Here’s my favorite way to describe Stacey: My sister is like a pinata. She’s hard to get open… but there’s candy inside.

And why is she hard to get open? Well… we’re Yankees, start with that. We are from a looooong line of practical, no frills, cheap… I mean, frugal Yankees. This is our heritage: waste not, want not, thou shalt flaunt not.

But you should know that uptight Yankees have the same feelings that more effusive people do, maybe more — they just don’t fling them about willy nilly. And why? Because emotions are important, and their intensity is to be respected. Sure, I could chirp “I love you!” to everyone who crosses my path, but then how would you know you were special? It’s the difference between watery spring sap and maple sugar candy. Which is, of course, what’s inside the pinata.

Christmastime is here by golly (disapproval would be folly) so I thought I’d tell this story about one time when my sister was shakin’ down the sugar.

Once upon a time, my nephew (we’ll call him ‘PuterBoy. When he was three years old, he showed me how to set up his dad’s desktop and speakers so he could play his Lowly Worm CD-ROM. Smartypants.) Anyway, when ‘PuterBoy was about five, he became obsessed with the idea of colored lights on the Christmas tree. “Thomas has colors on his tree, the trees in the stores have colors, I want colors, I want colors, waaaaaaaah!!!”

Settling the little boy on her lap, my sister explained: “A long time ago, 1630 to be exact” (true fact!) “your ancestors sailed from England to this new land to oppress its native people, plant crops in obsessively tidy rows, wear high-necked woolens in the summertime, and generally drive themselves and everyone else crazy with their reserved natures and repressed emotions. These ancestors were called the White Anglo Saxon Protestants, and to this day we follow their customs of precise speech, reluctant hugging, and preposterously tasteful holiday displays.”

“Mommy,” said the little boy, “you talk too much.”

Stacey sighed. “Yes, I know — we do that too. But the upshot is that we have white lights on our Christmas tree because we just do, the end.”

Ah, but in her crafty little noggin, my sister started schemin’.

On Christmas morning, ‘PuterBoy awoke, ran to the tree and…

“Mommy! Mommy!”

It had all the same tasteful ornaments, but now it shone with wonderfully tacky… I mean, vivid… colored lights! Blinking, even!

“Mommy! Come see the tree!” Stacey came to look, not at the tree but at the little boy, who was positively spazzy with delight. “What happened, Mommy?”

My sister smiled. “Must be a Christmas miracle, baby.”

Little ‘PuterBoy scored any number of fantabulous presents that day, but he kept running back to the tree to watch his colored lights. Because he’s a Yankee boy. And he knows where Mommy keeps the candy.

Holy crap! This man is… wait for it… FORTY-EIGHT years old.

Here, look at this:

BASTARD!

That is FREAKY! And entirely unfair, the little… big… arrgh! Whatever, it is NOT nice, when you are 47, to look the same way you looked when you were 19. Not nice. Not.

There’s a bit more soft focus to the 1980 one, and there’s definitely some mousse action happening there. His eyes have changed, now they look a bit more lived-in, which is not a bad thing. His lower lip a bit less full, his eyebrows a bit lighter (although I wouldn’t be too surprised if there was a bit of touching up on the first one.)

But the cheekbones! The nose! The shape of the chin! Identical. Bastard. If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that somebody made an ill-advised deal with Drop John the Foller Man.

But I do know better. I do. Because this eternal youth thing has NOT been kind to the poor guy’s career. How do you cast a 47 year old man who looks 19? What, opposite a 19-year-old starlet? Creepy. Opposite a 47 year old starlet? Also creepy. I don’t think this would be something an actor would choose.

But I know this also because Ralph Macchio is a nice man, a fine upstanding citizen, a good father and husband… an all-around lovely guy. And how do I know this? Because here’s a recent “Funny or Die” contribution to film history. And anyone who could do this and clearly have such a good time doing it is just A-OK.

Sorry, Ralph. I’d love to think ill of you but… ooh, you’re just so adorable!

I just want to scream and scream and scream when people say that nuclear power plants produce “clean energy”. That is true, but only in the same sense that poisoning someone is “cleaner” than shooting them in the head. My sister has cancer. Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer, to be specific, and although she is mostly indestructible I bet she would be the first to tell you that there is nothing “clean” about cancer.

Nuclear power plants produce death juice, is what, and nuclear proponents have some nerve standing out front pointing at the ozone layer while they’re carting barrels out the back for the fantastic poison-control method of BURYING them.

A recent NPR interview with Dr. Michael Levi (senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations and director of their program on energy security and climate change) and Dr. Frank Zeman (professor in the School of Engineering and Computing Science at the New York Institute of Technology and an expert in carbon management, energy management and environmental engineering) yielded the following interesting little factoids:

1. Dr. LEVI: If we phase out nuclear for the United States over an extended period of time, we would be replacing it with generation that’s not any more expensive. Now, nuclear that is already established and already out there is relatively cheap. What costs money is building the plants. The fuel is relatively inexpensive…. if we wiped out the U.S. nuclear capacity overnight, yes, rates would go way up, in particular in order to cut demand. That’s not the kind of thing that any policy maker is considering. So when we look at nuclear, electricity prices are not the are not the crux on which we should be basing our decisions.

2. Dr. LEVI: Nuclear energy supplies roughly 20 percent of U.S. electricity, so that’s a big share. It’s roughly equivalent to the amount supplied by natural gas and about half of the amount supplied by coal. Their balance is made up mostly by hydro-electricity and also by renewables like wind and solar. The one part of the economy where nuclear isn’t a player is, of course, in transportation, which makes up a huge fraction of our energy demands.

3. Interviewer: But if 20 percent of our electricity no longer came from nuclear power, how would that impact carbon emissions?

Dr. ZEMAN: Well, depends what you replace it with. Right now we have a huge excess of natural gas generating capacity. In fact, the capacity factor, which is really how much a natural gas plant is used, on average in the States is somewhere around 22 percent. So that means we have this large amount of excess capacity – more than enough to make up for the current production of nuclear power. So the emissions would go up somewhere between five to six percent for the U.S. economy as a whole if we replaced all of nuclear with natural gas. So it wouldn’t be a big emissions increase…. any emission impacts climate change. But when the U.S. is producing roughly six billion metric tons a year, adding, you know, 322 more isn’t going to really make a big deal.

DR. LEVI: If we move along our current course when it comes to greenhouse gas generation, frankly, this change on the margin with nuclear would be quite inconsequential.

 
A few years ago, I edited a set of speeches on energy issues. One of the most interesting points, made by Anthony Cordesman, was that if we’re REALLY interested in cutting down carbon emissions, we should be working with India and China to help them establish cleaner energy generation as they industrialize. Hm.

Dr. Zeman also said “The question is, can you find that gas and how much do you have to pay for it?” And that’s definitely a problem. But the big fat deal of the energy demand in this country is transportation. If we had lower energy demand for transportation, we could use those saved energy resources to cover the gradual drop in nuclear energy as we phase out these accident-waiting-to-happen nuclear power plants. Duh.

This is ridiculous, people: the power went out at a nuclear power plant on the other side of the world (in a Tsunami-ridden region, by the way, and no one thought of this?) and now, raining down on our heads, is one of a group of poisons that can have HALF-lives of THOUSANDS of years. Is this a rational way to conduct our business? We’re talking about 20% of our energy needs — surely we can find a saner fix for that.

So I hereby volunteer to be inconvenienced. I volunteer to pay more for gas. I volunteer to bike where I can (unless we’ve got four feet of snow) to work at home and use Skype and JoinMe instead of traveling to meetings (OK, I’m already doing those), to grow my own vegetables so they don’t have to be shipped from Chile, would spinning my own cloth help? I don’t know, but I hereby volunteer to find out.

Is my personal inconvenience going to help very much? No, not much. But what it WILL do is give me a leg to stand on when I scream and scream and scream.

</rant>

May I recommend to you, O Despondent One, the photography of my good friend Marla Singleton. Marla has a degree in Art Therapy, and it shows. She also has a natural eye for color, yes, and movement, definitely, and I would argue that she has a veritable genius for capturing the one image that will remind you: even the most craptastic day has joy in it if you put the right lens on.

Here’s the photo that did it for me this morning; this one was a close second.

Marla is also available for your joyful-graphic-design needs.

The quote is “I have fans!” which of course Possum has actually said. When I told her that I blog about her and she asked, breathlessly, “Mommy, do I have… fans?” I replied, “Yes, baby, you do!”  She announced to whoever would listen, “I have fans!” and here we are.

And, yes, I do own www.possumchronicles.com. There just isn’t anything actually… there. Yet.

Shut up and tell me how to get a Possum Tee!

All right, all right! Sheesh.

Thanks to a special deal at VistaPrint, these spectacular gems of randomness are available in Adult Medium, Large, and Extra large for $12.00, XXL for $14.00. And they come in the perfect color for all you liberal pinkos and Unitarians, Befuddled Grey.

Here’s the trick, though — this special deal is only marginally special because a) once I place the order I can buy as many as I want, but then the price goes up to, like, $18 and $20. Which is silly. And b) I need all the money before I can place the order.

So send me a note if you wish to be the envy of your peers with a high-fashion Possum Chronicles Tee. I’ll put you on the list and tell you how to make payment, and when all has been gathered together (especially the money) the glorious order shall be placed and joy shall reign supreme! And plus we’ll all have t-shirts! Huzzah!

And she did, for reasons known only to herself, give her grandmother this picture for Valentimes Day.

Happy Valentimes, everybody!

I say this only because of recent news — two weeks ago this would have been the innocent quip it was, and just as funny.

Today’s Quip Artist: my husband

Radio: …restricting the sale of high-capacity magazines…

ToolBoy: What, like “Brides”?



Possum: Daddy, why are you so good at this?

Daddy: (shrugs) I’m older.

Possum: And stronger? And bald?

Daddy: (sigh of resignation) Yes, baby. And stronger and bald.

Possum: Daddy, you know what? Your hat smells like bald!

Daddy: Uh huh. Can I have my hat back, please?

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