Tomatoes

Here's what my plants look like today.

Believe it or not, this is just four plants, two in each of the Earthbox planters. You can't see them but there are about 10 little green tomatoes, getting bigger everyday.

Just For Fun

If you need a diversion on this nice Saturday morning, take a look at Vanity Fair's on-line poll to determine who's the world's most handsome man. As I'm writing, Robert Pattinson is in the lead of this totally unscientific poll with 51% of the votes, but Nacho Figueras, who currently has 15%, is the one who gets my vote. I have to point out that my choice is based solely on the pictures provided by Vanity Fair. Until I saw the poll, I had never heard of Nacho, who in case you're wondering is an Argentine polo player, recently described by Page Six Magazine as the "Stud on a Steed." I was marginally more familiar with Robert Pattinson, who is one of those celebrities that I know about from looking at the covers of magazines like OK and US.

So what does it all mean? Absolutely nothing. As I said, just an entertaining diversion.

Changing The World ...

... one tweet at a time. Apparently Twitter is playing a key role in how information is coming out of Iran in the aftermath of the disputed election, so much so that the U.S. State Department has asked the site to defer a planned maintenance outage that was scheduled for this afternoon. How about that? It's easy to laugh about Twitter and be dismissive about the whole idea, starting with the silly name ("tweeting"? Really?), not to mention the notion of substantive information being squashed into messages no longer than 140 characters, including spaces and punctuation. Twitter gets the last laugh, because it's clearly having an impact far beyond those of you who are mesmerized by my tweets about tomatoes and my web development homework. Just one more way the world, and how we get information about what's going on in it, is changing.

Here's what cnn.com is saying about this.

The Queen, Michelle and Me

Gardening is cool! The White House's vegetable garden is well known, and of course, everyone knows all about my wonderful balcony garden, but apparently Her Majesty is getting in on the fun too. Based on the picture accompanying this article, it's not the Queen who is actually digging the dirt and planting the plants, but no worries. I'm sure she's enjoying her garden as much as I'm enjoying mine.

Nailed It!

I really don't play my old "Guess Who's On The Cover Of People Magazine This Week" game any more, but if I did, this week I was right. In my Bikini Rant Follow Up post on Sunday I listed Brangelina as one of three possibilities for the issue that comes out this Friday, and bingo! There they are. I know this because of the weekly What's In The Fabloids feature on The Daily Beast. Every Wednesday afternoon they provide a preview of People's upcoming cover, plus the covers of US, OK, the National Enquirer and a couple of others, and yes, every week I check it out. That's how I found out about Speidi.

I admit that I'm simultaneously intrigued and repulsed by the whole spectacle of tabloid celebrity coverage. There's so much more going on in the world than whether Brad and Angelina are together or not, much less what Speidi are up to, and a lot of it is actually important, but you'd sure never know that from the stories in all these magazines. Unfortunately, the important stuff is also frequently the boring stuff, and that doesn't sell magazines. It's probably not just the celebrity tabloids that won't be doing cover stories about the health care plan that was just introduced in the Senate. That's something that will affect my life way more than the latest celebrity gossip, and it's going to be a whole lot harder to find out what it's about than it is to keep tabs on Brangelina. For what it's worth, I'm going to try.

Be Careful What You Wish For

I frequently use the expression "I'd rather have root canal" when talking about something that I don't particularly want to do. Today those words came back to haunt me because after an unpleasant week-end courtesy of a very sore tooth, I ended up in the dentist's chair this morning actually having one.

Initially, it wasn't that bad. After a large shot of novocain, I not only didn't feel anything during the procedure but I also couldn't feel the sore tooth anymore, which was definitely a relief. The dentist gave me a prescription for pain pills, which I had filled on the way home, but as the afternoon wore on I was feeling pretty good and didn't think I'd need them. I had even begun to wonder what the big deal about root canal was. Then, at 4:10 p.m. (yes, I remember the moment exactly,) the novocain wore off. Yowza.

For those of you who saw my breezy little tweet about how I sailed through the root canal, never mind. I deleted it. I am indeed taking my medicine and I plan to spend the rest of the evening moaning and groaning and generally feeling sorry for myself. I know I'll feel better in the morning and I'm grateful I was able to get my tooth fixed. I'll also probably think twice the next time I start to say that I'd rather have root canal.

Bikini Rant Follow-Up

When I wrote my "Bikini Rant" post on June 1 I hadn't seen this fascinating bit of "inside baseball'' about how People magazine chooses their cover subjects each week, but I sure enjoyed reading it today, even as it depressed the hell out of me. True story: back when I had a subscription I used to try and guess who/what would be on the cover each week, based on what big pop culture stories and events had taken place at the time. I don't play that game anymore, but if I did, there's not a snowball's chance that I would have picked Melissa Joan Hart last week. Seriously - does anyone really care that she lost 42 pounds? Jon Gosselin's on the cover this week, which was fairly predictable. Any guesses for next week? Speidi? Susan Boyle? Brangelina? It could be Farrah, but only if she dies. (That's not me being morbid and disrespectful. I'm quoting People's editor.) As I said in my previous post - what this says about our culture depresses me beyond words.

Still Thinking About Madame Sarkozy

After writing my earlier post, I was still thinking about the life and career path of Carla Bruni Sarkozy when this thought came to me: What do you suppose the reaction here in the U.S. would be if a candidate for President was married to a former supermodel, a woman who had been famous for having an affair with a rock star?

It's fun to contemplate, isn't it? The U.S. isn't France and something tells me that for us it would be a very big deal and probably not in a good way for the candidate. I can only imagine the media feeding-frenzy-on-steroids that would follow such a revelation.

So here's another question. Does it matter? Does having a wife with a racy tabloid past automatically mean that an American man couldn't be an effective president? With our current "sex and scandal over substance" media-driven political process it almost certainly means that such a man couldn't get elected president of the U.S., but winning an election and actually leading the country are two very different processes. I don't know if Nicolas Sarkozy is a good leader or not, but I admit I kind of like the fact that he's married to a woman with an interesting past and the French people think that's okay. Wonder if it could ever happen here ...

Remembering D-Day

This morning I watched some of the ceremonies commemorating the 65th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. A few random thoughts:

Given the choice between watching CNN's coverage on television or cnn.com's live stream on-line, on-line wins by a landslide. Not only does the TV coverage switch to commercials on an annoyingly frequent basis, even when they're showing actual coverage you still have to listen to the inane and never-ending narration from the anchors. Watching on-line, there are no commercials (other than 30 seconds at the beginning) and no voice-over narration. Bliss.

Apparently there was some kind of diplomatic kerfuffle about Queen Elizabeth. The British are insulted because they say she wasn't invited to the various events in France; the French are saying it's up to the British government to decide who to send. What really happened? Not sure, don't care, but Prince Charles was there, which is apparently the "save face all around" solution they came up with. I didn't see Camilla, which makes me think he was a last minute addition to the program. I was struck by how old Charles looks (he's now 60) and by comparison, how young Obama is, at least by head-of-state standards.

Actually, now that I'm writing about this, I do wonder what the real issue was with the Queen. Unlike the five key dignitaries who were there (Charles, Obama, Sarkozy, British PM Brown and Canadian PM Harper), she was actually alive in 1944. She has already smiled her way through a lifetime's worth of these ceremonies and she may well have been just as content to stay home and send Charles, but still. She's of the same generation as the aging veterans who were honored today and it would have been poignant to see her there.

The French band played and the French soldiers sang the anthems of all four countries and it was interesting to hear our anthem sung with a French accent. As I listened I realized that I was at least vaguely familiar with the anthems of Great Britain, France and even Canada. Comes from watching the Olympics, I guess.

Whenever I see Carla Bruni in her role as First Lady of France I'm struck by what an interesting second act it is for her. It's almost hard to remember that she used to be a super model/tabloid fixture, at one point being famous primarily as the "other woman" Mick Jagger was fooling around with while he was still married to Jerri Hall.

Because I was watching on-line I could hear some of the announcements and speeches in French and I'm proud to say that I actually understood most of them. The Rosetta Stone lessons are working!

It's Not Just The Sheep

Global warming is a complicated problem with no easy answers. If you don't believe it, take a look at this story from today's New York Times. Back in February I linked to a story entitled "Sheep Belches Threaten World", and apparently cow breath is part of the problem too. According to the story, scientists are working to develop the cow of the future, who will have sweeter breath with less methane gas than today's regular cows. It sounds like a joke but in truth it's a serious problem that's apparently having a real impact on our environment. I'll be interested to learn more about the cows of the future. Won't you?

To Tweet Or Not To Tweet ...

... that's certainly the question. I set up my account on Twitter a few weeks ago and I've found it to be a fun way to express myself on topics both interesting (Talk like Shakespeare Day) and otherwise (perhaps a few too many weather updates from Chicagoland.) I also enjoy reading the tweets of the various people I've signed up to follow - again, some are interesting, some are boring and some people obviously felt inspired to create their Twitter personas but have fallen out of love with actually tweeting. Whatever. So far, I'm enjoying it.

If you're wondering what all the fuss is about, take a look at this article from Time.com. It's an interesting example of how this new-fangled way of communicating is changing the way we all get information. Twitter may be annoying sometimes but my guess is that it's not going away. Tweet on!

Bikini Shots

Warning: rant ahead. First, here's the background. Over the years I've had an evolving relationship with People magazine. Back in the day, I used to enjoy reading it, and for a few years in the 90s I even had a subscription. The new issue usually showed up in Friday's mail and reading it was a relaxing Friday night ritual that I looked forward to. Over the years, unfortunately, People magazine, along with the rest of pop culture and pretty much everything else we're exposed to on every level of media, has been dumbed down and sexed up to the point where I consider it to be almost unreadable now. It was never the New Yorker, but it didn't used to be "all bimbos all the time" either.

So here's my rant: Do we really need this many cover stories about B-, C-,
or D-list actresses who lost weight and are now posing in bikinis? To refresh your memory, the cover story for People's April 6 issue was a picture of Valerie Bertinelli in a bikini, with a headline that said "Bikini Body at 48." My thought at the time was "Is this really the most intriguing thing happening in the world of celebrities this week?" That issue must have really sold well because this week's cover is almost identical. It's a picture of Melissa Joan Hart (who???) in a bikini, with this headline "How I lost 42 pounds". There's also a "before" picture that the sub-headline describes as horrifying. Would you like to guess what her horrifying "before" weight was? 250 pounds? 185 pounds? No, her horrifyingly fat pre-diet weight was 155 pounds.

I fully understand that the fate of the world doesn't depend on what People magazine chooses to put on its cover every week. The cover story's one and only purpose is to sell magazines, and pictures of women in bikinis is probably as good a way to do that as any. I just really don't like what that says about our culture.