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RantsCounterRants:  Buchanan the Butthead

 

A lot of folks with an anti-war position have been pleasantly surprised to find they share this with Mr. Buchanan.  He's been an isolationist for years – his anti-war position in the case of Iraq really shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise.  In spite of finding myself in a similar camp with Buchanan, I’ve been reluctant to say anything about him that might appear to be an endorsement of his views.

 

No problem – he just made it incredibly easy to distance myself from anything he believes.  While tuned to MSNBC earlier this evening, I watched Buchanan go off, calling homosexuality as immoral and illegal as incest.

 

What a butthead.  What an idiot.  What a moron.  I could go on, but you get the point.  It's the same old bigoted Pat Buchanan.  No new tricks for this dog.

 

Consensual sex between loving adults who are not blood relations is in no way comparable to a relationship between immediate blood relatives, under age or consenting (particular where there is dominant power over a minor by virtue of parenthood).  I cannot fathom how Buchanan and the origin of Buchanan’s rant on this topic, Rick Santorum, can’t make that distinction.

 

Buchanan thankfully is not in a position of government leadership.  Unfortunately, Santorum is – and shouldn’t be.  If Santorum can’t make that distinction or keep his personal biases to himself, what other distinctions will he fail to make?  What other personal biases will he foist upon the public?

 

I changed the channel.  Vote with your feet, people, make the distinction.

 

  8:34:11 PM    comment []

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Movies:  what lies ahead

 

Netflix cofirmed mailing of the following:

 

The Fast Runner – Inuit legend comes to life (Foreign)

 

The Mothman Prophecies – my nod to a non-indie/non-art flick (Sci-Fi/Fantasy)

 

Truly, Madly, Deeply – A ghost story, because I haven’t seen one in a while (Romance)

 

All three are due to arrive within the next 24 hours.  I’d better check the popcorn inventory.

 

The big question: will hubby stay awake through any of these?  So far Netflix has been a bust with him…actually, it’s my taste in films that’s a bust, he and I are not fully compatible in the movie department (as evidenced by his twice-watching that waste of time, Femme Fatale).

 

Thanks again to the Real Live Preacher for his movie recommendations and to all the commenters who provided feedback at his site.

 

  5:02:03 PM    comment []

U

 

Shortie Sorties:  Wrong -- Just plain wrong

 

There’s a raft load of just plain wrong stuff about which I could rant.  More than I’ve ever seen at one time in my life.  As a kid it was Viet Nam and corruption in politics.  As an emerging young adult it was the poor around the world and voodoo economics.  Now?  Damn, every day there’s some fresh new horror.  It just doesn’t stop.

 

Breastfeeding: an obscenity?

 

Boycott Eckerd’s if you are a parent with cute photos of your kids without adequate clothing.  Especially if you’re breastfeeding in any pictures.  (Damn, I've got photos of my youngest in the bathtub, playing happily -- I'm worried! Was that child porn??)  What a supreme violation of privacy.  I’m surprised that the local police didn’t find something subversive in these family photos, too -- like family gatherings.  Maybe they’ll accuse breastfeeding mother Mercado of social terrorism and hold her kids indefinitely under the Patriot Act.

 

Does the Easter Bunny visit Guantanamo?

 

Maybe they could hold the breastfeeding mother’s kids in Guantanamo, along with other children.  Did you hear this, that the U.S. is holding children in this black hole?  What a crock!!  God forbid any American child should be held by a foreign government in this same manner, though.  Can you imagine what this must do to children who are held?  Do you think they’ll grow up to be people who respect and trust the U.S.?  Or could they hold grudges about the forcible separation from the love of family that will encourage them to become terrorists some day?  What kind of lowly animals have we become, to rationalize that holding anyone underage as an enemy combatant is moral?

 

Today's dirty word: Gingrich

 

That one word should be enough to tell you there’s a double-standard afoot.  Gingrich is bitching that the State Department is undermining Bush; he claims the State Department is broken.  Good gravy, the only thing that’s not broken is the State Department!  There’ve been people working there with real integrity!  If anybody’s been undermined it’s Colin Powell – he was hung out to dry, his integrity compromised when forced to peddle the Bush Administration’s neocon war.  Notice the careful tippy-toeing, not mentioning Powell by name.  Just spit it out, puppet boy, you’ll never recover from your broken American values anyhow.  Go ahead, show us all your cards – badmouth Powell, display that neocon arm stuck up your backside, Gingrich.  You’ve got nothing to lose.  Or maybe that was the point of throwing Gingrich out front; no neocon or Bush Administration person getting their hands dirty with this verbal sabotage.

 

 

(A big shout out to filchyboy for the link from the Dallas Observer on breastfeeding as obscenity.  Filchyboy may be posting infrequently again because his laptop’s being replaced.  Send him some positive vibes for his prompt return to the blogosphere.)

 

 

  2:12:24 PM    comment []

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Post-dinner post-mortem

 

We survived.  It wasn’t an episode of “Bewitched”, where with a single twitch of my nose the feast is set upon the table in time for the dinner party.  (Nice image, though, Kane!)

 

Not.

 

I triaged everything when hubby called just before 1:00 p.m. to confirm dinner, then hit the ground running:

 

§         Put on bread to bake

§         Clean the bathroom, pick up all the odd Easter debris in the living room  the kids left out before noon

§         Clean kitchen to meet having-guests-for-dinner level of cleanliness (make sure dishwasher is empty, get out the good dishes, put away any stragglers from last night, check the wine glasses for spots, other sundry obsessive tasks)

§         Get wine from basement for dinner – Fat Bastard shiraz or Vox Populi red table wine?  Both, what the hell;

§         Make the grocery list and menu

§         Pre-treat and toss Kool-Aid stained dining room chair slip covers into washer

§         Mop the kitchen and bathroom floors (to dry while out of the house)

§         Run to the closest grocery store (hope for the best – will they have angel food cake?)

§         Pull slipcovers out of washer, find previous load of towels in dryer still damp, pull it out and put in the slipcovers (hope to remember the damp towels later and cross-fingers that the aged and decrepit dryer isn’t crapping out NOW)

§         Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees (in defiance of instructions which say 450)

§         Remember to pull my frying pan collection out of the oven and put in my car (because we live in a bungalow-sized ranch and I have no other place to put them on a temporary basis)

§         Peel and chop garlic for roast and bread dipping oil, peel garlic for mashed potatoes

§         Massage roast with garlic, sea salt, rosemary, thyme and cracked black pepper  (while wishing it was me being massaged with same, sans garlic)

§         Run to the basement to toss slip covers in the dryer and hope like hell they don’t shrink or wrinkle too badly

§         Put roast into now-hot oven – studded with a meat thermometer which doesn’t appear to be working – turn down heat to 350 degrees

§         Pre-heat sauté pan for mushrooms

§         Bring potatoes up from basement, scrub, put onto boil with whole garlic cloves

§         Peel carrots like a mad woman, clean broccoli, chop all into bite-sized pieces and set into steamer on stove

§         Wash mushrooms (I cheated and bought sliced ones, sshhh), put on to sauté in olive oil in sauté pan which is too hot and smoking; turn on fan

§         Chop and wash romaine and head lettuce, slap into bowl, julienne carrot and red cabbage for garniture and throw on top

§         Prep coffee maker, only to realize I don’t know whether boss is a decaf or regular person or if he’s an espresso only type

§         Realize I might be burning the mushrooms; throw in some beef broth to rehydrate them, along with a chopped clove of garlic

§         Answer phone – hubby calling from the office at 5:40 pm, wanting to know if there’s anything he can do to help (you can imagine my thoughts here), offers to pick up kids from sitters and says the boss is 20 minutes away.

§         Turn potatoes down low, resign myself to mashing when hubby gets here with kids

§         Put vegetables on to steam

§         Toss red wine in with mushrooms, which look fine and smell great in spite of gross neglect at back of stove

§         Check roast through oven window – can’t see because of stupid grill on window; peek in oven in defiance of instructions not to open door during baking only to find the meat thermometer truly is broken; swear loudly and shut oven door quickly

§         Pull bread out of machine to cool

§         Dash around the house, make a once-over with the vacuum on traffic areas and on loose Legos and beads on den floor

§         Grab the ubiquitous black-wardrobe-which-doesn’t-need-ironing and head for the basement bathroom

§         Realize that I’ve forgotten the slipcovers, run back up the stairs and put them on the dining room chairs, wrinkles and all (one cover has shrunk, damnitall, put that one on a kid’s chair), hoping no one arrives while I still look like a sweaty, manic freak

§         Run back to the basement bathroom, madly shower and makeup for dinner while hearing footsteps and a strange voice above my head.

 

<deep breath>

 

Enter the kitchen as if nothing happened in the last 5 hours but bon-bon eating.

 

I have no idea how I did this kind of stuff when I had a full-time job.  I really don’t.  I think I must be blocking it from memory for some reason.  Although I must admit I usually had a couple days advance notice, not hours.

 

Everything else fell into place, without too much delay.  I chilled the wine too much, though.  The roast came out perfectly, a nice medium rare.  I had resigned myself to a overcooked piece of grey flesh.  Hubby mashed the potatoes for me while talking with the boss (two words: potato ricer – no kitchen should be without one, hubby can make perfect mashed potatoes with no coaching).

 

The kids were even moderately charming.  I think the sitter must have coached my son before he came home; he said during dinner, Wow, Mom, great dinner and This is very tasty, Mom.  I’ll have to remember to tip her this week…

 

I guess I could do it again, dinner for the boss on a few hours notice.  Just not this week.

 

  10:56:07 AM    comment []