zumalicious's Open Salon Blog

A Thankful Thanksgiving

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 12:11:07 -0500

Evening Sky Over Sacramento, November, 2009

Even when the glossy treats

Are far to pricey, out of reach

And when the car is dicey

And when the bank account is through

And whether we must sit with strangers

Or at quiet tables, all alone

This is still a time to thank

A time to toss whole prayers of thank

Into the buckets of our lives

A time to give and feast our thanks

To celebrate what life we have

My thanks are plentiful and they are true

Sidewalk leaf, November 2009

My prayers

Go out to those who suffer more

And many who have less this year

Than they have ever had before

This is a time to think whole thoughts of others

And to send some kindly words

Whole buckets of words that are filled with hope

And words of peace

And words to encourage

My hopes are plentiful and they are true

Fall, 2009 In The Hood

My thanks go out

To my friends at Open Saloon

To my friends and neighbors in the world

To my little family, whole and small and neat

For my Mom who travels down

The lonely, dusty road

In safety and with good care

For a president who makes his way

Stumbling and recovering

Against all odds

For our soldiers, brave and true

For our public safety forces

For those who serve us in many ways

Without our knowing or our recognition

My thanks to God are plentiful and they are true

Evening Sky Over Sacramento, November, 2009

To all, most joyful greetings

To all, good thanks for friendly kindness

To all, go prayer and blessings

To all, much love, peace, and goodwill.

The Three Best On Line Political Resources

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 11:11:29 -0500

Research is a terrible thing to waste.

For objective, comprehensive and detailed factoids, there are three on line resources that should be in everyone's bookmarks and RSS feeds, if you understand RSS feeds. The author has little clue. They scare us.

These sites are free of charge and have been around for a while.

I encourage you to add links to your own (free of charge) favorites, so that this post can build into a good reference for those who want to find out on their own, to collect good references for their blogs, or to just wander with curiousity.

Center for Responsive Politics: Open Secrets

The first is OpenSecrets.org. If you want to track campaign contributions, lobbying activities, political action committee influence, 527 organizations, industry profiles, and personal finances, this is the place to go.

The overall benefit of this site is to aid campaign finance reform through knowledge and information. The site favors not one side over the other and is neither liberal nor conservative. There is also analysis, in depth reporting, and current information on other elections matters. To find out who is getting what from whom, this is the place to go.

Project Vote

Next, to find out how someone is voting, there is Project Vote. This is another objective site that gets into the voting records of the politicians. The most fundamental help that this site provides is in the special interest area. If you want to see how a representative or Senator votes on Veterans, Senior, or other issues, there are ratings that are given by certain, large organizations that represent large groups.

The site also offers articles, analysis and news about voting, voting events, and voting problems.

To find out how they played once they got paid, this site offers excellent summation.

Govtrack

Finally, the behemoth of sites, Govtrack is a portal to paths down which you may go for days. From state of the art widgets that allow us to track individual bills, to customized pages where we can collect all of the bills that we are interested in, to search engines for finding bills by subject, number, or name, this site has it all!

You can choose from a host of "trackers" and add them to your custom trackers page. The trackers are feeds which keep the information current and without bias or interfering interpretation.

You can also call up a bill and find individual sections that are of interest, even if the bill is huge.

There is also news, current events, a portal to all of the individual politicians, and an incredibly rich amount of detail.

The Attention Deficit Newswrap November 24, 2009

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 12:11:47 -0500

BLACK FRIDAY LOOMS!

I found a Black Friday site that has all the dish, all the news, all the multicolored flyers, and all the sales to get you worked up into a frenzy of frugal consumerism, greed, and shopping madness.

SO DOES CYBER MONDAY!!!

And now, there's cyber monday. There's a site for that fateful day of consumer excess, too. It also has pretty logos and lots of shiny colors!!!

And...let's be careful out there.

To put you in the mood for marketing madness, we at the fishwrap present...

Steely Dan "Black Friday"

IT'S THE GAY NOUGHTIES!

(OR AT LEAST THE SEXUALLY AMBIDEXTEROUS NOUGHTIES!)

Adam Lambert caused quite a splash at the AMA awards ceremony night before last.

He came in second in last seasons "American Idol". The person who won was...who?

Whatever, that person is not famous, while Adam is gettin' it ON! All hail the new Freddie Mercury and hold on until it's over! For your entertainment...

THANKSGIVING HORROR!!!

TERRIBLE! The queen, Paula Deen got hit in the face by a ham thrown by a hillbilly!

Now NOBODY hits Paula Deen in the face with a ham, not even a hillbilly! We loves us some Paula Deen. She is the Ron Jeremy of food porn!

Note how she still manages to respond with that classic Southern grace. In her honor, I'm posting a Paula Deen Thanksgiving treat from the Food Network Site.

She has a whole thanksgiving menu for those who are still confused...

PAULA DEEN'S SWEET POTATO BALLS!!!

From FoodNetwork.com

Ingredients

4 large sweet potatoes
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons orange juice
1 teaspoon orange zest
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 cups shredded coconut, sweetened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 large marshmallow per potato ball

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Bake the potatoes until tender, then peel and mash them. Stir in the brown sugar, orange juice, zest and nutmeg. In a separate bowl, toss the coconut with the sugar and cinnamon. Press mashed potatoes around each marshmallow, creating a 2 to 3-inch diameter ball. Roll the balls in the coconut mixture. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes. Watch carefully for the last few minutes of cooking; the expanding marshmallows can cause the potato balls to burst open.

BALLS!

oH..ER...i'M BACK...

WITH SPORTS!!!!

In the NBA, it looks like Kobe and LeBron are the players of the week. LeBron had 137 points, 23 rebounds, 3 steals, and 37 assists for the week, nuking Golden State, Indiana, Philly, and losing to Washington.

Kobe had 87 points, 20 rebounds, 20 assists, and two steals in only three games, Pistons, Bulls, Thunder...all wins! ==

Football? Balls! Too early. Let Kind of Blue deal with the complexities of the shiny, shiny helmets and p r e t t y c o l o r s....

THE COMICS!!!!

Pearls Before Swine

Get Fuzzy

Scary Gary (A Retired Vampire Living In Suburbia)

Happy Sunday

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:11:33 -0500

A psalm of David.

¹ O LORD, our Lord,
       how majestic is your name in all the earth!
       You have set your glory
       above the heavens.

² From the lips of children and infants
       you have ordained praise ^[b]
       because of your enemies,
       to silence the foe and the avenger.

³ When I consider your heavens,
       the work of your fingers,
       the moon and the stars,
       which you have set in place,

⁴ what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?

⁵ You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings ^[c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.

⁶ You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:

⁷ all flocks and herds,
and the beasts of the field,

⁸ the birds of the air,
and the fish of the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

⁹ O LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Oh, Great Spirit,
whose voice I hear in the winds
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me.
I am small and weak.
I need your strength and wisdom.

Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes
ever behold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things you have made
and my ears sharp to hear your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand
the things you have taught my people.
Let me learn the lessons you have hidden
in every leaf and rock.

I seek strength, not to be superior to my brother,
but to fight my greatest enemy - myself.
Make me always ready to come to you
with clean hands and straight eyes,
so when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit will come to you
without shame.

american indian - lakota - chief yellow lark - 1887

My God, I am yours for time and eternity.
Teach me to cast myself entirely
into the arms of your loving Providence
with a lively, unlimited confidence in your compassionate, tender pity.
Grant, O most merciful Redeemer,
That whatever you ordain or permit may be acceptable to me.
Take from my heart all painful anxiety;
let nothing sadden me but sin,
nothing delight me but the hope
of coming to the possession of You
my God and my all,
in your everlasting kingdom.

Amen.

suscipe of catherine mcauley - 1778-1841

Is It all about how you look at it? Is It Really? Is It?

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:11:24 -0500

UPDATE: I WENT TO DELETE SOME OF MY OWN COMMENTS AND OS ACTED UP. IF I DELETED ANY OF YOUR COMMENTS, PLEASE PUT THEM BACK!!!!

It's Attention Deficit Conflict Resolution Discussion Time!

Arizona gets these. That grit gets everywhere, even in your cootchie!

OD closed comments to a very good post, and that is understood and supported. But OD wrote a very thought provoking post on the comment/pseudo advice: "It's all about how you look at it."

I am with OD, and get furious, sometimes, when people blather on about "perspective" without offering any. Bah!

Let us see what we have to say about that which motivates us to get perspective, agree, walk away, mix it up, give advice to settle down, call for peace in our times, or to passively aggressively agree to everything without actually agreeing to anything.

Is this truly what we seek? Is there a foot hole that allows breathing?

Do plastic feet stink?

DO WE FLAG, FLAME OR FUME: HOW, WHY AND WHEN?

Without getting into the factoids of specific dustups, what motivates us to do what we do in a dispute?

Here are some, but obviously not the only, conceptual frameworks that might help to start a dialogue.

Do we usually walk away without saying anything?

When we have a dog in the fight, do we get in there and support one side or another...or try to be peacemakers because we like both sides?

Is there a point when we don't have a dog in the fight, but want to express our opinions and feelings about the general issue?

Are there group values, norms, etiquette, or behaviors that we want to bring up and reinforce?

Are there interpersonal behavioral limits or lines that have been crossed?

Do we step in to express that the site or group image, atmosphere, or mood is at risk?

Who is more evil, Dwayne or Jim?

BUTTONS? DO WE HAVE BUTTONS? ARE THEY SHINY?

What is a person's button pushing point? Here are some frameworks, but not the only frameworks.

As OD indicated, is it being told to take an approach that sounds lofty, but which says or does nothing useful to resolve matters or to express feelings?

Is it being mentioned or drawn in by name or by indirect reference?

Is it being named in a negative title by someone who thinks that they are entitled to name you in a negative title? How about a friend, frenemy or enemy being named in a negative title?

Is it when fluffy, squeezable Canadians try to invade America, or when Pirate Wimmin have to re-establish their rightful control over OS?

Is it when some agreed upon group rule, boundary, group norm or value is violated?

Is it when a personal standard is violated?

Do tornadoes look like penises to you?

TRUE ATTENTION DEFICIT CONFLICT RESOLUTION:

Finally, what techniques, mechanisms or policies do we use to resolve matters when misunderstandings lead to flareups? Be generous with these, as they are helpful or funny.

I'll be back....oooh...the puffy pancake is done....oooh shiny!