the mandarin reel and the bbc

I am listening to my various daily podcasts: right now it is the bbc world news telling me about how these are the worst days in history for the tamil tigers. desperate days! MIA's father is a Tamil tiger. The people in Chennai where Charity is living right now speak Tamil. These are my Tamil ties. It makes me think of Bridget Jones: Chechnya, Chech-NYA..."so what do you think about this situation in chechnya, is it an absolute nightmare?" hugh grant: "oh, i couldn't give a f@$k, Jones."

Now the story is about Army Day in Kathmandu and talking about how to integrate the Maoists in the government and army. Maoists. As if you don't know how I feel about those assholes. Anyway, Charity, Corinne and I are going to Kathmandu in april as a little detour off our india extravaganza. good to know the maoists have been disarmed. i should drop off a bunch of jung chang's scathing mao biography for their perusal. no, actually, i don't care that it is not a balanced portrayal.

i have been trying to listen to the world news mandarin reel. damn my mandarin is slipping. they are talking about making contribution sources for campaigns public, and i seem to understand that some new shit has come to light about chen shuibians daughter and his money. urg. i have to listen like 3 times to put things together poorly. i should just read the bbc page where they tell me things in english about chen shuibian's hunger strike and his totally mafiosa wife. i appreciate her not letting her disabled status get in the way of her money laundering and shopping prowess. one should not underestimate the capacity for evil in the disabled. james bond villains taught me that valuable lesson.

oscars 09

we had an awesome time at scott and kirstin's oscar party. corinne dressed up as rachel from rachel getting married, i dressed up in a sari as a tribute to slumdog millionaire, and we dressed up owen as the kid from changeling, but we were thinking he could have been benjamin button. this did not go unnoticed and owen won the best costume award, which he was very excited about.





I thought Hugh Jackman was excellent and hilarious. I also watched the Barbara Walters special in which she asked for and was granted by Hugh, a lap dance. wow.
There was no hilarity though in her innterview with Mickey Rourke in which she basically asked him about every painful thing that has ever happened to him. "so mickey, your ex wife was a heroine addict and your divorce left you so alone and disillusioned that you only had your dogs to sleep with for comfort, one of whom just died yesterday." "how do you feel about that? tell us about it." so, everyone keeps talking about how his face was rearranged--did he have plastic surgery, or what?

So, I have two weeks in town before I am out for 8 straight weeks (including my trip to india). eek. what all does one do in 8 weeks that can be done beforehand?

i'm back on to being excited about a potential condo purchase. i have two in mind right now that seem great, both have great upsides. onbe is cheaper and in a slightly less excellent neighborhood--but is in a newer building and has a gym. the other is in a bit nicer neighborhood but is more larger and more expensive and has a garage and might require roommates. any advice?

have good weeks! i have to go to bed.
oh, i am going low carb for lent--anyone have good tips or recipes or restaurant options?

p.s. jessica--i was going to write you and i think i accidentally deleted the comment with your email. can you resend..i couldnt figure out how to comment on your blog

who knew i had so many opinions on the octuplet mom?

I watched Ann Curry's interview with the mother of the octuplets. Ann Curry kept trying to get the lady to admit that she was irresponsible and unthinking when she had those babies. She also tried to get her to admit that she was getting public assistance. I had a few problems with these aims. 1) the lady is clearly deranged. she didn't have the resources to have two kids, much less the 7 she had planned for or the 7 others she did not anticipate. So, beating her over the head about "didn't you think about your resources" yes, ann, she told you she did think about her circumstances and she thought she was fine and would be able to support them. not only that, but she also thinks that she will be able to easily pay back all her student loans and support 14 kids on a single counselor's salary. because she is DERANGED! Charity has a great saying which is "you have to fight crazy with crazy". you can't fight crazy with sane. so ann curry is asking this lady sane person questions and not getting anywhere. narf. 2) they tried to rip her a new one because she is getting public assistance. what the hell is public assistance for if not for people like this crazy ass lady and the 14 kids she can't support? We already reformed welfare so that you no longer get more welfare the more kids you have. so it's not like she will be living pretty and able to get her nails done on welfare. There's a cap. I think a lot of people who have never been on welfare think welfare should exist but that no one should ever be on it because they themselves went through hard times and never asked for help. well, why not? go ask for some freaking assistance. It isn't shameful to take welfare, it was created for a reason. Now, why SHE herself lied about and thinks getting public assistance is such a bad thing is odd to me. I understand that there is some fraud in welfare and it does seem heinous, but this is what you get in a free society with free will. occasionally people are crazy and mooch off other people. not to mention that there is now a 5 year federal limit on welfare. so even if people are so pissed that other people take handouts, well, they can't do it for more than 5 years. blurg. 3) Ann Curry didn't get into the abortion/pro-life issue when the lady was saying that her existing, not-yet-implanted embryos were children and gifts from God. I mean, the lady clearly has a problem, but the problem isn't that she should have terminated the excess babies when she found out they had ALL attached to the uterus. They were dangerously close to saying life does not in fact start at conception, and that isn't a debate she should be getting into with crazy lady but rather someone who has actually been fighting that fight sanely for years.

Some people were wondering how the doctor could have participated. But really, it isn't his job. Are we expecting doctors to say that poor people shouldn't be able to have kids. Maybe he could have referred her to a mental health professional before allowing her to get the surgery, but there is no reason why, if she had saved the money, that he should refuse her just because of her life circumstances. His job is to tell her the risks, right? Of course they did say that he implanted too many embryos, i guess that is his issue. then again, he's chinese, so what kind of ethical compass were we expecting?

Anyway, i think what really irked me was that they were trying to make someone crazy say something sane, like, yes i am obsessive and was thoughtless because i have no money left to support my children and yes i should give them up for adoption because i am going to drive my poor parents insane. and if she does keep getting her nails done instead of feeding her kids, well, CSS will come in and take them away anyway. pootooweet!

Triumphant ZHU LI

Yes, this is the broccoli beef and sauteed vegetables and tofu that Jamie LIn helped me make. That is two, count them, TWO homemade dishes this week.

Borderline! I feel like I'm going to lose my mind...

Something that has been bothering me sporadically for the last few years: In a VH1 documentary, Madonna was discussing her early career and what made her so driven to become a pop legend. and she said "i just really felt that i had something to say and I needed to say it." and for whatever reason, it comes to mind like 2-3 times a year and i think about those first few madonna albums and think, "what was it about holiday, starlight starbright, like a virgin, material girl, la isla bonita...that really *needed* to be sung." "I am desperately in need of a holiday, i think everyone should know!" like, this is not rage against the machine talking about racist police officers or injustice of war. it's about how much this woman likes men and frivolous crap. And who thinks that is important? these are essentially the things that 90% of rappers sing about, but would any of them say that rapping about sex and money is something that the world desperately needs to hear? i'm just flummoxed. In other news, I need everyone to know that I love shiny diamonds, wads of cash, champagne, and driving in flashy cars. i'm so glad i got that out there. phew.

in other news, when i went to get the espresso that is sustaining me right now, there was a rather attractive, scruffy man reading a thick book and i was intrigued like, oh a sexy reading man. then i saw it was an Ayn Rand book. And I rolled my eyes and judged that he was too philosophically immature for the Julie. Even though I myself have read and enjoyed Atlas Shrugged, the Fountainhead, and Anthem. whatever.

wash, rinse, repeat

Today is the 597 katrillionth day that I have woken up and started or restarted a diet. I invoke sleater-kinney *yet again* when I say that "I think that I sometimes must have wished for something more than to be a size 6." And that's not actually my goal, but I can't help but thinking that if I were a person who gave not a shit about what I looked like and somehow harnessed that energy into something else, I would be like, a proficient violinist, or a person who helps regularly at a soup kitchen, or working on my 10th novel. There is also the off chance that i would have spent all that time watching television. So, who knows? pootooweet!

Speaking of resolutions made and broken, I resolved to restart my new year this week. Ergo, I made tonight's dinner! (that's one meal a week). A spinach, feta, and onion egg white frittata. My mother liked it so much that she wanted me to make more on the spot. And I am now exercising as I blog. The first day of the rest of my life is always full of these little victories. I wonder if I could ever fool myself into thinking every day was the fresh start to my life. The majority of me is an Irish, Scottish, and German red-cheeked santa clause of a genetic optimist, but I think the often jolly, yet, in an instant, also extremely depressed, Irish strain of my blood(i think those are the southerners) can't stomach that kind of cheese.

I am listening to the slumdog millionaire soundtrack. Highly worthwhile--doing Bollywood dances on the elliptical machine. lots of shoulder movement.

This morning I found my Verve CD, Urban Hymns. A CD I have bought 3 times. Football season is over. It called for a playing of Bittersweet Symphony. The Super Bowl this year was fantastic. But I do feel like I have a new lease on Sunday afternoons. Anyone want to walk around Lake Murray?