This article shows just how serious cooking can be to some folks. Now, I hold some strong opinions about certain foods, but I promise that I won’t pull a weapon over dissention.
I even chuckled when Terry Bradshaw, sports announcer and graduate of a Louisiana college, publicized his “gumbo” recipe which had KETCHUP as an ingredient.
But these folks….
(And a tip of the hat to The Bitch Girls)
Just in case you think I”m some deranged fire-breather when I talk about NOT being as careful about targeting jihadis hiding behind children/”innocent” civilians/”historical” edifices, you can go here and read. And don’t stop at the end of the article. Read the comments.
And I’m adding this one to the blogroll. I understand that the celebration will be long and memorable…
Just checking the referrer list for this humble little blog:
We’re #3 for an MSN search for “real Cajun recipe”
I never meant to be a recipe and cooking blog… Just an occasional post…
So I was just walking out of the local Wal-Mart after buying a new wristwatch to replace the one which had quit working. I’m rough on watches, so I buy cheap, under $20. The cellphone in my pocket rings. It’s Chrissy at the office. Client called. Wants me at his plant right away. So I hope in the minivan and off I go. The destination is twenty miles and thirty minutes away.
As soon as I’m in the car, I call the guy’s office. No answer. Well, if it’s urgent he wouldn’t be in his office, he’d be out in the facility. But he carries his cellphone. So I try that. Several times. I leave a voice message. And keep driving. And a third of the way there, my cellphone rings. It’s him.
I ask what the problem is. He said they lost the WHOLE stinkin’ plant. ALL the lights. They killed the coffeepot in the admin building. Total outage.
My next question, since I’ve been in there almost daily for the last three weeks: “My stuff?”
“Nope. Somebody cut the gas flow off to the generator.”
Well, that’s pretty bad… This facility runs its generator when they’re at a critical point in operation because the local utility is notoriously unreliable. And so they’re running along on generator, and somebody shuts off the gas supply. And the lights go out. This is usually followed by a frantic effort to close the breakers to tie them back to the utility, since starting the generator takes ten or fifteen minutes, quite a bit longer if it has to coast to a stop after a trip-off.
Except the utility breakers won’t close. There’s a matter of having to reset one of the generator components to allow the breakers to close. And the operators don’t know you have to reset that. And that’s where my friend was when I tried to call him. Of course, after this is reset, they’re back with lights in a matter of a minute or two.
The next question is what happened to the emergency generator. This is a diesel-driven unit that’s supposed to power critical systems and lighting. Why didn’t it start? Well, THIS was the day they had it locked out for routine preventive maintenance. The timing for this was just one of those unfortunate coincidences.
So I turned around and went back to the office. And next week we’ll have a meeting or two, to discuss what happened and how they can fix things so it won’t ahppen that way again. Which means that next time, it’ll happen a different way…
This post and this post got me the most negative comments yet on my humble little blog. Let me say first that I figured I’m so insignificant in the blogosphere that nobody’d bother arguing with me anyway, so the appearance of a few negative comments comes as a surprise.
That said, both of the referenced posts deal with visiting massive retaliation upon populations who continue to harbor and dispatch terrorists. I said that the presence of polling data to the effect that 93% of Muslim populations support terrorist kidnappings, and by default the cold-blooded killings of hostages, this data indicated sufficient justification for vigorous retaliatory strikes against those who celebrate these acts.
Now, anybody who knows me knows that I like people. I am generally an easy-going, jovial type. I give the benefit of the doubt in most cases where many others would ascribe malice. I love children and families. I wear the thick veneer of civilization as a result of several decades of peace and harmony.
But that veneer is wearing thin. Let’s just cut to the big one, 9-11-01. Three thousand Americans went to work that morning, moms and dads and sons and daughters, and they did not have the opportunity to do a normal thing: go home that evening. Several civilians in Iraq were there to work, ostensibly to help bring Iraq farther into the present than the country’d been before. Some of those civilians were forcible captured and murdered in a most hideous manner. A bunch of children go to school one morning in Russia. Some days later, their captors raped and tortured some of these children, and murdered many, many others as the situation ends.
And that veneer of civilization wears very thin.
Let’s carry the argument to its logical end point. Imagine me standing with MY children, my beloved Bonnie and Corey. Further imagine that some jihadi is threatening harm on MY children in the same manner that he has harmed others, only he hides behind “innocents”, depending on my innate reluctance to harm these innocents in my endeavor to stop him. Do you honestly think I am going to idlly stand by and allow him to aim a rifle at MY children from between the bodies of his own, and NOT act to save MY children? You can bet that upon the expenditure of my last cartidge, I would give up my last breath in the bayonet charge to save my children.
Yes, I do hate the idea of harming non-combatants. But, dear readers, I do not hate that idea as much as I hate the idea of having not done everything to protect my own family.
9-11-01 made some things perfectly clear to any lucid mind: Radical Islam is not content with keeping the fight within its borders. They do not hold to Western ideas of combatant and non-combatant, nor do truces or an idea of “fair play” have a place in their actions. There is none among them whom we can capture or coerce to sign a “surrender document” to end the war as Germany and Japan did in 1945.
We as a nation keep trying to believe that this war can be fought like the old wars, that at some time in the future, that we’ll capture the “big cheese”, be it Osama bin Ladin or one of his followers-on. And when this guy shows up on world television, the rest of the jihadis will simply say “That’s it. they got us. We quit. We’ll go home.” We want to believe that when we sit down at the table to bargain with the leaders of one group or the other, that when an agreement is reached with that one, that ALL his followers will say, “Well, he says stop, so we stop.”
And folks, aside from those in the diplomatic corps and those blinded by the diplomatic corps, nobody really believes this. To use a tired phrase, this is a new paradigm. Many in leadership, especially the military, recognize this. It’s a new kind of war? No, it’s a very OLD kind of war. Mohammed himself would have recognized what will ultimately be necessary.
And here’s a quote from a participant,
“The spectacle of Zarqawi beheading and killing Americans must not be tolerated anywhere in the world,” Gen. Glosson said. “If you don’t make them pay a penalty for it, more idiots will try it.” Gen. Glosson said the U.S. military made three mistakes: not destroying the elite Republican Guard, some of whose officers now lead the insurgency; disbanding the regular Iraqi army, pushing its soldiers toward the insurgency; and stopping U.S. Marines in April as they were clearing Fallujah of terrorists.
(Lifted from this piece over at Jenn Martinez’s place.)
I recognize this, as do many like me, some bloggers, a lot more just plain ol’ Americans who would stand in front of THEIR children and cry real tears for the dead children of the enemy.
As I read about the debate, I saw it to be a carefully choreographed event that emt only the barest vestiges of an actual debate. Since John F. “screw the men still IN Viet Nam while I build a name for myself” Kerry has demonstrated since the Sixties that he has not the smallest vestige of the character I deem necessary for a president, and since I judge him by the actions of his supporters (The Hollywood Left, Ted Kennedy, Michael Moore) to be unfit for office, there was no reason for me to view the debate. I already know that George Bush does not come across as a polished speaker, and that the mainstreem media would harp on this and every other imagined weakness on the part of the President.
So why should I tune in the TV to what media whoring for the Democrats?
Others on the ‘Net have done well on the subject. REad them.
62% of US Senators are attorneys. Their average number of years in elected office is 24; and 97 of the 100 Senators are career politicians. “We keep sending the same old people to the Senate, year after year.
They debate the same old topics, and come up with the same old, tired conclusions … and we wonder why our Social Security System is on the verge of bankruptcy.why there is still no immigration policy that is fair to all.why a great public education is a thing of the past.”
But it’s not the Senators’ fault – it’s our fault for sending the same old people to the Senate year after year. Many of them had their last fresh thought twenty years ago. Most have never worked for a living, so they have no clue what you and I go through every work day. They exist in their plush ivory tower where their every whim is catered to because WE allow it.
(Forwarded to me via e-mail by good friend Norm Ricci, a frequent poster on CSP Gun Talk)