"the only tired I was, was tired of giving in"

Rosa Parks died last night at her home in Detroit. This piece in the Washington Post quotes from her 1992 autobiography "My Story:"

"People always say that I didn't give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn't true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old, although some people have an image of me as being old then. I was forty-two. No, the only tired I was, was tired of giving in."

Bless her heart.

Via Suburban Guerrilla. And Magpie.

How to wake up in the morning without really trying

Flaco Jimenez. In the CD player on the table next to my bed. The CD starts playing and I start dreaming that I'm dancing. And then I wake up all dreamy and happy and all I want to do is dance. How can I possibly have a bad day? How can anything suck? Accordions are playing! People are happy! Life is good!

I've tried so many different CDs to wake up to, and I keep coming back to this one. I'm sensitive, I guess, and I believe I've mentioned that I'm kind of tired of hearing the damn news right away in the morning. But the wake-up music has to be just right, or your whole day can be set askew. I don't, for example, want to start off the day with Tom Waits doing that completely demented version of the Dwarves' Marching Song "Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, It's Off to Work We Go," even though it's highly excellent and perfect for the bus ride to work.

Anyway, I think this CD is just called "Flaco Jimenez." Some of the songs are in English and some are in Spanish and a few are in kind of spangly Spanglish. All are very danceable. I'm sure I'll get tired of this one eventually and have to pick something else.

When entomology meets etymology

I'm having some trouble sitting still. You'll see why if you keep reading. Stop reading now if you're squeamish about bugs, or you maybe don't want too much information about my, um, mental health. But it's a funny story -- funny in the regular ha-ha way and also in that "isn't this a weird little planet we're on?" kind of way.

Part of the problem is that this time of year, at least where I live, bugs like to come inside. If they're spiders or other interesting bugs I mostly just let them stay, or take them gently outside if necessary. Their lives are pretty short and they generally go away on their own. Bugs that eat the house or infest my food are rather less welcome, even if they're really interesting. Termites, for example, or those moths that eat your sweaters and get into the pancake mix. Roaches are neither interesting nor welcome. They are the size of fucking basset hounds here, so they're pretty easy to track down & chase out of the house.

It's a little embarrassing that ants freak me out so much, but they do. Part of it has to do with the way they move all swarmy all over everything. I find it horrifying. And also that collective mind thing, that's scary too. Although it bothers me less when bees do it, for some reason. Bees don't bother me at all, or wasps. Bees and wasps and even hornets are interesting.

But ants, they've bothered me since I was a little kid, partly because I associated them with a phenomenon I used to call "itchul bugs," although I've since found there is a much better name for it, which I'll get to in a minute, because it does have to do with ants. My mother tells me that I was about four or five when I first complained about feeling like bugs were crawling on me even when I knew they weren't there. I said it felt like they were under my skin and had to admit that yes, I knew that wasn't possible. She told me that scratching would make it worse, and it turned out she was right. She was pretty sure I was imagining it, or that it was somehow from playing in the dirt all day. And it was my grandmother who first told me I could make the feeling stop if I looked really hard right at the itchy place and repeated to myself, "see, there aren't any bugs there." Bless her for teaching me that. Self-hypnosis is a really useful skill.

Anyway, the imaginary bug phenomenon has reappeared intermittently, but I hadn't been bothered much at all by it for years. It most often occurs when I get migraines or haven't slept in a long time. Then last spring I had a seriously unpleasant allergic response to some medication, and it's been annoying me pretty steadily since then. There's no skin irritation or anything. I've investigated a number of possible causes and have talked to a couple of doctors; there doesn't seem to be a lot I can do that works any better than doing what my grandmother suggested, but it would be good if I could stop doing whatver it is that sets it off. It's most likely part of the constellation of sensory weirdnesses that goes along with migraines, which I get a lot of. [update: Or maybe allergies. Duh. Seems like there's maybe something to this theory.]

I'll tell you what though, it got way way worse last week when the ants started showing up on my kitchen counter. I don't like to put out poison, but I did, and it didn't really help right away. I couldn't even go in there to eat or wash the dishes because it was absolutely and utterly terrifying. I made myself go in there for five minutes at a time until I had finally washed all the dishes and washed every surface with bleach. And of course then I found a large tin on the counter that had some dog food in it in case I have canine company. I got rid of that the other day and washed the tin and put it outside just in case there was some still in there and they came back for it. These ants seemed enthusiastic, I guess you could say, about the dog food. Finally, in the last few days they've started to slack off some, whether on account of the poison or the removal of the dog food. Or maybe the increasingly cold weather.

So I was looking up something in a reference book a little while ago, and (as I so often do) I got kind of distracted. And I have a lot of reference books. And once I started pulling on this thread, I couldn't think about anything other than the ants that are not crawling around under my skin. It's called formication, by the way. Isn't that a great word? And it has to do with ants! I mean, like, etymologically speaking. So anyway, here's what I found:

ant - Any of various social insects of the family Formicidae, characteristically having wings only in the males and fertile females and living in colonies that have a complex social organization. [Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Arthropoda, Class: Insecta, Order: Hymenoptera, Suborder: Apocrita Superfamily: Vespoidea, Family: Formicidae]

Formica is a genus of ants commonly known as wood ants. They typically secrete formic acid.

formic acid. - A colorless caustic fuming liquid, CH₂O₂, used in dyeing and finishing textiles and paper and in the manufacture of fumigants, insecticides, and refrigerants. So named on account of it was originally isolated by distilling ants (Latin formica).

Formica®, on the other hand, was invented in 1912 as an electrical insulator to serve as a substitute "for mica," hence the name. Duh. I was kind of hoping that it was called that on account of the irresistibility of countertops to ants. Or something like that.

formication. - A form of paresthesia or tactile hallucination; a sensation as if small insects are creeping under the skin. From the Latin formica, ant.

Eeeuw. Yes. That's it exactly.

Friday Random Ten: Chicks writing songs edition

Seven of the songs on this list are written or in one case co-written by gals, so it's not, strictly speaking, a chicks-only playlist, but I've never been one to favor segregated events. Plus this is supposed to be random, no?

1. "Hammer and A Nail" Indigo Girls (Nomads Indians Saints) - OK, I know I've said I don't have anything in my iTunes database that would embarrass me to be caught listening to, but if there's an exception this is it. I do kind of secretly like them, though. Whenever she heard these gals, my lovely ex-wife used to start this goofy rant about how pretentious and literary and hip they were, and claimed that she could just throw a bunch of quotes from dead feminist martyrs, a couple characters from Shakespeare, and a few stale metaphors into a hat and pull them out randomly and it would be an Indigo Girls song. I'm not sure she's wrong.
2. "Oh, Fait Pitie d'Amour" Buddy Miller (Midnight and Lonesome) - I absolutely love Buddy & Julie Miller. She is certainly high on my list of top ten songwriters ever. This is a kind of cajun two-step flavored tune that's just about irresistible: "you're gonna wreck up my lonely life/ with love and happiness and laughter/ take up my time making you my wife/ living happily ever after..." I can't stop dancing!
3. "Talk to Me of Mendocino" Kate & Anna McGarrigle (The McGarrigle Hour) - And speaking of great songwriting, these girls are pretty luminous. Kate wrote this old favorite, and I think this performance includes her son Rufus Wainwright in among the backing vocals, especially in this stretch: "and it's on to South Bend, Indiana/ flat out on the western plains/ rise up over the rockies down on into California/ out to where all the rocks were made.*"

   *This is my transcription, but I wasn't quite sure I had it right, so I looked it up and it's supposed to be something else that I don't like as much: "out to where but the rocks remain," which doesn't really make much sense to me.

4. "Overjoyed" The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir (Shy Folk) - I know I've gone on & on about this (alas, no longer performing together) Toronto-based combo, but if you can find a copy of any of their CDs it'll sure be worth your time to give it a listen: "We can live/ overjoyed/ we can give/ overjoyed/ when the crisis comes/ we'll find peace on the solid ground and say: we're overjoyed."
5. "Strange Lover" Julie Miller (Broken Things) - She's singing here with Steve Earle; Buddy is somewhere in the vocal mix, I think, and playing guitars, etc. I totally love that one line: "blood is red/and money's green/ sugar's sweet/ and you are mean." And the chorus: "well the cows lay down when it's going to rain/ when you come around it's a hurricane /you say it's bad luck baby but I know/ that it's cocaine" Oh and then somebody starts playing that Hammond B-3. Doesn't get much better. I don't even care that maybe the cows should lie down.
6. "The Married Men" The Roches (The Roches) - I've always liked these gals quite a lot too, and their songs are reliably funny and smart. And didn't one of them also used to be married to Loudon Wainwright? I forget which one. [Susie reminds me in the comments that she had his baby but was never married to him] This is one of their older recordings, just them and three big boomy Martin dreadnought guitars. Oh and a littly bit of accordion and some kind of shaker-y thing towards the end: "...one says he'll come after me/ another one'll drop me a line / one of 'em says all my agony is in my mind/ they know what is wrong with me/ none of 'em wants my hand/ soloing in my traveling wedding band" and "I know these girls they don't like me/ but I am just like them/ picking a crazy apple off a stem/ and givin' it to the married men/ the married men/ alla that time in hell to spend/ for kissing the married men..."
7. "Pithecanthropus Erectus" Robert Quine, Greg Cohen, Art Baron, Don Alias, Michael Blair, Francis Thumm, Bill Frisell, & Hal Wilner (Weird Nightmare: Meditations on Mingus) - No lyrics to quote on this one. Seriously cool shit though. Hal Wilner produced a couple of these high-concept compilations (there's a Kurt Weil project "Lost in the Stars" and a Disney one "Stay Awake" that I really dig). Robert Quine's guitar work on this piece is worth the price of admission. The rest of it's pretty high-quality as well.
8. "The Envoy" Warren Zevon (The Envoy) - Those of us of a certain age can recall reading the news or hearing about the President's envoy being sent all over the place. I always loved the sound of that title, Presidential Envoy, and wondered what exactly it meant: "whenever there's a crisis/ the President sends his envoy in/ guns in Damascus/ or Jerusalem..." I kind of wanted to be one when I grew up, but now I'm thinking I wouldn't like it all that much.
9. "Have a Nice Day" The Ramones (¡Adios, Amigos!) - Oh, I do love these boys. "I heard from the landlord/ when he kicked me out/ I heard it from the spirits/ as they possessed my house: have a nice day/ that's all I hear every day/ Have a nice day I don't believe a word you say."
10. "Right in Time" Lucinda Williams (Car Wheels on a Gravel Road) - Anyone who says women don't write great music just isn't paying attention. Plus I think this one's got both accordion and Hammond B-3. And what's she singing about? "I take off my watch & my earrings/ my bracelets & everything/ lie on my back and moan at the ceiling/ ohh baby/ I think about you and that long ride/ I bite my nails, I get weak inside/ reach over and turn off the light/ ohhhh baby." Oh yes.

I'm a liberal and I drink

I went to my first Drinking Liberally event last night. I went by accident, if you wanna know the truth. I'm not much of a joiner, but I might have gone on purpose if I'd known it was more or less in the neighborhood.

Stella and I stopped, as we usually do, at our neighborhood pub for a beer and maybe some peanuts while we were on our walk last night, and there were a few familiar faces on the deck, and quite a few people I didn't know. It felt almost like they were expecting me, even the ones I didn't know, but I couldn't quite say why. It took a while for me to notice that it was an official Drinking Liberally event, but I caught on after a while. Nobody asked me for the password or a secret handshake or anything. Maybe I'll get to that part next time.

There were several groups of people there to drink liberally, it turned out, and Stella liked them all, especially the ones who were eating peanuts. There were multiple conversations to choose from, with topics ranging from local politics to obscure rock bands to Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

I will note that there was, as far as I could tell, only one other chick there. There might have been one other in that group inside the bar. What's up with that? And what could it possibly mean that we both studied Linguistics, back in the day?

More fun than counting to ten when you're mad

I took this picture several years ago at the May Day Parade in Minneapolis, which is a wonderful and life-affirming and commercial-free phenomenon that I absolutely love. It's the only parade that I've ever really liked. These words were scrawled on the sidewalk with a lot of other goofy stuff, and every time I walked by it I giggled. I've had this photo above my work space for a while, but I had to move it the other day and it's now the first thing I see when I walk in the door of my house. Right above the pic of my sister the mailman standing next to Al Franken at some kind of fund-raiser type event. She's blushing like a teenager. He's hotter than you'd think, she tells me. I'll take her word for it.

Anyway, I think it helps: "I will not freak unless froken to." Go ahead and try it if you need to.

Why do they hate our freedom?

I don't even know where to start on this one.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush said Tuesday that the possibility of an avian flu pandemic is among the reasons he wants Congress to give him the power to use the nation's military in law enforcement roles in the United States. [emphasis mine]

Nor do I know quite what to make of the fact that, as of 2:48 a.m. (Eastern US time) Wednesday, October 5, CNN.com's QuickVote Reader Poll indicates that just over half (54%) of the 35,309 respondents answered "yes" to the question: Should there be a U.S. law enforcement role for the military during domestic emergencies? The disclaimer at the bottom -- about how the "QuickVote is not scientific and reflects the opinions of only those Internet users who have chosen to participate" and doesn't represent the opinion of the public at large -- just doesn't reassure me overmuch.

Are 19,009 people just nuts?

What he's talking about here is doing away with, or at least ripping to shreds, a highly excellent federal law enacted in 1878 to limit the US government's ability to use its military for law enforcement types of actions -- to prevent it from imposing a so-called "police state." It's called the Posse Comitatus Act, and it already grants the President the ability to waive the law during certain emergencies and exceptional circumstances. The military is already allowed to provide support and assistance in certain circumstances. Our president is not talking here about utilizing one of the several useful and appropriate exceptions to the law; he's talking about asking Congress to give him the power, essentially, to declare martial law.

And maybe it's just me, but I don't think that he's talking about bringing in the Marines to instruct us about proper handwashing techniques to prevent transmission of disease, or to somehow support the ailing Public Health infrastructure. They're not going to be bringing us chicken soup and ginger ale or fluffing our pillows.

But it's not just me: the CNN article quotes Mr. Gene Healy, a senior editor at the Cato Institute [more about the Cato Institute], and he seems concerned too. In an article posted Sept. 27, Healy notes that in his Sept. 15 post-Katrina TV address (which I guess I must've missed), our President gave the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a reason to make provisions for "greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces". And then you get the chair of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner (R-Va) explicitly suggesting the weakening of restrictions on the government's ability to use the military as a police force, and then Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita calling Posse Comitatus "very archaic" and saying it somehow undermines the president's ability to respond to a crisis. "Not so," says Healy:

"The Posse Comitatus Act is no barrier to federal troops providing logistical support during natural disasters. Nor does it prohibit the president from using the army to restore order in extraordinary circumstances--even over the objection of a state governor.

What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role. That reflects America’s traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that’s well-justified."

Yep.

[PS: I guess I should have read some more stuff before I posted: Magpie is already all over this one, as are the good folks at Effect Measure and I think Susie over at Suburban Guerilla mentioned it earlier, too.

Pandemic Flu Awareness Week

Hey everybody, it's Pandemic Flu Awareness Week! So why not take a few minutes to look at the Flu Wiki, or to read a few posts or follow some of the links over at Effect Measure? Yeah, it's depressing, I know -- but this really is pretty likely to become a big deal.

What kind of big deal? you may be wondering. The kind of big deal that, like, shuts down the global economy, kills a lot of people, and throws the remaining population into chaos as the already-fragile infrastructure collapses around them. That kind of thing. It's basically a doomsday scenario, but it's not yet a done deal.