Yikes!

Posted without comment...other than "Um...Wow."

Open Letter to Dodai Stewart at Jezebel

Hi, Dodai:

I'm a Jezebel lurker from way back. Jez Old School. Watched all the slap fights with Sinister Rouge and I GOT Moe.

So, I'm growing my hair out long one last time before I get too old for it to be appropriate. Yeah, I subscribe to the if you're eighty your hair shouldn't hit your butt; you're not going to prom club. Anyway, I'm growing it out. I've worn it short for almost 6 years now. Short. Really short. Amber Rose stole my haircut short. So now it's growing. And gray. It's gray, Dodai. Nearly all of it. **sigh** But it's a pretty gray, so I'm thinking when it's long, I'll have that Emmylou Harris/Helen Mirren thing going on and all will be right with the world.

But now I have to actually care for my hair. Or actually, I'll have to pay attention to it for it to have a style while it's growing. You can have short hair that's easy. You can have long hair that's easy. Hair in the middle is just work. I'm always looking for stuff that helps me not to have to spend time on my hair.

This young woman, Lauren Mechelle, has her own website and quite a few videos up on YouTube that really explain the care and feeding of thick "ethnic" hair. I don't know if Jezebel has already discovered her (since I can't lurk every day because I luckily have a job), but I thought 1) You should know about her and maybe if some of the women commenters get a load of just how much work it takes, they'd shut the frak up with "it's just hair" and 2) her videos are so explanatory that I want her to get some press so I thought I'd point you in her direction. Note particularly that there is a great instruction video on Curlformers - my new easy hair obsession.

Still love all your stuff, Dodai. Miss the old Jez terribly but hopefully, with the next election upcoming (has it already been 4 years??!), Jez'll kick up.

Sherlynn Hicks

aka Parasol (back in the day)

AnonymousSecs (now and still starless)

But Does It Show Pudge Fisk's Home Run?

Ken Burns' "Baseball" is available via Amazon streaming. It's free if you're an Amazon Prime member.

Math is Haard

A truer title never given. I've never had a knack for math. I always could arrive at a somewhat correct number (which I understand is not really math because numbers are by nature definitive), but couldn't really show or know how I got there.

So this is an informative post. As opposed to analytical, that is. With a question at the end. And maybe some in the middle.

Ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan, released a budget proposal. This I'm pleased about. I seem to remember the "Roadmap for America" idea put forward before with something much less serious than what Rep. Ryan has put together, even though I may not agree with the Republican ideology.

The Congressional Budget Office has also released its analysis (pdf). It's over my head. It's all pretzel logistics and incestuous fiscal reasoning and future decade hopeful projections to me. I do believe that the system as it is is not sustainable and something has to be done. What? I dunno, but at least there are choices greater math minds than mine have to consider.

I'd love to be able to read the CBO's report, much like, say, fine-ass Ezra Klein does and give a non-partisan distillation, but seriously, Ezra has liberal ways. I'd love to read a Conservative or even a Libertarian distillation that I don't end up yelling something like "Are we just going to let our seniors die, or only well-to-do ones get to live"or "Dammit, we aren't each an island" at. But that's just my own liberal bent being reactionary. Plus, if I'm being totally honest, I'm knocking on the "senior" door - softly - am single and frankly don't want to die sitting at the nurses station in diapers in some sub-standard old folks' home because I have more time than life and that's all my vouchers will allow me. Megan McArdle seems to resent my baby boomer entitlement.

You know what I do? I pay my taxes. I pay my credit card bills. I let the government have that tax free loan I give them every year just so I can have extra bucks in my pocket every May.

So, questions.

1. How can a budget, any budget, be sustainable? Aren't there, by nature of the Republic, going to be changes? And isn't each change a ripple that will effect the projected outcome many fold?

2. Really, are we just going to let seniors receive only the care they can afford? Is a comprehensive and caring health entitlement for the aged not something we as a nation can extend?

3. Is it me, or is Megan McArdle's snotty asides infuriating? I just remember that if she's lucky, she's gonna get old too.

Is the Price Too High?

I watched Jeremiah Johnson again today. I really love that movie, not the least of which is for Robert Redford. Yes, I have a weakness for the towheads and if ever there were a prototype towhead, it's Bob...well, I call him Bob...in my mind, y'see.

If you haven't seen it, it's about a man who, sick of war, turns his back on civilization and goes into the mountains to trap, sell pelts and exist in near solitude. He's meager at it at first, but is taken under the wing of an experienced mountain man, taught to be successful in the ways of hunting in lone existence and is then sent on his way. Through both tragic and humorous happenstance, he has a wife and a young boy to care for. He's alone no longer and fitfully comes to enjoy it.

When he seems to be most happy with this family he never wanted but now treasures, he is pressed into guide service by a group, including a soldier and a preacher, looking to rescue cohorts trapped in the mountains. He leaves his wife and boy

On their way to the rescue, he is made to desecrate an Crow burial ground. I say "made to" because his initially tells them that they have to go the 20 miles out of their way around. The preacher, full of pomp and righteousness with a handkerchief pressed to his nose so as not to smell dead Indians, asks why should he honor the Crow burial ground. The rescue party is not Crow. Those they are looking to rescue, who he says are freezing and starving, are not Crow. They must go through. Johnson reluctantly agrees.

They make it to the starving, freezing wagons in the mountains, and Jeremiah turns toward home. When he gets back to the burial ground, he sees his wife's trinkets strewn among the bones of the burial ground. He beats ass for home, only to find his wife and the boy slaughtered.

And here is where I recognized something.

Terry Jones, the Florida Koran burner, has the same bigotry and disdain for other religions, doesn't he? What arrogance it takes to publicly abuse the beliefs of others. Without apology. With full felt righteousness he pulled his church in league with his bigotry. And they brought the lighter fluid. Now, instead of a wife and child found murdered, we have UN workers dead.

The preacher in Jeremiah Johnson rode away to rescue and his life. Terry Jones will preach another day.

Sad.

Yeah, I get the "It's his right as an American to express himself" reasoning. But just because you can it doesn't mean you should. The Good Pastor Jones isn't the one paying for his expression, is he. It would seem he would consider the price too high.