Category: General

Thanks to the good people of Metafilter, I bring you paper plane flying school. Now quit working and go play. It’s Friday.

This is very cool. Combining my fascination with Google and a perhaps unhealthy fascination with obituaries and the dead. I have hosted the Phyllis Diller Is Not Dead celebrity dead pool for a few years and as part of that effort I send out topical obits to friends and subscribers. But this stalwart obit fan has taken it to a new level. I especially appreciate the obit poetry, the liberal use of dead folks photographs and the obituary related links on the left hand side. Do take some time and lurk around here. It has some shear gold. My hat goes off to the author.

Watched the newest Margaret Cho DVD last night. I was told that the show was just filthy and almost uncomfortable, but I disagree. With her frankness and filthy mouth and ability to go to the jugular for a punch line, she would fit in nicely with our crowd. Put it on your to rent list if you haven’t already. Unless, you are a grown up, then stay away, it makes Buddy Hacket look like a choir boy.

Cooked up a doozy of a steak last night. Following the Food Network’s advice, I pan seared a couple of rib eyes. Mmmmm, finally a restaurant quality steak at home. Growing up as a kid, my parents tended to ruin a broiled steak. And sometimes the grill isn’t handy. Its nice to have a way to cook a good steak quickly. I highly recommend it. And since we are on the topic, Jamie Oliver crafted a curry dish the other day that was very reminiscent of that served at Denver’s beloved Streets of London pub. Just leave out the potatoes and serve with fries. It features a curry sauce made from scratch. I think I may try it this weekend. I really must stop watching the Food Network late night between Letterman and Conan. I wake up hungry.

In younger days, the weekend was about drinking. Beer, parties, chasing tail. And so to salute the weekend upon us, I present the Lord of the Rings drinking game. Simple rules, which is paramount to any drinking game. And yet the ability have a few is also easily had. Enjoy.

It may not seem like it of late, but this is very much where my head is at right now. Neil Pollack has captured the sentiment of the post 9/11 world fairly accurately. Too much info*Can’t retain details*Information overload has caused disinterest*
Added bonus: A great line about Dan Savage. hahaha. Dan Savage humor is always welcome.

http://www.scarywhitegirl.net/tmbg.htm“>Everything I needed to know I learned by listening to They Might Be Giants

See earlier in the week for more along these lines. This is the kind of stuff that brings this here Inter-Web alive for me. Modern ruins and Archaeological Collage

The John Birch society is alive and well in Lakewood. This is more of the xenophobic attitude that has been percolating lately. This “head-in-the-sand” attitude troubles me.

Get us out of the U.N. and U.N. out of U.S.

I would like us to get out of the United Nations, and get the United Nations out of the U.S. Move it to France, Germany or Italy. Every time France gets in trouble we have to help them – World Wars I and II and French Indochina. We have had our military in South Korea for more than 50 years from Truman’s police action. What has that cost the taxpayer? Now the U.N. wants us to do something about North Korea. I say let China, Japan and South Korea take care of North Korea.

We need to bring all our military home. Let Germany and France take care of Europe and Africa and the oil countries. They think they can do a better job; let them try. We can use our military to keep the Western Hemisphere safe.

Those people who need French wine and cheese can just go to France. I can drink wine from Mesa County and eat fruit from Texas. We can heat our homes and run our cars with natural gas from Colorado and use wind power. Too bad we can’t use all the hot air from Washington and the media – we wouldn’t have to pump oil for 50 years.

Pat Allen
Lakewood

I can only imagine this is some grouchy old guy in a lawn chair in front of a manual typewriter, but that would be a sweeping generalization. But regardless, it is disconcerting to hear these 1950s-era phobic statements still so strongly held.

It is really getting out of hand. Are we so desperate a people that war is the absolute only answer to solving our problems. And those against us are to be condemned? Chastised? Embargoed like Cuba? Harper’s Week in Review recently reported “J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House of Representatives, was considering legislation to ban French wine and bottled water ? for “health reasons,” he said. Hastert claimed that some French wine is clarified using cow blood.” It is getting ridiculous. I was going to write a huge diatribe on why focusing on France’s wishes for peace and not war is missing the whole point about what the U.N. is about. I was going to write a whole tantrum on the ability for this country to get behind the hatred of the enemy of the day – but the good folks at Democratic Underground have already done it and have done a deeper and more thoughtful job than I was doing. But please, can we stop the hate and work on something real.

I still need a job.