How Do You See It?

Tags

culture, Humor, life in the foothills, lifestyle, President Obama, satire

 

 

I figure I’m pretty normal as normal goes. I figure I’m pretty unique too as unique goes. That brings us to zero. Sooo. What I mean to say is that I figure in the great scheme of things, most people are pretty much alike, but we have enough individuality to keep us from boring each other to death.

I spent a lot of evenings late at night with a glass (okay glasses, if you must) of wine thinking about how life would be in New Mexico. And pretty much most of it has come true. We are brimmingly happy here. We love our home, our locale, our new dog and life in general. I’m in a position to do the things I wanted to do. I feel productive. I sigh happily at the end of the day, figuring I’ve used it pretty darn well.

So, my question is this: are you a day planner kinda person or a let the day dictate itself kinda person? Are you scheduled or unscheduled? Are you a list maker or a surprise me human? How do you treat yourself–before, during or after the “should” part of your day?

Are you a routine lover or not?

I am. Routine lover that is. I just automatically start figuring out the order of my day. For instance:

• I walk every morning M-Sat, at 6:15 am until about 7:10 am. Diego joins me now, and loves it to death.
• I clean house on Monday and Tuesday following my walk.
• I swim on Wednesday and Friday at 9:15 until 10:15 am.
• I grocery shop on Wednesday after my swim.
• I try to read  a book (I read articles all day long) at least 30 minutes a day in the afternoon.
• I try to work on some craft at least 4 times a week.
• I try to meditate for 20 minutes ever day.
• I try to do yoga stretches about 4 times a week.
• I do laundry on Thursday and Saturday.
• I cook five meals a week, have left overs once, and let the Contrarian fend for himself on Sunday.
• I always attend the 7:30 am Mass on Sunday.
• We shower at 5:15 pm, and watch the PBS news hour until 6:30 and then Jeopardy.

Does that sound weird to you?

See, it seems normal to me, and well, I have no real way of knowing unless I ask. Or should I remain in the dark, thinking that I’m normal–in other words, let sleeping dogs lie?

The key is, I don’t feel very comfortable enjoying anything until the should list is done. The should part of the above are those things I do as opposed to those things I “try.” Am I anal? Am I in need of “intervention? Am  I crazy, mad, slightly warped, or just a crazy lady of the eccentric persuasion?

And, I’m not sure I care what you think, but I’m asking you anyway. Or better yet, share your own modus operandi for daily life.

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One reason we in the “West” seem to conflict with those in the “East” (think global kids) is our propensity to think that virtually everything good in the world erupted from our part of the world, and was disseminated over time elsewhere. We do have trouble seeing that lots of great things came from other parts of the world, and their worldview, customs and ways of thinking are every bit as “right”, normal and good as our own.

Ales Debeljak has a very good article on the idea of hybridity that you should read, and besides, you can impress your friends with quotes from Eurozine, the magazine it appears in.

≈

Niall Ferguson is one who thinks the earth would be a worthless place had it not been for the British Empire. He’s been raked over the coals more than once by the intellectual community for being shall we say, less than a heavy weight.

If you hadn’t heard, he wrote a piece for Newsweek which excoriated President Obama. The full weight of the intellectual community is coming down on him for his huge factual errors. Read a good one in the Salon by Alex Pareene.

Dang, I would write more, but it’s time for me to head off to the pool. I can’t be late you know,. . . .said the rabbit as it ducked down the hole. . . .

Related articles

• Is Niall Ferguson’s Newsweek attack on Obama ’embarrassing’ and ‘unethical’? (guardian.co.uk)
• Top Newsweek Cover Reactions (thedailybeast.com)
• Niall Ferguson Is a Sad, Strange, Deluded Little Man–and He Has Our Pity… (delong.typepad.com)
• Niall Ferguson Publishes Embarrassing Defense Of Newsweek Article (businessinsider.com)
• A Full Fact-Check of Niall Ferguson’s Very Bad Argument Against Obama (theatlantic.com)

 

What Is a Weekend?

Tags

African American, Arizona, Beatification, Carlos Gonzales, Catholicism, culture, GOP, GOP Chairman Reince Priebus, John Paul II, lifestyle, poverty, Sarah Palin, sociology, Tucson memorial service

I must say, watching Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Theatre has its moments of levity.

During a luncheon in which Matthew Crawley, the new heir of the estate is meeting some of his “family” he mentions something about coming down on the weekend.

The Dowager Countess, played by Maggie Smith, arches an eye and inquires in all sincerity, “what is a weekend?”

Now that is sure to set you up. I mean who doesn’t know what a weekend is? Think about it. The Dowager, safely ensconced in her country estate, probably only recognized one day and that was the Sabbath when she motored or carriaged her way to the services.

But it got me to wondering. I suspect there are plenty of people still on this planet who would have no idea what the word weekend means. We live in our enclaves of worlds within worlds don’t we?

***

The Contrarian is busy outside. He’s pulled two huge trunks over to the splitter, and is loading another cart of wood. We are headed for some really LOW temperatures next week, and he’s hoping to spend as little time as possible outside for the four or so days in the zero and below range. He has tomorrow and Monday to get it all chumped up and split, ready for the great fall coming Monday night.

On the bright side–winter is half done. It’s all down hill starting tomorrow!

***

There is a truly thought-provoking piece over at the Boston Review that warrants your attention. Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote a report on “The Negro Family.” Basically it posited that cultural behaviors were the causation of systemic poverty within the black community. The backlash to this was so enormous that for some forty years, it is claimed, research steered clear of anything that might suggest that the victim caused their own problems.

Now, we are told that research is reopening that issue. Are these so-called culturalists, still confusing cause and effect? Stephen Steinberg writes a compelling piece arguing that they have in fact failed to make their case.

***

I had to laugh Pat Buchanan this morning on MSNBC. The topic was Sarah. And Pat is making the case that everybody is piling on her because they are “terrified” of her. And worse, the more you make her feel defensive, the more you encourage her to attack.

I guess Pat fails to see the idiocy of his remarks. First, nobody is “terrified” of her, since her poll numbers are so abysmal as to be a joke. And they keep getting worse, the more she plays the victim and lashes out. So um, might it be a pretty smart thing to keep attacking?

I mean the woman is an idiot. Her next big gig is to be the keynote speaker at a gun show in Nevada. GUNS and more GUNS, Grifter Girl!

***

As you may or may not know, one Reince Priebus is the new head of the GOP. Taking out all those pesky vowels, we get RNC PR BS or Republican National Committee Pure Bullshit.  HA! a H/T to Bluegal at Crooks and Liars! Priebus was elected on the 7th ballot, saying something I guess about how much unity there exists within the Grand Old Poops.

***

It appears that all is in order and quite soon John Paul II will be beatified. I am quite conflicted about this. He was a good pope in many ways, but he did his best to unravel Vatican II and install a college of Cardinals that for decades will pursue conservative policies, leaving women and gays marginalized within the Church. I won’t even start on the pedophilia issue. All in all, I think it a bad move at this time I think. Although goodness knows, no saint is expected or often is totally blameless. Still, this is moving too fast, almost as if it must be done quickly, before too much more negative stuff comes out.

***

If you watched the Memorial at Tucson on Wednesday, you saw the Benediction by Carlos Gonzales, faculty member at the University of Arizona, and of Mexican and Yaqui lineage. Brit Hume, (who famously advised Tiger Woods he should dump that Buddhist stuff and become Christian in the throes of his marital woes), said that he found the benediction “peculiar.” I guess that was one of the nicer comments from the Extreme Right. Others called his prayer “pagan”.

Things only got worse at The Blaze, Glenn Beck’s site. After referencing Hume’s “peculiar” statement, they  liked to an unnamed blogger (post apparently now removed) who bemoaned that Gonzales kept using the term “Creator” and not God. Apparently he doesn’t see the Creator as God. He went on to surmise that the victims “likely would have appreciated a pray more closely aligned with their religious beliefs.” The post concluded that Gonzales was “reportedly” a doctor and professor at the university.

A perusal of the comments vomited up what you might expect. Invective, ad hominem attack, and vicious vicious assumptions. Words like, Chief Loony Toons, Nappy Hair, injuns, idiot president, part-time employee at an Arizona casino, peppered the comments, and it was hard to think that any of them could be over the age of 12. Not one could cite to any Arizona paper, news show, or statement by any family member of actual Arizonan to back up the charge that the service was an affront to real Christian Americans everywhere.

So much for toning down the rhetoric.

Go Packers!

Related Articles

• Brit Hume Questions Tone, Timing Of Arizona Shooting Memorial Service (huffingtonpost.com)
• An evening in Tucson — the good, the bad, and the ugly (powerlineblog.com)
• “Downton Abbey: Episode One on Masterpiece Classic PBS – A Recap & Review” and related posts (austenprose.com)
• WATCH: Stewart Mocks Fox News For Critiquing Arizona Shooting Memorial (huffingtonpost.com)

Fa La La La La and All that Stuff

Tags

chimpanzees, culture, evolution, Jesus, Mad Men, Matthew, Nativity, Poetry, weird hobbies

Last night was the longest night of the year, the shortest day. We had an eclipse that I didn’t see because of cloud cover. It’s only four days until Christmas. The Baby Jesus is coming! Since I’ve got all I need for a cozy holiday, I don’t give a flying fig newton if it snows us in.

For all these reasons, I’m not gonna talk about any of the repulsive, idiotic, evil, buffoons in Congress and elsewhere, until after December 25. We are gonna focus on funny, sweet, interesting, mind-opening, items that enrich, enliven, and empower. Promise.

But come, December 26, well we will be our old snarky self. Count on it.

Now to actually find some nice news.

I know I posted a book review yesterday. You’ll probably want to pick this one up too: It’s called Swallow and would make a great coffee table book, guaranteed to start a lively conversation.

Proving that there is a hobby out there for everyone, one Dr. Chevalier Jackson, began collecting items that he had removed from the bodies of his patients. Umbrella tips, opera glasses and padlocks. There are stories galore of people with strange desires to ingest all manner of bizarre “things.” Mary Cappello tells the tale I am told, with wit and aplomb. Take a look if you can swallow that kind of thing :O

***

Every parent knows that children, both boys and girls, attempt to emulate their parents and parent themselves. They use pets, and dolls mostly.

Well it turns out that chimp youngsters, especially girl chimps try to do the same. They carry sticks around, cradling them, and other wise mimicking the “mothering” behaviors of their moms. Although in chimp society, females do most of the child care activities, even a boy or two has been seen caring for his stick. (Don’t you dare go there!)

Which just goes to show, that girl apes are really just chimps off the same block. :O

***

Namelessneed is one of those real poets. You know what I mean. The kind of stuff I can’t write, but wish I could. You should always pay attention to such people because they touch you in the most unexpected ways. Go read W O R D M A T H S because I said so.

***

Some families read Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus, as a Christmas Eve ritual. They mostly don’t read the opening part, with  all that genealogy stuff. Boring you know. Tim, at Straight-Friendly, shows us why we should read it, and what lessons we can learn from it. If you don’t read Tim regularly, you’re, well, missing more than you know.

***

Do you miss Mad Men?  I do. Awfully bad. Really. Big Think has an article on it and why it’s still the best of the best.The message speaks volumes to our lives today. I wouldn’t argue with that assessment. Funny I should, since I have about as low an opinion as one can get of Ad men. I mean they are creatures of some other planet. I guess, their excesses, portrayed so elegantly on the show, are a lesson to us, one we should look at seriously.

What is my bitch with Madison Avenue you ask?   It’s that  their ads never bespeak a world that is actually real. Case in point.

There are, at this time of years, innumerable ads urging us to go out and buy cars as gifts! wrapping them up in big bows and surprising our beloved with their favorite brand. Except, that 99.9 percentages of us cannot afford to do this. Do they really thing the .01 percent who can watch television? Somehow, I rather doubt. it.

***

What’s on the stove: t-bones with baked potatoes/sour cream and cauliflower with cheddar cheese.

Book Giveaway #2

Tags

Bill Donohue, book giveaway, book review, Catholic League, Catholicism, culture, liberals, nihilism, religion, right wing activists, secularism

Today we have a new offering in our book giveaways. I think it behooves me to explain this event a bit. The Hatchette Book Group wrote offering me the opportunity to do book giveaways. They supply me with a short list of available titles. I’ve chosen three over a two month period.

That being said, it should be clear that these are not necessarily books I would choose to ask for or otherwise read. I neither endorse nor otherwise the selections presented. My “review” is intended to enlighten you, the reader, as to the general content of the book. It is not therefore, the usual review you would expect here.

This selection is from Bill Donohue, and is called Secular Sabotage: How Liberals are Destroying Religion and Culture in America.

Mr. Donohue is a “traditional” Catholic and is head of the right wing organization, Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. He sees it as his job to ferret out anti-Catholic sentiment and protect the faithful in their pursuit of Catholic ideals.

Mr. Donohue’s book is an attempt to show how secularists and others are destroying all faith and culture in America, at least the faith he subscribes to and the culture he envisions as appropriate.

Two terms are bandied around and require definition.  The first is nihilism which Donohue calls all those who oppose his views. Nihilists deny or believe that all existing moral and religious beliefs are worthless and need to be destroyed. It can mean as well the destruction of all political and social norms.  The other term, from the title itself is “secularism.” This means quite simply that religious matters needs be excluded from civil affairs and public education.

Mr. Donohue spits out the word secularism as if it is equal to atheism. And he nowhere provides any case other than blatant assertions that nihilists are afoot trying to destroy religion. He makes an assertion that somehow the far left was distraught over the fall of the Berlin Wall, and thus they gave up and just now try to destroy everything. He gives no proof of this claim.

Mr. Donohue claims that Christianity is being destroyed by these groups, yet, in every case, he lauds the fact that through his efforts and the poor quality of their message, nobody cares anyway. This does belie his message a bit I would say.

All the usual suspects are assailed. Sometimes we go back forty and fifty years to find examples of the efforts various groups make to destroy religion. And, before long, Protestantism and other non-Christian faiths are left behind, and Donohue concentrates on the real point of his book: how Catholics are as ever, being discriminated against and mistreated.

The list of offending groups is as I say the usual. Anyone who believes in pluralism is wrong since in Bill’s view this is a Christian nation which he takes to mean that most everyone wants only Christian views expressed. Then we move to the sexual libertines, which includes just about everybody who is opposed to his agenda. We all want to have sex with everyone, everywhere, everyway and as often as possible.

Next are the gays, then Hollywood with their liberal Jewish bias. Then the lawyers, then the Democrats, and unbelievably, then the “other” Catholics who Bill claims are not really Catholics at all, but pretend ones whose agenda is to destroy the Church. Then, last but not least, the Protestants who are “lefties.” We don’t really matter, of course, because like all the rest, we are so minor and disappearing so fast that we are barely visible.

Which all goes to make one wonder what the point of the book is, since all are failing so badly. But there is a constant and never ending refrain from Bill about his own efforts. The book is just chock full of “my involvement, my interview, I threatened to sue, when I sued, I sent a letter, I criticized, I launched, I complained. No one can not notice that Bill is always in the forefront of never letting any possible slight to his Church go unchallenged.

What is perhaps the strangest part of the book, is where he discusses movies and art. He finds plenty of anti-Catholic material around and describes in utterly step by step detail the contents that he finds so hideous. I’m not sure why. At the end of each, he then assures the reader that in fact each art piece or movie offering was rejected by the public and hardly viewed. It begs the question why he is willing to give so much advertising.

If you are a fan of Bill’s by all means drop a comment. If you want to get inside the head of someone from the far right, by all means drop a comment. There are five available, under the same terms as the last. Leave an e-mail address in your comment.