ISO: Halloween recipes that don't induce vomiting

I love Halloween. I hate Googling for Halloween recipes.

To everyone out there who posts Halloween recipes: Please put your vomit-inducing recipes on a separate page AWAY from the recipes for roasted pumpkin seed and caramel apples. I am getting so tired of searching for innocent recipes and instead stumbling upon these appetizing selections:

*** Please do not read if you've recently had a meal or plan to within the next hour. ***

"Bloody Popcorn"
"Kitty Litter Cake"
"Brains and Eyeballs"
And perhaps the all-time worst: "Hair Salad with Saliva Dressing"

I am not 11. I do not think that gross is cool. I do not want to consume food that may taste fabulous but looks like roadkill, bodily waste or a serious industrial accident. I do not want scary bits floating in my beverage. I do not want to consume things that remind me of sinusitis.

I was at a Halloween party years ago at the home of this artsy-tartsy couple of university professors. The house was way out in the hinterland, which just gave you this heightened sense of foreboding. (Oh, so this is where they hide the bodies?) The decorations were fabulous in a house that already had this quirky Dali-esque spookiness about it. (The kitchen was decorated RED and BLACK.) The appetizers were delicious and the beverages were flowing.

I was having a grand old time swanning about in my Bollywood princess outfit when some knucklehead guest brings out the kitty litter cake. In a real kitty litter box with a scoop.

Although my rational forebrain knew I was looking at rolled oats dotted with some kind of fig paste, my reptilian brain was screaming, "DO NOT EAT POOP! DANGER! DANGER! DO NOT EAT POOP! POOP BAD! POOP BAD!"

I could feel the bile rising in the back of my throat. I wanted to punch the guy.

So, all you recipe posters: No gross stuff where I can easily find it. Thank you.

Alton Brown on the real reason we cook

Our Patron Saint of Perpetual Good Eats


The GGB recently gave up her 40-hour-a-week Corporate America job for a kinder gig as Household COO (and occasional dance teacher and freelancer). When my former coworkers asked me if I was looking forward to a change of pace, I often told them I was excited about cooking dinner and having it ready when my husband gets home.

A few people looked at me as if I'd said I was going to be manacled to a stove and given daily beatings for my trouble.

It is not fashionable these days to be enthusiastic about the home arts. And if you do cook, you're supposed to do it as quickly as possible a la Rachael Ray. (That's another post entirely. The woman is a blight on humanity.)

However, I picked up on a bit of cosmic brilliance by the anti-Rachael, the sensei of culinary kung fu, the high priest of all that is sacred and holy about the range top and the saute pan. I give you words of wisdom from Alton Brown:

... feeding someone is an act of caring. We will always be fed best by those that care, be it ourselves or the aforementioned friends and family.We are fat and sick and dying because we have handed a basic, fundamental and intimate function of life over to corporations. We choose to value our nourishment so little that we entrust it to strangers. We hand our lives over to big companies and then drag them to court when the deal goes bad. This is insanity.

Amen, brother.

How come no one ever "finds" Buddha?

Puppy murderer Michael Vick says he has "found Jesus" and now claims that dogfighting is a "terrible thing."

Ever notice how no one ever "finds Buddha" or "achieves nirvana" in the pokey? (And Vick isn't even in jail yet. This must be a record.) I'm just saying that since Eastern-style religion is all the rage these days, I'm curious as to why it's the Jesus card that gets played.

Ministers behaving badly. Congregants behaving stupidly.

"The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer [bishop], he desires a noble task. Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money."

-- St. Paul, I Timothy 3:1-3

Evangelist Juanita Bynum recently got the stuffing knocked out of her in a hotel parking lot by her husband, "Bishop" Thomas Weeks III. A hotel bellman witnessed the attack, as relayed here in an article by Fox News:

"They were talking about a reconciliation. They got into an argument. In the process of the argument, her husband walked out to the parking lot area, turned back around and started to choke Miss Bynum," [Atlanta police officer Ronald ] Campbell said.

"As he choked her, he pushed her down to the ground and started to kick her and also stomp on her," he said. "There was a bellman at the location who witnessed the whole assault, intervened, and pulled Mr. Weeks off of Miss Bynum."

"Bishop" Weeks has yet to repent and instead took a few brief moments in the pulpit this past Sunday (before a guest preacher delivered the sermon) to blame the devil for his troubles, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. His congregants are being all mashy-mouthed about "not judging." One particularly pathetic comment to the AJC site [emphases mine]:

I am a member of Global Destiny. I was there yesterday and I support Bishop 100%. He is a true man of God who made a mistake. I get paid on this week and will sow my entire pay check to the ministry. I know these are trying times for him financially. My 8 year daughter does not mind forfeiting "back to school shopping" b/c Bishop weeks is in need. Praying is not enough. We need ot take action. I signed the thing on yesterday to have the Judge decrease the felony to a misdemeanor. I am praying that his case is dismissed due ot self defense or he gets Community Service. Everyone does stuff they regret. I know he is pure, he did not mean to hurt her-he got caught up in the heat of the moment. I pray that he will Preach on this coming Sunday.

Good Lord Almighty, this is so cosmically insane, I don't even know where to begin. Weeks is in flagrant violation of at least four Biblical requirements to be a bishop, and not only is he not being held accountable, people are flinging MONEY at him!!! ENTIRE PAYCHECKS!!!

"Judge not," my arse. I cannot judge Weeks' heart or motivations, but I sure as heck can judge that smacking your wife around is a big fat honkin' no-no for any man who claims to be a Christian, much less a "Bishop." And when church members do not stand up and demand decent behavior from their leaders, it makes us all look like cretins and gives cover to ignorant people who think that the Bible actually endorses that kind of behavior.

Aggghhhh. I want to throw something.

And now I'm appalled by Fox News' commercials, too

I am, admittedly, tuning in to Fox News via XM Radio to catch up on the horrible bridge collapse in Minnesota. Call me a rubbernecker.

I'm glad that my handy-dandy pink Pioneer Inno displays the name of the programming, including when the program switches to commercials. I can mute it when they're yammering about ordering Viagra and Cialis online.

Sheesh. It's like listening to spam.

Hostage Watch: Apparently, Amnesty International doesn't give a damn

The Associated Press is reporting this morning:

Afghan Police Find Body of Second South Korean Hostage


Out of curiosity, I checked Amnesty International's Web site to see what they had to say about the detention, mistreatment and summary execution of now TWO South Korean Christian workers:

::: crickets chirping :::

Oh. Hm. Nothing on the home page. I searched their site for the keywords "south korean hostages." I got four hits and keyword-searched each of them. I did discover that the U.S., apparently, is "denying human dignity" in the war on terror. Read all about it here. But the South Koreans in Afghanistan? I guess they're at a Talibani resort or something and the two found dead were just oopsies.

News -- Not News

What is "news." A primer.

News:

NOT News:

Any questions?

HOSTAGE WATCH: Update: Oh, shit.

This is Bae Ho-jung, father of South Korean pastor Bae Hyeong-gyu, who is reported to have been murdered by the Taliban. (AP photo) Our prayers are with you, brother.

UPDATE: 12:43 p.m. Central: It's been reported that the murdered pastor may have died of illness. Whatever. Six of one ... you know the routine. If he was that sick, he should have been in a hospital instead of in whatever shithole the Taliban stuck him in.

Barbarians.

UPDATE: July 25, 11:17 a.m. Central.

Michelle Malkin is on the case and reports that the body of a South Korean riddled with bullet holes has been found in Afghanistan.

I'm sick now.

Oh, NOW Fox News has the story on its homepage. Gee. Thanks, guys.

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Posted yesterday:

The GGB is just now recovering from a pretty nutso three months of newlywed life. (See my July 4 post for all the details.) I've been fasting somewhat from news and blogs because, well, I'm sick of reading about another bombing in Baghdad, and the only good thing about Lindsay Lohan's substance abuse problems is she's bumped Paris Hilton's orange-glo mug off the screen.

And then I read about this.

I just sent Fox News a snippy e-mail because THEY of ALL PEOPLE should at least have a MENTION of this on their homepage. But no. Alongside some legit headlines about global politics and Fred Thompson's campaign, we have these supermarket tabloid-worthy headlines:

"Live Well With Low IQ, No-Brainer"
"Man Has 33-Pound Tumor Removed From Face"
"Kim Jong-Il's Favorite Magician Injured in Risky Trick"

For the love of God and all that is holy, WAKE UP, PEOPLE! Good Lord Almighty, will you stop with the idiotic TRIVIA and stupid celebrity tricks and missing-pretty-woman dramas and start reporting the @#$%^% NEWS!!!!!!!!

When I need useless fluff, I'll watch WE TV or the Style Network. But when I turn on the news, I want frickin' NEWS! N-E-W-S!!!!

A dispatch from the other side of the altar

@#$%^&

Dad gummit.

No, I love marriage -- seriously -- it's just the upgrade in Blogger that's locked me out of my account for months and made me a little frustrated.

Okay ... where was I? Oh, yes ... marriage!!

At this moment, hubby and I are lounging in our brand-new, king-size Tempur Pedic bed (top of the line, mind you), with blankets and a duvet made of yards of the stuff that feels like plush teddy bears. We're in our PJs, Rich is reading Harry Potter and I am, well, blogging. Obviously. He's made us both coffee, and we're enjoying a rare quiet morning, punctuated by the cats walking across our laps and the occasional goofy-eyed glance.

Wedded bliss at its finest. THIS is what I'd hoped marriage would be like.

On the other hand, if you've been reading Rich's blog, you'll know that we've had a little drama in our world. That "in sickness and in health" clause kicked in way earlier than I expected when Rich was hit nearly head-on and totaled his Altima four days after we got home from Jamaica. It wasn't his fault and he had no permanent bodily damage, but he had some of the most horrifying bruises I've ever seen on a human being.

Since then, we've had the final move of my junk to the house. (Rich says that the garage looks like the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.) One of our dogs required emergency surgery and had a return trip to the vet this past weekend. My sister got pregnant (minor miracle). Then she miscarried (major heartbreak).

And I still love married life!

Rich and I have had each other to lean on and trust in during this cluster of minor trials. After viewing the aftermath of Rich vs. Shelby County patrol car (yes -- a cop hit him), I am grateful to God to have a husband to come home to. The cats and dogs are getting along, and the house -- though disorganized and far from complete in its transition -- is looking more and more like a home rather than a bachelor pad.

And it's peaceful. Especially this morning.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone.

Fatwa'ed: Imam sez you can't be nekkid during sex with your spousal unit

Good thing I'm not Muslim:

Leading Islamic Cleric: Nudity During Sex Annuls Marriage (Hat tip: LGF)

But if I were Muslim, this would lead to some interesting questions: Can I wear a hat? How about stillettos? Two Band-Aids and dental floss?

One LGF commenter wondered if there was an online database for fatwas -- they're getting so hard to keep up with. Is there an official Fatwa Report? How about an RSS feed? Perhaps you can sign up for e-mail fatwa alerts to get your fresh fatwas every morning.

Can I issue a fatwa? Do I have to be Muslim? Do I have to fill out an application or something? I've been wanting to issue a fatwa against telemarketers. And Michael Bolton.

Texas hospital wants to "pull the plug" on infant -- against parents' wishes

I'm so mad about this story, I don't think I'm capable of writing coherently right now. I'll let you get the details:

Texas Law Could Force Infant's Life Support to Be Pulled

Suffice it to say that I think hospital "officials" have no business making end-of-life judgments over and above the wishes of parents. God help us all.

Wife beating and other unintended consequences of relativism

In Germany, now that everyone's belief system is equally good and equally valid, the German justice system has paved the way for at least one Muslim to preserve a time-honored tradition: wife beating.

German Judge Says Woman Can’t Get Divorce, Men Have Right To Beat Their Women

Yes, you read that correctly. (Hat tip to Say Anything via Hot Air.)

But hey, as long one religion is just as good as another, what's the big deal? You have your truth, I have my truth, right? If there are no universal moral truths, then Moroccan Muslim men should be allowed to beat their wives because that's what their religious faith requires (or so some say).

If you're like me and believe this line of thinking is garbage, you might enjoy this:

"Relativism Self Destructs" by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason.

If this were 30 A.D., all my guests would be Mary

You know that "coincidence" of names on the ossuaries featured in the Jesus Tomb documentary? I thought of that as I was making the guest list for my upcoming bachelorette party:

- Four of the 20 women -- including myself -- are "Amy" or "Aimee." That's 20 percent. (One of the Amys is Rich's brother's wife. Ha!)
- Two of the 20 women are named Lisa -- 10 percent.
- Two of the 20 are named Vanessa -- 10 percent.
- We have a Jenna and a Jennefer. Close enough -- we'll call that 10 percent.
- We have a Meg and a Meagan. Ditto -- another 10 percent.

In other words, only eight women have "unique" names, and believe me, they're not names like "Esmerelda" or "Rainbow Moonbeam."

Apparently, all generations have a dearth of uniquely-named people, which is why no one should get their skivvies bunched up over the so-called Jesus Tomb.

Fox News: Procter & Gamble Wins 'Satanism' Lawsuit

From a cursory glance at this article, it looks like P&G might have been a little heavy-handed in going after Amway. However, I am constantly embarrassed at how so many of my fellow Christians buy into garbage such as the "Satanic" meanings of the P&G logo. That rumor has persisted for years. I hope that this victory will make people think twice before slandering people "in the name of Christ."

A blatantly ad hominem rant

From a Fox news article, "DePauw University Severs Ties With Troubled Delta Zeta Sorority."

"DePauw University's president ordered the Delta Zeta sorority Monday to leave its campus by September in response to a mass eviction of members that sparked allegations that only attractive, popular students were asked to remain." [emphasis mine]

Ah hah.

The article said that DZ " ... long had a reputation of being academically oriented rather than having conventional beauty or partying." The article also said they were referred to on campus as "the dog house."

Warning: Cranky diatribe ahead.

If you want to be "Greek" you have to pretend you have an IQ of 20, drink a lot, sleep around and act like you're better than everyone else. Unless you went to my alma mater (a Baptist college), in which case you can get away with more smarts and you hide your drinking and carousing, but the better-than-everyone-else-part still applies.

I'm cranky today, can you tell?

For those of you out there who are/were Greek and are perfectly fine human beings, my deepest apologies. I know you exist and you don't deserve to be smeared. Understand, I was disinclined toward being Greek before I even got to college by my mother. She quit Phi Mu (at the same Baptist college) because they shunned a perfectly precious and sweet girl because she had scars from polio. Later, not one of her sorority "sisters" showed up for her bridal tea.

Once I got on campus myself, I had only more and more reasons not to pay good money to have a bunch of country club princesses tell me if I was good enough to hang out with them and tell me who my friends could be. I bristled at how the "social Greeks" insulted the guys of Alpha Phi Omega, the "service" fraternity. The Greeks said the A Phi O's were "not good enough" for the social Greeks. I say they were too cool for school.

And in my 15 years since I graduated, I've met a few people who never let go of their inner Greek and continue to be bratty to anyone who is more than one standard deviation away from Mountain Brook. (If you are from Birmingham, you know of which I speak. Again, my deepest apologies to the decent Brookies.)

Okay, rant over.

Marcotte stays on with Edwards; Satan flummoxed

No doubt you’ve heard about the saga of liberal blogger Amanda Marcotte being hired by candidate John Edwards to manage his campaign blog.

Amanda Marcotte’s writing style varies in tone from the incendiary to the downright Hiroshimian. She has an elegant style and vocabulary no doubt inspired by sundry hip hop artists, comment threads on pornographic forums, and Bradley Dingledorf, the pimply, smelly guy who scrawled graffiti on her seventh-grade locker.

Behold this gem of literary fortitude:

“Q: What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?

A: You’d have to justify your misogyny with another ancient mythology.”

Convinced that Marcott’s treatise on The Third Person of the Trinity as Human Spermatozoa was merely misunderstood, nuanced satire rather than adolescent brain spew, Edwards said this, defending his decision to retain Marcotte:

“I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word.”

Indeed, rumor has it that the Maligning Bar has been set so high, Satan himself is having a hard time clearing it.

UPDATE: Just for the record, I could care less if John Edwards keeps Marcotte on or not. The fact that her reputation is blighted by vulgarity on a cosmic scale is his misfortune and none of my own. As vile as I think her comments are, I'd rather her come right out and say "f*** you!" than insult my intelligence by feigning innocence about her intentions. Plus, I wouldn't vote for Edwards anyway, but I'd rather the electorate see whose company he's keeping.

Headline of the day

Turn your radio on, and listen to the t'storms in the air ...

In the wake of 20 tornado deaths in Florida, the folks at my favorite weather blog -- the ABC 33/40 Weather Blog -- have issued another rant on the importance of weather radios.

I second that emotion.

Unfortunately, the "let the government take care of you" mentality has overridden common sense for a few people to the point that they'd rather get swept away like Dorothy than plunk down $20 for a basic weather radio. Scroll down to the first comment on that post and you'll see what I mean.

Granted, I'm a weather geek. I've gone through storm spotter training. I want my own wireless home weather station. But geekitude is not required for basic human survival.

Sometimes, people do all the right things and still get killed by tornadoes. In 1998, an F5 -- the most powerful type of tornado -- hit west of here and killed more than 30 people. A few were simply at ground zero and could have survived only if they'd had a basement or storm shelter. They did everything right and got into the most protected area of their homes, but the storm was too powerful.

But when I read about people in trailer parks getting killed, I want to scream. No one should EVER be in a mobile home during a tornado warning. NEVER EVER EVER. Drive to a gas station and hunker down in their bathroom. Go to a neighbor's house. Heck, crawling into a ditch is preferable to remaining in your own flying coffin.

Sad.

I want my pink back

Eve Ensler and fellow Code Pinkers protested this weekend against the war and the "surge," which Ensler likened to something that ... ahem ... happens to teenage boys in the middle of the night. She invoked images of things "swelling" and "rising" and "lasting just a minute."

OKAY, Eve, we get the picture.

Ensler has managed to completely invert the ideals of the women's movement. I thought women struggled to be recognized for their brains. You know, we're substantive, thoughtful, more than just the sum of our womanly parts.

Now, Ensler and the other Pinkers flounce around in ridiculous outfits, screeching, snickering about genitalia, and holding signs with insightful commentary such as "Augmentation is for Boobs."

And for Pete's sake, enough with the pink. Pink is a perfectly wonderful color, and I want it back.

Spare the rod, spoil the plane ride

AirTran had to boot a couple and their out-of-control kid off a plane because they were delaying takeoff. The 3-year-old refused to sit in her seat and was "climbing under the seat and hitting the parents."

Hitting the parents.

I've blogged before about my frustration with bratty kids who think nothing of assaulting their own parents. The 16-year-old who bruises her mother, as I witnessed one woman talking about, I'm sure started out like the 3-year-old on this plane.

In a not-unrelated item, a California assemblywoman wants to ban spanking of children under 4. She said she hasn't figured out exactly how to define spanking for the purposes of this bill, but she was quoted as saying, "I think it's pretty hard to argue you need to beat a child," [Sally] Lieber said. "Is it OK to whip a 1-year-old or a 6-month-old or a newborn?"

"Whip." Oh, geez. No one is advocating taking a cat o' nine tails to a three-month old. Anything that would cause injury to a child (apart from a tender bottom) is already against the law. And certainly she knows that.

Liber then invokes the tired canard that spanking breeds societal violence. Does that not collide with common sense? How many of you were spanked as children? Okay, put your hands down. How many of you have committed a violent act? That's what I thought.

Note to self: Never move to California, and ride AirTran at the next possible opportunity.