Man is chew it z

I can't remember if I ever noticed it before: that's 4 English words in a row, followed by a z.

This year, I boycotted all products containing cottonseed oil.
If they want their customers to live longer and continue buying their food, they'll start using healthier ingredients. Why not olive or safflower oil?

Passover is the Brigadoon of dishes.

We only have one week a year to break our passover dishes.
If you're looking for dishes from the 1950's, 60's, 70's, advertise in Jewish publications.

It can be a problem if we buy a food processor or electric kettle to use only on passover and it breaks the second week we use it. It would be difficult to take it back to the store after a year and say we'd only used it for two weeks before it broke.

heat the tub

In these chilly northern climes, why don't we have heated bathtubs? Then you could relax and read an entire New Yorker. A child could play with all her boats and rubber duckies and cups, and only come out for bedtime or when her mommy says, "You're turning into a prune!"

china trade

How is the economic stimulus package supposed to work if most of the stuff we buy is Chinese? Why not give out coupons for American goods or services? Is this a Chinese-economy stimulus package?

Considering how their ramped-up factory production increases their incentive to dig coal out of the most dangerous and deadly mines on Earth, and burn it in inefficient power plants, polluting their atmosphere, the lungs of their own people and increasing global warming as a whole, shouldn't we reconsider this most-favored-nation trade status?

Sure, our standard of living has gone up by our ability to buy cheap goods, but is all this shoddy junk really improving the quality of our lives? Why not fewer things that are appreciated more? Why not quality items good enough to fix, or good enough not to break in the first place?

We need to look into our own culture for ways to improve the environment. For example, why do we need to buy children new toys? I know my small children were happy to get used toys from their older cousins. But there's a cultural taboo against wrapping up a already-played-with toy, even an already-read book (still in good condition!) and giving it to a child for a birthday. Even Christmas toy drives for needy children insist on brand new toys. That increases the amount of junk in our houses, our needlessly trashed items, the purchase of Chinese-made goods and ultimately global warming.

If you read stories of older times, you can see that this taboo didn't use to exist. It's like we're in the Brave New World where all are subscribed to the slogan 'Ending is Better than Mending'.

not a sonnet

She has a big face,
Like Hello Kitty,
And like her Daddy,
But much, much cuter.

Her name is Rafi.
Her laugh is magic.
She makes me happy.
She is four years old.

POW's awaiting end of War on Evil

Someone should write an article about the oldest POW in the U.S. facility in Guantanamo: A slumlord who was imprisoned there during President Johnson's declared War on Poverty. We still haven't won that war, either, so he is yet to be released.

Obama scandal

A real scandal about Obama would be if we found out he was better at speeches than debates because he is ghost-written. By his wife, possibly, or by a leprechaun.

spider gone

It's been a week since I've seen the spider. There last Thursday, gone Friday morning. I guess the cleaning guy finally did a thorough mopping. No web, no ant carcasses, no spider.

Googling myself -- I've been quoted!

I wasted a lot of time the other night googling myself because Rodrigo said he'd found me quoted on the Internet. He said he googles me now and then.

In December, I was interviewed by a reporter at a talk by Bill Richardson in Manchester. I had hopefully googled myself a few days after, but I didn't find myself quoted anywhere. I gave up and forgot about it. Apparently, I did make it into an article.

What I read seemed a little odd compared to what I remembered saying. I thought I'd been really articulate, having clarified my New Hampshire voter opinion in a blog entry a few days before. The quote didn't seem to be what I mainly said, but it wasn't a misquote. At most, a paraphrase of something I'd said. And, I guess, the point that the reporter was after.

First, I thought it was just on an web-only news service, but then I found that the piece was picked up by various newspapers, including the Miami Herald and the Cape Code Times.

Not that it matters any more. The primary's over. Still, it was fun to be in a state with a first-in-the-nation primary. It made me feel so important for a while, and I noticed others getting energized about voting. It would be good to rotate the privilege around, and give citizens of other small states a similar chance.

Back to googling: For the most part, "Margery Harrison" brings up a lot of genealogical records.

It's much more fun to do an image search on "Margie Harrison". She was definitely not me, and probably a pseudonym, but I'd love to know what happened to her.

News media ignoring actual NH result

There's such a big splash about Hillary beating Obama in the NH primary. I suppose her edge is a nice psychological victory, but if you look at the results in terms of delegates--which is what the primaries are about--they each got 9 delegates from NH. That makes the results, actually, a tie.

--written by one of the 13,245 voters who earned Richardson zero delegates.

The forecast said mixed precipitation turning into snow; we've a foot on the ground left from last week. I'm looking out the window, thinking:

Rain, rain, rain.
So long as you're not snow,
I'm not going to complain.

L.A. business idea?

Why is it legal to get paid for having sex in a movie but not if the cameras aren't rolling?
It seems there is a loophole in there.
Why not start a business where a person can pay to star in his own movie, with the porn actor of his choice?
A single copy of the film is made, direct to DVD. The DVD is given to the client, so he can relive the experience in the comfort of his home.
Is that legal? If not, why not?

55 million miles

55 million miles away.
Someday it will matter.
Mars at perigee--
Aunt Sally will be that much closer,
Or some other relative who settled there.
Her voice will be clearer
On the telephone, with less of a delay.
The supply ship will reach her with drugs she needs.
"Balto" will be painted on the side
of some unmanned craft to reach
our colony on the neighboring planet.

gang aft agley

We are all just living in our corner of the galaxy, making plans and saving up and hoping that the Cosmic cleaning crew doesn't notice and wipe us out.

Knowing that some day it will.

Like that mouse in the Burns poem.

9th ant doesn't count

Friday morning, a small ant crawled across my desk. Without much thinking, I reached out to crush it with my finger. It was only wounded. Nature has made ant exoskeletons extra hard. I tried to crush it again, to quickly end its misery, but wasn't sure I succeeded. I considered what to do, then walked down the hall and threw it into the spider web. Seeing it suspended there, I felt guilty. It hadn't blundered into the web. It wasn't its fault. I had interfered with nature. On the other hand, an ant that walks across my desk in the middle of the day doesn't have the survival skills necessary to make it to the next generation.

The dormant spider woke and made a speedy L to the ant. She quickly wrapped it up. I considered that this death was at least more useful than in the wastebasket or down the drain.

Having ruined the scientific validity of my observation of the spider, I wondered if by feeding it I had invoked the stray-cat rule and made it my pet. I decided it was more like a bird feeder in the yard--the birds and squirrels remain wild.

This morning, there were still only eight ant carcasses in the corner. As if the spider knew that we cheated; it hadn't caught that ninth ant on its own. It was just a bonus, so it ate it up and didn't save any.

1 NH Democrat, 3 Weeks before the Primary

I don't see the point of John Edwards this time around. A good speaker with not much experience is done much better by Barak Obama, and without the $400 haircut. Plus Obama is African-American, and has lived in a foreign country. These are good things. I do like how Edwards emphasizes the importance of helping poor people, but good intentions aren't enough.

Lack of experience worries me. Our country has been damaged, and Iraq nearly destroyed, from the blunderings of a pig-headed amateur. I'm hesitant to vote the country to someone who may be well-intentioned, but have a steep learning curve. I'd rather vote on resume and mostly ignore the campaign promises. That's why I'm leaning toward Richardson. He was in Congress, ambassador to the U.N., Secretary of Energy, and now governor. He ought to know how government works. And he's fluent in a second language.

I don't understand why so many of my neighbors have Hillary signs in their front yards. She elicits such visceral hatred from so many non-Democrats. Why do Democrats think she can win? She is, I admit, a great campaigner, but I think there is too much prejudice against her. In the last debate, she said she would like to unite the country. She can hope, but I think she has the least chance of it. In spite of her being the most right wing.

Two people at my synagogue said they want her because they want him back. They loved what Bill Clinton did for the economy, as reflected in their retirement funds. Their wanting her because they liked him raised my feminist distaste at the first female President being a famous wife first. I want someone in because people wanted her.

Revisionist Rudy

I saw an ad on TV last week that made me say "Rudy Giuliani doesn't deserve to be voted dogcatcher, let alone President." He credited Ronald Reagan for getting the hostages released from Iran, something I don't think even the most partisan of Reagan supporters ever claimed. He said Reagan managed this feat during his first hour of his Presidency because "the best way to deal with terrorists, dicatators and tyrants is to stand up to them. You don't back down."

As I recall, the hostage crisis began because President Carter wouldn't back down to pressure from Iran, but allowed the deposed Shah to come to the U.S. for medical treatment. (Giuliani also refers to the captors as "mullahs", when at the time the T.V. news called them "students", but that's minor. I'd grant him the "mullahs" if the rest of the ad made sense.)

My husband, who is from NY, was more sanguine about the revisionist history. "Giuliani is a self-promoting egotist who's catering to the shallowist follower of politics. Reagan sold arms to Iran, that ended up with Hezbollah. Then the money went to the contras. So he supported terrorists."

See:
NYT
http://giuliani2008-blogger.blogspot.com/2007/12/rudy-giuliani-tv-ad-one-hour.html
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/12/guiliani_tv_ad_questioned.html

spider eight

She had an eighth ant in her web today. From early to late morning she brought it to the top of the web. After lunch I noticed the eighth ant deposited in the corner over the tiles, practically on top of another ant.

I've also noticed what looks like the ghost of a spider, where she sometimes hangs out in the corner. Could it be a discarded exoskeleton? Do spiders shed skin like snakes? The shed/dead thing has legs.
I'm pretty sure the spider has been growing. When I first noticed her, she was a much smaller spider. If she's the same one, of course.

This is in an approx. 7'x8' bathroom, which remains dark when no one turns on the light.

spider update: 7!

Tuesday evening I noticed the spider had another ant in her arms, in the middle of her web. I blew at her, to see if she was comatose from ant blood or possibly dead, and she scurried up to the corner of the web nearest to the corner where the ladies' room walls meet. She dragged her ant package up with her, and attended to it at the top of the web, where she'd be less affected by the wind. I wondered if she'd leave this latest ant with the six others. The next morning I noticed that she had. So now there are seven ants wrapped up in the corner of the ladies' room where the single row of vertical tiles meet the wall.

It occured to me that a spider's life is like that of a military patrol. She waits and does apparently nothing for days on end, but is always ready to spring into action for a kill. Then return to dormancy.

My husband's guess is that the ant stash is for baby spiders to come. I'm pretty sure that all we know of the natural history of spiders was learned from Charlotte's Web.

I hope the cleaning people don't get conscientious and clean up her stash, or her. I'd like to know what happens next, and that will possibly take a number of months.

song begging for alternative lyrics

Driving home, listening to WOKQ on the radio the other night, I heard a song whose refrain went:

I don't give a dern what other people think
What do ya think about that?

It's a fun song to sing in the car.

Some googling and I find its name is what do you think about that. Sung by a duo called Montgomery Gentry. And it is #10 on the billboard hot country chart.

The lyrics continue:

I wear what I want to, overalls work boots
Crank my music up loud

Like to sling a little mud in my four wheel drive
Trek it all into town
Shot a little eight ball down at the pool hall
Drink a beer with my friends

Now this is way too masculine for anyone else's opinion to be more than a paper tiger. If you're the toughest guy on the block, your nonconformity is a non-issue. How about singing in that deep low voice something more along the lines of:

I wear my feather boa every day to work
Clicking my high heel shoes.
If I didn't have a different boy every Friday night
A civil union's what I'd choose.

Then you can continue on with the original, but with a more rightfully defiant meaning:

Now don't judge me and I won't judge you
Cause we all get judged in the end....

Some people care about what other people think
Worry about what they say
Let a little gossip
Coming from a loose lip ruin a perfect day
Say, blah, blah, blah, just a jacking their jaws
Gotta letta roll offa my back
What do ya think about that

Say, I don't give a damn what other people think
What do ya think about that
What do ya think about that