AT&T U-verse Video Bill: what fresh hell is this?

Good thing Dorothy Parker isn't around to witness this, the latest skin-crawly thing offered under the guise of helpfulness: AT&T Video Bills.

AT&T now sends its wireless customers a friendly video with bouncy music, giving you several shout-outs by name, leafing through your bill and calmly explaining it to you in comforting female tones.  NBC News reports that the video bills are intended to calm irate customers.

Kind of like those safety demonstrations on airplanes.

I'm suspicious of this motive on the part of AT&T.  Why?  One less person who needs their bill explained to him/her (and really, they're not that difficult to understand) ALSO means one less AT&T employee, even if it's a call center person working for tiny wages.  The same thing happened 25 years ago when live operators in this country were replaced by automated voice systems.

Plus, there's something intensely big-brotherish in a way that bodes ill.  If the technology exists to make personalized short videos, in effect, movies, then it's not hard to envision an eventual scenario where the megapiles of data being aggregated on your personal shopping/browsing/renting/viewing/Netflix habits are amassed and turned into feature-length movies/TV/content that you will pay for (or will click during strategic moments to buy crap featured during the show).

Then, because it's literally tailor-made just for you, you'll get even more addicted to that than to anything else so far.  And worst case, you'll watch so much that that you'll never get up or pee or poo or eat and you'll watch that stuff until you die, like the fictional film "Infinite Jest," also referred to as The Entertainment in David Foster Wallace's novel of the same name.

Slight overstatement, perhaps.  Or is it?

Some pretty good resolutions.

One of the many perks of my job is posting to social media.  Much of the postage is fairly workish, but this one kind of grabbed me, so you get to read it too:  10 Resolutions the Most Successful People Make, and then Keep.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemaddock/2012/12/30/ten-resolutions-the-most-successful-people-make-and-then-keep/

My favorite one is #9:   Resolve to be the creator.
What is the outcome you want? What stands in your way? How do you overcome these obstacles? These three simple questions will keep you from being victimized by any situation. 
Creators change the world. Victims just bitch about stuff.

We all have our own bucket of crap to carry around 24/7.  Yours may feel lighter on some days and quite unmanageably heavy on others.  Sometimes it's OK to just acknowledge that a situation sucks and nothing can be done about it.  That's different from plain old bitching.  Bitching is having a pity party for yourself.  If you want to have one, fine, but don't have it around me unless you're at least willing to start thinking your way past it.  You'll get farther trying to find a way forward than focusing on how heavy your crap bucket is.

OK, soapbox put away.  Now here's a big hug, and I love you, and go get 'em, Hot Shot! 
Happy New Year!  May your bucket of crap seem as light as a feather to you in 2013.

music: Is "Wonderful Christmas Time" really worth $400K/yr?

This post is trivial by any measure relative to recent events, and I may write about recent events in the future. 

At the moment, however, this fact enrages me:  Sir Paul McCartney has been raking in four hundred thousand dollars per year from "Wonderful Christmas Time."  He has earned, according to Wikipedia, approximately $15 million from this one craptastic-yet-catchy song.

If you like it, I'm sorry.  No, you know what?  I'm not sorry.  It's a shitty, soulless song.  It's the Michael Caine of Christmas songs*, a where's-the-check performance that relies on one annoying beeoom-beeoom-beeoom-beeoom synthesizer riff, candidate for one of the worst earworms in music history, plus a dreadfully repetitive chorus, all relying on our love of his voice to carry the day.

What's a good Christmas song?  How about David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing The Little Drummer Boy?  Worlds collide in an unexpected, grace-filled way. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADbJLo4x-tk

 *Caine's recent performances have redeemed him; I speak of him in the long middle section of his career.

I support CPS teachers' right to strike because of teachers like this one.

My friend Mike, a CPS high school special ed teacher, sent out a letter that summed up the current CPS/CTU mess most compellingly.  In fact I couldn't get it out of my head all afternoon.  Here it is. Hello all, I really hope that you have heard by now that the Chicago Teacher's Union, the CTU, is striking.  This is the third largest school district in the country.  Thirty-thousand teachers, aides, and clerks have walked off their jobs teaching 400,000 children.  I am not a union rep, nor have I been enthusiastic about the CTU in my nine years with Chicago Public Schools.  I have been participating in the strike, though, going to every picket and rally called, and I feel I should give my take on what is going on. First off, this thing is not about the money.  Most teachers are pretty smart people and know when the government is cash strapped.  There are serious questions about how CPS runs its books, but I don't think the average striking teacher was thinking we would get a substantial pay raise this contract.  I think most have been pleasantly surprised (and deeply suspicious) about the size of the pay increase that has leaked out of negotiations.   What this thing is about is anger and frustration.  I can say that a good summarization of the attitude at the rallies is "I've been working for CPS in schools where the plaster is crumbling off the walls, 107 teachers share one photocopier, where a whiteboard is considered cutting edge technology, with a class size of up to 40 students that walk into school after dealing with poverty, homelessness, violence, and gangs.  Fine.  We'll do what we can despite CPS's criminal stinginess when it comes to providing special education services and hiring counselors, aides, social workers, even school nurses.  What we are sick of is constantly being threatened that, if we don't fix these kid's academic problems and get them up to a national norm, CPS will fire the entire school to either "turn it around," or hand it over to a Charter operation."    That is technically a "job security" issue, but it feels more like we are being scapegoated for much bigger social failings than we have control over.  That is why we are angry.  That is why teachers are hitting the streets.  Ironically, that issue in only indirectly being discussed in the negotiations. The links below are to relatively brief summaries of the strike and the contentious issues from unbiased (or pro-union if you are anti-union) viewpoints. I am asking you to  support our strike.  The "liberal" media has been downright lying about the strike--the issues, the motivations, even the size of the rallies downtown--and, except for at the rallies and picket lines, we are feeling pretty lonely in this thing.  If you live in Chicago, call your alderman, email Rahm, come to one of the rallies.  There will be one, somewhere, probably in Union Park at Lake and Ashland, Saturday at noon.  If you live in Illinois, email or call Governor Quinn.  If you don't live in Illinois, call anybody, call Obama's White House, tell him to rein in his former chief of staff.   For the record, the rallies are kind of fun, in an inconvenient sort of way.  Picketing, on the other hand, sucks.  I'll send out pictures from the events when I sort out my relationship with technology. Thanks, Mike Marren 12 years Special Education teacher, 9 at Roosevelt High School on Chicago's NW side. http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/15081962-452/rahm-emanuel-picked-this-fight-with-teachers.html http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/15068666-452/hard-facts-behind-union-board-dispute.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=IMUboOIQT48

Schadenfreude in Andersonville: Premise Restaurant is no more.

Back in May, I joined friends at Premise (the former In Fine Spirits), which turned out to be the most entertainingly awful restaurant experience in Chicago.

Shortly afterward, to my horror, the June 13th issue of the Chicago Reader ran a long and glowing review of Premise by Mike Sula, accompanied by droolworthy photos. 

Today, Gapers Block Chicago announced the abrupt closure of Premise and firing of its staff.

Arun's: Everything you see is beautiful AND yummy.

I like all food, including fine dining.  But there's an off-putting difference between presenting beautiful, delicious food (Arun's) and just showing off.  Today, I entreat all lovers of delicious, non-insulting food of any kind, whether highbrow or down-home, to follow what they like, not what they think they're supposed to like.  Don't give in to the system.  Fight the power.  Tell the Emperor he's not wearing any clothes.  Pass the bacon.  You know what I mean.

Premise: The most entertainingly awful restaurant experience in Chicago.

Tasty-looking, but be warned:  this is at 100X magnification.

Premise:  a restaurant so complexly wrong it can be enjoyed only as a psychosocial experiment, or a piece of masochistic experimental theater.

We went there this past Friday to celebrate dear friend G's birthday.  The prices left us agog, the portions required a scanning electron microscope, the service was both fussy and arrogant, and the amuse-bouche served at the start of the meal was literally inedible.  And I will eat ANYTHING.

This is one of those restaurants where the menu spells out every single ingredient in each dish (broccoli roots, lark eyeballs, etc.) - but it neglects to mention that the fish dish that G ordered (a pescatarian) is slathered with ham gravy.  When G brought it up to the server, he was dissuaded from ordering it without the gravy because it was a "really integral part of the dish." - and then chided for not mentioning his special dietary needs.

Ten minutes later, the server accidentally poured G a glass of rose instead of the red Malbec he ordered, and when it was pointed out to him, he said, "There, now we've BOTH made a mistake."  !!!!  Really?!  That's what you say to people who are paying $11 per person for something called "compressed melon," which turns out to be five (5) honeydew melon balls the size of Peanut M&Ms?  Where falafel costs $19?  Our table was breathless at the audacity of these and other remarks.

The entire experience felt like you'd walked into some kind of experimental interactive theater for foodie masochists.  Somebody, somewhere, must get off on this sort of thing.  In my book, when it comes to food, you have to hit on at least one of the following cylinders:
1.  Tastiness.
2.  Quantity:  doesn't have to be Old Country Buffet, but you know what I mean.  A certain amount of real estate on the plate.  Five tiny melon balls is not a salad.  You don't want to leave hungry.
3.  Service:  Don't be a jerkface.
4.  Value:  It's OK for food to cost money as long as it hits on cylinders 1 and/or 2.

The more of these cylinders you're firing on as a restaurant, the better things will be.  I walked in and saw nothing I wanted to eat on the menu.  I drank my dinner instead and had two of their tiny but delicious popovers.  Oh, and the fabulous M gave me a bite of his tempura sweetbread, which again, was quite tasty, but about one-fourth the amount of food you would want to have at a normal meal.  The portions were so small it shocked me that this table of men didn't immediately grab street food from the Midsommarfest going on right outside the doors on Clark Street.  I should have done that or I would have felt better yesterday.

I do like to end on a good note.  The cocktails were fine, intensely flavored and strong.  I enjoyed a Hemingway (a very fresh, tart grapefruit daiquiri) as well as a topnotch Sidecar.  Upstairs at Premise appears to be the in spot, as people in shiny clothes kept funneling up the stairs, while the first-floor dining room was nearly dead at 9:30 on a warm Friday night.  So go there for cocktails if you must, but please, do yourself a favor and stay away from the food.

http://www.yelp.com/biz/premise-chicago

food: chocolate croissant or abomination?

Croissants on my mind....

Looking for croissant recipes today, I came across this stunner on Cooks.com:

CHOCOLATE CROISSANT
1 can refrigerated crescent roll dough 1 stick butter, melted 4 fun size bars of Three MUSKETEERS® 1/4 c. confectioners' sugar Cut MUSKETEERS® long ways. Tear crescent dough and put MUSKETEERS® in middle and roll up. If you can see MUSKETEERS® at the ends, pinch together. Bake at 375 degrees for 15 minutes. When done sprinkle with confectioners' sugar.

You read that correctly.  It's greasy, commercial crescent roll dough wrapped around wretched 3 Musketeer Bars, with sugar on top.  The whirring sound accompanying this post is Julia turning over and over in her grave.

The demented thing is, I may actually attempt this.  Film at 11.

Aldi, part 3: The ugly (or, Why'd you mess with the fake Cheerios?!)

In milk, bad fake Cheerios grow to the size of donuts.  Grrr!

Heading my list of Top 10 reasons why ALDI rocks is that their fake Cheerios ("Crispy Oats") are practically free at $1.59/box.  I walk in there every few weeks and shlep home a case of 12 boxes at a go.  [We eat a LOT of fake Cheerios.]  And they appear to be made by General Mills, as I can discern no difference in quality from real Cheerios.  So who wouldn't want to save, like, three bucks a box?

...until two days ago, when I purchased a case, only to discover the old-style subpar fake Cheerios, the very porous ones (right) with visible holes that look obviously punched out of a big sheet of Cheerio dough.  These would, I knew, swell up unacceptably as they sogged and softened in the milk.  I wanted to pull a full-bore Howard Beale moment, but had no one for an audience but the kids, who were already a bit annoyed at having to continue eating not just fake Cheerios from now on, but crappy fake Cheerios at that.

Not really this angry, at least not now.

Aldi, I thought we had an understanding.  Can't we just go back to the way things were?

Seriously, though, I understand and respect that the reason for Aldi's success is that they keep costs low and quality reasonably high.  But somebody made a bad quality decision here by changing their private-label manufacturer.  I'd rather pay a bit more for fake Cheerios than the same low price for crappy ones.

The Nunslap and the GOP's War on Women: Coincidence? I think not.

this would be me after 2 weeks.

I'm still pretty chapped about the Vatican's recent Nunslap against the LCWR, a group representing most American nuns, by the papal powers that be.


Garry Wills wrote an excellent article recently on the reason for the US nuns' and the Roman bishops' division.  It is, simply put, the pastoral versus the juridical.  Nuns serve those in need; bishops enforce Rome's rules. http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/apr/24/bullying-nuns/


One of many terrific quotes:  Now the Vatican says that nuns are too interested in “the social Gospel” (which is the Gospel), when they should be more interested in Gospel teachings about abortion and contraception (which do not exist). Nuns were quick to respond to the AIDS crisis, and to the spiritual needs of gay people—which earned them an earlier rebuke from Rome. They were active in the civil rights movement. They ran soup kitchens.


But here's my bigger worry:  that now, having let the monster out of the box on this nun thing, more stuff I'm pissed off about will start coming out.  Oh no, here it comes.


To wit:  it's hard to look at the Nunslap and not see echoes of the same thing in the situation certain factions of the GOP would like to put American women in, at least to hear the media frame it.  How is it possible, for example, that we can be having conversations in 2012 limiting women's access to contraception?  I understand fully the whole Church position that life begins at conception, BUT it's also true that during Vatican II, a papal birth control commission made a careful study of all the issues and theological angles, and recommended to Pope Paul VI a complete lifting of the ban on birth control, only to have the decision reversed due to machinations by a highly placed ally of the Pope.


If birth control, which the Church was ready to put to rest 50 years ago as an issue, is widely available, are the powers that be unable to do the math and see that abortions would go down due to so many fewer unwanted pregnances? - which would mean precious astronomical healthcare cost savings, at a time when we've got aging Boomers aplenty.


On different yet related note, on what planet does it make sense for insurers to provide coverage for Viagra but be reluctant to do so for birth control?  Listen, babe, my Insta-Boner is covered, but if it gets you pregnant, that's your deal, not mine. I'm not done being mad about that one but will save it for another post.


Don't get me wrong:  this isn't some rant from a member of the She-Woman Man-Hater's Club.  I like men, on a lot of levels.  I really do.  It's just that I keep getting the sense that if, for some of these well-heeled (mostly) gentlemen trying so hard to get these uppity women back in line and shut them up, if they could switch places with a woman for a while, some of this nonsense would never have been on the table.

Vatican to US Nuns (and all women): STFU!

Duct tape vould be zo much cheaper...

Until now, I have left religion alone like the ticking landmine it is, because that's your reality and blah blah blah.  But I can be silent no longer.  This latest outrage screams for an equally outraged response.

The Vatican has concluded a major investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents a huge percentage of women religious in this country, with an appropriately outrageous smackdown report:  Apparently, US nuns have been spending too much time focusing on social injustice and the poor, while remaining silent on or questioning other issues they should be pushing, such as the Church's official positions on male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage.

Remember when our nuns were nice and quiet?

In other words, the nuns are less than jazzed-up about the very issues you would think intelligent, thoughtful religious women with no power in the hierarchy might be tempted to soft-pedal in favor of other, more practical and productive topics.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.html


These women have given their lives to support an institution which does not support them.  They are NOT pushing for female ordination of priests or even deacons (don't even get me started on deacons).*  Just by asking questions and voicing opinions, they are accused of advancing a "radical feminist" agenda.

There's a backstory here which I may go into sometime, but suffice it to say this:  I converted to Catholicism, from nothing, in 2001.  I gave it the old college try for years, eventually becoming a lay pastoral minister, but needed to step back from it for a year.  It got lonely, though, and I had just started going back six weeks ago.  I figured I would just set my phaser to Ignore for the many parts that don't work for me.  Still good to sit quietly in a consecrated space with a group of decent people, right?  And the singing is nice.  An extra hour chilling with my family.

...but then this happens and reminds me (again) that I cannot ignore the vast gulf between the Church and what a lot of reasonable people think.  I cannot overlook the messages that these kinds of actions send not only to women religious, but to all women in the church, to our daughters and our sisters.  I can't be quiet about it any more.

* Did you know there used to be female deacons?  Yup.  Deaconesses.  The Church doesn't make much noise about that.  I learned it in my Called & Gifted Lay Minister training, incidentally paid for by the Archdiocese of Chicago.  Apparently they were very handy to have around, and there were a lot of them, until somebody got the idea that menstruation made women unclean.  So, like I said, don't me started...

don't get me started: the "pat the bunny" iTunes app

A much-loved Pat the Bunny book.  Note "Judy's Book."

Can't feel the bunny's fur through the glass :(

Warning:  Giant soapbox alert.

This just hurts.  Pat the Bunny.  Remember it?  Published in 1940 by Dorothy Kunhardt, sold over 6 million copies, the book presents a series of sensory activities:  touching the bunny's fur, Daddy's scratchy face, reading Judy's book, etc.

Now iTunes has released a Pat the Bunny app.  That's right, your little one can amuse him/herself with exciting finger sweeps on the shiny surface.  Now you don't even have to bother yourself reading it to them* - just hand them your damn phone and they'll get out of your hair.  I am so sad.

Wasn't the whole point of that book to give young children real, interactive, tactile experiences?  My heart goes out to all the little kids out there whose parents find the Pat the Bunny app a suitable substitute - or even an improvement - over the book.  I still remember reading the tiny, real "Judy's Book" to all four of our kids.  [Shout-outs to Pat-the-Blog and Raising Sam for great Bunny posts.]

*While we're on the subject, have you seen the recordable children's books from Hallmark that allow you to record yourself reading the story once, so that you can hand your kid their bedtime book and go back to checking your Facebook status?

SIGH.