Year of the Elevator

I'm making a mix for my friends' birthday party. Yes, plural friends...singular party. Half my department is turning 30, just turned 30, or will be turning 30 tomorrow. My friend "Sharon" told me last year I was required to plan a "big fucking party" for her. I think at the time my response was "Um...yeah." But I had been planning stuff for my ex's 30th and rather than see that energy go bad and rot me from the inside out, I decided to put it into Sharon's birthday. Sharon and our lab mate, to be precise. So it's a rainbows and unicorns themed party for the two of them. Meaning we bought unicorn crap and crepe and you can't walk down the hall of my department without catching little glitter winks off the carpet, evidence of the glitter explosions my invitations caused. Oops.

And so I've been slowly working on a mix. Slowly because so much of the music from 1976 is like toxic waste. I can only be exposed to it a little at a time before I have to go listen to stuff like this to scour it from my ears. We're talking serious bad.

Here's a small sample, in the color palette that it deserves:
After the Lovin' - Engelbert Humperdinck
All By Myself - Eric Carmen
I Write the Songs - Barry Manilow
If You Know What I Mean - Neil Diamond
She's Gone - Daryl Hall & John Oates
That'll Be the Day - Linda Ronstadt
John Denver, Olivia Newton John, The Osmonds (together and separately) - the list goes on like a who's who of shit music. Fuck. No magical 70s unicorns and rainbows for that type of music. CheeeRIST, that was the shit that made me pull the holly hobby bedspread over my head and wish I could sleep until I was 30.

I tried very hard to find music that makes me think of that decade without leaving the bad taste of olive leisure suits and baloney colored lee press on nails in my mind. So what's in my mix? I guess it's mostly disco and funk. It's what was playing in the background of my 6 year old barbie doll based fantasies of me as a "grown up". It's songs that remind me of the delight of seeing discoing rollerskaters on the beach, that make me think of promises hinted in city lights hovering over the south east expressway. KC and the Sunshine Band, Commodores, Chic, The Temptations, Prince, Parliament, Rose Royce.... There's a wee bit of "Freedom rock" and pop-shit thrown in because what 70s rainbow and unicorn birthday party would be complete without Starlight Express, Bay City Rollers, and Foghat?

I will of course be burning a copy for cjblue, as she is my mix muse and requires homage.

Good Bye Larry!

Summers to Step Down As Harvard President
By Andrew Ryan
Associated Press Writer
February 21, 2006

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Lawrence H. Summers is resigning as president of Harvard University at the end of the academic year, the school announced on its Web site Tuesday. Summers' resignation ends the briefest tenure of any Harvard president since 1862, when Cornelius Felton died after two years in office. The announcement comes a week before an expected no-confidence vote by the Harvard faculty, who have criticized Summers leadership style and comments about women in science.

If you are wondering why, here's some background on Summers.
Sexist
Classist
Racist

Harsh band

"That's harsh" was a phrase that was popular among my siblings a few years back. There was a lot that fell under this one handy word, so we all used it quite a bit. At some point, my siblings informed me of an expansion of this term. I suspect marajuana was involved. They had discovered The Harsh Band. According to them, The Harsh Band plays the theme music for all those truly harsh moments in your life. The Harsh Band composes, arranges, and performs the incidental music to every scene from your life that makes you squirm whenever it comes to mind.

"What scenes?" the more faint or denial riddled of heart might be asking, cursor hovering over the tab closing X. Hey, don't be a wimp. Think of this as theraputic. Identifying the soundtrack to your misery is one way of laughing at it. We all need to be able to do that sometimes at least. None of us has lived so charmed a life that we are free of crushing and possibly public disappointments, humiliations, blunders, mistakes, and the like. We all have those moments. They're in there influencing us whether we consciously think of them or not. Of course when they threaten to become fully manifest in our conscious mind, we want to skip over them. Maybe we hum a compulsive little song whenever the memory threatens. Maybe we speak too loudly and brightly, trying to chase away the mental ick with verbal frippery. If you want to enjoy The Harsh Band, you'll have to think even just for a minute of one of those moments. When you cringe and think "That's harsh..." hang on for just a second before you jump away from the aftermath. There. You can almost hear it, the low discord of The Harsh Band.

What exactly The Harsh Band plays doesn't matter so much. It is unmusical from most traditional perspectives, it would be hard to hum along to, in fact humming along to it would probably make you very upset. It is what all the utility companies and university bursar's offices would play for hold music if only they could jack straight into the band's sound board embedded in the deepest parts of your psyche. What matters (in catalogable terms at least) say my siblings, are the instruments in the band. While the pieces and their combinations in the ensemble are unique to the person, some individual elements may well be universal.
Years ago, my siblings would occasionally announce that a new instrument had been added to one or the other of our bands.
"We've added a block."
"A block?"
"Yeah, you know like in kindergarten when they'd hand out the instruments for music time and there would always be the block?"
"I think it was supposed to have a stick that went with it - "
"Right. But no one ever knew where the stick was. So it was just the block. The block should definitely be in The Harsh Band."

From what I can remember, to date, the instruments in The Harsh Band include: triangle, saw, jug, washboard, two rocks being banged together, our mother repeatedly playing the first few measures of Fur Elise, block (sans stick), various pots and pans, and although she may not have consciously acknowledged the addition, I'm pretty sure that a around 10:30 PM on December 31, 2004, my sister added my former neighbor's ukulele playing 8 year old as a soloist.

So, what's in YOUR Harsh Band?

Message sent - look at my ass

I'm supposedto be working but I was sending e-mail. Whew. That feels better. I feel like I just went to confession. To the point - I have a yahoo account. In the various mail screens, there tend to be ads with graphics in the margins. I suppose because I am registered as a woman, I get a lot of ads for zapping wrinkles, removing crow's feet, lightening circles under my eyes, busting cellulite, melting inches off my waist and hips, adding them to my chest, and plumping my lips. There is a nearly constant barrage of tits and ass in the sidelines of my e-mail.

Normally I gloss over it. Sometimes the ads flash and piss me off. Then I take the time to shut them down. But occasionally I see an image quickly as I am clicking to another screen and I don't register it entirely consciously immediately, leaving me with an intrusive image of unknown origin. Such was the case tonight when I was taken to the "message sent" screen. I briefly registered that my message had been sent to blah, blah, and blah as I clicked on "back to inbox". At my inbox screen, I thought "Why am I thinking of a perfect tanned artfully lit ass barely covered by a white bikini?"

Oh that's right. It was part of the montage of "simulated images"* from a BodyShape by Hydroderm ad. It promises to improve the appearance of my skin tone. It alludes to being able to give me a white bikini clad tanned tight ass, a flat belly, taut cut thighs and calves, and an absolutely stunning collar bone.

I wish there was a way to opt out of the ads. At least the picture ones. It's not that I am terribly bothered by seeing ass. That's fine. But I'm not expecting it in the short trip from sending a message to returning to my inbox. I guess it could be worse. The ass could emit a seizure inducing strobe and then present a line of flashing text telling me how to fix my bad credit.

* I went back and examined the ad. It actually says "simulated images" in tiny text at the bottom corner.

What's my age again?

Ah another blogthing.
It says I act like I'm 27. Not bad I guess. My life was on the wrong track when I really was 27. I was married to the ER doctor and living in a boring yuppie apartment complex in Ann Arbor...you know, the kind with muted beige carpet, a gas fire place, and vertical blinds. I had one of those "This just isn't me" moments around christmas that year and although it took me a few years, I got it sorted out. Life's not perfect now, far from it, but at least it feels like MY life.
Hm...now that I think about it, I think 27 was the year I saw the Tea Room exhibit this blog is named after.

You Are 27 Years Old

Under 12: You are a kid at heart. You still have an optimistic life view - and you look at the world with awe. 13-19: You are a teenager at heart. You question authority and are still trying to find your place in this world. 20-29: You are a twentysomething at heart. You feel excited about what's to come... love, work, and new experiences. 30-39: You are a thirtysomething at heart. You've had a taste of success and true love, but you want more! 40+: You are a mature adult. You've been through most of the ups and downs of life already. Now you get to sit back and relax.

What Age Do You Act?

Sloppy grammar implicates Cheney in second shooting

Man Shot by Cheney Leaving Hospital

Oh the fun that can be had with sloppy modifiers. Maybe it's just that my head is in a strange place from looking at piles of datasets for too long, but honestly, my eyes skimmed over this headline and I thought "He shot ANOTHER one?"

This parse stayed in my head for just for a moment before pragmatics kicked in to help out. I realized I must have garden pathed the sentence or something because there's no way we'd hear about another shooting by the VP this fast.

Had the story been headlined with the verb in the active voice, as in "Man Cheney shot leaving hospital", there would have been no ambiguity. My guess is that there's avoidance of the active voice in the Cheney shooting stories since it sounds so much more, well, active. I adore that by trying to avoid placing grammatical cause on Cheney for the shooting, someone made it sound as if Cheney shot another person.

OMG, A___ just sent me another one. Cheney's out of control. Shooting people coming out of hospitals, hitting lawyers. Yeah, I'd call it an accident too if he kept attacking me.
Lawyer hit by Cheney calls shooting an accident

Ain't misbehavin'

Just being a cat. He was jumping around on my desk, printer, shelves, filing cabinet, etc. while I was working last night.

At first, Max seemed to enjoyed sitting on the scanner, purring about his new perch while I set it up and opened adobe. However, Max's fascination with the scanner ended soon after when noise and light started to come out of it. I didn't want to hold him there because that's mean. What remains is an interesting perspective of Max's rapid departure from the scanner while it was running.

Vice president showers man with itty bitty harmless pellets

According to today's follow up in the AP, the poor bastard Cheney shot is back in the ICU after having a heart attack from bird shot near or in his heart. Specifically, The shot was either touching or embedded in the heart muscle near the top chambers, called the atria, officials said.

Earlier in the story, it was noted that Hospital officials said they were not concerned about the six to 200 other pieces of birdshot that might still be lodged in Whittington's body. Cheney was using 7 1/2 shot from a 28-gauge shotgun. Shotgun pellets are typically made of steel or lead; the pellets in 7 1/2 shot are just under a tenth of an inch in diameter.
See, there's nothing at all to worry about. The doctors aren't worried. And why should they be? The vice president merely spritzed this fellow with a light dusting of quite small bits, well, specks really. Barely more than motes in fact.

Guns don't shoot people....

Vice presidents do.
I'm glad the guy Vice president Cheney shot is not critically injured. Because now I can make jokes about this and not feel too bad. Favorite quote from the early AP report on this:
"This is something that happens from time to time. You [k]now, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong.

This was said by the woman who owns the ranch where Dick Cheney shot a fellow hunter while aiming at quail. According to the story, Armstrong, whose medical qualifications are not mentioned, stated that the man who the vice president shot (that's such a fun phrase) was "alert and doing fine". The shot gun blast "peppered" the victim in the face, neck, and chest. But he's fine, according to Armstrong, because "It didn't get in his eyes or anything like that." Is she a kindergarten teacher? Providing no one shot his eye out, it's ok. Is it just me or does her choice of reassurance seem a bit incommensurate with the nature of the injury? It's not like Cheney threw paste or playdough at the guy. He shot him, with a shot gun, in the neck.

Rich idiots just love a storm

I am truly thankful I had time to get my grocery shopping done during the day Friday. The woman at checkout said it had been a nightmare already and was dreading her shift on Saturday. I did venture out today and although I was not at the grocery store, what rushing people I did see elsewhere suggest she was probably correct. I live in a working class area that has a lot of low income families. The state had massive power outages in the last storm, which was not even remotely as bad as the one that is moving in right now. I'm sure working in a supermarket on a day like today is an entirely thankless job.

I read this and wanted to share.
...The storm was great news for northern New Jersey's Hidden Valley Resort and its 12 ski slopes, said Roni Mattiello, director of snow sports...."Everyone is psyched and pumped up for skiing," she said.

I could go on about class distinctions and the assumptions of rich idiots ("everyone" has the luxury of enjoying snow!), about how much I have always hated rich people sports like golf, tennis, and downhill resort skiing, or just how much raw contempt I feel when I consider the sorts of people I imagine would be "psyched and pumped up" upon hearing news of an approaching blizzard. I won't. I will say that if this storm turns out to be as bad as is predicted, when I am shivering in my unlit apartment after hours of back breaking shovelling, there is a certain director of snow sports in NJ who I will spend at least one guiltless moment imagining smacking the shit out of.

Before there was photoshop...

...There were highlighters, soft lead pencils, and ballpoint pens. Another find from my box o'crap. This was tucked in the pages of a journal, although which year is hard to determine because in my youthful shortsightedness, I didn't put years on the dates of the entries. And while reading them for context clues is sometimes amusing, it is also often disturbing and I'm not really in the mood for that right now.
















As a teen, I read the paper more to find pictures to redraw than to learn about the news. But some of it did sink in, I think. Possibly news photo vandalism is an untapped educational material, a way for adolescents to familiarize themselves with current events.

Original tea room

I was looking for some old journals today. As I was going through my closet, I found a suitcase full of old pictures. And in the suitcase of old pictures, I found the picture I took of the description of the tea room exhibit in Ann Arbor, MI.
So here it is.

What do you DO?

I realized when I started grad school in linguistics, this was a really hard question to answer. Linguist is not a job or title that a large number of people have preconceptions about. Occasionally someone would assume it was synonymous with "polyglot". Sometimes I corrected them, sometimes not. Such preconceptions could get in they way, but they could also at least give someone a sort of sketch, a few lines I could build on. Zero preconceptions, as is the case often with "linguist" or even"psycholinguist", means that you frequently find yourself "pinned and wriggling on the wall" at a party, your dip drying on your decorative paper plate and the bubbles fizzing out of your drink, trying to answer the question without sounding like a total tit, while your conversation partner is regarding you with increasing levels of confusion or annoyance. And that's if you're lucky. If not, they will just walk. This is why linguists (psycho and otherwise) are mostly tits. Typically, linguists only know other linguists, the occasional "cognitive scientist", and approximately .7 philosophers. If this were your entire social circle, you'd suck too.

But now, ah, now I will have something to say that doesn't entail the risk I'll end up talking about "P-ness" and "A-ness" with my lovers' grandmothers. Now, when someone asks me "So what do you DO?" I can say "I study psycholinguistics". And when they look like they are going to run or pass out from anticipated boredom, I can quickly add "Do you remember that news story about the Tickle Me Elmo book that was heard to be issuing death threats? The one that people reported hearing say "Who wants to DIE?" I and other psycholinguists study why and how that sort of thing happens."

I am so happy. Well, I am sad that children may have been terrorized by the unexpected and menancing question asked in a piping caricature of a child's voice, but I am happy that I now have something I can use to establish common ground which might allow me to get over that conversational hump.

Soup and other goodness

I made the stock for the soup earlier this week and A___ finished the soup today, just in time for the damp, chilly end of January. I used to make the broth with a whole chicken but realized that this results in far more meat and hassle than I need (cjblue will attest to having called me once while I was "boning a chicken"). I recently switched to using chicken breast, 2 split breasts, bone in. This makes enough stock for a large pot of soup, and a little extra meat that can be used for chicken salad. Making soup is great because you get to clean out your old veggies and create something that is exceptionally yummy and good for you with enough left over to freeze. This is all very exciting for a low income grad student with some nutrition problems.

Some of the other grads and I have been joking for a while now about how we should make a grad cookbook. "How to Cook and Eat Healthy on an Apprentice Model Budget" or something like that. Chapters would include things like "Avoiding scurvy", "101 things to do with peanut butter", and "Pasta is a TA's best friend" We could sell it (at a large mark up) and put the proceeds into a graduate conference travel fund, a fund which has consistently been cut by my university over the past few years.

While the soup simmers, I am reading two papers on auditory cues for induced self motion and writing up an outline for an experiment I am about to record stimuli for over the weekend. Yes, I am kind of blowing off my dissertation research, although that is somewhat justified by soundbooth noise related delays. And I am most certainly and unjustifiably neglecting the evil manuscript from hell I've been working on for (gulp) way too long and should just finish no matter how much thinking about the horribly designed experiments makes me want to puke. But who can do that when there's a brand spankin' new research project with an extremely efficient faculty member whose enthusiasm for it is infectious. And there is kick ass soup and a movie with my loving neighbor A___ to look forward to when I'm done reading and writing tonight. Who could ask for anything more? Ok, maybe a loaf of fresh baked bread from Kate.

Sniffle

The mild winter is being mean to my allergies. I never had "allergies" growing up, not of the sniffling sneezing itchy eye type at least. Not until I was in my late 20s and living in Michigan did I finally know what misery people go through. Since that started, I have learned to I look forward to snow, cold, and dryness after a November of leaf mold has had my head spinning, literally. But with this weather, I am finding my allergies active in January. It's just wrong.

I spent too much time today in the soundbooth trying to troubleshoot "noise" in our recordings. We don't know what it is or why it's there, but we do know that you shouldn't have to filter recordings made in a fucking soundbooth. It sort of defeats the purpose. Sadly, I am not an engineer so I can only use trial and error to isolate and eliminate the variables in a very mechanical way...this mic, that mic, this jack, that one, high, low, etc. Frustrating and cramped, I fled finally knowing nothing conclusive. I think there's a soundbooth psychosis that sets in. By the end of two hours in there, I started saying things like "La la la...I'm Brittney Spears" for the soundcheck (for some reason, wearing a headset mic makes me feel like a former mouseketeer turned pop star). These recordings sound especially great since I have the allergy thing going on. I sound like Maryann Faithful.

Ok. Enough whining. Today's daily kitten is adorable - go check her out. She looks like a smaller fluffier version of my cat Max. She even has the Max pose down, on the back with the legs every which way.

Wacky fortune

Today I did battle with the Student Financial Aid office.
scroll all the way down to the bottom of the main page of my blog to see my battle cry, btw

Someday, they will do me the honor of releasing my loans so I can be more in debt. Oh but it's "GOOD" debt. Don't you fucking hate when people say that?

Anyhow, another stupid generator for today's post, rather than an incoherent rant from me. This is my "wacky fortune cookie generator" fortune.

Your Fortune Is

Man who snatches kisses when young, kisses snatches when old. ("...in bed").

Hey that's really funny. What's my wacky fortune?

Mai Tai....

Got a big old rant in here just waiting to come out but no time now. For now, I am a Mai Tai. It is much more fun and exotic than "I am a stressed out grad student"

You are a Mai Tai

You aren't a big drinker, but you'll drink if the atmosphere is festive. And when you're drunk, watch out! You're easily carried away.

What Mixed Drink Are You?

God is Love

"There will always be suffering which cries out for consolation and help. There will always be loneliness. There will always be situations of material need where help in the form of concrete love of neighbor is indispensable," (Pope Benedict XVI) said.

I am proud to say I have been doing my part to advance the cause of the faithful and God's will by concretely loving my neighbor, at least twice a week. Next time, I'll think holy thoughts to make it more special.

Depressing Day

I just read this. One of the little news blurbs I get in my browser homepage.

Depressing Day
If you're down in the dumps, don't blame yourself -- blame the calendar, according to an expert.

A British psychologist said Jan. 24 is the most depressing day of the year. Dr. Cliff Arnall has created a mathematical formula that takes into account the weather, holiday debt, time since Christmas and time since failing to make your New Year's resolutions.

Funny thing, huh? I mean funny strange, not funny ha-ha. Funny ha-ha are some of this guy's cultural assumptions. Hey Dr. Arnall, I made my New Year's resolutions, don't have a lot of debt, and I'm still not happy. I wonder why he left out the fallout from holiday family feuds/recollections of family trauma triggered by just seeing nasty old uncle what's his name's kids. Oh and then there's the whole "christmas came and went and it didn't make anything better. There was no christmas miracle and it is the end of January so I guess it isn't coming" feeling. There should be a word for that one. I think it's an emotionally relevant concept for most people in our culture, so it would be nice to be able to refer to it more easily. So anyhow, I suppose Dr. Arnall's proposal might not be 100% silly, although I contend the "mathematical formula"part is indisputably stupid.

Now Depressing Day for me personally is December 23. It's 3 months after my birthday, plenty of time to feel like this year was NOT going to be that much different than the last, that older didn't necessarily mean wiser or better. It is also 3 months into the school year, usually finding me failing my ass off in at least one class ("Do you see all these zeros?" asks the teacher, pointing to my name in the grade book. I squeak or nod or somehow indicate that indeed I do. "Those are the grades for your assignments," teacher sighs and closes book. I look at my shoes, his/her shoes, at the brightly colored shiny cardbord anthropomorphic numbers and mathematical operators under a "Math is fun! Meet The Decimals!" banner. My teacher asks "Couldn't you just turn in one or two so I don't have to give you a zero? You are such a bright blahblah potential blahblah smart blah" And I look at Mr. or Miss Teacher's sincere, concerned but disappointed face, thinking "I really want to turn in one or two assignments. I will still fail but at least s/he will love me again." Then I go home and end up re-reading three of my favorite fiction paperbacks over the weekend instead of doing the one or two make up homeworks my teacher just knows I can do.)

I found out years after December 23rd started overtly and consistently sucking for me that it was the day my grandmother's father died fighting a fire in Boston. That is kind of interesting, it's like a legacy I inherited or something.

But, I gotta say, January 24th is a big runner up for me. I figured that was because when I was 14, my sister was hospitalized right around then. When pressed, I blank on the exact date, but around January 24th it finds a way into my mind. The date alone is enough. Before I read this news blurb, I had just typed the date in an e-mail and thought something like "oh right, January twentything".

This time of year, I usually feel a little bit of hope because the light is returning. Cold blue light, but more light than we've had for too long. I think when you're an adolescent in the midst of some genuinely miserable shit, those small bits of hope can feel nearly simultaneously extremely beautiful and excruciatingly painful. Beautiful because the are so unlikely that they feel like blessings. Painful because of course they are short lived, adding to a growing sense that all joy and hope might be illusion.

I think it was a half day at school but I am not sure of that either. What I am sure of is that I was on my way home and anticipating hanging out with my sister. I was packed into the rattling stinking T bus. Salt and dirt constantly crunched between my unsensible 14 year old shoes and hard grooved rubber floor mats. I shifted through arbitrary pockets of overheated space and freezing blasts by the doors, no easier to tolerate or avoid despite being entirely predictable consequences of doors that could never fully close. Outside was cold blue daylight no longer a remnant by afternoon.

I felt hopeful and decided to stop at the 7-11 to pick up snacks for me and my sister. I don't remember specific plans, but I know I had a firm belief that she and I would be hanging out that day when I got home. I hadn't seen her at the T station after school, but I thought she'd be along eventually. I got home and went to the room we shared. Played music. Tried on different make up. Tried to coax the deck of tarot cards into providing me with a more definitive set of answers, explanations, and promises. Maybe I made a tape. I remember eventually watching the sunset out the window, leaning my elbows on the boombox and my forehead against the window. We had a great view out our bedroom window. Western, over the tops of other houses, clear over the Southeast Expressway. Boston was over there somewhere, which was a comfort to me in the murk of suburban January. I think I might have eaten all of what I bought at 7-11. I don't know for sure. What I know for sure is I remember feeling angry at being ditched, feeling like I had been stupid to think that day could be good. In that context, if my earlier hope had been realized as a hostess snack offering, then it makes sense that I might have eaten the snacks when I was steeped in denial of that hope. I think this because I remember feeling guilty, as if something I was doing signaled giving up hope on my sister. Go ahead and laugh, it is sort of funny in a very not funny way.

My sister came home very very late. It was dark, at best just one barely noticable shade lighter than dark. I was mad at her for leaving me waiting for her while my belief drained away while she forgot about me and took off to get fucked up with her friends...some of whom I felt were truly despicable people who were far far beneath us. Some were ok, like us, adolescents who were just trying to get through. Some were better than others. Michelle was a trusting stupid idiot and Mandy, well she was a different kind of idiot but the first to get pregnant and the last to stop. As I saw it, most of the people who swarmed along the edges of my sister's friends were older guys who I saw as of a limited kind: unspeakably stupid or maliciously wise-cracking, smelling unwashed or hosed down with buckets of Polo, and whose only discernable goals seemed to consist of getting head on a regular basis, keeping their cars running, and having enough money in their pockets to keep them and their child-brides in marlboros, Bud, and weed for the week. This is probably a harsh assessment, but this was my honest genuine impression of these men. This is why when I was allowed to hang out with the big kids back then, I did things like hit Mark in the head with a swing, repeatedly. Or try very very hard to trick these guys into showing how incredibly stupid they were. Most of the time, I had absolutely zero interest in hooking up with (in those days, "scooping on") any of them.

Since I had this very harsh view of the people she was spending her time with, I felt extra dumped when she didn't come home that afternoon.

Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one waiting that afternoon. My parents ambushed her. I'm not even sure she and I got to talk before they got her. The rest of that night was really horrible. To try to tell all the stories from the many perspectives would be hard. And to tell just mine would be so incomplete that it would be wrong, in the bad way and in the inaccurate way. I spent a large part of the night in my room after being threatened with arrest for screaming at cops in my kitchen.


But HEY, it's kind of reassuring to know that due to the wonders of silly math and cultural irrelativism, on this day, I am reassured that many people are sharing in this less than uplifting mood. Usually that sort of shared murk is only for special holidays, like Mother's day and Christmas.

Who's the wacko?

I had noticed in the past few weeks or so (by which I apparently mean months as I tend to telescope time around the holidays) there were several news items about Venezuelan oil. Specifically, I noticed stories about Venezuela offering discounted fuel oil to low income areas in New England.

Venezuela Gives US Cheap Oil Deal
BBC News November 23, 2005
Officials from Venezuela and Massachusetts have signed a deal to provide cheap heating oil to low-income homes in the US state. The fuel will be sold at about 40% below market prices to thousands of homes over the winter months. Local congressman William Delahunt described the deal as "an expression of humanitarianism at its very best"
...
The deal involves shipping some 45m litres of heating oil from Venezuela to Massachusetts at a discounted rate via Citgo Petroleum, a US-based subsidiary of the Venezuelan state-owned oil company.

I kept seeing more reports of communities that elected to benefit from this program. A January 19, 2006 story in the Boston Globe (reporting from Vermont's Rutland Herald) gave a list of areas offered discounted heating oil to date. It includes Vermont, Maine, and Rhode Island as well as "parts of Massachusetts and New York City".

But today, I saw an AP blurb about what McCain (who is starting to sound like he's campaigning again) thinks of the Venezuelan heating fuel assistance deal.
"We better understand the vulnerabilities that our economy, and our very lives, have when we're dependent on Iranian mullahs and wackos in Venezuela," said McCain
(see Bloomberg.com for a slightly different quote)

I do agree with McCain that it is fucked up and scary how dependent our economy is on the price of a barrel of oil. I don't agree with McCain's base appeal to the ignorant - Eeek! Iranians and Venezuelans and Bears, Oh My!

Hey Senator McCain, can you say "Saudi Arabia"?

Indeed, Venezuela's discounted oil program threatens not only to show up the US politicians' inability to advocate for their constituents. It threatens a new record profit for the oil companies by diluting the panic driven market with cheap oil for the needy. I can't help feeling like the Republican Senator's comments reflect less concern about our country's economic stability and national security than a deep commitment to protecting the interests of US oil profiteering. I am pretty fairly convinced (based on the last year's oil money "windfall") that oil people, which include the ruling families of the United States and their friends, were looking forward to making the mostest money ever based largely - if not entirely - on speculations about what oil prices would do after a winter of tv images of pipes breaking in the homes of freezing poor Americans.

McCain is not the only or first person to complain about these crazy Venezuelans and their evil ne'er do well plan to help poor people afford to heat their homes this winter. Pretty much any news story on the deals reached to buy Venezuelan oil includes comments like: Larry Birns, executive director of the progressive think tank, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, said Chavez is trying to counter Bush administration criticisms with"petro-diplomacy". [1] and Chavez's opponents accuse him of using Venezuela's oil wealth to win friends while trying to one-up President Bush. [2]

What these stories don't all include is information about what the alternatives might have been to the Venezuelan discount heating fuel plan. They don't mention what alternatives were proposed and rejected by our own government. They don't mention what steps could have been taken which might have, among other things, allowed "Patriotastic as fuck" fellas like McCain to not have to witness our excessive dependence on the kindness of South American socialists (Heaven Forbid!).

Let's go way back to early Fall when the gas prices seemed like they would never come down. People confided in one another about the cheapest gas in a 50 mile area, made gloomy speculations about whether it would hit $4 a gallon before it came back down. People wanted to know why costs were so high. People were PISSED OFF, and our lawmakers heard us. At least for a little while. Unfortunately, they didn't really DO anything about it.

In November 2005, Fox News had one of their "fair and balanced" stories about how the Senate Republicans "beat back" Democrat attempts to "pinch" oil and energy companies posting record profits. But it wasn't just Democrats who were asking the oil companies to share the wealth back then. From a November 22 Bloomberg.com report: Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, has asked oil companies to donate 10 percent of their profits to help families pay heating bills.
CNN Money reported in October 2005 that... The (record oil company) profits have led even some Republicans...such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert, to call for hearings into the profits gushing from the nation's energy producers.
And in November 2005 that ...A number of lawmakers, including Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine)...have called on oil companies to donate some of their profits to boost heating subsidies to aid low-income Americans who can't afford their heating bills.

The windfall taxes did not pass, at least not in any form where consumers saw rebates or lower prices. What about the call for oil companies to donate to low income heating program subsidies of the types proposed even by Republican lawmakers this past Fall?

According to this recent local report in the Pawtucket Times, it seems those calls went unanswered . Last October US Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) had written ...a letter to the CEOs of the nine largest oil companies, asking them to donate a portion of the record high profits they had just recorded to help low-income families, disabled citizens and the elderly pay their heating bills.
So did the 9 largest oil companies, who seem to have dodged the bullet on government mandated largesse, do the right thing? According to the Pawtucket Times story, Senator Reed claims Venezuelan owned Citgo was the only company who responded to his letter.

McCain is concerned about the vulnerabilities in our economy produced by a dependence on the second and third largest OPEC producers. His reference to "our very lives" is clearly a thinly veiled attempt to connect OPEC producing countries with countries which threaten national security. But what a glaring omission that McCain didn't mention our dependence on OPEC's largest producer, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, outpost of liberty and democratic principles, the country which gave us 15 of 19 hijackers who walked onto planes the morning of September 11th, 2001. Saudi Arabia, which supplies more crude oil to the US than Venezuela.

I'd really like to ask Senator McCain "Who's the wacko?"

Hani Saleh Hanjour, Saudi Arabian citizen and 9/11 hijacker believed to have flown American Airlines flight 77 into the Pentagon.
public domain image wikipedia


Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, Venezuelan President who implemented the Bolivarian Missions. From Wikipedia: Aims of the Bolivarian Missions have included the launching of massive government anti-poverty initiatives, the construction of thousands of free medical clinics for the poor, the institution of educational campaigns that have reportedly made more than one million adult Venezuelans literate, and the enactment of food and housing subsidies.
(Foto: Victor Soares/ABr - hor-58)