Easy Wind and Downy Flake

I got an email from one of the schools I applied to. It's the #3 school in the country for my field. They take about 10% of the applicants into their PhD program. These are the best Masters students. I know a bunch of people who were turned down by this program.

I expected the email to say, "thanks but no thanks".

Nope.

They have invited me to come to their campus in Chicago next month to meet with the staff, PhD students and other applicants. They want to size me up and give me a chance to size them up.

Every time I think about it my fingers get kind of tingly. I didn't say anything to anyone because I am afraid that I'm going to get a follow up email telling me they made a mistake. Just writing this out is making my stomach flutter a little.

This means that I got past the general university requirements (not a problem); I got past the departmental review *and* there are at least 2 professors who would be willing to work with me. Only 15%-20% make it to this point.

This is, "you have a good chance of getting in". Not a guarantee by a long shot, I'll still be fucking amazed if I get into this school. But I'm still thrilled, even if they don't accept me, this is firmly in the "it's an honor to be nominated" category. This is not luck, it's not the people I know. They invited me because of all the hard work I did, all the nights I stayed up till dawn, all of the papers I sweated over all of the articles and books I read. And my Master's thesis.

This is the payoff, as much as, if not more than, getting my diploma.

Yes, I had plenty of help from the professors who mentored me to you kind people who listened to me whine and moan. But, in the end, no matter what happens, I officially kick a teeny bit of ass.

I've become my grandmother!!!

When I was a kid Saturday at 12 noon was American Bandstand and 12:30 was Soul Train; a solid hour of the pop music that was the soundtrack of my earliest days. By the time I was old enough to make it to midnight on New Years Eve, Dick Clark had an annual show, "New Years Rockin' Eve". He generally had the same popular acts that he had on American Bandstand so I (and later my sister) liked to wach it. Generally this was not problem until about 11:55.

My grandparents had a New Years Eve tradition that stretched back to the days before the family owned a TV at midnight they would listen to Guy Lombardo and his Orchestra strike up Auld Lang Syne and they would dance in the living room*. Every year between 11:50 and 11:55, as the old man was one foot out of the door, they had to have Guy Lombardo playing no exceptions. In the mid or late 70s Lombardo died (actually, my Poppy died in 1978 so Guy Lombardo must have died before then). New Years Eve that year they tuned in as they always did but it must have not been the same because the next year they relinquished the big TV to us kids and we got to watch Dick Clark.

Since then, I've usually been able to catch him because it seemed like it was the show that everyone who had a TV on was watching. In clubs, private parties, small gatherings, at home. The two times I was in Time Square took up a spot where I could him, (I never got that close but I could still see the action even if they seemed as big as Lego people).

Dick ceased to be "cool" long ago but I kept watching. One year My ex and I tried Carson Daily and bailed before midnight because it just didn't feel right. He had a serious stroke and I suffered through Ryan Seacrest (seriously, that guy must have sold his soul to the Devil to be so mediocre and have so much success) just to get a glimpse of Dick at Midnight. Um, well, you know what I mean.

Anyway, now he's gone and what have I did I do tonight? Flipped over the ABC (Channel 7 in this part of the country) because it's New Year's Eve and that's Dick Clark's night. When I was a kid I didn't get wanting to listen to some fossil of a musician at midnight.

Now I get it in spades.

---

(On an unrelated tangent, I discovered after my grandfather died that my grandparents used to go to dances when they were dating because it was a cheap way to have fun during the depression. I didn't know how good they were until after my grandmother died and I found out they had ribbons from win, place or showing in dance competitions. It was the Depression so there was no money but they apparently had some impressive bragging rights. Of course by the time I knew them those days were long behind them.)

Some asshole(s) in my apartment building is smoking, I think it's on the first floor and I think I know which apartment. It is triggering my allergies and this is pissing me off. I don't want to be a rat fink, but as soon as I'm done with my deadlines for the semester, I will tell the landlord because I'm tired of having a sore throat.

I can't wait until next summer (you need to click on it to see it better)

I post because I can......



And then there is this. I think I used to date this guy....

First, I want to thank everyone for all of their goods thoughts. It's been a long couple days and I hope that everyone reading this who have been touched by the storm is doing okay, especially the couple of you down the shore.

 

I found a charging  station @ an Office Depot in North Brunswick. Ahhh my netbook is full of juice again, lol.

 

They are apparently working north towards my town to restore power. As of 530 I still had none so I packed some clothes and am at my sister's for a couple of days. Hey, she has heat, I don't ask for much.

 

OK, time for me to try to get sone rest. Be safe everyone.

I've got just 1 thing to say......FUUUUUUUUCK!

 

I feel better now. I have limited power on my phone and my netbook and a I'm hoping that tomorrow I'll be able to find a the coffee shop or diner some place that has electricity so I can a recharge electronics.

 

it was quite a show earlier watching the explosions of the transformers over enough New Brunswick and seeing the city go dark.

 

the last time I checked the last lights that were busy people were on the a helipad for the hospital so I guess that's still functioning. there was something disquieting about it. Even though I knew what it was, there was something surreal and slightly menacing about seeing the flashes of light and then darkness move across the New Brunswick skyline. I'm sure Rutgers has all the dorms on lockdown to keep students from trying to go for a walk in the rain, lol.

 

The storm seems to be all but over now. the 2 main roads to get you Brunswick on Route 27 and River Road, apples been flooded out and closed since early this afternoon. seeing as the river supposed to continue rising well into tomorrow evening I can't imagine what that part of town is going to look like. when it gets light tomorrow I might set off with my camera to try to get some pictures of the aftermath of the storm out including the flooding and the damage.

 

They said this is a once in a lifetime storm. I've lived in New Jersey my whole life and I've never seen anything like this. My mother is 70 and she's never seen anything like this. 

 

Shit. I hope they are right about this whole once in a lifetime thing.

"Women only want men who treat them like shit\bad boys" "The ignore guys like me and only call me if they need help" "Nice guys really do finish last"

We need to have a little talk. This might be uncomfortable but it's for your own good.

So there was this girl that you were attracted to. You hung out with her and her friends, even picked up the tab for a couple of rounds; helped her when her car needed a jump during that snowstorm; she found a mouse in her house and you set up the trap 8and * got rid of it; you met her at the local diner at 3am while she cried over being dumped by her cheating boyfriend.

When she finally pulled herself together enough to go home you hugged her and reassured her she was better off without a jerk like him while you were thinking, "why doesn't she see *me*?; I could make her happy, I'd treat her the way she deserves to be treated".

No you wouldn't.

Women want a man who acts as though he is confident, secure in himself and his identity and has decent self esteem. The guy who hang around the fringes trying to prove how good a boyfriend he would be doesn't project any of that and end up firmly ensconced in the "Friend Zone". He isn't going anywhere.

It is a myth that women never want a nice guy and/or they are only attracted to assholes. Women want a good man; big difference. A good man not only projects confidence but he also has healthy and firm boundaries. Here's where it gets tricky; assholes tend to project a lot of confidence; being ballsy will do that. If they are shrewd enough they can masquerade as good men but we all know they aren't.

Nice guys can engage in emotional manipulation that approaches misogyny.

Yes, I know you do stuff for her; I know that you are there for her whenever she needs emotional support; I know you may have even bought her some thoughtful present that shows her that you were listening to that story about how much she has loved penguins since she was a little girl.

Guess what, she's under no obligation to feel about you in any particular manner. While it might not be your conscience intention, the idea implied by, "how come she won't go out with me" is that you do this stuff because you expect her to return your affections. When your thought process descends into the "women never want the nice guys only the assholes" now you approaching misogyny. I hear your protestations but trust me on this.

So what's a nice guy to do?

#1 Have you ever asked her out? You would be amazed how often this never happens. Women aren't mind readers. She might think you're gay or interested in one of her friends, maybe she's just narcissistic who thinks that men *owe* her that kind of treatment.

If you don't try to plant that flag on the hill you are just loudly shouting how timid and insecure you are. What's the worst that can happen? That she might turn you down flat?

Oh, so that's the issue.

If you actually *know* she doesn't like you that way, it makes you seem like a creep to keep hanging around, right. Well guess what, you seem like a creep anyway. Someone with self esteem and confidence wouldn't hang around like that but a nice guy does. Life sucks, it happens, man up and deal with it.

This is where a nice guy differs from a good man. A good man will feel just as disappointed but is not going to go out of his way to do boyfriend stuff for a woman who doesn't want to be his girlfriend. This includes allowing her to call you at crazy hours of the night, listening to her problems with other men and inconveniencing yourself (I mean really, at her age she doesn't have AAA??).

This is not about being a bad person or being rude or not being a friend. This is all about having healthy, reasonable boundaries. Nice guys don't have them; good men do.

Oh, and let's talk about something else: why are you hung up on such a POS in the first place?

Okay, maybe that's harsh but let's think about this for a moment, hm? She calls you her friend (maybe?) she asks for (and gets) your time and sympathy and energy and everything else you give. She treats you like a boyfriend and expects you to be her emotional support.

Does she thank you? Does she promise to do the same for you're in a pinch? Does she follow through on those promises. Does she ever call you for no reason, just to chat?

If she doesn't she's an emotional vampire and *why in the blue blazes do you stick around? You love her? Do you love her or some kind of idealized image of what you think she is? Believing yourself to be in love with someone is no reason to be a human doormat

But a good man already knows that.

This is a long read, I know but I'm glad we could have this chat. You'll probably be pissed at me for a while but that's okay because deep inside you know I'm right.

For me, Fall begins the Tuesday after Labor Day and is marked by the beginning of the school year. It's more than two weeks until the beginning of Autumn, my favorite season.

One of the best vacations was about 17 years ago. It was October, I had just gone through a painful breakup and after 2 weeks of doing “The Zombie Shuffle”, decided to take a week off from work to stay in my pajamas and built a pillow fort to hide in. The first day I ate a box of something too sweet and shameful to even talk about.

The next day I decided I needed a change of scenery before the sugar fairy took me away.

I packed a few days’ worth of clothes, got in my car and just headed North. Through The Palisades, north through The Adirondacks (or it may have been the Catskills, I need to look that up). I passed through a spot called Cherry Plains and that name seemed funny because I was surrounded by rocky mountains, not a plain in site. I stayed on Rt 22 for a while longer and kept driving until I crossed over into Vermont somewhere in the Green Mountains.

Dear reader, I drove for 12 hours and ended up somewhere around Waterbury Vermont.

I could have made this drive in 6ish hours but I took all back roads and smaller highways: it was about making the journey not getting to the destination because once I got wherever it was I would end up, I didn’t know what I intended to do.

It was Autumn, so The Green Mountains were the Russet, Gold, Green Mountains. It was as if some messy goddess of nature had stuck her hands in pots of thick oil paints and slathered daubs of saturated colors all over the mountains. Pictures could never capture what it was like when I finally stopped: the clean air, the apple crisp wind, and the colors of a New England Autumn everywhere.

There was something very restorative for me. I had a hole the size of a man’s hand in my chest that my heart kept falling out of. And my books couldn’t fill it, and my writing couldn’t fill it, not movies, not booze, not tears. But bathing myself in the Autumn light and color purged me and cleansed me and made me feel whole.

I stayed for a few days poking around apple and pear orchards and that is when I realized that Autumn is a woman. Not a une jeune fille or sultry bombshell, but a woman. Mature and wise, dressed in rich winey reds and forest greens; crimson and amber; velvet and satin with gold jewelry on her wrists and ears. With wee touches of soft grey here and there. As I walked through an orchard I saw her leaning against a tree. She was holding a basket filled with produce and offered be a pear. I took it and when I bit in it was sweet and full of juice that tasted like optimism dipped in tears.

I knew then, the mountains could do nothing more for me.

So I turned my car south, homeward and when I got there it felt like my home again and not just a place to hide and lick my wounds.

---

Autumn Day
Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.

Bid the last fruits to be full;
give them another two more southerly days,
press them to ripeness, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will not build one
anymore.
Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
time,
will stay up, read, write long letters,
and wander the avenues, up and down,
restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I read this on the NPR Website and for a couple of reasons it struck me

The Guardian has launched "Six Songs of Me," a project to map as many personal playlists as possible.

They've set up a special site (fueled by Spotify) where you can pick your most meaningful songs in six categories. They're hoping to gather enough data "to "help us think more fruitfully about the 'big questions' that lie behind the sounds of our lives."

To that end they challenged people to answer 6 questions about music. Answer, discuss and share. I'll add my answers in the comments.

What was the first song you ever bought?
What song always gets you dancing?
What song takes you back to your childhood?
What is your perfect love song?
What song would you want at your funeral?
Time for an encore. One last song that makes you, you.

So Intervention is featuring a 63 grandmother who is a raging meth head. She says it makes her happy and more productive. She does it 8 times a day. And she likes to wash down pain pills with an ice cold beer.

The kicker: she's only been doing it for 6 months. This means that at the age of 62 or 63 *Grandma started snorting meth* !!??

Ponderous, just ponderous.

Who would have thought that Joseph Gordon Levitt (the little kid on Third Rock from the Sun) would grow up to be a a highly respected actor who seems to have become "King of the Indie Films".

But that happens sometimes. Ron "Opie" Howard became one of the most respected and powerful directors in Hollywood and Rob "Meathead" Reiner had a pretty good run as a director of RomComs (has he done anything in the past five years?). Tom Hanks went from running around in (very bad) drag to the top actor of the late 20th-early 21st century. I guess I could toss Melissa Leo and Benjamin Bratt onto that last but they would get an asterisk because they were known for drama, not comedy. Ditto for Tommy Lee Jones and Tom Berenger who began his career on a soap opera.

(Here's a senseless piece of trivia: Jones and Berenger began their careers on the same soap opera, One Life to Live, and in fact while Jones let about a year before Berenger began, their characters were brothers-in-law since Jones character was married to the sister of Berenger's character. Why yes, I am a font of useless information.)

Obviously a lot of American performers have made the jump from TV star (especially comedy) to movie star but I can't think of many who made the jump from being a TV star (especially comedy)to being a respected artistic artist in the movies (as opposed to a "movie star" like a Bruce Willis).

Can you think of anyone I'm missing?

I remember when the US began military missions shortly after September 11 that one of the big mantras was "hate the war but not the soldier". Can we adopt something similar with the Olympic coverage?

Here in the US, the network that handles the Olympics, NBC, can be Americo-centric and, dare I say it, a bit jingoistic. Most of their prime time coverage focuses obsessively on the American swimming and gymnastic teams. NBC even made the choice to omit the part of the Opening Ceremony because they felt the event being commemorated wouldn't matter much to Americans.

However, there is someone on my Family and Old Friends Facebook who has decided to make fun of the American athletes every time they lose or fall short of getting a Gold medal. You my dislike the coverage and the hype, criticize that. However, to get to London (or Bejing or Athens, etc) most of these young people were practicing and competing at an age when they could have been riding bikes with their friends. They have worked hard and if they fall short the majority of them show a very gracious face in public.

I find what he is doing very mean spirited and unnecessary.

This show is really becoming very Shakespearean.

Jesse is much smarter than anyone, especially Walter, thinks. He is a sophomore in the etymological sense. On one hand he is still a manchild, furtively swiping a tortilla while on a factory tour and sweetly awkward when it comes to romance. On the other hand, he has been Walt's Apt Pupil. He not only knows how to replicate Walt's formula but it was his idea to use a magnet to erase the hard drive on Gus'; computer *and* he figured out how to break down the equipment. When Walt, with his PhD, was ready to fight Mike over money, it was Jesse who was able to frame the money situation properly (not "we have less money"; but "we have a bigger piece of the pie". Walt has and still does manipulate Jesse because Jesse is naive and trusting. Jesse is loyal to those he cares about and as sure all this has been Walt's saving grace, it I suspect this will also be the cause of an irrevocable, and possibly fatal, breech between the two of them.

Walt continues his sure march towards the Tragic Hero's inevitable demise demise. He better make sure that neither Mike, Jesse nor Hank were "from their mother's womb untimely rippd". He like so many fallen heroes before him he thinks, to paraphrase Mike, that is a matter of "The king is dead, long live the king". He doesn't get that it's more a matter of "The king is dead, now begins the real work. Building any kind of community is tough work and that is what Walt has to do if he wants to become king. Gus Fring didn't get there overnite.

Skyler is an interesting problem. I felt badly for her in the beginning. She's pregnant, her husband is dying and he begins acting weird. She even finds that he has a secret cell phone he's been hiding from her. *And* he's lying about money. I get why she is cranky, she is in a stressful situation. But the problem is that the writers have gone out of their way to make Walter White a very sympathetic character; the everyman pushed to his breaking point. When Skyler is sniping and bitching at him she comes off as a bitch and a half. Even mores so when she begins screwing Ted.

But then the table turn again and she goes from nagging, cold harpy to Lady Macbeth. But there is a problem. Walt had a long slow slide From Mr White, Chemistry teacher masquerading as Heisenberg into Heisenberg masquerading as Mr White Chemistry teacher. Skyler went from ignorant to involved overnight. She's knowingly laundering drug money, her husband has given her ample reason to believe that he not only manufactures drugs but that he has murdered an/or ordered people to be murdered. If Walt thinks that he's the king and Jesse is his faithful knight, then Skyler is his queen, whether she wants to be or not. In Sunday's episode I think she had her, "all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand" moment. If Ted is killed (by either her or Walt) I think she'll really loose her mind and have her "out, out damn spot" moment.

---

One hellacious final shot for the series: Walter and Skyler both lying face up in bed, a bullet hole in the center of each of their foreheads, their eyes blankly starting straight ahead and packet of Walt's meth tossed onto each of their bodies. You can hear the sounds of suburbia going on outside and in the nursery you hear their baby crying. As the camera pulls back you see the door to Walt Jr's room is open as well. The whole white family except for the infant have all been murdered.

Cut to black.

It just hit me why I dislike Facebook so much: it reminds me of a shopping mall. A gigantic, noisy, crowded shopping mall. What it one of the things I hate with a passion unknown to mere mortal man?

A gigantic, noisy, crowded shopping mall.

So yeah, that explains it.

They are interviewing a young woman who survived the Batman Theater Attacks. I was about 5 minutes into it and the newscaster (Savannah Guthrie I believe) asked the survivor, "So this has changed you life?"

Bitch, this woman just said that she was in a dark theater, some guy caused a panic with tear gas and started firing his gun towards the exits. This woman then said that she panicked and when she looked up she thought he was aiming for her.

And you ask if her life had been changed??!!

WTF is wrong with you?

I immediately switched to Animal Planet to catch the last part of a documentary on Crazy Cat Ladies (I mean really, do you *need* to won 16 cats? I don't care how clean your house is). The women they are featuring all seem to have some rather deep rooted emotional issues and I'm sure the cat hoarding is just a symptoms. Anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia (I I'm afraid to leave my house because I know that some of them may break into my house and harm my cats"), Agoraphobia depression; hald of the DCM is in covered here.

Yes, this is much better than the news.

This is especially for my friends over at cinematixyz

I caught a movie from 2005 called Loverboy ( For Official Website Click Here).

The movie is a family affair. Kyra Sedgwick produced it, Kevin Bacon directed it and their children and friends like Campbell Scott and Sandra Bullock had parts in the movie. That being said, it was one of the most disturbing movies I've seen in a while. There are moments when *you* will have a knot in your stomach.

It's not a perfect film, but it's not as imperfect as I first thought because the story is told in the first person. Whenever you tell a story from one characters POV, the viewers perceptions are refracted through the lens of the narrator. And a warped lens it is...

This film is a perfect example of the literary convention of the Unreliable Narrator (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreliable_narrator).

( There Are Sooooo Very Many Spoilers Here )

Damn. This first episode of The Walking Dead is so much creepier in black and white than it was in color. The gore is somehow less gorier but the horror and sense of dread is amped *way* up

They should film a few more episodes in B&W.

And oh yeah, Breaking Bad begins airing the first half of its last season next week. I am giddy with anticipation.

I got the chance to see Blade Runner tonight. Dammit, that is an incredible movie, a classic in its own way.

Next, how could anyone not know that Deckard was a replicant, there are so many hints all throughout the film. One big hint is the way his eyes glow in the early scenes with Rachel in his apartment. But another dead giveaway would only be picked up by folks who really know their theater.

One of my favorite plays is the dystopian classic, Rossum's Universal Robots (RUR); this is the play that invented the term robot. (The word was adapted from a Czech word that mean serf labor). The whole plot hinges on the idea that Rossum runs a factory that produces robots, something akin to what we would call an android today. They are mechanized humans who begin to do more more and more of the manual labor formerly done by people.

As robots assume more sophisticated, but menial labor, Rossum's scientists develop robots with increasingly sophisticated intelligence. Of course, the robots rise up and kill of the humans save one who they view as a collaborator who has empathy for there situation. At the end of the play, it is discovered that there are two robots who have made the jump and experience of love between themselves.

The last human, who helped to make them, sends them out into the world to repopulate the earth.

I couldn't help seeing comparisons between that story and Blade Runner. It makes me wonder whether Philip Dick or the screenwriters of Bladerunner ever read this play.

So many people spend so much time putting shit off until they lose weight. Fat people can jump out of planes, go dancing, and wear bathing suits (hell, they even make bikinis in large sizes!). I'm a big proponent of Healthy @ Any Size. Do what you need to get and stay healthy but in the meantime don't limit yourself because you don't fit a societal construct or particular BMI.

I don't care about waiting until then because not a single day is promised us; there might not be a then, why wait to sip the fine scotch?

Every time I hear a woman talk about not going to the beach or pool because she's ashamed to where a bathing suit, it breaks my heart. When I encounter women who are desperate for outside approval from others, my heart breaks. We are worth far more than the sacks of meat that carry our brains and heart around.

The dirty little secret of the dieting industry is that losing weight won't solve your life problems. If you are shy you will still be shy at a size 6. Losing weight won't teach you how to flirt or be more assertive, or make you happier. You will be the same person only thinner.

It's a good goal if that is what you want but it shouldn't put your life in a holding pattern.

You don't put the weight you don't want on in a week. You are not going to take it off in a week. You may never get all of it off depending on the circumstances. That is not an excuse to put your life on hold. The people who matter and truly love you will love you for who you are physically, mentally, and in every other way.

Anyone else can go fuck themselves.

Put on that bathing suit, dance that Tango, dump that loser, flirt, play hopscotch, practice your downward dog, go to the gym, go to the spa. Buy that silky purple dress! Be that person you are waiting to be until you the lose weight.


Own. It.

Love yourself enough to have a the best life you can have life. And if you don't love yourself?

Pretend to love yourself until you do.

Note; Comments are screened on this post.

I found out that Rodney King died a few days ago.

Given his history, sadly, it wasn’t a surprise. No matter what else he did he was a father and there are several children who have lost their father too young. But he was bigger than that. His choices led to a beating that shook some fruit out of the race relations tree in this country that we’re still trying to choke down.

For those who don’t remember. A drunken Rodney King got into high speed chase with a couple of policemen, going up to 80mh in residential neighborhoods and posing a mortal danger. When the chase ended, his two passengers laid on the ground as per the policemen’s request. A combative Rodney King did not comply and effort to subdue him resulted in a beating by police that skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken bones and teeth, and damage to some internal organs.

Rodney King became the realization of a black man’s nightmare in different ways.

First there is the palpable fear blacks have when stopped by law enforcement. I get that *everyone* gets nervous when a policeman flashes his lights to stop us. You get a little sweaty, your hands tremble a little. If you are black, and if you are a black man, there’s a whole ‘nother dimension that gets added to that. That’s because shit can go wrong, very wrong.

A man is coming home after midnight and 4 men yell at him. Thinking he is being mugged he reaches for his wallet, he gets shot 50+ times. They say later that he matched the description of a rape suspect.
A bunch of kids returning from a basketball tournament are pulled over for speeding on a highway. When the driver puts the parking brake on the car lurches and the policemen open fire.
A local policeman is speeding in an unmarked car, late to work. He is stopped by a state policeman and in incident ends in him being hit on the head multiple times and maced. (This guy is the husband of an old friend of mine)

To be black in America is to always be mindful. No matter who you are the first thing people see is your black skin and you never know what that may hold for you. This goes doubly if the encounter involves law enforcement. In our DNA are the stories of institutionalized racial violence (whether they went by the moniker of the KKK or not) and law enforcement turning a blind eye, or even worse, being part of the wolf pack. Every time those police lights flash and you pull over you’ve got to hope it’s one of the good guys who’ll just give you a ticket and send you on your way. You hope that he’s not nervous or jumpy or angry.

This is not a law enforcement thing. I respect and appreciate law enforcement and support them in doing their job. It's a scary shitty world out there and they really are that thin blue line who protect us even when we don't know it. What I've talked about above reflects a minority of policemen.

This is a motherfucking societal standard.

It is no coincidence that Susan Smith blamed the kidnapping of her sons on a black man. We know a lot of them are criminals anyway.
It’s no coincidence that Bethany Storro claimed a black woman threw acid in her face with the words, “Hey pretty girl, do you want to drink this?". I remember at the time the rumor on the Internet was the assailant said to her "Hey *white* girl, do you want to drink this?"; driving home the idea that it was an act of racial jealousy.
After all everyone knows that black woman are angry and jealous of white women. And what about Charles Stuart? Driving through a bad neighborhood one night his wife and unborn child are shot and killed by a black man. You know you shouldn't be in their neighborhoods after dark.

While we know how all of these stories turned out, what isn’t talked about nearly as much is that in each of those cases there were multiple people taken in for questioning and eventually one who was identified as a suspect. IIRC, the woman in the Washington State case was an ad executive or something along those lines. All that education, all of her hard work and because she resembled a sketch she was held in a police station and considered the suspect of an ugly crime. I wonder how many of her acquaintances and co-workers wondered for a moment if it could be true.

That is what it means to be black in this country; at any moment the word of a white person can cancel out any good will you may have built up in life.

But if you say it out loud, people get very uncomfortable or angry or apologetic or they want to draw comparisons about the way their great great grandfather was treated in Russia or how everyone thought their grandfather was a mobster because of his last name or some other fact that they think will be equalizing or comforting.

Please stop doing that. Just. Stop. To do that is as disrespectful as me trying to draw parallels between the Black experience and the Holocaust. I don't need...wait, no, *Black people* do not need your sympathy, empathy, apologies or explanations.

Does it make you uncomfortable? Good, just sit with it. Does it make you aware of your own thoughts and assumptions? Good, just sit with it. You’re not sure how you feel? Good just sit with it. Pisses you off? Good, just sit with it.

Thanks.

Every kid regardless of color is taught to obey a policeman who stops them. My nephew is being taught how to move in such a way that that he doesn't get shot or maced. He's a nic boy who plays football, baseball, and is an actual boy scouts. He lives in nice suburban town 30 minutes or more from the nearest city. He is very obedient and polite. But all it takes is one girl to cry rape (look up why comedian Patrice O’Neal went to jail as a teen-anger) or one policeman to be nervous and none of that matters anymore.

And it’s not just men. When I was a child, my mother drilled into us that we were never to leave a store without having a receipt for everything we purchased. If we came out of convenience store without one, she’d make us march back in and get one. Her reason: If someone accuses you of stealing you have proof you didn’t. I was about 20 before I found out that not everyone’s parent’s taught them that. I thought it was my mother being crazy until the day I got stopped leaving a department. It seems a large woman was shoplifting and as I walked out someone must have thought I matched the description. Yay me. The plainclothes detective asked to see my receipt and took a look inside my bag. Yay receipts. Yay Mother.

A couple of years later I went to Ikea with man I was dating. This guy was successful; he owned a comfortable house with real art on the walls and had a brand new Audi in his driveway. We had gone shopping with friends who were unfamiliar with the area so they followed us until they found the on ramp they were looking for. They flashed their lights to say “good bye” and went on their way. Less than a minute later there were police lights lighting up the inside of his car so he pulled over. When the policeman approached the car we could see that him undo the snap on his holster that would give him easier access to his gun. It’s after midnight, we’re on a dark stretch of highway. He looked at my friend and the first thing he said was, “Is this your car?” before he asked for any ID, he asked him if the new, pricy car was his. Afterward he asked about the Ikea bags in the backseat (mine, of course) and asked about the butter knife sitting in CD slot (Ikea has huge spools of twine that you can use to tie stuff down. Why one of grabbed a butter knife I can’t remember). The whole thing ended when the policemen confiscated the butter knife because it was a deadly weapon.

The house, the art, the car and he was still just a black guy who might have been a car thief.

Welcome to our world.

I think Rodney King deserved something of an ass kicking that night. If he didn’t comply with the police request, the police on the scene were right to take swift and tough action to subdue him. But there is a line between strong, maybe even harsh, action and a brutal beating. I’ve seen the clip, almost all of us probably have. If you analyze the phases of the beating, there is a moment when it goes from a team of policeman subduing a prisoner and crosses the line into group think and the beating turns brutal. Yes, Rodney King was a low level criminal, yes he was causing a public hazard behind the wheel of his car and yes, IMO, the police were justified in using physical force to get compliance. However, this is *America*, we do not torture or physically abuse our prisoners; there is no valid reason I can see for beating a man into brain and internal organ damage.

I walk through the world with a mindfulness white people don’t need to. I think that mindfulness makes one wary and if not less trusting at least a bit slower to give full trust. That wariness is the source of my belief that the truth almost always lies somewhere in the middle (did Rodney King merit and ass kicking? Yes. Did he merit that beating? No). When you live with the understanding buried inside that at any moment, if I am in the wrong place at the wrong time, I can be publicly shamed because I fit some amorphous profile, you learn to be a bit more vigilant than other people.

Not a good or bad thing, it just is. But I think in a perverse way it makes me a better person.

(ETA: I meant that it makes me a better person than I would otherwise be, not that I am better than other people. Sorry if I left that impression)

How about a desert risotto?

It would be a close cousin to a rice pudding. You would still saute the rice in butter (less than you would in a savory risotto)I would deglaze the pan with a 50/50 mix of apple cider and apple jack. Instead of chicken stock (not conducive to a dessert at all!) I would use 2 parts dairy (whole milk, half and half or, if you're feeling very indulgent) cream and one part apple cider.

At the end of cooking I would add apples in a 1/2 inch dice, a handful of toasted walnuts, a 1/2 cup of apple sauce, a tablespoon of apple jack and a scant 1/4 cup of (real) white chocolate chips to add richness and a creamy mouth feel (sort of like the role of the parmesan in a savory risotto).

It might work.

O Candy Warehouse how I love thee in so many uncountable way!

For years I used to buy a sea shell shaped hard candy that was made in France. It wasn't common so I either had to go t a candy store I could pick it up when I went to Cape May.

Then it disappeared.

My old sources no longer carried it. When I called the shop in Cape May where I used to buy it they were nice enough to do some research and got back to me with "our supplier said the company no longer seems to be in business.

I made this face --> :(

And then I stumbled upon Candy Warehouse.

What did I find?

Of course I've ordered 5 pounds of the stuff. It seems that it's now made by a company in New York. If it's as good as the candy I remember I might have to go straight to the source and stockpile 100 pounds of it in case they stop making it too.

I can have such a hoarder mentality

Wow 12 weeks down, 1 more to go.

( Spoilers Ahoy! )