Blackout!

Well, it appears Matt has a nice manicure, so he’s got that going for him.

Who’s going to be attending the Felbermania event in Chicago? Wish I could be there!

11-28-07

Dear Diary,

Mildred may be retiring soon after almost 60 years in service to the Dept of Interior. She believes she was hallucinating this past Monday on her way home and that it may be time for her to be put out to pasture. The rain had just started in earnest as she left the office, heading home on her bike. Mildred’s commute is a rather long one and she normally looks forward to it after a hard day’s work, but the cold rain was definitely a “buzz-kill”, as she likes to say. (I have no idea what that means, but from the context, I would say it’s not a good thing.) At least she had brought her leathers. Oh, did I mention? Mildred rides a 2006 metallic teal Soft Tail Harley, with, what she refers to as “a shitload of chrome plated geegaws”.

Well, as she was going by Blaire House, it may have been the rain drops on her visor or the twilight being strobed by lightning, but she swore she saw Dick Cheney up on the roof, strapped to a gurney and being raised up into the storm by some sort of hydraulic lift. Just as the lift bumped to a stop, a bolt of lightning struck Cheney squarely in the chest. The gurney was quickly lowered and a doctor with a stethoscope listened to the Veep’s heart and gave an enthusiastic thumbs up to the other medical personnel. On Tuesday the White House announced that Cheney’s heart rhythm had been restored the previous day by a routine medical procedure. This may explain W’s new nickname for Cheney - “FrankenDick”. I just hope Mildred will reconsider her retirement. We’d really miss her around here.

Dirk

Honk, honk. (The cacaphony seems to have quieted lately.)

Watch out! Honk Honk! HUGE STORM to hit Minne-snow-ta tomorrow! Entire state to be buried under….uh…ok, about 3 inches. We don’t have much else to talk about “up here”. So the meteorologists interrupt reality shows just when things are heating up (I just can’t get enough of Tina Tequila and Tyra!!) and breath down our collective necks with blasts of icy hot air, screaming doom, car wrecks, heart attacks, and various other maladies. I usually just slurp a little more rum and put on another blanket on the bed.
But the first snow always is a little exciting. Kids pull out their sleds, neighbors have snow-throwing contests (cleanest driveway wins - ours always loses), and everyone gets to bitch about the weather for a day or two.

Protests in Khartoum
Crowds of people have marched in Sudan’s capital Khartoum to call for a tougher sentence for a British teacher imprisoned for insulting religion.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was jailed for 15 days on Thursday after allowing children in her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Some reports said protesters had called for her to be shot. Her lawyer said she was later moved for her own safety.

The protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks.

According to some agencies, some of the protesters chanted: “Shame, shame on the UK”, “No tolerance - execution” and “Kill her, kill her by firing squad”.

Maybe it’s just me, but I find this entire situation a bit harsh, springing out of the “Religion of Peace” like it has.

We’re back from Heather’s conference in Quebec City. I normally just love that city, but in November with the wind howling out of the north, well, it was colder than a well digger’s ass.

I thought this was a choice example of the MSM coverage of the campaign.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_ main.html?name=Toles&date=11302007&type=c

Hard-core text-literalist faith communities generally have an ugly history, and contemporary nutcase Muslim fundamentalism of the sort which shia-law adherents seem so enamored of is just the latest fucking nutcase expression of fucking nutcase religious extremism. Don’t know what percentage of the world’s Muslims fall into this fucking nutcase category, just as I don’t remember what percentage of European Catholics thought the Inquisition was a good idea. And then there’re some of those wonderful Old Testament “God-inspired” exercises in genocide. Seems to me that until the basic notions of universal human rights gain some kind of primacy, Christian fundamentalists are going to continue to treat gays like some kind of pariahs, Jewish fundamentalists are going to continue to do whatever the hell they are currently doing, and Muslim fundamentalists are going to follow the absurd, tribally inhumane madness represented by calling for a woman’s head for letting children name a teddy bear for their mythical savior (gotta love those tribal myths when they become an excuse for barbaric religiosity) or calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for writing a fucking book, for Lobster’s sake. Wonder what the hard-core Jainists are up to these days, and whether or not progressive Muslims who do have good sense will be able to counter these fucking spiritually, homicidally backward, shit-for-brains Muslim uber-fundamentalists.

Guys! Guys! A massive storm with hurricane force winds is bearing down on Ann (& all those other Felbernauts up there in the Pacific Northwest). What can we do to help?

I don’t know. Pray that Ann will be spared all the bad karma that normally would have befallen her and instead it gets spread around onto the other Felbernauts up there?

How ’bout we heap it onto you instead, numb nuts?

George, look, those other Felbernauts are not competition. They’re intelligent humans, who appreciate her existence and friendship, too. Never half as much as we do, but still don’t wish bad mojo on them!

Yeah, you’re right.

We’re with you, Ann! We’re just not……..with you.

Wow, Charlie, that was kinda limp.

Hahahahaha. Honk!! Hahahahaha!!

We’re letting in Norwegians now, too? All right. Enough with the membership drive already!

Honk! Honk!! Honk! Hahahahah….

Jim! Get the net!

We’re supposed to have snow here today, and then rain tomorrow. The winds predicted for Monday wont be as intense here on the Sound (20-40 mph) than on the coast, with the Pineapple Express moving in. Can’t say about the Portland area. I know fronts can move down the Columbia with more intensity than we get here ins Seattle.

Have fun, kids, with the hunkering down. Be sure to have candles…during our last wind storm when we lost power, SeattleTammy and I had fondue! Great stuff!

P.S. … Never thought I’d find myself saying, “Go Sooners,” but, uh, “Go Sooners!!!”

I mean, I’m just sayin’ …

How about Go, Panthers, Dave? Who’d a thunk you didn’t even need Oklahoma to beat Missouri. Roses for the Illini it is.

becca and brian, it just goes to show: you wanted to see the Tour de France and missed it; we didn’t realize it was there (we were in England) and had to drive around it (details in the last part of this post on my blog (minor blog-whoring here; while I’m at it, the photos of that leg of the trip are now posted at www.karenivy.net. But I didn’t get any photos of the Tour.).

With all the brouhaha about the teacher in Sudan, I am gritting my teeth and reminding myself of the Pareto Principle: 90% of the noise is made by 10% of the people. I’m also reminding myself that the government of Sudan, one of the world’s leading practitioners of genocide, has every reason in the world to encourage these idiots to flame off, in hopes of diverting attention from Darfur.

Adam, congratulations: you were brilliant on WWDTM today!

I agree with hedera (I usually do, BTW), that was a fun show. And the caller from Marlboro College, who knew Amy’s kilt-wearing nephew - what’re the chances? (Note to Lemuel: I hope you noticed I didn’t say “It’s a Small World!”, so not to be kicking my shins, okay?)

Well, Dale, you should know I made dinner last night and pancakes this morning, too.

Mmmm. Pancakes.

Quite right, David. My ex-wife was a huge Michigan fan (kinda explains my antipathy to the Wolverines, no? Well, that and 30-odd-years as a suffering Illini fan) and my ex-mother-in-law, and ever bigger sports fan.

And, my wife (I learned long ago to never ever say “my current wife”; or equally bad, “my second wife” … pretty much anything that suggests a sequence is a bad idea) is a big Bears fan and an adopted-Illini fan, too.

Not to mention my sister, also a U of I grad, who called me the second the Ohio State game ended …

By the same token, cooking is not an exclusively female pursuit either. Although I wish I could cook as well as my wife (I can’t), I’m pretty darn good in my own right.

But I can’t seem to spell “bring” correctly.

Dave-

Congrats on your Illini (said through with concern as I watch Brian and Piglet, who are still quacking sadly in the corner).

Dee…Right there with you. Watched Davis Cup tennis, checked out a little football, and am currently experimenting with an acorn squash-ginger-curry soup that might not be turning out so well. Maybe I should have used butternut or pumpkin (or your recipe!)

Becca

The snowstorm here on Saturday was lots of fun. I walked the five blocks to the grocery store, which for some reason I never do when the weather is good! (OK, it’s because I drive to a different grocery store, it’s a long story, not that interesting…)

But people talk and laugh and interact when we’re all outside dealing with the snow, when ordinarily we’re too polite to even make eye contact. And my long-haired cat loves the snow.

It’s been nothing but rain for more than two days now, though, so there’s no love.

dee, keep binging home that bacon, girl. I like the way it teases the image of a slab of hickory-smoked being escorted jauntily down the road, fetching young thing’s undisciplined hair swirling wildly in that unseasonably warm December day’s lustful gusts.

I trust we’re talking cast iron skillet (from Chattanooga, not China, and preferably at least half-a-century old - Griswold is good).

I didn’t check the name on my cast iron skillet. All I know is it was given to me nearly thirty years ago by a good ol’ girl from up Tobacaville way. And she knows from skillets.

I’ve been thinking about all of you up in the NorthWet. I guess I can’t complain too much that the wind yesterday just about blew back all the leaves I had at my curb on Sunday.

dee, sounds like that good ol’ girl from up Tobacaville way done you right. I realized after I posted that Griswolds might be from Pennsylvania. Mostly ours were generic old timers, well seasoned by my mother, and the source of some of the best corn bread, fried fish, fried chicken, and home fries that ever got my taste buds going. Dad was the master of the bacon and the eggs over easy in the bacon grease. We also ate generously of vegetables and fruit, the fish weren’t yet toxic, the chickens and the eggs came from the back yard, and the sustenance was served up by my mother and my dad, so it all worked for our Southern bodies and souls. We had a very simple grace: Mother would ask, “Children, are we thankful for this food?” The answer ain’t too hard to figure out.

That is a genuinely time-honored measure of a cast iron skillet, Murray. When my Sweetie was married, her mother gave her a cast iron skillet with the observation that if he treated her right, it was for cooking, and if he didn’t…

Which reminds of the time a close friend’s Alabama grandfather complained about his Alabama grandmother’s cooking and she picked up his plate, food and all, and threw it out the window. Gotta love the earthy honesty of that G.R.I.T.S. (Girls Raised in the South) move.