Opening shot to the War on Christmas
On Wednesdays, between surgical cases, I hop around the political blogosphere. Seems us secular humanists have launched the opening salvo to this year’s War on Christmas. Folks, it’s gonna be ugly.
First, at Raw Story, Polish exchange student Michael Gromek talks about his Half-Year of Hell with Christian Fundamentalists (hat tip to One Good Move):
My host parents hadn’t had sex for the last 17 years because — so they told me — they were devoting their lives to God. They also wanted to know whether I drank alcohol. I admitted that I liked beer and wine. They told me I had the devil in my heart.
With all due respect to Catholic priests, no sex for 17 DAYS is pathological, let alone 17 years. Meanwhile, over at Digby’s blog, Digby and Tristero point out that the Quiverfull crowd aren’t just quaint patriarchs spreading their seed willy-nilly to fugly dress-wearing Prairie Muffins. They want good white Christian folk to breed like rabbits precisely to keep good white Christian folk in the majority. Here’s Digby:
Plenty of young people want to come to America and would be more than happy to pay into social security to support all of us old codgers. They just aren’t the “right kind” of people, if you know what I mean. So get to breeding, white bitches. You’ve got work to do.
I am all for having a big tent. But there is no political party on earth that is big enough for me and people who believe that liberalism’s great hope is to create policies that encourage women to have 14 children so we can “outbreed” the competition and make sure the wrong people don’t come in and ruin the place. That’s where I head for the exit.
But what do I know. I’m just a horn-headed Jew, precisely the kind of person who needs to be kept in the minority.
D.
Under the hat
Under the Hat, 2006
oil on canvas, 18 by 24 inches
My friend Kenney Mencher has a new show at the Klaudia Marr Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico (November 10 – December 4).
Soon as I post this, I’m emailing him to get a price on Under the Hat. I love it. And I’m dying to pose for the man.
Here’s a previous bit I wrote about Kenney.
D.
Snake oil
Every so often, I get eNastygrams kvetching about my stance on ear candles. The less obnoxious complainers employ the “Oh, you should just try it!” argument, while the nastier ones suspect I’m trying to keep all that ear wax business to myself. Neither group can be dissuaded from their religious faith in ear candles; my counter-argument, that candles are unsafe and ineffective, falls on wax-filled deaf ears.
Medical conspiracy theorists abound. To them, we who practice “Western Medicine” are blinkered buffoons at best, greedy bastards at worst, due to our allegiance to drugs and treatments which seem downright destructive. In truth, our allegiance is to evidence-based medicine, but that has no sex appeal — not like all-natural herbs, touch therapy (which involves no touching at all; the practitioner’s aura heals the patient’s aura, thereby oh whatever), or omigod (literally) angel therapy.
Most folks seem to regard alternative medicine with tolerant skepticism. The argument, it can’t hurt and it might help, often wins people over. And, true, most of these treatments can’t hurt — not in any obvious way.
Exhausted
and I’m not sure why. But when my nosebleed patient sprayed me with bloody saliva, I was just about done. Felt like canceling the rest of my day and heading home.
I feel like I could sleep for ten hours. Shame is, I have something important to write about (modern day snake oil salesmen preying upon cancer patients). But if I write it now, I’ll make a muck of it.
So I’ll close with a question. The supermarket tabloids apparently think I should care about this twig of a woman:
My question: Why?
D.
To build a fire
Can’t live blog without power. Sorry.
Can’t stay warm without power, either, except — we have a fireplace! Which we never use! But can I build a fire?
It’s a manly skill, no? (Guess what I’ve been reading by candlelight for the last three hours.) Some wee twigs and flint, a split log or two, and off I go.
Oh, the butane lighter, presto logs, and cardboard helped, too. Thank heavens for presto logs. Anyway, it’s storming like hell out there, and I don’t trust our local utility folks to keep the power going, so I’m posting this puppy before everything crashes.
Sorry about standing you up at the virtual altar. Soon, I promise.
D.
Crispy rice
Remember: Live Blogging tonight at 7 PM PST!
My sister wants the crispy rice recipe. This one isn’t easy, Sis, but it is tasty.
This is from In a Persian Kitchen — not a bad Persian cookbook, especially for the price, but I’m looking for a better one. Any suggestions?
Chelo (AKA steamed rice . . . AKA crispy rice)
2.5 cups basmati rice
1.5 tbsp salt
2 quarts water
2 tbsp salt
0.5 cup butter (melted)
1. Wash the rice three times in lukewarm water, then soak in salted water (that’s the first 1.5 tbsp of salt) for at least 2 hours, or overnight.
2. Combine 2 quarts of water and 2 tbsp salt. Boil.
3. Drain rice and add it to the boiling water. Boil for 10-15 min, stirring occasionally.
4. Strain the rice and rinse with lukewarm water.
5. Put 1/3 of the melted butter into the bottom of a nonstick pan. I used a deep saute pan, for which I had a lid. (That’s important, as you’ll soon see.) Add 2 tbsp water to the butter.
6. Pile the rice on top of the butter. Distribute the rest of the butter over the rice.
7. If you have saffron, sprinkle a bit over the top of the rice.
8. Cover the saute pan or pot. Cook 10-15 min on medium heat, then 35-40 min on low heat.
9. When you have about 10 min of cooking time left, remove the lid and check the bottom. You should have a golden crust on the bottom. If you don’t, increase the heat and finish cooking it.
Getting that golden crust is key. It’s the reason you’re going to all this bother. Also, if you’re going to make this recipe, you had better make a main course with lots of tasty gravy — otherwise, once again, what’s the point of having crispy rice?
I suspect the leftover rice would make great stir-fried rice, although the butter taste might be a bit unusual for a Chinese dish.
D.
Anyone up for live blogging?
I’ll shoot for 7 PM, as usual.
Meanwhile, I’m editing, and I hope to make a dent on my latest Tangent assignment.
Editing. Yuck. I’m in one of those moods where nothing seems to flow, nothing looks good. Blech.
D.
Busy boy
I got home from the grocery store at 3 PM. It’s 8 PM right now, and we’re just finishing dinner. Do the math.
I go nuts sometimes. I’m not sure why. But the List of Accomplishments runs as follows:
Dinner tonight: I made a pecan-based fesenjan with chicken thighs, a dish with lamb and eggplant, and crispy rice. For dessert: chocolate tiramisu.
I also set up some cucumbers for Erin O’Brien’s Hungarian Cucumber salad, thinly sliced beef for Carne Asada, and more thinly sliced beef for bulgogi. Along with tonight’s leftovers, that should take care of dinner for the next few nights.
Time to finish cleaning up. *Big sigh*
D.
P.S.: Ever wonder what would happen if you searched YouTube for ‘anal’?
Funny stuff . . . I promise.
The firewall reading room
This morning, I’ve been hanging out at Jurassic Pork’s place, catching up on my New York Times firewalled columns. He has posted a couple of tasty Maureen Dowd columns, and a fine Paul Krugman column, too.
My favorite bit from Maureen Dowd, neatly summarizing why the Repugs got their butts kicked:
Republicans were oddly oblivious to the fact that they had turned into a Thomas Nast cartoon: an unappetizing tableau of bloated, corrupt, dissembling, feckless white hacks who were leaving kids unprotected. Tom DeLay and Bob Ney sneaking out of Congress with dollar bills flying out of their pockets. Denny Hastert playing Cardinal Bernard Law, shielding Mark Foley. Rummy, cocky and obtuse as he presided over an imploding Iraq, while failing to give young men and women in the military the armor, support and strategy they needed to come home safely. Dick Cheney, vowing bullheadedly to move “full speed ahead†on Iraq no matter what the voters decided. W. frantically yelling about how Democrats would let the terrorists win, when his lame-brained policies had spawned more terrorists.
She concludes with ruminations about the victory of estrogen-powered politics over testosterone-fueled blundering:
Because of the power of female consumers, some marketing experts predict we will end up a matriarchy. This year, women also flexed their muscle at the polls, transformed into electoral Furies by the administration’s stubborn course in Iraq.
On Tuesday, 51 percent of the voters were women, and 55 percent of women voted for the Democratic candidate. It was a revival of the style of Bill Clinton, dubbed our first female president, who knitted together a winning coalition of independents, moderates and suburbanites.
According to The Times’s exit polls, women were more likely than men to want some or all of the troops to be withdrawn from Iraq now, and 64 percent of women said that the war in Iraq has not improved U.S. security.
The Senate has a new high of 16 women and the House has a new high of at least 70, with a few races outstanding. Hillary’s big win will strengthen her presidential tentacles.
I’m still nervous about Hillary Clinton. Her “I have bigger balls than the rest of you dorks combined” style rubs me the wrong way. Also, I have the feeling political expediency tops her list of priorities. Why do some people like her so much? I don’t get it.
D.
Finally
Re: La Gabaldon’s sex scenes. Finally, on page 436, she ceases to be anemic:
He spread my thighs with his knee and sheathed himself to the root in a single thrust that made me gasp. He made a sound that was almost a groan, and gripped me tighter.
. . .
“Aye, I mean to use ye hard, my Sassenach,” he whispered. “I want to own you, to possess you, body and soul.” I struggled slightly and he pressed me down, hammering me, a solid, inexorable pounding that reached my womb with each stroke.
If I hadn’t seen the photo of La Gabaldon on the inside back cover, I’d have sworn a man wrote this passage. It’s so, so hormonal. Root-sheathing? Womb-pounding?
Ow. I don’t even have a womb, but I can imagine. OW. Dammit, Jamie, you could knock an ovary fucking Claire like that.
I wish I had more for y’all, but that passage left me in a post-coital stupor. So let’s open it up to discussion:
Does your feline prefer to be coddled with slow, gentle strokes, or would she rather be pounded senseless by some git in a tartan? Or perhaps she’d prefer to curl herself around a Hitachi Magic Wand.
Oops. No AC current in the 17th Century. Sorry, Claire.
D.