I love Loopy

four-song dedication to Lovey, on the jukebox at the bar, paid for with one dollar from the communal drink fund (such good socialists we are!)

1. Let's give 'em something to talk about (Bonnie Raitt)
2. Something in the way she moves (James Taylor)
3. Love of my life (Santana)
4. Brown-eyed girl (Van Morrison)

The first song I think of as our "getting together song." I can't quite remember why anymore, altho I think it had something to do with seeing her ex-girlfriend and having the ex get all jealous of us before we were even going out. I also taped my CD of the album for Loopy before we were going out... I drew a lovely cover art and left it in a bag on her doorknob.

I've always loved the second song...
"I feel fine anytime she's around me now, and she's around me now almost all the time..."

The third song I think of in connection with the rehabilitation of our marriage after some problems... this is probably my all-time favorite love song. "Every day, every night, you alone are the love of my life..."

And the fourth also makes me think of those early days in Tucson....Loopy introduced me to Van Morrison, I think....drivin' around in ol' Elvistina (the big green dodge dart with the continuous bench of a front seat so I could cuddle up to Loopy while she drove...), blasting the radio and just feeling so happy and content....

I miss you, Lovey. I'm glad I don't have to be away too much longer. I'm so sad I wasn't there for your little ER jaunt. :-( :-( Love you!!!!

a little hilarity from the front lines...

...of revolutionary struggle. Or if not the front lines, maybe the sidelines, or maybe the line for pretzels & soda.

Story #1

Apparently a group of comrades went to Cuba sometime recently. Among them were Brad, who doesn't speak Spanish, and Laurel, who does.

So Brad shows up somewhere with two Cuban women and asks Laurel to translate for him so he can chat with them. They talk for a while and then the women invite Brad back to their place to stay with them. Stoked at this opportunity to really bond with the revolutionary camaradas, Brad rushes up to his hotel room to get a few things.

"Are you sure you don't want to come with us?" Brad asks Laurel. Laurel laughs. "No, Brad, I'm sure." At his blank look, she explains, "Brad, they're prostitutes." "WHAT?????" Brad is shocked and so mortified that he makes Laurel go back downstairs and send them away.

[Interjection into the story from Isaac: "How did you know they were prostitutes?" Laurel: "You've never been propositioned by a prostitute, have you?"]

So apparently the really funny part was when they were reporting back to their branch, when Brad reported earnestly that "you can really see the benefits of state-sponsored health care, because Cuban prostitutes are very healthy, not like the prostitutes here in Detroit." You can just imagine the teasing he got for that, and apparently nobody has ever let Brad forget his report on the healthy Cuban prostitutes.

Story #2:

As part of our attempt to improve the democratic functioning of the organization, and make sure everyone's comfortable, and generally annoy the heck out of people, we have been having "check-ins" to see how things are going. (This reminds me of Franklin's post about his miserable job training retreat thing..I felt guilty reading it even then, because I feared I was going to unintentionally inflict similar torture on folks myself within a few short weeks...)

Anyway, during one of these sessions I was recording people's suggestions & feedback on a big flip chart when several people exchanged glances & started giggling. Later it turned out that I had written "facilitators give heads" as one complete item. Nobody has any idea what I thought I was writing, although we did all agree that if the goal was to release tension and make everyone comfortable, perhaps the performance of sexual services by the facilitators woud be useful....

Yes, it's true, we're just a bunch of big geeks. Havin' a ball, wish you were here....

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P.S. Apparently while I've been out of touch the AFL split in two (!!) and the London cops shot the wrong guy in the head seven times. I guess they admit it was the wrong guy because they're Brits. I shudder to think what kind of bizarre and elaborate cover-up they'd have pulled in L.A.

why we love Beth

I stayed last night with Beth B from college (remember her, folks?) I gave her the update on everyone, showed her the photos of Alexa Sophia, etc. She lives with partner/person Enid in a pleasant apt in Oakland, on a high floor with hwf, high ceilings, lots of light and cross-breezes. Altogether very pleasant. (Minor exception: they're doing the low-carb thing, which is fine--I like greens & veggies & meat & stuff--but apparently I'm more of a carb addict than I knew, b/c right now I'd give an arm for a scone or bagel or anything bread-like!!!)

Anyway Beth saw that I'm stressed b/c I promised to write up an evaluation of the planning process for the socialist summer school that starts tomorrow. BUt I didn't write it yet. I also didn't do most of the required reading. I'm just so wiped out. I almost feel like not going -- "here, we put this thing together, you have fun, I'm going home." But I'm sure I'll have fun once I get there.

Anyway, just before heading out the door to work this morning, the last thing Beth said was, "and hey, if you're stressed about that eval, just think of this: forty people are coming to a conference, and it's going to happen, and that's in part because of you."

Definitely made my day.

It's funny how you're friends with people forever and just assume you're going to be friends, and don't think about it much--that's why old friendships are so comfortable, it's not a bad thing!--but every now & then you have these moments where you kinda go, oh yeah, that's why I picked you. :-)

I might be outta touch for a few days (then again I might blog compulsively, we'll see)...... have a nice week....

a great mystery

San Francisco has some of the best food in the world, as you may know from experience or remember from last year's gluttonous SF extravaganza.*

I'm not even out of the airport and I've already passed a bunch of mouthwatering international options—fast slow and in between—including dim sum and three (three!) different Japanese restaurants. I don't think there's any place in Madison that serves dim sum, and here they have it in the friggin' airport.

So why, why, why, I ask you—why are there a bunch of people eating at Burger King?

Not just any Burger King, but Burger King in the airport . Same thawed out crap, now available at twice the price!

Why???

Actually, don't answer that. I can't think of a single possible answer that doesn't depress the hell out of me.

Or would, if I weren't in SAN FRANCISCO!!! Yay! (not for long—most of my time here will be in Oakland—but it's still a thrill to be in a real city).

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*(Hey—those posts from last year are better than anything I've written in a while! What's wrong with me??? —don't answer that!)

a whole lotta hollerin'...

...going on at our place.*

"Hey Lovey, look at my blog!"
"OK!"

....

.....

.....

"Didja see my comment?"
"No, hold on!......hee hee that's terrible!"
"Ha! I know!"

....

.....

.....


"I posted another comment!"
"OK!"

....

.....

.....

"Did you see my response?"
"Where, on my blog or yours?"
"On mine!"
"OK, I'll go look....."

...and at the end of this exchange...

"This is so much better than just talking!"
"Yeah, definitely!"

Yes, we know we are completely insane.

But at least we're not like the people in that story (was it supposed to be Bill & Melissa Gates?) who go see the same movie in different cities and "sit together" via their cell phones. We actually do interact in person.

Although we won't for the next week and that is making me very, very sad. What's a week of socialist organizing in San Francisco—plus re-connecting with old college buddies and a couple of cousins—compared to sitting in the house with the rain dripping, hollering back & forth with Lovey?

It's slightly alarming to me that I'm not being sarcastic there, but really would much prefer to sit here in the house with Loopy—listening to the rain and watching our groggy dog (just back from the vet) circling about drooling & running into things—than do anything else in the universe.**

It's funny because I used to want to do nothing but travel. But I guess that was because I didn't feel "at home" anywhere in the world. Now I feel at home wherever Loopy is. Sappy but true.

I'll miss my Loveygirl. *sigh*

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*We were yelling back and forth from our respective offices where we were "working" at our respective computers.

**Notice how crucial the punctuation was in that sentence. I'm still not sure it doesn't say that Loopy and I are the ones who are circling about, drooling & running into things, but let me just assure you that we are not.

Chiming in

OK, now that comments onCharlie & the Chocolate Factory have been posted by Ang (loved it), Franklin (hated it), and Loopy (mostly just talked about Johnny Depp, so what else is new), I'll add my two cents (no spoilers). That's all I've got, tho, because the film just didn't get me too exercised, either pro or con.

Let me just preface this by saying that I know I have a reputation for taking things too seriously, being too easily offended, and getting too politically hyped up about movies (no, really?). So I really try to take myself with a grain of salt. But after Franklin pointed out the exaggeratedly stereotypical "sissy" men walking dogs, I felt slightly more justified (as Franklin is not one to over-react) in being really offended at the following.

Charlie is explaining how pictures get sent through the air to a TV set, and then says something like, "so if you can do that with a picture, why not with a big ol' chocolate bar?" and the TV turns on and it's Oprah. I was a bit taken aback but still trying not to over-react, but then the channel flips and it's a bunch of apes hopping around.

I spent the next ten minutes first trying to decide if that was some kind of coincidence, but that seems impossible with a guy as detail-oriented as Tim Burton, and then trying to figure out if Burton was just being out-and-out racist—is he actually equating Oprah, a chocolate bar, and a bunch of apes?—or if there was supposed to be some more subtle ironic edge there somehow.

But I decided, no, there's a limit to "subtle ironic edge" after which it just becomes out-and-out racist, regardless of the director's intentions.

It sometimes seems that people think that just saying/showing something "politically incorrect" is automatically funny. But that's no more automatically funny than a fart joke, and just as childish. And potentially far more damaging.

That last sentence strikes me as "hysterical liberal" sounding. But as I have to run just now, I'm gonna let it sit there and see what I think of it later.

Mush Mook

That does it. You're going on my blogroll. Nope, no arguing, that's how it's gonna be.

I can't promise to read faithfully (hell, I barely manage that on sites of people who've saved my life or married me or both), but I'll try.

Still grinning about the glass in the foot thing. Heh. You rock, as the youth say these days.

Foo-Foo deux

Thanks to Rie for the Little Bunny Foo-Foo link that she provided in recent comments. I had forgotten the rest of the song, but when I saw all the lyrics I remembered hearing them...from my sometimes-friend Caryn Scott, somewhere between second and fourth grade, in Campfire Girls.

Ah, the Campfire Girls...Thank goodness Mom ran that Campfire Girls club (not troop, that's our better-known competitors, the Girl Scouts), otherwise I never would have had ANY contact with "normal" girls my age & would have remained completely under-socialized.

I would've been like Olivia L., the girl Loopy & I babysat & took to see the first Shrek—she had never read any of the original fairy tales so she didn't get any of the jokes.

Heh—I probably woulda ended up living in the woods somewhere, all unkempt and not leaving the house for days....waitaminute...I am living in the—never mind.

Ahem, back to our topic! To Franklin, who commented that he has heard two random references to this song within a short time span, I think it can only mean one thing: the Good Fairy is coming to get you. My advice: refrain from boppin' any field mice, and wear something sparkly and fabulous that shows off those abs.

is that my mochi over there?

In China and Japan people talk about the rabbit in the moon (instead of the man in the moon). After I learned this, for some reason I always had an easier time seeing the rabbit than the man.

The key to seeing him, I think, is understanding that he's not just sitting there—he's pounding rice to make mochi (a process described as mochizuki, which also means "full moon," get it? ha ha).

Anyway, Loopy complains about not being able to see the rabbit, so for her and other rabbit-seeing-challenged folk, here he is:



In case you are hampered by a lack of clarity on what "pounding rice to make mochi" looks like, here's another visual aide:



And what do you make out of mochi when it's all pounded up? C'mon, you know this one... yummy snacks!



And that's all the procrastination we have time for this afternoon, boys & girls.

seldom asked questions...

while looking for a Tokyo subway map I came across this, which appears to be either a blog by people traveling/living in major cities, or a cleverly designed vehicle for ads for travelers, or both.

Here's the post that amused me (in its entirety, so you don't need to click the link & get the cookies yourself).

And about those porcelain statues with the giant testicles...

(yes, that was the title of the post)

There are a million questions we had about Japanese culture.

• Why do people slurp ramen?
  
• Who are the people on Japanese money?
  
• Why are there statues of racoon dogs* outside ramen shops and why do they always have giant testicles?
  
• When Japanese TV shows crime suspects, why are their handcuffs fuzzed out?
  
• Did the yogurt drink ‘Calpis’ get its name because it’s cow piss? (No.)
  
• And most importantly, why are there always Love Hotels near shrines?

The Japanese Seldom Asked Questions page answers all of these and more; amazing, really.

Japanese Seldom Asked Questions [Official Page]

On the same blog/site there's also a post about this story about how some relatives of Taiwanese men who were conscripted into the WWII Japanese army came to the Yasukuni Shrine (which honors war dead or something—it's associated with Japanese imperialism and until recently was very much frowned upon, but in keeping with the upsurge of fascism worldwide, its image has been a bit rehabilitated—ANYWAY!) to retrieve the souls of the conscripts and take them back to Taiwan. But a right-wing Japanese group wouldn't let them. So they went home without the souls.

Loopy was trying to tell me the other day that the culture probably isn't as different as I remember from an insecure age 15.

I actually think it might be more different, as I was a pretty oblivious kid in some ways.

But I'm happy to leave the jury out on that one til Loopy can decide for herself.

---

*Raccoon dog??? I always thought these animals (tanuki in Japanese) were badgers.

But it turns out that this animal is native only to East Asia, so it's not a badger or racoon or dog, it's just a tanuki (stuffed one at left). They play a role in Japanese folk lore, sort of a gentle trickster (as opposed to the fox, the cruel trickster). More on tanukis here.

Which leads me to another question: why does so much folklore worldwide seem to have tricksters in it? I don't like these stories at all, but apparently that puts me out of touch with most of humanity through most of history.

speaking of being a nature geek...

I know I should cut down that giant weed (daisy fleabane, pictured at right). It looks ridiculous—it's about 6 feet tall at the front of a flowerbed (with 2-foot things behind it), and worse, it's gone to seed and is cheerfully scattering itself everywhere.

I can't help it. Not only do I think the flowers are pretty, in a friendly and unassuming sort of way, but there is this amazing mass of insect activity all over it (that's what's supposed to happen when you have native plants in the garden—they interact with native insects).

There are spiderwebs all over, of course, just for starters. Then there are little teeny bee-like things that are everywhere on the flowers. I think they might be hoverflies (left), but I don't know. (Check out this page that is supposed to help you identify bees & bee-like insects in your garden: "What's buzzin' in my garden?," obviously created by a fellow nature geek as it includes pleas like "please protect these gentle, giant pollintors!" hee hee).

I definitely saw a species of tachynid fly (right), which is in my bug book under "beneficials" (it parasitizes garden-munchers like caterpillars); I've never seen one before. (You can read all about beneficial garden insects here).

There are all kinds of other critters, too, and even when I can see they're feeding on the plant, I am too intrigued to kill them—they are each so intricate and funny (like this guy (left)—looks just like a leaf, and so pretty and shiny, too). Besides, the plant's a weed, so what do I care if they eat it?

Anyway, the thing that was interesting enough to post about (at least to me; you don't have to read it—that's what I love about blogging!) was the gradual progress over the last two days of two ladybugs and one ladybug larva demolishing a large colony of aphids on the daisy fleabane. Slurp, slurp, yum.

	Above: like mother like daughter: ladybug larva and aphid prey

When I first saw all the aphids, I almost sprayed them (with ecologically correct soap spray, of course), but then I saw all the aphid carcasses on other stalks and the ladybugs closing in, so I left them alone.

I'm glad I did because this has been fascinating to watch... and so natural somehow. It feels good to let the ecosystem function unhindered.

If you want to play around with identifying your own backyard fauna, check out this page: Crawly Things (actually four linked pages of photos!)

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Of course, all this (the fact that all the plants fascinate me and I like to just watch what happens with the insects etc.) would also explain why the yard is utterly overrun with weeds, except right in the flower beds where I've made more of an effort (and have an easier time convincing myself of the necessity of weed destruction for the greater good).

You have to get the weeds early in the year and then the rest of the summer isn't so bad. But when you let them go for a month, whoa, it's completely out of control.

I've tried boiling water, I've tried pulling, but I can't keep up. The temptation to just spray 'em with Roundup(tm) is growing (why Roundup is evil - why its manufacturer Monsanto is evil). As is the fear that if I don't do something soon, Loopy will break out the anti-organic arsenal the moment my plane (to California) leaves the tarmac (next Thursday), and I'll return to a lifeless garden bereft not only of aphids but also of ladybugs, spiders, earthworms, and everything else that makes life worth living, or, in fact, makes life continue at all.

A perfectly controlled garden is dead: it's a perfect a manifestation of imperialism, patriarchy, capitalism and white supremacy, dammit!!!

Hey, it may not be crystal-clear logic, but at least it's a good excuse for not weeding.

*sigh*

for some reason this song has been stuck in my head

Who else has heard this song? Where did it come from? Was it on TV? Where did things come from before everything was on TV?

Little Bunny Foo-Foo, hoppin' through the forest
pickin' up the field mice & boppin' 'em on the head.

And along came the goooooood faaaaaairy. And she said....

"Little Bunny Foo-Foo, I don' wanna see you
pickin' up the field mice & boppin' 'em on the head."

That's all I remember.

Anyone else?

this weekend's activities

in the name of love

Apparently Madison's Pride thingy is Sunday. (What, June wasn't hot & sticky enough for ya?).

I sorta feel like I should go this year, what with being gay being controversial again and all that. Anyone else from these parts wanna go? (since of course Loopy is in prelim hell). Well, let me know.

Here's a web page with the schedule... note the rally at (sweltering) noon at the (shadeless) capitol.

Or we could go line dancin' with the Dairyland Cowboys and Cowgirls. I was gonna say something sarcastic here but hey, it could be fun. (In the spirit of being more open-minded and flexible).

There's also...

Prairie Fest 2005

...at the International Crane Foundation out near Baraboo. There'll be naturalists leading wetland/prairie walks, pointing out/explaining all the different species of coneflower and crane, etc. I'd love to do that. Seriously. The website says you can learn all about bats and meet a goshawk. (Yes, I'm a big nature geek, in case y'all didn't already know that).

But then there's that whole "sweltering" issue again. Are there even cranes here this time of year?

I can't decide. It feels like there's too much else to do (mainly preparing for two upcoming trips) to use both weekend days in frivolous pursuits... and as usual when I can't decide, I'll probably do neither. But if anyone's inspired by one or the other, and is willing to accompany me, let me know.

cute cute cute!!!

Nadine's baby Alexa, again. SO CUTE!!!!! (Chip's baby too, sorry).

When I'm done with this never-ending work for the socialist summer school (geek geek geek!) I'll post some more pix of my friends' & relatives' adorable children. Nobody else so obligingly puts the photos online, I have to do all the work. Phooey.

Of course, secretly I look forward to the reward of playing with all those fun photos. I just gotta crank this thing out.... yawwwwwwn.....

summertime.... or, the world in a peach

Breakfast: the best peach I ever ate, sliced with cottage cheese.

It's an organic "Elegant Lady" peach from our CSA box.

CSA of course stands for "community supported agriculture:" we pay up front for biweekly boxes of fruit, all summer long, and let me tell you, it's heaven.

As I savor the peach, I consider how the sense of connection to the farmer and to nature makes it even more pleasurable to eat. This peach has never seen the inside of a supermarket or even Brennan's...it came straight from the farmer, David Masumoto (left), to the fruit box guys in Minnesota (I can't remember their names but I've been reading their newsletters for three years), to me.

I know the names of the farmer's kids (Nikiko and Korio, above right—such elfin creatures!), I can visit his website, and in the newsletter I can even read his story:

My old peach orchard tells my family's stories. In the twisted trunks lay the history of my father who planted these trees more than thirty years ago. I recall helping him as the family lined up trees by sight, holding up a bare root tree, closing one eye and squinting the other...down a quarter mile row trying to keep the row straight. We weren't perfect nor fast, and for decades I've had to swing my tractor wide to avoid the crooked tree I must have planted. But planting five hundred trees by hand and trusting our vision seems to be a wonderfully human way to befin an orchard. We made mistakes and rationalized our efforts. Life in nture is not always straight.

Maybe if more people understood that they wouldn't have such a problem with queers. In the film "The Business of Fancydancing," the narrator (clearly semi-autobiographical representation of the author, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian) talks about telling his traditional grandmother he was gay. Paraphrased:

She tells him a story about how she once got a rooster that was gay. He was more beautiful than any rooster she'd ever seen, so she should have known, she reflects. Anyway, he wouldn't service the hens, just walked around looking beautiful. Finally she got another rooster so the damn hens would lay eggs, and whaddya know, the first rooster walks up to the new rooster and squats down in front of him to mate. "So then I knew he was gay, and I ate him," she concluded.

Although this is not exactly a happy ending (to me anyway), the narrator explains that this was her way of saying that she doesn't think there's anything unnatural about being gay. I wonder if, for someone who sees how the "same" corn plant or peach tree can come up in an infinite variety of shapes, it doesn't seem so odd to think that people come in all different varieties as well.

How did I get here from the peach? Ah yes. I was initially going to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh's description of "interbeing," that nothing is possible without everything else. He uses the example of the paper on which the reader is seeing his ideas. Without the tree and the logger and the processing plant and its workers, the paper would not exist; without the sun and the rain and the sky and the earth, the tree would not exist. It's all interconnected; every piece is necessary; everything needs everything else. Interbeing.

So. The world, but especially David Masumoto and his parents planting the orchard and children picking the peaches, and his tractor swinging round the crooked tree, and the earth of his farm and the California sun, and his grandmother too (whom he describes perfectly enjoying a summer peach—you can read the whole essay here, in his moving paean to food and farming and memory).... it all connects to me through one peach this morning, and I love it, and I love the summer.

I haven't been to town in days, well, two days. I love being out here, especially with Loopy, even though she's peeved at me at the moment, I still love just being near her all day, day after day, in the quiet house surrounded by all this beauty.

our backyard
(for real—note the composters at the bottom center of the frame)

I wish I could stay here forever.

better than TV

At this evening's socialist soiree, the following conversation took place between Allen, age 56, and Max, age 4. (Max is Shawnee & Joel's kid, for those of you who know them)(Allen's surprisingly great with kids, for those of you who know him).

Allen: Hey, Max, your face is all scratched—what happened?

Max: I got in a fight at daycare.

Allen: Uh-oh! With who?

Max: With Dylan.

Allen: Dylan, huh?

Max (sadly): Yeah. We had to leave the sandbox.

Allen: Ohhhh.

Max: Carl had to leave the sandbox too.

Allen: Why? Did Carl fight?

Max: No, Carl doesn't fight. He's a good boy.

Allen: Wait a minute, let me get this straight—Carl doesn't fight and that makes him a good boy. You do fight.... so what does that make you?

Max (in all seriousness & without missing a beat): Obi Wan Kenobi.

deja vu all over again...

...but smaller.

Like everyone else, of course, this reminds me of 9/11, but in terms of proportion, it feels more like a "normal" disaster—the plane crashes & hurricanes that we tut-tut over on a fairly regular basis. My question is, is that a good thing?

Initially I felt some eerie echoes, flashed back to shakily dialing my calling card number into pay phones all day (didn't I have a cell phone then? huh...), going down my list of New Yorkers, starting with those who worked in or next to the towers before calling people who had more likely been safe in Queens. When I couldn't reach people I started calling mutual friends in other states: "Have you heard anything from Suzanne? ...from Effie?...is David okay?..."

The first call I made that morning was to the home of a neighbor with whom I used to ride the subway to work, who worked at the top of the south tower. How do you leave a message for someone, when you don't know if they're giddily relieved or a grieving widow?

"Uh, I hope everything is, you know, okay—I mean, as okay as it could be, under the circumstances—and, uh, if it's, uh, not okay, uh, let us know if there's anything we can do, I mean, I'm not sure what but if there's anything, anyway, we're thinking of you..."

My hands didn't stop shaking for three days.

Of course, by the time we got the message back—

"We just got home from Maine; yours was the first message on the machine. It was so kind of you to call, and now that we're back in touch, do call again and let's catch up...."

—I had known for a while (thanks to the doorman) that her husband was safe, so at this from the wife, I just thought, "Call you back? Why? We hated each other."

Anyway, then is not now. 37 is not 3000, for one thing, and for another, Brits are not Americans. The passers-by on the "telly" seem remarkably unperturbed. Well, back in the day I guess the IRA bombed them all the time—maybe they're used to it.

On our end, this time, only two friends to reach, and the odds were a lot better that they were not hurt. I heard back from one quickly, and she seemed unperturbed ("Yep we're fine!"); the other reports that his friend was in the train ahead of one that was bombed, and that there was "panic this morning but everything seems to have settled down ok." On the BBC there's a "business continuity expert" who said that "we're getting better and better at this."

I watched "The Incredibles" again while walking on the treadmill and was almost surprised that this thing was still on the TV when I finished. Wolf Blitzer was questioning an eyewitness with what seemed (though I hesitate to accuse the esteemed newsman of this) voyeuristic curiosity: "Beyond 'lacerations,' can you describe some of the injuries you saw?" No, really, please don't. Ooh. Ugh. Was that really necessary?



So what does it mean—is this progress, if this seems almost normal, if "business continuity" is getting better and better? Or is it horrific callousness?

Rumsfeld was on after the lacerations, saying we are to "go about our business," because otherwise, you know, we'll be letting the terrorists win. If we accept that this is normal, are we letting the imperialists win?

Is there any choice about it?

What movie am I thinking of, where terrorist incidents are so ordinary that nobody bats an eye—is it "Brazil" or "1984"? Or both?

Sorry, nothing witty today. Hope you & yours are all okay.

not a good sign

When we were in Chicago I picked up the Windy City Times, which had a "youth" column that was, well, a bit strange.

The writer's topic was the mysterious interconnection between crushes, sex, and love. Essentially the point was something like this: when you get all nervous, scared and sweaty over the thought of saying "hello" to someone new, well, that's not love. That's just a crush. And, boys & girls, you shouldn't have sex unless you're really in love. (What the $*&%$# kind of puritan queer kids are we spawning here?)

Anyway, how do you know you're really in love?

Well, apparently, love is when you have been dating that person for a while, and they still make you all nervous, scared and sweaty ("heart pounding, throat closing, sweat pouring" was the exact phrase).

I didn't know whether to be more disturbed by the puritan attitude or the kid's idea of love. I kept meaning to write to the author to try to explain two things.

First of all, as Franklin told me a long time ago (in the Lowell House dining hall no less), "casual" sex is very nice, even if not quite as nice as sex with someone you love. (Some years later, when I determined that Franklin was right and the Catholic Church was wrong, I was stunned by the implications and became an atheist).

Second, if you are nervous, scared and sweaty around someone you have been dating for a while, you either have an anxiety disorder or an abusive relationship.

Diagnosis: too much Disney!!!

This is supposed to be the beginning of a mushy post about my own true love, but I'm going now to actually spend some actual time with the real-life version. More to follow tomorrow.

"The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common."

Last year on the 4th of July, Democracy Now broadcast a speech by Frederick Douglass which he delivered on this day in 1852. I don't know whose voice read the words, but it was genuinely thrilling to listen to it.

This year, rereading it was my only observance of this holiday (other than telling my dog to shut up and quit barking at the damn fireworks).

You can read the full text here and some good excerpts here.

Douglass's prose style is in itself a delight, even more sublime when combined with the content. He basically came right out & told the people who'd invited him to speak that they were "requiring a song of the captive," that they were asking him to speak in celebration when he saw little reason to celebrate liberty in a nation that still held so many in bondage.

His words seem particularly appropriate at a time when the bigwigs in this country—who undoubtedly marked the day with much pomp and ceremony and pontification on themes of "freedom" and "democracy"—are preparing for the G8 meeting in Scotland, where they will determine the fate of millions who have neither voice nor vote in the proceedings.

O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Isn't he fantastic? Can't you just hear him when he's really on a roll?

May we live to see a 4th of July when everyone in the world is genuinely independent of the imperial caprice of this land of "revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy."

What, to the slave, is your 4th of July?