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Stuff and Nonsense — Why Now?
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Stuff and Nonsense

Please drop by Sam and Mexico’s personal photographer a few times daily so he will get the requisite number of hits prior to Flag Day and will stop whining and blegging.

This entry in NPR’s This I Believe series should make you hungry if you eat meat. They should have the audio link up by now, but they have the text available.

You have to pay attention to this commentary, Digging for Hidden Bodies in Michigan , in which “funeral director Thomas Lynch muses about what it means to hide the bodies of mobsters, regular folks and soldiers.” It sounds weird when you read the blurb, but it makes sense. [I’m not saying that he equates the Shrubbery with the mob; that would be wrong…]

This final piece from NPR, Funeral Protest Ban Targets Anti-Gay Church , in which you get to listen to the dulcet tones of that master of the obnoxious and leader among the Religious Reich, Fred Phelps, complain about the actions to ban things like Anti-gay group protests at National Cemetery, which took place at Arlington today. [If I were a nasty person I might say something like: “If his parents had taken Fred to the vet for neutering and a rabies shot we wouldn’t have to put up with his garbage”, but I won’t.]

5 comments

1 Jack K. { 05.30.06 at 9:58 am }

…I actually wish that Fred’s parents would have been a little more diligent in their birth control practices. Fred challenges all of my lofty liberal considerations about free speech…

2 Bryan { 05.30.06 at 10:32 am }

He has to be test by which our commitment to the concept is tested.

The media really should give him more ink so that people can understand why some of us find the Religious Reich so odious.

3 Steve Bates { 05.30.06 at 1:15 pm }

Great “This I Believe” essay. But why is it only for those who eat meat? There are places in Austin (or at least used to be; I haven’t been there in a while) that will serve you veggie barbecue that will make even a carnivore’s mouth water. Good barbecue is more technique than it is meat. The places I’m thinking of may use “wheat roast” as their base ingredient, but they use the time-honored way of cooking it, and their sauce is as good as any I remember from my meat-eating days. If I can’t get to Austin to eat it fresh, I use the containers of veggie BBQ put up and “exported” by another place in Austin… not perfect, but still mighty good. Stella and I have veggie barbeque probably twice a month. Believe me, we are not deprived, and that essay made me hungry, too.

Aside: decades ago, I played a concert of 18th-century music with an historical-instruments group in Dallas called Texas Baroque Ensemble. I still have one of the tickets to the event, “corrected” by the printer to read “Texas BarBQue Ensemble.” We seriously thought about learning some more recent literature and marketing our services to local restaurants.

4 Bryan { 05.30.06 at 4:47 pm }

Around here there aren’t many vegetarians and certainly nothing in a restaurant that would appeal to anyone who enjoyed vegetables. Most places cook them to death.

I suppose you could barbecue eggplant.

I can understand why a Texan would think Baroque was a typo, but Bach goes with everything.

5 Steve Bates { 06.01.06 at 2:00 am }

Curiously enough, Bryan, I read your reply while drinking a Shiner Bock. (Yes, it’s a false cognate: Bock=mountain-goat; Bach=stream.) BTW, that other Bock that is sold is not a Texas beer, though it pretends to be. Shiner Bock is a beer of my youth; it’s the genuine article, if you like that particular kind of seasonal beer.

Spare me overcooked vegetables. There’s no justification; the cook should be punished for the crime!