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The Presidential Cabinet I’m Not Staffing

August 30, 2019

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Department Of Somebody Got A Screenwriting Credit For This?

Dateline: last Saturday, Manzanita OR. Pondering the recent news re the death of actor Peter Fonda, I wondered how it was that moiself had made it through life as a movie fan (including taking a film class in college) without having seen that supposedly ground-breaking classic, Easy Rider.

Friend JWW was visiting MH and moiself. JWW and MH each claimed to have seen Easy Rider and, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, agreed to watch it with me that evening.

You know That Thing ®  when you get embarrassed for people you don’t even know and/or who aren’t even in the room with you?  That’s the thing I felt, watching Easy Rider. As (a cartoon version of) George Takei might say,

 

 

 

Now I know what it feels like to have a bad trip, despite never having dropped acid.

Anyone who has watched older, “classic” movies has probably noticed that many such classics, however groundbreaking and/or interesting they may have been when they were released, just don’t hold up over time. This is the case, IMHO, for Easy Rider.   I’ll just leave it at this: if ever there was a movie which turned out to be an inadvertent Public Service Announcement   [1]  for the idea that Drugs Makes You Stupid ® ….

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Apologies I Don’t Quite Believe…

A.K.A. Why I Love Walking On The Beach Early In The Morning

Dateline: last Saturday circa 7 AM, walking north along the beach at Manzanita.  The beach is fairly devoid of other bipeds; then I espy a figure dressed in shimmering, vibrant green attire walking south, about 50 yards in front of me. Woman In Shimmering Green heads in my direction when her two Corgis leave her side and do their funny-odd, scuttling dwarf-dog, crab-run towards me. She calls to them in vain as the scamper in the sand in a circle around me and beg for pets, which I am happy to provide. 

Woman In Shimmering Green approaches me, shading her eyes against the morning sun. She is barefoot, slim, with thick, shoulder length platinum gray hair styled in a manner reminiscent of Lauren Bacall.

 

“You know how to whistle for a corgi, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow.”

 

Speaking of Bacall, I note that Woman In Shimmering Green has that classic movie star style bone structure which ages well even when wrinkled – she appears to be in her late 50s or early 60s, and she is a knockout. The shimmering green reveals itself to be a rather stunning silk pajama ensemble with an elaborate, dragon pattern stitched in gold thread on the sleeves and legs.

She laughs, pointing at her bare feet and then at her pajamas, and says apologetically, “I didn’t even bother to get dressed.”

“This is the beach,” I hear moiself reply, thinking of my own beach walking “ensemble” (workout shirt and pants and knee high waterproof boots). “You look fine to me.”

We exchange a few sentences of small talk before she moves on; she says something along the lines of how she just got out of bed and the dogs demanded to be walked so she came out here figuring no one else would see her “looking like this.”

Which, I want to call BS on.  I mean, c’mon – she looks better at 59 than I ever did in my prime (assuming I had a prime, maybe for 15 minutes when I was 19 or 20). She is one of those “natural beauties,” and I think she knows it. She of the expensive dogs and designer pajamas wants me to give her the benefit of the doubt and believed she just rolled out of bed looking that way?  Yeah, right, fuck that exhibitionist bitch…

Never mind. I decided to stick with my initial, more generous assessment:  she’s just another early riser enjoying the beach.

And so it goes. That is, she goes her way and I go mine, with moiself laughing aloud as I imagine the scenario wherein I do the same as she allegedly did: roll out of bed and just come to the beach without altering anything about the way I look and/or dress in the morning.  I picture someone from the local beach cleanup committee following behind me, wielding an enormous butterfly net which they are attempting to place over my head.  Please stop it. You’re scaring away the tourists. 

 

I don’t have a picture of the woman in the green dragon pajamas, so Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page and his legendary dragon stage outfit (circa 1977) will have to do.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Looking On The Bright Side

So many Democratic Presidential candidates…so many podiums on the debate stage.  According to what I’m reading and hearing, many people find it easy to get confused or even discouraged about that fact – they figure what with so many candidates there is a dilution of interest, money, and time for serious examination of issues that require more than gotcha sound bites.

But I’m starting to think, it’s all good. The winnowing process has already begun via the debate committee qualifications; also;  some of the lesser known/funded candidates have consulted their Magic 8 ball and dropped out…even as others remain in the race despite not qualifying for the third round of debates (someone please copy Bill De Blasio on the if-you’re-polling-at-less-than-0.05%-this-is-pointless memo).

 

 

As for the debate qualifiees (which moiself assumes will include the eventual nominee), we started with twenty-plus and are now at ten. They are, in alphabetical order:

* Former Vice President Joe Biden

* New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker

* South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg

* Former San Antonio Mayer/Obama Cabinet Member Julián Castro

* California Sen. Kamala Harris

* Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar

* Former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke

* Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders

* Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren

* Entrepreneur Andrew Yang

There are positives about every nominee – a lot of energy and optimism and experience. I think that exposure to this many serious candidates is win-win for the country, because the Also-Rans are quite a talented bunch; you could fill the President’s cabinet with top-notch talent. And I am, in fact, hoping that when the proverbial dust settles and the President/Veep slate is chosen, that that is what will happen.

I’m already imaging a  Presidential Cabinet Roster, along the lines of the Also Rans‘ experiences and interests. For example, for Office of Management & Budget Director I’d nominate Steve Bullock, the governor of Montana, who has long expressed an interest in campaign finance reform. Michael Bennet, the Colorado Senator, has a zeal for education – and there we have the position of Secretary of the Department of Education filled.   

So, let’s say the ticket is President: Elizabeth Warren and Vice President: Corey Booker . My fantasy cabinet for the moment might include the following as secretaries and/or administrators of their respective departments:

White House Chief of Staff, Pete Buttigieg

Department of State, Joe Biden

Department of the Treasury, Bernie Sanders

Department of Defense; Kirsten Gillibrand

Department of Justice, Attorney General, Kamala Harris

Department of the Interior, John Hickenlooper

Department of Commerce, Andrew Yang

Department of Labor Beto O’Rourke

Department of Health and Human Services, John Delaney

Department of Housing and Urban Development, Julian Castro

Department of Energy, or the Environmental Protection Agency, Jay Inslee

Department of Veterans Affairs, Secretary Tulsi Gabbard

Department of Homeland Security, Amy Klobuchar

It’s fun – try it yourself.  What might your fantasy Presidential cabinet look like? Also, there may be some kind of board game potential in this.

 

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion   [2]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:

How To Cook Everything, by Mark Bittman

Recipes:

* Sautéed Eggplant With Basil and Chilis

* Barley Salad with Cucumber And Yogurt-Dill Dressing

My ratings, for both recipes:

 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher [3]

  *   *   *

Department Of The Never Ending Fight Against Maturity

 

Dateline: last Wednesday eve, at McMenamin’s Rock Creek Tavern. We are having a belated birthday dinner for MH while enjoying the tunes of one of our favorite performers, singer-songwriter Billy D.

Apropos of…something…I got son K to agree that, should the “natural” order of life proceed and I predecease him,  [4]  he will lead my memorial  attendees in singing and/or reciting rousing renditions of two of my favorite childhood songs: “Scab Sandwich” and “Beans Beans the Musical Fruit….”  To be followed by a pass-the-microphone session wherein attendees share their favorite, Robyn-would-have-liked-this fart jokes.

Y’all been warned.

 

*   *   *

May you pick a memorable sing-along for your memorial gathering;  [5]

May you waste spend precious neurological energy constructing your own
Fantasy Presidential Cabinet  ® ;

May you never experience Easy Rider flashbacks;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] put out by The Man, as one of the movie’s characters might say.

[2] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) one recipe from one book.

[3]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it

* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it

* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin (a character from The Office who would eat anything) would like this.  

* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.

* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.

* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up .

* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.

* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.

[4] The “natural” order – parents dying before their children, is something I am no longer taking for granted, given the events of this year: two longtime friends each suffered the deaths of one of their young adult children (one in January, the other just this month).

[5] Remember, if you don’t, someone may do it for you.

The Phone Call I’m Not Answering

August 23, 2019

Robyn Parnell extended family, family life, foodie, friends, games & puzzles, general ruminations, making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, movies, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , Comments Off on The Phone Call I’m Not Answering

Department Of How To Talk To An Obscene Phone Caller

Dateline: Monday eve, post dinner. Feeling nostalgic (or just too lazy to flip channels), MH and I tune in to the end of Wheel of Fortune, just in time to see the winner getting to choose the category from which her “bonus” puzzle will be chosen (categories may include Things; What are you doing?; Food and Drink; Places; People….). The night’s winner chooses the category, What are you wearing?

That’s weird, MH muses aloud. That category could be interpreted as a question from an obscene phone caller.

Moiself was beyond gratitude for MH’s observation, because it brought back a memory I hadn’t thought of in years.

 

“Pat, I’d like to buy a vowel….”

 

Arguably the only obscene phone call   [1]  I ever received  [2]  happened a long time ago in a galaxy far far away…specifically, one Friday afternoon between 2-3 pm, at the private OB/GYN practice where I worked.

Background info (which figures into the story, trust me):

*  The practice belonged to a doctor (“Dr. B”   [3]  ) and nurse practitioner (“NP”), who on Fridays saw patients until noon or 1pm and took the rest of the afternoon off. The practice remained open until 5pm for staff to return and make phone calls, notify patients of test results, ready the office for the next week’s patients, etc.

* The practice had two telephone numbers – one which was listed/public (for patients, pharmacists, hospitals, other doctors…) and an “inside line” which was private, its number known and used by staff only. If the private line rang on a Friday afternoon it was typically a call from Dr. B, more rarely NP, asking for clarification of something from a patient’s chart, or would I please check to see if he’d left ____ at the office, or call in a prescription for Ms. ____ or reschedule the Tuesday morning surgery of Ms. ____ …..

*  I had a very warm, congenial, and joking relationship with Dr. B and NP.   [4]

That particular Friday had been very busy – the morning slipped into the afternoon before I’d even had a chance to look at the clock and realize that the last patient had left over an hour ago and I hadn’t taken a lunch break.  I hadn’t seen Dr. B or NP in a couple of hours and figured they must have left while I was readying the ultrasound room for the amniocentesis which was scheduled first thing Monday morning, or perhaps when I was helping the pharmaceutical rep who’d stopped by to restock our samples shelves.  Dr. B and NP never left without saying goodbye, so when the inside phone line rang I picked it up, figuring it was Dr. B calling to wish me a good weekend. The male on the line spoke in the voice Dr. B sometimes assumed – a muffled, drawn-out, dopey tone – when Dr. B was imitating a drunken doctor, or asking me to repeat information he found to be implausible or just plain silly.

Unidentified Male: Hellllooooo?

Moiself: Well, howdy! Where’d you get off to?

Unidentified Male: Hellllooooo… (and something else I couldn’t quite hear).

Moiself: Yeah, I’m here. What’s up?

Unidentified Male: What are you wearing? 

Moiself: Oh, you know me – just the usual golfing attire.

Unidentified Male:  (heavy breathing, moaning and panting ensues…)

At that moment I espied a most quizzical-looking Dr. B standing in front of me across the desk counter, one eyebrow raised in a Mr. Spock-like fashion.  According to the office manager I stomped my foot and gave the telephone receiver quite the double take when I realized it was not Dr B on the other end of the line. I slammed down the receiver and ran to the nearby patient’s bathroom, where I washed my hands while alternately laughing and shrieking EEEEEWWWWWWW – I feel dirty! as I told Dr. B and the office manager about the phone call.

Neither the office manager nor Dr. B ever let me forget the incident. When for whatever reasons the office manager wanted to cut me down to size  [5]  she’d find an excuse to say to a patient,  “Robyn enjoys talking to obscene phone callers.” As for the good Dr. B, every now and then and seemingly apropos of nothing he would look at me and say, “just the usual golfing attire?”

 

If this don’t stiffen your putter I don’t know what will.

*   *   *

Department Of Conundrum Of The Ages

Dateline: Saturday, August 17.

Facebook: Let ____ know you are thinking of her on her birthday today!                                                   

Moiself:  But, I’m not!

But wait – technically I am because of the Facebook notice; that is, I’m thinking about the fact that I’m not thinking about it, which of course means that even for a moment I am thinking about it….

 

 

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion   [6]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:

Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes For a New Generation, by Molly Katzen

 Recipes:

* Grilled Ratatouille Salad

* Lime-Drenched Sweet Corn and Peppers

My ratings:

For Grilled Ratatouille Salad:

 

For  Lime-Drenched Sweet Corn and Peppers:

 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

 

Recipe Rating Refresher  [7] 

*   *   *

Department Of Without Eternal Vigilance
It Could Happen In Your Neighborhood

A friend turned that age this week   [8]   Which got me to wonder if there have been any Beatles fans who are so dangerously obsessive devoted that they insisted their grandchildren be named Vera, Chuck, and Dave?

 

 

*   *   *

May you not be plagued with “When I’m 64” videos
when you have that auspicious birthday;
May you remember, when you turn 64 and  friends play “When I’m 64” for you,
to react as if you had NO IDEA that might happen;
May friends and loved ones remember your birthday sans social media prompts;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] Obscene Telephone Call – is that even a thing anymore? For y’all who are too young to remember, an obscene phone call is a telephone call made to an unknown and/or unsuspecting victim, wherein the caller uses deception to gradually or suddenly pose questions about or make statements using explicit sexual imagery/suggestions and/or obscene language. The caller’s aim is to get the unsuspecting respondent to listen to material of an explicitly sexual nature, from which the caller derives sexual satisfaction.

[2] If there were others, I can’t remember them.

[3] Hoist your goblets, you who know what to do (certain friends invented a drinking game where one must take a sip of a [preferably alcoholic] beverage whenever moiself tells a DR. B story.

[4] Who were married to each other…although many of their patients didn’t know this, as they had different surnames.

[5] She sometimes gave off the vibe that she was envious of my collegiate relationship with our employers.

[6] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) one recipe from one book.

[7]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it

* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it

* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin would like this.  

* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.

* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.

* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up .

* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.

* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.

[8] Happy birthday, Erndawg!

The Good Old Days I’m Not Praising

August 16, 2019

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), books & magazines, current events, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, health & wellness, movies, nature, politics, reproductive rights, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Good Old Days I’m Not Praising

Department Of Not For The Reasons You Might Think

As in, the reasons why moiself  likes the 1959 movie, A Summer Place, which I recently re-watched.

Scrolling through summer-themed movie rentals several years back, I recognized the ASP title. I was familiar with the movie’s memorable instrumental theme: composed by the venerable Max Steiner, it was one of the few movie theme songs to spend weeks as #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it is still featured on oldies radio stations. But I’d little idea what the movie was about, only that it was one of the many “classics” I’d never seen, and that it was a big hit for Sandra Dee.  I decided to watch it and, much to my surprise, it caught the interest of my (then) teenage children.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed ASP, despite – or rather because of – its many cringe-worthy depictions of Life Back Then ®.  The movie inadvertently became a teaching/conversational tool, as I tried to describe to my son and daughter the kind of world their grandparents (and even parents, to a degree) grew up in.

 

 

In case y’all are or were ignorant of ASP, here is Amazon’s plot summary:

Troy Donahue and Sandra Dee star as two young lovers whose relationship catalyzes the end of their parents’ marriages during a vacation on a Maine island, aka, A Summer Place. Young, innocent and in love on an idyllic island, Johnny (Donahue) and Molly (Dee) face the anger and guilt unleashed by the dissolution of their parents’ relationships after Molly’s father (Richard Egan) rekindles an affair he had with Johnny’s mother before either was married. Now, can young love survive as Johnny and Molly witness the enmity that has replaced the passion their parents once felt in this classic romance?

To declare that I like ASP could be seen a retro attempt at being hip.  But, it’s so…dated, one of my offspring commented. That’s kinda the point, I said.  Moiself defended the movie as an illustration of the strictures placed upon both young and old alike during the post-WWII/pre-“sexual revolution” era portrayed in the movie, and my children looked at me in disbelief when I said that ASP was actually considered daring for its time, because of its forthright treatment of adolescent budding sexuality, economic and social class prejudice, adultery, hypocrisy, and other “mature” themes.

Son K and daughter Belle were alternately amused and appalled by the “morality” portrayed onscreen – in particular by how Molly’s higher-class aspiring, monstrously prudish mother openly criticizes her teenage daughter’s developing figure and interest in boys.  Fortunately for Molly, her father is a kind, gentle, and rational ally, and assures his daughter that her body and her natural desires are healthy, not shameful.

But her father’s alliance is not enough to protect Molly from moralistic paranoia. Before Molly’s father leaves for a brief business trip he gives Molly and Johnny permission to go sailing around the island. Their boat capsizes in a storm, stranding them on a beach on the far side of the island, where they are rescued by the Coast Guard the next morning. Despite their denials that they were “good,” the islanders gossip.  Molly’s mother accuses the teenagers of being sexually intimate on the beach, and she sends for a doctor who, to Molly’s shock and horror, forcibly examines Molly to make sure she is a virgin.

My kids were outraged by that scene. This is good, I told them.  You should be outraged.  And, yep, that kind of thing used to happen.

 

 

We had a short but interesting conversation…it was difficult for my offspring to imagine the over-riding importance of propriety back then and out there – they tried to write off the movie’s portrayals the of stifling concern with “decency” as being a 1950s and/or East Coast thing. I assured them that although in general people in the South and East Coast tend to be more formal than us Out West ® -erners, people all over the country dealt with (and some still must contend with) the threat of what can happen when, in the eyes of others, you’re not being or doing what is “proper”  [1]   Consequences of alleged impropriety, particularly and especially for women and girls, could be dire, even life-altering. With that in mind, my kids agreed that Molly’s frenzied proclamations to the doctor and her mother that she’d been “a good girl” were the product of realistic fears rather than adolescent hysterics.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Life Is Tough But It’s Even Tougher If You’re Stupid
Chapter 1 in a series

“Florida Man….”

Even if y’all are not familiar with the meme, you’ve occasionally seen the headlines: :

* Florida Man Breaks Into Crocodile Enclosure, Leaves Behind A Pair Of Crocs

* Florida Man Dressed As Fred Flintstone Pulled Over
For “Speeding” In “Footmobile”

* Florida Man Caught In Child Sex Sting Claims He Just Wanted To “See It In Action”

* Florida Man Tells Cops Playing Basketball Naked “Enhances His Skill Level”

* Florida Man Denies Syringes Found In Rectum Are His

* Florida Man Attacks Wife With Taco Bell Lunch
“Causing Some To Go Up Her Nose”

* Florida Man Calls 911 And Demands A Ride Home “To Change His Underwear”

 

“Girls and boys, can you say, ‘I’d bet the farm and Grandma’s gator ranch that Florida Man is a tweaker?’  I knew you could.”

 

* Naked Florida Man Performs ‘Strange Dance’ At McDonald’s
Before ‘Trying To Have Relations With A Railing’

* Florida Man arrested for hanging on traffic light
and defecating on cars passing underneath

* Florida Man Proclaims He’s The First Man Ever To Vape Semen

* Florida Man Finds a WWII Grenade, Places It in His Truck, Drives to Taco Bell

* Florida Man Who Threatens Family with Coldplay Lyrics,
Ends Standoff After SWAT Promises Him Pizza

* Florida Man tries to use taco as ID after his car catches fire at Taco Bell  [2]

So, what’s with Florida Men and Taco Bell?

My favorite FM headline, for its sheer, pathetic, clueless narcissism:

* Florida Man Googles Self to Find Out Which Florida Man He Is

Anyway….

MH warned daughter Belle, a proud Tacoma resident, that Tacoma Woman might just be giving Florida Man a run for his money, after MH saw this headline when we were up visiting Belle last weekend:

“Tacoma Woman Sent To Hospital After Posing With Octopus On Face.”

The story really deserves its own department.

*   *   *

Department Of Trust Us, Lady. No One Is In Any Danger Of Thinking That
That Is Your Motivation

“I’m not here to, you know, try to make myself look good…”

(Tacoma Woman trying to explain why she thought the
“opportunity for an unusual photo”  was worth putting an octopus on her face.
The venomous cephalopod bit her chin,
causing her to be hospitalized with a painful, paralyzing infection.)

 

*   *   *

Department Of This Also Explains #45 Supporters

Aka, Quote Of The Week

Aka, Forget Behavioral Psychology and Neurology – This Explains So Much

“When you’re dead, you don’t know you’re dead. It’s only difficult for others.
It’s the same way when you’re stupid.”

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion   [3]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:

 Forks Over Knives Flavor! by Darshana Thacker.

Recipes:
*Indonesian Peanut Sauce
* Basil Corn Cream

My ratings:

*Indonesian Peanut Sauce

* Basil Corn Cream

 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher    [4]

*   *   *

May you appreciate the cultural anthropology opportunity
implicit in movies like A Summer Place;
May you never feel compelled to begin an explanation with,
“I’m not here to, you know, try to make myself look good…”;
May you never be the subject of a headline which begins,
“________ (your state of residence) Man/Woman….” ;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

[1] I have always loathed that term and its implications, and tend to have a not-always-appropriate, knee-jerk, negative reaction to situations where it is employed.

[2] After he got his taco order, Florida Man fell asleep with his foot on his car’s accelerator (while he was in park gear), and the car’s engine caught fire.

[3] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) one recipe from one book.

[4]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it

* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it

* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin, a character from The Office who would eat anything, would like this.  

* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.

* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.

* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up .

* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.

* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.

The Question I’m Not Understanding

August 9, 2019

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), current events, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, games & puzzles, making fun of lawyers and/or doctors, politics, radio & podcasts, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Question I’m Not Understanding

Department Of Memories Apropos Of Nothing,
Which Nevertheless Arise In The Middle Of The Night

Dateline: A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, when I worked in an OB/GYN practice near Stanford Hospital.

Moiself  had been with the practice about four months, and had begun to be familiar with the regular patients and would often know, without having to look at their chart, what they were in for (when they had an appointment) or what they were calling for.

We had a patient from Persia – i.e. Iran  [1] – who had been trying to get pregnant, without success, for almost a year, and she and her husband had begun the initial rounds of fertility testing. One morning we received a phone call from the husband. The office manager answered the call and handed it off to moiself, since I was the health educator/medical assistant. The man’s English was very heavily-accented; I had to ask him three times to repeat his name. The office manager recognized the name when I spoke it aloud – Mr. Mizrahi, what may I help you with? Excuse me, what was that?  She listened to the brief conversation with increasing shock and disbelief and waved her arms to get my attention as I walked toward the massive Wall of Charts ®, searching for the wife’s records. The office manager had surmised what Mr. Mizrahi was calling about; she banged her forehead against her desk when she heard me say, to a man who was asking for the results of his semen analysis,

“Come again?”

 

*   *   *

Department Of Deja Vu All Over Again

Every morning at breakfast I do a cryptogram puzzle   [2]  from my Cryptogram-A-Day Book. This particular book of cryptograms consists of thoughts from philosophers, scientists, and other “great thinkers,” and proverbs and adages and sayings from the fables of Aesop to the koans of Zen Buddhism.  Twice within four days, my first thought, upon solving the respective quotes for August 4 and August 8, was, “Gee, I wonder why this one reminds me of #45?   [3]

“The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.”
Thomas Carlyle

“Wise men talk because they have something to say;
fools talk because they have to say something.”
Plato

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Make Me Sad

“New technologies – robots, software, artificial intelligence – have already destroyed more than 4 million US jobs, and in the next 5-10 years, they will eliminate millions more. A third of all American workers are at risk of permanent unemployment. And this time, the jobs will not come back.”
(Andrew Yang, former lawyer and internet/healthcare/education entrepreneur, philanthropist, founder of Venture For America, and Democratic presidential candidate)

Check out, if you haven’t already, the Andrew Yang For President website.  Specifically, check out the menu heading for his policies.  Yang has the most detailed proposals on the widest variety of issues that I’ve ever seen from any (would-be) public servant, from reducing student loan burden to campaign finance reform to modernizing military spending to “reverse boot camp” for returning GIs to border security and immigration reform…so many, that they are divided into topical groups:

* Economy/Jobs & Labor

* Civil Rights/Criminal Justice

* Democracy/Governance

* Healthcare

* Environment

* Education

* Family/Social Cohesion

* Foreign Policy

* Immigration

* Miscellaneous/Fun    [4]

Unlike so many other candidates (and this is, I’m sure, directly related to his background in business and education and NOT politics), Yang just doesn’t have call out problems, he offers solutions, which he backs with evidence.

I first heard of Yang in January, when he was interviewed on the Freakonomics podcast “Why Is This Man Running For President?” (#362, 1-9-19).  He reminds me of a Paul Revere figure, riding through the streets and calling out to us…essentially alone…because no one else sees that The British Are Coming – in this case, “The British” are, among other issues, the impending crisis re jobs lost to AI/robots and automation. Yang’s clear-headed reasoning and innovative (yet common sense, when you think about it) proposals got me to change my mind on the UBI (Universal Basic Income) concept – a concept that is so misunderstood and therefore unlikely to fly with the Average Joe ®  [5]   that Yang himself tacitly acknowledges this by calling his proposal the “Freedom Dividend.”

So, whence the department of things that make me sad? Because I know what’ll likely happen. When people from outside the Republican-Democrat duopoly , people with valuable experience, clear thinking, fresh ideas re complicated dilemmas, and no history of entangled agendas analyze our questions and offer feasible answers, we tend to dismiss them as dreamers and their ideas as impractical.  We say we want people who’ll tell us the truth and find bold yet workable solutions, but it seems most of us really can’t handle it.

 

 

*   *   *

Department Of Things That Make Me Sad
In Ways That The Word Sad Just Can’t Cut It

August 3, another day, another mass shooting, another long time/treasured friend suffers the death of a child…

Wait, WTF was that?!?!?!

How shamefully easy it is for moiself  to be so matter-of-fact about the former and so distraught by the latter. The mass shooting (excuse me, make that plural) last week barely registered in my mind as I was trying to comprehend the shock and grief of dear, longtime friend SGD, as she and her husband and daughter mourn the unexpected death of their 28 year old son and brother.

 

 

Remember, I told son K and daughter Belle, although I’m usually not a stickler about most Life Things ®, please get this Rule Of Life thing correct: you’re supposed to bury us, not the other way around.

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion   [6]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:

 Forks Over Knives, edited by Gene Stone.

 Recipes:

* Avocado Dressing
* Cucumber Tomato Salad
* Red Potatoes and Kale 

My ratings, the same for all three: 

 

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher  [7]

*   *   *

 

May  we remember to talk only when we have something to say;
May we not ask for the truth unless we are prepared to deal with it;
May we all, once again and forever, remember to love ’em while we got ’em;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

*   *   *

 

[1] During that time (mid-late 1980s), due to the volatile US-Iran political relations – or just a strong cultural preference – people from Iran would often refer to themselves as Persian, rather than as Iranian.

[2] A cryptogram in this sense is a word puzzle consisting of a short piece of coded text – substitution cypers, where each letter is replaced by a different letter.

[3] Aka D—– tRump, our Commander in Disbelief Chief.

[4] My favorite category, which includes such topics as “The Penny Makes No Cents” (the reasons, from environmental to practical, to get rid of pennies), “Robo-calling Text Lines” (a one step method to report Robo Callers to the FCC), and “Making Taxes Fun”….

[5] a Joe that is likely to reconsider UBI when he loses his retail/truck driving job to online shopping/self-driving trucks and robots and drones and….

[6] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook 9at least) one recipe from one book.

[7]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it

* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it

* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin (a character in The Office who would eat anything) would like this.  

* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.

* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.

* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up .

* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.

* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.

The Official Party Business ® I’m Not Undertaking

August 2, 2019

Robyn Parnell are we having fun yet? (Women & Men & Feminism), community, current events, exercise & fitness, extended family, family life, foodie, freethought/humanism, friends, Holy Shit!, Isms (religion), school, sports, TV, Wow, Yikes! , , , , , , , , , , Comments Off on The Official Party Business ® I’m Not Undertaking

Department Of Why The Two Party Duopoly Has To Go, Reason #379

Republican, schmublican; Democrat, schmemocrat – both parties use the same sleazy-ridiculous tactics when it comes to fundraising.  As per the following which MH received in the mail – previewed by moiself to him in an oh-so-excited text:

MH, look what you’re getting!  It’s official party business!
It has official numbers on it!  Quick – find something to salute!

*   *   *

Department Of I Guess You Had To Be There

Homemade yogurt joke:

 

“Whey! No whey!”

*   *   *

 

Department Of You Need To Watch This Show Because I Say So

“Happiness is amazing. It’s so amazing, it doesn’t matter if it’s yours or not.”
(“Anne,” to “Tony,” at their regular meeting place – in a cemetery,
sitting on a bench which faces their respective late spouses’ gravestones.)

Last weekend Moiself watched all six episodes of the first season of.After Life – a Netflix series written and produced by Ricky Gervais –  and I recommend that you do, too.

A British black comedy, After Life follows Tony, whose beloved wife has  died and whose dementia-addled, elderly father is in a care facility.  Tony, struggling to deal with the irritations and futility of everyday life, considers suicide, then decides to live long to punish the world for his wife’s death by saying and doing whatever he wants, including telling the truth about the pointlessness of his and his colleagues’ jobs – working for a community newspaper no one reads. Tony thinks of this as his “superpower,” but his friends and colleagues persist in seeing through his gruff persona to the decent chap  [1]   he used to be.

Every episode had me on the verge (and sometimes over the edge) of tears, of both mirth and pain.  Keep the Kleenex handy for the laugh out loud, spit out your popcorn/iced tea/wine dialogue, interspersed with gut-wrenching displays of the depths of Tony’s love for his wife and grief at her loss.  Tony’s observations about humanity are cutting; his misanthropy can be obscene; his heartache is raw and palpable. And the supporting cast – from his colleagues at the newspaper, to a prostitute (“Excuse me, sex worker!”) he befriends, to the inept postman he taunts, to the nurse at his father’s care facility, to a widow he meets at the cemetery who becomes a kind of grief mentor – all are multi-dimensional characters, keenly written and well-acted.

Frankly, imagining moiself in his shoes, I think Tony shows remarkable restraint in many of his interactions with his fellow humans. For example, he goes on assignment with the paper’s photographer to interview yet another clueless couple who think their daft doings deserve media coverage – in this case, parents who think themselves newsworthy for  having “…a baby who looks like Hitler.”

Newspaper staff member:
Got a good lead for you: “Local baby looks exactly like Adolf Hitler.”

Tony, at the baby’s home, with the staff photographer,
looking at the Hitler-style mustache on the baby’s upper lip:
So is that a birthmark?

Baby’s Mother:
Oh, no, it’s eyeliner. We did it with marker pen at first, but it took ages to get off.

Baby’s Father:
Yeah, I mean, this way we can do it when we want then wipe it off if we need to.

Tony:
So hold on, it doesn’t really look like Hitler then.

Photogapher:
It does.

Tony:
No. I mean naturally. It wasn’t born with its hair combed forward
and a mustache, was it?

Photographer:
Nor was Hitler, to be fair.

 Tony:
What I’m saying is, it’s not a revelation, is it? I mean, to get in the paper. “Baby born that looks a bit like Hitler,” mildly interesting if it had a real mustache. But you can draw a mustache on any baby and it looks a bit like Hitler.

Father:
Not a black one.

Mother:
Not as much.

Tony:
I’ve got one more question. Why do you want your baby to look like Adolf Hitler? You’re not fans, are you?

Parents:
We’re not Nazis, no.  Just a bit of fun, innit?

Tony:
I mean – Yeah. Hitler’s the funniest thing to do, I guess.

 

Moiself, I prefer Hitler cats to Hitler babies.

 

Tony (like his creator, Gervais) is an atheist. I’m grateful for Gervais using Tony’s character as a foil with which to reveal and parry some of the absurd things people  say to non-religious believers, as in Tony’s meaning-of-life exchange with Kath, a co-worker. Kath, the newspaper’s advertising editor, is a haughty thorn in most of her colleague’s sides. She’s also a fervent fan of the American comedian-/actor Kevin Hart:

Kath:
 If you were atheist –

Tony:
 I am.

Kath:
 – and don’t believe in an afterlife –

Tony:
I don’t.

Kath:
If you don’t believe in heaven and hell and all that, why don’t you just go around raping and murdering as much as you want?

Tony:
I do.

Kath:
What?

 Tony:
I do go around raping and murdering as much as I want, which is not at all.

(a co-worker chimes in):
‘Cause he’s got a conscience.

Kath:
But if death is just the end, what’s the point? –

Tony:
What’s the point in what?

Kath:
– Livin’! You might as well just kill yourself.

Tony:
So if you’re watching a movie, and you’re really enjoying it – something with Kevin Hart in – and someone points out that this’ll end eventually, do you just go, “Oh, forget it then. What’s the point?” and just turn it off?

Kath:
No, ’cause I can watch it again.

Tony:
Well, I think life is precious ’cause you can’t watch it again.  I mean, you can believe in an afterlife if that makes you feel better. Doesn’t mean it’s true. But once you realize you’re not gonna be around forever, I think that’s what makes life so magical.
One day you’ll eat your last meal, smell your last flower, hug your friend for the very last time.
You might not know it’s the last time, so that’s why you should do everything you love with passion, you know? Treasure the few years you’ve got because that’s all there is.

(a thoughtful silence envelops the newsroom)

Kath:
I’ve watched Ride Along 2 five times.

Tony:
Well, you haven’t wasted your life, then.

Kath:
Definitely not.

 

Series Bonus: you know satisfying it is when you resolve a Where do I know this actor from?! feeling? By the last episode I was so happy when I figured out (without “cheating” – i.e., looking at the credits) that the actor who plays Anne, Tony’s cemetery buddy, is Penelope Wilton.  Wilton is probably best known to American audiences for playing Downton Abbey’s Isobel Crawley, the more liberal member of the family whose modern outlook is an irritant to the imperious Countess Dowager.

 

 

Anyway, if it isn’t obvious by now, I found the show quite entertaining as well as thought-provoking and mirth-inducing.  And if anyone else thinks they have a better philosophy of life (that can be proven) than Tony’s what makes life so magical speech (along with what his friend Anne says in the quote which opens this segment) – well then, to use a suggestion the Tony character would likely approve of,  go $#?! yourself.

 

*   *   *

*   *   *

Department Of Words A Parent Lives For
(Sub-Department of My Work Here Is Done)

Earlier this week moiself ran into one of son K’s  high school teachers/coaches when I was out walking and she was out for a run.  So, wait a minute: did she run into me, or did I walk into her?

Move along, folks, nothing here to see.

 

I didn’t recognize her at first; it had been at least six years since I’d seen her.  She wore a running shirt emblazoned with the logo of the fitness club she and other coaches had started at K’s and our daughter Belle’s high school. I asked her about that, we chatted, I introduced myself, and she remembered K from his years on the Cross Country team and also from one of her classes. She will always remember K, she said, as being …“very intellectual, and also kind, very kind.” Two more times in our conversation she used the word kind to describe him.

 

That’s my boy.

*   *   *

Department Of One More Thing About Offspring

I found this while going through the file cabinets, looking for something which was in a folder adjacent to the folders in which MH and I keep old notes and sketches written by  Belle & K.  There is no date or attribution on it –  PARENTING FAIL!  [2]   I’m thinking it was done by K, due to the handwriting…but then, as MH pointed out, Belle was big on writing notes to us, so it could have been either one of them.   

 

 

Translation:

How to take care of children

  1. get in PJs.
  2. eat dinnr.
  3. let them have as much Desrt as they wont!

*   *   *

Department of Epicurean Excursion   [3]

Featuring this week’s cookbook, author and recipe:
The Food of Morocco, by Paula Wolfert

* Creamy Fava Bean Soup
* Eggplant Zaalouk
* Berber Skillet Breads

 

My ratings: for the Fava Bean Soup and the Eggplant Zaalouk:

 

 

For the Berber skillet bread:

☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼

Recipe Rating Refresher   [4]

*   *   *

May you appreciate (or at least tolerate) yogurt puns;
May a teacher remember your child – or you – with fondness;
May you rest assured that no baby is born looking like Hitler;
…and may the hijinks ensue.

 

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!

 

*   *   *

 

[1] He’s British, you know.

[2] I always (or so I thought) wrote on the back of a drawing or note I saved, the name of its creator, and the date.

[3] A recurring feature of this blog, since week 2 of April 2019, wherein moiself decided that moiself would go through my cookbooks alphabetically and, one day a week, cook (at least) one recipe from one book.

[4]

* Two Thumbs up:  Liked it

* Two Hamster Thumbs Up :  Loved it

* Thumbs Down – Not even Kevin (a character from The Office who would eat anything) would like this.  

* Twiddling Thumbs: I was, in due course, bored by this recipe.

* Thumbscrew: It was torture to make this recipe.

* All Thumbs: Good recipe, but I somehow mucked it up .

* Thumby McThumb Face: This recipe was fun to make.

* Thumbing my nose: Yeah, I made this recipe, but I did not respect it.