Archive for July 24, 2006

The Second Annual “Things You Only Hear at Starwood” Blog

July 24, 2006 / / 7 comments

I offer the following Starwood 2006 quotes without comment:

“Get your sleeve out of my grog.”
“The Cosmopolitan in my crotch was also your fault!”
“You hardly ever see a bar full of pirates.”
“I’m not hiking all the way down to the Time Machine.”
“Don’t quote me on anything. My ass is really wet and I’m tired.”
“Giant sky-enflaming fireballs.”
“Thank God for that man in the boa!”
“I’m so tired of seeing penises.”
“Undies on the table are right out!”
“Help me adjust my loincloth.”
“I’m not speaking after sundown, I’m just making cat noises.”
“After enough Starwood, women in clothes look sexy.”

Phew, made it

July 23, 2006 / / 6 comments

400-plus miles. Set up camp. 90 degree heat. Sun poisoning. Dress Like a Pirate Night. Viking attacks. Pool. Workshops. Sarongs. Rain. More rain. Break camp. 400-plus miles. Pet cat. Open mail. Where’s my Netflix?

Later.

Sunday Sierrablogging

July 23, 2006 / / Comments Off on Sunday Sierrablogging

AnneLake
Anne Lake on the Silver Divide, John Muir Wilderness.

Fun With Vodka: Pink Peppercorn-Lemon Vodka

July 22, 2006 / / Comments Off on Fun With Vodka: Pink Peppercorn-Lemon Vodka

A few years ago I discovered, to my horror, that my favorite pepper vodka (Pertsovka, made by Stolichnaya) was no longer available. I decided to take matters into my own hands and try making my own infusions. I experimented with various flavors of peppercorns and chiles, and got some really nice stuff.

Then I found a nice honey-pepper vodka (Nemiroff, from the Ukraine) at the Russian deli I frequent. Being naturally lazy, I let my infusion experiments slide and drank Nemiroff instead.

Recently, I started playing around with it again, and made a lovely pink peppercorn-lemon vodka. It’s extremely easy: in about a fifth of vodka, use 20-30 pink peppercorns and maybe 1/2 tsp of lemon zest (more if you want a more lemony vodka…but you knew that, didn’t you?). Let it steep for a couple of weeks, strain out the peppercorns and lemon zest, and there it is.

This makes a really nice V&V1; just use more vermouth than you would with non-flavored vodka, and garnish with a twist.

It’s also really good with lemonade–which obviously has to be made from fresh lemon juice. My recipe, adapted from the old Joy of Cooking:

1 quart water
3/4 cup sugar
3 oz. lemon juice
1/2 tsp. lemon zest
1/2 tsp. salt

Heat water, sugar, and lemon zest until sugar is dissolved. Add lemon juice. Strain and cool.

Enjoy!

1Vermouth & vodka

The Katherine Harris Show

July 21, 2006 / / 5 comments

The worst thing about all the incredibly crappy ‘reality’ series out there is it didn’t occur to anybody to make the one ‘reality’ series that would be worth watching.

I’m talking, of course, about a series following the Katherine Harris campaign.

It’s the gift that keeps on giving, the train wreck that keeps on wrecking, the catastrophic failure that just goes right on failing. It’s the entertainment event of the century. Because, let’s face it: loathsome + clueless + disaster-prone = Comedy Gold.

All is not lost. Maybe when it’s all over (which could be sooner than November), HBO could turn it into docufarce, in the vein of The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. (In fact, I’ll bet Holly Hunter could do an hilarious Katherine Harris.) But hell, I would even settle for a sitcom. Imagine the possibilities… » Read more..

Friday Random Ten

July 21, 2006 / / One comment

DiVinyls – Back to the Wall
Social Distortion – Ring of Fire
Go-Go’s – Daisy Chain
Wire – I Feel Mysterious Today
Ennio Morricone – The Ecstasy of Gold
Wire – Two People in a Room
Hüsker Dü – She Floated Away
The Clash – I’m So Bored with the USA
Siouxsie & the Banshees – Christine
DJ Shadow – Organ Donor

Bonus track:
Lene Lovich – Home

So…what are y’all listening to?

Friday Kittenblogging: The Little Prince Edition

July 21, 2006 / / 6 comments

Today it’s The Little Prince edition of kittenblogging.

Every time I make the bed, all or part of the Gang must plant himherthemselves in the middle of things. Usually Mingo, and usually he waits until after the fitted sheet has been put on. I then proceed to fan out the top sheet as if there were no cat there. I’m fun that way.

Now, if I do this to Fanty, she looks up in horror at the sheet looming above her and runs away. But if I do this to Mingo, he just hangs out.
» Read more..

You’re Gonna Take a Walk in the Rain, and You’re Gonna Get Wet…I Predict

July 20, 2006 / / Comments Off on You’re Gonna Take a Walk in the Rain, and You’re Gonna Get Wet…I Predict

As your substitute Deborah for the week, I feel duty bound to mention that over at Pandagon Pam Spaulding posts about a crazy fundamentalist attacking Wicca. Sigh. Sort of a dog-bites-man story, really, and nothing terribly new in it…except that she also mentions the guy’s co-author, Dave Hunt, who has written about the evil of using psychic powers:

While acknowledging that many psychics are fake and use tricks to deceive clients, Hunt believes some psychics are used by demons to make destructive predictions. He believes assassin Sirhan Sirhan, for example, had demonic psychic powers and predicted the day that Robert F. Kennedy died. [emphasis added]

Umm…right.

Somebody should tell this guy that George Bush used his demonic psychic powers to predict the date of the Iraq invasion.

Prosecutors vs. the ‘Gay Panic’ Defense

July 20, 2006 / / 3 comments

Via yesterday’s Chronicle, today prosecutors and law enforcement officials are meeting in San Francisco to discuss how to combat the ‘gay panic’ defense. In recent years a fair number of brutal killers have used this defense to get reduced sentences or (in at least one case) get off altogether. It’s a close cousin to the ‘she was asking for it’ rape defense, a way to minimize the brutality of the crime by shifting blame onto the victim.

The most high-profile case in recent Bay Area history is that of Gwen Araujo, a trasgendered teen who was murdered by three boys two of whom had had sex with her before discovering her gender identity. Fortunately, the jury didn’t buy it that time.

It’s encouraging to see law enforcement getting behind this effort (the conference is organized by our own DA, Kamala Harris, and co-sponsored by the workerscompcalaw.com law group and national district attorneys’ associations). It wasn’t that long ago, historically, that law enforcement was more committed to prosecuting people for being gay than to prosecuting crimes against gay people.

One of the guest speakers is a living example of this shift:

Former Laramie, Wyo., police Chief Dave O’Malley, who investigated the killing of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard in 1998, will discuss his own experience of what he calls “losing his ignorance.” Both defendants in that case received two consecutive life terms. Their attorneys included the gay panic argument in opening statements but the judge barred it during trial.

O’Malley describes himself as homophobic before that case, never hesitating to tell an anti-gay joke or story.

“Getting involved in the investigation and interacting with Matt’s friends and family got me thinking for myself and figuring out that I was wrong,” he said.

We still have a long way to go–the fact that the ‘gay panic’ defense exists at all, and is effective, illustrates that–but it never hurts to acknowledge how far we have come.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]

The President Makes the Decision

July 19, 2006 / / 3 comments

So everybody already knows that Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the illegal electronic surveillance program. I think we can all say ‘obstruction of justice’, but I’m pretty sure Congress (this Congress, with this president) can’t.

I was struck by this key exchange, reported in the Washington Post:

“It was highly classified, very important and many other lawyers had access. Why not OPR?” Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., the committee chairman, asked Gonzales.

“The president of the United States makes the decision,” Gonzales replied. [emphasis added]

d’Fuh?

I’m pretty sure Specter wasn’t asking who Bush is (we already know he’s the Decider); Specter was asking why the Decider Decided the Way he Decided. Gonzales’ response will go down in history as one of the all-time classic non-responsive answers.

Just for perspective, let’s try this out in some everyday-type situations:

Officer: Why didn’t you stop at that stop sign?
Driver: The driver makes the decision.

Mom: Why didn’t you do your homework?
Kid: The kid makes the decision.

Really, that’s the level we’ve sunk to with this administration.

The scariest part is that Gonzales (and Bush and the whole lot of them) probably think this is an answer–that the provenance of the decision makes it unquestionable. It’s the executive infallibility doctrine in action; under the influence of people like Addington and Cheney, they’re so ideologically committed to executive supremacy that it doesn’t even occur to them that simply asserting it might not be sufficient.

And the sad thing is, they’re probably right; despite some sharp questioning by Specter and Dianne Feinstein nothing more is going to come of this latest outrage than came of the hundreds before it.

[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]

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