the antidote to a funeral

When I got home from a memorial for a friend's husband this afternoon, I was feeling totally down and my eyes were so sore that I simply couldn’t cry any more. I sat there, dazed, trying to wrap my brain around how my friend, a 36-year-old woman with three children under the age of 4 (the youngest was born just 6 weeks ago), was going to face each day without her partner and best friend.

A few minutes later, Ruby came over, licked my elbow, flirted with me, and ran out of the room. I followed her to the front door (her sign that she needs to go out), grabbed the leash, and took her for a pit stop.

We ran into my new downstairs neighbor, who has a very young (just old enough to be adopted) German Shepherd puppy. Ruby took care of business out front and couldn’t wait to come back and play with Leysi, who weighs about 10 lbs and is about 12 inches long and 8 inches tall. They played for a while in the courtyard, with Ruby play bowing then laying down so that she didn't totally freak out the puppy.

The puppy was scared at first, but curiosity and moxie won out ... she started boxing with Ruby (who feinted left and right), hopped into my lap (I sat on the stairs and watched with my neighbor), and even barked back at Ruby once. When another neighbor's adult dogs came down and wanted to roughhouse -- first backing the puppy into a corner, then growling -- Ruby stepped in and regulated the big dogs, stopping the adults from overdoing it with the puppy.

Dogs are the best. And my pup is a very special pooch indeed.

today's speakeasies

The speakeasy of today has little in common with those of the Prohibition era, but the allure of the illicit remains.

Bar? What Bar?
By WILLIAM GRIMES
June 3, 2009

ON a nondescript block in Williamsburg, not far from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, a new bar and restaurant called Rye opened last week.

Try to find it.

There’s no sign out front. The facade, an artfully casual assemblage of old wooden slats, gives the place a boarded-up, abandoned look. It does have a street number, painted discreetly on a glass panel above the front doors, but that’s it. Like a suspect in a lineup, it seems to shrink back when observed.

There are a lot of bars like this right now. They can be found all over the United States, skulking in the shadows. Obtrusively furtive, they represent one of the strangest exercises in nostalgia ever to grip the public, an infatuation with the good old days of Prohibition.

Their name is legion: the Varnish in Los Angeles; Bourbon & Branch in San Francisco; Speakeasy in Cleveland; the Violet Hour in Chicago; Manifesto in Kansas City, Mo.; Tavern Law in Seattle (scheduled to open later this month). Everywhere, it seems, fancy cocktails are being shaken in murky surroundings.

New York has fallen hard for this fad. Sasha Petraske, the cocktail artist behind Milk & Honey, has just opened Dutch Kills on a bleak commercial strip in Long Island City, Queens. A small sign that says “BAR” is the only tip-off to its existence.

At the Hideout, in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, aspiring customers ring the bell at a forbidding-looking garage door and then stand there as a pair of eyes scrutinize them through a 1920s-style peephole.

The ultimate in speakeasy mystification takes place at PDT (Please Don’t Tell) on St. Marks Place in the East Village. Patrons have to enter through Crif Dogs, the hip hot dog place, then step into a phone booth and identify themselves by speaking into the receiver. A buzzer opens a secret door, revealing a strange, twilight world where artisanal cocktails are consumed under the watchful eyes of a stuffed jackelope and raccoon, and a bear wearing a bowler hat.

Whoopee!

“Speakeasy is a funny term, since the business is legal,” said Eric Alperin, a partner and head bartender at the Varnish. “What people are referring to is the allure, almost like an opium den.”

Brian Sheehy, an owner of Bourbon & Branch, agreed. “People have an affection for this period of American history, and they want the mystery,” he said. To enhance the backroom ambience, Bourbon & Branch assigns customers a password, to be spoken into an intercom, when they make a reservation. Once inside the bar, customers are expected to abide by house rules. “Speak easy,” is one of them, enforced by bartenders when necessary.

Password or no password, deluxe or down-low, all these bars have something in common. None of them really resemble an actual speakeasy from the 1920s, although Bourbon & Branch, oddly enough, sits on top of one, reached through a trap door leading to the basement.

A little history, please.

Prohibition, which took effect in January 1920 and finally ended in December 1933, was the worst cocktail era in the history of the United States, for obvious reasons. Half the liquor was homemade or adulterated, forcing the great classic drinks of the early 20th century to exit the stage. In their places appeared cocktails designed to mask poor ingredients, like rye and ginger ale, or the Alexander, a repellent mixture of gin, crème de cacao and cream.

“The basic raw materials then available, and I use the term raw advisedly, made it imperative that they be polished or doctored or decorated,” Frank Shay wrote in a 1934 Esquire article bidding farewell to the Great Experiment. “Also it was essential that their rougher edges be smoothed down in order that they might pass to their true goal without too great distress to the drinker.”

The Alexander merited a place of honor on Esquire’s list of “the pansies,” the worst drinks of the Prohibition era. These included long-forgotten abominations like the Sweetheart, the Fluffy Ruffles, the Pom Pom and the Cream Fizz.

Real cocktails fled the country, along with a lot of professional bartenders, who took up residence at American bars in Havana, London and Paris. In these civilized outposts, the serious work of cocktail invention continued, reflected in books like “The Savoy Cocktail Book,” while Americans made do with “Wet Drinks for Dry People,” subtitled “A Book of Drinks Based on the Ordinary Home Supplies.”

Bad-tasting cocktails were the least of it. Some of the drinks could kill. During the 1926 holiday season in New York, 47 people died after drinking poisoned liquor, bringing that year’s body count to 741.

“This ‘speakeasy’ business must be the most independent and prosperous business in the world, especially in New York, for no other industry in the world could afford to kill its customers off like that,” Will Rogers wrote in a letter to The New York Times in 1928. “They must run an undertaking business on the side.”

Extract of Jamaica ginger, a patent medicine with a high alcohol content, found favor with a certain class of drinker. Unfortunately, “jake,” as it was called, contained a neurotoxin that caused its devotees to lose the use of their hands and feet. All things considered, it required a certain amount of nerve to lift a glass to the lips in the otherwise fabulous Jazz Age.

Not surprisingly, bars like the Violet Hour — unmarked, with a lone bulb outside to indicate, with a faint glow, when drinks are being served inside — do not specialize in Prohibition cocktails, only in a Prohibition vibe. Virtually every new wave speakeasy makes a point of showcasing purist cocktails made with fresh fruit juices, house-infused liquors, recherché bitters and hand-chipped ice. The ethos lies somewhere between 1890 and 1910, the golden age of cocktails.

You get the drift at Rye, where the abbreviated list of signature drinks includes a rye old-fashioned with orange and Angostura bitters and Demerara sugar, and an “improved” tequila cocktail with maraschino, bitters and a dash of absinthe. This is not the sort of cocktail that Americans were drinking in 1925.

Likewise the décor. The rough floorboards, dark wood and stamped-tin ceiling, not to mention the Cinerama-scale mahogany bar, screams 1910. So does the interior at the undeniably impressive Hotel Delano bar, on the other side of Williamsburg, which, like so many of the nouvelle speakeasies, is visually a good old-fashioned pre-Prohibition saloon.

The Raines Law Room, in Chelsea, puts the issue front and center with its name, an allusion to the prohibition that came before Prohibition. The Raines Law, passed by the New York State Legislature in 1896, banned the sale of liquor on Sundays, except at hotels, where guests could be served drinks during meals. Overnight, hundreds of bars put a few beds and chairs in their upstairs rooms, called themselves hotels, and kept a few plates of nominal food at hand to put in front of drinking customers. One of the great artifacts of the Gay 90s was the Raines Law sandwich, a desiccated slice of ham between two slices of stale bread that no customer ever touched. As a pivot point for nostalgia, the Raines Law seems like an odd choice.

Speakeasy time travel, in other words, is vague, the images dreamy. At the Violet Hour, patrons pass through the boarded-up facade to enter a lush interior with saturated colors, heavy fabrics and ornate chandeliers. In the Back Room, on the Lower East Side, the drinks are served in teacups, a pointless exercise in deception. At Speakeasy, in Cleveland, which really does go the extra mile down the nostalgia highway by distilling its own gin, a chandelier over a basement stairwell indicates the way to passers-by on the sidewalk. “When it’s on, the speakeasy is open,” said Sam McNulty, the owner.

The reality of Prohibition was quite otherwise. “A speakeasy could be a table, a bottle and two chairs, or it could be ‘21,’ ” said Daniel Okrent, whose book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition” is to be published by Scribner next year. “Most were closer to the lower end. They were dives where you drank bad liquor from a bottle with a counterfeit label and woke up with a headache in the morning.”

In the early years of Prohibition, when agents pursued enforcement with some zeal, patrons needed passcards or passwords, but corruption and inertia took over fairly quickly. In “Manhattan Oases,” Al Hirschfeld’s 1932 cartoon survey of New York speakeasies, a fake cigar store called the Dixie is ridiculed as “one of those quaint, old-fashioned places (circa 1925), which still think it needs a false front.”

Everywhere else, the speaking was anything but easy. In cities like New York, San Francisco, Detroit and New Orleans, the game ended almost before it started, and bars operated with the merest pretense of discretion. “The secret aspect in New York was over by 1928 or 1929,” Mr. Okrent said. “To run a speakeasy you just bribed the local cop. There was not a lot of secrecy.”

It is true, though, that illegal liquor added a certain excitement to nightlife. On this score, Rye and Dutch Kills and the Violet Hour and all the rest have their finger on something genuine. In an age when virtually nothing is hidden or forbidden, the idea of a secret hideaway takes on an undeniable allure.

The flappers of 1920 felt it, too. When mild-mannered Asaph Holliday, the put-upon protagonist of Elmer Davis’s Prohibition satire, “Friends of Mr. Sweeney,” ventures into a series of Manhattan speakeasies by accident, he discovers a world strange to his middle-aged eyes. Night spots that he would have considered nothing special when he was young are now regarded as thrilling. “Mr. Holliday realized at last why a nation tolerated the Volstead Act,” the narrator writes. “It made any place at all that contained liquor look like a wild cafe.”

Make it illegal, and they will come. If the authorities will not oblige, make it feel illegal. Nothing quite hits the spot like a martini in a ceramic mug.

like i said ...

Via Casey

quotable

"And when love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony." -William Shakespeare

the lunatic fringe

Dr. George Tiller, one of only a few doctors who perform late-term abortions, was gunned down in church today as he handed out the church bulletin. That's right. A pro-life terrorist shot and killed a physician in a house of god. The irony would be delicious if it weren't so completely horrific.

Some in the pro-life movement are praising his murder as justifiable homicide and an act of god. They are the same violent extremists who have targeted him for years:

• In 1986, his clinic was bombed.
  
• In 1991, it was blockaded for six weeks.
  
• In 1993, he was shot in both arms.
  
• In March, Kansas prosecutors tried him on charges of breaking an abortion law; he was acquitted.
  
• In May, vandals cut wires to security cameras and made holes in the roof of Tiller's clinic, Women's Health Care Services, a fortified single-story building where abortion foes keep daily vigil.

A history of violence on the antiabortion fringe
Dr. George Tiller's slaying is the latest in a decades-long campaign of shootings, bombings and vandalism carried out by extremists from the mostly peaceful movement.
By Richard Fausset
June 1, 2009
Reporting from Atlanta -- Bombings. Butyric acid attacks. Sniper shootings. Letters filled with fake anthrax. These are some of the tactics used over the years by antiabortion extremists.

The slaying of Dr. George Tiller in his Kansas church Sunday was part of a decades-long history of domestic terrorism aimed at abortion providers, carried out by a small minority of the much broader and generally peaceful movement that opposes abortion.

The National Abortion Federation, which supports abortion rights, has documented more than 6,100 acts of violence against abortion providers in the United States and Canada since 1977. The group classifies as "violent" not only the acts of murder, attempted murder, bombing and arson, but also vandalism, burglary and stalking, among others.

Tiller's slaying appears to be the eighth of an abortion clinic worker in the U.S. or Canada and the fourth of a doctor. A fifth doctor was shot but survived -- as did Tiller in a previous attack.

These illegal tactics -- denounced by many peaceful antiabortion activists -- multiplied in the 1980s, as the broader movement shifted away from pressuring the women who were having abortions to the medical personnel providing them, according to Carole Joffe, a sociology professor at UC Davis.

The shift in emphasis was a smart public relations move for those who oppose abortion, casting women as victims while exploiting public uneasiness over doctors who performed the procedure. Those public sentiments stemmed, in part, from the existence of ethically sketchy, "back-alley" abortion providers in the era before the Supreme Court's 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, Roe vs. Wade.

Clinics and clinic workers were subject to vandalism, bombings and death threats through the 1980s, but it was not until March 1993 that the United States saw the first known political slaying of an abortion provider.

Dr. David Gunn was shot during an antiabortion protest at a Pensacola, Fla., clinic. The year before, a "wanted" poster with Gunn's photo and home phone number had been distributed at a Montgomery, Ala., antiabortion rally sponsored by the group Operation Rescue, according to an Associated Press report.

Five months after Gunn's slaying, Tiller was shot in both arms outside his Wichita clinic by a woman who had praised Gunn's killer as a hero.

In response, Congress passed the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which President Clinton signed in May 1994. The law outlawed "force, threat of force or physical obstruction" to patients and clinic workers.

Supporters of abortion rights credit the law with stemming some of the intimidation at clinics. But serious incidents continued throughout Clinton's presidency, which was viewed as inhospitable to the antiabortion cause.

In July 1994, Paul Hill, a former Presbyterian minister, shot and killed Dr. John Britton and a 74-year-old clinic escort in Pensacola. In December of that year, John Salvi III shot up two Boston-area clinics, killing two receptionists and injuring five other people.

In January 1998, a bomb planted at a Birmingham, Ala., clinic killed a security guard and injured a nurse. The culprit, Eric Rudolph, a foe of gay rights and abortion, had also carried out a bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, which killed one and injured more than 100.

Rudolph disappeared into the mountains of Appalachia. He became the subject of a protracted manhunt and, in some circles, a folk hero. He was not captured until 2003. He pleaded guilty to a string of bombings and was sentenced to life in prison.

Until Tiller's slaying Sunday, the last known slaying of an abortion provider was in October 1998, when obstetrician Barnett Slepian was killed by James Kopp in Amherst, N.Y. Kopp was convicted of murder in 2003 and sentenced to 25 years to life.

Less lethal tactics have included the release of foul-smelling butyric acid at clinics. In 2001, when the nation was gripped with fear stemming from legitimate anthrax threats, more than 500 clinics received letters with fake anthrax, according to NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Those who support abortion rights maintain that violence and the threat of violence have led to a shortage of abortion providers. According to NARAL, 87% of U.S. counties lack an abortion provider.

travel tips for the roughest of countries

Op-Ed Columnist: Cum Laude in Evading Bandits
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: May 30, 2009

One of the great failures of American universities is that they are far too parochial, rarely exposing students to worlds beyond our borders.

If colleges provide credit for dozing through an introductory Spanish class, why not give credit for a “gap year” in a Bolivian village? If students can learn about microfinance while sitting comatose in 9 a.m. lectures, couldn’t they learn more by volunteering with a lender in a Bangladesh slum?

So with summer starting, it’s up to students themselves to self-educate by setting off on their own. I hold my “win a trip” contest precisely to encourage such trips — I’m just back from visiting five West African countries with a University of South Carolina student. Yet when I encourage students’ wanderlust, questions invariably arise: Will I be safe? How do I avoid robbers and malaria?

In response, here are 15 tips for traveling to even the roughest of countries — and back:

1. Carry a “decoy wallet,” so that if you are robbed by bandits with large guns, you have something to hand over. I keep $40 in my decoy wallet, along with an old library card and frequent-flier card. (But don’t begrudge the wallet: when my travel buddy was pickpocketed in Peru, we tried to jump the pickpocket, who turned out to be backed by an entire gang ... )
2. Carry cash and your passport where no robber will find it. Assuming that few bandits read this column, I’ll disclose that I carry mine in a pouch that loops onto my belt and tucks under my trousers.
3. Carry a tiny ski lock with a six-foot retractable wire. Use it to lock your backpack to a hotel bed when you’re out, or to the rack of a train car.
4. At night, set a chair against your hotel door so that it will tip over and crash if someone slips in at 4 a.m. And lift the sheet to look for bloodstains on the mattress — meaning bed bugs.
5. When it gets dark, always carry a headlamp in your pocket. I learned that from a friend whose hotel in Damascus lost power. He lacked a light but was able to feel his way up the stairs in the dark, find his room and walk in. A couple of final gropes, and he discovered it wasn’t his room after all. Unfortunately, it was occupied.
6. If you’re a woman held up in an isolated area, stick out your stomach, pat it and signal that you’re pregnant. You might also invest in a cheap wedding band, for imaginary husbands deflect unwanted suitors.
7. Be wary of accepting drinks from anyone. Robbers sometimes use a date rape drug to knock out their victims — in bars, in trains, in homes. If presented with pre-poured drinks, switch them with your host, cheerfully explaining: “This is an American good luck ritual!”
8. Buy a secondhand local cell phone for $20, outfit it with a local SIM card and keep it in your pocket.
9. When you arrive in a new city, don’t take an airport taxi unless you know it is safe. If you do take a cab, choose a scrawny driver and lock ALL the doors — thieves may pull open the doors at a red light and run off with a bag.
10. Don’t wear a nice watch, for that suggests a fat wallet and also makes a target. I learned that lesson on my first trip to the Philippines: a robber with a machete had just encountered a Japanese businessman with a Rolex — who now, alas, has only one hand.
11. Look out for fake cops or crooked ones. If a policeman tries to arrest you, demand to see some ID and use your cell phone to contact a friend.
12. If you are held up by bandits with large guns, shake hands respectfully with each of your persecutors. It’s very important to be polite to people who might kill you. Surprisingly often, child soldiers and other bandits will reciprocate your fake friendliness and settle for some cash rather than everything you possess. I’ve even had thugs warmly exchange addresses with me, after robbing me.
13. Remember that the scariest people aren’t warlords, but drivers. In buses I sometimes use my pack as an airbag; after one crash I was the only passenger not hospitalized.
14. If terrorists finger you, break out singing “O Canada”!
15. Finally, don’t be so cautious that you miss the magic of escaping your comfort zone and mingling with local people and staying in their homes. The risks are minimal compared with the wonders of spending time in a small village. So take a gap year, or volunteer in a village or a slum. And even if everything goes wrong and you are robbed and catch malaria, shrug it off — those are precisely the kinds of authentic interactions with local cultures that, in retrospect, enrich a journey and life itself.

rob's twitter-versy

Who knew Rob Thomas was so articulate?

The Big Gay Chip on My Shoulder
Rob Thomas, Singer/Songwriter
Posted: May 27, 2009 12:43 PM

I am a straight man, with a big gay chip on my shoulder.

A while back on my Twitter page (yes, I know how ridiculous it sounds), I mentioned that, if I believed in the devil, Pat Robertson might be him.

Being a fairly liberal-leaning guy with either liberal friends or Republican and Christian friends who don't believe that being one has anything to do with the other, I was surprised at how many people took offense to what I had to say.

These people weren't friends of Mr. Robertson but friends, apparently, of God. They had "spoken" with him and he had assured them that he was no friend of the gays. He also told them that he loved America more than any other country and was a huge fan of Dancing With the Stars.

The small controversy or "Twitter-versy" (patent on phrase pending) all started when I had made the mistake of asking why two people of the same sex shouldn't be able to make the same life-long commitment and (more importantly) under the same god, as straight people. Why can't my gay friends be as happily married as my wife and I? It seemed simple to me, but let me start off by telling you a series of things that I believe to be true:

I am a person who believes that people are born gay. I don't think you have any control over what moves you or to whom you're attracted. That's why it's called an attraction and not a choice.

I believe that America is a great nation of even greater people. I also believe that anyone who says that this is a "Christian nation" has RHS, or revisionist history syndrome, and doesn't realize that most of our founding fathers were either atheist or at least could see, even in the 1700s, that all through Europe at the time, religion was the cause of so much persecution that they needed to put into their brand new constitution a SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE so that the ideals of a group of people could never be forced onto the whole. (I also find it funny when people point out to me that it says "one nation under god" in our pledge of allegiance, not realizing that this was an addition made in 1954 during the communism scare of the McCarthy era. It's not surprising, however, knowing that these same people would punch me in the mouth if I called Jesus a Jew.)

I believe the fact that an atheist, who doesn't believe in God at all, is allowed to enter into the holy land of marriage while a gay Christian is not, shows that this law is arbitrary. Are we to believe that anyone who doesn't live their life according to the King James Bible isn't protected by the same laws that protect those who do? Using the same argument that I've seen on the 700 Club, that would mean that Jewish, Hindu, or Muslim weddings are also null and void.

I believe that to deny this right to the gay population is to say to them, "this god is not your god and he doesn't love you." There isn't one person who is against gay marriage that can give me a reason why it shouldn't be legal without bringing God or their religion into it. Still, I'm amazed at the audacity of a small, misdirected group of the ultra-conservative Christian right wing, to spend millions of dollars, in a recession, on advertisements to stop two men or women who love each other from being able to be married, but when you present any opposition to them, they accuse you of attacking their religion. Isn't it funny that the people who are the quickest to take someone's basic rights to happiness are always the loudest to scream when someone attacks their right to do so?

But this isn't a paper about religion. How could it be? Since we clearly have a separation of church and state, how could a conversation about laws have anything to do with religion at all? I'm writing about basic civil rights. We've been here before, fighting for the rights of African Americans or women to vote, or the rights of Jewish Americans to worship as they see fit. And, just as whites fought for African Americans or Christians for Jewish Americans, straight people must stand up and be a voice for gay people.

I've heard it said before, many times, that if two men or two women are allowed to join into a civil union together, why can't they be happy with that and why is it so important that they call it marriage? In essence, what's in a name?

A civil union has to do with death. It's essentially a document that gives you lower taxes and the right to let your faux spouse collect your insurance when you pass away. A marriage is about life. It's about a commitment. And this argument is about allowing people to have the right to make that commitment, even if it doesn't make sense to you. Anything else falls under the category of "separate but equal" and we know how that works out.

The support of legalizing gay marriage is in no way meant to change the ideals of the section of Christians who believe that homosexuality is a sin. But we should refuse to let other people's ideals shape the way we live our lives. Each of us has a short ride on this earth and as long as we stay in our lane, and don't affect someone else's ride, we should be allowed to drive as we see fit.
Via Jerry

your point of view is medieval

Sometimes the absurd demands the absurd ... and the tune's catchy as all get-out. Lily Allen's - GWB (Fuck You Very Much) has gone from being a cheeky missive directed at the former president of the United States to a gay teen anthem.

Look inside, look inside your tiny mind
and look a bit harder
cause we’re so uninspired
so sick and tired
of all the hatred you harbor

so you say it’s not okay to be gay
well I think you’re just evil
you’re just some racist who can’t tie my laces
your point of view is medieval

Fuck you, fuck you very very much
cause we hate what you do
and we hate your whole crew
so please don’t stay in touch

fuck you, fuck you very very much
cause your words don’t translate
and it’s getting quite late
so please don’t stay in touch

do you get, do you get a little kick out of being small-minded?
you want to be like your father
it’s approval you’re after
well that’s not how you’ll find it

do you, do you really enjoy living a life that’s so hateful
cause there’s a hole where your soul should be
you’re losing control of it
and it’s really distasteful

Fuck you, fuck you very very much
cause we hate what you do
and we hate your whole crew
so please don’t stay in touch

Fuck you, fuck you very very much
cause your words don’t translate
and it’s getting quite late
so please don’t stay in touch

Look inside, look inside your tiny mind
and look a bit harder
cause we’re so uninspired
so sick and tired
of all the hatred you harbor

Fuck you, fuck you very very much
cause we hate what you do
and we hate your whole crew
so please don’t stay in touch

Fuck you, fuck you very very much
cause your words don’t translate
and it’s getting quite late
so please don’t stay in touch

the big gay shrug

After yesterday's debacle, it's hard to take comfort in much. Knowing that the court will be seen as being on the wrong side of history is fine and good. Knowing that change is coming is even better.

The big gay shrug: Sorry, enemies of gay marriage. Prop 8 or no, you've already lost
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Here's a fun thing to do to calm your frazzled, saddened nerves in the wake of the CA Supreme Court's very unfortunate, but also merely annoying and karmically fleeting Proposition 8 decision:

Head on down to your local high school -- hell, make it a junior high or even an elementary -- and take yourself an informal survey. Ask the various wary, bepimpled youth of Generation Tweet what they think about those scary gay people getting married.

Ask them, in your most panicky, alarmist, Mormonified voice: Aren't they horrified at the very idea? Aren't they shocked at the very thought of two people in love having their union officially recognized and validated by the state?

Don't they know the musty ol' Bible mutters some barely coherent, mistranslated silliness about it in a single word or two written 1,500 years ago in a long dead language by acidic church elders with powermad political agendas and violently repressed libidos who nevertheless wish to instruct us all how to live and love and screw?

Please note the response. Please observe how the kids merely look at you as though you're more than a little bit deranged and prehistoric, so out of touch you might as well be Dick Cheney talking up the diesel-powered rectal thermometers he so loved back in World War I.

Watch carefully as they sigh and roll their eyes, then whip out their Nokias to text their friends about how this creepy elder just tried to convince them that the harmless, yawningly commonplace homosexuality currently saturating the popular culture all around them, from fashion to Facebook, movies to "American Idol," is not only wrong, but so wrong that the law should ban it forever because... well, no one really seems to know exactly why.

Did you see it? That big, sighing shrug of what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-you, combined with lots of who-the-hell-cares? Because that's the reaction to note most of all.

Here is what it tells you: Gay marriage is a foregone conclusion. It's a done deal. It's just a matter of time. For the next generation in particular, equal rights for gays is not even a question or a serious issue, much less a sinful hysterical conundrum that can only be answered by terrified Mormons and confused old people and inane referendums funded by same. It's just obvious, inevitable, a given.

Let us hereby be reminded, before sadness and frustration overwhelm once more: Proposition 8 and its ilk are merely the last, fitful gasps of a long-dying ideology, markers of a certain kind of sad, conservative desperation. They are the final clawings and scrapings of a reactionary worldview that attempts to outlaw and punish all it cannot, will not understand. Same as it ever was, really.

The pattern is as old as fear itself. Remember, only rarely does true progress appear as a single, momentous, Obama-like shift that reverberates across the planet and changes everything in an instant. Most frequently it comes in fits and starts and hiccups, small lurches and hard-fought battles shot through with little spitballs of hate and intolerance and heaps of misunderstanding. You know, just like now.

Evidence? Plenty. Just look at the numbers: Support for gay marriage is now the highest it's been in American history, somewhere between 42 and 48 percent nationwide. Just a few decades ago, support was down in the 20s. It's been rising steadily ever since, never once regressing.

Or, flip that data around. According to FiveThirtyEight, marriage bans like California's are losing support at a rate of about two percent a year. According to that model, more than half of U.S. states will vote against bans like the contemptible Prop 8 as soon as 2012, if not sooner. By 2024, even miserably homophobic joints like Alabama and Mississippi will be flying the rainbow flag.

You could say, then, that we are, right this minute, at the tipping point. You could say that very soon indeed -- sooner than many people expect, in fact -- we will all look back on this inane gay marriage hysteria and wonder, what the hell was that all about? What the hell were we thinking? And by the way, isn't President Obama's second term going just astonishingly well?

As for massive, schizophrenic California, well, what can we say? In our convoluted, lurching, two steps forward eight steps sideways sort of quasi-progressive way, we flail and flip and frequently fail. It's just our way.

We may be a die-hard blue state overall, full of revolutionary ideas and world-class academics, Nobel Laureates and wondrous alternative belief systems, but we are also messy and flat-footed and just too damn big for our own good, and our southern half is packed to the Orange County rafters with piles of aging social conservatives and religious zealots with far too little spiritual/sexual awareness and far too much money. Sorry.

It's an undeniable shame indeed that this powerful, iconic, world-altering state couldn't get its damnable act together on The Last Civil Right. But, you know, oh well. Can't be the vanguard for 'em all. Iowa and Massachusetts, et al, please show us how it's done. And by the way, thank you.

Do not misunderstand: Setbacks like this Prop 8 decision are painful and even cruel, and the gay couples and activists who've been at the forefront of the fight since the beginning are nothing short of heroic. Like civil rights activists of any stripe before them, the subsequent generations who will take gay rights for granted will have them to thank forevermore for paving the way and fighting the good fight.

What's more, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done, new referendums and protests and fundraisers and awareness-raisings. The change will not come without help and push. Hate and homophobia still seethe in myriad pockets of the culture and the populace at large, even trickling down to dumb-blond silicon-injected beauty pageant runner-ups who parrot the same childlike religious misinformation her handlers have pumped into her kind for 2,000 wickedly patriarchal years.

But these setbacks are not insurmountable roadblocks. They are merely obnoxious speed bumps on what social conservatives see as our nation's ungodly highway to hell. They only slow us down a little.

A new campaign in the fight for marriage equality is already taking shape. Evolution is happening, the energy and momentum are unstoppable. Simply put, the ignorance and homophobia that fueled and funded Prop 8 in the first place will not stand.

Don't believe it? Hey, just ask your kids.

i wanna make a supersonic man outta you

This wedding video from the UK left me with an ear-to-ear grin on my face.

Brian & Eileen's Wedding Music Video. from LOCKDOWN projects on Vimeo.

seriously.

Taken on May 26, 2008 at the San Diego protest of the California Supreme Court decision to uphold the constitutionality of Prop 8, where 5,000+ people turned out for a 100% peaceful protest.

Bonus points to the UT for interviewing my friends Jim and Dave.

Thousands rally to protest ruling: Demonstrators march to Hall of Justice
By John Wilkens, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. May 27, 2009

Chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, homophobia's got to go,” thousands of San Diegans marched from Balboa Park to the downtown Hall of Justice last night in support of same-sex marriage.

Many said they were angered by the state Supreme Court's ruling earlier in the day that upheld Proposition 8, but there was no violence. Many said they were sad, but there were no tears.

More than anything, it was a demonstration of resolve. “We will not disappear,” one marcher's sign read.

San Diego police estimated the crowd at 3,500. That included an older woman in a wheelchair, babies in strollers and people of ages in between.

Some people watching from the sidewalk or caught in traffic muttered under their breath as the procession shut down Sixth Avenue from Laurel Street to Broadway, and along Broadway to the courthouse, but no organized counter-rally was seen.

Those who support Proposition 8, the traditional-marriage initiative approved by voters in November, said they saw no cause for open celebration.

“There wasn't an attitude that 'Yeah, we won,' but there was a sense that yes, the vote of the people was upheld,” said the Rev. Chris Clark, pastor of East Clairemont Baptist Church, who watched television coverage of the court's decision. “It does resonate as law, so there was a confirmation in that.”

Last night's march and rally had been planned for months – win or lose they were going to gather – and some were more prepared than others.

“Nobody's really surprised by what the court did,” said David Russell Talbott, a Normal Heights artist who was wearing a T-shirt he designed for the the occasion – one that had yesterday's date, a modified version of the state flag and these words: “California Republic of Shame.”

Talbott was there with his husband, Jim Herrington, who works at a clothing store. They married in August, when it was still legal, after they'd been together for 20 years.

The court ruled that their marriage and about 18,000 other same-sex unions are valid, but that wasn't much solace, Talbott said. “Equal rights should be for everybody.”

Before the march, organizer Sara Beth Brooks urged people to be “100 percent peaceful,” and police reported no problems. It took the crowd about an hour to cover the 20 blocks from the park to the justice hall.

Many of the marchers carried homemade signs: “We Shall Overcome,” “My Marriage Is Not a Threat to Your Jesus,” “Enough.”

Ron Hertz held a sign that read, “My Beautiful Grandson Has 2 Moms.” He was visiting from Oregon and decided to walk alongside his daughter, Jenell Ferhart, her wife, Amy, and their 18-month-old son, Nathan.

“I think it's important to support them,” said Hertz, a longtime teacher.

After the march ended in front of the Hall of Justice, police closed Broadway between Union and State. There, several speakers, including Mayor Jerry Sanders, urged the crowd to keep up the fight.

Among those watching was Janice Sands-Weinstein, a Carmel Valley accountant. She and her wife, Marti, were married in June. They have four children who give new meaning to the term co-parenting: Janice's eggs were harvested and fertilized with a donor's sperm, and Marti carried them to term.

“It's a very hollow victory to feel my marriage is intact,” Sands-Weinstein said. “I'm Jewish, and at Passover we have a saying: 'Not free until everyone is free.' ”

quotable

"If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less." -General Eric Shinseki

patenting genes

This is ridiculous.

Cancer Patients Challenge the Patenting of a Gene
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
Published: May 12, 2009

When Genae Girard received a diagnosis of breast cancer in 2006, she knew she would be facing medical challenges and high expenses. But she did not expect to run into patent problems.

Genae Girard, 39, is suing Myriad Genetics and the Patent Office over the granting of a patent on a gene. Myriad also has patented the only test that measures the risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

Ms. Girard took a genetic test to see if her genes also put her at increased risk for ovarian cancer, which might require the removal of her ovaries. The test came back positive, so she wanted a second opinion from another test. But there can be no second opinion. A decision by the government more than 10 years ago allowed a single company, Myriad Genetics, to own the patent on two genes that are closely associated with increased risk for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and on the testing that measures that risk.

On Tuesday, Ms. Girard, 39, who lives in the Austin, Tex., area, filed a lawsuit against Myriad and the Patent Office, challenging the decision to grant a patent on a gene to Myriad and companies like it. She was joined by four other cancer patients, by professional organizations of pathologists with more than 100,000 members and by several individual pathologists and genetic researchers.

The lawsuit, believed to be the first of its kind, was organized by the American Civil Liberties Union and filed in federal court in New York. It blends patent law, medical science, breast cancer activism and an unusual civil liberties argument in ways that could make it a landmark case.

Companies like Myriad, based in Salt Lake City, have argued that the patent system promotes innovation by giving companies the temporary monopoly that rewards their substantial investment in research and development.

Richard Marsh, Myriad’s general counsel, said company officials would not be able to comment on the lawsuit until they had fully reviewed the complaint.

The coalition of plaintiffs argues that gene patents actually restrict the practice of medicine and new research.

“With a sole provider, there’s mediocrity,” said Wendy K. Chung, the director of clinical genetics at Columbia University and a plaintiff in the case.

Dr. Chung and others involved with the suit do not accuse Myriad of being a poor steward of the information concerning the two genes at issue in the suit, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2, but they argue that BRCA testing would improve if market forces were allowed to work.

Harry Ostrer, director of the human genetics program at the New York University School of Medicine and a plaintiff in the case, said that many laboratories could perform the BRCA tests faster than Myriad, and for less money than the more than $3,000 the company charged.

Laboratories like his, he said, could focus on the mysteries still unsolved in gene variants. But if he tried to offer such services today, he said, he would be risking a patent infringement lawsuit from Myriad.

Christopher A. Hansen, senior national staff counsel for the civil liberties union, said the problem was with the patent office, not the company. He recalled that when he first heard that the office had granted a patent for a gene, “I said that can’t be true.”

As the A.C.L.U. explored the restrictions on competition that companies like Myriad had put in place — blocking alternatives to the patented tests, and even the practice of interpreting or comparing gene sequences that involved those genes — the restrictions started to look like not just a question of patent law, Mr. Hansen said, but of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech as well.

“What they have really patented,” he said, “is knowledge.”

A patent was also granted to a single company for genetic testing on long QT syndrome, which can lead to heart arrhythmias and sudden death, and to the HFE gene, linked to hereditary hemochromatosis, a condition in which iron accumulates in the blood and can cause organ damage. Doctors and scientists have complained about both patents.

On the other hand, the company that owns the patent to the gene CFTR, which has been linked to cystic fibrosis, has licensed the testing to dozens of laboratories, drawing praise from the medical world.

The decision to allow gene patents was controversial from the start; patents are normally not granted for products of nature or laws of nature. The companies successfully argued that they had done something that made the genes more than nature’s work: they had isolated and purified the DNA, and thus had patented something they had created — even though it corresponded to the sequence of an actual gene.

The argument may have convinced patent examiners, but it has long been a sore point for many scientists. “You can’t patent my DNA, any more than you can patent my right arm, or patent my blood,” said Jan A. Nowak, president of the Association for Molecular Pathology, a plaintiff in the case.

So far, however, two panels of government experts who have looked at the issue have not found significant impediments to research or medical care caused by gene patents. A 2006 report from the National Research Council found that patented biomedical research “rarely imposes a significant burden for biomedical researchers.”

That report and others, however, warn that the patent landscape “could become considerably more complex and burdensome over time.”

In the future, genetic tests are likely to involve the analysis of many genes at once, or even of a person’s full set of genes. Some 20 percent of the human genome is already included in patent claims, amounting to thousands of individual genes, says a draft report from the National Institutes of Health. The report warns that “it may be difficult for any one developer to obtain all the needed licenses” to develop the next generations of tests.

For Lisbeth Ceriani, a single mother from Newton, Mass., and a plaintiff in the case against Myriad, the biggest obstacle that gene patents present is one of cost. She has had breast cancer and a double mastectomy, but wants to have BRCA testing to determine her risk of ovarian cancer and help her decide whether to have her ovaries removed. But Myriad has refused to work with her insurance plan, Mass Health, and paying for the test herself is beyond her means.

She is reluctant to have surgery that might prove unnecessary, she said, but she also worries about her 8-year-old daughter and the inherited risk she might face. Which is why, Ms. Ceriani said, she wants to “find out if I have the mutation, so I can take the necessary steps to stay on the planet.”

“I want to be here,” she said, “to make sure she does her screening by the time she’s 30.”

re: miss california

"Yes, of course, you have a guaranteed right to freedom of speech. But if someone else paid for your breasts, I really don't care what you have to say. No one does." - P. Frausto

the man, the myth, the shoes

Since I just made cake, my mind got to free association. Cake or death? led to Eddie Izzard and this site: cake or death: an eddie izzard site.

For the uninitiated, Eddie Izzard's cerebral stand-up (in English and in French) is pure genius.

A few years ago, he was named number 3 of the 100 Greatest Comedians as part of (BBC) Channel 4's ongoing "100 Greatest..." series. I loved this note, from the bio for Channel 4:

Moved to Northern Ireland when he was about two, then to south Wales in 1967
Started his career as a street performer.
He is partially dyslexic and, of course, sometimes wears frocks.

Eddie Izzard: 'We need Europe to be a melting-pot. We need to melt'
This article is from the (RED) edition of The Independent, guest-edited for 16 May 2006 by Bono. Half the revenue from the edition will be donated to the Global Fund to Fight Aids.
Published: 16 May 2006

The first advice that Simon Kelner gave me about editing this paper was to include some pieces that "reflect your humour". "Why?" I thought. "Don't people know I'm really funny anyway?" Apparently not. Best way to get this done was to bring in the first stadium superstar of comedy, Mr Eddie Izzard. We've worked on a film together, Across the Universe, and I can easily talk to him for a couple of hours. This was one I wanted to do myself. So, here's our conversation. The first draft was 11,000 words; this is the edited highlights. I enjoyed it but I'm not sure it's funny.

BONO: How is Mrs Badcrumble?

EDDIE: Mrs Badcrumble... well, she's good. Were you ever taught by a Mrs Badcrumble?

BONO: Yes, well I know she is sort of your... kind of music teacher/mother of God.

EDDIE: Music teacher/mother of... yes, exactly! Well, there was this thing that if you wanted to learn an instrument you had to do the lessons thing. And the lady who teaches you is beyond the age of comprehension, like 140, and the music you learn isn't sexy, and you play it and no one will shag you.

I learnt non-shagging music. If you play that sort of "Snug as a Bug in a Rug" stuff, with those scales going up and down, no one's going to come near you.

BONO: Maybe I wasn't deprived of a musical education after all.

EDDIE: No, I think you had that "thing"... precisely because you didn't have one.

BONO: Punk rock was like my Mrs Badcrumble.

Eddie: Exactly. Punk rock is Mrs Badcrumble with a fag...

BONO: Mrs Goodcrumble!

EDDIE: Mrs Badcrumble with attitude. An old lady who can kick people in the face and say, "Get out the fucking room, I gotta make a noise now". That's the best teacher.

BONO: That might be true of many things. You know, when resistance becomes the thing that drives you... your engine room or whatever...

EDDIE: There are certain people who, if they say, "I want to do this", and everyone says, "No, you can't do it", they go "OK, I won't". And then there are other people who say, "Right, let's do it". You're very good at it. I try to be good at it.

BONO: I have no embarrassment at all. No shame.

EDDIE: That's the key: being able to take humiliation when people say, "Why are you doing this, you are a fool, you're an idiot". And you carry on through it.

BONO: Yeah, I come from a long line of salespeople on my mother's side, and I see myself as a sort of salesman, so I have no problem ringing the doorbell and asking people to let me in. Until I show them the Tupperware, that is...

EDDIE: It's OK if, in your mind, the Tupperware is useful.

BONO: Didn't you live in Northern Ireland?

EDDIE: Yes, I lived in Bangor until I was five. My dad worked for BP in Belfast, and it was the happiest time of my life. I didn't know the politics.

BONO: That's only five years of happiness.

EDDIE: I know. Actually, it was even less because I was born in Aden, in Yemen. I got to Bangor when I was about two, so it was three years. Going to the Ballyholme Primary School, playing with kids, having a gang. I didn't know about politics at the time, but it was a very Protestant town. I was oblivious to all that. I just had fun. My mum was alive, we had bicycles and we threw mud balls at passing cars. It was great. So I have very fond feelings for Northern Ireland.

Do you remember the "trick or treat" killings in County Londonderry, in the bad times?

BONO: Yeah, it was disgusting.

EDDIE: I was touring Ireland at the time and my tour manager said, "We're not going up there", and I said, "It's fine". And he said, "There could be shooting, and they'll target English people", and I said, "They're not going to target English people, they're fighting themselves, they don't care about us performing idiots". They wouldn't go, so I thought, "Well, I will", drove up on my own and played three nights.

BONO: Fantastic. I wanted to do this interview for a few reasons, and the psychology of the performer is one of them. It's something that's not much written about, and I'm not sure performers themselves know that much about it. I'm interested in the idea that you've no choice but to perform. It's like a twitch really, it sort of just comes on."

EDDIE: The performance thing, I've analysed it. I think the desire to perform has something to do with my mum dying, because I don't remember wanting to perform before that. She died when I was six, and at seven I saw a kid on stage in a play and I thought, I want to do that, and that feeling stayed.

The conclusion I have come to is that the audience is a surrogate affection organism for the loss of my mother's affection. A mother gives unconditional love (some mothers don't, but my mother did), but an audience's love is totally conditional. You have to deliver. Consequently, I believe my desperation to deliver is to get this love out of an audience. That is what kept, and keeps pushing me.

BONO: Ditto to a similar beginning. It's a signature of singers in particular. Maybe it goes back to that line, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child". But Lennon, John Lydon, it just goes on and on.

EDDIE: It can be dysfunctional parents as well.

BONO: I wonder if the audience isn't a mother so much as a father figure. At least, it is for me.

EDDIE: The audience is a father figure to you?

BONO: Yeah... I hope we don't sound, like, too fuckin' run amok on Jung and Freud. As Jim Sheridan would say, "The Muddah, it is all about the Muddah...". The loss of my mother definitely started me singing and writing, but the audience was probably some sort of attempt at my father.

It goes without saying, if we were of completely sound mind and proportion in our thinking, we wouldn't be performers.

EDDIE: That's it. I think Madonna's mum died when she was around six, and Orson Welles lost his mother young.

BONO: It is a performance thing - in hip-hop, it is always the missing father, the lost thing.

EDDIE: If you go into a very dark space, Hitler's father died...

BONO: Great performer.

EDDIE: Not good to start off with, but in the end...

BONO: I loved that one he did, what was it, Czechoslovakia, that was a great one.

EDDIE: Well, his mum died when he was young and he was beaten as a child - him and Stalin and Saddam.

BONO: I wanted to talk to you about the European thing.

EDDIE: It's my thing. The EU is now inviting those countries who've been killing each other for centuries to join Europe. There's a sense of stability and, hopefully, peace. Belarus is the only European country that still has a dictator.

BONO: With a great moustache!

EDDIE: Yes, with a very 1950s thing going on...

BONO: He's got an actual Hitler moustache. I've seen it. Isn't it interesting that you can meet somebody and they seem plausible, but there's one thing that screams madness. And with President Lukashenko, in Belarus, it's the tache. He looks normal, then you go, "Oh, my God, he's got a mad tache, silver hair and a black Hitler tache!".

EDDIE: If he could just go, we'd have no dictators in Europe for the first time ever.

BONO: Your desire for Europe is extraordinary to me, but you've followed through on it. I mean, is this where the languages come in? Did you learn French and German at school?

EDDIE: I learnt French at school but stopped when I was 16. When I first visited France, I'd go into a bar or restaurant and say, "Qu'est-ce que ils?". I'd just keep going with my broken French. My rule was, communication first, grammar second.

BONO: I'm amazed that you can do stand-up in French.

EDDIE: Absolutely. My dream is for Europe to become a huge melting-pot. We need to be a melting-pot. We need to melt. So my doing a gig in French is to kick the melting-pot up. I want to do gigs in German, Russian, Spanish. And Arabic, because I was born in an Arabic country and the 9/11 thing.

BONO: Do you consider yourself European?

EDDIE: I consider myself British-European, like there are African- Americans and Italian- Americans. You can be Irish-European. Whether you're Northern or Southern Irish, there's this umbrella of Europeanness. I think if we can make it work in Europe, it's almost a blueprint for the future of the world. If we can get all these countries, with all their languages, coming together to work in some shape or form, then the whole world can work. And if we can't get it working in Europe, the world has got no chance. Those are the stakes.

BONO: Wow, I hadn't thought of it like that.Now, did you become funny to stop being beaten up?

EDDIE: No, I became funny to get girls, actually.

BONO: It's either one thing or the other, isn't it?

EDDIE: At school, there was one girl for every 20 boys, so it was ridiculous odds, and if you weren't head of a sports team...

BONO: You'd better be funny! I'd like to talk about your material. I presume you write some of it beforehand and make some of it up on the spot.

EDDIE: No, I do it all on the spot. A lot of people write their stuff down and then develop it, but I'm inordinately lazy. I have great difficulty writing things down. In the end, I develop bits of material and then, in between those bits, I take the courage to break off, a bit like a jazz musician saying, "I'm going to go off on a solo here, I haven't got a band, it's just me".

BONO: Oh, I'm envious.

EDDIE: It was all improv once. That's why it feels like I'm making it all up. But I'm not.

BONO:Aren't you writing a show at the moment with somebody? That you're acting in? Collaborating on a TV thing?

EDDIE: Yes, I'm involved in the writing thing. There's a show for FX channel, which does The Shield and Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me in America. Minnie Driver and I play the mother and father of a family of American-Irish travellers, just like travellers in Ireland.

BONO: The story of the travellers is amazing.

EDDIE: Yes, it is. They're descendants of travellers who came over because of the potato famine. Some of them do legitimate business, some go around scamming and grifting.

BONO: To return to your line of business, I saw you invent a whole new genre at the G8 in Scotland, doing that piece of agitprop. I thought, "This is 'Stand-up Stadium'". How do you communicate to such a big crowd? I mean, I'm terrified and I have the security of my band, a guitar, a tune. Watching you, I thought, "Now, this is the top of the food chain...".

Anyhow, thank you very, very much for letting me interrogate you. I'm the biggest of your little fans, or the littlest of your big fans, I don't know which. So, up Bangor, and I guess I'll see you down the road?

EDDIE: Yes, absolutely.

quotable

Be like a duck. Remain calm on the surface and paddle like hell underneath.
-- Michael Caine
Via Diana

5-minute chocolate cake in a mug

We finally made this tonight. It was fun to watch it rise, rise, rise to what seemed an impossibly tall (and unsustainable) height a few inches above the top of the mug and *instantly* drop when the microwave stopped.

This is a great recipe for kids to watch. There are very few crumbs in this cake. It holds together quite well.

Ingredients
4 TBSP flour
4 TBSP sugar
4 TBSP cocoa powder
1 egg, beaten
3 TBSP milk
3 TBSP oil
3 TBSP chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Preparation

1. Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well.
   
2. Beat the egg in a small bowl, then pour in the milk, oil, and vanilla extract and mix well.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients in the mug. Mix thoroughly.
   
4. Add the chocolate chips and mix slightly.
5. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
   

The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.
Eat! (This can serve 2 if you want to feel slightly more virtuous.)

Why is this the most dangerous cake recipe in the world? Because now we are all only 5 minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

Via Laura

ambushed by really little things

"And then every now and then I get ambushed by really little things."- Joe Simpson, English mountaineer, author, and motivational speaker.

Leo and I just saw "Touching the Void," a compelling documentary based on a successful but near-fatal climb in the Peruvian Andes in 1985. The events of "Touching the Void" have now become a part of mountaineering folklore. Knowing that both of the climbers survived is nothing compared to learning how they survived. Here are the highlights of the story:

Joe Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, were undertaking the first ascent of the West Face of a peak in the Peruvian Andes, Siula Grande. On the ridge down, they encountered difficult terrain, Joe fell and broke his leg, the calf bone splitting his knee.

Simon Yates took it upon himself to lower Joe down the vast majority of the mountain. However, despite Simon's single-handed rescue attempt, a turn of events left Joe hanging over a steep overhanging ice face in the middle of a building blizzard. Yates was trying to support him from a desperate bucket belay hollowed from the snow, uncertain what exactly had happened. After hanging on for over an hour, Yates reached a point where he had to make a choice: Be pulled from the mountain into the abyss and certain death, or cut the rope. Yates cut the rope holding his partner and Joe fell into a gaping crevasse below, landing unexpectedly on a snow bridge. After cutting the rope Simon proceeded down the mountain, passing the crevasse and assessing that Joe must have died from the fall.

Despite his significant injuries, Joe lowered himself further into the crevasse and managed to find a way out. Suffering from hypothermia and dehydration, he then still faced the enormous task of crossing a glacier unroped, and with a broken leg.

The riveting documentary is an amazing portrait of the human psyche. The extras include interviews with Simpson and Yates returning to the mountain in 2002, during the filming of the documentary. Here is how Simpson characterized the déjà vu he experienced upon revisiting what should have been his final resting place:

"Do you have any idea how bad it was? I don't think you do. I don't think you have the first idea.

I died here. I lost everything I was, that I wanted to be.

And then I got it given back."

The documentary leaves me pondering how I might respond in the most desperate of circumstances and what I would do with a second chance like the one that Simpson got. I have a feeling that I'll be thinking about this for a while.

not all soul music comes from the church

Op-Ed Guest Columnist: It’s 2009. Do You Know Where Your Soul Is?
By BONO
Published: April 18, 2009

I AM in Midtown Manhattan, where drivers still play their car horns as if they were musical instruments and shouting in restaurants is sport.

I am a long way from the warm breeze of voices I heard a week ago on Easter Sunday.

“Glorify your name,” the island women sang, as they swayed in a cut sandstone church. I was overwhelmed by a riot of color, an emotional swell that carried me to sea.

Christianity, it turns out, has a rhythm — and it crescendos this time of year. The rumba of Carnival gives way to the slow march of Lent, then to the staccato hymnals of the Easter parade. From revelry to reverie. After 40 days in the desert, sort of ...

Carnival — rock stars are good at that.

“Carne” is flesh; “Carne-val,” its goodbye party. I’ve been to many. Brazilians say they’ve done it longest; they certainly do it best. You can’t help but contract the fever. You’ve got no choice but to join the ravers as they swell up the streets bursting like the banks of a river in a flood of fun set to rhythm. This is a Joy that cannot be conjured. This is life force. This is the heart full and spilling over with gratitude. The choice is yours ...

It’s Lent I’ve always had issues with. I gave it up ... self-denial is where I come a cropper. My idea of discipline is simple — hard work — but of course that’s another indulgence.

Then comes the dying and the living that is Easter.

It’s a transcendent moment for me — a rebirth I always seem to need. Never more so than a few years ago, when my father died. I recall the embarrassment and relief of hot tears as I knelt in a chapel in a village in France and repented my prodigal nature — repented for fighting my father for so many years and wasting so many opportunities to know him better. I remember the feeling of “a peace that passes understanding” as a load lifted. Of all the Christian festivals, it is the Easter parade that demands the most faith — pushing you past reverence for creation, through bewilderment at the idea of a virgin birth, and into the far-fetched and far-reaching idea that death is not the end. The cross as crossroads. Whatever your religious or nonreligious views, the chance to begin again is a compelling idea.

•

Last Sunday, the choirmaster was jumping out of his skin ... stormy then still, playful then tender, on the most upright of pianos and melodies. He sang his invocations in a beautiful oaken tenor with a freckle-faced boy at his side playing conga and tambourine as if it was a full drum kit. The parish sang to the rafters songs of praise to a God that apparently surrendered His voice to ours.

I come to lowly church halls and lofty cathedrals for what purpose? I search the Scriptures to what end? To check my head? My heart? No, my soul. For me these meditations are like a plumb line dropped by a master builder — to see if the walls are straight or crooked. I check my emotional life with music, my intellectual life with writing, but religion is where I soul-search.

The preacher said, “What good does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?” Hearing this, every one of the pilgrims gathered in the room asked, “Is it me, Lord?” In America, in Europe, people are asking, “Is it us?”

Well, yes. It is us.

Carnival is over. Commerce has been overheating markets and climates ... the sooty skies of the industrial revolution have changed scale and location, but now melt ice caps and make the seas boil in the time of technological revolution. Capitalism is on trial; globalization is, once again, in the dock. We used to say that all we wanted for the rest of the world was what we had for ourselves. Then we found out that if every living soul on the planet had a fridge and a house and an S.U.V., we would choke on our own exhaust.

Lent is upon us whether we asked for it or not. And with it, we hope, comes a chance at redemption. But redemption is not just a spiritual term, it’s an economic concept. At the turn of the millennium, the debt cancellation campaign, inspired by the Jewish concept of Jubilee, aimed to give the poorest countries a fresh start. Thirty-four million more children in Africa are now in school in large part because their governments used money freed up by debt relief. This redemption was not an end to economic slavery, but it was a more hopeful beginning for many. And to the many, not the lucky few, is surely where any soul-searching must lead us.

A few weeks ago I was in Washington when news arrived of proposed cuts to the president’s aid budget. People said that it was going to be hard to fulfill promises to those who live in dire circumstances such a long way away when there is so much hardship in the United States. And there is.

But I read recently that Americans are taking up public service in greater numbers because they are short on money to give. And, following a successful bipartisan Senate vote, word is that Congress will restore the money that had been cut from the aid budget — a refusal to abandon those who would pay such a high price for a crisis not of their making. In the roughest of times, people show who they are.

Your soul.

So much of the discussion today is about value, not values. Aid well spent can be an example of both, values and value for money. Providing AIDS medication to just under four million people, putting in place modest measures to improve maternal health, eradicating killer pests like malaria and rotoviruses — all these provide a leg up on the climb to self-sufficiency, all these can help us make friends in a world quick to enmity. It’s not alms, it’s investment. It’s not charity, it’s justice.

•

Strangely, as we file out of the small stone church into the cruel sun, I think of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, whose now combined fortune is dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty. Agnostics both, I believe. I think of Nelson Mandela, who has spent his life upholding the rights of others. A spiritual man — no doubt. Religious? I’m told he would not describe himself that way.

Not all soul music comes from the church.

Bono, the lead singer of the band U2 and a co-founder of the advocacy group ONE, is a contributing columnist for The Times.

her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you

Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" never fails to give me goosebumps.

The funny thing is ... I had always assumed Jeff Buckley's 1994 cover was the original, because it was the first version I heard. A few years ago, my (then-) colleague Suzanne walked into my office as I was listening to the Buckley version. I asked "Have you heard Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley? I love this song." She smiled, said "yes," and slowly walked away. Now I'm wondering if she was being polite by not pointing out that it was a cover, or if she just assumed that I knew it was cover. (She's a huge Leonard Cohen fan.)

Anyhow, here are a few of my favorite versions of this gorgeous song... Buckley's is still my favorite -- I love the warm sounds of the guitar.

Leonard Cohen (Coachella, 2009)


KD Lang

Rufus Wainwright

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

nothing else will do

Our friends Holly and Bucky included The Weepies' "Gotta Have You" on a CD they gave to all of us at their wedding a few weeks ago. The uncomplicated lyrics and lilting melody have worn themselves into my subconscious, so I suppose it's time to share the song.

Gray, quiet and tired and mean
Picking at a worried seam
I try to make you mad at me over the phone.
Red eyes and fire and signs
I'm taken by a nursery rhyme
I want to make a ray of sunshine and never leave home

No amount of coffee, no amount of crying
No amount of whiskey, no amount of wine
No, nothing else will do
I've gotta have you, I've gotta have you.

The road gets cold, there's no spring in the middle this year
I'm the new chicken clucking open hearts and ears
Oh, such a prima donna, sorry for myself
But green, it is also summer
And I won't be warm till I'm lying in your arms

I see it all through a telescope: guitar, suitcase, and a warm coat
Lying in the back of the blue boat, humming a tune...

tortellini, arugula, goat cheese, and roasted tomato salad

We enjoyed the seared scallops with roasted tomatoes so much that we kept the trend going for last night's dinner.

This is a modification of something I had at Bristol Farms for lunch last week. The Bristol Farms version used moistened sun-dried tomatoes and goat cheese-filled ravioli. We didn't have goat cheese ravioli, so the seven cheese tortellini was the next best option. (I still prefer small ravioli to the tortellini, due to a better cheese-to-pasta ratio.) Although we had julienned sun-dried tomatoes in our pantry, we opted for the roasted grape tomatoes. (Roasting the tomatoes intensifies their sweetness with minimal effort.)

Ingredients
1 lb fresh cheese ravioli (small) or tortellini
1 cup fresh grape tomatoes, roasted OR 1/3 cup moistened sun-dried tomatoes, julienned
2 cups arugula, washed and spun dry
4 TBSP chevre, crumbled
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
6 TBSP extra virgin olive oil, divided
1 1/2 TBSP vinegar (we used white balsamic)

Preparation

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Make the vinaigrette in a small jar or bottle. Combine 4 TBSP olive oil, 1 1/2 TBSP vinegar, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/4 tsp black pepper. Shake vigorously.
   
3. Arrange tomatoes in a single layer in a shallow roasting pan; lightly coat tomatoes with 2 TBSP olive oil. Sprinkle tomatoes with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; toss well to coat. Broil 10 minutes or until tomatoes begin to brown, stirring occasionally.
4. Cook the pasta al dente in lightly salted water. Drain and rinse with cool water.
5. In a large bowl, combine the still-warm pasta, arugula, and tomatoes. (Be sure to use a spatula to get every ounce of the olive oil, tomato juices, and spices from the roasting pan into the bowl.) Shake the vinaigrette vigorously and confirm that the salt has dissolved. Pour over pasta, arugula, and tomatoes. Sprinkle with chevre. Serve immediately.
   

seared scallops with roasted tomatoes

Leo and I made this for dinner on Friday and it blew us away. Roasting the tomatoes intensifies their sweetness with minimal effort. The cast-iron skillet creates a brown crust on the scallops that can't be achieved in a non-stick pan.

Yield: 4 servings
(serving size: about 4 1/2 ounces scallops, about 1/3 cup tomatoes, and 1 1/2 teaspoons basil)

Ingredients
3 cups grape tomatoes
Cooking spray* (we used 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil)
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, divided
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 pounds sea scallops
2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
Pasta

Preparation

1. Preheat broiler.
2. Arrange tomatoes in a single layer in a shallow roasting pan; lightly coat tomatoes with cooking spray or 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil. Sprinkle tomatoes with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper; toss well to coat. Broil 10 minutes or until tomatoes begin to brown, stirring occasionally.
3. While tomatoes cook, heat oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Pat scallops dry; sprinkle both sides of scallops with remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Add scallops to skillet; cook 2 minutes on each side or until desired degree of doneness. Add pasta to skillet, toss with tomatoes and scallops; sprinkle with basil.
   

Nutritional Information: Calories: 204, Fat: 5.1g (sat 0.7g,mono 2.6g,poly 1g), Protein: 29.6g, Carbohydrate: 9.4g, Fiber: 1.4g, Cholesterol: 56mg, Iron: 1.1mg, Sodium: 519mg, Calcium: 49mg. (Note: Does not include nutritional information for the pasta.)
Via: Maria Everly, Cooking Light, APRIL 2009

national pet month

I just entered these photos of Ruby in the National Pet Month contest at work, along with the following information. I hope we win!

Ruby is a 5-year-old Flat-Coated Retriever. We got her on Craigslist when her owner had to move. We're training her as a therapy dog due to her high intelligence and sweet disposition.

Quirks:

• Missing her top right front tooth (she looks like a hockey player when she smiles).
• Grins with her mouth closed, but her lips pulled back (so that you can see all of her teeth) when you get home.
• Wiggles when she walks because she’s a little bit pigeon-toed.
• “Editorializes” – she loudly punctuates our conversations with Scarlett O'Hara-esque sighs.
• Gets excited when she hears the word “work” – she goes to work with my partner a few days a week.
• Is afraid of most cats.

Likes:

• People
• Bacon
• Watermelon
• Walks
• The beach
  
• Squirrels
• “Watching” TV with us on the couch

Dislikes:

• Waiting for walks
• Having to work for food

the new math

via Casey

kooks, demagogues, and right-wingers on tax day

The next time your whackjob cousin/ sibling/ neighbor/ in-law mouths off about taxes, share this wisdom from Robert Reich.

A Short Citizen's Guide to Kooks, Demagogues, and Right-Wingers On Tax Day, by Robert Reich: No one likes to pay taxes, so tax day typically attracts a range of right-wing Republicans, kooks, and demagogues, all of whom tell us how awful we have it. Herewith a short ... guide ... responding to the predictable charges:

1. "Americans pay too much in taxes." Wrong: The United States has the lowest taxes of all developed nations.
2. "The rich pay too much! The top ten percent of income earners pay over 72 percent of all income taxes!" Misleading: The main reason the rich pay such a large percent is they've become so much richer ... in recent years. If you look at what they pay as individuals ... you'll see a steady decline over the years. ...
3. "The bottom 60 percent pay only 3.3 percent of the taxes!" Misleading again. Most Americans are paying more in sales taxes than they ever have. Property taxes have also been rising at a steady clip. And Social Security taxes have also risen (thanks to the Greenspan Commission), while earnings over about $100,000 aren't subject to Social Security taxes. So-called "sin" taxes (mostly beer and cigarettes) have also skyrocketed. All of these taxes take a bigger bite out of the paychecks of people with lower incomes than they do people with higher incomes.
4. "Obama is raising your taxes!" Wrong. Obama is cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans, by about $400 per person a year... Only the top 2 percent will have a tax increase, but even this tax increase is modest. Basically, they go back to the rates they were paying under Bill Clinton... And they won't start paying this until 2011 anyway.
5. "The huge debts we're wracking up will cause your taxes to rise!" Wrong again. When it comes to the national debt, as I've said before, the relevant statistic is the ratio of debt to the gross domestic product. The only sure way to bring that debt down and make it manageable in future years is to get the economy growing again -- which requires that, in the short term, the government spend a lot of money... In the long term, the biggest source of concern is rising health-care costs. And that's something Obama and Congress are aiming to tackle.
6. "We have a patriotic duty to stand up against Washington taxes!" Just the opposite. We have a patriotic duty to pay taxes. ... President Teddy Roosevelt made the case in 1906 when he argued in favor of continuing the inheritance tax. "The man of great wealth owes a particular obligation to the state because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government."

An acquaintance from law school, now a partner in one of Washington's biggest and wealthiest law firms, explained to me one day over lunch how he and his partners use tax rules to create offsetting taxable gains and losses, and then allocate the gains to the firm's foreign partners who don't pay taxes in the United States. That way, they keep the losses here and shelter their income abroad. I noticed he had an American flag lapel pin. "You're supporting our troops," I said, referring to his pin. "Yup," he replied, entirely missing my point.

True patriotism isn't cheap. It's about taking on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

Via Jeremiah

doga

I took my first yoga class in 1998. I distinctly remember coming home and seeing my Golden Retriever, Casey, stretching and understanding why the position is called "downward-facing dog." I watched him move through a series of stretches and smiled, thinking about how cool it is that humans took inspiration from the natural world in order to improve focus, gain strength, and relax.

Flash forward eleven years -- I've got Ruby, a willful Flat-Coated Retriever who thinks she's Leo's girlfriend and that I'm a contractual obligation. Don't get me wrong -- she loves me. She just loves Leo more.

We love her, too. We love the way she "editorializes," loudly punctuating our conversations with Scarlett O'Hara-esque sighs. We smile when she comes over and licks our hands if we're hugging -- it's one part "break it up," one part "love me, too." And we invariably laugh if she walks out of the room when things get physical between Leo and I.

I'm not sure that she'd be up for doga with me. With Leo, well ... that's another story.

Physical Culture: Bonding With Their Downward-Facing Humans

By BETHANY LYTTLE
Published: April 8, 2009

IN Chicago, Kristyn Caliendo does forward-bends with a Jack Russell terrier draped around her neck. In Manhattan, Grace Yang strikes a warrior pose while balancing a Shih Tzu on her thigh. And in Seattle, Chantale Stiller-Anderson practices an asana that requires side-stretching across a 52-pound vizsla.

Call it a yogic twist: Downward-facing dog is no longer just for humans.

Ludicrous? Possibly. Grist for anyone who thinks that dog-owners have taken yoga too far? Perhaps. But nationwide, classes of doga — yoga with dogs, as it is called — are increasing in number and popularity. Since Ms. Caliendo, a certified yoga instructor in Chicago, began to teach doga less than one year ago, her classes have doubled in size.

Not everyone in the yoga community is comfortable with this.

“Doga runs the risk of trivializing yoga by turning a 2,500-year-old practice into a fad,” said Julie Lawrence, 60, a yoga instructor and studio owner in Portland, Ore. “To live in harmony with all beings, including dogs, is a truly yogic principle. But yoga class may not be the most appropriate way to express this.”

Appropriate or not, this is how it works: Doga combines massage and meditation with gentle stretching for dogs and their human partners. In chaturanga, dogs sit with their front paws in the air while their human partners provide support. In an “upward-paw pose,” or sun salutation, owners lift dogs onto their hind legs. In a resting pose, the person reclines, with legs slightly bent over the dog’s torso, bolster-style, to relieve pressure on the spine.

Doga instructors are not required to complete certification, though teacher training seminars do exist, like ones taught by Brenda Bryan, 43, a yoga and doga instructor in Seattle who has just written a book on the subject. In general, instructors learn informally by sharing techniques. Guiding these techniques is an agreed-upon, though not officially stated, philosophy: Because dogs are pack animals, they are a natural match for yoga’s emphasis on union and connection with other beings.

Ms. Yang, 39, a financial analyst in Manhattan, has gone to doga classes for more than a year. Though she says that her 10-pound Shih Tzu, Sophie, has helped deepen her stretches by providing extra weight, the main reason she goes is to bond with her dog. “I always leave with a smile,” she said.

Such post-doga smiles run about $15 to $25 a class. Whether this is a bargain or overpriced depends on how — and why — the class is taught. Paula Apro, 40, of Eastford, Conn., owner of an online yoga retail store, tried a class near her home last summer.

“A stuffed animal — but not even a dog-shaped stuffed animal — was used by the instructor,” she said. Owners struggled to get their very real dogs to replicate the stuffed-animal poses, she said, and bags of treats were used to get the dogs to change positions. “It was lunacy,” Ms. Apro recalled. “Peanuts, my retired racer greyhound, didn’t participate at all. Instead, I did downward-facing dog while he ate the most treats he’s ever had in a 60-minute period.”

Ms. Caliendo said such tales are the exception. She offers her class in conjunction with the Royal Treatment Veterinary Spa in Chicago, which specializes in holistic animal care. “In no way is doga for teaching dogs silly tricks,” she said. “The dogs are never manipulated into any type of pose.”

Ms. Caliendo’s classes focus on poses and massage for dogs aimed at improving digestion and heart function, and poses for people that emphasize stress reduction and feeling well.

Ms. Bryan, the author in Seattle, said: “It’s a new field so there can be confusion about what doga is and isn’t.” Her classes are loosely structured and filled with humor. “Who cares if everybody’s facing the same direction and doing exactly the same thing?” she said. “Besides, laughing is spiritual.”

Ms. Bryan said some of her earliest classes were a challenge. “I was brand new to this, and in one class, this dog just wouldn’t stop barking,” she said. “There I was, trying desperately to look tranquil and calm, but inside I was, like, ‘Shut up!’ That was the turning point for me. I mean, this was a dog. Plus, he was having the best time of his life.”

Kari Harendorf, 38, teaches doga in Manhattan. “Jobs are disappearing,” she said. “Mortgage payments are looming. Change is everywhere, but your dog remains steadfast. So, why not spend time together?”

Ms. Harendorf links yoga to reductions in stress hormones, like cortisol, and blood pressure. “People always ask me, ‘Do dogs need yoga?’ ” she said. “I say, ‘No, you need yoga. But your dog needs your attention, and bonding with your pet is good for your health.’ ”

She is saying something many dog owners already know: Were it not for their pets, many people would never take daily walks in the park. By extension, it’s easy to see how taking your dog to doga may be a surefire way to make certain you do yoga yourself.