Distracted Mind

Some of my entries have been just a wee bit messed up as of late. I’ve been outsourcing my blogging to an individual in Tazbekilichtenbergerstein in exchange for wheat thins and beer (you’d be amazed at how those two items keep in international mail), and the quality has been somewhat less than sterling. I’ve decided against any further contract work with this individual and will be writing and coding my own posts from now on, cheap labor be damned.

The more I think about the whole issue of waving the Jesus flag against RON, the more disturbing the action becomes. It bothers me because there are other arguments against RON that actually make sense and don’t insult evangelicals’ intelligence.

To make the argument that, if you support RON, you’re a pot smoking baby-eater is very flimsy and insulting when RON has a bigger target painted on its back. RON doesn’t give an equal voice to independents and third parties and it’s written with too broad a scope. Those are only two arguments against it and those two arguments seem to be pretty good ones; much better than “Vote against it! People who support it don’t pray!”. The people behind the religion-based part of this campaign must not think very much of evangelicals. If I were part of the pro-RON camp’s advertising team, I’d be exploiting this for all it’s worth.

[Democracy Guy](http://democracyguy.typepad.com/democracy_guy_grassroots_/2005/10/new_ron_poll_go.html) has his own opinions on the anti-RON crowd’s [latest stunt](http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/1130406100136260.xml&coll=2). I’m tracking back here because I’m long-winded and I have my own weblog–there’s no reason to hijack Tim’s to say my piece. It’s interesting how the Jesus flag gets waved every time there’s something fighting against corruption. It’s even more interesting how that flag gets waved on the side of corruption.

These people aren’t even trying to “rabbit season/duck season” people, like they did with last year’s [Issue 1](http://www.smartvoter.org/2004/11/02/oh/state/issue/1/). They’re just tacking shit onto the issue and attempting to tell evangelicals that anyone supporting RON is essentially a pot-smoking, gay-loving, secularist baby-eater. Not everything in that list is bad (I love gays and babies), but c’mon — is that in any way related to voter reform? These people have so little ammunition that they’re picking side arguments, and bad ones at that. Read the rest of this entry »

Since one of the things discussed at the October bloggers’ meetup was spam prevention, I thought I’d pass this on. There’s a new spam prevention tool out, called [Akismet](http://www.akismet.com). It’s available as a [WordPress](http://www.wordpress.org) plugin, but there’s a catch: you have to have a [wordpress.com](http://www.wordpress.com) API key. If you don’t know what that is, don’t have one, whatever, drop me a comment with your email address. I can give you the API key (it’s just a long string of letters and numbers) so that you too can live spam free.

It’s free for non-commercial use and non-professional bloggers (anyone who doesn’t make more than $500 or so a month from blogging). Really cool stuff if it works–so far it’s found 8 spammers commenting on one of my weblogs and has stopped them, and I just installed it ten minutes ago.

I read a [Daily Kos diary](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/10/23/134518/85) the other day designed to make me feel guilty. Of course, a lot of diaries at Daily Kos are about making you feel guilty or scared or angry, feeding off knee jerk reactions to inspire activism, and it’s easy to be aware of this and dismiss it a bit, but this one has stuck with me since I read it. The diary addressed the lack of relief effort drives for earthquake survivors in Pakistan and the surrounding affected area.

There’s been a noticeable lack of news about the region, and while many bloggers around the region and Southeast asian bloggers are raising money, the “western” response has been pretty quiet. I’m just wondering if we’re all “disastered out,” if it’s just too far away for our attention spans to concentrate on, or if there’s just so many other things going on close to home. Are we just that shortsighted internationally? Or do we really have that much to concentrate on at home that these deaths just fall by the wayside?

If you want to donate some money to help people affected by this disaster or others, please visit [Chapati Mystery's list of reputable charitable organizations.](http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/homistan/quake_relief.html). October 26 is [Earthquake Relief Day](http://www.desipundit.com/2005/10/22/blog-quake-day/#more-1431)) — please help to spread the word and help other humans in dire need.

I’m an idiot when it comes to cooking breakfast food. I can make roast beef, whip up sauces, do just about anything else for any other time of day, but if it’s more complicated than cereal and milk, or bread and a toaster, I’m generally not your gal. I tend to scramble any eggs I cook, even if they’re supposed to be sunny-side-up. I’ve made my peace with this ineptitude, but I _have_ found something I can make: pancakes.

This recipe is extremely easy and it doesn’t take long to whip together. I can make pancakes in less than a half an hour and I’m not the most efficient girl on the block.

Last week’s stupid kitchen trick never quite made it. It’s been an interesting month ’round the homefront, and, without any excuses, let me just say that I’m nearly out of stupid kitchen tricks. Readers, if you have any that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear them and give your your proper credit. I’ll try anything once and I only write things I’ve tried, so you may even get me to do something strange in my kitchen.

Now, for this week’s kitchen trick. I’m not going to use my husband’s suggestion of extolling the virtues of combining bleach and ammonia (I told you I was going to blog that), but instead I’ll let you know about something a little less toxic and a lot more useful: thickening gravy.

Now this applies to sauces as well, but lumpy gravy is the source of so many jokes that it’s just another sad little groan at the table. Making an unlumpy gravy or sauce is actually fairly simple and will allow you to pimp slap Uncle Harry at the next Thanksgiving dinner when he starts in about lumpiness. Of course, it will be talked about for years, but there’s nothing more satisfying than a holiday pimp-slap, now is there?

On to the lack of lumps. Very simple. Take a small bowl and put a bit of corn starch, flour, or a combination of the two (I’ve found that the combo does the best for gravy). Then gradually ladle in a bit of the base of your gravy/sauce. If this is gravy, use the drippings. If it’s a sauce… use the friggin’ sauce. Whisk the sauce to mix while you’re adding the liquid until it’s completely mixed in, no lumps. Then add the mixture back into your gravy/sauce, stirring until the gravy/sauce is thickened.

There you go. Gravy sans lumps and a generous holiday pimp-slap for anyone who says otherwise.

_Edited to correct D’s recommendation–it was bleach and *ammonia*, not bleach and water._
_Big fat precautionary note: do not, I repeat DO NOT, combine bleach and ammonia. It creates mustard gas and inhaling mustard gas is a very unpleasant way to die. Trust me on this one._

I downloaded a new toy today: a browser called [Flock](http://www.flock.com). It’s based on [Firefox](http://www.mozilla.org) and it combines the browsing experience of Firefox with social tools like [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com), [del.icio.us](del.icio.us), and blogging tools. I’m actually writing this entry using the blogging tool and the interface is quite nice. In fact, the entire application’s interface is nice; it’s much nicer than Firefox and Safari (and we’re not even going to go into Internet Explorer… no comparison).

There’s only a few problems with the blogging tool–it doesn’t support markup, and if you use this tool to post to a [WordPress](http://www.wordpress.org/)-powered weblog, you lose a lot of plugin functionality. This, in my mind, is a drawback, but if someone less technologically-savvy were to use it, the blog tool would be peachy.

Being able to bookmark sites and have them immediately stored in my del.icio.us account is terrific and is definitely a good reason for using Flock. I use so many different computers that synchronizing my bookmarks between machines is wonderful enough to continue using the browser, even if the blogging tool is a little less than what I am willing to use.

I totally recommend this, if for nothing more than just a new toy. It’s free and it runs on both Mac and Windows platforms as well as Linux.

Remember the awful [snuff for porn website](http://www.distractedmind.com/2005/snuff-for-porn-theres-not-enough-words-for-this/) that had soldiers and contractors submitting photos of Iraqi and Afghani dead for free amateur porn? The site owner, Chris Wilson, is getting in all sorts of trouble now. There’s even a campaign to [save Chris](http://www.savechriswilson.blogspot.com/) and raise money for his legal fees. They’re trying to say that this is a violation of first amendment rights, which I’m just not sure will fly.

These are photos of dead people, blown to bits, fried, rotting, all sorts of gruesome shots. If I remember the first amendment (and I do), first amendment rights are not protected in cases of [obscenity](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Obscenity). Whether or not the bulletin board filled with photos of corpses is obscene is for the courts to decide. They’ll need to figure out if Wilson intended for these photos to serve as a protest against the war, if he meant for these photos to educate the general public regarding the actual daily life over there, or if he just meant them as a sick sideshow that would appeal to people that get off on looking at people killed in violent ways. The manner in which he acquired the photos is extremely questionable, offering porn as a carrot, and I’m not sure that his actions are necessarily covered.

Still, if you feel that Wilson has been wronged, if you feel that what he did was a protected area of speech, visit the ["Save Chris Wilson" website](http://www.savechriswilson.blogspot.com/ and buy a t-shirt. Of course, if you feel that you need to comment on his supposed plight, save it for somewhere else. They’ve turned comments off.

So the [House of Representatives has voted to ban obesity blame lawsuits.](http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/washington/index.ssf?/base/politics-7/112977474138081.xml&storylist=washington) I’m a little conflicted on this one, having some rounded corners myself, but I think that there are some problems on both sides. For some reason, as a culture, we have decided that it’s better to blame someone else instead of taking some responsibility for our actions. C’mon, if I gain a pound this week, is it the Town Fryer’s fault for making those yummy deep fried oreos, or my fault for eating them? Honestly, people need to look inward before they look outside themselves for culpability.

The conflict comes from this: we have all sorts of lawsuits where people blame corporations for things that may be the result of their own actions, made in full knowledge of the potential consequences. Look at the tobacco lawsuits. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t sue tobacco companies if they get cancer, because cigarettes are so damned addictive and so difficult to quit that some youthful bravado about how “I’m never going to get lung cancer” can lead to a pack a day habit for thirty-five years. Cigarettes are horrible. So is fast food, and for some people it’s just as addicting as one of those cancer-sticks. Read the rest of this entry »