DO IT YOUR OWN DAMN SELF

There's something I really like about blogging. It's one of those ultimate do-it-yourself activities. It's like painting a room or fixing something; if you can do it yourself, you get a great sense of satisfaction from the experience. Well, at least I do.

The past few days, since I recovered from my illness, I had an interesting E-mail exchange I'd like to share. My cousin wrote me about a package of Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies he was opening. He said that "the cookies are half the size they used to be." It was ironic that he sent that to me while I was nibbling on a few Triscuit crackers. I wrote back that I noticed that my box of Triscuit's had gone from at least 12 ounces down to nine-and-a-half ounces, and that the crackers seemed smaller. This got me thinking about things as they were and things as they are now, and how we keep losing our ability to do things on our own.

I live in one of the most expensive areas of the country. I work in probably the most expensive real estate district in America. And yet, almost every day, I bring my meal with me to work. I can't see spending even seven or eight dollars a day for food from a local restaurant. Figure, in the course of a week that adds up to at least $30, but probably more like $50...and hang plenty of extra weight I surely don't need on my middle. So my wife and I cook (more her than me). I also invested several years ago in some good quality Pyrex food containers that reheat nicely in a microwave. (I don't believe in using plastic to heat food in a microwave.)

Unlike me, one of the guys who works under me buys food at least once a day. He may spend $15 a day on takeout at the office. At the end of the year, that's more than $3,500 to feed your face at work. My stews and chicken over rice or noodles with an apple for dessert probably costs me less than half of that.

When I was a child, going out to a restaurant -- even a Burger King -- was a luxury. We ate at home. Rarely we went out, and often to a diner. I remember how amazed I was when I learned about all-you-can-eat salad bars, and never knew what to pile my plate with first. Your breakfast, lunch and dinner came from the home...although most of my lunches were subsidized cafeteria food. Today, when meals are eaten at home, they're largely heat-and-eat, while the recipes of our mothers and grandmothers sit on shelves collecting dust.

We see it as a sign of so-called progress in our culture that we don't fix our homes, prepare our food or even clean our own clothes. As a culture of convenience, we've lost our know-how and outsourced our everyday chores to others. I have friends who pay people to hook up their clothes dryers because they don't know how to run a hose. We've uneducated ourselves on the basics of life because spending those few extra hours at the office every week enables us to buy a guy who'll hook up an $8 piece of flexible line for just a $100.

Rather than looking at our stock market, bleak as the news has been, we need to take stock of ourselves. It's not enough to worry over material health, but rather to begin concentrating on our ability to be self-reliant. This doesn't mean that I think everyone needs to run out and skin a moose, but take the time to invest something other than money in your life. The returns for you, and the children around you, will be far better than shares of stock.

***The Judge***

Political Pig Pen

Yesterday (Tuesday), Barack Obama used the expression, "It's like putting lipstick on a pig" while making a policy point. Today, the McCain/Palin campaign and its various surrogates tied the remark to the V.P. nominee Sarah Palin. In effect, the Republicans called their own candidate a pig.

This has left me outraged! Not because the Republicans took the use of hackneyed expression -- one I've used several times myself in the past few weeks -- and put such a bizarre spin on it, but because Obama and the Democrats missed their chance to throw an even more blistering fastball right back at John McCain and the Republicans. Instead, what America was seeing this afternoon was Barack Obama back peddling in right field, looking like lost little Timmy Lupus in the Bad News Bears trying to catch that fly ball. In the movie, Lupus surprises himself by making the catch, but the Bears lose the game. Let's see if, now that Obama is chasing the ball, he can't do the opposite and turn around and win the game.

There's definitely more to be said on this subject -- like the use of "pork" by both camps and how it could insult Jewish, Muslim and vegetarian voters -- but I'll leave that for another post.

**The Judge**

Optional-Abstinence Education

I love Sarah Palin. The more I think of it, the more I love her as a candidate for national office. She's ambitious and has some really kooky views -- which is what makes her so much gosh-darn fun. She would have been even more fun if Mike Huckabee got the nomination and picked her.

The thing I can't get over is that she's a big advocate of two things I believe are purely rubbish -- teaching creationism and abstinence education in public schools. Both are foolish -- period, end of discussion. You want to learn about creationism, go to Sunday school and read the Bible. It's quick, gives you a simple worldview and tells you everything you need to know in just a few sentences. Abstinence -- parents should teach it at home, but as a matter of public health, all teens, especially young women, should get a solid semester of sexual education and hygiene...probably without young men in the same classroom.

Over the years, I've kind of modified my view on abstinence. As a horny teen, I'd have been happy to have been part of any hump-a-thon you can dream up. (Well, any straight hump-a-thon. I kind of had a conveyor belt fantasy...oh, another time.) But what we've learned (or I've learned) since those innocent days is that women really are sexual gatekeepers, and the more they give it away, the less prized sex becomes. Because sex is such an intimate connection and is fused in our cultural mythos with love, there's something wrong about advocating a form of sexual liberation that's merely sexually gratifying -- got my orgasm, thanks, goodbye (or, for guys, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am). Love is a component that can't be overlooked. To quote an English teacher at my high school (and, yes, this was said in the classroom): Sex without love is like masturbation with company. I love that!

So back to abstinence. You're young and horny, so what are you going to do? You're going to screw every chance you get...especially when you're the governor's daughter and you've snagged a popular, rugged hockey boy toy. Here's where abstinence comes in. Once you've been taught about abstinence, you can always just decide not to listen -- probably the biggest problem with abstinence education remains that ABSTINENCE IS OPTIONAL. (Abstinence education also tends to lead to more fairytales, like if you screw standing up, you can't get pregnant...which is something I remember a Marilu Henner character saying in some movie I saw years ago.) And what happens to that group that screws their brains out without a condom? In the right-wing fairytale, they get married, have a family and live happily ever after. In reality, they might have the baby and go it alone; have the baby and a rocky marriage (and by the time that finally ends, they're 26, have four kids and are stuck in a rut); put the baby up for adoption and move on with their life; have an abortion; do drugs and make believe life is just a bad dream.

So the Sarah Palin lesson is this: advocating abstinence education is a losing proposition. Sure, teach young women that they're the sexual gatekeepers, and that putting cocks in their mouths, vaginas or asses has consequences. Don't be a pushover. But, on the other hand, when they don't say no (by the way, those Virginity Pledges are hardly ever worth the paper they're written on), know that being clean, in love, wearing a condom and having your wits about you when having sex is going to make sex safe and a hell of a lot of fun.

**The Judge**

The Poultry Kid

Harry Reid bleeds chicken. The leader of the Senate, like many leaders before him (tuffies like Howard Baker, Trent Lott and Tom Daschle) is some form of concilatory poultry (turkey, goose, garden variety swallow). Reid would be the kid who started bleeding two periods (uh, that's school periods) before mixing it up in a schoolyard fight.

Why do I write such insulting stuff? Because after the whiz-bang speech delivered by Sarah Palin last night -- something with a lot of red meat and, as usual for Republicans, chocked full of lies and half truths -- Reid issued a name-calling screed, calling Palin's speech "shrill and sarcastic." Okay, he's got her on sarcastic, but shrill...please. Yes, Palin is going to be the attack dog, another Bob Dole running along with Jerry Ford, but get real! Shrill? C'mon. She did a brilliant job, and was frankly the only thing that wasn't really pathetic among the Republican speakers. Giuliani? It's what everyone who spent eight years watching that sort of bullying nonsense when he was mayor is very used to. Huckabee and Romney? Those guys are hollow suits (although I like Huckabee's preacher delivery...he should read bedtime stories). Palin did a great job and may stick around after this election.

Back to Reid. The senate, we all can acknowledge, is an institution of long and twisting rules and processes, and, unlike the House, isn't much a place for bare-knuckle brawling. What's really sad is that a few too many true panty-waists have risen to positions of leadership. I'm hoping that if Senator Obama is elected president, that he throws his weight behind his former rival, Hillary Clinton, and also behind Pennyslvania's John Murtha to ascend to leadership positions in the Senate and House, respectively. The current leadership is just a little to nicey-nice for tough times.

And let's face it, while Sarah Palin's biology has gifted her a pussy, Harry Reid really is a pussy.

**The Judge**

The Sarah Palin Factor

I've got a lot to blog about this year's election, but there is one thing I noticed last week that really has moved me to write. There are a lot of factors people keep citing as to why John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate. She's a woman, and may help attract what I've been calling the "Vag Vote" since Hillary Clinton was finally eliminated from the race. She added something of a "wow" to what looked like a hum-drum Republican offering. She's a gun-toting, anti-abortion babe who's a bit cross-eyed (in a sexy way)...all reasons the Republican base of Bible-thumping automatons will probably find her kind of cute and cuddly. She's already been branded a GMILF, which is normally kind of gross, but in her case sort of fits. She seems really ethical...except when sticking it to her ex-brother-in-law, a state trooper who was probably banging a 17-year-old on the side of some deserted Alaska highway.

Okay, all of that is fine. But what nobody, and I mean nobody, has pointed out yet is that she brings something else to the ticket -- she's actually shorter than John McCain! It's funny that nobody seems to notice that McCain is only 5-foot-7 or so, and that in 1988 Michael Dukakis was towered over by Lloyd Bentsen. (Bentsen, of course, also had lots of Senatorial gravitas, so he looked like the candidate and Dukakis looked like his puppet friend.) If McCain made the smartest move out there and chose a big, thundering white guy like Fred Thompson, well, Thompson would look like Edgar Bergen and McCain would be Charlie McCarthy. Now McCain's really got it all -- wow factor; woman (with pregnant 17-year-old daughter); issues that "fit the base;" and, most importantly, a few inches on his running mate.

**The Judge**