Free At Last

So what's the first thing Paris Hilton did after getting out of jail?

Bitch went and got herself a weave.

I thought three weeks in prison made her eschew the ways of vapidity and move toward a life full of meaning and purpose?

Silly me!


/sarcasm

Eight Random Facts About Me

Jeff at God of Biscuits tagged me with the "Eight Random Facts About Me" meme, and you know how I love me some memes. Here goes:

1. When it comes to matters of the heart, I think I --- the eternal optimist --- have finally become cynical and jaded.
2. I secretly suspect my friends think I'm the biggest flake on the planet. The reality is that I spend all of my disposable income on flamenco lessons.
3. I won't look in any mirror if I'm in the dark. I'm going to be thirty-fucking-five this year and I'm still freaked out about "Bloody Mary."
4. I worry too much about my parents. Maybe it's an only-child thing. Maybe it's carryover from the fact that:
   
5. I'm mildly hypochondriac-ish.
6. And OCD-ish. This is a relatively new development.
   
7. I think all of my friends are more exciting and cooler than I am.
8. I have this uncanny ability to look at someone just before they're about to hock a loogie. Don't be jealous.

Did I share too much, Boo?

I hereby tag the following cool people. They may or may not respond, but check out their blogs anyway, because they rock. (So does my tagger's blog, by the way.)

1. Seamus at Rangelife
2. Jonsey at Jones of the Nile
   
3. Catherine at Poverty Barn
4. Laurie at Defiance
5. pins&needles at I Play With Pins and Needles
6. Hal at Hal's House of Pancakes
7. sb at Disgruntled Grad Gal
8. Dulce at asi es mi vida
   

Beersicles, anyone?

I have to hand it to Executive Chef Frank Morales of McLean, Va.'s Rustico Restaurant for figuring out a way to create what is essentially frozen beer on a stick:

After weeks of testing several hundred beer varieties to find flavors that taste good on a stick, Rustico finally settled on three flavors: "Raspbeer-y," made with a Belgian, fruit-style beer; "Plum," made from a Belgian Lambic brew; and the "Fudgesicle," made with a stout with bittersweet chocolate undertones. He plans to offer other flavors on a rotating basis.

The beer pops sell for $4 in the six-ounce size, shaped like a traditional Popsicle, and $6 for a larger "beer cone."

Personally, I always find it hard enough to finish a pint before it goes warm, so I wonder if having it in popsicle form would be an easier way for me to get my swerve on.

I fear the Brain Freeze, though.


P.S. Don't hate on me for linking to Faux News, please. I had to work with what I had. Don't judge.

UPDATE: What about pizza-flavored beer?

(Photo credit: AP)

No one under 17 allowed to read this blog

Who knew?



Heh.

(I don't know how to get rid of that "online dating" link, so forgive my Ludditeosity.)

UPDATE 6/25: Thanks to my new friend at pins&needles for the HTML help! I am now online-dating-link free!


Thanks to Commandante Agi for the inspiration.

Retail Strategy in Oakland

I've always thought that Oakland was a city with lots of potential. For those of you who live in this city --- especially whose who love to shop --- here's an opportunity to make your voice heard:

PUBLIC MEETINGS
As part of development of a new citywide retail strategy, the City of Oakland invites local residents, visitors and those who work in Oakland to attend one of four community meetings scheduled in June and July. Participants will be able to share their perceptions, preferences and thoughts on retail shopping in Oakland and desired future development paths. Convenient neighborhood meeting locations with easy transit connections have been selected to encourage the maximum participation and input from residents.

Meeting dates and times are:

* Saturday, June 23, 2007, from 10:00 a.m. to Noon at Mosswood Recreation Center, 3612 Webster Street
* Monday, June 25, 2007, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Oakland City Hall's Hearing Room 4, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza, 2nd Floor, just off 14th Street near Broadway
* Monday, July 9 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Allen Temple Baptist Church, 8501 International Boulevard
* Wednesday, July 11, 2007, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. at Fruitvale/San Antonio Senior Center, 3301 E. 12th Street, at Fruitvale Village near the Fruitvale BART station

No R.S.V.P. is necessary. Participants are encouraged to arrive early as the limited seating will be available on a first-come, first-serve basis. If English is not your first language, translation services can be made available in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese at any meeting by calling (510) 238-6812. The Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community may request ASL translation by calling (510) 238-3254. All translation requests should be made one week prior to the meeting date.

ONLINE SURVEY
In developing a citywide retail strategy, the City of Oakland is encouraging local residents, visitors and those who work in Oakland to take a quick-and-easy online survey. Results from the confidential online survey, which was launched in late May, will provide the City with valuable insight on retail perceptions and preferences as well as what factors influence shopping decision making and what types of products, shops and restaurants respondents would like to see added to Oakland's retail mix. In addition to English, the online survey is available in Spanish, Chinese and Vietnamese at www.shopoakland.com/survey

The 26-question survey can be completed in less than 10 minutes with multiple-choice answers and easy-to-click boxes as well as space to provide more detailed answers if the respondent chooses.

Upon completing the survey, respondents have the option of entering a drawing for an Apple iPod nano. The prize drawing for the nano will be held on July 27, 2007, from all valid and complete entry submissions received by 5:00 p.m. on July 26, 2007. The winning entrant will be notified by e-mail and/or telephone. Entering the drawing does not change the confidential status of responses to the shopper survey.

MORE INFORMATION
The City of Oakland is working with a consulting team to develop the first-ever Citywide Retail Strategy and Implementation Plan. While examining numerous target areas across the city, the consulting team will evaluate the retail potential of each area including current sales leakage, gather demographics and lifestyle characteristics of potential shoppers, identify which types of retailers would be a good fit in the available sites and what infrastructure improvements or incentives may be necessary to enhance retail. Feedback from the public meetings will be vital in developing this strategy. The strategy is expected to be completed in Spring 2008.

For more information on Oakland retail, the strategy or these events, visit www.Business2Oakland.com/main/retailmarketupdate.htm or contact Keira Williams via e-mail at kwilliams@oaklandnet.com or via telephone at (510) 238-3853.

Props to Stachmo for the info.

Friday Morning "Hey look, it's a quiz" Blogging

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others. Left Brain Dominance: (6) Right Brain Dominance: (11) Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz

Props to Jeff at God of Biscuits for the inspiration.

Dr. Evil

If Dick "The-Office-Of-The-Vice-President-Isn't-Part-Of-The-Executive-Branch" Cheney were a small rodent, this would be him:



I'm just saying.

Your friendly neighborhood specialty food update

There they go again, stealing my joy:

Geese force-fed and then slaughtered for their livers may get their final revenge on people who favor the delicacy known as foie gras: It may transmit a little-known disease known as amyloidosis, researchers reported on Monday.

Tests on mice suggest the liver, popular in French cuisine which uses it to make pate de foie gras and other dishes, may cause the condition in animals that have a genetic susceptibility to such diseases, Alan Solomon of the University of Tennessee and colleagues reported.

That would suggest that amyloidosis can be transmitted via food in a way akin to brain diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, which can cause a rare version of mad cow disease in some people who eat affected meat products or brains.

Amyloidosis can affect various organ systems in the body, which accumulate damaging deposits of abnormal proteins known as amyloid. The heart, kidneys, nervous system and gastrointestinal tract are most often affected but amyloidosis can also cause a blood condition.

And I'm off to go eat a stupid salad.

Taguba exposes the bullshit

Retired Army Major General Antonio Taguba speaks out to The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh about Abu Graib. I found this quote to be one of the most interesting:

"From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."

Taguba is a man of the greatest integrity. It's such a damn shame he had to work for this administration, where his talents were silenced and wasted. Kudos to him for continuing to speak out.

My thoughts on immigration reform

I thought on this Father's Day, I'd share my thoughts on my father's immigration experience and the current debates among our lawmakers on this subject. Check out my post on Bring It On! for more.

Happy Father's Day to all you fathers and baby daddys out there.

Thursday morning Eva "La Yerbabuena" blogging

Por solea:



Eva, you are too good.

Gay Bomb

The Pentagon confirmed the existence of an Air Force proposal to create a special type of chemical weapon that would disperse strong aphrodesiacs and hormones that would "cause homosexual behavior."

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing [sic] the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

Firstly, do I even have to go into how stupid this is? Just like how you can't pray the gay away, you can't spray some love potion on somebody and >poof< make them gay.

However, some market-savvy inventor should jump on this idea, create a body spray and market it in a way that's similar to Axe that will make the gay menz swoon over each other. On second thought, gay men probably wouldn't buy it. All the ones I know are way more high-end than that, and would probably balk at the idea of buying a cologne from the drug store. But you know, this could be an option for the bois on a budget.

Hey, screw that; how about making one for us single, straight women out here? I can use all the help I can get.

FlyPink

I always hated the color pink. And now, I hate it even more:

THE WAGS have been doing it for years – but now every woman’s dream is about to come true with the launch of an airline for shopping trips to Paris, Milan and New York.

Called FlyPink in homage to all things girly, the airline which promises to put the glamour back into air travel, has a totally frivolous fuchsia-pink livery.

It makes its inaugural flight to Paris next month from Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport.

Passengers will sip pink champagne in a pink-themed cabin aboard the 100-seat Fokker aircraft. They will even be treated to a free manicure at the airport before they fly.

The boutique airline is aimed at Coleen McLoughlin and Vic­toria Beckham wannabes aged 21 to 35.

Heh heh. The aircraft's name is Fokker.

Halliburton Plans Move to Dubai

Interesting. Very interesting.

The company said it hoped the move to the United Arab Emirates would help it expand its business in the Middle East.

Halliburton won valuable contracts in Iraq following the US-led invasion of 2003, some of which were awarded without competitive bidding.

The company also has extensive operations in Saudi Arabia.

The oil giant will keep an office in Houston but the posts of chairman, president and chief executive will be based in Dubai.

BIO post: Seriously, Who's Running the Show Here?

I wrote a post on Bring It On! this morning that discusses yet another incident in the dysfunctional House of Bush regarding Iran and diplomacy. Check it out.

Not just a former racetrack, yo

Recreation area at the Tanforan Assembly Center

Did you know that the site of the Tanforan mall in San Bruno also used to be a Japanese internment camp?

I didn't either.

That mall sucked anyway.

Anyway, today at the mall, internees and their children (some of them born at the Tanforan site during the internment period) held a reunion to hold testimony about their pasts and remind current generations "of the injustices that the internees experienced."


Thanks to the good folks at SFist for the heads up.

(Photo credit: Japanese Cultural and Community Center)

eHarmony sued

Bigotry seriously has no place in this milennium, and I'm glad to hear that someone's finally calling eHarmony on their shit:

A lawsuit alleging discrimination based on sexual orientation was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of Linda Carlson, who was denied access to eHarmony because she is gay.

Lawyers bringing the action said they believed it was the first lawsuit of its kind against eHarmony, which has long rankled the gay community with its failure to offer a "men seeking men" or "women seeking women" option.

You know I have no love for eHarmony. I noticed this bullshit years ago, and I'd even take it a step further and say that interracial relationships aren't part of Dr. Neil Warren's idea of what constitutes a harmonious relationship, either.

So what, you say; interracial marriages and gay marriages are two different things.

Are they? Really? It wasn't until the U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1967 in the Loving v. Virginia case that denying two people of different races the right to marry was unconstitutional.

But God says that homosexuality just ain't natural, you say? Well, they tried that whole 'God argument' in the Loving v. Virginia case too. Said the trial judge in the original case against the Lovings:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

Seriously, he said that.

I understand that the issue of gay marriage isn't something that will go away in the blink of an eye, but I'm glad to see that the fight hasn't ended. This is why I'm in support of gay marriage; just 40 years ago, it would have been illegal for me to marry a white man in the state of Virginia. For what? The color of my skin? For being who I am? For something over which I have no control?

Ain't nobody gonna have any power over me, telling me who I can and can't fall in love with and marry, and vice versa.

R.I.P. Michael Dawson

You know how you just sort of feel close to a person even though you don't see them every day?

I want to pause for a moment here to pay my deepest respects to Michael David Dawson, a man whose friendly, bright, and warm personality shone like a beacon at many Peet's Coffee & Tea locations up and down the Peninsula. Words cannot even express how great this guy was.

Last Wednesday, May 30, he passed away during his morning shift.

When I heard the news, I didn't even realize it was him until yesterday afternoon. Shame on me.

I'm honored to say that I've had the pleasure of working with Michael on several different occasions a few years ago. His open and overwhelmingly friendly personality helped me get through some pretty stressful times associated with taking on new responsibilities, opening new stores, etc. He made such an impression on me that I never forgot him, even when I left. Michael Dawson was an awesome human being, and I will miss him.

My truly heartfelt condolences to his wife and his family.