Love Your Job

I do love teaching. Assigning, correcting, grading, and most of the administrative work I do could mostly go to hell, but teaching is good fun. I came across an article about Salinger today that I'm sure to include in the reading material for my next American literature course.

Is LOST real?

This is a bit of news you can find in a million places, I'm just linking to google's number one hit.

My special lady and I often watch an episode of Lost weeknights before bed. We're halfway through the third season. So far in the Desmond-Charlie arc, D has saved C's life three times.

For anyone unfamiliar with this, the deal is you can't avoid fate for long. If you're meant to die and you accidentally don't, the universe will course-correct and you'll die soon enough. Is that what happened to the women who missed the Air France flight?

And about the Air France flight in general, did they find the bodies, or just assume everyone was killed? Cause if they did make an assumption, hello, haven't they seen Lost?!

Article of the Day

Yeah, this is bullshit!

Climate of Hate, World of Double Standards, by Michelle Malkin

So Many Articles of the Day? I'd say it's because of universal goofiality.

In case anybody wondered why I've begun publishing more article of the day bits than usual, I will now let you know why, so you can stop wondering and return to day dreaming about being a pornography sound board operator. The top three blogs I follow for fun have halted production; no new posts for five weeks or more. I've been noticing this trend for a while, blogs getting abandoned or shut down. I used to blame laziness, now a mere devotion to new fads, too: the blog fad has come to an end, I guess. It has relegated its seat to Facefuck. So the amount of news I read during my free time has increased.

It wouldn't be so bad if Facefuck weren't also taking over the realm of email. Half the time I go to write some pal an email I realize when his email address doesn't pop us that I don't have it at all and I never did: he and/or she and I only send each other messages on Facefuck. It's our own fault (not mine, just everyone eles's) for being too lazy to switch from one webpage to another.

Hello people? If you want to make some comments publically about politics or life or anything random and begin a discussion about it, a blog is really the best forum for that. If you want to send me a personal messege, be a dear and send me a fuckin email, what? If you want to share some photo albums with me online, likely to include ones with people's faces, feel free to use facebook. Duh: that's why it's called facebook, not emailbook or blogbook.

Article of the Day

These are two related articles and I can't decide between them: Hate Speech? Nope. Just Common Sense by Phil Valentine and 'Thought Crimes' Bill Advances by Nat Hentoff. I also find the things they find appalling appalling.

Article of the Day

Rachel sent me a link this this interesting piece: Atheists: No God, no reason, just whining, by Charlotte Allen. I've never read an atheist website in my life, so it was pretty informational for me.

Article of the Day

I have had this great little piece open for six seeks. I'm finally getting around to closing old tabs on my real clear politics window, so I'd finally like to share with you National Disservice, By James Bovard. It's rather entertaining, and show clearly some of the waste of the Socialist Democrat Party and Obama in particular.

Facefuck Doesn't Let Me Write Long Enough Status Updates

This guy awoke at the ungodly hour of 6:30 and ate an apple in bed with his eyes closed. Ten minutes later he rose and shined all morning; but now that he's eaten his left over pizza lunch, what he'd really like for dessert before returning to the piles of work on his desk is a sweet sweet nap: so he wonders, now, as he's wont to wonder after lunch, if there's an unoccupied classroom somewhere in the college with a sofa he can lock from the inside.

Article of the Day

Robert Fulford: The UN speaks, and the world listens. Are we nuts?

Quite right. And when Congress refused Bush's appointment for UN Ambassador, we should have quit the UN.

Article of the Day

After a life time of trying to get the government out of my face, apparently, I'll be the happiest guy around: Happiness Is ... Being Old, Male and Republican

Consultation Innuendos and Another Student Hilarity

Lately I've been consulting the students who are writing diploma papers with me. Here are a couple passages from our dialogues:

Student, showing me a text box: "Is this a nice box?"
Professor: "Yes, you have a splendid box."

Another student showing me a pie chart: "Does my pie look good to you?"
Professor: "Sure does."

And today in class the warm up question each student had to answer in class was, "What was your last job, did it have any fringe benefits?"

Student: "I worked a construction job."
Professor: "Oh yeah? What kind of work did you have to do?"
Student: "Nothing, just stealing things."

Turns out stealing things wasn't even the fringe benefit: he'd take night shifts and sleep the whole time.

Dos and don’ts of another Trip to Cyprus

• Do insist that your eye-catching, seductive, appealing , glamorous , stunning, glimmering, exotic, alluring, foxy, marvelous, lovely, enticing, dazzling wife come: you’ll be lonely without your beautiful, intelligent, becoming, kind, well-chosen and forever increasingly sexually attractive soul mate.
• Don't break your toothbrush as soon as you get there...brushing all week with a one inch brush is sucky.
• Do turn on the central air for your room at night: even if the temperature is right without it, the whirring noise will block out the maniacal screaming from next door.
• Don’t overpay at the convenience store—too greedy: when my deodorant rang up too high I though fuck it, arguing about price correctness is hard enough on your own turf, and I do need some deodorant, but then the prick rung up the juice too high also, so I pointed out his two mistakes and paid the right price for both.
• Do eat the "prawn cocktail" flavored chips.
• Don't eat anything that doesn't taste good.
• Do take a full bottle of wine every time you leave a room with wine on the table.
• Don't expect to be fed sooner than an hour after the 350 person buffet begins.
• Do complain that your minibar isn’t cold at all; it’s quite funny just how profusely the hotel staff is taught to apologize.
• Don't wait an hour after eating to go swimming, it might get cloudy.
• Do order yourself some poached eggs and waffles or pancakes or french toast to end the monotony of the buffet breakfast, it's free!
• Don't pose for too many pictures with beautiful ladies or another even more, much more beautiful and pregnant lady might think you should have called more often.
• Do brush off the waiter who slept on his wine pouring duty: "Excuse me sir, I should pour the wine." "Too late buddy, I'm doing it now!"
• Don't expect to gain less than five pounds if you enjoy yourself to excess.
• Do go ahead and stock up on cigars and pipes at the Alpha-Mega grocery store, they're cheaper than in Lithuania.
• Don't laugh too hysterically when your colleagues opens a beer and it sprays all over her.
• Do go on all the excursions you can, the sights of Cyprus are splendid.
• Don't forget to bring some palm trees back for your special lady.

Article of the Day

Don't start nothing, won't be nothing, by Gregory Kane, is an excellent article about the morality of war and torture. I'm surprised I haven't read anything by him before: he's brief, to the point, and very convincing.

I remember where I was too, of course, even though I wasn't stateside. I'd just begun my Erasmus year at Vilnius University and I was at home in Riese. My uncle Alfonasas ran over to the house and yelled to turn on the television, that America was at war. I ran upstairs to get Sarunas Krukonis, who was living with me at the time. For at least a half hour he didn't believe it: he was utterly convinced that I must be playing a practical joke on him, or else that it's all a hoax.

My mother was in a windowless room with blocked cell phone reception in Brussels, I believe: the doors on this conference were locked until the delegates could hammer out a new strategy on education. Imagine her worry when she walked back into the world and was flooded with ambiguous sympathetic text messages from Lithuania: she thought I was dead.

The thought that she had to endure that for even ten seconds before getting touch with me brings tears to my eyes. Where can I sign up to waterboard terrorists myself?

Cross-posted here on my mother's remembrance blog.

Arlen Specter: Fake, fraud and liar

I get a kick our of this guy.

Article of the Day

I haven't posted one of these for a while (busy). But here's one I started reading a month ago but never closed. It's quite an entertaining topic: National Disservice, President Obama’s feel-good draft, By James Bovard.

Article of the Day

A certain failure, by Richard W. Rahn

An interesting and informative article about the tax code.

Article of the Day

O's Foreign Follies: Ignoring Festering Threats, by Ralph Peters

As Nelson puts it best, Ha ha!

People Are Stupid in So Many Ways

1. I went to Vilnius for Easter with a dead camera battery by accident. I am stupid. But somebody else is stupid too: the guy who tried to sell me the wrong charger. It was 120 litai (authentic Sorny), which is way too much, but I didn't want to miss filming the Easter egg hunt to show my family stateside so I took it to the information booth next to the registers to make sure it worked (I suspected it wouldn't work because my battery model number was no where on the package). My suspicions were right on target; the salesman is stupid. Unless he was trying to trick me based on his experience of tricking others. Then he is shrewd but other people are stupid, so stupidity abounds either way. P.s. my clever suspicions cancels out my earlier stupidity & I ended up getting plenty of photos of the Easter egg hunt with a disposable camera.

2. I had a long day today because I had to get up early to get to the hospital to see my doctor; he works in a new place now and I guess isn't comfortable yet seeing me with no appointment without waiting in line, so I had to show up first. It's easy to be first as long as I show up before 8, because all the stupid people wait in line outside the hospital by a locked door not realizing the open side door twenty feet away goes to the same place. But there is a wait at that point already. When I left at 8:30 the line at the registration desk right inside the front door isn't ten dumbasses anymore, it about thirty. Instead of waking up a bit earlier to save I'm guessing an hour and a half, maybe two hours, these dickwads spend their entire morning waiting in line.

3. I had a really good other example of how people are stupid, but I can't remember anymore.

Easter Fupdate

I'll skip to Easter this week since that's the most interesting (before that we did have awesome sausages, incidentally). We were so busy cooking (I) and cleaning (special lady) that we didn't even start decorating eggs until embarrassingly late in the day. But that's okay because Easter is two days long in Lithuania, and most of our guests didn't arrive until the second day. Photos of the food and eggs will come later, when I develop the film.

Sunday:
Herb Roasted Pork
Red Skinned Potato Salad
Green Beans
Broccoli with Bread Crumbs
Fresh Tomatoes and Cucumber
Cheese Garlic Biscuits
Authentic Curd Cake

Monday:
Chicken North Hudson
Chicken Liver and Pistachio Nut Pate
Colleen's Potato Crescent Rolls
Cold cuts from the left over meat


Notes
If you've been following the Fupdates you noticed that I made Herb Roasted pork a month ago. However, this was different: for Easter I got the biggest one they had, four and a half pounds; also I ended up being out of sage so I substituted a mix of seasonings so it was indeed something new. Especially new was the glaze, which I made this time anticipating the early doneness of the meat, which I didn't last time. The glaze is really really good, I spooned some drippings on every piece of meat I took.

Lokys would like the Potato Salad quite a bit: it includes two cups of mayonnaise and a pound of bacon for just two pounds of potatoes. Everybody else like it too, I'd say it was the most popular dish. To make this, if you're using cold smoked bacon, you should get five pounds, in case you eat two on the way home from the market and two more while you're preparing the dish. An additional note is that you should taste your bacon before cooking it: if it's on the salty side you won't need to add any salt at all.

The reason I called the curd cake authentic is that I could not find a single recipe for curd cake in English that used actual curd. Here's what the dictionary throws out:

1.	Often, curds. a substance consisting mainly of casein and the like, obtained from milk by coagulation, and used as food or made into cheese.

2.	any substance resembling this.

I was looking for a recipe for curd, and all I could fine were recipes for things that "resemble" curd. What the fuck good is that??? And now a questions: it tasted alright to me, but my wife though it tasted a bit artificial due to all the pudding powder that went into it; does anybody know what I can use instead that will be more natural? Cause it was pretty easy, I'd keep it as a standby cake. The crust was especially tasty.

Green beans are disgusting. I added them because I felt guilty about having so few vegetables on the table, but I was unable to eat more than one bite. Maybe there is a tasty way to prep fresh green beans, but forget about canned ones. I solemnly pledge never to buy canned green beans as long as I live, even if that's a million years.

Both the biscuits and rolls got complements from my wife and guests. Personally I preferred the biscuits: they are much easier to make and for me, at least, tastier thanks to crunchiness and cheesiness.

It's hard to go wrong with Chicken North Hudson. It's my father's recipe, and the high fat content pretty much makes it sure fire. Just make sure you check your garlic ahead of time, mine was past its prime and I had to surgically remove bad parts from half of the cloves, as if I wasn't busy enough in the kitchen as it was. You cannot make it without at least a clove of garlic per pair of thighs.

The pate was the least popular dish, but I don't have enough pate experience to write a bad review. I thought it was too dry, so I added a half cup of whipping cream that happened to be sitting in the fridge. That improved the texture, and the taste was okay, but only about 5% of it got eaten. I think by the end of the week I'm going to be sick of pate for the rest of my million-year-long life.

Naglas

It's good to be Naglas. What is Naglumas? I say it means excessivly active selfishness that may or may not be harmful to others: harmful as in cutting in line; harmless as in what I do. However, it's slang, and in this country the dictionary is too stuck up to define slang words. I've emailed somebody at the language control board to get an official verdict on what the proper word to use is instead, but he hasn't written back yet.

Saturday morning I went to pick up my external hard drive from the computer shop; I'd have to leave it there after serious mechanical failure left it a corpse. They'd told me the warrently was still valid, so I could get a new (blank) one or they could fix it for money. Fix it I said, wtf, I've got tons of information on there! When I went to pick it up, they'd allegedly fixed it and salvaged twenty gigabytes of the data (maybe 20%, but I told them that was 10%). I had agreed to a 200 lit price when I gave it to them, but what the hell, that was for the data, not a small part of the data. They explained that to check 320 gb of hard drive takes the same amount of time regarless of how much can be restored. I don't know anything about it, so what could I do but agree? Then at the last moment I asked if he could at least give me a pedagogue discount--I do keep an expired ITIC card in my wallet. I was going to say a 10% pedagogue discount, but good thing I didn't: he dropped the price by 25%.

Satruday evening I went to meet a couple buddies for a few brewskies, and we ended up going to Memelis. They had karioke going on and I saw somebody of there getting beers. I wasn't exactly sure what the deal was, because the singing was so bad that I spent at least haldf the fime we were there outside smoking my pipe jto get away from it. When one buddy signed us up for Yellow Submarine I asked if we'd get free beer.

"Will we get free beers?"
"No."
"I demand free beers!"
"I can't get you free beers unless I buy them for you myself."
"Perfect, so you'll buy us some beers if we sing?"
"Well no!"
"Well there's no way I'm singing then."

We were already on the list though and my friend didn't like the idea of getting on stage and not singing until we got some free beer, so I agreed to sing. In the middle of the song when there's no singing for a moment I yelled into the mic "We want free beer!" And then when the song was over I yelled "We're still waiting for free beer!" Well, I, the guy who was yelling for what he wanted all the time, ended up getting a free beer; my friend who just wanted to sing got nothing. Then he signed us up to sing New York, New York.* Who sings such a slow song at a bar? We sucked. It was way better when the next guys did Knockin on Heavan's Door.

*There was so little audience participation during the song that at the end of it I yelled "Klaipeda!" Apparently, naming the city you're in on stage does not always get you any applause.