#38 Men's Beach Volleyball

More on the bikini requirement for Olympic women's beach volleyball - they seem to spend a significant amount of time pulling the tops down, pulling the bottoms up, pulling the rear out of the crack.  One woman bent over with her backside to the camera, and the line of sweat down the center was most unattractive.  It doesn't look like the most comfortable thing to be wearing.  Maybe it's a test of concentration?  (Yeah, I've been watching.  There's nothing else on in the wee hours.)

Today I was skipping around again and heard the announcer say, "And next, men's beach volleyball."  I thought, "Oooo!  Bare chests!  Speedos!", so I stayed a while.  Such a disappointment.  The guys were wearing long shirts and baggy shorts - like for basketball.  Something's not fair here.   

#37 Test- Photo

This is a test.  Thought I'd try adding a picture.  For some reason, AOL has decided that this is an album or slideshow or something.  You have to click on it to make it bigger (and please do - this small it looks like I have a moustache).  I'll have to play some more to see if I can make it big.

This is Jay and me, taken maybe 7 or 8 years ago, not sure, but I know I was over 50 at the time, and it was before he got sick.  I'd almost forgotten how BIG Jay was.  Compare simply the depth of his shoulder to me!   

Boy, a few years, and a load of pain, made a difference in my appearance.  That was when I was happy all the time. 

Notice that Jay and I have almost the same nose.  That's something I noticed a long time ago - that the happiest couples seen to have matching noses.  Maybe a similarity in noses indicates a similarity in other important-to-relationship genes.  

#36 Makeup

Thinking about the last entry, makeup.  October, 1965, 21st birthday.  I had my picture taken.  Professional portrait.  I was teaching high school math at the time, and I used to eat dinner at the diner around the corner from my apartment, which also happened to be the teen hangout.  I always had a crowd of students crammed into my booth (which I loved, and still miss, they were so cute and so ALIVE!).  The day I picked up the finished portrait, I took it with me to the diner.

"Oooo - she's beautiful!  Your sister?"

"No, that's me.  Tuesday of last week."

"That's not your hair.  Did you have it done special?"

"No, I went to the photographer directly from school.  It was like that all day.  My hair almost aways looks like that."

"You looked like that last Tuesday?  In class?  Hmmm," peering at my hair, "Yeah.  It does look the same.  Never noticed before.  But it still doesn't look like you."

"I put some makeup on."

"Wow.  Makeup makes that much difference?"

I think maybe that day I caused some headaches for some mothers of teenagers.  I also started wearing makeup more often.

Three years later.  Summer, 1968.  New hire with "a large computer manufacturer".  Programming school.  Overslept, no time to put makeup on.  First break, off to the ladies' room to put a face on.  

I dabbed a little concealer on some spots, filled in the blank patches in my eyebrows, applied some light brown eyeliner, brown mascara on my blond eyelashes, a touch of pink blush, and lipstick straight from the tube.  No base, no "sculpting", all pretty plain, nothing fancy.  No "made up" look.  (After all, I was still pretty Puritan.)  I turned around to find I had an audience - other students from the class, mostly new college grads who, at that time, wore little more than lipstick.  They were all in absolute awe, big eyes and the whole bit.  One of them said, and this is the absolute truth, "Wow.  I didn't know makeup could make such a difference!".

Sigh.

 

 

#35 Volleyball, raspberries, & jury duty

Olympics.  Women's beach volleyball.  Ok, I can understand that sand underfoot is a requirement of the sport.  But bikinis??? 

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Picked red raspberries (and more "bloodberries", which this week Greig Farm is calling blackberries) yesterday with a friend.  When she arrived, she looked really pretty, all buttermilk and sparkle.  I asked what she had done different, and she said that she wasn't wearing any makeup.  Life is so unfair!  For the past 40 years, whenever I've gone somewhere without makeup, people ask me what's wrong - I look ill, or tired, or unhappy.  She looks radiant!   

The raspberry field was full of bees of every size and shape.  It sounded like the inside of a hive.  But there was no danger - the bees were very busy and very happy, and not at all worried about us.

Raspberries are low payoff picking.  On each cane there will be new flower buds, a very  few that are pickable now, and some that are way past prime, and no matter when you go, today, tomorrow, or next week, the proportion of ripe ones stays the same, so there's no best time to pick.  You go through a lot of canes looking for the ripe ones.  My comment was that there are past, present, and future berries, and as time goes on, the past gets larger and the future gets smaller, but the present stays the same.  It was only today that I realized that's a profound thought.

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A few entries back, I complained that I felt invisible because I don't get political missives, and don't get called for jury duty.  What I didn't know was that at that very moment, a jury duty notice was sitting in the van, unnoticed. 

I'd picked up the mail one day, and instead of putting it on the passenger seat to go into the house, I had put it in a box in the back (probably because there was some messy junk on the seat), and then forgot it.  Found it last week. There was a card that had to be sent in.  It didn't have a due date, just "within x days", and I had no idea how long it had been sitting there.  You could check "I'll come in and wait" or "I'll be home and come in on one hour notice".  So I checked "one hour notice".  I may have screwed up, because if the traffic is bad, it will take me more than an hour to get to the jury room in Poughkeepsie.   

So anyway, I am on jury duty this week.  I have to call in to a tape every evening to see if I'm on call for the next day.  I think maybe when my number comes up for the next day, I'll just go on in.  Easier on the nerves.  I'll take a book so the day won't be wasted. 

#34 Pete Rose

Pete Rose was in the news again today - something about income tax problems.  You know, I never fully understood the betting thing.  If he bet against his team, then he should be hung - by them.  But if he bet FOR his team, I don't understand why that's such a bad thing.  It's just putting your money where your boosterism is.  Why is there a rule against it?  It almost implies that the baseball folks are afraid somebody will trade on inside information about fixes!  Can't think of, and haven't heard of, any other reason to forbid it.  Doesn't look good. 

 

#33 Clothes Moths

The moths are driving me crazy!  I fight a constant battle trying to protect my oriental rugs, and today I found that they have eaten some bald spots into the trim on my Afghani leather coat!  Kill!!!  It wouldn't be so bad if they'd eat the wool from the end of the strand in.  They don't.  They eat only at the roots.  So the rug pile or coat collar looks fine until you run your hand over it, and then chunks of perfectly good wool tuft fall out.  Some of this wool stuff lasted uneaten a hundred years in the middle east, and may not make it six months in my house.  I don't understand. 

They must have come into the house ON something.   I can't imagine they just flew in, like ordinary moths, 'cause I can't imagine them "in the wild".  They've probably been 'domesticated' for thousands of years.  Somebody should do a study on the development of the clothes moth, like where did they come from, how did they develop such a specific diet, and how have they affected mankind.  Not to mention the popularity of cedar trees. 

What do they eat in the wild?  Sheep??  It can't be skiers - it's too cold when they're in season.   

I've tried those ridiculously expensive hormone-baited cardboard box moth traps, and they don't work at all.  I've seen moths flutter right past the box, without a glance, three months and not a single moth in the box.  I found a water-based moth spray that I'm not too afraid to use on the rugs, but I can't spray much or often because of the cat, and I'm not at all comfortable using it on clothing.  Bombing didn't seem to have any effect, either.

(I suspect they came back from a trip to Rochester, on my orange/brown coat.  That was the first item I found covered in moth cocoons, but nothing else in the same closet was affected --- yet.  That coat had spent two days and nights in a Rochester motel closet.  And they tell us to beware the bedspread....!)

I'm beginning to dream of moths. 

#32 The Olympics

Every once in a while as I flip through channels (all six that I get!) I find the Olympics, and I pause, and I get interested, and then I notice that I am getting tense.  I am actually afraid to watch!  I'm so afraid the broadcast might be live, and that something awful will happen while I'm watching.  On 9/11/01, we saw the second plane hit the tower in real time (I saw. Jay, being blind and paralyzed, heard.), and Jay's reaction was so bad.  He knew he was unable to protect me, and he was frantic that I would have to face alone whatever happened next.  I had never seen him so distressed, not even through the diagnosis and three recurrences and all that he had lost.  It was difficult to soothe him.  I think that's what finally took his strength.  The tumor didn't kill him - it was an overwhelming infection.  He had fought off similar infections before, but this time the hope/fight in him was gone.  It's unfair that he was not counted as a 9/11 victim.  

But anyway, that's not where I was headed when I started this.  I was thinking about the swimmer who "gave up his place".   I haven't been paying attention, but I gather that the great hope of the Australian(?) swim team, the guy who might break Spitz's records [8/20 update -  Ian Thorpe], somehow screwed up and just missed qualifying for the Olympic team.  So another guy who had made the team "gave up his place" so this guy could go.  I put it in quotes because when you do something you technically don't have to do, but you can't NOT do, it isn't exactly voluntary.  And what's even sadder is that I heard no reporter mention his name.  He will be forgotten.  He's officially nobody.  I feel so sorry for him. 

The reason I am sensitive to this is that (disclaimer!!! - according to my mother!!!) a similar thing happened to my cousin.  It was, ironically, the year that Marc (Mark?) Spitz won all those medals.  Spitz had qualified for the team, but had refused to go.  Something about finances, accordingto Mom.  My cousin was on the team.  Then, just before they were to get on the plane, all packed to go and everything, Spitz changed his mind, and my cousin was bumped off the team.  I have lost contact with him, and at that time all information was filtered through my mother, but I gather it was a crushing blow.  My cousin, the unknown swimmer behind Spitz.    

 

     

#31 Bloodberries

I went to Greig Farm again today, and picked some more blueberries, and something called a bloodberry - never heard of them before.  Overheard in the blueberry field, from a few rows over, mother and two small children:

"Oh Momma, I've wanted to go picking blueberries for a long long time, and here we are!  I thought it was impossible!"  A few seconds later, in a very small voice, "I thought it would be fun."

"Momma, can I eat one?"  "Yes, but not too many."  "Mmmmm.  This IS fun!"

"Momma, it's not at ALL scary in the forest.  Here I am in the forest and it's not scary AT ALL!"  [Forest???  That one brought my head up!]

Singing, "Here we are picking blueberries, picking blueberries in the forest, yummy tummy berries, all day long..."

"Momma, why do they call them blueberries?"  "Because they're berries, and they're blue."  "But Momma, if you rub the blue off, they're black." 

That little family left, pies promised, and another arrived.  A minivan with serious digestive problems (including a shot muffler) pulled into the field and disgorged what sounded like a horde of huns.  The driver may have been afraid it wouldn't restart, because the van was left running for a very long time.  Loud.  Smelly.  The kids shouted and whistled constantly as they moved down the rows - that ear-twisting shwreeee that kids do when they're just learning to whistle.  I felt my back tightening, and was about to warn the kids that ...um... whistling ...um...attracts snakes, yeah, that's it, "They feel the vibrations and think it's a bunch of mice" (sounds better than "If you keep doing that I will strangle you!"), when things got more interesting.

"Mom, can I eat one?"  "No.  Not with the skins on." [Huh?  I had to think about that a bit.]

A few seconds later, "Mom!  Billy ate one!"  "Open your mouth!  Open your mouth!  Show me your mouth!"   Yelps and some strangling sounds.  From off to the right, "What's wrong?  Did something happen?  What's wrong with Billy?"   "Oh, nothing.  He ate a berry, so Mom's making him throw it up."  [I almost choked on my mouthful of berries!]

I picked about three pounds of blueberries, and then moved on to the "bloodberry" patch (as in "What's ready today?"  "Blueberries and bloodberries."  "Bloodberries?  Those canes over there?  They look like blackberries."  "Yeah.  That's them.  Bloodberries.")  I love blackberries, so I headed for what looked like the blackberries.  Up close, they lost almost all similarity to any blackberries I'd ever seen.  They are put together the same, but they are huge!  If you make a circle with your thumb and forefinger, these things are almost that size.  Any that were any smaller weren't "fully packed" and fell apart in your hand (which meant they had to be eaten immediately, of course).  They don't taste like blackberries, either.  They taste like wine!  Sweet red wine, like sangria wine.  ("Sangria" means "blood".  I wonder if there's any connection.)  They grow on stickery canes like blackberries, but blackberry leaves are relatively simple, and light green.  These leaves are almost like grape leaves, rusty red-green, with pointed lobes, and the canes have fewer (and softer) stickers. I picked about half a pail, and then the thunder in the distance became lightening flashes over the hill, so I paid and left.

I like these bloodberries, whatever they are.  I'll go back for more in a few days.  (But I am still left with a blackberry hunger.)    

 

#30 Random Ravings

Just a few ramdom thoughts this evening:

Many people complain that we went into Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter) with no plan for the "after".  I'd take it further.  We went in with no understanding of the before - the history and culture of the area.  There may well be lots of people in Iraq who want a democratic government, but the fact is that throughout the countryside, it's still very tribal, with a might-makes-right way of doing things, not to mention a fanaticism that values idealism over life.  The strongest chieftain will always be tempted to take control, because if he can, then the thought is that he deserves it and should have it.  The most effective campaign tactic is still assassination, and we've seen plenty of that lately.  A democracy is weak by comparison.  You'd have to change the culture and the society before an elected government would have any hope of lasting (living!).  Or, you might be able to keep the elected government in power if it has a strong army supporting it.  But that's where a coup d'etat so often starts, in the army.  After an election, you'd have to restaff the entire army with soldiers loyal to the new leader (read "tribe", "religous persuasion", whatever...) before they revolt.  Easier to get a loyal army, then just cancel any further elections and dare anyone to object.  Agggh!  It just ain't gonna work, fellas.   Under those conditions, the only way to have a democracy is to kill everyone who objects.   Sorta like the way to stop a democracy from forming is to kill everyone who tries.    I wonder if any Americans in charge of this fiasco has ever read "The Ugly American".  Maybe they should reread it.  Has some good lessons we need to hear before we get uppity again.  

Maybe they should also look at Iran after the Shah was kicked out.  They had a Prime Minister and cabinet for a few months, until the religious right decided to take over, and executed thousands to cement their position.  To quote the Ayatollah Khomeini, responding to protests by human rights organizations, "Criminals should not be tried.  The trial of a criminal is against human rights.  Human rights demand that we should have  killed them in the first place when it became known that they were criminals."  Of course, who defines "known" and "criminal"?  Khomeini's bunch defined as a criminal anyone who was "Westernized", or who "Displayed leftist tendencies" - i.e. "might be a threat to us".

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Well, SilkenDrum is on the grid.  Said alter-ego got her first junk snail mail yesterday - an offer to handle credit card sales.  For a cut of the sales, of course.  Said mail has been appropriately filed.

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Funniest thing I've read lately was in a review of the movie "The Manchurian Candidate".  The movie is based on a cold-war pre-digital era novel, wherein corporations spend a lot of money and time to brainwash and elect a presidential candidate who would then do their bidding.  The reviewer said the whole plot of the movie seems sadly dated.   The corporations have already done it in real life a lot cheaper and faster simply by buying an idiot from Texas.

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I am now reading Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi.  That's where I got the Khomeini quotes above.  It's a rather fascinating memoir, covering the political and social climate during and after the revolution in Iran, mostly from the point of view, and in the context of, Mrs Nafisi and a small group of her female students, who meet secretly to continue their studies of forbidden Western literature after it becomes impossible to do so at the university. 

The women of Khomeini's Islamic Republic of Iran did not have to wear the burka (a.k.a. burqa), but they did wear a concealing robe, and a scarf over their heads.   It brought back tome how I felt when I wore a full burka for a very short time.  It was hard to see through the little embroidered window, which offered a very narrow view and was spatially disorienting, but worse was the growing feeling of detachment.  Even though everyone was looking at me, I was aware they couldn't see me, couldn't see even my eyes, and even though I could and did speak, pretty soon they stopped speaking to me.  I became both literally and figuratively invisible.  And then the view outside my little window seemed to recede, like the world was pulling away.  Things moved slower, colors became duller, sounds became muffled.  I began to feel that I could have no physical effect on the world out there.  It was an effort to make contact.  When began to feel like I could float through walls, I got scared and had to take it off.  And then I almost had a panic attack, because the world rushed in on me, pressed on me, too much all at once.

I can understand why women who have worn the burka for a long time lose the will to fight it.  It sucks every ounce of power out of you.

Men should have to wear a burka just once, one hour in the middle of town should do it.  Generate a little understanding.  (If, for religious reasons, he can't wear "female clothing", we'll create a male version.  It would look like one of those suits they wear to clean up industrial accidents, but with a cape over it and a tiny fuzzy window to peer through.)  

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Re my entry on Terrorism, along about 8/7 I think - The late night comedians and newsfolks in other parts of the country are now referring to those guys arrested in Albany "for trying to buy a shoulder-fired missile to kill a Pakistani diplomat".   Arrrrgggh!  There was no missile!  They didn't try to buy anything but a fake id card for a newly-arrived relative (suburban and college teens do stuff like that all the time)!  They didn't want to kill anyone!  Not even the feds are accusing them of any of that.  They even told the informant who set them up with the loan of tainted money that violence was not a good idea.  But the real story just isn't scary enough I guess.  I'm disgusted.  Ask me why I mostly watch the BBC news.  Every other source is enough blather to make it all suspect.  BBC is only slightly blather.

It came out that the reason the feds were interested in the Imam and wanted to search the mosque is because an address book had been found in Afghanistan with the Imam's "name and address", and the notation "The Commander" (as the feds translated it) next to the Imam's name.  Sounds bad, huh?  Until you look at it another way.  An address book was found with the address of the mosque, and the Imam was listed as the leader (an alternate translation) of the mosque.  Turns out that the word next to his name is an alternate term for "Imam", much as "Reverend" is an alternate term for "Pastor".  

Madmen are making decisions that directly affect me. 

Stop the world - I want to get off. 

 

#29 Silly test - redux

Now this is more like it!  What's weird is that I thought I used the same answers as the first time.  (But maybe the first one is more accurate - I am annoyed that the author misspelled "tendency".)

"You are the tree-loving faerie. The Earth Faerie.  Nature is your friend, all the little animals are cute and cuddly, even those that bite. You are a strong friend, people have a tendancy to go to you when they are feeling sad. You have a motherly instinct and always want to kiss away the tears."

What's your inner Faerie?
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#28 I defrosted the freezer!

Went grocery shopping on Monday, and when I came home and tried to put things in the freezer (the upright in the laundry room), nothing more would fit.  There was a good three inches of ice on the tops and bottoms of the shelves, and all kinds of things frozen into the ice, so I couldn't get them out if I wanted to.  A lot of it was like "Sam's Club" bags of  fish filets, bags of peas, Mexican thingies - stuff I simply won't ever eat, all left over from Jay.  There was so much solid frozen lumpy mass that more recent purchases were always in danger of sliding out when I opened the door, 'cause they couldn't sit flat.  Plus, I'd had to set it on "7", and it was really working hard to keep itself cold.

So at 8 PM I dragged coolers up from the basement, and started clearing the freezer out.  I'm glad I saved all those little wash-pans from the hospitals.  Since I can't get anything larger than a jellyroll tray under the drain, I usually have to put towels in the bottom and keep wringing them out, but this time there was just too much ice.  So I put the hospital basins on the shelves, and they caught most of the drips.  With the help of a hair dryer, I finished at about 2 AM.  I've got 5 kitchen-sized garbage bags of discards, and at a setting of "3", the freezer is easily staying below 10 degrees.

There's SOOOO much more room in there, so much open space.  I may have to defrost it again soon - I keep opening the door just to gaze in at how beautiful it looks.  It's the neatest, cleanest space in the house now.  If it weren't so cold, I'd move in there.

#27 Who am I?

I took a quiz.  This is what I got.  I don't necessarily agree with it - sounds more like Daughter than me, except for the "claim not to be" part. 

"You are a faerie of the flame. You tend to lose your temper at the littlest thing, hot-headed.  You're a loyal friend to those who can understand your raging moods. You're social though claim not to be. You are no one else but yourself and sometimes you try too hard to be just that. You're a passionate friend, and would do almost anything for those you care for."

What's your inner Faerie?
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#26 Weight

I would love to lose 30 or 40 pounds, but I'm beginning to wonder if I don't have some kind of psychological block that is preventing any loss.  Not like it makes me sneak yummies - I kept track of every bite I ate for about 4 solid months shortly after Jay died (I was in the habit because I'd had to track Jay's intake), when I was barely remembering (or wanting) to eat but was gaining weight anyway, and I didn't cheat because no one would see the chart but me, and I was eating between 800 and 1,200 calories every day!!!, while I was going to EMT class, not just sitting in front of the TV all day.  In theory, I should have been losing, but I was gaining, until I hit my present weight, and no matter what I do, eat or not, exercise or not, my weight wavers by no more than 1.5 pounds either way.   Back when I gained so fast after Jay died, the theory was that my body had adjusted to high stress during his illness, and although the stress was gone, my body had not yet "reset".  Well, it's been three years.  That theory no longer holds.

Here's my "psychological block" theory.  Back when I was "fully cooked" as Judge Judy would say, and under 125 lbs, I was built like Dolly Parton.  At 4'10", my measurements were 42" 22" 34".  (There's a funny story about the movers and my sewing room dress form...)  I wore baggy high-cut clothes a lot to disguise it, but still, men had a hard time taking me seriously.  They talked to my chest.  They didn't really listen to me when I talked.  They looked like they were listening, but their minds were clearly running on a different track.  They dismissed my ideas and suggestions outright.  Most distressing, they interpreted everything I said as having a sexual undercurrent, as a double-entendre.  It was all about sex, all the time.  I was very unhappy.  I think maybe I put on weight after Jay died as protection, because I didn't have him to protect me any more.  Men who made passes at me within mere weeks of Jay's death exacerbated it.

Now, I'm built more like Mae West, without the whalebone corsets, and finally, for the first time, I'm having real conversations with the male half of the world.  They look me in the eye.  They listen.  They hear what I'm actually saying. My own real words.  I'm actually getting honest attention and consideration.  And nobody's bugging me.

I'm afraid that maybe deep inside I don't want to lose weight because I'm afraid I'll lose all that.  That I'd go from being a person back to being an object.  Psychology, emotions, thoughts, brain, whatever - can have an effect on how the body works.  If my body has decided that this weight is safe, I won't be able to do much to change it without doing something drastic and dangerous.  Logic has no effect on emotions.  Logically, I know that this weight is NOT comfortable, and I know that if I lose 30 lbs or so, I won't be Dolly-like anymore.  I'll have gray hair and wrinkles, and bad knees, and I'll be tripping over my boobs.  That should be enough to protect me from testosterone, even oldfart testosterone.  I know I should be safe now, whatever my weight.

I am writing this here, now, because I have found that thinking about something doesn't cause a change in me.  Talking about it doesn't cause a change.  But the process of composing, of choosing words, of writing it, does somehow change things inside me.  Something gets released.  Like it goes out of me and into the "paper". 

(That was the function of the old Victorian journals - to clarify thinking, to capture an experience and seal it away, and finally, to moderate emotions.)

#25 Governmental Terrorism/Reportorial Terrorism

The FBI arrested two guys in the Albany area yesterday (well, actually, Thursday) for "terrorist activities".  I am very annoyed about the whole thing - the FBI's tactics, and the news reporting.

  It was clearly a setup - the FBI had some suspicions, but couldn't get anything on anyone, so apparently they set them up, just so they could search their homes and the mosque.  Today, it was disclosed that the imam's address and phone number had been in an address book found at an abandoned terrorist training camp some time ago. Hm.  Sounds even more like the FBI wanted to get something, anything, to allow a search of that address.  Is this how we do things in this country now?   

If the defense attorney can't get these guys off for entrapment he/she ought to be disbarred.  The way it apparently went down, they could have got ME if I'd been there.  

The local TV stations went apeshit, interrupting programming at random moments to repeat what they'd already said a dozen times.  The worst was when they spent like 10 minutes at a time, over and over, showing pictures of a shoulder-fired missile, showing one being fired, explaining how it can be used to shoot down passenger planes at Albany airport (Oh, my!  Tape of airplane passing low overhead... I could be ON that plane!), stir it up, shake it up, scare the people good!  

There WAS NO missile!  These guys were not trying to BUY a missile!  The money they were accused of laundering (which they may have seen as a loan) was not even the proceeds of the sale of a missile to be used against the US, or US citizens.  The (Pakistani) informer/entrapper said he had sold a (imaginary) missile to some fools who wanted to kill the Pakistani UN rep at the Pakistani consulate.  One would be tempted to think "this guy sure can brag, wonder if it's true?" and "Oh, well, internal Pakistani intrigue, nothing to do with me, these idiots could never pull it off anyway".  And why bother to report this conversation?  If you report it, the authorities would start digging into how you found out about it, and if your name has a "Q" or an "Al" in it, it really isn't worth the risk.  "If this fool wants to lend me some money at a really good rate (like, I get to keep some of it), why not?   Besides - hehe - I checked with my REAL terrorist buddies, and they never heard of this guy."  

Hm.  Does this mean we can now be arrested for not reporting a conversation we don't take seriously?  

Some FBI rep appeared at a news conference and begged the reporters not to make too much of the arrests.  "There's no danger.  There's no missile." etc.  He should have known better - you can't take a bone away from a rabid dog pack.  (Not even if you're the FBI and it's a bone you don't want anyone examining too carefully.)