Saturday, July 03, 2010

Independence Day Advice

Some advice from Linda, La Reine de Barbecue:

"For fun on the 4th, get a 5th on the 3rd!!!"

Sage advice from someone who knows how to have fun and where the bodies are buried! 

Thanks gurl!

Verrrryyy Interesting!

I saw a couple of items in the blogs this morning. I think those fools at the RNC better get their talking points straight. Take a look at these:
Gallup Discovers that Teabaggers are actually Conservative Republicans

"There is significant overlap between Americans who identify as supporters of the Tea Party movement and those who identify as conservative Republicans. Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene."

And then this:

Lindsay Graham (R-SC) Says Tea Party Will "Die Out"

"The problem with the Tea Party, I think it's just unsustainable because they can never come up with a coherent vision for governing the country. It will die out."

From Lindsay's lips to the imaginary super-being's ears!

Happy Fourth of July Weekend!!

Image from the boys at Hedge House...

Friday, July 02, 2010

And another thing...

What's that I smell?

Do I smell cherry pie baking? Noooo... 

Ugh! This damn diet. I have had this crazy fixation on baking a cherry pie for a whole week now. I can't seem to shake it loose.

Oh... and by the way...

Extra large Northwest Cherries on sale at Stop & Shop... $1.49/lb

Friday Fun

It's Friday afternoon, the beginning of Independence Day weekend. Do you have plans? My boss says that we are not off on Monday due to the fact that we are a small company, and that we can have the day off but we have to use a vacation day for it ;-(.

I'm going to install air conditioners in a couple of windows because I understand that starting tomorrow and for the next few days it's going to be pretty hot. Guess that it's a blessing I have to work on Monday. At least it'll be cool. I cannot bear being hot at night so I need to get the installation done tomorrow morning and fire it up early. Also I have plans to go out with the gurls Sunday to P-Town so that should be good for some yuk-yuks.

Going through my emails and web sites last night and at lunch today I came across these two funny videos that I wanted to share.

..........WE INTERRUPT THIS FUN FOR THE FOLLOWING ALERT! ... BOSS JUST CALLED... I HAVE DAY OFF ON MONDAY!!!... HOORAY!!!...  AND NOW BACK TO THE FUN...

I was alerted to the first one by House Party contributor Michael D from Washington (now North Carolina). It seems that Liza (with a black, sequined, Halston Z) has debuted a line of clothes on the Home Shoppin' Club. This I have to see:



The second one is a scream. It seems that once a year in Madrid, there is a drag race where everyone participating has to wear high heels!! Have a look:



Have a fabulous Independence Day y'all!

17 Senators from states with double-digit unemployment rates filibuster unemployment benefits extension


Since the beginning of the Great Recession, 15 million Americans have lost their jobs. Almost half of them have been out of work for six months or more, and there are currently nearly five workers actively seeking work for every available job. However, the Senate has been unable to extend job benefits because of a Republican filibuster, which has been joined by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE). On three separate occasions, Democrats tried to break the filibuster but were unsuccessful. And while no senator voting to continue the filibuster should be allowed to escape responsibility, many voting to sustain it are from states that have been hit particularly hard by the unemployment crisis. Here are the 17 senators from states with double-digit unemployment who are willing to leave their constituents without a safety net:

Senator(s) State Unemployment Rate Votes Against Cloture (Out Of Three)
Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby (R) Alabama 10.8% Three each
Sen. George LeMieux (R) Florida 10.4% Three
Sens. Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson (R) Georgia 10.2% Three each
Sen. Richard Lugar (R) Indiana 10.0% Three
Sens. Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning (R) Kentucky 10.4% Three each
Sens. Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran (R) Mississippi 11.4% Three each
Sen. John Ensign (R) Nevada 14.0% Three
Sen. Richard Burr (R) North Carolina 10.3% Three
Sen. George Voinivich Ohio 10.7% Three
Sen. Lindsey Graham South Carolina 11.0% Two (Missed vote on 6/17)
Sen. Jim DeMint South Carolina 11.0% Two (Missed vote on 6/30)
Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander (R) Tennessee 10.4% Three each
1.3 million people have lost their benefits this month alone, and this is actually an historic step on the part of the Senate, as “never before has Congress cut off benefits when unemployment was so high.” But perhaps Republicans in the Senate agree with Sharron Angle that unemployed people are simply “spoiled” and “afraid to get a job”?

It's a beautiful morning on Old Cape Cod!

Enjoying my coffee, the papers and birdsong on a glamorous morning.
Enjoy the day!

Thursday, July 01, 2010

The "Ethnic" food section at the supermarket

We've all seen them. The section at the supermarket that contains the curry paste and poppadoms (India), the Coleman's Sausage Casserole mix and canned spotted dick (Great Britain) and of course the matzohs and gefilte fish (Israel). But what if you are in another country, say Germany, and are looking for a bit of home-style food?

Hier ist die ethnische American essen bereich. Fablehaft!




Wednesday, June 30, 2010

I just gasped at work!

I have lived on Cape Cod for the last 21 years. It wasn't until I moved here that I really appreciated the seaside, probably because I am not much of a sunbather. Plus I really don't like swimming in the ocean. I prefer a nice chlorinated pool. However there is no substitute for the lovely views near the ocean. Often I find myself thanking fortune for having placed me here at this time. 

When I came back from lunch today I logged into my computer and what popped up on the Huntington Post's front page but the horrifying photo below. All I could think of was how I would feel if this happened here. For me it makes the question of whether or not to build offshore wind farms in Nantucket Sound a no brainer. Would I rather have a few windmills (which by the way hundreds of which dotted the landscape of Cape Cod not so long ago) or offshore drilling which could end up doing this to our shoreline?


I feel so bad for those folks in the Gulf.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

You Senior Citizens out there still think that Republicans are the party that's is on your side?

(As they said in the 40's) Pipe this!

More of what America would get from Speaker Boehner:
Ensuring there’s enough money to pay for the war will require reforming the country’s entitlement system, Boehner said. He said he’d favor increasing the Social Security retirement age to 70 for people who have at least 20 years until retirement, tying cost-of-living increases to the consumer price index rather than wage inflation and limiting payments to those who need them.

"We need to look at the American people and explain to them that we’re broke," Boehner said. "If you have substantial non-Social Security income while you’re retired, why are we paying you at a time when we’re broke? We just need to be honest with people."
Did you hear that senior citizens? The GOP leader admitted he's going to cut your benefits to pay for the war. He's not threatening to end the tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans. You remember how Bush and the GOP cut taxes for the rich despite our engagement in two wars. Nope. He's coming for Social Security benefits.

You've been warned, senior citizens.

This is how the GOP will govern. Wall Street bankers will be coddled. Working Americans will get screwed (again.) 

From the fine folks at AmericaBlog.com

Bonus Question: Why is this douchenozzle orange?

For the record

For the record:

I use an advertising banner program from Google Ads to populate the ads on my web page. It is easy to use and it has generated a very small yet viable revenue stream from my site. Google's web "spiders" crawl my page and grab key words from the site and then match ads to the site content. It works pretty well sometimes. Today is not one of the days I am happy with Google ads.

Why you ask? I was posting the pizza diet post and looking at the preview of the post when I noticed something horrible... something so anathema to me that I had to fire off this post immediately. There was an ad for Rep. Jeff Perry, R-Sandwich, MA, and his bid for US Congress to replace Rep. Will Delahunt!

Let me say unequivocally that neither Frenchy's House Party, nor Frenchy, nor any of his contributors endorses Rep. Perry for that position or believes that he would be an appropriate candidate for any public office considering what he has done (according to the public records).

I just wanted to set the record straight.

At Last!!! There is some meaning to this life!

For those of you who don't know me I will tell you that my favorite food, and the one I miss most on my Jenny Craig diet, is pizza. I have chronicled this in a couple of blog posts, here and here. My favorite pie is from a place in Providence, RI called Caserta Pizza on Acorn Street. Theirs is a pan pizza with just tomatoes and olive oil on it. You must order cheese if you want it and also if you want pepperoni you must order "sausage" as that's what they call their pepperoni. It is a delicious pie where the tomato caramelized on the fresh chewy crust. Yummmmmm! If you go there, beware! The medium is the size of a 1/2 sheet pan (for those of you in the food biz), and their large is a full sheet pan!

Imagine my delight when I saw this story today on the web. Huzzah! 

The Pizza Diet: Matt McClellan, Cyclist, loses 24 pounds in 30 days eating only pizza!

Matt McClellan may be an athlete and may own a pizza shop, but the former isn't why he lost weight, and the latter isn't why he's plugging pizza. McClellan just wants America to know that pizza is "healthier than other fast food." And he's not saying that to sell pizza, which he claims "sells itself.""Pizza is not junk food. We just need to eat it different[ly]. We're trained to eat it wrong -- we're trained to eat a whole large pizza at midnight with a two liter of soda and fall asleep," he told ABC. 

By eating a slice of pizza every three hours and working out for one hour, McClellan dropped 24 pounds and five inches of waistline.He is spreading his story, and diet, through his bike "tour de pizza," a 30-day bike tour that started in Florida and will end on July 4th in Times Square. In accomplishing this feat, he hopes to relieve the stigma associated with pizza, as well as challenge America to aim for a healthier lifestyle. "If I can ride my bike to New York, come on America, you can spend one hour a day getting healthier," he said. 

Can I hear an A-MEN??!!??

Monday, June 28, 2010

41 Years ago...

From Meisterblogger Joe Jervis at JoeMyGod.com

It was June 27th, 1969.

The day that the fags, dykes, and queens of New York City finally said "Enough!" For some historical perspective, I'm posting the story that the New York Daily News ran about the Stonewall Riots. Note how the story drips with condescension and ridicule. We've come a long, long way in 41 years and we've still got some distance to cover, but today we should all offer up a shout, a snap, and a moment of thanks to the people who started us down this road.

HOMO NEST RAIDED - QUEEN BEES ARE STINGING MAD

-by Jerry Lisker, New York Daily News, July 6th 1969

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn't bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.

Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. "We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over," lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.

"We've had all we can take from the Gestapo," the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. "We're putting our foot down once and for all." The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and tables. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.

The Raid Last Friday

Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.

All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.

Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.

The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn't protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn't want him to see her this way, she wept.

Queen Power

The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.

Urged on by cries of "C'mon girls, lets go get'em," the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.

Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.

Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.

Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. "If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war."

Bruce and Nan

Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20's. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.

"I don't like your paper," Nan lisped matter-of-factly. "It's anti-fag and pro-cop."

"I'll bet you didn't see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn't have a liquor license."

Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan's trembling hands.

"Calm down, doll," he said. "Your face is getting all flushed."

Nan wiped her face with a tissue.

"This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too," Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.

"What wedding?," the bystander asked.

Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. "Eric and Jack's wedding, of course. They're finally tying the knot. I thought they'd never get together."

Meet Shirley

"We'll have to find another place, that's all there is to it," Bruce sighed. "But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later."

"They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular," Nan said bitterly. "I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that's the real reason. It's a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn't they leave us alone?"

Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.

"Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there," she said. "The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don't know what they did inside, but that's their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies."

A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premises.

Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. "They had the tightest security in the Village," a First Division officer said, "We could never get near the place without a warrant."

Police Talk

The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

"They were throwing more than lace hankies," one inspector said. "I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn't miss, though, "it hit me right above the temple."

Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall's cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.

The police are sure of one thing. They haven't heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.