Month: July 2004

God Bless the USA

Why the best cardiology departments are in the southern US: Deep. Fried. Cheeseburgers. “Ochsner clinical dietitian Eve Dansereau reacted with astonishment that a deep fried cheeseburger existed, and I didn’t even tell her about the one that’s stuffed with bacon, hot sausage and two kinds of cheese.”

Melodrama

I come back again and again to Romance Sonambulo. It’s melodramatic, which I normally hate, but that’s part of the appeal for most of Lorca’s work. He was an incredibly melodramatic person, but the world really was out to get him, and sooner rather than later it did. Here’s the part where the bleeding highwayman comes to the house of his beloved seeking refuge and is turned away:

Compadre, quiero cambiar
mi caballo por su casa,
mi montura por su espejo,
mi cuchillo por su manta.
Compadre, vengo sangrando
desde los puertos de Cabra.
Si yo pudiera, mocito,
este trato se cerraba.
Pero yo ya no soy yo,
ni mi casa es ya mi casa.
Compadre, quiero morir
decentemente en mi cama.
De acero, si puede ser,
con las sábanas de holanda.
¿ No veis la herida que tengo
desde el pecho a la garganta?
Trescientas rosas morenas
lleva tu pechera blanca.
Tu sangre rezuma y huele
alrededor de tu faja.
Pero yo ya no soy yo.
Ni mi casa es ya mi casa.

Eventually, You Find One You Can’t Resist

I generally hate those little quizzes. but this one describes me so well:

You are an SEDL–Sober Emotional Destructive Leader. This makes you a dictator. You prefer to control situations, and lack of control makes you physically sick. You feel have responsibility for everyone’s welfare, and that you will be blamed when things go wrong. Things do go wrong, and you take it harder than you should.

You rely on the validation and support of others, but you have a secret distrust for people and distaste for their habits and weaknesses that make you keep your distance from them. This makes you very difficult to be with romantically. Still, a level-headed peacemaker can keep you balanced.

Despite your fierce temper and general hot-bloodedness, you have a soft spot for animals and a surprising passion for the arts. Sometimes you would almost rather live by your wits in the wilderness somewhere, if you could bring your books and your sketchbook.

You also have a strange, undeniable sexiness to you. You may go insane.

Blogworthy

The other day I was talking to bookdwarf about how I should do more structured activities– take a class, maybe join a book club or something. She thought maybe we could start one together, but I wasn’t too enthusiastic– I’d feel too competitive and intimidated, and I’d want to be the one with the most insightful comments or whatever. So she said, fine, we can each start our own book clubs, and we’ll see whose is better.

Hers, obviously.

At that point, I thought, damn, I should put this conversation on my blog. And I looked at her, and she was thinking the same thing. And we realized we’re a couple of great big nerds.

And All the Scientists are Above Average

Andrea Lafferty, of the Traditional Values Coalition, says, “There’s an arrogance in the scientific community that they know better than the average American.” Perhaps that’s because scientists are are educated and knowledgeable enough that “knowing more than the average American” is actually their job, just like “being better at fixing cars than the average American” is how an auto mechanic gets paid to fix cars by average people who respect that expertise. The fact is that if Andera Lafferty actually represents the average American citizen, then America is a nation so mired in barbarous superstition that it opposes the very concepts of science, research, and the advancement of knowledge.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

I had some of the A-Mano Primitivo when I was in SF, at an amazing little restaurant called Osteria Del Forno, in North Beach, but I didn’t know its origins. Then, just yesterday, I read in The Wine Bible an odd fact that the article also notes: the Primitivo grape is genetically identical to California Zinfandel. I haven’t drunk much of that because they tend to be just a little more than I want to pay. Now, Primitivo wines aren’t the same (the NYT helpfully points out) as Zinfandel wines just because they’re practically clones: they’re still raised differently. Nonetheless, they’re worth drinking side-by-side if you’re the type to do that, and it’s worth considering one when you’re thinking of the other.

Petra’s father believes that there is no such thing as a good American wine, at least partially because his experience of the US consisted of Richmond, VA during the 1970s. I plan to convince him otherwise, if he’s ever willing to enter the country again after the trauma of living in Richmond. This determination is probably a proxy for the fact that I still resent my ex-girlfriend’s mother and never managed to convince her that software was a legitimate business.

Señor MacDonald

My old spanish teacher, Señor MacDonald, often said “You pays your money, you takes your choice.” I think he meant that there were limited choices in life and that you were supposed to do what you could. Play the hand they deal you. That sort of thing.

We all make compromises. At least, most of us do. The rest of us, depending on the nature of the desires on which we refuse to compromise, are called idealistic, pigheaded, quixotic, exacting, annoying, stupid, or insane.

Recently I wonder about bicycle helmet laws. Lady K, friend of the nauseated bloggers, died in part because she wasn’t wearing a helmet. I blame the car, of course, more than I blame her or the helmet. But would a helmet law have saved her life? Would constantly mussed hair have ruined her artistic career? Would a helmet law make it too inconvenient or too expensive for some people to bicycle, make them walk more, be late more, lose their jobs, exercise less, ultimately creating greater obesity and killing more people than it would save? What about the lives of the sweatshop workers in Indonesia manufacturing the helmets, ruined by the sudden popularity of newly mandated styene foams?

You pays your money, you takes your choice.