Friday, April 28, 2006

(I) like water (after) fo(u)r (black) chocolate (stouts)

(it helps in the morning)


Friday random te-.... pffft - Friday Beer blogging!

Disclosure: I am not a Brooklyn Brewery shill - I am just one of those "local music! local beer! local [insert item you feel should ideally be crafted locally here]!" type of people I suppose. And in case you haven't read teh sidebar - this blog is authored from Brooklyn, NY (and sometimes Manhattan but always in one of the boroughs - although never from the
'sixth' one - yet)

Also, I wanted to post something. anything.

So I drink one of said-same beers as per above graphique and 'lo! - it is stouty and chocolate-y. I must research this on-line! - brooklynbrewery.com:


Food Matches

Served in a snifter glass, Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout is excellent with chocolate desserts, cheesecake, fruit tarts, and ice cream. It is also a very good accompaniment to strong cheeses.
You know what else is also a very good accompaniment to strong cheeses? Me. (hah! - now give me your stinky cheese!)

And with that - I bid you bon weekend.

ps. here's a music video I first saw on
NYNOISE* and then heard again at my somewhat well-scored office happy hour(s)** that we've been having (thus this post - among others): Sunshower by M.I.A.

* also introduced me to Joanna Newsom, LCD Soundsystem, and a few others - like Burnside Project.***

** I seek teh hippest of office parties! is that an oxymoron?!

Update 4/29/2006 2:13 PM: added youtube.com links for Joanna Newsom and LCD Soundsystem - and Burnside Project who want to teach you about the various wallpaper options available. And I fixed links to use the Video URL permalink which means this site will show up on those youtube pages - which means I may be getting over my link shyness. Check in next week and I'll be posting the My Dog Hates Me Manifest Destiny.

***U- 4/29/2006 2:46 PM: Burnside Project again (quicktime video) - this is the one I saw on NYNOISE a while back.


U- 5/1/2006 10:05 PM: So I guess Brooklyn Brand beer is brewed in Utica, NY which is local in the sense that Utica is in NY State but not even remotely local in the sense that it would be quicker to walk to Boston, MA. But I kinda knew this already - I just didn't have a bottle handy to refer to (what are the odds?) and now I don't care because I'm busy watching Stephen Colbert on Youtube.com and downloading Joanna Newsom mp3s from fromamouth.com/milkymoon/ - you know, feeding my soul. [Edit- ] And I feel the need to express my distaste with the caricature of JN on the aforementioned website - is she supposed to be fresh from a Botox injection in that portrait? All shiny and tight? Is this supposed to be some imagined Avant-Garde American Folk-Rock Barbie? I suspect someone was having too much fun with a photoshop filter of some kind.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

See Karl testify.

Testify Karl, testify.

One, two, three, four, five times before the Grand Jury. Go Karl, GO!



(AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
nicked from news.yahoo.com/photos

I'm just watching and waiting for
Karl Rove, The Architect to get what's coming to him - like I did here and here - and now we have this.

'All architects should have to live in the buildings they design' as the saying goes - and Turdblossom's was specifically designed to leak. And I don't condone the annoyingly wide spread perversion of the word 'Architect' to mean anyone who ever planned out anything ever, especially in this case, but it seems to be a lost cause at this point - kinda like Karlsbad Kavern's hopes of coming out clean from this hole he dug himself into. Speaking for myself, this moonbat is ready to drop some serious guano on Turd.

[Edit: oops, forgot to title this one - hasn't all the good turdblossum snark been used up by now?]


[Edit #2: Shite! I just googled "Karlsbad Kavern" and the first two results were from littlegreenfootballs.com - Do I remove my attempt at humor now that I find it is tainted by inbred warmonger mouthbreather wankerdom? No, I leave it. I stand by my stupid play on words. Even though someone far stupider already used it - poorly. How do you get from Kos to Karlsbad? Stupid. Nonsense. And I know nonsense.]

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

cats don't like (dark) water


Quick post - movie's starting!

My crazy pretty kitty likes to sit in the bathtub and 'meow' until her voice is gone.
Spooky. She's just skin and bones and now mute. Poor kitty.

Brklyn shoutout to Jenny C. from the block*

*Brooklyn Heights.


Update 4/26/2006 1:28 AM: Dark Water was a bit of a wet blanket to be honest. HA! Hey Now! I thought that one up during the movie - perhaps when I got up for a snack for the fifth or sixth time. - "Hey, Hey, tell me what I missed when I went to the bathroom!" - "Umm, it's still raining, she's still trying to get a divorce/custody/whatever, and her crappy apartment is still leaking like mad." - Moral of this story? Beats me. 'Always keep a bucket and mop handy?' 'Don't expect quality housing or a nice laundry room in NYC?' (actually - that's pretty spot-on). Maybe it should be 'If it's been raining for eight or nine or twenty days straight you can bet the beaches are going to be closed to swimming for a while' - talk about dark water! Nasty! "Hey! Let's race whatever you just flushed down the toilet to the beach! Last one is a rotten egg or medical waste of some kind!" (yes, we have beaches in NYC -have I enticed you?).


And as far as the kitty in the bathtub goes, the tub seems to be a good place to juice the kitty (a/k/a/ dialysis). But then I looked in the mirror and said "Candyman" three five times and things just got all screwed up. What was that about? Anyway, is your refrigerator running? Better go catch it! Ha! Another knee slapper! Is your upstairs neighbor's tub and shower and toilet and sink and bidet and hot tub and decorative water fountain and water-pick and fish tank and water bed running? Well, you're on your own. Unless you live near a corn field in Nebraska. Then you should go ask the neighbor's kid, Malachai. He seems like a good kid.

Monday, April 24, 2006

dalek/not dalek

If I knew how to create blog categories this would fall under the same one as this old post. Call it Malaprop Photoshop-isms or something.

This is also somewhat related to the 'Update: Super Duper Tangent Edition' of the post below about corporate public relations and what not. See, we have this new coffee machine at work (Yes, I am employed. Pet food doesn't grow on trees - yet) and I think DeLonghi is trying to get in on some of Starbucks' publicity from the whole 'Ha Ha, look at us, we're big, evil and bent on gobal domination' gag as seen in
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) with this obviously Dalek inspired-coffee maker -



"Percolate! Percolate!"

Maybe I'll catch the new Dr. Who sometime now that I have BBC America on cable since I'm obviously jonesing for a fix.

Update 4/24/2006 8:25 PM: find a non-corporate cafe/coffee house here.

Update 4/24/2006 8:53 PM: Well this blows. I can't find Dr. Who listed on bbcamerica.com. Well at least I have my Little Britain (caught some the other night) and The Young Ones, Faulty Towers, and of course The Office (all listed but haven't happened upon it yet during my couch potato sessions). But no Dr. Who?

F'ck.

What's sadder than not having Dr. Who to watch on cable TV? Blogging about how you're going to watch Dr. Who on cable TV and then realizing a few minutes later that you can't. Sad. Almost as sad as my dog hating me - which I should write about again because it's getting a little worse - and pretty kitty is dying/going mad.

Wait! It's on Scifi! sweet.

OK, time to get a life.

- end of transmission -


- oops, begin transmission -

Update 4/26/2006 6:24 PM: Now I remember how I got the Dr. Who seed stuck in my brain - it happenened when I strolled thru dextrslab.blogspot.com. My mind is like a leaky sponge - my poor leaky, sponge-like brain in my "GIGANTIC HEAD"* .

*as per The Editors at thepoorman.net

legislative body gets a charlie horse

Raw Story
In a bid to make lobbying reform legislation a better candidate for passage this week, House Republican leaders have stripped out language forcing lobbyists to provide detailed disclosure of fundraising activities and contacts with lawmakers.

[..]

House Rules Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.) scrubbed the requirement that lobbyists list contacts with lawmakers because he feared that it "could have a chilling effect on lobbying," his spokeswoman said.
Makes sense. Why try to curb lobbying too much when you're going to get kicked to the curb in 2006 anyway. I mean, hey, nobody likes you anyway right? -
Public approval of the job Congress is doing has dipped to its lowest level of 2006, and is now the worst Gallup has recorded since the closing days of the Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994. The current approval rating for Congress is a near-record low according to Gallup survey trending.
Just take the damn money.

Nobody really expected you to finish this race. You flew out of those starting blocks* and that's what counts, right? A valiant half-effort if ever there was one. Now just fake a bad leg cramp, fall to the ground and bag it.

*Although it would have been good if the starting gun (read: Jack Abramoff) didn't have to be shot directly next to your ear (read: Jack Abramoff *and* Tom Delay).


Update 4/24/2006 2:03 PM: Let's see what OpenSecretes.org has to tell us about Dreier -
Burson-Marsteller $1,000 PAC Contribution 4/15/2005

PMA Group $1,000 PAC Contribution 3/12/2005

[Edit: Fixed PMA link to go to PAC page instead of Lobbyists - PMA is listed as both - this FEC/campaign finance law stuff is confusing!]
I realize this is only a couple thousand of the $592,702 he received in 2005-2006
PAC Contributions as of 3/13/2006 but this Burson-Marsteller seems worth knowing more about:
Burson, 85, is founding chairman of Burson-Marsteller, largest public relations agency in the world. He recently began a blog at burson-marsteller.com.

[...]

Q: Do you read from the Internet? You now have a blog. Have you read other blogs that were worth the time?

A: I am not a regular reader of blogs, although prior to starting my own I perused several blogs over a period of two or three weeks. They were interesting and well-written, but my problem is simply that there's so much to read that one is forced to make choices. My principal reading from the Internet is when I am interested in a specific subject, such as a new prescription from my physician, and then I print it out rather than read from a monitor.
OMG. Oldest. Blogger. Evar. I would check out his blog but seeing as how Burson-Marsteller is doing more than 70 percent of it's business with Republicans so far this year I don't think I would like it. :-p

Update 4/24/2006 4:25 PM (Super Duper Tangent Edition): So I decided to check out Mr. Burson's blog -- all four posts in almost as many months -- and some of it seems OK (nothing I read popped out as wingnutty or neo-con-y) but he does seem to pull a big fat U-turn between a March 22, 2006 post titled "The Role of the Public Relations Counselor" and a April 24, 2006 post titled "Time Frame Compression: Media Multiplicity and Opinion Formation":

March 22, 2006 (emphasis mine):
Communicating with external audiences is an equally difficult undertaking. The public relations executive must convince the public that the corporation is, indeed, being responsive. Critics on the outside looking in tend to question a corporation's sincerity. All too often they mistake a real and genuine response for a seeming response. When a corporation asks for time to make an adjustment, the critics declare that the company is merely stalling in the hope it won't have to act at all. The fact is the corporation is often slow to react. It's that kind of a creature. It's easy enough for the chief executive officer to issue a public statement that reverses a long-standing policy overnight. But it's just as difficult for a CEO to mandate change as it is for the President of the United States. Policy changes in themselves are not enough.

If the corporation informs the public the company has a new policy, the public may very well respond: "So what! We're not interested in knowing about policy changes; we're interested in substantive acts. What have you really done?" And if the corporation does not inform the public that it has, in fact, changed its policies, the public can accuse it of failing to take action.
Effective external communications, therefore, is critical. The public relations executive must convince the public that the corporation is responsive, that it is taking actions that exceed mere policy statements, and that genuine progress is being made toward meeting public expectations.
and April 24, 2006 :
The problem for society is whether leadership can survive under conditions that are influencing, perhaps even forcing, and our leaders to respond to measurable public demand. Would it have been possible for President Roosevelt to support the British war effort against Nazi Germany with the constant din of the media and polls overwhelmingly in favor of strict neutrality? Could President Nixon have opened the doors to a relationship with China if diplomacy had been conducted in a fishbowl?

There's something about forming attitudes and opinions that calls for deliberation and considerable discourse give-and-take. Maybe we would be better off if we could freeze the time frame compression that gives us the instant gratification that both media and public now crave.
Ahh, yes. Opinions are like assholes; everybody's got one. Trouble is, when you're talking about our elected officials everyone has a vote** too, a cool refreshing vote to wash down our opinion and asshole combo meal. The disconnect revealed in these two Burson posts is that one hand there is a need to effectively show the public you hear their concerns and are being responsive and on the other hand there is an assessment that people are too uppity and knee-jerky with their opinions - why don't these people just cool it? Well, since Mr. Burson brought up the POTUS I would say it's pretty clear that Bush is hoping that whole 'fire Rumsfeld' public opinion will blow over. In fact, it's quite clear he thinks 70 percent of us just made up our minds too quickly about him being the Worst President Ever. Really, aren't we all just being a little hasty? The answer of course is no, we're not being too hasty. He had his chance, years ago, to be a leader (or 'The Decider' as he put it recently) but now we all know Bush is a miserable failure. He should start listening to us and he can start by firing Rumsfeld. But that's just my opinion. ;-)

**(well, sort of, see Electoral College)

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Nightmare at 250 ft

I'm imagining a remake of this Twilight Zone* where the plane is replaced by the stuck Roosevelt Island tram with this thing as the horrific monster.

I'm not saying being stuck on a 30 yr old tram 250 ft in the air wouldn't be a harrowing experience by itself - I'm sure it would be. I just have an over active imagination sometimes... and I also have a 'blogroll' that has zero blogs on it and one cat picture w/ captions website whose name has some equivalency/reciprocity with the name of this blog which I've never called attention to before now.

anyway. WTF is that thing?

* I don't think I've seen the original version (Shatner?), just an updated one.

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

People all over the world

Start a hate train, a hate train -I hate cilantro.


As the site says: "Cilantro. The most offensive food known to man."

and now I'm off to
lunch - which will most likely have trace amounts of cilantro in it. blech.

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Red America, Blue America

Hoagie America!*



via fark.com

Great, now I want a hoagie -- No! Make that a Schmitter!

* Oh, and for #118, count me down for 'a drive-through what now?'.

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

All of these seats are yours...

Saturday, April 08, 2006

I hate missing posts!

I swear I had a post (about missing posts) and it linked to this.

God! Now everything seems even *more* pointless. Is that even possible?

Have a good weekend.

Dog/Pussy*

My dog, she hates me. But perhaps not as much now. To maintain some connection to my URL/blog title I will provide a mini-update on the little furry ones (or at least on two of the three). Plus, it gives my inner eight-year old an excuse to post under a silly title and my inner twenty-something an excuse to name-check a dope (yet defunct) punk band from Phila, PA.**

My dog is
less orange now according to my wife. This is good (sorry, no pic). I don't see it but I haven't done a blind scientific study so who knows. If she is indeed less orange it means she is licking herself less which should mean she is less nervous. She could be less nervous because a) 'Mommy' has been more available lately. b) my dog hates me less c) a combination of 'a' and 'b'. *OR* She is still just as nevous and a) my wife's rods and cones are defective or b) my rods and cones are defective or c) my dog keeps a secret stash of greyish paint that she touches up her coat with *OR* ... OK, I'll stop.

Who knows. I need a control group. If you're reading this, send me your not-orange but nervous four year old italian greyhound so I can get some answers in the form of cold hard science-y advanced-canine-emotional-studies facts and figures.

Oh, and she made a flight to LA and back with 'Mommy' recently with few or no problems so that's encouraging. So, yeah, that's where the dog is at lately.

Pretty Kitty is sick so she gets stuck with a needle and juiced in the scruff of her neck with one of these every so often:



I think she is supposed to get the IV every day or so but we do it maybe once a week. We (Mr. & Mrs. Greenthoughts) would do it more often except that Pretty Kitty, well, flips out! We even warm up the IV juice but it is still just like torture for her. For a kitty with a bad heart and bad kidneys and little or no weight/mass she puts up a hell of a struggle. I suppose we should cut her claws more too. She put one clear through the skin on my right wrist (again, sorry, no pic). I looked at my hands as I was holding her down because it hurt more that it has in the past - and I see the tip of her claw poking through the other side of my skin. Nice. ROWWWRR.

-End of transmission-

* Dead Milkmen lyrics
here.

Update 4/8/2006 8:49 PM: And for a little pan-postal fun see Dead Milkmen's "Methodist Coloring Book"

** Update: 4/8/2006 9:21 PM: Somebody's milking that whole "sixth borough" thing... . Sixth borough? maybe by train - but sure as hell not by car. Longest 100 miles of my life - evry f'ckin time.

Land of Confusion*

I think found a possible new fav** who links to a Waco Tribune-Herald article (yes that Waco, TX) about a recent brouhaha involving infamous counter-culture agitator and public enemy #1 Bill Nye the Science Guy. Well bless my beakers!


"MEEP!"

And elsewhere***, just in time for tax season, we learn that (warning:
yet another Ohio rant!) apparently this little blurb no longer applies to the IRS -
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Pehaps I should I start a new blog - is mygodhatesme.blogspot.com taken?

nope.

* see the other
Genesis
** if only for the URL and the Bill Nye/Waco post [Update 4/9/06 10:22 PM: Yes, yes, I quickly realized it is a carbon copy of the original post at sploid.com published by Gawker Media. I thought that was a no-no. I guess if you provide a link to the original it's OK.]

*** via americablog.blogspot.com

Wednesday, April 05, 2006

too stupid for words

Dear Boortz-for-brainz,

You
again? Why are you still on the air? Here's some markers -


Go find a mirror and get it over with you moron. Now.

-Greenthoughts

via tbogg.blogspot.com, firedoglake.com & pamspaulding.com

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Hang the DJ*

as in Hang the Diebold Jackass:

Baby you and me were never meant to be
So maybe think of me once in a while.
**

And because I'm feeling bored and/or anal retentive, I updated my Ohio/
Drink Four rant too. "Forgetting Ohio?" I think not.

* a pretty good
Smiths song.

**
WKRP theme obviously.

via derenegade.blogspot.com & tpmmuckraker.com.

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Walker... Walker...

Walker... Walker... [/chanting]


"...So they left their homes, said bidey-bye to the Government Watchdog..."

I think I may be running a slight fever - that would go a long way in explaining this post.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

Paul Wolfowitz is dead

...he hadn't noticed that the lights had changed.

Sorry,
no elaborate*** pranks today. Just the kind of head-scratching that comes from poor hygiene and greasy hair, not bafflement.* Unless this April 2003 NYT article turns out to be true - then I guess Rummy will have pulled a good one over on all of us.

*
The generation gap is dead**

**when you're done mourning let me tell you about a bridge for sale.


***[edit] I suppose the title "Paul Wolfowitz is dead" is prank-like. Sorry PW if you're reading this news today. Oh boy.

Update 4/3/2006 2:25 PM: US and UK forces establish 'enduring bases' in Iraq