Nov 30, 2010

High-Plains Ugliness

Alternate title: "Just Bitching and Moaning"

From the official gummint guessers:

Today: Scattered flurries before noon. Cloudy, with a high near 22. Blustery, with a northwest wind between 23 and 29 mph, with gusts as high as 40 mph. 

Tonight: Mostly cloudy, with a low around 8. Blustery, with a west northwest wind between 15 and 21 mph, with gusts as high as 29 mph. 


D.C. al fine. And there is no "fine" in the forecast furs the eye kin see. 


To Hell with winter.

The Great Princeton Hummus War

Will you join me in a great cause?  Hummus eaters at Princeton are being exploited, and a mass protest is necessary.

The problem:  Grocery stores operated by Princeton offer only one brand of hummus. It is owned by Pepsi Cola and a  subsidiary. A Palestinian student group accuses Pepsi of donating money to support Israeli human-right violations.

The Palestinian kids collected enough signatures to force a student  referendum. If it passes the university will be asked to stock its hummus shelves with competing brands which do not contribute to Israeli human rights horrors.

(1) What in holy Hell is a university doing running grocery stores?

(2) If we can find a way to send the complaining kids home when they've finished matriculating, they'll become the rulers of whatever sort of nuisance the Palestinians next establish to misgovern themselves.   That is, they stand a good chance of becoming Gaza warloards in L.L. Bean button-downs who can quote Norman Thomas. (Princeton gives great credentials for aspiring rulers, foreign and domestic.)

(3) What in holy Hell do the P-kids kids think they're at Princeton to accomplish, anyway? If one of their goals is to learn to draft carefully thought-out proposals, mark down a failing grade:

"The referendum was originally scheduled for last week but was canceled then because of a goof: The wording called for Sabra hummus not to be offered at university stores rather than for additional products to be sold, too."


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Hummus: A sort of sandbox  salsa of chickpeas, sesame seed paste, olive oil and whatever spices do not violate camel country dietary laws. Suspicions that it diminishes mental capacity are so far unproven.



Nov 29, 2010

Death in the North Country



The Mossberg 500 had never seen field duty. It serves as one of the local security tools since having the "turkey" (20-inch) barrel installed for purposes of launching magic cones of certain death at intruders, along with, of course, the fearsome Clickety-Clack Chorus. (by Anton Dvorak, I think, or maybe Bill Haley.) On a lark I took it to the game farm near Avon, Minnesota this weekend for a morning of shooting at ringnecks. It turns out that the cone of death is real when the gun is  loaded with lead No. 6s and properly pointed. Modesty be damned, I estimated the range at 40 yards. My hunting buddy called it 40 to 50, but he is an extremely generous fellow. (The 3-inch double ought-buck in the stock band was set aside for the duration of the hunt.) 




 

The breast is preserved for an evening when I am absolutely certain to be dining alone. It will soak in salt water -- perhaps with a pinch of cumin? -- and be severely seared before hitting the oven. The legs will become part of a slow-cook stew, company welcome.  And anyone who isn't jealous gets a lot more pheasants than I do. Or has never tasted one.


  

RIP

With melancholy,  I record the passing of Clyde. She kept to herself when outsiders --- meaning everyone but her mistress and master --  were around, so I knew her only as Mencken knew Coolidge.  "...no ideas and ... not a nuisance."

She lived a fullness of cat years in a loving home.