Dying speeches I hope not to make on Wednesday

Dying speeches and bloody murders: crime broadsides collected by the Harvard Law School. Love it. Via Internet Scout.

Where to spend Nov 4... The Gate?

Well, the gate hasn't announced anything yet, but it was my favorite spot for watching the debates this year. It's the last of the bars we wound up in during the last presidential, too. Unless it was next to last. Or the one before that. It really hurts to remember. In any case, it's a fine, partisan venue.

Where to spend Nov 4... Barbes?

Maybe Barbes?

ELECTION NIGHT
We'll be showing election results all night on our big screen in the back room.
We assume it should be a joyful party, although we wrong last time. Very wrong.

Where to spend Nov. 4... Galapagos?

Maybe, Galapagos?

> Tuesday, November 4th, 6pm $10

Obama Fabulous Galapagos Art Space
Election Party!

So what are we doing for election night?

So far - besides projecting the results live - we're deciding between a 14 piece orchestra and an over the top really really fun "Yes we Can-Can!" Can can night. Or both. And then of course we'll have our Brooklyn-famous Presidential kissing booth and since it will be such a fun night we'll have a 'doctor' here signing "absentee explanation notes" for those who will undoubtedly arrive late to work the next day. And - just to add an extra dose of fabulous splendor to the night - we think Santa will make a special appearance.

once tuesday gets past us...

January's gonna seem a long time coming...

re that palin person:
in Mc Cain's own words;
and revisiting a topic we mentioned hereabouts previously,
results from the East Bay Express' S. Palin Song Contest
& the submissions (be they audio, video, whatever...) here

Sledgehammer

It's way late and we're just home from a farmer's dinner at Applewood (thank you Laura, thank you Dave) with Amy Hepworth and I hope to live long enough to write about it, and I'm supposed to be in a doc's office in 8 hours giving blood for deep study and measuring the old heart ticker ting, but instead of sleeping I'm obsessing at the mtv video site that juju devilishly sent in email and o my god, Peter Gabriel doing Sledgehammer?

Peter Gabriel |MTV Music

What I want to say but can't stay awake long enough to is, Now my 1986 is complete.

Vinous involvement

Ufta, went AWOL there for a few days while we immersed ourselves in winemaking and asthma.

6 AM Saturday morning we hit the road to be in Greenport, LI, in fields managed by Michael Kontokostas and the Kace Group, by a tad after 8.  And there the lovlies were, in their stacked pickers crates, about 750 lbs. of Cab. S. which, after chatting and bsing for a while, we dumped into plastic trash bags and loaded into the back of B's minivan (with a good deal of low-riding resulting - dude, check those shocks & your tire pressure).  Back to 11th Street and we'd finished crushing by shortly after noon, when P brought in some beautiful pastas from Bar Toto, Lori put out some salamis & bread, we popped a bottle of last year's 11th Street Sangiovesi and ate the lunch of the just.

Then, back to destemming.  Now, really, that's tedious.  It encouraged talk of retiring the mid-90's crusher we've been using and ponying up for a crusher destemmer.  B&L de-destemmed before the rest of us and declared their grapes ready for yeast.  Lori & P, bless their obsessiveness, kept destemming for what seemed like a couple hours more, then we pitched our yeasts, started the cleanup, more or less passed out.  

The grapes are much lower brix than California grapes would be, so we'll have pretty low alcohol - we didn't chapitalize.  Somewhere around 10% rather than 12%.  Worser things could happen, and when I remember how many folks stumbled out of our last year's wine celebration party, the lower content might be a positive good.  

Anyway, it's been a lot of time in the cellar the last few days, punching down, making notes.  The must is heating up, the brix is dropping and it's already smelling like wine rather than grape juice.  Giddyap.

Steal back your vote. Mine, too.

Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast: Drinking the ACORN Kool-Aid: How Cries of Voter Fraud Cover Up GOP Elections Theft.  This has become Palasts regular beat.  StealBackYourVote.org  (image from Palast site)

the weekend approacheth...

& like most of the rest o' yaz, me lookin' forward to it..

first off, a coupla things from the local fishwrap:
whoa. differences btwn page layout in the paper and some lazy ass web editor has the answers provided first in the page linked below
Test your economic meltdown IQ;
and be sure to visit D. Asmussen's Bad Reporter today.

via the wonder that is the clusterflock,
Crunking we can believe in.
and if ye were not already aware of this,
here's the NYT's endorsement of the democratic candidate
alongside recent column by M. Dowd, Moved by a Crescent.
lastly, for the moment at least, the Top 25 Censored Stories for 2009

Judge bans Mongols from wearing trademark logo

"If a Mongol is wearing a vest or jacket bearing the Mongols patch, that item is pursuant to seizure based on this order," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Welk.

It is believed to be the first case in the nation in which the government has sought to take control of a gang's identity - via its logo - through a court order.

Whodathunk (AP / FindLaw)?  

Opie! Bam Bam!

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

(won't play in Google Chrome.)

a handful of nuggets of linky goodness...

still enjoying my romance with NPR, this link from PRI's The World program broadcast today, and we want to point ye in the direction of the Global Hit piece;
courtesy that marvel that is MetaFilter: Buy-ology Blue;
Umbrella Today?, by way of Bifurcated Rivets;
lovely slideshow via flickr;
How to Make Fougasse, thanks to C. Corrigan & his Parking Lot;
two words: whiskey river
Otay Spanky!
dat be enuf fa now....

Uke lust: Kepasa Little Mac

See it and hear it here. And that very one is for sale at Fleamarket. Woof.

Straining, straining...

"NEW YORK, October 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- More than half of working Americans - 53 percent - have been interrupted by a work-related phone call or email while in the bathroom, according to a survey commissioned by Nokia (NYSE: NOK)."

That's nice.  Press release.  (Noun, not verb.)

David Sedaris is not undecided

 David Sedaris' piece this week in the New Yorker, Undecided: 

"To put them [undecided voters] in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

"To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked."

ILLUSTRATION: ZOHAR LAZAR

psssst...

be afraid...

be very afraid...

frighteningprospect.com;

courtesty the wee marvel that is Gordon Coale's weblog

early here on the left coast yet...

here at the j - o - b wit my coffee and donut, that comestible reminding mineowndamnedself of effort by Beth B, another hardworking drone here at nonopress,
donuts for hope...

for some goshdarned crazy reason, great old tune been running constantly in my head since hangin' out the laundry early this Am, my memory of it coming from Frank Sinatra's version, tho' there be plenty of 'em out there, but the song itself, truly one of the great tunes of all time, All or Nothing at All...

some controversy brewing in a town familiar with same,
'Berkeley Big People' making locals go "ugh-ly!"...
in that article is mention of statue on S.F.'s Market St by
Stephen de Staebler, a piece yourstruly has ambled by & admired many a morning on our way to work oncet upon a time;
a picture of 'Angel" available within this page

Holy Boy!
dis seems a lot more like the version of that Sinatra tune me recalls so fondly, Xtra added linky bonus: Frankie Chords!

Elections: hacked versus flubbed

Check out the maps at dvice.  State by state ratings of polling machines least and most easily hacked, and polling machines at which people ae least and most likely to make a mistake.  Guess what.  Easy to use = hackable, hard to use = secure.  

Me, I love my NY paper punching mechanical polling machine.  Especially love the big whump! sound it makes.

via gizmodo

Zazzle fizzle

After I posted What I talk about when I talk about coughing I thought it might be fun to contact zazzle and have them make real USPS postage from the image I used there.  

Unt, today I got the bad news.  REJECTED!

Result: Not Approved 
Policy Violations: 
--- Incorporates the name or likeness of a current or former world leader or politician, or a local, regional, national or international leader, religious figurehead, or politician.
--- Parodies an underlying copyright or trademark including well recognized brands, logos, titles, or phrases.

Skank.  Will resubmit it as BAM BAM CATS.  The underlying images are PD.

Socks

Seems I never mention the neighborhood oldsters & characters in my posts any more. As a number of them have passed it felt to me a little in bad taste to be talking about them without their knowing. Or maybe I just got lazy.

Anyway, Socks I've never mentioned. He's been in the hood longer than we have, and you'll often see him shambling down the avenues and streets, a little slack-jawed, in and out of storefronts, offering up packages of cotton crew socks, white and black, always seeming a little shocked that you don't want to buy any. But this afternoon I was taking an espresso break in Colson's when Socks came in, offering his wares to both sides of the counter, and I do believe I witnessed a transaction involving Socks, one hipster counter guy, one pack of black crew (or maybe tube?), and four beautiful fresh baked croissant. Everybody happy.

The great adventure

I was going to try to put together a post about the rolling snowball of endorsements for Obama this weekend, but everyone else will do a better and more current job. Instead, I'm posting this passport photo of Luther Powell, Colin Powell's grandfather, dating from the time of his emigration to the US from Jamaica.

Photo from the Academy of Achievement - A Museum of Living History.

What I talk about when I talk about coughing

Had a bummer of an allergy / asthma evening, giving up the whole sleep thing at 3 AM and started casting about for something cheerier to read than Antonia Juhasz's Tyranny of Oil (which I'm 3 or 4 chapters into on Juju's prompting - see links there.). Wound up choosing something I knew wouldn't be cheery at all, but would engage me - and downloaded Haruki Murakami's What I Talk Abut When I Talk About Running. (Here's a NYT review - I haven't read any reviews yet and don't intend to. Shush.)

So, I'm reading a section where Murakami's talking about what he thinks about when he's running, and it's very, very familiar to me. It's my good mode when I'm not actively involved in something useful (and maybe half the times when I am). My other mode is brooding (also known as thinking), and that usually sucks. To whit:

I'm often asked what I think about when I run. Usually the people who ask this have never run long distances themselves. I always ponder the question. What exactly do I think about when I', running? I don't have a clue.

On cold days I guess I think a little about how cold it is. And about the heat on hot days. When I'm sad I think a little about sadness. When I'm happy I think a little about happiness. As I mentioned before, random memories come to me too. And occasionally, hardly ever, really, I get an idea to use in a novel. But really, as I run, I don't think much of anything worth mentioning.

I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void...

Worm grunting maverick NYT mashup

"Worm grunting, also known as worm fiddling or charming, involves driving a wooden stake into the ground and rubbing the top of it with a leaf spring or other flat piece of steel to make a grunting or snoring noise. Done in the right place under the right conditions, the result will be hundreds earthworms appearing on the surface of the ground. Worm grunting is practiced in parts of the southeast to obtain fish bait."

Front page photo Michael Conroy/Associated Press. Article Worm Grunting: A Mystery Solved, by Henry Fountain

Of course, some people do go both ways

(Scarecrow always said it best.)

NYT profile of Christopher Buckley by Sheryl Gay Stoleberg.
Andrew Sullivan pointing to Steven Waldman writing about Obama's social conservatism (no free love).

(Buckley's post on his leaving National Review. "[T]he only thing the Right can’t quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.")

Who funny

Some of us are feeling pressure from our more open minded friends to admit that McCain was funnier than Obama at the Al Smith dinner. Ufta! Seems awfully late in the day to be anything other than hard core partisan. And, uh, it would mean actually watching the McCain presentation. OK, I'll get back to you on that. I'm working on it.

(OK, I watched. Pretty funny. He gets kinda weird in the 2nd 3rd, I think, but pretty funny.)

My friend Bill Ayers

Thomas Frank piece in the Wall Street Journal, My Friend Bill Ayers.  

Frank was a main character in Lori's film, This Land Is Your Land - clips here.

Tom Tresh dies

Tom Tresh dies, and so does a little piece of my childhood.  I still remember the early 60's Yankees better than the 2008 Yankees. (AP Photo - Tresh & Al Downing.)

Bam Bam: Swahili for "That One"

greetings from the left coast pt II

local weekly East Bay Express provides 30 Years of East Bay History & was also where we espied mention of the
7th San Francisco International Documentary Festival
and co-inkydinky mention of Saffron Gourmet on Solano Ave;
the mainline fishwrap provides winter sustenance with timely piece on chili & fixins, a visit to Albany's Solano Ave (nearby chez Juju),
& suggestion for No. California getaway destination;
& Daily Online, Weekly in Print, we present to thee,
The Berkeley Daily Planet...

greetings from the left coast...

and, likely, from the lefty-est part of that left coast, btw...

passed along to me from dear pals JaneyKakes & Phillipe:

Sent: Thursday, October 16, 2008 12:23:38 PM
Subject: Obama spots by Bob and Noni

Noni and I wrote and directed two independent pro-Obama spots, which you can view using the links below. Turn your sound up, and if the links don't work try copying them into your browser one at a time. The spots are called Prayer and Game, and they're 30 seconds each.
This grew out of a grassroots effort of a bunch of women sitting down in someone's living room, who gave themselves the informal name of Mamas for Obama. No need to call us, just spread the word by forwarding these links. This is a viral campaign.

Bob & Noni

Mamas for Obama video numero uno, Prayer

Mamas for Obama video numero dos, Game

Oh, and there's a group raising money to air some of these spots (including one or both of ours) in local cable markets in swing states. You can give any amount by going to this web site:
mamas for obama

Creative Commons / Jesse Dylan

3 minute film about Creative Commons by Jesse (Yes We Can) Dylan:

I'm still voting for Bam Bam, even though he's my Glass Booth #3

Have you taken the quizz at Glass Booth.  Go for it.  It tells me I have an 84% alignment with McKinney and the Green Party, an 80% alignment with Ralphyboy Nadar, and a 78% alignment with Bam Bam.  Not shocking news, but folks I been down that road before and I ain't goin' down it again this year, not no way, not no how.  Meet me in Philly.  Si se puede.  Via lifehacker.

Juju backchanneled this, but I think it's too good not to post.  Washingtonpost.com Fact Checker:

"I'm very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there. Very pleased to be cleared of any of that."
--Sarah Palin, phone interview with Alaska reporters, October 11, 2008.

"Sarah Palin has insisted that a formal investigation into the "Troopergate" controversy in Alaska has exonerated her of "unlawful or unethical" activity. The Republican vice-presidential pick has told critics to read the report by an investigator appointed by the State Legislative Council to determine whether she had abused her power as Alaska governor to push for the firing of a state trooper formerly married to her sister. But the report's finding that Palin breached the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act is very clear."

approaching mid october...

and by this time next month, katz und kitteez, vee vill haf new presidente, eh?

enjoyed wee neighborhood block party yesterday afternoon, avoiding mine own usual habit of hieing myself elsewhere and avoiding social occasions, turned out pretty nicely and managed to meet other longtime residents of the 'hood. A pleasant time was had by all (and my ersatz jamabalaya was a big hit..)

checking out the NYT on a monday morning and lookee here what I found: mention of Shopsin's which I thought had relocated or perhaps gone the way of the dodo. Yourstruly first came upon mention of the joint in a new yorker piece by C. Trillin way back in April '03 (check out link on 4.11 of that ol' d'monkey page, and damn, ain't it nice to know Kenny S. still at it after all these years...

Yo, Krugster!

When I heard the news this morning that Paul Krugman won the Nobel for economics, I actually forgot that we don't really know the Krugster personally.  He doesn't live on the block or make wine with us or even come to family weddings.  But I reacted like something wonderful happened to a friend.  (That dispite his support for Hillary.)  

Rope-a-dope

Well, I love any reference to the Rumble in the Jungle, and casting Obama as Ali and both the Clintons and McCain as Foreman, well, I'm in heaven:

...His most brilliant rope-a-dope of the entire campaign was against Bill Clinton in the spring. In a newspaper interview, Obama cited Ronald Reagan as the last transformational president. He didn’t mention Clinton. The former president was offended by being implicitly dissed, took the bait and unleashed a series of unwise public scoffs at the young Democrat, culminating in a dismissal of Obama as another Jesse Jackson. Suddenly, black Democrats abandoned Clinton’s wife, and the Clintons’ base collapsed. Obama merely stepped out of the way as the Clintons self-destructed. He didn’t just end their campaign; he helped to bury their reputation.

And that’s exactly how Obama has handled McCain...

Andrew Sullivan at (London) TimesOnline.
(Of course, Foreman came back, went through dark times but then made a complete personal transformation. The Clintons and McCain are welcome to do the same. I figure Bam Bam will be in his second term by then.)

Ne te quaesiveris extra

There is nothing like a Harold Bloom op-ed piece, there is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert, and there is no similarity between a Grateful Dead concert and a Harold Bloom op-ed piece - is there? Certainly I know which one I'd rather be involved in if I were, uh, schnockered. Anyway, HB's piece in the Times today makes me want to go back and re-read Emerson's Self Reliance. While listening to all 6 sides of Europe '72.

(Ne te quaesiveris extra... unless you have to.)

Bittman (last year) at TED

20 minute talk by Mark Bittman about eating more veg. , given last December. Nothing you don't know, but I like MB. If I had to choose just three or four cookbooks to keep, his How to Cook Everything would be one of them.

And, hey, how about all those TED videos!

Si se puede

What better thing to do right now while we're down in the mud than remember why so many folks supported Barack Obama from so early on? (Yes, you've seen it. It made the rounds 8 months ago. See it again. Show it to Mom, Dad, Uncle Pete and Little Junior. Surf's up.)

friday folly...

jessferdahalibut,
we presents to you,
the KazooKeylele
(courtesy MonkeyReview.co.uk)

When a crumudgeon points to something hopeful...

I'm guessing DL won't object overmuch to the characterization. He points to the Huffpost piece by Daniel Okrent, reposted at alternet, Bradley Who? Here comes the Obama effect. A nice companion-piece the the Brazile video juju pointed to.

tired o' seein' mine own last post here...

so...

Sarah Palin songwriting contest by local weekly, East Bay Express, who, by happy coincidence, is publishing a story this week about item previously mentioned hereabouts, Have Steam, Will Travel;

Esquire magazine endorses Barack Obama;
economists favoring Obama candidacy;
and coming soon to your local PBS station, The Choice 2008...

here a wee bit of dialogue from workplace e-bulletin board:

I'm no fan of either candidate, just for the record. But I am tired of hearing what a moron, old geezer, or whatever Senator McCain is - yet there seems to be no critical examination of Senator Obama, at least not in this forum. Obama is not squeaky clean and faultless either. His past associations with questionable characters are a concern. The fact that he has little national political experience is also a concern. The fact that he has no executive experience and is the most liberal democrat in the senate is a concern. I have no illusion who will win the election, but I would urge everyone to at least critically examine who Senator Obama really is before they cast their vote.
http://www.barackobamaassociates.info/

****
juju's response-

there's likely something most of us have experienced in our lives, choices we've made, alliances we have formed, that we'd prefer to keep from closer scrutiny, but ultimately we all hope to be judged by our conduct and ethical bearing overall. Yes, absolutely, one can only make an informed choice by looking as closely as possible at the character, bearing and background of the two candidates we've to choose from, and while I do indulge in the occasional slinging of verbal invective at the GOP candidate (and, yes, in my not so humble opinion, deservedly so) I am aware that the democratic candidate is not without flaws. Nonetheless, I feel (and speak for myself only here) entirely confident that in terms of the choice we have to make in less than a month, the person I want to see as president is Barack Obama. I believe the GOP ticket is a disaster in the making, and after the last eight years, a disaster I would prefer not to have to live through.


and for wading through that, here is your reward, from Jezebel,
Donna Bazile is NOT going to the back of the bus...

please, me begging you, please Please PLEASE...

hie thyselves to NPR's Fresh Air site for today's broadcast,
Antonia Juhasz: 'Tyranny of Oil' Is A Grave Threat;
also an excerpt there of her book, The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry — and What We Must Do to Stop It.

extra added linky goodness:
A. Juhasz interviewed by Amy Goodman at Democracy Now!;
and maybe, coming soon to your neighborhood.

Thrift (1)

Image is over in a gawker cache, used in a Gizmodo post.  Been thinking about this.  Even been making lists of what I will and won't be buying - very unusual for me and my usual mode of instant gratification.  (I've posted asking who gets the photoshopping credit.)

Hello, toytowngermany.com

Can't imagine why, but there's been a lot of referals from toytowngermany.com.  Howdy, folks, you are now my #1 favorite German cultural site.  Lota will be interested to know that the lead post when I looked was about the new film, Der Baader-Meinhoff Komplex.

Backchannelling Macinwi

Why dunt Macinwi post hisself insteadda sembding it to me I dunno buts:

• History of presidents who have had the most positive effect on the economy (Capitol Hill Blue)
  
• The link to the Keating / McCain video that was over on the right column for a while.
  

And me, like everyone else, I think the recent This American Life explication was expeditious: Another Frightening Show About the Economy.

And I likes this Krugster chart and post.

Post-block party mayhem

good for monkeys!

some of mine own distant cousins hard at work in Japan

but they're taking away jobs from humans!

and jessferdahalibut-
here's Christopher Walken reciting Edgar Allen Poe's The Raven.

una cosa mas, for today.
one of the best at this weblogging business, and has been worthy of lengthy repeated perusals for all of the eight years he's been at it. Happy Anniversary to Mark W. &
his wood s lot

Park Slope (11215) oral histories wanted

DL sends us this note, from the Park Slope Civic Council:

Oral History Subjects Needed: The Civic Council is looking for older Park Slope lifers (or near-lifers) whose stories we can save for future generations. They will be interviewed this fall by students at the Secondary School for Research at John Jay, working with professionals from the Urban Memory Project and the Brooklyn Historical Society (BHS). The interviews will be recorded and videotaped, posted on the PSCC and BHS websites, and archived as a trove of Park Slope history. Send us names of possible subjects as soon as possible!

Nominees' names should go to editor at parkslopeciviccounsil.org

We know a number of folks on our block who have been here since the 60's and 70's, and I want to hook them up to do this.  

I know from some of the long-timers that when the hood (I'm talking about south of 9th Street and west of 7th or 8th Ave) hit rock bottom it was redlined by the banks (or maybe it was the redlining that sent it to the bottom).  You could not get a mortgage to buy a home or building at any price.  People borrowed from friends and family, paid cash, and did what they could to keep things safe.  The house Lori and I bought 11 years ago for what seemed like a fabulous amount of money was, we are told, available for $1,000 during the white flight.  Last year the real estate agents would have flogged it for 1,000 times that redlined price.  Of course, next year, it may be sitting somewhere closer to the middle of those numbers.  So, in the 60's and 70's, neighborhoods were let rot or taken down (depending on your point of view and address) by the banks refusing to give any mortgage at all, and in the 2000's they were ridiculously puffed up and may come down again because the banks came to give mortgages regardless of ability to repay.  The pendulum swings both ways, and seems to spend precious little time in the safe, fair, humane middle.  I mean, I'm old, but I'm not older than dirt, and it looks like I'm getting to see at least one zenith and nadir.

The sharia plan: proof positive that Sarah Palin is the Manchurian Candidate, and John McCain is not

OK, I get it.

There are ZERO two word anagrams in English for John McCain.

There is ONE two word anagram in English for Barack Obama - and that would be, of course,

• maraca kabob.

Tasty. And it's got a beat you can dance to.

There are TWO two word anagrams in English for Joseph Biden - both a little shady:

• jibed phones
• jibes phoned

If you want to go more casual, with Joe Biden (the guy from Scranton), you jump up to FIVE two word anagrams:

• jibed one
• jibed eon
• be joined
• jibe node
• jibe done

And for Sarah Palin? Begorah! FOURTEEN two word anagrams in English! And look at the words!

• piranha las
• piranhas la
• sharia plan
• alpha rains
• alpha ranis
• phrasal ani
• alphas rani
• alphas rain
• ashlar pain
• lanai harps
• lanai sharp
• lanais harp
• anal parish
• saran phial

(God bless the Internet Anagram Server.)

Who fat?

I love this sort of thing. And since positions on global perpetual war, global economic collapse, and global warming all seem too, I don't know, difficult, this NYTimes chart gives you something to sink your teeth into.

My contribution to the cause will be to chart the number of words used by the candidates in each of the debates. I didn't do the first presidential, but did do the VP. (Sassy decisively beat Joe on word count.) Will post.

Shameless promotion: James Guido, Advocate Life Care

Neighbor and friend James Guido - the same JG that famously chefs our yearly wine & puttanesca party and cooked dinner for 85 of us this last June - is the designer of a number Advocate (tm) health care products, and has recently taken over the Advocate LifeCare website. Hey, we're getting older, laddies and lassies.

(PS: am still sitting out at the stoopsale - we've now set free the decopage mirror.)

Block party, folks

Kids, a quick break away from the decidedly less cheery posts of the last few days. Nothing about the septuagenarian Republican candidate thinking with his flagpole. OK. Nothing about the masters of the universe not understanding the thing they've created. (Or maybe they're just good with the outcome?)

No - just good local fun. Our second black party of the year here on 11th Street 6th/7th 11215. Having a stoop sale right now - have already sold a Johnson mandolin to a guitarist down the block who's thinking maybe he can branch out a bit, a big suitcase, a mask, a bicycle helmet, a handbag, a folding beach chair, a magnum of not-so-good amarone. Still have some antique lamps, a wooden mantelpiece, a bunch of vases, a decoupage mirror, more luggage, some cookbooks. Come on over.

Pot luck at 6 PM. I hear the Brooklyn Courier is sending a photographer. I'm hoping big Al makes his Carolina BBQ. I hear R&L are making their paella. Coming over?

The cars are gone. Everyone's decompressing just a bit. Let's break out a couple of bottles of the home-made, why dontcha?

a few words about the republican candidate...

via Rolling Stone Online:
Make-Believe Maverick;
kinda makes me feel all sick & queasy,
reminds me a lot of the waste of space currently in office...

In the newspapers I read, the supreme court decisions that have been, effectively, the Achilles heel of the president of the senate, have been:

Still reeling a bit from Mel's post, we're now home from watching the vp debate @ Galapogos - highly recommended as a debate watching spot.

A few things.

Winking? How many times? Four times I know I shouted when it happened.

Achilles heel. She doesn't know what the term means. Achilles heel and Bush Doctrine. Funny coincidence. For me, a coincidence too: a few years back I found myself a little obsessed with the Iliad, read a number of versions of it. The Rage of Achilles (Fagels translation):

"Achilles, dear to Zeus...
you order me to explain Apollo's anger,
the distant deadly Archer? I will tell all.
But strike a pact with me, swear you will defend me
with all your heart, with words and strength of hand.
For there is a man I will enrage - I see it now -
a powerful man who lords it over all the Argives,
one the Acheans must obey... A mighty king
raging against an inferior, is too strong.
Even if he can swallow down his wrath today,
still he will nurse the burning in his chest
until, sooner or later, he sends it bursting forth.
Consider it closely, Achilles, will you save me?"

Wink.
Wink.
Sigh.
Whatever. And I've finally made it to the epilogue of Woodward's book and am free at last to move on. Damn him for making Bush seem, uh, human. Ahab, but human. Obsessed with body counts rather than diplomacy, but human. Do it if you can, drag yourself through the book. You might then feel disqualified from any further discussion re the surge - you'll have way too many facts to weigh in easily - but really, that's OK.

And something Biden said toward his closing - "I have never since that moment in my first year questioned the motive of another member of the Congress or Senate with whom I've disagreed. I've questioned their judgment." Woodward gives you everything you need for that equation.

Anyway, having made it to the end of that book this morning and feeling like I needed something engrossing on my way to Galapagos, I jumped into a bookstore & opted for Jose Saramago's Blindness. 10 pages in. Not going to be funny, I can tell already.

But back to the debate: what I wanted to say was that the single most explosive reaction from the young (we could have sired most the folks there - individually, not in total) was something, I don't even know what, Sarah P said about women's rights. Every woman in the place erupted. Plosive and abusive. Woo.

Back to you, Katie.

we blame it on SBCDS...

sudden brain cell death syndrome...

forgot to mention this in previous post (and we already included one hot news flash therein) for fans of the Guardian, there is now the Guardian America awaiting thy perusal...

sorry to be such a downer...

but the bad news only seems to get worser...
(me can say worser if me wants to, okay?)
two bits of chewy linky goodness that will make you want to spit up:
(provided us via the marvel that is wood s lot)...
With All Eyes on the Bailout,
House Passes Trillion-Dollar Defense Bill;
if that wasn't tough enough to wrap your tongue around,
Bush, economic crisis, and war.
much much more marvelous stuff there at mark's place,
much of it will lift thy spirits...

this last jessferdahalibut, The Arena via Politico;
archived topics located at the bottom of the current page.
News Flash: HOT off the presses:
New Yorker endorses BamBam

disgusted and scared

Just two quick things to report:

1. Received a letter yesterday from my bank (JP Morgan Chase) telling me that using their "proven valuation methods" they have determined the value of my apartment is about 50% of what I thought it was worth (and about 50% less than last month's reported sales prices for comparable units in my co-op) and that they were cutting off my home equity line of credit. A good friend and former client of mine, who owns an apartment in an Upper East Side high-rise, got the same letter -- although his apartment has apparently only lost 30% of its value. So, the credit crunch comes home -- quicker than I anticipated and just in time to prevent me from drawing against my HELOC to help pay my kid's school tuition. I am in the process of getting an independent appraisal to appeal this.
   
   
2. I am in a new role at work, and I now attend a weekly meeting, held Wednesday mornings, of the Internal Comms working group. As we need to distribute memos and such regarding any changes to banking regulations, etc., the director of this group was briefing us (five Americans, two Swiss) on the then upcoming Senate vote on the financial bailout. The director said it was likely that the Senate would pass the legislation, mused about what the House might do when they brought the bill back for another vote, and the actually told the people in the room that she didn't know whether the House had to pass the bill in order for it to be signed into law. When I told her that both bodies of Congress need to approve a bill before it can be presented to the President for his signature, she asked whether there weren't some mechanism for the Prez to authorize the Senate to override any House vote in this time of emergency.

I'm really feeling like we're in for a world of trouble.

Funky funky funky but - chic bikes!

I keep fiddling with the (Bianchi Milano) bike.  Last week I put on one of those sassy red chains from KMC.  (First time I'd had the original chain off since I bought the bike, lo those many years ago, and lordy it was skanky).  Last night I removed and regreased the seatpost and the oddball antitheft nut I have on there, and for good measure took apart and cleaned and greased the seat clamps holding my beloved Brooks Flyer Special.  Where am I going with this?  Nowhere, really, but saw this nice link to chic bikes at design por vida.

And... would any of us be able to remember if we were at Max's on this particular night?

thank goodness esteban's been picking up the slack...

'cause myowndamnedself been leaving plenty of that to pick up, eh?
pssst, ese Stumpy-dude, juju picked up cool t-shirt for ya the other day, mebbe mail it off to thee this weekend...

miscellaneous linky goodness from hither and yon:
3 day competition for alternative fueled vehicles,
Escape from Berkeley;
via the slacktivist, She doesn't care... & that chunka linky goodness came our way via Akkam's Razor;
print up a lot of these and post them all over your neighborhood in time for Thursday's debate: NOPE;
last up here some linkage of a very local nature,
Hardly Strictly Bluegrass be happenin' this weekend,
and meet Country Joe at C.J.'s Coffee House...

and una cosa mas, becuz ye know we love providing ye chewy chunky linky goodness,
lots & lots lovely live music bits at LiveDaily Sessions

now, in the meantime, and we know it be difficult in these very tryin' times, y'all maintain an even strain...

Begorrah. Ballyjamesduff

I don't know that I have the strength to relay what led to what, but trust me that there's been talk this morning of greased pigs on the block, and also of the vice presidential debate, and B has tried to get me to believe in a Miss America pageant once broken up by a tiarra wearing pig.  Well, along the line of fact checking (and I do not yet have verification of this event, and if you do, PLEASE SHARE IT), I've come across this wiki page on Ballyjamesduff, the first paragraph of which must once have been published as a surrealist novel. 

Arts & Letters Daily

Friend & neighbor, DL, reminds me about the Arts & Letters Daily - Gadzooks!  Seems impossible for so much stuff to be crammed into one place at one time.  Juju might enjoy this one of bazillions of entries:

David Foster Wallace’s voice was the voice in your own head. But what was the voice in his head?...A.O. Scott ... Morgan Meis ... Joshua Ferris ... Tim Kreider ... Michiko Kakutani ... Monica Hesse ...Colby Cosh ... Mark Caro ... Sam Anderson ...Christopher Hays ... Richard Woodward ... Tim Martin ... Steve Almond ... Peter Craven ... Julian Gough ... Lev Grossman ... Sven Birkerts, Joyce Carol Oates, et al. ... Fritz Lanham ... Elizabeth Wurtzel ...Verlyn Klinkenborg ... Alex Rose ... satire