alias Bruce.

Incoming.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving holiday, whether you took part in a gathering or just enjoyed the time off. I did both.

There are new posts I want to put up, including one looking at what happens when colleges start treating their young enrollees as "customers" instead of as students -- it's not pretty -- and another asking questions about everyday things I can't figure out. Not to be evasive. But they're coming soon.

Meanwhile I notice, upon returning to the land of media, that Tiger Woods and his bizarre car crash seem to be in the crosshairs of every news operation, which is sad. But, as perhaps the most squeaky-clean demigod in sports, Tiger is the perfect target for rabid curiosity about any domestic or personal dirt that might be behind this weird incident. His silence further heightens the hunger.  And he sure hasn't helped his desire for privacy by thrice reneging on agreements to (voluntarily) do a sit-down with police investigators, which only spurs more speculation. I kind of wish he'd just go ahead and say something, even if it's embarrassing or painful, so the story can start to lose steam that much sooner.

Back in the world of actual public events, we all await President Obama's entreaty on Afghanistan, for which all indications are that the U.S. will 1.) send enough troops to raise casualties and escalate trauma but not enough for victory (because troops can never resolve this conflict and we wouldn't have enough to send there even if they could) and 2.) make a token try at providing non-military support to stabilize the country even as we further destabilize it with points of military intervention. It's not looking good. I wish Robert McNamara were still alive so that he could stand on the White House lawn and yell warnings up to the Oval Office.

More soon. I hope your week starts well.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Our nation's annual November dinner sermon about being thankful for the yummy spoils of conquest can give appetite a bad reputation. Not only that, its habits of mind can push the outrageous pleasures of unhurried sensual ritual -- the deliciously slow riot of food or sex or song or whatever is on your menu -- off the table for the remaining 364 days of our year, starting with the morning after Thanksgiving, when crowds of shoving shoppers converge at dawn at the barred gates of big-box stores.

Pablo Neruda is a great treatment for this appetite disorder. Here is his "Ode to Conger Chowder." Happy Thanksgiving.

Ode To Conger Chowder

In the storm-tossed
Chilean
sea
lives the rosy conger,
giant eel
of snowy flesh.
And in Chilean
stewpots,
along the coast,
was born the chowder,
thick and succulent,
a boon to man.
You bring the conger, skinned,
to the kitchen
(its mottled skin slips off
like a glove,
leaving the
grape of the sea
exposed to the world),
naked,
the tender eel
glistens,
prepared
to serve our appetites.
Now
you take
garlic,
first, caress
that precious
ivory,
smell
its irate fragrance,
then
blend the minced garlic
with onion
and tomato
until the onion
is the color of gold.
Meanwhile steam
our regal
ocean prawns,
and when
they are
tender,
when the savor is
set in a sauce
combining the liquors
of the ocean
and the clear water
released from the light of the onion,
then
you add the eel
that it may be immersed in glory,
that it may steep in the oils
of the pot,
shrink and be saturated.
Now all that remains is to
drop a dollop of cream
into the concoction,
a heavy rose,
then slowly
deliver
the treasure to the flame,
until in the chowder
are warmed
the essences of Chile,
and to the table
come, newly wed,
the savors
of land and sea,
that in this dish
you may know heaven.

"You're a Bunny Guy."

A 30-second re-enactment of the film Goodfellas performed entirely by animated bunnies? Life just got a little better. But you needn't be a mob film nut like me to get a kick out of Angryalien.com, a site I learned about just today. It has 30-second bunny parodies of a slew of famous films, including Borat, Casablanca, Alien, Brokeback Mountain, and Kill Bill, among others. Who knew? (Spoiler alert: if you don't want to know how a film ends, don't watch the bunny version.)

Thanks to Cat.

Obama's Latest Audition.

Is it just me, or was it straight-up creepy the way that Barack Obama put on his best kill-the-pig-drink-its-blood face to defend Eric Holder's 9/11 trial plans? In response to a reporter's question about some people finding it offensive to grant Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a federal trial (which is an absurd debate in the first place for a nation that claims to follow the rule of law), Obama set his jaw and intoned to the cameras, "I don't think it will be offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him."

It's not that this is some policy turnaround for Obama. He ran on a platform that challenged the general efficacy of the death penalty but that carefully left open a window to use it in heinous situations. But to me, the overzealousness of Obama's death declaration about the 9/11 trial (he quickly backed off and said he was just hypothesizing a possible outcome) stank of phoniness. Even through the television, for Chrissakes, he emanated the smell of a guy straining for primal toughness in the face of charges that he is a softie. The appropriate response in front of the cameras would have been a sober presidential declaration about the deadly seriousness of due process in order to secure justice for such a horrific crime. So why the bloodthirsty schoolboy overstatement? More and more, Obama reminds me of the title character in the film Zelig, who is addicted to being whatever others expect of him. How much of his soul will a man sell in pursuit of perceived gravitas?

You Didn't Read This.

Good evening. The subject of this blog non-entry is the former governor of the northernmost American state, who shall here remain nameless, since Google hits and soundbites from outraged liberals are precisely what she seeks in order to inflame her extremist fringe base. Not that the prospect of her shattering the Republican Party does not carry certain benefits. But for that she does not require our help.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to follow this link to an insightful piece at The Nation (and formerly at Tom Dispatch) in which Max Blumenthal makes the case that the former governor's appeal to her audience rests more on reptile-brain nihilism than on any structured affirmation, which makes her adherents immune to counter-argument or evidence, let alone reason.

If for any reason, after reading the essay, you or others become caught in the trap of overly energetic attention toward said former governor, I will disavow all knowledge of this post.

This message will self-destruct in five seconds.

We need a word

for a person who is the equivalent of a husband or wife but in an unmarried relationship by choice. I had an aunt who was with the same man for something like 40 years, until death, without their marrying. I have a friend whose live-in life love recently died unexpectedly --  again, they could have legally married but chose not to -- and in conveying my sympathy I realized I was missing a noun that would do justice to this person's role in my friend's life.

I have since been groping for that word in my hamstrung language, English, and I haven't found it. "Partner," to me, falls way short emotionally and sounds too transactional, although I know that some couples comfortably use it. "Companion" also seems to come up short; that could be your dog. "Girlfriend" and "boyfriend" seem OK to me up to a point, but once you have reached a certain seriousness of loving commitment, especially later in life, calling someone your "girlfriend" or "boyfriend" just sounds silly. I guess we could go with modifiers and try "life companion" or "loving partner" or similar pairings, but they feel to me more like fodder for obits or greeting cards than for actual life. Plus, who wants to lug around a two-word phrase as the generic handle for the person you love?

"Domestic partner" also feels chilly to me. I know the term is useful as a legal runner-up to "husband" or "wife" for gay couples who want to marry but are forbidden to by discriminatory laws, and it also has legal uses for potential recognition of straight couples who cohabit. But as a phrase it leaves me cold. Listen to it: "Domestic partnership." It sounds like a household business. All that's missing is the "Inc." afterward. Of course, gay couples who would like to marry can choose to call themselves "husbands" and "wives" no matter what the laws say (although there are plenty of reasons why they might not like those terms). But what about people who don't want to marry but who have built a life together?

So I've come up wordless for this. Maybe there's one I'm missing. Or it's time to create one. Surely we can do better than the lame assortment from which we've learned to choose.

Who's Really Scared of a 9/11 Trial?

For God's sake. With all of this chittering by small weasel-like creatures about the allegedly catastrophic "propaganda opportunity" provided to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 defendants by the federal court trial planned in New York by Attorney General Eric Holder, you'd think the United States was some sorry illegitimate state whose global stature cannot hold up under the challenge of a criminal defendant's statements in open court.

Which I guess, come to think of it, is actually the problem.

Holder has said, rightly, that he isn't scared. But I do think the spastic critters squeaking their fears on Fox are onto something, although a very different something than what they think they're onto. In truth, their behavior begs a basic question: What kind of country is so unsure of the persuasiveness of its ideals that it is afraid to apply its own rules of due process for fear that the transparency of a trial will allow an anti-American defendant's voice to be heard?

Answer: A country that has trouble believing in itself. For good reason, actually.

So here's the deal: When part of calling yourself a democracy involves using a publicly accountable and visible court process to put accused criminals on trial, you don't get to conveniently renege on the "public" and "accountable" and "visible" parts when you have a defendant whose beliefs you consider tangibly threatening. Dictatorships do that. Alleged democracies don't. An alleged democracy believes in its supposedly convincing principles of jurisprudence enough to put them into practice even when -- or especially when -- this shines a public spotlight on a defendant's violent defiance.

A right to a public trial is a right to a public trial. When you chicken out on granting that right because you fear the message of the accused, it says more about you than it says about the defendant.

Who's Afraid of...?

A couple of nights ago I watched Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the movie version of Edward Albee's eyebrow-frying play, with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton scorching their way through the Marriage From Hell and Sandy Dennis adding heat as an innocent bystander who gets raked into the coals. It's a pleasant little film if you don't mind clinging to the earth's crust for two hours to avoid sliding down into the magma. The film won five Oscars, including Best Actress for Taylor. I think it deserved at least one more, for Burton, who underplayed the steamrollered but knowing husband like a force of nature. Somehow I had managed to miss seeing this film, as I've missed a long list of classics. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you correct that quickly. I'm no movie maven, but it's certainly the best film about the lies of love that I've ever seen. You can find details here, but beware the painfully-complete plot summary if you plan on watching the film.

Anyway, I mentioned the movie to some friends, one of whom emailed me an excerpt about playwright Albee, who has managed to be ruthlessly honest AND to win every dramatic award in the universe at least once. He's the kind of informed bigmouth we need more of in the age of Small Change. The excerpt, from a 2008 interview in the Gay and Lesbian Review, dates from the last of the Bush years, but you'll want to read it anyway:

AMERICA’S leading playwright provocateur, now an octogenarian, Edward Albee—whose plays include the scalding Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, A Delicate Balance, Three Tall Woman, and the taboo-smashing The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?—is hardly resting on his accumulated laurels (three Pulitzer prizes and three Tony awards). In fact, the playwright is now directing new stagings of two of his one-acts, “The American Dream” and “The Sandbox,” with the assistance of a hearing aid, and is proving as durable as his work. When his The Play About the Baby ran at New York’s Century Center in 2000, he underwent an operation to have two stents inserted to bypass a 95-percent blocked artery to his heart, and stayed conscious to observe the entire procedure. He gamely recommends that “life should be lived at the precipice, so that we don’t come to the end of our life with regret for what we have not done.”

An ardent Democrat, he laments the Bush regime and its current “destruction of democracy in this country,” and observes: “I don’t know a single artist today who doesn’t believe this administration is terrible...that it was not elected, but was put in power by a coup d’état. It worries me to see that it believes the only way to save democracy is to repress it at home, by silencing journalists and writers.” There is still evidence of the angry young man who penned “The American Dream,” willing to call things as he sees them. A recipient of Kennedy Center honors when Bill Clinton was in office, Albee has refused to attend any Kennedy Center ceremonies under George W. Bush. “One doesn’t like some presidents,” he remarked, but “this is the first president I’ve despised. What’s worse is the fucking passive American people. Remember what Adlai Stevenson said? In this country we can still have anything we want—but we’re going to end up with what we deserve.”

Thanks to Laurie.

Baltimore Mayor's Card Trick.

Here's one for you:

Let's say there is a mayor. Of a major city. And the mayor is single and is dating a wealthy developer. (The mayor's administration is also granting said developer some big-ticket city contracts, by the way. But more about that later.) And at some point it comes to light that this mayor went on a shopping spree with 60 -- count 'em, 60 -- gift cards from Best Buy, Old Navy, and the area Giant supermarket chain worth about $1,500, most of which were paid for by the mayor's developer lover. Except there's a small twist: these 60 cards were allegedly intended for use by poor families during the holidays. The developer, by now the mayor's ex-boyfriend, tells a grand jury that the mayor's office telephoned him asking for a slew of $25 and $50 gift cards; the $25 cards, he says, were for single mothers and the $50 cards were for bigger families.

But, as it turned out, all 60 of them were personally used by the mayor, for the mayor.

All hell breaks loose. The mayor is indicted for felony theft and other charges. Initially, the mayor claims to have used the cards by mistake. (Yep, used up 60 cards, all by mistake. Shopping can be so confusing.) But no, wait. At the trial, the mayor's legal team makes a hairpin turn and argues that the mayor, in fact, truly believed that all these cards were intended for the mayor's personal use. So the mayor, the attorney declares to the jury, was spending recklessly in good faith. Sure, maybe it appeared a little odd for the rich boyfriend to send, as a personal token of affection, 60 small-value gift cards to the mayor's office instead of, say, sending a few big cards or a gift certificate for $1,500 to the mayor's home. But, hey, anybody can misunderstand a gift, right? So off went the mayor on an extended and thoroughly honorable mission to spend down 60 gift cards.

Welcome to Baltimore, the town where I live, where the mayor of the moment, Sheila Dixon, in a local tradition of political hacks, numbskulls, and petty thieves, is trying to set a new record for the most outrageous straight-faced claim of innocence ever. As well as a new standard for astoundingly reprehensible behavior toward the poor.

I care more about this sorry Baltimore episode than you do, of course, because I live here. Mayor Dixon is a perennial lightweight and sad sack whose un-mayorly leadership has been a local embarrassment since her election. But then, this is the town where (former mayor) William Donald Shaefer made it onto CNN by ordering a young staffer, on camera, to repeat her walk away from him while he ogled her derriere. Mayor Dixon might rightly figure that shame is extinct around these parts.

Anyway, at a time when former card-carrying Deficit Spenders For Bush Wars And Plutocratic Gluttony are now threatening to riot over federal spending to repair the damage they helped create, I thought I'd share with you Baltimore's latest little tale of political audacity.

By the way, Mayor Dixon's trial for theft, embezzlement, and misconduct is now in progress. Her perjury trial for allegedly not reporting gifts from city contractor and former boyfriend Ronald Lipscomb is scheduled for March.

Faces.

 

 

 

I took these photos in various places.