This parody is simply a comment on the complete nonsense that any idea of teaching one single solitary thing to the scatterbrained inmates of our government-run Prisons for Kids(TM) at this time of year is folly indeed. Based on a secular Christmas song you know well, It’s The Sap-Sappiest Time of the Year is a fair characterization of the “inmates running the prison” situation that mostly prevails in our government-run Prisons for Kids(TM).as Christmas vacation approaches.
Christmas Tips, etc. #1
This, via email, from DNW:
Holiday Eating tips
1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Christmas spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.
2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. Like fine single-malt scotch, it’s rare. In fact, it’s even rarer than single-malt scotch. You can’t find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It’s not as if you’re going to turn into an eggnog-aholic or something. It’s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It’s later than you think. It’s Christmas!
3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.
4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or whole milk. If it’s skim, pass. Why bother? It’s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Christmas party is to eat other people’s food for free. Lots of it. Hello?
6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year’s. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a 10-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.
7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don’t budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They’re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you’re never going to see them again.
8. Same for pies. Apple. Pumpkin. Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or, if you don’t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Labor Day?
9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it’s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.
10. One final tip: If you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention. Reread tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.
Remember this motto to live by:
“Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate in one hand, martini in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming “WOO HOO what a ride!”
A link to a commiseration with folks who work as guards at our nations’ Prisons for Kids (government schools, also disingenuously known as “Public Schools”) who suffer enormopusly at this time of year will follow, Real. Soon. Now.
Mineta and his morons…
Over on Jerry Pournelle’s Current Mail page, Greg Cochran comments,
“Norman Mineta is good for something: he serves as an existence proof. If an unquenchable desire for freedom burned in every human breast, he wouldn’t exist. We’d already have torn him to pieces.”
[heh] “…an existence proof…”
Oh, Puke
Where do they come from, these talking heads, these MMPs? Arrrgh!
I have avoided commenting on the Scott Peterson trial. Oh! How I have avoided it! But now, the verdict is in. The jury’s penalty decision has been rendered. I can now dispense with passive voice construction.
He’s a murderer, for heaven’s sake! What in the world do these talking heads mean babbling about, “Is he the kind of man who should not be allowed to live?” as they deconstruct the jurors’ deliberation and decision? It’s not about “what kind of man” Scott Peterson is. It’s about what Scott Peterson has done. The only civilized thing to do with murderers is to execute them. Any and all of them. Life in prison is not civilized. Only removing them from the genepool, from any possibility of further “infecting” society with their evil permanently, completely and absolutely is civilized.
[sheesh!]
He’s a murderer. For heaven’s sake, get his worthless carcass off this planet!
(OK, expect a rant in future about our “criminal” justice system in general sometime Real. Soon, Now.)
Classic Red Enchilladas—with a twist…
I’ve been threatening the voices in my head with posting a few recipes for lazy cooks who nevertheless like to eat well.
OK, time to make good on that threat. here’s number one:
Classic Red Enchiladas—with a twist
Ok, so not-so-classic. The ingredients are authentic, but the preparation is strictly “fast food†utilitarian. The biggest change? No rolled enchiladas in this puppy. Here’s how it goes…
Red Enchilada Sauce
(Makes 16 oz.—give or take)
8-10 dried Anaheim peppers (actually, I tend to use more). Clean the seeds out for merely “sorta-hot”. Leave the seeds in for “Yeh, I can feel that†spiciness. Tear the peppers up into pieces and then either
a.) Use an electric coffee grinder to powder the chiles to a fine powder and add boiling water to make 2 cups liquid. Blend in blender. Set aside and let it come together for a little bit. (My preferred “quick sauce” method)
OR
b.) Place the pepper pieces in a sauce pan and cover with boiling water. Place a saucer (or whatever works) on top of the peppers to hold them submerged under the water and then leave them all day soaking. Remove the peppers from the water, place them in a blender with enough water to make 2 cups and blend.
If you absolutely NEED a thicker and/or milder sauce, use a little corn flour in the blending stage to thicken/whimp out the sauce. Try to keep the corn meal down to less than 1/4 C for each 2 C water, otherwise it’ll really begin to taste “corny”. (Only have corn meal? Put a little in your coffe grinder and make corn flour out of it. Don’t have a coffee grinder? Get one! 🙂
OK, that is all there is to real Red Enchilada Sauce. Here’s the rest of the dish:
Preparation
In a 9×12 baking dish, LAYER (in the following order—tortillas, sauce, etc.)
24-30 corn tortillas
Red Enchilada Sauce (Yeh, make your own. The stuff in cans stinks.)
2 C shredded Monterey Jack cheese or Jack/Cheddar mix.
One YELLOW onion, chopped. (Need milder onion? Chop it the day before and store it in a plastic bag in the fridge to “sweeten”)
The top layer should be covered in sauce and cheese only—no onion.
Bake at 325 F for about 45 minutes. Check it at 30 minutes. Different timing/oven temps result in different textures. Play with that a lil to suit yourself.
I generally use 6 tortillas per layer in an overlapping 2X2X2 pattern and fill in the edges with torn tortillas so that I end up with 4 layers. Play with it. Find a layer/sauce/cheese mix that suits you.
I like to serve squares cut from the result topped with sour cream and shredded lettuce. Add a few sliced black olives for flavor and color or some salsa for a little more pep. A side of “Spanish†rice and one of refried beans make for a pretty well-rounded meal. If you want meat, hash something together, but DON’T put meat in these enchilladas!
Easy “Spanish†rice:
Easiest? Just substitute your favorite salsa for part of the water when making a pan of rice. (Another time, I’ll post my fav fast salsa recipes.)
Easy—and fast— Refried beans:
OK, use canned refried beans. Go ahead. But at least add some,—no, not some: a lot!—cumin to them while they are warming up. 🙂 Better? Here’s where you can add some meat to the menu: add some chorizo to the beans. Great cumin flavor and a lil meat all at once.
A Lesson in Natural Selection
James Taranto of “Best of the Web” posts an example of just how natural selection works:
“Longtime wetlands advocate” Jonathan Aurthur, 56, committed suicide last month by jumping off a cliff, a Los Angeles Times obituary reports. The family had a tragic history of mental illness; in 1996 Aurthur’s 23-year-old son, Charley, killed himself by jumping off an overpass into freeway traffic. But the Times suggests the motive for the elder Aurthur’s suicide was partly political: “Friends said [he] was despondent over mounting debt, his son’s suicide and the reelection of President Bush.”
An argument for evolution in action. And a candidate for the Darwin Awards, I’m sure.
File Photo of a “concientious objector”
Sharp as a Marble has this photo of Pablo Paredes.
Oh, so very wrong…
“…let me count the ways…”
This is so wrong, on so many levels, that I don’t know where to start…
OK, I’ll just hit the high spots, cos I’m waiting on a call so I can spend some money we didn’t expect to (but are glad to spend and glad we are able to spend, even so). It’ll make a low-level distraction.
First, traveling backwards through the news, the lame brain who beat up the waxworks figures of the Beckhams has good taste but lousy morality. Those figures were/are someone else’s property and he (I assume the attacker/defacer was a he) had no right to deface them. Lousy morality? Yes, because theft and destruction of others’ property is a moral issue.
Next: even on a merely aesthetic level, the nativity featuring the Beckhams as Mary and Joseph, Samuel jackson as a shepherd and Blair, Bush and some guy I don’t recognize but am told is a muckey-muck in Britain is just about as tasteless and stupid as I’ve seen (in about the same category as the guy who protested the “Parade of Lights” in Denver with a “baby Jesus” with a paper tear oozing out of one eye and “It’s My party and I’ll Cry if I Want to” playing in the background–yech!) I’ll post a close-up pic later, but take my word, the costuming alone is just lame-brain stupid…. No, “stoopid”.
Let’s leave aside for now the use of celebrity visages in the portrayal of the scene (although there is some fodder there). Imagine: first century Jews wearing pierced earrings. Just think on that one for a second. Mary and Joseph were chosen, we are told, because of their “righteousness” etc. According to their traditions and law, the wearing of earrings was for slaves, alone, and was forbidden to practicing Jews.
OK, a “stoopid” slip by sub-literates, there.
But what is David beckham, as Joseph, doing wearing not one, but TWO crosses as jewelry?!? The cross, as an item of jewelry, gained usage only after the death, burial and ressurection of the newly born child the nativity purports to represent… Stoopid sub-literacy, again.
I’d continue, but such stupidity is enough to prompt me to observe that although the doof who defaced others’ property was wrong, the property defaced was already so flawed as to be defaced in its very creation.
[sigh]
(OK, I will admit that Kylie Minogue as the annunciatory angel is at least decent eye candy… 🙂
Dioxin Not Needed
Sean Gleeson has a pic of Mickey Moore-on looking as though he had been poisoned with dioxin a la Yurichenko. Sadly, such is not the case, and Gleeson avers that the disfiguration seemed to have been bean dip. I demurred with:
Bean dip? I think not. 2 possibilities:
1.) Pic #2 makes me think of what a s**t-eating dog might look like were it to start out as ugly as Mickey Moore-on.
2.) Think: reverse peristalsis.
Of the two, I think the most likely is the second, given what Moore-on so frequently spews.
Notice my deference to unknown sensibilities. I have no aversion to writing the word “shit” on my own blog, as I view it as a perfectly good and useful, though perhapos vulgar, word. See my defense of vulgarity, below and elsewhere.
But “reverse peristalsis” evokes a far more disgusting image than simply “shit-eating dog.” It’s in the nature of dogs to be carcophages (indeed, for dogs it is frequently a survival trait), but spewing shit forth from the mouth, as Mickey Moore-on does almost every time he opens his for anything other than stuffing with more fois gras, is about as repulsive an image as I can conjure… And it’s simply normative behavior for this despicable example of human devolution.
But think: if the foretold (second) coming of the Christ is as Isaiah saw, with lions grazing on grass—literally a transformation of nature!—perhaps there is hope for even such travesties of nature as Mickey Moore-on. Let’s all pray for a transformation.