Random Thoughts

I may throw up on you…

Sometimes I think we’re living in an alternate universe. Or maybe it’s like the new Star Trek movie…someone accidentally sucked the US into a black hole, and now we’re living out a reality where everything that had meaning, everything of substance, has been tweaked and twisted, and things just are wacked.

Like maybe Ronald Reagan was never President.

And Lee Iacocca never resurrected Chrysler. In the new reality Iacocca doesn’t even get to keep his company car.

And the French President and US President, having determined that Britain is irrelevant, are sucking up to one another so hard it makes my Miele vacuum look like a tired old broom.

And the US Government has decided that significant donors to the GOP can no longer own American car dealerships. Doug Ross offers an eye-opening breakdown of what dealerships are being targeted for closure.

If that’s not enough, some brilliant DC policymakers are considering implementing a nationwide VAT (value added tax). Just what we need with rising unemployment, sinking home values and the tax burden we already carry.

A VAT is a tax on the transfer of goods and services that ultimately is borne by the consumer. Highly visible, it would increase the cost of just about everything, from a carton of eggs to a visit with a lawyer. It is also hugely regressive, falling heavily on the poor. But VAT advocates say those negatives could be offset by using the proceeds to pay for health care for every American — a tangible benefit that would be highly valuable to low-income families.

…Orszag has hired a prominent VAT advocate to advise him on health care: Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and author of the 2008 book “Health Care, Guaranteed.” Meanwhile, former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, chairman of a task force Obama assigned to study the tax system, has expressed at least tentative support for a VAT.

My head might just implode. All that’s left is to find out that the past 29 years never happened.

Meanwhile, Obama’s Energy Secretary wants us to paint our roofs white.

Speaking at the opening of the St. James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, Professor Chu said that this approach could have a vast impact.

By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the color of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.

Dude. Seriously. Feel free to come paint every single one of my roof’s bazillion concrete tiles white. And be sure to replace any you break in the process.

How the crap they’d begin to pay to repave the roads in my state–a state which is so deep in the red it’s hemorrhaging–I have no idea. Probably via some sort of Global Warming/Road Resurfacing tax.

Good luck with that.

What it takes to cook professionally

Since Eldest Daughter is a pastry cook, I’ve a greater than average interest in that industry. One of my favorite blogs is Eggbeater, and today Shuna Fish Lydon posted something I dearly wish I’d read back when Eldest Daughter was contemplating culinary school (before she racked up student loans). Then again, given her shy personality, I wonder if she would have had the fortitude to boldly go forth without some kind of official “I can do this” document.

Once she got her diploma and Cordon Bleu certification, she did manage to follow (instinctively or through blind luck) many of the steps Lydon details. Eldest Daughter is a skilled, dedicated, extremely hard worker who managed to land a job with a really good employer her first time out. And since then, she’s shared many of the thoughts Lydon spelled out so succinctly:

If you want to cook professionally you may want to stop watching kitchen reality shows.
If you want to cook professionally you should have money in the bank or very cheap rent or a spouse to support you.
If you want to cook professionally you immediately give up having a ‘normal’ life with ‘normal’ working hours.
If you want to cook professionally you will have to really want it. Above all else.
If you want to cook professionally go after it like nothing else. Stop at nothing.
If you want to cook professionally you will, if it’s all you can think about. If you can afford to do so. If you set your mind to it…

Be brave. Be bold.

This industry isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s for the passionate, the crazy, the driven, the competitive.
This industry is a knitted series of networks of people who are like tiny cities/families unto themselves.
This industry is my home, my heart, my love, my people, brethren.

But it’s not a part time job. And it’s not impossible to enter.

Judging from the hours Eldest Daughter puts in, and the stories she tells about her workplace and colleagues, cooking is not a job…it’s an adventure.

A cook needs to enjoy dining out, and to recognize a great restaurant (like Ristorante Il Molino in Spello, Italy) when she eats there.

Maybe Al Franken could do something…

99% of the time, I think the government should stay the heck out of people’s lives.

This is not one of those times.

MINNEAPOLIS – A Minnesota judge ruled Friday that a 13-year-old cancer patient must be evaluated by a doctor to determine if the boy would benefit from restarting chemotherapy over his parents’ objections…

Daniel was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma and stopped chemotherapy in February after a single treatment. He and his parents opted instead for alternative medicines based on their religious beliefs.

Child protection workers accused Daniel’s parents of medical neglect; but in court, his mother insisted the boy wouldn’t submit to chemotherapy for religious reasons and she said she wouldn’t comply if the court orders it.

Doctors have said Daniel’s cancer had up to a 90 percent chance of being cured with chemotherapy and radiation. Without those treatments, doctors said his chances of survival are 5 percent.

Daniel’s parents have been supporting what they say is their son’s decision to treat the disease with nutritional supplements and other alternative treatments favored by the Nemenhah Band.

The Missouri-based religious group believes in natural healing methods advocated by some American Indians…

“My son is not in any medical danger at this point,” Colleen Hauser testified at a court hearing last week. She also testified that Daniel is a medicine man and elder in the Nemenhah Band.

The family’s attorney, Calvin Johnson, said Daniel made the decision himself to refuse chemotherapy, but Brown County said he did not have an understanding of what it meant to be a medicine man or an elder.

Court filings also indicated Daniel has a learning disability and can’t read.

You have to prove you’re competent before you get a license to drive a car, but any damned fool can have a child. I’ve seen dogs that are better parents than the Hausers purport to be.

Will work for fish

I’ve been remiss in blogging, but not without excuse. End of the university semester, final exams, term papers and in-class presentations, a wedding out of town and a brief family vacation occupied my body and brain cells. Until today. Today, I am finally freeeeee…

I’d forgotten how good it feels to finish classwork successfully. Assuming, that is, I did not tank my last final, which (given the erratic grading of the prof) is probably not a safe assumption. Still, it’s done.

*tosses cyber confetti and turns to more important things*

This is the most awesome creature I’ve ever seen:

Five thousand pounds of highly intelligent marine mammal, willing to do whatever that little female human wants.

Yes, I went to Sea World. I wasn’t sure what to expect; it had been nearly two decades since my last visit, and that last visit left me depressed. If memory serves, I thought the killer whales were like “eagles in a canary cage.” I remember their environment they were kept in seemed small and somewhat shabby, and whatever the trainers were doing with the killer whales, it seemed only a step or two above the seals balancing balls on their noses.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, if you’re a seal.

Seals and sea lions (they’re not the same but they act the same) are like the goofy dogs of the ocean; spend any time deep sea fishing and you’ll know what I mean. They’re always yapping and playing and trying to snag a snack.

Killer whales are a whole ‘nother story. And it’s not just a matter of size. They’re fierce creatures, at the top of their food chain. Sharks make a meal of seals; killer whales are nobody’s lunch.

What bothered me 20 years ago was seeing these creatures being treated like an amusement park attraction, which in one sense they certainly are. People don’t go to Sea World to see the dolphins, even though they’re remarkable in their own right; it’s Shamu that’s the real draw. Since my first visit, things have changed a bit at Sea World, including substantially larger environments for the killer whales (no doubt thanks to the purchase of the park by Anheuser-Busch shortly after my first visit).

A better facility is only the half of it; the Sea World gang are sneaky folks and they’ve managed to turn an animal act into serious conservation and education. Whodathunkit? I learned so much about killer whales, and stingrays, and moray eels too, and a host of other sea creatures, and days later I remember a surprising amount of it.

It’s stuck in my mind because of what I saw, and heard, and touched.

Manta rays feel slick, like greased rubber. Weirdness. And they’re oddly willing to be touched. Who knew?

That’s the beauty of Sea World, and the importance of keeping in humane confinement wild creatures like killer whales. Perhaps Shamu (actually a stage name used with any number of different killer whales) and all the other marine mammals at Sea World would be “happier” on some level in the wild, though I could make a compelling argument that they are emotionally satisfied being given the food and the company they receive where they are. They’re certainly not unhappy. I spent a fair amount of time watching one of the whales through the underwater tank wall several hours after the last show. She was swimming lazily around her enormous environment, occasionally sliding slowly past the glass wall, checking us out. I’m far from an expert on orcas, but this female showed no signs of stress or discomfort…she seemed relaxed.

I on the other hand was full of questions. I wanted to know more about her and her companions, and the entire species. I wanted to know this because of what I’d seen, because now, for me, killer whales weren’t some abstract albeit beautiful thing, they were astoundingly real. And only a few hours earlier I’d been splashed by one, when it jumped out of the water less than 20 feet away from me.

And I am absolutely certain that a great many other visitors to Sea World come away with the same sense of wonder, and the same new appreciation for the life the ocean holds. I understand that these are not domestic animals, that they’re predators, and unpredictable for all that they’ve learned to respond to human beings. They are being treated with respect at Sea World; they perform because they wish to do so, not because they’re driven to it. And in return, they provide a remarkable education to their audience.

Teaching people like me (far from an environmentalist) to appreciate ocean life is of course the entire point. That people are making a financial success out of the whole thing is also cool, and very American. But that’s a subject for another post.

And if you’re wondering about how environmentally aware a for-profit enterprise like Sea World can be, check out John Ivanko’s evaluation of the park.

Why dogs are better than cats

Why dogs are better than cats.

Mountain lion mauls dog that defended owners

LAKE ELSINORE, Calif. – A mountain lion attacked and nearly killed a dog that defended its owners Tuesday on a trail in the Santa Ana Mountains.

The dog was severely mauled in the stomach area and rushed to a veterinary hospital for surgery, said Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino. The 5-year-old black Labrador mix named Hoagie underwent a four-hour operation and was expected to survive, he said.

William Morse told KABC-TV that he was hiking with his wife near a campground in the Cleveland National Forest, about 10 miles from Lake Elsinore, when a 120-pound mountain lion approached.

“Out of nowhere, a mountain lion just charged us, attacked us. And my dog saved our lives,” Morse said.

He said the attack lasted less than 10 seconds and left the dog with deep wounds.

But, Amormino said, the dog put up a “vicious fight. I’m sure that lion was hurt, too.”

Morse said he was traumatized by the attack and will never return to the campground where he and his wife have been hiking for years.

Sheriff’s deputies and Forest Service officials have not located the mountain lion, which will be destroyed if located, officials said.

I’m very fond of my two cats, but they’d be utterly useless in a situation like that. In fact, they’d probably team up with the moutain lion.

Useless against anything bigger than a baby rabbit.

It’s pure torture…

Masochism: Watching Rick Steves visit three of my favorite towns in Italy in the springtime, and realizing that my bank account can barely afford a one-way flight to Seattle. Italy is so out of reach right now.

As I watch, I find myself missing all that I so enjoyed about Italy. I miss Cortona.

I miss the winding little roads and the church steps where everyone sits and chats, and the insanely good proscuitto and the even more insanely good gelato, and the friendliness of shopkeepers and the charming little town that fed us our first Italian meal.

I miss Asissi. I miss the deep history and profound spirtuality of the place, despite its layer of tourism.

. I even miss Montepulciano, for all that I found it eerie and nearly empty when I was last there. I didn’t get to really experience it.

I miss central Italy.

I miss the weather, and the food, and the people, and the pace, and it’s just pure torture to watch someone else strolling and dining and enjoying all it has to offer.

Okay, I’ve gotten that out of my system. It’s no worse than dieting while someone else in the house is eating chocolate cake. Not that I’d know anything about that.