31 December 2009

new years eve


all fogged in

21 December 2009

¡hurra por los gays

MEXICO CITY — Mexico City lawmakers on Monday made the city the first in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage, a change that will give homosexual couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.

roswell


saw barrington hall and smith plantation today for the first time---interesting architecture but covered up with christmas doo-dah---typical tour guides that you just wished would shut up and let you walk around and look, which i did, which they didn't like---thnx cathi

winter solstice 2009


20 December 2009

vas genitch den liebenhauser?

the holiday spirit , continued


it is very cruel the way we treat our animals


thnx mr. wood

18 December 2009

ebenezer


finishing touches now --- they were finishing installation of the organ when i was there --- and the neon sign is back up out front

american philistines

saddam hussein built a giant palace at the ruins of ancient babylon, but did relatively little damage --- not so, our army who 

flattened a large area for "hard standing" for heavy vehicles and  helicopters which themselves caused considerable damage both to the underlying site structure and to some standing buildings. Worse still, a helicoptor landing zone led to the destruction and removal of the ziggurat debris left by alexander's troops and hephaestion's funeral pyre, both of immense archeological importance. Tanks and heavy vehcicles ere also driven along the processional way, destroying forever the well-preserved street surface on which nebuchadnezzar, dariuis, and alexander had once walked and whose bricks preserved their names.
the army knew what it was doing, but just didn't see what the problem was until it was too late --- this is kinda old news but it still makes me sick to read about it

swiftboating acorn

acorn has been vindicated, but not before their reputation has been thoroughly trashed --- meanwhile the court issued an injunction against enforcement of the law passed by congress denying them funding --- the law will surely be declared unconstitutional as a bill of attainder

silent monks do the hallelujah course

14 December 2009

lieberman [expletive deleted]

that sure was a friendly move of Joe Lieberman yesterday, on dance-y silver monster David Gregory’s Meet The Press, to go back on his pledge to support the Medicare buy-in proposal without telling the Senate leadership first
you just gotta despise lie-berman --- have you ever googled "lieberman" and "turd"? exactly 491,000 results, which of course doesn't prove a damn thing, but still . . . .

13 December 2009

neptune and triton

anniversaries

four years ago today, i moved --- it was an excellent change




texas surprises

houston has elected an openly lesbyterian mayor---

11 December 2009

allocating resources

so two miles north from fayetteville and the nearest sidewalk, surrounded by mostly fields and woods, they have installed handicapped-accessible curb cuts and pedestrian walk lights on all four corners of the intersection of hwy. 314 and kenwood road --- i don't think i've ever seen anybody on foot around there, unless they've run out of gas or something --- "dumb" is all i can say




eat it

The question is, if we don't say no to this, what do we say no to? If we don't say no to something that systematically abuses 50 billion animals, if we don't say no to the number-one cause of global warming, and not by a little bit, but by a lot, if we don't say no to what the UN has said is one of the top two or three causes of every significant environmental problem in the world, locally and globally, if we don't say no to something that is clearly - not clear to me, but clear to the World Health Organization - a prime factor in the generation of Avian and Swine flus, if we don't say no to something that's making our antibiotics less effective and ineffective, if we don't say no to something that causes 76 million of food-borne illness every year, just what do we say no to? This is not a case where we need to go to war with another country or spend a trillion dollars or elect a new government. We just need to say no to it.

blooming things

i've never had an aloe to bloom, but this one sure is blooming ---- it's a newer, more sun-tolerant variety that was out on the balcony all summer ---

09 December 2009

zombie freeways

The AJC’s Ariel Hart sends a shiver down our spines this morning, reminding us that a proposed toll tunnel under east Atlanta — an underground road that’s similar to what GOP gubernatorial hopeful John Oxendine discussed earlier this year — is still very much a possibility.
he's right, too, given the overall retardedness of our legislature --- if they do push forward with that, the whole process ought to generate some truly awesome public meetings --- in any case, no matter the design, it would be a colossal waste of money that could have been better spent a gazillion other ways

mayor-elect

Fulton County election officials say a recount of votes in the Dec. 1 Atlanta mayoral election show Reed beat opponent Mary Norwood by 714 votes. Reed received 42,549 votes while Norwood received 41,835.

remembering good government

here's a fascinating take on the health-care brouhaha, reflecting on the country's efforts to control food costs a hundred years ago----

None of this is as satisfying as a master plan. But there can’t be a master plan. That’s a crucial lesson of our agricultural experience. And there’s another: with problems that don’t have technical solutions, the struggle never ends. . . . Getting our medical communities, town by town, to improve care and control costs isn’t a task that we’ve asked government to take on before. But we have no choice. At this point, we can’t afford any illusions: the system won’t fix itself, and there’s no piece of legislation that will have all the answers, either. The task will require dedicated and talented people in government agencies and in communities who recognize that the country’s future depends on their sidestepping the ideological battles, encouraging local change, and following the results. But if we’re willing to accept an arduous, messy, and continuous process we can come to grips with a problem even of this immensity. We’ve done it before.

06 December 2009

the joys of air travel

one of them is not sitting next to a fat ass --- but this is just unbelievable

01 December 2009

watching a train wreck

i've been checking this guy's blog (charles johnson's little green footballs) off and on for two or three years, less so in the beginning when he seemed just like any other raving-right blog, only extra muslin-hating, in 2007 --- but then he began posting more and more that went counter to the orthodox rightist blogosphere in particular --- now there's been a huge hoo-ha in some quarters over his post yesterday of ten reasons he's "parted ways with the right"---- which he concluded with this:

"And much, much more. The American right wing has gone off the rails, into the bushes, and off the cliff. I won’t be going over the cliff with them."

29 November 2009

requiem for a tree

the elm on 11th street is a goner --- it adapted, sort of, to nearly everything in the vicinity getting paved over, mainly because it never had much that wasn't paved over or built on in the first place (that's an aerial view of midtown in 1949 down there) --- but it was too much when they dug up all the pavement and graded as they realigned 11th street


dee-catur

here's a preliminary look at the city's just-completed historic resources survey

testing the 14th

two straight lawyers, one of whom defended bush in bush vs. gore in 2000, are going for broke in the contest for gay civil rights ---

The stakes are high. If Perry v. Schwarzenegger reaches the Supreme Court and Boies and Olson are successful, gays and lesbians nationwide would not only have the right to marry, they stand to gain many of the legal rights they have sought for decades. Don't Ask, Don't Tell would be invalidated, as would employment discrimination against gays and lesbians. In the eyes of the law, gay people would be equal to straight people, and any legislation that discriminated against them could be challenged and easily struck down against this precedent. However, defeat could legitimize such discrimination against LGBT Americans, making it far more difficult to sue for parental or housing rights. The door to any federal litigation on marriage equality would be shut for decades. . . . This is risky because Boies and Olson are entering a legal no-man's land. . . . Despite Martin Luther King Jr.'s assurance, the arc of history does not bend in any direction -- much less toward justice -- on its own.

28 November 2009

what's really skeery?

everybody has gotten all wigged out about nuttin, if you get to thinking about it --- 'cause as usual they got us looking the wrong way

the great eggo famine of 2009

one of the major producers of eggo is here in atlanner, out off fulton industrial blvd --- they got flooded out in september and the company is also in the process of "equipment enhancements and repairs in our largest waffle bakery" (in tennessee), and now there is a great want for eggo waffles throughout the land --- don't expect full production until the middle of 2010

it's like a third-world country, i guess, when you can't keep eggos on the table

moratus milans

only 4 mm long

26 November 2009

25 November 2009

the white lady

interpreting mrs. dull

apples and cranberries:
1 pint cranberries
1 cup sugar
4 or 5 apples
¾ pint water






potato salad:
4 cups cold diced potatoes
2 cups chopped tender cabbage
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup mayonnaise
½ cup chili sauce
⅛ cup Worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons grated onion
salt, pepper and more lemon juice if needed


23 November 2009

19 November 2009

scary stuff

what is wrong with these people?

17 November 2009

bioplastics

seriously:

Sinskey can’t do much about the plastic that’s already polluting the Earth’s oceans, but he is trying to help keep the problem from getting worse. Next month, a company he founded with his former postdoc, Oliver Peoples, will open a new factory that uses MIT-patented technology to build plastic from corn. The plant aims to produce annually 110 million pounds of the new bioplastic, which biodegrades in soil or the ocean.
that would be better than sliced bread, one would think --- the supply of plastic crap could then be, theoretically, endless

(speaking of which, my doggie-excrement management system includes biodegradable plastic bags that i think come from corn)

coming down

the tower crane at 12th and midtown, that is --- they're repairing the parking garage that fell down over on spring street, but otherwise, midtown is built

16 November 2009

end of an era

both the southern voice and the washington blade closed today after the parent company filed for bankruptcy --- sovo had been publishing since 1988; the blade since 1969 --- we don't need them like we used to, but it's still too bad ---

building

the bad economy hasn't ended the tear-downs --- this was a perfectly good (and large) 1920s house on taft, a block off the park --- the roof, floor joists, and some of the wall framing is there, but not much else

















meanwhile the driving club's gazillion dollar addition already has issues --- aside from the crappy stucco, the whole south end is settling, so much so that the granite foundation has started to crack (near center of this image) --- methinks the lawyers are involved at this point

12 November 2009

mayoral politics

roy barnes and jim martin have endorsed kasim --- buckhead coalition endorsed wan for the sixth district council seat ---

a victory for the kitty cats

berkeley is the sixth california town to ban declawing of cats --- i've never done that to one of mine and aarf made me sign an agreement not to do it to dexter --- although if i had done it, i might still have a fine leather sofa