I need strength

Like literally, healthy calories, in the form of protein, green vegetables, iron-rich foods etc. I would like to live in world where healthy meals showed up on my doorstep every four hours and I'd just eat. (To my astonishment, such a thing exists on a fairly grand scale.)I recognize this would flout the joys of cooking.

As it stands, I've had a hard time negotiating some tastiness out of that stubborn broccoli. Yes, I steam it, yes I add salt and pepper and a bit of cheese, but it's kind of an unyielding vegetable. And it doesn't feel right to drown it in something to cover up the taste altogether. And then there's spinach. For chrissake, how unlikable is spinach?

Awesome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_HXUhShhmY

Lasantha Wickramatunga

http://www.thesundayleader.lk/20090111/editorial-.htm

"It is well known that I was on two occasions brutally assaulted, while on another my house was sprayed with machine-gun fire. Despite the government's sanctimonious assurances, there was never a serious police inquiry into the perpetrators of these attacks, and the attackers were never apprehended. In all these cases, I have reason to believe the attacks were inspired by the government. When finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me."

--Lasantha Wickramatunga, killed January 22nd.

Three days and I have a headache

So Barack Hussein Obama is the 44th president of the United States...a relief after the collective gulag that was Bush. Obama, true to promises, has taken the first step by requesting a 120-day halt to the torture-allowing trials at Guantanamo Bay. He has reaffirmed his commitment to end torture overall. And he has expressed solidarity with peace loving people anywhere.

Then, today, he bombs at least five people at the Afghan-Pakistani border.

This is a continuation of a Bush policy of "rooting out terrorists" on the border of those two countries, supposedly where bin Laden and his friends hang. It is a policy that has suffered little or no public debate, no thought to consequences or, in military terms, effectiveness.

I hate to ruin the collective post-coital/inaugural cigarette inhale, but from what I've heard, Pakistan (and therefore Afghanistan) -- more than Iraq, North Korea, Iran and your mom -- pose the single greatest threats to long-term global security. The deprivation and the poverty, combined with the lack of infrastructure, the 70+percent illiteracy statistics, lawlessness and, um, nuclear weapons makes these places very important. Not only to rid the world of genuine terror, but to make way for stability for everyone there and here.

Can we at least talk about this Mr. Obama? I'd like to know if these missile strikes are necessary. I would like to know why American generals are so concerned about America invading Pakistani sovereignty and inflaming and radicalizing people, yet within a few days of your presidency, your continuation of this Bush policy has not even been subject to explanation or, better yet, debate.

It is already hitting CNN, albeit with little fanfare or surprise. Now that we're lying cozy in bed together, can we talk about this please?

Indians and gays

From Pam's House Blend:

A Tennessee man said Thursday that he was weighing his legal options after being fired from a Nashville-area hotel specifically for being gay.

"They literally said to me that because of my orientation and my 'alternative lifestyle' that I was not a fit for the hotel," said David Hill, formerly the director of human resources for the former Brentwood Holiday Inn (currently doing business as ARTE' Hotel, with no connection to the Holiday Inn chain). "[Tarun Surti, the hotel's owner] said, 'I don't give a damn. They can sue me. I will not have any of 'the gay leadership role' in my hotel.' And that's a quote."

Mr. Hill has filed complaints with the EEOC and Department of Labor, and is currently in talks with the ACLU, Tennessee Equality Project and the Tennessee Labor Board about pursuing legal action.

"The owner, Mr. Surti, comes from a culture that is not very tolerant to the gay lifestyle," added assistant general manager Leonard Stoddard, who was ordered to dismiss Hill, "and therefore he felt it necessary to have him removed from the workforce at the property."

Now, I'm guessing that Mr. Tarun Surti is Indian. Just an unconfirmed guess based on his name and, well, yeah, the fact that he owns a hotel and a reference to his homophobic culture.

Which brings to light another fact in many hidden and not-so-hidden quarters in the Indiascape: bigotry. Bigotry towards gays, blacks, dark browns, and, of course, women. (With all the requisite qualifications against generality.)

Now I don't know the details of the case. Maybe something was bothering Uncle that day. But it sounds to me as if this fella was laid off simply because of his sexual orientation. Which is wrong. But more troubling is that there is no legal recourse for this fellow.

I am not familiar with gay right's laws, but according to Pam's House Blend, there's not a damn thing this guy can do under current law. Which is why the law must change.

Desperate times

This will book end my string of haphazards posts. I just have some burning questions to ask.
When someone gets murdered or killed in the District or the Metro area, why isn't there a stop-what-you're-doing, t.v. commercial-interruption, all-hands on deck to find out what went wrong and why newscasts and media reports? Why is it NOT everything anyone talks about for a few days? Why isn't it a colossal tragedy that hurts us all?

Why do the newspapers devote free print to the Redskins, I would argue whorish levels of print to the Redskins, and to sports in general as opposed to, say, another, more persistent feature of the Washington area: homelessness and poverty? How about a poverty section in the paper? On television. Devoted only to that? It's part of our community after all, and in growing numbers judging by Council of Government reports and say, a stroll by Martha's Table.

Why don't we see, aside from on PBS, pictures of people who die in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places where open and covert and proxy wars are being fought in the name of Americans? What is the aversion, aside from the obvious obscenity, to seeing the fruits of our tax dollars?

Not rhetorical. I am genuinely curious what people think the answers to these questions are, and how news directors and agenda-setters would answer these questions. I want to know what everyone seems to think is so obvious. What am I missing?

I'm not asking for 24-hour-a-day outrage at the injustices of the world. I am just trying understand this unflagging ability for people to sleep walk through their lives, as if none of this affects them directly. How long can so many people abide this tacit compliance to ignore and thereby endorse the status quo? How long before their souls start screaming out of the seams? Has it already happened?

I don't know. If you're in a hypnotic enough state where you can't see what's right before your eyes I suppose this will sound like a tantrum rather than what I believe it is. A hope that people, for lack of something less cliche, wake up.

Criminal

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98125240#email