I'm also watching Gamera vs. Zigra, mistied, multi-tasking if you will. Crappy movies are so much more entertaining that way.

The back door is open and the weather is so liveable; I am running about the house barefoot in shirt sleeves. The cats are playing outside and I just finished watering my plants, which are weathering over on the back porch.

Reading Tom Cahill, "How the Irish Saved Civilization". It's entrancing and just as Cahill says, it fills a void in history; between Rome and the Renaissance; how civilization survived. Also, I anticipate it must speak to a great love of books. We shall see.

Swiped this from a friend.



Anger Management

When you occasionally have a really bad day and you just need to take it out on someone, don't take it out on someone you know, take it out on someone you don't know.

I was sitting at my desk when I remembered a phone call I had forgotten to make. I found the number and dialed it.
A man answered, saying, "Hello."
I politely said, "This is Fred Hanifin. Could I please speak with Robin Carter?" Suddenly, the phone was slammed down on me.

I couldn't believe that anyone could be so rude. I tracked down Robin's correct number and called her. I had transposed the last two digits of her phone number. After hanging up with her, I decided to call the 'wrong' number again. When the same guy answered the phone, I yelled, "You're an a**hole!" and hung up.

I wrote his number down with the word 'a**hole' next to it, and put it in my desk drawer. Every couple of weeks, when I was paying bills or had a really bad day, I'd call him up and yell, "You're an a**hole!" It always cheered me up.

When Caller ID came to our area, I thought my therapeutic 'a**hole' calling would have to stop. So, I called his number and said, "Hi, this is John Smith from the Telephone Company. I'm just calling to see if you're familiar with the Caller ID program?"
He yelled, "NO!"and slammed the phone down.
I quickly called him back and said, "That's because you're an a**hole!"

One day I was at the store, getting ready to pull into parking spot. Some guy in a black BMW cut me off and pulled into the spot I had patiently waited for. I hit the horn and yelled that I had been waiting for the spot. The idiot ignored me. I noticed a "For Sale" sign in his car window ...so, I wrote down his number.

A couple of days later, right after calling the first a**hole, (I had his number on speed dial), I thought I had better call the BMW a**hole, too.
I said, "Is this the man with the black BMW for sale?"
"Yes, it is."
"Can you tell me where I can see it?"
"Yes, I live at 1802 West 34th Street. It's a yellow house, and the car's parked right out in front."
"What's your name?" I asked.
"My name is Don Hansen," he said.
"When's a good time to catch you, Don?"
"I'm home every evening after five."
"Listen, Don, can I tell you something?"
"Yes?"
"Don, you're an a**hole."
Then I hung up, and added his number to my speed dial, too.

Now, when I had a problem, I had two a**holes to call. But after several months of calling them, it wasn't as enjoyable as it used to be. So, I came up with an idea.
I called A**hole #1 "Hello." "You're an a**hole!" (But I didn't hang up.)
"Are you still there?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said.
"Stop calling me," he screamed.
"Make me," I said.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"My name is Don Hansen."
"Yeah? Where do you live?"
"A**hole, I live at 1802 West 34th Street, a yellow house, with my black Beamer parked in front."
He said, "I'm coming over right now, Don. And you had better start saying your prayers."
I said, "Yeah, like I'm really scared, a**hole."

Then I called A**hole #2.
Hello?" he said.
"Hello, a**hole," I said! .He yelled, "If I ever find out who you are?"
"You'll what?" I said.
"I'll kick your a**," he exclaimed.
I answered, "Well, a**hole, here's your chance. I'm coming over right now.

Then I hung up and immediately called the police, saying that I lived at 1802 West 34th Street and that I was on my way over there to kill my gay lover. Then I called Channel 13 News about the gang war going down on West 34th Street. I quickly got into my car and headed over to 34th Street. There I saw two a**holes beating the crap out of each other in front of six squad cars, a police helicopter, and news crew.

NOW, I feel so much better.

I really cannot get excited about the Black Crowes. It must be a southern thing.

Well, been a bit shy lately. Although it doesn't reflect in the blog, it's been a thought provoking few days. Everything seems spiritual and supercharged. I don't know why, but I will attribute it to one of the GOOD things about the holiday season, and about getting new music.

I am enjoying the new KGSR Broadcasts Volume 11. Right now, my favorites are: Honey and the Moon by Joseph Arthur, How Good it Can Get by the Wallflowers, and Alexi Murdoch's Orange Sky. The Wallflowers tune had me literally cocooned, it did not leave my head for the last three days. Finally, my skull quieted down. Pretty tune. Others will follow, I am sure.

The President and First Lady lit the giant Xmas tree tonight, with a swell set by rocker Brian Setzer and his band.

Well, actually it was Martin Sheen and Stockard Channing. (MY POTUS AND FLOTUS). And it was Rockefeller Center and not the White House. But it almost felt like we had leadership for a moment.

We'll warm up the globe just as much as we want.
If you don't like it, go live in Vermont.
Or find a new planet, like Venus or Mars.
Earth is for us and our 20-ton cars.
We're all Republicans,
All Republicans,
We're all Republicans now.

We're all Republicans now We've all come around somehow We turned away From French Chardonnay We're all Republicans now Cut taxes and deregulate And down with the welfare state. We're building new nations in the Mideast We stand for democracy, progress and peace, And we've got a piece, a piece of Iraq Thanks to a thousand shares of Halliburton stock We're all Republicans, All Republicans, We're all Republicans now!

http://search.publicradio.org/phc/query.html?col=mpr&qc=mpr&qp=site%3Awww.prairiehome.org&qt=%22we%27re+all+republicans+now%22

...one of Keillor's "We're all Republicans now" segments. It's f'ing hilarious.

on edit: This is streaming audio. Only click if you have Realplayer installed:

http://www.prairiehome.org/play/audio_segment.php?media=/030927/030927_phc&start=00:01:12:00.0&end=00:01:19:06.0

The guy who wrote this is brilliant and doesn't have a blog yet. I do, and I'm too tired to write. boom. this is excellent


Here's the screwed up GOP attack mode...LONG but worth it"
Edited on Sun Nov-30-03 10:27 PM by [pending approval]

This is from The Weekly Standard....I'll put the link to the original article at the bottom. It's the lamest defense of Clinton hating and attack on Bush hating ever printed. Of course, it will be the "intellectual" basis for the pure morons like Handingmylittlemanhoodity and O'Really to quote like it's respectable.

In essence, this clown admits that he and his shithead friends were way over the line in hating Clinton. He calls him a liar, but never shows what, apart from getting blowjobs. But we must be Bush-Haters because we call him a liar.

"SOMETIMES without straining I can remember the long-ago 1990s, when a number of people, including many of my friends--well, including me, to tell the truth--succumbed to what some of us came to call "Billy Bob Gasket Disease."

This creepling's point is that Clinton was such a good liar, he drove his opponents insane, so reporters wrote them off as loonies. He never mentions, of course, what lies those might be. He IS a right-wing scumbag, so that should not surprise me.



Haha, ambition means lying, to this right-wing sewage bag. Gasket, who is probably one of Clinton's many opponents for governor, who all lost, is probably the "disappointed office seeker" we all know from assassinations past.

Now we reach the crux. Of the intro, anyway. They didn't hate Clinton because of any reasonable dislike. They hated him because of his LOOKS.

"those who caught the disease didn't just dislike Clinton, as, say, they might have disliked Jimmy Carter. The crux of Gasket Disease was not contempt but unendurable frustration. They could not fathom why everyone else didn't grasp his essential, transparent fraudulence: the phoniness of the lower-lip-bite, the moist insincerity of the smile, the vanity in every tilt of the carefully coifed head. As with syphilis, so with Gasket Disease: Some Republicans recovered, others were driven mad."

So evidently, we are as crazy as the right wing for hating Bush. We MUST hate him for his looks, not his policies, this punk says. Why, "the nuthouse lately vacated by the Clinton-haters has suddenly filled with Bush-haters," he says, admitting he's a nuthouse resident.

Here's where he gets clever. He sort of cops to being a lunatic hatemonger, then admits that Ann Coulter and that crazed auntie-in-the-attic Amrose Evans-Pritchard and, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, Terry Reed and so on are completely nuts, he calls the latest batch of anti-Bush books, by Ivins, Franken, Krugman and so on are the equivalent of those hate-filled screeds.

He particularly hates Krugman and Ivins. See, Princeton economists and journalists with 40 years of experience are comparable to uneducated street punks (Hannity), stupid cumdumptsters (Coulter), and legitimately insane hatemongers (Savage). This is a common Republican trick, which I spent hours emailing and calling NPR about. They USED to have a discussion with a college Polisci prof on one side, and Max Boot, the aptly named nazi, on the other. The right wing is only interested in polluting the argument, never in making one.

Skipping his "literary" criticism of Krugman's book, which basically comes down to running a few years of columns tends to become repetitive (duh, read a Dave Barry book, moron), and that 750-word columns tend to be skimpy on back-up, this guy goes after him for hating Bush. Then he goes after Ivins. And Franken. And Hightower. And others. See, HE was insane for hating Clinton, so EVERYONE ELSE is insane for hating Bush. This is, of course, a false analogy. It is equivalent to comparing the Dime-Refusing Roosevelt haters of the 50s with the Hitler-haters of every age since 1933. He already admitted that they hated Clinton for no real reason other than thinking he was a phony. (and just to point out, Clinton came from poverty, raised himself up by his own effort, and for some reason didn't pull up the gangplank after him...BAD BAD BILL CLINTON.)

Let's see what he says about Krugman. " What happens is mayhem. Krugman sees a country in which free speech is disappearing, the poor are paying more taxes than the rich, and religious superstition is supplanting evolution in grade-school curriculums. That none of these things is actually taking place does not dampen his eagerness to spread the word."

Notice the denier? None of these things are taking place. Andrew, you make good money. So you might be excused for being a moron. Start adding up sales tax, which is a regressive tax for necessities, and the payroll tax, and the cap on SS contributions, look at the Free Speech zones the unelected Punk set up the second he got unelected, look at the people slammed into jail for protesting his illegal war, look at the soldiers who were arrested for criticizing the war, look at the ban on photographs of coffins returning home, just keep looking Andrew, you punk.

Notice he offers no proof for anything he says? The people he attacks do offer proof.

Now, the moron goes after the word "lies." He claims Bush never lies and then goes into a long history, courtesy of Joe Conason, about how other presidents have lied. To this punk, the SOLE lies are his denial of drunk-driving charges, his draft-dodging/AWOL episode and stealing the Arlington Stadium to make $16 million on a (borrowed) $600K investment. How about Weapons of Mass Destruction, Andrew? Remember he said there were drone aircrafts with bio weapons ready to cruise over the U.S. killing us all? Remember the rockets ready to launch in 45 minutes? Remember the huge stashes of ricin and other chemical weapons, and WE KNEW WHERE THEY WERE? Remember the nukes they were ready to produce? Remember the fack that they were working with Al Qaida? Yeah, numbo, you remember. You don't want to , but you do.

Now, of course, he has to lie blatantly. "As James Carville's ghostwriter cleverly puts it in "Had Enough?", "Democrats lied about something we really like: sex. Republicans lie about something they really like: war and money." Calling Bush a liar is a twofer. It at once underscores the gravity of the present president's misconduct, and it condemns the frivolousness of the previous president's accusers."

Want to prove his book was written by a ghostwriter, punk? C'mon, BRING IT ON, PUNK. You have an affadavit, of course. Oh, you don't? Oh, damn. You are SO SCREWED. Oh, who ghost-wrote YOUR stupid article?

Now, let's look at your latest piece of sophistry.

"The problem for polemicists in attacking a relatively popular president is that the People are implicated as well: Maybe they like him because they're as depraved as he is. Which is unthinkable. (For if the People are evil, what of their Tribune?) Conservatives struggled with this difficulty in the 1990s, when Clinton, despite their well-orchestrated abuse, maintained his popularity through both his terms. "

HAHAHA, Relatively popular. Like 50%. Clinton was in the 60s. In fact, the Unelected Punk's father was way over this at the same time in his sole term. So, Andrew, stop lying.

OK, time to stop going point-by-point. He attacks Molly Ivins and moans and bitches about us mean democrats. Read the whole piece and see why I didn't bother. It's like punching kittens.

Now, his next point, and this idiot gets paid by the word, no doubt, is that the Smirking Moron is a LIBERAL. This adds totally new meaning to the word disingenuous. What he means is that Bush has spent more money than any president in history, so us liberals should be delighted. He never mentions of course, that most of the spending goes to the rich, corporate donors and various other constituencies like ranchers and anti-environment activists. His Clear Skies motion, for instance, will cost tons of money, by allowing coal burners to pollute everything in sight, which will have to be cleaned up. He signed an education bill, then didn't fund it. He signed an Aids In Africa bill, promising $15 billion, then wrote the funding for it out of his budget. But according to dear Andrew, Smirk is a caring liberal who is spending HIS precious taxes. He even dares to bring up the Medicare prescription bill, which is unfunded (22% TOPS) and is basically a tax giveaway to HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, and rural states. Of course, Andrew doesn't want to bring up any evidence; he likes to sling mud without ANY proof.

This goes on and on. He quotes Corn's book with some inconsequential lies, leaving out the BIGGIES. Like, "we will have a humble foreign policy," "this will be the education presidency" and of course all those lies in front of the U.N. and in his state of the union speech.

Heh, then he does a neat trick. He says the critics, "always excepting foreign policy" attack the IdiotBoy. In fact, most of these books were written before the Iraqi war. And in fact, all of them attack Smirk over his foreign policy, apart from Ivins, who was concerned with his Texas career. What Andrew means is this: They didn't attack him for his war plans a year before the war, so they must agree with heroic, sexy, smart, intelligent, handsome, sexy, smart, lovely, wonderful, brave, sexy, smart, wonderful, smart-as-all-getout, hot as hell, really, really handsome, jeez-I-gotta-get-into-his-pants, man-did-you-see-that-HUGE-bulge-when-he-flew-that-plane-onto-the-aircraft-carrier, preznit.

At the end, he does THIS.

"At the end of "Bushwhacked," Molly Ivins speaks for all Bush-haters when, with typical artlessness, she sums up our present state of affairs: "There is something creepy about what is happening here." But they can't quite put their finger on what it is." He also mentions that we can't make up our minds if he's a moron or a genius.

Andrew, you moron, let's break it down. Stop talking for liberals. Smirk IS a moron. He ADMITS he doesn't read the newspapers or watch news on TV. He is an incurious, spoiled, stupid, dull little boy. A punk. He has some semi-bright, and I accentuate the SEMI here, because anyone who thinks Wolfowitz, Rice, Negroponte, Reich, Perle, Cheney, Rove and Card are deep thinkers is probably working for the...Weekly Standard. Remember, Andrew, these were some of the people who came up with the Nuns With Guns argument for Reagan. Remember the lay sisters in El Salvador who were kidnapped, forced to dig their own graves, anally rapped, the executed? Nah, YOU FORGOT. Remember Negroponte writing the speech for Reagan about "they might have been smuggling guns?" HAHAHA, of course you don't.

You know what? Intellectual dishonesty like this SHOULD have the death penalty attached. You are a whore much worse than the average Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity. You are obviously educated. You KNOW better. Rush was out picking up gay hookers and Sean was out shooting bathtub speed when you were in college.

You, sir, have no such excuse for your lies.

Pete Hisey
Chicago






http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/437txvzt.asp

I have an enormous turkey to cook. 23 lbs. I think I'll use this beer brine recipe.

Brine:
.5 gal apple cider
2 c. packed dark brown sugar. yum
2 c. kosher salt
.25 c. peppercorns
4 bay leaves
2 cinnamon sticks
1 t. whole cloves
12 pk. dark beer (use 11)
juniper berries if you've got them.

combine in plastic bucket. drink one beer while assembling. immerse turkey. marinate cold for 24 hrs.

24 hours later
drain and pat dry turkey. brush with butter. roast according to the Turk-u-lator at Better Homes and Gardens. Hahah you laugh. that turkey calculator rocks

htttp://bhg.com