Scenes from Amidst the Tumult

"No, I haven't had my flu shot." Image via Wikipedia:

To Kaiser we went this morning to get some blood tests and our regular flu shots.

Long line for flu shots, about half the length of the 3rd floor in the Fabiola Building. When I finally got to the sticking stage, the shooter asked me my birthdate: six-ten-forty four, I said.

And she burst into song:

In 1944/My mother went to war/She lost her girdle/And shot a turtle/And then the war was done

I laughed long and hard, though not so robustly they had to call security. The shooter said she learned the song from her mother when the shooter was a little girl. The shooter said she figured the song meant more than it said if you know what I mean?

Yeah. Like the Da Vinci Code, I said.

When E. and I left, the flu line had swollen and doubled back on itself. E. said this was a result of anxiety and confusion. Even those who do not follow the news closely and who live by word-of-mouth had picked up that there was a sort of flu thing going on. They had (metaphorically) gotten in line because there was a line. E. hoped that those who really also need the Genuine Swine Flu shot will come back and get that, too.

I'm wit' you, I said, bantering as furiously as Nick Charles to Nora.

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Sonia Sotomayor and the 'Anti-Deposition'

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I was deposed in a lawsuit some years ago, a lawsuit of our own choosing with a high-priced lawyer of our own choosing. I was prepped all day the day before the deposition. The basic message was: Listen to the question and answer the question but no more than the question. Make the lawyers questioning you work, and they'll get tired and back off, leaving unsaid some things we might not want said because the question was never quite exactly and precisely asked.

You pick your moments to elaborate if the questioner has set up some point you want to make. You aren't always terse and on point, just *most* of the time.

I'd have to say Judge Sotomayor (as she should) is doing the opposite during her confirmation hearing. Explain, explain and explain some more. Use "context" a lot. Understand that many of the senators are reading from remarks prepared by staff, and that their follow up questions are also prepared. If your answers don't always seem to address the questions, neither will their follow ups if your answers are voluminous and nuanced enough.

Mostly stay calm. When these old crackers see a woman display any kind of emotion, they think:

rag fit

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Dems Get Fed Up With Republican Senators, Kick Their Ass; Or, Lord Hamlet, Prince of Bloggers

Don't we wish. This post originated in my viscera as the stimulus package stumbles forward, impeded at every lurch by Republicans whose plush lifestyles have yet to be pinched by the recession and who figure they can ride it out if it turns into a depression, even if we get a right-wing dictatorship as a result.

They have correctly concluded that the people will not rise up and impose their own version of justice, no matter how bad the economy gets and how indifferent our masters continue, as (I read) Roosevelt feared in the Thirties. So I suppose these plush Repubs calculate they are all right no matter what. Though perhaps they are just stupid and have sunk too deep into their own dreams and trances.

Anyway, originally I was thinking about how sometimes one does feel as if certain a certain politician deserves a caning, and so I Googled off to the one caning I remember, that of a senator by a congressman in the 1850s. What I had forgotten was the circumstances of that caning. An anti-slavery senator was savaged by a pro-slavery congressman -- and got off in spite of the senator being seriously injured (though, to be fair, the particular speech that prompted the attack was quite brilliantly rude to the point of cruelty, and something Harry Reid could study with profit).

And so suddenly I was not only pissed off at the present, I was pissed off at the past.

But what to do?

Image via Wikipedia

Why, what an ass am I! This is most brave,
That I, the son of a dear (stimulus package) murder'd
Prompted to my my revenge by heaven and hell,
Must, like a whore, unpack my heart with words
And fall a-cursing like a very drab.

Well, there you go: Lord Hamlet, Prince of Bloggers