Eggnog Pancakes

These are completely ridiculous. The recipe was on the carton of eggnog and I had to try it. They're pretty dern yummy. I had no idea they'd grow out of the pan like that though. (Obligatory) heh.



Now that's an eggnog pancake!

Infinite Cat Project

This is cool. Do yourself a favor and check it out, especially if you're a cat nut like yours truly.

Infinite cat project

Enjoy!

dunce cap for Babs

I was gonna fisk Barbara Streisand's latest effort, but (thankfully) I got beat to it by Radio Blogger. A taste

So Babs has declared Dr. Rice to be a failure, and not qualified to be Secretary of State. Let's compare biographies, shall we? Here's Dr. Rice's bio from the White House website.

[... looooooong bio, very impressive...]

Now Babs' bio.

Barbra Streisand was an honor student at Erasmus High School in Brooklyn, and wrote the music for "Here We Are At Last" from the motion picture, "Nuts".

You'll excuse me if I laugh over Streisand's criticism of Rice.

I'll excuse you if you'll excuse me. Now for a little more from Radio Blogger

The National Security Adviser should be a thoughtful objective counselor to the president on security concerns and not be seen as a political operative, yet Rice actively campaigned for Bush during the election.

Yes, she did campaign...Just as hard as she could. The NSA should be thoughtful and objective? Like Sandy "Big Pants" Berger was to Babs' hero Bill Clinton? He definitely was thoughtful when he wore baggy pants and elastic socks to stuff 9/11 documents into when he visited the National Archives. And he certainly objected when he got caught.

Ah hah hah hah. That does it, up you go on the blogroll (my highly prestigious blogroll).

yada yada, great satan, yada yada

Puleeeaase, do these people ever listen to themselves? Says Osama bin Laden's right hand man

You can elect Bush, Kerry or Satan himself, it doesn't matter to us.

No kidding? Again with the Satan thing. Really, think for a moment. If we were truly Satan, why have we not nuked you? Why haven't we put American Muslims in concentration camps? Why haven't we begun the systematic extermination of Muslims? We could, no doubt, carry out these things with our vast economic and military superiority.

We are a nation of patience," al-Zawahiri said. "And we will resist to fight you, God willing, until the last minute.

Hopefully we'll see that minute pretty soon. Notice also, while being a nation of patience, that you are also a nation of poverty, violence, crazy, ignorance, backwardness, and sand dunes. It's pathetic. Allah sure has a strange way of showing his approval for your behavior.

---

And then we have this quip from a member of Turkey's parliament (via lgf)

"The occupation has turned into barbarism,"Friday's Yeni Safak newspaper quoted Mehmet Elkatmis, head of parliament's human rights commission, as saying. "The U.S. administration is committing genocide...in Iraq.

"Never in human history have such genocide and cruelty been witnessed. Such a genocide was never seen in the time of the pharoahs (of ancient Egypt), nor of Hitler nor of (Italy's fascist leader Benito) Mussolini," he said.

This guy is obviously in league with the former Iraqi Minister of Information. He makes our own crackpots like Lautenberg look sane. Can you imagine CNN or ABCnews actually mentioning this "... in other reports it appears that members of the Turkish parliament are crazy. " And yet liberals tout their Bushisms while they dingbats they support can be batshit crazy and still get their approval.

things to ban

Looks like we'll have to ban anything but plastic knives. Yet another stabing spree in China (and I recall one a couple years ago in Japan that killed several youngsters)

A man armed with a knife has broken into a high school dormitory in central China, killing eight students and injuring four others

...

China traditionally has enjoyed a relatively low crime rate, but has suffered a series of knife attacks in schools and day-care centers in recent months. The earlier assaults left one child dead and injured a total of 42 people.

at least the Chineese know how to deal with these people

A man who slashed 25 children with a kitchen knife at a grade school in eastern China was executed Wednesday, The Associated Press reports. Though no one was killed in that attack, a court ruled that the penalty was justified because the violence was "especially cruel."

Cars, chairs, anything weighing more than two pounds that is hard and could hurt somebody, e.g. toasters, rocks, laptop computers and anything else you can think of. Get with it people, it's common sense. We should at least register those implements. After all, if the government can regulate cars, it can regulate the ownership of rocks and toasters.

Happy Thanksgiving, Ma

My mom died last year about a week before thanksgiving. She'd been diagnosed with liver cancer a couple months earlier. This is the first time I've been home to see this side of the family and be in my Ma's house since she passed away.

We had thanksgiving dinner at Uncle Steve's house. All the immediate relatives were there. Everyone got to see how much my son has grown, and got to see my new daughter for the first time. I got to show off my wife whom I love so dearly. The food was good and the weather couldn't be better. I got to talk a little to my Grandpa about his time in the Marines as a navigator-bombadier during the war in the Pacific aboard a B25 Mitchel.

My mom was 53 when she died. She was a wonderful mother. I'm thankful for that.

Kibbles and Bits

The marketing certainly isn't for the dog, but for the dog's owner. A discussion recently came up between myself and the other folks in my lab concerning the notions of animal inteligence and self-awareness. With the maybe exception (don't know for sure yet) of the primates and whales, I don't think any animals are self aware. Mrs. du Toit's recent piece (scroll down to "word of the day" since I don't know yet how to link to an individual entry) speaks well to my understanding of the subject.

I have one quibble with her content though, and I hope Kim doesn't know where I live, just kidding, I hope.

Anyway, the particular phrase of concern that she writes, with respect to the proclamation "guns are scary," is that

It would be correct to say a human being was scared when they saw a person with a gun, but the gun cannot have a feeling or cause one.

and this is a problem because a gun can in fact cause a person to feel scared. Now this is not a rational feeling on the part of the person experiencing it, but that does not alter the causal nature of the feeling. They have been conditioned, probably by themselves, or possibly their parents or whatever, to feel this emotion in the presence of a gun, with or without the bad guy. I've seen it first hand.

That's my nit-pick. I hope this contribution to humanity is both deep and profound. I'm glad Kim pointed me to the Mrs., it's good stuff and I'll be back. Maybe someday I'll rise above the slop artist blogger that I am and move onto thoughtful and moving pieces like the du Toit's and all the other monuments in the blogosphere, but for now, let's hope not.

aaaaaand we're back

So the latest article on CNN goes back to the semiautomatic description of the sks. I wonder what gives?

The shooter used an SKS 7.62 mm semiautomatic rifle, the sheriff said.

2 out of 3 aint too bad, for CNN. I wish they'd show a picture of the one used. That would probably give it away. I'm going to assume that the rifle used resembles the plain old hunting rifle looking SKS I've got posted below and not the big honkin' banana clip (yeah yeah, I know it's a magazine) jobby from the VPC add. Hence, they'd look kinda stupid (more stupid?) to the general public, since they're whole assault weapon definition relies solely on appearances.

The article also indicates that it appears that the other hunters tried to shoot back, or shot back, or something. Geez. From now on when I go hunting, one guy better have an AR-15 or other assault rifle for self defense and the other guy carry the actual high powered hunting rifle for putting meat on the table.

Holy Cow! A real unbiased report from CNN involving guns and murder

CNN actually refered to the SKS rifle used in their report on the recent wisconsin deer hunter murders as:

a SKS 7.62 mm semiautomatic rifle, a common hunting weapon.

Wow, not the usual VPC stuff about the SKS being a high powered assault weapon. Neat. Good work CNN.

Note that there are two versions of the SKS, one typically used in the lefty media to show that this is an "assalut weapon" (although it wasn't defined as such in the 1994 so-called Assault Weapons Ban:


The other is the typical hunting version, looks like a low quality hunting rifle:


UPDATE: it didn't take long, a quick phone call from vpc did the trick I guess. Now CNN says

The shooter used an SKS 7.62 mm assault rifle, the sheriff said.

so there it is, the usual stuff.

Poor man's shock therapy, especially for traumatized Kerry voters

Are you feeling down? Did your girlfriend just dump you for your best friend? Did you rack up your credit card on what amounts to essentially nothing? Did Bush just win the election?

Well, you got yourself into this crappy mess, and now you are bathed in depression and self loathing, and are incapacitated by your emotions. Turns out that there's a quick fix for this. It won't make you feel good, but you won't feel bad anymore either, allowing you to approach the situation rationally so you can plan how to improve yourself and get out of whatever mess you are in.

I call it "the poor man's shock therapy," it's pretty simple and costs zilch. Just run a bath of ice-cold water. Dunk yourself in it for 30 seconds or so. Voila! Instant cure. Whatever it was you were so unhappy about, well, now you won't care. At least for the next 12 hours or so. By the time it comes back, it should be manageable. If not, repeat the therapy.

Disclaimer: I'm not an expert in psychology or psycotherapy and not licensed to practice medicine. My method is based on personal experience and the theories in the book "The Key to the Sciences of Man" by D.G. Garan.

Dear Osama

After reading your open letter to us (americans), one thing comes to mind: If we're really the "great satan" you say that we are, why are we not nuking you back to the primordial soup? Is Allah keeping our fingers from the button? If that's the case, why doesn't Allah smite us and be done with it so you can get on with a world of Islam?

In addition, I don't want to hear any more whining from muslims about the insurgent fighter shot by our Marine. After all, as a member of the Mujahideen, he loved death more than life, and we helped him to that end. We deserve praise, no?

One Two Three Four, I love the Marine Corps

Keep kicking their butts. I love the Marine Corps. If I wasn't married with two kids, I'd sign up. The U.S. Marine Corps (and the services in general) make me proud to be an American.

We won

Ok, gotta acknowledge this. House, Senate, Pres, and with any luck my governor (Dino Rossi, Washington).

Now if only Pete Coors had won in Colorado, dern it.

Oh yeah, and it looks like Tradesports was just experiencing some weak-kneed traders. Har har, I shoulda bought some shares. Geez.

Tradesports election day attack

wtf? Who's doing this and why? I'm starting to think that there's some funny guy out there with a big smirk on his face with no real point causing all the ruckus.

Tradesports as of 1:35pm PST:

Bush 38.5
Kerry 66.0

good grief.

My vote's been cast for Bush already, so not much chance of me being manipulated by this.

Could also be repubs doing this to try to get out the bush vote. Could be Dems trying to demoralize the repubs and keep the bush vote at home. Could be space aliens having fun with us. Could be Soros getting his jollies. Could be Britney Spears trying to conquer the universe. etc.