Lake Michigan

I'm still fascinated by the lake in winter.

Drinking Right/Cheddarsphere Party

Obligatory post-party post. :P It was great to meet everyone, and now that I know some of you I can go on Tuesdays. Heh.

I didn't catch who brought the hand warmers for the gift exchange, but thank you--I will use them the next time I go to Lambeau Field. :-D

...and it's probably bad form to stop posting after talking about a blog, but I have the week off from pressing buttons and I'm going to try to spend most of it away from the Internets--baking, sewing, reading actual books, that sort of thing. I hate to waste my break from staring at a screen all day by staring at a screen all day. If I do anything interesting, I'll take pictures.

Cat blogging

My brother's cat, Phydeaux:

I don't have his URL. I probably don't want to read it, anyway. :P

This blog powered by recycled sanctimony

Handmade gifts for people who want to Save Teh Planet!!1!, but don't care about it enough to stop drinking beverages made from beans transported thousands of miles (ZOMG, the CARBON!) and served in disposable paper cups. Sometimes it's fun to be an enabler.



"Reclaimed cotton fabric and batting" (read: tiny bits normal people would throw away) coffee cuffs. Notice how, unlike the "green" crafter linked, I did not buy brand new petroleum-based synthetic fabric for my planet-saving endeavor.

Look, a reusable sleeve! I CARE!!

Back to doom and gloom.

I never understood why "the Queen's Christmas message" needs a rebuttal. Especially when the only mention of Jesus is that he was a kind, unselfish man that some people find inspiring. Feel free to clue me in.

The irony of Britain's channel 4 giving Ahmadinejad the pulpit in the name of free speech is that as he was speaking, Iranian authorities raided and closed down the BBC's Tehran offices and, separately, in the spirit of goodwill to man, ordered Christmas trees banned from Iranian kindergartens.

By the time the tastemakers and public opinion shapers figure out that celebrating multiculturism only goes one way, is there going to be any "multi" left to celebrate?

I guess it's not all gloom; Her Majesty seems to wearing her mother's hats. I do love anachronistic millinery.

Merry Christmas!

I spammed my whole family with today's Gary Varvel cartoon. It took me about five minutes to see the face of Christ, and now I can't see the Nativity in it anymore...awesome.

Merry Christmas!

Difficult: The roadway is completely covered with precipitation. Accumulation is to the point that the roadway markings are completely obscured making it difficult to differentiate between the roadway and its surroundings. These conditions make travel very difficult. This is a hazardous environment. Some weather conditions can be severe enough that roadway treatments, such as salt or sand, will not work. Emergency vehicles and snow removal equipment may be called off of the roadway due to the conditions. In the event of an emergency, it may be impossible to get emergency vehicles to a scene.

My mother thinks I'm making this up to ruin her Christmas Eve. There is a special place in Hell for Norman Rockwell.

OTOH, I'm sure the kids would rather see Aunt Heather show up on Christmas Day than not at all. Aunt Heather certainly prefers to drive tomorrow instead of spending the night in a motel room in Dyersville waiting for Friday to roll around to get her car towed/fixed (Aunt Heather has already totalled enough cars on U.S. 20 for one lifetime).

So, what's there to do in Milwaukee on Christmas Eve Day in the snow?

Noteworthy

Mary Lundby, the Republican leader of the Iowa Senate is losing her battle with cervical cancer.

She is an uncommon Republican: She's a working-class Iowan with a union background who stands up for gay rights and the environment, yet she is a devout Catholic who is opposed to abortion and inefficient government.

A nonconformist, Lundby once wrote a resolution honoring everyone who had ever lived in Iowa, visited Iowa or flew over Iowa.

It was a dig at fellow lawmakers' fawning and self-congratulations.

Heh!

¡Feliz Noche de Rábanos!

Night of the Radishes is a tradition in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, where townspeople carve dioramas, especially nativities, out of monster radishes, then bring them to the town square for fun and prizes. More pictures of fantastic radish art here (not mine, I haven't been to Oaxaca).

Good grief.

Why is ESPN bashing Sarah Palin in the lead-up to the Packers game?

I miss Dennis Miller.

Pass the brain bleach.

Why is this photo making the rounds of blogs today (not safe for anyone who thinks "hawt" is not a qualification to be POTUS)? It was 4 degrees today. Aren't we suffering enough?

And who decided that scrawny, jug-eared, snobby, and uh uh uh effete were attractive qualities for men?!? Western Civilization is doomed.

Brain bleach, courtesy of Chele. Also, this is a nice palate cleanser.

Hasenpfeffer!

This is my 1000th post. That seems excessive.

That didn't take long...

AMES, Iowa – Paul Rhoads, a highly successful and charismatic defensive coordinator at both Pitt and Auburn and a former Cyclone assistant coach, is returning home to become head football coach at Iowa State University.

At least this one isn't gonna blow out of town on the first plane to the SEC after lying about his intentions--his parents still live in central Iowa. Heh.

What's this?

There was a building under all that scaffolding!



I think my goal for 2009 will be "try to take pictures that aren't at wonky angles."

So long, RCA Dome

My brother sent me this. Ha ha.

"Damn you!"


If you like demolitions, or just hate the Colts, there's video and photo galleries of the destruction on the Indy Star site.

“It’s a little ironic that a demolition company from Baltimore had the opportunity to take down the stadium to where the Colts fled when they left Baltimore,” said Loizeaux, a Baltimore Ravens fan.

It's really time to get over it, Baltimore. Y'all won a Super Bowl with the team you stole from Cleveland six years before the Colts won one...

"bowel-stewing self-indulgence of elite liberalism"

If you're reading this, you will enjoy Jonah Goldberg's latest column.

Wasn't there a war--a real one, with guns--fought at some point to rid America of an incompetent self-serving hereditary aristocracy? I saw a documentary about it once.

Merry Christmas to me!

“It’s been a very different season,” said Manning, who has quarterbacked the Colts to playoff appearances in nine of the last 10 seasons and who threw two of his three touchdown passes on Thursday night during the second-half rally.

Spoiled, I am.

This is pretty cool--in the postgame, Peyton talks about meeting Sammy Baugh.

PSA

Don't know much about botany

I stole this short lesson in tree identification Small Dead Animals:

No one ever suspects the butterfly*

Of all the people in the world Barack Obama could (will?) be taking orders from, Nancy "the children are in charge" Pelosi?

In talks with Emanuel, Pelosi has “set parameters” for what she wants from Obama and his staff.

Obama rubber-stamping the House has the potential to be far worse than Obama fumbling around on his own, and yet, it's entertaining. Like a clown act (imagine all the Congressional Gorebots climbing out of a Prius). And O brings a water-squirting lapel flower to the seltzer bottle fight.

We're going to starve to death in the dark, but until then at least we won't be bored.

* Come For The Funerals, Stay For The Pie

Don't touch me until you've had a shower.

A fan of Jay Nordlinger suggests a bumpersticker :

Celebrate Diversity — Hug a Conservative

It would be wittier if it was "Embrace Diversity." And I'd prefer to opt out, because I find that whole "liking people because of the label they wear" thing creepy.

But it might be a good way to lure an emergency moonbat into my trunk...

Poor Socks.

He's not long for this world.

I envision him lurking by the Rainbow Bridge for a chance to chew the faces off the two-legged jerk-offs who used him as an image accessory and then threw him away when they didn't need him anymore. (He's a cat. He's planning it for the last eight years.)

That's one way the Obama presidency might differ from Clinton's--there's a good chance Malia and Sasha will love whatever poor beast gets stuck doing photo ops, and that might stop him from getting rid of it as soon as there's no free staff to take it on walkies.

There's a lot I don't like about GWB politically (I can't even follow this auto bailout stuff), but you can tell a lot about people by the way they treat animals. The President and Laura Bush are good people. I'll miss that.

Winter emergency advice

Mark Steyn had some weather in NH recently:

We huddled around one of my Democrat neighbors whose incandescent rage at Bush for not doing anything!!!!! kept us warm.

And then a light bulb went off in my head: Keep a spare moonbat in your trunk in case you get stranded in the single-digit weather. In a different box than the emergency M&Ms, of course.

Finally, they're good for something.

Heh.

Andrew Johnson

I was in a bar trivia contest this afternoon, and one of the questions was "Who was the only President to serve in the Senate after being POTUS?" And I immediately wrote down "Andrew Johnson" and handed it to the girl who was submitting the answers for our team.

And everyone kind of stared at me. To their credit, they knew there was a President with that name...

Last week, I read a blog post--I just can't remember where! and I can't find it!--about the possibility of Bill Clinton keeping Hillary's Senate seat warm while she globe-trots for four years. The blogger noted, for our amusement, that the only other President who went to the Senate after the White House was the only other impeached President.

And of course I was right, and we got six points.

So whoever you are, snarky blogger, thank you.

Overall, it was pretty bad. I was the oldest by several years, so we missed all the questions about 70s TV shows (they were on after my bedtime). I got all the answers about 80s songs, American History, and geography. We finished in the 3nd quartile, well out of the money, but not last. Heh.

Ugh, spam.

I got an e-mail today flogging "Christmas gift ideas from Mike Huckabee." Do you know what I want from Mike Huckabee? I want him to go away and take his mislabled nanny-statism with him. I certainly never signed up for e-mail from him, and if I ever find out who sold him my address....

Someone somewhere is buying a copy of his book "in a collectible leather gift box." *snort* Maybe they're thinking it was a novelization of Spike Lee's film by the same name.

It's going to be a long, cold winter.

OK, losing at the last second to Drake (...Cyclones have beat Drake once this century) I could let go with no comment, but this, this is just pathetic.

I blame Ashton Kutcher.

For those of you who follow Milwaukee natives in their college careers (or is that jus a small-town thing?), Diante Garrett had 16 points.

...and this is just weird. Why would an SEC school want a coach who can't win in the Big 12?

Alright. AD Jamie Pollack got to go. The new logo is stupid stupid stupid (What's that I? Indiana? Idaho? Ithaca?), keeping Chizek is stupid, and I'll give McDermott another season, but hiring a coach because he played high school ball in Iowa was stupid. That's too much stupid, even for a school with a long tradition of suck.

Yeah, me too.

In other news, my sisters found some babysitters and the three of us are going to Portland OR to see our little brother in January, over MLK weekend (I don't get a free day off, but he does). Totally slipped my mind what else is going on that week--today I get this e-mail: "20th is inauguration day, some of the bars and theater venues here will be open with drinking games, etc."

Well, it can't be any worse than being in Milwaukee that day, can it?

And he'll have a teleprompter, so I'm in no danger of alcohol poisoning if I drink everytime he says "um" or "uh", right?

Oh boy.

Party like it's 1994

Last night when I was driving home from work, I saw a guy waiting for a bus wearing a Buffalo Bills OJ Simpson jersey and no coat. (I did a triple take, just to make sure it was OJ and not some other Simpson who played for the Bills.) 28 degrees, wind, light snow--there's someone with a statement to make. I interpreted it as "I'm an idiot"--less for the OJ and more for the no coat.

Signed OJ jerseys are now on sale!

I was going to write a rant about cleaning the snow off your damn turn signals, but then I remembered no one uses them anyway. I'm starting to be impressed when people clean the snow off their windshield before they start down the street.

I'm partway through Season 2 of the X-Files (I've been re-watching the series in order) and there's a lot more Janet Reno and Bill Clinton than I remember. And there was footage of OJ's white Bronco in one of the episodes last night. Everything old is relevant this week. Except Scully's shoulder pads.

Happy International Anti-Corruption Day!

You can't make this stuff up.

Victor Davis Hanson makes you laugh, or cry:

But as illegal and as unethical as that is, what exactly is the difference between the Illinois example, and doing something like: since you gave my party, my legal defense fund, my furniture account, my library account, and my wife's senate campaign fund well over an aggregate of $1 million, so also I give your felon ex-husband a presidential pardon?

I do hope someone brings that up during Hillary's confirmation hearing. It won't sway anyone's vote, but it'll be entertaining.

(That's not his real hair, is it?)

Vote Cy!

AMES, Iowa – Cy is calling all Cyclone fans to help him defend his title as the nation’s best mascot. Cy was named the 2007 “Most Dominant Mascot on Earth” and now faces a championship matchup against Thundar of North Dakota State in the final vote to see which mascot will be named the 2008 Capital One National Mascot of the Year. Fans can vote once a day for Cy at www.capitalonebowl.com.

Who needs a stupid bowl game?

Bad day at work?

Could be worse (link probably not safe for work/children/public areas).

Nice logo.

(At the risk of boring peoples by posting about my life, I have to ask: should I be concerned that my boyfriend is looking at pictures of naked guys on the Internets and showing them to me?)

1 trap avoided, 2 to go

Nice to have Kelvin Hayden back.

I guess I should have started Matt Schaub this week.

Anh "Joseph" Cao

Republican, Louisiana--don't expect the media to celebrate the first Vietnamese-American in Congress the way they celebrated Keith Ellison*. Seems like a decent guy. I hope he works out.

There's been all this flutter over the future of the GOP, and not much talk about incorporating legal immigrants and second-generation Americans from cultures who value education, entrepreneurship, and limited government power. Louisiana has Jindal and now Cao, but what's going on elsewhere?

Hrm.

* Imagine the media orgy when we get the first illegal-alien (D-California) in Congress. Oh boy.

"I choose not to participate."

Heh.


Glad I waited to catch this online, instead of making an appointment with my television. Starts out berating the subject for his success? WTF?

(...and whoever was responsible for her outfit in the introduction need to be fired forwith.)

Looks familiar.

Happy Repeal Day!

It kind of snuck up on me. My belated thanks to Utah.

But there's one positive thing we can say alcohol prohibition: At least it was constitutional. The prohibitionists built support for their cause by demonizing alcohol from state to state, winning over local legislators one at a time. When they'd built a sufficient national movement, they started the momentum for a constitutional amendment. Congress didn't pass a blanket federal law, Constitution be damned. They understood that the federal government hasn't the authority to issue a national ban on booze, so they moved to enact the ban properly.

It really was a different era...

Meanwhile, I have a bit of a beer weirdness going on here...in Ohio I picked up a six-pack of "Moe's Backroom Amber Ale" with a "Celebrating the Repeal of Prohibition" label, labeled "Tap Room Brewing Company, Rochester NY" but a Google search reveals it's probably contract-brewed by City Brewery in LaCrosse and there is no "Tap Room Brewing Company." So much for seeking out novelty at the small-town Kroger when I stock up on Mike-Sells (those are the best potato chips on the planet--next time you're in Ohio or Indiana seek them out).

It's not awful, it's going down well with bratwurst and X-Files, but its sketchy provenance is disconcerting and I'm not appreciating the irony of bringing a Wisconsin beer back from Ohio.

So....

is it OK if I refer to whats-his-ears as a dildo? (Link not safe for work, public places, or small children in the room)

I need someone with a grievance studies degree to explain to me why using the image of The One on a sex toy is different than using the image of Jesus--the latter is meant to profane the sacred and offend believers, so why isn't the former?

...I'm also entertained by the big fake testicles on his butt. Disclaimer: I've spent most of my week in a windowless lab, pressing the same eight buttons over and over, with a cow-orker who laughs like DNA from Elmer Fudd was mixed with DNA from Yakov Smirnoff and gestated in a California sea lion finding himself perpetually funny in the background. Everything is entertaining after that.

Kathy Shaidle must be sniffing packets in my head.

As are the authors of long quotes in her post.

Tossing my cookies

Looking for something tasty to eat off your Obama collectible plate? How about Obama cookies, fresh from Des Moines?

"Oh, great cookie, great president - the world is a happy place. Barack's going to fix all the problems and if I have a bite of this cookie it's going to make me feel good..."

What about Teh Obesity Crisis!!1!!? Did it evaporate after the election along with the oceans?

Also note the owner of Baby Boomers jacked up the price of the Obama cookies 50% after word got out. Spread the wealth around...oh, wait, that's pie.

(We made pie last night. Still want a piece of it, Mrs. O?)

Heads up!

Glad I read this after I finished driving across Indiana...

MARKLE, Ind. -- Five deer that wandered onto a highway overpass jumped to their deaths onto Interstate 69, one of them crashing through a tractor-trailer's windshield, police said.

You have to get six paragraphs in to learn the human was uninjured. Way to report, AP.

Late fall is a stressful time of year for deer, DNR spokesman Phil Bloom said.

Farmers are removing the last of their crops from the fields, reducing the animals' food supply even as deer breeding season is in full swing.

Any of these factors could have pushed the deer onto the highway overpass, Bloom said.

You expect AP articles to be written with a "human activity makes Bambi sad" slant, but when the DNR guy subscribes human emotions and motivations to animals...

(When I lived in Indiana I bought a 1940s pinwheel quilt top in Markle. It's got some feedsack fabrics in it, but mostly dress prints. I never expected to reference Markle ever again.)