Winner of the Most Out-of-Touch Award

Ralph Nader.

I admire the man - hell, I once voted for him as a Georgia contrarian back when a third party seemed like a political possibility. But in 2008, Nader-as-Don-Quixote is an embarassment.

NTD

I'm about to hit the road - in the rain, with questionable windshield wiper blades, no power steering, a weird squeak in fifth gear, and four hundred miles to go. And with a hacking cough I woke up with last night.

Crossing my fingers for good luck as I type this (which is not so easy to d0) -

NTD

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. – Annie Dillard

NTD

Go Obama!

In other news, I finished up my newspaper column this morning and sent it on. This does not get easier after five years - it's more like writing Rocky MCMXV, because all the original ideas were used up years ago. What's worse is that, unlike Stallone, there are no human growth hormones or steroids to help... just a strong cup of coffee or two. It gets difficult to find something I can talk about for 800 words.

But I did it... on to other tasks.

NTD

the naked tapdancer succumbs to a cute Asian

From NBC's Today Show:

CURRY: It has nothing do with the economy, the war — spending on the war?

G. BUSH: I don’t think so.

You know, I wake up with ideas to write about - my own little world, the birds singing in the back yard trees, the moonlight shining in my window so brightly at 4:30 this morning that I had to get out of bed just to get a good look at it - but then, I get the notion to check the news before going to my blog. And the willful ignorance of old men who stomp on the hopes and dreams of humanity as if they are six year olds jumping on anthills for sport, their arrogance and foolishness, it all just derails my train of thought.

I sometimes think that my life could be better without this darned internet and its thrust of too much information into my poor brain.

It's a love/hate relationship, I tell you.

NTD

Thanks to feministing.com for this hilarious (but scary) piece about Texas dildo and sodomy laws (in honor of the recent overturning of the state laws regarding sex toys):



God, I miss the late great Molly Ivins.

NTD

Rhymes with Hunt

Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, said this about NBC's recent apology for airing Jane Fonda's utterance of the word "c**t":

"Let me just say something about that word," she said. "The whole point of the play is to reclaim that word, and to make that word beautiful, and to make that word powerful, and not denigrating, and not ugly."

I completely agree. The word "c**t" has not bothered me since I was a shy, repressed pianist in a little church in the woods. Once I became a mother and a feminist, I wondered what the fuss was about. For some reason, there are dozens of socially acceptable words to describe the almighty penis, but hardly anything suitable to say on television - or in any polite society, for that matter - about what Ensler has called "down there".

Here are a few thoughts about the origin of the C-word, according to takeourword.com:

Cunt is believed to derive from a Germanic root kunton "female genitalia" which also gave rise to Old Norse kunta (ancestor of Norwegian and Swedish dialectical kunta and Danish dialectical kunte), Old Frisian, Middle Low German and Middle Dutch kunte, and the English doublet quaint. The word wasn't always considered derogatory... the proto-Germanic root of cunt is ku- "hollow place".

Therapy for the day: cuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcuntcunt

Gosh, I feel better.

NTD

Everything's coming up roses

The roses are beautiful, Stewart.

Happy Valentine's Day - slightly belated - to all.

Love love love,
NTD

21 Percent

Good Lord... my shop figures for January are off twenty one percent from the previous January. Generally, I read the dismal retail news and smugly think - well, that's Wal-Mart. That's Gap. And then, I go about business as usual, knowing that my store (both Incarnation#1 1987-1997 and Incarnation #2 1995-present) has survived the following:

-Birth of a child
-Surgery
-Divorce
-Terrible divorce financial settlement in which I basically paid for the shop twice over in order to secure the exit of former husband
-Crazy Former Boyfriend
-Institutionalization of Crazy Former Boyfriend
-Crazy Former Boyfriend stealing many shop assets with stolen key
-Two Burglaries
-Numerous unsuitable and/or dishonest employees
-Twenty years of economic ups and downs and two Bush regimes

But until yesterday, I have never faced what the Wall Street Journal would call a "significant economic downturn affecting the retail market" with such a statistical dip in my own back yard.

This must be what recession looks like.

Plan for the weekend: slashing prices (at least a few).

NTD

R.I.P. Dixie Crystals Sugar Refinery of Port Wentworth, Georgia

NTD

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain

NTD

Today I'm going to walk up to the courthouse and vote my hopes, not my fears.

NTD

The New York Times columnist William Kristol has spoken. On February 3^rd he told NPR/Fox News contributor Juan Williams the following:

Look, the only people for Hillary Clinton are the Democratic establishment and white women. The Democratic establishment - it would be crazy for the Democratic Party to follow an establishment that's led it to defeat year after year. White women are a problem, that's, you know - we all live with that.

I am offended on so many levels, but why should I be surprised?

Certain white men - such as Bill Kristol - just might be a problem, too.

NTD

Obama's Secret Weapon

It's all over, folks. Barack Obama now has the power to render every man helpless to resist his name on the Super Tuesday ballots.

Scarlett Johansson appears in the new Will.I.Am/Jesse Dylan promotional video for Barack Obama, looking as lovely and sincere and lust-inspiring as any actress this side of Angelina possibly can.

Every man I know has succumbed to Scarlett Fever in the past.

I'm sorry, Hillary. But Scarlett chooses to whisper the holy name of Barack. The Goddess has spoken. Resistance is futile.

NTD

Florida rocked, and an attentive reader might notice that I almost never ever use the term "rocked" which I would include in a list of Top Ten Annoying Overused Words in America, along with "awesome" and "sweet". But Florida in late January is warmish and wonderful, particularly when one scores a beach-eating highrise room featuring an ocean view and an always-available jacuzzi downstairs for fifty bucks a night. So Stewart and I did all the wrong things, like eating too much fried seafood and impersonating Giuliani supporters at a RonJon Surf Shop rally in order to photograph the top of Rudy's head as he rushed into the bus. As a dieting left-wing liberal who officially hates overdeveloped beachfront condos, Republican politics AND cable television, it was frightening to watch myself morph into the Ugly American Tourist so effortlessly. What the hell, it was fun. And you can bet that I will be perusing only the Democratic candidates on my state's touchscreen ballot next Tuesday. And No More Television, other than the endless stacks of VHS tapes now found in virtually every room of my house. And eating sensible food in sensible portions. And decrying developers and ugly tall buildings like I usually do.

NTD, who does not plan to use the word "rocked" again for the rest of 2008