Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Buy Now

I think my pot head kids were onto something.

It just stands to reason if you smoke it it will instantly enter your blood stream and probably save your kidneys some damage, too.

I wonder what the policy for smoking THAT in the workplace will be.

Dont' forget to enjoy the Snow Moon this month.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Sunday Supper

Since it's been raining I've been craving Hoppin John. Don't ask me why, as there is no rhyme or reason to my cravings. (Maybe it is one of those comfort foods as it reminds me of the ham hocks and beans my mom use to make). I craved Pralines and Cream during the cold snap (on a nightly basis) and I wasn't the only person bundled up in 31 Flavors at 9:30 at night.

Hoppin John is an African-American Classic. And there are as many ways to prepare it as there are myths as to how it got it's name.

One myth is the custom of inviting a neighbor to eat by saying "hop in, John."
Another is an old ritual where the children hopped around the table. But my favorite is "a man came a hoppin when his wife prepared the dish."

And here's why. Today John came a hoppin in from the garage and couldn't wait for the cornbead to finish so he dished it from the pot and ate it standing up in the kitchen. NOTE: we have a table

Sometimes I make it with black-eyed peas, rice and spicey sausage.

Today I made it with black-eyed peas, rice, ham steak, (I couldn't find a ham hock) and shrimp. Seasoned with as much Cayenne pepper as I could tolerate, garlic salt, fresh garlic, onions and the rice is made with chicken broth in lieu of water.














With a side dish of corn bread (made with white corn meal) with creamed corn and cheese. I find the corn bread is always best when baked in a cast iron skillet and served with a dollop of butter. Because food should be cooked with lots of love and lots of butter. I do believe it's time for seconds.


Thursday, January 25, 2007

No Rest for the Wicked

For the third week in a row I have to go into work on my day off. I've had two days off since I returned to work from our holiday shutdown. I shouldn't be complaining because if you added up the hours I've spent twidling my thumbs, it's a wash for sure. I'm just trying to find solutions, help our customer and everywhere I turn I'm greeted with "it can't be done" "we've never done that" "their not capable of that level of expertise". And the more digging I do the more areas I see that need to be improved upon. So wherein the complaint might not be valid the opportunity should still be taken to improve.

And all the fucking complaining. It's unbelievable. How dare you ask me to do my job? All these people could be spending their time productively, instead of being negative and/or pointing fingers. And the real rub is to hear people complaining about our customer! The one who is always right.

Even those that have valid reasons for thinking the customer's request is unreasonable I thought would have at least entertained the idea of "hey, let's be positive and take this opportunity to improve." Let's spend a little more money on training and changing attitude and philosophies, but apparently, I'm delusional.

I don't understand why people don't get it. Or maybe it's me, but it seems to be happening everywhere. It's ignorance. It's arrogance. Why would we choose to sit on our ass and complain when we have the opportunity to save our ass?

I'm not saying that what we produce is bad. It's not, it's merely a matter of interpretation. So, if the customer wants it better we have an obligation to try and make it better.

But what is to become of us if we don't try?

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Thanks Julie

 

It has been so cold in the house (even with a heater) that Hank has been shivering. Well, he's a lucky dog because today Julie gave him a jacket.






Before he got the jacket (a Pendleton, at that) he was using the heating pad for an electric blanket. I use the heating pad for my back and you can see by the picture who won that battle.




And to think some people treat their pets like animals!

Friday, January 12, 2007

The Wolf

A pox upon this bloody bastard. The governor should be removed from the endangered species list so HE can be hunted. And who the fuck calls them selves Butch anymore anyway? I'm pissed. The wolf is hunting to survive whereas most yoyo's who hunt do it for sport and we can thank Christianity for that. See, before the introduction of Christianity, most civilized Pagan regions hunted as a means to survive. Christianity brought us hunting for sport. They said the bible said we had dominion over all the animals, so Fuck em!

Both American Indians and settlers saw the wolf as an equal and learned to hunt by observing the wolfves skill and lived in harmony with wolf.

In Iran and Japan the wolf was a god. In Scandinavian and Slavic countries the wolves were messengers of gods. Odin had two wolves which he hand fed because he only drank liquor. My kind of god!

These fucking whinners are moaning because the wolves are eating all the elk. Well they don't eat tofu you fucking useless inbreed!

My only consolation will be if old Butch Otter invites sure-shot-Cheny along and gets blasted in his fucking face.

But really the wolf represents freedom to me and we should never forget the wolf (or any other animal for that matter) has a right to exist and we, as alleged caretakers of this planet, haven't the right to take that away for the sake of sport.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Rantings on the Sacred Disease

Aristotle was apparently the first to connect epilepsy and genius.

"Sometimes the same things that cause epilepsy result in giftedness. If you damage an area [of the brain] early enough in life, the corresponding area on the other side has a chance to overdevelop." Dr. Paul Spiers

"A temporal lobe focus in the superior individual may spark an extraordinary search for that entity we alternately call truth or beauty." Dr. Bear


And the epileptic geniuses are:

Edgar Allan Poe – Bud Abbott - Sir Walter Scott - Jonathan Swift - Lord Byron – Moliere - Alfred Lloyd Tennyson - Charles Dickens – Lewis Carroll – Fyodor Dostoevsky - Leo Tolstoy – Gustave Flaubert – Alexander the Great – Julius Caesar (Shakespeare knew that the Roman statesman suffered from the 'falling sickness and incorporated it into his play...He fell down in the market place, and foamed at the mouth, and was speechless.'– Napoleon Bonaparte – Harriet Tubman – Saint Paul- Joan of Arc (who also heard voices)– Soren Kierkagard – Truman Capote – Richard Burton –Ludwig Van Beethoven – Peter Tchaikovsky –Niccolo Paganini – George Frederick Handel- Chanda Gunn (US 2006 Women’s Hockey) - Danny Glover- Margaux Hemingway -Lenin died in Status Epilepticus - Neil Young- Jimmy Reed -Adam Horovitz- Karen Armstrong - Pius IX- Charles V- and Me

"But there is no bodily infirmity, not even leprosy or epilepsy, which cannot be caused by witches…. For we have often found that certain people have been visited with epilepsy or the falling sickness by means of eggs which have been buried with dead bodies, especially the dead bodies of witches, together with other ceremonies of which we cannot speak, particularly when these eggs have been given to a person either in food or drink." Excerpt from a 1494 handbook on witch-hunting and served as a guidebook for the Inquisition for 200 years, from the late 1400s until the time of the 1692 Salem witch trials in the United States.

The word epilepsy is derived from the Greek word epilambanein, meaning to seize or to attack. Hippocrates wrote the first book about epilepsy, "On the Sacred Disease," around 400 B.C.

Treatments:

Castor
As early as ancient Greek and Roman times, a resinous secretion from the scent glands of the beaver (castor sacks) was used as a remedy for the "holy disease": Castoreum. Up until well into the 19th century, this substance was widely used as a sedative and a remedy for convulsions and was to be found in every apothecary

The human skull (cranum humanum)
This was considered to be an effective remedy for treating the falling sickness throughout many eras: "Scrape a little matter from a human scull and administer this over a period of several months. If the patient is a man, the scull must be that of a woman, and vice versa" (folk remedy from Württemberg).

Mugwort (artemisia vulgaris)
In earlier centuries, this was the magical cure-all. Even in orthodox medicine mugwort was believed to be an effective remedy for epilepsy. Absinth, which has in it the amaroids from mugwort flowers, was also used to treat epilepsy.


Of the estimated 40 million people in the world with epilepsy, 32 million have no access to treatment at all - either because services are non existent or, just as importantly, because epilepsy is not viewed as a medical problem or a treatable brain disorder. Now is that anyway to treat a genius?

Saint Valentine, patron saint of the epileptics, of those who suffer from the falling down disease, yes, the disease with a thousand names, the superstitious, uneducated who think they are possessed by the devil, protect the 32 million.