Eve of Advent IV...or VII...

I'm not terribly proud of the earlier post this week on the parable of the talents. I think I'm "on" to something there, but I don't feel at all confident that I articulated it well, let alone proved my case. I wish that I had had more time to work on it, but there's so much going on this Advent season. It wasn't my best writing, and I'm out of practice. Recently I have also found that my extemporaneous speaking is not what it used to be, and I think there's a connection: I need to write more to practice training my thoughts to be both succinct and eloquent, and also, frankly, to "rehearse" talking points. I used to be better at this. May I find more time and energy to devote to this in the new year.

Today, however, was a special day. Today really felt like Advent. Come, Lord Jesus.

I Thought I'd Seen Everything

You know, I feel like more than 13 years of living in Manhattan allows me to be pretty jaded about quite a lot of stuff.

Nonetheless, when I was strolling around downtown Portland this morning and witnessed a man with his pants down around his ankles humping a trashcan, I have to say I was surprised.

Flew the Coop

Well, I guess you can't make chicken paprika without chicken.

I bought chicken, but it seems not to have made it into the shopping bag I brought home. I would go back to the store for it, but that was, oh, four hours ago now. What I can't believe is that I unpacked all my groceries when I got home and didn't notice. I only made the sad discovery once I set everything out on the counter five minutes ago to start cooking and couldn't find the chicken in the refrigerator.

I am an idiot.

The Straight Talk Express

Of the Birds and the Bees...and the Mice

Another absolutely perfect summer day in Oregon. I was able to leave work early again today, and made it out to the pool about 3:00, and for the first 20 minutes or so, I was completely alone as I stretched out on the chaise. I fell asleep almost instantly. I could feel my muscles relaxing in the warm golden sunshine, a gentle, dry breeze blowing away my cares.

Alas, my reverie was broken by that most unwelcome of pool intruders; no, not a cloud, or a raindrop, or a hornet...a toddler. Not even maximum volume on my iPod could keep out the stream of conscious shrieked forth unceasingly from this little girl.

As her grandmother was applying her sunscreen -- "Gramma, it's COOOOOLLLLD!!!" -- a small garter snake, about six inches long, slithered across the patio. The scream that emitted from the tyke...indescribable. I am hoping my hearing comes back tomorrow.

"Oh, you don't need to be afraid of him, dear," said Grandmother.

"He can't eat me?"

"No, honey. He's much too small, and he wouldn't want to, anyway. Snakes eat...well...let's see, I suppose he'd eat small birds, and bird eggs, and maybe turtle eggs if he found them, and mice --"

"And mice eggs?"

"...."

"Well, no...mice don't lay eggs, honey."

"Why not?"

"Well...because they're not the kind of animal that lays eggs."

Safely strapped into a vest and inflatable arm thingies, the little girl splashed about in the pool while Grandmother sat in a chair and tried to read a magazine.

"Gramma...Gramma...Gramma! Watch this."

"That's good, dear," said Grandmother, not looking up.

"Gramma...Gramma...Gramma!....GRAMMA!!!!!"

"What, honey?!?"

"Did you know mommy has a bagina?"

Not One of the Gifts of the Spirit

I kid you not: "An Oklahoma church canceled a controversial gun giveaway for teenagers at a weekend youth conference.Windsor Hills Baptist had planned to give away a semiautomatic assault rifle until one of the event's organizers was unable to attend." [Emphasis added.]

UPDATED JULY 15: They've changed their minds; the gun-giveaway is back on again. Money quote: "Windsor Hills Baptist apparently has a history of worshipping God through firepower, and last year ran a shooting competition as part of its annual shindig." Now, that is some snarky reportage! Bravo.

Holy...! Pt. 2

I just paid $4.16 for gas!

I hope this doesn't become a running series. :(

Hillary: Ball's In Your Court

Admit it, Senator Clinton. Your passionate advocacy on behalf of the voters of Michigan and Florida came only after you discovered that you needed their delegates to clinch the nomination. You told a public radio station in New Hampshire that Michigan would not count. And now the DNC has granted you more delegates than you had any reasonable right to expect.

Even if the DNC had seated the Florida and Michigan delegations in full, you would still trail Barack Obama, albeit by a tiny margin. Nonetheless, there is only one standard the party uses to determine the nominees, and that is the delegate count. That is the standard you and your surrogates insisted upon in the early days of the primary contest. As with Florida and Michigan, your arguments cynically commuted themselves into populist rhetoric in favor of "the popular vote" once it became clear to you that you could not win according to the rules of the contest.

Recognizing that there are many to blame for the current delegate fiasco, the DNC met to attempt to find a compromise. Do you know what a compromise is? It's when all parties involved give up something they want in order to achieve the greater good. The Committee awarded you delegates that you had previously agreed not to count, delegates that your senior campaign advisor Harold Ickes had voted in favor of eliminating for 2008.

You aren't going to win this nomination, and not because it was stolen from you, but because the process that was agreed upon by all candidates well in advance of the first vote selected Barack Obama. Your advocates decry sexism even as your campaign benefits from the open support of racists, xenophobes and religious bigots.

This was an ugly primary with unnecessary and unfortunate complications, but any way you slice it, Barack Obama is the winner. Your claim that you are ahead in the popular vote is disingenuous and you know it. Politics can be ugly, but the reality here is that the Obama campaign played by the rules and came out ahead. Respect that. Do you want a Democrat in the White House, or do you want you in the White House?

The call now is for healing and unity, but the onus is on you. The responsibility belongs to you and your husband to stop repeating the gross distortion that you are leading by a standard that does not matter. You continually imply that the rules you agreed to have led to an illegitimate result, even though you have benefited from a last-minute rule change that granted you delegates you had forsworn. You were the one calling loudest for the DNC to reconsider Michigan and Florida, and now you must live with the decision, as the Obama campaign accepts that the ruling results in a net delegate loss for them.

I have disagreed with you on a range of issues for many years, and I did not support your candidacy, but until recently I respected you, and had you been the rightful nominee I would have supported you whole-heartedly. But your campaign has resorted to Rovian politics of distraction, inflating side-issues, trafficking in guilt by association (for which you should be most grateful that the Obama campaign has not responded in kind, given some of your husband's friends and business partners) and most reprehensibly constantly dispensing discredited, distorted arithmetic to advance a bogus claim using an invalid standard that you are the rightful nominee. This stops now.

There is not much that Barack Obama can do to heal the party, because he's not the one who has inflicted the wound. The responsibility rests on you and your husband. Will you respect the democratic process and support the rightful nominee to help repair this country? Or will you, in your Macbethian quest for the throne toss aside reality and all principle and tear down our country's best shot at dismantling partisan gridlock, tossing aside rules and process?

Stop blaming Barack Obama for the crisis you created. Fix this, or live with the consequences.

Is it Too Late to Get Adopted?

Tonight I took my father and grandfather (*) out to dinner to celebrate my new job. We went to the local Italian restaurant which, in my father's book, counts as "fancy." You know, plastic grapes and empty wine bottles hanging from the ceiling with a steady Dean Martin soundtrack. Very upscale.

When the server came to take our order, my father eyed her suspiciously and said, "What's guh-notchee?"