June 13, 2006
Cosmic Justice Dept: Attacker Keels Over
There's a Swedish saying that translates roughly as "God punishes some people immediately." A recent illustration would be the 30-something guy who attacked an 82-year-old woman in the driveway of her home, then promptly expired.
" 'She was knocked out of her shoes,' said Detective Mark R. Stambach of the Homicide Bureau. 'Beaten, and knocked out of her wig.' ... 'If he would've asked for my purse, I would've given it to him,' she said. 'All I had in there was my Bible and a little money for collection, but I would've given it to him. He didn't say a word.' "
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:17 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2005
Strictly Optional: Chewing Gum Edition
Words of wisdom. "Success is like gum. It is fine till it's in your mouth but if you swallow it, it'll lead to indigestion."
Guess what crime you commit if you're a 34-year-old Australian twin suffering from anorexia? "Earlier this year, Clare received a two-month jail term for stealing chewing gum, a soft drink and a blender."
Too much information. "Cheryl Ankrom had set aside a minimum of one week for hospital recovery after her colon resection last August. Thanks to chewing gum, though, she headed home after four days. 'My intestines started working almost immediately,' says Ankrom."
Up next: pomegranate-flavored sausage, no kidding. "Ford Gum & Machine Co., Inc. of Lincolnshire, IL recently introduced Pomegranate Power Sugar Free Chewing Gum, a pomegranate and wild blueberry flavored gum made with natural pomegranate extract."
Americans gum up the works. "The Irish Business Against Litter group is seeking Government action to tackle the problem of chewing gum on Ireland's streets. ...The Government had planned a number of years ago to introduce a plastic-bag-style levy on chewing gum in an effort to combat the problem, but it abandoned the move following lobbying from US Ambassador James Kenny on behalf of the Wrigleys corporation."
In news beyond gum-chewing circles, it appears that Google has a worthy rival at last. From today's New York Times: "President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials. Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States..."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 04:34 PM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2005
Ten Random Top Ten Lists
1. Top Ten Urinals (No. 7, International Space Station).
2. Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School (No. 2: "95 percent of any creative profession is shit work").
3. Tim's Top Ten Bowling Tips.
4. Top Ten Things Guys With Testicular Cancer Have to Be Thankful For (includes "Protective radiation 'cup' doubles as a decorative soap holder.").
5. Top Ten Flirting Tips (No. 7: "Never leave home without a prop." That's why I take my husband everywhere.)
6. Top Ten Telemarketing Scams, 1998 edition.
7. Top Ten Most Outrageous Statements of 2004 (from the pinkos at Media Matters).
8. Top Ten Non-English Language Horror Films.
9. Top Ten College Pranks of All Time (remember Bonsai Kittens?).
10. Last and least, Top Ten Reasons Why Home-Made Rations Are Not Good for Pets (No. 10: "Owners and breeders often think their pet's ration is good because it's coat, behaviour and other external signs of 'health' appear to be normal. However this is not necessarily true." )
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 02:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
April 06, 2005
In God We Trust
I love traveling in the U.S. As an American woman, I am chatty. Swedes have many virtues but chatting with strangers is not one of them. New York is an oasis of friendliness and I fell into conversation with strangers there like a thirsty woman diving into a pool. Here in Grand Junction I notice another cultural difference. I had forgotten how insistent Americans are about our faith and patriotism. Across from the library is a church with a huge “God Bless America” banner. I see “Proud to be American” signs and similar stuff all over town. This kind of thing doesn’t come up in Sweden unless you’re a member of one of those skinhead groups. Swedes love their country but there’s no need to declare it. So after nearly three years in Europe all this red-white-and-blue stuff looks weirdly defensive and adolescent instead of normal.
I am typing this on a PC with a blinky, annoying monitor in the fabulous main library. What makes it fabulous, in part, is the hours: 9 AM to 9 PM Monday through Thursday, 9 AM to 5 PM Friday and Saturday and 1 PM to 5 PM on Sundays (September through May). Those are better hours than in Stockholm and certainly better hours than in Salinas, where city budget problems may shutter all three libraries in town. A variety of literary luminaries are trying to keep the libraries open, including Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of "The Dirty Girls Social Club." According to the NY Times (in a piece written by the lovely Carolyn Marshall), the author’s father "learned English at the public library in Albuquerque. 'We didn't come from money,' she said. 'Words were our only capital.' "
My mother, Robbie Branscum, was also an author but before that she was a single mom struggling to raise a daughter on welfare and using books from the public library to improve her seventh-grade education. For me, public libraries were a sanctuary from poverty and loneliness from an early age. It’s clear that this Grand Junction library plays a similar role for many homeless here and certain that the libraries in Salinas do the same. Poverty sucks; shutting libraries doesn’t just make it worse, it actually compromises the future for those like me and like my mom.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:54 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
March 30, 2005
Road Warriors and Salvation Army Bargains
Happiness is hard and I'm not good at it. So there's no explaining the warm glow that I'm basking in right now. Maybe it's because our tiny triangle (spousal unit, energetic daughter and cranky scribe) survived our first truly long road trip and just got back whole and relatively unscathed after an Easter vacation that entailed eight or nine hours on the road between Stockholm and Malmö, (a "city in transition" according to the English-version of the site, such a welcoming headline) then seven or eight hours heading north to Karlstad, then today a weeny little jaunt of three hours back to Stockholm, the newly christened Capital of Scandinavia. (Can't find the link yet but will. Are you shocked, shocked to learn that no one in Norway, Finland or Denmark was consulted about this blatant marketing move?)
So I'm tired but not exhausted. My kid is dancing wildly to Swedish bubblegum pop called Superduper Kille (Superduper Guy) while my very own SuperDuper Guy is sipping a brewski, cleaning up the kitchen and working on dinner. (Some wonder why I married a Swede. Duh.) All the small irritations of the trip--the kidlet threatening to jump out of the speeding rental during a freeway spat; the husband's snarls in response to calm, reasonably expressed concerns about parking in dark, gloomy parking garages filled with sneaky evil thieves; the wife's clear, appropriate setting of boundaries by threatening to force-feed her daughter an entire Bratz doll on the spot--are behind us now. So what's left? Plenty of stuff.
*The small teak magazine display rack bought near Ales stenar. We didn't make it to the ancient stones but we sure as hell found the flea market.
*The tasteful sewing kit in faux leather my daughter bought for 1 crown at the same place.
*The summer wardrobe my daughter picked out at the Salvation Army outlet in Örebro.
*The four fabulous 80s-era do-it-yourself home decorating mags I scored there.
*Hubby's haul of comic books.
*Four groovy square glass candleholders and
*My kid's 80s-era IKEA teen chair, which she bought with 7 bucks of her good-behavior money. (Repeat after me: It's only a bribe if they get it before they meet the agreed-upon goal. It's a *reward* if they get it afterward.)
Tomorrow I'm going to go pick up a teak office console (low, lean, accordian-doors it is soooo cool, way cooler than I am) that a friend is giving me. Of course, I don't need it; I don't need any of the stuff I picked up today, either. But I enjoy flea markets and Salvation Army outlets and antique stores. So maybe the miracle of the trip wasn't just that we survived but that we were able to take turns doing stuff each of us enjoyed. (One of my ears is still leaking liquid from the water park we were at today.) It's kind of a crazy concept, this taking-turns thing. Like win-win, it's not exactly a world view native to our little tribe. But we're home, we're happy, we're each doing a little jig, so maybe we're about to get the hang of it.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 07:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Medieval Manor/Media Reformers
Yesterday we made it to Glimmingehus. And what might that be? So glad you asked. "Glimmingehus, situated in the county of Skåne in southern Sweden, is the best-preserved medieval manor in Scandinavia. Jens Holgersen Ulfstand began to construct the stately fortress in the year 1499. You can search for ghosts at the fortress, try your hand at Middle Age-chores, relax in the herb garden or enjoy a medieval meal." But can you do the hokey-pokey? We didn't spot any ghosts but my daughter did get a dark red-purple egg, dyed with onions, to etch with a lovely Easter design as swanky, fine folk did waaaay back when. We had a fine time but I can't wait to get home to Stockholm.
Meanwhile, are you itching to reform mainstream media? Hey, take a number. There's an entire conference planned for folks like you and it's called the National Conference for Media Reform. "Fed up with the media? Want to do something about it? Activists from across the country will converge in St. Louis on May 13-15 to mobilize to fix our broken media system. Please join us for one of the most exciting and inspiring events of the year. The three-day conference includes panel presentations, workshops, discussion sessions, video screenings, book signings, and speeches and performances by renowned guests."
I don't mean to be cranky--no, wait, I *do* mean to be cranky--since when has any conference anywhere fixed anything? Hey, if you conference goers can fix the media system, be my guest. Once you get that little job out of the way, feel freel to tackle those other broken systems we all find so annoying, including health, politics and the ever-growing heartbreak of advertising clutter.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:01 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
March 28, 2005
Ales Ancient Stones
Today we were supposed to visit Ales stenar in southern Sweden. They are ancient and mysterious and way more entertaining than the tourist trap with the plaster of paris gnomes in No Cal near the Redwoods. At least, I imagine they would have been had my daughter been willing to brave the freezing, gale-force winds and climb the 700 meters up to the top of the hill to view them.
"If the site is not a grave, what function can the monument have had? One theory is that the ship setting was constructed to honour the crew of a ship who perished at sea. Another theory is that the ship was built to determine various times of the year. The alignment of the stones in relation to the sun is such that the sun sets over the north west tip of the monument at midsummer, and rises at the opposite tip at midwinter." Maybe, just maybe, the builders thought it was beautiful. That might have been enough.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 25, 2005
Stockholm: Spring Edition
Spring has sprung, even here in Stockholm where the sunshine makes us chipper and perky and happy to have survived another bleak, souless winter in the North. When I lived in California I never realized that I took light for granted. In Stockholm, it feels as though every year we have to earn spring. That this shift in seasons is not some inevitable, mandated event but something wonderous, tentative, fragile. During my first year here I was a little puzzled, during the earliest days of spring, as to why I'd see people standing stock still, their faces turned toward the sun. But now I've done it too. Because it feels like we've hibernated all winter and have just climbed out of our caves. So we need to stand just for a moment, blinking in the light, and wait for our eyes and souls to adjust.
In the spring, we are told, a gal's fancy turns to cleaning. Now there's a commercial-fueled myth if ever I've heard one. Natually spring cleaning calls for spring cleaning tools.
"For those hard to reach places in the bathroom, Good Housekeeping suggests you try the Mr. Clean Magicreach. This tool has a flexible head so it pivots around curves and gets into corners. The handle extends up to four feet and it uses two types of disposable pads, one for tub and tile surfaces, and another for floors.
"To clean every crumb, Good Housekeeping recommends the Leifheit Nook & Cranny Broom for its angled bristles and 7-foot telescopic pole. The triangular head can be removed for hand sweeping or attached to the pole where you can pivot it to get into corners and hard to reach areas."
But maybe you don't want to clean every crumb. Maybe you'd rather toss out the whole damn thing. Well, it seems that Craigslist and Freecycle now have a competitor in Throwplace. Not such a snappy moniker but perhaps it doesn't matter.
Happy Easter, dear reader. The family and I are heading south in a rental car loaded with Easter Eggs for Big Fun in Ystad and elsewhere. Hope you have fun too.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:37 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
March 15, 2005
Creepy Celebs
Since we have Michael Jackson, America wins the creepy-celeb contest hands down. But there are creepy celebs in other places. "According to Shakti Kapoor, his wife sees nothing indecent about his 'proposal' to a struggler-turned-female journalist on spy cam. There's complete harmony at home, he says. The screen baddie, who was apparently caught making promises of stardom to the girl in return for sexual favours, says he was falsely implicated in a sting operation orchestrated by a satellite news channel. Besides an overwhelming show of solidarity from the entire film fraternity, Shakti claims he's proud of the fact that his wife Shibani Kolhapuri and other family members have been unwavering in their support even after the damning video footage was aired on TV.
" 'At this difficult time, I am happy that my wife is by my side. She treats me as her only God on this earth. She is a typical Hindu woman who is very religious. She sees me as her Pati Parmeshwar and the video has done nothing to change that image. All this false and distorted exposure has not shaken her confidence in me one bit. In fact more than me, it is my wife who has jumped to my defence. If she has her way, she will go up to Mr Illiyasi and give him a good thrashing.' "
Clearly the Hindustan Times has got the tabloid approach nailed. I'd like to see somebody thrashed but not Mr. Illiyasi, whomever the hell he might be. Hey gals, are you treating your man as your only god on Earth? Me neither.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:43 AM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2005
Espresso Duels
"It's like Iron Chef, except the time limit is 15 minutes instead of an hour. And the ingredient is always the same: coffee. You have 15 minutes to prepare four espressos, four cappuccinos and four signature drinks of your own invention." My buddy Richard Reynolds writes about espresso duels in today's NYT. Don't miss it. Link
Just noticed another gourmet buddy, Derrick Schneider, gets some ink in today's SF Chronicle. "Schneider learned to cook from magazines and classes; it didn't take him long to learn how to whip up terrines or torchons. An Obsession With Food is where he shares his know-how, with a big dose of personality." The article claims Derrick wants to be a food writer when, in fact, he's already a food writer but hey, it's hard to get all this stuff right. Link to article, link to Derrick's excellent food blog.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 05:43 PM | Comments (0)