I like to take photos every day. What can I say?
I finally got around to trying out the scotty dog cookie cutter I bought at a junk shop in Quartzsite AZ.
Disconnect #1:
Puddin's text message was simple: "J hung himself."
The implications are far more complicated. Puddin has the sense of relief that her ex-husband won't be stalking her anymore, that the past few years' nightmare of frivolous custody suits, unsent child-support, and threats has ended. The down side…how do you explain to a seven year-old that the father who has only been there sporadically is dead? How do you explain that this father loved you, but he hanged himself?
A few miles up I-75, my friend's daughter, Eliza, has coded four times in the past week. She's fighting for her life, fighting the way she's had to her entire 16 years. She's waiting on a heart-lung transplant, eager to grow up and have problems.
There's a disconnect somewhere in this world. How one person can hate life so much that he snuffs it, while another person has battled her entire 16 year life to stay alive--I wish we could just transfer the healthy life spark from one person to another. I mean, it would have been no big deal for J to code--he wanted to go. Let Eliza be up and walking around, and J could segue into wherever abusive bastards are sent afterwards.
Disconnect # 2:
A couple weeks ago, I was surfing around the interwebs, and I stumbled across the video of Bud Dwyer, then the Pennsylvania Treasurer, holding a press conference. After making a statement, in which he professed his innocence, he gave envelopes to three of his aides, then pulled out a .357 Magnum and shot himself in the head. BOOM! Right there on live TV. (you can link to the video from wikipedia's article on Bud Dwyer) All I could think of was, "That doesn't even look real."
The next night, I watched "Boys Don't Cry," in which the protagonist is shot under the chin. All I could think was, "Now THAT is what it's supposed to look like!"
It was vaguely discomfiting seeing an actual gunshot suicide happen; even more horrible was that I judged it as lacking compared to the special effects extravaganza in the movie.
Disconnect #3:
I've written before about my extreme dislike of X-mas, which I differentiate from Christmas. X-mas contains all the frenzy: shopping, parties, stress, presents, et cetera ad valium. Christmas is a pretty straightforward message of peace. Once again, I'm up to my ass in X-mas, and have been since Black Friday. Christmas will be fine and peaceful, but it only lasts a day. Is it worth it? All the madness and mayhem--just for one day where people are less dickish to one another?
Don't ask me that tonight.
Last night, I lay in bed thinking about my life. I've been depressed and alcoholic, where my first thought upon awakening each day was, "Oh, shit; again?" I've also been really sick, where I was 24 hours away from dying. As I lay there, I focused on my breathing, on the fact that I'm not battling for breath. I thought about my job. Yeah, it's stressful as hell this time of year, but it's not too bad. I thought about my people, about Team Punkin and my various partners in crime, about friends nearby and afar. I treasured that even though I'm not wealthy, I have a nice apartment I can afford. Even though it was muggy outside, it was cool inside. I was breathing on my own, without equipment to assist me or monitor me.
I thought how nice it would be if Eliza gets her ultimate Christmas gift, and if Puddin' and her son can find a little peace somewhere in this mad X-mas frenzy.
Dear U.S. Senators,
When you have allowed months of torture and rape to utterly disfigure and destroy someone, the only sensible and humane thing to do is to take that person out somewhere secluded and shoot them in the back of the head.
Since you’ve essentially allowed this healthcare bill to endure the very atrocities I’ve described, it is my sincere hope you will have enough integrity left in you to consign it to the same fate. Executions are seldom easy, but considering the jaw-dropping debauchery to which you’ve relentlessly subjected this bill, such paradoxical mercy is the only way I see for you to even look in the general direction of redemption. Poor old “Healthcare” Bill was once our friend, but now he desperately wails in anguish, pleading for final respite from the blind, relentless assault of Lieberman’s tiny but deceptively powerful political penis.
Our friend wanted to give us a Public Option so that even the poorest Americans could get necessary medical attention. You laughed in his face.
Our friend believed a Single-Payer system was another way we could get healthcare to the less fortunate and was shouted down for that, as well.
Our friend wanted to fix Medicare Part D so that drugs were acquired at a reasonable price and beneficiaries didn’t fall into the infamous, medicine-revoking “Donut Hole”. In response to that one, you simply farted (although, to your credit, you did lift your leg beforehand so the gesture wasn’t lost on anyone).
In short, our friend’s overall goal was to HELP THE AMERICAN POOR. And you had a serious problem with that.
It’s a noble goal – aiding the poor – and one that is right in line with the teachings of every major religion, including the one this country so openly embraces (despite Constitutional insistence it doesn’t). But how did you react to such Christian kindness? You got all coy and then suddenly goal-kicked poor Bill in the nuts by adding a mandate that everyone purchase healthcare from private companies.
So kill it. Kill it until it’s good and dead and literally nothing of it remains. Better to have no healthcare reform at all (for now) than to have a panty-waste bill with ruptured testicles limping through American history as a permanent false testament to how the poor and weak simply don’t deserve access to medical care.
You know what you must do. If it helps, think about it this way: if all of you vote it out, then killing our friend Bill will be more like a firing squad execution than a cold-blooded murder. And isn’t that how you politicos sleep at night – by reframing the untenable things so they can be better blamed on someone else?
Oh, and Mr. President, your recent rhetoric surrounding this bill worries me. You seem to be hedging. I have no doubt you recall making it unequivocally clear when you debated Hilary Clinton last January that you are deadset against an individual mandate, so I'm looking to you to keep your promise to veto this bill if it comes across your desk containing that clause.
Sincerely,
Kirk Starr
Your Employer
The Cylon tester is now operational and Adama and Roslin each want the other to get tested first. Adama thinks it's a good idea for people to have confidence in the president and Roslin remembers that the captured Cylon told her that Adama was another Cylon.
It's hard for her to doubt that when he starts acting very strangely. He's distracted a great deal of the time, and he's been making mysterious phone calls and takes a ship, leaving no flight plan.
Turns out he isn't doing Cylon business--he's picking up Col. Tigh's estranged wife, Ellen.
Ellen's pretty awful. She drinks a lot (she was drunk in almost all of her scenes) and she's manipulative and just wretched.
Adama canceled his test and had Baltar test Ellen first (only one test can be done at a time and the results take 11 hours to come in). Ellen is not a Cylon, just an awful person.
(Except, of course, the "Cylon detector" is a joke and all the results will come back human. So I guess technically, she could be a Cylon after all.)
Here's Bekki's take. She didn't like Ellen Tigh, either.
You can find the entire recipe for Rum Balls here. Pre-heat the oven to 350. Generously coat a 12"x17" rimmed baking sheet with Pam and set aside. In a small bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt together the chocolate and butter until smooth and combines. Set bowl aside to cool slightly.
For gift giving: wrap each of the balls individually in a small square of plastic wrap and place in a mini-muffin paper. Fit a small rectangle of cardboard (my dad cut up some Macy's shirt boxes! Yeah Dad!) on the bottom of a cello bag and add a small strip of decorative paper. Place two rows of three rum balls each in their muffin papers into the bag, tie with ribbon and add a tag. Store in a cool place before giving.
You can find the entire recipe for the Spicy Hot Cocoa here. I followed all the basic ingredients but I added a few shakes of cinnamon, a teaspoon of vanilla powder and a large pinch of cardamom.
On to the marshmallows!
You can find the entire recipe for the Homemade Marshmallows here. I followed all the basic ingredients but I substituted Mexican Vanilla for the regular vanilla extract. You could also try peppermint extract for a pepperminty marshmallow!
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
DG walked up to me and said he needed one of his “silly pretty pixshurs” because he wanted to “hiccup codajoe”.
“Why the sudden decision to hook up Dakota Joe with one of your celebrity pictures?” I asked.
“He sayd I wuz ‘damn’ cute. I am thinkee that is even cuter than Diblet.”
“Yeah, you know, I happen to think you’re the cutest kitteh on the planet.”
“So does codajoe, evindentedly. You gettee teh pixshur for me DG or wut?”
“Sure, but I'm guessing Dakota Joe thinks his own cat is cuter, Deej. And he just goes by DJ now. I don’t even think his name is really Joe.”
“Less talkee, more celery pity pixshur! And also a box to mail it in!”
“I’ll get you an envelope."
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Taking the paper trash out to the recycling bin, a familiar something caught my eye. I didn't need to examine it further; I knew exactly what it was. I went back inside and found DG in the kitchen lounging in a flat of drinking water.
“Say, you ever mail that photo to DJ?”
The Deej blinked. “M-hm.”
“Really? How? You don’t have any stamps. You can’t reach the mailbox.”
“I fond stamps in yur bedroom – dog ones and spacee ones..." He licked his left foreleg for a few moments, then continued, "...then I dressed it and put it with teh rest of teh mails.”
It all came together. “Ha! You put it in the paper recycling, DG! I almost threw it out...”
“Well mail it alreddy wuld you? It wuz sposed to be there a week ago!!!”
*sigh* There’s just no pleasing a cat.
Very sorry for the delay, DJ. It’s on its way now...
Finished Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl.
This book is a mix of two of my recent favorite genres--paranormal YA and gothic fiction.
It's set in the south, a town called Gatlin. (There are not corn children and He Who Walks Behind the Rows does not appear.)
Ethan has been having a lot of weird dreams lately--he's trying to save a girl he loves (who he has only seen in these dreams) and failing. When he wakes up, there's generally a ton of dirt in his bed.
A new girl shows up on the first day of his sophomore year and it's the girl from his dreams. And things get weirder from there.
Such a fantastic book.
Up was just named one of AFI's 10 best of the year. (In case you're curious, the others are Coraline, The Hangover, The Hurt Locker, The Messenger, Precious, A Serious Man, A Single Man, Sugar and Up in the Air.)
I just watched Up a few days ago, so I'm counting it as one seen. :)
It's the latest Pixar offering, so not surprisingly, it's really good.
From the time he was a child, Carl has wanted to be an explorer like his hero, Charles Muntz. That's how he met the girl who would become his wife, Ellie. They never ended up going anywhere, though. After she dies, he decides he's going to go on an adventure, the one he should have taken with her. Except there's a stowaway (Russell, the little boy on the cover) and things continue to not go as planned.
This is a really cute movie, and I liked it. (But why are you so bloodthirsty, Disney/Pixar? Why do you always kill people?)
