And then I heard the infomercial-like rebuttals from the GOP that made me feel a bit dirty and stupid for feeling so optimistic.  Programs are cute, but we’re broke.  So, I’m going to comment on a more important facet of the evening.

I’m going to start with Senator Boehner‘s spray tan.  He looked stern and not too gushy over Obama’s speech.  He was especially bronze in contrast to the un-sprayed pallor of Joe Biden, that “working class kid from Scranton” as his boss called him.  And Boehner, was described by Obama as the boy who “swept the floor of his dad’s bar.” His dad’s BAR.  His dad was a BUSINESS OWNER.  Too obvious a background for a Republican.  You need a bootstrap-pulling gent, who got through $100,000 of Stanford tuition by selling magazines for a nickel each.  But with blondish hair and aqua eyes, he looks like a Malibu-ish senator of the same species as Megyn Kelly and the other yellow-haired, spray-tanned Foxes of cable TV.  If Boehner wants to win the center, he’s going to have to play-down his Malibu, son-of-a-business-owner side.  Spray tans read:  insensitive, pampered and orange.

Nancy Pelosi‘s facial “work” continues to shock and awe.  Her neck is age-appropriate, but her face is as the rear of a newborn child.  You can’t cover grandma with infant skin and then pretend she’s Selena Gomez.  Nor can you give her a hairstyle that resembles a nuclear warhead.  She looked like a sideways Gumby.  And you had to wonder if her opponents in the senate called her Parallelogram Head behind her back.  I have no idea what she said.  Her approval rating has, no doubt, dropped further.  Pink-slip the stylist/medical team already.

Hilary looked a bit stunning.  Her hair is longer, straighter and blonder (Will all of DC be highlighted soon?)  Perhaps she had a bit of work done on her face.  Maybe a blast, a peel or the prick of syringe.  But her skin doctor had the artistic restraint and the security of the nation in mind.  He kept those little vertical scowl lines of hers.  You can’t face off with North Korea without the power of some bitch-ass wrinkles.  And looking within a decade of your actual age is a good choice.

Obama is going gray.  Very presidential.  No more the young visionary of the campaign trail.  His vision is now seasoned.  Salt and pepper.  (Who doesn’t love metaphors that manifest in hair?)

Congressional representative Paul Ryan delivered his speech with a strong teleprompterific inflection.  His message was clear:  we’re broke.  But to those of us who can read between the lines,  we can see a his true intention.  Too prove to the entire world that he has an unstoppable hairline.  No recession or thinning WHAT-SO-EVER.  My god.  In fact, his hair is so thick that you could till it, hoe it, plant and harvest in it.  He could have shaved his head, sported a short crew, but NO, he parts it so definitely and flagrantly, shaming the thin-haired men of DC.  Show-off.

You’d think Michele Bachmann would stop her poor sense of style with the use of only one ‘l’ in the name Michele.  Buuut, NO.  She has had her face freshly poisoned for her televised “GOP Response.”  It looked as if her skin was removed, steamrolled, soaked in essential oils for a year, and then returned to her face.  We ALL love good skin, but no human skin should rival the smoothness of claymation characters.  And the painted-on eyebrows are a disgrace to the nation.  Not only did every word of her speech get lost in the paper-thin punch of those homemade brows, but there are children who watch TV.  They look up to ironed television faces with vetoed eyebrows.  Eyebrows are not voting districts.  They are not meant to be redrawn to keep you feeling out-of-date, safe and comfortable.  Bachmann, you must stop.  Stop this at once.  I’ve got impressionable daughters here.

What are we to do?  The future of our nation is running through a shocking number of surgically-altered heads.  Can’t we vote in a few more natural heads?  Unaltered, aging, seasoned heads, housing minds aimed at progress and justice over smoothness and agelessness?

And I thought people at the gym were weird.

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• CNN’s airing of Bachmann’s SOTU response irks Democrats and Republicans (dailykos.com)

• “Don’t retreat, reload.”

I would change this to “Don’t reload, rebrand.” Gun metaphors work for people who hunt, fish, and camp in the rain, but not for Kate Gosslein and I’m guessing she still finds time to make it to the polls.  Being now is important and “brand” is now a verb.  Angered Americans need to take their rage straight to a graphic artist and turn it into some funky, hip imagery for schwag-y magnets, backpacks and penlights.

• “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

Blood libel most commonly refers to a false accusation of murder made against the Jews, which historically was used to justify the violent persecution of the Jews.  This level of injustice and victimization is one to which a free-flying WASP of an Alaskan politician with a nice boat-plane cannot easily relate.  Palin needs to associate randomly with another culture and another context.  Stockholm Syndrome is an innocuous choice.  It would only potentially bother a handful of Scandinavians.  And, seriously, what are all those nordic pot smokers with excellent health care coverage gonna do?  They have little history of violence aside from that unfortunate Viking chapter, and one rarely if ever sees that kind of horn-hatted aggression at Ikea.  And if Ikea got mad, the worst they would do is attack landfills through the over-production of well-priced spoons and bowls.

Listen to how powerful this amended sound bite would be:  “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a Stockholm Syndrome that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn.”

• “Take Harry Reid out.”

The Tea Party’s Red-state Queen and 2010 Nevada senatorial candidate, Sharron Angle, made this statement which has been interpreted as having an “off with your head” quality.  No one likes to think of people losing their heads or their jobs.  Perhaps she should have worded it, “Let’s encourage Harry Reid to seek out other employment options.  Maybe reacquaint himself with a long, lost dream job.” Or she might have suggested that he “purchase a motor home and see his people out west.”

• On crosshairs as political imagery

Crosshairs and target imagery, though perhaps not causally tied to violence, poisons the screens and sensibilities of people who use Google, Twitter and the all-powerful remote control.  But this is a political battleground (shit. I mean shoot. I mean shit.) and imagery that emboldens is the only way to victory.  So I’ve ruled out the kaleidoscope.  Circles of rotating, jewel-toned prisms are for other arenas.  In order to save the “removal” concept that crosshairs provide, and to promote good, clean, adversarial fun, I’m suggesting the vacuum cleaner.  An upright sucker, with a collection bag that says: “Empty contents into a Senatorial Club Med Receptacle only.”  Send them to Club Med.  Who can argue with that?  Note the changed rhetoric below:

“It’s time to take a stand” would become “It’s time to clean up America.”

“Let’s take back the 20, together,” would read “Let’s suck off the 20, together.”

And with that kind of rhetorical imagery, everyone will have a smile on their face.

This incident, and the culture or events around it, requires intelligent, thoughtful, and informed dialogue, so I will remove myself from it.  I have only this to say.

I heard of the tragedy shortly after it happened.  I was taking a sandwich order from my husband over the phone.  As we talked of roast beef and ordinary Saturday things, he interrupted to tell me the news was reporting the shooting of an Arizona senator. I immediately guessed:  Democrat; opposed to the Arizona SB 1070 immigration law; attacked by the opposition.  When my husband confirmed Giffords’ party affiliation, I came to another thought, this one more frightening:  We are no longer safe to take a hard stance on polarizing topics.  In the United States of America.

As the situation developed, it became clear that the story is more complicated.  The assassin appears to have a severe mental illness, and his anti-government ideas seem to have no clear party affiliation, let alone logic.  Looks like answers will continue to unfold from many sources in the days to come. Nonetheless, the internet has blown up over this, as it should.  Twitter knows.  Facebook knows.  Columnists know.  Many know who/what was/wasn’t the cause.  What pushed this deranged puzzle of a young man to murder?  The internet knows how to fix it in 4,800 mutually exclusive ways.  And all points-of-view are very entrenched.  There’s going to be a lot of talking in the coming months and, possibly, years.

I have no answers.  No simple answers to complex questions.  And sometimes when things get too tough ideologically, and truth gets too buried or runs from us and hides, I turn to music, sewing, and plays, and I let the people in power figure it out.  As President Obama said on the impossible question of when life begins, “That’s above my pay-grade.”  And this is all above mine.

Nonetheless, if I happen to find an Oscar Wilde quote in my travels, I will always gladly send it your way.   It’s the least I can do.  And I did find one.  On Facebook.  It’s from one of my favorite plays by Wilde, but I never noticed the line until recently.  And even though Oscar Wilde was discussing fluffy circumstances and was probably kidding when he wrote this, he made the mistake, like he always did, of being right and profoundly meaningful.  The idea has been on my mind lately, and it’s good wisdom in our age, like any age, of frustrating ideological polarity.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either.”

Related articles

• International reaction to Arizona shooting (theworld.org)

Even Natalie Portman, who lost 20 pounds from her already rice-paper-thin frame for the movie Black Swan, is chiming in:  “In what other field is it acceptable to judge artists by how big they are? It was just amazing all of the pressure on dancers to starve themselves.”

In what other field, in what other field…hmmm….let me thiiink.  (fourteen second pause) Uh…how about…the film industry?  The industry that manufactures reality for us to take in with each buttery, salty scoop of popcorn.

Macauley’s comment, though shocking, is really not that shocking.  He expresses the sentiment of producers, directors, audiences, and much of the world’s women who can’t eat twelve french fries without hating themselves, punishing themselves, and wishing they were dead.  And the room for error is minuscule.  In the world of fat-phobic heads, women are usually a full eight pounds between being dangerously thin or morbidly obese.  Insanity about the female form is not exclusive to this one crazy reviewer.

I take two things away from this.  First of all, Ms. Ringer’s response:

“I am not overweight.”

Healthy minds and bodies can exist in the face of pervasive societal or, in this case, industrial insanity.  And this rock-solid perspective is coming from a recovered anorexic.  ATTENTION WOMEN AND GIRLS:  YOU HAVE A NEW HERO IN JENIFER RINGER.

And second, the New York City Ballet has cast in a manner that violates the older, emaciated aesthetic and offends nostalgic onlookers who know little and care nothing about the price of this aesthetic.  Offend away, NYC Ballet.  Women and girls are counting on you.

I see progress on the horizon.

Related articles

• “Fat” Ballerinas & The Black Swan Diet: Don’t Let The Times Set the Tone (blogher.com)
• ‘Sugar Plump Fairy’ ballet dancer says she suffered from eating disorders (telegraph.co.uk)

History tells us, at least it told people who told me, that a president’s popularity is strongly tied to the state of the economy.  Period.  Can I safely say that the economy is not in a good state?  The bubble of faux home prices, shitty Wall Street products, and hilarious stated income loans from Wachovia will not re-grow or re-bubblize or unburst.  The dream is over.  We will spend many years/decades waking up.  And, American voters took Obama to task for this unfolding of a reality that began long before he took office.

The Tea Party movement, though not my cup of hideous pun, is dismissed by many as a band of ranting, racist, paranoid Marxist-o-phobes.  Sadly, in some cases, some of or all of this is true.   Nonetheless, US voters are aligned with the core value of the Tea Party:  fiscal conservatism.   And fiscal conservatism does not equal racism.  Fiscal conservatism equals fiscal conservatism.  Racism equals racism.  And name-calling equals name-calling.  Additionally, Anderson Cooper and his colleagues’ use of the word teabagger as a way to undermine the views of the Tea Party has grown very, very stale, and it gives these journalists a very strong Eighth Grader Who Calls People Fat Vibe.  This works for Bill Maher, but not for journalists.   And they say teabagging like it’s a bad thing.  Teabagging is the foundation of our society.  It is at the heart of every marriage, life partnership or same-sex union (at least in the unions equipped with teabags).  Children’s futures in happy families depend on the teabagging behaviors of their parents.  I would not be surprised if the Pope made it mandatory tomorrow.  Well, I would be surprised, but he should consider doing so since the Church hates divorce so much.  Vatican III, anyone?  Don’t make unholy the teabag.  Fight your opponents another way.

California is weird.  Good weird.  (P.S.  Meg Whitman will not be escorting our schools to Hell on a pavement of good, Silicon Valley-coated intentions.  I am screaming inside.)

Ex-witches who talk masturbation and love Jesus too much are a difficult sell to American voters.

Fox News lost the election of 2008.  MSNBC lost this one.   Will a third party news station ever gain the footing to enter the race?  What will our future hold?  Will it be decided by the sensationalized, insufferable cheese of Glenn Beck’s chalkboard?  Or will Rachel Maddow’s sharp tongue, eye-rolling, and commenting from on high lead us to the promised land?

Candidate Jerry Brown, “a career politician” as I have heard Meggy point out (what?), KNOWS not to call himself Jerry.  Clearly, any Jerry is a tall balding gentlemen who laughed loudly and drank Bloody Marys with your parents in the 70s.  A Jerry is a cool dude, but lacks that distinctive out-of-touch quality that we so adore in our politicians.  And if you can say Governor Jerry, you come awfully close to saying Governor Jerr-Bear over time.  I don’t think we are at that point, even in our vulnerable recession state, where we would elect a cuddly Governor Jerr-Bear.

Arnold is the one candidate I can think of who used his first name only, but he’s of a David Hasselhof world, and, by golly, we expect that.  But running for the highest office in California and the sassiest office in the US senate, I don’t want your signage to evoke first name coziness.  The senate is a filibustery, bloodbathish sass-off.  When your opponents are blocking you by reading the phone book, you have to Barbara Boxer them into submission.  Is Carly a name that evokes the sentiment of a woman who could take on the formidable anti-masturbation lobby?  I think not.  Am I alone in this?

I guess there were the people who said I Like Ike in the 50s.  But that’s Mike without an ‘m’ which stands for Dwight D. Eisenhower.  So, maybe if Meg Whitman lost an ‘m’ she would go down in slogan history.  Eg Whitman for Governor.  Or Arly for Senator.  Or, to ensure victory, Arly for Enator.

I still think we need both first and last names, even with the first letter omitted.  Would you elect a Governor Enry into office?  Probably not.  But Governor Enry Iggins?  Now that’s a name that inspires a strange desire to sing and dance.

Related articles

• Meg Whitman Called ‘Whore’ By Someone In Jerry Brown’s Campaign (huffingtonpost.com)
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Jenny McCarthy in her role as a babe who doesn't vaccinate. Image via Wikipedia

A few days ago, a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld a 2009 ruling that there is no connection between vaccines and Autism.  I’m going to repeat that:  there is no connection between vaccines and Autism.  The erroneous theory, based on a 1995 study by Andrew Wakefield, has long been dismissed by scientists as contradictory and faulty, and, of late, FRAUDULENT.

But since the 1995 study, many parents of Autistic children are demanding answers and compensation. As would I if I believed thermisol, the preservative formerly used in most vaccines, were the cause of any neurological atypicality developing in my child.  But in addition to these struggling and searching parents are lawyers.  And there are people with master’s degrees in Liberal Arts who work as administrative assistants at the lawyers’ offices, and then they go for drinks with their friends and tell them not vaccinate their children.  And there is Jenny McCarthy who has done extensive research on the, um, internet.  And now the world is awash in vaccination paranoia. Oh no.

And no matter that study after study disproves any connection between vaccine and Autism, smart people who eat granola will tell their smart friends who eat granola (I love granola, especially hemp seed granola from Trader Joe’s) not to vaccinate.  And then it’s, Hello, Pertussis! Come on in, Measles.  Have a seat on my face. And then kill me.

And the myths around vaccines are the most widely held among the, wait for it, rich and educated. And this is what I have been trying to tell my readers since day one. THE RICH ARE STUPID.  They are. This comes from too much shopping.  Lululemon is such attractive sportswear.  And I’m guessing it corrupts the mind. I would never ever doubt myself if I looked that good. But when you wear the brands of a major discount store, you just HAVE to introspect, because you kind of look like crap. Self-doubt is a healthy side effect of economic disadvantage.  And impassioned self-adoration makes room for no such virtues.

And then there’s education. Education doesn’t make you smarter.  It just gives you more info about which to be misguided and stupid. Vaccination opponents will use terms like “allopathic care.” And they will feel triumphant because you’re looking up the term in the dictionary as you prepare your rejoinder.  And the Good Vocabulary Users think they’ve achieved an ideological victory when, in fact, they’ve only triumphed linguistically. Yes, educated people have the same capacity for stupidity as uneducated people do. Your dad having money to pay for your college does not make you smarter. It makes you lucky.

So I’m not sure what type of science it will take to convince people of science, but it should really come down to science. And if not, well, I guess it will come down to vocabulary, great shoes, and the ability to pay for private school.  And Jenny McCarthy’s chest, which, let’s face it, has given her the voice she has today.

And being anti-vaccine will be a required perspective of the ladies and gentlemen of high society.  And we will guiltlessly sip our Fair Trade Chai in cafes, as our children sit home with the babysitter, suffocating from Whooping cough, and we will say, “Oh dahling, don’t you know, vaccination is only for the lower clahsses?  And inoculation is only necessree for those of a diseased breeding.  What poor unfortunate minds they are that cahn’t decipher the conspiratorial code of Western medicine.  Tsk-Tsk.  Pshaw!”

Shop Greta, your unofficial provider of non-Lululemon yoga apparel. It’s not that we don’t like Lululemon, but they sell independently, not with the gorgeous folks of Amazon.com. At least, I assume they’re gorgeous.

Flared leg, fold over waistband yoga pants

“Peace Dove”

Nature’s Path Organic Pumpkin Flax Plus Granola with Omega 3 Fatty Acid 35.3 Ounce Box.  (Greta says:  Oh my god, I love this cereal!)

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• Vaccine exemptions in California threaten herd immunity [Respectful Insolence] (scienceblogs.com)
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Dr. Laura Schlessinger Image via Wikipedia

White people should never use the n-word.  That’s it on that.

But some are still perplexed by the concept.  Dr. Laura showed us she was by her recent shocking rant and insensitive handling of a black caller who was upset that her husband’s friends used the n-word in her presence.  And the How Come Only Black People Can Use the N-word question is so common and boring a question, that I spontaneously desire a nap or a temporary suicide upon hearing it.

Personally, I subscribe to the Chris Rock philosophy.  It’s a good philosophy, and I think it applies to all manner of insults, even insults that don’t have the horrific historical context and connotation of the dreaded n-word.

In an interview with Ed Pilkington of the UK Guardian, Chris Rock said, “Any black person can say ‘[n-word]‘ and get away with it. It’s like calling your kid an idiot. Only you can call your kid that. Someone else calls your kid an idiot, there’s a fight.”  And he’s right.  You get to insult the eyeballs out people as long as they are you or your family, because you are coming from a place of experience, not ignorance.

I make fun of myself all the time.  In real life.  To myself, I am fair game.  But sometimes people chime in and try to outdo me.  This DOES NOT WORK.  Not only do I find their insults uninspired, I find them insulting.  I, however, have seasoned my insults to my taste.  I quite like the way I insult myself.  I find it so on the money.  And I work hard to not insult others in social situations.  Though I do fail in this attempt, and I only enjoy it sometimes.

And I can say things like my kid sucks at Algebra.  But don’t you dare tell me my kid sucks at Algebra, even if she does, and she does.  She’s eight.  But never you mind.  You have your own kid’s intellectual shortcomings to insult.  Yes, you do.  (By ‘you’ I mean a few someone elses.)

So, if some among the black community would like to address each other by a nasty epithet, who am I, being a white I, to object?  There is power in taking ownership of your oppressors’ insults.  Stealing a person’s thunder is fun.  And why shouldn’t the black community have exclusive control and use over a word that they’ve had to endure?  Settle down, you sub-group of white people, and stop hogging all the insults.

It’s the whole cliched, but very real, concept of don’t judge until you’ve traversed the trail in my moccasins.  And Dr. Laura was very unwise in dismissing a black, female caller’s objection to others’ use of the n-word, just because Dr. Laura is fine with the use of the n-word.  The doctor’s rationale for her SIGNATURE insensitivity:  “Black people say it, too.”

THIS IS WHY THERAPISTS ARE TRAINED TO NOT BRING PERSONAL BIAS INTO THEIR PRACTICE.  BIAS IS PERSONAL AND BIASED.  BIAS SUCKS.  AND SO DO PEOPLE.  Which is why you should stop reading this blog now.

Now, if someone personally objects to use of the n-word, whether she is black, white or someone who is compulsively driven to wear paisley, I think it’s fair for her to say, “Please quit with the n-word, you ugly, urine-faced cracker.  And stop sleeping with your mother so much.”  And no radio talk show host should tell the offended person not to be bothered by the insults just because the talk show host is not bothered by the insults.  Even if the talk show host will go on to have a great day of shopping in spite of the offended person’s suffering, the suffering stands.

Furthermore, I’m not terribly bothered by someone saying they hate Jennifer Aniston.  I’ve never been Jennifer Anistion.  I’ve never done yoga.  I’ve never looked that good, and I’ve never made millions of dollars in the movies.  I have no Aniston empathy.  Therefore, I am not the best choice of human to tell Jen whether or not she should be offended by Hot Boring Actress Jokes.  And if I were to be a conscientious, on-the-air, telephone counselor, I would ask her how she feels and attempt to validate her feelings.  And then I’d call her a hot, boring actress.  Which leads me to the conclusion that Jen is an absolutely terrible analogy for this very serious issue of race.  And, I think I just really like to make fun of Jennifer Anistion.  Yes, because I’m jealous of her.  I want to be hot, boring, and rich, too.  Don’t you?

But I think the question of How to be Ethically Rude has been summed up nicely by Chris Rock.  And I will attempt to affix my soul to this philosophy.  But please understand, I’m making a distinction between unfounded, unreasonable attacks and the very bloggy act of calling people on what I believe are negative behaviors (preventing poor people from moving in your neighborhood), especially if they are behaviors that represent large groups of what I consider to be annoying, problematic people in society.  So elitist butt faces and the people who love them for their speed boats are still game!  Yay!

And I will close with my own adage, because nothing says annoying blogger more than self-quoting:  If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it about yourself.

OOPS!  Sorry, Jen.  It’s not you; it’s me.

"I'll take one croque monsieur and a coffee, please. Oh, and some Tic Tacs."

Perhaps you’re having trouble making sense of the information on the Goldman Sachs fraud allegations. And you can’t figure out how, and to what extent, the GS gentlemen in Armani suits are going to rot in hell forever and ever.  It makes sense that, in a time of such confusion, you would turn to a mommy blogger to interpret what economists, lawmakers, and business analysts can’t.  I thought I would highlight crucial parts of the damning emails of former Goldman Sachs vice president,  Fabrice Tourre, along with my analysis of this correspondence.

In 2007, the very French Fabrice Tourre (an excellent candidate for April in The Men Of Goldman Sachs calendar),  sent numerous emails to his girlfriend, which all but openly stated that he was fully aware that he was selling worthless securities to his clients, and, that he had every intent to profit from their demise.  While his words may suggest unscrupulous behavior, I believe that when interpreted through a lens of cultural sensitivity, namely French culture, it becomes clear that the man was just trying to impress his girlfriend and get laid.  And if the world ‘economie’ has to crash because of it, c’est la vie.

• “This…is a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: ‘Well, what if we created a “thing”, which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?’” French is the language of love, and money is the regional dialect.  So Tourre is brilliant, and he’s selling ‘things’ born of cognitive whacking off.  Remember, the French are folks who invented the menage a trois.  Why can’t Tourre then come up with investments that are equally entangled, kinky, and denounced by the Church?  How else can he arouse the interests of his lady, a super-smart French girl.

• “The real purpose of my job is to make capital markets more efficient and ultimately provide the U.S. consumer with more efficient ways to leverage and finance himself, so there is a humble, noble and ethical reason for my job I’m doing a very good job at convincing myself.” The last line sounds terrible, but what you need to consider is that the French are funny.  And they have Moliere to prove it.  We Americans really aren’t, at least not compared to them.  Because Tourre is French, he HAD to throw in the line that he was doing a facetious ‘good job’ in convincing himself.  The French can’t not be ironic and subtly funny.  (Though his use of the emoticon was pretty American.)

• “The whole building is about to collapse anytime now.  The only potential survivor…the fabulous Fab.” If there’s to be one man standing in a collapsing American system, why shouldn’t it be a Frenchman?  Napolean sold the Louisana territory to the children of U.S. colonists so they could one day pepper it with Chick Fil-A’s and McDonald’s drive-throughs.  And then Americans got fat, which the French are very quick to point out, by the way.  Who cares if a bunch of fat people lose their asses?

• “When I think I had some input in the creation of this product…It’s like a little Frankenstein turning against his own inventor.” Here, he’s just showing off.  French are, in addition to being thinner and funnier, better educated than Americans.  This has much less to do with Mary Shelley’s ‘I’ve created a monster’ tale and more to more to do with Tourre’s desire to share his knowledge of Romantic British literature.

I hope this gives you clarity in figuring out whom to hate for your financial woes.  Whatever you do, don’t confuse being corrupt with being elegantly European.  Au contraire!  Fabrice, the au pair of our investments, may have committed a few faux pas with his carte blanche in the ‘market-making’ business, and in this deja vu (hallo, Enron!), there will certainly be the coup de grace.  Nonetheless, the self-proclaimed ‘fabulous Fab’ Tourre, like all dudes, was just fulfilling his raison d’être, which was to get the attention and pledge of allegiance of his femme fatale.  And he’d probably do it encore!

So, au revoir, laissez-faire economics.  And bonjour, Armageddon.

Too Big to Save? How to Fix the U.S. Financial System

The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers & the Great Credit Crash

"We solemnly swear to tell exactly what our lawyers told us to."

Yesterday was my birthday.  It was a very good day.  Though not one that sounds so good in print.

It was definitely not the kind that is worthy of a Facebook status update, like this one:

[insert name] is so happy to have LITERALLY thousands of great friends who surprised me today with an aquarium of top-shelf margaritas and a mariachi band.  I made out with my husband all day long and my kids out-performed all of yours on the STAR test, AND my recent surgeries look great with my tan from Mazatlan.  (See pics below.  YAY for pics of me!)  I LOVE YOU ALL.  Thanks for being a part of my perfect life.  Oh, and thanks for the tequila. LMFAO!  Or rather LMGFAO!  (G is for gorgeous.)”

My birthday was a perfect day of ordinary things, executed nicely.  I’m officially middle-aged now, and I’m wondering if that’s the reason I’m getting such a kick out of the mundane.

Highlights of the day included:

• Sitting on my couch watching the rain through the windows.  Seeing my red pillows on the bench, against a backdrop of green hills.  The sun breaking through the clouds just enough to keep the house from being too dark.  (Sorry to talk about hills, rain, and furniture, but these things were that good.  Applause.)

• Watching the Goldman Sachs senate hearings.  I liked it.  It was a high stakes battle for control of the truth.   The men of Goldman Sachs were referred to as ‘market makers.’  Call me a mommy blogger, but I thought the market was a byproduct of our desire for lattes and Starbucks’ ability to supply them, along with a few restrictions from Bill Clinton thrown in to keep rich people from being too big and corporate-y and mean.  I didn’t know that those nice looking GS gents from Harvard were building it, harming it, and making some nice money from it.    I really appreciate the fact that I’m in no danger of being smart enough to destroy the world.  The only ammo I have is a few verbs and nouns.  That’s not even as deadly as Helen of Troy’s face.  Goodness, I have it good.

• My husband making me coffee and doing all the driving.

• Dusting my room and finishing the laundry.  The laundry hasn’t been in a fully finished state since I quit my job last June.  Cool.

• Princess cake, Mom’s spaghetti, and a REALLY long and dangerous dance show by our daughters (they were jumping into the air and landing in the splits).  These things were most awesome.

• The margarita finale was just fine, too.

Thanks, world, for a great birthday.

Important side note:  I think in order to improve popular opinion and trust of Wall Street investment firms, the executives of Goldman Sachs should make a calendar called The Men of Goldman Sachs. Lloyd Blankfein should be the centerfold and Mr. December, since folks will be especially bitter in the gift-giving season.  Blankfein is not as attractive as his full-haired colleagues, but power is sexy, and he’s the BOSS.