Old School Friday: Bad Day, Man, Bad

The theme for this week's Old School Friday is music for a "bad day." Must be something in the water because I've had a bad week. So, here it goes ...

If I'm in a general funk after a bad day, then it's Curtis Mayfield from Superfly to Marvin Gaye's rendition of Mayfield's "Trouble Man" and then "Kung Fu."

Eventually I end up with Marvin himself and "Inner City Blues," which is the video below.



If I'm mad enough to throw something, then I listen to The Pope by Prince a few times to hear not just Prince but Bernie Mac saying "I ain't scared of you, m----------."

But for the song I'm most likely to put on after a bad day, I've got to step across the OSF 1999 line to November 2000 with Erykah Badu's Penitentiary Philosophy. This is a song I play when I am angry as in having a bad week, not just a bad day, and need to get over myself. I've driven in my car for 45 minutes with this song on loop.



You may have heard that Ms. Badu had a bad day of her own recently with a stalker toting a Toucan in front of her house. Read about that here.

After I've gone through my mad music, which probably will include Janet Jackson's "Control," and I start to simmer down, I may play "Do Whatcha Wanna" by the Rebirth Brass Band and then move forward to "Stir Up the Gift" by Joe Pace and The Colorado Mass Choir for the healing.

I have other music for a bad day, but much of it was recorded after the year 2000. Had a lot more anger issues that I needed to tackle, I think, after my divorce. ;-)

The creators of the Old School Friday meme are Mrs. Grapevine and Marvalus at OBW and has these rules, if you want to join the party.

OTHER participants: Check out all participants at THIS link. If you're not on the list, please let me know by leaving a comment on my OSF Participants post.

Top 10 Becomes Top 9: American Idol (spoilers for west coast)

Tonight on American Idol's elimination show, Matt Giraud, Michael Sarver and Scott MacIntyre were in bottom three. Skip to the end of this post to see who was voted off. Pretend you don't see the picture here.

Rubin "the teddy bear" Studdard performed as part of the show's "bring back an idol" effort. What did he sing again? Boring. He should not have won American Idol.


Smokey Robinson performed with Joss Stone singing, "You're the One for Me." I didn't like the harmony on the chorus.

But Stevie Wonder came out before Ryan Seacrest announced the elimination and did a medley of his Motown hits. You can't go wrong with Stevie, ever.

Again I'm sending readers to Elisa Camahort's recap of the performance show. I agree with her on Adam Lambert, btw. And when we don't agree, she still makes me laugh. Here are tidbits from that regarding the contestants that ended up in the bottom 3 and one who should have.

In her recap of Motown night, Elisa said she didn't buy Matt Giraud's performance of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On." I probably wouldn't have been as hard. I think he did a better job of it than Justin Timberlake did when I saw him on some awards show last year.

Poor Matt, he keeps getting compared to Timberlake. I'm surprised that he was in the bottom three.

Elisa thought Michael Sarver's rendition of "Ain't to Proud to Beg" was boring, put her to sleep. I confess I didn't pay attention much because it was like Karaoke to me.

We agree on Megan Joy totally. Elisa writes of Megan:

OMG. OMG!!!! She is awful. Can't anyone please make it stop? She cannot actually sing. at. all.

Why is Megan is still on AI with an otherwise talented bunch of performers? Even though I didn't enjoy Scott last night at all and I don't think he can win, I was surprised that he was in the bottom three and not Megan, not to mention Matt was in the bottom and not Megan.

People keep saying Scott gets the pity vote. What's Megan getting, the gold hair with titties vote?

No, I'm not in a good mood tonight. Is it showing? My bad mood has nothing to do with AI though.

Michael Sarver went home. No surprise there. His performance was pretty much the same as last night's, and no the judges did not vote to save him. I don't care how much they pretended to debate it, I doubt they ever considered keeping him really. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if Matt turned up singing country on somebody's label, and if you're a Sarver fan, you can see him on the American Idol tour.

Fox's Glee: High School Musical Reloaded?

I don't know much about Fox's new show that premiers in May, Glee, but when I saw the preview I thought, "Oh, so it's High School Musical for non-cable small screen."

I've yet to see HSM, any of them, all the way through. My teen son has a gag reflex to the movies for some reason.

Dear Mr. DeSantis: Your Resignation from AIG via NYT ...

The plot continues to thicken in the A.I.G. story, despite this tale being in denouement. The saga climaxed probably last week with CEO Edward Liddy's testimony to Congress about death threats and President Barack Obama saying he'll take responsibility.

By the time it moved to revelations that U.S. Treasury Sec'y Geithner created a loop hole so the $165 million plus in bonuses could be paid to American International Group executives and New York Att'y General Cuomo on Monday saying he's gotten AIG's top bonus recipients to return $50 million in bonuses, public outrage had reduced from boil to a lively simmer.

Consider how easily people ignored what Obama said on Jay Leno's show about AIG because they had a new beef, insults to Special Olympics participants. Ah, the public, afflicted with short-attention spans, yes.

So, I doubt that as many people who have been outraged by the A.I.G. fiasco are also aware that one of its former employees published his resignation in The New York Times yesterday. Per the paper, "Jake DeSantis, an executive vice president of the American International Group’s financial products unit, (emailed his resignation) to Edward M. Liddy, the chief executive of A.I.G."

You can read the full letter at the NYT site under "Dear A.I.G., I Quit!" In it DeSantis says that he had nothing to do with "the credit default swap transactions that have hamstrung A.I.G. Nor were more than a handful of the 400 current employees of A.I.G.-F.P. Most of those responsible have left the company and have conspicuously escaped the public outrage."

He also says that he is donating all of his post-retention money to those impacted by the global economic crisis, and he claims he's worked the last year for nothing:

I take this action after 11 years of dedicated, honorable service to A.I.G. I can no longer effectively perform my duties in this dysfunctional environment, nor am I being paid to do so. Like you, I was asked to work for an annual salary of $1, and I agreed out of a sense of duty to the company and to the public officials who have come to its aid. Having now been let down by both, I can no longer justify spending 10, 12, 14 hours a day away from my family for the benefit of those who have let me down. (DeSantis)

He says that Liddy did not properly defend people like him when Liddy testified to Congress and that A.I.G. senior management is now reacting out of fear and Cuomo's threats to "name and shame" them all.

If it's true DeSantis and others worked for $1 for a year to help dismantle the company, then I think he's rightfully angry and frustrated. If we ignore that he agreed to work for a year for $1 in anticipation of some future payday, then this information means that in his case, the company's retention payment was compensation to him for services rendered and not a "bonus" as has been presented in the press, a point not clarified during Liddy's testimony to Congress.

The employees agreed to work for $1 and were promised a bigger pay-day. What a gamble! But where was the big pay-off money supposed to come from? If it was coming from mysterious profits, then that never happened, right? It's similar to people who agree to work for start-ups in which they have great faith in exchange for stock that could one day be worth millions or less than the paper on which it's printed.

Or did A.I.G. promise its executives big payoffs based on tax payer bailout out money?

DeSantis's resignation letter leaves me with the same opinion I had before: A.I.G. has been mismanaged with shady deals and copious doses of ego-tripping.

DeSantis should get more than $1 for his year of hard work (did that include full health benefits? I hope so.), but it would still be hard to sell to the average American earning less than six figures that he or any other A.I.G. employee should get $747,000 or more after taxes for that one year of service, M.I.T. degree or not.

In addition, most Americans could not afford to agree to work for one year for $1. So,(if you ignore that DeSantis was promised a retention payment of more than $1 million gross after working a year at $1) while his decision to not draw a real salary for a year is commendable, that he could make such an arrangement indicates he had a much bigger financial cushion to help him through that year than your average American Joe or Jane. Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

Nevertheless, this man is donating his retention money, whatever that will be if Congress adds additional taxes, and he is sharing his pain, and so, since he resigned not only by email but also in a major newspaper, he deserves a response from the public. Here's my answer.

Dear Mr. DeSantis:

I feel for you, sir, and if you say you didn't have anything to do with the tricky mortgage swaps that brought down A.I.G., I believe you because A.I.G. is a massive corporation. I doubt the fly on its left butt cheek can see the fly on its right.

You say the units you managed were consistently profitable, and so, I guess that means you are good at your job. I'd expect no less from an M.I.T. graduate and the son of hard-working school teachers. Also, based on your family background and how you made your way through M.I.T., I believe you know the value of a $1, no pun intended on that yearly salary you accepted in the name of duty and honor.

Furthermore, I understand your frustration and anger at how Mr. Liddy has handled this mess and how you and your former co-workers have been portrayed in the media and in blogs also. This will sound harsh, but that's life. "You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas," as my grandmother used to say.

Also, about your giving back the money, my grandmother used to quote the Bible as well and say things like "God loves a cheerful giver." The lesson taught being a gift given grudgingly doesn't mean as much. She also used to remind us that giving in secret is better because nobody likes a show-off and the purer the motivation for giving, the better.

So, if you really think you're not at fault for what happened with A.I.G. and that you're giving this money back under duress with anger in equal measure and, further, that you hope to escape public stigma by giving the money back in the open so we all know you did so, then maybe you should keep the money. There's no shame in keeping what's rightfully yours, no matter how much New York Att'y General Cuomo growls at you.

I wouldn't be one of those yelling "It's the principle of the matter" here. You know what the old folks say: "When anyone says it's not about the money but the principle of the matter, it's the money!" Just a thought. I'll fist-bump you on that one; folks messing over your money sucks!

Mr. DeSantis, I know it's hard to relax while you watch your retirement fund go swirling down the toilet with your tax dollars and mine, but please don't get an ulcer over this A.I.G crap. Additionally, I understand that you wanted to get your resentments on the public record. Confession and healthy venting are both good for the soul, and so I hope you'll sleep well at night for the rest of your life.

I accept your resignation, sir. Best of luck to you and yours. And, Mr. DeSantis, I'm guessing you'll land on your feet.

Respectfully,
Verite Parlant aka Nordette
American Tax Payer Peon,
Sucker A.I.G. Stockholder

Consider the Thistle and Find Your Way Home (Book Review)

For nearly three weeks, I've had a copy of Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart. The book has been a balm, a burden, and a bounty.

It's been a balm because in the women who present their stories in the book, I see that the universe has not forsaken humanity's spirit to overcome horror. A burden because as I hold these women's words and stare into my soul's mirror, I see that I often lack their courage. And a bounty because their words lift that burden and any other weight that may tether me to self-doubt and despair. This little book of feminine grace has the inspiration and spiritual guidance of a tome.

The Women of Magdalene wrote this book with the founder of the Magdalene community in Nashville, Tenn., Becca Stevens, an Episcopalian priest. You may be aware this organization under the name Thistle Farms through the marketing of its handmade candles and bath and body products.

Thistle Farms is a non-profit business run by women who have survived lives of violence, prostitution, and abuse. Thistle Farms products are hand-made by the very women they benefit. All proceeds go back into Thistle Farms and the residential program, Magdalene. Into every product goes the belief that freedom starts with healing and love can change lives.

... Magdalene is a two-year residential community founded in Nashville Tennessee in 1997 for women with a history of prostitution and drug addiction. Magdalene was founded not just to help a sub-culture of women, but to help change the culture itself. We stand in solidarity with women who are recovering from sexual abuse, violence, and life on the streets, and who have paid dearly for a culture that buys and sells women like commodities. (ThistleFarms.org)

With the current downturn in our economy, Thistle Farms/Magdalene community faces a dip in donations. According to a local news story with video, the organization has had to to cut its budget by 13 percent. One of its houses is in such disrepair, residents can't live in it.

After reading about the women this program helps, I decided to participate in a blogging initiative that Thistle Farms supporters hope will raise awareness of the work of Magdalene community. Through that effort I received its little book of wisdom for review.

The book is broken into 24 sections, 24 rules by which women in the Magdalene community live while in the program. In the book's introduction, Stevens explains that Magdalene community developed guidelines for its communal living in a way similar to St. Benedict of Nursia's development of the Rule of Benedict.

With each rule presented in Find Your Way Home comes personal stories and reflections from Magdalene community residents. Stevens writes:

In the Magdalene community, we start everyday by gathering in a circle where we read a meditation, pray, and make sure everyone is all right. We share stories and wisdom. We tell the truth. In this book, we invite you to share the spiritual principles of Magdalene.

Before I share part of one of its stories, here's a little background from both its website and the postcard that came with my book. It tells why Magdalene community uses the thistle as its symbol.

Considered a weed, thistles grow on the streets and alleys where the women of Magdalene walked. But, thistles have a deep tap root that can shoot through thick concrete and survive drought. And in spite of their prickly appearance, their royal and soft purple center makes the thistle a mysterious and gorgeous flower.

Like all of the personal reflections in the book, the story under Rule 14 puts flesh and bone on symbolism and the abstract:

Rule 14, Consider the Thistle

I know Dickerson Road all too well. I lived there in abandoned sheds and lots. The smell of urine was everywhere. I kept all my worldly belongings in garbage bags. I spent hours looking for restaurants where I could wash my body off. I spent days going to thrift stores looking for free clothing. All of this so I could hang out at the gas station to panhandle or catch a trick, whichever came first. I had no shoes, no good clothes, nowhere to sleep, no food to eat; and yet I am beautiful and worthy of every good thing. (from Find Your Way Home)

And yet ...

Much of this little book could be called "Psalms of And Yet," and I mean that in the best possible way: I have been sold like an animal, and yet ... I walk in dignity. I have been beaten and raped, and yet ... I can love and trust again. I am broken, and yet ... I heal.

As I read the book, I consider the thistle as well and how we are each stronger than we know, if we would only claim our inner strength and also be strong enough to accept help when we need help, to take our place in the community circle of our family, friends, or other support groups. To do so takes humility.

I also consider that any woman at any moment is akin to the women of Magdalene House. Even some of us secure and comfortable in our suburban homes must learn the same lessons women of Magdalene learn, such as Rule 11, Unite Your Sexuality and Spirituality:

We have been taught that our sexuality is a commodity, and have learned to live in a spirit of mistrust and manipulation.

In community, we claim ourselves again, saying no to people and institutions that are not part of the healing of our bodies, minds, and spirits. (from find Your Way Home)

A writer at Women Day By Day tells how the book resonates with her:

It’s a softcover, small format that fits nicely on a bedside table for an evening revery before bed. The book, called Find Your Way Back Home, is a perfect way to pause for a moment in respect and empathy for our troubled sisters. ... Find Your Way Back Home gives 20/20 insight into the pshyche [sic] of women who have lived lives of terror. What I saw is, they are just like me. They think like me and crave the same things I seek - peace, self-esteem, a successful path. ... It’s a humbling little read, reminding us of what make [sic] women the same rather than exaggerating those things that make us different. (WDBD)

I agree that it is a wonderful bedside book, one to read before bedtime, perhaps to plant in our heads hope for renewal and wisdom whispering in plain English.

If you'd like to know more about Thistle Farms and Magdalene community, please visit the site. I've posted the following video that gives further insight on how the struggle of these women in Nashville, Tenn., is the same as the struggle of women around the world who fight to free themselves and their sisters from violence and sexual abuse.



Also, here's a link to the Thistle Farms store where you can purchase bath and body products or the book Find Your Way Home. You may also visit Becca Stevens's blog.

In addition, a writer at Women's Health News sometimes discusses the organization's work. Through that blog I learned of the documentary Chances, a film about Thistle Farms' work.

Cross-posted at BlogHer.com.

Japanese Smart Toilet on Oprah

I know people are going to be curious about the Japanese Smart Toilet mentioned on Oprah's show today. According to Dr. Oz, the current version only measures sugar in urine, but later the invention may be able to tell you what nutrients you're missing in your diet or possibly whether your body is absorbing the nutrients you eat.

CNN covered the "intelligence toilet system", Toto, in 2005. Back then it was selling for $3,500. Based on this article at HomeTone, I suspect Oprah's talking about this toilet not only because it's a curiosity but also because its latest version is being marketed to women.

Today's show covered everything from calorie restriction for longevity to organ regeneration and David H. Murdock's diet and exercise routine. The billionaire is 85 with the blood pressure of a teenager, according to his doctors, he says. He wants to live to 125.

Erykah Badu, Twitter, and the Toucan Stalker

On singer Erykah Badu being terrorized by a female stalker, I feel for her. TMZ and other sources report on Badu's stalker drama and say Badu's been a trooper, showing up to perform at SXSW conference's Music Festival despite having recently been "barricaded in her home by a stalker" that the police "pepper-sprayed and cuffed." I think TMZ's use of the word "barricaded" is an exaggeration.

The woman stalker sounds a tad touched in the head, possibly not dangerous, but if somebody had been doing weird stuff with a rabbit, blue shutters, and a Toucan in front of my house repeatedly, I would've called the cops too. Was that a stuffed bird a live bird?

I guess you're a fan if you're buying CDs and talking about Badu in forums or on a blog. You're a stalker if you're following the star around and performing healing rituals on her lawn. The Toucan is a totem, per About.com.

The toucan represents communication and showmanship. The toucan's colorful appearance and large bill indicates a strong desire to be seen and heard. When the toucan appears as a totem it is likely time for you to step forward out of the shadows and stand in the lime light for awhile. If you have difficulty speaking in public toucan medicine can help clear and heal throat chakra blockages. The toucan may appear whenever you are craving attention, helping you to sort out why you are feeling this way. (About.com)

The TMZ story, which has an awful photo of Badu posted with it, also says the singer kept her fans updated about her stalker via her Twitter account, which is on lock, btw, meaning you have to be approved first before you can follow her. Nothing surprising there. But how do we know the page is really Badu and not a fan?

I found the link on my own, but I suppose it's correct since Entertainment Weekly shares it as Badu's Twitter account as well. She's one of many celebrities using the social media network. Per EW:

"Police just apprahended [sic] a stalker in front of my house. Stay tuned for details." Badu went on to give her Twitter followers a blow-by-blow account of a dramatic confrontation outside her Dallas home. (EW)

EW has a much better photo of Erykha Badu than TMZ. I think somebody at TMZ thinks bad pictures make its information seem more "real" and hot off the cell phone or something. I think it makes their pages look like TMZ people have bad cameras.

Rolling Stone reports that Kanye West and Common also performed with other entertainers at the SXSW two-hour event. RS has a photo gallery here.

I've posted Badu's "Bag Lady" music video. It's an older song but one of many songs by her that I like, and it's the song that came to mind when I heard about the stalker outside Badu's house. You can view the singer's more recent work at her website.

Telephone Pole Prophecy (Poem)

Telephone Pole Prophecy
By Nordette Adams

Yesterday, traveling through broken New Orleans,
I saw a sign on Washington and Broad:
Cash for Gold Teeth.

Cash for Gold Teeth!
Forsake idiotic decisions.
Dismantle the self, but how?

Shroud and sickle come nailing signs on chests,
foreclosures on flesh,
heralding soul's recession.

How we hunger for resurrection.

(c) 2009 Nordette Adams

South African Idol: Killing Me Softly Audition

Late night mischief. Someone shared this with me: "Buhle Mkwanazi, on MNet IDOLS 2009 auditions singing Fugees Killing me softly." The girl is pretty but her singing is, well, ... you watch.

OSF: I Love You, Baby (Old School Friday)

This week's theme for Old School Friday is songs that have the word "baby" in the title. So many selections.

I'm a sucker for Luther, what can I say, so the first song that came to mind was "Since I Lost My Baby" by either Luther Vandross or the The Temptations, but then I changed my mind and decided to go with a song that came out when I was 9 years old, and that's "Baby, I'm For Real" by The Originals. Think about it, people still want to know that the person they love is for real and not just playing with their hearts.


My next choice is James Ingram with Patti Austin, "Baby, Come to Me." I loved this song the first time I heard it on General Hospital:

"Baby, Come to Me" is an R&B song, written by Rod Temperton for a male-female duet. The original version, performed by Patti Austin and James Ingram (with Michael McDonald contributing background vocals), and produced by Quincy Jones, appeared on Austin's 1981 album, Every Home Should Have One. As a single it had minor chart success in early 1982. Later that year, however, it gained new exposure as the romantic theme song for Luke Spencer, a leading character on the ABC soap opera General Hospital. ABC received so many inquiries about the song that Warner Brothers decided to re-release it as a single, and it shot to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in early 1983. The song also spent three weeks at #1 on the adult contemporary chart. (from Wikipedia)

The creators of the Old School Friday meme are Mrs. Grapevine and Marvalus at OBW and has these rules, if you want to join the party.

Other participants: Check out all participants at THIS link. If you're not on the list, please let me know by leaving a comment on my OSF Participants post.

Technorati Tags: Old School Friday

Obama on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

I hope they put the entire interview of President Barack Obama on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, because I saw it and the whole thing's worth watching. Obama has a good sense of humor. He and Jay talked everything from AIG to the new puppy.

I hope more that NBC puts up the clip from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. He and The Roots did Jimmy Fallon Slow Jamz the News and covered AIG.

Geithner: He Stuck Up His Thumb, Said AIG's Plum, and Now We Have Rotten Pie

Yesterday, as I was posting on President Barack Obama's attempt to diffuse the A.I.G. bonuses bomb by saying he takes responsibility for the bonus mess, I read at Writes Like She Talks a paragraph from WaPo's "The Fix" about Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that made me think I'd either misread the article or it had a typo.

The part that tripped me up was that on March 10, Geithner, after meeting with AIG CEO Edward Liddy to tell him he was displeased about more than $165 million in federal bailout money that AIG would give to executives as bonuses, "tasked his legal team with finding a way not to stop the bonuses." I added the bold emphasis because the word "not" was what I did not comprehend. Geithner did what? Told his lawyers to find a way NOT to stop the bonuses. (Read The Fix)

In addition, according "The Fix," Geithner did not inform President Obama and White House aides about the bonuses and his attempts to ensure AIG was able to hand them out until two days after his meeting with Liddy.

It was late, and so, I thought I'll figure this out when I'm fully awake.

Tonight I was watching CNBC online and saw the video that I've posted up top. According to CNBC's report, Geithner is the one taking responsibility today for AIG stink. He said he was concerned that the Federal Government could be sued if its strings on the bailout money stopped AIG bonuses, causing the company to break its contracts, and so he asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the bailout's language. Per CNN Money:

Sen. Dodd, chairman of the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, admitted to CNN Wednesday he'd added the controversial provision after a Treasury official pushed for it. Earlier in the week, Dodd had said he had not played any role in the addition of the loophole.

Geithner told Velshi Thursday the bonus situation is his issue to deal with. "You know, it's my responsibility," he said. "I was in a position where I didn't know about those sooner, I take full responsibility for that." (CNN Money)

Dodd apparently is all politician. His first instinct was to lie and say he didn't do it. Let's save him for another post.

Here's Geithner on CNN:

As a daughter of New Orleans who's watched people sue the Federal Government, go to court and lose their class-action suits that accuse the Federal Government/Army Corps of Engineers of being at fault for the levee breaks, and having heard all my life how hard it is for anyone to sue the Federal Government and win, I think Geithner must be an absolute idiot. Or did Liddy have something on Geithner's sorry behind to hang over his head? Probably not, but I'm trying to fathom how Geithner could have made such an idiotic decision.

Obama has a reputation for being very loyal, but Geithner doesn't deserve that loyalty. Watch video of Obama standing by Geithner, supporting him for "the AIG fiasco," as The Washington Post calls it. The video accompanies an article, "How the Fed Failed to Tell Obama About The Bonuses," which asserts the following:

Federal Reserve officials knew for months about bonuses at American International Group but failed to tell the Obama administration, according to government and company officials, exposing problems in a relationship that is vital to addressing the financial crisis. (Read full story.)

The article goes on to say that Geithner, "a central figure in the decision to bail out AIG last fall as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York," declares he didn't know the AIG bonuses were so big until March 10.

Every money man I've known has been detail-oriented, and so, before they'd sign off to give away bonuses with federal dollars, they would have made sure they knew the size and timing of those bonuses. It seems Geithner doesn't operate like the average money man. Scary.

Why did Obama decide to keep Geithner on board again? Let's do a rewind and look at him over one more time at The New York Times, November 2008. And to be fair, here's his official U.S. Treasury Department bio.

I don't know what it is, but this AIG drama is making me go all Mother Goose. A few days ago it was AIG's Liddy Piggies. Today it's Geithner as Little Jack Horner. Maybe it's that the AIG saga sounds as unbelievable as nursery rhymes.

Flash Fiction News: Behold the Dreamer

Flash Fiction News: Short fiction tales taken from the headlines.

Behold the Dreamer
By Nordette Adams aka Verite Parlant

We all have stories. We all have pain. That’s what Miss Sharma Simms had wanted to explain to David when she joined him for coffee at Ralph’s Diner Thursday. He hadn’t asked for her company, but she’d been watching him for nearly a week. How she knew she didn’t know exactly, but he was ripe for a fit of madness. She couldn’t say he had an aura because she didn’t have visions so grand, but when she’d seen him in the Piggly Wiggly Monday night, picking up butter and a jar of Maxwell House Instant for his mother, Mama Jo Vincent, hatred framed his face and covered his head.

He paced the coffee aisle for a moment, rubbing one calloused hand through his fine, straight, sandy brown hair. For a second he looked sweet, innocent, and younger than his 27 years. He looked like the boy she remembered who learned his Bible verses faster than anyone else in her class.

She saw him walk to the cash register, appearing no different than other young men in Tipwood Springs. He was average height, medium build. A ring of keys hung from the side belt loop of his grungy, blue Wranglers, and he wore a red and blue short-sleeved, plaid shirt open, revealing a plain white tee beneath. On his feet, muddy work boots. But he was different. No whistling of a country tune or nodding his head to rap from earplugs and one of those tiny music players, not a wink at Darlene, the little curvy blonde who checked him out..

A dark mist hovered over his chest and snaked its way up to the crown of his soul’s countenance. She recognized it. A soul’s body could smile from the face, but if it held hate, the lips were never right. They were thinned and drawn up on the verge of a snarl, but it looked like smiling. It looked like smiling to the dull. A hidden pit of sadness looked similar, but she knew the difference well.

On Wednesday afternoon, she’d seen him at Jack’s Road House when she delivered the chocolate fudge they sold for her at the counter. Some people liked dipping fudge in beer, which she thought was disgusting, but her fudge sold better at the Jack’s than at Junebug Sweet Shop on Cypress Street.

David sat at the bar drinking hard lemonade, wearing his rage like a shroud. To the dull, he looked pleasant, calm even. Still, nobody talked to him. People had been ignoring him since he was about nine, thought he was shy. But he wasn’t. He just didn’t like his neighbors, not a one.

By the time she sat down with him at Ralph’s Diner, he’d worsened. His face appeared to her as though draped by sheer black muslin. That’s how dark his soul was. He flinched when she slid into the booth opposite him, and she felt guilty. She had never really tried to make friends with him since he was a boy, and today it took courage to sit near him because loathing rolled off him like the stench of road kill in summer heat. Its thickness nauseated her.

“Heard you quit the chicken factory, Dave,” she said.

“Yes’m.”

“Young man like you need a job, don’t he? Life in this town ain’t gonna get easier with no job.”

“Yes’ m,” he said and looked down at his coffee that was nearly gone. She turned over the extra white cup and poured herself a few swallows. The coffee was complimentary at Ralph’s.

“I don’t mean to pry, son, but I got a heaviness in my heart for you.” Shadowed dreams, she thought but didn’t say. “I want to help you. You know me, right? I used to teach your Sunday School class.”

“Yes’m. You smelled like honeysuckle water.”

Sharma nodded and smiled. “You have a good memory. I ain’t worn honeysuckle water in ‘bout 15 or so years.” She searched what she could see of his eyes, but his lids lowered, hooding his heart’s window.

“We used to pray, remember that?” she asked.

“Yes’m.”

“Could I pray with you now?”

“No, ma’m. I don’t think you can.” He refilled his coffee cup from the carafe on the table, and then gulped down the steaming brew without stopping. Standing, he placed the coffee cup on the table, looked down at her, and grinned. The curling of his lips, the brief revelation of teeth, terrified her, and he walked from the diner into the morning sun.

Two days later she was still thinking of his smile as she drove home from noon prayer. Pausing at the stop sign, she nodded at Jonathan Stokes, one of three town deputies. He sat in his green and white cruiser at the corner of Cypress and Bayou Lane, hoping to catch speeders in Tipwood Springs’s only planned subdivison. That’s when she heard the popping sound and then the crack against her driver’s side fender.

Someone had shot at her. Stokes heard it also. He turned on his lights and siren, and then shouted, “Are you hurt?” She shook her head “no,” He zoomed off after the small, red pick-up truck. The arm of its sandy-haired driver rested on the bottom of the driver’s side window frame, and the driver was in no rush until Stokes’s car neared him. One in pursuit of the other, the two sped down Cypress, which would turn into Highway 19 soon and lead to Feldman’s Chicken Packing Company.

Sharma’s dream flooded her head, the one she’d had weeks ago that made her join her old Sunday School student at Ralph’s. It came crisp with light. Shadowless, the dead lay all over Tipwood Springs, damp bodies in pools of fresh, red blood.

“Jesus, Jesus!” She shuddered and flung open her car door. Jerking sideward she nearly fell but turned and caught herself as she vomited her stomach juices onto the tar road.

(c) 2009 Nordette Adams aka Verite Parlant

Obama's Running Game: Take the Hit on AIG Bonuses

Is President Barack Obama brave for saying we can blame him for the AIG bonuses, saying he accepts responsibility for a mess he didn't create? Does he have some kind of Messiah Complex? Or is he simply using a common customer service approach that moves people beyond anger and frustration toward accepting a solution?

I think it's the latter; he's using a customer service technique:

"I know a lot of you are outraged about this. I'm outraged, too," ... (Obama said today at a Town Hall meeting in a part of California that's steeped in Republicans. He's talking about the $173 millions paid to American International Group executives with federal bailout money) ... "We're going to do everything we can to fix it," he said. "So for everybody in Washington who's busy scrambling, trying to figure out how to blame somebody else, just go ahead and talk to me, because it's my job to make sure that we fix these messes, even if I don't make them." (San Francisco Chronicle)

Then he went on using an analogy about people being strapped to a bomb and trying to talk them into easing off the detonator trigger.

I wonder how much he was motivated by not only public outrage and a frenzied flock of finger-pointers in Washington, but also by hearing that AIG executives are getting death threats.

Anyway, what I noticed is he used a classic customer service tactic that calms down angry customers without ever telling the customer to "calm down." When you tell angry people to calm down, their rage usually escalates.

But has he left himself at the mercy of right-wing spin doctors on this one? Remember, Rush Limbaugh started calling the economic crisis "the Obama recession" months before Obama was even sworn in as president. I've already read at least one conservative blog seizing on Obama's acceptance of responsibility as an opportunity to dump more crap on him.

Obama is an optimist, from what I can see, so perhaps he has faith in the American people to understand what he's said and evaluate his message correctly. As for his opponents, he probably knows that there's a group in this country that he will never win over no matter how rational his argument or eloquent his plea to shut up, move on, and solve the problem.

I hope he's successful at diffusing this bomb and knows which color wire to cut. It would be a shame if he's just thrown himself on a live grenade as an ill-fated hero.

The San Francisco Chronicle has raw video from a local TV station of Obama speaking at the Town Hall meeting in California. The following video from CNN appears to be the president answering reporters' questions.


Worthwhile Links:

• An economic crisis recap at WTS blog with lots of information from Pam's Coffee Conversations
• How the Fed Failed To Tell Obama About AIG Bonusues
• It's Only Money
• Obama Set the Bar, But GOP Embraces Defense Mechanisms

American Idol Results: Down to 10 (Spoilers if You're on West Coast)

Hard to go from A.I.G. fiscal drama to A.I.E., American Idol eliminations. So, I'm keeping it short. I saw the show and mega-star American Idol winner Carrie Underwood performed a duet tonight with country legend Randy Travis before American Idol said good-bye to Tennessean Alexis Grace.

Last night Grace, who's been pegged as looking like a young Dolly Parton, sang Parton's "Jolene," but that wasn't enough to save her. The judges could have kept her, but didn't.

A writer at NewsDay calls the dismissal shocking! I guess it is. I thought Megan Joy would be going home, but she sang Patsy Cline last night while enduring the flu, so maybe people felt sorry for her and didn't mind sacrificing one blonde for another.

BTW, the bottom three included Grace, Alison Iraheta, and Michael Sarver. The final top 10 will go on the famous Idol tour: Adam Lambert, Li'l Rounds, Danny Gokey, Scott MacIntyre, Megan Joy, Michael Sarver, Kris Allen, Allison Iraheta, Anoop Desai, and Matt Giraud.

Click here for my previous AI posts, and here for Elisa Camahort's astute evaluation/recap of last night's show of which the theme was country music. She thinks Adam Lambert is talented, as do I (his "Ring of Fire" was fine by me), but Elisa also thinks Scott MacIntyre is terribly boring. Do you think Scott's getting a pity vote because he's blind?

Here's video of Grace singing Aretha Franklin's "I Ain't Never Loved A Man" a few weeks ago, I think. AI blends together after a while. Don't be surprised if this video disappears later because the AI people ask for it to be removed.

AIG Death Threats & More Tales of Woe: Liddy Piggies @ Market

I'm gonna bet that American International Group's CEO Edward Liddy is telling the truth when he says AIG has been receiving death threats against its executives (see video below). He's latched onto those threats as one of the reasons AIG should not hand over the company's list of bonus recipients.

It's a lame excuse but no surprise that Liddy would want to find a way to not be held accountable in a civil suit should some lunatic gun down an AIG executive and his family. Accountablity is not AIG's strength.

The company continues to hide behind legal concerns such as breach of contract and fear of potential lawsuits, desperately attempting to cover its huge ass. It didn't want to turn over the list of its banking counterparties at first either.

When I first heard that NY Atty General Andrew Cuomo wanted AIG to turn over the list of bonus recipients, my thought was "Good luck with that." Lawyers waiving injunctions about privacy violations could keep that tied up forever if AIG wants to push it that far, despite government assertions that the American taxpayers own 80% of AIG.



Members of Congress have joined Cuomo in asking for the list. As you can see in the video above, Liddy said he wants assurance that the names of the bonus recipients will remain confidential, particularly names of those who won't to give back at least "half" of the bonus money as Liddy says he's requested.

Per HuffPo, House Finance Committee Chair, Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass.,, said "no" to guaranteeing confidentiality. Maybe this means if AIG were to turn over the list, some of its executives would give back the money so they didn't have to worry about crazy people with guns.

I'm sure if you were counting on a $1 million bonus in your paycheck but you didn't get it, you'd seethe with rage, but let's ask the many Americans who no longer have homes due to the foreclosure about rage. It's hard for me to sympathize with AIG executives losing the money to pay for their summer homes when millions of Americans have lost the only homes they've ever known.

If you read comments on my first post about AIG, you'll see that we the people are angry. Sure it's a few comments, but I think they reflect the outrage of the nation. Feel free to add your own.

"Those Liddy Piggies" comes from my comparison on an earlier post of AIG to a fat sow and its executives and banking counterparties to suckling pigs. AIG is a big corporation and we are told if it fails it will bring down the global economy. Is this what happens under deregulation, the self-control switch goes off as greed kicks in? Sorry to sows and piglets for comparing AIG to them because the sow and her little piggies are only doing what comes naturally.

AIG's Still Bitch Slapping Us & Barney Frank Says Stop

House Finance Committee Chair, Rep. Barney Frank, tried to explain from a CNN hot seat today how it is that the Federal Government owns 80% of troubled insurance giant AIG and yet may not be able to collect funds the company's already mismanaged. In other words, how he wishes reality would change to suit the American taxpayer and AIG would stop bitch slapping the people of the United States of America.

I've already shared my opinion on AIG, its fat bonuses, bank list, and how the government must chase it down to get the money.

• AIG's Slut List or How is this Tale like Death of a Salesman?
• Obama Wants Block on AIG Bonuses: More Slut List Drama

You can read the transcript of Frank's discussion with CNN's Kiran Chetry at this link in which he discusses nationalization of a financial institution. You may also watch the video provided below.


In CNN's words, Frank "shared what was legally and legislatively within the government's power on recovering the AIG bonuses and reforming the whole financial incentive system." Frank says he doesn't have confidence in AIG's CEO Edward Liddy and would like to invalidate the company's bonus contracts.

As discussed in one of my earlier posts, an anonymous Treasury official told CNBC that the Federal Government has to jump some huge hurdles if it wants that bonus money back from AIG. And I still think we'd understand this issue better if someone explained it in terms of sluts, whores, and pimps.

Hmm, AIG the fat sow with under-performing execs sucking at its $165 million tits, or AIG the corner pimp holding the American people upside down by the ankles, or AIG the player with a harem of exotic and domestic blank sluts. So many analogies, so little time.

And look at this, Liddy's asked AIG execs to give back "half" of their bonuses.

“I have asked the employees of AIG Financial Products to step up and do the right thing,” Mr. Liddy told lawmakers. “Specifically, I have asked those who received retention payments of $100,000 or more to return at least half of those payments.” (The New York Times)

It's Liddy's audition for Saturday Night Live.

The last time I looked at the nationalization issue and tried to understand was during the fall bailout; here's the 411.

Last Rites for Seattle Post-Intelligencer in Hard Print

We can still read it online, but today Washington state residents saw the last hard-print edition of the Seattle Post Intelligencer grace their doorsteps. It's one of many newspapers saying good-bye to the brick and mortar world.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the region's pioneer newspaper and the city's oldest continually operating business, a newspaper that both shaped and was shaped by the community it covered, prints its last edition Tuesday -- nearly a century and a half after its forebear first rolled off a hand-cranked Ramage press promising to be "the best and cheapest promulgator of all sorts of useful information." (PI)

Watching the video, interviews with its reporters and staff discussing what they'll miss about "The PI," you see Seattle is losing more than hard print delivered to its residents.



New Jersey journalism educator, Prof. Kim Pearson, who writes at her own blog and at BlogHer and elsewhere, has been examining the topic of dying hard newsprint for a while now, and I've been reading those posts. Here's a list of the last three:

• Why the New News Economy Has Me Confused
• Survival Tips for Journalist in the New News Economy
• Clay Shirky Has a Lot of People Thinking the Unthinkable

After reading her most recent post in which she examines reactions to Clay Shirky's commentary on the death of hard print, I shared my sadness and a little guilt about watching hard print die as you can see in my comment below:

I have a confession to make. It pains me as a lover of books and a person who grew up thinking journalism was a noble profession--I mean someone who's published a weekly paper and actually would sniff the finished product, loving its scent and feel, accepting that I may have been born with ink in my veins--that I don't pick up hard print as much anymore.

My dad gets The Times Picayune delivered each day, but I go online to read news. Earlier this year I got a baby come back letter from The New York Times and felt like I'd been cheating on a lover.

My daughter recently received her Kindle2 in the mail, and already I'm eyeying my large collection of hard print books thinking that I need to get rid of the ones I've read but don't love and the ones I'll never read, buy an electronic reader or start uploading books to a PDA.

I'll have a few book shelves reserved for hard-to-find titles and classics, perhaps on the coffee table some magazines that make far better eye-candy in hard print, but other than that--down with the clutter.

Why is it I feel guilty about this like I'm burning Bibles or swearing in church? (V. Parlant comment at BlogHer)

Another blogger/journalist who talks about the changing of the guard in journalism is Charlotte Anne Lucas. You can read her blog at this link.

Now I'm watching the PI video and tearing up. I can be such a baby sometimes.

Facebook, TNT's Trust Me, and Being Au Courant

When I wrote my piece on Faceboook, Oprah, and us older Facebookers being the punchline of a midlife crisis joke, I cross-posted it at Blogher.com, but forgot to mention the "Au Courant" episode of TNT's Trust Me, part of which focused on a parent spying on his daughter on Facebook.

Most likely I also forgot the episode because the show's like background noise to me. When I give full attention to a show about the advertising industry, I prefer Mad Men on AMC. The business and the people who go into it hasn't changed as much as you'd think.

Anyway, Lisa Belkin saw the "Au Courant" episode and mentioned it her NYT Motherlode blog post, "Facebook for Parents".

The next day I got an e-mail message from the local PTA. Would I mind teaching a class at the upcoming community education night about “Parents on Facebook”? (Sure, I said, but shouldn’t my children be teaching it instead?)

Then I watched the new TNT show “Trust Me,” where the plot revolved around parents worried about their daughter’s popularity because she has so few Facebook friends.

According to the calculus of blogging, three equals “time to write about it.” (Lisa Belkin)

She goes on and gives tips for parents on using the social network and mentions a Standford University educational project at facebookforparents.org. The site's link didn't work when I checked it. Nevertheless, Belkin's not making up the project. Stanford University offered a noncredit course Facebook for Parents earlier this year.

You can watch the full "Au Courant" episode of Trust Me at Hulu.com (Ep. 4, Season 1) or at the TNT site. Otherwise, episodes air on TNT Tuesday nights

Below is a sneak preview video of Episode 4, which first aired in February. If you watch it, you'll see why the episode is called "Au Courant." An advertising contract is in jeopardy because to the clients the ad team's television campaign for its product seems out of touch with teens, of whom it's said, don't even watch TV anymore. Not seen in the clip is how the character Mason McGuire, played by Ed McCormack, tries desperately to prove he's current and still cool and in touch with teens, that he must be in touch because he has a teen at home. However, his daughter, Haley, isn't the "typical" teen, and that creates a few amusing moments.

His buddy Conner, played by Tom Cavanaugh, is the one who convinces Mason that his coolness is in jeopardy partly because his daughter is not cool herself, as evidenced by her Facebook page. When Mason visits his daughter's page at home, his wife, Erin, catches him and says it's wrong to spy and also that it may be good that their daughter doesn't appear to be wildly popular. When their daughter finds out her father's been spying on her on Facebook, she wonders about her dad's obsession with her not being the typical teen or popular.

Later Haley says to her parents:

I've decided I should really try to be more cool so you guys will be proud of me. ... I've got a lot of catching up to do. In order to be a typical teen by the end of the week I'm gonna have to have some sort of sex with 3.2 boys. But hey, don't worry about birth control. It's mostly oral.

Mason looks at his wife and says, "Erin, make her stop!" His wife says, "Don't look at me. You shouldn't have snooped on her Facebook page.


The other Internet-related storyline in the episode involves the character Sarah who is informed by two guys in the office that she's identified as a lesbian online. She then sets out to prove she's not a lesbian and fears the rumor is further wrecking her dismal love life.

One of the observations used to label her gay is "She walks like a trucker so she must be gay." Angry, Sarah says, "This is ridiculous! I don't even like women."

Yes, I had to watch parts of this show online to write this post and recall what I saw the first time. Lessons I take away from this episode: Learn when to ignore your best friend's advice, ignore the ramblings of guys at the office, and don't worry about your child not being popular. But I think I've learned those lessons before in life.

Taalam Acey's 'Market': Paging Jay-Z, Paging Jay-Z

I was just at Soulbounce and read about Jay-Z pontificating that HipHop has made the world racism free or something like that.

After clarifying that Jay-Z isn't as offensive as some other HipHop artists who we may count as an embarrassment, Soulbounce had this poignant observation:

... I love the part where he says "Racism is taught in the home," because if I was a racist and wanted my kid to follow in my footsteps, then I would show him modern rap videos. (Read the full post here, including Jay-Z's quote)

I've got a response for Jay-Z, Taalam Acey's "Market for Ni$$as." Thank you, Taalam. You've saved me from having to write a dis-sertation on the regrettable aspects of the modern minstrel show. See more of Taalam Acey at MySpace.com.



And now I'm recalling how I spit my Barq's out one night watching late night talk and saw Snoop Dogg comparing his work to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s. I think Snoop was reading Michael Dyson, who's been a defender of rap, and makes a good case, but I still can't buy Jay-Z's logic. WTF!

Upskirting, Cameras on Shoes, Peeping Tom Tech

Zandria at BlogHer posted on another form of invasion of privacy and Peeping Tom perversion weeks ago called upskirting. You can read her post here about men who angle cameras so they can look up women's skirts at their panties and then post the photos online.

CNN recently posted a video about a man who's confessed to sticking his shoe with a camera attached under dressing room doors at a surf shop. He was watching women try on bikinis. The man stuck the camera in the tongue of his shoe.

Dude, I hope you get some help. What is this anyway? Too poor to pay a hooker to undress for you or is it a control issue, capturing a naked woman without her knowledge?

Peeping tom (Voyeurism): Peeping tom (voyeurism) is a disorder that involves achieving sexual arousal by observing an unsuspecting and non-consenting person who is undressing or unclothed, and/or engaged in sexual activity. This behavior may conclude with masturbation by the voyeur. The voyeur does not seek sexual contact with the person he is observing. Other names for this behavior are "peeping" or "peeping Tom." (Medterms.com)

Books have been written and movies made about the nature of the voyeur. There's even research that indicates with television and now the Net, we've become a Voyeur Nation, but cameras on shoes, peeping up women's skirts, looking through folks' bedroom windows? I think that's a little different from lurking on websites.

Midlife Apocalypse: Oprah's Plugging Facebook

Here's the joke: Even Barbie's had a Facebook midlife crisis. What do you mean who's Barbie? I mean Mattel's Barbie of course! Has Oprah joined her?

Facebook Midlife Crisis is in the Urban Dictionary also. It's got six thumbs up:

Facebook mid-life crisis

All of the 35-50 year old people that can finally make their own Facebook accounts. They try to reenact what the younger crowd does on Facebook by tagging pics and acting slutty.

A: Dude, your Mom has a Facebook account? She poked me and asked to be her friend. That's weird.

B: Yeah, she is having a Facebook mid-life crisis. (UD)

This is where you make a note to yourself to watch BlogHer Backtalk and answer the question, "Would you friend your child on Facebook?" But first, let's see what Oprah's saying about Facebook. Oprah's over 50. Is Facebook age sliding?

I chuckled reading the following at Twitter.

 
I checked the story out and it's true. One of the hot topics at Oprah.com right now is "The Face Behind Facebook"

In the new virtual age, social networking sites have taken the world by storm. With 175 million users and counting, Facebook has risen above the rest. In fact, if there were a Facebook nation, it would be the world's 6th largest country!

People around the world are reconnecting with long-lost friends and relatives, uniting on common ground from politics to Chia pets. Every day, half a million people join the social network. (Oprah.com)

You don't say!

Oprah had CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the show, told her audience "the 24-year-old is reportedly worth close to $1 billion," and then you too can learn Facebook lingo!

I am a member of Facebook, but for a long time I had a page and didn't add friends, upload a real picture, or even visit. I'm active now, but I'm still not keen on all the applications, and that's because I'm getting overwhelmed by more stuff to learn on the Net despite having been online since 1996, back when you could only set up pages if you knew how to hard code HTML.

Also, I laid low online for a while for personal reasons. However, some people avoid Facebook, MySpace, and similar social networks because they have Facebook phobia.

Another reason I avoided Facebook at first was it started as an exclusive site. I wasn't a Harvard student or alum and so the site wasn't open to me. A job forced me to join the site later, had to be on Facebook to connect with certain people. After the job ended, I forgot about the site because I shun elitism and still associated Facebook with that. Not that I have anything against Ivy League schools. My issue was a lingering sense that non-Ivy Leaguers would not be welcomed there, which is not true.

I suppose once Zuckerberg realized Facebook was a goldmine, he shunned elitism as well, opening the site up to more types of groups, the young capitalist.

Being active on the site has benefits such as interaction with people with whom you've lost touch, and it can help you to market a product such as a blog or book, but that wasn't its original purpose. So, you still have to be careful not to spam people. You need to show you want relationships not just a place to hawk your wares. Yet, good information and content is the currency of the World Wide Web; so, if you have nothing to share, you'll be ignored.

There are other reasons people avoid Facebook. Writing her article "Facebook junkie? It must be another midlife crisis," Detroit News Home Life columnist Marney Rich Keenan said:

My daughters set me up with a Facebook account several months ago, but I put off using it until recently. My reticence had nothing to do with the recent flap over ownership of content and everything to do with not wanting to become attached to yet another distraction.

As someone who could make people-watching an avocation, I knew that I would find nirvana in Facebook, that it would hook me in the same way the Bravo channel does when it rolls out another season of "The Real Housewives of New York City." I hate the fact that if I walk by a TV in our house, and it's on, I am glued to it like a magnet. Mindlessly, unwillingly. It's like a drug.

I also worried that I would be consigned to yet another network of people I would feel obligated to correspond with regularly (Read more)

I've felt like her before, like a woman clinging to the rim of a black hole.

Reading about Facebook midlife crises and Oprah promoting Facebook, I thought of Kate Wilder's blog post that I mentioned in "Midlife Coffee with Joni Mitchell." Kate wrote the following at My So-called Midlife:

I feel bad that Facebook, which began as a way for students to connect, is being overrun with boomers like me. It’s bad enough that we’re trying to be our kids’ buds, listening to their music, helicoptering over them so they don’t end up in the “wrong” college and dressing as youthfully as they are; now kids can’t even have their own online community without their parents butting in! ("No, You Can't Be My Friend on Facebook")

And now Oprah's got the Facebook bug? So, you're right Kate: Facebook's being overrun by boomers. And you're right George: It's mainstream now.

Does that mean its coolness must fade? Can't you be older but still hip and fresh?

BTW, there's a "Facebook for Boomers" according to an old Newsweek article, called TBD.com. No, it's not part of Facebook. Robin Wolaner, the woman who started Parenting Magazine started it.

I just wasn't sure—at 50, newly divorced, with two young children I wanted to be around for—that I wanted to be a CEO again. So I spent a year trying to convince myself that this was not a great business idea—or that someone else should be the CEO instead of me. Enter David Markus, who'd been the editor in chief who led Parenting to success. David loved the idea. There was just one thing, I told him: I had a lump. Two doctors had told me it was probably benign, but if it wasn't, I was going to be a breast-cancer patient, not a CEO. (Wolaner writing at Newsweek)

Wolaner has a compelling story, but still I ask, "Have you heard of TBD.com? It's tag line is "a social network for grown-ups." Anyone here a member of Tee Bee Dee?"

What made boomers flock to Facebook instead of her site? Is it that we wanted to keep an eye on our children? Maybe we don't want to be "grown-ups."

But wait! There's more on Oprah's Facebook discoveries:

Though Facebook started out as a network for college students, its appeal has reached users of all ages. "People over the age of 30, that group is actually the fastest-growing group on the site," Mark says. "People are even using it to connect with President Obama. He has the most connections out of anyone on the site—almost 6 million. He was using the service throughout his campaign to give people updates about what was going on with the campaign. Even now that he's in office he's using it to connect with supporters about the different packages he's trying to get through." (Oprah.com)

Oh, I get it. Obama uses Facebook and that's a selling point to everyone, even Oprah. He's the reason boomers are taking over the site.

Tidbit: Even if he'd never run for president and Facebook had never expanded beyond Ivy League members, he and his wife could still have pages there. Both of them graduated from Harvard Law, an accomplishment with the added perk that makes them old school Facebook.

I don't know if Oprah has a personal page at Facebook, but her show has a fan site there, and she posted the link at Oprah.com. When I went to "become a fan of the show," I saw another BlogHer CE at the top of Oprah's fan list, mainly because she's on my friends list as well. So, now I know we both watch Oprah. A while back I also friended Michelle Obama on Facebook, where she has a sweet picture of herself, Sasha, Malia, and her husband, but I doubt I'll be eating dinner at the White House soon. Still, it could be the first place they reveal the name of the the Portuguese Water Dog puppy they're expected to adopt.

So, we boomers thought we were cool and trendy, ahead of the curve with our Facebook pages, MySpace friends, Twitter alliances, Blackberries, iPhones, and recent sign-up to BlogHer Chatter. But the media and younger people are telling us we get no free pass to coolness. Oprah's talking Facebook, and we're just one of the midlife throng.

Cross-posted at Blogher.com

Attack of the Wiccans: Mother Nature Phobia

I just read a post at Alpha Women, "Scary Mommies," and I'm thinking the mother she's talking about in the second half of the post must be pretty young and easily impressed. Per Lucy Ricardo (no, not that one), a mother writing at a "mommy forum" is peeved that a pre-school teacher, I assume, said "Mother Nature brings spring and flowers."

I could understand why this anonymous mother would be upset if she wanted to make the argument that she's paying high pre-school tuition and wants her child taught the science behind spring--planting seeds, changing of the seasons, climate change etc.--because she wants her child to take the SSAT at 5 years old, but the mother's complaint is that the teacher is exposing her child to Wiccan religion and worship of Mother Nature, according to Lucy. Oy!

Well, I guess these undercover Wiccans were better hidden back in the day by staying in plain sight and evangelizing on commercial television.

Yes, back when America was sure it was a Christian nation (not so anymore), when men were men and women were women, and African Americans were still Negroes or colored, one of the more amusing commercials on television was a Chiffon Margarine commercial with the punchline, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature."

File this post under religious nonsense and fundamental paranoia.

Obama Wants Block on AIG Bonuses: More Bank Slut List Drama

Today The New York Times reports that President Barack Obama wants the Treasury chief to try to block AIG bonuses:

“In the last six months, A.I.G. has received substantial sums from the U.S. Treasury,” Mr. Obama said. He added that he had asked Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner “to use that leverage and pursue every single legal avenue to block these bonuses and make the American taxpayers whole.”

In strongly-worded remarks delivered in the White House East Room before small business owners, Mr. Obama called A.I.G. “a corporation that finds itself in financial distress due to recklessness and greed.”

“Under these circumstances, it’s hard to understand how derivative traders at A.I.G. warranted any bonuses at all, much less $165 million in extra pay,” Mr. Obama said. “How do they justify this outrage to the taxpayers who are keeping the company afloat?” (Read full NYT story here)

The paper also offers video from CNBC similar to the CNN video below of the president's speech at the White House today, speaking to small business owners. Obama sounds angry, an emotion you hear rarely in his voice because he has an even mood. However, after calling AIG's bonuses an outrage and clearing a frog in his throat, mildly joked that he was "choked up with anger." I like NYT/CNBC's video more than the CNN clip.

But this is not the first time President Obama has blasted AIG. Prior to his election he said AIG executives should be punished for a spa trip they took after receiving federal bailout money. He said the executives should have been fired and that the Treasury should demand that money back.

And here were are again, the Treasury may have to chase down AIG for this bonus money like financial crime bounty hunters or righteous debt collectors. CNBC reports that the White House may have to swallow the bonuses and add millions to AIG's tab. It quotes an anonymous Treasury official who says the White House may have few legal options to stop AIG shenanigans.

I'm not quite grasping that. Are they saying it's because the money's gone already?

AIG was supposed to pay out the bonuses yesterday, despite the company's poor performance, and some bonus recipients are overseas. The U.S. Treasury is exploring possible repayment plans so the insurance giant is held accountable to American taxpayers.

I've also read that AIG is claiming it can't break contracts in which bonuses were promised. I'm not buying that because I used to be married to a man who got hefty bonuses and it seems to me the company had clauses in those bonus contracts, ways of getting out of those if in the throes of economic death. AIG is in the middle of a fiscal heart attack. Why does it insist on paying bonuses? It's not like they have to fear losing employees. If workers jump ship because they didn't get an extra $150K, where are they going to find jobs in this economy?

I'm not the only person questioning the contracts angle. Pundit Mom, a "recovering" attorney, thinks something's fishy too.

Poor AIG says it has no alternative. Woe to the insurance giant. It's stuck.

Or they're crying wolf.

They're worried about keeping the "best and the brightest?" Well, if the purported best and the brightest got us into our economic mess, maybe we'd all be better off if AIG and the other financial corporations let them go. And if they don't get their millions, what are they going to do, quit? It's not like there are tons of jobs out there at the moment. 600,000 people are losing their jobs every month and I don't think the financial sector is really in a hiring mode at the moment. (Pundit Mom)

New York Atty General Andrew Cuomo is also angry. He wants AIG to disclose the list of its bonus recipients, and gave AIG until 4 p.m. today to hand it over, reports The LA Times. Can we do that, make them reveal the names of private employees who received bonuses? It could be argued "yes" because the Federal Government is feeding enough money to AIG to claim interest in the company. It might be educational to see who walked away with millions and what they did to earn that money.

Yesterday I posted on American International Group, AIG, and its slut list of counterparties as well as its controversial multi-million $$$ bonuses to employees. I wrote the following:

I wish we'd cut this BS and someone would explain our money crisis in base terms like sluts, whores, pimps, and suckers. It might make it easier to keep score and for us to see who needs a break and who needs an ass whuppin' followed by some alone time in a jail cell. I bet a street hustler could break this financial mess down just right. (VP)

The comments on that post are indicative how angry Americans are over AIG's abuse of tax payer dollars/bailout money.