Ideas are bursting into my public catch-pocket, since I've nowhere else to put them and their rattling din in my brain is incompatible with sleep.
First, I was very disturbed today. A cordoned off section of UAA's grassy commons hosted a sad group of pro-lifers rallying together. Obviously funded from somewhere, the group was standing awkwardly around a series of large poster-pictures mounted on elevated plywood signposts - dead babies, gore, hand-picked and shallow statistics. I'm a warm fuzzy pacifist, but these things disgusted me and to whatever extent it was their brain-child, so did the people.
Oddly enough, I saw them going to and leaving my Sociology class where the topic today was human sexuality. A statistic I learned there (not exact I'm sure): 68% of Americans these days believe abortion should be legal in at least some circumstances. 22% oppose it in all cases. Feel free to correct my numbers if I remembered wrong, but that was the gist.
So now I'd like to speak to them - the Anti-Right-ers. For clarity's sake I'm going to assume that the anti-abortion-rights folks I saw today were conservative, christian, republican, anti-gay or anti-gay-marriage, anti-socialism, anti-affirmative-action, anti-profanity/pornography, anti-cut-and-run (read that as anti-peace), ... and what I have to say (to you anti- type of person) is simple and falls into to categories: either (1) you have allowed your quiet subservience to turn into self-defeating stupidity, or (2) you are obviously more interested in self-righteous power games than saving fetal heartbeats. Let me explain.
1. Self-Defeating Stupidity: The GOP has taken on the mantle of Right-Wing Conservative values. Specifically this means that Rove and his predecessors realized they could get votes and stay in power by targeting a few topics. Ed Schultz says, "Gays, Guns, and God," but a more extensive list would include banning abortion and stem cell research, preventing the institutionalization of gay marriage, pushing back against Darwin's Theory of Evolution, and maybe something about guns now and then (guns aren't really a big issue these days if you ask me). Now, the GOP also courts rich people who want to protect their money from the government giving it to poor people (aka Reaganomics). One clear and easy sign that the GOP is in fact immoral is that their platform rests on this handful of ideologies. Any other legitimate political group would not only have an entire array of political priorities and viewpoints, but would have to constantly strive to unify its members due to their tenacious tendency of being composed of diversely opinionated human beings. Ergo, in my opinion, the GOP is a tool and nothing more. So the anti-women's-rights camp who are stupid enough fall right into a special trap the GOP set for them. The GOP knows the super-majority of Americans favor legal abortions (as does/did the Supreme Court), and yet they tout as one of their top five political battlefronts as banning abortion. The best part for the GOP is that a virtual non-issue such as banning abortion is an incredibly CHEAP way to buy a guaranteed (small) percentage of votes. For further understanding, I hope you'll take this imperfect analogy: say the Democrats wanted to strategically and cheaply pick up some small percentage of voters who are violently allergic to peanuts. So, they talk about peanut legislation, make peanut speeches, hold town hall meetings with peanut conversations, all blasting the damnable nut that kills so many every year. But, once they're in Congress, they sadly have to report that their effort to eradicate peanuts was a failure for now- though they'll say instead that the road to America-without-peanuts will be long and difficult. But, in truth the Democrats would snicker; they know that peanuts are too widespread and important to ever be banned in the U.S. Furthermore, they know that peanuts are heavily favored by beer drinkers, airline passengers, elephant trainers, and choosy moms. So, despite the fact that abortion will likely never be outlawed, your vote has been swept up for pennies on the dollar.
2. The Self-Righteous Power Game: You are a secretly hateful person who can't stand what you don't understand and without knowing it, you're doing harm to the world. While something eats away at your insides, you quietly lash out at the world by holding a racket against one or several activities you've decided to be vehemently opposed to. Abortion, something external and unrelated to you, is much more easily confronted than whatever soul-sickness you share with your fellow anti-lovers. Not to put you on the spot, but.... One of my favorite phenomenon of modern religion is the "born-again" christian. As an anecdote, this is most likely a weak willed or emotionally unstable human being who had a blank spot in their psyche and patched it with someone else's spiritual dogma. The best part about born-agains is that although they're usually pretty cool on the outside - humble, kind, etc. - you KNOW that their entire existence on the inside is predicated on their new-found moral superiority. Badda-bing - you're baptized, you're forgiven, and most importantly, you're not one of the "bad" people anymore. Sad but true: when you're starved of love, a bit of self-righteous hatred feels pretty good.
So why aren't you (1) or you (2) a special little flower for trying to save the unborn children? My evidence for accusing you of being ineffectual is fairly common knowledge among Progressives:
1. the GOP isn't interested in reducing abortions, but they ARE interested in increasing the power of government in the decisions of it's citizens (what better way to save the rich from the poor than to have legal jurisdiction over peoples' bodies).
2. the GOP supports abstinence only education, which is an oxymoron since standing in front of 30+ teenagers and begging them not to do what the media and their own bodies tell them to is a moron's idea of education.
3. research shows that leftist liberal condoms do way more to reduce abortions than the afore mentioned abstinence only thingy.
4. the GOP fears socialism, including paying for women's birth-control, medical insurance, or outreach clinics for the poor.
5. your self-righteousness, knowing no bounds, leads you to ASSUME that the best way to stop abortions is to ban it - like controvertible banned and burned books of old - when reality shows that the more you try to take away rights from someone, the harder and stronger they will fight back at you for it.
6. no one has ever convinced me that banning abortions won't lead to the good ol' dark ages of back alley abortions, where desperate women turn to their last option - maybe not in droves, but in enough numbers to make your recently approved ban seem like a bad idea.
7. your own lack of research into this subject has ejected you from the moral high ground and apparently pissed me off today.
If you still don't believe me, here's an excerpt from an op-ed article in the New York Times (http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/opinion/05kristof.html?scp=4&sq=abortion%20and%20Bush&st=cse is the link to view the Nov. 2006 article by Nicholas D. Kristof)
"One reason [abortion's decline slowed in Bush's administration] is that in half the states, family planning spending hasn’t kept pace with inflation. Thus, at last count, 11 percent of sexually active women and girls were not using contraception even though they did not want babies, up from 7 percent in 1995. Half of unwanted pregnancies come from that group.
Then there’s the rise in the poverty rate under Mr. Bush and the increase in the number of uninsured Americans. The number of women who say they need help paying for prescription contraceptives rose by one million between 2000 and 2004."
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 22, 2008
Thirty Second Chef
Well Thirty Second Chef is really the two minute chef this time. I'll keep working on that.
Sitka - Early arrival, Early breakfast, Ludvig's Bistro, quiet night with bar noise, Mellow Days Cafe, Twisty Turny Ferry back to Juneau, Back to work.
Bananas Foster, Josh the Recruit, Crew Chow Problems, "the wall", Bubblenet watching in Dibs, Rope swing, keeping food hot?
back at home.
Orville Delano Bunker (rejected)
John Brown Bunker
Caden
Parker
Pagan
Phinneas
Dylan
Thomas Glen
James Glen
Greyson
Earth oven
Office Chef
Debate boosters
diagonal thinking
kitchen reorganize
surety of the home
All stuff I was going to write about. Well, I wrote about it, kind of.
Now I'm thinking that "The Trees" would be a great name for a restaurant in downtown Eugene.
Politically, word from inside the Belt loop says Palin is making the Alaskans for Obama camp have to work harder. I'm sure a lot of Alaskans like the idea of voting for Palin, and furthermore, up here I'd say people are pretty familiar with the idea of having powerful people in Washington. I for one am going to get as many people I know to vote as possible. Stevens, Young, and others are older than Emperor Palpatine and keep Alaska rolling in braggarts and bacon. Personally I think Sugar and Bacon are better bedfellows, or at the very least, Milk and Honey Bacon.
Mmmmmyummmm
RECIPE TIME:
written by fingertip exclusively for the Thirty Second Chef:
Brown Basmati Chili Rice:
1 yellow onion,
Assorted fresh chiles, sliced or chopped, 1 cup (hotter or milder as you like - seeds out for mildest)
Toss with a few Tablespoons of Olive, Sesame, Peanut, or Vegetable oil over high heat
Cook a couple minutes - toss in a little wine if you have some leftover.
Add about a cup of whole baby carrots, bring up to heat and sautee briefly.
Add four or five smashed or minced cloves of garlic.
Add bbq or citrus marinated extra firm tofu, cut into cubes.
Add Three cups of brown basmati rice.
Add 9 Cups of water or chicken stock (I usually go 1/2 and 1/2 or 1/4 chix stock, 3/4 water).
Add a couple Tablespoons of Lemon Juice, fresh or not, up to you.
Cook at medium low heat with lid on for a while. When liquid goes away and rice is fluffy and soft, it is ready (47 1/2 minutes.) Towards the end of cooking, you can add any extra vegetables to the pot to steam - anything you're fond of, Zucchini, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Mustard Greens, green beans - whatever.
______
Top and Core Peppers, and stuff with:
Toss the following two ingredients with 1/4 cup basalmic vinegar.
1 1/2 - 2 cups wedged tomatoes with seeds removed
1/2 - 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese (the more the merrier)
make:
1/2 cup caramelized onions with 2 Tablespoons of garlic (saute a few minutes before onions are all done)
6-8 cups raw leaf spinach (or 4 oz. frozen chopped spinach) sauteed with onions and garlic
add:
-2 teaspoons dried Italian Seasoning
-more wine if you have some
-enough of the cooked brown rice from above to have enough filling to stuff all your peppers
-you can also add some meat here, like ham, salami, pepperoni, sausage, chicken, beef, or more tofu. mmmmmtofu.
Stuff topped and seeded peppers, surround with rice (add tomato sauce to the rice for 2nd baking, 1 8oz. can and 1/2 can of water or chix stock). Sprinkle Feta and chopped almonds over the rice and put tops back on the peppers.
Cover, bake on 400 for 1/2 hour, turn down to 350 for another 1/2 hour to 1 hour depending on how firm to mushy you want your bell peppers to be.
______________
Ginger Soy Dressing:
Mince one small chunk of ginger (about the size of a die) and chop a couple cloves of garlic.
Dice 1/4 of an onion.
Mix all these together with 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup sesame oil, and 1/4 cup rice vinegar. Puree all these items together (I use a hand held stick blender).
Rest of the Salad:
Soak 1/2 cup raisins in your favorite rum,
Using the waffle cut tool on a slight diagonal to the baby carrots, making three or four cuts the same distance apart from each other along the length of the baby carrot, or barring that, just cut baby carrots into quarters lengthwise.
Using a regular knife, cut the apple into quarters and trim the core out of each quarter. Then proceed to chop the apple slices with your tool, or into similarly sized pieces as the carrots. In other words, small and edible.
Toss most, but not all, of the dressing into the salad.
Chop 1 cup whole almonds and toss them into a hot pan. Add 2 Tbsp. honey and stir until honey gets really hot (hot sticky, be careful!) and almost begins to smoke a little. Quickly toss in about 1 Tablespoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of Kosher salt, and all the leftover rum from the rum raisins turn heat to low. Stir until liquid is almost gone, remove, let cool and try to separate it into chunks while it cools (you may have to chop it with a knife once it cools, it's basically just candy at this point).
Toss raisins and Almond Rum Candy crumbles into the salad and then eat. (hopefully the peppers are about done by now.
Serves 4 - 8 people depending on how big they are.
Total Cooking time: 500 hours and 30 seconds.
Sitka - Early arrival, Early breakfast, Ludvig's Bistro, quiet night with bar noise, Mellow Days Cafe, Twisty Turny Ferry back to Juneau, Back to work.
Bananas Foster, Josh the Recruit, Crew Chow Problems, "the wall", Bubblenet watching in Dibs, Rope swing, keeping food hot?
back at home.
Orville Delano Bunker (rejected)
John Brown Bunker
Caden
Parker
Pagan
Phinneas
Dylan
Thomas Glen
James Glen
Greyson
Earth oven
Office Chef
Debate boosters
diagonal thinking
kitchen reorganize
surety of the home
All stuff I was going to write about. Well, I wrote about it, kind of.
Now I'm thinking that "The Trees" would be a great name for a restaurant in downtown Eugene.
Politically, word from inside the Belt loop says Palin is making the Alaskans for Obama camp have to work harder. I'm sure a lot of Alaskans like the idea of voting for Palin, and furthermore, up here I'd say people are pretty familiar with the idea of having powerful people in Washington. I for one am going to get as many people I know to vote as possible. Stevens, Young, and others are older than Emperor Palpatine and keep Alaska rolling in braggarts and bacon. Personally I think Sugar and Bacon are better bedfellows, or at the very least, Milk and Honey Bacon.
Mmmmmyummmm
RECIPE TIME:
written by fingertip exclusively for the Thirty Second Chef:
Brown Basmati Chili Rice:
1 yellow onion,
Assorted fresh chiles, sliced or chopped, 1 cup (hotter or milder as you like - seeds out for mildest)
Toss with a few Tablespoons of Olive, Sesame, Peanut, or Vegetable oil over high heat
Cook a couple minutes - toss in a little wine if you have some leftover.
Add about a cup of whole baby carrots, bring up to heat and sautee briefly.
Add four or five smashed or minced cloves of garlic.
Add bbq or citrus marinated extra firm tofu, cut into cubes.
Add Three cups of brown basmati rice.
Add 9 Cups of water or chicken stock (I usually go 1/2 and 1/2 or 1/4 chix stock, 3/4 water).
Add a couple Tablespoons of Lemon Juice, fresh or not, up to you.
Cook at medium low heat with lid on for a while. When liquid goes away and rice is fluffy and soft, it is ready (47 1/2 minutes.) Towards the end of cooking, you can add any extra vegetables to the pot to steam - anything you're fond of, Zucchini, Cauliflower, Broccoli, Mustard Greens, green beans - whatever.
______
Top and Core Peppers, and stuff with:
Toss the following two ingredients with 1/4 cup basalmic vinegar.
1 1/2 - 2 cups wedged tomatoes with seeds removed
1/2 - 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese (the more the merrier)
make:
1/2 cup caramelized onions with 2 Tablespoons of garlic (saute a few minutes before onions are all done)
6-8 cups raw leaf spinach (or 4 oz. frozen chopped spinach) sauteed with onions and garlic
add:
-2 teaspoons dried Italian Seasoning
-more wine if you have some
-enough of the cooked brown rice from above to have enough filling to stuff all your peppers
-you can also add some meat here, like ham, salami, pepperoni, sausage, chicken, beef, or more tofu. mmmmmtofu.
Stuff topped and seeded peppers, surround with rice (add tomato sauce to the rice for 2nd baking, 1 8oz. can and 1/2 can of water or chix stock). Sprinkle Feta and chopped almonds over the rice and put tops back on the peppers.
Cover, bake on 400 for 1/2 hour, turn down to 350 for another 1/2 hour to 1 hour depending on how firm to mushy you want your bell peppers to be.
______________
Ginger Soy Dressing:
Mince one small chunk of ginger (about the size of a die) and chop a couple cloves of garlic.
Dice 1/4 of an onion.
Mix all these together with 1/2 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup sesame oil, and 1/4 cup rice vinegar. Puree all these items together (I use a hand held stick blender).
Rest of the Salad:
Soak 1/2 cup raisins in your favorite rum,
Using the waffle cut tool on a slight diagonal to the baby carrots, making three or four cuts the same distance apart from each other along the length of the baby carrot, or barring that, just cut baby carrots into quarters lengthwise.
Using a regular knife, cut the apple into quarters and trim the core out of each quarter. Then proceed to chop the apple slices with your tool, or into similarly sized pieces as the carrots. In other words, small and edible.
Toss most, but not all, of the dressing into the salad.
Chop 1 cup whole almonds and toss them into a hot pan. Add 2 Tbsp. honey and stir until honey gets really hot (hot sticky, be careful!) and almost begins to smoke a little. Quickly toss in about 1 Tablespoon of butter, 1 teaspoon of Kosher salt, and all the leftover rum from the rum raisins turn heat to low. Stir until liquid is almost gone, remove, let cool and try to separate it into chunks while it cools (you may have to chop it with a knife once it cools, it's basically just candy at this point).
Toss raisins and Almond Rum Candy crumbles into the salad and then eat. (hopefully the peppers are about done by now.
Serves 4 - 8 people depending on how big they are.
Total Cooking time: 500 hours and 30 seconds.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Keanu Charles Reeves
PK to the world
[last post at pkpoetry.blogspot.com is poetry I greatly admire that Gil Scott Heron wrote and delivered, an mp3 file I ran across.]
Last Thursday we rushed out of Anchorage to catch the night flight on time, bringing us safely without sleep to an airport. JFK arrivals led to the Air-train to a Manhattan subway line. Grand Central came next and little time was spent remembering the intervening hours of all the afore mentioned. Our friend Jessica, originally Carey's college roommate Jessica grew up near Beacon in upstate New York. Follow the Hudson like the train we caught Friday morning, and you'll wind up as us, in Fishkill. This town, "kill" meaning Creek in Dutch, isn't violent. The I-84 diner in front of the hotel we drove the rental car to had the feel well funded, well founded, mom and pop run homestyle restaurant or Denny's hybrid; open 24 hours a day, sometimes 25; stacks of pies and pastries; stacks of menu items and pages and pages as thick as a homemade pancake. Napped, woke, ate, slept, tossed, turned, woke. Road-toured; self-guided.
Mostly looking at houses and prices and trying a soak in maneuver as a passenger or a driver. Grumpy but playing, having fun looking all over. History waits at every T-junction. Every town has the name and the story of someplace old where the recognizable names come from. Seventeen-O-something built house with the wood plank floors and the same utensils and cookware.
Everywhere we go we're from Alaska. Palin means what? Just some lady that got promoted for all the wrong reasons. Reasonable to say she was fair and decent in many ways while here, though all politicians are really a bit difficult to trust now aren't they.
Sunday wedding day - couldn't get the jet-lag out of my eyes the night before. Get to Cat Rock where a large apparently wealthy family built a house/castle on the beautifully sculpted crest of hill, looking down on West Point military place school, but more importantly is the atmosphere of thousands of trees and rolling hills, and a beautiful, sunny, humid, swimming pool air, end of summer Sunday. Jessica's sister and her groom are Wiccan, so this double sister ceremony was Wiccan (cups, chalices, and blessings to elements). The after party was in wedding fashion with the addition of a pack of Lindy-Hop dancers; Jessica's favorite past-time for many years now, ever since dance classes at OSU, is Lindy-Hop. It looks like a combination of swing dancing and running in place. Or maybe some kind of bouncy step-aerobics. Last but not least, was the bride-sisters performance of the "Time Warp" from Rocky Horror Picture Show, lip-syncing to a semi-participating audience.
Monday we walked the Vanderbuilt estate, I fell asleep on Jess's mom's couch after feasting on leftover wedding food. Never did eat the wedding cupcake. Did bring home some New York maple syrup as reception gifts. Took back the rental car Monday at dinner time and took the 6:30 ish train back to the Big Red Delicious of Times Square. We needed to wait 'til 5:00 am get back on the subway to return to JFK and home. Instead of waiting in sleep, we waited awake, wandering the blocks. We saw the Lehman Brothers building, ate at Havana (where Plantains taste like Bananas) the Chimmichurri sauce has some magical blend of peanut or coconut oil or something that was definitely mmmmyummmy. We passed half a dozen Starbucks, stopped at the last one, had a chat about Liberal views on Palin and how we like Alaska with a nice guy acting cashier at Starbucks. Apparently they closed at midnight and we saw him later as we were momentarily encamped on a porch trying to raise the internet. Starbucks guy stopped and asked why we weren't at the bar he'd suggested. We said we were going there next. But then we moved along, not liking the Sports-ish bar and going on, and still walking, moving the computer from bag to bag to get comfortable, taking pictures of menus and trying not to feel guilty about "borrowing" ideas and prices (research you see). Say it needless anyway that New York is an unnecessarily big place filled with wonder - kind of like "The Matrix" of Keanu Reeves fame. Then again we didn't get on the tour bus or "see much daylight" and granted we took the subway and a bus to JFK at three o'clock in the morning, but hey, this is f'ing New York we're talking about. We weren't mugged and no buildings fell on - wait, that's in bad taste. I recognize that.
Coming up next time...a multimedia extravaganza! A coniferous epoch of epicurean analysis, the piece de la whatever - the first in a series of Thirty Second Digressions:
The Thirty Second Chef! (actual times may vary)
[last post at pkpoetry.blogspot.com is poetry I greatly admire that Gil Scott Heron wrote and delivered, an mp3 file I ran across.]
Last Thursday we rushed out of Anchorage to catch the night flight on time, bringing us safely without sleep to an airport. JFK arrivals led to the Air-train to a Manhattan subway line. Grand Central came next and little time was spent remembering the intervening hours of all the afore mentioned. Our friend Jessica, originally Carey's college roommate Jessica grew up near Beacon in upstate New York. Follow the Hudson like the train we caught Friday morning, and you'll wind up as us, in Fishkill. This town, "kill" meaning Creek in Dutch, isn't violent. The I-84 diner in front of the hotel we drove the rental car to had the feel well funded, well founded, mom and pop run homestyle restaurant or Denny's hybrid; open 24 hours a day, sometimes 25; stacks of pies and pastries; stacks of menu items and pages and pages as thick as a homemade pancake. Napped, woke, ate, slept, tossed, turned, woke. Road-toured; self-guided.
Mostly looking at houses and prices and trying a soak in maneuver as a passenger or a driver. Grumpy but playing, having fun looking all over. History waits at every T-junction. Every town has the name and the story of someplace old where the recognizable names come from. Seventeen-O-something built house with the wood plank floors and the same utensils and cookware.
Everywhere we go we're from Alaska. Palin means what? Just some lady that got promoted for all the wrong reasons. Reasonable to say she was fair and decent in many ways while here, though all politicians are really a bit difficult to trust now aren't they.
Sunday wedding day - couldn't get the jet-lag out of my eyes the night before. Get to Cat Rock where a large apparently wealthy family built a house/castle on the beautifully sculpted crest of hill, looking down on West Point military place school, but more importantly is the atmosphere of thousands of trees and rolling hills, and a beautiful, sunny, humid, swimming pool air, end of summer Sunday. Jessica's sister and her groom are Wiccan, so this double sister ceremony was Wiccan (cups, chalices, and blessings to elements). The after party was in wedding fashion with the addition of a pack of Lindy-Hop dancers; Jessica's favorite past-time for many years now, ever since dance classes at OSU, is Lindy-Hop. It looks like a combination of swing dancing and running in place. Or maybe some kind of bouncy step-aerobics. Last but not least, was the bride-sisters performance of the "Time Warp" from Rocky Horror Picture Show, lip-syncing to a semi-participating audience.
Monday we walked the Vanderbuilt estate, I fell asleep on Jess's mom's couch after feasting on leftover wedding food. Never did eat the wedding cupcake. Did bring home some New York maple syrup as reception gifts. Took back the rental car Monday at dinner time and took the 6:30 ish train back to the Big Red Delicious of Times Square. We needed to wait 'til 5:00 am get back on the subway to return to JFK and home. Instead of waiting in sleep, we waited awake, wandering the blocks. We saw the Lehman Brothers building, ate at Havana (where Plantains taste like Bananas) the Chimmichurri sauce has some magical blend of peanut or coconut oil or something that was definitely mmmmyummmy. We passed half a dozen Starbucks, stopped at the last one, had a chat about Liberal views on Palin and how we like Alaska with a nice guy acting cashier at Starbucks. Apparently they closed at midnight and we saw him later as we were momentarily encamped on a porch trying to raise the internet. Starbucks guy stopped and asked why we weren't at the bar he'd suggested. We said we were going there next. But then we moved along, not liking the Sports-ish bar and going on, and still walking, moving the computer from bag to bag to get comfortable, taking pictures of menus and trying not to feel guilty about "borrowing" ideas and prices (research you see). Say it needless anyway that New York is an unnecessarily big place filled with wonder - kind of like "The Matrix" of Keanu Reeves fame. Then again we didn't get on the tour bus or "see much daylight" and granted we took the subway and a bus to JFK at three o'clock in the morning, but hey, this is f'ing New York we're talking about. We weren't mugged and no buildings fell on - wait, that's in bad taste. I recognize that.
Coming up next time...a multimedia extravaganza! A coniferous epoch of epicurean analysis, the piece de la whatever - the first in a series of Thirty Second Digressions:
The Thirty Second Chef! (actual times may vary)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)