Wow!
This morning on the Today Show, Matt called Hillary Clinton a "tease." I didn't catch the whole exchange -- They showed Hillary Clinton and then Meredith commented that Hillary "didn't want to say something something" (the part I missed) -- cut back to Matt who looks incredulous. "Oooookay. What a tease." He says in the glib way only he can. I almost didn't post about it because I didn't hear the context, but then I thought, "What the fuck context could make that OK?" Nothing can make that OK. Oh she's a vixen alright. A cock-teasing, power pantsuit wearing, Democratic hopeful. Rrrrrowr!
Last week, Oprah unveiled her annual list of her Favorite Things™, an assortment of gifts that are either ugly, useless, obscenely expensive, just plain dumb, or all four, that loyal Oprah-watchers can purchase from her website, or obtain simply by wishing hard enough (according to The Secret).Of course, this list is no ordinary list. Its roots go very deep into the collective subconscious of both Oprah and her fans. In fact, much like Dark Side Of The Moon allegedly synchs up with The Wizard Of Oz, nearly everything on Oprah's Favorite Things™ list neatly matches up with the symptoms of clinical depression.
Link here
This week -- as every week -- all the Republican candidates talked about was who was toughest in the war on terror. While the country's most populous state literally burned. The Democrats, as usual, said nothing, because they didn't want to offend fire.Crap! He's so right, though! The Dems make me feel like we are watching a
mockumentary that is the political clusterfuck these days, only it's actually happening. Christopher Guest is the President (all shakey and smirky) and he has his pet dog who has his own website. Eugene Levy and Fred Willard are the Democrats in charge, who couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were on the bottom and Jennifer "Soup" Coolidge is the President's vapid and glassy smiling wife whose cause might be something important like, "zucchini".
attention and, in his words, it proves that the Japanese are the world's strangest people. If there is an invention that you do not need, the Japanese have invented it and they call it, chindogu or "queer tools." Imagine toilets that sing to you, hairbrushes that vacuum your head, tiny mops for your cat's feet...The invention in the picture to the left is a vending machine costume to prevent crime. Urban camouflage that the wearer can unfold and hide inside in case crime is near. Queer? I'd say so.
Eggers and Jonze — mostly, we suspect, Eggers — touchingly sketch this troubled family unit and carefully track the rising frustration and alarm Max feels as his world becomes darker and more unhappy, until, on page 21, he runs away, climbs aboard a boat, and sails to the island of the Wild Things.Here is the still that shoved me over the edge from very interested to unbearably excited:
There Jonze's influence begins to be felt, as the enormous creatures — with names like Carol, Alexander, and K.W. — look to Max as their King, and in a series of marvelous adventures, wrestle tornadoes, eat mud, and tame hawks. Always, though, there's a subtle undercurrent of menace, and it becomes clear that while spinning a yarn, Jonze and Eggers are also taking us on a tour of Max's psyche, as he works out so many of the issues that plague his young life.
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I am not sure what about this news story made me want to blog about it except that it is disgusting: Hardee's rolled out its new Country Breakfast Burrito on Monday. It is a two-egg omelet filled with bacon, sausage, diced ham, cheddar cheese, hash browns and sausage gravy, all wrapped inside a flour tortilla. The burrito contains 920 calories and 60 grams of fat.60 grams of fat. Seriously people, does anything about the phrase "portable country breakfast" sound good? No. No one should eat this. Period.
Did you get that? These three paragraphs are basically the Senate giving their blessing on the "use of all instruments" to "combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities...of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and "designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization" and "plac(ing) the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists."(3) that it should be the policy of the United States to combat, contain, and roll back the violent activities and destabilizing influence inside Iraq of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, its foreign facilitators such as Lebanese Hezbollah, and its indigenous Iraqi proxies;
(4) to support the prudent and calibrated use of all instruments of United States national power in Iraq, including diplomatic, economic, intelligence, and military instruments, in support of the policy described in paragraph (3) with respect to the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies;
(5) that the United States should designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a foreign terrorist organization under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act and place the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists, as established under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and initiated under Executive Order 13224;...
We walked out of the movie into the dark
The movie, which incorporates hundreds of Brian's photos, is not without its faults. The images, which are gruesome, bloody and hard to forget, are scattered throughout the film with haphazard and seemingly random ferocity. We are not given context for the bloody puddles in the dust, the half-buried, charred bodies, and blackened heads with mouths agape locked in their tortured last moments of screaming. See what I mean? These images will haunt you. And they should.
Another image that haunts me is one of the eyes of a woman in the refugee camp in
The camps where the refugees are staying are called Displaced Persons Camps or DPCs. We are shown aerial shots from a helicopter, presumably, of a vast network of tents and corridors which stretch for miles. There are hundreds of thousands of displaced people here. In
Back to the woman in the movie who tells Brian she was raped. She is not alone. She is one of countless women and girls who have been raped or mutilated, and then abandoned by their husbands or fathers. This is where it really hits home for me. I shift in my theater seat, I look away from the screen. I don't want to believe the horrors these women have been through. They are flesh and blood. They are teachers and daughters and mothers.
Now imagine that the struggle doesn't end when you reach a DPC. Imagine that you are at the mercy of aid organizations which are operating on too little money and not enough time. The movie states that the places where the camps are located are often devoid of resources. They have no water, no shade and no trees. No trees means very little fuel for fires. No fires means no food. The Janjiweed patrol around the camps and compete for the same scant resources. If the men leave the camp to get firewood, they are castrated or murdered. If the women go, they are raped. It is the women who are forced to go. They sometimes walk 20 miles to gather a week’s supply of wood. These journeys are fraught with danger and if they are attacked, they dare not tell a soul. Imagine this after your house, your family, your possessions and your dignity are all taken away.
A woman from the Save Darfur Coalition came to speak after the film. One thing she told us about was an idea that addresses this firewood problem. It's called the Solar Cooker Project. There are several groups who are organizing to get solar stoves to the women in the DPCs so they don't have to risk their lives to get wood with which to cook. These solar ovens use the resource which is plentiful there: the sun and cook as well, if not better than, an open fire. They are inexpensive, portable and efficient. Jon and I decide the only thing we will put on our holiday wish list is that our friends and families to buy solar stoves for these women. They cost $30 for two. It is the smallest and simplest thing we can do.
I get home and begin researching the cookers. Much to my horror, there are four years worth of articles that chronicle this problem of being raped when hiking for firewood. I find one from 2004 on washingtonpost.com about how the problem is getting worse and worse. I find another from three days ago on CNN.com. Almost all of them mention these stoves and how it will make a huge difference in the comfort and security of the women in the camps. How can four years have gone by and we haven't organized to get every family in every camp a solar cooker? I am so ashamed. I, like Brian, would have thought that America would be doing something. I would have bet that the UN would hear this horrible story and act in the simplest and most peaceful of ways: by helping women provide for their families after they have all been through so much.
But they haven't acted enough, so now we must. This one small act to connect you to a woman across the world who needs your help. We can start here: The Solar Cooker Project and speak up until our voices of sisterhood and compassion are heard across the globe and into Sudan, into a camp and into the tent and into the heart of a woman who needs our help. How can it be so easy and not be getting done?
Low was fantastic. Melodic and thumping. I feel like the bass player has it kind of easy. I know that's probably really offensive in bass-playing circles, but he just stands there and taps the strings twice every beat. Thump-thump thump-thump. On second thought, there was an awesome little military surplus Navy chaplain's "field organ" that he played for a couple songs. It had pedals and appeared to fold up into a 3' x 2' box with a handle.
"Not sure how you pick who gets which piece of art in this complicated project, but if you have anything of a polar bear barfing up a beautiful, beautiful rainbow, that would rock."And oh, how it does. See for yourself.
We ran into a friend at the Baguette Box this weekend (truffled fries!!) She clued us in on the coolness that is the Harvest Celebration Farm Tour. Here in King County on the day after the Autumnal Equinox, several area farms will open their gates to the public for a bounty-sharin', donkey pettin', hay-ridin', pumpkin pickin', chef-cookin' demonstrationin' good time.
