The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by windypoint:

If you include on your fruit platter some cherry tomatoes and some slices or sticks of cucumber of the sort that has edible rind, then the conversation will eventually turn to heated debate about the difference between a fruit and a vegetable. That debate tends to become as heated as the debate about whether Pluto is a planet.

I can see no problem with there being people who feel they need that much income to be happy. The problem comes if they see people on government assistance somehow managing a little happiness, and then start behaving as though those people are being given similarly huge amounts of money... because that much money is what it takes to be happy, right?

You are calling for the mice to bell the cat. Great idea, fabulous idea, OK, who is going to do it?

Am I slumming it when I go to conservative blogs to laugh at their intellectual and ethical poverty?

I feel sorry for your landlord too. I'm a landlord myself and if I had to deal with both the practical and emotional consequences of something like that happening in my rental property I would feel dreadful.

I don't think he should be permitted to be onsite with people still working at FEMA, discussing what happened, possibly colluding with other people to get their stories straight and avoid any blame. Ideally he would be locked up and only have access to legal advisors and the occasional visitor not involved in the debacle. That is standard procedure in the investigation of any serious crime, to isolate the suspects so that they can't make up lies that are consistent with each other.

Mice plagues are disgusting. Never seen one in person but I've a bunch of friends who experienced one. Mice in all the food. Mice in your clothes. Mice in your bed. So many mice the cats and dogs don't bother with them any more. Mice urine and feces everywhere. All your possessions nibbled or shredded for food or bedding, or at times it seems just for the sake of nibbling. Can't keep them out, they sqeeze through the smallest gaps. So many mice, and they are so vile, that parents stop telling their kids not to be cruel to them... if little Tommy wants to collect a bucket of them and play stomp the mouse with his friends, well good, less mice and at least some fun will be had amidst the disgustingness.

Hell might very well be full of mice.

Or ice. Which is more painful and traditional but not half as revolting.

Most Australians are OK with compulsory voting, except for a very few frothing mouthed ratbags at both ends of the political spectrum.

What happens if an adult Australian doesn't vote? A fine, and if you don't pay that or give a good reason, more fine, a court case, a criminal record and possibly time in prison if the judge thinks you are trying to overturn the system of compulsory voting by your actions.
Compulsory voting in Australia.

Better details are provided in the link from that page to a PDF. The Australian Electoral Commission is the bit of our public service that does the hard work in organising polling places, counting of votes etc. They do a remarkably good job.

Those who didn't vote at all are much more culpable than those who voted for Nader.

Someone needs to set this to music and record and distribute this as soon as possible so that radio stations (which often have a good deal more political freedom of expression than television stations seem to) can start playing it.

Dave, the outcry here about lack of a consular office isn't going to become deafening. We haven't even managed to convince John Howard to protest the detention without trial of our citizens who were found in Afghanistan, a simple delay in providing consular service isn't likely to become a big political issue.

I'm hoping that the least that happens is the Opposition repeatedly asks questions in Parliament about our own disaster preparedness, if only for the joy of seeing Howard having to basically say "we are better than that" over and over again, knowing that by doing so we make him distance himself just a bit from Bush.

For Bryan, who hasn't seen anything about trapped tourists yet.

Tourists at the Superdome

Hmmmm. I've been holding off posting this because it isn't directly relevant, but the longer this all goes on, the more interesting a comparison this becomes.

How Australia handled a cyclone in 1974.

Sandwiches and water! The Red Cross throws the best parties don't they, and no-one ever wants to leave.

I've been mulling the Helaine/Tessy story over in my mind for a while now... I guess I'm just not as fast as everyone else at coming to a conclusion and thus will always be unfashionably late by internet standards. But here I am now, posting what I think is a believable plot behind this story. A humble speculation, a fiction of sorts, just for amusement.

I'm now seeing this as a story about conflict between a husband and wife. We know (I think it was from Tessy) that the wife wants to move out to live in a large house in the country or burbs and that this has been a source of conflict in the marriage. Indeed it is the only real source of conflict we've seen between them, adults with normal healthy relationships just don't argue that much over stupid things like who cleans out the bathtub.

It is reasonable to assume, given what we know of their careers, that Roshkow is the main income earner, and thus the one on whom will fall the weighty responsibility of paying for the big house in the country. Not surprisingly he is keen to continue with their current (presumably almost paid off?) accomodation. You have to commit yourself to write an awful lot of soul destroying scripts to buy a dream home.

Olen, on the other hand, doesn't have a lot of income and isn't about to go get some. She instead wants the big house in the country, which will presumably soak up a lot of her time in decorating, renovating, putting in a swimming pool and canning fruit or whatever it is wealthy people do when they are convinced that the country is just so cute and desirable a place to be. Her writing career is pretty much stalled, and she is writing stuff that pays OK but will never give her what it takes to have serious economic clout in the marriage. To put it bluntly, she can afford to buy lipsticks and shoes on her own dime, but for broader lifestyle issues Roshkow is the only game in town.

So Olen lays seige to Roshkow. Nothing is right. The hired help are all fools and bad for the kids. She's a poor put-upon oppressed woman, and makes darn sure he pays up in guilt when she cleans out a poopy bathtub. She argues with him in front of the help. She shares a window into her private life with her friends despite the fact he is a more private person than her. Then finally she shares their private life with the world.

Roshkow really doesn't like his private life splashed all over place, after all, it was one of his main gripes about Tessy's blog, and Tessy's blog was semi anomynous and referred rarely to his household. How absolutely perfect, that Olen can point to her possible big break being something that he detests and does not wish to see repeated. The NY Times is probably enjoying the kerfuffle, it might not be too hard to persuade them to take further articles of this nature...

So Olen has created a situation in which shifting her out to the country to spend all her time on a new home is probably the best thing for all concerned. She may not be able to afford a nanny for a while due to the extra expense, can't say as that will make either of the couple too sad. We'll see a lot more of the same sort of scripts from Roshkow, and hear a lot less from Olen.

Quite frankly I think my version of the plot is a good deal more sordid than the "bonking the babysitter" theories that abound, and is a superior one to post here because it has within it a few lessons for artists of any sort to learn about how personal commitments can keep you on certain treadmills during the most productive years of your career. And if perchance Olen ever reads this work of speculation, I hope she has learnt the lesson that when you post a spectacular and engaging story without a sensible plot, people will impose a plot whether you like it or not.

Comment statistics for windypoint on the Making Light blog

Total: 16 comments. View all these comments on a single page.