"And, damn it all, they might have left me my toothbrush!"

The Odd Couple: The Americanized Huis Clos that found its ultimate expression in Bottom.

Discuss.

The rain it raineth every OH MY GOD KILL ME NOW

Readers, I give you the dourest production of Twelfth Night ever committed to videotape:

Employers should embrace paying for health insurance, because abortions should be rare

Just as I don't understand why a health insurer itself would decide to cover pregnancy and birth costs (some $20,000 per event, and most women who do it once do it at least once more) but not pay for birth control (some $360 per year for pills, less for an IUD per year over its lifetime), I don't understand why an employer would be happy to pay for pregnancy and birth insurance, plus the real risk of high turnover among its female employees, but refuse to pay for birth control insurance.

I'm a small business owner. I've been one for years, and I spent a good part of the 1990s as a successful small business owner who hired employees. When I've had employees, I've paid for their health insurance. And I will in the future, if I ever get into the position where I can hire them again, even if the number of employees is below the Obamacare mandate threshold. Why? Because it's good business. It's cheap -- you have to do some research and some math, but it's not terribly expensive per employee. In the 1990s, I found a trade association that hooked us up to a group that tailored its plan to small businesses (even tiny ones, like mine) that wouldn't have been able to negotiate a good deal on their own. I bet there's a trade or professional association for every darn industry out there, and I bet to a one that they have affiliate health insurance programs. I know my local and state bar associations do. A business owner who doesn't do this research and math in their own industry just isn't doing the best job they can do as a business owner.

To be clear, I don't recall the numbers offhand, because it was over 15 years ago and the paperwork is long gone. And the numbers weren't negligible, and the 1990s was a very easy decade to make money in the industry I was in, and my employees were young, healthy people. But offering health insurance to them was worth every penny we spent on it. Combined with a reasonable sick and vacation day policy, the work environment allowed a sick employee to stay home, see a healthcare practitioner, and get back to work quickly. They didn't lose productivity, coming into work because they felt forced to though they were feeling lousy, getting everyone else in the office sick. And for the love of Christ, I never asked the women about their birth control. (Though I do know that if they were on the pill, they were covered, because they got the same coverage I did, and you know damn well my pills were paid for.) And you know why? Because one, it's none of my goddam business. And two, I didn't want "these fool feemale women" having unintended pregnancies and bringing drama and grief to the office, and needing time off.

And three, because there's that Clintony pro-choice line that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare." Anti-choicers jump on that, with their favorite gotcha: "Why rare? If abortion is OK, why do you agree that it should be rare? You must actually think it's not OK, or else you wouldn't say it should be rare. Gotcha!" That "gotcha" is a logical fallacy. Do you see it? They beg the question as to Clinton's premise for why abortions should be rare. The reason isn't that pro-choicers think an embryo or fetus has the same right to life as the woman gestating it. The reason is that any abortion, even a very early or straightforward one, takes resources. It takes a woman away from her work or studies for multiple trips to the clinic or hospital (plus a trip to court if the patient is a minor in a state where she needs to get a judicial bypass around the parental notification law). It takes money, both in the cost of the procedure and travel costs to get it, plus lost wages from time off work. And it takes an emotional toll from the stigma, drama, and grief largely inflicted by the religious right.

Abortions should be rare because they cost women time, money, and work and educational opportunities. Abortions should be rare because they cost employers money. Oops, I think that makes me a capitalist! But hey, it's not me who wants abortions to be rare. It's just good business.

Forty-two years on

4 May 1970:

As they arrived at the top of the hill, twenty-eight of the more than seventy Guardsmen turned suddenly and fired their rifles and pistols. Many guardsmen fired into the air or the ground. However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13 second period. [ ... ] Four Kent State students died as a result of the firing by the Guard.

To understand who came looking for a riot, see who came dressed for a riot. When a protest situation gets out of control, you have to ask, every time, who did the escalating? Who brought in horses? Who is carrying pistols? Who is using billy clubs? Who is wearing military- and SWAT-style protective gear like helmets, body armor, body shields? Who arrived in a Blackwater armored vehicle? Who brought a panjandrum to a knife fight?

Honestly, I think the only reason we're not getting murders like this with Occupy events is that the actual National Guard is in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, instead of staying stateside to help evacuate cities during hurricanes and stuff.

Excitotoxins!

"Excitotoxins"? This is my word of the day. My made-up word of the day:

Don't you have to cook grains in order to get their nutritional benefit?

This question presupposes that grains such as rice, wheat, barley, and oats are helpful to the body's nutrition. Actually, they are not. The fact that they must be cooked to be edible is the first clue that something is wrong with them. They are bland to the taste and are virtually inedible without salt, spices, and condiments, the deadly "excitotoxins". Grains are acid forming in a body that needs to be slightly alkaline. Many people have substituted cooked grains in place of meat in their diet, and as a consequence, have shown a marked reduction in cardiovascular disease. However, because cooked grains create a condition known as acid toxemia, these same people will instead, suffer from a higher risk of arthritis and cancer. Cooked grains also contain opioids (which are addictive), cause daily mood swings, and contribute significantly to obesity.

As the joke goes, [citation needed]. Christ, why can't I look up some information about growing bean sprouts at home without being associated with looney-tunes raw foodists? (I recently started up again, after having quit since renouncing my former life as a hippie. All the internet research I can find indicates that the beans I'm sprouting are so old that they shouldn't be sprouting. But three dinner guests and my ravenous daughter found differently this weekend.)

Further on in the FAQ:

Too much fat will thicken the blood

Oh, man, that line brings just one thing to mind:

Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murd'ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry "Hold, hold!"

Gruesome, public Center City suicide mostly unreported

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Occupy attrition

Occupy Philly appears to be going out not with a bang but a whimper. What was accomplished in other cities by tear gas, pepper spray, and mass arrests will be accomplished in Philadelphia by rain, cold weather, and political out-maneuvering.

Philadelphia Film Festival's 20th Anniversary Film Festival

One of the city's innumerable film festivals is coming up soon. Convince me that I should make it the same full-contact sport that I used to. Or at least convince me which dozen films I should go see.

Oooh, wait -- a new Coriolanus with The Tree of Life's Jessica Chastain and a lot of explosions, starring and directed by Voldemort? Holy cow, I'm not sure how you can go wrong with that, except by not going to see it.

And something called Sleeping Beauty from Australia that bears some suspicious resemblance to Story of O, at least from the trailer. . . . Oh, and from the official website's synopsis, as well.

OK, so tell me which ten other films I should go see. But please don't suggest Barton Fink; I prefer Miller's Crossing.

I love the smell of artificial deadlines in the morning

I do a lot of pro bono work, for a lot of reasons. I have to keep myself busy, so I don't leave the office feeling that I've done nothing but dick around on the Internet all day long. I need to continue training myself, so I do what I like to call self-CLE: any work product I generate for a pro bono client goes right into my personal library of forms I can adapt for a paying client later on. And of course it's good for networking, a term I don't like but can't very well ignore.

But to get work done for non-paying clients -- it's all well and good to call them pro bono, but at the end of the month they've done nothing for my bottom line, at best, and taken potential paid hours away from me, at worst -- I have to be disciplined. This week I've given myself until Wednesday to generate the first draft of by-laws for a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization where I serve on the board, which I'll chuck to the other lawyer on the board for revisions and input. In the end, I'll add another document to my library, and we'll both add another item to our resumés. The ABA advises newer lawyers against serving on non-profit boards, but fuck the ABA. They're not on the side of solo practitioners or small firms, anyway, especially those of us who graduated in the "bottom 90%" of our classes at a "bottom 90%" school.

Anyway, my ultimate deadline, if I have one, which I don't because nobody is paying me to do this work, would be the end of my term of service on this board. I guess. That doesn't come around for a few more months. But in the meantime, and while I'm still underemployed for paying work, I'm stuck making busy work for myself. Once I'm done my morning news reading.

What do you do when you've finished your paying work? Or the other side of the coin, do you wish you could do some lawyering work for a non-profit company or public-interest organization? Please comment. Thanks!

Protesting, "meta" protesting, and Vancouver

So the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup and the fans who congregated after the match to congratulate their team on a good run and a fun season were overwhelmed by asshole rioters who trashed an area of town.

Reminds me of the assholes who ruined the World Trade Organization protests in 1999 in Seattle.

There, we had tens of thousands of ordinary people in the streets -- union members and kids on rollerskates, enviro-weenies dressed up like turtles, university students and professors, people who build Boeing planes and Microsoft software -- peacefully marching and basically partying to drums and music. Then the assholes came in and started smashing windows, spraypainting chain restaurant buildings, and lighting fires. The result? National news favorably covered the WTO and the establishment; the progressive message did not get publicized; the assholes got their 15 minutes on national TV; and part of Seattle's downtown was temporarily drawn into a bizarre, unconstitutional "no-protest" zone (PDF by ACLU-WA).

One of the Vancouver assholes, being a nice person since he is, after all, Canadian, apologized after the Stanley Cup riots. But a nurse at a local ER won't accept the apology, and for much the same reason that I wouldn't accept an apology from the Seattle WTO assholes:

To you [...], it's a chance to congregate in the ER waiting room, pounding on the triage window demanding to be seen for teargas exposure and cuts from looting and fighting, while posturing and bragging about how you kicked the crap out of somebody and smashed shit up. To me, it's taking my time away from the little old quiet lady having chest pain or taking time away from the person you "shit-kicked" for trying to stop the looting.

At the WTO protests in Seattle, I met a little old lady who'd been nearly blinded by a rubber bullet because a bunch of assholes decided to start a riot. No question, the police overreacted -- but they wouldn't have had anything to overreact to if the assholes hadn't started smashing windows in the first place.

To bring it closer to home: A few years ago, my pal Ted lost his car to rioters after the Phils won the World Series. To the rioters, it was a fun show of strength with a lot of great crunchy shattery noises. To Ted, it was immediately financially devastating because he needed the car to get to work, but he couldn't afford to fix or replace the car without being able to get to work. Luckily for Ted, it all came out right in the end. He's a sweet, honest, likeable guy and he got publicity and generous donations. But how many people in Vancouver have been just as "lucky"?

I don't mean to be so "get offa my lawn" and "back in my day" about this stuff. But it also brings to mind an incident when I was doing clinic defense a few weeks ago. An old white guy protestor was there with a crudely constructed hand-made cross. We patient escorts were outnumbered, because the protestors were in force for a religious holiday. A young white guy, dressed like a prototypical hipster in skinny pants, a scraggly beard, and 1980s-inspired sunglasses walked up to the cross-carrying protestor. He laughed at the old man, took a photo on his smartphone, and walked away. This is not helpful. Taking a mocking photo of a protestor and posting it to a social media site is not helpful. To you, it's a harmless old man with a stupid prop for a protest. But to the clinic patients, it's an intimidating physical barrier to getting inside to see the doctor; it's a person spouting religious, woman-hating invective at young women and girls who are going in to the clinic just to get their pills or undergo a pap smear. To the patient escorts, you're another body between the patients and the front door, and we're not exactly sure of your intentions because you haven't addressed us directly. And your taking a photo, laughing, and walking away does nothing to improve the situation, and likely only makes it worse by making the women not feel supported.

Protest or protest not. "Meta" protesting (like the hipster) or taking the opportunity of a gathering to do something violent or crazy anonymously (like Seattle in 1999, Philly in 2008, or Vancouver in 2011) makes life harder for everybody else, who are left to clean up the wreckage afterward.

"Spiritual parrots"

"Whooping," CNN tells me, "is a celebratory style of black preaching that pastors typically use to close a sermon. Some church scholars compare it to opera; it's that moment the sermon segues into song." Here's what one scholar says about white pastors who whoop:

[Rev. Patrick] Clayborn, the [assistant] homiletics professor [at Methodist Theological School] in Ohio, says the fuel for the whoop grows out of the black perspective, the experience of being among "the least, the last and lost."

"When I see a white preacher do it, it feels like they went and learned it, just like a parrot can imitate the human voice," he says. "They're like spiritual parrots."

Wow! Did you catch his meaning? When white pastors try to preach in the black tradition, it's a pale imitation of the real thing.

White pastors can't be truly, deeply, and honestly spiritual? They shouldn't be allowed to use a traditionally black style of preaching? Turn that sentiment around and you have the same crap that the Daughters of the American Revolution said about Marian Anderson -- not to be too heavy-handed about it, but really. Here, Rev. Clayborn, have a "spiritual parrot":



The converse of Rev. Clayborn's statement would be hard to bring up in polite conversation. It's too bad that the CNN article didn't address it.

Edited to add: Leontyne Price's "O mio babbino caro" kicks Maria Callas's right in the ass.

Income, Claudia! Income!

President Obama woodshedded Tony Hayward today and made BP set up a $20 billion fund to pay damages claims from the spill (MSNBC).

That figure is similar to what BP has netted every year for the past 3 years.

It's snowing today in Philadelphia

There are worse ways to spend a snowy afternoon than camping out on the sofa reading a 45-year-old mass-market paperback edition of Notes from Underground while the neighbors take turns shoveling the sidewalk even as the snow continues to fall.

Didn't we have a really mild winter last year? I remember it took a long time to warm up, but winter was more damp and disagreeable than it was snowy. I guess it takes two extremes to make a happy medium.

Voltaire: Pat Robertson is a despicable human being

(Tip to BooMan for the idea for this post.)

The city of Port-au-Prince, Haïti, was flattened in an earthquake on 12 January 2010. Pat Robertson has stated that the earthquake is an act of Jehovah's unleashing his wrath against the sinful Haïtians who made a "pact with the devil" to drive "Napoléon the Third and whatever" from Hispaniola. Of course this assertion despicable, and it should make you feel sick to your stomach, whether you're Christian or not. I'll address that in the second half of this post. But more stupidly, it's also simply ahistorical, which I'll address first.

In fact, Haïti won its independence in 1804, during the reign of Napoléon I^er. This first Napoléon was so vexed by trying to prosecute a war against much of Europe that the slave revolt happening in Haïti was sort of a last straw for his ventures in the Western Hemisphere. Napoléon abandoned Haïti in 1804, sold the Louisiana Territory to the U.S. in 1812 to finance a war against Britain, and stayed in power until 1814, when the European powers got together a coalition strong enough to finally kick his worn-out, mutinous army's ass.

Napoléon III was his nephew, born in 1808. Napoléon III focused not on the Caribbean but on Mexico, where he sought to establish an income-producing French monarchy, and on the Confederate States of America, to which he supplied arms in the hopes of getting their reciprocal support in his Mexico venture. He had interests in Algeria and Indochina, too -- basically preparing France for the military and political quagmires it would get itself into in the 20th century -- but he had no particular interest in Haïti.

The city of Lisbon, Portugal, was flattened in an earthquake and subsequent fire on 1 November 1755. Many influential clergy preached that the earthquake was an act of Jehovah's unleashing his wrath against the sinful Portuguese. Protestants preached that the Portuguese were being punished for not embracing the Reformation; Catholics preached that too many Portuguese were turning to Protestantism.

Voltaire's reaction is as apropos against Pat Robertson today as it was against those clergy 250 years ago. A lot of electrons are being spilled today about Robertson's insane, historically inaccurate claim, but I think Voltaire took care of him already:

Direz-vous, en voyant cet amas de victimes :
« Dieu s’est vengé, leur mort est le prix de leurs crimes ? »
Quel crime, quelle faute ont commis ces enfants
Sur le sein maternel écrasés et sanglants ?

[ ... ]

Les tristes habitants de ces bords désolés
Dans l’horreur des tourments seraient-ils consolés
Si quelqu’un leur disait : « Tombez, mourez tranquilles ;
Pour le bonheur du monde on détruit vos asiles ;
D’autres mains vont bâtir vos palais embrasés,
D’autres peuples naîtront dans vos murs écrasés ;
Le Nord va s’enrichir de vos pertes fatales ;
Tous vos maux sont un bien dans les lois générales ;
Dieu vous voit du même œil que les vils vermisseaux
Dont vous serez la proie au fond de vos tombeaux ? »
À des infortunés quel horrible langage !

In English prose, which doesn't capture the outrage of the original French:

Will you say, when you look at this heap of victims,
"God is avenged; their death is the price for their crimes"?
What crime, what fault did these children,
crushed and bloodied on their mothers' breasts, commit?

[ ... ]

The sad inhabitants of these sorry shores,
Would they be consoled from the horror of their torments
If someone were to say to them, "Fall, and die happily;
Your safe havens have been destroyed for the happiness of the rest of the world;
Other hands will rebuild your flooded palaces,
Another nation will be born within your flattened walls;
The North will enrich itself from your fatal losses;
All of your ills are a good in the natural law;
God sees you the same as the lowly worms
That will prey upon you at the bottom of your tombs"?
What horrible language to the unfortunate ones!

Voltaire, Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (1756), Glomarization, trans.

"Sarah Palin Parking Lot"

A camera operator and a man with a microphone interview people in a Border's bookstore parking lot in Columbus, Ohio, and asks questions from Sarah Palin supporters:



From New Left Media.

(What the title of this post refers to.)

On housework and dates

It's been so long since I had a date, sometimes when I do housework it feels like I'm preparing for a gentleman caller.

Profoundness: on cell phone auto-complete

For some reason my cell phone's auto-complete functionality doesn't recognize "O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

I wonder if I can teach it.

Driberally tonight

Drinking Liberally is a weekly social gathering where progressives talk politics and get to know one another. In Center City Philadelphia, we meet on Tuesday nights at Triumph Brewery's upstairs bar, where there are drink and food specials from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. I hope to see you there!

Triumph Brewery is at 117 Chestnut Street in Old City. It's conveniently SEPTA-accessible via the Market-Frankford El (2nd Street station), all the buses that turn around at or near Penn's Landing (5, 12, 17, 21, 33, 42, 48), and a few other buses that pass nearby (9, 25, 38, 40, 44, 47, 57, 61).

This week's topic: You'll have to come up with one on your own, because I can't attend tonight, though I suggest you put your money where your mouth is and start donating to NARAL or to some fund that supports med students who are training to become abortion practitioners -- since, as you've probably heard, there are now only 2 abortion providers in the U.S. who will help women obtain late-term abortions. Myself, I have a previous commitment with neighbors. Since it will probably also involve drinking, I don't expect I'll be stumbling in late anywhere, except into my own bed. EDIT: O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! Meeting with neighbors canceled. See y'all.

"Come for the beer, stay for the check"

"I live for truth and find that I am damned!"

Whoa -- did the Above the Law blog just compare John Yoo to Jesus Christ?

Maybe Yoo should be in prison. Maybe he shouldn't. But I'm almost positive he's got the right to say whatever he wants. And if somebody wants to publish it, I'm pretty sure that is okay too. John Yoo's Sunday column is not going to destroy America, it's not going to make our children grow up to be torturers.

I see no reason. I find no evil. This man is harmless, so why does he upset you?
He's just misguided. Thinks he's important. But to keep you vultures happy I shall flog him.

Wow, and it's not even Easter.

Things I need to do

I need to take some TSP to the bathroom walls.

I need to quit going to parties with the gang, and then cornering this one particular friend and pestering her about how sad it is that I can't find a real boyfriend, just a series of sub-satisfactory fumblings with a 25-year-old fellow law student. For chrissakes.

I need to clean out the window boxes and plant something on the deck other than tarragon, a dying fern, and a sole surviving vinca.

I need to make an omelet with fresh tarragon for lunch today.

I need to write more, like about the anti-fascist subtext of Zazie dans le métro and the contention that the whale is the Church of England.