Belated Musings On the 2nd Presidential Debate

Self realizes she should have posted sooner about the presidential debate. But what with grading the latest batch of quizzes from xxxxx community college (Students up in arms! Demanding speedy conclusion to meandering classroom debates over Edward P. Jones’ The Known World!), and wringing her hands over imminent arrival of Dearest Mum, and listening to Dear Brother-in-Law get exercised over Dearest Mum’s latest financial pecadilloes, and wondering what other Dear Brother-in-Law (arriving day after tomorrow) would like for dinner, self hardly has time to even pay attention to the election!

She did, however, catch a few glimpses of the last few minutes of the debate. My, Obama looked sooo relaxed! McCain looked — oh, well, he looked aggressive. Jumpy, even. The last question, which self thought was an extremely thoughtful one (There you go, self, two “thought”s in one sentence, you are definitely losing it!), went something like, “What don’t you know, and how are you going to go about learning it?” (Self apologizes in advance to dear blog readers for horribly mangled paraphrase). Obama went first. And he said: “Well, there are a lot of things I don’t know, and my wife always lets me know it.” Cut to Michelle, looking ravishing. And then McCain said: xxxxxx. Zzzzz.

Later, self saw highlights on the evening news, and there was this very exciting clip of Obama swearing he was going to go after Osama bin Laden and kill him. Self was so impressed! McCain countered with something like, “You all know that you never reveal your hand to your opponent! As my opponent has just done!”

Oh, but why dig this all up, dear blog readers? Hubby has just returned from the office. He’s hardly been two minutes in the house, and he’s already switched the TV from “House” (an extremely interesting episode, about a nun with an apparent stigmata) to “The Daily Show.” Self is reminded that there is indeed a world “out there,” that weighty matters are being decided, that the fate of the country, of the world, of millions of illegal immigrants, babies, not to mention self’s future, are hanging in the balance! Thank you, hubby! Thank you for always restoring self’s sense of perspective!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

The New York Times on Our Great Leader

From an article by Gail Collins, on the Op-Ed page of the 20 September 2008 New York Times:

These times are so perilous that George W. Bush emerged from his burrow on Friday to reassure the American people about the financial crisis.

Looking either grim or overmedicated, Bush spoke for several minutes  —  1,260 words worth of reassurance.  That was a far more ambitious effort than the day before, when, as Politico’s Roger Simon noted, our president devoted 100 fewer words to his public utterances on the collapsing economy than he did to toasting the president of Ghana at dinner.

Behind the-first-president-with-an-M.B.A.-and-a-lot-of-good-it-did-us stood the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, who appears to be actually running the government.

See, this is interesting:  self never knew that W had an MBA.  Now her next order of business is to find out where.  Or, perhaps it should be Ben Bernanke self should be investigating.  Does Bernanke have an M.B.A.?  And if so, from which august institution?  Would anyone from the alma maters of either Bush and Bernanke like to trumpet their assocation with these two stellar alums?  Self thinks not.

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

The Economist on Sarah Palin: What Is an “American Redneck”?

from The Economist of 13 September 2008:

“A backwoods, polar-bear-strangling Britney Spears manqué”; “Vice-President Barbie”: British newspaper columnists have sneered at Sarah Palin at least as energetically as some East-Coast Americans. Typically, however, there has also been an equal and opposite reaction to her appearance on John McCain’s ticket: we want one! This enthusiasm has generally been motivated by the sexy-librarian look and the Alaskan gothic back-story. But there are also sensible reasons for Britain’s political classes to pay heed to Mrs. Palin. She seems able to speak in the demotic lexicon of cross rednecks and others disenchanted with mainstream American politics.

The article then goes on to explain why there are no rednecks in Britain:

• In Britain, “large fauna are not routinely slaughtered for fun.”
• The British “cling to pubs and satellite-television dishes rather than Bibles and hunting rifles.”
• Few British people “race tractors or follow NASCAR.”

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Second Quote of the Day: Chancelucky on the Bank Bailout

From chancelucky on the Bank Bailout (cut and paste from a comment he left this morning):

Sixty years later, they removed those restrictions and lo and behold a stock market crash and a sudden financial collapse with ominous talk of a depression. It’s like they got bitten by a dog then stuck their hand in the cage again.

Oh, chancelucky, you’re killing me!  Self loves the comparison to the person sticking his or her hand in the dog cage, absolutely loves it!  Ha ha ha!

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.

Quote of the Day: Eavesdropping on “Chancelucky”

Because self thinks he is right and has something important to say:

Hidden Fees of the Bank Bailout

The Federal government recently bailed out AIG, the world’s largest insurance company, for 85 billion dollars in loans. Two days later, the Department of the Treasury is talking about hundreds of billions of dollars in “rescue” money for various financial institutions. These numbers are hauntingly familiar, because they’re roughly comparable to what we’ve spent on the War in Iraq. They’re also more expensive by a factor of at least ten than items like, fully funding special education (a thirty year old promise) at the Federal level, providing medical insurance for every child in America, giving every college student in America free tuition. Oddly we consider health care and education social “luxuries” that some claim we simply can’t afford, yet as best I can tell the various decisions that led to the current financial system and the War were also purely optional.

Pygmalion, The Remake: Starring, In Order of Appearance, John McCain and Sarah Palin

This morning, self doubled over with laughter (Quite a feat, considering she has shortly to teach two classes), all due to having read a post by an intrepid gang of Santa Barbara bloggers on contemporary misgivings

Check it out, dear blog readers.

Third Wednesday of September 2008

Dearest Mum, Dear Bro, and nephew are stopping over in Bangkok en route to Manila with Ying’s ashes. Her funeral is Sunday, 9 a.m., at the Santuario de San Antonio.

Self found two pictures of Ying, both taken with Dear Bro and Franco: In one of them, Franco seemed to be about seven. They were at a beautiful beach, perhaps in Palawan. The second was a studio shot: Franco appeared to be a year old. In both pictures, Ying is heart-stoppingly happy and beautiful.

Self also saw a movie: “Bangkok Dangerous.” It’s the last week that she’ll have any free afternoons: next week she starts teaching her fourth class, the one in xxxx community college. Half the time self was sniffling, remembering the first time Dear Bro introduced her to Ying: It was

The Official Start of Summer & A Quote From The Economist

(Gone: Memorial Day Weekend: A Questionnaire)

Self musing over what summer 2008 may have in store. Here is a short list of the movies self knows for sure she wants to see:

“Hulk”
“Hellboy II”
“Kung Fu Panda”
“The Love Guru”
“Zohan”

In her usual contrarian way, self resolves that her summer reading list will not contain a single thriller, “chick lit” novel, or memoir. Instead, she will focus almost exclusively on non-fiction: Stephen Greenblatt’s Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror, and similar.

Self would dearly love to get a lot of writing done but, she knows, that part of her life is not in her hands.

Here are a few certainties:

Self will watch the MTV Movie Awards (June 1).

Battlestar Galactica will end forevermore (sob).

There will be bills to pay.

Son will be traveling around Europe.

Self will not return home to Manila. Neither will she return to Tel Aviv (Even though Ying has just completed second round of chemotherapy and there is no end in sight).

Dearest Mum will visit and stay for a month.

The same ratty old pink couch which self has been wanting to replace for something like six or seven years will still be in the living room.

Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for president.

In connection to that last, here is a quote from the May 10 issue of The Economist:

In cartoons there is often a moment when a hapless character, having galloped over a cliff, is still unaware of the fact and hangs suspended in the air, legs pumping wildly, until realisation dawns, gravity intervenes and downfall ensues. Hillary Clinton’s campaign looks a bit like that this week.

(And that was two weeks ago, dear blog readers . . . )

Say It Ain’t So, Harrison!

Self is watching the weirdest Harrison Ford movie ever. In the scene currently presenting before self’s disbelieving eyes, a wildly staring, twitchy Ford is dancing with French actress Emmanuele Seigner, clad in a fetching orange dress (How very prescient of the film-makers to anticipate the “hot summer color” of 2008!)

The whole movie is crazy, though it does feature one very memorable scene of Harrison Ford jumping out of bed, stark naked, with only a teddy bear covering his privates. Then he gets into a fight with two French thugs and self wonders if the film-makers are really going to go all the way with this . . . (a la Viggo Mortensen in “Eastern Promises”) But, alas, no, the scene ends five seconds later.

Speaking of Viggo, “Witness” was showing on TV a few nights ago, and lo and behold, who was that fetching young lad in all the Amish scenes? A really good-looking boy — why, it was none other than Viggo! At, like, 15 years old! And his face looked exactly the same.

(And — aaargh, manicure that self was so proud of, only a few hours ago, has been chipped in several places. When??? How??? Was manicurist perhaps skimping on her product? Self means: using cheaper brands than usual? Because self has never had this happen before, not in all the eight years she’s been a customer. And then hubby tells self that he pulled into a Chevron and had begun filling up with gas when he saw the price/gallon: $4.23. He stopped after he’d loaded up $3.93 and left. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hubby says, shaking his head, “This country’s really going to the dogs.”)

Stay tuned, dear blog readers, stay tuned.