More PUMAs

SHELLEY DUVALL HOW COULD YOU

Today’s final “official” Electoral College Vote:
Obama 365 EVs
McCain 173 EVs

Way to show the awesomeness of your power, PUMAs by throwing all strength of your support to the entitled white guy and defeating that nasty “inadequate” negro muslim indonesian kenyan space alien black man.

Don’t fuck with Tweety.

I love her. Thats not a PUMA, though. These are people hired by some RNC funded swift boat astroturf group to go to the convention and make it look like there really was such a thing as a PUMA.

No, these are not PUMAs. These are the political operatives hired to create the illusion of some fantasy grass-roots groups calling themselves PUMAs.

The saddest thing about two-ton tessie the elepant seal, is that she is so deluded an individual that she became a true believer in a fictional cause. One of, from all evidence, about 2 dozen, nationwide.

@Promnight: But do you have a report that says so?

/tj that little msnbc ticker has the headline “Michelle Obama wins style points” um no, Michelle clearly has all the style points, and it is her job as First Lady to dole them out to the American people.

@Promnight: And you’ll agree she’s the best looking PUMA I’ve put up so far, but only in a third-tier MILF sort of way.

@blogenfreude: I don’t know. Both she and Ursula have super crazy eyes.

Tweety did OK. My wife, Rachel Maddow (yeaahhhh….that’s the ticket), would have eviscerated her.

@blogenfreude: Thought at first it was Johnny Miiilll’s crazy-ass baby mama.

@blogenfreude: I have a 17-page report from a Congressional investigator, of course. Do your ears need cleaning?

@nojo: A former Congressional investigator.

@Mistress Cynica: Me too! I was looking for the crystal pyramid around her neck, but I guess she’s hanging out in Topanga.

@homofascist: Who likely worked for some Republican whackjob, like Sensenbrenner.

@SanFranLefty: Note as well that she said he went to a madras school. What’s wrong with that?

@blogenfreude: Wrong Madras. Has nobody caught the Obama-River Phoenix connection?

@blogenfreude: I love madras in the summer!

@Mistress Cynica:
I thought it was Tanya Roberts of Charlies Angels /That 70s Show/Beastmaster fame.

BTW, if anyone cares tonight’s TDS guest is Black Eyed P, Dana Perino who is bitching about the MSM.

@Promnight: I hope you know I’m cheering for the Gators against fucking OU. It should be the Longhorns getting spanked by UF right now.

@SanFranLefty: Somehow I thought you would feel that way.

We had an earthquake here in So Cal, but I didn’t feel it. I was in spin class at my gym with the (bad) music cranked up.

I am watching Dana Perino on The Daily Show. Is it worth it?

@SanFranLefty: I have never seen a team give up like Oklahoma just did in the last 6 minutes. After the interception, with 6 minutes, even if they’d held us to a field goal, hell, they were so still in the game, and they started crying. I am surprised because they were doing great, they moved the ball against us very well, we squeeked through, yet they acted like they were hopeless when I was still scared.

Oh well. Go Gators.

@homofascist: Ugh, no. She is like a Stepford Wife/Fembot.

Wait, so “I have a 17 page congressional report [which proves conclusively, etc.]” but “I’m not going to tell you who wrote it?” That makes no sense whatsoever. If it’s such a conclusive report and so firmly cements your faith, why not tell us all about it, so we can cement our faith too?

These people are made of suck.

@homofascist: The best word to describe the interview is playful. Colbert’s interview, meanwhile, is delightfully zany, as usual.

@homofascist: No, you got her wrong, she is actually a pretty skillful wannabe press person who could not get a better gig than this fake grassroots apperance. Her talking points are batshit, of course, but she did a marvelous, professional job of delivering the message she was paid to deliver. Its the deluded bitters who actually fell for this and thought they were part of a real movement who are scary crazy.

And when did being Muslin become illegal unconstitutional unamurrican? That Man Coulter wannabe needs some serious slappin’.

If I got Dana alone, I would want to be playful too. So young, so star-struck, someday she will look back on these days of misguided youthful idealism, and believe that she was fighting a noble fight against evil forces, because she is a shallow and hollow human being and will never have the introspection, understanding, and wisdom to understand she was just a tool spouting lies fed to her.

@Pedonator: Ballsacks slapping against her taint, I assume you mean?

@nojo: Or it could be that he went to an Indian cooking school. I, for one, learned to dry fry my spices before adding wet ingredients.

@Promnight: With the Bon Jovi hair, chiseled jaw, and high cheekbones I’m sure she gets all the Republischlong she can inhale.

I’m talkin’ ’bout a serious (home-)schoolin’.

@Pedonator: Best fabric joke of the year, I’d wager. Well played!

@blogenfreude: Gracias. I just wish Tweety had taken her up on the email offer. Now we don’t get to see Exhibit A.

@Dodgerblue: The 5.0 that was quickly downgraded to a 4.5?

Scared of you in Spin Class. The chicks at the Y who take spinning scare me. I’ve never tried it.

Damn, Nojo, I had this hope that the “ballsack-taint” comment was twitterable. But I always loves the references to cannibal anarchy, too, I guess because I truly do believe we will be hunting each other for food, soon. We nerds are gonna have to come up with a strategy to deal with this, you know. RML can’t protect us all.

@Prommie: I’m going with readings from Shakespeare.

@Prommie: Unemployment up to 7.2%, another half-mil jobs lost in December. I printed out RML’s answer to my question of what kind of home defense weapon to buy.

@Dodgerblue: Sawed-off shotgun. Won’t matter that its illegal when the anarchy comes.

@SanFranLefty: Yes. A 4.5 is just a burp.
I try to isolate myself in spin class because I sweat a lot. I did a double class last night, walked up 5 flights of stairs at the parking garage to get to my car, and managed to drive home without cramping up. A victory!

@Prommie: In the end, the starving cannibals won’t be stopped by mere weapons fire. The survivors lucky enough to have stored a good supply of gasoline and gun powder will be tossing home-brew pipe-bombs and molotovs.

@Dodgerblue: Good idea. Likely we’ll be hitting 80% unemployment this time next year before the Adkisson Brigades sack and burn Washington, disband the federal government at gunpoint, after which economic trend data collection will be suspended, the currency collapses completely and America devolves into a stone-age cannibal anarchy.

@FlyingChainSaw: And while you’re stocking up on gasoline, don’t forget the styrofoam, for DIY napalm.

@mellbell:
Might want to purchase a copy of the Anarchist’s cookbook.

I love scrolling to the end of the comments to see how far away from the article topic we’ve strayed.

omg, I remember this crazy bitch! I kept hoping Tweety would knock her over the head with his microphone.

@SanFranLefty: No, the Longhorns should be getting spanked by me. Especially that cute little Colt. And the Cosby kid. I’d like to lick his Jell-O pudding pops!

Wait. What were we talking about?

@mellbell: True. A lot of people will be using it to build shelters by then, though, after breaking up their homes and furnishings for heat.

@Prommie: A shotgun needs two hands to operate, while a handgun can be fired with one with the other holding a flashlight, cellphone, big dog on a leash, samurai sword . . .

@ManchuCandidate: My brother’s was confiscated in high school when he loaned it to a friend who was showing it off. Dickhead. We made a grenade launcher and Molotov cocktails out of it back in the day when you could start fires at landfills.

@FlyingChainSaw: Thats why I am thinking we nerds have to come up with some better strategy than just diving in to the cannibal anarchy; with normal Darwinian selection forces at work (greater value on sheer strength, survival of the fittest, as opposed to social skills and intelligence having value in our current environment), our genes are doomed. But there must be some strategy that would allow us to use our skills to advantage, no?

Of course the obvious answer is to move to some place with a subsistence culture that has never bought in to the industrial economy, the high Andes, the Amazon basin, some islands.

@Dodgerblue: They revised the October and November numbers WAY up, too. Just lovely. We really have to find some strategy, we need to have our crops in the ground this spring to get through next winter, ya know?

@Prommie: I am seriously planning a veg garden this year. However, I’m dreaming more along the lines of heirloom tomatoes and golden beets than, you know, rutabagas (though they can be good; known in Scotland as neeps and mashed with butter).

And I don’t agree that our skills (can sing high A) are necessarily useless. Even the Vikings valued poets. They valued them more than we do, come to think of it. And in The Road (too much uplift for my taste but some striking sections) the ones who hold on to civilization are the ones who will win.

@Prommie: 2.6 million jobs lost in 2008. Bush and Cheney can add that to their scorecard.

I’m thinking that a species can be too intelligent to be successful in the fight to pass on genetic material. Compare coyotes, which will survive global warming and nuclear holocaust, with humans, who may not.

@Jamie Sommers: I like where you are going with this, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

@Benedick: Yum! Can I come cook for you? I will bring a whole assortment of naughty aprons.

Also, grow some rutabaga. Mashed with cream and butter and topped with crispy shallots – delicious.

@RomeGirl: I’ve always pictured it as a Family Circus Sunday panel where Mom asks Billy to get something from the fridge and he wanders all over the place.

@nojo: HAHHAHAHHA yes!! If by “all over the place” you mean a strip joint, the Culinary Institute of America and Area 51.

@RomeGirl: I have a hat from the Las Vegas 51s, the Triple A baseball team. Our local team is the Albuquerque Isotopes, as in the Simpsons episode. I have a black Isoptopes hat in my collection also.

http://www.chriscreamer.com/logo.php?id=4822

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7e/AlbuquerqueIsotopesCap.png

@homofascist: My dilemma – laziness aside – is that I would need to build raised beds and then fence it all. There’s a good site beside the house but it might interfere with the septic tanks (installed free by NYC at a cost of over $32,000 to them) which would not be good. But the cellar has a door there so tools could be stored. And there’s a faucet. But there’s the tanks. You see where I’m going with this: a circular argument that leads to doing nothing beyond reading the seed catalogues. However, maybe this year I’ll get off my ass and do it. I want tiny baby vegetables and potatoes straight out of the ground. Then maybe chickens. My doctor keeps chickens. Or goats. Or both.

I must go and make some tea and try to calm down.

@homofascist: In my family, mashed rutabagas, also called “swedes,” for some reason, were a tradition at thanksgiving and christmas. We called them turnips, that being the style at the time. I recall that they induce prodigious flatulence, which actually smells just like the original rutabagas, which is interesting.@Benedick: I have seen instructions for growing potatos in a stack of old tires, it said you could get a bushel out of three tires.

@Prommie: In the recipe that I use (well, actually Mr. HF mastered it) the author does refer to them as turnips. But says she means rutabaga, which is obviously different than a generic turnip. Said author is Ina Garten, who I hold at Rachel Maddow levels of high regard.

Also, did you know that in parts of Europe, they actually carve turnips instead of pumpkins at Halloween? I assume that those who told me about this meant rutabaga as well, as they are larger. Can you imagine trying to fucking carve a raw turnip like a Jack o’ Lantern? I can only imagine how many fingers have been lost in that process.

@Benedick: I have 4 raised beds in my back yard with a drip irrigation system, and we have no plant-eating varmints of note where I live, at least that my dog can’t handle. But — my tomato plants have been a sad mess the last two years, and our local bees seem to have gone away. My winter project is to replace the soil, blow the crud out of the emitters and stock up on So Cal native wildflowers to attract bees.

@homofascist: It would be like trying to carve a bowling ball into a jack-o-lantern.

@Prommie: Of course. But good luck coming up with a strategy while cities are burning and the Adkisson Brigades are murdering and eating everyone in sight. Or trying to get to the airport to escape to the Andes when the roads are impassable or even bothering if all the airlines are bankrupt and/or without fuel and/or have had their planes commandeered by the Adkisson Brigades for kamikaze missions into bastions of librulism.

@Dodgerblue: We have deer and bunnies. So I’d have to fence at least 5ft high. I’m thinking of long rectangular beds, perhaps 6 to start, so I can use the windows from the old back porch to make covers to extend lettuce growing season.

Have you tried the tomato bags? You hang them and let the plants dangle: no more staking.

@Prommie: @homofascist: Swedes are neeps and I think that here we call them rutabagas. Big and yellow. Turnips in England are related to the mangles and beets used to feed cattle. Much bigger than what we call turnip here. At least I think that’s right. I may well have it all the wrong way round. Scotland has strange differences with England; money, its own legal code, etc, and they call the same things by different names. They used to butcher beef in the French style and not in the English. But I haven’t lived there for a long time and much has changed. I don’t remember carved turnips in England but I do from Scotland. Pumpkins are not known in Britain. At least, I never heard of them there. No P Pie which I always think tastes musty with powdered cinnamon and more fun to hear about than to eat.

Swedes half-and-half with mashed potato is also very good.

@Benedick: Turnips are smaller, and are purple and white with white flesh, while Rutabagas are large and yellower. To me, Turnips taste of a hint of radish, while rutabagas, which in my family we call turnips, are sweeter.

@FlyingChainSaw: Of course, preparation is critical and time is short. We really should already be at work.

@Benedick: We had some British high school students stay with us for a while a few years ago, and they thought Halloween was the coolest thing ever. I had to go out and get more pumpkins for them to carve.

Can y’all believe that I’ve never had rutabagas? Not one single, solitary time. But this mashed business sounds delicious. Care to share that recipe, homofascist?

@Prommie: No one is prepared for collapse.

@mellbell: Oh, and speaking of pumpkin, I’ll give you my amazing pumpkin bread recipe in return, so that it’s a fair trade.

Has anybody mentioned rhubarb yet? No? Good. Keep it that way.

@nojo: A confession: I actually thought that’s what we were talking about at first, but the mashing with butter didn’t quite sound right.

@mellbell: A highlight of visits to Grandma — besides watching J.P. Patches — was The Viewing of the Canned Rhubarb. I figured that as long as it stayed on the shelf, no harm would befall me.

@mellbell: Not sure that I have it electronically. I’ll put a copy in my bag and deliver it to you in person.

OK, people, just talked to my friend in London who is a great cook and a scot. I sort of remembered it right.

@Prommie: It’s a different vegetable. The Brit turnip is bigger and white. It’s a mangle. It’s fed to cattle here. Those little white turnips with purple patches were hard to find.

In Scotland the swede is big and yellow, called a neep, and is the American rutabaga. When I used to mash them I’d keep the mashed veg hot in an open pan to let some of the water evaporate (stirring often) before adding cream and butter. Some people put cheese in. Or, as I said, half-and-half with potatoes, the ever-popular tatties-and-neeps.

It seems I’m wrong about pumpkins. My source says they do have them there. I don’t remember them. But of course, Hallowe’en wasn’t a big deal then. But I remember my grandmother helping me to carve a turnip. And isn’t the old story about Turnip Head?

@nojo: Love rhubarb. Raw stalks dipped in sugar. Mmmm.

@FlyingChainSaw: I googled Adkisson Brigade and got links to three of your postings and NOTHING ELSE!! A Republican conspiracy?

I have four raised beds in y back yard, and room for another, which we will add this year. Two are too shady for veggies, but I grew herbs, strawberries, blueberries, and more tomatoes than we could eat last summer. Except for real hot-weather lovers like eggplant and peppers, pretty much anything will grow here with the minimum of effort on your part. Just purchased a book with explicit directions for growing year-round vegetables west of the Cascades. If it weren’t for the cats, I would totally have my own chickens. I buy eggs (and chickens) from a local farmer now.

@Benedick: Even the RNC fear the Adkisson Brigades as they are completely out of its control.

@FlyingChainSaw:
Who is their leader? The Ayatollah of Rockinrollah? Or is it Aunt Entity?

@ManchuCandidate: Talibunny. She will enter the 2012 campaign as a neonazi snakehandler ubervalkyrie to organize the Adkisson Brigades and establish a theocracy dedicated to an apocalyptic vision for America. She will campaign topless and breastfeeding, Trig on one hip and an M60 on the other.

@Dodgerblue: @Mistress Cynica: The last couple of years have not been very good for tomatoes in the garden at Villa Ewalda, either. Oddly enough, there have also been essentially zero tomato horn worms for the last couple of years, and they used to be a major pest here. We have never used any pesticides, and always have a wide variety of flowering plants and bushes (and many roses) to attract and support honeybees, but there are not nearly enough honeybees around anymore. We’ve discussed setting up a hive or two back in the RV pad (which we use for sheds, compost bins, etc).
We have three large raised beds for the usual tomatoes/squash/peppers/herbs/lettuces/spinach/onions/etc, grapes along the back fence, peach/apple/olive trees, a side garden for corn and peas (grow them together and your corn will do better), a small plot for gourds/pumpkins/whatever, and a strawberry patch in a couple of old shower stall bottom pans. Oh, and lots of catnip.
We both grew up with chickens, and would really like to have some, but haven’t yet had the nerve to actually get any. The neighbors already think we’re nuts with our old VWs, many cats, and weird little Tibetan Terrier dog, so why give them an excuse to complain about us to the authorities? Also, the whole property is only 7700 sq.ft, so unless we tear up the front lawn and fence that area in (which I’d love to do), we’re just plain running out of room for more stuff.

@Benedick:
Re: Adkisson Brigades.
Plug this into your Wikipedia search:
Knoxville Unitarian Universalist church shooting

@Ewalda: Sounds like heaven.

Did I read somewhere about buying bees? I know that the few remaining apple orchards here in the Hudson Valley rent a swarm to pollinate. There are businesses now that rent swarms that move north with the spring.

I worry about getting it all set up and then having to leave home for two or three months. But next year is looking like I’ll be home and if I plan it right it shouldn’t require too much maintenance. It’s building the damn thing. Last spring I did a lot of clean-up and built several low stone walls. I planted apple, pear, peach and plum trees 2 years back. Last year I moved the Saturn peaches. Next spring I want to plant about 8 more apple trees with some of the old Jonathan apples that are dying out.

The dogs love it when I plant. The Dachshund helps till he finds an appealing rock which he then carries off to lick.

What an appealing thread: the end of the world and root vegetables.

@Benedick: Jonathan, Northern Spy, and Winesap were always favorites of mine in my East Coast youth. These days I am partial to fresh, tart, Gravenstein from NoCal. Unfortunately they have a very short season, and a very short shelf life. Macintosh are nice, but all I can find in the stores here are ones from British Columbia that look like they were herded down I-5, instead of being shipped in packing boxes.

@Benedick: We have scrub jays who show up when I’m digging in the garden. Their favorites are potato bugs (Jerusalem crickets) that I dig up and toss on the lawn for them.

@Ewalda: Oh. That Adkisson. I’d forgotten. I was happier then.

The Jonathan is the forerunner of most modern apples, I’m told. And it first appeared near Woodstock (site marked with a plaque) in the 1800s. Which is why I’m particularly keen to have some. I’ve got Winesaps. The only drawback is that the full-size trees can take a long time before they start producing. The dwarfs and semi-dwarfs I planted will have a crop next year. I already got some plums last summer. They were wonderful. I had three before I had to go away. The raccoons got the rest.

Our family has always eaten rhutabaga for T’giving, and only this year did my mom mention the whipped with taters option. I can’t wait to refer to that as “tatties and neeps” next year.

We have so much suburban lawn that is aching for good gardening and lest needless grass growing. But we also have serious woodchuck and bunny creep; my tomatoes took forEVER to ripen last year as they grew so big I began calling them “Lee Atwater tumortatoes” , and when they finally did in like late August the critters chowed down on them.

But I specialized in chile this year: some fiery cherry tomato-like peppers I wasn’t familiar with, three plants of fierce habaneros which are my weakness, and six jalapeno plants for guests and canning.

I was pleasantly surprised when the decorative cherry tree in our front yard last year produced fruit (only our second year here), but no sooner had we picked enough for one pie then the birds arrived, and then the jap beetles, and the leaves were decimated.

Anyone have a non-chemical way to thwart japanese beetles?

Oh, and the PUMA vid was awesome; she’s obviously a plant by the RNC, but easier on the eyes than was “Pat”. Tweety was monumental in restraint.

@Benedick: @Ewalda: @Mistress Cynica: Sigh. I grew up in a rural area and we grew tons of stuff. Now I have a 450 sq. apartment and a fire escape landing the size of a postage stamp that gets about 20 minutes of sunlight a day.

@homofascist: This is the first time in my adult life I’ve been able to grow vegetables. The soil and heat and drought in Oklahoma was more than a lazy amateur like me could contend with. Growing my own tomatoes successfully was a major triumph. I’m in town so no deer, and the bunnies are kept away by the guard kitties. My only enemy: slugs. I’m going to try Benedick’s hanging tomato trick this year to thwart them.
PS: even after all the snow, I still have tons of rosemary and sage in the garden. The catnip and mint have died back but are hanging on.

@Mistress Cynica: When I bought this house there was Rosemary, sage, thyme, and oregano growing in a garden behind the house. They must have been there many years, they are all huge and growing out into the yard and I have tried cutting back, and then I get even more, especially the sage.

Now all I do is clear out the dead stuff each winter and it explodes again, so much more than I could ever use. I lurves it. Thank you, prior owner.

@nabisco: There are traps you could buy to hang in the trees. I think when you put them up is important. You might try here http://www.gardengatemagazine.com/extras/79-earth_friendly_ideas.php for chemical-free pest-control. And nets for the birds.

BTW: you say tatties as if the a sound is half-way towards ‘toe’.

@Promnight: I have iris and peonies like that. I’m very lucky.

@Benedick: I’ll try the traps this year, although I’ve heard that unless everyone around you has them, all you do is attract more of those hungry beetles. I think I’ve got the timing down: there are about two weeks after the cherries appear before the beetles begin feeding.

I just prepared the most basic but least heart healthy eggs, bacon and buttered toast for the wife and kids, with squeezed OJ and strong coffee and got the most incredibly enthusiastic response from them all. We only eat bacon maybe once or twice a year, so it was like a holiday.

Kind of made up for the fact that I overslept and missed taking my daughter to her b’ball practice….

@nabisco: Kind of made up for the fact that I overslept and missed taking my daughter to her b’ball practice…. Bacon will do that.

@Benedick:
you say tatties as if the a sound is half-way towards ‘toe’
So it’s a like a perv talking about a 12-yr-old?

@nojo: Canned rhubarb? The horror! Surely it was a starving person who first tried rhubarb and then called it edible. We overprivileged not-starving persons know better.

@lynnlightfoot: Stewed with custard!!!11

Mmmmmmmmmmmm.

@Ewalda: Possibly.