Week 2 Friday Morning Report

Goal 1
My weight is not at all budging.

Goal 3
I did Cindy Lee’s basic Yoga In A Box.

This week was a tough one for the routine kinds of exercise I do. For one thing: it rained a lot, disrupting my walking schedule. That makes it annoying but temporary. I’m getting back up on that horsy.

On Tuesday, I think it was, I had one of those frightening mood plunges that make life with sharp cutlery so interesting. Fortunately, that too was temporary but there’ve been two in the past three weeks. That means fresh fruit and vegetables, leafy greens and light fish for a while. Something’s out of whack – or I’m a middle-aged woman. I’ll stick with the idea I have some control over.

On the other hand: this morning, I was on the stepper for 15 minutes – up from my recent 12 – and only got off the thing because I couldn’t listen even one minute longer to that opportunistic bigot Steve Lonegan talk on the news about how we shouldn’t blame bigots for failing to understand Advertising 101. So I stormed off, but 3 more minutes than usual was nothing to sneeze at, I thought.

So. I’m not losing weight, which could be discouraging. I am not discouraged. Last week, I wore a pair of pants I couldn’t button a month ago. Today, I’m wearing the smallest pair of pants in my closet, which is an outright shock. This morning, I felt a little defeated when I read the scale so when I pulled the small pants out of the closet I was behaving badly. And trying them on was ridiculous. That they fit doesn’t make much sense – but I’ll take it.

It’s not a win at all. Still, it’s slow progress, and progress is what I want.

White Punks On Dope

Through the looking glass, out of the memory hole and over the phone:

He: Talk talk talk talk talk. Talk talk. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk, talk talk, talk talk, talk talk talk. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. Talk? Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. I love you. Talk talk talk talk talk. Talk talk talk talk. Talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk. Talk talk talk. Did you hear what I said?
Tata: …At least one of us should be naked, yes…?

Previously on Poor Impulse Control, John stood in my cubicle, smiling and holding a book.

John: I think this book is for you.
Tata: What is it? I must know!
John: How Shall We Train Our Wives And Children? by F. Hopkinson Smith.
Tata: Oh, Jesus Christ, what is that? It seems small. Is that a whole monograph?
John: I don’t know. I think you should read it and give a report to the whole class.
Tata: Okay, but there better not be a quiz!

In today’s episode:

Tata: Okay, but there better not be a quiz!
John: When my friend had a baby her neighbors gave her a book called To Train Up A Child and told her it helped them a lot. It’s all about how to beat your kids without leaving marks.
Tata: Get out! This is a recent phenomenon? It wasn’t published in 1650 or something?
John: No, no. And they were serious. Their children were, like, eerily well behaved.
Tata: Did your friend call the cops?
John: And say what? “My neighbors didn’t tell me they beat their kids but the kids say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ Officer, it’s serious!”
Tata: Damn it.
John: You can read some of it online and buy it on Amazon.
Tata: This is going to make me have that dream again where I’m locked under the stairs and fed nothing but HoHos.
John: The reason to look at Amazon is the reviews. Wait, this gets scarier. The reviews say things like, “These people are crazy” and “It’s a child abuse manual and the authors should be in lockup” and yet the book still has 2 stars.
Tata: This time, I’ll be locked in the attic and fed baseball cards, I just know it.

I wouldn’t nominate myself for any parenting awards; moreover, I hate the use of the word parent as a verb. And I don’t understand or like the way kids are being raised now like veal. Parents who wouldn’t consider kicking the dog also wouldn’t consider sending perfectly healthy kids out to play kickball in the street without an armed escort. What does that really tell the kids? The world is so dangerous a place you can’t risk sunshine, fresh air, exercise and making friends. Let’s drive to a mall and you can walk as far as the food court, always where I can see you. Yeah, those kids are going to be neurotic, weird and fat. It bodes well for our future as a nation that these kids are surveilled from birth so when they join the corporate world they won’t even notice their bosses counting key strokes.

Michael and Debi Pearl, authors of To Train Up A Child, have a point about willful, angry, overindulged children. It makes me crazy to listen to parents whine at and negotiate with children. I read the online chapter. Folks, I don’t know what to make of this.

As in the military, all maneuvers in the home begin with a call to attention. Three-fourths of all home discipline problems would be instantly solved if you could at any time gain your child’s silent, unmoving attention. “TO THE REAR – MARCH” translated into family language would be: “Leave the room,” or, “Go to bed.” Without question they turn and go. This is normal in the well trained family.

What?

I was logging with a fifteen-hundred-pound mule that sometimes wanted to run away with the log. In moments of stress (actually I was panic stricken), I found myself frantically YELLING the commands. The owner would patiently caution me, “Speak quietly and calmly, or he will pay no attention.” I never did learn the art of calmly saying, “Whoa” to a runaway mule pulling a twenty-five-foot white oak log with my foot hung in the trace chain. The point to remember is that the animal learns to identify not only the sound but also the tone.

I don’t know about him, but I learned to keep my distance from logging. To add to the confusion, sometimes the Pearls sound so rational.

If you raise your voice when giving a command to your child, he will learn to associate your tone and decibel level with your intention. If you have so trained him, don’t blame him if he ignores your first thirteen “suggestions” waiting for the fevered pitch to reach the point where he must interpret it to be a real command.

…even concerned about what the reader might think.

“Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it (Prov. 22:6).” Train up, not beat up. Train up, not discipline up. Train up, not educate up. Train up, not “positive affirmation” up. Training is the most obvious missing element in child rearing. Training is not discipline. A child will need more than “obedience training,” but without it everything else will be insufficient.

Parents should not wait until the child’s behavior becomes unacceptable before they commence training – that would be discipline. Discipline is a part of training but is insufficient in itself to effect proper behavior.

The Pearls seem to worry about the discipline thing. I can’t quite put my finger on what’s bothering them – I’ve read a whole chapter of their book, you’d think I’d grasp their entire thesis, and I hope you know sarcasm when you read it – but it might be important.

Remember, you are not disciplining, you are training.

And:

This is not discipline. It is obedience training.

And:

Again, keep in mind, the baby is not being punished, just conditioned.

And then:

Disciplinary actions can become excessive and oppressive when the tool of training is set aside and one depends on discipline alone to do the training.

Plus:

Except where the very smallest children are concerned, training at home almost entirely eliminates the need for discipline – especially public discipline.

Then we come to this gem:

If you are consistent, this test of authority will come only one, two, or, at the most, three times in each child’s life. If you endure, conquering the child’s will, then in the long run the child wins. If you weaken and let it pass to the victory of the child’s will, then by winning it is a character loss for the child. You must persevere for the both of you. The household cat who, regardless of protest, door barring and foot swinging, is occasionally allowed to stay in the house will take the occasional success as impetus to always try to get in. If he is consistently kept out (100% of the time), he will not come in, even when the door is left open. The cat, allowed to occasionally get its way, is trained, despite your protests, to come into the house. If you kick it hard enough and often enough, it will become sufficiently wary to obey while you remain on guard but will still bolt through the door when it sees the opportunity. On the other hand, dogs, thirty-five times smarter than cats, can be trained either to come in or stay out upon command. The key again is consistency. If the dog learns through conditioning (consistent behavior on the part of the trainer) that he will never be allowed to violate his master’s command, he will always obey. If parents carefully and consistently train up a child, his or her performance will be as consistently satisfying as that rendered by a well trained seeing-eye dog.

The day I kick my cat is the day I don’t deserve feline companionship but do deserve a visit from the Humane Society’s S.W.A.T. team.

As a person who isn’t going to raise more children, I’m not going to buy the Pearls’ book and read the whole thing. I’ve read enough to guarantee bad dreams. Thanks, John, you bastard! Siobhan comes to the rescue with Pants Aflame’s All True Bible Stories For Children.

Some say that, as a parent, Beth Christian was less than perfect.
Some say that as a moralist, she left something to be desired.
But everyone agrees that she knew how to take the Bible’s advice – very, very literally.

Genesis 34 is my little corner of the sky. I know it inside and out, forward and backward, and All True Bible Stories For Children’s rendition is an absolute panic.

Three days later, when all the men were still sore from having the ends of their penises cut off, Simeon and Levi – Dinah’s brothers – came into the city with swords and killed all the boys. Then they killed Hamor and Shechem. Then Jacob’s whole extended family looted the city. They took the sheep, the oxes, and the donkeys because their sister had been ruined. Then they took all the valuables in the city, and all the children, and all the women, and they ruined everything that they left behind.
After that, Jacob said “People are going to be mad at us for what you did.”
“Well,” said Simeon and Levi, “we couldn’t let them treat our sister that way.”

“Wow,” said Beth, “I guess women are pretty valuable for all the men in Jacob’s family to get so upset.”
“Women are valuable, Dear One,” said Beth’s mother, “At least until someone has put a penis in them.”
Beth thought about this for a moment. “Well, I’m sure glad that nobody’s put a penis in me!” she said. Then she smiled and hugged her mother. All her questions had been answered.

That right there must be some newfangled definition of love.

I must be hopelessly old-fashioned.

Sign on a phone pole near my house:

garage / moving sale
Saturday, July 1
[address]
10:00 – 2: 00
everything must go
furniture
garden tools
clothes
we want to take nothing with us

If there were a phone number I’d call. I want to know where they were going and what they expected to find. Clothes? What are they wearing now? The answers are probably more interesting than the questions. John turns the cubicle corner with smile on his face and a very old book in his hand. He is King of Preservation. If he’s holding it it’s turning to dust.

John: I think this book is for you.
Tata: What is it? I must know!
John: How Shall We Train Our Wives And Children? by F. Hopkinson Smith.
Tata: Oh, Jesus Christ, what is that? It seems small. Is that a whole monograph?
John: I don’t know. I think you should read it and give a report to the whole class.
Tata: Okay, but there better not be a quiz!

Mr. Smith gave a speech at “the 13th subscription dinner of the Hamilton Club, February 8, 1890” – so says one of the sub- sub- subtitles. I expected this to be daft exposition of antiquated morality and in a way I was not disappointed. Mr. Smith:

Two tests present themselves to my mind as I begin to digest the meaning of this theme. One is the ancient admonition, “Wherefore, let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” and the other more modern caution, “Don’t monkey with a buzz saw.”

The mad charmer! He brought up power tools in a discussion of domestic bliss! He makes a list of different kinds of wives his audience members might have, like the thrifty wife.

You have a thoroughly practical, economical, thrifty, divinity. She is out of bed every morning at daylight, summer and winter, and insists on the same luxury for you. Her keys and her pass-books are her constant companions. She weighs every pound of meat and re-measures every peck of vegetables that crosses your door-sill. She knows to a nicety just how many days the ton of furnace coal should last, and makes the cook’s life a misery if she overruns a bucket. In her anxiety to keep them from lying around and making a muss, she burns every scrap of paper as soon as it is opened, including often your most valuable documents. She is the cleanest, most untiring, and most uncomfortable person in the world. When you mildly and kindly suggest there is something else in life besides running a house, on time, like a watch factory, with every scrap of waste paper carefully swept up and locked in the safe over night, she opens up with a cyclone on saving your money, and slaving for you and your children, that reminds you of a Dakota blizzard, so cold and cutting is it, and you crawl down to your office in a limp and dazed condition, wondering what struck you, and whether it wouldn’t be a good idea to build a bomb-proof vault in the cellar.

Hilarious! I bet he left ’em crying in their gratins. Or maybe –

She is philanthropic and charitable – overcome with the sufferings of the poor, overwhelmed with the millions crying for bread – so she supports a line of tramps all day from your back yard to your front gate and weeds out your stock of clothes until in the spring, you have hardly a pair of light trousers, thin shoes or straw hat left. When the snow melts you find the hat in the vacant lot below your house, and later on recognize your rum-exchanged breeches dangling from a Johnny-hand-me-down’s door near the ferry. You mildly upbraid her, setting forth in your kindest and most winning way the great wrong done to the deserving poor, touching lightly on your own mistfortunes and losses. She replies by comparing your sypathetic heart to a Belgian paving block, and winds up by hoping that you will never, never have to beg your bread from door to door.

These wives of one hundred sixteen years ago don’t sound wussy to me.

Or she is aesthetic, with a taste for green grays, dull reds and crushed strawberry pinks. She wears long flowing dresses – a cross between a night-gown and a bath-robe – and has a mania for butterfly-bows. Every individual article in the parlor, the backs of all the chairs, all the rockers, easels, lamps, candlesticks and sofas are tied up with ribbons. She is tied up herself, a broad silk band grabbing her tight around the waist just below her armpits, and a lot of narrow ones dangling from her elbows and throat. All the jars are filled with cat-tails, all the plaques decorated with golden rod and sunflowers.

Under your desk in the library there has stood for years a large, comfortable wicker basket, holding the scraps and waste of your correspondence. Once a week this is emptied. In its place is now a cracker-box set up on end, cretonned inside and out, having an eruption of field daisies on one side and a swelling of velvet cherries with plush leaves on the other. An unpleasantness ensues when you throw anything into this.

Some wives are more inconvenient than others.

Or she is what is known in common parlance as a “joiner.” She is one of those women who joins everything, The Central Sewing Society, the Middle Branch of the Orphan Relief Fund, the Western Chapter of Confirmed Lunatics, the Society of Dress Reform, the South Brooklyn and Gowanus Browning Club, the Society for the Prevention of Microbes, for the Spread of the Gospel and the Abatement of Street Nuisances. Your mail is crowded every morning with circulars, notices of meetings, calls for dues, subscription cards headed by a Scriptural quotation, and tailed by “send money to Mrs. So and So, Treas.” The Sewing Society meets in the upstairs back from, the Browning Club in the parlor and the Microbes and Lunatics in the library. Every other day in the week there is a committee stowed away somewhere in your house, all talking at once.

Um. Okay. What about them kids, eh?

You have two children, a girl and a boy. They are fat, chubby little tots, and you rejoice in their plump legs and arms. The little one wears a cambric dress with a while apron, and has her hair parted back from a forehead white as snow. The big one – Ned, the boy – wears a jacket and short breeches, punctured with pockets, which are crammed daily with a miscellaneous assortment of hardware.

One night there is a dress parade in the parlor for your benefit. Two Kate Greenaway manikins sidle in. Nellie’s hair is banged over her eyes like a Skye terrier’s; her dimpled arms lost in balloon sleeves; her plump little legs smothered in a Mother-Hubbard gown some fifteen sizes too large for her. She looks like a Christmas doll at a fair.

Ned breaks your heart. His jacket is so tight he can hardly breathe – his trousers are worse. Both are made of black velvet. Around his waist is an enormous red silk sash; on his poor little feet paper shole shoes with silver buckles. The entire combination affords but one pocket. This is over his left breast, and holds a six-inch-square handkerchief spotted with cologne. He has positive orders not to fool with this lest he muss it. He looks appealingly at you as he tries to wriggle his nervous little hands under his waistband, as if in search of his marbles, and you solemnly vow to roll him the mud and give him one more day of freedom the first chance you get.

“Aren’t they just too artistic for anything, my dear?” she says.

You assent, and suggest that they ought to be kept in a glass case, like stuffed birds, with something in a bottle in one corner to keep them from spoiling.

Then you go upstairs and knock the stuffing out of that waste basket with your foot.

I feel sorry for the club members who tried to eat blueberry grunt while Mr. Smith was speaking. I transcribed this at work and cackled like I was brewing potions without a permit.

So it goes. The training so far is a failure. The knowing how, the absorbing question of the day. If you can solve it to-night, they will name gates after you in Prospect Park, and later on conceal your statues in the shrubbery.

But, seriously, where should this training begin? With these wives?

At this point in the speech, I was looking for a vicious punchline, a knife in the back, a kick for the dog. Mr. Smith has pulled a fast one on us all.

To train your children – that is easy. Open your hear and your arms wide for your daughters, and keep them wide open; don’t leave that all to their mothers. An intimacy will grow with the years which will fit them for another man’s arms and heart when they exchange yours for his. Make a chum of your boy – hail-fellow-well-met, a comrade, a pal. Get down to the level of his boyhood, and bring him gradually up to the level of your manhood. Don’t look at him from the second-story window of your fatherly superiority and example. Hang your example. Ten chances to one it is bad. Go to the front yard and play ball with him. When he gets into scrapes, don’t thrash him as your father did you. Put your arm around his neck, and say you know it is pretty bad, but that he can count on you to help him out, and that will, every single time, and that if he had let you know earlier it would have been all the easier; and you can bet your bottom dollar that that is the last scrape he will ever get into without you.

The children part of this contract, the Queen Anne trimmings so to speak of this structure, is easy. The foundation and sub-structure is what bothers us. How to train our wives.

Bless their hearts, how shall we train them? Are not all the ills of life largely our own doing? If she considers cleanliness next to Godliness and in the excess of her zeal, cleans the very handle off the front door, should we growl? The restless activity of the worldly woman, the economies of the thrifty wife, the abundant, perhaps ill-advised generosity of the charitable woman, the absorption of the musical and literary, the tears and timidity of the clinging are but the natural outless of characters that need training as do growing vines.

Your part is to lead the delicate tendrils along the supporting trellis of your sympathy, nurturing and fostering each bud until it breaks into flower. Always upward into the sunlight of your appreciation, and never stunted or scarred by the keen pruning knife of your irony or ridicule.

The trouble with half the unhappy homes in the world lies in the pulling apart in such slight matters as likes and dislikes. You have by the very nature of your sex an unlimited freedom. You have your rod and gun, the fields, the water and hills as well as the exchange, the club, the library, laboratory or studio. That little woman up-stairs has spent one-third of her life in the nursery, one-third on her bed recovering from its effects, and but a fragment of the balance away from the cares of your house and its contents. She has busied herself with the maintenance of the social etiquette of your position, the constant watch over the child with her toys, the girl with her books, the maiden with her lovers.

When from out of this dull routine of duty, patience and love – stealing half hours or even whole days – the strong spirit of this once weak child-wife of yours blooms into art, music, literature, charity or science – hold each blossom sacred. It may not be the blossom that you like, but it is a blossom all the same, redolent with perfume, delicate in color, exquisite in form.

Begin the training by strengthening the trellis and adapting it to the peculiarities and necessities of the plant. Then shall your life be crowned with roses and a sweet-smelling savor follow you all your days.

How remarkably reasonable. For his time and place, this speech is curiously modern and empathic. Of course, after the inventions of birth control and doors that work two ways for women too, wives are different and domestic life is different and husbands are different. What remains the same is that finding the funny is still the path to domestic peace.

White Dopes On Punk

Dad’s wife Darla is a progressive Canadian and living in the wilds of Virginia; thus Darla smacks her forehead a dozen times a day. When the topic of politics comes up in the grocery store, for instance. In self-defense, Darla feeds me the dooziest of the online doozies. This one takes the cake and goes back for another.

Here are some quotes from a pro-abortion person, Miss Caroline Weber, who wrote an article at The Onion online magazine.

The Onion Article

When referring to the killing of her child she said:

“I am totally psyched for this abortion!”

“Those pro-life activists made it pretty clear that, unlike me, they actually think abortion is bad and to be avoided. Are they nuts? Abortion is the best!”

“It wasn’t until now that I was lucky enough to be pregnant with a child I had no means to support.”

“I just know it’s going to be the best non-anesthetized invasive uterine surgery ever!”

I can’t breathe! The Onion rocks my world!

Who does Miss Weber blame her abortion on? The pro-life movement.

“The funny thing is, I actually have the pro-life movement to thank for this opportunity.”

It’s our fault? She says:

“If my HMO wouldn’t have bowed to their pressure not to cover oral contraceptives, I never would’ve gotten pregnant in the first place.”

Sorry ma’am, if you hadn’t had sex you wouldn’t have gotten pregnant, it’s not the HMO’s fault for not supporting your promiscuity while not married.

To sum it up, Miss Weber said:

“I realize there are people who will criticize me, calling me selfish and immature because I took “the easy way out.” I realize there are those who will condemn me to hell for what I’m about to do. Well, I don’t care what they say: It’s worth it for all the fun and laughs I’m going to have at the clinic. So listen up, world: I’m pro-abortion… and I love it! See you at my post-abortion party, everybody!”

Miss Weber, you have killed your child, which you admit is a baby/human being, intentionally. That does make you an admitted murderer. I’m not going to “condemn you to hell”, I’m going to pray for your forgiveness and for the suffering which you will endure when you realize what you have done. Every baby you see from that moment on is going to wake you up to the realization that you killed your child.

Oh. My. God. So scorny and magically uninformed. In 2006, how can anyone not know the Onion is satire?

Poor Pete! He wants Miss Caroline Weber to suffer but I think she’d have to exist first, which might complicate his scorny scorn scorn. That’s okay, I’m sure eventually someone will break it to this guy that the writer of this article is not the cute little lady but a satirist working for pizza and bragging rights. Women don’t send out invitations to post-abortion parties. Women deal in their own ways. The other day, some friends and I were talking about that time one of them needed an abortion and we drove to the ends of the earth for it. Or somewhere in North Jersey because we couldn’t risk her seeing a doctor where she might be seen because of scorny douchebags like Pete, but that’s beside the point. So we’re getting ready to leave and she hands me the keys and the car’s a stick, which I can drive the same way someone who is really not good at something does that something. Then we hit terrible traffic and the car kept stalling and it was really bad until I broke down and said, “Can you drive?” and she did. Oh how we laugh about it now!

Women have stories like this because of scorny busybody douchebags like Pete who make life harder for people already in a tough situation, possibly the worst of their lives. And now we find Pete doesn’t have a sense of humor, either, which isn’t much of a surprise. Fortunately for us, he’s a fucking scream.

Week 2 Tuesday Report

The bedroom air conditioner is installed.

I pulled a crooked shelf off the wall in the bathroom and spackled the holes. That shelf was really bothering me so I felt a wave of relief when it was gone.

It’s just before 4 a.m. and I can’t sleep. Bad dreams, when I slept a little.The point of this project is to move into my apartment and live in it without reservation. Sharkey and I have no secrets from one another.

Tata: So I’m afraid if I get rid of all the boxes I’ll be alone for the rest of my life.
Sharkey: Well, I did notice a box of CDs…
Tata: I mean, what is that? In ten months, I couldn’t buy a CD tower?
Sharkey: I’ve been cleaning out my apartment, too. I got rid of a whole shelf of computer books.
Tata: Why are you cleaning? You never clean without a reason.
Sharkey: I’ve been afraid of the same thing. And I had to make room for my new TV.

He gestures. The hypothetical appliance is bigger than I am.

Tata: Mazel tov on your new bundle of joy!

Even so, maybe it’s the hour or a mood but my enthusiasm for this process is flagging. Fortunately, my subconscious heckles me like a game show host. A couple hours ago, when I was staring at the ceiling, wondering if meow meow meow and why meow meow meow, my subconscious burst into song:

Carry on,
Love is coming,
Love is coming to us all

Ugh. I said, “What is ‘finish what I started,’ Alex?”

Last week, Garrison Keillor published in the Chicago Tribune a column that is remarkable for a number of reasons. For one thing, I read all the way to the end. I have a microscopic attention span and Mr. Keillor’s writing requires the reader to demonstrate a patience I mostly do not possess. I try, I do. I’ve started this post five times since Thursday or Friday and have learned I sometimes lack the patience to even make a point worth making. I mean, I had to quit wearing shoes with laces. Here, read Mr. Keillor for yourself.

I’ll wait.

Feelings…nothing more than feelings…trying to forget my…

Oh, you’re back? Good. The context strikes me as significant. I have nothing against Mr. Keillor but I don’t understand the draw. I don’t usually read his columns, listen to the radio show and I haven’t seen the movie. Even so, Mr. Keillor is kind of ambient in mainstream culture, where he seems like a nice man who is gentle and patient with folks of all kinds. And yet, somehow, of all things and all people, Ralph Reed upsets Mr. Keillor so much that Mr. Keillor breaks character to talk politics. That’s interesting because Ralph Reed upsets me, too. I just break things.

The sexual trespass of a president is a story any mortal can understand, and the use of your father’s influence to sneak you into a military unit where you’re less likely to face combat is an act of cowardice all of us cowards can appreciate. But the chutzpah of Mr. Reed in wheedling money from Abramoff to snooker Christians against gambling is cold-hearted greed. And his work on behalf of the sweatshops and sex factories of the Marianas, arguing that the Chinese women imported there were being given the chance to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ, takes us to yet an entirely new level.

Mr. Reed is a Presbyterian, and the Westminster Confession says, “He that scandalizeth his brother, or the Church of Christ, ought to be willing, by a private or public confession and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are offended; who are thereupon to be reconciled to him, and in love to receive him.”

But Mr. Reed is running for office, and that’s no time for repentance. Time to hunker down and hope that the prosecutors are occupied with other matters. Smile and shake hands and keep changing the subject. If a reporter mentions Abramoff, smile and say, “I’ve said as much as I’m going to about that, and now I want to talk about my plan to strengthen families in Georgia.”

Gambling? “I’ve always been opposed to gambling.”

Deceit? Greed? “No charges have been filed. I have been exonerated of wrongdoing.”

Will it work? We shall soon see.

Shoot, if I could think of a way to indict Reed myself I’d do it. Are they taking reservations on The People’s Court? I may not be Reed’s brother but he scandalizeth me plenty. Where’s my public apology?

I hate shoes, and Mr. Reed’s whitewashed bad behavior, splashing all over mainstream culture and never rinsing clean. Thanks to Mr. Keillor for saying so.

Crossposted at Running Scared.

More and more lately, the difference between what I can and can’t do lies in what I let myself consider. I can’t run much farther than I have been for over a month. I’m not making a lot of progress on that front and it’s a little frustrating – but thinking ‘I should be able to connect this stretch I run with this other stretch I also run and I can’t. Harrumph!’ overlooks a few important facts. One is that arthritic stiffness in my hips has to be dealt with, which takes time, and I’m doing it. Another is I’m walking a lot faster than I was even a month ago. The third is a really steep hill on South Fifth Avenue.

At the bottom of the hill, there’s a crosswalk painted onto the asphalt. Adela and I walked all over the park where she usually runs and then she showed me South Fifth Avenue. We walked up the hill with some effort and at the top there’s a street sign: SLOW – where you, walking or running up the hill read it and say, “Yes! Yes, I am.” And we, walking up that hill, said, “That sign seems rather taunty.” Weeks ago, after I ran and walked in the park, I’d walk over to this hill and start to run up it, knowing I probably shouldn’t be able to run it at all but here I was, trying. I couldn’t get to the top. I’d come within two or three driveways of the top. Yesterday, after a rather disappointing walk and run in the park I went to the hill with modest expectations. I started at the crosswalk, kept my knees high and stayed on my toes. It took forever to reach the street I pass on the left but then suddenly I was at the top of the hill and two driveways from the sign. I thought, ‘That’s nothing! I can do that.’ Then I touched my hand to the sign and I had done it. I’d told Adela I’d never be able to run up that hill. A few months later, I have. It is a modest accomplishment but if I had not said, ‘Well, why not try?’ I would still think I’d never run another yard. This sense of possibility has not at all helped with the air conditioner situation.

Sharkey arrived at my house just after 1:30 this afternoon because of this email exchange:

Tata: CAN YOU READ?
Sharkey: Yes. Soemtmes. Y?
Tata: Come to my house and read the installation manual for my air conditioner!
Sharkey: Why? What’s the problem?
Tata: I CAN’T READ THE PICTURES!

It’s true: though I watched and helped Mr. DBK install the exact same model of air conditioner in my living room while he and I both muttered about how bad the instructions were, enough time had passed while waiting for parts to arrive that I couldn’t remember how the pictures were supposed to explain anything. The other day, a package arrived containing the last of the parts the factory failed to include the first time. I started piecing together what I could and I thought I could just install it myself. I’d seen it done, right? But no. There were two diagrams in the middle of the instructions I just couldn’t make head nor tail of, and thus I whined at Sharkey, and offered to take him to lunch if he’d read me this fairy tale.

Sharkey, like me, has little short-term memory. He, like me, looks at every situation and has to figure everything out from scratch. He has confidence in his ability to survey the facts, pick through for the important ones and arrive at a course of action.

Sharkey: What the hell is this?
Tata: See? It’s like the instructions need some!

Holding the manual, Sharkey walked from the pile of parts in my bedroom to the installed unit in the living room, then back, then back again. He put down the manual and looked at the window frame.

Sharkey: Does the screen just open or…?
Tata: Yes. Also: if you see a squirrel making eyes at you, he means it.
Sharkey: What are you talking about?
Tata: One of the previous tenants may have fed the squirrels so when you open that screen you may have a new best friend. Which will upset the cat. And the Health Department.

Fortunately, the squirrels are fickle or they don’t visit on Shabbos. Sharkey opens the window and nothing happens. He measures this thing against this other thing and marks the sill. It is at this point that we discover my electric screwdriver has not taken a charge and won’t be drilling into anything. I immediately choose a bold course of action.

Tata: Let’s go have lunch.
Sharkey: How long does it take to charge?
Tata: Shouldn’t be more than half an hour.
Sharkey: I’m feeling a little peckish…

We go to out for burgers because I had my braces massively adjusted yesterday and I can’t wait to chew a hunk of salted animal flesh. The waitress brings me the rarest burger they can make, which I eat with a fork and a grimace while Sharkey tells me about his dramatic romance. I pay the check and we race back to my place, where the screwdriver has not taken a charge at all. We stare at the small power tool and wonder why it does not love us.

Sharkey: I’ll go home and get mine.
Tata: I hate to ask you to go all the way to the other side of Piscataway and come back.
Sharkey: I could come back tomorrow? Whaddya think?
Tata: I think you’re being awfully nice about this. Should I check your skull for lumps?

In the wide world of almost unimaginable possibilities, I may have an air conditioner installed in my bedroom tomorrow. But I won’t blame you if you don’t believe it. I would’ve said the same thing yesterday. In fact, “I may have an air conditioner in my bedroom tomorrow” has been my mantra for the past few weeks. One of these days, these nonsense words will probably be true.

Week 1 Friday Morning Report

Goal 1
My weight hasn’t budged.

Goal 3
Yep. Took a basic yoga stretch class.

I am wearing a pair of pants I couldn’t button three weeks ago. This pair of pants doesn’t pinch or bind anywhere. Later this morning, when I crawl across the office floor to beg Lupe, “Please, please, hire me an assistant!” the pants won’t cut off circulation anyplace. This represents startling and unexpected progress.

“Times change. People change. Interest rates fluctuate…”
Top Secret

In recent months, righty writers, commentators and apologist have turned on one another like a hungry wolfpack. If a pundit said, “You know, that Emperor’s buck-nekkid” fifty others bit holes in his cheap suit. I don’t know about you, but I watched this spectacle with rapt attention. Something really significant is happening here, something historic and not at all what it seems. I am not certain what it is, but let’s count our fingers and try not to smell like raw meat.

Doug McIntyre is the latest media “conservative” to stand up and say our current administration is a failure. Doug is a personality on KABC radio in Los Angeles, hosting McIntyre In the Morning. I am nowhere near Los Angeles and in no position to judge whether or not Doug dabbed himself with steak sauce first but after he issued a public apology for voting Bush/Cheney, I bet he’s covered with bite marks. And not the good kind.

So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.

That’s…astounding. Thanks for joining us in reality-based Reality. There’s more and it is breathtaking!

Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now Iraq will be a peaceful member of the brotherhood of nations and George W. Bush will be celebrated as a visionary genius.

But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes we cast and the leaders we chose now.

After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.

Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce, Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding – the competition is fierce for the worst of the worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take decades to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly authored domestic embarrassments.

And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards. Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?

We? Dahhhhhhhhhhlink, let’s be careful of those plural pronouns. They’ll only start a land war in Asia – or put you up against a Sicilian where Death is on the line.

Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or workers’ rights.

I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t bore you with a rehash. It’s enough to say this President has been a catastrophe for the wages of working people; he’s debased the work ethic itself. “Jobs Americans won’t do!” He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders of the country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world. The President’s January 7th, 2004 speech on immigration, his first trial balloon on his guest worker scheme, was a deal breaker for me. I couldn’t and didn’t vote for him in 2004. And I’m glad I didn’t.

Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt, outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives, a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms – this President has run the most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any American’s lifetime.

You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history remembers you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the White Sox, and you use the same gut to send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.

While shocking, this litany of disappointments is – I’m sorry – silly. Trading Sammy Sosa is a klunker of a business decision without life and death consequences. No, really. Leaving the Gulf Coast to its own devices after the hurricanes is the work of a cabal of self-absorbed oligarchic gargoyles, with no insult intended to real gargoyles. Doug is having a little trouble differentiating between them.

And that’s not all. He’s sorry he voted for Bush in 2000 but washes his hands of the man in 2004. See, he’s making amends like any addict but like every neoconman, he’s skipped an important step in his recovery.

There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way, admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen.

And…

I was sick of all the Clinton shenanigans and the thought of President Gore was…unthinkable. So, GWB became my guy.

“Unthinkable.” Remember that word. And…

None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second crime of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when America needs a vibrant opposition to check the power of a run-amuck majority party. It requires it. It doesn’t work without one. Like the high and low tides keep the oceans alive, a healthy, positive opposition offers a path back to the center where all healthy societies live.

Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for anything. In fairness, I don’t believe a Democrat president would have gone into Iraq. Unfortunately, I don’t know if President Gore would have gone into Afghanistan. And that’s one of the many problems with the Democrats.

Aside from the fact that he has no idea what a leftist is and he’s still arguing that he can control his ravenous powergrab habit, Doug’s biggest problem is that he has learned absolutely nothing from what he’s admitting. In his estimation, voting Bush/Cheney in 2000 was a mistake. The unspoken insult is “and I’d have to do it again because you guys may be right but you still suck.” He has not reconsidered the motivations of the people who have taken the actions he so laments. He has not examined the utter selfishness, the persistent lack of human empathy or the criminal inability to see consequences coming as they ride up the front lawn on a FEMA trailer hooked to a Hummer H3.

With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the system is broken, so broken, it’s almost inevitable it pukes up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for recycled hacks and malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic competence and simple honesty too much to ask?

It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility that I’m all wet about everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it out there, because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it today. I don’t say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months and months. But eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.

I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our own to save this magnificent country. The United States of America is a gift to the world, but it has been badly abused and its rightful owners, We the People, had better step up to the plate and reclaim it before the damage becomes irreparable.

So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush continues to act the part, but at this point who’s buying the act?

Does this make me a waffler? A flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him while he was up.

You were right, I was wrong.

I fixed his wacky apostrophe placement because it met my OCD needs. I’m sure that admission was hard for him to spit out, so he wouldn’t take this well: Hey, Doug McIntyre! Shove your apology up your ass!

You know what, Mr. A Day Late And A Few Trillion Short? It’s douchebags like you that put him in power with your refusal to consider that Al Gore, an intelligent, well-educated, successful, experienced human being might – just might – be a better candidate to lead the fucking free world than a witless fake cowboy, and once you put him in power, you guaranteed he stayed in power with your McCarthyesque tactics of impugning the integrity and patriotism of anyone who said, “I’m sorry but that Emperor’s buck nekkid.” I’m glad you came to your senses but you’ve got miles to go before you approach reason and reasonableness.

Your apology is worthless. You know how I know? Because you’d sell your grandmother to be able to say “I told you so.”

Let’s hope the wolfpack makes short work of you.

The past few days have been something of an ordeal – if in the times of war, torture and swimsuit season one can describe several days of intense effort and suspense as an ordeal. Even so, I spend half my time laughing at my own idiocy. To continue from yesterday’s idiocy:

Dad: I like the board and the card is funny. But they were addressed to John Heatwole’s house. He’s a famous Civil War writer, sculptor, painter and cetera.
Tata: My stars, a girl could start a revolution, sending Father’s Day gifts to the wrong man. In fact next year, I think I’ll send Candygrams to the Republican National Committee.
Dad: They would tout it as a return to traditional family values. And take credit for it. And say that everybody who doesn’t think it’s a good idea is part of the terrorist organization called “Down-With-Fathers” who want to bomb maternity shops. The bastids. By the way, I’m at 4290 [Dad’s street.]
Tata: Did I transpose digits? Make up my own address? I copied off the funny screen-thing but I’m good for seeing things that are – IS THAT A SHINY OBJECT?
Dad: SHINY OBJECT…? Darla says I don’t have ADD, I have Attention Surplus Disorder. SHINY? Too many things occupy 100% of my capacity to concentrate… IT *IS* A SHINY THING… but I think… AND LOOK – OVER THERE. ANOTHER ONE…! 52 [Dad’s street], the package said. Yeah, transposed. In the Bantu numbering system.

There it is. He’s invoked a seldom-used plot device: Steve Biko. And Peter Gabriel’s singing in my head. So we talk about food, because other than our mutual fondness for Hugh Laurie, what is there in life but calling each other up and shouting recipes? In this case, email was a lot quieter and didn’t tip off my co-workers, which is good because contemplating moisture at work is at least…unsanitary…

Dad: Beer bread recipe:

3 cups self-rising flour
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 can beer (12 ounces)

To make your own self-rising flour,

For 1-cup substitution
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Tata: I’m big on whole wheat flour, which I probably mentioned. How can I make self-rising whole wheat flour? The moisture levels differ, I know.

I probably should have seen this coming. But I didn’t. My cover was blown when my co-workers demanded to know why I’d turned blue. Wind up and…

Dad: According to Linda McCartney, one of the culinary wizards of our time and a vegan (inherent hyper-oxymoron, although not as good as the three-pronged “constructive government program” wherein everything contradicts everything), the recipe is…
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon salt
She goes on to say, in that crisp British way… oh, wait she was from Schenectady or someplace like that… “When measuring flour, lift and stir it lightly with a fork or spoon to aerate it before measuring.” And, no, I don’t think she said “aereate.” Apparently the word “sift” was too rarefied.

Fortunately, I’m listening to Jim Croce on my iPod, so I’m impervious to veganism. SHINY OBJECTS for the ears. How I keep grounded or centered or whatever they’re saying nowadays – Croce. And Willie Nelson. Nine-inch Nails as interpreted/improved by Johnny Cash. Nana Mouskouri.

Soy milk has a profound effect on my digestive tract that doesn’t feel altogether spiritual. And I do so worry about how they kill the adorable little soys.