Month: February 2006

…knocks one outa the park.

The Mary Hunter has completed his “music meme game” post, and while I’ll probably just let folks list theirs in trackbacks, TMH not only made time in a very busy schedule, he also included some pieces that really brought a smile to my ear (if I may be allowed to severely mangle a metaphor—heck, whether I’m allowed to or not! Zelda B.’s not standing over my shoulder to correct me… ).

One, the Dona Nobis Pacem section of Bach’s B Minor Mass, spurred recollection of the older “dona nobis pacem” canon that’s most often sung as a three=part canon (though it can have as many parts as you darned well wish it to).

Here’s a cut of The Frazier Horn Choir playing an adaptation, with structured chorale additions:

donanobispacem2.mp3

This week, I fixed a nice pot of pinto beans and hamhock, and since I made them using a pressure cooker—a departure for me, but one I’ll do agai, cos the beans turned out great!—I decided to also vary the cornbread.

So, I took last week’s bread machine bread and varied it thusly:

• 1.5 cups warm water (about 115 degrees fahrenheit)
• 0.5-1.0 tsp salt (mostly a matter of taste)
• 3 Tbs oil (I prefer a good, full-flavored olive oil for this)
• 2 eggs (added last immediately before the dry ingredients)

Mix the dry ingredients separately and add them all at once:

• 1.5 C corn meal
• 1 C white flour
• 0.5 C whole wheat flour
• 3 tsp active dry yeast
• 0.25 C oat bran
• 0.25 C garbanzo bean flour
• 0.5 C vanilla protein powder (mostly soy)

Dumped it all in the order listed in my bread machine, set for a 2-pound loaf and walked away.

The bread and the pressure-cooked pinto beans were ready together.

Ambrosia.

Oh, the pressure-cooked pintos? Sure, why not?

2 C washed and sorted pinto beans (I just used a colander and picked them out of a full stream of water by the handful to sort and rinse, this time)
6 C water to start

Brought the pressure cooker to a “huff” under 15 pounds pressure and removed it from the heat. Let the beans soak for an hour. Removed the lid, discarded the water and re-rinsed. Added 6 cups water, 2 smoked hamhocks and set them on the stove to presurize at 5 pounds. When the cooker began huffing, I backed the heat off to the lowest setting and left them. When the bread was done, so were the beans and the hamhocks. Added some barbeque sauce and brought them back to a simmer, uncovered for about 15 minutes, to thicken the juices a bit.

Too delicious to save any leftovers for chili… *sigh*

🙂

Yeh, it’s been all over the news. I’ve been waiting for aomething new, more info, but it’s just the same old same old.

*yawn*

The bombing of a “sacred Shiite shrine” (whatever “sacred” means to the followers of The Butcher of Medina) set off a round of reprisals.

About time. As far as home grown terrorism goes, is there any doubt that the overwhelming majority is comprised of Saddam’s pet Sunnis getting their panties in a twist over not being able to enjoy a free hand torturing, raping and killing Shiites?

“Oh, dear me!” the handwringers whine, moan and wail, “This could split Iraq!”

And rightly so. Will no one say the obvious?

The Sunnis and Shiites are almost entirely composed of different tribes who have been at each others’ throats—metaphorically, in times of the rare brutal, but fair, ruler, but more often than not, in graphically physical ways—for hundreds of years. I say, give the Shiites enough weaponry and training to knock the Sunnis down to size.

A much smaller size than they are now. Serves ’em right.

Oh, and would someone PLEASE let the Kurds go their own way? The Kurds are by and large much too fine a people to force them into association with the cretins to the south… Give ’em enough weaponry and training and support to stand off incursions from Iran, Turkey and the creeps to the south, and let them be Kurds, not forced to associate with curs.

Calling for the resurrection of the Saracens at TMH’s Bacon Bits.

OK, folks, this is just too much. May I PLEASE have some help here?

Check my blogrolls out. OK, if your blog’s there, I want half of y’all to write some really crappy posts next week to give me a break in my reading, ‘K? I mean, really! It’s gotten waaaaaayyyy outa hand! You guys post alla these addictively great posts and I’m wearing out my synapses just trying to keep up!

So, work it out amongst yourselves, but PLEASE—would you guys work out some sorta rotation so that I can have time to read to good posts instead of alla you guys posting great stuff alla the time?!?!?

PLEASE!!!

PSA’d at Conservative Cat, Basil’s Blog, Jo’s Cafe.

Aha! What goes around… Adam got in a lil third-hand tagback on me with the playlist meme pool tag game. He was tagged by the Random Yak who was tagged by Lyn Perry who was tagged by… me.

*heh*

But since Adam seems to be having trouble coming up with seven to tag *cough* I’ll play again (not that it’s all that difficult, since songs and musical motifs run through my head all day). In fact, one-a the folks I tagged tagged another who has an open invitation to tag me any time, so I may get to play this one over and over again… And yeh, most of the music from last week’s tag are still running loose in here, somewhere… The meme pool tag game has some “rules” such as they are:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to.

I’d suggest linking here and tracking back, or I might tag you again, what with my Early Oldtimer’s Disease (or whatever it is–probably coffee deprivation–heh)

😉

1-“Rescue the Perishing–I like to play this one on my cornet (an old–1929 Vincent Bach Strad) with a shift to the relative minor for part of the verse that reads,

Down in the human heart, crushed by the tempter
Feelings lie buried that grace can restore (back to major here with a shift one step up)
Touched by a loving heart, wakened by kindness,
Chords that were broken will vibrate once more.

I don’t play it (or my “Strad”) often, but it does keep coming back and playing itself in my mind’s ear.

2-If I’m walking around shopping, I’m likely to be stopped by someone and asked “What is that song/tune?” and like as not it’ll be the opening to “L’Arlesienne.” If not it might well be

3-Don McLean’s “Vincent”. Don’t ask why, cos I’m not sure.

4-“Night on Bald Mountain”–Moussorgsky/Rimsky-Korsakov. Yep. NOT a song, but the thing’s so compelling, strong. And while that is still echoing, in marches

5-The Ravel orchestration of Moussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition”–mostly “The Great Gate of Kiev”… nice piece. (Oh, I also “hear” Moussorgsky’s piano piece, cos I once heard a particularly good rendition in recital that has stuck with me, but the Ravel is the standard, I suppose.)

6-“Take the Chance”–Peter Yarrow and Judy Collins from the PP&M “Lifelines” album. The same album that features Noel Paul Stookey and Emmylou Harris (!?!) singing

7-“For the Love of It All”

In the beginning, as life became form,
The oceans heaved, the mountains were cleaved,
The firmament stormed.
At the center of being, immensely small
Was the master of now, don’t ask me how
The Love of it all

And the seasons were many.
Creation was new.
And there on a tree (deceptively free)
A forbidden fruit
Upon leaving the garden, after the fall,
One thing was clear; we chose not to hear
The Love of it all…

And that’s some of what’s been running through my head recently.

Tagging…

Lingerie Lady (HAVE to know what’s on her “playlist” :-)) Hope she checks in, cos I can’t seem to find her email addy…

Kentucky Dan, at Committees of Correspondence, has been featuring the varied “ear” of American music recently, and I think his playlist would be interesting, don’t you?

Lisa Renee, of Liberal Commonsense may have played this, but if she did I just missed it. I still wanna know what she’s listening to, as do we all, of course. 😉

And I do wonder what Jake and The Bald Chick are listening to over at Freedom Folks.

And here’s hoping The MaryHunter’s schedule has cranked back juuuust a hair, and he’s got the time to list his playlist, at least. “Ave Maria,” bud? (Gounod, Schubert or other? :-)) Uhmm, don’t shoot me, TMH; I’m just the cornet player.

The Mauser Girl mentions she’s down in the dumps over chocolate milk (not really) and looking for inspiration, and I hope this lil tag will inspire her to… something. *heh* 🙂

And lastly, but certainly not “leastly,” Mark, of uhm, well, Mark My Words (wish I’d had something witty to name my blog, although I do blog now and then at My Dog Boo) seems to be a man whose playlist will “clast” some icons…

Thaz it folks. Let’s see who can keep the hits comin’.

Noted (*heh*) at TMH’s Bacon Bits

Well, for a couple of weeks I tried to insult Muslims so I could get a few death threats of my own. They’d drop in from Dubai or Saudi Arabia after searching for “filthy whore” in Arabic (long story) and go scooting off with their tails between their legs, though.

*sigh*

What’s a guy gotta do to get a little “respect” from our brothers in The Religion of Hate, Intolerance, Butchery, Rape and Slavery?

Heck, I even posted a realo nice pic of The Butcher of Medina in a pink dress! And what did I get? Not one illiterate scrawl from a splodydope moose-limb.

If it weren’t for alla you nice folks linking here and tracking back, I’d begin to think I was all alone in the world… *wah*

*heh*

Just link to this post and trackback, ‘K?

CLICK on the OTA graphic below or on my left sidebar for more info on the Open Trackback Alliance, ‘K?

Also note the other fine blogs featuring linkfests at

Linkfest Haven.

Mental Rhinorrhea has a thoughtful post, Morning After Pill Redux and Open Trackbacks, up responding to a comment I made to an earlier post there that deserves a fuller response from me than just a brief comment on her blog. Read her post first and come on back here.

Even posting this in response doesn’t do her entry enough credit, since I’m only commenting on a portion of her post—and then taking off on one of my trademarked rabbit trails. 🙂

I particularly commend her comment, “I would love to think that, God forbid, I were raped and became pregnant that I would have the emotional support needed to deliver the child to term…” My personal prayer is that no woman would ever have to face that particular decision, but if one should, Lingerie Lady’s outlook would be what I’d pray prevails.

Still, if one truly believes abortion is murder, then what? Simple logic compels the thought, apart from religious beliefs: if the fetus is not human, what species is it? Porcine? And if so when does it switch from being a pig to being a human? (OK, in cases of fetuses that grow to become politicians, the answer would be “Never” *heh*)

If the answer about when a fetus becomes human is the silly, “When it can sustain life outside the womb,” then that would suggest that most of the folk on “welfare” are abortable… among other classes of not-humans (by that definition). The question is silly, but it’s also either dangerously stupid or dangerously disingenuous… or both.

The answer is for those of us who have a moral sense to legislate that moral sense into law. After all, every crime against persons is a legislation of moraility, is it not? If murder is only “criminal” and not “immoral” then where is the justification for criminalizing it?

It is the bane of civilization: postmodern (and even sloppier post-postmodern) relativistic humanism that makes the disingenuous argument that one cannot legislate morality: if laws are not legislations of morality then they are purely arbitrary.

OK, almost hung myself on that one, didn’t I? Granted, many of the laws we are saddled with today are arbitrary, disconnected from morality, and also, not coicidentally, the prime factors in what Jerry Pournelle has labeled as the increasing presence of “anarcho-tyranny”–loosely, the arbitrary and unjust rule of subjects (no longer genuinely citizens) by bureaucrats and political elite, resulting in a disrespect for the rule of such arbitrary and unjust laws.

And make no mistake here: I have no respect for the current crop of abortion laws on just that very basis alone, apart from moral arguments: they are arbitrary and unjust. If they were just, they’d allow for the baby to be born, grow to maturity and argue its own case for being allowed to continue living or be “aborted,” but fetuses are allowed no rights in abortions. Arbitrary, because the assessments as to the humanity of the fetus are all subjective, with no foundation in fact.

Coming around to the original post by Lingerie Lady on the “womb broom” morning after pill and pharmacists who refuse to dispense it: On the grounds that abortion laws are arbitrary and unjust, alone, I would argue that anyone who refused to dispense those pills would have not only the right to assert their displeasure with the laws by refusing to dispense the poison but the responsibility to themselves and a just society to do so.

As in respect to such laws as require dispensing drugs against the personal moral judgements of citizens, “The law is a ass.*”

I heartily recommend putting Mental Rhinorrhea on your watch list. It’s going on my blogroll. Lingerie Lady’s post referred to here deserves a much fuller response than I have made, but I trust at least a few readers here will hop on over and check her blog out, and perhaps leave a few comments of your own.

Continue reading “Agreed: Abortion is murder…”

Today’s Stop the ACLU Blogburst is a reprint of Stop the ACLU article covering a significant issue in The War Against the West that was originally published at Gribbit’s Word on 28 August 2005:

---

“ACLU & CAIR Promoting Islam While Suppressing Christians & Jews”

For a year now, Stop The ACLU has been bringing information to you about the evil ways of the ACLU. We’ve been telling you about their war on religion, the Boy Scouts, Christmas, religious icons in public, the 10 Commandments, children, and the United States. But are you listening?

Judging by the comments that we receive, I’d say the only people listening are our own members and those who are poised to argue the ACLU cause. But we must have some readers who are in shock or out-right disbelief that any organization called
“American” Civil Liberties Union would be fighting for causes contrary to the best interests of this nation. But they are.

read Continue reading “ACLU and CAIR Stacking the Deck”

Because I am the sick, twisted, and bizarre person God has made me (THANK You, Lord, LOLOL), I have promised a quilt to David and his Lady Wife.

I requested a general color preference, and David’s Lady granted that she likes sage green and creams, with other accents, and so I offer – through God’s rich grace and Providence – a kit I bought two years ago (Oh, yeah, yet another chance to reduve my “stash” — so I can buy MOREMOREMORE!).

David, here are the colors – and make sure your Lady isn’t completely nauseated by them, OK?

Continue reading “Oh, David…”

Click on the thumbnail for the rest of the story.

Snickering over at Basil’s Picnic