A Poem for all of the Mothers at Christmas

Why does God allow	Por que Deus permite
that mothers go away?	que as mães vão-se embora?
A mother has no limit,	Mãe não tem limite,
she is time without hour,	é tempo sem hora,
light that does not fade	luz que não apaga
when the wind blows	quando sopra o vento
and the rain falls.	e chuva desaba,
A velvet hidden	veludo escondido
on wrinkled skin,	na pele enrugada,
pure water, clean air,	água pura, ar puro,
pure thought.	puro pensamento.
Death happens	Morrer acontece
to what is brief and goes by	com o que é breve e passa
without leaving a trace.	sem deixar vestígio.
a mother, in her grace,	Mãe, na sua graça,
is eternity.	é eternidade.
Why must God remember	Por que Deus se lembra
- profound mystery -	- mistério profundo -
to take her away someday?	de tirá-la um dia?
Were I the king of the world,	Fosse eu Rei do Mundo,
I would create a law:	baixava uma lei:
a mother does never die,	Mãe não morre nunca,
she will always stay	mãe ficará sempre
with her child	junto de seu filho
and her child, though old,	e ele, velho embora,
will be little	será pequenino
like a maize grain	feito grão de milho.

SCAM ALERT - SPEEDCOUNT / SPEED COUNT - aka Clean Up My PC

Run away - do not download - this is fake software - it will wreck your computer and rip you off for money
Don't believe the fake TV adverts

This is a public service to protect those of you who may be fooled by the NEW NAME
Why would any successful company come up with a NEW name for anything that was not a scam.

RUN AWAY

After running a scan, you’ll see an alarming count of the number of problems on your computer. It found 26267 issues on our computer. That’s an extremely alarming number — but what exactly is an issue?

• Every browser cookie and history entry counts as a single issue.
• Every temporary file counts as a single issue, no matter how tiny it is.
• Invalid registry entries are considered issues, although they shouldn’t actually slow down your computer.
• Our registry can be compacted a bit, but this shouldn’t make a noticeable different in performance
• Every fragmented file counts as a single issue. MyCleanPC is measuring fragmentation based on the number of fragmented files, leading to a scary-looking 21.33% data fragmentation statistic. For comparison, the Windows Disk Defragmenter tells us we have 2% fragmentation.

Fiona Apple Criminal - Making Brains Melt with Misdirection

"I’ve been a bad, bad girl
I’ve been careless with a delicate man
And it’s a sad, sad world
Where a girl will break a boy just because she can
Now, the same idiots who flipped out about the “Criminal" video read that first lyric as some kind of porn-culture come-on, when the deployment of the cliche is so transparently hilarious misdirection. You don’t get farther than the next line before Fiona lets you know that she’s the one who has all the power. It’s the lyrical equivalent of beckoning a man to come closer only to slap him in the face when he does. And the way she continues to layer on the condescension throughout the song is just next-level. "

Ahhhhhh... yes..... so this makes it all right - a woman can behave like a horrible man... but as long as it isn't a man... then all is good

Ohhhhh Yeah D'Arcy Wretzky

How to write well - Orwell Style - My Style

George Orwell's rules of writing are always worth repeating:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out
4. Never use the passive when you can use the active
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent; and finally
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say something outright barbarous

What women have endured is not only the history of men, but also their own specific oppression. Extraordinarily violent. Extraordinarily Whiny

What women have endured is not only the history of men, but also their own specific oppression. Extraordinarily violent. Hence this simple suggestion: you can all go and get fuck ed, with your condescension towards us, your ridiculous shows of group strength, of limited protection and your manipulative whining about how hard it is to be a guy around emancipated women. What is really hard is to actually be a woman and to have to listen to your shit.

King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes 

"Whiny Bitch"

Someone who exemplifies rather large amounts of crybaby-bullshit in order to:  1) get sympathy from the people around him/her. 2) make them self feel like less of a dumbass "somebody shut chris the hell up. no one cares about his wussy knuckle"

Ahhhhhh..... the irony here... and yet we have to listen to your whiny 'shit'

"Some problems we share as women, some we do not." But we all share the right to be totally irrational and random

“Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You [white women] fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.”

—

Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” This is what some women actually internalize as a reasonable argument. If that is truly your fear... and you do nothing about it - that makes you at the best one of the most ineffectual mothers in the world or at worst: a horrible self-perpetuating cartoon of empowered womanhood. Get over it - it is not a patriarchal conspiracy - it is YOUR failure - every day... every decade.

Bad Womyn Thinking about Writing & Reading

"There have been a lot of conversations lately online about the obvious and pervasive sexism in all our culture industries, including book publishing. We tally up numbers of women’s books reviewed and decry the lack of female reviewers; we point out the sexist ways women’s books are marketed and sold — all those headless women, all those “[man]‘s mother, sister, daughter” titles. It’s important and good to name the problem, but it’s more important not to stop there. The root of the issue is as simple as this fact: women, research shows, buy and read books by both women and men, while men predominantly read books by men. The solution? We think it’s to read books by women, especially women outside the literary establishment. Talk about them. Share them with your friends. Representation is important. It’s not a solution on its own, but together with more direct action to end inequality, representation can and will change our world."

NO! The solution is exactly what it has always been - champion good writing.
Pencils don't have tiny breasts or balls - good writing is good writing
Talent is Talent

The only one that champions these types of things are
BAD womyn writers.

I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists.

“I don’t know why people are so reluctant to say they’re feminists. Maybe some women just don’t care. But how could it be any more obvious that we still live in a patriarchal world when feminism is a bad word?”

—

Ellen Page: ‘Why are people so reluctant to say they’re feminists?’ (viathefeministpress) Because intelligent young women see it for what it is... and attempt by less-able, hating, whining individuals to tell an entire gender what their norms should be. I can only imagine if some guy said to all guys... here is how it is... here is what you can say and what you can believe. We live in a post-feminist world that welcomes all views and belief systems... not just a womyn's point of view

Bad Womyn Writing Redux - Trapping Yourself in a Ghetto You Create Chez-Vous

“Because I’m moved in writing to be irrepressible. Writing to you seems like some holy cause, cause there’s not enough female irrepressibility written down. I’ve fused my silence and repression with the entire female gender’s silence and repression. I think the sheer fact of women talking, being, paradoxical, inexplicable, flip, self-destructive but above all else public is the most revolutionary thing in the world.”

Well no actually - it is simply self-indulgent, whiny and traps you in a 'woman' ghetto of your own making.

Haim - Gotta love 'em

Why we love Elaine!

Granola

Store-bought granolas are often loaded with sugar, fat and salt. This recipe cuts down on all of those things and you can adjust the ingredients to your own tastes.


Servings: About 6 cups


Video

Wake up to homemade granola


Ingredients


3 cups rolled oats

1 cup shredded, unsweetened coconut

¾ cup pumpkin seeds

1 cup pecans (or any nut) roughly chopped

1/3 cup honey

½ tsp real vanilla extract

2 tbsp maple syrup

1 tsp salt

½ cup dried blueberries (or cranberries)

½ cup dried cherries

½ cup dried apricot, chopped roughly


Method

Preheat oven to 300 F.

In a bowl combine the oats, coconut, pumpkin seeds, flax and pecans.

In a separate small bowl mix the honey, vanilla, maple syrup and salt.

Pour the honey mixture over the dry mixture and toss until evenly coated.

Put parchment down on two cookies sheets. Spread half the granola mixture on each sheet. Put the sheets into the oven and check the granola after 10 minutes, stirring to turn the mixture.

Bake for a total of 20 minutes or until the granola is golden and fragrant.

Remove from the oven and cool so the granola can be handled. Pour it into a big bowl and mix in the dried fruit while the granola is still warm.

Cool completely and then store in a sealed container.

Nicolette Scorsese - National Lampoon Christmas Vacation

Started out her career as a model, which is where she met her former boyfriend, actor/model Antonio Sabato Jr..
The grand-daddy of them all - she still rocks my world every XMas when this film is shown.
Kinda like a treat for the big boys - still gorgeous BTW

Neruda 11 & 17 - Studies in Indifference or not

Cien sonetos de amor (100 Love Sonnets) is a collection of sonnets written by the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda originally published in Argentina in 1959.

It was dedicated to his beloved wife -at the time-, Matilde Urrutia, but that is another long and complicated story.

It is divided into the four stages of the day: morning, afternoon, evening, and night.

This collect has always been a bit of a Rorschach test for me: which poem do you like the best and why. The easy answer has always been  No. 11 – it is obvious – vulgar in an appealing way – soft and gooey in an unappealing way.

I have always loved No. 17 – almost dropped it when it appeared in Patch Adams (horrible movie!) but it always draws me in when I go on a Neruda jag.

Take a look – let me know what you think – if you have another candidate, I am always delighted to find new avenues to explore.

Love Sonnet XI

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.

Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Sonnet XVII

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
 
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Ninja vs. Chicken

 

Louise Gluck - Gotta love the poet priestess

“A Village Life”:
      

In the window, the moon is hanging over the earth,
meaningless but full of messages.
It’s dead, it’s always been dead,
but it pretends to be something else,
burning like a star, and convincingly, so that you feel
sometimes
it could actually make something grow on earth.

If there’s an image of the soul, I think that’s what it is.

I move through the dark as though it were natural to
me,
as though I were already a factor in it.
Tranquil and still, the day dawns.
On market day, I go to the market with my lettuces.

No-Knead Pizza Pie - The Cool and The Crazy

No-Knead Pizza Pie

Makes four 12-inch pizzas
Making the Dough:

500 grams (17 1/2 ounces or about 3 3/4 unsifted cups) all-purpose flour, plus more for shaping the dough
1 gram (1/4 teaspoon) active dry yeast
16 grams (2 teaspoons) fine sea salt
350 grams (11/2 cups) water
1. In a medium bowl, thoroughly blend the flour, yeast, and salt. Add the water and, with a wooden spoon and/or your hands, mix thoroughly. We find it easiest to start with the spoon, then switch to your hands.
2. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a kitchen towel and allow it to rise at room temperature (about 72°) for 18 hours or until it has more than doubled. It will take longer in a chilly room and less time in a very warm one.
3. Flour a work surface and scrape out the dough. Divide it into 4 equal parts and shape them. For each portion, start with the right side of the dough and pull it toward the center, then do the same with the left, then the top, then the bottom. (The order doesn't actually matter; what you want is four folds.) Shape each portion into a round and turn seam side down. Mold the dough into a neat circular mound. The mounds should not be sticky; if they are, dust with more flour.
4. If you don't intend to use the dough right away, wrap the balls individually in plastic and refrigerate for up to 3 days. Return to room temperature by leaving them out on the counter, covered in a damp cloth, for 2 to 3 hours before needed.