Category Archives: Life

Why I often focus on politics

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So, I focus on politics which is sometimes a downer.  But I can’t write about the Seinfeldian experiences in my family life because many of them read the blog.

In talking about a future gathering, the purpose of which is to pick at the emotional scabs over a wobbly relationship, I advised the person to wear a HazMat suit because although the people present vary in intensity, all will want to ask inappropriately invasive questions.  But I can’t go into the background because I don’t want to be excommunicated from my family.

So, you see my predicament.  I find people endlessly fascinating, but I need to keep it out of the family.

That is why I am going back to the gym and try to take public transportation.  Because the Seinfeldian experiences happen to me or to strangers and then it is fair game.

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Bruised, but energized

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I arrived at the gym at the crack of 11:30am on Sunday, ready to get back into shape.

Previously, I described my body as a pear with rhombus touches.  Right now, I feel like a square rhombus, which is a fatter, squatter, diamond shape.  I am going for the diamond shape rhombus — I am not getting any taller but I can shrink the girth.  Less girth, more mirth.  Somehow that isn’t slogan-y enough.  Let me try that again in sing-song perky voice — More Mirth!! Less Girth!!!  Naw.

How about:  It is time to put the T-O-N-E in my muscles.  (Except there is no “t”, “o” or “n” in “muscle”.)  Don’t I sound like an infomercial?  [imagine someone with perky, sing-song voice singing “All right, okay, waste that waist away!!” while doing something 1980s like jazzercise.]  (Didn’t some trainer of C-list celebrities say something like that?)

I still looked dweeby in my gym outfit because, while the length of my work-out pants covered my unshaven legs, they were toooooo form fitting.   (Here’s the sad truth — these once weren’t form fitting work-out pants.)  And my work-out shirt, which thank G-d was not sleeveless, wasn’t long enough. 

I did both cardio and weights.  I hurt today.  That is an understatement.  My body is SCREAMING at me.  Yet, I will go at it again, today, or, errrrrr, tomorrow.  But DEFINITELY, today or tomorrow.  Or Wednesday.  But I am committed, clearly.

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Finally, a Hate Crime Bill Goes to the White House

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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/10/senate_approves_hate_crimes_me.html?referrer=email

It is great that there is a federal hate crimes bill that will protect gays and lesbians.  Unfortunately, it had to appended to a bill authorizing pay increases for our troops in order to pass.  And, there is some pork barrel spending that Obama opposes in the bill and he will get tagged with perpetuating wasteful spending.

It is sad that there couldn’t be three separate bills:  “clean” appropriations bill for our troops, a clean hate crimes bill, and a clean bill on the controversial spending item.  They have nothing in common.

It is uncomfortable sometimes to look too closely into how we are governed.  But look, we must.

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Slapstick at the gym, starring me

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Ok, I have not kept up with my gym routine.  But this week I resolved to get back into shape (a pear with rhombus accents).  So I spent two days getting psyched and yesterday I went to the gym. 

First, I have to say in my defense that I am sleepwalking most mornings before 10am so while I thought I was packing a gym “outfit”, I was, in fact, packing a gym “misfit”.

I am in the locker room and to my horror I discover that I packed running tights that go down just below my knees and are form-fitting.  Two things to note — since Labor Day, I can’t remember when I shaved my legs, and if form-fitting looked good on me, I wouldn’t need to go to the gym.  I soldiered on and experienced the unpleasant sensation of my butt touching the backs of my legs and creeping around my body to engulf my hips.  If you are eating while you read this, please stop one or the other.

I have a geeky t-shirt that stops at my waist making “my look” particularly unattractive.  If my skin were pasty, I would have won the Woody Allen female impersonator award.  Not pretty a pretty sight at all.

Nevertheless, boldly, I go upstairs amid the lovely, the young and the buff and claim rights to a Stairmaster.  Not the easy pedal kind, but the full-on steps.  I am going to do 30 minutes no matter what.

After 5 minutes I think I will die.  Then I decide that I should have turned on my iPod that is lying on the tray all tangled.  I am trying to untangle the iPod, while on Stairmaster and wearing bi-focals.  Well that lasted for less than a second because I am crumpled on the ground having banged my head.  Buff, beautiful and thin people come over, offering helpful excuses like, did you have a seizure?  Did you have a drink before going on Stairmaster?  Have you eaten?  No, in fact, multi-tasking on a Stairmaster when you are a klutz AND you are wearing bi-focals is stupid, but not an illness recognized by the medical community or any support group known to me.

Bruised, but undaunted, I return to the Stairmaster to conquer this beast.  I start the program over AND I up the level from 5 to 6.  I’ll show the machine who is boss.  I make sure to put my ear phones in first.  But after 5 minutes, I am ready to collapse.  I decide it is time to email my college friends to catch up.  At some point I knocked my ear phones out while thumbing a message on my blackberry.  Ah!! Another trick, you dangerous and mean Stairmaster!! You want me to retrieve my ear phones so that I can fall off again.  No, I say, NO!!!  I will not succumb to your evil tricks!! The ear phones are not near any mechanism.  I WILL CONTINUE FOR 30 MINUTES AND MY FORM FITTING OUTFIT WILL LOOK BETTER FOR IT!!

I spend the next 20 minutes on Stairmaster looking at the closed captioning on the TV screens (the bifocals did come in handy, or seemed to, anyway).  I am bored out of my mind.  But I am determined to burn 200 calories and climb over 2 miles.  I even do the 1.5 minute warm down after the 30 minutes are over.  Take THAT, you evil machine.

Triumphant, I walk around the gym floor looking at other tortures waiting to be vanquished.  Then I catch sight of my gym stalker in the mirror — that middle-aged gray haired lady getting a little thick around the middle.   You remember, the one who looks suspiciously like my mother.  I sigh.  My reflection and I have had enough of the gym for today.  We go home together.

But there is always tomorrow . . . . . .

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E-books recreated as paperbacks

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Wait, I thought the ad campaign for the Amazon Kindle was “think green, buy e-books”??  Now Amazon is going to print e-books in paperback?  Then why do you need e-books again?

There is something so odd, almost reverse-Darwinian about this. As if Thomas Edison decided that candles and oil lamps were better than light bulbs.  And printing paperbacks is SOOOOOOOOOOO ungreen, especially if publishers have unsold hardcover or paperback copies stacked in warehouses.  Don’t kill more trees.

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HP, Amazon to sell paperback versions of e-books

  • By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Technology Writer – Wed Oct 21, 2009 2:16PM EDT  

SAN FRANCISCO –

Some of technology’s best-known companies are betting there’s pent-up demand for on-demand books.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s top seller of personal computers and printers, is teaming up with online retailer Amazon.com Inc. to join Internet search leader Google Inc. as the latest entrants in the quirky new market of re-creating digital books as paperbacks.

The concept represents a different type of book recycling, as digital copies created from print get a second life as paperbacks.

[rest of article deleted]

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Mr. President, please let me see you sweat

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Mr. President, I am sweating.  I am sweating the outcome of the healthcare reform votes.  I am sweating the outcome of financial system reform.  I am sweating the recession.  I am sweating Iranian nuclear proliferation.  I am sweating global warming.  I am sweating more troops in Afghanistan, which just seems to be a quagmire.  In short, everything on the micro-level of my life seems still as precarious as it was when you were elected. 

We elected you in part for your No Drama Obama comportment and you words of empowerment and calm assurance.  But now I want to see you sweat, too, Mr. President, in a take charge way.  Twist some arms to get the reform you promised.  Support the process of stripping health care insurers of the anti-trust immunity if they are bad players. 

LBJ was not Mr. Nice Guy when it came to getting Medicare passed.  And generations of Americans are in his debt.

Mr. President, be principled, be honorable and please be ready to rumble in order to get things done.

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Out of the mouths of babes come truths

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At a town hall meeting, a fourth grader asked President Obama why everyone hated him.

I think we should stop wondering about the kid who was NOT aloft in a hot air balloon and we should think about what this fourth grader asked the President. It is easier to wonder about hot air balloon boy, his family’s interest in science experiments and their appearance as contestants on “Wife Swap”.  Putting this family under a microscope helps us avoid bigger and, dare I say, more important, issues.

Focusing on the fourth grader’s question requires us to look at how we behave.

We have to examine the tenor of our disagreements, the personal nature of the attacks, our fears for the future of our way of life and our desperate anxiety about not being all powerful on the international stage.

From the simplicity of his question, the following things came to mind:

1. We need to disengage from the-ends-justify-the-means view.  There is another word for “means” and that word is “barbarism” — i.e., torture, character assassination, lies, bribes, etc.

2. Passion for one’s cause not require person attacks, lies and defamation.  Passion is evident in the force of one’s argument and tireless efforts promoting the cause.

3. There is room for the loyal opposition.  When did we forget the phrase, “my country, right or wrong”?

The goal should be fair and open, vigorous and informative debate, “deciders” act for the common welfare and everyone abides by the result.  If losing means you make up lies and propaganda and continually do things disrespectful of the government, then you don’t deserve to be a citizen.    I was pretty unhappy when GW Bush was declared winner in 2000 and elected in 2004 and every time he did something with which I disagreed, I always hoped that his decisions were right.  Because if he were, the country would suffer.

4.  We must be willing to see the flaws in our own arguments.

I’ll start.  I believe that the public option insurance is necessary, but no one can predict the price tag and it really could be too costly right now.  Maybe in five years, we could afford it.

Also, Afghanistan is a quagmire with a corrupt government.  Nation-building is always a disaster.  I don’t believe that President Obama should send more troops.  In fact, we should remove our troops and seek a relationship with a fairly elected government.  But we should continue to bomb out Al-Qaeda.  (I’m feeling pretty extreme this afternoon.)

Now, let’s look at the GOP who use the slogan, “America First”.  WAIT, do you think Democrats don’t put America first?  Are you delusional?

Let’s look at the facts of the GOP’s putting America first:

  1. Under GOP leadership, manufacturing jobs went overseas in astounding numbers, and promoted the burgeoning economies of India and China.
  2. Refusal to meet with Iran (and GWB’s botching of several opportunities for some sort of freeze) only increased its determination to build nuclear weapons.
  3. The war in Iraq made us indebted to the Chinese government in an insane amount.
  4. Our armies cannot continue another war without a DRAFT.
  5. Our need for fossil fuels has made Russia a necessary player.
  6. De-regulation almost brought this mighty nation to its knees and then the small government politicians had to bailout the banks (SOCIALISM, anyone?)

Now, explain to me again why the GOP blames President Obama for having to forge new diplomatic relationships and alliances?

(Now tell me the truth.  Was I ranting?)

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Run home. Run like the wind.

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This was my sister’s plea to me while I was away on my business trip to Texas.  Run home.  Run like the wind.

That was after I told her about the sign prohibiting weapons in the bar/lounge.  (Why do people need to be reminded that weapons don’t belong in a bar/lounge.

Renting a car in a city of freeways invites problems, especially for me, someone born and bred on the Island of Manhattan, amd driving in the Big Country.  But it is ok to have lapses of judgment on the little things.  I just hate having to ask people to call taxis for me everywhere.  I thought I would feel more in control having a car.  Also, I had a few different meetings scheduled during my trip. 

I had a GPS gizmo.  I kept typing in LBJ Freeway which, by the way, is the largest vehicular artery into Dallas, and the GPS gizmo didn’t recognize it.  Everyone calls it LBJ Freeway, so it never occurred to me to type in Lyndon Baines Johnson Freeway.  Doesn’t GPS recognize “JFK Airport”?  So I was driving blind, knowing only that LBJ Freeway is 635 and I wanted to go east.  Dallas is sprawling so I was driving for what felt like hours and seemed not any closer to anything looking like a business district.  I did make it finally, with my brother’s help in the last few minutes, so I could meet him for lunch.  GPS worked after that. 

It was a good trip and I saw friends and family and did a little business.  But, I missed my family and was ready to come home. 

I tried to get an earlier flight, which was already delayed 3 hours.  Sometimes I was No. 2 on standby and sometimes I was kicked to No. 10.  No one could tell me why.  The attendants wouldn’t let a husband and wife fly together, but they bumped me as I was about to get on the plane because a 20-something woman needed to connect in NY for a flight to VT for a wedding weekend that started the next day (with wedding probably on Sunday).  No one asked if it was ok with me. I would have said, “sure” but I would have insisted on priority standby status in return. So, of course, the airline staff knew better than to ask me or make eye contact with me. That enraged me but I kept it in check, since I don’t break FAA or TSA rules because Homeland Security still makes me think of Dick Cheney and so it freaks me out. And I dropped to 22 on standby for the next oversubscribed plane that was also delayed.

So I just went to the counter of the NEXT flight and met a perky customer assistant who told me there were 20 unsold seats on the flight.  I knew that all the people ahead of me on the new standby list would fill those seats, so I paid a transfer fee and got a seat with a seat assignment and everything.  Then all the angry people who didn’t get on the second flight came storming through the airport to get on my flight.  Cost of transfer ticket: $50; the smug feeling that you’ve outsmarted the hoards: priceless.

All of this so, as a result of delays, I could leave LATER than my original departure. But I think my scheduled flight was canceled because after awhile, LaGuardia shuts down. The thoughts of being trapped in the Republic another night and staying at an airport hotel were more than I could handle.

My earlier smugness had a karmatic boomerang effect.  The man across the aisle on the plane was really loud and was the kind of guy who acts as if all the world’s his stage and every comment is for his benefit and requires his response. Then he had two gin and tonics. The perfunctory handing out of the ear phones was cause for a lively (no, actually, deadly, deadly boring and exasperating) exchange between this guy and the flight attendant. I put my ear plugs in just to close out the noise.

All in 9 hours either in an airport or on a plane.

So while I wanted to run, run like the wind, I schlepped in a glorified cargo pit. G-d, I love this City, even the gross cab air freshener.

 

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Republic of Texas

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Just today a Dallas newspaper had an article about secession.  It posited that more people outside Texas than inside would like the state to secede from the Union.

I saw my brother for lunch.  My sister-in-law suddenly got sick at the sight of me and begged off lunch.  I am trying not to connect the dots.

I sat in the bar/lounge of my hotel, waiting for my friends for dinner, and saw a sign that weapons are not allowed in the bar/lounge.  I’m from New York City, where grit and crime are part of the  urban landscape, and I have never seen such a sign.  I suddenly felt safer in NY.  At least I know that in No-Where-istan, that fabulous, mythical place, there are no weapons, concealed or otherwise.

Actually, given that my hotel was in the seamy part of Dallas (my secretary allowed “cost-cutting” to go too far), I am feeling like I am in an area of Dallas that, if this were NY, would be called Fort Apache, The Bronx.

But no gunfights so far, so I don’t really feel like I am in the Republic of Texas.  This is already a long, strange trip and Jerry Garcia had the benefit of drugs.

republc

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For Serious News, Turn on Comedy Central

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Last night, Jon Stewart skewered CNN on its coverage of the health care debate.  I love Jon Stewart because he points to the idiocy of the 24 hour news cycle and the schnews (schmooze plus news) or newsertainment that passes for pertinent information about our cities, our country and the world. 

All the networks do is talk about finding out information, but they don’t really.  They ask us what we think and then read from the Twitter responses.  Fact-checking Saturday Night Live skits and not fact-checking what the politicians are saying is sheer idiocy.  Spending more time on whether SNL is a bellwhether for Obama than the issues is a disservice to viewers.

Other than Jon Stewart and Bloomberg News, I don’t know where else on TV to get pertinent information.  If I want comfort TV, I watch Rachel Maddow, because I agree with her views.  But for cold, hard, factual news . . . Comedy Central?  What an irony.

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