John Lydon flogs British Butter

I've always found the formerly Rotten Sex Pistols frontman to be endearingly straightforward. I think it's funny and delightful to see him in this setting looking like a wayward Weasley uncle being menaced by sheep, chased by cows and a face in the crowd. He were never a pretty young man, but as a geezer, he's kind of cute.

Nice pears.

Pretty maids all in a row.



In that special way I have, I managed to have a grand time at Mom and Dad's on Thanksgiving and remembered the deer head and my suitcase and my retainers and cell phone and cell phone charger, and managed to forget my handbag. *harumph*

So Friday night I drove back to Dallas, very nervously, and spent the night at the folks' house. I got up early Saturday morning and swung by Downtown Dallas' Farmer's Market for some fresh fruit and veg for putting by. Sunday I made a double batch of mild Cranberry Jalapeno jam, a batch of pickled sweet peppers and a batch of canned pears.



The pears were beautiful and they appear to have turned out nicely in the jars. I put a cinnamon stick in the syrup as it steeped while I was prepping the fruit, but it made for a bit of a mess in the syrup. (sorry, sweetie) Someone will just have to forgive me for that. I saw a tip online somewhere that you can use a melon-baller to neatly scoop out the big business of the core and the pips on a pear. Turns out, they're right! Looks super-tidy, actually.

Hopefully, they'll taste as good as they look. :) Sunday tally: 14 half pint jars of cranapeno jam; 5 jars canned pears; 5 jars pickled peppers. That's a chorus of 24 thrilling little jars snapping sealed. *smuck!* *smuck* Always makes me think of Smuckers preserves, because that sound is totally *smuck!*



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: Jolly Roger Sweater Puppies

Yes, Live! (nearly)Nood! Puppehs!

Okay, not even close to nude, but here's some live action footage of Miss Wigglebutt and ickle bruvva. What possible thing could rival the delightments of a fine pair of pups got up in such sweet threads?

I can't think of a thing.

you could have knocked me over with a feather.

I thought I'd never see the day when Gang Of Four music would be used for a commercial campaign. Lo and behold if Natural's Not In It is being used for an XBox commercial. As with all GO4 music, I found them very hooky and memorable and I can see why the rhythm track would seem compelling for an energetic commercial. It's been many years since they were on my frequent flier play list, and yet their biting social commentary comes back to me often in little bits and pieces. (That Essence Rare comes springing to mind, and I quoted Damaged Goods not long ago here).


So, what strikes me as particularly ironic is not simply that they've sold their music for a campaign (and I don't blame them one bit for making a bit of dosh off an old track and hopefully kindling new interest in their work, but that the lyrics of Natural's Not In It always seemed anti-commercialistic in nature to me. But maybe I've always looked at it wrong. *shrug* I still like it. Was shocked, but pleasantly surprised to hear it unexpectedly.

Natural's Not In It

The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure
Ideal love a new purchase
A market of the senses
Dream of the perfect life
Economic circumstances
The body is good business
Sell out, maintain the interest
Remember Lot's wife
Renounce all sin and vice
Dream of the perfect life
This heaven gives me migraine
The problem of leisure
What to do for pleasure

Coercion of the senses
We are not so gullible
Our great expectations
A future for the good
Fornication makes you happy
No escape from society
Natural is not in it
Your relations are of power
We all have good intentions
But all with strings attached

Repackaged sex keeps your interest
Repackaged sex keeps your interest
an original version below -

Farmer's Market

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Jayne's Hat Costume at DragonCon

Found this costume of Jayne's Hat over at Poorly Dressed FailBlog, but I do not concur. Considering all the abysmal get-ups folks get got-up in for Halloween or whatever, I think this one is actually made of Win. It's funny, and kind of cute, in a scary way. I know a lot of folk are rabidly fond of Jayne, but this is mebbe a bit much. Still, she's having a good time, it was a clever idea and well-executed, in my opinion.

JAYNE: How’s it sit? Pretty cunning, don’tchya think
KAYLEE: I think it’s the sweetest hat ever.
BOOK: Makes a statement.
JAYNE: Yeah, yeah!
WASH: A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything.
JAYNE: Damn straight.

Sunday, Puppy Sunday: matchey-matchey.

[Yes, this is how veddy veddy tired I was when I went to sleep a little after midnight. I was in bed, pupping up a post from my iPhone and reasoned that I'd just had a day off, it therefore must be Sunday today. oops! This week'll just have to be a two-fer!]

I normally don't hold with dressing your babies in matching outfits, but like their skull parkas from last winter, I couldn't resist these sweaters. KEWT!!!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

I'm thankful for...

my grandparents. Grandpa killed this buck about 25 years





ago. I didn't have to fight any cousins or siblings for this. To my amazement, teh puppehs haven't lost their minds over it. Yet.

Good memories of my grandpa.




(yes, Virginia, my living room ceiling will start going up in the next week or so)
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thanksgiving

Got here last night and mom dished me up a bowl of her soup. On non nom. It's sweet to wake up at my folks' house.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Later 'maters.

I had a cherry tomato plant that finally bore fruit this fall. I kept waiting for the one on the bottom to get bigger, but I suppose it decided to ripen before it got freezie around here. They were delicious. Next year it is my hope to have tomatoes coming out of my ears. I'm going to can up the awfulest mess of salsa and tomato stuff you ever saw.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Thank you, India. Thank you, Terror.

Wow. CEO of Rapiscan Systems who makes one of the backscatter x-ray machines used to irradiate folks at our aeropuertos was a guest of the Obamas on their visit to India. Why does this not surprise me?


I wonder how much this guy and his company are making selling their machines to American airports?

I think people bent on terrorizing the flying public would not be deterred by these scanners and I am skeptical about their efficacy as well as their safety for frequent travelers. I think the traveling public should pick a day for a mass protest. I'm thinking everyone who is willing to go through the scanners, albeit under duress, could spell something provocative on their body with reflective tape that would make their feelings known*. I suggest FUTSA, but someone can probably think of something more clever and to the point.

Then there's the folks who insist on a pat-down. While such gear is reputed to be uncomfortable, I think it would be a special treat if the TSA screeners found a lot of folks sporting, uh-- how shall I say?-- under gear of a sexual and bondage-flavored nature. After all, air travel these days is pretty much a form of masochism anyway, so why not mince up to the fondling station wearing a little secret something lewd, bawdy and very personal in nature, but entirely legal and non-threatening? I suggest strap-on day. Chastity Belt day. (don't read this next bit, Dad. I have no idea what that all means. I just saw one when a package broke open on the mail sorting slide in 1987 at the Dallas Bulk Mail Center. I'll never forget that. It wasn't masturbating-monkey weird, but it was definitely weird.) - Buttplug day.



I'm loving the idea of the guy who did an impromptu strip sans tease. How about a whole bunch of people getting pre-emptively nekkid whilst waiting in line?


I think it's ironic that in the name of so-called safety, folks going about their own business are being subjected to increasingly dehumanizing rituals. What then if someone manages to pull off another terrorist act in spite of these machines and invasive pat-downs? After all, no one has successfully pulled off another 9/11-style attack using commercial airliners in those scanner-free years after 2001, have they?



Looks like we're in for it, no matter what we do. Once a candidate for the governor's seat in Austin was on the campaign trail and a storm was looming. A reporter asked him if he was upset about the impending bad weather, he quipped that the weather was just like rape- "if it's inevitable, just relax and enjoy it**." Well, if being fondled or irradiated by the TSA is inevitable, I say we at least go out of our way to have fun with it.



I already detested flying. I feel sad because I don't know if I'll ever feel like going through all that invasive stuff just to see England one more time. I feel a little sad about that.

And to whinge on a bit further-- not a single one of us is guaranteed a tomorrow. Life is dangerous but we are made complacent by the relative ease of the western life we've built around ourselves. I think it's a great joy to not have to worry about the banal horrors of a world without antiseptic and the kind of sophisticated safeguards we have in place, but we should not take that for granted. At this very moment, some great rock could be hurtling through the depths of space and coming right for us. Should we all be standing around, knock-kneed and peeing ourselves because something bad might happen?

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

I'd rather take my chances with my privacy and dignity intact, TYVM. On a scale of degrees, the perceived benefit of body scans and TSA-endorsed groping is vastly outpaced by the abhorrent degree of exception I take to having my privacy thus invaded. Our government is perpetually thinking of new ways to bilk yet more money out of us, and they must be perceived to be doing something about threats to our society. Therefore, bodyscans are our dinner-and-a-movie. Either we do something to illustrate the preposterous scenario with which we are faced or we succumb.

* Himself suggested that subverting the process could get someone prosecuted, so mebbe this is not a great idea? I dunno.

** A bunch of us voted for Ann Richards instead

Matchless Music Maven -- fellow music entoosiast...

...well, I say fellow, but I'm not a stitch on her when it comes to sheer voracity of musical appetite... Anyhoo, Bad Tempered Zombie has composed an ode in my honor for correctly guessing which two tunes on her Friday Random Playlist on itunes shuffle were by bands she'd never heard of.

Anyway, it's not every day one has an Ode composed in one's honor, so I'm going to ride that wave of adulation, real or imagined. No matter what she says, I disagree that the ode is a crappy contest prize.

Yours truly,
Post Punk Priestess
[my new title]

I can't remember where I found this...

but it always makes me giggle just to think about it.

Cheeky, cheeky.

There's a tv show called Dancing With The Stars and the viewing public calls, emails or texts in votes for the contestant, with one person and their dancer partner being foxtrotted out the door each week, culminating with a big people's choice sort of finale.

Apparently some people question the numbers gathering methods for these votes, and someone at msn.com is outraged that the vote was hacked, netting nascent hoofer Bristol Palin staying power whilst better dancers have been shown the exit sign, possibly because some folks are voting (shock! horror!) more than once for their favorite dancer(an occurrence which apparently only outrages the author if the beneficiary of said extra votes is affiliated with a conservative politician). The author interviews a computer expert who concedes that 'this isn't supposed to be a "one person, one vote" election', but he goes on to identify those votes as fraudulent despite what the expert said about the intentions of this method of data collection. The harangue goes on to say the ramifications here are that with some voter bias and cheating, just as the inept Bristol could take the win with the DWTS competition, so too could we end up with her embarrassing tea-party style mom taking the White House in 2012.

I realize Bristol took the job on that show of her own volition and criticism will come along with the adulation. As long as her mother is a lightning rod, Bristol probably thought she might as well join in and have a laugh and kick her heels up, since she's in for uninvited media exposure every single day anyway. But if she is having a good time and actually enjoying herself, why wouldn't people be drawn to support that? It's supposed to be entertainment, for goodness' sake.

Himself said maybe people are voting for her not based on technical skill but just on moxie. He cites the affection inspired by the Jamaican bobsled team and Eddie the Eagle at the Calgary Olympics in 1988 and says what's wrong with it if people are voting with their hearts rather than with the withering criticism of a ballroom dance judge?

In the case of Eddie, the ski-jumping establishment was outraged that an interloper could waltz in with little qualification, garner so much attention and [in their eyes] make a mockery of their sport. Eddie didn't win at the Olympics in any category-- that went to folks technically more proficient - but Eddie did win the hearts of the world. I suppose when people think things are set up for a predetermined outcome, they get butt-hurt when things don't completely run on rails.

It would be really scary if ignorant people went out and voted without having a lick of sense or the first inkling of what is going on at the highest(er, uh, lowest) levels of our government and how that directly impacts their lives. When that happens, you end up with something like 2008.


I hope Bristol wins. I couldn't give a toss about the show-- I don't even own a TV, but here's to a young woman going out and daring to try despite the naysaying establishment. Here's to Bristol for smiling and not turning into some bitter, pinched emaciated fashion victim, no matter what the critics say. Same goes for her mom.