Thanksgiven

After 31 years of reading Marvel Comics, I know that the Skrulls will not be the heroes. So who are they facing off against? Or do we have to wait for that? Originally the Fantastic Four owned the Skrulls, so to speak.

Oh thanks, Tim. I thought at first that Adam meant to write “Excalibur” and I was all ready to start riffing on the inappropriateness of “watery tarts distributing swords….” My bad. Actually, I went to school at Franconia College (R.I.P.), so I’m quite familiar with going “Excelsior”.

I’m a bit tardy, but I’d like to add my Happy Thanksgiving voice to the chorus. I stayed off my computer from Wednesday night until Saturday- I think it’s the longest I’ve been unplugged since the Iowa caucus.
I’m grateful that, when I didn’t think anything would ever pull him back to center, my brother’s high school & college-age kids have done the job. Even though he’s still a Republican, I do believe there’s a smidge more compassion & common sense in his thinking. We had an actual political discussion, with areas of agreements and intellectual give & take. It was startling, really.

11-30-08

Dear Diary,

Today is my birthday! I got a multi-pack of 3 calculators from Patricia. I think she wants the middle sized one for her own use, but that’s my favorite as well. Once again, we’ll have to mud-wrestle for rights of ownership, but that’s probably what she wanted to do anyway. But no eye gouging or crotch kicking this time.

Patricia is almost giddy with the thought of returning home. Who can blame her. She already started packing and may not come back after the Christmas break. I should be so lucky.

President of Vice Cheney (that’s what Russ Feingold calls him) was back at the Cabinet Meeting on Friday (sitting much more comfortably, I thought) and agitating for invasion of Iran. Bush has been absent from the last three, busily perfecting the reverse triple toe loop on his inline skates, I hear. The main hallway of the White House, where he’s been practicing, is pretty much trashed. The heart of pine flooring is seriously gouged from ill executed landings and the 18th Century wallpaper and the plaster beneath shows serious claw marks. Any furniture items not immediately removed to safety has been reduced to kindling (very high priced kindling). The American people will have to pick up the tab for all this destruction, but are actually getting a bargain, when you compare the clusterfucks he normally would have been making of international affairs, had W chosen to occupy his time with the duties of the office. Laura refuses to come out of the Presidential Bedroom and chain smokes Lucky Strikes by the carton. This place is an insane asylum. If the rest of the world only knew.

Dirk

Geez, Adam, is there really such a thing as a great veganturkeysubstitute?

Dirk, after the trashing that W gave the whole country, I’m glad to hear that the path of destruction is limited to a few hallways in the West Wing. Has he started taking the ‘O’s off the keyboards yet?

Harrumph. I LIKE Tofurkey.

Steve,

You use curly wood shavings in your stuffing? If you’re looking to increase the fiber in your diet, I guess that’s one way to do it. Though I can’t say it sounds the least bit appetizing.

Bob Dylan is back with the biggest surprise of all.
He’s learned to sing.
— Firesign Theatre

David:“Never did understand why people were so upset about tree-based cellulose”

For eating? - three words: “shredded wheat squared.” I rest my case.

Ah, retsina! Back when I used to imbibe, I took to drinking retsina now and then to appear more continental. Tasted like turpentine. Came in cool looking bottles, though.

All this business of cellulose and shredded wheat reminds me of Garrison Keillor’s old advertiser for the Prairie Home Companion: Raw Bits breakfast cereal. Required 2 letters of recommendation to prove that you were worthy to eat it.

Retsina is very tasty when it’s icy cold, and far more palatable (in my opinion) than a glass of nasty ole whiskey or bourbon or one of those other hard liquors.

I saw this in the newspaper last week and I still smile when I think of it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_ main.html?name=Toles&date=11252008&type=c

They used to tap the pine trees in Goldenrod for turpentine when I was a tad. Jacksonville smells like turpentine, since that’s where they make the stuff (at least they used to), and naval stores were the original basis for Euro-American Florida’s economy.

Retsina most definitely tastes like it came from the pine trees of my childhood and got made in Jacksonville.

Bush’s EPA just jammed through a ruling on mountain top coal mining that allows the mining company to dump debris into streams, even if this debris thoroughly blocks or buries the stream. Obama keeps saying that’s only one president at a time…. OK, can that be Obama - now?

Vinnie, that reminds me of the great truism of Chicago politics: “We don’t talk to nobody nobody sent.”

The AnnBaz Club, it should be. Jeez, take your propeller beanie off for one minute, and you lose all your internet skills? Oy!

An infant, Ann, an infant. Oh, the sting, the humiliation, to have a merry band of bozos chase the latest sparklie. But Harold and Dale are still loyal devotees (right, Harold and Dale?)

While we’re all standing around, maybe some of you can help me with some Christmas shopping. I’ve drawn a surly, 10-year-old video game junky in the family gift exchange, and I’m thinking that maybe some cool comic books would be fun to get (and a sneaky way of getting him to read). Unfortunately, I know nothing about comic books these days.

Are there any good ones for 10-year-olds out there?

piglet, he’s ten years old? Maybe a graphic novel. And of course, there is always the lump-of-coal-in-the-stocking fallback position, if you never want him to speak to you again. No, no, don’t be hasty; give it some thought. There are definite advantages to silencing a smart aleck 10 year old boy.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid is good for a reluctant reader. There are three of them in the series now, with the last being a journal with story ideas for the reader himself. My nephew really liked the books. He’s ten and this year he’s getting Lawn Boy by Gary Paulsen,( which explains economics via the story of boy and his lawn mowing service,) Science Fair by Dave Barry (which I heard about on NPR) and Swindle by Gordon Korman, (which was recommended by his mother, the middle school English teacher)

There are also some EXCELLENT novels written by Emily Ecton, Producer Extraordinaire of WWDTM — Boots and Pieces and The Curse of Cuddles McGee. They can get a little gruesome at times, so if he’s a sensitive type you might want to wait a bit.

No one has mentioned it here yet, but Adam and Mo were on fire during this week’s WWDTM. Great back and forth with Peter and all in all, a good show. I really liked the item about the Bush White House’s first attempt at a Chanukah card that was sent out this year with a Christmas tree on the front. Oh yeah and (*yawn*) Adam won again.

My Gators are on a tear.

I have to add to the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” chorus. Both my boys loved those books, and my younger guy is 10 and not the most avid of readers.

Dave vE: this kid has plenty to be surly about, but that’s a long story and unfortunately beyond my control.

and also Chris, dee, Jake, Aunt Sam et al: thanks so much for the great tips. It’s been 13 years since I had a 10-year-old of my own (and he was a compulsive reader like myself), so I am way out of the kid loop.

Off I go to shop for some of these suggestions.

Wow, way to go, Brian! If I could run a marathon in three days, I’d be doing darn good.

Holy-moly, that’s fast, Brian! I throw some respect in your general direction.

becca, you’re right, that’s a great picture. Thanks for sharing it. I hope you and the family are doing well. Congrats to Brian.

A:Good show!
B:Wow, that’s fast (I’m going to try for the LA Marathon in March)

C:I want to say goodbye to a truly great piece of television–Boston Legal–which closes tonight. Witty and weird, it was the only network show to routinely and seriously critique and deconstruct the callous hypocrisy of the Bush administration. It was one only network shows to deal with issues of any kind, and it dealt with them more directly and more intelligently than any of the others. It understood satire, that satire has a point, and that that point is to be used to further the good by discrediting the awful. And it was funny.

Here is one of Alan Shore’s closing speeches from 2.5 years ago.

“When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn’t.”
“Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.”

“Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.”
“And now, it’s been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven’t.”
“In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we’re okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretappings, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.”

“There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there’s no clear indication that young people seem to notice.”
“Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we’ve lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.”
“Stop for a second and try to fathom that.”

“At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed. This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?”
“Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29 year old, but the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism”.
“Today, it’s the cloak of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also remarked, It’s far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them”.

Wow! It looks like the automakers will get a bailout of some sort after all. Think of all the jobs being saved! Thanks politicians. And thanks especially to Nancy Pelosi for jamming this through Congress!

But wait a minute…. Where are they getting the money? From the TARP - that unsupervised tsunami of cash sweeping over the banks and Wall Street? Nope. From Big Oil, who wants things to stay just the way they are until there is no more oil to plunder? Nope, the congress did not touch petro with a use tax of any sort.

No, the money comes from the fund to help the Big 3 automakers retool in order to begin building cars that use alternative fuels. And… the gas prices that we all are so thrilled to see are dropping like a stone - they are coming down, in a one-two sucker punch, to knock down the alternative fuel and energy business for another decade. Who says massive campaign contributions don’t work anymore?

But don’t mind me - I’ve just been working in the Federal government too long…. Yeah, that’s probably it.

Yum. Patrick Fitzgerald….

Aunt Sam says: Nice. Blagojevich makes me ashamed for the Democratic party.

I say: Could we pull a Rush Limbaugh trick and just say he’s a Republican with enough vehemence that none of our listeners will question us and begin repeating to everyone they know that Blagojevich is a Republican. It worked that way when Rush asserted that Henry Paulson was a Democrat.

NPR is reporting that Bush made a surprise visit to Iraq today. During a news conference, an Iraqi reporter threw his shoes (a famous Middle Eastern insult and a very serious breech of protocol) at the President’s head and called him a dog. Bush had to duck to keep from being hit. Now, that’s the way to make an exit from the Presidency. I hope the reporter gets out of prison soon. He’s got spunk, that guy.

Yes, I sampled 2 non-animal Thanksgiving “turkeys” - a Tofurky & a Field Roast Turkey. Many thanks for including us vegans in your pleasant holiday wishes. And please say Hi to Susie for me!