good cheer

The elegant Ms. Place offers a diagnostic test to determine what brand of liberal you might be. Lest any noses are rising at the term "liberal," remember that liberal means, among other things, "of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies" and, I might add, dictatorships. Liberals are also "free from prejudice or bigotry," and "favorable to progress and reform."

I took it twice, once before lunch, for which I was diagnosed a Peace Patroller, and the second after a fine meal and a brief review of the day's news, which apparently turned me into a NewLeft Hipster.

So how about it? What brand are you? Check out Ms. Place's test and come back and tell.

ch-ch-ch-ch-chaaaanges

In my futile but lifelong effort to transform my food addicted self into a normal person, I am revising yet again my eating plan. I know I need a plan. OA tells me "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail," but there's a little voice in my head saying "it's okay to go slow."

So am back to a couple of shakes a day and a meal and a snack, something like that. The point is flexibility. I vacillate between absolute rigidity and some sort of fluid approach to food. Too fluid = big binges, but absolute rigidity seems beyond my grasp at this moment.

I learned this yesterday after returning from Ponca City, taking my sister to the airport and finding myself starving. Starving, I tell you! Starving!! So I stopped at a fast store thinking I'd get a protein bar kind of thing. When I am thinking protein bar, I should never, ever stop to read the ingredients. These things have to be manufactured by Dow or Pfizer and they actually smell and taste like it. Yuck.

So instead of the plan-approved protein bar, I looked around and there were grapes. Red, luscious, fresh grapes all clean and lovely in a nice portion-sized cup. I dropped the chemi-bar and snagged the grapes. I went to the park and sat in the grass feeling a delicious sense of gratitude for the beauty of the day, the sun, the breeze, and each one of those cold, crisp, delicious, divine little bursts of juicy sweetness.

Life may be too short to not eat grapes. I am forever grateful for the 6-7 months I was able to do on a full liquid diet because it gave me such freedom. I got rid of a pile of weight and feel frisky and fit and strong. I can do the rest with a more moderate plan of a few meal replacements and a real meal, something to share with friends or my sweetheart. It's okay not to be in a rush. It is. Isn't it?

Bang those pots and pans and get the mammogram now

The loss of Molly Ivins leaves a gaping hole in the world. I have loved her since I lived in Texas. She epitomized the smart, sassy, rowdy Texas kind of belle I adore. Amy Goodman has written as fine a farewell as I've read to date, noting that Molly "first questioned authority, then skewered it." It brought tears to my eyes and is a fine remembrance of a fine woman. What a loss.

I've borrowed this photo from the Texas Observer, Molly's home for many years.

I can't get over Ted Kennedy's righteous rant

I keep watching it over and over. It's a nice break from Donnie Davies. I really had not had that much exposure to Kennedy and I am impressed by his passion on the part of regular folks.

I love this man!

I fell in love when he started hollering in the midst of this video from C-SPAN-2. Amendments worth $200 billion to corporations, small business, education, but not $2.15 for the poorest working people?

"What is the price that you want from these working men and women? . . . Seventy more amendments to add to the minimum wage bill before voting. . . . Do you have such disdain for hard working Americans that you want to pile all your amendments on this? . . . What is it about this that drives you Republicans crazy. What is it?"

My hero is a gay hooker

Mike Jones is my hero. I admire his courage, his strength of conviction, his honesty.

Mike Jones used to be a hooker. I don't hold that against him because the only difference between us is that he had the sense to charge. Having been single in the '70s, I was a very popular girl. I had a blast and I don't regret it, but it's not who I am today.

Mike may have had a problem with meth. I can't possibly hold that against him, as I used more than my share of that powerful drug in my misspent youth, and I know how seductive it can be.

I'm a 49 year old relatively proper (vastly reformed) married woman, owner of a successful small business in the upper south. I don't drink, smoke, do drugs or whore around. I've had the support of my family throughout my life, even the times when I was so off the rails as to be unrecognizable to them.

So why is Mike Jones, the gay prostitute who outed the hypocritical homophobic Ted Haggard my hero? Mike is my hero because, at great personal risk he provided a distraction from the Republican machine that has derailed so many elections.

Mike's story of his ongoing relationship with Ted Haggard ~ the head of an enormous church and a monstrous evangelical association, who reviled gays while engaging in homosexual acts, who used drugs while preaching purity ~ prevented the American public from once more swallowing the pro-war propaganda we've been fed for the last four years.

It was a story so shocking, it could not have been derailed by even one of those terror alerts Karl Rove is always pulling out of his ass to scare us into submission. By telling his story, by standing up, Mike encouraged the rest of us to stand up and do what needed to be done in Congress.

Mike took a risk. He told his story in northern Colorado ~ not far from where Matthew Shepard was beaten nearly to death, then left to die alone on a fence in Wyoming. People think folks in the south are homophobic, but we've got nothing on some of those idiots out west. Mike knew he would be reviled for his past, for the drugs, and he spoke up anyway.

I am not sure I have that kind of courage: I hope so, would want to, but in the end? I don't know if I have the kind of courage it takes to put everything at risk for a principle. The principle is honesty and Mike spoke up. For that, he is my hero.

If you want to help Mike, another of my heroes who writes so eloquently of the worst years of the "gay plague," Joe at Joe.My.God has a great post and complete details about a Paypal account that's been opened for Mike Jones. Mike is alone, without resources, but check out Joe's post. He says it better than I can. I sent $$ yesterday, along with my thanks. Mike's email for Paypal is massageandmuscle@aol.com. It felt great to be able to help, and anything does help ~ $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, anything at all.