Update: Now, of course, the OTAN is back, and most of us seem to have headed back home! I think I’ll put up a new Open Thread here late on Friday, though, in case people want a place to hang out over the weekend, and we’ll see what happens with it.
It doesn’t look like TNC is leaping straight into a relaunch of the OTAN, so I’ll just put a fresh Open Thread up, in case anybody’s looking for one! For explanations and rules, go here and here and here. For the Coatesian mothership, here.
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emilylhauser
/ August 30, 2010Over in the Things I Don’t Hate thread, the lovely Pearl of the World sed:
Off-topic, but I’m not on twitter so this is the next best way to ask you a question: the other day at the bookstore I sat down with a copy of The Atlantic magazine and read an article by Jeffrey Goldberg about how war with Iran was a foregone conclusion and that if America did not back Israel in this, the Arab states would ally themselves with Iran out of self-preservation. The article pissed me off because the author’s voice came across as presumptuous, as if war were some grand, romantic struggle that was necessary and its consequences excusable. Nevermind that the US is bogged down with two wars already. I was wondering if you had read it, or if you had an opinion on it.
emilylhauser
/ August 30, 2010I will be perfectly honest – I have not read that article, and am really hoping not to have to! I really liked Goldberg’s book (Prisoners) and thought we were in the same political-emotional boat, he and I, but I’ve since discovered him to be a mostly frustrating, if not infuriating, talk-first-think-later kinda guy. I almost always disagree with his analysis, in no small part because of the grand romance that you heard in his tone — it often seems he would rather swoon over Meaningful Shit than actually consider the implications of what he’s saying (and the lives that will be lost).
And then there’s the not inconsiderable problem that he got a very great deal wrong in the lead-up to Iraq but has never copped to it, and was recently caught flat-out lying about Glenn Greenwald on NPR — and after kind of apologizing, made it worse http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/goldberg So… yeah.
PaulW
/ August 30, 2010So I see this weekend that Glenn Beck did NOT turn into a pillar of salt like I’d prayed. Jehovah, I thought we agreed…
On a happier note, I’ve found out there’s a March for Jobs planned this October 2nd in DC. http://www.onenationworkingtogether.org/ Gotta see about spreading the word (P.S. HIRE MEH!)
enstar
/ August 30, 2010for beck to be transformed into a pillar of salt, doesn’t he have to turn around and, like, look at the past? clearly that never happened.
emilylhauser
/ August 31, 2010Look to the past — and see the damage wrought in his wake…
Yeah. Not gonna happen.
PaulW
/ August 31, 2010No, Beck looks to the past. Unfortunately his view is stuck on 1850.
dmf
/ August 30, 2010no doubt the hallowed promise of a homeland marks an uncanny sense of being rootless, but haven’t we always been on the move?
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2010/09/06/100906crbo_books_lepore?currentPage=all
BenjaminTheAss
/ August 30, 2010I’m doing a trip to DC and Philadelphia in a couple weeks. Any recommendations for museums, historical sites, bookstores, etc.?
carlos the dwarf
/ August 30, 2010Two of the hidden gems of DC:
National Building Museum
Postal Museum
For bookstores in DC, head to the famous Politics and Prose, and if you’re a coffee snob like me, hit The Bean Counter in Georgetown.
SWNC
/ August 31, 2010I love the Freer and Sackler Galleries in DC–they’re two of the smaller Smithsonian museums, both focused on Asian art.
In a slightly different vein, the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities in Philadelphia is also well worth a visit, if you’re into that kind of thing.
emilylhauser
/ August 31, 2010If only because it’s called the Mutter Museum of Medical Oddities.
PaulW
/ August 31, 2010I think I’ve been to Kramerbooks near Dupont Circle in DC.
As a librarian, I always consider a visit to the Library of Congress a fun trip (ps. apply for a library card and you can go inside and check out the reading rotunda (they will check any bags afore you get that far).
Best place for restaurants is down towards Georgetown along the Potomac, can’t recall the road. Lots of Indian eateries last I was there (2004).
If you want to view the Adams Memorial (the Grief statue) that’s in Rock Creek Cemetery in Petworth neighborhood (NW corner of the city, north north on the compass).
Never been to Philly, so can’t help there.
dmf
/ August 30, 2010dmf
/ August 30, 2010if you can ignore (or mute) the twit doing the intro you might enjoy this talk by david simon:
http://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/webcast_Simon.shtml
emilylhauser
/ August 30, 2010Dear SWNC:
I finally tried your fried green tomatoes recipe tonight — and it rocked!!
That is all. (And thank you!)
xo
ellaesther
SWNC
/ August 31, 2010I am so glad! Our tomatoes are pretty well done for the season here…sigh.
dmf
/ August 31, 2010@thatgb i don’t have the savy to post on yer site but i appreciate your writing, reflections and spirit, hope yer PO is treating you humanely. a catholic theologian you may like is john caputo:
http://www.metanexus.net/Magazine/tabid/68/id/10297/Default.aspx
anibundel
/ August 31, 2010Spent the last 18 hours flat on my back with a sinus infection headache. Finally conquered it with a winning combination of sleep, dark and icepack to the brain. Anyone have any headache conquering suggestions?
Kylopod
/ August 31, 2010Did you take anything? There’s a tylenol for sinus problems, with drowsy and non-drowsy varieties.
anibundel
/ August 31, 2010Did I take anything? *giggles* ..I am a natural pill popper, so being in the amount of pain I was, BF took it upon himself to regulate my dosages. But I believe I took over the course of this (not listed in any particular order)
1 Musinex+D
2 Aleve
4 Advil cold&sinus
4 Tylenol sinus congestion
+/- 10 glasses of water
At one point around 3am, he walked me out to the back patio to see if the fresh night air would help….which it surprisingly did. BF determined that my headache was therefore at least partially lack of oxygen to the brain and that’s when he grabbed one of those ginormous icepacks he has for his back and covered the right side of my head with it. That turned out to be the only thing that got the swelling to go down around my sinus cavities far enough for my ear and the passage between the upper and lower sinus cavities to reopen.
The real problem is that I’m not employed enough to have health insurance, so I can’t just go to the doctor and get a round of those 5-4-3-2-1 steroids to kill the infection. My best friend brought over a neti pot this morning, but it strikes me as a bit voodoo quackery, and the last thing I want to do is something that might make this worse….
dmf
/ August 31, 2010i have chronic sinus infections and if your like me and antibiotics don’t help than the best thing is to try and keep your muscles (neck, face, etc) from being too tense, so hot showers, stretching, and massage can offer some relief, good luck
anibundel
/ August 31, 2010I have been cracking the hella out of my neck and shoulders the entire time. It’s almost freaky how much. I told BF at one point that what I think I really needed was someone to pull my head off to take the pressure off my neck and let everything stretch…..
dmf
/ August 31, 2010ha i have imagined building a rack, deep slow breathing and NOT clenching your jaw might make a difference, infections and anxiety are a kind of hellish feedback loop. try clenching your muscles as you breath in for a count of 10 and then releasing as you exhale. oh and the neti pot is good for flushing out allergens but will do nothing for an infection and could plug yer inner ears.
emilylhauser
/ August 31, 2010Sudafed? I’m sure there’s some kind of decongestant in the Advil cold/sinus, but I’ve always found that the real pseudoephedrine, which the meth heads have forced back into the hands of the pharmacists until we show them our driver’s licenses, to be the best decongestant.
Saline sprays also help me, and my doctor suggested them again for my sinus-infected son last week, but that’s essentially the same as a neti pot, which dmf suggests has made his situation worse…. So, proceed with caution.
anibundel
/ August 31, 2010Musinex+D and Advil Cold and Sinus both contain decent amounts of pseudo ephedrine, and are behind the counter only. To get the horse pill variety (which I used to abuse hardcore in HS) requires prescription. Sudafed and Tylenol sinus congestion are nowadays pretty much the exact same thing.
Saline sprays give me nose bleeds, which for a while yesterday sounded like a pretty good idea if it relieved the pressure…..
Rosa
/ August 31, 2010when drugs don’t work, try the hippy-dippy answer- neti pot.
I have such terrible sinuses, and it’s genetic, and I’m allergic to every damn thing, but the neti pot helps a ton.
dmf
/ August 31, 2010the new woodsy-transcendentalist TNC is interesting, i certainly applaud the graduation from dormroom debating to thinking in more constructive terms but will he be able to manage such a shift in
commenting-culture and do folks here even welcome such a potential change?
dmf
/ September 1, 2010st.prothero continues to be an interesting public thinker on religion, came across this journal via the daily dish which i must say i’m enjoying more without a-sully’s over the top drama:
http://www.bigquestionsonline.com/features/against-the-%E2%80%9Canswer-bank%E2%80%9D-theory-of-religion
emilylhauser
/ September 1, 2010Bless you for bringing Billy Bragg into my day! Not only do I love him a whole ton, he’s one of the touchstones of my early relationship with my beloved husband. All you have to do is quote Billy singing “I steal a kiss from you in the supermarket, I walk you down the aisle, you fill my basket,” and I tear up (as I am right now!).
This is a good day to remember love and good things.
dmf
/ September 1, 2010ee, is there any real hope here?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/opinion/01mubarak.html?ref=opinion
emilylhauser
/ September 1, 2010I don’t know what to think anymore. But I’ll address it in a post later today, so I’ll leave all my angst — I mean, “my reply” — for then.
dmf
/ September 1, 2010thanks i find myself having moments of hope and then feeling like a fool for buying into the shadow-puppet play yet once again, think i’ll leave the reading of these reports up to you if you don’t mind.
anibundel
/ September 1, 2010My week just keeps getting better. Today’s emergency is about the wedding I am MOHing. The wedding party was supposed to have everything custom made. Yesterday that fell apart. The wedding is in under six weeks. This morning I am spending on the phone, calling bridal salons and having them laugh at me when i ask if they could possibly function under such a time frame.
Seriously? This is why I hate the Wedding Industrial Complex. We’re not looking for the fanciest of dresses, but neither she nor I are size zeros either. She’s not even all that into wearing white, but she does want the dress to read “bridal” and not “prom.” If Bridal Salons actually carried real sizes in their stores, we could easily find her something off a rack, and get it altered into what she’s looking for. As it stands now, I’m considering the bridal salon experience (which she is woefully unprepared for) as a way to break her down, and then we’re going to head over to Macy, Saks and Needless Markup and see if we can find something in an actual realpeople size we can alter into a wedding-esque dress. We’re going to follow that up with a trip to RenFest this weekend to see what dresses they have.
This is friend three of four I’ve MOHed for (but friend four I am not sure will get married to long time BF–they seem happy as is) so I’ve got experience managing these things, but any suggestions as to ideas i might not be coming up with would be much appreciated!
emilylhauser
/ September 1, 2010I’m guessing that anyone who might have answered you here, did so at TNC’s, but if folks want to see an astonishingly lively (and frequently amusing!) conversation about wedding gear and SLEEVES, I highly recommend that you check out today’s OTAN! http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/09/open-thread-at-noon/62341/#disqus_thread
dmf
/ September 1, 2010dmf
/ September 2, 2010enstar
/ September 2, 2010ooh, thank you for this one. hits the spot right now.
dmf
/ September 3, 2010dmf
/ September 3, 2010ah the return of the original formula otan has drained the pool, summer must be over. but it’s still friday
Don’t be ashamed that your parents
Didn’t happen to meet at an art exhibit
Or at a protest against a foreign policy
Based on fear of negotiation,
But in an aisle of a discount drugstore,
Near the antihistamine section,
Seeking relief from the common cold.
You ought to be proud that even there,
Amid coughs and sneezes,
They were able to peer beneath
The veil of pointless happenstance.
Here is someone, each thought,
Able to laugh at the indignities
That flesh is heir to. Here
Is a person one might care about.
Not love at first sight, but the will
To be ready to endorse the feeling
Should it arise. Had they waited
For settings more promising,
You wouldn’t be here,
Wishing things were different.
Why not delight at how young they were
When they made the most of their chances,
How young still, a little later,
When they bought a double plot
At the cemetery. Look at you,
Twice as old now as they were
When they made arrangements,
And still you’re thinking of moving on,
Of finding a town with a climate
Friendlier to your many talents.
Don’t be ashamed of the homely thought
That whatever you might do elsewhere,
In the time remaining, you might do here
If you can resolve, at last, to pay attention.
“Drugstore” by Carl Dennis
emilylhauser
/ September 3, 2010That is just lovely, dmf. Thank you. Thank you.
dmf
/ September 3, 2010my pleasure, thanks for being my keyboard pal, have a good sabbath.
emilylhauser
/ September 3, 2010NEW OPEN THREAD UP FOR THE HOLIDAY WEEKEND!
Labor Day Weekend – whoot! Open Thread.