Dudley comes bounding into the living room from the kitchen and lies at my feet, touching her knee with his nose, because "touch" is one of his commands I taught him, and he's trying to be good to get what he wants, which is to go to the dog park. We're going to leave shortly, so Dudley is all wound up and I'm teasing him, pretending I don't know what he wants. "What do you wanna do?" I ask. "What is it that you wanna do? Huh? Do you wanna go somewhere?" Dudley gives his Big Yawn-Nip of Impatience and looks at me plaintively. "Where do you wanna go? Where do you wanna go, Dudley?" He looks around, toward the kitchen, where Iain is, and then back at me, whining. "Oh my goodness. That seems very desperate." Cut to footage of Matilda writhing around on the couch beside me, purring like a lawnmower. She licks her paw and looks at me with big blue eyes. Cut to Dudley running back in from the kitchen again. "Dudley!" He touches the camera with his nose. "Oh my goodness! What do you wanna do?" He runs to his bowl for a drink of water. Cut to Olivia walking by the couch. Matilda lazily reaches out and bats at her tail. Cut to Dudley standing at the front door; he looks up at me excitedly. "You wanna go somewhere? Huh, Dudz?" He walks around me, bumping against me and trying to get me to go out the front door. "Are you trying to herd me out the door?" He looks out the front door. "Where you wanna go? Are you looking at the car? Does that take us somewhere that you like to go? Where does that take us?" He whines and circles around me again. "Oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. Where do you wanna go?" He looks at the kitchen as Iain clatters about. "Ah! Oh my gosh! Is Daddy almost ready?! Ah! Where do you think we should go? Should we go to the zoo?" Dudley whines complainingly and sits. "Where?" I ask, trying not to laugh. Iain, walking out of the kitchen, says, "Are you torturing this poor dog?" I reply, "Basically. I mean, we have to wait for you anyway, so." Cut to Matilda rolling around on the couch again. She licks her paw and purrs loudly. Cut to Dudley jumping around excitedly as we walk to the car. He jumps into the backseat like a good boy. Cut to Matilda still being a lazyass on the couch. She makes cute, sleepy faces. Cut to Iain and Dudley playing tag at the dog park. Dudley comes racing toward me, then runs past, his feet thundering on the ground. He runs across the park, over to a Doberman, whose acquaintance he's decided he wants to make. End.
...And ignorance. And bigotry:
The four "Obamas" [are] sitting around a table with playing cards showing only sixes bunched in groups of three.
Also on the table is a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a liberty bell, a toy soldier and a statue of Justice holding a balance.
Beneath the Obama caricatures are numerous rats, some of which are labeled as the IRS, trial lawyers, the EPA and the Fed. Sitting above all that is a line, "Vote DemocRAT. Join the game," which is positioned between two vultures, one of which is labeled the U.N. and the other with the name Soros.
I'm catching up on some political news I missed over the past couple of days, and, honestly, this has got to be the stupidest election we've had in my lifetime.
I'm looking at you, Carl Paladino. Even though you're only the tip of the enormous, stupid iceberg.
I saw this courtesy of Peter Daou (on Twitter), who called it "scary", earlier today:
Likely voters in battleground districts see extremists as having a more dominant influence over the Democratic Party than they do over the GOP.Ok, I know...polls (and it's The Hill). But still. What the hell? The Democratic Party is "more dominated than the GOP by extreme views"? What? Did they forget to finish that statement with ".... more dominated than the GOP by extreme views because they're so like the GOP and not like Democrats at all"? Who are these "extremists"?
This result comes from The Hill 2010 Midterm Election Poll, which found that 44 percent of likely voters say the Democratic Party is more dominated by its extreme elements, whereas 37 percent say it’s the Republican Party that is more dominated by extremists.
[...]
The polling firm Penn, Schoen and Berland conducted the survey, contacting 4,047 likely voters by phone between Oct. 2 and Oct. 7. The margin of error for this sample is 1.5 percent.
More than one in every five Democrats (22 percent) in The Hill’s survey said their party was more dominated than the GOP by extreme views. The equivalent figure among Republicans is 11 percent.
Results for independent voters reflected the larger sample. Forty-three percent of likely independent voters said the Democratic Party is more dominated by its extreme elements, compared to 37 percent who thought the GOP had fallen under the sway of extreme views.
The figures by party do come with one caveat: Because the voter sampling size is smaller, the margin of error by party is 4.5 percent.
[P]olling data from congressional districts in Arkansas, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington state, West Virginia and Wisconsin show that Democratic leaders are having trouble convincing voters that the GOP is more extreme.Just...what? How is that even possible?
Liberal Democrats say that Fox News, Glenn Beck and other conservative broadcasters who frequently criticize Obama, Reid and Pelosi as extremists have an enormous influence on public opinion.I think Markos has a point, to a degree. Media like Fox and their hateful talking heads certainly make a lot of noise--and many people listen to that noise. This country seems to have drifted "right"ward, given how many people actually take it seriously--see it as a reasonable accusation--when Obama is called a socialist. He's a centrist, milquetoast Democrat. He's not a freaking socialist! However, a lot of people really seem to believe that some centrist positions are socialist (and un-American, to boot).
“Democrats haven't nominated anyone like Sharron Angle or Rand Paul or Christine O'Donnell or Rob Johnson or Joe Miller for Senate seats, much less the myriad of wackos in House races across the country,” said Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of Daily Kos, one of the nation’s largest liberal blogs. “We don't have media figures like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh calling the shots for our party.
“But they have built their alternate world courtesy of Fox News, thus making them impervious to reality. Is that a problem? Sure. Even more so when Democrats think they can reason with this crowd,” said Moulitsas, a contributing columnist for The Hill.
The survey also showed that a majority of Democratic voters want their representatives in Congress to work harder to achieve compromise with Republicans.WHAT? Why?
Fifty-eight percent of Democrats said they would urge the lawmaker they supported to “look for compromises across the aisle”; only 35 percent would rather urge their representatives to “stay firm on their principles.”
Part Two, here we are. Wasn't Part One thrilling? Not so sure? Let me recap:
There was lots of walking. In the rain. Down hallways. We were treated to no less than four speeches. There was a cab ride. Someone was murdered. (And never mentioned again.) There was a Powerpoint. There was a Toby Keith reference. Blackwater thugs walked the streets of New York City. Cops raid the Stars 'n Stripes pub. There's a lawyer, then a limo ride. And chicken and waffles. And "total horndog" Elliot Spitzer. Noah warns Molly "don't tease the panther."
If anything could be described as thrilling, maybe it's Noah's run-in with Blackwater. Or maybe the raid on the bar. And quite possibly, in the hands of a competent author, these events would have been. Unfortunately, our ghostwriter is not a very good one.
In no one's hands would Darthur's speech be compelling reading. Nor Beverly's. Nor Danny's. Nor Noah's. There is nothing inherently thrilling about the Federal Reserve. Or Social Security. Or Carrol Quigley. Or home schooling.
The story thus far is this: PR whiz Darthur Gardner is about to implement his plan to replace the U.S. government with a "new structure". His son, Noah, also a PR whiz, has fallen for a teabagger named Molly. That's it, more or less.
Molly, Molly's mother, Noah, and about 300 teabaggers are arrested on trumped up charges then released. Überteabagger Danny goes missing. Molly and Noah go home together, but not in that way.
That's Part One.
In Part Two, chapter sixteen, Beck and company get back to basics: Nothing much happens. We do get a new character. Yay for new characters!
Federal agent Stuart Kearns shows up at The Tombs to interrogate Danny Bailey. Yes, I know I said he was dead. Turns out he's not. He was just whisked away (is that an expression? whisked away?) to a "a cage full of the worst serial offenders this venue had to offer" instead of the holding tank with all the other teabaggers.
Kearns arrives at the jail and sits around waiting for Bailey to be brought in. This gives the author an opportunity to share Kearns' backstory and describe the furniture and lament bureaucracy for several pages.
While waiting, Kearns pulls out Bailey's rap sheet (do they still call them rap sheets?) and we get Danny's backstory as well. Good times.
This was an abridged version of the FBI file for the young man he was about to see. The guy was a marshmallow, he'd been assured, and by a covert order he'd just spent a long hard night in a cage full of the worst serial offenders this venue had to offer, so he would certainly be softened up even more by this morning. With luck, once a deal was on the table there wouldn't be too much time wasted in negotiation.
At this point, we're not supposed to know who Kearns is waiting to see. It's clearly meant to be a surprise when it's finally revealed. Danny's name isn't mentioned for quite some time, but, jebus, on the page prior Molly was saying Danny had gone missing. So who in the hell else would this be? Or were we to have forgotten all about him like Molly thought Noah might have?
Here's the big reveal:
Three corrections officers approached the open door with a heavily shackled prisoner in their charge. He could barely walk on his own, either from the effects of heavy fatigue, the abuse he'd obviously taken from his cellmates overnight, or both.
They brought him in, sat him down across the desk, cuffed him to the chair. The guy's head was hanging, chin to his chest. Without the arms of the chair holding him upright he'd probably have slumped right to the floor.
"Daniel Carroll Bailey?"
Insert music sting here. Bum-bah!
Oh, yes, gentle reader, look on, with shock and horror, how cocky young Mr. Bailey has been brought low by his night in The Tombs.
Okay, back to Bailey's rap sheet. Some coke busts. Tax problems. Caught with "a modest grow operation and a trash bag full of premium bud." (Premium bud! HA!) He rolled over on someone in that one, and Kearns hope to use Bailey's snitchy tendencies against him.
The latest entries concerned evidence gathered through recent home and business surveillance warrants, highlighted transcripts of a monitored ham-radio show, and a list of some videos he'd produced that were now circulating through the Patriot culture on the Internet. Hate speech/counterterrorism was the box that was checked on his first wiretap request, but the latest such authorization had been requisitioned by three cooperating divisions, as abbreviated in the margin: DC-JTTF, NM-DTWG, NM-WMDWG.
The Joint Terrorism Task Force, the Domestic Terrorism Working Group, and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Working Group. The last two offices were based in New Mexico.
Uh oh. Remember those missing nukes from the prologue? This thing is finally starting to tie all the pieces together. It looks like Danny's involved in that missing bomb business.
Or... maybe not!:
Based on this file and, more important, based on Stuart Kearns's own long experience in the field, this little guy didn't seem like he'd ever been much for the government to worry about. It was almost as though they decided years ago that they were going to get him, but they hadn't yet known exactly how. He didn't seem dangerous, only outspoken and troublesome.
Damn! I knew it! Danny's a troublemaker and a patriot! The government is out to get him! Like all patriots! The government hates patriots! Or something.
Okay, I need to tell you something. I have a headache. And I think this chapter is making it worse. So I am just going to wrap this thing up post-haste.
Danny has been roughed up in jail. He wants his lawyer. Kearns says that's cool. You can have your lawyer but...
If you decide to go that route I want to warn you. This is from a high authority, the highest; in fact with your past record, your charges from last night, and especially"—he patted the folder in front of him—"the evidence from an ongoing federal investigation, the best any lawyer's going to get you is fifteen to twenty years in a place much worse than this. That's a fact.
Kearns assures Danny that he is the only one that can help him.
Oy. So, what do you think? Will Danny squeal on his teabagger friends? Or will Danny fake squeal and pull a total double-cross on the Feds? I'm voting the latter.
In ten minutes, I could come up with at least a hundred stories I've never seen told on the big screen, just by virtue of marginalized people's stories not being told unless they fit some pre-established pattern of overcoming adversity or being rescued or some variation on the usual Blind Side bullshit.
And yet—and yet—"20th Century Fox has teamed with Walden Media to buy rights to Bil Keane's venerable syndicated comic strip The Family Circus, and they've hired Bob Hilgenberg & Rob Muir to script a live action feature."
"Venerable" means saccharine, trite, repetitive, and uninspired, right?
Look, I'm sure there are people who enjoy The Family Circus for some reasons that elude me, and that's cool. Just because my personal aesthetic doesn't include an appreciation of "venerable" comics about never-aging children saying never-funny things doesn't mean you shouldn't love the fuck out of it, if that's your thing.
It's just that even if you love The Family Circus for whatever incomprehensible reason, the one thing on which I'm sure we can both agree is that making a live-action version of the comic is really just another excuse to make a film about a privileged white family.
And I'm sure Tom Arnold, Patricia Heaton, and Angus T. Jones, or whoever they cast in this dreck, would make wonderful supporting players in a movie about other kinds of people.
On the other hand, with imaginative casting, The Nietzsche Family Circus would make an excellent film.
Though I hear it's quite nice for some.
Sometimes you encounter a piece of writing that's just so sharp, so perfectly incisive, that you can apply its lesson to a myriad of life patterns.
This is one such.
Dear Koch Brothers,
I guess you really are fucking liars.
Kindly fuck off.
Love,
Space Cowboy
I am recurrently disabled.
Or, if you prefer, I am recurrently temporarily able-bodied. Whichever way one prefers to describe it, the facts of my life are these: I am, for much of life, effectively (physically) able-bodied. And then there are times that I am not.
Monday morning, I fell on the stairs and ruptured a cyst on my spine. I fell because I have only partial feeling in my left foot, which causes me to fall with some frequency—a numbness that was caused by nerve damage as the result of a herniated disk, which itself was caused by the cyst. That is what I call, with a caustic grin, my Circle of Bullshit.
The cyst has ruptured so many times since it first arrived not long before my sixteenth birthday that, despite the pain of it, I consider it more an aggravation now than anything else. I know it will mean days, sometimes many days, sometimes only a few, of being unable to sit upright, because the pressure on my spine is too agonizing to bear. It means days of interminable boredom and loneliness and the tedium of making sure it heals right, from the inside out, since it has left a permanent hole in my back.
All of which I share in order that you may understand what I mean when I say that when my body doesn't work, neither does my life.
Occasionally in this space—and incessantly in others—there is expressed a particular bit of disablism that goes like this: "To accomplish X, just do Y. That's what I do!" Here, it is likely to be found in threads about the OH NOES! Obesity Crisis, particularly regarding the procurement of fresh foods or in the course of some admonishment about losing weight; elsewhere, it's likely to be found, well, everywhere, anywhere there is an opportunity to judge someone for failing to do what someone else thinks zie should be doing.
There are many reasons that people aren't able to "just do Y," whatever Y may be. Commonly among them are poverty and disability, and their frequent intersection.
Or, rather, the institutional, structural, comprehensive failure to support people in poverty and people with disabilities able so that they are able to achieve the same ends as Y, whatever Y may be.
The decision we've made as a culture, particularly with regard to people with disabilities, is that they will design their lives around the programs available to them, and, if they want a specific type of basic opportunity or basic access that is not available here, they understand they will have to move there.
Which really only works (such as anything so inherently marginalizing can be said to "work") if we erroneously regard disability as a constant that never mutates, never changes.
And if we assume that no one who is currently able-bodied will ever become temporarily disabled—or permanently disabled, and have the unmitigated temerity to expect to continue to otherwise live the same life zie was living before.
It's not the life inside my house that doesn't work when I am temporarily not able-bodied. It's the life outside my house—the one that has no accommodations for people who can't drive, no buses, no trolleys, no public transportation at all; the one that regards disability as a black-and-white, you-are-or-you-aren't issue, that doesn't have "temporarily disabled" parking or any other "temporary disabled" accommodations; the one that assumes if you need a service, you'll know how to get it, where to go, who to see, and have some way to get yourself there (and be disabled "enough," or in "the right way" to qualify); the one that is steeped in prejudice which allows people, even people who fancy themselves good progressives, to judge others, to say things like, "Zie doesn't look disabled," or "Zie could obviously do Y, but is simply too lazy or stubborn or uncreative or unmotivated."
The thing is, that external life only doesn't work for me sometimes. But if my disability were to become permanent, it wouldn't work for me all the time, and I would need to change my life so that I lived in a place where the external life would work for me.
And that would take some time.
Forget laziness, or stubbornness, or a lack of creativity or insufficient motivation: It would take a long while to sell my house and relocate, and I don't even have the additional consideration of finding another job, since I can do mine from anywhere.
There are tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions? of USians who are not living in optimal circumstances for their level of ability, but are nonetheless stuck where they are, in a situation that might make doing Y unreasonably difficult, or outright impossible.
Since living a life of cyclical disability, I have lived in Chicago, Edinburgh UK, an affluent Illinois suburb of Chicago (living with a monied friend upon our return to the States), and an exurban Indiana suburb of Chicago. And the absolute worst place of those to be temporarily disabled was the affluent suburb, the message of which seemed to be: Look, we've got wheelchair ramps, but if you need more than that, you're probably better off moving someplace else.
Even being rich can't buy institutional support. Not if there isn't political will.
Political will is driven by social conscience—and our conscience at the moment seems to be in a state where we have no compunction about being shitty disablists. Disability policy is not remotely my strong suit, and I will leave that leadership to people more knowledgeable than I. But I do know a little something about what it takes to create political will, and so I want, as the first order of business upon my return to this space, to remind everyone that judgments about individual ability, opportunity, and access are off limits.
And they are off limits for a reason: Because standing in judgment of the lives and circumstances and bodies of other people, to pretend to know about them what we cannot possibly know from a casual glance, to draw conclusions about what we might not see, is just as deeply bigoted bullshit as is asserting to know something about them based on their gender or sexuality or the color of their skin.
Refusing to stand in judgment is instead to stand in solidarity, the sort of solidarity in which political will is born.
If we want a world in which everyone can do Y, the first step is rejecting the premise than we can assume with certainty that anyone already can.
------------------------------
I am slowly returning to what is normal for me, which is a privilege. My profound thanks to the other contributors and moderators who were under no obligation to keep things hopping while I was away, but did nonetheless.
So, Shakers, what is/was for dinner?
Tonight I'm making a potato/onion/broccoli frittata. Which is basically to use all the leftover, uncooked, stuff from dinner last night. We also have half a toffee apple pie leftover from yesterday for dessert. Everything old is new again! Or something like that.
Something today reminded me of an old joke I remember from The Dick Van Dyke Show:
What's yellow and doesn't ring a lot?Open Wide for the answer.
An unlisted banana.That one always cracks me up.
This blogaround is brought to you by Shaxco, makers of LiquidGold dance shirts and shorts. LiquidGold: all of the gleam, none of the skin suffocation!
Here are few links to get you started. Leave your own contributions in comments.
Shark-Fu: On discussing what they don’t want to discuss…
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at Disruptive Women in Healthcare: Patients 2.0 – the growing demographic of networked patients
taz at Sepia Mutiny: Deported and Denied
Garland Grey at Tiger Beatdown: Sex-isms and The Working Mother
Southern Fried Science: Biodiversity Wednesday: Bed Bugs (This post contains a video of bed bugs; it's not for the bug-phobic. Note: there's also a link at the post called "More bed bug science". It leads to a video that warrants a trigger warning for sexualized violence. Thanks to IndyM and Rana in comments for pointing it out.)
Terry Teachout is won over by Patrick Stewart's performance as Robert in Mamet's A Life in the Theater in Mamet, with an accent.
[TW for transphobia and violence] Helen at Questioning Transphobia: Philadelphia: another woman murdered
Dave Hingsburger: A Pop Quiz
Zooborns: Meet Ruth the Tiny Baby Sloth
Well past time for another Teaspoon Report, don't you think? Well, tough. I do.
Leave comments here that describe an act of teaspooning you encountered or committed. They don't have to be big, world-shaking acts; by definition, a teaspoon is a small thing, but enough of them together can empty the ocean.
If you would like to discuss the teaspoons here reported, or even offer congratulations or your admiration to a fellow Shaker, we ask that you do so over here in the Discussion Thread for today's NQDTR.
Shaker bgk has been kind enough to get a Twitter-pated version out there for you young twittersnappers (and by the way, get off my lawn, you meddling kids! *shakes cane*). You can find the details about the Tweetspoons project right here. That runs all the time, as far as I'm aware (*grumblenewtechnologygrumble*), and we encourage you to let other people know that there's at least one tweetstream talking about just going out and doing good things for the human species.
Teaspoons up, let's hear 'em, Shakers!
ô,ôP
Hiya, Shakers, time for another Discussion Thread for the Not Quite Daily Teaspoon Report!
This is the thread in which you may offer congratulations or admiration for a teaspoon or teaspooner. If you're posting with just congrats or admiration, though, do take a moment and check the thread to see whether other people have said so a number of times already. Remember that no one is required to read here just because they posted over there, so there's no guarantee you'll get a response to a given comment.
I received an email yesterday from a reader who saw my post on Monday and asked if I had any resource recommendations for beginning sewists/sewers.
Now, I am a beginner. I have only been making clothes for two years. Before that, it was just pillow cases and the odd window treatment. I grew up wearing homemade clothes and watching my mother sew, but she never encouraged me to learn. I have learned a lot in the past two years, though, and I found the information online. Here are a few of my favorite sites for sewing information:
PatternReview.com. This site has a free registration level, and a paid subscription level. There is a pattern store and a lot of free information, including reviews of sewing machines and patterns written by users. I don't even buy a pattern until I have read the reviews at PatternReview. The annual subscription gives you access to an advanced knowledge base. They also offer online sewing classes for fees in the $30-$50 range or so. I have not taken any of these workshops yet.
Deepika (the site's creator) has built an amazing resource, and I recommend supporting her if you can.
Burda Style is an open-source sewing site with lots of tutorials and downloadable free patterns.
HotPatterns.com offers free sewing and fitting tips and video tutorials that I find very useful. (N.B.: HotPatterns are wonderful, but they are NOT easy, and not suitable for one's first efforts. The free info at Trudy's place is terrific, though.)
Gorgeous Things' Blog . Anne Steeves puts up reviews and tutorials. Also, every link in her blogroll is useful. Pamela Erny's Off The Cuff Sewing Style blog has great tutorials as well. Both Anne and Pamela have excellent businesses associated with their blogs, but all the information is free, whether you buy their fabrics and notions or not. The Sewing Divas is a blog that has tutorials and a wealth of useful links. I also like Miss Celie's Pants. In fact, once you start going through the blogrolls at any of these blogs, you'll find more info than you can assimilate.
Emma One Sock is a fabric store with an exhaustive collection of sewing guides for working with different fabrics.
As for books, I only have two: Simplicity's Simply The Best Sewing Book and Sandra Betzina's Power Sewing Step by Step. Both are good. PatternReview.com has book reviews, and I've found useful chunks of various sewing books for free on Google Books. There's also my local library--I am fortunate to have a good one.
Personally, I found videos easier to follow than books at first, and there are lots of free video tutorials on YouTube and Expert Village.
The biggest material obstacle to learning this craft is the machine: even used ones can cost quite a bit, and it takes time and patience to learn everything you need to know about it.
PatternReview has sewing machine reviews, so if you are thinking of buying a machine, read there first. A machine is a big investment that many people can't afford to make. There may be a sewing studio in your area that offers open sewing time (we have a place like that in Pittsburgh). That would allow you to practice with a machine before you buy one. Some fabric stores (Like Jo-Ann) and sewing machine dealers also offer classes on using machines.
I am lucky: my mother gave me a hand-me-down basic machine (a Singer 1027) a few years ago. That surprised me, as she had openly laughed and said I was "funny" when I expressed interest in sewing ten or fifteen years ago. Perhaps she felt bad about that, but whatever her reasoning, I am grateful. If you do gain access to a machine, read the manual. I downloaded a manual from Singer's website for $5, and it was absolutely necessary.
At least as important as a sewing machine, though, is a basic steam iron. Sewing is pressing. Learn about pressing and you'll save yourself a ton of grief and wasted time. (here is a PDF on pressing techniques). Pressing hams and sleeve rolls are yet another expenditure; I have made do with rolled-up old towels so far. No, the results are not as good, and I can't recommend skimping on the right tools, but they aren't in my budget now.
As for first projects: after window treatments and pillow cases, my first attempt was hemming pants. Then I made some lined purses out of old jeans (I can't find the exact video I used, but there are lots of tutorials out there on recycled jeans bags). Finally, I bought a pattern: Kwik Sew yoga pants. Kwik Sew patterns are great for beginners. I also recommend Jalie. Do read about others' experiences with a pattern before trying it.
There is so much to know that it can be intimidating. But the good news is that it's pretty easy to do some basic things if you have access to the necessary equipment and the time and energy to invest in learning. (For many, those are big Ifs.)
I want to open it up now to all of you who sew or want to sew: how did you start? How did you learn? What if anything holds you back? What are your favorite sewing resources? Any tips for low-cost startup?
