Sweet Skirt

I took a short look in the mirror and wondered where the chin hair had gone. One of the three little pigs had joked, “not by the hair on my chinny chin chin”. It seems that I was about to be taken, by a wolf? Hair is a defense. More importantly, ugliness, disheveled and maintaining a foul scent are as well. Tell me, what are we afraid of when we do that? Have you ever watched the movie The Princess Diaries and her transformation? What about the homeless man that strutted the runway for a couture fall fashion line in New York City?

 

Take it a step farther. Is beauty a bridge over prejudice? Ever notice that the national beauty standard can be determined by the cleanliness, comeliness and dress of a certain style of working woman? Here is where I scream about former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. How could the history of the world turn on a hemline? For God’s sake, again!??!!  Well, if I recapped the punishment women received for wearing bloomers in the 1800’s, you wouldn’t gasp enough.{ FYI: Bloomers were the predecessor to pants.} In an age when only men wore pants, some can laugh now when you ask a lesbian couple, “who wears the pants in the family”? Dare I say that both of them do. Although, lipstick lesbians do exist and Portia Di Rossi, Ellen DeGeneres civil partner, is one.

 

A wild thought and public punishment I receive is for wearing a skirt or dress. I wear them more than pants. It is a conscious choice that has nothing to do with Pentecostal traditions or some stereotype I learned from other women, and kids. Namely, “only prostitutes wear skirts”. I like wearing skirts and dresses, because I assert my female nature to myself; and to others–specifically men. Yet, I do not seek to get paid for it, although unique qualities do draw higher prices. (That was NOT an advertisement).

 

[Aside: Recently, while at a museum, two precocious children passed by me. One male the other female. They seemed to be brother and sister and no older than age 8. I heard the little girl whisper loudly to her brother that only girls who want to date men wear dresses. The funny thing was, everyone was wearing shorts, but me. It made me wonder al the way home, what kids know about relationship and meeting someone. I began to howl quietly in the back of the car on the way home. Concerned I might have not heard them correctly. Was I the accused prostitute in the room.  It seem my lingering presence at one installation, angered the lady to comment on no les than, my dress.

 

Though some see it as a rebellion “of the vindication of the rights of women” and all other benefits of the inheritance of feminism. I prefer to be seen as maybe, just female. I definitely fear to be defined as some haggard female stereotype to be tossed for dross. Even now, in an antiquated way, I want not to be viewed as a spinster or an old school marm— Also because I am still single at this age, not to be gossiped as gay, neither seen as woman (politely put) having been made one by a man, nor as the gay divorcee seeking to recapture her youth. To carefully obey older conventions, I will not mention any previous liaisons, or if I had any at all.

 

I have been accosted with remarks in the past four to five months about how I am crazy for wearing a skirt, or when tension hits the high notes of the day in public: I have been threatened with a beating or two if I did not go home and change clothes. Happily, it has not happened. And I hope it does not. Strange how it has frequently been a woman’s voice that does the speaking.  So why would the visual fact that I wear skirts and dresses, offend another woman? One reason would be their personal insecurity. Another might be that I am not fashionably dressed. The more I started to pay attention to common street fashions and even those on television, the more the answer became obvious. I noticed that  women’s, misses and girl’s fashions are strongly given to pants and men’s structural designs. If you look at GQ and Glamour you’ll notice that male and females are wearing the same clothes, the same hair cuts, and the same behaviors. I can see the unisex revolution so clearly now, it is scaring me. When women look like men, and men look like women, what is the point in separating anything out? At places I have worked and frequented, I have watched the evidence of the complaint of the wrong sex in the wrong bathroom. What happens when the sexual assaults or the perverted displays begin? Not that they would at all, but be kind enough to use your own bathroom, post-operative transvestite or not.

 

Honestly though, the thing I am most afraid of is getting romantically involved with some apparently beautiful man. And we kiss, then, lo and behold he pulls a Hillary Swank on me. Meaning he is really a she who has stuffed their pants with a strap-on. For those unfamiliar with the term, it is a plastic penis mounted on an underwear like apparatus. As a former P-Flag type friend to homosexuals, friends began to open up about their sex lives to me in ways that frequently stunned me, but I listened because they were friends. A particular black female from Africa explained to me how she would go to bars wearing something like I described. Then having hit on someone, would take them to her car and proceed to perform a sex-like act. She bragged that she was known for being able to “get wit’ anyone”. The last I saw her, over a decade ago, she had married a man.

 

Is there a conversion of sorts for someone like that? Meaning her aggressiveness, dominance and brutal personality always made me wonder, what am I doing wrong? In my methods of communication I need not stand so defiantly; In my choice of subtlety, I need not be abrasive about my expressiveness; In my pursuit for male companionship, I need not be deviant. Maybe coy, clever, and flirtatious; but not deviant. That is one of the reasons why it is the cut of the cloth not the measurement of the inseam for me.

by N. C. Constantine

Copyright July 6, 2009

Honduras

Just an observation:

If the military, as in the government completes a seizure of government administration, they obviously knew and know the *real* problem was about to cause a greater issue in the government than the voting system could accomplish at any point in time. It may be that the military, who worked that closely, or where that closely aware of  Zelaya’s plans took it upon themselves to “save the day”.  The general public is in a confused state. When the military finally expalins what Zelaya was up to, we may see that his removal from Honduras in the nth hour was a blessing. Versus a complete meltdown or an assasination from inside the government’s walls.

Oddly enough, we’ve got a guess of order around the office about how to assassinate a president. It would have to be someone who was already in office or is on a direct track into the office of te Presidency. We’ve got a substantial guess on the assasination of deceased former U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln. We’ve got to go into the archive first though.

BTW: Please forgive us for saying the Vladimir Putin is still in charge. Although when it comes to security, he probably still is. From what RR and Frog ran into, Putin used to be high up on the KGB totem pole. We’ll refer what we can about President Medvedev. Strange, in May this year, RR swore Putin signed some agreement about the management to the natural gas lines and Oil lines with Yugoslavia or some country we can not remembber except the first name of a representtive wwas Yulia.

Current Headlines Moscow Times (online)

Ordinary Russians Get Chance to ‘Reset’ Ties

06 July 2009By Alexandra Odynova, Igor Tabakov / The Moscow Times
People walking by Pushkin Square over the weekend got to try their hands at diplomacy — quite literally.
The symbolic — and misspelled — reset button that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presented Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March resurfaced on Pushkin Square for ordinary people to press as they pondered the state of relations ahead of President Barack Obama’s three-day visit to Moscow, which starts Monday.
The red button affixed on a palm-sized yellow box was placed on a wooden table between cardboard cutouts of Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev on the square at an event organized by the state newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta. It attracted the curiosity of a steady stream of tourists and Moscow residents on Friday and Saturday. U.S. Secretary of State Clinton and Foreign Minister Lavrov pressing a symbolic reset button March 6 in Geneva. An 8-year-old boy from Omsk pressed the button with a big grin after his parents stopped and explained that the Kremlin and the White House hoped to reset relations this week.
A woman of about 55 said she hoped that ties would improve because the United States had done so much to help the Soviet Union during World War II.
Passersby were also invited to fill out forms expressing their wishes for relations and place them into a ballot box.
Among the first people to push the button Friday were Senators Mikhail Margelov, who chairs the Federation Council’s International Affairs Committee, and hockey great Vyacheslav Fetisov. With wide smiles, they both declared that it was high time that relations improved between the two countries.
A recent poll, however, indicated that many Russians are skeptical of Obama and wary of the United States. Forty-four percent believe that relations with the United States are “cold” or “tense,” while only 28 percent said Obama would be able to improve them substantially, according to the poll last week by the independent Levada Center.
“On the eve of Barack Obama’s arrival in Moscow, many Russians are showing a surprising degree of indifference to the trip, while others say they didn’t even know the American president was coming,” Russia Today state television said in a report posted on its web site. The red reset button on a yellow pad Rossiiskaya Gazeta said it would reveal the results of its informal Pushkin Square survey on Monday.
On the square Friday, no one seemed to pay any attention to the misspelling on the button. The Russian word on the box reads peregruzka, or overload,” instead of perezagruzka, or “reset.”
Clinton was left red-faced when she presented the gift to Lavrov during their first talks on March 6 at a Geneva hotel.
“I would like to present you with a little gift that represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying, and that is: We want to reset our relationship, and so we will do it together,” said Clinton, giving the gift to Lavrov.
“We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it?” Clinton joked.
“You got it wrong,” said Lavrov, smiling as the two pushed the button together.
Lavrov said he would put the button on his desk.
Rossiiskaya Gazeta spokeswoman Lilia Filonova said Sunday that the newspaper got the button on loan from the Foreign Ministry’s museum.
“We asked the Foreign Ministry to provide the button and they readily gave it to us,” she said.

21AD: The Opium Wars

Afghanistan, Helmun Province. – Poppies….

Aside: Does anyone know what Yashidim or Yashidem means? It is important. RR has not been to the library for maps, but an online reference says it is a river. Other references make a translation into possible a eastern Asian language, another Arabic, and another guess was Hebrew, but  no one here has dug deep yet.

Opium Wars

Opium Wars, 1839–42 and 1856–60, two wars between China and Western countries. The first was between Great Britain and China. Early in the 19th cent., British merchants began smuggling opium into China in order to balance their purchases of tea for export to Britain. In 1839, China enforced its prohibitions on the importation of opium by destroying at Guangzhou (Canton) a large quantity of opium confiscated from British merchants. Great Britain, which had been looking to end China’s restrictions on foreign trade, responded by sending gunboats to attack several Chinese coastal cities. China, unable to withstand modern arms, was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and the British Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue (1843). These provided that the ports of Guangzhou, Jinmen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai should be open to British trade and residence; in addition Hong Kong was ceded to the British. Within a few years other Western powers signed similar treaties with China and received commercial and residential privileges, and the Western domination of China’s treaty ports began. In 1856 a second war broke out following an allegedly illegal Chinese search of a British-registered ship, the Arrow, in Guangzhou. British and French troops took Guangzhou and Tianjin and compelled the Chinese to accept the treaties of Tianjin (1858), to which France, Russia, and the United States were also party. China agreed to open 11 more ports, permit foreign legations in Beijing, sanction Christian missionary activity, and legalize the import of opium. China’s subsequent attempt to block the entry of diplomats into Beijing as well as Britain’s determination to enforce the new treaty terms led to a renewal of the war in 1859. This time the British and French occupied Beijing and burned the imperial summer palace (Yuan ming yuan). The Beijing conventions of 1860, by which China was forced to reaffirm the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin and make additional concessions, concluded the hostilities.

See A. Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (1958, repr. 1968); H.-P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (1964); P. W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840–1842 (1975).

The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2007, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.

 

Doctor in residence saw this coming.. The basis of medicine can be said to be the treatment of pain. When the pain is the pain from war, it is unending. Expect the drug trade to proliferate and skyrocket. Hopefully safely. Possibly not. Thinking over when soldiers return from was and are frequently not met with emotional or psychological support evidence of pain that has no source will arise. Managed addiction or not, sometimes anything that alleviates pain gets used. Although finding a permanent support system may help one out of that.

The drug of choice after the U.S. Civil War was morphene. The surgeries may have had lingering painful effects. Especially in an age when anasthesia did not exist. Lots of whiskey and a white towel to clamp your mouth on so as not to bite off your tongue. Morphene too is an Opiate. War is about medicine sometimes.

~Al-Adir Saqqara, Fluted Frog, Esq, N. Constantine, A. Asueno

Quick Cap: President Obama and economic strategy assessments

 

When and How the U.S.

Economy Will Recover

 

Though it seemed like we entered recession overnight, it’ll be much

longer until we emerge from it.

This report outlines when the U.S. economy will turn around, the

effect of President Obama’s policies and how to protect your finances

in the meantime.

(www.moneymorning.com) excerpt from the report.

 

 

Obama Economy

 

 

Many commentators have described the current economic disaster as “difficult to understand.”

But that’s not really true: The United States and the world in general are currently undergoing

inevitable aftermath of a decade of excessive money creation

from 2001 for much of the rest of the world.

 

Not only did such a prolonged period of cheap money produce asset bubbles in stock, housing

and commodities, it also produced a leverage bubble of excessive debt among consumers, businesses

and financial institutions that must be wound down, an agonizingly painful process. The disaster was

primarily caused by government, in particular the U.S. Federal Reserve and the (government-created)

housing finance agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but there’s no question that perverse

management incentives in the financial sector, unsound new financial tools and sloppy regulation also

played important roles.

 

During the election campaign, Obama and his supporters had great fun assigning blame for these

troubles. Now it’s Obama’s job to come up with solutions.

 

What he has to realize – and he may already know this – is that there is a clear conflict between

minimizing the current pain of recession and minimizing its duration. Actions that provide short-term

relief generally create new problems that both delay the ultimate exit from the downturn and may

cause a deeper economic “hole” before recovery takes place.

 

At first blush, the Obama administration seems likely to continue some of Bush’s economic

policies. The second tranche of the $700 billion TARP bailout has been used to support bank lending,

homeowners and carmakers, while there is talk of a “bad bank” approach to dodgy mortgage-backed

assets, similar to the original TARP plan, which would absorb hundreds of billions of additional bad

assets.

 

By nature, he is a much deeper and more long-term thinker than President Bush, Bernanke or

former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. “Hank” Paulson Obama also is surrounded by economic

advisors Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and former Fed Chairman Paul A. Volcker, who all are

committed to a free market rather than a government-directed economy – and who, in Volcker’s case

at least, realize that short-term economic pain can be used to produce long-term gains that far

outweigh it.

 

The recession of 1981-82, produced by Volcker’s tight money policy, was painful but highly

worthwhile. The reason: It resulted in the disappearance of inflation and a period of almost recession free

economic growth that lasted a quarter of a century.

 

 

 

Thus, it absorbed its approximate parameters and would be badly damaged by the uncertainty

such abandonment would cause. However, President Obama has already said that he sees the

necessity of balancing the federal budget over the long haul, and with Volcker by his side he must

realize that a similar course must be taken with respect to monetary

 

Code 2: Back up please….

Here ya go Frog:

RR (Roving Researcher) said that when the Roman Empire was in decline around 312 AD, Diocletian (caesarian emperor) was already reformulating the monetary standard by 1) minting new coins with his face on them and 2) resetting the weight standard of gold by minting a new and lighter gold coin for use in the republic. Notably the counter was to raise taxes as well. The apportionments seemingly change and well as taxes not seeming to be so heavy.

BTW: This happened during Constantine I’s reign as Augustus

Russia , I think back in the late 1990’s reset their monetary system when they collect all rubbles in sight. The rubble no longer had value and the whole system changed. With the United States it could be possible. But, instead of revaluing the paper money, which is really a promissary note (i.e. it has not value and I promise in good faith to pay you the true value that this piece of paper should represent) maybe we should reset the coin values which would fundamentally rework the whole structure. Maybe then we all will know the true value of a penny and a dollar. Metal is a primary staple of a countries infrastructure. I’d rather be paid in change and food, if only shop and other vendors could handle ten cent for a cup of coffee again. I think the StarBucks trustees would have a hissy fit.

Russian Hands and Roman Fingers

Kremlin Plays Coy on Agenda for G8 Summit

06 July 2009By Nadia Popova / The Moscow Times

(http:// themoscowtimes.com)
With the world’s attention turning to Moscow on Monday for U.S. President Barack Obama’s three-day visit, the Kremlin has decided to take a wait-and-see approach before unveiling its agenda for a G8 summit later this week.
President Dmitry Medvedev’s top foreign policy aide, Sergei Prikhodko, said Friday that the Kremlin’s pet topic for international economic forums — replacing the dollar with supranational or regional reserve currencies — could “come up briefly,” but he indicated that Medvedev would not push the issue.
“I don’t think it’s a comfortable topic for the president of the United States,” Prikhodko said, Itar-Tass reported. “More likely, the topic will be reforming and perfecting international financial institutions. Medvedev, I think, will touch on this and seek their opinions,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Alexei Pavlov said Russia’s agenda had already been set for the three-day summit in L’Aquila, Italy, but stated that he could not reveal it before Tuesday, when Medvedev’s top economic adviser, Arkady Dvorkovich, is scheduled to hold a news conference.
Prikhodko also said Medvedev would hold talks on the sidelines with leaders from “around 10” countries, including China, Italy, France, Japan, Spain and South Korea.
“The main priority for Russia at this summit will be to raise its importance, to have more of an influential role, rather than being treated as something of an unwelcome guest as was often the case in the past,” said Chris Weafer, chief strategist at UralSib.
“Russia is very likely to push its claim to be the voice of developing economies within the G8 group, and Medvedev will push Russia’s credentials as a spokesman for them,” he said.
The format of the meeting could give Russia an opportunity to do just that, as some 30 countries have been invited to participate at the summit in the Apennine Mountains city of L’Aquila, which was seriously damaged in a series of earthquakes in April.
On Wednesday, the G8 — comprising the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia, as well as representatives from the European Union — will meet to discuss the economic crisis, climate, the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs and other regional issues, Prikhodko said.
The following day, the G8 leaders will be joined by the so-called Plus Five — Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa — as well as Egypt, he said.
On Friday, about 30 countries will participate in the talks, including Angola, Nigeria, Senegal, Algeria and Libya, which are expected to focus on ways to help Africa cope with the economic downturn by developing new infrastructure and energy projects.
“This is essentially a recognition of the fact that in the current multipolar world, key global questions can only be decided through the collective efforts of a wide range of governments,” Prikhodko added.
But Russia, which was granted a seat at the Group of Seven advanced industrial nations in 1997, could also have trouble acting as a representative for the developing world because of the wide attendance.
“The biggest developing economies will all be present there in L’Aquila and will all speak for themselves,” said Natalya Orlova, chief economist at Alfa Bank.
“Anti-Americanism is currently a main driver of Russia’s initiatives in the G8,” said Yevgeny Gavrilenkov, chief economist at Troika Dialog. “Russia doesn’t have a lot of its own formulated concepts, but it has the idea of the supranational currency. … No one expects any economic breakthroughs, and no one actually wants them from Moscow.”
Beijing, which has also backed the idea of a broader system of reserve currencies, has signaled that it won’t challenge Washington on the issue in L’Aquila, and Medvedev also might not make it a priority this time — particularly if the talks between Obama and Medvedev go well.
“If the Moscow summit goes well, then we may expect a less forceful position concerning the dollar from the Russian delegation,” Weafer said. “In that instance, they will raise the issue, because that is what has been promised to China, Brazil and other energy producers, but more as a topic for discussion than a priority.”