And Now for Something Completely Different: Department of Been There Done That

RevPaperboy has tagged one, with what he describes as the "latest stupid blog meme", and one must respond.

It's a job thing. One must make a list of all the jobs one has held so far.

So.

Jobs in chronological order (paying):

horrible job as clerk typing letters on stock certificates, Boston

GS-1 civil servant ordering wastebaskets and other supplies, Philly

dancer in bar, Pittsburgh (the tame kind of dancing, not pole-dancing. but dicey, dancing on actual bar 3 ' wide 4 feet off floor next to cash register w/out help of contact lenses while acrophobic )

grant writer, Boston Model Cities program, Roxbury (I don't know how I landed this job. I had just dropped out of college to work with the theater company below, to the dismay of my family of origin. My co-wokers were nice people, and there was a fabulous classic sub place across the street.)

actress, Blood Theater, Cambridge/Roxbury, w/desperately funny playwright who morphed into screenwriter & went on to pen "Air America," one of NBFH's fave movies.

camp counselor teaching theater & dance (Camp Sunningdale), Maine

actress, summer stock, Albany NY (including a charming love scene in Foster's "Tom Paine" as Marguerite Bonneville with Tom Paine, played by John McTiernan, later of the many Die Hards, which partially made up for (but not entirely) his having earlier slapped me viciously across the face (in character of course, Talthybios vs. Hecuba) during an improv for Nicholas Nabokov's production of Sartre's "The Trojan Women" at Planting Fields experimental college. yes some part of me after all these years still wants to punch him back but I'm buddhist now lucky for you, John, dear. ; )

general factotum, Academy of American Poets, NYC

actress, director, playwright, teacher for experimental theater in Chelsea, NYC; also festivals & gigs in US, Germany (Dusseldorf Schauspielhaus, Munich Theater Festival; Warsaw, Poznan, Teatre Kalambur, Wroclaw, Poland; residencies at Antioch, SUNY Albany, Bard, somewhere in Pittsburgh, too. What I remember best is at the Dusseldorf Schauspielhaus, still acrophobic, wearing five-inch high platform shoes, a floor-length blue silk dress, standing on the very edge of a table three feet off the floor, leaning backwards over the edge of the table, holding a mirror in my hands, and suddenly having a total blank for my lines. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. But then, they came to me. And I did not fall off the table and break my head.)

book shelver, Cornell Univ. Medical College/New York Hospital

new! just remembered! --->New York City Board of Elections, Proportional Represenation Balloting poll worker, Staten Island.

research secretary, later research editor on the uses and functions of language in medicine, CUMC-NYH

highly-paid fecal homogenizer, CUMC-NYH

Wang sec'y at CBS News Finance & CBS Records Law

Voice-over "The Emperor's New Clothes."

hopelessly inept waitress at east village famous ethnic restaurant on 2nd ave, the Kiev. Lasted maybe four days.

ESL teacher, ELI, Kathmandu, Nepal

travel & tourism writer; w/occasional news writing & restaurant reviews, and endless articles on Tibetan rugs, Kathmandu

editor for reports of international development projects, Kathmandu

breeder of a classic line of Tibetan Mastiffs, Kang-ri ( 'snow mountains' in Tibetan)

writer of Regency novels, novellas & short-stories for Zebra books

nanny, Boston

teaching assistant at residential school for violent traumatized girls, MA

licensed clinician specializing in treatment of complex trauma & dissociation, The Trauma Center, Boston (Allston)
& practicing elsewhere at NFP agency in MA now

---
unpaid work:

candystriper counting surgical sponges
counselor-in-training at riding camp
modern dancer
actress at LaMaMa E.T.C.
actress, several indie films, including a war protest flick where I played a corpse and had to undergo three hours of wound application and three hours of wound-removal all in the service of lying verrry still. which I did SO very well. lie still, I mean.
poems in the Paris Review, Chelsea, the Mississippi Review, Hanging Loose, Nimrod, and other small literary magazines and anthologies
translations of poems from Spanish, Nepali, Tibetan into English
back-up singer for 2 song demos
actress, director, playwright, Himalayan Amateurs/Extreme Off-Off Broadway Alliance
editor-in-chief for 706-page biography of an 18th-century Tibetan lama (initially translated into English by 6 different translators, among them four non-native speakers of English, each with a different native language.)
Youth Committee chair for American Women of Nepal
fashion-show choreographer
meditation instructor
publisher of dharma pamphlets, Mirror Editions, Kathmandu
Editorial board member, the Nalandakirti Journal, Rumtek, Sikkim
Brownie Guide Leader, Kathmandu
Member of the Board, The British Primary School, Kathmandu
board member, DC, Nepal
actress, community theater on NE isthmus
LMHC intern at elementary schools, middle school, domestic violence/sexual assault resource center
actress, writer of plays at other community theater on NE isthmus
board member, SSI-USA
state-certified domestic violence/rape crisis counselor

Now I must tag others. Hmm.

democommie at polrant.
The Out of Joint Times.
Advice From Abu Shri.
Kvatch at Ragebot.

Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men

Merry Christmas.

Happy Holidays.

Keep the faith, baby.

Nothing to It But to Do It

Gates orders Pentagon to draw up plan to shut down Gitmo.

How hard was that, really?

Hillary Clinton Named To State: Quick, Cue MediaWhoreMedia to Ramp Up CDS Spin: rivalry, power, control, oh, my!

From the Sydney Morning Herald, Clinton Stars in Obama Team,

December 3, 2008

"THERE is something about Hillary Clinton. She is not very tall, she is a conservative dresser, but when she enters a room she fills the space, even when she shares it with the president-elect.

On Monday, when Barack Obama and his choice as vice-president, Joe Biden, stood before eight American flags crowned with gilded eagles and revealed the names of the six top members of his national security team, it was the petite woman in the inky navy pantsuit who was the centre of attention. [will they ever stop talking about her clothes?]

No matter that on one side stood the first African-American attorney-general of the US, Eric Holder, and the long-standing Bush Administration official Robert Gates, who has agreed to stay on to end the Iraq war he has been running for two years.

Or that on the other side she was dwarfed by Jim Jones, a former supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, a physically imposing former marine who makes Mr Obama look puny. . .

Mr Obama said he preferred to have strong-minded people with strong opinions around him.

He chided the media, saying the far bigger risk in the White House was the tendency towards "group think"."

A Vote for TalkLeft Is a Vote for TalkLeft

And why not?

Happy Thanksgivingday Post

One will be heavily involved in cookery and eatery all day today, as the No Blood for Hubris household gathers together for a festive Tibetan buddhist version Thanksgivingday feast. Mr. NBFH and oneself start dicing salt pork at dawn, no we don't I'm lying. Maybe around nine. Making NE style stuffing. This is complex and takes hours.. (Throw the salt pork into a big pot. Chop mounds of onions and celery and garlic. Wait around till the salt pork gets crispy. Watch cricket in the meantime. Remove salt pork pieces from big pot. Throw onions and celery and garlic into pot. Saute same. Throw in some Bell's Seasoning. Must be Bell's. . . . well, you get the idea . . . )

Life goes on in this vein for hours, with a serene wish that all things being cooked are ready more or less together which they never are, and that the gravy is purty smooth, which is mostly is. A good time is had by all, with thankfulness to toward all circumstances which have auspiciously arisen so that this occasion could occur.

So I wanted to put up something re: T-day, for the day. One was tempted by William Burroughs'Thanksgiving prayer, by Lord Amherst's biological warfare blankets (did that last year), and "Thanksgiving & Socialism: What Really Happened at Plymouth.".

One's slightly better self won out. This Thanksgiving song by Don Henley, attached to endless pictures of Don Henley, embodies hope, if not change, awareness of impermanence, and some other relevant Thanksgiving-y stuff.

Don Henley - My Thanksgiving (Photos and Videos Slide) - video powered by Metacafe

Be well, those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, and be well, those who do not.

Closing Gitmo: Inadmissable Evidence, Inconvenient Torturees

Good article from the BBC on issues facing Obama re: closing Gitmo.

"Legal problems

The legal problems involved in trying terrorist suspects have not yet been resolved. Some say that the prisoners should simply be brought before normal US courts. It is thought there are about 50 or so prisoners who might face trial, out of the 255 or so in the camp.

A new system would also come under the close scrutiny of the US courts and a case against it would probably go right up to the Supreme Court to test its constitutionality

The problem is that evidence against them might have obtained either through coercion, or even torture, or from foreign agencies which have used similar methods.

Some of this evidence might be admitted in a trial before a military tribunal. So might hearsay evidence, in which someone relates what he or she was told, if the military judge decides that it would have "probative value to a reasonable person".

But neither would be acceptable under the normal rules of US courts.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, for example, charged at Guantanamo with responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, was subject to waterboarding. It is true that he has expressed a wish to die but a civilian court in the US might not admit evidence against him gathered at Guantanamo Bay. Then what happens? It is hard to see him simply being released.

There is also the problem of whether the source of some evidence should be withheld from the prisoner."

And what are they going to do with all the prisoners they've driven mad?

See Torturing Democracy.

A Shout-Out "w00t!" to Americans United for the Separation of Church & State

One is seriously considering metaphorically renditioning Talibangelical pin-up gov and cheeky, winky ex-Trophy VEEP Sarah Palin forcibly metaphorically to induct her into Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, a fine bunch of separationists who organized a fab blogger meet-up in DC recently, at which many fab bloggers actually met up (including the divine Flying Corrente Brothers VastLeft and Lambert, BlueGal, Dr. Zaius, PZ of Pharyngula, tristero, Ed of Dispatches from the Culture Wars, the divine Jesus' General, et al.) to frolick and to gambol, to say the least. It was inspiring.

Many many thanks to Beth Corbin and AU.

Bush Admin to Obama: Shutting Down Gitmo "Won't Be Easy"

Not as easy as leading the US into moral and fiscal bankrupcty, anyhow.

Bushist Fascist Operative Compares Palin-McCain Infighting to "Middle School Girls' Clique"

Bet them operatives don't recognize that as a sexist frame, either, do they?

Not that one minds. "Circular firing squad" works, too.

"Sarah Palin is sorting through her luggage working out what clothes belong to her and what do not, her spokesman said yesterday. [hey shouldn't that be "spokeswoman"? Or "spokesmodel"?]

Meg Stapleton added that the Alaskan governor was coming under unfair attack from a 'firing squad' of anonymous John McCain staffers in a frenzy of finger-pointing.

'It’s a circling firing squad,' said Ms Stapleton.

In a string of damaging briefings, it was claimed that Mrs Palin had spent 'tens of thousands' more on her clothes than budgeted for, that she once met McCain aides dressed in nothing but a towel and that she did not know Africa was a continent.

She was also unable to name the nations in the vitally important North American Free Trade Agreement. There are only three - her own, its northern neighbour Canada and its southern neighbour Mexico. "

Hat-tip to reader AT.

Rightwing Culture War To Die Terrible Death

Republican Party Sees Some Kinda Light: MUTATE OR DIE.

Via the Sydney Morning Herald:

"The Republican Party must abandon its 'stringently right wing' positions on gay marriage, abortion and immigration or it could be banished to the political wilderness by the American people for decades, says the deputy director of a conservative think tank.

As the recriminations over the Republicans' defeat in last week's elections continued, the deputy director of the Hoover Institution, David Brady, said the party had moved too far to the right, leaving behind a significant proportion of its supporter base, and that more would leave unless the party returned to the centre.

"In order for the Republicans to win again they have to drop the anti-gay, anti-immigrant, strict pro-life, no-abortion social positions they have taken," said Professor Brady, who is in Australia as a visiting fellow at the United States Studies Centre at Sydney University.

"They have to drop those things and move to the centre where the American voters are. Look at gay marriage - support for gay marriage in America is going up; it's not going down. It's a similar situation if you're pro-life. The majority in America has been pro-choice for a while, and it's not moving anywhere."

Using a series of internet surveys to determine voter preferences, the Hoover Institution found that 8 per cent of the Republican base had [already] shifted towards the Democratic Party since 2004."

Obama, Lama

As is said:

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

May all beings never be apart from the great happiness that is free from suffering.

May all beings remain in the great evenness of mind free from passion, aggression,and ignorance.

w00t!


hat-tip for pic to The Out of Joint Times.

US Votes To End Bush Nightmare

"Americans, frightened and frustrated, have rejected the party of George Bush and have made a leap of faith with Barack Obama, writes the Herald's Political Editor Peter Hartcher. . .

Today, the US has voted to reject the nightmare of George Bush's America and has elected . . .[the] fairy tale.

Americans are more pessimistic today than at the time of any election in four decades. . . .

The economy was the dominant issue for 63 per cent of voters, according to exit polls.

The Bush Administration has given the US two recessions now, and two unfinished wars.

Of a panel of 100 US presidential historians, 61 have voted Bush as the worst president in 2¼ centuries.

He is the most unpopular in the history of US opinion polling.

Americans have rejected the party of Bush and embraced a candidate who, in many ways, is his exact opposite.

He is not only youthful and black, articulate and cosmopolitan, he's also well to the left of Bush on many key issues.

'Bush and the economy were the fundamental dynamics of this election," observed the commentator E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post.'"

Must be the right day to quit drowning government in Grover Norquist's bathtub.

Update, via Talk:Left: A Few More Election Results




Why Sarah Palin May Be the Last In a Line of Culture Warriors, via the Sydney Morning Herald.

US Votes to Reject Bush Nightmare, Via the Sydney Morning Herald.

Praise from around the world.

Election Day -- So Far, So Good. (Or Maybe Not)

So I was at the local polls at 7:10 AM, and the line of voters snaked all around the building. It took me an hour to vote, and it usually takes five minutes. Town clerk is expecting 100% turnout of registered voters in this tiny village of 2,212. I was looking around the line to see who was coming out -- seemed like lots of golfers and construction workers. Hm.

Friend T in DC arrived at his polling place at 6:40 AM, and it took him an hour to vote. He said the mood was upbeat there.


We'll see.


-----
Update:

Hat-tip to Kvatch: Election Protection has received >50,000 calls as of 4:29 PM EST complaining of problems with voting in multiple states. See also OurVoteLive.

My favorite so far:

UPDATE (4:05 p.m.): Heather Smith of Rock the Vote reports that youth voters have received the following deceptive text message:

Due to long lines today, all Obama voters are asked to vote on Wednesday. Thank you for your cooperation.

Then there's this, out of sight, out of mind ballots for New englanders.

And from Hominid Views:

Probability of Obama winning 100.0%

Probability of McCain winning 0.0%

Recovery from Bushist Fascism: An Anecdote

From reader AT:

"Anecdote for you.

I told you I was going to phone bank today -- out in Bethesda. The headquarters was overflowing so much that by 1 PM, both the HQ and the first two satellite locations were full and they had to open a third satellite -- and by 4 PM, that one too was overflowing. This, btw, in Maryland -- which is not a swing state.

O'Malley, the Governor came by -- and walked around the room and shook hands with maybe 100 people or more -- wearing a tee shirt and jeans and a leather bomber jacket... and afterwards gave a 3 minute speech

Now, I'm a cynic..., but even I was taken by it....

He said this thing's not in the bag yet -- that we're only up four points in PA and four in Ohio -- but how proud he was of Maryland -- that of the 1.4 million calls made into Virginia, 385,00 came "from the Free State of Maryland...!" -- and that "we would take our country back, not to be proven right..., but to be proven worthy of our citizenship...." -- it was really electric.... And so we spent the hours calling into Virginia and Ohio --

Of course..., I'll gladly take 52-48 in both PA and OH....:

So here's a tune to give us luck in Ohio.

"


P.S. I (NBFH) would also like to add that fully 99 44/100% of my closest friends are and have been seriously involved this year on some level, most of them actually phone-banking and/or canvassing door-to-door for the Democratic ticket, an experience I have never ever had in prior elections. So something's definitely up. And not necessarily all about Obama, but about us.

Official No Blood for Hubris Mental Health Interlude

Mm. Maybe it's pre-election nerves/anticipation, maybe it's a whiplash injury following being rear-ended a while back, maybe it's an anniversary reaction to a death threat at work this time last year, maybe-who knows-maybe, but one finds oneself in an odd, bardo-like subjective space. Time to change the subject and perhaps one's mood?

Thus:

"Today, John McCain campaigned in the Ohio town of Defiance. Next comes Anger, then, finally, Acceptance." --Jay Leno

"And McCain says he's ready for Halloween. McCain says he's going to wear a Barack Obama mask and go as a socialist." --Jay Leno

"And a lot of juicy gossip on the campaign trail. Insiders of the McCain campaign say that Sarah Palin has gone rogue. Republicans are complaining that she's not listening to their advice, she's not taking their notes and she's going off on her own and saying whatever she wants. And then when the campaign was asked what they like best about her, 'She's a maverick!'" --Jay Leno

"And Republicans now say that the $150,000 worth of clothes they bought for Sarah Palin will probably go to a charity. Charity, is that a good idea? Isn't that kind of counterproductive? I mean, you're going to give a homeless woman your spare change when she's wearing a Dolce & Gabbana jacket and Jimmy Choo shoes, you know?" --Jay Leno

"It’s a little cold and windy outside, isn’t it today? It’s so cold today that Sarah Palin was putting ChapStick on a pit bull." --David Letterman

"John McCain was on Larry King’s show last night, and it got kind of awkward when Larry had to tell John McCain that 72 percent of his ex-wives were for Obama." --David Letterman

"And have you seen Sarah Palin and John McCain. I mean if you look at them, it’s kind of interesting. He looks like the elderly husband who would have her followed by a private detective. A little bit, don’t you think?" --David Letterman

"But here's what I like about John McCain. He's an optimist. Always sees the glass as half full of his teeth." --David Letterman

"And how about last night, when Barack Obama had his half hour infomercial TV special. I mean, thank God! It’s about time this guy got some media coverage, don’t you think?" --David Letterman

"But I thought it was one of those heartwarming infomercials. It had a wonderful ending. In the final scene Barack Obama is adopted by Angelina Jolie." --David Letterman

"This week out on the campaign trail, John McCain called Barack Obama a socialist, and President Bush defended Barack Obama. But see, again, I don't think President Bush really understands. Like, he told McCain, he said, 'When you're president, you get a lot of visitors to the White House. You have to be a good socialist. It's good manners'" --Jay Leno


------
Non sequitur: Even At Costliest School, Unease Over Downturn.

Oh And BTW The Clintons Are Racists, Etc.

When Windmills Attack, Is It Quixotic to Notice?

Not to mention Anglachel on Losers.

"Struggle to the Death for the . . . Soul (sic) of the [Republican] Party"

Mm. If it had a soul, that would frame well.

From the party that brought us moral AND fiscal bankruptcy! A fight to the death!


A civil war in which insufficiently rightwing very rightwing rightwingers get excommunicated, and the litmus test is -- Sarah Palin!

Sarah who? Oh you know, the winky mavericky demagoguey stealth Talibangelical! The pro-government-forced maternity gal with pesky ethics and grammar issues.

But, wait, it gets better! Sarah Palin then turns into Ronald Reagan! No, really, she does!

From the Guardian UK:

But the real bile has been saved for those conservatives who have balked at the selection of Sarah Palin.

In addition to Mr Frum, who thinks her not ready to be president, Peggy Noonan, Ronald Reagan's greatest speechwriter and a columnist with the Wall Street Journal, condemned Mr McCain's running mate as a "symptom and expression of a new vulgarisation of American politics." Conservative columnist David Brooks called her a "fatal cancer to the Republican Party".

The backlash that ensued last week revealed the fault lines of the coming civil war.

Rush Limbaugh, the doyen of right wing talk radio hosts, denounced Noonan, Brooks and Frum. Neconservative writer Charles Krauthammer condemned "the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama", while fellow columnist Tony Blankley said that instead of collaborating in heralding Mr Obama's arrival they should be fighting "in a struggle to the political death for the soul of the country".

During the primaries the Democratic Party was bitterly divided between Barack Obama's "latte liberals" and Hillary Clinton's heartland supporters, but now the same cultural division threatens to tear the Republican Party apart.

Jim Nuzzo, a White House aide to the first President Bush, dismissed Mrs Palin's critics as "cocktail party conservatives" who "give aid and comfort to the enemy".

He told The Sunday Telegraph: "There's going to be a bloodbath. A lot of people are going to be excommunicated. David Brooks and David Frum and Peggy Noonan are dead people in the Republican Party. The litmus test will be: where did you stand on Palin?"

Mr Frum thinks that Mrs Palin's brand of cultural conservatism appeals only to a dwindling number of voters.

He said: "She emerges from this election as the probable frontrunner for the 2012 nomination. Her supporters vastly outnumber her critics. But it will be extremely difficult for her to win the presidency."

Mr Nuzzo, who believes this election is not a re-run of the 1980 Reagan revolution but of 1976, when an ageing Gerald Ford lost a close contest and then ceded the leadership of the Republican Party to Mr Reagan.

He said: "Win or lose, there is a ready made conservative candidate waiting in the wings. Sarah Palin is not the new Iain Duncan Smith, she is the new Ronald Reagan." On the accuracy of that judgment, perhaps, rests the future of the Republican Party.

---
Full Metal Meltdown.

Indiana Robo-Call Workers Rise Up, Refuse to Pitch RNC Smears

Sounds like they're mad as hell, and they're not gonna take it any more.

"Nina Williams, a stay-at-home mom in Lake County, Indiana, tells us that her daughter recently called her from her job at [a robo-call] center, upset that she had been asked to read a script attacking Obama for being "dangerously weak on crime," "coddling criminals," and for voting against "protecting children from danger."

Williams' daughter told her that up to 40 of her co-workers had refused to read the script, and had left the call center after supervisors told them that they would have to either read the call or leave, Williams says."

Shades of this previous recent RNC smear-fest:.

"Hello, I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC, because Democrats are dangerously weak on crime. Barack Obama has voted against tougher penalties for street gangs, drug-related crimes, and protecting children from danger. Barack Obama and his liberal allies have a disturbing history of coddling criminals so we can't trust their judgment to keep our families safe. This call was paid for by the Republican National Committee and McCain-Palin 2008 at 866 558-5591. Thank you, bye."

The workers in Indiana who refused to repeat the smear-script had to pay for it -- losing many hours of work. Sounds like in the end they made the right call.

Go Ahead, Elizabeth Hasselbeck: Make My Day!

One assumes that one's fearless readers will automatically understand why one finds perky spokesmodel 'n rightwing- semi-sex-object TV "personality" Elizabeth Hasselbeck's viewpoint so desperately hilarious.



(And one does wonder about that shade of lime green, yep, one does.)