I’ve moved or am in the process of moving the blog to jimarnoldblog.com/blog.
I will post new entries there, but all the old stuff will stay here (as well as be on the new site).
The new wordpress.org blog will allow more functionality and I hope it will be easier on the eyes, more readable.
Thanks for your patience!
Jim
Link to: Cathedral City officer charged with sexual assault | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun.
For Friday, something perhaps not so serious – after all, we’ve got Halloween and elections coming up.
OK, Partay! See, we have fun out here in the desert. We have wild 4 a.m. pool parties and invite the cops to join in!
I’m just thinking there’s a few things missing, or a few things I’d like to see.
The View from here...
Short post today as it’s an L.A. day and I have to get on the road.
My dear cousin Mary sent me this map. I laughed so hard and it really did remind me of those depressingly awful great, thrilling times when I lived in SF! My particular faves are the rebranding of France as “EuroNapa” and Japan as the “Outer Outer Sunset!”
Gotta love it in San Fran! Really! Where they take Provincialism to a whole new level… Just remember your jacket and your hat for that afternoon “sea breeze,” which felt to me more like the frigid winds off the Russian (sorry, I mean Stoli!) steppes.
Link to Washington Post Story: Gauging the scope of the tea party movement in America.
I'm a little teapot...
Interesting piece on the scope of the Tea Party Movement in America. What, with all the usual MSM reporting on the terribly frightful significance of this “populist” movement, the reporting from the Post suggests that it’s nowhere near as big a deal as we would have been led to believe.
It’s certainly a LOUD movement, and certain of its stars (like that woman from Alaska – you know the one) get covered when they break a toenail.
It’s also interesting to see that in their polling conservative social issues (like taking away rights from other American citizens) really didn’t register much, if at all. If that’s really the case, one must wonder what the agenda is in reporting the opposite.
Which brings us back to the MSM again – don’t you love that conservative meme that’s always railing on and on about the damn liberal media? What exactly must they be referring to. Perhaps MSNBC? The LA weekly? Huffington Post? I don’t know what else could possibly qualify these days, it all seems “right of center” to me, except for Fox, which of course is right of right.
I still don’t trust that the tea party thang isn’t racism in disguise – I mean really, the national debt is hardly anything new, and where were all these guys when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were merrily bankrupting our country and its ideals? Talk about non-adherence to the ideas the U.S. was built upon.
In the spirit of trying to be helpful, I reprint here a list of questions you can ask your favorite neighborhood tea partier. I’d love to hear what their answers are. Anyone? Please feel free to copy and disseminate everywhere.
After The 8 Years Of The Bush/Cheney Disaster, Now You Get Mad?
You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.
You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate Energy policy and push us to invade Iraq .
You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.
You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.
You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. You didn’t get mad when we spent over 800 billion (and counting) on said illegal war.
You didn’t get mad when Bush borrowed more money from foreign sources than the previous 42 Presidents combined.
You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars in cash just disappeared in Iraq.
You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.
You didn’t get mad when Bush embraced trade and outsourcing policies that shipped 6 million American jobs out of the country.
You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.
You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.
You didn’t get mad when Bush rang up 10 trillion dollars in combined budget and current account deficits.
You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.
You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city, New Orleans drown.
You didn’t get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in taxbreaks. You didn’t get mad with the worst 8 years of job creations in several decades.
You didn’t get mad when over 200,000 US Citizens lost their lives because they had no health insurance.
You didn’t get mad when lack of oversight and regulations from the Bush Administration caused US Citizens to lose 12 trillion dollars in investments, retirement, and home values.
No…..You finally got mad
When a black man was elected President and decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick.
Link to Activists: Mormon beliefs factor in LGBT struggles.
Mormon Tabernacle
Yeah, well big surprise here, the Washington Post’s Jennifer Dobner’s Mormon Beliefs Factor into LGBT Struggles. Like Catholic beliefs do, Christian beliefs, Jewish beliefs, Islamic beliefs, Hindu…. Basically, you have to ask, what good is religion – at all – if it encourages people to deny who they are and ruin lives?
And this is only talking on the personal level – on the societal level, religious fervor is responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions and untold numbers of wars, just to prove that “my god is better than your god, asshole.”
More articles like this one in the Post are needed, to continually expose the hypocrisy of organized religion – from these gay-bullying suicide-encouraging Mormons to the Catholic rapist priests and all the rest of the religious – who truly need salvation of some kind, no doubt.
As a society, we have to ask if we’ll continue to allow such organizations tax-free status – when what they are truly undermining is our stated national raison d’etre of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
The Integraton
Yesterday I went on the California Men’s Gathering outing (experience) to the Integraton, in Landers, California – which is on the way to Joshua Tree, just up the road from Yucca Valley, about 45 miles from Palm Springs.
The Integraton would take more space to explain than I have the expertise or time to do, so please see the link to their website, where it’s all explained in great detail.
The experience we had was called a Sound Bath. Basically, quartz bowls are played inside the rotunda of this building, and one taking the bath lies on his/her back, letting the sounds reverberate throughout the room and into the body, where they resonate with each of the chakras. This building has amazing acoustical properties, and the location is significant as a vortex of a tremendous amount of earth energy.
The story goes that George Van Tassel, who built the place in the 1950s, was visited by extraterrestrials who consulted on the design and intended for this place to be a haven for humans who needed to de-stress. I’m certainly all for that, and count myself in the group that should be de-stressed.
I found the experience to be interesting. The guide explained that because of the unusual gravitational energies surrounding this area, some people feel lighter in this place, and some feel heavier. During the experience, I felt it was like an extended Savasana pose (corpse pose) that we end yoga class with. I felt myself get extremely heavy, to where I could not move my limbs, as if I was sinking into the floor and becoming a part of it.
My mind would drift to dream-like imagery and topics, including a dream I think I had the night before, so it was a continuation. Then I would come back into my body, remember where I was, remember what these strange sounds (and not unpleasant sounds) were. Much like a meditation experience, that part of it.
Someone fell asleep and was snoring softly during this time (it takes about a half hour). So obviously, different folks have different reactions. In all, I’d have to say another cool slice from a very interesting area.
More photos:
Leaving the Integraton; that's me in the mirror taking the pic.
This odd purple bed was just sitting there in the desert.
CMG'ers leaving the Sound Bath
pool at Ramona Villas in Palm Springs
This was a fine kettle of fish to wake up to today, front page story in our local paper about the economy not recovering for four to five more years. So “the mortgage crisis may delay local recovery until 2015.”
I had a conversation with a friend last night about crashed real estate prices. Truly, if your home is only worth half of what you paid for it, what sense does it make to keep paying the mortgage on that original, fairy tale amount?
We talked about the possibility of valuations rising again. But it was a bubble. They won’t rise to that prior level for years and years, if ever. For the amount of a mortgage payment on a 300K condo loan out here in Palm Springs, which would be roughly $1700 or so, not counting your HOA fees and such, you can easily rent a 3 or 4 bedroom single family home in a great area, with a pool!
It’s disheartening, frustrating, maddening and a looming national disaster – as so many people are in this situation. I wonder what will happen when they all realize prices are just not ever going to go up again, to any where near those record levels? What happens when everyone walks away?
I take an early morning walk every day. Along one of the roads on my trail, there’s a house with a derelict desert front yard, a weathered “for sale” sign, and various pieces of seen-better-days furniture in the driveway and stacked at various places around the house. For a while, there’d be handwritten signs about the junk for sale, along with a phone number you could call. There was a car or cars parked in the driveway. Frequently, I’d see lights on in the house – a classic 50s ranch style house in a really nice residential area of Palm Springs.
In the last few weeks, the junk has gone. Now the car has disappeared as well. Earlier this week, a notice was tacked up to the front door. I checked it out the other day – of course it was the foreclosure information. Not a surprise, but like the beginning of a sad song you weren’t quite ready to hear, way too early in the morning.
OK folks, it’s Friday, my brain is fried or dead or something. Maybe it’s the weather. The politicians have temporarily exhausted me and I’ve already voted. Remember, D is for forward, R is for backward. Good thing to remember on November 2.
In the meantime, here’s more from the novel I’m writing, The Forest Dark. Love L.A.’s Biltmore Hotel, so I set a bunch of scenes there. Here’s one. It’s July, 1984…
Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles
Senator von Eiff had called KCET and left a message that Eden should meet him downtown, at the Gallery Bar in the Biltmore Hotel. Eden thought it odd, if not ominous, that he hadn’t asked to speak directly to her since she was present when he called.
This is certainly a wonderful day, and it’s about to get better.
She took the Sunset Boulevard RTD downtown. Normally, she would’ve asked Noah for a ride but he was finally home, and sleeping, which is just what he should be doing, she thought.
Ronnie and he thought it funny that she didn’t drive. Eden had taken the bus all her life and didn’t see what the point would be in learning a skill she wouldn’t need again when back on the east coast.
From the outside, the Gallery Bar at the Biltmore emitted a golden glow, as if those entering had gone to heaven. Or, if her father was in there, maybe it was the fires of hell.
Rhino stood in the doorway wearing the usual black suit, his meaty arms folded tight over his chest.
“Where were you the other day?” Eden asked. “I waited in the gate at the Coliseum just like I was told to, just like a good little girl.”
His rings reflected the light from the chandelier above, making her blink. “The senator is waiting,” he said, cocking his head toward the bar’s interior. “Go on.”
Creep.
Eden could see her father sitting in a dark brown club chair at the far end of the room, facing her, his head framed by an enormous arched mirror, like a halo.
* * *
“I’ve already ordered you some cold California chardonnay, from a Santa Ynez Valley winery, a place called Bridlewood,” Henry said to her as she approached. A surprisingly hip charcoal sport jacket complimented his perfectly combed silver hair.
“Thanks, Daddy. It’s been a long day, I’m thirsty.”
He patted the arm of an ancient leather sofa next to him. “Did you park in the hotel garage?”
She sat and glanced around. Unfortunately, cocktail hour denizens either hadn’t shown up yet or had gone elsewhere. Perhaps everyone was so engrossed in the Games they didn’t have time to drink. She counted one elderly couple wrapped up in conversation across the polished wood floor.
“No – I took the bus,” she said. “It’s really easy from the studio and you know I don’t have a license.”
The server, a young woman – so short Eden thought at first she was a child wearing blue eye shadow – put the wine and what looked like a Gibson martini in front of her father, then soundlessly left.
“Are we still in that place?” he said, holding up his drink, inspecting the cocktail onion inside the glass, “that obnoxious place where you want to be treated like a child, instead of the daughter we raised you to be, who – and like it or not – is a young ambassador for our state?”
“Oh, Daddy – ”
“Case in point. My eldest daughter, almost 25, calls me ‘daddy’ and doesn’t have a driver’s license. Do you even know what we make in Michigan?”
Eden now wished Rhino had come in with her.
“Cars, Dad, we make cars in Michigan.”
“We make cars! Exactly! I would have preferred for you to tell me you’d leased something like a Caddy, a nice cream Coupe de Ville or one of the big Fords, and parked it out front.” He took a tiny sip of the martini. “Instead, you tell me you took the goddamn bus.”
Eden’s head was going to explode.
She gulped down the chardonnay, which wasn’t in a very big glass anyway, and caught the eye of the tiny waitress, who was watching them from the bar.
“Yes, all right, you can have another. Yes, of course, I’ll pay for it,” he said. “You may need several, as I want to now hear the story of why you could not sit with your mother and your sister at the Olympics.”
Usually it’s not this unpleasant, she thought. Her father did have that great sense of humor. She’d even read once in The New York Times that Democrats thought he “was witty.”
“I’m sorry about that,” Eden started. “I ran into a friend – actually, he was a friend of both mine and Noah’s, the guy you met – and we got to talking and seeing some of the backstage production stuff, you would not believe – ”
“No excuses, Eden. You’ve ignored us for the good part of a week now and your sister is here to specifically see you.”
“But I was working! I’ve been doing this internship you love so much, practically all day and all night!” Eden noticed that the old couple across the room was not conversing with each other anymore, but rather being entertained by the von Eiff family.
She was being too loud.
Henry von Eiff often had that effect on her.
“An internship I can end with a quick phone call,” he said. “And this hanging around with homosexual boys, I really don’t think that’s a good idea, is it honey? We brought you up better than that.”
The waitress was back with another glass of wine for Eden. “Are you finished, dear?” she said, putting the fresh one on the low cocktail table.
She nodded to the woman, but could feel herself begin to shake. This is just what he wanted and she would not lose it in front of him, in front of these strangers.
“They are my friends, Daddy. What would you know about it anyway?”
“Henry? I thought you said the two of you would be coming up to the suite for cocktails.”
Eden wasn’t usually overjoyed to see her mother, but right now was an exception.
Just like she owned the place, Madelyn von Eiff walked across the bar toward them. The way she held her cigarette out, from a distance a person might think she was a skinny transvestite doing a Bette Davis impersonation, just like one Eden had seen in a video at Revolver.
Her dress was powder blue and perfectly matched her shoes. Her blond hair with its streaks of gray was so precisely flipped and hard she could’ve used it as a weapon if she needed to. Behind her was Barbara was almost an afterthought, like a period.
That’s it for now, a work still in progress… have a great weekend everybody!
Link to: Eating On $20 For One Week – Houston Restaurants and Dining – Eating Our Words.
Gimme some black beans
OK, so I’m not excoriating Republican candidates today. I’m building my arsenal, it’s going to be like hitting the side of a barn.
In the meantime, I’m back on frugality, especially regarding one of my favorite subjects, food. I happened upon Katharine Shilcutt’s piece in the Houston Press blog. She figured out how to Eat on $20 a week. I found it interesting (and helpful!) in particular because it focused on her own household of one.
My grocery bills normally run probably around $50 – $60 a week if I’m honest, and that doesn’t include meals out – which in Palm Springs comes to only one or two a week. Large parts of my food budget go to things I’m always trying to get off of: diet rootbeer soda, for instance – I buy 6-packs for around $2.50 at Fresh ‘n Easy or TJ’s and they go in a day or so depending on how hot it is.
I also like “artisan” bread and buy the La Brea Bakery brand whenever I can find it here. Typically that does cost more, but it’s SOOO much better than anything else. I do buy a lot of fresh and frozen berries (depending on season) that I use in smoothie concoctions along with yogurt and (sometimes) milk.
Lately, I’ve been trying to eat more locally and sustainably so haunt the Farmer’s Markets in Palm Springs – one at the Thursday night Street Fair (Villagefest), the other on Saturdays outside the Camelot Theater. Typically, I will buy greens for salads at those and whatever fresh vegetable they have in season that I can figure out how to cook. Some things fare better with me: yams, for instance, are much easier to deal with than leeks, which I didn’t really know what to do with.
The best value I see in Katharine’s weekly haul is the oatmeal. It is amazingly cheap, and I’m lucky because I like it a lot. I wouldn’t buy the chicken, as I really don’t like meat or poultry all that much. Instead, I add black beans to lots of things, getting my protein there. I also make batches of brown rice and freeze individual portions since it goes bad so fast.
But one thing I have noticed is that Farmers Market fresh vegetables last longer. Maybe because they don’t have to travel from New Zealand or Chile to reach us?
I’d love to hear other stories on how people save on food.
Link to: 9 Top Ways We Waste Money 2010.
Brown-baggin' lunch
I’m so guilty of spending my almost non-existent income on some of these things: big targets for me include those energy drinks – somehow and for some reason I almost always have to have a low-carb Monster when I go to the gym ($3 at the gym, $1.50 at Ralph’s or Fresh ‘n Easy on the way there). I totally do not need these. Of course, I like the buzz.
I’m also guilty guilty guilty on the coffee – though I will say, I’ve never fallen prey to all the stupid high fat high calorie extra special super duper Starbucks drinks, and rarely have anything there other than a medium sized coffee (I REFUSE to adopt their lexicon for small, medium and large – go to hell).
What else – I WAS a good brown-bagger, except when I got lazy. Funny, now that I work at home every day, going out for the occasional lunch is such a treat. Luckily, Palm Springs is full of restaurants barely holding on to business so they all have specials. But usually I eat at home anyway, as it’s so much healthier.
Never fear - I’ll be back with anti-conservative screeds tomorrow, I’m sure.
