The pundits have been out with their divining rods, trying to read the twitches to determine whether or not we are, have been or will be in a recession. Bear in mind, that they are willing to change the definition of the word to fit whatever it is they find. My favorite economist has an entry talking about that issue and that is what inspires me to note a few of the observations I’ve made.

I’ve noticed that there are “Work from Home” placards springing from the ground like mushrooms at many intersections. I wonder how many, if any, of these are legitimate. It seems like a good way for a shady company to take advantage of those who are struggling and failing to find a real job.

I’ve also noticed an increase in billboards for jewelers looking to buy gold instead of sell it. One can tell quite a lot about the economic status of the neighborhood based on the appearance of those ads in particular. On my way to grocery store there is one such billboard which looks very much like any other jewelry store ad, with a glamor shot of some gold rings and an attractive font offering to buy ones treasure. On my way to work, there’s another such ad but this one features a large bald white man wearing enough jewelry to make Mr. T’s taste subtle by comparison. It says in big bold letters, “WE BUY GOLD!”

This morning as I was leaving work I predicted, correctly as it turned out, that someone would call out sick. Sure enough by 9 A.M. I had a message asking if I could work some overtime. I wanted to because overtime plus holiday is hard to turn down. I’ve just now returned home, having worked 16 of the last 24 hours. I’m tired mentally, but I’m not sure when I’ll be able to fall asleep.

Going to work in the middle of the afternoon felt very strange. Leaving my apartment building, I got sight of my reflection. I looked like some sort of un-dead security guard. Perhaps the black pea coat in 80° F weather was a mistake, but I thought I might need it when I left work tonight and I like that it shields my uniform while I’m ducking into Panera to get something to take with me. I ate the salad, but forgot the sandwich and had to turn back to get it after leaving tonight. I didn’t figure it would hold up all that well until Wednesday night. It is a testament to the quality of their sandwiches that I bothered.

I thought about my brother a lot today. While he was in Iraq, I couldn’t listen to any news about the war. I’d read about it, but talk radio was off-limits. He’s been back in the States, but living far away for some time now. I miss him. We’re making plans to see each other in August.

According to at least one member of the Bush administration I should be ashamed of myself for something I did earlier tonight, probably several somethings, but specifically:

I used my tongue to eat an ice cream cone — like a no-good, dirty cat.

This humiliating faux pas was brought to my attention by Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me! with a question concerning Leon Kass, the head of the Bush administration’s Council on Bioethics. Mr. Kass opposes the idea that one should be free to do as they wish with their own body and he especially abhors eating in public:

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone –a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.

I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many a reader, people who will condescendingly regard as quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the street is for dogs. Modern America’s rising tide of informality has already washed out many long-standing traditions — their reasons long before forgotten — that served well to regulate the boundary between public and private; and in many quarters complete shamelessness is treated as proof of genuine liberation from the allegedly arbitrary constraints of manners. To cite one small example: yawning with uncovered mouth. Not just the uneducated rustic but children of the cultural elite are now regularly seen yawning openly in public (not so much brazenly or forgetfully as indifferently and “naturally”), unaware that it is an embarrassment to human self-command to be caught in the grip of involuntary bodily movements (like sneezing, belching, and hiccuping and even the involuntary bodily display of embarrassment itself, blushing). But eating on the street — even when undertaken, say, because one is between appointments and has no other time to eat — displays in fact precisely such lack of self-control: It beckons enslavement to the belly. Hunger must be sated now; it cannot wait. Though the walking street eater still moves in the direction of his vision, he shows himself as a being led by his appetites. Lacking utensils for cutting and lifting to mouth, he will often be seen using his teeth for tearing off chewable portions, just like any animal. Eating on the run does not even allow the human way of enjoying one’s food, for it is more like simple fueling; it is hard to savor or even to know what one is eating when the main point is to hurriedly fill the belly, now running on empty. This doglike feeding, if one must engage in it, ought to be kept from public view, where, even if WE feel no shame, others are compelled to witness our shameful behavior.”

Kass, Leon: The Hungry Soul at 148-149. (University of Chicago Press, 1994, 1999)

He fears he is going to lose the “sympathy of many a reader”? I wonder if Bush feared he would lose the sympathy of many a constituent by hiring this moron, though that wouldn’t appear to have been much of a factor in any of Bush’s decisions.

I can go for months without buying a new CD, without even feeling the urge to buy a new CD, but then I usually make up for it by buying several albums all once. In the past couple of weeks I have newly acquired, “No, Virginia …” by the Dresden Dolls, “Third” by Portishead, “Diabolical Streak” and “The Bittersweet Constrain” by Jill Tracy, “Rockferry” by Duffy and, last but not least, “the Seldom Seen Kid” by Elbow.

The last time I went on a music buying spree it was a couple of albums by Spottiswoode & His Enemies and She & Him’s “Volume One”. That was a period of buying CDs with ampersands in the artists’ name.

I had been thinking I would likely buy Scarlett Johansson’s album of Tom Waits’ covers when it came out last week, but what I’ve heard so far has not been very promising. It’s a shame really, because it took moxie to put out such a collection, too bad it doesn’t seem like she pulled it off. Perhaps, Zooey Deschanel is the exception that proves the rule about actresses not making great singers and vice versa.

About the only way I can stand to consume plain yogurt is with granola and berries tossed in. Mostly, if I want a yogurt fix I just get the Activia cups, but the generic pre- & pro-biotic brand that comes in a tub (and only in plain or vanilla) is still less expensive per serving even with the added expense of buying the granola and berries.

I decided to forgo my usual Kashi granola mix in favor of the light (or as they call it “Fit”) version by Bear Naked. At first glance it appeared to have fewer calories (120 versus 220), but the serving size is half the size of the Kashi serving (¼ cup as compared to ½ cup). Let me tell you, a quarter cup of granola is not very much — it barely covers the bottom of the small bowl I use for such purposes.

Yesterday I wrote about how I was renewing my subscription to Bitch in spite of some reservations I have about the opinions therein. Last night I finally got around to reading Issue No. 39 and one article left me steaming. I wanted to fish the envelope out of the mail drop-box, write VOID across the check and include a small tirade about the check I had written and the article which made me change my mind. Today I feel a bit more level-headed about it, but I’m still ticked off.

The article in question was by Jessica Wakeman and entitled, “Slap Happy”. It concerned feminists who were in relationships that include “Domestic Discipline” (or DD for short). In other words, when they disappoint themselves or their partners, their partners spank them and not in a kinky naughty schoolgirl meets nasty nun kind of a way. This isn’t role-playing, this is husbands (the women interviewed for this story were in heterosexual relationships) spanking their wives for being bad. The women claimed that they were the ones who were allowing themselves to be spanked for their indiscretions. These indiscretions could be anything from not meeting a goal to not keeping the house clean enough. One woman told the story of how mid-argument with her husband she finally yelled, “Maybe you should just spank me.” I fail to see that as empowering.

In the last paragraph, the author made it very clear that she found the idea repulsive, but she continued to say we are all trying to find the way in which our particular relationship works and that for some people that just might not include having an egalitarian one. But what is feminism if not asking for equal treatment in every aspect of life? I don’t have a problem with whatever it is that any two (or three or ten) consenting adults want to do behind closed doors, but you can’t have this kind of dominant male, subservient female in everyday life and call it feminism.

If one wants to discuss this as a backlash against feminism or frame it as the expression of religious beliefs that hold that women should be submissive to their husbands, that’s fine. If you want to discuss the conflict that feminist women feel when their sexual desires are to be dominated by a man even though in everyday life they want to be treated as an equal, that would be an interesting paradox to explore. But you simply cannot claim that some feminists need a man to violently punish them for not vacuuming!

Feminists take responsibility for their own obligations and their own achievements. I would argue that no one should need the threat of physical harm to do the things they truly want to do in their lives. If some women want that threat having over their head to “inspire” them that’s fine, but they aren’t feminists, and treating this as an acceptable form of feminism is just absurd.

I received an e-mail notice today from Amazon that “No, Virginia…” is shipping. Yay!

In other news, I renewed my subscription to Bitch (which began as a fulfillment of my subscription to Clamor Magazine when that publication went under) mostly because of the chance to write “Bitch” in the “Pay to the order of” line on the check. Well, maybe not mostly due to that, but partly. Mostly it was because I appreciate their coverage of a number of stories which get overlooked in the mainstream media, even though I don’t always agree with their opinions (or the degree of their opinions would be more accurate) on said issues. I think of myself as a reasonable feminist.

I lost one of my two Bluetooth headsets sometime last night. It wasn’t the one I liked best, so I wasn’t too disappointed, just a bit annoyed at the unexpected expense of replacing it. Today I bought a Motorola one at Target which I like better and part of the cost went toward the Global Fund, but I was somewhat surprised that upon returning with the new one I didn’t find the missing one. If it turns up now, it can be a back-up for my back-up. As much as I like these wireless hands-free headsets, I think I really must have two due to the issue of keeping them charged hence the felt need to replace it right away.

While I was at Target I bought a couple of frames, both of which rang up for less than I was expecting even though they hadn’t been marked as on-sale, so that was a nice surprise. One of the frames was for a photograph I took of Daniel while he was visiting. I didn’t have a specific use for the other frame in mind, but I chose to frame a greeting card as least for the time being. I still need to find a smaller frame for a postcard showing a picture of Josephine Baker that I bought on eBay. It hasn’t arrived yet, so I still have some time.

As I write this I’m watching yet another rainstorm approaching from the West. I consider the ability to watch storms as they materialize on the horizon a perk of living on a relatively high floor. It reminds me of living in Virginia and watching thunderstorms travel up the valley. The line of rain from a distance looks like fog, throwing the buildings that are not yet under its veil into sharp contrast. The gray wall converges on them until they too become just another shadow and finally are obscured from view entirely. The rain drops are hitting my window now and the city has disappeared.

While Daniel was here, I couldn’t, for the life of me, park the car with anything resembling right angles in relationship to the space. He joked (?) about buying me a T-square. This made me just a wee bit self-conscious — to the point I abandoned my usual practice of backing into spaces, but even pulling in straight didn’t help much. I blamed the car’s unresponsive steering.

But in the last couple of days I’ve been taking note of my parking, backing in no less, and the fact is I think I was suffering from some bizarre form of performance anxiety . Now the car goes in straight each time with no fuss. I’m somewhat proud of my driving skills so it’s exasperating that I couldn’t manage this simple maneuver last week and peculiar that while the rest of my life feels much more put together when he’s around that this one small area would fail so completely.

Why is it that the security line moves so quickly when only one of us has a boarding pass?

Daniel left today to return home. The apartment seems empty without him, but I am comforting myself with the thought that the next separation won’t be as long.

The week flew by and mostly we did seemingly boring things. Yesterday, however, we ventured out to the Brandywine River Museum where we toured the Wyeth home and studio in addition to the museum. (I had been to the museum previously, but the home and studio were not open that day.) Then we went to the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I had been meaning to go and this was the last week. The galleries were somewhat crowded and it was the end of the day, but I did get to see the pieces that I wished to up close. I noticed details in several that I had failed to note in any of the reproductions I have seen. I decided to buy the catalog in part because of the photographs included which I had mostly skipped due to the time constraint.

On the list of things that weird me out, knowing that people talk about me when I’m not there is right up near the top, especially people I don’t know very well. I know my mother is going to talk about me to her friends. People to whom I am a mutual friend might talk about me and what I’m up to when they’re together. I still find that kind of disconcerting, just unavoidable. But with people who don’t know me very well, I can’t imagine why I would come up in conversation.

Tonight a co-worker that I have never before exchanged more than just greetings with asked me how I dress outside of work. I was surprised, but answered honestly, “Jeans and t-shirts mostly, why?” I was expecting him to say that he thought he had seen me somewhere, but was going about it in a strange way. Instead he said that he had been talking to someone else and they thought that outside of the workplace I dressed, “Uhhh … I don’t know … umm, ya know … funky.”

So far that’s the strangest exchange I’ve had this month.