Category: Uncategorized

Faster than a speeding bullet?

Quick snack pizza. Thin crust. No, really thin.

C’mon, tell me you haven’t been in this situation. No time to make a meal. Have a hankering for pizza. Ain’t gonna use some frozen sewer cover pizza. Uh-uh. Not gonna do it.

Whadda ya gonna do?

Well, if you were in my house, no problemo. Always have cheeses and some sort of leftover Italian-seasoned tomato sauce. Flour, oil, etc. (or just some leftover flour tortillas–store bought are really usually OK). Some sort of toppings (veggies, meats–usually leftovers or some bacon pieces or crumbs in the fridge, whatever).

(Addendum: here’s a decent flour tortilla recipe. It’s easy, and it just works.)

Easy: just slap some tomato sauce–appropriately seasoned–on a flour tortilla, add cheese and toppings, more cheese. Set oven at about 350-375 (oven temps vary). Use a convection oven if you have one to get the cheeses nice & melted quickly, etc. Depending on your toppings, about 20 minutes oughta do it.

Yeh, the tortilla crust makes a nicely crisp THIN crust. And while I prefer a thick yeast crust, this’ll do in a pinch.

Serves one. Make your own. This one is mine (Three cheeses, thin-sliced dried pepper-beef, bacon, onion and jalapeno peppers—yum!)

No, really: shoot!

Over at Riehl World View, Dan has broken the *worldwide exclusive!!!* story clearing the military in the shooting of the commie Italian “journalist” who had spent a few days shacking up with her buds in Iraq. Read “Military Cleared in Sgrena Shooting.”

Reading is believing.

(BTW: Her buddies now say they turned down the Italian government’s offer to “chip in on the rent” for her visit with them. “Nah, we’d already paid the rent and utilities for the month. One more ??????? ????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ???? ????? ???? ???? (filthy whore) in the crib didn’t cost us anything extra. She didn’t eat much, and, being Italian, didn’t even bathe.”)

Nah, hate’s too mild a word…

I hate doing my taxes. I also hate paying someone else to do them (a function of my Tightwad Philosphy of Lifeâ„¢). My compromise, for the last 12 years, has been to use relatively inexpensive computer software to make a compromise between these two in-tension feelings.

When Parsons sold out to Intuit, it wasn’t too bad. I could still import my Parsons material from th previous year into Turbotax.

Even when Intuit decided one year to install some really malicious spyware (crippled, totally crippled my CD burner on the machine I had Turbotax on. had to scrub the machine and re-install Windows to get my full-functionality back on the burner), I managed to grit my teeth and bear it, because at least doing my taxes was pretty darned easy.

but this year… Familiar with Kim du Toit’s “RCOB” (red curtain of blood) expression? THIS year, Turbotax found and imported by previous year’s Turbotax file all right.

And recognized absolutely NO usable data!

Scrub that. Try a backup file (of which I had four, on different hard drives and CDs).

Same thing.

RCOB.

Oh. You have NO IDEA how enraged I am with Intuit. No. Earthy. Idea. Were I still in my 2003 clinically obese body, I probably would have stroked out… seriously. You have no idea how much I now HATE Intuit. With. A. Passion. One that I dare not give vent to, because

I HAVE TO DO MY STINKING TAXES!!!!!!

ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh………….

I don’t know… but it’s an intriguing thought

OK, this post is as wild a departure as can be from anything that can be considered normal for this blog (whatever normal for this blog is?I still don’t really have that pegged down).

I thought I had an explanation for my transformation a year ago from clinically obese to well within normal range. Then I started reading some USDA-referenced info about drops in food nutrition—vitamin and mineral content—and began to wonder about something. I have noticed a change in my appetite. I feel “fuller” faster and have fewer cravings for just… stuff. Could my altered appetite be due in part to a substantive change in my nutrition?

Yeh, maybe. When my wife switched brands of vitamin supplementation (something we’d researched as a part of her cardio/PPS health regimen), I began taking a subset of the same brand of super-duper “patented formulation” (well, they are) vitamins, as well. Yeh, I also ate the “fat conversion activity bar” that was developed for use in the Arctic, and I’m sure it had some impact. But my exercise levels have, um, leveled off and even declined over the winter months and no gain in weight, inches, whatever.

And no increase in appetite or junk food cravings as in past years when my idiosyncratic form of cabin fever set in.

Could it be that the cravings for more stuff to stuff in me were in part because the food I was stuffing myself with was deficient in nutrients my body needed?

Maybe. I just don’t know. I do know that after years of failed diet and exercise programs, now in my *cough cough something* 50s I have been able to not only lose a good 50+ pounds of excess weight (and BUNCHES of inches in chest, waist, etc.), but I have been able to keep it off for the past year.

Could one (surely of many) factor in the obesity problem here in the U.S. be that folks’ bodies are craving vitamins and minerals not available in the “healthy” (note: I abhor that construction/use when used in place of the term “healthful”—but that’s a different rant entirely) fresh fruits and vegetables we’ve been encouraged to consume, let alone in all the crap we stuff ourselves with?

Maybe. I just don’t know.

But it is an intriguing idea.

Back to regularly scheduled ranting.

Check that. I notice I can’t lay my figurative hands (via mouse/keyboard) on the pdf I downloaded from the USDA with the data that has been brewing in the back of my mind concerning this thought. Well, the same data seems to have been used in this article. Maybe that’s enough for now.

Back to the salt mines.

[bump] Who needs the pressure whenthere’s so much good stuff to choose from?

But really, now, when presented something like this comment to a post on Jackson’s Junction
about Dan Blather’s signoff as C–B.S. “News” anchor, I’m tempted to label it “quote of the day”—

“O’l Dan Looked tighter than a long-necked wombat wearing a hat full of cranberries.”–’Ken’

It’s great art like that that convinced me to stop attempting poetry. That sentence just begs to be set to music… Where, oh where, is a Marty Robbins when you need one?

Ahh! Found Marty Robbins’ backup guys…

[Not!] Apparently they’re underwater or something, but maybe it’ll give Dan Blather’s Last Standâ„¢ a lil background music… (see below)

Would someone please set this liar’s pants on fire?

Here’s the car that Italian commie “journalist” Giuliana Sgrena claims had “300 and 400 bullets [fired] at if from an armoured vehicle” (quoting her lying mouth in an article in Il Manifesto). As one wag noted, great marksmanship to fit all those bullets into 3-4 holes…

Pic from The Jawa Report. See more at the link. (Thx to Glenn Reynolds for the link to The Jawa Report)

Oh, and a h.t. to The Jawa Report for the link to Jeff Goldstien’s droll take on Giuliana Sgrena.

Addendum: Austin Bay, writing at Strategy Page, has a trenchant observation (read the whole thing, would you?):

“…one rule never changes at a roadblock: Even escorted military convoys slow down as they approach a roadblock. As for a single civilian auto approaching at high speed? If a driver doesn’t hit the brakes, the troops will shoot.”

Of course. Nearly everyone is bemoaning the “tragic mistake” that led to the death of the security agent Nicola Calipari. But one has to ask, who made the mistake of approaching, without even slowing, a military checkpoint? The expert security agent in the car (said Nicola Calipari) had been in Iraq before, delivering another ranson in the Italian terrorist funding program. he knew the rules of engagement and the rules ofthe road. The barriers and checkpoints are not only clearly marked, they are, by now, well-known traffic choke points.

Sounds like the expert security agent, as noble as his act of throwing himself on top of the commie journalist he was there to take back to Italy, also provided a wee lesson in evolution in action.

It’s that, or run around in a mad rage breaking things…

Sometimes it’s good to break things. Frank J. at IMAO has another sardonic editorial up. This one mocks the Dems push to give convicted felons the vote. An excerpt for flavor:

…conservatives have been making statement against the effectiveness gun control for a while in the form of “If someone is planning on killing someone, he won’t have any compunction about breaking gun laws.” Democrats must have finally taken that to heart and expanded the logic to “If someone is capable of murder, he probably won’t have any compunction about voting for a Democrat.”

Indeed.

A Visit to the Weird World of Dreamland

OK, get this. I was dreaming this morning (yes, it was in color, and yes, I remember—some of—my dreams) and in my dream, I met my wife for the first time in a Chinese restaurant (not where we really met, of course). From that point on, fate took a hand (it was a dream). We continued to meet at the Chinese restaurant, fell in love and became engaged—all in that Chinese restaurant.

Mama-san (how I knew her name is a mystery, of course), the owner, was delighted and counseled us on which day was most fortuitous for us to tie the knot. She, of course, was not only a J.P but also a Methodist minister and would perform the ceremony. (Why Methodist? I dunno. Analyze that.)

Came the day and I’m waiting for my bride to appear. Naturally, I notice at the very last instant that I do not have on the socks my lovely bride chose for me. Oops. Not a good omen. I find them in my coat pocket and change in the blink of an eye. (Did I mention that I’m Superman—in my dreams… )

Another oops: pants have a spot. Another Supernman moment and I’m still waiting for my bride to walk down the aisle (in the Chinese restaurant).

It was a wonderful ceremony. The honeymoon was just starting when… “Time to get up, sweetheart.”

*sigh* Sleep over.

At least I woke to see my bride.

Happy thought, that.

The hallmark of tyranny

The central characteristic of tyrannical rule is this: the citizen is replaced by the subject and rights are replaced by priviledges allowed by the tyrant. And so we see the tyrant displayed in McCain-Feingold, where a right once specifically ennumerated by the Constitution (free political speech) has now become a regulated priviledge. The blogstorm this last week over the proposal to apply McCain-Feingold to blogs by re-defining political speech on a blog as a “contribution in kind” to some politician/political party or other political entity so that it can be regulated (controlled, stiffled, etc.) by our political masters indicates that the pols’ goal of complete subjugation of what was once the American citizenry is not quite yet complete (except in airports, where the Thousands Standing Around can command complete servility from us all).

Despite (or perhaps in part because) of his lapse into vulgarity, Kim du Toit sums up a very proper response to such action here.

I suspect that attempting to enforce “consequences” for practicing what the First Amendment guarantees against such as Kim might well carry consequences of its own for those petty tyrants stupid enough to try it.

Good.

More (and a bump): Since all most people hear about the First Amendment to the Constitution is what the Mass Medua Podpeople choose to represent, I think that every time I discuss a First Amendment issue in any way, I ought to post the thing. Heck, any time I mention anything regarding the Constitution, I suppose I ought to include whatever relevant clause applies. Of course, if I happen to be commenting on any recent Supreme Court decisions, I might just have to post a blank, since so many seem to have revolved recently around ruminations over goat entrails rather than the Constitution…

Herewith, Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

There. It’s written in plain language in a vocabulary easily accessible to sixth-graders of my generation (which means most college graduates today can grasp its plain text. Most. I do not count people with advanced degrees in English majoring in textual criticism. Those so blessed generally can’t parse their way out of an oatmeal carton.)

Now, tell me: what part of “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…” did our congresscritters, President Bush (he signed the damned thing—and I’m speaking theologically when I say “damned”—and the Supreme Idiots not understand when McCain-Feingold was passed, signed and affirmed? (The one dishonorable thing Bush did in his first term was sign thisabortion of a bill, thinking the Supreme idiots would surely knock the pins out from under it. Shoulda vetoed the thing… It’s one honest answer he could have given when asked what mistakes he has made, apart from trusting apointees to be honorable, that is.)