Honk if you’re a homophobe!
I nearly drove off the highway yesterday evening. NPR’s Michele Norris was interviewing Paul Weyrich, a conservative activist and leader of the Free Congress Foundation, about the Foley sex scandal and Dennis Hastert’s role and responsibility. Weyrich said the following: (transcript taken from Wikipedia)

Weyrich: It has been known for many years that Congressman Foley was a homosexual. Homosexuals tend to be preoccupied with sex — the idea that he should be continued, or should have been continued as chairman on the Committee for Missing and Exploited Children, given their knowledge of that is just outrageous (Interview at 1:08).
Norris: Now, before we go on, I think I can say, Mr. Weyrich, that there quite a few people who would take exception to the statement that homosexuals are preoccupied with sex.
Weyrich: Well, I don't care whether they take exception to it — it happens to be true.
Norris: That is your opinion.
Weyrich: Well, it's not my opinion, it's the opinion of many psychologists and psychiatrists who have to deal with them* (Interview at 1:40).

What?!?! The same has been said about men in general, but no one ever said, “We should have expected no less from Clinton; after all, he’s a man!” In no way do I condone or excuse Foley’s disgusting actions, but if Weyrich’s rationale were rational, then what we really need is a (straight) woman in the White House, for lord knows our culture’s stigma says that women don’t think or talk about sex (a claim that Sex and the City does well to dispute). So here’s yet another reason W. shouldn’t be president: he’s man and is probably spending too much time thinking about banging his wife to responsibly govern our country.

*"Deal with them"? I "deal" with traffic on my daily commute; I "deal" with pesky telemarketers; I "deal" with PMS. And unfortunately I have to deal with homophobes and bigots like my good friend Mr. Weyrich.

go CoMo, go CoMo, go!
An excerpt from "Making the Band" by Erin Byers in this month's issue of Boston.

There's a particular smell that comes from a rock band at 4 in the morning--the semll of too many guys crowded into a small space littered with too many pizza boxes, too many cigarttes, and too many empty beer bottles. This is the smell wafting through a room at the Regency Hotel downtown in Columbia, Missouri, where the Boston band Apollo Sunshine is crashing for the night.
For the past five days, all that the band members had talked about was the marathon party they were going to have after they played a gig at Columbia's Blue Note club. It would be an all-nighter for the record books, the Perfect Hangover. Yet there we all were, slumped in a stinky haze--them, dazed; me, confused.
[...]
Groupies today are not the sex-crazed females portrayed in so many movies. Forget Kate Hudson in Almost Famous;* think John Cusak in High Fidelity.
[...]
We finally arrive in Columbia. The band has visited nearly every city between Boston and San Diego, but to the guys this college town is Vegas and Gomorrah combined. "Last time I was in [Missouri] I slept with two women," Gallagher boasts...


I wonder if I know either of those two women...

Also, Columbia was mentioned on NPR last week in a story about a guy (in CoMo) who started a Save Fiona Apple club and helped to convince her lable to go through with producing her latest record. I gave a little, "Woot woot!" in my car when I heard them mention Columbia.

X degrees from Nelson Mandela?
My dad is having dinner with the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Monday night. Sweet.

*Penny Lane was not a "groupie." She was a Band-Aid! Get it straight!

do you understand the words that are coming outta my mouth?
Intense coverage of Katrina has brought to light the various ways of prounouncing New Orleans. I give you a few I've heard:

Nu Or-lins
N'Aw-lins
Nu Or-leens
N'Or-lins
Nu Or-ley-ans

And then there's the way Cokie Roberts pronounces it, which I can't even begin to emmulate in type.

I'm wondering how Snoop Dogg* would pronounce it. N'Orlizzle? And how about Fiddy? N'Errlins?

*Or Snoop Dubb, for that matter.

CSI: Phoenix
So, the news around here is my work computer left me. As in just got up last night, took its monitor and external hard drive with it, and said, I'm getting the hell out of Dodge. We fought over a font last week, but I didn't think it was a fight worth leaving over.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was stolen. Either way, it leaves me without my normal work station and prepping to talk with police officers. At least that's what I expected. But one police office visit later and they didn't even dust for finger prints. I was hoping for some yellow caution tape roping off my desk at the very least. Apparently the footage from the tiny cameras that record every move in our building has been fried by the heat. And I had to unlock the door to the office this morning. Something fishy's going on here.

Thank God for the major backup I did last Thursday of this summer's total redesign. That leaves only 2 days of work to make up. Here's a tip: write down all the serial numbers of your computer, monitor, printer, all software etc. so you have them in case anything happens to your computer.

makin' the news
In case you haven't read Fiscus' post yet, here's more news from the Valley of the Sun: I made The Republic. Scott Simon: so dreamy.



in plate view
What do you think of ONAJRNY?

to london, with love
9/11 may have had more deaths and casualties and may have been only half the country away, but yesterday's attack on London hit closer to home, because it hit closer to my heart. In September of 2001 I had never been to NYC or DC, and I knew no one in either city, (save for Gracy having grown up in a DC suburb, and she of course, was safe in Columbia). I had seen New Yorkers running from an attack on their city before - I had watched Independence Day. So even though my brain knew that the news cameras were not using special effects to alter the scenes of destruction, I didn't react emotionally to the attacks for months.

But yesterday had me in tears the moment I heard of the bombings on London's transport system. I felt very much under attack even half-way across the globe. London is my city. I can picture Russell Square, hear the computerized voice saying, "This is a District Line train to Edgware Road," remember rushing up the stairs to the top of a red double-decker bus for the best seats in the house and have pictures of me with the trolly beneath the sign in the King's Cross station marking Platform 9 3/4. The city holds a piece of me in its history, and it holds Megan and Jon now. When I got into work and turned on my computer, the image of a Tube map that I had set as my desktop wallpaper back in January flickered into view, bright, colorful and looking as safe as it had the day before. The tube map, so central to London and my experiences there, the map is London itself to me. And despite its smells and crowds, or maybe a bit because of it, the Tube is one of my favorite parts of London.

Glued to NPR, I clung to the report that the Jubilee Line was unharmed, knowing that was the line Megan took to work every day, and burst into tears as soon as her mom said she and Jon were safe. But even knowing they were safe didn't keep my emotions in check for the rest of the day. A woman was interviewed on NPR outside Earl's Court Tube station, a block from where I once lived, and I could imagine her - I could imagine ME - standing there, next to the news agent with an Evening Standard poster proclaiming the day's biggest headline: "Terrorism on London Transport." An attack like yesterday's wasn't unexpected. There were warnings when I was there. But knowing it could happen doesn't dull the shock when it does.

One of my favorite depictions of the Tube map was the '80s "Tate by Tube" poster that shows tubes of paint creating the Tube map (Get it? Paint tubes? The Tube?) and promoting the Tate Museum - I don't remember if it was for the Tate Modern or the Tate Britain, but my hunch is the Tate Modern. I had a horrible vision yesterday of some ignorant 2-year-old mussing up that image by finger painting.

Maybe it sounds a bit callous, but while 9/11 left a hole in the skyline of New York, 7/7 left a hole in my heart.

and now for a little comic* relief
I've been house- and dog-sitting this week. For me, this has meant eating sugary cereals for breakfast (Golden Grahams - yay!), drinking fun drinks for dinner (chocolate milk - woohoo!) and having special drinks for dessert (Bailey's - oooooh!). For the dogs, it meant peeing on the clothes I set out for church. I've never lived with dogs before. Apparently they don't like it when something new is on the floor. Or maybe they had warmed up to me and were marking my clothes as part of their territory, in which case I feel I should sense some kind of flattery, but it's evading me. I quickly made a new rule for myself: all clothes go in the closet, behind a shut door, and nothing is left on the floor. I must have disobeyed my own rule, because today I came back from work to find a pair of my knickers torn and in a knot - A KNOT! These cute black poodles literally have my panties in a bind. I didn't know dogs knew how to tie knots.

*Sans the sans, of course.

blogless
I haven't been as regular with my blogging lately, and that's partly because I've taken to going on walks during lunch rather than sitting at my desk. The weather is perfect right now and I know it won't last long, so I eat my lunch while working, then tie on the grubby pair of sneakers I stash in a desk drawer and head to the park. I've gotten to know the park regulars by sight now. There are the young professionals who lunch at the picnic tables, the retired couple to play tennis, the two UPS drivers who rest in their trucks and talk between cabs, the children who chase each other on roller skates up the slope and down the slope, the older birdwatching couple - he with his Cardinals (football) cap on and each with their binoculars around their neck - who take the same walking path as I. With an hour at my disposal, I usually go for a half-hour walk and then find a sunny spot on a park bench and read for a half and hour.

There's a riding stable next to the park, and Thursday three young kids were resting their horses at the picnic table where the young professionals usually lunch. The eldest girl was probably around 16 and the two younger kids (a brother and sister?) were somewhere between 7 and 11 years old. And the horses, oh they were beautiful. The 16-year-old had her hair in pigtails and I longed to be able to go up to her and say, "Hello there. I almost wore pigtails today too. Mind if I pet your horse?" as if our similar hairstyle would have forged an equestrian kinship. Later, while I was on my walk, the two horses and their riders came galloping through the park. The older girl was riding bareback (bareback!) and the two young kids were sharing the saddle of the second horse. And for a moment as they passed me, I was the girl with the pigtails, galloping through the park on a sunny Arizona day.

Instead, I turned around, sought out a park bench, jumped into the waters of the Atlantic and emerged in London, circa 1990 as I opened White Theeth and started reading.

really very ordinary
About three weeks ago, my mom and I went to a book reading at a local bookstore. The program was called "Wine and Words," and for it, the store brought together three first-time authors to read from their memoirs while the group of us sipped wine and ate yummy finger foods. One of the authors was Amy Krouse Rosenthal, her book is titled, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, and it's fantastic.* The whole thing is alphabetical snippets of her life. Take, for example, BROTHER: "My brother, who grew up with three sisters, was I won't say how many years old when he finally realized that he didn't have to wrap the towel around his chest when he came out of the shower." Ha! The book is personal and personable. She lets you into her life in chunks, much like the way you get to know a friend. A friend doesn't divulge her life's secrets in narrative, but rather you learn about her in bits of conversation and asides. Rosenthal's style is really akin to blogging, and maybe that's why it is so comfortable to me. Each alphabetical excerpt is like a blog entry, an entire book of "10 things you didn't know about Amy Rosenthal."

Morning Edition interviewed Rosenthal today, and I felt I had to share her with others as well. Check out her Web site (linked to above and on the right) and then go get the book. Do it.

quiz show
I'm thinking about tearing a page out of Clark's blog and creating a quiz for my readers to answer. Look for than in a few weeks.

*Yes, I'm double-booked right now. If you don't know that reference, you need to read So Many Books, So Little Time.

...and a bully for ol' manhattan
This just in: Fred Brock was interviewed on Morning Edition as I was driving to work this morning. My mom called me right after the report ended, and we were both sqealing, "He lives in our house!" Could Brock have taken that interview in our former kitchen? Or maybe in the downstairs office? Or maybe his office is my former bedroom, and he took the call from Renee Montagne there. Oooh! I love having him live in our house!

because i'm a good person
I just made a listener contribution to our local NPR station.