REPOST: The Convention Made Me Do It

photo courtesy of Business Insider

Apparently, just about two years ago today, I published this post as my "end of hiatus" triumphant return to blogging.  Well, "yay" for that.  
But what's disturbing is that, looking about at the discussions going on today, the "dialogue" on race hasn't progressed.  As in: at all.
Yet we continue to feign surprise and haven't let up the speed in which we produce these precious, precious "teachable moments."

photo: Christian Science Monitor

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The hiatus is officially ended.

The spell, somehow, broke around 10 pm last evening, during a ventriloquist failure at the Republican Convention, as a broken and weird-haired Clint Eastwood opened network coverage of the circus, basically introducing former Governor Mitt Romney with a routine that I'd bet a bazillion dollars wasn't... vetted.

So much of our troubles are due to this vetting obsession, so much of the loss of our fun.  What should have been the guiding light of my life is this seussian bit of wisdom:  “If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good.”

And then there is the iconic Seuss, meant for my gravestone:  “Being crazy isn't enough.” 

Back to vetting, the idea that we can know it all by what all we can dig up in the peaty dirt, the dirt old enough to get peaty rich, that old, old dirt.  Like an imaginary President Obama perched on what looked to me to be an insultingly uncomfortable folding chair, mouthing off at Clint with a big old "Go fuck yourself." 

Presumably, Obama was pretty lit, having had to be forcibly removed from Boehner's bar.

Yes, I suspected that the Republican Convention would end my blogging hiatus.

The balance, the scale, isn't just the symbol of justice, blind.  Balance and scale are needed to make it safely head-to-pillow each and every day -- provided head-to-pillow denotes, for you, day's end.  What people consistently fail to point out is the grin on Lady Justice's pocked and bruised face.  And she's not *blind*, people, she's blind-folded.  Big difference.  I think she peeks.  And I think she joneses for Seuss as much as I do.

She-Hulk #1

“I know, up on top you are seeing great sights, but down here at the bottom we, too, should have rights.” 
― Dr. Seuss, Yertle the Turtle and Gertrude McFuzz

“The words in this book are all phooey. When you say them, your lips will make slips and back flips and your tongue may end up in Saint Looey!” 

― Dr. Seuss

In addition to vetting, I propose ciphering, or coded words, as enemies to my political fun, at least. I would like "Chicago" to reference a city in Illinois and not become the millionth Other Word to mean "a gathering of people of color," "black," or "African American."  What was so wrong with "urban"?

The day has come, O Jehovah, in which I quote with approbation the inimitable Michelle Malkin, from her half-assed researched and cent pour cent aware articlette, entitled "The Condensed Liberal Handbook Of Racial Code Words."  Oh, and it was published in the... Patriot Post.  Quick!  If you are a J. K. Rowling fan, eat chocolate!  If not, if you're the lazy sort:  "You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes." 

As Malkin slipslides her way down, she writes this graffito in the slime accumulated on her ill-kept rodent burrow, and it *is* a good one:

--Kitchen cabinet. Radio talk-show host Mark Thompson jumped on Romney for using this phrase -- coined to describe Andrew Jackson's administration in the 1800s -- at the NAACP convention in July. Romney was referring to a close member of his staff during his tenure as Massachusetts governor. 

"To talk about being in the kitchen and not talk about an African-American actually being in your cabinet is really not a good metaphor to use with African-Americans," Thompson blasted. Is it racist to ask: Huh?

I'm so fully aware of racist speech and racist code words in political speech, in particular, that I've developed linguistic bulimia, polysemic purging.  As Lee Atwater, Malkin's godfather put it:

You start out in 1954 by saying, "Nigger, nigger, nigger." By 1968, you can't say "nigger" — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me — because obviously sitting around saying, "We want to cut this," is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "Nigger, nigger."[9][10]

You all know that I am an expert in everything, being something of a specialist in 16th century French Literature, although, through circumstances completely out of my control, I ended up writing a thesis concentrated on the eighteenth -- which explains my real and actual fascination with the relationship between word and image, the whole ut pictura poesis thang.  If you're with me, then you'll understand that simply seeing a fleeting image of Jan Brewer is cathartic for someone with my predilections.  She simply makes me spew -- and go into a five-minute routine of poking people with a witchy index finger.

Thank goodness there are not too many occasions for using that old chestnut of a phrase, "blah people." 

from Crooks and Liars

"We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers." asserted Neil Newhouse.

Now, there you go!  It's not exactly MY take on the Good Seussian Life, but I can stomach such an open-armed hug to fun... I mean, it's not quite ipecac, and that's progress.  So thank you, Neil Newhouse!  I'm laughing and so far, lunch is staying down.

The lower you go, reading-wise, down, down, where the hard work, the hard digging is done, the more ano-friendly the texts.  There are no codes in use.  The First Lady is called a "fat black cow."  This same author pondered summore and came up with:  "id like to take obamas big fat black lips and make them kiss his own buttox." 

One of my favorite writers on the interwebs is a frequent tweeter of Our President and his First Family, excitedly anticipating their love of a spicy African soup, and frequently deciding that Michelle Obama must be pregnant.  She's a fan of those who are fans of her, and so I pray and frequently beg my friend, The President, to send her a letter full of praise of some of her original ideas -- you know, how sex is solely intended for those intending procreation, and acknowledging the incredible guilt of newborns, in general, and in specifics -- from unemployment to shady welfare suck-ups.

I HAD to come out of sabbatical.  The world was going to Hell and being led there by people blaming climate change on Hell itself.

Captain Haddock may, however, need to extend my FMLA job-protected and unpaid loafing, that invitation to sloth so obligingly enacted by that impeached bum Bill Clinton, who stole it from the blessed founding father of the free lands west of the Lone Alp, now known as the Tête de Hergé.

More Blogging Through Email: How to Embarrass Your Friends

hey girl.

do you know how i spent yesterday?  feeling my way around the house, running into walls, actually cooking a huge meal for fred's wednesday evening dinner with kitty (and 7 other people of the militant lesbian existentialist feminist types) -- using very sharp knives, hot oil, boiling water, the whole shebang -- while SEEING DOUBLE!

it seems like every wednesday i am supposed to double or increase one of these new meds, and whoa, nellie, does that make wednesdays (and thursdays and fridays) interesting.  "am i about to cut into this lovely dancing chicken breast or am i about to slice my shimmying index finger off?"  "is that a bouncing mushroom or the jumping bean of a wine cork?"

so... while fred was out turning on the local dykes and i was trying to watch the seven televisions in the bedroom, while petting the always multiplying number of cats ("there's marmy. there's dobby, there's buddy, there's buddy again, wait, there's dobby one more time, and look!  another marmy, no, two more marmies!"), feeling dizzy, dreading what going to the bathroom was going to be like... i ripped off my fentanyl patch, and passed on my 9 o'clock and midnight meds.  then, apparently, i passed out and slept from about 8 pm to 7 am.  if i had spasms, i didn't know it.  plus, i shut the door -- which is like putting an upside down crucifix as a sign -- open this door, wake me up, and your ass is the proverbial grass.  chasing out the dozen cats was hard, though.

and would you believe...?  i am still seeing at least one-and-a-half, if not double!  it's like everything has a visual echo. one and a half wheelchairs.  one and a half café presses to pour boiling water into...  but i can finally see well enough to type. with, praise the lord, spellcheck.

while i am gabbing about eyes -- i saw the eye doctor -- a lovely, romney-like (as in "all business"), whirlwind of a teeny woman who runs at 100 mph on the most beautiful italian stilettos, in mini-dresses, all doctored-up, of course, by a long prim white coat (tailored).  her name is dr. k and she is very good.  i could kick myself in the booty for sticking with that guy we used to waste an hour on the highway to get to... and then, he would never answer my questions, and used to laugh when i asked about a plan.  the straw that broke that camel's back came when i asked him when he planned to remove my cataracts and he said, "never, if i can help it." and laughed.  so i almost ran to good old dr. MDVIP go-to-guy, begging for a referral.  i am mad at him, too, though, because for all those years i would tell him how the guy made me feel minuscule and unimportant, and that my only option was to slowly go blind. or to go slowly blind. whatever.  see? it's the blindness behind my bad grammar.  or am i confuising french weeth zee anglais?

well, now that  i AM going blind, it's largely that a-hole's fault.  he let my eye pressures stay much too high for much too long, did not track the damage to my optic nerve often enough, etc.

anyway... she does more testing than any doctor i have ever visited (and yes, i admit that impresses me, particularly because she explains -- quickly, very quickly -- what they mean), compares results, and even runs additional tests because "the data shows a tie... we must break the tie!"

she has a drably dressed female flunky, who is apparently her Scribe, who hovers behind her writing down all the numbers, parameters, and codes that the good dr. k barks out in a voice much larger than her person.
i had to visit five different rooms for the visit, no biggie, unless you are in a wheelchair and have to transfer an ungodly amount of times, in the presence of medical techs unused to people so impaired.  nothing more fun than plunking one's ass down on an unsecured rolling office chair, for example.

also, who knew that having to put your chin in the thingy, while pressing your forehead against the other thingy puts horrid pressure on the area where you used to have a shoulder?  useful trivia, eh?

BOTTOM LINE:  removing a cataract is normally a 15-minute l'il operation with local anaglesia.  "you have terrible glaucoma. everyone experiences a huge rise in eye pressure after any eye surgery... but for a glaucoma patient that can mean blindness... also, you still have this p.acnes infection in your body.  we would need to use general analgesia, and perform two surgeries at once, a glaucoma surgery as well.  and so... the decision willl not be mine [dr. k's] but the anesthesiologist's at the hospital. let me go make some calls..."

and no anesthesiologist would agree to touch me.

so... she said i could at least go ahead and get new glasses, so they tested my vision, which could easily have been a comedy routine in and of itself.  "okay, read that line for me." "what line?"  and so on...

anyway, i get to have some 9-inch thick glasses in lieu of having my cataracts removed.  she said to let her work on the anesthesiologists.  i figure all she has to do is pick a young, feisty, unmarried one, take off her white coat, and invite him out for some fresh squeezed carrot juice at the local health food store.  sit on a bar stool, cross her little legs, and show those million dolllar shoes...

now i need to figure out whether to wait until i adjust to this freaking medication increase before i go try to try on glasses and get that script filled.  hank could be my fashion adviser, i guess.  oh, god.  he gets excited when i wear something besides an oversized men's short-sleeve button-up, button-down shirt -- they happen to be the kindest tops i can wear after losing one shoulder and having the other in constant pain from overuse.  it's oh-so-attractive!  oh... and they go over neutral-toned oversized scrub pants because they are the easiest for me to put on, and kindest to my legs. so hank gets excited and compliments me when i turn up in my faded "cal" t-shirt and sweat pants!  "you look nice, honey!"

what a sweet boy.  of course, some idiot at the first existentialist church of angry lesbian feminists gave him TWELVE kelly green tees promoting the local elementary school down the street.  this thrills my snazzy dresser, and now all i see are HIS sweat pants (complete with air holes) topped by these green well-made-so-as-to-NEVER-wear-out EXISTENTIAL ELEMENTARY -- WE LOVE LEARNING t-shirts.

the good news, and i imagine you would like some:  the memantine is helping the neuropathic pain -- by maybe 20%?  and the mobic, my god, a drug that has been around forever!  why wasn't it ever offered, or even mentioned, before?  okay, so it may make me bleed to death... but that aside, it is helping at least... 30%. some days more, even, but some days not at all.

it's the dantrolene that is kicking butt. and supposed to be stopping the seizures, and it AIN'T.  but i am not yet at the full dosage.  i've gone from 25 mg a day to 150 mg (as of yesterday) and next wednesday?  300 mg.  at that point, my vision may resemble what one sees looking through a kaleidoscope.  so someone come up with enough money for a week of joints, and i will just lay in bed and dooby on down...

what else, healthwise?  my depression is better. i only think of suicide after about 4 pm.

my right leg is still leaking.  so yes, i have a huge kotex pad from the mitt-romney-50s (since holding an aspirin between my knees would accomplish nothing) wrapped around my leg at all the spout spots.  you haven't lived until you wake up and try to figure out why your bed is wet... not under your bottom, not with urine, not from a spilled water bottle, not a cat contribution, but from a leg that has sprung a leak...

hank and i are doing the best we can to be together.  he is scared.  i am scared.  so we meet in the middle of scared.  and joke around a lot, which -- if we have any brilliance to us at all -- is our brilliance.  the presidential race provides a lot of material.  i know, i know, you are either a republican or a libertarian (my bet is libertarian) and i am a socialist, and hank is mr. independent (he thinks)... so i should leave politics alone.  but really, when you can't see and you're about to perhaps lose your health coverage AGAIN, and you are descending wayyyyy into poverty -- along with your fellow 47 per-centers -- and after 4 pm you consider applying a dozen fentanyl patches and taking 500 mg of baclofen?  2012 amerikan politics is your friend!  i do have to stray from foreign policy because then i just get overwrought.

so.... HOW THE HECK ARE YOU? are cindy and amber still on The List?  and would you come deep clean my bathroom (no one should be allowed in there...)?  ruby the honda needs help, too.  whenever i climb insdie ruby the honda, i start grabbing tissues and wiping... which does nothing beyond make fred give me the stink eye.  "i know, i know," he says.  then he forgets, forgets.  i scrambled in there last week, for the eye appt, and it REEKED of pesticide.  he said he got in the night before and there were ants everywhere.  duh.  he eats in the car and i just cannot figure why ants would be all over my dear baby ruby.

okay, who knows when i will be able to write again.  i will try. and i send you love and hope, love and hope.

profderien

Sending a sundial to Mars - Bill Nye

Published on Oct 16, 2012 by TEDEducation

View full lesson:  http://ed.ted.com/lessons/sending-a-sundial-to-mars-bill-nye

"Bill Nye, otherwise known as The Science Guy, inherited his father's fascination with sundials. And so he campaigned to have sundials aboard the Spirit and Opportunity Mars exploration rovers. A look at how a small device reveals big implications as to our place in space."

I'm a sucker for Bill Nye.  Smart AND sexy, that rare combination.

Since I am now taking one of the very few Alzheimer's meds, I've felt a growing imperative to do what I can to help my forever demented brain, so I am watching one TED session a day.  Coming as I do from the truly Ivory Tower of Liberal Arts That Will Get You Exactly Nowhere, most of this stuff is new to me.

Say "TED" to the likes of moi, and I think ugly, white, restrictive, painful, medical hosiery.

Fred can laugh all he wants.  (Because he is smart AND sexy, too.)

Oh, and someone has gotta tell me whether it is true that the Mittster had to have debate practice time on how to sit on a bar stool!  My favorite piece of trivia thus far.  Romney: not smart, not sexy.  I don't know if the magic underwear includes TED hose, but I bet it might...

Paul Krugman on Romney's Sick Sense of Humor

Romney’s Sick Joke
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: October 4, 2012


“No. 1,” declared Mitt Romney in Wednesday’s debate, “pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan.” No, they aren’t — as Mr. Romney’s own advisers have conceded in the past, and did again after the debate.


Was Mr. Romney lying? Well, either that or he was making what amounts to a sick joke. Either way, his attempt to deceive voters on this issue was the biggest of many misleading and/or dishonest claims he made over the course of that hour and a half. Yes, President Obama did a notably bad job of responding. But I’ll leave the theater criticism to others and talk instead about the issue that should be at the heart of this election.

So, about that sick joke: What Mr. Romney actually proposes is that Americans with pre-existing conditions who already have health coverage be allowed to keep that coverage even if they lose their job — as long as they keep paying the premiums. As it happens, this is already the law of the land. But it’s not what anyone in real life means by having a health plan that covers pre-existing conditions, because it applies only to those who manage to land a job with health insurance in the first place (and are able to maintain their payments despite losing that job). Did I mention that the number of jobs that come with health insurance has been steadily declining over the past decade?

What Mr. Romney did in the debate, in other words, was, at best, to play a word game with voters, pretending to offer something substantive for the uninsured while actually offering nothing. For all practical purposes, he simply lied about what his policy proposals would do.

How many Americans would be left out in the cold under Mr. Romney’s plan? One answer is 89 million. According to the nonpartisan Commonwealth Foundation, that’s the number of Americans who lack the “continuous coverage” that would make them eligible for health insurance under Mr. Romney’s empty promises. By the way, that’s more than a third of the U.S. population under 65 years old.


Another answer is 45 million, the estimated number of people who would have health insurance if Mr. Obama were re-elected, but would lose it if Mr. Romney were to win.

That estimate reflects two factors. First, Mr. Romney proposes repealing the Affordable Care Act, which means doing away with all the ways in which that law would help tens of millions of Americans who either have pre-existing conditions or can’t afford health insurance for other reasons. Second, Mr. Romney is proposing drastic cuts in Medicaid — basically to save money that he could use to cut taxes on the wealthy — which would deny essential health care to millions more Americans. (And, no, despite what he has said, you can’t get the care you need just by going to the emergency room.)

Wait, it gets worse. The true number of victims from Mr. Romney’s health proposals would be much larger than either of these numbers, for a couple of reasons.

One is that Medicaid doesn’t just provide health care to Americans too young for Medicare; it also pays for nursing care and other necessities for many older Americans.

Also, many Americans have health insurance but live under the continual threat of losing it. Obamacare would eliminate this threat, but Mr. Romney would bring it back and make it worse. Safety nets don’t just help people who actually fall, they make life more secure for everyone who might fall. But Mr. Romney would take that security away, not just on health care but across the board.

READ THE REST HERE

Kolob Schmolob!

I've gone 18 hours without any true spaz attacks and am enormously grateful.  Unfortunately, my left foot is informing me that the respite is over, but at least I had a chance to cook dinner -- without injuring myself or a beloved -- a wild and woolly affair featuring Sven (face it, if The Castafiore is here in quarters, so is Sven), Bianca, Cabana Boy, Fred, Tante Louise (she dropped by to inspect our fire extinguishers), me, and the Feline Triumvirate.  On the menu, spicy pinto beans, and a chicken stewed with spinach, onion, cumin, and organic brown jasmine rice.  Oh, and roasted, juicy, burst-in-your-mouth mushrooms.

For dessert?  Irish whiskey.

We cheered Obama;  We jeered Romney.

It was a good time.

Like everyone, I had hoped for a better job report this morning, but I'll take tepid over awful any day.

And in pre-market trading?  GOOG hit 700.  The farther GOOG, DHI, and COH (my three current best bets) go... the more likely you bloodsucking medical creditors will get your filthy lucre.

I dropped by American Idyll, Brother-Unit TW's blog mostly featuring his incredible photography of The Canyon and The River, and wise words...  But today, I gotta steal this:

KOLOB: Mormons believe that Kolob is the star system for the planet where God lives. According to Mormon tradition, one day for Kolob is the same as one thousand years of our time. 

I have no idea if Romney believes in the stuff from the book of Abraham in the LDS tradition... Like with everything else, what he really believes is difficult or impossible to discern.   Most Christians don't read the Bible literally (unless it suits an argument), and I am hoping Romney also abstracts Kolob as... well, as something best left to NASA.

It kinda explains, in a weird way, his weakness in geopolitics...