Comments for fightingfreefromed

Comment on About by fightingfreefromed

fightingfreefromed — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 22:49:07 +0000

In reply to balancebabe01. Aw thank you so much! You are a sweetheart! Same goes to you; we can definitely reach recovery together!! You stay strong as well, you can do this! :)

Comment on About by balancebabe01

balancebabe01 — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 02:10:10 +0000

You definitely don’t have to suffer alone. Check out my blog if you ever want to talk. We can reach recovery together 🙂 stay strong hun

Comment on A New Step Towards Recovery by Tiffany

Tiffany — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:43:50 +0000

We’ve believed in you since day one- but SO happy to read this! I truly believe you want this, and your niece is your biggest cheerleader! She loves and misses her auntie and looks up to you. You can do it! We are all very proud!!!

Comment on 23 by fightingfreefromed

fightingfreefromed — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:31:30 +0000

In reply to Tiff. Thank you!! I love you!!!

Comment on 23 by Tiff

Tiff — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:53:17 +0000

Today is the start of a new year!!! Things will be different and you will be better!!

Comment on Exhausted Today by fightingfreefromed

fightingfreefromed — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:34:13 +0000

In reply to Jessica Wilson.

Thank you so much!! That means so much to me! I hope things are going well for you!!! 🙂

Meghan

Comment on Exhausted Today by Jessica Wilson

Jessica Wilson — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:22:28 +0000

Hi Meghan!

I came across your blog and am so glad you are writing! From tennis I know that you are a strong girl and a huge competitor who has always inspired me. I’m confident your story will do the same for other girls. I believe in you and I’m thinking of you!!

Jessica Wilson

Comment on Introduction by fightingfreefromed

fightingfreefromed — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:33:51 +0000

In reply to julie lee. Thank you so much!! It means a lot to me! You and you're family are in my thoughts and prayers as well and I hope things are going well for you! Thanks again! Meghan

Comment on Introduction by julie lee

julie lee — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:43:21 +0000

Hi Meghan,
Rachel shared your blog with me. You will be in my prayers (and your whole family) as you fight this disease. I hope to see your beautiful smile on the tennis court again someday!! Please pass my good wishes along to your parents, also…..
Julie Lee

Comment on Introduction by fightingfreefromed

fightingfreefromed — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:57:42 +0000

In reply to Rachel Lee. Thank you so much! That means so much to me, truly! You are so sweet and I hope that things are going well for you and your family! Thank you SO much! Love you!!!

Comment on Snippets by figsandtwigs

figsandtwigs — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 14:17:43 +0000

In reply to melbournemummy. Sorry belated reply. I had a blogging break while Kobe recovered then we snuck off to Adelaide for a few days. Thanks he is all super well again:)

Comment on Snippets by melbournemummy

melbournemummy — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 07:09:32 +0000

Poor Kobe, tonsillitis is awful. Hope he feels much better soon.

Comment on Polka dot vintage markets by figsandtwigs

figsandtwigs — Sat, 28 Sep 2013 14:17:03 +0000

In reply to Sherry Key, Artist. Im the same, I love trawling thru all the pretty vintage things oohing & aahing over them.

Comment on Polka dot vintage markets by Sherry Key, Artist

Sherry Key, Artist — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 15:37:58 +0000

Love it all. Barbie, yay! Wouldn’t want it all in my house but love looking at it.

Comment on Moments by figsandtwigs

figsandtwigs — Tue, 24 Sep 2013 13:33:41 +0000

In reply to melbournemummy. ha ha yeah it is Sooty, found the puppet version (& Sweep too) at some markets & its now Kobe's fave toy:) I crazy loved Sooty as a kid!!!

Comment on Moments by melbournemummy

melbournemummy — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 12:34:07 +0000

Is that Sooty from Sooty & Sweep? I didn’t know they were still around – loved that show over 20yrs ago!

Comment on One giant leap: From cot to toddler bed by figsandtwigs

figsandtwigs — Thu, 12 Sep 2013 14:46:45 +0000

In reply to melbournemummy. Kids are without a doubt so darn SWEET when they are sleeping, its the getting them to bed is the problem for ME:( Kobe is the same as lil chop he is the king of procrastination at bedtime takes about 30-60mins to go down for a nap than has an hour (if that nowadays). Yep I usually skip out on Luke & the bedtime nightime routine 15 mins before Kobe goes to bed so I dont have to hear/feel guilty about Kobe asking mummy to lie down. Keep me posted how you go on any progress on getting lil chop to her own bed (& staying in it). I know we will eventually get there, I have hope!!! (Psst, the cot was a fabulous Ebay find!)

Comment on One giant leap: From cot to toddler bed by melbournemummy

melbournemummy — Wed, 11 Sep 2013 03:48:23 +0000

It’s hard to believe they can make us feel like pulling our hair out when they look like angels in their sleep. I feel for you. 99% of the reason that Little Chop still co-sleeps with us is that I don’t have the energy or the patience for the nap/bedtime struggle – as it is, she takes 45-60 mins to go to sleep with me lying on the bed right next to her. My partner also seems to think that I am capable and content to do EVERYTHING until I erupt in tears of exhaustion/ frustration and then he realises he needs to step up without being asked. Perhaps Luke can do the bedtime routine – I think kids tend to play up more to mum. Love the cot, haven’t seen one like that before.

Comment on Upcycling old sheets: painting apron by figsandtwigs

figsandtwigs — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 13:34:49 +0000

In reply to melbournemummy. You may become like me then, 50 sewing projects on the go with little time to finish them. All in good fun thou!

Comment on Upcycling old sheets: painting apron by melbournemummy

melbournemummy — Sun, 25 Aug 2013 10:58:20 +0000

Great idea. Think I need to buy a sewing machine…

Overview of a Puppet Split CA architecture

Mathias Gug — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:49:14 +0000

The Puppet Master CA is the only Certificate Authority (CA) in the whole infrastructure. It issues certificates for all Puppet agents. It also manages the Puppet Master systems.

The Puppet Masters are only responsible for compiling catalogs requested by Puppet Agents – they don’t act as CA themselves. They only accept Puppet Agents which certificates have been issued by the Puppet Master CA.

The Puppet Agent retrieves their certificates from the Puppet Master CA the first time they run. They connect to the Puppet Masters afterwards to get their catalogs. They won’t contact the Puppet Master CA anymore.

Puppet Master CA

The Puppet Master CA manages all Puppet Masters. In particular it distributes its own Certificate Revocation List (CRL) file to every Puppet Master. The Puppet Master CA also issues certificates to Puppet Agents.

Puppet Master

A Puppet Master runs under Apache and Passenger. Apache ssl module is configured to require certificates signed by the Puppet Master CA (/etc/apache2/site-available/puppetmaster):

 # Require certificates to be valid
 SSLVerifyClient require
 SSLVerifyDepth  1

The Puppet Master is also configured to not act as a Puppet CA (/etc/puppet/puppet.conf):

 [main]
 ca = false

Puppet Agent

Puppet Agents retrieve their certificate from the Puppet Master CA and request their catalog from one of the Puppet Masters (/etc/puppet/puppet.conf):

 [agent]
 ca_server = PUPPET_MASTER_CA
 server = PUPPET_MASTER

Conclusion

From a security perspective setting the SSLVerifyClient option to require increases the protection of Puppet Masters from unknown requests and revoked Puppet Agents. Having the Puppet Master CA manage the Puppet Masters also facilitates the distribution of the Puppet Master CA CRL.

On the reliability front new systems won’t be added to the infrastructure if the Puppet Master CA is unavailable. However existing Puppet Agents are still functional as long as they can connect to a Puppet Master.

Deploying a Hadoop cluster on EC2/UEC with Puppet and Ubuntu Maverick

Mathias Gug — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 01:02:08 +0000

Architectural overview of a Hadoop Cluster deployed on EC2/UEC with Puppet and Ubuntu.

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A Hadoop Cluster running on EC2/UEC deployed by puppet on Ubuntu Maverick.

How it works

The Cloud Conductor is located outside the AWS infrastructure as it needs AWS credentials to start new instances. The Puppet Master runs in EC2 and uses S3 to check which clients it should accept.

The Hadoop Namenode, Jobtracker and Worker are also running in EC2. The Puppet Master automatically configures them so that each Worker can connect to the Namenode and Jobtracker.

The Puppet Master uses Stored Configuration to distribute configuration between all the Hadoop components. For example the Namenode IP address is automatically pushed to the Jobtracker and the Worker nodes so that they can connect to the Namenode.

Ubuntu Maverick is used since Puppet 2.6 is required. The excellent Cloudera CDH3 Beta2 packages provide the base Hadoop foundation.

Puppet recipes and the Cloud Conductor scripts are available in a bzr branch on Launchpad.

Setup the Cloud Conductor

The first part of the Cloud Conductor is the start_instance.py script. It takes care of starting new instances in EC2 and registering them in S3. Its configuration lives in start_instance.yaml. Both files are located in the conductor directory of the bzr branch.

The following options are available on the cloud conductor:

s3_bucket_name: Sets the name of the S3 bucket used to store the list of instances started by the Cloud Conductor. The Puppet Master uses the same bucket to check which Puppet Client should be accepted.
ami_id: Sets the id of the AMI the Cloud Conductor will use to start new instances.
cloud_init: Sets specific cloud-init parameters. All of the puppet client configuration is defined here.Public ssh keys (for example from Launchpad) can be configured using the ssh_import_id option. The cloud-init documentation has more information [1] about what can be configured when starting new instances.

A sample start_instance.yaml file looks like this:

# Name of the S3 bucket to use to store the certname of started instances s3_bucket_name: mathiaz-hadoop-cluster # Base AMI id to use to start all instances ami_id: ami-c210e5ab # Extra information passed to cloud-init when starting new instances # see cloud-init documentation for available options. cloud_init: &site-cloud-init ssh_import_id: mathiaz

Once the Cloud Conductor is configured a Puppet Master can be started:

./start_instance.py puppetmaster

Setup the Puppet Master

Once the instance has started and its ssh fingerprints can be verified the puppet recipes are deployed on the Puppet Master:

bzr branch lp:~mathiaz/+junk/hadoop-cluster-puppet-conf ~/puppet/ sudo mv /etc/puppet/ /etc/old.puppet sudo mv ~/puppet/ /etc/

The S3 bucket name is set in the Puppet Master configuration /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp:

node default { class { "puppet::ca": node_bucket => "https://mathiaz-hadoop-cluster.s3.amazonaws.com"; } }

And finally the Puppet Master installation can be completed by puppet itself:

sudo puppet apply /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp

A Puppet Master is now running into EC2 with all the recipes required to deploy the different components of a Hadoop Cluster.

Update the Cloud Conductor configuration

Since the Cloud Conductor starts instances that will connect to the Puppet Master it needs to know some information about the Puppet Master:

the Puppet Master internal IP address or DNS name. For example the DNS name of the instance (which is the FQDN) can be used.
the Puppet Master certificate (located in /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem):

On the Cloud Conductor the information gathered on the Puppet Master is added to start_instance.yaml:

agent: # Puppet server hostname or IP # In EC2 the Private DNS of the instance should be used server: domU-12-31-38-00-35-98.compute-1.internal # NB: the certname will automatically be added by start_instance.py # when a new instance is started. # Puppetmaster ca certificate # located in /var/lib/puppet/ssl/ca/ca_crt.pem on the puppetmaster system ca_cert: | -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- MIICFzCCAYCgAwIBAgIBATANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQUFADAUMRIwEAYDVQQDDAlQdXBw [ ... ] k0r/nTX6Tmr8TTU= -----END CERTIFICATE-----

Start the Hadoop Namenode

Once the Puppet Master and Cloud Conductor are configured the Hadoop Cluster can be deployed. First in line is the Hadoop Namenode:

./start_instance.py namenode

After a few minutes the Namenode puppet client requests a certificate:
puppet-master[7397]: Starting Puppet master version 2.6.1 puppet-master[7397]: 53b0b7bf-723c-4a0f-b4b1-082ebec84041 has a waiting certificate request
The Master signs the CSR:

CRON[8542]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/check_csr https://mathiaz-hadoop-cluster.s3.amazonaws.com) check_csr[8543]: INFO: Signing request: 53b0b7bf-723c-4a0f-b4b1-082ebec84041

And finally the Master compiles the manifest for the Namenode:

node_classifier[8989]: DEBUG: Checking url https://mathiaz-hadoop-cluster.s3.amazonaws.com/53b0b7bf-723c-4a0f-b4b1-082ebec84041 node_classifier[8989]: INFO: Getting node configuration: 53b0b7bf-723c-4a0f-b4b1-082ebec84041 node_classifier[8989]: DEBUG: Node configuration (53b0b7bf-723c-4a0f-b4b1-082ebec84041): classes: ['hadoop::namenode'] puppet-master[7397]: Puppet::Parser::AST::Resource failed with error ArgumentError: Could not find stage hadoop-base specified by Class[Hadoop::Base] at /etc/puppet/modules/hadoop/manifests/init.pp:142 on node 53b0b7bf-723c-4a0f-b4b1-082ebec84041

Unfortunately there is a bug related to puppet stages. As a workaround the puppet agent can be restarted:

sudo /etc/init.d/puppet restart

Looking at the syslog file on the Namenode the Puppet Agent installs and configures the Hadoop Namenode:

puppet-agent[1795]: Starting Puppet client version 2.6.1 puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[apt]/Hadoop::Apt/Apt::Key[cloudera]/File[/etc/apt/cloudera.key]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}dc59b632a1ce2ad325c40d0ba4a4927e' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[apt]/Hadoop::Apt/Apt::Key[cloudera]/Exec[import apt key cloudera]) Triggered 'refresh' from 1 events puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[apt]/Hadoop::Apt/Apt::Sources_list[canonical]/File[/etc/apt/sources.list.d/canonical.list]/ensure) created puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[apt]/Hadoop::Apt/Apt::Sources_list[cloudera]/File[/etc/apt/sources.list.d/cloudera.list]/ensure) created puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[apt]/Apt::Apt/Exec[apt-get_update]) Triggered 'refresh' from 3 events

The first stage of the puppet run sets up the Canonical partner archive and the Cloudera archive. The Sun JVM is pulled from the Canonical archive while Hadoop packages are downloaded from the Cloudera archive.

The following stage creates a common Hadoop configuration:

puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/File[/var/cache/debconf/sun-java6.seeds]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}1e3a7ac4c2dc9e9c3a1ae9ab2c040794' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/Package[sun-java6-bin]/ensure) ensure changed 'purged' to 'latest' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/Package[hadoop-0.20]/ensure) ensure changed 'purged' to 'latest' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/File[/var/lib/hadoop-0.20/dfs]/ensure) created puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/File[/etc/hadoop-0.20/conf.puppet]/ensure) created puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/File[/etc/hadoop-0.20/conf.puppet/hdfs-site.xml]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}1f9788fceffdd1b2300c06160e7c364e' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/Exec[/usr/sbin/update-alternatives --install /etc/hadoop-0.20/conf hadoop-0.20-conf /etc/hadoop-0.20/conf.puppet 15]) Triggered 'refresh' from 1 events puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[hadoop-base]/Hadoop::Base/File[/etc/default/hadoop-0.20]/content) content changed '{md5}578894d1b3f7d636187955c15b8edb09' to '{md5}ecb699397751cbaec1b9ac8b2dd0b9c3'
Finally the Hadoop Namenode is configured:

puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Namenode/Package[hadoop-0.20-namenode]/ensure) ensure changed 'purged' to 'latest' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Namenode/File[hadoop-core-site]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}2f2445bf3d4e26f5ceb3c32047b19419' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Namenode/File[/var/lib/hadoop-0.20/dfs/name]/ensure) created puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Namenode/Exec[format-dfs]) Triggered 'refresh' from 1 events puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Namenode/Service[hadoop-0.20-namenode]/ensure) ensure changed 'stopped' to 'running' puppet-agent[1795]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Namenode/Service[hadoop-0.20-namenode]) Failed to call refresh: Could not start Service[hadoop-0.20-namenode]: Execution of '/etc/init.d/hadoop-0.20-namenode start' returned 1: at /etc/puppet/modules/hadoop/manifests/init.pp:177

There is another bug in the Hadoop init script this time: the Namenode cannot be started. The puppet agent can be restarted or the next puppet run will start it:

sudo /etc/init.d/puppet restart

The Namenode daemon is running and logs information to its log file in /var/log/hadoop/hadoop-hadoop-namenode-*.log:

[...] INFO org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.server.namenode.NameNode: Web-server up at: 0.0.0.0:50070 [...] INFO org.apache.hadoop.ipc.Server: IPC Server handler 9 on 8200: starting INFO org.apache.hadoop.ipc.Server: IPC Server handler 8 on 8200: starting

Start the Hadoop Jobtracker

The next component to start is the Hadoop Jobtracker:

./start_instance.py jobtracker

After some time the Puppet Master compiles the Jobtracker manifest:

DEBUG: Checking url https://mathiaz-hadoop-cluster.s3.amazonaws.com/2faa4de9-c708-45ab-a515-ae041a9d0239 node_classifier[30683]: INFO: Getting node configuration: 2faa4de9-c708-45ab-a515-ae041a9d0239 node_classifier[30683]: DEBUG: Node configuration (2faa4de9-c708-45ab-a515-ae041a9d0239): classes: ['hadoop::jobtracker'] puppet-master[23542]: Compiled catalog for 2faa4de9-c708-45ab-a515-ae041a9d0239 in environment production in 2.00 seconds

On the instance the puppet agent configures the Hadoop Jobtracker:

puppet-agent[1035]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Jobtracker/File[hadoop-mapred-site]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}af3b65a08df03e14305cc5fd56674867' puppet-agent[1035]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Jobtracker/File[hadoop-core-site]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}2f2445bf3d4e26f5ceb3c32047b19419' puppet-agent[1035]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Jobtracker/Package[hadoop-0.20-jobtracker]/ensure) ensure changed 'purged' to 'latest' puppet-agent[1035]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Jobtracker/Service[hadoop-0.20-jobtracker]/ensure) ensure changed 'stopped' to 'running' puppet-agent[1035]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Jobtracker/Service[hadoop-0.20-jobtracker]) Failed to call refresh: Could not start Service[hadoop-0.20-jobtracker]: Execution of '/etc/init.d/hadoop-0.20-jobtracker start' returned 1: at /etc/puppet/modules/hadoop/manifests/init.pp:135

There is the same bug in the init script. Let’s restart the puppet agent:

sudo /etc/init.d/puppet restart

The Jobtracker connects to the Namenode and error messages are logged on a regular basis to both the Namenode and Jobtracker log files:

INFO org.apache.hadoop.ipc.Server: IPC Server handler 7 on 8200, call addBlock(/hadoop/mapred/system/jobtracker.info, DFSClient_-268101966, null) from 10.122.183.121:54322: error: java.io.IOException: File /hadoop/mapred/system/jobtracker.info could only be replicated to 0 nodes, instead of 1 java.io.IOException: File /hadoop/mapred/system/jobtracker.info could only be replicated to 0 nodes, instead of 1

This is normal as there aren’t any Datanode daemon available for data replication.

Start Hadoop workers

It’s now time to start the Hadoop Worker to get an operational Hadoop Cluster:

./start_instance.py worker

The Hadoop Worker holds both a Data node and a Task tracker. The Puppet agent configures them to talk to the Namenode and Job tracker respectively.

After some time the Puppet Master compiles the catalog for the Hadoop Worker:

node_classifier[8368]: DEBUG: Checking url https://mathiaz-hadoop-cluster.s3.amazonaws.com/b72a8f4d-55e6-4059-ac4b-26927f1a1016 node_classifier[8368]: INFO: Getting node configuration: b72a8f4d-55e6-4059-ac4b-26927f1a1016 node_classifier[8368]: DEBUG: Node configuration (b72a8f4d-55e6-4059-ac4b-26927f1a1016): classes: ['hadoop::worker'] puppet-master[23542]: Compiled catalog for b72a8f4d-55e6-4059-ac4b-26927f1a1016 in environment production in 0.18 seconds

On the instance the puppet agent installs the Hadoop worker:

puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/File[hadoop-mapred-site]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}af3b65a08df03e14305cc5fd56674867' puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/Package[hadoop-0.20-datanode]/ensure) ensure changed 'purged' to 'latest' puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/File[/var/lib/hadoop-0.20/dfs/data]/ensure) created puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/Package[hadoop-0.20-tasktracker]/ensure) ensure changed 'purged' to 'latest' puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/File[hadoop-core-site]/ensure) defined content as '{md5}2f2445bf3d4e26f5ceb3c32047b19419' puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/Service[hadoop-0.20-datanode]/ensure) ensure changed 'stopped' to 'running' puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/Service[hadoop-0.20-datanode]) Failed to call refresh: Could not start Service[hadoop-0.20-datanode]: Execution of '/etc/init.d/hadoop-0.20-datanode start' returned 1: at /etc/puppet/modules/hadoop/manifests/init.pp:103 puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/Service[hadoop-0.20-tasktracker]/ensure) ensure changed 'stopped' to 'running' puppet-agent[1030]: (/Stage[main]/Hadoop::Worker/Service[hadoop-0.20-tasktracker]) Failed to call refresh: Could not start Service[hadoop-0.20-tasktracker]: Execution of '/etc/init.d/hadoop-0.20-tasktracker start' returned 1: at /etc/puppet/modules/hadoop/manifests/init.pp:103

Again the same init script bug – let’s restart the puppet agent:

sudo /etc/init.d/puppet restart

Once the worker is installed the Datanode daemon connects to the Namenode:

INFO org.apache.hadoop.hdfs.StateChange: BLOCK* NameSystem.registerDatanode: node registration from 10.249.187.5:50010 storage DS-2066068566-10.249.187.5-50010-1285276011214 INFO org.apache.hadoop.net.NetworkTopology: Adding a new node: /default-rack/10.249.187.5:50010

Similarly the Task Tracker daemon registers itself with the Jobtracker:
INFO org.apache.hadoop.net.NetworkTopology: Adding a new node: /default-rack/domU-12-31-39-03-B8-F7.compute-1.internal

The Hadoop Cluster is up and running.

Conclusion

Once the initial setup of the Puppet master is done and the Hadoop Namenode and Jobtracker are up and running adding new Hadoop Workers is
just one command:

./start_instance.py worker

Puppet automatically configures them to join the Hadoop Cluster.

Using puppet in UEC/EC2: Improving performance with Phusion Passenger

Mathias Gug — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 01:55:37 +0000

Now that we have an efficient process to start instances within UEC/EC2 and get them configured for their task by puppet we’ll dive into improving the performance of the puppetmaster with Phusion Passenger.

Why?

The default configuration used by puppetmasterd is based on webrick which doesn’t really scale well. One popular choice to improve puppetmasterd performance is to use mod passenger from the libapache2-mod-passenger package.

Apache2 setup

The configuration is based on the Puppet passenger documentation. It is available from the bzr branch as we’ll use puppet to actually configure the instance running puppetmasterd.

The puppet module has been updated to make sure the apache2 and libapache2-mod-passenger packages are installed. It also creates the relevant files and directories required to run puppetmasterd as a rack application.

Passenger and SSL modules are enabled in the apache2 configuration. All of their configuration is done inside a virtual host definition. Note that the SSL options related to certificates and private keys files points directly to /var/lib/puppet/ssl/.

Apache2 is also configured to only listen on the default puppetmaster port by replacing apache2 default ports.conf and disabling the default virtual site.

Finally the configuration of puppetmasterd has been updated so that it can correctly process the certificate clients while being run under passenger.

Note that puppetmasterd needs to be run once in order to be able to generate its ssl configuration. This happens automatically when the puppetmaster package is installed since puppetmasterd is started during the package installation.

Deploying an improved puppetmaster

Log on the puppetmaster instance and update the puppet configuration using the bzr branch:

bzr pull –remember lp:~mathiaz/+junk/uec-ec2-puppet-config-passenger /etc/puppet/

Update the configuration:

sudo puppet –node_terminus=plain /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp

On the Cloud Conductor start a new instance with start_instance.py. If you’re starting from scratch remember to update the start_instance.yaml
file with the puppetmaster CA and internal IP:

./start_instance.py -c start_instance.yaml AMI_NUMBER

Following /var/log/syslog on the puppetmaster you should see the new instance requesting a certificate:

Apr 8 00:40:08 ip-10-195-93-129 puppetmasterd[3353]: Starting Puppet server version 0.25.4
Apr 8 00:40:08 ip-10-195-93-129 puppetmasterd[3353]: 7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 has a waiting certificate request

Now that the puppetmasterd process is run by apache2 and mod-passenger you can check in /var/log/apache2/other_vhosts_access.logs.log the http requests made by the puppet client to get its certificate signed:

ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:40:06 +0000] “GET /production/certificate/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 HTTP/1.1” 404 2178 “-” “-”
ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:40:08 +0000] “GET /production/certificate_request/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 HTTP/1.1” 404 2178 “-” “-”
ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:40:08 +0000] “PUT /production/certificate_request/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 HTTP/1.1” 200 2082 “-” “-”
ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:40:08 +0000] “GET /production/certificate/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 HTTP/1.1” 404 2178 “-” “-”
ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:40:08 +0000] “GET /production/certificate/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 HTTP/1.1” 404 2178 “-” “-“

Once check_csr is run by cron the certificate will be signed and the puppet client is able to retrieve its certificate:

ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:42:08 +0000] “GET /production/certificate/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47 HTTP/1.1” 200 2962 “-” “-”
ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:42:08 +0000] “GET /production/certificate_revocation_list/ca HTTP/1.1” 200 2450 “-” “-“

The puppet client ends up requesting its manifest:

ip-10-195-93-129.ec2.internal:8140 10.195.94.224 – – [08/Apr/2010:00:42:09 +0000] “GET /production/catalog/7d6b61a7-3772-4c41-a23d-471b417d9c47?facts_format=b64_zlib_yaml&facts=eNp [….] HTTP/1.1” 200 2354 “-” “-“

Conclusion

I’ve just outlined how to configure mod passeenger to run puppetmasterd which is a much more efficient setup than using the default webrick server. Most of the configuration is detailed in the files available in the bzr branch.

Using puppet in UEC/EC2: Node classification

Mathias Gug — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 20:58:57 +0000

In a previous article I discussed how to set up an automated registration process for puppet instances. We’ll now have a look at how we can tell these instances what they should be doing.

Going back to the overall architecture the Cloud conductor is the component responsible for starting new instances. Of all the three components it’s him that has the most knowledge about what an instance should be: it is the one responsible for starting a new instance after all.

Using S3 to store node definitions

We’ll use the puppet external node feature to connect the Cloud conductor with the puppetmaster. The external node script –node_classifier.py – will be responsible for telling which classes each instance is supposed to have. Whenever a puppet client connects to the master the node_classifier.py script is called with the certificate name. It is responsible for providing a description of the classes, environments and parameters for the client on its standard output in a yaml format.

Given that the Cloud conductor creates a file with the certificate name for each instance it spawns we’ll extend the start_instance.py script to store the node classification in the content of the file created in the S3 bucket.

You may have noticed that instances started by start_instance.py don’t have an ssh public key associated with them. So we’re going to create a login-allowed class that will install the authorized key for the ubuntu user.

Setup the puppetmaster to use the node classifier

We’ll use the Ubuntu Lucid Beta2 image as the base image on which to build our Puppet infrastructure.

Start an instance of the Lucid Beta2 AMI using an ssh key. Once it’s running write down its public and private DNS addresses. The public DNS address will be used to setup the puppetmaster via ssh. The private DNS address will be used as the puppetmaster hostname given out to puppet clients.

Log on the started instance via ssh to install and setup the puppet master:

Update apt files:

sudo apt-get update
Install the puppet and bzr packages:

sudo apt-get install puppet bzr
Change the ownership of the puppet directory so that the ubuntu user can directly edit the puppet configuration files:

sudo chown -R ubuntu:ubuntu /etc/puppet/
On the puppetmaster check out the tutorial3 bzr branch:

bzr branch –use-existing-dir lp:~mathiaz/+junk/uec-ec2-puppet-config-tut3 /etc/puppet/

You’ll get a conflict for the puppet.conf file. You can ignore the conflict as the puppet.conf file from the branch is the one that supports an external node classifier:

bzr resolve /etc/puppet/puppet.conf

Edit the node classifier script scripts/node_classifier.py to set the correct location of your S3 bucket.

Note that the script is set to return 1 if the certificate name doesn’t have a corresponding file in the S3 bucket. You may want to change the return code to 0 if you want to use the normal nodes definition. See the puppet external node documentation for more information.

The puppetmaster configuration in puppet.conf has been updated to use the external node script.

There is also the login-allowed class defined in the manifests/site.pp file. It sets the authorized key file for the ubuntu user.

On the puppetmaster edit manifests/site.pp to update the public key with your EC2 public key. You can get the public key from ~ubuntu/.ssh/authorized_key on the puppetmaster.

To bootstrap the new puppetmaster configuration run the puppet client:

sudo puppet –node_terminus=plain /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp

Note that you’ll have to set the node_terminus to plain to avoid calling the node classifier script when configuring the puppetmaster itself. Otherwise the puppet run would fail since the puppetmaster certificate name (which defaults the to fqdn of the instance) doesn’t have a corresponding file in the S3 bucket.

We have now our puppetmaster configured to look up the node classification for each puppet client.

Update start_instance.py to provide a node definition

It’s time to update the Cloud conductor to provide the relevant node classification information whenever it starts a new instance.

Update the bzr branch on the Cloud conductor system:

bzr pull –remember lp:~mathiaz/uec-puppet-config-tut3

The start_instance.py script has been updated to write the node classification information when it creates the instance file in the S3 bucket. That information is actually set in the start_instance.yaml file under the node key. All of the node classification information expected by the puppetmaster from the external node classifier script is set under the node key in start_instance.yaml. See the puppet external node documentation for more information on the information that can be provided by the external node script.

Review the start_instance.yaml file to make sure the S3 bucket name, the puppetmaster server IP and CA certificate are still valid for your own setup.

Start an instance:

./start_instance.py -c start_instance.yaml AMI_NUMBER

Following /var/log/syslog you should see something similar to this:

Apr 7 19:15:37 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 puppetmasterd[1644]: 77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0 has a waiting certificate request

The instance has booted and registered with the puppetmaster.

Apr 7 19:16:01 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 CRON[2188]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/check_csr –log-level=debug https://mathiaz-puppet-nodes-1.s3.amazonaws.com)
Apr 7 19:16:02 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 check_csr[2189]: DEBUG: List of waiting csr: 77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0
Apr 7 19:16:02 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 check_csr[2189]: DEBUG: Checking 77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0
Apr 7 19:16:02 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 check_csr[2189]: DEBUG: Checking url https://mathiaz-puppet-nodes-1.s3.amazonaws.com/77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0
Apr 7 19:16:03 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 check_csr[2189]: INFO: Signing request: 77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0

The puppetmaster checked if the client request is expected and signs it.

Apr 7 19:17:39 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 node_classifier[2240]: DEBUG: Checking url https://mathiaz-puppet-nodes-1.s3.amazonaws.com/77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0
Apr 7 19:17:39 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 node_classifier[2240]: INFO: Getting node configuration: 77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0
Apr 7 19:17:39 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 node_classifier[2240]: DEBUG: Node configuration (77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0): classes: [login-allowed]
Apr 7 19:17:39 domU-12-31-39-07-D6-52 puppetmasterd[1644]: Compiled catalog for 77ad2a3c-5d52-4ca7-9fea-b99b767b09d0 in 0.01 seconds

The puppetmaster compiled a manifest for the client according to the information provided by the node classifier script.

Make sure that the instance that has been started doesn’t have any ssh key associated with it:

euca-describe-instances

Make a note of the instance ID and its public DNS name.

Run euca-get-console-output instance_ID to get the ssh fingerprint. You may need to scroll back to get the fingerprints.
Login into the instances using your EC2 public key:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/ec2_key ubuntu@public_dns

Conclusion

The start_instance.py script is currently very simple and should be considered as a proof of concept.

Storing the node classification information into an S3 bucket makes it also easy to edit the content of the file. It also provides an easy way to get a list of the nodes that have been started by the Cloud Conductor as well as their classification.

If you look at the start_instance.py script you’ll notice that the ACL on the S3 bucket is ‘public-read’. That means anyone can read the list of your nodes as well as the list of classes and other node classification information for each of them. You may wanna use S3 private url instead.

We now have a puppet infrastructure where instances are started by a Cloud conductor in order to achieve a specific task. These instances automatically connect to the puppetmaster to get configured automatically for the task they’ve been created for. All of the instances configuration is stored in a reliable and scalable system: S3.

With instances being created on demand our puppet infrastructure can grow quickly. The puppetmaster can easily be responsible for managing hundreds of instances. Next we’ll have a look at how improving the performance of the puppetmaster.

Using puppet in UEC/EC2: Automating the signing process

Mathias Gug — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 20:54:03 +0000

I outlined in the previous article how to setup a puppetmaster instance on UEC/EC2 and how to start instances that will automatically register with the puppetmaster. We’re going to look at automating the process of signing puppet client certificate requests.

Overview

Our puppet infrastructure on the cloud can be broken down into three components:

The Cloud conductor responsible for starting new instances in our cloud.
A Puppetmaster responsible for configuring all the instances running in our cloud.
Instances acting as puppet clients asking to be setup correctly.

The idea is to have the Cloud conductor start instances and notify the puppetmaster that these new instances are coming up. The puppetmaster can then automatically sign their certificate requests.

We’ll use S3 as the way to communicate between the Cloud conductor and the puppetmaster. The Cloud conductor will also assign a random certificate to each instance it starts.

The Cloud conductor will be located on a sysadmin workstation while the puppetmaster and instances will be running in the cloud. The bzr branch contains all the scripts necessary to setup such a solution.

The Cloud conductor: start_instance.py

Get the tutorial2 bzr on the Cloud conductor (an admin workstation):

bzr branch lp:~mathiaz/+junk/uec-ec2-puppet-config-tut2

In the scripts/ directory start_instance.py plays the role of the Cloud conductor. It creates new instances and stores their certname in S3. The start_instance.yaml configuration file provides almost the same information as the user-data.yaml file we used in the previous article.
Edit the start_instance.yaml file and update each setting:
- Choose a unique S3 bucket name.
- Use the private DNS hostname of the instance running the puppetmaster.
- Add the puppetmaster ca certificate found on the puppetmaster.
Make sure your AWS/UEC credentials are available in the environment. The start_instance.py uses these to access EC2 to start new instances and S3 to store the instance certificate names.
Start a new instance of the Lucid Beta1 AMI:

./start_instance.py -c ./start_instance.yaml ami-ad09e6c4

start_instance.py starts a new instance using the AMI specified on the command line. The instance user data holds a random UUID for the puppet client certificate name. start_instance.py also creates a new file in its S3 bucket named after the puppet client certificate name.
On the puppetmater looking at the puppetmaster log you should see a certificate request show up after some time:

Mar 19 19:09:33 ip-10-245-197-226 puppetmasterd[20273]: a83b0057-ab8d-426e-b2ab-175729742adb has a waiting certificate request

Automating the signing process on the puppetmaster

It’s time to setup the puppetmaster to check if there are any certificate requests waiting and signs only the ones started by the Cloud conductor. We’ll use the check_csr.py cron job that will get the list of waiting certificate requests via puppetca --list and checks whether there is a corresponding file in the S3 bucket.

On the puppetmaster get the tutorial2 bzr branch:

bzr pull –remember lp:~mathiaz/+junk/uec-ec2-config/tut2 /etc/puppet/
The puppetmaster.pp manifest has been updated to setup the check_csr.py cron job to run every 2 minutes. You need to update the cron job command line in /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp with your own S3 bucket name.
Update the puppetmaster configuration:

sudo puppet /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp
Watching /var/log/syslog you should see check_csr being run by cron every other minute:

Mar 19 19:10:01 ip-10-245-197-226 CRON[21858]: (root) CMD (/usr/local/bin/check_csr –log-level=debug https://mathiaz-puppet-nodes-1.s3.amazonaws.com)

check_csr gets the list of waiting certificate requests and checks if there is a corresponding file in its S3 bucket:

Mar 19 19:10:03 ip-10-245-197-226 check_csr[21859]: DEBUG: List of waiting csr: a83b0057-ab8d-426e-b2ab-175729742adb
Mar 19 19:10:03 ip-10-245-197-226 check_csr[21859]: DEBUG: Checking a83b0057-ab8d-426e-b2ab-175729742adb
Mar 19 19:10:03 ip-10-245-197-226 check_csr[21859]: DEBUG: Checking url https://mathiaz-puppet-nodes-1.s3.amazonaws.com/a83b0057-ab8d-426e-b2ab-175729742adb

If so it will sign the certificate request:

Mar 19 19:10:03 ip-10-245-197-226 check_csr[21859]: INFO: Signing request: a83b0057-ab8d-426e-b2ab-175729742adb

S3 bucket ACL

For now the S3 bucket ACL is set so that anyone can get the list files available in the bucket. However only authenticated requests can create new files in the bucket. Given that the filename are just random UUID this is not a big issue.

Using SQS instead of S3

Another implementation of the same idea is to use SQS to handle the notification of the puppetmaster by the Cloud conductor about new instances. While SQS would seem to be the best tool to provide that functionality it is not available in UEC in Lucid.

Conclusion

We end up with a puppet infrastructure where legitimate instances are automatically accepted. Now that instances can easily show up and be automatically enrolled what should these be configured as? We’ll dive into this issue in the next article.

Using puppet in UEC/EC2: puppet support in Ubuntu images

Mathias Gug — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 20:56:32 +0000

One of the focus for the Lucid release cycle in the Ubuntu Server team is to improve the integration between puppet and UEC/EC2. I’ll discuss in a series of articles how to setup a puppet infrastructure to manage Ubuntu Lucid instances running on UEC/EC2. I’ll focus on the bootstrapping process rather than writing puppet recipes.

Today we’ll look at configuring a puppetmaster into an instance and how to start instances that will register automatically with the puppetmaster.

We’ll work with the Lucid Beta1 image on EC2. All the instances started through out this article will be based on this AMI.

Puppetmaster setup

Let’s start by creating a puppetmaster running on EC2. We’ll setup all the puppet configuration via ssh using a bzr branch on Launchpad: lp:~mathiaz/+junk/uec-ec2-puppet-config-tut1.

Start an instance of the Lucid Beta1 AMI using an ssh key. Once it’s running write down its public and private DNS addresses. The public DNS address will be used to setup the puppetmaster via ssh. The private DNS address will be used as the puppetmaster hostname given out to puppet clients.

We’ll actually install the puppetmaster using puppet itself.

Log on the started instance via ssh to install and setup the puppet master:

Update apt files:

sudo apt-get update
Install the puppet and bzr packages:

sudo apt-get install puppet bzr
Change the ownership of the puppet directory so that the ubuntu user can directly edit the puppet configuration files:

sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu /etc/puppet/
Get the puppet configuration branch:

bzr branch –use-existing-directory lp:~mathiaz/+junk/uec-ec2-puppet-config-tut1 /etc/puppet/

Before doing the actual configuration let’s have a look at the content of the /etc/puppet/ directory created from the bzr branch.

The layout follows the recommended puppet practices. The puppet module available in the modules directory defines a puppet::master class. The class makes sure that the puppetmaster package is installed and that the puppetmaster service is running. The manifests/puppetmaster.pp file defines the default node to be configured as a puppetmaster.
We’ll now run the puppet client to setup the instance as a puppetmaster:

sudo puppet /etc/puppet/manifests/puppetmaster.pp

Starting a new instance

Now that we have puppetmaster available in our cloud we’ll have look at how a new instances of the Lucid Beta1 AMI can be started and automatically setup to register with the puppetmaster.

We’re going to use the cloud-config puppet syntax to boot an instance and have it configure itself to connect to the puppetmaster using its user data information:

On the puppetmaster instance create a user-data.yaml file to include the relevant puppetmaster configuration:

cp /usr/share/doc/cloud-init/examples/cloud-config-puppet.txt user-data.yaml
Update the server setting to point to the puppetmaster private dns hostname. I also strongly recommend to include the puppmaster ca certificate as the ca_cert setting.

The example certname setting uses a string extrapolation to make each puppet client certificate unique: for now %i is replace by the instance Id while %f is replaced by the FQDN of the instance.

The sample file has extensive comments about the format of the file. One of the key point is that you can set any of the puppet configuration options via the user data passed to the instance.

Note that you can remove all the comments to make the user-data.yaml file easier to copy and paste. However don’t remove the first line (#cloud-config) as this is used by the instance boot process to start the puppet installation.
Launch a new instance using the content of the user-data.yaml file you’ve just created as the user-data option passed to the new instance.
You can watch the puppetmaster log on the puppetmaster instance to see when the new instance will request a new certificate:

tail -f /var/log/syslog
After some time you should see a request coming in:

puppetmasterd[2637]: i-fdb31b96.ip-10-195-18-227.ec2.internal has a waiting certificate request

During the boot process of the new instance the puppet cloud-config plugin used the user-data information to automatically install the puppet package, generate the /etc/puppet/puppet.conf file and start the puppetd daemon.
You can then approve the new instance:

sudo puppetca -s i-fdb31b96.ip-10-195-18-227.ec2.internal
Watching the puppetmaster log you’ll see that after some time the new instance will connect and get its new manifest compiled and sent:

puppetmasterd[2637]: Compiled catalog for i-fdb31b96.ip-10-195-18-227.ec2.internal in 0.03 seconds

In conclusion we now have an instance acting as a puppetmaster and have a single user-data configuration for the whole puppet infrastructure. That user data can be passed to new instances which will automatically register with our puppetmaster.

Even though we’re able to make all our instances automatically register with our puppetmaster we still need to manually sign each request as outlined in step 6 above. We’ll have a look at automating this step in the next article.

Comment on Day 04 — Something you have to forgive someone for. by wohnzimmer gestalten ideen

wohnzimmer gestalten ideen — Fri, 02 Oct 2015 15:34:06 +0000

Hello my loved one! I want to say that this article is amazing, nice written and include approximately all important infos.
I’d like to look more posts like this .

Comment on the lack of tact is astounding at times. by Simon Le Bon

Simon Le Bon — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 23:54:34 +0000

Dally – you can only do something about things you can do something about. If you cant do anything about it it shouldnt trouble you. Life is already full of fastballs coming str8 at your head…there aint no sense going to the batting cage & jacking the pitch speed up to 100 mph if providence says you personally cant do anyting about the behavior of certain peeps, mmm-K.

your pal,
Simon

Comment on blah. by Tricia

Tricia — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 23:09:40 +0000

if my phone was hooked up i would let you say whatever you wanted and I would just listen unless you asked for my advice…I have those days too..and I just want to point out my view of Facebook…I have kept from leaving statuses that lead into anything troublesome in my life…those things are private…but FB gives me a connection that I cant have with these people any other way…and so that I dont feel lost and forgotten, I continue on this path with FB. I also am the type of person that doesnt like having all my friends in my backyard. I like the distance…most of the time. I do get lonely occasionally, but I have a car, and a way to visit other people if it gets too bad for me. FB is a crutch for a lot of people, and it allows us all to be lazy on a personal level, but without it…I wouldnt have found you…I have to say I supported your decision about FB, but Im glad u r back 🙂

Comment on ciao, facebook. it’s been real. by Tammy

Tammy — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 06:29:12 +0000

I am bummed you left FB. I SUCK serious arsss.. at keeping in touch via email, letters, phones, smoke signals in the eastern sky, etc. That being said, I completely understand why u left. I have had to work on monitoring my time there too. I try to only check if the lil one is asleep or with the baby-daddy. But it’s hard, because it is like crack. 🙂

Just know Im gonna miss seeing Bunny’s adventures in toddlerhood, but wish you well with all your new endeavours. xoxoxoxoxo!!!!

Comment on ciao, facebook. it’s been real. by Sally

Sally — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 21:41:49 +0000

I will miss you on FB, too. I’ll need your help to keep us connected…I don’t want to lose touch again, and I have stopped blogging so much due to FB. Make sure I keep you updated on us, ok?? =) Oh, and congrats on hubby’s new job…I must have missed that status update.

Comment on ciao, facebook. it’s been real. by Tricia

Tricia — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 21:16:06 +0000

I completely understand what you mean…I will miss you on there…but I totally get why you did it 🙂 love you

Comment on omfg. stfu. you.are.an asshat. by shell

shell — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 15:40:36 +0000

so i went back yesterday and went thru all my friends. i got rid of her and several other drama creators. don’t need those people in my life. i do feel better. ahhhh. now if only i could do something about the family members i have….hmmmm.

Comment on omfg. stfu. you.are.an asshat. by Tricia

Tricia — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:30:02 +0000

What an ignorant woman… I hear ya… I feel the frustration…some people just need to be heard .. 🙂

Comment on omfg. stfu. you.are.an asshat. by just beth

just beth — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:18:00 +0000

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, OMG. i…i… i don’t have the words. she is amazing, that’s for sure. and if you want to block her, i’ll keep you updated on her insanity. 🙂 she’s awful, and you’re right of course. love you!

Comment on omfg. stfu. you.are.an asshat. by Tammy

Tammy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 03:41:26 +0000

ooooooooohhhhh!!!!!!! I know EXACTLY who you are talking about. I “friended” her for the exact same reason. AND—- I blocked her for the same reasons…. she is THE most horribly unhealthy twisted and unhappy person I have ever known in my entire life. I remember her and her sister being dreadful when we were kids… and I guess not much has changed. Actually, she was bringing me down SO much- I couldn’t take it anymore. I prayed for her even as crazy corny as that sounds. I figured she needed some positive love sent her way. But I still blocked her out of my life. I cant deal either. So you’re not alone on that one Shell! 🙂

On not attending the Auckland Writers Festival

Dr Alison Barrett — Sun, 10 May 2020 04:15:57 +0000

This year, the Auckland Writers Festival became a casualty of the pandemic. For me it was no loss. I always have other plans at the time the festival is held. I always know—pandemic or no pandemic– I won’t be going.

One year I almost went. In May 2015, I bought tickets to listen to Atul Gawande. Gawande, a doctor and writer, had just written his bestselling book Being Mortal. My copy had barely arrived when I found out from my doctor friends that Gawande was going to be in New Zealand for the festival. When I bought the tickets, I didn’t know that instead of listening to Atul Gawande speak about mortality, I’d be attending a private tutorial on the subject. It was the funeral of my daughter.

I’ve kept the ritual of not going to the Auckland Writers Festival ever since. Not because it wouldn’t be a fantastic festival, but because every May I am paralyzed by grief. I don’t even need to look at a calendar to know what’s coming. My body clock automatically senses the stars aligning. It registers the quality of daylight, the pollen pattern in the air, the particular rustle of leaves, the form of birdsong. Some internal clockwork samples the soundscape, scentscape, landscape, and smellscape. At precisely 4.15 pm everything is a match. So begins my involuntary commemoration of the time that a daughter shaped window opened up in the sky. Grief is go for launch.

We traumatically bereaved know something about events that change the entire purpose and meaning of your life. Everything that happens before is before. Everything that happens after is after. A date and time in a whole lifespan where the world tilts, a kind of solstice of your existence. My daughter’s death prepared me for this new crisis. This pandemic is a dawdle by comparison.

In lockdown, I finished a lot of partially started books, but I never read Gawande’s. In the years that have passed since she died, I couldn’t crack the cover open. Maybe there’s some great stuff in there, but suddenly I didn’t want to read a doctor’s doctorsplaining of death. I was not the least bit curious about anyone’s opinion about the subject.

That didn’t stop well-meaning friends sending samples of existing commentaries on grief. They were in an accidental competition of the wrong things to say. But what is the right thing? If other people wanted to tell me “She is just behind the veil” (nope) “God only takes the best” (nope again) “Time heals all wounds” (definitely not) I knew they had good intentions. I didn’t believe their ignorance was malicious.

My fellow doctors were another story, which I will save for another time. I just remind you for now of Anne Lamott’s view that if you want writers to write warmly about you, you should have probably treated them better. Some of these doctors had gone to the festival and read the book. Their sustained lack of compassion confirmed a view that medical school selects for people who are good at reading words but not in the practical application of kindness. Maybe Gawande himself is different, but I will probably never know.

My friend Deb, who is a writer, has been to several writer’s festivals. She told me about a workshop she went to at one which was all about writing the hard stuff. There is a trick to writing things that might be off-putting to your reader, she said. That would be useful if you are writing things with readers in mind. Margaret Atwood wrote that it’s useful to be indifferent to readers. Instead, Atwood claims, you should write as if you possessed magic fingers: like so. From the forefinger of your writing hand the ink flows out along the page, even as the forefinger of your other hand comes along to erase it.

Dear reader, I have not told you the worst of it. My daughter died on Mother’s Day. She lived long enough from my attempt to revive her to make it to the ICU, where the consultant on call told us she was brain dead, and that we should allow her to disconnect the ventilator. I asked her how she knew that was the right decision. She pointed out that they’d done all sorts of invasive things to her without any anesthetic. But I had seen them draw up drugs to paralyze her before the tube went down her throat. “That’s not true” I said. “Well then” she harrumphed. “If you are going to be like that”. I did not know how I was going to be. Dear reader, I have not read Atul Gawande’s book, perhaps it contains the instructions.

I have read the book The Black Swan, wherein Nassim Tareb describes the gigantic library of Umberto Eco. Many visitors admire the books, for surely Eco had read them all. But he had not read them all. Taerb points out that the books we have not read are more valuable than the ones we have read. He speaks of these unread books that “peer at us menacingly from their shelves” as the anti-library. Some personal libraries can become monuments to our inabilities, to procrastination, a lack of attention, in my case, pain.

Tareb reminds us that the anti-library’s great value is in revealing that there is a shadow side to knowledge we don’t normally consider. There are entire sections in any library we could view as shrines to our own ignorance. Things we’d rather not know about (like when your child dies) in one section. Things we wish we did know but didn’t make the time to find out. Worst are the books we won’t read because we think we already know the answers. We believe lies when we could avail ourselves of the truth.

A few months after I didn’t attend the Auckland Writers festival, I got some mail from their sponsors. I hadn’t realized I’d sold my address with the ticket I didn’t use. It was a flyer from a chain of old folk’s homes, which (in effect) hoped I’d enjoyed Atul Gawande’s presentation, and had I considered that I might want to check out their services, for myself or a loved one, who were, after all, only mortal. I took a photo of the ad and put it on twitter, wondering if Gawande had known about the endorsement. He tweeted that he had not. I got a private message from one of the organizers asking me to take down the tweet. Maybe it was this part that bothered me the most. That the organizer would think I would simply comply without caring to know the multitude of reasons for my outrage. They seemed to care only they’d caused Gawande offence.

This year the Auckland Writers Festival had a great line up of speakers that no one will be in attendance to hear. I will attend my anti-festival, an event no plague can interrupt.

This year I plan to read The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic work. The Little Prince lives on Asteroid 325. Every day he cares for his planet, and also a sheep and a rose. One day he sets off on an adventure. He lands on Earth, in the desert. He befriends a pilot of a downed plane. Exactly a year later, coinciding with the pilot’s success at engine repairs, the little Prince lets a snake bite him, under the exact spot he landed. His body falls noiselessly in the sand. We are meant to imagine his spirit rising, in a linear fashion, into the sky and up up up. Asteroid 325 will be directly overhead then.

On this same fine day in May, when the world strikes a certain angle, I will be catapulted into loss. On the anniversary of my daughter’s death, the sky is always a crisp autumn blue. I will go outside and crane my head upwards. I won’t see anything. There is always too much light.

*******

Climbing Trees

Dr Alison Barrett — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 06:21:13 +0000

I was one of those kids who loved to climb trees. I grew up in Ontario, Canada, where some of the best climbing trees grow. The short growing season and cold winters create ideal conditions for slow growing hardwoods to flourish. What I didn’t know then was the impact climbing trees would have on my adult life.

When my parents had to drag me inside and along to the homes of their friends, where they had boring adult conversations, I would look in their gardens hopefully for suitable trees to climb. The search began even as we would drive up the driveway. That was nothing new; I looked at every tree I ever saw in the world with the sole purpose of categorizing its climbability. I was a quiet child, and it would usually be a while before I was missed. Eventually, my parents’ friends would look out their windows and seeing me high above the ground they would say, “Should she be doing that?” “Aren’t you afraid?” “What if she falls?” They would make calculations in their heads: leg fracture height, neurological injury height, the height of probable death. My mother would crane her neck upwards and say, “She’ll be fine”.

I want to be clear: climbing trees was not, to me, about taking risks. There was nothing about tree climbing that felt risky, in fact, it felt very safe, to be cradled in the canopy of a tree. Besides feeling safe, I felt other things too. The solid branches underneath my hands and feet, warm from the sun. The bark: smoothness interrupted with the scarified design of leaf wounds, insect burrows, woodpecker holes. No art installation I’ve ever seen since could match the beauty of leaves which turned and rustled in the wind as sunlight skipped along them. In the canopy of a tree I could hear my own thoughts more clearly. Aloft, I felt steady and attached to the earth and to nature.

That it felt safe was one thing. That it was safe, you might say, is another thing altogether.

Some people think children should not climb trees. They’ve banned tree climbing in most school yards. Today some might claim that my parents were irresponsible. Perhaps they would have reported my mother to CYFS. I might be forced to accept a tree climbing substitute: playground equipment, with safety nets and supervision. The real thing might be allowed under certain conditions: with harnesses and helmets.

There are people who believe that risk shouldn’t be allowed in childbirth either. Since it involves an unborn child, who cannot consent, parents should be made to do the right thing. An innocent child, many quite rightfully believe, deserves protection from a parent’s bad decision making. After all, there are seatbelt laws, bike helmet laws, antismoking laws, and similar pieces of legislation in place to protect the public good from bad decisions made by individuals. In the same vein some argue that homebirth should be made illegal because of risk.

But if the risk model is applied to homebirth then it must be turned back on hospital birth also. There is a label we give to the harms caused by doctors: it is called iatrogenesis. Iatrogenesis has many forms: the side effects of prescribed drugs, the complications of surgery, or when people pick up an infectious illness in the hospital. Iatrogenesis in childbirth is huge problem. It stems from the fact that interventions are applied in the name of risk reduction to people who do not need them. We are not good enough in the prediction of complications to ensure that only those who need interventions get them.

There are some risks of hospital birth that the iatrogenesis model doesn’t take into account. These may be small risks, but if we counted each they could reach significance. Does the risk of hospital birth, for example, include the risks entailed when driving to the hospital in a car? How about the risk of driving home?

Taken to the extreme, one can soon run into absurdities with a risk model. Life entails some risk, if we want to avoid it entirely we should stay in bed and send an avatar of ourselves into the world. (Though then, we’d risk developing blood clots in our legs from immobility). For the purposes of a thought experiment, if somehow we could factor all of these risks on either side precisely into a giant equation and come up with the definitive answer to the risk associated with the place of birth, we’d still be no further ahead in predicting the risk to ourselves. There are dangers of applying risks at the population level to individual people. If the risk of a complication for a member of the population is 1 in 100, it is not the same as saying that your risk is 1 in 100. Your risk is dependent on your unique set of factors, and some of those factors are things about you that you alone know.

Arguably more important are values that don’t show up on the balance sheet of risk. These values are the benefits, often immeasurable, that one gets from having experiences. What is it worth to you to have the feeling of being tucked into your own bed with your freshly birthed baby, minutes old, beside you? What price could be assigned to that feeling that some of us secretly know? The feeling, from the vantage point above fresh sheets and below a lovingly fluffed duvet, snuggled in with your baby: where you know with certainty that the whole world is made of two.

When I look back, I am sure that climbing trees gave me some immeasurably important gifts. One was a belief in my own body. I’m not a star athlete; I don’t consider myself particularly stoic, or brave, or over-confident. That belief in my own body served me well later on during the birth of my children, and in attending the births of others. Years later, I remember the feeling you get from the vantage point of a crow looking out from the top of the highest tree in the heart of a stand of ancient Carolinian forest. It is the feeling that the whole world belongs to you. Climbing trees gave me the experience of trusting my own body and my own decisions, and of finding great and secret delight in an activity that others might forbid because of risk.

(This article was first published in Home Birth Aotearoa Magazine, 2014).

Home Birth Obstetrics

Dr Alison Barrett — Tue, 23 Oct 2018 07:24:55 +0000

About that time I had a home birth.

Eighteen years ago, against the advice of an obstetric college to which I belonged, I gave birth to my second daughter at home. Back then, the governing body of obstetricians, the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, had put out a statement advising women against attempting a home birth. They reasoned that all women should have immediate access to an obstetrician during labour and birth. I felt I’d met the criteria at a stretch, since I am myself a member of their college. I did have access to myself at the time.

As it turned out, I did need myself. I did have something of a complication. My baby had practically fallen out on the floor, but my placenta had other ideas. After an hour or so of waiting, it met the criteria for “retained”, and that usually buys one a consultation with a doctor and potentially a trip to the operating room for removal.

The complications of childbirth are a matter of degree, and not one hundred percent predictable. As far as the placental situation goes, I’d encountered the full spectrum of scenarios several times over in my line of work. Most fearfully, some placentas just aren’t coming out without the uterus they are attached to hitching up for the ride, and in that case a great deal of blood products are usually required. Wouldn’t you want to have your baby in a hospital just in case you are that rare case? Who takes that sort of chance anyway?

The American College of Obstetricians knew who takes that sort of chance. In a 2014 statement about home birth, they said that women who choose to birth at home are putting their own experiences ahead of the safety of their babies. An article published in their journal in 2013 by Frank Cherney and others threatened any member of their group with professional sanctions if they supported it. And my own college reaffirmed its anti-home birth vows in an updated guideline warning mothers against it.

The midwives tried the tricks they knew to coax out my selfish placenta. Watchful waiting, gentle cord traction, instructions to cough, to push, to feed the baby, all to no avail. They sent me to the bathroom where, they said, gravity and privacy might help. As suggested, away from their prying eyes, I discovered that the entire thing was pretty much just sitting in the lowermost reaches of my uterus, merely pretending to be still attached higher up. It just needed someone with a little nerve, small hands, and long fingers to reach in give it a grasp and pull. Sometimes though, the comforting back op of an operating room, blood bank, and the lifesaving personal that come with those things are needed instead. With my fellow obstetricians as my witness, this we know to be true.

Most obstetricians have seen terrible things that other people don’t see: that horrible case where a mother or baby has a bad outcome, even death, which they know would have been prevented if only action had been taken sooner. If only that mother had been induced a day earlier, if only that labour was monitored more closely, if only someone had thought to give antibiotics. Most importantly, we have all seen cases where mothers transfer in to hospital too late for us to help them. If only they hadn’t been at home in the first place.

What’s less intuitive is the whole series of problems that might have been prevented if only actions hadn’t been taken. The antibiotics you gave that mother caused an anaphylaxis. The close monitoring you thought that baby needed caused an unnecessary induction, and that induction caused a catastrophic uterine rupture. Maybe that woman, your good friend, the one who never asked you for your professional opinion, whose damaged baby will require a lifetime of complex medical care, maybe she should have stayed at home in the first place.

The truth is that birth harms take place in between two extremes, the paradox of too many interventions and not enough. We obstetricians strive to hit the sweet spot, to apply the medical model precisely and only when it is needed. But we miss, all the time, and then we call your unnecessary procedure the numbers needed to treat.

As a resident, I remember a particular retained placenta which matched the situation of my own. Except hers was removed in the operating room under a wholly unnecessary general anaesthetic. My boss at the time instructed me to always make a great show of saving the day. To him, what was the harm? In his view, the operating room staff wouldn’t really want to know that their time was wasted. The woman was happy feeling her life had been saved rather than marginally endangered by an unneeded exposure to anaesthetic drugs. “Just in time” this guy used to smirk at the theatre team when he’d finished a particularly needless procedure.

It is the definition of duplicity to believe that women should not be allowed to birth at home out of what you think is their best interests, which, by an unexamined coincidence, align perfectly with your own. The point is that we are grown women, and we shouldn’t have our rights and freedoms limited by others’ good intentions.

And what of bad intentions? When you have to achieve their compliance by threat. When you imply that women are selfish, or misguided or stupid. When you dismiss their experiences —-ones you will never be privileged to have, as having no value. This is misogyny. Worst of all is the lying. You played the hero when you knew you were not.

*********

We bury my daughter’s placenta under a tree in our yard. It grows into a fine young sapling. There is a curious thing about time. In tree years, eighteen years is nothing. In mother years, it is shorter still. Yet, it is a long time not to speak your truth to power. For that the years move slowly, during which, we all know, a woman can bleed out.

Here’s hoping.

Dr Alison Barrett — Sun, 01 Oct 2017 09:45:28 +0000

Over the past 9 years, watching the increasing underfunding of women’s health, I’ve prayed a single prayer. Please god, can we put someone in charge of the health care system who possesses functioning ovaries? Because if there’s one thing that women’s health needs it’s a woman with health. A woman with illness might be even better, but at the very least send me a lady-boss with a functioning set of ovaries. Because regardless of whether she intends to use those ovaries to kick start a kiddo, the very possession of capability requires some sort of management plan. The thing is, unless you have functioning ovaries, the plight of women’s health could easily fall off your radar. But functioning ovaries require at least a teenie bit of attention to one’s own reproductive health, and it’s got to be a shorter leap from there to consider others’.

But wait, you say. Those with testicles can be allies. They certainly can, and sometimes do, pay lip service to the care that’s inflicted on their daughters, granddaughters, wives or sisters. But the problem with allies is always the same: it’s awfully hard to fix a problem that you yourself are implicated in creating. It requires the kind of intestinal fortitude and introspection the patriarchy just doesn’t have.

At the end of the day, our ovary-less allies won’t give up their power if it means things have to get uncomfortable for them personally. This is why tampons are taxed as luxury items, and Viagra is over the counter in New Zealand but RU486 is not. It is why men don’t have to plead insanity to two separate doctors when their ejaculations produce unwanted conceptions, instead women do that heavy lifting. It’s enough to make one positively hysterical.

It’s worth considering what would happen if it didn’t have to be like this, and at times like this I reach for Ursula Le Guin’s brilliant book The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin builds a fantasy world on the planet Gethen, in which the inhabitants are asexual androgynous androids, who have interesting reproductive biology. When they fall in love, one pair of the couple “becomes” female and the other “becomes” male. In between such times, they normally remain in a completely androgynous state. Across their reproductive lifespan, they have the opportunity, but not the choice, to be female or male. This single fact has intriguing implications. Consider what might happen if every member of our own society, might, at any given time, be “stricken” pregnant. Maternity units would be converted into palaces overnight. Parental leave would be adequate, likely even generous, certainly not fought for tooth and nail. And no particular class of individuals would ever be singled out and subjected to the human rights abusing question in a job interview: Are you planning on having kids?

In medicine, there is a saying. You don’t have to have cancer to be a good oncologist. But lord knows it would help. And you don’t need to have an occupied uterus to be a good advocate for the maternity system. But it certainly couldn’t hurt. And right now, New Zealand’s maternity system is in tatters. Sure, there’s lots of midwives and doctors who are trying to catch women falling through the holes. They are trying to put up a brave front when backstage is in chaos. But at a point the public needs to know it’s a front. They need to know what sort of risks hospital CEOs and district health boards are willing to take on their behalf. You wouldn’t let your cat have kittens in it, if you really knew and really cared what was going on in some maternity units.

When Jacinda Ardern was asked about her future reproductive plans, she rightfully scolded the asker. Jacinda Ardern has no time for that shit. Whether she has a child or not is none of your business. It’s none of mine either, and I’m an obstetrician. The ethics of psychiatrists have been rightfully questioned for their diagnosing of Trump over the internet, the same could be true of obstetricians like me who cast aspersions on someone’s ovarian reserves. We don’t know without personal access to the results of hormonal testing of the secret heartbreak of someone’s premature ovarian failure. We can’t know if people who present as premenopausal females possess –or care to action— the functioning plumbing bits to match.

But when Christina Campbell, a midwife here in Hamilton asked Jacinda Ardern at a campaign rally what she might do to help the plight of maternity systems, here’s what Jacinda did say. She told the audience she was only too aware of the problems. Some of her best friends she said, are currently experiencing the broken system first hand. This is the kind of ally we need. An ally for whom the politics of maternity care is much more up close and personal. Who can blame us if we hope for something more? So far, no one who has needed our services has ever been responsible for making them functional.

On Grief

Dr Alison Barrett — Fri, 05 May 2017 01:00:14 +0000

Note: This is not a new piece of writing, but I wanted to post it today, May 5, 2017, on international midwives day, with love and gratitude to my daughter-midwife. In the ICU I promised I would write to her, what we didn’t know then was how long it would take.

Grief is a place

Everyone agrees that the loss of a child is the worst kind of trauma, and every parent tries to imagine it. The minute you have that newborn in your arms, the second you know you are pregnant, the instant you think of even trying to conceive, practically the very next minute you imagine the worst thing that can go wrong. You move through infertility, miscarriage, and stillbirth: a mother’s hierarchy of horrors. At the top of this list remains the thought that you might one day outlive her.

When that happens, you join a club that you never wanted to belong to. There are few members and you are enrolled for life.

A mother’s grief is a place that few visit, but you can never leave.

Do you remember, when you were pregnant for the first time, how you wondered what giving birth was going to be like? It’s a little like that when your child dies. You can’t really know ahead of time. Once it happens people will try, without success, to give you pills and drugs to shut you up. The nice ones are trying to be nice, the not so nice ones have other motives, but each is trying to justify a certain choice. They don’t understand why anyone would want to feel everything that life has to offer. Drug free privilege is a homebirth mamma advantage.

We know people who apply this epidural philosophy to the whole rest of their lives, people who are so scared of pain that they chose numbness over living. People who, at the end of their lives, might well ask if they have ever really lived at all.

When people ask me if I found childbirth painful, I used to tell them it was the most painful thing I’d ever done. When I gave birth to her, it was like having my leg sawn off without anaesthetic. At some point I realized I could actually have my leg cut off without anaesthetic in this way.

The pain went like this: huzza huzza Huzz. It quickly built up to a white hot burn. To my surprise, when the sawing stopped, I was perfectly fine. I told jokes and entertained my supporters.

Persons who knit will find the mechanism of labour familiar. You start out at the beginning of a single row, build up momentum in the middle and slow down at the end of it. And then you take a little break in the process to turn the piece of knitting around, before adding another bit to it. Then, eventually, a sweater appears.

The purpose of knitting is to produce knitwear, while the purpose of labour is to make one person’s body into two people’s bodies. It makes sense that painful sawing is involved. And it is just plain clever that the chainsaw of contractions operates under an ingenious, off- grid wind-up mechanism. Something—who knows what — starts it off, then it eventually winds down, and there is a welcome break in the action for rewinding.

Huzza huzza Huzz. Stop. Huzza huzza Huzz. Stop. Just like this the pain stopped and started and stopped. Eventually, a baby appeared, along with a little bit of torn skin.

The pain of birth didn’t exactly compare to the pain of losing her. She fell into the sky that day without leaving a visible mark. Even so, it is true that the pain of grief is even more intense. Your whole body hurts. Your heart hurts and you cry and cry and cry. Your teeth and joints come lose. Snot is running out of your nose and your eyes are swollen shut. It is as bad and as ugly as you imagine it.

But what you might not know is that I –and you—we—cannot sustain it. The chainsaw of grief is operated by a similar mechanically wound clockwork apparatus. Our bodies run out of the stuff of grief. Eventually you are spent and you sit up and someone brings you a cup of tea. Some boringly banal thing happens in the midst of all this profundity and it calls you back. You smooth your clothes and pat your hair, and you decide to defrost a casserole for dinner. You tell jokes and entertain your supporters. The pain comes back, yes, but it stops again. In between the pains, as in labour, you find yourself coping. You find yourself marvelling at the design of it.

If you lose your child without taking the drugs they offer you to numb it, you also might find out, as I did, that you can have your heart removed from your body without anaesthetic. Here is what you also know, when your heart is eventually given back to you.

You will be sorely tempted to place it in a metal box, in order to prevent a second removal. This is why they talk of hardening your heart, under a protective coating of scar tissue. You will remember what it is like and you will fear it happening again. Like when you have a second baby. They say you forget the pain the minute it’s over. But you do not. You never will.

The trauma is so severe that you rightly worry you would not survive a second loss. But you must risk it. Your sternum may indeed be made of steel now and you may possess a myocardium of iron, but there are a million other routes inside. You must turn your soft underbelly to the world and invite them to kick you again. You may well now be constructed of some artificial body parts but you need to be as fully human as you are able to be. She is dead and you owe her nothing, but nonetheless, you don’t want loss to diminish you in that way. You want to honour her life with your best broken self. That means exposure. She would be– but of course, she cannot be– so proud of you.

There is no law of nature that says for every bad thing that happens a good thing of equal and opposite magnitude has to happen to you. But there is a law of parenthood that any greatly loved child will leave you—(and I hope she never does)— with equally great grief. That is just the way these things work. It follows by simple mathematics that one can measure the magnitude of loss by the magnitude of love. You will stop grieving the day you forget to love her. You will not forget.

For Olivia

Dr Alison Barrett — Sun, 07 Jun 2015 11:23:17 +0000

This story could begin in any number of places, but there is only one way it ends. I’ll spare you the suspense. She dies.

Beginning at the beginning, I grew her, held her body from the inside and then from the outside, and in the end, I crawled into her bed in the ICU and held her there too. She was as warm then as on the day she was born.

People have been unbelievably, impossibly, unbearably kind. They brought love and food and hands to clean my house and they played music and brought photos and told stories. Karen deserves a special mention, an award, Companion of the Order of Bereaved Mothers—now there’s a club you never want to join— but there are many other nominees. You brought coffee and tea and hot chocolate and this amazing vanilla chai stuff in a can, we have run out and I would like more. Except that I don’t know who you were to ask where you got it, let alone thank you. You brought wondrous things: a Leunig print, a child’s drawing, a maple tree. Later, others of you hung that tree with fairy lights. Did you know how much I loved you? You bearers of soup, you doers of laundry? You even put laundry away; I can’t find my blue sweater now. You took my boys shopping for clothes, my girl for a dress, and you took my husband’s suit to the dry cleaners.

It wasn’t your fault that later on, with minutes to spare, me having left with Olivia in the hearse and the menfolk only having one job left to do, said husband could not do the suit up. It was ten sizes too small. In a panic he checked the lining: Tip Top Tailors Toronto, yes; no possibility of a mix up at the cleaners. They must have shrunk it. Which, dear husband, is an impossibility, the very purpose of waterless dry cleaning. The men try to hammer him into the pants but it will not work. They, marine biologists in their rank, line up like hermit crabs, an elaborate game of suit trading ensues. In the end my older son puts on the too small suit which fits him perfectly, my husband puts on the son’s—modern, low cut pipe pants, which he can button up underneath his (smallish) gut, like pregnant woman do. I alone recognize the suit my son wears—vintage perfection– from wedding pictures 26 years old. The other suit, the one my husband wore two weeks before to a meeting, the one that actually does fit, hangs in the cupboard still, exactly where I said it did.

And it rained and rained, which they say happens when someone important dies. Our septic tank could not cope and in the middle of everything we had the poo hoover arrive. The disimpaction was not a success. We ordered in a port a loo. My friend David made funny signs directing our guests, they made me laugh.

Over the septic tank’s tile bed, a duck died. I worried it had been overcome by fumes, but David plucked and dressed it, performing an autopsy at the same time. The post mortem exam revealed it had been -thankfully- shot, and in a desperate, dying last flight, this dear duck managed get away from the hunter, instead, laying down its life in my semi-vegetarian yard. It felt like an offering too sacred to pass up. Justine, playing the role of Nigella, cooked it with rosemary and red wine.

Take, eat, this is my body, given for you.

We retrieved Olivia’s from the coroner’s own section of the morgue. I think it is the equivalent of first class for the dead. Jessie climbed into the back of the hearse and rode with her that way to the funeral home, lying beside her and chattering like the two good friends they were. We, the women who were Olivia’s mothers, cared for and bathed her body, washed her hair, and clothed her, and brought her home. I hardly need mention that I hoped it would be the other way around.

There is a lot written about death. It feels ridiculous, embarrassing, and deeply presumptuous to add my two cents. What I might as a mother and a semi-atheist contribute to that huge lexicon? People send other people’s words to me, hoping I’ll find some comfort there. Thank you and please keep trying, though nothing works as yet. Death isn’t merely in the next room. There’s no God for me where Olivia is. You can believe that but I cannot. Let’s state the obvious here: there is a three year old with an exact match of her mother’s eyes and you dare to tell me – and her– that your gods are good with that.

Yes, the angry-at-God part, so predictable when there isn’t any other suitable target.

Oh, but there is, you see. Writers are a vengeful lot: and oh, I promise you my daughter, that day will one day come. I always thought I wrote stuff down to try to make sense of things. I always thought there was sense in things to make. There is no sense in this. Which is why the only stories that are sensible are fairy tales, once upon a time, and happily ever after. In her coffin, which we placed in her old bedroom, my daughter looked like an exact replica of Sleeping Beauty. An exact replica of a figment of someone’s imagination. Iris said, “Mommy, wake up!” Except she died for realisies.

I spend these days in memories. I open her closet, and smell her clothes, the scent ignites them. In that paper mache head of mine, edges curl and smoke and then they lift here and there, lit up in flames of green and yellow and blue. Inside my brain the memories are dancing like the northern lights. I stand, in awe, gasping with the memory of her birth, satin sliding out from me, heartbreak beauty die laughing funny. Biddiee biddie bee. She snorts, she cries with laughter trying to get the stories out, she is riding horseback, higher Mommy, higher she squeals. Inside my own head, I rummage deep, holding up my favourite parts to the flickering aurora lights. Her belly swollen with Iris, she is floating in a birth pool, huge brown eyes locked into mine, and she gives me one small gift. “Oh Mom. Why does it hurt so much?”

Because, my own sweet girl, I am whispering, we don’t know the pain ahead of us. You don’t know, in the future what will be asked of you. I myself back then didn’t know what kind of daughter I would get. This, I tell you, is preparation. She nods, and reaches in. I am watching her, a woman at the peak of strength.

I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.

The obstetrician’s dark gallery

Dr Alison Barrett — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 11:28:46 +0000

The writer Anne Lamott tells her writing students that they should always write out of vengeance, as long as they are nice about it. I mainly write out of a longing to make sense out of things, but maybe there is room for improvement. According to Anne, there is a trick to doing this vengeance writing thing without getting sued. You can go ahead and write about the boss you hate, the ex-husband you despise, in fact, you really should write about them, says Anne, but if you have a boss or an ex-husband who has an identifiable set of unfortunate personal characteristics she says you should probably change these details dramatically. So, she tells us, if they are known for their long toenails, give them tufts of nasal hair instead. I think that filling their ears with tufts of hair too, would be a nice touch, as a good crop of ear hair can explain perfectly why they don’t hear anything but the sound of their own voices. It is a good idea to alter a few things in their personal lives, marry them off to unfaithful spouses if they are single, and divorce them several times over if they are married. Leave out the plastic surgery they had, and the membership in the hair club for men (So unfair, how hair follicles are assigned!) And —I saved her best advice for last— give them a small penis. They will never sue you when they recognize themselves in your writing, if you make a few alterations to their physical self and life, and give them a teenie little penis.

It’s not like I’m not tempted to write about any number of previous or current bosses, but what I’d really like to write about are my patients, and the midwives I work with, and my friends and colleagues, and there’s a problem with that. I can’t give them small, or even large penises. In the first place, the big dramas, the things I’d most like to tell you about, the things that fill my diaries and get up in the middle of the night and stomp around in white bloodstained gumboots, those things happen to the penis-less among us. This is not a coincidence. To disguise the details is also problematic. It is in the exact details that the horrors are fully revealed.

Agatha Christie once said that it is a curious thing what one remembers. You never know what is going to be permanent. If my head were made of paper mache, the births I’ve attended would be posted like bills in a gallery of their own inside it. There are many of them so it’s crowded, and they get papered over under layers of other births. I remember the ones that soak and bleed through like wounds that cannot be staunched, no amount of plastering and bandages are enough.

I have presided over some deaths, and there they are, scenes of tragedies, in the obituary section. A recent addition is a couple who came in last week. I see them clearly, their heads bent together making a little drawbridge over their grief. My colleague and I are taking turns operating the ultrasound. It takes seconds to find a beating fetal heart with a scanner in a full term baby. It takes a couple seconds more to break a mother’s heart when you can’t find it. A few extra seconds of scanning: a lifetime of grief.

Over here, in the same week’s catch, another baby-shaped void, but she’s not dead, only missing. This one’s been uplifted, there’s a misnomer, it’s the word they use when babies are taken off their mothers. Mothers who are bad, or mad, or addicted to drugs, or in this case, all three. This mother’s eyes look back at me like two deep wells when she asks me where her baby is when I visit on rounds the next day. In those wells there is a sadness that surpasses understanding, a deep tissue sadness that no drug can penetrate.

In my brain there is a dark lit gallery where these portraits hang, portraits of mothers who lose their babies, lose their minds, and have had their minds fucked over, purposely. “Don’t you want what is best?”

It is depressing, and I don’t mean for you to feel that way. When one becomes depressed, it is because one realizes that life has no purpose. Patients sometimes say an obstetrician’s job must be so fun. We know our speciality is often full of sadness. Patients know this too, if they think about it for a moment. The psychologist Jordan Peterson said “Everyone knows that life is tragic. Everyone knows that to exist is to suffer. And one logical and appropriate response to this is to be grateful in spite of your suffering and attempt to make the best of it.” I am not going to do this. I will not be grateful in the patriarchy. But here I must tell you the all-purpose cure for depression: the one and only cure that doesn’t involve denial or repression. It is this: to try if we can to alleviate the suffering in others. And when we cannot, it is to bear witness, to be in solidarity, to say, yes, it happened to me too. I add to my gallery every day.

The most beautiful section in my gallery is the exhibition of the births of my own children. They are on the innermost layer of paper mache, but visible at all times to my inner eye. Like all mothers, it doesn’t matter how long ago it was. The images don’t fade. My oldest son’s birth was painted there by Michelangelo. There, in the Sistine Chapel of my brain, he is dancing out of my body. He spins upwards like a baby dolphin, dark wet, and slippery, breaching the surface of the universe. He is half an infant god, and I am the goddess mother to whom he needed to return. My arms fling outward to receive him. And his arms fling upward to reach mine. Our fingertips almost meet. It is an exact copy of Michelangelo’s painting in the Sistine Chapel, where God’s fingertip reaches out towards Adam. Divine sparks are flying from our outstretched beseeching palms.

This must be a multimedia exhibit, because I hear myself saying to the doctor, “Please, can you give him to me right away?” But at that precise moment, the sacred moment of my son’s birth, an anaesthetist walked into the room. In that moment of dithering my doctor stops, she hesitates, she is confused for a moment, and then she gives my baby to this higher power instead of giving him to me. I had no need of anaesthetic. My son had no need of neonatal care. But later I find out that in the Canadian medical system, if that anaesthetist gets your baby he can do something you, the mother, cannot do. He can bill the government for resuscitation.

Where exactly do these men, those anaesthetists, the alpha males in charge, that swagger with their male privilege into our spaces, those of the small and large penises and untrimmed toenails and unhearing hair-filled ears, where do they think they started out? Do they not know they hang in a gallery in some other woman’s brain? Were they not little boys at one time in their lives? When did they become such assholes? Isabel Allende says that misogyny trickles down. There is always some woman to be abused. But where is the wellspring? Let’s shut it down.

St Augustine, before he became a saint, wrote a manual called the City of God, in which he touched on the woman problem. The latest Pope has solved the dogs-going-to-heaven issue, back then Augustine grappled with the question of the female immortal soul. Men, self-evidently, were created superior from the get-go. In my view you could count them as the first draft. The shitty first draft, Anne Lamott might say. Not so the wise men of that era. Augustine wrote that, by virtue of women’s inferior shitty second-class draft status, no matter what godly deeds they did in their life on earth, they could never be the equal, let alone superior, to any living man. Fortunately, there was hope in the afterlife. Once women were actually admitted past the pearly gates, like cripples and the blind, we’d be restored to a perfect state. In the case of women, it means that we will get a penis. If we are good and virtuous in this misogynistic life, it is meant to be no small measure of comfort that we will get a penis of our very own.

*********************************

I am on call, and a woman comes in bleeding, 30ish weeks pregnant. She is haemorrhaging badly. We rush her to the operating room. Her partner, the one with the swastika tattoo, is anxious and pacing. There is a letter in the notes about domestic violence and the police. His last baby was born by c-section, (to a different partner, he’s on his fifth or sixth now), he’s an expert, he mansplains what I’m going to do. But those babies weren’t premature and this is different. He is not cutting the cord, there will be no skin to skin. It’s not on purpose, we want these fathers, all fathers, to attach, to bond. So they don’t kill their babies or their partners for starters. The woman is unstable, and the anaesthetist needs to give her a general anaesthetic, and this means he’s not allowed into the operating room. When he’s told the plan, he loses it. The aggression and verbal abuse escalates. We have no time to cross match blood, no time to deal with years of trauma, no time to dismantle systemic racism and misogyny. I try reason: it doesn’t work. That chills me, because it almost always does. I’m nice. Really nice. It scares me when scary people don’t respond to reason and to genuine kindness.

“How dare you goddam bitches keep me away from the birth of my child?” He raises his voice, his face is too close to mine, he knows what this is about, “You fucking cunt. I know my rights. You are discriminating against me! All because I have a dick”.

“No”, I hear one of the staff say, moving her body like a shield between us. “It is not because you have a dick, it is because you are acting like one”.

I flee to the scrub room. In a few minutes, I find myself in a company of women, surrounding this mother, our heads bowed, a scalpel in my hand.

This Post is Not About My Workplace

Dr Alison Barrett — Sun, 25 Jan 2015 02:13:44 +0000

The other day, the front page of my city’s local newspaper had an article in it called Big Brother Is Watching. The hospital that I work at featured prominently. The communications people there (and there’s a misnomer for you) are monitoring our communications, and if we say unfavourable things about them, we are to be disciplined.

So.

I read this thing once that said the only way you can write something approximating the real truth is by writing fiction. I read memoirs, and the only ones that are any good are brutally honest, and the only ones that are brutally honest are when the narrator is the sole survivor of some horrific thing. Everyone else is dead, or it’s a scandal of epic proportions and the person has been stripped of all dignity. She has nothing at all to lose since everyone knows the public details of the shame right down to the brand of stain remover she used to try to remove the semen stain from her dress.

The heroes in these memoirs are divorced, widowed, fired or wrongfully imprisoned. Most importantly they are usually unemployed, if not unemployable. Horrific things make for gripping reading, but that’s not the only reason these memoirs grip you. It’s because they are free to be true. It is the pure raw truth of it that holds you in its thrall. You could make someone’s ordinary life a best seller too, if only you had some way of making it that truthful. But you can’t, because you need the witnesses dead, so you can speak ill of them. If they aren’t actually dead they will soon be dead to you if you are writing anything awful about them. And you will be writing awful things because it’s the truth. Everyone has an awful side to them. They don’t call it the awful truth for nothing.

I like to read mom memoirs too. But there’s a reason why all those mommy blogs are about toddlers. They have to stop writing as soon as their kids can read. There’s this huge gap in the momoir genre. Unless something horrific happens, like, say your kid is in one of those schools for criminally insane children in Utah, and even then, you don’t dare write a word, because they might get out one day. You hope they will. If, say, they are trafficked out into a polygamous cult and meet a tragic and sticky end, well, then you can write away. You don’t hope for that. So, you can’t write about your own real life.

The main barriers to writing the truth come in the form of witnesses. If the writer-to-be is the actual perpetrator, they, of course, have almost no incentive to reveal themselves. If the writer-to-be is a victim, they are often afraid of retaliation. So a great many awful things carry on happening in plain sight of many people. It is The Emperor Has No Clothes On and He is Now in Charge of the Maternity System. No one can speak of it, unless you want to be divorced, exiled or never employed by anyone ever.

In his book Feral, author George Monbiot writes that we have been conditioned to have a benign view of farming because of the stories and rhymes of our childhood. Remember those story book farms with exactly one pig, one horse, one cow and one duckie swimming in a little pond? The horrors of the slaughterhouse, the cruelty of factory farming; those things were never depicted in those books. Later, we put two and two together: Farmer Brown’s friends were in those the meat packs in the supermarket. The farmers in turn, point their finger of shut-the-hell-up shame at us to distract us from the pile of entrails in the corner over there. They don’t want us to be vegans.

We’ve probably been conditioned to have a kinder regard of medicine than it deserves too. A similar set of circumstances conspires to shape our early views of it. The play doctor kits, storybooks and soap operas are practically developmentally staged favourable views of the medical profession. Later, it’s self-interest and self-preservation that keeps you from examining things too closely. We give up the best years of our lives for medicine and to find out it is based on any word of a lie is painful.

There’s something else that prevents us from truthfulness. People can get hurt by lies but they can also be hurt by the truth. Mothers know this. They have fed a great many mother’s day breakfasts, lovingly prepared, to the family dog. I read this thing about how people with Asperger’s do actually read the things that you write on the internet about people with Asperger’s. Patients read what we write and I like my patients. Colleagues read what we write and I like my colleagues. Flawed and twisted they may be, I like them a lot. They are a pain in the neck to work with just like people with Asperger’s are a pain to live with. But then, people, in general, are a pain to live with. It makes sense that they are a pain to work with too. And a pain to look after as patients. Life is a pain.

You can take painkillers, or antidepressants, alcohol, and, if you can get it, a smidgen of cocaine, for that. But life in general has no medical cure. We all know how it ends. Palliative care for life comes in the form of reading poetry and literature and in writing things down. I have done this almost my whole life but I only found out recently that this is a thing. There are actual prescription books, “novel cures”, and emergency poetry….things you read for the treatment of actual conditions. You can have bibliotherapy, which is exactly like chemotherapy, without the side effects.

If I was talented enough to write fiction, I’d write about a middle aged obstetrician, who has a disabled son. She’d have hair greying in an attractive way, which she wouldn’t dye because she’s paradoxically quite crunchy. Just to be clear, she’s not me, you can tell because she weighs five kilograms less, she’s a little taller, and has better teeth. She would have more energy than I have too. In the night, when not on call, instead of lying in a state of sweaty anxious exhaustion, she’d be doing research, at the university, trying to find help for her son, which is to say, help for herself, which is to say, the meaning of life.

She is failing on every count. It is ever thus, half-finished projects litter her life. She needs to pick one cause but there are too many things of too much importance and she is paralyzed. In addition to the above mentioned tasks, she wants to dismantle the system that conspires against mothers, but she finds that it’s snowballing out of control from its own weight. It has scooped her up, surrounding her in deep swathes of snow, her arms and legs are soon the only things sticking out as it rolls down, down, down, dead leaves and twigs stick to the surface like medicalization and iatrogenisis stick to the practice of obstetrics.

Like so many problems, the trouble is in the naming. The trouble is that good people stand by and say nothing, while so many emperors remain unclothed. In obstetrics, in workplaces everywhere, it’s no wonder. Have you ever tried to speak with your mouth stuffed with snow? We are trapped and silenced. We cannot speak the truth. She, our hero, especially, cannot.

She can’t lose her job because her disabled son will depend on her for his whole life.

***********************

I am a first year resident. My job is to assist, to write the post op orders, and to dictate the notes. Today, I am assisting one of the staff doctors at a caesarean section for breech presentation. The surgeon makes the first cut, parting the skin over the fat and underlying fibrous rectus sheath and so he begins the decent down to the uterus from the abdominal wall. He reflects the bladder, and cuts into the uterine muscle. But what’s this? We are supposed to be seeing the baby’s bottom, this is what they call the “indication” for surgery, as if it’s a signal, a sign, a pointing finger, the marching orders to the operating room. You draw that breech card and you are not passing go. You are not collecting 200 dollars. The baby is head first. The surgery has been done for nothing. The doctor swears, just loudly enough for me to hear. The rest of the surgery proceeds in silence. At the end of the case, he says “I’ll dictate this”. I wonder what he is going to say.

I read the note later.

Pre op diagnosis: Unstable lie tending to breech

At least the lying part was true.

#notallobstetricians

Dr Alison Barrett — Sun, 31 Aug 2014 11:52:03 +0000

In Tolkien’s classic Lord of the Rings, Arwen Evenstar gives up her immortality for the love of a mortal man, Aragorn. Arwen’s father is against the match. He’s got nothing against Aragorn, it’s just that he understands the full weight of her choice. But Arwen won’t be dissuaded. We often do things that are crazy in the state of temporary insanity induced by love. Like having children. It’d make a great story if I could say that’s why I did obstetrics too. For the love of it. But looking back, it might have been for hate.

My son Colin, the philosopher, tells me that our decisions go back to the big bang if we go back far enough. By this he means that there’s a certain inevitability to our choices. That if we look backwards at our lives, everything that happens nudges us in a certain direction, and we find ourselves falling down a particular pathway under the influence of these unseen forces. That hateful obstetrician who I met the day I attended my first ever birth might have tripped me up a little, but I might have been heading in that direction too.

I like to think that the reason I became an obstetrician was that when I saw that doctor pull that baby out with forceps for no apparent reason, it made me think that I could do better. That I could cancel out some of the abuses that I saw were happening to women. The trouble is that some of those things I did to cancel out the wrongs have been acts of responsible subversion. Because they maintain the status quo, responsible subversion is somewhat irresponsible. And also, since people don’t know about my good deeds, one day history might judge me in the same light as those evil obstetricians. History might think I was one of them. But history lies sometimes. Like, just because I once owned a gold lame pantsuit, it doesn’t mean I was a disco queen. Disco music gave me a migraine in my ear.

I’ve written about Mary Rose McCall’s book The Birth Wars before. In it, she compares the philosophical disagreements between midwives and obstetricians (birth as natural: birth as dangerous) to a war in which women and babies are the collateral damage. I’m aware that one day my grandchildren might well ask me what side of the war I was on. If you read the obstetric history books it would appear that all my predecessors were monsters and maybe they were but more likely they were just human beings trying to do the best they could with the material they had to work with: the lowest human life forms on the planet –mothers and babies. Who knows, maybe Joseph Delee himself, he of forceps = gentle / vagina = skull-crusher fame may have been a closet feminist.

The poet and philosopher Criss Jami wrote “When good people consider you the bad guy, you develop a heart to help the bad ones. You try understand them.” And he’s right. In trying to understand the field of obstetrics we must consider the patriarchy, and the fact that birth must not go quietly into the service of those dark knights.

In the world of obstetrics, there are too many bad guys. #notallobstetricians, that’s for sure, but far too many. The sad explanation is that we do not value motherhood, which is a nice way of saying that our culture (still) hates women. I know many people won’t believe that: they will say they love women, but they only love good women, thin women, beautiful young women, they don’t love women on welfare, women who smoke and who eat junk food, women with rotten teeth and rolls of fat, women who have had too many babies to too many different men.
When I had my first baby one of the first things I felt was a deep connection to all of the other women who had babies before me. This feeling surprised me. I think part of the reason it surprised me was, in truth, that I had been a snob. Before I became a mother myself I hadn’t appreciated the profundity of the act. After all, even stupid women become mothers. Women with rotten teeth, and rolls of fat, who eat too much junk food. These women are often, too often, some might say, mothers too. If ordinary, regular women could do this thing– become mothers— like I just had, then perhaps there was more to them then met the eye. Maybe there were other things I’d overlooked. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d judged someone harshly and then come to find things out about them that shattered my image not only of them but also of myself as a fair minded and reasonable person.

What all women have in common is that they when they become mothers they deserve the best of care. Let that sink in. That woman with the tattoos and badly dyed hair who got addicted and had a baby with a gang member deserves the best of care. Yes, we have a duty to protect the baby from abuse from her own flawed mother. But the best way of doing that is to make the world a better place so that good mothering can emerge from flawed women.
.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy has a long appendix, so maybe you haven’t read it. In it we find out what happens to Arwen in the end. As it gets closer to that day of reckoning, when Aragorn ages and eventually dies, Arwen comes to regret her decision. The reality of a mortal life is before her. It is in the end, looking back, where choices can be regretted. When we suffer, ourselves, for taking what stances we took in our lives. Where what seems like a good idea at the time doesn’t seem like such a great idea after all. Part of this is just what always happens when we have lived a while in the actual life we chose, with all of its disappointments. The road we didn’t take often seems so much better, because it’s always a fantasy. We don’t imagine alternative careers to be boring, alternative spouses to be abusive, alternative children that won’t brush their teeth when asked.

Imagine Arwen sitting at the coffee table with her best friend. There are things even best friends don’t talk about, for example, their choice of partner, especially when it’s a done deal like that. My dearest friends have ended up with some surprising choices. I know left wing beauties married to right wing uglies; down-to-earth earth mothers hitched to conservative snobs; friends who divorced weirdos and remarried idiots. You can’t account for it other than thinking that Cupid is pretty random. We might not comment but we certainly think it, what they hell did she see in him and she could have done so much better. Behind her back Arwen’s friends might have said that Aragorn was pretty hot in the day and a King and all, but seriously, I’m sure she coulda had any pick of the elves AND kept her immortality. To paraphrase my grandmother, “it’s just as easy to marry a mortal man as it is to marry an immortal one”.

We tell ourselves it’s for just and worthy cause, this diminishment of power. But there is no reward for love in the patriarchy. Most women become lesser beings there, in the service of men. We tell ourselves its okay, we’ve done it for a noble cause: because we love them. And we are punished, because they—the ones that write the rules that govern how women are abused and oppressed —-they hate us most of all.

***************

I am leaving the hospital after a difficult night which stretched well into the next day. A colleague has called in sick, and I have stayed far beyond the rest of my shift. When I get to my car, I realize that in my haste to arrive in a crushing emergency, I have parked in the space reserved for the paediatrician on call. My driver’s side window is plastered with a sticker warning me that I will be towed if this transgression ever happens again. The sticker obstructs my vision and I can’t remove it. I cheer myself up by indulging in a fantasy about what happens if I am killed in a car accident on my way home. The CEO of the hospital attends my funeral, the jerk who is a member of the hospital board, and wait, here is a particular manager who has previously made my life miserable; they all say how great I was. It makes at least page three of the Times. The dream sequence fades into nightmare when a man approaches. I think he’s going to offer me sympathy for a moment; he is looking at the sticker, so I get a shock, because he’s nasty. He strides towards me menacingly. How dare I park in this spot, he (An Important Man!) had An Important Meeting!! in the morning and was Running Late!!! I try to explain about the emergency c section that turned into a postpartum haemorrhage and the foetal distress that followed in the room next door, and the same time and to top it off there was a woman with an intrauterine death who I have just left and how one thing lead to the other and that I didn’t mean it, I try to engender some sympathy, you see, while I appreciate the importance of the meeting there were lives truly at stake, except for that woman with the dead baby which wasn’t an physical emergency but it was an emotional one, but I realize he doesn’t care. All I manage to say, hanging my head, is that I was on call. He knows what it’s like to be on call, he’s done it himself for years, as he (raising his voice)—- don’t I know—, is a Consultant Paediatrician. It doesn’t dawn on me until later when I am at home, that, because of my crappy car, and my crappy clothes, and maybe the mascara tracks on my face from the dead baby, he treats me that way because he doesn’t see me as a peer.

He thinks I am a midwife.

Lessons from giving birth: A letter to my friend Wendy

Dr Alison Barrett — Mon, 26 May 2014 01:04:47 +0000

Dear Wendy

When I was in labour with Olivia, you were there, and I hated you. Don’t take it personally, I hated everyone. I was in pain, and not having fun. I felt sick to my stomach, and shaky, and in pain, and those feelings mixed up together in a hot and cold mess of misery. The nausea shakes and pains came at me in disorderly unpredictable waves, I couldn’t brace myself against them. At that point, I was mad at the world.

For a price, you can employ other people to do most unpleasant things in life. You can pay someone to wash your windows, to scrub your toilet, to clean your stove. Some things you can avoid doing entirely, a favourite technique of mine. This makes sense because according to a quiz I took on the internet I’m an anxious avoidant on the attachment scale. My oven cleaning strategy illustrates this perfectly. Normally, I just don’t clean my oven. Things merely burn off as they crust over and reach a critical mass. Pregnancy and birth don’t work that way. You can’t get a stand-in for the unpleasant parts.

In my case though, the pain brought important lessons. First, I’m really good at birth though no one could say I enjoy it. I know women who do: I shake and vomit on the floor, like I’ve had too much too fast to drink at a party, like I’m having a bad acid trip. The hangover part is missing though. Instead, I get this grand afterglow, the kind of buzz addicts everywhere search for endlessly. The kind of feeling you might expect to have when you’ve died and actually gone to heaven. Complete with angels. One anyway: a plump, pink and juicy freshly squeezed angel baby that plops out of your vagina. It’s ridiculous, hysterical, and also true.

The second lesson was this. I’m getting serious now. When I had Olivia, there was a point where that intense feeling of hating you and everyone else because you all were enjoying your lives and not in pain—so unfair – there was a point where this feeling suddenly gave way and I realized something: I was alone. With my baby yet to be born, I was alone. With a room full of supporters, I was alone. No one could birth the baby for me. The labour was mine and mine alone. It would continue inextricably as death follows life.

The Jesuit priest Henry Nouwen wrote in his book The Wounded Healer that “the painful experience of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and look beyond the boundaries of our existence”. He wasn’t kidding. My painful experience of loneliness just happened to coincide with the pain of labour, but the transcending bit was exactly the same. This was a gift, filled with promise. I looked at the boundaries of my existence and found the space it enclosed to be empty.

Nouwen writes that we spend our lives trying to fill this emptiness, to meet the right person who will complete us, to have a job that makes us feel powerful and special, to read a book that will have all of the answers. Or we drink, or become addicted, or shop. We are depressed, sad, anxious, unhappy. It is all everyone else’s fault. There I was, in a blue cotton hospital gown that did up the back, in a room full of people, alone with my pain. And like Nouwen said, I too have tried to fill this emptiness.

How many of us really ever come to know the mind of any other? We read of suicides, of murders, of murder-suicides, the neighbours say during interviews on TV “I had no idea”. I think it’s because we keep the worst of ourselves, the empty space we all have– mostly hidden from each other’s view.

There’s a quote that says that having a baby is to forever know what it’s like to have your heart walking outside your body. This is true. But it’s true when we have any meaningful relationship. Real relationships have real meaning only if we put ourselves on the line: we let them have a piece of our heart to carry with them, to do with what they will. We give away a lump of our own myocardium and we risk that others will not value or cherish it. Sometimes they can’t even hang on to it; they let it die for lack of caring. Meaningful life is a willingness to be vulnerable with our true unvarnished secret self, the self that approaches –but can never truly banish—the truth of our isolated existence.

Time has passed since that birth, but I remember it all so clearly and I always will. We had the same due date, you and I. But I went into labour before you, so I came to your birth a few days later with my daughter, the first birth she has ever attended. You sang in labour, like you always did. Each note held, clear and beautiful, moving higher and higher up the scale. You are a true soprano. I imagine you filled your empty space with song. Your son is a musician now and my daughter is studying to be a midwife and I don’t know if that means anything.

What I do know is this. We all get here- one way or the other- from the body of a solitary woman (results may vary). There is always blood. There is almost always pain. There are sometimes drugs; forceps, surgery, prematurity, inductions, stitches. Sometimes, the pain is not understood or comprehensible. Sometimes no one cares. Sometimes it’s really ugly. Sometimes it leaves scars. Sometimes it’s nothing that fabulous or transcendental. Sometimes it’s ordinary, straightforward, routine. But maybe birth could have something valuable to teach you about yourself.

You can listen to my friend Wendy’s heart walking outside her body here:

http://keenanreimerwatts.bandcamp.com/album/thoughtful-music-and-other-music

Or here on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95i20vcago8

My Resume and Cover Letter

gsutke476 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 04:27:22 +0000

My Resume and Cover Letter

“The Path to 9/11” and ABC’s Misinformation

gsutke476 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:47:16 +0000

“The Path to 9/11” was a two part mini series that aired on ABC September 10th and 11th, 2006 that dramatized the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the U.S. Capital. ABC got itself into trouble when it promoted the film as being heavily based on factual information found in the 9/11 Commission Report.

Controversy arose as clips came to surface before the films release. One such clip involves CIA operatives who have surrounded a house they believe Osama Bin Laden is hiding in. They contact up the chain of command and all the way to the whitehouse, where the field operative speaks with Clinton’s National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.

The operative asks permission to storm the house and capture or kill Bin Laden. Berger and Clinton fear political back lash if the mission results in civilian casualties and instruct the operative to stand down.

Multiple sources from all parties involved quickly came forward to assure that those events never took place. And in fact, they didn’t. Because the author later admitted that it was a complete fictionalization.

Even conservative author Richard Minter, the political enemy of the Clinton administration, couldn’t believe the outright lie that the film portrays. When interviewed by Wolf Blitzer he said, “the idea that someone had bin Laden in his sights in 1998 or any other time and Sandy Berger refused to pull the trigger, there’s zero factual basis for that.”

The same day that Minter went on CNN, ABC published a statement on the film. “The Path to 9/11 is a dramatization, not a documentary, drawn from a variety of sources, including the 9/11 commission report, other published materials and from personal interviews.”

This was a weak response to these allegations. The real issue here is that from the first pieces of marketing, this film was marketed as bieng a factual retelling of events, based on the findings of the 9/11 commission. Face it ABC, you didn’t do your research.

You agreed to produce a mini-series written by an author known to include conservative undertones in his work. Anyone who sees any of the scenes involved in the controversies could likely be confused by the authenticity of the film, and believe the events to be factual.

The real crisis started in the marketing process. Either its entirely factual, or its fiction thats based on fact. There is no such thing as fact based on fiction. If you believe even one minor event to be fictionalized, then you must make that clear from the beginning. That is your responsibility as a news source.

The crisis with the film, was just one of several reasons why the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America named ABC its third annual “Misinformer of the Year” award in 2006.

ABC and Me

gsutke476 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:43:43 +0000

So I’ve spent the past three days reading every piece of source material I can find online about ABC’s history, corporate philosophy, and communications department. All in all, I have to admit that I am intrigued by the idea of working at a television network.

Perhaps it’s my love for acting that brings out the desire to be around show business, but I get the feeling that I would be happy in this industry. ABC seems like a good fit for me because they are focused on establishing an online presence and incorporating the web into their business plan.

I like ABC’s commitment to finding better programing and not just cycling through season one and done sitcoms. I believe that if it’s broke, fix it. If it ‘aint broke, figure out how to make it work better.

Their work with LOST during the writers strike has proven to me they have a commitment to their publics. LOST had a strong following as it was, and the ARG was not “necessary.” But they felt a responsibility to the fans of the show to provide them with anything that was within their means, given the circumstances.

I look forward to seeing what ABC does in the future, and I would certainly not mind being involved in that future in some capacity.

So What If Your Boss Is a Mouse?

gsutke476 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:34:10 +0000

Much like ABC’s newsroom, their career center is fairly useless. It currently has no jobs listed and just instructs you to move on to The Walt Disney Company’s career center.

Now this is a careers page! It’s got a photo slide show, a press release declaring them to be the number one place to launch a career, and a highly customizable job openings search engine. This engine allows you to search within any of the dozens of business units of the Disney company for job postings in 50 or so different job categories. There are a lot of PR/Marketing/Advertising jobs available now if you’re not picky about where you work or which business unit it is in.

The only catch? They’re only hiring for a few entry level positions right now. I wont be linking you to those, because I think I might apply.

Another great feature of this tool is that you can put in a text version of your resume and it will analyze it and pull up ideal positions for you. I’ve never seen this kind of application on a search negine before and its pretty interesting. It appears to operate as just a keyword search, but it sifts through your headings and locates your past work experience to find jobs you are qualified for.

All in all, Disney does seem to be a great place to work, but I hear they have really strict rules about actors playing the various characters that roam the parks. Not sure I want to work with a company that will fire you for taking your hat off.

ABC Goes Green (Groundswell Green)

gsutke476 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:55:16 +0000

The title of this post is a bit deceptive. If you’re familiar with Forrester Research book Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, then you may have already gotten a chuckle out of this post. If you haven’t its seriously well past time you got on board. The groundswell is going to happen with or without you, so its time to hop on. If you need a brief rundown of what all of this swelling ground business is all about, here’s is the guy who came up with the idea to explain it himself:

So, this is a lot of fun because in going out and finding sources for this subject – twice actually – I kept winding up back at the post I made on the subject on my own blog. So I’m just going to let that post do most of the talking. Read the following post I authored in response to ABC Entertainment’s VPs of Marketing winning the Marketing Maverick Award, and check back in with me here once you’ve made it through. ABC Was Being a Maverick, Before Mavericks Were Cool.

If you weren’t living under a rock in the first half of this decade, you probably noticed that the entertainment industry was at war with the Internet. Napster fought the RIAA, and the law won. Television networks scoured YouTube, Google Video, and the rest of the video sharing sites out there to try and limit Internet users access to their copyrighted materials.

They were within their rights, and nearly every digital piracy case went in favor of the plaintiff. But, for every site they took down, 30 more popped up, and for every peer to peer downloader they sued, tens of 1000s more peers were brazenly sharing their music, video, and software files across the globe. Slowly, the entertainment industry realized that this was not a trend.

We were in the digital age, and the entertainment industry could either join the rest of the global community, or become obsolete. Suddenly, services like iTunes, Netflix Online, GameFly, and hundreds of others started distributing their music online. Their profits were down, but at least they were selling again.

Well, in comes ABC. It decided that it was tired of being behind the curve on technology. So, it invested large amounts of money into – get this – giving away their programing for free online! they developed the first full-length episode player on a major Network’s website.

Deciding that it wasn’t enough to just offer the current episodes, they offered whole seasons of their programing for free. the only catch was you had to sit through a few 30 second advertisements. Go to any TV network’s site and you will see that they have an episode player now. Go ahead, pick one. I’ll wait.

See what I mean? The interesting thing about ABC’s programing is that they were hitting a huge variety of demographics depending on which shows they were watching. And one thing they noticed was that their hit drama LOST had very technically savvy fans.

So they went to them. they brought their two intrests together and created whole networks and activities that appealed to both their interest in LOST and their interest in the Internet.

They “Listened” in at LOST fan sites and bulletin boards. They “Talked” with their publics through the use of fake websites, secret online puzzles, and mini-webisodes that kept the fans coming back between episodes. They “Energized” their publics through the use of the www.find815.com ARG keeping them actively engaged in the story during the writers strike. They “Supported” their fans by encouraging and enabling the development of online wikis and fan communities by providing information and exclusive content to the fans in these groups.

That just leaves “Embracing” of the strategies that Groundswell highlights. Embracing is the trickiest, beacuse it requires to you give up some of the control of your product to the customers. Its kind of like socialism for comercial enterprise.

I would argue that ABC’s entire approach to marketing LOST to its high-tier social technographic fanbase, is embracing them by bringing them much further into a TV drama than they ever have been before.

ABC’s Marketing department understands the process that Bernoff discusses at the very beginning of that video. They understand that they can’t market every show this way. Its is only because their publics are high on the technographic ladder that this technique worked. They analyzed their publics, chose the objectives the wished to achieve and then used the technology that best enabled them to reash those publics.

ABC’s Less than Newsworthy Newsroom

gsutke476 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:50:40 +0000

I’m not impressed ABC. Here I am trying to write a positive review of your newsroom, (because lets face it, I’ve liked what I’ve been seeing) and I can’t find it. Seriously. Where is it?

Oh. There’s no link to it from ABC.com? I thought the point of your newsroom was to keep all of your important news in one place, where a member of any of your publics – whether it be the media, your shareholders, or a fan who wants to keep up to date with all things ABC – can quickly get your information.

I’d been looking for nearly half an hour, and gave up. I moved on to find other information. Then, when I was searching for something else altogether, i stumble upon your newsroom. Poor form.

So I’ve found it. Now what? There’s nothing on the front page i couldn’t find on the TV guide channel. Its just your programming schedule.

Oh, here’s a link to your “Daily Press Releases”. And there’s one press release. Where’s the good stuff?

Where’s the stories about you planting trees in local parks, where’s the story about the millions of dollars you’ve donated to communities and countries near and far? I’d even take a press release explaining your side of teh story in some crisis. But you’re giving me nothing! Heck, I know you’re doing this stuff, I found a small section on the ABC homepage about community involvement.

Lets take a look at some good newsrooms, shall we?

Coca-Cola – Notice how they shamelessly flaunt their good will actions and their environmental sustainability initiatives. They do that because thats the stuff we want to hear about. Not what is scheduled when…
Apple – Do you see the URL on that link? http://www.apple.com/pr. I’m not sure they could have made that easier to find.
CBS – If you want to know what you should probably be doing, look to the people who are doing it better than you. Here’s where your competition is making it in the media more than you. These headlines are something a journalist/blogger could work with.

I expected better from you ABC. Maybe you should hire me and I can fix this. Please see my resume and cover letter attached.

ABC’s Awards (More Than Just Emmys)

gsutke476 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 20:16:11 +0000

Yes, they have won more than just Emmys. But they did win an awful lot of them last year.

And while that may not be the measure of a great company or a solid public image, clearly they are doing they’re job right. They were nominated 76 times, and won 12 awards. That was good enough for tops over all three other broadcast networks.

HBO was the only network that brought home more hardware, but they have the distinct advantage of being able to produce higher budget shows without many of the hassles of the FCC.

But seriously, they did win more than just Emmy’s this year. In June, Michael Benson and Marla Provencio, executive VPs of marketing for ABC Entertainment, were honored at the Promax/BDA 2008 conference in New York with one of four inaugural Marketing Maverick Awards. Jointly presented by TelevisionWeek and Promax/BDA, the awards recognized the top marketing minds in television during the past year.

While its not an award they were trying to win, the liberal watchdog group Media Matters for America named ABC the winner of its third annual “Misinformer of the Year” award in 2006. Not only for the highly controversial miniseries “The Path to 9/11“, but for the alleged conservative pandering of ABC News director Mark Halperin and for biased claims on news programs such as “ABC World News” and “Good Morning America.”

According to ABC Medianet’s description, “ABC News’ “Nightline” is television’s most esteemed Late-Night news program… “Nightline’s” anchors, correspondents, producers, and editors have won every major award in broadcast journalism, including eleven Peabody Awards, over twelve duPont-Columbia Awards, over a dozen Overseas Press Club Awards, scores of Emmys and many others.”

The Road Ahead for ABC

gsutke476 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:31:49 +0000

ABC has some catching up to do. If this were the Boston, they started in New hampshire. ABC bought its way into the big three, and it still has some work to do. ABC tends to fight itself alot.

Think about this. In the 80’s and 90’s all three major broadcasting companies were bought out. In the cases of NBC and CBS, they were bought out by large appliance and electric corporations. ABC is bought by the Walt Disney Company.

ABC is bought out by a company that had owned its own cable network since 1981. Disney was already in the business of providing entertainment. ABC and Disney had been working together since ABC helped to finance Disneyland in 1953.

ABC had exclusive rights to Walt Disney’s material for a long time, helping them to gain ground in market share. But as had always been the problem for ABC, they didn’t have the moeny to start broadcasting in Color when the first opportunities arose. So Disney took his show to NBC and renamed it ‘Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color”.

They have always been a step behind CBS and NBC, and once again they find themselves competing with their own parent company. Its a tough spot for ABC. When ABC succeeds, Disney prospers. When Disney’s operations do well, it could go either way.

The Disney Channel and ABC Family channels both compete for the same target market. When a Disney channel show is popular, it is likely tuning sets away from ABC.

But, the infusions of cash and resources from Disney have been a life line of sorts for ABC. The merger brought with it touchstone pictures, and they began producing ABC’s original programing. In 2007 Touchstone changed its name to ABC Studios and is now the production company for all of ABC’s biggest primetime hits.

So, what does all of this mean in terms of challenges facing ABC in the road ahead? Their biggest challenge will be overcoming NBC and CBS with programing alone. With the least HD options available, ABC has to find a way to stand out from the crowd, and the best way to do that is by offering the best shows at the best times.

Next they need to get ahead of the curve. They have begun that process already by becoming an early adopter of providing full-length episodes on the web. The ability to access content when and where the user wants it has almost become an assumption in American culture.

Finally, they must figure out a way to get out from the shadow of the Walt Disney Company. Competing with the company that pays your bills is always difficult. Disney has given ABC leaps and bounds, but how far has it set it self back?

ABC and its Publics

gsutke476 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:06:22 +0000

ABC is one of the biggest, if not the biggest broadcaster in America. (ABC often spins their rankings to indicate that they are the most watched network, but I suppose they all do…) As such, they have got a very large group of publics. So, I will break them down in to very broad groups for PR communication purposes.

Certainly the most important public for any service provider, especially television, is the viewer. Marketing and Advertising people will focus on the demographics and the average impressions per quarter hour, but we need not break down this public that far.

We know that there are men and women watching, and there are certainly viewers of every age. It is more important, unless you have a very specific target public for a very specific period of time, to keep your communications with this public universal and simple. Whether its running a PSA or an important news update, just keeping it basic is the best way to go. Its best to use a wide broom when sweeping up this group.

Another very important public for ABC is an internal public. Much of the programming they air is produced through in house production companies like ABC Studios, Disney Studios, or other studios that ABC has a long standing relationship with. The infrastructure for this communication is already in place, it is just important for the chain of communication to not break down.

Having to air a re-run because there was a hiccup in the supply chain is a quick way to get fired in the pressure cooker that is the entertainment industry.

Other publics include its employees, shareholders, and the FCC, which regulates the airwaves and grants licenses to broadcasters.

It Takes Two to Tango With the Stars

gsutke476 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:36:40 +0000

It takes two to tango, but it only takes one to televise it.

Grunig & Hunt defined four different models of PR Communication, and every company falls into one of them. (Here’s a brush up on them if you’re having trouble remembering your Intro to PR days). Well, most companies will tell you that they believe they run a two-way symmetric model, but in reality, the best most companies can hope for is the two-way asymmetric model. ABC is no different.

Try as they might, there public is far too large to truly ever have symmetrical communication taking place. very few individuals can truly claim to represent the whole, and so what one member wants, there are probably thousands who don’t want it, and vice versa.

They fall under the two-way asymmetric model because while they can’t possibly listen to everyone, they do actively do research into what their customers want via focus groups and viewer data. They can determine who is watching what, and they can then determine the why. Focus groups help to more closely narrow down what is working and what is not. But ultimately what matters to ABC is which shows will get the ratings, and which shows will not. As a result, they actively listen to their viewers desires, but they often prefer to change the publics’ attitudes rather than change a multi-million dollar show.

ABC knows that the people want to see Danny Bonnaduce dance, because the ratings and the focus groups say so, but they aren’t going to change the format of the show to put him and Johnny Fairplay as partners just because a few fan emails say they’d like to see it.

No, It Wouldn’t Be Cool OR Plausible

drawinghotrods — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:02:52 +0000

Look at you, fan of the sciences: You saw that pic and re-posted the whole “gosh, if our moon were replaced by Saturn” bullshit concept. Some third-rate hack with Photoshop learned a layer technique and boogered a few planets into a poorly-framed shot of the horizon, and suddenly you’re Neil Degrasse Tyson, pondering the mysteries of the universe with regard to altering the makeup of the solar system as though it’s yours to fuck with. It’s not all about YOU. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that I can make this all about ME. That is, after all, the point of social media, right? “Look at ME!”

Sorry to burst your bubble, cupcake, but let’s be honest here. It wouldn’t look all neat-o with Saturn hanging there with those rings all silhouetted against a blue sky. In fact, it’s doubtful that your dumb ass would be here to see it, assuming that one approached this fucking idea logically, and realized that between the extremes of heat caused by never-ending plate tectonics and volcanic activity (not to mention the debris thrown skyward as a result), any atmosphere that could survive the gravitational pulls and releases would be opaque at best on a clear day (perhaps whatever higher power there is had a spark of compassion, and in its almighty pity sent a little functional weather your way and blew a few metric tons of poison gas and particulates out of the way). I mean we’re not even getting into the really important things like orbital shifting and irregularities that may have severely altered the processes of life and evolution, rendering your existence improbable in even the remotest sense. And then there’s the whole pesky fabric of space thing, which would have buckled, drawing the two objects into a collision. resulting in one mass, floating in (and causing) a destructive field of massive rock fragments and near light-speed particulates, which (judging from the makeup of the two planets) may have just enough energy to create something entirely different altogether.

And let’s say that all of that physics talk took a day off, and you managed to somehow evolve into the social sharing fuckwad credit to your family of obvious inbreeders that you are today… Each day on your wondrous ring-bedazzled moon-having planet would be many, many times the length of a current hollow iron space station moon-having current habitat (Scientology, motherfucker!). And that might lull you into a sense of false security when blocking an entire aisle as you debate between the store brand and the name brand Oreos as you text back and forth to your bros about how great the new Star Wars movie is. I mean it only took you eleven viewings, because REAL fans have to see the same shit nearly a dozen times to fully grasp the whole intricate layering of Han and Leia having bred some evil, whiny prick that talks to Voldemort in an obvious rip-off of Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy. And don’t even get me started on the whole comparison of a certain character dynamic that rings awfully close to a little chunk of the last Star Trek film. But rest assured, I still have to waste MY time on THIS planet (with an atmosphere I can see through – even if it has been poisoned by the illuminati – and solid ground and weather and an orbit that makes some sort of sense) standing behind YOUR self-absorbed ass.

The problem isn’t some dumb Photoshop or social share, and it isn’t even the fact of having a moon that would somehow be roughly ninety-five times the mass (or over seven hundred and fifty times the volume; although Earth has it beat on density some eight times over… and we’re not even getting into the rings and the shit-storm THOSE would cause… not unlike that bratty-ass kid of yours, orbiting around your cart and sneezing and coughing on everything) of the planet that it orbits. It all comes down to ME simply wanting to squeeze by so that I can get the fuck out to my car and inspect the latest ding from some lazy asshole who just threw a cart into the quarter panel, versus trudging the extra eleven feet to the CART RETURN with it’s wonderfully bright signage, so designed as to stand out against the blue sky which lacks what? Fucking Saturn hanging there like some childish cut-and-paste nightmare.

History All Aglow

drawinghotrods — Thu, 24 Dec 2015 15:23:11 +0000

Little-known fact about Christmas Eve, via Brian’s “Lost History and Other Shit They Can’t Be Bothered to Teach You in School and Stuff Secret Bunker of Knowledge”.

Today’s installment: “All Things Are Delicately Interconnected Via Rubbers.”

Pining for his never-to-be love interest on this day back in 1933, Albert Einstein pens a letter to the woman he’s become smitten with, one Marie Curie from his New Jersey study as his wife prepares their usual evening treat, a fifth of wood alcohol and an eight ball chaser. Unbeknownst to Mrs. E, her husband is about to make history once again; this time in the field of photography.

After snapping the world’s first selfie (on the world’s first instant film camera, no less; the man was a fucking pioneer), he inscribes the photo with the words “Me equals meat squared,” and sends the image off to his crush.

Her second husband at the time, Stanley Czeirnitkovielskiweicz intercepts the pornographic portrait, and proceeds to poison his wife – whom he incorrectly perceives as being unfaithful – by utilizing a glow-in-the-dark condom that night, which he fashions from lambskin coated with radium-laced, self-luminous paint.

While the prudish history books of old may tell of her death being the result of she and her first husband Pierre staring for hours at a glowing batch of radium extracted from pitchblende, the cold reality was that it was a warm, glowing rod that sealed her fate years later via a photograph of a very disturbed (and naked) German, thus sparking the Polish-German war of 1934. As we all know, the war cam to an end with the Treaty of Lubin, wherein private manufacture of condoms was outlawed, and as a blanket punishment for the Polish people in general (based unfairly by virtue of his last name alone – Stanley was actually a Korean immigrant living under an assumed name), the Polack joke, once considered taboo, was to become the go-to icebreaker of choice in all pubs across Europe.

Conspiracy Theory, “The MAS*H Defense” Edition

drawinghotrods — Fri, 18 Sep 2015 14:45:25 +0000

If you enjoy a solid conspiracy theory like I do, then you’ll no doubt dig this. You can just bet that everything leading to the trial has been placed into hedging all bets on another Kardashian family member’s defense technique: The old “tuck something away to avoid prosecution” maneuver. In this case, we’ll call it the “Klinger Defense.”

You have a dude that’s into some weird shit, right? Whatever. But in true Kardashian flavor, there’s money to be made, so you work a deal around this guy’s weirdness, and get another fifteen minutes of fame. You capitalize on the shock of “the dude from the Wheaties box wears dresses!” and nab some air time. All is right in the world of “fame at any cost” once again for these people who thrive on being paid attention to.

And then he gets in a wreck and someone dies. Uh-oh.

Fearing prosecution, they spin the “dude in a dress” to “he’s a woman now”, and it places the prosecution (and jurors) into the uncomfortable position of choosing to send a guy in a gown to a men’s prison, or to a women’s prison… or simply throwing their hands in the air and saying “fuck this… we have no idea what to do!” After all… he looks a lot different than the driver at the scene, and according to the media, he’s not Bruce anymore. He’s Caitlyn. She’s a new person. Haven’t we seen this before on TV cop dramas?

Much as Maxwell Klinger sought Section 8 discharge on the TV show M*A*S*H, this guy has taken the concept far downfield, and is hiding behind a serious issue, using it to avoid punishment. It’s genius, really. Manipulate the people just enough for empathy, utilize the media like a politician to plant the right buzz words, and then once they have what they need, they abandon the bandwagoning supporters (namely those who may suffer from some form of gender dysphoria), and he sashays off into the salon. And if you don’t think for a minute that some writer scripted the whole “But gosh, Bruce, Caitlytn, whatever, you’re a Conservative who is against gay marriage?” thing as the perfect doubt-filling seed to plant, then you may just be a stupid enough motherfucker to serve on the jury. Just a touch of controversy to make his “transition” seem all the more real, and give them that oh-so-typical backup argument should they be confronted. Looks strong on the surface… But if you know me, I love finding the cracks.

KLINGERGATE.

The whole thing smacks of the OJ/Robert Kardashian hidden murder weapon controversy, as well as the glove fiasco. Double-down on that with support from the President (speaking of media-manipulated gain) and coincidentally-timed awards for “courage” and such nonsense, and the picture of the “tragic hero” is painted with wonderful colors… Look at the under-painting, though, and it’s an ugly mess of the same bland technique we’ve seen time and again from those who think they’ve earned some station in life that is above the law. It leaves me with some concern for all of the “transgender community” supporters, wondering just how many of them are prepared to be run down by this self-serving use of their plight? You’d have to imagine that, should the truth come out looking as described here, that their cause would be set back decades… But much as Hillary would throw around the phrase “champion of women’s rights” and step on the carcasses of feminists everywhere to reach her goals, you can’t escape the feeling that this guy is no different, and has entered a world of ambiguity on so many levels that finding any way back to normalcy is a futile escapade in even the simplest sense.

Am I totally on board with this conspiracy theory? My personal jury is still out on that. I’m just waiting for the trial, and hoping they’ll present the argument that “Caitlyn here couldn’t possibly be the same persona as the driver of that Escalade… That is clearly a man, and she’s, uh, sort of woman-ish,” and then they present the wardrobe of the driver from that fatal day.

The lawyers, beaming with self-satisfaction will go on to explain that “with her breasts, there is no way that shirt could button around the breasts. If the shirt doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”

Roll credits.

Movin’ on up…

figswithbri — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:03:37 +0000

I decided to go for it and secure my very own domain name:

figswithbri.com

Please join me there. I have a bit more freedom while still enjoying the ease of a wordpress based blog. Very cool. See ya round!

Cento Makes THE Best Canned Tomatoes

figswithbri — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:37:39 +0000

My husband and I make tomato sauce from scratch A LOT. Several times a month, I’d say. We’ve tried many brands, but some were a bit bland and some were just awful.

Then we heard someone sing the praises of San Marzano roma tomatoes from Italy. We searched high and low, and found several companies that sell San Marzanos. We tried all of those…and Cento was, by far, the best.

I bought the peeled tomatoes and pureed them with my stick blender right in the can, but I recently found that Cento has canned tomatoes already pureed, so it saved me a step. When I would made tomato sauce in the past, I’d add wine, a bunch of dried herbs, a little sugar, cream, butter…anything to make it taste good. With the Cento tomatoes, all I do is sautee some diced onion in a little olive oil, add the can of tomatoes, a little salt and pepper, and simmer about 20 minutes. That’s it!

The tomatoes are already so delicious, with the perfect balance of acidity and sweet, they don’t need anything else. Sometimes I chop some fresh oregano from the garden and add it in after I turn off the heat. It really is tomato heaven. That is the tomato sauce I use for pizza, my Polenta Medallions, gnocchi, spaghetti…you name it. It is rather unfortunate that Cento’s tomatoes aren’t organic. Organic really is my preference. But, I tried all the other brands of organic ones and they just weren’t right. Oh well.

Maybe some year I’ll have a huge garden and grow my own organic San Marzano roma tomatoes and can a bunch myself. Who knows?

Polenta Medallions with Tomato Sauce

figswithbri — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:24:58 +0000

One of my new favorite dishes is vegetarian polenta topped with melty fresh mozzarella. The quick (and delicious way), is to buy a tube of pre made organic polenta (I get mine from Trader Joe’s or a local health food store) and slice it into ½ inch rounds.

Then I pour a couple tablespoons of olive oil in a non-stick pan (important because it is prone to sticking) and fry them up for about 10 minutes per side. Then, when they are nice and golden with a crisp layer, I put them on a large cookie sheet, top them with a little fresh mozzarella ball and broil them about 2 minutes. The cheese caramelizes as it melts. As long as you keep an eye on them so they don’t burn, they ALWAYS come out absolutely delicious. I make a tomato sauce to serve on the side. In the summer, I make a fresh sauce with local organic heirloom tomatoes. Otherwise, I use canned Cento San Marzano tomatoes.

For a party, it would be great to fry up a bunch of slices, top them with the cheese, set them aside, and then put them under the broiler right as your guests arrive. As a main dish, one tube of polenta cuts into about 13 slices and feeds two people. Served with a salad and broiled zucchini or eggplant, it makes a stellar summer vegetarian meal, worthy of all members of the family and the most discerning guests.

“Recipe” Serves 4

2 tubes of polenta cut into 1/2 inch slices

1-2 Tbs. good olive oil for frying

1-8 oz. container of fresh mozzarella

A couple cups of your favorite tomato sauce

Bon Apetit!

Red Velvet Okra Summer Meal

figswithbri — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 23:46:38 +0000

At our Wednesday and Saturday morning Santa Rosa farmers market we have great local organic produce. Some farms aren’t certified organic, but don’t spray, since certification can be a long costly process for a little farm. One of the local farms I love is Crescent Moon Farm. They aren’t certified organic, but follow those principles. I love their Armenian Striped cucumbers, yellow and green zephyr squash and sweet red lipstick bell peppers.

But this week, I found something even more gorgeous…Red Okra. I really like okra, but I generally wouldn’t use “gorgeous” and “okra” in the same sentence. The stand’s overflowing basket was other worldly though. I bought about 1 ½ pounds and mixed in a little of the green okra.

When I got it home, I trimmed off the stem ends and sliced them into about ½ inch rounds.

Then I sautéed diced onion until caramelized and added a diced heirloom tomato and the okra. The okra cooked about 8 minutes until they were tender but still a little al dente. The finished dish lost some of the vibrant red color, so I didn’t take pictures of it, but boy was it delicious! It was enough for the four of us, but I think we all could have eaten twice as much. It was so succulent, tender, sweet and savory. I just seasoned the dish with some salt and pepper and a couple tablespoons of fresh chopped cilantro for brightness.

To go with the okra, I made some quinoa and a lentil dish with onions, carrots, and celery, seasoned with turmeric, black mustard seeds and sweet curry powder. I like to use red lentils since they only take about 15 minutes to cook up, and are just so delicious. I highly recommend this simple but fabulous summer recipe. Start to finish, the whole meal took about an hour to prepare.

Mexican Style Cucumbers

figswithbri — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 22:01:36 +0000

My favorite snack on a hot late summer day is cool cucumbers served Mexican style. Mexicans love to toss fruits or veggies with lime juice and chili. You name it: cucumbers, mango, carrots, jicama or fresh coconut chunks…all can be amped up with chili and lime.

My favorite combo is Armenian Striped cucumbers with lime and Tajin Salsa en Polvo. Tajin is a chili powder with crystallized lime and salt. I have tasted many other perfectly good varieties of Mexican chili powders, but Tajin stands out as the best. I first tasted it when my step mom brought some back from central Mexico, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. Then on a brief stopover in Puerto Vallarta, we found it in a grocery store and bought 3 containers to hold us over a while. I just discovered it in our local market in Santa Rosa. Which is a good thing, because flying all the way to Mexico once we run out may be a little excessive.

“Recipe”

1 big cucumber

1 juicy lime

Tajin (or your favorite chili powder or hot sauce) to taste

Just slice the cucumbers, juice the lime over them and sprinkle on copious Tajin. Serves one, or if you are willing to share…two.

Armenian Striped and Lemon Cucumbers

figswithbri — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 20:39:46 +0000

Mid to late summer is my absolute favorite time for fresh produce. Nature’s bounty is almost overwhelming. How can I even keep up with preparing everything I want to buy at the farmer’s market? Some of my favorite veggies are Armenian Striped Cucumbers and Lemon Cucumbers.

Armenian striped cukes are incredibly sweet and fragrant. If you think cucumbers are bland, you haven’t tasted these beauties. They are striped lengthwise with darker and lighter tender green skin and usually come in these funny curly cue shapes. They are hard to transport since they refuse to conform to uniform shapes and sizes, but that’s part of their charm. Striped Armenians have very small or no seeds at all, so they are a burpless variety (a plus for those concerned with proper dinner etiquette, neither here nor there to me). I always keep my eye out for them come July and August, since they are such a great treat.

The other wondrous cuke I lust after are Lemon Cucumbers. As a child, going to the Santa Barbara farmer’s market in late summer with my mom always meant abundant lemon cukes. They are small yellowish orbs that look like lemons, but taste of cool summer cucumber. Their skin is a little thicker and tougher, and can sometimes be prone to bitterness, but when they are perfect, they are well worth it.

Of course both varieties of cucumber can be prepared in as many dishes as you can dream up, but this traditional Mexican snack is my favorite.

Vik’s Chaat Corner

figswithbri — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 21:36:04 +0000

Recently we rediscovered Vik’s Chaat Corner in Berkeley. What a great place to find authentic chaat (small plates of savory Indian snacks) in the Bay Area. A friend took Marc and me there 10 or 12 years ago, and just this weekend (on a great culinary adventure) my aunt took us again. They have delicious puris (flat breads often topped with spiced veggies or legumes and tamarind or mint chutney) and my husband’s all time favorite…dosas.

Dosas are South Indian crepes usually made with lentil flour. They come rolled up like a giant burrito with savory fillings. Vik’s has several dosas including the typical (but oh so good) Masala Dosa filled with potatoes, onions and chilis and spiced with turmeric and cumin. I could eat dosa every week, given the chance, but not every restaurant features them, so they can be hard to find. The batter comes out crispy, a little sour, and totally fun to eat. It’s a great meal for all senses.

Vik’s also has a giant glass case of colorful Indian sweets. Milk, coconut, ghee (clarified butter), sugar and flour are the main ingredients, but some of them are golden with saffron or even bright pink. We bought four delicious pieces of different sweets, but it was so hard to choose among the dozens of varieties. We shared them with my in-laws to rave reviews. The hot chai (spiced milky black tea) was incredibly delicious and fragrant. The cardamom almost seemed to reach out and grab you from the cup.

Indian food is some of the most complex cuisines in the world. Sometimes I find it too heavy, but the people at Vik’s Chaat Corner create wonderful light fare, great for sharing with friends. They recently extended their hours on weekends and evenings, so now there are even more chances to get my dosa fix.

Vik’s Chaat Corner is located at:

726 Allston Way

Berkeley, CA 94710

510-644-4432

http://www.vikschaatcorner.com/index.htm

Ici Ice Cream Shop

figswithbri — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 18:11:45 +0000

This weekend my aunt took my husband and me on the most spectacular ice cream adventure. Ici is the establishment that serves up such confectionary perfection. They had flavors like Chicory, Honey Basil, Candied Cocoa Nibs (delish), and my fave..Cardamom Candied Orange. The line was long and there were a few women around us who were just as anxious to jump right in to ice cream heaven. Chez Panisse protégé, pastry chef Mary Canales opened this ice cream shop not long ago and it has become a sensation. It’s small, but the décor is elegant and welcoming. The “ice cream enthusiasts” behind the counter were friendly and helpful.

My husband and I established an iron-clad plan. He would taste two flavors, and I would taste two other flavors, we’d swap spoons and decide on the two choices we’d actually commit to. I tasted Chicory and Cardamom Candied Orange. He tasted Carmel Banana and the Candied Cocoa Nibs. All were better than any regular ice cream parlor, but the Cardamom Orange was spectacular. The orange was perfectly sweet, tart and chewy, and the cardamom was fragrant but subtle. The Candied Cocoa Nibs was a stellar flavor as well. It was crunchy, with intense cocoa flavor, and a little bitter with the sweet.

As if that wasn’t heaven in a bite, you can get their handmade sugar cookie cones with the surprising (though very practical) chocolate plug at the bottom. They use the freshest seasonal organic ingredients and you can really taste the difference. Ici also uses compostable bowls and spoons. So…you are really doing a great service to the planet by giving in to your sweet craving. My husband and I generally prefer gelato over ice cream, but Ici is in a category of it’s own.

Ici is located at:

2948 College Ave.

Berkeley, CA 94705

Phone: 510.665.6054

http://www.ici-icecream.com/

You Can’t Just Hand Someone Entitlement

drawinghotrods — Thu, 04 Feb 2016 16:25:32 +0000

A successful culture builds upon the past, providing each generation to follow with not only the tools to continue their growth, but the foundation to build upon.

However, watching these Sanders supporters in action, it’s painfully obvious that the new idea is to eliminate the last generation of free-thinking Americans. The ones who were fortunate enough to listen to first-hand accounts of horrors brought forth by rogue governments and dictators and despots. The generation following mine is somewhat clueless, having been the first of the hard-core “participation trophy” and “no-spanking” bullshit style of passive parenting. And THEIR kids, these miserable, candy-assed, lazy fucking douchebags…They teeter on barely functioning, intellectually, and utterly clueless issue-wise, yet they sure as hell have no problem rambling on and on via 140 character-long rants of piss-poor grammar. They’re distracted and entitlement-borne, and primed to usher in the golden age of another “leadership” disaster. And don’t kid yourself, you saw it this week already: The fix is in. They’re not even wasting time with the lube and dirty talk they had to employ in 2008 and ’12. They’re diving right on in, because they’ve already laid claim to it when you opened that door the first time.

Hyphenate it any way you want, but Socialism is Socialism, and it has NEVER WORKED, PERIOD. Erase history and rewrite it all you’d like, but simple facts remain. To function at even the most base levels, that idea requires a working class. And expecting that class to be earning a huge salary only leads to crippling inflation, and a lack of demand for product, which eliminates the jobs. The ouroboros eventually runs out of tail to munch upon.

Yet, if you’ve raised a couple of generations on empty promises and worthless goals like celebrity and material worship, anything with “free” in the name becomes nearly impossible to NOT want, and by the act of merely offering it you can garner support. After all, nobody actually expects it to be delivered upon; they’re conditioned to live for the thrill of that moment when it’s MENTIONED, bracketed by whatever hashtags are trending. It’s brainwashing and conditioning, and they’d realize this if they had to attend any of the classes they’ll pass simply for having signed-up in the first place. And you can’t expect any of them to pay for shit they don’t use, right?

It’s 2016, and the future is fucked.

The Chains of Acceptable Absurdity

drawinghotrods — Fri, 22 Jan 2016 19:53:49 +0000

All of this “racial equality” talk surrounding the Oscars really got me thinking. While I can agree that some feel slighted, it’s the prevailing attitude of “my personal feelings and cause are the most important thing in the world” which always leads down the same path toward “screw logic and making sense,” and that’s not always a good thing. I mean at least not in the sense of accomplishing anything, anyway.

In my world, it serves grand purpose. And that purpose is absurdity.

Demanding that someone be nominated, even when they’re not qualified in comparison to whatever the field happens to be is just another case of “everybody gets a trophy,” and that tarnishes the $10 dust collector. ANY award should be a symbol of the hard work put in to best the competition, correct? If you just give everyone praise, regardless of the quality of work presented, you wind up with a society loaded with self-important idiots. You can’t name everyone a Spelling Bee Champion… Otherwise you have to deal with some stupid motherfucker who can’t spell “probably” or doesn’t know the difference between “lose” and “loose.” Sounds pretty straightforward, right?

That said, I’ll just cave to the dumbing-down of everything, and agree that we all deserve a trophy to ensure an inflated, false sense of ourselves. And with that whole Oscars thing fresh in our minds, why not just remake a film to suit this attitude? A lesser man might look to the 1980’s and an action film or cartoon to start with, but I am not “lesser.” I’m going big.

Imagine, if you will, Roots as a racially-equal feature film. The feel-good comedy of the Summer, starring Jim Gaffigan as Kunta Kinte. Where the miniseries was biased toward having many black actors, this new version will have total equality. I mean sure, we’ll have to change most of the plot, and rewrite nearly every scene, but what’s more important? Some “story” or “everybody gets a part?” I’m thinking “road comic nails sit-com deal, but finds the contract to have all sorts of hidden clauses, and hilarity ensues as he tries to get out of the deal.” Based loosely on The Producers and Tootsie (and assorted chapters from the first three Dianetics books… I mean who has time for all of that self-analysis bullshit in the fourth?) I’ll hire Tyler Perry as a co-writer and we’ll bring the funny across demographics and whatnot. I already have the marketing tag line:

“The original had people in chains… But this remake will leave you in stitches!”

See how fucking stupid the whole thing sounds? You want to change things moving forward? Write an intelligent script that avoids racial stereotypes and pitfalls, cast it properly and produce the damned thing with some care. THAT is what will win awards; not bitching and boycotting. Besides, what the fuck have you done of any note lately, Jada? Roll credits. (stinger to feature Roger Moore as me dropping a mic and exiting the screen via levitation)*

* Consider the genius of a William Castle-esque gimmick, wherein the audience that sticks around for the stinger feels a bump on their feet following the mic drop, and they receive a souvenir microphone that plays a half-dozen phrases from the movie

No, It Wouldn’t Be Cool OR Plausible

drawinghotrods — Tue, 05 Jan 2016 14:02:52 +0000

Two Lives Separated by Mere Letters

drawinghotrods — Wed, 23 Dec 2015 15:49:30 +0000

It’s not merely the spelling of their last names which provided for an incredibly diverse life for two gentlemen, but the careers of Smokey Yunick and Smokey Eunuch couldn’t have been any more different if they had planned them.

Do Something BIG.

drawinghotrods — Mon, 07 Dec 2015 18:03:14 +0000

This Christmas season, help a kid or family in need.

Each year, the tradition in our home is to not buy one another a gift. Rather, we “adopt” as many Christmas Angels as we can afford, shopping for wish list items such as clothing, jackets, school supplies and a toy or two. We always throw in some extra art and craft supplies in the hope of inspiring the next artist or designer… or maybe get their mind off of the things that are a bit too big for a kid to have to deal with. And while we can’t help every child, we can try to inspire others to do likewise, and that may help a few more in many communities across the nation.

That said, I’m closing the online store on our website through the end of the year. Please excuse any inconvenience, but I felt it beat to put my money where my mouth is, and lead by example. If you can find it within your means, please reach out locally, and try to help someone who may not be able to help themselves, and offer a helping hand.

That said, thanks for your consideration, and Merry Christmas.

More TV Show Ideas

drawinghotrods — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 16:45:17 +0000

I’m hoping to find time this week to bang out a draft of my all-new Prime-Time Action Thriller TV series starring Charlie Sheen and Bill Cosby as black-ops agents who travel the globe (and time!) to off dictators, terrorists and freestyle-rapping geniuses. Each will rely on the skills of the other, with both having help from a team of super chemists and biologists. After all, we can’t have Charlie dropping a load and the resulting damage taking several years to be effective now, can we? We have like forty-four minutes each week. If we can spring OJ, the series could go much darker. …and in that way as well.

The working title is The AIDS Team, and we don’t expect much resistance from Stephen J. Cannell, what with him not so alive anymore.

Or how about Bruce Jenner in Half-Manimal. It could be a 15-minute time killer, backed to another series, like R Kelly’s That Ain’t 18 Yet!, which could explore bad ideas that happened in the last fifteen or so years.

Failing the action market, we simply do what Hollywood does best: Rehash the same old shit. Cosby, Sheen and Jenner in Two and a Half Men. BOOM. I smell an Emmy.

BETTER: We keep the action theme, but it’s Chuck Norris and Bruce Jenner. Same title. Hollywood loves a reboot, right? Hell, we get Peter Jackson aboard, and we can stretch this fucker to eight movies.

BETTER STILL: We reformulate The Amazing Race. In our version, we remove a vital organ, and hide it someplace on Earth, leaving only vague clues as to where it may be. IN the mid-season break cliffhanger, a contestant finds his spleen, but it’s… IN ANOTHER PERSON. And he’s hiding in a knife factory.

Next time, we’ll dive into my Facts of Life-meets-Twin Peaks conceptual game show/thriller mini-series.

Bruce’s Man Cave

drawinghotrods — Tue, 24 Nov 2015 15:28:58 +0000

It’s time for another of our “Billion-Dollar TV Show Ideas”, kids!

With the popularity of home improvement-style shows continuing from the last decade, it seemed only fitting that we throw an additional celebrity element at one, and that too has worked marvelously. Consider such greats as Vanilla Ice and now even Mr. T having shows. Yet, there’s a missing puzzle piece, and that piece is a celebrity with current tabloid exposure. This isn’t simply about mindless voyeurism or celebrity deification; it’s about revolutionizing reality and home improvement TV in one sweep using some dude’s junk.

The pitch:
People want to see a celebrity in day-to-day life. People enjoy seeing these celebrities engage in projects. Those same people like watching home improvements happen (and we’re betting that they’re not so engaging on their own). And consider that your average voter thinks that “change” can mean something in even the most inept of hands. What if we brought all of that together with a celebrity home improvement show that REALLY makes a change? Think Trading Spaces meets Bathroom/Backyard/Kitchen Crashers meets Man Caves meets What Not to Wear meets The Science of…, with a “Hey, I didn’t want to know THAT!” twist. And while I am plenty aware that our friend already has a show, I simply can’t imagine that it’s working to its full potential. And being a giver, well, I see a need and try to fill it. You can learn a lot from the movie Robots.

You may wish to sit down, as you’ll probably collapse under the weight of a “why in the fuck didn’t I think of this?!” moment of realization.

We follow a former Olympian (and current celebrity/reality TV star) as he trades his man cave for a scrap-booking room. We’ll follow along as a team of decorators and contractors help him “make the switch” in this ten-episode (oooh, a decathlon reference – see how thought-out this is?) mini-series. Plenty of room for guest appearances, and consider the genius of being able to switch demographics, bringing in fresh advertising through a season? I know. It’s that good. Guest spots from decorators, designers and handymen, as well as RuPaul, Dr. Ruth, (bonuses for the writing team if they work with me to bring in the Ghost Hunters guys – or John Edward OR even better: The Long Island Medium lady – to channel the spirit of Dr. Joyce Brothers in a… wait for it… cross-over episode) and assorted stereotypical men and women. We’ll be teaching not only design and construction, but learning all about society and gender roles, and then throwing that out of the window, should ratings dictate such a thing. This will grab awards like someone is just throwing them at it.

TLC, are you listening? Bruce’s Man Cave can be all yours… for a price, naturally.

…and of course, assuming that we can pay him enough to go along with it. Including my $1.81 found around the desk, that gives us exactly nineteen cents less than $2.00, still well-shy of even the most meager of lunchtime meetings. But it’s not about where we are, it’s about the place that we identify with as being… So long as it buys a beach house or three.

When Did Hot Rodding Become Hip Hop?

drawinghotrods — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 14:49:57 +0000

A little piece I threw down for Tubbed Magazine. Stop by and enjoy the second coming of Pro-Street.

Think back to your first memorable experience that set your fate as a “car guy.” Don’t let nostalgia sway you, just blurt it out. Just roll with the first one that comes to mind.

I’d be willing to bet that it had nothing at all to do with what anyone else thought of you. Taking that a yep further, I’d sweeten that bet by adding that it had nothing to do with fame or money. While one or two of you may have though about the guy with the bitchin’ ride in your hometown that got all of the girls or that every other guy wanted to be, that seems pretty normal, and had nothing to do with defining just who you were. It started with the car, right?

Along that patch of blacktop we all travel on our way to becoming full-fledged car guys, we all get a taste of the pride that comes with a thumbs-up at a stoplight, or the strangers wanting to discuss our cars and the one they had “just like it” back in the day. Ego always grows a bit to fill those freshly upholstered bucket seats, and it’s all fine if you know how to keep it in check. And if you had any car guy friends worth anything, they knew how to help you keep that in check. It’s what good friends do.

It’s a family.

Compare your memories to what any kid coming into what remains of the hobby today will know it as:
A bunch of posturing and ego-driven, money-hungry wannabe celebrities driving catalog-sourced vehicles destined to provide big returns at auction. In an entitlement-driven, fame-is-everything era, we’re losing the real car guys and builders to a steady stream of TV stars and project managers. It’s an awful lot like Hip Hop and reality TV: Just a load of “look at me” bullshit with no redeeming value. And having already conquered reality TV, it’s not a far stretch to see the whole thing sink to a level of commerce-driven stereotypes telling you what’s cool this week, and making everything so base and trend-driven that they’ll be left with little choice but to either cannibalize the damned thing, or just leave it to die and move to the next.

Let’s roll with the whole Hip Hop analogy. Let’s create a fictional car guy who maybe came into the scene in the late-1970’s. He’s stoked about these “Pro-Street” cars, and can’t get enough of the look. It becomes in his mind the right look: Big, fat tires out back, a rake, skinny tires up front, and perhaps some form of induction poking though the hood. The essentials are in place. Our budding car guy is exposed to cars like Joe Ruggirello’s Mustang II or Lisk’s Challenger or Kollofsky’s ’55 Chevy (side note: Anyone else find it coincidental that all of these guys have names befitting a cool character or bad-ass cop in a movie?) or any other of a series of killer, pro-style bruisers. And much as any fan of what would come to be called “Hip-Hop” would have heard Grandmaster Flash or the Cold Crush Brothers early on and been drawn to it for the unique approach and the imagery it inspired in anyone outside of the Bronx, what would come to named “Pro-Street” did likewise to anyone who never cruised Woodward.

While Hip Hop evolved by taking outside influences from funk and soul to new wave and even punk, Pro-Street did likewise, borrowing from Street Freaks and Street Rods and other places, always looking to raise the bar just a touch. And, like anything gaining popularity, each had a stand-out that came to be the face of the movement: Hop Hop had acts like Run DMC, and we scored with names like Sullivan, Dobbertin and Hay (they could play the law firm in that film idea mention earlier). And in that popularity of a select few, we can trace the evolution of each, mans see the ongoing influences applied to shape just where each might head.

Like anything that goes popular, there exists the danger of haven it buckle under its own weight. While Pro-Street suffered from a number of ills, we could blame the decline on magazine saturation and constant competition to be the next big thing, with cars adding more extreme power plants and detailing and so-on, that it just became a caricature of itself, and begged for something to step in and rebel against it. We wound up with Pro-Touring, which didn’t seem to heed its own warnings, and is finding itself on a similar path. As for Hip Hop, it changed from a creative ocean of experimentation and arrangement to a soul-less money farm in the 1990’s (oh, the similarities between Hip Hop and Pro-Street are many, kids), and eventually a sad joke with all of the “gangsta” posturing and crunk-style bragging. (Side note 2: Consider that Dr. Seuss coined the phrase “crunk car” back in the 1970’s, and you start to feel all lightheaded, right? Scary how that works.) Where Hip Hop and its offspring found their way into the mainstream via MTV and radio play, hot rodding was doing likewise via major events, magazines and videos. TV wouldn’t be far behind.

It’s not such a far reach then, to compare Hip Hop and Hot Rodding. Each became a pale version of its former self once television became a part of the marketing. Hell, we could take this little notion on a whole other ride, but let’s settle on the marketing of each as being hand-in-hand harbinger of destruction forthe movement. Don’t get me wrong, I get the money thing… We all need to eat. But when the problems come banging down the doors, they usually look like the fresh-from-College guys from Marketing. And when they come visiting, even the goldfish stop swimming, if you get my drift. The dollar signs flash, and it’s off to the races. On the music side, it becomes about selling the image of what Marketing thinks that it should be, with reference to moving product (as Yogurt the Wise taught us so many moons ago, the real money is in merchandising). You craft an image, and get the kids to buy into that. On the car side, it’s eerily similar: Craft an image of what someone outside of the whole thing thinks it should be (based upon what the data shows will sell), and run with it, facts be damned if need be. Understanding that, it’s not so difficult to see why we had shows like Orange County Choppers or, keeping with the theme, Pimp My Ride. On one hand, you had screaming and yelling and time crunch drama because, by golly, that has to be how it is in a real shop, right? The natural outgrowth was American Hot Rod, Wrecks to Riches and their ilk. They appealed to the “behind the scenes” exclusivity gene which TV inserted into the genetic code, and never mind how skewed from reality it might be… Just cash that check and find more shit to fight about. Take that a step further in the appeal to “you can sell these cars and make money!” idea, and by golly, the shows practically write themselves. I am convinced that there are but two formulas for any reality-based show:

1. The Shop as setting for drama (family, client/shop, contest, money or otherwise) formula,
2. The find it/buy it/fix it up/sell for profit/repeat formula

…each of which may be seasoned to taste by adding celebrity appearances, surprises, some form of competition, pranks or canned “tech tips” wherever holes appear in the story line. Take a long, hard look at Monster Garage and tell me it isn’t so. Shit, get a hold of a script from Lords of the Car Hoards, Unique Whips, Leepu and Pitbull or Fast N Loud, mix them all up, and I’d bet that a seven year old could put a season’s worth of shows together at random, and you’d never be able to tell the difference. You could do likewise with any current Hip Hop video premise. It’s not about telling a story or building a cool car; it’s about who can brag the loudest. And that opens the door to really scary things, and can usher outcomes like not unlike the Lucifer Effect, as postulated by Philip Zimbardo (aka the Stanford Prison Experiment), wherein the wheels can be put into motion that make a good person do some really twisted evil things. I mean, what would the dollar amount be for you to sell out and bastardize the car hobby you love? Roll with your first instinct. That’s a lot of fucking zeros, isn’t it? And that’s chump change when the Advertising Department bros get involved (and you thought that little fishie was holding still earlier? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet). And when the image consultants and writers come to play, you’ll hardly recognize yourself. It doesn’t take a lot to go from singing about your sneakers over a sampled loop to bragging about the women you slept with in the penthouse last week and how big the rims on your SUV are when the residuals roll in.

And that’s where we stand today: It’s not about some guy with a cool 1970’s action movie cop name building a kick-ass machine that will set your synapses afire, blazing a whole new path for thought across your brain or even mashing two things together that have never been mashed before. It’s about having some money guy or project manager (at best) playing the douche (OK, sometimes it’s not a stretch for the guy. As a wise man once told me, “Only two kinds of people wear sunglasses indoors: Rock stars and assholes. Be on the lookout for a guitar.”) and creating some filler to top with ad sales. It’s loosely connected product placement opportunities designed to make the numbers so that Trent and Blaine in the front office can keep that tee time. You don;t have the imagination or thrill of discovery involved with your entry to the hobby anymore. Instead, you have an image to play up to, and try to out-douche so that you can make your own mark and score that show.

After all, it isn’t about the cars anymore, unless they’re a prop for your bitches to lean against while you pose with jewelry and assorted gold-plated handguns. While I can appreciate how anyone uninitiated into the family that is hot rodding can fall for this, you can bet your ass that I’ll be stepping into frame and doing my best to drop knowledge on Quick Mix Theory and Bill Jenkins’ Pro Stock Vega.

A Helping Hand

drawinghotrods — Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:23:42 +0000

A note to the Broad Museum:

They prefer to be called “chicks” or “girls” these days. One would think that being so “contemporary” and all that you’d know this. However, I am looking forward to your coming exhibition, “Knockers, Wazoos, Gazongas and the Mona Lisa: Stuff You Can’t Just Touch All Willy-Nilly.”

Tastes like…

drawinghotrods — Fri, 06 Nov 2015 14:39:31 +0000

Actual Breakfast conversation: Ethical Cannibalism.

“I don’t believe that it would be as simple as a cut-and-dried argument about just WHICH people would be eaten.”

“True. They would have to be ‘food-safe’ or inspected like beef and so-on.”

“Are we talking people farms? Like ‘we can breed them in Montana, and have mini malls for free-range Edifolks – great name, by the way – or just huge houses with them being bred and fattened-up in front of TV’s…. Or more like punishment? ‘Your sentence is to become a meal, douchebag.’ That would open some doors to arguments. And interesting zoning meetings, I’d bet.”

“I like Edifolks. Or Meatple.”

“I would like the Shepherd Pie, and my little lady there has a hankerin’ for some cowboy burger.”

(laughter, sounding much like the gibbon cage at the zoo is sporadically interrupted with a variety of names for culinary treats such as “Lou-sagna”)

“I think we’d just need to concentrate more on breeding good-natured people to avoid anything like Mad Cow.”

“OK, forget all that. The big question is ‘would you eat it?’ I mean, no market means no point in building the farms.”

“It would really depend on how they taste. I mean, a neutral taste like pork or whatever could be OK, because like Chinese food, you could season it, and it could pass for a lot of things.”

“Even more useful would be if humans tasted like turkey. Because they use turkey to imitate beef AND pork. Like turkey bacon, for instance.”

“The real trick, then would be to raise the people you’re planning on eating much as you’d raise a turkey.”

“So, like, to get that right flavor?”

“Exactly. Like you know how corn-fed beef tastes different than grass-fed beef?”

“Oh, yeah! So like, if you had cereal-fed food people, they might taste different than the ones you feed only Burger King.”

“For future cannibalism. It’s probably going to happen, so we’re desensitizing ourselves to the possibility. Like a new area in the meat counter at the supermarket. That brings us back to ‘Free-Range Meatple’ and whatnot.”

“See how progressive we are?”

“I’ll have the Moo-Shu Dork, please.”

“I’m eating light. Do you have anything on the Vegan menu?”

“Do you think the Mulims would…“

“Leg quarters would be a huge meal on their own.”

“Perhaps you need to switch to a leaner brand.”