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Thursday, December 29, 2005

people watching

sitting in the local german bakery/coffee shop in the afternoon. it's a grey day out. the clouds are a foreshadowing of the torrential downpour we've been promised tomorrow.
she's sitting in the corner, over by the coffee pots, knitting and watching. she's around my age, early fifties. she's quiet, just sitting there knitting. she wears a picture id tag on a clip and chain around her neck.
why have i noticed her? it's not like she's some young sweetie, and it's certainly not because she is actively trying to attract attention. no, it's because she's knitting as a cover for checking out everyone that enters the shop.
i get this visual. imagine mid 60's moscow, and the aura of watchful paranoia we in the west were lead to believe was the norm there. this lady could easily have been the neighborhood informant, sitting in her window, wearing a shapeless dress and those big clunky black shoes, one hand on the curtain and one on the phone.
knit one, perl one, look up and give a quick, searching scan, look down, repeat.
she sat that way for the whole time i was there. she was there knitting and watching when i got there, and was sitting in the exact same spot when diane and i left. knit one, perl one, look up and scan, look down: repeat.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

quiz time. no peeking

question: how can you tell the package the mailman delivered was wrapped by your dad, and not your mom.





the wrapping paper is a garbage compactor bag (hey, they are lined, so they're water proof!). oh, and it's sealed with duct tape.

gotta love my dad

Saturday, December 24, 2005

just a thought on my way to bed this Christmas eve

i hope santa's reindeer and sleigh don't wreck my brand new, gonna be paying for it for years, tile roof.

just a thought.


MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!

a little shared intimacy

ok, i don't usually think telling the world every single detail of my life is all that interesting to the world, so i try to avoid it. now if i was living a fairy tale like a couple of friends of mine, i might be of a different mind.
but i have to share this, since it is so significant.
background: my ex-wife complained she could never get a good night's sleep when i was in bed. not because i was randy, but because i would stop breathing for minutes at a time. it drove her crazy. fast forward a life time, and i get some of the same comments from the love of my life.
i am always tired, lacking energy to even give a damn.
i finally convinced my doc (in amongst a ton of other things going on) that i need to fix this problem. i had a sleep study that showed i slept less than an hour a night typically. i stopped breathing for over a minute 28 times in 4 hours, and "desaturated" nearly 500 times during that same time span. desaturation just means i stopped breathing long enough for the oxygen concentration in my blood dropped below 90%. that's bad. it got as low as 61% several times.
last night i slept with a machine providing overpressure to my airway. the machine is called a CPAP. last night's sleep was the best i've had in as long as i can remember. and that was with a foreign object strapped to my face blowing air into me. imagine how good it's going to be when i get used to the damned thing. Merry Christmas indeed.
the only drawback is the straps left marks in my skin. we used to call those rack burns in the navy, and derided the shipmates that had them. the obvious point was that they spent so much time sleeping that their faces creased. since i'm no longer out there looking to hook up with a young sweety, and my wife loves me with or without these big marks across my cheek, i figure this a non-issue.
ahh, now i know what most of you feel like in the morning. i woke up without a headache, jumped out of bed, and didn't feel like i needed to climb back into bed an hour later. i'm pissed at myself for all those years that i could have done something about it, but was too stubborn. and i'm grateful that i finally did something about it. this is good. really, really, really good.
i think i'll celebrate by going to the range and popping a few hundred rounds downrange.

merry christmas everyone. i hope you have a fabulous time, and get great gifts. me, i've just received the best gift, the gift of a real nights sleep.

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

more cookies: montecao or montecado cookie recipe

one of the great things that happened to me when i married Di is that i've been exposed to both portuguese AND spanish cuisine from being around her family. they are american as american gets, but there is still a lot of foods from the "old country". i've already posted my mom-in-law's churros recipe. here's another from the family archives

Montecao cookies

ingr.
  • 5 cups of flour, sifted
  • 3 Tbs granulated sugar
  • 2 Tbs baking powder. Yes, that's tablespoons
  • 1 Tbs Lemon Extract
  • 1 tsp oil of anise OR 2 Tbs anise extract. use the oil if you can get it. it's way way way way better.
  • 2 oz. whiskey
  • 1 cup white wine (sautern is most preferable)
  • 1 lb lard, melted. hey, i didn't say they were healthy, just very damned good!


how:
Mix all ingredients in order, wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight.
roll out to 1/2" thick. cut with favorite cookie cutters

Bake 375 degF. for approximately 22 minutes. you don't want these to get any darker than a light brown.

when cookies are cool enough to handle (but still HOT), roll in granulated sugar to coat. usually you want to roll them just as soon as they come out of the oven.


enjoy with a cup of coffee or hot cocoa. these are well worth the work.

as an aside, let me recommend an on-line resource for serious home bakers. the King Arthur Flour Baking catalog is a great resource. they will send you a paper catalog that i recommend if for no other reason than all the pictures, tips, and products.

as always, if you try this recipe, or it inspires you to try something different, please let me know how it turned out. i'm always looking for fresh and clever ideas to improve my own cooking skills and recipes.

for a complete list of my online recipes, follow the link here

JOEL!!!!!!!!! LOOOOOOK OOOOOUUUTTT

here i was, minding my own business, surfing the web, when i came across one of the most frightening things i've seen on the web in many many many moons.

this is from the paragon of journalistic integrity, the Weekly World News :

TASTY EATS OR THREAT TO MANKIND?
POTATOES DEVELOP INTELLIGENCE!

Thursday December 15, 2005



By JESSICA DeBARRETT

CLARKE, Idaho -- In a series of startling events, potatoes on farms in Idaho have suddenly developed intelligence and are on the move.

"I was cultivating the back row of taters when I saw them blinking their eyes and pointing their vines at me," said noticeably upset farmer Floyd Haywood. "I ran and got my boys but by then the spuds had stopped moving. They figgered I'd been sippin' potato moonshine until we went to harvest the crop. That was when those big Idahos -- there was seven of 'em -- just pulled themselves from the dirt and rolled into a gully to try and get away.

"We didn't even have time to scratch our heads," Haywood went on. "We chased them with a big burlap sack and overtook them before they could reach the road. Their roots were waving around like little fingers. We suspect they were gonna hitch a ride to Starchless County."


and a true sign that they aren't, well, shall we say, intellegent:
Weekly World News was granted access to the potato leader, who goes by the name of Duncan. He was able to communicate by blinking Morse code with his eyes.

"We never wanted conflict with humans," he told us. "We read about TV. We only wanted to see The Apprentice."


read the rest of this horrifying, frightening article here

food blog! Roasted lemon herb cornish game hens

the holiday season is a time for sharing with friends and family. this season is a little special, because we have great friends this year that can't get out and about. we found out that our fiery frau has basically become homebound. since she's the primary caregiver for her hubby, things have just been turned upside down for them. their circle of friends have tightened around them, helping whenever and however possible. we volunteered to fix dinner and bring it sunday. there were six of us altogether, so the recipes are calculated for 6, with leftovers.

looks like the 71st Carnival of Recipes is up. go over and visit.

lemon herb cornish game hens and roasted rosemary potatoes

hens:
  • 6 hens, thawed, rinsed inside and out, and giblets removed
  • 6 tbs butter
  • 3 sprigs fresh rosemary
  • 1 or 2 cloves garlic
  • 1 lemon
  • salt and pepper
  • paprika (smoky spanish or hungarian)


prep: preheat the oven to 350 degF.

Strip the three sprigs of fresh rosemary leaves off the twig, and toss into a mortar. add one or two cloves of garlic, and the juice of 1/2 a lemon. pulp. this can be done with a knife and cutting board, with the juice added later while mixing the butter. toss in a pinch or two of fresh pepper and salt.


in a small prep bowl mix the herb mash into 6 tbs of softened butter. blend until the lemon juice is incorporated. set aside.
take each hen and run your thumb down along the breast meat, separating the skin from the breast. try not to tear the skin, otherwise the herb butter will escape during baking. salt and pepper the inside of the bird with a couple of pinches each. take the 1/2 lemon remaining, and rub it all over each hen, giving it a little squeeze while doing so to get the juice to lightly coat the bird.
add about 1/2 tbs of the herb butter per side on the breast between the skin and the meat. if you do this right, it will look like the bird went to a cornish plastic surgeon for silicon implants.
i used wire racks designed to hold the birds vertical. i've got several sizes, ranging from game hen size thru chicken up to turkey. i bought them over several years for use in my smoker and bbq grill. they work pretty well in the oven too.
you don't need vertical racks though. but one thing i would do is use something like a v-rack (for a couple of birds) or a cookie cooling rack (for over 2 birds) in the bottom of a roasting pan. that way the birds brown all over, you don't end up with greasy soggy back and thigh meat, and you can collect and reserve the juice released during cooking.
here's a look at the birds during prep:


when you have all the birds done, mix kosher salt, fresh ground pepper, and paprika together in a small bowl, using a fork. a 1 tsp, 1/4 tsp, 1 tsp ratio works well. coat the birds lightly with this seasoning mix, and toss into the oven.
here they are, ready for the oven


while they bake, rotate the roasting pan every 15 or 20 minutes, and give the birds a 1/4 while you're at it. baste the birds with the pan drippings each time. as you can see from the next picture, they take up a big area, and the temperatures are usually not real consistent throughout the entire volume of the oven.
here they are, "getting a tan"


bake for around 1 hour, until a thermometer inserted into the thick part of the thigh reads around 175 deg. the last 10 degrees will come while the birds are resting following the roast.
here they are, fresh from the oven.
remember when i said you should collect the juice? look at the bottom of that pan. there's some seriously yummy stuff sitting in there. after removing the birds, i pour off the juice into a small sauce pan and suck out about 2 basting bulbs worth of the oil floating on top. then i turn on the heat, and reduce the juices to about 1/2. butter, herbs and garlic, and rendered fat and juices...dayam. i use this reduction to spoon over the bird just before eating. the rest i saved for inclusion in the stock i made from the carcasses. that's going to be a killer soup.

i also made garlic rosemary roasted potatoes. this is a simple variation of my bbq spuds.

ingrd:
  • 1/2 pound of spuds per diner
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced finely
  • 2 sprigs rosemary, leaves pulled off and chopped coarsely
  • fresh cracked pepper and medium coarse sea salt
  • olive oil to coat spuds


directions: wash and chop spuds into quarters. pour a couple of good tablespoons of olive oil into a big bowl, add the garlic and rosemary, and mix. add the spuds, and toss, coating them with the oil and herbs.
lay out in a single layer in a small roasting pan or cookie sheet, and toss into the oven. top with a couple of grinds of pepper and a couple of BIG pinches of sea salt. i love using sea salt this way, because it gives a great cruchy texture to the dish. i just stuck these on the next rack down under the birds. no sense letting all that heat go to waste. pull these out and toss each time you rotate the birds. pull when browned and fork tender. this took about 45 to 50 minutes.
here's the finished product:


we fixed a nice big salad and a side dish to complete the dinner.

appetizers consisted of a triple cream french brie, allowed to come to room temperature, topped with a mandarin pumpkin marmalade, with crackers. i loved it, ed loved it, everyone else thought the marmalade too sweet. too bad. more for me!

as always, if you try this recipe, or it inspires you to try something different, please let me know how it turned out. i'm always looking for fresh and clever ideas to improve my own cooking skills and recipes.

for a complete list of my online recipes, follow the link here

what the hell is this doing in court?

i'm sure that you have heard by now that some wackjob woman in new mexico petitioned and ACTUALLY RECEIVED an injunction against david letterman. his crime?
Nestler's application for a restraining order was accompanied by a six-page typed letter in which she said Letterman used code words, gestures and "eye expressions" to convey his desires for her.

She wrote that she began sending Letterman "thoughts of love" after his show began in 1993, and that he responded in code words and gestures, asking her to come East.

She said he asked her to be his wife during a televised "teaser" for his show by saying, "Marry me, Oprah." Her letter said Oprah was the first of many code names for her, and that the coded vocabulary increased and changed with time.


so let me get this right. i can get an injunction against someone because they have been sending me secret signals using code words, gestures, and the like? and i can get a judge to approve this thing?
well. in that case, i'm going to file for an injunction against Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. why? because they are sending secret signals, and a lot of overt ones too, telling me that my values and beliefs are wrong. they want me to feel remorse over the fact that the economy is enjoying its 10th quarter of growth, and that i have benefited from that growth. they want me to hate the government, and are constantly sending signals that our government is a corrupt, meglomaniacal entity that can't be trusted. wait, only the part of the government they aren't involved in. that's ok, it's everything else that's bad. they want me to feel guilty that the american military, with congress's blessing, freed the iraqi people, ridding the world of maddman hussein and his warped progeny. i am supposed to hate the fact that i'm an american, proud of my country and the accomplishments of the last 4 years.
yup, i want an injunction. i want them to shut the fuck up.
think i can find a judge to issue that one?
one can only dream.

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

this one's for willy

hmmm. what did you have for dinner tonight? me, i had homemade queso, pollo asada, and green chile tamales, washed down with a glass of jug red spanish wine. go here to read about the wine. willy is learnin' ta bee a conniesewer of wine, and i had to help him out. he published my missive, so i'm returning the favor!

both the tamales and the vin were good. damned good.

here's why we spend so much time baking

here is one of the gift baskets of cookies we made and gave away this Christmas. mmmm, let's see, there's some of those springerles, and chocolate snowflakes, and OHHH, look, chocolate thumbprints, and strawberry thumbprints. the mexican wedding cookies (aka russian teacakes) must be buried. i don't see the montecados either. those are killer anise shortbread cookies from spain.

click for larger image

Monday, December 19, 2005

this guy had a REAL buddy

so these two miscreants break into a home, hold up a father/son pair with guns to their heads, and all hell breaks loose.

two things come to mind when reading this article.
  1. The man who nabbed the valuables was able to get away, while Hernandez sat on the other robber, trapping him.
  2. By the time police arrived on the scene, Hernandez told WISN-TV, they had injured the man so badly that an ambulance had to come to the home.


the dumb bastard that wasn't able to protect himself, even though he was holding a gun to one of the victim's head got his ass kicked, stabbed and stomped.
the other dude, he got away. as in, too bad, so sad, i hate to see you get your ass kicked, but hey, i'm getting away, and with the goodies.

imagine the next meeting between these two crooks.
sometimes you wish you could be a fly on the wall.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

mindless rainy day activities

yup, it's that time of year again. the time when you have enough free time because the weather is acting up to actually waste on these stupid quizes. here are a couple for you to start your day of wasting time

You Should Learn Japanese

You're cutting edge, and you are ready to delve into wacky Japanese culture.
From Engrish to eating contests, you're born to be a crazy gaijin. Saiko!


Your Brain's Pattern

Your brain is always looking for the connections in life.
You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first.
You're also good at connecting people - and often play match maker.
You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white.


thanks to pettifog for helping me waste my time.

how did i find pettifog? backtracking visitors using my site tracking program.

Friday, December 16, 2005

how do folks get to YOUR blog?

man, i'm cracking up laughing. how do folks find your blog? i have a site counter that let's me see what the refering page is to folks that surf into my blog. i've had some vellllly intellllesting search phrases that have lead visitors my way, but this one makes me not even want to guess the intent. people can sure be funny sometimes.

i'm still impressed with Iraq the Model

i've posted about one of the links to the right before. iraq the model is one of the truly informative websites about what is going on in iraq. the writers for the blog have been on the cutting edge of reporting on events in iraq for two years. these guys have placed themselves in danger reporting on what was going on in their country. and now, they report on the election. every American worth his salt should visit and read Iraq the Model blog and feel incredibly proud.

Monday, December 12, 2005

holiday cookie time!

well, here it is. yahooyipyipyiphooorayyy. christmas cookie time! here are the first ones of the season. i just love making a huge mess in the kitchen while baking.
click for bigger image

flour flour everywhere. i make two recipes, and one of them has you beat the eggs for 15 to 20 minutes before adding the dry ingredients. then you add 6 cups (!) of powdered sugar, which poofs everywhere. damn i like baking. i make a huge mess, and wife doesn't complain!

here are a couple of the molds i use to make my springerle cookies. one is a carved rolling pin my friend Karin gave me. her mother gave it to her, but since making these cookies is such a pain in the backside, I inherited the roller, because Karin knows i make goooooooood springerle and she just never bothered. it's a really good roller, with the patterns cut deeply, as you would expect from an old springerle roller from germany. the new ones you find in the stores and on the web suck. the impressions are cut very shallow, and don't leave the pattern on the cookie worth a damn. a couple of other molds i use come from an on-line shop called House on the Hill. they sell a wide variety of springerle and speculaas cookie molds and presses. i bought several a couple of years ago. some of the patterns are centuries old, and that's pretty cool. they've been able to resurrect these old patterns and save them from slipping away. Father Christmas and the 6-in-one press make spectacular cookies. the one i like the best though is the diamond gems press that makes cookies about 1 1/2 x 1 1/2 inch diamond shaped cookies
the actual press is about 12 inches tall and 8 or 9 inches across. it's rounded just a little, which makes pressing and removing easier.
they have some really good roller pins too, with BIG impressions. too big for me, but they would make killer cookies. i like the very old carved roller Karin gave me, if for no other reason than it's from Karin.

don't tell anyone, but i ordered this pin for some of next year's batches
just because.

and here's what springerle looks like after they cool
WHAT? they look like ziplok bags? well, to tell the truth, these cookies suck bigtime fresh. to really get the full effect, you have to seal them up tightly for at least a week or more.

what is a springerle cookie? it's a hard biscuit type of cookie flavored with anise and lemon peel. are they good? i've been making springerle for years, and typically the 12 or 14 dozen i make don't last two days after they've been set out for consumption. i've been told my cookies are at least as good as "momma's" from germany. works for me. these hard as hardtack cookies just melt in your mouth after a dunking in a cup of deep dark roasted coffee. i can hardly wait.

these cookies take at least two days to make, and require many square feet of space while drying prior to baking. if you really want the recipes i use, email me, and i'll send them along.

all this post was really about was how big a mess you can make while baking, but it got out of hand!

buh-bye

bye bye tookie, bye bye. hey dude, you're going to die.

tonight, baring some unforeseen cosmological event.

now think about this. what would you do, psychologically speaking, if you knew the exact time and means of your death?
most of us have no clue when that cold cold hand squeezes our life out. stan the man, he knows exactly when it's going to happen. 0001, 12/13/2005, san quentin, CA.

which would be worse? being murdered in cold blood, but not knowing your murderer was getting ready to pull that trigger on the shotgun, or being executed by lethal injection 20 some years after pulling the trigger?

and another thing. (stolen from some comic i no longer remember who) if they are going to be killing stantookie with a lethal injection, why do they use an antiseptic swab on the arm prior to placing the needle?

can you tell i'm underwhelmed that they are finally going to give paybacks for the 4 innocents this guy killed? personally, i hope he reaches room temperature before 0030 tomorrow morning.

Thursday, December 08, 2005

wow, is citizen smash fired up

wandering around my links, i found citizen smash's Call to Arms. he has said what i've been trying to say, only a whole lot better.
when the leadership of one of the two major political parties embraces the "cut and run" mentality of the weak knee sisters, it's time to get fired up.

goes to show that submariners are the same

regardless of country of origin. case in point the following joke stolen from the UK submariners site (linked on the right)


The five "Most Dangerous Things" to be heard on a RN Submarine

1. A Seaman saying, "I learned this at Raleigh..."
2. A Petty Officer saying, "Trust me, sir..."
3. A Sub Lieutenant saying, "Based on my experience..."
4. A Lieutenant saying, "I was just thinking..."
5. A Chief chuckling, "Watch this s**t...


in no way would i have any problems substituting USNavy rates and locations and still have the exact same joke, with exactly the same veracity.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

the latest e-joke from my buddy bill

The boy has a history of being beaten by his parents and the judge initially awarded custody to his aunt, in keeping with child custody law and regulations requiring that family unity be maintained to the degree possible.

The boy surprised the court when he proclaimed that his aunt beat him more than his parents and he adamantly refused to live with her. When the judge then suggested that he live with his grandparents, the boy cried out that they also beat him. After considering the remainder of the immediate family and learning that domestic violence was apparently a way of life among them, the judge took the unprecedented step of allowing the boy to propose who should have custody of him.

After two recesses to check legal references and confer with child welfare officials, the judge granted temporary custody to the San Francisco 49ers, whom the boy firmly believes are not capable of beating anyone.


if you haven't guessed by now, willy-boy is an ardent raiders fan.

Pearl Harbor



i spent a summer in pearl harbor in 1977. i was attending school on ford island while my boat was out punching holes in the ocean. yup, i got an "augment" assignment. of course, i'd reenlisted for this school 2 1/2 years earlier, but who's to bitch when you get a summer in hawaii. a summer that didn't require getting underway, incommunicado for 3 whole months!

i had pretty cush duty, being an E-5. i think i stood 5 duty days in 3 months. really tough to take. but one of the duty days i spent was on the Arizona Memorial. I rode the small boat out for morning colors, stood several watches on the memorial, and then stood evening colors, where i struck colors and folded the flag with another sailor.
i must have had my picture taken about 20000 times that day. i did look good. dress whites, dixie cup hat, and my submarine qualification dolphins worn proudly on my chest. that was one of the most emotional duty days i ever spent. i can't even begin to express the things that went through my mind as i stood there at parade rest. to have raised and lowered the flag on that memorial was one of the defining moments of my young military career. it really hammered home what it was i did for a living.
there were several ships still in the water, with only the arizona having a memorial built on top of it. as a matter of fact, my running mate mike and i found the plaque for the USS Utah buried under some brush. it's on the other side of ford island from the arizona memorial. we cut back the brush, and spent something like 14 hours cleaning, polishing, and varnishing the plaque, simply because it needed to be done. one of the things from that day that really stands out is that there was a description of the action that actually sank the ship, and penciled in (freshly too i might add) in a very shaky hand was graffiti stating that the japanese pilot's name was 'so and so'. we figured it was probably put there by either an old colleague, or a family member. we didn't polish it out, and it may still be there under a couple layers of varnish as far as i know.
when we pulled into pearl in '74, our skipper had the entire crew minus watchstanders lay topside and render honors as we passed the memorial coming in from westlock. we saw why we were out there in the big blue sea. we knew that we had to be ever vigilant to prevent that sort of attack from ever happening again. the skipper was pretty smart having us man topside. it cut the bitching about having to be out to sea by a factor of 10.

7 dec

one of the defining moments in our modern history in this country was how the United States reacted to the attack of Pearl Harbor. the entire country mobilized, with the citizens taking on a war footing and doing without many rationed items needed for the war effort.
another defining moment occured almost 60 years later. more people died, and with the exception of those killed in the pentagon, all were civilians. how did we react? with stunned surprise, a sudden upswelling of patriotism, and then what?
our military did the task it was assigned, taking out the taliban and subsequently madman hussein. and what have we, the people of the U.S. done? from my chair, it looks like there is a large group of folks in this country actively engaged in helping defeat US! and have there been any sacrifices? starbucks is doing as good or better than it was on 10sep2001. sometimes i'm ashamed to be associated with this group called "americans".
fight them on their lands. kill them on their lands. destroy each and every one of them if that is what it takes to insure my kids and grandkids won't be ducking through doors and worriedly scanning the lady wearing a big coat, looking for that dead man's switch indicating a bomber.
and never forget, when america REALLY gets into war mode, there is no such thing as defeat.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

latest from bill. cool pictures of Mt St Helens

Here is something not many of us get to see, unless you live near there - Mt. St. Helens at sunrise.

Mt. St.. Helens continues to spew ash, while it is forming a lava dome in the crater and still having minor tremors.

Here in this sunrise shot, she appears to be blowing smoke rings (and anything so benign is welcomed, given recent history).

What forms the "smoke rings" is the air flowing over the mountain getting pushed up higher as it goes up and over the top. The moisture content and initial temperature are just right so that the moisture condenses from a vapor to small particles at the higher altitude. When the moving air moves past the peak and comes down again, the particles evaporate back to an invisible vapor.

The two "pancakes" describe that there are two layers of air for which this is happening, thus making this awesome picture possible.

Picture by Brent and Jan LeBaron

as usual, click for larger image


the number one draw to my blog

this is too funny. i posted the following picture a while ago, and it has been the number one entry page on my blog for the last couple of months. they get there by searching for the picture. i'm not sure how it got out there, but it sure is popular.

which picture?

this one, and clicking will give you a bigger version.
those of you with weak stomachs, please look away.


the comments to the original post still crack me up. skippysan's comment about this being just about the only way to get into a grolsch hilarious.

"a landmark execution"

that's what the news crews are reporting. what's that, you say? well, the 1000th execution held in the U.S. since the lifting of the death penalty ban in the 70's is scheduled for tonight. the execution, if it happens, will be in North Carolina.
my question is: does he win some sort of prize? will the warden jump out from behind a bend in the hallway with a big sign and party favors? does he get to wear a special paper crown with "1000th CUSTOMER" emblazoned across the front? do they serve cake and ice cream, and take his picture with the governor, both standing there thumbs up for the cameras?
just wondering


and speaking of executions, they hung that young guy from australia in Singapore today. his crime? he was caught with 14 ounces of heroin. i don't know why people around the world are surprised when something like this happens. there were vigils and protests across australia. hey, if you move drugs around, you know there are places in this world that you simply don't go. singapore, thailand, and most of the middle east frown on drug trafficking. thais execute by firing squad, with a 50 caliber machinegun. hey, if you are going to move drugs around, do it in places like oakland or los angeles, where drug gangs are the local heros. look at that bozo "tookie" williams, the founder of one of the most violent street gangs in the country. he murdered 4 innocent people in cold blood, yet to listen to the prating of certain folks in this country, the fact that he wrote children's books while on death row should give him a bye. we live in one really messed up country.
he didn't give the 4 poor folks he murdered any clemency hearings, no appeals courts, no additional years to live and breath. the problem with the appeals process is that it removes the perpetrator from the crime by 2 decades. sorry dude. i hope our governor doesn't cave to pressure from the celebrity world and cut this guy slack.