Attack of the Penis

Kremlin critic and former chess champion Garry Kasparov was attacked last weekend by a flying penis during an address to Kremlin opposition activists. That's right, a flying penis came buzzing toward him as he gave his address, in a move he called "below the belt." Check out the video:



According to the Moscow Times, the penis-prank was staged by a couple of Young Russian Activists. I love the look on the bodyguard's face as he first sees the flying terror, and then slaps it out of the air.

Right Wing Conservative Talk Show Host - Moron!

This is one of the funniest clips I've ever seen, I just have to share. I have never even heard of this guy, Kevin James, but his ignorance has made him infamous. Hilarious!

How Healthy is John McCain?

“It was the size of a dime and as thick as a nickel—a discolored blotch on John McCain's left temple,” starts the article in Time Magazine that asks, “How Healthy is John McCain.” The article then goes on to how he didn’t pay much attention to it during the 2000 Republican primaries, and then finally took the time to have it checked after being defeated.

Now, I have to tell you that, if I see anything new ON MY FACE the size of a dime and as thick as a nickel, that almost merits a visit to the emergency room. Hello, am I alone on this? Truthfully, if anything shows up ANYWHERE ON MY BODY that wasn’t there before that’s the size of a dime and the thickness of a nickel needs immediate medical attention!

Okay, I have admit that as I get older, I get strange things on my skin that I never saw when I was a younger woman. Once a wart-like thing appeared on the tip of my nose. I made an appointment with the dermatologist but there was a two month wait (apparently I’m not the only one who thinks that things that show up on your skin overnight aren’t good). But before I could get the thing checked, seemingly overnight it morphed into a sharp-pointed monstrosity that stuck out like about 1/16 of an inch. I panicked and call the dermatologist and said the “witches wart” (my son’s affectionate term, which he named while I was waiting for my appointment) had changed and I couldn’t wait for the appointment. She agreed and told me to come in the next day. While I was sitting and waiting for her, the medical assistant came in with a large needle which she jabbed in my nose and numbed it. Wow, I’m thinking, they are pretty no-nonsense. But then the doctor comes in, moves the thing around and to my complete surprise and horror, whips out a razor blade, that’s right, just like those things you see in your shaving device, and slices the tiny horror right off the tip of my nose and drops it in a vial of alcohol. While I’m sitting there in shock she presses a sterilized gauze pad to my nose to stem the bleeding, then a band-aid. Well then. “I don’t think it’s anything but we will call you as soon as we get the lab results,” she says, ushering me out. The whole thing probably took five minutes.

I get the call a couple of days later. “Good news,” says the nurse who called me. “Your skin lesion is only a Keratosis, also known as an OLD AGE BARNACLE. It’s totally harmless, but come back and see us if it grows back.” An Old Age Barnacle. Now that’s a sobering thing to have growing on your face, right on the tip of your nose.

But back to the dime sized, as thick as a nickel growth on John McCain’s face. I know how men are. They don’t like going to the Doctor, and sometimes have to be pushed. But c’mon. A COIN growing on your face is surely cause for alarm. It turned out to be malignant melanoma when he finally got to the doctor to get it checked and required 5 ½ hours of surgery. That’s right, melanoma. Bob Marley died of melanoma! The article also states that he had a malignant melanoma removed from his shoulder in 1993. You have to ask - if that had been you, wouldn’t the appearance of a dime sized lesion the thickness of a nickel be cause for alarm? What if he had won the nomination? Would he have gone on campaigning, not taking time to have the thing checked out and really put his life in danger? The article states that there’s a 40% chance of a melanoma re-occurring, and that when it re-occurs it’s usually trickier because it will often not appear on the skin but inside the body. I don’t know, 40% seems like some pretty high odds to me, especially for a man his age.

Just something to think about. Although I hope with all my heart that McCain gets stomped by the Democratic nominee (and I say Obama!) because the Republicans have just done a miserable job over the past 8 years, after reading this article I now additionally hope he loses because of the stress running a campaign and (God forbid!) being President would put on his body. If I were his wife I would tell him to go sit down somewhere.

Morehouse Glee Club Concert

Music lover that I am I have a deep appreciation for most musical instruments, but am particularly fond of the piano. I have even learned to appreciate the bagpipe, after learning that it was intended to be played outdoors (they had a bagpipe player once in church playing "Amazing Grace" and I almost jumped out of my skin), and even the much-maligned accordian. However, over the years I've come to the conclusion that there is no finer instrument than the human voice.

So I was really looking forward to last Saturday's concert - the Morehouse Glee Club was making another appearance at New Hope Baptist Church. I didn't see them the last time they were here but heard rave reviews from people who had seen them. I got there about 10 minutes before the concert was to start so had to sit in the balcony, because there were 1,200 people there! The concert was a fund raiser for the Alphonse Robinson African American Music Association, so it appeared to be a successful concert for them.

I was talking to the people around me and they came in so quickly and quietly that I was startled - there were about 40 African American young men dressed to the nines in tuxedos - multi-hued, from bald to dreads, and beautiful to behold. But when they opened their mouths and started singing I was floored. The voices were so pure and crisp that it seemed almost fake. Almost every song was sung a capella; some with a piano accompaniment. I felt myself tear up a couple of times, so that's one of my measures of good music - for it me it means I'm actually feeling the music as well as hearing it.

After an intermission the young men came back (quickly and precisely, almost militaristic) in sports coats and ties. The Quartet performed and had the audience in the palm of their hands with their hilarious (and skillful) performance poking fun at the black church. Then the choir reassembled themselves and pulled out bongo and conga drums and tambourines for a rousing performance of "Betehelemu," sung in Yoruba, with precision clapping (in the air) that is hard to describe, but let me just stay that I had to struggle to stay in my seat. Check out the video I found on YouTube of them performing this song at Spellman during the Christmas Holidays:



This song earned them a standing ovation. After another African-inspired song with drums, the rest of the second half was dedicated to traditional spiritual music and we were treated to several breathtaking solos. After their performance each young man stated his name, class and major (quickly and precisely, probably only taking four minutes or so), then all the Morehouse alumni were invited down to sing the Morehouse Song. It made me puff up with pride to see all those unbelievably talented, accomplished and smart young men keeping the tradition of the Morehouse Glee Club alive. So, if you are lucky enough to have them come through your city you owe it to yourself to see their performance. Or go to their webhouse to learn more about them and purchase a CD:

http://www.mcgclub.com/

Also, check out the story on CBS.com today about Morehouse's first white Valedictorian:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/05/15/national/main4098548.shtml

Lucille's Creole Cafe

So, my Auntie has been in town for two weeks (visiting her daughter, celebrating my cousin's birthday and Mother's Day) and left last night. We celebrated her last day here with lunch at Lucille's Creole Cafe at Alameda and Logan. This made my third visit, my first lunch. I've been there for breakfast twice before.

Beignet

Biscuit

My first time at Lucille's was breakfast, and I had the Oyster's Rockefeller. This was a bed of steamed (just right) spinach topped with scrambled eggs and fried oysters, dripping with Rockefeller sauce (I can't tell you what's in this sauce, only that it's rich and delicious). Oh, and you get the giant biscuit, grits or potatoes, or the half and half of grits and potatoes, which I opted for. This was on President's Day, before our annual movie marathon, and we were hungry and had eyes bigger than our tummies, so we ordered beignets BEFORE the meal. And, since it was a Creole Cafe I had the delicious chicory coffee. The beignets were brown fried dough pillows that reminded me very much of sopapillas (but for the thick coating of powdered sugar they put on them), and Lucille's offers strawberry preserves and apple butter to dress them up with. We tried both and I preferred the strawberry preserves. The giant biscuit they bring with the meal was frustrating, because it was hot and delicious but you have to decide. If you eat it, you won't be able to eat your meal. I ate some of it, with butter and some of the strawberry preserves. It was light, crunchy on top and simply delicious. The Oyster's Rockefeller was a piece of art. The oysters were crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside, and the spinach was steamed to perfection, not mushy. On my second breakfast I had the "Creole Breakfast," which was a serving of meaty (with ham) red beans, topped with a couple of poached eggs and hollandaise sauce, grits and potatoes. A rich combination of fiery creole seasoning (in the beans) tempered by the creamy hollandaise. Oh and that huge biscuit. I fell in love with the red beans - spicy, perfect and meaty. I recommend this dish.

Above - Red beans and rice with andouille sausage, and corn bread below

Yesterday at lunch I had the Oyster Po' Boy. I asked them to substitute a side of red beans instead of the slaw or french fries, which they were happy to do. The Po' Boy was served on a kind of ciabatta bread with artichoke-mayo, lettuce and those delightful oysters. And instead of just a regular pickle, I was delighted to bite into a crunchy, pickled okra-pod pickle. In the end I ended up just eating the inside of the sandwich after struggling with all that bread, because I couldn't resist those red beans and ate them first. Auntie and girl-cousin had red beans and rice, which was served andouille sausage and slabs of moist, delicious corn bread. Boy-cousin had some standard bacon-and-egg breakfast, and complained that it wasn't enough food, although it was served with one of those mondo-biscuits.

Oyster Po'Boy with Red beans

I couldn't help noticing what the people at the next table were eating, especially since they were all up in our conversation after my loud boy-cousin launched into an incredible story about the court hearing of a family member had them all intrigued. The Bloody Mary's that they were drinking looked, well, sinful - course black pepper floating around in rich tomato, with a lovely kebab of an olive, okra-pickle and pink shrimp. They split this spicy, cheesy-looking casserole full of sausage and had a pink sauce they spooned over their biscuits, which was probably Lucille's version of sausage gravy. It looked fantastic, so that's what I will have next time. In the meantime, check out Lucille's for breakfast, lunch, or both. It hasn't disappointed me yet.

http://www.luciles.com/flash/

Baby Bunny Update

Some good and bad news on the bunnies. I suspected that they had been abandoned by their mother, because they were on top of the dirt for several days and had that wild-eyed abandoned-I'm-starving-help-me-who-the-hell-are-these-giants-looking-at-us look, and would dig furiously every time one of us came out the door to look at them. So, I thought briefly of getting an eye-dropper and feeding them warm milk, but remembered what my friend Judy told me about baby bunnies. She says they succumb easily to heart attacks when they are frightened, and for that reason wild baby bunnies cannot be raised by humans. Well, based on their reaction every time I came out I believe, but I couldn't just let them starve. So I did what any 10-year old would do - I set out a saucer of warm milk in the flower bed. Huddled together and shivering, they just stared with what looked like one huge eye. A couple of hours later I go out to check on them, and in their struggle and haste to get as far away from me as they could they kicked dirt and bark into the saucer of milk trying to dig into the dirt. So I took the saucer of milk away. Perhaps, I'm thinking, they are already weaned, and their mother just pushed them from the nest and wants them to find their own food. So, of course, I did what any 10-year old would do in these desperate circumstances and grated a carrot. I took the grated carrot out and sprinkled it in the dirt, and ignored the babies as they desperately tried to get away from me, tiny rear legs kicking frantically.

A couple of hours later I looked out the window and saw two things trying to make their way to the deck - a squirrel and a rabbit. Barging out the back door I yelled at the greedy squirrel to get away - I know he was after the grated carrots. The squirrels around here are the size of footballs; I can't figure out for the life of me how they can climb trees without breaking branches. The rabbit hopped away, but reluctantly, so I was happy, and assumed this was Mama coming back from her 4-day bender, or whatever she was up to. I wish there was such a thing as rabbit birth control, because that irresponsible ho was probably out there getting pregnant again, and then thought, "oh yeah! I have hungry, dependent babies!" before getting up off her back and coming back to the yard.

So the next afternoon, I go out to check on things, and there is this poor, pitiful little body, no bigger than a gerbil, lying lifeless in the dirt. The runt. The one that wasn't vigorous. The other two are gone. I figure she came back for her brood, and cruel nature, she only took the healthy ones and left the runt, or possibly even helped him out of this cruel world. But the two kickers are definately gone. Hopefully, I will see them again someday, and chase them out of my garden.

Tyra to Hilly

Just finished watching John Edward's endorsement of Obama, and got tired of the talking head's analysis of it. I swear, they would analyze the crap out of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if someone said Obama had left it on his plate in a diner after just taking a small bite.

Anyway, I need to share this video of Tyra Banks telling Hilly it's time to give it up because I found it so amusing. Enjoy:

Babies in my Flower Bed

I have been harassed by rabbits for a while. Like a gang, they hang out under the bushes, on the deck, leaving their "pebbles" for people to clean up and digging holes in the yard. A couple of weeks ago I was having trouble with one fat-@ss who kept digging in a flower bed. She would dig holes, then I would add topsoil and fill it in only to notice it dug twice as deep two days later. And why, oh why, was she adding scraps of plastic and old flower pots to the flower bed? Was she planning on planting flowers in the flower bed, or maybe something else?

So I was surprised this morning to go out and notice two furballs in the dirt this morning, about the size of gerbils - one laying on his tummy, nose twitching, and one buried in the dirt with only a stub of a tail and a tiny rear leg showing. Baby bunnies!! I have never seen bunnies so small. The only thing that identified them as baby bunnies and not gerbils were the long ears, still only about two inches long because the lil' things are so tiny.

Well, I'm in love. I'm thinking about names, and fully intend to chronicle their growth and probably even provide carrots and bits of apple once they are weaned. I haven't seen the Mama lately, so I'm hoping she's around but I've but aside my contempt for long-eared rodents since discovering the tiny, precious babies.

Quick update: I just saw a red-tailed hawk circling over the yard from the window. I stopped typing and ran out, yelling and waving my arms. I don't know if the thing saw the babies, but I can't take any chances.

50 Cent Robbed in Angola

In case you missed this video, here is 50 Cent being robbed of his necklace (right on stage!) in Angola. One has to wonder if this was a diamond necklace:

MSN Liars - Read the Truth

From "The Field:"


Operation Anti-Chaos: The Narrative on “White Voters” Is Fiction
By Al Giordano

I turn on the TV, read the political columnists (and a significant number of analytically-challenged bloggers, too) and all I hear is a bunch of white folk prattling on about their favorite narrative: “Obama’s losing white voters!”

They’ve swallowed the Clinton racially-obsessed spin, hook, line and sinker. Some, because they are gullible, haven’t an original idea in their little pea brains, and follow the pack of what everybody else is talking about. Others, because they like to toss around knowing falsehoods. Nary a superdelegate can go on Fox News without being berated by an anchorperson screeching (this is pretty close to an exact quote): “But your duty as a superdelegate is to select the most electable and that’s Hillary Clinton!” That these anchorpersons are Republican partisans openly cheering for Senator Clinton is our first clue of the game afoot. One of the major successes of Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos is that it has got all the right-wing pundits and reporters marching lockstep behind the effort to give Clinton enough oxygen to keep slashing away at Senator Obama, who remains the prohibitive likely Democratic nominee.

And when Clinton wins state primaries that, because of demographics, she was always going to win - last week, Pennsylvania and next week, Indiana - they then wave that event up like a blood-soaked flag as proof of their narrative: See? See? We told you so! White people won’t vote for Obama!

So imagine my pleasant surprise this morning to see a New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, who did what none of these chattering lunkheads have done. He looked at the hard data of how voters, white and black, view the two Democratic candidates - favorably or negatively? - and how those views have progressed over time. The data is based on multiple CBS-New York Times polls (among the most respected survey outfits among competing pollsters) over two years and more. Check it out:

(Go to the website to view the graphs - http://ruralvotes.com/thefield/?p=1144#comment-26926)

Nobody - not blogger, nor superdelegate, nor cable news anchor - should open their mouths with another word about this contest until they’ve studied those graphs and the numbers upon which they are based. Blow explains:

Since January, the Clintons have pummeled Barack Obama with racially tinged comments and questions about his character…

The question is this: Have white Democrats soured on Obama? Apparently not. Although his unfavorable rating from the group is up five percentage points since last summer in polls conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, his favorable rating is up just as much.

Wait. The numbers show that the cynical effort to turn the 2008 campaign into a race riot has hurt the popularity of one candidate among an important demographic, and it’s not Barack Obama:

On the other hand, black Democrats’ opinion of Hillary Clinton has deteriorated substantially (her favorable rating among them is down 36 percentage points over the same period).

So, to sum up: Look at the damn graphs. You can see that Clinton is in a staggering free-fall among African-American voters, her favorability is down 36 points while 17 percent view her more negatively than before, while Obama’s favorable and negative ratings among whites have paired at five point increases. You can even see the small dip - about two percentage points - in his popularity among whites that can be attributed to the news cycles about his ex-pastor, and see that it has leveled out and is now on a straight horizontal line (meanwhile, Clinton’s numbers among blacks continue on an extreme downward precipice). The greater context is that even including Obama’s slight dip, he’s more popular today among white voters than he ever was prior to February.

Not since Ronald Reagan has an American presidential candidate withstood such an assault in the media and seen his popularity not hurt by it, but, rather, galvanized by it. That’s what is meant, in politics, by the term “Teflon.”

Those facts won’t stop many media (and Internet) talking heads from continuing - whether out of gullibility or intentional dishonesty - to prop up the “white voters” narrative, but it ought to inoculate you, kind reader, from believing it.

Don’t let yourself get upset when some idiot repeats the false media narrative. Don’t plead with them to tell the truth (they won’t; remember, they’re either stupid or dishonest). Mock them. Ridicule them. Expose them as the lightweights they are showing themselves to be, with all the confidence that understanding the hard data ought to provide you.

Let Operation Anti-Chaos begin!