Completed Category: Short Film (Animated)

 And now I'm done with all the Shorts!  Saw the Animateds yesterday. 

And guess what - regarding the question of which of this year's set of Shorts is clearly better or worse than another set of Shorts, I was actually good with all the Live Action and most of the Animated. And most of the Documentary Shorts. So basically, there was no omg-wtf set this year. 

That's not to say there weren't some heavy topics!  I'll keep my thoughts short, since the Shorts were short. (Which is how I like my Animation, by the way.) 

OUR UNIFORM:  I was into this and then it ended too abruptly.  It's a kind of meditation about how girls are forced to wear the hijab (nowadays) in Iran and at the beginning there was a disclaimer of no offense to anyone who chooses to wear hijab but that this was about the experience of being forced to wear it in a certain place. Eye roll. 

LETTER TO A PIG: This is a meditation on .. a lot of things. Including escaping death, but also war and pigs (not War Pigs though) and some other stuff.  I want to watch this again and maybe again and again. 

There was no disclaimer of no offense to anyone who has not hidden in a pig sty. 

PACHYDERME: This was creepy as f*ck. I do not want to watch it again and again. There was no disclaimer of no offense to anyone who had a positive experience in a house with an elephant tusk on display. 

NINETY-FIVE SENSES:  I did watch this one twice. (It's available online and I also saw the group of Shorts in the theatre.) I like this one a lot too. It is heavy. It is also about being alive in a way unlike anything I've ever seen before. It kinda sneaks up on you of how good it is.  There was no disclaimer of no offense to people who do not have five senses. 

WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO: It's about war.  I liked it a lot! I was thinking it was the best and might win until I walked out of the theatre and heard two people complaining that it was the worst of the five. What!? It was so good. War is bad. Chess and birds and cease-fires are good. There was no disclaimer of no offense to the wars that are not over. 

Order I want them to win:  top 3 might as well be a tie

Ninety-Five Senses
War Is Over! Inspired By the Music of John & Yoko
Letter To A Pig

then Our Uniform
then big gap then Pachyderme

Order I think they will win: 
I am pretty sure this category is one of my worst in terms of predictions? Sadly I don't keep stats so we'll never know but that is my impression. Once in a while I get it right. Hmmmmm... 

probably War Is Over! Inspired By the Music of John & Yoko? 

maybe Ninety-Five Senses? 
maybe Our Uniform? 

maybe Letter to a Pig  which was weird but I loved it
please not Pachyderme

Have you gone to see the Animated Shorts at your local cinema? 

There's also a Highly Commended but not nominated one that was kinda like The Shape of Water 🤣🐟 except about real fish - sort of.   Animators sure can do weird stuff! 

Salon Day

Completed Category: Makeup & Hairstyling 

I recently was on TV and on that occasion I got to have actual Los Angeles studio professionals touch my hair and makeup, for two seconds. I believe this is the first Awards Season in which I've had this recent, fresh perspective. This, of course, is of no actual consequence whatsoever to anything. On to the nominees! 

All Quiet on the Western Front * The Batman *  Black Panther: Wakanda Forever * Elvis * The Whale 

The other day I got around to watching Im Westen Nichts Neues which is German for not much is happening on the western front, and by the way I loved it, and since it got a whole lot of Oscar noms, this viewing let me chip away at eight more categories AND complete another one: Makeup and Hairstyling. 

I will say this. There is a pivotal moment in Im Westen Nichts Neues (aka AQotWF) where the makeup of caked up mud etc. on our protagonist's trench-war-weary face is really, really close up for a good long scene and it is haunt-your-nightmares memorable. That one scene, along with all the various blood and guts, could bring a Makeup win here. I think it would be well deserved. 

It's interesting that this category is mostly thought of as Makeup, when Hairstyling is clearly also right there in the name. I think that IWNN/AQotWF, The Batman, and The Whale had far less going on hair-wise than makeup-wise, whereas BP:WF and Elvis had notable hair. 

As I've mentioned, BP:Wakanda Forever was OK but loooong and boring, and I'm not sure that I would pick this category for it to win. It might get overlooked because it just did its Makeup/Hairstyling job well and that's that. The Batman, a much worse movie (in fact, in the bottom two of all nominees I've seen so far), had at least one superb makeup job (everyone's raving about the Penguin) but that movie was mostly about being dark and moody and brooding and dark (and terrible) and I don't predict a win here for it. 

What about The Whale? This is an interesting question of how a full-body prosthetic is "makeup."  It is, of course - but just interesting to think about. For example, how much daily work was it, how many touch-ups, versus building how many prosthetic bits in the first place? Also, the whole fat suit and the movie got some backlash because they are said to be one big fat-shaming mess, so I suspect that might lead some people to not vote for it. But, it's a secret ballot, so who knows? 

Elvis, on the other hand, is definitely going to get some proud votes including for the nominated Actor performance, and sometimes when the Makeup & Hairstyling is a big part of the actor's "transformation," people like to applaud both and talk incessantly about them throughout the Awards Season. Elvis could definitely take home this prize without much other thought being given to anything else. 

I, however,would probably vote for Austin Butler's actual acting performance. HE was great. It wasn't the makeup and hair. That said, this movie DID have a constant stream of shows and glitz and performances and aging and many people to make up and style over many decades, and I won't be mad if it wins this category.

If I were an Academy voter, I'd check the  Makeup & Hairstyling box for All Quiet Im Westen, because I can still see that soldier's face now, vividly. Not to mention various other bullet wounds, blood, guts, and human tragedy that we somehow will never, ever learn not to perpetuate. 

This was the folk-music-icons weekend that was

Back in the day, by which I of course mean the late 1980s, I accumulated a few pen-pals. Yes, pen-pals -- remember those glorious days, of sitting down with pen and paper, writing a letter, and sending it off to your new "friend" who lived in another state or another country? I loved that hobby. Only one of my pen-pals lasted for years and years of correspondence -- she and I had quite a bit in common and a lot to say to each other, and even ended up both living in New York City at the same time years down the road and getting to meet and be friends in real life, which was in itself amazing. However, this particular story isn't about that pen-pal, but rather about a fleeting pen-pal with whom I briefly wrote letters and then lost contact forever but who, nonetheless, had an impact on my life through the act of sending me a particular cassette tape.

This particular fleeting pen-pal was named Nancy (I think? that's how long ago and fleeting this was) and was, again I think, from Oswego, NY.  I do hope I'm remembering that correctly and not mixing her up with someone else. Anyway, the fleeting pen-pal in question and I decided we would exchange tapes, and we sent each other lists of the albums that we owned and then let each other know which of the other person's we wanted and copied them onto blank cassettes and sent them to each other. (I know, hello, copyright laws, anyone?) We were young adolescents still with a manageable amount of albums, and I can't tell you what the hell else she sent me or what I sent her, but I very specifically remember one dark brown Memorex cassette she sent to me that had on one side a copied Cowboy Junkies album and on the other side Indigo Girls.

I even remember exactly where I was when I was looking at her letter with her list of albums and thinking, "Cowboy Junkies. Indigo Girls." I didn't really know what their music was going to be like -- anyone whose hit songs I knew and loved I had probably already acquired via Columbia House Record & Tape Club or from Sam Goody at Metrocenter mall, so browsing her list was a chance to try something new I wouldn't have otherwise stumbled upon. And this was the mother lode.

I played the hell out of that 90-minute, no-longer-blank cassette. I played it at home, in my parents' cars, and anywhere else I could get it in a tape deck. I loved those albums fiercely, and -- good future copyright law student that I was -- I eventually bought both of those albums properly, thus giving the artists and record companies their profits and more importantly getting my hands on the liner notes. And needless to say, that simple act of being intrigued by my pen-pal's album list -- I can still vividly see it in my mind's eye, can perfectly visualize her handwriting -- launched me on my lifelong Indigo Girls love and fandom.

What if I had never exchanged those handful of letters and cassettes with this random girl across the country? Would I have come to know Indigo Girls and Strange Fire, and then later, Nomads*Indians*Saints and Rites of Passage and all the rest? When? Would I have been too late? I once read a piece in Psychology Today that said studies indicate that the music you listen to during that adolescent time, like toward age 14 or so, resonates more deeply with you than anything you ever listen to in the future, no matter how much you like what you come across in the future. And among the cassettes I spent those early teen years playing over and over were Indigo Girls, Bob Dylan, R.E.M., Simon and Garfunkel,  Cowboy Junkies -- folkies who still speak volumes to me today.

I bring this up because some remarkable things happened this weekend. Tonight, Sunday, I attended a concert at the Chicago Theatre: Four Voices - Joan Baez, Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Indigo Girls. When this tour was announced a few months back my breath caught and I thought, this! This is something I cannot BELIEVE I am going to be able to witness! Now, of course I knew that they were all friends, and I know about Mary Chapin singing backing vocals on Amy and Emily's album and Amy and Emily singing backing vocals on Mary Chapin's around 1991, and I remember when the Girls performed with Joan Baez in the early mid-1990s for a benefit and she thanked them for letting her be an Indigo Girl for the evening and called them young whippersnappers, and I own the CD (yes, I eventually moved from cassettes to CDs) from the benefit where Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin and a bunch of other artists all performed with Joan Baez and planted roots for this blossoming friendship so I've heard them harmonizing in pieces and knew of their crossing paths but THIS - a tour called Four Voice, with lots of dates, coming to my town, playing cities near me - it was amazing news.

And it was an amazing concert, needless to say. There are so many highlights, and perhaps I'll tell about more of them in another post, but here let me just assure you that among the evening's joys was the final song of their main set, a cover of a particularly good, particularly relevant, Nobel prize-winning even! song that with their Four Voices became THE best performance of a song that I have witnessed being performed live, ever.

But there was also another little thing that happened at the beginning of this weekend. On Friday night, it just so happens, I saw Cowboy Junkies in concert at the Old Town School of Folk Music. For whatever reason, I had never got a chance to see them in concert before this weekend. Unlike Indigo Girls and Mary Chapin Carpenter, whom I've seen multiple times (Indigo Girls, dozens), I somehow had missed out on the Cowboy Junkies until just this past Friday. There was Margo Timmins, in all her fifty-something glory, and that voice! That achingly lovely voice, with all those heartbreaking, swirling Cowboy Junkies songs. That was the opening of my weekend, and then it ended with this other collection of voices, including the legendary Joan Baez, up there showing us what incredible things words and music can do.

And I thought, how odd, how odd indeed that my weekend was bookended by incredible, life- and music-affirming concerts featuring the two bands that were on either side of that blank cassette sent to me by pen-pal Nancy from Oswego, NY nearly thirty years ago.

And I thought, how beautiful, how beautiful indeed that we are gifted with time on this planet where we can make and share our art, where we can hoist our visions onto the world stage and where we can tuck recorded sounds gently into an envelope with a bit of extra postage and let them be carried across the miles to someone who needs to hear them, or where we can now just upload them with a few quick finger taps on a keyboard.

In spite of all of the hard things, and the misery that Margo openly jokes about (wondering aloud to her audience why anyone would come to a Cowboy Junkies concert expecting to hear happy songs), and some of the political happenings that Joan, Mary Chapin, Amy, and Emily talked about and sang about and alluded to, and just despite the ever-ongoing struggle -- in spite of these things, my god but isn't there some beauty to be found out there, to be brought into our lives thanks to the random simple chances we come across?

Milk vs. Human Kindness

An Open Letter to Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, his constituent dairy farmers, et. al. 

Representative Welch, I read with interest an article (by Cleve R. Wootson Jr. of the Washington Post printed in the Chicago Tribune) about a letter signed by 20 U.S. legislators demanding the FDA require makers of soy milk, almond milk, and so forth to drop the word "milk" from their labels.

If it doesn't come from an animal, the word "milk" doesn't belong, the article said, summarizing your point. Of course, your own quote a couple of paragraphs later gets to the heart of the matter (or at least, why your heart's in it): these drinks are being placed in the dairy aisle (the outrage!) "right next to milk" you say, adding that dairy is "really crucial" in Vermont and much of "rural America," and dairy farmers are "hanging on by their fingernails."

To which I can only say: really? The end of the dairy industry as we know it? This could not happen soon enough!

Sometimes, we simply have to accept that a job that has been done for hundreds of years won't be with us forever. We have to accept that just because a profession has been in our family for generations doesn't mean we are entitled to it. We also have to accept that this might be for the better.

Often, it's technology that eliminates a job: consider the lamplighter whose gig was made unnecessary by our wired streetlights, or the telegraph and switchboard operators that have given way to ever speedier and more digital technologies, or even the bowling alley pinsetters whose work is now done by simple machine movement.

Sometimes, though, it's a moral goodness that eliminates a job. Where, now, are the slave traders that kidnapped thousands of humans, cruelly confined them, separated them from family members, and forced them into lives of suffering and sorrow that bore no hint of justice?

Please, Representative Welch, and dairy farmers of Vermont, open your hearts and minds to think about WHY people are buying more and more alternative "milks" and less and less of your cruel, unnecessary product.

We don't want to support an industry that relies on confining sentient beings.

We don't want to have adult females impregnated, only to then have their calves taken away (sometimes just to be slaughtered - a true wasted life).

Do you vouch for the health and safety of the cows on your constituents' dairy farms? Can you possibly assure us that the cows of your industry are not living lives of misery? You speak of farmers metaphorically "hanging by their fingernails" but what about newborn calves stolen from their mothers who are actually trying to cling to life?  Or adult cows living in years of imprisonment, unable to have the simple freedom to walk or turn or roam?

Perhaps people would buy more of your milk, so "crucial" in Vermont, if you could assure us it isn't manufactured in cruelty.

On the other hand, maybe we would continue to reduce the amount of dairy milk we consume, because as the populace at large learns more and more about how to healthily sustain and nourish ourselves, we logically turn away from your "crucial" product.

We might continue to realize on a grand scale that we simply don't need milk. Despite the years of successful lobbying, despite your oh-so-powerful Vermont/rural America industry that has brainwashed minds young and old with slogans like "Got milk?" and "It does a body good!" we know that it doesn't do all that much "good" for our bodies at all.

Humans do NOT need cows' milk. Drop the tired old argument about calcium (available in plenty other foods). Despite your having convinced so many of them that they do, humans who have been weaned from their mothers after breastfeeding should take a hint from the rest of their fellow mammals and move on to other foods.

Where else in the class Mammalia do you see animals suckling at the breast of another species? Do you see tigers feeding at the breast of camels? Raccoons drinking from wolves? When someone forwards an "aw, shucks" heartstring-tugging photo of a mother dog letting the poor, abandoned kitten drink milk along with the puppy litter, it's interesting BECAUSE it's an anomaly. It's an emergency situation, not a way of life. Yes, humans would be doing right and good to feed an abandoned human baby who had no mother from a cow's udder in order to save the human baby's life. That does not even remotely justify an industry of pain and terror. Those mother-puppy-feeds-the-kitten stories demonstrate the milk of canine kindness -- not a bunch of inhumane humans locking bovine species into captive servitude to create an industry of suffering,

And by the way? Milk and dairy really aren't that healthy. You might be amazed at how much better you feel when you eliminate dairy from your diet,  how easily you shed those few pounds of bloated abdomen that just accumulate and hang out when you're a milk drinker,

As a legislator, a position that purports to be about service and leadership, you ought to be spending your time and Congressional efforts creating sustainable, forward-thinking jobs and opportunities, rather than clinging to antiquated notions and perpetuating industries that have become completely out of control in the modern age as they scramble to produce enough for too many millions of greedy, entitled humans. You should be encouraging Vermont and others to build a healthy, happy future.

Is it acceptable for a rural farmer to have a couple of cows, milk them to provide for the family, and perhaps sell to a few local village households, while NOT removing and killing the calves, and while NOT keeping the mother penned but instead allowing her to be a free, roaming animal? Sure.

Is the massive dairy industry lobby that controls our nation now acceptable? Good god, no.

Please reconsider your ideas and strategy, and please try to use your position and your voice to actually do some (human and cow) bodies good.

Word #1 Word #2 Word #3

I'm back!

Yeah, it's been a while. The good ol' U.S.A. sure hasn't done itself any favors in the not-being-a-total-disaster department in the interim, now has it?

I hardly know where to begin, but they always say, well, start where you are, eh? So, sitting here at my laptop trying to make sense of everything happening this week in these United [sic] States, I took a picture of my shirt. Here it is:

Well, I didn't say it was a flattering picture, did I?

And I would like you to take a look at this shirt with its (cheeky? feisty? rebellious? assertive? feminist? empowering? simple? nuanced? you make the call!) slogan and consider the following questions.

Whether you are familiar with the shirt or have zero context, you can think about what its message is. You can ask yourself, does it mean that girls don't play anywhere else but here, that for example they don't play over there? Does it mean that playing is the only activity they engage in here? That they never dance, talk, sing, laugh, fight, breathe, meditate, or whatever else when they are "here," wherever "here" is, literally or metaphorically? Does it mean that boys don't play here? Or there? Or anywhere? In a box or with a fox? For god's sake OBVIOUSLY NO IT DOESN'T MEAN THESE THINGS. So why the !@#$%* is everyone so damn confused about #BlackLivesMatter all the time?

I can't understand why people interpret #BlackLivesMatter the insipid ways that they choose to interpret it. I can't understand why they read "only" in a sentence where "only" doesn't exist, or why they add "and therefore police lives don't" when that is not only clearly not said and not meant but also utterly nonsensical (for example, what if there's a black police officer? Is he just caught in a paradox of both mattering and not mattering for eternity?), or why they DON'T see the implicit preamble of "Whereas a lot of people, institutions, and systemic societal forces have been disregarding black lives, up to and including the murder of innocent black people, we're going to mention here that..."

But hey, guess what? Girls play here. And black lives matter.

Moooove over, dairy: how to win my udder loyalty

From the true-true files: I drink a lot of coffee. And the salient point here is not just that I drink it, but I buy it. Regularly. With enthusiasm. (Like most foods and beverages,) I much prefer buying it to making it at home. I like going to coffee shops. I like getting coffee to go on the way to work.  I consider stopping for iced coffee an essential first step to any errand. I like barista lingo, the hiss of steaming milk, and rewards programs.

Let's focus on those last two for a moment.

In the circles I run in, or any circles that I would ever want to run in, it's fun to debate the grand question of our era, to wit: Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts? I used to say that Starbucks is like cocaine (addictive, expensive, a definitive part of certain lifestyles,  ubiquitous in L.A. and Manhattan) while DD is like crack (cheaper, grittier, arguably more powerful, easy to find on every corner in certain cities). But this is not to say I'm all about the behemoths, because I also dig independent coffee shops. I've done quality time in Insomnia, Buzz Coffee, Someday Cafe, Champion Coffee, and more recently, Beans and Bagels. I also like the coffee chains that haven't reached cartel saturation levels, like your Peet's and your Caribou and your Intelligentsia, and I like the local heroes: Dutch Bros., Biggby, Angel-in-Us. Basically, if you are willing to invest in espresso, ice cubes, and employees,  I'm yours. "Iced coffee is civilization!" That's my motto, but I won't turn down a hot one, either.

So we need to talk about milk.

The dairy industry lobby is really powerful in the U.S./world. Disgustingly powerful. They have convinced so very, very many of you that milk is an essential part of your diet. "Got Milk?" "It does a body good,"  you know. Ha! The non-advertising truth is more like, what's up with suckling at the breast of an entirely different species, something most mammals only do when in dire orphaned straits? Because lattes, cappuccinos, cafe au lait, etc. are the greatest thing in the world, the aforementioned coffee shops buy a whole lot of milk. We are talking unfathomable amounts. The power of the dairy industry and economies of scale mean that milk comes cheap -- well, that and the immense suffering borne by the dairy cows, the calves ripped away from mothers, the mothers locked, immobile, in pens, the milking machines, the unjustified captivity, the industrial nightmare of it all. ("Got torture?" "It wears a body out!")

The coffee shops offer dairy alternatives, such as soy milk and more recently the trendy almond milk and coconut milk. This makes me happy. The coffee shops charge extra for these alternatives. This makes me sad. I have paid these extra charges over the decades because I have to, and I've watched them go from 30 or 40 cents extra to a standard of 50 or 60 and even sometimes 75 cents more for soy. 75 cents extra! For one drink! I can buy a carton of soy milk for $2.75 and get way more than four drinks out of it. (Don't even get me started on having the same upcharge for a latte, which is mostly milk, as for an iced coffee with milk, which is just a splash of soy. Some Starbucks cashiers do the right thing when you get just a splash and note "with soy" not "add soy" but you take your chances on this in general.) But the coffee shops don't pay anything close to retail prices for their truckloads of cow milk, so it makes some kind of economic sense to them to think of the cow milk in a latte as costing them a cent but the soy milk in a latte costing them 50 cents. That's not quite right, but I follow their thinking.

The problem is that the dairy industry is evil, and most coffee shops aspire to be socially conscious. What they should do is make soy/almond/coconut/oat/hemp milk free and charge extra for dairy.

Since the vast majority of people are ordering dairy, they could upcharge a mere ten cents and more than make their money back, but still call attention to the issue that your dairy choice is a bad choice (because it's cruel) (not to mention unhealthy) and that you could make a better choice. Or, hell, they could be brave enough to really speak truth to power and just go ahead and make it a fifty cent upcharge on dairy from the word go, which might light a fire under the ass of some of those who just need reality pointed out to them once in a while but who are willing to do the right thing.

And so here is my announcement:

Despite my love for any and all the coffee places, I hereby declare the I will permanently switch my loyalty to the first coffee place that makes soy and other non-dairy alternatives free while simultaneously charging extra for dairy.

If Starbucks has the socially responsible guts to do it, I'm theirs. If feisty upstart DD does it, something I find hard to imagine seeing as they recently made me pay the 50-cent almond milk upcharge when I got a "free" rewards drink that I had earned in their Perks program, then I will forever more choose to run on Dunkin' even if the mermaid is looking longingly at me from a block closer.If a smaller chain does it, I will visit that smaller chain every time I have the option to do so.

You might be thinking, um, what's the big deal? But if you actually know me, you know that the idea of becoming loyal to one coffee shop is a very big deal indeed. There couldn't be a bigger deal for me, unless I announced that I was going to read only genre fiction from here on out or something. (Note: that would never ever happen.)  And whatever coffee shop is willing to make people face a tiny portion of the cost that the cruelty of dairy incurs will get the added benefit of my evangelizing on their behalf forever, too, because when I'm loyal, I can also be loquacious.

If there is some coffee place already doing this, not just giving soy/non-dairy alternatives free but also charging extra for cow's milk, some beautiful little coffee shop somewhere, then let me know, because that place is my next vacation destination (and who are you that you haven't told me about it already?)

In China, Starbucks didn't charge extra for soy. I don't always espouse the benefits of living in China (or, you know, ever espouse those largely non-existent benefits) but that one is a good one. In the U.S., we Starbucks Gold Card members used to get free soy, but it was apparently costing them too much, so they changed their rewards program. They should have changed it to charging all customers for dairy instead.

Who will do it? Who wants my loyalty -- for LIFE?

"War and peace?" -- Radar O'Reilly

I do believe the time is here. This is the year to re-read War and Peace. Who's with me?

Why now, you ask? Careful readers will note that I first began reading The Book, as I like to call it, that magical Russian novel that lives up to all its promise of literary glory, in 2005. (In fact, it's what prompted me to start my Literary Supplement blog in December of that year.)(Have you actually looked at the URL of my Literary Supplement blog?) And now it's 2015. (CANYOUBELIEVEIT'SBEEN10YEARSSINCE2005?!! BECAUSEICAN'T.) It's been nearly a decade since I moved to Korea, started a blog, assumed my Linda Without Borders identity, and bought my treasured copy of War and Peace (not in that order, because I had bought the book at Borders -- which has since died, leaving us all Without Borders -- in Massachusetts well before leaving the country). Ten freakin' years, my friends.  Side note: we shall perhaps have to have a tenth blogiversary party this fall.  I have mentioned in the time since I read The Book that it is definitely a book to be reread over one's lifetime, since it's so goddamn wonderful and all, and naturally this reminds me of the random guy on the Boston Common who jabbered to me about Goodbye, Columbus. Remember him? Go on and click that link to refresh your memory, if you don't recall the encounter. I'll wait here.  ...  OK, all caught up? He was funny. And I still haven't watched Goodbye, Columbus.

(Is Ali McGraw going to annoy me in it as much as she did in Love Story? I mean, that is one overrated movie and her character was SO irritating! I hated that movie. "Love means never having to say you're sorry." Ugh, who thinks that? Who wants a relationship based on that? Good god. That is second only to "The customer is always right" as the emptiest platitude of crap that everyone repeats as if it speaks some profound truth. Blech.) (It does occur to me to wonder, though, whether the man on the Common jabbered to me because I reminded him of Ali somehow. I mean, she could play me in the movie of my life, right? Or the older version of me, anyway. What is she doing these days?  Maybe it was just her character that was annoying. Maybe I should give her the actress another chance, or read her book, or something. But not that horrible overrated Love Story again, no thanks.)

OK, so where were we? Right. War and Peace. Over the past almost-decade, I have cherished my memories of reading that novel, that quintessential novel of novels, that standard of bookdom, that ultimate literary fiction experience. I remember the excitement of plunging in, reading those first few pages of something SO big and famous and intriguing. I remember the cafe across from my job in Daegu where I would read for an hour or two each afternoon in between classes on my split shift days. I remember finishing it on the plane on the way back to the U.S.-- such interesting timing -- and then the random Eastern-European-who-spoke-Russian man next to me talking to me about it and me being utterly unable to form an answer to the immense question "So, how was it?"

And I'm inspired to reread it now because every ten years, why not, and also because at the bookstore here in Chicago where I attend my Women's Classics book group there is also another book group that is reading big books (called, would you believe it, the Big Books Group) and taking two or three months/meetings to discuss each one, so like they just did Middlemarch and are now doing Vanity Fair and in the spring will be doing, what else, the ol' War and Peace.

I'm starting to get a little bit giddy with the anticipation. (Even among all the other books and projects and reading plans I have for 2015.) Who wants to revisit The Book with me, or perhaps discover its joys for the first time?  Who's in?

How to make life better

On our first evening in Nowy Tomysl (aka "Beyond Poznan"),  we learned about Habitat Poland's partnership with an incredible non-profit organization called Barka (there's a bit of English info for you at http://www.barkauk.org). Barka is a non profit community in which people who are rebuilding their lives help themselves and one another rebuild their lives. Basically, it involves my favorite things on Earth, like rehabilitation, problem-solving, communal efforts, and the like. The people we meet have in the past had problems with drinking/alcoholism, homelessness, criminal activity, etc. Barka helps people get off the streets and change their lives for the better; they are taken into the community but also have a responsibility to the community. The key is leadership from within, so the leader of each little Barka community (you might say: commune) is someone who has himself struggled with these things, so he can relate and lead by example. Also, Barka sends people to the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, etc. to help Polish and other Eastern European immigrants who are struggling there but might be afraid to come back home, or unable because they've lost their job and are now homeless in a foreign country, and so forth.

So, Habitat Poland has a partnership with Barka. The house we are building is for a man who has successfully passed Barka's "Jacob's Ladder" program, and so he has been rewarded with a piece of land, on which he is (and we are) now Building a house where he and his wife and two children will live. As of now, they are living in the communal Barka house, so that was our staging area for the build, meaning that unlike many other Habitat projects I've worked on, we had actual house facilities around while building the new house, so that's a fun perk. And while Mr.Homeowner worked construction with us, Ms. Homeowner made lunch for everyone (us, the other Barka commune residents who work around the farm, etc. ) and we are talking delicious, here, folks! On the first day there were these potatoes with dill that I basically wanted to face plant into. And one day there was gnocchi... two kinds... oh my heavens. ..

Anyway, the point is that Barka is awesome and on Sunday night when we arrived in Nowy Tomysl, a different Barka community in the area hosted us for a barbecue to introduce the organization and themselves. They all told us their stories and we told them our stories and why we came to Poland and we cooked kielbasa over the fire and it was beautiful.

My old boss in my public radio days, JJ Yore, once explained his theory of life thus: Life is a series of magic moments, and we can look back and see the journey from moment to moment, kind of skipping the insignificant things in between,  almost like a physical path, and we must also be careful about trying to recreate the magic moments that are over, rather than just treasuring them in memory.

This "series of magic moments" theory has always stuck with me (even though I didn't actually follow the advice he was giving me on that specific occasion), and I'd like to couple that here with what Toni Morrison wrote in the dedication of her novel, Sula, that it is sheer good fortune to miss someone before they leave you. I have thought about that sentiment over the years, and Sunday as we ate and talked bilingually and broke bread with the inspiring founder of Barka and this little community, I was filled with joy because I was there, and because I was so happy that I was able to recognize the magic moment as it was happening.

Who Should Win the World Cup?

World Cup Fever: catch it! No, I didn't make that up (duh) but Brian and I have been saying that to each other for the past few weeks to amuse ourselves as we watch the 32 teams whittle themselves down to a mere four via the process of football aka soccer aka fútbol aka #becausefútbol matches. The benefit to being unemployed a part-time freelancer (me) and between jobs (him) is that we can watch pretty much every game and do the other things we need to do at other times of the day. Bosses are for suckers! Ha!

But seriously, folks. The World Cup is great fun, especially if you like soccer and if you like it when nations get together for peaceful endeavors instead of to blow one another to bits with guns and bombs. I'm big on the whole Make Sports Not War idea. Now, the USA sadly failed to advance to the quarter-finals, despite the Tim-Howard-and-his-many-saves performance, and some of Brian's and my other chosen teams are also out:  Mexico, where we lived and where the fútbol spirit is always fun, lost to the Netherlands and thus did not make the quarter-finals, while my good friends (Republic of) Korea and Honduras failed to make it out of their groups. The Honduras national team is always my first second choice (after my patriotic duty), ever since I happened to be in Honduras in 2008 for a Habitat for Humanity trip and we attended a World Cup qualifying match in San Pedro Sula. Vamos catrachos! Alas, they did not see fit to do any winning this year.And France, Brian's other-other team, lost to Germany the other day, while our CONCACAF solidarity pick Costa Rica, despite a noble effort, went down to the Netherlands. Since those Dutchies also beat Mexico, and even Chile (my other-other-other pick, although that was early and didn't eliminate Chile), I am basically against the Netherlands right now, my fondness for Curaçao and the former Netherlands Antilles notwithstanding. (And despite the fact that I like the color orange.)

Which means I need to cheer for Argentina against the Netherlands tomorrow. What about the other match, today's exciting encounter between Germany and Brazil? Well, folks, I have nothing against Brazil (in fact, I really want to go there, AND we've been drinking caipirinhas during several of the games...) but Brazil beat both Chile and Colombia, which was annoying, plus when it comes to choosing between a massively hyped superpower home team favorite and their opponent, I'm generally going to go for the opponent. Guten tag, Deutschland!

In honor of the World Cup, I've already added a film from each of the eight quarterfinals teams to my Netflix queue, and I've also decided to add a book from each of the final four countries' literature to my to-read list. Do you have any suggestions for a great book by any authors from Brazil, Germany, Argentina, or the Netherlands?

Right many a nipperkin! Or, how quaint and curious war is...

Another Memorial Day has come and gone, and as usual I was saddened by the outpouring of gratitude for those who have "served our country" in the armed forces when the expressions of gratitude accepted war as a matter of course, as something that will never change.

Obviously, a species (humanity) that enjoys warfare so much won't ever change without beginning by thinking about how to change. Rarely do people think about how war can be eradicated; instead, they tend to start with the premise that war is inevitable and then go from there into how they think we "should" conduct ourselves in this state of inevitability.

I can certainly understand the sentiments and pragmatism that lead someone to want to be prepared for things. But I find it troubling when the larger idea is meant only with this insistence on pragmatism that refuses to reject the violence or call a spade a spade.

No one wants to be kidnapped. As a child, I learned about "stranger danger," I was taught not to accept a ride from someone I didn't know, I was taught about safety, my mom knew which friends I was playing with, I had to be home by a certain time,  I knew that I should scream or fight or run or put my bicycle between me and the attacker...all sorts of scenarios were met in my 8- or 9-year-old head with a plan as to what I should do if I met with this imagined potential kidnapper.

No one would have ever been so absurd as to suggest that kidnapping was not completely and totally evil, wrong, immoral, sinful, depraved, wicked, whatever word you want to use. Kidnapping = bad. Kidnapping should not exist.

I don't understand why when I mention that war is evil and should not exist, I am forever met with the argument that war is inevitable, so we should thank the soldiers who fight. It completely fails to address the philosophical issue at hand. Unlike kidnapping, apparently not everyone has yet decided that war is evil, and that is what I'm talking about when I say war is evil.

This happened, as usual, on Memorial Day. From what I can tell, it's nationalism that provokes it, and this may be the largest part of the disconnect. For example, when I post on Facebook about how absurd it is to ask some young man or woman to be slaughtered in order to make rich and powerful business leaders and politicians (especially arms manufacturers, let alone oil magnates) richer and more powerful, even the most "anti-war" touchy feely hippies among my Fb "friends" chime in with arguments about how "our" freedom hasn't been threatened in our lifetimes, that "we" have been the aggressors ever since WWII, etc.  All this does is fixate on the lines in the sand that make up our nation states. (As if only nation states ever engage in warfare.)

When I cite Wilfred Owen's poem "Dulce et Decorum Est," it's meant to remind you that it is a vicious lie to tell someone they should be honored to die for their country. It's a crock of shit to tell someone that being torn apart by bullets or having your life forever scarred by the trauma of battle is glorious because it was for [insert country name here]. When so-called anti-war folk in the U.S. chorus their "agreement" with the idea that "Yeah, no one's really dying for their country! They're dying for oil! We're being the aggressors! They're attacking! Our politics are wrong!" and so forth, there's an implication that it would be OK if we were really sending 18-year-olds to die for their country. Some have even come out and said that: WWII was "necessary," they say, to defend our nation, so in that case our boys were really dying for our freedom! etc.

What this really means is you have zero other ideas for solving problems--and fail to recognize that WWII didn't come out of nowhere. International politics don't happen in a vacuum. Years and years of choices led to WWII, just as with any other war.  And I respectfully disagree that asking anyone to die "for" their country is any better than asking them to die "for" their country's economy, rampaging electric grid, or politicians.

...If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
      -- Wilfred Owen

Is it because people are so easily deceived that those from another nation are so different that they could really be "enemies" by virtue of their passports? There is no nation on Earth that is my "enemy." This has already been covered in poetry, too: if the German and English soldiers met up in a bar, they'd joke and drink and swap stories, but on the battlefield they're expected to shoot each other to death. It's absurd. Why can't everyone see that it's absurd?

In some way, the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld trifecta of supreme evil may have at least got this part right; rather than trying the traditional nonsense that this or that nation was the U.S.'s "enemy" they just declared a war on "terror," because they perhaps knew that people in the global economy internet age are, we can only hope, getting to know more and more people from and getting more and more economically involved with other nations, which could lead to them being resistant to suddenly having to shoot and bomb those people to keep Boeing or the Saudi royal family in business. We cannot reach the day soon enough when every nation looks on every other nation with the kind of ironic friendship the U.S. and Canada share; a war between the U.S. and Canada has no place outside of a Saturday Night Live sketch.

The other large part of the disconnect seems to be in my questioning of the way we are constantly asked to revere the so-called "heroes" and the veterans who have served in armed conflict (and/or cruised through a war-zone free stint in the armed forces before going on to have their college/health care/retirement at age 40 paid for).  I can't for the life of me fathom how clapping for them in the airport or offering them a discount on their baseball game tickets or appetizers at some family restaurant is supposed to make up for the evils to which their own government has subjected them. But I can fathom exactly how this "hero" worship leads directly to more and more war. It creates an endless sanctification of the military, endowing returning vets and fighters in battle with a spiritual greatness (rather than acknowledging the real life desperation and adrenaline and fear and courage and physical effort and pain felt in those moments); it creates a culture of way-more-than-pragmatic acceptance of the concept of war; it blesses anyone who decides to join up to "defend freedom" when that is not even remotely what they will be doing; it pressures susceptible minds, minds that refuse to think critically, and even reasonable minds that simply want to do what is right into thinking that if they don't support soldiers, and they don't laud their acts out there (acts that involve war, aggressive military, atomic bombs, drones, the whole kit n' caboodle, if you will), then they the citizens are somehow at fault for daring to say "Hey, veteran -- no f------ way should you have been sent to war!"

Some people like to separate this in their minds. "I don't support the war, but I support the troops," they say, and then they have to fall all over themselves showing their "support" at parades or ball games or wherever.  I'd rather see you support the truth: that "supporting" the troops as people would mean calling off this nonsense immediately, and that supporting the seriously flawed military institutions of superpowers and empires (over the last many thousand years) just leads to more troops and superpowers and empires -- and death. As for war itself, this "ingenious" way humans have come up with of "solving" their problems? Of course that shouldn't be supported. It should be challenged at every turn.

One of the hardest (for me) misinterpretations of my thoughts this year came when someone suggested that I was failing to thank public servants who put their lives on the line because I was missing the reality that lives will be put on the line every day by police, firefighters, and many other professions, in addition to the military.

I would hasten to add: coal miners.

I am grateful every day for police officers and firefighters and other emergency responders. Not one of us who has ever flipped a light switch is grateful enough for coal miners. There is a difference between risking your life in the line of duty and having your life put on the line for you in this ridiculous "game" called war, where no lives are put on any line until the parties join together to enact their pathetic bloodbath. Why can't the world leaders (pretend) just go in a room with the board game Risk and play with green and plastic soldiers instead of wreaking real havoc all over the world with real people, real families, real lives, real torn flesh and real spurting blood?

This isn't about the U.S. military (although I'd love to see such a powerful country set a good example by putting its many resources, financial and human and university-endowed and so on, to good use finding other ways to solve problems on a global scale), nor is it about the skill and achievement of an organized military operation or the ways members of the armed forces can step in when disaster strikes with aid, engineering, transportation, and other help as needed. By all means, let's have a force ready to serve in times of emergency around the world. Let's have people trained to react, strategize, and defend against attack (like a kung fu fighter would also be able to do). Let's deploy ditch-diggers, nurses, teachers, builders, and other workers all over the planet. Let's march boldly toward every child dying of hunger or suffering from abuse and violence (including in our own towns where we live) and try to create solutions to those problems. If the U.S. or any other nation or empire wants to organize its young and able as well as a few old and curmudgeonly (I believe they're called "generals") in squadrons to rescue and create and serve, go for it.

But for god's sake, let's stop with this ridiculous notion that war is ever "okay."

Could we use a man like Herbert Hoover again?

Normally, I write about books over on the ol' Literary Supplement, but what I have to say after finishing An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover is far less about Richard Norton Smith's book, which had some pretty serious flaws, and more about Hoover, the man.

Strengths: Efficiency. Thrift. Churned out a lot of words. Anti-militaristic. Fed people (entire starving nations, in fact). Supported equal pay for women, the end of child labor, etc.  Worked hard. Worked tirelessly, into his ninth decade. Self-made man, as they say. Traveled the world. Known to offer up a pithy comment or two. They loved him in Belgium. And Poland. Random acts of generosity. Enthusiastically supported young people, from Scouts organizations to Boys' Clubs to answering thousands of letters people wrote to him, well into his old age.

Example: He agreed with a young woman that "the chances of a female president were improving; after all, 'the men have not done too good a job of government...in the last forty-seven years' and wishing her well 'if you are a candidate for President about thirty years hence."

Another girl, Kathleen, told him she wasn't yet born when he was president and she wanted to be not president, but a doctor. He wrote, "My dear Kathleen, You were saved a lot of trouble by not being born earlier. I am glad you want to be a doctor and not President. We do not have enough doctors, and there seems to be a sufficient number of candidates for President." --from p. 383 of An Uncommon Man 


Weaknesses: Probably wasn't meant to be a president, namely because he didn't excel at the compromising political schmoozing of it all. (On second thought, maybe this is a strength.) Listened a little too carefully to some of Joseph McCarthy's fears, although not the rabid paranoia.

Fascination factor: High. He was born in 1874 and died in 1964. The year he was born, Thomas Edison was inventing the duplex telegraph, Jesse James was robbing trains, and Hoover's eventual alma mater, Stanford University, did not yet exist. By the time he died, he had gone from meeting with Charles Lindbergh through advising against dropping the atomic bomb to congratulating John Glenn on orbiting the Earth. He also outlived, among others, his wife Lou, his pal General MacArthur, and Eleanor Roosevelt, not to mention his successor FDR and John F. Kennedy, whose father the ambassador to England had known Hoover for a while.

The man got around. He met everyone from Hitler to Eva Peron, and he was friends with other presidents from Woodrow Wilson to Harry Truman, with FDR being basically the exception (he spent time with and was consulted by Eisenhower AND Kennedy). Bottom line is that Hoover had a fascinating decades-long pre-presidency career and an accomplished decades-long retirement, but all most people know about him is "the Depression!" And really, he was unfairly blamed for the so-called Great Depression, as if any one person caused it or could solve it single-handedly, and it's interesting to note the complicating factors of his administration, such as: Congress. The economic policies of his predecessor, Calvin Coolidge. The fact that FDR was his own brand of crazy, when he swooped in to "save" the day -- and the fact that FDR used some of Hoover's ideas and already-started-before-FDR-got-there tactics.

Other  fun facts gleaned from this bio, in a more-things-change-the-more-they... way:

*In the aftermath of World War I, "Washington sports fans cheered a uniformed sailor for shooting to death a fellow spectator who refused to stand for the national anthem."

*In a 1935 speech, Hoover noted the way some politicians stifled dissent: "They set up a glorious ideal to which we all agree unanimously. Then they drive somewhere else or into a ditch. When we protest they blackguard us for opposing the glorious ideal. And they announce that all protesters are the tools of Satan or Wall Street. When we summon common sense and facts they weep aloud over their martyrdom for the ideal."

*"If America joined the [World] war [II], he said,  and was rewarded with victory, 'then we will have won for Stalin the grip of communism in Russia and a greater opportunity for it to extend in the world. We should at least cease to tell our sons that they will be giving their lives to restore democracy and freedom.'" -p.298

*In a 1954 critique of foreign policy, he noted: "We should cease to jabber about leading the world. Sometime the world will turn on us with remarks as to where we have led to."

Furthermore, I hereby declare that we should bring back the name Herbert. Come on, hipsters, get with me on this! I previously mentioned, during my reading of the William H. Taft bio, that I really like President Taft's brother Horace--he was a fun guy!--and that I kind of wanted to bring back the long-forgotten name Horace. Well, now I'm adding Herbert to my list. If I have twin sons, perhaps they'll be named Horace and Herbert. Or maybe I should just get two puppies or kittens for this purpose.

While I learned a lot about Hoover, I should probably check every fact in this book, because author Richard Norton Smith and his editors apparently couldn't be bothered to do so themselves. I've ranted elsewhere about the incorrect statement that the Hoover Dam is on "the California/Nevada border" (hello, can you read a map?) but that isn't the only fact Smith gets wrong herein. So, I do advise you to learn a thing or two about Hoover, but maybe check out some other sources while you're doing it.

And may we all hope to be as accomplished and prolific in ninety allotted years on this Earth!

Oh, hello there...

It's almost as if China heard me, like the country was monitoring my blog or something... after I raged against the winter-in-Guangzhou machine yesterday, because of my personal annoyance at building block after block of apartments that have stupid wall-mounted air conditioners for all but no heat sources, and my extreme annoyance at having to live in one of said apartments now that it has turned cold, and having to do so for four more weeks -- well, less than that, really! woo-hoo! -- and after that led me to further rage about the many ill-treated and restrained animals, including 'pets,' here in Guangdong, not the least of which are the cats and dogs caged and starved and maltreated and then slaughtered for the just-this-side-of-forbidden cat-and-dog-meat industry that operates in shady fashion with illegal transport and stolen domestic animals, and the connection between this cold winter and the total assholes around Guangdong who proudly 'eat anything that moves' and think winter is a good time to eat cat meat to stay warm (what the holy actual bleeding fuck, you monsters!) ... well, after all that blog rage, the very next day on my walk from workplace #1 to workplace #2, I was treated to the delightful sight of two - count 'em two! - cats who were not scraggly, not tied on a leash or god-!@%&*ng-forbid in a cage, and who were hanging out with their humans in their respective storefront. One man beckoned me over when he saw me looking at his big furry black and white cat, so we could scratch the kitty's head together, language barriers aside. The next cat, a few doors down, was enjoying a snack. I was so happy to see two cats who could just be normal, and have  'masters' who obviously actually like them. It was like a little reward from the universe.

I still want to point out that we need to save all the animals in the world that are currently locked up, and worse. Because, really, we need to not be assholes. Is that so much to ask of humans, that they not be assholes?

But maybe this was my Christmas present from China...?

Can we please not make any more veterans?

It has been decreed that 11/11 is the time to honor the sacrifices of people who are sent away from their homes and families in order to make rich and powerful people more rich and powerful. Because this horrible way of treating one another is usually downplayed as "conflict" (instead of large scale violent death), promoted as problem solving, or characterized as defending freedom in order to manipulate people into thinking it is the right/honorable/just/necessary thing to do, one is considered a horrible person if one points out that the holiday's outpouring of rhetoric keeps everyone's blinders on and arguably does a greater disservice to veterans than anything else (by perpetuating the brutal paradigm and creating more and more wars and casualties and veterans and broken families and crippling injuries and traumatized lives).

TO THE VETERANS: I am sorry for your suffering. I wish fervently for your healing. I hope you can go forward in peace.

TO THE MILITARY FAMILIES: I am sorry you had to spend so many days worrying and waiting, and my sympathy goes out to those who received the worst news ever. I wish your government leaders had the courage to admit how bloody unnecessary it was to sacrifice those lives.

TO ALL OF THE ABOVE: I wish they hadn't been able to convince you that dulce et decorum est...

TO THE CIVILIAN VICTIMS OF WAR: What the hell can any of us say?

TO EVERYONE:  You should watch this.  At least click that link and go watch the trailer. Go.

November Holiday Roundupin reverse chronological order

November 24, U.S.: If you go shopping on Thanksgiving night at WalMart or anywhere, you are part of the problem. Forget slippery slopes, this was a total free fall. 7 a.m., 6 a.m., 4 a.m., who needs sleep when we can just go SHOPPING!, Black Black Black Friday, trampling to death, and now this. You know what, retailers of the U.S.? Forget you! (I put it that way because this is, of course, a family blog. Heh.) And you know what, holiday shoppers of the U.S.? Forget you, too! DON'T GO SHOPPING ON THANKSGIVING. And, p.s., don't go shopping at WalMart. We have been over this.

November 11, U.S.: Veterans Day. I posted on Twitter and Facebook the following great idea: in honor of all the veterans, let's not have any more veterans. The first comment I received was a request to explain what that meant. I didn't answer right away; I thought I would give everyone a little time to think about the simplest way to not make any more veterans.


November 11, Korea: Peppero Day (although I feel like Beppero more precisely conveys the pronunciation?) is here again, and what a doozy! 11/11/11! So many sticks! Unfortunately, they have "cancelled" Peppero Day in some of the elementary schools here. (Isn't that just an old joke? "That's it! We're cancelling Christmas!") My students initially told me a few days ago that one of the elementary schools here in Andong was cancelling it, and we talked about bad behavior and troublemakers running riot with the chocolate sticks. Then I heard from some Daegu teachers about Peppero cancellations, allegedly due to unsafe Peppero being imported from China. Where, apparently, Lotte factories are up to no good. Then someone else said the schools just don't wawnt to deal with all the trash a day of the 11-like Peppero sticks produces. Damn it, someone get to the bottom of this!!! (I am allowed to say "damn" on my family blog. I just made that rule.)

November 1, Mexico etc.: All Souls' Day/Day of the Dead. Oops, I forgot to celebrate. I was too busy on the first of the month enjoying my first full day in our new apartment, waiting to see at any given moment whether we would have any of the following: electricity, hot water, a refrigerator, a stove, keys...you know, luxuries like that. I might add that we also don't have a television, which while clearly not essential to life is in fact in our English teacher contract (!) and also at this point hilariously NOT a "first-world problem," as they say.

How will you celebrate this month? Anyone who is thinking of going shopping on Thanksgiving night, tell you what - why don't you donate ten of those dollars to Habitat for Humanity, by clicking here, instead. That's a better thing to do, I promise.

A Comparison to Hitler

Yesterday I mentioned that Hank Williams Jr. did not in fact set out to compare Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler, but I also mentioned that if he had done so, it would not have been a mortal sin (as it were), in my opinion. Of course, there's this whole "free speech" thing people like to jabber about (but not actually practice), but there's the additional fact that comparing someone to something extreme to make a point is a valid rhetorical tactic. Also, I frankly think that comparing oneself to Hitler ought to be encouraged. After all, who could possibly make you look better in a comparison than Hitler? If I compare myself to Gandhi, or Voltaire, or Gloria Steinem, or Steve Nash, well, then I have a lot to live up to. But Hitler? Let's take a look:

Hitler: Spoke fluent German
Me: Did very well in German class in high school

Hitler: Leader of Nazi party, chancellor, head of state
Me: Student government secretary

Hitler and Me: Both Tauruses!

Hitler: Wrote a famous book, Mein Kampf
Me: Wrote a lot of stuff, absolutely none of it famous (yet)

Hitler: Responsible for the deaths of millions of people
Me: Responsible for the deaths of dozens of insects, including cockroaches and one particularly memorable centipede in the bathtub

Hitler: Anti-communist
Me: "Communism is just a red herring." - Clue

Hitler: Racially motivated policies
Me: Cheese enchilada-motivated policies

Hitler and Me: Both sang in the church choir when we were young

Hitler: Decorated for bravery in World War I
Me: Pacifist

So those are some of the ways that I am like or not like Hitler. Now, you try!

"And I believe it could be someday it's going to come..."

Although (obviously) there was no prelude-to-the-end-of-the-world rapture on Saturday, there was a cosmically significant event for 10,000 Maniacs fans, of which I am one: at their Chesapeake, Virginia show the band played "Peace Train" for the first time in 20+ years! Seeing as I am around the world, about as far on this sphere as you can possibly be from Chesapeake, Virginia, I got to watch it in a 2-inch video on Facebook. I am not complaining!

I consider 10,000 Maniacs one of the greatest bands of the late 20th/early 21st centuries. They are hard to categorize, although they hung out comfortably in the alternative-folky-college-rock category for much of the 1980s and 1990s. Their sound was unique and interesting. In My Tribe, in particular, is a strong desert island disc candidate of mine.

As it happens, that album contained a cover of "Peace Train" when it was originally released circa 1987. Shortly thereafter, Cat Stevens famously spoke out about the fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Obviously, that or any other fatwa is insanely stupid, and Cat Stevens' comments have been subject to debate and interpretation, but at the time, circa 1989, many people interpreted the comments of newly-Muslim Cat Stevens to be supporting the death of Salman Rushdie. This led Natalie Merchant, then-lead singer of the Maniacs, to refuse to ever perform "Peace Train" again, and the band had the song removed from In My Tribe. I originally listened to In My Tribe on cassette, but in 1994 when I found myself wanting to replace the cassette with a CD, I used the then-new internet to search for someone selling a copy that had "Peace Train."

There's an episode of my beloved sitcom Designing Women in which Julia protests pornographic exploitation. At one point, Mary Jo questions whether Julia is wrong to want to "censor" porn magazines. Of course, Julia clearly explains the difference between protected speech and commerce, in a great Designing Women exchange with the magazine's publisher. Elsewhere in the episode, Mary Jo talks to Charlene about censorship and mentions the Cat Stevens kerfuffle. Of course, it has precious little to do with the pornographic-magazines-point of the episode, but Mary Jo does make an interesting point that when Cat Stevens uttered his possibly misinterpreted remarks in favor of the fatwa, people protested by burning his records, which essentially meant that they were advocating freedom of speech for Salman Rushdie's art by destroying Cat Stevens' art.

Then again, people should have the freedom (I think) to burn things as their own symbolic speech - so on and on the layers go. Julia Sugarbaker is totally right that the porn proprietors are not expressing themselves artistically and would shut down their magazines (etc.) tomorrow if they weren't turning a profit, so the whole high-and-mighty freedom of expression argument is basically bullshit. But Cat Stevens is so totally separate in my mind.

And now 10,000 Maniacs have performed "Peace Train" again!

To All Who Say Their Desire for "Change in Washington" Motivates Their Voting Choices Today

First of all, if you want to "change" everything and therefore you cast your vote for Republicans, all Republicans, and only Republicans, then your logic fails me. What it seems you really should be doing is voting against every incumbent. Logic: get some! It's free! And yes, I also made fun of Democrats who voted for "change" in 2008 (and used it as a campaign slogan) here and here because it sounded just as dumb then.

Secondly, another great way to change Washington? Third-party candidates, my friends. Or, third and fourth and fifth. The Greens and Libertarians come to mind; stop dismissing them and then complaining that Washington is "business as usual."

Finally, when I hear my friends and people on the radio and other random squeaky-wheel strangers talk about how after these past two years they are tired of it all and just need to vote the "ruling" party out, I think back to 2002 and 2004 when we had a murderous administration headed by monsters who were not only profiting from wars they had lied their way into (and which they had plotted from their first days of taking power), but also actively torturing people around the world and who to this day continue to detain, torture and kill thousands illegally, unethically and unconscionably. Then I realize that these crimes were not enough to motivate my friends, people on the radio, and random squeaky-wheel strangers to "change" things and vote those thugs the hell out of D.C., and I am shocked and saddened to see where everyone's priorities lie.

No thanks to anyone in the U.S. "news" media, I might add, for all of the above folly/murder.

Happy election day!

Good Sports

And now for something (completely?) different: USC vs. North Korea

As Brian and I like to remind each other, courtesy of a fabulously hilarious Onion commentary, "Professional sports is very interesting." (You should definitely click on that link to read it after you read this blog entry of mine.) There is certainly a lot of sports excitement swirling around me right now. For one thing, the Chicago Blackhawks just won the Stanley Cup after a decades-long drought. Good for them! I witnessed much joyous revelry just outside our apartment windows on Wednesday night after the Blackhawks' victory. Then, of course, there are the NBA Finals, although I am still a little too devastated by the Phoenix Suns' loss to really get into the whole Amazing-Happening. I really, really thought one-eyed Steve Nash and his team of BFFs were going to do it this year. Crushing! Steve does get to report on the World Cup from his birthplace, South Africa, though.

And that is biggest of all, of course, right now: the World Cup started today! (And I correctly predicted the 1-1 tie between South Africa and Mexico!...on some silly Facebook app that rewards me with nothing.) For those who haven't heard, I even went so far as to invest in the World Cup this time around. Ever since attending a World Cup qualifier while we were in San Pedro Sula, I have deemed myself a new fan of the Honduras national team and I am cheering for them, in addition to the U.S.A. In consultation with Brian, I placed a small wager on Honduras getting out of their group, and we think that has a chance.

I also have what most call a foolhardy bet on North Korea to win it all, because, as I joked, with a mere $10 bet I could pay off my law school loans if I win. In case you aren't aware, that's because North Korea is the longest of shots. Not only are they not a powerhouse, and maybe not even good, but they are in the toughest group, with Brazil, Portugal, and Ivory Coast. (For those not in the loop: yes, the Cote d'Ivoire is good, too. North Korea is totally cursed.)

Here's my point: yes, part of me acknowledges that my North Korea bet is a bit of a sarcastic move. But there is more to it than that. It is also a symbolic statement about the way much of the world - and I daresay many of you - write off North Korea in the geo-political scheme of things. When I first went to (South) Korea (it's one country, people! It should be again!) and read about the extremely limited options for visiting "The North," the general response from people was one of horror: "Why would you want to go there?!" I hate that mentality. I got a fair amount of it about Cuba a decade ago and hated it then, too. First of all, if you've got issues with a country's government, you don't have to hate its citizens. They are just people, too! I was similarly adamantly opposed to any and all threats to boycott the Olympics in Beijing. The best thing you can do is gather dozens of countries together for the Olympic games, in peace and friendly competition. (Or have your Korean students write about it.)

In fact, the minute someone ever says, "Why would you want to go there?" I take it as a sign that I most definitely want to go "there," wherever it is, because people in the world need to travel, and need to meet other people in the world, and should be free to visit any country they want to. ANY country - including Cuba, or Iran, or North Korea.

Travel embargoes may be the dumbest thing I've ever seen passed off as legitimate national policy. The thinking seems to go like this: "We, the U.S.A., are awesome and free. That country there? They are not free. They are bad and terrible and monstrous. Just to prove how awesome and free we are and how not-free they are, we forbid our citizens to go there." Hello?

Because North Korea is such a "pariah" and really, more accurately, such an unknown entity to so many, I will cheer for them even more.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, my alma mater USC is having a little trouble in its own sports departments, you may have heard. The institution and some of the athletes - who were decidedly not supposed to be professionals and/or getting paid - committed a bunch of dastardly deeds and are now being punished -- oh, wait. Actually most of the wrongdoers have LEFT THE UNIVERSITY and the punishment is being meted out on some athletes playing there or being recruited to play there now. I know a two-year ban on post-season play sends quite a message, but it doesn't really effectively punish its target. In that sense, it's a lot like some U.S. foreign policy.

Meanwhile, just as things were getting underway in South Africa, tragedy struck. Nelson Mandela's great-granddaughter died in a car accident, now under investigation for possible drunk driving guilt by the chauffeur, on her way back from the big, celebratory, star-studded World Cup kick-off concert. Nelson Mandela himself understandably did not therefore attend the South Africa-Mexico match today. I have been thinking so much about him over the past year, and especially in connection with his nation's sports after seeing Invictus and reading Playing the Enemy. I am so sad for him, and wonder how much tragedy and sorrow one amazing, peaceful, brilliant man has to suffer in his lifetime? He is so much more newsworthy than Reggie Bush and O.J. Mayo's egos.

Let's all think about our sanctions and bans and boycotts, and more importantly, let's all come together to watch the world play nicely, in friendly competition. Let's admire the magic of professional sports, where people are pushed to be better than they are. I hope that the guilty Trojan parties can acknowledge that they made mistakes, and then strive to be better. I hope the NCAA can acknowledge its mistakes, too. I hope that North Korean political leaders can acknowledge their mistakes, and most of all I hope the bullying U.S. can be kind enough and open enough and honest enough to acknowledge its many U.S. mistakes and give North Korea a reason to play along, nicely.

I shall cheer for my team U.S.A. - but I shall also cheer for "my" other teams. I like the World Cup. I like the world.

Speaking of redemption and forgiveness...

In other news that the whole world is talking about while U.S. conveniently ignores it, the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla was outrageous and deadly and wrong. Israeli officials could take a lesson from umpire Jim Joyce, who made a huge mistake, took a perfect game away from Galarraga, apologized, and not only made his peace with it but brought a lot of other people to make peace with his blown call as well. I love atonement. It's one of my favorite themes. Israel has so much still to learn about it.

Lost, War, Good, Evil

So while I absolutely love to watch Lost, you may have noticed a distinct lack of posting on this blog about Lost theories. When I consider writing about this amazing show, I run into one problem: I am waaaaaay out of my league.

I have really come to care about Lost, since that 2004 day when we of the old Borders Westwood crew tuned in to see this random new ABC show, but my brain is just not at the level of the devotees who scrutinize and dissect each and every word. And most of the fans who develop theories support those theories with really, really specific supporting details. Who am I kidding? I'm lucky that I watch it with Brian, because he remembers every face and event, and sometimes I have to ask him who a character is when s/he recurs, like, two seasons later. (Brian's good at that outside of the Lost world, too. He can see an actor with two lines on a TV show and pick them out three years later in a bit part in some movie, and tell you the commercial they did in between. Not me; I'm more the type to confuse famous actors and be like, "Where do I know her from?") So yeah.

Nor am I any more than a casual reader of Doc Jensen's column or Lostpedia or any of the other post-game analysis. I think maybe I approach all that stuff the same way I think of Cliffs Notes, or commercial outlines in law school. Which is to say I think they are for weaklings. I know they're not exactly the same thing as Lost junkies, but it's a similar kind of judgmental take on the matter: if I can't "get" the meaning from watching the show, then I somehow don't deserve to or something. Actually, flip that around, because it's more like the literary analyst/English teacher in me who thoroughly enjoys talking about the story, but is loathe to admit I would actually need someone else to explain it to me ... even though I probably do ... Also, I am wary of some sources. Like, I'll read a trusted professor or admired novelist's ideas about Moby Dick, but have disdain for some "commoner's" opinion. I sound like a snob?! I totally am, I think. But the joke is totally on me, because the people who read those know what's going on, and I really probably don't, at least not as much. I still think less of customers who came into Borders to buy Cliffs Notes the night before their papers were due, though. Especially when they wanted Cliffs Notes for, like, Of Mice and Men, and we were sold out, and they wanted you to call another store to find them. I'm like, "Of Mice and Men is not that long, you idiot! The time you're wasting trying to buy the Cliffs Notes, you could read the book!" That's why it's not a perfect analogy -- Lost fans at least aren't looking for a substitute for their show, and definitely not trying to make it easier. It's all about making it more complicated.

Anyway the POINT of all this (I have one!) is that you don't really see me posting Lost theories here. But I will say this: as we wend our way through the final season, there is some question about which one of Jacob or the Man in Black is the "good side" and the "bad side." There are also those fools who for some reason like or trust Ben (best Ilana line ever, in response to his question of why she didn't believe him: "Because you're speaking") and think he could possibly be "good" in opposition to Charles Widmore's "bad." Only now all those people are confused as to whether both Ben and Widmore and their "sides" are against the MIB, and they are both on the "same" "side" somehow ... etc. etc.

Needless to say I haven't dissected all any of this or read about it online, but this is what I hope: You're all wrong! (with potential to be right) Or, to put it in Clue terms, "They ALL did it!" I want it to work out that when "war comes to this island" it's like when war comes to this rock we all live on (Earth) and nobody is right, and everyone's wrong. I want it to be that the "right" people are the ones who lay down their weapons and realize you can't "win." I want it to be that Ben is wrong, wrong, wrong for all his lying, manipulating and killing, but that Widmore is also wrong for using other people for his purposes and keeping Desmond and Penny apart, but that Dogen is also wrong for holding back answers and trying to off Sayid, and so on. I want the person who is "right" if there is a "right" to be revealed to be the peacemaker(s), but not anyone who took sides. Which, if you think about it, could very well be the candidates, although Sayid and Sawyer have done very bad things. But, they are so primed for redemption, in my opinion. (Sayid went to build houses with a Habitat-for-Humanity-like group! Of COURSE he was redeemed!) And they always seemed to act for themselves instead of taking sides.

Part of why I want all this to happen is that I want it to be a giant "F!@$%*" to religion and specifically violence in the name of religion and/or the misguided notion that "war" is "right." I mean, even to the point that Sayid, conveniently the "evil" Iraqi "torturer" of the show, but who is clearly smart, capable of many things, and very awesome, could be a symbol of how stupid people in the U.S. are for scapegoating Iraq for all their problems (while stealing Iraq's oil).

I have had little patience for people (Brian, mostly, I suppose) when they justify Ben's dastardly deeds or anyone else's by saying they did it for the island. I want the whole point of this to be that whenever humans start justifying actions that are wrong (namely, killing and lying, as well as a whole lot of kidnapping) in the name of some "greater purpose," be it an island, God, or whatever else, then they are wrong. But when they do good things, they are right.

Of course this doesn't even begin to get into the flash sideways, whether exploding the bomb worked, or my favorite (ahem), the time travel. Or why dead people communicate with Miles, or what the numbers mean, or or or or or or ... anything else for that matter. And, I can almost guarantee that my preferred philosophy is so not even close to what will actually happen on the show. Which is why I should go back to not bothering to write about it in the first place.

"We're sculptured from youth; the chipping away makes me weary.
And as for the truth, it seems like we just pick a theory,
The one that justifies our daily lives..."
--indigo girls, 'deconstruction of love'