Nom de plume: Rivrdog

Another Grinch found

This one appears to involve either You Tube, the RIAA, the European Community, our Federal Government, or, more likely, all of those suspects.

I got an email sending me to You Tube to hear a vocalist sing the blues about religion being removed from Christmas, and afterwards, I noted several medleys of Christmas music on the "suggested" area in the right sidebar. I clicked on several, only to be greeted by a black screen with a message listing the usual suspect recording companies the RIAA always trots out in all of their whines about "intellectual property rights". Common Use trumps all of that legalbabble, as I understand the law. But the RIAA greases a lot of palms, and has since the 1950s, so now they're trying to lock down Christmas music.

Here's how you skin that cat: make the RIAA produce LEGAL, court-quality proof for every single instance where they claim to represent the interests of artists. Damn near every one of the composers of Christmas songs is dead, and if proof of an RIAA contract is not filed and recorded in all those dead songwriter's courts of Probate, then it legally doesn't exist, and the material reverts to Common Use.

The RIAA is a bunch of pirates sitting astride the music industry, nothing more. It's high time all those scalawags swung from the yardarm.

You Tube "Music Awards"...WTF?

This HAS to be the defining moment for the Information-age culture: You Tube music awards.

Consider the gravitas. No, don't, you will get a headache. There is NO gravitas to a post-any-video system which, at one time, manages to avoid ALL intellectual property rights, has zero content quality filter, no technical standards, and only a basic search engine for navigation among the millions of assorted offerings. To be sure, if you're lucky, you might find a professional-quality music offering there, but if you do, it's the proverbial diamond in a goat's ass.

But wait: I saved the best for last. Guess who will be Mistress of Ceremonies at this shindig?

Lady Gaga, it says here.

That tears it.

So, we get an awards show, for "art" in a medium where those with the biggest shit-shovels rule, officiated by the very symbol of sensation-before-art, Lady Gaga.

Could our culture POSSIBLY get more insignificant and/or trite than this?

Sorry about ruining your breakfast. I hope you did a selfie-video of yourself spewing your breakfast. If you did, put it on You Tube. You could be "Performance Artist of the Year" with that...

Comment from Rivrsis:

Well, it could be hosted by Molly Cyrus.  Wouldn't you just love to get another glimpse of her lolling tongue?  Or her flabby backside?  Some more crotch-rubbing?  And furthermore, if you don't like Gaga's stage style, or her sexuality, at least the woman has a good voice!

Waiting for...?

While the Nation awaits the Obama response to his failed attempt to railroad George Zimmerman for defending himself from a thug, let's go back to a more laid-back era (1950's, it would seem), and have a little entertainment, shall we? Back in that era, entertainers took their craft seriously, and could entertain on many levels. Here's the proof:

Presenting actors Bob Hope and James Cagney, doing some dancing at the Friar's Club.

Tip o' the hat to the Coyote Kid, who put on his first (USMC) military uniform back in that era.

Table Art

A table centerpiece from the annual Lincoln Day Dinner of the Multnomah County, OR GOP. The gudwife is a member, I'm too conservative for them, but they DO have promise, as seen by their table art:

The straw-thingies are some sort of glowsticks, the toy gun seems to be modeled on a S&W Model 10 or maybe a Colt New Police.

We have some gun control issues coming up in the OR Legislature, so we'll soon see just how stiff the spine of the OR GOP is...

Oh well, at least the Pilsner glass will be useful...

Best Commercial was...

Dodge Ram, with Paul Harvey's narrative poem, "and God made a Farmer". There was nothing else close.

Thursday Thuds, Astrological Edition

Yep, there must be a conjunction that the horoscope didn't report:

The Constellation Ignoramus is in the Seventh House of the Moon, so we may call this Teh Stoopid Rising.

Thud the First: The looney Kimmy is at it again, sort of declaring war, nuclear war, on the USA. What Teh Stoopid Norky apparently doesn't realize is that he is ALREADY at war with the USA. Way back in 1953, when I was playing sandlot baseball with my first mitt, a Rawlings Al Kaline, we ended the Korean War with an Armistice, not a Treaty. We're still under the terms of that armistice, and still technically at a state of war. One B-2 Spirit with a belly full of nuke AGM-86s ends this war. Might be as easy as a B-2 Spirit with a single Small Diameter Bomb detonating on the pillow next to Kimmy in his bed.

Thud the Second: Goes to State Rep Mitch Greenlick (D-33), Oregon. He's a white guy, but has made a political career of being a race pimp, creating a Diversity in Sports Hiring Law for Oregon a few years back, and steamrolling it through the Legislature. The Oregon Ducks just replaced Head Football Coach Chip Kelly, now coaching the Philadelphia Eagles, with Offensive Coordinator Mark Helfrich. Both are white. Someone put the bug in Greenlick's ear that Da Rulz had not been followed, and no person of color had been interviewed before hiring Da White Guy. If Greenlick had paid attention to the local sports press, he would have gotten all these facts, but he decided to shoot off his face anyway, and when caught short on his accusation, he doubled down on Teh Stoopid and bitched that the SPIRIT of the "Diversity" law was not being followed, apparently because a person of color wasn't hired. The law, of course, does NOT mandate hiring people of color, it is only there to see that they are given a chance at the slots that come up. Now Greenlick has to re-double down by holding a Star Chamber hearing on this boneheaded "spirit of the Law" crap. Of course, what he really wants to do is be appointed Diversity Potentate/Caliph for Oregon. Perfect Celestial Alignment of Teh Stoopid. Letter to the Editor sent.

Thud Da Toid: What can I say, it's a toss-up between outgoing Secretary of State Hildebeeste and incoming S.O.S.-Nominee John Effing Kerry. Hillary got ground up, chewed up and spit out by Sen. Rand Paul yesterday, and today, J Effing Kerry got a John McCain blow job. Perfect alignment of McCain's dripping chin with Kerry's belt buckle. GOPes rolled over on the Swift Boat Liar. One can only hope that the Liar will soon embarass himself badly enough to be consigned to the dustbin of history, or maybe better, he will invent his own foreign policy and completely screw up Obama's.

Thud the Fourth: Rocks and Shoals edition. Yep, as long as men go down to the sea in warships, some of them will have to suffer bad navigation/ship-handling, and will wind up on the shoals. Happened here. Ship had just left Subic Bay. Do you suppose all the quarterdeck crew were sober? Pretty cheap drunk in Olongapo...worse news is that the shoal is a world-recognized endangered reef.

Thud the Fifth: We don't have many Thuds in the Art World, but what good can happen to the Paris Ballet Corps now that their Chef de la Danse is a chap named Millepied? That translates directly to "1,000 feet"...(H/T to the RivrSis, my Art Correspondent).

Ah, well. Time and the stars march on, so soon this alignment of Teh Stoopid will be over. Maybe I should go back to bed and wait it out. Fighting off Teh Stoopid Rays is giving me a headache, anyway.

Whisky Stones, a product review

For Xmas, a family member, knowing that I like to sip straight whiskies, gave me "Whisky Stones". A simple concept, Whisky Stones are nothing more than small cubed-shaped pieces of soapstone. You freeze them in the little cloth poke (looks strangely like a bleached-out Bull Durham tobacco poke) which comes with the kit, and you put them in a glass and pour whisky over them, just like ice, except ice melts and dilutes the whisky. The objective is to cool the whisky some without diluting it.

Do they work? Yes, somewhat. I took a standard 8-oz highball glass, put in three frozen Whisky Stones (my freezer runs at -5), and poured in Teacher's Scotch, a blended whisky, to the top of the stones as per the instructions. As I sipped, I noted that the whisky was cooled slightly below room temperature, and was probably AT what passes for room temperature in Scotland where the whisky originated.

Now, I sip this whisky neat at room temperature about half the time I imbibe it, and I noticed little difference in the pleasure I get from sipping. The whisky was slightly cooler, that's all.

Since I usually allow myself two whiskies of a night when I'm not driving, I made a second one. In this glass, I put six of the frozen Whisky Stones and poured in a double-shot of whisky. Note that the whisky did NOT cover all the stones, as only four of them fit flat in the bottom of the glass. I rocked the glass to get all the stones covered, and sipped away. Now, the whisky was definitely cool-to-cold, probably 25 degrees colder than it had been with only three stones in the glass. This was superior sipping!

For care of this equipment, you just take your emptied glass and Stones, run in tap water to rinse the stones, pour out the water and dump the stones into a clean dish-towel, dry them, put them back in the poke and the poke back into the freezer. Couldn't be simpler.

You can look up the product's maker online. I started to, but Google rejected the search, indicating that there was some sort of script or bad text in the website. If you feel confident in your security set-up, go to terraforma dot com.

I also have an earlier, less glamorous form of this product. It consists of poly capsules filled with antifreeze of some sort. They work, are not as glam.

You greenies could easily make your own, since making (rolling?) your own is THE Greenie thing. Just hie yourself to your nearest highland stream, wade in and collect some appropriately-sized pebbles of rounded river-rock, take them home, scrub them up, maybe boil them for good measure, dry off and freeze. A zipper bag will serve as the poke to freeze them in or you could drag out your trusty sewing machine and make yourself a muslin (not Muslim) poke.

Or, you could simply place your bottle of Highland Dew in the fridge or freezer and serve it cold.

According to the Rivrdog rating system, this product rates 3 Huzzahs for concept, 3 more for execution, and a half-meh (half of a negative Huzzah) for necessity (since, using the same resouorces, you can pre-cool the whisky instead of using Whisky Stones). Cost effectiveness is not rated since I don't know how much the giftor was charged for them.

I saved the best for last, though.

The name of this product would make a GREAT name for a small band of musicians, wouldn't it?

 

Fisking Hollywood hypocrisy, Hollywood Style

...with a video.

The rotary-wing contingent over at the League of Extrordinarily Grumpy Majors (I am ronin from that group) has found a video that Hollywood tried to whip Lefty sentiment up with to "make a plan" {to (evidently) seize guns}, all, that is, except the ones in their hyper-violent movies.

You have to stay to the end. It's only 3:25.

The end expresses the point from rage, but if the refusal of the Left to consider changing one of the main causes of gun violence doesn't make you mad, well, Pilgrim, you are taking far too much anti-depressant.

After this fisking video, the naked hypocrisy of Hollywood and the game people gets off the Free Ride Bus.

NPR on Christmas

NPR has a valid purpose: project the Christian culture. They do a very good job of it on Christmas with two liturgical pageants, one fron Temple Square with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and one from Luther College with their excellent symphony orchestra and 470-voice choir, which is really a collection of smaller choirs which sing well together. My favorite sub-choir is the "Norsemen" a male choir composed of mostly baritones. Good stuff, lets me celebrate being a WASP & Christmas at the same time.

Ho, ho, ho to you, too

I dunno, I'm getting a bit ancient for the full-on Christmas decoration bit, but the gudwife sniveled, then wheedled, then thundered, so here it is.

Tree not finished, lacks the hanger-type decorations, the floor skirt and the Xmas Xpress train chugging roundy-round underneath.

Sorry for the grainy photo, the flash self-blinded the lens, so I had to shoot it without flash. Stockings hung by the chimney with care, etc, on their fancy brass hangars. Carolers on one end.

The Hearth Group. A line of nutcrackers on one end, another group of carolers on the other.

The must-have, stairwell Tootly Horn ensemble. This thing sticks out about a foot, and I'll collide with it about a dozen time between now and when it comes down.

Well, that's about half of the decorations. There will be a monster centerpiece in the dining room for the formal dinner she said we weren't going to have but probably are, there will be the Family Christmas shrine in the family room, taking up all the shelves in a wall of them, and involving moving the current contents to temp storage.

The only thing missing is outdoor decoration. Save for a swag or wreath on the door, there aren't any outdoor decorations. I want the casual observer (read: burglar casing) to think that a Grinch lives here, because those thieves know that hereabouts, the Grinches are armed.

Not in chrono order, but here's a photo of all that STUFF, enroute from my storage unit to here, yesterday. That's the helpful nurse-dau modeling her best Okie-lumper look:

Now, I've been told that this is not a REAL Okie Load, because I tied it down with binders. I dunno, I think it counts, whaddaya say? BTW, that load went only 3 miles, at not over 35 mph. We had about 3 hours in between rainstorms to do it in.