Scruffy Inspiration

There may be some Derridian or Freudian or some other-ian explanation for this but I realized today that my two most significant television-derived inspirations have been, to be kind, "scruffy."

I bought my first serious camera in part because of "Animal" from the show "Lou Grant" in the 1970s. Photojournalism isn't my milieu.

I don't know what is.

Tonight, as I avoid putting the children to bed, we're watching "Northern Exposure" Season III; while these first aired a dozen or so years ago (before I even met the mother of these, my day job), the seed of inspiration may well have been received then. It may be that "Adam," the characterAdam Arkin played, was the first "chef" I ever encountered. Now I cook. Mostly for my own amusement and probably my equalibrium.

No time for photography.

In any case, I acknowledge my debt to Adam and Animal. My photos and food make people happy and keep me from being even grouchier. While I am fairly scruffy, it's more a function of time (can't always shave or dress well while trying to get the young folk rousted) than fashion.

Martin Picard is my current idol, just a chef, I think. His foie gras poutine may kill me. And that's OK.

Nancy Pelosi for President

It's a big if, but it gives me hope to think the Forces of Evil will lose their control of the House and Senate in November, and that in January the hearings and trials will begin. They'll have to take both Dark Lord Cheney and the Chimp in the Oval Office out, but that shouldn't be especially difficult. And according to what's left of the Constitution, the Speaker of the House is next in line, QED.

Dick Cheney is a Vogon

It's the only explanation that makes sense.

"Vogons are extremely ugly, extremely officious, and generally not much fun to be around. They emerged from the seas of the planet Vogsphere, and gave up on evolving there and then. Only their stubbornness allowed them to survive."

"They generally become bureaucrats in the galactic government. Their unpleasant demeanour makes them ideally suited to such employment"

Prices Matter, Not People!

"I shop at Wal-Mart (and the other big boxes) because I want cheap stuff. Human rights don't matter. Fair wages and working conditions, and especially the environment don't matter. I don't care how it affects my community or Chinese slave laborers. I got it for less at Wal-Mart!"

The Dent in Al and Tipper's Bedroom Wall

If I can't take the madness of Emperor George, I can hardly imagine how Al Gore feels. It would be perfectly justifiable for him to get out of bed every morning and bang his head against the wall.

I know I've written before about having gone through the looking glass, but I really wonder what that alternate reality looks like, the one that had Ralph Nader reconsider and support the Gore/Lieberman ticket.

The one we're living in is really too weird.

American Freedom*

I'm going to get in trouble for this one, I'm sure. But I'm wondering what happened to civil liberties.

Impeachment? Hell no, impalement

Will Durst in WorkingForChange.com: Why are we sick of George W. Bush? Pick a reason

I can't say it better myself.

Arbeit Macht Fries

Anti-fascist, liberal arts educated, underemployed, overtired...

"Sometimes I just think funny things." (Arthur Bach)

It made me giggle this morning.

Let the War Crimes Trials Begin!

If it's a war (on "terror", on Iraq, on facts, on evolution, on whatever), I'm looking forward to the War Crimes Trials.

Talk about your overflowing prisons! Where will we put them all?

The cartoon is from July 2004. What's changed?

I Prefer France

For a variety of reasons, I live in the United States of America. It isn't necessarily my first choice (especially since the forces of evil completed their takeover in 2000), but that's how it goes.

There is a certain contingent of Patriotic Amurcans who, for some reason, have a problem with France. I think it's because the French weren't bullied into supporting Dark Lord Cheney's wealth-transfer scheme that is otherwise known as the War on Iraq. Is there any thinking person left on the planet who believes the French weren't right to doubt the Bush gang on this one?

I took my shoes to be repaired at a little shop over the hill and noticed on a shelf there a combat boot that had been painted pink and a French flag sticking out the top. When asked what it was about, the cobbler said, "the French are pussies; they won't fight." I don't blame them, and I suspect that most of the poor lunks who find themselves on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan wish they were somewhere else, too! (This excludes the ones who are enjoying the opportunity to "make the ragheads pay for 9/11.")

Yep, I'd take a farmhouse in rural France or an apartment in Paris in a second if the opportunity presented itself.

Arbeit Macht Frei

Yep, work brings freedom.

There are lots of businesses with "Freedom" in their name these days. Just today I recycled a phone book put out by a firm called "Freedom Publications." Just up the road there are two car dealerships called Freedom whatever. Yahoo yellow pages lists several more of these patriotic establishments. I'm fairly confident that none of them are owned by people who think Dark Lord Cheney and his cabal's adventures in invasion, torture, and wealth transfer is a bad idea.

Then again, I've been doing Anne Frank research, and there are too many parallels for a thinking person not to get nervous.

Since they've co-opted family, I'm going tribal.

First they stole the word "life" (Pro-Life, Culture of Life, etc.) to mask their efforts to limit women's reproductive rights and control people through the end of their lives as well, and now they've laid claim to the word "family." My favorite definition of family is "a circle of people who love you." The folks behind this latest insidious plot to Redeem America have appropriated this perfectly serviceable noun and made it mean "that which is opposed to 'the homosexual agenda', any abortion, same-sex marriage, non-religious science education, and anything else that might offend the church ladies."

The American Family Association
Focus on the Family
Family Research Council
and
FamilyLife.com, a family ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ

It's like heaven: if these are the people who are going to be there, I'll pass. If they're the ones defining family, I'll call my circle a tribe.

Pity the Persecuted Majority

It is bad enough that white Christian Republicans control the government and much of business and media in America, but claiming that "conservatives" (a code for this brand of theo-fascism) are unfairly treated is unseemly. The fact that thinkers outnumber believers at many schools where thinking is permitted, and that the Wonderland logic that governs much of "conservative" dogma is discounted or ridiculed results in outcries claiming that they are persecuted on campus. The irony is that thoughtful, intelligent, truly compassionate, inclusive thought and action are decried as liberal idiocy by this gang of fools. Their ideological lock-step is way too close to a goose-step.

I'm Sure We're Not the Good Guys Anymore

From the BBC:

"An Australian TV channel has broadcast previously unpublished images showing apparent US abuse of prisoners in Iraq's Abu Ghraib jail in 2003."

"US defence department spokesman Bryan Whitman said the images 'could only further inflame and possibly incite unnecessary violence in the world'."

"He said: '[The images] would endanger our military men and women.'"

Starting this whole business, engendering a culture in which this sort of thing is possible, and actually doing it is the source of the danger.

It's not the images themselves, no matter how often you say it, that gets us in trouble. It's the dark forces at the top, and everything that emanates from that evil that makes this possible.

If the precedent holds, I'm for this one...

The fool in the White House today was once a Texas Governor. If Kinky can get elected, maybe someday...

I'm Not Sure We're the Good Guys Anymore

Maybe it's because I recently watched Schindler's List and have been thinking of directing The Diary of Anne Frank, but I'm finding it way too easy to see parallels between those times and our times.

What about the soldiers who didn't speak up and say, "This is not OK. I can't do what you're telling me we have to do to these people." What about the contractors who deliver shoddy goods (or nothing at all) because all that matters is making sure the right people get taken care of properly.

It's not that the other folk are any better, but it's fairly disingenuous to declare, as is so often done, that the gang in charge are wearing white hats, and civil liberties must be sacrificed in the name of Freedom and the bad guys hate us because of our Freedom and illegal actions are justified in the name of Freedom.

The whole business reeks, and it's not just because I'm not on the receiving end of the Wealth Transfer Program that drives the Republican Party.

qui ascendit sine labore descendit sine honore

"Who goes up without working for it, comes down without honor."

And I hope they come down so hard they bounce.

Hooray for the Frivolous Weird

I like odd people. Most of the interesting people I know are dancing, strutting, stumbling, and occastionally, marching to the beat of their very own (often polyrhythmic) drummers.

It's important for me to distinguish the Frivolous Weird from the Obsessed Weird. I find the people who do Society for Creative Anachronism fascinating, in theory. I many have only met a couple. I don't remember. But they're often DEEP into it. Same for some Star Trek or Star Wars fans. Or Civil War re-enactors. (Think about that Venn diagram.) To the point that there's no room for humor or even good-natured mockery. It's what some folk have instead of lives.

This is for all the lonely people.

We like to be accepted, and are often even willing to be inauthentic to get people to like or at least notice us. My cousin who joined the radical Christian church because they seemed to care about him. Many of the people I've worked with in various theatre companies over the years are odd in their own special ways. But we find each other and life gets better.

Let's here it for the odd dilettante. I know that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down. But not in my eccentric orbit.

I say, get up, get out, and go have a face-to-face, authentic (true to yourself) non-commercial human interaction. It's good for you. And good for everybody else, too.

True justice is easier when you realise that it's just us. It's hard to really make somebody a "them" when you know their story.

Thanks, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and Rice. Love, Hamas

Oh my! No showers of roses when the "heroes" rolled into Baghdad? Could it be that some people don't like us? Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, etc. aren't really public relations successes, are they? Unless you make it your business to capitalize on these shining examples of what the Good Guys do. Thus the victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections. How unexpected was that? The world is significantly less safe (especially for Americans) since this gang took power. Hope you're happy, Red States. My Republicans for Voldemort bumper sticker resonates with truth.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
- Benjamin Franklin

It's OK, I wasn't using my civil rights anyway.
America has been released from its social contract.
It's a free agent now.

Freedom, however, isn't free.

Life. Don't Talk to Me About Life.

The church ladies and forces of evil have mastered the art of rhetoric, particularly refurbishing words to the point that some words have had their original meanings clouded. And that's sad.

Case in point: Life.
As part of the effort to return the United States to some mythical theocratic state, to remake America the way Jesus would want it, one primary goal is to make it impossible for a woman to legally end an unwanted pregnancy. The linguistic implications of this are manifest in the co-opting of the word life. Instead of honestly referring to the cause as being Anti-Choice or even anti-abortion, they say it's Pro-Life. Proponents of genocide aside, who isn't pro-life?

Let's get this out of the way right now: nobody gets pregnant so she can have an abortion. Abortions are for accidents. People who believe abortions should be safe and legal are not Anti-Life. It's a compassion thing. Something the church ladies aren't good at.

It's just another "Oh my goodness, isn't that terrible!" issue that serves the objectives of redirection. Don't look at the issue (why do women have unwanted pregnancy?), look here and be outraged (PARTIAL BIRTH!).

But I digress. It's difficult to see the words life or choice anymore without being reminded of this whole infuriating business. Too bad for Volvo. As we prepare to get a new car, I acquired some brochures from the Volvo dealer and was startled to see that their slogan now is "Volvo for life." We understand, yes, Volvo, safety, life, blah blah blah. Elegant simplicity, and all that. Still, it's no "Find your own road." It leaves a bad taste in my mouth because of the above-mentioned co-option. Too bad.

And Now for Something Completely Different

No rants today. I'm just cooking.

It's the first official post of the new year and instead of compaining about the state of this embarrassing country, I'm going to just catalog what's been going on in this kitchen for the last few weeks.

Set the wayback machine to December 30. My lovely bride (my Sue-chef) and a college pal of hers who happened to be visiting spent the day making a variety of interesting stuffings while I deboned a turkey, a duck, and a chicken. The next day we put all together and cooked it for nine hours and... Stunning. At right: our New Year's Eve turducken - three boned birds with stuffing, rolled and tied, roasted, flipped and cross-sectioned.

And there's the bread. To divert myself from the outside world, I carried up the KitchenAid and got to it. I've tried a variety of recipes in search of MY bread. I think I'm reasonably close with one that started as a baguette recipe and has morphed into our house loaf. It works with roasted garlic bonus pieces or without.

Today started with roasting bones that are now simmering in the stock pot. The rondeau is ready to go in after the kindergarten bus gets here. All this is in service of a bouef en daube that's marinating for a gathering on Saturday evening. It's the initiation of my doufeu.