Damitol

… a joke name for reverse Geritol, from long ago.

That’s one of those non-indicative titles. This time that might be what I want.

I need to get back into writing when I have nothing whatsoever to write about. Privilege the ephemeral, the whimsical. Or else I am just not writing, and, when I do have something to write about, I am unready, and it is just part of the stream of ideas I watch flying past and disintegrating like flowers in wind, an image very old with me.

I lie awake, caffeined and dyspeptic – I just had to look up what “dyspeptic” meant. Tomorrow I had better hammer away on the class project for Copyediting III. The first part of it is due in a week, serving as the midterm. In the meantime, flowers in wind:

A friend, who I will call Freckles for anonymity (and for deception – I suspect you could search her whole body for a single one in vain), wrote elsewhere, discontentedly, about a journalist lazily accusing Joaquin Phoenix of possibly being mentally confused, or incoherently deranged, or some such. Phoenix said in an interview that he thought the Academy Awards were “total, utter bullshit, and I don’t want to be a part of it”, and expanded on the theme thus:

I don’t believe in it. It’s a carrot, but it’s the worst-tasting carrot I’ve ever tasted in my whole life. I don’t want this carrot. It’s totally subjective. Pitting people against each other … It’s the stupidest thing in the whole world.

The journalist said that Phoenix’s “rambling statement comparing the Oscars to carrots . . . has people worried he’s having another meltdown – but this time for real,” and used this as the anchor for a rundown on “celebrity meltdowns” that took up the rest of the piece.

The trouble is that Miss Freckles understood the use of the common expression (carrot as incentive), and so did I. We did not think that Phoenix had spoken even elliptically, let alone incomprehensibly.

My esteemed colleague spoke irritably of her increasing suspicion that journalists were fools who were not out to help us understand anything. I contributed a grouchy coffee-lengthened ramble about the importance of charitable listening (i.e., listening as though the speaker is not talking gibberish but in fact has a point that you have to discern and understand, lest you instead proudly prove yourself an insulting oblivious fool).

But nothing in particular was redeemed by our being wiser than yon loudmouthed scrivener. The uninformed aspersion lives on.

The blogger Reihan Salam, a conservative blogger at NRO, is quite a clever fellow, but I have trouble reading him, and he’ll never make my central blogroll – I get tired of his writing from a 30,000 foot altitude. It’s the sort of writing where he seems to have a rational and evenhanded attitude, but he’s writing at such a remove that I cannot tell whether he really does, and neither can he.

The problem is that the details under which Salam would be right or wrong are on a much more specific level; at such a generalizing height, there’s only room for general characterization of the landscape… which means he characterizes, but whether he is right or wrong is something for another day for him and us both. He is likely to describe a controversy and talk about what seems to have weight or worth, but he tends to stay on the empyrean height rather than swoop down and make a detailed call on a central point. He talks about other people’s pieces as being stimulating and provocative. And so on. Characterizing.

(And there is room for bullshit in such characterizing. While Salam is talking about Ezra Klein’s ideas about why conservatives abandoned their former support for a carbon tax, and suggesting a different set of explanations, he writes this:

[Ezra] does, however, argue that Republicans have been “putting raw partisanship and a dislike for Al Gore in front of the planet’s best interests,” which neglects the possibility that conservative opposition to pricing carbon is intellectually and politically overdetermined and that conservatives believe that (i) it is difficult to divine the planet’s best interests in some abstract sense, given that it is very likely that the planet will outlast humanity, and that (ii) humanity’s best interests are best served by robust global growth, and that adaptation and innovation are preferable to expensive near-term mitigation efforts that might undermine growth prospects.

So, does this truly mean to explain that conservatives oppose carbon pricing because they wonder what the priorities should really be for a large mass of internally molten rock, in itself? And that they are sincerely wondering about this in regard to … a certain phrasing used by Klein? Yes, no, ptui. It’s a side sneer in getting to the framing in (ii), with a pretense of thoughtful philosophizing that you have to slow down to see through.)

At one point in his blog Salam recently gave me a double-take, not entirely his fault, where he wrote, “I imagine that I’m more sympathetic to Romney’s five-point plan than Josh, but I think …” Some mannered or real imprecision in certainty about what Josh Barro thinks is one thing, but for a moment I had this wild impression of Salam peering down from 30,000 feet at the distant question of his own sympathies…

Measure 80, the marijuana legalization initiative here in Oregon, faces a dead-even split in the polls, last I saw, or actually I think opponents had a four-point lead. And the campaign for it is flat broke, so there won’t be any yes-on-80 TV spots or anything before the election.

The initiatives in Washington state and in Colorado poll better. If one or both of them legalizes pot first, without Oregon… well. What fun is that?

The poll I saw also had 20% undecided. A full twenty percent – saying, not that they weren’t absolutely certain of their view, but that they actually did not know whether they themselves were going to vote yea or nay on this question. What sense does that make?

It does not lighten my mind, with the great debate over pot laws and personal freedom being this big fun and heart-engaging balloon for me for all these years. On the face of it all those undecideds means there’s hope, but my own crystal ball wants to tell me they indicate that Measure 80 will very likely lose. Obviously with what happened to my and Gwen’s summer I have no intrinsic faith in my crystal ball, but my idea is that those undecided folks can best be explained by a hesitating-on-the-brink squishiness. They’re not sure enough to want to be radical – and because they’re not sure enough, voting for it will seem radical. Which implies that, with a dispirited sagging sound, a majority of those hesitating folks will fill in the No space.

A body of Oregon’s progressive groups and unions and so on sent around a mailer with a chart of the various initiatives. Not all of the groups had aposition on any particular initiative; the card said Yes if all the groups that had a position said yes, No if all the groups that took a position said no, and just showed the split if there was a split. But, alone on the card, the marijuana initiative was the only initiative in which none of the groups took a position of any kind; it just said, in large letters, “No Position Taken.” Was it that all the groups had other major concerns, and they feared tarring themselves if they went on record with any position, pro or con? Was it internal dissension on the issue itself, with some or all of them? Probably a mix.

It doesn’t really surprise me, this lukewarm photo finish on such a matter here. Oregon, especially in the cities, has have a fairly liberal climate on marijuana as a subject, as much as can be expected when it’s illegal – that’s probably our reputation… but everyone’s so freakin’ laid back, among the progressive critters. It’s not a place where the progressives grow up railing against social conservatism, because there ain’t much. The people who think pot should be legal say so to each other. No one’s shouting at their parents.

And the progressives who don’t think it should be legal think they already know all about thoughtful tolerance, and that they fulfill it, and so it’s very hard to draw their attention to where they’ve put the Out Of Bounds lines. The old establishment here in Portland is somewhat liberal, but it’s rather bluestocking liberal. The Oregonian newspaper is an example, and is staunchly against pot. (Well, no – they’re sidlingly against pot, as a matter of style, but very firmly. They’re against medical marijuana because they see it as covert fraudulent de facto legalization and they’re always saying it would be much more honest if advocates went for general legalization. And they’re against this general legalization initiative because, they say, it’s the wrong way to do it and goes too far… with no specification at all of what would be a right way. It’s not quite in-your-face Never, but it’s very broad and wide and deep No.)

So. This November it’s the best chances ever for the legalize-marijuana movement to start winning at the state level around the country and in so doing putting pressure on the Feds, or changing the political landscape for Congress… but, here in Oregon, for me, a win would be a quiet and unheralded and unexpected surprise for me to go and tell Gwen about. And the run-up to the surprise, if it comes, is as glum-colored as the autumn-winter chill dripping wet that has rolled in in the last few days to finally end this year’s unprecedented endless, endless glorious haunted sunny summer season.

My dearest Angelique buoyed my spirits last week with really refreshing optimistic meditations on how much the internet has loosened the chains on the mind and spirit of humanity. It was a pleasure to hear, and to think about afresh.

In return, I may have helped her introduce cooking with green tomatoes to a Brisbane and an Australia as yet mostly ignorant of the practice. 🙂

(She carefully clarified the central matter with me first: yes, “green tomatoes” are simply tomatoes that have not yet ripened and are still green.)

I feel sure I have posted the recipe before, but in case I haven’t, here it is, the way I copied it out of the Oregonian and the way I pasted it into an email to Angie. I usually double or triple the amounts given. Leftovers vanish extremely quickly. (… And it is completely antithetical to an uninterrupted weight-loss trajectory. Resign yourself to this.)

Spaghetti with Green Tomato and Bacon Sauce

Ingredients:

•6 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
•2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
•3 cloves garlic, minced
•1 pound green tomatoes, cored and cut into 1/4-inch dice
•Salt
•1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
•1/2 cup dry white wine
•2 tablespoons minced pepperoncini
•1/2 pound cappelini pasta [or angel hair pasta, the thin spaghetti anyhow. – Flug]
•2/3 cup freshly grated pecorino Romano cheese
•1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh Italian (flat-leaf) parsley, plus more for garnish
•Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

In a 12-inch skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon until crisp. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a plate lined with paper towels. Drain and reserve 1 tablespoon bacon fat. Add the olive oil to the pan. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, 60 seconds.

Raise the heat to medium high. Add the tomatoes, salt and red pepper flakes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the tomatoes soften and start to turn golden brown, about 7 minutes. Add the wine and pepperoncini and cook until the some of the liquid evaporates and the tomatoes are a bit saucy.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in salted boiling water according to the package directions until al dente. Reserve 1/2 cup of pasta water, then drain the pasta.

Put the drained pasta back into the pot and add the cooked tomatoes, cheese, 1/2 cup parsley and cooked bacon. Toss until combined, adding reserved pasta water to moisten, if necessary. Taste and season with additional salt and pepper.

Divide the pasta among warm plates, sprinkle with additional parsley and serve immediately.

Imaginary book titles that have been knocking around in my thoughts. (I use such things in daydreams. I have galleries of props.)

Science fiction: Planet Of The Planets. Mon Amour, Oort Cloud. The Utilization Of Gomer.

A peculiar anthology of stridently Nazi erotic fiction: The Stukas Of Delight.

A gender-bending Robert Bloch-style thriller: Breasts Of A Madman.

Phooey. No, nothing in my head makes any more sense than that.

I told you I had nothing to write about tonight.