#69: Yea, Bi-Mart! Really bare-bones kind of place, with pegboard on the walls and cans stacked on palettes. There are two nearby, but not especially convenient. I keep an eye on their circular, though, and if there's enough stuff I need on special I swing down there to load up. I recall buying my carpet steamer there, and a clothes drying rack.
Yes, they're employee-owned.
* * *
Portland seems to have a Wal-Mart exclusion field. There's one out on I-205 way east of downtown, and one up in St. Helens by the river. There's no sense making a special trip given the proliferation of Targets and the presence of Fred Meyer, a very nice Kroger chain that is essentially a discount department store with a nice grocery.
If things go as planned a recently-licensed-pilot friend will be flying me over Yosemite on Friday morning. Far away from any malls.
Ironically, I'll probably be doing some shopping that day. I have to put together Christmas hampers for an aunt and some friends.
#84: Nope, just down there for Thanksgiving. Christmas is back east.
Flying to the Bay Area tomorrow morning.
I have a bag of stocking stuff type gifts I picked up at Goodwill. Cute little voice-memory records. They come with batteries. I'm trying to imagine what the TSA people will make of them.
Or of THIS.
The Oregonian ran a piece today about people swarming to Palin's signings. Their gushing sounded so damn familiar. So damn much like people gushing about Bush back in 2000.
Hang in there! Hospitals are miserable places and getting him home may make a huge difference.
#69: Thanks for the update. Seizures are nothing to sneeze at, but I imagine that beats a stroke.
Not a praying man, but intense hopeful thoughts and good wishes directed his way.
I hope Sarah Palin's book sells very, very well, and that she uses her profits to further her quest to make as many GOP political figures act as crazy as she does, because I really want to see Republicans become the party of crazy self-marginalized loons.
#771: Ooooh. Turning that around would make a great gag label:
"Made by the Sisters of the Caramelite Order."
* * *
Fudge pictures:
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/fudge_naked.JPG
http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones/fudge_08_lo.jpg
RE Text Messaging Girl particle:
Last Christmas I showed up at an old friend's house. His girlfriend was there too. Both were in shock. One of her squad mates's(*) daughters had walked into traffic while texting. She had her parka hood up, the weather was bad, the roads not good. Just walked across a freeway exit without looking.
They were taking the kid off of life support that evening.
* She's a policeperson.
#755: I wonder how long one of those would stand up to my dog's attention.
* * *
Mmmm. Confectionarish talk.
Thinking out loud:
Last weekend I bought $55.00 or so worth of chocolate (and mint) chips, condensed milk, evaporated milk, and marshmallows.
Yes, it's fudge season.
Plans: A layer of "flavored" evaporated milk fudge over a base of condensed milk fudge. Mint over dark chocolate. Coffee over milk chocolate. Butterscotch over something.
All with a broiler-carmelized paste of confectioner's sugar and [coffee | mint] liquor on top.
Oh, for Cripe's Sake:
Marine reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist
TAMPA — A Marine reservist armed with a tire iron beat and chased a man he thought was an Arab terrorist and even called 911 to say he was detaining the man, police said.
But the man he assaulted was actually a Greek Orthodox priest visiting from overseas who spoke limited English, police said.
That's why police arrested reservist Jasen D. Bruce on a charge of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.
Police said they're also investigating whether Bruce, 28, committed a hate crime.
The incident took place around 6:35 p.m. Monday, police said. The priest, Alexios Marakis, 29, is from Crete, Greece. He is visiting St. Nicholas Greek Cathedral at 17 E Tarpon Ave. but police said he was in the Westshore area to bless another retired Greek priest.
But Marakis apparently got lost and exited northbound Interstate 275 into downtown Tampa, police said.
The priest followed several cars into the Seaport Channelside Apartments on Twiggs Street. He got out of his car and asked Bruce for help.
Instead of offering help, Bruce struck the priest on the head with a tire iron, police said.
He then chased the priest for three blocks to the Madison Avenue and Meridian Avenue, police said, and even called 911 to say that an Arabic man tried to rob him.
Bruce said he was going to take the Arab into custody. When police arrived, Bruce told them the victim was a terrorist.
Two movies of note:
The Lives of Others: Bland Stasi careerist spies on playwright and girlfriend.
Good Bye Lenin!: Young people recreate East Berlin in an apartment so delicate, bedridden mother who coma-slept through the fall of the Eastern Bloc doesn't have a fatal relapse.
Amped up version of what I just posted on a gaming board:
What an astonishing year that was! I got a traveling job in 1989, flying all over the country to do trade shows and visit appliance stores to train salespeople.
Layer on top of that the "WHAT happened?" aspect of the news and you've got a year that seemed a lot longer than 365 days. (During my first trade show, in Chicago, the Ayatollah Khomeini died.)
I used to hang with wargamers and such who lived in this cold war thought bubble. There was this whole end-times scenario worked out involving Soviet tanks rolling into Germany and nukes flying. I had long already started to roll my eyes at this stuff; 1989 just totally tore apart that paradigm. Seeing how the old wargamers took it was kind of sad and funny.
It didn't really begin with the wall going down. As I recall, Poland's regime was the first to effectively give it up. Welesa's tireless enough-of-this-BS labor organizing just couldn't be countered.
Then boom, boom, boom . . . all those tired Eastern Bloc bureaucratic farts, up against VCRs, rock music, and modems, just giving it up. Then the wall, and then, just before the end of the year, Romania. I remember joking with friends at New Year's that at the rate the world was moving it wouldn't surprise me if the Hyperdrive was announced before midnight.
Went to an all-you-can-eat Sausage and Sauerkraut Dinner fundraiser today. The organizers, members of a church in Verboordt OR, made NINE TONS of kraut and THIRTEEN TONS of smoked sausage. They've been doing this for seventy five years, and it shows.
Sheesh. I'm glad they only have that once a year. Eating that stuff habitually would kill me, though I might die with a big smile on my face.
* * *
I'm starting to look around for a sauerkraut bucket. Any ideas? I want to make about two heads worth.
Christopher Moore's "The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove" features a dragon-like sea monster humping a gasoline tanker.
#75: "What I dislike are "speculative novels" by literary lions who don't really believe anything will change from their current situation."
From an essay I mentioned uptopic:
"Updike is wrong. He clings to a rotting cultural fabric that he knows is based on falsehoods, and rejects challenges to that fabric by declaring "well you're another." But science, true science, does learn from mistakes; theologians like Roger Lambert merely further complicate their own mistaken premises.
It's a shuck, ladies and gentlemen. It won't wash. It doesn't own the future; it won't even kiss the future goodbye on its way to the graveyard. It doesn't own our minds any more. We don't live in an age of answers, but an age of ferment. And today that ferment is reflected faithfully in a literature called science fiction. SF may be crazy, it may be dangerous, it may be shallow and cocksure, and it should learn better. But in some very real way it is truer to itself, truer to the world, than is the writing of John Updike."
Suspiciously generic post. Link to commercial site.
Apologies to Andy if he's genuine, but I Think Not.
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