Everybody needs an Italian grandma! Even if you have to live with a smelly Italian to get one. :)

Today was canning tomato day. Last year was my first experience and I went today to repeat the lovely experience. Nonna is just great. Just the right kind of old-world charm, grandmotherliness, and just plain sparkling joy that everyone needs in their lives. She really makes me happy. She's 86 and only moved to America in her 40's. Her primary language is still Italian but she gets around in English as well (though it helps if you have a smattering of a romance language to get the full effect, she has these great idiosycratic words that slip in, ie: always suppone instead of suppose...). And the stories... She remembers living in Italy during WWII! Her brother actually had a bomb dropped on him and had to be dug out of a crater. She blends this perfect kind of innocence with a great pragmatic common sense. Anyways here are some pics from the tomatostravaganza:


First you must prepare the bottles, some fresh basilica and a pinch of sale


Next peel the skin from those guys, make 'em shine


They're ready to be popped in the pot for a 20 minute boil. You can already smell how wonderful they'll taste!

Do you guys remember this "get your war on" comic strip thing by David Rees? It started right after 9/11 and apparently has been going on since. They're pretty gosh darn funny. Here are a couple samples from this month's strip:





sidenote: Deaf children in Nicaragua have created their own language. A special education school which opened in the 70's and never taught official sign language has documented the progress of the language from simple hand gestures to a genuine language. Very cool. The study also finds (as if there was much doubt) that children are the true inventors of language, tugging and changing existing rules until novel structures are found. Kids rock. Who invented the word dude though?

my manager be trippin' and stuff
talkin' how we gotta use water,
but i always use some milk and cream for you, cause...
i think you kinda sweet

you with your sparkling cufflinks

'n i swear on my mama 'n papa,
it feels like.......

I am in the mood to write something meaningful but find the words are not mine to grasp. Or the words are mine but their spirit, their being, escapes me. I really should be a lawyer. I am so full of bullshit sometimes. It seeps out. When the spirit of the words escape me I make up for it in shear volume. As if enough words could conjure the meaning of the few that relly mean something. What to blame it on. General complaceny. The government. Corporations? Or shall I bear the burden alone?

Do you ever find yourself trying to escape value? I wrote a whole journal (which I am too lazy to now link to) about the nihilism of goals. Success eludes only those who seek it. Or label it at all. If I strive for nothing than everything is success. Or failure for that matter. But it's all a lie. All bullshit.

Pointless entry that I sould probably delete so as not to depress. But in the sense of keeping the history I'll leave it. Who the hell cares anyway.

This is a book that I believe every American should read. Admittedly, it is about taxes and so may seem a bit dry, but it is chock full of details that will make your blood boil.

Did you know that the richest 1% of the population is about 5 times as rich as it was 20 years ago, but that the bottom 75% hasn't gone anywhere in terms of real income?

Do you know what payroll taxes are? They're the taxes you pay for Medicare and SS, 6.2% + 1.25% which are matched by your employer (a total of 15.3%). Once you make over about $87,000 you don't pay that anymore.

Do you know that for all of our progressive tax system (and oh-so-much complaining on behalf of the rich) the real tax rate for all Alericans is almost the same. Taking into account the payroll taxes we all end up paying somewhere around 20% (with both the megapoor and megarich paying less).

Do you know the IRS audits one of every 70 poor people claiming the Earned Income Credit (a social welfare program to slightly boost the working poor's income), but only one of every 200 or so people making over $100,000?

Do you know the IRS has just about zero ability to analyze (much less understand) the majority of complex tax shelters used by the megarich to hide their income from taxes?

Do you know what the so-called Death Tax is? Sounds scary right? Bush would say it's taking the family farm away from struggling farmers. But that would only be true in any sense if the farm was worth millions of dollars, the Estate tax (it's proper name) was for years before Bush a tax on income after death in excess of $1,000,000 (this year he's raised it to $2.5 million). That means the vast majority of us (unless we hit the lottery) will have zero need to worry about it.

Do you know that corporations just don't pay what they're supposed to? The corporate tax is a flat rate: 35%, but in the last five years 60-70% of corporations paid no tax (many even got refunds!!). [inlink]terry,182[/inlink] All you telling me that even with the internet boom these corporations just didn't make any money?

So anyways the book goes into detail about all of these subjects and more. You don't need to understand taxes to take away from it that the rich are getting richer at the expense of you and me. The tax burden has been and continues to shift onto those least able to carry it. It needs to be fixed. But first of all it needs to be at least basically understood by all Americans. Read this book!