That is, to the extent it’s possible. Take solace in family and friends and know that you won’t be alone in your sufferings.
It’s barely 8:45 am here, and I’m already drinking. Take that as a sign. Also, I’m going to leave this post here as an open thread of sorts, for when we get the announcement that, naturally, the GOP has folded on the “fiscal cliff crisis” just in time to save New Years!
— When what they could have done is gone over the cliff, then introduced legislation calling for tax rate reductions on the bottom three brackets, a cut in corporate tax rates, and a return to the Bush rates for everyone else as a way to incentivize business and investment. Taking away Obama’s greatest weapon: his class warfare posturing.
Which they won’t do. Because DC is nothing but the theater of a one-party system pretending to be a two-party system. And most of us deep down know it.
Sláinte!
If Weepy folds on the fiscal cliff, his political demise is assured, though perhaps not as swiftly as with the Reverend Mother’s needle.
Human or animal? If there were any question the Beltway GOP would never have elevated him.
Honestly, I am going to drink so much today that I lose my cookies.
I have had one looong, freaking, insane year, and I’m glad it’s over. I hope everyone’s next year is better than this one.
Has to be, right?
I’m not sure that I can say I’m glad it is over Cookies. Since the kick in the gut Nov. 6th, it seems the worst is yet to come.
Drink while you can. I’d say.
Happy New Year to all! There’s nowhere to go but up!
Charles, that’s what my dinner said on Election Night.
Same to you Jeff…
The “Fiscal Cliff” is such crap. I have never bought any of it for a minute. The fact that they think their theatrics still matter is telling. The fact that many of the
citizensserfs in this country think it matters is telling also, and it indicates that we have to try harder to point them in the correct direction.“Shitizens”
Happy New Year! Welcome to
201319811937!Happy New Year, Outlaws!
May this new year be better than the last. Prost!
[…] Happy New Year, all! | protein wisdom […]
Or even just let it burn. Let any R that wants to vote for these things, keep a bare number of people present for quorum, and vote present a lot. Let them have what they want with a minimum of R fingerprints on it.
This is one of those times when it sucks to be a teetotaler.
On the other hand, once I got the hang of being numbed to the Obamanation, I might not feel like stopping.
In other news, I’ve learned that wheat and corn are murder.
Or something.
Actually, I’ve been reading that Gary Taubes stuff that Insty is always touting, plus I just started reading the Perfect Health Diet, which is similar. It goes off the notion that our modern agricultural society, with its fancy cultivated carbs and sugars, is also susceptible to lots of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer and all that autoimmune stuff.
The key point is that the hormone that controls whether calories are allocated to fat cells is INSULIN, and the more insulin in the bloodstream, the more calories go to the fat cells, regardless of the needs of the muscles and organs. Which means that if your body is obsessively stowing calories into the fat cells, you’ll be fatigued because those calories aren’t going to the muscles and organs.
Which means that obesity is the CAUSE of sloth and gluttony (sugar crashes and stuff), not the RESULT.
Which, if that’s true, an awful lot of our current scolds are gonna lose their raisin tray (French: “reason for being”).
So if insulin is the enemy, then any food that does not provoke a strong insulin reaction is good.
You know what this means, don’t you?
It means:
BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON BACON!!!!11!1
di, don’t forget the butter with that bacon. Butter basted bacon?
– ….Which just goes to show di there are worse things than fiscal cliffs and insulin.
– S Novym Godom droog Goldsteinski, and everyone in the PW family!
You sound like Homer Simpson: Buttter that bacon and bacon that sausage!
You’re making my hungry, leigh.
*me
Heh. I’ll make it worse. We’re having Alaskan King Crab Legs with lots of butter for dinner tonight.
Those are good stories, BBH. I hadn’t heard of the woman without fat tissue at all. I think I’d rather have the abundance: at least I can get rid of it somehow, whereas she’s stuck.
– Took the kiddo to Tom Hamms brunch buffet yesterday for an Xmas treat, and if they knew his ability to pack away the crab, lobster, and oysters on the half shell they would have charged me double. He’ll be in food stupor until new years now. Nostrovia Leigh.
Just got back from Indiana visiting my dad, his wife and assorted sheep, turkeys, pigs and guinea fowl. Thinking about a new career in just keeping the hell away from most people, while selling wealthy liberals free-range poultry at high prices.
Really, who cares whether I get rich doing that? I sure as hell don’t.
Nostrovia BBH. My kiddo could give yours a run for his money on the fresh seafood. Even though he’s 123 pounds at 5’3″, he can eat like he’s a foot taller and 80 pounds heavier.
Teenagers.
Worth reading:
P.J. O’Roarke: Zero-Sum Doesn’t Add Up
Jonah: Don’t Tread on Six-Toed Cats
Burge on Brit vs. Yank mortality
Knitting Clock
Perfect Health Diet
Toast Bandages
PJ O’Roarke thing
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324660404578199363527441002.html
One more worth reading, long though it is:
Clues to Mass Rampage Killers
Written before Newton and containing an in-depth exam of the kid who shot up Paducah KY, it confirms what many of us suspected: these guys don’t just “snap”: they give themselves over to a massacre fantasy that they develop over weeks and months.
A huge part of the appeal is that they are plotting to commit mass murder and nobody around them knows. Acting normal enough to fool everyone is part of the excitement, which is why it’s nearly impossible to spot these guys beforehand. There are no “signs” to pick up on, because there are no signs given.
The author concludes that the only “sign” you could possibly read is the amassing of armaments—far more than they will need to pull off the caper. Because they very deliberately conceal their actions, you’d have to stumble on the hidden arsenal. Prior to that, there’s no way to know who’s planning and who’s not.
One interesting detail: those who don’t off themselves also don’t try to escape capture. They give up meekly, as if they’d never planned anything beyond the massacre (which, actually, they haven’t). The fantasy fulfilled, they don’t know what else to do with themselves.
Also, they might seize the opportunity to acquire an unsecured weapon, but if there’s no easy armament, they’ll figure out how to get one by hook or by crook. Theft is common.
As Prager says, these people are human earthquakes: there’s no predicting them, there’s just prep for when they finally execute their plans.
I’m rereading Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear.
Yes you can predict deadly situations. It’s just that most of us don’t know how.
– So then, being a recluse and anti-social is no clue?
Being afraid of someone before they do something bad is just plain rude, leigh, if not outright racist.
Shame on all of you.
Buon Capo d’Anno, tutti!
– Yes, everyone in Utopia should have the right to pursue their dreams of mass murder without fear of stigmatizing. For the fairness and social justice!
happy new year!
this is good
How to Make a Chick-Fil-A Sandwich at Home
So then, being a recluse and anti-social is no clue?
No.
Way too many people fit that descriptor. Only a tiny fraction of a fraction of misfits and rejects go ahead and indulge in a massacre fantasy to the point of carrying it out.
Most flat-out sociopaths are not violent, either. They just prey on other people and enjoy the gamesmanship in conning the idiots who trust them.
I have to confess I had a crush on Kim Fields back when “The Facts of Life” was on the air.
And that was even before she, er, ripened.
Why is everyone looking at me like that? I was, like, 14.
Okay, 17. Jeez.
I mostly remember Linda Carter, Erin Gray, and Jenny Agutter from that era.
I was seven or eight.
…and I just now looked up how old she was when FOL started. I was a creepy kid.
I guess I must be remembering Tootie and the gang from later in the show’s run, but me being in my 20s doesn’t make it any better.
One measure of the lameness of a television show is whether you’d rather watch an old episode of Who’s the Boss? — one of the really old ones, before Alysssa Milano grew breasts.
It probably works with Tootie, too.
Our Tootie too?
How did we get on Star Wars?
Ahhh, drinking! I went back to work today, so I’d better get started. It’s Bombay Sapphire and Crystal Light’s appletini mix (that’s a grown up kool aid fo’sho!).
Krauthaumer slaps Obama’s “I’m’a Demigod-on-High” speech; Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan wins a stay against ObamaCare’s contraception mandate with this line…
So, there’s some good news.
Happy New Year! and may 2012 rot in the same hell 2011 is a-rotting in! 2013, for the FUTURE!
What if these had been Tea Party types?
dicentra, I’m willing to be rude if it keeps me alive. And I totally agree about the reclusive and anti-social thing not being an indicator of homicidal tendencies. If that were the case, I’d be visiting my husband in prison.
de Becker’s point, in the main, is that we have an internal signal that is like a sixth sense: our intuition. If something feels wrong, it is. Unfortunately, our society discourages women from being proactive. If the lone guy on the elevator makes us uncomfortable, we’d rather suck it up and get on the car with him than wait for the next one and worry about hurting his feelings.
Flat out fear will drive us to flee or attack, but if we had listened to the prompts we wouldn’t have to do either.
For instance, once upon a time I missed my train and had to take the Greyhound bus back to San Diego from Santa Barbara. A young man was sitting next to me and was very chatty, asking a lot of personal questions that I answered vaguely as possible. We had to change busses in Los Angeles and he had left to buy a sandwich so I took advantage of his absence to plead my case to an older woman about how this guy was scaring me. He was telling people “we’re going to San Diego” and the like. She told me that I could sit with her and that she would tell him we were together, having missed each other in Santa Barbara. He got pissed off, but that was the last I saw of him. Thank goodness.
McGehee, I thought it was going to be a revisit of Ayers girlfriend getting blown to smithereens. Like an anniversary edition.
I am a firm believer in intuition, ever since I realized it’s the distillation of things seen and heard, but remembered only subconsciously — until something noticed consciously brings it forward as “that feeling.”
Me too, McGehee. I’ve been that way since I was a kid.
If you have a fight/flight reaction seemingly out of the blue there’s a reason for it. When you get a chance, sit back and remember when you suddenly became vigilant, because you knew it before you knew it. Sometimes by as much as a two minutes.
Most people may be perfectly nice people, but I tend to err on the “they are all dangerous mutherfuckers who want to do me wrong” until I know the score.
I assume that about the perfectly nice ones too. More so probably than the prickly spit-in-your-eye-soon-as-look-at-you types, with whom I’ve always got along famously.
…or infamously, depending on your point of view.
Notoriously, I believe is where you’re going with that thought. I’ve always gotten along with the mean as a snake types quite well. At least they are straight up about having no use for your sorry ass until you prove you’re worth their time.
I can respect that. The perfectly nice types generally want something from me.
Yeah, everyone should know at least one person who isn’t afraid to tell you to go fuck yourself.
I think so, too Blake.
And anyone who assumes without cause that people aren’t dangerous, is just asking to be educated good and hard.
– Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree, I’ve traveled the world and the seven seas, sweet dreams are made of this….
– Some want to use you, some want to be used by you…..Some want to abose you, some want to be abused….
– Keep your head up, get your head up, keep your head up, get your head up…..Sweet dreams are made of this…who am I to disagree….
Ah. Secret Agent types then:
One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s mass murderer.
Finished the 18 year old Glenlivet. Forward to the Tobermory!
Clearly what we need is more redistribution of
top-shelfunder the bar back of the shelf whiskyand whiskey too!
Share the water of life!
Yea! Another Eurythmics fan here.
– Leigh….back when I was an up and coming young rake I took a GF to an Annie Lennox concert. During the sweet dreams portion a guy sitting next to us said sort of in awe….”Man, I knew she was good but now that I’ve seen her in person I’d do that in a heart beat”…. My GF looked at him and said, “Hell I don’t blame you, I’m not even gay and so would I”.
Happy New Year Outlaws,
Had the Cheese Fries at Outback tonight; For the BACON!!!
And thanks to Dicentra, not only do I know that Bacon is MEAT CANDY, but it’s also Insulin free!
Now that’s something to celebrate in my book.
So enjoy the Bowl games tomorrow and 2 January lets get back to making Barack Obama’s life hell!
Keep Firing!!!
Midnight has come to the east coast.
For the love of God, don’t follow us into 2013! Stop! Turn around and go back!
Thinking about a new career in just keeping the hell away from most people, while selling wealthy liberals free-range poultry at high prices.
Really, who cares whether I get rich doing that? I sure as hell don’t.
If you can pull it off, don’t underestimate your profit potential.
Back a few years ago I was reading a thing about “natural” insecticides and how they kind of work but not as good as the real shit. I was at the age where a bunch of my hippie/progressive/green friends were starting to have rug rats and I was joking with a friend of mine that we should go into business against Orkin and those guys with a All Natural Pesticide business, it was mostly DIY at that point. We could go around in old VW vans spraying all these herbal essences around and the beauty of it would be if a few bugs were still around we could just use that as an example of how safe it was around your kids.
We thought it was funny, until a couple years later some dudes got rich doing it.
Happy New Year, folks.
bee achh is in da house!!!
Here’s an appropriate song for the first year of Obama’s second term.
[Jeff already said “Slainte” and I’ve sworn off “Cheers” so…] L’chaim, Danger.
Damn, that’s a cold ass honkie bh;)
And that’s a pimped out Delorean!
Skol, to all ye tipsy.
I just spent a couple hours listening to a Vietnam vet explain what Agent Orange did to him. Step 1: Instant diabetes. While at the VA, some guy with awfully leprous-looking skin asked when he was in ‘Nam and then said: “I’m the one what done that to you.” He had run into the first helicopter pilot to spray AO on the foliage, and the backdraft had exposed him something awful.
During his life, this guy I was talking to also got blown off a loading platform with a blast of chlorine gas, plus he worked awhile at the Dugway Proving Ground, where they dispose of chemical weapons. He’s 70 and can hardly walk around. Lost most of his hearing from the shelling during the war. Still has a bullet in his elbow.
Says he’s too mean to die. Then he shows me a picture of Dumbo that he drew freehand (perfect likeness) and said that when he doodled in school as a kid, his teacher swiped his drawings and sent them off to a childhood friend for evaluation. That friend sent him a letter saying that he’d like to take him under his wing and mentor him. That friend’s name was Walt Disney.
I don’t know why he never took him up on it. He’s lost the letter. His vision is blurring, making it hard to draw. Poor guy. He sits alone most of the day while his wife (my friend) gads about and does her thing. He talked my ear off, but he obviously needs to talk to someone new from time to time.
So that was my New Year’s Eve.
Good on ya for lending your ear, di. Certainly that’s the kernel for a short story, btw. Transmogrify.
:), Danger. That’s my one emoticon for the year. Hope I didn’t use it too early.
Happy New Year to everyone.
Although, it’s not the New Year here yet. However, I hear the sweet siren call of the mattress.
Happy New Years everyone … I got an hour to go here on the Left Coast
Midnight here, and there’s cowbells and fireworks and stuff.
Right at midnight a lot of earwax came loose in my right ear. I rolled it into a pill and threw it at my cat, who chased it.
Right now I am watching Dr. Who on Netflix and eating uncured sandwich pepperoni that will probably cause me to reflux when I go to bed. I’m too smart to try it with the 4 alarm chili again.
Jonah: Don’t Tread on Six-Toed Cats
I have a polydactyl cat that is the love of our family’s life, so this whole ten-year shenanigans against the Hemingway house’s cats makes me incredibly sad.
Also I am one of those shy, reclusive anti-social types with elaborate violent fantasies that I deal with by playing lots of video games and then cuddling with my adorable kitties.
Happy New Year from California, who preceded you all over the fiscal cliff long ago. ♥
Past it now, here. Was at a bar, with older women trying to get my attention and not understanding when I did my best to ignore them politely.
The young girl who was dancing around with the pants almost falling on the ground, on the other hand, was, overall, a delight.
On the other hand, she was with a guy who was about my age, and he knew he could do nothing to stop her without being “dad.”
Young, cute, dumb.
Hee!
– polydactyl cats are bad luck, like under cooked buffulo wings.
She’s a black polydactyl cat, so the bad luck cancels.
I am watching Dr. Who on Netflix
Which Doctor?
Happy New Year to all.
Not so happy for those “rich” [small business owners] earning over $400,000.
Pertwee. Spearhead from Space.
In other news, I’ve learned that wheat and corn are murder.
See, here I thought you were gonna discuss the number of small animals that die every year as a consequence of modern agricultural techniques. And not the insects, either–the mice, rats, voles, moles, gophers, ground-nesting birds and others who get chopped into meat paste by plowing and later by the use of combine harvesters. Many of them along with all their babies, too.
This is why I sort of roll my eyes at vegans! Especially because I learned this at a very young age, from The Secret of NIMH.
Actually, I’ve been reading that Gary Taubes stuff that Insty is always touting, plus I just started reading the Perfect Health Diet, which is similar. It goes off the notion that our modern agricultural society, with its fancy cultivated carbs and sugars, is also susceptible to lots of chronic diseases such as diabetes and cancer and all that autoimmune stuff.
Interesting!
I’ll need to look at his data on autoimmunity and cancer, since the prevailing theory that I hold to about the rise of autoimmunity in modern culture is due to our (often excessive) hygiene. City kids don’t get exposed to nearly the array of endotoxins and harmless bacterial/fungal/animal epitopes that their peers in third-world countries (and rural settings) do, so consequently their immune systems go haywire later in life. Endoparasite treatments for MS and some other autoimmune diseases also bear this one out, since providing the parasites we’re missing in a modern setting results in rapid amelioration of symptoms. The theory there being that once it’s presented with a proper target, the immune system quits pitching an inflammatory fit and settles down to do its job.
Okay, time to drink myself to sleep with a bottle of bubbly.
Mott’s Sparkling Apple Cider has enough sugar to induce a decent glucose crash.
Which means that obesity is the CAUSE of sloth and gluttony (sugar crashes and stuff), not the RESULT.
Which, if that’s true, an awful lot of our current scolds are gonna lose their raisin tray (French: “reason for being”).
Some of that Taubin stuff I agree with and some I don’t.
Yes, if you’re overweight and out of shape, you’re going to be low-energy. Duh.
Chicken, egg. *shrugs*
Eat right, you’ll feel better.
It worked for me, Carin — eventually. One of those will to power things, where the power I willed to was to climb stairs without stopping to rest halfway up.
Still, I did enjoy half of a giant Hershey bar yesterday. Hershey chocolate and hot coffee. Damn fine treat, as long as I don’t do it every day. Or with the giant bar, more than once or twice a year.
the prevailing theory that I hold to about the rise of autoimmunity in modern culture is due to our (often excessive) hygiene.
I’m sure it can be both. But our current sensitization to gluten is no coinky-dink, either.
Feh. Gluten sensitivity is a fad. If you’ve ever known any Celiacs, they can tell you all about gluten trying to kill them.
I have known one, yep. Celiac’s been around for a while, though.
Celiac disease is genetic and very common to Scandis, although my former BIL is one and he is not a Scandi.
Gluten sensitivity is a fad.
Except for those who are gluten sensitive. Frank J’s wife is, as have been a few co-workers. My bro and his kid both have ADD and they’ve gone gluten-free with good results.
Migraines, fatigue, excema, all kinds of awful things, and when they go off gluten, it goes away like magic.
Endoparasite treatments for MS and some other autoimmune diseases
What, like TAPEWORMS? Srsly?
Mebbe. The mind is a powerful thing and you can convince yourself of many things. Many physical problems, such as those you listed and depression, too are added by regular exercise. Exercise can also cure many digestive issues people are convinced they have to live with. I’m not talking about P90X, just a brisk walk a couple times a day.
My step-daughter is convinced she is allergic to dairy. She isn’t. It’s selective and designed to inconvenience the hostess. She thinks I don’t know this, but I keep my vast knowledge to myself with regards to the steps.
aided not added
“What, like TAPEWORMS? Srsly?”
Yep. Small-scale studies have been promising enough that the FDA has approved large-scale clinical trials for several conditions.
The usual species is the pig whipworm because they can only survive in the human body for a limited time — long enough to produce the beneficial effects, but not long enough to reach adulthood and begin reproducing.
Well, here’s what I like about Taubes’s theory:
One week on the steak & salad diet: seven pounds lost.
All of which I gained back by indulging in Christmas sweets, of course, but you can’t argue with success. If’n I get my energy back (and I do plan on some substantial walking in the future), then I’ll be cured and I’ll know that the carbs/sugars are not handled well by my idiot body anymore.
Good to hear that the parasite is not intended to be a permanent guest. That’s only slightly more gross than a fecal transplant.
Yeah, it’s pretty disgusting, but (like the fecal transplants) the underlying theory does make a certain degree of sense.
Of course, darned near anything that works against MS is worth trying. It’s a nasty, nasty disease… likewise with many of the other autoimmune diseases.
My late MIL had MS. It was a terrible thing to watch her deteriorate. This was back in the 70s and there were a lot of MS diets that were popular but made the dieter terribly thin. Likewise, treating arthritis has also been through the diet wringer. No nightshade family plants (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes) are supposed to slow inflamation.
I think if you look hard enough there is a diet for nearly everything and people on each side of it swearing by it or swearing at it.