Imagine my dismay

I've been without a computer at home since July 1, or thereabouts. Last Friday afternoon my boss says to me, "Hey, I've got this laptop you can take home, let me just clean it off and it's yours." I say "Great," and I mean it. I don't even mind that it's an old cruddy Thinkpad running Windows 2000. It works, and I can have it. Yay for me, I'm thinking. Never mind my now departed but zippy little PowerBook, and the new Tiger OS I have sitting here in a box. This is something, and it's free.

So I was busy Friday night & then I took a lot of naps on Saturday, as is my custom. Saturday night I ended up not exactly babysitting but my friends have this teenage daughter and they needed to go away overnight and I said "yeah sure I'll stay at your house tonight." Not to babysit, per se, but just to make sure that there was no excessive alcohol consumption on the premises. And to walk the dog. Plus they let me drive the new Infiniti F/x with that GPS map thingy that shows you exactly where you are but makes me kind of nervous so I had to turn it off. And I got to do my laundry, which kind of needed doing, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, there I was, out in fancy-land, enjoying the quiet house and the nice dark night. I finished reading some stuff I needed to read and then got out the laptop to write up a summary. Problem is, the damn thing thought it was still connected to the network and wouldn't let me in without an administrative password. Or maybe it would have let me in with my network password, but I wasn't connected to the network, and it doesn't have a wireless card, or something. I got tired of messing with it after a while.

Fuckity fuck fuck fuck.

Regular blogging should resume shortly, in any case. Monday I will have someone figure all this out and explain it to me. I'll let you know how it goes.

Support our troops

I finally got a chance to talk to my friend K. alone the other day. He's normally very cheerful & calm, but he's seemed tense lately. I mean, really tense. About to fucking snap. Loses patience over nothing at all. Sort of stands on the outskirts of everything, on his tiptoes, like he might blast off any second.

I asked him what was up & he did not let me see him cry. His mom had just had a heart attack. It was on account of him, he said, because the night before she had the heart attack he was robbed at gunpoint at a drive-thru food place in his old neighborhood.

I know he knows that she's had heart troubles for years, and that he didn't actually cause her heart attack, but it took a few days' worth of chance meetings in the hallways to sort out the whole story. I just kept listening.

After the guys who robbed him took off on their scooters, K. got a handgun (legal, registered, etc.) out of his glove compartment. He was freaked. They'd had a gun right in his face. He fired his gun, even though there was no one there. He called the cops. He told the cops that he had fired his gun, and they confiscated it. Told him to settle down or they'd file a charge against him for illegally discharging a weapon within the city limits.

It's a good thing that they took that weapon from him, because he went looking for the guys who'd robbed him. Figured they'd be easy enough to find on that shiny red scooter. Fortunately he didn't find them, and he went home. Stopped and got a pint of vodka first, to calm his nerves. Told his wife what had happened, and went downstairs. His wife called his mom, a second-shift nurse, and she came over on her way home. It appeared that K. was trying to assemble Molotov cocktails and get some of his old army buddies to come over and help him get these scumballs. Or something. Even K. isn't sure what he was trying to do.

See, K.'s a Gulf War vet. His story is not unusual. He enlisted to get money for college and make his mama proud. Only he got shipped off to Desert Storm a few weeks before his time was up. He knew, of course, that that sort of thing could happen when you're in the army. In his better moments, K's grateful for the opportunity to serve his country, and grateful that he came back in one piece and that he was able to finish college and get a job. And he got married, and he's absolutely crazy in love with his wife and adores his beautiful baby daughter. His mother should be proud of him.

But the thing is he didn't come back in one piece. He has PTSD. Looking down the barrel of a gun the other night scared the shit out of him. The idea that he might do something that compromises his daughter's and wife's and mother's safety scares the shit of him. The idea that he might do something stupid and end up in jail scares the shit of him.

"I know I need help," he said to me. "I called the VA to make an appointment. I can see a shrink in like February or March."

Surely we can do better than this.

All about me

Yes, I took another quiz. Via Feministe.

Which rad old school 70's glam icon are you? (with pics)

It turns out I'm Brian Eno. Who knew?

"You're a little reclusive maybe, a little quieter than most people... But man, who needs outside entertainment when your brain is like KABOOM all the time? You are innovative, creative, and intelligent. You dress flamboyantly, gravitating towards large feathers and tinsel. Everyone respects you, and looks up to you. We are not worthy, we are not worthy..." brought to you by Quizilla

Cooking in hot weather

It's starting to cool off a little bit this week, but really it's been too hot to cook lately. Too hot really to even eat anything other than an occasional gin-soaked olive. But when it's steamy and hot and crappy like this I sometimes want a really spicy-sweet-sour soup. Not one of those fancy chilled soups, but a hot soup. With shrimps and scallops and lemon grass -- kind of like that stuff you get at Thai restaurants. I figure it's no accident that people in hot climates eat spicy food.

So I made some of this last night; it's not particularly authentic, and I don't make it the same way every time. The following instructions are just guidelines, not exactly a recipe, but I think you'll get the idea. It's kind of expensive to make unless the seafood happens to be really cheap. I like it hot enough to make my ears ring, but I've toned it down a bit here.

I wish I'd had a camera at home so I could show you how pretty it was, but you'll have to take my word for it: it's beautiful.

This makes about four smallish servings. I usually use 1 whole chicken breast, and a pound each of shrimp & scallops, and two or even three quarts of broth, but the quantities below fit comfortably into what I think is a 3-qt saucepan. I serve it over short-grained white rice (nishiki or sushi rice), but it's not necessary. You could also add some of those cellophane-type rice noodles (cook separately & store extra rice or noodles separately or you'll end up with a gummy mess).

Ingredients:

• onion (medium)
• olive oil (about 1 Tbsp)
• chicken breast (about 1/3 lb boneless, skinless)
• chicken broth (1 quart)
• garlic (1 clove)
• shiitake mushrooms* (4 largishstems removed), or some other kind, or no mushrooms at all -- about 1/2 cup sliced
• lemon grass (1 stalk)
• kaffir lime leaves (2 or 3)
• dried red chili peppers (1 or 2)
• fresh jalapeno pepper (optional - 1/2 to 1)
• fresh ginger (a few quarter-sized slices, peeled)
• juice of 1/2 lime (or more if you want)
• rice wine vinegar
• shoyu or tamari
• water (a cup or so)
• fresh basil *and/or cilantro (lots)
• cherry tomatoes (a few, say 4 or 5, cut in half)
• about 1/3 lb bay scallops
• fresh, whole jumbo shrimps (8)

Directions:

First you slice up the onion and saute it in the olive oil very slowly until it's very soft. Then you cut up the chicken breast and put it in and let it cook for a bit. Add the garlic and let it cook for just a minute. It doesn't really matter if you mince it up or if you run it through the garlic press. I can't find my garlic press, so I minced it. Then add the chicken broth (I used one 32-oz box of unsalted chicken broth, but I've also made it with homemade vegetable stock and mushroom broth which I bought by accident and it tasted just fine). Toss in the very thinly sliced mushrooms if you want them. Shiitakes especially seem kind of rubbery to me if you don't slice them really thin.

The next few things you won't actually eat, but they add a very nice flavor to the broth: just snip the lemon grass into 2-inch pieces - it's a bitch to chop, and you'll be picking them out later anyway; the kaffir lime leaves just toss in there whole, sort of like bay leaves. The dried peppers can be put in whole (though know your peppers -- if the broth is going to stand overnight, for example, you might want to break one or both of them and discard the seeds, unless you like really hot food). I usually also add a couple of thick slices of jalapeno pepper -- remove seeds (wear gloves!!) if you don't want it to get too hot. Peel the fresh ginger and slice into quarter-sized slices - add maybe $1 or $1.50 worth (4-6 chunks). Dried ginger doesn't work so well -- skip it if you don't have fresh ginger.

Let all of this simmer for a while, until the chicken is completely done. Add the lime juice and maybe a tablespoon or so each of rice wine vinegar and good soy sauce or tamari. The only rice wine vinegar I had was sushi vinegar, which is sweetened and salted. Worked fine - I just used a little less tamari so it wouldn't get too salty.

Taste it at this point. If you feel like it needs to be a little sweeter, add a few slices of carrot. The best time to do that whole broth part is the day before you want to make the soup, but if you didn't think of it yesterday, just let it stand for as long as you can (bring it to a simmer every now and then for a few minutes if it's going to be a while, just to discourage pathogen growth) or refrigerate it for a few hours. You don't want to just let it simmer endlessly, though, as I find this compromises the delicateness of the flavors.

When it's almost time to serve it, bring it to a gentle simmery boil and add the scallops, shrimps*, tomatoes, and the basil, stems and all (I'm talking about like maybe almost a whole one of those packages you get at the grocery store). Add more water if you need to, in order to keep everything submerged (a cup or so should do it). You can remove the peppers, lemon grass, etc. before you serve it, or just make people pick it out of their bowls themselves.

*Update: Yes, I just toss the shrimps in, shells and all. You can peel & clean them first if you want, but I think they look kind of cool whole. Plus they're kind of fun to peel at the table if you and your guests don't mind that sort of thing. Regarding the mushrooms, they are totally optional. I prefer shiitakes, but those little funny-looking ones like they have in the Thai or Vietnamese restaurants are good too, if you can find them. The button mushrooms or portobellos are not so good in this.

And also, I forgot to include cilantro when I wrote this down. Use a generous handful (not a whole great big bunch of it), rinsed and maybe torn up a bit, but don't bother chopping it. Oh, and I also forgot to say to simmer it gently for five or maybe ten minutes -- until the shrimps are bright pink and the scallops are cooked through. The basil and cilantro should still be bright green.

Friday Random Ten: Nothing new under the sun edition

1. Bonin' in the Boneyard - Fishbone/Truth & Soul
2. Love Me Not - Polecat Creek/Salt Sea Bound
3. Cheatin' - The Gin Blossoms/New Miserable Experience
4. There's A Moon in the Sky - The B-52s/ The B-52s
5. I Can't Make It Alone - Dusty Springfield/Dusty in Memphis
6. Red Accordion - Patty Larkin/Perishable Fruit
7. Window on the World - John Hiatt & the Goners/Beneath This Gruff Exterior
8. Little One - Elliott Smith/From a Basement on a Hill
9. Evil Town - The Pinetops/Above Ground & Vertical
10. Top of the World - Two Nice Girls/Like a Version

Biking on Wednesdays

I didn't ride my bike today. It's another bad air day, with orange level alerts for both ozone and particulates. Plus a heat index of 102 with highs in the high 90s. It's OK, I guess, if I don't ride my damn bike every single day. I don't have to feel guilty about it. But if I thought it all through, I think I'd stop riding my bicycle altogether on Wednesdays on account of here in the land of a bazillion baptists (that's pronounced 'babtists,' apparently, if you're from here), Wednesday night is church night, and no matter which route I take home, I have to pass at least two churches.

Big deal, you say. Why should a bunch of churchgoing yahoos harsh your buzz so royally that you want to stay off the street? Are they so zealous that they have to stop and witness to passing bicyclists? Is cycling some kind of abomination, or is there something in Leviticus or the teachings of St. Paul that suffereth a woman not to ride a damn bike? Are they offended by those little skirts that you wear biking? Are you such a heathen that the very presence of a bunch of christians can wreck your day?

No, I'll tell you what it is: these people are a fucking traffic hazard. Seriously.

In the first place, there's a lot of them. And because all the churches have so many different activities Wednesday nights, it's impossible to predict what time would be best to pass by. It's like there's this ebbing and flowing swarm of them and they're all over the place and they're just not looking where they are going. The teenage girls are furtively watching the teenage boys, who are of course watching them. Mom is busy trying to herd a bunch of girls who are dressed like refugees from the set of like 'Little House on the Prairie' or something across the street in the crosswalk. Grandma is clutching her pocketbook and looking around warily. She saw it on the news the other night that little old ladies get mugged all the damn time, and she's pretty sure tonight is her night. She doesn't see me of course on account of I'm white. She's easy to miss though because she's moving pretty slowly.

Dad sees me at least; he's staring right at my tits as I swerve to avoid him and the car door he has just opened in my path. I imagine he's thinking about the sins of Bathsheba* as he stammers an apology. This is by far the worst menace. The car door opening, I mean, not immodest women.

Anyone fool enough to ride a bike on city streets knows that it's safest to act as if every car door will in fact open when you're right alongside of it. But once you've seen five people get out of a Civic and cross the street and go into a building, you're surprised when the driver's door opens and someone gets out. Maybe you're riding defensively enough that you're sort of prepared for it, and there's no collision, but what was he doing in there? Having an NPR Driveway Moment^SM? Didn't think so. Getting high? Reading a little bit of scripture, maybe, before going on in to the fellowship hall?

And you can forget about anything you might have thought about how friendly and polite these freshly-scrubbed, modestly dressed people must be. They're every bit as rude and hostile as people in a hurry anywhere else. They not only ignore the presence of a passing bicyclist, they aren't paying any attention at all to passing cars, either. And they're rude and hostile when they're driving their cars too, honking and cutting in front of people, and turning without using their signals & then getting mad at other drivers for not using their signals. Oh, and harassing females. A couple of weeks ago on a Wednesday, I was going over the bridge just before this one church, and a shiny red car full of college boys rode past me, slowed down and rode alongside me for a while, then slightly behind me, then a bit ahead of me -- shouting crude sexual remarks the whole time and making rude gestures. For quite a while. I mean, it was quite a bit beyond the kind of scene where you can just maybe flip 'em a bird & forget about it. Scary-type shit, actually. Then they sped up, cut in front of me, and into the church parking lot, whereupon they piled out and started tossing a frisbee.

How fucking wholesome.

On the other hand, Wednesday is a great night to go to the grocery store, or the laundromat, or anyplace else you want to avoid a crowd.

*Thanks to Emma at Gendergeek for the Sins of Bathsheba link.

Now this is just sad

Nudist's naked burial wish denied

So this 82-year-old guy in Illinois died after a lifetime of nudity. Naturism. Whatever. He fought 20 arrests for indecency since 1962. Despite his clearly stated wishes to the contrary, his brothers (one a minister, apparently) are having him buried in grey trousers and a shirt.

The jerks.

-via the BBC

And in related news, the BBC also reports that cops on a Dorset beach are going, um, undercover to catch "predatory males" making indecent propositions at a nude beach.

Truth vs. Advertising

OK.

The Dove ads. I'm sort of oblivious; I haven't actually seen any of these in the wild, but it seems like everybody's got their knickers in a twist about em. I guess there are some guys whose manhood is actually threatened by the presence in their field of vision of underwear-clad chicks who don't look like all the other mostly-unclothed chicks they like to look at while whacking off. And some other people, apparently, are freaking out because oh my god these women are FAT! Yuck! Unhealthy!! And then there are some girls, I guess, going all 'yay, it's OK to be fat! I saw this girl in this one ad, and she was like, well, not fat exactly, but she looked sorta normal, and they let her out in her underwear anyway.'

Yippee, an ad campaign giving us all permission (!) to be young, beautiful, airbrushed, and fit -- and we can even choose from several skin colors and heights, and to be something larger than a size 2. In comfortable white cotton undies, no less. Hey, I'm going to rush out and buy some of that -- what is it again they're selling? Body Firming Lotion?

What in the fucking bloody goddamn hell is that for?

Yikes. Hang on. I'm having a flashback here. I know exactly what that shit is for. They use it to take money away from women. The cosmetic-industrial complex, I mean. And it works! The part about the money does, I mean.

I found out about such things in my early twenties. I wasn't fat, exactly, but I was on a diet. I'd in fact been on a diet for much of the previous decade. Since that growth spurt right before puberty when my mother got terrified because I was already almost 5 feet tall (her height) and weighed almost 95 pounds (her pre-pregnancy weight). She was afraid for me, see, because she knew that if I got fat, no one would love me. She said it right out. It was for my own good. If I ever actually got fat, then men like my father wouldn't marry me, and women like her would talk about me behind my back, and pity me. She was not wrong, as it turned out.

But I got very good at dieting in the meantime. And exercising. And throwing up after meals. It would never happen to me, I was pretty sure of that at least. But then I was in the locker room one day and my best friend (a ballerina) pointed out that, if I stood a certain way, with my butt sort of clenched, it looked almost like I was getting cellulite on my ass.

Oh! the horror! I couldn't quite see it, but she assured me it was there. A woman in her thirties, maybe, was in the room with us, and she overheard us and laughed at us! Laughed! Had she no idea that my entire future was on the line? She dropped her towel and we stared, aghast, at the fit, trim gal we'd seen encased in lycra in the advanced aerobics class. She had stretch marks! And cellulite! And her tits -- gravity -- oh my god!

"We all get it, girls," she said, or something like that. "Might as well relax."

She was trying to be kind, of course, but my friend and I got dressed in a damn hurry, terror in our eyes as we looked around and noted that there was not one perfect body over the age of like 15 in there. And this was a hard-core fitness studio kind of place, not some YWCA full of stressed-out moms and middle-aged secretaries trying to relax in the hot tub. This was not the sort of place where you saw actual fat chicks. Models worked out there.

So off we went to our favorite department store to buy some shoes or something on the way home, and stopped by the cosmetics counter to see if there were any free-gift-with-purchase totebags, which we sort of collected. I can't remember whether there were any or not, because we were entranced by a new product on display in the very posh end of the cosmetics department.

You might say we were extra vulnerable at that particular time, on that particular day, at that particular point in our lives. It was a perfect marketing moment: naked unquestioned desperation meets product, and money will be spent.

I wish I could remember what that shit was called, or who made it, but it was one of the high-end cosmetic companies and it smelled really, um, well it was made out of seaweed I guess, and it came with this specially designed device for massaging it into your ass and your thighs. What it did, see, was break down the cell walls of cellulite and if you used it faithfully every day for the rest of your life, you would never be troubled by cellulite. Totally scientific. Breakthrough discovery. You might get a fat ass, but it would be as smooth as it was the day you were born. Sort of.

Well, we both bought some, free tote bag or no. And we used it every day until we couldn't stand the smell any more. And that shit was expensive! And oh my god, it stunk! And you know what? It didn't work! It did absolutely fucking nothing! Plus it had the extra bonus effect of making us look at our asses every day, right after we stepped off the scale, to see if it was working. If we'd been able to get a full-length magnifying mirror we would have, to better see our hideous flaws and repent. I would quite cheerfully have donned a burka to hide my shame at the horror that was my own perky little 21-year-old ass.

Jesus.

So, yeah, now it's 20-some years later. I have cellulite. And stretch marks. And I guess my ass is kind of big, now that you mention it. And let's just not talk about gravity and my tits in the same sentence.

And they are still trying to sell me that shit?

I'll keep my fifty bucks, thanks.