(Arlo & Janis via GoComics.com)
.
.
(via Schrodingers Cat)
(via Wenchacha)
… Everybody’s been there, everybody’s been stared down
By the enemy
Fallen for the fear and done some disappearing
Bow down to the mighty
Don’t run, stop holding your tongue
Maybe there’s a way out of the cage where you live
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in
Show me how big your brave is…
PurpleGirl
Schrodingers Cat: What a nice little video; the different instruments are so good. Thanks for suggesting it.
Anne Laurie: The song by the Maccabees is really good. I’d love to have all the lyrics for it. It sort ties in with what we talked about in my group therapy session this afternoon. I have to recommend it the others in the group and our leader.
Anne Laurie
@PurpleGirl: I linked to the lyrics: Sara Barielle, Brave
Let your words be anything but empty
Why don’t you tell them the truth?
JPL
So the big dog I’m taking care of knocked me which caused me to knock red wine on my black pants.. I’m not going to soak them cuz it’s to late but should I wash them in cold water?.
PurpleGirl
@Anne Laurie: I found the link and went over to it. Thank you. A very meaningful song for me tonight. (I liked the Maccabees video with all the different instruments and the different players on each one. They are a great group.)
PurpleGirl
@JPL: Yes, cold water and a cold water detergent is best. Hot water sets stains.
NotMax
@JPL
Got club soda or tonic water?
Dampen the stained areas with either and blot with paper towels (may have to repeat process) before laundering.
PurpleGirl
@NotMax: Club soda/tonic water is a good idea for pre-treatment of the stain.
Dork
@JPL: Should I be assured of a female issue, I’d normally recommend the removal of said pants and the recommendation that one struts around pantless. But becuz “JPL” is a crapshoot for gender determination, Im just gunna recc a drycleaner.
Frankensteinbeck
Is that Finnish? It has ‘Those aren’t real words’ feel I get listening to my Finnish friend speak his native tongue. It doesn’t look like any variant of Germanic, but it does kinda look European, so ‘Magyar’ would be my other guess.
lamh36
O Holy Night may just be my favorite Christmas song.
No matter the singer or genre of music, I just happen to love that song Ina different way than I do the others
JPL
okay.. the pants are soaking in cold water and I’ll deal with it in the morning. I sorta blame myself cuz I put the big dog up during the party and only let him out when I could sit and just enjoy a glass a wine. He really knew I didn’t need that glass of wine.
good dog.
JPL
@lamh36: Many years ago, I was touring the missions in San Antonio and the former spouse and sons were missioned out. I don’t know which one, but I walked in and someone was singing Ave Marie. It caused goose bumps to this atheist soul. They were waiting impatiently outside.
NotMax
@JPL
If all you’re doing is soaking them in cold water, would humbly suggest adding salt to the water. Wring them out and change the water a couple of times, too, leaving them to soak the final time in plain water.
redshirt
@Frankensteinbeck: Magyar would be a good bet. Also, that’s also what Hungarians call themselves and I’m not sure why we don’t.
Yutsano
I like this song for this time of year.
@lamh36: Ever heard it in Icelandic? It’s wifey’s fave too.
mbss
Anyone else notice that The Beatles have been added to a host of streaming sites? I was listening to “Beatles A-Z” all day today on Slacker Radio.
redshirt
@efgoldman: Was the trip by stagecoach in 1825? What was Andrew Jackson like? And why didn’t Mrs. E get a gig?
redshirt
@mbss: 12:00:01 on 12/25/15 all Beatles music is now streamable, apparently. If you’re into that thing.
redshirt
@efgoldman: I’m kinda obsessed about historical nomenclature these days. Ask me about the so called Byzantine Empire!
JPL
@efgoldman: What I learned later was the mission I was in was acoustically and used by soloists around the world. Although it was just a fluke, it was a magical fluke.
JPL
My dishwasher is loaded for the third time, and now it’s bedtime.
Mnemosyne
Watching “The Shop Around the Corner” like we do every Christmas Eve. I finally figured out the instructions for the decreases on the hat for my older nephew, so I need to stay up at least late enough to finish those.
Pirovich is explaining why he’s looking forward to ruining his wife’s uncle’s Christmas. I love Felix Bressart.
/Mnemo +1
Suzanne
I am still sinus-infection-y and fucking sore from falling on my stairs. Fuck fuck.
divF
Just got back from our annual Christmas Eve outing with Madame’s family. Late lunch, present exchange, then a Christmas Carol sing at the assisted living facility near my mother-in-law’s. About 30 residents turned up and joined in with the singing, many of them family faces from years past (and of course they all know my 87 yo MIL, who is a pillar of the community). Then the facility provided cookies and lemonade, and we hang out and chat.
PurpleGirl
@redshirt: I heard that whoever owns the Beatles rights finally came to agreement with the music sites and Apple (IIRC) about putting the music on the web. So yes, the Beatles are all over the place now. (Technical information is an approximation of what I heard on the news.)
rikyrah
Merry Christmas, Everyone :)
divF
@rikyrah:
And the same to you, good sir !
Yutsano
Whoever guessed Magyar gets a cookie.
Amir Khalid
@mbss:
It’s been in all the news. The young people might not understand why, but it’s THE BEATLES so it’s a big Biden deal.
? Martin
@lamh36: Carol of the Bells is my favorite holiday song. Never tire of hearing it and so many arrangements to choose from. Watched Star Wars with the kids – original Laserdisc rip just as I saw it in the theaters when I was 9. Han shoots first. No fucked-up added scenes. Presents under the tree. Anxiously hoping teenagers like their gifts. They are handling their transition to adulthood slightly better than their old man.
Hope everyone is having a lovely holiday. Best wishes to everyone and to all those around you. It may not feel like it around here sometimes, but we are making the world a better place not in small increments but in huge, rapid leaps. It has never been a better time to be a human being on this planet or in this country, and that will improve again next year. That doesn’t mean it’s roses for each of us every year or along every dimension, but on the whole, we’re getting more and more of this right each year. Just need to keep at it.
PurpleGirl
@? Martin: When a friend bought DVDs of the edited version of Star Wars a few years ago, I took the VCR tapes of the original trilogy from her. I preferred that to the newer edited version. She was just going to throw them out.
I also like Carol of the Bells.
PurpleGirl
Merry Christmas… Happy Holiday… whatever… to everyone.
(Time to go to bed.)
Mnemosyne
It wouldn’t be Christmas Eve if I wasn’t up desperately trying to finish a knitted gift. At least one is in the washer (it’s superwash wool/nylon) and the other is soaking in the sink, so I’m in the home stretch.
Mike in NC
@Frankensteinbeck: We visited Helsinki last year on our Baltic Sea cruise and learned that the Finnish language is related to absolutely nothing else in the region. (Maybe slightly closer to Estonian?) But nowhere close to German or Russian or Hungarian.
Amir Khalid
Should I see Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens in 2D or 3D?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mike in NC: This is incorrect. Finnish and Hungarian aren’t especially close, but they are related. Both are Finno-Urgic languages, and not Indo-European, and share about 600 core words. However, the last common ancestor of both dates to about 5,000 years ago and there has been divergence since. In particular, the Urgic peoples migrated in a different direction and came into contact with Turkic central Asians, which influenced the Magyar language.
Keith P
I just woke up a few minutes ago (just in time for 4:20, yay Jesus!) and went into the bathroom only to come out to have both cats sitting outside the door wanting breakfast. So I set them some dry food plus wild salmon and some other mushy feast. Put it outside so the feral living under my deck can have a xmas treat as well. Then I go back to bed.
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Norway to make a gift of a mountain to Finland in honor of Finland’s upcoming centennial anniversary of independence.
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: Saw that on TRMS, it would be Finland’s highest elevation.
Mike J
@Amir Khalid:
I was going to see it in 0d, but I didn’t see the point.
Mike J
@Mike J: And at the 1d theatre, there was too much of a line.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike J: Ladies and Gentlemen: Mike J will be here all weekend, remember to enjoy your waitress and tip the veal.
Baud
Remember Juicers,
The easiest way to defeat Christmas is to infiltrate it from the inside. So have a very Merry Christmas, everybody.
And to our Finnish friends, hyvää joulua!
maeve
@Frankensteinbeck:
@Yutsano:
@redshirt:
Google Translate says
Boldog Karacsonyt es lsten aldjon meg minket mindenkinek
Translates to
Merry Christmas and God will bless us everyone
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Bah Humbug!
OzarkHillbilly
@maeve: What’s Finnish for “Bah! Humbug!”?
Frankensteinbeck
EDIT – Removed, as I don’t feel sufficiently confident of my facts.
OzarkHillbilly
@BillinGlendaleCA: or did Baud already answer the question?
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ilmapallo Mehu
Mustang Bobby
I’m at a Holiday Inn Express near Cincinnati where I’m spending Christmas and a few more days with my parents, my sister and her son and D-I-L and their 8-month old, and my older brother and his wife. Brother #2 is in Seattle with his family. We had dinner at my sister’s house last night and will reconvene there at 9 for coffee cake and stockings, then over to my parents’ place for Christmas dinner. The weather is the talk of the town; I had to have the A/C on in the rental car yesterday afternoon and it’s supposed to continue like this through the weekend, returning to normal just in time for me to go back to Miami.
My favorite piece of Christmas music is this collection by Gustav Holtz called Christmas Day. This version is by a concert wind ensemble, which somehow seems more yule-tidy than the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
In Wales they say “Nadolig llawen a blwyddyn newydd dda,” which is basically Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck: Never stopped me.
Iowa Old Lady
@Mustang Bobby: Someone needs to buy the Welsh some more vowels.
BillinGlendaleCA
Since the song was mentioned upthread: Carol of the Bells performed by Stephen Colbert and Henry Rollins.
maeve
Just got a link to this from elsewhere – Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales in 1952
https://youtu.be/Hv4-sgFw3Go
“One Christmas was so much like the other, in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.
All the Christmases roll down towards the two-tongued sea, like a cold and headlong moon bundling down the sky that was our street; and they stop at the rim of the ice-edged, fish-freezing waves, and I plunge my hands in the snow and bring out whatever I can find. In goes my hand into that wool-white bell-tongued ball of holidays resting at the rim of the carol-singing sea, and out come Mrs. Prothero and the firemen.
….”
Elizabelle
Happy Christmas morning, BJ peeps.
Here are some baby bats in festive sacks, with holiday music, to go with your morning coffee and tea. They’re all about Christmas.
Raven
Merry Xmas ya’ll. We’re in the in laws Airbnb in Blackburg. We’re going to head off for a drive through the mountains and the hit the wonderful xmas dinner at the Hotel Roanoke. It wet and warm here too.
Mustang Bobby
@Iowa Old Lady: “Y” and “W” are considered vowels in some respects, but since the only Welsh I know is “Bore da” (Good day), don’t take it from me.
Satby
@JPL: My (adult) kid once dumped 1/2 a bottle of Merlot on my mostly beige Oriental rug. While sleeping after passing out, so it had hours to soak in. Oxiclean got all the stains out and didn’t damage the rug at all. FYI.
OzarkHillbilly
Christmas is ostensibly the time of year where we’re all supposed to forgo our petty differences, our prejudices and our micro-aggressions to come together as one human race – assuming you are Christian, well-to-do enough to afford presents and free of communicable disease. If you qualify in at least two of those three categories, you can be a part of our fun-time holiday jamboree!
That sense of good cheer and fellowship is great and all, but it’s fleeting and artificial. Why waste your time with a transitory moment of disingenuous kindness when you can double-down on the same misanthropy and petty score-settling that defines you the other 11 months of the year?
My relationship to Christmas is far less Hallmark Movie of the Week and more Richard Nixon’s enemies list. To me, this is a time to take stock of all the people who have wronged you in the last year, to reflect on their repugnance and plan for their eventual demise. In that spirit, here are the 12 biggest dicks of Christmas – the dozen most reprehensible, unforgivable tools of the holiday season.
maeve
@OzarkHillbilly:
According to Google Translate “Bah Humbug” is “Pyh Humbug” in Finnish.
To find google translate just Google “translate”
It apparently is seeded with common phrases (rather than word by word translatation) because when I sent a greeting in Norwegian to a friend (who is an American but currently living in Norway) it translated “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” the same way it translated “Happy Christmas and a Good New Year” – both to ”
God jul og et godt nytt år”
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Including STDs?
And # 9 on the list is crap. Among the top 12 worst for the year? Then it’s been a better year than I thought.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
Now there’s a holiday tradition I can get behind!
EDIT: Just read the article, I may disagree with a couple or think there are notable absences but I can live with the tradition.
Satby
And in Irish Gaelic we say Nolliag Shona. Which I wish to all of you.
Satby
@Elizabelle: Thank you! I love bats!
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud:
Not among this crowd.
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, there hasn’t been a meet up in a long while.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: It’s the thought that counts.
@Schlemazel: We all have our own petty grievances, but like you I think I have a new holiday tradition. And right now I think 12 foot 6x6s are at the top of my list.
Schlemazel
@OzarkHillbilly:
A 12 foot 6×6 might be a little too heavy for me use in the manner I want with the people on my list
BillinGlendaleCA
I’ve spent most of yesterday and tonight recovering from the Win10 Threshold2 upgrade on my Intel Compute Stick. I ended up doing a clean install, and that only worked after multiple failed attempts and I figured out that I needed to update the BIOS.
Thanks Obama.
OzarkHillbilly
@Schlemazel: Apparently it was a wee bit too heavy for me too.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@NotMax: I’m torn as to whether the best sentence in that article is:
or:
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
Miracle stain remover
OzarkHillbilly
Where are Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen when you need them?
Schlemazel
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
So, pokie posts there too?.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly: They should drop the two fictional characters and replace them with Ted Cruz and David Cameron. IMNSHO.
***
We’ve survived our early morning of wretched excess and WarriorGirl is watching CartoonNetwork on her new iPad mini. HerrDoktor is horrified by the idea of a $450 backpack — for $500 he expects a Bag of Holding, dammit! I am mystified by the breakfast sandwich maker we received.
Now for showers and off to the SIL!
Rashi
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Thanks. I’ve been looking for a way to keep my balls dryer.
Schlemazel
Her are a couple of my favorite Christmas stories
David Sedaris
6 to 8 Black Men
SantaLand Diaries
Being up early after the kids are grown & gone these are a perfect starter for the day – Merry Christmas to you all & may we all be touched by His noodley appendage in 2016
BillinGlendaleCA
@FlyingToaster: $500 backpack? I’m looking to get a camera bag and only looking at $50 tops.
Rashi
The real song about Christmas
JPL
@Satby: haha, It’s difficult getting upset with dogs but my reaction wouldn’t be the same for my son.
Merry Christmas everyone!
OzarkHillbilly
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Thanx. My wife makes our laundry detergent out of the ingredients used in this young ladies recipe with the additional ingredient of lavender crystals that can also be had at Wallie World. Works very well, is good to my skin, and smells great. Cheap too.
Iowa Old Lady
@Schlemazel: I love SantaLand Diaries. It’s often on the car radio when we’re driving to Chicagoland for the holidays. Crumpet rules!
They could play that and Squirrel Cop repeatedly and I’d still listen.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@OzarkHillbilly: I figured if I could get an old mustard stain out of a cotton tee with the stain cleaner recipe, it might work on the spilled wine from upthread.
I’m gonna try the laundry detergent after I’ve cleared out my detergent stash. Good to have another positive review. :D
OzarkHillbilly
Anybody else catch the “Gangsta Carolers”?
debbie
@Satby:
There’s an Oxy spray, Max Force, which is as strong as it sounds. You can spray and wait for several days before laundering. Miracle stuff, especially with grease.
debbie
@Iowa Old Lady:
Squirrel Cop cracks me up every time I hear it!
Satby
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: The only caution I would apply to this is dishwasher cleaners have bleach so it could affect colors.
Satby
@OzarkHillbilly: I did, that was great.
geg6
Merry merry to all of BJ!
No presents opened yet, but the pups are very interested in the stockings under the tree with their names on them.
Right now, my John is heading to pick up his brother to go place a Christmas wreath on their parents’ grave, a ritual they have every Christmas. While he’s out (he’s taking Koda with him), Lovey will lay on my feet while I prep my part of the family meal, the veggies (carrots roasted in olive oil, honey and sea salt and asparagus roasted in olive oil and sea salt–yes, I got off easy!). Sister who is hosting is making prime rib and salad, youngest sister is making twice-baked potatoes and oldest sister is making a variety of her spectacular desserts. Should be a good day. Oldest niece is adopted and just found her older brother, who was also adopted. He is coming to our family celebration (with his fiancée) where we will meet him for the first time. What a lovely thing!
SiubhanDuinne
Moved downstairs, where more appropriate.
sharl
Merry Christmas to the Balloonkateer Juicertariat Collective!
Or, something like that…
Have a good day, everyone!
jurassicpork
We are truly in need of a Xmas miracle to stave off eviction right after the holidays.
sharl
@SiubhanDuinne: So sorry to read this SD. My best wishes for your cousin to get better soon, and for all of you to be able to make the best of things under such unfortunate circumstances.
Glidwrith
Happy Day to all of you! Currently munching an apple while the rest of the family is getting cleaned up. Visiting with Kentucky in-laws that are marginally more sane than my side of the family, we will be indulging in the blizzard of torn Xmas paper in the afternoon.
And just to twist the knife concerning those that don’t like fruitcake, these folks are stealing the fruitcake that I made from each other. It’s. Just. That. Good.
Patricia Kayden
Merry Christmas to all — especially those who run this wonderful blog. It’s unseasonably warm but I’ve grown to mostly hate snow so that’s fine with me.
OzarkHillbilly
@Glidwrith: Recipe is demanded.
The Golux
Merry Christmas all!
My favorite.
FlyingToaster (Tablet)
@BillinGlendaleCA: Exactly. AFAIK, he was looking at somebody’s wish list and wondering if they were going trekking in the Gobi Desert or something.
My daughter’s lower-grade school backpacks run about $17. My Olympia travel backpack ran about $50. The most expensive multi-day pack at LLBean is $309. I don’t want to know where these people shop.
Germy
CHRISTMAS AMONG THE DAMNED
(ca. 1963)
By Arnold Schnabel
Their eyes blear,
their voices coarse,
they wander from tavern to bar,
full of fear
and cheap remorse;
they know death is not far,
and that the Lord on high
will not come for them;
He would rather drop
a bomb on them;
He does not heed their grumbling,
He does not hear their curses,
He does not hear them mumbling
as they scrabble through their purses
and their wallets made of plastic
for the price of a glass of Ortlieb’s
or, tripping the dark fantastic,
perhaps also a shot of Schenley’s.
These are the damned, these
who seek but know not pleasure,
damned once,
damned twice,
damned thrice,
and damned once again for good measure.
Their eyes bloodshot,
their noses bulbous and red,
their flesh carbuncular,
where it is not the color
of the belly of a week-dead
flounder,
yes,
these,
these are my friends.
I see them at Pat’s,
at the Huddle,
and at the Green Parrot;
I see them at the VFW,
and at the Knights of Columbus;
Some of them even have wives
or husbands as the case may be;
many of them have children,
even grandchildren
(unlike bachelor me);
they all have homes of some sort
a rowhome, apartment, or rented room,
most have jobs of some kind,
working at the Heintz factory
or at Philco or Tastykake,
but this is their real job,
sitting in a bar, staring at
the TV playing I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster,
sitting silently,
or talking petulantly,
this is their calling
and their place,
in the legions of the damned.
Yes, some sit silently on their stools
but most will talk at the slightest
provocation, or even if there is none,
even if they have nothing to say
which is nearly always,
because the hell they carry within
loves to overflow into the hell
outside them.
At last the bartender, last call
long called, stands in his coat by
the door. “This is not a hotel,”
he yells. “You don’t have to go
home, but you can’t stay here.”
One by one they shuffle through the
door and out into the cold,
into the night, from one hell
into another, and off they stumble,
to rowhome, apartment or rented room.
Gay colored lights are strung
outside the windows of the modest homes,
and along the shops on Fifth Street,
for it is Christmastime,
the anniversary of the birth
of the Savior, of someone’s savior,
but not theirs, not these,
who are beyond saving;
no.
It’s Christmas on the streets of Olney,
and a gentle snow begins to fall,
on these the damned who have
nothing to look forward to
but another hangover.
It’s the eve of Christmas Eve,
the cold wind licks their faces,
the snowflakes find their way into
the collars of necks whose scarves
have been left in the sawdust of the
barroom floor.
A shortcut is taken through Fisher Park,
but the scrubby grass is slick and wet;
a fall is taken down Dead Man’s Hill
where the children love to sled
on their Flexible Flyers:
down, down he tumbles, down and down,
until finally he lands at the bottom,
in the slush and jagged ice,
where, in pain,
which means at least not dead,
not yet, he lies on his back,
howling at the universe,
the snow rushing down
heedlessly into his face,
and somewhere among the rowhomes
on Nedro Avenue, a dog replies,
howling also, and then another on
Sixth Street, and yet another on Spencer,
and soon a whole chorus of dogs join in,
drowning out the screams of the human,
or of what once was human.
Yes, it’s Christmas,
for God and man and dog,
for those who are heaven bound
and for those forever banned
from paradise.
This is Christmas,
Christmas among the damned.
(A TIP OF THE HAT TO DAN LEO)
Glidwrith
@OzarkHillbilly: It is Emeril Lagasse (sp?) recipe though I don’t bother with the whisky sauce, so the alcohol can’t be claimed for its yummy goodness.
I vary the fruits and nuts from year to year. Don’t ever make the mistake of using peanuts as one of the nuts.
I often use Amaretto instead of Grand Marnier called for within the cake.
I have an ex-professional chef rave about it. Follow the recipe and you too will have folks eagerly asking when will you make it again.
ETA: I am hoping the recipe is online so you can find it. I’m not at home and it is rather long. If not, I will try to get it posted in a few weeks.
delk
Wesółych Świąt
&
Feliz Navidad
From my childhood Christmases
OzarkHillbilly
@Glidwrith: The google is my friend, is this it? He’s posted it 3 times with variations in the wording.
Amir Khalid
The Guardian‘s football feature You Are The Ref normally features serious questions for fans of the beautiful game who can’t get enough of second-guessing match officials. But not this week.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
obDyingOpenThread: Dean Baker has a righteous takedown of the WP this morning:
CEPR:
For example:
This, this, this.
1000 times this.
We buy things with our taxes and our tax preferences. The money doesn’t get buried in a hole somewhere.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Scapegoat
@Amir Khalid: Sadly, neither will be satisfying, I suspect. Terribly derivative, with a paucity of (highly predictable) new ground. Looking forward to your (and others’) thoughts if/when you see it.
Has the spoiler thread been posted (been moving household, so may have missed it)?
Saw it in 2D. 3D is kind of fun, in general, but the inability to focus on background items can be annoying.
SiubhanDuinne
@sharl:
Thanks, Sharl. Dinner will be good whatever day we eat it, and gifts are just stuff. More worried about some of the hard decisions that are going to have to be made about round-the-clock care at home vs. assisted living in a facility. And naturally, lots of dysfunctional family dynamics simmering under the surface, because why should this family get a pass?
It will happen as it happens. Good holidays to you!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Thanks for the pointer.
Probably doesn’t work on antiperspirant buildup on T-shirts though. :-( I haven’t found anything that works on that yet. (I’ll have to give this a try though!)
Cheers,
Scott.
Glidwrith
@OzarkHillbilly: The instructions and ingredients are roughly correct, but the balance between ingredients (eggs and butter) looks off. I make a double recipe of 24 mini-loaves and I can tell that one doesn’t look like it would scale properly.
The main secret is wrapping the cakes in the cheesecloth after poking them full of holes (use a fork, don’t bother with a toothpick) and taking the time to hydrate them with the fruited syrup. It can take up to three weeks to do this, depending on how rushed you are for time. It is truly a work of love, as Emeril would say.
Since you have the directions, it will be much easier to post the recipe later on, or you could look for his Creole Christmas book.
Satby
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Man, I needed a cigarette after reading that. And I don’t smoke.
Satby
@SiubhanDuinne: sorry to hear that and adding my hopes that your elderly relative recovers. Time-shift Christmas can still be a good Christmas, and I hope it turns out that way for you all.
Satby
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: There’s an old fashioned product called “White Brite” that’s reputed to do just that.
Ben Cisco
Cyrus Chestnut – A Charlie Brown Christmas
Germy
“I think the whole concept of monotheism is a gift from the gods.”
– Emo Phillips
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
The consensus on an earlier thread was 2D. The 3D was added in post, and someone said there was only one scene that really used it.
I saw it in 2D Tuesday night and don’t see that 3D would have measurably improved it.
Germy
“How many people here have telekenetic powers? Raise my hand.”
– Emo Phillips
Germy
xmas will break your heart
A new song by LCD Soundsystem
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Satby: Thanks muchly!
Best wishes to you and yours. I know next year will be a challenge – here’s hoping it marks the beginning of great things. :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
danielx
Merry Christmas* to all. About to make breakfast, daughter unit is digging through presents. No snow, 49 degrees. The upside is no snow, downside is no snow, although I confess that I could happily wait until February until we receive that form of precipitation.
*Substitute deity or personage of your choice, YMMV.
Edit: it appears that Cole has definitely got his Scrooge going on.
randy khan
@Yutsano: Well, I’m glad somebody else thought of Google translate.
For the record, that’s something a dog would say; a cat would be more likely to have a complaint.
J R in WV
@Elizabelle:
Those are such pretty babies! Reading all the comments, it’s obvious that they have a procedure for raising them to adulthood, dehumanizing them, and releasing them back to the colony they were lost from. Amazing.
Hope white-nose doesn’t get all the North American bats, we used to have tons of them on summer evenings, flitting about the farm house eating flying insects. Now we’re lucky to see one or two, instead of a whole flock of them every eve.
The habitat locally changed as the pump houses throughout the woods were torn down 15 or so years ago. Many bats hung in the rafters of the little pump houses, now they have to go elsewhere to roost for the day.
Years ago I visited neighbors two farms away, and by the time I headed home it was quite pitch dark, and my flashlight was so dim it was useless for walking. As I got onto our farm, there was an odd little fluttery sound, and a tiny splash in a shallow puddle. I used the red, dim flashlight to see a tiny fuzzy shape kind of thrashing in the edge of the puddle. It was a tiny bat!
I worried briefly that it might have rabies, and briefly considered killing it, when one of them flew away, and then the other. They had been mating on the wing, and fell to earth when the experience got too strong for them to keep flying! So glad I hadn’t interrupted their brief bliss! This was probably 1979-80 something like that, when bats were very common here.