I had a blood pressure "adventure" last week -- despite being on medication for 4 years -- and called my doctor after my B/P was up around 150/95 for a couple days in a row. He gently suggested that I was still eating way too much sodium, and needed to be super vigilant about cutting down. So I bought two low-sodium cookbooks (the American Heart Association's and the "Complete Idiot's Guide") and installed some software on my computer (from FitDay.com) that lets me put in everything I eat and track calories, fat, and everything else as well as sodium. The program is a little aggravating in terms of choosing the foods from their selection list, but at least it's keeping me a lot more honest about what I eat. And I lost six pounds in the first two days, which I'm sure was all water, when I cut back as much as I could on sodium. Since then, some of it has come back, but I'm still down four or five pounds. Guess that's the price I pay for being middle aged and stressed. I'm also practicing yoga (no classes, just books, the "Yoga Dacks" of cards, and when my daughter returns them, I'll use our Rodney Yee DVD's. I'll try to ignore his package.
Anyway, my gripe is that it's REALLY hard to find food at the grocery store that isn't loaded with sodium. You pretty much have to cook your own fresh meat and buy fresh vegetables. Some frozen stuff is OK, as long as it's "one ingredient" stuff, like green beans or lamb chops. But anything that's in any way convenient is loaded with the stuff. And even most breads have way more salt than they need to have for baking purposes. I suppose the food companies would say that people demand the salt so the stuff "tastes good." Well, that's what a salt shaker is for, if they can have it. I can't.
And The Snowball's Chance in Hell award goes to...
Well, I kept quiet so far about Rev Wright, but it's hard to ignore the whole deal. I'm a child of the civil rights era, and a white liberal; and I've put up with diversity training, the politics of guilt and resentment, and the circus of Chicago identity politics all my life while trying to be a good sport about it. I've been accused of being an unconscious racist (because I'm white), of taking my "privileged" status for granted, and blah blah blah. I've always wished that my sincere hope -- that we could some day be color-blind in this country -- wouldn't brand me with all the above-mentioned accusatory labels, but what the hell. I'm an idealist, so I still hope for it. So Rev, Wright's first round of bombast struck me as just more of the same old crap. I thought, well, if his ilk had their way, we'd be having Al sharpton running again, not Obama. I found Obama refreshing because he didn't echo all that same old grievance politics and pessimistic accusatory crap. And I still think he's managed to stay above it. But all the talk about Wright is kinda depressing.
Now of the black journalists who've commented, I liked Clarence Page's take the best. But he's probably thought of as not black enough, either. And Mary Mitchell from the Chicago Sun-Times had that old disapproving DCFS-caseworker-facing-white-people-who-want-to-be-foster-parents-to-a-black-kid look on her face. She commented that Obama didn't have a good connection to the black leadership, or something to that effect. Obviously she meant it as a criticism. Well, Mary, I say again, if I wanted a black candidate who had that kind of connection, I'd vote to bring back Al Sharpton for another sorry circus like he had before. That's the whole point.
And by the way, what's with this "prophetic tradition" crap? That's just a code word for whipping up a lot of racist rhetoric from behind the shield of a pulpit, if you ask me. You can justify pretty much anything you want to by quoting the Old Testament selecively, including hate crimes against gay people, polygamy, and domestic violence. I don't recall anything in there about prophets (or their emulators) having a license to blame white people for everthing wrong with the world. Amen. Thank you. Mmm-Hmm. That knowing smirky clever blame game, like we all know the score and how things really work in this country and how they always will work as long as white people are running things, is a sorry rehash of the Black Power/Black Panther era, only dressed in Sunday clothes and kept behind church doors.
I read one column that quoted a survey that said something like 37% of black people surveyed believe that the United States Government really did create (or at least spread) the HIV virus in order to kill minorities. Now, THAT, my friends, is about the most scary and dangerous piece of ignorance that I've heard since we learned about the anti-semitic rants of Nazi Germany. And even though it kind of expalins why someone like Wright can keep on blowing these rhetorical stink bombs and getting away with it, it still makes me feel like our country is in pretty sorry shape and the future looks bleak for race relations.
But then again, a depressing percentage of white people think that the universe was really created in seven days, so it's not race relations that's the problem, but a general tendency for Americans to swallow stupid ideasand hate people who disagree with them. As the Internet has proven quite well - look at the Comments posted after any news story on AOL, if you need proof.
Damaged Disney Goods
I feel sorry for parents who've paid $500 for scalped tickets for their kids to see a "Hannah Montana" show, but not because they now have to explain to their kids why their idol is acting like a tartlet. Rather, I feel sorry for them because they've failed to avoid letting the media juggernaut brainwash their kids into thinking that's something they need to do in the first place. And I'm sorry for Miley Cyrus, not because she was manipulated into doing this ill-advised photo shoot for Vanity Fair (although I would GUESS that an adult had to give permission for it). Rather I feel sorry for her because she was turned into a "franchise" or an "image" rather than being allowed to be a kid. Her objectification started long before she let Annie Liebovitz drape a bedsheet around her and sit her in front of the camera. The furor I imagine is taking place at Disney is probably a lot like the feeling among investors in a Kentucky Derby winner that's just broken a leg. Their product has been damaged. They shoot horses, but Miley may just not have her contract renewed.
How did I miss "Pinky and the Brain?"
When my kids were in their pre-teen and teen years, I was pretty busy working and going to grad school, so I didn't have a lot of exposure to their entertainment. I know they liked "Animaniacs" because they got me to replace all our Windows 95 sounds with wave files from Animaniacs and Tiny Toons.I knew about "Pinky and the Brain," but it looked like just another Roger Rabbit style homage to old Bipolar Bugs and the Looney Tunes I grew up with.
So I was pleasantly surprised when I stumbled on a You Tube clip of Pinky and the Brain doing the famous Orson Welles "Frozen Peas" tape almost word for word (took out the cuss words). Watching that, I thought, I wonder if my kids had ANY idea what that was all about when they saw it? It was humor aimed at people MY age who grew up with Orson Welles and his pompous attitudes, and the rumors of his drunken outtakes for those Paul Masson commercials we all hated (of course now, the rumors can be validated on You Tube as well, along with Alex Trebek drunk on his ass). But it almost makes me feel guilty that I'm discovering things that were hip so late that they're now nostalgic. Kind of like what happened with me and some music of the 80's. Except that was stuff that was so BAD it's now campy and nostalgic ("Mr. Roboto" and "She Blinded Me with Science" come to mind). Like I said, I last paid attention to popular culture about the time of Woodstock. Well, I admit that I was taken in by "prog-rock" a bit in college, when people were blasting "Lucky Man" by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer out their windows so they could hear the Moog synthesizer echo off the Administration Building... Wow, man...)
But anyway, good job, Pinky and the Brain.
No comments:
Post a Comment