Yeah, it works. And with one click of the mouse, you're in live chat.
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Yeah, it works. And with one click of the mouse, you're in live chat.
]]>New Barbie is a hot babe.
Welcome to Black Canary Barbie, named after the Marvel comic character. She's coming out in September and her little ass will be sitting on my shelf even if I have to beat off the tweens and Christian Fundamentalists. She'll sit right next to Harley Barbie, Biker Bear, Betty Boop (boop-oop-a-doop), and Hard Core My Little Pony. Oh c'mon now ... My Little Pony? You believed it for a second though didn't ya? Freak.
Yeah, the Christians are up in arms about her. Seems some group called Christian Voice out of the UK has their panties in a bunch calling her "filth". Eh, screw 'em, they don't like fags, they don't like abortion, they don't like Muslims, and if you're not a Christian, you're going to hell. I bet they even hate You.
Welcome to the real world mother fuckers! While the rest of us are out enjoying life, having a good time, and seeing the sights, Christian Voice sits in their little dark room looking for plots and conspiracies in their paranoid "Satan's gonna gitcha" world view. Sucks to be angry doesn't it bitch?
You know what's interesting? I think I just might be a better Christian than you. And I don't even believe in your blood sacrificed god-on-a-stick cannibalistic version of the After-life. Now run back inside before Satan sees you and gives you a spanking or runs one up your exit hole.
What? Isn't that the reason why guys are all yelling "Get thee behind me Satan!" You know you want someone to rub your prostate and tickle your little soldier under his helmet.
]]>A buddy of mine busted me the other week for using plastic bags at the grocery store. They're bags. They're plastic. They're plastic bags. So. I can carry 10 or 15 plastic bags of groceries at one time making for an uneventful trip from the car to the fridge. Throw the empty bags in the tall kitchen plastic bag container, made of plastic and go about your bees wax. But I can do something right? I can use canvas bags to carry my groceries. But it hit me ... the .99 cent 2 liter bottles will still end up in the tall kitchen plastic bags, I'm still unwrapping my biodegradable paper towels from their plastic wrap, I'm cutting plastic away from toilet paper rolls, my dishwashing detergent, my Dollar Store clothes detergent, a Coke, my take-away dinner, the plastic bag my new organic cotton socks came in ... they all ended up in a plastic tall kitchen trash bag.
Below is a partially decomposed Albatross with its gullet full of plastic bottle caps, it starved to death. Found in the North Pacific at Kure Atoll - http://www.nhmag.com/1103/1103_feature.html
And then it hit me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_shopping_bag#Plastic_shopping_bags_by_country
Countries around the world are trying to cut back on using plastic bags ... but where do the bags usually end up? Inside another plastic bag that gets carted off to your local landfill. So I asked Wikipedia what they thought about plastic shopping bags and plastic trash bags.
It was probably not a good question to ask.
Bin bags, as they're known on Wikipedia, are just ducky - "Plastic bags can be incinerated with their contents in appropriate facilities for waste-to-energy conversion. They are stable and benign in sanitary landfills."
Plastic shopping bags, on the other hand, get a bit more negative rap -
"The following disadvantages have also been identified:
Plastic bags are made of petrochemicals, a nonrenewable resource.
Plastic bags are flimsy and often do not stand up as well as paper or cloth.
When disposed of improperly, they are unsightly and represent a hazard to wildlife. See separate section below.
Plastic bags, conventional or "biodegradable", do not readily biodegrade in a sanitary landfill, (but neither does paper due to lack of oxygen).
Plastic bags (particularly thin dry cleaning bags) can cause unsupervised infants to suffocate.[5] "
So on one hand we can use plastic bags because they're "stable and benign" and on the other we can't because they " ... do not readily biodegrade in a sanitary landfill". There's a spin doctor at work here. Logic dictates that plastic in a landfill is fine but ... but in the Pacific Dead Zone somebody is towing their landfill garbage out to sea on barges and dumping it.
The blue trajectory is North American trash found in the Pacific Ocean. The red is Asian originated trash that encompasses the Southern California Blight. Someone in Asia is hauling their trash to the open ocean east of Japan and dumping it where it's showing up on the west coast of the United States. The amount of North American trash affecting the Blight zone is miniscule and the amount of North American trash found in the Pacific Ocean is nothing compared to the trash dumped by Asia.
Something funny is going on here.
I smell ... liberal fascism playing to my emotions and not my science. While the Bin Bag is considered the 36th most remarkable Canadian invention, the plastic shopping bag is deemed a danger to aquatic life - http://www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/publications/docs/anl_oview.pdf
So which one is it? Is plastic a danger to the environment or not? Are we picking and choosing which is dangerous? If a plastic bottle cap off your Diet Coke is killing Albatrosses in the Northern Pacific, don't you think you'd better never, ever, buy a plastic bottle of soda again? And if a plastic bottle cap is a danger to the enviroment, then don't you think that plastic trash bags, 2 liter bottles of Pepsi, a plastic milk jug, and those damned dirty plastic shopping bags aren't just as bad? Or worse?
I'll make my stand when a for-profit, public company engineers a natural fiber tall kitchen trash bag AND local municipalities offer composting facilities and pick-up (no reason for every citizen to increase their gas consumption and carbon footprint by hauling their trash to the dump, right?) recycling services based on organic recyclables, metallic recoverables, and non-sustainable consumable residue.
Government cannot regulate this, instill fines, apply incentives, or in any way influence individual free will when it comes to throwing away your garbage. If you know you're going to receive a fine for overextending your monthly weight limit on non-sustainable consumables, then the excess will probably be hidden in either the organics or metallics. When government agencies tell people what to do, mandate how you live, legislate your personal life, there's a backlash based on the most simplest of principles: human rights.
To destroy the menace of sea-borne plastic garbage across the world ... wait ... Trade Winds ... where's the plastic garbage from Europe and Africa carried across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico? Why isn't Ireland and Iceland petioning the UN for relief from trash carried up the Gulf Stream Current? Where are the Atlantic plastic bags that are killing our wildlife and choking our habitat? Why isn't Florida, Cuba, Hispanola, and the Yucatan Penninsula pitching a royal bitch about plastic trash in their waters? They're not because there isn't. The Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone(s) are due to agricultural and industrial chemical run-off, not garbage. Look at what's happened in America's largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay: run-off has destroyed first the oyster market and now the crab harvest is next to nothing. Thomas Courtney, 62, a Waterman, states: "It ain't what we're pulling out of the water. It's what we're putting into the water." http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080716/ap_on_bi_ge/blue_crab_blues_4
Plastic bags are not the problem in industrialized nations. Plastic bags from Asia are destroying Pacific wildlife and polluting the ocean. Who is going to stand up and point the finger at Asian countries and say "You will not dump your garbage in open waters". Not a single environmentalist from North America will state the obvious, instead we're to be guilted on how we carry our groceries into our houses even though we are environmentally responsible in how we dispose of our non-consumables. Not today enviromental fascists. I challenge you with the scientific method.
]]>That would be Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs for Limeys and the Canada Revenue Agency for you Canucks.
You see once upon a time 'ol Kenny was rather wealthy, until the Dot-Com bubble burst in late spring, early summer of 2001. Then add on top the 9/11 terror attacks in the fall and I went from a multi-millionaire to a multi-thousandaire. In 6 months. Usually that's not a problem as you can sit on your assets and wait out the storm but not this time, not for me, and not the IRS or the Internal Revenue Service (keep in mind there must be an External Revenue Service running around out there somewhere). And especially not my ex-wife's divorce attorney. She received a multi-million dollar divorce settlement and 3 houses. I got the kids. Fuck her, I'm broke but got the better of the deal, heh.
Anyway, ignore the ramblings, when it came time to pony up for taxes at the end of the year, I just sold more stock, usually a couple hundred shares out of quite a few thousand. A drop in the bucket, so to speak. But when it came time to pay taxes for calendar year 2001, I didn't have enough assets on hand to cover the tax bill, which was several hundred thousand dollars. 2002 came, no money, plus no income. Penalties and interests acrue, the tax bill is getting larger. At this point I owe more in taxes than some people make in their entire life.
In 2007 the IRS says
Cant you hear me knockin, ahh, are you safe asleep?
Cant you hear me knockin, yeah, down the gas light street, now
Cant you hear me knockin, yeah, throw me down the keys
That's when I lost the last asset I had left. My truck. Damn. Had to cover expenses somehow, amirite? Turns out I don't have medical insurance as my Company neglected to tell me I needed to sign up for another insuance plan when moving to PA. 2k in cash outta pocket, bam. Then my Company comes back and says I overspent my food allowance while on the road to the tune of 1600 dollars, bam. Pay up or get your ass fired for embezzlement. Double Bam. Paid. They still gave me a raise, go figure. So now I'm hanging by a thread, right? I bought two Crimbo gifts, 2 laptops, 1 for each kid still living at home. Other than buying and decorating a tree, that was Christmas. Then!, get this ... then the Company bolluxes my deductions and hits me for a 400 dollar charge in Feburary/08 and we're eating Oodles of Noodles. With ketchup for variety. And maybe a hot dog or two, and store brand Kool-Aid.
Oh no, honey, it's not over yet! Turns out the company hasn't taken a dime out of my paycheck to pay State and Local taxes. And I never noticed. Holy crampy tampon, talkin' about a screwed pooch. While I'm trying to save up money to pay off the local taxes, here's the IRS again.
Hear me ringing big bell tolls
Hear me singing soft and low
I've been begging on my knees
I've been kickin', help me please
Now don't get me wrong, MY irs agent is a hella nice guy, he's just doing his job. Starting the first of July/08, they take 20% of my net pay. Straight-up. Gone. Man, so much for trying to buy a new vehicle to replace my truck or even paying off my local taxes. Hell, I can't afford to get new glasses or go to the dentist and I've got an abscessed tooth so bad it's kicked off an earache. My ass is going to end up in jail for evading taxes or something.
They have minimum security for non-violent felons, right?
]]>Ye are walcome tae visit the Pairlament tae hae a keek roon or find oot aboot whit wey the Pairlament warks.
We want tae mak siccar that awbody is able tae visit the Scottish Pairlament biggin. Wir premises is awready designit tae be as accessible as possible. Hooanever, gin ye are disablit and hae ony specific requirements, ye’re gey walcome tae contact us afore yer visit.
+++++
Yeah, that's what I thought too. This is a joke, right? Some nasty Anglish bastard is making fun of the poor Scottish neds and their lack of A-Levels, right? Or maybe this is a genuine Scottish satire site - Queen's English? We don't need no stinkin' Queen's English! We're Scots!
Let me translate this into Redneck -
Ya'll come on by da State Hawse to see which'in ways we's workin'.
Cuz we wants all ya'll to visitin' us, we done made it cripple friendly. But if'n ya'll really fucked up, you gotsa call afore ya shows up, aw-ite?
Can you imagine seeing this handicap disclaimer on the official web page of your state government? Of course not. The above quote is taken from a page of the Scottish Parliment web site. In complete disbelief I might add. Is this what they teach in their schools? Scotonics? Think I'm bullshitting?
http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vli/language/scots/index.htm
What a joke.
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Retail/Commerical has died out here. Companies are holding back on non-emergency repairs until after the first of September which means I'm getting paid a basic wage for sitting around.
I'm almost positive I'll be laid off in August unless something picks up quick. In the meantime I'm working outside clients trying to grab subcontracting work. That's not going all that well either; contractors are slow, service repair companies are slow, people are pulling back on all fronts.
Man, I feel useless right now. I spend my time writing, puttering around in the yard, walking the streets, watching movies, reading (shhh, don't tell anyone but I'm reading Harry Potter fanfiction. I must be illin, my only defense is that the amateur authors are a hella lot better than the originals), making cold calls, sending out letters of introduction, and waiting for the phone to ring. Bleh.
]]>Yaillungee
That''s the phonetic spelling at any rate.
So I ran into a friend of a friend of a ... you get the idea. We don't exactly move in the same social circles as he's a 60 year old little Greek guy (and I mean little, he only came up to my titties) and I'm a long-haired, tattooed, redneck. He recognized me coming out of the grocery store this afternoon and wanted me to quote on some electrical work he needed done and my thoughts about upgrading his furnace to cental A. Yeah, no problem buddy, here's my card, I'll be by at 9am on Saturday, call me if that isn't going to work for you.
Then we started shooting the shit. He wanted to know about my tattoos, I have 3 on each arm from my wrists to my shoulders. So I gave him the typical Christian answer I usually give when asked: Oh, the vines represent Uriel, the arch-angel of the North, the flames are for Michael in the South, and my legs represent Gabriel and Raphael.
He busted my ass, "Only three arch-angels in the bible, right? Uriel not there." He's Greek Orthodox and was picking up pickeled grape leaves at the store for him and his wife's Wed-Thu fast. He's religious. And knows his frickin' bible.
Damn, I thought to myself, do I give him the spiel, blow him off, or rock his world with the short version of the truth? I opted for the truth, just to be sincere .
"John, I'm not a christian, " I paused to guage his reaction and gather my next statement. Do I insult his religion and by extension, him? Or do I draw back from the abyss and pull penitence? His little grey-browed covered beetle eyes grew round and I'm sure he expected me to spout off some christian-based Satan nonsense. "My idea of god doesn't have a name, it has labels; it's male and female but neither and both ...."
"Oooh, you mean like the ancient Greeks? With their Gods and Goddesses?"
Crap, we're about to discuss Greek mythology; I flipped through my internal catalogue but could only remember 7 of the 12 Olympians and I think 2 of them were Roman names. Fuck, turn up the bullshit-o-meter quick.
I sighed, I wanted to pat him on his tiny elfen head, I watched the shoppers going in and out the grocery store, then I pulled this out of my ass, verbatim: "That's exactly what it is, buddy," I pulled up my right t-shirt sleeve to show him the Greenman and the full aspect of the vines. "This is Zeus but it's not Zeus, it's also Ares and Demeter, this stands for Law, Judgement, Death, Logic, Science, and orderly change." His eyes never left my arm so I turned my left side to face him and pulled up my sleeve to show him my flames, the Mor Rioghain, and the Three Aspects. "This is passion, fire, chaos, strength and determination, it's sweat when you're making love and the sweat from battle, it's conviction and a royal 'fuck you'. This is like Ares, Hera, and Aphrodite." I almost said Venus but Pop Culture saved my ass - Terry Gilliam's Baron Munchausen of all things.
He didn't say anything. I knew he wanted to touch the tattoos, people sometimes do when they get that weird reverent look in their eye. I waited. A w k w a r d. I finally told him, "My god's name is Bob or Shaniqua, it doesn't matter what the name is, what matters is the intent behind the supplicate (screw you guys, I did too use supplicate and yes I know its a verb but in this case I think I was trying to say both supplication and petitioner and got my wires crossed); you guys call it prayer."
The little dude looked up at me while I put my hand in my back pocket waiting for his response. I expected a self-righteous christian rant, instead I got "But you believe in one God, right?" he asked.
"There is only one god and it has many names," I intoned in my best Vincent Price thinking of Antonio Bandaras in The Thirteenth Warrior. Heh. I love non-sequitors, coincidences, and synchonicity. Patterns are cool.
Did I mention coincidences? Scene Break. His cell phone rings. Our tiny world bursts open and we're standing in the parking lot of a shopping center with all the associated noise of cars, people, and traffic while the sun is beating down cooking my skin. In my paper shopping bag the peach Faygo is getting warm condensing into a wet spot on the side and I can smell my 11 dollar a pound crab legs preempting the pot. He's on the phone speaking Greek/English patois and I'm thinking of reasons to get my ass out of here. It's hot, I'm a pasty White guy, I'm standing in the sun cooking. Like my damned crabs,
Non-sequitor alert - "Your skin is so white and soft, it's like cream, I could rub my strawberry all over you," said the hairy French-Canadian bitch at a bar in St Cats. "Ma'am, I just want a Blue and to get my cigars home, not interested."
He finishes his call and reaches into his shopping bag and pulls out his can of pickled stuffed grape leaves. "This stuff? It's ok, but no good, right? Come with me, I'm showing you something."
Dude, it's like 6pm on a Thursday and I'm hungry with hungry kids at home. Fuck it, I thought to myself, in for a penny, in for a pound. So I follow his dark blue SLS Cadillac, the long, low, sleek model, down the road. He pulls that Caddy into an empty lot right behind my house, up an abandoned driveway. No seriously, we're standing at a fence that separates my backyard from an empty field behind my house. We're standing here and there's my house.
I get out of my vehicle wondering what the hell is going on and watch him walk right into a mass of shrubbery, backed up to my fence, that stands taller than his head. "Look-it here," he says, pulling out a long green rope. I walk up to see what he's doing in some kind of reverse deja-vu surrealist fog. "Look, you see this? This the grape. Watch what I do." He then proceeds to pinch off hand sized wild grape leaves commenting as he does so ... "This one? No good, has a hole. This one good, pulled off the stem easy. Watch." He popped about a dozen wild grape leaves throwing vines around and setting them on the ground beside him. "It's almost too late in the year to do this but I show you."
And that little dude tore through those bushes ripping off leaves, popping left over stems, and stacking them neatly beside his feet. He made like three quick piles then picked up one of them and said, "This is what you do with them ..."
Recipe begins here:
Soak the leaves in salt water for maybe 20 minutes
Set aside a cup of uncooked wild or brown rice, no instant rice! No, no
Drop the leaves in boiling water for maybe 2 or 3 minutes, don't cook them
Spread the leaves out on a table and put a spoonful of rice in each one
Add crumpled spearmint and dill, fresh, dried, whole leaf, over the rice
Roll them up tucking in the ends as you roll (like tiny burritos I'm guessing)
Cover the bottom of a large pan with olive oil
Place the rolled up leaves in the pan, seam down
Put in as much water as it takes to cook the rice and a little bit more
Put a plate over the pan
Cook the rice, not the leaves (in other words low boil or simmer until the rice is done)
When the rice is done, carefully take them out and let them cool a bit
????
Profit
I felt honored I made that type of connection with the little dude. This was like being taught by grandma the differences between field cress, water cress, and dandilions (redneck, don't forget that part), and what it means to have Greens with dinner, yo.
Saturday's Menu
I'm going to have the butcher at the grocery store up the street grind me out a half pound of lamb (yes, that's Bambi's cousin) and pick up some ground beef and ground pork. I'm going to mix it all together with bay leaves, oregano, basil, and pepper then follow Wise Food Man's instructions.
Of course this calls for a big 'ol bowl of tzatziki sauce, pronounced za-ZEE-kee, and by the way? It's not gyro, it's YhEE-roe. Get it right noob.
]]>What a freakin' treat.
"But wait Kenny," you Anglophiles exclaim in astonishment. "It's just bangers and mash, c'mon now mate,"
Ah, but you're forgetting something ... the region of the country where I live. The ethnic stock of a sizable chunk of people here are from Eastern Europe and eastern Mediterranean countries, We have Hunky festivals, what? Oh, you've never heard of a Hunky. That's perfectly understandable, it's not honky it's Hunky, short for Hungarian, and the American Hungarian Club. The Greek festival at the end of the month is huge with fireworks, carnival, and a parade. We have the Sons of Italy, the Slovak American League, Yaga Grocery (Eastern European, Polish, and Russian grocery store), Hellenic Prodomos - Greek, the Croatian Club, Slovanian Working Men, the Croatian American Club, German Home, Italian Home, the Pacentrani Club - central Italy, and a ton of Catholic organizations. 165 restaurants are listed in the yellow pages under pizza. You can't swing a dead cat without knocking a slice out of somebody's hand.
When I went to the grocery store to grab my snausages, there was an entire case of different types. You have a choice between Italian sausage (both hot and sweet), smoked sausage, Polish sausage, and bratwurst. There was about a dozen different types of ham. Oh, and there was a small section for Bob Evans Breakfast Sausage. I was hatin'. I wanted some Cumberland Sausage, spicy, peppery, chunky, mmmmm
Nothing doing. So I bought two packages of bratwurst, fried them, covered them in white and black pepper, made the mashed potatoes, smothered it all with brown onion gravy and threw in about of cup of buttered peas.
It's Bangers, Bitch!
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