Monastic

Ran (separately) into a couple of people who are not speaking to each other.  Coincidence.  

Happy New Year.

Happenstance

So in the Jon Carroll Christmas Quiz, there was a question about Delaney and Bonnie, "a reasonably well-known rock group" from the early '70s.

So it transpires that Delaney Bramlett died Saturday.  (That would be 12/27.)

Huh.

SFX, part 2

Ba-dum-bum!

In memoriam

Eartha Kitt died today.

Performance in Kaskad (?), 1962.

(Also Harold Pinter.)

ETA:  Afronerd's tribute, which contains a clip of Ms. Kitt as Catwoman.

A joyous celebration-of-your-choice!

Links

From Better than salt money, a few sparks of hope.

Hermitting

Solitary.

Information You Did Not Know

A feature story on communion wafers.

Breaking News!

Glasses all smeary.  Where the hell do they go while I'm asleep?

By the Way

That swan is still in town; I thought it had moved on, but it was gliding on the lake yesterday afternoon.

Hermitting

Stylite.

Hermitting

Marabout.

Swan (from November) Doing Betty Grable

I printed this shot of that swan, and decided that you should suffer, too.

Santa Claus Explains It All For You

Right here.

Example:  

We also have a number of requests for exorbitant gifts. More often than not, the folks that make those requests are on the "Naughty" list. But for those that are on the "Nice" list, we do have a few rules. We do not deliver gifts over US$25,000 in value unless there is a special exemption granted by our independent auditors. Granting requests over US$25,000 usually requires a pretty extensive background check and involves someone with a life-long tenure on the "Nice" list. Gifts between US$1,000 and US$24,999 also require a minimum of 2 consecutive years on the "Nice" list.

Hermitting

Howard Hughes.

Hermitting

Eremite.

Educational Post

Via Arthur Hlavaty, from the LJ of Paft:  Bestiary of [Online] Debate-derailers.  More light!

Hermitting

Anchorite.

Hermitting

Hermit.

Class Warfare Primer

Republicans hate the middle class. [ETA:]Seriously. (Thanks to Mahablog and Brilliant at Breakfast, respectively.)

(As do some members of the extreme "left" wing, many intellectuals, and teenaged middle-class offspring.  But I digress.)

Bill of Rights, US Constitution, ratified on this date in 1791.

Hermitting

Recluse.

A Thought

You know, I don't think somehow that a pink Hello Kitty guitar exactly says Joan Jett to the aspiring young female guitarist.

Cerebral Tickle

Hmmm; is it too late to start collecting model trains?

Well, very small model trains.

Yeah, probably...

Hmmmmmmmm...

Three cop cars.

One making with the blinky but not the screechy.

In single file, approaching an official-looking golf cart.

A bust?  Ya think?

Two Things

1. The unions didn't cause the problems in the auto industry; the execs and decision-makers of the auto industry did.
2. William S. Stevens, who wrote:  

   “The dynamics of the common law and the development of one of the most important technical rules of baseball, although on the surface almost completely different in outlook and philosophy, share significant elements.”

   about the relation between common law and the infield fly rule, has died.

Improvization

I was supposed to make Red Sauce for friends who have newborn twins and not much time or energy to cook (because it's tasty and you can use it in interesting ways) but time kept sneaking away from me and it got to be six pm.

Red sauce needs time to cook.  Marriage and swyving of flavors and all that.

So.  Larder.  Odds and ends of various pastas but not enough for diners > 1.  Garlic.  A portabella mushroom.  I'd eaten the bell pepper a couple of days ago.

But I'd promised.  And you can't go too wrong with pasta.

Off to chain supermarket, where I explained, telephonically, that there'd been a change in menu.

Then I bought 2 12-oz boxes of similar-cooking-time pasta, 2 bell peppers, a container of grape tomatoes, and a pint of low-fat ricotta, and got to work.

Ingredients (additional possibilities in brackets):

• Enough olive oil.
  
• (ETA) Garlic.
• Any two pasta shapes that take approximately the same time to cook.  Capellini and fettucine, for example, will not work.
• Portabella mushroom[s].
• 2 Bell peppers, preferably contrasting.
• 1 pint low-fat ricotta.  Probably high-fat ricotta also works.
• Grape tomatoes.
• [ETA:  Capers and/or olives, if sodium content is not an issue; I'm working the low sodium line here.]

Preparation:

• Cut up:
• Portabella mushroom[s] into cubes
• Bell peppers
• [Onion]
• [Ginger.  Not a whole lot.]
• [Chicken or cold cuts]
• [Broccoli or something]
• Bring water to boil and stir in the pastas.
• Crush, chop, or otherwise render [onions, ginger, and] garlic cloves and saute in large frying pan.  Add the mushrooms, cook them down, add the bell peppers.  [Add other bracketed ingredients.]
• When pasta is done, drain, rinse in cold water, decant into large container, using two tablespoons of olive oil to prevent clumping.  Empty sauteed ingredients into pasta, stirring to distribute well.  Stir in ricotta cheese, being sure to coat all elements.  Top with the grape tomatoes.

Eat, dolling, eat.

On-going Struggle

Link-rich posting by Ilyka, referencing anonymity, institutional history, appropriation, silencing,  and intersectionality, and reminding me that I have to write a modern-day version of "The Emperor's New Clothes."  (Which has probably Been Done.)

So when you recall things that happened to you online, things that actually hurt you and hurt others–when you allow for the possibility that the internet is a real place inhabited by real people–you’re breaking all their nice toys. And that’s kind of a repeating theme, if I understand correctly, in interactions between white women and women of color, regardless of the internet: Your hurt scarcely merits acknowledgement, let alone apology, but break a white girl’s toy and OH THAT’S IT. The internet is just a relatively newer and faster way to perpetuate it–and also to dispose of the evidence afterwards.

I recommend following all the links.

The Cost of Truth

Remembering Gary Webb.

(via Consortiumnews, via The Sideshow; see also comments)

Musical Interlude

Oh, no.  Not me.

Maybe I'll take the bus.

RIP

One Elmer Valentine.  He brought back this kind of funny club from France...

(Some obits get posted for what I have to call "quirk" value.  Jim Morrison's father also died recently.)

Reasons to be Cheerful

Why I'm blowing off Joe the Plumber's book.  Yes, without reading it.

Best sentence:  

There was a time when I wanted to be like Sting, the singer, belting out, “Roxanne ...” I guess that’s why we have karaoke, for fantasy night. If only there was such a thing for failed plumbers, politicians or celebrities who think they can write.

(Also, in the tradition of Stan "The Man" Musial and Abe "Kid Twist" Reles, shouldn't it be Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher?  It is a self-chosen nickname.)

(Also:  What is the weird Republican thing for plumbers?)

Snow Like Millions of Pulverized Mirrors

Fafnir!  

I escape in the middle of the night with the help of an unfrozen caveman, an animatronic dinosaur and the robotic head of Alexander Hamilton.

Edited to Add

All day.  Whatever comes into my head.

• I haven't heard the word "crest-fallen" in ages.
• I got to pontificate at the local Drinking Liberally (thanks Cyril, Igor, Robert, Rashid).
• Leave it to Atrios to earworm me with "Total Eclipse of the Heart."  Which was bad enough (ancient associations, let us say), but that video...  (No, I'm not linking to it; it's beyond baroque and brain bleach would not do the job.)
• A "defense of teasing."
• Avedon Carol reminds us that the media is not biased in the direction they're presumed to be.
• I got to see a large piece of Breakfast at Tiffany's in November.  What an...interesting...artifact of its time and attitudes.  

I need a walk now.  And heavy-duty brain bleach.

4E is Dead

Forrest J. Ackerman has died.  (Link is to File 770.)

French Lesson of the Day

I got it from Echidne: Ne me quitte pas.

Season's Greetings

Minstrel Boy at Group News Blog hits one out of the park:

While we're waiting in the checkout line, just ahead of us is a archetypal Snowbird. He's wearing the uniform so identification is a snap. Shorts and windbreaker, Costco sandals with sock, shocking alabaster white skin. Most of the locals here at least end up with "farmer" tans, even if they get their farmer tan on the golf course.

All is well and proceeding nicely until the checkout lady finishes up his transaction and hands him his receipt. She says "Happy Holidays."

You would have thought she said "Allah bless Osama bin Laden, and all gay marriages," Because the snowbird guy puffs himself all up and puts on his best Bill O'Reilly look of extreme indignation. He gives her what I expect he imagines as his best imperious and withering gaze and says:

"In MY house we say MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

Usually I have my normal brought up on the rez type of reserve. I'm not known for being chatty or even saying all that much. Usually I just would have stood there and let things shake out the way that they will. It might have been the creeping pain that I was starting to feel in my jaw as the novocaine began to subside. It might also have been the two Vicodin that the oral surgeon gave me before I left his office. It might have been my extreme feduppitude with the whole bullshit "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" fiction that is so beloved of the social conservative crowd. It might even have been some residual resentment of out of state folks who spent bazillions of dollars in the last election to amend the California State Constitution for the first time in history with the express purpose of denying rights to a whole class of our citizens, including my cousin, with their odious Proposition (h)8.

Go read the whole thing.

In memoriam

Odetta died.

She was a fine folk singer and many of the songs she sang were anthems of freedom.  She was the "Voice of the Civil Rights Movement."

"House of the Rising Sun," 2005.  (Thanks to Avedon, although she posted a different video.)

It's Official

We're in a recession.

<  obGomerPyle  >  Surprise, surprise, surprise! < / Gomer >

So…

why does it take so long to resort to Apple Support search when something drives me up a wall?