McCain is still a ginormous asshole with a terrible sense of humor who makes "jokes" about inappropriate things.
Shaker Gourmet: Made of Awesome
Ok, so that's not really the recipe title--but it should be! No, really. I made it last night and my chicken-hating husband not only had seconds then but ate the leftovers today!
(recipe from here) It is a bit time-consuming but so worth it. I made it in stages during the day--in the afternoon, I made the chimichurri (I recommend putting it in a food processor to make an easy drizzle) and then the basting sauce/marinade & chicken. A couple hours later near dinnertime, I made the sweet potatoes and kept them warm while I cooked the chicken. Oh and I didn't have lime zest but it was still fabulous.Mahogany Broiled Chicken with Smoky Lime Sweet Potatoes and Cilantro Chimichurri
1 cup chopped cilantro leaves
6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 large cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1/4 teaspoon pepper, divided
5 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons bottled hoisin sauce
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup plus 1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice, divided
1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast halves, cut in 1-inch cubes
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut in 1/2-inch pieces
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon chopped canned chipotle pepper
1 teaspoon adobo sauce (from canned chipotle)
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon lime zest
Cilantro sprigs, for garnish
In a small bowl, mix together chopped cilantro, olive oil, minced garlic, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and 1/8 teaspoon of the pepper; set aside.
In medium bowl, mix together brown sugar, mustard, hoisin sauce and vinegar. Reserve 2/3 of this mixture. To remainder, add 1/2 cup lime juice and stir in chicken; cover and refrigerate.
Place sweet potatoes in a heavy saucepan and cover with boiling water. Cook, covered, over medium-high heat until tender, about 15 minutes. Reserve 1/4 cup cooking liquid, then drain potatoes in colander. Return potatoes to reserved cooking water and add butter, chipotle pepper, adobo sauce, remaining 1 1/2 teaspoons lime juice, cumin, lime zest, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Mash potatoes.
Preheat the broiler. Thread chicken on 8 bamboo skewers that have been soaked in water for 30 minutes. Broil about 6 inches from heat, basting with reserved mahogany sauce until done, about 8 minutes. To serve, divide potatoes among 4 plates; top each with 2 skewers of chicken and drizzle with cilantro chimichurri sauce. Garnish with cilantro sprigs.
If you'd like to participate in Shaker Gourmet, email me at: shakergourmet (at) gmail.com
Where's My Dykes At?
Any lesbians in the house want to head on over to Queerty and explain that "[A poll of 500 Scottish women finding that 20% of lesbian and bisexual women in Scotland had deliberately harmed themselves in the last year and 5% had attempted suicide] also shows that the ladies aren't taking proper physical precautions, like getting tested for cervical cancer and the such. You would think lesbians would like that sort of thing" isn't funny?
You know, for a lot of women, a pelvic exam is a very stressful and unpleasant experience—and especially, but by no means exclusively, for survivors of sexual assault, it can be triggering and traumatic. Is that the "sort of thing" lesbians are supposed to enjoy?
And why, I wonder, is it that lesbians are supposed to enjoy pap smears more than bisexual and straight women? Are they only supposed to enjoy "that sort of thing" if they've got female doctors…?
Maybe it's because I'm only an honorary dyke, but I've never enjoyed a pap smear no matter who was doing it.
[H/T to Shaker Juliemania.]
Assvertising
Apparently this one, featuring professional misogybag and general superfuck Adam Carolla, has been running for awhile, but I only saw it for the first time last night:
Adam Carolla: You deserve a meal made for men!Combining two of my least favorite advertising staples—treating food as gendered and asserting that eating shit is what makes a man—with the visage of nightmarishly ubiquitous dude-guru Adam Carolla, while pretending that every audience member is male (I was watching the Cubs game, for chrissakes) is pretty much a surefire way to make sure I intimately associate Taco Bell with a gag reflex for the foreseeable future.
VO: [Intro to?] Taco Bell's Big Box meal—a bean burrito, crunchy taco, cinnamon twists, a large drink, and featuring the bacon club chalupa.
AC: Eat like a man!
Insert your own joke about the capacity of their food to do same here.
[Assvertising: Parts One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty, Twenty-One, Twenty-Two, Twenty-Three, Twenty-Four, Twenty-Five, Twenty-Six, Twenty-Seven, Twenty-Eight, Twenty-Nine, Thirty.]
Wednesday Blogaround
What's the frequency, Shakers?
Recommended Reading:
Elle: They Learn It, Too
Shayera: Dear "Plus Size" Clothing Makers
Echidne: From the LOL Files
Redstar: The GOP Continues to Starve Cities
Lynda Waddington: Obama's Late Term Abortion Comments Ignore Stark Realities
Blue Gal: This is why I blog every. single. day.
Leave your links in comments...
Happy Birthday, Space Cowgirl!
To my friend "Leslie Green," who was the family from the moment we met and can make me laugh until I cry. (She also happens to be married to Space Cowboy.) Viva la bootlegs of sauce!
Happy Birthday, gorgeous!
(I know the cowgirl on the cake looks sad; all I can say is try doing an image search online for "cowgirl" and just finding something not dirty.)
Cheerio, Mate!
Jeff Jacoby, to whom I once referred as a "useless, jejune, dullard of a wanker, whose wanktastic brain has long waved adieu to the capacity for nuanced thought," quoted me in his column for the Boston Globe today, "Dancing on the Grave of Jesse Helms"—and proved his reading skills leave something to be desired, too.
In The Nation, the former North Carolina senator was memorialized as "Jesse Helms, American Bigot." For its online audience, The Washington Post resurrected a column David Broder produced when Helms announced his retirement: "Jesse Helms, White Racist."To what pond is he referring? Lake Michigan?
The invective streamed in from across the pond as well. "There seemingly wasn't a right-wing, retrograde social issue Helms met that he didn't like," wrote Melissa McEwan in a savage essay on the Guardian's website. "It was . . . his unmitigated intolerance toward people of color that will define his legacy.
Dude, I live in the Midwest. Although I shall henceforth refer to traveling to the East Coast as "crossing the pond."
And that "savage essay" (written for Comment is Free America) includes the line: "The Dixiecrats are falling away, and we may inaugurate our first black president this year, despite their best efforts." We. Our president. He'd have a tough sell trying to convince me that he'd: A) Carefully read my piece; and B) Nonethless came away from it believing I was a Brit.
Now, if you'll excuse me, you cheeky gits, I have a meeting with the barrister at half-noon, and I'm feeling a bit peckish, so I'm going to do a wee fry-up for my elevenses, or maybe have a tin of beans with some bangers and mash, then watch a bit of telly on the chesterfield with a cuppa before I put on my plimsolls and hit the carriageway. Cheerio!
[H/T to Shaker Amit, in comments.]
Why Change Will Never Happen
As a postscript to Bill's earlier post, I think the reason the knuckleheads in Congress will cave in to the FISA bill without giving a shit about their approval rating is because of the disgustingly high level of ignorance in this country, thanks to the hypnotic instant gratification of our esteemed (ha!) media.
Bluegal helps shed some light on this topic by pointing to some alarming statistics that Rick Shenkman raises in his new book, “Just How Stupid Are We?: Facing the Truth About the American Voter”:
--Only 2 in 5 voters can name the three branches of the federal government.No child left behind? Don't bet on it. The folks in DC are counting on everyone being left behind to keep things cozy for themselves.
--Nearly half (49%) of Americans think the president has the authority to suspend the Constitution.
--Only 1 in 7 can find Iraq on a map.
--A majority (70%) continued to believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, even after the 9/11 Commission reported that the claim was groundless.
--Only 1 in 5 know that there are 100 federal senators.
--Only one-fifth of Americans between ages 18-34 bother to keep up with current events.
Six Dead in Attack on US Consulate
Three policemen and three gunmen have been left dead after a firefight at the US Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey:
In a televised news conference, Governor Muammer Guler said one of the policemen died at the scene after a nearly 10-minute gun battle and two others died of bullet wounds in a hospital. One of the officers was part of the consulate security detail, while the other two were traffic police. A policeman and a tow-truck driver were also injured.No motive has been identified. Perhaps authorities will locate a note pinned inside one of the deceased gunman's jackets noting they hate us for our freedom.
"Three policemen were martyred and three attackers were killed," Mr. Guler said. Ross Wilson, the the United States ambassador in Turkey, said that none of the dead or injured were Americans.
…Istanbul's chief prosecutor, Aykut Cengiz Engin, told reporters at a televised news conference that the authorities "consider the incident a terrorist act."
We Don't Need Another Hero
I shouldn't have to start off more than one post in a week with "oh, for fuck's sake," but it's turning out to be one of those Wednesdays. I am seriously sitting here all gobsmacked at this piece of virulent, misogynist douchefuckery disguised as "humor."
Here's the premise of the joke: What if the makers of Guitar Hero introduced a new game called Vagina Hero wherein the player had to tap all the right buttons in the right sequence at the right time, just like in the original game, but on a vagina shaped controller to "win"? (If you're not holding your sides now from laughing so hard, well, you won't ever be. The joke doesn't get any better than that. A stupid premise has nowhere to go but downhill, my friends.) Oh, and "winning" here is defined as bringing an on-screen woman to orgasm. In case you hadn't guessed.
Of course, as the author reveals, winning is really impossible unless you buy the deluxe package ($600!) because, you know, "the inevitable truth that dudes with money are more successful with women." And the author asks, apparently devoid of any sense of irony, "Isn’t this offensive?" If you have to ask…
Sorry, the joke continues, informing us that this would actually be "a great service" to women: We are making foreplay interesting and exciting for guys… I think women should be excited by the idea of no longer walking away from a sexual encounter with blue balls, or whatever the equivalent of that would be for women.
Get it? Men don't like foreplay and women are strange and mysterious creatures with strange and mysterious genitals. So not only is this misogynist, woman-hating swill, it's unoriginal, misogynist, woman-hating swill. Though really, it's not so much that women are strange and mysterious as it is that the author doesn't actually give a shit about them beyond his own gratification. Wevs, Valentino.
If you were unsure of intent here, read the description of the game's controller (mildly-NSFW image):Just look at it. What the fuck is that? We designed it and we don’t even really know. We tried to stay true to real thing, but that's the best we could do.
Scary girl parts! Ho ho! High komedy, that.
And what strategy is there in the fictional little game, aside from "the sooner you're done, the sooner you can move on to the next girl"? Well, there's the move where players can "speed things up by initiating Vagina Hero's version of Star Power, 'The Shocker', by jamming the yellow, orange, and blue buttons simultaneously."
Look, I told you this joke wasn't going to get any better as we went along. It's actually getting worse. The string of really, really bad puns at the end of the piece is sort of the maraschino cherry on a cat turd sundae that is this piece of alleged humor. Nevermind the connotations behind "jamming the buttons simultaneously."
What's sad is that someone thought this clever enough to write out and somehow managed to con a cohort into creating some illustrations to go along with the piece. (Oh, hell, maybe the artist did his part first and inspired the author. Chicken, egg, whatever, I'm not going there.) Sadder still is the fact that there are, no doubt, a whole bevy of people out there who will find this just fucking hilarious.
I'm going to crawl back in bed and dream of Tetris.
[H/T to Shaker Em.]
Disability Doll Distaste
by Hoyden and Shaker Lauredhel of Hoyden About Town
Why are some people so resistant to the idea of dolls with disabilities?
The Times Online ran an article last week on dolls that look like children with Down syndrome, or dolls with wheelchairs or physiotherapy equipment, or dolls with prosthetic limbs or leg braces or guide dogs.
Despite the glaring obviousness that is the fact that dolls should come in all sorts, and the clear evidence that such dolls are enjoyed by children and useful in therapeutic situations, some people are freaked right out at the thought that not all dolls exhibit Stepford eugenic homogeneity.
Even a "psychologist" quoted in the Times Online article whined about how the dolls "emphasise" difference:
"Children who have disabilities, including children with Down's syndrome, tend to see themselves as 'like everyone else' and to offer a toy that 'looks like them' may only emphasize the difference."I wonder whether the same psychologist would object so strenuously to dolls of colour? Dolls wearing clothing unlike that of most others in their environment? How about female dolls?
Disaboom talks about this article further:
She adds that, if a child has a temporary condition, such as a broken leg, which requires the use of a wheelchair, that child may feel an affiliation with Becky, who also needs a wheelchair. But those children who may have a lifelong condition such as cerebral palsy, which requires the long-term use of a wheelchair, "may wish to affiliate with a free-moving child and in fact see themselves as a normal, free-moving doll."A person quoted in a Daily Mail article on the topic finds dolls with disabilities to be "disturbing and sinister", and commenters find them "grotesque", "sick and patronizing", and "disrespectful".
So let me get this straight…A child who looks different EVERY day doesn't realize? But a child who breaks their leg is welcome to play around with this little temporary fashion accessory if they please? IF children with disabilities wish to "affiliate themselves with a free-moving child" it's because they don't have positive models of how some in the world see them. Most recognize the importance of children of color to have access to dolls that resemble them. How is this different?
A commenter at Fibrofog states point blank that giving a child a doll with the facial features of Down syndrome (or with a wheelchair) is just like giving a child a doll resembling an alcoholic, or simulating a drug overdose. A few weeks ago we had a major television show, All Saints, saying that Down syndrome is the result of sibling incest; now children with Down syndromes are just like heroin addicts.
What next? How did we get to this place of hate? How do we get out?
(Cross-posted.)
Sounds Costly?
Does having an accent or a particular style of speech have an impact on your income? Apparently so, according to Steven D. Levitt.
Fascinating new research by my University of Chicago colleague, Jeffrey Grogger, compares the wages of people who “sound black” when they talk to those who do not.
His main finding: blacks who “sound black” earn salaries that are 10 percent lower than blacks who do not “sound black,” even after controlling for measures of intelligence, experience in the work force, and other factors that influence how much people earn. (For what it is worth, whites who “sound black” earn 6 percent lower than other whites.)
Shades of Pygmalion; we like to think that we are still a nation that says we're all for equality regardless of irrelevancies such as race, color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation. But we know it's not true, and speech is just one more barrier. I guess it's because I live in Miami, where accents and dialects are as varied as can be, that I find this disappointing. Not surprising, though. In my current job assignment, I work with people from all over the world; Thailand, India, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Costa Rica, and even among the native-born Americans, we have people from Minnesota, Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio. I hear all sorts of accents; upper-class Caribbean, Jamaican patois, Haitian kreyol, Southampton British, New York (several varieties, including Lon GUYland and Brooklynese), Joisey, terse New England Yankee, and I had a beloved boss with a Boston accent as thick as chowdah. Throw in my upper-Midwest (no, I'm not Canadian) and New Mexican Spanglish when I speak Spanish, and you have an office of Babel. And we all manage to work together and get our work done.I have met an awful lot of incredibly smart people who "sound black" or "southern" or have some imagined speech pattern that is supposed to indicate a lower level of intelligence, and I've worked -- more's the pity -- with a lot of really dumb people who are smooth talkers and bear no trace of any accent whatsoever. (As a corollary, I've met a lot of people who are proud of their accent and resent any suggestion that speaking more "genteel," as Eliza Doolittle says, will help them get a better job.) I have a lot more respect for someone who cares more about what they're saying than how it sounds when they say it.
I suppose what this research proves is that we still harbor these irrational barriers that are based on little more than prejudice and the snobbery that comes with the human nature of looking down on people who aren't the same as we are. As Steve Levitt says, "Tru dat."
(Cross-posted.)
Question of the Day
What is one thing that you were really, really into in your youth (or, as they say in the city, yewt) that now makes you hurl in embarrassment?
For me, I'll admit this: I was really into Kiss, and I actually joined the Kiss Army. I really did. And I totally loved the paper gun thing that came with the Love Gun album.
I feel much better now. After all, admitting it is the first step.
196 Days
While we generally count down the number of days until Bush will be out of office, it's also good to occasionally remember that, in 196 days, this execrable waste of space will be out of office, too.
[H/T to Shaker John.]
Rainbow Arches
The American Family Association has got its chastity belt in another wad, this time directing their ire at McDonald's, who they've decided to boycott in retaliation for the burger factory's support of the radical gay agenda.
Apparently, the AFA was set off by a simple letter written by Pat Harris, the Global Chief Diversity Officer, in which he states the corporation's respect for employees "regardless of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, and sexual orientation." In doing so, McDonald's has simply reiterated an all-inclusive policy that is more or less standard with most big companies.Likely story. Word on the street is that Don Wildmon is just running offense after Mayor McCheese caught him doing sexay times with the Hamburglar.
Just wait until Mickey-D's starts including pink glittery dildos with every Happy Meal. That'll really send 'em into a tizzy. "Toy inside" indeed!
[H/T to Shaker Scott.]
Caption This Photo
The cheese stands alone.
[Hilariously, the AP caption for this photo is: "U.S. President George W. Bush walks along the fence with other G8 leaders for the official photo at the G8 summit, Tuesday, July 8, 2008 in the lakeside resort of Toyako on Japan northern island of Hokkaido. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)" Or not.]
