Odd Jobs

I'm going out on a limb and speculate that it is not just me who is having trouble distinguishing signal from noise in the cacophony leading up to this Presidential transition. This does not apply to anyone reading this, but I shudder at the concept that many Americans are relying on television, possibly a newspaper, and talk-radio as their only means of grappling with these epochal events, including near-destruction of our republic by the cheney-rove regime and their wooden sub-lingual boy-puppet, the shameful McCain campaign, and the hopefully transforming emplacement of our New Hire at that somewhat gaudy place at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave with the absolutely appalling yellow throw-rug.

I will be erring towards terseness here. More reason to investigate links, which I promise involve important stuff. Perhaps it is just as well I did not get this done last night. I have new framing as of today, which might be pegged as human behavioral outliers, in keeping with my recent Gladwell read.

Mercifully, I did not suffer an earworm as a result of prolonged encounter at bus stop this AM with delimited soul I have encountered before. I had to wonder (Tom Jones not exactly my idea of a role model) how he came to be in a loop which I eventually realized was various portions of "Pussycat, pussycat, I love you, you and your pussycat eyes (nose)."

For me, one of the most critical parts of this epochal, I would even say hallucinogenic transition, is that it cannot possibly be shortchanged of proper consideration of where we have been. Especially given how routinely paranoiac and monomaniacal on the subject of secrecy the bushies have been, there is far more than normal need to do some excruciating poking through the entrails. There seems to be an awful lot of stuff these sleazebags did that we alas will have to do some serious investigation and probably prosecution of lest it become standard practice and the executive branch of our government turn into a routinely lawless cabal. Once is bad enough, ehh?

But let us not forget their big-time enablers, as documented by Mr. Pitt at Truthout:

Seeing as how we currently find ourselves hurtling along this downhill run towards new history - the countdown to the day America has itself a president named Obama can be measured in hours instead of days or weeks now - it seems an appropriate moment to pause and reflect on a bit of older history we've already passed through. I'm not talking about any kind of ancient history, mind you. For the purposes of this reflection, we need only take a small leap backwards in time, just six short years ago.

We all passed through the little slice of history that began to take shape in the early months of 2003, and we all remember that time in our own way. Today, however, there is a great deal of effort being expended to make sure this bit of history is remembered differently than how it really happened. An even better result for those exerting this effort would be if this bit of history were not remembered at all. That may, in fact, be their ultimate goal.

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The mainstream American news media is just as responsible for what has happened in Iraq as the Bush administration; they are as responsible for the lies they repeated as the ones who first told them, and are as guilty for what happened in Iraq as the Bush administration officials they enabled and covered for.

Many people, by now, may have forgotten the manner in which this gruesome symbiosis played out six years ago. An organization called Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has compiled a little refresher course on the topic. Behold some of the highlights.

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Exhibit "A" for your further exploration - parsing that for briefness was no fun. Go on - a couple more mouse-clicks will not cause carpals to go critical.

And, while we're on the score of Big No-Longer-Media, who better to invite to the party than Glenn Greenwald at Salon:

The Washington Post's David Ignatius today does what he does best: serve as the spokesman for the Washington establishment's most conventional wisdom in a way that really illuminates what it is:

To underscore the message, Obama indicated that he would oppose retrospective
investigations of wrongdoing by the CIA and other agencies, arguing: "When it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed [to] looking at what we got wrong in the past." This is the kind of realism that will disappoint liberal score-settlers, but it makes clear that Obama has a grim appreciation of the dangers America still faces from al-Qaeda and its allies.

The word "liberal" has undergone a remarkable transformation over the last eight years. All that has been necessary to qualify is a belief in such radical, exotic and fringe-leftist concepts as search warrants before the Government can eavesdrop on our communications; due process before the state can encage people for life; adherence to decades-old Geneva Conventions restrictions which post-World-War-II America led the way in implementing; and the need for an actual, imminent threat from another country before we bomb, invade, occupy and destroy it.

Now added to the pantheon of "liberal" dogma is the shrill, ideological belief that high government officials must abide by our laws and should be treated like any other citizen when they break them. To believe that now makes you not just a "liberal," but worse: a "liberal score-settler." Apparently, one can attain the glorious status of being a moderate, a centrist, a high-minded independent only if one believes that high political officials (and our most powerful industries, such as the telecoms) should be able to break numerous laws (i.e.: commit felonies), openly admit that they've done so, and then be immunized from all consequences. That's how our ideological spectrum is now defined.

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Repeating myself, I've ruthlessly excerpted there - your education will be incomplete without at least a visit to site - that is true of all too-short clips here!

And the other part of my "frame," you ask? As I was leaving bookstore today, devoid of purchases, (feeling guilty over not helping the economy, of course), my eye was caught by book title "Orgy Organizer Wanted." Subtitle was something like "A Compendium of Unusual Jobs." Sorry I can't tell you more - I had a job to return to and felt need to conserve resources to keep trying to distinguish signal from noise.

Good Eating = Economic Stimulus?

We continue to prepare and consume more than our fair share of good stuff around here. The holidays, for those of us fortunate enough to still be employed and paid more than minimum wage (a dramatically decreasing population share, it seems), provide ample excuse for trying something new.

In the runup to the holidays Eric concocted a terrific batch of one-of-a-kind mac-and-cheese. Comfort food with a kick. I'm sure it had a lot to do with our surviving the ensuing weather debacles leading to rare Northwest White Christmas.

Our typical Christmas routine has involved a semi-fancy Eve dinner with friends, often at their place - but sometimes ours. This year we indulged ourselves sans friends. Or maybe I should say we dined with our most inner circle of friends, i.e., we three and our terrific dog companions.

Marg had procured a moderate-size rib-roast, and Eric assembled a mustard-horseradish paste. A friend called me on my joke about Yorkshire pudding to the point where I had to make the experiment, which seemed to turn out as marvelous as I could have imagined. But in truth, we wondered what the big deal was. It was fun to add a bit of snazzy and all, but I admit a potato would have suited me fine. Add a nice tossed salad with colorful dashes of pomegranete and grapefruit, some decent dinner rolls, a nice hoppy IPA, and a deep, dark, delectable native red home-made by aforesaid friends (h/t Jules and family), and you're starting to talk about something more than survival rations.

Which was good, because conditions outside at the time were periodically somewhat near the survival category. I spent almost as much time commuting as actually in manacles for several days there. Meanwhile, Mara, Sean, and Aristotle were parked on I-5 south of Portland. Elaine awaiting pickup. The foursome got here somewhere around 1:30AM, having left Salem about 6PM.

Our standard Christmas dinner entree for lo these many years has been corned beef. This year, as is common, I started dreaming of it in early November. We have scrambled at times to find vendors of quality CB, experimented with recipes (including, at least once, adding Coca Cola to cooking fluid!), and altered our starting lineup when it comes to the cooking and the carving. But truth be told, the stuff is too good for our talented bullpen to ruin it. "A bit tough" is probably the worst we have ever done. This year, Grandma conscripted Eric and me for the cooking, and Sean wielded the sharp sword when it came to the carving. Add in a dozen or so side dishes, and at least the lower vestiges of royalty might be content.

In the process of weaning ourselves off large portions of red meat, Eric took us through a recipe that involved baking scampi with a coating of garlic (duhh!), butter, shallots, parsley, rosemary, red pepper flakes, citrus, and panko. Oh have mercy. That's parmesan-roasted broccoli in the background.

And then we made a run up to join our friends the Baxters for New Years at their version of Fernando's Hideaway up near Mt. Baker, where they know how to do snow. And the Baxters know how to do hospitality like nobody's business. Together with mutual friends Diane and Bill we moved in on them for Holiday Number 2, with of course delicious food and beverages and the occasional snowy perambulation. But mostly food and more food. Our eve dinner included calamari with a wonderfully garlicy dip, a variety of cheeses, seafood manicotti, prawns named differently than the misleadingly-named BBQ prawns a la P. Prudhomme, yet actually remarkably similar and scrumptious - actually perceptibly more tangy than I have been gradually schooled as to put before my occasional scoville-challenged diner, devilled eggs, potato salad, and slow-cooked pulled pork with side of onion-carrot-cilantro escabeche. What a lot of excellent food and joy.

It was great fun when we were invaded post-dinner by a wild neighborhood contingent of a dozen or so bubbly Eve-celebrators, who kicked up the party atmosphere a good deal. We reciprocated with a visit later in the evening, returning barely in time to celebrate the new year.

Breakfast was no less over-the-top, though in this case almost exclusively Baxter-produced: eggs-on-a-raft, pancakes, cranberry bread, sausages, grapefruit, and mimosas. At least 4 inches of snow had accumulated overnight, and it continued to fall throughout the New Year. We worked off a portion of our accumulated body-burden via a snowy walk to clubhouse, scene of impending "polar bear swim," only to find pool occluded by a foot-plus layer of snow and slush. However, a few of us returned later to witness brave souls immersing themselves in reportedly 37 degree water. Oiks.

I suspect I am not the only one who has been focused on slightly smaller portions the last couple weeks.