What is Beauty?

People reading the CNN website and taking the polls tend to mostly answer with the same kinds of responses I do, and I am a LIBERAL.  They have a story today about "What is Beauty and Who Has It?"

So today's poll results surprise me.  It has (so far) 68,690 YES responses and 18,279 NO responses (including my own) to the question:

Does physical beauty matter to you?

Seriously?  Almost 80 % of the respondents say YES???  I am confused.  Are liberals this shallow?

I don't always answer with the herd but as I said, I usually do, and I am not even close to being middle-of-the-road, politically.  Beauty to me, comes from inside the person.  That feels like a liberal response, if I were to select one based upon ideology.

I look like a troll.  A big, hairy, cave troll.  The troll in the LOTR games would want to bear my children, I am such a twin soul mate.  So maybe, the fact that I am not good looking probably colors my judgment, and keeps me from having a need for others to be good looking. 

Do I wish I was good looking, is the poll asking about my own looks?  Hmmm.  Maybe then, I might lean a little more to answering 'yes', but I'm pretty resigned to being fuck-ugly on the outside. 

This bothered me so much I mentioned it to a friend, who had a simple response.  "There are many true liberals who wouldn't bother to answer this shallow question.  So the answers are mostly conservative responses this time".

Yeah, no.  I think as a culture, we have an obsession with beauty.

What's Cookin' ? (3)

Fresh Fruit Salad

1 cantaloupe                                                2 pears

1 honeydew melon                                      2 bananas

1 bunch green seedless grapes                 2 nectarines

1 red apple                                                1 pint blueberries

1 granny smith apple                                1 lb ripe cherries

3 kiwis                                                      1 quart SOUR cream

  Prepare the fruit…use a melon baller for the melons, or you could chop them into 1 inch pieces.  Chop the apples, pears, nectarines into smaller chunks. Slice the bananas and the kiwis.  Cut the cherries in half, remove the pits.   

  Mix the fruit together, except for the kiwis.   Use enough sour cream to coat the fruit mixture thoroughly.  Arrange the kiwis on top as a garnish.

Serve immediately.

Protecting Our Children from ??

Well, at least the Supreme Court gets kudos for this one.  Yes, violence is awful, and it's not good to expose children to it.  But to force video game companies to clean up their act opens up a whole 'nuther set of issues indeed.  The argument that a child is willingly complicit in the violence by pressing on the controller buttons holds no water vs all the violence they can read about or see on tv, hear on the news, etc.  First Amendment protections for the video game makers.

But there's no sex in your violence, is there?  (Apologies to Bush...I'll make it up to them by promoting "Everything Zen" below).  If the video games show sex, or nudity, are they still just exercising their First Amendment Rights?  Apparently not, because we as a culture haven't cared about violence but we damn sure don't wanna see no tits...

CNN HLN SUX

I'm a news junkie.  When CNN Headline News first went on the air, I loved it.  Even though on slow news days the news was repeated every hour, at least I got an hour of updated news every few hours or so.  In fact, because it was repetitive in the evenings, I listened to an hour then used the next hour as my audio whitenoise to go to sleep.

Then Fox News must have been eating their ratings lunch (or dinner, as it were) because CNN brought on that same format.  All of a sudden, instead of news, we got Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck, and ShowBiz Tonight.  Repeated all night.

I couldn't go to sleep to any of that.  It was vile, low-brow, inflammatory rhetoric instead of news.  It was so awful I stopped watching CNN HLN.  It was only in the last year on the weekends and my weekdays off, I found I was able to grab an hour or two of actual news on HLN during the day. 

That all ended when the Casey Anthony circus began this spring.  Now HLN runs live footage of the trial during the weekdays (and even Saturdays if the trial runs that day).  And on the weekends, HLN runs RECAPS of the trial footage from the previous week. 

What the fuck?  I never watched any of the OJ trial, I don't want to watch Casey Anthony either.  But it must be a ratings bonanza, because it's taken over the channel. 

TABLOID "NEWS".  All the "news" that's fit for our current culture.  We don't need no steenkin' news, give us dirty laundry. 

Peter Pan Syndrome?

I have a few close friends who are my own age, and have acquaintances who are older than me.  But the vast majority of my friends could actually be my adult children.  We like the same music, we like the same books/authors and even the same recreational activities, etc.  I am comfortable in their presence and oddly enough, they seem comfortable in mine despite my age and decreptitude.

This observation occurred to me today when a group of friends got together and I spent most of my time at the end of the table with the younger set rather than those my age and older.  I wondered, is there something wrong with me?  I'd say, my younger friends are remarkably mature (which is true) but I don't think that accounts for it, strictly.  Am I refusing to grow up? Am I stuck in a permanent second childhood? 

My spouse has always looked very young.  Age hasn't been kind to me, however.  I don't think it bothers me, much, to look my age, as I'm rather resigned to it by this point.  So what is it, then? 

I realize I'm prone to navel gazing to the extremes, but on this one, I think I'll have to ponder the significance (if any) for awhile... 

TGIF 6

Are you a Stone Roses fan?  This is a slightly muddy recording of "Elephant Stone".  (I heard a very nice live cover of it on Wednesday, done by Cary Judd at a Boise sports bar.  I usually like his own music best, but everything he does is quite nice, and this was no exception).

Panhandlers Are Everywhere!

I used to have a pretty decent income.  I gave via payroll deduction to the United Way every year.  When the Boy Scouts (the biggest benefactor of those funds), openly threw out the homosexuals, I stopped giving.  Until they stop discriminating, I will not be supporting them via donations to the United Way.

So then how could I fulfill my need to be charitable?  I started handing out $20 bills to the guys on the street corners. 

I took all sorts of abuse for doing this, as if I was personally enabling them to kill themselves by giving them money.  Of course they were going to buy drugs and alcohol with it, I knew that was a good likelihood.  But they were asking for help, I had extra to give, so it was a mutually agreeable situation.  Who was I to make a value judgment as to their worthiness for receiving aid that I was able to give?

Until the economy went south.  All of a sudden, so did my income.  I started giving $10s instead of $20s.  Within a few months, it got worse, and I dropped to $5s.  And that's about the time that EVERY ingress and egress point in the city became permanent stations for people with badly written cardboard signs.  (Does no one have access to anything other than old black marker and hand-torn flaps of cardboard?  Seriously?)

Sign o' the times:  Lots of women out there, not just the usual man or man with loyal doggie.  Sometimes, even entire nuclear families sitting forlorn in the inclement weather.

Now I dread going shopping in the daylight, because I can't avoid them.  I have started giving only a few dollars each time.  I haven't the intestinal fortitude to sit in my car and studiously pretend I don't see them, nor do I have the hard heart to ignore their silent pleading eyes.  At the same time, my wallet is near to empty and I'm living from paycheck to paycheck, myself. 

What happens to us when the Zombie Apocalypse hits?  These folks are prime recruits and we will all be targets.  Don't say I didn't warn you!

What's Cookin' ? (2)

Leek Potato Soup

2 large leeks                                        3 c chicken stock

1 onion, finely chopped                      1 c heavy cream

3 T butter                                            salt and freshly ground pepper

2 medium potatoes                              chopped chives

Trim the root end of the leeks, then cut off and discard about half the green stems.  Slit the leek severals times lengthwise from the stem and rinse well under cold water.  Chop the leeks and cook them with the onion in butter about 3 minutes, stirring.

Peel the potatoes and cut into ½ inch cubes.  Add the potatoes and stock to the leeks and bring to a boil.  Simmer about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.  Add the cream and bring just to a boil to heat through.

Season to taste and serve hot, sprinkled with chopped chives.

Are You Proud?

It's a crime that this couple has spent 61 years together and have not been allowed to get married.  As a country, the US is better than this.  As a society, we must protect the rights of all our citizens.  As voters, we must ensure this is never allowed to happen again.

SLC Pride was on June 11th.  Boise Pride was on June 18th.  Did you get there?  Pocatello has Pridefest on August 20th.  Mark your calendars!

This photo was posted by Cindy Gross, a local activist and tireless supporter of human rights.  State Senator  District 19 (D) Nicole LeFavour is at the podium.  She rocks!

How Does My Garden Grow?

It doesn't.  Or at least, it doesn't grow with anything I have planted this year.  After using a scythe to get through the man-high foliage of whatever weeds were thriving there, I'm staring at it and getting ideas.

At the store today, luscious looking and delightful smelling potted vegetables and herbs were beckoning.  The eggplant was especially wicked, and even the catnip giggled insanely as I dithered.  Or was that me, giggling insanely?

I'll never know because the piece de resistance was the entire rack of basil, and it was crowing so lustily for attention that nothing else mattered.

I'm strategizing right now.  I see fresh pesto in my future...

TGIF 5

I'm likin' Cee Lo's music solo these days...but a few years back, this was a great one from Gnarls Barkley...Crazy

Online Newspaper Comments

I prefer to get my news online.  I got the subscription to the Statesman paper edition and it’s difficult to re-train myself to sit and read it.  But reading the paper edition is infinitely preferable to reading the online edition and accidentally scrolling to the comment sections.

For the love of Pete.  Do real people, with intelligence, humor and compassion, ever read that paper online?  If they do, they have certainly learned not to venture into that inner circle of Hell that constitutes the comments section.  Dwelling there are trolls, assholes, and lost souls.  The poor lost souls wage an endless and winless war against the sheer volume of vitriol and unabated spite coming from the other two groups.  It’s demoralizing and horrifying and I can’t believe it’s been allowed to continue.  Is this what free speech is all about in Idaho?

The Idaho State Journal (Pocatello) and the Spokesman Review (Spokane) are both open sites like the Statesman, and their comment sections seem to be hit and miss.  I’ve seen times when the comments get out of line, but there also seem to be plenty of both sides in the mix.     

I don’t know about the Idaho Press-Tribune (Nampa), or the Morning Tribune (Lewiston), because those are subscription sites.  The Post Register (Idaho Falls) makes a point of saying that it requires real names and it monitors the online bashfest, but again, I can’t tell unless I subscribe.

Anonymous commenting (opines this anonymous blogger) is apparently a license to spew.  I don’t know if that’s progress that we allow it, or spineless.

What's Cookin' ?

I'm going to try a Tuesday feature that gives a recipe I'm dying to try or one my friends have been dying to get from me.  This one I searched online for, because I was an addict for Iggy's Sausalito Chicken, but the restaurant went under and no one knows that recipe by that name...but this one I found online comes closest. 

Mediterranean Chicken

Ingredients

• 4 boneless chicken breasts cut up in thin strips
• 1 medium onion cut into thin julienne strips
• 2 cloves garlic minced
• 1 small jar of artichoke hearts drained and chopped
• 1/8 cup drained capers
• 1/2 cup fresh coarsely chopped basil (reserve 1/4 cup)
• 1/2 cup sundried tomatoes coarsely chopped
• olive oil - enough to coat bottom of pan
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 cup sliced leeks
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• juice of 1 lemon
• Angel hair pasta, cooked al dente

Preparation

Heat olive oil in pan over med high heat. Add chicken and brown until chicken has a good sear. Add onions and garlic. Cook for 2 minutes.

Add artichokes, capers, sundried tomatoes and pine nuts. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss evenly.

Add leeks and 1/4 cup of fresh basil. Add wine. Bring to an even bubble.

Add lemon juice then cream. Stir and heat just until thick and bubbly.

Serve over cooked Angel Hair pasta with the rest of the basil on top.

Desperately Seeking Purpose

I’m old, and I’m tired.  I’m got my health issues as do many people, and this is not the forum to whine about that.  Universal, affordable health care is not likely to happen in my lifetime, as there are too many powerful and monied interests who depend upon making big bucks off the broken fucked-up system that is the status quo. 

What’s got me in the dumps lately is what to do with my life.  I’m bored, bored bored bored bored.  Not to mention, bored.  And some days, despite everything I can think of, I’m just bored some more.

Have I been there, done that?  Not at all, not everything I’d like to do.  But I have some severe limitations on my choices of actionable steps, including lack of discretionary funding (due to said health issues). 

But even if I had the $$, I can’t seem to find anything that yanks my chain these days, and that’s got me concerned that I may be depressed, which is another topic for another day.   I’ve tried various volunteer positions, political activism opportunities, and even the usual fare of TV, video games, library books, Netflix, and internet.  Nothing jazzes me. 

I thought I had found a raison d’etre this last year.  I met a person whose business is going nowhere fast, but it has great potential and makes a popular product that I very much enjoy.  Recently I offered my sweat labor services (behind the scenes and free of charge) to help them grow their business, and they accepted my offer but haven’t extended any work my way.  So, nothing is happening and business remains low-key as usual.  And as their stagnant situation is obviously suitable to them, I figure I may as well give up, move along and find another pet project to apply my talents toward. 

But that puts me back at square one, searching for a purpose.  I want to DO something, be happy about something, have meaning in my life, before I leave these Earthly bonds.  “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” says if I try sometimes, I just might find, I’ll get what I need.  Maybe I just need to try harder?

Decide to Change the World

I have strong feelings about equality for all individuals.  I'm passionate about the concept of erasing cultural biases using education and activism.  Women, minorities, LGBT folk--all have struggled and continue to struggle for civil rights in this supposedly enlightened, modern age. 

Tea Partiers point out that we have elected a black President and state that racism is dead, a non-issue.  Conservatives can name women who have broken through the glass ceilings in many businesses and therefore all women obviously have equal rights.  Likewise, LGBT people come out publicly every day so it's obviously not needed as a protected class and there's no need for "It Gets Better".

Exceptions prove the rule.  The fact that we can point to this, that, and the other to show it just ain't so, means as a rule it usually IS so, except in some situations.

I'm fascinated by civil rights activists throughout history of our country. 

• Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X.  They fought and died for racial equality.
• Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, who gave voice to women's rights in the 60s and 70s.
• Harry Hay, Harvey Milk, Brenda Howard.  Voices and faces of Gay Rights in America.

These people and thousands of others fought for their causes of social justice and equal rights.  They were vilified, imprisoned, killed.  But they were inspired individuals who paved the way.

The "Be the Change You Wish to See" is so trite, and so true.  We must all model the behaviors and contribute to the stream of consciousness about equal rights.  We must continue to educate our families, coworkers, and neighbors. 

This is a great story about several gay individuals in the midwest.  One of them is Ben Alley, a young man who at the age of 16 was totally abandoned by his Baptist parents.  They dumped him and moved out of state due to him being gay.  He just graduated high school and is moving on to college, thanks to kind and caring friends. 

The other is Raynard Kington, the black man and Grinnell college president who acknowledges,

"I am where I am because a lot of other people decided to change the world."

I think that's very important for us to remember.  What we do, the struggles we encounter in our fight for equality for our fellow citizens, makes the path smoother and less treacherous for those who follow.  We can never abandon the fight, we can never give up or become complacent, or rest on our laurels.  The fact is that although we may win some battles, the war will continue for some generations to come.

Join with me?  Decide to Change the World.

Why Blog? Why This Blog?

I had an extraordinary opportunity last night to hang out with some casual acquaintances who are contemporaries of my kids (my kids weren't there) and just be.  Not be entertaining, not be mentoring, not be anything except be one of the boys (and hopefully, not be a buzzkill or overly annoying).  That was energizing to me, to say the least.

At some point I mentioned that I had posted a video on my blog, and one of them, who is finishing up school for his day job and has been writing a novel, said he'd like to read my blog.  I was taken aback, that a talented young writer would actually want to read what I had to say.  I couldn't think of a good response so I hastily dissembled, saying that I no longer had my blog site, that the website was already taken down, etc. 

I was truthfully referring to my former blogging life when I had my own domain and the blog was reasonably rich with some bells and whistles, many loyal followers and a nice sense of purpose.  But I was not giving the whole truth about the fact that I had recently started this little blogspot thing going which was what my initial comment had been referring to.  I don't know if anyone noticed the discrepancy or just thought I was an old flake...

Why not admit this site and lead him to it?  Is it terribly embarrassing?  Well, yes, I believe it is.  It's not as pithy as I was thinking it might be when I started it.  It's not as witty or entertaining or even as deep as it could be.  It's just a lot of shallow, short nothings, so far.  The best content isn't even mine, it's the music videos I share on Fridays.

Is that why I was suddenly unwilling to let this young author know about it?  I certainly would have welcomed him to my former blog, I think I was pretty damned great for many years, in that one.

So if the freakin' blog is not worthy of sharing, then why do I do it?  Why am I putting it out here, knowing that there are already some readers and even a commenter (thanks, Dan!)  As it stands, I think I do it because I have a need to write, to share my thoughts.  And I think I didn't start out great before, I had to get into the flow of it, it took some months to get up to speed.  So maybe I'm being overly harsh on myself right now, and should cut myself some slack.  I'll never be totally satisfied with what I write, but it's honest and it's me and I'm going to keep pouring it out as long as I feel I have a license to spill...

I've been puzzling over that incident today, since I don't like lies and that semi white kinda lie is bebothering my sense of decency.      

TGIF 4

Brett Dennen.  He's at the Knitting Factory in Boise tonight! 

I like this song, it's light and fluffy.  Make You Crazy

Libertarian Musings

I Heart Penn Jillette.  He's my favorite atheist libertarian, even though I disagree with him on some things.  But we both agree that the war on drugs is insane, and the civil rights of gay people are violated, in this country.

I don't care for recreational drugs (mostly because they're illegal and unsafe) and I drink very little alcohol (I don't like the side effects) but I have been know to abuse both in my youth.  I have a son-in-law who is much like Penn Jillette, he doesn't drink (never wanted to) and doesn't do drugs (also never wanted to).  It seems today's generation is maybe making smarter choices than lots of their ancestors.

I like this interview with Penn, it's a year old but it's good stuff.

I haven't decided yet if I would smoke weed if it were legal.  I think I might do it more often than I drink alcohol, but only if it was primo Humboldt or something equally tasty.

Connecticut just decriminalized weed for adults.  Progressive State!!  They already allow gay marriages...

Dumbing US Down

In this recent opinion piece, Dr. David Schwartz commiserates with the late Kurt Vonnegut about the condition of our country's government, which has turned into a joke, purchased by the oligarchs and run by psychopaths.  He says what I've been warning of for years:

It is no secret that the Koch brothers and others of the super-rich seem to have undertaken a final push to consolidate control through the conversion of a marginally democratic to an essentially fascist state; extreme right-wing, authoritarian, and demagogic. This kind of government is ideal for control of a populace by the moneyed elite. To carry this out requires the employment of many ‘kept’ politicians to excite and misdirect scared and angry – and ignorant – voters. Lest the citizenry realize who stole their money and storm their castles with torches, the rapacious elite need politicians who will carry out the work of re-directing anger at teachers, or labor unions, or the poor.

But Dr. Schwartz says, the folks doing all of this are not your grandmother's psychopaths.  They actually believe in what they are doing.  So he proposes that they are second rate, second string psychopaths.

I disagree.  I think they are ignorant disciples, and it's part of the plan to dumb us all down.  Intelligence becomes mocked, and ignorance is king.  Cutting our education funding helps to bring the future voters into line, making them prime sheeple for the next round of craziness.

Ignorant disciples, ideologues, take more effective actions than psycopaths, who may not share your same agenda and may move on when they have another interest.  But true believers will stay the course until the end result is accomplished.

Drug Testing Welfare Recipients

Republicans have such a need to attack the poor in our country.  (Okay, it's not just the poor, it's also women in general, and homosexuals, and minorities of any stripe, etc).  But states continue to attempt drug testing of welfare recipients because they continue to buy into the myth that poor people are poor because they use drugs. 

Well, rich people use drugs, too...but the use of drugs by poor people is being subsidized by the taxpayers, to paraphrase Florida governor Rick Scott (Republican, natch).  The hell it isn't being subsidized, but that's a blogpost for another day.  So he signed into law a bill that takes effect July 1st, to drug test welfare applicants in Florida. 

But the ACLU isn't going to let this happen without a fight.  Per Howard Simon, the ACLU in Florida,

"What (Scott) is doing is giving ugly legitimacy to an unfortunate stereotype that has been in this country for a couple of decades -- that all welfare recipients are a bunch of drug abusers,"

Even Idaho is not immune from that myth.  It crops up year after year, taking a lot of time and effort to determine, is it cost neutral, is it cost effective, does it give us the desired effect of not having drug users on public assistance, and can we get away with it legally? 

Republican governance is legalized craziness.  And poor people continue to vote for them, against their own self interests, why?  Because they identify with being rich, they crave and desire being rich, and they want to protect the rights and privileges that come with being rich, in case they ever get there.  Dream on, I'd normally say, but hey, this is America, and it can happen!

TGIF 3

The Smithereens were a great 80s group. 
They did "Behind the Wall of Sleep", "Girl Like You", etc. 

This is one of my favorites.  No video, but the song is great...