Breaking up with George Bush

I’m loving all the comparisons of the end of the Bush presidency with the end of a bad relationship… And it’s true, when I was at the inauguration, it really felt very cleansing, like we needed 2 million people to stand in sub-freezing temperatures for eight hours in order to collectively cleanse of the past eight years. Here’s one blog post that makes the analogy. Since Tuesday I’ve realized just how low my standards have become for President – something that also happens in a bad relationship. Watching Obama repeal the gag rule, Hillary get confirmed and military prisons closed makes me realized how little I’ve come to expect from Washington.

Mexico

Sarayana enjoyed an adventure-full trip to five Mexican states: Quintana Roo, Chiapas, Tobasco, Campeche and the Yucatan.

Here’s a photographic sampling from each one:

Tabasco

Chiapas

Campeche

Quintana Roo

Wheel in the Oatmeal

Who knew that my grandfather was ahead of his time while swearing up and down that Oatmeal was the best breakfast ever?  The hot topic in the food industry, oatmeal.  It’s the new thing for fast, healthy breakkie…Starbucks is carrying it, so is Jamba Juice.  The draw for businesses: it’s uber cheap and can be sold for about $3 a bowl.

The thing is…according to the WSJ the sales of hot cereals are cooling in the supermarket.  I wonder if I would be more willing to have a $3 prepared bowl of oatmeal w/ my latte rather than make a $.25 bowl at home (which btw would take less time).  Who knows?  I’m just loving that oatmeal is the hottest thing since sliced bagels.

Mmmm....

Friendship

Ok, this is sort of a cheesy post, but it seems to be something that is on Sarayana’s minds this week.  The follow situations apply:

1.  An ex-non boyfriend is taking you to an out-of-town wedding the same weekend of his birthday.  His “other” friends threw him a HUGE birthday weekend bash with dancing, dinner out, homemade cake and thoughtful gifts.  Does it make you less of a friend that you will not be doing the same or something similar, even though you will be in his presence on his birthday?  Are you obliged to make this a special day?  How????

2.  A friend of yours chooses not to own a car, but asks you for rides all the time: to the furniture store, to the airport.  This is a multiple-times-a-week situation.  Is it ok to say no?  When?

3.  Another friend is running for local political office.  You make a low salary and choose to not spend your money on your friend’s campaign, not because you are being mean or selfish, but because the friend is often “out of line” when it comes to fund-raising tactics and doesn’t act like a real friend at all.

How do you react to these situations?

Save cheese!

While the US government is on the verge of a mental breakdown trying to figure out how to save the faltering makers of cars that nobody seems to want to drive anymore, Italy has got its priorities straight. The country is bailing out its Parmesan makers. This is no laughing matter: after all, if you can’t buy a Chrysler, there is always Honda. But what would happen to my pasta without Parmesan?! It’s not like you can replace it with cheddar and it’ll still get you from point A to point B!

Current_tv Targets Jewelry

Now that I have figured out how to post Youtube videos, I can’t stop. This one is amazing. I despise these jewelry ads, as well as their billboard-counterparts.

And so the disappointments begin…

Both of us supported Obama for president, but neither one of us ever “drank the kool-aid” of his candidacy. I was actually an ardent Clinton supporter in the primaries, but eventually came around and even volunteered for the Obama campaign. So the chances of Obama majorly disappointing us were a lot lower than many of his supporters who utterly worshipped him. Still, I am pretty appalled that he not only chose Rick Warren to be the pastor at his inauguration, but is actually defending his choice. I find the idea of open-mindness when applied to people like Warren, who is the definition of closed-mindedness, a complete sham. Forget the overquoted comparison of homosexuality to incest. It’s the whole concept of bowing down to the intolerant evangelical right. You cannot unify those who oppose unity. Can we please stop pandering to that fringe group that already wields way too much influence? Obama is making a huge mistake and is not only disappointing his supporters, but is also alienating his base.

Clever Take on Equal Pay

Someone shared this with me and I loved this video’s in-your-face approach to the wage gap:




A Christmas Tale

Well, last night, while my counterpart was finding out whether Size Matters, I went to the movies with my mother. The selection of parent-friendly movies at the moment is quite slim, so we settled on A Christmas Tale, a French film with Catherine Deneuve and Chaira Mastroianni (daughter of Marcello and Deneuve in real life). It turned out to be the third over-two-hours movie in a row that I’ve seen about disfunctional families (the first two being Rachel Getting Married and Amarcord – a Fellini film from the 70s) in less than a month.

Not surprisingly, the movie got rave reviews from both Salon and the New York Times (and a whooping 89% on rottentomatoes.com). I think it’s mandatory for reviewers from those publications to worship any film that is a) in French, b) over two hours long, c) has Catherine Deneuve in it. But I must admit, the movie is quite powerful. It is centered around a French family, the matriarch of which (Deneuve) gets diagnosed with cancer fairly early on, and for the next 2.5 hours we watch their stories and their dynamics unravel. The most interesting point of the movie, which is eloquently summarized in Salon, is this:

…[T]he painful, wonderful, freeing truth that Desplechin gets at in “A Christmas Tale” (as he did in “Kings and Queen”) is that sometimes people feel the most lost within the context of their own families — the very context within which they should feel most at home.

It is true. We watch these people, who have known each other their whole lives and who love each other almost out of habit, realize how little they really know about one another. The house, another powerful character in the movie, connects them all with its own personality, history, complexity. And Deneuve is still, after all these years, magnificent.

Serious Important Post

Well, in an effort to save this blog from becoming a sex-blog only (in fear that we’ll run out of material due to Sarayana’s limited experience in the area…), this is going to be a Serious and Important Post.

The New York Times published this article today that discusses the role of the financial meltdown on men’s self-esteem. The premise is that the author, a psychiatrist, has noticed a rise in male patients who have been coming to him with anxiety, and his theory is that the economic crisis is destroying their self-confidence. I found this quote particularly interesting:

I have plenty of female patients who work in finance at high levels, but none of them has had this kind of psychological reaction. I can’t pretend this is a scientific survey, but I wonder if men are more likely than women to respond this way. At the risk of trading in gender stereotypes, do men rely disproportionately more on their work for their self-esteem than women do? Or are they just more vulnerable to the inevitable narcissistic injury that comes with performing poorly or losing one’s job?

I can’t decide if it’s good or bad that women’s self-esteem is not as tied up with their careers as men’s. On the one hand, this may just be because women have not been dominating the workplace long enough for this to occur. On the other, it may be because women do not feel pride about their professional accomplishments as often as men. Or perhaps women are just more realistic about their professional success and take a more holistic approach to happienss. Just earlier today Sarayana were discussing whether sometimes professional disappointments actually stem from troubles at home.

The bigger question that arises from this, though, is whether this means the demise of the Wall Street/Corporate Asshole-type dudes who have been ruling the streets and bars of Manhattan for way too long?