Utah's Cannon out, Chaffetz in
Per the Salt Lake Tribune, Republican primary challenger Jason Chaffetz has taken six-term incumbent Chris Cannon's seat in the House of Representatives. What does this mean? As the French say, Pas...
View ArticleGas at 3 euros/liter by Christmas
I came back to my rented room in Heidelberg Sunday night (I occasionally work on-site for a German client). I went to say goodnight to my landlady and landlord, who were watching the news. I waited for...
View ArticlePunish the Mother!
Last year, 5-month-old Daniel Hadley died three days after his mother forgot he was in the car and left him there for two hours. A month ago, a Utah court found the mother guilty of one count of...
View ArticleHilarious website: "Welcome to the PalinDrome"
Fans of satire, rejoice! Some creative soul has launched "Welcome to the PalinDrome," a satiric website that pretends to be the personal blog of Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin.The...
View ArticleA Mormon's view of CA Prop (h)8
This past week, Mormon church leaders spoke via satellite to audiences in chapels in Utah and California about supporting Prop 8. Mormon Apostle M. Russell Ballard specifically appealed to the youth of...
View ArticleI'm an expat, I want to make calls for Obama!
I live in France. My husband and I have already sent our absentee ballots back to Massachusetts. I do some minor sparring with McCain supporters in a couple of venues, but I want to do something that...
View ArticleMy dad sent me an email about Snopes today (sigh)
We studiously avoided much political discussion while my parents were visiting us here in France, and for good reason. However, after my dad brought up Obama's "Muslim ties," I suggested that he go to...
View ArticleMy dad asked, "Who can you trust these days?"
Yesterday I wrote a diary about my dad forwarding to me an email attacking Snopes.com's credibility, and my response thereto. Given how far apart we are politically, I was very surprised to receive...
View ArticleGo to a Mormon church TODAY!
On the first Sunday of each month, Mormons typically hold "Fast & Testimony Meeting" during their communion service (called Sacrament Meeting). F&T meeting is an open-mike event: after the...
View ArticleGOTV -- phoning from France! (w/poll)
Bonjour les Kossack! I'm an American expat living in a tiny town in Upper Provence (as of this writing, less romantic than it sounds, thanks to scorpions, flooding, poor road conditions, and did I...
View ArticleHow to get through to Mormons re: Prop 8 (etc.)
Since the unfortunately probable passage of CA Prop 8, there have been a number of diaries calling for retaliation against the Mormons, the state of Utah, and so on.Writing as an insider, here are my...
View ArticleBob Herbert's money quote
As ever, Bob Herbert's NY Times column today is spot-on in its look at President Obama's intention to create jobs to head off another Great Depression.
View ArticleProp 8 shame and Handel's "Messiah"
As usual, singing along this past week with a lovely recording of Handel's Messiah brought tears to my eyes at the memory of the many times I performed the work over a 10-year period (mostly in the...
View ArticleThe casino spam on my website
Inspired by John Hodgman's SPAMasterpiece Theater, I thought I should share the wit and wisdom of the casino-spam I have found among the "comments" on the paltry few entries I've written on my mofembot...
View ArticleCelebrating MLK Day through service: Obama leads the way!
What better way to honor the memory and the dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., through service to those less fortunate. And who is showing us the way? Why, President-Elect Obama!
View ArticleHuge storm in SW France and N Spain (w/poll)
The southwestern part of France and the north-northeastern part of Spain were stricken by a killer storm that came off of the Atlantic this weekend. At least 111521 fatalities, numerous injuries,...
View ArticleLearning about Sex... the Mormon way!
As a, um, piggy-back to a recent currentlyRec-listed diary about Utah and porn, I thought I should give the voyeurs intellectually curious on DailyKos some insight into how a typical Mormon kid is...
View ArticleThe Mangler is at it again (w/poll)
George W. Bush's verbal faux pas are legendary. It is not surprising that his gaffes would continue after (finally) leaving office, and in his very first speech in front of a friendly audience in...
View ArticleMay 8 (V-E Day) in my French village (updated w/photos)
I picked up my daughter at her boarding school near Aix-en-Provence last night, and stayed in Aix so that we could watch the new Star Trek movie (in French, alas), but I made sure that I would be back...
View ArticleI did not know that he was dead.
A very belated, and too-brief tribute to one of America's very best writers of our time.
View ArticlePiling it on for Froomkin
The hundreds of readers' responses (845 so far) to the Washington Post's decision to fire Dan Froomkin ("White House Watch") have been overwhelmingly negative. Although the odds seem slender-to-none...
View ArticleMy last-minute letter to President Obama
I've been traveling, I've been up to my eyeballs in work, but I really don't have any excuse for having procrastinated to this degree. But watching the latest MoveOn video, We Can't Afford to Wait, has...
View ArticleFrank Rich gives winger Beck a thrill?
I have mixed feelings about Frank Rich's having chosen to make Glenn Beck the focus of today's column. There is nothing Glenn Beck likes better than to be taken seriously, and this week's upswing of...
View Article3 out of 5 of us are now French citizens (updated w/poll)
After more than 11 months since filing our applications for French citizenship, three envelopes from the French Interior Ministry showed up in our mailbox this past Monday, November 2nd. As I grabbed...
View ArticleFrank Rich and West Wing vs. LTE
I was heartened to read Frank Rich's column in this morning's New York Times, "Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet." I realize that he is talking about using Admiral Mullen's stance about repealing DADT...
View ArticleWhen JFK was shot (updated)
I was in second grade at Limerick Avenue Elementary School in Canoga Park, California (a suburb of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley). It was a sunny day; we were all outside playing in the free...
View ArticleCoping with the news from Japan
It feels odd to me, possibly even inappropriate, that my means of coping with the dreadful news from Japan has been creativity. Yesterday in the tiny studio I've rented in Berlin (as a means to ensure...
View ArticleWhat is with these guys and their zizis?
As a devotee of Sphinctera the Vengeful Bladder Goddess here in very rural SE France, I am often up in the wee-wee hours. Thus I can lay claim to being one of the very first people in France to see the...
View ArticleIt's effin' BORING in heaven.
It won't be any consolation to those who expected to go rocketing off into the bosom of Jesus yesterday for front-row seats to watch the rest of us die in fear and agony, but the way my evangelical...
View ArticleComing August 15: Onerous new rules for expats and their non-US relatives
Per an email I received from the head of the French chapter of Democrats Abroad, as of this Monday, August 15th, the US State Department will no longer allow US consular services to process visas for...
View ArticleIn between emergencies ...
With another winter storm bearing down on New England later today, but with the seasonal lull in dramatic wind activities (= tornados and hurricanes), and hopefully a lull in seismic events (knock on...
View Article“Matt” died 5 years ago today
Four years ago I published a lengthy diary on the first anniversary of the death of my then-15-year-old nephew. In his honor and memory, I am publishing the same diary, with only a few edits, below the...
View ArticleI've done baptisms for the dead (w/poll)
Yes, it's true: when I was a youthful teen true believer, I was baptized for dozens of dead people. Follow me below the orange loops-de-kos to find out more about this practice and other (yes, other!)...
View ArticleUpdate on mormon baptism for the dead
Well, well, well… looks like all the negative PR and how it may adversely affect Mitt's chances has finally pushed the mormon church to belatedly take some steps to get its members to stop submitting...
View ArticleI just voted here in France (updated x2)
Aux urnes, citoyens! ("To the ballot boxes, citizens!")I just got back from the village multi-purpose hall (named, rather grandiosely, La Salle Émancipatrice— literally, "the liberating room," but...
View ArticleBare Naked Lady, or post-mormon nudity, part I
More than 10 years ago, prior to moving to Europe, I participated in an off-off-off-Broadway (try Salt Lake City) mormon takeoff on The Vagina Monologues. My monologue from that time is posted below...
View ArticlePost-mormon nudity, part II (or, bare naked lady? who, me?)
More than ten years ago I participated in a mormon version of The Vagina Monologues. I published that monologue yesterday. A few weeks ago I was asked to contribute a follow-up… and that's what's below...
View ArticleBeware of Mitt's Mormon ground game this weekend
A lot has been justly written about how well-organized the Obama campaign has been, and how lacking in field offices and such the Romney campaign is by comparison.Well, guess what: this weekend the...
View ArticleCalling Pittsburgh-area Kossacks: please help a lady in distress
Pittsburgh Kossacks, can you give this lady a hand? Please read her diary here. If you're in a position to help, please leave a comment in her diary and/or send her kosmail. Thanks in advance!
View ArticleMore than German in German class
This past Friday evening marked the end of my third week in an Integrationskurs here in Berlin — a state-subsidized German-language course that is intended to help immigrants become more fully a part...
View ArticleMBTA, Harvard, MIT, etc. closed — stay home!
All MBTA services (buses, trains) are suspended. Harvard, MIT, Boston U. and numerous other schools and businesses are closed in Boston and Cambridge while the second suspect, armed and considered...
View ArticleI think of myself as a writer, and yet…
I think of myself as a writer, and yet my diaries here are few and far between. My blog entries are even scarcer these days. Even today, visiting my principal blog sites, I ended up just clearing out...
View ArticleIt's Pioneer Day today in Mormondom
When I was growing up in Southern California, the child of active converts to Mormonism, I dressed up as a pioneer (usually a girl pioneer, much to my tomboy dismay) every July 24th and went with my...
View Article“Matt’s” death, 7 years ago today
Five years ago I published a lengthy diary on the first anniversary of the death of my then-15-year-old nephew. In his honor and memory, I am publishing the same diary, with only a few edits, below the...
View ArticlePraying for “moisture”
California has been in the grip of a huge drought for quite some time now, and today being the first Sunday of the month, a.k.a. "Fast Sunday," Mormons are being asked to fast and pray that the drought...
View ArticleI will remember this my whole life long
[This is my annual diary in remembrance of this day in 1963.]I was in second grade at Limerick Avenue Elementary School in Canoga Park, California (a suburb of Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley)....
View ArticleI'm done with the Mormon church
Following the Mormon Church's announcement of its new policy, that the children of gay parents cannot be blessed nor baptized (until they are 18 and renounce their parents'"wicked ways"), and that...
View ArticleThe Pootie Queen has gone over the Rainbow Bridge
I am very sorry to let you all know that Tricia Wyse, a.k.a. the Pootie Queen, died this morning, apparently from a heart attack (others will doubtless provide more details). I know I am far from the...
View ArticleTen years ago today: In memory of “Matt”
Ten years ago I published a lengthy diary on the first anniversary of the death of my then-15-year-old nephew. In his honor and memory, I am publishing the same diary, with only a few edits,...
View ArticleReporting in after… a very long time
UPDATE: I removed the paragraph mentioning “silver linings,” because it appears that at least the part about dolphins being seen in Venetian canals is not true, per National Geographic. (Air quality in...
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