78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



Cookie Monster to Head FDA
2004-11-14   5:31 p.m.

I wonder now if Cookie Monster suffered drastic shifts of mood and blood pressure because of his affinity for and overindulgence in cookies. This surely would disrupt his very delicate insulin and blood-sugar balance.

Well, me want cookies, nonetheless.

This morning, I woke up wanting cookies, and I still can't shake the desire. I think it's because of what I put my body through this weekend. Friday night I wanted to go swimming but wound up taking a really long nap, and waking up to see that The Beach was playing on Lifetime. Yes, I thought that was odd too. It's not exactly a Lifetime television type of movie.

Anyway, it's a great book, and OK movie, so we sunk into the couch and just stared blankly at the screen for a while. Bruno called and asked if he could come by, and when he did, brought with him all kinds of pastries and chocolate tarts. Who needs to eat dinner when there's key lime mini-pies?

We decided after dessert(/dinner) to go to Lee's to meet Jen, Thomas, Bernadette, and Eddie. I had two Mai Tais - more sugar and sitting around.

I went swimming Saturday morning, but then almost immediately went to a really fun (no - seriously) wedding with the most elaborate food spread I've seen since my friend Paul brought me to some really opulent Mafiosi party at Cipriani's in Midtown.

Besides the extensive cocktail hour and four course dinner, there was a Venetian table with the best Cannolis and Neapolitans ever, and a Sorbet bar. Oh and of course, we had some wedding cake. I think I ate more last night than I have all week.


So it was a good thing we danced here and there with our friends who got married - we couldn't possibly sit still after eating so much (oh - and I forgot to mention the cappuccino bar...). But after we got home around midnight, we were so wired that we had to go out and dance some more. This lasted until about 3 am, when we came home exhausted from dancing and the sugar rushes.

So this morning - me want cookies. And this afternoon, me want cookies. But I think I'll settle for some lentil soup instead; I can't imagine the week I'd have if I ate more refined sugar today. Funny thing about trying to eat really healthy food, in balanced proportion - the second you depart from it, it's easy to slip right back into becoming Cookie Monster himself, thinking you can subsist on nothing but crap. He was an addict, he was.

I had a long conversation with punk-rock Jon over lunch on Tuesday. I was still down about the election, feeling frustrated by Alberto Gonzales' appointment (he's the Enron cronie who called the Geneva conventions "quaint" and insisted they "didn't all apply" to the U.S.) and how this admin would spin it as "progress" because he happens to be Latino. I was frustrated because Palast's article on voter fraud and election rigging made me feel that the election was stolen yet again, but this time is being grossly underreported.

And when I'd heard of W's choice for FDA head, and recognized the name Dr. W. David Hager as someone I'd heard of before, someone who is so fanatically conservative that he has "moral objections" to Birth Control Pills, someone who is so far outside of accepted medical practices that he prescribes "praying and turning to the bible" for women who suffer from severe menstrual cramps or extensive PMS (and has been sued for refusing to prescribe pain medication or birth control pills to his "unmarried" (read: SLUT) patients), my blood boiled over.

I had seen "Doctor" Hager's book, "As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now", and was infuriated then with how, likening HIMSELF to Christ, he explained that many technological advancements in women's health - from birth control to hormone therapy to prevent bone density loss - "separate women from God" because they "encourage immorality" (hormone therapy? Yes, how DARE someone like my mother want to prevent osteoporosis! That whore!).

I dismissed the "doctor" as a nutter religious freak, someone who would be laughed right out of any legit medical practice. He'd been sued enough times anyway for manipulating his patients and failing to provide adequate and sometimes life-saving necessary treatments; I figured he'd never get far with that kind of record.

But guess what? NOW HE'S IN CHARGE OF THE FDA. This means he makes decisions about public access to medical technologies and funding research into drug and disease studies. If he wants to be a nutter religious freak, and treat women's health "as Christ did" centuries ago when medical science still thought hanging people upside down and bleeding them for hours would cure their cancer, that's totally his right. But if he takes the option to choose science based medical care over religious or politically oriented medical care away from me, something is drastically wrong. I shudder to think how many women in my own family would be dead right now if they were told "why not start by reading the bible?" at the doctor's office when they went complaining of a lump in their breast.

Anyway, Jon not only insisted on buying me lunch, but also told me that if I let myself get so insane with anger, I limit my abilities to productively resist or protest. Steve, too, has told me as much - and has insisted that I don't let the energy I expend on being angry exceed the energy I expend on writing. I'm lucky to have so many people in my life who seem to be concerned for my well being. My director even emailed myself, Jon, and some others who teach for him to offer theater tickets for next weekend, just so we could "have an opportunity to see all that's still good in the world" and "channel our energies" away from that which disgusts us.

Isn't that sweet? I don't know if we'll all take him up on it - I know it'd be easy for the boys I teach with; Jon and Brian live practically around the corner from theater, somewhere on the Upper East side. It would be easy for me to make the trip, but I am having ladies night again next weekend, though, and I've explained to my pals this will be a special "plotting world domination" edition of girlie night. They seem down, so I suspect I may have to disappear for some covert OP for a while after our plans get established this weekend.

Or, we'll laugh and talk, drink some wine, hear Amanda talk about her dreamy, artsy, still-new boyfriend Raf, have the leftovers Bruno brings after he gets off work at the restaurant, and admire Jen's fabulous shoes.

Or, it'll be a combination of both - like it always is.

I've been writing like a...um...like a writer this weekend, so I think my next couple of posts here will be the continuing saga of my South African trip. I think that's a very positive place indeed with which I can "channel my energies".

nighty night