Deja Vu Horizon

This clip is 7:54 long, but watch it anyway.



So, basically the deep-water oil drilling companies are currently using 30-year-old technology to contain the Deepwater Horizon spill.

I'm sick of seeing BP's Tony Hayward being held up as the single face of villainre in all of this. Sure, BP's involvement is egregiously negligent. But let's see Steven Newman and David J. Lesar put through the ringer. In my point of view, they're all involved, so they're ALL deserving of the same excoriation.

In 1979, it took them nine months to stop the spill coming from a well 200 feet underwater. We're now three months and 3 days into Deepwater Horizon oil spill. How long will it take them to stop this well that's 5,000 feet underwater?

Alvin Greene, GOP Plant?

U.S. politics is a clusterfrench. Case in point: South Carolina Democratic primary winner, Alvin Greene. From The New York Times:

Just when it seemed political events in South Carolina couldn’t turn more bizarre, calls are mounting for investigations and for the withdrawal from the Senate race of Alvin Greene, who has become known as the “stealth candidate” after mysteriously becoming the state’s Democratic nominee on Tuesday.

On Thursday, not only did more officials urge Mr. Greene to quit the contest against Senator Jim DeMint, the Republican incumbent, but top lawmakers — like Representative James Clyburn — began suggesting that Mr. Greene was a “plant.” Mr. Clyburn, the House Democratic majority whip, also called for a federal investigation because of reports that Mr. Greene, who is on unemployment, paid more than $10,000 of his own money to enter the race.

“There were some real shenanigans going on in the South Carolina primary,” Mr. Clyburn said on a radio show. “I don’t know if he was a Republican plant; he was someone’s plant.”

What the hell? Just watch. If this guy's for real, he desperately needs media training. Among other things. Like a substantive platform. And if he is a plant, I feel sorry for this man. He's obviously too dumb enough to know that he's being used by the GOP.

Some background here.

SBUX provides free Wi-Fi

To be sure, offering free wi-fi is pretty cool. But damn, is it really THAT newsworthy? Seems like all the SBUX PR folks have to do is burp out a press release and it gets picked up everywhere.

Sugartit Kitchens: You know you want some.

Hey everyone!

I'm so happy and proud of my homegirls at Sugartit Kitchens, who recently scored a spot at Forage SF's Underground Farmer's Market. And what, you may be wondering, is the Underground Farmer's Market? From the Forage SF web site:

The SF Underground Market was conceived of by Iso Rabins in early December 2009. Frustrated by his inability to get a booth at legit farmers markets (to be in most farmers markets in SF you need to be certified as the primary producer of the food you sell, and since wild foraged food grows on its own, there is technically no producer), as well as amazed by the wealth of delicious professional quality food being made in Bay Area home kitchens.

The first market was held in a private home in the Mission neighborhood of San Francisco, with 8 vendors, and about 200 attendees. Now at number three (at the time of this post) , It has grown to 47 vendors and over 1,200 people attending.

The SF Underground Market is an incubator. A place where budding businesses can get a leg up on their road to legitimacy.

Sugartit Kitchens will be offering the following items this Friday, June 4, from 6 p.m. to midnight:

• Whoopie Pies
• Cupcakes
• Brown Sugar Bread & Butter Pickles
• Pickled Green Beans
• Apricot/Vanilla/Almond Confiture
• Strawberry/Black Pepper/Mint Jam
• Rhubarb/Rosemary Confiture
• White Cherry/Raspberry/Absinthe Jelly
• Tipsy Date Cake
• Cocoa Nib Cookies

Seriously, if you can, go check out the market, and look for Sugartit Kitchens. They're two of the most fantastic, creative, charming, and talented women I know. You won't be disappointed!

SF Underground Farmer's Market

SOMArts

934 Brannan Street
San Francisco, CA 94103-4906

Sugartit Kitchens will be representing to the fullest from 6 p.m. - midnight.

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

Hey, look. Another congressman caught in an extramarital affair:

Mark Souder (R-Ind.)

The punchline --- and I use that term loosely since it seems to happen so frequently now that the joke's not funny anymore --- is that Souder is known as a "conservative enforcer" in Congress.

Throughout his time in Congress, Souder made his evangelical Christianity a centerpiece of his public persona. He was known for his outspoken views on religion and his uncompromising conservative positions on social issues such as abortion.

He said after a 2008 hearing on abstinence-only education that the only fully reliable way young people can protect themselves from pregnancy and STDs is by "abstaining from sex until in a committed, faithful relationship."

He and his alleged mistress, Tracy Jackson, made a video (easy tiger, not that kind) together on abstinence education. Oh, the irony.



I just want to state for the record that I don't care what you do in your personal life, except when your entire career is based on espousing a certain way of life that is in direct contrast with the way you live your own. And I find it especially offensive when you have a hand in the legislative process through which you see fit to dictate how the rest of us should live our lives.

Vile. Just vile.

(link)

So THAT'S what the sun looks like.

I wouldn't know. The weather's been very weird 'round these here parts.

Not to mention the ginormous migraine that I like to call the 2010 Gulf Oil Spill Clusterfrench is giving me high blood pressure.

So I need calm down and focus on something beautiful and awe-inspiring. Like this:

The big yellow thing is the Sun. But look at the upper right section. See those two dark blips? The one on the left is the Shuttle Orbiter Atlantis and on the right is the International Space Station! Incredibly, Thierry caught them as they passed directly in front of the Sun! To give you an idea of how talented Thierry is, the entire transit lasted just over half a second.

... Mind you, Atlantis had just started its pitch maneuver, designed to show its belly to the crew on the ISS so they can inspect it for heat tile damage. That means this image was taken shortly before the Orbiter docked with the station, on May 16th. Thierry was in Madrid specifically to get this shot.

Get a good look. This is the last mission of Atlantis (unless it’s needed as a rescue mission later this year), so we won’t get too many more views like this.

Aaaah. I feel better now.

(link)

Remembering: Ian Curtis

Thirty years ago today, Joy Division's lead singer Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen. A troubled soul, struggling with severe epilepsy, an estranged wife, a mistress and burgeoning success, his is a tragic story of yet another great talent who left this world too soon.

(Photo credit: Bernard Pierre Wolff, Appiani family tomb, Cimitero Monumentale di Staglieno, Genoa, Italy)

Red wine-fueled lament

Oh, blog. How I've neglected you. I'm sorry. I have big, grandiose plans to resurrect you to your G-list status in 2010. I blame Facebook for taking all of my time and energy. And yes, while I admit the attention I received on said social networking site provided me with the short-term validation I needed at the time, I feel like there's nothing that compares with the just-as-superficial-yet-somehow-moreso-deserved validation that comes with all the effort that goes into one blog post.

I find myself at a crossroads with social media. On the one hand, keeping up to speed with the ever-changing world that is social networking and other things of its ilk is crucial, not only to the work that I do, but to my own interests as a semi-(and I use that prefix loosely) savviness with the Internets and all that, but quite frankly, I miss writing. The practice of writing something (no matter how horrible it ends up to be) on a daily basis.

Must figure out how to work this blog back into my regular day-to-day. Be patient with me, oh blog-o-mine.

Not to mention the fact that I just got out of a relationship and could use the mental, cathartic release that comes with putting words to virtual paper.

Bear with me, I promise I'll be back soon.