YouTube Fridays

So I am on a bit of a nostalgia trip here. Today I was thinking about these really bad '90s Saturday morning shows.


City Guys


California Dreams

And of course, the original that got it all started.


Saved by the bell

Blog P-I-M-P

I wanted to post something here today, I am trying to write everyday at least something. So today I am doing a little blog pimpin'.

• Have Camera, will be goofy by Lisa. I love reading Lisa's stuff since she was DCup and this has not changed. Plus being able to see the drive home with her and Mathman makes this post funner (funner is so a word).
• Do you need a license to perform a vivisection on national TV? by Tengrain. Tengrain is one of the snarkiest and most entertaining bloggers I read and this post has Rachel Maddow in it, so that is really all I need.
• Alcohol Bender: "Women" shouldn't drink? Wait a minute... by Figleaf. Figleaf is a really smart blogger. Although he would probably be considered a sex blogger, mostly he writes about gender issues and feminism and not just sex.

pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins

Someone on Facebook mentioned that I was waiting for my pumpkin-chocolate chip muffins to cool and I said I would post it here. I love these muffins and am working on getting the recipe exactly the way I want it, so as I reprint the recipe here I will also add the notes I have found so far. I tried to do these in my new Kitchen Aid because I could and I wanted to play with the mixer attachment and it worked pretty well, although I found some spots on the bottom of the bowel that were jsut flour that I had to mix in with the rest of the batter. I am not sure if I didn't mix it long enough (which I was trying to be careful of so I did not overmix the muffins) or if I need to adjust the mixer so that it reaches farther into the bottom of the mixer or if muffins just should not be done in a stand mixer.

Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Muffins

INGREDIENTS

* 3/4 cup brown sugar
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 2 eggs
* 1 small can of pumpkin (the original recipe calls for only a cup of canned pumpkin, but I really like pumpkin and it didn't seem that pumpkin-y the first time so I upped the amount this time)
* 1/4 cup water
* 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour ( I used white whole wheat this time and it didn't affect the flavor or the density)
* 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
* ¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon (the original recipe calls for 1/2 teaspoons of cinnamon, but GG and I thought it needed a bit more)
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
* 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F . Grease and flour muffin pan or use paper liners.
2. Mix sugar, oil, eggs. Add pumpkin and water. In separate bowl mix together the baking flour, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt.. Add wet mixture and stir in chocolate chips.
3. Fill muffin cups 2/3 full with batter. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes.

Meat for a vegetarian

As a vegetarian, there are times I want to be able to have a quick meal of burgers or hot dogs and fries. No, I do not want meat, but there are times it is nice to be able to just make a quick meal or healthier comfort food. Sure black beans and rice or lentils and rice can be comfort foods and I do like them a lot, but they are not as quick, at times as I would like. And it is nice to be able to use meat substitutes in recipes, so I tend to use veggie burgers or tofu pups or fake meat. Most of these fake meat things are just not very good, sometimes they taste weird and/or have a weird texture and sometimes they are just plain disgusting. I do eat fish, but the salmon burgers I have tasted are as bad as the veggie burgers. I do eat veggie burgers at times and they are OK, I have found I like Morningstar Farms stuff the best, but really these are only really sad imitations. When i am really lucky I am able to find restaurants who make their own veggie burgers like this place or this place. But really places that make their own veggie burgers and do not just use the same frozen patties you find in the grocery store are few and far between. But then something happens, you find a veggie meat product at the grocery store that is truly good. Well, I found one that I really like. The Trader Joe's Italian Sausage, GG and I had tried a little sample at the store a few weeks ago and thought it was pretty good, so we decided to get some and use them in a recipe. We made some of the sausage in some pasta sauce and put it over pasta. It was good, really good in fact, but the sauce was really good so maybe that was the reason they tasted so good. So, GG got the sausages again to try in Italian sausage sandwiches with some onions and peppers maybe. Well, we finally decided to have the Italian sausage, but no onions or peppers so just sausage on bread with some ketchup and mustard. MMMMMMMM...well the sausage was still really good. I was so happy and now will have to think about keeping this Italian sausage from Trader Joe's in the house for when we want a sandwich or to put in soups or in pasta etc. It seems so simple to just find a way to put good flavoring in the sausage, the herbs in Italian sausage is not exactly a secret and yet no one else has figured out how to do it, except whatever brand TJ's throws their label on.

So for those of you who are vegetarian or semi-vegetarian or who just want a lower fat alternative to regular Italian sausage try the Trader Joe's brand as a good alternative.

Interesting short film

When I went to see Coraline, which was a great film by the way in case you cannot tell from the short review I did, there was a preview for a film called 9. I sat there with my jaw open and was in awe of the film, when it was over, I leaned over and told GG, "I want to see that." It is a feature length movie based upon a short film which was directed by Shane Acker. Well, now Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambetov are involved. I am sure most of you know who Burton is, but Bekmambetov is the director of Wanted and previously and much better the Night Watch/Day Watch sequence of movies. I loved the Watch series of movies and Wanted was interesting enough so I am excited to see what happens when he and Burton combine. So I looked up the short film and it is really interesting. The short film is like 10 minutes long, but if you have the time I recommend watching this film.

Kitty Sunday

Although this blog is named for my dog and kind of focused on him at times. He is doing well by the way, there are two other special animals in my life, Kali and Pele. They may not often be mentioned on this blog, but today I thought I would show them.

This is the elder statesman, Pele. She is the oldest of the animals at 15 and still doing well for her age.


And here is my kitty, Kali. She is all kitten at barely over a year old.


I can't leave Logan off of this accounting of animals because he was the first of the pets that I got and he is my old dog.

Movie Review in 10 words or less

Coraline. 3-D. creepy. cool. fun. not for kids.

Just a reminder

Chrissie Hynde was protesting outside a McDonalds yesterday with PETA. Apparently many of the people did not recognize her, so I am here to remind you what she looked like and how much she rocked.



And now a bonus video of Hynde and Michelle Branch because I can and just to show off Hynde's amazing guitar abilities. Also to show a more updated view of Hynde.

What do you think?

I firmly believe that there should be free speech for all, even those we do not agree with. I was reading this brief article about a student at a community college in Los Angeles who was berated by a professor for their stand on gay marriage. I saw the title and thought it was about a person who was pro-gay marriage, well I was wrong. The student gave a presentation about the fact that he thinks gay marriage is wrong. As you can see from my side bar, I am on the other side of him. I think that everyone has the right to get married and that there is no reason that the government should be involved in who and who cannot get married, but this student also has a right to his opinion. According to the article, the student says that midway through his speech he was cut off and called a "fascist bastard". And when the professor returned the grading rubric, rather than giving a grade he wrote "ask God what your grade is." Now maybe the student was blatantly hateful in his speech, but the article, of course, does not give us enough information to make a determination either way. So I have to go on that the professor reacted badly to the speech, by being childish by getting into a fight with a student and then refusing to give a grade. If the professor did not feel that the sources used were appropriate or that the student was being hateful or that the student was not respectful of others than there are ways to handle that, but to act childish is not one of those ways. I also hate the fact that this professor gives all liberal a bad name and just supports the whole notion that liberals are unfair to the opposition and unreasonable.

So my question is, if you are/were a college professor and a student wrote a paper or gave as speech and it was in direct opposition to your opinion on the topic, how would you handle it? The caveat I am going to add is that the student is not hateful toward you or other students, but has an opinion that may be unpopular or antithetical to your own.

YouTube Fridays

This first song is dedicated to my blog older sister FranIAm.


Fiddler on the Roof- Tradition

This song is dedicated to my brother and sister-in-law who are going to see Avenue Q this weekend and to my parents who say it last weekend. This has been probably my favorite song since I first heard the soundtrack.


Avenue Q- Fine, fine line

New toy

I got a new toy today. Well, I got it yesterday, but it had a scratch on it so I got a new one today. Yay!!



I have wanted a Kitchen Aid for a while and I finally found one at a good price so I snapped it up. I have one that was my Papa's and it is great, but it does not have the dough hook or the blender paddle and I was worried about trying to do bread or cookies or anything that was too viscose since all I have in the whisk. So maybe, now I can get back to making bread agin like I used to and really want to be doing.

What I learned in my teacher inservice today

I had a teacher inservice today and the presenter was actually not too bad for most of the time. He was engaging, interesting and attempted to keep us awake by asking questions and encouraging us to ask him questions and then the last ten minutes of the presentation happened. He ended with some thoughts on boys. Ok so boys in education, I am a male and I know that the pendulum in education has swung toward the idea that males are not ready for schooling or some other such bullshit. Males are 1.5 years behind neurologically and so we are still developing and not ready for schooling. Anyway... so I learned other things today. All of this is either in the handout he gave us or he told this to it. He did emphasize that this is all on average and that no one single boy or girl should be used as an example. I am not making any of it up.

- Boys are not able to multitask.
- It can take up to 7 hours for a boy to process emotions, which really means that boys are not able to process emotions because hell we can't multitask so while we are supposed to be multitasking on emotions and something else of course the emotional processing gets lost.
- When trying to talk to boys about feelings, keep it short and simple.
- Boys have more cerebrospinal fluid, which is because "boys hit their heads more and like a football helmet evolution provided boys with extra cushioning."

Now I have no issues with looking at the differences between boys and girls and learning styles. There does seem to be some credible research that says that boys and girls learn differently. Boys tend to be more spatial and math oriented (although not this boy) and girls tend to be more language oriented. There is also research that suggests that boys tend to need more movement and tend to be tactile-kinesthetic learners. So ok to looking at the differences, but I draw the line at things that I see as blatantly stupid or wrong and that set back gender relations.

The whole boys cannot process emotion sounds like it was created by a man as an excuse as to why men have to be macho all of the time and can't show their emotions. Boys are not able to understand emotions so why bother with it. If they want to hit someone, don't even try talking to them about how that might make the other person feel, boys are too emotionally stupid to understand this. And if you absolutely, positively have to talk to a boy about feelings or emotions keep it simple. Don't overburden them with such girly things such as their emotions and feelings. Oh and boys can't multitask so don't bother asking them to be able to focus on more than one thing at a time. And neither the lack of the ability to multitask or the lack of the ability to understand feelings are their fault, they are made this way, so don't bother trying to fight evolution or God or whatever made them the way that they are. And evolution also provided men with more brain fluid as they are prone to banging their head on things and their brains need cushioning. WTF!?!

When I hear this shit about how boys can't learn, about how boys and men can't become emotionally aware and then bullshit like evolution provides a brain cushion for men because we like to bang our heads into things, I get annoyed. I waited several hours before I put up this post because I knew I needed to calm down a bit so that I could be at least somewhat coherent. But really people, What the Fuck?!? This whole ending on the bullshit about boys made me reconsider everything else this man said and I had to find some of the statistics that he quoted about other things. Such as the fact that apparently for every hour of Baby Einstein that a child watches they develop 6-8 less words. (If you do not know what Baby Einstein is then consider yourself lucky as I will not link to such an evil and horrible product.) I had to look up this fact and according to this article in Time magazine, this is in fact true, but really I didn't want to have to look up other facts when I got home but this fucking idiot had to make me do it when he starts talking total shit about head banging boys without providing a shred of evidence or research.

Something I never thought I would see

Wonder Bread has now gone natural. Consumers have demanded that the company start to make healthier breads, so Wonder Bread responded and created a bread with no trans fats, no high fructose corn syrup and no artificial preservatives or flavors. It is truly amazing to me that this icon of unhealthy, highly processed white bread has done this 180, but I am also glad to see it happen as well. I am sure that this will not preclude the same company from making the unhealthy, highly processed breads as well, but still change is good. What's next all natural twinkies?

On a slightly different note, I love Mexican Coke. No, I am not doing illegal drugs. The Mexican Coke I am referring to is the Coca Cola that is produced in Mexico. It seems to have a cleaner taste, which I have figured out is probably because they do not use high fructose corn syrup in the drink just good ol' fashion sugar. I can find this around here pretty often since we have a large Latino(a) population. So hooray for Mexican Coke.

The Boxer Rebellion (YouTube Friday Weekend edition)

I found (Mathman mentioned them at some point to me in a comment or on Facebook or somewhere and I followed up on it) this band and decided that of course I have check them out. Well, The Boxer Rebellion are really good, IMHO. I wish I could take any kind of credit for this, but since I have no musical bone in my body, I can't, but I am honored to share my name, of sorts, with them.


The Boxer Rebellion- Evacuate


The Boxer Rebellion- The Flashing Red Light Means Go (Live)

When was the last time we saw this

"I screwed up" Obama says.

When was the last time our national leader admitted that he made a mistake? Oh yeah, at least eight years ago. I am not saying that Obama is perfect or that he hasn't royally fucked up considering he has nominated three different people for different cabinet positions who have had tax issues, but at least he admits that he makes mistakes and that is refreshing. Maybe there is some change going on although definitely not enough yet.

You're B.A.D.

So today is Blogroll Amnesty Day. I am supposed to pick five blogs that are smaller than mine to suggest to people. Well, guess what... I don't think I could pick three that are smaller than mine. I could pick my five favorites, but y'all are my favorites so I guess I will just post my whole blogroll and if you are not reading anyone I am you should be because really I do not read that many blogs and most of you are reading each other anyway.

Yikes!
When will I use this?
That's Why
Phydeaux Speaks
Never what you thought it should be
Monkey Muck
Monkey Mouth
Mock, Paper, Scissors
Media Needle
Little Mary Sunshine
Little Bang Theory
Konagod
Goumet Goddess
FranIam
Driftglass
Darkback
Comerade Kevin
Cap'n Dyke
Brave Sir Robin
Blue Gal

Important news

Traveler caught with pigeon in his pants. Is that what the kids are calling it these days?

The Kinky Llama delivers sex toys, products in a jiff. For when you have those 3 AM "cravings."