Got a few kids in range from about 4 years old to about 20 years old.

Still lots of candy left over.

Had meant to use yellow LED’s but didn’t have time so stuck a toothpick in the bottom of a candle and then jabbed the other into the base of the innards of the pumpkin. Works well enough and is authentic looking.

The mouth went through a brief revision. I thought about the toothy grin but the grimacing look appealed to me.

The lump of fur next to the pumpkin, that’s Angie the cat during one of her favorite activities, sleeping.

So I mentioned the farmers market in Boston. It’s over between Quincy Marketplace and the wharf area of Boston.

Two of the things I picked up were 6lbs. of plum tomatoes, and about 3lbs of peeled garlic.

I had some basil and parsley on hand so I cut up the tomatoes, basil and parsley, crushed about a pound of garlic cloves and then mixed with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper.

This is what it looked like before going into a 350F oven:

Here they are after being roasted for a couple of hours:

I’ll post pix once I grind em’ and strain em’ too. They taste FANTASTIC.

And here they are, all ground/processed. Decided against straining. I want it a little chunky.

So Keyron and I went up to Boston with our friend Chico today.

Got into Boston a little after noontime and headed over to Chinatown. Picked up some Chinese pastries and these dynamite dinner rolls. Who knew! Went to a little place on Beach St to get those babies.

Then we meandered around the city finally ending up by a farmers market near the wharf area. Brought home about 30lbs worth of fruit and vegetables. Got things like apples, plums, blackberries, grapes, tangerines, plum tomatoes, tomatoes, avacados, carrots, garlic, and even some thick cut bacon.

They also had boxes of limes for $3 to $5. But since we took the train we were limited in what we could carry back with us. Next time I’ll do a car rental or zip-car and load up.

Total cost for everything we bought was under $30. Pretty damn cheap if you ask me. And I know the game now. Every now and then you see trucks pulled to the side of the road here in Providence peddling the same items for 2 to 4 times the price. Now that I’m onto the game I can either trek up to Boston or dicker down here and tell em’ I could go to Boston and get these for N times cheaper, but I’ll split the difference with you.

Overall a pretty good day before Halloween.

Providence City Council Majority Leader Terrence Hassett was struck and critically injured by a hit and run driver on Atwells Avenue in Providence.

My first thought upon seeing the headline was that it was par for the course. It is a section where traffic opens up on Atwells Ave and people hit the gas. The Councilman was attempting to cross the street.

But what really irked the crap out of me was one little fact in the article:

The accident occurred around 9 p.m. as Hassett was crossing the street alone, in a crosswalk, in front of Tammany Hall Pub and Parlor at 409 Atwells Ave., Sauro said.

I emboldened the relevant section. IN A CROSSWALK!

I’ve noted that here in Providence the registration plate pretty much tells you the behavior of the driver. If it’s a RI plate of any kind, they’re going to blow right on through it whether you’re in it or not. I’ve found the alpha stare works very well. Look the driver straight in the eye with a look on your face that says “Are you really gonna do it?”

But as I said, RI’ers including the fucking cops, rarely stop for pedestrians. Just last week I was surprised when a Providence police cruiser actually stopped for people in a crosswalk. But as a rule, that’s not what always happens.

MA drivers on the other hand ALWAYS stop for people in crosswalks. I think it’s to do with MA law, and how MA marks it’s crosswalks VERY well. You can’t miss em’.

Here in RI the crosswalks are two narrow parallel lines in most places. I’ve noted the new ones are proper angled bars.

They need to implement traffic calming measures on Atwells. Either that or I start carrying a bagful of caltrops.

I found out today that the company I work for has Bible Study classes at our office in the Bible Belt.

I so wish we could have them here because I could demolish some of the arguments in the Bible.

Let’s take Genesis for example. I will concede that an omnipotent and omniscient being could form the earth and the heavens and all within a period of six days. But then I also concede that monkeys could fly out of my butt at any moment. It is possible, but is it probable? Not at all.

It took a few million years for the earth to form, then another LONG period of time for life to emerge, first from the mono-cellular to the macro-cellular and leading ultimately to we in our modern form as well as all the animals. plants, insects, fish etc. around us.

But the part I’m going to discuss here is a part that should have been read by every believer at some point in their lives. It’s the creation of man. In the story god creates Adam and sets about having Adam name all the critters, plants etc. But then god realizes that Adam is lonely.

Stop, wait, what? And Omnipotent and Omniscient being couldn’t know ahead of time that his creation might be lonely?

In essence what this means is that god is either not omnipotent, not omniscient, or both. In essence, it proves that the god of the Bible doesn’t exist, couldn’t exist because that god wasn’t omniscient, ergo it wasn’t a god.

But this is precisely why most religious texts always caution you not to question the faith aspect of the religion. It is because the moment you do, you see the little non sequiturs and blatant contradictions in said text. The moment you do so, it’s all over. The end of faith for you. For how can you have faith in such a logical fallacy?

My commute which normally takes about a half hour (I’m home by 5:30ish every night) turned into an hour and a half commute.

You could hear sirens all over the city, there was a red and white medevac helicopter hovering over the city and traffic was at a standstill.

You guessed it, President Obama is in Providence stumping for Mayor David Cicilline’s bid for congress.

Traffic was horrid. For example:

Cops everywhere:

Wish I had $7,500 (Well, $15,000 if I wanted to bring Keyron) to rub elbows with the President. Someday I will.

This meme started with a video posted by Depfox on youtube.

It got me to thinking about the role models in my life.

My maternal grandparents for giving me the safe place to just be myself.

My maternal great grandfather (grandmother’s father) who nourished the inner geek in me by teaching me about electricity and soldering when I was very young. Should be a surprise that my great grandfather was an engineer, actually had a patent for designing a small device that let you change the yarn out on a Jacquard loom on the fly.

And one of my uncles was an engineer at EG&G SealAll and worked on the seals for the Apollo moon program.

My paternal grandparent both nourished the geek too, getting me subscriptions to technical publications, science publications and supplying me with enough food so I’d never go hungry. As a kid I hated going there but as I got into my teens I learned to appreciate it more. And this leads partly to my activism later in life.

My mother who taught me that people had names. And that sometimes they had ‘other’ names that weren’t polite to say in public but none the less could be blog fodder later in life. Hence my nicknaming of the bigots. But I also think I get my disbelief and incredulity over religion from her. My mother was, in the words of that generation a hot ticket. A shame she died so young.

From my father I got the not so good things like the temper. I had a hot temper as a young man. Luckily that has subsided much due to the influence of Keyron. And I do look a bit like my father and sound like him too. Oh well, can’t have everything even though Keyron says my mom was my saving grace.

Other role models are politicians and activists like Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harvey Milk, Sherry Wolf, Dan Choi, and the guys at Depfox. They latter five are out there on a regular basis fighting for full equality. And that gives me great inspiration to never rest until we are all equal!

Here we can watch one Valerie Jarret try to spin the appeal of the DADT ruling as being one that should be decided by congress.

Here’s the source of my cognitive dissonance. I know that President Obama was a Constitutional law professor. So it’s not like he doesn’t understand the structure of government or about the checks and balances of the tri-lateral form of government.

But at the same time I know the President is also the Commander in Chief of ALL the military branches, as well as being the chief executive. If you didn’t know, the Department of Justice falls under the EXECUTIVE branch.

So Obama could be a leader and tell the military they’re going to allow gay people to serve openly. Case closed, no recourse. He IS the Commander in Chief.

So why is it our ‘fierce advocate’ can’t find the stones to be a fucking leader when we need him to be a leader.

He’s had some successes sure, but the health reform debacle where he backpedaled the public option was fucking shameful. And he’s throwing we gay people under the bus too.

It isn’t that I won’t vote for him come 2012 but damn it, act like a leader. Not some namby pamby doormat that the Repugs are going to walk all over.

This is too good for words. The Repug/NeoCon/Corporate Assholes have been exposed.

It’s a veritable who’s who of the corporate masters.

As to what we can do about it. We can boycott, we can protest, we can do all sorts of things.

Happy day! Finally a networked printer so I don’t have to go and plug my laptop into a printer anymore. Just hit print and pick it up later.

Did have some issues trying to get it on my WiFi network though. It’s flakey in that respect but luckily it had an ethernet port on it so I just plugged it in via that. Driver setup was a piece of cake, just set it up as a net printer at http://192.168.2.102 and load the driver. Simple!

Print quality is fantastic. I see the price is up to $253 now on buy.com. I only paid $147 for mine with free shipping. Gotta love it.