Saturday, October 11, 2008
MOVIES (2008)Street Kings Blindness Bottle Shock Ghost Town (David Koepp) _________________________
Friday, October 10, 2008
IN THE KITCHENBROWNIES
Ingredients1 Cup White Sugar 2 Eggs 1 teaspoon real vanilla 1/3 cup cocoa 3/4 cup flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon salt Mix butter and sugar. Beat until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and the vanilla. Sift cocoa with the flour, baking powder, and salt. Work in nuts if you want. Spoon this into a 8x8x2 inch pan and bake for 30-35 min at 350F until the brownies just begin to pull from the sides of the pan. Cool to room temperature upright in the pan, on a wire rack. Cut into 16 squares and serve. SUSHIWash 2 cups rice (1 cup rice: 1 cup water) Bring water to boil Simmer until water has almost gone Close pot for 20 minutes (let simmer) Turn Off Leave covered for 15 minutes In a pot: Put 1/3 cup rice vinegar (Japanese rice wine vinegar, Mitsukan) 1/8th cup sugar Heat till the sugar is dissolved Add 1/4 teaspoon salt Open up rice, put the vinegar/sugar/salt mixture inside. Stir it. Make little balls with your hands, put the slices of sashimi over it. PASTA WITH RED CLAM SAUCEStart boiling water for the pasta; vermicelli works just fine, but any spaghetti will do. Rinse and drain a can of chopped clams. Fresh would be better if you have them, but canned are easy. To a saucepan, add a can of chopped tomatoes (plain is my preference), a clove or two of chopped garlic, a teaspoon of dried crumbled sage, a little white whine, a grating of black pepper and a couple of tablespoons of olive oil. Simmer the tomatoes as long as you like or have time for. Mash the tomato mixture with a potato masher to break up the tomatoes if you like. Just before serving, add the clams and a tablespoon of chopped parsley, heat through and serve over the pasta. Garnish with more chopped parsley. CREAM OF POTATO SOUP
Ingredients2 cups diced potatoes 2 tablespoons chopped onion 2 cups low-fat milk 1 chicken bouillon cube 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon black pepper 1 tablespoon butter Coat a large saucepan with nonstick cooking spray. Over medium-high heat, cook and stir potatoes, butter, and onion. Cover and cook for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. In a blender, add potato mixture, milk, bouillon, salt, and pepper. Puree until smooth. Return to saucepan and heat, stirring constantly, for about 5 minutes. PANCAKES
Ingredients:1 1/2 cups flour 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 3/4 teaspoon salt 2 tablespoons sugar 1 egg, beaten 1 3/4 cups milk 3 tablespoons melted butter Combine flour, baking powder, salt and sugar in a large bowl. Mix eggs, milk, and butter. Add in the flour mixture and beat until smooth. Serve with butter and syrup. TURKEYArno Premium Stuffing In a large sauce pan, add 2 cups of water and 1 stick of butter. Bring water to a boil with the butter. Stuff the turkey and cover it with foil. Place in an aluminum pan at 350F. When turkey is ready, take off the foil and let it bake for 45 minutes. Spread juice over the turkey. Cooking timesSweet PotatoBoil sweet potatoes Mash Put marsh mellows on top. Stick it in oven till marsh mellows melt. ______________________________
Pop Artist: Kenny Scharf________________________
Saturday, October 04, 2008
FROM THE ONION
6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling
August 15, 2008 | Issue 44•33CARPENTERSVILLE, IL—Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported. "I don't want to go to school," Bolduc told his parents, the crushing reality of his situation having yet to fully dawn on his naïve consciousness. "I want to play outside with my friends." While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick him up on his first day of elementary school, his parents reportedly were able to "see the wheels turning in his little brain" as the child, for the first time in his life, began to understand how dire and hopeless his situation had actually become. Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed. According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms. This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario does not take into account additional time spent on homework, extracurricular responsibilities, or college, sources said. "I can't wait until school is over," said the 3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount of time between now and summer, let alone the years and years of tedium to follow. The concept of wasting a majority of daylight hours sitting still in a classroom when he could be riding his bicycle, playing in his tree fort, or lying in the grass looking at bugs—especially considering that he had already wasted two years of his life attending preschool and kindergarten—seemed impossibly unfair to Bolduc. Moreover, sources said, he had no idea how much worse the inescapable truth will turn out to be. Shortly after his mommy, homemaker Ellen Bolduc, 31, assured him that he would be able to resume playtime "when school lets out," Connor's innocent brain only then began to work out the implication of that sentence to its inevitable, soul-crushing conclusion. When pressed for more detail on the exact timing of that event, Mrs. Bolduc would only reply "soon." At that point, the normally energetic child grew quiet before asking a follow-up question, "After [younger sister] Maddy's birthday?" thereby setting the stage for the first of thousands of rushing realizations he will be forced to come to grips with over the course of his subsequent existence. Madison Ellen Bolduc was born on Sept. 28. After learning that the first grade will continue for eight excruciating months beyond that date, it was only a matter of time before Bolduc inquired into what grade comes after first grade, and, when told, would probe further into how many grades he will have to complete before allowed to play with his friends. The answer to that fatal question—12, a number too large for Bolduc to count on the fingers of both hands—will be enough to nearly shatter the boy's still-forming psyche, said child psychology expert Eli Wasserbaum. "When you consider that it doesn't include another four years of secondary education, plus five more years of medical school, if he wants to follow his previously stated goal to grow up to be a doctor like his daddy, this will come as an interminably deep chasm of drudgery and imprisonment to [Connor]," said Wasserbaum. "It's difficult to know the effect on his psychological well-being when he grasps the full truth: that his education will be followed by approximately four decades of work, bills, and taxes, during which he will also rear his own children to face the same fate, all of which will, of course, be followed by a brief, almost inconsequential retirement, and his inevitable death." "Even a 50-year-old adult would have trouble processing such a monstrous notion," Wasserbaum added. "Oh my God, I'm 50 years old." The first of Bolduc's remaining 2,299 days of school will resume at 8 a.m. tomorrow. On the next 624 Sundays, he will also be forced to attend church.
You'll Never Be Vice President: A Letter to My Daughter, the Community Organizer
Why didn't I nip all this in the bud and buy you a well-oiled Remington 12-gauge?
By Marc CooperPublished on September 11, 2008 Daughter Dearest, It is with great pain and a certain measure of shame that I write you this note. Having grown up in the ’60s and watched, sometimes at glaringly close range, the emergence of the women’s liberation movement, I had always harbored great dreams and aspirations for you. But as I listened to Governor Sarah Palin address the nation the other night, I had to confess that — as your father — I have clearly failed. Honey, you will never be able to achieve the greatness of being nominated for vice president of the United States. Forget about it. And for this sad reality, I accept all blame. ’Twas I who steered you wrong. Here you are, almost 25, with what your mother and I believed was a solid education behind you, and yet you are nothing but a common community organizer. Yes, the labor union you work for represents nearly 2 million service workers — about three times the population of Alaska. But, alas, as Governor Palin pointed out, you have no real responsibilities. By helping janitors, security guards, nursing aides and orderlies gain a living wage, paid health care insurance and a retirement fund, you have only robbed them of the personal initiative to go out there and make something better of themselves. You have rendered them feebly dependent on Big Labor and tax-and-spend Big Government — and all in their own crass self-interest in survival. I’m not sure when I helped nudge you on to such a mistaken road. Probably sometime while you were attending that government-run high school in which we enrolled you. You could have joined the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, as Ms. Palin did. Instead, I pushed you to become a columnist on the school paper. You could have spent your afternoons becoming the local barracuda on the courts. But, nope, your mom and I indulged your trivial passions for staging and directing the plays of Shakespeare. You could have competed to be Miss Woodland Hills or even Miss Congenial California, but — no — there were your mom and dad encouraging you to finish writing your first play. Sorry. From there, the mistakes only multiplied. Instead of letting you wait until the responsible age of 44 before letting you secure a passport, we strained our family budget and squandered who knows how many thousands by putting you on countless Flights to Nowhere: New York, Washington, New Orleans, Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, Santiago, Mexico City. And to what end? So you could return home — as the huggable Mayor Giuliani so neatly put it — some sort of “cosmopolitan”? Exposure to so many foreign ideas (like the notion of spending an idle afternoon reading a book in a café instead of learning to field-dress a moose) only contaminated you, rendering you insensitive and contemptuous to the day-to-day needs of bowling league members in Michigan’s Macomb County. Worse, you returned from those European jaunts a brainwashed follower of the elite, angry, left media. By the 12th grade, all the warning signs were there. I’d walk into your room at 1 in the morning and catch you with a flashlight under the covers, reading the book pages of The Atlantic. Why didn’t I nip this all in the bud and buy you a well-oiled Remington 12-gauge so you could plink the coyotes south of Ventura Boulevard? The real disaster came, of course, in college. Four straight years wasted at UCLA, when you could have been following the course of the governor, sampling five different schools in six years. You were reading Orwell. By then she was practicing doublespeak. You were studying public policy, by then she was figuring out how to win the 909 votes she needed to become mayor of Wasilla. You were inclined to donate $100 to the ACLU. She was way ahead of you, sweetie, as she calculated how to avoid the ACLU when she made her inquiries into pruning the local library of un-American and anti-Christian propaganda. She was on her way up and you, dear child, were dead-ended in the silly task of trying to organize seven hospitals back to back. It’s not healthy to dwell on so many regrets, I know. And as I said, this is mostly the fault of your parents. While you are the victim of these reckless choices, your mom and I, nevertheless, pay a heavy price. If we had only been sage enough to bar you from sex-ed class and contraceptives and instead had let you rely on abstinence and prayer, there was an even chance you could have been pregnant by age 17. You’d have a joyous 7-year-old child right now to help you get through your 10-hour workday. The father might have married you. And we’d have a lovely grandchild who a mere decade from now could produce us a great-grandchild and we would all still be young enough to go snowmobiling together — the next time it snows in Woodland Hills. Ah, but better not to dwell on the negative. Make the best of the little we have given you, and grant us your understanding and forgiveness. And don’t despair too much. Remember, when McCain-Palin come to power, real change is gonna come, and we’ll all be better off. Love, Dad
Sicko "Marriage Contract" One For The Ages
Repulsive "Wifely Expectations" pact emerges in Iowa kidnap caseFEBRUARY 17--This country, as you know, is filled with the deranged. And then there's Travis Frey, a 33-year-old Iowa man who is facing charges that he tried to kidnap his own wife (not to mention a separate child pornography rap). Frey, prosecutors contend, apparently is a rather demanding guy. In fact, he actually drew up a bizarre four-page marriage document--a "Contract of Wifely Expectations"--that sought to establish guidelines for his spouse in terms of hygiene, clothing, and sexual activities. In return for fulfilling certain requirements, Frey (pictured right) offered "Good Behavior Days," or GBDs. Each GBD, Frey wrote, could be redeemed by his wife to "get out of doing the things" he requested daily. A copy of the proposed contract, which Frey's wife never signed and later provided to cops, can be found below. While we normally point out the highlights of most documents, there are so many in this demented, and very graphic, contract, we really can't do it justice. So set aside ten minutes--and prepare to be repulsed... ___________________
IMAGES ON WOOD
Artwork by Chico Munson
_________________ The progressive surrealism of PAUL WHITEHEAD @ Rock Art Gallery 7517 Sunset Blvd 323.876.0042 _________________
INTUITIONYou have recognized your life's pattern. People with great intuition know how to watch. They know how to observe and see patterns. Once they observe these patterns, then they can make calculated guesses. The unconscious mind can make a guess about something on the basis of you having picked a pattern. The more you learn, the more patterns you'll see, the more intuition you'll have. _______________ Enjoy the little things. One day you may look back and realize they are the big things. _______________ Cool and artistic Jigsaw puzzles www.editionsricordi.com_______________
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