O Spiderman of sticky web
How did you end up in my bed?
I dreamed of this, you know, quite wet
Revealing that you're not quite het.
No Mary Jane could turn your head:
instead a fag in spandex skin,
A circumstance I revel in,
A situation, queer, indeed.
I can't believe your hairless chest
is getting my attention best.
I dreamed of this, a spider's nest
of comfy love togetherness.
A tighty white across my pecs,
You, Spiderman, made quite a mess!
Elena Kagan is not a lesbian. Ruth Marcus, a columnist in the Washington Post, said so, and of all people, Ruth should know (evidently). Oh, and the White House also announced that Elena Kagan is not a lesbian. I needed to know this.
I don't know how to approach this subject delicately, but I was reading an article in the Economist about religious defamation - in some countries this is a crime punishable by death and imprisonment - and the whole concept just seems like an oxymoron. The nature of belief, and the attendant behaviors that spontaneously occur among the faithful, well, they demand scrutiny, which immediately is seized upon by the believers as defamation, a completely closed loop of internally consistent logic based on unsupportable assumptions, because they are, after all, assumptions, and assumptions require neither evidence or factual basis, merely a fatuous, "I think...."
I got off track in that last paragraph. Today as I was driving down Viers Mill Road, I saw a car moving erratically. The car initially was moving much slower than the flow of traffic. It wandered about a bit. I noticed that the driver was staring at the seat. I was finally able to pull around the car, and I noticed a cell phone stuck in the driver's ear. An opened Bible was spread out above the dashboard, the gold leaf providing a halo effect in the auto's interior. The rear-view mirror was festooned with white and purple garlands. When the traffic stopped at a light, the driver picked up a book to read, and when the light changed she continued to read the book while she continued to drive. Obviously, God was her co-pilot. I got out of there as fast as I could.
In this instance, a little religion seems to be a dangerous thing.
Okay, tomorrow is April Fool's Day, so I'm fooling you by posting this today. Gotcha. Tomorrow, the newspapers will print at least one bogus tale in every edition; every blog will tap out a fibbed truth; every newscast will have a smiling anchor pronouncing a lie, given as wisdom. So I thought I'd get ahead of the curve (what does that mean?) and get April Fool's out of the way so as not to get caught up in the last minute rush of writing an April Fool's Day posting.
Today, I purchased all of the ingredients I need to make Jerk Chicken. I am so excited about this. I have a genuine recipe straight from Jamaica (that is about the most apt statement I have ever written in this blog, by the way) that uses Thai Fish Sauce. It seems that some Thai refugees had escaped from Thailand during the era of the Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. One Chongolongkorn Pavalthatchai ended up in Addis Ababa where he ran into some ex-pat Jamaicans. He suggested fish sauce for all or part of the soy sauce in the Jerk. By the end of World War II, the practice had returned to Jamaica, and has since spread to the United States and (co-incidentally) Thailand. Honest.
British Israelites, Birthers, Aryan Nationalists, and FAIR activists are certain that FEMA is building concentration camps across America. Until last week, this fact could not be verified, either in the National Inquirer or other media outlets. I get outraged at the government whenever it covers up something like concentration camps. So I was pleased that Secretary Napalitano announced this week, that indeed the government is constructing several large concentration camp facilities in remote regions across the United States. Most of these facilities will be built in remote mountain fastnesses, close to where America's British Israelites, Birthers, Aryan Nationalists and FAIR activists actually live, thus saving billions of dollars in taxpayers' money by reducing internee transport expenses. The government also expects to recoup some of the "camp" expenses by encouraging internees to learn a trade such as making license plates or manufacturing furniture for government agencies. Honest. I only tell the truth in this blog.
Doubleday has offered me a large book advance, because the company, always a forward thinker, has decided that I have something to say, and it believes that I have the chops to communicate what I mean to say effectively with other people who would like to read what I write, thus buy a book that Doubleday would publish and make lots of money off the sweat of my brow. Actually, when I write I don't sweat that much. In fact, I keep quite cool. That makes me green, except in the summer when we raise the thermostat so high that I get quite uncomfortable and have to sit around composing blog entries in my underwear, which is not a pretty sight at all. Honest, I would not make any of this up, despite the fact that this is an April Fool's Day post. I am telling the truth, and Doubleday is more than happy to verify that. Just ask them. My book will also be published in a large print edition because so many people who read my blog have requested that.
Scientists (notice how when I use the term "scientist," it immediately adds credibility to what I'm going to write, even if I were (notice the use of the subjunctive) going to perhaps write an untruth, which I am not, because I don't do things like that) have recently discovered how zinc oxide works to prevent perspiration. The Gilette, Wyoming Laboratory for Advanced Research on Personal Grooming Practices recently published a paper written by Dr. Harrison S. Tuttelweit, "Zinc Oxide Uptake in the Sebaceous Glands of Adolescents." This was an interesting paper, because adolescents apparently sweat a lot (much more than adults), and the zinc oxide applied to their underarms did appear to stem their sweating significantly, but also caused a significant increase in aggressive social behavior, promsicuous sexual activity, and binge alcohol consumption. The conclusion of the paper is that zinc oxide-based grooming products could be successfully marketed to adolescents by including subliminally perceptive appeals to anti-social acts! The psycho-societal effects of the zinc oxide, itself, will underscore the anti-social message of the antiperspirant advertising. Wow. Not even I could make that up!
Chinese do not eat cats. It is a blood libel. They also do not eat kittens. Well, at least some Chinese do not eat kittens. I have eaten kittens, and I confess, they taste just like chicken. So I'm starting a campaign right here to wean people, wherever they may live (and you know who you are) away from kittens and onto chickies. I think when people have been eating chickies for a while, that social custom in the larger culture can perhaps persuade them to let the chickies grow up (free-range) and lovingly harvest them as chickens. No farm factory here, these will be free-range chickens killed in their prime. Last year, Americans ate nine billion chickens. Think how many of those chickens could have been kittens, rabbits, iguanas, and baby goats (also called kids). Whew, that sounds a lot like a Modest Proposal, doesn't it? Remember, the Chinese do not eat cats.
Okay, The Office is about the personal miserable lives of employees at a paper company. I have a different tale. It's also about a lame life (mine), and although it doesn't take place at a paper company, paper plays a big role in the misery.
I finally got tired of the mess. Ron asked me what I wanted for Christmas, and I told him a visit from Clutterbusters. It didn't come to pass. Instead, he offered to help me clean up the office, so he and I have been tackling it, pile by pile for the past week. Progress has been slow but steady. Here are the BEFORE pics.
The mess has been growing since 1994, the last documented archaelogical dig that took place at this location. Lots of dust has accumulated, and some organic compounds have broken down over the years. Lots of computer technology crap has accreted over the years, much to my hidden shame.
Ron took on as his special project to tidy up the bookcase. The bookcase had turned into another lateral storage and retrieval area. Unfortunately, it was becoming a lot easier to store than to retrieve. I became quite frustrated with the office, and really haven't used it for a couple of years, and I was angry with myself for wasting valuable space in my home with an ugly mess.
We're not done yet, and we'll be sorting crap for a while, and storing "stuff" for a flea market sometime in the spring. But we are making tangible progress. Here is what that looks like so far:
The corner consisted of boxes of papers that I had not looked at for fifteen years. I threw out the papers and saved the photos, because a picture is worth a thousand words, or something like that.
This corner contained records of a group that no longer exists. I shredded hundreds of address and lists, and threw out all the paper, flyers, announcements, and detritus that collects in an office when you are its co-chair. It's gone!
So far, we've removed sixteen grocery sacks full of paper wasted and six garbage bags of computer disks, drag, radical faerie costuming, plastic bags, and evidence of a life that needed some organizing skills.
We aren't done yet, but we're making progress!
T'is the woolly season of fashion gone awry, and mysterious men ending up in the living room under bad lighting conditions. Fa-la-la-la-la-la-la! la! la! So much for gay apparel.
Wednesday, our friend Michael, Ron, and I headed off to the County Fair. I haven't been to a fair in a decade, but as a kid, I was there (Latah County Fair) every year with my 4-H projects. I was a townie, so my 4-H projects didn't include large animals, but I entered many cooking, sewing, forestry, and electricity projects in the fair over the years.
So it was with very fond memories that I headed out to Gaithersburg, and the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. It might not be the experience of my youth, but I was sure the fair would have good times in store.
Who can resist an adorable cow? This one was being groomed, and looked like she was enjoying herself. And why shouldn't she? She's at the fair! She's a Contented Cow. She's about two weeks away from being hamburger. I didn't whisper any of that to her, because I didn't want her to worry about anything. Cows have feelings, too. In addition to this bodacious bovine, we saw some very cute bunnies, which are just a couple of weeks from stew. But they were really cute, for as long as they are around. Reminds me a little of the Twilight Zone's To Serve Man. Do you suppose that rabbits ever think about things like that? Do they know what's going to happen?
Food = Death. At least that's what this fair specialty appears to be offering. It tastes pretty good, though. Oreos are dipped in a sweet batter and fried. They are served very hot, and you can create a small nuclear meltdown in your mouth if you eat them too soon or too fast. It's just as effective as pizza mouth. The Oreo loses its crunch in the transformative process, but it still definitely tastes like an Oreo. It's an evil food, but worth it. And did you really come to the fair to eat healthy food? Fair = Adventure.
Did I mention that I had a Country Ham Sandwich in addition to the Fried Oreos? Michael and I have been to fairs before, so we understand the food and the animals. I think this may have been Ron's first county fair. So this was an anthopological experience for him. I'm not sure that he actually looked at the pigs and saw ham sandwiches, or someone's 4-H project that was going to yield a lot of Christmas money. The ham sandwich was delicious (although I did manage to squirt barbecue sauce on my wrist while overshooting my sandwich). And let's face it, pigs are cute. These were suffering some from the heat and the humidity. The stalls had sawdust on the floors, and the sawdust was soaked down with water, but the pigs still were taking it easy in the heat. These are big, beautiful animals, and I do feel qualms knowing what I know about their demise and my complicity in it.
Ah yes, the Midway! When we got to the fair, we hopped on a shuttle, that took us to the top of the fairgrounds, then we walked through the exhibit and barn areas to the Midway. Fried Dough. Well that just about sums it up! I saw the sign, and it captures much of the essence of what a county fair should be, while leaving you scratching your head, and wondering where you can find some Kettle Korn.
Michael and I rode a couple of kiddie rides. The really big rides didn't appear to be operating. I guess the crew was waiting for all the high school kids to get there for the evening. So we road some rides that tossed you around a bit, but didn't even come close to tossing your cookies. Not that we wanted to.
We had enough tickets to take one more ride, and we had to Freak Out. Wow. This is a great ride. I was praying for it to end before it did, and I'm not religious. You sit in seats at the end of a pendulum. At the highest part of the swing, you are approximately 70 feet above the ground, and it's a scary view. Michael and I both said, "Shit!" at exactly the same time. I said, "Jesus Christ" a couple of times, and am pretty sure that I meant it. The little kid sitting next to Michael kept saying, "Wait, it gets better!" He asked his friend when it was all over, "Want to go again?"
A young couple in their twenties was seated across from us. His face was white during the whole experience, and his girlfriend was laughing at him. You should go to the county fair just for this ride. I had such a sense of accomplishment when I stepped away from this ride. This is an awesome experience.
And that was our day at the county fair. Pigs, Kettle Korn, Freak Out, and Oreos.
I'm in the final throes of a sinus infection. All the crud is moving south. My head is stuffed with yellow-green gunk, and I cough, pathetically. We went to see the movie, Star Trek, and I needed a throat lozenge because my mucus was stealthier than the Romulans.
Ah, the movie. You should see it. Star Trek makes no sense, but doesn't need to. It's exactly what a summer movie should be: action packed where the good guys where Star Fleet uniforms, and the bad guys have lots of tattoos, the kind your mother worried about. Just be careful who you call, "Cupcake."
In a half hour, I leave for the Dr.'s office to have him do something about a sinus infection I've had since Portugal. I'm getting tired of it. My right knee hurts, and this is after Dr. Bernstein stuck a 2-inch needle full of cortisone into it on Friday. I'm the other dwarf, today = Grumpy. I hate being ill. I don't do well with it, because I usually don't slow down, and eventually, the creeping crud catches up with me, and that's what has happened, three days before I fly off to Puerto Rico.
Okay, enough of the complaining. I'm through with it. I've acquired an interest in Bear Codes over the weekend. I devised a decoder, then discovered some others out there. The decoders are not "canonical," (in the NBCS sense) and the results from them can be variable. Just like all the bears that I know. Oh, it takes a cave to make a cub! (I am not a bear.... (sounds plaintively similar to I'm not gay)) Here's the Turkish canonical version. Isn't that amazing!
It's pledge week at WAMU, and that ALWAYS ramps up my Seasonal Affective Disorder. I get terribly depressed listening to Diane Rehm cajole extra bucks out of the listeners. "We have 11 hundred dollars to go - three minutes to go!" Oh, yeah, I'll make my contribution before the week is over, but it won't make the voices go away! I despise these pledge weeks. They are just a little lower in the universal order than pond scum contaminated with mercury.
Tim and I were in York, Pennsylvania for a Challenge-1 Square Dance Concepts weekend. We ate at the Farmer's Market on Saturday. It was a gay man's paradise.
Note:This interchange is a little loopy. I've concluded that the only reason my Internet Hosting Company has tech support is to aggravate its customers.
Thank you for contacting support. Please be prepared to answer your Security Question when we begin chatting. To enhance our security protocols, we'll need you to provide the answer to your Security Question at the beginning of our conversation. If you have not yet set your Security Question and Answer, please log into your account now to set it up. Thank you. Please hold for the next available operator to respond.
You are now chatting with 'Preston Sanders'
Preston Sanders: Hi Happy. My name is Preston, how are you today?
Happy: Hi Preston. I'm having a browser issue with cookies in my PHP scripts.
Preston Sanders: To protect your account from unauthorized changes, can you please verify for me the answer to the Security Question:
Preston Sanders: What is your mother's maiden name?
Happy: B*****t
Preston Sanders: Thank you for the authentication.
Preston Sanders: What exactly seems to be the issue?
Happy: I have some scripts that work okay in Google's Chrome browser, but the scripts do not work in IE7, Safari, or FireFox. I'm using PHP scripts and the $_COOKIE variable. I can read the variable in Chrome, but not in the other browsers.
Preston Sanders: I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused you.
Preston Sanders: There may be an issue with the browser or version of the browser you are using. Please contact any system Administrator regarding this issue.
Preston Sanders: We can do nothing in this regard as you are experiencing this issue on your local machine.
Preston Sanders: Are you the owner of this hosting account?
Preston Sanders: Do you have access to the e-mail address a*****t@happydoodle.*** ?
Happy: Yes, I own the account and I do have access to the e-mail account.
Preston Sanders: Okay.
Preston Sanders: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Happy: I'm not sure that I've actually yet been assisted. I'm wondering, for example, is my site configuration correct so that cookies work properly for the different browsers.
Preston Sanders: It should work fine with all the browsers. You can check it on other computers.
Happy: I've checked it on other computers, and it doesn't work on them, either; however, it works for the Chrome browser, but not for the other browsers. I think it is some kind of a PHP problem with reading the $_COOKIE variable, because I can look at the cookies in those various browsers, and the cookie has been properly set, but I can't read the cookie on those browsers, except for the Chrome browser.
Preston Sanders: Could you please provide me the exact URL where you are receiving the error?
Happy: I'm not receiving an http error; the script simply is not working correctly:
Happy: http://www.happydoodle.org/login.php user=***** password=*******
Happy: The script should display http://www.happydoodle.org/profile.php with menu options, but instead, the script display a login url (which is the intended behavior IF the login cookie is not set).
Preston Sanders: Can you please provide the username and password to login at http://www.happydoodle.org/login.php ?
Happy: user=***** password=*******
Preston Sanders: May I place you on hold for 2 to 3 minutes while I review your account?
Happy: Sure.
~~ Two Minute Interlude ~~
Preston Sanders: Thank you for holding.
Preston Sanders: I have checked it and it looks like there is an issue with your scripts. Hence, please contact any Web master and update your scripts.
Preston Sanders: We don't assist our customers with coding issues. I'm sorry and would like to apologize for that.
Happy: I'm the "webmaster" for this particular site. Any suggestions about where to seek some assistance for this issue?
Preston Sanders: I'm sorry, you need to correct this issue on your own. We don't have any issues on our servers.
Preston Sanders: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Happy: Evidently not.
Preston Sanders: Thank you for chatting with us. Please feel free to contact us at any time. We are available 24x7.
Preston Sanders: Bye!
As I get older, I notice mental slip ups. The most common is calling Ron "Tim," which is embarrassing, but at least I know who Ron and Tim are, and I can quickly correct myself. Another slip up is to forget a word, and then talk around its definition, hoping that the word will come back. This is a lot like "The word's on the tip of my tongue...." That phenomenon is more common to me than it used to be, but I usually can either come up with the word, or at least make myself understood.
The strangest one for me, and the one that causes the most trouble is recalling names, either of people or places. In this instance, I recognize the person or the place, but I'm totally clueless about the name. I can access the information in my brain about the person or place, but I can't put any name on the person or place at all. The name is also beyond my own recall. It's like I've never know the name in my memory, I can only remember that at one time, I knew the name.
If I hear or read the "forgotten" name, I immediately recognize it, and it is once again connected to the "nameless" information with which it was once associated in my memory. My brain's grasp on those names appears weak, because I can easily forget those names again, and have no way to recall them. I compensate for that by replaying those names over and over in my head whenever I recover them.
Most names that I forget are in my long term memory, but within the last 10 or 20 years. I don't have any trouble with names from my childhood through high school or so. The most difficult names for me to remember are co-workers, some of whom I worked with for years. I can tell you where they sat at work, what projects they worked on, all kinds of things, except their names.
I think the challenge I have with names is that they are arbitrary. On the other hand, the information they represent isn't arbitrary at all, and the connection between the arbitrary name and its information can be lost. The information, itself, remains in my brain, but that pesky pointer to that information is missing in action.
Tuesday can be a historic moment. We can elect Barack Obama President of the United States.
I apologize to all of my regular readers, all four of you. I haven't been particularly faithful in my musings here for the last month or so. I'll try to do better in November.
I don't bite my nails, but if I did, I would be chewing between now and Wednesday morning. Every day, I go to RealClearPolitics.com and check out its electoral maps. Today, it's giving 311 electoral votes to Obama and 132 to McCain, with 95 tossups. I rework the numbers every day trying to figure out the combinations that Obama needs to win at the polls. It's still a cliffhanger in the College, a College that Maryland would like to change. Go Terps! or something like that.
I don't want the Presidential Electors of Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Florida to elect the President. I want the American people (no matter how deluded or stupid we may be) to elect the President. I'm really tired of this "Swing State" phenomenon, and think that all the states should be swing states. Maryland has a solution, and maybe within my lifetime, it will be working.
I'm holding my breath for Barack Obama. Although he's ahead in the polls and looks like he's headed for victory on Tuesday, the campaign isn't over yet. He is a transformational leader. John McCain is correct, Barack Obama will lead our country in a new direction - a change in economic policies, a change in health care policies, a change in international relations, a change in our war policies. America needs Barack Obama.
We stand at a crossroads. This election really is a choice. Do the American people continue with the failed policies of a bankrupt, neo-conservative philosophy that has taken us to war and wrecked our economy? Or do the American people vote for pragmatic policies that will restore our financial and economic soundness, provide universal health care coverage, and get us out of the Iraqi quagmire? McCain is not a maverick. He's a retread.
I'm also holding my breath about the outcome of Proposition 8 in California. All people should have the right to marriage. Shame on the backers of Proposition 8 for wanting to deny basic human rights to a class of people, and wanting to make that denial a constitutional ban. The campaign for the ban is mainly being financed by members of the Mormon Church. It appears that the church has been pressuring church members to contribute a lot of money (about $18 million or 77% of the total contributions) to the campaign. This campaign has the proponents spreading all kinds of lies about same-sex marriage, about education, about free speech, but very little about love, respect for human rights, or strengthening the family. Religious activists are attempting to force their views on the rest of us through deception and fear.
I'll continue to hold my breath until Tuesday.
By the way, the pumpkin carving party was fabulous. I now know the competition. These carvers are good! And scary! The Halloween Party afterwards, at the Lost River Grill was also a hoot. Ron and I went as Clark Kent and Wonder Woman - Over-the-Hill Superheroes. We looked good!
Today is the last day of the WAMU Fall "Membership" Campaign. Tomorrow will be a happy day! More accurately, tomorrow will be a rainy, gray, wet day.
I'm not completely back in the groove. Of course, most of my dearest friends haven't even noticed that. But deep inside the recesses of my darkest self, I know. I REALLY know. I can tell that something is, somehow, different. Maybe it's the persistent post-nasal drip. Perhaps it's the odor emanating from my underarms whenever I raise my arms over my head to strike my just-do-me pose. Whatever, it has a dank, musty resonance that vibrates in my cranium, and anchors in my duodenum, then belches from orifices, unbidden eructations that scare the men in my life.
Actually, I think it's just the result of a mild sinus infection mixed with lots of well-intentioned fiber. I can't adequately express HOW HAPPY I am that the WAMU Fall "Membership" Campaign is in its very last day. These pledge weeks are always the most depressing, demoralizing weeks on radio, and as I pointed out in an earlier post, even if I did contribute this campaign, I'd still have to listen to the awful drivel about the needy nature of public radio for the rest of the campaign, anyway. It could drive the more unstable of us over the mental threshhold: I'm being cajoled to act, but nothing results from the action. That sounds like a recipe for mental illness, if I ever heard one. Public radio drives listeners insane!
What's even more irritating for me (and my bowels), is that I'm a habitual "user" of public radio. I'm hooked. I couldn't turn off WAMU if my life depended on it. Without that background noise, my life seems empty, without purpose. Unless I'm sleeping, of course. In fact, when I was on vacation in Europe, it was iffy the first several days whether I was going to make it or not, because I was in the mental doldrums from not having Rene Montaine and Steve Inskeep greet me every morning. And no Kojo was no mojo. I just couldn't get a grip on Madrid. Now, you might think it was the six-hour time difference, and the thirty-three hours without sleep, but the reality was, I couldn't get WAMU, and man, I really suffered for it. "Hello. My name is Happy Doodle, and I am a WAMUholic."
I caused the world financial crisis. Are you surpised about that fact? I'd been following the financial markets for weeks before I left for Europe. Four days after I leave, the markets tank. I felt bad about that, and because I couldn't listen to WAMU, I couldn't do anything to ameliorate the resulting ruinous free-fall spiral into doom. I tried, and if I'd been on my game in Wheaton, instead of being a playboy in Lisbon, well, world history would be different. Of that, I am supremely confident. You know, it's odd, too, that WAMU hasn't called me up for an interview about this. After all, Alan Greenspan gets coverage for making a mistake, but nobody from WAMU is knocking on my door! It's the last day. It really is the last day.
The financial markets will recover. This recession will end. Sarah Palin's speeches are mean, vicious, and ugly. She removed her lipstick.
Go Barack!
While in Portugal, we saw pictures of our president looking like he was a deer caught in the headlights, and headlines streaming across the TV "America in Crisis." We couldn't understand the Portuguese, but we figured out from looking at W. that something was not quite right. I promise never again to leave America when it's in crisis. It's the least I can do for it.
Yep, I'm back home. I'm glad to be here, too. I was eating way too much food on the cruise ship, although I did not gain any weight when I was gone. However, the flab redistributed itself in an obnoxious way, and I look vaguely like Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair. Oh well.
Life at Bucknell Terrace is getting back up to speed. I'm going to a square dance tonight in costume, because, after all, it is the season. It shows off my stomach well. Even if you can't see my abs, you can see my abdomen. I look so sexy!
There seems to be some confusion as to exactly what Grace and I are doing in Europe. I often ask myself that, myself. Why are Grace and I in Europe, and of all places, why in Portugal. First of all, PORTUGAL IS NOT SPAIN. Just thought I'd throw that geographic tip in. Secondly, PORTUGUESE IS NOT SPANISH. This is a very important fact that apparently most people don't know. In fact, while talking to the Portuguese, you'll be amazed at how much they seem to be Canadians, only, they are speaking Portuguese.
Grace and I are now FLUENT language speakers. We can recognize sardines and pork chops on cafe menus. I know how to order coffee with milk. Two words will be your best friends: obrigado/a and desculpe. Obrigado/a (masculine/feminine forms) means thank you, and desculpe means excuse me, or sorry. You can open just about any conversation with desculpe, and end it with obrigado or obrigada.
Occasionally, we've run into situations where the other party didn't speak any English. This is not a problem. In fact, if you can open your eyes wide enough, the Bambi in the headlight look will solve most communication problems. A large part of the Berlitz school curriculum that we are taking is to help us to get just the right look on our faces when confronted by this challenge. First, open your mouth a little wider than normal, and clench a bit. Next, make your eyes as round as possible. Finally, arch your eyebrows while wrinkling your forehead. The teachers make us stand in front of a mirror to practice. I think we both have it down pretty well.
Food - again not a problem. The Portuguese, taken together, on average weigh about 40 lbs less than Americans, taken together. This is because they only eat cake or bread and coffee for breakfast, and they smoke a lot. They never eat eggs for breakfast (and here I really am telling the truth); eggs, either fried or scambled are on lunch and dinner menus. Meats are often served with a fried egg on top, but the smoking cuts down all the cholesterol. Some interesting dishes I've eaten so far: chicken with a fried egg, boiled bacalhau (salted cod) with potatoes (cozido), grilled squid, grilled pescado (grilled catch of the day). Bacalhau is Portugal's national treasure. It's a salted, dried codfish which is now eaten on special occasions. I really enjoyed the cozido; I expect I'll be eating more of Mr. Cod. Oh, almost every meal comes with potatoes AND rice. I like that. You can never have too many carbohydrates. Olives, lots of olives. Sardine pâté is also a big hit around here.
I'm enjoying the food immensely, because it's very different than what I normally eat. More than that, it's made with many of the same ingredients with which I cook, but they are put together in ways that I never thought about before. So I'm having a lot of fun. Here in the hotel, we have a salad bar, too, that Ron would enjoy. It has a wide selection of very different salads, that, again, use many different ingredients that we just don't see in a salad bar.
So today, Grace and I came right back to the hotel after class because we were dead tired. We have been really pushing ourselves, and needed a day off to regroup, and to catch up. The Berlitz class is going well. When Ana took us out to lunch today, she let us order for ourselves. Manuel gave us a history lesson. He had prepared a lesson on body parts and clothing, but the history got in the way. I'm afraid that we derail our instructors a lot, but we are getting very useful information about the country, the culture, the people, and learning how to fend for ourselves in many different situations.
I sometimes think the instructors must wonder who are these crazy Americans, but they have been very supportive and excited about our stay in Portugal. One of the instructors, Susana, brought in several pages that she had printed off from the Internet, because she wanted to be sure that we had all the information about Sintra, and a couple of other palaces/castles that Grace is going to drag me off to.
We send our love, and we'll catch up with you later.
Last Thursday, one of our financial planners, Joe, invited Ron and me to lunch. This is always a good thing, because by picking up our lunch tab, he can more easily justify the fees he charges us. He must have a great job, taking people like me to lunch!
At any rate, he mentioned that we should get on Facebook and become his friend. I was under the mistaken impression (apparently) that we were already friends, but I guess we were just business acquaintances or something.
Yesterday, another friend, Chaz, sent me an invitation to join a Facebook group. I thought that this was a Providential Sign (I don't really believe in Providential Signs; I'm hedging my bets here, see Mr. Pascal and his wager, actually, I'm not even hedging my bets, I'm just making a literary allusion, maybe not even that). So I registered on Facebook.
Wow! what an interesting landscape. I've been on other social networking sites (okay, I've been on Manhunt, LinkedIn, and Classmates.com), but nothing quite prepared me for Facebook. I mean, it's a whole industrial segment, and probably accounts for a full 3% of the Gross Domestic Product.
Facebook really wants you to sign up and have friends. It's eerie, like I've just joined a cult, or something (not that there's anything wrong with that). If you import your email list, you'll be astounded that about 98% of the people you write to daily are also members of Facebook, and even stranger, you discover that you are the last person in Wheaton, Maryland to join the herd. Who knew?
But interesting things happen on Facebook, too. A guy I've been trying to get in touch with for years is suddenly my friend. A high school friend is now a Facebook friend. My two daughters are not only my friends, but they wrote on my Wall! Now, of course I'm getting excited, and I realize that maybe this is better than the other places I hang out at on the web.
No, I probably am not going to cancel Manhunt, but it's a very targeted community for special needs. And LinkedIn has a lot of my friends from work, although I notice that Facebook has a lot of those same friends, and it's a lot more social than LinkedIn. Classmates, well, most of the people I've connected with on Classmates are also on Facebook. Facebook is evidently the 600 lb. gorilla and the 136.08 kg canary all rolled into one.
And no wonder, duh! Facebook has a lot of stuff that appeals to a lot of people. At a glance, I can see what friends are doing, and I can always find new friends. I find the site a little intimidating in that it has so much to do and explore (Focus, anyone?). But I'm just blown away by the friends I see on the site, and how I have so many more connections than I had ever imagined. This site is a sociologist's dream. I have not yet asked Barack Obama to be my friend. But I'm thinking about asking Sarah Palin. After all, she's from Idaho.
I expect the novelty will wear off in a few minutes. Facebook seems to have more reach than just a social community, though. I'm pretty sure it will have at least as much utility as eVite. The coolest thing about Facebook is that I don't feel hemmed in. I see the activity of my own world all around me, and for now, that's fascinating.
This may not seem like a big story to you, but if you go to the Greek Embassy's web site, you'll notice that everything stopped on June 12, 2008. No additional explanation was provided on the site. Click on the graphic to see details.
Did anything unusual happen on June 12? It was certainly a slow news day in my blog. Some mystery, huh? It's amazing, if you click through the items on the Latest News link, you'll not find a single entry after June 12. I'm totally flummoxed.
This is even more interesting to me, because I'm planning on visiting Greece in October. I'm hoping that some news happens between now and then. If you hear of anything, please let me know.
By bitches, I mean the ranting, whining, complaining kind that Phil Gramm talked about when he was being honest, rather than political.
The Bitches column in the Blade is a type of reality genre. It provides a guilty kind of pleasure for the reader, and a certain notoriety for the writers. Some of the quips/observations/idiocy rises to ironic, shallow entertainment. A lot of it is puerile crap, but even that has a morbid fascination value. Many of the writers appear obsessed with youth, looks, fashion, sex, and terribly failed relationships. Lesbians also come in for a fair amount of unfavorable comment, but not nearly the abuse older men (apparently, any guy over the age of 27) receive.
I point all of this out because I confess that I read this column every time I pick up the Blade. I catch myself chuckling at some of the lamebrain observations of what passes for gay in Washington, DC. For the most part, I don't see my gay friends, or gay me in it, and I often think of some nifty rejoinder that would probably get me bitch-slapped by a screaming 22-year old wearing some gay male version of a Jimmy Choo.
The column is offensive, but any public airing of artless prose ends up being offensive. Most of the writers appear to have the intellectual depth of a Jerry Springer reject. I suppose even they need a public forum. I am bothered by the amount of racism and misogyny that, on occasion, gets slathered on thickly in the column. While the George Bush Center for Intelligence out in McLean could be fooled into believing that the expressions in the column represent all gay opinion, don't you - gentle reader - carry the same misconception. Some of us airheads don't need to be published to prove our wit.
Today is a bright summer day here in Wheaton, just outside our Nation's Federal City. Ron is in Memphis visiting his mother. I am here at home getting ready for a cookout this afternoon. The cookout started as a joke from Tim who said, why don't you have a cookout next weekend? I sent out the invites, and quickly friends, friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends indicated that they would be attending. I'm making Happy's Famous Potato Salad, and I'm doing some cursory cleaning. I still need to mop the kitchen floor and sweep off the back patio. I feel so domestic today.
Ron sends his greetings to all of you. Just for your information, he recovered from his tick fever incident and has gone to even greater success. I hope he's checking for ticks in Memphis. I understand those urban ticks can have a real mean attitude, nothing like those hospitable (even lovable!) western Rocky Mountain ticks. Ron's big project for the summer has been to keep the ants under control. Wheaton had a very wet spring, and ants have decided they like our home, too. Ron put ant traps on the shopping list, and last week, he struck back. After surveying the kitchen battle zone, he strategically placed the traps in ant-friendly places. I've seen a few ants since then, but their numbers have greatly diminished.
I guess you all know that my sister Grace and I were in Cleveland three weeks ago at the International Association of Gay Square Dance Clubs annual convention. I have a new name. Many dancers at the convention now call me, "Grace's Brother." It is a worthy and wonderful honorific. Since everyone else calls me "Happy" or "Doodle," Grace also has a new name, "Big Cheez Doodle." Grace roomed with another straight woman from my square dance club. The two of them, and a third straight woman had dinner with Tim and me on the last day of the convention. It was vastly interesting and amusing to hear about the differences between straight square dancing and gay square dancing. Tim and I had a jolly time listening. Juanita and Tonja had definite opinions about the style of dancing, the jokes that callers tell, and the culture difference between the two square dance worlds. I wish I were a sociologist.
Also in Cleveland, I attended a callers school to learn how to call square dancing. It was about the most intense learning experience I've had in many years. It's a little daunting, and I don't have the filler patter that makes my calling smooth, but I've been working on putting together call sequences, and I've called a couple of tips at convention and here in my home club. I've decided I want to be a competent caller so that's my next career (just kidding!) I guess. I've also had a couple of aha experiences about square dancing. It's a dance form that is in danger of disappearing. It's the type of activity that is fun for a group. It brings people together. It's physical. And I'm coming to think I want to do my part of encourage it and to keep it on the American Folk Scene.
After Cleveland, Ron and I spent a week at gay summer camp. It was hot and humid and no air conditioning. But the afternoon cocktail hour made up for a lot of deficiencies. Each cocktail hour had a theme, and the best-dressed camper won fifty dollars. Ron is a couturier of some merit - he won $100 over the course of the week. He looked fabulous. One evening I lead the Doodle family to victory in a Family Feud contest. We were remarkable, and again, it was Ron who clinched victory out of the jaws of defeat. His intimate knowledge of late night television saved us.
Odds and Ends: For those of you who know Perry, the neighbor who lives across the way. He and his cat are doing well. Yesterday the roofers came and installed a brand new roof and shutters. Perry was following our fine example, and used the same roofing company. Ah, life is so sweet in Wheaton! For those of you who know Brian, the guy who lived in our basement for five months three years ago, he came over, and we went out to a new Thai restaurant in the neighborhood. The pad thai was marvelous, and the cashew chicken had a nice spicy kick to it. I hadn't talked with Brian for months, and we had a delightful evening catching up with each other. He's a computer geek and voice teacher. I'm probably going to take some lessons with him for my square dance calling. It's wonderful to get together with old friends.
To end this epistle, I'm starting a square dance troupe. I have some excited dancers, and all I need to do is find a caller and a choreographer, and some rehearsal space. The club I dance with, DC Lambda Squares, often gets requests for dance demos, and they are usually pulled together at the last moment. So I thought, maybe we need a group of dancers who are ready to go dance. We had our first meeting, and we want to incorporate different dance forms within the traditional square dance idiom. It's exciting and a little daunting, but maybe you'll see us on YouTube someday.
It's a good thing I retired!
