Cake Eater Chronicles

The Only Way to Win the Game is Not to Play

The Fug Girls, who have a pretty suh-weet gig commenting on all things fashion related for New York Magazine have some valid things to say about Vogue's "Shape" Issue. If you're unfamiliar with the "Shape" issue, this is when "my hair is bigger than my body" editor Anna Wintour decides that it's time to put out an issue to appease The Big Girls, and by "big" I mean the girls who wear a size six, not a fourteen.

Cut to the Fug Girls:

Every year, as a nod to the abnormality of its bony universe, Vogue publishes a shape issue purporting to spotlight non-model bodies for a change. It often feels as perfunctory as it sounds — like alpha-twigs know anything about cellulite? — but this year we dove in with extra curiosity thanks to Anna Wintour’s recent criticism of runway models’ diminishing frames. Would that sentiment bloom into an issue that actually honored real clothing sizes and three-dimensional shapes?

Not so much, apparently.

{...}Yet, short of featuring a bacon-cheeseburger on the cover, this is sadly probably the best we can expect from Vogue. It just isn’t in the habit of realism. Because it peddles fashion and fantasy better than anyone, these clumsy attempts to soften up just feel as patronizing and ham-handed as a Very Special Episode of Blossom, but without the hats. So while we’d love to see women of various sizes in the magazine — wearing bizarre $20,000 goat coats like any other model — if it keeps feeling like an act of bored, forced obligation, we’d rather Vogue climbed back on its pedestal and left us to get our feel-good fix from Glamour. And a pizza.

The Girls have a point. Vogue is, well, Vogue. It's meant to be the fashion bible, and, yes, while it's frustrating to look at the photo spreads in that magazine and be disheartened that a. the models keep getting younger and younger (and, no, I don't mean that in the context of my getting older; they're honestly no more than fourteen or fifteen years old at most, and hence have the body types associated with that age (no hips, no boobs, they've lost their baby fat, but haven't gained any Reese's peanut butter cup-associated fat, either.)) and, b. that the clothes are extremely impractical and just are not meant for anyone. At some point you just have to realize that they're peddling this magazine not to budding fashionistas, and people who love clothes, but to photographers, and the art world. The clothes are the art, and as such, you want the art to look good, so you hang it on a nice wall, aka a size zero model.

I know I'm rare in that I've actually modeled a bit---and when I mean "a bit", I mean I had a total of three jobs when I was in high school, and I did it a. as a favor to a lady I knew who worked in the advertising world, who needed models who weren't from the local Barbizon school and b. for the cash, because I got paid $50 a pop. While it was actually the most boring job I've ever held down (and that's saying a bit), tottering around in high heels on a four-foot platform the size of a child's shoebox, it was, nonetheless, educational. If I had to go on tee vee, even now, almost twenty years later, I could do my own makeup. I know what clothes are most flattering and work with the limitations of the cameras (no red, no checks, or optical illusion-type patterns). But mostly what I learned is that, if you're smart, you realize that they don't really want you because you have a charming personality, charisma, or a vivacious smile, although that's part of what you bring to the table, it's that whatever they're peddling will look good on your body. You are just a hanger for their clothes. That's it. Therefore to sit there, and flip through Vogue, and base your entire self-image on what the hangers look like is a bit ridiculous. If you're looking through Vogue to find women who "look like you" and you aren't an androgynous, prepubescent, bony young girl, you're going to be a bit disappointed, aren't you?

I'm just tired of playing this game. The fashion magazines are in existence to sell clothes. They make a lot of money on this, hence, they know how to do it, which means they're going to use skinny, young models, with dewy skin and the bodies of a twelve-year-old boy to sell the wares. Women read fashion magazines to keep up with the latest trends, to see who's doing what in fashion, to see what they want to buy. But there is a disconnect---the clothes that are advertised, generally speaking, aren't made for the women who buy the magazines. This is just what the deal is. I'm weary of reading article after article about how the average American woman is a size fourteen and how disheartened they feel after watching tee vee or reading a fashion magazine, how angry they are that none of this is meant for them; how these magazines and designers are holding them up to a standard they'll never meet. I'm tired of the argument of how the fashion magazines, the entertainment industry, et. al, are encouraging eating disorders in young girls because of the images they put out. I'm sick of Kate Winslet and other actresses holding themselves up for the admiration of all because they claim they choose not to starve themselves, when it's patently obvious that they're nowhere near "average size" and that they simply cannot be because of the demands of their jobs, in front of cameras, which really do add ten pounds. I'm sick to death of all of it, even though, from time to time, I'm just as guilty of perpetrating these issues on this here blog as anyone else who's bitched about size-two models. I've had a change of heart, however. As Joshua once said in War Games, the only way to win the game is not to play. While I will grant you, he was a computer and was chatting about Global Thermonuclear War, the machine's got a point.

It's time for an attitude shift.

If women are really sick of what Vogue and all the other magazines are peddling, STOP BUYING THEM. Stop buying the products they advertise. That will send them a message as clear as anything else. If, however, you want to buy the magazines and wear the clothes advertise, start working out so you can fit into them. It's your choice. You won't be happy, probably, because no one wants to be hungry all the time, but if that's what you really want, go for it. You have my blessing, because at least you'll be doing something about it, instead of wishing for the impossible to happen. If young girls are starving themselves to fit some preconceived notion of what beauty is, my question usually is, where are the damn parents? How can they not see that their daughter is excusing herself to go and throw-up after every meal? I once read a story somewhere about a girl who had hundreds of empty paint cans shoved under her oversized princess bed, and instead of being full of paint, they were full of vomit. This was how she chose to hide her problem. She knew that the toilet in her bathroom would eventually plug up, so, living in a new development, where there were plenty of empty paint cans available in dumpsters nearby, she started appropriating them and used them as her own personal vomitorium. How did her parents not realize this? This whole thing is a sick, co-dependent cycle. There is choice involved. Women choose to participate in this game and on either side of it, each needs the other's dysfunction to keep going, otherwise they themselves will disappear.

Is this a reality-based solution? Probably not. But, I have a bit of a different perspective on all of this since I went through chemo. I hit absolute rock bottom in terms of vanity toward the end of my treatments. There's no getting around it:I looked like a spud. A bald spud whose face had been rounded off with steroids. In fact, you could pick out all of Dr. Academic's patients in the waiting room because we all looked alike. I had no eyebrows or eyelashes, which you need for facial definition. I had no hair, through which to express my personality or my sense of style, despite what I was wearing. Because my skin was gray, with nary a shade of pink to be found in my cheeks when I went severely anemic, and the deep, dark circles of exhaustion under my eyes that never went away no matter how much sleep I got, I looked ill. There was absolutely nothing I could do in terms of clothing or makeup that would make me look like anybody other than what I was at that point: a sick person. While I wasn't happy about it, there wasn't much I could do about it, either, and that, in itself, was, surprisingly, liberating. I could go out of the house and know that this was as good as it got, and while it wasn't very good, at least I wasn't "looking good and feeling better" in a room on the oncology floor of the hospital. I could leave my house, do what I could manage to do, and while I didn't look great, and, most of the time didn't feel great, this was, in and of itself, a big deal. I was alive and moving, and that wasn't too shabby. I knew that, someday soon, the rest would come back once the treatments were done. And it did come back, even if I was impatient for it to do so. When my eyelashes, eyebrows and---Mother of God!---hair came back, it was cause for much rejoicing. The first time I could put on mascara in a few months, I was happy as a clam, and I'm still get a small, cheap thrill every time I put the stuff on. I'm sure I'll get back to bitching about the crap soon enough, but all of this provides an important lesson, to be sure: none of this stuff is necessary. Sure, putting on make-up and dressing in stylish clothes can make you feel nice and normal, but, on the whole, this is stuff you can live without. You can live without reading Vogue as well, or buying new clothes, or trying to live up to someone else's standards about your appearance. You don't have to play the game. In fact, the only way to win the game is not to play.

Perhaps this is all overly optimistic of me, because I'm obviously not coming from a place where too many people have been, but that's just the way I see it. You have a choice: you can either buy into this scenario, choosing one side or the other, or you can choose not to. It's up to you.

"Eliot Quit Before They Peached Him"

It may be really wrong of me to say so, what with the exploitation of a three year old to describe the downfall of Eliot Spitzer and all, but, screw it, it's still funny.

Opportunity for Decent Customer Service Shot To Hell

I'm a little late on this one, but as I get the opportunity to bitch about Northworst Airlines, it's not like I'm going to pass this one up. The proposed merger between Northworst and Delta has been put on the back burner.

A new era of belt-tightening is beginning for Northwest Airlines, as its executives respond to abnormally high fuel costs and craft a future that in the short run isn't predicated on a merger.

The company's planned combination with Delta Air Lines was envisioned as a way to create a global airline that would be a long-term survivor in an intensely competitive industry. Their networks are compatible, with Northwest dominant in Asia and Delta strong in Europe.

But now that merger looks to be on indefinite hold, and with it the vision of building a larger company that could grow its way to greater profits while also being better insulated against cyclical downturns.

Now some analysts are forecasting that most major U.S. airlines will lose money this year, and additional cost savings are tougher to find because a number of carriers -- including Northwest and Delta -- already have restructured themselves in bankruptcy.

{...}An evolving part of that strategy is how to deal with much higher fuel prices than management anticipated.

Northwest revealed last week that its fuel bill could reach $5.2 billion this year if oil averages $104 a barrel. That's $800 million more than the carrier projected for 2008, or more than half of the $1.4 billion in annual labor savings that Northwest achieved from its workers during bankruptcy.{...}

Riddle me this, Joker: one of the reasons NWA went into bankruptcy a few years back (besides the fact that the fat cats at the top would get paid more if they reorganized under Chapter 11 before new bankruptcy laws were enacted) was because of "astronomical fuel prices" that they hadn't anticipated. Now, a few years later, they're still whining about how quickly fuel prices have gone up and how they haven't worked this into their business plan? How the eff is that possible, when anyone who fills up their car on a regular basis knew that the price of oil wasn't likely to go down anytime soon? Eh? How is it possible that the MBAs at Northworst thought that prices would go down and calculated their projections accordingly?

I've gone on at length in the past about how shitty it is to be stuck in a Northworst dominated hub. Everyone I know who lives elsewhere refuses to believe that the situation could be as crappy as it is. They have received good deals and good service from Northworst. I regularly get emails from my brother in Austin, who would really like me to visit, claiming that it's only a hundred and some dollars to fly from Austin to MSP, so why don't I buy the freakin' ticket already? Of course, I have to regularly disabuse him, because NWA wants twice as much from me to fly from MSP to Austin.

Northworst has a lock on MSP International Airport. They control over seventy-five percent of the gates. The population of the Twin Cities is close to three million people and we don't have a low cost airline available to us. Neither Southwest nor Jet Blue operate here. Why? Because Northworst won't let them in. They threaten and cajole the Metropolitan Airport Commission with the loss of their business, and because they've set themselves up in the dominant position, and MAC is worried that they could find themselves with a huge but empty airport, they cave every time. Never mind the fact that, in the early nineties, Northworst borrowed somewhere around $125 million from the state to stay out of bankruptcy, never paid the money back, let alone the interest on the loan, and then had the debt forgiven when they did declare bankruptcy. Never mind the fact that Northworst, an airline that didn't have one of its flights forcibly hijacked and crashed on 9/11, had its lobbyists up on Capitol Hill on 9/12, begging for federal assistance to keep running before the fires at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center had stopped burning.

Then there's the fact that they treat their customers like shit. They just don't give a rat's ass about the people who actually fund their billion dollar largesse. You pay through the nose for a ticket because you don't have any other option, (for instance, we have a family reunion coming up in August, and I checked the prices the other day, just to see where they're at. Currently, they want $506 per person to fly from MSP to Austin in early August. You're generally supposed to get some discount for purchasing early, but not now. They're going to get you coming and going. Get bent.) You show up at the airport to check-in for your flight, and, if you got stuck in traffic and are running late, be prepared to be yelled at about your tardiness by the ticket agent, with dire threats of your bag not making onto the plane hurled at you for good measure. If you're lucky, you walk away from the counter without paying anything extra. But, if you haven't packed carefully enough, or tried to fit all of the belongings of many people into one bag, you're screwed. They weigh every piece of checked luggage to make certain it doesn't weigh over fifty pounds and if it does, in the name of funding their worker's compensation plan (or so they say), they charge you $25 on the spot. You get through the hassle that is security, then you go and get a bottle of water for your flight, so you don't get dehydrated. Because the airport is paying off a load of debt Northworst forced them to take on to upgrade the airport (otherwise, of course, they would have taken their business elsewhere), you wind up paying $3 for the bottle of water, the costs of debt servicing having been passed on to the retailers through astronomical rents, who, ultimately, pass them onto you, the paying customer. Then, after you're treated to the hassle of getting to your gate, and after you've been treated indifferently by the rude gate agents, who always have something better to do than the job they're paid for, you get on your plane, where you're crammed into a seat that would only fit a toddler comfortably. If you want to sit in the bulkhead, or the emergency exit rows, you have to pay extra for the privilege of opening the emergency exit doors in exchange for a little more legroom. Once you're settled in your extra small seat, and are crammed in like sardines in a tin can, you are, predictably, told by the pilot, that you're going to be late taking off. To make up for the late take-off, the pilots jam up into the stratosphere as fast as they can, causing your ears to pop, for babies to wail, and for allergy and cold sufferers to moan in pain. The speedy rise in altitude is, of course, accompanied by a rapid descent, which causes even more pain and wailing. When you actually land, you have to suffer through an interminable taxi to the gate, the indignities of unloading, only to have to wait a half hour or longer to get your luggage, which, undoubtedly, will have been shaken and jostled by baggage agents who could not care less if you actually like your possessions and would prefer for them to remain in one piece. Never mind that your bottle of shampoo has exploded in mid-flight because of the massive shifts in altitude and all of your belongings are now covered in soapy goo.

But I've neglected to mention the wonderful customer service that the flight attendants offer. They no longer help people stow their carry-ons, but rather bitch and moan when there isn't enough room for all of them, and then get on the loudspeaker to berate people, and inform them that the plane isn't taking off until they, the passengers, get things sorted out amongst themselves and someone checks their bag. When they come around with the beverage cart, they sniff if someone requests something that would require them to do some work, like mixing a Virgin Mary. Then, if you're the husband, and are sitting on the aisle, prepare to have a flight attendant dump milk down your $800 black cashmere sport coat. They do, somehow, manage to apologize in this circumstance, but only because it's going to come back and bite them on the ass if they don't. They'll offer up some club soda and where to send the drycleaning bill, but if the jacket comes back from the cleaners with the milk stain intact, don't bother trying to get compensated for the loss of the jacket, because not only will they want a copy of the original receipt, which was lost to the sands of time, they want to know how much the jacket is worth now, forcing you to sort out the depreciation on a cashmere sport coat that's going to cost just as much to replace as when you originally purchased it. Because that's all they're going to pay for if you manage to get them everything they want in the first place, which happens to be an inordinately large amount of paper. They actively look for ways to get out of their obligations. But I digress. Then, after you manage to get your one obligatory beverage out of these people, if you want something to eat, because, perhaps, if you're me, you have to take medication that requires it to be taken with food, you'll have to pay extra for a teeny can of Pringles. Then, when they're done with serving, the flight attendants roam the cabin, collecting trash as quickly as they can so they can get back to their jump seats, where they'll bitch, loudly, about how onerous their jobs are, and how people can be such a pain in the ass, within earshot of said people.

And all this is if your flight goes off as planned. God help you if there are weather or mechanical related delays.

This is what passes for customer service on Northworst. I'm not alone in this opinion, either. While I'm sure there are nice people that work very hard for this airline to make their customers happy, and they will howl with outrage at this rejoinder, all I can say to them is that your compadres are ruining it for you. Again, I'm not alone in my complaints. Everyone I know here in the Cities has at least one Northworst horror story in their repertoire, and everyone they know has a similar tale of woe. We talk about it at dinner parties: it's a favored topic of conversation. When that many people have had a poor experience with a company, something's wrong. Unfortunately, Northworst does nothing to fix these problems. They file for bankruptcy, in part, to pay their employees less, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to realize that the customers are going to suffer as a result. Furthermore, Twin Cities residents are supposed to consider ourselves privileged that Northworst has headquartered itself here, and that MSP International Airport is a hub. We're supposed to consider ourselves lucky that we have an international airline at our disposal. Well, pardon the language, but fuck that. We're expected to take it from all angles: as taxpayers we have to bail this stupid company out, and fund their largesse through tax breaks and airport expansions they declare they need to stay competitive, and then we're stuck using them because they have a lock on the market. We're held hostage by this freakin' company. I, for one, would have been extremely happy if they'd merged with Delta, because perhaps we would have started to receive some decent customer service. Perhaps they could have found some cost savings and stopped nickel and diming us at every turn. Perhaps we would have received some decent, fair pricing. But that's not going to happen.

I don't think I'm alone in saying that I hope Northworst does go out of business. It would be better for the people who are forced to fly this garbage airline because we have very few other alternatives, but it would be better for the Twin Cities economy as a whole, because, perhaps, the freebies we hand out to Northworst on a regular basis would finally come to an end. The free market would find a solution to the problem of all those empty gates at MSP, and we would finally get some competition in this market.

UPDATE: Oooh, how convenient! Proof of more nickel and diming to make my point!

If you want to check a second bag on your next trip on Northwest Airlines, you'll be paying an extra $25 starting May 5.

The fee applies each way on flights for passengers in coach class.

The move, announced this afternoon, follows an industry-wide trend started by United Airlines in early February.

If you travel extra heavy, you'll have heavier costs. The Northwest changes also include an increase from $80 to $100 for three or more checked bags, and an increase from $25 to $50 if a bag weighs more than 50 pounds.{...}

I can't check two suitcases without paying extra? Bite me. The sooner this airline dies a horrendous and painful death, the better.

If You're Going To Do it, Do It Right

Good grief, but does that stupid gray pillbox hat bother me. Taaaaaaa-cky. The whole outfit is hideous!

If one is unaccustomed to the duties and responsibilities attached to first lady-ship, like Carla Bruni-Sarkozy obviously is, it seems reasonable that one would look to see how others had done it, for inspiration. The only problem with looking to Jackie O for fashion inspiration is that, ahem, she was first lady almost fifty years ago. Anything you come up with that Jackie would have worn, way back in the day, is bound to be a bit dated, n'est ce pas? You live in Paris, with some of the world's best designers in your mobile phone, and this is what you come up with for your first state visit?

That the hat is, apparently, shrouded in the wool from a WWII era blanket, is beyond the pale. I wonder if it reeks of mothballs, because it looks like it should. Don't even get me started on the shoes.

It's not every day when you can say Queen Elizabeth II is more fashion forward than an ex-model.

Ahnold, Apparently, Felt Lucky

The Terminator shitcanned Dirty Harry.

...and lived to tell the tale.

Must have something to do with the fact he's actually a robot and those .357 .44mag* bullets just pinged right off.

Don't know what I was thinking. My apologies. Thanks to Bike Bubba for the correction

Meet the New Boss, Same As the Old Boss

Yesterday, the FT published a rather lengthy interview/analysis piece focused on the new President-Elect of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev. The man whom nobody (you know, other than Vlad the Impaler) knows had some rather choice things to say. It's a long piece, but it's good.

A few highlights of the article:

{...}Mr Medvedev’s inauguration on May 7 will mark a unique moment in Russian history. For the first time a Russian leader – whether tsar, Communist general secretary or post-communist president – will voluntarily leave office on time and at the height of his popularity. Yet it also heralds the start of a risky experiment. Mr Putin will leave the presidency but stay on as prime minister, in what some see as merely a ruse to remain in power. Others warn it could create a dual-headed power structure, which has spelt instability in Russia’s troubled past.

The president-elect insists the arrangement can work. He describes it as a “tandem”, in which both men understand the division of labour spelt out in the constitution. Mr Medvedev, as president, will set the priorities in domestic and foreign policy. He is commander-in-chief, makes the key decisions on forming the executive, and is guarantor of Russians’ rights and freedoms. The government, headed by Mr Putin, implements policy, especially in the economic arena.

He has much to prove, therefore, not just to the former military and security men nicknamed the siloviki or “men of power”, but to the outside world, where he remains an unknown quantity. Until two years ago, Mr Medvedev was largely a backroom operator, as Kremlin chief of staff. Two stints as chairman of Gazprom, the state-owned energy giant – a position he still holds – will have provided only a hint of the pressures he faces running a country where the political environment is as unforgiving as a Siberian winter.

So how does Mr Medvedev intend to assert his authority? In his first interview since the March 2 election, Russia’s next president outlined his priorities and offered an insight into his political philosophy. Speaking through an interpreter whose English he frequently corrected, he spelt out how he planned to continue Mr Putin’s course while putting his own stamp on how the country is governed. He was clinical and dispassionate in his answers, without the folksy wit or earthy language of his mentor, scribbling occasional words and doodles on a Kremlin notepad.

His starting point is his legal background – he is, he says, “perhaps too much of a lawyer”. Meticulous and precise, he sees almost every issue through the prism of legal thinking. But behind the occasionally laboured language lies a deeper goal. Mr Medvedev says he wants to do what no Russian leader has done before: embed the rule of law in Russian society. “It is a monumental task,” he agrees, switching momentarily to English. “Russia is a country where people don’t like to observe the law. It is, as they say, a country of legal nihilism.”

{...}Mr Medvedev insists Russia can build the rule of law, outlining a three-point plan. The first step is to assert the law’s supremacy over executive power and individual actions. The second is to “create a new attitude to the law”.

“We need to make sure that every citizen understands not only the necessity and desirability of observing the law, but also understands that without [this] there cannot be normal development of our state or society,” he says.

Third is to create an effective courts system, above all by assuring independence of the judiciary. Judges must be paid more and their prestige enhanced so Russian law graduates, as elsewhere, see becoming a judge as the “summit of a legal career”.

Proper law enforcement is also fundamental to tackling another age-old problem that Mr Medvedev has made a priority – bribery. The president-elect is equally severe on the motorist paying off a policeman to avoid speeding fines as on the bureaucrat taking a cut on a business deal.

“When a citizen gives a bribe to the traffic police, it probably does not enter his head that he is committing a crime ... People should think about this,” he says. He also pays lip-service at least to the idea that those at the top of the “vertical of power” Mr Putin has created must set an example themselves. “The only way that Russia can count on having the supremacy of the law is in a situation where the powers-that-be respect the independence of courts and judges,” says Mr Medvedev.

When pressed, moreover, the president-elect signals a break with recent years by saying he will rein in any security and law enforcement services found to be engaged in illegal business. It seems a hint that he may be prepared to confront the siloviki clan – those most unhappy with his elevation to president. Viktor Cherkesov, head of Russia’s anti-narcotics service and a former KGB general, complained late last year that rival security services were fighting between themselves for wealth and influence.

{...}“I am a supporter of the values of democracy in the form that humanity has developed them over the last few centuries,” he says instead. “My definition of democracy as the power of the people is in no way different from classical definitions that exist in all countries.”

In what appears a veiled sideswipe at the US “freedom agenda”, he calls it a “dangerous extreme” to attempt to develop democracy in a country “outside its historic or territorial context”.

“Our democracy is very young,” he says. “It’s less than two decades old. Before this, there was no democracy, not in Tsarist times and not in Soviet times.”

But in words that may be welcomed in western capitals, Mr Medvedev makes clear he gives short shrift to those who say Russia is barren ground for democracy. “Russia is a European country and Russia is absolutely capable of developing together with other states that have chosen this democratic path of development," he says.{...}

Ok, enough with the theory, let's get down to business. Russian business, that is.

Mr Medvedev’s overall thrust is that if Russia’s economy continues to expand, and it can build the rule of law so corruption can be overcome, its democracy will mature into something more closely resembling international models. His biggest priority, he says, is to translate Russia’s oil-fuelled economic recovery into social programmes that transform the lives of citizens.

{...}Mr Medvedev concedes the need for careful marshalling of the economy, but trumpets its strength. Russia’s financial and stock markets, he contends, are “islands of stability in the ocean of financial turmoil”.

“What makes us confident is that over the last eight years we have managed to create a stable macroeconomic system,” he says. “Our financial reserves ... are higher than ever before, reflecting the overall state [of] the Russian economy.”

The president-elect does not say specifically he will reduce the state companies that have proliferated under Mr Putin, which rivals and many economists charge with inefficiency and stifling competition. But he does say they should operate only in certain, limited sectors, for example where essential to the state’s economic security.

“The number of state companies ... should be exactly the number required to ensure the interests of all the country, but no more,” he says. Mr Medvedev also repeats campaign pledges to reduce the number of state representatives – often ministers or senior Kremlin officials – on state company boards and bring in more independent directors.{...}

So, basically, Gazprom and Rosneft will continue to operate as arms of Russian foreign policy, but they're not going to go into trade as haberdashers any time in the near future. Status quo, in other words.

As far as that foreign policy is concerned, well, let the man speak for himself:

“Any effective leader ... has to take care of defending the interests of his country. In foreign relations, you can’t be a liberal, a conservative or a democrat.”

On Russia’s most strained foreign relationship – with the UK – he says it is in Russia’s interests to see an improvement. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, was one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate him on his election victory, he adds. Economic relations remain “magnificent”, with British investment in Russia totalling $26bn. Bilateral relations, such as co-operation between intelligence services, have been largely “rolled up”, though this is “not a tragedy”. But Mr Medvedev does not shrink from repeating recent accusations that the British Council, the UK cultural body whose offices outside Moscow were forced to close, has been involved in spying.

“The reports I get as one of the leaders of the country show that there is a problem with this,” he says. He deflects suggestions that last week’s detention of an employee of TNK-BP, the Anglo-Russian oil joint venture, might be a bid by security services to sabotage any improvement in UK-Russian relations. In this case, too, he says, his information suggests there is a case of industrial espionage to investigate.

Russia’s next president gives little sign he will adopt a more conciliatory approach to the US, with whom relations have deteriorated sharply. But he says he told George W. Bush, during a call to congratulate Mr Medvedev on his election, that relations might have been even worse were it not for the personal chemistry between the US president and Mr Putin. He holds out some hope of a “legacy” deal with the US before Mr Putin steps down to resolve disputes over US plans to site elements of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe, and over how to replace the Start treaty limiting strategic nuclear missiles, which expires next year. But Mr Medvedev warns that offering Ukraine and Georgia the prospect of Nato membership at a summit next week could undermine attempts to mend transatlantic ties.

“We are not happy about the situation around Georgia and Ukraine,” he says. “We consider it extremely troublesome for the existing structure of European security. No state can be pleased about having representatives of a military bloc to which it does not belong coming close to its ­borders.”{...}

In other words, don't even think about offering Georgia and Ukraine Nato membership, otherwise we'll feel threatened, and you wouldn't like it when we feel threatened. BIG OIL AND GAS RICH HULK SCARED! HULK TURN OFF HEAT IN MIDDLE OF WINTER TO TEACH YOU A LESSON!

So, I suppose the question would be, do we know anything new about Mr. Medvedev? Perhaps. Although, I don't think so. My impression is that he simply told everyone what they wanted to hear. What do western leaders want to hear? That he's all about the rule of law and democracy. Did they get what they wanted? Yes. What does foreign business want to hear? That he'll put and end to corruption, and that the nationalization of industry would, in essence, be stopped in its tracks. (I'm sure Royal Dutch Shell, Mitsui and Mitsubishi feel comforted.) Did they get what they wanted? Yes. What does the nationalist base who elected him want to hear? That he'll stick up for Russia against "western aggression." Did they get what they wanted? Yes.

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

I suspect we'll see what Mr. Medvedev is made of when the cost of a barrel of oil plunges. It will only be then, when he'll be able to cut the puppetmaster's strings, that he'll dare to dance to his own tune. Until that point in time, watch what dear old Vlad is up to, and not Mr Medvedev: it will be a waste of your time to do otherwise.

Digitized

Courtesy of TechCrunch, we have for you this morning, the digitized version of the Vietnam War Memorial.

Here's the story:

Footnote has taken the initiative to digitize all 58,000 names inscribed into the Vietnam War Memorial. It has also correlated them with military personnel records from the National Archives and made this information searchable from within an interactive Flash application.

The project started by hiring a National Geographic photographer to take over 2,000 high quality photos of the wall. The company then stitched them together, indexed the names, and pulled out information about each person from two major national databases: one for casualties and one for personnel. The whole process took about four months to complete and the end result is being provided for free.

If you want to find a particular name, you can run a simple keyword search. You’ll be shown key facts such as the person’s rank, grade, specialty, and casualty date. You can also search for names that conform to certain criteria such as enlistment type, race, hometown, casualty date, squadron, and much more.{...}

And it works well. For instance, meet the man for whom the husband is a namesake.

Pfc. Michael Laverne Pheiffer is the husband's first cousin, and, unfortunately, he was killed of "multiple fragmentation wounds" in Binh Duong province a little over a month after his first tour of duty started. This is information the husband never had. If his family knew this information at all once upon a time, it's information that was lost over the years. All the husband knew was that he was named after his cousin who died in Vietnam; he didn't know any of the particulars. But now he does. The husband has always felt a little awkward about the fact that he knew relatively little about the relative he was named after. He once told me it felt a little disrepectful to carry this man's name, but to know so little about him. This will never tell him what sort of a person Michael Pheiffer was, or what he was like to know, but it does provide something that his family had never provided: bare facts about what he was doing there (he was drafted) and how successful he was in his mission (sadly, not very). From that you can deduce a few things, none of which make Michael Pfeiffer less of a person or a soldier, but, nonetheless, fill out the story a bit more.

There are an awful lot of people who can't make it to the Memorial in D.C., for one reason or another, but due to the wonders of the internet, they can at least take a peek at the names on the Wall, and find out some very valuable and relevant information that's not necessarily available to those who visit in the flesh.

Amazing

Last night, Mr. H. and I ventured down to the Minnesota Zoo's IMAX theater to take a peek at U23D.

Now, I'd never seen a movie filmed in the IMAX format before, let alone a 3D movie (yes, kids, somehow I missed Jaws 3D), so I wasn't really familiar with the format, let alone if a 3D experience was really, well, three dimensional. I figured, if nothing else, it would be an opportunity to see the Vertigo tour show, because Mr. H. and I had been cruelly shut out of ticket purchasing opportunities when they hit town two years ago. While I am a U2 fan, and have been listening to their music ever since I was fourteen (which is, precisely, the same time my well-documented crush on The Edge developed) my fandom is nowhere near the level Mr. H. has attained. He's a U2 fanatic. He has every album they've ever released, including the rare imports. He has books and DVDs. And, after one memorable front row experience on the Zoo TV tour, he has, in a Ziploc baggie, carefully preserved a tee shirt he was wearing that Bono's sweat dripped on. So, as you might have gathered, after the cruel ticket mix-up, Mr. H. was really looking forward to seeing this film. I, too, was looking forward to it, because, honestly, it never sucks seeing U2 perform.

We were, however, not expecting what we got, which was, well, everything even the most lackadaisical U2 fan could have ever wanted, let alone someone as dedicated in their fandom to U2 as Mr. H. It went ABOVE AND BEYOND anything we could have expected. It was amazing.

Imagine, if you will, a sixty-five foot white wall, and steep, expansive, theater seating opposite it. We positioned ourselves in near to the middle of the seating, placed our overlarge 3D glasses on our heads and strapped in for the ride. The opening of the film, when they were rolling the credits, was, I believe a way to orient the viewers to the 3D experience. You followed a young woman, running, and it became obvious, only after a few moments that you were following the first person through the gates, and she was doing the mad rush authorities no longer allow you to do when you go to a concert---rush for the general attendance spots near the stage. The shot then went to a darkened arena, where the fans were anxiously awaiting the band's appearance on stage. Confetti was thrown, and it seemed you could reach out and touch it as it fell. The Argentine flag was being waved, and it felt as if you could have been whipped by it. People in the audience were positioned directly in front of you, and, again, it felt as if you could reach out and touch them.

Then the band came out.

They started off with Vertigo, and when they screamed, "HOLA!" and the South American crowd went wild, the illusion was complete: it was real, you could reach out and touch them if you wanted to. By the time they played my personal favorite song of all time, Where the Streets Have No Name, I actually had to remind myself that I was not at a U2 concert, and jumping up, dancing, singing along, and in general just going wild, would not be welcomed by my fellow movie viewers. It's hard to describe the experience. The people at the IMAX had put up, before the film started running, tidbits of several positive reviews of the film, and one of them said something to the effect of, "It's better than being front row at a U2 concert." And it was---but in a very specific way. If you've ever been to an event you've only previously watched on tee vee, and then gone to the same event as it was staged live, you know that cameras can provide something you, the average spectator in a huge arena, cannot view: your eyes simply aren't good enough, your brain cannot process all that several camera operators and a crew in a control room can. But you'll never, when watching a concert on film, have the experience of being jostled by the crowd as you gaze up to see your favorite band playing; you'll never feel the heat of all the people crowding you; or the absolute communal exhilaration when the band rocks the house down to its foundation. The twain, in other words, do not generally meet. Here, however, they do. You get the experience of seeing it all, being able to catch things only cameras can see, whilst simultaneously feeling as if you're there. It's amazing. I don't know how they did it, but the filmmakers managed to accomplish the rare feat of making a concert film that actually makes you feel like a participant, not just a spectator.

The sound was fantastic, but wasn't overpoweringly loud. The play list was exceptional, and included many favorites like Bullet the Blue Sky from The Joshua Tree, but also New Year's Day, Pride (In the Name of Love), Sunday Bloody Sunday, that are U2 staples, and fan favorites, but that they don't play live all that frequently because they prefer to focus on the newer stuff. The play list was obviously tailored to appeal to all, but in this instance, it wasn't shooting for the lowest common denominator audience---this is STILL quality music, that is still worth listening to, almost twenty, and in some instances, almost thirty years later. It wasn't at all like when The Stones roll out Brown Sugar for the umpteenth time, and you can see that while they're bored with it, that this, nonetheless, is what pays the bills, so give the audience what it paid $120+ (per person!) to see, lest they not want to show up again and feed our largesse. This is music U2 still cares about, and that's enough for them to play it properly and with verve.

About the only downside of this film is that Adam Clayton, the bassist, was obviously having fun with the 3D aspects and he kept hamming it up in front of that particular camera. Many times it felt like you were going to get smacked in the face with the end of his bass, but, honestly, that was the only downside of the film. It's an AMAZING experience, and if you like U2 even a little bit, or even have a grudging appreciation for the band, let alone are U2 Fan #1, YOU NEED TO GO AND SEE THIS FILM. It's incredible. If you can see it in IMAX, I highly recommend doing so. Mr. H. tells me it's going to general release soon enough, but the IMAX experience is well worth the extra high admission price.

Trust me on this one. You won't be sorry.

Expert

I was chatting with my niece, Maggie, on the phone last night. They were waiting for their easter eggs to get up/down (?) to room temperature before they could dye them. After discussing how chocolate easter bunnies are lovely things, and how solid ones are better than hollow, I asked Maggie a simple question:

Me: Are you going to be a good girl for Easter?

Maggie: Are you going to be a good girl?

She didn't even pause whilst coming up with an expert deflection. She just zinged it right back to me.

By the way, she's seven.

Way to go, Maggie! {insert sniffles of pride here} I suspect you have a long future ahead of you in the legal field.

Easter Bunny: Hit and Run Edition

Seems as if the Easter Bunny has been doing some of his runs early.

I can practically feel Moses' temper being tested, can't you?

A Refresher Driving School Course

So, this morning, I decided to walk up to the library to return some books. It was a relatively nice day, and since we're supposed to get six inches of snow tonight/tomorrow, I figured I'd better take the opportunity to get out and about before the world turned into one big slurpee.

I'm walking along, minding my own business, trying not to wipe out on the various icy patches, and despite the fact it's below forty degrees outside, the fact that the sun is shiny and warm, the walk is turning out to be a pleasant experience. A hint that spring is around the corner, and I'll soon be able to do this on a regular basis without worrying about ripping out my pants and can avoid all the public humiliation that goes part and parcel with such an event.

I approach a busy intersection and, because the light has just turned green, I start to walk across it. I'm not hustling, because I know from experience that I've got plenty of time to get across it, and it's nice outside---I'm not in the mood to pick up speed. I get to the other side, and, because I need to cross the intersecting road, I wait for that light to turn green. While I'm waiting, some prosperous looking jagoff in a silver Volvo, decides this would be a good time to honk his horn at me. I turn and look, and as his window is already rolled down, he starts yelling, "If the sign says 'Don't Walk,' DON'T WALK BITCH!"

Then he rolled up his window and drove off. Bewildered, I just held up my arms, in what is universally accepted code for, "What the fuck was that all about?" He saw me from his rear view mirror. I know he did, because he paused for a moment at the top of the hill, before jamming on the gas again and taking off.

What is it with these obnoxious drivers? I don't have to press the crosswalk button. If it's been a long time since Driver's Ed, let me remind you that----ahem---PEDESTRIANS HAVE THE RIGHT OF WAY. And, yes, that includes not pushin the "Walk" button, and not moving as quickly as you'd like. As long as I'm not jaywalking, I'm in the right. The crosswalk button is there for people with small children, who need a longer period of time to make it across. I don't HAVE to press anything when the light is already green. That is my right by law. But, apparently, the law is not good enough for him. I did not move quickly enough for him, who, had to wait for me to make it across the width of one lane before he could turn right. And, God, you know, that JUST TOOK TOO FREAKIN' LONG TO HAVE TO WAIT FOR SOMEONE TO CROSS THE ROAD, so he had to delay his trip even more by stopping his car---in the middle of traffic, mind you---to yell at me.

This is becoming a problem around Cake Eater land, because this is not the first time some guy has yelled at me from their very fancy, very expensive cars about my failings as a pedestrian. I am sick of this shit. I regularly feel like Dustin Hoffman's character in Midnight Cowboy "I'm WALKING here!" Today, it was Volvo Guy. A couple of years ago, it was Black Toyota SUV Guy, who actually turned around, parked his truck, got out of said truck and tried to find me after I refused to move more quickly, so he could turn left, while I was carrying two heavy bags of groceries. His truck was about a foot from my person, he was gunning his engine, honking his horn, and, as I was royally pissed off at his behavior, I just stood there for a moment, refusing to move in one direction or another, to make my point. When I did move, he squealed around the corner and I went into another store. When I came out, the same guy was standing on the sidewalk, steaming, hands defiantly placed on hips, looking in the direction I had been headed. I walked right past him, a grocery bag in either hand. And he was, apparently, so pissed off that he didn't recognize me, even though I'd been about a foot in front of his truck, staring him down ten minutes previously.

Last autumn, it was Beemer Guy. early on a Sunday morning, I was walking up to the local bakery to get the husband a muffin. There was very little traffic at this hour, but there was some. One car in particular. I was waiting for the light to turn green at the intersection about a block away from our house, and when it did, this "gentleman" in a white, five series Beemer, who was waiting for me to do my business so he could turn left behind me, started gunning his engine before I could even enter the crosswalk. I was not only annoyed that someone had his panties in a bunch at seven-thirty on a Sunday morning, I was threatened by his behavior as well. I don't know about you, but I am NOT going to walk in front of a car where the driver is gunning his German-engineered engine. One slip of the foot, and I'm road kill. Thanks, but no thanks. I've spent too much time in the hospital already, I'm not looking for more. I waved my hand, insisting that he should go first. After he took advantage of my generosity, I shook my head and muttered to myself. He then stopped his precious Beemer, (again, in the middle of the street) and waits for me to get within shouting range. "If you've got something to say to me, SAY IT! YOU HAD YOUR TURN! I DON'T NEED THIS SHIT TODAY!" I just stood there, and stared at him until he decided to storm off.

Look, I'm a pedestrian. I walk places. I am used to coexisting with automobiles and the people who drive them. I am accustomed to obnoxious drivers, who regularly honk their horns at the slightest infraction, who blow through red lights and who are monstrously pissed off when I don't get out of their way as quickly as they'd like---and believe you me, you can never get out of their way quickly enough. Even if you're running, it's not fast enough and you should speed it up. Surprisingly enough, as well, I'm also used to the drunks who like to turn left, illegally, by turning into the wrong lane right in front of you, as in, if you'd been two steps further than you actually were, you would have been flattened. I am used to these people. I always make sure to cross at a crosswalk, with the light, so that if they choose to hit me, I will be able to sue them back to the Stone Age. But to actually start screaming at a random pedestrian? That's just not kosher. That should be a sign to you that you've got anger issues, and should start paying visits to a therapist. I don't really care if you're having trouble paying your mortgage, if your house isn't worth as much as you thought it was, if your wife is fucking the Guatemalan pool boy, if the lease payment on your overpriced sports car is getting to you, or if your kid didn't score well enough on the entrance exam to get into Blake. I don't care about any of these things. YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SCREAM AT ME FOR NOT GETTING OUT OF YOUR WAY! I have every right to be there. When I'm there, in a crosswalk, you yield to me, asshole, not the other way round.

Visiting Southwestern France Sometime Soon?

It's interesting the people you meet on the web.

A few years back, I had the pleasure of meeting a lovely lady, Pat, on some boards I used to frequent. She's a professional translator, who used to live with her husband, Pascal, and their three kids outside of Toulouse, in a little town called Auterive. A little over a year ago, the family uprooted and moved to Dakar, for Pascal's work, which has something to do with water treatment plants. They still, however, have their lovely farmhouse in the French countryside, which was built on the ruins of a monastery, and now you, if you can afford to travel to France despite the atrocious exchange rate, can rent their guest house!

Go here, if you're interested.

There's decent skiing nearby, and the joys of the Pyrenees abound. It's a short hop to Lourdes, and if you're looking simply for a base in the region and have a car rental, it would make a good location.

Clever

Stealing is wrong.

But when someone actually manages to be clever about it, instead of the number of thieves in this city who simply attach a chain to a truck and pull out window frames or walls to steal cigarettes from a neighborhood convenience store (What? A black market in smokes in Minnesota? Couldn't possibly be! Nice job, Pawlenty!), well, my feelings become somewhat conflicted about casting them in a civic morality play. Yeah, they did wrong, to a great number of people, but you can still be impressed with their cunning ways, and think, perhaps, they should get some points off for being clever, quick and non-violent about it.

Take this guy, for instance:

If the accusations against Chad M. Storey are true, give the North Oaks man a big fat A for effort, along with some jail time.

Storey, 34, is accused of concocting an elaborate system of hoses and switches that allowed him to siphon gasoline from another vehicle into his own, all from the comfort of the driver's seat of his shiny red Dodge Ram 1500 4x4.

Storey was charged Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court with one count of possession of burglary tools. The sophistication of the device automatically elevates the charge to a felony, according to sheriff's investigator Tom Rudenick.

All Storey had to do, authorities said, was pull alongside a vehicle, stick a hose in its gas tank, flip a switch under his dashboard to activate an auxiliary fuel pump, then sit back and wait.

Authorities said they could only speculate about whether Storey was reselling gas after they found a valve on his gas tank -- clearly not installed at the factory -- that could be used to empty his tank.

{...}It took slightly less than 2 1/2 minutes to siphon 5 gallons from a gas can into the pickup truck. Authorities said it would take 6 to 8 minutes for Storey to steal the 20 gallons needed to fill his tank.{...}

I don't know much about siphoning gas, but what I do know is that it's messy, dangerous and takes a while, which, ultimately, creates more time to get caught. This guy, apparently, looked at the downsides of siphoning, found a way around said dangers and engineered a different option. Yeah, it's still stealing, but at least, he MacGyver'ed it. Which shows he's got some potential in the engineering realm, if he ever wants to turn away from a life of crime.

{ht: buzz}

Heh

Are you perhaps, my devoted Cake Eater readers, having a wee bit of trouble understanding just how the hell JP Morgan was able to pick up Bear Stearns for the bargain basement price of $230 million (when the Bear Stearns building in Manhattan is worth about a billion itself) or thereabouts?

Go here.

Instead of "RSG Investments" insert "Bear Stearns" and you'll be good to go.

You can thank me later.

Oooh, Baby, It's Lawsuit Time!

This was all anyone could talk about this morning at the hospital. How badly would it suck to be this person?

In what officials are calling a "tragic medical error," a surgical team removed the wrong kidney from a patient with kidney cancer last week at Methodist Hospital in St. Louis Park, the hospital disclosed Monday.

Officials said the error occurred weeks before the surgery, when the kidney on the wrong side was identified on the patient's medical charts as cancerous. The patient, who was not identified, was left with the cancerous kidney when the healthy one was removed.

"We feel just profoundly responsible for this," said Dr. Samuel Carlson, chief medical officer for Park Nicollet Health Services, which owns Methodist Hospital.

Hospital officials said that they apologized to the patient and family, and "are working closely with them to support them in every way we can."

The hospital took the unusual step of announcing the mistake in a memo to Park Nicollet employees on Monday. "An error of this degree has, to the best of our knowledge, never happened at this hospital before," Carlson said.{...}

Discussion ranged about just how screwed this person is. How nurses usually marker up a leg that's to be amputated, and why couldn't they do the same thing with the kidney? Why wouldn't the surgeon have known they were looking at a cancerous kidney? (I fielded this one and said it might look perfectly healthy, but the cancer might actually be microscopic.) Why couldn't they just put back in the old kidney? (Because, duh, it was obviously dead because they hadn't kept it alive but were going to biopsy it instead.) If this person can now get a kidney transplant, and would be moved to the top of the list, or if they were eligible for one at all now, because of their condition? How bad must the morale at Methodist be today? But, mostly, what we discussed was just how big of a settlement Methodist is going to have to pony up.

We decided it was going to be big. In the tens of millions of dollars.

My sympathies go out to the family. But for God's sake, don't sign anything!

But there's a lesson to be learned here, and it's one that I was reminded of last week: know exactly what they're going to be doing, and if your version of what needs to be done differs in any way from theirs, make sure that difference is reconciled. I'm kind of amazed this happened in the first place. One would think the surgeon would have gone over what they were going to do with the patient, and then the patient would have said, 'Hey, you're talking about taking out the working kidney here. Let's try this again.' But, then again, if the mistake was in the chart long enough, and had been propagated enough times within the chart, well, maybe the patient thought the surgeon was taking out the correct kidney? Who knows?

This is a goof of tremendous proportions. I think the hospital is to be commended for not only going public, but to fessing up to their part in the whole debacle, despite the fact that by doing so they've clearly admitted liability. That's fairly rare in this day and age, when most hospitals would have hedged their bets. The surgeon is to be commended, as well, for voluntarily suspending their practice, while things are investigated. It's nice to know that some people have consciences.

Ok...

...It's one thing that I can't catch myself from falling on the ice (and ripping out the knee of a brand spankin' new pair of jeans in the process. Grrrr.). It's entirely another when a robot can.

That there is a 21st Century pack mule.

Thank God, we still need humans around to tell the robots what to do, otherwise, I can't see that there'd be much of a need for us to be here.

You can find more about Big Dog here.

Don't Be Evil

Google has bent itself over a barrel to do business in China. They're a bunch of 'yes' people when the PRC demands they do certain things to gain access to the massive Chinese market. They've felt secure in their relationship with the powers that be and have, indeed, gained access to that market not only through Google, but through investment in Baidu, the PRC approved search engine. They probably felt that they'd worked hard enough to please the people in charge that they wouldn't face the strict penalties levied on other Internet companies who haven't followed the party line.

Well, they were wrong.

Amid the recent protests and violent crackdown in Tibet, the Chinese government is closing off all media access to the region and censoring reports about Tibet inside China. That includes not just CNN, but YouTube and Google News. Both Google sites have been blocked from the Internet in China. News reports about the protests and images that appear to come from inside Tibet are available on YouTube (see the slide show embedded below—warning it shows graphic images of bodies in the streets—and a CNN report). To prevent its citizens from seeing these videos or reading about them, the Chinese government has taken down all of YouTube and Google News inside China.

{...}The question is: What will Google do to restore access to YouTube and Google News inside China? China is a big market that Google needs to be a player in. Will it voluntarily strip out all videos or news items about Tibet? Or will the Chinese government just figure out how to strip them out itself? There is a precedent here: in China you cannot find a lot of information about the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising on the Web, including the famous image of the lone man standing in front of the line of tanks. Most young Chinese have never seen that image.{...}

Yes, what will Google do? Their stock price is, in my humble opinion, overinflated and they need access to the Chinese market to keep the shareholders happy. They need China more than China needs them. So, will they kowtow to the PRC hacks, and allow the blocking to continue? Or will they start stripping out content related to the Tibetan uprising? It's not unlikely, at all, that they would do this. Hell, if Anonymous posts a video, a bajillion Scientologists scream in protest and the video is pulled. One can only imagine what Google would do if a big source of their lifeblood is taken away from them because someone posted a video of a newscast about what's happening in Tibet.

Google has a chance here to step up and do the right thing---and to gain hand with the Chinese government. If they're tempted to pull the videos, to get the feed, as it were, turned back on, they should think twice. What kind of a precedent would this set? Their negotiating power with the Chinese, master negotiators that they are, would be at ground zero. If, however, they refuse to do what their PRC masters have probably already asked them to do, well, they'll have the upper hand, and will have finally lived up to their "Don't Be Evil" motto. Of course, I'm simplifying the situation, because there are undoubtedly many other factors in play, the upcoming Summer Olympics being one of them, that would prevent them from such a move, but how long is Google going to stand being the PRC's bitch?

One would think that Sergey Brin, one of Google's founders, a Russian Jew who emigrated from the USSR, would have a little sympathy for the protestors in Tibet. Alas, however, I suppose with his billions at stake...

And While We're on the Topic of Cute Kids

Apparently, St. Patrick's Day is the day for making debuts.

Only this time, my niece, Maggie, is making her Omaha World Herald Debut. Really, go and clicky on the link. She's well worth it.

According to her mother, the Cake Eater sister Christi, she really had a great time hamming it up at the photo shoot. That photo is quite representative of her personality.

I wonder, however, if I shouldn't bust them for a wee bit of dishonesty, though. The red hair does NOT come from the Irish side of their family; it comes from OUR side, the half Polish, half German side.

I do have one question, though. Do Leprechauns have pointy ears?

Awwwwww

Making his internet debut this fine St. Patrick's Day, we have young Moses Glenn from Winterset. He's the product of regular commenters Russ from Winterset, and The Lovely Janis.

Ain't he a cutie?

Here's Moses and his Dad

And here we have Moses with his mom, who's been through rather a lot over the past week and, she tells me, has gained an appreciation for the wonder drug that is percocet.

Moses, fully realizing his internet debut is an auspicious occasion, forwarded this short note along with the pictures.

Welcome to the world Moses Glenn. I was born March 11th - 6 weeks early - because Mommy's pre-eclampsia had gotten worse and she was only going to get better if I came into the world. I weighed 3 pounds and 5 ounces and 16 1/2 inches long.

Mommy is doing much better. She got really sick and the doctors and nurses are taking really good care of her and keep telling her that it just takes time to get better. Once her blood pressure gets better she will be released from the hospital.

I am in the NICU (Neonatal- Intensive Care Unit) and I am lucky that my lungs are well developed and have not had to have helped to breathe. The doctor says I am small for my age and need to gain weight!!! I am eating through a tube right now and learning how to nurse from Mommy too. I am gaining slowly.

I am told I am feisty despite my small stature -- I like to fling my arms and legs around and actually scoot around my incubator.

I will have to gain weight, eat regularly and get control of my body temperature by myself before I can go home. My doctor says I am doing very well. Mommy and Daddy are really proud of my progress.

Thank you Kathy for posting this for us. Enjoy the pics!!!

Love --

Moses and Mommy & Daddy too!!!

Say it with me: "Awwwwwww."

In Re People's Republic of China and Human Rights

Typical for the PRC.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials have declared a "people's war" of security and propaganda against support for the Dalai Lama in Tibet after riots racked the regional capital Lhasa, and some sources claimed the turmoil killed dozens.

Residents of the remote city high in the Himalayas said on Sunday that anti-riot troops controlled the streets and were closely checking Tibetan homes after protests and looting shook the heavily Buddhist region.

Two days ago Tibetan protesters, some in Buddhist monks' robes and some yelling pro-independence slogans, trashed shops, attacked banks and government offices and wielded stones and knives against police.

China has said at least 10 "innocent civilians" died, mostly in fires lit by rioters.

But an outside Tibetan source with close ties in Lhasa said that number was far too low. He cited a contact who claimed to have counted many more corpses of people killed in the riots or subsequent crackdown.

"He said there were 67 bodies in one morgue alone," the source told Reuters. "He saw it with his own eyes."

The self-proclaimed Tibetan government-in-exile in northern India has said some 30 people were killed in clashes with Chinese authorities. Beijing bans foreign reporters from freely reporting in Tibet, so the conflicting claims cannot be easily checked.

The convulsion of Tibetan anger at the Chinese presence in the region came after days of peaceful protests by monks and was a sharp blow to Beijing's preparations for the Olympic Games in August, when China wants to showcase prosperity and unity.{...}

Chinese authorities have now signaled a sweeping campaign to redouble security in the region and attack public support for the Dalai Lama, who fled into exile in 1959 after that year's failed uprising.

"This grave incident of fighting, wrecking, looting and burning was meticulously planned by reactionary separatist forces here and abroad, and its goal was Tibetan independence," a Saturday meeting of senior regional and security officials announced, according to the official Tibet Daily on Sunday.

"Fight a people's war to oppose separatism and protect stability ... expose and condemn the malicious actions of these forces and expose the hideous face of the Dalai clique to broad daylight."

The meeting was attended by Tibet's hardline Communist Party boss, Zhang Qingli, and senior central government security officials, and it strengthens signs that China has no patience with international calls for a lenient response to the riots.

Authorities have already set an ultimatum to rioters, urging them to hand themselves in to police by Monday midnight and gain possible clemency, or face harsh punishment.

The government has mobilized officially favored Buddhist monks to denounce the protests and the Dalai Lama, the Tibet Daily reported.

"The Party's policies on religious freedom have been very well observed," one said, according to the paper.

"But monks in a few monasteries don't study the scriptures well ... and coordinate from afar with the Dalai clique." {...}

The PRC invaded Tibet in 1950. They have taken over the practice of Bhuddism there, even going so far as to put a fake Panchen Lama on the throne, much like they put "state approved" Catholic Bishops in place in Beijing. There is no freedom of the press ANYWHERE in China, let alone in Tibet, where, currently, the death count is unknowable because they won't let the information out, or the reporters in.

When is the West going to stop pretending that these are people we want to do business with? They invaded Tibet, and if the US Navy wasn't currently patrolling the Taiwanese Strait, they'd invade Taiwan, too. Make no doubts about it, ideology rules in the People's Republic, and no matter how many skyscrapers they build in Shanghai or Beijing, or how many deals they cut with companies desperate to reduce their manufacturing costs, they are still the party of Mao. They are still the party of Li Peng, who murdered God only knows how many in Tianemen Square. their ideology demands repression of anyone who rejects it.

Et tu, Google? Et tu, Yahoo? Et tu, IBM? Et tu, Mattel?

I could go on, but I think you get the gist. They are murdering people right now in Tibet. The sad thing is that this situation is hardly unique in the PRC's history: they apparently enjoy murdering people. The PRC's higher ups think no one's going to mind a little enforced repression dressed up as a "People's War." They want to portray this as an "internal matter" so the west won't get their panties in a bunch over it, and the summer olympics will go off without a hitch. They're counting on our western greed, because they believe we're more interested in money than a few dead Bhuddist monks. Just how many of them have to die before we'll realize that we don't want access to the Chinese market so badly that they think they have carte blanche to commit murder?

The only decent thing Jimmy Carter did during his administration was to boycott the 1980 Moscow Olympics to protest the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan. It was wholesale slaughter in Kabul and elsewhere in that country that got him to act. And despite the fact that many hopes and dreams were slashed by bringing foreign policy into the Olympics, it was, morally speaking, the right call. The Moscow Olympics were a failure without western money to prop it up, and the USSR suffered as a result. I'm sick of rewarding the PRC with business when they repress a billion people on a daily basis. I'm sick of Google's investment and development in Baidu despite its "Don't be Evil" campaign. I hate that the CEO of Mattel had to go and publicly grovel in front of a PRC flack after criticizing Chinese production standards last summer. He had to do it, otherwise Barbies would cost considerably more than they already do. I hate that western companies that wouldn't exist without the free market in western society nonetheless, have to appease the stockholders and expand into the Chinese market, with nary a thought about how they're propping up a repressive dictatorship in their rush to make a buck. They think they can get away with this and it drives me nuts that we let them, time and again. It's time for this shit to stop.

And the only way is to teach them a lesson only the deprivation of western money and attention can provide. Boycott the Beijing Olympics. Screw 'em. They want us to think they've created a new modern, progressive, prosperous China? Well, they wouldn't be so damn prosperous if it wasn't for western money. Deny them that and they might straighten up and fly right. I don't think communism is going anywhere in China, but it's time for them to stop thinking they consistently have us bent over a barrel. They've got to learn that we can push back.

The question is, however, does anyone want to teach them that lesson, or are cheap Barbies and DVD players really more important than someone's life? Sadly, I would suspect that the answer is 'yes.'

I really wish someone would prove me wrong, though.

He's Trying to Sell Me a Pre-Owned Lexus...Again

So, the great hope of America, Barack Obama has a virulently racist pastor. And now that said pastor's DVD footage of his sermons has hit the mainstream press, all hell's breaking loose and Obama has been forced to condemn his pastor's statements.

The pastor of my church, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who recently preached his last sermon and is in the process of retiring, has touched off a firestorm over the last few days. He's drawn attention as the result of some inflammatory and appalling remarks he made about our country, our politics, and my political opponents.

Let me say at the outset that I vehemently disagree and strongly condemn the statements that have been the subject of this controversy. I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue.

Because these particular statements by Rev. Wright are so contrary to my own life and beliefs, a number of people have legitimately raised questions about the nature of my relationship with Rev. Wright and my membership in the church. Let me therefore provide some context.

As I have written about in my books, I first joined Trinity United Church of Christ nearly twenty years ago. I knew Rev. Wright as someone who served this nation with honor as a United States Marine, as a respected biblical scholar, and as someone who taught or lectured at seminaries across the country, from Union Theological Seminary to the University of Chicago. He also led a diverse congregation that was and still is a pillar of the South Side and the entire city of Chicago. It's a congregation that does not merely preach social justice but acts it out each day, through ministries ranging from housing the homeless to reaching out to those with HIV/AIDS.

Most importantly, Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus, a gospel on which I base my life. In other words, he has never been my political advisor; he's been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn.{...}

Oh, really? Rev. Wright preached the gospel of Jesus? Point out the section to me in either Matthew, Mark, Luke or John where Jesus goes on about hating America, Americans getting what was coming to them on 9/11, and how "Barack knows what it means to be a black man to be living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people{...} Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a nigger." Pushing aside the issue as to whether or not they teach proper grammar at seminary, where, precisely, are these located? I'm not a literalist, but I, sure as hell exists, spent a goodly portion of time during my Catholic education on the New Testament, and I can tell you that, ahem, Jesus didn't spend a lot of time (read never) preaching hate. He did, however, spend plenty of time on forgiveness and taking care of the poor and the sick.

What is this guy preaching? Christianity With a Vengeance?

I'm not buying this particular pre-owned Lexus. I'm just not. Obama himself admits he knew about these inflammatory sermons from the beginning of his campaign, and "made it clear" that he strongly condemned Wright's statements, but since Wright was in the process of retiring, and because his church played a strong part in his life, he wasn't going to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Bullshit.

If I'm remembering correctly, Obama and his family live in a house on the north side of Chicago. Yet, apparently, they packed it up every Sunday morning and schlepped down to the south side to go to church. If you're at all familiar with the ways and means of transportation issues in Chicago, you know that's quite a ways to go for a church service. Even the most dedicated of parishioners, at some point, when they move away, eventually put the kaibosh on a lengthy church commute and find somewhere closer to home, if they're able, if for no other reason than that it's Sunday and they'd like some time to spend with their family outside of church. The Obamas' dedication to this particular church meant, if I'm doing the math correctly on the commute, that they were probably spending an hour to get there, however long the service took, and an hour getting home---a minimum of three hours, but probably more, what with all the gladhanding that undoubtedly needed to be done. That's a pretty sizable time commitment for someone as busy as Senator Obama is. There's simply got to be more to it than just a fondness for the church community and the pastor. Obama isn't the type to expend energy on anything he doesn't think he'll get something more out of in the long run. I fully understand that Obama isn't the only person to cherry pick his pastor or his church---plenty of people do that---but the difference here is that, I'll betcha five bucks, Obama undoubtedly chose this church and this pastor, and schlepped his family out there every Sunday, because it would be good for his political career. That this was the church to attend, because it would put him on the correct side of certain chunks of the voting populace. And now we're supposed to believe that he wasn't in the pews when the good Reverend preached his words of hate? That he was only made aware of them when he started running for president? I'm just not buying it.

Going to that church was a conscious decision on Obama's part, and I doubt it had anything to do with his faith. If he really had a problem with what the pastor said, well, wouldn't he have gone through a crisis of conscience, like many of us have, when our pastors preached something that went over the line? I had a pastor at my parish in college who was a flaming hippie BIG on the liberation theology and who decided, carte blanche, that we didn't need to kneel during mass any more as recognition of the fact "that we've all been saved by God." If you understand Catholic theology at all, you know that that is a big boo boo. This wasn't a small deal for me. I went through some serious soul searching about this, and, despite the fact that it's technically against the rules, I started going to mass at the other Catholic church in town. It took me years to start going to mass at that parish again. It was only after I met up with this priest's replacement at, of all places, the bar (What can I say? The guy knew his parishioners.) and quizzed him about if he was of the same stock as the previous priest, and found out that he wasn't, that I started attending mass there again. Obama knew what Reverend Wright was preaching. He undoubtedly knew that it could be a liability when he ran for higher office. But I'm sure the benefits of attending church there probably far outweighed the negatives of being associated with a man who preached hate on a regular basis, and were, most likely, something he could easily disassociate himself from.

It's like he's trying to tell me that he didn't know the pre-owned Lexus had a salvage title, when, in fact, he did know, and rather than admitting he fibbed (and in the process admitting he had a weakness), he's instead counting on my good grace to let him off the hook.

I don't think so.

Obama is trying to get away with something here. I don't really know that a person should be held accountable for what their pastor says, but it's his easy disavowal and instant condemnation of someone, who, by all accounts, was influential in their personal beliefs and played a large part of their life that bothers me. That this, apparently, was the plan in case anyone started sniffing around, bothers me even more. If x happens, we'll do this. If x never happens, then we won't bother. Obama is, undoubtedly, happy right now that this was raised in the primary process, rather than in the general election, when more people would be paying attention. I'm sure he hopes he's dodged this particular bullet. The negatives of attending a church helmed by Reverend Wright have become greater than the perceived advantages, hence Obama did what he thought was necessary and threw the Reverend under the bus. It's political survival at its finest. It was a deliberate calculation that a man who claims his faith is as important to him as Obama regularly does, wouldn't have completed, no matter what the consequences.

Dumbass

Despite the fact he gets paid upwards of $20 million per picture, Tommy Boy Cruise, apparently, has failed to buy the ability to sing in key. Neither will all that money buy one rhythm.

Don't believe me? Watch for yourself.

Do you feel better about yourself after that? I know I do.

{ht: where I usually get these things}

And We All Fall Down

So, the government bailed out investment bank Bear Stearns today, with a healthy assist from JPMorgan.

NEW YORK - Bear Stearns Cos., one of the most venerable names on Wall Street, turned to a rival bank and the federal government for a last-minute bailout Friday to prevent it from collapsing.

The Federal Reserve responded swiftly to pleas from Bear Stearns that its coffers had "significantly deteriorated" within a 24-hour period as rumors about the bank's situation fueled the Wall Street version of a run on the bank. Central bankers tapped a rarely used Depression-era provision to provide loans, and said they were ready to provide extra resources to combat an erosion of confidence in America's biggest financial institutions.

Nearly half the value of Bear Stearns, or about $5.7 billion, was wiped out in a matter of minutes as investors felt the bailout signaled that the credit crisis has reached a more serious stage, and now threatens to undermine the broader financial system — and the U.S. economy.

"My guess is by next week, there will be rumors of other large, familiar institutions" that might be in financial trouble similar to Bear Stearns, said Anil Kashyap, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Bear Stearns, the nation's fifth-largest investment bank, made its fortune dealing in opaque mortgage-backed securities — a strategy that backfired amid the worst housing slump in a quarter century. The bank has racked up $2.75 billion in write-downs since last year, and releases first-quarter results on Monday that could show more losses.{...}

Ok, so riddle me this, joker: a business listed on the stock exchange, made some faulty gambles by buying up mortgage-backed securities and is now in trouble, so they go running to the government to bail them out. And guess what? The government helps them out by floating them some cash.

I have one question: how does this help anyone out in the long run?

I am not an economist. I don't claim to have a good grasp on the wheel-running hamster that is "the market," but I don't see how funding a business which made bad decisions should be bailed out by the taxpayers of this country. Particularly not when, undoubtedly, despite already having written off $2.8 BILLION in losses, the fat cats at the top were undoubtedly well-compensated with bonuses and dividends.

I understand about keeping our financial system working, but, and let's face it kids, it's time to separate the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps Bear Stearns needs to crash, so that the market can be come healthier? Perhaps this might, when the dust has settled, boost the dollar out of the basement and get speculators out of the oil market, so the cost of living can go down and I can stop paying through the nose for things like eggs and milk. I don't know. Again, I'm not an economist. But I do know this much: I'm getting tired, as a taxpayer, of funding businesses who bought securities that were faulty in the first place. Anyone with half a brain knows that ARM-interest only mortgages were a bad idea. Why, gee willikers, sir, you're trying to sell me a loan where I only pay the interest on said loan, and that rate is adjustable, meaning it's just as likely to go up as well as down, in an overinflated real estate market? Why, thank you, sir, but no. If people didn't figure it out, well, sorry, kids. That's just the way the ball bounces. {Insert Mr. Brady explaining the Latin phrase 'Caveat Emptor' here} Why didn't the MBA geniuses on Wall Street figure out that buying securities based, in part, on these mortgages was a bad idea?

I guess it comes down to this: I'm tired of bailing out stupid people. Whether they be your average subprime mortgage customer who got in over their head, or fat cat MBA's on Wall Street, who should have known better than to bet the farm on these securities. I've got the feeling that all this government intervention is just putting off the inevitable.

Presented With Minimal Commentary

The husband forwarded this along to me today. For Russ from Winterset, of course.

You Couldn't Pay Me To...

...buy property in the province of Minneapolis. Not surprisingly, however, given the inclinations of the Minneapolis City Council, they want to do just that.

MInneapolis, Minn. — The Minneapolis Advantage is an effort to stabilize neighborhoods hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis. It would pay homebuyers $10,000 to buy properties in certain inner city neighborhoods.

It's not a new concept. Some neighborhood groups have been offering similar incentives for years, and they say the city plan can boost their efforts to encourage homeownership.

The Minneapolis Advantage is still in the planning stages, but if adopted by the City Council later this month, there will be 50 loans available for qualified buyers to purchase a home in any of 18 neighborhoods.

Minneapolis City Housing Director Tom Streitz recently presented details of the plan to members of the City Council. He says the neighborhoods chosen for the program are areas that have high concentrations of boarded and vacant homes.

"We know that investors have come into some of these neighborhoods, and essentially flipped these properties over and over again. They've inflated the value," Streitz said. "They've stripped the equity, and in many cases they've stripped whatever quality materials were left in the house, and left devastation in its wake."

Streitz says the program may not be able to completely prevent a repeat of that scenario, but there are some safeguards.

For example, the loans will only be available to individual homebuyers, not corporations. The homebuyer has to live in the house and commit to staying there for five years. After that point, the loan will be forgiven. {...}

Ok, so not only is the City of Minneapolis considering offering interest-free loans to people whose religion bans them from applying for "traditional financing," they now want to pay people to buy up houses in one of the worst neighborboods in the city. And by "worst" I don't simply mean that the neighborhood is blighted because the houses are old and no one wants to upgrade, I mean "worst" in the sense that this is one of the neighborhoods that regularly earns the city the moniker "Murderapolis." It may be quiet now, but that's only because it's too cold for the crack/coke/meth dealers to go out and shoot one other. As soon as it gets warm outside, the melee will start afresh. And, if one should choose to take the city up on its generous offer, and the bullets start flying because the same city council won't fund the police department adequately, you wouldn't be able to move your family to a safer location because that would violate the terms of said cash payoff.

You might as well as someone to move to Mogadishu and tell them they can't leave when the warlords start rampaging. Again.

Mr. H, who is in the relocation business and knows something about real estate, and I were chatting about these same houses over the weekend, and he said that everything worthwhile in these houses has been stripped, either by flippers, or by squatters and thieves who moved in after the properties had gone into foreclosure. That means there is no plumbing in them, or electrical wiring---both are made of copper, and copper is particularly valuable right now---appliances, windows, furnaces, or wood, even, because if there were salvageable hard wood floors, those were stripped out for use elsewhere. They're just shells, and there's no way in hell that a $15,000 "incentive" renovation loan is going to bring these properties back up to code. Which, of course, the city will fine you for violating.

Then you have to remember that you'd be buying property in Minneapolis, where the property taxes are high, and I'm fairly certain there wouldn't be any sort of break on those particular taxes. Never mind the fact that, in the province of Minneapolis, you pay your taxes and you get squat in terms of city services, like plowing when it snows---and even then, they're more likely to tow your car than to actually get around to plowing the street---or even garbage removal (everyone in the Twin Cities has to pay to have their garbage removed. No one gets a pass on this one.), or even police, because they're strapped as it is stands. What anyone who decides to take the city up on its offer will get, however, is incessant, and expensive, meddling in their affairs. City inspectors will show up and will fine the bejeezus out of these people. They'll have to pay up the wazoo to get any renovation plans approved. And, of course, the property tax bill will, of course, go up when they make renovations and increase the value of the property.

Why would anyone, in their right mind, consider this to be a worthwhile endeavor? You know, other than the city of Minneapolis, that is.

This is just about as predatory as some on the City Council, or elsewhere, would claim the subprime mortgage market was.

Worth Your Time

I know seemingly everyone is posting this, but it's worth your while to hop on over and read about David Mamet's conversion on the Road to Damascus.

Apparently, the Village Voice's servers are run by aerosol huffing hamsters who are, indeed, out of cans of Ready Whip, but it's the Voice after all: if they manage to do nothing else, they'll keep their junkies afloat, so keep trying.

Somehow, Wires Were Crossed

Everything went fine.

Everything, that is, except that I wasn't scheduled for the procedure I thought I was to have.

See? I told you something wasn't going to go as advertised.

We checked in at the hospital and they set me up in my own room, in a portion of the hospital they call "Care Suites." I've been in there a few times, as a volunteer, delivering the box lunches they order up for the patients. My room, in fact, was right next to the fridge I usually put the lunches in, so I knew precisely where I was. I'm still not really sure what they do there, but it's got something to do with looking after people who have radiologic procedures done (Ya think?), and people who need more monitoring after same day surgery. Perhaps? I dunno. Anyway, after putting on one of those HIDEOUS gowns, they did the standard stuff, vitals, IV inserting, blood taking, running through medical stuff, handing off the remote control for the tee vee, you know, the regular. When it came time for the procedure, a very nice radiology RN wheeled me (yes, I was in bed, and it was, again, very luxurious) down to CT. They got me settled in, and it was then that a problem arose.

The RN started talking about how the procedure was to be done, and when she reached the end of her schpiel, I was a bit confused. She had described how they were going to take some preliminary images with the cat scanner, the radiologist would claim her stake on my lymphocele, then they'd be running me in and out of the scanner in between draining the lymphocele, to make sure they had everything. She asked if I understood, and I said, I did. "So," I asked, "how long do you have to wait before you inject the alcohol?" She looked at me queerly, and said, "Why would you think you were having that done?"
"Because that's what I was told would be happening. That after draining it, you'd put alcohol into it so it would create scar tissue and would shrink up."

"Ok," she said, and went into the control room, to chat with the radiologist.

This is the point where I muttered, "Houston, we have a problem."

The problem being that Dr. Academic's main nurse didn't write up the order for the alcohol procedure, but rather for a simple draining of the lymphocele (or "suspected lymphocele", because they're still not sure that's what it is.). Now, I'm not really sure why, when I talked to her on Friday, and we chatted specifically about the alchohol procedure, she didn't say, "But, Kathy, that's not what you're having. You'll simply have it drained, and we want to do it this way because it might work, and it's less invasive." But she didn't say that. She talked about the alcohol procedure, and that's all she talked about, SO HELLO, that's what I thought I was having. I mean, am I dumb or something, because she NEVER mentioned draining the thing outside the context of this certain procedure. NO ONE in that bloody office who I chatted to about it said ANYTHING about simple drainage, because, and I quote, "Chances are it'll just fill right back up." It sounded to me as if they weren't going to waste their time with that procedure, and Dr. Academic thought it would be better to skip to the step that did work.

So, they ran around the control room for about a half hour, calling Dr. Academic's nurse, then they got a hold of Dr. Academic himself, and he ok'ed the procedure. I just couldn't get my head around why he wanted me to do this, when it had seemed like he'd ixne'd it right off the bat. I was confused and tried to explain to the RN that this is what we had talked about and that this is what I had signed up for. And she didn't doubt me one iota. She said, "You obviously know what you're talking about, but we just need to be clear about this." The radiologist came out and we chatted. She recommended having the procedure done, because it was less invasive and it was going to be more "comfortable" than having the alcohol procedure done. The crux of the matter was this: it was either drain the sucker, or that would be that. My choice. I chose to drain it, but am still bewildered as to why the wires got crossed in the first place.

As far as these sorts of things go, it was pretty easy to bear. In and out of the machine, marking the injection point with a sharpie, in and out of the machine again, then they gave me the IV sedation drugs, the radiologist numbed my belly up with some lidocaine, cleaned me off with iodine, and then did her thing. Then they ran back into the control room and ran me in and out again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Until it was over and done with, by which time one of the lymphocele's walls had collapsed, 44cc of supposed lymphatic fluid (it was yellow, that's all I can tell you) was sent off to pathology, and the doctor had put a band-aid on my wound. I was wheeled back to Care Suites, and since I hadn't been allowed to eat or drink for four hours before, devoured a box lunch I am sure one of my fellow volunteers schlepped up there a few hours before.

They let me go about fifty-minutes after the procedure was done, and I was happy to get out of that place. I got a wheelchair ride to the door, and our friend ML picked us up. Then I came home and napped for about two hours.

As of right now, I'm simply sore in that neighborhood. They told me to take advil for any pain. I wish I could take a bath and soak some of the pain away, alas, however bathing is verboten until the injection site is completely healed. Bummer. I didn't think the IV sedation was all that bad, but if I'm up and moving, I'm not really enjoying life all that much. Even now, sitting at my desk, writing this, I'm getting woozy. If I stay down on the sofa or in bed, I'm ok, so that is where I shall be heading shortly.

Thanks for all the well wishes, prayers and everything. I appreciate them. You're a lovely bunch of coconuts, my devoted Cake Eater readers. But now you need to send them Russ and Janis' way, because they've had a rough couple of weeks and it's shortly to be compounded by the fact they're not going to get hardly any sleep for the next few months.

The clock is ticking

My wife's doctors decided during her weekly appointment yesterday that the baby's delivery shouldn't be put off any further, so we're sitting in a maternity suite as I type this. Delivery might occur this evening, and I'll post the vital information as soon as I have time. Hopefully, our procedure and Kathy's procedure go smoothly.

As far as the name goes, we're fairly certain of what we're using (sorry, "Robbo Steve (from Winterset)" didn't make the final cut).

AND WE HAVE A BABY UPDATE

It's a boy. Moses Glenn. 3lbs. 5oz. 16.5 inches long.
Mom and baby are just fine. I'm sure Russ is shitting his pants right about now, but that's nothing out of the ordinary.

(And, just for the record, no, I'm not pissed off that Ace got the exclusive. Nope. Not hurt at all. Juuuuuuust Fine.)

Now, let's commence with a communal awwwww.

Well, Here We Go Again

As I mentioned, I've been having some medical problems. Again. Sigh. When will this long national nightmare be over with? I haven't the foggiest, but hopefully it will be soon. As in, it might end tomorrow.

Because, my devoted Cake Eater readers, I'm going back into the hospital. And not to volunteer, either.

The deal is this: the lymphocele is causing more pain. I called in about it last week, and Dr. Academic's office called back on Friday, and instead of moving the CT scan up, like I thought was going to happen, instead they recommended that I go through the procedure where they drain the lymphocele and then fill it with alcohol to create more scar tissue, so it didn't fill back up again. Dr. Academic's main nurse is finally back from maternity leave, and it's a good thing too, because she was able to explain the procedure well enough to get me to sign on. See, I wasn't crazy about going from having a tennis ball-sized, fluid-filled sac in my pelvis to having a tennis ball-sized, scar tissue-filled sac in my pelvis. I mean, what's the point? I explained this to her, and she said, "Oh, no, that's not entirely correct. Yes, the alcohol will create scar tissue that will keep the lymphocele from filling up again, but it will also shrink it down to almost nothing." "Really?" I asked, somewhat confused. "Dr. Academic didn't mention that at all." "Well," said she of the knowledge, with a light laugh, "That doesn't surprise me." {insert rolling of eyes and a massively painful slap to the head here} I should have known he would, in his general state of rushing around like a chicken with its head cut off, forget to tell me something essential. I told her I needed to chat with the husband, and she said she'd write up the order for the procedure, and if I decided to go ahead with it, I was to call the scheduler and they'd set it up for me.

After im'ing back and forth with the husband about it for about a half-hour, we decided to go through with it, and I put a call in to Dr. Academic's scheduler to get the ball rolling. After about four phone calls with the scheduler, I am tentatively scheduled to have the procedure tomorrow.

The reason it's "tentatively" scheduled is because I've been on ibuprofen therapy since November for the neuropathies, as well as Vitamin E. I've been taking 600mg of Advil, three times a day, and one Vitamin E capsule per day, and since both are blood thinners, they generally have a five day wait rule in place, as it takes that long to get the crap out of your system so that your blood will clot normally. This would have put the procedure on Wednesday, but, alas, the hospital did not have any open slots on Wednesday, and as Dr. Academic told the scheduler that Thursday would be too long to wait, they pencilled me in for Tuesday. I now am waiting for the hospital to call me back, to confirm that the radiologist who will be performing the procedure, has signed-off.

Fortunately for me, the procedure is outpatient. Phew. That was another concern of mine, but, fortunately, Dr. Academic was wrong when he told me that I'd probably have to stay overnight after the procedure. (See, it really is a GOOD thing that the main nurse is back, because she ALWAYS has more---and better---information. Bless her.) Neither will I have to go to the different hospital, but can have it done at the one I was at last year. The procedure, I believe, is called "alcohol scleropathy," but basically what will happen is that it's a CT guided procedure, and when the radiologist gets the lymphocele on the screen, he/she/it will inject a big honkin' needle into it to drain it. Then they'll insert the alcohol, and will shift my inert body around to make sure the booze hits all the high points within it. Fortunately, I shall be, blessedly, out of it for this part. When that's over and done with, they'll keep me for a few hours for observation, and barring any goofs or complications, I should be able to go home. If you're curious about this procedure, go here and then scroll down to the portion on lymphoceles and you'll be able to see (yes, kids, there are pictures!) what will happen to me. Fortunately, while I will be out, I won't be knocked out via general anesthesia, which is good because I didn't react so well to that last time round. Neither do I have to clear out the intestines with Colon Blow (aka magnesium citrate, which is not the nicest of laxatives), but rather have to simply refrain from eating or drinking for four hours beforehand.

Surprisingly, I'm not all that nervous. I suspect that might change, though, as the time draws closer. I came to the conclusion last night, as I was trying to fall asleep, that I just really needed this one to go right---or at least for it to go precisely how they told me it would. God willing, it will, but let's face it, kids, if something was bound and determined to go wrong, it will go wrong with moi. I wasn't supposed to have ovarian cancer, and I did and I lost everything that day. I was supposed to breeze through chemo, because I was young and healthy, but I didn't. This is supposed to be no big deal in the scheme of things, but, like I said, if something's bound to go wrong, it would be just my luck for it to follow through. {Insert long windy sigh here} It would seem that millions of people around the world, enter hospitals and medical clinics every day of the damn week and get out relatively unscathed. I haven't been one of their number, and I wish it were otherwise. Tomorrow will be another test to see if I can join them in their normality.

Let's hope this is uneventful, because if I wind up back in the hospital, in one of those HIDEOUS gowns, for an extended stay, someone's head is going to be roasted on a spit and will, eventually, wind up on a platter, garnished with vegetables and greens, and a Granny Smith apple jauntily placed between their upper and lower mandibles.

UPDATE: We're on for tomorrow.

Hey Robbo, You've Got Some Time To Back Out

My dear pal Robbo is currently in the process of converting to Roman Catholicism. He's long been frustrated with the Episcopalian Church's new, pc friendly line, that's light on condemning sin, is heavy on being a one-stop shop for everything new agey, and hence has decided to swim the Tiber. I wonder if he's still going to want to go through with it after reading this:

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Thou shall not pollute the Earth. Thou shall beware genetic manipulation. Modern times bring with them modern sins. So the Vatican has told the faithful that they should be aware of "new" sins such as causing environmental blight.

The guidance came at the weekend when Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti, the Vatican's number two man in the sometimes murky area of sins and penance, spoke of modern evils.

Asked what he believed were today's "new sins," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that the greatest danger zone for the modern soul was the largely uncharted world of bioethics.

"(Within bioethics) there are areas where we absolutely must denounce some violations of the fundamental rights of human nature through experiments and genetic manipulation whose outcome is difficult to predict and control," he said.

The Vatican opposes stem cell research that involves destruction of embryos and has warned against the prospect of human cloning.

Girotti, in an interview headlined "New Forms of Social Sin," also listed "ecological" offences as modern evils.

In recent months, Pope Benedict has made several strong appeals for the protection of the environment, saying issues such as climate change had become gravely important for the entire human race.

Under Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, the Vatican has become progressively "green."

It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference to discuss the ramifications of global warming and climate change, widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels.{...}

See it's one thing for Pope Benny to scatter solar panels across the various roofs of Vatican City; it's entirely another to make littering a sin. What's missing here is guidance from the dear red beanied one about whether creating environmental damage is a venial sin or is of the mortal variety. See, most Catholics are familiar with the fact that genetic manipulation---i.e. stem cell research---is absolutely verboten. This is absolutely nothing new in the scheme of things. But environmental damage? Could you, conceivably, be on the hook if your garbage contractor dumps the waste in an illegal fashion? What about if your city's water treatment plant screws up and lets loose raw sewage into pristine streams? As a Catholic, I know that I'm not supposed to even invest in a biotech firm that fiddles about with stem cell research. Am I supposed to follow the same line in choosing our garbage contractor, or otherwise I might be scheduled for some time roasting on a spit in hell? It's a bit murky if you ask me. And it might cause Robbo to think twice.

He's got a little over a week to decide. {insert wiggling of eyebrows here}

UPDATE: Steve-o and I are thinking along the same wavelength.

spoooooky

Random Question of the Day

Is it just me, or is anyone else getting the faint whiff of Stalinism every time Barack Obama opens his mouth?

Le Projet Runway Finale Commentaire

So, the little troll won Project Runway.

Sigh.

The master of the super fantastic, The Manolo, has the wrap-up that you should go read.

Honestly, I was surprised when he won. I thought Christian had shot himself in the foot when I saw his line. Just about everything was black, and was entirely derivative of other projects he'd done throughout the season---particularly the last challenge. If this had been a different season of Project Runway, and if Christian hadn't been so impressive throughout, he would have been reamed by La Nina and the Kors, from here to Poughkeepsie and back again, for not showing them anything new. I'm not denying that the troll has talent; its overflowing from five gallon buckets that he, undoubtedly, could not pick up and carry to save his life---but undoubtedly $100,000 will pay for a sherpa to do so. I simply think that, when it comes right down to it, the competition was his to lose, and the judges obviously didn't want him to lose. His talent is exceptional. Yes, it's very obvious that he's worked for Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood. Yes, the clothes were exceptional. But were they wearable? No. In fact, I'm having a hard time seeing how they could be watered down into Ready to Wear at all, which is the only reason Couture still exists in any sense whatsoever. It's like the judges couldn't get over how fantastic it was to discover a Picasso, never to realize that most people would never hang his work on their wall in the first place. It would have been obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse that Rami and Jillian had to step up, and do so in a miraculous way. In a sense they were destined to lose, which is a shame, because after all of Kors' and La Nina's bleating about making clothes that keeps in mind the shape of a woman's body, they completely chose to ignore the lines that did just that.

Asshat Redux

I vented my spleen a couple of months ago at Garrison Keillor for suing his next door neighbors for blocking his view of open space. Well, he found a solution to the problem: he's moving.

The star of "A Prairie Home Companion" and his wife, Jenny Lind Nilsson, listed their house in the Ramsey Hill Historic District with a real estate agent this week. The asking price: $1.65 million, according to www.realtor.com.

Keillor and Nilsson sued their next-door neighbor, Lori Anderson, in January to stop her from building a two-story garage-and-studio addition to her house, saying the project would "obstruct the access of light and air to [their] property."
But the dispute isn't the reason Keillor and Nilsson are selling their house and buying another, said real estate agent Mary Hardy. Keillor wants a large, airy first-floor studio where he can work, she said. Keillor and Nilsson made an offer for a house in the 200 block of Summit Avenue that has about 4,000 square feet more space and sits on a half-acre lot on a bluff. While its listing price is no longer public, the house's taxable value was listed at just under $1.6 million.

The lawsuit that Keillor and Nilsson filed was settled through mediation about a week later, but terms were not disclosed.

Since then, however, new drawings have been submitted to and approved by the city, said Robert Humphrey, assistant to the director of the city's Department of Safety and Inspections. The new plans, Humphrey said, call for the addition to be built away from the property line. Otherwise, the project is essentially the same.
On Tuesday, it appeared that construction was underway.{...}

{my emphasis}

So those poor people went to all that trouble to try and satisfy Keillor and his wife---and undoubtedly had to pay a lot of money in legal fees, architect fees, and planning fees---and now he's moving?

Jackass.

If were them, I'd pull the old "flaming bag of dog shit" trick on his doorstep. Every day. Until he moves. He deserves it.

Your Minor Ethical Dilemma of the Day

There's this elderly gentleman who works the same volunteer shift at the hospital that I do. He's a nice enough guy, probably in his early-eighties, is a WWII vet, and is a retired mortician. He loves being assigned to work with teenagers, because they invariably ask him questions about what happens to the bodies of the dearly departed, and he has a good time scaring the hell out of them when he answers them, because he's got some good stories to share. I've got nothing against the guy. He works at the hospital three days a week, to keep himself active, and has been volunteering there for years. Everyone loves him, and more importantly, knows him. Most of the hospital staff like all of us volunteers enough, because we save them a lot of time and hassle, but they take their time warming up, because they just assume you'll be gone soon enough, so why bother? But the staff all love this guy, and go out of their way to help him achieve his tasks. It takes me a half-hour to flag someone down when I need them. But him? Five seconds flat. So, we've established that he's a good guy, with good intentions at heart. But there is one thing he does that drives me nuts: he steals cookies from the hospital's oncology clinic.

The clinic is in another building (the same one Dr. Academic's office is in) and we gophers have to run over there a couple of times a day to pick up specimens for delivery to the lab. I feel sorry for those patients, because they have to wait for us to come over, pick up the samples from two different offices, and schlep them back to the hospital's lab---which takes about fifteen minutes to a half-hour, all told, and that's before the lab does its deal. At Dr. Academic's office, the lab was in the office, so you didn't have to wait, but because the hospital has a perfectly good lab in the hospital, the samples have to be schlepped over and these people do have to wait. These runs always have priority over others, but no one understood why until I told them that the patients had to wait for those results to see if they were going to have chemo or not that day. Now everyone puts on winged shoes for these runs. All except for this one gentleman: he's in a hurry all right, but he's in one because he raids the cookie tray they keep in the lobby. Now, to be fair, he never snakes the cookies to eat himself: he takes them and offers them to everyone else, as a treat. He can't eat them because he's a diabetic. He offered me one, one day, and I refused. Now he thinks I'm kind of snotty.

Undoubtedly you're thinking I should just take the cookie, right? That the kind thing to do would be to accept this man's hospitality. The thing is, they have those cookies there for a reason. People go through icky treatments, which a goodly part of the time causes stomach upset, and perhaps, a cookie would help settle their tummies. Also, people on chemo need to snack, because that's the easiest way to eat when you're on these treatments. Anything that can boost the calorie count of a person who's going through a treatment that makes them lose weight is a good thing. There's always a full complement of snacks available in the waiting room at Dr. Academic's office, and people do take advantage of it (and I was one of them. For some strange reason, those Keebler fudge cookies taste good after enduring a carboplatin drip.), but they never take advantage, and always leave something for someone else in case they need it. Despite the number of elderly people at Dr. Academic's clinic, and knowing the propensity of some of their number (Ahem. I think we're all familiar with the ways of some of the "Geritol Express.") to fill up their handbags at all-you-can-eat buffets, I've never seen anyone take more than one cookie or a piece of candy. They, too, know that the food is there for a reason. But this guy, God bless him, doesn't get it. The people at the oncology clinic know full well what he's up to when he raids the tray, but because he's older, they don't say anything. I tried to explain to him, very kindly and very patiently, that the cookies were meant for the chemo patients, to get them to eat, but he just shrugged it off, saying there was plenty to go around, because the tray was always full.

Sigh.

What would you do if you were me? Would you lighten up, and just take the cookie, to smooth things over with someone as universally loved as this gentleman appears to be? Or would you again try to get him to understand that he shouldn't be taking them in the first place? Or would you just leave it be?

Dude...

I told you I didn't think all that bacon was a good idea.

Seriously, though. Prayers and happy thoughts to Russ and Janis---as they're going to be making more life adjustments than just the one they were counting on.

I can only imagine how badly it's going to suck for Russ to have to be careful about his diet. Sigh. He's an Iowa boy. Iowa boys don't like being told what to eat. Let me tell you. I'm married to one and I had to wage a seven year battle just to get him to eat something as measly as a salad. Janis, my dear, my prayers are with you.

Yet, in good news, that means more venison for us! {insert evil chuckle here}

The Grass is Always Greener

So, the thing I hear a lot from my sister and other parents I know is how picky their kids are when it comes to food. Sometimes, even, their eyes become all misty and they wish aloud for a kid who would eat what's put in front of them, let alone for one who's adventurous in the food department, and doesn't solely rely upon nourishment gained from mac and cheese and hot dogs.

This is that kid. Can you imagine how green this kid's grass is to other parents?

On a visit to Boston last summer, just before our son’s birthday, my wife and I gave him the gift he most desired: we allowed James to eat his first raw clam, thus ending three years of simmering frustration for him.

True, he was only turning six, but that meant he had spent half his life pining for a taste of uncooked bivalves. His reaction, when the moment finally arrived, was unsurprising: he loved the clam, so much so that he proceeded to help himself to the five others on my plate and declared that henceforth I would need to order double the number so that he and I could each get our fair share. Between slurps, he reiterated his determination to eat that other long-forbidden fruit of the sea, raw oysters.

We had held him off raw shellfish out of health concerns, which in retrospect was probably silly. We were certainly guilty of inconsistency. When James was three, we let him try sushi, and ever since he has been ordering his own sashimi (early on, he decided he had no use for the rice and wanted the fish straight up) whenever we went out for Japanese. Were raw clams and oysters really any riskier than raw tuna? We had also given in to his pleadings and allowed him to eat unpasteurised cheese, and it was not as if raw-milk Camembert – his favourite, although he is also fond of Époisses, Comté, and Langres – was without potential hazards. And if we were worried about polluting his young body, we certainly would not have permitted James to get in the habit of taking a sip from my wine glass every night.

On the other hand, all that sniffing and swilling has served him rather well. He has become a very able blind taster, with a particular knack for identifying Burgundies and Beaujolais. He has a good nose for herbs and spices, too, and can often pinpoint specific seasonings in dishes. It probably helps that he now keeps his own herb garden during the summer, which he very much enjoys. He would doubtless be even happier if we bought him a lobster trap, built a pond and stocked it with sturgeon, and filled the yard with ducks and geese; James has a prodigious appetite for lobster, caviar, and foie gras.

{...}there were indications that he was to the table born. At 10 months old, he sat through a long lunch at a three-star restaurant in Paris without so much as a moment’s fuss, astonishing us and the wary waiters, too. Barely out of the womb, Tiger Woods was mimicking his father’s golf swing; James was jealously eyeing my mille-feuille. The greatest athletes come by their talent naturally, and it seems reasonable to assume that the greatest eaters do, as well. Great eaters, like great athletes, possess a certain ruthlessness. James loves his pet goldfish and hopes to have a dog. But for him, animals exist mainly to be consumed. On a visit to an aquarium when he was two, he startled me and the people nearby by pointing to one tank and asking: “Can we eat them?” A few months ago, watching a documentary about giant squid, James turned to me and said: “I’m getting kind of hungry. You, too?” (He was disappointed to learn that giant squid is not very tasty; he adores squid and octopus and orders them whenever possible.) Last year, his kindergarten class read Charlotte’s Web. One evening, when we were two-thirds through the book, I asked James if he was worried about what might happen to Wilbur the pig. He shot me an incredulous look. “Of course not; if Wilbur dies, that means we get hot, juicy bacon,” he said, elongating the last three words to underscore his delight at the thought.{...}

Too bad he's only six, because a kid who can read Charlotte's Web and instantly think "hot juicy bacon" would undoubtedly grow up into a man I could love.