Yay politics!

One of my local papers just ran a story about a couple of folks here in CT who decided not to wait for national democratic party censure of Senator "Traitor Joe" Lieberman.

Back when Lieberman lost the state democratic primary in his last run for US Senate, he refused to give up on his senate seat even though he had clearly given up on the people who had previously elected him. "Traitor Joe" made his own party so he could get a line on the ballot that November. The party was called the "Connecticut for Lieberman" party (or CFL). Lieberman, as stated in the Hartford Courant article, "...abandoned the name and the embryonic party as soon as he won".

Since then, John Mertens, a Trinity College engineering professor and John Orman, a Fairfield University political science professor have put the abandoned party to use. Here's a statement of the revived CFL party's new purpose from their website:

The Connecticut for Lieberman Party (CFL) rejects the fraud perpetrated on the members of this party and the citizens of Connecticut by Joe Lieberman when he used the creation of this party to get on the general election ballot in 2006. The CFL is an independent, anti-war, anti-corruption, pro-fiscal responsibility, pro-democracy party, that stands for individual liberties and real problem-solving in government. The CFL wants everyone to know that in the United States of America, voters are free to join any party they wish, and participate in the democratic process according to the laws of Connecticut and the United States.

I have one word to describe this move and that is BRILLIANT!

not Monday, again

I want to say at the outset, while someone was apparently injured here, and probably rather seriously, I've been assured by the police that this person will be ok.

I woke up to the cell phone alarm, slapped it into snooze and went back to sleep. About two minute later my house phone rang. I dug my cell out from under the pillow, opened it and grunted a sleepy "hello?" into it. Shit. I dropped the cell and picked up the house phone, glaring at the caller ID. It was my gynecologist's office. I answered it. The receptionist told me they need to change my appointment. Again. Without computer and calendar, I picked a day I hoped was good and set it up. I repeated the day and time to her, then to myself after I got off the phone. I thought about getting up and writing it down. In a minute, I told myself. Next time the alarm goes off....

Even though I technically still had at least 20 minutes of snoozing left before I'd consider myself to have overslept, and even though there was a cozy orange cat on my bed (making it all the more appealing), a warning cramp fairly launched me out of bed to find food to take my drugs with. This is so not how I like to get up.

Cat fed, coffee poured, and drugs swallowed I sat down to update my calendar. I had been repeating the new date and time of the gynecology appointment since rising. I heard a chainsaw in the distance. I didn't think a hell of a lot about it at the time. I thought "oh, a chainsaw" because I don't like chainsaws, and then went about pointedly ignoring the sound. It seems like someone in the neighborhood is always having yard or house work done on any given day. Nothing remarkable there. Just pretend there's no chainsaw. I called to change an appointment which I just then realized I had doublebooked and got some guff from the staff member on the phone.

In general, I'm not a fan of doctors' office staff. Often, I find they piss me off. I think I get more pissed than I would otherwise since I used to be a medical secretary. This means I have done their jobs. While I realize it can be a hard job, I don't think I was ever that shitty to a patient. To doctors and nurses? Yes. To respiratory therapists? Sure. To other secretaries even? Definitely. But not patients.

This staff member wasn't shitty, she was exasperated that this was the second time I had to change this appointment. I held my mouth in check, mostly because I was still waking up and therefore rather verbally unarmed. It is frequently at this point where I get cheeky and from there it's a very rapid descent into shitty. When she finished giving me her exasperated huffy mild shit and making my new appointment, I explained, "You know, that last time I canceled I was calling you from my broken down car. And when we rescheduled that appointment then, when I was calling from my broken down car, I didn't actually have my calendar with me."

It wasn't much but I thought she needed to know it. She had slid back into a more sympathetic tone, complete with gracious "oh"s and "ooh"s while I was reminding her about these circumstances. I'm not fooled. I've seen what's under that mask and I won't forget it.

I got off the phone, updated the calendar again, and was just returning my attention to some serious coffee drinking and email checking when I heard the chainsaw cut out. You remember the chainsaw. The one I pointedly ignoring until I realized it had stopped suddenly and was followed by what sounded like a dog which had been hit by a car.

For a moment, it was just that. This yelping sound and nothing else. It was otherwise quiet. And then every dog for blocks started barking and howling along with the sound, which continued. It was an urgent sound. You cannot ignore a sound like that. I grabbed my cell phone and went outside just in time to hear the yelping turn into a very tortured sounding human voice saying "HELP ME! Somebody please help me!!! HELP!"

What seriously sucked was I had no clear idea where this man was. Consequently, my 911 call was sort of fragmented. "Hi, I'm in (town name). I just heard what sounded like someone working with a chainsaw outside, then a man started screaming and yelling 'help me' and I'm walking toward where it was coming from but I don't know what house he's at yet....I'm on (street name) near (street name) and I can tell he's around here somewhere..."

I'm sure they love this kind of call. I realize as I type it that I have just completely assumed they get this kind of call from other people.

I was coming up on the huge house about a half block down and another half block around the corner from my street. This was where I suspected the man was, mostly on the reasoning that this was the biggest house around and so the inhabitants could probably afford and be inclined to hire someone to come work on the yard, which is most likely who was doing yard work on a weekday morning.

The man had gotten quieter now and less verbal although he was still vocalizing. The 911 dispatcher stayed on the phone with me while I yelled "Where are you? Are you ok?" into various driveways and yards until I got to the long driveway at the big house. I hobbled up to the top of it.

Here's what I saw.

A tree with a huge branch hanging off it. I couldn't see the point where it departed from the tree, just that it was at such an angle that it had to have been nearly detached and just stuck there on the tree or something. I saw a man standing a little away from the tree. He was standing where the side I couldn't see would have been fully visible to him. "Where is he? Is he ok?" I yelled to him. He half turned toward me I saw he was holding a cell phone to his ear.

Two men came running out of the garage toward the tree. They were each carrying several two by fours. One of them had heard me asking if the guy was ok and replied hurriedly "He's stuck in the tree and he's hurt."

"What's the address?" I yelled to anyone who could answer. "For 911" I added. The man with the cell phone snapped the phone shut and said "They're on their way now." Then he approached the tree, where the other two men had started doing something with the boards on the side I couldn't see.

I waited for a moment near the top of the driveway, thinking I should probably go since I was serving no useful purpose and since I had NO inclination to actually see what had happened. I started toward the road. I got out to the street just in time to see the first emergency vehicle slowly driving by. I guess the guy who called 911 had no idea what the address was either (hey, there's a lesson here - make sure your damned house number is visible from the street!) . I waved them down and sent them up the driveway. I started to leave again only to make eye contact with a cop who was very slowly driving by, scanning the sidewalks carefully. "He's up there, in back" I said helpfully pointing back toward the driveway. He pulled into the driveway and stopped. Sirens were starting up somewhere. "Can you stay here and send the others up?" he asked me. Er, ok. So I did, only realizing after I sent up the second cop car how much it sucked that I had no bra on under my t-shirt. Great. You know, you just don't think about this sort of shit when you hear someone screaming like that.

After the fire trucks came and parked out at the driveway entrance, bright obvious lights flashing and all, I decided there was plenty of indication where the emergency was. And my cramps were coming back. I started to think about walking home, which seemed a bit further now than it had about 20 minutes ago. A cop came down the driveway on foot and said "He's going to be ok," and that was all I needed to hear - I was out of there, arms crossed very not casually over my chest, wanting to walk much more quickly than my hip would allow, which is probably good because while I am not huge of chest, without bra there's still a hell of a lot more jiggle than I'd care to be showing as I made my way back up to my apartment.

Now I'm back home, drinking more coffee, feeling sort of sick to my stomach, being thankful that I didn't go around the tree to get a better look, wondering why my period always manages to come at the worst possible time (my first two hour lecture of the semester will be on day two - of course), trying to shake off that knock on wood feeling, and trying to forget the chilling sound of that particular pain call.

Did I mention that I have always hated chain saws? I do. When I hear them I have to consciously tune them out or I'm likely to have nasty images flood my mind. Good lord I am glad I didn't go around that tree.

gay day

"This is the gayest day ever!" exclaimed the young woman working the register at the supermarket check out. Her name was Annica and she was just finishing with the customer in front of me in line.

The customer in front of me was having problems reading the display on the card reader and had asked Annica which button to push for "debit". The reason the card reader wasn't displaying properly was that everything electronic was a bit fucked up that day. "There's no dairy, meat, or frozen goods but there is produce and other groceries" a boy standing at the front of the store had told me when I came in and stopped short at the surreal, underlit aisles. The lights were completely out in produce, but with some light trickling in from the front windows and a set of lights on the back wall of the store. In addition to these few peripheral lights, the registers, scanners, and card readers were working, more or less. The less part must have been giving Annica problems for some time, I assumed. After the customer's second request, Annica heaved herself up from the register well and peered over at the buttons on the less working contraption. She seemed genuinely put out at having to exert this energy. A typical late adolescent petulance was coming off her in waves. I could sense them in the combination of her posture, features, gestures, and quasi-verbal utterances up to that point. A series of huffs, puffs, thrusts, and squints conspired to give away the climaxing frustration that was that day, a warm, humid Memorial Day weekend Saturday which might have been full of presummer promise and thrills had Annica not been stuck working in a half lit, under airconditioned supermarket checkout line with moron customers who couldn't interact with a poorly working card reader.

"This is the gayest day ever!"
The customer in front of me paused. He glanced back at me. I had been humming absentmindedly to myself and hit a sour note, stopping abruptly when Annica erupted. The customer said "What?"
I said "Oh, 'gay' means anything negative to young people these days." The customer looked to be a bit older than me. He was attractive and well put together looking. I considered for a moment whether or not he was gay. He looked at my hello kitty t-shirt. Annica looked at my hello kitty t-shirt and then up to my white bandana. I wondered if I looked gay to either or both of them.

"If it were gay" the customer said to Annica and me "that would mean it was fun and open and exciting..." I nodded vigorously in agreement with him. I could feel my mouth twisting in a sarcastic half smile as I glanced over at Annica and saw that she seemed to have taken an extreme interest in the more or less functioning register keys.

The customer picked up his bags and left. Annica started ringing me out. "So...it's a gay day, huh?" I said to her. The sarcasm was in full swing now. I was hoping though that she would engage in a dialouge with me about this. Unfortunately, Annica didn't say anything. I had only one item, for which I am pretty certain she was thankful, so our official exchange was over quickly. "23.99" she told me. I handed her a five and a twenty, got my change and my bag, and then turned and looked her in the eye saying "Thanks. Thanks a whole big bunch Annica."

I started to leave, got about half way across the front of the store, then paused and looked back at Annica. She looked at me. She had a blankish look of crafted incomprehension. Not total misunderstanding or bewilderment. It was the kind of look I get from my students when I've asked them "Ok, so who didn't do the reading?" after I've been lecturing for 20 minutes and am starting to get the sense that this is all brand fucking new information. It was the look which says to me "You don't seriously expect me to answer that do you? Oh shit, you do. Um...If I just look at you like you're speaking another language, maybe you'll think my lack of response is an indication that I simply fail to understand what you are asking me rather than an admission that I haven't done the reading..."

I looked long enough for her and I to have a mutual recognition of this moment. The moment was broken when a hassled looking manager hustling up to the customer service desk passed near me, drawing first Annica's and then my attention.
"Excuse me, are you a manager?" I asked turning to the woman.

After explaning that Annica should be spoken to about how to either keep her mouth shut or how to do some rudimentary damage control for her mouth when it gets away from her, I left.

On my way home, I considered the remark again. "The gayest day". I fucking hate this. I remember asking a (different) young woman who had a tendency to overuse the word "gay" as a catch-all pejorative if perhaps she could imagine a big burly masculine looking leather daddy saying "WHAT?!" every time she found herself considering something "stupid" something "gay".

After yesterday's supermarket moment, I was thinking - what if whenever some kid says something like that, it in fact DID turn into a "gay day"? What if, that remark was like the "hey cool aid!" call in the 1970s kids' drink advertisements? What if speaking those words summoned up something of a less harmful gay stereotyped production which would evolve out of or descend upon the moment turning it into a broadway or hollywood musical dance sequence?

I imagined the store shifting from dim grey supermarket drabbery to a stage covered by flashing colored spotlights, laser-sliced fog, and speckled with twinkling flecks from a series of twirling disco balls which had descended from the ceiling as soon as the word "gay" had sprung so carelessly off the lips of some homo-aggro child.

Ranks of attractive dancers in coats and tails, top hats, and bikini briefs or denim short-shorts would spin, leap, and glide out of doorways. A moving chorus line of leg kicking fellows would emerge from seemingly out of nowhere, backlit by the eerie glow from the still functioning lights against the far wall, spotlights racing across them as they marched toward the registers, timed to seamlessly switch places with the flipping, cavorting, and leaping dancers all around. Streams of Lawrence Welk like bubbles would flow across the scene and a dusting of glitter would appear on the floor, where the tiles would pulse like the Saturday Night Fever dancefloor. The disco-thumping orchestral theme would swell as the dancers, some still kicking and leaping, others having taken partners from the crowd to pull into free form cha-cha, hustle, and the occasional tangos, converged on the registers, now brightly flashing in time with the music.

"Did somebody say it's the GAYEST DAY?!" a drag MC would yell into a megaphone while strolling down the checkout counter like it was a catwalk, pausing to flick her rainbow feather boa at Annica before launching off into the waiting arms of a dozen strapping young dancers who would wisk her away as the entire entourage shimmied and high kicked its way out the door to disappear into the parking lot and beyond, off to make another "gay day" come true.

or maybe something a little like this but with better lighting and wardrobe

Your money or your life

Schools look at safety after massacre
The Virginia Tech massacre could bring about widespread safety reforms at colleges and universities, much as the Columbine shootings in Colorado led to security improvements at primary and secondary schools, Udell said.

Oh my sweet jumping jesus, how naive. The majority of high schools aren't for profit. Not so with colleges. These days, even the "public" universities and colleges function as if they were corporations - receiving a mixture of public and private funds, railing against any public oversight for use of those funds, and swelling the ranks of their three titled administrators (Associate Vice Dean of Provostery). E.g., at my school, the prez was entwined in fiscal nastiness with our now jailbird governor. What did we the students get out of their involvement? Smoke and mirrors. A contrived patina of "academic excellence" which easily flaked off if scratched. While my university "built" itself into a "center of excellence" (the schools do love those terms, don't they?), we were witnessing early retirements of faculty in record numbers - faculty who have yet to be replaced, increased tuition, sky rocketing fees, reduced services for students (the entire front office of financial aid is staffed entirely by work study undergrads now), and an admission policy which does not take into account the availability of these already tight campus services for the constantly swelling population. And we get construction. Lots and Lots of construction. Interestingly enough, one of the things our governor was investigated for (and I believe convicted of) was steering bid free construction contracts.

So will the Virginia Tech killings "bring about widespread safety reforms?" Not at my school they won't. The need or promise of such reforms might be something my schools uses for leverage with the state appropriations committee, but it sure won't be something they ask the private donors for.

You can't exactly put a private donor's name on locks for all the classrooms in the many (many) buildings without them. And who wants to be the one who sponsors the emergency mass murderer announcement speakers?

Raising money for improved safety measures as well as implementing them are LOW on the priority list (ask any women's group which has tried to get more lights and call boxes installed) because of the natural money grubbery combined with a head in the sand attitude of "It can't happen here" is most universities' tacit motto.

pet food (II) - Stop & Shop

Yesterday I posted about the pet food recall. There are two more brands who voluntarily added their food to the list so be sure to check it out.

If you're looking for info about the recalled brands, here's the FDA site and here's the direct link to the Menu Foods website where you can access lists of recalled Dog Food and Cat Food brands.

If your pet is sick with symptoms of renal failure ( or "RF", acute RF in cats, RF in dogs and cats), contact your local vet immediately. If your vet thinks your pet's symptoms are food related, you can report it to the FDA. You can find the local FDA contact to do this through here.


Below is a post which is essentially musings about levels of action and personal responsibility. How much do you feel, how much do you take. Turns out for me the answer is "lots", at least about some stuff.

Yesterday after reading the news about the pet food recall and checking the list to make sure my cat's food isn't on it (thankfully so far it hasn't shown up), I went grocery shopping at the local Stop & Shop supermarket.

While I was there, I swung by the pet food aisle to look for kitty litter sales (big cat = big cat box). As I heaved my cart back down the aisle towards diary, I thought I noticed a guy pushing a cart with one of the brands of cat food which had been on the list. I went back and scanned the shelves. Yep, Iams was there. At the time I wasn't certain it was on the list but I thought it was (turns out it is) .

As I looked over the shelves of food, I tried to remember other names off the list but they kind of blend in together when you're trying to recall something you didn't explicitly study while you're hungry, almost done grocery shopping, and your brain checked out back at Chips and Soda.

I reasoned with myself, trying to talk me down from where I could tell I was going. I stood near the half and half and thought.
Maybe they took off the ones which were recalled and left the others. So there are some Iams out but not the bad Iams out.
Maybe I don't remember the list that well.
People do their jobs and they'd know which ones to pull. Who am I to....
Ah fuck it. I won't be comfortable until I satisfy my, well, whatever this is.

I headed off for the customer service desk.

It's not that I assume all people can be fucking morons. It's that I know all people can be fucking morons, sometimes about really important stuff even. That knowledge pretty well drowns out any faith that people's desire to (want to be perceived as trying to) do the right thing will be sufficient all the time. We all fuck up. You work in a hospital for 6+ years and you'll discover quickly that we all fuck up. This is not cynnical or pessimistic dogma. This is just life.

Thus, when I see evidence of a potential and likely fuck up in an area that is near and dear to me, I sort of can't live with myself until I satisfy my need to be assured that there is no impending fuck up. I want there to be no impending fuck up. Honest I do.

Thus, concerned by the presence of certain brands I vaguely recalled being on the list, disquieted by my private neuroses, and compelled my abiding belief in human falibility, I went to the customer service desk. I politely asked the woman about the recall and if she knew whether they'd pulled all the recalled lots or all the recalled brands because I thought I saw some brands of cat food on the shelf and in a customer's cart which had been on the recall list.

She had no clue what I was talking about.

A phone call to the manager later, it became clear at neither of them really had any idea about this. "She says she has some stuff that was recalled but they pulled it off the shelf last night..." the customer service clerk narrated to me with her hand cupped over the phone as the manager still spoke on the other end. She added "If there IS anything that hasn't been pulled or that we missed but it's part of the recall, it won't scan. It'll show up as 'not available'."

Mostly because I felt there wasn't much else to do short of starting to get upset all OCD style and partly because I wanted to believe them (because I sometimes yearn for the kind of conscience that would more easily allow me to act like a lazy "not my problem" sack without hating myself, and because I am aware my behavior in this kind of situation is or borders on socially inappropriate, and because I want to have more faith in people) I left. On the way home, whenever I thought about the pet food thing, I would replay for myself the customer service woman's reassurance and tell myself things like "See, just you getting all worked up. It's taken care of. You were acting silly really. From a good place, but silly."

When I got home two things happened. A___ fed the cat and I read the comment to my last post.

I thought about how the food we were feeding the cat that evening was bought weeks ago. It's typical you buy your pet food in advance. I dawned on me the recall wasn't just about what was at the store, it was also about what pet food was on people's shelves that might be part of the recall. And I started to wonder why the stores which sell brands which were part of the recall didn't put up info alerting customers. Or specifically, why the store I was in hadn't. It just seems like the right thing to do.

And so...yep. I called Stop and Shop. Talked to the same customer service woman again, who promptly connected me to the same manager she had spoken to earlier. The manager sounded a bit peeved. Not a shock. I was embarrased to keep bugging her but I thought about what if it was my cat who was about to chow down some bad food? I thought about a lot of stuff both for and against calling but I won't list it all here since it seems it's likely the usual garden variety OCD-driven-conscience train of thought.

The manager said "I checked. We had a recall. It's for dog food, not cat."
"Oh no, no no, it's definitely ca-" I began. She cut me off.
"Yeah well the one I got here is for dog food only," she continued, telling me that they pulled them last night, that the items wouldn't scan if there were any out, etc.
"Look" I persisted. I didnt' want to raise my voice so I just kept trying to throw discourse demanding words between her phrases ("look...", "listen...", "but (+pronoun)", "ok-but-listen".

Finally I got a break. "Alright but look....It's on the news. I'm looking at it on my screen right now. It's a huge recall - cat and dog food, and you guys have some of the brands up on your shelves. Can't you at least put up a sign with the number to call?"
No. Just dog food, she told me. Not her recall, she insisted.
Could you put up a sign, I started again.
We pulled the affected dog food, she told me.

All in all, it was a pretty quick call and I managed not to lose my temper. It turns out the knowledge that we all fuck up doesn't mean I hate people or see them in an overly negative light just on account of that. As a younger woman, I didn't separate these two things. I realize now I have two independent reactions to foolishness. What feeds the misanthropic coals which can sort of rush up into a raging fire rather quickly when I am short on resources like patience is when people adhere to ignorance, cling to foolishness, and in short, would rather maintain sometimes shitty, deeply selfish attitudes rather than take one small moment to examine their beliefs or practices, even the more superficial and immediate ones, even the ones which they are supposed to be examining - you know? That annoys me a lot. (golly, I sound nutty).
But hey, I'm getting better at not letting all that annoyance out at once. Good for me.

So not long after it began, the call wrapped up with reiteration, clear but tempered annoyance (mutual), and me finally giving up and hanging up.




I think I made it a whole hour or so before calling back....

man of the house

Ever look up your town on Wikipedia? Not long ago, I looked up a place I was living in and discovered what was apparently some intense rivalry between the north side of town and the south side of town. And there I was, a city slicker interloper not even knowing they HAD distinctions like "side of town" in the little bitty antique filled hamlets around my campus.

I have since moved to something more like a city. It has sidewalks here and there, a bus line, and grocery stores it doesn't take a half a tank of gas to get to. Overall, I like my new place pretty well. But having had such an enlightening experience with the prior wikisearch, on a whim tonight I decided to look up my new town. And here's something I found which is really outstanding.

On my town's wikipage, "As of the census of 2000....There were 23,197 households out of which 28.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 43.8% were married couples living together, 13.0% had a female householder with no husband present, and 39.6% were non-families. 31.1% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.32 and the average family size was 2.93.

"13.0% had a female householder with no husband present?" My god, it's a town full of loose women. No wonder I like it.

I smacked (into) a guy on campus today. I had just come from proctoring an exam of about 13 students for an hour and a half while the professor sat at the front of the room engrossed in an article. He sat and read while I stood and walked. I kept thinking "what the hell did he need a proctor for???" About 20 minutes in, my hip decided this much standing was not ok for us to do. And then my knee got in on the action. When I finished 50 or so minutes later, I was sore and cranky on my walk back to my office. It was then that I met the fellow. He was coming down the middle of the slushy sidewalk, totally failing to acknowledge the presence of another person moving towards him. I have a problem with people who can't be bothered to exercise even that basic level of awareness which would normally cause someone to change trajectory even just a little to accomodate another non-intrusive seeming person. Especially when it's not crowded or congested and there's plenty of room for everyone to have his or her space. And very especially when the other person is walking slowly and stiffly, you know, possibly in pain or something.

I see these men get out of the way of other men. I know they do because I've tried it. I walk with a man on the inside, the fuckheads get out of the way. I walk with me on the inside, they don't. I get very sick of this shit. As I passed this fuckhead today, I didn't squeeze over into the snow drift to get out of his way. He stayed his middle of the sidewalk course and I felt his coat brush my side, the side with the bad hip. So I checked him.

For something like the 80th time, I considered getting a cane. It won't help much in the snow and I have no idea if it would make walking any less painful for me, but it would at least be a signal for people to not expect me to dance lithely around their ignorant, unaccomodating asses. And, should they fail to notice not just another person walking but another person walking with a cane, I would have something to hit them with other than my shoulder or elbow.

Correction

It was a mountain bike.

My god the man is lucky they didn't shoot him.
Have you ever noticed how after something like this there is always a handful of people who can be relied upon to say things like "I'm all for civil liberties but you don't just go charging around at a parade and expect the police won't see that as a threat...."

Interestingly, that response has been lacking here. I suppose that is because school is still on break. And, for better or worse, it will be old news by the time the campus paper cranks out their first edition of the semester.

The state I'm in

If you've read any other part of this blog, odds are you've stumbled across posts detailing or at least referencing my feelings about this state. If not, allow me to summarize - I am not a fan of connecticut. What's currently fueling my extreme dislike of the state of connecticut? This time, it's the use of law enforcement to pre-emptively silence speech of the sort most integral to even a shred of democracy.

Kenneth Krayeske, a freelance journalist, political activist, and law student, was arrested for being at the inaugural parade of our new (old) governor Jodi Rell. Ok, it was for more than being there. It was for being himself and being there. From the news reports it doesn't look like the cop(s) who arrested Krayeske knew he was a journalist. If they had, they might not have gotten all jazzed up when they saw him ride up on a bike, jump off, and approach the parade line with camera in hand as the governor passed. Although I realize as I typed this, Krayeske was riding a bike. That right there could count as probable cause.

But I digress. See, in connecticut it's not ok to exercise your first amendment rights. It's not just illegal to talk about things like poop and boobies on the radio. At least as offensive is visibly and effectively exercising first amendment rights. The existence of these rights is something that never fails to get patiots all swelled up and patriotic. But here in CT, there is a disconnect between pride in the existence of the right and pride in the practice of the right. According to news accounts, Krayese was targeted because of his "past actions" and statements. So Krayeske's being an outspoken critic of the Rell administration (among other things) made his appearance at the parade a questionable act. Thus, in connecticut, having visibly and effectively exercised first amendment rights results in forfeiting those rights.

But Connecticut is the constitution state! How could that happen here? Well, just because it's the constitution state doesn't mean it's the bill of rights state, does it? It turns out the constitution state has a recent history of high profile free speech fuckery. In October of 2001, demonstrators in Hartford were assaulted and arrested by police, held with ridiculously high bails, and charged with crimes such as inciting riot [1, 2].

The 2001 arrests were a frightening over reaction on the part of the police. At the time though it was easy to think it was part of a larger and temporary national trend towards over reaction. Tempers were running high and people were very freaked out in October of 2001. We were still dealing with the immediate wave of aftermath of the plane hijackings, the horror of realizing the full scale of what had happened. And on top of it, there was that whole fucked up anthrax in the mail thing going on, keeping many people on edge. But here we are, years later in a totally different situation. And still it is illegal to be a visibly dissenting member of the public, at least in Hartford, CT. Governmental reaction to September 11 can be seen as the grandfather of a bevy of (now) official restrictive policies and govenmental agencies. This trend is responsible for institutionalizing the kind of reasoning the police used in October 2001 and more recently to target and arrest Krayeske at the governor's parade.

See here's how it goes (excerpted from the Hartford Courant, January 9, 2007)

[State commissioner of public safety] Boyle said that when state police are providing security for any dignitary, its intelligence unit does research to identify "persons who through their prior actions or statements show an intention or propensity to disrupt that event."

"The officers are not told to arrest the person on site, nor to detain, question them or otherwise approach them," Boyle said. "That information is provided to officers working at the event so that they might simply give closer scrutiny to that person."

The whole story is pretty well covered here at this blog through the posts and links. The short version is that we can thank the convergence of the free speech hating policies of CT-local law enforcement with information provided by a relatively new governmental thing (let's refer to it as an "agency") called the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security. DEMHS houses the Connecticut Intelligence Center. This agency has been referenced in several news stories on Krayeske's arrest. What is it? From the DEMHS website, the CTIC is a... multi-agency center...located at the FBI’s Connecticut office. The center includes Federal, State and Local law enforcement personnel working side by side to develop leads and solve cases. The center is connected to every local law enforcement agency by specially trained Intelligence Liaison Officers who report to Regional Intelligence officers to report to and work at the Connecticut Intelligence Center (CTIC). The CTIC produces weekly Intelligence bulletins which are distributed electronically to law enforcement and others...who work in the field and may come upon important information.

While emergency management services are certainly necessary, while it seems a reasonable goal to find ways to improve communication between federal and state agencies in order to expedite appropriate and useful responses to prevent (preventable) tragedies like the Hurricane response disasters, why put these jobs under "homeland security"? Even typing those words makes me want to cringe. For some reason, the phrase calls to mind notions of governments spying on their own citizens. News of the president's push for a monarchy and events like the arrest at Rell's parade solidify and validate that association.

So here's this creepy (as fuck) organization which exists with the blessings of our state legislature. It's run by what looks like at least one hack from the (former) super corrupt executive administration. Further, it sort of looks like The Department doesn't do such a stellar job at the whole protecting the citizens thing.

You have to wonder then what possible excuse we could have for entrusting oodles of money and power to an agency which has demonstrated a lack of ability to do exactly the one thing it was created to do, especially if it or its officers are implicated in this most recent application of what is apparently becoming a connecticut tradition of obstructing free speech.

The state legislators are in a tizz now, asking to see "the list", that is in reference to whatever information landed Krayeske on the radar of the free speech hungry cops in Hartford. There is talk among the state legislators of holding hearings. They know this is a king sized screw up and they want to get on the right side of it. But they're neglecting the fact that the assembly already had a chance to weigh in on this when the agency was first created. Today I read an article where a prominent state representative, a member of the party leadership in the house, said she hadn't heard of this agency (the CTIC). That's sort of odd considering she was on the legislature when the DEMHS was created through statute.

The state legislators should be held responsible for allowing such an agency to exist and for not mandating appropriate oversight of this agency (at least). That any member of party leadership could dare to claim ignorance of the existence of this agency speaks to that lack of oversight. Allowing the creation of such a thing without insisting on the proper safeguards against its use to curtail the rights and freedoms of the people it's meant to serve is the same as if the state legislators themselves acted to destroy civil liberties in the state. Yes, there should be hearings. But we should consider putting a few questions to the legislators too, starting with "Just what the fuck were you thinking anyhow?"


From the dissenting opinion in Abrams V the United States, US Supreme Court Justice Holmes (1919):
Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power, and want a certain result with all your heart, you naturally express your wishes in law, and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care wholeheartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas -- that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That, at any rate, is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year, if not every day, we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge. While that experiment is part of our system, I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

Fatty McFat?

I just read a story on the NYC transfat ban. I recall a similar measure was considered in Chicago. My reaction to these ordinances is best described as sort of perplexed and a little scornful. I guess as a smoker, I can't help seeing the bans on things like artery clogging fat as a little bit of a double standard. It says "hey, we understand it's hard to take accountability for your own shitty dietary choices." But cigarettes? Yes, smoking's been banned in some places, but there's always a big old dose of blame on the tobacco consumer. The transfat bans and discussions which go with them do not place a similar blame on the fat-munchers. Regardless of whether I think stipulating when, how, and where people can consume things that are legal and arugably their own (bad) choice to consume, the way the issue of personal accountability is partitioned between smokers and poor eaters really rubs me the wrong way.

Take this quote from NYC Mayor Bloomberg, for example:
"Nobody wants to take away your french fries and hamburgers — I love those things, too," he said recently. "But if you can make them with something that is less damaging to your health, we should do that."

When was the last time you heard that kind of apologetic language about smokers and smoking from antismoking advocates? The common reasoning which seems to support the double standard of blame/accountability is that the negative effects of the substances contained in cigarettes smoke, unlike those in an artery clogging McMeal, are not easily contained to just one person. If you smoke in public, you are exposing others to your nasty carcinogen laced fumes which are both unpleasant and constitute a physical irritant for many people. Further, if you smoke in public you are making it very hard for people who have chosen to quit to maintain a tobacco free state.

Another argument in the various tobacco free public health campaigns and policies is that we all pay for other people's smoking habits. Even if someone were to confine her nasty health destroying tobacco habit to the privacy of her home and car, she puts herself into a higher health risk category through tobacco use. Google "health insurance" "health care costs" and "smoking". There's been plenty of interest in calculating what tobacco addiction costs not just the individuals who smoke but society. It seems to be common wisdom at this point that all of us, smokers or not, pay for individuals' tobacco addiction and use in terms of increased health care costs. Those health care costs mean higher premiums and copays for those of us lucky enough to be insured and higher taxes for the working uninsured. These claims, true or not, seem to be a significant factor in the stigmatization of smokers.

However, let's not forget that cigarettes contain a highly addictive substance. As far as I know, there haven't been any widely released studies on the physically addictive properties of fat ("fat addiction" is a totally separate thing from eating disorders, and I'm disregarding the stuff about general fat or carb addictions which are, at best, hypotheses). So if you eat this shit habitually, you are choosing to put yourself at increased risk for a variety of physical ailments and you are creating a public health nuisance that could be quite legitimately considered nearly if not exactly as bad as that caused by smoking - if we applied the same reasoning to both smoking and eating high trans fat diets. For example, the "shared cost" argument which supports a culture of stigmatization of smokers can easily be applied to people who consistently make poor dietary choices. Obesity and malnutrition resulting from overconsumption of transfats are associated with lifelong substandard physical conditions which, much like smoking, put the afflicted/consumer at risk for a greater number of diseases.

So who the hell is Bloomberg to say "no one wants to take away your fries"? Someone wants to take away cigarettes, to the point where a smoker could lose his job for smoking during his non-work time, based on the theory that even if smokers can keep their fumes to themselves, they can't keep the cost created by their legal substance addiction to themselves.

I do recognize that restaurants make it hard to make health conscious choices regarding their menus. A restaurant chain that has a lot of locations locally, Friendly's, will not provide calorie information to customers, even type 1 diabetic customers who would simply like to know how much insulin to give for the presumably responsible oriental chicken salad. I know this because I was with someone who once asked, then looked it up when he was given an uninformative answer. "We change our menu so often that we can't keep up with the nutritional information on every item" was the reason given for their providing no nutritional information. Ok, so how about they give the info for at least those things that have been on their menu for YEARS? Nope. I do think that shit like that is something public health officials can and should regulate. This issue is addressed in the NYC diet regulations recently passed, but it is poorly addressed.
(from the AP report)
Some [restaurants] that chose to inform customers about calorie content will have to list the information right on the menu. The rule would generally apply to fast-food restaurants and other major chains.

Breaking that down: It's not mandatory to provide nutrional information, and those restaurants where the info is voluntarily provided will essentially be punished for making the information available to health conscious diners. I don't blame the restaurant chains for not wanting to spend the extra printing costs for menus which include page after page of nutritional info. A reasonable alternative would be a highly visible notice on the menu which says "nutritional information is available on request" or an insert/table topper/tray liner with the info on it. I wonder if such options were considered or if the members of the NYC public health board made their menu only decisions after having seen the shocking scene in Super Size Me where a chain routinely hid the nutritional info posted in the restaurant.

It would be a simple and no more authoritarian solution than banning transfat to mandate and enforce nutrional information availability while making it less costly or difficult for restaurants to comply. But this puts the responsibility on the restaurant goers, and that brings me back to my initial point. While possibly too much blame and stigma is put on smokers, I think too little is put on the people who eat themselves and us into a national health crisis. I am a little divided on all the antismoking policies, and I certainly think the stigma is excessive. But what bothers me the most is the selective and extreme application of the notion of responsibility which translates into a motto of: Smoke yourself to death, shame on you. Eat yourself to death, shame on someone else.

When in doubt...

This morning, my brother called. It wasn't that early, but I hadn't gotten to bed until a little after 3:00 AM so when he called a little after ten, I was still hitting the snooze button on the alarm. First he called my house phone.
"hey...It's me. I just wanted to remind you to vote tomorrow because your senator voted against gay marriage..." etc. etc.

Then he called my cell phone.

Waking up late today meant I almost missed the deadline to make changes to my registration should they have been necessary. See, although A___ and I both went down to town hall on the same day, both filled out registration cards right there in the office and dropped them off with the town clerk, both dealt with the somewhat ignorant and possibly stupid town workers there presumably to "assist" with matters like this, only A___ got a confirmation in the mail that his registration had been processed.

He got it last week. I checked my mail several times but nothing. I figured perhaps my letter carrier had done something creative with it. She's like that. I have decided she places the mail into the various compartments of our cluster box based on the principles of Feng Shui. I waited out the week hoping that my card would arrive or a neighbor would come to negotiate a mail exchange. Nothing.

So today is the last day to register as a democrat (in person) with the local registrar of voters. I think it was today at noon in fact. After speaking with little brother, I called the Secretary of State's office. Why them? Because that is what the morons at town hall said I should do if I hadn't gotten a confirmation card. I called and I spoke to someone who said "You should probably call your town's registrar". PROBABLY? I said "You know, they told me that I should call you guys." The woman replied by telling me she was new and this was her first election.

Ok. Now, I've got some sympathy for her at this point. But why (oh why) have this newbie answering the phone the day before the primary? It's not like the CT Secretary of State's office didn't know this was going to be a bigger than normal primary. Maybe they are so busy they had to let a Judy answer the phone at the elections office.

The woman got me the number for my registrar. I called. It was confusing. Finally, the old gal on the other end (who despite the confusion sounded much more competent than the town clerk who "helped" with my registration) said "I have you registered but something's not right. Let me call you back."

Turns out whoever processed it gave me the wrong address. Aw, and here I was blaming the mailman....she does deserve it though not for this issue it seems. Why would I leap to the conclusion that it was the carrier's fault? Because she does suck (A___ frequently gets a neighbor's bank statements), but also because I just sort of naturally assumed that something as important as processing voter registrations would not be left in the hands of idiots.

Turns out A___ also got a confirmation card for another person, not a neighbor. She shared a last name with A___ though. So that's two local registration fuck ups right here in my tiny little apartment complex in my tiny little town. This is troubling, no? Not conspiracy theory troubling, but again, don't you think voter registrations should be processed with a bit more care? I do.

After I vote tomorrow (assuming the repair the town registrar made to my registration actually goes through) I'm planning on asking who processes this stuff. I'm sort of curious now.

Oh and mostly of the point of this was to say if you live here in the US and plan to vote (ever), if you find you have any doubts about whether you are registered or registered PROPERLY, call and ask. I'm hoping to find out today what I should do if I go to vote tomorrow and find that the problem has not been fixed (because now I am finding I just haven't got a lot of faith in the town government). If I discover anything remotely informative, I'll post it.

Stormy (and scary) weather

At first, it was just sort of strange and sometimes annoying. Something you thought maybe would go away. Something to say "wow that was a rainy October." Or "the weather that year sure was strange."

Now, with us greeting the third atypical season of the year with the second day of the most recent "spontaneous" thunderstorm (complete with fierce lightning and 2 to 3 inch per hour downpours), now as I reflect on the creepy local weather (which feels like an echo of unfortunate national and global instances of fucked up weather related shit), it undeniably feels like something is very wrong.

It feels like we broke the weather.

Kinda makes you want to go out and tag an SUV, doesn't it? Better watch out though. SUV vandalism is not only a federal offense these days, it is a crime on the same scale as the 9/11/01 attacks. Just the thought of SUV vandalism is enough to raise at least as much community outrage as child rape. How fucked up is that?

Yep, if I were to go out and spray paint "Avarice" onto the hood of a Ford Expander or whatever the fuck they're called, I would deserve to die horribly according to some. I can't imagine what the motivation for buying and driving an SUV is, especially now that gas costs so much. For those of you who have never driven something like this, here's a fuel economy table, modified, from Wikipedia*.

			Type										Combined fuel economy
			SUVs										19.19 mpg 12.25 l/100 km
			Minivans										20.36 mpg 11.55 l/100 km
			Family sedans										26.94 mpg 8.73 l/100 km
			Honda Insight										63 mpg 3.73 l/100 km

*Wikipedia gives theautochannel.com as the source for this info.

I haven't read this yet but I am planning to. It's a regional climate report called the New England Regional Assessment Report (description from website below).
The New England Regional Assessment (NERA) is one of 16 regional assessments, conducted for the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), as part of the National Assessment of climate change impacts on the United States. The National Assessment is directed by response to the Congressional Act of 1990, at the request of the President's Science Advisor.