Stiggy on Cricket.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:00 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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There was a post here. There isn't now, because I changed my mind.

Because that's my perogative.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Holy Crap! Sauron is real!

I could never be described as a Tolkein junkie EVER, but that, I must admit, is pretty freakin' cool. Provided the all-seeing-eye doesn't see me.

{Hat Tip: Martini Boy's Bartender}

Posted by: Kathy at 09:06 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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But maybe if the French had perhaps spent a little more time fighting than rounding up the train car where the Treaty of Versailles had been signed to serve as a quaint surrender locale, well, perhaps they wouldn't have been occupied for four years?

I understand they're all about being the hosts with the most, but really.

Posted by: Kathy at 05:40 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I present for your perusal three stories:

Bloomberg: U.S. Air Force Academy Details Pattern of Religious Intolerance

NY Times: Panel Finds No Overt Religious Intolerance At Air Force Academy.

San Jose Mercury News/AP Wire: Religious Insensitivity Cited at Academy

So, am I to use the "two out of three ain't bad" yardstick here?

Posted by: Kathy at 05:03 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The husband emailed me this earlier with the message, "Don't shoot the messenger" attached.

LONDON - Married men earn more than bachelors so long as their wives stay at home doing the housework, according to a report on Wednesday from BritainÂ’s Institute for Social and Economic Research.

Academics Elena Bardasi and Mark Taylor found that a married man whose wife does not go out to work but is primarily responsible for the cooking and cleaning earns about 3 percent more than comparably employed single men.

But that wage premium disappears if wives go out to work themselves or donÂ’t do most of the housework.

“It has been fairly well documented that married men earn more than single men,” Taylor, a labor economist, told Reuters.

“However, our research established the wage premium is related to the wife doing the chores,” said the academic who teaches at the University of Essex in eastern England.

He said analysis suggests there could be two explanations for the results:

A marriage might allow a husband and wife to focus their activities on tasks to which they are most suited. Traditionally, this would result in the man concentrating on paid work enabling him to increase productivity and in consequence his wages.

Taylor said another explanation could be that marriage may increase the amount of time a man has to hone work-related skills which could trigger higher wages.{...}

Have no fear, my devoted Cake Eater Readers, the husband will be live and well for quite some time. I can't shoot him: he's the breadwinner.

Heheheheheh.

All kidding aside, though, this doesn't surprise me one bit. I learned long ago that no matter what I did, or how brilliantly I did it, he will always make more money than me. While I don't dismiss out of hand the possibility that I, someday, could overtake him in the money department, I don't think it likely and it's simply because he has a different skill set than I do. I have a Liberal Arts---would you like fries with that?---degree; he has a Business---we need to be thinking about the P/E ratio---degree. He's also heavily interested in and has been working in IT for years now. I haven't. Hence, he's made himself highly marketable, whereas I haven't. It makes sense, then, to spend my time working on my stuff, whilst doing stuff around here to clear his schedule. While I'm sure some bra-burning, hairy-armpitted feminist thinks I'm subjugating myself to his will, that's not the case. It makes more sense, financially speaking, to maximize his potential and if that means taking care of the chores around the house, well, so be it. If the situation was reversed, it would make an equal amount of sense for him to take care of the chores.

What would interest me, however, is if someone did a study to see how marriage affected a woman's earning potential when her husband was the one to stay at home.

Posted by: Kathy at 01:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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...for once again telling me what I can and cannot do with MY money.

WASHINGTON - With the acquiescence of their leaders, key House Republicans are drafting Social Security legislation stripped of President Bush's proposed personal accounts financed with payroll taxes and lacking provisions aimed at assuring long-term solvency.

Instead, according to officials familiar with the details, the measure showcases a promise, designed to reassure seniors, that Social Security surplus funds will be held inviolate, available only to create individual accounts that differ sharply from Bush's approach.

Under current law, any Social Security payroll tax money not used to finance monthly benefits is in effect lent by Social Security to the Treasury, which uses it to finance other government programs. Government actuaries say the surplus is expected to vanish in 2017 when benefit payments exceed payroll taxes collected.

In addition, the GOP bill "doesn't deal with solvency," according to another official, indicating it would avoid the difficult choices of curbs on benefits, higher taxes or changes in the retirement age needed to implement the president's call for long-term financial stability.{...}

{empahsis mine}

Grrrrrr.

Yes, let's suck up to the AARP once again. Never mind the millions of younger people who have to foot the bill for this bit of stupidity. They don't count because our polling numbers tell us they don't vote. And the people who vote are the ones we need to be paying attention to. Because they're the ones who keep sending us back to Congress, and our cushy jobs with our cushy paychecks, every two or six years. By all means, they're the ones who matter. Not the people who foot the bill.

One of the secondary reasons I voted for Bush was that he promised to do something about Social Security. He promised to give me control of a part of my money, to invest as I saw fit. While I never thought the solution he was plugging would be the one that made it through Congress, this proposal is too little, too late. I sincerely hope that he vetoes this pig if it actually makes it through Congress. If he chooses not to, well, that's YET another sign to me that he really wanted my vote, but now that he's got it, he doesn't really care all that much.

Perhaps, the next time an election comes around, I won't vote Republican. Perhaps I won't vote at all. I am sick and tired of playing by the rules. I always vote. Because I believe that if you don't, you don't have a reason to bitch. You didn't take part and you have effectively disenfranchised yourself. Well, you know what? It doesn't do me a fat lot of good to vote when the disenfranchisement happens anyway, does it?

I can understand Congress being a bunch of wishy-washy idiots. That, apparently, is their purpose in life. But if the President accepts this "compromise," and, at some point in the future---after millions of dollars in pork have been attached to the stupid thing---signs it into law, well, that's it. That will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

"The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money."

Posted by: Kathy at 10:24 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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I'm a little tired of watching cable news right now. I would like to know what's going on in the world. Instead I am subjected to endless reports on Natalee Holloway.

Now, please don't get me wrong. I would like for her to be found as much as the next person. I am sorry for her family because it's obvious that they are only looking for her body right now. It's a horrible situation all around, but I'm failing to see why so much coverage is being devoted to her story, other than that it's apparently a slow news summer.

That and the fact that the networks apparently needed another pretty young thing to focus on.

I'm tired of this. And I mean, I'm really, really tired of this. Women, it appears, are only of value to the tee vee news networks if they disappear or are murdered horribly. And if they're pretty. They do have to be pretty. Because no one really focuses on the ugly, fat women that disappear or are murdered, do they? Apparently you have to be white, with big eyes, carefully groomed hair, and tastefully applied makeup to rate. Oh, and it helps if you're skinny as well. You can have some extra meat on your bones, but only if you're pregnant. Cable and network news have taken a cue from Hollywood on this one: if they can't cast you as the girl next door, you don't rate.

The families must really have a heck of a time submitting snapshots to the networks, don't you think? Good God, the pressure of that choice must be horrible on top of everything else. And I'm not being sarcastic. Can you imagine what it must be like, to be in that situation, to want desperately to get the word out about it, and then have to find a recent snapshot that's exceedingly good? One that shows your loved one at their finest? Because you'd know that the media wouldn't deign to cover the story if your loved one just had a mistake of a haircut or color job? Or if they were having a bad time keeping control of their weight? It must be a horrible thing to know that their physical beauty could be the one thing that might make the difference. That's a double-edged sword if there ever was one.

I'm weary of this. While I'm sorry for Miss Holloway and her family, I just don't see where this is news. Reporting the latest rumor about which of the four well-connected Arubans contacted their lawyer today is not news. There are literally hundreds of other women who are murdered or go missing every day of the week. I'm sure the fact she went missing in Aruba, a nice tropical locale---with plenty of posh hotels for all the reporters to stay in---isn't hurting matters, either, but let's face facts: it's because she's pretty that her disappearance is a priority story. And that's just wrong.

What's even worse is the number of people who are lapping this story up. And by that you know who I mean, don't you? Yes, that's right. I'm talking about the viewers. They have been devotedly tracking this story, like they knew her when they didn't. The networks at least have the excuse that they're only providing what the public wants. What excuse does the viewing public have? Yes, they can claim they're only interested in the story; that there seems to be an epidemic of violence against women, and that concerns them; that they're interested in poor Natalee's fate. And I suppose those are legitimate excuses, up to a point. But, what I would like to know is that if they're so interested in this particular missing-persons case, why aren't they interested in all the other missing persons cases? Perhaps the ones they read a quick blurb about in the paper? Or see on their local news? Because it's not logical to say that you're interested in this case, but not all the others. Unless, the real reason they're interested in is because poor Natalee is pretty. Could that possibly be it? Hmmm. I wonder.

Everyone's guilty on this one. The people who watch, and the people who provide the content. And I'm tired of being guilty by association in this little media festival of the grotesque because there's nothing else on. I feel dirty after watching some of these reports. And I'm really tired of feeling that way.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:46 AM | Comments (11) | Add Comment
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Well, not anymore he doesn't.

Oh, le gag.

I'd love to smash in his fat head like an overripe pumpkin on Halloween night.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:03 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 Sniff.

Posted by: sadie at June 22, 2005 05:01 PM (2xn/2)

2 Yeah, I know. You love him. Sorry babe

Posted by: Kathy at June 22, 2005 05:13 PM (yCuZO)

3 Sokay. We still have Keanu;-)

Posted by: sadie at June 23, 2005 12:55 PM (zZMHN)

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I just got a new dishwasher hence I'm in a giving mood.

Did I mention it's stainless steel? And that I can fit wine glasses on the top rack?

WooT!

Anyway, here's a bit of a roundup.

• Does it ever worry anyone else when Steve-o decides to wax rhapsodic...about anything? Yeah, that's what I thought. Your bomb shelter or mine?
• Speaking of the Llamas, I must say, dear Robbo has greatly disappointed me with this very lax critique of the DirecTV Sunday Ticket ads. Who cares if it's from Willy Wonka or not. What really matters is that those @#W$#$#$@#$@$ ads are ANNOYING AS HELL! Particularly when they play it again and again and again. Really, Robbo. I was hoping for more.{Insert windy sigh of disappointment here}
• There are times when I wonder if Doug would like to go down to the Portland Avenue headquarters of the Strib and just start beating the crap out of the editorial board. Methinks they've got it coming. And people wonder why I don't subscribe/bother to read that paper anymore.
• Usually it's the French waiters who do the bashing, but that little bit of truth isn't going to stop Phoenix from dishing out some payback. Oh, and she, too, chimed in on the Diva topic of the day. Go and read.
• Margi's preggers and there's apparently no such thing as too much information.
• The Manolo, he has the inside story on the David Spade.
• Go over and read Rich's blog. He likes it when people do. Really. And because I owe him an email and since you people are my minions, well, you'll have to give up some love on my behalf.
• I meant to link this one yesterday. My bad, yeah, I know. But it's worth the wait. Fausta wonders if Batman is a Republican.

Allrighty then. Go forth and share the love that is a link dump, kids. Your karma will be all the better for it.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:53 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Remove leftover food, bones, toothpicks and other hard items from the dishes. It is not necessary to rinse the dishes before putting them into the dishwasher. The wash module removes food particles from the water. The module contains a chopping device which will reduce the size of food items.

Note: If hard items such as fruit seeds, nuts, and eggshells enter the wash module, you might hear chopping, grinding, crunching, or buzzing sounds. These sounds are normal when hard items enter the module. Do not let metallic items (such as pot handle screws) get into the wash module. Damage can occur.

From my new dishwasher's owners manual. Which is the Whirlpool Quiet Partner II, model DU1100.

Should be interesting to hear that puppy in action, no?

Posted by: Kathy at 05:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Ok, the good news is that I'm FINALLY getting a new dishwasher. Actually, the new landlord bought the dishwasher almost two weeks ago and it's been sitting down in the garage, waiting to be installed.

The bad news is that they're trying to install it now, and they're, of course, this being the Cake Eater Pad, having some issues with it. They got the old one pulled out all right, but when they were checking the connections or something like that, some ancient part blew. I was in the office and all of a sudden there's this hissing noise. It didn't sound right. And you know what? It wasn't right. There was water shooting all over the kitchen floor from underneath the sink. No one happened to be there at the moment, but the back door was open so I screamed, "TURN IT OFF!"

Well, we got that cleaned up. And, really, I did need to clean the kitchen floor anyway, so the fact that I now have to mop is really a non-starter. Really. But, as it turns out, the part that blew, well, it's because the plumbing's old and---FOR SOME STRANGE REASON---Tweedledumb brought a new cold line all the way up from the basement a few years back, but didn't bother to bring a new hot line up at the same time. The old hot line was, apparently, good enough for him. So, now they have to replace that. In case you didn't know, I live on the second floor of this house. It makes things interesting.

Fortunately, both the landlord and the plumber seem to know what they're doing and are interested in getting it done quickly. Which is good because I haven't showered yet today. And I smell right now. So it would be nice to have the water turned back on sometime soon.

And I'll have a dishwasher by the end of the afternoon, which will really make my freakin' day! I cannot bloody wait for it. After dinner tonight, I will be able to load it up and NOT HAVE TO WASH EVERYTHING BY HAND!

Woohoo! That will be so freakin' exciting. I cannot wait. I LOATHE washing dishes. So, God Willing, I will be able to retire the marigolds after this afternoon. Keep your fingers crossed that another bit of Tweedledumb's laziness doesn't come back to haunt this endeavor.

Posted by: Kathy at 02:55 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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So, our topic for the Demystifying Divas and the Marvy Men's Club this week is...{insert drumroll here}what lies do we tell our significant others?

For your education and entertainment, I present to you, Mr. Dave Stewart and Ms. Annie Lennox---yes, that's right kids. We're talking about the Eurythmics--- performing their smash hit Would I Lie To You?.

And, yes, kids. I was trying to sound like Dick Clark there.

Anyhoo...I've always thought the snarky alternative title to this song should be "Did I Stutter, A**hole?" Annie's packed her bags, she's cleaned the floor, and you're supposed to watch her walk out the door, (Although, one does wonder why, if the relationship is over, Annie would bother to clean the floor. Wouldn't a breakup negate the need for that sort of dreary housework?) and all the while the chorus is singing in the background, "Believe Me." So, when one actually bothers to listen to the lyrics of this song, one gets the impression that perhaps Annie wasn't as truthful as she might have been during the course of this relationship. Why else would she need plead with him to believe her otherwise?

Annie's been telling some little white lies, methinks.

And you know that happens, right? No one likes to cop to it, but it does happen, especially in the early stages of the relationship, when we're desperate to impress and perhaps the unexpurgated truth isn't the image we'd like to present. However, when you really dive into the deep end of a relationship, honesty is always a virtue, but not at the cost of being kind. So, instead of lying flat out, we perhaps tell little white lies, or tell lies of omission, where we just skip around the situation altogether. Because, sometimes, lying---and I really do hate to say it---is the right thing to do.

To prove my point, we shall examine all the options for one particular, universal, question that is asked everyday by women:

If a man doesn't want his bollocks to magically disappear, the smart answer to this question is...

...a noncomittal, "hmmmm" and a prompt change of topic. While this would count for a lie of omission, it would nonetheless be, technically speaking, the most correct way of answering this question. It dodges. It weaves. It avoids the killer right hook. Yet it's kind, and if the woman knows how to read between the lines, she will know that a. her man does not want to be dumped into a vat of hot water and b. he's trying not to hurt her feelings.

The seriously wrong answer to this question would be, "Yes, you are a lard ass. Change into a tent, would you? I don't want to be embarrassed." If you have a wish to be castrated, well, go right ahead and throw this one out there for the consumption of your beloved. It won't hurt...I promise.

Yet another incorrect answer would be if he chose to flat-out lie and said, "No, dear. It doesn't. You look great." If said woman then goes out to a party, where the main topic of whispered gossip happens to be "what the hell was she thinking when she put on that dress?" and she catches wind of it, well, he's a dead man. Because he's supposed to protect her from this sort of thing, he's supposed to be honest with her, and he failed. If only he'd told me the truth!

The problem here is that, at times, we want our significant others to lie to us. Sometimes we don't want the truth as they see it, but rather we want them to prop up the truth as we see it, which probably isn't the truth at all, but rather an illusion, or delusion as the case may be. Sometimes the kind thing to do, the thing that will ensure your vital bits don't magically disappear, is to fib. And by my usage of the term "fib," I mean it's all right, on occasion, to slightly lie to save someone hurt. "Fib" is not, in Kath's Thesaurus of Potentially Life Altering Language, the exact equivalent of "I'm not going to tell her that I slept with someone while I was at that dental convention in Acapulco." That would be an outright lie. And it's not kind to pull that sort of whopper on someone with whom you've pledged to spend the rest of your life. Because that kind of lie, while saving your bollocks temporarily, could come back to bite you...hard. Because that's a selfish kind of lie. A fib is a kind sort of lie. Get the difference? Good. Otherwise, you'll be just like Annie and you'll be pleading with her to "believe you" as she walks out the door. And I'll bet you anything she won't have cleaned the floor before she packed her bags.

And that's all she wrote. Quite literally. So, now go and see what the other Demystifying Divas have to say on the topic. One of our newest Divaesque Ladies, Sheila of The Sheila Variations, is stepping up this week and adding her two cents. Then, for the flip side, go and read what our Marvy Men's Club, which is comprised of Stiggy, The Wiz, Phin and our Maximum Leader, has offered up on this topic.

UPDATE: Divaesque Lady Twisty has also chimed in. Scoot along and read.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:11 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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We had some nasty weather move through roughly about two hours ago. When I left the house a little before noon to go walking around the lake, it was sunny, hot and the skies were blue. And humid. Really, really humid. Because we'd had another set of thunderstorms move through around nine this morning and they'd just---to quote Stella from Rear Window---made the heat wet. As I huffed and puffed around the lake, sweating up a storm (yeech!), I wasn't really surprised to hear over the radio that another set of storms was going to move through. What I was surprised about, however, was that the county was in a severe thunderstorm warning, instead of a watch. I decided to hustle home. And a good thing I did, too, because by the time I'd reached the house, I could see big, blue clouds rolling in from the northwest.

Then the husband called. Our new landlord had called him, wondering if he was home and could walk his suddenly available plumber through a preliminary check of the place because he was stuck at work. Obviously, I was home and was more than willing to show the guy through the place. No hassles. But he was going to be there in five minutes or thereabouts. I raced through the shower---did I mention it was humid when I was at the lake?---and when I got out, well, you'd have thought night had descended upon the Greater Twin Cities area. The clouds had turned blackish-green, which, any native of the midwest could tell you usually means bad things. Like hail. And the occasional tornado.

It started to downpour, and wow, what a storm! It was the first really nasty one of the season. In between keeping an eye out for the plumber, I was watching the waterfall on the south side of the house. You see, Tweedledumb never bothered to clear out the gutters after all the leaves fell. Have I mentioned we have three oaks and five pine trees in the yard, and a few of them hang over the house? So, to put it mildly, there's a few years worth of debris in the gutters. Rather I should say there was a few years worth of detritus in the gutters because it was raining so hard it actually knocked crap out of the gutters and sent it careering to the ground. I've never seen that happen before and it was kind of cool. But no tornadoes, which is always kind of a blessing and a curse. No running to the basement, but no excitement, either. Sigh.

Well, the plumber didn't show up until two-thirty. He'd waited the storm out, but hadn't bothered to tell anyone. Which wasn't really pleasing, but was understandable. I wouldn't have wanted to drive through that storm, either. The "world coming to an end" situation comes in when the plumber left and I left the house in search of a pack of smokes.

I'd run out before I'd gone to the lake. Now, normally this isn't a hassle. Just walk down the street to Walgreens and pick up a pack. No hassles. But where we hadn't lost electricity, which I must admit is a first for this kind of storm, everyone else had. And NO ONE wanted to open up and sell their wares to people who wanted to buy stuff. Because they didn't have power.

Now, I know this is going to sound very "When I was your age, I walked five miles to school, uphill both ways, and it snowed a lot too," but what the hell is up with that? Are you that crippled without power that you can't ring things up by hand? Can't you do the math with a calculator? Can't you keep track of what you sold with a pen and a piece of paper, and then enter it in manually when you have power again? None of these things, apparently, are possible nowadays.

Back in the day when I managed for Caribou, we lost power due to an overeager construction crew one afternoon. And it was no big deal. In fact, it was an adventure. The kids working with me had a ball---when they got over their fear of performing all the transactions manually. I gave the drip brew away because I couldn't guarantee that it was hot and I was just going to have to pitch it anyway. Obviously, espresso drinks were out. But I had a boatload of of bakery products to sell, and believe you me, boy, did they sell. People were hungry. It was lunchtime, and here they were in the middle of a freakin' grocery store, loaded with food, and they couldn't buy anything. I was out of product within an hour. And all because I knew how to use a calculator and how to record things with a pen and a piece of paper, I sold stuff I normally would have pitched at the end of the day. There's opportunity everywhere, and yet, no one in this neighborhood apparently cares about capitalism. No one cares about the law of supply and demand. Because the power's out. And they can't be bothered. Because this was more of a "Woohoo, we've got the afternoon off!" situation for most of these employees, and not one where money could be made.

Not a lot of initiative there if you ask me.

Now, I realize you're thinking "well, the cash drawer locked up. They can't access it." Sorry, that one's not going to fly, because I've seen people get into the drawers at these places with a simple turn of a key. Or you might be thinking, "there's liability issues. Dark store, people bumping around, hurting themselves." Yeah, I understand that one, too, but when they've actually let friends into the store---and I can see them---and you're standing at the front door, telling me to go away because there's no power, well, that's not going to fly, either. And, yes, they had flashlights.

You should have seen this chick at Walgreens. Man, was she ever peeved with me. I told her I didn't need change, but I just needed a pack of smokes. That's all. Here's my id. Here's the three bucks. PLEASE? (Yeah, I was having a nicotine fit. But I was polite about it.) But we don't have power she said in a really whiny voice. We can't sell you anything because it would ruin our inventory. "What?" I replied, somewhat baffled, "Aren't you keeping track of sales manually? You can enter them in when the power comes back on, can't you?" When she whined some more, I finally had to play my trump card: "what are those women doing in there? They don't work here. They work at the salon across the street. How come you're selling to them and not to me?" At which point she let out an incredibly windy, My-God-Are-You-Ever-Putting-Me-Out sort of sigh and then handed over the smokes. I took them and boogied. I didn't want to "bother" her anymore.

It kind of makes you wonder what the case would be if there was a really serious outage. A days long outage. Because that's been known to happen in this neighborhood in the past because our power lines aren't buried. This happened before I moved here, but I heard nothing but goodwill stories. People helping people. Stores pitching in and helping their customers. Gas pumps were unlocked manually and no one stole anything.

I wonder if that would still be the case today. Or would it be more like this, even if it was a godawful movie.

Posted by: Kathy at 04:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Oh, that makes soooooo much sense.

In other Tom "I'm MOST DEFINITELY NOT GAY" Cruise news, did you see where he got squirted with water by a fake reporter in London? I don't exactly see how you could have missed it unless you're just checking in from the top of Everest, via a sat phone hookup. In which case, you're excused. But for the rest of you, well, gosh, isn't it striking how well Tommy can dish it, but just can't take it?

{...}Cruise initially appeared to laugh at the incident but then asked the prankster: "Why would you do that?"

As the man gave a barely audible excuse, Cruise said: "Do you like thinking less of people, is that it?" The prankster tried to walk away but Cruise reached across the metal barrier, held his arm and said: "Don't run away. That's incredibly rude. I'm here giving you an interview and you do that ... it's incredibly rude."

The actor grew increasingly irritated and told the man: "You're a jerk." Footage of the incident appeared on Sky News TV on Monday.{...}

Ain't that rich?

We've been subjected to the "Tom Cruise Circus of Dysfunction" for over a month now. We've been told we should be happy because Tom's IN LOVE! That this is the reason why he's, to steal a phrase from Sheila, running around like a gibbering chimp. To make sure his new movie doesn't tank, Spielberg is being forced to give interviews defending his star. And we're supposed to feel sorry for Tommy Boy because he got squirted in the face with a little water? Furthermore, Tommy Boy has to transform the whole incident into a matter of personal philosophy. "Do you like thinking less of people, is that it?" Like Tommy Boy is a complete and utter angel and has never done anything so revolting in his life! The nerve of some people! Scientology preaches against exactly this sort of behavior and, if you'll step right over to the tent that's set up over yonder, those nice people will explain to you exactly where you're going wrong and they'll give you a personality quiz that will last, roughly, for four hours and they won't let you leave! Then they'll tell you exactly how much enlightenment costs, roughly, within the Church of Scientology. Have a good time, sucker!

Bleh.

Posted by: Kathy at 11:21 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Go on and click. You know you want to.

Ovaries. Twitching.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:31 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Just in case you were wondering, I, apparently, rule the universe.

Why, you ask, have I appointed myself ruler of the Milky Way?

Because I completely winged a recipe for pie today and it came out perfectly.

I wanted a berry pie, but all the berries that are normally considered to be suitable for pies (blueberries, raspberries) cost an arm and a leg. But Strawberries were (reasonably) cheap. (They really do stick us for produce here in the Great White North. It sucks, in case you were wondering. $2.99 for a feckin' pound of Roma tomatoes. Grand freakin' larceny!) Anyway, having no recipes for Strawberry Pie, I checked around to see what I could find, but they all either took forever and day to make, or they used frozen strawberries (bleh). So, I mixed and matched and came up with this. Enjoy.

Strawberry Pie

4 cups sliced strawberries
3/4 cup sugar
4 tablespoons cornstarch
1/3 cup all-purpose flour

Sift sugar, cornstarch and flour together, mix with berries and throw into a pie crust that you've already prepared and haven't gotten the recipe for from me. Because I suck at pie crusts. I use the Pillsbury pre-made ones you get in your grocer's dairy case. Really. They work just fine. Cover with the second bit of dough, cut some slits into it, and sprinkle some sugar on it.

Bake at 425 degrees for 45 minutes or until it starts bubbling. Cover the edge with foil so it doesn't burn, and take it off with ten minutes to go, so the crust gets baked. This only holds unless you're super-duper cool and have one of those nifty metal circles (available at your local cookery shop!) that serves this purpose. If you've got one of those, well, use that instead and save yourself the trouble of trying to fit square foil on a round pie pan.

Enjoy!

Posted by: Kathy at 11:40 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 320 words, total size 2 kb.

Does anyone else worry that because of the ever-present scooter, we're going to have a generation of kids who all have one leg that's stronger than the other?

Posted by: Kathy at 11:26 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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For they shall have their own ring of hell to live in.

That thar link shoots you to a windy Financial Times piece from Saturday's edition on the International Red Cross and the difficult decisions they're facing due to modern warfare. You see, the ICRC's mandate, traditionally, has been to send out monitors to POW camps and prisons to ensure that nation-states are living up to their obligations under the Geneva Conventions. To gain access to these camps, they promise that they will not publicize their findings, but will rather work on the inside to make sure things are done to help the prisoners with their living conditions. This has been the case since WWI. It's a quid pro quo arrangement. But, lately, it seems as if some people within the ICRC have been having issues with this quid pro quo. They want the quid, but now they're having second thoughts about giving the quo. And you want to know what events have brought about this remarkable potential change in mission?

Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.

Yes, that's right. This is the organization who did not think twice about what the SS was doing in Theriesenstadt. They bought the SS's story about that town, hook, line and sinker. But wait, it gets worse. From the article:

{...}But on the Nazi extermination and concentration camps, their courage and imagination failed. At a meeting held in Geneva on October 14 1942, the 25 people who presided over the organisation voted not to go public with the knowledge they had about Auschwitz and the systematic murder of civilians, Jews, gypsies, political dissidents and intellectuals, on the grounds that Hitler might retaliate by denying them access to the allied prisoners in German hands. It was not actually in their mandate to protect civilians - a revision of the Geneva Conventions to include protection for civilians had only reached draft stage by the outbreak of war - so that, technically, they were not at fault. But at the end of the war, when this decision to stay silent became known, it provoked widespread criticism including talk of anti-Semitism, and even threatened the future of the organisation.{...}

So, here you have an organization that has, for the most part, stuck to its original mission: to observe and work for better conditions for prisoners of war from the inside. Except for a few rare instances over the past sixty years, they have not publicized their findings. But the one time they should have diverged from their mission and publicized that millions of people were being systematically exterminated, they didn't do it. They were worried about the potential of Hitler retaliating and denying them access to POW's. They kept quiet, instead. Because protecting civilians wasn't a part of their mandate. And the mass murders continued. The smoke kept pumping out of the smokestacks at Auschwitz, in part, because of their silence.

It beggars belief that Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo should be the straws that are reportedly breaking the ICRC's back nowadays, when they had the opportunity to play a major part in stopping a genocide and they didn't do it. But, I'll fully admit, that could just be me and my skewed sense of right and wrong.

Posted by: Kathy at 12:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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{Insert Gomer Pyle Voice Here}

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise.

Man, I simply, flat-out, cannot freakin' wait for the Baba Waba interview five years from now, when Katie announces to the world---as a part of her "comeback pr tour"---that, yes, indeedy, she made a huge mistake marrying Tommy Boy; that Scientology, really and truly, is a cult; and that---insert drumroll here---Tommy Boy really does prefer cabana boys over cabana girls. Because methinks Katie will be bitter when she finally realizes she's been used. And everything's going to be fair game at that point in time.

Have you ever seen a more self-loathing, closeted gay man? Nope. Tommy Boy really does take the cake on this one. What's really sad is that he's taking advantage of a moderately talented, but extremely naive, young woman who has a future---but doesn't now---to prop up the biggest lie he tells himself. (There is a reason he picked her, after all. Don't kid yourselves. The fact that she's naive in the extreme was a bonus for Tommy Boy.) It's sad, really. If he can't come out publicly, for obvious reasons, he could at least stop taking advantage of young women to cover his ass and, you know, just be alone, living a discreet life. Because the women keep getting younger and younger. You have noticed that, right? And, in my little world of theory, it's not because he prefers them young, per se, (look at Mimi Rogers for chrissakes) but rather because they've got little experience to suss this sort of thing out. That and his ex-es always seem to go running for men with who possess an overabundance of testosterone once they break up with Tommy Boy. Penelope Cruz has hooked up with Matthew McConaughey; Nicole Kidman was reportedly upset when Russell Crowe got married because she wanted to date him. The pattern is clear. He's using these women as uninformed beards. They've bought into the myth that is Tom Cruise. And he takes full advantage of it. It's just mean and selfish.

And when Katie does talk to Baba Waba, well, it's going to be sweet.

Oh, and just for the record, I believe War of the Worlds is going to tank. Big Time. It's going to be Gigli all over again.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:26 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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