The Blog I'm Not Writing

It just ain’t right :

I tweaked my wrist while setting up my new ergonomic computer stand.

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Not even one paragraph into the post, and I digress.

Last Sunday, during my family’s customary dinner at the BCC, [1] friend LH mentioned that, in anticipation of Tuesday’s election results, she’d purchased a bottle of champagne and a bottle of tequila.  Bubbly = good news, tequila = ay yi yi.

As Election Day approached I shuddered to think of a Mitt Romney presidency ay-yi-yi outcome, but forced myself to consider the possibility. The only way I could do that sober was to fantasize about distracting Romney’s Secret Service detail[2] and hoisting his magic undies into a wedgie of presidential proportions.

I never asked LH about what kind of tequila she’d purchased. Shots of any rotgut (“mixtos”) brand, or even your best reposado, would do for a toast to misfortune.  But the following margarita is too good too good to waste on sorrow.  This is not your Applebee’s bar blender/slurpee-style margarita. The key is using the best ingredients:  the proper tequila, ditching the triple sec, and only fresh lime juice.

La Margarita Que yummers – makes 2
-2 margarita glasses prepped w/kosher salt and  lime slices or wedges
cocktail shaker (do not even think of using a blender)
-1/2 c tequila blanco **
-1/4 c agave syrup or nectar
-1/4 c freshly squeezed lime juice. Not frozen, nor from a plastic jar.  Fresh.[3]

Combine ingredients in cocktail shaker, fill shaker with ice & shake well while singing your favorite variation of Guantanamera.  Strain into prepared glasses.  What do you mean, how do you prepare a glass for a margarita?  Do they let you out without a chaperone?

** Always use tequila made from 100 % blue agave. Use only blanco (silver or white) tequila in this recipe.

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On Tuesday I gave a good deal of thought towhich bottle LH might be tipping later that night.  It was better than thinking about the news, which I tried to ignore all day, which means I had to stay off my computer.  The three advance dinners in our refrigerator offer silent but yummers testimony as to which room in the house became my safe haven.

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What, me worry? Well…yeah.

To those who might call me cynical I have four words:  Look around. Pay attention.

Cynical? Try realistic.  Or, observant:

– millions of viewers make “reality” TV (Jersey Shore & Here Comes Honey’s  Booby… whatever) a rating success

– the past four years have seen a buttload of Republicans who support (or refuse to refute, which is the same as supporting in my book. Silence = acquiescence, y’all) the thinly disguised racial slur/code word rhetoric of the tea party/birther barfbags, and just as many GOP gorps muster little more than a lame, “Golly, that was a poor choice of words,” when their candidates launch their latest, mind-numbingly ignorant attacks on women’s private[4] medical issues

– there are an exasperating number of media outlets that pay attention when Donald Trump’s facial orifice moves, as though there could be anything other than self-promoting trollery in his blatherings, which regularly, cacophonously, emerge via the festering conduit linking his mouth and the brain tissue allegedly residing under his shag carpet cranium.

I could go on, but it’s too damn depressing. Oh, and any one person in any of those categories, guess what? They get to vote. And their vote counts, the same as yours or mine.

As a country, intellectually and culturally, we’re not the brightest bulb in the planet’s chandelier.[5]  My dear friend, expat-Oregonian and temporary[6] Coloradoan LH nailed it: I just have to hope and believe that tomorrow we won’t read a version of the UK Guardian headline, circa 2004:  “How can 35 million people be so stupid?”  Peggy Noonan predicted that Romney would win because she has seen an increase in Republican yard signs.  Two things that should never be mixed together:  Republicans and scientific methodology. 

And then, late Tuesday eve, I discovered that although you still cannot lawfully partake of non-medicinal marijuana in Oregon, LH’s fellow Coloradoans were celebrating their legalization measure, along with our northern neighbors in Washington.

Yep, I finally dared to heed the Big Talking Rectangle.  Although I missed Diane Sawyer’s feeling no pain reportage and Karl Rove’s losing his loo biscuits on Fox News, there was plenty o’ else to love.

I loved that marriage equality measures looked to be passing in Maryland, Minnesota, Washington and Maine. I loved that so many of the Republican slime-fests came to naught; I loved that Colleen Lachowicz, the Maine Democrat who was slammed by the GOP for her online gaming activity, won her seat in the Maine state senate, and that Tammy Baldwin won her senate race in Wisconsin despite the She’s a commie lesbo!  smears from conservative pundits[7].  And I really, really, really – and did I mention, really? – loved learning that those “Life Begins at Rape” GOP caveman, those walking, talking, human peshas [8] Richard Mourdock, Allen West,  Joe Walsh and Todd Akin , all lost their respective, disrespectful campaigns.

Loveliest of all, as astute friend and Brown Dwarf expert MM observed, was that, apparently and ultimately, Mitt Romney forgot his binders full of concession speeches.[9]

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Yo, future candidates.  Behold grace, and a dose of humility and pragmatism, in action:

“You always have two speeches prepared, because you can’t take anything for granted.”
(President Obama, 11-6-12)

It is a political tradition, like ass- and baby-kissing, for the winning side to praise the loser’s “gracious” concession.  And from late Tuesday-early Wednesday, the talking heads did that, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. However, I think they were remiss in applying that adjective to Romney’s five-minute, teeth-clenching, whine concession speech.

Romney bragging about how he hadn’t written a concession speech was condescending and naïve, not gracious. Making the nation wait until early Wednesday morning, nearly two hours after the AP, CNN et al had called the election, was stubborn and petulant, not gracious.

I heard no grace in Romney’s mercifully brief but nonetheless arrogant, clueless and sexist recognition – phrasing expected from the most stereotypical 1950s corporate CEO  but cringe-worthy when coming from a 2012 candidate for LOTEFC[11] –  of his sons “for their tireless work on behalf of the campaign, and… their wives and children for taking up their slack as their husbands and dads have spent so many weeks away from home.”

Romney’s mopey wish, “that I had been able to fulfill your hopes to lead the country in a different direction,” was a thinly veiled tantrum.  I wanted it to be different – waaa! As for what followed, those of us who are religion-free know well the creepy, patronizing, presumptuous and sinister threats that are often disguised with an ostensibly innocuous, I’ll pray for you.

“Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for (Obama) and for this great nation.”

Yeah, cause you’re gonna need it!  Ick.

In Romney’s insular world, his ethnicity and gender give him power as per his religion.[10] Add that to his birthright of wealth and social and political prominence – it’s obvious the dude is used to having it his way, and not having to do much on his own to get it. His the other guy won so let’s all pull together now speech had all the sincerity of a hostage reading a ransom note at gunpoint.

I wasn’t the only one who noticed.  I think the reliably more-articulate (and less profane)-than-moi  salon.com columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams put it best:

He wanted it to be “different,” and he’s praying for you, America. That is not “gracious.” What it is instead is a pretty typical Romney, a man who would arrogantly refuse to entertain the notion of defeat and then grind in his heels and refuse to accept it for as long as possible. A man who…thanks men for their tireless work and “wives” for picking up the slack. That was your glimpse, Tuesday night, of what your President Romney would have looked like. And maybe it doesn’t sound gracious to say so, but thank God that’s the last look we’ll have.

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MH, like me, is sick of the years of political mindfuckery, and wants it to fade away.  For the record, for what it’s worth, MH does not agree with my interpretation of Romney’s speech. He thinks I’m reading/hearing too much into it; he thinks I should let it go.  Perhaps, unlike MH and very much like the Dixie Chicks, I’m not ready to make nice.

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Thanks…I think:

Every Wednesday, after my Tai Chi class, I have lunch at a local pasta café. This week the café’s cute, chatty, mildly spacey and abundantly tattooed counter-girl squirmed with excitement when she brought my Caesar salad to my table.

“Harry Potter!  You’ve seen Harry Potter?”

“Have I seen Harry Potter?” I doffed my reading glasses and brushed a crouton off of my NY Times crossword puzzle.  “You mean, the movies?”

She giggled her affirmation.

“Every one,” I confessed.  “And read all the books.”

“I finally figured it out, who you remind me of,” she gushed. “Especially when you put on your glasses – you look like the professor who reads the tea leaves…I can’t remember her name, but isn’t that great?!”

Me:  “Uh, yeah…the flaky one [12] Professor of Divination, Sybill Trelawny.”

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Sometimes, you just have to crank up the volume and dance.  As Professor of Divination, I see a Go-Gos song in my future.   Hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!