Pajama Pundits

Please remember that this makes him no worse a senator than is Mary Landrieu.

I'm making a ToDo list so I can procrastinate in a more organized manner. I mean I've started one. I don't know when I'll finish it.

I've seen commercials before that I thought encouraged bad behavior in children, but never one quite as horrible as this one.

It practically leaves me speechless.

Okay, so one person requested the recipe... but she's really, really popular around here.

I got this recipe from a cousin who is a nurse. She said she got it from a co-worker. I'm guessing, after trying these that they both work in a cardiac unit and circulating this recipe is a form of job security.

As much as I love butter, I couldn't quite bring myself to use all that the original called for. The original said this recipe would make 24 medium-sized rolls. Mine were about 3" in diameter and there were 50 of them. They are so rich, that's plenty big.

The Dough

7 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup powdered milk
3 T instant yeast
1 T salt
2 large eggs (or 3 medium)
3/4 cup butter (melted)
2 cups water

Measure and blend dry ingredients, including yeast. Measure wet ingredients into mixer bowl. Add dry and stir until moistened. With dough hook, mix for 10 minutes. The dough will be very soft, almost moist. Let rise until double.

The Filling

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
1 T cinnamon (more or less to your taste)
2 cups butter (reserve 1/4 cup)

Mix sugars and cinnamon until blended. Melt butter.

Roll out dough as thinly and as near to a square or rectangle as possible. Spread melted butter over dough and top with cinnamon mixture. Choose an edge and start rolling the dough up. Cut 1" slices and place 1/2" apart on jelly roll pan. Brush tops with reserved butter and let rise. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

The Icing

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 T. vanilla
1/4 t. salt
1 lb. confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup milk

Blend all ingredients together using the paddle or whip attachment. Add milk (1/2 teaspoon at a time) or powdered sugar (1/8 or 1/4 cup at a time) until you get a consistency that is just slightly too thin for cake icing.

While the rolls are still hot, drop approximately a tablespoon of icing on each one and spread it as it melts.

Eat. Enjoy. Check your cholesterol.

UPDATE: Belated link to Carnival of the Recipes at RDoctor Medical. It's supposed to dedicated to healthy food, but I think some not quite so good for you snuck in. There's also a link there to a post titled Worst Thankgiving Dinner Recipes: How to cook a Thanksgiving meal that ensures you'll never be the host family again. I'll have to check that one for sure!

For Mayor!

ROLAND BUSH SETS FOREMAN RALLY

Foreman, AR – Mayoral candidate Roland Bush today announced that his campaign will host a fish and brisket supper at the Little River County Fairgrounds in Foreman on Tuesday, October 24, 2006. “Everyone is welcome to come by. That means all of Foreman and anybody else curious or hungry in the neighborhood.”, he said.

Mr. Bush, a Winthrop native, has lived inside the city limits of Foreman for less than a decade, but has long ties to this area. After successfully operating lumber businesses in Colorado, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Texas, he retired here and plans to spend his energies on improving the town and the surrounding area it serves. “Foreman,” he said, “is in serious need of active leadership with defined purposes. We have inadequate drainage, overgrown lots, an unresolved water tower situation, and the challenging prospect of making room for a few hundred new people in the near future while the Ash Grove Cement plant expands. The inactivity of the city government in the last few years is not adequate for the future.” Mr. Bush is running against Chris Gauldin and the current Mayor, David Wilkerson.

The candidate has been especially critical of the city’s handling of a $150,000 improvement grant primarily devoted to the purchase of park land. “Foreman paid too much for too much land and has very little or nothing left to develop and operate the park,” he said. Mr. Bush said he has filed two requests under the Arkansas Freedom of Information act to learn more about the city’s recent actions and is awaiting a complete response. He said, “The current Mayor has accused me of ‘making trouble’ for my efforts, but all I want is an open city hall with no secrets or special deals.”

The rally will run from 5:30 to 9:00 on Tuesday, October 24, exactly 2 weeks before the November 7 election. Music and children’s activities are planned along with the food. “Very few speeches,” he noted, “my primary concern is that nobody gets cold fish.” All other local candidates are also especially invited.

No cold fish - how's that for a platform to appeal to the masses? While my Dad is in charge of food temperature detail, my aunts, in a perpetual competition for Best Cook in Little River County, are in charge of desserts.

Seriously, he's a fine man and will do a great job as mayor. He's not just spouting a campaign slogan when he talks about an 'open city hall', he means it. Shreveport (any town!) should be so lucky.

And isn't my brother doing a fine job handling his campaign and writing press releases?

Emily Metzgar's dictionary of Louisiana political terms.

While Louisiana is near the bottom of state rankings in many categories, in political shenanigans, we're a national leader. I've heard rumors there are some other states trying to knock us out of the top spot there, so these terms may be useful nationwide.

Examples:

–Campaign: An opportunity for elected officials to rewrite history in the hope that voters aren’t paying attention. A time of selective truth-telling and exceptional creativity during which elected officials endeavor to blend fact with fiction about job performance in pursuit of continued job security. See also rhetoric.

–Children: Second only to “recovery” as justification for action/inaction on a given measure. Particularly effective when exercised in the context of health care, education or poverty.

–Harassment: Distribution of information about an elected official’s voting and attendance records. Circulation of statistics, voting records and other fact-based performance indicators. Viewed by incumbents as unwelcome political speech.

As the saying goes, read the whole thing.

I'm still waiting for the referral to see a radiologist. Someday I'll post all my frustrations with Tricare's referral system. And appointment system.

In the meantime, I finally got around to getting a CD of the MRI & CT scans done in July. These three slices show the meningioma's location. The first two are from the MRI, the last from the CT scan. UPDATE - all three are from the MRI.

I don't foresee a Name This Tumor contest.

I guess we pissed 'em off somehow.

The Kitchen Faerie hasn't really cooked a meal in a week, or cleaned up the mess from the resulting snacking on leftovers and fast food forays.

The Laundry Faerie has done just enough to keep our bodies decently covered and to keep the back door accessible in case of fire.

The only creature making a daily appearance around here is the Wicked Witch of Clutter.

Image used with permission

It's raining. It's the first good 'soaking' overnight rain in several months. All Shreveport should thank me for ignoring the weather forecasts and watering my yard yesterday afternoon.

IRS Eyes Religious Groups as More Enter Election Fray - Good. I certainly don't mind anyone voting for a candidate whose platform is consistent with their religious ideals, but I hate the idea of organized religious groups involved in the political process - like this one in Shreveport.

I don't want any ID chips anywhere, especially not this one. Besides the State Department poo-pooing the flaws in security of the RFID chips in passports, the point that any security measure that works now cannot be counted on to work in 10 years is reason enough.

Yes, size does matter. If the label is what bothers you, cut it out.

Worst selection of mayoral candidates ever. Police kiosks? and "8 percent strike force", and asking the experts because the candidates certainly don't have any idea.

I liked this. A lot. I'll buy if the guy records a CD.

Tigerhawk obviously wasn't the last one to see this.

Below, in To blog or not to blog, I wrote that one of the reasons I'd stopped blogging was that I'd developed a serious distractibility.

I'm hoping that the good news embedded in some recent bad news is that the reason for that has been discovered and can, perhaps, be eliminated.

I have a benign meningioma.

I knew this seven years ago, but at that time it was so small that the neurosurgeon said it wasn't worth worrying about. Frankly, I'd forgotten almost everything about that episode of strange headaches except the extreme unpleasantness of the MRI.

It's bigger now (at least 10x according to my memory of the first MRI which has been destroyed by the hospital due to storage space problems and the written report did not include any reference to size except small), but it's still small (< 2.0 cm), at least according to one neurosurgeon I've seen. The other... well, he says it's too big for Gamma Knife surgery. I'm going to see about the TomoTherapy recommended by the other neurologist as soon as the official insurance referral comes through. Also, one says it is near the optic nerve and the other says it is attached to the superior sagittal sinus.

What should I expect from a third opinion - that it's adjacent to a kidney?

The seizure I had was small too. One of my roommates at McCurdy (back when it was a boarding school) had epilepsy and this was nothing compared to the seizures she had.

I do not want to experience another one, no matter how "small" it was.

Is it too much to hope that getting this thing out of my brain will alleviate the distractibility and other little annoyances that I've noticed over the past year or so?

To quote, perchance to link ay, there's the lure

And the rub.*

There are basically three reasons I quit blogging. One, it had become work, probably due to reason Two, I developed a serious distractibility and then, Three, something more important came up.

I'd like to blog about that something more important, but I find that my sense of privacy is too strong and well-defined to write openly about family matters.** It will be a test of my thinking and writing skills to blog about those things without violating my sense of privacy.

* Shakespeare tired of spinning in his grave long ago and merely sighs with resignation these days.

** No relation at all between Shakespeare's original and the something more important. To ___ or not to ___ was just... too handy.

Having had six full months to recover from hearing Jimmy Smits deliver the line "My wife and I always wanted to adopt a baby girl!" in "The Revenge of the Sith," the Entertainment Curmudgeon was lured by the offer of free tickets and fond memories of the Marlboro Man to go "Bareback Mounting." You know--that current movie everyone's talking about and no red-blooded American male wants to voluntarily go see. The Entertainment Curmudgeon posts the following review but suggests anyone who actually plans to see the movie skip reading because the entire plot will be revealed. Actually, the entire plot is revealed in the trailer, but that's besides the point here.

For the record, let's first clear up one frequent question, as submitted to this columnist by a local fan: Did the Marlboro man actually herd sheep? I don't even recall the Marlboro man being a cowpuncher. Didn't he just kind of pose and stare off, as horses ran wild across the screen?

No, Virginia, the Marlboro Man did not herd sheep. The Marlboro Man's only job was to look Manly and handsome while smoking. In reality, the Marlboro Man, like Shamu, was a group effort. One prominent Marlboro Man died of lung cancer and his widow sued the tobacco company: http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/marlboro.htm

At any rate, the Marlboro Man lives on now as the bane of metrosexuals: http://www.newsline.com.pk/Newsdec2003/cover2dec2003.htm

The boys on Brokeback Mountain were only sheepherders for one season. They began as mini Marlboro Men, about age 19. They were both down on their economic luck. They took the mountain job for an angry white male capitalist type. The work involved taking the capitalist's sheep herd up onto the mountain to graze for the summer and preventing the 25% loss of sheep he sustained the previous year (with nobody guarding them, I guess, coyotes had their own orgy).

The evil capitalist went up on the mountain to deliver some bad news about a death in one of their families and from a distance observed the two young men frolicking together, resulting in a permanent hostile attitude on his part and refusal to hire them for subsequent years. Isn't that just like an angry white male? Was he happy to see the sheep grazing peacefully, unmolested? Nooooooooo ... he has to cop a lifelong attitude.

Tragically, the two youths were forced to go their separate ways and to marry and pursue lives of quiet desperation and reproduction until one couldn't stand it anymore and got in touch with the other after a separation of 4 years. Thereafter, they went on "fishing trips" on the mountain several times yearly. This fantasy tale was immediately ruined for one of the wives when she observed them kissing at their very first reunion. She eventually got a divorce. She was already kind of unhappy with only "getting it" aggressively from behind anyway, but she didn't quite know what to make of that until she saw her husband French kissing his best friend.

One of them now freed from matrimonial bonds, the other was eager to jump his, too, but the first one was extremely homophobic and didn't want to be known as "queer"--some trauma having to do with his father taking him as a child to see what a gang of local good old boys did to two old gents who were living quietly together in their town. "For all I know, my father did it," he muses, revealing the Freudian underpinnings of his obviously damaged psyche.

Meeting periodically on the mountain to frolic in the nude goes on for the next 20 years, at which point the more sensitive of the two, Jack, begins to make some demands because "it's never enough time." Rejected yet again, he is forced to stop in Mexico (on his way back to Texas from Wyoming) to frolic with a homosexual prostitute. Then some married guy in the town where he lives begins to make overtures. Jack is conflicted. Getting it once every six months next to a trout stream, even if from his one true love, isn't quite enough.

There is one more meeting on the mountain at which the homophobic one, Ennis, gets mad at Jack for not being faithful and they go through the "it's never enough time" argument again. Nag, nag, nag!!! "We could have had a good life together," Jack pouts. Yeah, they could have been married, then Jack wouldn't have nagged! Next thing we know, Ennis gets a postcard back marked "deceased." (They communicated about their fishing "dates" via postcards). So Ennis calls his late paramour's wife. She says Jack was changing a tire on a tractor or something and it blew up in his face and he lay there and drowned in his own blood. Ennis envisions Jack getting beaten to death, although it's left vague as to what actually happened. This reviewer suspects that Jack's father-in-law never quite got past being told to sit down and shut up at Thanksgiving. Remember, you heard that here first!

Ennis goes to visit Jack's parents to try to get his ashes to spread on the mountain, as the deceased wished. (At this point, he takes off his hat, proving the Entertainment Curmudgeon's companion's observation that "Ugly guys look a lot better wearing hats.") The late Jack's father is bitter and wants him (the half of him that the parents got, anyway) buried in the family plot. The mom invites Ennis to go up to his dead lover's childhood room. In the closet, he finds a terribly familiar and significant shirt and jacket, with a little blood spattered on the sleeve (Maybe this was from the first time he beat Jack up on the mountain before having sex with him?) and Mom lets him take it home. He hangs the outfit inside a closet door and puts a photo of the mountain over it. It's sort of like a little shrine for him to visit when he's on his 5th beer of the night.

Ennis' own daughter, who has spent the movie trying to get his attention, comes to visit him in his trailer/Jack shrine and announces her impending marriage. We know that an epiphany must have happened because Ennis first says it's roundup time and he'll be out with the herd (he has possibly graduated to cattle by this time?), but then he thinks again and mouths a line worthy of Jimmy Smits: "They'll have to get themselves another cowboy. My little girl is getting married."

Well, if the Entertainment Curmudgeon didn't get an exact quote on that very last line, it's understandable. Bad enough to repeatedly watch men riding, hunting, sheep herding, building campfires, eating beans, smoking, drinking whiskey, etc., etc. ad nauseum, but then the sex scenes were boring, too. However, "Brokeback Mountain" gave the Entertainment Curmudgeon a whole new appreciation for the nuances of cowboy lyrics. We quote here from "Strawberry Roan" by Marty Robbins:

I was hangin' 'round town, just spendin' my time, Out of a job, not earnin' a dime A feller steps up and he said, "I suppose, You're a bronc fighter from looks of your clothes." "You figures me right, I'm a good one," I claim. "Do you happen to have any bad ones to tame?" Said he's got one, a bad one to buck! At throwin' good riders, he's had lots of luck.

I gets all het up and I ask what he pays, To ride this old nag for a couple of days He offered me ten; I said, "I'm your man, A bronc never lived that I couldn't span." He said: "Get your saddle, I'll give you a chance" In his buckboard we hopped and he drives to the ranch I stayed 'til mornin' and right after chuck I stepped out to see if this outlaw can buck.

Gifts of food should always include chocolate, or something that goes well with chocolate. This is not an ironclad rule, but before you protest too much, tell me what, other than certain animal innards and green vegetables, doesn't go well with chocolate?

If you're the type of person who gives chicken livers and cans of spinach for Christmas presents... well, what can I say?

Until my daughter made Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread for me, from a recipe given to her by the mother of a friend, I would have said chocolate and pumpkin don't go together. I was a fool.

Her husband loves these, and she's tinkered with the recipe over the years, catering to his taste.

All Time Favorite Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

3 cups sugar
1 cup oil
3 eggs
1 16 oz can pumpkin
3 cups plain flour, unsifted
½ tsp salt
½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 bag mini chocolate chips (can use full size, but mini melt better)
1 cup chopped pecans (optional)

Mix first 4 ingredients well. Add dry ingredients and spices. Mix thoroughly. Fold into chips. Grease and flour pans. Divide into small loaf pans or muffin pans. (makes great mini muffins). Bake at 350 degrees for 65-70 minutes. Best the day after.

Personal experience note - experiment with baking times and oven temperature, as your mileage may vary.

If I were giving baked goods this year, it would probably be cookies. I'd use one or both of these recipes I've submitted to previous carnivals, No-Name Cookies or Snickerdoodles.

This year I'm sending marshmallows. The basic recipe and technique is from Test Recipes: Marshmallows at Cooking For Engineers. I've made some changes and additions and... um, some messes.

Through experience, I discovered that lining the pan with plastic wrap, lightly oiling it (use a light oil, like canola that has little or no flavor), then dusting that with a mixture of 2 parts powdered sugar to 1 part cornstarch, works better.

I don't have a candy thermometer, so I used the cold water test to determine if the sugar syrup was ready.

After the mixture has set for several hours, I turn the pan upside down on a cookie sheet or cutting board lined with plastic wrap prepared the same way.

Through impatience, I learned that letting the mixture set overnight makes it easier to cut. No, make that possible to cut. Impatience gave me some really sticky messes to clean up.

I also don't have a pizza cutter, so I used a round cookie cutter. I discovered that these cute round marshmallows fit perfectly in a cup of hot chocolate and decided that made them unique enough to give as gifts, especially if the recipe worked as well when I added flavors. I get 15 round marshmallows out of a batch instead of 40 little square ones.

For cinnamon marshmallows, I added a heaping tablespoon of cinnamon to the sugar.

For peppermint marshmallows, I substituted 2 1/2 teaspoons peppermint extract and 1/2 teaspoon red food coloring for the 1 tablespoon vanilla extract.

The peppermint marshmallow in Ibarra Mexican Chocolate has already got rave reviews from the younger daughter.

I'm making gifts, assembling packages to mail, and my husband is finally finishing the bathroom remodeling project.

For distraction from the fun and mundane, I'm re-reading Jacques Barzun's From Dawn to Decadence : 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present.

That should keep me out of trouble for a few weeks. Maybe more, it's not a short book.

They're up and running now after some server glitches yesterdays afternoon. If I weren't so lazy, I'd steal the snazzy logo to put here... but I am so lazy.

Now, for the part you've all been waiting for: Pajama Pundits endorsements: Best Blog: Mudville Gazette

Best Group Blog: Moderate Voice

Best LGBT Blog: Classical Values

Best Blog Design: The Shape of Days

Best Business Blog: BizzyBlog

Best Military Blog: The Officer's Club

Best of the Top 5001 - 6750 Blogs: Army of Mom

More endorsements as soon as the checks arrive...

undated blog posts.

Unbelievable that anyone is offended by the mere mention of a the name of a medical procedure.

Reynolds says:

...there aren't many simple safe procedures that can absolutely prevent cancer, and this is one. Don't forego it because you're squeamish.

He is correct, but doesn't mention that this test also catches cancer before it's too far along to treat effectively and easily. Easily, to me, means surgery without chemo or radiation. Chemo and radiation are never easy, and they generally last much longer than the recuperation period for major abdominal surgery.

I think he's not giving a good picture of the sedative, often Versed, given for this procedure. Not only is it very relaxing for the recipient, it can be fun for whoever gets to accompany the patient. The patient has little or no memory of the events of several hours, is extremely cooperative, and can be very amusing. Precautions after getting Versed include:

Midazolam may cause some people to feel drowsy, tired, or weak for 1 or 2 days after it has been given. It may also cause problems with coordination and one's ability to think. Therefore, do not drive, use machines, or do anything else that could be dangerous if you are not alert until the effects of the medicine have disappeared or until the day after you receive midazolam, whichever period of time is longer.

Ability to think is required for blogging? Damn, somebody should have told me!

In 1992, the doc found a cancerous polyp during a colonoscopy on my husband. Surgery followed - a colon re-section (without colostomy) - and no signs of cancer have been found since. This is a very good thing.

He had yearly colonoscopies until 1997, then a 3 year follow-up, and after finding no polyps this year, he won't go back for another for 5 years.

So, listen to the Instapundit: Don't forego a colonoscopy because you're squeamish.

Or too easily offended.

So far, no one's voted for DOOMED, WE'RE ALL DOOMED!

A sensible Happy Holidays from the AnalPhilosopher.

Best and Worst Jobs? Scott Adams is doing his part for Army recruiting.

A Cricket's Tale. Yes, what a ride!

This cracks me up - Oh My! - a real Art Linkletter Kids Say the Darndest Things moment.

Eye of the beholder is the latest reason why I read Sissy Willis almost daily.

The illusion of security.