further proof of a world gone mad

cross-processed expired slide film in lomo fisheye2

this morning when i took sabin to school i heard a woman on the radio enthusiastically talking about her new book. i missed the title of the book and the woman's name (ya gotta cut me some slack, i've got pneumonia and my brain is bruised from all of the coughing), but the premise of the book was that Sex in the City has indelibly changed culture. in her words, the bible had ten commandments, but sex in the city has only one: "be fabulous." it was a given, to her, that this makes sex in the city vastly superior.

she went on to argue that the cultural seachange wrought by sex in the city was one of the cool, hip independent woman who doesn't need a man. i may not have seen every episode of carrie and her cohorts, but in those i have seen, the age old striving for a man and a relationship has been pretty much the main focus. that and shoes. and freakishly thin women with a lot of issues. and i'm not sure how that has really advanced us (women) as a species. other than perhaps upgrading how we look upon shoes, which frankly was already pretty much a priority for many of us even before they came along. but according to this woman, it's got something to do with a hip new yorker attitude. blah, blah, blah.

what is wrong with the world where someone can get PUBLISHED and go on the radio with such an absurd premise? the next thing you know, sarah palin will be president....

you're the weakest link, good-bye

tangobaby was up very, very early and she asked me if i'd read andrew sullivan's piece on why sara palin still matters. i hadn't, but i have now. i wish the whole world would read it. although part of me wants ann robinson to come on and tell her to her face, "you're the weakest link, good-bye," since she didn't really seem to catch the clue from having lost the election, i realize now that it's so important that we keep questioning this bit of, in andrew sullivan's words, political malpractice. it simply must never happen again that a person so unqualified and unvetted is chosen for such an important role.

reality t.v. and inspiration

i'm jetlagging. i wake up promptly at 4:30 a.m. these days. and because i'm wide awake, i just get up. i actually quite like it, because i can sip my chai in quiet, early morning darkness and ponder things...things like how although obama won, we still aren't rid of sarah palin. she's busily being spoon fed fox TV opportunities to appear innocent and maligned by the meanies in washington. and people are still writing her love letters like this one (it's really quite hilarious, do go read it). and it struck me that she actually thinks she's some kind of winner on some (far) stranger than fiction reality show. then again, what reality show isn't stranger than fiction? the problem for me is that although we voted her off, she's STILL HERE, so it's like some especially perverse twisted reality show from hell. i do wish they'd stop broadcasting it soon.

* * *

but, thinking about reality t.v. reminds me of some concepts that husband and i once came up with for reality programs. one of our best friends is head of entertainment at the danish t.v. channel that i like to think of as the CSI channel. but, in addition to CSI, they also have a few locally-produced reality programs. gems like "farmer wants a wife" and "gay army" and "the young mothers," which could soon offer a spot to bristol palin (but i digress).   husband and i pitched the following to her:

1. gay construction--very flamboyantly gay men are given asphalt and paving equipment and asked to lay some road.
2. near miss--ordinary people as air traffic controllers in some of the world's busiest airports.
3. quack docs--ordinary people performing surgery on willing victims. we figured with the whole me-me-me culture of fame that there were enough stupid people out there on both sides to make half a dozen episodes or so.

strangely, despite how clearly inspired these ideas are, our friend didn't actually take any of them further...

* * *

and speaking of inspiration, in order to escape the SP channel, i went looking in the blogosphere for inspiration. and i found some here. and here. and here as well. and i totally love this, i mean who doesn't need some encouragement? and there's always so much inspiration on flickr.

i love the echoes journal so much, the notion of selecting and photographing objects, then trading them with three others and photographing them again is so appealing. does anyone want to do something similar? i'm seeing a cross-continental collaboration...won't you please play along?

teasing meaning and significance from the chaotic stream of daily contingencies

dear sabin,


you’re only seven and you’re growing up mostly danish, so i’m not sure that you understand the significance of this american election. you’ve watched with me on BBC and CNN, but i realize you don’t really comprehend it. i hope that one day you will. one of the things that i have worried about with you growing up outside the US is that you won’t be instilled with the good bits of the american dream...that part where you believe so much in yourself and your abilities that anything can happen.


for a long time now, i haven’t really believed in that...i’ve felt much more ashamed to be american than anything. although many cite sept. 11, 2001 as the beginning of the end, for me, it started with the whole clinton-monica lewinsky thing followed by the debacle of the 2000 election and the resulting eight years of bush. it hasn’t been good for my identity, nor has it been good for me knowing what identity i hoped you would have.


but now, with the election of barack obama, it all feels different. it feels like hope has returned to the world. and with it my pride in being an american. i haven’t felt proud of that for a very long time. it’s strange how pride comes back intact in one fell swoop. i literally no longer feel the need to hide my passport as i stand in line for passport control.


don’t get me wrong, those people who found their voices during the bush years...people who are hyper-religious, people who believe jesus was hanging out with the dinosaurs, people who think that evolution is just a fluffy science thing that masks the “truth” of the bible, and especially people who would compromise a woman’s right to choose what happens in and around her own body...they were always there. it’s just that bush and those who brought him to power...the aptly named (because it means ass in danish) karl rove and the dark lord dick cheney...made it ok for those people to speak up and be the loudest voices, spreading their bigotry and narrow-mindedness. those people who made sarah palin not only possible but logical as a VP candidate. those people who were afraid of other nationalities, didn't have passports and who weren’t really aware that there were other countries...those people were in power during your entire lifetime. and that gave me pause. because i wanted you to have the good parts of growing up american...especially the part about not believing there were any limitations if you worked for your dreams.


and i worried about you growing up danish, because the government that’s been in power in denmark since your birth has been equally if not more mediocre. no big ideas, actually not even any medium-sized ideas...only small minds and small thinking, anti-intellectualism..the ultimate in mediocre. not to mention afraid of the other. of which i have feared you would be classified with a foreign mother. so, what kind of world had we brought you into? i have to admit it has worried me. rather a lot.


but somehow, in my mind, the election of barack obama in the US changes everything. it’s a return to an intellectual politics. (at least it feels like that right now.) it’s a return to ideas. it’s a return to sanity. it’s a return to a world that acknowledges (and even just realizes) that there are a whole lot of other countries out there and holds a passport. it’s a return to thinking and logic. it’s a return to the silence of those radical right wingers (at least i hope it is), a space in which they don’t feel it’s ok to spread their hate and narrow-mindedness and try to force their version of god and their morality down everyone else's throat. it’s a return to the good parts of the american dream. and it makes me worry less about the world you will inherit and inhabit.


but for you to understand it, perhaps i need to share with you with some thoughts from the guardian weekend edition (8.11.08) on what the election of barack obama seems to mean for the world...


“when, at 8:01 p.m., pacific time, CNN called the race for obama, we collapsed...the champagne, whose presence in the fridge i had thought to be ominously bad karma, was opened. no toast. just ‘thank god, thank god, thank god’,’ spoken by four devout atheists.” --jonathan raban . (i took the title of this post from his article as well.)


“for the last eight years, it’s been hard to keep the flame alive. those of us who have admired america since childhood--seeing it as endlessly fascinating, brimming with energy and founded on the deeply radical ideal of self-government--felt increasingly beleaguered after 2001. how to admire the land of ‘you’re with us or against us,’ embodied by a president with a cowboy swagger, waging a fraudulent war and threatening to choke the planet by belching out a quarter of the world’s CO2 and damn the consequences? america became bush country, its national symbol no longer the statue of liberty but abu ghraib. the flame was sputtering out.” --jonathan freedland


“palin may despise the cities and the coasts, the new yorks and californias and the university towns--but that is the america that the rest of the world treasures. and now it is in the ascendant.” --jonathan freedland


i think through the election process, especially since the naming of sarah palin as mccain’s VP, she is what provoked me most. probably, if i’m honest, because she in many ways, reminded me of me...a failed beauty queen who hopped from one university to another before finally gathering a degree. although my geography is better than hers, and i did eventually complete more than one degree and earn a fulbirght, would i really have been any smarter? or less ambitious? or less anxious to prove my small town background was good enough? i was left with the overwhelming feeling of wanting more and expecting more. and hoping there was more. after all, i know i wouldn't make a good vice president. this self-knowledge seemed to be disturbingly lacking in her.


i was a hillary supporter, mostly because i have a soft spot in my heart for bill. i heard him speak at commencement at the university of chicago in 1999 and could understand why monica lewinsky did what she did. he is such a dynamic individual, and although weak as a person, an embodiment of the good parts of the american dream. in a way, i felt it was hillary’s turn. and i was heartened to think that along with hillary, we would get bill. but somehow it’s different with obama and it’s become ok for me that he ended up the candidate and that he won. more than ok, actually. it’s the beginning of something new. a sense of hope and a return to all that’s good about the american dream.


it isn’t going to be easy. the world you will inherit will be a different one. energy consumption will change, banking will change, the way you travel and how you spend your money will be different. but, i hope that you will be able to consider the entire world your home. but i also hope that you will feel a tie to a particular place that you consider your base...because a home is important. wherever it is, be that place denmark or the US (hopefully some of both, because you are the product of both). or perhaps it will be another place, should your parents choose to move you to norway or singapore. whatever the place, i hope that it will be a space in which you can be the thinking, intellectual being that i already see in you. i want so much for that space to be free for you to inhabit.


whatever may happen, i am more filled with hope now because of the election of barack obama. whatever he proves to do in the coming years, this moment of hope, this very one, is an important one. for us and for you and for the future. please treasure that and hold onto it for the future, no matter what else happens.


(composed on KL804 MNL-AMS, nov. 9, 2008)

the twilight of mcpalin

it's long past sunset on election day where i am and i thought this picture, taken of the sun setting over manila bay this evening, was a good metaphor for the dark hours ahead of the mcpalin campaign. we are surely in the twilight of their negative, counter-productive, no-ideas, anti-intellectual, moose hunting, QVC pork knife-selling, massacre of the constitution and everything it stands for (alas, if only sarah palin had read it (and understood it), it would surely have been a lot less amusing).

let's all raise a glass to the waning hours of this election...

i think we're really gonna make it...i just can't really bear to watch.

like watching beavis & butthead

i've just been chatting with amanda and we've been discussing that feeling we get these days whenever we see the latest antics from sarah palin. whether it's falling hook line and sinker for canadian comedians posing as sarkozy (seriously, did she REALLY think that sarkozy would be calling her?) or claiming the first amendment is to protect a politician's right to say stupid shit without media scrutiny. or claiming obama is a communist. as amanda said, it's like watching the olympics and the girl falls off the balance beam and you can't watch anymore because you know she'll do it again. for me, it's the feeling i get watching mr. bean or beavis & butthead...an uncomfortable, fist-clenching, squirmy, can't-sit-still feeling.

i have the same feeling about watching actual election returns tomorrow. it's been such a long, mad road and i have such a feeling of dread about it. from where i sit, i have an excuse...i'm in a time zone that makes it slightly inconvenient to watch the returns. plus, i'm really busy tomorrow, so i can probably escape watching. because it's no doubt going to be uncomfortable, fist-clenching and squirmy.  i hope i'm wrong, but i will not trust these clowns and their banana republic-esque voting irregularities until it's all over.

speaking of banana republic, i've learned that one has opened in greenbelt 5, so perhaps i'll check that out tomorrow evening, rather than torturing myself with election returns.

what are you going to do? be glued to the t.v. or trying to stay far away until it's all over?

p.s. this was my 400th post. we all expected so much more....

that does it...

canadians take the piss with sarah palin and surprisingly (or not), she doesn't have a clue! i wish i could say something nice about her, but the only thing i can think of is that she's hilarious.

have you seen this?

in the lounge in oslo, laughing my ass off with headphones:

things can only get better

going to bed early seems to make me get up early. not sure i'm so keen on that...but it did give me time to check up on my election obsession before getting ready for work.  and this piece warmed my heart--9000 people brave pissing down rain in pennsylvania to see barack obama. john mccain canceled a rally at the same time, citing the weather. it may also have been that no one had shown up due to lack of interest.

the cracks are really starting to show in the mcpalin campaign.  mitt romney, who has apparently been living under a rock, acknowledges that there is now a "very real possibility of an obama presidency." that's been apparent for some time, my friends (to quote mr. mccain). one of mccain's advisors has actually called our sarah a "wack job"and others are beginning to admit publicly that they were shocked at how little she knew. it's clear she's trying to save herself a political future, going increasingly "maverick" on the campaign trail, tho' these fruit fly comments aren't going to help. let's hope she doesn't succeed and goes back to alaska to her refurbished governor's mansion with her tail between her legs. sadly, she probably lacks the good sense to do this. and sadly, she won't have all her pretty new clothes to wear in the prettied up governor's mansion. that is, if we actually believe they will go to charity. i can see it now: a sotheby's auction of palin memorabilia.

i'm not sure what i feel about the 30-minute ad the obama campaign is going to air--it seems like a bit much--but i am definitely looking forward to seeing obama on the daily show!

time for my day to begin...things can only get better, right?

monday links and ramblings

i've expended a lot energy, not to mention time, being outraged about sarah palin, but will admit that it's cooling. not least after reading this article about how all of her antics should make us laugh, not cry. is this whole thing just because we crave entertainment? of course, we should remember that she's most definitely not harmless, but we must admit that it's been pretty entertaining.



at first i wondered how i would survive until election day and now i'm wondering what i'll do to fill the void when the election is over. although we don't yet know the result, i suppose i already feel anticlimactic because i've voted and sent off my ballot. not to mention that i vote in illinois, which is a pretty sure bet obama state. i've done my part and i know you'll all do yours.

* * *

lest you guys think all i do is read about politics, i hereby offer some of the other, totally non-political things i've been reading:

1. will we eventually download books from amazon directly into our brains? this is a discussion that husband and i have very often...where evolution will lead humans and whether the internet is in fact the stirrings of the next life form?

ok, i looked around and realized that's pretty much the only non-political, non-work-related article i've read of late. man, it's bad. i will be glad to have my brain back when this election is over, so i can fill it much more stimulating things...like why madonna and guy ritchie are splitting!?

* * *

the mailman just came and brought me this and this:

tangobaby's fabulous chinatown book!

and a beautiful print

and two of those little moo cards

(NOW i know what they are, even if i still don't know what it stands for!)

thank you, tangobaby, madame president!

* * *

and because it was a rainy, dreary weekend, made for staying indoors and baking organic chickens and squash and making warming curries, and because this blog has become way too much politics and way too little inspiration, i hereby share the weekend's creativity:

working with mathilde (husband's middle daughter), we made two pillows for her bedroom, using some cute japanese matrioshka fabric (the fabric is japanese, not the matrioshki, they're russian) from etsy (which can't be linked to at the moment due to scheduled maintenance) and a couple of lush anna maria horner fabrics.

and i'm working on a small lap quilt, made entirely of anna maria horner fabrics:

i got the top done and will reward myself today with a trip to get the batting and backing fabric, if i finish the writing i need to get done (and which is fast becoming urgent, which may be just what i need to be able to finish it). but yes, i've reached the point where i have to threaten myself and then promise rewards. i'm clearly a bad parent.

on that note, i'm off to write...it's the same piece i've been struggling with for the past several weeks. i think i'm struggling because i actually care too much about it and want to get it just right. do you ever have things you do that with? and if so, how do you get out of it! i'm open to any and all good advice! because i've written about ten different versions of this thing and none of them are right and thus far, i've been unable to combine them into something i can live with. but, today, i shall succeed!!!

mediocrity rules

well, it looks increasingly like mediocrity will not in fact rule, which is quite a relief, but of course, it's never over 'til it's over.  judith warner has a very interesting piece in today's NYT on that ever-worrying topic of sarah palin as the ultimate feminist. she suggests that palin and not hillary clinton offered the political breakthrough moment for women in this year--because "mediocrity is the privilege of those who have arrived." hillary is and always was the consummate over-achiever--sarah palin, a person who happened to be in the right place at the right time and now apparently even has the right wardrobe. (because if you have a look at this, you'll see she definitely DIDN'T have the right wardrobe before.)

and there ARE just people who you shake your head at and wonder how they've attained the position they've attained. i worked with one in my previous job. the boy was nice enough, but quite simply rubbish at his job. he's still in that job and i just heard that he's getting another promotion. it's a fact that everyone around him--his employees, his peers, his customers--everyone but his boss--sees him for what he is--an utter and complete mediocrity. but, because he's mostly harmless, he ends up rising. if you're a weak manager, it's easy to promote other weaklings and fun to hold down the strong and those weak sucks totally benefit from that.

but, i do have faith and i think that sarah palin is evidence, that those mediocrities eventually rise too far and then they crash and crash hard. it's really quite nice of sarah palin to take down mccain, who likely would have continued along the bush trajectory. because i've said for years that mccain was the one republican i could think of who i could vote for. thanks to her, that is no longer true.

perhaps this whole thing will give the republicans pause. they'll have to think about whether the direction they've gone in over the past 8 years is the right one. they'll have to think about whether it's ok that those right of the right loonies who used to be their fringe have now become their center. and that introspection can no doubt only be good for everyone (assuming republicans are capable of introspection--which is currently taking the form of the "blame game," big and bad and the election isn't even over). because regardless of which answer they come up with--we are a bunch of religious, right-wing, shoot-to-kill lunatics or we are fiscal conservatives who believe government should stay out of the people's way (a lot of good that did recently)--the democrats can only look good these days.

but now, i'm going back to my sewing projects, because i have to do something constructive in these times that feel so full of destructive rhetoric.

hope you all had a fabulous weekend.

p.s. i have a new political blogsite to add to my list of regular visits which include the huffington post and andrew sullivan's daily dish, it's called the daily beast and you all probably knew about it, but i didn't until today (thanks sis!).

what new madness?

i'm sorry, i couldn't stay away from the huffington post this morning, so i'm going back to my political musings. and although this is old (from 2007), you simply must see it, because it completely underlines yesterday's argument that postmodernity is indeed alive and well in election '08:



i'm speechless.

* * *

i also did a bit of research into sarah palin's wardrobe upgrade. remember yesterday when i asked how bad her old wardrobe was that she needed to go all imelda. well, take a look at this, taken just a few months before she became the VP nominee. frankly, i understand better now the $150,000. she needed a LOT of help here, people:

that lipstick on a pig comment is making more and more sense. is it just me or is it a little disturbing that she has the same evening gown competition up-do in this grocery store shot?

i do think this whole wardrobe issue will have a knock-on effect of making the job much more appealing to women in the future. heck, like my fellow julie, i would consider running if it meant a whole new wardrobe. of course, one cools on the idea when the campaign announces that they are giving the clothes away to charity after the election (as if). poor little piper will have to give up her louis vuitton bag. that kinda breaks my heart.

* * *

as i watched the daily show last night (the one from last week with that guy from the PC-Mac commercials--now there's a weird guy!), it hit me that watching it was pretty much the only thing keeping me sane through this election. these people are actually capable of driving people crazy, and thankfully, i'm not even there where i'd have to see all of the awful campaign ads. i feel for all of you who are living there in the middle of it and can highly recommend the safe distance of an ocean between you and the campaign the next time around. larry david has quite a funny piece on keeping sane (or not) in this mad election, check it out.

i've been flipping back and forth between CNN and BBC World these days. one thing that has struck me is how much footage from other networks and shows the news broadcasts are using--especially on CNN, but frankly, BBC is doing it as well (they disappoint me at times with their CNN-ness). clips of jon stewart and this new up and coming woman on MSNBC--rachel maddow (how are we going to keep her separate from rachel ray? dark-haired, perky. but i digress), clips of SNL. it's one thing to use another interviewer's clip, but an awful lot of entertainment is entering the news sphere.  and that seems to me like further evidence that we are in this strange, postmodern, unreal place.  what's frightening is that it's all too real! and not all that entertaining. 

i'll leave you with an especially good (and funny) example of what i mean, which i admit is pretty entertaining:

and now i shall try to restrain for the rest of today. there's only so much we can all take.