John & Belle Have A Blog

This piece should become a classic in American Jurisprudence

If you have some extra time on your hands, and you don't have anything better to do, such as cleaning the lint filter on the dryer, or using creme rinse as well as conditioner on your hair, you might read this anti-gay marriage "essay" at Townhall. It's so turgid, festooned out with gen-u-wine footnotes, and all in all so completely fails to address the point in any way, much less a convincing way...well, there's not much to be said about it. I mean, I'd "take it apart", but it's lying there disjoint like a supermarket fryer family pack, and we all know my predilection for trying to help these people out. I'd have the franken-chicken stitched together in no time and be waving the wings around with my own hands. Let it suffice to say that a) a consideration of the declaration of independence doesn't really do the needed work of enshrining "natural law" b) the concept of natural law invoked doesn't self-evidently preclude gay marriage and c) complaining at length about judicial activism in the course of an article intended to persuade citizens to express the popular will in a vote strikes me as...tone-deaf. (AS John points out, trying to reconceive Millian liberalism without tolerance is a fool's errand, and I would add that in this case someone very well suited to the job has taken it on.) Should the California electorate decide to explicitly allow gay marriage by declining to ban it when given the chance, I trust everyone will be mollified and consider gay marriage in California legitimate. Because when you support states' rights, and people support something with a popular vote, you...what? You mean that wasn't principled opposition to judicial activism, but rather strongly held views about the result independently of how it was enacted? Well, at least abortion rights are safe.

Paleocons: Sometimes Right

It's nice to see Bainbridge pushing back against the "over-solicitousness towards black and brown people destroyed Wall Street" meme. I was disturbed when I first saw this start to surface six or so months ago and time has not rendered it less odious. It's particularly annoying when you consider all the immigrants scammed by unscrupulous Spanish-speaking brokers in California.

Sarah Palin: Not The Sharpest Icepick on The Cocktail Tray, Bless Her

My inability to watch things that are embarrassing extends to the clips of Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric. The misunderstandings in Three's Company are as naught. I managed to watch the clip about why the bailout should be directed towards Wall street rather than main street, but only barely, with my nails pressing neat half-moon depressions in my palms all the while. There is no way I'm making it through that thing about Putin and I refuse to try. Sullivan notes someone saying it's like Ricky Gervais humor, and that's right. I thought Sullivan had really gone off the deep end for a while, and I still think he was too quick to get up in Palin's obstetric records, but I'm beginning to share his shock and alarm. It's just literally crazy for this woman to be in the position she's in.

Get Your Fixx

When I was little reading Asterix and Obelix comics I didn't understand why the druid was named "Getafix". My religion forbids embedding youtube links* but you could click this link and watch a really ridiculous 80s video for "One Thing Leads to Another". I have to say I kind of like this song.

At John's urging I listened to an "All Songs Considered" podcast from NPR on "The 80s--were they really that bad?" I believe you can download them all for free at iTunes. It was funny and definitely worth a listen, with deft deployment of evil riffage from "BUILT THIS CITY111! on rock and r--BUILT THIS CITY!" But curiously they didn't mention hip hop at all. I mean, I can see saying explicitly, "we're leaving this whole arena of music out due to time constraints" but just not to mention it? Weird.

*Who among us has not sinned, I ask? And they're too wide for my blog's text column, and it looks wonky when I rejigger it.

Spicy Thai Thai Restaurant

Tonight we ate at a really great Thai restaurant, which is now my new favorite, with "Young Neil", aka Neil Sinhababu (we call him that after the character in Scott Pilgrim). I can't find the exact address online anywhere, but it's called "Spicy Thai Thai Restaurant", and is right at the corner of Dickson Road and Jalan Besar in a pinkish building, with the tables in the alley. The glass noodle salad was almost too spicy (and this after my friend Cheu asked for it to be less so). Young Neil had an amazing dish of seafood in otah paste, served in a coconut, with the young coconut meat in long shavings in the paste. Otah paste seems to be the Thai version of what's in Singaporean otak--basically fish, dried shrimp, maybe candlenuts, and then the garlic etc. that would make up a normal chili paste, all pounded together. Singaporean otak is made into banana-leaf-wrapped packets and grilled, whereas this seemed to have been steamed in the coconut. Very unusual texture, with soft paste studded with bits of seafood and ribbons of translucent coconut meat. The other food was all great, too, with a pronounced fresh coconut flavor in the curry that tells you they made fresh coconut milk for it today. And it's hella cheap! Those of you in Singapore should go to this restaurant.

Moving Day!

Well, we moved all our stuff over today, or almost all. I felt bad for the guys getting those huge wooden dressers up the stairs, especially as they missed lunch somehow. I guess they got caught in the CBD somehow when I thought they were off for 'makan'. I tipped them well and gave them refreshing drinks but dag, that was some strenuous effort. By my lights they even moved--without busting it up I hasten to add--a chifforobe. When the movers left I celebrated by lying on the floor under the air conditioner with my eyes closed. Pictures to follow when I am able to sit back up. Honest toil is a bitch.

Going Blegging

Would it be possible to make a blog that looked pretty like design*sponge using existing blog platforms that were only slightly modified, or does it need to be a top to bottom custom job? I mean, having the pretty scanned items as borders, etc. I'd basically like to make a big collage, scan it, and have it come alive as a typepad blog--how unrealistic is this and does anyone have advice? Please, no comments on how I don't need another blog and can't even feed the blogs I have. This blog would be for business, so it's totally legit, and anyway John and I have religious beliefs that prevent us from using blog control. We're just ready to accept however many blogs God's going to bless our lives with.

Seamstresses' Guild

Sorry to be such a lame-ass blogger, internet people. I have been busy "IRL", as they say. Here's the view from my new studio, towards the back roof we share with the Seamstresses Guild Thai massage parlour denizens. They hang their laundry out back here.

Here's the view from the front, there's a backpacker hostel down across the street.

And this is the interior, in its former incarnation as institutional green with stripes, but we are in the process of painting it white.

Notice to everyone: when stuff is green with stripes, you need to use primer on it. Also, painting walls takes longer than you think it's going to.

Shady Lane--Everybody Wants One

I'm excited because my business partner Cheu found us a really great studio space. Right now there are half-finished projects piled up around my house everywhere, and with continual rains like we've been having I can't spray paint or varnish anything outside for fear it will be drenched at any moment. I know my wonderful husband sometimes wonders things like, why is this chair half covered with alligator-skin paper in the middle of the living room? And those are good questions. If I were the sort of person who did one thing straight through and then another thing it might even be manageable, but I'm not, with the result that I'm partway through about 9 things. And also it's really dim in my house, a good thing in tropical architecture because it means it's cool, but a bad thing in terms of wanting to sew something without ending up blind like the tediously noble big sister in Little House.

Cheu had been wanting to find an industrial space, and the ones we saw were indeed great, with 15-ft ceilings and big areas to work in. But the only ones we could ever afford would be out in Tuas or something (read: noweheresville) and I couldn't easily get there without a car. Enter the greatest neighborhood ever: Little India! She found us the top floor of an old shophouse sandwiched between a bar and a Thai massage parlor, which--yeah, like you think. The massage parlor denizens hang their laundry up in the back on a shared space there, so maybe we'll make lots of interesting new friends. I'm just dizzy at the prospect of having all my stuff in one well lit, open space. We're going to give it 6 months, and if we're not making money selling all our cool refurbished furniture and artwork at that point we'll give it up.

I've decided to buy a new sewing machine, because my (1970's model) has given up the ghost, and I'm looking at one of those fancy embroidery machines where you can program new designs for them. Does anybody use one?

Warning: Doesn't Contain Batman Begins Spoilers

I saw the movie Batman Begins only for the first time last night. It was awesome, of course, but one random side effect was to remind me how hot Jonathan Rhys Meyers is. Check me into Arkham, people! I was aware of his hotness in the past, since I loved Velvet Goldmine and enjoyed him as Steerpike in the TV Gormenghast (if they had only had another 100 million for the CGI it could have been genius, since the casting was perfect, but there's this little wee matter of a castle to deal with.) But I don't watch many movies, and thus haven't seen him looking hot with Scarlett Johansson in that Woody Allen movie that has been implausibly touted as watchable, nor have I seen him on TV--no doubt looking very hot, I should mention--in the Tudors or what have you. In short, I had forgotten, but it all came rushing back to me. Jonathan Rhys Meyers is hot, people. Cruel looking, granted, but...wait, let's not go there.