Picture it

An intervention a la  Maureen Dowd:

…This raised the odd specter of the president's being dragged off from running a war and taken to Kennebunkport for a Metternichian outing in the family cigarette boat. Mr. Scowcroft and Mr. Eagleburger could pin W. down while Bar steered and Poppy explained the facts of international life.

Oh please, can I help, Poppy?  Can I take pictures?  Puh-leeease, pretty please?

(Thanks to Paul for bringing Dowd's article to my attention!)

8:30:37 PM    comment []

Any of the rest of you Salon Bloggers had problems with the Recently Updated List this afternoon -- again!?!?

Agh, two different updates submitted in the last two hours and neither of them have shown up on the Recently Updated List!!!

Time to pop off an e-mail to Radio Userland.

4:43:40 PM    comment []

filchyboy-by-proxy:  The Second Superpower

If you’re missing your daily dose of filchyboy, you’re not alone.   Mr. Filkins has been stricken with a frustrating case of blogus interruptus.  His laptop is the shop for repairs this week; it may be at least that long before he can post again. 

Christopher did send me a link that's so very blog-worthy – here’s an appetizing tidbit:

There is an emerging second superpower, but it is not a nation.  Instead, it is a new form of international player, constituted by the “will of the people” in a global social movement.  The beautiful but deeply agitated face of this second superpower is the worldwide peace campaign, but the body of the movement is made up of millions of people concerned with a broad agenda that includes social development, environmentalism, health, and human rights.

I love this!!  I can really get behind the concept of this particular Second Superpower gathering enough critical mass to make the right things happen at the right times.  Better yet, I can really get behind the idea of being an intrinsic part of a Superpower to which I can contribute directly, which actually hears me as well as the rest of its constituency – unlike the Superpower to which I am currently subordinate.

What do you think?

(Don’t forget to send filchyboy some love until his laptop is back up on line!)

3:11:36 PM    comment []

That American thing

Daniel Dolinov’s post today reminds me why America is a special place.  It’s kind of refreshing to get a perspective from someone who wasn’t born here, doesn’t have that oblivious umpteenth-generation-of-American sense of entitlement.

A few years back I was bashed in a forum for being American -- apparently my bashers (both Arabic and Italian) thought we were all lazy here, that all American women were grazing cows that couldn’t lift a finger.  This, to a woman who’d just come in on a raw spring day from taking down storm windows and washing every window on her home inside and out.  Yeah, right. 

Perhaps, if one overseas were to watch only old re-runs of Dallas or catch Anna Nicole, they could formulate that opinion.  But we’re not like that at all.  We’re pretty diverse, even from state to state.  As for the laziness – I’ve been bashed by people overseas about the amount we work here in the US, criticized that we work to work, that we don’t spend enough time with family or on relaxation.

So what is it?  How can we be both things at once, lazy and obsessed with work?

The next time I spoke to my sister-in-law’s mother after being bashed, I asked her why these people would be so nasty about Americans.  She is Cypriot, migrating here as a very young women in the early 60’s with her Greek husband; I figured she’d have a better perspective on this topic, given her background.  She told me, Ah, ignore them, they’re jealous.  They don’t have the opportunities that people have here in America.  It’s just plain jealousy.  Her aunts and sister, all émigrés as well, nodded their heads vigorously.  Just jealousy, envy.

Perhaps it’s just sour grapes…if they can’t have it, it must be bad.

I recall a conversation with my husband’s cousin, who’s lived in London for more than 20 years.  She’s only American by birth now, having adopted her new home whole-heartedly.  When she visited us a couple of years ago, she and her spouse laughed about the stores here; they would walk in, see no one in site to wait on them, and yet a disembodied voice would call out, Hi!  How are you?  Can I help you?  So unlike the cool reception they would receive in Europe at most small shops.  Friendly, to the point of freakiness.

Oh yeah, I see.  That can be so annoying, that friendliness thing.

11:49:29 AM    comment []

Breakfast of Champions?

Not likely.  I think I need help; it could be stress eating which brought about this morning’s casualty.

I just ate a cannoli for breakfast.

Nope, not oatmeal or wheat bran or whole wheat toast or a honey-wheat bagel.  Not grapefruit or yogurt with granola.

A damned cannoli, making like the mother-of-all-fat-bombs for my hips.

I can only hope the bloody thing didn’t have marscapone in the filling.  I’m praying it was low-fat ricotta, but it’s highly unlikely.  No bakery around these parts caters to guilt.

It was a sneak attack, a Trojan Horse; my husband brought a couple of them home, knowing he couldn’t help eat them because of the suspect filling.  The kids won’t touch them, being a little too cosmopolitan for their tastes.  If it had been a couple of Twinkies, the kids would have been all over them.  But no such luck; my husband brought home a couple of cannolis for ME.  What could I do, insult him by telling him Thanks, but no thanks for the lovely fat boluses?  Should I have tossed them, let these two little tokens of affection go unfulfilled, unrequited?  Is hubby indulging vicariously in that which he cannot eat -- in which case, not eating them would deprive him of the pleasure?  Agh, the pressure.

There they were, beckoning to me, calling out in Italian, sotto voce: eat me, eat us, mangi, mangi prego questi…

I’m such a sucker for Italian. 

Thank God they weren’t something French, like pain au chocolat, or I wouldn’t have stopped at one.

I’m a bigger sucker for French.

9:53:52 AM    comment []