Hi,

I am in two classes that deal with Asia this semester. They are both my least favorite classes too. Not because I don't like Asia. Nope, I really like Chinese history, Japanese lit. and Korean pet-names for children: Dun Teggie (which translates to 'shit pig'). But man, these classes are bad.

I have noticed over the semester that American's love two things about Asia: 1) The Dalai Lama 2) Singapore. These are two things I don't much care for.

Free Tibet bumper stickers litter the cars of every university parking lot. Americans love Tibet, though they don't know very much about it. We imagine a peaceful land that finds injustice and disparity abhorrent. We ignore that it is a brutal, feudal society which exists to support their god-emperor. Peasants are horribly oppressed, they are Serfs.

The Dalai Lama has raised thousands of dollars for Tibetan seperatists. Ya, that means guns and bombs and stuff. He gives men like Richard Gere and Stephen Segal titles of spiritual nobility because they give lots of money.

Man, can't wait to go back to that in a free Tibet (which, by the way, has been a part of China for hundreds of years). I mean, ya, they have a right to self-determination and all. But an independent Quebec should be higher on our list than a backwards and violent Tibet.

Then there is Singapore. It is so CLEAN! Have you seen how clean it is? Singapore is one clean city! You would think these people have never been to Canada or Sweden by the way they gawk at Singapore's cleanliness.

Did you know that you can spend time in jail for possessing gum in Singapore? Did you know that poppy seeds are illegal? Did you know that the government recently made it illegal to rent apartments to same sex couples?

Singapore has the highest per capita rate of capital punishment in the world. Ya, they leave China and Iran in the dust. The murder rate is relativly low. Most executions are given to drug offenders. 22 grams of coke will get you murdered by the state.

Singapore is a police state. But it is so CLEAN!

AH! I mean, look this shit up on a wiki. It's not like the information is hard to find people.

(e:Joshua) has been talking about cooking. Well, (e:Jbeaty) has been talking about cooking a lot and (e:Joshua) brought it up. But it made me think about why I don't like Rachel Ray.

The thing about her is, she makes meals in twenty minutes. They are simple foods that everyday Americans would love to eat. Nothing fancy, no ingredient they can't get in a regular grocery store, nothing difficult to pronounce. Her set is like her food, simple and a bit nostalgic with a retro fridge and not a scrap of stainless steal in site. It would evoke grandmas kitchen where you brought in some eggs from the hen house.

And yet this whole air is betrayed by the window. Grandmas farm kitchen is apparently in a high rise in Manhattan, with the visible skyline of that city etched out between those yellow country curtains. This is the lie she serves up, that the everyday, the humdrum, is somehow extra ordinary and classy.

There is pleasure in the regular home cooked meal. A meal so simple anyone could make it. And that is the charm of Rachel Ray, anyone really can make it. Her recipes litter the grocery store aisles on packages of triscuts, miracle whip, ketchup. It is food that anyone with a passing interest in cooking can make. It is a pat on the back to the mediocre and the store bought.

Rachel Ray is not edifying. We learn, essentially, nothing from her. Julia Child took America into culinary worlds we had not yet imagined! French cooking with serious technique became fashionable, dethroning jell-o molds and aspic. Now, ecen greasy spoon diners will serve a sandwitch au ju. Her effect on America's palate is immeasurable.

On the other hand, Ray sends us into a bit of a time warp. With Julia we realized the importance of technique, with Ray we trade that for ready made. Rachel Ray is making the meat and potato meals of days of yore in an age where eating bears the scientific name gastronomique.

A celebration of the everyday isn't really a good use of time, but man can it get you sponsorships.

Ahoi,

On Halloween last year I accomplished two fine things. First, I sold my piece of shit car to a guy in Rochester for more than I should have; but he was as desperate to get a cheap car as I was to sell one. Second, I bought my very first new car. Yum, so sexy you could climax just looking at the tail pipe... which reminds me of a very disgusting story I need to tell sometime when very, very drunk. (It isn't about me, and I could tell it sober but it is more believable after a few dozen.)

Well, short of our one year anniversary some colostomy bag threw a Zima bottle at a window and put a dent in the door and cracking the paint off. I have unleashed the hounds in search of his loved ones.

My question to you, dear estrippers, is where should I go to have that little dent repaired. I don't want the exposed metal to start to rust.

thanks

Ever since the NY Times let me once again have access to their op/ed section I have been doing basicly what I have been for the last four years since they initially restricted access.... reading other things. But I could not turn away from the synergistic pizzazz of the fluffy snark Maureen Dowd with the cuddly Stephen Colbert.

You can read it here

Or you can read it in its entirety below.

enjoy kittens


OP-ED COLUMNIST
A Mock Columnist, Amok

By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: October 14, 2007
I was in my office, writing a column on the injustice of relative marginal tax rates for hedge fund managers, when I saw Stephen Colbert on TV.

He was sneering that Times columns make good "kindling." He was ranting that after you throw away the paper, "it takes over a hundred years for the lies to biodegrade." He was observing, approvingly, that "Dick Cheney's fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into The New York Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann's skull."

I called Colbert with a dare: if he thought it was so easy to be a Times Op-Ed pundit, he should try it. He came right over. In a moment of weakness, I had staged a coup d'moi. I just hope he leaves at some point. He's typing and drinking and threatening to "shave Paul Krugman with a broken bottle."

I Am an Op-Ed Columnist (And So Can You!)
By STEPHEN COLBERT

Surprised to see my byline here, aren't you? I would be too, if I read The New York Times. But I don't. So I'll just have to take your word that this was published. Frankly, I prefer emoticons to the written word, and if you disagree :(

I'd like to thank Maureen Dowd for permitting/begging me to write her column today. As I type this, she's watching from an overstuffed divan, petting her prize Abyssinian and sipping a Dirty Cosmotinijito. Which reminds me: Before I get started, I have to take care of one other bit of business:

Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn't have to think about. It's all George Bush's fault, the vice president is Satan, and God is gay.

There. Now I've written Frank Rich's column too.

So why I am writing Miss Dowd's column today? Simple. Because I believe the 2008 election, unlike all previous elections, is important. And a lot of Americans feel confused about the current crop of presidential candidates.

For instance, Hillary Clinton. I can't remember if I'm supposed to be scared of her so Democrats will think they should nominate her when she's actually easy to beat, or if I'm supposed to be scared of her because she's legitimately scary.

Or Rudy Giuliani. I can't remember if I'm supposed to support him because he's the one who can beat Hillary if she gets nominated, or if I'm supposed to support him because he's legitimately scary.

And Fred Thompson. In my opinion "Law & Order" never sufficiently explained why the Manhattan D.A. had an accent like an Appalachian catfish wrestler.

Well, suddenly an option is looming on the horizon. And I don't mean Al Gore (though he's a world-class loomer). First of all, I don't think Nobel Prizes should go to people I was seated next to at the Emmys. Second, winning the Nobel Prize does not automatically qualify you to be commander in chief. I think George Bush has proved definitively that to be president, you don't need to care about science, literature or peace.

While my hat is not presently in the ring, I should also point out that it is not on my head. So where's that hat? (Hint: John McCain was seen passing one at a gas station to fuel up the Straight Talk Express.)

Others point to my new bestseller, "I Am America (And So Can You!)" noting that many candidates test the waters with a book first. Just look at Barack Obama, John Edwards or O. J. Simpson.

Look at the moral guidance I offer. On faith: "After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." On gender: "The sooner we accept the basic differences between men and women, the sooner we can stop arguing about it and start having sex." On race: "While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad." On the elderly: "They look like lizards."

Our nation is at a Fork in the Road. Some say we should go Left; some say go Right. I say, "Doesn't this thing have a reverse gear?" Let's back this country up to a time before there were forks in the road - or even roads. Or forks, for that matter. I want to return to a simpler America where we ate our meat off the end of a sharpened stick.

Let me regurgitate: I know why you want me to run, and I hear your clamor. I share Americans' nostalgia for an era when you not only could tell a man by the cut of his jib, but the jib industry hadn't yet fled to Guangdong. And I don't intend to tease you for weeks the way Newt Gingrich did, saying that if his supporters raised $30 million, he would run for president. I would run for 15 million. Cash.

Nevertheless, I am not ready to announce yet - even though it's clear that the voters are desperate for a white, male, middle-aged, Jesus-trumpeting alternative.

What do I offer? Hope for the common man. Because I am not the Anointed or the Inevitable. I am just an Average Joe like you - if you have a TV show.

Dude!



Crab Apples are so fricken sweet. Growing up we had a crab apple tree in our front yard that was constantly rotting. Like a much beloved fruit dispensing zombie.

They are as hard as rocks, slightly larger than grapes, and hurt like a song of a bitch when thrown.

Well, now is the time for them to ripen and fall off the tree; giving plenty of ammo to the poor souls forced to live under their projectile burden.

To make myself feel better, here is a picture of a crab apple titty.



ya, you so want to tap that