John & Belle Have A Blog

Take Me Down To The Infirmary

I'm feeling better today. Much less "it hurts when I breathe." Peak flows inching upward, starting to taper down the prednisone tomorrow; it's all coming together. Being in my house without our maid Tena has caused me to realize that I have gone completely insane. Why do I think my house has to be so clean? It really doesn't. To some degree, it's just much more soothing to be sick in a tidy room, and so I have to cut my self a little slack on the bustling around in my own bedroom. But the other stuff? Why did I clean the toilets the day after I got home from the hospital? (I must say in my defense that the water levels in Asian toilets are very low, and little kids are unlikely to give the bowl a quick swipe after doing a poo, with predictable results.) I remember way back when we were discussing housekeeping issues and gender disparity, one commenter suggested she spent 2-3 hours a day doing housework. Most people thought this was crazy, and couldn't even imagine what she could think she was doing all that time. Sadly, I can easily think of 2-3 hours of stuff. Stuff like mopping the kitchen floor every night, or getting and preparing food, or laundry, or ironing, or putting $^&^ing Old English Oil on the wood furniture. Or washing all the dishes, drying and putting them away, and then washing and drying the sink itself. Mmm, shining clean sink, so soothing. Perfect time to microwave the damp sponge, too. The thing is, I'm much less crazy when I go home to the states; I do get accused of bustling around, but I often let my own bedroom get pretty untidy. I think it's partly just that it seems that a modicum of continued effort could keep my apartment in its current (astounding, ridiculous) state of cleanliness. I'm hoping the rest of it is the combination of prednisone and various powerful types of speed. I remember when I had pneumonia once in Berkeley and was on 60mg of the Predator and John came into the kitchen at 2am to find me cleaning the knobs on the stove. I had torn off tiny strips of Formula 409-soaked paper towels, wrapped them around the ends of toothpicks, and was removing the accumulated grime of the ages from the grooves running along the knobs. So, yeah, it's the drugs, right? If I've really gone this 50s housewife on myself I've got biiiiigg problems. John, earlier tonight, with incredulity: "why are you making cupcakes for Zoë's class?" I promise I really did rest a lot, and one of my friends' helper came over and did lots of stuff and watched the girls. And it was the easiest kind of cupcakes I know how to make, (she said triumphantly, and yet with a feeling that she was missing something important.) Mom, don't kill me.

UPDATE: I should add that this isn't about me overdoing it with stuff I'm too tired for, though of course there's a little of that, but rather that I thought it seemed like a perfectly reasonable idea to have someone come clean my house today, even though someone else is coming to do it Sunday. How clean does the damn house have to be, really? OTOH (lying on clean sheets, gazing about at order, delicious jasmine oil in the oil burner) it looks fabulous around here.

I've Decided To Go Doomed Nineteenth C Heroine

I'm back home, having spent only one night in the wonderful (and allegedly haunted) Alexandra Hospital. It was a colonial hospital and when the Japanese took Singapore they bayonetted a number of patients on the operating tables to death. I had a four-bed room to myself, which was nice. I could see our apartment building from the bed, although since we face the other way I couldn't get the girls to wave flags. It was raining today, which was more suitable; there is something strange about being in the hospital and looking out through tinted glass at the actinic, blazing tropics. Yesterday the foliage was heaving out beyond the window in the heat. The nursing staff and the assortment of helping aunties were all very nice as usual (those people are pretty much always great) and in a suprise move the doctors themselves were polite, thoughtful, and listened to what you said. Naturally, this being Singapore, they're moving the hospital to Yishun in a few years. I don't know what they'll do with the old buildings; they really are nice and the gardens around are full of huge trees. It would make a great luxury hotel, but I think it's likelier to be a big condo. To make a long story short, it hurts when I breathe (boo), but I'm getting plenty of air (yay) and thus not turning blue etc. Also, I just feel tired and unwell (boo) but I am wearing possibly the greatest single item of clothing I own: a pale-blue silk, bias-cut thirties nightgown, with handmade lace at the top, and a sort of racer-back of two wide satin strips running down the center of my back. And it's in perfect condition. So, you know, the girls can come in and see me for a minute or two but then be dragged off because "we musn't tire mummy out" and so on, and then they'll grow up to be Somerset Maugham or something, so we all win. Thanks for the good wishes, internet peoples.

Lucky Old Sun

Poor Belle had to go to the hospital for her asthma. Hope she doesn't have to stay too long. Send her your best wishes.

Pushing the girls home in the trolley, after visiting hours and a visit to the butterfly garden - nice hospitals we have here in Singapore - I see a poster for "Sunshine". This sounds like a very ridiculous movie, no? But earlier today, when I was trying to put Mei Mei down for her nap - no-go - at one point she comments: this is really nice music. The Sunday oldies radio was playing "Lucky Old Sun", the Frankie Laine version, I think it was. If you absolutely had to make a movie, the plot of which is eight astronauts heroically re-igniting the sun; and then you have the obligatory slow final sequence where the few burnt and frazzled and grizzled survivors are making their way home, you could do worse that pick "Lucky Old Sun" as the sentimental soundtrack fodder. Seems to me. I mean: if they just won't let you pick a better story.

Mei Mei also really liked "When Rock n' Roll Came To Trinidad", sung by someone-or-other. I think she especially liked the soft and non-rocking flutes.

UPDATE: Crikey. Belle has pleurisy. (I thought that was a myth.) It turns out Frankie Laine only died last month, and he once got in the Guinness Book of World Records for dancing for 145 days straight in a Depression-era marathon. And the tagline for Sunshine is: "If the sun dies, so do we." I think that has to be a contender for all-time worst. I mean, I'm pretty sure the tagline for Scarface wasn't, "If you suffer a fatal bullet wound, or wounds, you die." They came up with something better.

Sucks To My Assmar

Weeell, I went back to the hospital. And then all around creation trying to find a nebulizer. But we basically made it in under the descending metal gates of Guardian pharmacy at Jelita and got one. Then we had to go back to the hospital for the medicine, due to communication problems. BUT, now we're home and I hopefully won't have to be admitted. I'm supposed to wake up and nebulize myself every 4 hours, ensuring I will never sleep. Trying to weasel out of that one...surely if I can breathe enough to stay asleep I'm not doing that bad, right?

20-20-24 Hours A Day...I Want To Be Predated

I'm so sick right now. Sooooo sick. And two weeks ago I was sick with my normal chronic thing, feeling queasy and painful and sorry for myself. But now I'm really sick, not like that fake sick from before, which I now realize I was used to (and that stuff is still there but it's submerged below the attention level). Asthmatic bronchitis @#%%^^&*. When I first went to see the doctor he was saying I wasn't wheezing that bad, and I was trying to explain, right, but I just used my inhaler about 8 times in a row, and my peak flow has been going down... So he did give me prednisone, which is the right thing to do, but he didn't start me off with a high dose and a taper, just 20mgs a day. But that wasn't enough, so I went back and the other doctor was there...blah blah here's some more theophylline blah. Can I just ramp it up to 60mgs for a day and taper now, all on my lonesome? Will I have to go to the %^^%^rassafrackin emergency room tonight becuase I can't breathe properly? Oh, I hate not being able to breathe. I can only walk about a hundred feet. And I hate being on prednisone anyway; in my family we call it The Predator. So bitter, the most intensely bitter thing that will ever touch your damp tongue and shock you like a live wire of bitter. And it makes you feel weeeird, like someone reached inside you and turned the dial up, up, up. But at least then you can breathe properly--right? Oh, no you can't. And Zoe broke my peak flow meter just now and our maid Tena is going home for a month on Sunday. Wah, wah, poor me. No, but really wah. I mean, objectively my life is very wonderful, and though I can't get health insurance I do have money, and for some reason last night I was thinking how there are thousands--millions? of women out there who've had their clitoris hacked out. Nothing so much else in their life good either and now they can't ever enjoy sex. My problems seem pretty trivial  now, don't they? Except for one thing: I can't breathe properly. Everyone has to chime in in the comments, "oh, Belle, it's a shame you can't breathe, that sounds like a drag, and you so charming and whatnot." Go on.

UPDATE: Back from the emergency room. Belle one, rales and crackles zero. In Your Face, rales and crackles. So, yeah, no pneumonia, lots of nebulized goodness, more of The Predator. I can breathe much better, though still not without some soupy wheezing in the lower registers. And I feel tweaked out like a mug. I should probably be weaving easter baskets out of pipe-cleaners or something. Maybe I could go through my spice cabinet discarding old spices and noting down what I need to buy when I go to Mustafa Centre next week? Or, I know, I'll just re-read the "Barack Obama Anti-Christ" thread.

You don't have anything personal against me do you? You bet I've got something personal against you!

Towering intellect:

The Planet Has A Fever   [Jonah Goldberg]

It would be so cool if Pringle's did a parody of the Gore testimony about how the planet has a fever for the flavor of a Pringle.

Considering the above, how likely do Goldberg's claims about his delayed book Liberal Fascism sound?

My book isn't like Dinesh's latest book. It isn't like any Ann Coulter book. It isn't what the Amazon description says or what the Economist claims it is. Or what Frank Rich imagines it is. It is a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.

For example, the Amazon page describes the book like so: "Impeccably researched and persuasively argued, [em. mine] LIBERAL FASCISM will elicit howls of indignation from the liberal establishment–and rousing cheers from the Right." I would imagine Jonah will be wanting to clear that up any time now.

Everybody Here Is Equally Kind In Living Color

I realized tonight, as I stared at a mound of pretend plastic peas on a red plastic plate, that I really don't understand what the experience of red/green colorblindness can be like. (I was studiously staring at this arrangement of toys rather than at Violet, whom I was trying to lull back to sleep. Mommy eye-beams can be fatal to such an effort.) I mean, OK, red and green things form a single indifferentiated category of redgreen. But what happens as I add progressively more yellow to blue? Does it form a series of colors identical to that produced by subtracting yellow from orange? Surely not. I assume that such a person can see the pop of orange against blue, opposites on the color wheel. Can he see the "warmth" of orange vs. the "coolness" of blue? Does he see blue as receding and orange as approaching? Assuming the non redgreen color experience is the same, what happens as the distinguishable colors move into the redgreen? I have learned from the internet that I am very far from alone in having thought up the color problem as a young kid. I really used to worry about how I couldn't be certain other people saw the same colors that I did. Thank goodness years of studying philosophy cleared up all those worries.

Echo

I have to say. This new Arcade Fire album sure sounds a lot like Echo and the Bunnymen. Ocean Rain. "The Killing Moon". Oh, a bunch of people already noticed. Just last night I was noticing that Modest Mouse with Johnny Marr - Modest Marr - sounds an awful lot like "Lovecats"-era Cure. Everythings coming up 80's. I fixed that by paying iTunes 99 cents and downloading "Don't Fear The Reaper". Sweet sweet cowbell take me away to where I want to be. (Not that I don't love Echo and the Bunnymen.)

And now. Back under that mountain of work.

War, Huh, Good God

Hilzoy has some terrible and moving excerpts from a walled-off Bob Herbert column in this post. Sample:

In a moment of deep despair on the Christmas Eve after his return from Iraq, Jeffrey hurled his dogtags at his sister Debra and cried out, “Don’t you know your brother’s a murderer?”

You know what's terrible? He may very well have been a murderer. (Or, more likely, he may have been someone who killed people in a way that fell short of being murder, killed them in a way that was justified by the terrible circumstances he was in, but killed them all the same and could never look away from those awful images. Broken-apart people flung up in glorious stereovision against the black of his closed eyelids, forever and ever.) This NYT magazine story about women fighting in Iraq is worth reading, too. I've been living overseas all during the oughts, so maybe I'm not best placed to make this observation. I've been back to the states at least once a year, though, and for a month or more at a time. I don't have a whole lot to compare  it with, but America just doesn't seem much like a country at war. I don't know whether I expect Bugs Bunny urging me to buy bonds or what, but whatever countries embroiled in fairly lengthy foreign wars are like--I didn't think it was like this. In a way it just shows how low the stakes are for the country as a whole, while for Iraqis and the Americans we've sent to kill them they remain as high as they can possibly be.

Happy Birthday to Stuyvesant Wainwright II

Amanda weighs in on the whole disparate sexual desires thing. Also, Friday Random Ten, happy birthday to my grandad edition:
1. Intermission: Theme From 6th Grade Watercolor/Valient Thor
2. He's a Mighty Good Leader/Beck
3. ZYX/They Might Be Giants
4. Turbonegro hate The Kids/Turbonegro (ironically, Amanda also blogged about how Turbonegro are at SXSW today)
5. Provisional/Fugazi
6. Home of The Brave/Naked Raygun (what is up with iTunes' mood?)
7. Enjoy and Get It On/ZZ Top (this song is awesome, and totally relevant to the female desire question: "do she still have her fightin' gear/just one look is going to make it clear/ c-c-cuz she enjoy me, really enjoy gettin' it on")
8. My Brother Woody/Free Design
9. Theme/Descendents (OK, back to the punk rock we were feeling earlier)
10. Two Against Nature/Steely Dan
Bonus Track:
Synchro System/King Sunny Ade
That felt randomer than usual.

Maybe The CIA Needs to Watch The Wire?

Remember when Webay confessed to a murder that Bird had really done, because he was facing life anyway? Yeah, I remember that too.

With Enjoli

This Pandagon post on housework inequities (riffing on this article) is really interesting and thought-provoking, if depressing. The gist is that as wives earn more money, they end up doing a greater and greater share of the housework, with the result that women who are the sole bread-winners often do more housework than women who pull in 50% of the family's income. Season two of The Wire beckons me, but I'd like to say something about it in the next few days.

It's funny, but I'm really concerned about the way the Barksdales are losing market share. How are they going to hold on to the towers and the high-rises with that weak-a$# s%*t? At some point Stringer Bell is going to have to do something, no matter what Avon says. Also, I hoped that Stringer's seduction of D'Angelo's girl was going to lead to a lot more shirtless Idris Elba. A LOT more.

Just Because You're Paranoid/Don't Mean They're Not After You

Ezra has a good point:

There needs to be some sort of rule for the Bush administration's tendency to eventually, inevitably justify the most intensely cynical interpretation of their actions. If Tappers want to propose names and formulations for the rule in the comments section, I'll pick the best one and use it. My nominee is Bush's Razor: Given a possible universe of explanations for a particular administration action, the most morally pessimistic and politically cynical will inevitably be proven correct.

Get out there with your winning suggestions, J&BB readers! This is what my mom thinks about everything and she's tediously right, all the time.

Security Will Escort You Out The Building

So, y'all in America are springing forward early, eh? Here in Singapore the longest day of the year is a mighty three minutes longer than the shortest day. We don't do much of the springing forward and falling back. We do have a government mandated time-zone, though. Being on the equator, by rights the sun should rise in Singapore at 6 and set at 6, with the sun directly overhead at noon, just as it does in Bintan a few miles away. Instead, it rises at 7 and sets at 7, putting us in the same time zone as places much further east. It's my understanding this was done for financial market reasons to help Singapore compete with Hong Kong, but that's just what I've heard. It's my firm belief that in the future Singapore will be even more awesome. As the most politically stable and technologically advanced city on the equator, and one already equipped with a vast, efficient port, Singapore is the obvious choice as terminus for earth's first space elevator. What's the competition, after all? Somewhere in southern Somalia or something? Bring on the awesome cable of carbon nanotubes, baby.

Also, could somebody give Kool Keith some help with his MySpace page? That really looks bad.

More Makeup

So, yeah, ettusais' zero pore makeup base is womderful. (ettusais is a japanese company that has branched out to Singapore.) Now, you may be thinking, "Belle, foundation just looks weird anyway, so why would I be using foundation base and then foundation? I don't want to look like the human interest reporter for a crappy local TV news show." The thing is, makeup base just makes your skin look even, and then rather than putting on lots of foundation you can just put a teeny bit of foundation around the base of your nose and maybe in your T-zone and around your eyes. Or just concealer. One option is Shu Uemura's foaming makeup base, which is a mousse that sprays out of an aerosol can. Transparent coverage, and it has sunscreen, although I am skeptical that any face product other than sunscreen/moisturizer is going to give you adequate coverage. I used to swear by it, and it's great, but...the fabled ettusais zero pore base is even more awesome.  It looks white in the little pan, but when you put it on with your finger it's transparent and makes your skin look matte and poreless. Really, it's amazing. As matte as with loose powder, but without looking powdery and old-ladyish. I got some as a sample, and this is the only time in my life that I went right back to the counter a week or so later and bought some. The sample gimmick worked. Also pictured is ettusais soufflé cheek in the little pot, which is also great and looks incredibly natural.

Finally, I discovered the greatest thing ever at Mustafa Centre. On the main floor, just before the entrance to the drugtore part there is a big wall of oil-based perfumes. Some of them smell just awful, at least to me. I mostly can't stand oriental perfumes because I don't like amber or musk (although sandalwood and chypre are OK). Some of them, though are incredible, like the one I got: Cempaka (i.e., a type of jasmine.) It doesn't smell like anything other than jasmine; it's just as if you were wearing a big garland of flowers. Mmmmm. At Sing$ 6 per bottle, it's massively cheaper than either Chanel Allure or Robert Piguet's Fracas, my other favorites, so I can wear it to bed without guilt. It's made by Jamal Kazura Aromatics in Singapore (but trademarked to a company in the UAE?). Hie thee to Mustafa and get some, local readers (also sold in Chennai and KL, from what I can glean.)

Also, on the second floor where the groceries are there is a shelf of turkish delight running around one of the stairwells. Hacizade rose flavored is so good you'll cheerfully betray your family to the White Witch for Sing$ 7 per box.

More Frankenstein

Remember when Kramer bought dungarees that made him walk like Frankenstein? And scared that kid? I've obviously got Frankenstein on the brain these days. But you might be interested to know that seasons 1-7 of Seinfeld [amazon] are on sale - $99.99, marked down from $271. I don't really like Seinfeld all that much, truth be told. But maybe that sort of thing is more your style.

Frankenstein

So I'm working on this Frankenstein project - making a clean new version of the 1831 edition - and Zoë has volunteered to help illustrate it. (Click for a larger image.)

Godspeed You Spack Emperor

Spencer Ackerman has finally gotten approval from the DoD to go to Iraq as an embedded reporter. I can't think of anyone whose reporting from Iraq I'd rather read. Having gotten the chance to see his body armor subjected to flailing fists of fury in December, I know I am one among many who hopes that will be most strenuous workout it ever gets. We here at John and Belle Have a Blog pledge to keep the home fires burning bright by utilizing 50% more Wu-Tang lyrics as post titles, and listening to the Clash while blogging up to 200% more than usual.

Also, that Moqtada al-Sadr has a posse graphic is hilarious.

Start Snitching?

I have always found the 'stop snitchin' campaign to be a piece of charming lawlessness which appeals to the N.W.A. lover in all of us. Truthfully, I have been hostile to the cops 'from young', as we say here in Singapore--that is, since I was a kid. Still, somebody's got to do something about violent crimes, and we all know I'm skeptical about private rights-enforcing organizations. This article from the NYT relates how pervasive pressure on witnesses not to testify is letting known murderers walk around unmolested. DA's have been reacting to this heightened unreliability of witnesses when trial time rolls around in various ways, some more salutary than others:

Newark’s mayor Cory A. Booker, who was elected last year on a promise to reduce crime in the city, recently met with [County Prosecutor] Ms. Dow to ask her to be more aggressive in filing charges. In recent years Newark police officials have accused the prosecutor of being reluctant to take on cases that could be difficult to win because her office was criticized after losing a succession of high-profile trials....

Ms. Dow declined to discuss details of any open cases. But she said that she was proud of her office’s performance, and that she hoped her rigorous standards for filing charges would lead investigators to work harder at getting corroboration.

“It’s easy for the police to point fingers when they haven’t done enough detective work to get a conviction,” [em. mine] she said.

In Essex County, the conviction rate for homicides, which includes plea agreements, was 79 percent in 2006, up from 74 percent when Ms. Dow took over three years earlier (but down from 86 percent in 2005 and 83 percent in 2004).

Wow, this is just the kind of buck-passing and b.s. focus on clearance rates I have learned to know and love from The Wire. I thought they were exaggerating...I suppose I may have to rethink my annoying white hipster love of the stop snitching campaign. (Except for this one guy who still really deserves to get beat down, ratfink bastard that he is. Y'all know who I'm talking about.)