The Gurly Life

Are you shitting me?

Or, A New Business Opportunity;

Or, Finally, A Way For Those Damn Feline Freeloaders To Make Me Some Money!

A friend brought this to my attention, that the most expensive tea in the world is made from panda droppings. No, really. If you want to click through and check it out because you're shaking your head incredulously, go ahead, I'll be here.

I have also recently learned that the most expensive coffee beans in the world, Kopi Luwak, are eaten and pooped out by a civet, which appears to be a rat-like critter. That's right. A rat. These beans sell for $3,000 a pound.

So I have three words for you:

Cat. Poop. Tea.

I'm looking for investors.

 

Jon Stewart on Fox News Sunday

If you missed this on Facebook, Twitter, and so on, here it is. Worth the 24 minutes.

Jon Kyl, you're a liar

And that is intended to be a factual statement. Dude, seriously. On the plus side, it's a comedy boon.

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Countdown to the Next Countdown - Jon Kyl's Planned Parenthood Statistics
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Pap Smears at Walgreens
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Here are Colbert's tweets about this whole thing. Tee hee. You can follow Stephen Colbert @StephenAtHome and you can go here to see all of Stephen's NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement tweets.

Jon Kyl was the CEO of Enron when they took all those people's pension money. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl assassinated Archduke Ferdinand. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl calls all Asians "Neil" no matter what their name is. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl holds the Guinness World Record for "Largest Collection of Penis Enlargers." #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Jon Kyl once ate a badger he hit with his car. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Citing religious reasons, Jon Kyl refuses to utter the number 8. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Once a year, Jon Kyl retreats to the Arizona Desert and deposits 2 million egg sacs under the sand. #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement

Really?

You're right, Republicans, the way out of a budget crisis is to cut taxes on corporations and the top 2% and cut benefits for teachers. Silly me.

What I'm amazed by is that a handful of really rich people have convinced half the country to vote to advance their interest (the handful of rich people's interests, that is), instead of their own, and that they think they're going to be better off. Well played, Koch brothers, well played.

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The divinity in our humanity

As unrest and demonstrations rage on in Egypt, this from the New York Times (and also earlier reported by MSNBC):

As the chaos continued, it appeared some Egyptians might be taking steps on their own to stop any destruction. An Al Jazeera correspondent, who had spoken by phone to eye witnesses at the National Museum, said that thousands of protesters had formed a “human shield” around the museum to defend from possible looting of antiquities, though there were no confirmed reports that such looting had begun.

I am deeply moved that the people of Egypt, after decades of suffering and deprivation, in the midst of chaos and riots, care so much about their heritage and their world-famous museum, that they would do this. Later, the army replaced this human shield, protecting the National Museum while allowing the ruling party headquarters, the building next door, to burn (from Mother Jones).

I am NPR, hear me roar!

In the last couple of weeks, KPCC, one of the local NPR stations and my personal favorite, is doing their biannual pledge drive.* In fact, maybe all the NPR stations are doing it, not sure. Whatever. It's pretty tedious, I think, to have to beg and plead for people to donate for hours and days. Sometimes they get a little desperate, a little giddy. This morning this earnest exchange occurred while I drove to court:

NPR correspondent 1: We are a little behind. We need 155 new or renewing members in the next hour. It's time to bring down the hammer. My producer printed up this picture of a hammer [presumably, he waves the picture around in the studio, but I can't say for sure because IT'S RADIO AND YOU CAN'T SEE THEM], and it's a big hammer.

NPR correspondent 2: Oooh, scary.

HAHAHAHAHAHA! That is awesome. It's like they were up all night and they just got to that totally nutty place where the weirdest stuff sounds brilliant and witty. If I hadn't already renewed my membership, I would have totally called in.

This beats the other day when they inadvertently mooshed the words "challenge" and "pledge" into "chedge," and explained that pledge time is when they at NPR get "a little flustered, a little edgy." They're such nerds, I love them.

 

*While I'm here, and I happen to have my little soapbox with me, I will get up on it and tell you that KPCC is a great station. If you live in So Cal, I recommend it highly, they're 89.3 on the FM dial, and of course they're online and you can listen to the great reporting on streaming audio. They also have an iPhone app. If you already listen, please consider becoming a member or a one-time donation.

Three weddings and a funeral

Yeah. MY funeral.

Ok, I exaggerate, I admit it. But since there is no pictorial representation (stop pressuring me!!!), I have to get creative. More pictorial representations will come soon, but for now there are words, words, WORDS!

As I recently mentioned, I have had a lot going on. A lot. So here's a recap of what went on this weekend.

1. Dating and such, i.e., 3 weddings

A few months ago I made the decision not to blog about specific dates and men much because having the blog as a background made it more interesting for me to be on bad dates than on good ones. Be careful what you ask for and all that.

I am still doing lots of personal growth work in this area, it just never seems to end. That I can talk about in more detail.

To the point: this weekend I went on 3 dates with 3 different men. One of these guys was Bob, who I've mentioned before. And yes, he's aware of my other dates and being a very cool and generous guy he thinks it's great that I date, thankyouverymuch.

All three men are terrific, and it is the first time in a long time (ever?) that I'm not operating from scarcity. The point being that I recently managed to dislodge yet another crummy belief about me and relationships that had been stuck like a barnacle on the ass of my fabulousness. I know, vivid, right?

The barnacle was that single men my age are not interested in me (and the flip side of that, which is that only unavailable men are interested). What strikes me about this little nugget of joy is that it is VERY specific. Mmh. I have been forced to give up the more generic "men are not interested in me" because it so obviously isn't true as to be bordering on insanity. So I went more specific, this way I got to keep it. Sweet.

I was doing an exercise from Calling In The One (see the What I'm Reading list in the right panel), and I had to look at what I get out of keeping certain beliefs, and being single. This is not the first time I have looked at this question, but I haven't looked at it in a significant amount of time. I've uncovered all kinds of crap since, so it's not too surprising that the inquiry was almost a new one for me. What I saw was that I get to be safe. Because as much as it frustrates me to be constantly circled by unavailable men, and sometimes pains me, there is really no chance that I will really, truly put myself at risk with any of them. Even if I want to (or say that I want to, because really, I don't), they make sure I get shut down. So then I'm all mopey and hurt, but safe.

Even if I find a great guy, I soon find something about him that I cannot possibly put up with so I can continue to complain about how there are no great guys, and the great guys don't like me, blah blah blah. And on it goes.

It's very likely that I've seen this before, and shared it before, but this time it hit me like a ton of bricks. I proceeded to call myself a lot of names, including a fucking liar. Don't worry, it wasn't one of those woe is me kind of things. It was like looking for my keys for hours and they were on the table the whole time, in plain sight, and I wasted all this time being blind. Like that.

I also noticed I do something sneaky to men who are available: just as we get close and all is going well, I drop-kick them. It's not a very obvious thing, because I'm somewhat subtle about it, but that's what I do. That way, I get to push them away first and I get to be right about how I'm not important or unwanted or unlovable, or whatever the self-flagellation of the moment is.

But it's not over. I then got to see how when I'm found out, I have an overwhelming sense that I need to walk from this relationship. I make up excuses like, who is this person to point out that I do such and such? How dare they? Pshaw! What is underneath this is that I'm very invested in looking good and doing it right, and I'm unwilling to be human and imperfect, i.e., look bad. In other words, I'm unwilling to be vulnerable. So rather than simply address the issue, I walk.

Wow, right? I mean, what a fucking racket. I mean, this is like trying to surf the entire internet - it can't be done, you don't get to the end of the internet. You just keep finding interesting stuff and thank goodness for the internet.

And all of a sudden, I get more interest from single and available men in one week than I've had for the past 7 years (I exaggerate, but really, not that much - ask Deirdre, she'll confirm).

We shall see what comes of this.

As an aside, I seem to have an unusual number of people in my life who have no qualms telling me when I'm full of shit and/or when I'm being a jerk. You know who you are. And I want to take this opportunity to tell you that YOU ROCK!! I have very few friends who enable me, thank goodness, they mostly call me on my shit all the time and force me to grow, as uncomfortable as that may be for me.

2. An event, i.e., the funeral

Not really a funeral, not even close. On Saturday I helped out at the Brown Club of Southern California's annual GaLA Bruno, which is our annual membership drive. We had an awesome event, at the home of Matt Miller '83 and his wife Jody Miller. Matt is the host of Left Right And Center on KCRW, one of our local public radios.

We even had a string quartet!

This was the view from their house. I know, right??

Matt said something very interesting: that we can't move forward in politics because special interests on both sides pressure the politicians not to talk about certain things. Thus, the dialog is not honest and open. No open dialogue, no progress. I'm curious to know what these things are that are not being discussed.

A great event, but the temperatures finally dropped (well it IS November, for heaven's sake) so I was freezing for about 5 hours. My feet were so cold I was in pain. I know that in the grand scheme of things it was not very cold. Don't judge me. Needless to say, I was dead at the end of the day - get it? dead? funeral? ha ha. On Sunday I worked out and met a friend for coffee, then basically went back to bed. Och. I slept a lot. And now I'm fine.

The end [curtsies].

When life imitates ... everyone getting high and having a gubernatorial debate

Ok, so I know my comment about this is going to be the LEAST INTERESTING COMMENT ABOUT IT EVER. But finally I cannot resist any longer. I mean, COME ON!! Have you seen any part of the New York gubernatorial debate? If it weren't so funny, it would be depressing. Oh, wait, maybe it would be funny if it weren't so depressing.

Briefly, a recap: "Joining the headline grabbing tea party-favorite Republican candidate [Paladino] and the scion of New York Democratic politics [Andrew Cuomo] were a convicted madam, a Black Panther turned city councilman, a retired mailman [and self-proclaimed karate expert], a current UPS package handler and a lawyer who moonlights as a screenwriter." [From here]

Jimmy McMillan, of the The Rent Is Too Damn High Party. Well, he's kinda right, ok? From here, some of his best quotes:

• On the deficit: "It's like a cancer. It will heal itself."
• On negative campaigning: "As a karate expert, I will not talk about anyone up here."
• On gay marriage: "The Rent Is 2 Damn High Party feels if you want to marry a shoe, I'll marry you."
• On... Jesus, I have no clue what prompted this one: "We plan to bulldoze some of those mountains in Upstate to make New York an independent state. I want my own cable company; I want my own telephone company."
• On the rent: Too damn high.

HAHAHAHA! If you want to marry a shoe, I will marry you? Oh my heavens.

Paladino, as I'm sure we have all heard, has made quite the name for himself for his staunchly family values/anti-gay stance. This coming from the man who has a wife and a mistress. So what he means by family values is polygamy and/or adultery, as long as it's straight poligamy and/or adultery, or as long as it's his poligamy and/or adultery. This guy is less funny, more scary.

Then we have Kristin Davis, a former madam. She said that legislators are "the biggest whores" and she, of all the candidates for governor, is probably the best qualified to deal with them. Well, she's kinda right, too, if you buy into the whore premise. However, I find hypocritical her implication that whores are bad. (A couple more gems can be found here.)

Of course, it's only funny because it's true and over there and because if we don't laugh we will have to stab ourselves in the eye with a sharp object. Can I vote for Andrew Cuomo from California, or is that, like, not allowed?

"I was wrong, and Heston was right." Yep.

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FIRE!

This morning I was getting ready for work, specifically I was in the middle of my morning virasana, when suddenly I heard strange crackle-and-pop sounds coming from somewhere across the street. It sounded much like someone jumping all over some oversize bubble wrap. After a minute or two, I got up and looked out the window, but couldn't see the source of the noise as it was behind some trees. Then I noticed black flakes falling from the sky, and looking up I saw the smoke and where the black flakes were coming from.

Apparently one of the houses across the street was in the process of catching fire. Some bamboo along their property line had gone up, and by the time the LAFD showed up about 90 seconds later, part of a shed in the back had caught fire and was being quickly burned up.

Needless to say, I came downstairs for some pics, but LAFD was too fast for me. Thankfully.