Monthly Archives: September 2008

Ask Me Why

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It’s a dreary gray Friday afternoon. I got out of work around 2:30 this afternoon and rather than walk across midtown enjoying a birthday cigar I took a subway which I rarely do. It was raining but not hard enough to warrant an umbrella since I only had to walk a block or so.

Now I have that ‘I might have napped too long’ feeling despite the fact I didn’t really have a restful nap. Phone calls and phone buzzing kept interrupting. Missed a birthday greeting from Chaz, but earlier I did speak with my sister Annemarie, as well as a voice mail from her and my nephew Earl.

Also heard from Queen Jane Approximately, Constant Connie, Sweet Sarah and Brenda Bubbles, Adorable Adrienne and Lovely Rita and Harpy and Julio and Stine with a picture of that adorable little man, Alexander.

Text messages from assorted nieces and maybe my brother Brian or his son Brian. I just can’t tell. Actually I can tell. I just checked and it was from my brother. My other brother Frank hasn’t called and that means if he doesn’t call later, he will call on the weekend and feel bad about not calling on my birthday.

It’s not a big deal. It would have been years ago. It might have been last year. But this year? Eh, no biggie. Last year Bill gave me a saucepan for a birthday present. I found it an odd present since I’m not much of a cook or a foodie.

I don’t watch the Food Network, or Armenia’s Next Top Chef or Gordon Ramsey or whatever. But since the spot where I get my penne, pesto and chicken in Manhattan, Cafe Fonduta went under I have been lacking pesto in my life.

So having watched the guys prepare the pesto, I think I can do it myself and finally have a reason to break out that sauce pan. It’s still in the box. I figure I can take a teaspoon of pesto, some heavy cream, some olive oil and imitate the guys. Or I can try to look it up online somewhere.

Perhaps there’s a video on YouTube that shows the How To.
Or perhaps you dear reader, would have a recipe to make a nice pesto sauce.

Bill just came home and we’re going to go out for some steaks at Arthur’s steakhouse on Washington Street. Hopefully it will be better than last year, when we went for my birthday after a few other things going wrong earlier in the day.

My churlishness towards the saucepan (embarrassing 365 days later) and the fact that some disgruntled mail room worker wished that I would die since I had decided to smoke a Padron and walk along Park Avenue during my lunch hour.

Birthday wishes also came from some new Facebook friends (Andres et al.) as well as a dear friend, Betti Cola. It’s still raining and my bones are tired after tossing and turning in the late gray afternoon but in a few minutes Bill and I will head over to Arthur’s where hopefully they will have their credit card machines up and running, unlike last year.

Just got back, excellent dinner with Bill. Arthur’s wasn’t too crowded, credit card machine in order and I was caught by surprise with a few waitresses singing Happy Birthday to me with a wonderful slice of chocolate mousse cake with a candle on top. I turned a thousand shades blushing.

A walk around Washington Street followed, me finally enjoying my birthday cigar in the misty evening.

That seems to be it for the day. Loveliness abounds.

Here’s some quite recent snaps as well as something else. Thank you for your good wishes

and here I thought I wasn’t going to write tonight!

The World and His Wife

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Well here we are on a Thursday. Weather wise it’s a pleasant day. A bit cool, which isn’t bad for wearing a suit and tie. Last night Bill and I watched Olbermann which was very good for his righteous commentary about how the republicunts use 9/11, the imagery and the fear for political purposes. Quite heinous. Keith was right on the money.

Mr. Noun/Verb/9.11 Guiliani was rightly put in his place once again, but he’s so slimy he wiggles his way out of it each time, King of the Lisp, Lord of the Comb Over. After that came our gal, Rachel Maddow. We love her. She wasn’t as high falutin’ as Olbermann, much more personable.

That doesn’t stop the wrong wing ideologues from going after her on FuckSnooze, specifically because she’s a lesbian. Apparently that’s wrong. It’s fine with FuckSnooze that Shepherd Smith is a gay man, but wrong for MSNBC.

Today is 9/11 and I’ve been fine. Flags throughout the area were at half mast. I find myself getting misty at the loss of our unity after the attacks. On the news was a former coach for the Giants football team. He was talking about how a week after the attacks, the Giants were playing in Kansas City and when the Giants came out they were greeted with a standing ovation.

We seemed to really be as one, as a country in the time following that day, at least in this tri-state area. Perhaps in DC and Shanksville PA as well. We had the support of most of the world, different countries by our side. Then George Bush threw all that away, leaving us where we are today. Lost and alone mainly. That really is a shame.

I think a moment like that in our history might not come around again, not in my lifetime. Squandered. I remember the fliers of people reported missing all over the city. People looking for their loved ones, friends, roommates. Within a few days those missing persons fliers turned into sheets of memorial paper, usually lit by votive candles.

Walking through Union Square with Bill one night with thousands of other people, I wrote on a scroll a quote from Maya Angelou, “..and still we rise.” I remember in the weeks following the attacks, Manhattan was still in shock.

Whenever a fire truck or a police car would go by sirens wailing, everyone would stop. Today it was very much the same. A few times, being out on the street a fire truck would go by en route to a call and a number of people stopped and watched the truck go by.

I reread the posts from the past two years and I really can’t add more to that, at least not right now.

We still haven’t healed in these 7 years. We wound up being abused by the one we hoped would do the right thing about what happened, whatever the right thing was.

George Bush abused the faith that the majority of people, people of different political parties, faiths and backgrounds placed in him following that day in September and doesn’t give a shit about it and then exploited that faith again and again all in the name of protecting us.

We actually needed protection from him in the long run. Never forget, these attacks happened on his watch. They try to blame it on the Clinton regime, but Clinton was hamstrung by the Lewinsky saga, and rendered ineffectual thanks to the republicunts that were in control of the senate.

Like the Reagan policies that we are seeing the effect of nowadays, we will be suffering from the actions of this asshole president for a long time.

And now for something completely different,
the cover of the NY Post.

I guess even Rupert Murdoch thinks Sarah Palin is a pig.

tonight