Steaks with a Mushroom Cloud

My wife's best friend's mother invited us over for a combined birthday party. My wife and her best friend, who have known each other since kindergarten, grew up next door to each other in Huntington Beach. The best friend's mother still lives in that same house. My wife's family had to leave their ancestral home for reasons that the government still maintains are classified.

It so happens that Mrs. Wasjawlueskovich (or something like that) was a Japanese war bride, born and raised across the bay from Nagasaki. Yeah, that Nagasaki. She was 15 years old when the second A-bomb was dropped. She heard the 'boom' and everyone rushed outside and watched the mushroom cloud blossom. She had a bunch of stories to tell me about the days that followed.

She holds no grudges. And she cooks like a dream. We had steaks that had been marinated for two days, potatoes, corn souffle, fried rice, steamed rice, teriyaki chicken, a yummy jello/fruit salad and then the cake and ice cream.

Here's the cake:

Liz & Pattie had their pictures taken together in kindergarten standing in front of Pattie's house. (I'm married to Liz...) They struck the same basic pose on high school graduation day. And last night they did it again.

Kind of weird seeing the same two females at 5 years old, then 18 years old, then xx years old standing in front of the SAME house, french-kissing! And what is it with airline food, huh? What's up with that? (Yes! A new episode of Family Guy tonight!)

By the way, lots of people living in Las Vegas back in the 50s saw mushroom clouds, including yours truly. And then they went to underground testing. For weeks after an underground test you could almost read by the glow from the toilet bowl water.

How to Stifle an Orgasm

There are many of us men who enjoy the art of orgasm. Okay, maybe it's a science? I don't have the answer, but if any of you women do, I'd be interested in knowing: Who makes a better lover, an engineer or a creative blogger?

One answer I do have is that a man who achieves an orgasm in 2.8 seconds is considered by most women to be a thief. I apologize in advance...

So right away you can see the relevance of this woman's photo. I borrowed the image from a site which had also borrowed the image. But I suppose if you steal something from a thief who just stole that something, it's still a crime. Hopefully humanitarian considerations will get me off with house arrest. (hee hee! I said, "...get me off..."!)

So, we get to the heart of the situation. I would no more want to make sweet love to this woman that I would to ..., to ... a picnic table!

Right at this moment, the scroll down has cut of the lady's head. And without the hair-do, I can't tell it's a female! That, when it comes to sex, is never a good thing. And I think most heterosexual men would agree, we enjoy those secondary mammalian treats. I mean, traits...

So to all my favoritely-placed blogger women: thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my crotchetal well of goodness.

I'm not just another pretty face...

Yesterday, after golf, I was reading & lounging just outside my office. (It used to be a bedroom, but hey, if the kids are going to run away to college, I'm not holding their rooms for them.)

I have a metal rocker/recliner just out the sliding glass door. There's a hummingbird feeder at the end of the portico, so that as I recline there, these tiny little birds are about 12 feet from me.

I'd always figured that taking a photo of one and posting it was trite to the max, especially as they are pretty boring looking as still lifes. Poetry in motion, but not much to look at when they're still. But then this guy shows up. All the other ones perch on the ... perches. But this one wouldn't. He/she would do her business while in flight. I consider that a form of purism and so since I'm a purest, I had to admire him/her. So I grabbed my paints and easel, put up a canvas and painted him/her. Then when the painting was done, I took this photo of it. You can see that I had trouble capturing the blur of the wings.

My wife like the painting so much that she taped it to the frig. The one with some fudge still in it.

(That's one of my gripes with blogging, your time lines suffer because they stack them most recent first.)

Proving Who's in Charge.

I worked late on Thursday, so my wife saved dinner. So Friday at lunch I opened the frig and saw the moist, succulent fudge. Then I saw my share of the previous evening's meal. I love salmon. Salmon and rice! C'mon, is there a better, healthier meal.

But... My wife's fudge, as I've already stated, is always moist and succulent. (Like her!)

So I got them both out and lined them up. I knew you people would benefit from a good example.

I took the photo, put the fudge back into the fridge, headed up the salmon and rice.

While it was heating, I got the fudge out again and made sure that it was worth cleaning my plate for.

It was.

And truly, I did eat all the salmon and rice. I added soy sauce to the rice because lemonated soy sauce coats the stomach walls and neutralizes chocolate. I'm very careful that way. Proving that by thinking things through, you can stay in charge.

You're welcome.

Press F for Fart

Ripped screaming from today's Google Tech News:

"NTT Communications aims to tap into the sense of smell with a new system that allows users to send fragrances from their cell phones.

"A trial of the service will take place later this month during which users will be able to select and send certain fragrance recipes to an in-home unit that is responsible for concocting and releasing the various fragrances. Each holds 16 cartridges of base fragrances or essences that are mixed to produce the various scents in a similar way that a printer mixes inks to produce other colors."

This is kind of bogus, because it's not like I can wave my Blackberry around the area of my butt to capture that essence that is truly me and then attach it to an MMS so that my wife can be reminded of just what she had to look beyond in order to marry me.

This is one of those things that a business is doing just because they can, not because there's a genuine need. Like people on welfare reproducing...

Role Modeling in Abstract Clay

I borrowed these photos from a friend's blog. The kids are way cute, but still I thought it best to obscure their identities.

The second thing I thought about after looking at these photos of my friend's niece & nephew (the first thought being, "I wonder if their mom fools around?") was, "Hey! Look at the genderfication!"

He's all manly and she's all demure.

I'm betting the photographer suggested the poses and the parents, or whomever was present representing their interests (wouldn't it be wild if Hillary Clinton won the election and every minor child was assigned a Federal Child Welfare & What's Good For You Department attorney to help guide each and every kid through life's shoals?) and got immediate agreement.

I know my friend was there, because she posted photos of her own baby, the adorable 'Mando,' and I sure hope she had a reservation or two pass through her mind as the poses were arranged.

My kids have never struck poses based on what society supposedly expected of them. Calvin & Hobbs was our guideline back then. We all remain to this day CalvinHobbsians.

Parents, don't make your sons grow up to be captains of industry or Presidential candidates. And for goodness sakes don't let your daughters grow up thinking that only their flesh matters.

Strike a blow for liberty and buy your boy a bonnet!

Holy Week

Based on a glance at a calendar, I am fully aware that Genesis notwithstanding, the world seems to have decided that Sunday is the first day of the week. But it can't be if you're talking about a Holy Week. Holy Weeks end on Sunday. Unless you're Seventh Day Adventist... but even a Seventh Day Adventist golfer would agree that this week, The Masters Week at Augusta, ends next Sunday.

Of course I understand that all this Holy Week at Augusta crap is a creation of advertising and the crusty bastards who run Augusta National. These guys are so crusty White Bread that the first Black golfers who played there had to change in the parking lot. (This is perhaps a legend, but when you have a choice between legend and the truth, print the Man who Shot Liberty Valance.) But yet I will watch just about all the televised coverage that I can, with the proviso that I'm switching to Family Guy when it's on, including re-runs.

Drunk on his Ass

As old men go, I'm not "age old," just "calendar old." I think most of this is due to the fact that my third wife, the ex-brassiere model, is 28 years younger than me. I didn't want to marry her, but my doctor, her father, prescribed it. And because it was a prescribed marriage, my group health carrier paid for everything but the co-payment.

Anyway, I've done places and been things, driven over a million miles, averaged a book a week since I hit puberty and manufactured over 2.6 trillion gametes. Did you know that gametes think that zygotes are basically useless except for their ability to create gametes? It's a twisted way of looking at why we, you and me, exist.

Anyway, one of my people had a meeting with a guy, but when my guy showed up, the other guy was so drunk he couldn't do more than grin and drool. Which brings me to my admission: despite having been things and done places for lo these many years, I've never been drunk. Heck, I haven't even been tipsy except that one time at a pizza place when my wife (the ex-brassiere model) dared me to drink a pitcher of beer. I didn't do it, but thinking about it sent me over the edge. She had to drive home, despite the fact that she was only 14 then.

I haven't even done marijuana or a single other recreational drug, except for snorting estrogen.

A mystery writer whose work I like very much wrote a novel that I'm sure she hoped would be optioned by movie producer. It wasn't a mystery. It was a flight of fancy. But she is a good writer, so it was a well crafted, entertaining flight of fancy. And it would make an excellent movie that I could watch when it finally got to basic cable, but only to see how the actors and director interpreted the characters and their mannerisms.

Reading is FUNdamental. Didn't use to be that way. Used to be you had to learn by doing. Silversmiths learned their trade as apprentices and played with pewter for 10 or 15 years. For most of the history of mankind, that's the way we learned. Gutenberg, the printer, not the actor, really got the ball rolling. Look where we are now! There's nothing you can't find in print!

And now we have videos and audio tapes supplementing reading. But what you do best in life comes from learning by doing, no matter how much of the theory of it you read before hand.

Martha Grimes. That's the writer's name.

Tree, this isn't good news ... for you

My friend, the one who wants a Democrat in the White House next term, cannot be happy with this story. She has been worrying that the primary races, between Clinton & Obama, are a continuing divisive factor causing harm to the Democratic party. Certainly there is an argument to be made for this proposition.

And supporting this contention is a story on Drudge today, wherein a person apparently favoring Obama was described as having used vulgar language when she likened Hillary Clinton to a prostitute. I could have clicked the link and watched the YouTube video and listened to it from the (w)horse's mouth, but was too excited about writing this post to take the time.

And who was the author of the critique? None other than liberal commentator Randi Rhodes, who prior to making the comment was the 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. host on Air America… She has been ‘indefinitely suspended…” So much for freedom of speech.

Three observations:

If this inter-mural squabbling continues to take place between now and the nominating convention, Republicans don’t need to say or do anything...

If Rush or Sean had called Hillary a hoor, there would have been blood in the street.

There may be some hard working prostitutes out there who were offended by the comparison.

What do you know and Why do you know it?

Back in the hey-day of the British Empire, circa 18th & 19th Century, if you were upper class, you proved it by knowing everything Greek & Roman. There was constant reference to Aristotle this, Narcissus that, Peristalsis this, Hydra-headed that. The schools of the privileged taught the kids all this Greek and Roman knowledge and you proved you were upper class by laughing at clever references to this fund of knowledge.

Those of you reading this post, and the person writing it, don't know diddly about the Aztecs, except that Hernan Cortez tricked them out of Mexico. You don't know squat the creation myths of the American Plains Indians. The list is endless of things about which we know nothing. One of the most important facts that we should be taught is that speaking categorically, humans barely know enough to come in out of the rain.

Luckily for the vast majority of the herd, there are individuals who want to know more about a certain topic than is currently known. These people have the Curious George gene. Without these people, with this gene, or gene set, Homo sapiens would still be Homo scratch-his-assiens.

But whom does society reward? A hint, it's not the knowledge gatherers. Too many of us have become Homo trendiens. So in today's culture we prove our superiority by knowing the names of the American Idols finalists. Zeus must be weeping.