Saturday, April 11th, 2009
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2:04 pm - Meditation on Springtime
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Double daffodils,
Growing higgeldy-piggeldy.
current mood:  silly
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(comment on this)
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12:58 pm - Microwave Chocolate Cake for One
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Chocolate cake, for those of us who aren’t into deferred gratification. About ten minutes from urge to plate, counting digging out the ingredients and cleanup afterward (if you don’t count soaking the mug). From Instructables Ingredients: - microwave
- straight sided coffee mug
- 4 tablespoons flour (100 Kcal)
- 4 tablespoons sugar (135 Kcal)*
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa
- Pinch of salt
- 1 egg (90 Kcal)
- 3 tablespoons milk
- 3 tablespoons oil (360 Kcal)*
- 3 tablespoons chocolate chips (150 Kcal)
- splash vanilla or other flavoring
Mix dry ingredients in mug. Add egg & whomp. Add milk & oil & whomp. Add chips & vanilla & whomp. Microwave on “high” for 3 (1000W oven) or 4 (700W oven) minutes. The cake will rise up out of the mug while it’s cooking, but it will collapse when you’re done. It’ll slide right out of the mug. The mug will be a lot easier to clean if you coat the inside with nonstick cooking spray first. Makes one me- sized serving. I’d estimate it’s about two normal cupcakes. This is the first bread/cake/muffin thing I’ve ever cooked in a microwave that has come out edible, let alone tasty. I suspect that the small volume is the key — there’s no way to get the microwaves spread evenly over a large area.
* I actually like a bit less.
current mood:  hungry
current music: Sugar Pie Honey Bunch -- The Temptations
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Friday, November 14th, 2008
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12:50 pm - A Warning for the President-Elect
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Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
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6:01 pm - For Armistice Day
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Buttons
I have been watching the war map slammed up for
advertising in front of the newspaper office.
Buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black buttons--
are shoved back and forth across the map.
A laughing young man, sunny with freckles,
Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd,
And then fixes a yellow button one inch west
And follows the yellow button with a black button one
inch west.
(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in
a red soak along a river edge,
Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling
death in their throats.)
Who would guess what it cost to move two buttons one
inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper
office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing
to us?
-- Carl Sandburg
current mood:  contemplative
current music: "No Man's Land" -- Eric Bogle
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(comment on this)
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Saturday, May 31st, 2008
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11:02 pm - Today's Time Waster
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Annoy the Cat
If anybody cares, I "win" 1/3 - 1/2 of the time.
current mood: bored
current music: "Never Set the Cat on Fire" -- Frank Hayes
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(comment on this)
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Saturday, May 17th, 2008
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8:28 pm - WSFA Footnotes
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I mentioned a bunch of Websites at last night's WSFA meeting:
And for food:
current mood: Intellectual
current music: March from "Bridge on the River Kwai", played on 10,000 kazoos
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(comment on this)
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7:52 pm - Hieronymus Bosch
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Tuesday, May 13th, 2008
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11:41 pm - Quote of the Day
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i did not absorb my twin. I am thoroughly convinced my body was trying to create a toad.
here, if you dare.
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(comment on this)
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Monday, May 5th, 2008
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7:53 pm - Latest Casualty of the Civil War
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Saturday, April 26th, 2008
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6:20 pm - OH JOHN RINGO NO
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Just found a review of Ghost, by John Ringo. No, I'm not going to buy the book; I'd be afraid of biting myself if I read it. Basically, guns, violence, and sex porn, in concentrated form. It's compared to the Gor books, unfavorably. The interesting part is the author's response:
Thank you for the best review of the Ghost books I've ever seen.
Turns out that the author was using the book to work out some of his own inner demons, and was as surprised as anybody when he found that publishers wanted to publish it and readers wanted to read it. The title of this post is ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) hradzka's (the review author's) mantra for when Ringo wrote some particularly vile bit of guns, violence, and/or sex (usually all three at once).
BTW, if you like killer reviews of really awful books, crevette (possibly the funniest writer in LJ) is slicing 'n dicing one now. More bad sex & violence, this time from the female POV.
Can somebody please pass the brain bleach?
current mood:  weird
current music: Sax & Violins
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
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9:06 pm - Time Wasters
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Eyemaze. Click (or occasionally drag & drop) in the correct order. You will probably want to turn off the games' sound. Very Japanese (in a good way).
Vector Park. Click around. They do stuff. I think I've got all of them figured out except the one with the guy with the telescope. Is the gondola supposed to bring something back from inside the tree?
current mood:  amused
current music: The background music for "Grow ver.3"
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(comment on this)
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Friday, July 20th, 2007
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8:05 pm - Words for Today
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Sunday, March 20th, 2005
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3:17 pm - Spam Title of the Day
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ankara rent a car
Yep. The one in Turkey. In what I take to be Turkish.
Yeah, I'll drop in if I'm in the neighborhood ....
current mood: amused
current music: "Baby, You Can Drive My Car" -- The Beatles
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(comment on this)
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Tuesday, March 8th, 2005
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7:45 pm - We In A Heap o Trouble Now ...
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Sunday, February 27th, 2005
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1:55 pm - I Think I've Done Business With These People
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Saturday, February 19th, 2005
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8:38 pm - Not a Surprise
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Another test:
current mood: amused
current music: "The Elements" -- Tom Lehrer
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(comment on this)
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Monday, February 7th, 2005
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10:41 pm - Spam Title of the Day
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World Class Hotel Bedding Collection
Seems to be a real company selling bedding.
current mood: Bemused
current music: Eagles - "Hotel California"
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(comment on this)
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Friday, January 7th, 2005
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3:31 am - Red Dog
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Well, Washingtonian Magazine just came out with their “100 Very Best Restaurants” issue. (Yeah, the neighborhood hole- in- the- wall Chinese joint made it again.)
One of the restaurants in the “Twenty to Watch” sections was another local hangout, the Red Dog Cafe. We've been going there since it opened — after all, it's in the same strip mall as the Parkway Deli, which has been a local fixture for decades. They've had some startup problems — in particular, the pizza has taken a while to settle in.
But last night, they went crazy. I had the daily special. Pasta with lobster sauce. I can't remember when I've had anything that good. We split the “special dessert”, a pear poached in Merlot. Again, totally spectacular. We also had to wait for a table, which is unusual.
I hope this means that they'll get lots of customers and keep doing spectacularly good food. I hope it doesn't mean that they'll raise the prices, like happened to a friend's neighborhood pizza joint a few years back.
current mood:  satisfied
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(comment on this)
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Tuesday, November 2nd, 2004
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8:49 am - Voted!
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OK, I voted. I've been here for eighteen years -- I remember it because it was the first time that Barbara Mikulski was running for the Senate. That was the dirtiest race I've ever seen -- she was running against Linda Chavez, former Reagan staffer and Republican attack dog. Think of a junkyard fight between a poorly- trained German shepard and a pit bull.
Anyway, voting took about an hour, counting the walk to and from the polls (about a block). No problems, no hassles. I have no idea if my vote got recorded correctly (magic word -- Diebold) but everything looked OK.
BE WARNED. For the first time in eighteen years, they asked for ID. Driver's License worked just fine.
So I've got my Political Griping License for the next four years.
Do you? If you're eligible and don't vote, you deserve what you get.
current mood: hopeful
current music: MTA -- Kingston Trio
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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Monday, November 1st, 2004
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8:49 pm - EBay is At It Again
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A German guy on another board had a perfectly legitimate question. "Why" he asks, "do you Americans futz around with fancy high- tech voting machines. Why don't you just have a piece of paper with the candidates' names. You put an X next to the one you want to vote for. Simple."
Well, to anyone who's ever voted in an American election, the answer is obvious. We tend to vote on all sorts of things. Ballots can get long and complicated. California is generally considered the worst; not only is it easy to get a referendum on the ballot, but they have enough stuff written into the state Constitution that an amazing variety of things need an amendment.
So I went looking for a California sample ballot. This is tricky, because every locality has their own ballot. So, Googling around, I visit a general LA site, which just happens to have Google ads going. Google ads turn out to be a disaster for political sites -- since this year's Presidential campaign is almost totally negative, the political sites spend a lot of time talking about the other guy. So the ads on Demican sites are all political ads for Republicrats. Not cool.
Anyway, the ads have some other problems. One of the Google ads was:
Election Ballot
Election Ballot for sale. aff Check out the deals now!
www.eBay.com
(No, I don't know where the "aff" came from.)
Now, I know this election is tight, and I know that both sides will do anything to win, and I know that local election commissioners have been ignoring a lot of "irregularities", but this is still a bit much ....
current mood: amused
current music: "I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" -- Country Joe McDonald
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(1 comment | comment on this)
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cynical