unless you feel like subletting part of my seat (i'm open to reasonable offers—$2/stop? $1/minute? a reasonable flat rate of $20?), then stay the hell over on your side.
i don't care if you'd rather sit with your legs all splayed out like a dog sunning the spot where his balls used to be, or if you prefer to drape your arm around the back of the seat beside you. i'm sorry if you're lonely or if you never developed basic social skills, but not sorry enough to want you to let you touch me or invade my space.
i'm getting rid of lots of paper clutter these days (woo!) and when going through a box just now i found a somewhat cryptic note. i have a dim recollection of someone saying this, but since the date at the top of the note is 8/06 i am not particularly surprised or disappointed that i don't actually remember the exact wording or who said it. something like:
so this supercollider that's going to end the world, this is my kind of disaster! not even bottled water can save you!
once upon a time at a zoo in tokyo there was a snake named aochan that stopped eating its frozen mice. the people who were in charge of feeding it decided to give it a live hamster to eat instead. to everyone's surprise, the snake and the hamster became best friends. the hamster is named gohan, which means snack. zookeepers say that the two appear to enjoy one another's company. i still don't like snakes. via the bbc.
•when you consider that we already have socialized bookshelves (libraries), socialized learning places (public schools), socialized fire protection (your local fire department), socialized security forces (police departments), socialized letter and package delivery systems (the u.s. postal service), socialized road fixing (caltrans, at least here in california), socialized environmental monitoring (the e.p.a.), and socialized medicine for old people already (medicare)...socialized medicine for everybody just doesn't seem so unreasonable.
•i've read the gospels quite a few times and i still can't find the part where jesus says that the man found by the good samaritan shouldn't have been lazy enough to not have a job with good coverage and lucky enough not to have a carrier who dropped him when his treatment got expensive.
•if health insurance companies are already doing such a great job, why should competition from a public plan endanger them in any way?
•on this issue (and probably this issue alone) i am turning into a total laissez-faire economics cheerleader. move over thomas friedman, it's my turn to high five the invisible hand! natural competition in the market solves everything!
•if we were to get a public option and you didn't like it, you wouldn't have to use it. that's why the public option is called the public option, not the public mandatory.
•rep. alan grayson is a total badass and i would like to give him a hug and bake him a cake and probably give him a kiss, but only if he would like it and only on the cheek. WATCH THIS OMG HE IS SAYING THE THINGS I'M THINKING BUT HE IS ON TELEVISION:
Rep. Grayson on the Situation Room
•if you want to contact rep. alan grayson and tell him that he is the best ever, you can do so here.
•if you want to contact your congresspeople and ask them why the hell they can't be more like rep. alan grayson, you can do so here.
•stephen helmsley is a bad person (but he's not the only one. anyone who makes their fortune denying care to sick and injured people is, in fact, a bad person):
Greedy Insurance Companies—Unscrupulous United Healthcare CEO Stephen Hemsley
•it's taken me a long time to get around to writing about this. i don't feel like this post represents my best work, or my clearest or best organized thinking about health care reform. but i'm tired. tired, and furious and terrified. i just weathered another coverage-related fiasco, and i'm doing fine now (properly covered, going to get reimbursed for some stuff i needed but couldn't easily afford, etc) but it was a really scary couple of months. yes, months. with terrible nightmares. i'm publishing this in spite of its failure to meet my usual capricious standards because i think it's important, but i've really gotten to the point where, when i'm trying to talk to someone who is arguing against health care reform, all i hear these days is, "sarah, i don't actually care if you die."
cantaloupe, however, is a perfect shower snack. let me tell you why:
1. it is delicious. 2. it is full of sugar and water, two of the things that you need after a long ride (and i suppose that you could salt it if you wanted to. and also sprinkle it with protein powder, making it the ultimate recovery food.) 3. it is actually more enjoyable to eat in the shower. due to the aforementioned delicious sugar and water, cantaloupe is pretty sticky in a non-aquatic environment, requiring the use of a utensil if you are one of the perfectly reasonable people who really prefers not to be sticky in most situations. in the shower, though, cantaloupe juice on your hands can just be rinsed off! it is perfect! 4. it is full of vitamin A and vitamin C and also potassium.
special note to brother bear: those three on the bottom right (you know, the ones that are colored like actual natural substances) are actually recharge.
i'm pretty good at appreciating eating and sleeping times, but especially in the last few weeks, as i've returned from ecuador and had time to be more focused on riding, i have become an eating and sleeping superstar. i'm not just hungry anymore, i'm ridiculously hungry, and whatever i'm eating is the best food ever*. and at bedtime (or, um, during the afternoon sometimes) i'm not just sleepy, i'm super sleepy, and i've been sleeping better than ever (which is amazing.)
*"best food ever" does not always apply to energy bars/sports fruit snacks. those are just excellent.
a few years ago i received a fantastic birthday present from some of the most excellent (and craftiest) friends i have. it was a bunch of baking supplies—a frosting knife that is vaguely reminiscent of a magic wand, a set of silicone baking cups with legs, a cupcake display stand that reminds me of a chandelier...and a frosting applicator that definitely resembles a caulk gun.
i've used the frosting knife a lot, and the cupcake tree too, but not the baking cups or the frosting applicator. i'm kind of afraid of putting anything as plasticky as silicone into the oven, to be honest, and the frosting applicator seemed like a lot of effort.
the other day, though, i was making cupcakes for my gardensitters (who kept things alive and happy while i was in ecuador, yay!) and i had some time, so i decided to try the frosting applicator. and this is what happened:
(i'm pretty sure the blurriness is due to waves of deliciousness emanating from this cupcake.)
as these photographs clearly indicate, these cupcakes are approximately 1000% more delicious than they would have been if they had simply been frosted with a knife, even my perfect funny shaped frosting knife or the magic wand-looking one.
frosting applicators are totally worth the trouble.
by now, i hope you are aware of the excellence of david rees. he started writing get your war on shortly after september 11, and i am not exaggerating when i say that g.y.w.o. was a key part of my continued post september 11-existence. it's already starting to seem like a distant memory to me, but for the record, 9/2001-1/2009 were some pretty messed up times to be alive. g.y.w.o. said what i was thinking, but in cleverer ways and with a lot more profanity (a lot more), and reassured me that i wasn't the only one who was running out of ways to explain how disgusted i was with my country. for that i will be forever grateful. brother bear and i were talking about this the other night, in fact:
sarah: i have such a crush on david rees a celebrity crush he's married and all but i was just looking at gywo the other day and thinking about how that was seriously and truly one of the things that got me through the entire bush clusterfuck i will tell my grandchildren that some day "granny why does this comic book have so many curse words and no funny jokes?" "THAT BOOK MADE IT POSSIBLE FOR YOU TO BE HERE TODAY. SIT DOWN AND I WILL EXPLAIN ALL THE REFERENCES TO YOU UNTIL YOU CLAIM YOU HAVE TO PEE AND THEN SNEAK OUT THE BATHROOM WINDOW." brother bear: heh heh
and also, david rees has recently written a very thought-provoking article, asking a question that's been at the forefront of everyone's minds these days: "Is Mark Sanford America's First Emo Governor?"
i hope you get a chance to look at that too; rees presents a pretty compelling case.
i also encourage you to watch this talk by david rees, delivered at columbia university in 2005. if you don't have time for all 70 minutes, watch the first few, where he thanks his sponsor, the thomas friedman metaphor illustration service. it made me laugh until i cried the first time i saw it. (granted, it was 2005 and we were all under a lot more stress, but still, the point is, it is funny.)
if you are going to watch "let the right one in," which is a dark and disturbing and gory and beautiful swedish movie (shocking, i know), you really ought to consider making sure your viewing companion is way braver than you so that she or he can tell you what you missed when your eyes were both covered and closed (and in certain extra-serious circumstances, when you were also hiding your entire face), and also when it is safe to open your eyes again.
me: blah blah blah possibility that probably isn't going to end up working out blah blah blah "...it would be fun, but it's not keeping me up at night."
nephews' mama: "well, to be perfectly honest, nothing really does."
