Month: November 2008

Thanksgiving Wrap Up

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Didn’t get a lot of hours billed this week (Only 57) but enjoyed the time off with family and friends.

Thanksgiving day we had the menu I previously posted about. All total we had 7 people and we packed off everyone with deserts and food and still have a ton left over.

Friday we went over to our friends Beth and Nick’s place to have a nice decadent little time. We enjoyed a $46 bottle of Pinot Noir, and a Barolo to start. Then we had thinly sliced warm breads with various cheeses including a Stilton, and two others with herbs in them, along with some chicken pate.

Later on we enjoyed some delicious meat pie along with sweet potatoes, stuffing and cranberry sauce.

Saturday we went up to Salem, MA. Salem is an interesting town, it’s got that neo-pagan vibe to it. Of course Beth had to mention that if they met a real pagan they’d be a little surprised. In fact I love how she talks about it. She changes her voice to sound like the neo-pagan dipshits. It’s too funny.

We ate lunch at the tavern at the Hawthorne hotel. I’ll be frank here, the Mucho Nachos were good, but the burgers were nothing to write home about. For four people and six alcoholic beverages the tab came to $100. I’ve noticed this in a lot of places, diners included. Everyone seems to be afraid of seasoning meat or eggs. Just a little salt and pepper are fine you know. If you want to be daring you could use garlic powder, or other herbs and spices too. Maybe a little chili powder, you know, jazz it up. You can still have the old regular flavorless burger on the menu. Just offer something with a bit more kick. The same goes for eggs of any kind.

And while I’m on that kick, I need to knock a few diners in Providence. If you stuff an omelet don’t just throw raw vegetables in it, saute the vegetables first. And season, season, season.

We got back to the house around 6:30PM. I will say that the amount of food we ate carried us all night so that’s one recommendation for the Hawthorne Tavern.

I managed to turn Nick on to the TED talks. And Nick and I had some interesting discussion on what to do about the terrorists. I’m in the camp that says a proper U.S. response to the 09/11/01 event would have been to obliterate Mecca and Medina. Show the Muslim savages that supported those who did the cowardly acts of 09/11/01 how it’s done.

At the same time end our dependence on foreign oil. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if we use alternative energy forms the despots like Hugo Chavez, and the other OPEC asshole could literally go and pound sand.

While we’re at it, whatever we develop share it with Europe, Russia, China, India and the like. Sure you’ll have to do licensing costs, but make it pretty simple to end worldwide demand for oil.

Universal Health Care and the New America (with respect to Harvey Milk)

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Bravo! I am an out gay man in a 16 year relationship. I want marriage equality rights but I also want universal health care for all citizens.

The industry has made the European and Canadian systems out to be the boogeyman. But if you watch Michael Moore’s “Sicko” you see that we’ve been under an attack by a master propaganda system funded by the hospital chains, pharmaceutical companies, billing companies, et al.

Put it this way, if we weren’t spending $500 billion a year to maintain a standing armed force, if we weren’t blowing another $500 billion a year in Iraq, and maybe if we weren’t giving tax breaks to large corporations and agri-business perhaps we could fund not only universal health care, but rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, improve our educational system, maybe even forgive 75% of student loans.

We need to elect people who pledge not to take PAC money, or allow lobbyists of the big corporations to dictate the laws and the votes.
More on Health
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

AFA needs to stop whining about the mistreatment of Mormons

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Once again the AFA is upset because their Moronmon brethren are under attack. It isn’t just their Mormon brethren, but their Catholic brethren too. You don’t hear them talk much about Catholic persecution because quite frankly they wish the Catholic Church would go away.

It’s funny, when they don’t have something to rally around they’ll all sit and point finger at each other. But give them a rallying cry and suddenly their dogmatic differences don’t matter.

Gays launch hate attack against Mormons because of their support for traditional marriage

Thank the LDS church for its support of Proposition 8

Dear Friend,

Homosexual activists have launched a hate campaign against the Mormons because of the church’s support for Proposition 8 in California. Prop 8 defined marriage as being between a man and a woman.

A hate campaign? No, we’ve simply launched a campaign to claim our rights and perhaps get the IRS to revoke the tax exempt status of the Mormon church. It isn’t hate, it’s justice. The AFA gets very confused on that issue. When things are going their way it’s justice, when they’re not it’s hate.

I don’t hate the Mormon Church, I just want to see it dry up and blow away, same as I’d like to see happen to the Southern Baptists, some of the Catholics, and a few of the more hard line Jewish and Muslim Abrahamic and monotheistic traditions.

As a society I feel we’d be much better off if we stopped focusing on a sky fairy and instead focused on our helping our fellow man. That’s a pretty radical idea isn’t it. Remind you of anyone?

Here are some examples of how gays are targeting Mormons:

* A lawsuit by Fred Karger, homosexual activist, claims that the Mormons violated election laws in California.
* Richard Raddon, director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, was forced to resign when it was discovered he contributed $1,500 to support Prop 8.
* Homosexual groups are calling for the revocation of tax-exempt status.
* For more examples, Google “Mormons prop 8.”

The Karger lawsuit has merit. The Mormons did violate election law and should lose their tax exemption because of it.

In the case of Raddon, he didn’t have to resign. He just couldn’t take the heat that he’d been found out. Screw him.

And yes, we are calling for revocation of the tax exempt status. That’s what happens when a church tries to step into the political fray. Remember Jefferson’s wall between church and state? We want to enforce that.

The Mormons played a vital role in the Prop 8 battle, and traditional marriage would have lost had it not been for their support. While other churches were also involved in the battle to protect marriage – including Catholics and evangelicals – the homosexuals have singled out the Mormons as their target of anger.

Thank you Donald Wildmon and the AFA for admitting that the Mormons overstepped their boundaries on this one. And we haven’t singled out just the Mormons, they themselves made sure they’d be the single beneficiary of our wrath. Let me tell you something, at the Prop 8 rally here in RI I told the people around me that we shouldn’t be rallying on the steps of State House, we should instead start there and march directly over to the Diocesean Offices and residence of Bishop Tobin and protest there.

Because in Rhode Island the Catholic Church is our biggest enemy when it comes to marriage equality.

I urge you to sign the petition thanking the LDS for their good work in the marriage battle. Several nationally known leaders have already expressed their support. In addition to myself, the list includes Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Charles Colson of Prison Fellowship, Tony Perkins of Family Research Council, Paul Weyrich of Free Congress Foundation, Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, and Gary Bauer of American Values. We will forward the petition to LDS leaders.

If there was a god, I’d hope that he/she/it would strike down the likes of Perkins, Dobson, Wildmon et al. of their religiously motivated ilk. The fact that they’re still foaming at the mouth sort of proves my point.

I often wonder, what would happen if they got their wish and we were all pushed back into the closet. What would they complain about then. Would they consider the high divorce rates in the U.S.? Would they try to feed, clothe and shelter the homeless?

Probably not. The men I talked of two paragraphs ago aren’t in this for the greater glory of any god, they’re in it for themselves.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has offered “prayerful support and steadfast solidarity” to the LDS church for its efforts on behalf of Proposition 8.
Take Action! Sign the Petition NOW!

Thank you for caring enough to get involved. If you feel our efforts are worthy of support, would you consider making a small tax-deductible contribution to help us continue?

Sincerely,

Don

Donald E. Wildmon,
Founder and Chairman
American Family Association

I think it goes without saying that I won’t sign their petition, nor will I donate any money to cretins like Willdmon.

In short, fuck off AFA. On the one hand I’m glad I’m on your email list because I get to find out what pisses you off. Then I can add fuel to the fire.

But seriously, to my brothers and sisters out there keep up the fight against the Mormon church and lets spread a little of that fight to the Catholic churches too.

The Thanksgiving Day Menu

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An interesting them has been kept to for each thanksgiving. The number of foods in the meal is generally matched by deserts.

E.g. this year:

The Meal:
Turkey with Gravy
Cornbread stuffing
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Potato Salad (Life with a southern guy!)
Broccoli Casserole
Butternut Squash
Home made cranberry sauce

The deserts:
Pumpkin Pie
Apple-Cranberry Pie
Berry-Berry Pie
Pumpkin Cheesecake
Banana Pudding
Pineapple Cake

Those last three are made here at casa Truthspew. It’s funny, we get more people for the desert phase than we do for the meal. But it doesn’t mean the meal is bad, just that the deserts totally rock. This is what happens when you have two sugar freaks in the same household.

The mashed potatoes, potato salad, broccoli casserole, cheesecake, pineapple cake, and the cranberry sauce got made today. That way tomorrow it’s the turkey, stuffing and butternut squash.

The cranberry sauce gets rave reviews and it’s so damnably simple. It’s the recipe right off the package of cranberries. A cup of sugar + cup of water, bring to boil. Add cranberries, return to boil and then back the heat down a bit, cook for 10 minutes. I do use a bit of starch to stiffen it a bit.

It looks like it’ll be a good holiday once again. Keyron and I have gotten it down to a well oiled routine.

As to what we have to be thankful for, I’ll start with our health. We’re still in good shape, me at the decrepit age of 44, he at 35. I have a job that pays extremely well and takes advantage of my intimate knowledge of many things I.T., it even allows me to indulge my hobbies as well as going down to North Carolina for Christmas again this year, and perhaps a visit to Atlanta in April to see our friend Kyiesha whom I haven’t laid eyes upon in a few years.

Life is good right now. I know that it never stays this way though. So I’ll enjoy this while it lasts. Over the past few months I’ve explored new wines, new foods, and gotten to know friends a bit better.

Troppe informazioni numero uno e cento sessanta due – l’edizione del Ringraziamento (TMI #162)

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1. What is your favorite Thanksgiving food?

Probably the cranberry sauce. I don’t by the canned variety but make my own instead.

2. You can flip a switch that will wipe any band or musical artist out of existence. Which one will it be?

Now this is a quandary. Do I have to limit it to just one? Can’t it be several? Well, there’s one, Bjork. One flip of the switch and poof! gone much to the chagrin of Keyron. He loves her for some reason.

3. You seem to be having an excellent day because you just came across a hundred-dollar bill on the sidewalk. Holy crap, a hundred bucks! How are you gonna spend it?

Geek toys of course. Lets see, that would pay for the coin box, coin relay and the DTMF decoder chips I need to get my payphone project up and running. I think the one at Citizen Engineer is good, but I want the guts on the outside. In essence it will talk to the payphone just like the central office used to do. The project is moving along, I have most of the components like timing chips, central office tone chips, etc. In essence I’m reverse engineering a Western Electric 1D2 Coin Station aka Pay Phone to act like a COCOT (Customer Owned Coin Operated Telephone).

That would still leave me with about $70 so a nice dinner with Keyron would be cool.

4. What is your favorite curse word?

I’m just so plebeian when it comes to cursing. The word ‘fuck’ is so universal but my favorite is “What the fuck!”

5. Rufus appears out of nowhere with a time-traveling phone booth. You can go anytime in the PAST. What time are you traveling to and what are you going to do when you get there?

This would just be too delicious a chance to right some wrongs. Maybe go back to the birth of George W. Bush, snuff the little bastard out before he has a chance to wreck a country.

Bonus (as in optional):You accidentally eat some radioactive vegetables. They were good, and what’s even cooler is that they endow you with the super-power of your choice! What’s it gonna be?

I’ll have to go with the crowd here and say invisibility. Think about it for a moment, and the more I think about it the more I realize that one would have to disrobe for the power to be effective.

Hmm, so let’s think a bit more. Super strength and endurance would be cool.

Obama: An FDR for the 21st Century

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Watch this video and tell me that he isn’t following in the footsteps of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

What encourages me most is that President Elect Obama gets it. He understands that our economy is in a major mess. But more than that, he offers a way out of the mess. That is true leadership.

I have the feeling that historians will favorably compare Barack Obama to FDR. There are parallels between the two. In the case of FDR he overcame his disability, in the case of Obama he overcame the inherent racism that still exists in the United States.

FDR did his fireside chats, Obama does his YouTube updates. It’s beautiful.

Maggie Gallagher, the hateful Cunt

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I’m sick and fucking tired from people outside the state of Rhode Island saying what rights I can and cannot have.

One of those people is that cunt, Maggie Gallagher. I cannot stand that fucking woman. First off I’d like to ask what are her qualifications for being an expert on marriage? Could it be her god damned religious background? Or her educational qualifications?

Maggie is a nationally syndicated columnist, the author of three books on marriage (including most recently with University of Chicago Prof Linda Waite “The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially”), and a leading voice of the new marriage movement. National Journal named her to the 2004 list of the most influential people in the same-sex marriage debate.

She wrote books. Woop-te-fucking-do! I can write books too about how religion is the most evil fucking thing on the planet. I hate to say this but I’ve never seen any of her books, or her articles.

I’ve only heard this evil fucking bitch speak at the marriage equality hearings in Rhode Island.

This is when I throw down the challenge. I want to debate Gallagher. I want to show what bigoted fucking cunt she is.

I hope her snatch swallows her up whole. I really can’t stand people like her.

A new Providence restaurant experience

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I have probably been by the place a zillion times. It’s in a place where one wouldn’t expect a French restaurant and it’s right across the street from my favorite electronics distribute, A&J Distributors.

The restaurant in question is Loie Fuller’s on 1455 Westminster St in Providence, RI. Apparently the only thing you’ll see on the doors are the initials “LF”. ProJo did a nice write up on the restaurant too.

We started off with La Chouffe for Nick and I, and Champagne Cocktails for Beth and Keyron. Then we moved on to a bottle of Cataldi-Madonna Trebbiana Abruzzo red wine. Very smooth, wine.

I’m surprised I can actually blog right now because I’ve got enough alcohol in my system to knock a horse out.

I had the green onion and pistachio ravioli, Nick had the Wild Boar, while Beth had the duck and Keyron the seafood platter. All was excellent. I particularly likes the ravioli, very rich and creamy filling in those.

For desert I had the pumpkin bread with cranberry and cream cheese. Oh that was delicious.

Highly recommend this place. It’s at 1455 Westminster Street, Providence, 273-4375. Get there at 5PM sharp, they don’t take reservations and it’ll be packed by 6:30PM. This is a place I can imagine us to return.

A more fit parent than a gay person?

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Check this out. The guy is unemployed, owes oodles on the electric bill and then chains himself to the meter so his adopted handicapped daughter can live.

How do you get to the point where you owe $2,000 on an electric bill? Here in RI we pay through the nose for energy and I’ve never gotten an electric bill for more then $350. And National Grid will shut your ass off for non-payment after three months of non-payment.

But this is Florida where gay people cannot adopt. Isn’t it interesting that an unemployed man who has suffered several strokes, and can’t collect unemployment insurance because of his medical condition. Yet he makes a better candidate for adoption.

It’s a screwed up world we live in.

iTunes fun

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Got this from the Gospel According to Mikey:

1. If you played your iTunes library from start to finish, non-stop, how long would if play for? 4.5 Days, 1,435 items at 6.52GB

2. If you played you iTunes videos/movies from start to finish, non-stop, how long would it play for? 0 days. This isnt’ to say I don’t get video podcasts. There just isn’t an easy way to calculate it.

3. What artist appears the most in your iTunes library? How many files? Earth, Wind & Fire with 57 files, followed closely by John Legend with 41 files.

4. Which word appears the most and how many times, when typed into your iTunes search: Love, Sex, Fuck, Death? Which is the least? Love: 159 times, Fuck: 3 times, Sex 11 times, and death 0.

5. What is the longest iTunes file? P-Funk Funkentelechy (Where’d You Get That Funk From) at 23:14.

6. Shortest? Next, by Sylk 130 at 9 seconds.

7. Right now, which track has the highest Play Count? Dubfunk by Shur-I-Kan with 60 plays.

8. If you were to close and reopen your iTunes, what is the first track that plays on your Party Shuffle? It’s missing on mine. I must have deleted it.

9. What was the last item you purchased on iTunes? People by Chocolate Milk.

10. What item is in your shopping cart that you are hoping you can find as a free download? I don’t maintain the shopping cart since if I buy something on iTunes it’s with a change card.