A Petition

Read this post by Arthur Silber, and then sign this petition in support of the Illinois high school students who are being threatened with expulsion and possibly criminal charges for their participation in a peaceful antiwar protest. (via Antiwar.com) I just signed it myself.

Tired Brains Melt Down

Not only does sleep deprivation slow one's mental and reasoning skills, apparently, lack of sleep makes one overreact emotionally to situations and events that would otherwise be handled with grace and tact. So says a new study. So where does that leave all of us hollow-eyed parents--especially those of us expected to perform at a place of business--when we feel like we are not much better adjusted or socially equipped than our toddlers?

I've begun taking half a sleep-aid tablet at night to get as much sleep as I can, but this is beginning to worry me. There are some days when I need a nap as much as or more than my toddler, and some days when I am absolutely unable to fight it--coffee or no coffee.

No Health Care for Low-Income Kids

The House GOP stood united today. Not one of them defected and changed their vote, meaning that the House was unable to come up with the necessary two-thirds required to overturn Bush's veto (the only one of his presidency) of S-CHIP. See the roll call to find who voted for and against.

Bagism

In honor of John Lennon's birthday today. Bagism is a nice site for Lennon fans to, as they say, come together.

The Antiwar GOP Majority

I wasn't aware of this. But as the sole antiwar Republican presidential candidate, perhaps it explains Ron Paul's recent breakthrough.

Toddlers and YouTube

When we have nothing to do, sometimes my toddler and I surf YouTube. Here are three of her favorite finds:

The Rhino Song
The Elephant Song
The Lion Sleeps Tonight

More Fox Hypocrisy

This 40-second video by by Robert Greenwald (via Fox Attacks) makes clear the real reason Fox censored Sally Field at the Emmys.

New York Times Removes Its Pay Wall

As of midnight tonight, the Gray Lady will do away with TimesSelect, the annoying "pay wall" behind which, for the last two years, the paper's website has been hiding its most popular columnists, as well as some of its special features and its archives of stories dating back to 1983. Online readers will once again be able to access the writings of influential establishment mouthpieces like David Brooks, Maureen Dowd, and Thomas Friedman without paying anything.

It seems the Times finally got the fact that 99.9% of information on the Internet is free, and that they were losing massive amounts of potential ad revenue by not allowing non-subscribers, directed to the Times' website through search engines like Google and Yahoo, to view this content. Less hits = less $$$. Whatever they were making from TimesSelect subscribers ($49.50 per subscription per year), simply didn't make up for this loss. By erecting a cash barrier around the aforementioned opinion leaders, the Times shot itself in the foot, essentially removing these same columnists and their opinions from the national conversation and, in effect, marginalizing them. It was a calculated yet uninspired move that seemed destined to fail from the beginning. You can read all about it here.

Apparently, one of the few large newspapers that still has a "pay wall" model in place is the Wall Street Journal, although brand-new WSJ owner Rupert Murdoch is already making noises about doing away with that and going back to an advertising model.

Family Cookery

Here is a nice solution to the challenge of cooking for a family of four, all with different tastes. I made this pizza and topped one-third of it with plain fresh mozzarella (for the kids), one-third with spicy sausage (for husband), and one-third with grilled veggies (for myself). Everyone was happily satisfied with this one creation. Success!

More Deja-Vu: Yet Another Resignation

My head is spinning (see last night's post about Alberto Gonzales and his Top Ten Moments of Ridiculousness). Yesterday was also Tony Snow's last day as White House spokesman. Who knew? Extreme Mortman has posted the Top Ten Tony Snow Exchanges With Helen Thomas.

Gone-zales Redux

This was so under the radar that I didn't even realize until now that today was Alberto Gonzales' last day as attorney general. To commemorate the occasion, check out the devastating compilation on Talking Points Memo of the Top 10 Moments of Alberto Gonzales Ridiculousness. It is such a pathetic display (rather like watching a wounded animal gnaw its own limb off in slow motion) I was barely able to stomach it.

Anyone want to place bets on a possible AG replacement? Chertoff? Poindexter? Ted Olsen? Can't imagine which of those three would be scarier, yet in the bizarro world we are living in, these are real possibilities.

Tragic Irony

On August 19, seven active-duty U.S. troops in Iraq coauthored an op-ed piece in the New York Times called "The War as We Saw It." In their essay they wrote that “In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are—an army of occupation—and force our withdrawal.”

Less than a month later, on Monday, September 10, after two 15-month tours there, two of those soldiers, Sgt. Omar Mora and Staff Sgt. Yance T. Gray, were killed in a vehicle accident in Iraq. A third was shot in the head before the essay was published; he is expected to recover.

Ron Paul at the Fox Republican Debate 9/05/07

As a side note: It is a surreal experience watching Chris Wallace and Brit Hume "moderate" this "debate." Their voices practically drip with sarcasm and condecension when addressing questions to Ron Paul. Also, you can't see who it is, but notice that some of the Fox questioners (or is it the other candidates?) begin snickering and cackling inanely into live microphones every time Rep. Paul is asked a question. Journalists, or propagandists? You decide.

War With Iran?

There seems to be an increasing amount of rumor and talking points surrounding this possibility in the past week. Has anyone seen this Times of London piece about the Pentagon's plan for a three-day blitz against Iran, designed to take out not just their alleged nuclear facilities but their entire military? And why is this being reported only in the UK press and not anywhere in the American mainstream media? So plans are drawn up. Whether this scenario or a similar version of events unfolds in the final eighteen months of this unmitigated nightmare called the Bush presidency, we should expect more sabre-rattling and drum-beating from all the usual suspects. But can anyone say this is not totally and criminally insane?

Day Into Night at the U.S. Open

The weeks before and after Labor Day were always my favorites in New York. Usually beatiful weather, gorgeous nights, the feeling of summer melting slowly into autumn, and the U.S. Open. We lived in Queens, along the same subway line you take to get to the Open, and friends and I would go every year, especially during the first week, when, with a single ticket you could watch 10 different matches in a day.

This year I have finally found something to love about having basic cable TV, which we've had for about three months now. I think we may be one of the last families in America to get cable, which I resisted for years. Yet here is the beauty of it: It's 9:20 at night and I've had tennis on since 11 in the morning. I watched live as Justine Henin blew Serena Williams off the court. And Nadal and Ferrer are still slugging it out in the third set as I type. The way the match is going they could easily be playing until 2 in the morning, New York time.

While it can't compare to being there in person, it feels like the next best thing. Needless to say, light blogging until next week...

Late update: The match continued until 1:50 a.m., EST. After three and a half hours of play, Ferrer prevailed in what was one of the most phenomenal, high-quality matches I've seen in ages, stunning the crowd and no. 2 seed Nadal. Final score: 6-7, 6-4, 7-6, 6-2.

Wonkosphere

I am absolutely exhausted and brain dead, having been up since 4:30 in the morning. Was it the full moon? The first day of school for DD#1? Stress about how to handle the coming weeks? The nanny who never came back from vacation? I don't know, but I did want to take a moment in between getting the kids to bed and before losing consciousness myself to link to an interesting site I stumbled upon earlier today called Wonkosphere. The site describes itself as "your listening post for the 2008 presidential election." It also has a nice blog. Genuinely non-partisan, they update every four hours with all kinds of info on all the Republican and Democratic candidates, from the so-called "first tier" establishment candidates (Obama, Giuliani, and Hillary) to those who have no chance whatsoever (John McCain) to those the mainstream media all but ignore (Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel), giving equal weight to all, although, of course, I found no reference to any third-party or independent candidates.

Gone-zales

I will post more on this later, but just wanted to quickly note my favorite reaction to the long overdue resignation of AG Alberto Gonzales. This, from Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL): "Alberto Gonzales is the first attorney general who thought the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth were three different things."

Russia Goes Ga-Ga for Topless Putin

Russian president Vladimir Putin made headlines around the world yesterday after he stripped off his shirt for photographers while on holiday in the Siberian mountains.

Is this a new trend for world leaders? Perhaps 54-year-old Putin was trying to show he is just as macho as French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who recently posed topless for the paparazzi while vacationing in the U.S. But Kremlin watchers are abuzz trying to guess just what sort of political message the pictures, which have been prominently displayed on the Kremlin website, might send. There has been speculation that the images of a vigorous healthy president are meant to appeal to voters, to enhance Putin's image in case he decides not to relinquish power at the end of his current term, as he is constitutionally required to do. Reportedly, Russian gay chat rooms and blogs have said that the pictures represent a plea for greater tolerance of homosexuality in Russia (say what?).

You have to admit he doesn't look that bad topless. While this must be driving W crazy, I am only grateful that I've never seen a photo of Bush or Cheney without their shirts on. And hopefully never will.

Grace Paley Dies

I was greatly saddened to read about this today. Paley was a huge influence on me in my attempts at writing short fiction, particularly her 1974 book of short stories called Enormous Changes at the Last Minute, which I read over and over again, utterly amazed at her mastery of dialogue: so spare yet utterly loaded. She used to teach at the City College of New York, which is where both my husband and I received our master's degrees in fiction writing, and, coincidentally, where we met. Paley had stopped teaching there a few years before I attended, but her presence was definitely felt, and we actually got to meet her after a reading she did at the 92nd Street Y in the early 1990s.

From her obituary in today's NYT: "Ms. Paley was among the earliest American writers to explore the lives of women — mostly Jewish, mostly New Yorkers — in all their dailyness. She focused especially on single mothers, whose days were an exquisite mix of sexual yearning and pulverizing fatigue. In a sense, her work was about what happened to the women that Roth and Bellow and Malamud’s men had loved and left behind."

In the coming days I'm sure I will be rereading her work.

Dweezil Zappa Rocks!

Went to see a great Zappa concert last night. “Zappa Plays Zappa” is Frank Zappa’s oldest son, Dweezil, and other musicians performing Frank’s music with the goal of bringing it to a new generation of fans. At times Dweezil was even accompanied by his father himself: Old footage of Frank playing guitar was synchronized audio-visually on a large video screen so that father and son could actually jam together. It was seriously amazing. In my opinion, this music benefits from having a state-of-the-art sound system behind it, as well as being performed live. I went to this show because my significant other has been a Zappa fan since his tween years. So I had heard plenty of Zappa music around the house before, but I never really "listened." After seeing this show I am now a fan. Dweezil is an amazing guitarist in his own right, and the music, considering how long ago it was originally composed, didn't seem dated in the least. In fact, one can really get a sense now of how far ahead of his time Frank truly was. Here is a clip of dueling guitarists Steve Vai (left) and Dweezil (on the right) from the ZPZ 2006 tour:



I also realized that one reason I never got into Zappa back in the day was simply visual aesthetics. By that I mean that as an adolescent girl I recall being a bit freaked out (no pun intended) by Frank's weird facial hair (hitleresque soul patch, 70s mustache) and bizarre fashion choices (particularly his penchant for performing topless). If Frank's appearance had been more Dweezil-like, I suspect he might have had a more gender-balanced fan base.

Here are the rest of the ZPZ tour dates. If you can make it to one of these shows, go. (Melkweg, anyone?) You won’t be disappointed.