More On Mike Nifong

From Instapundit:
"But it's starting to look as if Nifong should wind up in jail himself. This goes way beyond simply prosecuting a weak case."

Yes, I agree. Unfortunately, I do not believe that he will get more than a reprimand from the Bar Association. It's the rare instance where a lawyer is punished for "overzealousness". Otherwise, most of ACLU's attorneys would be disbarred.

Wowee

From SayUncle.
Advice: If you ask this lady out, be prepared to treat her right.
Commenter Jon at SayUncle links to even betterer photos

If They Charge Me With "Theft Of Services", I'm Charging Them With Criminal Trespass To A Residence

Instapundit links this story about a young man possibly facing "theft of services" charges for accessing his hometown library's free WiFi from his laptop, outside the library. The cops in that town need more cats on trees to keep them busy but I'm going somewhere else.

My home is wired for DSL with WiFi from ATT, for a whopping $220.00 a year plus tax. When I use the cable, my SiteMeter tells me I'm using a steady IP. When I use the WiFi it occasionally shows me a different IP than the one I was using before. Now, I know that there is public (unsecured) WiFi in my neighborhood because my WiFi modem showed me two signals in addition to ATT's when I was configuring it. I'm wondering whether one or the other is overriding my home's signal when I power-up the computer on those occassions when my IP changes.

I'm only kidding about charging them with trespass. I won't even report them to the FCC. I'll just report them to ATT. Nobody messes with the telephone company. Heh!

Greek Lentil Soup

If I can be bothered to, I'm going to be making a Greek lentil soup today.

Ingredients:
Six to seven quarts of water (how "soupy" do you like your soup).
One pound of lentils picked through for grit and rinsed, not soaked.
Two chopped onions.
Four ounces of olive oil.
Two heaping tablespoons of tomato paste.
Two cloves of garlic (if you have them).
Three bay leaves (if you have them).
Level tablespoon of ground black pepper (less is more to my taste).
Salt, about a teaspoon, AT THE END.

Cook everything, except the salt, at low heat, semi covered, bubbling not violently boiling, until the soup takes on a thickened sauce-like quality and the lentils are tender and semi-amorphous. There will be a critical point when it starts to thicken that it will want to stick to the bottom of the pot and singe. You have to be there to stir a few times over about 10 minutes. When you're ready to turn off the heat, stir in the salt, turn off the heat and cover completely.

Serve with anything.

There's no formula for the salt and pepper. How much do you like either? Less is more because you can always add more to your plate.

UPDATE: Cook time really varies according to the strain of lentils you use. I bought some I had never tried before today and after almost two hours they still look like they need another hour.

UPDATE II: Thank you one more time to SayUncle for linking this post.

UPDATE III: No grilling is possible when the temperature is 30 degrees but I maintained the Mediterranean motif with "oven-grilled" mild Italian sausages. A steel baking pan, about two inches deep, a thin coating of oil on the bottom of the pan, some oregano sprinkled on the sausages, bake at 360. The sausages will plump and brown nicely and a lot of the fat will be rendered out. Take them out when they look "grilled" to you and squeeze a lemon on them (if you like lemon). A Sesame Semolina bread from Jewel and various cheeses from Costco.

UPDATE IV: Venomous Kate uses less water but adds two cans of diced tomatoes. You need a minimum of six quarts, water and ingredients, to begin with because by slow cooking/reducing you lose about two quarts of water and you want to end up with about four quarts of soup.

Spirits In A Bottle

In this post, Patterico begins to suspect that drinking Scotch whiskey is an acquired taste. I could have told him that and that the acquisition is really fast. About as long as it takes you to down that first drink. There's this saying: The man drinks the first drink. The first drink drinks the second drink. The third drink drinks the man.

KFC's Hillary Special

Attribution unknown. Allegedly in New York. Click to enlarge.

Consumerism

The steel in the drain augers I have been buying at Ace hardware stores lately is way too soft. One kinked on me this morning and I threw it away after only the second use. I might be forced to go back to Home De[s]pot and see if theirs are still as good as I remember.

McDonald's is NOT junk food. I especially love their Egg McMuffins and Sausage McMuffins. My daughter liked an Egg McMuffin very much yesterday. As far as I could see it was a sandwich with egg, cheese and ham. What is "junk" about any of these ingredients?

A Vertical Expression Of A Horizontal Desire

At Ace of Spades.

Is That A Gun In Your Pocket Or Are You Thinking Of Something Almost As Dangerous?

The things you find when you surf the internet. "Sexual behaviors" were attributed as the cause of death for 20,000 people as opposed to firearms for 29,000 and illicit use of drugs for 17,000. Still, it's only 1/20th for being obese [edited for niceness -- nk] which accounted for 400,000 deaths. Let's see the ratio for guns to obesity ... 29,000 goes into 400,000 13.79 times. Hmm, your spoon and fork are almost fourteen times more likely to kill you than a gun. And your "peepie" about two-thirds as likely as a gun.

Aside: Somebody should point this out sometime to fat-assed, liberal anti-gunners Rosie O'Donnell and Michael Moore.

(Thank you to SayUncle for linking this.)

What I'm Reading Now

Alan Campbell's "Scar Night". I'm glad that I was not put off by the overuse of adjectives in the opening paragraphs of the first two chapters because the story is interesting, the setting is novel and the characters are well-formed and sympathetic.

Keyboard Emoticons

From my neighbor, Towering Barbarian, keyboard emoticons for programs such as Blogger which do not support the other kind.

Not Knowing What You're Missing

I was a bachelor until I met the woman who is now my wife, at age 34, and I finally knew what it meant to be happy.

I was childless until age 45 and the birth of my daughter re-defined happiness for me.

I had a piddly little dial-up connection until yesterday and now I have DSL!!!!

Ok, the parallelism between the first two and the third is not that great but ... I have DSL with WiFi!!!

Yuck Fourselves Second-Trimester Abortion Proponents

Amilia Sonja Taylor, "born Oct. 24 after just under 22 weeks in the womb ... was just 9 1/2 inches long and weighed less than 10 ounces when she was delivered by Caesarean section."

"Amillia, the first child for Eddie and Sonja Taylor" "now weighs 4 1/2 pounds. She has suffered respiratory and digestive problems, as well as a mild brain hemorrhage, but doctors believe the health concerns will not have major long-term effects."

Nixon and Elvis

My next door neighbors just came back from Memphis, Tennessee and brought me a souvenir refrigerator magnet with a photograph of President Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley, holding hands and posing for the camera when Elvis visited the White House. This one. Which led me to wonder: I know Elvis is the most liked, but who was the better man?

Birds Of A Feather ...

Dafydd ab Hugh, of Big Lizards, whose thinking I admire very much, has this post about a leftie personal attack against him because of his political views. I'll just post the comment I left on his site:

Dafydd,

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

I know which blogpost you are referring to. The commenters who showed up to participate in the echo chamber were a lot less interesting and credible than the magpies who roost in my neighborhood. A cuckoo chimed in as well, to play the misogyny card. I recognized one of the magpies -- I had read some of his "gangster-in-fairyland" stories in my subway-riding days. His comment confirmed my suspicion from back then that he was published more as a result of cozying up to radical feminists than for the quality of his writing.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

(If you feel that this comment grants them too much dignity in the way of acknowledgment, I will not be offended if you redact it.)

UPDATE: I left a very polite comment, in support of Dafydd, at the leftie post. A commenter there mooed at me that I was trespassing on the herd's grazing ground. Apparently, new voices interfere with the chewing of their cud. Fine with me. My attitude about these matters is here.

UPDATE II: A second commenter on the other hand very graciously invited me to stay expressing a wish for divergent points of view. I declined, I hope just as graciously. Contrary to previous testimonials, I am not all that comfortable at trolling.

Thuck Fem

Sometimes it's hard to know whether it's because you committed a faux pax, because you're the new kid on the block, or because you picked the wrong crowd to introduce yourself too. The conclusion in all three instances is "Thuck Fem".

Sorry, SayUncle readers. Uncle fixed the link on his post but in case you haven't refreshed your browsers here's where the poem is:
Blaming of Parts

The Nazi State Lives On

But now it's not Jews, Gypsies, Slavic "sub-humans" or Mediterranean "mud people". It's smokers.

Germany may outlaw smoking in cars because it is a health hazard and a safety risk, the government's commissioner for substance abuse Sabine Baetzing said.

"We're examining whether it would be possible to ban smoking while driving and how that would work," she told the Kurier am Sonntag newspaper in an excerpt made available on Saturday.

Think I'm exaggerating? Germany is a country that imposes prostitution on unemployed women very reminiscent of the SS brothels and has toilets who order men to sit down to pee.

Finally!

My Christmas present, two Christmases ago, was a 10.5hp Toro snow-blower. The biggest in the neighborhood. Well, between then and now we have not had snow worthy of the name. Easier to do it with the shovel. The one eight-inch snow we got was too slushy and kept clogging up the machine. Finally, we get a beautiful blizzard, with a nominal six-inch accumulation but actual knee-high drifts of light, soft as down, powdery snow. Perfect. I powered up the Toro and cleaned out the driveway, 80 feet long, and the sidewalks. The neighbors' up and down the block too.

I used to hate snow but now that my daughter loves it, I love it too. She looks so cute, snug as a bug in her snowsuit, shoveling alongside me with her little shovel. Then we make a snowman and snow angels on the lawn.

... Now They Confuse Me With Abraham Lincoln

My next door neighbors and very good friends, one my best friend, left two birthday cards for me and in addition to the wishes the message that a present is on the way. The problem is that my birthday is not for months yet. OK, I'm 6'3", skinny as a rail, former farmboy and on occassion go for a week without shaving. Still ....

Risk-takers

A conscience is the only thing that distinguishes a hero from a criminal.

Great Super Bowl Party

Anwyn was a gracious hostess. And I met Venomous Kate.

Do I Look Like Dubya?

People keep telling me that I look like President Bush. I suppose that all good-looking people look alike.

2-8-2006: Even I got tired of looking at my pretty face. Posting for a few days is part of the joke but leaving it up permanently is narcissism. You'll just have to use your imagination.

P.S. I might post something later about the blog etiquette of copying and pasting an image from another blog as compared to linking it or even hot-linking it. Or maybe not.