There Needs To Be A Word

I'm at work - I have a bunch of projects to get done before I leave for vacation. I still have to run about ten million errands and be done with packing by tonight. Yet I'm incapable of doing work. At. All. It's impossible people. Hurumph. Is there a single word that describes this condition?

He Will Be Missed

Brit Hume was always my favorite. Allah links to a farewell video montage and notes that Hume always provided the needed "gravitas" to Fox News. I'm glad he will be around in some capacity. I don't think they make it like him anymore: screaming at the GPS system because its grammar was incorrect. So cute.

I'm Not Very Eloquent When I Have Chemo

In fact I think I tend confuse words, use more swear words than usual, and generally be out of it. But today was MY LAST CHEMO (at least for the cancer I was diagnosed with!). So in that spirit...I don't know if I'm cancer free or not but I would like to give a big FUCK YOU TO CANCER. Cancer can go fuck itself.
On a sort of related note Peter thought of a funny shirt for me: I have cancer, bitches. Hopefully very soon that would be lie if I wear it.

Please Explain to Me How This Is Not A Stolen Election

I actually implore my liberal minded friends/readers to tell how these inconsistencies are fair.

The primary problem isn’t the rules. The real problem is the lack of consistency. Take some of the ballots that only marked the oval for Coleman, but where the oval is also marked through with an “X.” The Canvassing Board determined that those marks meant those voters intended to support “other/no one.”

The different rules for Franken versus Coleman are staggering, just look at the visual examples they provide.

Dwight for Vice President!

I loved the Dwight bumper sticker...I might have to get one for my car. The Brandeis visual pun was also cool. The car also had support the IDF and Israel stickers, on top of which there was hiking gear in the trunk (yes I looked). This car was the epitome of a dream guy for the Jewish conservative, Brandeis attending, Office watching, girl. Although it was a Suburu.... (Hey my mother drives a Suburu Jim Gaffigan audience voice/)

Here's a reference point for Jim Gaffigan inner monologue voice:

First the Economy...

now the internet? Look I can take being poor as long as the internet is around. Seriously an anchor and boats can damage the internet. What's next pirates in 2008?!

Interoute, the internet networks company, reports that three of the four internet sub-cables that run from Asia to North America have been damaged.

These carry more than 75 per cent of traffic between the Middle East, Europe and America. It's hard to gather what this actually means - is it that the internet is down or (more likely) significantly slower than usual between the Middle East and America?

For The Computer Nerd In Your Life Who Has Everthing

LOL!

Because You Always Wanted to See Grown Men Dance With Bunny Ears and Bunny Tails

Youtube was created for you:


via Facebook

I Heart Steak

IMG_9519, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

I heart steak as well. I have a feeling that if I ever shared a living space with my boyfriend, the above mural would serve as inspiration for some wall art in our abode.

A Culinary (almost) Truth

The Rule: Melted cheese on anything is delicious.

The exception that proves the rule: Sushi

Post inspired by Peter.

U.S. Troops Surrounded by Holiday Mail During WWII

U.S. Troops Surrounded by Holiday Mail During WWII, originally uploaded by Smithsonian Institution.

I love this photo.

Best. Blog. Ever.

Okay, maybe since the Lolz Cats phenomena. It seems like I'm having a pretty crappy week year and seeing cute animals being told off is fucking awesome.

via Rachel Lucas

For the Lego Hip Hop Fan In Your Life

Twenty hip-hop album covers remade with legos:

Meep!

Made my day. I love Beaker. Meep!

via Kottke

As Usual....

Gib sums it up best about the Governor Rod Blagojevich "(pronounced "DIP-shit") (ed. heh):

It seems that Blagojevich was corrupt on a truly staggering scale, and any politician who dealt with him regularly would almost have to fall into one of three categories:

1.) Knew Blagojevich was corrupt, and engaged in corrupt practices with him.

2.) Knew Blagojevich was corrupt, avoided engaging in corrupt practices with him, but never raised any kind of stink about it in the interest of getting along.

3.) Is dumber than a grilled cheese sandwich.

Paglia's Thoughts On Mumbai, Among Several Other Topics

She was one of my favorite writers in school and while I disagree with her on many different topics, I love the way she cuts through the bullshit. Here's excerpt I agree with from her recent Salon article:

Meanwhile, an area where too many in the mainstream media have been oddly AWOL is in the response to the attack on Mumbai, India, two weeks ago by a squad of Pakistan-based terrorists, who killed nearly 200 people. Reaction in the U.S. was somewhat muted because the protracted standoff occurred over the Thanksgiving holiday, when many Americans were traveling or absorbed in family business. But I was troubled by a persistent soft-pedaling of the identification of the attackers as Muslims --as if the mere reporting of that fact would be offensive and politically incorrect.

Because seven years have passed since 9/11 without another attack on native soil, many Americans, particularly urban professionals, seem to have been lulled into a false feeling of security. But jihadism as a world movement -- even if its membership is a tiny fraction of young Muslim men -- will continue to pose a serious threat to every open democratic society over the next century and more. Anyone who has studied ancient history knows that great civilizations, from Egypt and Persia to Rome and Byzantium, broke down in stages separated in some cases by many superficially tranquil decades. Because of the unprecedented fragility of our intertwined power grid and complex transportation system, the technological West is highly vulnerable to sabotage and chaos.

The tragic fate of so many innocent victims in Mumbai deserves our pity. But what should live in special infamy was the ruthless execution of the Lubavitcher rabbi, Gavriel Hertzberg, and his lovely wife, Rivka, who was 5 months pregnant. These were two idealistic young people of obvious warmth and humanity, who sought only to serve. The rescue by their Indian nanny of their orphaned 2-year-old son, Moshe, crying and smeared with his parents' blood, is already legendary. Was this zeroing in on the Chabad Jewish Center in Mumbai about Israel, or was it simply a gruesome eruption of the medieval tradition of anti-Semitism? Why have Muslim organizations, very quick to protest insulting cartoons, been mostly silent about the atrocities in Mumbai?

The slaughter of the Hertzbergs and other Jews at Chabad House should be a wake-up call to Western liberals who believe that jihadism can be defeated through reason and happy talk. Only other Muslims can launch the stringent internal reform necessary to stomp this barbaric extremism out. But the events in Mumbai confirmed my opinion about the looming problem of a nuclear Iran: While I oppose all American military operations and bases in the Mideast, I continue to believe that Israel, whose security is directly threatened, has every right to take preemptive military action against Iran.

I also like her take down of a recent snobbish Palin critic, the Yale groomed Dick Cavett:

Yes, that is the lordly Yale that formed Dick Cavett's linguistic and cultural assumptions and that has alarmingly resurfaced in the contempt that he showed for the self-made Sarah Palin in "The Wild Wordsmith of Wasilla." I am very sorry that he, and so many other members of the educational elite, cannot take pleasure as I do in the quick, sometimes jagged, but always exuberant way that Palin speaks -- which is closer to street rapping than to the smug bourgeois cadences of the affluent professional class.

English has evolved, and the world has moved on. There is no necessary connection between bourgeois syntax and practical achievement. I have never had the slightest problem with understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. Since when do free Americans subscribe to a stuffy British code of veddy, veddy proper English? We don't live in a stultified class system. In the U.K., in fact, many literary leftists make a big, obnoxious point about retaining their working-class accents. Too many American liberals claim to be defenders of the working class and then run like squealing mice from working-class manners and mores (including moose hunting and wolf control). What smirky, sheltered hypocrites. Get the broom!

via Hot Air Headlines

Writers, Daily Routines, and Career Choices

Daily Routines focuses mostly on writers and how they spend their days. I find it fascinating to know how accomplished people get through their day. Are they very different than the slackers I know?
Reading about John Updike (I'm not a huge fan) - I realized one of the things I most respect in an author or poet is if their careers span more than just sitting behind a desk and writing. For example, Williams Carlos Williams, one of my favorite poets, was a doctor all his life. I feel like his "day time" profession, infused a lot of his work, gave it meaning and perspective he others would not have, sitting at home constructing his poems out of thin air. Had he not practiced medicine, his writing would have lacked the depth and the keen observation his worked exposed him to. Imagination is important, but so is living among the mere mortals.
That's another phenomena I've observed when a some indie-director makes it big in Hollywood and then makes crappy movies. My theory is that these directors (and actors for that matter) have forgotten what it's like to have a daily routine, to not just focus on art and yes-men that surround them. Art is the bone marrow of life, living in a ivory tower makes for some very dull, uninspiring, and lifeless art. Of course drugs help and reading others for inspiration doesn't hurt, but nothing like life experience gives a great piece of art its juice.

Here's on of my favorite poems of Carlos Williams Carlos:
Complaint

They call me and I go.
It is a frozen road
past midnight, a dust
of snow caught
in the rigid wheeltracks.
The door opens.
I smile, enter and
shake off the cold.
Here is a great woman
on her side in the bed.
She is sick,
perhaps vomiting,
perhaps laboring
to give birth to
a tenth child. Joy! Joy!
Night is a room
darkened for lovers,
through the jalousies the sun
has sent one golden needle!
I pick the hair from her eyes
and watch her misery
with compassion.

Preconceived Notions

What I thought love felt like/looked like when I was a misguided teenager.

It's still a pretty photo.

Clean Living With Mr. T

Is Mr. T opposed to vampires or robots (see top left circle)? It's a mystery, but very amusing.

via

Sharing Is Caring

It's weird but I haven't been much of a dessert person lately. I mean I'll eat sweets but they don't satisfy me like the used to. I blame chemo. However, the other day I was at Trader Joe's and I picked up Creme Brulee with Raspeberries - it hit the elusive spot of the perfect dessert. Not too sweet with the raspberries providing the perfect balancing of a little tartness to the warm gooey sweetness of the creme. It's the kind of dessert that is perfect in a cold winter night - one the reasons I love winter is the permission to indulge in warm desserts that are too heavy and warm in the summer ( although this dessert is light).

The best thing about these, besides their taste, is that once you are done you have these very functional little pot bowls.



(I don't put brown sugar typically, I find it sweet enough without it.)

Sedaris In My Head

I've been meaning to post this essay for a while now and Karol's link to another essay convinced to do it now rather than later. This essay is more serious than the typical Sedaris fare - but he has described so many thoughts in my head - so much better than I will be able to do it myself. I actually printed this essay out - wanting several people I know to read it, however I never gave it to them. So here is another shot at sharing his writing. Read the whole Journey into the Night.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts:

The Polish man might have been in his mid-forties but seemed older, just as people in my parents’ generation had. Foreign blood, or an abundance of responsibility, had robbed him of the prolonged adolescence currently enjoyed by Americans of the same age, so his face, though unlined, seemed older than mine, more used. His eyes were red and swollen from crying, and his nose, which was large and many-faceted, looked as if it had been roughly carved from wood and not yet sanded smooth. In the dim light, he resembled one of those elaborate, handcrafted bottle stoppers—the kindly peasant or good-natured drunk who tips his hat when you pull the string.

I've noticed this phenomena when I was living in Scotland, people seemed older, more age appropriate somehow.

The Polish man didn’t want dinner, just waved it away with those king-size mitts of his, but I could feel him watching as I cut into my herb-encrusted chicken, most likely wondering how anyone could carry on at a time like this. That’s how I felt when my mother died. The funeral took place on a Saturday afternoon in November. It was unseasonably warm that day, even for Raleigh, and returning from the church we passed people working on their lawns as if nothing had happened.

........

None of us reminded her that Monica had died of a terminal illness, as, in a way, that didn’t matter anymore. The point was that she was gone, and our lives would never be the same: we were people who knew people who died. This is to say that we had been touched by tragedy, and had been made special by it. By all appearances, I was devastated, but in fact I had never been so happy in my life.

The next time someone died, it was a true friend, a young woman named Dana, who was hit by a car during our first year of college. My grief was genuine, yet still, no matter how hard I fought, there was an element of showmanship to it, the hope that someone might say, “You look like you just lost your best friend.”

Then I could say, “As a matter of fact, I did,” my voice cracked and anguished.

It was as if I’d learned to grieve by watching television: here you cry, here you throw yourself upon the bed, here you look in the mirror and notice how good you look with a tear-stained face.

Tip of the Week

Don't eat anything while watching Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern.

Okay This Is Hilarious

Andy Samberg was the best addition to SNL. My favorite line in the whole song is "One more thing, I'm going to pay by check."

Nerd Sex Appeal

via

Upgrade?

I recognize that Beyonce is talented and works hard, I even think the song is catchy, even though I like "If I Were Boy" more. However, I always find her dancing somehow ungainly. Her limbs are all over the place and the dance moves are the opposite of graceful. I read someone describing the video as "Fosse getting raped by a GAP commercial." Not to mention the hideous metal glove, which I can only guess is a homage to Michael Jackson? Anyhoo, she has always looked weird dancing and this video, plus her annoying and ugly ad for Direct Tv, just confirms she should not dance ever. I mean the woman inspires this (click at your own paril).

He Was Like Tottally Turned On

Best line from a collection of bad sex writing nominees:

"He made her forget she was a Communist."

The rest is worth checking out too. I have a hunch that erotic genre produces some of the worst writing. I'm glad someone is keeping track of the truly horrible.

Good Side of Stupid Actions

Plaxico's stupidity might lead to challenging New York City's unconstitutional gun laws. That would be sweet, since I'm hoping to both move to NYC and get a gun permit in the near future.

Processing the Hate

I haven't been following the news closely for the last week or so. The mini break I took to celebrate Thanksgiving and be with my very lovable/wonderful long-distance boyfriend might have had something to do with it. Or maybe it was because I've had it with the crap cable news spit out. Just the other day I remarked that the most depressing job I could think of was being a cable news anchor - all they do is report on the miseries around the world, without stop. At least as a non-reporter one can choose to tune it out once in a while.

However, what happened in Mumbai was hard to ignore...not only because of the overall tragedy, but as a Jew, it plunged me back into yet another reality check of Anti-semitism being alive and well. India is the last country I would expect to hear about Jews being murdered and yet when the photos of the young rabbi and his wife flashed on screen it wasn't much of a surprise. Besides being angered and horrified it reminded me of the Lech Lecha Torah portion from a few weeks ago. Avraham is promised by G-d:

"I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you and make your name great; and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and he who curses you, I will curse; and through you, will be blessed all the families of the earth."

Basically G-d tells Abraham that it will protect those who protect Jews and he will punish those who cause harm to the Jews. This is one of the central answers to why the world should care about what happens to Jews and to Israel. Even if you don't believe in G-d, the pure historical evidence is that Jews have been the "canary in the coal mine" to the world. When something happens to the Jews it will eventually happen to the rest of the world, this is why gentiles and Jews should care that these thugs targeted Jews and Israelis. As Dennis Preger notes so well in his column about the Mumbai terrorist:

For years I have warned that great evils often begin with the murder of Jews, and therefore non-Jews who dismiss Jew-hatred (aka anti-Semitism, aka anti-Zionism), will learn too late that Jew- and Israel-haters only begin with Jews but never end with them. When Israeli Jews were almost the only targets of Muslim terrorists, the world dismissed it as a Jewish or Israeli problem. Then it became an American and European and Filipino and Thai and Indonesian and Hindu problem.

Ultimately, the people set to destroy the Jews have been destroyed themselves and those who sheltered Jews have prospered:


(shirt via)

How Awesome Is Ileana?

I saw her a few years at the AIPAC dinner and she quickly became my favorite Congresswoman!

Overheard at Thanksgiving

I spent a good portion of Thanksgiving sitting/lying down on the sofa in the basement. I wasn't feeling particularly well, so when the kids came down to play I had to hush them a few times. Yes, I'm officially an old lady. At one point one of the boys, M., asked me what I was sick with, I didn't really feel like going into the details. Here's the conversation that ensued:

M.: Are you car sick?
Petitedov: No
M.: Are you home sick?
Petitedov: No
A few minutes later I hear Z. whisper to M. "I think she's lady sick."

So from now on I will tell people that I'm lady sick. Kids say the cutest things.

Political Awareness

Remember the Zogby poll of Obama supporters commissioned by John Ziegler? Now there is one for McCain supporters, the results are not very surprising.

“This wasn’t just an election in which supporters of the two major party candidates divided on ideological lines or separate goals for the direction of the nation,” said Wilson. “It was also an election where the electorate was literally divided by separate realities of the world around them.”

“As the data from these surveys show, the information believed to be true by, respectively, McCain and Obama voters directly correlates not just to the candidate each voter was likely to support, but also the sources from which the voter received his or her political information,” Wilson commented.

via

Short Movie Review

Man on Wire is a solid docu-drama, but not worth seeing in theaters, definitely a home watching experience. In fact, at times, I thought there wasn't enough material for a full length feature - it would have been a great short film. The film basically recounts the story of Philippe Petit attempt (and success) to walk across a wire illegally rigged between the Twin Towers. The film shows key players describing the event, interlaced with archival footage and dramatic recreations. It does a good job of letting the audience get an inkling of the beauty and thrill of this act.
Some quick thoughts:
- One of the accomplices explains his reasoning behind being involved: "I liked the spirit of it, it was illegal without being mean or destructive."
- The idea of tight rope walking only being meaningful and beautiful because of the death element. Without the possibility of death - the act becomes ordinary and uninteresting. Dying for ones dream/art is tangible reality.
- French men can pull of crying and still seem manly.
- I loved how devoted everyone was to the goal. Not only was Petit's accomplishment impressive, but so was his devotion to practicing his art and figuring out a way to accomplish the impossible.
- Once a dream is achieved life changes forever, not necessarily in a good way or bad way. I like how the film left it a mystery.

I'm Regressing

I've never found toilet humor funny, typically I find it gross. However, lately words such as poop make me laugh. I wonder why this article about waste management held such interest for me. As the article notes,"Interest from the public is strange. Women don't care. They think, they worked it out and that's that. Men have an almost unhealthy interest. Children are interested in the poop factor." I guess I'm the exception to the rule when it comes to this topic.

It seems when it comes to re-using water, psychological factors are important:

Reuse works better when it involves camouflage. This technique is used, appropriately for a militarized country, in Israel. During a presentation at a London wastewater conference, a beautiful woman from Israel's Mekorot wastewater treatment utility, who stood out in a room full of gray suits, explained that they fed the effluent into an aquifer, withdrew it, then used it as potable water. "It is psychologically very important," she told the rapt audience, "for people to know that the water is coming from the aquifer." This is a clever way of getting around fecal aversion. Not having wastewater—and not wasting water—would be better still.

Devotees of ecological sanitation—"eco-san"—think that composting or urine-diverting toilets are the solution. Though it only makes up 5 percent of the flow, urine contains 80 percent of the nitrogen and 45 percent of the phosphorus that has to be removed at treatment works. Separating it at source would cut down treatment processes and costs. A urine-separation toilet also cuts water use by 80 percent. In the remote Chinese village of Gan Quan Fang, a schoolteacher named Zhang Min Shu extolled the virtues of his urine-diverting toilet to me with a big grin. "It's very scientific. There are two solid waste containers. We only need to clean it once a year. Once it's full, we swap the containers around." The contents of the full container are removed, hopefully now safely composted and pathogen-free, and applied to fields. The empty container moves into the full one's place, and another year should go happily by. Done properly, eco-san turns waste into safe, sowable goodness. Done properly, there's little argument against it. It is sustainable. It closes the nutrient loop, which sewers and wastewater treatment plants have torn open by throwing everything into rivers and the sea, damaging water and depriving land of fertilizer.

Dear Internet,

I miss you a lot. I'm thinking of returning to you very, very, very soon. Hope all is well.

Fondly,
Petitedov

I Think I Just Found My Winter Song

Every winter I have a song that just makes me happy and which I can just dance to around the apartment. I think this year it might be this: