hard-edged fast food

these two places are near my parents' apartment in baltimore, and they share something hard-edged. "cluck-U chicken" is an obvious pun on F-U, delivering a visual kick to consumers or innocent bystanders. "polock johnny's" is more passive-aggressive, draping itself in self-labelling. when i was little, "polock" was synonymous with "stupid." it refers to people from poland. note, too, that this proudly ethnic sausage has draped itself in an american flag -- echoes of pro-war protests in the vietnam war era? -- and is squirting itself with ketchup. hmm. it is even lewd in some odd way.

in the downtown we passed another self-deprecating restaurant, an italian or greek place with the ephithet "good'a'food" on the awning (imitating the supposed ethnic accent).

frankly, the whole neighborhood -- no, "zone" -- feels hard and cruel. the cars drive fast and there is no place for walkers to walk. large warehouses stand between residential streets and large avenues. the little houses are hunched in on themselves, away from a harsh reality. like pottersville in "its a wonderful life," actually. hey, george bailey -- it all came true! your hallucination was really a vision of the future!

operation fish in a barrel

the newspapers are full of word of israel's "operations" against Gaza. a massacre has never been so handsomely rewarded with bureaucratic euphemism. 300 dead arabs is just fine for the US government: what really matters is those pesky rockets buzzing out of gaza, killing a person every few weeks. israel has no answer to arabs but violence. if they are trying to restore their air of invincibility and military potency, they are off base: no one has ever questioned their manly willingness to kill. by killing arabs, what they are after is the fissures and uncertainties in their own psyche: they want to restore their own belief in their invincibility.

alas, hundreds more will die in this narcissistic little experiment before it, too, inevitably fails.

peace will come only through palestinian independence and a withdrawal from land stolen in the 1967 war.

for the US and israel to foment palestinian civil war, as they have done these past few years, is only to work against this necessary and doable outcome.

we shall see if Obama has the guts to stand up for these principles and renounce this divide and conquer policy -- a policy which has failed, failed, and failed some more over the decades. but americans have an endless appetite for failure, it appears.

passive house

this (pasifhaus in german) is the name given to the german creators of a low-energy-consuming house. it requires little or no energy inputs, relying on the heat of the sun, directly shining into the house, or on the internal heat put out by people. it is sealed against the outside air, except for a special heat-exchange ventilation system. the cool air coming in from outside passes right next to the tube carrying the warm inside air out. 90 percent of the heat is conserved by passing to the incoming air and returning to the house. these houses are a bit more expensive to build than normal houses, because there are special fittings and seals around windows and doors. and there is a possibility they can be created for staying cool in hot places, too.

to catch on in the US the term "passive house" will never do. anything that reeks of passivity or the natural (or any diminishment of the heroic individual) is morally repugnant to americans. "tough house" or "success house" might work, however.

passive houses were written up in the new york times on sunday, i think.

there is another kind of alternative heating using air shafts into the earth and convection currents inside and around the house, but i forget what this is called.

dudine?

apparently, in 1883, the year "dude" was coined in new york city to refer to that era's decadent fashionistas, the word "dudine" was also coined for women.

two years later, "dudess" was unveiled. funny that neither made it to the present. although i would guess "dude" only made it to us because it was pulled into a bit of social satire -- to describe eastern city slickers playing cowboy in the West.

shadow tail

"shadow tail" is the literal translation of the old greek word which forms the base of our word "squirrel." it was taken into latin, then into old french, and finally into english. the meaning seemed to be, "animal whose tail is so big it can shade itself." i looked up this and other words for fun on the online etymology dictionary over christmas.

"squirrel" used as a verb first appeared in 1939.

christmas

i wonder if being shut up in a modest apartment made christmas better this year. passed in the suburbs, it is so easy on christmas to crawl into one's own space, in one's room, or on a sofa, or in front of a TV in the basement. but there in my parents' apartment, in an ugly unzoned area of baltimore, there were only two spaces: the kitchen and the living room.

so christmas was wonderful. dad and i took a walk before noon, past hundreds of small houses, and talked about politics and society. he said he did not know how society could ever heal the wounds and tears suffered by people in those poor neighborhoods. actually, these urban social disasters have been there since the 50s, when white middle classes emptied the cities for the suburbs and left them to rot. but one is insulated in the suburbs, away from the damage.

we opened presents, seated in a semicircle. sara and i got a rice cooker, which we had to carry on the greyhound bus yesterday.

then we put on "its a wonderful life," which sara had not seen before.

then we threw ourselves into cooking christmas dinner.

after stuffing myself i was exhausted, hit by a calorie bomb. i slept for an hour or two.

we sang christmas songs from the hymnal, with mom playing along on the piano. then we read the story from the bible.

around the kitchen table over more pie we talked about the old house on hickory lane, its curious details so obvious to kids: the venice canal scene on the formica shower enclosure, the black fridge in the basement, the musty smell there. and what was obvious to adults: the flooding problem. despite our investment in the old place, we left it behind so easily. even karen, who despised its discomforts (and its memories of an overcrowded youth), still dreams of it.

in short, rather than slipping into a bored malaise, we connected with each other. and with cranberry and rhubarb pie.

turkey + kimchi tacos

back from baltimore, where we visited my parents for 3 days, sara and i heated up leftover turkey, whipped up a sauce, and heated corn tortillas. we were out of jalapenos, so we took out a jar of kim chi. the sauce we took from scott's fish taco recipe, which we all gorged on so gorgeously in baltimore.

they were delicious. but there was no denying the odd sense that we were creating a crazy bricolage of this and that, here and there.