beancounters

Falling like

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to learn to play Drawminos. Drag and drop dominos and balls where you want them to create displays of technical merit, without having to sweep up all the dominos when you're done. Gotta love the internet.

How's your weekend going? We bought a Christmas tree yesterday, which is the earliest we've ever done so. We also began putting up our outside lights, working until it was too dark to see. Bunny and I used to have a routine where I would climb the ladder, and she would hold strings of lights. Now she's over five foot tall and is sure-footed. She has taken over ladder duty. The work goes quickly.

Friday dog-blogging: lost weekend

Shh-h-h. It's a 3-day weekend. Let's all gather 'round the roaring computer and bask in the glow of togetherness.

Required viewing: Star Wars vs. Star Trek. As if there could be any doubt of the outcome. (via Pops)

Another cool video: Haunted Mansion Counterstrike. I'm giving you the BoingBoing link for the background info. Whatever the reason for creating the video, all I care is, Haunted Mansion is my second home, and this video makes me nostalgic.

The Rockefeller Center Turkey

Two white guys break it down with a Black Friday rap. They even mention a turducken!

Thanks for the laughs

(No chickens, ducks, pigs, goats, stoats or geese were harmed in the making of this main dish.)

Check in here for a list of dirty things you can say in front of your grandma on Thanksgiving.

More contributions from Twitter:

@santaispissed The elves are stuffing the turkey and singing "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt." I am cleaning the guns.

@thelordyourgod THOU MAYST THINK THE TRYPTOPHAN-SLEEP THING IS A MYTH, BUT THE LORD YOUR GOD THINKS NOT. AND REALLY, IT'S ALL ABOUT WHAT HE THINKS ANYWAY

And in case you missed it, the whole country got rick rolled at the Macy's Day Parade. The internet is over.

Happy Thanksgiving, blog folk!

Seven-in-one: more turkey-related madness

Three birds in one, shrouded in pork products, is no longer the baddest kid on the playground. Ready for this? Behold the turgooducochiqua. [h/t: e]

From smallest to largest:

quail -> cornish hen -> duck -> chicken -> turkey -> goose, with bacon between the layers.

My Brit friend Daisy remarked that she doesn't understand what the fuss is about. She says she has always layered bacon strips on top of her turkey, to add flavor and to keep the bird moist when cooking. But Daisy - three seven animals in one dish? I don't think she gets the uniquely American impulse to take an innocuous Thanksgiving tradition and ramp up the crazy.

Thanksgiving Quiz

Thanksgiving Quiz (5 pts.)

Read the following and answer the question below.

Just in time for the winter season comes a recipe that is sure to bring bacon lovers some warm holiday cheer. Turbaconducken. That’s right — a chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in a turkey, all wrapped in bacon. Otherwise known as a bacon-wrapped turducken. Just how did we create this meaty madness? It all started with a dream…and a whole bunch of bacon.

--><--

When I consider a meat dish that consists of a chicken stuffed in duck stuffed in turkey and then wrapped in bacon, my first thought is:

a) Don't look! It's a conspiracy by the vegans, man. The entire blogging community is sure to spontaneously turn vegetarian after seeing this.

b) They baked it? In the oven? What a bunch of wimps. What this sucker needed was to be deep-fried.

c) There's nothing new about the turbaconducken. There is evidence that the Roanoke Colony in Virginia produced this dish for one of their first meals in 1586. Of course, the colony mysteriously disappeared later without a trace. But not every historian attributes this to a colony-wide combination attack of indigestion and trichinellosis.

d) Hmm, I wonder if I can talk my sister Pam into making that when we go up to visit her next Saturday.

Chiller killer thriller turkey shoot

It's close to midnight. Something evil's lurking in the dark.

 

Walking through a snowy village somewhere in the UK, you feel pleasantly squiffed from all the sherry you've consumed this evening. All is quiet, except for the inexplicable sound of banjo music. You shift the rifle in your arms. Suddenly, you hear a strange sound. You turn, blinking, and you see before you a chilling sight. Can it be ...? It's turkeys - strange, UK-type turkeys, banshee turkeys capable of bounding from over the horizon, coming right at you. You try to bring your rifle to bear, feeling alone as never before, knowing that no one can save you. The only thing standing between you and certain death is your own aim. You fire, and fire again, the peace of the village is rent asunder, and still they come, until you are overwhelmed. It is then that you resolve to take on the turkeys again, but this time, you swear you will not drink so much sherry.

Friday dog-blogging: stay in the lines

Grace says if we buy it for her, she will be our slave for life. We say, a centaur teddy bear is just all kinds of wrong. (Luckily, the site is in Japaneseish and we can't find the Shopping Cart icon. Er - I mean, sorry, Grace.)

Learn three techniques to wrap extension cords and garden hoses. And here's the video. Simple, yet breeeliant! [via]

It's not too early to make a chewing gum advent calendar. CUUTE

God prefers atheists [comic]

And for my daughter: color in wallpaper. I used to get those color in posters for Christmas, and they seemed to take months to finish. Imagine putting this on your walls and having a whole room to do. Yikes!

Consequences of Gay Marriage?

[via]

Con

If the economy tanks, here's my backup plan: con artist. (Unless I really do hone my skills as a pet psychic as previously discussed.) How to run a con is an interesting article on the psychology of accepting one's role in a scam. Then in the video, Michael Shermer teaches the art of the pigeon drop con. ::taking notes::

Loops of Zen

It's Saturday, and you're stressed already. I can tell. So take a moment and relax with Loops of Zen. All you do is click the pieces until they form closed shapes. The music is transporting. Soon, you will fall into a deep .... restful ..... sleeeeep ..... and when you awaken, you will find you just submitted all your savings to the Kongregate game site through PayPal. And you will quack like a duck. Heh.

Friday dog-blogging: toothless

Thanks to your timely comments, I will not be posting pictures from the vet's office of Sammy's gnarly gingivitis. You may now safely resume eating your breakfast. Here are this week's Links Of Destiny.

Google flu trends. This could be useful. Certain search terms are indicators of flu activity. Is your state about to get hit? So far every state is safely in the 'low' category, but it looks like the flu is due to hit us all in mid-December. For Eris's sake, patriots, run out and do some Christmas shopping now, for the sake of your country's economy, before you get knocked back into bed.

99 bricks - a flash game. It's like Tetris but instead of eliminating rows, you build a giant tower. It gets more challenging as you grow. I keep coming back to this thing.

Would you ever live on this street? As the commenter said, you'd always win at the porn star name game.

magnetic curtains - coooool

Typocalypse - induce paranoia through your font selection

And for my daughter: mixed breeds, mutts and mongrels - a partial list of mixed dog names. Half of 'em sound like sneezes. On the plus side, Sammy finally has a breed name.

Tales and teeth from suburbia

What's been happening lately in the world of Pam? Primarily attempting to get a new water heater installed. It's been eight days! Last Friday, the floor model water heater we bought was installed, but when it came time for the pilot light to ignite -- eh, not so much. Sears wouldn't consider replacing the defective heater unless a Sears technician came over -- the following Tuesday.

Now, here's what's weird about that. The installer identified the defective part. Couldn't Sears have worked with that guy to decide the fate of the heater? Instead, they sent another tech, who BTW took his own sweet time meandering over to the vicinity of our house on Tuesday, thank you very much. The second guy charged Sears another $132 just to confirm what the first guy had said.

With the blessings of the second guy, I finally went to Sears and had them do an exchange on the heater for a brand-new model. The first installer came back today and swapped out the heaters - charging Sears for the labor. When all is said and done, I'm out a few hours and Sears is out I'd say $500. That's not even mentioning the insultingly faux-polite yet frustratingly unhelpful phone service I got from the national service center. I'm still trying to sublimate that particular memory. In this day and age, you might want to rethink the Sears stock in your portfolio.

In other news, our dog Sammy got his teeth cleaned. As his third owners of record, we're not surprised nobody ever brushed his teeth before we got him. But by the time we did, our brushing efforts didn't counteract his dental problems.

He's still a little groggy after yesterday. Also, he is disgusted with us all and has written more than one person off his Christmas card list.

One more thing, which I submit to you as a blatant misuse of digital technology: the veterinarian sent us home with full-color pictures of his yucky, plaque-ridden teeth. Maybe it's a helpful visual to some, but couldn't I have opted instead for a nice, friendly essay? A letter? A telegram?

(I won't show you the grungy teeth today, but if you people don't start leaving more comments on my blog, I'll post them for Friday Dog-Blogging.)

The other shoe drops

Get your war on: Now that Obama's won, there'll be a few changes.

Fuzzy bunnies and verbal abuse

It's Saturday, so you have plenty of time to learn English the hard way with English for Dirty Foreigners. So far, there are only two episodes in what is to be a 700,000-part series. We dirty foreigners are jolly lucky to be able to start from the beginning. I think this is a promising little comedy sketch. Hopefully they'll pick up the pace of their comedic timing, add a larch and a lumberjack to the cast, and really go to town.

When you've learned the difference between an adverb and a reverb, come back and calm down with a few rounds of Winter Bells, there's a good chap.

Friday dog-blogging: The one question you should never ask

• What if your favorite movies all had cell phones? For one thing, Romeo and Juliet would end ve-e-ery differently.

• The starship Enterprise made out of office supplies. Why do I post stuff like this? It isn't that I'm ever bored at work. It's just, something like this hanging over my desk would make my coworkers laugh. And believe me, those people need more laughter in their lives. So do yours.

• follow cost. How annoying would it be to follow _____ on Twitter?

• Oh My Science. Takes Twitter tweets and replaces the word "God" with the word "science". Pretty silly, the things people thank God for. But hello, thanking science isn't any more rational. We need a site that replaces "God" with "Eris", the goddess of chaos. That would make complete sense.

• Puppy cam. "Why would someone put their puppies on the internet?" asked BB. Chah! Can you believe he really said that? You never, ever ask WHY something's on the internet. That, my friend, is a slippery slope. It can only lead to MADNESS.

• And for Anthony and my brother: The Kurt Cobain guide to startup success. It appears to be a non-ironic article, except for the last line. I'm rather offended. Sure his startup was "successful", if you overlook one inconvenient fact ...

Brr

Does life know when you're a little money ahead? Because within days of this fortuitous circumstance, our water heater went out, for good.

BB will do what he's paid for - he will wade in amongst the male sales staff that line the basement of the Sears in Citrus Heights, buy a new water heater & arrange to have it installed.

Meanwhile, there's a small matter of getting clean. Boy, I hate cold showers.

Update: advice from a Twitter friend (because I've been bitching on many social platforms today)

Navy shower: one limb at a time, turn water off between limb washing/rinsing. Shiver. Repeat. Coffee.

Yes We Did

My husband BB and I sat glued to the TV last night, flipping between CNN, PBS and Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008". We got one call from BB's dad at the 8:00 hour, right when CNN called California, Oregon and Washington for Obama and made it Official. My father in-law is a WWII vet and retired schoolteacher. He and his wife are absolutely thrilled to see an end to the Bush years.

Got another call from Anthony on the East Coast, whose internet connection had failed and who needed to hear if he had bragging rights this fine day. He did. We all do.

Now: too early to be funny? Naaah.

Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress

WASHINGTON—After emerging victorious from one of the most pivotal elections in history, president-elect Barack Obama will assume the role of commander in chief on Jan. 20, shattering a racial barrier the United States is, at long last, shitty enough to overcome.

Best part:

"Obama had the foresight to run for president at a time when being an African-American was not as important to Americans as, say, the ability to clothe and feed their children," Pung continued. "An election like this only comes once, maybe twice, in a lifetime."

As we enter a new era of equality for all people, the election of Barack Obama will decidedly be a milestone in U.S. history, undeniable proof that Americans, when pushed to the very brink, are willing to look past outward appearances and judge a person by the quality of his character and strength of his record. So as long as that person is not a woman.

Ready?

Get out there and vote, blogfolk.

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