Category: Not Quite News

Maybe It’s Just Me, But…

plumberbutt.jpg
If I must subject myself to anything resembling this view, I had better be standing behind someone who’s working hard to resolve an urgent household drainage problem. And, to be honest, that’s a cliche’d cheap shot and completely unfair to the plumbers I know – all of whom are prompt, efficient, reasonably priced, and professional in their attire.
So, then, if it is within the capacity of a plumber to select a wardrobe that covers the equatorial realms of his anatomy, is it too much to expect of a waitress?
I didn’t have my camera at brunch today. But, to the young woman who seated us at our table, and swished by on too frequent a basis, may I offer the following observations:
1. Jewelry located anywhere between the collarbone and ankle is not intended for public consumption.
2. The protrusion of post-pubescent lardy tissue between the upper lip of your low rise pants and the lower edge of that shrunken t-shirt resembles a uncooked roll of pork sausage. This may not have occured to you, but with a breakfast menu in my hand, it certainly occured to me.
3. The only women thin enough to expose a midrift forcibly confined in such away are in a hospital bed and subject to medically supervised feedings.
4. People are trying to eat, dammit.
There. I feel better already. Next time, I will bring a camera, and I will make you famous.

Moore® Oven Bags And Thanksgiving Safety

Which Moore® oven bag for which job?
feel the bandwidth, baby
Oven bags are available in Super Size in addition to the popular Berkeley Big-Mac Weanling size. Use Weanling size (2′ 0″x 6′ 0″) for easy, everyday single-serving meals for socialist filmakers that eat other people’s young, Super Size for DNC national conventions.
Why do you add flour to Moore® Oven Bags?
Always shake one tablespoon of flour in a Moore® Oven Bag before cooking. Or granola. This flour should remain in the bag during cooking to blend the fat and juices and to protect against bursting. More than one tablespoon of flour may be added to the bag for recipes with thickened
sauces or gravy. Remove Birkenstocks, or gravy may be slightly gamey.
Can I use Moore® Oven Bags in electric roaster ovens, crock pots or as a “boiling bag”?
Oven bags should not be used under a broiler, on the stovetop, on barbecue grills, in toaster ovens, crock pots, countertop convection ovens, electric roaster ovens, or as boiling bags. The possibility of exposing the bag to the heating elements or to heat extremes makes these cooking methods unacceptable for oven bags.
Or campfires. Goes without saying.

Cattlers

Beef farmers launch protest

Oh, just stop.
They are not “beef farmers”.
(In fact, if one were to quibble with the details, those critters are Holsteins – dairy cows. Great lean lanky things with bone as heavy as a Budweiser Clydesdale. Holsteins are bred to convert feed to milk. When was the last time you wandered through your meat department and saw a t-bone labelled “Triple A Holstein beef”? There’s a clue. And let’s be honest – with the quota-controlled protectionist price supports of the dairy industry, dairymen can afford to shoot cull cows.)

Compare:


Angus steer.

Holstein cow.

But back to the original point. As I stated, they are not “beef farmers”, for the simple reason that one does not “farm” cattle. Not even guys with mixed grain/beef operations “farm” cattle. They “feed cows”, “raise calves”, “run a few head”. It is no more appropriate to call those who raise beef “cattle farmers” than it is to refer to reporter Ross Marowitz as a news “author” or “non-fiction writer”.
I know that a dilemma faces the media when stepping into the dangerous terrain of gender-neutral nomenclature. Unlike the “fishermen”, who awoke one day to discover they were now “fishers”, the cattle industry is a little tougher to neuter. Really, who can say “cattler” with a straight face?
So, you insufferable fanaticist media twits dear reporters, let’s stop pretending that uncomfortable three letter word doesn’t exist. It does. The word is “men”. M.E.N. Sound it out. “Mmmmmmmm… eeeeeeeeee…nnnnnnnn” . No really – try it. See what happens.
Did your face open up and swallow your tongue? Write it down on that reporter’s pad…. “men” …. hold your breath as you wait for the paper to begin to curl in disgust … Still nothing?
That psychological hurdle cleared, the rest is easy. Append “men” to the word “cattle”. Cattle – men. Cattlemen.

Cattlemen launch protest

See: Canadian Cattlemen’s Association. Holy Cow! It’s even the correct terminology, as in what they call themselves! Who knew? Don’t you feel free? Once you’ve become comfortable with “cattlemen”, the world is your prairie oyster. Push the envelope – try “stockmen”.
A newsman only lives once.

Tune-in, Turn-on, Chug-up

It can be triggered by something as innocent as a John Deere baseball cap.

“I’m not sure where we went wrong,” says Ellen McCormack, nervously fondling the recycled paper cup holding her organic Kona soy latte. “It seems like only yesterday Rain was a carefree little boy at the Montessori school, playing non-competitive musical chairs with the other children and his care facilitators.”
“But now…” she pauses, staring out the window of her postmodern Palo Alto home. The words are hesitant, measured, bearing a tale of family heartbreak almost too painful for her to recount. “But now, Rain insists that I call him Bobby Ray.”
Even as her voice is choked with emotion, she summons an inner courage — a mother’s courage — and leads me down the hall to “Bobby Ray’s” bedroom, for a firsthand glimpse at the psychic devastation that claimed her son.

It’s not an isolated case.

Some say the craze threatens even the nation’s most exclusive prep schools. At Exeter, Andover and St. Albans, rumors abound of secret societies where initiates are steeped in the black arts of restrictor plate cheating and satellite descramblers. Washington’s elite Sidwell Friends School was nearly forced to close after scandalized parents learned that several students were openly touting Sams Club cards.

Does your child have the warning signs?

New Hostage Video

The Arabic television station Al-Jazeera has broadcast a second video of kidnapped blog worker The Commissar, who took himself hostage last week and threatens to behead himself with his own circular saw, unless his demands are met.
The station showed footage of The Commissar demanding that American troops stay in Iraq. He also urged DynaCorp, the private security firm, to keep open its office in Baghdad, and appealed for Iraqi women prisoners to be executed.
The Commissar, who is holding himself hostage, was seized last week while at his New York office. The Commissar, 50, was born in America and has lived and worked in America for 30 years and is married to an American. He holds American citizenship.

I think this marks the “jump the shark” moment for the impact of beheading threats. Move on Jihadis…. your ratings are about to tank.

Grapes Is In

A successful operation by the “Pyjamahadeen” – Don Cherry has made the top ten in CBC’s “Greatest Canadians” list. Kevin Libin;

Those of you who have been following the Shotgun for a while might remember that the Meatriarchy campaigned to get all of us to vote for Cherry who, at the time, looked as though he was about to get fired from CBC following last hockey season’s dustup over frenchmen and hockey visors. As a Canadian who practices free speech and political incorrectness, Grapes was the perfect foil for the CBC’s exercise in national values standardization.
I suspect the nod to Cherry came directly as a result of the tireless on-line campaigning of one of our favourite bloggers. So congratulations to the Meatriarchy. (And shame on the CBC for not knowing (as the Meatriarchy also notes) that Alexander Graham Bell was not a Canadian, but a Scot who only spent a few years here, as well as living in the U.S. and the U.K.)

Heh. Vote early – and vote often!.

update – Garth Woolsey at The Star is not amused. Even better.

Team America: World Police

When a movie review can make you laugh out loud….

Even as we speak, several prominent Hollywood actors may be calling their lawyers to check on slander laws. GLAAD is certainly drafting a press release condemning the film, and North Korean madman Kim Jong II may have a case as well.
[…]
“Team America” is certainly destined to be a cult classic, but it may have a rocky road getting to that status. Watching the movie means being slack- jawed for its 90-minute running time.
When I saw it over the weekend, the only other person in the screening room kept looking around to make sure a) I was all right and b) that we were really seeing what we were seeing.

I’m going to be first in line for this one.
Seriously.

Dentyne Frost Bites

Is it just me, or is the Dentyne Frost Bites commercial about the most revolting ad ever created?
A man and woman in the back seat of a cab – he fills his mouth with the chewing gum, turns to ice, she and the driver start screaming and his head falls off in her lap.
Ugh.

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