Knock Knock -

I know, I'm Vegan - but still love a good recipe!

Another Houston Favorite - Spicy Gulf Shrimp - Crazy Easy

Best of Houston - Goode Co. Seafood - Campechana

I've always wanted this recipe! Showed up in the Chron this morning. Guess what's in their secret sauce?

My new obsession -Flash Mob Dancing

Totally puts me in touch with my joy. I want to do one of these in Houston! I'm thinking Rodeo or Art Car Parade...

The Sociologist in me just loves this and I feel the need to post as many of these examples of "collective group behavior" as I can. My favorite part is watching the reactions of the unsuspecting onlookers. (Oprah in this case). Stay tuned!

My Dream Home

Hopetown Beach...

We Are # 37!! Yeah USA!

Whaaa...?

Here's an articulate bunch of True Americans... I am sold! I especially like guy with the huge cross saying he just happened to be in DC cause he wanted to see the Capital. I guess he drags that cross around with him all the time. Cool.

Watch out for them evil Czars!

There's been a lot of discussion over this one on Facebook this morning. One of my friends posted this with a reference to Dumb and Dumber - she got a reply back from someone screeching FREEDOM!!!! - we have the FREEDOM to think what we want to think and say what we want to say - and my friend is UN-AMERICAN for calling these people dumb.

Well..

So now you are a g.d. commie-pinko to call an American idiot an idiot? I agree that it is way beyond awesome that we have the right to think and feel and express our views freely. But freedom isn't exactly free - with Freedom Comes Responsibility - I heard that somewhere... :)

With our freedom we have the responsibility to educate ourselves, to maintain intellectual curiosity and double check our facts. Don't be screaming Fascist! and Socialist! when you don't know the frickin meaning of the term! To protect freedom, we have the responsibility not to sit on our asses getting spoon fed information (that could be biased - or even, yes, a lie!) and then go spewing it in all directions without checking to see if the info is correct. It's irresponsible, lazy and yes, DUMB. It's scares me and angers me - because a willfully uneducated MOB is a dangerous mob.

I like this from Wikipedia - (I'm too lazy to go find my political science textbook in the attic) : )

Socialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with an egalitarian method of compensation. In Marxist theory, socialism is a transitional phase between capitalism and communism characterized by unequal distribution of goods and compensation according to work done. Contrary to popular belief, socialism is not a political system; it is an economic system distinct from capitalism, an ideology expounding the setting up of an alternative system, using intervention.


Fascism comprises a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology and a corporatist economic ideology developed in Italy. Fascists believe that nations and/or races are in perpetual conflict whereby only the strong can survive by being healthy, vital, and by asserting themselves in conflict against the weak.
Fascists advocate the creation of a single-party state. Fascist governments forbid and suppress criticism and opposition to the government and the fascist movement. Fascism opposes class conflict, blames capitalist liberal democracies for its creation and communists for exploiting the concept

This concludes today's lesson. Tomorrow we will cover Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism and several other ism's that will also confuse and scare the shit out of you.

xoxo

More on the Race Card -

Andrew Sullivan may have it right..

OPINION

The Opinionator: Is It Because He’s Black?

By By Eric Etheridge

Published: September 14, 2009

Some see racism behind the actions of Barack Obama's opponents.

StopPressuringMe

Jackson awesomeness - watch in full scream...

Scream Video

Mental Illness

Was just reading Maureen Dowd's latest column Boy Oh Boy, where she discusses her reluctant realization that all the fuss over Obama this summer really does boil down to this - racism.

I've been feeling this way for a while. There is no other way to explain the ferocity and hatred his opponents display. It's not just the rednecks and illiterates that are guilty! I am hearing it from old friends of mine - people who are otherwise rational, intelligent and caring beings. The extent of concern goes way beyond what you would expect from a mere republican reaction to having to pony up more in taxes or fear of government getting bigger. They didn't freak out when government grew by leaps and bounds under Bush!

The first comment after MoDo's article really hit the mark for me and sums up what I've known all along:

"The saddest thing is, people aren't just angry with the fact that we have an African-American president. They are angry with the feelings within themselves which are activated by seeing such a symbol. Racism becomes not just an attitude at this point as it does a mental illness."

Mental illness is correct. You simply cannot rationalize this extent and expression of hatred and fear. I am certain that if the opponents of Obama's agenda were to sit down and read one of his speeches - the address to students, last week's healthcare reform speech, the Yes We Can speech - without knowing the author, especially the color of the author, they would recognize a true American Voice.

Another commenter mentioned how it is time for those of us who support our President to stand up for him and do it as loudly and as proudly as possible. My fear is that the lunatic fringe will succeed in marginalizing this intelligent, thoughtful and devoted American. After all, his poll numbers are down - not everyone who voted for him is supporting him. Strange and scary. What did they expect "Change" would mean? (that everything would stay the same???)

Let's work together to get this change enacted and to counteract the hatred and fear. Ya wit me??

From Mr. Cranky to you (through me - Ms. Cranky)

Facebook is fun. It's also annoying as hell - especially when one of your friends (in this case a relative) spews never ending and really ignorant bile aimed at the current administration. I would love to roast said relative - but am employing good manners and appropriate FB etiquette. Instead, I will post Mr. Cranky's rant regarding the politics surrounding healthcare reform on my very own blog which very (and I mean very) few people read.... :) Just call me chickenheart.

No Longer a Christian Nation

Submitted by Mr.Cranky on Fri, 08/21/2009 - 18:36.

• Culture War

What would Jesus Do on healthcare reform? Apparently, he’d scream all sorts of slanderous insults at the top of his lungs, call our President a Nazi, and tell the uninsured to go die in the streets like the money-grubbing suckholes that they are.

Keep in mind that the vocal opposition to healthcare reform is the Christian Right. It’s time to stop pretending that America has any form of Christianity that actually resembles real Christianity. Christianity used to be about helping thy neighbor, but now it’s just some bastardization of religion whose main tenets are: “Fuck the government. Fuck the poor. Let’s make sure I keep what’s mine.”

You can be sure that whenever a complex issue comes up, a huge portion of the American people will run in circles screaming at the top of their lungs in fear because they’re simply too stupid to understand anything and too willfully ignorant to educate themselves when information is so readily available. The right-wing and the Christian right have concocted an anti-healthcare reform platform that’s so filled with lies that it’s hard to know how to combat it. Surely, if they wanted to start a “World is Flat” campaign, they could certainly convince their constituents that the “World is Round” folks have just been shoving some giant government conspiracy down their throat for the last however many years.

These morons have been referring to healthcare reform as some kind of Nazi propaganda while being completely incapable of connecting the two (because there is no connection). These same morons have been willfully utilizing completely debunked criticisms as well: government takeover (debunked), illegal immigrant insurance (debunked), death panels (debunked) – the list goes on and on. And this is all in an effort to make sure the uninsured – the poor – stay uninsured. The irony is that the uninsured end up going to emergency rooms and driving up the cost of healthcare, costs that are put on the American taxpayer anyway.

A further irony is that the parents of all these idiots are likely on Medicaid or Medicare, a government run healthcare system that works quite well. Another irony is that old people are largely against healthcare reform, citing the “government-run” thing as their main criticism, despite the fact that the government runs their healthcare. I say that if you’re old and have the gall to oppose healthcare reform, we pull your Medicaid or Medicare and let you fucking die as soon as possible. And if you’re one of these Christian right-wing idiots and your parents are taking from the government, we let them die too.

After all, this is the mantra of our Christian nation: fuck the government, fuck the poor, give me what’s mine. Man, that Jesus must have been a hell of a guy.

This Cracks Me Up -

Last night we got a wild hair and Mama took YaYa to the Demi Lovato concert. YaYa let her freak flag fly!! (FFF)

Mama (feeling very Mama-ish) enjoyed the ruckus and was especially moved by the quality of the opening act's voice - David Archuleta. The other Mamas there were a but stunned to meet someone who had never heard of David Archuleta. Hmmm... How much popular culture am I missing by not watching American Idol? (very small forehead wrinkle...then a shoulder shrug...)

I haven't let my FFF lately. Things have serious - lots of forehead wrinkling. I think I will put those concerns aside today and concentrate on smoothing out those wrinkles. I am going to learn to cook quinoa. So there.

ahhhhh

Mamarazzi Monday

Palo Duro Canyon - Spring 2008

I Got It From My Mama

A Facebook meme I got yesterday states: The BBC doesn't think we read!

(now I have looked at the BBC website The Big Read and I did not find any evidence the BBC believes only a few of us will have read over 6 of the books listed. So - grain of salt time...)

Anyway - the list is interesting and I had fun checking off those I've read and those I'm pretty certain I've read, (because surely (!) I read Hamlet in high school! Didn't we all? Or am I just having Mel Gibson movie flash backs?) This is not a list of the greatest books of all time, the BBC compiled this list in 2003, to determine the 100 best loved books.

Here's the meme:

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. (I added an m for "saw the movie" as well)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x m
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x m
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x m
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x m
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x m
6 The Bible m
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x m
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x m
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens x m (LOVE Ms. Havisham!)
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x m
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy x m
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (can't say I've read them ALL) m
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier x m
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x (m - can't wait! eeek!)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot x
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x m
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x m
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x m
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh x m
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck x
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x m
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy x
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x
34 Emma - Jane Austen x m
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x m
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x m (sort of a repeat of 33?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini x m
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden m only (I know...)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x m
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x m
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving x m-sort of, if you can call it a movie
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x m
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy x m
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan m only...sigh..
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons x m
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x m
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon x
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez x
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x m
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas m...
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x m
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville m surely...
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x m
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker m...
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x m
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x m
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x m
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x m
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro m only..
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert x
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x m
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom x
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x (m soon!)
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas m...
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare x m
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x m m
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

MY TOTAL = 57 Hmmm – 43 to go!

I already have several of my non-read books on the shelf, but for some reason have not picked them up - Catch-22 and A Confederacy of Dunces come to mind. Doh! It's OK - I plan to have them all read (and those on the greatest novels of all time list) by the time I am 90. My epitaph on the wall at James Coney Island? "She was well read and ate a ton of popcorn to boot"

So are we Dunces? (I mean in the sense that we don't read..) I like to think not! However, the stats for the "general population" are sobering... Minnesota Matron (one of my everyday blog reads - I am a big fan!) recently posted a link to a very disturbing article from Truthdig. Is it really possible that 80% of American Families did not buy one single book last year? Suffused with disbelief and drama -because I certainly don't know anyone like that! - I recited my horror to one of my work buddies who admitted that yes, she was one of the 80%. After gnawing on my foot for a while, making references to how much ROOM books take up in the house, we hung up and I decided that my book clutter was not so annoying after all.
Thanks to my wonderful book-aholic Mom! I have you to thank for the countless hours of adventure, romance, mystery, wonder and awe I have gleaned from my library. I hope I can promote the same passions in my children.

Exponential Times

It's a 6 minute long video, but just think, in a couple of years they'll put it on a microchip and insert it into the Microport in your skull and voila! you'll have an extra 5minutes and 55seconds to make chocolate chip cookies!



Love the music from "Last of the Mohicans". Always wanted to choreograph a ballet to this one... It's called Promentory.

Kookie Anyone??

What it's REALLY like at our house....


Doppleganger Take #2 or so...



Doppleganger Take #31 or so....



You can hear the voice of their horrified mother in the the background...

Love Thursday

                                                                      YaYa made this!


The World Has Changed
A poem written for these times by Alice Walker

The World Has Changed:
Wake up & smell
The possibility.
The world
Has changed:
It did not
Change
Without
Your prayers
Without
Your faith
Without
Your determination
To
Believe
In liberation
&
Kindness;
Without
Your
Dancing
Through the years
That
Had
No
Beat.
The world has changed:
It did not
Change
Without
Your
Numbers
Your
Fierce
Love
Of self
&
Cosmos
It did not
Change
Without
Your
Strength.
The world has
Changed:
Wake up!
Give yourself
The gift
Of a new
Day.
The world has changed:
This does not mean
You were never
Hurt.
The world
Has changed:
Rise!
Yes
&
Shine!
Resist the siren
Call
Of
Disbelief.
The world has changed:
Don't let
Yourself
Remain
Asleep
To
It.
--By Alice Walker for the Inauguration

Michelle says..

Ladies, You Know I Love This Man - But Oh My GAH! My Feet Hurt!!

This Day in History - Let Love Grow

My Dearest Children (Z and C) - I am so proud of you and am so glad you are both here to see this Day!! What an amazing world!

................................

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation.

Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights.

Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness.

Yes we can.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountaintop and pointed the way to the Promised Land.

Yes we can to justice and equality. Yes we can to opportunity and prosperity. Yes we can heal this nation. Yes we can repair this world. Yes we can.

And so tomorrow . . . we will remember that there is something happening in America; that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation; and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast; from sea to shining sea.

Yes. We. Can.

Text from President Barack Obama's speech at the New Hampshire primary, Jan 8, 2008. 

Thanks for the idea Meg!

Check Out This Girl's Placement!

Did you know that I was a dancer? Still am in my heart. Keep thinking I am going to go back to Ballet Class. Hmmm - maybe I will. (just as soon as I lose 20 lbs....hee hee! Vanity, thy name is Bonnie!)

Saw this just now on YouTube. Aria Alekzander is a member of the Corps de Ballet at Houston Ballet - her fouettes turns are amazing! Looks like she is having fun...



Enjoy!

Her page at Houston Ballet.