Home of the Snarkmaiden

Consider the possibility that if some one tells you your choice of words makes it hard for some people to hear your message, this may not be a request to shut up, it might just be a request to find better words. If you can't bear to have people ask you to rephrase, perhaps the problem does not lie in them.

Indeed the world is full of wonders, and horrors, and I try to take note when I stumble across one. I've got several rattling and rolling around my head like marbles now, so I reckon it's time to share them out to make room for more.

First, a horror. I thought it was fine when my buddy Jenn got Seahawks logos put on her most recent manicure. That's cute, in a my-house-has-wheels sort of way (sorry, Jenn!). But a trip to the West Hill Fred Meyer revealed that those people have no business being given a free hand with blue and green food coloring in the pursuit of game-day snack sales. Yes, folks, those are bright Seahawks Green-and-Blue deviled eggs. You can pretty much feel the cancer cells forming just looking at those dyes, can't you? A finer waste of a chicken's fertility, I have yet to see.

On a more positive note, I have discovered that I can make hot buttered rum or hot toddy with Hal's new Keurig. Hal had been hankering for a Keurig pod system hot beverage machine for a couple of years now, ever since his previous employer got one at work, so this year Santa and I got him one for Christmas. I wasn't expecting to have much use for it, myself, not being a super big coffee drinker, but it turns out that you can run the machine without a pod in it to get a really quick cup of hot water, which means that with a batch of rum batter, some bourbon, and a cinnamon stick on hand, I can get a hot buttered bourbon as easily as a cup of coffee. And while I've been recovering from this nasty upper respiratory grunge the past couple of weeks, I have found the ability to have a hot toddy at more-or-less any time has been a real boon.

Hot Toddy Recipe

1 T honey
2 lemon wedges
1 jigger cheapass bourbon
4 ounces steaming hot water
1 cinnamon stick

In a glass mug, squeeze in the juice of your lemon wedges, add honey, bourbon, and cinnamon stick, and drop in the spent lemon rinds if you wanna. Add hot water and stir until blended. Enjoy. This is surprisingly tasty for such a simple thing, and the heat, the lemon, the honey, and the booze are all sovereign for making sore throat and cough feel a lot better. If you haven't got lemons, half a small lime works great too, as does half a mandarin orange. I imagine a small quantity of almost any acidic juice would work well.

And a while back I was having breakfast at the local greasy spoon with Hal and watching the silent Northwest News channel because it's the sort of greasy spoon that has an obligatory television set and I happened to be the one sitting facing the tube, and there was a commercial for some sort of special bag for microwaving baked potatoes in, and in the way of television commercial demos for dubious products, there were a bunch of other things this special bag was supposedly good for, including reviving hardened bread -- just slip it in the bag and microwave for a few seconds and it comes out magically restored. Well, while home sick and wanting something to eat I discovered that all the bits of baguette in the house were rock-like, and since I was feeling too crappy to go to the store for more bread, I thought I'd try microwaving the bread briefly just in its own little paper bag sleeve. Yep, this works fine. No need to add water, just zap the bread for 15 seconds or so, and magic, it's back to being soft if somewhat more chewy.

And last, but certainly not least, and perhaps equally chewy, I have long been experiencing various forms of discontent with the way the term "privilege" gets applied these days and Will Shetterly has a marvelous piece that distills a number of those discontents with remarkable clarity. Privilege is not just the absence of oppression, it isn't privilege if the majority of the population has it. Privilege is something that is experienced by a tiny minority, as a direct result of power and wealth. If you want to talk about how people who aren't oppressed don't always notice the way other people are oppressed, find a different word. But by all means go read Will's piece, and by all means also his take on recent discussions of author "privilege" versus the privileges of fanfic authors, which was how I tumbled on Will's earlier piece.

The Polling Point people are running essay contests through the election, requesting opinion-driven essays (blog posts, really) and videos on various issues. The current one is on the prompt, "If you could speak directly to Obama and Romney, what would you tell them they had to do to secure your vote?" What follows is my take -- it's a short version of something I've been meaning to write as a letter-to-the editor for a while now:

In the coming election the candidate who first appoints Paul Krugman to his economic policy team gets my vote. As the American economy has cratered, then struggled vainly towards recovery, Professor Krugman has been there first, telling us how it would go, and why. And he’s been right. He has been doing this since before the housing bubble burst. His was the lone voice in the wilderness telling us there even was a housing bubble, back when all the Wise Old Men of Washington and Wall Street pooh-poohed the idea, certain that unregulated financial speculation could keep expanding forever. Alan Greenspan has since recanted. Washington politicians should follow his example.

The country needs a sound economy before any other political agenda can be pursued successfully. So the President and Congress’ first job is to fix the economy. And to fix the economy they need to stop taking bad economic advice, and listen to someone who actually knows what he’s talking about. You don’t fix the economy with government belt tightening or grim austerity measures. “Austerity” is just another word for cutting yet more vital jobs. People have to have jobs in order to make money in order to spend it to buy the things private industry wants to sell. You don’t fix the economy by focusing on retiring debt. Debt can only be retired from profits, which means you have to make more money than you spend before you can pay down the debt. Government can only make more money than it spends when the economy is already robust, so that tax income on individual and corporate earnings is also high. In other words, to get the economy going again, the Federal government needs to spend money on targeted job growth, especially in emergency services, infrastructure, and education. Yes, that will increase the national debt in the short term. But any good businessman knows that sometimes you have to take on debt in order to increase your capacity and expand your business. Once you expand, and your income grows, you retire the debt again.

And before any blowhard parrots the lie that government never created jobs, remember that anyone who believes that does not belong in Congress, or the White House – because anyone who believes that obviously doesn’t take the very real job of running the country seriously.

A theoretical framework that supports conclusions I agree with is a sound theoretical framework. ("Sound" here in the technical sense -- i.e. incorporates a logically valid argument, and is based on true premises.)

Someone who argues with the argument I'm using to reach my conclusion doesn't understand my argument, or is emotionally hostile to my position.

Someone who disproves an invalid argument for my conclusion disagrees with my conclusion.

Someone who questions the truth of my premises doesn't understand them.

All of my premises are true and correct.

* * *

These things may not be true in all sorts of circumstances. How their potential untruth in the Great Titty Button Flap is left as an exercise for the (probably mythical) careful reader.

And furthermore, Hah! I say. This is the sound of Ulrika having finished the triple-looped moss-covered color morph necklace of doom. And so I say unto you, Hah!

I ended up having to restring the whole thing in order to have enough extra thread to do the knotting. And still I was fighting with scooting beads out of knots with tweezers and subvocalized swearing by the time I got to the end. It turns out they really mean it when they suggest untold spare yards of silk to thread on, because knots eat a surprising amount of thread. Still, the fixed-needle knotting technique sped things up enormously (thanks for the link, Marilee!). And the re-string allowed me to make some small improvements in the overall bead layout while I was about it, but really, it could be a complete three alarm conflagration and I'd still be pretty damn' happy because IT'S DONE!

Which reminds me -- don't let anyone tell you that if something feels like homework that proves you don't love it enough to make a career of it. Anything -- ANY damn thing -- be it done for money or fun or love or even orgasms can feel like homework sometimes. Don't judge your love of anything by what it feels like when you hit a chore-point. That's like judging sex by how much you like it when he puts all his weight on the arm that's trapped your hair.

Recently we were down at the QFC in University Village, which has a pretty passable cheese section. Hal must have passed by it to and from a visit to the Gents'. On his return, he said, "I guess if you like cheese curds that means you're a fan of Squeaky Frommage."

I rolled my eyes. "That joke will date you."

But really, one is reminded that she had to be nuts. Of all the Presidents to take a potshot at, few make less sense than Jerry Ford. I mean, the guy was only in office for two years.