December 2011

To close the year, some Christmas foliage

I’d begun to worry, but i knew in my heart i could count on ’em to come through with another outrage before the year ended.  Yep, God’s Own Roman Catholic Church strikes again.  Their Chicago Cardinal has pronounced that the local gays were attempting to “stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church” by moving the route of their increasingly popular annual gay parade to a street that passes in front of a Catholic church.  Yes, the queers weren’t clear that once a Catholic Church is built, it gets to control use of all city streets that pass near it.

Frankly, Your Silken Crimsonness, it’s high time gays woke up and realized that our most vicious enemy in this country is the Roman Catholic Church and that we damn well ought to start fighting back against its continual attacks on us.

The Cardinal went on to complain that the gays were ” like the Ku Klux Klan in demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”  Oh please.  I’d been thinking of the KKK as this racist group that devoted itself to cross burnings and lynching of blacks, but now that i know they were also anti-Catholic i realize that they weren’t all bad.

The cardinal’s whining is a routine feature of Roman Catholic propaganda.  They paint themselves as victims because they no longer have the power to burn us at the stake.  I just love that.  And what i love almost as much as their no longer having the power to burn me is that they know they once had the power and no longer do.

We need to reroute the San Francisco gay parade from Market Street over to Mission Street so that it will pass in front of a Catholic church and all the marchers can scream abuse and strew obscene confetti as they pass it.   Now that, Your Idiocy, would be “demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.”

Let’s do it.

Just discovered that the guys on 21st Street had made today’s Wall Street Journal.

And spotted these lovelies growing alongside the sidewalk bordering Dolores Park.

Sure did want to saute ’em for an omlette, but i’m real happy with my liver just the way it is.

Last year about this time i cooked dinner for my dear old friends and ex-colleagues – Rick, Nancy, and Kurt –  and i had so much fun doing that that i talked ’em into letting me do it again.

This year i’m serving them Chile Verde, Cranberry Beans, and Grandmother’s Cornbread.  They ain’t gettin’ a salad because i’m not much on salads in the winter although i just got a recipe for pickled beets from David that sounds so good that i can imagine creating a salad around them.  Maybe next year.  The cranberry beans i bought fresh in October, shelled, blanched to kill that enzymatic activity so as to preserve the fresh taste, and froze.  All i’m doing to them is cooking them slowly with disks of Chantenay carrot and some yellow onion.

For dessert they’re getting a Dianda Almond Torte, a legendary dessert better than anything i can make that also will trigger memories of our days as colleagues at Oracle when i’d bring these things into the office for everyone….or at least the first comers.

On the 4th of December i lucked out and got a pic of 21st Street’s famous Christmas Tree house just as the cherry picker had arrived to begin the decorations.  Here’s what it looked like this morning.  Tom and Jerry, the owners of the place, have been decorating that tree since it was about six feet tall 25 years or so ago, and provide a bench for Santa Claus to sit on so that kids from all over the city can come by in the evenings leading up to Christmas for photo ops and chats with Santa.

Before dessert, i led my friends over to this house, where we enjoyed watching folks talk with Santa.  To continue my tradition, i walked up to Santa and handed him a jar of marmalade.  Here’s the place at night before the crowd swelled:

“Sometimes it’s hard to believe that only half the people in this world are dumber than average.”  — Warren Hellman 1934-2011

And OK, don’t want to overdo the “bare ruin’d choirs” pics, but i kinda liked this one.  Besides, the sentiment of the sonnet has never seemed more appropriate.

We have to stop ourselves short when we start comparing ourselves with our friends and look with envy at how successful they’ve become.  Better to remember them as we knew them, young and buffed and funloving.  An old friend sent me this Christmas card recently, and i was pleased to see how high His Eminence had risen although when i knew him here in the Castro twenty years ago he was still at the party when it came time for mass on Sunday morning.

Here’s a new product i made last week, pickled Manzana chiles:

Dallas is getting a Calatrava bridge and they’re complaining about it.

Pearls before whom?

In San Francisco, on the other hand, we are grateful for our new Bay Bridge even though it’s not a Calatrava.  When you click on that link, click on the internal link near the top to “View Bridge on Google Earth” for the most spectacular pan and zoom i’ve ever seen. You may have to click on the Play arrow after it’s limped through the first play to get it to display properly.

Oh, and we’re also grateful for our winter sun, especially since it’s not in Dallas.

I had delayed posting this but can no longer resist.  Back on  20 October the Prius acquired a dueling scar.

See, the obstacle that i’d described as a “mud hole” was actually bounded at the far side by either rock or some dense hardpan, in any case something more durable than my bumper.  
 
Have it fixed?  Oh please.  Now i’ve got proof that the Prius is a real dirt tracker, and i’ll be wearing my scar with pride.
 
I’m considering getting me some knobby tires, mudflaps, and loud mufflers.
 
So i can walk the walk….umm, or is that ride the ride?

While i hunt for a sticking place to which i might screw my courage and try in the face of near certain failure to figure out what’s gone wrong with searches and fix it, i’ll toss out a bit of the twisted humor that formerly distinguished this site.
 
It just occurred to me that the finest gift my friends could give their grandchildren would be to pay their tuition for a certification-level course in unmanned drone operation, a growth field in which there will always be plenty of jobs available.  And not only that, but safe jobs, since the drones are operated from secure, airconditioned command centers.
 
For now, we’re targeting evildoers on the other side of the globe, but soon the targets will be disruptive forces here at home that must be put down to maintain our security and preserve our freedom.  You know, things like unauthorized demonstrations and Occupy encampments.
 
And if not a drone operator, maybe a charter bus driver.