Running & Howling with Barrel Fever

Joy of Salt

2011-04-25T16:42:00.001-05:00

As I got ready to brave todays awesome Chicago *spring* weather (45degrees, rain, and... misery), my friendly neighborhood nbc newsman shared this little ditty with me.

View more videos at: http://www.nbcchicago.com.

LOVE salt rooms. You should too. Unless, as they mention, you live near the ocean. Then you can probably get your fill of healthy clean healing air simply by walking your dog to the beach for an hour each morning.

But if you are in Chicago, and missing that heavenly air, sitting in a salt room will blow your mind.

I cant wait to be an eccentric bazzillionairess (vs. my current condition of eccentric poor spinster) so I can build a salt room in my home. Next to the gift wrap room. And the mikveh. And the giant movie room. And the disco. And the Disney princess castle playspace complete with ballet studio and ballgowns. and the...

ok Ill settle for 1 bedroom and maybe (Im pushing it, I know!) a....*gasp* yard. Back in my little piece of heaven, 8blocks from the Pacific Ocean, in Santa Monica...

In the meantime, if you are in Chicago, or nearby... do yourself a huge favor and plan a couple hours visiting Isabella at Solay Wellness

Youll thank me. But thank Isabella first. Because shes a really fantastic person. (Then tell her I sent you!)

Kosher Wine; Maple Syrup; Texas Barbecue in L.A.; Momofuku

2010-03-28T17:05:00.000-05:00

Kosher Wine; Maple Syrup; Texas Barbecue in L.A.; Momofuku

Yes, Elisheba, There IS A Farmers’ Market (In Chicago)…

2010-03-28T01:02:00.000-05:00

Yes, Elisheba, There IS A Farmers’ Market (In Chicago)…

Grace

2009-11-24T09:38:00.000-06:00

'Grace': PETA's Thanksgiving ad

Just throw it in the garbage

2009-08-04T22:19:00.004-05:00

When I returned to Chicago from California, I also returned to volunteering at PAWS. There was a young labrador who'd just had puppies and needed some "me time" away from her demanding brood. I took her for a long quiet walk and fell in love.

She's recently been adopted by the police department. However, while the department decides who her human partner will be, she continues to live at PAWS.

Since she's no longer available for adoption - and still very much in need of extra exercise because she's a young labrador - a foster home is needed for her. In the meantime, several volunteers are stepping up to take her out for long runs, playtime on the rooftop dog park, and then there's me-- taking her out on marathon walks about town while I do errands by foot.

Today we discovered OZ park together! I can't run her, but I enjoyed the thought of repeated climbs up/down this large hill in the park. So we marched up, then down, then up, then down, then up, then...

oops! an outdoor stage with marble seating built into the hill. and what's this? 2 wooden sticks. One maybe a mop handle. Another a broken-off leg from a table. Tucked together in a crevice between the earth/grass and the seats. An empty Grey Goose bottle next to them.

I have a brief chat with my heroine future-police-dog walking buddy, Wonder Woman. Debating if I'm overreacting by feeling alarm at this discovery.

There have been nightly beatings in this area. Some in this park! The sight of broken off wood sticks tucked together with alcohol in a park making headlines daily makes my Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew mystery/logic/puzzle book-trained brain work overtime.

Wonder Woman agrees we should call the non-emergency police, so I do.

"umm hello I'm out for a long walk with a dog, just returned to Chicago after a long time out of town, not sure where I am... little bit east of Halsted and Armitage in a large park on a hill behind a....school? By an outdoor stage... haha - I promise I've got a point here...."

"uh huh"

"ummm so I noticed 2 sticks. Well one is long, wooden...not sure what it is... The other looks like it was a leg to a table, but now broken off. They're laying together tucked by the seating area of this stage. Next to an empty vodka bottle. And I wondered...mmm...wondered if this was something that might interest the police..."

"mmm hmmm. Well I tell you what. If we saw something like that in a park you know what we would do? we would pick them up and THROW THEM IN THE GARBAGE"

"eh (chuckle)- ummm- well normally I would just throw them in the garbage but, well you know, with the daily reports of beatings in this area in the middle of the night...well...I just thought... you know I thought they could be weapons"

"(chuckle) well of COURSE they're weapons. Which is why you need to toss them in the garbage"

"ummm but don't you want to...ummm the beatings here...ummm I just thought...well (nervous chuckle) ok, I'll just throw them in the garbage. Sorry I took up your time sir. Thank you!"

I had fantasized a grateful voice on the other end eagerly grilling me for info on my exact location. Wonder Woman and I waiting for the squad car to arrive. Pointing out our discovery and happily sharing the news that "my" dog was actually their dog getting some exercise from a loving volunteer happy to help her city police. The officers grateful for my call, my quick thinking, and for giving so much love to a random dog who will soon be working for them full-time.

"Wonder Woman! You've cracked your first case before your first day on the job! You haven't even finishing your training yet!"

The reality was a chuckling, condescending officer explaining how I should react to litter. My canine friend helping me find a newspaper to grab our discovery without leaving MY fingerprints. Us searching for a garbage receptacle large enough to fully accept the long sticks and hide them from potential ne're do wells.

After finishing our job we walked back towards the shelter. Me stopping for a lemon Italian ice. Her stopping for some water and biscuits.

And when I got home the top story on the local news was another attack in the neighborhood. And how the police have no leads on who the culprits are. And how Guardian Angels came out from NYC to hand out information in Lincoln Park on how to keep safe and spot suspicious clues.

A man gives an interview describing the attack he survived early this (Tuesday) morning. He mentions the villains hit him with tools that looked "sort of like long wooden bully sticks".

2 blocks from Wonder Woman's discovery.

Chicago Native Helps Homeless Dogs, Victims Of The Recession

2009-07-21T00:28:00.001-05:00

digg stumble reddit del.ico.us

The Huffington Post | Stephanie Harnett
First Posted: 07-20-09 12:23 PM | Updated: 07-20-09 01:20 PM

1 Like It 0 Don't

Kara Severson knows that victims of foreclosure come in all breeds. Breeds of dog, that is. Severson volunteers at a no-kill animal shelter in Chicago where she walks all types of canines who, like their owners, have suddenly found themselves without a home.

Severson's own Shar Pei, Kennedy, has stayed by her side through unemployment and a cross-country journey to move back in with her mother. But the dogs she walks haven't been so lucky.

The shelter keeps a wing for dogs that wear the tag, "I'm here temporarily while my family gets their life on track." Severson told us she began volunteering there when she was in the depths of her own financial struggle.

"To combat my self-pity, I signed up to walk dogs...at PAWS, a no-kill shelter in Chicago. I have seen more and more dogs dropped off by teary-eyed owners who can no longer afford their care. The shelter offers temporary housing to help families keep their pets while suffering economic hardship. As I walk these temporarily homeless dogs, my eyes fill with tears for the dog who's suddenly living in a cage and doesn't know what he did to be ejected from the pack, for the mom who's dropping off her child's 6-month-old puppy because they just lost their home."

Severson lost her own home in California, and she remembers thinking, "Oh my god, I'm flat broke." She did everything she could just to feed her dog.

"I'd walk around the stores because I knew they'd give my dog a treat," she admits of perusing the pooch-friendly clothing boutiques in Santa Monica. The nearby pet store was particularly helpful.

"They would hand me a giant bag [of dog food] tied up and they would say, 'Don't react, don't say thank you, just take it. Just take it,'" she said. "That's really how we got by, just by the goodness of other peoples' hearts."

But late last year, even that was no longer enough and Severson was forced to move with her dog and two kittens back to her mother's home in Chicago, where she slept on the couch, often with Kennedy beside her.

That's when she found PAWS and began volunteering to walk dogs. The story of one dog, especially, touched her heart.

"There was this woman that was in the parking lot, she was holding a Boxer puppy and kind of looking at me with a frown on her face, and usually people are smiling at me because they recognize what I'm doing," she said. Later she saw the woman again, without the dog this time, and inside she saw the dog in a kennel:

I took that Boxer for a really long walk one day, and I was crying. She was six months old then and I was thinking she was probably a Christmas present," she said. "I think of all the happiness and joy that comes with having a puppy and I just cry. And for myself I have tears of gratitude for the loving mother who took me and my dog when I could no longer pay rent...

I was in this position, so I feel like maybe I have a bigger obligation.

-----

As a counterpoint to the (justifiably) gloomy tone of much reporting about the economic crisis, HuffPost is highlighting stories of service, local heroes, and acts of kindness (random and otherwise). If you read or hear about uplifting stories or good deeds in your community (or do a good deed yourself), please let us know by emailing allforgood@huffingtonpost.com.

That wacky business with Huffington Post

2009-07-21T00:15:00.002-05:00

When I first returned to Chicago from LA, I got an email from Huffington Post asking for readers' volunteer stories. So I wrote a little ditty that wrote itself. I was rather proud of it, I gotta say.

which really says something as I'm rarely proud of what I write, this blog in partics.

But that little missive just magically bookended with recession, doggies, getting charity, and giving charity.

So I can't say I was THAT surprised when I got a personal email from the blog asking if they could polish my story and publish it.

woo!

I guess it was published today. I think this because I got an email from the shelter I described, then a fan letter on Facebook! I have ONE fan people! this is brilliant!

So I google and I find the article. And it's not my little ditty (did I mention it was lovely?), it's a new story bits and pieces of my work thrown in for good measure. And it wasn't about how amazing PAWS is. It made me sound like a saint. eek. that I am not.

So I'm a wee embarrassed. But it's kinda cool I Google myself and a whole page of links pop up with this story. So because other sites reposted the article, I've decided to indulge and repost it here.

cheers-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/20/chicago-native-helps-home_n_241289.html

Energy In Energy Out

2009-06-03T19:57:00.008-05:00

I finally won my 8-month fight with CA unemployment. Kinda. They still owe me about $2,000. But at least I have the first $10,000 so that's a start.

A little late but...well better late than never.

Tho never was, eh, never an acceptable conclusion for me!

After 8 months of starving, freezing, negotiating, begging, pleading, and fighting...

now what?

First I paid everyone off - feels amazing to send money to creditors vs. letters apologizing and explaining. The lack of finance charges will be awfully nice too!

Then I treated myself and a friend to beer and nibblies before a free show at Millenium park.

Today? I'm suddenly suffering from that awful post-war void of having nothing to fight. Nobody to fight. I have no fight dammit!

So, I stopped at the new Whole Foods in the new Lincoln Park. Got myself a cup of organic coffee + a raw bar before parking my butt on some green furniture to check my email and newly full bank account. I was supposed to volunteer at PAWS this morning, but the wifi at Whole Foods is awful. Just good enough so I could begin emails & transactions, but continuously shutting down in the middle of my work.

aaaaarrrrrrggggghhhhhh! I'm now tightly wound. Bitter. Angry. Aggravated. Ashamed. Embarrassed. Furious. Swearing and (softly) yelling at the lousy internet service and wishing I'd just gone to Dunkin Donuts for my coffee as I wanted to and just skipped email and banking until this afternoon.

so now it's nearly noon and too late to work at PAWS as I promised Kennedy I would not be gone all day.

So I remember my plan to find a local source for salt lamps. Other than Karyn's Raw. My assumption is she's overpriced, tho I can't recall being shocked at the tag when I found the lamps in her shop last year. So I attempt a search despite the bad wifi.

It crashes a couple times, but eventually I find a groovy little shop in Skokie.

Skokie?! I have to drive to Skokie?

fine. I've wanted that salt lamp for over a year. And after a sh*tty 40th birthday plus 8months of a negative balance in my checking account, I deserve that salt lamp dammit. Besides this shop looks REALLY cool and it has a salt room and says I can sit in that salt room for up to 1 hour if I want to and I could really use some positive vibes rights now to offset all the aggravation I put myself in today and it's not even noon.

So I drive up to Skokie. My laptop is now at 8% battery life so I turn it off as I get near my destination. As I memorize the final 2 steps in the directions, I shut down my trusty pal Mac.

But there's no shop. But I could swear it said Ridgeway! And to turn left. And if I turned right, I'd be in the front lawn of the Chicago Transit Authority.

aaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhhh

more anger. Stupid suburbs. Stupid Skokie. I hate the suburbs. Right now, I. Just. Hate.

I try to get the phone number by accessing the internet from my old phone. But this website is not old phone internet friendly so I can't get the information I need.

More anger. Stupid website. Stupid old phone. Why won't this website have the phone number on it's front page readable from an old phone?!

I call 411 and get the number. A lovely female voice answers. I quelch my disgust just long enough to ask her for some guidance to her shop. She's so sweet and polite and calm and....positive she pulls my head out of my arse just long enough to finish our call.

I get turned around, find a parking spot. Cursing the whole way. Storming to the building. Stupid building. Stupid small sign so I can't easily find the place in the midst of this industrial neighborhood.

I walk in and the room is filled with salt lamps. The air is cool and clean like Palisades Park at 6am. Isabella is helping someone out and smiles "oh! You're the woman on the phone right?!"

I smile and I mean it. 30minutes of listening to her answer my many questions on the varieties of salt lamps and I'm calm.

No more hate.

I choose a rare Persian lavender salt lamp. As she packages it for me, I sit in the salt room breathing deeply. Looking at the plant on the top shelf and thinking of Fred and how lovely it would have been to build a salt room for him when he was so sick. Feeling overwhelmed with peace and happy and calm.

Isabella steps in quietly to ask if I'd like to stay for a while or if I'm eager to go as my lamp is ready if I'm in a hurry.

I'm not in a rush, but again promised Kennedy I'd be home at a reasonable hour, so I decide to get up.

Denise rushes in gushing about how pleased her doctor is with her improvements since her acquisition of her salt lamps. So she's back for more! Denise explains to me why her doctor suggested the lamps and how they've positively affected her.

As she continues to shop, Isabella walks me to the back shipping area and shows me all their products. I ask about a feng shui remedy I recently read and she responds by grabbing 4 large salt rocks and lovingly placing them in my hands.

I'm already in a buzzy positive bliss and now she's pushed me into heaven. I can't believe her generosity of both material and spirit.

I told Isabella - and because she was so tickled by my comment I'm repeating it here - Solay is the coolest!

I love Solay. I love Isabella. I love Denise. I love my new salt lamp. I love my salt rocks.

and I love Kennedy- who just jumped up from her

bed across the room and ran to me, climbing her 50lb body onto my lap while eagerly licking me and wagging her tail.

Clueless Luxury

2009-05-18T10:29:00.000-05:00

Have you ever seen Clueless? or any other movie that depicts very wealthy, spoiled individuals absolutely clueless about reality? as in they honestly feel they're being tortured when daddy makes them drive a Honda to school? Or when they're shocked that someone would not have $500 in his/her wallet at any given moment?

I never thought these were based on real people.

But I guess they were.

Go ahead laugh at me. I suppose I'M the clueless one being shocked each time I'm faced with someone who thinks living paycheck to paycheck means owning 4 houses (2 of them appraised at over $1million), having several tens of thousands in savings, and over $100k in his 401k account.

A couple years ago I was slapped into reality by a woman I consider very kind suddenly blurting out "you wouldn't want someone renting from you who couldn't afford the $60 westside rentals subscription. yuck!" Everyone in the room shuddered in agreement.

*I* am one of those who cannot afford the $60 westside rentals subscription.

Someone very close to me- close enough to know I lived without heat in my home from Sept-December last year. Who knew my only access to food August-December was scrounging up the free stuff at volunteer events or demo tables in stores. He told me he is, by no means, living a life of luxury.

This person owns several homes. Drives a leather-interior, Harmon Kardon stereo, convertible 2008 BMW. He eats most meals at restaurants where it's impossible to dine for less than $25. Every meal is organic. Most are gourmet. He has reverse-osmosis installed in his home. His dogs get walked by a professional weekly. They eat raw food. They are cared for by nationally-respected holistic veterinary doctors. He has a full-time accountant managing his money, investments, spending. Advising him how to spend during the year to reduce his taxes to the point some years he gets refunds greater than most Americans' annual salaries. He has a woman come every month to his home and scrub the place clean so he doesn't have to.

This man- telling me he loves me and considered me for his wife- knowing I starved and froze the last 3 months of our relationship - knowing I've been homeless since December.... this man tells me, in the expectation I will offer compassion, he doesn't live in any kind of luxury.

And again, I'm shocked. Shocked that someone could be so out of touch with reality. To drive a luxury car, eat luxury meals every meal every day, to own several homes, to work less than 40hours a week in exchange for a salary 5 times what my greatest salary was (and I worked 50-75 hours a week!).... and to seek compassion for his hard knocks bare bones lifestyle.

I'm shocked and angry. I'm angry at him and all the people like him. and all the people worse than him. I know, theoretically, there are people worse than him. He's one of the good guys actually. I'm giving him the bum rap here- He really is one of the good guys.

But absolutely clueless.

Don't you want these people to be stripped of their money, assets. supportive families? For a couple years? Not knowing they'll ever have security in their lives again? Don't you want them to experience reality for a bit? I don't mean in a cruel vindictive way... I just mean in an educational way.

Sort of like that rule of thought that every person should be required to work as a waiter or busboy for 2 years so they can appreciate what service-industry people deal with.

Just that.

Just an educational, get a grip on reality type of deal.

Of course, if I were some tortured, raped, starving, oppressed woman in Africa, I'd probably be writing about that stupid, shallow, self-absorbed, self-pitying white woman in Chicago who doesn't appreciate the fact she can walk her dog for an hour at dusk without fear of being attacked and her genitals mutilated.

Then again, I'm aware of that good fortune. That I'm indeed living in luxury. Sleeping on my mother's couch. Ruled by her whims and needs. Survived 3 months of freezing--- me, my dog, my 3-month old kittens all curled up with each other every night trying to use our collective body heat to stay warm. Taking turns not eating for 24 hours to stretch out the free food I gathered and the little funds I had. THAT is still luxury.

There's worse. much worse out there. I'm living in luxury just by the fact I live in the United States. I have never lived in war. I have never lived in the projects where war-like conditions are a daily reality for kids right here. A couple miles from my mom's cushy little cozy home south side of Chicago.

How can anyone living in the United States look someone in the eye and say "it's not like I'm living a life of luxury?"

How can you be worth over a million dollars, working less than 40hours a week, and look your homeless ex-girlfriend in the eyes and say "I love you, always loved you, will always love you...I'm struggling too, no luxury for me...oh, I guess luxury is relative"

It's not relative my friend. If you're not starving, not freezing, not homeless, not in fear of being shot/knifed/raped/bombed... you are living in luxury.

Then again, this is the person who stormed off from a discussion about the world and politics and who's leading our world....stating "ugh, who wants to sit through this?! Get me out of here. Where's that Seth Rogan movie playing?"

Wake up. Look around. Get a clue. There's oodles to find if you get your head out of the movie theatre and into those projects down the street from your million dollar home.

Why hello Brad...

2009-05-15T09:58:00.000-05:00

I had a dream last night.

I was in my mother's car. In Chicago Heights. Joe Orr Road. Waiting at a stop light. Dark. Stormy. Wicked stormy. Just-so-close-to-a-tornado stormy.

Two tall men are running in the rain to my car. I can tell they're running with the intent to get in and take over. I'm afraid.

C'mon I'm in Chicago Heights at some god forsaken hour with 2 tall men coming at me, how could I not be terrified?

One of them gets in the driver's side, pushing me over so he can take control. The other gets in the back seat.

The guy in the driver's seat is Brad Pitt.

His friend is George Clooney.

They're both grateful to be out of the storm and George is beaming and laughing and chatting away.

I'm so stunned I don't question why they're here or where Brad is taking us.

I find myself in Brad's home. I guess he has a place in Chicago. Or Indiana (Chicago Heights is very close to the state border). Or maybe he drove us all the way to New Orleans and I didn't notice seeing as Brad f*&king Pitt was driving me with George Clooney in back.

I'm immediately handed a pomegranate martini. Organic natch. People are milling about. Friendly vibe. But VIP as well. It's some sort of secret underground fundraiser. Only the really cool, hip, smart -- yet incredibly kind -- people have been invited. Brad wanted to make sure I got there. His home is amazing. Beautiful. Modern. All sustainable. Everything in there is recycled, organic, environmentally and politically conscious.

It's kinda David Lynchian tho...

Downstairs a presentation has begun. A woman speaks. She's a former drug addict gushing with thanks to Brad, George and their foundation for pulling her out of her self-induced gutter and saving her life from drugs. We're all crying from her story. She buckles over. I see her convulse as one does when vomiting. She stands back up, wiping her mouth, uttering "I'm fine...really I'm fine, dont' worry I'm fine" She's obviously wasted in some meth/heroine wacked out desert.

My body is kidnapped by horror. Shame. Despair. Failure. I quickly turn away and walk as far from the presentation as possible. I can't take it. I can't handle watching the failure.

And yet while walking away crying, shaking, praying I'm also thinking "whoa I hope John Cusack is seeing how deeply touched I am by this woman's plight. He would totally want to meet me impressed with my sensitivity and depth."

I overhear Brad or maybe George on the mike announcing to the crowd how everything is ok because my mother is there to help and she has already rescued the woman. He goes on to agree with everyone on the greatness of my mother-- her saint-like life. Everyone applauds and celebrates the good, selfless, miracle-giving life of my mother the heroine.

I get myself together and return to the main room.

It's clear while I was gone wait staff served organic, locally grown gourmet vegan and raw food. Exotic food too. All indescribably yummy. All untouchably expensive and rare.

But now it's all gone. I get a crumb of some goat cheese off a plate.

People wander finishing off their 2nd drinks. Champagne. very very very insanely expensive and delicious champagne. I want to have a glass, but the staff is cleaning up and the crowd is thinning and I worry if I grab a 2nd glass I'll look desperate for the alcohol and, thus, labelled an alcoholic.

So I just stand there. Alone. Hungry. Sad.

Feeling like the poor, hungry outsider I've always felt like growing up. Standing in the classroom alone watching all the kids laugh and play on the jungle gym. Sitting alone in my apartment watching all the people giggle and stumble with each other down the sidewalk late into the night.

But I shared this dream with my mother and she said it's positive. And I think, "Brad Pitt and George Clooney get into my car and insist on driving me to a VIP party at Brad's home--- you needed a degree in Psych from the University of Chicago to decipher this as a positive story?"

Reply to man screaming obscenities at me at the bus stop

2009-04-28T07:24:00.000-05:00

As I sat on the bus stop bench on the corner of Lincoln/Montana waiting for the #3 to take me to LAX to pick up my family...

A man driving a Camero drove past me and angrily screamed:

"Buy a fucking car!!!"

*clearing throat*

I had to sell my American made GM Saturn which sat broken down roughly 6 of the 7 years I owned it thanks to a crummy-designed & built cooling system. I couldn't afford to repair it anymore when I lost my job at a major banking firm.

the hesitant goodbye

2009-04-19T10:40:00.000-05:00

so I went back to Chicago in December thanks to long-term unemployment and California keeping my unemployment benefits from me. The time home was supposed to be just for 6 weeks. Just to have someone else pay my rent for that time so I could live rent-free and hopefully resolve my issues with the state of California.

the trip home turned into 3 1/2 months thanks to needing a 2nd appeal with unemployment and the only subletter I could find needing my place through the end of March.

when I came back home (Santa Monica) 1April, my appeal was still up in the air, I was flat broke, and very depressed that my only option was to spend the month packing and saying goodbye to a town in which I've lived, worked, played, loved, lost for 10 years.

less than 1 month to say goodbye after 10 years.

Now I'm a bit of a fighter, so I was optimistic some miracle would happen that would allow me to stay here at least another 6 months.

But as of 10 days ago no miracle occurred. So I helped my mother and sister buy 2 one-way tickets to California with the plan we drive my stuff back to Chicago the final week of April.

I spent the next 36hours on my couch depressed, crying, living on a diet of coffee and hoho's.

then 9 days ago I had a nightmare about the near-future of southern california and that made me feel ok about leaving. In fact, rather excited about getting out before the apocalypse!

So I made my plan to leave at the end of the month. Made a list of things I need to do here before saying goodbye, feasibly, forever.

But 4 days ago I got the answer to my 2nd appeal with California unemployment and- holy crap there's the miracle I prayed for my 1st 2 weeks back in Santa Monica --- The judges reversed all 3 of the accusations against me! And even declared the money taken from me last fall should be returned!! Without sitting down to do the calculations, I can safely estimate I'll receive a check from the state for over $10,000.

This is about 5 months of rent - IF I don't move or re-negotiate my rent with my landlord. And, of course, I'll now receive checks from the state equalling my monthly rent until I can finally find a job.

For the 1st time in over 10 years I finally FINALLY had a prayer answered. But what about the nightmare?

So I get that miracle which allows me to stay here. And my home is FINALLY a home I enjoy. Ok, it could use a new couch. Some bookcases. New carpeting and paint. Some artwork. But overall? My home is a cozy, peaceful escape from the world. I love my home for the 1st time in 10 years. More so than the home I loved in Chicago 10 years ago! I have a full bedroom. An office. A dining table. A full kitchen. Windows windows everywhere! And a beautiful HUGE patio on which I can sit, read, sleep, draw -- night and day. Listening to the birds chirp. Sometimes I can even hear the ocean. Palm trees and fir trees against blue skies. My dog happily naps on her blanket out here with me.

I walk about my neighborhood with Kennedy and I see the For Rent signs. And the empty spaces that used to be private boutiques. and the For Sale signs. The rental ads are full of people begging strangers to take over their mortgage payments before they lose their homes. The streets aren't as full of pedestrians and shoppers anymore.

In Chicago, I could feel a strong life-force pulsing through the streets. Healthy, oxygen-charged blood forcing energy throughout the city.

Santa Monica is quiet. and still. scared.

So I continue with my plan to leave. Family arrives in 5 days for a brief visit before we pack up and drive out in a week. I sit here right now on my patio crying for what I'm leaving. For a life I've dreamed of for over 10 years - finally achieved - now packing up and leaving?

So I'm trying to say goodbye. I'm trying to do the things here I know I will most miss when back in Chicago. But I'm foregoing a lot because I love my home. FINALLY love my home so much I don't want to leave it! I know there is potentially something so much better waiting in the future. Anytime I've been forced to change my life, a much better one was waiting for me. But am I being forced to move now? I got my money. I have that life I fantasized about for 10years. The one I cried for. I've got it!

Kennedy is rolling and stretching in the sunbeams on our patio. I'm enjoying the leaves on my new chocolatemint plant I bought at the farmers' market Wednesday. The chirping birds. The fresh ocean air.

But we have a walk to the ocean waiting for us... one of our final ocean strolls. So I suppose I need to say goodbye

for now...

Happy Birthday Jack!

2009-03-12T12:56:00.000-05:00

Only sorry he got caught

2009-03-12T12:53:00.000-05:00

Madoff pleads guilty and goes to jail in handcuffs

By LARRY NEUMEISTER and TOM HAYS, Associated Press Writers
1 min ago
NEW YORK – Saying he was "deeply sorry and ashamed," Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty Thursday to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history and was immediately led off to jail in handcuffs to the delight of his seething victims.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin denied bail for Madoff, 70, and ordered him to jail, noting that he had the means to flee and an incentive to do so because of his age.
Madoff spoke softly but firmly to the judge as he pleaded guilty to 11 charges in his first public comments about his crimes since the scandal broke in early December.
"I am actually grateful for this opportunity to publicly comment about my crimes, for which I am deeply sorry and ashamed," he said.
"As the years went by, I realized my risk and this day would inevitably come. I cannot adequately express how sorry I am for my crimes."
Prosecutors say the disgraced financier, who has spent three months under house arrest in his $7 million Manhattan penthouse, could face a maximum term of 150 years in prison at sentencing June 16.
DeWitt Baker, an investor who attended the hearing and said he lost more than a million dollars with Madoff, called it "fantastic" that Madoff's bail was revoked but belittled the apology.
"I don't think he has a sincere bone in his body," said DeWitt, who added that prison time would be too good for Madoff.
"I'd stone him to death," he said.
Madoff did not look at any of the three investors who spoke at the hearing, even when one turned in his direction and tried to address him.
The fraud, which prosecutors say may have totaled nearly $65 billion, turned a revered money man into an overnight global disgrace whose name became synonymous with the current economic meltdown.
Madoff described his crimes after he entered a guilty plea to all 11 counts he was charged with, including fraud, perjury, theft from an employee benefit plan, and two counts of international money laundering.
He told the judge that he believed the fraud would be short-term and that he could extricate himself. He implicated no one else, though investigators suspect involvement by relatives and top lieutenants who helped run his operation from its midtown Manhattan headquarters.
The plea came three months after the FBI claimed Madoff admitted to his sons that his once-revered investment fund was all a big lie — a Ponzi scheme that was in the billions of dollars. Since his arrest in December, the scandal has turned the former Nasdaq chairman into a pariah who has worn a bulletproof vest to court.
The scheme evaporated life fortunes, wiped out charities and apparently pushed at least two investors to commit suicide. Victims big and small were swindled by Madoff, from elderly Florida retirees to actors Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel.
Helicopters circled above the courthouse before the hearing, and federal officers with machine gun-style weapons stood outside as Madoff arrived.
Jilted investors signed in before entering the courtroom on the 24th floor. Richard and Cynthia Friedman turned up to get a glimpse of the man who defrauded them of their life savings of $3 million.
Richard Friedman, an accountant, noticed how well his clients were doing with Madoff and began investing his own money in 1991. He learned it was gone months before he had planned to retire — a plan now on hold.
"I wanted him to see some of the faces of the people he lied to and destroyed," said Cynthia Friedman, 59, of Jericho, N.Y.
After arguments began on whether Madoff should remain free on bail, his lawyer Ira Sorkin described the bail conditions and how Madoff had, "at his wife's own expense," paid for private security at his penthouse.
Loud laughter then erupted among some of the more than 100 spectators crammed into the large courtroom on the 24th floor of the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. The judge warned the spectators to remain silent.
George Nierenberg, the first of the three investors to speak, approached the podium glaring at Madoff, then said in the financier's direction: "I don't know if you had a chance to turn around and look at the victims."
At the hint of a confrontation, a marshal sitting behind Madoff stood up, and the judge directed Nierenberg to speak directly to the bench.
The courtroom erupted in applause after the judge announced Madoff would go directly to jail. As he was led out of court, a spectator yelled, "Hey, Bernie," but was shushed by investors in court and backed off.
The plea does not end the Madoff saga: Investigators are still undertaking the daunting task of unraveling how he pulled off the fraud for decades without being caught.
Court papers say Madoff generated or had employees generate "tens of thousands of account statements and other documents through the U.S. Postal Service, operating a massive Ponzi scheme," prosecutors said.
The money was never invested, but was used by Madoff, his business and others, prosecutors said.
Authorities said he confessed to his family that he had carried out a $50 billion fraud. In court documents filed Tuesday, prosecutors raised the size of the fraud to $64.8 billion.
Experts say the actual loss was more likely much less and that higher numbers reflect false profits he promised investors. So far, authorities have located about $1 billion for jilted investors.
In addition to prison time, he said Madoff faces mandatory restitution to victims, forfeiture of ill-gotten gains and criminal fines.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Peltz and David B. Caruso contributed to this report.

The best latte

2009-03-12T09:18:00.000-05:00

Didn't sleep much last night- My subletters leave in a wee less than 3 weeks which means I have to go back to Santa Monica and be forced into things I don't want to do just yet (or at all in some things). Unless a miracle happens and I get a job soon. VERY SOON.

Even Kennedy knows I'm paralyzed with anxiety right now. Instead of sleeping at my feet, she squeezed her body along side mine on that very narrow couch I've been calling a bed for 3 months. I don't even have money to buy my flight back to California. Don't have the money to bring the animals to a vet for a flight certificate. Then, of course, no money to fly them with me.

And as it looks like I may be forced to spend April packing up to move back to Illinois - into my mother's home - 100% dependent on her indefinitely....well I slip into a depression I'm determined to fight. But some days even walking homeless dogs and helping kittens post-surgery won't remove the sludge from my heart. Thanks to yet another one of my mother's fits, I try to consider really how bad it would be to just live on the streets vs more time enslaved to her and her anger.

So before I walk doggies, I treat myself. More Intelligensia. Since it's my 1st cup of the day, I can enjoy one of their award-winning lattes. Made by the recent winner of the US Barista Championship, Michael Phillips. I get lucky and he's here this morning. My latte is exquisite. Both to see and taste. The photo above is me enjoying my, eh, 3rd sip. It's so beautiful I hate to drink it not wanting to destroy the artful way he poured the steamed milk. But to drink it- ahhhhhhhhh-- for now my anxiety lessens...and I'm able to give 4+ hours of this snowy day to 30+ homeless dogs I've been neglecting this past week thanks to flu bugs and motherly surprises.

Getting that 2nd pint glass

2009-03-11T10:24:00.000-05:00

Started today abruptly - alarm on my phone waking me at 6:30am. Funny, the last 2 years I was getting up at 5am to take care of dying kitties or walk doggies before getting to my job at 7am. And now a 6:30 wake-up is painful. Honestly, I think the latter is healthier. 5am wake-ups for a low-paying, dead-end job was insane.

So the temp plummeted last night which made me lazy which resulted in Kennedy simply getting the quick, lame "ok honey, just do your thing in the back yard".

Off to Argonne Labs with mom. I can't recall what today's presentation covers. I think it's a standard-maintenance type thing tho. Usually the crisis counseling comes with a colourful, sad story. And I'm drawing a blank here.

I wasn't planning to go, but last night she assured me this was a quickie so we'd be done by noon. This morning the story changed and now I have no idea how long I'm stuck in this coffee shop drumming up ways to take advantage of my lock-up. I've scoured all my usual job boards, applied for the 3 jobs posted for which I'm qualified. Checked email. Checked and played about Facebook. Even read PerezHilton - a bad bad habit I thankfully broke in my unemployment. When your life is fulfilling, you don't need the pain of others to entertain you...

Eventually, I'll get to leave. Take her to her office downtown, then join my college friend, Mike, at Corcoran's on Wells. They're doing this month-long Guinness promotion on Wednesdays. $5 Guinness and you keep the pint glass. I need new glassware for my non-existent kitchen. $6 pub burgers. 35cent wings. The bartender told us last week we'd get an email offering 50% off the wings, but I haven't gotten yet- I hope Mike did!

******
Picked up mom at Argonne - she's smiling...a rare sight. It's both sunny and relatively warm....a rare coupling in Chicago. She needs to take care of some banking business for her mother, then we eat. I ask if she'd prefer to eat out in the burbs, or still wants to grab a burger at the Irish pub on Wells. "I'm starved! let's eat here!" Somehow in our discussion, I realize she's not planning to go to her office today. I balk at change, I inform her I had plans to meet a friend in the city while she was at work. She claims I should have known we weren't going into the city. Same old crazy-making miscommunication from her. The story changes second-by-second and when you call her on it, she still answers non-sensically but in a tone normally attached to certainty. This crazy, changing plans without notifying the other parties, is not rare for her. I ask myself why I continue to believe her when she assures me of her plans. At least I stopped making commitments with anyone 2 months ago. Too many last-minute cancellations from me accompanied by humiliated apologies and the dread that "great, I'll never get a job here thanks to proving I'm unreliable". But I continue to believe her and make wish-washy plans accordingly despite her fairly consistent game-changing. When do I develop some sort of insurance to protect myself against this?

So we go the pub anyway. Broken meter. Sunny day. Warm day. Beautiful day to enjoy some mother/daughter time. She chooses the silent treatment. The martyr treatment. We sit in the pub where she sits silently scowling. Our 1-hour there feels like 10. I think about the week before when 2 1/2 hours flew by laughing with Michael and the bartender.

I think about how much personal sunshine I'm missing by being enslaved to my mother's whims right now. About my life in Santa Monica and my beautiful neighbours. About my life in Chicago if I could afford rent. THIS IS THE TIME TO REALLY ENJOY LIFE. And I'm locked in a depressed, cluttered house of sadness and anger.

I NEED TO FIND A WAY OUT

We get home about 3:30pm. I go to my little room and lay on my "bed". It's a beautiful day to take Kennedy for a nice long walk. But I curl up miserable in the back room and fall asleep until 6pm. I wait impatiently for mom to go to church. Thank G*D for church. The 2 hours she's gone, I breathe again and laugh and play with Kennedy and the babies. Mom still isn't home. She's apparently staying away from home avoiding me. ugh. So I go back to my little room and back under the covers and get to sleep before she comes home.

Good thing she goes to church twice a week. Seems to really help her be a good Christian....

Cool idea a little late

2009-03-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

Some of my favorite blogs are those which simply share day-by-day trivial happenings. Because I find people fascinating and beautiful -- anything is colourful to me. But for me to share daily nothings seems way too self-absorbed even for me.

On further thought, during this extraordinary time in our generation, it might be interesting, humourous, fun for others to read the day-by-day experiences of a full-grown, well-educated, ambitious, otherwiseresponsible adult sponging off her mother thanks to 8 months of unemployment and a crazy unemployment officer.

So here is my 1st post-- 7 months too late. All the really good stuff happened between September and February. I have a sneaky feeling my life is settling down to managable now. well poop.

Well there's something new- I finally found a way to keep my kittens' litter box clean fast enough to avoid my dog enjoying kitty poop snacks.

there.

So here's today. A very lame, self-indulgent day. Maybe I'll back-track and fake-post "real day-by-day events" just for kicks.

Today began with a long walk with Kennedy. Something quite rare these days given the crazy Chicago winter weather. It was supposed to thunderstorm, but today began without rain, so I thought I better take advantage and take her out. It's been 3 days since she got significant time outside and it's supposed to rain until the weekend. Then again, the weather changes so quickly here, the meteorologists have mis-predicted it every week of the 3 months I've been out here.

Hold on- today began at 6am when I heard a glass crash in the kitchen. My mother's house is far from kitty proof. I've given up trying to safeguard her stuff piled up anywhere and everywhere. So this morning I was woken by Monroe, in her nightly mousehunt, knocking over what became my favorite beer glass here. The 16oz Bears glass my mom got for free from some gas station 20 years ago. When I went to the loo, Monroe ran in as usual and we played and she purred and she snuggled in my lap. On the toilet. Just like Misha. hmmmm

Right now I'm experiencing a heavenly overload of the senses. Rain. City smells. Pedestrians from every background making their way down Broadway. Skyscrapers hidden under heavy rain clouds. Smell of Intelligentsia coffee. The sound of the espresso machine artfully creating the best cappucino in town. People discussing art, literature, politics and laughing. 2 older men playing chess. Devotchka playing through the speaker above me. The muffled roar of the #36 bus. The taste of a REAL chai made from black tea stirred with ground vanilla seed, nutmeg, clove, cinnamon, honey and milk. No boxed syrup here. As the song ends, the voices get softer. My head buzzes my eyes drink in the beauty of this misunderstood city. The door opens and the cool wet air blows in accompanied by the smell of fresh rain mixed with taxi exhaust.

Hmm the restaurant across the street has $5 pad thai on Thursdays. I'll have to come back. Wed $5 Guinness. Thurs $5 pad thai. Recessions are fun.

After dropping off my mother, I went up to that Starbucks on North Avenue that has the parking lot. I'm so poor, 50cents for a meter is too much for me right now. I use the Starbucks card my sister gave me to buy a drip coffee knowing I can get a free refill too. Spent 2 hours reading email, playing on facebook, researching ideas for writing, checking what little money I have in my bank account, applying for the 2 jobs I found looking at 12 job sites.

Ran to Borders on North/Halsted for their 50% off sale. Never used my Borders gift card from the holidays. Waited for a sale to make my spending worthwhile. Bought 6 movies-- Barton Fink, Breakfast at Tiffanys ("Cat! cat! ohhhhh where are you cat?! cat!"), Amadeus, Sweeney Todd, The Apartment, and that crazy anime film who's name escapes me right now. I wanted Lagaan, but Borders doesn't carry it. But thanks to my brilliant reenactment of the film's highlights, the staff now wants to get a copy of the film to see its epic epicness for themselves.

NOW it's pouring. I notice the time. I should have walked dogs at PAWS. dammit. I'm so selfish. Those poor dogs don't have enough volunteers to walk them and here I was available and it wasn't raining until noon and I spent my time in a coffee shop and book store.

Off to Trader Joes on Clybourn to pick up some food for dinner tonight. And some electrolyte water for mom. When I write my fake "today's events" post for the weekend, you can read why we need electrolyte water for my mom.

Then to Kreiser's for raw food for Kennedy. I feel sick about this. I want to support Eric's store on Lincoln. He was so sweet giving Kennedy oodles of free treats and food when we first walked into his store in Jan and both looked visibly shell-shocked by our life that month. But he charges $7 more than the other stores. As much as I prefer supporting small businesses, I have to support myself and my babies 1st right now...sigh...

On to DSW to find some galoshes. $60?! I can buy designer boots for less at Bloomingdales. ugh. I'll continue to live with soggy feet.

ok- 1 more hour to kill before picking up mom from Rush/Chicago. I. Need. Internet. So tired of living in Starbucks tho. Hateful. Got it- Intelligensia, My favorite little privately-owned coffee shop when I lived here. Now they have a shop in Silverlake. California. So I come in, it's huge. The yuppies have gone! Perhaps it's the 2pm weekday time that's responsible for this. Good times anyway. I get a chai + some banana bread. Thanks to Mom for loaning me money to buy golashes.

Well, now it's 3pm and I have to resume chauffeur duties. Pick up mom, take her out to Tinley Park for her dentist appointment. Go home, take Kennedy out. Make dinner for everyone. Collapse on the couch to watch The Biggest Loser and old reruns of Boston Legal.

Told you today was a lame one...

Ah-ha!

2009-02-10T10:50:00.000-06:00

How Wall Street Continues To Doom Itself
January 30, 2009 11:34 AM ET | Rick Newman | Permanent Link |
We’ve arrived at an ah-ha moment.

Virtually everybody who butters their own bread is outraged that Wall Street, which is becoming a de facto government agency thanks to billions in bailout money, found $18.4 billion in bonuses for bankers who nearly wrecked the world’s financial system in 2008. President Obama’s criticism – “shameful” – is mild compared to what many of us think.

The bankers are bellyaching about a 44 percent decline in bonuses from 2007 levels. That’s like complaining about being served a 40-ounce porterhouse instead of a 70-ounce one.

[See why "Wall Street talent" is an oxymoron.]

Here’s a bit more perspective: Charles Payne, CEO of the research firm Wall Street Strategies, points out that in 1985, Wall Street bonuses totaled $1.9 billion. The average recipient got $13,970. Since 1985, inflation has run 97 percent in total, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That means that something worth $1 in 1985 would be worth $1.97 today. So follow the math:

Wall Street bonus pool in 1985: $1.9 billion

Value in 2008, if indexed for inflation: $3.75 billion

Actual 2008 bonus pool: $18.4 billion

Amount by which bonus pool exceeded inflation: 490 percent

Average Wall Street bonus, 1985: $13,970

Value in 2008, if indexed for inflation: $27,580

Actual average bonus, 2008: $112,000

Amount by which average bonus exceeded inflation: 406 percent

So pay for top Wall Streeters has risen 4 to 5 times as much as the rate of inflation since 1985. Of course those bankers are worth it, because of all the great things they’ve done for America during that time, like engineer the Long-Term Capital Management meltdown in 1998, the tech bubble that burst in 2001, the housing bubble that’s still bursting, a credit freeze that’s producing hypothermia at hundreds of real companies that actually make stuff, and the near collapse of the financial markets.

[See why it was a good move to let Lehman Brothers fail.]

If there’s a crowning absurdity, it’s that Wall Street mustered any bonuses at all in a year when the industry lost $34 billion. Does anybody else in America get a bonus when their company tanks? “Rewarding cataclysmic failure like this has to be what led to the fall of the Roman Empire,” Payne wrote in a recent note to clients.

It’s worth pointing out that not all Wall Street firms are as wayward as big offenders like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, AIG, and Bank of America. Many made money in 2008, and any firm that isn’t asking for taxpayer handouts should be allowed to pay its people whatever it wants.

[See five pieces missing from Obama's stimulus plan.]

But the bonus brouhaha reveals so many disconnects in the financial industry that it could end up being a pivotal moment in the dismantling of the old Wall Street. Derivatives and “funding facilities” are hard for most people to understand. But gimme gimme gimme is a corruption we all understand. If the politicians didn’t have a clear rallying cry for going after Wall Street before, they sure do now.

Another reason to boycott Macys

2009-02-04T13:01:00.001-06:00

As if their flagrant disrespect for Chicago history wasn't enough...

C'mon, I know this is actually 2004 bonus money, but getting all this cash ONE DAY after laying off 7,000 paycheck-to-paycheck employees... If this is your bonus, something tells me your annual salary is more than enough to pay the bills after giving back this money to save jobs of those who will be homeless without.

Seriously- I'm sleeping on my mother's couch in her living room for 3+ months because the state of California is too bankrupt to give me the unemployment funds it owes me. I'm a lucky one-- I know others who are sleeping in stairwells thanks, again, to CA bankruptcy. If WallStreet used that bonus money to pay their bills vs. incompetent staff wallets, perhaps there would be funds avail for state governments to pay their massive unemployment benefits- Jesus.

Macy’s execs get performance bonuses

By John Eckberg
jeckberg@enquirer.com

A day after Macy’s executives announced lay-offs of 7,000 workers and cut a dividend in half, top company officials received a final installment on $1.39 million in performance bonuses from 2004.

The stock credit plan created in March 2004 brought five top executives “phantom stock units” or stock credits after a three-year holding period ended on Saturday, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Tuesday.

Half of the incentive was paid in February 2008 with the remaining amount paid Monday.

Payments for stock credits and accrued dividends were as follows: Chief executive Terry J. Lundgren, $613,281; Karen Hoguet, chief financial officer, $192,742; Thomas Cole, chief adminstrative officer, $227,794; Janet Grove, vice chair, $227,794; Susan Kronick, vice chair, $227,794.

On Monday the company announced that swooning sales and poor earnings would bring thousands of pink slips to associates and reconfigure management of the company.

Finally SOMEone with a conscience

2009-02-04T12:41:00.000-06:00

Good news today from our beloved real superhero, President Obama--

Obama caps executive pay tied to bailout money

By JIM KUHNHENN, Associated Press Writer
44 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed $500,000 caps on senior executive pay for the most distressed financial institutions receiving federal bailout money, saying Americans are upset with "executives being rewarded for failure."

Obama announced the dramatic new government intervention into corporate America at the White House, with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at his side. The president said the executive-pay limits are a first step, to be followed by the unveiling next week of a sweeping new framework for spending what remains of the $700 billion financial industry bailout that Congress created last year.

The executive-pay move comes amid a national outcry over huge bonuses to executives heading companies seeking taxpayer dollars to remain afloat. The demand for limits was reinforced by revelations that Wall Street firms paid more than $18 billion in bonuses in 2008 even amid the economic downturn and the massive infusion of taxpayer dollars.

"This is America. We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success," Obama said. "But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure. Especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers."

The pay cap would apply to institutions that negotiate agreements with the Treasury Department for "exceptional assistance" in the future. The restriction would not apply to such firms as American International Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., and Citigroup Inc., that already have received such help.

"There is a deep sense across the country that those who were not ... responsible for this crisis are bearing a greater burden than those who were," Geithner said.

Firms that want to pay executives above the $500,000 threshold would have to use stock that could not be sold or liquidated until they pay back the government funds.

Generally healthy institutions would have more leeway. They also face the $500,000 limit if they're getting government help, but the cap can be waived with full public disclosure and a nonbinding shareholder vote.

Obama said that massive severance packages for executives who leave failing firms are also going to be eliminated. "We're taking the air out of golden parachutes," he said.

Other new requirements on "exceptional assistance" will include:
_The expansion to 20, from five, the number of executives who would face reduced bonuses and incentives if they are found to have knowingly provided inaccurate information related to company financial statements or performance measurements.
_An increase in the ban on golden parachutes from a firm's top five senior executives to its top 10. The next 25 would be prohibited from golden parachutes that exceed one year's compensation.
_A requirement that boards of directors adopt policies on spending such as corporate jets, renovations and entertainment.

The administration also will propose long-term compensation restrictions even for companies that don't receive government assistance, Obama said.
Those proposals include:
• Requiring top executives at financial institutions to hold stock for several years before they can cash out.
• Requiring nonbinding "say on pay" resolutions — that is, giving shareholders more say on executive compensation.
• A Treasury-sponsored conference on a long-term overhaul of executive compensation.

Top officials at companies that have received money from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program already face some compensation limits.

And compensation experts in the private sector have warned that such an intrusion into the internal decisions of financial institutions could discourage participation in the rescue program and slow down the financial sector's recovery. They also argue that it could set a precedent for government regulation that undermines performance-based pay.
"It's not a government takeover," Obama stressed in an interview Tuesday with CNN. "Private enterprise will still be taking place. But people will be accountable and responsible."

Still, some elected officials were pushing for the stricter caps.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has proposed that no employee of an institution that receives money under the $700 billion federal bailout can receive more than $400,000 in total compensation until it pays the money back. Her figure is equivalent to the salary of the president of the United States.

Even some Republicans, angered by company decisions to pay bonuses and buy airplanes while receiving government help, have few qualms about restrictions.

"In ordinary situations where the taxpayers' money is not involved, we shouldn't set executive pay," said Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee.

"But where you've got federal money involved, taxpayers' money involved, TARP money involved, and the way they have spent it, with no accountability, is getting close to being criminal."

Returning Home

2008-12-04T20:50:00.000-06:00

BY RABBI DAVID WOLPE
In leaving there is discovery: Only when he wanders is Jacob granted a vision. Moses must go to Midian to find God. The Israelites throughout history have only in exile grasped the spiritual contours of home.
All of us raise children in the hope that they will treasure the values we have taught them at home. But we also realize that those values will never be fully realized until our children go off on their own. You cannot know your home if your home is all you know. Out in the world, amid the jostling of other values, ideas and rich possibilities, is the potential to appreciate what one has already learned.
Abraham was told that his descendants would need to one day leave Israel, endure hardship and return to savor its beauty. This is the reverse wisdom of Thomas Wolfe's admonition that you cannot go home again. At times that is true; yet equally if paradoxically, you cannot truly understand home until you have left and go home again.
As Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding," the last of his four quartets:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

on the opposite side of the universe...

2008-12-04T15:45:00.000-06:00

...my very poor low-wage vietnamese nail salon goddess insisted I come in for a free mani/pedi.

We crossed paths on the sidewalk last night, we smiled and said "hello!!!" to each other. She said "you not come for long time"

I said "I not work for long time" followed by a sad-pouty face.

To prove myself, I showed my gnarly hands and said "see! Look how disgusting my hands are - so sad!"

She replied "You come in, I do your nails. Free. You come in!"

I cried-

I guess it does pay to be kind and tip well.

Let them eat cake!

2008-12-04T14:56:00.000-06:00

ok I used to write funny tidbits I observed, but this past year my writing has been decidedly depressing and self-pitying...

so...

let's change it up-- anger. Uncontrolled, deep rage.

As I read about everyone losing their jobs, and taxpayers paying billions for bail-outs of companies badly run by...clearly MORONS...I want to stand up and SCREEEEEAM as loud as I can. so loud they can hear me over the bloody muslim gunfire in New Delhi and Mumbai.

What--- WHAT is happening with the people, the men, who have made bad decision after bad decision after bad decision?!?! Why do THEY keep their million dollar jobs while the just-getting-by-despite-doing-a-great-jobs all become jobless?!?!

A producer at kcrw just lost her job due to budget cuts due to the recession. After a bloody year of pain and pundits wondering "hmm I wonder if we'll sink into a recession" they FINALLY formally decide we're in one. and have BEEN IN ONE SINCE LAST YEAR. NO F*CKING KIDDING!!! and the stocks....LOL.. the stocks- they plummet after this announcement? Was this really truly news to these people?!

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?~!?~?~ oh yeah, gazillionaires who most likely were raised by bazillionaires and thus have NO IDEA WHAT THE REAL WORLD is.

Back to the jobless producer-- she said "funny, all of those who successfully built lauded and profitable projects lose their jobs. But the top executives who have been bungling everything for years, they still have their million dollar jobs?!"

exactly

WHEN DO WE GET TO SEE HEADS ROLL?!

I haven't had heat in 4 months. I lost the job I was supposed to start in August becuase they had a hiring freeze. Because CA is bankrupt and it's unemployment staff woefully overwhelmed, I was subjected to a 20min verbally abusive tirade that was supposed to be an interview. Followed by a letter accusing me of lying about my conditions of unemployment and telling me I get NO UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS + I have to pay a $500 PENALTY for lying. I filed an appeal, natch. But until I have my court date, the state will take out the penalty from my bank account with no warning. And hold on to the checks I'm supposed to receive. And because the state of California is in such a mess the earliest court date I can expect is sometime in January. I appealed in October. I've not received a check from the state since early September. Oh my f*cking G*d.

I've been paying into unemployment for 25 years! I have not filed for unemployment before because, this is a strange concept, I LIVE FRUGALLY AND SAVE for days I may be jobless!! Well the well has run dry George- and where are you?! Typically, your hiding at the time your country needs you the most. Thank G*D we elected a man who's actually willing to WORK for a living.

I'm about to sublet my apartment and move in with family because despite my intelligence, education, and job experience, I can't pay rent on a moderate apartment. My cousin may have to move in with HIS family -- him, his wife, and their 2 kids.

And I'm supposed to be impressed because the CEO of Ford will work for a dollar. oh boohoo what a hero- That dip in pay certainly will hurt someone who has MILLIONS IN SAVINGS AND ASSETS.

One reason I left my job was my pure and deep disgust for the upper management of the company. The President is a moron who's filled with self-adoration. He announced the company would not be giving bonuses to it's lowest-status (i.e. most overworked and poorest) staff. We were also told raises could not be very good this year due to budget constraints. But, after seeing the jaguar one of his department presidents drives, he announced "ooo! I want to buy that for my teenaged daughter!"

I'm done DONE with the stupid, selfish, clueless upper management in this country. When do we hold the revolt? When do we storm the bastille? Why are we not storming the white house each time a group of overpaid morons begs for handouts in their $3000 suit and $1000 shoes. Delivered in private jets. Driven in limousines. Why are we not rocking them over like we do taxi cabs after winning sports championships? Why not raid and loot the upper offices of Enron, Haliburton, Fannie Mae with the same anger and vigor given to poor local merchants in a poor town after a major hurricane and flood?

If the president of my last employer lived in revolutionary France, his name would be Marie Antoinette. Let them eat cake!

Nostalgia and that pit at the bottom of your stomach

2008-11-25T16:07:00.000-06:00

I've always snickered at people reminiscing "remember when..."

Typically these 2 words were the beginning of a long recollection of high school or college events. I have no fondness for my high school or college days. I felt forced to go to both. Looked at both as merely something to get out of the way to please my government and my mother.

But when I finally graduated, I was free, finally 100% free to do what I wanted with my life. And I soared.

I adopted a 10-wk kitten, all black, he was "this close" to be euthanized at the humane society. The staff lined up and cheered as he was carried from his cage to my lap. I named him Mikhail, called him Misha, and only spoke Russian to him.

I got myself a scholarship to a dance studio on the north side of Chicago. For the first time in my life....in 13 years of desperately wanting to study dance...I was free to study dance 9am-6pm Monday-Friday. All I had to do in exchange was sweep floors, wash mirrors, and be good. And write a paper here and there on dance legends. I learned about Katherine Dunham at that studio. And how she discovered a new genre of dance while working on her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. I decided if the dancing didnt' work out, I'd get my PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. Maybe discover a new genre of dance. Maybe not.

I danced all day every day. Then on the weekends I danced more in rehearsals for shows. Late night drinks with fellow dancers. Home to my wee black kitten for fetch and mousies and Russian.

I got myself an apartment-- top floor of a 3-flat-- on Sheffield just north of Belmont. How convenient... My favorite hobby was dancing until 3am at the Avalon on Belmont. Just 2 doors East of Sheffield.

Rent was $230/month. I had a closet-less room in a 2 1/2 bedroom (I had the 1/2). I was able to move myself in 3 car trips.

Oh yea, this was after I landed an apprenticeship with a world class Graham company-- Joseph Holmes Dance Chicago. I still danced all day, rehearsed all day, swept floors, pulled pubic hairs out of shower drains, took out the garbage. Lived on bananas, peanut butter, yogurt, pasta. Cheap but filling for an athlete. Dream life for a dancer forbidden to dance until she finished college.

Then an audition for one of the best dance companies in the world- and the artistic director pointing me out the entire time. And him coming up to me a week later to gush about how beautiful a dancer I am. And how the only reason he didn't hire me was he needed to get a mature redhead and I was too young at 23. I immediately dyed my hair red and started booking dance jobs left/right.

Meeting Gwen Verdon. and Twyla Tharp. Playing with Lou's dog and impressing him with my knowledge of vet medicine.

And the owner of Avalon introduced me to the owner of The Vic. So I had myself an amazing bartending job where I made oodles of cash in 5 hr shifts. 1 block from home. Partied with legends of rock. Was set up with a famous comedian. Only to learn- as he asked me to go to Glee Club with him the following night- that he's gay. oopsie!

Members of Jesus and the Mary Chain making cocktails for me backstage at their Metro Show for which they gave me all-access passes. "You served us, so now we'll serve you!" How fun to watch beautiful Ken get to flirt with Hope Sandoval. He had such an adorable crush-

Dancing in a sun costume while my dear sweet friend, Ben, told the 6th graders in that south-side school all about the solar system. Laughing at the vast difference between the response of the rich white kids vs. the poor black kids. And how the poor black kids were definitely the more enjoyable audience.

Getting smashed at Market Days...Frank Orrall getting ready to spin on the corner of Halsted and Roscoe-- but the sky breaks open rain thrashes down upon us as we defy nature and continue to dance. And Frank defies electrocution and continues to spin. And everyone is wet and everyone is sweaty and everyone is drunk and everyone is giggling. and smiling. and happy. And it gets so dangerous with the lightening striking the small DJ stage, the music has to stop. But the dancing continues. and the bars are bursting. and the crowd is laughing. and wet. and sweaty. and smiling. and Halsted Street, from Belmont up to Addison thumps thumps until 4am as we continue to dance and sweat and drink and laugh and flirt and giggle.

And I sit here today in a generic coffee shop on Montana Avenue. 6 blocks from the Pacific Ocean. 2 blocks from home. A infinite distance from the laughing the dancing the sweating the smiling the giggling the drinking the flirting the spinning the music. The happy.

The eternal nights that last until we stumble to Nookies for a 6am breakfast before going home and to bed.

The cozy Saturday nights in January all bundled up with the kitties and some movies and the radiator banging heat into my wee historic landmark studio off Lake Michigan. The 11pm call from Heather "what are you doing?! I wanna get out! Meet me at Delilah's at midnight baby" I jump in the shower, put on my favorite dance clothes and grab a taxi in front of my building. 40 degrees below zero but I dont' need a coat. The Bailey's I put in my coffee while getting ready has deadened my skin's ability to read cold. Heather's sitting on a barstool dragging another puff from her Virginia Slim Ultra Slim Menthol Light. Rolling her eyes at the yuppies making fun of her tattoos and scars and combat boots. But we sit down and drink our martini's because the owner is a friend and it's sometimes more fun to be surrounded by yuppies tearing us down vs. hipsters supporting us.

And I scour the photos on Facebook. All the black and white images from Avalon, China Club, Shelter, Metro, Smart Bar...What happened to Augenblick? Henry? He's Liz Phair's favorite bartender...maybe she knows. I miss Henry and his late night after hours and his surprise order "the owner insists you drink these shots NOW!". I miss the snow. I miss struggling and fighting and laughing trying to get to the taxi in my wornout combat boots despite the 2 inch thick layer of ice and the winds so strong they literally blow me into the intersection.

And my heart hurts missing that happiness. And the success. and the hope. and the arrogance. and the spite. and the fire. and the rebellion. The hot coffee with baileys in a basement coffee shop on Dearborn. The soap-soaked skin in a club on Halsted. The random meetings with long lost friends both of us drunk at 2am and confessing we've loved each other since we were 13.

Don't bother mentioning high school or college. I'm so glad to put those behind me and forget them. But the 8 years between college and moving to LA. Those were the most glorious. Sometimes the most painful. But overall the most beautiful. It was the sunbeams that break through after a lifetime of rain. Rainbow years. I do wish I had a time machine to go back. Just for a week. Just so I can feel happiness.

To be reminded what it is to be happy.

YOU are the change you've been waiting for

2008-11-05T20:20:00.000-06:00

Response to Shawn to emailed me: Great job! Like Barack said--YOU made the difference!! :D

we all did :-)

I firmly believe many laws have passed and elections lost due to too many people thinking their vote or voice didn't count enough to be missed. This year millions of Americans FINALLY realized their opinion CAN make a difference and thus made bloody certain they spoke up, lined up, and voted. Honestly the hundreds of people (all sorts of people- not the usual political junkies and activist hippies) who showed up every weekend to my phone bank here in Santa Monica begging "how can I help?! Give me those phone numbers to call!" coupled with news footage of long lines waiting up to 4 hours to vote.......THAT's what made me cry in relief and pride for my country.

Can Obama make the changes he promised? who knows. Hopefully yes.

One thing he's ALREADY changed is all of us. Somehow there's something about him which inspired millions of non-voters to get to the polls this year. I spoked with a 31yr man in Las Vegas who told me this is the first time he's ever been excited to vote. I attended a 2-day training, Camp Obama, where several hundred people buzzed with the new confidence that each and every one of them (us) CAN be a leader and CAN improve our country. One person CAN make a difference- we're ALL leaders inside if we focus our passion and make the effort. This room included trust-fund waspy ivy leaguers and african-american welfare moms.

I'm crying as I type this- I'm looking forward to the future again, aren't you? :-)

URS Returns from its hiatus

2008-09-03T19:12:00.000-05:00

So my favorite pop girl crush sensation returns to the scene of the crime - but minus Sarah Silverman's asinine comments. As she returns from hiding, we return to equally cheering her on and wondering if she'll provide more fodder for our cattiness. Either way it's something to wait for, to see live vs. Tivo, and to discuss on our blogs our facebooks our twitters as soon as she walks off the stage at Paramount this Sunday evening.

Still crying over Hillary

2008-08-27T17:48:00.000-05:00

In case you missed it, here's the tribute video that aired at the Democratic Convention. I realized how sad I still am she won't be running our country. Barak Obama is magical, but it would have been ideal if he could have led us with her - not instead of her.

Blues at the Farmers' Market

2008-08-27T14:59:00.000-05:00

When I find myself in times of unemployment, I make a promise to myself to do all the things I never have the time for when I'm employed. This:

a. keeps me from complete anxiety paralysis worried about how the hell I'm going to buy food and rent
b. avoids the eventual self-loathing that will happen when I'm working again and still have to muddle through the clutter in my spare room or look at the damage still on the walls from my last roommate.

It also fills the soul.

I do fail at this promise to myself, however...I know I know...shocker.

oooo the blues singer wearing the dirty White Sox cap is singing a song I loved when I was a kid - "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" yes. I was a strange kid. Not many friends. Just me, my mom's long pink scarf, and the albums in my mom & sister's rooms. Barbara Streisand sings this on her "My Name is Barbara....Two" album. I used to lip-synch and dance/perform the entire album in our living room as if I were performing for my live telecast special. "Nobody Knows You...." is belted in a grovelly bluesy manner unlike the rest of the tracks...then segues back into 2nd Hand Rose in a rousing conclusion to one of the best albums EVER.

ok back to failure and the universe taking care of us despite ourselves. I spent the past 2 days locked in my apartment not accomplishing much more than self-pity and high anxiety. I stared at my computer hitting refresh on FaceBook for about 4 hours I believe. Today Time Warner Cable is having troubles so I was forced out into the world. I have to fill out my unemployment form and all my job apps are online in my email history. I had to get to the Farmers' Market to discuss my temple CSA with the farmer as he's impossible to reach via phone or email. So life (or Time Warner & Sinai Temple) forced me out for a couple hours.

The farmer didn't come down with his crew today, but I have my laptop and Santa Monica offers free Wi-Fi if you're downtown. So I sit here listening to a brilliant blues artist camped out on the promenade next to the farmers' market. Toddlers barely able to stand are wiggling and bouncing to his sliding guitar strings and emotional southern vocals. The air is lightly puffing through my hair cooling the temp from the hot sun to make this office a perfect temperature. As I focus on my self-indulgent storytelling the singer's performance is mixed with footsteps and random snippets of lunchtime conversations. Pigeons make a stop by me now and then to grab a quick bite before continuing their food search.

It's appalling Jessican Simpson and Britney Spears are millionaires while this brilliant musician is making pennies playing for pigeons. Then again they do Pop and he does Blues so it's all fitting, no?

oo! the Chabad has arrived bringing Mitvah's on Wheels and is now wrapping tefillin on the croc kiosk workers' arms.

A young dad wearing camouflage and dreadlocks helps his daughter travel the promenade without stepping on cracks.

As much as the air and sun and footsteps and birds and babies and blues are lifting my spirits, I still have responsibilities. yes, it's true. Even the unemployed slackers of this world have commitments by golly. Time to get back home to take the girls on a walk thanking them for letting me play for a couple hours.

Feel the tingle return

2008-08-21T11:10:00.000-05:00

My body tingles

cold shaky full warm sweaty throbbing tingly

I feel again

Nic Harcourt began his show this morning with an oldy but goody from Garbage . I sat in my office thinking "hmm this is good, is it a cover or an original?" Stepping towards my little radio propped on the back of my yard-sale chair, I continued to place the music. After pressing the volume button forcing the singer's voice to fill my living room, my body began to move.

Slowly, painfully, emotionally...my body moves again. Unlike it has in years. I'm returned to my late nights/early mornings stomping alone on the dancefloor at Avalon.

The room is dark and smoky with a faint scent of spilled beer, Jack Daniels, and sass. I'm alone in a room crowded with nightcrawlers. The sex the want the pain the glee the arrogance the hate the youth the insecurity the dread the hope the lust.

It breaks through the walls of age and defeat and fills my veins again.

I'm alive again.

Daily Kabbalah Tune Up

2008-08-16T13:13:00.000-05:00

From the Kabbalah Centre of Los Angeles

There is a joke about these two shoe salesmen who travel to a third world country in search of new business opportunities.

One man calls his wife the moment he lands, telling her, "Honey, I'm coming back home. There's no hope here. Nobody here is wearing shoes, so there's no one to sell to." He boards the next flight home.

The second man calls his wife and says, "Honey, you wouldn't believe what I found here. There is so much opportunity. No one here is wearing shoes. I can sell to the whole country!"

There's opportunity everywhere. When we have a consciousness of expecting the magic to happen, it will happen. We'll find the right people, we'll move in the right circles, we'll 'bump' into the right solutions. It all starts with that opening in the mind.

Open up today. Open wide!

Kennedy Quote

2008-08-13T12:59:00.000-05:00

Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.

-Robert F. Kennedy

Speechless

2008-08-12T17:00:00.000-05:00

Daily Kabbalah Tune Up

2008-08-12T11:15:00.000-05:00

From the Kabbalah Centre of Los Angeles

We all reach points in our days when we don't understand. It can be a relationship challenge, a health issue, which direction to do with our career, a difficult passage of study, a momentous business decision. We all get those 'not-knowing' moments.

The way to see with clarity is, according to Rav Ashlag, to stretch. Not physically [though a forward bend always does wonders.] But to really do something that is outside your zone of comfort, out of the norm. When we elevate above the normal course of things, the Light responds in kind.

Suddenly we understand what we are reading, suddenly we know which doctor to go to, suddenly we see what limiting belief has been sabotaging our relationships. These moments of epiphany do not come from our brains, they come from the Light.

Go above your nature today. Really stretch your tolerance or patience or compassion or belief in yourself. Do something that will build the vessel for whatever it is that's beyond you to come in.

Open letter to owner of unleashed maltese

2008-08-11T17:19:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry I yelled at you to get your maltese on a leash as he ran straight to my 2 shar-peis one trained to kill humans, her daughter leash-aggressive-just-spent-6-of-her-1st-8-months-being-abused. I wasn't kidding when I told you they can kill your dog in one bite.

Your dog

My dog

And my other dog

You see, as you get into your black Mercedes parked in the driveway of your home on 15th north of Montana, I know you won't react nicely to seeing your little baby's guts all over the sidewalk bloody and oosing all over your vuitton bag. And I'm an unemployed artist barely making ends meet so I'd prefer to not make you angry.

I'd also prefer to not be involved in the vicious death of a maltese.

or a wealthy woman witnessing the vicious death of her maltese.

or my dog euthanized for viciously killing your maltese.

See- THERE ARE REASONS FOR LEASH LAWS. It's not a mean mean big bad bully way of controlling you and your dog. It actually has some purpose. oh say, for example, to KEEP YOUR MALTESE ALIVE. Keep him from FROM CHARGING UP TO MY TIGHTLY LEASHED-BECAUSE-SHE'S-AGGRESSIVE SHAR-PEI. or RUNNING INTO IMPATIENT MONTANA BOULEVARD DRIVERS!

Notice I have my dogs on leashes. The young leash-aggressive one has no slack and I'm keeping her close to my hip. There's a reason for this. The older one is more stable, but goodness she does get riled up when her daughter is exploding. The big one is 60 pounds. And was a guard dog for a drug house downtown before she was rehabbed. She knows better than to attack, but if the situation calls for it, she's well trained and strong. very strong.

and yet, you and I both know when your dog is mauled by a shar-pei because you let him run amock on a public street and could not restrain him from charging into my dog.... well. you'll destroy us in your grief. You'll sue me- You'll have my dogs impounded and euthanized.

and yet, you and I both know YOU were the negligent parent.

I'm sorry I yelled at you- But I'd prefer to not be a unwilling participant in a murder. Please leash little poopy pants, would you? If he's not killed by a leash-aggressive Shar-pei, he'll be run over by a car. Please.

More encouragement

2008-08-10T19:08:00.000-05:00

Still freaking out and yet happy and calm and wondering what on earth is going on. Just realized an hour ago I'm sitting back and letting life happen to me vs. trying to be responsible and do the right thing.

Today's Tarot card is:

The Hanged Man
This card denotes the need to look at your current situation from a different perspective. The Hanged Man creates change by acting passively and accepting fate. By surrendering control and making yourself vulnerable, you will facilitate change in your life. In order to see the bigger picture, you will need to take a step back.

Panic sets in

2008-08-09T11:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was a brilliant morning writing, dog walking, answering phones for kcrw, working with Chris and Tom on their shows, Gemma getting me started helping her research for her Global Gig Guide, Eric chatting Music Library with me.....all before 10am!

Came home, collapsed, met Jana for lunch- WALKED to meet her. Had a Kirin with my sushi-

Got back home- more writing, phone interview for yet another writing gig. Collapsed again.

Carved up my farmers' market bought organic, free-range, locally raised chicken for my dog's weekend meals, poured myself a nice glass of organic kosher Israeli cabernet...

On the couch drinking my wine watching Persepolis -- too tired to get pretty and on the bus to Friday Night Live...

I suddenly panicked. I still didn't regret my decision to quit- best decision I've made in years....truly outrageous and heavenly-inspired... But where will the money come? When? How am I paying for food for the dog, kitties, myself? ugh...depression sets in.....

First thing this morning I find today's horoscope waiting for me:

Today is the dawn of a new era for you. You can feel yourself shedding the last remnants of old baggage or beliefs that held you back and are eager to tackle the new challenges that await.

Me at my former job

2008-08-06T07:03:00.000-05:00

"He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away."
— Raymond Hull

Kennedy's Miracle and Today's Horoscope

2008-08-04T11:13:00.000-05:00

"You and your friends are working together to do something cool and you feel absolutely great about the collaboration In fact, you may decide to formalize the arrangement to do more of the same in the future."

From my earliest memories, I recall wanting to save the world. Or the unprotected. The young children. The animals.

But I'm also an artist- born into a family of musicians, dancers, painters, storytellers.....it's deeply in my blood I can't deny it. It's what powers all the cells to thrust through my arteries, veins, organs...it drives me from before sunrise until long after sunset.

So the plan, since I was ohhh about 5 years old, was to become insanely wealthy as a world-famous artist. What kind flopped from actor - figure skater - rock star - poet - novelist - journalist - photographer - painter - dancer - actor.

I accomplished all the career aspirations (ok rock star only happened as far as Victor Isaac and Dean Cameron / Jessie Marion's living rooms...) but not the crazy fame and wealth.

Because the end-goal was to use my fame and money to save the children, the animals, the peace, this has been quite defeating!

So I do what I can to help but it's never anywhere near what I want. And I sit in office's witnessing heated debates on Hannah Montana's hair or font size of footnotes on market research reports. And I wonder how these people can keep a straight face making these so important when there are children starving or being beaten only miles away from us.

I just quit my job- completely insane decision on the surface, yet my gut said "do it- it's the right move"

And I immediately face 3 women who make the world move. Adriane, 6-figure corporate VP who quit to be a dog trainer, who rehabbed my shar-pei from sickly killer dog to show-dog quality couch potato. Helen, the guerilla-tactic animal rescuer, who rescued my shar-pei despite everyone around her saying the dog should be euthanized as a lost-cause. And Parke- the brilliant woman who quit her 6 figure publishing job in Manhattan to spend 2 years developing and fundraising for an animal shelter in South Carolina.

Kennedy is the center of this universe. Helen rescued Kennedy. Adriane rehabbed her. Parke stopped me during our early morning walk to chat about dogs and rescue groups.

And here I sit writing about them. And writing about the animals. And writing about the miracles. And I feel overwhelmed by the force that comes from nowhere....somewhere....everywhere. The force that has brought us together from unimaginable sources. I am not a dog person. The rescue group didn't trust a then-unknown volunteer, Adriane. The rescue group didn't believe in the killer shar pei, making Helen desperate for someone who would take her in and rehab her. Parke just moved here from the east coast and knows nobody. And yet here we are a network of amazing women who host different skills while holding the end-result in unison.

I'm so excited for the future. And learning what's coming around the corner. It will be big. Huge. And beautiful.

A day late

2008-08-01T12:10:00.000-05:00

Today's horoscope - a day late

You may be something of a loose cannon today, so do your best to keep your wildest tendencies under control, even if just barely.

G*d bless George

2008-08-01T11:51:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I did the most childish irresponsible act. At the same time, it was the most responsible act I've done in a long time.

I quit my job. No notice. Not even for me. There was a project that got forgotten because he didn't bother to copy me on the discussion. So I asked (after 2 years of asking and our boss agreeing with me) that he copy me on emails with project members so we BOTH know what's going on with reports. He replied with a 2 page email rant to me. Then stormed into my office and threw a stack of papers at me.

I felt beaten up as usual. Then I giggled at the absurdity. Then I asked myself why I continued to feel it could be improved. Our boss, as usual, blamed the r.a. she hates vs. seeing my co-worker's mistake. He treats me and others like crap, ridicules dept members behind their backs to entertain other dept members. And he's rewarded for it.

So I wrote my reason for leaving and calmly walked out the door.

Ok my legs shook so badly on the way down the stairs I could barely walk.

I had a meeting across the street for what was supposed to be a part-time Sunday job. I changed my clothes but had my office belongings in a large grocery bag. How could I walk into an interview with a monster financial institution carrying a grocery bag of food, nic nacks, papers?

Bewildered, depressed, defeated, shocked I stumbled to the mall concierge who advertised "check your bags while you shop!" She looked at my bag with disgust and said "only packages purchased HERE"

In my painful akward high heel shoes and fancy dress, I stumbled to Bloomingdales and asked the salesman, George, if the store's customer service checked bags. He smiled and said "just put it here in my cabinet!"

I gratefully placed it inside but it toppled over-- oatmeal and mouthwash tumbling out. Embarrassed I sighed "I just quit my job -- I wasn't planning to -- this is my office here....my office in a bag"

George's eyes lit up and he extended his hand out to help me stand up. "you just quit your job? right now? as in moments ago??"

I sighed in regret "yes, just moments ago...I'm still shaking"

He shook my hand and exclaimed "Congratulations!!! You are VERY brave!!!"

I laughed "eh, well, brave or stupid-- I'm not sure which right now"

Nodding in reassurance he offered "no, it's very brave. Great things will happen for you. This is the way"

Thank you George for boosting my non-existent confidence right before the interview that was suddenly so important. I nailed it. Now I'll make twice what I used to make and without the selfish co-worker and the blind manager.

Listen to Your Gut

2008-07-23T08:00:00.000-05:00

From the Kaballah Centre in Los Angeles - a good one for right now especially....

Have you ever had a gut feeling that if you went to this one particular party, even though you were tired and grumpy, something good was going to happen to you? Or have you ever just known that if you walked down a certain street, something bad would happen?

This is your intuition guiding you. And your intuition is provided by the Light.

According to Kabbalah, there is a curtain separating the physical world (1% realm) from the spiritual world (99% realm.) This curtain is all that keeps us from total fulfillment.

Intuition is one means of pulling aside the curtain.

Familiarize yourself today with that feeling in your gut, with first thoughts that pop into your mind. Trust your initial instinct. With each step you take towards listening to your intuition, you will draw that curtain open further.

4th and Montana at 6am

2008-07-22T08:31:00.000-05:00

10 squad cars
5 detective cars
1 fire engine

6am

4th street just south of Montana

being the dutiful nosy neighbour I insisted on walking Kennedy slowly past the hullabaloo on our way back from the beach

*shrug*

Anyone know what happened so early in the morning in the "safe" part of town?

Walking with Kennedy

2008-07-22T07:35:00.000-05:00

It's 5:30am I've been up since 3am to write for work.

I'd love to write for me. But writing for work is at least a first step away from the chains I've felt there these past 2 years. 2 years of working round the clock on powerpoint slides when I took the job to pay rent easily while I focused on writing.

So the job demanded all my time which meant no time for writing.

And powerpoint 50 hours a week isn't going to get me anywhere-

I feel like I've worked myself to the nub and not gotten anywhere. In fact I feel several giant steps backward from where I was when I got the first call from this company January 2006.

So I asked to write. If they're going to demand 50 hours a week from me I need to spend those 50 hours writing vs. adjusting graphs for pennies. So now I write. Or I just began. Crossing my fingers I didn't suck so they'll increase my writing hours and decrease my powerpoint hours. Then again, I took the job so I could have a job I could work from home - and my co-worker stole that from me. So now I hunt and wait for the beautiful day I can leave him alone to deal with everything. Noone should notice I'm gone. After all-

I've done NOTHING there for 2 1/2 years (according to management).

Which brings me to Kennedy....She's sitting on the couch patiently sleeping and waiting for the biggest moment of her day. A walk. We'll walk to the land's edge, down the stairs to the sand, several hundred yards along the beach, then back up to land and home. About an hour. And this will be heaven for her.

I don't know anyone who's happy with his or her life. But Kennedy seems happy. I'm sure there are happier homes for her. But she continues to give me love. There is little about my current life which brings me joy. But Kennedy just walks in the room and my heart sings.

And all she hopes to get from me is a walk or two each day. And some food. Scratching on the back is a bonus!

In return, she gives me security. Makes sure she barks loud and threatening for each person who steps up to my home.

I owe her so much - she's changed my life. She taught me how to stand up for myself. I no longer let my co-worker abuse me. His response is, natural for abusers, to accuse me of being out of line. I know I'm not. I know he's taken advantage of my generosity for 2 years. I'm no longer willing to let him do that. He's pissed. He's blaming me for his failures and taking credit for my successes. Now forced to share the work he, not surprisingly, is hoping the new girl will take on the projects he refused to touch. The projects he forced me to do alone for 2 years. I hope she quits. I know I will as soon as I have income lined up. I accepted the abuse for 2 years but Kennedy taught me how to stand up and say "no" finally.

And in return, all she hopes for is a walk with me.

Speaking of....she's been waiting since I got up at 3 for me to walk to the door holding her leash so we can go to the beach. I better get cleaned up and dressed so I can give that to her.

(I confess watching her joy while we walk is a gift to me too)

Daily Kaballah Tune Up

2008-07-22T07:23:00.000-05:00

From the Kaballah Centre of Los Angeles-

How often have you heard or used the word suddenly? Suddenly she broke up with me; suddenly the coach kicked me off the team; suddenly my mom moved out.

But how sudden is sudden? For instance, have you ever woken up to suddenly find a new tree in your backyard? Or to find that your hair had suddenly grown ten inches? Or that you suddenly lived in a new home? Not likely.

"Sudden" implies a sense of chaos, a sense that things happen to us, rather than the deeper truth that we happen to ourselves.

Happening to ourselves is a good thing. No one else is calling the shots. And while this introduces a whole lot of responsibility for our thoughts, words, and actions, it also allows limitless possibilities.

We have already, perhaps unwittingly, shaped our past. And we have the power to shape our present and our future as well.

As you live today, keep this thought in mind: If something happens to me, I am locked in the physical. I am reacting. But if I am happening to me, good or bad, I am connecting with the spiritual. I am being proactive.

Don't expect to understand this completely now. This idea is a huge gold mine that will continue to yield riches as you explore it.

Daily Kaballah Tune Up

2008-07-01T19:16:00.000-05:00

From the Kaballah Centre in Los Angeles-

My father and teacher Rav Berg always taught me, "...there is only one thing that is important in this world: the Light. Nothing in this world is important in this world unless it, or they, are connected to the Light."

In the real reality, everything was created only so it could bring the Light of the Creator to the world. The truth is: to be truly important is to be connected to the Light.

Today, know that this connection comes from acts of transformation and sharing. A spark of the Light exists within all of us. We connect to and enflame it every time we place more importance on helping others than helping ourselves.

Alice

2008-07-01T16:08:00.001-05:00

down

swirling

down

the

drain

swirling

spinning

swirling

spinning down the drain

sunshine disappears into thin air

blackness grows and howls

swirling

spinning

sinking down into the drain

A Dream is a Wish your Heart makes...

2008-07-01T13:43:00.001-05:00

...when you're feeling blue

Last night I enjoyed my first dream in MONTHS.

I've been really frustrated with my job lately. With my life.

I spent a full year temping at this job vs. leaving for permanent, higher-paying work because it was presented as/with:

a low-key, low-stress position with plenty of flexibility in hours to allow pursuit of career goals
good raises
nice secluded/private office to focus on creative demands
large monitor-- good equipment and software to get the job done comfortably
opportunity to work from home

This was my reality:

I spent the first 18months stuck at the office 10-14 hours a day + 8-12 hours a day on Sundays
I quickly dropped my writing classes at UCLA - getting stuck at the office too many times until 10pm
I quickly dropped my music pa shifts at kcrw - getting stuck at the office too many times until 10pm
I neglected my geriatric cats' health, canceling over 20 vet appointments- neither of them saw a vet for 2 years. They should have been seen every 3 months. But they both went without med attention for 2 years.
I sat at a reception desk by the front door for over 6 months with no privacy, no phone, no use of my cell phone, no access to personal email, only web access to work email-- getting scolded daily by old ladies for not "doing my job" when I failed to locate their lawyers (I do not work a law firm btw)
I made my cousin and his 6yr old daughter and 7yr old son wait until 10pm to have dinner because packages needed to be reordered in a 40page report. No amount of pushing back and pleading convinced the analyst to let me leave at my quitting time of 6pm that night. And I was only a temp so- well you know- a temp can't say no.
I skipped shabbos service every Friday for 2 months because Starbucks could not wait until Monday and my co-worker snuck out of the office 1/2 hour early....this despite my quitting time being 3:30pm
I cancelled my birthday plans because my co-worker didn't feel like helping a senior director "make it pretty!"
I was 1/2 hour late to my temple Passover seder thanks to an r.a. being too busy shopping for a handbag to give me 10min of her assistance + my co-worker refused to help get the job done "oh, it's HV. I don't do HV, have fun"
I worked over 40 hours OVER THE WEEKEND to get reports done, not because they were needed, but because it made life easier for my co-worker. and I didn't even get a "thank you" email in return. but he got 5 days of downtime at work.

and now I learn I was "this close to being fired" because I finally asked for something in return. A few days to take care of my dying cats. Would they be dying if I'd not cancelled 2 years of appointments?

and apparently I've done nothing to earn a decent raise. I spent a full year here as a temp so actually I worked 2 years before seeing any raise. But I'm supposed to be grateful for what I got.

on the other hand I'm supposed to understand my co-worker deserves to work from home EVERY FRIDAY because after all he "only got a xx% raise" (it was more than my raise & he already earns way more than me hourly)

But yes, please do continue to give me stacks of blank pages and say "make it pretty!" "come up with something creative!"

But don't let me have the same software EVERY GRAPHICS PERSON IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE WHEN THEY START HERE.....

my co-worker is given fully drawn-out pages. I'm given blank pages.

and I do it. and the dept wins awards for the reports I created from blank pages.

but I get nothing. no raise. no share. I get "don't think your efforts go unnoticed!".

and yet they go unnoticed. over and over and over again. I'm told at my review I just barely met expectations.

I give up.

They ask me to drop my writing, my music, my cats, my religion. They ask me to do their jobs for them. They ask me for $60 work while paying me $20 with no bonus because "well if I ever felt like actually making an effort I too could get a bonus"

This is barely meeting expectations? They give me nothing in return and tell me I'm lucky.

I dreamt last night I worked from home. I wrote. I drew. I studied. I learned. I played amazing music. I grew. I contributed.

I was revamping my spare bedroom into a full-scale office with high-end computer equipment, scanner, fax, wicked-fast internet. Good lighting. Good seating. I dreamt I earned a living wage so I only have to work 40hours a week to pay rent and groceries. I don't have to pay for gas because, well, I work from home. I don't have to pay for doggie day care because I work from home.

I dreamt I was appreciated and considered worthy.

My heart has barely breathed for over a year now....I'm paralyzed now....I've collapsed...and I just learned there's no air waiting for me because I "don't deserve it".

Well I disagree.

My heart will breathe -- I'm breaking the window, taking in the ocean breeze. Living again.

Dreaming again.

Chaos and lack of...

2008-05-20T07:26:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've written anything more than a quickie email or two-

It's been a busy busy year so far- but mostly my doing-

I adopted a dog in February. After being her foster parent for 2 weeks.

Me - a dog - my first dog ever really. I've lived with dogs before. Cared for one 15 years ago. But after I was deep in the sh*t with this one I realized I SHARED custody of that dog with my live-in boyfriend at the time and he pretty much cared for her. I just handled the medical/nutrition parts since I was working for the vet at the time.

So I got myself a dog 4 days after my 2nd cat died. 4 days. 4 days after spending 10 days not sleeping because I was frantically trying to save him from cancer. I got myself a dog. A rescue. A 2yr old dog who'd been abandoned in her home for however long. Abandoned while pregnant. Downtown. Raised to be a guard dog for some drug dealers. A Shar Pei. If you don't know the significance of her breed well -- this breed was developed to accompany the Chinese army in war. So I've got this dog with war instincts, raised to be a guard dog, for drug dealers, downtown, abandoned while pregnant, moving in my home 4 days after working overtime to save a dying cat.

My childhood, as chaotic and unstable as it was, apparently appeals to me on some base level.

After 4 months, Kennedy (my new dog) and I have established a nice routine. I have the coffee maker brew me some fresh poison to be ready when I get up at 5am. I groggily pour cup after cup to drink while checking email, social sites, and random celebrity gossip.

I could say Huffington Post and BBC but where's the fun in that?

I get cleaned up, dressed, and pour another cup to take with us on our walk. We walk for an hour- to the ocean, up and down the park along the water, then back home. A little bit of fetch with her little teddy bear in my living room. Then breakfast. Then she takes a nap in her crate while I go to work.

We're quite adorable together.

ok- it was insane when she first moved in. insane. she was insane for the first month. Now everything is calm.

So the rescue group who found her with her puppies last August learned one of her puppies's adopted homes is abusive. So they removed her. Since my Kennedy is so incredibly stable and very patient and nuturing with any random puppy we meet on walks and at the parks, I thought she'd be the perfect teacher for her daughter and volunteered to foster.

A 9month old. Shar Pei. chained in the back yard daily for 6 months. Abused by the husband in the home. No discipline from his abused wife. Shar Pei. Abused for 6 months. Not exercised for 6 months.

yep.

So she moved in last Thursday. It's chaos. She growls if you approach her head too fast. She wants to kill any man who comes near. She wants to kill any dog we pass on our walks. But I love her. But it's chaos. Kennedy does keep her in line. It's funny I considered Kennedy to be this little dog (47lbs really isn't that big in the dog world)--- Her daughter moved in and I was reminded that I am the guardian of a tank. She's huge. Not in poundage but in heft. She's got the neck of a pro football player. And don't misbehave young lady- she'll snap you into place toot sweet.

Kennedy, despite her mellow sweet soul, started to lose patience Monday morning. I found myself standing between 2 shar-peis ready to fight commanding them to sit, down. The I grabbed their necks and quickly rolled them on their sides/backs forcing them into submission nose to nose.

There are few things better for empowering a woman than stopping a fight between 2 grown shar-peis with nothing more than her hands and emotional strength.

But its' chaos nonetheless.

So as I drove to work, late, yesterday exhausted by 8am, I thought "how long can I handle this insane little girl?"

We all thought given how cute she is, she'd have applications after her 1st adoption day this weekend and she'd move into a permanent home next weekend. But the abuse has made her a project dog at best. Some cities would just euthanize her if she entered a shelter. So her time with me became "indefinite".

sigh

Yesterday morning I got an email from the rescue group saying someone from Cesar Millan's facility would be coming to my home last night or today to pick her up to live with him for rehab.

heavier sigh

what?!? you can't take her from me!! Her mother and I are doing great work with her! She lets me pet her and she listens to my every command. She slept with my boyfriend over the weekend. She's improved dramatically in only 4 days of being with me! I'm doing great work! you can't take her!

so the chaos is overwhelming and exhausting but when presented with some relief I protest.

Cesar's people have not come so Matt (my boyfriend) took her to his place for a sleepover as this may be his only chance for some alone time with her. He's smitten. He wants to adopt her. So last night I looked forward to some alone time with Kennedy. I thought she'd rejoice.

She moped for an hour - laid in front of the front door for an hour. She still seems a bit sad today.

The crazy little one will return this morning as Matt drops her off on his way to work. The trainer from the rescue group will come down to walk the 2 of them and reinforce training on the little one. I'll come home at 4pm to chaos.

It will be exhausting.

But apparently both Kennedy and I think it's worth it.

Bedazzled! the good one. With Peter Cook. And Dudley Moore. And Raquel Welch.

2008-05-12T22:35:00.000-05:00

The Ultimate Reality Show

2008-02-07T02:22:00.000-06:00

email last week - "omg heath ledger is dead!"

Exclaimed down the hall at my job "aaaack! Britney's out!"

Used to be - first thing in the morning in offices, people would debate whether or not Rachel and Ross would ever hook up. Or will Dylan and Kelly reunite? Who shot JR? Can you believe what Seinfeld got away with? I believe one mark of a show's success - to network executives - was the amount of time it was discussed and debated at the office between episodes. The Watercooler Effect?

So here it is. This is the latest in the evolution of mass entertainment. First the radio. Then tv. Then the internet. Reality tv. Tv on the internet. Tv FOR the internet. Reality tv for the internet.

Disguised as journalism.

I just spent today flipping from perezhilton, x17, and tmz. The time I used to spend lying on my couch mindlessly watching whatever bad sitcoms the networks had to offer that night. Now replaced by a strong engagement in the material being offered on my computer.

But this is entertainment offered at someone's expense.

Not some 20something looking for his 15min of fame and some cash from surviving a month of endurance tests.

Someone just trying to live her life. A very challenging life. With little to no support. A 20somthing struggling to survive several years of endurance tests. Being chased by camera crews. Every second of her struggle photographed, taped, documented both journalistically and legally.

For our entertainment.

Britney shopped around a reality show 4 years ago. She got 2. One was mocked and cancelled immediately.

The other goes on and on and on and she doesn't get paid a dime for it. In fact she pays. Her parents pay. We the taxpayers pay – for all the police and fleets of ambulances and court hearings and special hospital arrangements.

As the networks scramble to get our money via their advertisers, we instead gladly pour it all to the authorities in exchange for a real life soap opera a supercharged, ultimate gladiator survival celebrity reality show.

So I continue to refresh my browser hoping there's more updates on where Britney is. Did her dad get hold of her? Is he still successfully keeping Sam, the evil guy, away? What about her lover? Is he legit? Is he what we think he is? Or something more sinister? Perhaps he's in an evil plan with Sam the evil guy? Where's her mother? Was she drugged too by the evil guy? The ex. He's turning out to not be what we thought he was! Or is he? Is he, in fact, a good guy misunderstood? Or is he, too, plotting some underhanded selfish agenda? 2 young baby boys lost in the mayhem and drama. A pregnant 16yr old sister! The leading lady – a fragile, kind, bubbly girl who caught fame in childhood. And sex symboldom….in childhood. Talented – yet not talented in the ways that she could earn respect and awards vs. scorn and mockery. Sexy, sweet. Truly grateful to her fans. Lonely, isolated, vulnerable – a new Marilyn Monroe for our generation! And the money! Ooooooo tons of money! Beverly Hills! Mexico! NYC! Malibu! Flesh! Sex! Mental illness! Million dollar Beverly hills estates in gated communities! Malibu beach homes! Padded rooms. Mass car chases all over Hollywood and Beverly Hills and across Mulhulland Drive! A daily rotation of high-end cars, fashion, drugs! Secret meetings in Hollywood legend hotels! Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? Music industry! Pop stars! Rehab! Blackmail.

I could be describing Dallas or Knots Landing or Dynasty….oooo I'm dating myself aren't I? I've never seen the latest round of night-time soap operas as I stopped bothering to watch tv years ago. Then again reality Tv effectively cancelled our need for night-time soaps no?

Until we got Britney. Poor Britney. The American Tragedy of Britney Spears. And all for our nighttime viewing entertainment.

Did dad get into her home? Will he be living with her now? Did he really install gps tracking systems in all her $200,000 cars? Did she escape again under a black blanket in the back seat of a paparazzi car so her father can't catch her? How long and how far will she run from her family? How many cars can squeeze from a 4 lane street into 1 lane to keep up their pursuit? Did evil Sam break into her home (which a respected news source published is "never locked")? Did he steal compromising video and photos of our tragic heroine? Was he really crushing pills into her food? Cutting off her phone lines? Disabling her cars? Or are these accusations nothing more than a plotting mother with a selfish agenda?

I'm so ashamed of my contribution to her hell yet that doesn't stop me from refreshing my browser just one. More. Time. Before bed.

What will make us stop? When does the commercial break come for Britney? What price does she have to pay to get us to stop?

I'll be online as soon as I wake up tomorrow morning eager for the latest-

Will you?

Prudence

2007-10-18T21:47:00.000-05:00

This song always brings sunshine to my heart....ever since I was a kid and WXRT would play it as their final song of their 24-hour Beatles Marathon. Since their days ran 6am-6am, Prudence began just before the sun came up. As the birds began to chirp in the massive trees outside my bedroom window in my mom's home.

I got really really depressed last Monday about Misha. Then got smacked by the flu. Then tonight, still sick and still kinda beat down, I totally broke down in tears regretting all the time missed with Misha. That year with that abusive roommate watching Misha sick every day as a result and not knowing how to escape.

I saw a photo of Kelly Osbourne carring her dog and the caption mentioned it's name is Prudence.

This song immediately popped in my head. My tears evaporated. My heart sang. It still sings.......

Dear prudence, won't you come out to play
Dear prudence, greet the brand new day
The sun is up, the sky is blue
It's beautiful and so are you
Dear prudence won't you come out and play

Dear prudence open up your eyes
Dear prudence see the sunny skies
The wind is low the birds will sing
That you are part of everything
Dear prudence won't you open up your eyes?

Look around round
Look around round round
Look around

Dear prudence let me see you smile
Dear prudence like a little child
The clouds will be a daisy chain
So let me see you smile again
Dear prudence won't you let me see you smile?

gone baby gone to a premiere!

2007-10-09T01:00:00.000-05:00

Dammit, if you're going to invite me to a movie premiere, could you let me know??!?!?

So I stayed home today being sad about my cat and decided I would skip tonight's SAG Nom Comm screening of Ben Affleck's "Gone Baby Gone". I thought it was at 7pm which meant I'd have to be there about 6pm which meant I'd have to leave about 5pm and at 5pm I was in no mood for cleaning up, driving, or movies.

But at 6:30 Matt calls me to say he finished his shoot early and could join me tonight and the screening wasn't until 8pm.

ok, I'm in flannel pjs, a wool rollneck sweater, no makeup, slippers. I'm thinking "hmmm Ben Affleck is doing a q&a after.....aww shoot, if anyone appreciates flannel pjs and wool rollneck sweaters it's Ben so.....eh......c'mon Kara get yourself cleaned up for Matt at least"

so I change into jeans and a fluffy hoodie and Uggs. and slap some makeup on during stop lights....just enough so I won't scare young children.

we're walking from the parking lot, turn the corner at Gayly and find spotlights, cops, CBS, E!, velvet ropes, red carpet. GOOD GRAVY

the woman at the table gives us our ASSIGNED SEATS and we run in (free popcorn and sodies! thanks Ben!) to find Ben giving a speech to a packed, well-dressed, house.

Our seats are 2nd row, center.

yes, about 3 feet directly in front of Ben, in front of all the celebrities and Disney execs and other SAG Nom Comm members.

wheeeeeee

And here's my review:
BEN SERIOUSLY NEEDS TO DROP THE LAME ACTING CAREER AND STICK WITH WRITING AND DIRECTING.

He won his Oscar for writing. THAT's what put him on the map by golly.

why?

HE'S GREAT AT IT!

This is one of the best-written scripts I can recall watching. I've been addicted to movies since kindergarten so it's near impossible to surprise me-- I always see the plot twist a mile away. But I didn't see a couple things here..... Just amazing characters. You can tell he LOVES Boston and the real people who make it so lovable. Pure love is poured into the writing, the direction, the camera.

Casey Affleck is such a wonderful actor....it's kinda sad, tho, to see him morph into his older brother's leading man good looks tho. But he's so good! He used to be the alternative, artsy, indie younger Affleck. Now he's Ben but younger. And a good actor.

This shouldn't win any big film awards. But the screenplay should at least be nominated for something. And I recommend seeing this. Really fine film.
Gone Baby Gone

I really hope Ben sticks with writing and directing. He's really amazing with it. And here's another thing I learned tonight, he's a very down to earth, grateful, nice guy. JLo should be so sad she let her agent agree to stop the fake relationship they arranged for the press......

reality in the ashes

2007-10-02T19:29:00.000-05:00

after 2 weeks of working very hard to deny reality I sit here with a bag of black fur and a wood box of ashes....

...and when I clear the tears from my eyes I see my world as it now

without my beautiful little friend, moy kraceevee, OCHEN kraceevee maleenkee drookie....

I sit here holding what's left of his body and desperately wish the rest was still here with me playing and jumping and running and sleeping...

but it's empty

dos vee donya moy maleenkee Misha. Bolshoi cpaceeba. Ya t'lubitsch.

seeing. here. now.

2007-09-29T01:22:00.000-05:00

When Misha left, I spent a lot of time trying to find the answer. Trying to heal the pain. Trying to quelch the guilt.

I come from a family of thinkers and feelers. Intellectual sorts who spend more time thinking than being.
My childhood memories of my sister do not consist of playing or learning with her. They consist of watching her think.
Meditating and thinking.
Yoga and thinking.
smoking and thinking.

My memories of my Dad include maybe 3 hugs, some rages, but mostly thinking.

Just staring and thinking.

With cute little me right there available to share time and enjoy life.

But I did not exist in their world.

I catch myself doing it now. Doing it since I was a child. I think. I think of all the mistakes. I obsess over the what-ifs.
Hours and hours, sometimes days pass and I can't tell you what anyone else was doing. All I can share is what was in my head.
I've driven long distances with no memory of how I got home, but I can tell you what I thought about.

So these grief sites for pet owners all describe pets as our personal "angels". That when they pass, they stay with us,
guiding us
protecting us

Spirit guides

The technician who took such great care of Misha in his final days told me pets are here to teach us and guide us.
Help us in life, then when they feel we're ok on our own, they're so worn out from helping us, they leave.

As I spend hours, days crying and thinking and obsessing about all the time I missed with Misha, I realized something.

I have no idea what's happening NOW.

when he was alive, I had all this time, SEVENTEEN YEARS, to be with him, play with him, love him.

Instead I laid on the couch, sat in my chair, laid in bed, stood in the corner and thought
and thought
and obsessed

about everything I didn't have. or had and didn't want.

cried about being so lonely

and every minute of every day I had a dear sweet friend who loved me sitting in the same room with me

and I never saw him

and now I wish he was here. So I sit, and stand, and cry, and obsess about everything I regret for him and how much I miss him

and I have dear Fred sitting on the bed and I don't see him.

so now I must see him. Live now. Stop thinking. Start looking. At the beauty I have right in front of me.

Thank you Misha- you gave me the greatest gift anyone can give-

bolshoi cpaceeba moy maleenkee kraceevee drookee, ya t-lubitsch

I've got 16 layers of chanel makeup on...

2007-09-27T01:42:00.000-05:00

for allison........

Being poor in LA is a major drag. Didn't I just read something somewhere about how there is no middle-class in LA but somehow it works for the city? Either you're a millionaire or you're starving while working 60 hours a week. I, unfortunately, am on the high-end of the latter.

But there's always Bloomingdales

they have all these groovy parties and send special invites to you if you have an account with them.

Today was a benefit party. I'm done with my job by 3:30pm, so I walked over to the store to enjoy their late-afternoon events.

I got a free manicure while sipping champagne delivered to me on a silver tray and munching on gourmet treats (also delivered to me). Then I got a back/neck massage, then a hand massage (we did the back/neck first to let the manicure set, natch). Plus a stack of 20% off coupons for a killer spa. Plus the contact info of the woman who runs the same spa in Chicago so I can treat my mother when I'm home. Then a champagne cocktail was delivered to me - The Chanel. I had chatted briefly with the Kama Sutra woman before the manicure, so during my hand massage, she came over to me and told me to come back for a free gift (that's my boyfriend's favorite part of this story). Then I nibbled some more.

Did I mention the fat-free ice-cream sandwich when I stopped by during my lunch break?

Back to the evening cause that was more delecadent.......

Then I got a cappucino to kill the buzz from The Chanel

But there was a woman with me who told me the blue martinis were yummy

so I asked the drink guy if I could taste a little taste of the blue martini.

He was making more champagne cocktails for some woman, so rather than make a sampler of the martini, he surprised me by pushing a glass to me and saying "this is YOUR drink.....that Blonde Parisian you mentioned earlier?"

yum

ok, so I walk to the makeup department and get a facial. Then Blu at Jo Malone teaches me how to layer my fragrances. He gives me a wee bottle of the nectarine fragrance thinking I'm a fruity-flowery girl. But during his tutorial he's shocked to hear me say "wow I LOVE that one!" when he handed me a paper sliver sprayed with Pomegranate Noir. Blu's delighted to hear me say it smells like Christmas becuase one of his co-workers started wearing the scent and has been upset that Blu chides him for smelling like holiday potpourri. So he gives me a wee sample bottle of the Pomegranate Noir. Did I mention I successfully smelled the middle note of clove? If I were to go into frangrance layering as a new career, do I need to change my name to a colour and speak in a British accent?

Post manicure, massage, sex-toy, cappucino, champagne, facial - I opt for a makeover to prep me for my weekly meeting with Alison and Jana and, later my shift here at the station.

Chanel seems fitting for my upcoming Beverly Hills dinner--

There is, of course, 3 layers of special hydrating gels, primers, etc. which must be liberally applied before any makeup action begins.

My GOD who wears this much foundation?!?!? Oh wait, I see. The woman doing my face and the other artist across the way. The blush turns out very red on my cheeks. The solution, it seems, is to put more foundation on to cover it up. The second blush is too pink. More foundation natch. Ah! a winner! A peachy colour, then the winter-limited-edition-soon-to-be-sold-out-so-I-better-buy-it-tonight frosty pink dusted on top.

I learned as much as I love the colour Vamp, the lipstick is frighteningly pink on my lips. Second hue she tries is a scary peach. Shit! I was supposed to be at Alison's 10 minutes ago! I give up and put a light gloss on. yay me!

My skin can't breathe, but I look amazing. And I'm walking out the store with more than $1000 worth of crap brushed, smudged, layered, lined on my face.

I raced from Century City to Beverly Hills to meet the ladies for some guilty pleasures.

They exclaim "wow! yuuuuuuuuuuuuu look beauuuuutiful!"

"thanks, I've got 16 layers of Chanel makeup on"

as I excuse myself to come here, Alison, in all seriousness orders me to write something titled "I've got 16 layers of Chanel makeup on" during my radio shift.

Raul is shocked at how beautiful I look. He's used to seeing me show up in pjs and ponytails and cheap, worn-out makeup.

He's thanking me on air for my assistance and telling his listeners how gorgeous I look all smothered in Chanel.

My income for this job is $0.

If I scraped this off and put it in a bottle, I could pay my rent + car insurance with it-

Across the Universe

2007-09-21T01:36:00.000-05:00

Just got back from a screening of Across the Universe, a new musical film directed by the otherwise incredibly talent Julie Taymor.

Now let me start this with -- I'm a HUGE Beatles fan. HUGE. Raised on them. My ear glued to our stereo speakers so I could hear the slightest nuance in every guitar string and every breath of every song. So I cringe each time I learn somone has done a cover of their song or, worse yet, a movie based on all their music. In order for me not to be repulsed, the cover MUST be brilliant. and most of the time it is not.

The film started out reeeeeeaally great- Jim Sturgess staring at us while sitting alone on a beach singing one of my faves, Girl. The song is already built with creepy nuance and his delivery added more dark shadow in it's focused simplicity.

I was really excited!

then it came.

the rest.

now keep in mind I've recently decided I'm not a big fan of Broadway musicals. Not any more. In addition to my sisters Beatles and Simon/Garfunkel LPs, I grew up on my mom's West End and Broadway soundtracks and, well, listen to the original West End production of Cabaret vs. this year's Tony Award winner and you'll hear the difference. Today's Broadway shows seem geared to the white-washed, upper-middle class middle American who can't stomach more than Wonder Bread.

So if you like Wonder Bread, you'll most likely enjoy this film.

I do not like Wonder Bread. Never did. Always a sprouted whole grain or pumpernickel girl...

And both John and Paul had such dark sides to them, it would seem to be relatively easy to make this a dark, surreal trippy trip through their songs, NYC, and Liverpool. What made the Beatles brilliant and immortal was their fearless risk. Ms. Taymor’s greatest betrayal was her inability to take risk in this film.

Instead we got Wonder Bread in Iowa.

Some good points were:
Opening scene
Joe Cocker - but only when he's homeless
Bono's 10 minutes (his improved moments were brilliant) - and the magic bus
Eddie Izzard improvising
I dug Helter Skelter, Matt did not
Daniel Ezralow's choreography --- I was DYING to work with him when I was a dancer, alas I never got the chance
casting 2 actors who looked just like Paul and Linda circa 1970 (when camera was far) -- I was looking for a Jane Asher or Yoko Ono reference, but I guess that was too much for a mainstream stomach

Most obvious is Julie Taymor's inability to work with actors in dialogue. She's pretty ok with the song and dance numbers. But once everyone stops singing and dancing, she fumbles and fouls.

What made the evening worse was the q&a that followed. I normally dont' stay if I hate the film but....c'mon! Julie Taymor!!! I was going to blow off the chance to hear Julie Taymor talk about her work?! However, she MODERATED the q&a so what followed was 1/2 hour? 45 min? of masterbation by her and her young cast.

Here's a review that best summ's up my experience with this film-
Something that would have been a bad idea for an Off-Broadway concept show has inexplicably been turned into a bloated two hour and eleven minute movie musical. - Pete Hammond, Maxim
Full Review by Pete Hammond

Best moment:
"They ALL really liked it!" - Julie Taymor referring to "The Beatles" response after seeing the film
"ALL? All TWO of them??" - Matt's disgusted response

Time

2007-09-19T18:21:00.001-05:00

One of the truly tragic realities of getting older is….

You have regret and the deep sadness that accompanies all that you missed or dismissed. The hunches and instincts that told you quite clearly what to do, where to go to protect you and your loved ones…..and how many you dismissed only to learn they were real.

All the love and good intentions in the world can’t protect you from the life-changing decisions made from the brain vs. the spirit.

Dos Vee Donya Misha

2007-09-13T21:48:00.000-05:00

My dearest, sweetest, coolest friend of my life, my little Misha, passed away tonight-

At least now he's climbing trees, running through massive fields, chasing rabbits, squirrels, birds.......

I love you Misha-
desperately-

I miss you so much-

Nocturne 1 in B Flat Minor Op. 9 - Chopin

2007-09-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

I dunno who's favorite this was--

the head ballet mistress for Hubbard Street

or the pianist

But every day, our first exercise -- usually a mellow plier series -- would be accompanied by this song.

And every time I hear it, I'm immediately calmed. Brought back to that cold studio. Standing at the bar between 2 ballerinas....or maybe that 35 year old dancer who's all crickety and tired but every move she makes is stunning thanks to her age and experience.... Me drowning in layers of worn out knit hoping to keep my 98lb. body warm enough in the frigid studio until either the heater kicks in or our body heat warms up the space. (the body heat usually won)

Watching Birute's long, graceful, kirov-trained arms swim through the air guiding us through the series....her calm, wabbling voice gently waking us up... The fog on the windows blurring the train and all the cookie-cutter corporate drones miserably departing on the platform....

That was as dream life! Funny how all the stress and pressure I put on myself to be superhuman marred what is definitely the high point of my life..... I watch The Company and cry and cry and cry remembering those wonderful frigid days on 19th/Halsted and Wabash/Adams. Harriet's thick whiny NYC voice scolding us for not being more demanding of our bodies. Lou grabbing his golden retriever, Buddy, from the doorway to the studio before he could get in and be trampled by our grand sodebasques (sp?!)- Joel and his regal majesty... The Cabrini Green kids in their low-slung pants and high-top Jordans showing us tutu-butts how hip-hop is REALLY executed -- compete with sass, rebellion, and fire one can only develop growing up in one of the most dangerous blocks in the county.

sigh....

thank you Birute and Warren for giving me something to bring this all back-

Thank you Chopin.

ohh that sinking feeling...

2007-08-25T15:54:00.000-05:00

ever have that sick feeling at the bottom of your gut? a strong throbbing at the pit of your stomach? your heart pulled in 6 directions?

anxiety of losing something really important to you?

I've been feeling that a bit this past week, but it's especially strong today as I sit alone in an office in Westwood knowing I'll be here with nothing to do and noone to talk to until 7pm.

I'm not sure why. What am I about to lose? Who am I about to lose?

My cat has been very ill since my return from Chicago 6 weeks ago...but he's 200% better today than he was 2 weeks ago. But he looks depressed and still isn't 100% where he was before my trip.

My grandmother will be 90 22September. I just bought a ticket to fly to Detroit to help her celebrate that weekend. My mother just called to say Nana now needs a nurse 24/7 as she's dizzy and confused.

My mother just spent 5 hours on the freeway trying to get to Detroit from Chicago. It took 5 hours to travel a distance normally travelled in 30 minutes-- thank you crazy midwest storms. My mother is 71 and this is her 6th driving trip to Detroit in a month.

or maybe it's something else........

I wish I was home so Fred could give me some words of wisdom....

get happy

2007-08-23T13:44:00.000-05:00

My roommate was feeling sorry for herself the other day-

Lying on her bed, suddenly Fred jumped up to visit her.

Purring, he nudged her, then jumped off and walked out of the room

She looked down on her pillow- he had left the words

"Get Happy"

be inspired

2007-08-21T16:03:00.000-05:00

My roommate was playing her guitar....kind of floundering around with chords.

Fred marched around her room, she had phrases cut out of magazines on the floor.

He jumped on her bed, next to her, head-butted her.

Jumped off. Left the room.

She looked down on the bed next to her and she saw he left the words-

"Be Inspired"

nice way to start the day

2007-08-19T16:15:00.000-05:00

Just started a weekend gig in Westwood, near UCLA.

new farmers market on Sundays. I have nothing to do today (woo! big money for no work!) so after getting my morning Peet's, I linger over....

Free 1/2 hr yoga sessions for kids- watched a peaceful beautiful blonde woman teach a young girl -- maybe 5? -- how to "Namaste".

I then hung out at the petting zoo. young goats eagerly, clumsily, running from food bowl, to playmate, to more food, to mom.

a young pig sitting in a small tub of water. all alone from the hubbub of social activity in the rest of the area. he finally gets out of the tub only to still be alone...pushing one of the chairs around with his snout.

3 toddlers -- giggling -- grabbing young bunnies from the giant cedar-filled tub in the center. Sitting down and petting the bunnies-- giggling and giving love to the young animals.

The goats wandering around the kids.

Everyone is innocent. Everyone is basic. Everyone is happy.

Nice way to start the day-

just a cat...

2007-08-16T07:45:00.000-05:00

have a 17 1/2 year old cat--- his name is Mikhail-- I call him Misha-- This photo was taken about a year ago when I was wrapping my sister's birthday gift and he surprised me by attacking the ribbon and jumping on the table to continue attacking the package.

that was a year ago....

this morning I had to shove his bowl of food to his face while he sat under my roommate's bed.

It's been about a month since I returned from my trip home to find him skinny and very sick. He apparently is no longer anemic and has gained a pound since my return (yay!)

But after a month of progress, he stopped eating a day ago and has now planted himself under my roommmate's bed and I can't get to him right now as it's 5:30am and of course my roommate is trying to sleep-

If you've got any spare time to think about a sweet cat who's not feeling well. And his owner who just wants the best for him, regardless of what that might be (is it time? I don't think so, but am I one of those pet owners who keeps a cat alive well beyond the reasonable time for him? I'm starting to wonder...)

.....oh my gosh! he just walked in, jumped on my bed and is drinking!

whew

maybe I'm overreacting. it's so difficult to guage.....overreacting? underreacting?

he's been with me over 17 years and I'm such a bloody workaholic I've spent most of those years running from one job to another leaving him home......and I hate myself for this. And now I want to stay home with him and I can't. I've pushed my boss's patience enough working from home those 4 days last month and coming in late so many mornings due to Misha not eating or me having trouble with his IV treatment or....or....something anything.

And I sit at work angry that, if he was human, my employer would gush with sympathy urging me to take all the time I need. She would gladly help me arrange to work from home (there really is no reason why I can't work from home given my job is graphic design-ish.). But since he's a cat, and few people respect life forms other than human, people just roll their eyes and snicker that I'm so worried. One person said, "wouldn't you just euthanize him vs. spending all that money? I mean, he's just a cat"

Just a cat.

Just a cat who's been my best friend for 17 years. That's more than any man has every stuck with me.

Second best is my father and he only stuck around 5 years.

So Misha's a pretty big deal in my world.

if you're reading this and you can spare a min or 2 for him- please think some good thoughts for him-

thanks for reading-

Sedaris on Speed

2007-08-12T11:18:00.000-05:00

The upswing being that having eliminated the need for both eating and sleeping you have a full 24 hours a day to spread your charms and talent.

the beginning

2007-08-12T10:45:00.000-05:00

hello-
this is my blog. finally a real blog. no friendstermyspaceflikrjdategoodreads blog. a real blog.

This will surely make me a billionaire!!! yesssss!

haHA!

or just a place to feed my narcissism.

I just realized I actually kinda dig my blog name. I hate naming things. Always convinced my choice is too boring or stuffy or stupid or vapid or......overthought.

But I like this one.

Of course that's because it's not original.

As far as I know, the sentence/title "Running & Howling with Barrel Fever" has not been used for a public - er - publication. But it's a composition of 3 of my favorite writers..... You might be able to figure it out if you have the same lit tastes. Or even if you just bother to read a book or 2 now n then. or the cliff notes. or a book review.

anyway- hope this is good. oy. my inner charlie kaufmann is already rearing his self-berating head. Where's my drink? ahhhh the writer is born.

Gained a pound!!!

2007-08-08T21:08:00.000-05:00

When I returned from my trip home last month, I found my 17 1/2 yr. cat, Misha, wayyy too skinny, disoriented, not eating. Just overall glum.

This after I paid a woman $25/day to feed him and observe him to make sure he was ok and not in need of medical attention. A woman referred to me when I called my vet to schedule hospital boarding. A woman who, looking at me and Misha at the hospital after my return, chuckled "yeah, he wasn't big on the whole eating thing...."

?!?!?!?!??!?!?!?

You're being paid to give medical attention to a 17 1/2 yr cat with moderate kidney deterioration and you think it's CUTE he doesn't want to eat??!?!?!

FOR 10 FUCKING DAYS?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!!!!!!

oy

anyway-- I spent a week working at home so I could force feed him every hour and just be with him.

today was his 2nd follow-up check after my emergency trip with him 2 weeks ago.

He's gained a pound!

Doesn't seem like much, but when you're a 17 1/2 yr cat and your weight dropped to a scary 4.15 pounds 3 weeks ago gaining a pound is a crazy amount and truly a miracle.

looks like the davening, red string, scanning, and buddhist charms do work.

or maybe it was the force-feeding, iv fluids, iron injection, daily iron boost injections, and daily steroids combined with a buttload of hugs and kisses and cheering him on when he ate on his own.

He's still a long way from the goofy playful goofball he was when I left for Chicago 5 weeks ago, but, per his usual kick-assiness, he's kicking major ass over here in Santa Monica.

Baryshnikov and Gorbechev have nothing on my maleekee Misha-

wheeeeeeee!

Chis Hedges and LA Times Festival of Books

2007-04-29T03:04:00.000-05:00

"This presupposes there's something GOOD about the mainstream"

Beginning of an anwer to panel question....

I've never heard of Mr. Hedges until today when I attended "The Politics of Faith" panel at the Festival of Books today. Amazing man, I have to own and read all his books in addition to reading all his essays on TruthDig and The Nation....

If you don't know about him either, here's an easy place to start-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges

then another-
www.chrishedges.org

Then go to Amazon.com and buy his latest book -

American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Fascists:_The_Christian_Right_and_the_War_on_America

http://www.amazon.com/American-Fascists-Christian-Right-America/dp/0743284437/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4840182-8858238?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1177834402&sr=8-1

do me a favour and let me know what you think

what I learned today...

2007-02-09T17:19:00.000-06:00

I was lucky enough to be invited as a VIP guest to Donald Trump's Wealth *cough* live 8-hour infomercial *cough* Summit.

I learned some things today-

1. Only poor people are willing to pay $6000 for a book that will teach them how to protect themselves from losing their money stupidly.

2. Ivanka Trump sure loves herself. and her daddy.

3. You can get wicked strong free unlimited wi-fi at the bar/lobby of the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel.

4. If you sit in said bar surfing the net long enough, the cabana boy will bring you a bowl of really yummy wasabi covered peanut butter thingies...yum...

5. They shoot movies at the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel.

6. CAA is quite ominous looking from the bar/lobby of the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel.

7. CAA agents hang out at the bar/lobby of the Hyatt Century Plaza Hotel. (or at least expensively dressed-all-in-black, clenching cell phones and blackberries, ridiculously coiffed with too much product snotty people - why would I assume they're CAA agents.....)

8. If your job is making your head all dizzy, it's ok to email in sick on what you expect to be an insanely busy day.....they will survive without you and your brain will slowly unmush...

al gore, kcrw, and al's huge hands

2006-06-14T17:37:00.000-05:00

so I met Al Gore last Thursday morning at a book signing here in LA

I made a point of wearing my volunteer-exclusive Sounds Eclectic Evening kcrw t-shirt hoping he might ask me about it.

I walk up....dumbfounded and a wee intimidated by his massively large hand reaching toward me to greet me with a firm handshake...

As we grip each other's hands (aaaackkkk! where did mine go?!!?? it's lost in the midst of this super-human politician hand!) he inspects my shirt and says "great shirt!"

*choke* "thank you" *smile*

I try to think of the smart, informed bullet points I'd planned to share with him but all I could think of was how large his hand and head are and how in awe I am of him and how crazy it was I was standing here before him and he was signing my book and how he liked my kcrw shirt and should I tell Nic Harcourt and should we send him a shirt and my GOD I need to pitch the station to him and in my choking haze surrounded by secret service agents and news cameras....

I raised my hands held in rock-star devil ears and proclaim "npr rocks!"

and Mr. Gore, nodding in agreement says "yes, yes it most certainly does, doesn't it"

Next time on Kara's blog:

my ex-boyfriend's wife

and nobel peace prize winners vs. G*d

change

2006-05-31T04:14:00.000-05:00

These past 2 weeks....ok a wee more than that...have had a steady dark cloud over my "circle of life"

Death

The unexpected death of the daughter of a dj I only know from our 5min smiles exchanged each Monday morning...I was shocked to find a tear rolling down my cheek as I read the email.

The long-anticipated death of the young daughter of a good acquaintance of mine. Since I still vividly remember it, I guess I'll never forget that sunny Saturday afternoon in that park on Riverside/Victory. After the Sacred Fools "retreat". Sitting on a park bench with her dad and Joe Jordan. Watching her in awe of the small green grasshopper on her arm. Lizzie was a bright beautiful flower in the middle of my grey life at that time.

My cat wobbling on my patio - reminding me his days with me will be short.

The woman for whom I babysat for 8 years was found dead in her sleep 2 weeks ago. Last Wednesday I suddenly had a strong feeling about that family...feeling guilty I'd not made contact with the family in 5 years thinking "oh no! I wonder if the father is ok?! I need to contact them before he dies so I can make sure both the parents know how much I appreciated them in my life!" Last Friday I got the call from my mother that the funeral was a week ago.

sigh

Today I learned a good friend is now so alcoholic she's slowly killing herself with the alcohol she consumes nearly 12 hours a day. Calling her vet panicked her white mouse has black spots. The vet explaining to her, while washing the spots off, that their orgin is a marker, not disease. She called 2 days later panicked with the same black spots on the same mouse. I remember all the fun I had with her 10 years ago. And her 10 cats. And how 8 of them were under 2years old. And us laughing about how, in 10 years, she better be a millionaire to have the time/money to care for 8 geriatric cats! and now I wonder what's happening to poor Willow...does Julie notice him anymore? Does she care? I'm both releived and feeling guilty for pulling away from Julie when I felt alcohol was too important to her. From the description our vet and friend gave me, it sounds like the Julie who lit up many days and nights for me is now dead on the floor of some bar in lincoln park.

and the CD that was playing when I began this depressing rag is strangely appropriate for where my mind and heart has been recently

battery acid

2006-02-20T17:47:00.000-06:00

Just extricated myself from an oppressive, abusive environment.

Sometimes you wish you never learned something about someone...

2 words to describe my former housemate:
Battery
Acid

He knows what that means. I have the scars on my hands to remind me.

I'm still unpacking. Bringing my lingerie drawers and pillow to the police. Mailing my key to my former landlord. Enjoying watching my 16yr cat being playful for the first time in over a year.

more later

how much do we need?

2005-12-02T17:49:00.000-06:00

more wise words from my rabbi.....

I know people whose homes are so large most of the rooms sit unused from one year to the next. They own more cars than they drive, more clothes than they wear, make more money than they can spend. Whatever security or exhilaration this affords, it is a painful commentary on the grandiosity that overrides generosity and empathy.

Tolstoy wrote a short story entitled: “How much land does a man need?” It tells of a Russian who travels to Bashkirs, a tribe in hinterlands. They offer to give him as much land as he can cover on foot in one day. Impatiently, the man starts a frenetic journey. He covers as much ground as he can, never pausing, never resting. As the sun sets, he dies of exhaustion. In the end, the amount of land he gets is a six foot plot of earth as a final resting place.

The Rabbis of the Midrash teach us that a baby is born with a closed fist, as if to say, “there is so much to grasp in this world.” The old man dies with his hand open, as if to say, “I can take nothing with me.” Wisdom and goodness lie in opening our hands before death opens them for us.

the wait continues....or...how to live on no sleep

2005-11-03T20:52:00.000-06:00

I love my veterinarian-

She was comedically honest about her failure with Misha yesterday.

"I could give you a long list of reasons why I never got to his abdominal tap today, but.....well....bottom line is there's STILL no excuse he got forgotten"

So he spent today at the hospital. She came in on her day off JUST for him. And called me right after her doctor appointment.

No answers from the abdominal tap! oy

I think I slept about 3 hours last night. Maybe 5 the night before.

So he's set to come back to the hospital next Wednesday for an ultra-sound.

Last night I did some research and discovered that mysterious disease she mentioned last night but I couldn't understand is actually a disease I know quite a bit about-- more commonly known as FIP. A cat's life expectancy after exposure is 2-11months. I was 90ure this is what he has as it matched all his symptoms and, well, symptoms show up about 2 weeks after exposure. It can only be contracted through contact with an infected cat. And it was 2 months 2 weeks ago I last caught him roaming about the neighborhood (long story- ugh). So it all made sense.

But today the test came up with nothing! And he's perky, happy, playful and eating like a machine! (cuz machines eat a lot. and verociously. if verocious is a word. you may not know this, but they really do)

So his doctor is optimistic and I'm optimistic.

oh- did I happen to mention I love my veterinarian? She ended our call today with "ok, you've got my cell number. If there's any trouble during my days off, you know where to find me"

Misha's so lucky

and I'm luckier.

Thanks to everyone who thought good wishes for him today......we're both very lucky to know you-

I'd go on but...Misha has some more high-calorie, yummy to devour and I have a new South Park episode to watch!

where's that faith again??

2005-11-02T17:55:00.000-06:00

So my best buddy, Misha, spent today at the hospital getting x-rays.

The doctor just called to apologize for forgetting to do an abdominal tap.

There's fluid in his abdomin.

She said this could be a syptom of disease- liver. Or some crazy, 13word disease I didn't understand coming from her lips.

I'm dropping him off..AGAIN..tomorrow to spend the day at the hospital.

She's coming in on her day off just for him (and me).

If you're reading this, could you take 30 seconds to think some good thoughts his (my) way?

He's 16 years old and never had to be on any medication other than antibiotics --- maybe 3 times in his long life? ok, and that brief need for Vita K after the rat poison scare 13 years ago.

If you've ever had a geriatric animal, this is miraculous -- him not needing medication.

So why am I complaining?

I guess G*d is forcing me to open my eyes and see the reality.

The mortality.

My best buddy is very old and may be leaving soon.

sigh

getting what you want when it really counts

2005-10-27T00:57:00.000-05:00

I have a cat, Misha, who will turn 16 this March....if he survives.

He's been with me since he was 8 weeks old...I fondly remember holding him in the shelter. He fit in my hand, his 6 inch skinny tail wrapped up so he could clutch it and chew on the end- he was my little monkey.

I remember him climbing the Christmas tree every year. Every night, I'd come home to find my tree rattling in my apartment, fir needles ting ting tingling to the floor and a little black furry shadow clinging to the branches in the middle.

I remember him sitting so politely on the floor next to my chair at the Thanksgiving dinner table at my mother's...knowing his patience would pay off with a plate of turkey and mashed potatos made just for him.

I remember him batting at snowflakes falling past the windows of our little studio apartment in Lincoln Park.

He's been all over with me. Survived some pretty crappy living situations. Some horrendous situations. He's really been my best (and sometimes my only) friend for 15 1/2 years.

Somehow he trusts me 100%; Have you ever had that pleasure? It's quite extraordinary. I can do anything to him- 12 years ago, after discovering he'd gotten into a cabinet holding a box of rat poison, I rushed him to his doctor, who promptly gave me these big nasty capsules of Vita K for him. All I had to do was hold the capsule in my hand and he'd lick it up eagerly. He truly trusts that whatever I do, it's for his best interests. He totally and completely trusts I will always protect him from any harm-- it's overwhelming and comforting simultaneously.

So he's had a rough year and I've been beating myself up for not protecting him as much as he needed apparently. I couldn't afford to board him at his vet when I was out of town 5 different times this year. That really killed me to leave him home alone each time. On top of that, about 6 months ago, I discovered something terrible that was happening to him....and I discovered he'd lost 2 pounds (a LOT for a 10lb geriatric cat). Normally I'd rush him to the vet for extensive testing, but again, money prevented this. I've spent the past 6 months saving and planning to bring him in only for unexpected expenses to pummle my "misha account"--- 6-week notice of an out of town wedding in my family, immediately followed by a month of unexpected unemployment--- I knew the longer I went without getting him checked, the deeper in danger he got.

This past month he's dropped a ton of weight and last weekend I kept finding him in wierd parts of my home just staring blankly not knowing where he was or how he got there.

I did some research and what I found- "dimentia is not old age. It's a symptom of a serious problem, including hyperthyroidism, renal failure, diabetes..."

my heart shattered- If only I'd been able to board him during those 5 trips I took this year- If only I'd been able to bring him in sooner.

I failed my baby

So Monday I called the vet, explained my financial situation, begged the accountant to let me bring him on my day off Tuesday.

That night, I curled up Misha in my arms, under the covers, and cried while begging G*d with all my heart and soul to please make this something managable...not renal failure, not diabetes....and please bring me money to pay for it all so Misha's well-being would no longer be sabotaged by finances.

I got 2 job interviews Tuesday- both companies love me. Both pay very well. A voice-over director of a job I recorded a year ago called me in for a "pick-up" booking for Wednesday. Seems the client preferred my voice to one of the male actors in the original cast, so I was brought back to record his lines. Yes, more money. I submitted my first reviews for a Nightlife Website -- these would determine if they'd give me more assignments and pay me. They loved my writing and sent me 8 more clubs to review....yes paying!

I got the call from the vet Wednesday. Blood, urine, fecal...all 100% normal! I'm astounded there's no kidney damage. We're both astounded a 15 1/2 yr-old cat has 100% normal blood-- this is almost unheard of.

She recommends a re-check in a month and plenty of high-calorie food (kitten or prescription) and a lot of love.

I checked my bank account. Looks like, even after Tuesday's $400 vet bill, I'll have some spare change after my November rent payment. Which means I'll have MORE spare change near the end of November. Which means I can afford to have Misha stay at the hospital when I go home for Thanksgiving, so he can be surrounded by 24/7 professional care vs. last year's 10 minutes daily of my friend checking his water bowl.

Or maybe I'll take him to my mother's house in Chicago this year for some mom-made turkey and mashed potatoes and sweet-potato pie.

And the annual real Christmas tree.

And some snow.

And I just got another reminder on how f*cking cool faith can be.

And how important my kraceevee maleenkee malcheek is to me-

For those of you lucky enough to have a long-term relationship with an animal, I wish you the very same extraordinary luck I had this week.

Cheers-

DON'T LET MACY'S KILL MARSHALL FIELDS!!!

2005-09-28T17:59:00.000-05:00

as a proud former Marshall Fields elf (yes, sedaris and I could swap some good stories), I can't let Macy's kill off my favorite, 140yr Chicago landmark, department store!

help save Marshall Fields!

Save Marshall Fields!

that garbage in our backyard

2005-09-08T18:03:00.000-05:00

People are so shocked, appalled, surprised by the looting, raping, killing that went on in and around the Superdome.

Do people in this country not realize this is a daily reality for the people we hide in our projects?

We sit in our Pottery Barn leather chair, sipping Starbucks with that college degree certificate on the wall -- that education at least partly paid for by our parents. We shake our heads, look down our noses at them saying "well they deserve to live in poverty if they're too lazy to WORK for a living. We EARNED what we have here."

I dunno about you, but I didn't EARN the priviledge of being born a white woman to a man with masters degrees in Engineering & Physics from a top university. I didn't EARN the priviledge of growing up in a cute pretty home in an upper middle-class neighborhood host to good elementary and high schools with state champion programs. These were all things that were handed to me by devine luck. And all these things held my hand through my development and are 90% responsible, in my opinion, for any success I've enjoyed in life.

From what I heard growing up, projects like Cabrini Green and the Robert Taylor homes (Chicago) were nearly like prison/war zones 24/7. I remember taking the Halsted bus to ballet class every morning from my hipster Lakeview 3 flat past Cabrini Green. As the bus cruised between North and Division, all of us would hunker down so we wouldn't be exposed in the windows should any gunfire fly from the projects.

Now imagine being 7 years old, about 50 pounds, about 3 feet tall. And to go to school, you have to walk past drug dealers and gangs firing the same guns we feared on that Halsted bus. Would you go to school every day if doing so meant you may lose your life? What if you're a young boy being raised by a single mom and you know, by leaving her home alone, she's vulnerable to that rapist down the hall and the locks on the door haven't been sturdy for years.

I remember skipping school for a week becuase I no longer could withstand the teasing from my classmates. If they were 100 pounds heavier with guns and knives....well....

So we here in the US have shoved what we don't want to see in the dark alleys, dirty and dangerous buildings grouped together out of the way so we don't have to be reminded of them and our failure as a society to help them.

Kinda like the crap you put behind your garage because you don't want to look at it, yet for some reason you know you can't destroy it?

Putting it behind the garage doesn't improve the conditions of the undesirables.

It doesn't make it go away.

It just sits there getting more decrepit.

Am I the only one who sees all Katrina did was destroy the garage so we're forced to see what we've been hiding behind it for decades?

robert taylor projects, new orleans, failure

2005-09-07T20:13:00.000-05:00

Good story passed on to me by the most awesome Jermaine- I replied to him to say so, then found myself rambling, then, in my own self-absorbed-self-importance, felt the need to share share everywhere-

I'd forgotten the sadness I learned in Chicago's Robert Taylor projects until now. This is long becuase there's my story, then the Intellectual Activist's story- but, well I think both are important to share- but IA's is more, er, intellectual, so if you're here, but short on time, scroll down to his story.

**************************************************

I taught dancing to kids in the Robert Taylor projects. Clinton's response to Chicago being named worst education system was pouring millions of dollars into alternative ways to teach math/science to the poorest kids.

Every day we arrived, for 8 weeks, we were greeted in the elementary school by 2 large, stern, Chicago police officers standing guard at the front door, equipped with billy clubs and guns, bullet-proof vests. They'd check our bags, the battery compartments of our stereos, pad us down confirming no weapons.

Daily life for a grade-school student on the south side of Chicago- whee!

The kids had to earn the priviledge of staying after school 2 days/week to learn math/science via song and dance skills.

They were THRILLED with what they developed. I personally taught choreography and biology to 8 3rd-grade girls. Then witnessed them choreograph a 3-minute dance that also represented the water cycle!

The boys created a 3-minute rap on the solar system.

It was brilliant.

They were so proud.

They wanted to put on a show for their school and parents and anyone who would watch.

The teacher said "oh no, that won't happen"

and we said "oh yeah....we're such out of touch artists, we forget normal people are busy at jobs until 5 or 6pm ooops"

she shook her head sadly and said "you think the parents of these kids have JOBS?! nooooooo *angry chuckle* they're not tied up with jobs. they just don't give a damn. nobody cares about these poor kids. they won't come"

I think those 8 weeks were simultaneously the most inspiring and most discouraging of my adult life.

These kids were smarter and harder working than most of the suburban white kids I met while teaching dance...

...and I knew they'd end up, at best, making minimum wages and living in poverty.

Good points made

but Bush's still the devil- hee

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: jermaine
Date: Sep 7, 2005 6:12 PM

Just PARTIALLY. I mean, he was still on vacation THREE DAYS after the storm hit!!! But anyhoo....

This article is from the editor of The Intellectual Activist (www.TIADaily.com).

He offers the most intellectual point of view so far, which makes sense since he's editor of The Intellectual Activist...

Thoughts?
_________________________________________________

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State

by Robert Tracinski
Sep 02, 2005

It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can't blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city's infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

The man-made disaster is not an inadequate or incompetent response by federal relief agencies, and it was not directly caused by Hurricane Katrina. This is where just about every newspaper and television channel has gotten the story wrong.

The man-made disaster we are now witnessing in New Orleans did not happen over four days last week. It happened over the past four decades. Hurricane Katrina merely exposed it to public view.

The man-made disaster is the welfare state.

For the past few days, I have found the news from New Orleans to be confusing. People were not behaving as you would expect them to behave in an emergency—indeed, they were not behaving as they have behaved in other emergencies. That is what has shocked so many people: they have been saying that this is not what we expect from America. In fact, it is not even what we expect from a Third World country.

When confronted with a disaster, people usually rise to the occasion. They work together to rescue people in danger, and they spontaneously organize to keep order and solve problems. This is especially true in America. We are an enterprising people, used to relying on our own initiative rather than waiting around for the government to take care of us. I have seen this a hundred times, in small examples (a small town whose main traffic light had gone out, causing ordinary citizens to get out of their cars and serve as impromptu traffic cops, directing cars through the intersection) and large ones (the spontaneous response of New Yorkers to September 11).

So what explains the chaos in New Orleans?

To give you an idea of the magnitude of what is going on, here is a description from a Washington Times story:

"Storm victims are raped and beaten; fights erupt with flying fists, knives and guns; fires are breaking out; corpses litter the streets; and police and rescue helicopters are repeatedly fired on.

"The plea from Mayor C. Ray Nagin came even as National Guardsmen poured in to restore order and stop the looting, carjackings and gunfire....

"Last night, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said 300 Iraq-hardened Arkansas National Guard members were inside New Orleans with shoot-to-kill orders.

" 'These troops are...under my orders to restore order in the streets,' she said. 'They have M-16s, and they are locked and loaded. These troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so if necessary and I expect they will.' "

The reference to Iraq is eerie. The photo that accompanies this article shows a SWAT team with rifles and armored vests riding on an armored vehicle through trash-strewn streets lined by a rabble of squalid, listless people, one of whom appears to be yelling at them. It looks exactly like a scene from Sadr City in Baghdad.

What explains bands of thugs using a natural disaster as an excuse for an orgy of looting, armed robbery, and rape? What causes unruly mobs to storm the very buses that have arrived to evacuate them, causing the drivers to speed away, frightened for their lives? What causes people to attack the doctors trying to treat patients at the Superdome?

Why are people responding to natural destruction by causing further destruction? Why are they attacking the people who are trying to help them?

My wife, Sherri, figured it out first, and she figured it out on a sense-of-life level. While watching the coverage one night on Fox News Channel, she told me that she was getting a familiar feeling. She studied architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which is located in the South Side of Chicago just blocks away from the Robert Taylor Homes, one of the largest high-rise public housing projects in America. "The projects," as they were known, were infamous for uncontrollable crime and irremediable squalor. (They have since, mercifully, been demolished.)

What Sherri was getting from last night's television coverage was a whiff of the sense of life of "the projects." Then the "crawl"—the informational phrases flashed at the bottom of the screen on most news channels—gave some vital statistics to confirm this sense: 75f the residents of New Orleans had already evacuated before the hurricane, and of those who remained, a large number were from the city's public housing projects. Jack Wakeland then told me that early reports from CNN and Fox indicated that the city had no plan for evacuating all of the prisoners in the city's jails—so they just let many of them loose. [Update: I have been searching for news reports on this last story, but I have not been able to confirm it. Instead, I have found numerous reports about the collapse of the corrupt and incompetent New Orleans Police Department; see here and here.]

There is no doubt a significant overlap between these two populations--that is, a large number of people in the jails used to live in the housing projects, and vice versa.

There were many decent, innocent people trapped in New Orleans when the deluge hit—but they were trapped alongside large numbers of people from two groups: criminals—and wards of the welfare state, people selected, over decades, for their lack of initiative and self-induced helplessness. The welfare wards were a mass of sheep—on whom the incompetent administration of New Orleans unleashed a pack of wolves.

All of this is related, incidentally, to the incompetence of the city government, which failed to plan for a total evacuation of the city, despite the knowledge that this might be necessary. In a city corrupted by the welfare state, the job of city officials is to ensure the flow of handouts to welfare recipients and patronage to political supporters—not to ensure a lawful, orderly evacuation in case of emergency.

No one has really reported this story, as far as I can tell. In fact, some are already actively distorting it, blaming President Bush, for example, for failing to personally ensure that the Mayor of New Orleans had drafted an adequate evacuation plan. The worst example is an execrable piece from the Toronto Globe and Mail, by a supercilious Canadian who blames the chaos on American "individualism." But the truth is precisely the opposite: the chaos was caused by a system that was the exact opposite of individualism.

What Hurricane Katrina exposed was the psychological consequences of the welfare state. What we consider "normal" behavior in an emergency is behavior that is normal for people who have values and take the responsibility to pursue and protect them. People with values respond to a disaster by fighting against it and doing whatever it takes to overcome the difficulties they face. They don't sit around and complain that the government hasn't taken care of them. And they don't use the chaos of a disaster as an opportunity to prey on their fellow men.

But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don't, because they don't own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.

People living in piles of their own trash, while petulantly complaining that other people aren't doing enough to take care of them and then shooting at those who come to rescue them—this is not just a description of the chaos at the Superdome. It is a perfect summary of the 40-year history of the welfare state and its public housing projects.

The welfare state—and the brutish, uncivilized mentality it sustains and encourages—is the man-made disaster that explains the moral ugliness that has swamped New Orleans. And that is the story that no one is reporting.

15,000 body bags

2005-09-06T18:21:00.000-05:00

My mother is somehow a part of the FEMA team.

She was deployed to Dallas this weekend. Her hours are roughly 4pm-3am.

She's 69

She was told she'd be there for 2 weeks. Now that she's down there, she's been informed she should not expect to return to Chicago for 6 months.

People calling the help lines are not calling for help as much as to scream, curse, cry about how much they hate Bush, the US government, and FEMA.

15,000 body bags were shipped to New Orleans this weekend from the office in Dallas.

Army Corps arrived this weekend in Dallas - 3 of the men were immediately shot dead by angry evacuees/refugees.

what was washed away, and what remains

2005-09-02T12:23:00.000-05:00

by Rabbi David Wolpe

One of the great novels of our time, 'Remembrance of Things Past' is a sustained meditation on the meaning of memory. The author, Marcel Proust, is haunted by memory. His entire artistic life was given to evocations of his past. His work, in several volumes, delicately traces the web of recollection from early childhood. His book is an elegy to a lost world, the world of his youth.

Proust was Jewish, and it is likely that his ancestry sparked some of his obsession with memory. Jews are afflicted by memory, uplifted and impelled by it. To be a Jew is to dote on the past, to understand what has changed; to recognize not only what has been gained, but what has been lost.

Jewish memory teaches us that things do not remain as they were. It helps us overcome the sense of our own invulnerability, and the permanence of the world. It is an early and innocent belief of life that things do not change -- that nothing will fade, or break, or die. That sentiment soon disappears; it roars out of the broken dam of our first tragedy, our first experience with what can never return. Then we remember what was, and in the act of memory is the recognition of loss.

As we grow, we become increasingly aware that life is studded by loss. Some losses are small, inconsequential. Others shake the roots of our lives.

Watching the news this week from a safe niche far from the hurricane, I saw devastating pictures of loss. The most permanent fixtures of being -- homes, businesses, life itself -- were torn away in an instant.

It was an inexplicable burst of tragedy. No answer can magically soothe the scars of desolation. Nonetheless Judaism, with its insistence on memory, provides some context for such a horrible event.

At the Yizkor service on Yom Kippur we mourn the impermanence of life. We speak about the brief years we are granted on earth, how all of our accomplishments are rooted in time. Inevitably, we scan the synagogue for those who worshipped with us last year who are now gone.

Reinforcing the theme of impermanence, Yom Kippur is followed by Sukkot. On Sukkot we read the book of Ecclesiastes, with its insistence on the brevity and evanescence of all things. During that week we also we dwell in a sukkah, a flimsy hut that temporarily serves as a home.

According to Jewish law, a sukkah must not be too sturdy. Building a sukkah is way of saying "You see, our structures are fragile and fleeting. Each year we build them, and a week later we tear them down. That which we imagine will last forever briefly flickers on this earth, and is gone."

Our tradition teaches transience. Do not think that steel and stone will last forever. Loss is ingrained in life. There is a time for everything, the author of Ecclesiastes assures us, which means that there is another time when that thing will be no more.

Yet this teaching of transience is not so that we will be left with despair. It encourages us to search for that which is permanent. The sukkah may be temporary, but the memory of building it has lasted for three-thousand years. Even if individuals forget, the community remembers. And that memory lingers even when more palpable symbols of achievement in this world are gone.

The teaching of Judaism is that while the world changes, there is permanence. There is continuity in memory, in connections between people, in God. Although much in this world might be lost, it is reclaimed through recollection.

Part of the understanding to be wrested from any tragedy is that everything has not been rendered meaningless by loss. Even something so fixed and durable as a home is not ultimately what lasts. The abidingness of life is found in others, and in God. This Yizkor there will be much to mourn for many who have lived through this terrible tragedy. Nothing can obliterate the horrible pain, the sense of life's work having been swept away, the helplessness and violation.

Yet Judaism adjures us to remember that which lasts. It is in our power to ensure that no storm can blow away memory, and no floods wash away faith.

Those of us who only watched the devastation must remember the vivid images of lives upended, dreams shattered, homes and hearts swept up in the storm. Those who lived through it have the far harder task of clinging to what does last: to memory, to hope, to each other, to God. From the rest of us, in the immemorial words of our tradition, chazak, chazak v'titchazek: Stay strong, and may you be strengthened.

the new orleans joke

2005-09-01T12:50:00.000-05:00

For YEARS I've heard my friends from Louisiana joke about how the bottom 1/2 of the state would be destroyed by a hurricane because of its dysfunctional system. What's atrocious is the GOVERNMENT had the same theory, had a plan to fix it and the money to prepare the city

and Bush took it away to pay for his war in Iraq

Added note from Governor's press conference right now: "If people had jobs, they don't have jobs anymore. They don't have homes anymore"

SPIEGEL ONLINE - August 31, 2005, 11:22 PMURL: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,372455,00.html

Former Clinton Advisor "No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"
By Sidney Blumenthal

In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.

Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature. A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations.

In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation. "The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge.

In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce. In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. "There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection," said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as "highly questionable," and boasted, "Everybody loves what we're doing."

"My administration's climate change policy will be science based," President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as "a report put out by a bureaucracy," and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive "Report on the Environment," stating, "Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment," the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions.

At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes. In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking": "Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease." Bush completely ignored this statement.

In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of "abstinence." When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.

On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: "And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan." Bush had boarded his very own "Streetcar Named Desire."

Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of "The Clinton Wars," is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.

craig's casual encounters

2005-07-28T22:48:00.000-05:00

About 2 months ago, I was kinda sorta not really dating someone to whom I was madly attracted...he went to NYC for 2 weeks and I found myself alone & restless one Saturday night. This is when I discovered Craig's List Casual Encounters.

This has led to many sociological discussions with my girlfriends on men -- their attitudes, obsessions, injudiciousness to sex -- our theories will be in at least one future post, don't you fret! If you haven't discovered this plethora of entertainment and cross section of human behaviour, it is a place where people post ads looking for nsa connections (is that an oxymoron?). Most are men, in fact roughly 96% are men, and perhaps 80% of that are hetero men. Looking for a sexual partner. Just for that night. Perhaps, "if the chemistry is right", for an extended period. But most posts clearly state the poster is home alone with nothing to do and nowhere to go and horny as hell so he's hoping a woman will come over to let him nail her- no names exchanged, no conversation, nothing more than some hot fun in the city tonight. "call me by 10pm, after that this post will be deleted"

ok, I confess, as a single, sexually charged woman, this is a fun past time as I get to see quite a variety of excited men all from the comfort of my HermanMiller 198 position ergonomically correct chair, in my favorite cotton jammies, while sipping red wine and listening to KCRW's evening broadcast streaming online. Most of them are very good looking- from the neck down. Only the VERY daring or crazy post their face here. But for my purpose on this excavation, faces are not necessary. Seeing lots of well-developed pecs, washboard stomachs, toned bums, perfectly hairy torsos...well, it's nice to absorb without having to give anything in return.

The posts are frequently accompanied soley by close ups of the man's erect penis. Sometimes with a ruler held next to it. Sometimes a beer can. Sometimes from all different angles. I suppose if a woman or man is ONLY looking for sex, this would indeed be the most important selling point. ahem. I said point. hee. Some point east. Those are my favorite

It's been over a month since I last studied the Casual Encounters and just now I was delighted to find this ad-

IF YOU WANT TO GET A GOOD RESPONSE FROM YOUR AD, IT HELPS TO HAVE PHOTOS THAT MAKE YOU LOOK YOUR BEST.
ALL DIGITAL SERVICE HERE.
ONLINE PORTRAIT PACKAGE
60 pictures burned to a disc
1 retouched favorite image of your choosing
$50.00
from mild to wild

Hmmm there's a guy on there tonight who could use this service. At first glance, he's a scroll-by, but on closer inspection I evaluate him as a possible grower given his scrotum and girth.

oh wait- he's got another post.... no, poor guy, he's a show-er.

So if you're looking for some nsa on Craig's list, your competition might get steeper unless you, too, put the webcam away and invest in some professional quality digitals of your genitals. And at the very least, you get to quench your exhibitionist thirst.

When do I get to be France?

2004-03-07T09:02:00.000-06:00

Before I moved out to LA from Chicago, I’d heard nothing good about dating in LA. Hollywood. Land of movies stars and shallow bars. Spinning hubcaps and lips that look like they’re filled with lumpy jelly. So when my mid-west boyfriend and I broke up I knew I was in for, as Betty Davis said, a bumpy –and I don’t mean collagen injections- ride. In the past 4 years, I’ve dated a LOT, but every guy, after two or three seemingly great dates, calls and apologizes to me letting me know his heart is pining for another woman. My most recent experience was the son of a Forbes “100 Most Powerful” CEO. In ten days, we had three great dates with him gushing about how he’d treat me to a long, luxurious evening out when he got back from the family trip…to Paris. Upon his return, he sent an email explaining how he’d met a woman during his May trip to Paris and, over his 2-week December trip, had changed his mind about her deciding he was in love and wanted a commitment. I lost an amazing guy to France. Yep, France. Bitter bitter I was… Even more since learning he married her 9 months later in a lavish ceremony in the south of, yep, France.

Sometimes she’s an ex he thought he was over, sometimes she’s someone he met and decided not to date, but his time with me magically brought to light his true love and devotion to her. Let’s see the pattern, shall we?

The 36 year-old Toy Collector: He nearly cried to me on our first date about how his wife broke his heart when she walked out on him on his birthday the year before. They reunited a month later. Actually, that reunion didn’t bum me out because his home was literally filled with toys – the stove, the fridge, the ENTIRE 2 bedroom home littered with toys arranged to recreate famous scenes from films. uh-huh. And now he’s someone’s dad….raising our future. mmmm Well at least he’s not violent.

The MFA Shakespearean Actor: We were in a show together. Comedy of Errors- an appropriate description of my dating life in LA actually. For three weeks he clung to me during rehearsals and chased me to my car serenading me with his guitar. So I finally agreed to go out with him---he’d broken me down with his relentlessness. Three weeks later as I had decided he was possibly a good catch, he bolted. He and I are now friends so I now know I was the third woman he’d tried to date after he’d caught his fiancé cheating on him. Oh the drama.

The Magician! Hmmm yes, he was quite charismatic. And, well, magical. After two fun dates and two weeks of daily calls from him making all sorts of future plans for us, he emailed me letting me know he thought he was over his ex but, well, dating me stirred emotions he didn’t know he still had for her. Poof! Disappeared into thin air!

The Web Cutie: Chased me for three months then, when I finally decided to go out with him, he recoiled. He told me he’d dumped another woman 3 months before because she was too old, but now he’s decided he’s in love with her. Apparently his HTML codes were a bit mixed up.

Thinking this was merely artists’ flaky commitment phobia, I decided to launch out to the grown up world and dated Mr. France mentioned above. Well, you know how THAT ended. The chemistry, the poetry, the music, the Mercedes, the home in Bel-Air, the family private jet all for France. Oh la tristesse…

Then came Little Warren the Quaker: After five, yes! Five! Woohoo! dates- he said, or shall I say, broke down in tears and said he had SO much fun with me and was convinced we’d have a great relationship for 10 months but no more than that so we should stop dating now. The following 3 months, he dated others, but continued calling me and flirting with me and acting quite fond of me. So I would giggle to myself thinking – “a-HA I will FINALLY realize the glory of being that woman for whom the man dumps others to return with a grande l’amour!” But it hasn’t happened. In fact, he’s quite enamored with his latest pursuit.

So I ask with great frustration and aggravation-

“When do *I* get to be France?!”