The most vocal war critic in our house is my 83-year-old father-in-law, who stops by two or three times a day. He was drafted for WWII and was taken from his 3-month bride for three years. He served in Africa and Italy. "War is a terrible thing," he says. "They should do everything they can to avoid it." He is a highly lauded past bank president, but has not a clue about how to use a screwdriver. War frightened him no end.

I wonder if the most vocal critics of the war in the public sphere are people who don't do mechanical things (apart from the Germans)?

Mr. Possum, I have one word for district spelling bees: zephyr. In Texas, we spelled the west wind "sandstorm".

Virginia Postrel is showing her roots. Her South Carolina southern roots, that is. Here she has reached her forties and now she is talking about her Lasik surgery, the surgical corrective for myopia. You'll need to scroll down the page.

This procedure has always been interesting to me. I have worn glasses since second grade, moving from farsighted to near-sighted. Unlike many of my peers, these days I see wonderfully at close work like sewing, but can't see a highway sign until I am within twenty feet of it without glasses. But I have seen too many reports that the surgery overcorrects, leaving patients using reading glasses rather than distance glasses, which would be a poor trade in my case. I'll stick to my bifocals.

Should've watched Ninotchka.

What a night for TV. The Superbowl, Star Trek V, Grumpy Old Men, Gone With the Wind, Ninotchka and Sabrina. Shame they're all on at the same time.

When I wrote the post below, I mentioned our gasoline usage per year because I had in the back of my mind this article that Gregg Easterbrook wrote in September of 2001. In the article, Mr. Easterbrook mentions that every licensed driver in the US uses 875 gallons of gasoline per year. Doing the numbers, we use about 28% of the normal family's intake. I do not like to be vilified without reason.

Apart from all that, we are in the market for a dependable 4-door sedan for local use. Do you have something for about $6000?

Gee, I like Gregg Easterbrook. I like his articles on affairs and I like Tuesday Morning Quarterback. But what drives his fury at SUV's and pickup trucks in this article in the New Republic?

The article is a review of Ken Bradsher's book, High and Mighty, a scathing indictment of the SUV. Here's an excerpt of Easterbrook's review, including a quote from Bradsher's book:

"They tend to be people who are insecure and vain. They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centered and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbors." This is Bradsher's summary of the auto industry's own marketing research about SUV buyers, and he adduces numerous on-the-record comments from auto-marketing gurus to back this up. One such wise man, named Clotaire Rapaille, tells the Big Three that people buy SUVs "because they want to look as menacing as possible." It is perhaps not startling that rather than trying to alter these buyer proclivities, the manufacturers of SUVs have tried to encourage them. There are lots of self-centered and self-absorbed people with little interest in their neighbors. Somebody finally made a class of vehicles designed to bring out the worst in them.

I take that personally. I drive a 1997 2-wheel drive 4-door Chevy Tahoe. It has cloth seats, lots of rubber mats, air-conditioning, power transmission and a radio with a tape player. It weighs a little over 4400 pounds without any load. It's heavy enough to pull a 700 pound trailer. It is a glorified pickup truck. It is our only car. We drive it about 7800 miles a year, which in past years has included two 800+ mile trips to Dallas and at least two 600+ miles to Alabama each year. We use about 485 gallons of gas per year.

We live in a small town at least eighty miles in any direction from a major shopping center, so if I want to visit Lowe's, Dillard's or Albertson's I have to hit the road for Baton Rouge, Alexandria, or Jackson, MS. We keep these trips to a minimum, so we often have many packages to carry. For the past three years we have been renovating our house in Vidalia and a condo on the coast of Alabama, entailing loads of building supplies and furniture, carted sometimes in rain. Our house is situated on an acre of land which entails much maintenance and we garden vegetables in the spring and summer, all of which calls for flats of flowers and plants and many bags of fertilizer and soil additives.

Mr. Easterbrook, I do care about other drivers and I drive safely. I was hit by a car at two and a half, and I still carry scars from an accident at 21 in which I was a passenger and my driver wasn't at fault. I don't want to intimidate you or anyone else. I just want to get my work done.

This weather is driving me insane. Today the thermometer is reading 69.8 at 2:51 pm. The forecast on the Weather Channel is predicting a high of 37 for Friday, with lows of 19 for Thursday and Friday nights.

Vivian Brown is informing me all about it. Tell me we haven't come a long way since the sixties when I am taking my weather from a pregnant black woman.

On Hardball tonight, they debated the new daisy ad. Christopher Hitchens was nearly sick in his condemnation of it as lame and incoherent. If you want to do a derivative ad, there's a better one to use. Stupid ad, I don't even know what they're selling, but it's the ad where the little girl asks "Daddy, will you call me?" Then it goes into into the song of "Wherever you go, I will be with you, until the end of time." Her daddy takes off into a world of airplanes and newspapers and racecars, then finally he calls. "Daddy!"

What if daddy never calls? There's your anti-war ad.

Axis of Weevil Pride Alert

I was wandering around the blogosphere today, putting off cleaning up that tacky spot in the guest bathroom, when I ran across a post at Bill Quick's about the PC labeling of African-Americans. A commenter there talked about the 2002 Olympics, when the first black person in the Winter Olympics earned a gold medal. He thought she was from a country other than the US, and that the TV persons were forced to call a "black" person an "African-American" for PC purposes.

The person he was referencing is Vonetta Flowers, who is, indeed, the first black person to win a gold in the winter sport. She is from Alabama. Pretty damned unbelievable, isn't it? I can't much blame him. Why in tarnation does a southern woman who might have seen snow maybe eight times in her life succeed before a Canadian black? Beats me.

Maybe there is a clue in her biography. Here is part of her backstory.

Billy Joe Bob at the barbecue emporium in Alabama has been kind enough to add me to his blogroll over at Compleat Redneck. I have been a fan of his site since its first day, and happily return the gesture. Thank you, Mr. Roberts.

Oh! Me? I'm still trying to figure out how to adjust your cup size so your bra can carry 12 little possums along with your cuddly warm breasts.

(Link via Obscure Store)

Happy new year!

If you come around here tomorrow you can have some ham, black-eyed peas, cabbage and cornbread. We tried Hoppin' John one year and it was the most troublesome year of our marriage. The Carolinians can keep that stuff to themselves. One water heater, one riding lawn mower, one air-conditioning system and one huge oak limb destroying the north eave of the house were the aftermath of that creative foray.

Truthfully, I don't associate luck with food unless I am sitting at Antoine's in New Orleans eating Les escargots a la Bordelaise. Then I think "Lordy, I am one lucky girl."

Bless her heart, Lucy has been trying to keep up with the big boys and it's worn her to a frazzle. She was blissed Christmas Eve when one of the boys' friends took her from the cage and kept her on his shoulder while he conversed with the group. She was in the center of the flock with her big brothers. I can't blame her. It's an aspect of Christmas in this house that I like. Ours is the gathering point for the friends when they tire of "home". They come here to plan the next step of celebration.

When I was far younger our little pack would gather on Thanksgiving night or Christmas night when we were surfeit of food and quality family time and go do something -- usually see a movie. I saw "Alien" one Thanksgiving evening with our pack, including the gay paperboy (now dead of AIDS these eight years) and Robert (hey, honey), and such assortment who didn't have girlfriends or boyfriends or some compelling reason to stay home. Lack of money wasn't a good enough reason to stay behind. We'd scratch up our loose change to pay someone's way.

Now the boys are down in Baton Rouge disrupting each other's homes, and Lucy Belle is decompressing along with her middle-aged minders.

Uplifting holiday conversation:

"I see in the paper that the Million Dollar Club (in Dallas) is advertising for the Cotton Bowl."

"That's a strip joint, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I went there for lunch once. It didn't do much for my appetite to have a skanky girl dancing on the table."

Oh, dear. Older son has come home saying "I want to gain some weight while I'm here." How's that for a challenge? Or is it a threat?

Whatever, he's come to the right place.

Someone needs to point out that the whole Lott-Thurmond fiasco might have been avoided if the Senate had imposed some reasonable mandatory retirement age on its members before Thurmond turned 100. At least, it wouldn't have carried over into a new millennium.

You know you're getting old when your son's childhood companion is now your dentist. That's a little better than the gynecologist who looks like a high-school drum major, though.

Zone ... When the hygienist cleans my teeth I use deep-breathing techniques to reduce the flinch factor. As a result, I am zapped for the next hour or two. Who needs drugs?

6 tea glasses, 6 cocktail glasses, 6 soup bowls, 12 service plates, 6 salad plates, 6 dinner plates, 5 coffee cups, 6 dessert glasses, and three tired hosts. Sounds a little like the Twelve Days of Christmas. Nobody knows the words to that song anyway.

It pleases the parents who, at 83 and 82, have the rights to some gifts in their lives. My mother-in-law is thrilled when I bring out her mother's china. As she was leaving the other day, she surveyed the used dishes collected on the bar and said "Look at that. That china is pretty even when it's dirty."

Oh, you note, there should have been dishes for 8. Nada. I don't ever plan to eat like that at 12:30, and the logistics of getting a five-course meal for six out within an hour and a half or so prevents the cooks from eating at that time. (Menu: shrimp cocktail, seafood gumbo, garlic bread, Antoine's mixed salad, Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Bienville, chocolate mousse, iced tea and coffee). I have waitressed in the past, but never had the collected responsibilities of cooking, waiting and bussing for one table in my life before my marriage. Another reason not to eat -- our dinner table only seats six comfortably. But everyone was happy with the food, if not the indigestion. My fingers have finally rehydrated after all the dishwashing. It was an overcast and cool day, so we had a fire in the fireplace, Lucy was a good girl, and the first day of Christmas at our house was "a good thing". Even if it was on Friday the 13th.