Archive for August 31st, 2002


My Secret Shame

Letter from Johannesburg decides that the Harper’s Index model is the way to go. I guess we know who LfJ doesn’t read.

Amount needed to provide a basic education for all who don’t now have it, world- wide, annually: US$6 billion
Amount spent annually in the United States on cosmetics: US$8 billion
Amount needed to provide basic water and sanitation for all who don’t now have them, world-wide, annually: US$9 billion
Amount spent on ice cream in Europe annually: US$11 billion
Amount needed to provide basic health and nutrition for all who don’t now have them, world-wide, annually: US$11 billion
Amount spent on pet food in Europe and the United States, annually: US$17 billion

Oh, the guilt, oh the shame of it all! I painted my daughter’s toenails tonight, never realizing that but for me and mine, a Bagledeshi child would have had his geometry lesson. I could have prevented a malaria death in Togo, but viciously chose to have three cats instead. The half-pint of Haagen-Dasz in the fridge means that when a drunk British soccer fan in Brighton looks for a street corner loo, he will not find one, and will suffer the indignity of having to obtain sweet release in an alleyway. Had I only known!

Perhaps in future the environmental movement will do me the favor of stationing activists with informative leaflets in the frozen food aisle at the Harris Teeter, so that when I am face to face with the question of French Vanilla Bean or Schistosomiasis, I can give them the finger and ask them how much their hemp shirt cost, obtain an estimate of the relative value of a sterling silver nose stud versus a malaria vaccine, and determine whether the three-color yin/yang tatto with extra kanji lettering was worth any number of Kwashiorkor ridden Somalis.

In the spirit of spending other people’s money to solve the poblems of the world, the statistical staff here at Hraka have come up with a list that we believe is at least as economically sound as the one listed above.

For the same amount of money that environmental activists in the United State and Europe spend on organic farm produce and free range chicken, the world could have clean water to drink and food to eat.

The cost of a delegateship in Johannesburg would buy AIDs drugs for a South African for the rest of their lives.

The amount of money Peta spends to pay personalities to wear bikinis made of lettuce would free every lobster in the greater Boston area for two weeks.

The price of Ed Begley Jr’s electric car batteries could wire every house in the Rio slums for electricity.

You could buy that Sting CD, or you could vaccinate an entire Pakistani classroom against anthrax. It’s a win/win situation!

The amount of money the World Wildlife Fund spends on junk mail every day would buy 400,000 acres of Amazonian rainforest.

We call on the members of the groups named above, consumers of PC produce, adult rock listeners and Ed to send us that money instead, so that we here at Hraka may use it to more efficiently solve the world’s problems, minus a small administrative fee, of course.

Posted by Bigwig on 31 August 2002 at 5:23 pm under Uncategorized.
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Brilliant Corners - and his photolog - The weblog evangelists are constantly getting a more bloated view of their “profession.” I ranted a while back how all these weblog books are pretty pointless, but I think statements like “publishing is dead” are even more ridiculous.

Weblogs are really nothing more than a version of online journals with a catchier name. Sure, some tackle politics and the tech sector and the media all at once, but many are tightly focused on one topic alone. While 10,000 unique visitors is a good audience for a weblog, that’s still nothing compared to the 1-million-plus circulation of the New York Times.

I don’t think there should be weblog “jobs” [b] either. If you can’t have a current employee set up a Blogger account, and update a page once or twice a day, in addition to normal duties, then maybe you’ve got too much money to waste. With all the books and hype, it seems like the push is to get weblogging recognized as a legitimate profession.

In my opinion, weblogging isn’t journalism, and it’ll never replace traditional publishing. I’m happy that when I do read the newspaper, I just get the news, and not the news, and then a little snippet about so-and-so’s humorous encounter at the mall.

Mindscapes, Heartstrings & Soul-searching -
Zod: Heathcliff, Heathcliff!
Quiet you.
Zod: So what, you read the title and thought “Here’s a likely place to go learn more about Glock semi-automatics!”?
No, I thought “Hot damn, that’s another rung up in the ecosystem.”
Zod: Link slut.
It’s alway’s sex, sex, sex, Zod. Is it because of your….
Zod: Quiet you.
I just think we ought to at least read the blog before you decide it’s all about passion on the moor.
Zod: Fine.
Fine.

Mindscapes, Heartstrings & Soul-searching - Just because I choose to embrace my femininity does not mean that I’m any less effective a feminist. I just happen to believe that only when society accepts femininity and womanhood on par with masculinity and manhood, learning to value both equally, will equality truly come into effect. Someone once called me “a lady with feminist ideas” and listened to my ideas with interest… hell, I think that’s better than being labelled a radical harridan and dismissed out of hand because of the stigma attached to such behaviour.

Some believe that we need to be like men to achieve equal status with them.

Some believe that we need to bring the development of feminism up to comparable stages around the world before we have any chance in hell of finally decisively moving towards a real sexual revolution.

Still others believe that we need to attack the whole issue through education and enlightenment.

And then, again, there are those who believe that activism and chest-beating and picketing forms the solution. It always has done in the past and it will do again.

These are all worldviews and choices.

And I respect them even if I don’t agree with them.

Because that’s the gift feminism has given to women (and men)–the gift of choosing and being true to yourself.

Whoa.
Zod: What’s a girl like that doing in a place like this?
I dunno. Blog-slumming?
Zod: There’s a new motto “Silflay Hraka, for when a girl needs a dirty night out.”

Balloon Juice - I am nearing a volatile explosion from impatience when a car pulls up and a woman comes rushing into the store.

The woman embodied every negative stereotype you have ever heard about West Virginians (as a West Virginian, I feel allowed to pick on us- if you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at). She is short and fat, about 5 feet tall and nearly as wide. She is wearing lavender stretch pants, the kind you only see at wall mart, and she has a huge gut that isn’t quite where her stomache should be but still above where her nether regions should be. She is wearing what was once a white ‘Tweetie” bird t-shirt, but now it is a yellowy/dirty beige. She has thick glasses, the kind that make your eyes look 3 times the real size, and they have the ear pieces that extend from the bottom of the lense (the kind that went out of style 20 years ago).

And. She stinks. Really bad. She has that musty odor that is a combination of 1 part not bathing, 1 part dumpster grunge (you know what I mean- that juicy bile that stays in the dumpster after they dump it, where it just sits and ferments), and 1 part 40 packs of cigarettes without a change of clothing. Essentially, she smells like a popular nightclub bathroom floor on Sunday morning.

She charges to the front of the line, which startled me and infuriated me at the same time. She then looked at the lady behind the counter, and blurted out, “I got’s the diarrhea, I’m gonna dirty my pants.”

You could hear everyone in the room breathe in, and at the same time, everyone took a step away from where the woman was standing. Also note that there is NO public bathroom, and the only doors are to leave or to go into the employee area behind the counter. The lady behind the counter looked like she had been shot, and before she could respond, the woman this time yelled out:

“I GOT’S THE DIARRHEA, I’M GONNA DIRTY MY PANTS.”

Zod: That’s more like it. Zod is pleased
Oh, goody.

Posted by Bigwig on 31 August 2002 at 3:55 pm under Uncategorized.
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It’s been raining for a week, and drought or no drought, we need it to stop. Cabin fever has set in, and from the amount of toe stepping going on you’d think we were in the deaf-mute beginner’s competition at the annual Walk In Closet Square Dance Championships (nighttime division). It’s made Ngnat bipolar, so she’s either goose-stepping around the coffee table shouting “Elmo, Huwwah! Huwwah, Huwwah, Huwwah!” or screaming like an Inquisition victim when some small thing doesn’t meet her approval, like the cat sleeping on the foot of her bed. Putting her down for a nap involves chasing her down, telling her very sternly not to get out of bed, again, and hoping that the neighbors don’t decide to call Animal Services to come and remove the dyspeptic family of howler monkeys we’re apparently housing on the second floor.

The sainted wife and mother’s project for the four day weekend was toilet training, which are the chocolate shavings on the giant sundae of stress. Pee score so far, 1 potty, 2 carpet soakings and 2 sofa cushions which will likely smell funny for a month or two. I’m no help, because my basic idea was to put the child in timeout each time she had an accident until the accidents stopped. Apparently this makes me the Genghis Khan of toilet training theory, as it was dismissed with the kind of look you give a person who kicks dogs in the park. I say you shouldn’t reject an idea like that out of hand. Before you can criticize a man, you should sit in his daughter’s sofa cushion pee pool.

We have managed to get out of the house twice today, braving the savage elements (67 degrees, with a light rain) to take the cat to the vet and visit the bird feeder store. Before we even got the pet carrier out of the door, Grey (that’s the cat. I named her. You can always tell which one of us named the cats. Sainted wife gives them names; “Toby”, “Jack.” I give them adjectives: “Hissy”, “Grey”), had muscled up to the bars and voom!, out she went, scrabbling for dear life on the linoleum to get away from us. We stuffed her back in, and made makeshift repairs to the plastic piece of crap that was supposed to hold the door in place. Sainted wife then loaded her in the car and drove off, trailing anguished metronomic cat howls behind her. It’s a horrible sound, combining the oh so painfully annoying quality of fingernails on a blackboard with the demanding yowl a cat makes when it wants something that it suspects you are too stupid or slow to delivery in a timely fashion, like an open door, and it comes once every second for the ten minute duration of the trip. And once you get there the vet is slow, and has overbooked, so a five minute examination is preceded by a 30 minute wait, and the cat screams all the way home as well, even though the vet visit is over you dumb shut up kill you shoot you in the head if you don’t stop that infernal wailing goddamn animal!

So I was pretty glad the wife did it, at least until I discovered myself sitting in warm pee that wasn’t even my own.

Posted by Bigwig on 31 August 2002 at 2:40 pm under Uncategorized.
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