holidays

baby in bar

hellos and goodbyes

boola boola

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — Police say someone driving a U-Haul truck into a tailgating area at the Yale-Harvard game accelerated into three women, killing one and injuring the other two. Police spokesman David Hartman says the truck entered a parking lot designated for pre-game tailgating, sped up for unknown reasons and hit the women. The truck then crashed into other U-Haul vans in the lot. He said a 30-year-old woman was taken to Yale-New Haven hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Another woman was seriously hurt, but was in stable condition. The third woman suffered minor injuries.  Police were questioning the driver of the U-Haul.

everybody's doing it

In the mouths of babes. . .

pork futures

LAFAYETTE, Minn. — Here in pig country, the pigs are vanishing. Ryan Bode, whose family has raised pigs for decades, said thieves broke into this barn in Lafayette, Minn., by cutting straight down some ventilation netting. This month, 150 pigs — each one weighing more than an average grown man — disappeared from a farm building in Lafayette despite deadbolts on its doors. Farther north  594 snorting, squealing hogs disappeared last month, whisked away in the dark. And in Iowa, with cover from the vast stretches of tall cornfields, pigs have been snatched, 20 or 30 at a time, from as many as eight facilities, said the sheriff, adding that among other challenges, the missing are difficult to single out.
“They all look alike."
  “This is the hot commodity of the moment, like copper a few years ago and gold,” said Ryan Bode, whose family discovered that 150 of its pigs were missing shortly before they were to be taken to market. The loss was $30,000 on top of the “ungodly high” price of corn that he had paid to feed those pigs until they were fat enough to be sold. “And after all that, they’re not here,” he said. Mr. Bode seemed doubtful about seeing his pigs again.
“My guess is that they’re bacon and pork chops already,” he said.

This little piggie went to market.  I'll take an oink on the rocks with a twist of tail.

Don't drink and make your kid drive?

WOODHAVEN, Mich. (AP) — A 9-year-old Michigan girl is in tears as she testifies about the night her dad had her drive a full-size van in suburban Detroit. Authorities say Shawn Weimer had his daughter drive because he had been drinking. He is charged with child abuse, and a judge is holding a hearing to determine if Weimer will go to trial. Police in Wayne County's Brownstown Township stopped the van in the wee hours of Oct. 8 and found the girl behind the wheel in a booster seat. The girl says she agreed to drive but "felt a little scared." She testified her dad drank half of a bottle of whiskey.

The judge called a recess as she kept crying.

nyny

The Apartment of No Regrets.

witches' new year's

Chew the bones and suck the marrow.
Thin the veil between the spheres.
Drink the blood and fuck tomorrow.
Make a vow to last for years.

dark and stormy

Need warmth here on Bleak Island. Line 'em up, baby!

real estate

. . . need I say more?

month two

A full day with the ex including two ferry rides, a 75-mile shopping trip and a storm window attaining liftoff in a howling gale.

crossing the bar

Why I can't stop: Eating at the bar in the Beachhead. . .

thus spoke Michael Lutin

wednesday 19 OCTOBER

Why do people eat, drink smoke, screw
ordo anything compulsively?
Because they are hungry.
When you locate the original source
of your hunger,
you're not so hungry any more.
It's easier to get in touch with it
when the Moon is in Cancer
and the Sun in Libra
as it is now.
You'll find comfort in comfort food
preparing it,
eating it
or serving it to loved ones.
It's a form of connection
an inescapable one
in the search for
intimacy.

Intimacy is not,
contrary to popular belief,
the need to reveal every part of yourself
to another person.
it is about sharing
on a soul level.
And when that is denied you,
you eat yourself silly.
Or
some people just starve themselves
to repeat the process of
emotional starvation.

The effort it takes to remain balanced
is worth it.

week four

I'd like to howl at the waning gibbous (meaning: humpbacked, convex) moon. But alas, a nice diet coke don't make me want to howl.

soda

Or, as I call it, pop.
Others in this great nation of ours do so as well, as you can see at popvssoda.

it's in the stars

Saturn in Libra. . .

full moon

. . . and dinner at the Manisses with Ballard and Leili.
Week three.

holiday weekend!

Finished the story! Partay!

week two

Ah. Nothing like a fire in the fireplace, some mellow music on the iPod and a nice glass of—water?

a spot of sun

Prime tanning hour: Quick, run outside and soak in the warm rays. Ah, nothing like a cool beverage. . .

arrivals and departures

  

One for the road?

day three

Sometimes the universe just says "L'Chaim!"
Shouldn't you drink to that?

day two

Happy New Year! I want my manischewitz!

day one

Because of dinner parties.

rebel

Because they all want me to.

nice

Elderly Woman Attacked by Alligator in Florida  

COPELAND, Fla. (AP) — Officials say an alligator attacked and severely injured an elderly woman in southwest Florida.The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reports that 90-year-old Margaret Webb was walking near her Copeland home Wednesday when the 8-foot alligator lunged out of a canal.Officials say the animal tried to drag the woman into the water, but she was able to hang on long enough for a man driving by to stop and help her.Officials say the woman, who lost part of her leg in the attack, was airlifted to a Fort Myers trauma center.

The agency says a trapper was sent to the area to find the alligator. If found, the reptile will be cut open in an attempt to retrieve and reattach the leg.

ex-girlfriends

gay for a day

Celebrating the passage of gay marriage by the New York State legislature!

i'm a supplier

Were I to stop drinking, how would the designer daughter get her recycled materials?

nice town

Mid-Atlantic Dreads Bad Summer of Foul, Hungry Stink Bugs“We hope your day,” it says, “is stink bug free.”

Ask people around Pittsburgh and much of the rest of the Mid-Atlantic region and they are likely to say there have been far too few stink-bug-free days of late, a harbinger of what promises to be another challenging summer, a year after tens of millions of the inchlong pests wreaked havoc on crops and homes.
As the temperatures rise and stink bugs emerge from their winter quarters, entomologists say, the infestation could prove even worse this year, with the bugs making their way into new areas of the country.
The brown marmorated stink bug is believed to have arrived here from Asia in the 1990s. It has made its way from Pennsylvania to at least 33 states, and has been spotted as far west as California and Washington. A continuing advance is inexorable, scientists say, because the bugs have no natural predators and can travel long distances — not by flying, but via a more convenient method: covertly hitching rides in vehicles.
The insect has caused tens of millions of dollars in damage, munching apples, peppers, corn and soybeans, and has proved to be a general irritant — in no small part because of its foul odor, which the bug secretes as a defense mechanism.
“The feeling in the bug world is this is the worst bug we’ve seen in 40 years,” said Michael J. Raupp, an entomologist at the University of Maryland. “It eats peaches and grapes and soybeans. It’s annihilated organic growers who can’t use pesticides. And guess what? After it eats your crops, it comes inside your home. I’ve never seen another bug do that.”
  James McCoy, owner of SBS Pest Control, short for Stinkbugspecialist.com, said Pittsburgh was so rife with the insect that he did not bother with calls seeking help for termites, ants or roaches — the bread-and-butter triple play of pests that extermination companies typically go after. “Everybody has stink bugs,” Mr. McCoy said. “We get one call out of 100 for the other stuff. No one here cares about the other stuff. It’s the stink bugs, and its getting worse every year here.”

why i can't stop

Photo by CBA

. . .um—smoking! It's hard to stop smoking when the Smoking Gun bbq is smokin' up a big batch of dead animal flesh for your delictation, putting the wood into the chamber.

what would become of the brewmeisters?

photograph by CBA

. . .not to mention bottle manufacturers, glass recyclers, bodega operators and etc. Just think what would happen to the jobless rate if I stopped drinking!

bear, bearing posies

First it was hyacinths. Then it was daffodils. He's always hanging around. He quit drinking and lost weight. Does he have hopes? Give me another beer. . .

st pats

I have the corned beef and cabbage. I have the beer—though my tastes in alcohol are catholic.
Alas, my background is Orange Irish. . .

fat tuesday

Actually, this is the reason I couldn't stop drinking yesterday:
Solidarity with my Brazilian friends at Carnival.

blond at the apollo

Appolling.

politically incorrect

This funny link showing classic photographs doctored to remove evidence of tobacco shows just how unacceptable smoking has become.
Next up: Dash that drink from your lips. Cheers!

nice town

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio science teacher accused of burning the image of a cross on students' arms has officially been fired.

The Mount Vernon school board voted 4-1 Monday night to accept a state hearing officer's recommendation to terminate John Freshwater. The Columbus Dispatch reports the firing took effect a few hours later, at midnight. Freshwater had appealed his earlier firing by the board. An internal investigation found he had preached Christian beliefs in class. He also was accused of using a scientific device to mark several students with a cross and of keeping a Bible on his desk. The hearing officer's report issued Friday said Freshwater sowed doubt and confusion in the minds of impressionable students.