John & Belle Have A Blog

Happy Halloween

The girls dressed up as our neighborhood stray, calico cats, Fowler and Hissfahan - so I guess they aren't stray anymore. Once your kids dress up as them, they are just plain your cats.

DOES WANT

OMG I want this table by Gregor Jenkin. It is soooo cool.

Via Smoke and Ochre, a South African design blog. I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but probably the best vintage clothing store I've ever been to was in Cape Town. Incredible designs, perfect condition--truly awesome. I only regret I didn't spend much more money getting more cool stuff. And that I can no longer fit into the Ossie Clark silk shirtdress I bought...for US$ 20.

Maybe He Should Move to Florida?

I don't read Lileks like I used to back in the hazy free love incessant warmongering early days of the blogosphere, for a number of reasons. One is that he's starting to just bum me out. There's an undercurrent of profound despair beneath the matchbooks and the jeremiads on out-of-stock fall-harvest-themed paper towels. Consider:

I also have to get a meat and cheese platter from Costco. I like to pretend that they’re my caterer. I call them up an hour before I go, say that I’d like a big meat and cheese platter. The meat must be pre-rolled and secured with small wooden pins – tapered on both ends -  and I require that the cheese be cut into triangles and stacked in a fanned-out semicircle. I also expect some of the cheese to have at least one edge cut in the serrated style.

Uh – whatever, we have a lot of pre-made plat-

I shall be there in an hour. Good day to you sir.

See, that's funny in a way, but sad-funny.

             

Bonnet

I found this lying on the floor in the study. Evidently Zoë has moved on to drawing girls with bonnets, in profile. Or, possibly, girls in profile getting their heads knocked off by giant badminton shuttlecocks. Or, possibly, it is something vaguely H.P. Lovecraft-inspired.

Paging Andrew Sullivan

And here you have it, a presumably staunch Republican for whom torture is an end in itself rather than an instrumental good. Volokh commenter Kazinski, on a post on Bush's spendthrift ways:

For all Bush has done right, tax cuts, Afghanistan, Iraq, Roberts and Alito, torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, etc., his lack of discipline on domestic spending, especially the Medicare boondoggle are going to be a black mark on his presidency.

Well, at least he tortured that guy. Nobody can take that away from him.

For Whatever Reason

Your right-wing obliviousness of the day: reason's Hit and Run blog links to a site by a local white Jena journalist explaining how outsiders got the case wrong, and black and white people in Jena Mississippi Louisiana (thanks Pokie!) actually get along just fine! Best part (but seriously, read the whole thing):

Myth 2: Nooses a Signal to Black Students. An investigation by school officials, police, and an FBI agent revealed the true motivation behind the placing of two nooses in the tree the day after the assembly. According to the expulsion committee, the crudely constructed nooses were not aimed at black students. Instead, they were understood to be a prank by three white students aimed at their fellow white friends, members of the school rodeo team. (The students apparently got the idea from watching episodes of "Lonesome Dove.") The committee further concluded that the three young teens had no knowledge that nooses symbolize the terrible legacy of the lynchings of countless blacks in American history. When informed of this history by school officials, they became visibly remorseful because they had many black friends.

This is a bit much even for the Hit and Run crowd, but commenter Tobycat chimes in to explain:

Nooses and Ignorance: I disagree with those who find this unbelievable. I grew up in Oklahoma and never heard of the connection between nooses and Blacks until I moved to Washington, DC, and it was only after living here 15 years that I found out that this was a sensitive race issue. Heck, I never heard of the Tulsa Race Riots until I was 25. The white communities, I guess, prefer to move on and bury these things of their bad past, for whatever reason. Or it's just passed down as a fact of history, without turning it into an issue or symbol.

Wow, racism really is dead in our great nation! Thanks, generation Awesome.

Doddmania!!!

I swear to god I am printing out a picture of Chris Dodd from Google images and making a little shrine with jasmine garlands and incense and balls of rice. I am not even kidding.

I'm Sorry.

Sorry about the flaky non-blogging, people. I really haven't been keeping my end of the internet up. Zoë is back in school (yay!) while Violet has moved directly from hand foot and mouth to some other apparently unrelated cold without ever getting well enough to go to school and is home with asthma (boo!!). I knew she wasn't doing well when she the girl who hates asthma medicine most in the world, up and says "I think I need the puffs." Grack. Anyway, so that's been lame, and my throat is still sore. I soothed it with delicious mango ice kacang, and just stopped eating when I got dfown to the layer of corn, beans, and cubes of grass jelly. No, wait, I ate the dried longan that was in there, or whatever that was.

On the more fun angle I've been fixing up this chair that I bought at a cool junk shop (they sell second-hand furniture from hotels and serviced apartments in China.) I'll put up pix when it's done. Its for my friend's daughter's room in their new place. Today I realized why I think I can do it so much more cheaply: I irrationally value my time at 0$ per hour! But perhaps if those hours hadn't been spent on re-finishing the chair they just would have been spent reading blogs! But I like reading blogs--but then I'm having fun with the chair, too: it's upholstutainment! I think I better just not think about comparative advantage at all.

ALSC goes to Bollywood

So I just got back from the ALSC annual conference. It was good. Some had their doubts (and check out comments, hoo-boy. And that's nothing compared to comments here.) But, of course, it all turned out peachy.

I am strictly bound within the volume of a 'cone of silence', not to reveal anything, but I'm going to betray that trust because that's just the way we roll at the old J&BHAB. Especially since others have already purported to do the same. But I have the photographic evidence. I give you: Adam Kotsko, forcing himself to get up at 8 AM on a Saturday morning:

Benches

So, I've been going around to the various antique stores in Singapore, partly scouting for my friend whose renovation/decor I'm helping with, and partly just to see what there is. I'm basically hoping to start a small interior design business, though I'm just practicing on my friend for the moment. Anyway, her dining room isn't going to be that long, so she can't have a 2.3 m table. Thus, she has no need for this amazing pair of 19th C Burmese teak church pews, even though they would make the greatest seating EVER!! Maybe one of you should buy them. SGD $3800 a pop, but that's the asking price, you could totally talk them down. They're from Skybaba antiques, on Scotts Road. Waah, so pretty! Such simple lines, and a yummy patina you can't really see in this photo. I wannit!

Machine Gun Snare!!

So, hand foot and mouth disease, not really the worst thing ever. Everyone's pale, sniffling, and has a stomachache and a sore throat, but that's about it. Home is getting boring, though. I set the Thomas train set up in our new looong living room, that's been good. I'm sure halloween decorating will be modestly entertaining. Then we can make cupcakes. And then...I'm out of ideas. Except I better start sewing some costumes. Zoë's going to be Hermione Granger, that's easy. Violet wants to be one of our stray calico kittens (Fowler and Hisfahan.) I need a white leotard I can sew spots onto.

I read this interesting article about Syrian Jews in NYC and their harshly enforced intermarriage ban (basically, if you marry outside the community, even to a convert, you're anathema and your children can't even re-enter the fold.) As sometimes happens, the high costs of remaining in the community have made it very strong, and many community members are fantastically successful businessmen who share the wealth.  I was amused to read this:

The Cayre brothers, from one of the world’s richest families, according to Forbes magazine, got rich in the ’70s producing Latin music on the Salsoul label and then got much richer distributing videocassettes via Wal-Mart. Joseph Cayre was also among the major financiers behind the World Trade Center’s Larry Silverstein.

I'm very glad to hear that someone got crazy rich off of SalSoul records, one of the great labels of all time. Just as long as people like  Loleatta Holloway and Shep Pettibone aren't starving an an alley somewhere.

Please Don't Burn Us On A Heap Of Sheep In Wales

You know what's lame? Zoë and I have hand, foot and mouth disease. It's just like hoof and mouth, except we don't have hooves. Maybe we are magical sparkling ponies inside and so we have magical hooves! Magical hooves with sores! It's not really so awful to have, although it's very very contagious. Poor Zoë's throat is hideously sore and I wish I hadn't followed the doctor's lead in looking in there with a light, because I didn't need to see her soft palate perforated with repulsive holes. Mostly it's just like getting a cold and a mild stomach virus at the same time, with a soupçon of sores. It'll burn itself out after a week. We did get reported to the government, but as far as I know they don't plan to cull us from the herd. I rate Violet's chances of not getting it as 5%. The doctor told me, oh, adults almost never get it because they were exposed at some point, but naturally I have it because I am a fracking mutant. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the girls and I get sick a lot, dawg. I was telling Zoë about all the great things in our life that mean we are actually very lucky despite often getting transitory illnesses, but she wasn't in the mood to hear it. Since HFM can't be transmitted via blogs, feel free to weigh in with cheering messages for Zoë. I will read them to her. Also, if you're at that conference in Chicago, you can tell me whether my husband has gotten into a fistfight with Adam Kotsko yet.

So Young, And Yet She Understands Capitalism Perfectly!

Zoë sometimes tells me about what things are like in the fascinating if imaginary Zoëland. "I think only police will have guns" she suggests. "OK, that's a good idea." "And soldiers, because soldiers need guns to protect palaces!"

Beer Is Great

John went to have a shower after exercising while watching Heroes, and commented that "Heroes is pretty good, but not great." I thought he had said "Beer is pretty good, but not great." That was really going to have been a shocking aesthetic judgment, there, but it was a false alarm.

Funny Animals

I would just like to say that an odd Google search has taught me that Frank Frazetta - before he drew all those Conan covers we know and love from days of yore - drew Funny Animals. And he was pretty good. In a Walt Kelly-ish and quite distinctive sort of way. Who knew? Apparently there's even a book - Small Wonders [amazon].

 

But I think my favorite from that page is:

Just Imagine I'm Making The Kissy-Kissy Noise Here

having just been through the train-wreck of the recent cat-calling threads at Yglesias' and LeBlanc's places I was amused to read this, from the opening of a story by David Mitchell (from this collection).

My three a.m. nightmare dispersed like a disappointed audience as I tried to find the Coke machine. A woman passed, in her fifties, maybe, cuddling, saying, "All I want out of life  is a good night's sleep." Too woozy to reply, I just smiled back. The second person I met at that sweltering hour was a barefoot girl of eighteen or nineteen, kneeling before the Coke machine, extracting a can from its cumbersome mouth. Pixie-nosed, Oriental, wearing surfer's clothes for pajamas, not an ounce of fat on her, bony as macaroni, in fact. "You can't sleep either, huh?" I asked. Apparently she hadn't heard. I raised my voice. "So you can't go to sleep either, huh? We should throw us a party for insomniacs." The machine relinquished her 7UP but she still refused to acknowledge me. Her dead eyes bore through me. "Sure was a pleasure meeting you," I thanked her retreating figure. Bitch. But particles of the girl remained in the air. These I breathed in. Musk, salt, lime.

Plausible set of reactions, no? And that, my friends, is why after you determinedly ignore some guy saying stuff to you in public, using your best NYC-fu thousand-yard stare, he is liable to shout "bitch" at your retreating form. This is also why self-interest demands that guys step up and police other men who act like jerks to women out in public: you, a perfectly nice guy, can never chat up some pretty girl on the subway, and it's all these other dudes fault.

Counters

Continuing in the kitchens vein, I am curious about what kinds of kitchen counters people have. We had new cabinets etc. put in here in our house, sharing the cost somewhat with the landlord, and since it was lots of money and not our house I didn't even look at homogeneous countertops when I was picking the finishes out. In retrospect I should have gone with Ikea cabinets; it would have been cheaper and looked better. I am annoyed at myself about it, but such is life. My dad re-did his kitchen a few years back and went with granite, a dark color with some green flecks, and it looks good, if a bit dominating. My basic understanding on marble is that while it looks the greatest ever, it can stain easily, and sealers don't totally solve this problem. My friend only has to leave that cut turmeric root on the counter one time... (A mysterious fact about my life is that every time I wear white I end up going out for indian food.) The other day I was talking to a supplier of solid countertop (Corian-ish) and he seemed to be saying the same was true about the carrera marble-look counters, namely that they could stain. I seem to recall Martha Stewart taking the rather sanguine line that she had accepted that her counters would stain and was OK with that, but I don't know that ordering a copy of Marcus Aurelius to be delivered with the marble is really a practical solution, going forward (and anyway, won't Martha have an army of worker bees applying poultices and the like?). Slate? I love slate, actually, though I don't know how much there is kicking around in Singapore. Well, an amount equal to the marble, I guess! What do you all think? Also, is there any point to hoods over the stove that aren't connected to the outside? I bought a hood for my apartment in Gillman and then realized it didn't vent anywhere except...to the edge of the hood.  I almost want to say just don't bother (NB: the same condo regulations that bar laundry also bar hacking holes in the exterior walls). I didn't bother moving mine and so don't have one now, and it's fine (keeping in mind that I have 15 foot kitchen ceilings and a huge opening to the outside...)

Alex, I'll Take "Stuff That Is 100% True About Republicans" For, Like, A Million Dollars

From TPM's Steve Benen:

On "Meet the Press" this morning, Pat Buchanan, whose tolerance for diversity is less than stellar, argued that the GOP candidates made the right call [in skipping minority-focused campaign events]:

"[L]et me explain it, 90 percent of Republican votes are -- in the general election are non-Hispanic, white. That is a higher percentage in the primaries, even higher percentage in New Hampshire and Iowa. These are [sic] what is going to decide this nomination, Tim.

You know, all of this might actually make some sense ... if you're willing to assume that white people are completely indifferent to the concerns of the African-American community. Indeed, if you're convinced that the typical Republican primary voter doesn't care about the challenges facing black people in the United States, and might even hold it against a presidential candidate who showed up to talk about those challenges, then sure, blowing off minority communities would certainly be the right call.

Yep, those Republican candidates had better try to make sure Buchanan's analysis doesn't get wide play, otherwise people might think all that crazy stuff was true! Which it totally isn't and only someone as crazy and out-of-touch as Pat Buchanan would ever, ever think so.