8 posts from February 2008

What aspect of your personality could use a little work?

HA   HA   HA.  You're kidding, right?

I think the main thing is that I could be a nice person.  That would actually take a lot of work.  I could be kind and generous and maybe even sweet.  I hear such people exist. 

Of course, that would mostly depend on me experiencing things like "compassion" and "empathy."  My emotional functions, as I believe has been discussed before, are not optimized.  Indeed, they are deficient in many ways.  The "anger" button works well, but "happiness" was completely nonfunctional until recently as was "love."  I am given to understand that "kindness" springs largely from the "care" function, so now that I have some semi-functioning emotions, perhaps one day I will become this "nice" person.  

I wouldn't really be the GinBaby anymore, though, would I?  I'd be the WineCoolerBaby or something.  Ewwwww.

I suck because I totally caved since I have paid employment, more or less, and got satellite TV.  Seriously.  Out here if you don't have satellite, you have pretty much nothing (ABC is all). 

We got the 200-channel package.  Had to, to get Bravo so I could get back in on the Project Runway/Top Chef thing.  Tim Gunn is really necessary.

I didn't realize just how much I missed The Daily Show and Colbert, either.  I am still in awe that Hodgman compared the business model of al Qaeda to that of Quiznos. 

So, yeah, we're back on the TV.  Feh.

Anyway.  I'm down here shopping for seeds.  I've been studying--and I do mean studying--seed catalogs and gardening books for months now, and I have a game plan.  We're going to grow everything.  Possibly I have gone insane. 

Because, see, I live in Idaho.  Idaho is fairly far north.  The entire month of January this year, it did not once get above freezing.  Yet I just ordered a collection of seeds for a "tropical garden."  Just who do I think I'm kidding?

I think I can make it work.  It gets quite hot here in the summers.  The issues will be a) keeping tropical plants moist enough and b) getting them a long enough hot season.  The moisture issue can be controlled in large part with generous mulching.  Getting them extra hot days is going to take various types of plastic coverings.  Keep your fingers crossed for me, people, because we are also growing sesame, sweet potatoes, and peanuts.  I'm fascinated by the growth habit of peanuts, and I had to try to grow some.  But none of these things are even close to being adapted to this area. 

We're also growing a vast assortment of crazy Japanese veggies this year.  T grew up on a farm north of Tokyo, though, and he's grown all these things before (including sesame) and he thinks, with the exception of the peanuts, that we can get it all to work here.  He thinks the peanuts are just madness. 

He also, if he lets himself think about it too much, thinks the quantity of tomato plants we are planning to install is madness.  We might oughtn't go into numbers here--but let's say it's north of 50, south of 100, and they're going in at different times so we have staggered production.  So that makes it all OK.

Anyway, the goals this year are three.  The first is to improve the quality of the soil.  This "soil" we have here is terrible.  It had nothing but grass for who knows how long, and it's near worthless.  We have been adding organic matter to it--llama poo, hay, veggie waste, etc.--but it needs more.  In a few places we need hardpan broken up.  So, I have concocted a scheme to alternate crops and cover crops (the cover crops will serve multiple purposes including breaking up the packed dirt, adding nitrogen and phosphorus, and providing us and the chickens with some greens (mostly the chickens). 

The second big goal is moving to as close to year-round gardening as it will be possible to get here without a heated greenhouse.  We have been debating building a heated greenhouse, but since we're not staying in this house permanently, it seems like a big thing.  Anyway, if the weather cooperates, our first things will start going in the ground just after St. Patty's Day.  The last things will be planted in September--of those, some will be harvested in late October or even early-to-mid November, some will get mulched and stored in-ground (carrots, parsnips, leeks, etc.), and some will overwinter to produce the next year (garlic, shallots, etc.)  That only leaves us with 3 months in which we have nothing growing out there and even less time with no fresh veg at all.  To hell with the supermarket.

And the third goal is DAMN we need windbreaks and shade.  I mean, DAMN.  These hot, dry winds of Hades rip across our garden from the south and EAT OUR SHIT UP.  The tomatoes, which I put along the south fence not knowing about the hell-winds, did not like it one bit last year.  My poor, beloved Brandywines.  I shall treat you better this year, my pretties.  Anyway, a windbreak of mixed shrubbery is going in there--some rosa rugosa, some nanking cherries, some chokecherries.  It should be quite fetching and protect my beautiful little tomatoes from Satan himself.  Another group of shrubs will go along the back of the house to absorb some of the afternoon heat that beats down right into my kitchen, the kitchen that is already hot from all the canning and has a window that DOES NOT OPEN.  Last summer was unbearable.  We are also planting a couple of trees back there and a big forest of tall sunflowers to provide some relief from it all (not to mention tasty seeds for snackin'). 

*sigh*  So much to do!  I want to get out there right now, but the foot and a half or so of snow left on the ground suggests it is not quite the time.

But I do have the seed catalogs, both online and off.  I wonder at the variety of seeds available.  We're trying to go mostly with open pollinated seeds so we can save them and even then, there are thousands of kinds.  Hell, there are probably thousands of kinds just of tomatoes.  I want to try them all, too.  Fortunately, I think we're going to sell some of it at the farmer's market this year, so I can justify all that zucchini (the catalog need only say "Italian heirloom variety" and I'm ready with the order form).

I'm browsing the catalog of the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange right now, and I have just suddenly become convinced that I must grow chervil.  And horehound.  And...

I'm sorry people.  I know I haven't been here lately.  I haven't read any of your blogs, and I haven't written anything. 

You know why?

Because I'm having an increasingly difficult time wanting to come down here and be on this stupid computer.  I hate it.  Every time I do, I end up being down here for several hours, much more than I was planning to, and it makes me feel like hell.  It's so sedentary.  It's so headache-inducing.  It's so ooogy in every way.  I hate it.  I could have been sleeping right now, and should have been.  Instead I came down here to look up one thing and here I am, three hours later, feeling shitty and tired and like my ass will never come unglued from this chair.

Also.  I'm going through one of the extreme misanthropic cycles which has made me not want to communicate with other humans outside my own little nuclear family.  I'm tired of people.  I'm tired of people who hate the South, even though they know nothing about it.  I'm tired of hearing about gun owners' phallic obsessions.  I'm tired of the creeping malaise of half-assed "anything goes" moral relativism that's going around; I am yet more tired of hearing it from people who in the next breath get all judgy and preachy about someone else's life (I am not a moral relativist in this sense, so it is my right and duty to get all judgy and preachy about other people's lives, so suck it).  I'm tired of people who get all exercised about "global warming" (note the quotes--I'm as concerned about actual global warming as anyone else, but the people I'm talking about are people who spend so much fucking time in air conditioned buildings they have no idea at all what the temperature is outside anyway) and then don't give a crap at all about, say, the effects their birth-control pills are having on fish (who are, yo, a part of the ecoSYSTEM--see the 'system' there?  DO YOU KNOW WHAT SYSTEM MEANS, YOU IGNORANT FUCK?).  I'm sick of Obama and Hillary and their ridiculous health-care "plans" and I frankly couldn't give two shits whether McCain had a mistress.  The man was a POW, for pity's sake, he's entitled a bimbo or two.

I'm sick to death of people who preach the results of every damned scientific study as new prescriptions for life, no matter how new the science is or seemingly contradictory to past reports.  I am YET more sick of the fact that these same people will one and all COMPLETELY IGNORE scientific findings, no matter how many other reports back it up, if they don't agree with their precious little world views.  I am tired of people who put themselves first in all things and then "refuse to feel guilty" about it.  I am tired of people who think their taste in music is the only defensible taste.  I have lost all patience for people who think that every privilege that they enjoy is actually a "right," and I am finding people who believe that they have a right not to be offended (irritated, outraged, irked, etc.) utterly intolerable.  (And hmm is it just me or are these the people who seem to be constantly offended by shit?)  I am tired of people who move to Phoenix and expect to play golf on greens that look as if they belong in merry old Scotland (isn't Scotland merry?  I had assumed, since they put whisky on their oatmeal, that they would be, yet I once knew a Scottish guy who insisted that the lyrics to the Sesame Street theme song went, "Sunny days, wishing my life away" which seems perversely dark for a kids' show.  The land of Burns and haggis is surely merry.  And rainy, and the rain is really the key thing there, in terms of the golf courses.)  I do not want to hear another story, either, about how all the old people in Sun City are getting STDs.  Apparently, the older generation needs sex ed, even as they like to lecture my generation about our fallen morals. 

I can't talk about it anymore.  I have artichoke seedlings to tend to.  This year's garden is going to be EPIC.  Oh, and I recently got a new digital camera, a tiny Sony camera, so there will be pictures this year, and I will start doing a separate Vox about the garden and the food.  Ninja keeps getting after me to show pictures of food, so I will.  Presumably, it will make me feel happy and good to talk about the plants and the food, and I'm just totally going to cover my ears and shout "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU" whenever politics or air conditioning or gun control comes up, ok?  Otherwise, I am sooooo going to burst an artery.  Food is nice.  Plants are excellent.  Compost delights me. 

I am my father's daughter, I guess.  Actually on both sides of my family, we're farmers from way back.  Why fight it?

OK, I've been puzzling over the health care plans put forth by Clinton and Obama (and Edwards, not that it matters anymore).  I've read them.  I've read commentaries on them.  And there are still some things I don't get.

How are these requirements that insurance suddenly become universal (in that no one can be denied on the basis of preexisting conditions and so forth) and also affordable supposed to work?  I mean, as far as I can tell, both plans are still working through mostly private insurers--that is, insurance companies that exist to make profit.  I think that a) the insurance companies are going to put up one hell of a fight about that and b) Congress and the courts won't go for it anyway, because requiring companies to do this sort of thing seems like a government intrusion into business that no one will actually approve.

Also, how exactly are we going to mandate (Clinton does; Obama not, apparently) that everyone buy insurance of some kind without also having pretty far-reaching solutions for the growing lower classes?  I understand Clinton wants to mandate that everyone buy insurance but at the same time index the premiums to income--but we're talking mostly about families who are already stretched to the breaking point.  Real wages haven't gone up in my lifetime; we're losing jobs; we're in a bloody recession!  There are already plenty of us who can technically afford health insurance but still cannot actually afford to go to the doctor for simple things like strep throat*.  I don't see this helping that situation, although they claim that they are going to reduce health-care costs at the same time.  But it is not at all clear to me how exactly this is supposed to happen. 

I understand this has been compared to requiring car insurance, which we already do.  Except that there are actually a lot of people out there who flout that mandate because they either cannot afford or cannot get car insurance.  You can require people to do things that they still do not do--I know this well, as I have a 2-year-old in my house.  Paul Krugman is arguing that Clinton's plan, by mandating that all the poor schleps out there further stretch their budget by buying some kind of health insurance, will get us universal health care.  Mmmm, I doubt it.  It will likely get nearly everyone to be insured, yes, but if they still can't afford to go to the doctor when they need to, I don't think it's much of a victory.

I thought--silly me--that the idea behind universal health care was that all people would be covered and be able to afford to actually use the services of health care providers.  Unless Clinton and/or Obama suddenly comes up with radical plans to greatly reduce the already plentiful economic burdens on those of us who exist between the median income and the poverty line, I really don't see this helping very much. 

Am I too pessimistic, or am I missing some key part of their plans?  O wise readers, please tell me it's one or the other (or both) because otherwise, this poo just stinks.

*Last year, we (my family) were in this position.  This year we're a little better off.  The main difference is not that we have more money but that T's employer offers flexible spending accounts (which Hillary does not approve of, or so I hear) that allow us to deposit a portion of each of his paychecks into a special account we can use for medical expenses.  You get a tax break by doing this, but the tax break doesn't actually save us any money because our tax bracket is already a negative percent.  All it does for us is ensures that there is money for medical expenses.  We don't miss the $34 or whatever per paycheck, and then the money is there when we need it.  However, we don't miss that money mostly because we are excessively, obsessively frugal, and I believe a lot of families in our income bracket would miss it.

The news is out:  Obese people and smokers cost health care systems less money over their lifetimes than thin, "healthy" people do.  

Initial response:  So, I guess all those people who claim to have a virulent hatred of the obese because of the costs to the health care system and the increase in premiums for "healthy" people are going to have to find a new justification for their feelings.  I always thought it was a rather selfish and shallow and unnecessarily monetary justification anyway, but now it's also untrue. 

Second response:  Well, it makes bloody sense, doesn't it?  If the nonobese, nonsmoker types live longer than the others, then over a lifetime, they probably do cost more. 

But wait.  Thin, "healthy" people only live 4 years longer (on average, of course) than obese people?  Four measly years?  So, I'm thinking the people who claim to have seething, roiling hatred of the obese because it's ruining their health and shortening their lives need to find a new justification, as well.  (This, anyway, is added to the CDC's study that demonstrated that overweight people have less mortality than people in the "normal, healthy" weight range.  Favorite takeaway quote:  "Counting deaths is not an exact science."  Really?  Because I would have thought counting deaths is pretty straightforward--you either are dead, or you're not.  Unless you're UNdead, of course, but presumably the undead among us did not get counted, as I doubt they rely on traditional health care services.)

Third response:  "Preventing obesity and smoking can save lives..."  Ah, no.  I have to object to the use of "save" there.  See, the rub of the matter is that we're all going to die.  Some of us will die of heart disease, some in knife fights, some by getting hit by the proverbial bus, some of us will be fortunate enough to die while we're in one of the Kama Sutra positions.  But preventing obesity will not save anyone's life--they might die later than they otherwise would have, or they might not.  They might die of a stroke instead of diabetes, although that is impossible to know. 

No, sorry.  If you want to hate on the obese, that's your business, of course, but it is not right to hate on them for economic reasons or because you (disingenuously) claim to want to "save" their lives.  If you want to hate on the obese, do so honestly.  Admit that obesity disgusts you, because you think obese people are immoral and engaging in at least two (and possibly more) of the 7 Deadlies and utterly lack self-control.  Admit that you're afraid you'll catch it and be unable to fit into your jeans.  It's alright.  Most people will understand, as those are similar to the reasons most people dislike the obese and want to "help" them. 

That doesn't mean there is no good reason to prevent obesity when it is possible to do so.  It seems to be that obese and even overweight people, in general, are less healthy overall while they are alive.  It is possible that the quality of life suffers for many obese people, although that's hard to measure (and it is entirely possible that lower quality of life is directly related to being discriminated against).  But those things hardly warrant the bigotry and the invasive measures our government is undertaking to prevent "the epidemic."

Oh, and P.S., America isn't the #1 country for obesity anymore, it appears.  You know why?  Because we suck at everything.  Ha Ha Ha.

Oh, man, so I mentioned recently that when I took that quiz, the candidate I came up most matching with was Mike Gravel, right?  Then today I read this, and OH YEH, GRAVEL FTW!

Not that that will happen of course.  But imagine a world in which the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and the COMMANDER IN CHIEF of our big freakin armed forces thinks that war is never the answer!  Can you imagine?  It makes me all giddy just thinking about it.

I mean, seriously.  America is all about war.  And here he thinks that maybe we could find better things to do with ourselves than kill people?  It's...it's unimaginable.  It's also a strategy that will not get you put on any ballots anywhere in the country.  Super.

And another thing.  Since it looks like McCain is the likely Republican nominee, I've been thinking about the matchup, and I don't think Hillary can beat him.  Certainly she knows more about domestic policy, but the American people don't vote for someone based on what that person knows.  There is the war thing, of course, where Hillary claims to want to end it and McCain apparently doesn't care if it just sort of goes on forever. 

But.  McCain tends to attract right-ish Democrats and independents, whereas Clinton tends not to.  It is my humble opinion that McCain generally appeals to rural and Southern voters more, too.  And finally, and I think this may be a biggie--she's been running all this time as the "experienced" candidate, right?  I realize she doesn't have to keep a consistent message from the primaries to the general election, but a) she can't win the "experience" thing against McCain, no way, b) she can't become a "change" candidate because HELLO OLIGARCHY and anyway she represents politics as usual, and c) she will get hammered by the voters who already are inclined to dislike her for changing her message--wishy-washy liberals and the politician in her saying whatever it takes to get elected instead of what she really believes, etc.; we've heard this all before about many a Democrat candidate, no?  She could win on domestic policy because, again, she certainly knows a lot about the economy and health care that McCain does not.  But she can't win on foreign policy against him (she could have won on domestic and foreign policy against Romney, I think, and handily).

Now, Obama, I think, could beat McCain.  In Barack and John, I think there are two such completely different people--in temperament, in experience, in beliefs--that it wouldn't be a fight over who knows more or who has more experience.  Instead it would be more of a debate about what we believe and what kind of person we want up there, and I think Barack could win that.  Change!  Youth!  Handsomeness!  Diplomacy!  Heckuva wife!  Unity!  Hope!  Did I mention the handsome thing?

So, does that mean I'm voting Obama?  No way.  GO GO GADGET GRAVEL!  GRAVEL/EDWARDS '08!  With Richardson as Secretary of State.  There's your change.  Suddenly we're a nation of leftish libertarians who decides to use the money freed up by ending the war on drugs to implement real sex education and make sure all people can get their hands on (and know how to use) contraception.  Suddenly we're taking real steps to fight poverty.  Suddenly we have an experienced diplomat--someone who fundamentally believes in diplomacy and knows how to do it--as Sec. of State.  What a different world it would be.

And what about Barack, whom I have grown to like?  Make him Secretary of Unity and Hope and Smooth Talking.  Make him Secretary of Positive Thinking.  Make him Secretary of How to Keep Your Integrity by Not Voting for Senseless Wars (of course, we won't have senseless wars if we have Gravel--wooooo, Gravel!).  Make him Secretary of Handsomeness. 

I guess Hillary could be Secretary of Pantsuits and Overanalyzed Crying.  She could also be Secretary of Takin' Care of Business (workin' overtime!).

I've completely lost my head.  I need this election to be over.

P.S.  How the fuck has it come to be that someone can win the popular vote but not win the majority of delegates?  The results from some states are showing Barack with a popular win but Hillary with more delegates?  Did we not learn anything at all from the Gore v. Bush debacle, people?  THIS IS ALLEGEDLY A REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY, RIGHT?  COME ON, PEOPLE.  I believe we are supposed to be nominating the person the most people actually voted for. 

So, I just took this quiz to see which presidential candidate I am most closely aligned with, and it proclaimed me to have an 86% similarity with Mike Gravel.

And I'm thinking, Mike Gravel?  That dude from Alaska?  Is he running for President? 

I know who he is, but I had no idea he was running for President.  Or, I think I had a vague notion that he was running for President but I guess I didn't realize he still is running.  You know, it's possible I would have realized he was running for President if he was ever mentioned as a presidential candidate in any of the media I read.  I get most of my coverage online, of course, like any modern girl, and I had no idea dude was running.  Everything is Hillary this and Obama that, which both Richardson and Edwards noted and had noted on their behalf.  But who has any love for Gravel?

Anyway, I was also 84% similar to Edwards.  I knew it!

My similarities to the two pet candidates of the liberal mass media (hee hee!) were very close to each other but a full 10 points below my similarities to Gravel and Edwards.  And let's face it, the health care plans of both Clinton and Obama have a lot to do with the plan Edwards came up with (although all of them are very meh and uninspiring and even kind of not good, but, hey, this is America, and we're not a bunch of damned socialists!). 

So, media:  Why no love for the white boys this year?  Me, I don't care about the gender or color of the person who will put an end to this senseless and wasteful war or who will wangle a way to make health care affordable or who will fix the No Child Left Behind mess.  I don't see color or gender as particularly germane to those issues.

Obama is very cute, though.  Maybe we could talk more about that and just forget about that pesky war.  Gee, you think he wears boxers or briefs?

I almost linked the "boxers or briefs" bit to this, referring to Bill Clinton being asked that, but when I noticed that the blogmeister refers to the life of Hunter S. Thompson as a "67-year-long episode of Jackass" I'm afraid I just couldn't deal.  Because, yeah, Thompson was so totally all about stuffing foreign objects up his ass for the comedic value.   Curse you, MTV, for soiling the universe.

What have you changed your mind about? 
Submitted by chitoes.

You mean just today?  Today I think I've only changed my mind about what color I want to paint the bathroom walls.  Oh, and I changed my mind about what to make for dinner.  I was going to make pozole, but we ended up making something else. 

If we're talking more long term, then I have changed my mind about virtually everything, for various reasons.  One of them is that I started reading philosophy in the context of debate and then I majored in philosophy at college.  This all matters because of the way competitive debate works and the type of professors I had.  Allow me to elaborate.

For any of you who have not gone to the extremes of nerdiness that I have and joined a debate team in high school or college, let me explain a few of the fundamentals.  I did Lincoln-Douglas debate, a type of debate that centers on theoretical and philosophical questions rather than matters of policy or practical matters.  The policy debaters are way, way nerdier than the L-D debaters, trust me.  But some of what I'm talking about pertains as well to policy debate.

In a competitive debate, you are given a topic (in L-D, we got a new topic every month, but policy gets one for the whole year, as their research is more complicated).  You must prepare to argue both sides (affirmative and negative) and you are told a very short time (usually) before each round of the tournament which side you are to argue.  That means that whatever you believe you must at all times be prepared to convince someone of the opposite.  This is not always easy.  (Incidentally, I still do this, all the time.  Just because I am arguing some point, that does not mean that's what I personally think or believe.  It goes beyond playing "devil's advocate" for me, as I won't just bring up one or two points to throw you off.  Oh, no, I will have an entire argument with you in which I say nothing that I actually believe, you know, just to argue.)

Then there is the matter of the flow chart.  Any time I am in an argument, I have a little flow chart of it in my head.  I have the summary and organization of my opponent's argument, even if they presented it in an entirely incoherent manner. 

Thanks to debate, I am also adept at predicting arguments.  Most of the time, I know what my opponent is going to say before she says it.  I know the arguments and I have previously considered them.  Occasionally, I jump the gun and start arguing against something they haven't actually said yet, just because I've heard the argument before.  On spectacular occasions, someone says something I entirely failed to predict or consider.  The first time that happened to me in competition, it was Dean who did it, and I had a tremendous crush on him ever after.  Who knew that while debating whether the US has a moral obligation to promote democracy around the world, Dean would opt for arguing that, actually, democracy sucks?  Few people take that position, and he used Plato's Republic to back him up, a book I had not read at that time (you bet I read it after that, though!).  I was flummoxed, not least because of his delicious eyes.  Ah, well.

Anyway, so this is how I used to have fun.  Arguing, considering counter-arguments and ways to successfully eviscerate them, then arguing some more.  Between rounds of debate, my good friend and I would wander the halls in heated debate over the Categorical Imperative.  He was a Kantian, and I was not.  Being forced to adopt positions you do not believe in and --crucially-- convince others of those positions makes you think long and hard about what you really think, and I often changed and refined my beliefs.

The second thing I mentioned above was studying philosophy at university.  This might not have had anything to do with changing my mind except that, well, obviously I read books that presented completely new and startling ways of considering the world, ethics, art, and everything else.  But the key really was Professor Walton, not called Dick for no reason.  No, he was a nice enough guy but inclined to being very stern and old-fashioned in his views of education and ethics.  He taught me all I know, or very nearly, about classical philosophy--Greek, Roman, that sort of thing.  It is not my specialty, to say the least, but he did the best he could.

The most important thing I took away from his class, though, was what he called the "principle of generosity."  The idea is that when you are reading a text, you always assume the author is correct unless and until you can prove them wrong.  Sometimes, like when you're reading Rush Limbaugh, it is very easy to come up with the counter-evidence (or, the factual evidence as opposed to his fabricated evidence) or counter-argument, as his arguments are facile and juvenile.  When you're reading Plato and Aristotle, it is less easy.  Indeed, it is often confounding.  But unless you are really prepared to just accept as truth every work of philosophy (or anything else), you must find those arguments.  Old Walton certainly knew how to separate the serious students from the billy goats and make the serious students work their asses off justifying their beliefs.  More people should try it--it makes your argument-fu very strong.  Instead of encouraging reading for the purpose of passively learning about someone else's ideas, it makes you question and defend your own.

Anyway, so in the course of debating people for fun and profit and suffering under the tutelage of Aristotle and Kant, I have changed my mind about most everything.  I remain always open to new evidence or ideas (I know, you don't believe me, but it's true) and thus my mind changes sometimes--less frequently now, because I have listened to and considered more arguments now than I had 10 years ago, but it still happens sometimes.

Ah, so, what?  You want examples?  Well, I used to be a libertarian capitalist (and I used to believe America practiced capitalism, until I learned about the elaborate provisions of corporate welfare we have).  Now I'm a libertarian socialist.  Discuss.