It must be true, I won an award!

The Academy Awards were last night, all is now clear. The King's Speech must be a better movie than the Black Swan or Inception. Natalie Portman is now a better actress than Annette Bening. Hey it must be true. Our society is a meritocracy after all, we are all about the merit. Reward the achievers, the rest of us can bask in their reflected glow. How could that ever go wrong?

Wait a minute, didn't I say achievers? We honor achievers, we elect, well you know.

So consider this list of achievements...

Awards and honors

• Anti-Defamation League – Torch of Liberty Award
• Beta Theta Pi (Zeta Phi Chapter) – Wall of Fame
• Brunel University (London) – Honorary Doctor of Social Sciences
• Child Advocates – Super Hero Honoree Award
• Episcopal High School – Campaign Fundraiser Award
• Gas Daily – Man of the Year Award
• Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans – Annual Membership Award
• Houston Area Women’s Center – Honoree
• Houston Children’s Chorus – Honoree
• Houston Community Partners – Father of The Year
• Kenneth Lay Day – Proclaimed by Kathryn J. Whitmire, Mayor of Houston, Texas
• Kiwanis Club of Houston and the Greater Houston Partnership – International Executive of the Year
• March of Dimes – Award of Distinction
• NAACP Freedom Fund Banquet – Mickey Leland Humanitarian Award
• National Conference of Christians and Jews – Brotherhood Award
• Oswego State University – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree
• Phi Beta Kappa – Outstanding Alumnus Award
• Private Sector Council – Annual Leadership Award
• Stanford Business School Alumni Associations – Houston Business Man of the Year
• Texans For Lawsuit Reform – Award
• Texas Association of Minority Business Enterprises – Texas Corporate Partnering Award
• Texas Business Hall of Fame – Inductee
• Texas Navy Admiral – Commissioned by William P. Clements, Jr., Governor of Texas
• Texas Society To Prevent Blindness – Man of Vision Award
• The Brookwood Community – Honoree Award
• The Rotary Club of Houston – Distinguished Citizen Award
• The Wall Street Transcript – Chief Executive Officer Award
• United States Energy Association – United States Energy Award
• U.S. Navy – Navy Commendation Medal & National Defense Service Medal
• University of Colorado, College of Business and Administration – Ben K. Miller Memorial, International Business Award
• University of Houston – Distinguished Alumnus Award
• University of Houston – Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters Degree
• University of Missouri – Honorary Doctor of Law Degree; The Hebert J. Davenport Society Benefactor Award
• Volunteer Houston – Honoree Award

...what an amazing guy with a pile of awards like that. It certainly is good living in a meritocracy where the cream rises to the top and if you don't become wealthy or famous it is probably your own fault. Thank god there are plenty of  awards so we know what we like? Who was good? What qualifies as art? Consider  an America without American Idol? How would we ever know who is a great singer? Why we might be fooled by...

Raw Vegan Goodness!

No I am not crazy. I just came back from the  "Organic Garden" in Beverly. I went because I love my friends, because I'm going stir crazy with the winter, and because you never turn down a chance to mooch a meal. I also figured that eating raw, vegan food would give me some sort of "Fear Factor" street cred. What's the worst that could happen? Boy was I wrong. The stuff was delicious.

 I'm almost mad about it, because despite this bloggy little exercise in politics and food porn I create I don't eat very much meat. There's a reason for that. I actually got to murder my own dinner many times when I was a wee lad. I spent a summer working at a religious retreat (many posts buried in my soul from that 3 months) that had their own farm. It wasn't a factory farm though so I never even blinked about the concept of where meat comes from. When Bessie got too old you eat her. What were you supposed to do? Let her go to waste? Then my friend who invited me today linked me over to this.

No Green Beans

This is my 30th Post. It's Sunday Morning, February 27th and I just wanted to come clean. Even though I'm a skeptic I love the idea of a supreme being. Truth. I also want to believe in magic, happy endings, true love, Santa Claus, the Democrats, desserts that aren't fattening, the kindness of strangers, karma, destiny, the meek shall inherit the earth, life is like a box of chocolates, our president, our congress, the Red Sox, the Bruins, the Celtics, all men are created equal, everything works out in the end, I just look that way because the camera adds 10 pounds, there is life after death, space people exist,  they will balance the budget with-out crushing programs that help poor women and sick kids, and right about now you have to be shaking your head because no matter what you believe you know that I'm in for a truckload of disappointment. True that.

But aren't we all hard wired to believe in the unbelievable? More importantly doesn't the unbelievable come true every once and a while? Sure it's a bad way to bet, but who would have though that a lightening bolt to the primal ooze half a billion years ago would create a cascading series of events that could result in Justin Bieber and Mylie Cyrus  reproducing themselves someday, maybe with each other? No I did not just disprove the theory of evolution. So even though I don't roll the dice myself I can't really blame people that do... And shame on me because all the really great stuff we ever did ( I'm talking the universal we here ) required a leap of faith at some point. It is Sunday, so I'm going to load you up with the greatest gospel singer of the twentieth century, only if you're a believer...



... and I'm going to give  the rest of you something real, something that our parents and our parents, parents believed in. Hey, it came from the sweat of their brows and their own leap of faith in themselves. More importantly it is what everyone, red state or blue state, is afraid of losing.



Well that was pretty simple, a whole post with almost no irony or sarcasm. You know why? Because when push comes to shove I believe in you people, not just your parents. It is amazing how many hard working honorable people I meet in the coarse of a day. Unfortunately for my hard working and honorable friends this post doesn't have a green bean recipe. Oops! I promised too didn't I? OK, real quick.

The Rules Matter.

When you cook stuff the rules matter. Put a piece of chicken in a pot of boiling water for 20 minutes and it will be cooked and it will be edible, but you're not going to want to eat it. That's because of the rules. The rules of physics actually. No matter how much you want say "screw the rules" if you put that piece of chicken in that pot of boiling water you are going to have some nasty, gnarly, dried-out, tough chicken. So just change the rules, right? You can't dumb-ass! Physics is above your pay grade. There are rules that can be changed though.

Wisconsin wants to change the rules for state employee unions. They want to take away the right to collective bargaining. So what, you say. " I think unions need a good spanking. We need to balance our budgets, why do they have stuff I don't have?" The thing is you don't need to strip away a right in order to balance a budget. Your church would probably suggest that hating on someone because they have a good deal is a bad thing. I might even concede that unions need a good spanking, I might if they hadn't been getting spanked ever since Ronny Ray-gun told the air traffic controllers to take a walk. We can go round and round on that, but can we agree that if they take away a "right" we all lose the use of that right. Hey, maybe we might need that "right" down the line.



You'll have to wait until the end of the clip before you get to my point, but it might be worth your time. Old George could really nail things when he wanted to.

Us? We have to deal with the rules of physics. Namely important stuff like how heat caramelizes sugar, starch is water soluble,  and butter, Mmmm butter!, brings on the goodness.

I just took a walk.

I was going to do a post today about the way the Republican members of congress are trying to trample women's reproductive rights. I was going to weave that theme in with a few pop culture highlights, then finish the whole thing with the mashed potato and green bean recipes I didn't give you with yesterdays post, hopefully making the whole thing fun instead of offensive. That's what I was going to do. I'm going to tell you about my walk instead.

I didn't sleep well last night. A friend of mine needed me to go with him to housing court today, but I have an appointment this morning. This is probably his last hurrah before the banks take his house. He was obviously distraught, raging at the injustice of it all, the failures of the government, how his enemies will gloat, how he moved furniture for years to buy that house, how they're stealing his labor. It was paranoid, it was true, it was spin, it was about mistakes in life made and not made. It was me with a little bad luck.

Yeah, it's all about me. So after a night of tossing and turning I just had to get out of here. Out my front door and into the sunshine. The sky is really blue today and you can feel a hint of spring in the air. The sidewalks are finally clear after months of unshoveled snow. As I head toward the T station everything is still quiet.  The yoga studio is closed, so is the tattoo parlor, someone is inside the liquor store but that's closed too. The rent-a-car lot has a couple of young hispanic kids wiping down the cars,  a woman in a green blazer is visible at the computer at the front desk. I wave to the kids, they don't wave back. Both are wearing earbuds; I'm not even on their radar.

I keep walking. There's a small gang at the White Hen. They're drinking cheap coffee, smoking cheap cigarettes, and filing in and out for scratch tickets as they convert their 2 dollar winnings into another roll of the dice. I buy a paper, it's early but there are only 4 on the stack. If I come back tonight there will still be 2, soon they won't carry the paper at all. No need for it around here.  I pass the bus stop, but it's empty. School is closed for the February break. People schedule trips to Disney land, you can't have school interfere with that even though the kids have already missed almost 2 weeks worth of classes because of snow. What hardship could going late in the summer cause? A kid losing out on a summer job?Hundreds of people trying to learn in unair-conditioned 80 degree buildings?

I skip "Mark's Deli". It's a nifty little slice of the 50's buried directly under the railroad tracks. Unfortunately I've got some pounds to shed by summer so the siren call of cheese omelet with a side of ham has to be resisted. I pop into "Sweet Things" instead for a coffee. Will power is required here too, there's a Mom/daughter team baking away, but I don't like sweets in the morning the way I like eggs. Both women are cheerful and welcoming but the place isn't exactly mobbed. Maybe later in the morning, right now I'm the only foot traffic and the car people are at Dunkin Donuts.

What's the Beef?

You'll see me come back to this one over and over. Roast Beef is good.

The regular news, with an extra shout-out to Fox news, is lame.

I mean let's face it. You come home, you've been working all day, you just want a little comfort. After all you work hard you deserve it. So, when you slide that roast out of the oven, and the whole house smells of beef, and you put a few slices on your plate along with a heep of garlic mashed potatoes and green beans , and you pour on the gravy, just at that moment you know that today was a good day. Then you turn on this.



Scary stuff, Oh No!, the whole world is going to hell in a hand basket! Run away! Run away! Now far be it from me to downplay the dangers of the modern world. Justin Bieber alone is a reason to tremble. Your news people shouldn't be just trying to scare and manipulate you though. Democratic uprisings in the middle-east aren't going to have guaranteed outcomes. Still, democracy is a good idea, right?



Listen for just the first few moments(or the whole thing if you want, this is America). Democracy is a noble thing. It was well worth blowing up a country of strangers and killing 10's of thousands of their people if we can bring that off. Then go back to that first clip. Apparently the Egyptians aren't ready to take the training wheels off the bike, and God only knows about all those other countries. (Shhh! don't tell anyone, but muslims live there.). Hogwash! Enjoy your dinner, turn off the news, and talk to your kids about why democracy is good and why people have the right to self determination. You could have the kids send Billo a letter reminding him when he liked democracy too. You know  what you believe. Consequences and Billo be damned.

What is the Beef!

Boy that's kind of a prissy meal. Well let's tackle the beef and then we'll man up the rest of the plate.

We are so stupid.

1. Us banks created credit default swaps, took our toxic mortgages, diced them up, inserted them into the credit default swaps, and voila! no risk ever again! Wee! it's like we can just print money.
2. Uh oh! Barney Frank + Acorn are crashing the economy (B***S**T but its better than banks being blamed right?).
3. Well the default swaps are still triple A rated investments Mr Public Pension administrator. They can't (cough, cough) fail.
4. Crap they failed anyway. Sorry. Lucky for us banks we are too big to fail.
5. Bush and Obama take turns giving us lots of your money, bonus time!
6. Oops! the states have a hugh deficit. Their pension funds are under water. Somebody sold them toxic investments. Someone will have to take a hit.
7. Time to stop those damn unions from wrecking the economy (not the police or fire fighters, Republicans (and bankers), like the police and firefighters).
8. Look at those greedy teachers and clerks having a job action. Why do they hate America?
9. I love me my gold bathroom fixtures.
10. It really is like we can just print money. I'm glad workers hate teachers and clerks more than they hate us. That way we won't get any flak when we foreclose on their houses.
11. If we are lucky we might actually be the lien holders. We merged so many times that finding the paper work is kind of a bother.
12. Somebody should have gone to jail for this. I hope those Acorn people are finally brought to justice.
13. I really do love me my gold bathroom fixtures.
14. Maybe we can get them to privatize social security. I'd love me a solid gold bathtub.