War of the Worlds

There's no revolution in Belgium. Really.

What moron thought this would be a good idea?

Even the Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister from neighboring Luxembourg, was angry and let it be know at the opening of the European Union summit. "This is not the kind of issue you play around with," he said.

The RTBF's phony newscast reported that the "Flemish parliament has unilaterally declared the independence of Flanders" and that King Albert and Queen Paola had left on the first air force plane available.

I can't even begin to guess, off the top of my head, how many Heads of State have actually had to flee for their lives because of a coup just in the last 100 years. Constantine of Greece, Michael of Romania... this shit isn't funny nor is it a way to spark a debate. It's a good thing for the morons at RTBF that His Majesty can't have people flogged for this. Hell, I'd feel this way if NBC pulled this stunt saying Bush was leaving the Office and the White House on Marine One. If it isn't true, don't put it on the news!

The RTBF's phony newscast reported that the "Flemish parliament has unilaterally declared the independence of Flanders" and that King Albert and Queen Paola had left on the first air force plane available.

The broadcast showed jubilant demonstrators waving the yellow-and-black flag with the Flemish Lion outside the legislature. A small crowd of monarchists rallied outside the royal palace waving the Belgian flag.

Reporting that the royal family fled did not go down well at the palace, which said in a statement the hoax was in "bad taste."

This isn't bad taste, it's sheer stupidity.

About the only people who enjoyed the program were the separatist far-right Flemish Interest party. It wants to get rid of the king and thought it could see a flash of its future in an independent Flanders.

"I want to congratulate the RTBF for this daring show," said Flemish Interest leader Filip Dewinter.

Moron.

So This is Christmas

Senator Tim Johnson Is in Critical Condition

A Republican appointee would create a 50-50 tie, and allow the GOP to retain Senate control.

This is what the media is talking about. I'm thinking about his family. Dad's not much past that age and after two ocular strokes this year, well... let's just say I feel worse for that family than I do for the US.

~ ~ ~

Judge Upholds Detainee Rights Terror Law

"This is the first time in the history of this country that a court has held that a man may be held by our government in a place where no law applies," said Barbara Olshansky, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has handled many detainee cases.

Bush got what he wanted for Christmas.

~ ~ ~

Sudan dismisses Darfur 'threats'

However, the BBC's correspondent says that, while Mr Natsios said the talks had been productive, there is still no sign that Sudan's government will agree to a UN force.

There is a growing sense of frustration and urgency in Washington over the situation in Darfur, he says.

I'm not quite clear on what a No-Fly Zone or naval blockade would do to ease the horrendous situation in Darfur. George Clooney is in Eqypt appealing for help after trying to talk the Chinese into backing the UN plan to send in more troops - which Sudan would consider a threat to it's sovereignty and therefore is unwilling to accept. I wish him and everyone else trying to end this disaster well and hope they succeed soon. You can read more about Sudan, Darfur and the nightmare there on the BBC site: Sudan: A Nation Divided.

AmeriCares
Disasters Emergency Committee
Heifer International
Medecins Sans Frontieres
Oxfam

It's a dark and dreary Wednesday

Hat Tip to Lynn Hayes for point out Michael Lutin's article in Vanity Fair entitled Special Alert: Horoscope U.S.A. I've enjoyed Michael's writing for years and this article is an excellent example of his style and depth of knowledge.

~ ~ ~

Interesting article on Truthdig entitled Was Nixon Worse?, which gives a rough overview of the two Presidents.

This comparison of war casualties in Vietnam and Iraq has one flaw: The war in Iraq is not over. Bush says he has no intention of ending it promptly. He wants U.S. forces to remain until “the terrorists” are “defeated.”

~ ~ ~


The Nightmare Scenario will not leave you with that warm holiday feeling.

Moscow views the new U.S. drive for military superiority and nuclear war-fighting capability in the context of a geopolitical full-court press against Russia, aimed at reducing her influence in the post-Soviet space and attaining maximum control of hydrocarbon resources in the area. Recent U.S. interest in possible deployment of ballistic missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic is seen by Moscow as proof that NATO’s eastward expansion is motivated, among other things, by the American determination to undercut the Russian strategic deterrent. The Bush Doctrine of “democracy promotion” by means of fostering regime change in countries considered adversarial has exacerbated the sense of heightened insecurity in the Kremlin: The Putin regime considers itself one of the targets of this policy.

By the way, did you see Israel actually admitted it has nuclear weapons? And, hmm... seems the Saudi Ambassador has left DC. Georgie's got more problems than you can shake a stick at.

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No, really, it's not.

Yeah, it really is!

I swear I'm bi-polar.

I love the season, the lights, the decorations, the baking, the music - I loathe the shopping, gift receiving, make-nice-to-relatives-I-don't-like parts.

I'm half Scrooge, half Martha Stewart this time of year. Thank the beybey Jebus for rum punch and the internet for shopping ~ or am I'm supposed to thank Al Gore for the internet? Well, thanks to whomever came up with online shopping. You deserve a Nobel for that. If I have to step foot into a store between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day people will die. Slowly, painful, damning commercialism, Santa Claus and me to Hell in the process.

Not that I would care. Hell, I'd probably love every minute of it.

My sister has organized a cookie baking soirée for Saturday night. My contribution to this cookie extravaganza will be my peanut butter cookies and cherry and white chocolate chip cookies (see below). How all six of us, the draftee's, are going to do this in a two oven kitchen is beyond me - we're usually more spread out. As long as there is rum punch and my Kitchen Aide I really won't care too much.

The Italian tradition of baking a gadzillion cookies each December, just to give them away in anticipation of receiving the exact same cookies from someone else, was new to me in the early 90's after Dad had remarried. Bizarre, even. I love to cook so I was willing to join in even though this whole process didn't make a lot of sense to me. If you are going to get the same type of cookies back, why not just keep the one's you've baked? That is not the point, however.

The difference between the Anglo-Irish families and Italian families is a lot like the differences between cats and dogs. Cats are aloof, cold, independent creatures. Dogs are affectionate, familial, pack creatures. The Italian stepfamily, also known as La Familia, is an extremely large pack of friendly dogs. Being one of the Cat People I found this pack of dogs to be very strange in the beginning. But there are cats who actually like dogs, who will elect to spend some of their time in the pack, though usually only on the fringes, with the most cat-like dogs available. That's me. La Familia, being of the accepting dog nature, let me do this. I weave my way in and out of Familia gatherings, sticking to the fringes, only to disappear from time to time. There's only so much affection and attention a cat can take, afterall.

So this Saturday night will be one of the nights I choose to participate. Cookie baking with my sister, Mom, one sister-in-law (who is Irish and was just as floored by this family as I was) and three of my nieces. The numbers are dwindling each year. In the past there were several kitchens around Fairfield county baking like crazy and the people in them telephoning each other with comments and questions on recipes. I think the phone rang more often than the timers went off. It also used to take all night but now it's just around six hours. In between mixing ingredients and getting trays in and out of the ovens we decorate the house to the sounds of Christmas music. Dad, being a Cat Person as well as a Scrooge, hides on the porch watching CNN and reading and hollering every hour or so "aren't you done yet?"

"We'll be done when we're done, you grumpy old man", I'll bark at him.

Mom will enquire if he's tired, if we're too loud, if he needs anything and generally just fuss about him like he's Santa Claus or the beybey Jebus. She'll tell us to quiet down, hurry up, then ask Dad, again, if he's okay, does he need anything... not that he answered her the first time. She'll make him some tea and bring him some cookies and he'll complain about how long this stupid process is taking and I'll tell him to shut his gob and eat his damn cookies.

And Dad will smile and eat his damn cookies and complain to no one in particular what bratty kid he's got. Mom will respond, "Well, your Mother always said she's just like you."

La famiglia è il mondo intero.

Cherry and white chocolate chip cookies:

For this recipe you will need a very sturdy hand mixer or a Kitchen Aide.

The ingredients are:

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
2 eggs
1 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups of flour, well sifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 package of white chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of dried cherries
1 cup of cashews, coarsely chopped

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line up your baking trays and line them with Silpats if you have them.

In a large bowl, place the butter, both sugars, eggs and vanilla. Cream the ingredients together using either a hand mixer or a Kitchen-Aide at a medium speed for several minutes. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking soda and mix them together well. Slowly add the add flour mixture to butter mixture until both are well combined. Next, stir in white chocolate chips, the dried cherries and the cashews. Spoon a tablespoon of cookie dough into your hands and roll into a ball. You should get 16 small balls on each baking tray. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are a light, golden brown. Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack quickly. This recipe should make about 4 dozen cookies.

Favorite Things

School shuns tech, teaches fountain pen.

How cool is that?

Okay... I have several fountain pens so of course I think it's cool. They sit upright in a old Waterford cream pitcher next to my computer at home.

"The pens improve the quality of work because they force the children to take care, and better work improves self-esteem," principal Bryan Lewis said. "Proper handwriting is as relevant today as it ever has been."

"I don't see fountain pens as old-fashioned or outmoded. Modern fountain pens are beautiful to use; it's not like in the old days of broken nibs and smudging," Lewis said. "We have a particular writing style and we have developed it very carefully and found a way that allows left- and right-handed people to write without smudging."

I'll preen a tad and admit I've always been complimented on my handwriting ~ it's even better when I use one of my fountain pens. I have one Montblanc (my parents picked it up for me in Europe a couple of years ago) and the rest are Waterman's. The pens I've bought for myself I have found at eBay.

Man I feel sorry for whomever has to clean up after me when I'm dead. I've got the oddest assortment of stuff in my life: fountain pens, mis-matched Waterford crystal, colored glass collection, gemstones, Christmas ornaments, Spode, Lladro, Wedgewood, Royal Doulton (no hand-painted periwinkles however), tons of needlepoint and cross stich, quilts, hand-made pillows, lace work, and several lambs worth of yarn... and this is after two tag sales and giving stuff to family!

Do you collect anything? Do you have too much stuff in your life?

~ ~ ~

Forgot to add that I won US$24 in poker on Saturday night.

Oh, and no one died from eating the cookies.

Peanut Butter Cookies

For YaYa poker night my sister has asked me to bring my infamous heart attack on a plate cookies. I'm cheating and uploading my recipe (and story) from another site I posted it to a while back.

This recipe originally came to me from my maternal grandmother. Back in the day, she mixed this by hand, with a wooden spoon, in the large yellow bowl I inherited from her. The first time I made the recipe by myself I marveled at upper arm strength of that little lady. I couldn't make the dough budge! I needed a electric handmixer, which burned out by the time I got the dough together. As a result, I didn't make these cookies very often. Having to buy a new handmixer everytime I made these cookies made them too expensive.

Three years ago my parents gave me a Kitchen-Aide standmixer for Christmas. I was floored! I couldn't believe they would get me such a cool, and expensive, gift. The first thing I made in that mixer were these cookies. My stepfamily had never had them because they were just too expensive to make. Everyone loved them and they've become a staple of our Christmas cookie baking tradition.

Ingredients:

2 cups shortening
2 cups white sugar
2 cups brown sugar
4 eggs, well beaten
1 jar of peanut butter, 18 ounces **
5 cups flour, well sifted
4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon of salt
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

** Find the cheapest peanut butter you can. Generic works well. The brand name peanut butters on the market do not give you enough peanut butter flavor, in my opinion. Organic peanut butters work well, if you don't mind mixing the peanut butter together first. Don't skimp on the vanilla extract. If you can afford it, get the best extract you can find.

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. Line up your baking sheets and, if you have Silpats, line your baking sheets with them. With the amount of fat and oil in this recipe, the cookies don't usually stick to the baking sheets, but using Silpat just makes clean up easier.

In a small bowl, crack your four eggs. Beat them well and then set them aside. In the largest bowl you have (five quarts is just big enough for this recipe) put in the shortening, sugar, peanut butter, extract and then add the eggs. Mix these ingredients together until creamy smooth. In a sifter, place the flour, baking soda and salt; slowly sift in the dry ingredients to the creamy mixture. Sift in about a cup at a time, mixing the dry into the creamy between cups. By the time you get the last cup of dry ingredients into the bowl, you will have either a sore arm or a burned out mixer.

I don't usually chill the dough before I begin baking. The choice is yours. I use a measured tablespoon to place the dough on the baking sheets. They are half round and I then use a fork to flatten them out, making the traditional cross-hatch pattern on the dough. I can get 16 cookies on a baking sheet this way. The entire recipe makes roughly 90 cookies. I say roughly because we eat the raw dough as we go, so I don't know, exactly, how many cookies this recipe is supposed to make. Bake the cookies for 12 to 15 minutes and place on a rack to cool.

If you have a heart condition and eat these cookies, I will not be held responsible.

Art Appreciation Friday

For Art Appreciation Friday I thought I'd share some of my favorite works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.



St. Francis in Ecstasy




The Musicians




Bacchus




The Cardsharps

~ ~ ~

Another YaYa Poker Night tomorrow. Looks like we're only going to have five people this time.

Back to the Moon

I'm not sure how I feel about the plan NASA has to take us back to the Moon by 2020. I'm on the fence because both arguments have merit. I want human beings to go back to exploring the universe in a more concentrated, intensive, way and I'm not sure having a Lunar base will aid the investigation of the cosmos. More than likely it will get bogged down in politics slowing the process of discovery.

Just an FYI: Space Shuttle Launch Visible Across Eastern US Thursday.

It's one of those days

Puking rain outside.

My computer is toast. Burned toast.

I'm working on a slower, inferior machine and I hate it. HATE IT!

All my bookmarks are gone and I'm trying to remember passwords and shit. Damn it, I'm 41 years old, I need technology to remember shit! It must work at all times or I am SCREWED!

sigh

Like I said, it's one of those days.

But I'm alive and well and sorta sane; I'm inside out of the rain; I can still feed my addictions to both coffee and the internet.

It ain't all bad.

I guess.

Whether it's online or in the real world, I do seem to attract some interesting "characters" into my life.

~ ~ ~

Tomorrow is World AIDS Day.


~ ~ ~

Afghan Autopsy

After a month traveling around Afghanistan this autumn, I was forced to a grim conclusion: This project is lost, and nothing very good will likely replace it. The reasons for the international community’s failure here are several. First, there are the immediate blunders of the occupiers who, despite extensive European involvement, are led by the Americans. Next are deeper historical dynamics dating back to the U.S. role in the anti-Soviet jihad. And finally there are much older cultural, political and economic facts about Afghanistan that have long made this a wild, lawless place, impervious to conquest and even resistant to the modernizing efforts of its urban middle classes.

Learning to Live with the Ayatollahs

How in the world did George W. Bush manage to turn Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the “Supreme Leader” of “Axis of Evil” Iran, into a prophet of peace in the Middle East?

Good question Mr. Scheer.

So it is that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani was so desperate in his pleas to the ayatollah, admitting that “We are in dire need of Iran’s help in establishing security and stability in Iraq.”

Of course he is, because six years of Bush’s foreign policy has had the presumably unintended consequences of elevating radicals and theocrats into positions of dominance throughout the region, from Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and even, this past week, to the oil emirate Bahrain, where Shiite and Sunni radical Islamists split elections in an upset.

You may have already seen this

I'm usually a day late and dollar short...

Serpentes on a Shippe (spoylerez)


I think I'm in love.

Lexeme

Howard Kurtz says there's a war on civil war: The C-Word

I'm still working on the part where NBC gets more power if the conflict is viewed as a civil war. Because the network would be seen as galvanizing support for a pullout? All because of the use of the C-word? Is American support for the war so shaky that a single network's phraseology can cause that support to crumble?

Let's hope so. I get Mr. Kurtz's point, but I'm hoping that the media's use of the term civil war will wake up American's to the realization that we do not belong there.

I continue to believe that the day-to-day coverage of the carnage in Iraq is more important in terms of swaying public opinion than the label that the MSM chooses to slap on the conflict. Did most people think this wasn't a civil war before Lauer et al made the switch? I don't think so.

I do. Words matter. They shape our conscious and unconscious decisions on how we live. The media has been denying us the truth since January 2002 and that must end. The first step is to say, categorically, that Iraq is in a state of civil war. Next, help that general public recognize that we caused this to happen. Then remind them they have the power to change the direction.

Cat Eyes

Yesterday I wandered over to Homo Escapeons and that cat, above, assaulted me. Scared the crap outta me, it did! I asked if that animal was a resident of chez Escapeons but it seems that Madame Escapeons is allergic to the saliva produced by animalia chordata mammalia carnivora felidae felis silvestris and so, no, that freak of nature is not a resident of their home.

In case you are not aware of it I am owned by three cabana boys... I mean cats. A Bombay named Raven, a Russian Blue named Pewter and a psychopath named Fidgit. None of my lads are pure breeds, though I think I can get papers on Fidgit certifying him as completely insane.

On occassion, being an entity of pure evil, I will... fuck with my cats. No, NO! not that. Eewww, gross. No, I mean fuck with their tiny cat brains. I'll hang large feather cat toys just out of their reach and watch them go crazy trying to get to it. Raven usually just cowers in fear of anything new and waits for the other two braver souls to figure out what the new things are that entered their world. I'll make strange noises that send them diving for cover under furniture and keep doing it until they come out to see what I'm doing. I've got a Furby that I drag out every once in a while just to torture them. I love watching them run from it, then circle it, hunt it down and then try to kill it. Well, not Raven. He hurls himself under the couch or bed and stays there until the offending beast disappears again.

I torture the Lads because it's fun. I love watching their expressions, watching them figure out how to conquer the lastest obstacles their slave (that would be me) has placed in their path. So seeing that beast on HE's blog made me wonder just what the hell someone did to that cat to make it react that way. All of the crazy things I've done to the Lads has never produced that expression!

Obviously someone is much better at cat torture than I am. I am a lowly grasshopper.

Of course, if I were a grasshopper, Fidget would have eaten me by now.

I also noticed that the cat is a Havana Brown, though probably not a purebred Havana as it lacks the distinct Siamese features. Raven isn't a purebred Bombay for the same reason - lack of Siamese features that distinquish his breed. Also missing is the "chattiness" that Siamese are known for - Raven is a very quiet Lad. Of course with Fidgit around he couldn't get a word in edgewise if he tried. Fidgit is a "dsh", domestic shorthair, tiger cat muttly who never STFU.

I would like to have a Havana Brown, and a Chartreux, cat someday, but not a pure breed. Pure breeds tend to have a lot of physical and pyschological issues that I just don't want to deal with. Additionally, with all the animals in shelters needing homes, I just can't justify getting a pet any other way. If I'm going to spend US$1,000 on a pet, I'd rather make a donation to the animal shelter than pay a breeder.

Not that I have any intention of spending that kind of money on a pet. I'm not sane but I'm not that crazy! But it does remind me that I need to make a donation to the local shelters again. I will stop at a Petsmart store near my office and pick up a gift card so they can use to it buy supplies. I should probably do that everytime I pick up some new toy to torture the Lads with. Spread the joy, as it were.

Civil War

It's about damn time.

NBC to use 'civil war' to describe Iraq

NBC News said Monday that its reporters and anchors would begin referring to the ongoing sectarian strife in Iraq as a "civil war," a move that reflects the news media's use of increasingly stark language to characterize the escalating violence gripping the country.

NBC's decision, which came after a particularly deadly series of retaliatory attacks in Baghdad, makes it the first television network to officially adopt the term "civil war," a description the Bush administration has resisted.

I should give NBC some credit for doing this, for growing a pair, but I'm not going to. Iraq has been in a state of civil war since 2004 and the electronic media should have been stating that since then. As the article states, the NY Times has been calling the situation in Iraq a civil war for a month now, but it's print media and, even though it's the NYT, no one pay attention. Using the words "civil war" in electronic media will make people pay attention.

If the media starts stating the obvious, this civil war is our fault, then I'll give them the credit they deserve.

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, one of those consulted in NBC's discussions, told Lauer on Monday that he had considered the situation in Iraq a "low-grade conflict" civil war for the last 18 months.

"Now it's on the verge of spinning out of control," said McCaffrey, an NBC News analyst.

It's spun out of control General. But at least now Americans can make that determination for themselves.

Iraq violence is al-Qaida plot

President Bush said Tuesday that an al-Qaida plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge in Iraq is to blame for escalating bloodshed, refusing to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war.

I don't doubt for a second that terrorist organizations are exploiting the situation to further their own ends; however, if weren't for the illegal invasion of Iraq, they wouldn't have this opportunity. As usual, Bush doesn't get it.

Jordan's King Abdullah, who is hosting al-Maliki's meeting with Bush, has warned that unless bold steps are taken urgently, the new year could dawn with three civil wars in the Mideast — with one in Iraq added to those in Lebanon and between the Palestinians and Israelis.

I applaud HM King Abdullah for trying to end this nightmare by meeting with both Mr. al-Maliki and Mr. Bush - but it's useless. Normally I think all diplomatic avenues need to be explored but this is just pointless. HM is not dealing with someone who exists in the real world and unless Mr. Bush is forced to deal with reality, or we remove him from office, the devastation will continue to escalate until the entire region from Turkey to Indonesia is at war. Radical Islam and George W. Bush are on a collision course of total annihilation - there is no middle ground to be found. The Israeli's are exploiting the situation in Gaza, the various terrorist organizations are exploiting the situation wherever they are and this is only going to get worse.

Removing the Bush administration is only one small step in ending what will most likely be another decade of war. But it is a step that must be taken. We caused this unholy mess into being; it's up to us to end it.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

If you are from or live in the US.

If not ~ pfft! And stay away from the stuffing!

I'm outta here until Monday. WoOt! Don't kill each other in the Malls on Black Friday.

Holiday.net - Thanksgiving

The First Thanksgiving

Plimoth Plantation (really have to go there some year)

The Wiki Word on Thanksgiving and The National Day of Mourning

All Recipes just in case you haven't started planning Thursday's dinner.

Bits and pieces

I love this story!

Kansas woman, 95, prepares for final exams:

On Friday, the last day before fall break, her family and fellow classmates threw her an impromptu birthday party during her Biblical Studies class. Her son, Alan Ochs, flew in from Jetmore for the occasion. Her granddaughter, Alexandra Ochs, didn't have to travel as far — she's in the same class as her grandmother.

~ ~ ~

Deja Vu isn't just a movie starring Denzel Washington. White House Brushes Off CIA Report on Iran

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," according to the article.

Read also: White House ‘Stovepiping’ Iran Intelligence.

Israeli forces launch raids in Gaza

"I emphasize that our hand is outstretched in peace, but anybody who rejects it ... should know that ... we will do all we can to sever the hand which uses terror," Peretz said in a speech carried by Israeli radio.

"We have no intention of making concessions to anybody, we have no intention of being dragged in to reoccupying Gaza, but we have every intention of protecting our citizens."

Six Muslim Imams removed from U.S. airliner

The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, Calif., he said.

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

“I never felt bad in my life like that,” he said. “I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It’s terrible.”

Five years of being terrorized by our own government leads to this. We're afraid of six men praying. So it isn't surprising to read that U.S. is most unfriendly country to visitors.

Gore Vidal: Living Through History, an interview with Robert Scheer.

Fantastic interview. There are some great lines here:

I’m now a creationist. Because the distance from George Washington to George W. Bush makes a monkey out of Darwin.

There are a few crazies who want to cheer the flag and this yappy little terrier as though he were a real president—well he’s not a real president. He’s a thing, a chimera who was put together by the supreme court, first time around, and reelected by Diebold, Sequoia and some other interested parties. Everybody knows he isn’t there. Or what is there isn’t for us—it’s not our president. We do have a real, uh, a shadow president in vice president Cheney, whose wife is a famous novelist given to tales of unnatural love...But Lynne, more power to you. She’s my kind of novelist.

And sobering:

So this election, coming up, although it’s a mere off-year, this is the on year election of all our lives. And if we don’t turn it around the right way, we’re not going to have representative government. We’re not going to have the people’s voice ever again expressed quadrennially in the presidential election, because they can falsify it each time now. So now’s the time to use a new Congress, hoping we get one, to tidy up.

~ ~ ~

Where do you stand on God:

This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

Warning: this is seven pages long. Well worth reading, however.

Restoration of sanity and other stuff

O.J. Simpson book, TV special canceled.

~ ~ ~


When religion loses its credibility

The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you're powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it's likely to be.

~ ~ ~

Orgasm for Peace.

I'm liking this.

California couple calls for orgasm for peace.

"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."

Spread the word: Global Orgasm.

Friday Night Poker

I made it home sober. With shoes.

Yeah, it was that boring.

I had two slices of pizza, one Cosmo, a canoli, lost US$16, and was back home and in bed before midnight.

Sweet beybey jesu, Bingo night at St. MaryTheresaHolyNamewhatever would have been more exciting.

The most interesting conversation of the night? What television shows we like. And even that moronic topic tappered off into nothingness after a minute or two.

We're skipping December.

No one will either notice or care.

For the rest of the weekend I just unplugged. I got laundry and the dreaded grocery shopping done and then read for the rest of Saturday (Queen Emma And The Vikings: A History of Power, Love, And Greed In Eleventh-Century England and The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, if you are curious). On Sunday I crocheted while listening to "American Experience" on PBS - about the Kennedy family. Like I needed to learn anything else about the most dysfunctional family in the United States.

I remembered the Leonid showers driving into work this morning.

Maybe I shouldn't bitch about how boring poker was considering just how mindblowingly boring the rest of my life is.

I ignored the talking heads because they just make me want to kill them all slowly and painfully with long pointy sticks and rabid screaching wombats.

I ignored the rest of broadcast/cable televsion because, seriously? there is nothing on.

So it wasn't until today I saw TomKat had gotten hitched.

'Never-ending kiss' caps TomKat wedding.

I'm still hurling.

Issues:

1) Katie... dear... HE IS A FUCKING FREAK! Hello, Scientology? Haven't you had enough clues NOT TO MARRY THIS GUY?

After exchanging vows before a Scientology minister Saturday, Cruise and Holmes engaged in a "never-ending kiss," according to Giorgio Armani, who attended the wedding outside Rome and designed the outfits of the bride, the groom and their baby, Suri.

2 years. Tops.

2) Women who have BRED, given BIRTH!, should not wear white to their goddamn wedding.

EVER!

It should be so freakin' obvious that you wouldn't need a law... but...

New Law: No woman gets to wear white unless she can PROVE she is a VIRGIN!

Having the child you gave birth to attend said wedding is another clue you shouldn't be WEARING WHITE!

Look, the conservative whack jobs in this country want to codify what marriage is, who can and cannot get married - I say fine, bring it on! Let's start at the beginning, shall we? If you are too stupid not to know that wearing white means you are a VIRGIN... maybe you shouldn't be allowed to get married at all.

AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

I hate weddings.

Everything comes before the whole reason to get married.

3) The only thing worth two months salary... DeBeer's stupid commercial which flashes a gignormous rock on the screen with the above voice over.

The only thing worth two months salary is a DOWN PAYMENT ON A HOUSE!

4) Wedding dresses starting at US$1,000. There isn't US$100 worth of material in the damn things, which you will only wear once regardless of how many times you get married (and yeah, each time the dumb dodo's will wear white). I could almost understand if you wore the damn dress several times, but once? A grand and a whole lot more on a dress you will never, ever wear again?

5) The never-ending angst over the band, the food, the colors (and what the fuck is this about? The bride has to pick her colors? Is it a wedding or a fucking joust?), who sits where, limos, first dance, alcohol... and on and on and on. I've been a bridesmaid twice, maid of honor once. That those three women are still alive is a fuckin' miracle. I deserve to be Sainted because I am responsible for THREE MIRACLES!

By the way, the longest any of those three marriges lasted? 3 years. Uh huh. All three of them put their parents into hock (their parents own stupid fault). All three got engagement rocks the size of Gibralter because the first one (or, in once case, THREE) selected rings weren't good enough for their highnesses - all three of which got pawned before the ink was dry on the divorce papers. One of these first-class broads even got alimony for reasons I will never, ever, understand except that the groom was such a fucking moron I didn't even feel bad for him.

Thankfully, none of these people spawned before or after the intial wedding. They have all since remarried (wearing white), spawned, divorced, spawned, remarried (yup, in white), spawned some more. One of them has been married five times in the last twenty years. Wore white each time.

I've got at least ten pages of ranting about brides maid/maid of honor dresses that has all been written before. But what is with this new trend of the Mother of the Bride dressing up like she's the one getting married?

Don't even get me started on the goddamn tiaras.

And why, in this day and age, do we still have Bridal Showers? Just so we can buy sleazy underwear that we would never be caught dead in to give to someone else who will probably never wear it? This makes sense?

sigh

Every single wedding I have ever been a part of - family, guest, attendant - the same thing is said at the rehearsal ever single time:

We have to write our vows

Let's see... it's T -12 and counting to the ceremony and now you assholes are thinking of this? Shouldn't you two have been thinking about what marriage means before the rehearsal?

We have to write our vows

But if you have two vaginas or two penises... well that's just wrong! Wrong I say! The Bible says... something about that! Wrong, wrong, wrong and you're going to Hell.

Yeah, whatever.

Marriage, naturally, leads to divorce:

The McCartney meltdown has lessons for all marriages

No-fault divorce will never happen, though, until society gets over its undue veneration of marriage. Commercialised at the entry stage (all those gift-wrapped electric woks) and at the exit (all those lawyers' fees), it is invested with fake dreams. While many marriages are long and happy, some are little more than a charade in which the irreligious make promises they will not keep to someone else's god. Even those who marry in civil ceremonies are bound by the same legal strictures.

In France, where the 'pacte civil de solidarité' gives tax and immigration breaks to heterosexual and same-sex couples alike, marriage is plummeting. The option of civil partnerships allowing for simple, non-adversarial dissolution must be better for men, women and children than a system that offers nothing between the insecurity of informal bonds and a contract still prone to end in feuding.

I knew I loved France for a reason.



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Update:

Saw this headline on top of google news:

TomKat wedding 'a stunt':

The cynics among us may not be surprised, but there are reports this morning the "wedding of the year" was a stunt.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have admitted they were actually married four days before their Rome extravaganza, staging a big show to promote the Church of Scientology.

It's been reported a Scientologist advisor was placed at every table at the reception to answer questions.

Roman clergy say the sham is insulting and Bracciano's mayor is considering taking back the honorary citizenship she offered after the couple refused to wave to well-wishers.

I'm all for TomKat being the next Secretary of State. All in favor, say Aye!


How's about just Ambassador to Italy?

The Sun! The Sun!

The Sun is actually shining! Holy sunblock Batman!

I've read on a few blogs that people are checking their stats and making some interesting discoveries. I use Mapstats and if you scroll down a bit you will see a little button labeled just that. This site tells me that people show up here and read stuff. Cool! Love that! That knowledge is full of cheesy goodness!

It also tells me what search phrases bring people here.

cala+lilly 23%
laura elizabeth 6%
cat+and+woman 4%
cala+lilly+pictures 4%
cala+lily 2%

The search phrase, cala lilly, has been recurrent for several months and so, being bored at work, I decided to google cala lilly to see how long it took me to come up with the url to my own blogspot.

When I got to page 19 I stopped bothering to search for my own blogspot because I started wondering why people would keep searching cala lilly for so many pages and end up at my little slice of blogosphere.

I'm easily distracted by everything.

Anyway, anyone searching for cala lilly, calla lilly, cala lily, would you care to explain this to me?

The search wasn't entirely fruitless: I learned that I mis-spell calla lilly, cala lilly, cala lily - it's calla lily.

Other searches that have led people to my blog are:

"remove+your+thong"

"saints that have the name laura"

"lads bra drink panties OR knickers OR thong"

"Rumsfeld and Joseph Mengele"

"who's the Mighty woman with a torch"

"woman%3B+cat"

"i want to marry jesse l martin"

Sorry, deary, but if I ever get off my lazy ass and onto Metro North I'm stalking that sexy man all over Manhattan until he marries me just to get some peace and quiet because, as we all know, restraining orders don't work. Don't tell him, mkay? Just our little secret. Whoever you are. And if you're Jesse, email me!

There are no queries for "reasons to be on prozac", "reasons to be on lithium", "10 warning signs of insanity", or the like, which I find slightly amazing.

Something else Mapstats tells me is that the second largest country of origin of my readers is Unknown. I've tried googling Unknown, but I'm not coming up with anything. I pride myself on my geographical prowess so not knowing where Unknown is, is really starting to bother me. If anyone has a link to Unknown, please feel free to leave it for me in the comments section. Thank you.

Other bits of trivia provided by Mapstats:

Firefox 1 is the browser of choice for 56% of you, and Firefox 2 is used by 2%. You rock!

82% of my readers are from the United States, Unknown makes up 9%, Canada is next at 3%, the UK is at 2% and all the rest are from: Denmark, Germany, Austalia, Puerto Rico, Ireland, UAE, New Zealand, Morocco, Russian Federation, Portugal, Italy, Netherlands, India, Brazil and Malaysia.

No, I will not give you a refund on the two minutes of your life I've just wasted.

Art Appreciation Friday

Today's art appreciation is brought to you by the letter S ~ Paul Signac and Georges-Pierre Seurat.

First up, the work of M. Signac ~ The Dining Room




And now, for M. Seurat ~ Gray Weather




You can read more about Pointillism, the art form shown above, at wiki.

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For a little bee named Boo ~



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Two armed thugs tried to rob a line of people waiting to buy the new Playstation 3 gaming console early Friday and shot one who refused to give up the money, authorities said.

Merry Freakin' Christmas.

The two confronted 15 to 20 people who were in line outside a Wal-Mart store shortly after 3 a.m. and demanded money, said Lt. J. Paul Vance, a spokesman for the state police. The new Sony consoles are selling for around $500 to $600.

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Hunger still widespread:

That leaves less money for groceries, and the end result is that 194,000 people in Oregon and Clark County, Wash., are eating from an emergency food box each month. That statistic becomes even more heartbreaking when you consider that 72,000 of those food recipients are children.