Monthly Archives: September 2009

Rip the Sky of Ink And Gold

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I.

Miss Sasha: Mom, I’m working off a lot of kid karma.
Tata: What are you talking about, sweetheart?
Miss Sasha: I just spent the last hour scrubbing crayon off the TV.
Tata: Really? Didja use Brillo?
Miss Sasha: I think this makes up for some of the things I did as a kid.
Tata: As little kids go, you were very good, so it was a real surprise when you went totally bad later.
Miss Sasha: What about the time I wrote all over the walls?
Tata: You drew a city out of the letters of your name. That was how I knew you were smart.
Miss Sasha: Gotta go! Panky colored that TV in.

II.

Tata: I am stupendously fat. Hormonal eating is my job! What can I do?
Doctor: So, what medications are you taking daily?
Tata: None.
Doctor: Besides calcium, what medications do you take?
Tata: I can’t make me take pills so I eat lots of cheese and make my own yogurt, which is less personal than it sounds –

The doctor has known me a long time. He is trying to give me a way to break through my terrible lies.

Doctor: You were just in physical therapy. What drugs did they give you?
Tata: None. I refused. They looked at me just like you are. I told them exercise is always the answer.
Doctor: Exercise is the answer for – uh – lots of things.
Tata: Right, so about my being fat –
Doctor: Why are you here?
Tata: Because it’s been a year since my last hilarious pap smear.
Doctor: Already? How time flies.

III.

The unnamed university’s gym dot the landscape, and none is as dotty as the one across the street from the library where I work. At the end of physical therapy, I emailed the gym’s gatekeeper-dude about my fervent desire use the elliptical for fifteen minutes every day, but it was summer, the gym was closed and he was all like You wouldn’t want me to lose my job, would you? Well, now that you fucking mention it, I’m trying to decide what sport I can become world champion of so I can sidle up to a Sports Illustrated reporter and declare what a douchebag you are. So I waited. Summer passed. Th gym opened. I appeared in the gym and presented myself to the gatekeeper, who ushered me to his student assistant, who was very broad.

Tata: I need a Fitcheck sticker. Whaddo I gotta do?
Justin: Here is the form. Here is a pencil.
Tata: Name, department, phone, relationship to the university… no heart condition… no strokes… not a 55 year old man or – what?
Justin: We just want you to know the – um –
Tata: The risks? Your form has just reminded me that having had a hysterectomy makes me a sexual suspect.
Justin: You have to know how to use – um –
Tata: The equipment properly because I’m more than 20 lbs. above what the insurance indexes say I should be? Exactly. Are the machines free around 11?
Justin: It’s first come, first served.
Tata: At 11? Eleven thirty?
Justin: Between 1 and 3.
Tata: You can barely breathe, can you?
Justin: [coughs up a furball.]

Call it a hunch, but I suspect I might be his mom’s age, and he’d rather chew off his own foot before answering the question, “Should Mom spend a little more time on the stationary bike?”

Dance And Have Some Fun

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Let’s pretend we’re in our footie pajamas!

A new food-labeling campaign called Smart Choices, backed by most of the nation’s largest food manufacturers, is “designed to help shoppers easily identify smarter food and beverage choices.”

The green checkmark label that is starting to show up on store shelves will appear on hundreds of packages, including — to the surprise of many nutritionists — sugar-laden cereals like Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops.

“These are horrible choices,” said Walter C. Willett, chairman of the nutrition department of the Harvard School of Public Health.

…from his secret underground fort made of couch cushions. Kapow! Kapow!

Dr. [Eileen] Kennedy, [president of the Smart Choices board and fairy princess] who is not paid for her work on the program, defended the products endorsed by the program, including sweet cereals. She said Froot Loops was better than other things parents could choose for their children.

“You’re rushing around, you’re trying to think about healthy eating for your kids and you have a choice between a doughnut and a cereal,” Dr. Kennedy said, evoking a hypothetical parent in the supermarket. “So Froot Loops is a better choice.”

…from her turret on the Barbie Dream Castle and Unicorn Sanctuary, no backsies!

“Froot Loops is an excellent source of many essential vitamins and minerals and it is also a good source of fiber with only 12 grams of sugar,” said Celeste A. Clark, senior vice president of global nutrition for Kellogg’s, which makes Froot Loops. “You cannot judge the nutritional merits of a food product based on one ingredient.”

Dr. Clark, who is a member of the Smart Choices board, said that the program’s standard for sugar in cereals was consistent with federal dietary guidelines that say that “small amounts of sugar” added to nutrient-dense foods like breakfast cereals can make them taste better. That, in theory, will encourage people to eat more of them, which would increase the nutrients in their diet.

…from her perch on the edge of the top bunk where her head is wedged between the guard spindles, and she is so gonna tell!

Michael R. Taylor, a senior F.D.A. adviser, said the agency was concerned that sugar-laden cereals and high-fat foods would bear a label that tells consumers they were nutritionally superior.

“What we don’t want to do is have front-of-package information that in any way is based on cherry-picking the good and not disclosing adequately the components of a product that may be less good,” Mr. Taylor said.

He said the agency would consider the possibility of creating a standardized nutrition label for the front of packages.

…from his ZOT! ZOT! ZOT! laboratory behind the bookcase, where he knows you’ve been eating his pet microbes again, loser!

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, was part of a panel that helped devise the Smart Choices nutritional criteria, until he quit last September. He said the panel was dominated by members of the food industry, which skewed its decisions.

“It was paid for by industry and when industry put down its foot and said this is what we’re doing, that was it, end of story,” he said. Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Clark, who were both on the panel, said industry members had not controlled the results.

…

Despite federal guidelines favoring whole grains, the criteria allow breads made with no whole grains to get the seal if they have added nutrients.

“You could start out with some sawdust, add calcium or Vitamin A and meet the criteria,” Mr. Jacobson said.

…from his big two-wheeler in the driveway but not all the way in the street because Daddy said, you jerk!

Nutritionists questioned other foods given the Smart Choices label. The program gives the seal to both regular and light mayonnaise, which could lead consumers to think they are both equally healthy. It also allows frozen meals and packaged sandwiches to have up to 600 milligrams of sodium, a quarter of the recommended daily maximum intake.

“The object of this is to make highly processed foods appear as healthful as unprocessed foods, which they are not,” said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University.

Mom, why is my Ariel underwear all bunchy?

h/t: Wintle.

You Can’t Stay Here With Every Single Hope

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It’s Sunday dinnertime. Pete’s made yet another dinner for the record books. I spent all afternoon in the driveway, stripping ninety years’ worth of paint off our tenant’s bedroom door, so I’ve had a lot of time to think about this.

The resignation of Obama administration figure Van Jones, following controversies over a petition he had signed and his comments about Republicans, did not come at the request of the president, the White House senior adviser said Sunday.

“Absolutely not – this was Van Jones’ own decision,” David Axelrod told NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked if the president had ordered the resignation. The chairman of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana, had called for Jones to resign or be fired.

“I think Van Jones did the right thing,” Pence said Sunday about the resignation. “His extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration.”

Jones has frequently been dubbed a “green-jobs czar” for the administration.

There are a number of ways to understand this story. CNN offers one in the next paragraph. It sounds innocuous, if one is only half-listening:

“The president should suspend any future appointment of so called czars while the administration and the Congress carefully examines the background and qualifications of the more than 30 individuals who’ve been appointed to these czar positions,” said Pence, speaking to reporters. “And the Congress ought to initiate a thorough inquiry into the constitutionality of this practice which has spanned Republican and Democrat administrations.”

Well, that might make sense if the president’s nominees weren’t already being blocked by Republicans on the confirmation committees. To be clear: Pence is calling for the president to stop staffing his administration and CNN skips blithely past that point but lands here, so close to the truth:

One of the most prominent conservative voices condemning Jones in recent days has been FOX TV host Glenn Beck.

Jones is a co-founder of colorofchange.org, a group that recently has been pressing advertisers to boycott Beck’s program after Beck called Obama a racist.

Color of Change sends me email. I participate in CoC’s campaigns because I agree with CoC’s positions on media racism generally and Beck’s racism in particular. So far: about 50 sponsors have removed their sponsorship from Beck’s program but not FOX itself. This has pissed off Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck, because – and we should be clear about this – in their view, Black people should be quiet, subservient and politically invisible. CoC’s campaign is the racist’s fear come true: Black people in numbers and fellow travelers like me wielding economic power. Murdoch, Ailes and Beck are not taking this lying down. They don’t care about Jones. It could have been almost any person of color. They picked a target, hounded him and forced him to submit. Still, there are different ways to measure what happened. FOX offers this coy tea leaf reading:

Jones’ Resignation May Embolden Administration Critics

I’m not linking to that crap. You can Google it, if you feel so inspired. Jill sums up her take thusly:

The only question is whether Beck is really as utterly batshit crazy as he seems, or if Beck is the second coming of Andy Kaufman and this is all a kind of gonzo performance art that’s gone completely out of control. But does it matter at this point, when the Obama White House has shown its complete willingness to dance to the tune of a party that has become now the exclusive province of racists, thugs, religious nutjobs, and other people you wouldn’t want to run into on a dark country road?

Why on earth does Barack Obama care about what these people say? Is there something in the water at the White House that makes Democrats shut off their ability for independent thought and turns them into hapless slaves of Republican Mojo Mind Control? What the hell is going on at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Whatever it is, it’s infecting the outside world as well. I was just listening to “Morning Edition” on WNYC and heard Leann Hansen say in regard to health care reform that “There doesn’t seem to be a lot of support for a public option”. And this is National Public Radio, that old supposedly liberal bastion. Either Leann Hansen has joined the ranks of Laziest So-Called Journalists in America, or the corporations that help subsidize NPR have given their marching orders. Or both.

Jane wants to know why the big-name liberal groups didn’t come out in support of Jones, but left him to twist in the wind.

If these groups, if these liberal leaders, let Jones just hang there while Glenn Beck pounds his chest and celebrates the scalp, we have no liberal institutions. What we have are a bunch of neoliberal enablers who have found a nice comfortable place in the DC establishment that they don’t want to jeopardize, a place on the new K-Street gravy train that they don’t want to lose. Dropping Van Jones from their rolodex is a small price to pay.

If there is going to be a serious progressive movement in this country capable of standing up for health care against an industry that spends $1.4 million a day on lobbying, we can’t just look to the members of the Progressive Caucus and say “hey, you, get something done.” They need cover. They need to know that they will be supported. And people like Van Jones who have given their lives to causes we say we value like prison reform and environmental advocacy need to know that they will be defended, and not handed over to Glenn Beck as an acceptable casualty in the battle for K-Street dollars.

So to all you liberal organizations in the “veal pen” – this is your moment of truth. I get all your emails. And the next Common Purpose meeting is probably on Tuesday. If you can’t get it together to at least put out a statement of support for Van Jones and condemn the White House for using him as a sacrificial lamb to right wing extremists that will devour us all if left unchecked, it’s time to add “proudly liberal only when it doesn’t matter” to your logo and be done with it.

At Jack & Jiill Politics, Jack laments:

Van Jones was one of the good guys. A really, really good guy. He used his education and his passion to combat police brutality and the massive, wasteful incarceration of so many of this nation’s young, brown people. Having fought in the trenches for so long, he saw an opportunity to build hope and jobs and tangible communities as the world responds to the climate crisis. He connected the dots and inspired action and had a vision. He was the rare outsider who got a chance to move inside, and move he did.

Van was the kind of guy that gave me real confidence in this administration’s seriousness. President Obama meets with generals every day and sees scary reports and wants to get re-elected. I can always make some politics-based allowances for his underwhelming actions. Van, however, was truly one of us. He got it. And to give someone like him power gave me more faith in the president. So when the lynch mob came after Van, it was a test. The same test so many Democratic administrations have failed time and time again. When the going gets tough, do you back your people, or do you fall back on excuses.

This White House, this administration and this president failed Van, failed its supporters and failed to honor the efforts of millions that got them into office in the first place. What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it? When will this White House realize that nothing it does will ever be acceptable to the loud-mouthed, ignorant minority? When will it learn that you cannot negotiate with terrorists??

I’m heartbroken over Van’s departure because it’s these little meaningless concessions that undermine people’s faith in the system. You get folks all riled up about change. You empower a man who embodies that change. And they you let him be run out of office by fucking Glenn Beck? So Glenn Beck is running the White House now? Is that how it’s gonna be? Just tell me that I knocked on all those doors for nothing, and I can start the grieving process, but don’t pretend this will solve anything.

I can’t help but look at this spineless response and see it in contrast to the previous administration. You know how gansta they are? DICK CHENEY IS STILL TALKING SMACK!

Somewhere in the course of my reading today, which I should have been able to backtrack and find but couldn’t, a Black female writer had written that Jones was punished by Beck for being a Black man breathing too loudly. (If you know who wrote that, please remind me.) I have been wondering since the Obama Campaign distanced itself from Jeremiah Wright if FOX News would be able to push President Obama apart from his supporters, and now the answer is clear.

I had a lot of time to think about this while I used the heat gun and the scraper, the orbital sander, the two coats of primer, two more coats of paint. The administration has made many false steps and mistakes along the way, but this is the one we will regret for decades. Bad laws can be repealed, bad policy will find its way through the courts and suffer reversal, but this is different. From the very beginning, Candidate Obama demonstrated a peculiar refusal to recognize the Republicans were not just trying to beat him. They’re planning to kill him. Beck’s taking Jones’s job and reputation is just the beginning of a political nightmare that will make Clinton’s impeachment look like a church picnic, and the worst part of it is that Mr. Obama is going to let Murdoch, Ailes and Beck do it. This weekend, the president could have called out Beck and stood with Jones, but he didn’t. No loyal supporter could be without blemish, and no past is pure. No one close to the president is safe, and we will see them destroyed one by one when Democrats do not stand together. For all intents and purposes, the skinny kid with ten bucks in his pocket has stood up in the cafeteria and announced he’ll be available for beatings every afternoon on the playground at 3:45.

What bully wouldn’t take him up on it?

The Money’s Gone Nowhere To Go

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What’s a comic to do when the humor writes itself?

The speech, which will be broadcast live from Wakefield High School in Arlington County, was planned as an inspirational message “entirely about encouraging kids to work hard and stay in school,” said White House spokesman Tommy Vietor. Education Secretary Arne Duncan sent a letter to principals nationwide encouraging them to show it.

But the announcement of the speech prompted a frenzied response from some conservatives, who called it an attempt to indoctrinate students, not motivate them.

Omigod, conservatives now respond to stuff that hasn’t happened yet, like they’ve just come back from the fuuuuuutuuuuuure armed with a pre-buttal.

Jim Greer, chairman of the Florida Republican Party, said the speech is an effort to “spread President Obama’s socialist ideology” and “justify his positions” on health care, the economy and taxes. Conservative columnist Michelle Malkin claimed that “the left has always used kids in public schools as guinea pigs and as junior lobbyists for their social liberal agenda.”

I KNOW! I had no idea CBS was writing satire!

Okay okay okay. Breathe, two, three, four. Okay, first: Presidents of the United States sometimes talk to the kids.

How’d that work out for us? Just another day at the office? No history-changing law-breaking by an American administration followed, right?

Okay, maybe Republican presidents shouldn’t talk to children.

Faces At the Edge of the Banquet

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The other night, we were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner and Pete groaned, “Oh noooo.” Two bananas had turned to gooey compost and taken the Cuisinart Bread Machine recipe book with them. There was no salvaging the book. We faced the terrible truth: we were on our own.

Tata: Bread machine recipes?
Siobhan: King Arthur Flour is my go-to. I’m rocking the Ancient Grains Bread.
Tata: Why do you know this stuff?
Siobhan: Magic 8 Ball.

On Fridays, Pete and I take our time wandering around the farmers market – after we make a beeline for the bread guy, where every week we buy a loaf of garlic, spinach and mozzarella bread. It is so good the co-workers I’ve been dragging to the market also buy loaves they conceal from their mushrooming teenage children. A few weeks ago, I finally developed enough confidence in myself and the bread machine to suggest we make this bread at home, then I had a better idea.

Pete: I’d say we should find a recipe but you’re incapable of following one.

That’s not a swipe. It’s the truth. Tuesday, I took this poor, defenseless recipe and made a sponge by combining the water, bread machine yeast and one cup of whole wheat flour. I covered it and left it huddled and alone in a big bowl under a clean cloth dinner napkin. After twenty-four hours, the yeast had bloomed a little differently than when I’d made sponges before, and the mixture was watery. I substituted molasses for honey, added 1/4 cup wheat bran and most of the other ingredients in roughly the correct order, with the sponge going into the bread machine last. Pete watched the dough come together and wanted to add some water, which we took from the draining spinach. In the meantime, Pete put olive oil and a mess of garlic cloves into a small saucepan to simmer gently. Then he said something terrifying.

Pete: I’m going upstairs to exercise.
Tata: What do I do when the machine beeps?
Pete: It’s not going to beep for an hour and a half.
Tata: That’s what’s supposed to happen. What do I do when the machine beeps?
Pete: I see. The first time it beeps is for add-ins. Are you going to add anything to the dough?
Tata: Garlic.
Pete: I thought we’d put that in with the filling.
Tata: Yes, and in the dough. Cold & flu season is upon us, baby!
Pete: The second time it beeps is when you take the paddle out, but in this case, we’re going to turn off the machine and bake in the oven. Got it?
Tata: I almost certainly don’t, so go exercise and hurry back.

Pete retreated to the attic, which was very, very far from the kitchen, and almost immediately, the bread machine beeped. I tossed my laptop on the couch and sprinted to the kitchen as cats scattered, then gave chase. I fished garlic cloves out of the oil, mashed them into bits and tossed them into the bread machine. Pete came back down slightly fitter; we giggled like teenagers. When the machine beeped again, I tossed the laptop, cats scattered and gave chase, Pete grabbed the dough and I grated mozzarella. Pete rolled out the dough, laid out spinach, cheese and garlic, then folded the dough so beautifully I sighed. He brushed the top with the garlicky olive oil and sprinkled on kosher salt. Then we tried not to stare at the oven and growl, “COME ON…BAKE!”

We stayed up until 12:30 watching bread cool. We’ve become bread nerds. This summer, we started out jarring because we spent the last two summers learning how to jar. Then I dug out Dad’s dehydrator and gave it a few whirls. This has not been an unmitigated success. An example: every dehydrating instruction ends with store in a cool, dry place. This summer, no place in New Jersey is a cool, dry place, so a whole pint jar of dried apples grew blue beards on their way to the compost heap. After that, we stored baggies of dried fruits and vegetables in the fridge, which was frustrating. One reason we chose to dehydrate was to build a pantry outside of the refrigerator. But, we’re learning. The other day, I learned that drying parsley and oregano is a cinch, and some of those skills I learned in the seventies came in handy. Don’t ask. Drying chives was much harder, and I’m considering repotting the remaining plants in kitchen-friendly, cat-discouraging pots. That will probably involve some exciting science I haven’t worked out yet.

The bread is important. Spinach and cheese in wheat bread with garlic and molasses is actual food, by which I mean it’s completely good for me. The other thing to consider is Pete’s got thirty years in professional kitchens under his belt but not in breadbaking, whereas I am a complete idiot with or without a recipe book. This is a big step for us. It means that we are ready to take on more real-food breads. Even so, the joke’s on me: next week, Pete’s going gluten-free.

We will start over.

You Won’t Hear Me Leaving

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Jim Bell
Executive Producer, The Today Show

Mr. Bell,

Yesterday, many news services reported you’d hired Jenna Bush Hager as an education reporter. This is offensive on a number of levels. Hager has no resume, no experience, no competency and nothing to offer. I’m afraid this hiring does not just betray NBC’s political leanings; it also argues against your news organization’s basic ability to gather news.

I have been watching your show for decades. Several years ago, I wrote to The Today Show twice to inform you that when Ann Coulter appeared on your show I changed the channel or turned off the TV. Ann Coulter continues to appear on your show. Recently, I wrote to tell you that Jim Cramer’s presence also caused me to change the channel or shut off the TV. I should have mentioned, perhaps, that Erin Burnett’s every pronouncement made me feel cheap and dirty, but some people like that. You should have disclaimers on the screen each time Cramer and Burnett speak, describing their culpability in the financial crisis, but even honesty is too much to ask. This, hiring Hager, is the last straw for me. NBC has lost all credibility. This is an insult to serious people of all kinds who train, hone a craft and polish their skills.

This morning, I switched the channel, and I won’t be back until your organization does some very serious growing up. I won’t hold my breath.

Sincerely yours,
Princess Ta

Sent to: TODAY@nbcuni.com

All Move And Try He Knew

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Our Hero, with the thatcherizing contraption, photographed from the bathroom window. I did not at all hang out the window and shout, “Do that spot again, honey!”

Tata: Obviously, we can spend our vast fortune –
Pete: Hahahahahahahahaha!
Tata: – on one meal and it’ll be fantastic, but can you conjure up really great dinners for two for less than $10? Can you do it every night?
Pete: I can….Yes. I can.
Tata: I double dog dare you!

Recipes will follow. Twenty-some years ago, I rented a room here in town from a crazy woman desperate to save her home from foreclosure after a very bad divorce from a violent man. Yeah, I slept with a baseball bat anyhow because I’d had an invigorating breakup with a man who kept a butcher knife in the trunk of his car, so it was nothing new. What was new was her mania for meal planning. “My best meal cost $.39 per serving,” she said, with a gleam in her eye. “It was great!” I can’t tell you how I wanted to go out and buy her bags of marshmallows, but I did learn that if you keep your head, you can eat a balanced diet. It’s on everyone’s mind, maybe yours, too. With every meal, you can know that you’re kicking the asses of industrial agriculture, our corporate overloads and your bank, besides. It’s like you need theme music!

What are you eating?