My fellow prisoners...

Tonight's third and final presidential debate between Obama and McCain was the first debate I've watched this election cycle without alcohol. That sounds bad, I know, but I thought this debate was the best, and I have no idea if the absence of beer or wine was indeed a factor.

The Common Man's hilarious liveblog-style post on tonight's debate summed up almost all of my sentiments exactly. Hats off to my old roomie for capturing the spirit of the debate with such humor!

On my entirely sober ride back to my apartment from the Political Science Department's debate-watching gathering on campus (there was free pizza, so naturally half the attendees were graduate students), it occurred to me that, since I was born in the last quarter of the Carter administration, Bill Clinton is the only Democrat elected President in my lifetime. And I wasn't of voting age either time he ran.

I might disagree with Obama on a few issues (yeah yeah yeah, I'm way farther left), but in the past twelve years I've learned to live and work pragmatically within the two-party system. And damn it! I want to see a Democrat in the White House --one that I voted for!

Getting very excited for Election Day...

Four corners

Via the FG:

Four places that I go to over and over: campus (duh), Trader Joe's, CVS, and The Dubliner

Four people who e-mail me regularly: Mi Hermana, La Madre, Lady Grace, and my friend Jenn in LA

Four places I would rather be right now: here in New York for a few more days, London, Seattle, and someplace warm and tropical

Four of my favorite places to eat: Phoenicia at Alki, Thai on Alki, Zoe, and La Madre's (the grad student budget doesn't allow for eating out much in Beantown)

Four people I'm tagging: the FG, Trivial Kate, Xtina, and The Common Man

Four TV shows I watch over and over: The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, The West Wing, and CSI:New York

And then there's:

Clothes Shop: Nordstrom
Furniture Shop: IKEA (grad student budget!)
Sweet: tiramisu, and anything involving raspberries or lemons
City: Seattle has my heart, London has my imagination, and New York has my shopping addiction
Drink: scotch, Mac & Jack's, red wine
Music: blatantly cheesy remixes, and whatever else is in my voice range
TV Series: The West Wing
Film: I Heart Huckabees, The Matrix
Workout: the elliptical
Pastries: rarely, but whatever has raspberries or is raspberry-flavored
Coffee: drip, with whole milk and honey

These vagabond shoes

Four years ago in October, on a visit to DC, I went to the recently-opened National Museum of the American Indian. Since it was still new I thought it was really well done. And because I also am bizarrely fascinated by museum cafes, I thought the idea behind the NMAI food court was really cool too. What I found really positive was the emphasis that what happened to various peoples (oh, say, annihilation by disease or massacre, forced reservations, broken treaties, etc.) significantly shape but do not solely define who they are. So the Museum highlighted various ways that different Native peoples are empowering their communities.

That was Columbus Day weekend in '04. To come full circle, it's Columbus Day weekend again, and the irony of my visiting the New York branch of the NMAI is not lost on me. I didn't actually intend to go to this particular museum, but now I'm really glad I did.

The "Chinatown bus" got me from Boston to New York in a shocking 4 hours, so I had an extra two hours to kill before meeting my hostess. Wandering around Battery Park across the street, I noticed the Museum had large banners advertising free admission, so of course I went inside.

The main exhibit was Native Women's dresses in the nineteenth century. I learned a hell of a lot! I can't stitch worth beans, so the art of sewing and making clothes is lost on me. But the thing I'll walk away with is the differences between one-hide, two-hide, and three-hide dresses, which were also regionally based, to some extent. (For the spatially challenged, there were computer aids to diagram exactly how the number of hides is made into a dress. I had to study the digital aids frequently...)

The exhibit also showcased dozens of gorgeous, intricately detailed dresses from across the continent. (At one point, when I was stooping down to examine the beadwork on one dress, a security guard came over and offered to shine his flashlight so I could see exactly how extraordinary the handiwork was.)

Lesson learned the hard way #1761: The bottle of wine you bought for your hostess does indeed show up in a museum security detector.
"Miss? Do you have a bottle of wine in his bag?"
Blink, blink. (I'd forgotten.)
"Wine? Do you have any in this bag?"
Blink, blink. (Travel fatigue.)
"I see a bottle of wine here. Is it open?"
"Oh! OH! No, it's not. Open. I didn't open it. It's a gift for a friend...."

A pulse in the eternal mind

I didn't plan on going from the quintessentially English murder mystery to the quintessentially English garden show, but it turns out it worked. I also didn't know that Greenfingers was loosely based on a true story about prisoners-turned-gardeners, and that it also crossed genres into the field of prison reform stories.

Clive Owen leads a motley crew of fellow prisoners who enter England's most famous gardening contest; the always-wonderful Helen Mirren plays a world-famous gardener and horticulturalist whose daughter falls for Clive. (Who wouldn't fall for Clive, though?) It's your typical underdog tale, told with a good cast, in a short and enjoyable manner. As a prison-reform story it sort of fails (the audience has to take for granted that workforce training is good for society), but its heart is in the right place.

Then, still on the English theme, I read Jerome K. Jerome's sequel to the hilarious Three Men in a Boat. Three Men on the Bummel, however, lacked the same level of humor and hysterical insights of the first book. The premise is the same: the three friends go on a two-week trip together (this time a bicycling journey through the Black Forest), and most of the book is actually anecdotal ramblings about funny social situations or sometimes less-than-tolerant cultural observations. This time, the fellows are a decade older, and are angling to escape their wives and children. So they go biking across Germany. (It's worth noting that the book was written less than thirty years after the unification of Germany, so Jerome's observations about regional differences, though told from the humorous and bumbling tourist's point of view, are actually rather interesting. My great-great-grandfather roamed all over the regions Jerome mentions, avoiding Bismarck's wars, before ditching Europe and settling in Michigan. But I digress.) The chapters in this sequel, however, are longer; and the collection of humorous diversions seems forced and less fluid.

Also, this history nerd couldn't help but cringe while reading Jerome's long descriptions of both the beauty of Dresden and the Jewish sections of Prague. It's only heartbreaking a hundred and ten years later.

Wonders to perform

After the Moonstruck disappointment, I watched a better-done dark comedy about a dysfunctional family. Keeping Mum features Rowan Atkinson outside of his usual slapstick role: as a country vicar whose wife (Kristin Scott Thomas) is involved with her golfing instructor (a hilariously self-parodic Patrick Swayze), teenage daughter is oversexed, and tween son is bullied. Enter Grace the new housekeeper (yes, the pun is significant to the storyline) and an upcoming sermon on God's mysterious ways, and the movie is a truly enjoyable twist on the quintessential English murder mystery.

LOVED it!

Also, apparently the screenplay was written, in part, by Richard Russo, who used to teach at the old alma mater, and whose Empire Falls I've been inching through whenever I'm at Ms. Tungsten's.

When the world seems to shine like you've...

In preparation for my trip to the Big Apple next weekend (and also because my movie shipment was messed up for this weekend), I watched Moonstruck on Netflix Instant Viewing. I have bad memories of La Otra Hermana running around the house shouting "La luna! La bella luna!" so I finally wanted to see what the fuss was about. (She would also run around shouting "I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!" and now I finally know what the hell she was referring to...)

I was not a huge fan; I didn't dislike the movie, but I didn't like it either. I could have been a fan, if I'd liked any of the characters a little more. But they all were sort of surface-level neighborhood caricatures. Also, I didn't buy Cher's superstitious widow (and, quite frankly, didn't really like it). I know some of the underlying themes were family and acceptance and time, but let's face it, most films about Italian-Americans seem to be. I didn't think it was anything special. Maybe it was too much carmenere, but I was slightly bored watching the whole thing.

The only character I thought that had any depth was (ironically!) Nicolas Cage's, and it was odd but refreshing to see him both younger as well as in a very different type of role. I am NOT normally a Nic Cage fan, but I actually found his hostile, broken character believable. Plus, he uttered my favorite line of the movie: "The storybooks are bullshit."

Left a good job in the city

After reading Connie Willis' To Say Nothing of the Dog, which frequently references the Jerome K. Jerome original work, I finally got around to reading Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog).

I was hooked in in the first few paragraphs by the hilarious description of the narrator's hypochondriac panic attack, which drives him to go boating up the Thames with his two buddies and his dog. (One of the funny parts is that the narrator talks about the dog as if he were a fourth person...)

It's one of the funniest books I've read lately! (Then again, for full disclosure, this past week I've been reading about the history of the EPA, so my perspective might be a bit skewed.) It's not really about a boating excursion upriver, it's about the neurotic social tendencies and bizarre memories of the main characters. Each one tends to romanticize their trip or their fishing prowess or their singing abilities, and then abruptly swings the other way (often with the weather) to despise fellow travelers and curse the camping gear. The book is more a collection of very true-to-life anecdotes told in a skillfully hilarious fashion, with the boating trip as an excuse to throw together a bunch of character sketches. Jerome supposedly originally intended it to be more of a tourist's guide (boating the Thames was popular in the late 19th-century), and parts of the book definitely seem to randomly mention various pubs and hotels in small river towns. But it's still a great story!

Not to mention 55 electoral votes!

Something about the "No on Prop 8" ads just make me all sniffly and weepy, though it could possibly also be the meds or that I missed the cutest niece in the world's first birthday last weekend. At any rate, I like the videos. Especially the 5-minute montage of faith leaders in California explaining why they support the freedom to marry.

Then there's this one, which is just a lot of people and couples (gay and straight) reciting 1 Corinthians 13. I love how it's both subversive and affirming.

Time for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster

Last week, while perusing a used bookstore with Pastor X, I picked up the book I should have read back in middle school. I watched the movie (on opening weekend, I believe, with, among others, the FG and The Scot) and loved it. But decades ago, I was still overly skeptical of science fiction.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was brilliant! It was sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek and irreverent and insightful. Just as his house is about to be bulldozed to make room for a freeway, human protagonist Arthur Dent's planet is destroyed by otherworldly beings to make room for an intergalactic highway. Dent is thrown together with a motley crew, including the only other human left in existence, a woman who ditched him at a party back on Earth to hang out with, as it turns out, the President of the Galaxy. Wackyness ensues, sandwiching fleeting but perceptive commentaries on various beings' social behaviors and beliefs. Spoiler alert: the answer to the question about life, the universe, and everything is 42, and Earth was a giant computer built to figure out what the question itself is.

So then I ran back to the bookstore and bought the second book, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It picked up where Hitchhiker left off, with the crew on an odyssey through space and time to discover the ultimate question about life, the universe, and everything.Suffice to say, I thought this second book toned down the wacky factor a tad (but just a tad!) and waxed a little more existential (in a satirical sort of way). Restaurant did also have longish stretches where some of the protagonists wander around trying to solve their own identity crises (particularly Zaphod, the President of the Universe, who is unaware that those in powerful positions are supposed to distract attention away from those who actually have power). But it was all fine by me. It ended rather abruptly, though.

So now, of course, I'm hooked....

Xtina has kindly lent me her big thick volume of the books, so I now have reading material for the next few weeks!

No Soy Marinero

In the ongoing quest for free food events (though the grants post this Friday, so it shouldn't last much longer), Lady Grace and I met up with two others at an alumni function on Wednesday. Turns out we were the only ones over the age of 23, so we ditched the private event and headed to the main area of the bar (but not before I got two platefuls of free hors d'oeuvres), where it happened to be trivia night.

We fared badly, but one of the questions was "What Mexican-American singer's former bandmembers went on to form Journey?" Partly because I sang "La Bamba" at karaoke two weeks beforehand, and partly because we couldn't name any other Mexican-American singers, we guessed Ritchie Valens. (Incorrect. It was Carlos Santana.)

Based on that, though, I decided to watch La Bamba via Netflix Instant Viewing. Except for the plane crash with Buddy Holly and the one hit song, I didn't really know anything about Ritchie Valens (or, for that matter, that "La Bamba" was a Mexican folk song before it was rockified.)

Also, ever since I watched Stand and Deliver as a kid, I'd been a fan of Lou Diamond Phillips. Then a few years ago, I found out he was a hapa brotha, which escalated the cool factor.

At any rate, as biopics about musicians go, it was pretty good. The genre has a formula, like all genres do: struggling, talented artist overcomes personal issues to make it big, then struggles with success. Movies about modern musicians seem to always have a nostalgic tinge to them, too, and this one was no different. The stories are really about innocence lost, whether it's the singer's or the audience's; viewers are left only to compare the depiction with contemporary entertainment legacies.

Click!

I finally finished Framing the Future: How Progressive Values Can Win Elections and Influence People, four months after the author led a training for candidates at work this summer. (For some odd reason, I kept falling asleep at my work desk while trying to read it....)

Having read George Lakoff's Don't Think of an Elephant almost four years ago (it was the book that catapulted Lakoff from linguistic, nerdy obscurity into the mainstream political spotlight) and having had to attend many work-related trainings on the concept of issue "framing" as well as re-reading articles for a policy class last spring, there was nothing conceptually new in Horn's book. What was different was that he relied on polls and surveys to test frames, which was fascinating.

The idea of framing is, to be blunt, that words are loaded. For better or worse, like it or not, certain words carry certain images and convey specific wordviews (or frames). Everybody knows the "illegal alien" versus "undocumented worker" frames -- each phrase conveys a different ideology. ("Illegal" lumps people with murderers and rapists, "alien" makes them "not one of us"; "undocumented" calls attention to the paperwork, and "worker" on the fact that individuals are both working as well as, well, hired by someone...) But my favorite example is the conservative "death tax" versus the progressive "estate tax." It's not hard to figure out how those words affect voters.

Conservatives have mastered the art of framing; progressives have not, sadly. For the past five years, it's been drilled into my head that using the Other Side's frames does nothing but reinforce the Opposing Viewpoint. (So anytime anyone's ever said "gay marriage" I've always responded with "marriage equality" or "equal marriage rights" or "marriage for same-sex couples" ... if nobody's ever noticed...) Lakoff as the cognitive linguist goes into detail how frames determine the starting point for all political discourse; Horn backs it up with survey data to show how many Americans will run off and vote for politicians that oppose their values, based on how an issue is presented. Framing the Debate is specifically geared to persuading the "moveable middle" voters.

A cynical person might think that framing is just another attempt at political spin, but it's not. The vast right wing network has been honing the craft of framing for almost thirty years now, to the point where frames that were deliberately constructed to further one political agenda have entered the mainstream vocabulary (see "partial birth"). The values, as Horn points out, stay the same; it's the language that changes.

Horn's three frames are freedom, security, and opportunity. Every issue can be framed according to these values -- frequently all of them, depending on the goal. Three years ago, after the Washington State Supreme Court smacked down our challenge to the state DOMA, one recourse for same-sex couples was domestic partnerships. The first few weeks of the legislative session after the ruling, our framing around the bill was one of freedom: LGBT Americans work hard and serve their country, and should have the right to basic benefits that the government only gives to married straight couples. Then, as it became obvious that the "denial of rights" argument worked with some legislators and constituents but not others, the framing switched: LGBT familes and their children deserve basic protections in order to remain stable and healthy. That's the frame that worked, and the bill passed. Both frames are true, but only one persuaded enough elected officials and members of the public at that time.

I like how Horn ends his book, by saying framing is just one of many, many tools in a progressive activist's kit. There's still a lot of organizing and hard work, not just talking to do!

Feeding time at the U

A classmate recommended King Corn last spring while we were surviving the Econ class and dealing with the assignment on farm subsidies.

The documentary can be summed up pretty easily: most corn grown in the U.S. is destined to be made into cattle feed for the beef industry (and cows are grass-chewin' creatures) or corn syrup for soft drinks and other highly processed foods.

It could have been as horrifying as Supersize Me, but it wasn't. The filmmakers rented an acre of a corn farm in Iowa for a year, talked to locals, learned about the corn-growing business, and then followed all the routes their corn might make after harvest. It started a bit slowly, but picked up towards the middle. It wasn't as in-depth as it could have been, but it was a good effort, with some enlightening bits.

Scary in totally different way: Best in Show, which I watched with Ms. Tungsten before I left the Emerald City. I have all of Christopher Guest's mockumentaries in my Netflix queue, and have been watching them when the mood is right. This one was, as expected, funny -- though to date, A Mighty Wind is still my favorite. Maybe because folk music is dearer to my heart than dog shows!

And speaking of Netflix... its online viewing offerings (along with Hulu) are my saving grace while broke and bored, before 1) the fellowships and loans post in a few weeks and 2) the homework assignments start to eat away at the free time.

Currently getting through the first season of 30 Rock. HILARIOUS!

Next up: a Star Wars convention...

In the ongoing quest to read all of Connie Willis' books, I finally got around to
Light Raid. It's essentially a war spy story, almost Blitz-esque with its regular air raids. (And one of Willis' favorite periods for constructing alternate realities is the Blitz, as we know from some of her short stories...) Except in this delightfully cute story, a teenage war refugee escapes from a home for war orphans and heads home to find that her mother is accused of treason, her dad is shellshocked, and global alliances hinge on her investigative abilities. The hilarious assortment of nations at war, though, are Quebec and Victoria. (Sleeply little Port Townsend -- really in Washington State where, in fact, where my cousin lives-- gets a nod as one of the cities full of secret agents and military secrets.) In all, a great way to spend an evening when you're still tired from being cheap and walking around the city on errands.

Unlike a lot of Willis' stories, Light Raid did not involve time travel. This is only relevant because I also finally got around to reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. It is surprisingly short! Appropriately, it is the grandfather of time travel stories. Though I knew the general plot (especially since "Eloi" is a typical answer in many crosswords),

I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. But I was roped in from the very first pages with the dialogue and debate on the Fourth Dimension!

One thing that irked me (but only slightly) was the Time Traveller's assumptions about the descendants of capitalists and workers. The man goes 800,000 years into the future for all of eight days, manages to become semi-fluent in Eloi, and by pure observation of a completely unfamiliar world, manages to somehow know how human history progressed. Riiight... because if someone from a mere 1000 years ago traveled forward to our 21st century, they could definitely do the same thing. Also, though Wells had socialist leanings, there's still a smattering of classism in both the 19th-century characters' attitudes as well as in how the whole narrative of future class stratification between the Eloi and the Morlocks plays out. Ironic!

It did remind me at times of The Planet of the Apes ... but of course The Time Machine was not only the first (I'm pretty sure!) time-travel story, but one of the first to offer the "humans will annihilate themselves" theme. So many other stories have drawn from it heavily, and it's so much a part of pop culture at this point, that I didn't realize how much of the story was already imprinted in my brain. I'm glad I finally read it!

Both Wells' classic and Willis' story did reinforce some of my preconceptions about the sci-fi genre, though: that many sci-fi tales are really just concerns about present social situations (technology, racial inequality, sexuality, or war), transposed onto a thinly disguised alternate present or set in a future that can be altered only if present-day humans change their ways.

Classes resume tomorrow!

Napaholic

Lesson learned the hard way #1760: Saving money this month by walking everywhere and NOT buying a T/bus pass is excruciatingly exhausting.

And it's only been three days! Granted, campus is about 45 minutes to an hour away by foot, depending on which route I walk (it's 45 minutes cutting through the Fens, but I won't do that if it's dark). And lugging books and then groceries (10 minutes away) is extra-tiring. But still!

Rock of Ages

Admittedly, I was packing while watching the last film in the Rocky series, so I don't know if the final Rocky movie was actually as bad as I thought it was...

The plot: Rocky returns! Again. Except this time, he can't come to terms with Adrian's death, his businessman son is embarrassed about him, and the online fight community claims he was never the best. To vindicate his record, prove his sport is still relevant, and join Indiana Jones in celebrating elderly sports-action heroes, Rocky fights a much, much younger boxer.

It did wrap up the series neatly, though. I was really only a fan of the first two Rocky films; after the second it all got a little ridiculous.

La Madre has an odd DVD collection, and I found Amazing Grace sandwiched between 3:10 to Yuma and The Pursuit of Happyness. (Strangely, La Madre's media collection gained numerous R-rated films only after Mi Hermana, the youngest sibling, left for college... there were virtually none when I was a teenager.)

At any rate, I thought Amazing Grace was going to be the Merchant Ivory version of the life of John Newton, the former slave ship captain and author of the well-known hymn. Plus, I vaguely remember watching sometthing similar on PBS as a child.

However, the film turned out to be the story of William Wilberforce, the abolitionist MP credited with outlawing the slave trade in Britain.

Unfortunately, the actor who played Wilberforce was also the guy who, many years ago, played Horatio Hornblower in a series which I was sliiiightly obsessed with in college. So in between packing sessions, I kept wondering

The film was the typical rushed period piece. I didn't know enough about Wilberforce, so I read his wikipedia entry while watching parts of the movie. Looks like they toyed with the timeline a bit, but other than that it was okay. I'd recommend it only for its educational inspiration, not its stellar acting or plot twists. (Because the abolition bill eventually passes in Parliament. Not to ruin the ending or anything...)

The one interesting story development, where I actually stopped packing watch, was the discussion on whether or not criticizing one's country was appropriate in a time of war. The irony struck me as timely (especially given today's anniversary, though I watched the film a week ago: my first job out of college, though horribly traumatic, relied on bashing the Bush Administration. Then 9/11 changed political advocacy forever. Gathering signatures for the public comment period on drilling in ANWR suddenly had to stop and be reframed, as did every other legislative or policy issue.

At any rate, the irony comes in the fact that I was packing to finish up a degree in public policy, in the city where I working seven years ago on 9/11 when that whole "patriotic" debate took on new meaning. It was just kind of interesting how Amazing Grace highlighted the same dilemma for a different time, a different issue, and a different set of political organizers.

The rest of the vacay was spent with family and friends. The neffy will be crawling by the time I'm home for the elections!

Lesson learned the hard way #1757 : Shoes are damn heavy!
Especially when you want to take, uh... many, many pairs back to Boston, but end up having to leave some in Seattle. (Side note: many, many pairs awaited in Beantown...) But since the airline luggage limit is now 50 lbs, shoes now rival books as the heaviest things I transport, and are thus the cause of much re-arranging and re-packing. Arrrgh.

Lesson learned the hard way #1758: There can be moments of bliss in old, unhealthy behavior patterns
Last-minute, unexpected relapses could also be indicative of, in the words The Champ, a subconscious but nonetheless determined attempt to be "as dramatic and tragic as possible." Ahem.

Lesson learned the hard way #1759: Your cat allergy is very, very serious
And apparently it's possible to either build up a tolerance to Benadryl, or for the FG's cat to somehow haunt the couch she sold to the The Champ several years ago. (The cover was washed the night I crashed on it, and the anaphylactic reaction I got after sitting on it for a few minutes didn't lessen even when I overdosed on OTC drugs and moved to another room, causing both The Champ and Ms. Tungsten to rearrange bedding options.) Whatever mystery caused the abnormally strong reaction, it warrants a doctor's visit before the end of the year.

Summer days drifted away, indeed....

"Because she'll have the nuclear codes..."

Sarah Palin, that is.

That was my favorite line in this AP interview with Matt Damon:



Yeah, it all does kind of seem like a bad Disney plot...

Sleep, read, veg out, repeat...

The internship ended last week, just in time for Labor Day. I learned a hell of a lot about elections this summer, and think I will return to school next week a better-prepared student of public policy. I doorbelled for candidates for the first time ever, examined past election results at the precinct level, and met a lot of great people trying to change politics.

But vacay is, of course, an all-powerful force that makes lazy pumpkins out of even the most overly stimulated graduate student. =)

Ms. Tungsten lent me Courtesans: Money, Sex and Power in the Nineteenth Century. The story of five English courtesans in the late 18th and 19th centuries, the book traces the various experiences of women who became prostitutes. The point of the book is that, in a time when "respectable" women had no legal rights and few educational or vocational opportunities, courtesans actually had more freedom than even some of the most privileged women. The price of independence and business acumen, working within society's sexual double standards, was virtual invisibility in "polite" circles.

Hickman did a good job of selecting women who entered the business for different reasons: one had a mutually open marriage that eventually led to a string of wealthy patrons, another was raped and too ashamed to return home, another was tossed out on the streets by a guardian and had no choice but to join a brothel. Similarly, their last days were equally varied: one died in poverty chased by creditors, another married her longtime aristocratic lover, others slowly faded into comfortable retirement. Surprisingly, many wrote memoirs later in life, or had biographies written by acquaintances.

Though I appreciate the fact that Hickman illuminated parts of the past that I, for one, didn't get in two semesters of Women's History, their stories were sort of the same. Between becoming a prostitute and rising to the status of courtesan, and then eventually dying, the five women really just went through a succession of lovers/clients, and the roll call got a little repetitive.

What I found more fascinating than the five mini-biographies were Hickman's background asides on the history of condoms; the evolution of the crinoline; the descriptions of jewelry; the slow passage of bills in Parliament that gave women the rights to divorce, own property, and inherit ... Within the context of how powerless women were, the book made a very loud statement about the price of cultural subversion. But after a while I didn't really care how many lords each had slept with, and how much all the diamonds they received in payment were worth.

Ms. Tungsten and I returned to our Hrithik Roshan roots with Mission Kashmir, in which the hottest man ever to have lived plays a terrorist separatist. To be fair, the film is actually a kum bah yah tale of hope and peace and how cycles of violence only hurt everyone. Hrithik plays an orphan of violence who wants revenge for his family's death and so joins a separatist cell.

The plotline is barely believable. There is also the creepy factor -- the policeman who murders Hrithik's entire family tries to adopt Hrithik to ease his wife's pain and to replace his own murdered son. The rest of the movie is a cat-and-mouse game as Hrithik wants to kill his adoptive father to avenge his own family, and the policeman hunts his adoptive son because he's, well, a terrorist. The whole cycle of violence thing being rather crucial, there were only two possible outcomes: either the cycle continues and some main character dies, or the cycle ends and some main character still dies to atone for the past... (Turns out, I guessed incorrectly which character would be sacrificed for the larger message of peace. Oh well.) At any rate, the ending was the stuff of dreams -- literally, it was complete with the dream-sequence-as-metaphor-for-a-happy-afterlife.

But then, we weren't really watching it for the deep plot... ;-P

By contrast, I See You, Bollywood's version of the Reese Witherspoon film Just Like Heaven, was hilarious.

Arjun Rampal, the creepo from Om Shanti Om (which we also watched again, just for the hell of it), was great as a TV personality "haunted" by the spirit of a coma patient that no one else can see. Of course, she's a hot coma patient whose job is to just look pretty the entire movie and to show Arjun how to stop being an arrogant, womanizing prick. I haven't seen Just Like Heaven, but its wikipedia summary looks like the same as I See You. (But I'm guessing Just Like Heaven didn't have the random Hindi-speaking London bobby. It was a kind of funny.)

One of the coolest things about the movie: cameos by Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan!

Vacation rocks. Especially since the last week at work was really hectic.

Now it's nap time again...

Not a Trekkie, but ...

I would TOTALLY watch this!

The Onion| New 'West Wing' Animated Series
SAN DIEGO—On day two of the 2008 San Diego SorCon, the biggest Aaron Sorkin convention in the world, screenwriter and producer Aaron Sorkin revealed plans for his next project, an animated continuation of his most popular franchise, The West Wing.

"I'm excited to bring my Emmy Award–winning writing to the field of animation," Sorkin said in a speech before approximately 30,000 screaming fans, many of whom were dressed up in the business-suit costumes of their favorite Sorkin characters. "[A]animation technology will enable us to provide fans with extended 40-minute walk-and-talks, digitally compressed dialogue for faster delivery, and a cast of over 70 main characters."

...The pilot ends, Sorkin said, with a 15-minute speech from President Santos about holding unpopular ideals.

"And I can promise SorCon that there will be at least two filibusters in the first season."

*Sigh*

A beach, a highway, beautiful ...

In the first post-SCOTUS testing of Washington State's Top Two primary system (in which the top two vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party), all of our candidates advanced! Also, at one election night celebration, I got a kick-ass T-shirt and won a dim sum gift certificate. Causes indeed to celebrate...

The morning after brings much reflection on the summer's bizarre connection between keys, cars, karaoke, and campaigns. Such introspection almost always calls for the Second Person Narrative and the illusion of emotional impartiality.

Maybe mental notes are the same thing as speeches you imagine giving to the person you were three weeks ago, before the madness...

******

Lesson learned the hard way #1749: Keys are tricky, sneaky creatures
When you're holding down the office fort, they sometimes make you lock the doors without remembering, and then magically reappear inside the locked office. You then have to wander around the building to search for the security guard to let you back in. (Also see Lesson #1755.)

It being your podunk hometown, said security guard might recognize you from your previous job because the same company manages many buildings downtown. He might decide to tell you about several personal issues that went unresolved even after repeatedly contacting the legal department at your old job... You have no qualms about playing a ditz to get out of this awkward scenario. (Also see Lesson #1756.)

Lesson learned the hard way #1750: Cars are tricky, sneaky creatures
Cars are also in cahoots with the American Automobile Association to humiliate spacey drivers everywhere. Weeks and weeks ago, while dining and theatre-going with The Scot, it took AAA an hour to get downtown to let you back into La Madre's car, where you had locked the car keys.
(Unlike Pastor X, you did not leave them in the ignition with the engine still running in the middle of rural Maine while on your way to Torgo's rehearsal dinner).

Then, about a week later, you allegedly killed the battery by leaving the overhead light on overnight, thus making La Madre late for work in the wee hours of the morning.... Once again, it took AAA an hour to get to a neighborhood with a lot of auto body shops, to jumpstart the car.

Which brings us to...

Lesson learned the hard way #1751: If you're no longer young, you need sleep
The one night you leave the regular karaoke place before midnight so you can get a full night's sleep the day before your state's primary election, you somehow also kill the battery in La Otra Hermana's car and have to call AAA again, to jumpstart a different vehicle. Thankfully, it took less than an hour ... but you lost an hour's worth of much-needed sleep the night before a busy, busy day.

Sleep was especially needed since you only got 4 hours of sleep the previous night. You had a few glasses of wine with one friend and then had to sober up at a different friend's house after closing down a different karaoke bar.

And somewhere, in the glasses and glasses of water and a 7-11 hot dog and Cheetos, you encountered...

Lesson learned the (frustratingly) hard way #1752: You have moments of quasi-maturity after all.
Even if kind of hurts. Again. See Lesson #1748.

Lesson learned the (not-so-) hard way #1753: Choose the whisky
Again, 100% of your PAC's candidates survived the Top Two primary, advancing to the general election. When your drink ticket at one of the evening's many parties gets you either a bottle of beer, a glass of cheap wine, a mixed drink, or a dram of Talisker, there is NO contest. The family whisky gods might even bless you with a server who pours a generous portion into a wine glass...

It being podunk Seattle, you might run into an old family friend who tells you, "Days like this I miss your grandfather" and you can reminisce together about how unapologetically partisan he was. So when your coworkers say "Hurry up and drink your wine so we can get to the next party," you can tell them "This is not wine, it's scotch." Then you can let them know it was also your Grandfather's favorite, that you and four of your cousins downed an entire bottle at his ash-spreading ceremony, that he was the first person in your life to talk to you about political events and take you precinct-walking, that you get your rambling tendencies from him, and why you miss him a hell of a lot this election cycle.

A hell of a hell of a hell of a lot...

Lesson learned the hard way #1754: J-Lo's "If I Had Your Love" is difficult for karaoke
It's also OK to sing only if election night is also your state director's birthday and she specifically requests it. Never, ever anytime else!

Lesson learned the hard way #1755: Post-election "mornings" bring spaced-out behavior
You might wake up at noon, then accidentally leave the house with your purse (and cell phone, wallet, and keys) still inside. With nothing but your bus pass, which is inexplicably in your pocket, and sporting your newly-acquired blatantly partisan gubernatorial T-shirt, you can head to the office and email La Otra Hermana to pleasepleaseplease bring you the spare key, after the peak hour bus fares go back down to regular prices in six hours and you can once again head back to the Westside.

Lesson learned the hard way #1756: You might be crazy after all
Additionally, the Second Person Introspection process might make you realize you have boozylicious and slightly schizophrenic tendencies. (But tell yourself at least you're not in denial, and to buy yourself a drink sometime...) ;-P

******

If Present Me had only imparted these words of wisdom to Past Me several weeks ago!

Eh. I probably still would've chosen the red pill.

C'est la ... quelle?

Surveying Mr. and Mrs. Smith

The Drum Major Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, has just released its First Annual Survey on the Middle Class and Public Policy.

A telling highlight:

"When it comes to gas prices specifically, adults are skeptical that gas prices will normalize – despite regular reports of Hollywood breakups, 56% of households believe that Brangelina is more likely to celebrate their 25^th anniversary (56%) than gas prices are to return to $3 per gallon (19%). (Another 18% believe neither option will come to bear.)"

Also in the report: Americans disapprove of Congressional job performance but overall don't know how their members of Congress voted on certain issues or bills. (Actually, that seems like a contradiction, but it's not.)

More fascinating data to mine while waiting out today's state Primary Election!

Pop goes the...

I have long been obsessed with the pop/soda question, and finally, a linguist has made a map of it! I love how it's broken down by county...

Our long national nightmare is finally over.

Also, I remember freshman year in college, sitting around with some friends in a dorm lounge, we ascertained that the pop/soda border was somewhere in central Pennsylvania. Guess we were right!

Woo hoo, $10.50 so far this summer!

Though I loves me my medieval mysteries, sometimes I accidentally stash them underneath old Atlantic Monthly magazines, and leave them to fester. (This can cause momentarily delight upon re-discovery of the books, followed by severe panic and heart palpitations at the thought of the overdue fines incurred.)

The fifth book in the Catherine LeVendeur series has our heroine travelling to Scotland and northern England with her four-month-old baby, to help investigate gruesome murders in her husband's family. The book is filled with the typical detective work, mysterious goings-on, and dramatic end-of-tale confessions.

A major theme for the series is Jewish life in medieval Europe. Obviously, said life was not the happiest, though some areas were less anti-Semitic than others. Cursed in the Blood compared Jewish history in various French cities (the previous four books) to the diaspora's English contingent. In this fifth book, though, Newman adds another new element: the gays! There's a minor subplot involving a nobleman and a man of the cloth.

Newman had a shocker for an ending, too. Whereas the previous four books have ended on relatively happy notes, this one was both shocking and heartbreaking. I did not expect the violent ending with the dismembering of a major character! It'll be interesting to see how Newman develops this in the next few books...

... which I will make sure are not overdue at the library.

Space oddity

Connie Willis' and J.K. Potter's D.A. was a quick read, which took all of like 20 minutes. Since I'm nowhere near approaching my self-imposed moratorium on the word "cute," I can use it to describe this short story (which, bizarrely, is not in a collection with other short stories).

It was cute. A high school senior is mysteriously selected for an elite space cadet program to which she did not apply, and she and her computer hacker friend try to uncover the conspiracy that launch her into orbit in the first place. Sarcasm and mucho mocking of teen speech patterns abound.

The book, along with several others, is also about a month overdue at the library. So much for trying to live debt-free...

Municipal charters and the 25th Amendment

I've been a little obsessed with the Detroit text message scandal, and today's news brings such political horror on several levels:

Kilpatrick will spend night in jail
Judge unmoved by mayor's apology

[Judge] Giles’ jailing of Kilpatrick leaves no clear line of authority in who is running the city ... because there currently is no deputy mayor.

... "Last week was a tremendous wake-up call to me," [Mayor Kilpatrick] said, referring to Giles' rebuke last month after he allegedly assaulted law enforcement officials trying to serve a subpoena . . . . Kilpatrick further said he was not "frolicking" in Windsor [Canada] but trying to make a deal that would let him avoid laying off more than a thousand city workers....

"The defendant left the state of Michigan, left the country, without prior notice to the court," [Prosecutor] Moran said, referring to a recent trip to Windsor. . . .

Suddenly Seattle's mayor's problems seem really small.

GolGotham

This is somewhat belated, but I finally saw the long-awaited new Batman movie a few weekends ago. A couple of friends had warned me that I would be uncomfortable with the many, many blatant civil liberties violations in the film. And I was -- very much so! It was disturbingly prescient. Warrants? Telecoms? Yeah....

But all that aside, the movie kicked ass. There's really nothing more to say other than that I concur with The Common Man's review. Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhardt were both incredible. Great action sequences, especially the car chase scenes involving the Batmobile.

And also, I spotted two blatant rip-off scenes: one suspiciously similar to Pan's Labrynth, and another highly akin to Inside Man. (Those are just the ones I caught, and I don't really watch movies that often....)

But again, aside from all that, the movie kicked ass.

It did get me thinking again about the superhero genre, though. A coworker mentioned that Batman doesn't actually have any superpowers, he's just a guy who has a lot of money and awesome gadgets, and uses them to fight crime. I hadn't really thought of that before, but she's right.

I waffle between loving the genre and being suspicious of it. I'm suspicious of it only in that in most superhero flicks and books, "the City" is almost always a place of evil, where people are greedy bastards and everyone's lost in violent and crime-ridden anonymity, and the happy Jeffersonian idyllic farm is where the "true" values of family and love and innocence are. And I am, after all, a die-hard City Mouse....

But car chases and explosions and shootouts onscreen are totally seductive.