; it's not like he likes me any more or less depending on what I'm wearing. However, he does notice, and he does appreciate fashion. Every time I wear something I haven't worn before: "is that new?" or even something I haven't worn in a long time. Notices when I'm having a particularly good hair day or even, the other day, that I was wearing a light lipstick (which I basically never do). I've seen him compliment other women on nice items, too, so it's not like he's just doing it to me to get in my good graces.

And though he's a little more attentive to detail, he's by no means vastly different from the other guys I've dated, who have also uniformly been aware of fashion. I remember one time, the last guy I dated actually noticed that I had parted my hair slightly differently. I mean, seriously? A hair part? The last time I was in Cairo, I ended up seeking fashion advice from my dad and he performed admirably. Even he was tentative about it though, saying "I'm not really the person to ask..". I find it baffling that the men-don't-understand-fashion meme is so strong that my dad, a professional artist with the aesthetic sense that I trust most in the world, thinks he can't pick out an outfit.

Besides that, there's a more general, worldly sense in which men are aware of fashion. You know, a lot of us pick what we wear to reflect who we are to the world, and I think it works. Some try to dress in a certain way just so they won't stand out, but most women, I think, choose clothes that they personally like (demonstrates your aesthetic sense) that they think puts their best selves forward (whether that's the case or not). And I think other people pick up on that projection. For example, I recall a conversation I had with my boyfriend shortly after we got together where he said that he thought I seemed like a highly sexual person ever since he'd met me. I asked how he could possibly know that, and his answers included "the way you carry yourself" and "the way you dress." Now, it's not like I'm wearing miniskirts and stiletto heels. But I guess that my general practice of wearing tighter, more form-fitting and body-conscious clothes than your average fat chick, that emphasize my assets (if you know what I'm sayin') had the intended effect.

Obviously, my anecdotes are just that. But perhaps, together, we can lay this meme to rest. I'm not quite sure why it has such appeal, but I'd probably say that it fits in with general narratives about masculinity and femininity. It's not masculine to care about fashion or clothes or hair or jewelry (trifling concerns!), so men say they don't. Even going so far as to cultivate it, and being willfully unaware, like "all your shoes are fine!" Because fashion is female (or gay), and thus deprecated. Oh, those silly women, with their fussing over outfits and shoes. God, women.

So, women, and men, talk to me about how you and the men in your life engage with fashion. I'm sure I'm not the only one with a boyfriend who, despite his claim to be unfashionable, keeps remarking on how lovely my brand new red winter coat is (and it is, people, it is).

In which i feel a little better, so probably have no more excuses to put off grading

I got a request for an MLA interview yesterday. It was my first one, this year or ever. I feel enormously relieved to have confirmation that at least one search committee thought I was a viable job candidate.

And yet, I just got back from the grocery store where I bought ingredients to bake peanut butter brownies. I am concerned this may mean I really like baking, irrespective of its therapeutic qualities. Of course, there are still plenty of things to need therapy for. Like the fact that I now have to *do* this interview, which will involve flying across the country for 3 days and spending $1000 for a 30 minute conversation. And the fact that I haven't actually interviewed for anything since I got a job at the Nine West outlet when I was an undergraduate. And the fact that when Mr. Vane shared the news with his mom last night, her only reply was, "Well, is there a [company Mr. Vane works for] in [city the college is in]?"

There's also the fact that it's not clear if all of my very deserving friends will also get interviews, including my very closest friend (who, btw, works in the same field as I do. We applied to the majority of the same jobs. I feel like the MLA owes us some kind of professional award for representing the true essence of collegiality). And that none of the systemic problems, the ones that make me wonder if I really ought to have chosen this profession, are in any way mitigated by my getting 1 job interview.

But for the time being I feel better. And the upshot for y'all is that I will be able to provide notes from my first MLA, which I imagine as ripe for a Christopher Guest mockumentary.

file under "no good deed goes unpunished"

So I have this student. Portfolios were due on Wednesday, which was the last day of class. He wasn't there, and one of his teammates told me that he had asked teammate to ask me "what he should do?" I said fine, whatever, here's my cell #, have him text me and make arrangements to drop it off at my house over the weekend. (Yes, I am being a pushover this semester; I have given up on Being a Disciplinarian, and I wasn't going to grade until the weekend anyway.)

So student texts me, some sports thing he does has required him to leave town for a game or something. Fine, I say, get it to me this weekend. I remind him that if he doesn't turn it in before grades are due, there will be nothing I can do for him. I get more text messages than necessary thanking me and telling me he "can't fail this class" blah blah blah, whatever.

Sunday I get a series of messages about how the team isn't getting on the road until that evening, and omg what is he going to do he's freaking out?!?!?! I say relax, get it to me tomorrow morning. Blah blah gratitude again.

This morning I get a message telling me that he's in Hollywood (I don't know why) and won't be back until this evening can he turn it in at 6 pm? I say fine, whatever.

Now, at 6 pm, I'm getting messages saying "what's the login for the class server I need to download one of my papers off of it."

I think that when he shows up at the door with the portfolio I am going to make him stand in the rain for a couple of minutes while I point out to him that an extension is one thing, but complete and total incompetence is something else entirely and he needs to realize that no other teacher, or boss, will accept this kind of thing from him. Ever.

Its a Bourgeois Town

Me and my wife
Were standing upstairs
I heard a white man say
Don't want no Black folks up there

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bso4iSf9QdY


The Washington Post reports the dubya Administration is unable to accomodate the Obama family's request to move into Blair House a couple weeks earlier than the customary date of 15 January.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/12/12/wh_tells_obamas_no_room_at_the.html

The family had asked for an early move-in date so the Obama daughters would be in residency for the start of classes at their new school.

Apparently, the house, used for state visits by foriegn dignitaries, is booked up with going away parties for dubya Administration officials.

Now, I don't know about you but if Barack and Michelle and the girls wanted to come to my house for a visit, I would clear out the spare room, pronto, I don't give a fuck who's staying there.

As far as scheduling conflicts with going away parties for the dubya clowns; what they been waiting for? The rest of the country has been partying their departure since about 11pm EST, November 4.

Pseudonymous Kid fails to appreciate Rankin-Bass

Watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer tonight, as we reach the climactic scene, in which everyone realizes that only Rudolph can guide the sleigh through the blizzard. Rudolph's father, Dasher, if you recall, had originally tried to hide his son's nose; now he declares, "I knew that nose would be useful someday!"

Pseudonymous Kid says, "what an asshole."

"surveillance equipment"

Okay, so, I was at Target yesterday and I bought myself a few sweaters. Retail therapy, ok? And I bought a sweater for my boyfriend, too, cause I thought it would look sexy on him (I was right, of course--no trying-on even necessary). And I was looking around for a gift for a Secret Santa thing I'm doing this weekend. I came across this cheap-ass shower-radio-fog-free-mirror-thing, which was no good for my Secret Santa gift, but I thought hey, that would be a great gift for my dude. Who shaves in the shower, and listens to the radio more than anyone I know. So I bought it, and we tried to set it up just now and the suction cup came unstuck so many times that the thing promptly broke.

Not surprising, considering what a cheap piece of crap it was. So I started to wonder, is there anything like this that doesn't totally suck ass? For a little more money?

One of the first things I came across was this, a hidden camera in a shower radio.

Check it out. See the woman's face in the little mirror? See that there's a rental price? You know, just in case you'll only be needing it for a limited period of time.

Call me a humorless feminist, but this product, like few others I've seen, screams SEXUAL ASSAULT. I kept looking to see if there was a toilet cam on the site. No luck.

Rico Suave

The other night I was at the bar, making new friends, and hit it off pretty well with a handsome woman of wit and poise. I had, early on, noticed the wedding band on her left hand.

I continued to pour on my unthrottled charm without expectation or anticipation, enjoying the flirtatious back and forth for its own sake.

After an interval of dancing and conversation, she began to gather her things together to go. I told her it had been a pleasure meeting her and offered to escort her to her car.

She replied that there was no reason to end the evening and suggested we adjourn to the Best Western down the road.

I replied with a debonair series of gulps and gurgling sounds.

I'm married, you know, she said.

Further gurgling. A couple squeaks.

Does that bother you?

Rapid eye-blinking followed by tugging at the collar, clearing the throat and a nearly inaudible yelp.

Let me just call my husband.

Hummina hummina hummina hummina.

He'd love to meet us there.

On "leaving" academia

Some of the comments to Sybil's post below, along with similar comments to posts of my own, combined with a really crappy thing that happened yesterday, got me thinking. When people with PhDs (or in graduate programs) talk about doing something other than professing, we always do so in terms of their "leaving" or "quitting" academia. When I left my tenure-track job, I talked abut it in terms not only of leaving a job, but possibly of leaving the profession, though that's not really what I wanted to do. When I talk to unhappy graduate students, I try to remind them that there is no shame in leaving academia. When someone like Sybil talks about not finding a job, we reassure her that it will be academia's loss if she quits.

But the truth, I think, is that part of what's so painful about "leaving" academia is that we usually aren't leaving by choice. More often, academia is leaving us, and all we're doing is having to slowly come to the point of acknowledging that we've been left alone in this big apartment full of books, maybe with a cat or two, and a big pile of bills on the counter. Academia, that bastard; he just up and walked one day, and it took us a while to realize he wasn't going to come back.

Oh, you know, maybe we could maintain the fiction that the relationship isn't over. We could seek him out, hang around in the background picking up a few scraps of part-time attention when he needs someone to fill a gap in his schedule and hoping that at some point he'll realize/remember how great we are and we'll get back together on a full-time basis. Maybe he'll even propose someday, and we'll say yes--of course! does anyone ever say no?--and it'll turn into a lifetime commitment.

That probably won't happen, though. Our friends will try to make us feel better by pretending that *we* left *him*, and we might do the same. Maybe we'll even believe it. But he doesn't seem to be spending a lot of time feeling regret over our loss, does he? We're the ones trying to decide whether or not to hang onto the memories.

Doing As One Likes

I get sappy about the last day of the Fall semester when I am teaching freshmen. I love first-semester freshmen. This is generalizing, but they are largely so eager and interested, at least for awhile, and they haven't yet picked up any of that affected cynical bullshit they get over the next year-ish. I always feel so proud of them when the semester is over and try to give a little speech in the last class about what a big deal I think it is to finish the first semester. They learn so much about negotiating the college setting and most of it goes unrecognized in the crush of finals and being really homesick.

As part of this routine, I try to remind them that part of the work of college is learning to be flexible about what the storyline for your life is going to be like. You come in sure you are going to go to med school and end up majoring in art history. Or you are sure you are staying with your hometown girlfriend, or that your first semester roommate will be your best friend forever. Perhaps most importantly, you come in thinking you know something about who you are. And then you find you care about totally different things than your parents did, or your high school friends did. Or just than you thought you would. And you have to be open to that tangent in the plot, and be willing to appreciate when the tangent becomes the plot.

******

I had a long conversation today with my best college friend's younger sister, who has just found herself unexpectedly pregnant at 21. She wanted to talk to me about making a decision about keeping it, but by the time I finally got her on the phone she was pretty much settled on an abortion. So we talked through logistics, when she could get an appointment, whom she had to go with her. We talked about how it feels to confront and unplanned pregnancy, particularly when you were raised, as she and I both were, with a very black and white view on abortion; that view being, It Is Wrong. She was at the point, which I remember very well from both of my unplanned pregnancies, of just barely believing this had happened to her and dealing with the strangeness she felt at recognizing herself as someone who could chose to end a pregnancy. It just was not a choice she ever imagined she would make, not a situation she ever imagined herself in. She was realizing that she was totally wrong in her sense of who she was; or who she was the last time she actively checked in on it, at any rate.

********

I know it's a bit like a broken record, but I baked again today. Because I keep feeling myself getting closer to letting my academic career go after this season.

*********

I don't know how it could be done but I wish there were a way to weed all the rhetoric of being one's self and knowing who one is out of the discourse of becoming. No offense to Emerson, but it might cause more trouble than it's worth. I want, badly, to stop thinking I am some thing, some unified thing. These moments of letting go would seem less tumultuous, less anarchic, if I didn't have the idea of a self going forward. Doing as one likes is only the enemy of culture if one has always predetermined what it is one likes.

depressing

Y'all probably saw the NYT article about the cookie plant closing in Ohio's effects on its former employees' health care. In case you didn't, though, it included a really uplifting story about a woman who found out that her job was disappearing while she was pregnant, and who convinced her midwife to induce labor and give her a c-section two days before her insurance ran out.

Only to have the insurance company deny the claim.

I can't wait for the fun comments explaining that this was, of course, only to be expected and that the insurance company is doing nothing wrong and that this is all somehow the woman's fault for trying to cheat the insurance company by having her baby early.

Welcome to Illinois

I woke up this morning to the incredible news that the Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, has been arrested. Along with his chief of staff, John Harris. Apparently, the feds have wiretapped a phone at Blago's home, as well as a phone in the "Friends of Blagojevich" office (read: campaign/fundraising HQ), and surveilled some of the other meetings there. I don't follow Illinois politics as closely as I should, but apparently I'm not the only one shocked by the extent of the information presented in the criminal complaint. I spent the last hour or so reading it--fascinating stuff.

According to the complaint, Blagojevich was using his gubernatorial authority to:

1) Try and get staff of the Tribune's editorial board, which had been critical of him, fired--by threatening to hold up Tribune owner Sam Zell's sale of the Chicago Cubs. This including having his associates call an unnamed "Tribune Financial Advisor" and basically tell him that if Zell wanted his "Cubs thing" to go through, he should fire some writers, including Deputy Editor John P. McCormick. Also, not only would they like the offending writers fired, they would like some good publicity, defenses from the editorial board, thankyouverymuch. Highlight: Blagojevich's wife, overheard on the wire during a phone call, "in the background telling ROD BLAGOJEVICH to tell Deputy Governor A “to hold up that fucking Cubs shit. . . fuck them.”

The reason? The Tribune's publishing of editorials critical of Blagojevich, including editorials calling for his impeachment. Also mentioned as an offense: the Tribune's endorsement of Mike Madigan, speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives.

2) Try and secure a financial benefit for himself and/or his wife in exchange for appointing a particular person to Barack Obama's now-vacant Senate seat. He had a lot of ideas for how he could be compensated, including being made Secretary of Health and Human Services, being chosen to work in a new position at an organization called Change to Win, and having "10-15 million" dollars raised for a new 501(c)(4) organization of unspecified purpose of which he would be the well-paid director. In the days after the election, Blagojevich says over and over in phone calls to his associates that he will absolutely not "just give away" the Senate seat. Actually, he says "I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden, and, uh, uh, I’m just not giving it up for fuckin’ nothing. I’m not gonna do it. And, and I can always use it. I can parachute me there." He had a few ideas, including appointing Obama's preferred candidate in exchange for a cushy job, or appointing another candidate in exchange for that candidate's promise to raise money for him.

So, here are a few things that need to happen. First, Barack Obama needs to IMMEDIATELY detail any conversation that he or any staff (most likely his staff) had with Blagojevich or Blagojevich's associates about the open Senate seat, if there are any such conversations. I hate to say this, but we need some information quick to know whether Blago and his crew were just crazy drunk with authority, or whether they had some reasonable expectation that Obama could be counted on to cooperate in any way with any of their ridiculous schemes. I was really surprised to read in the complaint how, day after day, Blagojevich and his chief of staff and his Deputy Governors seemed to think that they could manipulate people throughout the world of government and business to get their way. They seemed to regard it as a fait-accompli, a mere function of phrasing it the right way and getting the right person to do the job. It's truly disgusting.

Second, Remaining Illinois Senator Dick Durbin needs to retract his request to President Bush that he commute former Illinois Governor George Ryan's 6-year sentence for corruption charges. Gov. Ryan is currently incarcerated in Federal prison. Before, I was on the fence about Durbin's request. I, like a lot of others felt like this was just another instance of pols letting pols off the hook. At the same time, I hate the prison system, and I don't think old people in poor health should have to stay in prison for no real reason than to satisfy our desire that they get their just deserts.

But now? Another huge chunk of the Illinois political system is going down in flames, another Governor indicted on corruption charges, which in my opinion are significantly worse than what Gov. Ryan was accused of, and the very integrity of the Illinois Senate seat called into question. I mean, what are they going to do now? Who is going to fill the appointment? It can't be Blagojevich, and it can't be the next in line to him because all of his associates are tainted, too. And Durbin is there sitting in the other seat, being a newsmaker because of his push to get the other corrupt Illinois governor's sentence commuted? For god's sake, we need to restore some sense of dignity and transparency to this state's participation in government, particular just when we have been thrust into the national spotlight on the heels of Barack Obama's victory.

Third, I think Chicago needs to withdraw from consideration for hosting the 2016 Olympics. Having the Olympics here is a giant breeding ground for corruption--all those contracts to be awarded, all that money pouring in. It's already been an issue. Given the apparent truth that political and business people can plainly be bought and sold for mere thousands of dollars, I don't think that Chicago will win the Olympic bid anyway, and it would be disgraceful for the City to continue to try and pursue it amid all this disgusting corruption and abuse of power. Because as bad as Blagojevich is, I guarantee you Daley is worse. He's been around much longer and has more power, if smaller purse-strings.

It all just really chaps my hide. Two places where people are trying to do public service: journalism, and the United States Senate, tainted by the flounderings of a petulant, angry, money-grabbing asshole.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

It will be improvised.

The United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America Local 1101 occupation of the Republic Windows and Doors plant in Chicago has attracted rapid and wide support. Barack has made his support known.

The last time American workers resisted mass layoffs this way, we ended up with a middle class.

And that's change you can believe in.

The Long Exhausting Slog Towards Home Ownership (TM) Continues, continued.

The cute Spanishy house, it turns out, is a fixer. It's a much cuter fixer, and the old lady who owned it, may she RIP, kept it up very nicely, so it doesn't have nearly the Feeling of Doom that the dead cat house had. No dead cats, for instance.

What it does have, however, is:

1. Galavanized pipes--the main line out is corroding, and you can clearly see ooky things growing on the outside of the pipe, and it really is only a matter of time before the damn thing explodes and floods the basement. (It's weird for a CA house to have a basement, but this one does.) The bad news: $8-10k. The good news: Mr. B. is actually capable of doing the work himself, which probably means just $1-2k in materials and a week off. Not that he really wants to do that, but I mean, he could.

2. Knob and tube wiring in the ceiling. The wall outlets have been updated, but not all the stuff up in the crawl space. Which means that our insurance company of choice actually won't insure the house. Plus blah blah fire hazard, although I'm inclined to think meh, if the wiring's been there for 80 years already, it's not likely to start a fire tomorrow. To me this is our lowest priority. Mr. B. thinks I am insane. In any case, he can't fix it himself. Let's assume $5k, maybe?

3. Anyway, the insurance company we use wouldn't cover us regardless, because the foundation hasn't been earthquake retrofitted yet. I gather the foundation has to be bolted to . . . something. Anyhoo. I dunno how much this costs, either.

4. A crack in the foundation! I can hear you all now: run, do not walk away! Following our inspector's lead, however, I am inclined to calmness. Or maybe I have just been beaten down. In any case, I don't know how much it costs to brace a cracked foundation (we sure as shit aren't cranking the house up on a jack and repouring the goddamn thing). We're gonna have to have a contractor come in and give us a bid on all this shit, obviously. Or, I gather from the intertubes, perhaps a structural engineer. Any structural engineers in Southern California reading this blog?

Anyhoo. So the plan is that tomorrow morning* I call our realtor, ask her to "extend the contingencies," i.e., get an extension on the contract to give us more time to come up with a list of requests for the seller. As we enter part two of the goddamn negotiations. Mr. B. is inclined to ask her to fix all of these issues before we take possession. I am inclined to think that she'll tell us to get stuffed--at least, I would--and therefore want to prioritize, at least for our own sakes, which things will kill the deal and which things we're willing to just accept and go through with the sale anyway. (I suspect the answer is "all of them.") It's hard to know what the seller will do--she's the sister of the house's real owner, who died recently. (I saw a sign in a closet yesterday that said "Happy 90th Birthday M-- P--".) Presumably, given that MP owned the house for 40 years, her sister's getting free money out of it, so maybe she'll be fine with doing a bunch of work and making, say, $350k instead of $370 on the house in the end. Especially given that apparently she had a couple of offers right after the house listed that fell through when the potential buyers learned that the house has a septic tank.**

Or maybe she'll decide that getting all that work done is too much of a headache for her. Who knows?

All I know is that this entire damn thing is too much of a headache FOR ME.***


* At the time of writing. By the time you read this, the phone call will have been made, and probably we'll be well on our way to yet another update with even more exciting details.

** Which is apparently 178 feet from a city line, which means that if and when it eventually has a Major Problem we are legally obliged to pay whatever it costs to connect to the city line. As is everyone on the street. I gather that there's a neighborhood storm brewing, because the woman who owns the property on the end of the street, which sits on a huge lot, wants to divide the lot and build a new house and sell it off--but her doing so would require the city to run a new line down the street, which would in turn require everyone on the street to connect to the city line, and no one wants to pay that money. Mr. B. and I are determined to be neutral on this issue, since obviously the connection's going to need to be made and paid for at some point.

*** The house really does have a lot of things going for it. Like apparently a twin boy and girl PK's age two doors down. It's also on a short cul-de-sac mostly filled with older women, which means that the neighborhood is going to turn over to young families within the next few years, which would be nice for us. It's a really nice neighborhood in an unassuming way. The location's less perfect than that of the dead cat house, but it's workable, especially in a year or two when PK will be old enough to cross major streets and get to school all on his own. It has a good-sized back yard (mostly concrete now, in that old-lady low maintenance way that doesn't really look bad but clearly will need to be changed for PK's sake). The kitchen cupboards are old and beautiful. The turret room would make a cheery study area. And it's obviously cute as the dickens.

The long exhausting slog towards Home Ownership (TM)! continues.

Dead cat house update. Sellers "offered" last week to "let" us have half of the $5k sitting in escrow. They "only want $2500." Realtor talked to her broker (that is to say, the person representing the umbrella agency she works for), and realtor and broker were in agreement that because the seventeen day contingency blah blah whatever had expired long ago, there was no way sellers would get away with this, but that we needed to present them with a demand letter before we could take them to small claims court.

I said NO WAY am I signing that until I talk to a lawyer.

Meanwhile, my mortgage agent is flipping out because the new (old--built in 1928) house we've offered on is supposed to close this month* and without that $5k we really don't have our closing costs covered. Which irks, since we have about $4k+ in the bank, and the $5k was apparently enough for closing on an offer of $100k MORE several months ago, but now that the banks are all refusing to fucking loan money, apparently even those of us with VA loans are having to pay through the nose for zero-down mortgages (despite the fact that that's the entire point of the VA loan program, and the government guarantees the goddamn loan in the first place). Fucking banks.

But in any case, mortgage agent is saying we need to get that money, or at least part of it, back asap in order for the underwriters to approve the loan. Realtor is assuring me that we're completely in the right. Ironically, I,** the person with actual money on the line, am the calmest of the lot. Realtor finds me a real estate lawyer, we go in for a meeting, and Mr. Lawyer says--as I thought he would--that we really don't have the strongest case in the world, taking-it-to-court-wise. There's an argument to be made on our side, yes, but there's also one to be made on theirs: we cancelled the deal, not because we really got any new information--we knew the house was a money pit and yet we'd kept negotiating--but because we finally just got fed up with the dicking around and came to our senses.

Luckily, lawyer guy (as is, I guess, the job of lawyer people everywhere) points out that the sellers don't actually want to go to court any more than we do, assuming they are rational people. And that even if they aren't, any lawyer they are consulting will be telling them, as he is telling us, that there is nothing to be gained by litigating for a pathetic $5k, given what it's going to cost in time and legal fees.

Which makes me feel much better, because this has been my position all along, and what I really wanted was for someone Who Knows These Things to back me up. Which he's doing for free, at the moment.

So having gotten to that point, I say to him, okay, they've offered us $2500. Do I just suck it up and give it to them in order to stay out of court, or is there something else I can do? Advise me here.

Lawyer guy's advice is twofold. First, if neither the sellers nor we push this matter, eventually the escrow holder is going to sue us both in order to get us to court so that we can figure out who gets the money, because escrow holder needs to get it off their hands. Escrow holder will deduct their legal fees from the money, though, which means that neither the sellers nor we will get anything, plus we'll get the bonus fun benefit of spending time in court and hiring lawyers for no good reason. Sellers will be advised of the same thing. Which leads to the second piece of advice: lawyer guy says that yes, we can certainly send a Firm Letter of Demand on a Real Estate Lawyer's Letterhead for, say, $200-250, and that doing so will almost surely mean that we'll get more than $2500 back.

So that's what's happening. We're offering the dead cat people $750 to fuck off and let us have our goddamn money sooner rather than later. Plus $250, say, for the lawyer. Which is worth it and all, given that it's hopefully going to net us an extra $1500, and sooner rather than later. I'm okay with this outcome. Mr. B. is a little more Upset on the Principle that that's Our Money! but is actually being decent about it for the most part.

In the meantime, we're in the process of buying the cute Spanishy house with the little turret. The inspection just happened yesterday. Stay tuned for the next installment of the Exciting Process of Achieving the American Dreram.



* Technically it should close on like the 24th or something. For a while I was trying real hard to get it to close on the 17th, so that we could actually maybe get moved in before Xmas instead of trying to move ON Xmas, which would be insane. Now the seller wants an extra month, presumably because she doesn't want to have to fly down here before Xmas herself in order to get rid of her dead sister's belongings, so the point is moot. We're either going to "close" this month and then rent it back to her for a month, or just extend the closing. Tomorrow morning I have to get the mortgage guy to explain to me which is going to be better for us, money-wise.

** I say "I" throughout because I am the person who is basically handling all the negotiations and calls and details of this purchase. Mr. B's job is to go to work all day long and earn the money with which we'll pay for the house. That and to occasionally get all stressed out and combative and try to tell me how I should be doing things, which pisses me off.***

*** I wonder how many couples end up breaking up in connection with house purchases.

Yuletide Marriage Tip

Early in the screening process, Christmas-celebrating couples intending to co-habitate should determine whether each party is a real or fake tree person. Differing couples should probably end it now, before shit really hits the fan.

Three Cups of Tea

I've recently finished reading Three Cups of Tea. It tells the story of Greg Mortenson, a climber-type guy who, after failing to summit K2 on a climb that he intended to honor his dead sister, ended up staying in a Balti village for some time and deciding to build a school for girls in the village as a better way to honor his sister. After a lot of trial and error figuring out how to raise funds, Mortenson eventually goes on to found the Central Asia Institute, wich has by now built dozens of schools, most for girls, through Pakistan and Afghanistan.

By way of review, I want to quickly get out of the way the fact that the sentences in this book are not great. The prose tends to oscillate between simply declarative and overwrought. And we are told entirely too many times about Greg Mortenson "plunging," "crashing," "plummeting," "drifting," "collapsing," and so on, into sleep.

That being said, it's an engaging read. I got a much better understanding of the incredibly intricate details of the region with respsect to tribal and cultural affiliations and geographic conflicts. Without really psychologizing the thoughts or efforts behind it, Mortenson demonstrates the ways deference to religious and cultural practices can lay the groundwork for real communication. And while the narrative does include the various ways he is met with resistance during efforts to educate girls, on the whole the text reinforces how noncontroversial the idea really is to a vast vast majority of the region's people. It is innovative and it is incredibly impactful, but not, in most cases, controversial.

In conclusion, I would like to recommend Three Cups of Tea. If you both believe very earnestly in the value and impact of education, and you are desperately in need of a story about a person succeeding against incredible odds, those odds created both by systemic issues and bouts of self-indulgence in a feeling of failure - I'm looking at you, academics on the job market - then this might be the right thing for the winter evenings.

dreams, now haunted.

So here I am at the office. Working.
And then Roomie sends me *this*.

I flinched when he kissed her.

(Warning: SFW but will probably induce monstrous coffee/soda-nasal-sprayage.)

Levity

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Let me Repeat

Not. Good. To its People.

Maybe later today this will make me less livid and I will supplement with content.

ETA: I swear to God immediately after reading/posting this, I overheard a conversation in my department's office, wherein a faculty member was aggressively voicing concerns to another faculty member who is apparently in a position to do something about them. The concerns centered around the results of something ( a search I assume) being canceled, one upshot of which is there being fewer opportunities for faculty to teach grad courses. I guess this is because search cancellations and budget cuts for temp. faculty mean faculty will be teaching more freshmen level courses. Anyway, the "concerns" being expressed include the intangible but very real negative effect on faculty's sense of self-worth and purpose that would result from having no graduate courses to teach. Man, once you have a salary, teaching undergraduates must really make you feel like shit.

ETA again: apparently the Chronicle piece is behind a subscription wall, which I didn't realize since I am accessing at school. I think you can still get a day pass. Anyway, the full report is available here.

The Shopping Season

Okay, so I think we can clearly declare that the Official Bitch PhD position on holiday shopping is that trampling other people is perfectly understandable, as long as you're not wearing a Tacky Sweater.

Food, Grief, and American Myths

My life of late has become a blur of cooking and September 11th. While I'm trying to sort out my professional life, I have been a madwoman in the kitchen and, because we only have one computer that my boyfriend has to take to work (hence, no surfing internet during the day), reading books instead of reading news and blogs.

In the last week I have ripped through Alaa Al-Aswany's Chicago, Jess Walter's The Zero, and am now three-quarters of the way through Susan Faludi's The Terror Dream (previously reviewed by our very own Bitch at this site). Sense a theme? Yeah, they all, in either subdued or explicit ways, are trying to make sense of the world 9/11 has wrought. And, feeling rather contemplative, I'm enjoying the theme. So if anyone would like to recommend any more fiction or non-fiction that deals with the post-9/11 world, leave 'em in comments.

Faludi's book is a shocking, compelling argument that painfully exposes how much of the post-9/11 narrative was about creating myths, myths of heroes and victims, strong and weak, captor and captive, and, at the myths' most basic level, man and woman. So the irony does not escape me that I'm devouring books filled with fear and grief to cope with my own personal crises, all the while toiling away in the kitchen on aching feet and ferrying my boyfriend around town just for an excuse to have somewhere to go. Just like 9/11 brought about the myth of women returning to domesticity. But nevertheless, without further ado, recipes.

Lee Bros' BBQ Picnic Shoulder:

I can't call this "oven BBQed" like they did, because my oven doesn't work, so just used the stove. I bought about 3.5 pounds of pork shoulder, cut up, from the Mexican market at $1.00 a pound. If you shop at a more fancy grocery store, get yerself a whole shoulder. Season meat with salt and freshly ground black pepper, then brown the meat in a tablespoon or two of canola oil, in batches in a big skillet, so meat is deliciously browned on all sides, and let rest on plate on the counter. Get out your dutch oven/giant pot. Put in a 28-oz can of whole tomatoes and 2 whole peppers from a can of chipotles in adobo sauce. Pour in 6 tablespoons of white wine vinegar (I'm sure regular vinegar would work fine), and 3 tablespoons of honey. Turn on medium heat to bring to a simmer. Then chop up an onion, and take the cores out of 4 whole plum tomatoes. In the same skillet you used to brown the meat, sear the tomatoes and onions over medium-high heat until tomato skin starts to buckle and onions are golden, 5-10 minutes. Put the meat in the pot, trying to get the liquid to cover it, then pour the onions and tomatoes on top. Bring to a boil, then turn down to low simmer, and cover. In the same skillet that you have now browned the meat and cooked the onions and tomatoes, turn on medium heat and pour in 3-4 tablespoons vinegar. Use wooden spoon to scrape up brown stuff from the pan (i.e. deglaze), getting the pan as clean as you can, then pour into the pot.

Cook for about three hours. For the last half hour, turn the heat up and take the lid off to boil off some of the liquid and make the sauce thicker. Meat will be tender and delicious. Serve with a starch, like mashed potatoes or plain white rice. Leftovers will be great for sandwiches, tacos, or whatever else you can dream up.

Lee Bros' Pimiento Cheese Spread

As soon as you get the shoulder going, start making this so you can have something to snack on for the hours it takes for the above dish to finish (I, personally, like eating appetizers for 3 hours and then dinner at 11 pm).

Take out a package of cream cheese to soften. Turn on the broiler. Put a whole red bell pepper in a dry skillet and stick under the broiler. Monitor it, turning periodically with tongs, until skin is blackened on all sides (takes about 10-15 minutes total--wait 'til one side is blackened, then turn). While pepper is roasting, finely (finely!) grate 8 oz extra-sharp cheddar cheese. When pepper is done, take it out and put it in a bowl, cover, and let steam for 5-10 minutes. When you take it out of the bowl, you should be able to peel off all the blackened skin. Do it. When skinned, cut pepper open and lay it out flat on a cutting board, scrape out the seeds, and dice it up real fine. Save any juice that comes out of it. Put the diced pepper and juice, and 2 oz of the cream cheese in with the cheddar. Throw in about 4 tablespoons (more or less depending on your personal taste) of mayonnaise. Now for the spice: the recipe calls for 1 tsp red pepper flakes; I didn't have any, so I used about 1 tsp cayenne pepper. Either works great. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Mix it all up with a wooden spoon until everything is combined. Refrigerate, or eat immediately with crackers, tortilla chips, or on slices of thick bread.

Cheesy, spicy, and Southern as shit.

Now go back to reading about terrorism, mythmaking, and grief.

Someone has to say it it

In defense of the pitiable bastards in the Wal-Mart Black Friday sale who trampled the poor man who was working as a maintenance worker from a temp agency. My two cents, originally written as a comment at EotAW.

I’ll defend the shoppers. And not just because, as it happens, I *did* go shopping on Friday, so there.

Here’s what I think. You guys know how crowds work. So the setup, as I’ve heard it described, is that the guy who was killed is hired security, and his job is to keep back a *crowd* of people who are trying to push through glass doors, yes?

Okay, look. The people at the front–the ones who actually pushed down the doors and, horribly, the security guard–are being pushed from behind by a crowd that can’t see what’s up ahead. Crowds will do this. And if the crowd is big enough, and trying to push through a small enough opening, and there’s a sense of urgency–like, oh, say, there are a limited number of loss leader items available and it’s first come first served–then it is very likely that the force of the crowd *as* crowd is going to overcome the individual strength of any one person.

You know how hard it is to work your way backwards through a crowd. Now imagine a crowd that’s *urgently* trying to push forward–it would be impossible. And, given that the crowd was apparently strong enough, en masse, to push down a door and trample a man, then (presumably) any individual–or even several individuals–who tried to push back–to keep the doors from being pushed open, or to keep the man from being trampled–is also going to be overwhelmed and pushed forward.

This kind of thing happens every year on Black Friday–if not someone being killed, then people being hurt, certainly. And yeah, if you stand back from it it’s easy to say that it’s awful (and it is), but I think you have to take into account the psychology of crowds as well as the simple physics of having a lot of bodies in one place all trying to go somewhere at the same time. Someone(s) should have stopped–I can’t imagine what it would have been like actually stepping on the poor man!–but you guys know about bystander psychology, and how people won’t step in if no one else does. Presumably everyone was thinking “oh poor guy, but if I stop I’ll get stomped too and I *really* want that Wii for my kid” and thinking that the man wasn’t *being killed* but had merely fallen and was going to get up again soon–that someone else would help him. It’s the same reason that people drive past a broken down car on the freeway, or walk past sleeping homeless people (who, for all we know, might actually be dying).

The real problem isn’t the people in the crowd. It’s the policy of creating such crowds, especially in situations without infrastructure and trained security people to manage the crowds properly. I mean, shit, set up some freaking ropes and create a damn *line*, or hand out rain checks, or have the damn sale run all day or all weekend long. Why the fuck are temp agency maintenance workers put in front of doors behind which are huge crowds of people who've been waiting all freaking night for the store to open?

The problem is the corporations who deliberately create an unnecessary sense of urgency and scarcity in order to drum up sales. The cops are apparently looking at video tapes in order to charge individuals in the crowd. Who the hell is going to charge the decision-makers at Wal-Mart? Or indeed, any of the other stores that pull this kind of stunt where, every year, people get hurt?

By Request

Jesus, get a damn food blog already, Sybil. I know.

Here are some awesome things I've lately made. And they weren't even part of my Thanksgiving meal:

Pumpkin Cranberry Bread
2 cups flour
2 eggs
2 cups white sugar
cooked pumpkin, probably a can's worth
1/2 cup chopped cranberries. Dried would work too, I think.
1/2 cup oil of some kind
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp maple syrup
1 tsp salt
some cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves
Mix this stuff and cook at 350 for an hour

Pumpkin Butterscotch/Chocolate Cookies
1 stick butter
1 cup sugar
2 cups flour
some cooked pumpkin, again, about a can's worth
i tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup butterscotch or chocolate chips
350. 10 minutes or so a batch. Because these don't have any eggs, they are that soft, spongey, muffin-y kind of cookie.

Turkey Meatloaf that doesn't suck
1 lb turkey
1 egg and 1 more egg white
1/4 cup fresh parsley
1 smallish onion, sauteed until soft
3 tbsp ketchup
1 tbsp mustard
2 tbsp worcestshire sauce
1 clove chopped garlic
1 cup bread crumbs, or crushed up crackers, or oatmeal I think might work ok.
1 tsp marjoram
some salt and pepper
Mash into loaf and bake at 350 for about 40 minutes. At which point mix these things together: ketchup, mustard, honey and a little beer. Spoon that mixture on top of meatloaf and cook for another 15 minutes. I also think that it would be just a tiny bit tastier if you had a package of french onion soup mix to throw in like you are supposed to for yummy meatloaf. But this will do without it.