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Whoo-whoo-whoo. Whoo. Whoo. Whoo whoo, whoo whoo

don't blow across my weasel!

February 29, 2008 — 11:57 pm
Comments: 30

It’s a cat’s-asstrophe!

cat's ass

— 6:05 pm
Comments: 38

Permissible dual-cat configurations

dual cat configurations

My two cats are like matter and anti-matter: they mixeth not, neither do they mingle. They will, however, appear on the same bed — now that I’ve turned the thermostat right down to save money and nurse my boiler through its last Winter. They will share a bed in two and only two configurations, as pictured above.

A single-cat configuration is always to my right, regardless of cat. Since all cats really are gray in the dark, I try to work out which one I’ve got by stroking its fur (his is coarser). Usually, I get the wrong end of whichever animal and find myself whispering sweet nothings to a cat’s bottom. They don’t seem to mind.

Cat blogging: because it doesn’t make my spleen throb like a native tom-tom.

Also: Garfield Minus Garfield as seen on Innocent Bystanders.

February 28, 2008 — 10:05 am
Comments: 31

Good manners type class? Or shut up, peasant type class?

tiny megaphoneOkay, I promised myself I wasn’t going to take any more shots at McCain, but this is really pissing me off.

Backstory: at a rally in Cincinnati, one of the speakers who worked the crowd before McCain appeared was some bozo local talk show host named Bill Cunningham. He delivered the rhetorical equivalent of a typical Free Republic comment, with references to the Clinton News Network and Barack Hussein Obama. Meh.

Afterward, McCain sought out the press and distanced himself from the remarks. Apologized, even. The blogosphere is taking this as a sign of McCain’s classiness and good judgement. HotAir even wondered if this consititutes a Sister Souljah moment (as if McCain needs to juke left in ’08 the way Clinton needed to juke right in ’92!).

HEL-LO! McCain didn’t hear Cunningham speak. Leading with Cunningham’s remarks or pretending McCain was reacting to the specifics is pointless. When he apologized, McCain had no freaking idea what exactly Cunningham had said. All’s he knew was, some peasant had dared to speak ill of a Senator. And I quote:

It’s my understanding that before I came in here a person who was on the program before I spoke made some disparaging remarks about my two colleagues in the Senate, Senator Obama and Senator Clinton,” he said. “I have repeatedly stated my respect for Senator Obama and Senator Clinton, that I will treat them with respect. I will call them ‘Senator.’ We will have a respectful debate, as I have said on hundreds of occasions. I regret any comments that may have been made about these two individuals who are honorable Americans.”

Bolding mine. It isn’t McCain’s lean to the left that’s pissing me off here (though it’s hard to escape the impression McCain thinks more highly of Hillary Clinton than he does of Mitt Romney). It’s the whole collegial atmosphere of the Senate thing.

This is why we so seldom elect one of these self-regarding bubble-headed jackasses to the presidency: they think a hell of a lot more highly of each other than they do the rest of us. How this became a blogospheric conversation about whether Obama’s middle name is a cheap shot…is a mystery to me.

Okay, no it’s not. We’re having that conversation because that’s the conversation the media wanted us to have. Happy now?

February 27, 2008 — 11:40 am
Comments: 27

Green crystallized dead Russian mouse mineral thing

mouse pseudomorphIn geology, a pseudomorph is a mineral that takes on the shape of another mineral (or other object) by infiltration or incrustation. Petrified wood is an example, where the form of the original wood (right down to the cellular structure) has been replaced over time by minerals.

This here thing? It’s a mouse that has been partially incrusted with chalcanthite and atacamite. Where did it come from? Is it ancient? I don’t know! I found it years ago, while surfing the web for limonite pseudomorphs (for entirely personal reasons). It’s from the Fursman Mineralogical Museum in Moscow. Please to click the link and see it in its natural green.

When talk turned to Russia and Pravda and Lenin’s tomb and assorted other dead things — the internet today, for example — I naturally thought of my friend, green crystallized dead Russian mouse mineral thing.

February 26, 2008 — 4:09 pm
Comments: 26

Creepy Monday

davey and goliath

So I had this dream about Mike Huckabee, and the punchline was, “not David and Goliath, Davey and Goliath,” which I woke up thinking was the funniest joke evarrrrr. Then my eyes adjusted and saw that I was lying on a mattress on the floor covered in cats and dustbunnies.

Monday. So very, very Monday.

Anyhow, Davey and Goliath — for all you philthy pherriners — was a stop-action TV program of the ’60s, brought you by the Lutheran church and Art Clokey (of Gumby fame). Yes, it was every bit as fun as it sounds. It ran Sunday mornings, and you watched because…what the hell else you going to watch Sunday morning? Davey and Goliath has to be in my top five Programs I Wouldn’t Want to Watch after Dropping the Brown Acid.

I didn’t realize until I Wiki’d it this morning that the sweet, stupid Davey of the Sixties turned into a major dick in the Seventies: cheating, contaminating a well and “telling a handicapped child to shoot himself for being so ‘dumb’.” I’d love to know how Goliath handled that one.

It’s still running on some religious stations, minus certain episodes. Violence, racial issues…that sort of thing. Yes, we have lived to see the day that Davey and Goliath is too edgy for children.

And speaking of edgy and creepy…a doctor in Australia is under investigation for mutilating and abusing hundreds of women.

Carolyn Dewaegeneire, a patient who broke her silence on a national TV news program last week, was admitted to Pambula Hospital on August 2002 to have a minor lesion removed from her labia.

Before she lost consciousness to a general anesthetic, she said Reeves leaned over and whispered in her ear: “I’m going to take your clitoris, too.”

After the operation she discovered all her external genitalia had been cut off her body. It is alleged Reeves later boasted of removing “all the fun bits” — and said she wouldn’t need them as her husband had died.

He wasn’t struck off for that. He was merely ordered not to practice as an obstetrician. He was struck off for disobeying and working as an obstetrician anyway.

Note to self: swing by the liquor store on the way home.

February 25, 2008 — 3:14 pm
Comments: 39

They want me. They want me bad.

Okay, I just got a robocall from the Huckabee campaign. Tomorrow, six p.m., same hotel that McCain was at (big conference center near the airport, that’s why). It starts an hour after Drinking Time, though. I’m not sure Huck’s worth sixty or more of my active boozing minutes.

Say, who’s up on parliamentary procedures? Is there any chance Huck will force it to a brokered convention and somebody totally else can grab the nomination?
Like Zombie Reagan or Maggie Thatcher or Chuck Manson or
Marvin the Martian or…somebody?

February 24, 2008 — 6:22 pm
Comments: 11

Evildoers? On the *Internet*?!

google badware warning

Have y’all run into this yet? I got this one clicking on the result of an images search.

Backstory here. Google just finished combing through three billion web pages looking for bad actors. They found about three million. One in a thousand.

They were surprised to find there was only a slightly greater risk of badware in the sleazy neighborhoods. So go on, surf porn with confidence (I’m looking at you, McGoo).

The breakdown? China: 67%. The US: 15%. Russia: 4%. Malaysia: 2.2%. Korea: 2%.

Malicious site operators in China fall into two broad categories, Thompson said: fraudsters looking to steal your banking password, and teenagers who want to steal your World of Warcraft character.

The solution mentioned in the article is to keep automatic updates switched on. Automatic updates can kiss my ass. The last time I ran automatic updates, it made Internet Explorer my default browser and loaded the vile Outlook Express on my nice clean machine. I turned it off, and now it pisses and moans every time I reboot. So I don’t reboot. How bout we just don’t give out our banking or WoW details instead?

I know, I know. It’s the weekend. I’m s’posed to be restesing. But I’m all about looking out for the minions.

Hey, can you cook potroast from frozen?

February 23, 2008 — 10:34 am
Comments: 23

And my heating pad is dead…

weasel in the snow

It started off with a fizzle, but it snew pretty good there toward the end. Just three or four inches, but it’s turning to ice now. Glad I’m not driving in it.

February 22, 2008 — 11:26 pm
Comments: 7

Snow day!

snow day

Okay, as snowstorms go, it’s not too impressive…but, as employees go, I’m a complete waste of human skin. So here I am, at home making pizza.

Hey! Want my pizza recipe? I believe I have already mentioned I was once a pizza professional. Yeah. Is there no end to my accomplishments? We made an award-winning, very deep dish Sicilian pie, and here’s how:

Start with raw white bread dough. That bagged stuff you get at the supermarket is fine. One of those (a pound) will make about two pizza doughs. You want to spread this in the bottom of a pie dish. Eight inches, eleven…whatever you’ve got. Press it into the bottom until you have a thin layer in the middle, and a thicker lip all around the edge. Try not to tear it.

The pie plate needs to be very slightly greasy, or the cooked pizza will stick. But too greasy, and it will pull away from the edges before it’s done. At the pizza joint, we simply wiped out the pans and left them unwashed; the accumulated pizza goodness did the trick. Wiping the pan with a very small amount of oil works, too, Mister Germophobe.

Now bake the dough, all by itself, in a 400° to 450° oven for about ten minutes, until the outer lip just starts to brown. This keeps the bottom of the pizza from going all wet and ‘orrible later on. First thing in the morning, we’d bake the whole day’s crusts and store ’em in the refrigerator until called for. You can too, just like a pizza professional!

When you’re ready, smear a layer of sauce on the crust (I use spaghetti sauce, for simplicity’s sake), then your desired ingredients, THEN your shredded cheese. Toppings under cheese — innovations you can really use. The shop used cheddar and mozarella. I like to use muenster. Whatever. Give this about ten minutes in the same 400° to 450° oven, and viola!

Let the pie sit a few minutes to firm up a little, then run your biggest knife underneath, all the way around, to make sure it’s totally unstuck. Leave the knife under the pie, hover over the cutting board, and pull the pan away from the pizza.

There you have it! Two years of my life in a nutshell.

— 1:22 pm
Comments: 72