Almostgotit.com

Here’s a valuable story, brought to you in today’s CNN:

A  photo of a breast-feeding Angelina Jolie will be featured on the November cover of W Magazine.  In the picture, an actual, partial view of her actual breast shows, along with a tiny baby’s hand, so you will even be able to tell what she’s doing (eww, eww, EWWW!) with that breast.

I didn’t even know Angelina Jolie had breasts! 

She’s certainly never shown them in public before.  I’m also shocked that any modern-day publisher would ever be so crass as to feature Angelina Jolie’s partially-exposed breasts in a magazine, much less on the magazine’s cover!

Nursing mothers and their appallingly inappropriate (not to mention just plain icky) breasts.  What are we going to do about them, America?  Will we allow this outrage to stand?   

My “Writing Humor” class in Iowa bonded deeply with each other last summer.  There’s something about writing, laughing, and almost drowning together that will do that to people, I suppose.

One of my classmates was a banjo-playing lawyer named Sheila Simon, who published an article promoting the use of clotheslines in the Chicago Tribune not long after our stint together in Iowa City.  Here’s what Sheila and I have both discovered about hanging up our laundry:

1. Save a hundred dollars on your electric bill every month.
2. Keep your house cooler in the summer, and save on your AC bill, too.
3. Hanging laundry takes much less time than you think.
4. Line-dried laundry smells wonderful.
5. You paid for that yard and all that landscaping, so why not enjoy it?
6. Get to know your neighbors, too.
7. Help humidify your house in the winter.
8. Join virtually every other modern country on the planet.
9. Get your daily ration of Vitamin “D.”
10. You can still use your clothes dryer for emergencies.

A little more about humble Sheila.  We particularly enjoyed a story she shared about her father driving the entire family to MacDonalds, where he gravely recited their lengthy take-out order…  to a concrete traffic post. 

Eventually, we learned that Sheila’s family is from Illinois.  Later still, we learned that the take-out order had been delivered in the familiar, sonorous voice of a certain former Illinois legislator and presidential candidate. 

Yeah, THAT Simon.

Nor did Sheila tell us that she was a politician herself, having just completed a (sadly unsuccessful) run for Carbondale mayor last Spring – with a little help from another Illinois senator, last name of “Obama.”

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More about clotheslines:

• Project Laundry List: everything you need for air-drying (and for low-energy clothes washing, too)
• Vermont Clothes Line Company: more air-drying supplies and ideas
• Clothesline rule creates flap: Boston Globe article on states which are once again embracing “The Right to Dry.”
• Do clotheslines really lower property values? Discussion, with many good links
• A Line in the Yard: The Battle over the Right To Dry Outside New York Times article on the world-wide resurgence of clotheslines

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Cross posted at Blogher.com

Well, I guess the good news is I’m feeling a lot less lonely in my semi-employment these days.

Even better news is that I’m cooking at home more.  Hell, I even marinated something earlier in the week. 

Plus also, I made real live gnocchi totally from scratch!

My sister sent me this wonderfully autumnal recipe she adapted from Sunset Magazine (that’s Southern Living for Northwesterners, yo) and it is just as easy and tasty as she said it is. 

Nor could anyone in my family detect any nasty squishy squash component in these, only delightful, noodley-gnocchi-ness.

Butternut squash are not only very healthy — lots of vitamins and fiber – but also dirt cheap. Next year, I might even try growing some in my whiskey-barrel garden.

Butternut Squash Gnocchi

Serves 8 as a side dish, 4 as an entrée.

• 1 butternut squash (2 lbs)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp each ground white pepper (we used black) and nutmeg
• 3 to 3 1/2 cups flour
• 3 tbsp butter, melted
• 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese or other hard cheese such as asiago.
• fresh black pepper

1.  With a fork or sharp knife, poke holes all over squash; microwave on high 10 minutes.  Let sit until cool enough to handle.  Halve squash and scoop out seeds.  Flesh should be tender when scraped with a fork.  If it isn’t, microwave on high (cut side down) in 1 minute intervals until tender.  Let sit until cool enough to handle.  Scrape out flesh and mash until smooth.

2.  In large bowl, combine 2 cups squash, 1/2 tsp salt, white pepper, and nutmeg.  Stir in flour, 1 cup at a time, until a dough forms  (it will pull away from side of bowl).

3.  Turn dough out on a generously-floured surface.  Knead dough 10 or 12 times.

4.  Divide dough in half and cover 1 batch with plastic wrap.  On floured surface, roll other batch into a 3/4 inch thick rope and cut into 1/2 inch long pieces.  Put pieces on a floured baking sheet and set aside.  Repeat with remaining dough. 

5.  Bring large pot of salted water to a boil.  Boil gnocchi until they rise to surface, about 4 minutes.  Cook 30 seconds longer and then lift out with slotted spoon.  Gently toss with melted butter and cheese!

286 calories, 21% from fat, 9 grams of protein, 3 grams of fiber.
 
I doubled the recipe and froze some: I put them on two floured cookie sheets as I sliced them and put the extra  cookie sheet in the freezer.  Once the gnocchi were frozen, I transferred them to a ziplock bag.

Serving Suggestions and Variations:

• Butternut squash loves pepper, onions and butter.  Try adding some minced garlic to the gnocchi dough, or toss with sautéed sweet onions along with the butter and cheese.
• Gnocchi also goes well with marinara sauce, or pesto.
• Borrowing some ideas from epicurious.com’s recipe for Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Duck Confit and Swiss Chard, I plan to serve my frozen batch of gnocchi tossed with quickly stir-fried swiss chard, chopped chicken, and onions. Plus also garlic, because I *love* garlic.
• How about serving squash gnocchi with this mushroom sauce for gnocchi, also from epicurious.com?  This recipe suggests the gnocchi be made ahead (including the boiling part) and then heated through in the sauce.  Maybe I should have cooked mine before freezing it?

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Cross-posted at Blogher.com

(with a little help from webfetti.com)

If we can’t support them, we need to get rid of them.

Top Tennessee economist Bill Fox, among many others, has already given us the hard numbers: sales tax collections do not ever keep up with economic growth, and thus are a terrible way to provide ongoing funding for anything, including public education. This is true even when the economy is in good shape: when it isn’t, consumer spending slows and tax collections plummet.

Dramatically.

Moreoever, the University of Tennessee, like many state universities, already receives less than 20% of its total funding from the state, even as it remains fully accountable to Nashville for every dollar it spends… including the millions that Nashville does not even provide.

Nor has UT ever done a very good job of presenting the seriousness of current and past funding cuts to the tax-paying public. A major barrier to reforming UT’s regressive funding structure is the persistant public perception that universities are rife with excess spending (or) that the whole point of a state university is to field a football team.

UT’s Development, Alumni and Communications offices are good at wearing orange but have always been too tentative about promoting UT academics, nor have they yet aimed high enough with their private fundraising goals.

So how about this: move the football team to Nashville and privatize the rest of UT — under a new name, of course. Let’s stop pretending that we can support, or that we even want, publically funded higher education.

Only a fraction of Tennessee’s taxpayers takes advantage of higher education in any case, so why should taxpayers pay for it, either? Why not reserve our tax money for other government projects (K-12 education? Public transporation?) — or even give it back to the people who earned it?

U.S. universities are still the best in the world, and one reason they are is that they are very good at raising their own money. Universities are also better than legislators at managing their own budgets and setting their own curricula, without state interference.

Why not let them?

Almostgotit takes a deep breath and plunges into Monday…

• How sad I was at the news of Paul Newman’s recent death. Newman’s greatest Hollywood accomplishment, of course, was his 50-year marriage to fellow actor Joanne Woodward. Playboy magazine once asked Newman if he’d ever been tempted to stray. Newman’s swoony response: I have steak at home; why go out for hamburger?

• Karen of Working Girl recently posted about a talk she’d given on the two “secrets” to getting published. I found her words about handling criticism particularly brilliant:

Helpful criticisms are ones that, when you hear them, seem familiar to you. You will feel a flash of recognition. Maybe a little voice in the back of your head says, “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along!” Helpful criticisms feel “right.” Helpful criticisms spur you to do more of whatever it is you do, and to do it better.

• The political, literary and social commentary on Korrektiv has been particularly fun lately. Almostgotit.com commentors Quin and Rufus are both part of the Korrektiv team. Bad Catholics, indeed!

• Congratulations to blogging buddy James Viscosi who has been very successful with his new blog, the wonderfully funny Dennis’ Diary of Destruction. Nor am I just saying so because James and his dog Dennis (who has been leaving his own comments of late on Almostgotit.com) recently presented me and MY dog, Jerry, with a Gold Paw Award. As I so rarely receive awards of any kind, I’ve since posted the Coveted Gold Paw right here in my own sidebar.

Badly. James is also an IT person who seems to have invented his very own kind of HTML…

Humor is highly subjective. I know this, but it still surprises me how often I think something is funny when someone else doesn’t, or vice versa.

It’s impossible to avoid the political world at all these days, nor the humor that goes with it. Personally, I think humor is one of the things that saves the human soul, and I’ve greatly enjoyed many of the political jokes I’ve heard lately:

Sarah Palin and McCain are a good pair. She’s pro-life and he’s clinging to life.” –Jay Leno

Q. Why did Joe Biden get a hair transplant?
A. To hide the mark of the beast.

Q. Why is Barack Obama so thin and scrawny?
A. If he were any heavier he wouldn’t be able to walk on water.

Sarah Palin right now is training for tomorrow night’s vice presidential debate in Arizona. And she says it has really helped her on foreign policy, because from Arizona she can see Mexico. –David Letterman

I’ve seen both of SNL’s Tina Fey parodies of Sarah Palin, too, and thought they were brilliant as well as funny.

The “Sarah Palin Disney Trailer“, however, I’m not quite so sure about. I doubt Sarah Palin was ever a woman who stayed at home making lasagna and sharpening her kids’ ice skates, for one. So why set up this particular image of her, and then make fun of it? What are we really making fun of: Palin, or stay-at-home mothers? Palin, or women who seek (or enjoy) power?

I’d hate to live in a world where it was no longer acceptable to make fun of public figures. I have never been a soccer mom, and never wanted to be. I think politicians are funny. I think people in general are funny. But making a joke of the skills and relevance of stay-at-home motherhood hits me wrong somehow, particularly as “stay at home mother” probably isn’t even a category which ever included Sarah Palin to begin with.

I am suspicious when something is so easy to make fun of that we change a real person to fit the joke, rather than vice versa. In other words, in this video, I’m afraid Sarah Palin may not be the real target.

Could be I’m making too much of nada, though, and it’s all just good, clean fun. What do you think, readers?
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Related Posts:
Sarah Palin’s email and a couple of goats
Palin V Obama: Which one makes me evil, again?

Another irreverent “Target moment” by Sarah Haskins