Completely Unnecessary

President Obama will rescind the Mexico City Policy - otherwise known as the ‘global gag rule’ - today.

I was hoping he’d do it yesterday, but apparently not using symbolic dates to deliberately piss off anti-choicers is part of this whole post-partisan thing we’ve been hearing so much about.

Hmmm.

I am an ideologue on this issue, but I guess I’ll let the president slide this one time.

He’ll probably sign the Ledbetter Fair-Wage bill next week once the language gets worked out in Conference. (Omg, we get him for at least four years!)

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Sure, it’s not as sexy sounding as ‘Sec Def’ - though if you don’t carefully enunciate, it’s actually more sexy sounding - but Hillary Rodham Clinton looks to be a great Secretary of State.

I’ve had a number of discussions with other HRC fans, and none of us could understand why Clinton would take this post.

It locks her into an Obama administration, leaving her unlikely/unable to challenge him for the presidency in 2012. She easily could have brokered for strong committee appointments in the Senate. She also probably eliminated a run for NY governor.

But perhaps we’ve all bought too much into the idea of Clinton machinations, because it really seems like Clinton really just wants to be Secretary of State.

I can’t remember seeing her as relaxed and happy as she seems in her swearing in photo.

(And unfortunately that’s a small version; on my tv last night, she looked beatific.)

And check out her speech to State employees today. [Ed. - You have to watch it via that link (or at the Jezebel post below) because my software and MSNBC don't like each other so much. Sorry!]

Where was this woman on the campaign trail?

She’s charming, sounds incredibly sincere and embodies everything I want in the office. And most importantly, she seems at ease,  something she never seemed during the presidential campaign.

Interestingly, her poise in that speech reaffirms my decision to back Obama in the primaries. It appears she’s built for the role of top diplomat.

Well, this is all coming together nicely. I hope it’s as good a fit as it seems for both her and us.

Links:
Hillary Clinton Greets Her New Job, Staff with a Smile [Jezebel]

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I really miss the days of creative spam.

There was a time when those who sought to enlarge the size of my penis went to extraordinary lengths (right?) to conceal the lurid content of their messages.

Interesting email addresses  (and bizarrely long quotes from The Hobbit) were the brown manila envelope of the internet age.

Today I got a spam from someone simply called ‘Penis’.

Should the time ever arise (right?) when I need to thrill her with the size/girth/turgidity of my admittedly minute manflesh, I don’t feel I could trust a company/some dude/bot that can’t put the time and effort into wooing me into clicking on the link.

[Sigh. I started to write a sentence about the puns coming naturally, but that yielded just far too many more puns. It's a family restaurant.]

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My American phone is a more sophisticated creature than my Australian phone (the biggest advantage is that when people want to talk to me on it, I can (sometimes) hear the words they’re speaking - insane, I know).

The text message capability is particularly advanced. After typing in just a couple letters, it will suggest longer words that you might be too lazy to type. (This doesn’t get used much since I’m used to typing in every godforsaken letter on my Samsung.)

I was typing ‘eek’ in a text message tonight, but the combination (335) comes up as other things first - such as ‘del’ and ‘eel’.

And, to my immense surprise, ‘felledefoo’.

Erhm, okay phone. That is not a word; I checked.

Well, I checked Google - and it appears that this guy’s friend has the same phone as me.

I am thinking about writing to Dan Savage and offering it up as a contender for the next naming contest he has. I mean, it’s already in my phone - might as well have a function.

ps - I also just scraped up my arm falling down the basement stairs for the umpteenth time. Ah, the sweet graze of stucco. Nothing says, ‘I’m home!’ like careening uncontrollably down a flight of stairs. (I caught myself about five down - hence the stucco burn on my elbow and the fledgling bruise on my left ribs.)

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For the national races, the NYT has a great interactive map that allows you to see the country as a snapshot to zoom in to states and counties.

Fivethirtyeight and electoral-vote are also updating regularly.

If you’re interested in local Chicago elections, the Tribune’s is down, but the Sun Times has results up as does ABC 7. Those are for IL House, but you can navigate to other areas.

I’m headed either to the bar or downtown to the festivities. See you in a bit - or at the end of the night!

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Oh, there are so few hours in the day.

I’ve been marking my little butt off for the past few days - in no short part because of my excess of blogging last week (amongst other reasons).

We will return to our regularly scheduled vague outrage tomorrow.

For tonight, I’m going dancin’ and Buffy-watchin’.

Oh, um, so America might collaspse, huh?

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As part of a dinner party last night, I hung out with a five-year-old. We bonded over Irish dancing, and, by the time dinner was served, I’d made a new friend.

I amused her by figuring out what she’d had for dinner through her belly (it’s a ’skill’ of my mother’s, which now that I’m an adult seems pretty simple: it consists only of knowing what a kid’s eaten and then expressing great surprise upon ‘feeling’ carrots, etc.).

And then we also had this exchange:

“Excuse me. What’s your name again?”
“Brie. It’s a kind of cheese if that helps you remember it.’
“Oh, does anyone call you ‘Cheddar’?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Do they call you Cheddar because you talk a lot?”

I’m not sure how those two things got connected in her mind, but I’d be hard-pressed to say she’s wrong on the second count.

But she thought Avi was my dad, so just goes to show how smart she is.

Ha! I am a meek and sensitive wallflower.

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Remember how for the last several months everyone, everywhere has been like, “Boo China! Boo! Torch, human rights abuses, Beijing is a smoggy nightmare, military crackdown, boo!’

The Age has been running at least a story a day about how horrible everything is in China.

Until today. Today’s age.com.au is more or less: ‘Shiny, happy, pretty! Oi, oi, oi! OMG, can you wait for the swimming?!?!’

And no, I can’t wait, because the US is going to kick some overachieving antipodean ass. And Michael Phelps shaved off his mustache, so that’ll probably skim another 87 million seconds off his times. We will crush you. (Sorry guys, swimming is about the only thing I get patriotic about.)

And the swimming’s also about the only Americans I’m likely to see on the TV. (Seriously Channel 7, the Australia v Belarus women’s basketball game? The only thing interesting about that match up was how many air balls there were. Apparently the women’s shooting was really cool - the Czech Republic upset China - but no…)

Women’s gymnastics doesn’t even seem to be on the schedule, which has to be a mistake. (I also get vaguely patriotic about gymnastics.)

Anyway, given the chance for Aussie gold in the men’s cycling, we’ll be showing that all afternoon. It’s kind of nice, actually. They let one of the Chinese riders lead the pack through most of downtown Beijing. And all the cyclists are taking it easy through the first section, chatting and smiling with people from other countries.

It’s what the Olympics are all about!

SBS is running women’s beach volleyball, which is so only an Olympic sport because there are women in bikinis. Norway versus Belarus (again!). How do you get into that sport in either of those countries? It’s the middle of summer, and it’s freezing in Norway. Belarus is landlocked (though they appear to have some nice lakes…)

Bikinis!

Which, as I mentioned above, is more or less what China’s doing. But, you know, with fireworks.

Oh, I also learned this morning that equestrian dressage commentary is what hell is like. They had nothing. During the two and a half minutes I watched it, the two commentators completely ran out of things to talk about. Actual quotes: “Oh, and I hear he’s quite the singer. Yes, yes, he definitely enjoys singing.”

Mix that with watching a horse trot and you’ve got the best reason for putting dressage on in the morning when no one is watching.

Except people who are avoiding work!

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Sometimes you get what you pay for - sometimes you get a lot less.

I’ve been going to the Biba Academy to get my hair cut since I’ve lived here. Like the Aveda School, they’re generally good and all supervised - I’ve gotten one relative dog of a haircut, but whatever.

My hair’s pretty easy to cut - being stick straight and all - and the uptick in Australian salon prices is one of the few cost adjustments I just haven’t gotten used to. (My housemate, Kass, and I now judge the price of big ticket items in terms of how many of her accidental $200 haircuts they cost. For instance, a pair of $150 boots are only 3/4 the price of a haircut. Sold!)

But I’m making more money now, so I thought about treating myself to the lifestyle of those not living off student loans. But in the end, I figured, what was the harm? I’d have them keep it long, and if I didn’t like it, I could go somewhere more expensive in a couple weeks.

So much for that.

Despite my exhortations to keep it longish, but to take some length off the back and generally cut into it to keep it interesting, I am now NOT the proud owner of about two-thirds of my hair.

I have to take my glasses off during haircuts, so it’s always like my own little version of an Extreme Makeover reveal when I put them back on. I can see shapes, however, and I could tell that this was going a bit weird.

We got to the end of the cut and it was pretty blunt and conservative. So her supervisor and I were both like, “Okay, add some layers and break up the line.”

Suddenly, there was lots more cutting. (And pulling, jesus she was like removing follicles to razor my hair). Getting nervous, I joked, “Heh. Better watch out or I’m not going to have much hair left,” as she continued her flurry of inspiration.

About a minute later, I was done joking. “You need to stop cutting. Now.”

The long and the short of it (mostly short) is that my ‘keep it long just in case it’s not what you want plan’ is stuffed. And the front won’t stay behind my ear enough to stay in my helmet, so biking is going to be a joy. Not even Sunny’s grilled pork sandwich has rallied my flagging spirits.

I was having a chat with Avi the other day about how even if we made it super rich, we wouldn’t live in crazy flash houses and the like. We’d be able to live the same or a little bit better and just work way less. (Avi did, however, want one Lamborghini).

Apparently, Pluto, god of money, doesn’t see it the same way. I feel I’ve been punished for considering vaguely excessive expenditure and then rejecting it.

Well, at least I have no split ends. (That, of course, would be impossible considering there is not a single hair on my head that avoided losing several inches of its length.)

Actually, I can sum up the haircut in one quick moment. She went to get a mirror to show me the back, but then stood directly behind me, making it impossible to see anything. I kept trying to get her to move to the side so I could engage in this pointless activity (there was no chance I was letting her back at my head even if it’d been weird), but she just kept standing there. I was literally waving my arms to the right, trying to get her to move, but to no avail. I was like, “Okay, it’s fine. Where’s my coat?”

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