Article of the Day

Sarah Palin's Cheat Sheet Palms the Show? I guess there's no such thing as bad publicity. But here's what I don't get: in movies, people have been using invisible receivers in their ears for decades: Old School, to name just one. Doesn't that technology really exist? Why doesn't anyone use it?

Article of the Day

The Electorate vs. Obama's Agenda, by Charles Krauthammer, is pretty accurate as I understand things.

Article of the Day

How Climate-Change Fanatics Corrupted Science, by Michael Barone, gives a good answer to the question how, as in, "in what ways?" I'd like more, though, on the question of how, as in, "how is it fuckin possible?!"

Article of the Day

Try Googling It, Mr. President, by John Stossel, is a nice little piece that proves beyond a doubt what a turd Obama is.

Diet Guidlines according to Bloodtype

Blood type I

Eat lots of:
spinach
tomatoes
brussel sprouts
poultry
rabbit
grains
peanut butter soup
mustard
lemons
raw currants
spicy

Don't eat:
pork
mayonnaise
sour cream
avocados
coffee
beer

Rabbit Meat

For my birthday this year my aunt Silvija taught me how to slaughter and skin a rabbit. It's not difficult, but it's also not that easy: there's a sort of mental hump you have to get over. It's a bizarre stream of consciousness: she takes out a largish bunny and has to calm him down, saying things to him, "there there, shhh, everything's okay, just relax buddy"; then she says to me, "now grab one of those sticks and whack him here or here," pointing between his ears or right behind them. I decided between the ears made for a better angle. Should I whack it as hard as I can? "Yup," she said. I had to go through the motion of bringing the stick down on it's head several times before I actually did it. I wasn't sure I could even do it; she'd offered to just let me watch this time, if I wanted, but I thought, I can do this. And I did: I brought the stick down right between the ears with a mighty whack that crushed his skull immediately. His extremities shot out and he shook for a moment, but no sound betrayed the slaughter, which was very good: my aunt told me if you don't get the job done at once they start squealing, and then all the other rabbits in the other room start squealing, and that's a sound the neighbors can hear. We then hung him up by a back foot off a roof beam and left.

You can leave rabbits hung up in the cold for days, but if you do they'll be frozen when you skin them, which will freeze your hands, so told me Silvija. So just a couple hours later we went back to finish the job. "Cut his feet off," she said, handing me a pair of tree shears. Holy shit I thought, what if he's just knocked out? Before we'd started she'd told me about a time the rabbit was only knocked out, and when she came back for it it'd escaped. What if it's like that? Well, I sure hoped not, which is about all I could do. I cut the front feet off.

Now if you're going to skin a rabbit, you should string him up first. That way, when you get to the skinning, you can just pull the skin down: otherwise you have to hold the rabbit in one hand and pull with the other, which I can't imagine is very easy. She showed me how to slice through the skin on one back leg, then I did the other one. The important thing is not to cut into the meat: first, that makes the meat not as good; second, then it gets bloody (we got through the whole process with barely any blood on our hands). We next cut down to connect the incisions and start pulling the skin down over the belly. As you pull the skin down, minus the little bit around the butt hole, steam rises, which is kind of gross. You have to keep snipping away at the transparent paper like thing that keeps the skin attached, which is even more delicate: if you cut through the intestines you'll ruin the whole meat.

Once you've pulled off the skin you snip though the same paper like thing to get at the organs. First you remove the good ones, the liver and kidneys. The most delicate cut of all is to remove the gall blatter: it's tiny organ the shape of a large vitamin, and nicking it rather than snipping it off would ruin the liver. She did that of course, and I was very impressed. Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, her son is one of the most highly regarded surgeons in Vilnius. Last, only the intestines are left; you cut through the pelvis so you can remove them still connected to the butt hole (without cutting them and risking getting shitty). A similar risk is present when removing the bladder, but luckily our rabbit had just relieved itself, apparently.

Once we got down to the end I understood why I had to cut the front feet off: the skin came off the front legs together with the feet intact easily, instead of having to pull the skin off the feet. once we got to the head it was sort of stuck, and I asked isn't it simpler to just chop the head off at this point. You don't cook the head anyway, right? And that's what we did. We actually cut it a bit farther down the neck than is necessary, but we did that because of the might whack I'd struck: there was a big bloody bruise under the skin all the way down the neck from the skull, which is apparently considered bad to eat. Although she did tell me about a blood soup that my grandfather's mother used to make when they slaughtered bigger animals. She also told me she used to save the tails for Liepa and Sirvydas to use in school plays.

I took the carcass home to butcher. I couldn't find a cook book that showed how to do it exactly, but it wasn't complicated, just like a chicken really, except with no breast. There were six good pieces: the back legs had the most meat, the front legs had less but some, the lower-back had plenty, and the ribs and upper-back had some too. Silvija said some people prefer the lower-back, which has two loin shaped pieces, and some prefer the back legs, which look sort of like chicken thighs, because the drum stick part of the leg is just bone, really.

After two days of brining I used this recipe for rabbit fricassee, and it turned out really well, the gravy especially was very tasty. My special lady and I each ate a back leg, and my five year old took a bite or two of a front leg. She was rather squeamish about eating it, because rabbits are "so polite." I made sure to butcher it out of her sight, but I didn't lie to her when she asked what's for dinner. My special lady, especially, having grown up on a farm, thought it appropriate for her to understand where food comes from.

Article of the Day\

Time to Hide, Liberals, By Jay Ambrose, leads me to one remark: "Ha, ha!"

Martinis in the Bathtub (A Facefuck do-here-instead because my status update was over 420 characters--that's why it's in the 3rd person)

Aras Vebra has a hard enough time drinking martinis as it is, but let him tell you, doing it horizontal in the bath-tub without spilling cold drips of booze onto himself is not possible. Here's one tip, though, for the majority of you out there who share this problem: the booze drips may be unvoidable, but the cold water drips condensed to the bottom of the glass making it to your chest aren't: you can nullify them by dipping the bottom of your glass into the hot bath water before taking a sip. Then only hot water drips onto your chest, as long as your cold drink goes *into* your mouth. Gerai Luck!

The Tyranny of the Majority Party, By Fred Barnes, includes some interesting history.

Sure hope William Daley is right.

Article of the Day

Serfdom vs. liberty in 2010, by Colin McNickle, is a very fun dream, but I'm pretty sure that's all it is. Americans are a long way from the zeal required of revolutionaries.

Kindergarden Christmas Work

This morning I took the pleasure of religious expression during my kindergarten English class. Each week I try to add something new, though it's mostly repetition. By the eighth week we have Hello, Good morning, My name is _____, Have a nice day, and Good bye under our belts, as well as counting to ten, naming some colors, and answering the questions How are you (the answer is I'm fine), how old are you, and which color do you like under our belts. By under our belts I mean some of the kids remember these phrases sometimes, but regularly when I ask some her age she tells me her age, for instance.

I also have the problem of asking any question, what's your name in particular, and getting responses like Šukšlė, Susiukas, or Kakū. (Garbage, pee-pee, poop) Misbehavior abounds too, but whatever.

This morning we had a decent class, though. And we had a fun new phrase, Merry Christmas. I brought my kid's stuffed Christmas begarbed reindeer to kindergarten and each kid got a chance to tell it Merry Christmas (although some kids said their age bųy accident instead). As I was prepping for the class, I thought, this lesson is probably forbidden in America. Stupid PC culture.

Article of the Day

Yes, there is Santa, He’s no liberal myth, by Michael Graham, is a quite a nice piece on BS. The objective research evidence on liberals believing BS (...About 50 percent more Democrats than Republicans say they have spoken to the dead...) is amusing indeed. The rest is agreeable and fun to read as well.

Is There a Doctor in the House? By Howard Fineman

Ron Paul was my favorite 2008 candidate for president.

Article of the Day

In Steven Greenhut: We're increasingly ruled by rules, Greenhut gives several examples of things in America banned by the government. This reminded me of an argument I had with Gedas, because Lithuania has the same problem: "It's a lot easier...for authorities to target law-abiding citizens...than it is to target the real bad guys."

The result? I have to have people bring me ammonia from America in the form of After Bite. This stuff costs like two bucks, it's just plain ammonia, but I can't get it. Housewives in Lithuania can't use it as a cleaning agent. Why? Because somebody drank it once and died. So fuck it, this multi-use, convenient product will not be available for anybody.

How about Krupnikas, the Lithuanian spiced honey liqueur? Nope, can't have that in Lithuania. Well, you can have the shitty factory version from Maxima which is disgusting and gross. But can you make your own, delicious Krupnikas? No, brewing this traditional Lithuanian liqueur is restricted to emigres. This form of patriotism is restricted to Lithuanians abroad. Why? Because some bums drank too much grain alcohol and died once. Good luck finding it for sale now; as in Greenhut's examples, getting it now is part of the underworld economy.

Thanks Be To Good Times

Thanksgiving was a tremendous success this year. The preparation and cooking lasted several days as usual, but for the first time we had so much fun the festivities lasted into the night, the next day, and the next night too, almost until midnight: a thirty hour Thanksgiving!

The menu included:
Perfect Turkey
Gravy made from Awesome Turkey Giblet Stock
Sausage Stuffing
Awesome Sausage, Apple and Cranberry Stuffing
Sweet Potato Casserole I
Stir Fried Broccoli
Cheese Garlic Biscuits II
Fetaki Mushroom Noodle Casserole*
Roasted Carrots with Whiskey Glaze
Cranberry Sauce
Chutney (Ed's delicious home made chutney)
Wild Mushroom Sauce
Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins
Double Layer Pumpkin Cheesecake with a Graham Cracker Crust

*One item that had to be scrapped was the Zucchini Alfredo. The zucchini was over ripe and did not tenderize while cooking. Thank God I tasted it before pouring it over the fantastic noodles that special lady brought me back from Italy. I redid the sauce as a fetaki mushroom sauce.

And the morning after I made beer bread with the left overs.

Aidas won the food eating competition as usual, but may have overeaten. He and Kristina had to leave more than 24 hours earlier than the others without much drinking to blame.

The first evening we hit the sauna, the man cave, and played a beirut tournament. After several rounds of play while Gintaras and I were still in the sauna we decided we needed some breweries to rehydrate. We beat my special lady and Linas, then we beat Ed and Donatas, and no challengers arose: Eglė and Giedrė either pussed or were too drunk. We won! Luckily the games were close enough that we got to quench our thirst anyway. And just in case we didn't, back to the man cave!

Next day we did the sauna again after being party to the shampoo effect. We had a terrific afternoon playing Alias and Cranium, but then made the mistake of playing Žodžių Bokštas (Up-Words). That took forever; towards the end it was high time to say labanaktis! I was really glad they stayed because it's nearly impossible to get a game of Cranium going, it's only the second time I've been able to play it in Lietuva since getting it for Christmas. You need four people with a decent knowledge of American pop culture, and it always seems more appropriate to play something like Beirut during the party proper. The stragglers left on the day after the party turned out to be perfect cranium players.

A good time was had by all!

Flustered? What a bone head.

Yesterday I was a bit flustered after work, apparently. I walked out as usual to Kalvarijų Street. Usually I just flag down a micro bus, but this time I had a bunch of bus tickets burning a hole in my pocket. I began crossing the street to walk to the bus stop, when I immediately noticed a great micro bus: I usually take the five, which runs more often, but when I get a fifteen it's better, it brings me closer to home. So I dashed through the intersection just in the nick of time. Actually I wasn't in the nick of time, the micro had to wait for me during a green light, but I made it. Awesome.

I had no money. Not awesome. I told the driver crap, I don't have any cash, I'll have to get out and go to an ATM. The kind man told me just to sit down this time and forget it. Awesome. As we drive by Kalvarijų Market I reach for my phone. I have to call my special lady to ocme pick me up at the end of the bus route, because the bus doesn't take me all the way home, and it might not be safe to walk home at night. As I did this what do I find but my keys? Oh, yeah, I took the car myself today. Not awesome. I tell the driver to let me out, it seems that I've forgotten something else as well and have to go back.

Here is my walk back. Before I even got the car my wife had already called me to ask why I'm not home yet. I hadn't even left work properly yet.

I had to walk

Article of the Day

What an asshole Obama is! I don't know how he can look himself in the mirror after bowing so low...Why is this man bowing?

Allow me to introduce myself: I'm a mathematician.

Gedas was visiting Vilnius to register the birth of his second child. We went out for beers with Auriukas and Bronius. After a few beers somebody asked, for no reason in particular, "what's the sum of the internal angles of a hexagon?" The question wasn't addressed to anybody in particular but sort of as a rhetorical question, such as "Who is John Galt?" or maybe sort of as a general challenge. Irregardless of the meaning of the question, which was lost somewhere in a number of beers already drunk, I piped in with "720."

Nobody was expecting an answer, at least not one instantly. If the point of the question was a challenge than it was assumed that if would be a difficult challenge requiring four heads to be put together. But that's not how it went down. I just answered it and three surprised faces turned to me and two of them proceeded to call me a fool while the other demonstrated on paper that, in deed, I was right.

As the beer flow continued and the pipe smoking began, a new question was quickly put forth, two questions really: why is it 720º, and what is the formula for the internal angles of a polygon? I couldn't answer either. I just knew! Gedas was especially insistent that the meaning behind the knowledge is more important than the knowledge itself--why oh why is it 720º??? I didn't know how I knew it.

I asked the bartender for some paper. We spent the next 45 minutes or so working out the internal angles of all polygons up to an octagon, trying to work out the formula, and drinking several more beers. By the end of this period, which everybody else in the bar spent chatting about sports and women, or else shopping and men, the rest of my company gave up. I couldn't give up, though, I knew I was so close. Finally five minutes later I got it: 180(n-2) where n is the number of angles, happiest moment of my life excluding love life. Hooray!

Article of the Day

This piece puts such an interesting spin on the whole health care thing that I'll have to put some of it into practice at work: Want to Reform Health Care? Improve the Workplace, by Jeffrey Pfeffer.

Article of the Day

I had an enjoyable little read today with It's Barack Obama's first anniversary - but there's precious little to celebrate, by Simon Heffer. I wonder what the chatter is like now in America. I wonder what people are saying about all the Nothing getting done.

Professionalism

I had a 40º temperature yesterday (104º Fahrenheit), and I had the shakes, so I called into work sick. I was in real pain. Do you think they told me to stay home and get well soon? No, instead they told me they won’t “tolerate” sick leave, reminded me that I'm still on my trial period, and said it wouldn’t look "professional" to cancel classes—apparently they think it looks more professional to have contagious teachers moaning and shaking throughout class between squirts of Orofar® into their throats. Can you believe that?

p.s. one really great thing about the American heath care system is that they give you pills for everything. Here they give you huge doses of disgusting tea (well, at least there's booze in it)

p.p.s. my special lady was my lady-in-waiting (but for a nobleman). she spent half the day keeping me tucked in, souped up, and forcing me to drink disguisting tea...which did make me better. Unless it was my huge sperm count.

UPDATE: Because I succumbed to the pressure and went to work on Tuesday, I now have complications and am sequestered from the world, including my two special children, for the next five days.

Groupthink

Man, kids are stupid. I suppose we learned in IR about the same thing happening among adults, but I've yet to witness it.

It all started when I began volunteering at my kid's kindergarten. I teach English there twice a week. After a month the kids "know" how to say:

Hello, my name is _______
Bye bye
Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
White
I like _________
One
Two
Three
Four
Five

By "know" I mean some of them remember the words sometimes, there’re a few bright ones, but mostly they repeat after me. I demonstrate the colors to them by showing them bowling pins; each pin is a different color. I've counted by counting off balls in the past. Today I decided to make things simpler by just counting off the pins instead of balls. Think that worked?

"How many pins am I holding up?"
One kid shouts "Blue!"
Then the rest chime in "BLUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"No no, how many pins am I holding?"
One kid shouts "Holding!"
Then the rest chime in "HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Enough of that, time for a new game. I put three of the pins on top of book cases in three corners of the room. I said, "let's go to the blue pin!" and jogged over to the blue pin. They got the hang of that pretty quickly. Problem was, sometimes they went to the wrong pin. As soon as one kid started running, they all followed him, irregardless of who the kid was (not the same leader every time). And you might say the rest figure he knows which color is which so they follow. You'd be sorely mistaken if you thought that, because get this: my daughter followed the group to the wrong pin as well! She knows very bloody well which color is which! Can you believe that?

Applause is in order for the Hero of this Article of the Day

This man accused his ex-wife and sister-in-law of pimping out his 4 year old daughter and niece to a judge and parliament aide who raped them on several occasions. After a year of his accusations falling on deaf ears at the Lithuanian Child Welfare Office, despite three independent expert psychological reports confirming the girls' honesty, he allegedly shot one of the rapists and one of the pimps himself. How tragic that he couldn't get to the others.

This article in English doesn't have all the details, but it has the general picture.

Article of the Day

Obama and the Bureaucratization of Health Care, by Sarah Palin.

Article of the Day

Listening to a Liar, by Thomas Sowell. I like Sowell more and more each time I read him.

Heart Attack

I had a mild heart attack yesterday, I think. It felt pretty severe, but I didn't collapse or anything. I was teaching class, and we were talking about what makes people attractive. The students were supposed to think of the most attractive person in the world. They were having trouble, so I told them that other quality besides physical appearance make people, honesty or bravery or intelligence. There are three students in the class that know me already and there is one girl who is new. It was her first day, and at this moment she shouted "Barack Obama!" I shuddered violently and grabbed the left side of my chest--ouch, real pain! I told her she wouldn't think so if she'd been to my classes for the past three weeks. I managed to teach all my other students the truth.

Article of the Day

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare: Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit, by JOHN MACKEY.

Clear and wise.

Godfried Daniel, Picasa is a Fuckface!

For reasons I'll go into on my other blog, I've chosen to start saying Godfried Daniel around my children instead of God Fucking Damn It! I can't put into words how frustrating it is to download Picasa over and over again from different sites claiming to offer it in English and never get it in English. What's the fuckin deal, can somebody please enlighten me? Does google think that nobody in Lithuania speaks English, and that everybody does speak Lithuanian? Both assertions would be dead wrong. But no, that's not even the problem: I tried turning on a privacy program that hides my IP address, and I still can't get the English version! So please, what is the fucking deal already? I had it at work in English, I had it on my laptop in English, is Picasa simply no longer offered in English?

Unfortunately, I haven't decided on a clean version of "fuckface" yet, so I hope my kids were around this afternoon. I'll take suggestions on that too.

Article of the Day

Obama's healthcare horror: Heads should roll -- beginning with Nancy Pelosi's!, by Camille Paglia, is a good piece on the doom of Obama's reform plans, if you can call them "plans." She also points out a couple of the stupider things he and the media have done lately (useful for me because I'm behind on my news reading).

Thanks Liepa!

I wish I were stupid, instead of *so* stupid

When I bought my new computer the guy offered to put a universal card reader into the front. But it doesn't transfer data any faster than my camera cord, and I do have a camera cord, so I didn't take it...even though I didn't know where my camera cord is at the moment...and even though it was only 20 lits!

Now I can't find my camera cord, so I have to bring my computer back to have it installed; I haven't been able to unload my full camera for a week and I have to take the time and pay for the gas to make another trip. Why can't I just be regular stupid?

High Score in Upwords: where's my medal?!

Ever since giving our kid away to my mother-in-law for the end of vacation, we spend most days playing hangman, buck euchre, or gin. We added rummy a few days ago, and we don't just play at home, we go to the beach or park too, but still, I've been kicking myself literally for leaving all our board games in Vilnius. Yesterday I felt unaccountably down (is there such a thing as antepartum depression for men? or cleaning-out-your-desk depression?), and bored, so we decided to go to Acropolis for a new game.

They have game store at the mall; we get most of our daughter's games there because they have thinking/learning games for various ages. They have the kinds of toys that you have to take apart, like a 3-D metal and/or wood contraptions that you sit with for hours or days until you figure out how to take it apart (which is simple and only takes a second once you figure it out). Unfortunately, they don't have any card games (such as Uno or other nonstandard deck games). Also unfortunately for boardgames they mostly have stupid things like Warcraft. What? That's a computer game! Next can I play the Duck Hunt board game? How about Street Fighter II Turbo?

We ended up buying the Lithuanian version of Upwords (Žodžių bokštas). We went to Chili Kaimas to get some beer and play. It took us a while to get going, because I'd never played before and my special lady had never even played Scrabble before. It was really fun, though, we're really glad we bought it. Throughout the game we'd both gotten a 12 point word (we were playing mostly in Lithuanian, incidentally). The thrilling conclusion was my rewriting a word that changed a couple other words too, giving me 23 points. I don't know if that's awesome or anything as far as standard play goes, but it was awesome for me!

Article of the Day

Malaise Forever!
-The immortal epitaph given to Jimmy Carter by the Simpsons

Make mine malaise, The attempt to rehabilitate Jimmy Carter, by Steven F. Hayward, is a decent account of how silly it is to try and glorify the wost president in American history. I've ready better, but I have to give a shout out to any article about the dud with the word malaise in the tile.

Is that a pickle in your pants, or...?

You bet your sweet ass it is! Sweet ass, that's a funny expression, isn't it?

I went downstairs today at work with a bowl of chili and a delicious pickle from the market. I had to slice up the pickle and heat up the chili. When I finished my lunch prep I went back upstairs to eat and watch Jim Gaffigan on the tube. I had to use both hands to carry the chili because it was so hot. I guess in addition to the hotness the chili was so good I totally forgot I'd had to put the pickle in my pocket (it was in a plastic bag). I didn't remember until I felt something cold and wet on my leg.

Article of the Day

The EPA suppressing its own report skeptical of global warming is no surprise: the Democrats' government ignores legitimate science because it stands in the way of one of their strongest talking points: science fiction, like man-made climate change.

The Hangover (Two or three Spoilers in the third paragraph, you can read till there safely)

My special lady and I have been on vacation, but up until a few days ago it's all--two whole weeks--have been spent moving and taking care of business at our new home, which has been somewhat neglected. We gave our kid away to my mother-in-law on Wednesday, and since then we're all, "Now what do we do?" The answer is mostly play cards, also some hangman. But one night we went to the movies.

The Hangover is a really good movie. We hadn't gone to the movies in a while, and it was fun to laugh out loud, especially for me, because I'm often the only one in the theater to get a joke. There were plenty of jokes in this one. It was also funny to see them translated: thrice somebody accents the wrong syllable in the word "retard," so in the subtitles the word "delibas" (which actually means dumbass, not retard) was misspelled "debylas," as if being pronounced as only a dumbass would.

Two things disappointing about the movie (here come the spoilers): predictability and too happy an ending, both of which are typical, though, and expected. Knew-it-1 as soon as Alan opened the book on how to count cards I knew they'd end up having to do it at some point. Knew-it-2 as soon as they blanked out that early in the night I sensed that Alan's Jager wasn't kosher. Knew-it-3 as soon as they showed Doug with the hood I knew it wasn't Doug. Knew-it-4 as soon as Melissa was such a bitch I knew no happy ending for her was coming. That brings us to the too happy ending: uptight Stu breaks up with his girlfriend whom he inteded to propose to, and instead makes a date with a hooker-mom? Only in Hollywood...

On the other hand, I did not guess where Doug would be, which I should have because I know that high up hotel windows don't open. I highly recommend the movie and give it an 8 on IMDb.