Here in my little chunk o’ Michigan, we’re enjoying our first snow storm of the year. Gallons of fat, slushy, white snow falling out of the icy gray sky, covering up my crappy field-grass yard for another few months. Finally. In a couple of weeks, I’ll be bitching about the cold and the snow, and paying the plow guy every week, but for now, I’m just grinning, because it’s December, and it’s Christmas, and it’s snowing.
     Yesterday I baked off a veritable mountain of sugar cookies. Mom always said, of her famous sugar cookie recipe, double the batch. So I did. It occurred to me as pan after pan of fluffy round cookies came out of the stove that maybe, just maybe, Mom always doubled the batch because she had two kids helping frost (and eat) the cookies, and that maybe, just maybe, a household of two and a half (the half being Lil’ Art who’s only here a day or two a week) didn’t really need 75 or 80 sugar cookies. Ah well. The girls at work will like them just as well.
     Today is “family day” at Casa del Java. We have Lil’ Art, and there will be sugar cookies to eat, and more baking to be done, and a Christmas tree to put up (because, with no snow and 60° weather, nobody felt like putting up a tree last week), and dinner to be cooked, and so forth.
     In the meantime, have some linkage:
     First up, enjoy this hilarious editorial from SFGate: Sex Will Make You Go Blind:

It is the only way to account for something like, say, the latest twist in the Abstinence Education Program from Bush’s increasingly laughable Department of Health and Human Services, a $50 million slice of embarrassing government detritus that is now actually encouraging all states to tell their single, youngish residents that they should — how to put this so you don’t shoot coffee through your nose? — that everyone should avoid sex entirely, until they turn 30.

See? See your reaction? You are like: No way. You are like: Is the United States government really saying that? You are like: Laughter, a smirk, maybe a shrug and a sigh and a sad shake of the head and another glass of wine because, you know, what the hell is wrong with these people?

     Here’s one from Crooks&Liars that will piss you right off — or should, anyways — a video and transcript of Keith Olbermann’s latest Special Comment, about Newt Gingrich’s call for less freedom of speech, to keep us safe from those nasty terrorists who haven’t managed to do anything significant to us over here in the States in five years.
     Go ahead, go watch it, I’ll wait. It’s only eight minutes long or so.
     Done? Right on — preach it, Keith. Nothing, nothing, nothing is ever worth giving up our rights and freedoms for. Part of being an American, part of what makes America what it is, are our rights and freedoms. Every one that we give away is a victory for the terrorists that struck us on 9/11. This is what they wanted. They wanted to scare us so bad that we did stupid-assed things like, oh, I dunno, gave up our freedoms. Does our freedom of speech make us a little less safe, what with the press flying off at the mouth about every little thing they learn our corrupted, heinous government is doing? Yeah, maybe. But that’s the price you pay to be a free nation. We being willing to pay that price is what makes America great. Giving up those freedoms because some fear-mongering politician said we should is what makes us a bunch of assholes.
     Also, I totally want one of these. They’re freakin’ adorable.
     Apparently, someone did a study about the link between psychosis and liking/voting for George W. Bush. As much as I would dearly love to trumpet this study from the rooftops, unfortunately, it’s a crap study. Orac explains why: 1 & 2.

Playing the Popularity Game:

This entry was posted on Friday, December 1st, 2006 at 4:33 pm and is filed under Linkage, Medicine, Politics, Real Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.