The Tuesday of Fatness

Happy Fauschnaut Day! Having grown up in Pennsylvania, the Tuesday before Lent (i.e. Mardi Gras, i.e. Fat Tuesday, i.e. today) is always Fauschnaut Day to me, so named by the PA Dutch (i.e. Germans) because traditionally they always made donuts (i.e. fauschnauts) to use up their lard (i.e. yumminess) before the privations and abstemiousness of Lent, which begins tomorrow with Ash Wednesday. In Catholic School we always used to get donuts with lunch on this day. I love donuts, but I in fact prefer to spell it doughnuts.

Anyway, in a minor update to yesterday's post, in which I ingeniously tie together Mardi Gras and New Orleans with Ground Zero, all by listening to the news, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has defended the slow progress of rebuilding, saying,

"Let me remind you that after 9/11 in New York, it took them six to eight months to get out of the fog of what happened to them. And to date, there's still a big hole in the ground. So when I look at everything that's going on, I think we're right on schedule."

Sounds like a challenge to me! Mayor Nagin, you're on - but let's sweeten this deal a little. The competition will be between you and Mayor Bloomberg, and whoever has made more progress on rebuilding by the time you finish your respective terms will win the grand prize - you'll be named director of FEMA!

Shaking the Can for Ground Zero

Hello, dear chaps, terribly sorry for not posting yesterday, terribly sorry. I was on an important secret mission, which I naturally cannot disclose at the risk of compromising national security. You understand.

Anyway, the New York Times reports today that donations for the Ground Zero memorial have slowed. You people just make me sick. The city is trying to honor the 3,000 who lost their lives on 9/11 with years of bickering, controversy, and false starts, and you can't even give them a few bucks to help them prolong the agony? It's pathetic, that's what it is. Just because many of those who lost loved ones are afraid to even enter the memorial (as currently planned) because it's terrifyingly far underground, that doesn't mean you shouldn't help it get built. Sure, the Drawing Center and the International Freedom Center have been forced off the site, leaving it culturally hollow, but does that mean you shouldn't have your name on a brick? Come on, people, it's like you don't want to be involved in the most torpid public project since, like, ever.

They Were Having Abortions Right in the Street

When I read this article on South Dakota's new abortion ban, which passed with no trouble in the State Senate and which does not allow an exception for cases of rape or incest, I felt something kind of funny. Something kind of like a bad case of the bends, concluding with my head exploding.

So just to be clear, if you are a twelve year-old whose father rapes you in South Dakota, you will be required to bear the child who is both your son and your brother. How biblical.

Now, I have a suggestion, and while I recognize that it might be controversial, I think it might really contribute to the national debate on this challenging topic. The one exception to South Dakota's shiny new law is that abortion will be permitted in cases where the life of the mother is in danger (not her health, mind you, just her life). So I think women should go into the sole clinic where abortions are performed in the state of SD and hold guns to their heads and say they are going to shoot themselves unless they get an abortion. As any good politician knows, there's always a loophole.

Who A.E.?

I've kept quiet up till now about a company owned by the Dubai government purchasing a British shipping company that operates the Port of New York, as well as five other American ports, mainly because the whole thing is very confusing to me. Or, rather, the issue itself is not confusing to me; I'm confused by the fact that I agree with the administration. (I'd say the President except that he found out from the news that the deal had been approved, so I'm not sure he was all that involved with the decision.)

While I'm not at all impressed with the way the guvment went about this whole thing, seeing as they failed to consult the NYPD and I (as well as many people who actually know what they're talking about) trust the NYPD as much as or more than the FBI and CIA in some counterterrorism efforts, I don't think a British or German or American company is necessarily so much more secure than one from the UAE. Glass houses and all that. I think the nationality of the countries operating in our ports is the least of our problems, frankly. I could go on, but thinking about terrorism and stuff is so booooring.

Support the Iraq Body Count

This is a totally not funny topic. But sometimes we have to just not be funny. Sorry.

As perhaps you're aware, there's a website called Iraq Body Count that is keeping track of Iraqi civilian deaths since the U.S. invasion in 2003. As far as I know, they provide the only publicly available count (whereas the Bush administration claimed for a while to not even be keeping count), and while IBC has an anti-war perspective, their tally is actually very conservative, based only on reported, cross-checked deaths. But the thing is, they're running out of money. Their research takes a significant amount of manpower and time, and so, especially in light of the high death tolls of the last two days, I'm asking you to consider making a donation so that they continue work that is so important to filling out the hazy picture we have of what's going on in Iraq. Just click on the above link to go to their site.

Also, while I'm on the topic, the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count is another thorough resource, with tallies of American and coalition fatalities by date, as well as information on the wounded, non-military (i.e. journalists and contractors) casualties, and Iraqi military/police casualties. It's the kind of information that removes some of the inevitable abstractions of the venture. They, too, accept donations.

Tomorrow, a joke about a priest, a rabbi, and a talking donkey.

Speak no evil

Ah, friends, the hour is getting late. Be sure to check out the brand spankin' new Lost Writers today to see my very first column on the sneaky branding tactics of rodents!

So this British "historian" was sentenced to three years in prison in Austria for denying the existence of the Auschwitz gas chambers. Now, I'm all for embarrassing and inconveniencing people who make such idiotic claims as suggesting that the Holocaust never happened (though the defendant, David Irving, claims to have "moderated" his views), but I don't feel so great about putting such obnoxious people in jail. Or, more specifically, I don't feel so great about making Holocaust denial a crime. I know I can't really understand the fear and discomfort around the topic in the countries where Nazism was born and the Holocaust was carried out, but I know that repressing people's right to say what they think, even when it's astoundingly dumb and hurtful, is the first step towards limiting the rights of free speech that are the only weapon we have against these jackasses running the world. Wait, am I allowed to say that?

Let all of this be a warning to memoir-falsifier James Frey: if you don't want to really go to jail (as opposed to lying about going to jail), I'd keep your bad ass out of Europe.

Sunday Confidential

Hey ladies and fellas, I have some exciting news: tomorrow, February 20, marks the launch of lostwriters.net, a brand new web magazine for which I am a staff writer. The site will be updated every day with a column by a "found voice" (such as myself) and a plethora of articles on politics, sports, sex & relationships, and reviews of art, books, film, music, and food. So the whole shebang, is what I'm saying. I'll be writing every Tuesday -- my column will be about consumerism, so check in over there, too!

I wanted to write about consumerism because so often our identity as consumers supersedes everything. I think our relationship to that identity is very complicated -- on the one hand, the desire to consume is practically hardwired in our psyches, and corporations do everything they can to cultivate it and manipulate it. On the other hand, the more time we spend thinking about things and thinking about buying things, the dumber it makes us. And of course, the insane level of production happening around the world is destructive to the environment, labor standards, and human rights. But that doesn't mean that sometimes we don't really want those hot new shoes. That dilemma plays out in so many different ways throughout our lives, and that's what I am going to write about. The end.

He's Beautiful on the Inside

I know I'm a little belated in posting about this, but the Westminster Dog Show was earlier this week, and Best In Show honors went to the colored bull terrier, Rufus.

Now, I am very happy for Rufus. As far as I can tell he's a brilliant, good-natured dog. And, you know, determining the character of dogs solely from their photographs happens to be a specialty of mine. But I feel compelled to express my serious doubts about the judging process. The judges have said that they awarded the silver bowl to Rufus because of the perfect egg shape of his head. However, this does not negate the fact that he is an ugly-ass dog. Just look at him:

Sure, he's got a great smile, but choosing Rufus as best in show just because he's the most attractive example of the least attractive breed of dog on the planet is like giving the Oscar to Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo because it was an exemplar of lame sequel production.

And I hate to break it to you, but I don't think you can really improve Rufus's self-esteem by giving him prizes - he knows he's ugly, and he knows you feel sorry for him and that's the only reason he won. You're going to have to assuage your guilt about the time you told your kid he'd never make it in the dog show judging business some other way.

photo by Kathy Willens/AP

Fried Chicken in the Thermostat

Westward, ho! Bird flu continues its westward expansion through Europe.

However, there is an exciting development in the fight against bird flu: LG Electronics will begin selling air conditioners with a filter treated with a substance extracted from kimchi. Supposedly this anti-bacterial substance will block the bird flu virus. In other news, researchers suggest that putting scrambled eggs in your showerhead eliminates mercury and miso soup in your gas tank reduces CO2 emissions.


(Link via Boing Boing)

Least Favorite Olympic Athletes

God damn it. I just did this whole long post, and it was so hilarious, there were dogs on skis, you would have been rolling on the floor. But you will never see that post, because my browser crashed. Instead I'll do a eulogy for Mother Teresa. Just kidding. I'll do my carefully considered roundup of Least Favorite Olympic Athletes, garnered by approximately 28 minutes of watching the Games.

1) Gold: Bode Miller. I know, he's predictable, a go-to, really, but I mean, he has to medal in something. So there we go. Gold medal in arrogance, hot air, choking under pressure, and handsome, smoky gazes.

2) Silver: French figure skating guy. I missed his name, sorry. But the reason I hate him is because he just did this James Bond routine and he was wearing a leotard designed to look like a suit, with a black glove on one hand, 007 written on the back of the leotard (in case it wasn't obvious, which it's not, because it sort of looks like Michael Jackson from the Thriller days), and all this arm waving, which I believe is supposed to be an artistic gesture representing shooting guns. Ridiculous.

3) Bronze: Shaun White. I don't hate Shaun White, actually. He's kind of a goofy adorable stoner type with long red locks. But I'm jealous of his high, beautifully defined cheek bones.

* Honorable mention: the guy "Baby Huey" who screams at the American men's downhill skiiers at the gate at the beginning of their races. Apparently he's an unofficial motivator guy, but I think Ted Ligety won the gold tonight because he was just trying to get away from Baby Huey as fast as could.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

This very moment I am heaving a gigantic sigh at my computer screen. It sounds something like this: huuuuuuunnnnnnhhhhh. I'd throw an orange or something, but I like my computer too much. The cause? U.S. and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster. Now, far be it from me to say whether political parties that call for the destruction of other countries should be allowed to govern (although there doesn't seem to be any prohibition against governments that actually destroy countries, as opposed to just talking about it), but how many times does the United States need to learn its lesson? Trying to force disfavored leaders out with monetary pressure doesn't work (Cuba or pre-invasion Iraq being good examples). Destabilizing countries in one's own interest (like, all of Latin America during the 1970s) inevitably backfires. Daarrgghh! Who runs this country? Oh. Right.

Sunday Confidential

We're under two feet of snow here in the city of New York: a day for curling up in bed with hot chocolate and a good book. So with that in mind, herewith I offer you a book review of Ghost Town, by Patrick McGrath.

Ghost Town is a collection of three novellas; all are about Manhattan (below 23rd Street), all are told by a first-person narrator who is not the protagonist, and all three have ghosts. They share a dark moodiness that forms a thread through all of the stories. The first novella, "The Gibbet," is the best, I think. The narrator tells the story of his childhood during the revolutionary period in New York, and how his mother was killed as a traitor by the British. It's raw, visceral, with murky smells of death and rot. The man feels responsible for her death, and as he tells the story, he waits for his own death to claim him during the 1832 cholera epidemic. "Julius" tells the tragic decline of the wealthy Van Horn family by the patriarch's denial of Julius's love, and "Ground Zero" tells of a psychiatrist's struggle with ideas of good and evil as her patient falls for a woman in the days after 9/11.

I give it 4.7 out of 5 - the writing is so mournful, so full of buried terror of the unknown, so intimate - like it's whispering in your ear.

For Christ's Sake, I'm On Vacation! I'm Already at the Beach. Oh, you said BREACH.

Welcome, Gawker friends! We are a peaceful, lazy people over here at Gurgly, and apparently the folks at Blogger want it that way, because they're about to take me off line for a "scheduled outage," so I don't have time for a long post.

But speaking of lazy, the Bush Administration was apparently informed of the levee breach the day before they were supposedly told and a day before most major news outlets were aware of the damage, but they couldn't be bothered to do anything about it, because Dick Cheney was too busy ordering the Plame leak (yes, I know my timeline is completely cracked), Chertoff was battling back the Mexicans rushing our borders, and Bush was, where else, on vacation.

Fashion Week Redux

I know it's not Sunday (lord, do I know it), but I felt that I couldn't remain silent. As you may know, it's Fashion Week in New York, just in case you felt like there wasn't enough really important stuff for us to think about. So naturally, I was scanning the slide shows at The New York Times and The L.A. Times, when I came across this photo:

The Deadly Omahyra!

I have done battle with this Omahyra, and as you can see from the picture, I am lucky to have escaped relatively unscathed. It was the spring collection, 2002 (or thereabouts), at Nicole Miller. Through an unusual string of circumstances, I was enlisted to dress models backstage for the show. This entails pretty much what you might imagine - putting clothes on the lovely mannequins before they trip out onto the runway. Time is short and the clothes can be complicated, and if you mess up your model plus Nicole will string you up by your hair and let Cathy Horyn laugh at your jeans. Omahyra was my charge, the model I was to dress. Things were going fine until, during a quick change, with a mere 73 seconds left before she was due back out on the runway, we were pitched into a heated battle over whether the deep cowl dress had the drape in the front or the back, and Omahyra took out her giant gantlet-gloved hands and punched me in the face and ran away. I sank to the ground, seeing stars and the Nicole Miller signature pattern flash before my eyes. And she had the cowl in the front! A sad day for fashion everywhere. But I'm fortunate to be alive, considering the massive power of those enormous hands.

*I kid, of course. Omahyra was fabulous and lovely. When she punched me it hardly hurt at all.

photo by Mark Mainz / Getty Images

I'll Supersize That

Well, I never. Turns out that a low-fat diet doesn't reduce your cancer risk:

Those assigned to a low-fat diet had the same rates of breast cancer, colon cancer, heart attacks and strokes as those who ate whatever they pleased, researchers are reporting today.

As someone who usually falls in the second category, I guess this is good. But disquieting.

Nevertheless, this is thrilling news for fast food restaurants everywhere. I extend my sympathies to the brussels sprouts industry.

God Bless Cuba

Around the world people are rioting, embassies are burning, the Attorney General testified on NSA surveillance, and the President submitted a budget that cuts 140 social programs and taxes for the rich, but the news that really caught my eye was that Cuba and the US have gone mano a mano in a heated propaganda battle.

The brief version is as follows: the US mission put up an electronic signboard posting news and human rights messages with quotes from people like Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi. Cuba responded by blocking its view with a mysterious construction project and putting up anti-American billboards. Today, the mysterious construction project was revealed -- 138 flag poles, each flying a black flag with a single white star to commemorate Cubans killed by the actions of the American government. Conveniently, these flags block the signboard from view.

Man, you have to love the unfree press. Without investigative journalism you have so much more capacity for surprise; without dissent there's no public opinion to stop you from doing hilarious stuff like this. I love it. Maybe Americans could adopt this tactic - pro-lifers could plant trees in front of abortion clinics, and the separation of church and state folks could beam quotes from the Constitution onto displays of the Ten Commandments.

Sunday Confidential

In my continuing quest to visit the museums of every borough, I went to the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday; however, due to time constraints, I didn't actually see any art.

On the first Saturday of every month, the museum hosts a free dance party with a different kind of music, and I have to say, I think this is one of the most "New York" things I have done in the city. This month it was '80s music, and the mix of people was really amazing - despite the diversity of the city, it usually happens that we spend most of our time with people who look and act a lot like us. But at the museum, there were kids, teenagers, people in their forties and fifties, white, black, and brown people, straight, gay; I know, I'm starting to sound like an ad. But besides the dj playing PYT and some kickass Prince, here are some of the highlights:

:: The woman and her friend who came with their five kids and entertained them by singing every word of every song.
:: The beautiful black woman dancing with the chumpiest, whitest, worst-dancing white guy I've ever seen.
:: A large selection of middle aged guys impressing their ladies with their slick moves - slides, shimmies, and spins.
:: A woman in African tribal dress.
:: A fifty-person conga line.
:: Kids wrestling on the raised octagon in the center of the big rotunda while the rest of us danced around them.

It was a great time, and despite the fact that I didn't see any art on this particular trip, I have had the pleasure of visiting the Brooklyn Museum before, and they have a wonderful collection. The Egyptian art is great, they have a new visible storage center, and the building itself is beautiful - as we came out of the subway, the sky was misty and the lights shone on the facade, a combination of the original neoclassical marble and the new renovations, which expose the brick foundations and and an added glass lobby. A lovely place.

Sunday Confidential

In my continuing quest to visit the museums of every borough, I went to the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday; however, due to time constraints, I didn't actually see any art.

On the first Saturday of every month, the museum hosts a free dance party with a different kind of music, and I have to say, I think this is one of the most "New York" things I have done in the city. This month it was '80s music, and the mix of people was really amazing - despite the diversity of the city, it usually happens that we spend most of our time with people who look and act a lot like us. But at the museum, there were kids, teenagers, people in their forties and fifties, white, black, and brown people, straight, gay; I know, I'm starting to sound like an ad. But besides the dj playing PYT and some kickass Prince, here are some of the highlights:

:: The woman and her friend who came with their five kids and entertained them by singing every word of every song.
:: The beautiful black woman dancing with the chumpiest, whitest, worst-dancing white guy I've ever seen.
:: A large selection of middle aged guys impressing their ladies with their slick moves - slides, shimmies, and spins.
:: A woman in African tribal dress.
:: A fifty-person conga line.
:: Kids wrestling on the raised octagon in the center of the big rotunda while the rest of us danced around them.

It was a great time, and despite the fact that I didn't see any art on this particular trip, I have had the pleasure of visiting the Brooklyn Museum before, and they have a wonderful collection. The Egyptian art is great, they have a new visible storage center, and the building itself is beautiful - as we came out of the subway, the sky was misty and the lights shone on the facade, a combination of the original neoclassical marble and the new renovations, which expose the brick foundations and and an added glass lobby. A lovely place.

Shadows

Ah, golly. So, as you might have heard, Representative John A. Boehner (as you might also have heard, that's pronounced BAY-ner) of Ohio was elected as House majority leader today, beating out acting leader and DeLay buddy Roy Blunt, Jr. in a bit of an upset seen as a reflection of Republican concern over voter concern at all that corruption nonsense.

It's sort of sad that Boehner is seen as the squeaky clean guy in this race, because in 1995 he passed out checks from the tobacco lobby on the House floor before a vote. And while I don't want to seem all prude or anything, isn't that kind of, like, shady?

In related news, Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow today, and wrote bad poetry. Dark days, my friends, dark days.

Babylon and Flying to Heaven on a Chicken's Back

Most of the political nation seems to be suffering from a SOTU hangover. I think there should be a rule that if the speech doesn't even interest Republicans, no one should be allowed to talk about it. The most interesting thing is the Battle of the Bereaved Parents, with Cindy Sheehan getting arrested outside the SOTU and the father of Army Sgt. Mike Mitchell, killed in Iraq, speaking out as well. Inside the House, the parents and widow of Marine Staff Sgt. Dan Clay supported the President in supporting the troops.

Anyway. Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse... Iraq has caught the bird flu. On the bright side, the lethal environment may be inhospitable to the H5N1 virus - what with all the explosions and the like. On the downside, given the unusually high traffic between Iraq and the United States right now, it does seem like a kind of obvious way for the virus to spread, no? A soldier/contractor/Halliburton lobbyist travels from Iraq to the US, and all of sudden we're all clutching our throats and vomiting up our anuses. Or whatever it is that happens when you get the bird flu.