"Look I eat really well and I work out, but I also indulge when I want to. I don't starve myself in an extremist way. You're not taking away my coffee or my dairy or my glass of wine because I'd be devastated. My advice: just stop eating shit every day."—Jennifer Aniston, in the May issue of Harper's Bazaar UK, on her beauty secrets. [Via.]
Leaving aside the awesome display of privilege in admonishing people just to "stop eating shit," I'd love to know how one starves oneself in a moderate way.
Quote of the Day
Never Let You Go. NEVARRRRRR!!!
[Trigger warning.]
[Lyrics available here; description of video within post.
Above is the new video from teen bangs sensation, Justin Bieber, for his single, "Never Let You Go," which is a totes perfect song for a 16-year-old-who-looks-like-an-11-year-old to be singing, you guys, because, as everyone knows, the best age for finding your eternal soul mate is about 13 and a half.
I mean, this song is just great: Not only does it pay homage to
And, ZOMG, howsabout that awesome video, in which Bieber (a white boy) and his love interest (played by Paige Hurd, a young woman of color) fall in love while frolicking "in the catacombs of Bahamian aquariums … sharing near-kisses, touching and nuzzling…. Shots of the pair in silhouette holding hands play into the video's plot of two young teens falling in love in a very exotic locale."
You know what the best place to shoot a video of a white boy and a brown girl falling in love is…? An exotic locale.
I also appreciate how the video never really lingers on the girl's face, or gives us a glimpse of her emotional spectrum beyond "gazing admiringly and/or mysteriously" at her new white boyfriend. The denial of her autonomy and personhood really lets me
If Bieber Fever means repeatedly vomiting until you get an urge to hit yourself in the head with a tack hammer, I've got it! BIG TIME.
[Commenting Guidelines: Please note that the critique in this post does not include condemnation of Bieber as a person or an artist. Comments that present an argument based on an erroneous assertion that the post is criticizing Bieber personally, or his talent, will be considered off-topic. Comments that do criticize Bieber personally, or his talent, will also be considered off-topic. Also unwelcome is apologia that seeks to dismiss concerns about the problematic elements in this video by pointing out Bieber is not the only artist whose videos use these elements, or by ignoring that videos in which a female singer has a genericized love interest who's male, or a singer of color has a genericized love interest who's white, don't play into the same narratives that this video does.]
Lost Open Thread
Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...
Shaker Thumbs
Hello, and welcome to Shaker Thumbs: Heirloom Legume Edition!
This post covers Rancho Gordo New World Specialty Food and Purcell Mountain Farms. Use the thread to discuss businesses, products, and services you like or dislike, so we can share in the wealth of your knowledge.
Magic beans: heirloom Vaquero beans from Rancho Gordo New World Specialty Food of Napa, California. Heirloom strains are those that are open-pollinating and have been carried from one generation to the next for more than 50 years. Read more about open pollination and heirloom crops.
In John Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus, bus driver and mechanic Juan Chicoy muses on the longevity of his contentious marriage:
Besides Alice was the only woman he had ever found outside of Mexico who could cook beans. A funny thing. Every little Indian in Mexico could cook beans properly and no one up here except Alice—just enough juice, just the right flavor of the bean without another flavor mixed up with it. Here they put tomatoes and chili and garlic and such things in the beans, and a bean should be cooked for itself, with itself, alone. Juan chuckled. "Because she can cook beans", he said to himself.I could write a whole post about how Steinbeck's love of Darwin (possibly gained from his buddy Ed Ricketts) emerges in The Wayward Bus as speculations in pop evolutionary psychology, and maybe someday I will. For now, though, I'll say that besides the vividness and economy of the writing, there are two great things about this book: the women are actual characters, not merely symbolic links between men. And Juan Chicoy is 100% right about beans.
(page 114 of the Penguin Twentieth Century Classics edition)
My parents are natural born Texans. They raised me in Steinbeck country (Santa Clara County, right next to Steinbeck's native San Benito County). My mother also spent the '60s living and teaching in Colombia. So throughout my childhood the big pressure-cooker my folks got as a wedding present was usually full of beans. Beans in our house meant pinto beans cooked for themselves, with themselves, alone. When I was hungry I would eat some cold straight out of the pot. My mother preferred her signature creation, the bean "foldover": a single piece of bread folded around a scoop of beans, plain or refried.
Steve Sando, founder of Rancho Gordo New World Specialty Food, says that "[y]ou can tell where someone is from by their attitude about beans," adding that "Californians and Southwesterners understand that you have a pot of beans like any other veg[.]" That is certainly true for me, and over the past few months, I've cooked Sando's beans according to his simple directions with nothing added but perhaps a bay leaf, a bit of sauteed onion and carrot, and a splash of vinegar at the very end.
I discovered Rancho Gordo on a search for dried posole for my sister. Now, posole is worthy of a whole other post, and I doubt I could write about it better than Calvin Trillin did in Gourmet in 2002. I will report, though, that Rancho Gordo's dried posole has a rich heady flavor and addictively chewy texture entirely unlike the waxy lumps you get in cans.
Rancho Gordo offers $8.95 flat rate shipping by UPS no matter how many pounds of food you buy, so when I got TheLadyEve's posole I added a bunch of beans too: Good Mother Stallard, Vaquero, Yellow Indian Woman, and Cargamanto. All I have left is the handful of vaqueros pictured above. Rancho Gordo is not cheap, but rest assured, these are no ordinary beans.
Because Rancho Gordo beans are never stored for more than a year, they are very fresh and require only a short soaking (4-6 hours); over-soaking can cause them to split during cooking. The varieties I tried all cooked in 1.5 to 2.5 hours, and all were dense, velvety, and fragrant.
Sando's Yellow Indian Woman beans impressed me so much that I went looking for a place that sells this heirloom variety in units larger than one pound. That's how I found Purcell Mountain Farms in Moyie Springs, Idaho. Purcell Mountain Farms partners with other farms to offer a wide selection of beans, lentils, dried fruit, and much more. Some of their beans are heirloom strains and some are organic; everything is clearly labeled. And you can buy many of their beans in 1-, 3-, 5-, or 10-lb quantities. The Yellow Indian Woman beans I got from Purcell Mountain farms are darker in color than Rancho Gordo's, and I have not cooked any yet, so I cannot compare the quality. However, the heirloom Rio Zape beans from PMF are absolutely the best beans I have ever made or tasted. (Rancho Gordo offers this variety as well.)
Purcell Mountain Farms ships in USPS flat-rate boxes; orders up to $25 ship for $9.99. So while PMF's prices are a bit lower than Rancho Gordo's, the shipping may be more, depending on how much you buy.
What I would recommend is to get a few friends together, put in a big order to Rancho Gordo or PMF (or both), and divide the goodies.
5-dollar-a-pound beans are steep compared with grocery store brands, but there is no comparison in flavor and texture. A pound of beans is about 10 servings, and they are a complete meal with a bit of rice, bread, or cornbread. You could dress them up with a sofrito/mirepoix cooked in bacon grease, or with a bit of sausage or roast chicken, but it's really not necessary. These beans make for luxurious vegan meals.
Share your recommendations and warnings in comments, folks. Your links need not be legume-related!
Previously in Shaker Thumbs: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.
I'm So Excited I Just Bipartisaned in My Pants!
Obama to Open Offshore Areas to Oil Drilling for First Time:
The Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time, officials said Tuesday.The article notes that Obama has "staked out middle ground" on the environment with support for other bipartisan, ahem, energy policy, such as expanding nuclear power, and did use the occasion of his State of the Union address in January to prepare people for his support for offshore drilling, but nonetheless "the sheer breadth of the offshore drilling decision will take some of his supporters aback."
The proposal — a compromise that will please oil companies and domestic drilling advocates but anger some residents of affected states and many environmental organizations — would end a longstanding moratorium on oil exploration along the East Coast from the northern tip of Delaware to the central coast of Florida, covering 167 million acres of ocean.
...[T]he Interior Department will spend several years conducting geologic and environmental studies along the rest of the southern and central Atlantic Seaboard. If a tract is deemed suitable for development, it is listed for sale in a competitive bidding system. The next lease sales — if any are authorized by the Interior Department — would not be held before 2012.
Unintentionally hilarious understatement FTW!
Given that Obama did campaign on an openness to an energy policy that incorporated conservative/corporate preferences, and has already conceded to expand both nuclear power and offshore drilling, Steve notes that the real mystery here is "the administration's negotiating tactics. ... Obama has already effectively given Republicans what they wanted on energy. What is he getting in return?"
Excellent question. And here's another one: What are we getting in return?
We, the people, are trading some measure of safety for nuclear power, and we are trading some measure of environmental security for offshore drilling—and potentially delaying indefinitely the sustainability that our current energy infrastructure lacks. We, the people, might be better served if those government contracts were offered, say, to people wanting to put wind turbines offshore, instead of drills, and people whose technology could update our crumbling energy infrastructure and turn the US into a global leader in green power.
Obama needs to be orchestrating the energy equivalent of packing us all into the Apollo 11 and shooting for the moon. But he's packing us all into the backseat of an Edsel and driving us to Poopsburg.
I've already been to Poopsburg! I wanna go to the moooooooooon!
Free Speech Isn't Free - Update
Following up on my post from yesterday, Shaker chef007c informs us (as in Melissa who passed it on to me) via the comments that Bill O'Reilly has paid the legal costs for Mr. Snyder. Good for him, and I mean that sincerely.
As the commenter noted, Mr. Snyder will still have other legal costs to pay as he proceeds towards the Supreme Court, so I'm sure he'll continue to need our support.
ETA HT to Shaker chef007c.
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker Skreee: What did you learn about yourself in the past year that surprised you, good or bad?
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Free Speech Isn't Free
Not being a lawyer I can't figure out the rightness of this ruling, but there it is.
Lawyers for the father of a Marine who died in Iraq and whose funeral was picketed by anti-gay protesters say a court has ordered him to pay the protesters' appeal costs.I get it that Phelps, being the defendant in the suit, has the right -- somehow -- to demand that his legal costs for the appeal be covered by the plaintiff. It's one of those things that makes our justice system so infuriating... and frequently unjust.
On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ordered that Albert Snyder of York, Pa., pay costs associated with Fred Phelps' appeal. Phelps is the leader of the Westboro Baptist Church, which conducted protests at the funeral of Snyder's son, Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder, in Westminster in 2006.
Lawyers for Snyder say the Court of Appeals has ordered him to pay $16,510.80 to Phelps for costs relating to the appeal, despite the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the Court of Appeals' decision.
They say that Snyder is also struggling to come up with fees associated with filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We are extremely disappointed," said Sean E. Summers, an attorney for Snyder. He added that the U.S. Supreme Court will likely hear the case during its October term and make a decision in June of next year.
"The Court of Appeals certainly could have waited until the Supreme Court made its decision," Summers added. "There was no hardship presented by Phelps."
Summers said there is no timetable for when the costs must be paid, but if his client doesn't have the money when Phelps requests payment the matter would go into collections. Snyder could lose his property or his wages, Summers said.
Summers added that if Snyder pays Phelps' court costs and then receives a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court, "imagine him trying to get money back from Phelps."
If you wish to contribute to the legal fund for Mr. Snyder, go here.
HT to Steve M.
From the You Can't Make This Shit Up Files
Professional Ding-a-ling Doc Thompson, subbing for Glenn Beck on his radio show today, claimed that the 10% tax on indoor tanning salons included in the healthcare bill to "disincentive the carcinogenic practice of indoor tanning" is actually racism "dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans."
I now too feel the pain of racism. Racism has been dropped at my front door and the front door of all lighter-skinned Americans. The health care bill the president just singed into law includes a 10% tax on all indoor tanning sessions starting July 1st, and I say, who uses tanning? Is it dark-skinned people? I don't think so. I would guess that most tanning sessions are from light-skinned Americans. Why would the President of the United Stats of America — a man who says he understands racism, a man who has been confronted with racism — why would he sign such a racist law? Why would he agree to do that? Well now I feel the pain of racism.Okay, this is wrong on about a thousand different levels, but the wrongness I love the most is that "light-skinned Americans" constitutes a specific race.
I get the feeling he was sort of smart enough to realize that there are light-skinned people of multiple races who use indoor tanning (though perhaps not smart enough to realize that there are dark-skinned people who use indoor tanning, too), so he didn't want to say "white people." Especially since he certainly knows that anyone ignorant enough to be listening to the Glenn Beck Show in the first place will naturally do his work for him and substitute "white people" right where it belongs, in order to get their grievance on.
Fine. We'll Just Increase Unemployment Then.
No one could have predicted that corporate America would act like greedy, belligerent shits:
An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T, Caterpillar and other companies to announce substantial charges for the current quarter.Blah blah blah. Because if it's just explained to them in a reasonable voice, voraciously avaristic corporations will realize they were mistaken and that the health, happiness, and general well-being of the American Worker really is more important than mountainous fuckpiles of profits.
The association, the American Benefits Council, said the provision — which reduces the tax deductions for companies with drug coverage for their retired employees — would deal a significant blow to corporate profits and would discourage companies from hiring more workers.
...James A. Klein, the president of the American Benefits Council, called the provision "a serious mistake that is having negative and unintended consequences."
White House officials defended the provision, saying it was a deliberate effort to eliminate what they said was an unusually generous tax loophole. ... White House officials said it was rare for companies to obtain a tax-free federal subsidy and be able to deduct it as well.
..."We're confident that the benefits are going to accrue and strengthen business's bottom line," said Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House Health Reform Office.
..."Let's put these changes into perspective," Ms. Douglass said. "While accounting rules required companies to book this cost upfront, there are a whole set of benefits that will accrue to companies over time..."
The Bubble People
In a piece seriously and not ironically titled "How Should Conservatives Deal with the Left's Disrespect and Lack of Empathy?" the always-amusing Dr. Helen—who is totally "not saying here that liberals are psychopaths, for this would be incorrect for the most part"—suggests that one reason liberals are such assholes is because of our insularity:
The second possibility is that liberals do have the capacity to empathize with conservatives, but they do not have to do so because of the liberal bubble they mostly live in. Schools, the media, and many of the cities they live in lean left. This means that there is no incentive to understand other ideas and there are no consequences for showing disgust and ugly feelings towards conservatives.Leaving aside the idea that "most" liberals live in beautiful blue enclaves of progressiveness (I've this week alone spoken to five different friends or acquaintances who are struggling at their jobs in conservative states because of a work culture that creates a hostile environment for them), and the myth that a "left-leaning" city creates a protective bliss for every liberal (ask any feminist, any person of color, any member of the LGBTQI community, any liberal person with a disability who lives in a left-leaning city if they're cloistered in contented inclusion), I'd like to address the quite genuinely hilarious contention that any liberal in America has found a place of residence hermetically sealed from conservative ideology.
This tiresome accusation of leftist insularity is really reflective of a fundamental denial about our national discourse, which is absurdly lopsided in favor of rightwing narratives and ideas—social, political, financial, theological—and yet consistently misrepresented as balanced between two equal sets of extremists. It's the old "Both Sides Are Just as Bad" canard, which is treated as self-evident by all the Very Serious People of the Beltway, and all the so-called moderates across this country who think Bill O'Reilly's a decent and reasonable guy, and all the rightwing extremists who have a vested interest in perpetuating the myth of parity, and most of the rest of the country, right up to the president himself, who never misses an opportunity to pretend there are two equal and competing forces in this country, despite the fact that there are fundamental differences and, no, both sides are not just as bad.
Rightwing ideology is so ubiquitous in America that it is not even possible for a progressive to access the news in an impenetrable bubble. Despite attempts to frame MSNBC as wildly lefty, there is no equivalent to Fox News on the American airwaves, with the possible exception of _Current, which is comparable only in content but hardly in scope.
I couldn't avoid rightwing opinions even if i wanted to. The idea that I could is laughable.
As laughable, quite frankly, as the idea that any left-leaning city is devoid of conservatives and conservative ideology. New York's got a Republican mayor. California's run by a Republican governor. Chicago is surrounded by some of the reddest bits of the country, whence sprung Henry Hyde and Dennis Hastert. I'm frankly not sure in which of America's blue cities, exactly, Dr. Helen imagines a progressive lives completely removed from and utterly untouched by conservative thought.
On the other hand, I have known many people from many small, conservative towns across this great country in which words like "feminism" or "same-sex marriage" or "universal healthcare" are never spoken, even in the year 2010. Except, perhaps, as dirty words.
That's not even intended as an indictment of such places; it's merely a factual observation that there exist throughout America a vast number of extremely conservative communities which are insular by design (and a smaller number of similarly insular progressive communities), which explicitly reject the multiculturalism of big American cities, which are diverse in both people and ideas. Calling city-dwellers the Bubblings gets it precisely backwards.
Dr. Helen, it seems, ought to stop fretting about liberals' "disrespect and lack of empathy" and tend to her own raging case of projection.
Whose Choice?
Liss forwarded me this story a few days ago and I've been flipping it around in my head, trying to figure out how best to approach it.
I've decided that maybe we can have a conversation of sorts about it and the larger issues. I'll tell you what I think, of course, and then give you some background (on me) for context.
The headline reads "Mother furious after in-school clinic sets up teen's abortion" and the first paragraph is
The mother of a Ballard High School student is fuming after the health center on campus helped facilitate her daughter's abortion during school hours.The mother, referred to as Jill, says she feels her rights were stripped away.
Because I am pro-choice and do not support parental notification laws, you might wonder where, exactly, I am conflicted. It's more of a personal conflict. As a mother, I wouldn't want my child to have a surgical procedure without my being there to be supportive. And I would hope my child could come to me in similar (I have a son) circumstances. I don't necessarily believe it is my right to know and I definitely don't think I should be able to impose my will on such a personal choice.
See, the other side of my story is that I have had an abortion. I was seventeen-going-on-eighteen, my parents did NOT know, and I know I made the right choice. My devoutly-Baptist parents would've never consented. I did not feel it was their right to know or to "make" me carry that pregnancy to term. I wonder if the daughter in this case had similar sentiments.
I am against parental notification laws for two primary reasons. First, I have heard forced pregnancy described, too many times, as parents' punishment for girls who dared to have sex. I know people who say, "If she was woman enough to lay there and get it, she's woman enough to keep it." I know mothers who have denied their daughters epidurals during labor as punishment and "to keep her from doing it again." I know people who posit pregnancy and motherhood as a punitive consequence. I know parents who hope their daughters will feel shame and stigma.
Second, the choice often becomes the parents'. Right now, I am watching as a young relative of mine deals with her second pregnancy. She's a high school senior. When I asked her, at the beginning of this pregnancy, what she wanted to do, I heard, "Well, Granny doesn't believe in abortion" and "Mama says I have to have it." Her father told my sister his daughter would NOT be having an abortion. I am not saying that the young woman is pro-choice; I'm saying I haven't heard what she thinks. It does not matter that she is 19 and could have had it without her parents' consent--she would've faced ostracism, anger, and withdrawn support. Too much for a young person already struggling with school and one baby.
And that's another thing I notice about this story. The mom did not describe what her daughter thought or wanted. She mentions her rights and the school clinic's audacity, but in the end, it was her daughter who decided to terminate the pregnancy without notifying Jill.
What do you think, Shakers? I'm curious to know.
Legitimate Concerns
I didn't see the interview discussed here, because I don't watch TV in the morning. But according to the article, President Obama "recognizes the movement involves 'folks who have legitimate concerns' about the national debt and whether the government is taking on too many difficult issues simultaneously."
As Liss and I discussed it this morning, she said "I guess it's easy to be magnanimous toward FUCKING TERRORISTS when you've got a 24/7 Secret Service detail. The rest of us? Not so fortunate."
Yeah, exactly. And as the article states "he said he didn't want to paint Tea Party activists 'in broad brushes' and he hopes to win over members who have 'mainstream, legitimate concerns.'"
Great. More of the same old shit.
No matter what Obama says or does, they will always hate him. And he tells them they've legitimate fucking concerns. No. No, they don't. And no matter how much you suck up to them, Mr. President, they'll always hate your stinking guts.
Texting! With Liss and Deeky!
I just got back from a doctor's appointment, which was for 10:15, although I didn't actually get called in to see the doctor until 11:15. That sort of wait would be aggravating enough for any old appointment, but this was for a routine pap smear—a procedure that is anxiety-provoking enough already without having an extra hour to sit and contemplate it. Luckily, I had Deeks at the other end of my phone to keep me company…
Liss: "Are you ready to do something about overactive bladder?"
Deeky: I'm ready to urinate.
Liss: That made me LOL 4 realz right in the waiting room.
Deeky: Yay!
Liss: They've got "The View" on and the ladies are talking about fat people. It's a GREAT discussion. P.S. It's not a great discussion.
Deeky: LOL.
Liss: OMG coming up on "The View": Ricky Gervais. I predict: High blood pressure today. Thanks, "The View!"
Deeky: LOLOLOL!
[Note: I actually had high blood pressure today, which I normally don't. It was so high that the nurse took it again manually because she couldn't believe the machine could be right, given my usual numbers. That's what happens when you leave me in a waiting room for an hour before a pap smear to watch "The View."]
Deeky: You should have brought your iPod. Some Oasis would have soothed you.
Liss: Shut up, fuckface! You know I don't have an iPod, lol!
Deeky: That's right: You're a no-iPod asshole.
Liss: Be quiet—I'm trying to hear Ricky Gervais' rape jokes!
Deeky: LOL for realz.
Liss: I shit you not: Next on "The View"—the cast of "The Jersey Shore." It would be more efficient if Barbara Walters just took a shit directly into my skull.
Deeky: Double-plus LOLz for real.
Liss: I'm glad I got here five minutes early for my appointment!
Deeky: Totes. It gives you a chance to get caught up on People magazine from 1997. How are the Spin Doctors doing, by the way?
Liss: Awesome. They're putting out a new line of plaid skater pants. "Little Pants Can't Be Wrong."
Deeky: LOL… You're killing me here.
Liss: Also: Jesus Jones says hi.
Deeky: They say hi everyday. On my iPod.
Liss: Joy Behar just asked "The Situation" if he uses condoms. Oopsy! Now I'm celibate.
Deeky: LOL.
Liss: Tomorrow on "The View": "The Octomom."
Deeky: WTF???????
Liss: This show is a real thing in the world.
Deeky: Totes.
Personal Note
I've just returned to my laptop and inbox, having been struck down with a brutal migraine in the early hours of Monday morning, after we'd gotten back from Shakago.
I saw a number of e-mails from various Shakers with links of beauty and outrage, and I'll try to get caught up with them over the next few days. Just wanted to explain why i'm not answering right away, I've got work to catch up on that was due yesterday evening. :)
