Category: General

I think I first heard the term “zombie lies” from Duncan Black. That link goes to top hit for “atrios zombie lies”, not necessarily the first instance of him saying it, by the way, and I’m not saying that he invented the term. But he uses it often, and it always seems to refer to the same idea: a zombie lie is an argument or idea that has been thoroughly debunked and refuted, time and time again, and yet still seems to have people in the public sphere promoting and defending it.

Like the zombies of fiction and fantasy, you can’t put them down. No matter how many bullets you put in them, no matter how many times you stab one, they just will not die.

And the zombie lies seem to revolve, politically anyway, around conservative policies and themes. Like the whole “Social Security is going bankrupt!” zombie lie. You hear this a lot. You heard it from President #43 right after he was elected in 2004. You hear it even today, while we are in the middle of an economic disaster caused by tax cuts and deregulation. But the fact of the matter is that Social Security as currently structured will pay out full benefits until the year 2041. Y’know, somehow I think we have some time to deal with the “problem” of a fully-funded safety net for retirees and the disabled for the next 32 years. Maybe we could be focusing on the more immediate problems right now?

Another zombie lie is related to, and in argument against, the just-passed mostly-spending bill in Congress, and can be summed up in the phrase “government should be run like a business!” This zombie lie includes the idea that “we’re broke – we shouldn’t borrow any more!” It’s a bit more insidious because individual Americans can certainly understand their own household economics: when income decreases, spending should likewise decrease. You don’t borrow money when you’re broke. The reason this is a zombie lie, though, when applied to governments and larger economies is that only the government is large enough to absorb the costs of infusing new capital, in the form of spending, into an economy in an effort to reverse an economic depression. If no individual is spending any money because of a depression, it takes the government to step in and make things happen.

How do we know that this is true? Because FDR’s New Deal spending is what got America out of our Great Depression. In fact, when FDR gave in to some “fiscal conservatives” in Congress and cut taxes and decreased spending, in 1937, you can plainly see that those cuts reversed the gains from the previous spending. It may seem counter-intuitive to those of us who are clipping coupons and cutting back personally, but if we want to get out of this economic nightmare, we should be cheering the spending portions of the stimulus bill that just passed, and should be booing the Republicans who forced a bunch of tax cuts into it.

Just look at how great President #43’s tax cuts were at sustaining and building on President Clinton’s budget surpluses. Oh, wait. #43 turned a $127 billion dollar surplus into a $455 billion dollar deficit.

We need more spending; and because #43 left us in a hole with his tax cuts for the rich and his wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan that costs us billions, and the free money give-away to banks and financial institutions (which I will admit, President Obama supported at the time and is continuing), our situation is far more dire than it should have been. But that doesn’t take away the proven fact that building infrastructure and putting more capital and money into the economy is the answer, in a nutshell.

Luckily, that’s what President Obama is proposing. Sadly, the Republicans seem to want to obstruct that spending and, in some cases, Republican state governors are considering refusing the money. That’s about as willfully destructive and ignorant as they could possibly be.

Y’know, just like zombies.

Sorry I don’t have a real post for you this morning. I’ve been sleeping.

Got home last night from work, and was immediately tired. Well, I’d been tired all day, and had a bit of a headache. I barely had any energy but forced myself to get a load of laundry done (a bunch of black t-shirts, actually) then crashed on the couch and watched a little bit of recorded TV (last week’s Clone Wars) and then… drifted into bed.

Where I slept for twelve hours.

Had a dream about shopping for a VW Jetta that I was sure I couldn’t afford. Had another dream about moving into a new house that I, also, couldn’t afford. I think those dreams stemmed from the conversation at lunch about the economic crisis our country, and the world, is going through.

But beyond my vague remembrances of dreams, being in bed was a half-day of oblivion.

Now I’m over-tired and stiff, muscles sore, and a bit sweaty (I didn’t turn down the heat before sleep so it’s too warm in here).

And now, I’m off to work.

In case you liked my latest in the “Motels and Hotels I remember” series, you may want to read the past installments.

I’ve added a new tag, so you’ll find all the previous posts here.

The new Dell laptops we (the place I work) are buying have biometrics built-in – fingerprint readers. You’ve gotta figure that’s pretty secure, right?

The folks at Mythbusters have successfully beaten fingerprint readers, though, a couple of years ago.

Myth Busters-Finger Print Lock – video powered by Metacafe

Wonder if fingerprint readers have gotten better since then? I don’t know, but my guess is, no. Not in retail off-the-shelf laptops anyway.

Last night, after having a great time at nevafeva’s birthday party in NE Portland, I faced the downer of a long bus ride back to Sellwood.

Bear with me for a little Portland geography; surely most everyone who reads my posts already knows this but just in case, let me set the scene. The majority of all bus routes in Portland pass through, or end in, downtown. The first part of my bus journey was on the #6 bus, which basically traveled up and down the north- and south-bound highway of Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, before hopping over the Hawthorne Bridge into the downtown bus mall.

Then, to complete my journey from one end of Portland to the other, I had to grab the #33, which hopped back over the Hawthorne Bridge to drive south-bound highway of McLoughlin Boulevard, where I debark and enjoy a half-mile walk to my little apartment building o’ fun.

Two boulevards, two straight shots, each with a juke into the city center. Easy-peasy, right? I should be home in a flash, right?

The first part of the trip went smoothly. I love people watching the folks who ride the bus late on a Saturday. The attractive young girls who are going to a dance club. The middle-aged men who still think they’re young men talking to the young girls. The older lady, drunk out of her mind, just riding around for something to do. Just another bunch of damaged humanity (including me). I felt a kinship with all of them, but sat in my seat and watched.

I debark downtown, and check the schedule on my iPhone. Side note: I found the best iPhone app for anyone in Portland who rides a bus. Last Friday, the website I have been checking for TriMet bus arrival times went away – I got a 404 error. So I poked around Apple’s App Store and found a long list of iPhone programs for transit times. Our local transit agency actually has an API to let others use their schedule information, which explains all the Portland-specific iPhone apps I found. The top rated one was called PDXBus, and it was free, so I downloaded it.

It’s full of features! Bookmarks for most-used stops, it can show multiple stops on one page, it lets me organize and arrange the bookmarks and rename them, it uses Core Location to show me the closest stops to me in case I’m in an area of town I’m not familiar with. It even has a built-in blue flasher that I can use to flag down buses at night.

Last night, though, iPhone told me that I had a 35+ minute wait for the next leg of my trip home. It was cold and I was tired and did not feel like standing in the wind for that long, so I walked 6 blocks to the only open coffee shop I could find, the Starbucks at Pioneer Courthouse Square, which was open until midnight. On my short walk, I was asked directions, as I normally am whenever I walk anywhere. I must look like someone who knows where things are. I accidentally gave incorrect directions (no, seriously, it was accidental). Got a small coffee, had to wait a bit while it was finishing brewing, was offered an Americano instead (no, I’ll wait for the brewed coffee, thanks), texted goodnight to my bestie, Tracy, found out the wifi at Starbucks wasn’t working (which matters much less since I bought an iPhone), and then walked the six blocks back to the bus stop.

And got asked directions once again. His Spanish accent was thick so I had a hard time understanding what he was asking for but we eventually got it sorted out and I pointed him in the right direction.

Got to the stop and the bus was already there, laying over until time to leave. Hopped on, started people watching again while surfing to kill the time. A driver and 15 or so people just wanting to go home, or somewhere else at least, on a Saturday night.

The driver was tall, and white-haired but strong looking, and when it was time to go he pulled out into traffic sharply and crisply. Turned onto Madison to cross the bridge… then just kept going straight.

He should have taken the off-ramp down onto McLoughlin and continued south. He didn’t.

A passenger walked up to the front of the bus to ask him about this mistake, which is always a touchy situation. If the driver is defensive at all, or the passenger is rude at all, it can turn into an argument. This passenger was deferential enough, or the driver was humble enough, to avoid that. “I’ll just have to go around the block to get back on track,” the driver said.

So we continued onto SE Hawthorne, crossed Grand Ave., went one block up and turned right. Now we were parallel to McLoughlin and two blocks away. It’s a little complicated by the fact that the major streets are one-way onlies, but the very next right-hand turn would have gotten the driver right back on track.

He kept going straight.

I kept quiet, but made eye contact with a couple of my fellow passengers. We wanted to see where this was going. We didn’t want to point out that the driver was lost. Well, I did, but I did it on Twitter.

After just a block or two, the driver was screwed, because McLoughlin becomes a raised thoroughfare with no on-ramps. Now, when he got to an intersection and looked right, he could see that he had no way to get back on McLoughlin and back on track. Now, his little GPS unit was beeping at him that he was seriously off course. Now, he (or at least I) could feel the tension of all the passengers wondering where the hell we were and where we were going. A girl who had been talking on her cell phone to a distant friend started narrating the streets we passed, trying to figure out what the score was and how much longer until she reached her destination.

I thought ahead and realized that the driver was going to have to zig-zag through inner Southeast and past the TriMet Center garage, along SE 17th, before he could get back to the normal route. And so he did.

Because the boulevard is one long multi-lane highway, even with this long detour, the driver only missed one stop. Still, I felt bad for anyone who was waiting at that stop for a bus home; the next bus to pass there wouldn’t do so for another hour, and that was the final trip of the night. They’d be waiting a long time, and with no word about what had happened. Maybe they (these hypothetical people I’m picturing) saw their bus pass over the bridge – I’ve stood there at that stop and I know that where this bus had gone was in line of sight from there. How frustrating that would be, to see your bus be so wrong, knowing the next one won’t show up for an hour or more…

Such is life when one relies on transit.

Friday morning and I approach the coffee cart in my building’s lobby. The coffee cart girl sees me coming and smiles.

“Good morning,” I say, hopefully brightly but probably, considering the early hour (at least an hour before the normal opening hours for my office), more likely mumbled and blurry.

“Good morning, sunshine!” she replies, her smile wide in her freckled face.

I laugh. “Sunshine? I like that.” I move around to the side where the row of brewed coffee [things] are arrayed. I get a medium cup and start to fill it with half decaf, half macadamia chocolate flavored coffee. “Actually, though, my last name is Moon, which is pretty much the exact opposite of sunshine.”

She’s not facing me; she’s setting out the trays of donuts, wiping down the counter. The cart has just officially opened for the day. She laughs, too. “So, then: goodnight, Moon?”

“Ha, ha! ‘Goodnight, Moon. Goodnight, cow jumping over the moon.'” I recite back at her, and she and I finish speaking the last sentence in unison.

“I loved that book. It was my favorite book when I was a little girl.”

“Mine, too,” I say, still smiling. “For obvious reasons.” I pull out my wallet and lay down some money for my coffee, and pluck a donut, a giant apple fritter, from the tray. “But I really wanted to get my hands on Harold’s purple crayon. Or run away with Max where the wild things were.”

“Ah, but do they have donuts?” she asked.

“Wild things don’t need donuts,” I said. Nor do they need friendly cute redheaded coffee cart girls, I thought as I wished her a good morning and walked away.

Last night was supposed to be the Thursday Thing with Kevin. But an early morning email from Kevin announced that he was sick; too sick to hang out after work, he not only did not have the energy, he did not want me to catch what he had, too.

I missed him already, but wished him well.

I went through my day and kept busy, but when the end of my work day arrived, I was both glad to be done but in a strange reluctance to go home. Old Barfy, about whom I’ve written before, has taken to storing shopping carts of bottles and other recycled goods in the shared backyard, and a couple of nights ago I discovered that these shopping carts (yes, multiple) have multiplied to the point of being right next to my kitchen and bedroom windows, and my back door. I had left him a note about it this morning, and I anticipated having to talk to him about it after work.

What better reason to not go straight home, then? Yes, I’m generally non-confrontational. I will get around to it, but it might take me a while.

Instead, I transferred from my normal #70 bus to the #19, and went up Woodstock to the Delta Cafe (about which I’ve written before). Kevin and I were planning on going there, and I decided that I would still keep that appointment, even though Kevin had had to bow out to get well.

The thought of the home cookin’ perked me up from my already-good mood. Walking in the front door I could smell the BBQ sauce and fried foods. The hostess sat me down near the window, and gave me a menu.

What to have? I knew I’d start with corn bread. I love corn bread.

After rejecting the idea of ordering something I’ve already tried (I haven’t been going there long enough; I need to try more of the menu) I landed on pork chops. Grilled tender pork loin. With applesauce. For my two sides I tried the mac and cheese and cole slaw.

After I’d placed my order with the tattoo’ed black haired dark-mascara’ed waitress, I texted my order to Tracy, who is always down for some food porn.

And it hit me: every item I ordered was something my mom used to make, and serve, as a meal. Not just each individual thing by itself, but the meal as a whole. Corn bread, pork chop, mac and cheese, cole slaw, applesauce. It was literally just like mom used to make. But mom was long gone, buried up in Willamette National Cemetery.

And in spite of my generally good mood that day, and my anticipation of the delicious dinner still yet to be served… I missed my mom.

Forgive a blurry phone cam shot but, daaaamn.

It was so good, with just a hint of sad remembrance. Not that my mom was from the south; she was born and raised in Oregon, though she and dad moved and lived up in Aberdeen, Washington, and outside of Seattle, and in Kalama, before finally coming back to Portland. She visited Mexico a couple of times, and went on road trips with dad back east to visit his family, and down to California a couple of times, and even got her wish to see Hawai’i before cancer took her. But she was an Oregonian in all senses of the word.

She only knew a few recipes, and when she cooked she made lots of use of pre-packaged ingredients, but that was the food I grew up on, and grew fat on, to be honest, so I remember it fondly.

The food at the Delta is higher-end, but the menu could just as well have been the menu when I was a kid. And it took me until last night, my third visit, to realize it.

It’s truly comfort food for me.

Donuts (or doughnuts, if you prefer) are tasty pastries, deep-fried fluffy or cake type, covered in frosting, or not.

The canonical donut is a torus; an inner tube or wheel shape, a ring with a hole in the middle. The round nuggets called “donut holes” are, therefore, the bit of a donut punched out of the middle.

But donuts can be other shapes. Two bits of dough twisted or braided and then fried can also be found on donut trays, in donut cases, or in donut shops around the globe. Sweet rolls, without a hole in the middle at all, are also called donuts. Round puck shapes, filled with custard or fruit jam, are likewise donuts, without any hole. And apple fritters, lumpy and irregularly shaped, are also commonly called “donuts”.

All of which leads me to a question, on I have pondered for nearly as long as I have eaten and loved donuts themselves:

What kind of “nut” is a donut supposed to resemble?

Is it the nut that you’d screw onto a bolt?

Or a nut that you’d pluck from a tree?

Is this a binary choice? Is it one or the other? Or has the lineage of the suffix “-nut” passed beyond the word it was derived from, so that “donut” no longer has a connection to its root word?

In these difficult financial times, I’m looking for any way I can to save money.

Which is why I proposed to my landlord that he could get tax credits from the Feds and the state if he installed solar panels for my apartment building.

It’s a win-win. My landlord could get money back (up to $4500, if I’m reading these web pages correctly) and I’d save money every month on my electric bill.

Plus we’d both be doing more to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and carbon-based fuel sources. OK, him more than me, but, y’know, still. It’s my idea.

I haven’t heard back from him yet. But I’m confident I will. Hear back, I mean. One way or the other.

Is it just me, or does the pun in this video make anyone else laugh hilariously?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qIcujTxA0E&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0]