Fat is the new sexy
SATURDAY, MARCH 27, 2004 9:06 PM
I know because I’m seeing it everywhere. Low rise jeans and shirts that just hit the top of the jeans are still in and so is raising your forearms above your elbows. Meaning the world is being treated to rolls of not quite taut skin above the jean line. Even among relatively thin women this practice is epidemic. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with not being the picture of fitness, but it’s just interesting that it’s all just out in the open now. Like the horizontal hills on the rear of a fella on Castro Street tonight shining in the darkness. And any doubts I had about the cultural shift were removed by Yoanna’s victory last week on America’s Next Top Model. The day in Milan when her shirt was lifted up to reveal back flab above her low rise black pants, I thought she was doomed. She was a size 2, but still needed to "tone" as Tyra unconvincingly acknowledged. I thought, she can’t wear any midriff baring clothes now, how can she win? But she did. Her obscenely symmetric face and the fact that her fat rolls disappeared when naked (you had to watch the show) probably helped her too. Someone keep an eye on this trend.

Pennies Lighter
FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 2004 8:45 PM
So today I did something that was a little rude, a smidge self-serving, but mostly, well, insignificant. I had a to buy a stamp ASAP and I forgot the trusty book of stamps I keep in my wallet. Strangely, I had a pack of 80 cent international stamps, a couple 20 cent old postcard stamps, and a pack of 23 cent postcard/extra ounce letter stamps but no 37 cent stamps. Funny that. (In a pinch, one 20 cent stamp plus a 23 cent extra ounce stamp plus a 37 cent first class stamp gets you to 80 for that international mailing, which I had to do once. This will never help you, but now you know.) Anyway, as I sat in my office, I thought about unloading some of the pennies I had accumulated at the PO. I tend to use my credit card (but I'm debt free!) for most purchases or if I pay cash, I hate fumbling around for change and deciding whether I should go for no change back or try to swing it so I get a quarter or two back and no pennies or what so I pay with bills and fumblingly get change back. I've got little use for coins as I rarely park at meters, don't patronize vending machines, and don't pay when I do laundry, dropping even precious quarters out of importance.

Sitting there counting my 7 pennies, I realized I had a lot more so I counted to seventeen, but there were still a ton of pennies left (and little else). A dime popped out swathed in pennies and I thought 'Hey, might as well go to 27!’ and I did. Had I more time, I possibly would have gone to 37 pennies. My motives were mixed. I partly really needed to dump the pennies. My wallet can't really take the strain of so much coinage. And partly, I kinda wanted to stick it to the post office. Please ignore the flaw in the logic—I'm sure the USPS doesn't care about my pennies. But so many times I have stood there at the machine with a 10 in one hand and a need for a whole book of stamps in the other. Well, not in my hand, but, you know. It was there. And I'm just thinking, is there a way I can buy something else so I'm not stuck with 3 Suebucks (in the old days) or 2 Sacagaweas? And rarely is there. Sure I could plan these trips better, but the post office, sadly, is not the center of my universe. But I needed to unload my pennies and they would take them. Also for discussion: I know it’s old news, but why do we honor important women by putting them on coins no one ever wants to use? And if Canadians can handle loonies and toonies, what's up with us Americans complaining about a dollar coin? I’m just asking.

Anyway, when I made my way to the post office I discovered a minor flaw in my plan. Needing one stamp, I intended to go straight for the single stamp, no change dispenser. Only that machine doesn't take pennies. At this point I'm flustered because I can see the vending machine next to it only issues stamps in books. So I walked purposefully to the machine on the other side of the post office to find that—yay!—it takes pennies and dispenses individual stamps. As I'm waiting for this guy (who was buying a book of stamps—that's $7.40—with what appeared to be mostly nickels and dimes, making me feel better) ahead of me to finish, a girl came and got in line. The vending machine at the SF Embarcadero post office is set up a little dumb because there's nowhere for the line to go. You can either block the door or block the P.O. boxes or easily both. I was off to the guy's right because that felt natural and orderly and instead of filing in behind me, the girl stands to the guy's left. I know she's not thinking of cutting, but I'm wondering, 'what if someone else comes, we'll have quite a pickle.' Thankfully, that non-crisis was averted by the nonarrival of another customer. I notice she's got a ton of letters and clearly needs a book and I think about letting her go ahead of me in the grand tradition of letting the guy with one thing cut you at the grocery store, but I figured I'd be fast and there's another machine in the place if she gets impatient. (It says so on the machines that there's another one in the office so it's not a mystery.)

My turn came and I started off pretty well, but then realized, 27 pennies is a lot of pennies and it sure takes a really long time to put them in the machine. Especially when I drop four of them on the ground. Twice. I felt a tad guilty, but I was jettisoning pennies so how bad could I really feel? When I finished she registered no reaction on her face so I'm not sure if she was ticked off, but as I walked away I think I could hear her become the next victim of the dollar coin conspiracy as the Sacagaweas thudded into the change bay.

Bottom line, post office = penny collection reduction facility.

Supreme Supremes
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2004 8:07 PM
Well, I don't think kids think much is religious
My problem with the whole Pledge of Allegiance case is that people who don't think it's a big deal, don't really get that it isn't about offending them. I mean if you believe in God, specifically the God implied in the Pledge, you probably won't be offended by having to say the Pledge so this case isn't about protecting you and in this situation the First Amendment isn't really about protecting you because your beliefs aren't arguably under assualt. Missing the big picture is pretty endemic in these types of articles about complex legal issues (though the media takes some blame on that too). In the end, I think the kid who notes that the one student who refrains is thought of as "weird" really says it all.

Elitism in high government? You don't say!
This article by Michael Dorf excellently analyzes of Scalia's memorandum refusing to recuse himself from the Cheney case. It makes a good argument about how a lot of the opposition is about something other than the hunting trip, though one can argue that reminds Scalia what great friends he and Cheney are. But I particularly like the discussion at the end about how there's sort of an elitist undercurrent to it all that we all know is there, but usually doesn't get shoved in our faces. As he says:

The real problem with the Court is not its connection to the other powerful elites that run the country. The problem is the collective disconnection of all of these elites, taken together, from the masses of ordinary citizens. And that's something to think about as you decide which Skull and Bones man to vote for in November.

I particularly love that last line. The one certainty in the election is that a Yalie will be in the West Wing. I don't know how I feel about that.

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