the moon has a good baritone.

sweet justice

2009-01-05T15:02:00.001-08:00

i think the 'sho yo flesh' story shouldn't apply to everybody, but isn't it lovely when boys who have broken up with you end up dating completely lame girls several years later, and both of their waists have expanded by a factor of ten? i know, i know. it's almost mean. except that they broke up with you so it's only even. that, and you weren't the one eating all that bojangles at some winston-salem dump. dear rat, i knew you when you'd LOST your babyfat. what on earth are you doing putting it back on?

terrible, i know. but so true.

everyday mischief

2008-08-27T10:08:00.000-07:00

today's drawings are...

easy oriental salad

2008-07-05T15:45:00.000-07:00

INGREDIENTS

* 1 (16 ounce) package broccoli coleslaw mix (i used just the regular coleslaw mix)
* 2 (3 ounce) packages chicken flavored ramen noodles
* 1 bunch green onions, chopped
* 1 cup unsalted peanuts
* 1/2 head read cabbage, diced
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 1/3 cup cider vinegar (if you have soy vinegar, add it.)

i also used soy sauce to taste, and a little less sugar.

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large salad bowl, combine the slaw, broken noodles and green onions.
2. Whisk together the sugar, oil, vinegar and ramen seasoning packets. Pour over salad and toss to evenly coat. Refrigerate until chilled; top with peanuts.

someone try this with mandarin oranges, please? dres won't touch 'em, so i haven't done it yet.

God in the NYT? .... He does Exist!

2008-07-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/06/world/middleeast/06stone.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
[but only for Israel]

apple dapple cake

2008-07-05T15:15:00.000-07:00

Apple Dapple Cake

3 cups all purpose flour
2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 beaten eggs
1 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/2 cup apple juice
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups finely chopped cooking apples (peeled)
3/4 cup chopped toasted pecans
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup whipping cream

In a very large mixing bowl, combine flour, granulated sugar, baking soda and salt. Make a well in the center and set aside. In a medium bowl, combine eggs, oil, apple juice and vanilla extract. Stir in apples and toasted pecans. Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring until combined. Spread batter into a greased and floured 13x9x2-inch baking pan. Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

For sauce, in a small saucepan, combine brown sugar, butter and cream. Cook and stir over medium heat just until bubbly and all of the sugar is dissolved. Cool slightly. Drizzle the warm sauce over the cake. Reheat sauce for leftover cake.

bex -- can we alter this w cornmeal?

monkey bread!

2008-07-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

Preheat oven to 350°F
1. Cut biscuits into quarters. Combine 3/4 cup white sugar with the cinnamon. Roll each biscuit quarter in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.
2. In a cake pan or baking dish (bundt pan is best), layer the biscuits and the pecans.
3. In a saucepan, slowly bring milk, remaining 3/4 cup white sugar, brown sugar, and butter to a boil. Remove from heat. Pour over biscuits in the pan. Bake for 30 minutes or until it is cooked to your liking! Flip pan over onto a serving dish and serve right away!
Voilà!
Preparation Time: about 10 minutes
Cooking Time: about 30 minutes

Ingredients: (for 8 people)

4 tubes Biscuits (refridgerated)
3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
3/4 cup Additional Granulated Sugar
1/3 cup Brown Sugar
1/4 cup Evaporated Milk
1 cup Butter
1.5 cups Chopped Pecans
2 tsp. Cinnamon

How to make it:
Variations:

Although the classic monkey bread recipe calls for pecans, of course you can use chopped almonds instead! Here are a couple more ideas to give your monkey bread some originality:

Layer biscuits with apple chunks and walnuts... mmmm!

Layer biscuits with strawberry jam and fresh strawberry slices. For this variation, you would want to cut out the cinnamon and maybe replace the pecans with almonds. Of course, you can also use this same idea with other fruits… for example: apricot jam and apricot jelly or raspberry jam and mixed berries. Just remember to cut out the cinnamon! Unless you're using apple or pear jam with apples or pears! Have fun creating your own fruit combos!

Chocolate lover? Layer with chocolate chunks or chocolate chips. Just remember to cut out the cinnamon. Enjoy whatever monkey bread recipe you come up with! You can't go wrong because they are all so good!

spring at columbia

2008-05-16T10:16:00.001-07:00

take away the takeaway... PLEASE.

2008-05-16T09:54:00.000-07:00

rs do you have the takeaway there?
rp no
is it any good
we're going to talk about it in class
how pub radio's trying to reach out
dod you like it?
12:43 PM
rs i hate it
i HATE IT
it's horrible
it's like talk radio for the left
only two things:
(1) i don't get as riled up by it as i do right radio,becase it's not issue-based at all and frankly way boring
and (2) it's like listening to z100, but no good tunes
they spent ten minutes this morning laughing and going on about this interview with this kid from upenn whose class went to la and waited in tuxes and gowns to get inside the new jack black movie premier
i mean seriously
do they think i'm dumb?
did i fail a public radio test i didn't know about?
why am i damned to this!!!!
12:49 PM
rp LOL
thank you
that will be helpful in my discussion of it
a critic at the huffington post hates it as well.
rs it SUCKS
and everyone at the j-school just looves loove slooves it
please
they love it because they're HIRING
that's just about it
it's the biggest bullshit
i don't need some liberal cackling - they don't laugh, aodora CACKLES - into my ear at six a.m.
rp LOL
rs i mean honestly, unless they intend to start delivering coffee to me before they air this, it's totally not going to fly
four pm sure
not at six
rp i'm quoting some of this in class
rs and definiltey not in the place of MORNING EDITION
quote away
rp LOL
rs so my friend adam works there
rp yeah?
rs and he said, moreover, all of their video will be produced internally.
and i said
you're going to try video too!?!?1
DEAR GOD
first of all
rp LOL
rs public radio faces on video.
enough said there.
second
rp i know
rs are they going to cackle at me there too????
because i at least don't have to imagine their gnashing teeth
and now
i will have to see it
i wrote wnyc
and i said
listen.
here are copies of the last five checks i have given you.
this amounts to almost 1/20th my salary.
which is what i feel public radio is worth to me.
it is pledge
and i am not pledging.
in fact
rp nope
rs i will pledge one thing only
rp tal?
rs i will not give you ANYTHING until you give me morning edition back.
don't fuck with creatures of habit
we're radio listeners
you know?
rp especially news creatures
yes
rs if i wanted entertainment
i'd turn on the today show
and at least get to laugh jovially with al roker
they aren't al
if they get al roker
rp nope
rs we'll talk.
rp LOL
i'm going to make them listen to a commerical radio interivew about pigeon poop at the cleveland airport
rs ooh
can they put that on instead of the takeaway?
can you talk to laura walker???

u really got a hold on me

2008-05-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

when i was a kid i really thought this was "you really've got to hold on me." i always thought smokey was going to leave someone and this made me cry. my mother helped clear this up once in for all... but i kind of think that's why she started me in therapy.

friday newsbusters

2008-05-16T09:33:00.001-07:00

Billions of electronic-eating 'crazy rasberry ants' invade Texas

It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronic.

Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges – all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled.

Having ruined pumps at a sewage facility, the ants are now marching towards Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre and William P. Hobby airport, Houston, putting state officials in a panic. “They’re itty-bitty things, and they’re just running everywhere,” said Patsy Morphew, a resident of Pearland, on the Gulf Coast.

She spends hours sweeping them off her patio and scooping them out of her pool by the cupful. “There’s just thousands and thousands of them. If you’ve seen a car racing, that’s how they are. They’re going fast, fast, fast. They’re crazy.”

now the question is, do they think cars are yummy too?

Leftover from Europe

2008-05-16T09:29:00.000-07:00

This is better than finding the beer opener we stole from our vienna hotel in my bag this morning. Mmm, bottle opener in the morning. Damn, God, you're good.

food like us: fast and cheap

2008-05-16T09:24:00.001-07:00

raleigh's doctored work-it-mom peanut butter chicken

1/2 cup natural peanut butter
1/2 cup water
2T soy sauce, or Tamari (which is basically gluten free soy sauce)
1T brown sugar (if your peanut butter is sweetened skip this)
2T veg oil
3 cloves garlic, minced OR 6 cloves roasted garlic (cut off top of garlic, drizzle oil on top, wrap in tin foil, stick in muffin pan so it sits up straight, and Bake 450 for 20-30 mins)
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper (use more if you would like this anything but mild... i use five whole red french peppers, dried and hand-crumbled)
4cups broccoli
3 tomatoes - vine ripened and chopped (or 1 small can diced or crushed tomatoes - - just nothing pasty)
4 chicken breasts

Mix all the ingredients through the crushed red pepper into a mixing bowl. do this with a spatula at first and finish with a fork to get it smooth. if you're using roasted garlic, it'll mix in smoother -- and does your part keeping the vamps at bay.

Cover this and set aside. The longer you set it aside, the more the flavors will meld together and the spiciness will come through. If you think to make this in the morning, even better. I thought to make it last weekend. very smart of me.

Cut the crowns off of your broccoli. if you're me, you've just doubled the broccoli quotient anyway, because you're looking at it and thinking mmm tasty. and you know what, it's healthy. throw it in. and don't be an idiot and think you can use olive oil here. you can't. this is my time to remind you. you need natural veggie oil. or canola, if you can't find veggie. and sunflower if you can't find that. if you want this to be super delicious and have been starved in myanmar for hte last two weeks, you could use peanut oil. but when your heart clogs and you have to go into a triple peanut butter bypass, don't say i didn't warn you.

I fillet the chicken breast, as usual, and then slice it into strips. This makes cooking the chicken so much easier. salt and pepper it a bit before you put it in the pan. i load it up with pepper, obviously. Pour a little bit of oil into the pan, just enough so that it doesn't stick, perhaps a tablespoon or two.

After the chicken is slightly browned on the outside remove it from the heat.

Dump the broccoli on top. Add about 1/4 - 1/2 cup of water to the skillet and put the lid on it. (this is totally important.) If you've thought about it, this is a good time to use less water and some beer. or some cheap champagne. gives it a little punch. don't use wine though. Then let the chicken and broccoli steam. This ensures that the chicken is cooked all the way through, yet remains moist, while the broccoli cooks.

Remove from heat. Ooooooh, steamy. You can lean over and give yourself an impromptu facial if you desire, though this tends to illicit weird responses from dates. They can stuff it though. My skin is better.

Almost all of the water should be gone now. If there is a small but left don't worry about it. If there is still a significant amount just pour it off.

Dump the peanut butter mixture into the skillet.

Gently stir to coat. If you are too rough all the broccoli will break and that will be a tragedy. Tragedy, I tell you.
Serve with rice. Or coconut rice if you're feeling crazy. (follow instructions on jasmine rice packet, but use 4 - 2 cans - coconut milk, 3 cups rice, 2 cups water. let liquids get all boily, add rice, stir, reduce, steam for fifteen.)

Better as leftovers.
Delicious.

Alternate: follow all the instructions for peanut sauce, then roll drumsticks in it. Take a pack of corn flakes and salt and pepper them (add some delicious cayenne pepper), toss in some breadcrumbs if you have them (progresso's best), and and then roll the drums in that. Bake 325 until done.

This recipe is a total rip of Chris Jordan, who we all know I'm madly in love with in the kitchen. Mine's spicier and a has a few more ingredients (and is a little more meaty) but hers is the place to start. The drumsticks, though, are basically my grandmother's. Only she didn't use soy sauce. And there's crisco involved. Skip it. She says honey might be a good addition in the flakes... gets it that nice golden crispyness. Nana knows best.

Andres is buying roller skates

2008-05-16T09:23:00.001-07:00

This is a cat. Not a horse.

2008-05-16T09:19:00.001-07:00

Today at the circus, I mean New York, we present... Thumbelina!!! The world's smallest horse! At an impressive seventeen and a half inches, this little guy clippity clops around with the best of them. Barbaro, move over. This one's so little the wind could BLOW HIM DOWN THE TRACK FASTER.

More from AMNH.

insanely delicious food from chris jordan

2008-05-15T10:14:00.000-07:00

now that everyone and their mother blogs, it's time for your stomach to thank the heavens: finally, moms spill the beans.

really.

chris jordan's "Work it, mom!" food blog is my die-hard favorite. she doesn't go wrong on anything -- im even willing to touch cauligrossness, which means two things:
1. hell froze over.
2. this mom knows her stuff.

my mother could never get me CLOSE to a vegetable that resemebled anything icky, sticky, or like a body part. off limits therefore were: avos (green slime), green beans (well the way green beans are cooked in the south... which means they aren't "done" until they are so brown you never knew they were green), and caulis (brain). but she throws some honey and pepper on a cauli and i'm already asking for seconds.

delicious.
but -- DEFINITELY try her peanut butter chicken. add a can of crushed tomatoes (or real tomatoes if you're feeling rich) to the peanut butter... it's very traditionally african then, which gives it a nice meatyness. you can also sub out the chicken and broc and add in spinach, beans, and mango. i followed her recipe to the T on the the peanut butter sauce (and definitely make the coconut rice, btw), and then put in the pan:
- 1 can cannellini beans
- a bunch of garlic (the more the better, wards off the vamps)
- half the juice of 1 can of mango.
let it simmer up and cook it... then add in the spinach (frozen is fine, just make sure it's defrosted a bit in the nuker) and let it steam with a lid on it for a few minutes.
- call your boyfriend frantically because you do not have a can of crushed tomatoes because you walked out of the market without it like an idiot and are now standing in the kitchen in a polka dot night shirt and cheer shorts. have him pick some up on way home.
- turn everything on low till he gets there.
- add crushed tomatoes - whatever seems a good amount to you, i like about 2 cups worth for this - and simmer away.
- add some crushed mango - i did three slices, cubed. it adds a nice sweetness.

i also used a billion dried red french peppers in here. mine's firehouse... so just a word to the wise.

i think she's hit on the perfect recipe here with her peanut butter sauce, so next time 'round i'm going to cover it in a well-seasoned ritz/corn flake crust (you know you want to use potato chips. and you know it's gonna be good.) and throw it in the oven on Bake 350 for some picnic drums. I figure they'll be delicious in the summer with a side salad.

morality for beautiful girls

2008-05-15T10:13:00.001-07:00

oy vey, this long? well no more veraci for me, so back to the real world.
things to do:
1. finish eating last night's leftovers.
2. finish procastinating so as to start masters thesis.
3. masters thesis.
4. procastinate for all of the above.
5. read fabulously awesome book currently in my hands. (see title)

loft slideshow

2007-09-13T14:32:00.000-07:00

all the descriptions are on my flickr page too!

King Harvest Has Surely Come

2007-09-12T08:04:00.001-07:00

Matthew pictures!
... and a special happy birthday to alex who (hold your breath) turns 15 today. and i can still remember (vividly) going to see him when he was born. Em's birthday is soon too (sweet... 17) and, of course, we have the Kelsey-Raleigh 9 Day Birthday Sweep!

FOX explains the economy with strippers

2007-08-18T08:52:00.000-07:00

... and the world makes so much more sense. fully story on veraci.

where in the world is carmen sandiego???

2007-08-18T08:50:00.001-07:00

if you've been wondering where i've been, why i've fallen off the face of the planet, et al, let me grant you the three most basic answers i can:
1. andrew...
2. butler library
3. VERACIFIER

if you haven't visited our friends over at NNN lately, start moving your traffic. really, you don't like pictures ofm y baby brother nearly as much as making fun of jenna bush's new engagement. (will they serve bojangles??? see, i told you it's fun.)

so, GO.

oh and, yeah, i'm blogging there. unabashed self-promotion.

falling slowly

2007-07-06T12:22:00.001-07:00

THE TEMPS!!!

2007-06-26T19:05:00.001-07:00

...

2007-06-25T20:40:00.001-07:00

= : )

the way i love you

2007-06-25T20:31:00.001-07:00

See the World - Gomez

2007-06-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

Day to day
Where do you want to be?
Cause now you're trying to pick a fight
With everyone you need

You seem like a soldier
Who's lost his composure
You're wounded and play a waiting game
In no-man's land no-one's to blame

See the world
Find an old fashioned girl
And when all's been said and done
It's the things that are given, not won
Are the things that you earned

Empty handed, surrounded by a senseless scene
With nothing of significance
Besides a shadow of a dream
You sound like an old joke
You're worn out, a bit broke
An' askin me time and time again
But the answer's still the same

See the world
Find an old fashioned girl
And when all's been said and done
It's the things that are given, not won
Are the things that you earned

You've got a chance to put things right
So how's it going to be?
Lay down your arms now
And put us beyond doubt
So reach out it's not too far away
Don't mess around now, don't delay

See the world...

making silk-screen fun at home!

2007-06-21T07:32:00.000-07:00

it's time for those RIOTS NOT DIETS shirts, ladies.

Another Celia Star

2007-06-19T11:41:00.000-07:00

... from the woman who reminds me which way home is.

FROM THE BELLE TOWER
We all love Paris' trauma and drama

By CELIA RIVENBARK

Paris Hilton's teary screams to her mama, pleading with her to save her from the slammer (and just as bad, the color orange which is almost impossible to wear) told me all I needed to know. Acorn, meet tree. Both believed that they were entitled to special privileges and what possessed that numbskull judge not to see that?

On the other hand, the unseemly scene softened my view of Paris, who at 26, is getting a bit long in the tooth for the youthful indiscretion defense. With only her mama to save her, as they reached out perfectly manicured hands to one another, I was reminded of Michelangelo's beautiful cracked fresco depicting the outstretched fingers of God reaching to Adam. OK, maybe not.

Truth is, I know lots of Southern women who had two or three knee babies by the time they were 26, so there wasn't a lot of time for drunken dinners at Il Sole followed by clubbing and homemade porn with one's current squeeze.

Paris, turning to her mama to fix everything, delivered a quintessentially Southern, and possibly even heartfelt, performance.

Sure, her mama's as shallow as a pie plate but, even so, Paris knew that when all else failed, Mama would fix things or at least die trying.

Remember in "Steel Magnolias" how Sally Field gave her daughter a kidney? If she had been a real Southern mama, she'd have offered both of 'em up along with her heart.

I'm not saying that being a protective mama is strictly a Southern quality (curse?), but I do believe that a Southern mama is statistically more likely to plunge a butter knife into the gut of anyone who would ever hurt her baby girl, even if the baby girl is old enough to wear faux denim Koret pantsuits and order "senior coffee."

We simply won't accept seeing our daughters unhappy, even if they've brought it all on themselves.

You don't ever read headlines about a mama in, say, North Dakota, plotting to kill off her daughter's competition for chief cheerleader or prom queen or even valedictorian (if'n she's homely).

Naw. It's always some crazy Southern mama who does stuff like that. That, and banana pudding warm from the oven, is how we show our love.

Oh, and one more thing. I'm tired of the same people who seem to know every nuance of Paris' problems complaining about how she's dominating the news. ("If only they'd stop talking about her, I could resume reading my Mensa journals. Osgood, my good man, another snifter of brandy!") Shut up; you love it or you'd turn the danged channel.

Y'all know I'm right.

ONLINE | To read past Celia Rivenbark columns, go to her page at MyrtleBeachOnline.com.

swimming upstream

2007-06-19T11:39:00.000-07:00

i'm just listening to amos lee sing night train and thinking about love, faith, and strength.

“Consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything.”

James 1:2-4

wild wild wild: glow in the dark printer ink, diy dye

2007-06-19T10:38:00.002-07:00

How Make Glowing Printer Ink - Watch more funny videos here

be my love

2007-06-19T10:38:00.001-07:00

Dispatches from New Hampshire

2007-06-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Just an hour before the democratic debates are set to begin and the press has convered on Manchester, NH.

The old guard - CNN, ABC, FOX (NBC, where are you?) - takes up about fifty percent of the gym here at St. Anselm College, but the real story is all the international press that's here.

El Mundo has four representatives, Swedish TV, Swedish newspapers, French newspapers, Danish newspapers - everyone has sent a small flock to cover this: Election '08 -- in '07.

American rationalizations of this extra-early election coverage span the guantlet: frustration over the war in Iraq, celebrity effect, the You Tube Generation - but what is the foreign interest? Yes, the election of our next president has a huge effect on the rest of the world, but where in the media-fed public hysteria is there any ground for a real, several-correspondent trip interest?

As we speak, the french delegation is standing over me eating grapes. Maybe the free Cordon Blue won them.

Andrew's learning how to hold a boom. He's the tallest person here.

More from my favorite columnest, the Peanut Queen herself...

2007-05-24T10:30:00.001-07:00

FROM THE BELLE TOWER
Mom jeans need to stay in back of closet
CELIA RIVENBARK

T his just in: "Mom jeans," those disasters in denim with the 9-inch zippers and waistlines that threaten to crawl all the way up to your armpits, are making a comeback.

Precious Lord, take me now.

Lampooned in a classic "Saturday Night Live" skit circulated on the Internet for years, Mom jeans are, frankly, hideous. No one looks good in them, with their strange and cruel propensity to broaden the hips, flatten the butt and taper in a ghastly fashion at the ankle.

Extreme Mom jeans even come in odious pale blue washes and feature an elastic waist that tells the world: "Why, as a matter of fact, my idea of a good time IS dinner at The Cracker Barrel at 4 p.m. followed by a "Murder, She Wrote" marathon on TNT."

The phrase "Mom jeans" is so universally understood it has even made its way into Urban Dictionary, which notes they are "usually accompanied by a sexy cardigan boasting birds or wildlife and accented by a quilted purse."

Well, those quilted purses are light and easy to carry, but if you want to, as "SNL" said so perfectly, "let the world know you're not a woman; you're a MOM!" just wear your Mom jeans with one of those cardigans with a cardinal straddling each breast and bird's nests for pockets. Yes, the look is complete, the message is clear: You have officially stopped trying.

So whom do we blame for the return of these high-rise horrors? Our pop culture icons, of course.

Mom jeans are showing up on Jessica Simpson, Mischa ("Feed me!") Barton, Fergie, Scarlett Johanssen and even Jennifer Lopez, who, I'm sure, is terribly upset that she can't find any trimmed in dead baby seal fur.

Of course, there are some women who are thrilled to have Mom jeans back on the scene after years of too many low-rise jeans that celebrate, rather than reign in, the aptly named "muffin top," that unfortunate belly fat that puffs out above the low-rise waistline.

The truth is there are plenty of women and teens who have no business wearing the super-low rise jeans (I'm thinking, in particular, about anyone who shows her thong above the low-rise waistline or who has allowed all of us to see the top two-thirds of an American Eagle flapping above her butt cheeks) but no one, I repeat, no one, looks good in Mom jeans.

Even sexpot Simpson, photographed in her Mom jeans recently, looked as if she needed to be hauling webbed chairs and Capri Suns out to the soccer fields instead of nibbling on hottie John Mayer's earlobe like a piece of cheese.

Mom jeans? Think I'll pass.

i would give you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if i knew your name and address...

2007-05-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

but then this not knowing has its charms.

school bells ring!!! (even though it's summer)
so i'm very busy with homework.
and next new networks.
and duck.
and decorating.
and wiktatorship.
and house beautiful.

and homework.
and class.
and summer.

and commuting.

and mostly homework.

buuut....
this, dear ones, a little homework for your webby eyes:

"To His Piano" by Howard Nemerov.

To His Piano

Old friend, patient of error as of accuracy,
Ready to think the fingerings of thought,
You but a scant year older than I am
With my expectant mother expecting maybe
An infant prodigy among her stars
But getting only little me instead–

To see you standing there for six decades
Containing chopsticks, Fur Elise, and
The Art of Fugue in your burnished rosewood box,
As well as all those years of silence and
The stumbling beginnings the children made,
Who would believe the twenty tons of stress
Your gilded frame's kept stretched out all this while?

since we're going away this weekend I can bet there will be pictures in the near future... plus some of pretty lamposts : )

hooray hoorah!!

happy commencement to the class of 2007!

2007-05-15T09:12:00.000-07:00

it's graduation up here "on the hilltop" of broadway and 116th again... soon (two, three, five) it'll be me too!

new pictures are up at flickr!!! www.flickr.com/photos/raleighbeth

best new picture ever

2007-05-14T14:17:00.001-07:00

pledge

2007-05-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

only on public radio can you describe a donation as, "and for your penannual gift," and know - automatically - everyone knows exactly what you mean.

if you have to ask...

2007-05-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Lucky mag does this segment called "does this outfit work?" http://www.luckymag.com/magazine/features/howto_20070502

answer: if you have to ask, dear god no.

how did i know you were yankee?

2007-05-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

i recently had a long conversation with a southern expat who wandered into my office about the tribulations of life in the tundra. the focus of our dissertation was, by and large, how the conspicuous lack of sweet tea and warm sun was enough to force anyone into the state of yanktitude my mother has warded off (or at least tried to) with a lob lolly switch and enough raid to stop even a monster invasion before the likes of, say, ivan or katrina.

every week or so she pops in on the promise that 310 offers what little refuge she can seek in the form of three guarantees:
* warm co-cola in a can (honestly, y'all. if you're starting to gag, go wash your mouth out with camay some camay and come back to me when you know up from down, my mama will show you what's up)
* a fine selection of music you could expect played at courtyard 280, otherwise known as the shack behind those trucks parked six deep, a little skynyrd if we're desperate but generally some dixie chicken. feats don't fail me now!
* something to eat that has not been made: diet, low-fat, without sugar, without butter, without taste.

just yesterday - a day where my coke supply had done dried up like the dirt in august and i was brandishing my last remaining can of salvation as if it were the holy sceptor of possibility to the students banging down my door with near-impossible demands - she stopped by with pictures from her recent escapade back down south to tuscaloosa (roll tide) for the annual KA old south ball.

what beautiful pictures. (although, i'd like to go on record here amd now to say that as soon as my nana turns away long enough that i can scan those pictures in without her screeching, "don't ruin my photo albums! i worked hard on those for more years than you've seen on this planet!" and flying at me like a bat of hell, i will indeed scan those pictures for posterity and supply the general familial population with our photos en digi, you know, so we can, say, actually hold on to them for aw hell maybe posterity. (just call me crazy as the day is long.) i digress. i only meant to say that my mother was the prettiest i've ever seen in her old south pictures. she just looked like she fell off the plantation. and no plantation that's now turned into an intersection of state routes and a peach stand like shady dale (not even a stopsign!) but like the farm that would have made twelve oaks looked like the poor cousins way out that we just don't talk about much. she was always just so gorgeous. (honest mama.) right there, those pictures, when i saw those when i was a little girl, that was what set my bar for "beauty." obviously i've never matched it - i think it's a daughter's perogative to know, quite firmly, that her mother is just the most beautiful woman alive - but now this girl's pictures did come close. and to be honest - there is an ounce of integrity that just demands it - this is tuscaloosa. ain't much goin on down there with that readin, writin, and 'rithmatic, so it surely leaves plenty of time to put on the dog.

now, the interesting thing is she also brought her pictures from the theta formal here. and by formal i mean completely informal. and by theta i mean not actually since they don't do anything that real sororities do or make those dues worthwhile. honestly, if you don't get to throw the best mixers and themed parties where people walk away with more nostalgia than just a "proof it happened" plastic beer cup, it's not real. the plastic beer cup alone actually probably sums that up quite well. i don't care how many flowers you had printed on it. unless you come back in forty years to "just smell the basement" of the fraternity house down the street, it's not real greek life. just ask my cousin kay.

so my expat in crime says to me: you remember when you were little? remember when your mother taught you how to pose for the camera?
me: yes. painfully. years of therapy have failed to block it out.
her: like christmas poses. all cute with the fake presents. remember that?
me: what's this past tense. my mama just took one of those with me on the stairs just last year. i was moaning the whole time, "mama, i don't fit in my florence eisman anymore, don't you think you've got enough of this." and was quiclky reprimanded with ah, "oh hush. now, sit still or we're putting the champagne away." it did the trick. i think the same threat would have worked when i was four.
her: right. so. you remember learning how to pose with groups?
me: oh god. yes.
her: learning how to turn in, where to put your hands
me: "HEAVENS TO MURGATROID BUNNY WILL YOU STOP PUTTING YOUR ARMS ON PEOPLES SHOULDERS! THEY GO DOWN! DOWN, DOWN, DOWN! DO YOU HEAR ME? DOWN! GOD ALMIGHTY. I CAN'T BELEIVE YOU'RE MY FLESH AND BLOOD. THIS IS YANKEE. THIS MUST BE FROM YOUR FATHER."
her: aw, my mama did that to me too. and we didn't even have yankee blood. but my daddy's got people in detroit - their second cousins - but they're there nonetheless. and they got transferred there for a job. but still, yeah, it's all my daddy's fault too.
me: well, it's always true.
her: okay, so, now i want you to look at these pictures.

now, all the girls looked lovely in both sets. (obviously those from loosa were cuter, but i'm being nice. and to be fair, alabama girls do go a little heavy on that whole eyeliner thing, don't they sizzle?) but in the pictures from the south, all the girls were standing just so, i mean, they were poised. everyone was angled in just right, hands to their kneees in this almost playboy bunny kind of way that was way too charming to have ever been really associated with that beyond a fleeting moment. and one could really argue that the bunnies, knowing this is the best way to stand, stole it from the South.

the girls from the north were all helter skelter. no one quite knew what to do with their hands. where to put their arms. how to bend their legs. clearly, their mother had not looked apalled at the pictures from their seventh grade dances and shreiked, "good land of the living get in here and do this with me." and then pulled out the full-length mirror when you were still "doing something funny" with your foot. and then, turning away in utter dispair, shook her head and said, "it's just impossible, i give up. i must have failed you as a mother if you can't even get this right." and you realize the error of your ways is so severe that not only will you still hear about it when you're seven nine and your mother is on her deathbed (you've been keeping her on life support just so she can finish her last few lectures and get it all out before toasting st. paul at the pearly gates with a glass of piper chilled just so) that you spend the next three days of spring break fastidiously tied to the mirror until you, too, can bend and grin with the best of them.
(or so you think.)

this necessary cycle of southern upbringing is something i've discussed with all my fellow greystoners at length in the summer - when we could get our really cool counselors to show us how to do it in a "sexier" way (clearly they didn't have my mama) - and with my dear friend the-new-mommy elizabeth during pictures sessions with the old bitties at docent shoots at the b'ham museum of art. (daouh-sin.)

i concluded that this mortification process was actually an integral part of the mothering cycle and will be sure to traumatize my babies equally as much so long that at least by high school their formal pictures have them looking like they're the only ones in their new york pictures who can really ham it up with grace and class. in other words, so that they don't look either ugly, slutty, or fat, things we all have to admit to doing by mistake at some point or another. my mother once insisted on buying me the most whorish dress in the world for a fall semi-formal, explaining to me that as long as i held myself like the innocent little kid i was, it didn't matter at all. to this day, she loves those photos. the mortification may have eaten into my soul and pocket book with more years of therapy (on top of the lifetime sentance i'd already earned) and conservative looking cardigans (DO YOU HAVE YOUR WRAP???? hahaha... ha. oohhh, banana.) but, to be honest, she was exactly right. minus that one picture she'll never forgive me for where my hands are on another girl's shoulder (to explain that they all had wet nails and i was no more getting close to them than the man in the moon and thought this picture idea was stupid as hell was obviously not valid whatsoever. hte picture happened and i looked stupid.) at least by prom this was all straightened out - and i'll be the first to tell you now that i can bend-and-pose with the best of them.

what's worse is that, in discussing this, we both realized that at our sister camps (so to speak, we largely didn't do much but wave to them from canoes) on lake summit (edith on our side!), they actually taught us how to do this. everytime they took a cabin picture, our counselors would go around and carefully place our hands and tell us how to bend - a good thirty minute process - and holler at the top of their lungs, "now hold it!" until that picture was snapped, shot, and we were all in perfect formation in our sunday whites.

i think that this may be one of the most crucial things i've ever learned how to do, and looking at the gossip picture page in vanity fair, i think we should teach a lesson to the north. y'all look stupid when you're spread all over the page, and i suggest you take a hint from hell's belles, because even when they've come back from a 10k, they'll still pose in style. (thanks to heather ann for the shot)

me: save your confederate money, boys.
her: the south shall rise again.

happy as a lark

2007-05-03T06:47:00.000-07:00

i am happy as a lark. or a bee. or anything else that warrants this much blessing. i'm just so happy.

we made a DELICIOUS bruschetta and pasta last night, but foodies among you might have some recommendations on how to jazz up the pasta a little. i actually think, in retrospect, a little chicken stock would do the trick... and maybe wilting the leaves a bit.

Serves 4

1 TB sea salt
10 oz (dry) angel hair pasta
1 bunch watercress (or other tender green like spinach or arugula)
3/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
11/2 cups artichoke hearts, cut into 1-inch pieces
2 TB lemon juice
1/2 cup crème fraîche
sea salt, to taste

Fill large pot with water and bring to boil. Add one tablespoon salt, then add pasta and cook according to package directions.

Separate the watercress leaves from their stems and combine leaves with the Parmesan and artichokes hearts and set aside.

Drain pasta after it cooks, reserving 2 tablespoons of pasta water. Quickly return drained pasta to warm pot and stir in lemon juice and the reserved pasta water.

Mix pasta with crème fraîche then add watercress mixture. Salt to taste and serve warm.

Nutrition Info

Per serving (7.15 oz-wt.): 380 calories (110 from fat), 12g total fat, 6g saturated fat, 18g protein, 54g total carbohydrate (8g dietary fiber, 3g sugar), 30mg cholesterol, 640mg sodium

it was very tasty.

today is our year end show! i would be freaking out, but it actually seems i have everything under control. yay mad event planning skills: this looks so easy.

oh, oh, oh and guess what! i officially turned in my deposit to columbia... i am now enrolled!!!!

empty subway cars and thunderstorms

2007-05-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

i'm listening to ray lamontagne, and the day began with the blower's daughter in a near empty subway car pulling away from the 103 street stop in a way that made me stop and look around in that way that you just don't remember to on a daily basis. when did my sadness turn to sentimentality? when did old love become nostalgia?

so much has changed in the past few years - as rosemary constantly tells me, the twenties are really, really hard. i don't think that's true for most people, but it's definitely been true for us - maybe there's this certain meloncholy you have to know and this sort of steadfast loneliness you have to breathe to taste it. but what strikes me as how much of it's actually over. it sometimes feels so much like i crossed the atlantic on a piece of driftwood, surviving storm and sun and heat and waves a hundred feet high as skyscrapers and now, looking back from the shallow end of the other shore, i'm just sort of filled with the mist of it. i don't want the waves back. i don't want those nights perched beneath my window in outright plea, but i don't think i'd realized how much it's shaped me - made me just more me - until now, until then, sitting on that train as it sped along uptown. it seems like now i'm moving forward without even having to do anything. it's bizarre.

but, anyway. on to important things, like music for thunderstorms:
van morrison - caravan
ray lamontagne - trouble
little feat - willin
sia - sunday
alexi murdoch - orange sky
iron + wine - evening on the ground
joe crocker - into the mystic
damien rice - blower's daughter

last night we had one hell of a thunderstorm. made me miss ole bamy once again (and i think it's a sin).

ooh, now advice!
i need help choosing my photo for my id card for school. i get to send in my own, and here are my options so far:

Poem: "Count your fingers" by C.D. Wright from One Big Self: An Investigation. © Copper Canyon Press. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Count your fingers

Count your fingers

Count your toes

Count your nose holes

Count your blessings

Count your stars (lucky or not)

Count your loose change

Count the cars at the crossing

Count the miles to the state line

Count the ticks you pulled off the dog

Count your calluses

Count your shells

Count the points on the antlers

Count the newjack's keys

Count your cards; cut them again

the brazen, the brave, the baby, and patron.

2007-04-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

so i imported the duck to the burg for the weekend and while the pressure cooker came out steamy, i think he survived.

it was a pretty hectic trip.

friday night: in at eleven thirty. home by twelve-thirty. "dinner" until two thirty.
saturday: up at nine thirty. breakfast with momma. (grits and mims and fruit.. oh god momma, i forgot! he doesn't like fruit!!! he was only eating to be polite!!! granted, how you can not like fruit i don't understand, but i don't eat fish, so i'm willing to give every one their room on things.) drive to richfield (one hour). get lost (half an hour). babytime. borrow prius. drive home. wine store. whining. naptime for duck. duck pond for mommy and raleigh. everybody up. rb and duck to brueck-kowal-smithfield "you know, this area is the nicest area really... very elite..." we will not choke on our laughter. help emmy choose jewlery. be supportive big sister and not smack her over head saying "you idiot of course you look gorgeous." instead point out she looks very beautiful, and those earrings compliment your outfit perfectly. make polite conversation with brueck-smiths-kowals. drive emily and amy to prom. get lost. get found. take pictures. drive to richfield. dinner. fighting. cute baby. more fighting. drive home. ahhh. duck: pure exhaustion.
sunday: up, up, up! we hvae the museums to go to! uh, no. lay about lazily, pack summer clothes, convince mother i look whorish in old black dress. leave black dress at home. make margamommies. determine margamommies could kill a five hundred pound man. revamp to margaraleighs. eat cheese. play three rounds scrabble. even with a passed turn, rb butchers duck and mommy. REIGNING QUEEEN!!! drive to richfield. duck steals matthew from arms of his mother and i wave arms jealously about. duck snickers with evil-empire undertones. flight/drunk. home. chinese food. conk out.

so, there was lots to survive.. i mean, he met three whole families.

but the best part was meeting matthew!!!

pictures:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raleighbeth/

liddy dole doesn't snort

2007-04-24T07:05:00.000-07:00

it's that time of year when, as the pink buds from the trees impossibly bright, and we've left behind that first harbinger of spring in the dark wet bark on an early march morning, i find myself missing the deck at 5084 pinehurst and its daily-rainrinsed white chairs that stick to your skin from the heat and my french press and fresh from the ice box lemon pound cake and nana's audible tirades falling out of the breakfast room window to me and my book, sitting in the sun, snowy ending in the drive, the black snake below, and the lizards hanging out by feet.

this is when it's important to pick up celia rivenbark, author of one of my favorite books ("we're just like you only prettier") and the newer "bless your heart, tramp."

it, plus an email from rosemary that just said (no lie) "i know this great teahouse just off 280" - yeah, we're going out to tea, off the highway. at least i'ts not the interstate. could always be worse. plus, 280 is my idea of home.

this just about sums up everything i know to be true in this world (thank you mama, libby, jimdaddy, nana, and aunt linda, our favorite second-southerner):

liddy dole doesn't snort - celia rivenbark

it should come as no surprise that elizabeth dole poster princess for the conservative steel magnolia, has stated that she never snorted cocaine. let me just say thta, on behalf of all southern chickhood, i believe that the reporter who asked that question should have his mouth washed out with camay. [if you don't know what camay is, you might as well stop reading here. david corey will remember countless trips to brunos and publix to buy it en masse every single time we drove back down south. and the time in knoxville we had to try three different markets to find it, the only soap worth using. this was, of course, no silly romp through the highway that made my soap loyalities seem suspect if not a bit supercilious, but rather a life-affirming absolute. there is no other way to clean. period. and it works on everything. just ask mama.]

it's notthe cocaine part that bothers me, rather it's the notion that a southern woman would be cpaable of 'snorting' anything. just as everyone knows that southern women do not sweat (we glow), it is also a geographical and genetic fact that we do not 'snort.' it simply isn't done.

you can take one look at the lidster and know that no way, no how, has this woman ever done lines of cocaine off a tattered copy of who's next while her pre-bob boyfriend strummed a sitar in the corner. nope. elisabeth dole isn't interested in lines of anything unless it's halston.

so while all the world is wondering if and when bush lite did or didn't do drugs, i'm m ortally offended that a 'southeren' woman of mrs. dole's obviuos breeding and background would be asked such an awful question. i just hope her poor ol'mama back in salisbury, north carolina, didn't have to hear such foolwishness or she most certainly would have had to be revived with spirits of ammonia.

of course, having lived in the sin-filled city of washington d.c. for so many years, elisabeth dole has surely faced the normal temptations that beset a belle in foreign lands.

these include such go-ahead-everybody-does-it atrocities as giving money as a wedding gift or, worse, learning that yankee wedding staple: the chicken dance. a true southern belle would never, ever squat at the knees and flap her elbows out while wearing dyed-to-match peau do soie pumps. why, she'd sooner snort.

through all her years of living in washington, elizabeth dole has mained belle-like dignity. ("oh, no thank you, mr. mayor, i couldn't possibly join you for a, what did you call it, toot?") surely, she has had to resist the advances of unscrupulous yankees who are unaccustomed to seeing a well-coifed woman in a fuschia st. john's knit running a cabinet meeting, finding this, in the words of orrin hatch, 'hot!hot!hot!'

now, i do confess that whlie i believe elizabeth dole should not have had to answer such a vulgar question, i am having the time of my life watching the other presidential candidates stumble all over one another to discuss their druggie pasts. (and who would want to get high with al gore anyway? he's gotta be making that up.)

bush lite has finally admitted (after running from the press and hiding in stalls with his feet up) that he hasan't used drugs in twenty-five years, or roughly the average of a first-time drug offender in one of his highly touted tough-on-crime texas prisons.

enjoy the ride, y'all. and, liddy, don't forget to keep your gloves on. like mama told you, you don't know where those hands have been.

the kid stays in the picture

2007-04-10T10:28:00.001-07:00

IN LIKE FLYNN

how could i be so remiss!

2007-04-04T07:29:00.000-07:00

when we were in yo-hio, papa sent us a whole box full of cotton. we put it in a vase and put it around the house like other people put flowers.

we loved it.

heart of dixie's home to me

2007-04-04T07:13:00.001-07:00

well, rosemary did this great post about how she misses southern ohio, and in my trade of trades, i'm posting about how much i miss hell's belles, highway 280, and even the summit. (that's right y'all, i miss a mall.) i miss linca-lonca road (though that's georgia), i want mayhaw jelly on my biscuit, i'm fairly sick of bagels, and i want lemon pound cake on the deck looking at the hawks and wondering about snowy ending.
to wit:
i miss home. (southern pines shelby county!!!!)

so, in the honor of our great rosemary, a little humpday honor to our sleepy sweet home alabama. (roll tide roooolll)

Moonlight and magnolias, starlight in your hair
All the world a dream come true
Did it really happen, was I really there
Was I really there with you

We lived our little drama, we kissed in a field of white
And stars fell on Alabama that night
I can't forget the glamour, your eyes held a tender light
And stars fell on Alabama last night

I never planned in my imagination, a situation so heavenly
A fairy land that no one else could enter
And in the center, just you and me, dear
My heart beat like a hammer, my arms wound around you tight
And stars fell on Alabama last night

Yes, we lived our little drama
We kissed on the dunes so white
And stars fell on Alabama
Last night

mmm... birmingham!

and naked vulcan, our crowning glory:

heart of dixie's home to me

2007-04-04T07:13:00.000-07:00

penguins and pephalents

2007-04-02T11:45:00.000-07:00

hello, india!

2007-03-30T07:54:00.000-07:00

K. Edwards 'back to me' --- fantastic lyrics.

2007-03-30T07:00:00.001-07:00

I've got ways to make you sorry
start my life with someone else
I've got ways to make you fall
I'll tell you all the things that I lied about
I've got ways to make you mad
Laughing at the girl sitting on your lap
I've got ways to make you sing my songs
Ones I ain't written yet

I've got lights you've never seen
I've got moves I've never used
I've got ways to make you come
back to me

I've got ways to make you strange
Drug you up and drag you home
I've got ways to track you down
In all of the places you like to go
I've got ways to make you crazy
wear all the things you always wanted me to
I've got ways to make you run
My daddy is coming for you

I've got lights you've never seen
I've got moves I've never used
I've got ways to make you come
back to me

I've got ways to make you hear me
just by whispering your name
I've got ways to make you think
you'll never be happy again
I've got ways to make you see
I'm so much better than before
I've got ways to make you swear
you won't want your old life anymore

I've got lights you've never seen
I've got moves I've never used
I've got ways to make you come
Back to me

Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at.

2007-03-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

so, unbeknownst to me, there is this great alice in wonderland sculpturegym on the east side of central park. (my provincial dt/ws would, perhaps, explain that ignorance a bit...) that's nut of it.

anyway, last night, after fetching andrew after work and falling madly in love with this desperately fabulous orange jacket we were dilly-dallying our way home up the park, enjoying the splendid evening in the city, and he took me to this marvellous monument of youthful urban literati, and - be still, my beating heart! - i happily played like a four year old for a good twenty minutes. (ahem, so did he.)

how fun is this! a rabbit to kiss!

we also made a quite delcious coq au vin, but i need to ask emma why skipping steps two through six (or rather, ignoring them and reworking them differently due to the creative license reasonably brought on by the delicious vino nobile da montepulciano, where, of course, we should return and re-drink under that hazy tuscan sun) made no noticable effect on our little feast. although, it was a tiny bit too liquidy (well, very) but we decided next time that it's the perfect way to make a risotto to go-go with it. that'll work, right?

mmm. and delicious cheddar-chive-jack biscuits on the side. i'm going to enjoy a scrumptious lunch of leftovers oggi.

time has told me, and other songs: the tuesday afternoon playlist

2007-03-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

Van Morrison - Avalon of the Heart
Lucinda Williams - Words
The Holmes Brothers - "(What’s So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding?"
Patty Griffin - Heavenly Day
Taj Mahal - Corrina
Rosie Thomas - Much Farther To Go
Bob Dylan If You - See Her Say Hello
Brett Dennen - She’s Mine
Dean & Britta - Words You Used To Say
Andrew Bird - Fiery Crash
The Decemberists - Summersong
Nick Drake - Time Has Told Me
Meg Baird - The Waltz of the Tennis Players

i'm wide awake, it's morning

2007-03-27T08:43:00.000-07:00

it's spring it's spring it's spring!!!

our loft is beautiful, my emma isn't getting pnuemonia, i am not either, and i'm waering a skirt... and i'm not chattering my toofs!

it's sprrrriiiiiiiiiiiiing!!!

now, granted, i'm in a severe missing-dixie phase. (why did i leave? what, job opportunity? ahhh. what kind of reason is that!) but tonight i'll make cheddar biscuits while andrew makes his coq au vin, and that will tide me over for the day; and yes yes yes it's lovely out.

more pictures of matthew when my father figures out how to use a camera.

i don't LIKE big. i like SMALL.

2007-03-23T12:49:00.000-07:00

this is my I DON'T LIKE THIS. WHY DID YOU KILL MY EASY DINNER. face:

this is the face i will make later, when my roommate pledges to never have dinner with me again because someone takes a certain liberty in over-including:

it's only fair to point out that i am inexorably tied to her for more dinners than anybody else. and this, therefore, is a very troubled face.

night rocking - blumenthal

2007-03-23T11:47:00.000-07:00

It could be the stars or the full moon
or your breathing beside me, or perhaps
it is merely the old, familiar hand of restlessness
leading me from the water, but something
shakes me from sleep this night
and, like an old widow who misses her husband,
I go to the living room and rock my way
to a vague remembering. Naked, a bottle of wine
in one hand, a hunger for clarity in the other,
I rock forward and back, the way I’ve seen
old sailors rocking in rest homes, the wind gone.
I take an account of the things in the room—
salt, pepper, books, an empty wine glass—
their terrible, relieving mundanity,
and I know that, as I sit here and rock,
my thighs clinging to the polished wood,
you are lying in bed, the shape of my body
pressed to the sheets the way a victim’s blood
holds the shape of an accident, and you are,
perhaps, dreaming of loving a man who is not
always leaving you, and I am a man rocking
who sees in the small movements of this chair
the comings and goings of tide, the departures
of the restless, and the constant returnings
of the infidel. And I go on rocking until,
finally, the bottle is empty, and I peel
my back from the chair, return to the bed
the way an old beach sleeper returns to the print
of his body in sand, and I sleep again,
knowing you will wake in the morning, stretch
your small hands toward me, forgiving me
as sand forgives the restlessness of tide,
as an old widow forgives the beatings of her dead husband.

and one more, for easter : )

2007-03-20T13:45:00.000-07:00

great pictures from moo

2007-03-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

barn doors are open

2007-03-19T17:14:00.000-07:00

Yolanda Johnson: Duct tape will not make an honest man out of you.

linking is still the new post-it note

2007-03-19T07:44:00.000-07:00

Emily Yoffe on Facebook: I got such a ping of pleasure when a connection was made that it occurred to me the Bush administration could stop violating the laws on national security letters and instead just send friend requests to terrorism suspects—how could they resist?

http://www.slate.com/id/2161920?nav=tap3

now, i think the best part of all of this is is that this article is the PERFECT example of exactly what slate does right. at the very end, yoffe says: But I will be interested to see if Facebook and sites of its ilk end up being a granfalloon, or a revolution.
pensive, beat-rejecting reader that i am, i thought to myself (rather humbly, if not embarassed), "um, what is a granfalloon?" and don't you know it, but that word is written in blue, the international color of hyperlinking peace, and... tada! i'm given straight to the wikisphere where a presumably reliable souce expounds for me on the nataure of granfallooness in my life.

i love the modern era

the end of blindness!

2007-03-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

i cannot wait for the eighteen months to be over when our new office will be built and i, oh luxury!, will have a window.

Gulfs of Absence

2007-03-19T07:20:00.000-07:00

Message Wierda:

loft/life partner:

i have been swallowed whole by a parade of upper east side prepsters. they drink gin and tonics year round and say things like "charming." my time in captivity has so far been draining, but today they let me out to go to the petstore so i could do model-drawings for rousseau the rat. i was not allowed to take a rat home with me, however. i was also encouraged to adapt my story to a feret, a more homey creature for these types i suppose, instead.

i said ra ra ra long live the rat! and bought a pair of brown chucks in defiance.

still, their entreat continues. i am worried the next pair of soles i purchase will be needole-point stubbs. and i will not where house shoes out in public.

captively yours,
raleighbeth.

Message Smith:
Dear Raleigh,

Despite your best efforts to distract me from my frustrations with a dose of witty prose and anecdotal jabs at UES club and culture normally so heedlessly disarming, i remain unfettered in my convictions. Upon arriving back at our house this morning to the 3 bottles of andre neglected and yet still so loyally standing salute in the refrigerator awaiting their certain mortal sacrifice i concluded that you, indeed, spent the night out again. Though i tried throughout the morning to keep my hostilities at bay and keep in perspective the very nice relationship you are embarking upon and how important it is for me to learn that as an adult, i must learn to share and compromise and cooperate with my fellow man. However, only hours later reading the paper in the living room without you, i was overtaken by my sadness and feeling of abandonment and in a fit of rage stormed down into your room and amassed a large pile of relics from your former inhabitance and burned them all outside in my little cigarette hovel.

unfortunately, this drastic and desperate attempt to unburden myself of my truly gripping grief stood to ultimately exacerbate my loneliness and longing because there, in the shadow of the flames so consuming your arts and crafts, thomas pink oxfords, hanna andersen longjohns, and ballet flats was the silhouette of your shining face. in that moment, i realized... i will love you always. perhaps as i get older and wiser, the grief will blossom into a celebration of your life and spirit, and i can look up and out in a northeasterly direction and feel that somewhere, in an overpriced bistro on madison, my little raleigh is looking up and thinking of me, too.

fingers crossed, active citizens

2007-03-15T13:44:00.000-07:00

because i have to go to court tomorrow to explain why i can't be called for jury duty when i don't live here... wish me luckluckluck!

the current playlist - for rosemary

2007-03-15T11:20:00.000-07:00

no cars go - arcade fire (neon bible version) because it's just so damn great.
goodnight and go - imogen heap i'm definitely partial to hide and seek (where are we? what the hell is going on?) but this is pretty. it's just sort of unabashedly girly like walking through the lulu guinness spot in the fragrance section of bloomies at christmastime. which is somehow annoying, and somehow also completely ethereal, unavoidable, bliss.
pictures - sia because everyone's a current to an ex.
head home - midlake this makes me think of fall. fall in dc, or late summer in dc, but not so much the miserable part as the shipwreck part. it makes me think of the old wednesdays and the malay place. and bug bites. and it makes me smile.
lake marie - john prine i love this song. i just love this song. i adore this song.
sons and daughters - the decemberists i agree, roz. about all of it : )
astral weeks - van morrison because i'm falling in love. and because we both adore vm. and jenzo, remember the lantern-bed-rigging in beantown?
at the bottom of everything - bright eyes ohhh i love the imagery in this song. "We must hang up in the belfry
where the bats and moonlight laugh"
daniella - john butler trio it's dani's themesong!!! minus "you got what i want, why don't you give it to me." only john butler trio is way cooler than stupid ray.
secret hour - birdie busch i'm girly. and i love this one.
bunny ain't no kind of rider - of montreal theme song
officer - kate earl highway 280 in afternoon traffic and trying to find a parking spot at the wal-mart. there are so few people who understand that in my current life. but this song is that moment.
she moves in secret ways - polly paulusma sort of like birdie busch, only it reminds me of d.c.
the well and the lighthouse - arcade fire loooooooooooooooooove it.
fidelity - regina spektor have you seen the you tube video??? such a great song. and duck and i don't launch into an argument about samson (we really have to look that stuff up) when we hear it. it's a great shower song too : )
soft and warm - voxtrot i LOVE vox. as you know. but i love this song as much as "the start of something" -- thanks to corn for that.
(songs for my) sugar spun sister - the stone roses sentimentality : )
last night i dreamt of mississippi - nicolai dunger because, really, last night i dreamt of mississippi. i listen to this on the subway when i'm feeling overwhelmed and suddenly some tourists from home trip on and you can tell they're from home not because they look lost, but because they look NICE. because the men simply WON'T sit down (because there are LADIES to sit down) and because the women are always done up. not tacky like riverchase done up, but pretty like mountain brook or buckhead done up. like kay. like linger longer road done up.
alfie - lily allen ohh i love this. dno't watch the video though. i can't get the flashing puppet out of my head.
travelin thru - dolly parton theme song.
neighborhood #1: tunnels - arcade fire theme theme theme very special theme song.

blogger is being weird

2007-03-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

and i can't upload any images.
so, until then:

How to Tell If You're a Participant or a Staff (A Handy Guide for Day Programs)
by David Moreau from You Can Still Go to Hell and Other Truths About Being a Helping Professional

If you have a bowel movement at work and no one records it in a
communication book — you're a staff person.

If someone shouts at you from the other side of the room, Did you
wash your hands? every time you come out of the bathroom — you're a participant.

If your feet don't quite touch the ground when you're sitting in one of
the cafeteria chairs — you're a participant.

If you know where the candy is in Jolene's office — you're a staff
person.

If you can run out to Subway or Burger King for your lunch — you're a staff person.

If you're in a wheelchair — you're a participant.

If you get a buzz cut every staff day — you're a participant.

If you've never ridden in the back seat of the van — you're a staff
person.

If you can walk in the office without being asked, Where are you
supposed to be? — you're a staff person.

If the soap dispenser is on the side of the sink opposite your one good
hand and you can't reach high enough to keep the automatic faucet
from getting your sleeve wet — you're a participant.

If you can give a hug without someone telling you, Remember circles —
you're a staff person.

If you go out for cigarette breaks — you're a staff person.

If your paycheck is for $1.82 — you're a participant.

today's new glasses day!!! yipppy!!!

love some bananas

2007-03-13T14:01:00.000-07:00

I love Columbia. This is the best example of what appears on our soc-gr-fac listserv:

Hi,

I made a mistake. I ordered like 15 kilos of bananas on freshdirect.
I get rid of them half the price of freshdirect. I m living across
Lehman Library (415 west 118th street apt 22). if you're interested
we can settle a meeting time.

Hope some of you love bananas.

best,

clement

Matthew Keller Smith...

2007-03-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

... Finally a Matthew worth loving!
l
(ha)

And especially for my littlest brother:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Welcome to the World, Baby Boy!

2007-03-12T12:56:00.000-07:00

I have a new brother. He's not yet named (he was only just born) but he's healthy, happy, and apparently, really beautiful. (I looked like Baby Huey when I was born and my parents were honest about it, so I'm hedging my bets on Brother actuall being a beautiful baby.) He's pinky fair, jet black hair, and big blue Irish eyes... and my dad says he looks like Bumpy. (Maybe they'll name him Franklin.)

Baby Brother, we're so excited!!!

Daily Candy for Us Kids Who Know

2007-03-08T10:55:00.000-08:00

(ohh arcade fire.)

dude, listen, coolest thing ever.

1. If you haven't checked out nextnewnetworks.com yet, you need to.
2. Particularly you weird comic bookies, although I'm repeatedly told (and yes! yes! i listen!) "it's not a comic book, it's a graphic novel."
3. If you read Thom's diatribe (and my rant) at the Sideways Initiative, you'll know our propensity for engaging in vibrant (ahem) discourse regarding Political Protest Sartorial Proclivities.

Now, you need to discover Threadbanger

My life may be complete.

International Women's Day - Call Your Mother, Pray for your Daughter, and Wonder Whatever Happened to Seneca Falls

2007-03-08T09:47:00.000-08:00

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

Maya Angelou

read Rosemary's posting

an open letter to legging-wearers of the world

2007-03-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

please, please stop wearing bikini cuts underneath. i can see it. please, please stop wearing lacy anything underneath. i can see that, too.

pleaes, please stop wearing leggings. i see way more than i want to see, ever.

Mmmm Food

2007-03-07T08:04:00.000-08:00

Country Grit Bread

1 cup plain white stone-ground cornmeal (not instant)

3/4 cup yellow self-rising cornbread mix

1 teaspoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 teaspoon baking soda

3 tablespoons sausage, bacon, country ham, or pork chop drippings (Crisco or half butter and half Crisco will work as substitutes)

1/4 cup plain white stone-ground grits

3/4 cup water

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk

Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

Sift white cornmeal, cornbread mix, sugar, salt and baking soda into a big mixing bowl. Add fat drippings to a cast-iron cornbread pan (or muffin or cornstick pan) and warm it on the stove. When drippings are melted, tilt pan so the sides and bottom are well greased. Then pour off and reserve two tablespoons of drippings.

Mix grits and water in a bowl and microwave on high for 3 minutes. Stop and stir and then microwave again on high for 3 minutes and set aside. The grits will be about half done, but that's OK. Whisk egg in a bowl. Then mix egg with buttermilk and add to the dry ingredients. Stir until the batter is well mixed but still a bit on the firm and dry side. Add the reserved pan drippings and grits. Mix all of the ingredients well with a large spoon. (If grits and water have cooled, reheat for 30 seconds before adding.) Your batter shouldn't be too dry or too wet, but somewhere in between.

Pour batter into pan and bake for 20 to 25 minutes. (Cornsticks take slightly less time.) Your grit bread is done when a nice, golden brown crust has formed. Now, all you need to do is get a big slab of butter and dig in!

Cooking Tip: Leftover grit bread makes mouthwatering fried cornbread. Just heat up a griddle or cast-iron pan and drop in a small bit of butter. Then fry up your leftover cornbread wedges until they are nice and golden brown.

Chow Chow

Makes about 8 pints

2 cups chopped sweet red peppers

2 cups chopped green peppers

4 cups chopped cabbage

2 cups chopped sweet onions

2 hot peppers, chopped

5 cucumbers, chopped

4 cups chopped, cored green tomatoes

3 tablespoons pickling salt

4 tablespoons mustard seed

2 tablespoons celery seed

1 cup sugar

2 cups vinegar

Chop up vegetables into a medium dice. Sprinkle with pickling salt; cover and refrigerate overnight. Lightly rinse veggies and drain well.

Put the remaining ingredients in a large pot, and bring to a boil. Add the vegetable mixture and cook for about 10 minutes. Pack into sterilized canning jars, leaving about 1/2-inch headspace. Remove any air bubbles. Wipe jar rims and seal at once according to canning manufacturer's directions. If you don't have any canning materials handy, you can store relish in an airtight glass container in the refrigerator for up to a month.

nobody's chow chow could ever be Full Moon's, though. Oh god. Full Moon. Ohhh.

Scooter's in the Reuters!

2007-03-06T08:33:00.000-08:00

"here's the thing about jesus. you sit at the table with jesus, you start eating with the wrong people."

really interesting discussion on take this bread: a radical converson -- a smackdown on food, religion, agricultural, and community: saramiles.net

Did you know black american women are 20% more likely to get AIDS than white american women? And why don't we talk about domestic AIDS anymore? It's like it's stuck in Africa or something (Rosemary did a great AIDS series I will link in here, because you could readily subsitute "Alabama" for "Africa"). Rosemary's story: http://www.wbhm.org/News/2006/AIDS_The_Epidemic_in_Alabama.html

Atomic Melodrama

2007-03-06T07:36:00.000-08:00

Happy New Arcade Fire Day!

David Fricke (Rolling Stone) didn't give it the best review, but historically, he and I don't always agree anyhow. Somehow, in his pathetic attempts at condemnation (I say pathetic since he couldn't outright say what he didn't like, he just danced around it, which I think is something of the point of Arcade Fire to begin with; do you remember when the EP came out and no one really said they didn't like it, but more critiqued it, and then it gained such a base that no one could even pan Haiti in Funeral, or worse, In the Backseat, which is really an awful song and someone should have just SAID so) but, he did say some things that I found not only appropriate, but actually kind of elegantly correct. Given what he's said about the references, I'm not sure he means it as a compliment, but given how I feel about them, I'm taking it as totally fabulous. and couldn't agree more.

"on Neon Bible, the reverb is so big and black that the beat becomes boom and the orchestral garnish, arranged by Chassagne and Final Fantasy's Owen Pallett, gets pressed to the margins. The result is a huge sound that only sparkles on the edges, leaving Butler alone in the middle, railing against rising tides, falling bombs and the nonstop rain of shit on television like he's singing from the pulpit of an empty cathedral.

Maybe that was the idea. Neon Bible is an aggressively gothic record, explicitly so in the pipe organ that soars over the hunger and wreckage in "Intervention." More intriguing are "Black Mirror" and "Black Wave/Bad Vibrations," which somehow combine the oppressive dread on Side Two of David Bowie's Low with the church-bells-in-the-rain reveille of U2's Boy. "Neon Bible" is even bleaker, a soft two-minute eulogy for a generation blinded by chain-store signs and laptop-computer glow. "A vial of hope and a vial of pain/In the light, they both looked the same," Butler sings through whispering cellos and child-angel harmonies, like Leonard Cohen wandering through the third Velvet Underground album.

But there is determined resistance here too, a twisted faith in escape that comes through best when Arcade Fire hit the gas pedal. " for full: http://www.rollingstone.com/reviews/album/13467688/review/13544415/neon_bible

Me, I'm partial to the well and the lighthouse. and the one about the King and the Queen. And (obviously) Keep the Car Running, which I've been bouncing around my lair too for so long it's actually started running through my dreams.

Today is hipster day, apparently. I even have the hat to prove it.

pix, trix.

2007-03-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

Your Girlfriend's Picture Scares Me Like Ann Coulter Scares Us All

2007-03-05T13:01:00.000-08:00

One of the weirder things that happens is when your ex's friends facebook you in current time. "Friends" qua friends might, to some, imply we actually know each other. Or, per se, that when we met, that one night where you were so gracefully spewing insults and Miller High Life in tune to an ACC basketball game, I actually might have thught, gee, you're charming. Or maybe even we might recognize each other on the street. Lacking these things, and also noting a dearth of certifiable basis to reject said friending, I bring my complaint to Chris Hughes and other useful youth scions of the digisphere, as it were:

There should be a new set of "How do you know this person?" options.

I suggest:
- I met this person at an east village bar I will always claim I've never been and you cannot prove otherwise because I spilled beer on the only camera that might prove it.
- I met __________ through an Former I despise and for whose incineration or sudden disappearance I wish for daily.
- By association I do/do not hope for ____________'s incineration/sudden disappearance.
- I really don't know ___________ at all, nor do I care to, but I do hope ___________ passes along to our ________ mutual aquaintance _____ that his girlfriend's facebook picture absolutely terrifies me. And I'm glad I'm not prone to facebook stalking. I'm not. It's just those bright colors and animal stripes cannot be hidden.

In the wealth of things that cannot be hidden, high in the rankings is one Ann Coulter, who for very obvious reasons cannot seem to find herself a nice, conservative mate because NO ONE, I repeat NO ONE can handle the idea of actually waking up next to that. Or worse, under?

At the Republican shindigs this weekend, Coultermort said:
“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards."
Oh yeah, she's so classy. I just love it when people listen to such smart people!!!

Sadly, the showing from the left was equally revolting.
Was anyone else besides me completely revolted by Obama and Hillary down in Selma? Who's the bigger black person, huh huh huh??? One's got the locals in the church and talking about the success of civil rights and how it's opened up the door for even her to run for president, and the other one's downtown talking about the Joshua Generation to a bunch of outertowners who wouldn't even know which way is UP at the local market!!!! A market that, by the way, doesn't take credit card or anything, but does take food stamps. Selma, Al is dirt poor, y'all. Civil Rights my left elbow. These two idiots essentially just pointed out, dressed in their Chanel and Armani best, that civil rights are what led their middle and upper class selves to private jets and posh parties in Washington while the people who actually marched in Selma on March 7, 1965, continue to live in abject poverty with absolutely no consolable hope out. Why aren't they talking to these people about social service? School accreditation? EMPLOYMENT, HEALTH CARE, JOB TRAINING, LOGGING (yeah, there's a big bad word for congress, I don't care what side you're on) and exactly how, when the parties in Washington are silly giddy selling off every possible acre of Black Belt (an agricultural term, y'all, it has to do with the ground) Alabama to the highest paper plant bidder around, they intend for the rural agrarian South to make any sort of living at all! And I hate to point out the obvious, you know, as the last two rainy elections did, but if you can't make any money, you can't afford to skip what little work you do get to go vote, or, more aptly, even have any transportational means of getting to that vote so it really doesn't matter who the bigger black person is, does it.

Despite my rantings, life is great. : )

Duck and I had the nicest, nicest, nicest trip to the shore this weekend, and I saw the beach and calmed down. Baby Brother hasn't yet decided to arrive, but I bought some cute new onesies for him when he does and am closer to done with his painting. : ) Yipppeeeeeeey

Three Delightful Things:

(1) For Thought
While We Wait for Spring
Todd Davis

The last three days snow has fallen.
No thaw this year, no day even above
twenty since the end of December.
Climbing the hill, my two boys slip, fall,
stand again. They complain, but there's nothing
to be done except to make it to the top
where above the trees we will look down
upon the river. Near the peak a barred owl
releases from the limb of a burr oak, sweeps
over our heads and out above the tree line.
Our eyes follow its flight to the river ice,
current moving beneath its blue surface.
Like the owl, our breath rises, drifts
toward something warmer, something better.

(2) For Laughs
How To Win Arguements, As It Were
by DAVE BARRY

I argue very well. Ask any of my remaining friends. I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me. You too can win arguments. Simply follow these rules:

Drink Liquor.
Suppose you're at a party and some hotshot intellectual is expounding on the economy of Peru, a subject you know nothing about. If you're drinking some health-fanatic drink like grapefruit juice, you'll hang back, afraid to display your ignorance, while the hotshot enthralls your date. But if you drink several large martinis, you'll discover you have STRONG VIEWS about the Peruvian economy. You'll be a WEALTH of information. You'll argue forcefully, offering searing insights and possibly upsetting furniture. People will be impressed. Some may leave the room.

Make things up.
Suppose, in the Peruvian economy argument, you are trying to prove Peruvians are underpaid, a position you base solely on the fact that YOU are underpaid, and you're damned if you're going to let a bunch of Peruvians be better off. DON'T say: ``I think Peruvians are underpaid.'' Say: ``The average Peruvian's salary in 1981 dollars adjusted for the revised tax base is $1,452.81 per annum, which is $836.07 before the mean gross poverty level.''

NOTE: Always make up exact figures.
If an opponent asks you where you got your information, make THAT up, too. Say: ``This information comes from Dr. Hovel T. Moon's study for the Buford Commission published May 9, 1982. Didn't you read it?'' Say this in the same tone of voice you would use to say ``You left your soiled underwear in my bath house.''

Use meaningless but weightly-sounding words and phrases.

Memorize this list:

Let me put it this way
In terms of
Vis-a-vis
Per se
As it were
Qua
So to speak
You should also memorize some Latin abbreviations such as ``Q.E.D.,'' ``e.g.,'' and ``i.e.'' These are all short for ``I speak Latin, and you do not.''

Here's how to use these words and phrases. Suppose you want to say: ``Peruvians would like to order appetizers more often, but they don't have enough money.''

You never win arguments talking like that. But you WILL win if you say: ``Let me put it this way. In terms of appetizers vis-a-vis Peruvians qua Peruvians, they would like to order them more often, so to speak, but they do not have enough money per se, as it were. Q.E.D.''

Only a fool would challenge that statement.

Use snappy and irrelevant comebacks.
You need an arsenal of all-purpose irrelevant phrases to fire back at your opponents when they make valid points. The best are:

You're begging the question.
You're being defensive.
Don't compare apples and oranges.
What are your parameters?
This last one is especially valuable. Nobody, other than mathematicians, has the vaguest idea what ``parameters'' means.

Here's how to use your comebacks:

You say: ``As Abraham Lincoln said in 1873...''
Your opponent says: ``Lincoln died in 1865.''
You say: ``You're begging the question.''

OR

You say: ``Liberians, like most Asians...''
Your opponent says: ``Liberia is in Africa.''
You say: ``You're being defensive.''

Compare your opponent to Adolf Hitler.
This is your heavy artillery, for when your opponent is obviously right and you are spectacularly wrong. Bring Hitler up subtly. Say: ``That sounds suspiciously like something Adolf Hitler might say'' or ``You certainly do remind me of Adolf Hitler.''

So that's it: you now know how to out-argue anybody. Do not try to pull this on people who generally carry weapons.

(C) THE MIAMI HERALD

(3) For Tummies

This is the recipe I made last week for CJ's 23rd Birthday.... ohhhhh my tummy. So good. Although, I think next time I might substitute Fluff for Cream Cheese... although the CC frosting certainly cuts the sweetness. Also, I made the caramel sauce from scratch (brown sugar, evaporated milk, salt, water, and a watchful eye), which makes a huge difference. I think next time, though, I'm going to do this over brownies instead of cake.

Serves: 20
Preparation Time: 5 to 7 minutes
Baking Time: 35 to 38 minutes
Assembly Time: 10 minutes

Cake

Vegetable oil spray for misting the pan
1 package (18.25 ounces) plain devil's food cake mix
1 1/3 cups water
1/2 cup vegetable oil, such as canola, corn, safflower, soybean, or sunflower
3 large eggs

Topping

1 jar (8 ounces) caramel topping
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
4 Butterfinger candy bars (2.1 ounces each), crushed
1 container (12 ounces) frozen whipped topping, thawed
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, at room temperature

1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly mist a 13- by 9-inch baking pan with vegetable oil spray. Set the pan aside.

2. Place the cake mix, water, oil, and eggs in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping the sides down again if needed. The batter should look thick and well blended. Pour the batter into the prepared pan, smoothing out the top with the rubber spatula. Place the pan in the oven.

3. Bake the cake until it springs back when lightly pressed with your finger and just starts to pull away from the sides of the pan, 35 to 38 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and place it on a wire rack. Immediately poke holes in the top of the cake with a drinking straw or chopstick.

4. Prepare the topping. Place the caramel topping and sweetened condensed milk in a small bowl and stir to combine. Spoon this mixture over the warm cake so that it can seep down into the holes. Measure out half of the crushed candy bars and sprinkle the pieces over the cake.

5. Place the whipped topping and cream cheese in a large mixing bowl and blend with an electric mixer on low speed until smooth and combined, 1 minute. Spread the mixture over the top of the candy. Sprinkle the remaining candy pieces on top.

6. Place the pan, uncovered, in the refrigerator to chill the cake for about 20 minutes before cutting it into squares and serving.

from shipwreck

2007-02-27T12:22:00.000-08:00

It was called THE MARSHALL PLAN

2007-02-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

Keith Olberman, you are my hero. and you don't even work for NPR.

Last night, while eating my oh-so-gourmet dinner of ramen noodle w/ mushrooms and grilled cheese mcraleigh, I was given the best dessert possible: Keith Olberman going off, with style, on Condy Rice, who apparently flunked 7th grade history in terms of grades but whose teacher didn't have the heart to actually fail her and, instead, passed her on to a life of historical confusion.

Transcript:
On "Fox News Sunday" Feb. 25, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paralleled World War II with the state of Iraq when discussing what would happen if Congress were to revise the Iraq authorization:

We already know about her suggestion that the president could just ignore whatever congressional Democrats do about Iraq. Just ignore Congress.

We know how that game always turns out. Ask President Nixon. Ask President Andrew Johnson.

Or ask Vice President Dick Cheney, who utterly contradicted Secretary Rice on Monday when he warned President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan about what those mean congressional Democrats could do to his foreign aid.

All of this, par for the course.

But about what the secretary said regarding the prospect of Congress’ revising or repealing the 2002 authorization of the war in Iraq:

Here we go again! From springs spent trying to link Saddam Hussein to 9/11, to summers of cynically manipulated intelligence, through autumns of false patriotism, to winters of war, we have had more than four years of every cheap trick and every degree of calculated cynicism from this administration, filled with Three-Card Monte players.

But the longer Dr. Rice and these other pickpockets of a nation's goodness have walked among us, waving flags and slandering opponents and making true enemies — foreign and domestic — all hat and no cattle all the while, the overriding truth of their occupancy of our highest offices of state has only gradually become clear.

As they asked in that Avis commercial: "Ever get the feeling some people just stopped trying?"

Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld thought he could equate those who doubted him with Nazi appeasers, without reminding anybody that the actual, historical Nazi appeasers in this country in the 1930s were the Republicans.

Vice President Cheney thought he could talk as if he and he alone knew the “truth” about Iraq and 9/11, without anyone ever noticing that even the rest of the administration officially disagreed with him.

The president really acted as if you could scare all of the people all of the time and not lose your soul — and your majority — as a result.

But Secretary of State Rice may have now taken the cake. On the Sunday morning interview show “Of Broken Record” on Fox, Dr. Rice spoke a paragraph, which if it had been included in a remedial history paper at the weakest high school in the nation would've gotten the writer an "F" — maybe an expulsion.

If Congress were now to revise the Iraq authorization, she said, out loud, with an adult present: "… it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change, then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

The secretary's résumé reads that she has a master’s degree and a Ph.D in political science. The interviewer should have demanded to see them, on the spot. Dr. Rice spoke 42 words. She may have made more mistakes in them than did the president in his State of the Union Address in 2003.

There is, obviously, no mistaking Saddam Hussein for a human being. But nor is there any mistaking him for Adolf Hitler.

Invoking the German dictator who subjugated Europe; who tried to exterminate the Jews; who sought to overtake the world is not just in the poorest of taste, but in its hyperbole, it insults not merely the victims of the Third Reich, but those in this country who fought it and defeated it.

Saddam Hussein was not Adolf Hitler. And George W. Bush is not Franklin D. Roosevelt — nor Dwight D. Eisenhower. He isn't even George H.W. Bush, who fought in that war.

However, even through the clouds of deliberately spread fear, and even under the weight of a thousand exaggerations of the five years past, one can just barely make out how a battle against international terrorism in 2007 could be compared — by some — to the Second World War.

The analogy is weak, and it instantly begs the question of why those of "The Greatest Generation" focused on Hitler and Hirohito, but our leaders seem to have ignored their vague parallels of today to instead concentrate on the Mussolinis of modern terrorism.

But in some, small, "You didn't fail, Junior, but you may need to go to summer school" kind of way, you can just make out that comparison.

But, Secretary Rice, overthrowing Saddam Hussein was akin to overthrowing Adolf Hitler? Are you kidding? Did you want to provoke the world's laughter?

And, please, Madame Secretary, if you are going to make that most implausible, subjective, dubious, ridiculous comparison; if you want to be as far off the mark about the Second World War as, say, the pathetic Holocaust-denier from Iran, Ahmadinejad — at least get the easily verifiable facts right: the facts whose home through history lies in your own department.

"The resolution that allowed the United States to" overthrow Hitler?

On the 11th of December, 1941, at 8 o'clock in the morning, two of Hitler's diplomats walked up to the State Department — your office, Secretary Rice -- and 90 minutes later they were handing a declaration of war to the chief of the department's European Division. The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor four days earlier, and the Germans simply piled on.

Your predecessors, Dr. Rice, didn't spend a year making up phony evidence and mistaking German balloon-inflating trucks for mobile germ warfare labs. They didn't pretend the world was ending because a tin-pot tyrant couldn't hand over the chemical weapons it turned out he'd destroyed a decade earlier. The Germans walked up to the front door of our State Department and said, "We're at war." It was in all the papers. And when that war ended, more than three horrible years later, our troops and the Russians were in Berlin. And we stayed, as an occupying force, well into the 1950s. As an occupying force, Madam Secretary!

If you want to compare what we did to Hitler and in Germany to what we did to Saddam and in Iraq, I'm afraid you're going to have to buy the whole analogy. We were an occupying force in Germany, Dr. Rice, and by your logic, we're now an occupying force in Iraq. And if that's the way you see it, you damn well better come out and tell the American people so. Save your breath telling it to the Iraqis — most of them already buy that part of the comparison.

“It would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then, the resolution that allowed the United States to do that, so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

We already have a subjectively false comparison between Hitler and Saddam. We already have a historically false comparison between Germany and Iraq. We already have blissful ignorance by our secretary of state about how this country got into the war against Hitler. But then there's this part about changing "the resolution" about Iraq; that it would be as ridiculous in the secretary's eyes as saying that after Hitler was defeated, we needed to go back to Congress to "deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

Oh, good grief, Secretary Rice, that's exactly what we did do! We went back to Congress to deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after Hitler was overthrown! It was called the Marshall Plan.
Marshall!

Gen. George Catlett Marshall!

Secretary of state!

The job you have now!

C’mon!

Twelve billion, 400 thousand dollars to stabilize all of Europe economically — to keep the next enemies of freedom, the Russians, out and democracy in! And how do you suppose that happened? The president of the United States went back to Congress and asked it for a new authorization and for the money. And do you have any idea, Madame Secretary, who opposed him when he did that? The Republicans!

"We've spent enough money in Europe," said Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio.

"We've spent enough of our resources," said former President Hoover.

It's time to pull out of there! As they stand up, we'll stand down!

This administration has long thought otherwise, but you can't cherry-pick life — whether life in 2007, or life in the history page marked 1945. You can't keep the facts that fit your prejudices and throw out the ones that destroy your theories. And if you're going to try to do that; if you still want to fool some people into thinking that Saddam was Hitler, and once we gave FDR that blank check in Germany he was no longer subject to the laws of Congress or gravity or physics, at least stop humiliating us.

Get your facts straight. Use the Google!

You've been on Fox News Sunday, Secretary Rice. The Fox network has got another show premiering Tuesday night. You could go on that one, too. It might be a better fit. It's called "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader?"

"That man sure gets around..." - Miss Patt

2007-02-27T10:08:00.000-08:00

So, this whole Jesus-Bones contraversy spawned (what else?) the great intellect of none other than Miss Patt, the saving grace of WCL and the only thing that made my time under Troll Bridge more bearable.

Raleigh: Did you read about how they "found" "Jesus' bones?"
Miss Patt: I've been in a tizzy since last thursday. Where did they find Jesus' bones... on Ebay? Send me the site. Good Grief! They seem to find every damn body except Bin Laden.

see virginia, james cameron DOES exist

2007-02-27T07:42:00.001-08:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7615622

i got practice on my brothers, thap

2007-02-26T13:57:00.000-08:00

There is really nothing better to do in this city, so let's hit each other with pillows.

Thap, take that Austin. Thap. We've got spirit, yes we do, we've got spirit, how bout you!!!

This is my new favorite whistle-to-whistle sporting event in New York: the ultimate pillow fight. It consumed Union Square this weekend, leaving behind a chicken pen of snow, maybe giving a little down to those left out in the cold here. Donate pillows to the homeless? Why. We're all crazy. Excess energy + violence + Giuliani ran our city so long we don't know how to really misbehave = pillow fight extravaganza.

I miss Dixie, but damn. There's no place like home. I ♥ NY.

waiting for the neon bible

2007-02-26T10:59:00.000-08:00

In exactly one week from tomorrow, there will be new Arcade Fire to fill my ipod (and soul)!!!!!! Gleeful joy abounds, especially since I'm still Effing Furious I spent Valentines UNDER MY DESK to Neighbhorhood #1 (which has been reclaimed in a project of imminent domaine, starchy). Keep the Car running is already getting mad play and I am listening to it on near repeat. God, they have energy.

Life is always a tightrope, or a featherbed. Give me the tightrope. - Edith Wharton

2007-02-26T09:58:00.000-08:00

With impressive skill and mimosa-induced confidence, I'm pleased to report that our Brunch for 35 was an utter hit. It may not even be just our innate perfection of the giddily bulbbly aftershocks of orange and Moet but rather have something (significantly) to do with the little funtoys provided by Williams Sonoma that help even the biggest brute (moi) execute nearly anything in an urbanely acceptable manner, but, either way, we did it, and everyone was happy. The menu was nothing short of ambitious, either, and I hereby declare us the Brunch Royals.

After Hollendaise sauce success --
Joe: We are kings among men, Raleigh.
Raleigh: I am a Queen among kings, Joe.

Other than that, not much happened. We got landlordian approval on our swing (hoorah), which we agree is the absolute in our apartment, and there were Oscars, of which I didn't catch much, there was an attempted trip to the MoMa sidetracked by a crepe cake I never want to repeat in my life, and there was a whole Sunday of reading and drawing and painting and Bubby's... life doesn't get much better than that.

In fact, if we all are like Yoshimi, then happiness is easy to create:
Morning Edition, February 26, 2007 · I believe we have the power to create our own happiness. I believe the real magic in the world is done by humans. I believe normal life is extraordinary.

I was sitting in my car at a stoplight intersection listening to the radio. I was, I guess, lost in the moment, thinking how happy I was to be inside my nice warm car. It was cold and windy outside, and I thought, "Life is good."

Now, this was a long light. As I waited, I noticed two people huddled together at the bus stop. To my eyes, they looked uncomfortable; they looked cold and they looked poor. Their coats looked like they came from a thrift store. They weren't wearing stuff from The Gap. I knew it because I'd been there.

The couple seemed to be doing their best to keep warm. They were huddled together, and I thought to myself, "Oh, those poor people in that punishing wind."

But then I saw their faces. Yes, they were huddling, but they were also laughing. They looked to be sharing a good joke, and suddenly, instead of pitying them, I envied them. I thought, "Huh, what's so funny?" They didn't notice the wind. They weren't worried about their clothes. They weren't looking at my car thinking, "I wish I had that."

You know when a single moment feels like an hour? Well, in that moment, I realized I had assumed this couple needed my pity, but they didn't. I assumed things were all bad for them, but they weren't. And I understood we all have the power to make moments of happiness happen.

Now, maybe that's easy for me to say. I feel lucky to have fans around the world, a house with a roof and a wife who puts up with me. But I felt this way even when I was working at Long John Silver's. I worked there for 11 years as a fry cook. When you work at a place that long, you see teenagers coming in on their first dates; then they're married; then they're bringing in their kids. You witness whole sections of people's lives.

In the beginning, it seemed like a dead end job. But at least I had a job. And frankly, it was easy. After two weeks, I knew all I needed to know, and it freed my mind. The job allowed me to dream about what my life could become.

The first year I worked there, we got robbed. I lay on the floor. I thought I was going to die. I didn't think I stood a chance. But everything turned out all right. A lot of people look at life as a series of miserable tasks, but after that, I didn't.

I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves. This I believe.
-- Wayne Coyne, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=7572601

The Invention of Fractions

God himself made the whole numbers: everything else
is the work of man.
—Leopold Kronnecker

God created the whole numbers:
the first born, the seventh seal,
Ten Commandments etched in stone,
the Twelve Tribes of Israel —
Ten we've already lost —
forty days and forty nights,
Saul's ten thousand and David's ten thousand.
'Be of one heart and one mind' —
the whole numbers, the counting numbers.

It took humankind to need less than this;
to invent fractions, percentages, decimals.
Only humankind could need the concepts
of splintering and dividing,
of things lost or broken,
of settling for the part instead of the whole.

Only humankind could find the whole numbers,
infinite as they are, to be wanting;
though given a limitless supply,
we still had no way
to measure what we keep
in our many-chambered hearts.
-- Jessica Goodfellow

and to dust you shall return

2007-02-22T11:24:00.000-08:00

domine, non est exaltum cor meum: neque elati sunt oculi mei. neque ambulavi in magnis: neque in mirabilibus super me. si non humiliter sentiebam: sed exaltavi animam meam: sicut ablactus est super matre sua, ita retributio in animam meam: speret israel in dominio, ex hoc nunc it usque in saeculum.

Lucky

2007-02-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

I just found this. I think I like it as much as Days We Would Rather know, which I see as nothing short of a modern miracle that it can be liked equally much:

Lucky

Off to the market to buy a lottery ticket,
I consider the possibilities of luck: good luck.
bad luck, beginner's luck, hard luck, the luck
of the draw, and I realize I am lucky, in fact,
to be here at all, on this benignly lit street
on a night in October, as luck would have it,
and I know that it's not just the luck of
the Irish, but any man's, to walk the streets
of his town, beneath the shapely moon,
and ponder the dumb luck that brought him here,
against all odds, into the vast lottery of minnow
and ovum, and to know he has once again lucked out,
this very night, spent as it has been without
accident or incident, a small testimonial
to the quietudes that are still possible,
the only half-felt wish for some grand stroke
of luck that will change everything, that will
change, really, nothing at all, our lives being,
in some sense, beyond the vicissitudes
of luck and yearning, the night being lovely,
the day finite, many of those we know whose luck
has already run out, and we not yet among them,
thank the beneficence of Lady Luck, our stars
just now flickering into flame
as the night lucks in.

I love that. As the night lucks in. And the quietudes that are still possible. I love that feeling, and my obsession with night is not a small one. It's what sticks Arcade Fire's Neighborhood #1 into my head, the stars fading in and out in the beginning, the same stars I used to tell Tristan he had to find on the piano, to play stars with me up from the tip top and down in the darkest hallows of the lower left. It's that feeling you get in the quiet of Van Vorst park late at night, when you have wonder if an urban monster or merely a petty theif is going to destroy that somnolent safety you hold dear or if, perhaps, the blue overhead will guard you in a soft and quiet perfection you will always know but never touch. In paint, if you could combine Van Gogh's Starry Night over the Rhone with Rothko's Blue Green and Brown (1959), you'd get so close. It's my favorite time; the only moments of the day where we realize our incadescence, and our vulnerability. And in that, both at once, we touch that fleeting truth that love struggles towards, finding only the ephemeral.

A New Blog is Born

2007-02-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

Since I have proven entirely incapable of completing blogs from home, this is my new lunchtime activity that will hopefully satiate the rest of you that wondered why, exactly, I seemingly fell off the face of the planet.

Well, here I am. And let's celebrate this new arrival in style. A bloggening, of sorts, without the real-life immersion but with the same gallantry. And as we invoke her, a note to the Muse: Dave and Morely Live would have been a more appropriate option, but this is the most raleigh-approved substitute readily available.

Days We Would Rather Know

There are days we would rather know
than these, as there is always, later,
a wife we would rather have married
than whom we did, in that severe nowness
time pushed, imperfectly, to then. Whether,
standing in the museum before Rembrandt's "Juno,"
we stand before beauty, or only before a consensus
about beauty, is a question that makes all beauty
suspect ... and all marriages. Last night,
leaves circled the base of the ginkgo as if
the sun had shattered during the night
into a million gold coins no one had the sense
to claim. And now, there are days we would
rather know than these, days when to stand
before beauty and before "Juno" are, convincingly,
the same, days when the shattered sunlight
seeps through the trees and the women we marry
stay interesting and beautiful both at once,
and their men. And though there are days
we would rather know than now, I am,
at heart, a scared and simple man. So I tighten
my arms around the woman I love, now
and imperfectly, stand before "Juno" whispering
beautiful beautiful until I believe it, and—
when I come home at night—I run out
into the day's pale dusk with my broom
and my dustpan, sweeping the coins from the base
of the ginkgo, something to keep for a better tomorrow:
days we would rather know that never come.