Why can't upload movies?

: (

How do you feel

NANCY and JOE

Stop smiling about NOTHING

and 

Stop looking down and taking notes; hire some intern / clerk!

Hurry up, please, it's time

Indeed.

Actually

Mr. VP Biden looks like he is 60+, lives on the EC and got up to have pancakes with Dirty Force.

And Nancy

… is not there at all!

Joe Biden

He is Twittering!

You know it's __ when

Get fat today, lustful piggies!

Way too many of you out there would just love it if I were to lose all sense of propriety, pretend I were 15 years younger and post a photo appropriate to this day that comes before the "remember-man-that-ye-are-dust-and-to-dust-ye-shall-return" day …

C'est la vie!

There was nothing

I woke myself up at 4 by being nervous about something that doesn't even have nervous-inducements attached.

So now I'm tired.

I had to be someplace by 8:30 a.m., and when one is out of practice with getting up and finished before the technical first coffee break of the regular working world, apparently it's enough … especially when one (who is this one?) is also out of practice with being nervous about things to the extent that sleep is truncated.

Coffee now, post-8:30 a.m. event … on to next mandatory task-set. As usual, not sure where to begin. Structure is lacking. Laziness is akin to dizziness but really is more related to inertia.

And caffeine doesn't really do anything.

More!

I'm tired.

My blog has been reduced to a status-report dumping-ground. Let's protest that one has-a-life and isn't just a pile of liquid non-ambitions:

I'm in the middle of three books (two non-fiction), a freelance project about such fun as the holiday of the moment and such dull as Civil War leaders (though, hey, it's my favorite era, isn't it?) and the usual stuff that is hard to define because nothing has been usual for months.

I mentioned that structure was lacking.

Need to build fences for my thoughts and corral things along with timers and whips if necessary.

Not sure if the rustlers are out of the area yet, though.

Perfectly aware

I'm using a knife and nothing with the skill as demonstrated by either samurai nor Chef Pepin on public television and so I pay attention as best I can, but, as for the same reason I can not swim for more than a minute at a time nor dance properly (extreme distraction into the fake-now / inability to concentrate — add in why I can't drive a manual car, even though I understand it perfectly and have driven them before … for short periods) and I end up with, amid ginger root from China, blood on my left index finger.

All the awareness in the world will not counteract the fact Mexican cliantro passed though my hands.

Peanut butter and spinach for all!

Posts pending

Holy now

I just have to say, "really, the job market is tight?"

Oh, but I like to laugh. I hate everything, as you know, but this is still funny.

Long live people who don't know how to use tools.

(like Photoshop).

Photoshop Disasters, we love you.

Own the tailor's face and hands

Who's faking what,
That is the question.

Electronic providence

I read about how our current Internet, created for information exchange and not to carry the entire of world commerce and something-something (you read), is about to implode with insecurity and how Stanford folks are on the case to create some other kind, more secure, the kind, of course, that renders anonymity less easy, making current Internet the sleazy step-grandcousin.

The only way I know that a lady I went to school with (lady being a term I employ from my younger status of when we met, when she and I were 14/15 to 17/18) is home from the hospital today after having her entire reproductive system removed after cancer was found in the ovary tumor where things began / were first detected and will be undergoing chemotherapy, the same as another dear friend's father, 64, I believe, is doing for a pancreatic et. al. cancer this year, too, is because of Facebook. Cancer is 2009's small confluence in my conscience.

But Facebook's powers are unprecedented. There have been phone trees and pony rides with lanterns and shouting, but I don't know anything like being able to see updates from someone's friend about health and situation and how we can be actually supportive, with physical things like food and time and mail and love, has come by lately.

Tax Credits

I will complain:

payroll tax reductions, income tax credits, energy-saving tax credits, credits for buying a car or deducting more than the usual homebuying interest for first-timers … all these things presume you have a job, a job that pays enough that you actually owe federal income tax after the standard deduction — and that you are buying things.

My brother is looking to become a first-time homebuyer this year, I think, so there's one benefit. Of course, those of us who took the plunge in 2007, during prime "let's make a housing crisis" time, are out of luck for that $8,000 credit.

My dad will get $250 extra Social Security, which will go very far against his thousands of credit card debt.

I might qualify for the now-bigger Pell grant for college … chickens at this point.

And that $13 extra per week in my "paycheck" will be so useful. $400. New contacts by December?

I want to deduct my car's sales tax from 2008 anyway … No one is going to be buying cars in 2009 except people like my mom, whose car was totaled by a great driver in a semi.

PS, there are some people out there whose main goal in life is to make sure everyone knows how brilliant they are and whose chief method of proof is comparison to the rest of us who are utterly stupid. moreover, this type excels in feeling misunderstood and needs constant slavish "you are so right" reinforcement, despite having established a hostile and abusive atmosphere. is that called self-righteousness? whatever; i'm going to pollyanna it up on candy day and call it good.

(anything multiplied by zero is zero)

Paralyzed by a particular kind of purposelessness, possessor of nine new books of or by E.W., an unaffordable foray of an average of $17.11 (includes shipping and taxes) per educational tome in lieu of a thousand-dollar semester, 10 times more unaffordable, is picturing another path that does not pander exclusively to inertia but honors gravity, friction, and all the other forces democratically.

Rock dove shovel

Getting that feeling

NYC 1905-2005

The rich still wear feathers and fur, even just to pop into the Met for a bit of shopping.

Mansards atop and rusticated foundations below … sigh.

When I look around

I think this, this is good enough

And I try to laugh

At whatever life brings;

Because when I look down

I just miss all the good stuff

And when I look up

I just trip over things.

—ani difranco

Getting ready

Back to Basics

If you happen to be here:

Don't look in the woods.

You may become disgusted with humanity.

All over again.

This property belongs to either the railroad, the children's hospital, the city parks department or other entity.  The east side is a typical dump site, with trashbags, a discarded carpet, wooden palette, litter, old homeless camping junk … the west side is someone's idea of an exploded picnic, 10,000 lunches of plastic wear, bottles, styrofoam, a kid's tricycle, nursery trees that died in their root-bags, etc.  The dinner-wear seems to have arrived all at once …  This mess extends along the railroad bluff under Gillham along 22nd Street west to McGee.

Sooooo

This guy can swim really fast … and someone took a photo that they claim shows him (A), and that shows "him" with a pipe in his mouth that allegedly (photos are not scratch-n-sniff, you know) contains pot, which he allegedly (C) inhaled. It was in November; no drug test is going to find that now (he shaves all his hair, you know!), unless he's smoking all the time.

If he's guilty of anything, it's of unmitigated honesty (for admitting it). And the people who shared it and especially who took the photo are lame.  I side with the honest guy as having better principles.  Bad judgement, sure. 

It's not like he was shot accidentally in the head while posing with a gun … a 17-year-old KCMO boy died January 29 while sitting in a car in his driveway with a friend, who is (still) 16; they had gotten high and gone out to the car to listen to music.

They had the 17-year-old's mom's 9 mm and were using it as a cell-phone photo-prop, which they didn't think to unload or engage the safety on … earlier in January, another 16-year-old around here got drunk with friends and was shot and killed while he and friends were posing for cell-phone-photos outside their house, proving stupidity knows no intoxication prejudice.

Fu Fu

The Japanese are good with puns. Today, 2-2 (our Groundhog Day), can be written as the characters for "married couples," so today is something like happy married couples day. The Japanese celebrate our Valentine's Day, too, mostly (I make this up) because it's a holiday that lends itself to cutie stationery and lots of chocolate.

Today, however, I am going to talk about salt, or dietary/elemental sodium, which, on food information labels, is indistinguishable from NaCl. Na or NaCl — it probably doesn't matter, because the people writing up the FDA-mandated labels all have different ideas about rounding and percentages and totals, but I find it interesting that the "less healthy" foods seem to allow you more. I'm not surprised, are you?

Hence, a serving of:

Sea Salt (1.5 grams / half-teaspoon) has
590 mg of sodium, or
25% of "daily value" for those eating 2,000 calories in 24 hours

[total sodium math=2360 mg]

Whole Wheat Bread ("with honey," and high fructose corn syrup, the latter further down the list than it usually figures on store-loaves — this is the 45-calories-per-slice kind and the closest thing you can get to sugar-free bread without making it yourself)
210 mg
9%

[total sodium math=2333 mg]

Ovaltine
140 mg
6%

[total sodium math=2333 mg]

"Hint of Salt" Wheat Thins (these used to be labeled as "low sodium" crackers, but I guess Nabisco tested that name again for no reason and changed it — or the FDA changed their rules, which would explain the math that follows)
65 mg
3%

[total sodium math=2166 mg]

"Hint of Salt" Triscuits (the "low sodium" version of which has not been available around here since October)
50 mg
2%

[total sodium math=2500 mg]

Peanut butter
55 mg
2%

[total sodium math=2750 mg]

Diet Pepsi
35 mg ("or less")
1%

[total sodium math=3500 mg]

Regular Coca-Cola
35 mg
1%

[total sodium math=3500 mg]

Black beans
20 mg
1%

[total sodium math=2000 mg]

So, beans say you should only have 2000 mg of sodium per day, and pop-makers say you can go up to 3500 mg. Bread and Ovaltine people agree on 2333 mg, but peanut butter pushers give you 2750 mg, and the same darn cracker company provides a range of 2166 to 2500 mg.

Math people, tell me what I'm missing.

High blood pressure people, tell me you know what you're really supposed to be eating and share how in the world you know what you actually do eat.

Other dieters, feel free to play this game with fat content and calories using items found in your own cabinet.

And on that note, I call for a mandatory across-the-board IRS-audit of all U.S. elected officials. Everyone else, we should be safe this year — there are a lot of politicians. Congress (and Congressional pensioners) should be audited every year as part of the gig.