Here's hoping!

As some of you dear readers might be aware, I am fairly politically active; I vote religiously, follow the issues, and donate frequently to political campaigns. One of those campaigns was that of Bob Casey Jr, back in 2006, and ever since he sends me Christmas cards.** Every year. Even though I know I am just one of a zillion people on a mailing list, I find this oddly endearing. So, this year, I am reciprocating in kind, although not with a card. Here's the text of the letter I just sent Senator Casey:

Dear Senator Casey:

Let me start off by expressing my appreciation for the work you do on behalf of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Although I think I am somewhat to the left of you, politically speaking, I find your stance on the issues sensible and, by and large, in line with my own. I voted for you in 2006 and don't regret it.

Here's the point of my letter. You send me frequent email updates on issues, holiday cards, and the like, and it occurred to me that I have never reciprocated in kind. Naturally, I'm not voting in the U.S. Senate (or in any other legislative body), so I have nothing of that kind to report, but I have been told that I make a mean peanut butter cookie. So I am sharing my recipe with you. Here goes:

Precious Peanut Butter Cookies
Ingredients:

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup freshly ground peanut butter
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2.5 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1.5 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 8oz peanut butter chips

Directions:
Cream the butter in a large mixing bowl, then beat three eggs in a small bowl. (The longer you beat the eggs the better the cookies.) Add the white sugar and about half of the eggs, then beat until smooth. Add the brown sugar, and the remainder of the eggs, then beat again until smooth. Stir in the vanilla. Then add the peanut butter, but – and I can't stress this enough – make sure to use freshly ground or, at the very least, organic. If you use a store-bought variety like Jif or Skippy the cookies will turn out salty and greasy.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda, then add it to the butter-sugar-egg-peanut butter mixture along with the chips. I recommend adding, say, one-third of the dry ingredients, then one-third the bag of chips, and stirring, then another third of the dry ingredients, then another third of the chips, and stirring, etc. The dough will be VERY thick, so if you add the wet ingredients a little bit at a time you'll do better than simply dumping in everything at once.

Once you've got everything thoroughly mixed, refrigerate the dough for an hour. Then spoon out the dough on to a cookie sheet in cookie-sized portions. (I recommend modest sized portions.) Bake at 375º for 10 minutes (and no longer). Recipe makes 60-70 cookies.

*****

Hopefully this has been useful. I know that everyone has a cookie recipe, but I can tell you that my sister-in-law, a good cook herself, tells me that she dislikes peanut butter cookies but loves mine. If you try the recipe do let me know how they come out.

Sincerely,


Neil McGarry

I suspect that this letter will be received in one of two ways.

One (most likely): Someone in Casey's office chalks it up to a nutcase and tosses it.

Two (I hope!): That someone thinks, "This is a riot...I have got to send this along to Bob."

I now await a reply. Maybe Casey will send me a recipe for apple cake, and if he does, I am baking it!

**I donated to the campaign of Delaware's Chris Coons, to keep that dreadful Christine O'Donnell out of office, and now he has sent me a Christmas card as well. I have displayed it prominently.

Hey Star!

Yes, I am writing you at the last possible moment of this day. Better almost late than actually late, I suppose.

For me, 2010 has been a hard, hard year. Layoff, layoff, injury, illness, stress, and death. And then, of course, today. I guess today doesn't bother you in the Great Beyond, but it sure as hell bugs me. Hey, are there chocolate-covered Nutter Butters in the Great Beyond? I sure can't find them here.

Just as the good things pass away so do the bad, and right now I'm just hunkered down, waiting for that turn of the wheel. Thinking of those who left too soon. Speaking of which, keep an eye out for my friend Cathy, if you would. She'll need some showing-around, and I can't think of a better guide than you. Plus, she can share some embarrassing stories about me. Get that out of your system now, please, so I don't have to hear it later.

Tell her I miss her. And you, too.

Hanging on? Not me

There's a motivational poster that reads, "When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on!" This is of course accompanied by a photo of a suitably adorable kitten clinging to a rope. Something always bothered me about that message, but only in the last few days have I come to understand why. Now you get to understand, too.

Life is tough sometimes. OK, alot of the time, and contrary to what we are told, it doesn't get better just because you work hard or go to church or generally intend well. I remember a high school teacher saying, "99% of what happens to you is in your control." Even at the tender age of 15 I went, "Hmmm" and now at the not-so-tender age of 41, I say, "What the hell was he thinking?" In my experience, most of what happens to you is well outside your control; illnesses strike, layoffs happen, and people die, and there's not a damned thing you can do to prevent most of it. And it sucks. It just sucks. The only real power you have is in your reactions to what comes your way.

Sarah Palin, in resigning the governorship of Alaska, said, "Only dead fish go with the flow." Unsurprisingly, she's wrong, and for the same reason as the hanging kitten poster. You can, of course, white-knuckle your way grimly through life, hoping that as soon as this problem or that problem is over, everything will be fine, but of course there's always another problem just over the hill or hiding behind the hedge. That's the irresistible force versus immovable object approach, and it ends in wrinkles, high blood pressure, and indigestion.

I take a different view. When the wind blows up, I don't stand tall and defy it; I adjust my sails and try to use that force to take me where I want to go. Doesn't always work, but I'm a good swimmer, so when my little boat flips over, I paddle around until I get things back in order. Then I look for a friendlier wind, because sooner or later, one always comes along. Just as you can rely upon the bad, so can you expect the good. So, Ms. Palin, I do go with the flow, because the alternative is to swim vainly against the current until you use up your strength and drown. Not this little fish, thank you.

It's true that I have neither wealth nor fame, nor do I have a respectable career or a fancy car. (Hell, I bought my car before Hillary Clinton started wearing pantsuits.) And maybe if I'd refused to go with the flow I'd have some or all of those things. As it is, though, my blood pressure is well within the normal range, I haven't lost my hair to stress, and I sleep at night with an easy heart. If someone had told me twenty years ago that would be the case, I'd have been pretty damn pleased.

So to (finally) come back to that kitten, do you know what I do when I reach the end of my rope? I let go. Sometimes, tying that knot is harder than just taking the fall.

Our torture culture

This piece by Dahlia Lithwick is a great chronicle of the way the US moved from a nation that used torture surreptitiously to a nation that uses it proudly.

Well, at least we no longer have to outsource our torture to nations like Syria or Pakistan; we can employ good old American torturers! Now I'm wondering if the CIA will begin training torturers, or if universities can begin offering graduate programs in waterboarding.

My favorite guardian angel

This is terribly dated, I know, but I have always had a soft spot for Frankie Avalon in "Grease." It's not that he's attractive (although he is), but he's just the kind of guardian angel I'd like. If you remember, Frenchy wishes she had a guardian angel who could tell her if dropping out of high school to be a beautician was the right choice. Then, hey presto! Frankie Avalon appears with a heavenly choir and says, "Go back to high school." And he does it in song.

See, I'm not a big fan of dream interpretation or slow realization. I just want a guardian angel to pop in and say, "Hey, dumbass, here's what you should do." And he'd sing it.

The time has come...

...to talk about bad candy. Here goes:

Circus Peanuts: Great gods, but these things are not only disgusting but disturbing. What are they made from? Why do they squeak slightly when one bites into them? How does anyone stomach them? I'll never know.

Mary Janes: They supposedly taste like molasses and peanut butter, and I guess there's a certain charm to the old-fashioned Mary Jane girl on the wrapper. As far as I am concerned, however, molasses and peanut butter have no business getting in bed together.

Peeps: Yeah, yeah, I know they are cute and are holiday-customized, but that doesn't qualify them as tasty. You know what might qualify them as tasty? Ingredients other than stale marshmallow and gritty cheap-ass sugar.

Indian Brand Pumpkin Seeds: Yawn. Not even a candy.

Orange Slices: Three things wrong with this candy: 1) It's jelly; 2) it's orange; 3) it tastes like orange.

Satellite Wafers: They should rename this, "Tasteless Styrofoam Discs around Balls of Grit." That's truth in advertising.

Now I'm angry and can't post any more. Comment your own gross candies, if you like.

It was worth it

Obviously, November 2 was painful for we libbies, and there's been much discussion about whether or not it was the ACA that cost House Democrats their majority. My answer: So what if it did? Crafting good policy (and that's what the ACA is) is why we send these people to Washington in the first place, not to keep their damned majority. Obviously, you can't govern if you don't win, but there are some achievements that are worth risking your majority, and the Affordable Care Act was one of them. Bill Saletan at Slate has more to say on this. Give him a read.

A banner day

Working on a college campus as I do, I see a lot of signs. Free this one, impeach that one, save these other things…every liberal notion you can imagine has a sign somewhere at Penn. That usually doesn’t bother me, but this week my eye was caught by some banners extolling the virtues of consent. Here are some examples:

- Sex without Consent isn’t Sex
- The Joy of Consent
- Consent is an Aphrodisiac

The first one I am all about; it seems obvious to me but, clearly, not so much to others. Who’da thought anyone would need a reminder of that?

The second and third banners I find…well, vaguely objectionable. It’s all well and good to remind people that consent is something you seek before you try to have sex with someone, but to promote it like a new trend or an erotic enhancement just seems wrong.

Maybe I’m a stick-in-the-mud, but I wouldn’t even take a Diet Coke from someone’s fridge without asking first, and that’s not because Diet Coke tastes better when it’s given by permission. It’s because if I take a Diet Coke without permission I’ve stolen it. That’s theft. I learned that early on…so early on, in fact, that I don’t remember being taught the lesson. Breezing past the consent part of sex is not an oopsie; that’s assault and, at its conclusion, rape. These are both crimes and moral transgressions. Something else you should have learned early on was that you keep your hands – and all your other parts – to yourself unless invited.

Obviously, rape usually occurs in a heterosexual context (there are, after all, more heterosexuals than not), and I freely confess to not being up on all things hetero. However, I’m pretty sure that straight people are as capable as gays of getting the whole consent thing, and it seems most of them do. So I just don’t get these banners, and although I don’t normally get twisted up over stuff like this, I vaguely disapprove.

I can't look away!

I'd heard Kate Bush's "Wuthering Heights" before, but only when I played it for Dan did I realize two things: 1) I really like the song; and 2) the song is downright weird. Some of #2 has to do with Kate Bush herself, of course; watching this video I just can't stop wondering how many heads in jars she has in her basement.

Dan, of course, proceeded to analyze the song in a musical sense. I just marveled at Kate Bush's range. I've come to realize that the true test of any female vocalist: she can convincingly cover "Wuthering Heights."

Great gods...I must be dreaming

I've been looking over this Web site for a half-hour now, and I still can't believe it. Take a look. Go ahead, I'll wait.

It seems I find something flabbergasting on each page. Like the ready-made missing child poster, or the USB that contains that poster, along with everything else the authorities will need to identify your child's decomposed corpse when it turns up in a ditch. And then there are the comments from paranoid parents. (The kid's out of sight for 15 minutes and this woman's ready to close the borders.)

OK, I am no parent, but isn't this a bit...well, morbid? Should you really be making detailed plans for your child's abduction? From what I have heard, only about 40 kids a year are abducted, so you'd probably do as well preparing yourself a "In Case Little Johnny Is Struck by Lightning" CD. Criminy.

You're better off with a seatbelt

Bruce Schneier is my current security crush, and he has something interesting to say about parents and perceived threats vs. real risk.

I can't speak to any of this as an expert, but when Pennsylvania tightened its regulations regarding what age/size children must use car safety seats...well, you could have heard the howls of protest from Michigan. I imagine many of those howlers are in favor of the various Megan's Laws this commonwealth enforces, which probably don't provide much measurable protection, unlike car safety seats, which we know make children safer. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, nearly 9,000 lives were saved by such devices from 1975 - 2008. I wonder if Megan's Laws have saved a hundredth that many.

I make no claims to parenting expertise, but I know fear-mongering when I see it, and it seems to me parents are a prime target.

Makes my head go "pound"

As many know, I am not a fan of security theater, a coin adopted by Bruce Schneier to describe the song-and-dance that passes for procedures. The fiction moves into the realm of fantasy in terms of airline security, and I have learned to choke that down for the most part, but this takes the cake.

I have serious doubts that any of the nonsense we endure at airports makes us any safer, and I am convinced that the TSA is a prime example of "scope creep." I don't care if my seatmate is carrying embezzled cash, cocaine or child pornography; as long as he doesn't have something he can use to destroy the plane, he's fine by me. I thought the job of the TSA was to make sure plane destruction was avoided, and not to safeguard husbands against wives who might (or might not) be cleaning out their accounts, but I guess I was wrong. I imagine that pretty soon those airport screeners will be conducting full criminal background checks on the passengers, and flagging those with unpaid speeding tickets or unpaid child support. We can't let those people fly, that's for sure.

Perhaps it's a bad time to say this near mid-September, but on 9/11 those hijackers gave the US an exam on our commitment to civil liberties, and we failed. Big-time.

Technology foiled again!

I haven't updated this blog in ages because Blogger kept telling me I had to update this and transition that, and when I looked at the eye-crossing directions I thought, "Uh...Dan?" But Blogger has left off, evidently deciding I have had enough, so I am back.

Ezra Klein, whom I read regularly, has an interesting piece today explaining why in politics party matters more than individuals. Think that Senate Republican Scott Brown has to be moderate because he comes from a blue state? Wrong! He voted with the GOP 82% of the time, which is more even than Maine's much-vaunted maverick Olympia Snowe. Keep it in mind next time you visit the polls. Oh, and I recommend reading Klein, or at the very least Googling his image and looking at that. 'Cause he's hot.

Is anyone else reading The Dwarves by Marcus Heitz? If so, can you explain why it's so boring? I used to be a huge fan of genre fantasy, but nowadays I have a hard time getting into it. First of all, when I open a book and find a world map, my blood pressure rises. Second, I just can't deal with any more strange fantasy-world names like Tungdil or Durzo Blint. And that doesn't even count all of the strange names with apostrophes or Ks used as Cs, etc.

Finally, there are the inevitable patterns that may once have been interesting but are now boring. Book opens with a battle in which evil prevails, then cuts to an idyllic country setting, completely at odds with the previous scene. There, a strapping young man of humble but somewhat shadowy origins is approached by a mysterious druid/wizard/magic guy who tells him of a Great Evil and the approach of Minions of Dread, bent on capturing/killing/seducing to the dark side this selfsame young man. Who is of course heir to the throne or the fated wielder of the Sword of All Things Good. Argh.

If I wind up in one of these stories, I'm going to tell Gandalf or Allanon or whatever other meddlesome conjurer appears that I don't care what Lord Blackness is up to in the Kingdom of Shadows. If Lord Blackness has a good health insurance plan that extends benefits to domestic partners, and will start me with three weeks' vacation, sign me up.

Am I going mad?

Or is Glenn Beck, of all people, suddenly defending the separation of church and state?



Good gods, but the world has turned upside down. Send him an ACLU membership form before he recovers his lunacy.

Wait...we elected Democrats, right?

This article makes me wonder just how much has changed.

Remember when we were told that indicting important people for these crimes would make Republicans stonewall health care reform? Well, now that Democrats themselves have fucked up said reform, I think it's high time we penned arrest warrants for Yoo and Bybee and Cheney and all those other folks who happily and shamelessly created a culture of torture within the executive branch of government.

I'm only half-kidding. The recent Democratic retreat on health care, in my opinion, will cripple the party's ability to pursue any sort of meaningful legislative agenda for 2010. So if we're to lose, we may as well lose big. Drag those torture-happy Republicans into a court of law and let the testimony begin! Let's lose not 25 House seats in November but 80, and really get our money's worth out of the loss.

Like a real comedian!

Performed both Friday and Saturday night in Marlton, and I totally earned enough to pay for my Friday visit to the doctor and the Saturday pad see-ew I ate before the show. That's living, my friends.

Friday night was plain awful. The audience was as not into me as possible and drunk in the bargain, so my ten minutes on stage seemed like three months. (To the audience as well, I am sure.) Saturday night, however, was a home run. I ditched my set list minutes before going on stage and decided to wing it with some brand-new stuff, written only that morning. (Thalia, as is her wont, awoke me at 7am with inspiration.) The new stuff worked, the old stuff worked, and my audience interaction was smashing. I nearly floated off that stage, and on the way out a number of audience members thanked me for a great show. I know I'm supposed to act all professional and coolly thank them, but instead I squeed like an eight-year-old. I roll that way.

Thalia, I totally forgive you for getting me up so early this morning. Keep up the good work, toots.

It's still Saturday, dammit!

I performed in NE Philadelphia tonight. I guess it was technically yesterday, but in my mind the day has not turned until I sleep and wake up when it's light. So there. Anyway, I was sick as a dog today, so I medicated myself heavily so's I could climb on stage and perform adequately. The audience was attentive but not very into any of the comedians, but I did all right.

Can I tell you that certain word uses bother me? I already bitched about the overuse/misuse of the word "creepy", so now I'd like to extend the complaint to "stalking." Anyone who expresses any interest - romantic, familial, platonic - in another human being must now worry if s/he is a stalker. Let's review a few stalker examples:

A) Not stalking:
Asking to friend me on Facebook
Sending me an email without invitation
Asking me where in Philadelphia I live

B) Stalking
Asking for my Facebook password
Sending me a severed ear, with or without invitation
Asking me for my home address and Social Security number

If you behavior resembles Category A, you're good. If it resembles B, seek help. But let's not diminish the reputations of stalkers everywhere by thinking that contacting me on a social networking sight is stalking.

Cue the curtains

If you aren't reading Bruce Schneier, you should be. He is a security expert and a noted critic of the TSA and its various "security theater" measures. This is in my view one of the best things he's ever said:

Only one carry on? No electronics for the first hour of flight? I wish that, just once, some terrorist would try something that you can only foil by upgrading the passengers to first class and giving them free drinks.

As do we all, Bruce. As do we all.