The car thawed out, and more importantly, it starts. This led to a celebratory excursion to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods for among other things: coffee, toffee, rapini, and a couple of duck legs (to make confit).

Pizza topped with broccoli and lemon zest.

Yet another sign that I am throughly disillusioned with Obama: I don't trust him to do the right thing with respect to events in Egypt. While the US still has the ability to influence the situation in a positive way, I don't expect he will do beyond making the minimal noises such as "the future of Egypt is the choice of the Egyptian people", as if there is still the possibility that the Egyptian people will freely choose to keep the Mubarak regime. A clear stand, and/or any concrete action is clearly out of the question because that won't be "pragmatic". In the event of a bloody crack-down, I'm sure Obama will make the usual condemnations, and of course there will be sanctions. But fundamentally breaking relations with the Mubarak regime, who is after all a "crucial ally in the volatile Middle East" wouldn't be "realistic"; what to do then but to disapprove and secretly hoping everything blow over soon. The dead will be forgotten, and the imprisoned still languishes, but hopefully the pragmatic, reality-based US-Egyptian strategic relations will resume its usual course after with only a brief interruption. Maybe I will be wrong, I sure hope so, but things have followed this script so far.

What a pitiful little man this Barack Obama is turning out to be.

Martha's B-Day 10-09-1985 from New Picture Agencies on Vimeo.

This is awesome.

For the past two months, my guess:

Average number of dinners cooked per week: 2
Average number of dinners eaten out per week: 2
Average number of dinners consisting of toast/Cliff bars: 2

I don't know what happens on the leftover day — leftovers?

What a physicist wouldn't give to be a fly-on-the-wall there....

Some days I just don't feel like working...

What I have been listening more or less non-stop for the last month or so....

Labels: music

(Noah Vaughn)

And the day after the great snow storm: the sun shone and the sky was blue. In Chicago, such days were also the days when winter was at its sharpest, clear as broken glass. Wool socks on your feet, hands in your pockets, but insulated inside that heavy coat your body still feels an electrical hum, and every breath stings a bit. But that's fine: you are alive, you feel everything, the day is brightly lit, the sky is bluer than you think is possible in real life, it's beautiful.

Today though, here, was warm enough to regret wearing that heavy sweater. The snow has begun to melt into thick, grey pools. One ought to be grateful, but I miss the sudden icy gust that shut your eyes because it hurts, and the ringing sound it leaves in my ear.

My beautiful brown overcoat, it hangs in the closet, unworn for another winter.

Labels: Chicago

What happens when you look for the new Chinese stealth fighter on radar?

"404: Object not found." (Not funny? Click here.)

Labels: jokes

I have started a photo blog, e.g. #4 (naturally). We will see how long that lasts...

Of course here in the US we have unsustainable levels of public debt: so better shape up & cut the deficit, or pretty soon we will go bankrupt like the Greeks & the Irish! Except of course, at 68.5% percentage of GDP, the US debt is smaller than that of Germany, that exemplar of fiscal rectitude, and smaller in fact than that of Austria!

And what would the professed lovers of liberty and Austrian economics have to say about this?

If you think the politics of this country are screwed-up, just a friendly reminder that it could always be much, much worse.

Urgh, I have got to stop reading the news.

I am starting to feel bad for Obama (just a little). I wonder what it does to a man to turn from the object of so much adulation to being so throughly disliked, all in so brief span of time. The liberals are disillusioned, the "moderates" have lost interest, and the conservatives haven't been appeased one bit, no matter how timid Mr. President has been.

Of course then I read this:

That appears to be the only way, said David Axelrod, that middle-class taxpayers can keep their tax cuts... "We have to deal with the world as we find it," Axelrod said... "The world of what it takes to get this done."

I suppose it is only pragmatic, but it is the pragmatism of the defeated. Doesn't Obama & co. know that "Change we can believe in" is not merely the conservation and/or accommodation of the status quo?

How does Obama expect people to fight for him and his agenda, when he won't even fight for them himself?

Every time I read another political obituary for Russ Feingold, I feel the intense desire to sock Barack Obama in the face. What a bloody, bloody waste that someone as principles and courageous as Feingold had to pay for Obama's political cowardice, equivocation, and incompetence. It's not worth it, it's just not worth it.

Normally, it takes considerable inbreeding to develop this much upper-class (top 1%, in fact) twit-ishness, but apparently in America, it can develop spontaneously in as little as three generations. I wonder what is in the water...

"Obama = Bush", painted on the underpass connecting Trader Joe's and Whole Foods.