Wonder Boy 10/25/95
I made Beth’s peanut butter cookies for Jacob the other day — he really loves ’em with white chocolate chips and pistachios** — and I’m making homemade pizza for his birthday dinner tonight. Usually, I use a focaccia dough (two cups of bread flour, one cup of water, one teaspoon of salt, one packet of yeast, one tablespoon of olive oil), but the crust always comes out too thick. Good, but thick. So tonight, I’m following The Fanatic Cook’s thin crust pizza recipe. Cross your fingers.
I’ll save more Jake stories for future birthdays, but here’s one for today.
As a toddler, Jake was a perfectionist. If he couldn’t do it right, he wouldn’t do it at all. This drove us crazy because he wouldn’t talk. We knew he could talk. Just knew it. One day, at a Vietnamese restaurant in San Antonio, Karen and I leaned in towards Jacob and pointed at a young Texan couple at a nearby table. “Bubbas, Jake,” we said, keeping our voices low. “Buh-buhs. Buh-buhs.”
“Buh-buh,” Jake said. It was his first word.
“Yes!” we cried. “You did it. Now do it again. Bubba. Buh-buh.”
Nothing. He kept his mouth shut for another year, and then he began talking in full sentences.
Happy Birthday, Jake!
You’re Ten NowNo More Free Ride
You’ll find the classifieds on your bed.D.
**Yes, Beth, I’m tweaking you.
We need a little Fitzmas
Haul out the shackles;
Put up the rope before my spirit falls.
Fill up the stockade,
We may be rushing things,
But indictments should rain down now.
For we need a little Fitzmas
Right this very minute,
Neocons red blood flow,
Rove’s balls in the light socket.
Yes, we need a little Fitzmas
Right this very minute.
Need a little Fitzmas now!
Tomorrow’s Fitzmas, the Good Lord willing.
D.
Aren’t they precious?
Have your internet eyes been raped yet by the sight of Prussian Blue? I think this blogger says it best:
Vanaf hun negende vermaken deze twee evil-Olson-twins onder de naam Prussian Blue, allerhande zieke amerikanen met hun nazi-propaganda.
“We’re proud of being white, we want to keep being white,” said Lynx. “We want our people to stay white … we don’t want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race.”
Dan liever toch maar die aan anorexia lijdende idioot en haar tweeling zus.
Not sure what that means, but ‘deze twee evil-Olson-twins’ and ‘anorexia idioot’ says it all.
I’m not going to say anything nasty about these two girls. They’re thirteen years old, so I’ll have to save the wicked snark for their VILE DUMB-ASS PARENTS.
The twins are a musical duo, don’t you know, and they’re bringing their message of racial purity to the hungry ears of trailer trash skinheads everywhere. If they come ’round your area, give them a warm welcome, okay?
D.
Coitus interruptus
Have any of you ever been in the thick of it with your spouse when all of a sudden the cat started myowrowling outside the window, and you tried to ignore it, but then your son came tap-tapping at the bedroom door, complaining, “I can’t get to sleep with the cat making that racket!” And after putting on your clothes and getting your son back to bed, you let the cat back in, figuring she needed something to eat, but she only wanted to get back outside again, and then she waited just long enough for you and your spouse to get hot and heavy again before myowrowling a second time, so you let her in and figured, “Oh, to hell with it, let her watch,” even though she wouldn’t stop complaining, but still you managed to get the job done (thinking, This is not what I had in mind when I imagined a threesome), and afterwards put the cat out again, only to have her snap up in her jaws the dead mouse which is what she wanted to show you all along, and then she brought it into your bedroom and proceeded to crunch her way through it on your carpet, because, damn it, she wanted an audience, too?
Not that any of this happened. I’m just asking.
D.
And the winner is . . .
One long-ass paragraph:
After waxing the racing stripes on my woody, she buffed my chassis with hands as smooth as a chamois. I compensated by adjusting her headlights and performing a tune-up, revving her engine until it purred. Her wheels flanking my underbody, I inserted my dipstick to make sure she was sufficiently lubed, then scoped out her spark plugs with my diagnostic tool. She lost all cruise control then, begging for more torque and increased acceleration, pushing me beyond the speed limit with a flagrant disregard for improved gas mileage. No problem with my 6-speed manual transmission. I greased her rear spoiler before she clamped her fenders around my exhaust outlet. I almost lost it while tailgating her, but managed to keep my tire properly inflated. I shifted into gear, applying my hydraulic clutch, which sent her anti-lock braking system into overdrive. Traction control became difficult with all the skidding and fishtailing. Then our radiators started to steam so we flipped on the defoggers. When her bucket seat lurched, I ratcheted her safety belt as my rod pistoned her battery. I thrust into fourth gear with a powerful gas emission, blew my horn, and burned rubber across the finish line.
Daisy, I’ll be emailing you just as soon as I figure out how to do a Barnes & Noble gift certificate. Thanks to all for playing!
D.
Supporting the Troops
We’re coming up on 2000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. Will anyone care? Besides Cindy Sheehan, that is.
I care. I can’t really comprehend why anyone would join the military with Bush as Commander in Chief and with the current crop of gutless bureaucrats who call themselves the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but I don’t want these enlistees to die.
I am sure that Bush and the Neocons don’t care. They’re incapable of any emotion except greed.
Does the public care? Bush has tried to insulate them from any effects. As a result, they haven’t sacrificed anything for this war except their children’s future. Poll numbers show that support for the war is very low but will that translate into real anger over these pointless deaths?
When so many servicemen died in the beginning of July, Bush’s approval rating dropped. The public took that as a sign that the war was progressing poorly. Still, earlier this month, there were several deaths which received scant attention.
If Fitzgerald issues indictments over the Plame/WMD hoax AND the insurgents manage to kill a substantial number of soldiers/marines this week, that might make a dent in public opinion. What will the next set of polls show?
It’s a fv(king extravaganza!
Your dose of puerility for the day.
From the Jammy Blog, one of my link exchange partners, comes this link to an instructive video on the word fuck. This should help all you writers remember the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb.
While you’re at it, check out Jammy’s photos demonstrating why you shouldn’t fuck with your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife.
D.
Good Bad Sex Challenge: last call for votes
Okay, you anonymous contestants (you know who you are!) This is your last chance to vote.
All entries are posted here. Email me your votes for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place entries. You may not vote for yourself.
My email addy is:
azureus
at
harborside
dot
com
See ya,
D.
Karl and Scooter’s Excellent Adventure
Props to Nevada Thunder for posting the full text of today’s Frank Rich Op-Ed column, “Karl and Scooter’s Excellent Adventure.” Right from paragraph one, Rich focuses on the question which should be on everyone’s mind: given the lack of WMDs and no provable tie between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, why did we go to war in Iraq?
Rich finds somewhat different motivations among the major players. On the one hand, the Rove-Bush camp wanted to secure Republican victories in the November ’02 midterm elections. Bush’s post-9/11 political capital had hit the skids, thanks to the bungled effort to capture Bin Laden “dead or alive” and waning American interest in an extended Middle East war. Hence the impetus towards something dramatic:
Mr. Rove could see that an untelevised and largely underground war against terrorists might not nail election victories without a jolt of shock and awe. It was a propitious moment to wag the dog.
On the other hand, we have the Cheney-Scooter Libby-Wolfowitz camp:
Mr. Libby had been joined at the hip with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz since their service in the Defense Department of the Bush 41 administration, where they conceived the neoconservative manifesto for the buildup and exercise of unilateral American military power after the cold war. Well before Bush 43 took office, they had become fixated on Iraq, though for reasons having much to do with their ideas about realigning the states in the Middle East and little or nothing to do with the stateless terrorism of Al Qaeda.
The desires of these two groups converged with the plan for a war in Iraq. Rich: “the path was clear for a war in Iraq to serve as the political Viagra Mr. Rove needed for the election year.”
The answer to Why? Republican hunger for unmatched political control of the United States government, and neocon wet dreams of a world-dominating American military juggernaut.
Why? Because they wanted to rule our country with an iron fist. Because they had that same glorious vision for the rest of the world.
And we all know what absolute power does, don’t we?
D.
Arsenic for Type A personalities
Curses, Jurassic Pork! I didn’t need to see this link, which offers a gizmo telling you how much your blog is worth.
What’s his algorithm? That’s what I want to know. Is it a function of incoming links, hits per day, or what?
Meanwhile, Karen wants to know:
How do you cash in? The kitchen still needs countertops!
Candy, your site has me beat about 6:1, no surprise. Yup, that’s my yardstick of success — the Smart Bitches.
D.