“Ring of Fire” is a great song.
It’s great when Dwight does it, too! Very different, and weirdly upbeat, but great.
The lyrics are wonderful. If I’d had a proper wedding, I would definitely have chosen “Ring of Fire” over the syrupy classic “At Last,” the syrupier “Marry Me,” or the inexplicable “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”
Love is a burning thing
And it makes a fiery ring
Bound by wild desire
I fell in to a ring of fire
I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire
The ring of fire
I fell into a burning ring of fire
I went down, down, down
And the flames went higher
And it burns, burns, burns
The ring of fire
The ring of fire
The taste of love is sweet
When hearts like ours meet
I fell for you like a child
Oh, but the fire went wild
Okay, it’s a great tune.
Do you want to know where it isn’t an appropriate selection? Where it isn’t jokey, fun, or tongue-in-cheek?
WHEN PLAYING OUT A CABLE “NEWS” SHOW SEGMENT ON THE WILDFIRES IN CALIFORNIA.
Yet that’s just what happened this morning on “Morning Joe.” Noted preening ex-Republican and gab show host Joe Scarborough chose “Ring of Fire” as the “light-hearted” bumper for a piece on the horrifying wildfires in California!
I won’t blame a member of his production team. Joe fancies himself a rock star and music critic, and I am sure his paw prints are all over the music that plays out each block.
Frankly, it was appalling. It was not funny. It was tone deaf, and it was cringeworthy.
This came after MSNBC weather person Bill Karins finished a segment about the weather that featured footage of the California wildfires and the heat wave that is spurring them to ever-more-catastrophic destruction. He did this, as I am sure you have guessed, without once saying the words “climate,” “change,” “global,” or “warming.”
That, of course, is par for the course. I can’t even spike my blood pressure about it any longer. It has to change, but getting riled up over a particular individual on corporate media not doing the brave (and right) thing is just a way to torture myself.
Bill’s gonna do Bill. And Bill Karins doesn’t do mentions of the 400ppm gorilla in the atmosphere. Bill reports on “heat advisories” and marvels witlessly about how – garsh! and golly! – even the folks in the Pacific Northwest are going to be miserable!
Whatever happens, we can be sure that every move the modern corporate media makes is profit-driven. And they are still not reporting nearly enough on climate change.
They’re not even connecting the blindingly obvious dots when given spectacular footage to show as they connect them!
So okay. We’ve reached some sort of impasse, and we know that climate change is here, and we know that the media won’t report on it until… what? Until it ceases to be a downer? That isn’t going to happen.
Maybe they’ll report when even more people have been burned out, uprooted, flooded, drowned, and displaced? Won’t it be too little, too late by then?
Maybe they’ll start talking about climate change if enough progressive activists start jumping up and down and screaming. Maybe they’ll begin urgent, factual coverage of global warming and the damage it is doing to real American lives right this very minute if we flood their Twitter feeds and jam their Facebook comments.
Maybe they’ll start reporting if enough of us lie down in the street or chain ourselves to the White House fence and refuse to be moved until SOMEONE PAYS ATTENTION.
Maybe.
Except I am not counting on anything changing for at least the next two years. As the clock keeps ticking, and we get closer to the climate precipice from which there is no coming back (pro tip — we might already be there) the media is positively juiced and febrile as they plaster every outlet with wall-to-wall TRUMP.
He and his spectacularly corrupt administration drive ratings. The endless grifting, the ever-more-gobsmacking scandals, the frenzied tweets, the sludge-festooned cronies, the sheer barking madness of it all is so compelling that there’s barely enough oxygen left in the room for Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen these days, much less for even the most cursory reportage on the climate.
So what’s an old broad to do?
Well, today it is HOT in Seattle. HOT. This afternoon I will hang out in my cubicle writing a “lessons learned” document and reveling in the combination of delicious A/C and the gusty little fan under my desk.
Tomorrow I will wake up, brace myself for a day of miserable, pungent sweating, and keep on talking, blogging, and activism-ing about climate change. It’s the most pressing problem on our planet right now, and I don’t have any choice.
But tonight? Tonight I will creep home along the baking sidewalks, fling off my work clothes in favor of something loose and cool, shake up a wicked icy martini, and have this delicious, protein-packed no-cook salad for dinner.
_____________________________________________
Depleted Pantry Salade Nicoise
This recipe is based on a traditional Salade Nicoise and is adapted for what I know I have in my kitchen right now. Have I mentioned that it’s HOT? It’s hot. So I am not making any extra trips to buy ingredients, and I am not turning on the stove!
On a bed of fresh greens – I have romaine and butter lettuces in the fridge – arrange tuna, hard-boiled eggs, olives, green beans, and anchovies (yes, these are obviously optional). Boiled potatoes are traditional, and very nice, but I don’t have any cooked potatoes to hand.
I start by tearing up the lettuce into manageable pieces and tossing them in a basic vinaigrette. Here’s a really easy one from my favorite Swedish Chef, Marcus Samuelsson:
1 plump garlic clove, smashed and minced into a paste
1 generous tsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
Juice of ½ lemon
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Whisk the garlic, mustard, vinegar and lemon juice in a bowl. Drizzle in the olive oil as you continue to whisk. (Or you can just dump everything into a small jar and shake it about madly.)
Toss the lettuces in half the dressing and mix to coat (reserve the other half for drizzling).
Plop the dressed greens on a broad salad plate (in an artful arrangement, if you have the energy).
I open and drain a can of sustainably harvested solid white tuna, but you can use whatever tuna you like.
Flake the tuna into sizeable chunks onto the greens. Use all of it for a protein punch, only half if you don’t want a salad dominated by fish.
Slice a hardboiled egg or two (I think I only have one, but we shall see) and arrange it over the salad.
Toss a few whole or halved olives onto the plate. I have a jar of supermarket salad olives. A good, traditional Salade Nicoise uses excellent French olives (or Cerignola olives, mmmmmmmm) but I am fresh out of those. Manzanilla olives from Safeway will have to do.
Arrange a few cooked green beans on top. I have leftover steamed beans that are-pre-dressed with a little garlic. If you have pickled green beans, those would work a treat!
Finally, drape an anchovy fillet or two over the top and drizzle with the remaining dressing. Eat it accompanied with a hunk of crusty bread. It’s easy, healthy, delicious, and does not require heat.