Sarah Jamison

HI OLD LADY I MADE YOU A MIX TAPE. I DREW A LITTLE COFFIN ON IT. I HOPE YOU LIKE THE SMITHS.

Milani Purple Streak textured polish.


2 coats.




Added a top coat.




:)

mahjo:

croutoncat:

This unphotogenic yet rewarding marvel is largely based on a recipe I hounded out of a now-deceased cousin, and is known in my family as "the tilapia thing."

"I don't have much time tonight, I'll make the tilapia thing."
"Ugh, those peppers are on their way out, I'm going to slice them and put them on top of the tilapia thing."
"We need to finish these brownies stat, I want that dish to make the tilapia thing in."

You get the idea. It's special! It doesn't sound that great, but it's cheap and easy and delicious and super-nutritious. I usually don't serve anything with it except white wine, because I just like to dump a bunch of it in a bowl and then eat it while watching television. But you could probably use some little roasted potatoes. No vegetables or salad, though, or you'll be up to your gills in roughage. It's one of those things where you're eating it and you say "and it's so good for you!" with your mouth full. And I'm giving you my version of the recipe, which involves more fat than the original, which enhances both the deliciousness and the nutrition. Tell me quadrupling the feta was an expensive mistake. Go on.

Preheat your oven to 425 degrees, and oil or cooking spray a glass dish (I use one of these guys here.) There's no way to make that step sound conversational.

Now, you want a lot of baby spinach. The recipe calls for, like, a ten ounce bag, but I don't really think that's enough spinach. I usually use one of the big tubs, because you're going to wilt it, and baby spinach cooks down to a tiny fraction of its original bulk. It's like it actually changes states, or something. I just keep tossing it in and wilting it until I run out of space in the skillet, and then I have an handful of leftover spinach that eventually liquifies in my crisper drawer and needs to be sponged out with a paper towel. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

You may not have wilted greens before, it's great, and it smells amazing! Heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium low heat. I just use my nonstick for this, use the biggest one you have. Sometimes I even use a wok, so I'm not dropping half-wilted spinach off the sides of my skillet onto the burners. Again, the recipe calls for one tablespoon of olive oil, but I start with two or three and then add more as I go. Stir in some garlic. I buy minced garlic, and then I drop in a big spoonful, but it's probably a couple of cloves, if you want to chop your own. I read a scary book about someone giving their entire dinner party botulism with jarred garlic, so now I use the smaller squeezy bottles of minced instead of the big glass jars. Your call! Okay, cook the garlic in the oil until it gets brown and smells great. Now, just dump in one handful of spinach at a time, it'll become dark green and wet and small. Keep adding until you run out of space. Congratulations, you are done with the hard part, and it was totally easy.

Next, you want a cup of salsa (of your choosing!) Ideally, you'll want to take a second and dump the cup of salsa through a strainer to make it less watery, but sometimes I skip that part. Stir the salsa into the spinach, take it off the heat.

Spread half of your salsa-y spinach onto the bottom of your baking dish (it may not cover the whole thing). On top, you're going to place your fish fillets in a single layer. Right! The fish. Just some cheap-ass white fish. It doesn't really matter. Basa, haddock...I use tilapia. About a pound and a half of it, but you can squish in more or less based on how many people you're feeding. Put the other half of the salsa-y spinach on top. This is a good time to add random vegetables you're trying to use up (sliced peppers, mushrooms, or zucchini work best) if you want. Now douse the whole thing in chunks of feta cheese with a few turns of black pepper. Tons of feta. It'll brown in the oven and be gorgeous. Hand-to-God, the original recipe is like 1/4 cup of feta. Silliness!

Now, put it in the oven for half an hour, check to make sure the fish is flaky and cooked through, serve with the pan juices on top. Eat it.

---

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We know you’ve probably all looked at the laser cat meme going around the web and felt like you needed to wear cats with lasers on your person. Thankfully, this is a dream you can make happen. Shop 2020 Avenue has tights featuring cats and spaces. It’s close enough to count.

Product Page ($16 via The Geeky Hostess)

Source: thelaughingstork.com via SmartPetBeds on Pinterest

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(via robotindisguise:huffpostcomedy: Woodchuck Eats An Ice Cream Cone)

They have no agenda and they are nonpartisan. That’s why they’ll spend several news cycles talking about Ann Romney’s horses but not a single front-page article on the murder trials concerning a grotesque fetus-abattoir in Pennsylvania.

I always mention my non-religious libertarian-ness when I blog about stuff like this because it’s become boring to deal with that one person who will assume my problem with the active killing of breathing humans is rooted in religious dogma or a desire to control others, as though those are the only reasons decent people would bother to oppose the killing of helpless humans. Nobody needs religion or a control-freak complex to be repulsed, sickened, and profoundly disturbed by the Kermit Gosnell story, and by the almost-total lack of national news coverage of it.

Even Kirsten Powers, Democrat, is baffled:

Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven’t heard about these sickening accusations?

It’s not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell’s former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart.

NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, “described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, ‘literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.” One former worker, Adrienne Moton, testified that Gosnell taught her his “snipping” technique to use on infants born alive.

Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified “It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.” Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: “Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic.”

“Chaos” isn’t really the story here. Butchering babies that were already born and were older than the state’s 24-week limit for abortions is the story. There is a reason the late Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called this procedure infanticide.

Planned Parenthood recently claimed that the possibility of infants surviving late-term abortions was “highly unusual.” The Gosnell case suggests otherwise.

Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.

Indeed it is, but there we are.

Allahpundit:

Out of curiosity, I skimmed the last week’s results for “Kermit Gosnell” on Google News to see what turned up among major U.S. media. I found a few articles from local Philadelphia and Delaware outlets, a couple of AP items picked up by ABC, a Mona Charen op-ed carried in the Chicago Sun-Times, and…that’s basically it…

I’m left feeling about media bias the way I felt yesterday about dynastic politics: It seems like it’s getting worse, especially their willingness to completely black out “unhelpful” stories or parts of a story rather than simply spin them away…

Have you read the details of some of the testimony? I’m not sure you’ll want to.

A Delaware woman who worked for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell recalled hearing one child “screaming” after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure at Gosnell’s West Philadelphia clinic.

Sherry West, of Bear, said she was loyal to Gosnell – who is now facing multiple counts of murder for allegedly killing children after they were delivered alive at his clinic – but said the incident “really freaked me out.”…

“I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” West testified, telling a judge and Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury that the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at Gosnell’s clinic.

West said she saw the child, whose face and features were not yet completely formed, lying on a glass tray on a shelf and she told a co-worker to call Gosnell about it and fled the room.

Wow, I bet she was so “freaked out” that she quit that job right away and notified the authorities of the live murders going on there. Or, not.

About that testimony, interesting that a 53-year-old woman is unable to describe the sound of a newborn crying except by saying it sounded like an alien. Behold someone so detached from basic human rationality that her psyche requires her to think of the newborn she helped kill as an alien. We all have to sleep at night, I guess.

Also, since when do 18-to-24-inch newborns have “not yet completely formed” faces and features? Isn’t the average size of a newborn 20 inches? Well it sure is. So unless that baby had a severe birth defect, it most certainly had a fully-formed baby face. So, again, this woman is doing psychological acrobatics to protect her own seriously fucked-up psyche, and fine, that’s what people do, but I’m surprised to have seen this bit quoted so many places and not one shred of skepticism about it. A few sites even parroted the line about that particular baby “not even having eyes yet” – but being 18 to 24 inches and capable of “screaming”. Right. See, silly, it isn’t even human.

Another post by Ed Morrissey yesterday links to another bit of testimony that makes you not want to live on Earth anymore:

And Lynda Williams, 44, of Wilmington, said Gosnell taught her how to flip the body of the baby over and snip its neck with a pair of scissors to ensure “fetal demise.”

Williams also testified that she followed Gosnell’s orders one time, when Gosnell was away either running, swimming or working at a clinic in Delaware, and took a baby that was delivered in a toilet and snipped its neck.

“It jumped, the arm,” she said, showing the jury by raising her arm.

Williams told investigators she only snipped a neck the one time, “because it gave me the creeps.”

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I get “the creeps” when I see mosquitoes or when the lights flicker at night and Primo cocks his head in a weird way. I get “the creeps” when a homeless dude looks at me at the train station or when I think about fungus.

But if I were to describe holding a newborn baby’s head in my hands and shoving a pointy pair of scissors through the skin on the back of his neck, through his bony spinal column, until I felt myself chop clean through his spinal cord, “the creeps” is not a phrase that would come to my mind. “Profoundly evil and grotesque” or “the reason I will never sleep at night ever again” or “oh my God, what have I done, I have killed a human” seem somehow more appropriate.

But hey, don’t judge her. She was just following orders.

“I only do what I’m told to do,” she told the jury. “What I was told to do was snip their neck…I never knew it was murder.”

As Ed Morrissey puts it: “I’m sorry, but that excuse wasn’t good enough at Nuremberg for people in a military organization.”

At least the Nuremberg trials got some publicity. We won’t be getting any on this story – even though nobody should be stupid enough to believe the Gosnell clinic was unique – because our betters do not wish it.

“

So how much land have you sold so far?

Well, this is the only job I’ve had since 1995, which is when I started doing this full time. We’ve sold 611 million acres of land on the moon, 325 million acres on Mars, and a combined 125 million acres on Venus, Io, and Mercury.

”

- Dennis M. Hope Has Owned the Moon Since 1980 Because He Says So | VICE United States

The College Pottymouth Police
A 30-year-old college student said "fuck" in conversation with another student outside the classroom and it nearly ruined his life, thanks to a communications! teacher who finds freedom of speech (of the sort not fit for tea with the queen) not quite to her liking.

FIRE -- the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education -- to the rescue!

In 2010, Isaac Rosenbloom was a student at Hinds Community College in Mississippi. He was disappointed to receive a grade of "74" on an exam, and after class ended he walked outside and complained to a fellow student, "This grade is going to fuck up my entire GPA."

After overhearing the comment, Rosenbloom's professor, Barbara Pyle, berated him for cursing and threatened to send him to detention. Says Rosenbloom, "I countered with, 'I'm 30 years old. This is college. There is no detention.'"

Rosenbloom didn't get detention, but the husband and father of two children received something worse: Administrators booted him from Pyle's class. The punishment jeopardized his financial aid eligibility and could have derailed Rosenbloom's plans to become a paramedic.

Then FIRE got involved.

"If it wasn't for FIRE," says Rosenbloom, "I wouldn't have a career. I would be delivering pizzas instead of saving lives."

Video by my friend Ted Balaker

(via maurocuervo)

candlejack:

hermitologist:

oldtimefamilybaseball:

sbnation:

usatodaysports:

Baseball fan, American hero. (via @CrawfishBoxes)

U-S-A!

I know gifs don’t have music, but I can still hear the faint notes of Lee Greenwood belting out “I’m proud to be an American.” 

You’d think that someone with the hand-eye coordination to catch a foul ball in a beer cup could probably manage to pour his beer into his mouth.

Nope. 

Also: Stoked friend in GIF #3 is a total scene stealer.

So proud to be an American.

Evie encapsulates the peculiar appetite-stimulating effect of wheat that trumps all other appetite effects, “sweet tooth” included.

I’ve been on the wheat-free plan for four months and have had good results with loss of 12 pounds, total resolution of digestive/intestinal issues, cessation of food/carbo cravings, and diminished arthritic pain.

I am 70 years old and have fought Carbo Hell for most of my adult life. It was called a “sweet tooth” in my day, but I think it should be changed to a “WHEAT TOOTH,” as without wheat, my addictive compulsion to eat the terrible chemical laden sugar bombs pushed by the food industry just up and disappeared.

As a retired mental health counselor, who worked in a MICA (mentally ill/chemical abuser) program, I was well aware of the hypoglycemic and emotional ravages of abusing alcohol and drugs. I also intellectually understood the similar effects of simple and refined carbohydrates, even grains and fruits, but I was powerless to resist the call from Little Debbie and Pepperidge Farm myself.

I was, myself, so frequently depressed and often irritable and anxious, but saw little to no relief from cutting out sweet treats. Every evening at 5 pm, the blood sugar dropped and I, like a food zombie, began my craven search for that evening’s simple carbo of choice. Ice cream, some cookies, a piece of pie or cake, even candy. Somehow, despite my heavy research into the bad health effects of high blood sugar and hyperinsulinemia, no matter that I ate sweet-free all day, every evening I would, sooner or later, find myself with some decadent goodie. Every morning I would wake up in an extremely depressed mood (hypoglycemia?) with very negative thoughts. So, when Wheat Belly arrived into my sphere of awareness, I just did it.

Wow. As long as I “Ate no wheat, I craved no sweet.” Even if I had a little rice or grits occasionally, I was just not hungry. But each time I’d relapse and have a slice or two of sourdough toast, I’d be ravenous that evening again and would wake up next day practically suicidal. I now know that cutting out all the junk sweets and simple carbs, though healthy in itself, is not enough for me. I must abstain from wheat in all its manifestations as for me it is the “gateway food,’ if you will, to Carbo Hell with all its many ill effects, both physical and emotional. Thank you, Dr. Davis for helping me.

Evie experienced exactly what I have witnessed countless times: What people perceive as a “sweet tooth” was really a desire for sweets and carbohydrates triggered by the gliadin protein of wheat. Spinach doesn’t do this; olives don’t do this; beef liver can’t do this–only wheat.

Recall that the gliadin protein of wheat, this modern form of the protein changed by the manipulations of geneticists, triggers appetite and causes people to consume, on average, 400 more calories per day. Appetite is triggered specifically for carbohydrates, such as chips and cookies, not for steak, salmon, and asparagus.

Another interesting aspect of Evie’s experience are the emotional consequences of wheat consumption: Not only did it trigger cravings for junk carbohydrates, but also negative thoughts that seem to go beyond the self-loathing of lost impulse control. (Especially interesting coming from a person with the professional sophistication of a mental health counselor.) This would be consistent with the mind effects of gliadin that can trigger depression in those susceptible. (Time and again, these gliadin effects, often profound influences over mood and behavior, raise the question: How many societal problems–violence, crime, family discord, drug abuse–are really the consequence of this ubiquitous disrupter? I don’t have an answer, but I suspect it is a substantial contributor, one that can be remedied.)

Rarely does the impulse to consume sweets–a “sweet tooth”–persist in the aftermath of wheat elimination: Lose the wheat, lose the sweet tooth.

This is the hot, wet pussy you’ve heard so much about on in the internet. Austrian dude drove twenty minutes to the car wash, noticed the car made an odd shrieking sound going through the water jets, discovered it continued to scream even with the engine switched off, found his cat wedged into the grill. Then he slowly drove himself to the automobile club to have the cat extracted.

Murli is fine. And she smells Springtime fresh!

Stupid cat stories: when you absolutely, positively have something else you have to do tonight.

Where I live, there’s still frost in the early morning, and most days I leave the house bundled in a sweater and jacket. But. The hyacinths are up, and above the front porch a pair of finches are at work building their nest with strands of shimmery, iridescent Easter-grass. Spring is here! Is it here yet?

Berries, the quintessential spring-summer fruit, are definitely not. Luckily, I have frozen berries hidden away, ready to transform into something unexpectedly perfect for the any-day-now springtime. For me, this recipe pulls it off: after eating it, it’s spring.

Clafouti is one of the most gratifying breakfast-desserts I know: It looks elegant, tastes like a combination of cobbler and flan, and is ridiculously quick and easy to make. Often clafoutis call for butter and heavy cream, and I confess I’ve never even tried it that way. But why bother, why it’s SO GOOD just like this? In my version, I decided to leave out the flour, and add more eggs and more berries. I’ll never look back.

I adapted this recipe from this, although there are many other delightful ones out there. Because of the additional eggs and sweet berries, this clafouti needs a longer cook time than most. Some things are worth the wait.

***

Ingredients

6 eggs

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons vanilla

1/3 cup sugar

Pinch of salt

¾ cup milk

½ cup plain yogurt

4 cups berries (I used blackberries, blueberries, and cherries)

***

Directions

1. Heat the oven to 375°. Olive-oil-spray a 10” round gratin dish (or some other type of tart pan, roughly equivalent in size).

2. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, olive oil, and vanilla. Add the sugar and salt, then the milk and yogurt, and whisk until smooth.

3. Toss the berries into the baking dish, and then pour the batter on top. Wheeeeeeeee!

4. Place in the oven, and bake for about one hour until it’s firm, browned on the edges, and the center is just set. I always serve this warm (but then usually sneak some from the fridge cold, later, and personally I think it’s delicious that way, too).

SPRING!

Previously: Lemon Olive Oil & Lemon Olive Oil Muffins

Natalie Eve Garrett is an artist who likes surprises and loves olive oil. You can buy prints of her paintings here.

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It is said that men are always proud of the wrong things.  That may be, but I think everyone here will most certainly agree that working in "aw, he got the velcros" into the conversation, in correct context, makes the week productive, by definition.
Posted by Vox Day.

cat-baseball:

I am going to destroy all of my cameras because this is clearly the greatest photo of me that will ever exist.

all other grad photos: useless

TSA Worker: But Hawaii Is A Foreign Country!
Luckily for us, the TSA is just a security puppet show, not real security. (We took care of actual security by reinforcing cockpit doors and by coming to understand that there are people out there who think bringing down an airline for Allah will get them 72 virgins.)

Meaningful security is the sort done by trained intelligence officers, using probable cause to root out plots -- not by waiting until people get to the airport and having unskilled workers feel up their genitals.

Well, reinforcing what most of us who have looked into the dead eyes of a TSA worker already know, there's this posting from FlyerTalk, by "RedWingsFan" :

Hawaii is not a state according to the TSA agent

I just went through the TSA expedited line at O'Hare. I handed my boarding pass and driver's license to the TSA agent -she's like we don't accept foreign driver's licenses. I informed the agent that Hawaii is a state. She's was adamant that it was a foreign country. Calls her supervisor over and proceeds to ask him if Hawaii was a state or not. He's like yes! And rolls his eyes!

Where do the Feds find these employees ?!

vanehwasreal:

i mean what

what the fuck

gustav no

stop it

gustav please

I’m just like,

I love scallops. Those big, fat scallops, not the little cute ones that are the size of your thumbnail. They are also super good for you. And they do not have brains, or anything, and they do not care that you're eating them. I mean, they have ganglia, or something, you can make your own ethical decisions. But they cost A DAMN FORTUNE in restaurants, and you get, like, two of them (see picture). Promise me you will never order scallops in a restaurant, it's a mug's game.

(Also, it is still expensive to buy scallops at the grocery store, so this is your romantic at-home dinner with someone you want to buy scallops for. Scallop-worthy is an even higher bar than sponge-worthy. The recipe is totally 88% as good if you make it with a bag of frozen scallops, which are cheaper. Take them out of the freezer and remove the packaging the night before, or they taste a little plastic-y. Put them in your fridge in a bowl with plastic wrap over top of the bowl, instead.)

Buy the exact number of scallops you want to eat. Four each? Eight in total. If you see a bit of yellow on one of your scallops, it's just roe, leave it. Buy them the day you want to cook them.

Take 'em out of the fridge about half an hour before you cook them to get the chill off. Then wash them really, really well in water, because they get a little gritty. They feel all slippery and dense in your hands, it's fun. Pat them dry, salt and pepper both sides.

(You are just going to make a green salad on the side with olive oil and vinegar. Do not get worked up about it, your person will only care about the scallops. Start drinking a glass of white wine now.)

Now, in a non-stick pan (or cast-iron, whatever) over medium-high heat, chunk in a couple of tablespoons of unsalted butter. Wait until it's gone frothy and then stopped being frothy. It's getting a little golden-y brown in there. Gently place the scallops in. They shouldn't touch. If you're only doing eight, you'll have plenty of room in even a nine-inch skillet, I think. Set your timer for two and a half minutes.

DING.

Flip them right now! Quickly. Stare at the beautiful brown crusty side which is now on top. Oh, my God. Set your timer for another two and a half minutes.

DING.

Okay! Use a slotted spoon or spatula, set them aside with some foil over them. Now dump the rest of your glass of white wine in there, and turn the heat up to high. Scrape up the brown bits with a wooden spoon. Chunk in some more butter. A little more white wine. Keep stirring, let it cook itself down until it's almost syrup-y. Then pour the pan sauce over the scallops, squeeze a lemon onto them, put the stupid green salad on the plate next to them, and serve. With more wine.

You will totally feel like a French person, because you're all "here are the fruits of the sea, but with butter and a simple* green salad on the side," like a class act.

Okay, go do it. You might still be a little hungry afterwards, because, get real, it's a salad and four scallops, so have a ton of ice cream for dessert, or something. Tell me how it goes.

*Why are they always simple? And do you wash your pre-washed greens? I never do but my mother always does, and then there was an e-coli outbreak from pre-washed greens and I felt like a fool for doubting her.

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