secret life of gringas

My brother and his ladylove are currently living in Santiago, Chile, teaching English and perfecting their Spanish. I'd be jealous if I were not living in my own personal paradise.

My sister-in-law, the aforementioned ladylove, is blogging about her experiences there. Check out her musings on her favorite things about Santiago, tampons, and mayonnaise.

m's roundup

(This is not just any pomegranate.
This is the first fruit of the tree my mom
planted nearly two years ago.
It was even yummier than it looks.)

I decided the other day that instead of adding a disturbing number of "Posted Items" to my facebook profile, I will do this:

From an excellent friend and fellow mommy, I got an email with a link to this article about a boy who drowned hours after swimming, in his own bed. Oy, shivers down my spine. Dry drowning? How horrific. And I take my toddler to the beach once a week or more. Then while reading the RSS feed for one of my favorite mind-candyish sites, the Urban Legends Reference Pages, I found this explanation of the difference between dry drowning and secondary drowning, which at first made me feel much better, then not so much.

I'd heard of the infamous daisy ad, but had never actually seen it. (I heart youtube.) As creepy as it is, to me it looks totally modern in spite of its being older than I am. (I am a sucker for black and white.) Tony Schwartz, creator of this ad, passed away last week. I heart wikipedia.

The new Governor of New York State (you know, the blind West Indian guy who replaced Eliot Spitzer after that unfortunate hooker incident), has pardoned Slick Rick. Slick Rick is British. Who knew?

I love the Vanity Fair online archives. (Scroll down the menu on the left.) If you missed, say, "Shattered Glass" when it was published in 1998, you can read it now.

Firefox rules, in spite of technical difficulties.

I'm not one for gratuitous derisiveness towards lawyers, but this is ridiculous. A group of lawyers are suing Rockstar Games, the makers of Grand Theft Auto, because the game includes some very sexy easter eggs. They are disappointed because of the millions of people who bought the game, fewer than 3,000 have filed a claim. It apparently has not occurred to these chuckleheads that people who purchased Grand Theft Auto are probably not easily offended. For more madness from the U.S. legal system, read this.

The White House sticks fingers in ears and says to the EPA: If you're talking I can't hear you! Classic.

Hulk Hogan needs to stop talking. My two favorite gossip blogs, The Superficial and What Would Tyler Durden Do? say it all.

Grenadian general election

The last general election in Grenada was five years ago, nearly two years before my time. So I'm getting a real kick out of election season, especially since everyone is to some degree taking a page from or making a comparison to the campaigns going on right now in the States. My informal survey tells me that most Grenadians make their political decisions based on very narrow and personal issues, often having to do with an actual encounter with the candidate, because the island is that small. Some seem swayed by the rallies. Some talk politics for hours every day but never bother to vote. A woman I used to work with told me that she's voting against the incumbent in her parish because several years ago he wanted to charge her for showing her where the boundary of her land is. My babysitter remembers a day during the revolution when she had to run and hide to avoid being shot. She's voting against the party that she believes those men later joined. The Prime Minister, of course, is in rare form. He's pretty desperate to remain in power, for all the obvious reasons, but also because he's been using that power to hide from some rather serious legal problems.I can't vote here, of course, because I'm not a citizen. I find myself caring about this election, though, almost as much as I care about the election in November. I live here and my son was born here. I very much hope there's a regime change on July 8th.

it's the adultery, stupid

YY's comment on my last post reminded me of this article in Vanity Fair.

Get through the part about Eliot Spitzer and there is some fascinating commentary re: how sex informs U.S. politics. The best part, the part about Michelle Obama, appears towards the end. I won't spoil it for you.

Because it's Friday, here's some random Obama-related fun.

it's called a BOUNCE: UPDATED

We weren't going to get political here, really we weren't. But I just cannot let this pass without comment, not when it comes to my girl Michelle.

The following is so racist I need to go spit. (Others chime in here. Maureen Dowd, bless her, even gets the terminology correct.)



UPDATE:
The bimbo in the video above lost her show. Unfortunately they're replacing her with one of my least favorite people on the planet, but I would expect nothing less from Fox.

I spoke too soon.