November 16, 2009
"Squirrelizing" Obama
I was counting the seconds until Deb piled on. Just scroll down to the woodland setting. Someone needs to create a downloadable BowBama graphic. I'd do it but I don't have the right software.
Posted by Cassandra at 01:10 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
November 04, 2009
Someone's Got to Do the Real Work....
Little Miss Attila asks:
"Don't they have better things to do in the Army?"
Damn straight! There's important work to be done!
Posted by Cassandra at 07:07 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
October 22, 2009
Well Dayum....
Rock bands including Pearl Jam and REM have joined a coalition of musicians to support the US president's efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.The National Campaign to Close Guantanamo, which also includes former military officers, launched on Tuesday.
Many of the artists who have signed up are angry that their music was used as an interrogation tool in the jail.
Amateurs... what do these people know of torture?
JACKIE KLEIN is a devoted mother of two little boys in the suburbs of Portland, Ore. She spends hours ferrying them to soccer and Cub Scouts. She reads child-development books. She can emulate one of those pitch-perfect calm maternal tones to warn, “You’re making bad choices” when, say, someone doesn’t want to brush his teeth.LOWERING THE BOOM Some frustrated parents resort to yelling and screaming followed by feelings of guilt.
That is 90 percent of the time. Then there is the other 10 percent, when, she admits, “I have become totally frustrated and lost control of myself.”It can happen during weeks and weeks and weeks of no camp in the summer, or at the end of a long day at home — just as adult peace is within her grasp — when the 7- or 9-year-old won’t go to sleep.
And then she yells.
“This is ridiculous! I’ve been doing things all day for you!”
Many in today’s pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering generation of parents would never spank their children. We congratulate our toddlers for blowing their nose (“Good job!”), we friend our teenagers (literally and virtually), we spend hours teaching our elementary-school offspring how to understand their feelings. But, incongruously and with regularity, this is a generation that yells.
“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” said Amy McCready, the founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills in classes, individual coaching sessions and an online course. “This is so the issue right now. As parents understand that it’s not socially acceptable to spank children, they are at a loss for what they can do. They resort to reminding, nagging, timeout, counting 1-2-3 and quickly realize that those strategies don’t work to change behavior. In the absence of tools that really work, they feel frustrated and angry and raise their voice. They feel guilty afterward, and the whole cycle begins again.”
Why don't you just go ahead and spank your child, lady. Or better yet, have Michael Stipe spank him.
Posted by Cassandra at 05:02 PM | Comments (23) | TrackBack
October 02, 2009
Do Me a Favor, People
If you are the parent of a Cub Scout, Brownie, Girl or Boy Scout, please do not send your clueless offspring to my door with his/her hair uncombed, shirt not tucked in... and to really fry the Blog Princess's Maternal Bacon, bereft of the slightest clue what the troop is selling, how much it costs, who to make the check out to, or when payment is due for the order.
The princess is arguably the easiest touch on the planet but even she gets her Hanes Silky UltraSheers in a wad when faced with a monosyllabic, zoned out urchin who appears to be blinking T O R T U R E with his or her eyelids as she struggles to read the tiny print on the (*&%$ order form on her way out the door to some place that urgently requires her presence.
She really wants to buy that oversized tub of cheese popcorn that will sit uneaten in her pantry along with the caramel corn she bought this time last year from some other speech impaired midget.
And if she has to walk up to the street and drag you out of your car so you can perform the parental functions so beloved by generations of Moms and Dads from time immemorial to get it through your thick head that this is all part of the Great Circle of Life, she will.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Do your job.
Consider this a teaching moment.
Posted by Cassandra at 05:45 PM | Comments (52) | TrackBack
September 17, 2009
*snort*
Charles Gibson.... this is your courtesy wakeup call.
Heh.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:30 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 15, 2009
Well Damn...
Mark my words: you radical feminists are to blame for this somehow:
Government scientists figure that one out of five male black bass in American river basins have egg cells growing inside their sexual organs, a sign of how widespread fish feminizing has become.The findings come from the U.S. Geological Survey in its first comprehensive examination of intersex fish in America, a problem linked to women's birth control pills and other hormone treatments that seep into rivers. Sporadic reports of feminized fish have been reported for a few years.
We tried to warn you, but no! You were having none of our frantic intersex fish warnings.
DENIERS!!!!
Update: Heh... if there's one thing I can't stand, it's a link slut. Worse, in many ways, than an intersex fish.
Posted by Cassandra at 12:10 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack
September 03, 2009
Oh... Like This Hasn't Happened to You...
After all, who among us has not had a similar experience?
"While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus," she explains in the tome she published last year. "It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green."When the new Japanese first lady related her adventures to her then husband, he told her flatteringly that it was probably just a dream. But she is confident that Yukio, the man now entrusted with the task of hauling Japan out of its deepest recession, would have reacted very differently. "My current husband has a different way of thinking. He would surely say, 'Oh, that's great'," she wrote.
Our guess is that the living room sofa doesn't get a lot of use in this house.
Just sayin'.
Posted by Cassandra at 07:23 AM | Comments (10) | TrackBack
August 21, 2009
BWA HA HA HA HA!!!!
h/t, Nicki F.
Posted by Cassandra at 01:26 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
August 20, 2009
VILE BLASPHEMERS!!!!
Woe be unto you, Blasphemers and Idolotors! Filthy deniers of the public option: know that The Obamessiah shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew. And He shall pursue thee until thou perishishest...umm...eth...err...perishethest!
Verily do I call heaven and earth to witness against thee! The caterpillar shall munch upon thy many gardens and vineyards, devour thy fig and olive trees, masticate upon thy 401K accounts and preferred provider plans. For Lo! The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish rich and the tyranny of the evil monger. Blessed is He, who in the name of social justice and income equality, guards the Stupid from the lies of the Iniquitous, for He is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children.
And I shall strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger. And thou shalt know My name when I do lay My Vengeance upon thee:
In a conference call with liberal and progressive religious leaders Wednesday afternoon, President Obama railed against those who were “bearing false witness” in the debate over health care reform.“I know there’s been a lot of misinformation in this debate, and there are some folks out there who are, frankly, bearing false witness, but I want everyone to know what health insurance reform is all about,” the president said.
“Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor,” is, of course, one of the Ten Commandments. (It’s the 9th Commandment in all religions except for the Catholic and Lutheran traditions, in which it’s the 8th.)”
Whoa. For a moment I thought we were watching The Shrub try to force religion on us again.
My bad.
Posted by Cassandra at 02:24 PM | Comments (19) | TrackBack
July 08, 2009
Ode to a Summer's Morn
The dreamy butterflies bestir,
Lethargic pools resume the whir
Of last year's sundered tune.
From some old fortress on the sun
Baronial bees march, one by one,
In murmuring platoon!
The robins stand as thick to-day
As flakes of snow stood yesterday,
On fence and roof and twig.
The orchis binds her feather on
For her old lover, Don the Sun,
Revisiting the bog!Without commander, countless, still,
The regiment of wood and hill
In bright detachment stand.
Behold! Whose multitudes are these?
The children of whose turbaned seas,
Or what Circassian land?- Emily Dickenson
Ah yes.
What joy after a long winter to lightly trip amongst the Cosmos, gently harvesting the spent blossoms as the plaintive cry of a lone Western Maryland DorkHound (Loungeaboutis Davenportensia) wafts heavenward; a myriad invisible ooooooooooo's rising to greet Hyperion as he beginneth his appointed rounds.
The deeply spiritual satisfactions of a carbon neutral life can hardly be overstated.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:34 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack
May 06, 2009
Fear and Loathing in DC
I tell you, this is enough to make a Blog Princess take up indoor gardening:
D.C. police responded to a report of a suspicious package this morning at 18th and I streets NW that turned out to be an empty can inside a newspaper box. The investigation created traffic jams through the morning rush, but everything is now all clear.D.C. police and fire officials were called to the scene about 8 a.m. and closed nearby streets to set up their emergency response.
Alan Etter, a spokesman for the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department, said the agency sent a battalion chief and equipment to the area "in case it was something harmful."The scene was cleared at 9:45 a.m., and all streets have been reopened.
An empty can. Inside a newspaper box. Just imagine if it had been something really scary, like a Starbucks cup under a park bench or a cigar box on a fire hydrant.
This happens time and time again. If it isn't a misdirected UPS shipment that has us quaking in our boots, it's the possibility that we might catch a relatively mild form of an illness that many of us already deal with every year. We close streets. We close schools. Why?
It's a jungle out there. Be careful, my friends.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:56 AM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
Torture, Defined
As a Supreme Court justice once quipped, "I know it when I see it"
Posted by Cassandra at 08:20 AM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
May 01, 2009
A Fool and His Money
I love Reader's Digest. As a kid, it was a fixture on the back of my parent's toilet right there beside the little wicker basket of pink, seashell-shaped soaps wrapped in cellophane (Which we were never allowed to use. Besides, there was always that bar of Lava soap that only got used once in a blue word.) and the large can of Lysol. (Father and two brothers. 'Nuff said.) One feature that I particularly loved were the little *filler* anecdotes where an article had fallen a little short of a full page but didn't leave enough space for an ad. These were almost always funny stories, quick one-liners or typos that had appeared in print in some small town paper and were generally guaranteed to elicit a giggle or three. One in particular stuck in my teenage mind like a Band-Aid on a Bologna sandwich:
"How did a fool and his money ever get together in the first place?"
Many have been the times since in which I've had cause to wonder that very same thing. Granted, in true 20/20 hindsight, plenty of those times involved me.... So it wasn't without a little curiosity, and a lot of rememberance of that quip, that I watched as people everywhere, caught up in the latest "This is what healthy (cool) people do" fad, began to pay extra for water. And as time passed by, I couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't a kernel of truth in the old joke that said the first bottled water company named their product "Evian" because they knew the American people (their major marketing demographic) would never *get* that their product's name was "Naive" spelled backwards.
Now we have Vitamin Water.
Yep. Water (distilled to remove any impurities like vitamins, minerals, fish poop, etc.) with vitamins and minerals put back in. Oh, and a little flavoring added in so it doesn't taste like water. I can see the brainstorming group now:
Great Leader: So, ok, now we have water...
Mr. I Say Mr. Potayto Not Potahto: With vitamins!
Ms. Fly In My Soup: But our test market group isn't buying into the idea because it tastes like water.
(Shirley, you jest!)
Captain Obvious: Anybody can buy water and take a vitamin pill.
Great Leader: We need to find the hook, people, so customers will buy it.
Boy Genius: Hey let's make it taste like something other than water!
Great Leader: Brilliant! How do we do that?
Boy Genius: Let's add Flavor.
Great Leader: Flaaavorrr....Hey, that just might work. That way it doesn't taste like water...
Mr. I Say Potayto Not Potahto: With vitamins!
Adding flavor is a simple process, however, there is one small set-back: a manufacturer's "flavoring", in and of it's chemical self, is bitter. So, in order to counter the bitter, a sweetener is added. (Yeahyeahyeah! That's the ticket! Now people will buy it.)
Soooo, why are we calling it water?
When I was a kid, flavored water was Kool-Aid. Then, sometime in the mid-70's, everything became fortified -- bread, milk, breakfast cereal (fortified Cap'N Crunch?!?).....Kool-Aid. Good job, guys. You've just reinvented fortified Kool-Aid. And now we have more brands of flavored water than toilet paper. (Honestly, how many brands of toilet paper do we need anyway?) Except this particular one has about as many calories as a regular can of soda. Umm, yeah,...that's gonna sit well on the hips of the calorie-counting cadre. What to do, what to do.....
(Shirley, there must be a visionary with a *Big Idea* that doesn't involve vanilla icing. 0>;~})
Viola! In the quest for more money, now we have Diet Vitamin Water! With only 10.....er, 25 calories!!
Diet
Vitamin
Water
Think about those words for a minute.
Diet - in food product terms, it generally means an alternate version of a product containing fewer calories than the original.
Vitamin - any of various organic substances that are essential to nutrition, but do not provide energy or serve as building units. (IOW, no calories.)
Water - clear liquid comprised of oxidized hydrogen atoms that, when pure, is odorless and tasteless. (Nope, no calories here...move along.)
Ok, so water=0 calories + vitamins=0 calories. How can you make that any more *diet*? Because, if you have water....with vitamins! in a bottle, isn't that already the most *diet* you can get?
Unless, of course, you don't want it to taste like water.
Personally, I'll take beer over water. If I'm gonna drink calories, I want to enjoy it.
Besides, fish poop in water.
0>;~}
Posted by DL Sly at 11:22 AM | Comments (27)
A Fool and His Money
I love Reader's Digest. As a kid, it was a fixture on the back of my parent's toilet right there beside the little wicker basket of pink, seashell-shaped soaps wrapped in cellophane (Which we were never allowed to use. Besides, there was always that bar of Lava soap that only got used once in a blue word.) and the large can of Lysol. (Father and two brothers. 'Nuff said.) One feature that I particularly loved were the little *filler* anecdotes where an article had fallen a little short of a full page but didn't leave enough space for an ad. These were almost always funny stories, quick one-liners or typos that had appeared in print in some small town paper and were generally guaranteed to elicit a giggle or three. One in particular stuck in my teenage mind like a Band-Aid on a Bologna sandwich:
"How did a fool and his money ever get together in the first place?"
Many have been the times since in which I've had cause to wonder that very same thing. Granted, in true 20/20 hindsight, plenty of those times involved me.... So it wasn't without a little curiosity, and a lot of rememberance of that quip, that I watched as people everywhere, caught up in the latest "This is what healthy (cool) people do" fad, began to pay extra for water. And as time passed by, I couldn't help but wonder if there wasn't a kernel of truth in the old joke that said the first bottled water company named their product "Evian" because they knew the American people (their major marketing demographic) would never *get* that their product's name was "Naive" spelled backwards.
Now we have Vitamin Water.
Yep. Water (distilled to remove any impurities like vitamins, minerals, fish poop, etc.) with vitamins and minerals put back in. Oh, and a little flavoring added in so it doesn't taste like water. I can see the brainstorming group now:
Great Leader: So, ok, now we have water...
Mr. I Say Mr. Potayto Not Potahto: With vitamins!
Ms. Fly In My Soup: But our test market group isn't buying into the idea because it tastes like water.
(Shirley, you jest!)
Captain Obvious: Anybody can buy water and take a vitamin pill.
Great Leader: We need to find the hook, people, so customers will buy it.
Boy Genius: Hey let's make it taste like something other than water!
Great Leader: Brilliant! How do we do that?
Boy Genius: Let's add Flavor.
Great Leader: Flaaavorrr....Hey, that just might work. That way it doesn't taste like water...
Mr. I Say Potayto Not Potahto: With vitamins!
Adding flavor is a simple process, however, there is one small set-back: a manufacturer's "flavoring", in and of it's chemical self, is bitter. So, in order to counter the bitter, a sweetener is added. (Yeahyeahyeah! That's the ticket! Now people will buy it.)
Soooo, why are we calling it water?
When I was a kid, flavored water was Kool-Aid. Then, sometime in the mid-70's, everything became fortified -- bread, milk, breakfast cereal (fortified Cap'N Crunch?!?).....Kool-Aid. Good job, guys. You've just reinvented fortified Kool-Aid. And now we have more brands of flavored water than toilet paper. (Honestly, how many brands of toilet paper do we need anyway?) Except this particular one has about as many calories as a regular can of soda. Umm, yeah,...that's gonna sit well on the hips of the calorie-counting cadre. What to do, what to do.....
(Shirley, there must be a visionary with a *Big Idea* that doesn't involve vanilla icing. 0>;~})
Viola! In the quest for more money, now we have Diet Vitamin Water! With only 10.....er, 25 calories!!
Diet
Vitamin
Water
Think about those words for a minute.
Diet - in food product terms, it generally means an alternate version of a product containing fewer calories than the original.
Vitamin - any of various organic substances that are essential to nutrition, but do not provide energy or serve as building units. (IOW, no calories.)
Water - clear liquid comprised of oxidized hydrogen atoms that, when pure, is odorless and tasteless. (Nope, no calories here...move along.)
Ok, so water=0 calories + vitamins=0 calories. How can you make that any more *diet*? Because, if you have water....with vitamins! in a bottle, isn't that already the most *diet* you can get?
Unless, of course, you don't want it to taste like water.
Personally, I'll take beer over water. If I'm gonna drink calories, I want to enjoy it.
Besides, fish poop in water.
0>;~}
Posted by DL Sly at 11:22 AM | Comments (27)
April 08, 2009
Dang
Don't you just hate it when this happens?
Where in the helk are the 111th Congress when you need them?
Update: No wonder we can't find them. They're playing hide the sausage.
I am so going to the Bad Place for that one.
Posted by Cassandra at 02:01 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
April 03, 2009
In Honor of....
Our own Blog Princess. Whom, after laboring laboriously throughout the night, actually judged not one, ladies and gentlemen, but all unjudged caption contests. (I think this was solely to remove a source of harassment for yours truly.......oh, and because I judged mine in light-speed fashion -- as compared to *some*, that is.)
0>;~}
So, without further ado:
Because surely such an event was divinely inspired.....and it's Wookie time.
Posted by DL Sly at 06:13 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 14, 2009
Obviously....
...the Armorer has never seen The Princess drive.
As Carrie can attest, if he had he would surely know that her mad speed management skillz would have allowed her to rudely violate the space-time continuum, thereby neatly arriving home just before she left in the first place.
Posted by Cassandra at 10:29 AM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
December 05, 2008
The Daily DimWit: White Boy Fails Nihlism 101
The next thing you know they'll be teaching these kids some sort of twisted PC nonsense like "White men are human, too":
The student council at an Ottawa university has reversed its controversial decision to pull out of an annual fundraiser for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.Following vocal protests from students, the Carleton University Students Association voted unanimously Monday night to:
Support next year's cystic fibrosis fundraiser, called Shinerama.
Donate at least $1,000 to the organization.
Issue a formal apology.
In addition, the student councillor who crafted the controversial motion to drop the fundraiser resigned.Donnie Northrup received hate mail and death threats after he suggested the council find a new charity to support during Orientation Week instead of participating in the same fundraiser as other universities across the country.
His motion incorrectly claimed the disease affects "only white people, and primarily men" and said students should feel their fundraising efforts "will serve their diverse communities."
One other councillor, Sean Maguire, also resigned.
"I love this university," he said, sniffling, his voice choked with emotion. "And it pains me to no end to know that we have damaged its reputation."
Ariel Kimmel, a second-year political science student at Carleton, said the student council embarrassed the whole university.
"I really hope there's lessons learned — that they do need to start representing their students better," she said.
The half vast Editorial Staff were vastly heartened to learn that cystic fibrosis afflicts non-whites and women, too. That, at the least, makes it defensible to support the effort to find a cure.
Posted by Cassandra at 08:29 AM | Comments (17) | TrackBack
April 22, 2008
What Is This Country Coming To?
Details were scarce Friday, but the Wings have been told by the NHL that head octopus wrangler Al Sobotka no longer may swing the mollusks over his head while removing them from the ice at Joe Louis Arena. If he (or anyone else) does, the team will be fined $10,000.That's $1,250 per tentacle.
In an e-mail to the Free Press, NHL spokesman Frank Brown gave this explanation: "Because matter flies off the octopus and gets on the ice when he does it." The Wings wouldn't comment.
Ducks general manager Brian Burke complained about Sobotka's swinging last year. Before Friday's game, an octopus landed on the ice, as usual, and Nashville defenseman Greg Zanon whacked it aside with his stick.
First the Ass of Life crack.
And now this.
We're going to bed...
Posted by Cassandra at 12:32 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
March 28, 2008
Oh Yes, Yes We Can
Make fun of ourselves, that is.
Along about quitting time at work this Friday (not that we're done yet) the half vast editorial staff looked down at ourselves and noted with no little amusement that we are clothed all in...
[wait for it, people]
Pink.
Oh yeah. Go for it, Carrie, Deb, Sly, and MaryAnn. Oh yeah, it's your birthday. Uh-huh.
And we're about to quaff a very pink pomegranate martini. Because we are getting a headache.
We hope that was good for you.
Because the world moved for us.
Posted by Cassandra at 05:22 PM | Comments (29) | TrackBack
February 12, 2008
OK. I Suck, Massively...
But then you knew that, didn't you?
Posted by Cassandra at 06:08 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack