Another Election Night Nail-Biter

UPDATED: just to add that if you're keeping score at home, we would really like No on 1 in Maine, Yes on 71 in Washington. The updates on the Maine numbers are showing no more than a couple hundred votes separating the yes and no sides at any given time.

Stuff is scrolling by on the Tucson TV, but I'm far more riveted by the neck-and-neck race in Maine between the leave-marriage-equality-well-enough-alone folks and the bigots. There's a liveblog on Pam's House Blend, which you can follow tonight if you're so inclined, or check in tomorrow for what I hope isn't a sad story. The numbers-in-progress are almost more of a roller coaster ride than I have the stomach for; I cannot imagine what it is like to be a gay couple in Maine tonight, waiting to find out if your fellow citizens have decided to take one of your civil rights away from you. Been there and done that, a year ago in Arizona.

Hyde Amendment Be Damned

Excuse me, Senate Finance Committee?

At issue is how far healthcare legislation should go to prevent insurance companies from offering abortion services to the millions of women who could get taxpayer subsidies to help them pay premiums.

Are abortion services legal in this country? Yes? They are? Then STFU. End of story.

No, Seriously

Really, Abdullah Abdullah. So the election in Afghanistan last month was rigged in a fairly blatant and amateurish fashion, and over the past few days we have (1) Karzai's runoff opponent Mr. Abdullah threatening to pull out if the same bunch of jokers that fixed the first election run the second, (2) Abdullah making good on his threat and quitting on Saturday, and yesterday (3) the US saying it's troublesome but we'll go ahead and fully support Karzai because polling indicates Abdullah would have lost anyway.

Meanwhile, Wali Karzai laughs all the way to the bank.

Is there a better solution here? If there is, it's escaping me at the moment. I spent part of my swine flu downtime finishing Ahmed Rashid's Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, a complicated, detailed, extremely bothersome account that explains why "graveyard of empires" barely scratches the surface. Pakistan's secret intelligence agency (ISI) has spent the past couple of decades propping up the Taliban, effectively making them the ISI's western franchise in Kabul, Kandahar, and Helmand, all while the military either turned a blind eye or flat-out lied about their involvement and Pervez Musharraf conducted the government's business with the sole aim of maintaining his hold on power.

Meanwhile, since the September 11 attacks the CIA has been paying off first the warlords of the now-defunct Northern Alliance and now the drug lords in the south, with the mission focus remaining always Arab-tied al Qaeda operatives rather than the guys who are poppy farmers today, Taliban fuckwits tomorrow, a-Q sympathizers the day after that, and then poppy farmers again when the local warlord makes a power grab. Oh, and we've thrown a few billion dollars at Pakistan, which has promptly turned around and handed most of that to their military, which has promptly funneled wads of it to the Taliban holding court in the Waziristans, and you can see where this is going.

Most of our UN partner nations have greatly limited their involvement in Afghanistan (Germany, for example, refused to conduct combat patrols after dark) while all of us have pretty much left infrastructure development and repair--the one thing everyone seems to agree would go the furthest toward weaning the populace away from the Taliban toward nonsectarian stability, and which represents the most efficient use of cash resources sent over there--to NGOs, most of which can no longer operate in-country because the Taliban kill them. The UN food program gave up years ago after too many food convoys were hijacked and the supplies stolen or simply burned. This in a country where only about 16 percent of the land is arable.

Tribal factionalism, ISI intervention, Indian intervention, Pakistani Taliban infiltration, an abysmal literacy rate, and seven years of US policy constructed by people with no Pushtu language skills, let alone even a rudimentary understanding of the dozens of cultural and political vectors crisscrossing the country, have fed on each other to create a damn near unwinnable situation.

Hahmid Karzai has been the target of at least three assassination attempts--the ones that have been publicized, anyway--since he's been in office, and now a good faction of his countrymen think he got his second five-year term by cheating his way there as a puppet of the Americans. And all we can do is shrug and say this is our guy? Good luck, Mr. President. I hope you've read Rashid's book. A little history might go a long way here.

Food, Football, Fighting Nausea: The New Sunday Routine is 67% Good

I learned an important lesson on Friday morning, at the horrid hour of 7 in the morning--not horrid on its face, but in the context of "at the gym," 7 sucks hard--and that would be that a month of zero physical activity means that Workout #1 is going to be near-lethal. I made it through half an hour of lunges, presses, crunches, and leg curls before collapsing onto the floor in a cold clammy puddle of defeated-person-trying-to-stay-conscious-and-not-puke.

A complicated cold clammy puddle, to be sure.

Thank god the trainer was a good sport about the whole thing, even running downstairs to fetch me a cup of Powerade on ice, and the other middle-aged old farts in the weight room wandered over to look down at me and cluck sympathetically. The rest of Friday and Saturday were devoted to trying to think about anything but the workout in order to avoid the resulting wave of nausea and cold sweat that accompanied the flashbacks. It was really a great experience.

Anyway. Today only brought a mild headache and queasy stomach--amateur shit at this point in the game--so the boy and I headed out on an expedition to find breakfast. Since our previous pacts to Do Something Together have fizzled due to uncooperative fish and inclement weather, we settled on keeping the adventure-seeking focused on new places to eat. This morning we hit on Shot in the Dark Cafe, located on Broadway just east of 6th in downtown Tucson. It's a typical downtown space, brick walls and exposed ceiling beams in a building that probably dates to the 1930s at the latest, soothingly worn down around the edges, mismatched sofas by the front window, flies circling languidly but never quite to the point of annoyance. I had something called the Cornucopia, which involves three eggs making intimate friends with several different vegetables while snuggling up against a pile of seasoned homefries and toast. Quite delightful. The boy got a bagel with smoked salmon, which is thoughtfully served with separate ramekins of cream cheese and capers, as well as thinly sliced tomatoes and onions and a lemon wedge. He inhaled it in roughly 45 seconds, so I assume it tasted good. The coffee is quality, and the Italian sodas are served in giant Imperial pint mugs. I would go back. It is homey, the people are friendly, and the menu is promising, so you should probably go too.

The rest of the day was spent watching football and listening to Fox color man Brian Billick offer new twists on the English language such as "put an explanation point on it." Tomorrow, back to the gym. What, me quit? Who do you think I am, Abdullah Abdullah or something?

Coming off the Bench

This has been the longest stint on the PUP list I've ever had, never mind the DL. 28 days of nothing requiring lung action beyond walking twenty feet at a time! Lungs are still a bit on the bubbly side, but after the month of respiratory crap following several months of limited lifting thanks to a bum shoulder and bum elbow (Aging: It Sucks), I am hobbling into the gym tomorrow afternoon and giving the trainer free rein to make me cry.

The fantasies of transforming back into the stud I was at 19 or even the approximation of an athlete I was a few years ago may remain safely in my head. Or, hell, maybe I'll get a step back or be able to return to outlifting at. I got spiffy new running shoes, anyway.

Day One. Comeback Day. Tomorrow. I'm stoked.

Commie Fascist Socialist Liberal Media Strikes Again

The AP sure has been interesting recently. The byline on this morning's above-the-fold shrieker isn't Ron Fournier's, but it might as well have been. Insurers' profits not as big as claimed, the headline intones, before tsking into this lede:

In the health-care debate, Democrats and their allies have gone after insurance companies as rapacious profiteers making "immoral" and "obscene" returns while "the bodies pile up."

Ledgers tell a different reality. Health insurance profit margins typically run about 6 percent, give or take a percentage point or two. That's anemic compared with other forms of insurance and a broad array of industries, even some beleaguered ones.

Aren't the multiple scare quotes a nice "touch?" Because the Democrats are just being hysterical about the eeeeeeeevil insurance companies. Why, health insurance companies posted an average profit margin of only 2.2 percent last year! Which is only good for 35th place on the Fortune 500 list of top industries! So why are Democrats whining about how much money Cigna rakes in when its credit rating is tanking, and health insurance in general is outperformed by Tupperware and Coors?

After mulling the question for perhaps two seconds--hey, the bright and shiny objects in my office distracted me for a while there--I came up with two reasons for not shedding tears over my insurer profiting less than Clorox. Number one, I don't really need Clorox on a regular basis, much less Tupperware and Christ on an ignored hop-plant, Coors. My bleaching and food storage and beer needs are met, wonder of wonders, by the company whose product is on sale this week, and if things are tight it's not much of a problem to do without for a while, or improvise something on my own, or borrow from a friend.

My healthcare needs, on the other hand, can't exactly be put off, and, as the past 27 goddamn days have illustrated in a big way, can't be shopped around--Boltgirl is not made of money--or nicked from my neighbor's pantry. Don't get me wrong; I'm very grateful that I have insurance and that it only sets me back about twenty bucks out of every paycheck, plus about $150 out of pocket for the flu-related doctor visits and prescriptions. But if my plan sucked? Good luck finding a similar level of coverage in an individual plan for the same costs. I wouldn't be able to; that's what pooled risk is all about.

Speaking of being made of money, number two looks something like this.

Company and CEO's 2008 Total Compensation:
Aetna $24.3M
Cigna $12.2M (a 50 % drop from 2007! oh noes)
WellPoint $9.8M
Coventry Health Care $9.0M
Centene $8.8M
AMERIGROUP $5.3M
Humana $4.8M
Health Net $4.4M
Universal American $3.5M
UnitedHealthGroup $3.2M (although "in May 2006, the amount of Hemsley's supplemental retirement benefit was frozen based on his current age and average base salary and converted into a lump sum of $10,703,229.")

Another list that breaks the numbers down into base salary, stock options, and cash bonuses is available here. So from the perspective of obscene piles of cash being thrown at executives who may or may not have "earned" it, depending on your definition of "earn," the health insurance industry isn't necessarily much more or less revolting than, say, any investment bank still in business.

But a lot of people--Democrats and their allies included--see the compensation as "obscene" when cash bonuses representing five, seven, ten times a million-dollar base salary are funded by annual rate increases on the order of 20 percent. This isn't a cable TV or high-speed internet level of luxury item we're talking about here. It's the ability to go to the doctor when you're sick, or, better yet, before you're sick, for preventative care. It's the ability to, oh, say, not die from a preventable condition or treatable-when-caught-early disease. It's an industry that we're beholden to with little choice in provider (well, those of us not, as mentioned before, made of money), so when those providers rake in the cash, yeah, "rapacious profiteer" isn't a bad term at all.

Thanks for reminding us that it's all about the bottom line, AP.

Public Service Announcement

Even if the president hadn't declared H1N1 a national emergency, it is definitely a household-level emergency, and that should be enough to get your attention. You don't want to get this friggin' virus; you probably won't die--although about a thousand people have, sorry for their families--but you will lose anywhere from a few days to a month of your life to lying on the couch in too much of a daze to read or follow TV scenarios more complicated than Dancing with the Stars.

Get the vaccination if you can, and until then wash your hands, don't touch your face, and make every day your personal Beat the Record Day when it comes to ingesting immune-boosting foods like sweet potatoes, oranges, and green tea. And drink lots of water.

Seriously, be at least somewhat vigilant for a while, even if you normally don't get the seasonal flu. I don't usually get it, or if I do it doesn't last long. But this bug knocked me on my ass for a month and I don't like that one bit. Who am I and what am I doing? And do my lungs still work? I get to figure all that out today.

A Mystery for Our Time

My fairly lofty opinion of McClatchy Newspapers may need to be dialed back a notch or two after this lede this morning:

MERCED, Calif. — Nobody can say why the Virgin of Guadalupe would appear on a hunk of rock formed millions of years before the birth of Jesus.

But David Nunez says the image is unmistakable — a bluish-black stain on the football-sized rock outlines what looks like the Holy Mother.

Friends have called it a miracle.

Really? Nobody can say? It seems like somebody could say, though, and it turns out a couple of people actually can, so thank Mary-in-a-rock the reporter decided to ask them. One is a priest, and the other is a geologist. What does the priest think?

"People see what they want to see," said [the Rev. Harvey] Fonseca, who hasn't examined the rock.

Well then. Scientist?

[Rob] Rogers, the geologist, said he couldn't see the image in the e-mailed photos of the rock. "I must lack imagination," he said.

And science lives to fight another day.

Personally, I think it looks like a giant Cretaceous almond. You know, the kind of big ol' nut T. rex was given those pointy teeth to crack open before Eve ate the apple and brought planet-wide veganism to a crashing halt. Can't you see the long gougy toothmarks? Does that make it a slightly cooler miracle? I think so.

A Marriage Parable for Our Time

Keith Bardwell is a justice of the peace in a state where, despite contentious debate and strong public sentiment opposing such pairings, a formerly banned type of marriage is now legal. He recently refused to issue a marriage license to a local couple, the law be damned, citing concerns for any children the couple might wish to raise and his certainty that their kinds of marriages don't last. In fact, he's done this four times in the past two and a half years.

Sigh. We've heard this plenty of times in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and California, haven't we?

Except that we haven't. The couple in question is straight and male-female, and the state in question is Louisiana. So what about these two people triggered JP Bardwell's won't-someone-think-of-the-children lobe, with a touch of you-people-can't-stay-married palsy? Oh. The woman is white. The man is black. And no way in hell are they getting married under Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell's watch.

But don't get the wrong idea about Bardwell! He's not a racist! Look, he says so himself:

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

See? He has piles of black friends! He even lets them use his bathroom! How can you call him racist?

Bardwell clarified that conversations with both black and white people, and his own observations, have led him to conclude that mixed-race children aren't accepted by either blacks or whites. And that their parents don't stay married for long. The only thing lacking in his argument is the citation of the passages from Leviticus forbidding interracial marriage; otherwise, it's a spot-on simulation of arguments we've heard from other people--including, sadly, county clerks and other people whose job descriptions include "issue marriage licenses to qualified couples"--who rail against gay folk seeking marriage equality.

Hey, I have gay friends. I just don't want them to be allowed to get married because gays screw everything that moves so they'd probably just get divorced anyway and oh dear god people will make fun of their kids.

Beth Humphrey and Terence McKay, the most recent couple to be denied by Bardwell, plan to file a discrimination suit. I suspect the repercussions will be very, very interesting should the court find that perceptions about a certain class of people's ability to form lasting pair-bonds, and predictions about society's treatment of any children they might raise, have no bearing on those people's rights to enter into a marriage contract. I only wish Bardwell had tossed in a religious objection as well, but we can't have everything.

Do You Need Another Reason to Love Bao?

Not that you really do need another reason to love steamed buns, but if you do, here are three: (1) they dance, (2) they bust wicked nunchuk moves, and (3) they are adorable when they do it.

Dragon Fist from sun haipeng on Vimeo.

(via Serious Eats)

Love!

Boltgirl Hearts Al Franken

Al Franken had me way back in the late eighties the first time I saw him do his draw-the-US-map-freehand trick on SNL. He got me again today in a big way.

Rookie Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) passed an amendment to a defense bill this week that would withhold government contracts from organizations like KBR if they restrict employees from taking rape and sexual assault cases to court.

Sadly, but unsurprisingly, 30--thirty--Republicans voted in favor of gang-raping contractors. Do I need to point out that my two illustrious senators are among them? Stay classy, Jon Kyl and John Fucking McCain. Happily, they lost. Suck it, Halliburton!

What Brings Me out of my Flu Hibernation? Ok-La-Homa!

As I tossed around in bed this morning trying to weigh the relative merits of actually getting up against the vertigo and pounding in my head as the last remaining flu viruses sprint circles around my tired and cramping white blood cells, my thoughts stumbled onto a long-slumbering memory of a musical my grandparents wrote back in the 1970s. Zuh? Yes. My grandparents were career high school music teachers and leaders in a surprisingly vibrant community arts movement in our small southern Illinois hometown, and after decades of directing teenagers in sophisticated productions of other people's music and books, they decided to give writing a shot themselves and turned out something called Mississippi!

That's all I remember about it, and I spent a good many minutes wondering why in the fuck they chose that state. Granted, Oklahoma! was already taken, but Jesus on stage left, Mississippi? Because fewer complete sentences or multisyllabic words would be required? I do not know. I recall seeing sheet music strewn across the kitchen table, and possibly some promotional posters. The community college may have staged the production. Couldn't tell you.

Anyway, Mississippi! naturally leads to Oklahoma! and, coincidentally, my friend who points out all the good stuff I miss--and I have missed everything over the past 11 days--sent me a link to this bit of comedy coming out of Oklahoma, which unfortunately I cannot chalk up to music directors with their sights set on off-off-off Broadway:

A new Oklahoma law requires physicians to disclose detailed information on women's abortions to the State's Department Of Health, which will then post the collected data on a public website. The controversial measure comes into effect on November 1 and will cost $281,285 to implement, $256,285 each subsequent year to maintain.

Well, that's interesting. And expensive. What public good, exactly, does this achieve? Oh, but of course. It serves exactly the same purpose served by my (other, non-musical) grandmother's police scanner. It gives people something to gossip about and essentially serves as state-formalized fuel for informal social sanctions that will frighten some of the remaining women unbowed by 24-hour waiting periods, long drives, and crowds of shrieking protesters calling them murdering hell demons away from seeking abortions.

Police-scanner grandmother would sometimes take me to the schoolyard on Saturday afternoons, when I would scamper around and play and she would sit in a swing facing the school cafeteria. I didn't think much about it until my grandfather asked her, so, watching to see who comes out of the AA meeting today? The Oklahoma law will let anyone with internet access sit in a swing outside all the clinics in the state at once. Sure, no names will be attached to the data, but if small-town Oklahoma is anything like small-town Illinois, the legions of biddies will have a field day matching age, marital status, education, and nature of the relationship with the father to women they just didn't see around town on a specific date.

One of the legislators sponsoring the bill calls it "common-sense legislation," apparently so common-sense that his statement doesn't require any further explanation. I remain unconvinced; fortunately, so do a lot of other people with standing to file a suit that would block its implementation. Stay tuned for the future of state-sanctioned slut-shaming in the Dust Bowl.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/08/oklahoma-abortion-law-det_n_313779.html

H1N1, Day Bazillion

Slightly only more disturbing than this fucking bug's ability to sap my energy is its ability to sap my cognitive processes. I have not watched Maddow for a week. A week! I tried, but anything requiring concentrated thinking for more than ten seconds or ten consecutive words is pretty much a no-go. I can skim Jezebel, but can't read Greenwald. Crosswords marginally okay, Ahmed Rashid definitely not.

It's heartbreaking. Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink. I have nothing but time and piles of books on my hands, and no faculties to do anything with either of those treasures.

The world continues spinning on out there. I hope to catch up again soon.

Swine Flu, Day Seven

Bleary eyes and a gouge on my nose between them I don't quite recall incurring. Football on TV. Food not exactly sounding good.

All in all, a Sunday pretty much like every Sunday when I was an undergrad, but for completely un-fun reasons, and no suicide wings from Buffalo Joe's to soothe my soul.

The Last Word

No, not from me, since I can barely get the first word pounded out here over the roar of clogged sinuses, plugged ears, a raggedy throat, and a chest that protests at being asked to expand any more than absolutely necessary to let in any of that... ah, yes, oxygen. Instead, the last word for today comes from Katha Pollitt, injecting all the reason you need into the insane why-are-we-even-having-this-debate debate over whether drugging and anally raping a child should matter if you're, like, a really artsy filmmaker.

It's enraging that literary superstars who go on and on about human dignity, and human rights, and even women's rights (at least when the women are Muslim) either don't see what Polanski did as rape, or don't care, because he is, after all, Polanski--an artist like themselves. That some of his defenders are women is particularly disappointing. Don't they see how they are signing on to arguments that blame the victim, minimize rape, and bend over backwards to exonerate the perpetrator? Error of youth, might have mistaken her age, teen slut, stage mother--is that what we want people to think when middle-aged men prey on ninth-graders?

'Nuff said.

Flublogging Update

Blah!

So much in the news, some of it even penetrating my foggy, foggy brain. The biggest good news out of Arizona is a judge blocking the stupidest provisions of the new abortion-restricting law passed earlier this month. More analysis tomorrow, possibly, but for now you can rest easy knowing that the mandatory double clinic visit bracketing a 24-hour waiting period has been kiboshed, along with the execrable conscience clause that not only would have allowed pharmacists to refuse emergency contraception to rape victims, but also would have exempted doctors from any participation in an abortion, even when "participation in an abortion" is construed to cover "telling women that abortion is actually still a legal option in this country."

The stupidest news out of Arizona has been that Trent Franks guy calling Obama a threat to humanity; Rep. Franks clarified yesterday that he meant Obama is a threat to "unborn humanity," so thank goodness that's all cleared up.

In Arizona flu news, my nurse parents report that Flagstaff Medical Center is completely full, and also that the waiting room is helpfully not sequestering flu patients from non-flu patients, thus ensuring both (1) that everyone will eventually be a flu patient and (2) the cash-strapped hospital's revenue stream should be perking up substantially in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, I continue to cough and whimper.

Boltblah: Adventures in Seasonal Afflictions

It's just the dust, I kept telling myself this morning, just the several cubic yards of dust I inhaled while cleaning up my grandparents' trailer in Mesa yesterday in 107-degree heat in preparation for their overwintering arrival. Uh huh. That lasted a couple of hours--I'm very stubborn these days--but I finally succumbed to the reality that not even the collective conservative jetsam of several billion dead skin cells blowing off of old Midwestern folks and several thousand young Mesa Mormons is a likely explanation for the knot in my lungs and accompanying crappy cough and body aches.

Now "collective conservative" is sending me into fits of dissonant giggles, which is another telling sign that all is not as it should be, healthwise.

So I fled the office for home with a stack of papers I really should be reading, but focusing is a little hard at the moment. Focusing is hard? A distant bell is ringing through the fog. Oh yeah. Last week we had dinner at Bangkok Cafe (sweet thoon tong Jesus, YUM) and sat next to a table whose undergraduate occupants moaned about how hard it is to focus because of (1) 8:00 classes, (2) pre-lunch classes, (3) post-lunch classes, and (4) stupid people in English 101. Yes, child, I'm feelin' ya on that one.

Jon Kyl: Meet Your GOP Representation, Arizona

How nice for you, Senator Kyl. I am elated to learn that you have never needed maternity care, since that would imply just a touch of intersexability, and lord knows that level of cognitive dissonance might make your delicate head explode. I wonder, though, how your wife managed to pay for her two bouts of prenatal care/delivery, or who paid to shepherd your four grandchildren through embryoship and fetushood and into the wide world. Then again, that's apparently not your problem; those harlots got themselves knocked up, so why should you have to worry about it? Or, even worse, pay for it? Seriously, you donated the sperm! What else do these freeloaders want?

I do wish Senator Stabenow had come back with a little more current rejoinder than "your mom probably did." Something along the lines of "I don't need ED coverage, but my premiums help pay for yours" might have been a little refreshing.

I also don't need a prostate exam and will never be at risk for testicular cancer, but--as long as my company policy also covers things like well-woman exams and contraception--I don't mind knowing I'm chipping in to help keep the guys around me healthy. Because, unlike Senator Kyl and the brain-dead Maricopa County voters who keep putting him in office, I understand that paying out a little for things that don't benefit me directly but are still necessary for the nation to keep humming along is part of the deal when you live in a society that falls anywhere on the continuum past bands of hunter-gatherers. And, frankly, those guys probably understood that a little extra effort on their parts to keep everyone in the band fed, clothed, and sheltered upped their own chances for surviving another season.

More Fun Nicked from Elsewhere

Curse these complicated reports with five zillion data tables. While I'm busy, go look at these:

The Weekend in Sports

The Cubs have suspended Milton Bradley for the rest of the season and may be looking to unload him. At this point, just eating the two years remaining on his contract would be worth it if it gets him out of Chicago. They dumped Mark DeRosa to pick up this guy, and then had the temerity to act baffled when he refused to play nicely with his teammates, the fans at Wrigley, and greater Chicagoland. Bradley's been clubhouse poison basically forever. How this knowledge escaped Jim Hendry until it was too late is a mystery to me.

In football news, the Irish escaped a fiftieth or something consecutive home loss to Michigan State on the whisker of two dropped balls by the Spartans and Kyle McCarthy hanging on to an interception at the Notre Dame 10. And top receiver Michael Floyd is lost for the year to a broken collarbone. Maybe this was the wrong year to keep Goliath-slaying Washington on the schedule?

Finally, the Washington Freedom's Jo Lohman and Becca Moros are spending part of the WPS off-season playing in Japan. They're blogging about it, and they're adorable.

The Week in Medicine

Hrrrraaaarrrgghgghghhmmmm.

That is the approximate sound going on in my head and quite possibly out loud every time I try to move my arm.

Yesterday brought another punch to my orthopedic bingo card. I already have both knees and a shoulder, so with the free spot in the middle, my new blot on "right elbow" has me thisclose to bingo and, possibly, a free arthroscopy or whatever surgeons give away when you complete a line.

Hmm, he said. If ice and a band and anti-inflammatories aren't doing anything for your tendonitis, you're going to need a shot, and it's gonna hurt. Fine, I said, it can't hurt any more than it already does. Uh huh. I should have known I was in for it when he brought in a canister I usually associate with freezing weird shit off of sun-damaged skin. I'm going to freeze your arm, he said, but it's still going to hurt. Go for it. Seriously. Bring it.

Okay, magic freeze spray applied, needle in, no problem. Now the burn, he said. No problem, I thought for the splittest of seconds, since I'd already had this done in a knee once and shoulder twice. Now the burn? Burn, my ass. More like now the 300-pound guy leaning with all his weight on a red-hot giant nail jabbing directly into your ulnar epiphysis. Hrrrraaaarrrgghgghghhmmmm, I said. Sorry, he said, you're going to be cursing me tonight.

He was off by about twelve hours. Last night it felt great. Then I woke up this morning swearing bones were grinding together every time I moved. A friend joined me at Home Depot. You're radiating pain, she said. At home she rigged a sling with an ace bandage and left me staring at football in deep amazement at the difference suddenly being able to breathe again made.

Of course, two hours later it hurt even more for not having moved in, well, two hours. Now I'm clutching frozen peas and wondering why this seemed like a good idea. He said it would take a couple of days for it to feel better and get back to the weight room. Wow. Considering I am yelping every time I move, that seems optimistic. Jesus. This is what I get for trying to keep up with my steroid-and-other-supplements-addled brother. I am too old for this shit.

Calling Cafe Press

Contemplating putting this on a t-shirt. Found on Joe.My.God, who nicked it from Dan Savage. When they get serious about protecting the sanctity of biblically defined marriage--with the prescribed stones, at the village gate--I'll get serious about thinking about not defiling it by wishing to participate in it.

If You Miss the Train I'm on, You Will Know that I am Gone

Mary Travers died yesterday, taking my earliest musical memories with her. You can hear the whistle blow a hundred miles...

God Perhaps Sees Error of His Ways after that Last Fiasco, Scales Back Next Divine Executive Appointment to State Level

God's Own Archangel Jan.

Aaaaaaand here we go again with the chosen one. No, not the "Chosen One" tag derisively hung on Barack Obama by detractors who think he's the Antichrist, but Jan Brewer's actual belief that God got distracted from the pennant race long enough to reach down into Arizona to pluck her from the obscurity of the lieutenant governorship and install her as the our ruler. Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Gov. Jan Brewer said Wednesday that she believes "God has placed me in this powerful position of Arizona's governor to help guide our state through the difficulty that we are currently facing."

Delightful, but harmless, no? I mean, as long it's limited to delusions of grandeur and doesn't intrude on state business, no big deal. Because it doesn't, right?

Brewer detailed to a group of pastors of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church how she relies on her faith and in prayer to deal with many of the issues she faces as the state's chief executive. Brewer also said there are times when, during a meeting with staffers, one will suggest praying about an issue.

"And we stop, and we take that time, and we pray about it," Brewer, a Missouri Synod-Lutheran herself, told the group meeting here. "And it does make a difference."

Oh. Uh.

Brewer goes on to assure us that she recognizes the dangers in tying personal religious beliefs too intimately to the business of governing, or, as she puts it, the belief that "we can convert God's truth into a political platform, a set of political issues, and that there is 'God's way' in our politics. I don't believe that for a moment." Okay, fair enough, and can I just get a whew from the non-Missouri Synod congregation on that one? Unfortunately, she follows it up with this little gem:

Brewer, in response to audience questions, said she has been "blessed because so many people of great faith" have helped her with their prayers.

"And that has caused me, of course, to be grateful that we are a country of Christianity," she said.

"I don't think under the circumstances that anybody's in the position of living at this turbulent time, these terrible, critical times of our nation, can possibly get through without asking for help and guidance from Jesus Christ and from God," the governor told the ministers.

Granted, she was speaking to a group of Lutheran ministers, not giving a State of the State address. But. Please. It wasn't exactly a whisper in the confessional, even if Lutherans had such things, which they don't. They did have reporters with microphones, and despite that, in one fell swoop Brewer simultaneously promulgated the "Christian nation" falsehood and pooh-poohed everything falling outside the box labeled "Christianity." After quite openly proclaiming that state business is regularly guided by a Christian prayer circle.

The former governor, now HHS chief Janet Napolitano, was an observant Methodist who nonetheless elevated secular notions of civil rights above theology and managed to keep the rabidly conservative state legislature at bay. Now God's Own Jan, about whom exactly zero rumors of lesbianism have swirled, has set the governor's office on a Godly and explicitly Christian path. And her greatest hits to date include signing into law a bill that severely restricts reproductive freedom (see yesterday's post) and eliminating benefits for the domestic partners of state employees, which affects a few disabled adult dependents but overwhelmingly targets fornicatin' straight couples livin' in sin and, of course, the gays. And the kids of all the people involved.

But don't worry; there's one realm Brewer not only keeps her religion's teaching firmly out of, but also claims to not even know what that teaching might be.

Brewer, facing a question about illegal immigration, said she does not know the stance of her church. But she said her views are governed by her elected position.

"As the governor of Arizona, I stand on the law that they're illegal, they ought not to be here," she said.

Seriously, what were you expecting?

Welcome to Arizona. Hope you brought your cross.

In Which the Nine-Twelvers Explain It All for You.

Whooo-eeee. Nicked from AmericaBlog.

Arizona Legislature Notices Janet Napolitano is no Longer Governor, Crams Every Previously Vetoed Abortion Restriction into Single Law

The new Arizona law that massively restricts access to abortion and emergency contraception is scheduled to kick in at the end of this month. The first lawsuits were filed yesterday. Most of the provisions were included in bills vetoed at least once by former governor Janet Napolitano, although at least one rather audacious restriction was tossed in for good measure, just because they can.

Among other things, the new law includes a provision that prohibits nurse practitioners from performing abortions, a move expected to shrink services in Southern Arizona to a level at which women will be forced to go to Phoenix for the procedure, said Patti Caldwell, the chief operating officer of Planned Parenthood Arizona. It also allows health-care and pharmacy employees to refuse to take part in any way in abortions or to fill related prescriptions if they have moral or religious objections. [...]

Other provisions of the new law require that minors provide notarized parental consent for an abortion and that a woman make a face-to-face visit with the abortion provider within 24 hours before the procedure or emergency contraception such as the "morning-after pill" can be prescribed.

That last bit is the one that made me choke on my Kashi this morning. A mandatory 24-hour waiting period before EC can be prescribed? When it's a nonprescription medication? Hmm. Nancy Barto says "expanding the law to cover the morning-after pill simply updates existing laws covering abortions," cheerfully continuing to falsely conflate emergency contraception with abortion, which it most assuredly is not. A reading of the text of the House bill suggests the Daily Star got the bit wrong about a waiting period before acquiring EC, since there is no mention of it either there or in the Senate version (although the conscience clause exemption specific to pharmacists not wanting to hand it over still stands). But hang on, there's still more than enough bullshit to go around.

Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, the legislation's sponsor, said all the provisions are good policy to protect the health of women as well as being legally sound. Barto defended the 24-hour waiting period — and specifically the requirement for face-to-face counseling — rather than allowing a woman to get the information over the phone and avoid having to make a second trip.

"This ensures that they get the information that they need and the attention that they get for their own health," she said.

Because lord knows the primary societal effect of the Information Age has been limiting the delivery and comprehension of information to face-to-face interactions. Phone? Internet? It's a wonder people can even order a pizza any more with the intervention of these confounded electrical instruments, much less raise the local constabulary! But wait! It gets even better, where "better" means "completely assfucked sideways with a chainsaw and no lube."

The requirement, however, does not stop there. The law says certain information can be given to women only by the physician who will perform the abortion and not a nurse or other staffer.

Shade your eyes. This one really requires shouting. Because LORD KNOWS THE ONLY DOCTOR CURRENTLY PROVIDING ABORTION SERVICES IN ALL OF SOUTHERN FUCKING ARIZONA FOR PLANNED PARENTHOOD HAS NOTHING BETTER TO DO WITH A 16-HOUR DAY THAN HOLD FACE-TO-FACE COUNSELING SESSIONS. Can Cathi Herrod, chief harpy of the Center for Arizona Policy, clear this up for us? Of course she can.

"Finally, Arizona is taking care of the needs of women facing the abortion decision, as well as parents and health-care professionals," said Cathi Herrod, president of the Center for Arizona Policy, which lobbied for the legislation.

Finally. Up, down. Black, white. Charlie Weis, football genius. Arizona, taking care of women's needs. How nice to be taken care of like this. Throw enough roadblocks up between a woman and one of her options in "the abortion decision" and the decision pretty much makes itself for her, doesn't it? Which, unfortunately, is exactly the point.

The hearing on Planned Parenthood's requested injunction is scheduled for next week. Can you feel the optimism from BoltCorner? Me neither.

Sunday Rumbling

My girlfriend has the uncanny knack of knowing just when to offer to make me a gin and tonic, which she always makes superbly. I find this almost unbearably romantic. Maybe it's the two lime twists. Maybe it's the crisp bite of fizzy tonic and cool Bombay cutting through the last wisps of monsoon humidity. Whatever the source, I love it.

The weekend in sports turned out to be an exercise in suck--thank you, Charlie Weis, for the massive reality check you provided yesterday in the Big House, and I'm not even going to talk about USC--with the sole exception of Northwestern somehow finding a way to beat Eastern (Western? one of the directions) Michigan and, possibly, Arizona's less-than-inspiring slide past Northern Arizona.

I guess I need, at some point, to deal with the small teabagging confab in Washington (two million? sixty thousand? eleventy squillion? who knows?) and the newly established but inevitable alliance between the Nobamans and the John Galt wannabees. That is not going to happen tonight.

Actually, here. This does the job reasonably well.

Ah, romance!

In Which We Have One Question

Where were these people when the previous administration was burning through a billion bucks every few days in Iraq?

Doubtlessly, in the Halliburton parking lot protesting private contractors being paid to do jobs formerly entrusted to the military at rates of at least three times military pay with no UCMJ rules to get in the way of, oh, compromising the mission. Doubtlessly!

Sportsweek in Review

Busy week, sports fans. We started with Notre Dame walloping the mighty, mighty Wolfpack of Nevada, who managed to make Jimmy Clausen look like the second coming of, well, the Jimmy Clausen who was last seen spanking Hawaii in the Coconut Bowl last holiday season. This week sees Jimmy lead the Irish to the Big House against the guys with the six-note fight song and little wings on their helmets. ND is a 3-point favorite. I say, MICHAEL FLOYD, and that translates to a 14-point Irish win. You read it here first.

Moving from throwball to kickball, the US men's national team snoozed through an actually fairly important World Cup qualifier against Trinidad 'n' Tobago and managed to pull out a one-goal win for a crucial three points. Seriously, Clint Dempsey? I was worried about Clint the last couple games because his more-hangdog-than-usual expression, coupled with his lassitude on the field, made me fear he was suffering from clinical depression and needed some serious help. Then I realized it's just that he pouts and doesn't bother running when Bob Bradley makes him play midfield, and only puts out what qualifies as "effort" when he's up top. Wow. I thought that kind of crap was limited to recreational leagues, and lord knows I've played with enough people who pull that to wonder how his teammates manage to not kick him in the nuts. Or why Bradley wastes a spot on him at all. I want Stuart Holden, dammit! Boy's young, but he run his ass off no matter what. No matter who starts in the midfield against Honduras, the entire side needs to remember how to possess AND move off the ball, and maybe show just a glimmer of intensity, as if, oh, the World Cup were at stake or something. You! Read! It! Here!

For contrast, have a look at the Slovakia-Northern Ireland game FSC keeps replaying. There's 90 minutes of passion and creativity and full-speed running for you, plus the requisite testicular injury for comic effect. Look out for the Slovaks, especially Vladomir Weiss. Tricksy!

Finally, the England women made it to the final of the UEFA championship for the first time in forever, but got wiped by a German team that hasn't lost a game in this tournament since 1999. England did manage to fight back for two goals and probably wins whatever metallic boot is awaded the most improved team over the past few years. Think the WPS has helped that national side? I do. They'll be an interesting team to watch. Kelly Smith. Sigh.

Go Irish!

Somebody's Mama Fell Down on the Job

And I don't mean Obama's.



Stay classy, jerks.

The Personality Cult of Dear Leader

No, not him. The other guy, who came before him. Thank god Glenn Greenwald is around to do the heavy lifting on a day when I have a headache and a deadline.

I'm always amazed -- even though I know I shouldn't be -- at people's capacity simply to block out events, literally refuse to acknowledge them, when they are inconsistent with their desire to believe things.

Just click over to Salon and read, and weep, and then print it out and roll it up into a tube for whacking upside the head the next person you hear muttering about how creepy it is that President Obama would dare tell your kids to pay attention in school and do their homework.

In other news, there's a good chance Obama ate breakfast this morning, which is exactly what Kim Jong-Il does every morning himself, and which Mao and Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin and Charles Manson were rumored to do as well. Eeeeeeeevil!

But of Course

Obama school talk stirs furor
Planned TV speech next week is decried as 'creepy' attempt to brainwash students

Wait, that's not quite histrionic enough; let's do it up like the Daily Star's front page this morning:

There, that's more like it. [headdesk] [facepalm] [heavydrinking]

Wow, so somebody who knows about these things is calling Tuesday's planned stay-in-school speech brainwashing! Maybe a retired PsyOps commander or high-level CIA spook? I mean, it was in the headline, so it must at least be a psychologist or childhood development specialist, right? Oh.

Trent Humphries, a 36-year-old computer consultant who counts himself among the Tea Party members, blames the controversy on the president himself...

"If he were going to a school to speak, that would be a different issue, but to speak to all children in America without their parents present, I don't know," he said, describing it as "creepy" and saying parents should be included in conversations about staying in school.

A Teabagger dad thinks it's creepy. Well then. That settles that. And Obama thinks he can just beam into a first-grade classroom and talk about the highly controversial topic of staying in school without asking parents who send their kids to school about that? The nerve of that man. What's next? A lecture on regular flossing and eating vegetables? That's a topic for parents to present to their children only as they see fit! The unbridled hubris! Thanks for alerting us, Daily Star!

Some parents apparently see the address as a campaign speech to a captive audience. Fair enough. Others see it as an end-run around the excellent arguments the town-hallers have been hollering, like Obamacare! and HitlerHitlerNaziHitler!

[Flowing Wells Unified School District Superintendent Nicholas] Clement received another note from a pastor, saying he was recommending that members of his congregation keep their children home on Tuesday. Acknowledging other presidents have made similar speeches encouraging youths to succeed in school, the man said he finds the speech "highly suspicious given the timing and the battle for health-care reform."

Because lord knows if you give that Socialist Nazi Commie Fascist an opening, he'll totally exploit the opportunity to explain all the policy and financial nuances of insurance regulation and co-ops and public options to your sixth-grader--in 45 minutes--and your kid will totally absorb all of that information and then run out to lobby his senators and possibly bring them coffee and stuff to keep them awake for the floor vote and wham, before you know it we'll all be speaking Canadian and sieg-heiling maple trees and little Johnny will start pestering us for curling brooms.

Unless it's a ploy to turn the kids into homos, of course.

In the Amphitheater Public Schools, Superintendent Vicki Balentine said she's heard similar concerns from about two dozen people.

Much of it, she said, stemmed from misinformation. Some callers thought the purpose of the speech was to sell kids on health care, or to address students about homosexuality.

To be fair, it's not all about the speech, although the shorts-knotting springing up around it is enough material for a solid week. The curriculum supplement sent out has raised the ire of people like Michele Malkin for being "activist" and people like Arizona education head Tom Horne for, well, oh, Tom Horne.

Arizona schools chief Tom Horne put out a press release objecting to the "worshipful" tone that the White House expects students to use, drawing examples from some curriculum prompts suggested by the U.S. Department of Education to engage students in dialogue about the speech. One singled out by Horne asks students to brainstorm: "How will he inspire us?"

Because the only inspiration in Arizona comes from Jesus, thanks--well, except for that bit about compassion towards the weakest among us he was always going on about, but that's a discussion for another time--and because inspiration is always and only religious in nature, schoolkids are being directed to worship Obama. QED.

The White House hasn't had a complete tin ear on this--hey, if we've learned anything from the healthcare kerfuffle, it's that maniacs must be appeased--so they changed one really offensive activist question in the lesson plans.

The White House altered the language of one suggested activity, which initially read, "Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”

That was changed to: “"Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”

How awful that first directive was. What other president would have have the unmitigated gall to require such a thing of children? Oh.

President George H.W. Bush made televised address to students in October 1991 as campaign season was heating up... Bush asked students to “take control” of their education and to write him a letter about ways students could help him achieve his goals, strikingly similar to Obama’s messages.

Sigh. Coming soon to a breathless headline near you: Obama pulmonary action stirs furor: President's insistence on continuing to draw breath in the White House decried as 'creepy.'

More Love from Ben & Jerry

'Nuff said.

Wait, actually, not enough said, except I can't figure out how to work a girl-girl reference into my personal favorite Vermonty Python.

Guess the Missing Letter with Glenn Beck!

Oh, but you'll be wrong. Grievously wrong.



Andrew Sullivan posted this without comment, and I don't know what else I can add beyond an only slightly more incoherent than whatever the fuck that just was whaaaaa?

Jam-Packed Saturday Extravaganza

Unfortunately, it is packed with panic-button archaeology writing (journal article due Tuesday; why did I agree to do this, again?) interspersed with grocery shopping and, hopefully, some zoning out in front of an EPL game or two. I do not know why Arsenal's diving exhibition against Celtic this week pissed me off so much, but I firmly despise the Arsenal now. Just play football, boys, and leave the dramatics and triple flips with a half-twist to the thespians and Olympians.

This will leave precious little time for blogging. Maybe if I pretend the journal article is just another ten-page blog post with lots of photos, it will go quicker. I'm sure it will read just fine and it will be very easy for me to not say fuck fuck fuck every other sentence.

Science, onward!

Today in Weird Sonoran Desert Biology

Conjoined rattlesnakes! Complete with mildly disturbing video!

The snakes will be surgically separated despite Mother Nature's clear intent to keep them superglued together at the head, since they apparently can't exactly agree on which direction to slither or what to bite, and will be live out their days in luxury at the Desert Museum in Tucson. Where they will never have to share snacks again. Stop by and say hi, hi when you get the chance.

Giving Credit Where Due

John McCain surely knows the bed he made, and I have to give him props for lying in from time to time.

Keep making me proud to live in Arizona, elderly Arizonans! By which, of course, I mean the exact opposite of "proud." I do wish McCain had asked the lady which part of the Constitution the president getting by with all this money refers to, but, possibly wishing to avoid another SNL Crazy McCain Campaign Lady, he pretended not to hear that part of the question and dove straight into the meaty issue of whether President Obama remembers that the Constitution exists. And the seniors in Sun City didn't disappoint, booing lustily each time McCain alluded to Obama retaining his mental faculties and even being a sincere man.

How hard was John McCain gritting his teeth through this? Probably hard enough to be glad he has a good dental plan. If only someone had asked him about Obama's foreskin, the afternoon would have been complete.

Literally the Most Important Post Ever.

Thank you to the intrepid blogger behind this. Because it's very hard not to literally tear the throats out of people who say "literally" when they mean "totally" because they think "literally" sounds more erudite.

Caution: Archaeologist at Work

I knew all this blogging would come in handy for work someday. I am writing a journal article about some extensive collections a guy made west of Phoenix in the 1940s when he noticed that several large Hohokam sites were going to be damaged by irrigation and hydroelectric (I think) work along the Gila River. Almost all of the stuff--buckets and bucket and buckets of stuff, mind-boggling in both sheer numbers and the superhuman quality of workmanship--is from mortuary contexts, cremations to be exact, and while a few people have dipped into the collection over the years to write dissertations and master's theses, it's never been comprehensively presented to the public.

So that's my job, at least for the arrowheads, and until this afternoon I had no real idea what to say beyond holy shit will you look at all these amazing things. A lot of the arrow points that were included as offerings in various cremations are stunningly well made, on the order of 10 cm long and yet no more than 2 or 3 millimeters thick, but there's an equal number of offertory points that were clearly intended to be of the same design as the big showpieces, but whose workmanship falls far short. Even accounting for the warping and twisting incurred in the intense heat of the crematory fire, they are asymmetrical, unevenly serrated, thick in the middle. Why? What social mechanism was at work here?

I don't know for sure. Nobody does. But! This afternoon, as I was thinking about mortuary rituals and grave furnishings, I remembered the field trip I took last summer to a tiny cemetery in the limestone country of southwestern Indiana, which I wrote about here. These completely unrelated cultural settings provide my favorite kinds of analogies, the sorts of parallels I best like to draw between in attempting to understand the human forces behind the extinct technology I study for a living because the initial apparent absurdity strips somehow strips away the superfluous and lays intrinsic processes bare (ask me sometime about 17th-century European gunflint industries and arrowhead manufacture in the US Southwest circa A.D. 900). Cultural parallels between central Arizona in the year 1000 and southwestern Indiana in the year 1880 are pretty much nonexistent, but in both places and times people had to deal with the deaths of friends and family, and had to send them off with the requisite ritual and grave furnishings.

The dead needed certain things, and then as now the survivors were constrained somewhat by their ability to pay for the really good stuff, the highly visible status items. In Gila Bend, they wanted chalcedony arrowpoints with long, serrated blades, side notches, square shoulders, and deep basal concavities. In Needmore, they wanted a limestone grave marker inscribed with a name and dates, ideally with a bit of scripture and a decorative motif. Those who had the resources to acquire these things from a master craftsman got the long thin arrowheads, the headstones inscribed with a lengthy bible verse and topped with intricate scrolls, ferns, and flowers. Those who didn't were left to make their own uneven points with mismatched serrations and awkward humps, left to scratch names into unadorned slabs with an unsteady hand, letters backwards and dates squeezed together, scrollwork passed over in favor of a stick-figure sun.

Or maybe not. It makes a good story, though, the thread of common humanity weaving possibilities across hundreds of miles and years.

WPS Championship

The first ever WPS championship game is in the books, with the massive underdog Sky Blue FC taking down the mighty LA Sol, 1-0. The playoff system--which rewarded regular-season champ LA with a free pass into the finals--could not have tipped the table any further in the Sol's direction without spotting them a 2-0 advantage, but in the end the two-week layoff appears to have bitten them in the ass. Fresh legs were no match for the groove SBFC got themselves into by virtue of two road games on the road against higher-seeded teams in the previous seven days.

The goal came with the teams at even strength, and after that the miracle happened. No, not the straight red to Sol defender Allison Falk, but Jenn Hildreth's completely unprecedented moment of clarity and coherence in explaining the call. SBFC's Tash Kai was heading to goal with a head of steam and the ball at her feet and no intervening defenders, and Falk put her on the ground with at least a forearm to the upper back, if not an elbow to the back of the head, and it all combined to be a no-brainer for referee Kari Seitz. In the booth, Mark Rogondino tried to wax wistful about all the players coming out hoping they'd be the one to make the difference in the game, and here Kari Seitz goes and makes herself the difference in the game... and just as I had the remote cocked behind my head ready to sail through the screen, Hildreth reminded him that Seitz called what she saw, and that what she saw was what the replay showed, and that was no one's fault but Allison Falk's.

I may have passed out from shock at that point, but recovered to watch the rest of the game. Marta showed a few flashes, but without a full midfield behind her to feed cherry-picking through balls, she wasn't the impact player you might have expected in this match. Shannon Boxx actually created a few more chances for LA than Marta did, and surely worked harder tracking back on defense.

And, in the best news of all, the league managed not to fold yet and will be back next year, possibly with Germans. My Red Stars scarf will be waiting patiently, and, uh, don't tell anyone, but I can't help being really really intrigued by the Breakers and what next season may bring for them if Kelly Smith can stay healthy.

Oh, I almost forgot. Suck it, Marta! You lose again!

Dinner for the Morose

Some very important food blogs found while puttering around the various Top Chef recaps from last night:

Fancy Fast Food offers step-by-step directions (with pictures!) for remastering fast food standbys into classic cuisine standbys, more or less.


Le Chicken McConfit, anyone?

Also, Insanewiches for inspiring photos but, regrettably, no recipes.

Solve it, eat it, whatever.

Top Chef notes from BoltLand are limited for the moment to (1) "a hot temper" and "procrastination" may be character flaws, but they are not vices; (2) all those chefs went with "heavy drinking" as their vice of choice to build a dish around since "black tar heroin" probably doesn't really bring out the flavor of scallops so well; (3) Michael I. apparently is confused and thinks he's in Gordon Ramsay's stable of douchetastically misogynistic contestants over at Hell's Kitchen rather than on Top Chef; (4) bacon doughnuts; and (5) BACON FUCKING DOUGHNUTS. WITH BEER CHOCOLATE SAUCE.

Note on Top Chef Masters, which finished up last night: please please please do this again next summer, Bravo. You don't even have to make it a competition--it was hugely satisfying to watch a group of very talented chefs get together every week and (with the exception of Michael Chiarello toward the end, and that Ludo guy) so clearly enjoy each others' company as they cooked and shared their experience with unfailing humor and grace. Just call it Top Chef Masters Cook and Drink and Shoot the Shit and I will watch that every week, maybe twice.

Vox

Now the Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light... And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so.

Creationism? Not a chance. Theism of any stripe, let alone religion? Piffle. I don't believe in those things, but I include these particular Bibley bits here because little else illustrates the power of the spoken word so evocatively, and that is something I do believe in quite fervently. Verbalizing makes the intangible tangible, crystallizing concept and possibility and potential into reality with a speed that is both awesome and unsettling.

As a writer, I am eminently more comfortable churning out words in their printed form than speaking them aloud, particularly in front of groups of people. Words made material by print are securely tethered to the screen or page by pixel or ink, made harmless and theoretical by their physical status, while words pulled by breath across vocal cords are unleashed precisely by their ethereal nature and made concrete.

The incongruity is not lost on me.

It is why I can construct elaborate and perfectly rational frameworks in my head that allow me to decide that my grandfather--still quite alive, if facing an uncertain amount of time before the inevitable comes-- is probably approaching the end credits calmly and with the pragmatic mindset that saw him through the war and business ups and downs and the loss of one of his children, and not skip a beat. And it is why, when my girlfriend calls me to ask how he's doing and I speak the phrase "congestive heart failure" aloud, the words yank the breath they rode on clean out of me and push my head down to the desk and prevent any more words and any more breath from going in or out for long, long moments.

This is why I don't talk much. Material words can be wrangled. Spoken words have far too much life and intractability.

Wrapup

I suppose it could have been much, much worse, but the birthday balance sheet teetered a tad more to the crap side of things than I would have preferred. My aging grandfather wound up in the hospital yesterday after what was supposed to be a fairly routine artery-stenting procedure revealed that his femoral arteries have completely shut down and his kidneys aren't far behind, a condition that would have been prevented had his totally swamped old-people doctor in Mesa bothered to check the pulses in his legs a couple of years ago.

I mean, for fuck's sake, the vet checks my dog's femoral pulses every time I take her in for a checkup; would this not seem to be a fairly obvious first thing to poke at on an old dude who has chronic intense leg pain and, oh, a couple siblings who have lost limbs to poor circulation?

There might be a metaphor for socialized medicine in here someplace, but probably not. He got in to see doctors without any trouble, and everything was covered through some combination of Medicare, the VA, and private insurance. But it wasn't until he left the giant senior citizen metropolis that is Mesa for the summer and called a different doctor in tiny tiny Pagosa Springs, Colorado, that the lightbulb went on next to the simplest possibility on the list. And now, despite having a mind that is still razor sharp despite pushing ninety, it would appear that his body's trashed.

Fuck.

Oh, and speaking of the dog, who is also aging poorly, the new med that is intended to flush excess ammonia from her system works really well. Unfortunately, it works so well that she flushed said system by shitting up and down the hall in the middle of the night. The poo trail suggests that she tried to make it to the door, but failed rather spectacularly. Happy birthday, Boltgirl!

On the plus side, I did enjoy a lovely dinner courtesy of one of the kids, good company courtesy of the whole family and a family friend, had ice cream out the wazoo, and managed to win at cards for the first time in forever. Nothing caught on fire and nobody died (not yet, anyway), so we'll call it a wash and hope for less excitement next year.

One More Thing

Happy birthday to me. I am old!

Escalation

Last week, former Arizonan William Costric caused a bit of a stir when he showed up to a presidential town hall in New Hampshire with a large-caliber handgun in a thigh holster. Not to be outdone by that pussy-ass shit, a current Arizonan showed up to Obama's confab in Phoenix yesterday with an AR-15 strapped to his back.


You want dick-waggling? I will give you dick-waggling.

What? I'm just exercising my constitutional right to bear arms. I always carry my assault rifle on my back when I go for a stroll around the neighborhood. Oh, the president's here? I had no idea.

In fairness, this guy wasn't the only openly armed protester strutting and posturing for the cameras; about a dozen of his fellow douchewaffles joined him in milling around with guns on display, batting their eyelashes innocently and wondering what the kerfuffle was about. And, in fairness, since they weren't encroaching on federalized space, Arizona law allows them to be armed to the teeth as long as all the weapons are in plain sight, and these guys were apparently purely interested in the photo op and out-dicking New Hampshire (link courtesy of a commenter at Pam's House Blend).

We were there AGAINST gov't take-over of healthcare,...but also to uphold standards. Arizona simply MUST keep it's place first amongst all others as the "Gun Guy State".

They even let the cops know ahead of time that they were coming, which is a lovely touch.

None of which diminishes the asshole quotient of this display one shred.

Last week it was one guy with a handgun. This week it was twelve guys with guns including one assault rifle. The protests haven't been particularly internally contentious, as far as I can tell, but as more people are emboldened to show up with more and more firepower on display, it isn't much of a stretch to suspect that sooner or later, one of these asshats will get pissed enough at a counterprotester to unholster his sidearm, you know, just to make a point or try to intimidate somebody, and, well, since as William Costric said, who'd be silly enough to carry an unloaded gun, really unfortunate mistakes will be made.

You think Obama's going to steal all your guns, and you're a self-styled uber-patriot. We got it. Leave your gat at home next time, yo.

All You Need to Know

"The public option, whether we have it or we don't have it, is not the entirety of health-care reform," Obama said on Saturday in Grand Junction, Colo. "This is just one sliver of it."

Bucking a bearish Monday trend in the broader stock market, shares of health-insurance companies including UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Aetna Inc. rose after the comments by Obama as well as members of his administration over the weekend. Health insurers have fought a public plan.

Uh huh.

Meet the Press

Oh, Rachel. You're going to need a gallon bag of single-malt on a centerline drip after this lovely roundtable this morning. I'm only about ten minutes in on the DVR and already scrambling to get a screengrab of Maddow's perfect BISH PLS look while Tom Coburn claimed that all the Nazi references, Hitler references, and calls for Obama's death are a perfectly understandable reaction by people who are afraid that they've lost control of their government. Oh, here you go:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

She's doing her best with Coburn and Dick Armey, but jello is damn hard to pin to the wall no matter how many nails you have. Ah, but she slaps the Blue Dogs for ceding their majority to fearmongers like Chuck Grassley, and calls out the president for not reining them in. Oh, now Armey says the health stuff is the most hostile government takeover in history. Rachel is sitting next to him trying really hard not to snicker.

Coburn: life expectancy isn't a good indicator of healthcare quality. Medicaid is failing us in terms of neonatal mortality! Rachel comes out of her seat but Coburn shushes her--apparently he can talk without interruption, but she can't--leaving it to Tom Daschle to point out that we currently rank 19th out of 19 industrialized nations in that arena. I was not aware that Medicaid was responsible for all the neonatal mortality in this country. All the dead newborns are Medicaid babies? Because that's the only way that statement makes sense.

And I have now learned from Dick Armey that the best way to handle a question I don't really have a good answer to is to start talking about something else, while leaning forward over the table, waving my finger, and smiling disingenuously. Oh, and talking over anyone who's trying to clarify something I just said. And, finally, Medicare=tyranny! Rachel gives up and just starts laughing.

And I give up and need to eat breakfast before re-watching this and trying to understand it.

Just This One

Unfortunately, I could probably limit the blog to covering only right-wing hyperbole re: the black guy in the White House healthcare reform and not run out of material any time soon. Not wishing to spend the rest of forever under a totally dark cloud of depression, I'll just point you to this:
















An unnamed Hagerstown resident realizes Sasha and Malia are to blame
for the government attempting to get its grubby hands on his Medicare.

If your Jesus-approved purely capitalist healthcare system has failed to provide you with regular vision checkups and the bottom of the sign is a little fuzzy, it reads "Death to Obama - Michelle & 2 stupid kids." It's entirely possible, of course, that I'm misreading this and the sign actually reads "DEATH to Obama - [signed] Michelle & 2 stupid kids," and the gentleman found it stuffed in the Hagerstown dumpster where Michelle and the girls ditched it after deciding going public with the latest family feud over Dad sneaking Kools on the back porch wouldn't be the best idea, but that just somehow doesn't feel like the right interpretation here.

"Death to Obama." And to his wife. And to his daughters.

Death to Obama's children.

And the pot simmers a little hotter day by day.

But of Course

I'm a little slow on the uptake today, so it took me this long to realize that doucherocket William "time to refresh the tree of Liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants" Kostric, who showed up at Obama's town hall meeting in New Hampshire yesterday with a giant penis handgun strapped to his leg in a bitchin' Han Solo-style holster and a poster in his hand printed with an only thinly veiled threat against Obama, isn't really a New Hampsherite after all. No, he's from Arizona. Of course.

And he hearts Ron Paul and hates taxes and Social Security and President Wilson but really likes Randy Wilson--well, who among us wouldn't list a white supremacist who survived the Ruby Ridge shootout as one of our heroes on a public website, am I right, ladies?--and lurves that Second Amendment and always straps his piece on when he goes out of doors like everyone else in New Hampshire, unlike his sissy socialist new neighbors next door in the People's Republic of Massachusetts.

Scottsdale, AZ apparently wasn't right-wing enough for him. And as an Arizona resident, that's a scary thought. Of course, somebody wasn't paying attention at Gaby Giffords' townhall in Douglas last week and let his gun fall clean out of his pocket, which is arguably more Wild Wild West than Mr. Kostric's securely-snapped-in-a-holster-but-still-dickish posturing, although it bespeaks maybe a little less competence with firearms, which now has me wondering if that makes me feel better or worse about Arizona.

Anyway. Kostric strikes me as little more than the malevolent little weasel kid on the playground who was always waving the biggest stick he could find just far enough away from your face for him to be able to say innocently what, I'm not doing anything to you, I'm just holding this stick, I'm not touching you I'm not touching you I'm not touching you until an adult happened to notice what he was doing. And the problem is that that kind of behavior exactly epitomizes the healthcare screamers, but now they're showing up with guns instead of sticks, and no adults are around to tell them to put those goddamn things away before someone gets hurt.

Mr. Kostric, you aren't just innocently exercising your Constitutional right to bear arms and your home new state's laws on open carrying, nor your Constitutional right to free speech. You're posturing. You're trying to intimidate. You're quite possibly trying to provoke a confrontation so you can be the new poster boy of the right wing, now that the shine's worn off of Joe the Fucking Plumber and even most of your ilk are starting to see through the carnival sideshow that is Sarah Palin. It's transparent. It's pathetic.

Unfortunately, it's also likely to be pretty fucking successful, if the sidewalk outside your local Planned Parenthood for, oh, say, the last forty years or so is any indication. The right wing's tactics of intimidation and provocation have gone unchallenged enough there to allow them to keep coming back weekend after weekend, egged on by eliminationist rhetoric from their favorite commentators. We know how that ended for George Tiller. Now William Kostric has shown up outside a facility where the president was scheduled to speak, waving a poster with an incendiary message lauding political assassination, with a loaded gun strapped to his leg, and the only sanction he's suffered so far has been getting lectured by Chris Matthews on TV.

Secret Service? Your table is ready.

The Only Remaining Question

Douche of the Day, waiting for Obama in New Hampshire

So did the dick-waggling happen before or after this shot?

Wait, I guess I have a second question after all: how do I make the eye-roll emoticon, again?