Y'all know about live blogging, right? Well this is live blog cookin'. Tonight's special is called Macho Dip. I'll be making two flavors - one that works well as a depilatory and one for pussy wuss momma's boys.

Assemble the ingredients

Two pounds chopped sirloin (I don't know why it's called "ground" when it's beef and "chopped" when it's sirloin. I think it's just so they can charge you an extra 50 cents a pound. Anyway, use sirloin or 97% beef or whatever they call the good stuff in your neck of the woods.)

One big-ass block of Velveeta cheese. (I think it's two pounds. Use "Mexican Flavor" if they have it. If not, no big deal. It's not like this is real cheese anyway.)

Two cans Campbell's Cheddar Cheese soup. (They used to have "Nacho Cheese" soup but I haven't seen that in a coon's age.)

Two jars of salsa. (I'm using one mild and one hot since I'm doing the real one and a pussy variety.)

Anal-friendly sauces. (For the wuss dip.)

Anal-explosive sauces. (For the depilatory dip.)

Corn chips.

Beer. (Whatever variety you prefer to drink. It's not for the dip, it's for you. None of the wimmen folk will be bothering you while you cook for fear that they will frighten a man out of this strange 'kitchen' environment so it's the perfect chance to sock a couple away 'free of charge'.)

Begin Cooking

Get a big frying pan and put it on the stove.

Turn the stove on. Figure about 70% of maximum. If your dial thingy doesn't go to 10 you can use a calculator to figure out where to set it.

Put the beef in the pan.

Chop the hell out of it with your spatula so it's in bitty bits instead of the big rectangle o' beef. Use a spatula appropriate to your pan.

Drink some beer.

If the pan is non-stick and you used the barbecue spatula you will need to consume more beer now in order to weather the assault that will come later.

After a couple minutes use the spatula to whack apart the beef pancake that has solidified in the pan.

Drink some more beer.

If you started drinking prior to cooking (you know to build up your courage) you may need to pee now. Go for it.

Be right back...

Hey, this is just like one of those cooking shows only you don't have to send in two bucks for the transcript!

Drink some more beer.

When the beef is browned nicely (this is a French cullinary term meaning "healthy dark gray with earthy undertones") turn the stove down to simmer, or #2, or low, or whatever the next to the lowest setting is on your stove.

Strain the beef.

Put the Velveeta into the now beef-less pan. Make damn sure that you put that sucker on low. Velveeta is a space age polymer that resists all damage (including digestion) except heat.

Drink some beer.

If you did not turn the stove down you should begin pounding the beer at this stage as you just ruined her best pan.

Seriously, burned Velveeta is what they use to stick the tiles on the Space Shuttle. Don't burn the Velveeta.

When it starts to melt whack it apart with your spatula. Yes there is a lot of whacking in this recipe. Guys are naturally superior wackers after all.

Drink some more beer.

When the Velveeta is all nice and smoothly melted add the cheddar cheese soup to it. Mix well.

Beer.

Get out another skillet type pan. Oh, you thought this was a single pan dish? It probably is for you, you lucky bastard. Me - I'm making two flavors so I need two pans. Grmblrm...

VERY IMPORTANT! Do not forget which pan has the hot and which one has the not. If you're making two flavors like I am. Which you probably aren't. So ignore this part.

More beer, please.

Split the amazingly cheese-like substance between the two pans.

Add the beef to the two pans. Put more beef into the one that you'll be eating. They won't notice but it'll satisfy your inner gremlin.

Let it warm up a bit more.

You did turn on the burner under the second skillet, right?

Dumbass. Do that now. And have some more beer. Thankyou! Don't mind if I do.

Gotta pee again.

Don't forget to wash your hands after you pee. Thanks.

Okay, where the hell are we now? Right! Salsa. Add the cans of salsa. Mix up the pans real good.

Turn the brners up to 3 or 4 or "braize" or whatever medium low is on your stove.

"Brners"? Um...yeah.

More beer.

Warm up the concoctions for a little bit. Stir occasionally.

You should be able to finish a full beer right at this stage.

Add sauces to taste. For the wuss flavor you're probably okay as is. I'm using just a little chipotle and cheyenne. For the man's dish it is important to remember that everything you have done to this point was to create a vehicle for hot sauce delivery. I'm using chipotle, chili, cheyenne, habanero and scotch bonnet sauces.

I got the scotch bonnet sauce for Christmas.

Mmmm...beer...

It's from Jamaica. The sauce, not the beer.

Jamaica is now on my short list of places to visit. Hot sauce and ganja. What more could you ask for?

Put the stuff into bowls and scoop it out with the corn chips.

And don't forget the beer! As this food has no actual dairy content, thus no lactic acid, it is an incremental hot. That is, the more you eat the hotter it will get. Beer should be used to modulate the ambient heat level. You can easily work 2 more beers in during consumption.

And there you have it - Jim's Macho Dip.

Thank you, thank you. Oh, you're too kind. Too kind.

I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. We're going to burn stuff tonight in the big steel barrel. Outside. In December.

I love Georgia.

Me: I have a problem with the UI (user interface) on this program.

Boss #2: What's the problem?

Me: It seems to have been designed by a team of near-sighted epileptics.

Boss #2: [silence]

Me: On crack.

Boss #2: [silence]

Me: During hurricane Ivan.

Boss #2: I laid that one out.

Me: The graphics are striking.

I am now tasked with defining and documenting UI standards.

I heard a story about Venezuela on NPR this morning. A political action group is being charged with treason for encouraging citizens to vote against the sitting president. The group receives funds from the US through the National Endowment for Democracy. The gist of the story is that American money is being spent to further American interests instead of bolstering a democracy.

Well...duh. (Issue 1)

Generally speaking a strong democracy is in America's best interests. As an ostensibly democratic nation we deal better with other ostensibly democratic nations. However, not all governments perform admirably in following our wish list, whether the government is democratic, oligarchic, despotic or other. American money should most definitely be spent to further American interests. One of our great interests is fomenting democracy so our money is very often spent supporting democratic causes but this does not and should not mean that we will spend money on supporting a democracy against our national interests.

Um...excuse me? (Issue 2)

How exactly is giving money to a party working within the democratic framework of their country not supporting democracy? Isn't one of the tenets of democracy the ability to organize change from within? The money here is being spent in support of a candidate in a democratic election. Since when is it not democratic to support a candidate in an election?

Conclusion

NPR really pisses me off sometimes.

Annette of More Than Words is moving to Atlanta. This shows that she has class and taste and some not insignificantly challenging mental issues. I joke - her writing shows the class and taste. The move to Atlanta only illustrates the mental thing.

Anywho, she's doing a photo scavenger hunt and needs items for the list. Pop on over and give her a few ideas of what she should shoot.

I should specify that "shoot" means with a camera. It won't default to gun use until she's been a Southerner for at least 12 months.

Generally speaking I work every Monday through Friday. The drive into work is pretty busy. It takes forty-five minutes to an hour (down to about a half hour at the moment with half of the workforce on Christmas vacation). I estimate that I probably see about 2,000 other cars on my way to work. That includes both lanes of traffic and a passing view of the bumper to bumper throughway. The vast majority of them have only a driver. Since this is a pretty rough estimate we'll just say I visually encounter 2,000 people on the way to work.

The ride home is even worse. Call that 2,500 people.

Sometimes I stop at the QT for gas, a danish, maybe coffee. On a busy morning I'll see 50 people there.

I work in a four story building. We've got about 300 people here on any given day. True, I don't interact with but a small fraction of them but we'll stretch the definition a bit and say they're part of my daily encounter.

I might stop at CVS on the way home to get some milk (they have Mayfield milk cheaper than any of the supermarkets and I loooove me some Mayfield). Another 20 people or so there.

Sometimes we might need something from the supermarket. A Wal-Mart stop might even be in order. That's easily another 1,000 people combined.

I also see the most precious people in my world every day. That's four more people.

How many is that now? Let's see...2,000 plus 2,500 plus 50 and another 300...add 20 and another 1,000 then top it off with my four reasons for living. I encounter somewhere around 5,874 people in a busy day.

Now let's say that on my drive to work there were no other cars on the road. None at all. And when I stopped at QT it was empty. Nobody at the pumps. Nobody to run my card for my purchase. When I get to work the parking lot is completely empty. There's no guard at the security desk. There's nobody in the hallway. Nobody in the breakroom. At my stop at CVS I get a deja vu of the QT experience of the morning. Nobody is there. It's the same at Kroger and Wal-Mart. These massive consumer edifices lie starkly abandoned. Normally teeming with people, they are now vacant and deathly silent.

When I arrive home there is no jumble of kids at the door yelling "My Daddy's home!". There is no Lovely Wife waiting to greet me with a kiss.

Say that this happened every single day for half a month. That is about how many people have died from the tsunami in Asia.

I've been trying to wrap my mind around that number - 77,000 dead. I'm afraid that I've managed to do so.

Y'all know the drill, right? The contest will be open until the end of the year or maybe a day or two later depending on how hungover I am. Best caption gets 5 points with another handful thrown around to the rest of the best.

It tolls for that stinking rat bastard*.

The battles were harsh and more than once our courage faltered but we finally got him using bacon in the traps. He was a valiant foe but he was not a match for the power of bacon.

All told he cost us a squirrel, two birds, several days of rat banquet service as he stripped the traps and a crawl space completely covered with scattered rat shit.

* This is not an empty disparagement. As Georgia in its infinite wisdom has modified its Constitution with limits on the definition of marriage we can be certain that this rat's parents did not form a legal union prior to his birth.

So I joined BlogExplosion*. It's a nifty idea. You surf through blogs and accumulate points which are then spent to direct other surfers to your blog. You spend 30 seconds on a blog to get credit for viewing it.

One notable problem is that although surfing through the blogs takes a manual click there's nothing to stop people from keeping the surfing window open and just returning to it periodically to click to the next blog without ever giving a site even a cursory look. Oh, well. There are asses in every crowd, no sense crying about it.

The cool thing is that you might actually find a couple of blogs that you like. I've got a half dozen in the evaluation stage now. That's sweet.

Another sucky thing is that you get exposed to a whole lot of absolutely horrible blogs. True garbage, presented on a bed of skank with a side of rotten. After a short while surfing I've identified several instant elimination criteria. Any blog that pops up with any of these gets clicked off right away. Yeah, that means no credit for viewing but my browsing time is limited and I'm not about to look at a piece of crap for half a minute when there might be something worthwhile right around the corner.

So what are these items that ring the death knell for Jim's surfing? I'm glad you asked!

Black backgrounds with blue text. Or any dark background with any dark text. Any light background with light text too for that matter. If I have to highlight text in order to read it the site is dead to me. Ditto for obscuring background graphics.

Yet another female blogger set up with a pink background. Sorry, it's just too trite and common. I'm sure there are many fine pink-backgrounded blogs out there but the vast majority of these are full of inane posts and whining about terrible fate and the vagaries of being misunderstood.

The first post is a health complaint. Or the title is something along the lines of "My life with incurable rectal stenosis" or "My battles with chronic depression". Don't get me wrong now, I'm a compassionate person - I've got compassion leaking out of every orifice. I'm very interested in the travails of my friends and acquaintances. From them it is sharing and support. From strangers it is just depressing. Think of it this way; if you were on the subway and you had the choice between talking with the depressed guy with facial ulcers or the well spoken and cheerful accountant you'd probably pick the accountant. Unless you had some sort of ulcer fetish of course.

The first post is hard-line partisan. Strident tones from the right, left or middle. I like reading political commentary and opinions from every side but I'm fed up with the temper tantrums. Instant site failure.

sk8r kr@p. If u t1pe l1ke dis ur s1te sukz.

Too much crap in the sidebars. For the love of all that is holy, don't have so much crap on your site that it can't possibly load in 30 seconds over a T1 line. Animations, massive graphics, a hundred link buttons, busted java scripts, clutter, geegaws and toys. A weather pixy with a tagboard will get me off of a site faster than Michael Moore downs a Krispy Kreme.

And that's about it. It just comes down to the essentials really: have a site that is easy to load and navigate and doesn't immediately turn me off with depressing or angry content. And yes, I know that on any given day my site would fail one or more of these criteria. That's okay though, I already have the best readers in the world.

* Sign up with BlogExplosion through this link and I'll get 'points' as your referrer. That would be cool and would put a big smile on my depressed ulcerated face.

Comments are going to be just a touch different now. In an effort to defeat the spambots I've implemented this solution (pointed out by Pylorns). You'll need to preview comments before you can post them now.

Hopefully this, along with the comment script hiding that Pixy has already done, will keep these sumbitches at bay until I can move to MT3.

I'm under a constant stream of crapspam bombardment. I started to go through entries one by one to turn commenting off but that is just this side of ridiculous seeing as I have a bonifide shitload of posts.

How the fuck can I turn all commenting off on an MT blog?

Snowballs!

Something tells me that Claire won't be sending me an interactive Christmas card next year.

We went light with dinner on Christmas Eve. The whole day was full of snacking and egg nogging so a big dinner would have been a waste. In any case, the kids wanted to keep it light so they'd be in fighting trim for Christmas morning. The dinner itself was light and refreshing but the conversation was another story.

[The Scene] The Peacock Clan sits around the table eating spiced fries. Occasionally one or more children (and one or more adults) will break into a Christmas Carol. The mood is festive and gay.

Bear: [sings] Jingle Bells! Batman smells!

Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!

Bear: No, Grandma laid an egg.

Bacon: Did not!

Bear: Did so!

Burger: [sings] Grandma got run over by a reindeer...

Bear: [sings] Walking home from our house Christmas Eve!

Bacon: [sings] Robin laid an egg!

[A vocal squabble errupts wherin the relative merits of the Grandma and Robin versions are discussed at length. Eventually a strained silence is achieved.]

Burger: [Leans to the side in the "letting one sneak out" pose] I'm pooping!!

Me: No, you are not.

Burger: Yes I am! At the table!

Lovely Wife: Do you need to go to the potty?

Burger: I'm pooping in my pants! In my pull-up!

Bear: No toilet talk at the table!

[Chaos ensues]

They say that awareness of bodily functions is one of the critical steps towards potty training, so this is progress. That's what I tell myself, anyway.

Merry Christmas from the Peacock Clan.

More adorable pictures at Lovely Wife's place.

I had a freaking long-ass drive home yesterday. Y'all benefit from my misfortune though because a new story wrote itself during my extended commute.

Three and oh is now posted over at Protomonkey. This is one of my better ones, if I do say so myself. It popped in the noggin almost whole and all I had to do was get it down in type.

Plus, in a stark departure from my normal Christmas fare, it isn't a horror story!

Merry Christmas!

Lovely Wife has the replay.

Ms. Coworker: Don't freak out or anything, but I had a dream about you last night.

Sir Coworker: A dream about me?

Ms. Coworker: Well, you were in it. You, me and Bob. We were in the telecon room talking with Kansas City and I looked over at you and you had this monstrous bugger [that's 'booger' through a hellacious accent] hanging out your nose.

Sir Coworker: Gross.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah. Totally. I tried to let you know without saying anything so KC wouldn't know but you just looked at me like I was a freak.

Sir Coworker: What about Bob?

Ms. Coworker: Um...I don't know. I guess he was just gone then.

Sir Coworker: Freaky.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah. But then I emailed you about the bugger so you would know about it, only I sent it to the group by accident. All the KC people were going on like "Ewwww! Gross! It's huge!" like they could all of a sudden see it or something.

Sir Coworker: Weird.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah. So you picked it and I was like "Gag", you know? But it wasn't really a bugger. It was your brain coming out your nose.

Sir Coworker: That is fucked up.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah! Then it got weird.

Sir Coworker: That wasn't weird enough?

Ms. Coworker: Okay, it got weirder. Suddenly I was you and you were me looking at me picking the brain bugger. It was me all the time only I was confused or something because my brains were coming out of my nose.

Sir Coworker: That is one seriously weird dream.

Ms. Coworker: Yeah! Oh, my microwave is done. See you later.

Sir Coworker: Later!

Me: [suddenly and conclusively no longer hungry]

Dusty has it all figured out.

At the four corners of most intersections there are usually light posts or some other weapon mounting system.

It's generic enough to work for just about any big city, too!

If your sentence begins with any of the following, please consider whether there is an actual need to relate the information you are about to divulge:

Don't freak out or anything but...
I probably shouldn't say anything but...
Don't get the wrong idea but...

In fact, if the "but..." conditional is anywhere in the opening sentence of your anecdote you may want to rethink the necessity of speaking whatever is on your mind.

And if you should decide that your personal world will stop unless you divulge your mental gem please, please, please verify that there is nobody within earshot who shouldn't, mustn't or doesn't want to hear what you are about to relate.

Especially if that person is me.

And you are talking about bodily functions gone awry.

Thanks,
Jim

You won't find it at Protomonkey. You will find a twisted little Christmas story by Michele though, accompanied by a Christmas thriller by yours truly.

And once your holiday jones has been sated you can take a well deserved breather with shank's first contribution. Don't breath too deeply though - his protaganist is about as sympathetic as mine.

Hmmm...that's a spooky Christmas story two years in a row for me. Does that make it a trend or a tradition?

Okay, so I'm getting pretty experienced with pain management. The crap I've got requires some form of external medication in order for me to function like a relatively normal person. I say relatively because, let's just face facts here, I ain't never gonna be accused of being normal. Hehe.

Anyway, the specialist I saw (the last doc I saw about whatever I've got) gave me Vioxx. This worked pretty well. When i was taking Vioxx I was pretty much back to regular function. General lack of pain, free body movement, wrestling with the kids, lifting heavy objects, stuff like that. The only thing it didn't really tackle was my feet. Still, it worked and I was in better shape for using it.

Then Vioxx was recalled because it kills people. People on Vioxx have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Fuck.

I kept taking it anyway, seeing as I didn't have that many left and am not in any particular risk category for heart problems. I looked forward to the day when I could see the doc again and get a prescription for Celebrex, which was the drug that Vioxx users were being switched to (in the majority).

In the meantime I needed something of the over-the-counter variety. I went to my old friends acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid. They'd carried me through many a hangover and headache. They sucked. Didn't really get rid of the pain at all. I tried ibuprofen. That worked pretty well but not for a very long time and I had to take a pretty large dose for it to work. It also started to make me violently ill.

Enter naproxen sodium. More commonly known as Naprox or Aleve. Aaaaaahhh!!! (<--- Angels singing)

It worked. Really well. Maybe not quite so well as Vioxx but well enough to function and no stomach problems, no need to overdose. I was happy and relieved that I had found something that worked to take me through to when I could get Celebrex.

Then late last week some problems surfaced regarding Celebrex. It seems that it kills people. People on Celebrex have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Fuck!

What the hell is up here? Now the FDA is looking into the entire class of drugs and it's possible that they might all be classified as unsafe. The entire class of drugs! This is the class of drugs specifically designed to get rid of the pain I've got.

Fuck!!

But wait, there's more. On my ride into work this morning I heard about a test that is being aborted because the drugs being tested were greatly increasing the risks of patient's suffering heart attacks and strokes. The drugs involved? Celebrex and naproxen.

Fucking Aleve, which has been on the market for 30 years, over the counter for more than a decade, regarded by all as one of the safest pain killers available, is suddenly found to increase risk factors for heart attacks and strokes but this isn't discovered until I need it?

Fuck you, universe!

I've got a new blogson and blogdaughter. Go say hello to the dynamic duo at Loggerheads. Or @Loggerheads? Whatever, just go say hi.

Actually, I don't know if I get to claim paternity. They were both established bloggers before. I just helped them get a modicum of anonymity for their newest venture. Harvey, can i get a ruling?

I don't think fear of heights is properly characterized as a phobia. I think it lies more along the lines of "proper appreciation for gravity". It's really misnamed anyway - isn't it really a fear of falling to a painful and grizzly death? What could be more rational than that?

My life would probably have been a lot safer if I had that common sense response. Unfortunately for my insurance company I'm one of those freaks who likes falling. That tickling feeling you get when you look down from a height? The one that happens when your stomach is trying to invert itself and crawl behind your kidneys for protection? I love that feeling.

I've been laughing myself silly at Boudicca's rodent adventures (Parts I, II, III, IV, V and Conclusion). She had a mouse move into her mini-van and she tells the story in fine style. Somebody was listening to my laughter. Karma, as they say, must balance.

Saturday eve I was standing in the carport waiting for man's best friend to finish her business and return to the domicile. It was cold. Damned cold.* I was shivering so hard my balls thought they were epileptics. My mind wandered a bit and I thought about what I'd do if I got locked outside of the house. I decided I'd be forced to skin Kota for her fur as I'd need something to wrap around myself for warmth once her body cooled and the blanket of entrails (a la Luke Skywalker in Empire) no longer sufficed.

I was brought out of my reverie by a skrinching sound. A sound remarkably similar to the noises that the homestead's resident rodent** makes when traveling about his cage. A sound of tiny claws on a hard surface. This sound was similar but had a different timbre. It included a bit of that nails down the chalkboard cringe inducing noise.

Tiny claws on metal.

I think of the odds against our meeting. What are the odds that the ICQ random chat button that you hit would come up with me? What if I hadn't had a funny tagline in my profile that caught your eye? What if you hadn't had the courage to cross an ocean for me, or if The Godfather hadn't been there to help you? The odds against us ever getting together mean we're statistically luckier than a PowerBall winner.

I think of the things we've faced. Family frictions, culture shock, enduring terrible solitude, relocating, hard pregnancies and health problems. The list of things that tried to break us apart is monstrous but we defeated or dealt with every one.

And then I think of the things we've built together. Trust, love, passion, friendship, a family, a home (and one freaking huge menagerie of pets). And that's when I thank you for the one hundred eighty nine million presents you've given me, because I treasure every moment with you like the gift that it is.

Happy Anniversary my Lovely Wife.

*KISS* *HUG* *NIBBLE*

This was a good one. What else would you expect when you use a picture of a guy with a pole through his ass?

Grand Prize: 5 points
John returned the pogo stick to Toys R Us the very next day.
Simon

First runner up: 3 points (selected by a dedicated (medicated?) team of hippies)
So am I going to need a tetanus shot doc? I hate needles.
Kenny

Second runner up: 2 points (selected by "enabler" Karl Rove)
Bob soon realized anal sex isn't all it's cracked up to be!
DeAnna

Third runner up: 1 point (selected by an elite team of French commandos)
New this fall on ABC ......Extreme Makeover/Monster Garage
Frick

Posted at Protomonkey.

Bad: The Dear Any Servicemember mail service I mentioned yesterday is apparently suspended. :-(

There are security concerns about anonymous items (anthrax, etc) being sent directly to the frontline troops. The anonymous nature of Any Servicemember made this a dangerous and uncontrollable vector for anybody who wanted to harm the troops.

Good: There are other ways to send smiles to our boys and girls overseas. :-)

Operation Dear Abby was started many a year ago to allow people to write letters to our troops overseas. The modern (security conscious) system allows you to send a note that can be read by any servicemember with internet access. Posts can also be printed off by division personnel with internet access to distribute to troops who aren't online.

For a more personal touch, join SlagleRock's Letters to the Troops campaign. A friend of Slagle's is being deployed to Iraq and will hand carry letters that bloggers post on their sites. Just write a letter and trackback to Slagle's post linked above and they'll take care of the rest. Be quick about it though - the deadline is today!

(My letter follows in the extended entry.)

I've got some friends who would love to receive one. Here are their addresses:

ANY SAILOR
USS NIMITZ CVN 68
FPO AP 96620-2820

ANY SAILOR
USS RONALD REAGAN CVN 76
FPO AP 96616-2876

ANY SAILOR
USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN CVN 72
FPO AP 96612-2872

ANY SAILOR
USS HARRY S TRUMAN CVN 75
FPO AE 09524-2875

These are the carriers currently on deployment in the Pacific Ocean and Persian Gulf. Make a sailor's day - send 'em a card.

If you're afraid of the water you could adopt a platoon, or if you'd prefer a more direct contact consider adopting a soldier.

The little things mean so much more when far from home. Send a card to a serviceman overseas and you can make two people smile with each one. (One of those people is you.)

(Hat tip to Lovely Wife)

Protomonkey is reborn!

Protomonkey was my attempt to goad myself into writing more and better. Being the stubborn SOB that I am, I was unable to force myself to do so and the site languished. It has now risen like the monkey from the flames, changed into a new and stronger site.

What