Oil in Liberia? You don't say...

Time for "liberation".

To be quite honest, I couldn't follow a budget if it put a choke collar and leash on me. Financial discipline (heck while we're all being honest, self-discipline) has never been my thing. I can hear lectures and sermons on stewardship as well as the wisdom of leaving an inheritance for your descendants all day but the end product would still be "So where do you want to go out to eat tonight?" *sound of wallet opening* or "Man, Canon Press really has some great new books out" *sound of wallet opening* or "Honey, look at all these great cigars on sale" *sound of wallet opening*.

I see the bills and debt and I feel a great sense of repentance. Note I said "sense" of repentance. Because three days or so later it's wash, rinse, repeat.

And so it goes. I honestly don't know what I'm going to do. I can give the standard Christian rigamarole and say I gotta keep on repenting, but if I take a step back and look at it, I find that what I really mean is just keep on feeling guilty while you continue on to your destruction.

Rom. 7:24-25.

Being a good father, I feel it is my duty to not only encourage but also warn my sons of both the ups and downs of their chosen career paths.

So in anticipation of my oldest son's illustrious calling to work with whales, I think it is only right that I post this:

""The picture is of an Antarctic minke whale taken from the bow of a ship," Gales explained. "The white bits in the photo are pieces of ice-floe, the stream of pinky color behind the whale is a fecal plume — a.k.a. "poo" — the large circle in the water is indeed the physical eruption of the whale's flatulence."

"The general rule that flatulence is worse than halitosis is certainly also true for whales," said Gales, who had to flee the bow of the ship shortly after the whale's natural release was observed, and smelled.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I just heard Bon Jovi's Wanted: Dead or Alive on the classic rock station.

Nope, it wasn't 80's night.

It was in rotation on the Classic. Rock. Station.

I'll give you some time to let that sink in. I gotta go finish off my glass of Metamucil.

Mark Horne links an article by Nick Monohan which was originally written in December. I remember reading it then and found it sufficient to anger me. As I read again I found that it doesn't lose it's efficacy to infuriate any less.

Basically, it's his story about how the TSA thugs at the airport (y'know, the government employees who are paid to frisk little old ladies for WMD's before they board the airplane) basically violated and harassed his wife, then arrested him when he complained about it, thereby ensuring that he would miss his friend's wedding. They then lied and falsified facts in the official report. When he asked for the evidence on the security tape, they informed him that it was destroyed, which as he later found out, turned out not to be exactly the truth.

Not only that but they sent him a bill to cover the court costs to the tune of $309 American dollars. Land of the free, home of the brave and all that I guess.

I normally wouldn't post a squib about this, not after the length of time that had passed. But I'm sorry when pregnant ladies are being frisked, ordered to lift up their shirts in public and told that their husband may be facing some time in the hole, while all the while total shit like this is allowed to happen without anyone so much as blinking a flipping eyelid (you didn't hear about any arrests in the news didja?...nope), you know that something is amiss in Ashcroftland.

A hearty "Amen" goes out to the author's conclusion:

"There are plenty of stories like this these days. I don’t know how many I’ve read where the writer describes some breach of civil liberties by employees of the state, then wraps it all up with a dire warning about what we as a nation are becoming, and how if we don’t put an end to it now, then we’re in for heaps of trouble. Well you know what? Nothing’s going to stop the inevitable. There’s no policy change that’s going to save us. There’s no election that’s going to put a halt to the onslaught of tyranny. It’s here already – this country has changed for the worse and will continue to change for the worse. There is now a division between the citizenry and the state. When that state is used as a tool against me, there is no longer any reason why I should owe any allegiance to that state.

And that’s the first thing that child of ours is going to learn

I'm stoked! There's a new ethnic market that has opened just down the street from me. Now I don't have to travel far and wide looking for the perfect chow mein moodles and other hard to find spices and veggies for recipies. Very cool!

I took Caleb with me to gather some ingredients for my BBQ that night (TIP: Do not use Corona to marinate your steaks. It made the steak taste like a nasty beer belch). While we were there, it was hard to keep me from dancing down the aisle with joy. Hispanic and Asian ingredients as far as the eye could see. From kimchee to 8 different types of chorizo to dried seaweed and pre-made spring rolls (a recipie I have yet to perfect). Wonderful stuff.

Being an ethnic market, you should not be surprised to find all sorts of interesting...um...well let's just say they use all the parts of the animal. I didn't know you could make a dish with pig uterus but, well, color me surprised!

And mangoes...oh the mangoes...mangoes as big as your head for .59 each. Yum!

I'm looking for a good, affordable red wine. Must have some sweetness to it but not a full-blown Lambruscoesque sweetness.

Any recommendations?