Posts from — December 2009

Merry Catmas!

HO! … Ho? … Whatever.

[Editor: A rerun showing as close as I will ever get to putting antlers or a hat on any of the cats.

Friday Ark

[As I search for an audio feed of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, I thought I would re-run this post as a follow on to the recipe.]

The British have some wonderful Christmas customs that have survived the incursion of Christianity, especially the Puritan party poopers. Stealing customs from the Celts, Germans, and Scandinavians, they have created a wonderful holiday that I fondly remember from time spent there.

The bird is a European robin that is featured on British Christmas cards, as it is a Winter bird in England, unlike the fair-weather laggard of the same name in America. It is bracketed by holly and mistletoe. All go back to the druids and solstice celebrations.

If you read the Harry Potter books you will get a taste, but not the full effect of a British Christmas. A full-on Christmas dinner is wretched excess to the n^th degree – Thanksgiving on steroids. Charles Dickens and Queen Victoria were major influences on the American celebration of Christmas.

The BBC has the background on Father Christmas.

Note: another recipe from Kryten in comments.

This very old fashioned recipe uses suet and has no sugar, so is diabetic friendly. 🙂
September to November is the perfect time to make this Christmas pudding.

Ingredients:

• 250 grams sultanas
• 250 grams raisins
• 250 grams currants (or substitute figs)
• 250 grams mixed peel (or substitute prunes)
• 3/4 cup of nice port (or substitute Irish stout)
• 3 eggs (lightly beaten)
• 250 grams chilled suet
• 125 grams plain flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 250 grams fresh breadcrumbs
• 1/2 teaspoon (or to taste) of each: mace, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger.

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Ho Ho Ho!

Happy NODWISH
С Рождеством Христовым
Sung Tan Chuk Ha
Vrolijk Kerstfeest
Nadolig Llawen
Fröhliche Weihnachten
Joyeux Noël
Buon Natale
Feliz Navidad
God Jul
Rauhallista Joulua
Happy Christmas

So it’s time to get everything in line so that there will be smooth sailing tomorrow.

Obviously you need the text of A Visit from St. Nicholas [AKA Twas the night before Christmas] or one of the variations.

But now that you’ve finished putting up enough lights to match the total electrical consumption of a third world nation, you can sit back and watch the North American Air Defense Command’s annual attempt to take out that red-suited commie’s attack on the capitalist system by giving stuff away. [Don’t worry kids, they are using the anti-missile defense system, so there’s no danger to anyone but taxpayers.]

Apparently, none known to the White House, so, as McClatchy reports: Obama names conservatives to Legal Services board

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama this week formally nominated Sacramento-based attorney Sharon L. Browne to help lead the Legal Services Corp., whose activities Browne’s fellow conservatives have long tried to restrict.

Another attorney formally nominated by Obama this week, Victor B. Maddox of Kentucky, is also a conservative. Maddox served as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Browne is a Republican and a principal attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, which promotes limited government. Even so, she voices support for the legal-aid program born amid Lyndon Johnson’s expansive Great Society.

I’m sure that in the spirit of bipartisanship Obama will eventually find a Democrat to appoint to something.

While the North cleans up in the aftermath of Cyclone Laurence, South Australia is dealing fire: ‘Explosive’ bushfire destroys homes

Police have confirmed at least nine houses were destroyed in yesterday’s bushfire at Port Lincoln on South Australia’s Lower Eyre Peninsula.

Firefighters managed to contain the blaze after a cool change hit the area overnight, but not before it destroyed 500 hectares of scrub and grassland and the State Emergency Services headquarters.

Power has now been restored to most of the 6,000 homes that were affected by the blaze.

Near 100° temperatures, single-digit humidity, and gusty winds – everything necessary for flash fires to rip through the countryside. Weather conditions have improved allowing firefighters to begin controlling the fires, but the fire season stretches out for months.

The BBC has the report: Swedish Christmas straw goat burnt

A giant straw goat – the traditional Scandinavian yuletide symbol – erected each Christmas in a Swedish town has been burned to the ground yet again.

The 13-metre (43-ft) high billy goat has been torched 24 times since it was first erected in Gavle in 1966.

The goat was set alight in the early hours of Wednesday morning in the city north of Stockholm.

Once again some arsonist/Grinch has torched the Gävlebocken.

Yes, today is the celebration of the very untraditional Festivus.

If you celebrate I hope all of your grievances were aired and the airing did not involve the Festivus pole being used in an inappropriate fashion.

I have to renew my driver’s license this year. Normally it is a minor deal that might kill a couple of hours if you don’t schedule an appointment, and it cost about $25. This year everything changed.

I have already mentioned that Republicans hate to be caught raising taxes, but they have no problem doubling fees, and one of those fees is the driver’s license renewal, which now costs $48. If that wasn’t annoying enough, they lacked the guts to tell the Hedgemony to shove it on the Real ID program, so you have to go to the office and present all kinds of proof.

You need your Social Security card to verify your Social Security number; a birth certificate or passport; and two proofs of your current address.

I don’t have a current passport because I wasn’t allowed to leave the country for an extended period after I left the military, so there wasn’t much point in continuing to pay for one. That means my birth certificate.

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Thanks to DCNY I understand why Blue Dogs and Republicans oppose the Public Option –

They think it’s a Pubic Option.

Given they way they freak out over the mention of sex, I understand their total meltdown at the thought.

So, ten seven months after claiming it was a major priority, Obama has appointed a network security figure-head: “Obama has tapped Howard A. Schmidt, longtime computer security executive who worked in the Bush administration and has extensive ties to the corporate world”.

Apparently he was the choice of Larry Summers, because Schmidt knows how to suck up to CEOs, and he had essentially the same do-nothing job in the Hedgemony. More smoke and mirrors, another facade for Obama’s Potemkin village.

No need to find someone who will actually push to secure networks and prevent the script-kiddies from running rampant through government files, because that might upset the corporate owners of the White House, and reduce the salaries and perqs that the current inhabitants expect when they resign “to spend more time with their families”.

I hate to break it to people, but this portfolio doesn’t even sound robust enough to be classified as a Revizor, much less a Tsar.

Always update to the latest version before setting out on long trips, or you might have to stop and ask for directions.

From the New York Times [via MSNBC] Denied 2 full victories, Obama takes validation

From Copenhagen to Capitol Hill, the president determined the outer limits of what he could accomplish on climate change and health care and decided that was enough, at least for now. He brokered a nonbinding agreement with other world powers to fight global warming, averting the collapse of an international summit meeting. And he blessed a compromise on health care to guarantee the votes needed to pass the Senate.

In order to get two checkmarks for his curriculum vitae, Obama has cast off liberals, independents, new voters, women, environmental voters, pretty much 80% of the people who voted for him. He hasn’t actually fought for anything, he has just read a few speeches when he thought it was necessary to quiet the masses.

So far he has maintained all of the executive power grab that the Shrubbery claimed, continues to abuse civil liberties, has enacted policies that help Wall Street, and bowed to the wishes of the Blue Dogs. He has more interest in courting the votes of Republicans, than his own supporters.

Pyrrhic victories are a fine thing if you don’t care about your “troops” and aren’t interested in winning the “war”.